She kissed him on the eyes — an impersonal, passionless kiss, and the next minute they were in the room, crowded, with the ‘guns’ from a large shooting brake which had just arrived.
How Norman staggered in among the noisy throng and played his part as a fellow guest, he never understood. He managed it somehow, while in his heart sang the wild music of the Irish Fairy’s enticing whisper: ‘I kiss you and the world begins to fade.’ A queer feeling came to him that he was going lost to life as he knew it, that Diana with her sweet passionless kiss had sealed his fate, that the known world must fade and die because she knew the way to another, lovelier region where nothing could ever pass or die because it was literally everlasting — the state of evolution belonging to fairyland, the land of the deathless Gay People....
Sir Hiram welcomed him cordially, then introduced him to the others, upon which followed the usual description by the guns of the day’s sport. They drank their whiskies and sodas, in due course they went up to dress for dinner, but after dinner there was no carousing, for their host bundled them all off to an early bed. The next day they were going to shoot the best beat on the moor and clear eyes and steady hands were important. The two drives for which Greystones was celebrated were to be taken — Telegraph Hill and Silvermine — both well known wherever shooting men congregated so that anticipation and excitement were understandable. An early bed was a small price to pay and Norman, keen and eager as any of them, was glad enough to get to his room when the others trooped upstairs. To be included as a crack shot among all these famous guns was, naturally, a great event to him. He longed to justify himself.
Yet his heart was heavy and dissatisfied, a strange uneasiness gnawed at him despite all his efforts to think only of the morrow’s thrill. For Diana had not come down to dinner, nor had he set eyes on her the whole evening. His polite enquiry about her was met by his host’s cheery laugh: ‘Oh, she’s all right, Norman, thank ee; she keeps to herself a bit when a shoot’s on. Shooting, you see, ain’t her line exactly, but she may come out with us to-morrow.’ He brushed her tastes aside. ‘Try and persuade her, if you can. The air’ll do her good.’
Once in his room, his thoughts and emotions tried in vain to sort themselves out satisfactorily: there was a strange confusion in his mind, an uneasy sense of excitement that was half delight, half fearful anticipation, yet anticipation of he knew not exactly what. That sudden use of his familiar first name, the extraordinary kiss, establishing an unprepared intimacy, deep if passionless, had left him the entire evening in a state of hungry expectancy with nerves on edge. If only she had made an appearance at dinner, if only he could have had a further word with her! He wondered how he would ever get to sleep with this inner turmoil in his brain, and if he slept badly he would shoot badly.
It was this reflection about shooting badly that convinced him abruptly that his sudden ‘love’ was not of the ordinary accepted kind; had he been humanly ‘in love’, no consideration of that sort could have entered his head for a moment. His queer uneasiness, half mixed with delight as it was, increased. The tie was surely of another sort.
Turning out the electric light, he looked from his window across the moor, wondering if he might see the strange lights the chauffeur had told him about. He saw only the dim carpet of the rolling moorland fading into darkness where a moon hid behind fleecy, drifting clouds. A soft, sweet, fragrant air went past him; there was a murmur of falling water. It was intoxicating; he drew in a deep delicious breath. For a second he imagined a golden-haired Diana, with flying hair and flaming eyes, pursuing her lost mother midway between the silvery clouds and shadowy moor... then turned back into his room and flooded it with light... in which instant he saw something concrete lying on his pillow — a scrap of paper — no, an envelope. He tore it open.
‘Always wear this when you go out. I wear one too. They cannot come up with you unless you wish, if you wear it. Mother...’
The word ‘mother’, full of imaginative suggestion, was crossed out; the signature was ‘Diana’. With a faint musical tinkle, a little silver crucifix slipped from the pencilled note and fell to the floor.
As Norman stood beside the bed with the note in his hand, and before he stooped to recover the crucifix, there fell upon him with an amazing certainty the eerie conviction that all this had happened before. As a rule this odd sensation is too fleeting to be retained for analysis; yet he held it now for several seconds without effort. Startled, he saw quite clearly that it was not passing in ordinary time, but somewhere outside ordinary time as he knew it. It had happened ‘before’ because it was happening ‘always’. He had caught it in the act.
