We have all had these intuitions, these breathings, of awe at being fearfully and wonderfully made, and it is our natural instinct to assume a maker of such intricacy, which our developed minds may hardly believe to have come about by blind chance. The Psalmist here forestalls the theorists of development by his knowledge of the perfection of substance and the continuous fashioning which goes to make living beings. He writes earlier of God’s loving care of the unborn infant, in verse 13, ‘For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.’ It is not unreasonable to ask in what way such a Deity differs from that force which Mr Darwin calls Natural Selection, when he writes, ‘It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being …”

Is not this watchful care another way of describing the providences through God’s grace in which we have traditionally been taught to believe? Might we not indeed argue that Mr Darwin’s new understanding of the means by which these providential changes are brought about is in itself a new providence contributing both to human advance and development, and to our capacity to wonder at, to know, to further and repair those forces which God has set in motion, and which Mr Richard Owen has described as the ‘continuous operation of ordained becoming’. Our God is not a Deus Absconditus, who has left us darkling in a barren waste, nor is He an indifferent Watchmaker, who wound up a spring and looks on without passion as it slowly unwinds itself towards a final inertia. He is a loving craftsman, who constantly devises new possibilities from the abundant graves and raw materials he gave to them.

We do not have to be Pangloss to believe in beauty and virtue and truth and happiness and above all in fellow-feeling and in love, human and divine. Clearly all is not for the best in the best of all possible worlds, and it is the height of folly, of wishful thinking, to attempt to deduce God from the joyful skipping of spring lambs, or the brightness of buttercups, or even the promise of the rainbow in a thunderous sky, though the writer of Genesis does offer all men the image of the bow set in the cloud as a promise that while the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. The Bible tells us that the earth is accursed, since the Fall of Man, the Bible tells us that the curse is lifted, in part, after the Flood, the Bible tells us that our own destructive natures may be redeemed, are redeemed by the ransom paid by our Lord, Jesus Christ. The face of the earth does not always laugh, even if it speaks God to us through the mouths of stones and flowers, tempests and whirlwinds, or even the lowly diligence of ants and bees. And we may discuss, if we wish, an amelioration of our own cursed natures, working itself out in our daily lives, with many a setback, many a struggle, since the day when Our Lord bade us ‘Love our neighbours as ourselves’ and revealed Himself as God of Love as well as of Power and of special Providence.

Let us, like Him, speak in parables. His parables are drawn from the mysteries of that Nature, of which, if we are to believe His Gospel, He is Maker and Sustainer. He speaks to us of the fall of sparrows and the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin. He speaks to us—even He—of that wastefulness of Nature which so appals the Laureate, in His parable of the seeds which fell among weeds or on stony ground. If we consider the humble lives of the social insects I think we may discern truths which are riddling paradigms for our own understandings. We have been accustomed to think of altruism and self-sacrifice as human virtues, essentially human, but this is not apparently so. These little creatures exercise both, in their ways.

It has long been known that amongst the nations both of the bees and of the ants, there is only one true female, the Queen, and that the work of the community is carried on by barren females, or nuns, who attend to the feeding, building, and nurturing of the whole society and its city. It has also long been known that the insects themselves seem able to determine the sex of the embryo, or larva, according to the attention they pay to it. Chambers tells us that the preparatory states of the Queen Bee occupy 16 days; those of the neuters 20; and those of the males 24. The bees appear to enlarge the cell of the female larva, make a pyramidal hollow to allow of its assuming a vertical instead of a horizontal position, keep it warmer than other larvae are kept, and feed it with a peculiar kind of food. This care, including the shortening of the embryonic condition, produces a true female, a Queen who is destined, in the noteworthy words of Kirby and Spence ‘to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger, to be incited to vengeance, and to pass her time without labour’. Mr Darwin has confessed to his distress at the savagery with which the jealous Queens watch over, and murder, their emerging sisters in the beehive. He questioned whether this murder of the new-born, this veritable slaughter of the innocents, did not argue that Nature herself was cruel and wasteful. It could conversely be supposed that a special providence lay in the survival of the Queen best fitted to provide the hive with new generations, or the swarm with a new commander. Be that as it may, it is certain that the longer development of the worker produces a very different creature, one, again in Kirby and Spence’s words ‘zealous for the good of the community, a defender of the public rights, enjoying an immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains of parturition; laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful; incessantly engaged in the nurture of the young, in collecting honey and pollen, in elaborating wax, in constructing cells and the like!—paying the most respectful and assiduous attention to objects which, had its ovaries been developed, it would have hated and pursued with the most vindictive fury till it had destroyed them!’

I do not think it is folly to argue that the society of the bees has developed in the patient nuns who do the work a primitive form of altruism, self-sacrifice, or loving-kindness. The same is even more strikingly true of the sisterhood of ant-workers, who greet each other with great shows of affection and gentle caresses, always offering sips from their chalices of gathered nectar, which they are hurrying to carry to the helpless and dependent inhabitants of their nurseries. The ants too are able to determine, how is not known, the sex of the inhabitants of their nurseries, so that the community is replenished by desirable numbers of workers, males or fertile Queens at various epochs. Their care of their fellows might itself be thought to be a special Providence, if it were thought to be conscious, or a true moral choice. Much labour has been expended on attempts to distinguish the voice of authority in these communities—is it the Queen, or the workers, or some more pervasive Spirit of the City, located everywhere and nowhere, that determines these matters? What dictates the coherent movement of all the cells in my body? I do not, though I have Will, and Intelligence, and Reason. I grow, I decay, according to laws which I obey and cannot alter. So do the lesser creatures on the earth. How shall we name the Force that directs them? Blind Chance, or loving Providence? We churchmen have always in the past given one answer. Shall we now be daunted? Scientists attempting to ‘explain’ phenomena such as the growth of the ants’ embryos have resorted to the idea of a ‘forma formativa’, a Vital Force, residing perhaps in infinitely numerous gemmules. May we not reasonably ask, what lies behind the forming power, the Vital Force, the physics? Some physicists have come to speak of an unknown x or y. Is it not possible that this x or y is the Mystery which orders the doings of ants and men, which moves the sun and the other stars, as Dante recorded, across the Heavens—the Spirit, the Breath of God, Love Himself.

What is it that leads Mankind to yearn for the Divine Reassurance, the certainty of the Divine Care and the organising hand of the Divine Creator and Perpetuator? How should we have had the wit to devise such an aweful concept did not our own small minds correspond to some true Presence in the Universe, did we not dimly perceive and even more crucially NEED such a Being? When we see the love of the creatures for their offspring, or the tender gaze of a human mother bent on her helpless infant, which without her loving watchfulness would be quite unable to survive a day of hunger and thirst, do we not sense that love is the order of things, of which we are a wonderful part? The Laureate puts the terrible negative questions squarely in his great poem. He allows us to glimpse the new face of a world driven aimlessly by Chance and blind Fate. He presents, with plaintive singing, the possibility that God may be nothing more than our own invention, and Heaven a pious fiction. He gives the devil-born Doubt its full due, and makes his readers tremble with the impotent anxiety which is part of the Spirit of our Age.

Oh yet we trust that somehow good

Will be the final goal of ill,

To pangs of nature, sins of will,

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;

That nothing walks with aimless feet;

That not one life shall be destroyed,

Or cast as rubbish to the void,

When God hath made the pile complete;

That not a worm is cloven in vain;

That not a moth with vain desire

Is shrivelled in a fruitless fire,

Or but subserves another’s gain.

Behold, we know not anything;

I can but trust that good shall fall

At last—far off—at last, to all,

And every winter change to spring.

So runs my dream: but what am I?

An infant crying in the night:

An infant crying for the light:

And with no language but a cry.

In the next poem, Mr Tennyson writes even more strongly of Nature’s cruelty and carelessness, she who cries, ‘I care for nothing, all shall go,’ and of Poor Man:

Who trusted God was love indeed

And love Creation’s final law—

Though Nature, red in tooth and claw

With ravine, shrieked against his creed—

And how does he answer this terrible indictment? He answers with the truth of feeling to which we must not be impervious, though it may seem childishly simple, naive, almost impotent. Can we accept this truth of feeling from the depths of our natures, when our intellects have been stunned and blunted by difficult questions?

I found Him not in world or sun,

Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;

Nor through the questions men may try,

The petty cobwebs we have spun:

If e’er, when faith had fallen asleep,

I heard a voice ‘believe no more’

And heard an ever-breaking shore

That tumbled in the Godless deep;

A warmth within the breast would melt

The freezing reason’s colder part,

And like a man in wrath the heart

Stood up and answered ‘I have felt.’

No, like a child in doubt and fear:

But that blind clamour made me wise;

Then was I as a child that cries,

But, crying, knows his father near;

And what I am beheld again

What is, and no man understands;

And out of darkness came the hands

That reach through nature, moulding men.

Was it not a true leading that enabled Mr Tennyson to become again as a little child, and feel the Fatherhood of the Lord of Hosts? Was it not significant that the warm organised cells of his heart and his circulating blood rose up against the ‘freezing reason’? The infant crying in the night receives not enlightenment, but the warm touch of a fatherly hand, and thus believes, thus lives his belief. We are fearfully and wonderfully made, in His Image, father and son, son and father, from generation to generation, in mystery and ordained order.

Harald had put up the cowl of his gown against the cold. His long face, on its scrawny neck, peered at William as he read, assessing the flicker of the other’s eyes, the compressions of his lips, the odd nod or shake of the head. When William had finished, Harald said, ‘You are not convinced. You do not believe—’

‘I do not know how I can believe or not believe. It is, as you most eloquently say, a matter of feeling. And I cannot feel these things to be so.’

‘And my argument from love—from paternal love?’

‘It is resonant. But I would answer as Feuerbach answers, “Homo homini deus est”, our God is ourselves, we worship ourselves. We have made our God by a specious analogy, Sir—I do not mean to give offence, but I have been thinking about this for some years—we make perfect images of ourselves, of our lives and fates, as the painters do of the Man of Sorrows, or the scene in the Stable, or as you once said, of a grave-faced winged Creature speaking to a young girl. And we worship these, as primitive peoples worship masks of terror, the alligator, the eagle, the anaconda. You may argue anything at all by analogy, Sir, and so consequently nothing. This is my view. Feuerbach understood something fundamental about our minds. We need loving kindness in reality; and often we do not find it—so we invent a divine Parent for the infant crying in the night, and convince ourselves all is well. In reality, many cries remain unheard in perpetuity.’

‘That is not a refutation.’

‘In the nature of the case, it cannot be. It leaves the matter exactly where it first stood. We desire things to be so, and so we create a tale, or a picture, that says, we are so and so. You might as well say, we are like ants, as that ants may develop to be like us.’

‘Indeed I might. We are all one life, I believe, shot through with His love. I believe, I hope.’

He took back his papers with careful hands, in which the papers shivered. The hands were ivory-coloured, the skin finely wrinkled everywhere, like the crust on a pool of wax, and under it appeared livid bruises, arthritic nodes, irregular tea-brown stains. William watched the hands fold the wavering papers and was fined with pity for them, as for sick and dying creatures. The flesh under the horny nails was candlewax-coloured, and bloodless.

‘It may be an emotional deficiency in myself, Sir, that I cannot feel the strength of the argument. I have been much changed by the pattern of my life, of my work. My own father was very much in the image of a terrible Judge, who preached rivers of blood and destruction, and whose own profession was bloody too. And then the vast disorder—the indifference to human scale and preoccupations—in the Amazon—I have not been left with a propensity to find kindness in the face of things.’

‘But I hope you have found it here. For you must know that we must count your coming as a special Providence—to make a new life for dear Eugenia, and now for your little ones—’

‘I am most grateful—’

‘And happy, I hope, contented, I hope,’ the tired old voice insisted in the sharp air, hanging there in a question.

‘Very happy, of course, Sir. I have all I wished for, and more. And when I come to think about my future—’

‘That shall be provided for, as you richly deserve, have no fears. There can be no thought of leaving Eugenia as yet—you would not so disappoint her—her happiness is young—but in due course, you will find all your needs can be answered, amply so, have no fears. I regard you as my dear son, and I intend to provide for you. In due course.’

‘I thank you, Sir.’

There was frost on the inside of the windows, and watery tears, involuntary damp, round the red rims of the clouded eyes.

William was not invited to join in the amusements of Lionel and Edgar, though Eugenia did ride out to the Meets, in a velvet habit, and come back flushed and smiling. There was a tacit conspiracy, he could almost have called it a conspiracy, to assume that, not being a pure gentleman, he would not have the skill or bravery for these gentlemanly pursuits, however resourcefully he had endured the Amazon. He went on long country walks, most frequently alone, sometimes with Matty Crompton and the schoolroom young. He was expected also to join in the evening games, in the drawing-room, where Lady Alabaster liked to play dominoes, or spillikins, or Black Maria, and where charades were occasionally organised, very ambitiously. He caused a great deal of laughter once, by likening these to the village feasts of the Indians, where everyone was fantastically dressed, and he had once met a dancing brown figure in a red-checked shirt and straw hat with a net and a box whom he recognised as a parody of himself. Great gales of laughter were aroused too by a particularly witty enactment of AM A ZON, in which AM was represented by Lionel as Abraham hearing the Voice of God out of the burning bush, a wonderful creation of yew boughs and red silk and tinsel made by Matty Crompton, A was represented by the children and Miss Mead, enacting a schoolroom alphabet lesson, in which apples were plucked from a paper tree, bees flew from a hive, and an animated Crocodile snapped at everyone’s heels. ZON was a love scene in which Edgar, in full evening dress, pinned a beautiful silver girdle (zone) around Eugenia’s waist—she was wearing a new silver and lemon ballgown, and her appearance aroused a huge round of applause. AMAZON was William himself, paddling a canoe made from an upturned bench behind paper reeds and dangling woollen vines, observed by a tribe of feathered and painted Indian children led by Matty Crompton in an imposing cloak painted with feathers, and a mask painted like a hawk. Tissue-paper butterflies danced in the hothouse plants stacked on the stage, and colourful snakes made of string and paper hissed and wriggled dramatically.

William congratulated Miss Crompton on the scenery of this tour de force, when he met her next day, winding up the crimson ribbons and folding the tinsel of the Burning Bush.

‘It was easy to see whose was the inventive mind behind all these beautiful objects,’ he said.

‘I do what comes to hand, as well as I can,’ she said. ‘Such activities stave off boredom.’

‘Are you often bored?’

‘I try not to be.’

‘That is not an answer.’

‘I suppose we all feel we have greater capacities than are called for in our daily lives.’

She gave him her sharp look as she said this, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that she had only answered his intrusively personal question in order to draw him out. He was beginning to be a little afraid of Matty Crompton’s sharpness. She had never treated him other than very benevolently, and had never put herself forward in any way. But he sensed a kind of suppressed, fierceness in her which he was not wholly sure he wanted to know more about. She had herself very much in her own control, and he thought he preferred to leave things that way. However, he answered, because he needed to speak, and he could not speak to Harald or to Eugenia on these matters. It would be wrong. Wrong now, at least, wrong at this juncture.

‘I do feel something of the kind myself, from time to time. It is strange that in the Amazons I woke daily from a dream of mild English sunshine, of simple and wonderful things such as bread, and butter, instead of endless cassava. And now I wake from dreams of the forest curtain, of the movement of the river, of my work, Miss Crompton. I do not have my work, my own work here, though my life could not be more pleasant, nor my new family kinder.’

‘You work, I believe, with Sir Harald, on his book.’

‘I do, but I am not really needed, and my views—in short, my views do not wholly agree with his. He desires me to play advocatus diaboli to his arguments, but I fear I distress him and add little to the advancement of the work—’

‘Perhaps you should write your own book.’

‘I have no settled opinions to advance, and no wish to convert anyone to my own rather uncertain views of things.’

‘I did not mean opinions.’ There was a possible curl of contempt—he could not decide—in the incisive voice. ‘I meant a book of facts. A book of scientific facts, such as you are uniquely qualified to write.’

‘I have meant to write a book of my travels—such books have been very successful, I know—but all my detailed notes, all my specimens were lost in the shipwreck. I have not the heart to invent, if I could.’

‘But nearer to hand—nearer to hand, lie things you could observe and write about.’

‘You have suggested this before. I am sure you are right—I am most grateful to you. I do intend to begin a close study of the Elm Copse nests just as soon as they return to life in the Spring—but a scientific study will take many years, and much rigour, and I had hoped—’

‘You had hoped—’

‘I had hoped to be able to set out again on another foreign journey to collect more information about the untravelled world—I wish to do that—Sir Harald suggested, more or less promised, that he might be sympathetic—’

Matty Crompton closed her sharp mouth tightly. She said, ‘The book I should like to see you write is not a major scientific study. Not the work of a lifetime. It is a book I think might prove useful—and dare I say it—profitable to you, in the quite near future. I believe if you were to write a natural history of the colonies over a year—or two years, if you were to feel the need was absolute—you would have something very interesting to a very general public, and yet of scientific value. You could bring your very great knowledge to bear on the particular lives of these creatures—make comparisons—bring in their Amazonian relatives—but told in a popular way with anecdotes, and folklore, and stories of how the observations were made—’

She looked him in the eye. Her own dark eyes gleamed. He caught at her idea.

