"Strap, our fox-terrier, picked up some rat poison towards the end of April and died in the night. Thumbeline's way of taking that was very curious. It shocked me a good deal. She had never been so friendly with him as with Bran, though certainly more at ease in his company than in mine. The night before he died I remember that she and Bran and he had been having high games in the meadow, which had ended by their all lying down together in a heap, Thumbeline's head on Bran's flank, and her legs between his. Her arm had been round Strap's neck in a most loving way. They made quite a picture for a Royal Academician; 'Tired of Play,' or 'The End of a Romp,' I can fancy he would call it. Next morning I found poor old Strap stiff and staring, and Thumbeline and Bran at their games just the same. She actually jumped over him and all about him as if he had been a lump of earth or a stone. Just some such thing he was to her; she did not seem able to realise that there was the cold body of her friend. Bran just sniffed him over and left him, but Thumbeline showed no consciousness that he was there at all. I wondered, was this heartlessness or obliquity? But I have never found the answer to my question.[7]
[7] I have observed this frequently for myself, and can answer Beckwith's question for him. I would refer the reader in the first place to my early experience of the boy (to call him so) with the rabbit in the wood. There was an act of shocking cruelty, done idly, almost unconsciously. I was not shocked at all, child as I was, and quickly moved to pity and terror, because I knew that the creature was not to be judged by our standards. From this and other things of the sort which I have observed, and from this tale of Beckwith's, I judge, that, to the fairy kind, directly life ceases to be lived at the full, the object, be it fairy, or animal, or vegetable, is not perceived by the other to exist. Thus, if a fairy should die, the others would not know that its accidents were there; if a rabbit (as in the case cited) should be caught it would therefore cease to be rabbit. We ourselves have very much the same habit of regard toward plant life. Our attitude to a tree or a growing plant ceases the moment that plant is out of the ground. It is then, as we say, dead—that is, it ceases to be a plant. So also we never scruple to pluck the flowers, or the whole flower-scape from a plant, to put it in our buttonhole or in the bosom of our friend, and thereafter to cease our interest in the plant as such. It now becomes a memory, a gage d'amour, a token or a sudden glory—what you will. This is the habit of mankind; but I know of rare ones, both men and women, who never allow dead flowers to be thrown into the draught, but always give them decent burial, either cremation or earth to earth. I find that admirable, yet don't condemn their neighbours, nor consider fairies cruel who torture the living and disregard the maimed or the dead.
"Now I come to the tragical part of my story, and wish with all my heart that I could leave it out. But beyond the full confession I have made to my wife, the County Police and the newspapers, I feel that I should not shrink from any admission that may be called for of how much I have been to blame. In May, on the 13th of May, Thumbeline, Bran, and our only child, Florrie, disappeared.
"It was a day, I remember well, of wonderful beauty. I had left them all three together in the water meadow, little thinking of what was in store for us before many hours. Thumbeline had been crowning Florrie with a wreath of flowers. She had gathered cuckoo-pint and marsh marigolds and woven them together, far more deftly than any of us could have done, into a chaplet. I remember the curious winding, wandering air she had been singing (without any words, as usual) over her business, and how she touched each flower first with her lips, and then brushed it lightly across her bosom before she wove it in. She had kept her eyes on me as she did it, looking up from under her brows, as if to see whether I knew what she was about.
"I don't doubt now but that she was bewitching Florrie by this curious performance, which every flower had to undergo separately; but, fool that I was, I thought nothing of it at the time, and bicycled off to Salisbury leaving them there.
"At noon my poor wife came to me at the Bank distracted with anxiety and fatigue. She had run most of the way, she gave me to understand. Her news was that Florrie and Bran could not be found anywhere. She said that she had gone to the gate of the meadow to call the child in, and not seeing her, or getting any answer, she had gone down to the river at the bottom. Here she had found a few picked wild flowers, but no other traces. There were no footprints in the mud, either of child or dog. Having spent the morning with some of the neighbours in a fruitless search, she had now come to me.
"My heart was like lead, and shame prevented me from telling her the truth as I was sure it must be. But my own conviction of it clogged all my efforts. Of what avail could it be to inform the police or organise search-parties, knowing what I knew only too well? However, I did put Gulliver in communication with the head-office in Sarum, and everything possible was done. We explored a circuit of six miles about Wishford; every fold of the hills, every spinney, every hedgerow was thoroughly examined. But that first night of grief had broken down my shame: I told my wife the whole truth in the presence of Reverend Richard Walsh, the Congregational minister, and in spite of her absolute incredulity, and, I may add, scorn, next morning I repeated it to Chief Inspector Notcutt of Salisbury. Particulars got into the local papers by the following Saturday; and next I had to face the ordeal of the Daily Chronicle, Daily News, Daily Graphic, Star, and other London journals. Most of these newspapers sent representatives to lodge in the village, many of them with photographic cameras. All this hateful notoriety I had brought upon myself, and did my best to bear like the humble, contrite Christian which I hope I may say I have become. We found no trace of our dear one, and never have to this day. Bran, too, had completely vanished. I have not cared to keep a dog since.
"Whether my dear wife ever believed my account I cannot be sure. She has never reproached me for wicked thoughtlessness, that's certain. Mr. Walsh, our respected pastor, who has been so kind as to read this paper, told me more than once that he could hardly doubt it. The Salisbury police made no comments upon it one way or another. My colleagues at the Bank, out of respect for my grief and sincere repentance, treated me with a forbearance for which I can never be too grateful. I need not add that every word of this is absolutely true. I made notes of the most remarkable characteristics of the being I called Thumbeline at the time of remarking them, and those notes are still in my possession."