The child had taken out of his pocket certain small black stones of a peculiar shape. So absorbed was he that he never noticed the presence of the men. He kissed the stones and arranged them in a curious pattern on the floor, still kneeling, and keeping his eye on
Mab in her bottle. At last he placed one strangely shaped pebble in the centre, and then began to speak in a low, trembling voice, and in a kind of cadence:
“Oh! you that I have tried to see,
Oh! you that I have heard in the night,
Oh! you that live in the sky and the water;
Now I see you, now you have come:
Now you will tell me where you live,
And what things are, and who made them.
Oh Dala, these stones are yours;
These are the goona stones I find,
And play with when I think of you.
Oh Dala, be my friend, and never leave me
Alone in the dark night.”
“As I live, it’s a religious service, the worship of a green butterfly!” said the professor. At his voice the child turned round, and seeing the men, looked very much ashamed of himself.
“Come here, my dear old man,” said the professor to the child, who came on being called. “What were you doing?—who taught you to say all those funny things?”
The little fellow looked frightened. “I didn’t remember you were here,” he said; “They are things I say when I play by myself.”
“And who is Dala?”
The boy was blushing painfully. “Oh, I didn’t mean you to hear, it’s just a game of mine. I play at there being somebody I can’t see, who knows what I am doing; a friend.”
“And nobody taught you, not Jane or Harriet?”
Now Harriet and Jane were the maids.
“You never saw anybody play at that kind of game before?”
“No,” said the child, “Nobody ever.”
“Then,” cried the professor, in a loud and blissful voice, “We have at last discovered the origin of religion. It isn’t Ghosts. It isn’t the Infinite. It is worshipping butterflies, with a service of fetich stones. The boy has returned to it by an act of unconscious inherited memory, derived from Palaeolithic Man, who must, therefore, have been the native of a temperate climate, where there were green lepidoptera. Oh, my friends, what a thing is inherited memory! In each of us there slumber all the impressions of all our predecessors, up to the earliest Ascidian. See how the domesticated dog,” cried the professor, forgetting that he was not lecturing in Albemarle Street, “See how the domesticated dog, by inherited memory, turns round on the hearthrug before he curls up to sleep! He is unconsciously remembering the long grasses in which his wild ancestors dwelt. Also observe this boy, who has retained an unconscious recollection of the earliest creed of prehistoric man. Behold him instinctively, and I may say automatically, cherishing fetich stones (instead of marbles, like other boys) and adoring that green insect in the glass bottle! Oh Science,” he added rapturously, “What will Mr. Max Müller say now? The Infinite! Bosh, it’s a butterfly!”
“It is my own Dala, come to play with me,” said the boy.
“It is a fairy,” exclaimed the poet, examining Mab through his eyeglass. This he said, not that he believed in fairies any more than publishers believed in him, but partly because it was a pose he affected, partly to ‘draw’ the professor.
The professor replied that fairies were unscientific, and even unthinkable, and the divine declared that they were too heterodox even for the advanced state of modern theology, and had been condemned by several councils, which is true. And the professor ran through all the animal kingdoms and sub-kingdoms very fast, and proved quite conclusively, in a perfect cataract of polysyllables, that fairies didn’t belong to any of them. While the professor was recovering breath, the divine observed, in a somewhat aggrieved tone, that he for his part found men and women enough for him, and too much sometimes. He also wished to know whether, if his talented but misguided friend required something ethereal, angels were not sufficient, without his having recourse to Pagan mythology; and whether he considered Pagan mythology suitable to the pressing needs of modern society, with a large surplus female population, and to the adjustment of the claims of reason and religion.
The poet replied, “Oh, don’t bother me with your theological conundrums. I give it up. See here, I am going to write a sonnet to this creature, whatever it is. Fair denizen— !”
“Of a glass bottle!” interrupted the professor somewhat rudely, and the divine laughed.
“No. Of deathless ether, doomed.”
“And that reminds me,” said the professor, turning hastily, “I must examine it under the microscope carefully, while the light lasts.”
“Oh father!” cried the child, “Don’t touch it, it is alive!”
“Nonsense!” said the professor, “It is as dead as a door-nail. Just reach me that lens.”
He raised the glass stopper unsuspiciously, then turned to adjust his instrument And even as he turned his captive fled.
“There!” cried the boy. Like a flash of sunshine, Queen Mab darted upwards and floated through the open window. They saw her hover outside a moment, then she was gone—back into her deathless ether.
“I told you so!” exclaimed the poet, startled by this incident into a momentary conviction of the truth of his own theory.
©Jason Stemple, 2015
Interview: Jane Yolen
