“And your good china, too,” she sighed. “I’ll clean up, Madame, and give that tile a bit of an extra rub, too. Maybe we’ll be able to wipe that ugly face out.”
But I knew she’d never be able to erase it from my mind.
Or the floor, either!
In fact, her efforts only made it more distinct to me, although she seemed to think she had obliterated some of it.
When she had finished and gone, I sat there trying to figure it out. There was an outline of a face on the tile. Johnson saw it, so it wasn’t entirely imagination. She wasn’t educated enough to know about Pan; if she had been, she too would have seen the resemblance. So I wasn’t completely off track. There was a face. It was inhuman, but there actuality stopped. The rest had to be imagination. The cracks of time could make a face but they couldn’t make it weep or speak. That had been my own mind, and, yet what it had said made sense in a way: “You have tasted the salt of my tears; that is why you see more clearly.”
There was a fairy tale I remembered from my youth and Andrew Lang’s colored fairy books. It was called “Elves’ Ointment” as I recollect, and it was the story of a midwife brought to attend the birth of an elf. Given ointment to put on the new baby’s eyes she had inadvertently gotten some on her own, and had seen everything differently thereafter—that is, until the elves caught on and took her new sight away from her, with quite tragic results, as I remembered.
But the analogy held. I looked at the face again. The full lips were parted. I could almost feel the hot quickened breath on my nearby ankle.
This was getting beyond sense. I was making myself see things that couldn’t be, hear a voice, feel emotions that should be kept under cover. It was incredible, yet it was so real! It was uncanny. It made me a little afraid.
I decided I would go up to the attic and see if there were any left over tiles and if there were, I’d have this one, with its cracks of time, removed as quickly as possible.
“Of course,” I told myself sternly, “It’s only because you’ve been emotionally stirred up these past days. What with Myra’s engagement and Jason, no wonder you’re full of imaginings.”
Then I heard the voice again, an ageless voice, thin and reedy, yet with a curious appeal. “Don’t fight me. Just listen to my music.”
The music was soft at first, fleeting into my brain with gently vibrating notes. From its first sound I didn’t think any more; I couldn’t. I could only listen to something indefinably lovely—music that soothed and made me know that nothing apart from it really mattered. It held the essence of life,
Suddenly it changed and became little tongues of flame licking around me, touching me here and there like caressing winds. Then there were waves of sound that vibrated through my entire being. And it seemed as though all the magic there had ever been was in them, weaving itself around me until I was a part of it, and I knew that nothing so lovely had ever happened to me before. I was suddenly a part of nature. Soon all its secrets would be known to me, and—
Jason’s voice: “Hi, Shelley, where are you?” came from the living room, driving the music away. I didn’t answer. I didn’t want Jason to find me. I wanted the music back again. I wanted to lose myself in it.
“Shelley.” Jason was calling. “Shelley,” His pet name for me, part nickname for Sheila and partly made up from my admiration for the poet.
I looked down at the face. There was a finger touching the lips, as though to enjoin silence. Another crack of time, but it looked like a finger and its meaning was plain: the music was to be our secret, there was no mistaking that. And I wasn’t imagining it. There was a finger on the thick lips.
For a minute I thought of them touching mine, and I knew that was what I wanted most in the world—that, and the music.
“Soon. It will be soon.” The thin, reedy voice was like the notes of a pipe, coming from far-off enchanted places. A pipe, Pan’s pipe.
Then Jason was in the room, exclaiming: “What the—! Why didn’t you answer me? Didn’t you hear me call?”
“No. I—I guess I was half asleep.”
He leaned over and kissed me. There was warmth in his kiss but it left me cold. The wonderful music had deadened my senses to everything but its own magnificence, and Pan’s, the god who had called it to being.
I looked down at the tile. The finger was no longer against the full lips. Instead, they were forming a word, “Wait.” It was as plain to see as though I had studied lip reading.
Jason’s eyes followed mine. “Hello! Look at that cracked tile. We’ll have to change that. You know, those cracks make a face, a horrible, repulsive face that gives me the shivers. I’ll go to the attic tomorrow and fish out another tile and get rid of that face on the bar room floor.”
Against my will I laughed. Against the hurt look in Pan’s eyes. But suddenly the expression changed to one of cunning, combined with determination.
Words came to my lips. Without any volition of my own I found myself saying, “There’s a piece of broken china still there. I broke a cup.”
Jason bent down, picked up the piece of the tea cup the maid had overlooked, which I hadn’t even know was there. He swore softly and shook a few drops of blood from his finger. Aghast, I watched the full lips catch them, suck them in.
“Jason,” I cried. “You’re hurt!”
He laughed. “Don’t look so horrified; it’s only a small cut.” Again he shook off a few drops of blood, which the mouth on the floor caught.