‘It might be interesting—it might be fun—’

‘Fun,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘The children could be usefully employed. I myself would be proud to assist. Miss Mead would do what she could. I see the children as characters in the drama. There absolutely has to be drama, you know, if the work is to appeal to the general public.’

‘You should write it yourself, I think. It is all your idea, and you should have the credit.’

‘Oh no. I have not the requisite knowledge—nor the spare time, though it is hard to say where my days go to—I do not see myself as a writer. But as an assistant, Mr Adamson, if you would accept me. I would be honoured. I can draw—and record—and copy if necessary—’

‘I am quite extraordinarily grateful. You have transfigured my prospects.’

‘Hardly. But I do believe it may answer. With good will and hard work.’

In the Spring of 1862, then, around the time of the birth of Robert Edgar, the organised ant-watch began. The city and its satellite suburbs were mapped and all their entrances and exits carefully recorded. Drawings were made of the way in which the gates of the city were closed at night with barricades of twigs behind which the watchers slept. Maps were made of the paths of the foraging ants, and judicious investigations were made of the nursery chambers, the eggs, grubs and cocoons which formed both the city’s population and its living treasure. A kind of census was taken of guests and parasites in the community. There was a thriving population of aphid ‘cattle’ in the Elm Tree Bole, assiduously stroked and petted by their ant-keepers to induce the secretion of drops of sweet honey-dew, eagerly sipped and stored. There were a great many wandering guests, whose presence was encouraged or tolerated—the beetle, Amphotis, who would solicit sips of nectar from returning workers, but who, in turn, appeared to secrete some marvellous manna which its hosts energetically scraped and licked from its wing-cases and thorax, another beetle, Dinaida, which seemed to lie quietly around the corridors, gulping up a few eggs when no one was watching. The whole process of cleaning the nest was observed and documented, as convoys of ants flowed out to the huge rubbish mound bearing mouldered foodstuffs, unsavoury droppings and the corpses of their dead or dying sisters. Many of the internal processes of the nest—the Queen’s industrious parturition, the workers’ perpetual grooming and nourishment of her, their carrying-off and nursing of eggs, their shifting of eggs and larvae to nurseries that were warmer or cooler—could be seen in the glass-sided nest in the schoolroom, where the young girls, in good moods, would be set to document a nursery, or the Queen, for an hour or two together. William made a study of the foodstuffs brought into two particular entrances over the whole period, and thought he discerned distinct seasonal variations in what was chosen, and offered, depending on the needs of the larvae for secretions, or later for insect-flesh, and the lessening needs, in the latter part of the year, to provide for these myriads of dependent mouths. William and Miss Crompton together began to construct a military history of the whole society, which turned out to bear a remarkable resemblance, in some ways, to human warfare, with sudden invasive attacks by one army on the neighbouring stronghold of another community. They observed both successful sieges and fights which resulted in stalemates and simultaneous retreats. Matty Crompton made some very spirited drawings of battling formicae; she sat on a grass hummock whilst William lay full-stretch on the earth identifying the waves of attackers and defenders.

‘How anything can survive with a hair for a waist, puzzles me,’ she said. ‘They seem so vulnerable, with their bristling little feet and their delicate antennae, and yet they are armed with stings and savage jaws, they can slice and pierce as well as any knight in armour, and they are armoured moreover. What would you say to a few cartoon-like illustrations for your text—here, I have drawn one with a stiletto, and there with a staring helmet and a kind of heavy wrench.’

‘I should think it might add greatly to the human interest’, said William. ‘Have you observed how they can sever antennae and legs and cut each other in half so very quickly? And have you observed how many of the combatants advance to meet an adversary with several helpers clinging to their legs? Now, what possible advantage can such assistance be? Is it not rather an impediment?

‘Let me see,’ she said, dropping to her knees beside him. ‘Why, so they do. How endlessly interesting they are. See this poor soul bend round to sting an adversary who has a terrible vice-grip on her head. They will both die, like Balin and Balan, I should think.’

She was wearing a brown cotton skirt, and a striped shirt, the sleeves rolled up to her elbow. Her face was shadowed by a rather ragged straw hat, with a limp crimson ribbon, which were her usual ant-watching garments. He knew all her wardrobe by now; it was not extensive; two cotton skirts, a Sunday dress, in Summer, in navy poplin, with a choice of white starched collars, and perhaps four different shirts, in various fawns and greys. She was thin and bony; he found himself abstractedly studying her wristbones, and the tendons on the back of her brown hands, as she drew. Her movements were quick and decisive. A flick, a sweep, a series of little hooks and curves, and there was an exact diagrammatic rendering of ant-jaws crunching ant-legs, ant-thorax and ant-gaster contorted either in pain or in effort to inflict it. Beside these informative images trotted tiny anthropomorphised ant-warriors, with swords, bucklers, tridents and helmeted heads. She was absorbed in her work. William found himself suddenly sharply inhaling what must have been her peculiar smell, a slightly acid armpit smell, inside the cotton sleeves in the sunlight, mixed with a tincture of what might be lemon verbena, and a whiff of lavender, either from her soap, or from the herbs in the drawer where her shirts were laid up. He breathed more deeply. The hunter in him, now in abeyance, had a highly developed sense of smell. There were jungle creatures whose presence he sensed with all sorts of senses undeveloped in urban Englishmen, he supposed—a pricking in the skin, a fluctuation in the soft nasal lining, a ripple in the scalp, a perturbation of his sense of balance. These had tormented him in London streets, where they had over-responded to fried onions and sewage, to the garments of the urban poor and the perfumes of ladies. He sniffed again, secretly and quietly, the scent of Miss Crompton’s outdoor identity. Later in Eugenia’s bedroom, when she had reclaimed him, and he was buried in the smells of her fresh sheets and her fluid sex, her hot hair and her panting mouth, that sharp little smell returned briefly like a ghost of the outdoors, and he puzzled for a moment, as he pressed Eugenia into the plump mattress, over what it could be, and remembered the severed feelers and Matty Crompton’s busy wrists.

Matty Crompton gave a name, at least a first name, to the child he thought of as his beetle-sprite, whom she recruited to keep an eye on the nest of the Blood-red Ants, on her afternoons off. Her name, it turned out, was Amy, and Miss Crompton asserted that it would do her good to get a bit of fresh air, having no family and nowhere to go, and to earn a few extra pennies. She sat with the gardener’s boy, who had to be dissuaded from dropping stag beetles down her neck, but was observant. It was these two who alerted William and Miss Crompton to the change in the activities of the slave-makers. Tom said he had noticed several of the red ants, as he put it, ‘prowling around like’, near the Stonewall Nest, and one day, sent by Tom, Amy came running across the lawn crying, ‘Come quick, come quick, Tom says the Bloody Ants are coming up in a fizzing great army, he says, he says, come quick something is up, he says. I saw them mysen, they are like gravy boiling, do come.’ She was still a thin, bowed, pinched little thing, but the project, and Tom, had put some colour into her cheeks, and she was developing a bird-like prettiness of which she was wholly unconscious.

William and Matty sallied forth, armed with camp-stools and notebooks, and were there in time to observe the slave-makers’ forces, after a great deal of excited waving of antennae and legs and apparently inane running-about, suddenly get out, purposefully, led by an advance guard of particularly excited scouts, across the thirty yards or more that separated their smaller mounds from the Elm Tree Bole. They poured out in various regiments, accompanied, as William duly noticed, by a sizeable force of Wood Ant slaves, whose behaviour appeared to be identical to that of their masters.

William wrote up what they observed, and read it aloud later to Matty Crompton and the rest of the inhabitants of the schoolroom.

The great Slaving Raid took place on a hot June day, when the temperature had been rising steadily for some time, and with it the activities of the Blood-red Ants, as reported to our historians by our spies and pickets. We were led to speculate whether slave-raids, like other large exoduses and population changes, are instigated by the heat of the Sun. Ants do not move in cool weather, and sleep at night, even in the balmiest Summer days; they are cold-blooded, and need external warmth to get their desires and designs in motion. Be that as it may, the approach of Midsummer roused the Blood-red citizens to an increasing hum of conversation and activity. Messages came in more and more speedily and frequently. More and more scouts could be seen spying on the peaceful foraging of the Wood Ants, or busily trampling out trails between their nest and that of their unsuspecting victims.

Finally, at some signal, awaited eagerly by the gossiping and seething crowds who had rushed in readiness to the agora on their hill-top, the red armies divided into four parties, which set out in direct lines across the terrain—following well-mapped routes, used, we suspected, on previous raids. When the four regiments had taken up their positions around the Elm Tree Bole Nest, the leaders of all four could be observed like little Napoleons rushing excitedly along the ranks, stirring up valour and determination with strokes of their antennae and agitated bodily movements. Suddenly the 1st Sanguine Troopers moved into concerted action, storming their way towards the entrances—so carefully barricaded at night, now gaping open to the incitatory sunlight. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th Regiments patrolled the positions they had taken up, with increasing forcefulness and ferocity.

The Wood Ants sallied forth bravely to beat off the thieves and kidnappers. Waving their antennae, hurrying furiously, they bit at the legs and heads and feelers of the busy Bloody Ants, attempting, often with success, to grasp the invaders and sting them to death. We observed that the Sanguine Ants did not retaliate unless they were wholly impeded from progress. They had one purpose only—to snatch the unhatched infants from the Nursery, and to bear them back, in their fine jaws, to their own fortress. Whilst the martial Wood Ants battled to delay them, the tenders of the helpless young snatched up their infant sisters and tried to bear them away to safety. Most strange was to see Wood Ants, identical in appearance to the inhabitants of Elm Tree Bole, rushing forwards into the corridors of the castle, seizing cocoons and bearing them, not to safety, but out again to the ramparts and the waiting, protective corps of sanguinea who would be the rearguard for their safe passage back to the Red Fort. We were sufficient in numbers, as observers, to make quite sure, from repeated trackings of individual sanguinea and Wood Ants, that the residents of Elm Tree Bole did not distinguish between the ruddy foreigners, and their slaves of their own race, attacking both impartially.

It was all over remarkably quickly. There were very few casualties. The Blood-red Ants had not come to slaughter, and had moved so swiftly, so single-mindedly, that the Wood Ant defenders—retaliating as they would to aggressive territorial invasions by their own kind—had been baffled and bewildered, and had allowed their attackers to make their limited assault without very effective opposition. Back streamed the victorious invaders, carefully bearing the captured nestlings whose fate was to live and die as sanguinea, not as true Wood Ants, to feed and nourish little sanguinea, to respond to the Summer sun by massing to attack their forgotten parents and sisters. They do not appear to have depleted the nursery inhabitants so severely as to disrupt the way of life of the Elm Tree Bole, which resumed, after the excitement, much as it had been. They did not, as human soldiers do, rape and pillage, loot and destroy. They came, and saw, and conquered, and achieved their object, and left again. It is believed that slave-making raids are made not more than once a year, so we were lucky to have—as the Red Ants themselves did—good spies to alert us to this interesting event.

The English slave-makers are not so specialised as certain other larger slave-makers are. These are known as the Amazons, though they do not originate in the Amazon basin but are commonly found in Europe and North America. The Amazona—for example Polyergus rufescens—never excavate nests nor care for their young. Their name is probably bestowed because like the classical Amazon warriors, who were all women, led by a fierce queen, they have substituted belligerence for the delicate domestic virtues associated with the female sex. Unlike the Blood-red Ants, the Amazons have developed such powerful tools and weapons of fighting and thieving that they are unable to perform any other function, and depend entirely on their slaves to feed them and polish their ruddy armour. Their jaws cannot seize prey; they have to beg their slaves for food; but they can kill, and they can carry. It might be argued that Natural Selection has perfected these creatures as fighting machines, but in the process has rendered them irrevocably dependent and parasitic. We may ask if there are not lessons to be learned by ourselves from this curious and extreme social state.

‘Nature does indeed teach us,’ said Miss Mead. ‘A terrible war is being waged at present across the Atlantic, to secure not only the liberation of the unfortunate slaves, but the moral salvation of those whose leisure and enrichment are sustained by their cruel labours.’

‘And we are urged’, said Matty Crompton, ‘to fight on the side of the slave-makers, to preserve the work, that is the daily bread, of our own cotton-mill workers. And our own philanthropists, in turn, seek to rescue those machine-slaves from their specialised labour. I do not know quite where these thoughts may lead us.’

‘Analogy is a slippery tool,’ said William. ‘Men are not ants.’

Nevertheless, in the hot days just after Midsummer, when they increased their vigilance in order to observe, if possible, the nuptial flight of the Queens and their suitors, he was hard put to it not to see his own life in terms of a diminishing analogy with the tiny creatures. He had worked so hard, watching, counting, dissecting, tracking, that his dreams were prickling with twitching antennae, advancing armies, gnashing mandibles and dark, inscrutable complex eyes. His vision of his own biological processes—his frenzied, delicious mating, so abruptly terminated, his consumption of the regular meals prepared by the darkly quiet forces behind the baize doors, the very regularity of his watching, dictated by the regularity of the rhythms of the nest, brought him insensibly to see himself as a kind of complex sum of his nerve-cells and instinctive desires, his automatic social responses of deference or required kindness or paternal affection. One ant in an anthill was neither here nor there, was dispensable, was nothing. This was intensified, despite his recognition of the grimly comic aspect of his reaction, by the recording of the fate of the male ants. This passage he did not read aloud to the whole team of researchers; he showed it in the Winter, after several rewritings, to his chief collaborator, Matty Crompton.

We were fortunate also, in 1862, to be able to observe the spectacle of the wedding dance of the thousands of winged Queens and aspiring suitors, who swarmed on the Osborne Nest and the Elm Tree Bole as if at a given signal, a trumpet-sound, or the resonant hum of a gong. Vigilant young eyes had observed young males attempting to leave the nest some days earlier, and being held back by determined guardians until the appointed time. We had had some idea when that might be, for we had noted the exact date of the nuptial ceremonies during the previous Summer, when the whirling couples had plummeted, like so many Icaruses or falling angels, to a creamy suffocation, or death by drowning in a steaming cauldron of fragrant Mysore in the midst of our own strawberry picnic. The appointed day in 1862 was the 27th June, and the ball-guests emerged in clouds of gauze and took to the air in fragile spires. Many ants consummate their unions in flight, embracing each other high above the earth. The Wood Ants appear to mate in fact on the earth—the males of this species are nearer in size to the Queens than in many others, where the Queen may exceed her consort by twenty times or more in bulk, and can easily transport her lover through the empyrean. We were unable on this occasion to observe whether the Wood Ant Queen practises polyandry, though other species of ants are known to do so—we hope to be able to observe more closely next year. We did observe heaps of fiercely struggling and battling black bodies, wrapped in their diaphanous veiling, each Queen fought for by ten or twenty determined suitors, who will hang fiercely on to each other’s legs, to get a purchase anywhere at all—more like a battle in Rugby Football than the elegant minuet for which their silky robes might seem fitted. The little workers stand by and observe, occasionally pulling at one or other of the actors in this passionate drama. We might imagine them feeling a certain complacency at their immunity from the terrible desire, both murderous and suicidal as well as amorous, which drives the winged sexual creatures. They appear also to feel a certain organising interest in things going well, and will give a pull or a push or a tweak to one or other of the embracing combatants—we could not ascertain the purpose of these interventions, though in other breeds of more primitive ant, where mating takes place in the nest, the workers are known to control the access of the males to the Queens, choosing which shall be admitted to their presence and which shall be kept at bay with jaws and sting.

How busy, how festive, how happy the dancing seemed! How tragic its outcome for almost all of the participants! The nuptial flight of the Wood Ants offers a supremely moving example of the inexorable secret work of Natural Selection, so that anyone observing it must be struck by how completely Mr Darwin’s ideas might seem to explain it. The males struggle mightily to possess the winged Queens; they must prove their strength of flight, their combative skills, their powers of attracting and gaining the trust of the wary female, spoiled as she is by choice of an almost infinite number of pressing lovers. And the Queens themselves, who emerge in their hundreds of hundreds, must possess strength and skill and cunning and tenacity to survive more than a very few moments after successful fecundation, let alone to start a nest. The time in the blue sky, the dizzy whirling in the gauzy finery lasts only a few hours. Then they must snap off their wings, like a young girl stepping out of her wedding veils, and scurry away to find a safe place to found a new nest-colony. Most fall prey to birds, other insects, frogs and toads, hedgehogs and trampling humans. Few indeed manage to make their way again underground, where they will lay their first eggs, nourish their first brood of daughters—miserable dwarfs, fragile and slow, these early children—and in due course, as the workers take over the running of the nursery and the provision of food, they will forget that they ever saw the sun, or thought for themselves, or chose a path to run on, or flew in the Midsummer blue. They become egg-laying machines, gross and glistening, endlessly licked, caressed, soothed and smoothed—veritable Prisoners of Love. This is the true nature of the Venus under the Mountain, in this miniature world a creature immobilised by her function of breeding, by the blind violence of her passions.

