The House of Eld

A chapter from the novel, "Rosewood Dreaming"

An introduction to the novel

Who can explain the chemistry that attracts person to place? The one-sided love affair between Harry Hope Vance and his run-down farm, "Rosewood", has far-reaching implications for the other members of his family. His son, Jack, daughter-in-law, Jeannie, and granddaughter, Anna, become players in the old man"s drama, their lives in thrall to his impossible dream of creating an Eden in the Queensland tropics.

But Harry Vance"s garden harbours earthly beings, not angels, and as the other characters chafe at its confines, Rosewood becomes the catalyst for revelations and self-knowledge. The attachments and antipathies it elicits are a dynamic force, building in intensity to the point where change is inevitable but unpredictable. Nobody is free to leave, however, until the story has been played out, and those who seek escape find they are haunted by the legacy of an old man"s passionate vision.

* * * * *
The House of Eld 

One day Anna was summoned to her grandfather’s room, his den overlooking the front garden, where he nodded permission for her to sit on a footstool and placed a book with faded binding in her hands. ‘I want you to have this,’ he told her gruffly. ‘It was given to me as a young man.’
Seeing the questioning look on her face, he added, by way of explanation: ‘Stevenson. Robert Louis. Fine writer, mark my words. I remember him visiting Sydney when I was a lad. The name didn't mean much to me then, it was the man himself impressed me. My parents were great ones for hosting social occasions, so there was some kind of soiree in his honour, and I can still recall the way the atmosphere changed when he entered the room. It was like a charge of electricity. Later, reading his books, I thought that here was a man with a nomad soul, whose god was freedom. Those were times to be alive, and names to conjure with! Stevenson, Gauguin, the South Pacific…' Old Vance sighed, returning to the present. Anna was dismissed as abruptly as she'd been summoned, with one last word of advice.   
'Read "The House of Eld". It’s one of his best, and food for thought, I believe you’ll find.’
Anna sat on the swing strung from a branch of a mango tree, poring over the story. It seemed to her such a sombre tale that she wondered why her grandfather wanted her to read it.
It told of a boy, Jack, who lived in a place where people all wore leg-irons as some kind of religious duty. When Jack saw that the travellers passing through moved freely and unfettered, he asked his uncle why he and his kind had to wear irons on their legs.
"‘My dear boy,’ said his uncle, the catechist, ‘do not complain about your fetter, for it is the only thing that makes life worth living. None are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that are not gyved like us. And I must tell you, besides, it is very dangerous talk. If you grumble of your iron, you will have no luck; if ever you take it off, you will be instantly smitten by a thunderbolt.’"
And when Jack persisted in doubting the wisdom of wearing leg-irons, his uncle reproached him further. "‘Ah!’ cried his uncle, ‘do not envy the heathen! Theirs is a sad lot! Ah, poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered! Poor souls, my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are vile, odious, insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly human – for what is a man without a fetter? – and you cannot be too particular not to touch or speak with them!’"
It happened one day that Jack met a boy in the woods who had removed his iron, and who told Jack that the threat of the thunderbolt was an old wives’ tale. Jack began to question the travellers who walked the roads so freely. "The wearing of gyves (they said) was no command of Jupiter’s. It was the contrivance of a white-faced thing, a sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the Wood of Eld. He was one like Glaucus that could change his shape, yet he could always be told; for when he was crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He had three lives; but the third smiting would make an end of him indeed; and with that his house of sorcery would vanish, the gyves fall, and the villagers take hands and dance like children."
Jack began to believe that it was his duty to free his people. "There was in that village a sword of heavenly forgery, beaten upon Vulcan’s anvil. It was never used but in the temple, and then the flat of it only; and it hung on a nail by the catechist’s chimney. Early one night, Jack rose, and took the sword, and was gone out of the house and village in the darkness." He set out, asking the way to the Wood of Eld and the house of sorcery. And having entered the house, where nothing was quite as it appeared, Jack was approached by a semblance of his uncle.
 "‘It was very well done,’ said his uncle, ‘to take the sword and come yourself into the House of Eld; a good thought and a brave deed. But now you are satisfied; and we may go home to dinner arm in arm.’
