Emily’s Diary: May 26, 1913
SUCH A STRANGE THING, today. I almost hesitate to set it down in these pages. I am still not certain that the whole incident was not a dream… Yes! I am certain. However strange, however uncanny, it happened, it was real, and I shall set it down for all time in these pages so that I will always remember that it happened.
I was up at the bower in the woods above Cross and Passion after evening chapel. It was lovely and bright, a gorgeous late evening, everything just as full of life as it could be; bees and butterflies and birds and everything. I thought I’d like to read some poetry. Mummy’d just sent me one of Mr. Yeats’s books of poems. With it in my hand I slipped away across the back field. I’m sure no one saw me, but I kept having that funny feeling you get when you are sure someone is watching you but you can never catch who they are. I would look behind me every so often, but I still couldn’t see anyone or anything. But I still kept getting that peculiar prickling-between-the-shoulder-blades feeling. I should have gone back then, I suppose. If I’d known then, I would have.
Even in the bower the funny feeling would not go away. Funny feelings. There was another one, sort of like the one you get just before a thunderstorm, that something is going to happen, as if every leaf, every flower, every blade of grass is humming with a power that might at any moment burst in release. But it wasn’t a scary feeling, this other one—not like the invisible eyes. It felt safe and comforting.
I was reading poetry from Mr. Yeats’s book, and I must have been far, far away in it, even with all the funny feelings, because I never heard him coming up on me. All of a sudden I heard the crashing of branches and leaves and the light was cut off by this big shadow at the entrance to the bower—the huge, horrible, frightening shadow of a man, blocking the way. It was Gabriel, the groundsman’s son. He was standing there in front of me, looking at me. Not a word did he say, not a muscle did he move. He just looked at me, and that was horrible because the way he looked was as if he was saying all the horrible, horrible things I knew he wanted to do to me. I was too scared even to scream, let alone move to get away from him. Everything was spinning in front of me.
And then there was a sound, just like a bee buzzing against my cheek. I felt a tiny puff of air, as if stirred by an insect’s wings, and there was an arrow between his feet. Right between his feet, an arrow, out of nowhere. Then it was as if he had seen the most awful thing he could imagine. I have never seen such a look of shock and horror ever before. I have never seen anyone run as fast as he ran away, shrieking and screaming and wailing.
I looked behind me and still I cannot quite believe, dear diary, what I saw. Standing there was a fair-haired man with a small harp. He had little rags tied all over him—in his hair, in his beard, to his clothes, to his arms, his legs, his toes, his fingers. Even his little harp had coloured rags tied to the tops of its strings. He was blind—I could see that at once. He had no eyes. He had never had eyes. Where eyes should have been, there was smooth skin growing over empty sockets.
Beside him was a red-haired woman dressed in a sort of harness made out of leather straps. She carried a huge bow as tall as she was, which was not very tall, smaller even than I am, and the wood of that bow was marvellously painted with spirals and twisted, twining animals. At her waist she wore a quiver of arrows.
I stared so long, diary—I just could not believe what I was seeing. Then, without a word, the blind man and the woman turned and walked away, back out of the bower, up into the woods, and I heard the song of the ragman’s harp drifting on the still evening air.
As I have written, it all seems now like a dream, or a nightmare. I just don’t know which is more disturbing—if it was real, or if it was a dream?