And what of the males? Their fate, even more poignantly, exemplifies the remorseless random purposefulness of Dame Nature, of Natural Selection. It is believed that early males of primitive ants were also in some sense workers, members of the community. But as the Societies of insects became more complex, more truly interdependent, the sexual forms of the creatures involved became more and more specialised. It is not generally known that worker-ants can and do, upon occasion, lay eggs, from which, it appears, only male children will emerge. But they appear to do this only if the Queen is ailing, or the nest is threatened. In general the Queens mother the whole society, and have changed in body to be able to do so, swollen with eggs, enough eggs fertilised from this one matrimonial encounter for a whole generation. Changes in bodily form according to function exist throughout the insect societies. There are ants whose heads exactly fit to plug the holes in the stems of plants where they live, which when not plugged are entrances and exits. There are ants known as Repletes, hung up in cellars like living wineskins, bloated with stored nectar. And the males, too, have become specialised, as factory-hands are specialised hands for the making of pin-heads or brackets. Their whole existence is directed only to the nuptial dance and the fertilisation of the Queens. Their eyes are huge and keen. Their sexual organs, as the fatal day approaches, occupy almost the whole of their body. They are flying amorous projectiles, truly no more than the burning arrows of the winged and blindfold god of Love. And after their day of glory, they are unnecessary and unwanted. They run hither and thither, aimlessly, draggle-winged. They are beaten back for the most part from the doors of their home nests, and driven away to mope and die in the cooling evenings of late Summer and early Autumn. Like the drones of the beehive they toil not, neither do they spin, though like the drones too, they are pampered in the early stages of their lives, tolerated pretty parasites, who dirty and disturb the calm workings of the nest, who must be fed on honey-dew and cleaned up after in the corridors. The drones, too, as Autumn approaches, meet with a terrible fate. One morning in the hive a mysterious Authority arms and alerts the worker-sisters, who descend on the sleeping hordes of velvet slugabeds, and proceed to tear them limb from limb, to pierce, to sever, to blind, to bundle bleeding out of doors, and remorselessly to refuse readmission. How profligate is Nature of her seeds, of her sons, making thousands that one may pass on his inheritance to sons and daughters.

‘Very eloquent,’ commented Matty Crompton, drily. ‘I am quite overcome with pity for these poor, useless male creatures. I must admit I had never seen them in that light before. Do you not think you may have been somewhat anthropomorphic in your choice of rhetoric?’

‘I thought that was our intention, in this History. To appeal to a wide audience, by telling truths—scientific truths—with a note of the fabulous. I have perhaps overdone it. I could tone it down.’

‘I am quite sure you should not—it will do excellently as it is—it will appeal greatly to the dramatic emotions—I have had an idea of writing some real fables of my own, to go with my little drawings of mestizo fairy-insects. I should like to emulate La Fontaine—the tale of the grasshopper and the ant, you know—only more accurately. And I have been making a collection of literary citations in a commonplace book, which I thought might be placed at the head of your chapters. It is important that the book be delightful as well as profound and truthful, is it not? I found a wonderful sonnet by poor mad John Clare, which, like Milton’s Pandemonium-beehive, seems to suggest that our idea of fairies may be only an anthropomorphising of insects. I like your Venus under the Mountain. She is related to the Little People under the Hill of all British fairy lore. I am convinced that many of the flying demons on church walls are inspired by stag beetles with their brows. How I go on! Here is the Clare. Tell me what you think. Rulers and labourers alike were men to him, you will see.’

What wonder strikes the curious, while he views

The black ant’s city, by a rotten tree

Or woodland bank! In ignorance we muse:

Pausing, annoyed, we know not what we see,

Such government and thought there seem to be;

Some looking on, and urging some to toil,

Dragging their loads of bent-stalks slavishly;

And what’s more wonderful, when big loads foil

One ant or two to carry, quickly then

A swarm flock round to help their fellow-men.

Surely they speak a language whisperingly,

Too fine for us to hear; and sure their ways

Prove they have kings and laws, and that they be

Deformed remnants of the fairy-days.

She was keen, she was resourceful, William thought. He half-wished he could confide in her about his own drone-nature, as he increasingly perceived it, though that, of course, was impossible for all sorts of reasons. He could not betray Eugenia, or demean himself by complaining of Eugenia. Moreover, to complain in this way would make him look foolish. He had yearned for Eugenia, and he had Eugenia, and he was bodily in thrall to Eugenia, as must, in this confined community, be apparent even to a sexless being like Miss Crompton.

It interested him, that he thought of her as sexless. That thought itself might have arisen out of some analogy with the worker ants. She was dry, was Matty Crompton. She did not, he was coming to see, suffer fools gladly. He was beginning to think that there were all sorts of frustrated ambitions contained in that sharp, bony body, behind those watchful black eyes. She was determined and inventive about the book. She was fiercely intent, not only on its production, but on its success. Why? He himself had an unspoken, almost unacknowledged vision of making enough money to be able to set out again for the Southern Hemisphere independent of Harald and Eugenia, but Miss Crompton could not want that, could not know that he wanted that, could not want him to go, when he added so much to the interest of her life. He did not think she was so altruistic a being.

The end of the Summer made him think rather sourly of the fate of the drones, not only in terms of himself and the ants, but in terms of other male members of the household. Harald was enmeshed in the problems of instinct and intelligence and his powers of thought seemed paralysed. Lionel had cracked his ankle jumping over a park wall for a dare, and was laid up on the terrace, on a rattan chaise longue, complaining loudly of his immobility. Edgar went riding, and paid long visits to various neighbouring squires. Robin Swinnerton and Rowena were back in the neighbourhood, still childless. Robin invited William to ride with him, and said that he envied him his luck: ‘A man feels a fool, you know, if an heir doesn’t put in an appearance in due course—and unlike Edgar, I don’t have little love-children all over the county to show I can father them if I choose.’

‘I know nothing about Edgar’s private life.’

‘A veritable centaur, or do I mean a satyr? A man of appetites—no girl is safe, they say, except the most unimpeachably respectable young creatures, who innocently set their caps at him and whom he avoids like the plague. He likes a rough and tumble, he says. I don’t think a man should behave as he does, though there’s no denying plenty do, maybe most.’

William, about to be righteously indignant, remembered various golden, amber and coffee-skinned creatures he had loved on hot nights—and smiled awkwardly.

‘Wild oats,’ said Robin Swinnerton, ‘according to Edgar, are stronger and more savoury than the cultivated kind. I always meant to save myself, to commit myself—to one.’

‘You have not been married long,’ said William uncomfortably. ‘You should not lose hope, I am sure.’

‘I do not,’ said Robin. ‘But Rowena is downcast, and looks somewhat enviously at Eugenia’s bliss. Your little ones are very true to type—veritable Alabasters.’

‘It is as though environment were everything and inheritance nothing, I sometimes think. They suck in Alabaster substance and grow into perfect little Alabasters—I only very rarely catch glimpses of myself in their expression—’

He thought of the Wood Ants enslaved by the sanguinea, who believed they were sanguinea, and shook himself. Men are not ants, said William Adamson to himself, and besides, the analogy will not do, an enslaved Wood Ant looks like a Wood Ant, tho’ to a sanguinea it may smell Blood-red. I am convinced their modes of recognition are almost entirely olfactory. Though it is possible they navigate by the sun, and that is to do with the eyes.

‘You are dreaming,’ said Robin Swinnerton. ‘I propose a gallop, if you are agreeable.

Early one morning, that Autumn, a disagreeable incident revealed the centaur or satyr in Edgar to William. William had risen early and was making his way to the stable yard when he heard a kind of choking sound in a scullery at one side of the corridor and turned aside to investigate. Inside the scullery was Edgar, bending over the sink, his back to William. In Edgar’s grasp, William saw slowly, was his little beetle-sprite, Amy, whose curls had become brighter and thicker over the Summer, though her face remained white and pointed. Edgar had bent her backwards, and had one hand over her mouth and one thrust into her bodice. His buttocks swelled behind him: his genitals were pushed up against Amy’s skirts. William said, ‘Amy?’

He wondered if he should retreat. Amy made an inarticulate cry. Edgar said, ‘I didn’t know you had an interest in this little thing.’

‘I don’t. Not a personal one. In her general wellbeing—’

‘Ah. Her general wellbeing. Tell him, Amy. Was I hurting you? Were my attentions unwelcome, perhaps?’

Amy was still bent back over the sink. Edgar withdrew his arm from her clothing with the deliberation of a trout-tickler leaving a trout stream. His fingermarks could be seen on Amy’s skin, round her mouth and chin. She gasped. ‘No, sir. No, sir. No harm. I am quite well, Mr Adamson. Please.’

William was not clear what the plea meant. Perhaps she was not clear herself. In any case, Edgar stepped back, and she stood up, head hanging, hands nervously rearranging her buttons and waistband.

‘I think you should apologise, Sir, and leave us,’ said Edgar coldly and heavily.

‘I think Amy should run away,’ said William. ‘I think she would do best to run away.’

‘Sir?’ said Amy in a very small voice, to Edgar.

‘Run off then, child,’ said Edgar. ‘I can always find you when I want you.’

His large pale mouth was unsmiling as he said this. It was a statement of fact. Amy ducked a vague obeisance at both men, and scuttled away.

Edgar said, ‘The servants in this house are no concern of yours, Adamson. You do not pay their wages, and I’ll thank you not to interfere with them.’

‘That little creature is no more than a child,’ said William. ‘And one who has never had a childhood—’

‘Nonsense. She is a nice little packet of flesh, and her heart beats faster when I feel for it, and her little mouth opens sweetly and eagerly. You know nothing, Adamson. I have noticed you know nothing. Go back to your beetles, and your creepy-crawlies. I won’t hurt the little puss, you can believe. Just add a bit of natural spice. Anyway, it’s none of your business. You are a hanger-on.’

‘And I have yet to learn what use you are to the world, or anyone in it,’ said William, his temper rising. Surprisingly, Edgar laughed at this, briefly, and without a smile.

‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I have noticed you know nothing.’

And he pushed past William and went out to the stables.

The book was put together in a provisional way during the Winter of 1862. Its final title was to be

THE SWARMING CITY
A Natural History of a Woodland Society,
its polity, its economy, its arms and defences,
its origin, expansion and decline.

William worked on it fairly steadily, and Matty Crompton read and revised the drafts, and made fair copies of the final versions. It had always been their intention to devote one more Summer to the checking and revision of the previous Summer’s observations. Two years’ data were better than one, and William wrote off with queries about comparative observations to various myrmecological parts of the world. The project of a publishable book was, by tacit consent, shared only by William and Miss Crompton: there was, in fact, no ostensible reason why this should have been so, but they both behaved from the beginning conspiratorially, as though the family should think of the ant-study as a family educational amusement, a gentleman’s use of leisure time, whilst they, the writers, knew differently.

The book took shape. The first part was narrative, a kind of children’s voyage of discovery into the mysterious worlds that lay around them. Chapter 1 was to be

THE EXPLORERS DISCOVER THE CITY

and William wrote sketches of the children, of Tom and Amy, of Miss Mead and her poetical comparisons, though he found himself unable to characterise either himself or Matty Crompton, and used a narrative voice that was a kind of royal or scientific We, to include both of them, or either of them, at given points in time. Miss Crompton brightened this passage considerably with little forgotten details of friendly rivalry between the little girls, or fragments of picnics carried off by the foraging ants.

The second chapter was

THE NAMING AND MAPPING OF THE COLONIES

and then followed the serious work of describing their workings:

Builders, sweepers, excavators.
The nursery, the dormitory, the kitchen.
Other Inhabitants: Pets, pests, predators,
temporary visitors and ant-cattle.
The Defence of the City: War and Invasion.
Prisoners of Love: The Queens, the Drones,
the Marriage flight and the Foundations
of new Colonies.
The Civic Order and Authority: What is the source
of power and decisions?

After this, William planned some more abstract, questioning chapters. He debated with himself on various possible headings:

Instinct or Intelligence
Design or Hasard
The Individual and the Commonwealth
What Is an Individual?

These were questions that troubled him, personally, as deeply as the questions of Design and the Designer troubled Harald Alabaster. He debated with himself on paper, not quite sure whether his musings were worthy of publication.

We might remark that there is a continuing dispute amongst human students of these interesting creatures as to whether they possess, singly or collectively, anything that can be called ‘intelligence’ or not. We might also remark that the attitude of the human student is often coloured by what he would wish to believe, by his attitude to the Creation in general, that is, by a very general tendency to see every other thing, living and inanimate, in anthropomorphic terms. We wonder about the utility to men of other living things, and one of the uses we make of them is to try to use them as magical mirrors to reflect back to us our own faces with a difference. We look in their societies for analogies to our own, for structures of command, and a language of communication. In the past both ants and bees have been thought to have kings, generals and armies. Now we know better, and describe the female worker-ants as slaves, nurses, nuns or factory-operatives, as we choose. Those of us who conclude that the insects have no language, no capacity to think, no ‘intelligence’, but only ‘instinct’ tend to describe their actions as those of automata, which we picture as little mechanical inventions whirring about like clockwork set in motion.

Those who wish to believe that there is a kind of intelligence in the nest and the hive can point to other things besides the marvellous mathematics of the hexagonal cells of the bees, which recent thinkers have decreed to be a function simply of their building movements and the shape of their bodies. No one who has spent long periods observing ants solving the problem of transporting an awkward straw, or a bulky dead caterpillar through the interstices of a mud floor, will feel able to argue that their movements are haphazard, that they do not jointly solve problems. I have seen a crew of a dozen ants manoeuvre a stem as tall, to them, as a tree to us, with about as many plausible false starts as a similar crew of schoolboys might make, before finding which end to insert at which angle. If this is instinct, it resembles intelligence in finding a particular method to solve a particular problem. M. Michelet in his recent book, L’Insecte, has a most elegant passage on the response to the plundering attacks of a lumbering moth, Sphinx Atropos, imported into France at the time of the American Revolution, probably as the caterpillar on the potato plant, protected and promulgated by Louis XIV. M. Michelet writes eloquently of the terrible appearance of this ‘sinister being’, ‘marked fairly precisely in wild grey with an ugly death’s-head’—it is our Death’s-head Hawk Moth, in fact. It is a glutton for honey, and pillages the hives, consuming eggs, nymphs and pupae in its depredations. The great Huber decided to protect his bees and was told by his assistant that the bees had already solved the problem either with, for instance, a variety of experimental barriers—by building new fortifications with narrow windows which would not admit the fat invader—or by making a series of barriers with successive walls zigzagging behind narrow entries, making a kind of twisting maze into which the Death’s-head could not insert its bulk. M. Michelet is delighted by this—it proves the bees’ intelligence, to him, conclusively. He calls it ‘the Coup d’État of the beasts, the insect revolution’, a blow struck not only against the Death’s-head but against thinkers like Malebranche and Buffon who denied bees any power of thought or capacity to divert their attention in new directions. Ants too can both make mazes and learn man-made mazes—some ants better than others. Do these things prove the little creatures are capable of conscious development? The order of their societies is infinitely more ancient than our own. Fossil ants are found in the most ancient stones; they have conducted themselves as they do over unimaginable millennia. Are they set in their ways—however intricate and subtle these may be—do they follow a driving force, an instinctual pattern rigid and invariable as stone channels, or are they soft, ductile, flexible, malleable by change and their own wills?

Much, so much, almost all, depends on what we think this force, or power, or indwelling spirit we call ‘instinct’ is. How does ‘instinct’ differ from intelligence? We must all admire the miracle of inherited aptitudes, inherited knowledge in a founding Queen of a new ant-colony who has never been outside her parent-nest, who has never been digging, or food-gathering, yet is able to nourish her young, feed and care for them, construct her first home, open the pupal shells. This is inherited intelligence, and is part of the general thoughtfulness and intelligence diffused through the whole society, which gives to all a knowledge of how to answer the needs of all in the most suitable way. The debate between the proponents of instinct and the proponents of intelligence is at its sharpest in its consideration of the Vigilance on the part of the whole community which makes decisions as to how many workers, how many soldiers, how many winged lovers or virgin Queens a community may need at any given time. Such decisions take into account the available food, the size of the nursery, the strength of the active Queens, the deaths of others, the season, the enemies. If these decisions are made by Chance, then these busy, efficient communities are ruled by a series of happy accidents, so complex that Chance must appear to be as wise as many local deities: if this is automatic response, what would intelligence be? The intelligence that directs the activities of the founding Queen, or those of the mature worker, is the intelligence of the City itself, of the conglomerate which cares for the wellbeing of the whole, and continues its life, in time and space, so that the community is infinite and eternal, even if both Queens and workers are mortal.