 ‘Oh dear, no!’ said Jack. ‘I am not satisfied yet.’
             ‘How!’ cried his uncle. ‘Are you not warmed by the fire? Does not this food sustain you?’
             ‘I see the food to be wholesome,’ said Jack; ‘and still it is no proof that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg.’
             Now at this the appearance of his uncle gobbled like a turkey. ‘Jupiter!’ cried Jack, ‘Is this the sorcerer?’
            His hand held back and his heart failed him for the love he bore his uncle; but he heaved up the sword and smote the appearance on the head; and it cried out aloud with the voice of his uncle; and fell to the ground; and a little bloodless white thing fled from the room.’
Jack was conscience-stricken, yet his resolve remained unshaken. ‘If the gyves are to fall,’ said he, ‘I must go through with this, and when I get home I shall find my uncle dancing.’"
Jack went in pursuit, but encountered the semblance of his father, who ordered him home by sunset, whereupon all would be forgiven.
"‘God knows,’ said Jack, ‘I fear your anger; but yet your anger does not prove that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg.’ And at that the appearance of his father gobbled like a turkey.
 ‘Ah, heaven,’ cried Jack, ‘the sorcerer again!’
             The blood ran backward in his body and his joints rebelled against him for the love he bore his father; but he heaved up his sword, and plunged it in the heart of the appearance; and the appearance cried out aloud with the voice of his father; and fell to the ground; and a little bloodless white thing fled from the room.
             The cry rang in Jack’s ears, and his soul was darkened; but now rage came to him. ‘I have done what I dared not think upon,’ said he. ‘I will go to an end with it, or perish. And when I get home, I pray God this may be a dream, and I may find my father dancing.’"
              Again in pursuit of the bloodless white thing that had fled as before, Jack met instead the semblance of his mother, weeping and reproaching him for what he had done, and beseeching him to return home by bed-time, before he did more harm to those dear to her, for he had struck down her brother and her husband, Jack’s own father.
             "‘Dear mother, it is not these that I have smitten,’ said Jack; ‘it was but the enchanter in their shape. And even if I had, it would not prove that a man should wear a gyve on his right leg.’"
           And at this the appearance gobbled like a turkey.
He never knew how he did that; but he swung the sword on the one side, and clove the appearance through the midst; and it cried out aloud with the voice of his mother; and fell to the ground; and with the fall of it, the house was gone from over Jack’s head, and he stood alone in the woods, and the gyve was loosened from his leg.
"‘Well,’ said he, ‘the enchanter is now dead, and the fetter gone.’ But the cries rang in his soul, and the day was like night to him. ‘This has been a sore business,’ said he. ‘Let me get forth out of the wood, and see the good that I have done to others.’" ...
As he left the wood behind and walked along the highway, Jack met folk returning from the field. They no longer wore fetters on their right legs, but now they all had fetters on the left.
 Jack asked them what it signified; and they said,"‘that was the new wear, for the old was found to be a superstition.’ Then he looked at them nearly; and there was a new ulcer on the left ankle, and the old one on the right was not yet healed ...
And when he was home, there lay his uncle smitten on the head, and his father pierced through the heart, and his mother cloven through the midst. And he sat in the lone house and wept beside the bodies."
            Anna kept returning to the lines with which the story closed:

                Old is the tree and the fruit good,
                Very old and thick the wood.
                Woodman, is your courage stout?
                Beware! the root is wrapped about
                Your mother’s heart, your father’s bones;
                And like the mandrake comes with groans.

           The warning and the meaning and the rhythmic words were like a spell, something her grandfather understood and wanted her to share. The verse had an uncanny power, eerie as an incantation.
                *     *     *
             Old Vance referred to the story only once. ‘Have you read "The House of Eld"?’ he asked Anna one Saturday morning at breakfast.
             ‘Yes,’ said Anna shyly, ‘but...’
             ‘But what?’
             ‘It is such a sad, strange story...’ 
             ‘Not if you think about it, Anna, not if you think about it...‘
              Thinking about it made Anna uneasy, intensifying her sense that somehow Rosewood and Old Vance held her entire family in thrall, an unbreakable, invisible thread binding them all in a common fate.