For a flashing instant he understood; the crucifix symbolised security among known conditions, and if he held to it he would be protected, mentally and spiritually, against a terrific draw into unknown conditions. It meant no more than that — a support to the mind.
That antagonistic ‘draw’ of terrific power, involved the nameless, secret yearnings of his fundamental nature. Diana, aware of this inner conflict, shared the terror and the joy. Her mother, whence she derived the opportunity, had yielded — and had disappeared from life as humans know it. Diana herself was now tempted and afraid. She asked his help. Both he and she together, in some condition outside ordinary time, had met this conflict many times already. He had experienced all this before — the incident of the crucifix, its appeal for help, the delight, the joy, the fear involved. And even as he realised all this, the strange, eerie sensation vanished and was gone, as though it never had been. It became unseizable, lost beyond recapture. It left him with a sensation of loss, of cold, of isolation, a realisation of homelessness, yet of intense attraction towards a world unrealised.
He stooped, picked up the small silver crucifix, re-read the pencilled note letter by letter, kissed the paper that her hand had touched, then sat down on the bed and smiled with a sudden gush of human relief and happiness. The eerie sensation had gone its way beyond recovery. That Diana had thought about him was all that mattered. This little superstition about wearing the crucifix was sweet and touching, and of course he would wear the thing against his heart. And see that she came out tomorrow with him too! His relief was sincere. Now he could sleep. And tomorrow he might not shoot too badly. But before he climbed into bed, he looked in his diary to find out when the equinox was due, and found to his astonishment that it was on the 23rd of September, and that tonight was the 21st! The discovery gave him something of a turn, but he soon fell asleep with the letter against his cheek and the little silver crucifix hung round his neck.
He woke next morning when he was called to find the sun streaming into his room, promising perfect shooting weather. In broad daylight the normal reactions followed as they usually do; the incidents of the day before now seemed slightly ridiculous — his talk with Diana, the crucifix, the chauffeur’s fairy-tales above all. He had stumbled upon a nest of hysterical delusions, born of a mysterious disappearance many years ago. It was natural he thought, as he shaved himself, that his host disliked all reference to the subject and its aftermath. For all that, as he went down to breakfast, he felt secretly comforted that he had hung the little silver crucifix round his neck. No one, at any rate, he reflected, could see it.
He had done full justice to the well stocked sideboard and was just finishing his coffee when Diana came into the empty room, and his mind, now charged with the prosaic prospects of the coming shoot, acknowledged a shock. Fact and imagination clashed. The girl was white and drawn. Before he could rise to greet her, she came straight across to the chair beside him.
‘Dick,’ she began at once, ‘have you got it on?’
He produced the crucifix after a moment’s fumbling.
‘Of course I have,’ he said. ‘You asked me to wear it.’ Remembering the hesitation in his bedroom, he felt rather foolish. He felt foolish anyhow, wearing a superstitious crucifix on a day’s shooting.
Her next words dispelled the feeling of incongruity.
‘What did you hear?’ Norman asked gently, taking her hand.
‘My pet name— “Dis”,’ she told him, ‘the name only mother used.’
‘What words did you hear?’ he asked, trembling in spite of himself.
‘Quite distinctly — in that distant muffled voice — I heard her call: “Come to me, Dis, oh, come to me quickly!”’
For a moment Norman made no answer. He felt her hand trembling in his. Then he turned and looked straight into her eyes.
‘Did you want to go?’ he asked.
There was a pause before she replied. ‘Dick,’ she said, ‘when I heard that voice, nothing else in the world seemed to matter — !’ at which moment her uncle’s figure, bursting in through the door, shouted that the cars were ready and waiting, and the conversation came to an abrupt end.