We do not wholly know what we mean either by the word ‘instinct’ or by the word ‘intelligence’. We divide our own actions into those controlled by ‘instinct’—the sucking of a new-born infant at the breast, the swerve of the runner to avoid danger, the sniffing at our bread and meat to detect signs of dangerous putrefaction; and those controlled by ‘intelligence’—foresight, rational analysis, reflective thought. Cuvier and other thinkers compared the workings of ‘instinct’ with those of ‘habit’, and Mr Darwin has finely observed that in human beings ‘the comparison gives a remarkably accurate account of the frame of mind under which an instinctive action is performed, but not of its origin. How unconsciously many habitual actions are performed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our conscious will! yet they may be modified by the will or reason.’ Are we to see the actions of the ants and bees as controlled by a combination of instincts as undeviating as the swallowing and swimming motions of the amoeba, or are we to see their behaviour as a combination of such instincts, acquired habits, and a directing intelligence, not residing in any particular individual ant, but accessible by these, when needed? Our own bodies are controlled by such a combination. Our own nerve-cells respond to stimuli and respond very strongly to the excitements of great fear, love, pain or intellectual activity, often arousing in us the possibility of new exercises of our skills previously unheard of. These are deep questions, pondered by every generation of philosophers, answered satisfactorily by none. Where do the soul and the mind reside in the human body? Or in the heart or in the head?

And do we find the analogy with our individual selves more useful, or that with the co-operative cells of our bodies, when understanding the ants? I believe I have been able to observe individual ants who habitually moved more vigorously and nervously, explored farther, approached other ants to interest them in new activities or to exhort them to greater efforts. Are these restless and inventive individual persons in the society, or are they large and well-fed cells in the centre of the ganglia? My own inclination is to wish to think of them as individual creatures, full of love, fear, ambition, anxiety, and yet I know also that their whole natures may be changed by changes in their circumstances. Shake up a dozen ants, in a test-tube, and they will fall on each other and fight furiously. Separate a worker from the community, and she will turn in aimless circles, or crouch morosely in a coma and wait to die: she will not survive for more than a few days at most. Those who argue that ants must blindly behave as ‘instinct’ dictates are making of ‘instinct’ a Calvinist God, another name for Predestination. And those observing similar reactions in human creatures, who may lose their wills and their memories after physical injuries or shocks, who may be born without the capacity to reason which makes us human—or may lose it, even, under the pressure of extreme desire, or extreme fear of death—are substituting the Predestination of body and instinct for the iron control of a loving and vengeful Deity on a golden immutable Throne in a Crystal Heaven.

The terrible idea—terrible to some, terrible, perhaps, to all, at some time or in some form—that we are biologically predestined like other creatures, that we differ from them only in inventiveness and the capacity for reflection on our fate—treads softly behind the arrogant judgement that makes of the ant a twitching automaton.

And what may we learn, or perhaps fear to learn, or draw back from learning, in a comparison between our own societies and those of the social insects?

We may see their communities as the true individuals, of which the independent creatures, performing their functions, living and dying, are no more than cells, endlessly replaced and renewed. This would fit with Menenius’ fable in Coriolanus of the commonweal as a body, all of whose members help its continued life and wellbeing, from the toenails to the voracious belly. Professor Asa Gray, in Harvard University, has argued persuasively that in the case of the vegetable world, as in the branching animal communities of corals, it is the variety that is the individual, since the creatures may be divided and propagated asexually, without loss of life. The ant community is more varied than the corals, in the division of labour, and the variety of forms taken by the creatures, but it is possible to believe that its ends are no more complex and do not differ. They are the perpetuation of the city, the race, the original breed.

I made a Belgian friend in my travels on the Amazon, who was a good naturalist, a poet in his own language, and much given to meditation on the deeper things in life. He wrote despondingly of the effects on social animals of the very high elaboration of the social instinct which developed, he claimed, for the most part, from the family, the relations of mother and child, the protective gathering of the primal groups. He was in the jungle because he was not a social being, but a natural solitary, a romantic would-be Wild Man, but his observations on these matters are not uninteresting. The more perfected the association, he said, the more probability there is of a development of severe systems of authority, of intolerance, constraints, proliferated rules and regulations. Organised societies, he said, tended to the condition found in factories, in barracks, in the galleys, without leisure, or relaxation, using creatures pitilessly for their functional benefit, until they were exhausted and could be cast aside. Such social being he characterised memorably as ‘a kind of common despair’ and he saw the cities of the termites, in which fellow creatures are rationally turned to food when no longer useful, as a parody of the terrestrial Paradises towards which the social designers of human cities and communes are working so hopefully. Nature, he said, does not desire happiness. When I retorted that Fourier’s communities were based upon the rationally indulged pursuit of pleasures and inclinations (1,620 passions, to count exactly), he said gloomily that these groups were doomed to failure, either because they would disintegrate into combative chaos, or because the rational organisation would substitute militarism for Harmony, sooner or later.

I retorted at the time that Réaumur claimed to have observed ants at play like ancient Greeks, indulging in wrestling-bouts without harm, on sunny days. I have since, I must confess, several times observed what I believed to be this playful phenomenon, only to conclude on closer inspection, that what I was watching was not play, but war in earnest, fought, as ant-wars usually are, for limited objectives and without wholesale berserker bloodlust. Alfred Wallace, who was travelling in the same parts at that time, and is a convinced Socialist, much affected by the vision and practical success of Robert Owen’s successful experiments at New Lanark, attempted to put the problem in a kinder and milder light. Owen, he argued, had proved by his social experiments that environment can greatly modify character for the good—‘that no character is so bad that it may not be greatly improved by a really good environment acting upon it from early infancy and that Society has the power of creating such an environment’. Owen’s limited extension of individual responsibility to his workers, his care for their individual education, improved their wills, which were their individual natures. Wallace wrote (I quote an unpublished letter), ‘Heredity, through which it is now known that ancestral characteristics are continually reappearing, gives that infinite diversity of character which is the very salt of social life; by environment, including education, we can so modify and improve that character as to bring it into harmony with the possessor’s actual surroundings, and thus fit him for performing some useful and enjoyable function in the great social organisation.’

I have digressed far, you may think, from Elm Tree Bole and Osborne, the Red Fort and Stonewall City. In fact, these fundamental questions, of the influence of heredity, instinct, social identity, habit and will, arise at every moment of our study. We find parables wherever we look in Nature, and we make them more or less wisely. Religious thinkers have seen in the love of mother and infant, of Father and Son, a reflection of the eternal relations of the Prime Being with the Created World and with Man himself. My Belgian friend saw that love, on the other hand, as an instinctual response leading to the formation of societies which gave even more restricted and functional identities to their members. I have mentioned the role of Instinct as Predestination, and of Intelligence as residing in communities rather than individuals. To ask, what are the ants in their busy world, is to ask, what are we, however we may answer …

William stared at his page. He had argued round and round, not really thinking of publication, for if he had been, he thought, ruefully, at least for the large, young audience envisaged by Matty Crompton who might read for improvement, he would have had to pay more attention to the religious susceptibilities of their parents and guardians. He thought of appending that useful tag from Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast.

He decided to give his pages to Miss Crompton, and gauge her response, if he could. It struck him that he knew nothing of her own religious views. A friend of Charles Darwin had once told him that almost no women were prepared to question the truths of religion. He thought, then, that the whole of what he had just written was somehow set against what Harald Alabaster was trying to say—more so than appeared on the surface of the writing, for like almost all his contemporaries, he was half afraid to give full expression, even to himself, of his very real sense that Instinct was Predestination, that he was a creature as driven, as determined, as constricted, as any flying or creeping thing. He wrote about will and reason, but they did not feel to him, in his bones, in his sense of his own weight in the mass of struggling life on earth, to be very powerful or important entities, as they were for a seventeenth-century divine under the Eye of God, or a discoverer of new stars exulting in his power. His nerve-cells pricked, his hand ached, his head was full of crawling black fog. He felt his life as a brief struggle, a scurrying along dark passages with no issue into the light.

When he gave his final musings to Miss Crompton to read, he found himself waiting anxiously for her opinion. She took the pages away one day, and brought them back the next, saying that they were exactly what was required, just such scrupulous general considerations were what would greatly increase the appeal of the book to a wide audience and lead to its discussion in all circles. She added, ‘Do you think it conceivable that there may be future generations who will be happy to believe that they are finite beings with no afterlife—or that their natures may be fully satisfied by the part they play in the life of the whole community?’

‘Such beings exist now, I believe. It is a curious outcome of travel that all beliefs come to seem more—more relative, more tenuous. I was much struck by the universal incapacity of Amazon Indians to imagine a community which did not reside on the banks of a vast river. They are not capable of asking, “Do you live near a river?” only “What is your river like? Is your river quick or slow, do you live near rapids or possible land avalanches?” They picture the Ocean as a river, I know, no matter how we may try to describe it vividly and accurately. It is like trying to tell a blind man the principles of perspective, which I once attempted. And it led me to wonder what do I not reflect upon, of what important facts am I ignorant in my picture of the world?’

‘Many—most—would not have your intellectual carefulness and humility.’

‘Do you think so? Those who will not accept Mr Darwin’s findings are divided between those who are very angry and quite sure they are right—who kick imaginary stones like Dr Johnson refuting Berkeley—and those, like Sir Harald, whose quest for assurance—reassurance—of Faith is shot through with trouble, indeed anguish.’

‘The wisdom of the serpent might suggest strengthening your case for a possible explanation that might square with Providence.’

‘Do you think I should do that?’

‘I think a man must be truthful, as far as possible, or the whole truth will never be found. You must say nothing you do not think.’

There was a silence. Matty Crompton ruffled through the pages. She said, ‘I liked your passage from Michelet about the depredations of the Sphinx Atropos. It is amazing how much—how much of mystery, of fairy glamour—is added to the creatures by the names bestowed upon them.’

‘I used to think of Linnaeus, in the forest, constantly. He bound the New World so tightly to the imagination of the Old when he named the swallowtails for the Greek and Trojan heroes, and the Heliconiae for the Muses. There I was, in lands never before entered by Englishmen, and round me fluttered Helen and Menelaus, Apollo and the Nine, Hector and Hecuba and Priam. The imagination of the scientist had colonised the untrodden jungle before I got there. There is something wonderful about naming a species. To bring a thing that is wild, and rare, and hitherto unobserved under the net of human observation and human language—and in the case of Linnaeus, with such wit, such order, such lively use of our inherited myths and tales and characters. He wished to call the Atropos the Caput mortuum, you know, the Death’s Head exactly—but the system of nomenclature requires a monosyllable.’

‘So he chose the blind Fury with the abhorred Shears. Poor innocent insect, to have its small life burdened with so large an import. I was partly struck by Sphinx Atropos because I too have been writing—and what I have been writing has become strangely involved in just these names selected by Linnaeus—I have derived much instruction both from the Systema Naturae and from the copy of Thomas Mouffet’s Theatrum Insectorum which is in Sir Harald’s library.’

‘I am amazed at your accomplishments. Latin, Greek, draughtsmanship of a high quality, a thorough knowledge of English Literature.’

‘I was educated with my betters, in the schoolroom of a Bishop. My father was the tutor and the Bishop’s lady was kindly-intentioned. I would be grateful,’ she said, seeming to hurry on past any further personal questions, ‘if you would cast your eye over this writing when you have a spare moment. I meant it for no more than an illustratory fable—you will see—I amused myself by tracing the etymology of Cerura vinula and another Sphinx, Deilephila elpenor, and thought I would write an instructive fable around these strange beasts—and found I had got rather carried away, and written something longer than I intended and perhaps, for a simple puzzle-tale, over-ambitious—and now I am puzzled what to do with it.’

‘You should publish on your own behalf—a whole volume of such tales.’

‘I did not believe I had an inventive nature. It is the chronicle of our insect cities that has stirred me up to authorship. But I do not think there is much merit in it. I count on you to be ruthlessly honest about its failings.’

‘I am sure I shall be full of admiration,’ said William, honestly, if vacantly. Matty Crompton looked thoughtfully downwards, not meeting his eye.

‘I have already said, in another context, you must say nothing you do not think.’

He read her tale in bed that night, by the light of a new candle. On the other side of the door between his room and his wife’s he could hear a new, regular, comfortable sort of sound—Eugenia’s recent snoring, a ruffling, like a wood-pigeon, a squeak like fingernails on silk, and then a snort like a hungry foal.

THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM

There was once a farmer, who had a hard time tilling his land, which was full of thorns and thistles. He had three sons, too many to inherit his difficult plot, so the youngest, Seth by name, was sent out into the world with a bundle of food and clothing, to seek his fortune. He travelled far and wide, crossing and recrossing the Oceans, until one day he was shipwrecked in earnest, and cast up on a sandy shore with a few companions. They had no idea where they were—they had been blown very far off course—but they put together packets of salvaged rations, and set off to walk up the beach and into the extensive woods which lay before them. They heard the laughter of birds and monkeys, and saw the secret flashings of myriads of wings in the treetops, but they met no sign of human dwellings and were just about to decide that they were the new rulers of an uninhabited island when they found tracks and a pathway, which opened into a wide ride between the trees, which they followed.

After a time they came to a smooth high wall, too high to see over, with a gate in it, which was locked. They debated a moment or two between themselves, and knocked, and the door swung open before them on smooth, oiled hinges, and swung to behind them with the same facility, although there appeared to be no one there to control it. And they heard the bolts and tumblers fall into place inside the great lock. One was for turning back, at this, and one was for scattering and hiding, but the rest—including Seth—were for continuing boldly forwards. So they walked on, across marble floors, through great cool halls, and heard splashing fountains in courtyards, and spoke in whispers of the sumptuousness of the architecture and domestic appointments.

And finally they found themselves in a banqueting hall, with a great ebony table spread with a fine feast—tasty pies and pastries, fine jellies and blancmanges, heaps of fruit with the bloom on it, and vessels full of sparkling wine. Their mouths watered so at this sight that they sat down without more ado and helped themselves, eating untidily until the juices ran out of the corners of their mouths, for they were half-starved. Only Seth did not partake, for his father had told him always to be sure never to eat anything that was not freely offered. He had been soundly beaten as a boy for trespassing in neighbouring orchards, and he was wary.

When they had been eating for some time, and were half stupid with good feeding, they heard a sound of tinkling bells and harpstrings, and a door at the far end of the hall swung open, and admitted a strange gathering of folk. There was a major-domo, who looked more like a goat than a man, and a very pretty milk-white heifer with roses wound in her horns, and a procession of herons and geese, all wearing collars studded with rubies and sapphires, and some very very pretty fluffy kittens, silver-blue and rosy-fawn, and an elegant little silver greyhound, with bells round its neck, and the loveliest King Charles spaniel, with long silky russet ears and huge, appealing brown eyes. And in the midst of these was a cheerful, comfortable-looking lady, dressed a little like a shepherdess, in a frilly cap and a delightful embroidered apron, with beautiful white ringlets falling to her shoulders. In her hand she carried the prettiest shepherd’s crook, decorated with ribbons, silver and rose and sky-blue, and she had the sweetest smile, and the most dancing eyes. All the shipwrecked mariners were immediately enchanted by her presence and began to smile fatuously amidst the grease and fruit juice on their lips and chins. It was easy to see she was no working shepherdess, but a great lady who chose to dress as one, out of condescension or simplicity of spirit.

‘How lovely’, she cried, ‘to have unexpected visitors. Eat your fill, help yourselves to wine till your cups run over. I love to have visitors.’

And the mariners thanked her, and set to again, for their hunger had been mightily restored by her words, all except Seth, who, it is true, was now invited, so was not breaking his father’s prohibition. But he still had no appetite for the feast. The delectable lady saw that he was not eating, and the goat held a chair for him, so that he was more or less obliged to sit down. And when she saw that he was not eating, the lovely lady came near with a rustling of her pretty skirts and pressed on him dishes of all manner of dainties, pouring him glasses of cordial julep and fragrant syrups, which looked like dancing flames in the crystal.

‘You must eat,’ she said, ‘or you will be faint with hunger, for I can see you have had a terrible journey, and are salt-stained and gaunt with weariness.’

Seth said he was not hungry. And the lady, without losing her smiling good temper, sliced him a salad of delicate fruits with a silver knife, and laid them out in a fan, like a flower, shavings of melon, circles of glistening orange, fragrant black grapes and crisp white apples, and slices of crimson pomegranates studded with ebony seeds.

‘I shall think you most obdurate and ill-mannered,’ said she, ‘if you will not taste even a sliver of apple, even a grape with its bloom on it, even a sip of pomegranate-juice.’

So for very shame he took up a slice of pomegranate, which seemed less substantial than the crisp apple-flesh, and ate three of the black seeds in their sweet, blood-coloured jellies.

One of the companions hiccuped and said, ‘You must be some great Fairy, ma’am, or Princess, to have all this plenty in the midst of this wilderness.’

