“Special pleading, special pleading!” Lady Muriel cried, in a most unfilial tone of triumph. “Why, you yourself said, just now, ‘the mind of the Bee’!”
“But I did not say ‘minds,’ my child,” the Earl gently replied. “It has occurred to me, as the most probable solution of the ‘Bee’-mystery, that a swarm of Bees have only one mind among them. We often see one mind animating a most complex collection of limbs and organs, when joined together. How do we know that any material connection is necessary? May not mere neighbourhood be enough? If so, a swarm of bees is simply a single animal whose many limbs are not quite close together!”
“It is a bewildering thought,” I said, “and needs a night’s rest to grasp it properly. Reason and Instinct both tell me I ought to go home. So, good night!”
“I’ll ‘set’ you part of the way,” said Lady Muriel. “I’ve had no walk today. It will do me good, and I have more to say to you. Shall we go through the wood? It will be pleasanter than over the common, even though it is getting a little dark.”
We turned aside into the shade of interlacing boughs, which formed an architecture of almost perfect symmetry, grouped into lovely groined arches, or running out, far as the eye could follow, into endless aisles, and chancels, and naves, like some ghostly cathedral, fashioned out of the dream of a moonstruck poet.
“Always, in this wood,” she began after a pause (silence seemed natural in this dim solitude), “I begin thinking of Fairies! May I ask you a question?” she added hesitatingly. “Do you believe in Fairies?”
The momentary impulse was so strong to tell her of my experiences in this very wood, that I had to make a real effort to keep back the words that rushed to my lips. “If you mean, by ‘believe,’ ‘believe in their possible existence,’ I say ‘Yes.’ For their actual existence, of course, one would need evidence.”
“You were saying, the other day,” she went on, “that you would accept anything, on good evidence, that was not à priori impossible. And I think you named Ghosts as an instance of a provable phenomenon. Would Fairies be another instance?”
“Yes, I think so.” And again it was hard to check the wish to say more: but I was not yet sure of a sympathetic listener.
“And have you any theory as to what sort of place they would occupy in Creation? Do tell me what you think about them! Would they, for instance (supposing such beings to exist), would they have any moral responsibility? I mean” (and the light bantering tone suddenly changed to one of deep seriousness) “would they be capable of sin?”
“They can reason—on a lower level, perhaps, than men and women—never rising, I think, above the faculties of a child; and they have a moral sense, most surely. Such a being, without free will, would be an absurdity. So I am driven to the conclusion that they are capable of sin.”
“You believe in them?” she cried delightedly, with a sudden motion as if about to clap her hands. “Now tell me, have you any reason for it?”
And still I strove to keep back the revelation I felt sure was coming. “I believe that there is life everywhere—not material only, not merely what is palpable to our senses—but immaterial and invisible as well. We believe in our own immaterial essence—call it ‘soul,’ or ‘spirit,’ or what you will. Why should not other similar essences exist around us, not linked on to a visible and material body? Did not God make this swarm of happy insects, to dance in this sunbeam for one hour of bliss, for no other object, that we can imagine, than to swell the sum of conscious happiness? And where shall we dare to draw the line, and say ‘He has made all these and no more’?”
“Yes, yes!” she assented, watching me with sparkling eyes. “But these are only reasons for not denying. You have more reasons than this, have you not?”
“Well, yes,” I said, feeling I might safely tell all now. “And I could not find a fitter time or place to say it. I have seen them—and in this very wood!”
Lady Muriel asked no more questions. Silently she paced at my side, with head bowed down and hands clasped tightly together. Only, as my tale went on, she drew a little short quick breath now and then, like a child panting with delight. And I told her what I had never yet breathed to any other listener, of my double life, and, more than that (for mine might have been but a noonday-dream), of the double life of those two dear children.
And when I told her of Bruno’s wild gambols, she laughed merrily; and when I spoke of Sylvie’s sweetness and her utter unselfishness and trustful love, she drew a deep breath, like one who hears at last some precious tidings for which the heart has ached for a long while; and the happy tears chased one another down her cheeks.
“I have often longed to meet an angel,” she whispered, so low that I could hardly catch the words. “I’m so glad I’ve seen Sylvie! My heart went out to the child the first moment that I saw her—Listen!” she broke off suddenly. “That’s Sylvie singing! I’m sure of it! Don’t you know her voice?”
“I have heard Bruno sing, more than once,” I said: “but I never heard Sylvie.”
“I have only heard her once,” said Lady Muriel. “It was that day when you brought us those mysterious flowers. The children had run out into the garden; and I saw Eric coming in that way, and went to the window to meet him: and Sylvie was singing, under the trees, a song I had never heard before. The words were something like ‘I think it is Love, I feel it is Love.’ Her voice sounded far away,