This abrupt interruption at the moment of deepest interest left Norman, as may be imagined, excusably and dreadfully disturbed. A word from his host on this particular shooting party was, of course, a command. He dared not keep these great ‘guns’ waiting. Diana, too, shot out as though a bullet had hit her. But her last words went on ringing in his ears, in his heart as well: ‘Nothing else in the world seemed to matter.’ He understood in his deepest being what she meant. There was a ‘call’ away from human things, a call into some unimaginable state of bliss no words described, and she had heard it, heard it in her mother’s voice — the strongest tie humanity knows. Her mother, having left the world, sent back a message.
Norman, trembling unaccountably, hurried to fetch his gun and join the car, and Diana, obeying the orders of her uncle, was shoved into the Ford with her retriever. She had just time to whisper to him ‘Keep off the Trod — don’t put a foot on it,’ and the two cars whisked off and separated them.
The ‘shoot’ took place, nevertheless, ordinarily, so far as Norman was concerned, for the hunter’s passion was too strong in him to be smothered. If his mind was mystical, his body was primitive. He was by nature a hunter before the Lord. The imaginative, mystical view of life, as with peasants and woodsmen, lay deep below, the first birds put an end to all reflection. He was soon too busy to bother about anything else but firing as fast as he could and changing his guns swiftly and smoothly. Breaking through this practical excitement, none the less, flashed swift, haunting thoughts and fancies — Diana’s face and voice and eyes, her mother’s supernatural call, his own secret yearnings, and, above all, her warning about the Trod. Both sides of his mixed nature operated furiously. Apparently, he shot well, but how he managed it, heaven only knew.
The drive in due course was over and the pick-up completed. Sir Hiram came over and asked if he would mind taking the outside butt at the next drive.
‘You see’, he explained courteously, ‘I always ask the youngest of the party to take the outside, as it’s a devil of a walk for the old ‘uns. Probably,’ he added, ‘you’ll get more shooting than anyone, as the birds slip away over yonder butt down a little gully. So you’ll find it worth the extra swot!’
Norman and his loader set off on their long tramp, while the rest of the guns made their way down to the road where the cars would carry them as far as the track allowed. After nearly a mile’s detour Norman was puzzled by his loader striking across the heather instead of following the obvious path. He himself, naturally, kept to the smooth track. He had not gone ten yards along the track before the loader’s startled voice shouted at him: ‘For the love of God, sir, come off! You’re walking on the Trod!’
‘It’s a good path,’ cried Norman. ‘What’s wrong with it?’ The man eyed him a moment. ‘It’s the Trod, sir,’ he said gravely, as though that were enough. ‘We don’t walk on it — not at this time o’ year especially.’ He crossed himself. ‘Come off it, sir, into the heather.’
The two men stood facing one another for a minute.
‘If you don’t believe me, sir, just watch them sheep,’ said the man in a voice full of excitement and emotion. ‘You’ll see they won’t put foot on it. Nor any other animal either.’
Norman watched a band of black-faced sheep move hesitatingly down the moorland slope. He was impatient to get on, half angry. For the moment he had forgotten all about Diana’s warning. Fuming and annoyed, he watched. To his amazement, the little band of black-faced sheep, on reaching the obvious path, jumped clear over it. They jumped the Trod. Not one of them would touch it. It was an astonishing sight. Each animal leapt across, as though the Trod might burn or injure them. They went their way across the rough heather and disappeared from sight.
Norman, remembering the warning uncomfortably, paused and lit a cigarette.
‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘It’s the easiest way.’
‘Maybe,’ replied the loader. ‘But the easiest way may not be the best — or safest.’
‘The safest?’
‘I’ve got children of me own,’ said the loader.
It was a significant statement. It made Norman reflect a moment.
‘Safest,’ he repeated, remembering all he had heard, yet longing eagerly to hear more. ‘You mean, children especially are in danger? Young folks — eh? — is that it?’ A moment later, he added, ‘I can quite believe it, you know, it’s a queer bit of country — to my way of thinking.’
The understanding sympathy won the man’s confidence, as it was meant to do.