‘Indeed I am,’ she said. ‘I am a Fairy who likes to make things pleasant for mortal men, as you see. My name is Mrs Cottitoe Pan Demos—which means, “for all the people”, you know, and that is what I am. I am for all the people. I keep open house for everyone who comes. You are all so very welcome.’

‘And can you do Magic?’ asked the ship’s Cook, who was no more than an overgrown Boy, and associated Magic with tricks and disappearances and feather dusters and bouquets appearing from nowhere.

‘Indeed I can,’ she said, with a silvery laugh.

‘Show us, show us some Magic,’ said the Cook, licking his lips.

‘Well,’ said she, ‘I can make make this feast vanish in a twinkling.’ And she touched the table with her silver crook, and all was gone, though the scent of the fruit, and the savour of the meat, and the tang of the wine still hung in the air.

‘And I can chain you in your chairs without chains,’ she said, smiling more happily, and she gave a little imperious wave of the crook, and the seamen found they could no longer rise to stand, or lift their hands from the chairs.

‘That is not very nice,’ said the Cook. ‘Let us go, ma’am. We thank you for our good meal—we must go back to mend our ship and move on.’

‘How ungrateful men are,’ said the lady. ‘They will not stay, whatever we give them, they will not rest, they will sail away. I thought you might like to stay and make part of my household, for a time. Or forever. I keep an open house for everyone who comes.’

‘No thank you kindly, ma’am,’ said the Cook. ‘I’d like to go now.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said she, and touched him on the shoulder with her silver crook, which lengthened itself for the purpose. And immediately, with a strange half-human cry, the Cook became a great hog, at least as to his head and shoulders, with a damp snout, and great tusks and bristles. Only his poor hands, clamped to his chair, were still hands, hands hard as hoofs, and hairy, and clumsy. And the lady went round the table and touched every one of the sailors, and each of them became a different kind of pig, from the great White Boar to the dapper Black and Tan, from French sanglier to Bedford Blue. Seth was interested in the variety of the pig-forms, despite his own great danger. He was the last to be struck by the crook, which sent a kind of electric shock through his whole body, stinging like a snake. He put up a hand to his head to feel his snout and was surprised to find that, unlike his fellows, he could do so. His face felt much the same, his nose, his mouth, his eyebrows. But there was a kind of itching and rushing in his head, and he felt upwards and there was his hair, springing outwards like water from a fountain, into a kind of prancing mane.

Mrs Cottitoe Pan Demos laughed heartily at this sight.

‘I never can tell what the effect of my magic will be on those who eat only frugally,’ she said. ‘Your head of hair is very handsome, I think, much more handsome than tusks and bristles. But you must still make one of our party, you know. I shall set you to work as my swineherd—my swine are kept deep in the rocky caverns below this palace, for pigs have no need of daylight, and I shall show you how to arrange their fodder, and clean out their sties, and I am very much afraid you will be horribly punished if you do not do it well. For we must all co-operate, you know, for the good of the household. Come with me, my dear.’

And she drove all the creatures—the new swine and the geese and the herons, the little heifer and the old goat—at a spanking trot through the corridors, laughing musically when they slid about on their awkward hoofs, waving her pretty crook, which stung mercilessly wherever it touched hide or fur. And under the palace they found an enormous succession of pens, caverns and cages, in which languished all sorts of creatures, docile rabbits, gentle palpitating hares, drooping draggle-tailed peacocks, a few donkeys, a few Barbary ducks, even a nest of white mice.

‘You need not listen to the noises they make,’ said Mistress Cottitoe Pan Demos, ‘unless you wish to, and I do advise against it, for they make a very miserable mixture of grunting, squealing, braying and honking, which it is best to ignore. I’m afraid I must close you in with them—you may sleep in this fresh straw, and here is a delicious loaf, only a week old, and some excellent spring water to drink, so you will have no reason to grumble about your entertainment. There is nothing more wholesome than good bread and clean water, I’m sure you’ll agree. From time to time I shall send you messages by one of the house creatures—the geese can carry little baskets, and the spaniel has been trained to bear letters safely in her mouth. You need not worry over how to answer. You must do as I say—that is the rule here—and unfortunately any infringement meets—every time I’m afraid—with the most terrible consequences. I will leave those to your imagination. I find that imagination feeds wonderfully well on bread and water in the darkness—quite like little seeds sprouting under the soil—you may imagine all sorts of consequences, my dear. I hope your dreams are pleasant.’

And with that, she swept through the cellar gates, going tap, tap, tap, in her little diamond pumps with her great cap nodding on her snowy curls. And the unfortunate Seth was left in almost darkness, surrounded by staring, mournful eyes, half-human eyes in furry faces, or peering between wrinkles of pigskin, glistening with bright tears.

Poor Seth had a hard time of it in those miserable caverns. He did his best to make things easier for the creatures, partly because he feared the vindictive power of the Fairy, but also because he pitied their hopeless state. He wiped their tears, and tended their sores, and changed their water, and listened to their sobs and moans, which he felt painfully, perhaps the more because he could not translate them into the words they wished to be. From time to time he formed plans of escape. He would rush the gate. He would suborn the King Charles spaniel. One day he did try to speak to the little dog. He said, ‘I suppose you are also an enchanted human being—no doubt a very handsome person, to judge by your present lustrous hair and eyes. I beg you to nod your head if you are prepared to help me to think of a way out of this servitude, which can no more be agreeable to you than to me, even if your lot is easier.’

But the little animal only began to tremble all over: its hair stood on end, and it whined to get out of the gate and back into the corridors. When he approached it, it snarled, still shaking, and bit at his hand.

After this failure, he went into his corner, and sat down on his straw, and wept bitterly. His tears fell rounder and faster, damping the dust at his feet, and trickling darkly away into corners. Suddenly he realized that for the past few moments a small, scratchy voice had been crying out, in a bubbling way, ‘Stop, you are drowning me, stop.’ He looked all round for the invisible speaker, but could see no one.

‘Where are you?’ he finally said.

‘Here, at your feet, in all this salt water.’

So he looked down, and there was a rather large Jet-black Ant, rolled up in one of his tears, with all its thread-like legs soaked to its body, and its antennae drooping. He broke the tear with a straw and held the straw for the creature to climb on to.

She said, ‘Why are you making all this mud and mess?’

‘Because I am a prisoner, and will never get out of this dark place. My life has come to a stop.’

‘I can get in and out.’

‘So I see. But you are a minute creature and I am a great useless lump. It is all quite hopeless.’

‘Don’t start weeping again. I can do you a good turn, for you saved my life, even if it was yourself who put it in jeopardy. Wait there.’

And the little creature ran busily away, and vanished through a crack in the rock of the cavern. So Seth waited. There was not much else he could do, whatever he thought of the capacity of the ant to render him any material assistance. After a considerable time, he saw her waving her feelers agitatedly at the edge of the crack, and then she worked her way through, accompanied by two of her fellows. They were carrying between them a package the size of a large crumb of bread—a good featherbed, by their measure—which they dragged on to his feet, and laid down. Something almost invisible was wrapped very neatly in a fragment of dark leaf, sewn, or tied, with nearly invisible thread.

‘There,’ said the ant. ‘This will help.’

‘What do I do with it?’

‘Eat it, naturally.’

‘What does it contain?’

‘Three fernseeds. Particular fernseeds. Collected beyond-the-wall, of course.’

He hesitated. He was about to say, ‘What will the effect of this be?’ when the ant said, ‘Hurry!’ in a voice quite as determined as that of Dame Cottitoe Pan Demos.

So he put it on the edge of his tongue, where it dissolved, with a taste of woodland shadow, and he felt something like pins and needles run through his veins, and a terrible giddiness, and the next he knew he was standing next to the ant and was now only about twice her height. She appeared much more menacing and mysterious when she was larger, or he was smaller. Her huge black eyes considered him out of their dark shiny windows. Her shear-like mandibles opened and shut.

‘I am worse off than before,’ he said. ‘I am even more helpless now. Any of the pigs and donkeys here can crush me thoughtlessly. The hens and doves can eat me. Please restore me.’

‘I told you,’ said the ant, in what now was a crackling boom. ‘I can get in and out of here. If I can, you can. Please follow me.’

And so he began a terrible journey, through earthy tunnels, that twisted and turned every which way, with the spokeswoman ant leading, and the others helping Seth along in the absolute darkness by holding on to his limbs and pushing and pulling, gently and precisely. They trod delicately, and he slid, and stumbled, and after some time they came out, quite suddenly, round a very sharp corner, into very bright sunlight, which he had not seen for so long that he blinked and blinked and his eyes filled with tears.

He could not see where he was, for he was down among the roots of a large grassy lawn, and his view was restricted to some rocky gravel and the waving forest roof of the grasses. The ants suggested he should climb a rose-bush which stood near, so he did that, standing carefully on the largest thorns like a robber climbing over the defences of a castle. And when he was up in the air, and could see a long way, he saw he was in some kind of high-walled garden, with pleached fruit trees growing in the sun along the bricks, and with lawns, and stone benches, and flowerbeds, and beds of vegetables and herbs and soft fruits stretching as far as he could see. But everything was so much too much for his new vision that he became very giddy, and had to hold tightly to a leaf and close his eyes briefly against the terrible crimson of the rose petals as large as Persian carpets, or the glitter of the grass forest, as wide as the English Channel.

Imagine to yourself a red apple, hard and shiny and heavy as the Albert Hall, hung on a cable and swinging over your defenceless head. Imagine then how much more terrible must appear the veined spherical mountain, wonderfully streaked with rich purple, soft and green-ridged and folded with crevices and crannies, which is a gleaming cabbage, bursting with strength and just ready to pick. Seth was overcome with a mixture of awe, and apprehension, and admiration of the huge force behind all this burgeoning. He climbed down again to the earth, and thanked the ants for their kindness. He thought he might try to live in the garden until he could find a way of restoring himself to his original form, and rescuing his comrades. He thought he could hide well enough from Dame Cottitoe Pan Demos, unless of course she knew a magic that would reveal him to her. This thought cast him down a little. He began to hurry across the lawn forest, away from the wall of the castle, as though there was any use in distancing himself from her sphere of influence. The ants had helped him. He might meet other helpers, he told himself, to keep his spirits up.

He could hear all sorts of sounds around him. Some of them he would have heard in his natural state—the liquid warbling of the birds, now an orchestra singing in a waterfall, and the huge hum of bees, darting from flower to flower. He heard also sounds he would never have heard with unsharpened ears—the mumbling, and champing and sawing, and munching of thousands and thousands of busy mouths eating away at leaf and flower, fruit and flesh and bone. He could hear worms sliding by like slimy trains and thirsty mouths in the soil, sucking up dew and juices. After a time he got used to all these sounds, like a man walking easily in the bustle of a great city, and began to look about him more confidently. He carne out of a tunnel in the grass, and on to the edge of a bed of raspberry canes. He thought he might manage to pull off a raspberry and eat part of it—he was suddenly hungry—and began to climb up the stem of one, hand over hand, as he used to do in the days of his sailing. By this method he managed to approach the sun-baked top of a low brick wall, against which the canes were springing, and he was about to reach out for the fruit, when, from amongst the leaves, he heard a slow, menacing hiss. And from along the wall he heard a kind of threatening coughing growl, like the voice of an angry crocodile.

Along the branches of the raspberry poured the most terrible creature, a loathsome, blunt-snouted dragon, with a horrible bloated head, and huge staring eyes. And along the wall, making the growling noise, advanced another, waving a forked tail like a whiplash, rearing up a huge cavernous mouth, snarling loudly. This one had a wine-coloured back and bright green head and tail. It moved slowly, in a swaying way, whilst the more serpentine beast oozed over the branch.

Seth backed away, looking frantically for a weapon. He found a flake of slate on the wall that might, at a pinch, cut or stab, and he picked up a handful of fragments to throw.

‘Get away—’ he cried. ‘Go back.’

The serpent in the branches swayed to and fro. It spoke in a thick, bloated kind of voice, as though its mouth was full of nasty things.

‘I—am—very—unpleasant—indeed. I—will—hurt—you—very—badly. I—am—very—dangerous. You—should—not—approach—me.’

And the one on the path said, ‘I—am—very—cruel. I—am—the—eater. I—pick—you—to—the—bones.’

‘Go back,’ said Seth. He could smell their hot breaths, all fleshy and full. He threw a pebble at the forked-tailed one, which stopped and twitched its skin, and then came on again. Seth thought his last moment had come: he could not run away because there was a sheer rising wall behind him, and the fat-headed serpent in front. He was trapped between the two.

And just at that moment, out of the sky, someone descended very fast on the end of a long silken rope, which did not appear to be attached to anything. Two shiny black shoes arrived, with a little skip, and above them someone long and thin and black—a four-limbed creature, which resolved itself into a human shape, female, with a long black skirt and a white bonnet, shading a little white face with large hornrimmed glasses on a sharp nose. She was wrapped in a long, silvery cloak. This person rolled in the silk rope out of the blue, and coiled it at her feet.

‘Good morning,’ she said. ‘You appear to be troubled.’

‘I am about to be eaten alive by dragons and serpents.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘These are my friends, Deilephila Elpenor, and Cerura Vinula. They are quite as much afraid of you as you are of them. They tell terrible lies about themselves, and blow themselves up to horrify those they think might hurt them. I don’t think this creature will hurt you,’ she said to the dragons. ‘You have frightened him very efficiently. That is enough for now. You must hurry, and eat more. There is not long to go.’

Seth said, ‘They look very terrible and dangerous.’

‘They will be pleased to hear that. Won’t you, Elpenor? Won’t you, Vinula? Look closely at Vinula, Sir, and you will see that his real jaws occupy a small space underneath that great Mask he shows the world. And watch Elpenor deflate himself, and you will see that his terrible eyes are only the spots on his saddle, puffed out to dwarf his real head, which is small enough. Really, he has a dear little snout, more like a piglet than a great Dragon. Things are not always what they seem, you know. May I know your name?’

‘It is Seth.’

‘And I am Mistress Mouffet.’ She held out a thin hand. ‘Would you like to share my picnic? I think you must have escaped from the Sties, and I may be able to help you, if you will trust me.’

So Seth sat down with Mistress Mouffet on the top of the wall, and she gave him bread and cheese and apples from her basket, all of which were the right size for him in his present state, and for her too. And she looked at him kindly with her shining eyes behind her spectacles, and told him about the Garden.

‘It belongs to Dame Cottitoe Pan Demos, who uses it to ripen fruit and vegetables for her table, and flowers to decorate her boudoir and her drawing-room, and likes to walk about in it, as you see, for Dame Cottitoe is a good gardener, and her plants flourish mightily. But there are other creatures who spend time here, and are not subject to the rule of Dame Cottitoe—who came from beyond-the-wall, and have other purposes. Elpenor and Vinula are such creatures in a sense, or will become such creatures, as I hope you may see, for although they were born in this Garden, and have no memory of any other place, they are not subject to the laws of the Garden and will leave it. And many other creatures sail into the Garden on umbrellas of silk, or long threads as I do. And many more come in through burrows and cracks in the earth, for the Garden is part of the realm of a much more powerful Fairy than Dame Cottitoe, who allows her to tend it, but likes to see how its creatures fare, and to send and receive messages from within the wall. Look at the grass, and you will see that it is all laced over and over with silken ropes, such as I came on—each belonging to a spiderling, who will make her nest here, and spin her web, and keep watch. And the birds too, and the winged seeds of the trees, which spin in and out, and the clouds of pollen from others, and the parasols of the cow parsley and the dandelion, all carry messages.’

‘And who is this Fairy? And would She help me, and my poor enchanted companions? And who are you?’

‘I am the Recorder of this Garden, or you might say the Spy, for Dame Cottitoe does not know of my existence. I look after creatures such as Elpenor and Vinula, and yourself, as it turns out. A relation of mine, in another world, was one of the great Namegivers, one of the great historians of this Garden. It was he, indeed, who named Elpenor and Vinula, and their names are like delightful poems, you know. I got into a poem myself—“Little Miss Muffet” my poem is entitled—but it is a garbled thing, associating me with spiders, it is true, but suggesting that I, the cousin of the author of Theatrum Insectorum sive Animalium Minimorum might be afraid of a spider, when I am in fact a recorder of their names and natures, and their good friend.’

‘Tell me about the poetic names of Elpenor and Vinula, Mistress Mouffet. For I too come from a country family, where namegiving is a family occupation.’

‘Elpenor, you must know, was the name of a Greek sailor, who was turned into a swine by a relative of Mistress Cottitoe, named Circe, and my father chose this name for him because of the snout-like nature of his ordinary nose. He has a junior relative called Porcellus, a pigling, for the same reason. And Vinula’s name is Cerura Vinula—Cerura for two Greek words, (keras) a horn, and (oura) a tail, for his tail, you see, is forked like two horns, and hard into the bargain. And my relative called Vinula “an elegant caterpillar, by Jove, and beautiful beyond belief”. Names, you know, are a way of weaving the world together, by relating the creatures to other creatures and a kind of metamorphosis, you might say, out of a metaphor, which is a figure of speech for carrying one idea into another.’

