The Willows | Page 7

for the
wind, that drove the smoke in our faces wherever we sat, helped at the
same time to make a forced draught. We took it in turn to make some
foraging expeditions into the darkness, and the quantity the Swede
brought back always made me feel that he took an absurdly long time
finding it; for the fact was I did not care much about being left alone,
and yet it always seemed to be my turn to grub about among the bushes
or scramble along the slippery banks in the moonlight. The long day's
battle with wind and water--such wind and such water!--had tired us
both, and an early bed was the obvious program. Yet neither of us made
the move for the tent. We lay there, tending the fire, talking in
desultory fashion, peering about us into the dense willow bushes, and
listening to the thunder of wind and river. The loneliness of the place
had entered our very bones, and silence seemed natural, for after a bit
the sound of our voices became a trifle unreal and forced; whispering
would have been the fitting mode of communication, I felt, and the
human voice, always rather absurd amid the roar of the elements, now
carried with it something almost illegitimate. It was like talking out
loud in church, or in some place where it was not lawful, perhaps not
quite safe, to be overheard.
The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept

by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us
both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there
beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of
another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and
the souls of willows. And we, in our rashness, had dared to invade it,
even to make use of it! Something more than the power of its mystery
stirred in me as I lay on the sand, feet to fire, and peered up through the
leaves at the stars. For the last time I rose to get firewood.
"When this has burnt up," I said firmly, "I shall turn in," and my
companion watched me lazily as I moved off into the surrounding
shadows.
For an unimaginative man I thought he seemed unusually receptive that
night, unusually open to suggestion of things other than sensory. He too
was touched by the beauty and loneliness of the place. I was not
altogether pleased, I remember, to recognize this slight change in him,
and instead of immediately collecting sticks, I made my way to the far
point of the island where the moonlight on plain and river could be
seen to better advantage. The desire to be alone had come suddenly
upon me; my former dread returned in force; there was a vague feeling
in me I wished to face and probe to the bottom.
When I reached the point of sand jutting out among the waves, the spell
of the place descended upon me with a positive shock. No mere
"scenery" could have produced such an effect. There was something
more here, something to alarm.
I gazed across the waste of wild waters; I watched the whispering
willows; I heard the ceaseless beating of the tireless wind; and, one and
all, each in its own way, stirred in me this sensation of a strange
distress. But the willows especially; for ever they went on chattering
and talking among themselves, laughing a little, shrilly crying out,
sometimes sighing--but what it was they made so much to-do about
belonged to the secret life of the great plain they inhabited. And it was
utterly alien to the world I knew, or to that of the wild yet kindly
elements. They made me think of a host of beings from another plane
of life, another evolution altogether, perhaps, all discussing a mystery

known only to themselves. I watched them moving busily together,
oddly shaking their big bushy heads, twirling their myriad leaves even
when there was no wind. They moved of their own will as though alive,
and they touched, by some incalculable method, my own keen sense of
the horrible.
There they stood in the moonlight, like a vast army surrounding our
camp, shaking their innumerable silver spears defiantly, formed all
ready for an attack.
The psychology of places, for some imaginations at least, is very vivid;
for the wanderer, especially, camps have their "note" either of welcome
or rejection. At first it may not always be apparent, because the busy
preparations of tent and cooking prevent, but with the first pause--after
supper usually--it comes and announces itself. And the note of this
willow-camp now became unmistakably plain to me; we were
interlopers, trespassers; we were not welcomed. The sense