‘And it’s equinox time, isn’t it?’ Norman ventured further.
The man responded quickly enough, finding a ‘gun’ who wouldn’t laugh at him. As with the chauffeur, he was evidently relieved to give some kind of utterance to fears and superstitions he was at heart ashamed of and yet believed in.
‘I don’t mind for myself, sir,’ he broke out, obviously glad to talk, ‘for I’m leaving these parts as soon as the grouse shooting’s over, but I’ve two little’uns up here just now, and I want to keep ‘em. Too many young’uns get lost on the moor for my liking. I’m sending ’em tomorrow down to my aunt at Crossways—’
‘Good for you,’ put in Norman. ‘It’s the equinox just now, isn’t it? And that’s the dangerous time, they say.’
The loader eyed him cautiously a moment, weighing perhaps his value as a recipient of private fears, beliefs, fancies and the rest, yet deciding finally that Norman was worthy of his confidences.
‘That’s what my father always said,’ he agreed.
‘Your father? It’s always wise to listen to what a father tells,’ the other suggested. ‘No doubt he’d seen something — worth seeing.’
A silence fell between them. Norman felt he had been, perhaps, too eager to draw the man out; yet the loader was reflecting merely. There was something he yearned to tell.
‘Worth seeing,’ the man repeated, ‘well — that’s as may be. But not of this world, and wonderful, it certainly was. It put ice into his bones, that’s all I can swear to. And he wasn’t the sort to be fooled easy, let me tell you. It was on his dying bed he told me — and a man doesn’t lie with death in his eyes.’
That Norman was standing idly on this important shoot was sufficient proof of his tremendous interest, and the man beyond question was aware of it.
‘In daylight,’ Norman asked quietly, assuming the truth of what he hoped to hear.
‘It was just at nightfall,’ the other said, ‘and he was coming from a sick friend at a farm beyond the Garage. The doctor had frightened him, I take it, so it was a bit late when he started for home across the moor and, without realising that it was equinox time, he found himself on the Trod before he knew it. And, to his terror, the whole place was lit up, and he saw a column of figures moving down it towards him. They was all bright and lovely, he described ‘em, gay and terrible, laughing and singing and crying, and jewels shining in their hair, and — wor
st of all — he swears he saw young children who had gone lost on the moor years before, and a girl he had loved these twenty years back, no older than when he saw her last, and as gay and happy and laughing as though the passing years was nothing—’
‘They called to him?’ asked Norman, strangely moved. ‘They asked him to join them?’
‘The girl did,’ replied the man. ‘The girl, he said, with no years to her back, drew him something terrible. “Come with us,” he swears she sang to him, “come with us and be happy and young forever,” and, if my father hadn’t clutched hold of his crucifix in time — my God — he would have gone—’
The loader stopped, embarrassed lest he had told too much. ‘If he’d gone, he’d have lost his soul,’ put in Norman, guided by a horrible intuition of his own.
‘That’s what they say, sir,’ agreed the man, obviously relieved. Simultaneously, they hurried on, Sir Hiram’s practical world breaking in upon this strange interlude. A big shoot was in progress. They must not be late at their appointed place.
‘And where does the Trod start?’ Norman asked presently, and the man described the little cave of the Black Waters whence the beck, dark with the peat, ran thence towards the sea across the bleak moors. The scenery provided an admirable setting for the ‘fairy-tale’ he had just listened to; yet his thoughts, as they ploughed forward through the heather, went back to the lovely, fascinating tale, to the superstitious dream of the ‘Gay People’ changing their hunting grounds along that unholy Trod when the equinox flamed with unearthly blazing, when the human young, unsatisfied with earthly pleasures, might be invited to join another ageless evolution that, if it knew no hope, shared at least an unstained, eternal, happy present. Diana’s temptation, her mother’s incredible disappearance, his own heart-searing yearnings in the balance to boot, took strange shape as practical possibilities.
Collected Works of Algernon Blackwood Page 576