I shivered. There was something so horrible about the mouth and the blood that I forgot the music.
“Come on.” Jason caught me up. “I’ll let you put a band-aid on it and then we’re stepping out. The Crawleys are waiting for us at Agello’s.”
Agello’s was our local “21.” Going there was always an event. I was quite excited. There in the bright lights, with the gay music, I could forget the face and the silly things it provoked me into imagining.
I thought that, and was happy, looking forward to fun at Agello’s with Jason and the Crawleys, a couple we both liked tremendously. I was quite elated. Jason had his arm around me and it felt fine—warm and vibrant.
But as we left the porch I saw the face again. The lips had color, and they formed a word, “Soon.” And as we left, an echo of the thin, fluting pipes sounded in my ear.
At Agello’s, I managed to forget. I had to forget, otherwise I would begin to think I was going mad. The face on the floor was genuine enough; Jason and the maid had both seen it. They had sensed evil. The maid had said it was inhuman, Jason that it was repulsive. So the face was all actuality. The rest had to be an overworked imagination, and I didn’t like the implications of that. I made up my mind there on the crowded floor dancing with Jason that I’d help him find another tile and get rid of the one with the cracks of time: as quickly as possible. After that, I proceeded to enjoy the evening.
It was late when we left Agello’s. Once we were home, Jason didn’t give me time to think. It was like our honeymoon all over again, and I was glad of that.
* * * *
The next day was Sunday. Sunday was the day we usually had breakfast on the sun porch in our pajamas. In the light of day I wasn’t worried about the face, but it was comfortable in our room. “Let’s be sissies,” I said, “And have breakfast in bed.”
“Lazy.” Jason laughed. “But it’s too nice a day to be on the north side of the house. No, Shelley, we’re going to bask in, the sunlight. And just to pamper you, I’m going to carry you thither.” He leaned over the bed and gathered me into his arms.
“This is fun,” I grinned, “But in the interests of modesty you’d better let me have a negligee.”
He held me down so I could retrieve my blue crepe housecoat from the foot of the bed. I clutched it to me, and we were ready.
On our way, Jason pa
used a minute before the mirror set into my closet door. “See what a pretty picture you make,” he whispered in my ear. “You’re like a slim dryad of the woods, and I—” he squared his massive shoulders and I felt the muscles of his chest hard against me—“am Pan.”
There wasn’t any music—no thin fluting or wondrous tones; only a resentment and a feeling of instinctive recoil—as though anyone could be Pan but the face. I made myself look in the mirror. Just as we were we might have posed for a calendar picture of a dryad being abducted by a satyr—not Pan. Jason’s face was lascivious enough but there was no suggestion of the god in him: He was of the earth.
I, in my white satin nightie had a classic look, for the satin molded my form and was a startling contrast to my red-gold hair.
Jason, in blue foulard pajamas, looked like an advertisement straight out of “Esquire.” Direct physiological appeal. But I knew instinctively that within him there were no nuances, none of the subtle approach, that is so dear to a woman’s heart. His was not the knowledge that Pan possessed.
It was at that moment I heard the music—the faint, thin piping that shivered against my nerves and made them vibrate to its tune, music that grew louder even as I listened.
Jason started towards the door.
The music was calling to me. Calling to me to come, to give myself up to it completely.
Suddenly I was afraid. Jason was very deaf, human and near. I clung to him. “Don’t go downstairs,” I begged. “Let’s stay here.” I tried to put allure into my voice. Anything to keep him here where it was safe, where I could shut the door and drown out the music that attracted me, as something evil that is yet beautiful can always do.
Jason’s mind was one track. “Breakfast first, darling.” He walked on, and the music swelled in tone. It was making me forget everything but my desire for it—and Pan, for the two were inescapably one…
Still I tried to hold to reality. “Do you hear music?” I asked Jason, as he descended the stairway.
“Music? Lord, no! But I do hear a vibration like the jangling note of a wire that’s off-key. After breakfast we’ll look for it.”
“There may not be time.” The words said themselves.
“We’ve got all day, darling.” He was at the bottom of the steps, advancing to the living room. The music was becoming more and more pronounced. Like Wagner’s fire music, little tongues of flame licking about me, growing larger and stronger.
I knew they were waiting to envelope me. I made a last effort. “Jason, we mustn’t go to the sun room. There’s something there—something—” “Evil” was what I’d meant to say but the word was stillborn on my lips. The music had taken possession of me. I was encased in it as surely as Brunehilde ever was on her fire-ringed mountain. Little flames of music were licking about me.
Then we were in the sun room and Jason put me down.
My wrapping the negligee around me was mechanical, and wasted, for Pan’s eyes looked through the material, yes, through the skin, into my very soul. He was complete now, a full-grown figure, and eyen as I watched he rose from the blue-green tiles, wholly dimensional. His boring eyes held mine and the music was like a flowing river of fire, touching me, everywhere.