Of course,’ said Seth, who was pursuing his own ideas. Of course, they are caterpillars. I took them for terrible snakes, or lizards.’

‘So do full-grown humans and hungry birds. That is their cleverness. And like all true caterpillars, they will change into winged beings. And then their names are added to and changed again. I know where some of Elpenor’s brothers and sisters are just about to burst out of their hiding places. Will you come and see them? I think they may help you. For they carry very particular messages to the Fairy beyond-the-wall, and are named for Her, in some ways, and might consent to carry you to Her, if you have the courage.’

So they went along the top of the wall, accompanied by the caterpillar-dragons, who rippled along very busily. And after a time they came down, in a far corner of the garden, where a graceful willow-tree overshadowed pots of herbs, and a vegetable-bed, with solid rows of leeks like green cathedral-pillars, and ferny carrot-tops, like luxuriant palm-trees, and bowers of potato-leaves, in which a large caterpillar could be seen crunching up vast mouthfuls, ripping and tearing with great force.

‘This is a relative of Elpenor,’ said Mistress Mouffet. ‘His name is Manduca, which means simply a Glutton, in Latin, which is not very nice, but appropriate, you know; because he is so large, and must grow so much, he has to eat very quickly. He is very handsome, I think, despite his nasty name. Over here are some of Elpenor’s relations, feeding on the rosebay willow-herb, which is not one of Dame Cottitoe’s nurselings, but one who flies in on silky floss on every breeze and can make a rooting-place in any nick or cranny. And Vinula’s relations can be seen all over the tree here, for they love willow. If you come near the tree, I will show you the chrysalis woven by Vinula to rest in for the winter. Look, there, in that crack in the bark.’

Seth looked, but could see nothing.

‘He is due to hatch any moment,’ said Mistress Mouffet. ‘I am here to record the date of his transfiguration.’

‘I can see nothing at all,’ said Seth.

‘And yet there is his house, or cradle, or even coffin, however you wish to name it,’ said Mistress Mouffet. ‘It is woven tightly of lovely silk—he curls up and spins his own soft shroud from his own substance, using his little head as a shuttle. Each makes his own characteristic house. Manduca does not weave silk, but builds himself a horny carapace, like an Egyptian mummy-case, in darkest mahogany, and buries it far beneath the soil, where it lies quietly in waiting. And Elpenor makes a similar case—only paler—and hides it on the surface of the soil. You must have seen these things, when you were—larger. You may even have broken into one, whilst digging in your garden. Your father must turn them up, often and often, in his thorny soil. And if, by accident, you break open the coffin during the sleep of its builder you will not find either a grub or a folded moth, but a yellow soup, like egg-yolk, which looks like the decay of putrefaction and is the stuff of life and rebirth itself. For things are not what they seem, as you must always remember.’

‘I will,’ said Seth, and guided perhaps by this excellent principle, or perhaps by a preliminary shudder of changes, he was suddenly enabled to see the chrysalis of Vinula, which was a huge tent, or nest, on the bark of the tree, woven so wonderfully with bits of bark and sawdust, and wood, that it seemed to be an outgrowth of the tree itself, and nothing to do with caterpillars, or moths. But from within it appeared the soft head, and then the thin shoulders, and then the clinging wet, trembling wings of the moth, which clung with its fine feet to the bark of the tree, limp and exhausted.

‘He will dry out his fur, and wait for his wings to harden in the air and the light,’ said Miss Mouffet, obviously a person who took great pleasure in instructing others. ‘Meanwhile, here is a brother of Elpenor, who has already found his way out, and is waiting for the evening. He is very handsome, I think, with his rosy body and wings, striped with the loveliest mossy-green. He is like a moss-rose-bud, though he is not named for that. He is a Large Elephant Hawk Moth.’

Those are strange names,’ said Seth, considering the beautiful rosy creature, with its pointed wings and its furry breast. ‘For there is no resemblance between an elephant and a hawk, so how may Elpenor resemble both at once?’

Mistress Mouffet was momentarily puzzled at this. Then she said, ‘His family are Hawk Moths. The gluttonous Manduca is a Hawk Moth, too. They are named for the sharpness and darting of their flight, and the pointed nature of their heads. I suppose the “elephant” is a reminiscence of his snout in the caterpillar state. His scientific name is Sphinx Deilephila Elpenor. Deilephila is a beautiful word, meaning “lover of the evening”, for he likes to fly at dusk.’

‘And Sphinx?’ said Seth.

Miss Mouffet lowered her voice.

‘Sphinx is one of the names of the great Fairy. It means, in part, the asker of riddles. And the answer, too. She loves these moths because they are riddles, like herself.’

‘What is an elephant and a swine and a lover of twilight and a desert monster all at once?’ said Seth, helpfully.

‘That sort of riddle, but not only that sort,’ said Miss Mouffet.

‘And what is the true name of Cerura Vinula?’ asked Seth, watching with fascination as the wings dried into the most beautiful floating silver, spangled with gold and smoky grey, and the damp body puffed itself out into soft grey fur.

‘He is the Puss Moth, as you can see, and his family are the Notodonta, from () the back, and (odontos) tooth—as you see, he has sharp points on his upper wings. He too is a kind of mimic dragon, at rest, though soft and delicate.

‘But now, evening is approaching, and the greatest of the Moths, the Sphinx, whose larva was Manduca, the hungry one, will be stirring, and ready to sail beyond-the-wall. I might ask him to bear you with him, for he goes into her Presence. But the journey is fearful, and the place where She is is not for the faint-hearted. For you must go into the Shadows and beyond, and few return from there.’

‘Will she help me?’

‘She helps all of us, though some of us do not recognise her help for what it is.’

‘Will she restore me to my former shape?’

‘She will change you, for that is her work. It may be that the change will be a restoration.’

‘I will go,’ said Seth. ‘Take me to the Moth.’

When he first saw the great Sphinx, he thought it beautiful, and restful, for its wings were dappled with rich shades, umber and charcoal, dark rose and silver, beautifully veined. It had long feathery antennae, gently moving in the darkening air, and its voice was soft and dreamy. Miss Mouffet stood before it, and asked it if it would carry this metamorphosed Human into Her kingdom and it answered, in soft syllables, ‘If that is what he wishes, I am willing.’

‘Let him see his saddle,’ said Miss Mouffet, who seemed taller and darker and straighter of a sudden, and her silvery cape more mysterious and moony.

And the great Moth spread its wings—its underwings were moon-gold, fringed with soot—and there, on its back, spun in its very hair, was a staring mask, which could be read as a jackal, or a demon, or a human death head, with cavities of bone that had once held eyes. And Seth had a moment of terror, to think of riding into the dark on the back of a death’s head, and thought even, ‘Things are indeed not what they seem, and perhaps Miss Mouffet is a witch and perhaps Madame Sphinx is simply terrible and devouring.’

‘What is this Moth’s true name?’ he asked, knowing the answer in his soul.

‘It is the Death’s-head Hawk, Sphinx Acherontia Atropos,’ said Miss Mouffet. ‘And Acheron is the River of Pain in the Underworld, where you must go, and Atropos is the Fate who snips the thread of life with her terrible shears, but fear nothing, and answer the Fairy’s Question, and you will come out of it well. Hold tight to the Sphinx, no matter what forms flow past you, and remember, things are not what they seem, and the death’s head is not Atropos’s face, but a soft nest where you may lie in safety, if you dare.’

So Seth climbed up on to the great back—from where he could no longer see the deathly sockets, for they were soft brown pillows—and said goodbye to Miss Mouffet.

‘You said nothing about a question.’

‘I said She was the source of riddles, but also of answers,’ said Miss Mouffet. ‘And if you do not fear, and remember things are not what they seem, you will very likely find the answer—’

‘And if I don’t find it?’ asked Seth.

Miss Mouffet’s reply was lost in the whirring of the great wings, as the Moth rose from the earth, with steady beats, and went swiftly out, over the wall, into the dark beyond.

The journey was full of terrors and delights, which you may imagine for yourself. Sometimes the moon was obscured by great hooked leathery wings, and sometimes the earth shone silver and peaceful beneath. They flew on, and on, over oceans and cities, rivers and forests, and then began a long, slow descent in a ravine between rocks that went on, and on, so deep, that above them the stars appeared to vanish. And as the sky and the moon and the stars vanished, another world was revealed by another light, a black world washed by flickering silvery fires, and shot with rainbow colours whose source he could not see. And finally the Moth alighted on what seemed to be the steps of a temple cut in a rock face, surrounded by a thick grove of silent, watching black trees. On the step of the temple was a much smaller Hawk Moth, or Sphinx, grass-green in colour, with a gold underwing, and a look of earthly leaves in that dark place.

‘This is a relative of mine,’ whispered Acherontia Atropos. ‘Her name is Proserpinus Proserpina, and she and her family wait constantly upon the Lady. She will take you to the Cave, through the Garden, if you wish to go.’

So Seth dismounted, and followed the small flying green moth. Inside the Temple gates was a closed and dreaming garden, where everything was asleep. Lawns of closed daisies lay in that strange even light surrounded by trellises of closed columbine where sleeping birds nested, and drowsy trees under which slept curled-up snakes, and lambs with their noses between their hooves, and many other creatures, all still and calmly waiting. Only the moths moved, silver wings, soft brown wings, chalky wings, visiting the flowers, stirring the quiet air with noiseless plumes.

In the end they came to a cavern, out of which the light seemed to be flooding, now white, now broken into many colours. Moths danced before the light, and behind the moths was a thick veil of living silk threads, moving busily, about and about. And over the cavern was written, ‘I am all that hath been, and shall be, and my veil hath no mortal yet uncovered.’ And Proserpinus Proserpina danced before the golden silk which seemed to spin out of the light inside. And inside stood a Figure who held a high staff, or spindle, and who could not be seen because of all the living stuff She spun into the light. But Seth thought he saw a face of great beauty, illuminated with gold, and then he thought he saw a lion, hot and ruddy with snarling lip and bloody teeth. And he fell to the earth, and said, ‘I beg you to help me. I have come all the way to beg for help.’

A small dusky brown moth, with what appeared to be hieroglyphic scribbles on its draggled forewing, said, ‘I am Noctua Caradrina Morpheus, and I serve the maker of dreams. You are commanded to lie down before the threshold and sleep in the dust, and take what dreams may come to you, good or ill.’

And Seth said, ‘Sleep will be very welcome. I already feel drowsy. I should like to sleep here, even on the bare earth.’

So he lay down in the dust, at the sill of the Fairy’s Cave, and Caradrina Morpheus flew heavily to and fro over his eyelids, dusting them with a brown, sooty dust, and he fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed of kind hands touching his brow, and of hot, bloody breath in his ears, and he heard a voice crying, ‘Fear no more,’ and another saying, ‘I care for nothing, all must go,’ and he saw in his dream everything that was, like a great river hurrying to the lip of a huge fall, and going over, in one great rush of mingled matter, liquids and solids, blood and fur and feather and leaf and stone, and he awoke with a terrible cry, and the even light was as it had been.

And then the Figure behind the veil addressed him directly in a low voice, neither male nor female, which asked him who he was, and what he desired.

So he explained, and asked for help for himself and his comrades.

And the voice said, ‘Before you can be helped, you must answer my question.’

And Seth said, ‘I will try. I can do no more.’

‘My question is: What is my name?’

And many names murmured together in his mind, names of fairies and goddesses, and monsters too, like the sound of waters in his ear. And he could not choose. So he was dumb.

‘You must speak, Seth. You must name me.’

‘How can I name you, who have more names than all the creatures, when they have so many each, and Elpenor is Elephant, Hawk, Pig, Twilight Lover and Sphinx and he is only one tiny rosy moth? How can I name you, when you are hidden behind a veil, and you spin your own hiding-place, and make your own light? What would any name I choose be, to you? I cannot name you, and yet I believe you will help me, for Mistress Mouffet said you would, if you wished to, and I do believe, I do believe you are kind—’

And at that all the moths danced furiously and the light inside the silk moved with laughter, and the voice said, ‘You have solved the riddle most excellently, for I am indeed kind, and that is one of my names, one of the best of them. I am known as Dame Kind in many places, and you have answered my riddle by trusting me. So I will help you—I will send you back to Dame Cottitoe Pan Demos’s garden and I will send Caradrina Morpheus with you, who can creep into the palace and the garden and with his magic dust cast everyone into a deep sleep. And some of them will see sweet things and some of them will see terrors, for although Caradrina Morpheus appears to be an insignificant, dingy creature, he has another name, and another aspect, for he too is not what he seems, and is also Phobetor, the Terrifier. He is ally enough for you, although his power over Dame Cottitoe cannot last long, for she has great strength of will, and will snap his spell even within her dark dreams. So you must hurry to rescue the enchanted creatures, which you will do by touching them with this insignificant little herb, whose name is Moly. And you may restore yourself, on your return, by the same means. Here, as you may have noticed, you have many forms and many sizes, for you are what you are as reflected in the pupil of my Eye, which you cannot see, for it is behind the veil and shrinks and grows huge like a dark moon, like the pupil of a great cat. And what I see and what my Eye reflects is your outward case, containing what you may become, like Atropos’s pupa, which is named for a carved doll, or a small girl child, ready to grow. I hold you small in my gaze, Seth, and you may grow in it, or shrink in it, or vanish, if I blink. You may see my pupil, or my puppet, as you choose well or ill. Everything is single and double. Things are not what they seem.’

And then the person behind the veils laughed briefly and gave a little sigh, and must have blinked, for Seth was able to turn his own gaze away, and there was soft, humming Atropos, waiting to bear him back, with Caradrina Morpheus flittering beside them.

And it all fell out as Kind had predicted. They waited by the wall for the evening shadow, and then Morpheus fluttered away, like a blown leaf across the lawn, and over the threshold into the large salon, where he spread his wings, and became a monstrous creature, the size of a great eagle, and shook his wings and filled the room with a sifting cloud of dark brown dust. And the goat and the heifer and the spaniel stood like blocks of ice or marble where they were, and Dame Cottitoe stretched out her silver crook to strike at the monster, and sneezed on the dust, like an old woman taking too much snuff, and was frozen there. And Seth came in then, through a side door, and hurried to the Sties and released his comrades, who looked around and blinked and nearly killed him in their excitement for he had forgotten to restore his own shape. So he did this, appearing amongst them as if by magic, that is to say, by magic, to their great pleasure and amazement.

And as they hurried away from the palace to begin a new adventure, Seth heard a buzzing in his ear, and there, floating on the end of a silver rope, no bigger than his little finger, was the long thin black figure of Mistress Mouffet, borne up by her grey silk cloak like wings, with her spectacles gleaming with pleasure. And Seth thanked her, and hurried on, for he needed to be miles away before the garden resounded to the wrath of Dame Cottitoe Pan Demos.

William was much surprised by Miss Crompton’s flight of imagination. It made him uneasy, in ways he could not quite analyse, and at the same time his own imagination could not quite see her writing this story. She had always seemed dry, and this tale, however playful, was throbbing with some sort of emotion. He waited a day or two before giving it back to her; during this time, she appeared to be avoiding him. Finally he took his courage in his hands, along with her boldly written pages, and waylaid her in the morning-room.

‘I have been wanting to return your work to you. I am full of surprise and admiration. It is all very lively and vivid. Really very—full of surprises.’

‘Ah,’ she said. And then, ‘I am afraid I got rather carried away. Something that rarely happens to me, or never. I became intrigued by the caterpillars—do you remember little Amy bringing in the Large Elephant Hawk Moth and saying she thought it was some kind of lizard? And I thought that the thing was a kind of walking figure of speech—and began to look up the etymologies—and found it was all running away from me. It was as though I was dragged along willy-nilly—by the language, you know—through Sphinx and Morpheus and Thomas Mouffet—I suppose my Hermes was Linnaeus—who does not appear.’

‘It is all extremely ingenious, certainly.’

‘I am afraid,’ said Miss Crompton carefully, ‘that it is too didactic. That there is too much message. Did you find that there was too much message?’

‘I don’t think that is true, no. The impression I got from it was one of thickening mystery, like the riddle of the Sphinx herself, a most portentous person. I think childish readers will find both instruction and delight in it.’

‘Ah,’ said Miss Crompton. Then, ‘I had meant to write a fabulous Tale, not an allegory, it is true.’

‘I wondered if Dame Cottitoe was the Church, at one point. Bishops, you know, with crooks. There have been very pretty religious allegories using butterflies, since Psyche is the Soul and the Greek name for butterflies—’

‘I had no such grand aims, I assure you. My message was linked to my title.’

‘ “Things Are Not What They Seem,” ’ said William. ‘Well, that is certain at least. That is a good lesson. You could have included the mimicry of poisonous butterflies by harmless ones, observed by Bates—’

‘I could indeed. But the work was already too long for what it was. I am glad to have it back.’

‘I think you should write much more in that vein. Your imagination is most fertile.’

‘Thank you,’ said Miss Crompton, with an inappropriate final sharpness.

