The White People | Page 5

nor bruises nor marks of usage. The book
looked as if it had been bought "on a visit to London" some seventy or
eighty years ago, and had somehow been forgotten and suffered to lie
away out of sight. There was an old, delicate, lingering odour about it,
such an odour as sometimes haunts an ancient piece of furniture for a
century or more. The end-papers, inside the binding, were oddly
decorated with coloured patterns and faded gold. It looked small, but
the paper was fine, and there were many leaves, closely covered with
minute, painfully formed characters.
I found this book (the manuscript began) in a drawer in the old bureau
that stands on the landing. It was a very rainy day and I could not go
out, so in the afternoon I got a candle and rummaged in the bureau.
Nearly all the drawers were full of old dresses, but one of the small
ones looked empty, and I found this book hidden right at the back. I
wanted a book like this, so I took it to write in. It is full of secrets. I
have a great many other books of secrets I have written, hidden in a
safe place, and I am going to write here many of the old secrets and
some new ones; but there are some I shall not put down at all. I must
not write down the real names of the days and months which I found
out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian
language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the
chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the
way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And I must not say who the
Nymphs are, or the D™ls, or Jeelo, or what voolas mean. All these are
most secret secrets, and I am glad when I remember what they are, and
how many wonderful languages I know, but there are some things that I
call the secrets of the secrets of the secrets that I dare not think of
unless I am quite alone, and then I shut my eyes, and put my hands
over them and whisper the word, and the Alala comes. I only do this at

night in my room or in certain woods that I know, but I must not
describe them, as they are secret woods. Then there are the Ceremonies,
which are all of them important, but some are more delightful than
others--
there are the White Ceremonies, and the Green Ceremonies, and the
Scarlet Ceremonies. The Scarlet Ceremonies are the best, but there is
only one place where they can be performed properly, though there is a
very nice imitation which I have done in other places. Besides these, I
have the dances, and the Comedy, and I have done the Comedy
sometimes when the others were looking, and they didn't understand
anything about it. I was very little when I first knew about these things.
When I was very small, and mother was alive, I can remember
remembering things before that, only it has all got confused. But I
remember when I was five or six I heard them talking about me when
they thought I was not noticing. They were saying how queer I was a
year or two before, and how nurse had called my mother to come and
listen to me talking all to myself, and I was saying words that nobody
could understand. I was speaking the Xu language, but I only remember
a very few of the words, as it was about the little white faces that used
to look at me when I was lying in my cradle. They used to talk to me,
and I learnt their language and talked to them in it about some great
white place where they lived, where the trees and the grass were all
white, and there were white hills as high up as the moon, and a cold
wind. I have often dreamed of it afterwards, but the faces went away
when I was very little. But a wonderful thing happened when I was
about five. My nurse was carrying me on her shoulder; there was a field
of yellow corn, and we went through it, it was very hot. Then we came
to a path through a wood, and a tall man came after us, and went with
us till we came to a place where there was a deep pool, and it was very
dark and shady. Nurse put me down on the soft moss under a tree, and
she said: "She can't get to the pond now." So they left me there, and I
sat quite still and