“So, you have answered my pipings?” It was as though he were singing.
“Yes,” I replied, “And now that I am here?”
“Shelley, what are you talking about?” Jason’s voice was impatient.
The music diminished. “Didn’t you hear?” I began.
“Wait.” Pan’s voice was thunder-clear.
Suddenly arrested, I stood still. But my gaze betrayed me.
“What is it?” Jason asked. Then, when I made no reply, he became insistent. “What is it? What do you hear?”
That caught me up short with surprise. It didn’t seem possible that he didn’t hear that glorious, engrossing, enveloping music. I found words. “But you must hear the music. It’s so wonderful. And you must see—”
I looked at Pan. He was regarding me strangely and shaking his head.
I stopped short. Jason followed my gaze. “It’s that darn tile. You’ve been acting peculiarly ever since you saw those cracks. I’m going to dig it out.”
“No,” I cried. “No, Jason, let it alone. There’s danger!” I don’t know how I knew there was danger for Jason, perhaps it was the expression in Pan’s eyes. But how or why I knew Jason went in peril? And at that moment the urgency was upon me to save him.
“Don’t be foolish, Shelley. How could there be danger in a tile—a cracked tile, at that?”
“But he’s larger than you.” I was struggling against Pan and the music now, trying to save Jason from something intangible, some danger I sensed but couldn’t rightly name. I was afraid, and yet, what did Jason —anything—matter, against the vibrant music that was swelling around me?
“Sheila!” Jason exclaimed. “I think you must have a hangover—seeing things. A hangover, or be mad. That tile has bewitched you. I’m getting rid of it now— this second
He went to an old sea chest where he kept tools and things. He opened it and took out a hunting knife.
I could see Pan’s triumphant smile.
“No, Jason, no!” I shrieked, and then the music was so loud, so beautiful, that I couldn’t think of anything else. I was completely lost to the music, hypnotized as any snake by a master piper, enveloped by melody which was part of Pan.
As in a dream I saw Jason advance toward the tile, knife in hand. I saw Pan moving towards him.
The music accelerated. For one desperate moment I came to my senses. “Jason, come away!” I screamed, and rushed to him.
Pan was before me. With one hand he thrust me back; with the other he turned Jason’s arm with the knife inward, so that the knife was toward Jason’s body, I saw the blue tile gleaming, crackless and pure, just like the others. Pan had left it. He had materialized. Just as I realized this, Pan pushed Jason. My husband fell, and as he did so, impaled himself on his own knife as surely as any ancient Roman running himself through with his sword.
There was a funny gurgling noise. Then Jason rolled over on his back. I knew the danger had struck. Jason was dead.
But Pan was alive!
Alive and wholly man, and the music too was a living, throbbing thing, marvelous beyond human knowing, enveloping me until I was part of it.
The wonder of the music was completely mine now. It swept me forward, into Pan’s arms.
* * * *
I don’t mind being in prison; or the fact that I am on trial for my life, charged with the murder of my husband. I don’t even care that they are saying I am mad, perhaps because I know that if I told them the truth they would be certain of it.
I don’t mind being confined in this horrible cell, or any of the rest of it. I don’t mind, because the cracks of time opened for me and now the wonderful music is always in my ears, and the remembrance of Pan’s kisses on my lips.
And the certainty that at the end I shall feel them again!
THE DEVIL AND TOM WALKER, by Washington Irving
Taken from Tales of a Traveller (1824).
A few miles from Boston, in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay, and terminating in a thickly wooded swamp or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove; on the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water’s edge into a high ridge, on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kidd the pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly, and at night, to the very foot of the hill; the elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be kept that no one was at hand; while the remarkable trees formed good landmarks by whi
ch the place might easily be found again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money, and took it under his guardianship; but this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kidd never returned to recover his wealth; being shortly after seized at Boston, sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate.
About the year 1727, just at the time that earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees, there lived near this place a meagre, miserly fellow, of the name of Tom Walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself; they were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat each other. Whatever the woman could lay hands on she hid away; a hen could not cackle but she was on the alert to secure the new-laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hoards, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savin-trees, emblems of sterility, grew near it; no smoke ever curled from its chimney; no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse, whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron, stalked about a field, where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged beds of pudding-stone, tantalized and balked his hunger; and sometimes he would lean his head over the fence, look piteously at the passer-by, and seem to petition deliverance from this land of famine.
The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom’s wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue, and strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband; and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words. No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The lonely wayfarer shrank within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper-clawing; eyed the den of discord askance; and hurried on his way, rejoicing, if a bachelor, in his celibacy.
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