In the Spring of 1863 Eugenia was brought to bed with Meg and Arabella, two soft, pale little creatures, as like as two white peas in a pod. In the Summer, with scientific precision, William checked and elaborated his observations of the ant colonies, managing to observe the mating of the sanguinea this year, as well as that of the Wood Ants, which gave rise to the experiment which provided his coup de théâtre. He introduced into the glass nest of Wood Ants in the schoolroom two or three sanguinea Queens, presumably newly fertilised, which he had collected after their nuptial flight.

What follows is a tale of patience and subterfuge, determination and racial power. The small Queen waited patiently outside the Nest, offering no resistance to workers of the Colony who attacked her, but bowing her head submissively and retiring from combat, returning only when the guardians of the city had gone about their business. Little by little she made her way along the narrow tunnels towards the centre of the Nest. Once or twice she was challenged and crouched back, like a rabbit before an oncoming hound. Once, a more agitated, or wiser defender of the city made a determined attack on her, grasping and biting, attempting to bring her sting to bear on the young Princess’s new ruddy armour. At this the young intruder roused herself, and fought back, seizing the head of her attacker, and severing it neatly with her jaws. What she did then was truly amazing, considering that she had barely emerged from the shelter of her cocoon and hardly had sight of other ants, friend or enemy. She gathered up the sad remains of her gallant opponent, and crept on her way, always inwards, bearing the dead body before her. This must so have confused the inhabitants of the nest—must so effectively have masked her strangeness, her foreign odour, that this Medea was able to insinuate herself into a crevice adjoining the very bedchamber of the Queens of the Glass Nest themselves. There she lay, with the enemy corpse across her door, motionless and watching. Hungry too, we fear—we did not observe her to feed during this time. And then one day she began to burrow again, obeying some inner informant as to what was beyond the thin wall of soil she was destroying, until finally she burst into the chamber of the Rulers, where their slaves were licking their large bodies, and carrying away their eggs to the nursery. The Red Queen looked about her, and advanced to the attack. The black Queens were swollen with eggs and sweltering in luxury in their harem. They did not expect to have to fight, and did not retaliate with any fury concomitant to the power put into the assault of the aggressor, who was soon straddling one unfortunate and cutting off her head with one exact movement of her mandibles. There was some confused agitation amongst the nurserymaids and the ladies’ maids, but no one confronted the regicide, who lay exhausted for a time, without relaxing her deadly hold on her adversary.

And for many days more, she did not relax her hold. She began to move more and more freely about the bedchamber, but always riding, as it were, upon the dead husk of her rival, as though she were a ghost, or a possessing demon, animating a puppet-queen. And then she laid her own first eggs, which were slavishly seized upon, and carried away to the cradle by the Wood Ant slaves, quite as though this cuckoo, this impostor, were a true heir to the slain. The eggs differ considerably in appearance from her rivals’, but this appears to make no difference to the nurses, who ‘recognise’ them by whatever traces of the scent of the poor dead mother still cling to her murderer. And the red children will spring up amongst the black, and for a time they will work together—and who knows, they will come to outnumber the Wood Ants, and the palace may change shape, and the colony die out in its present form. Or maybe the line will fail, and the Glass Nest will return to its previous rulers? We shall watch, year by year, season by season, for the Kingdom underground to give up its secret history—

In the early days of that Autumn, as the activity in the nest died down, the book was brought to its end, and the pages, William’s science, William’s brooding, Miss Crompton’s exact demonstrative drawings, all neatly heaped together, and copied in Miss Crompton’s firm handwriting. William wrote to a friend in the British Museum asking casually about publishing houses for a possible future project, and Miss Crompton packed up the manuscript and went to the nearest market town with it, on the pretext of looking for new winter boots.

‘For I do not trust the village postmistress not to tell everyone that such and such a fat packet has gone off—to where it has gone—and we do not wish to attract attention to what may be a completely unfruitful endeavour, do we? When the book is handsomely bound, and ready for review, then we must be open. But that time is not come.’

‘I had thought we were to include some of your stories in the text. As it is, we have a few illustrative verses—Clare and Wordsworth and Milton and so on—but none of your fables.’

‘I was a little discouraged by the nature and length of “Things Are Not What They Seem”. And then I gathered myself, and thought I would try to put together a collection of such tales. I should dearly love to have an income of my own. Is that a shocking thing to say? I cannot tell you how dearly.’

‘I cannot help wishing—for your sake—you had taken up the pen a little earlier.’

Oh, I waited for my Muse. Our ants, you know, were my muses. They inspired me.’

When the letter from Mr Smith came, the time did not still seem quite ripe for explaining to the Alabasters that he had turned author. Matty Crompton brought the letter to him in his workroom, where he was mounting a very fiddly birdskin from Mexico. He had never seen her so full of life—her sallow cheeks were hot, and her breath uneven. He realised she had been watching the postman come and go, like a hawk, for weeks. She stood in the doorway, her fists clenched in her skirts, all tense muscles and angles, whilst he read the letter, at first to himself, and then, in a half-whisper, aloud.

Dear Mr Adamson,

You are to be heartily congratulated upon your ingenious Natural History, which is just the kind of book of which the world of letters, at present, cannot have enough. It has everything that could be desired—facts in abundance, useful reflections, drama, humour, and fun. We are very happy you have chosen our house as its publishers and hope we may come to a happy arrangement for what will, I am quite sure, be a most fruitful partnership.

Matty Crompton let out a great sigh, and leaned weakly against the doorpost.

‘I knew it. From the start, I knew it. But I was so afraid—’

‘I can hardly believe—’

‘You must not be over-sanguine. I have no idea of the profit from a successful book—’

‘Nor I. Nor I.’ He paused. ‘I hardly like to mention it to Sir Harald. He is in a very bad way with his own project. He has torn up several sheafs of writing, only yesterday. I feel I have not given him the support he needs—’

‘I understand—’

‘Perhaps, after all, it is not certain enough yet to be revealed? Perhaps we should keep our own counsel a little longer? We have done so well—so far—’

‘I am quite happy to go on as we are. The shock—the surprise, I should say—will be the more complete when we come to reveal what has been in the making—’

There was also, though William could not mention this, the embarrassment, in Alabaster company, of his latest contretemps with Edgar. For he had noticed—it had impinged very slowly, too slowly, on his preoccupied consciousness—that his little beetle-sprite, Amy, was no longer trotting along the corridors with her buckets, no longer creeping out into the paddock on her day off. In fact, he slowly came to see, Amy was no longer there at all. He had asked Miss Crompton if she knew where Amy was, and Miss Crompton replied tersely that she believed Amy had been dismissed. William had not liked to investigate further, but casual questioning of Tom, the gardener’s boy, had produced a sudden outburst, choked off, equally suddenly, by caution.

‘Amy’s in the workhouse, with a baby, Sir, or will be any day, and she no more than a baby herself. And without a character, Sir—what will she do, I don’t know, I can’t tell, poor little creature—’

Something in William boiled over, remembering Edgar in the scullery, remembering Amy’s submissive droop of the spine. He went out, without reflection, to the stableyard, where Edgar was saddling Ivanhoe.

‘I wish to say something to you.’

‘What then?’ without even turning his head.

‘I hope this about poor Amy is nothing to do with you.’

‘I know nothing, and care nothing, about “poor Amy”.’

‘I think you are lying. The poor girl is in trouble, and you are the cause.’

‘You jump very early to conclusions. And in any case, I do not see what business it is of yours.’

Edgar let go of the girth he had been steadily tightening round Ivanhoe’s belly, straightened himself, and looked at William with a very slight smile on his pale face.

‘What is your interest in the matter?’ he said slowly and deliberately.

‘Common humanity. She is only a child. And one I like, one I care for, one whose childhood has been drudgery—’

‘Ah. A Socialist. Who “cares for” little drudges. I could ask, where has your “care” led you? No one looking at the two of us would be in doubt which of us had spent more time with the little woman. Would he? Think about what people would make of your concern. Think about that.’

‘That is ridiculous. You know it is.’

‘And I answer the same, your accusations are ridiculous. The girl has not complained, and you cannot do anything to disprove what I state.’

‘Why can I not? I can find Amy and ask her—’

‘That would do no good, I assure you. And you should think what Eugenia might think. Of what I might choose to say to Eugenia.’

Edgar looked so pleased with himself that William was momentarily confused, and could feel the blood banging in his head.

‘I could bang you against the wall,’ said William. ‘But that would not help Amy. She should be provided for.’

‘And you should let those who are able to do that,’ said Edgar, ‘—who do not include you—take care of that as they see fit. My mother will send some sort of present. It is her place. You yourself have found us generous enough, I trust.’

‘I shall see that something is done.’

‘No, I shall. The girl was in our service and unless you want to brandish your care for her in Eugenia’s face—’

He turned back to his horse, led him out, and mounted.

‘Good day, brother-in-law,’ said Edgar, and dug his heels into Ivanhoe, who gave a startled bound and trotted away.

He could not bring himself to discuss Amy with any of the women, neither with Lady Alabaster, nor with Eugenia, nor with Matty Crompton. Edgar had aroused in him some disproportionate and inhibiting male shame at his own powerlessness and impotence. He thought of collecting what pitiful sum he might collect and asking Tom to give it to May, and then thought of the uselessness of such a sum, of the misconstructions that might be put on his action, and did nothing. Here and there in Brazil, it might well be, were pale-eyed dark-skinned infants with his blood in their veins, to whose support he did not contribute, who knew nothing of him. Who was he to judge so righteously? It was not his place to care for Amy, Edgar was right about that. And so he wavered, and did nothing, whilst Amy’s biological time, presumably, moved sweetly or painfully along its inevitable track.

In the Winter of 1861 and 1862 Edgar had spent much of his time riding to hounds, or out with a gun, and the family indoors had been even more sedentary and female than in the Summer. In this Winter of 1863, whilst the Ant History was going through the press, Robin Swinnerton asked William rather diffidently if he cared to hunt, for he had a horse that needed the exercise, and could mount him. No Alabaster had proposed this, or supposed William might be interested, and perhaps other circumstances, tact or delicacy towards the family—his family—might have led him to decline Robin’s offer. But he was angry with Edgar, and full of nervous energy over his book and its progress. He did not want to stay still in the house. So he accepted, and rode out once or twice on Robin’s mare, Beauty, who jumped neatly, like a cat, but was not the fastest horse in the field. He was almost happy, going out across crisp English fields in the grey morning, smelling the polished leather, and the warm mane and glossy neck of Beauty, and beyond these animal smells, the whole Autumn and stubble and bracken, a whiff of woodsmoke, a sharpness of crushed hawthorn leaves that suddenly and surprisingly, as Beauty pricked her ears and rose in a rush of air and a suck of mud beneath her feet, reminded him of Matty Crompton’s secret smell, her sharp armpits, the acrid touch amongst lavender and lemon.

Hounds met one day outside the Bay Tree Inn, in a neighbouring village. Edgar and Lionel rode off immediately after the Master, in the place that was usually theirs. They did not acknowledge William’s presence at the Meets, as though some rule of minimal courtesy, which obtained in Bredely Hall, did not need to be kept in the outer world. They did acknowledge Robin, when he was not with William, and this led William to hold back, as the Hunt followers pressed forward, and to set off in the rear. On that day the field spread out quickly and over a distance: William could hear the horn vanishing, and the faint echo of galloping whilst he himself was still negotiating a quiet, rutted lane between high hedges. It was here that a Bredely stable lad, whom he knew only by sight, caught up with him, riding a stolid cob, and said, ‘Mr Adamson, Sir. You are asked to come back to Miss Eugenia, please.’

‘Is she ill? Is anything wrong?’

‘I couldn’t say, Sir. I don’t think it can be anything bad or them as gave me the message’d’ve said, but that was all. You are asked to come back to Miss Eugenia.’

William was irritated. He turned back, listening to the horn and the hounds baying, and set off at a good trot—Eugenia never commanded his presence, so the matter must be urgent. The hedges slipped by, he galloped peaceably across a few fields and turned in at the stable gates. The ostler took his bridle and William hurried into the house. No one was around. On the stairs, he met Eugenia’s maid.

‘Is my wife well?’

‘I think so, Sir.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In her room, Sir, I think,’ said the young woman, unsmiling. ‘I brushed her hair, took away her breakfast, and she told me she was not to be disturbed until after dinner. But that is where she is, I believe.’

There was something odd about the girl’s manner. Something furtive, apprehensive, and also excited. She lowered her eyes demurely and went on down the stairs.

William went up, and knocked at Eugenia’s door. There was no reply. He listened, his ear to the wood. There was movement inside, and, he could sense, a listening watchfulness which became still, reflecting his own. He tried the door, which was locked. He listened again, and then went quickly round, through his own room and the dressing-room, opening that door without knocking.

Eugenia was lying back in her bed, largely naked, though a kind of wrapper was still clinging to her arms and shoulders. She was much plumper now, but still silky-white, still sweet. As she saw who it was, she blushed, over face and neck and breasts, a great flood of furious rose. Standing next to the bed, clothed in a shirt and nothing else, was a man, a large man with his back to William. Edgar. The room was full of an unmistakable smell, musky, salty, aphrodisiac, terrible.

William did not know what to feel. He felt revulsion, but no primeval awe. He felt a kind of grim laughter rising in him, at Edgar’s grotesque appearance, at his own open-mouthed idiocy. He felt humiliated, and simultaneously he felt hugely empowered. Edgar gave a kind of stifled bellow, and for a moment William sensed Edgar’s thought, that it would be simplest for Edgar to kill him, now, quickly, before any more could be known or could happen. He was to think later that Edgar might have killed him, if he had not been caught with his tail between his legs. For a naked prick which was power two minutes ago, in the presence of the female, is vulnerability and ridicule when three are in the room. He said, tersely, to Edgar, ‘Get dressed.’

Edgar fumbled obediently to obey. William became slowly decisive. He said, ‘Then go. Go now.’

Neither brother nor sister could say, ‘It is not what you think.’ Neither tried. Edgar’s feet would not find the outlets in his breeches. He flapped and swore to himself. William continued to watch Edgar intently and did not look at Eugenia. When Edgar bent to put on his boots, William, feeling sick and trembling with some powerful feeling said, ‘Just take those, take them, in your hand, and anything else, and get out of here.’

Edgar opened his mouth, said nothing, and closed it. William nodded at the door. ‘I told you to go.’

Edgar picked up his boots, and his jacket, and his whip, and went.

William looked at his wife. She was panting. It was no doubt from fear, but it resembled closely enough the pants of pleasure, which he knew.

‘You too. Dress yourself. Cover—cover up.’

Eugenia turned her head on her pillows towards him. Her lips were parted. Her limp legs were still parted. She lifted a tremulous hand and tried to touch his sleeve. William sprang away as though he had been stung. He repeated, with an edge in his voice, ‘Dress yourself.’

She rolled herself very slowly out of the bed, and gathered up her clothes. They were cast down here and there in the room. Stockings on the carpet, drawers on a chair, her corset draped over a stool.

‘It is like a whorehouse,’ said William, simply telling the truth, and betraying himself into the bargain, which went unnoticed. He remembered, then, thinking he might smutch her, God help him. His sickness increased. She ran around, curved on herself, cradling her breasts in her arms, moaning.

‘I can’t put this on without Bella—help me.’

‘I shan’t touch you. Leave it off. Hurry. You are horrible to see.’

She obeyed, and put on a white dress, which hung oddly on her uncompressed flesh. She sat down at the mirror and made one or two automatic passes with the hairbrush. When she saw her own face, a few tears fell between the pretty lashes. She sat, lumpish, in front of her mirror.

‘What will you do?’

‘I don’t know,’ William said truthfully. He was looking back, with difficulty. ‘I don’t want you to think you must lie to me, Eugenia. This—this has been going on all the time, hasn’t it? All the time I’ve been here?’

He could see the lies pass over her face, like clouds over the moon. Then she shuddered, and nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘How long?’ said William.

‘Since I was very little. Very little, yes. It began as a game. You cannot possibly understand.’

‘No. I cannot.’

‘At first it seemed—nothing to do with the rest of my life. It was just something—secret—that was you know—like other things you must not do, and do. Like touching yourself, in the dark. You don’t understand.’

‘No. I don’t.’

‘And then—and then—when I was going to marry Captain Hunt—he saw—he saw—oh, not so much as you have seen—but enough to guess. And it preyed on his mind. It preyed on his mind. I swore then, I would stop it—I did stop it—I wanted to be married, and good, and—like other people—and I—I did persuade him—he—was mistaken in me. It was so hard, for he would not say what he feared—he could not speak it out loud—and that was when I saw—how very terrible—it was—I was.

‘Only—we could not stop. I do not think—he—’ she choked on Edgar’s name, ‘meant even to stop—he—he is—strong—and of course Captain Hunt—someone led him to see—he saw—not much—but enough. And he wrote a terrible letter—to—to both of us—and said—oh—’ she began to weep rapidly suddenly, ‘he could not live with the knowledge even if we could. That is what he said. And then he shot himself. In his desk there was a note, to me, saying I would know why he had died, and that he hoped I would be able to be happy.’

William watched her weep.

‘But even after that—you went on.’

‘Who else could I turn to?’

She went on weeping. William looked back over his life. He said, ‘You turned to me. Or made use of me, anyway.’ He began to feel very sick indeed. ‘All your children, who revert so shockingly to the ancestral type—’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know. I made sure I don’t know,’ cried Eugenia, on a new high frantic note. She began to sway to and fro, exaggeratedly, banging her head on the mirror.

William said, ‘Make less noise. You cannot wish to attract any more attention.’

There was a long silence. Eugenia moaned, and William stood, paralysed by conflicting furies and indecisions. He said, when he felt he could not protract this unbearable scene a moment longer, ‘I shall go now. We will talk again later.’

‘What will you do?’ asked Eugenia, in a small toneless voice.

‘I don’t know what I shall do. I shall tell you, when I do know. You may wait for my decision. You need not be afraid I shall kill myself.’

Eugenia wept quietly.

‘Or him,’ said William. ‘I want to be a free man, not a convicted murderer.’

‘You are cold,’ said Eugenia.

‘I am now,’ said William, lying at least in part. He retreated into his own room, and locked the door on his side.

He lay down on his own bed, and, to his later surprise, fell immediately into a deep sleep, from which he woke, just as suddenly, and unable for a moment to remember what had happened that was terrible, only that something had. And then he remembered, and felt sick, and over-excited, and restless, and could not think what to do. All sorts of things went through his mind. Divorce, flight, a showdown with Edgar, making him promise he would go away and never return. Could he? Would he? Could he himself stay in that house?

Nevertheless, he stood up and changed into his house clothes and went down to dinner, where, apart from the absence of both Edgar and Eugenia, things were as they were every night, with Grace from Harald, bickerings amongst the younger girls, and a kind of ruminative supping noise from Lady Alabaster. The servants brought the dishes, and removed them again, silently, unobtrusively. After dinner card-games were proposed, and William thought of declining, but Matty Crompton said to him on their way through the corridors to the parlour where tea was served, ‘O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,/Alone and palely loitering?’

‘Do I look as though something ails me?’ asked William, forcing himself to speak lightly.

‘You have a brooding look,’ said his friend. ‘And you are distinctly pale, if you do not mind my observing it.’

‘I missed my gallop,’ said William. ‘I was called back—’ He paused, considering for the first time the strangeness of that calling-back. Miss Crompton appeared not to notice. She enlisted his support for a game of Anagrams, with Lady Alabaster and the elder children and Miss Fescue, who was always enlisted to help Lady Alabaster. They arranged themselves around the card-table, in the light of an oil-lamp. They all looked so comfortable, William thought, so innocent, so much at home.

The game consisted of making words out of alphabet cards, prettily decorated with pictures of harlequins, monkeys, columbines and devils with forks. Everyone had nine letters, and could give any complete word they could make secretly to anyone else, who must change at least one letter, and pass it on. The game was not to be left with the letters with demons on, which were, rather at random, some of the awkward letters, like Q and X, and some of those in demand, like E and S. William played with half his mind, pushing on easy words like ‘was’ and ‘his’ and ‘mine’ and accumulating demons. At one point, finding himself with PHXNITCSE, he suddenly woke up, and found himself able to present Matty Crompton with INSECT even though that left him with an X with a demon on it. Miss Crompton, her face heavily shadowed in the lamplight, gave a small snort of laughter at this word, considered it for some time, rearranged the cards, and pushed it back to him. He was about to point out that the rules did not allow of returning the same word, without adding or subtracting a letter, when he saw what she had sent him. There it was, lying innocently in his hand. INCEST. He shuffled the evidence hastily, looked up, and met the dark intelligent eyes.

‘Things are not what they seem,’ said Matty Crompton amiably. William looked at his cards, and saw that he could make another word, and get rid of the X, and answer her message. So he pushed his word back, and she gave another snort of laughter, and the game went on. But now, his eyes met hers, from time to time, and hers gleamed with knowledge and—yes—excitement. And he did not know if he was more comforted or alarmed that she knew. How long had she known? How? What did she think? Her smile was not commiserating, nor was it prurient, it was somehow satisfied and amused. The luck of the letters was uncanny. It gave him the feeling that occasionally comes to most of us, that however we protest we are moved by chance, and struck by random shocks and blows, in fact there is Design, there is Fate, it has us in its grip.

It was possible, of course, that she had somehow shaped his cards. She liked riddles. He watched the flick of her precise, thin wrists as she passed PHOENIX on to Elaine, neatly getting rid of the dangerous X. Did she see him as a dupe, as a poor victim? Had she always seen him that way? Things were not what they seemed, indeed.

At the end of the game, he managed to say to her under his breath, ‘I must speak to you.’

‘Not now. Later. I will find a time. Later.’

He found it hard to sleep, that night. On the other side of the locked door was Eugenia. He could not hear her snore, and he did not hear her move, and once or twice resisted a compulsion to go in and see if she had killed herself. He thought she would not do that; it was not in her nature; though of course he knew nothing about her nature, after this morning. Everything he had thought he knew was overturned. Or maybe not. He had partly known that he did not know Eugenia. Either she had no inner life, he had thought, or it was locked away, inaccessible to him. Something terrible had been done to him. And to her, he thought. He should perhaps wish to kill Edgar. Except that even Edgar was in some ways less simply hateful, in this hellish plight. He was more driven, less complacently, ordinarily brutal and overbearing than he had seemed.

William heard a tap on his outer door, which then opened quietly, to admit a dark figure. It was Miss Crompton, still in her day clothes, which consisted of a long black silk skirt, and a grey poplin shirt. She stood inside his door, and beckoned, without speaking. William got out of bed and wrapped himself in his dressing gown. He followed her silently along the corridor and up another flight of stairs, on to a long landing carpeted serviceably in cord, and through a door into what he saw immediately was her bedroom. She put her candle down on the little dressing-table. The room was narrow, like a high box, with one hard upright chair and a narrow bed with a cast-iron bedhead, and a precisely folded white dimity bedspread. There was a tiny bookcase, in dark oak, and books everywhere there could be, under the chair, sticking out in boxes under the bed, under the dressing-table. On the back of the door were hooks, where there hung the small wardrobe he knew so well. Under the window was a small chest of drawers, on which stood a glass, with a few teazles and poppyheads in it. That was all.

‘Please take a chair,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘I hope you don’t think this is too conspiratorial.’

‘No,’ he said, although he did, in part. He was troubled to be closed away with her, in her private place.

‘You wished to talk,’ she said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and seeming a little at a loss for how to begin.

‘You sent me a word, tonight,’ he said. ‘And someone sent for me to come back to the house, today, when I was not wanted. When I was anything but wanted.’

‘I didn’t send for you,’ she said. ‘If that is what you are thinking. There are people in a house, you know, who know everything that goes on—the invisible people, and now and then the house simply decides that something must happen—I think your message came to you after a series of misunderstandings that at some level were quite deliberate—’

There was another silence. They were very awkward together, now they were on her territory, the little territory she commanded.

‘But you know what I saw,’ he said.

‘Yes. There are people in houses, between the visible inhabitants and the invisible, largely invisible to both, who can know a very great deal, or nothing, as they choose. I choose to know about some things, and not to know about others. I have become interested in knowing things that concern you.’

‘I have been used. I have been made a fool of.’

‘Even if that is so—it is not the most important thing. I want to know—what you feel. I need to know what you will do.’

The oddness of her way of putting it struck him, but he did not remark on it. He answered heavily, as best he could, ‘I find that—my most powerful feeling—is that I am free. I ought to feel—shocked, or vengeful, or—or humiliated—and from time to time, I do feel all these things—but mostly, I feel—I can go now, I can leave this house, I can return to my true work—

‘I cannot, of course. I have five children and a wife, and no income—though I might seek employment—’

‘There was talk of equipping a further Amazon venture—’

‘I cannot now take one Alabaster penny. You must see that, you see everything, I begin to think. I must go away, and soon. And never return. Retribution is not my business. I will—I will ask Edgar for money, for Amy—I do not care how that may appear, I will ensure that Amy has an income for life—and then I will go. And never return. And never return.’

The phrase was exciting him. He said, ‘You are all I shall miss here. I have never felt—not in my heart of hearts—any warmth to all those—white children—’

‘This may be of the moment.’

‘No, no. I can go. I shall go. My book—our book—will provide a little—more can be earned.’

‘I have sold my Fairytales,’ said Matty Crompton.

‘I cannot take—you were not offering—I am sorry—’

‘I have taken certain steps,’ said Miss Crompton, in a tense voice. ‘Entirely subject to your approval. I—I have a Banker’s Draft from Mr George Smith that should be more than sufficient—and a letter from Mr Stevens offering to negotiate the sales of specimens as before—and a letter from a Captain Papagay, who sails from Liverpool for Rio in a month’s time. He has two berths free.’

‘You are truly a good Fairy,’ said William with an edge of rebellion. ‘You wave your wand, and I have everything I desire before I can think of desiring it.’

‘I watch, and contrive, and write letters, and consider your nature,’ said Matty Crompton. ‘And you do desire it. You have just said so.’

‘Two berths—’ said William.

‘I shall come with you,’ said Miss Crompton. ‘You have filled me with a great desire to see all those Paradisal places and I shall not rest until I have seen the great River and felt the air of the Tropics.’

‘You cannot do that,’ said William. ‘Think of the fever, think of the terrible biting creatures, think of the monotonous insufficient food, of the rough men out there, the drunkenness—’

‘Yet you wish to return.’

‘I am not a woman.’

‘Ah. And I am.’

‘It is no place for a woman—’

‘Yet there are women there.’

‘Yes, but not of your kind.’

‘I do not think you know what kind of woman I am.’

She rose, and began to pace, like a prisoner in a cell, in a little room. He was quiet, watching her. She said, ‘You do not know that I am a woman. Why should that not continue as it is? You have never seen me.’

Her voice had a new harshness, a new note. She said, ‘You have no idea who I am. You have no idea even how old I am. Have you? You think I may be of an age between thirty and fifty, confess it.’

‘And if you know so precisely what I think, it is because you must have meant me to think it.’

What she said was nevertheless true. He had no idea, and that was what he had thought. She paced on. William said, ‘Tell me then, since you invite the question, how old are you?’

‘I am twenty-seven,’ said Matty Crompton. ‘I have only one life, and twenty-seven years of it are past, and I intend to begin living.’

‘But not in the rainforest, not in the Amazons. There is Esmeralda, which looks like Paradise on Earth, until you see that all the houses are closed, that all the life is vegetable, not animal, that a poor man’s face is crusted with Mosquitoes, and his food is alive with them, and his hands running blood. The place is in many ways an Inferno—’

‘But you will go back there.’

‘My work is there. And I know how to live that life.’

‘I will learn. I am strong. I have not lived softly, contrary to appearances. I am resourceful. You need not heed me, once the voyage is over.’

‘It is a daydream.’

‘No. It is what I will do.’

He hardly recognized the ironic practical Miss Crompton of earlier times. She paced and turned. She swung on her heel, with her hand on her hip.

‘Miss Crompton, Matty—’

‘My name’, she said, ‘is Matilda. Up here at night there is no Matty. Only Matilda. Look at me.’

And she put up her hands to her head and undid the plaits of her hair over her ears, and shook it out, and came and stood before him. And her face between the dark tresses was sharp and eager and hungry, and he watched how trimly she turned and said, ‘I have seen your wrists, Matilda. I dreamed about them now and then. You have—remarkable—wrists.’

‘I only wanted you to see me,’ said Matilda, less confidently, once she saw that he had indeed seen her. He saw that her cheekbones were high and sharp, and her mouth was hard, not soft, but full of life. He saw how quick she turned at the waist, and thought quickly of a greyhound. He said, ‘I don’t think that was all you wanted.’

‘I want you to be happy,’ said Matilda, fiercely.

William stood up, and looked her in the eye, and put his hands on her waist.

‘I will be,’ he said. ‘I will be.’

He pulled her against him, the unyielding Matty Crompton, the new hungry Matilda.

‘Shall I stay here?’ he said. ‘Or shall I go back, now?’

‘I should like you to stay,’ said Matilda. ‘Though it is not comfortable here.’

‘If we are to travel together, you will find we look back on this as a Paradise of comfort.’

And in a way, in many ways, they did.

Two more pictures. William went to see Eugenia to communicate to her his decisions. She had put it about that she was ill, and had her meals brought to her in her room, which was not unusual enough to cause any comment in the household. He sent her a message by her maid, saying that he wished to discuss certain arrangements with her. When he came in, he saw that she had paid great attention to her toilette. She was dressed in silvery-grey silk, with bright blue ribbons, and had a posy of rosebuds at her breast. She looked older; the calm glaze had gone from her look, and was replaced with a new softness, a new overt sensuousness.

‘So you have decided,’ she said. ‘What is to be my fate?’

‘I must confess I am more interested in my own. I have decided to leave you. I shall set out on an expedition to explore the further reaches of the Rio Negro. I have no intention of returning to this house.’

‘I suppose you will wish me to write a cheque for your passage, for your expenses and so on.’

‘No. I have written a book. The money from that will suffice.’

‘And—shall you speak to anyone—shall you—tell?’

‘Who can I tell, Eugenia, whom I should not destroy in the telling? You must live with yourself, that is all I can say, you must live with yourself as you can.’

‘I know it was bad,’ said Eugenia. ‘I know it was bad, but you must understand it didn’t feel bad—it grew little by little, out of perfectly innocent, natural, playful things—which no one thought wrong—I have never been able to speak to any other living soul of it, you must forgive me for speaking to you—I can see I have made you angry, though I tried to make you love me—if I could have spoken to anyone, I might have been brought to see how wrong it was. But—he thought it wasn’t—he said—people like making rules and others like breaking them—he made me believe it was all perfectly natural and so it was, it was natural, nothing in us rose up and said—it was—unnatural.’

‘Breeders know’, said William curtly, ‘that even first-cousin marriages produce inherited defects—increase the likelihood—’

Eugenia cast down her lashes. ‘That is a cruel thing to say.’

She was clasping her own hands nervously in her lap. She had the curtains half-drawn against the sunlight and to hide the shadows of tearstains. She was lovely, and complacent, and amoral, and he sensed that she was now waiting for him to go, so that she could resume her self-nurture and self-communion. At some level, what had happened was inconvenient to Eugenia, and he was about to remove the inconvenience, himself. He said, ‘Morpho Eugenia. You are very lovely—’

‘It has not done me good,’ said Eugenia, ‘to look pretty, to be admired. I would like to be different. ’

But William could not take that seriously, as he watched her compose her mouth, and open her wide eyes, and look hopefully up at him.

‘Goodbye, Eugenia. I shall not come back.’

‘You never know,’ she replied vaguely, her attention already sliding away from him, with a pretty little sigh of relief.

And the second picture is very different. Imagine the strong little ship, Calypso, rushing through the mid-Atlantic night, as far from land as she will be at any point on this voyage. The sky is a profound blue-black, spattered with the flowing, spangled river of the Milky Way, glittering and slippery with suns and moons and worlds, greater and smaller, like spattered seed. The sea is a deep blue-black, ribbed with green, crested as it turns, with silver spray and crinkled crests of airy salt water. It too is swarming, with phosphorescent animalcules, the Medusae, swimming with tiny hairs, presenting a kind of reverse image of the lavish star-soup. William and Matilda are standing on deck, leaning over the rails, watching the ship’s nose plunge down and on. She is wearing a crimson shawl, and a striped scarf in her hair, and the wind stirs her skirts round her ankles. William’s brown hand grips her brown wrist on the rail. They breathe salt air, and hope, and their blood swims with the excitement of the future, and this is a good place to leave them, on the crest of a wave, between the ordered green fields and hedgerows, and the coiling, striving mass of forest along the Amazon shore.

Captain Arturo Papagay, whose first command this is, comes past, and smiles his rich, mixed smile, white teeth in a golden-brown face, laughing dark eyes. He has brought Mr Adamson a curiosity. It is a butterfly, found by a midshipman in the rigging. It is amber-gold, with dusky borders to its wings, which are a little dishevelled, even tattered. It is the Monarch, says William, excited, Danaus Plexippus, which is known to migrate great distances along the American coast. They are strong fliers, he tells Matilda, but the winds can carry them hundreds of miles out to sea. Matilda observes to William and Captain Papagay that the wings are still dusty with life. ‘It fills me with emotion,’ she says. ‘I do not know whether it is more fear, or more hope. It is so fragile, and so easily crushed, and nowhere in reach of where it was going. And yet it is still alive, and bright, and so surprising, rightly seen.’ ‘That is the main thing,’ says Captain Papagay. ‘To be alive. As long as you are alive, everything is surprising, rightly seen.’ And the three of them look out with renewed interest at the points of light in the dark around them.