The Curse of the Wise Woman

by Lord Dunsany

  And further down the street we saw Mrs. Marlin, leaning upon a stick that was, rather, a crooked pole, with wisps of her dark hair hanging about the sides of her face; her eyes watched us intensely, and more than the watchful dogs she seemed to be guarding Clonrue. Or perhaps Clonrue was but her outpost, and she watched for the sake of the bog, or for the sake of that land that lay under the frown of the bog, where her cottage stood and through which the river ran, where the gnarled willows leaned, a stretch of earth that always seemed to me strangely enchanted. What desecration she feared for this land I do not know, but she eyed us intently and showed no sign of enmity.

  “Shall we find in the sallies, Mrs. Marlin?” I shouted as I passed her.

  “He’s waiting for you,” she said.

  “Will he give us a good run?” I asked.

  “To Clonnabrann,” said she.

  I have often thought of those words, and looking back on them after all these years, and with the experience that years must bring, it seems to me now that, as every cottager thereabouts knew, a strong dog-fox lived in those sallies; a southwest wind was blowing and, running down wind as they do, Clonnabrann would be right ahead of him if he could get so far. To say, therefore, that he would get as far as Clonnabrann was no more than an estimate of his strength by one of those on whose chickens he nightly dined.

  There was a silence as the hounds went into the wood, a silence that hung heavily for what seemed a long time; then one hound whimpered; silence again, and then the whole pack gave tongue. We were all lined up on the bog side of the willows, to prevent the fox breaking on that side, for if he went over the bog none but the hounds could follow him. And there we waited for a sign from the Master that we could let our impatient horses out. A mild man, as I have seen him in a drawing-room, the Master; almost shy at a tea-table; but on a horse the owner of a fiery tongue that held his field in awe, as his whip-lash held his hounds. Only for a few seconds he held us back; I remember the waving line of horses’ heads; I remember a patch of gorse at the edge of the wood, whose buds had already burst into two small blossoms; then we were off. We used to have big fields out in those days, and for a hundred yards or so it was like a race; and then each rider began to settle down to deal with his own difficulties, to cross each fence in accordance with the capacity of his horse, and to take a line in accordance with his estimate of many things, constantly varying, or to follow different men for different reasons, of which these are three; because he is a masterly rider, because he is close to his own home, or because he is going in the opposite direction to what appears the right one. Before following the third kind one should know something of the man, but, if he is reasonably intelligent, he must have some strong motive for turning away from the rest. I remember the first few fences to this day; the first of all a narrow-bank five feet high, built of earth as thin and steep as earth will stand, and green with sods: it seemed impossible that it would not trip up a horse galloping at it, as it would have tripped up me if I had tried to clear it on foot. But I was forgetting the four hooves. Other horses cleared it, mine was hard to hold, and I let him go at it. He rose at it, touched the top, or near it, for a moment paused, and was on again. So my first obstacle was left behind me. The next was a narrow stream, with sides steep as those of a ditch, clear water that had cut its way through the soft black earth. As I rode at it a man that I did not know called out: “Not there, Master Charles.” And I followed him, trotting along the bank. “Boggy landing,” he said.

  Soon we came to a place at which the far bank sloped, and there he plunged in. It was deep water, and the bank on the far side seemed nearly liquid, but the horse struggled up, and I followed. We came next to a double, a great bank thrown up from two ditches, and twelve feet high, with small trees growing along the top of it. It looked an impossible obstacle, but others had been before me through the stream and were now crossing the double in several places, cantering slowly at it and jumping as high as the horse could reach and doing the rest with a scramble, then pausing a moment and disappearing from sight. So I checked my horse and jumped where another had jumped before me, and he easily found a foothold in the soft turf for his hind-legs, while his fore-legs reached the top. With a heave we were there. Looked down on, the far ditch seemed wider than the near, wider indeed than could be jumped from a standstill, but you can’t go back from the top of a double, so I left it all to my horse. He approached it as cats approach a garden from the top of the garden wall; he went down and down the steep bank till I thought he would slip to the bottom, and just as this seemed certain he sprang, and we easily reached the field on the far side. For a moment from the top I had seen the hounds, going over a field together, and somehow reminding me of the shadows of clouds drifting over the flashing grass on a windy day. The next fence we came to was an easy one, and the last we saw of its kind, for we were leaving the country of white loose stones from which they built it, a stone wall. We went fast at it and my horse hit it hard, but it made no difference, for the stones flew with a rattle, and we were in the same field with the hounds.

  From patches of bracken and gorse, and pale grey stones sometimes as large as sheep, we looked to a wide plain stretching for miles in the sunlight, with large green fields and having a tended air. It was as though that loose stone wall that I had crossed were a boundary between the last of the things of the wild, lying behind us, and Earth subdued by man, lying before. Bog and the rough lands were behind us now, and the turf good for going: the pace increased. Shall I breathe air again that is like that air that I breathed as I galloped down to the bright vale gathering sunlight? What vintage in what golden and jewelled cup will ever equal it? It came in gusts as we galloped, so that we breathed it like giants quaffing wine, and whenever one lifted one’s eyes from the fields and the fences, the rim of the plain far off shone gold as a god-like cup. Shall I ever breathe it again? And the priest in this foreign town tells me not to think of these things any longer; the time being come for thinking more of my soul. But he is not an Irishman, and has only ridden a mule.

  CHAPTER XIII

  The time came for holding back my horse a bit. Hitherto I had left the pace, and most things, to him, as knowing more about the business than I did; but as I saw that wide valley opening to the horizon, and not a wood in sight, and hounds pouring away down the valley, it came to me that we were in for a long hunt. The horse was pulling still, but I held him back now, and there was the place for doing it; for, riding down a long slope with that wonderful vista before one, there was such a clear view of hounds, or at any rate of the hunt, that by riding straight where they turned a little one easily made up the ground that one lost while resting one’s horse. And I did then too what I have done ever since; if there was a gap or an open gate I rode for it, rather than tire my horse by the display of jumping a fence. There were plenty of fences ahead of us, and, if I could get over all the fences I had to jump, I should have jumping enough. I think I had learned already, from noticing the effect on my horse’s festive spirits, that jumping one fence tires a horse more than galloping across two fields.

  It is strange that during this hunt I thought of the Marlins, but the green and tidy country to which we were coming was so unlike the wild willows about their cottage, and then the bog and those watery levels shining on its horizon, and beyond that the wonderful country whither wandered the dreams of Marlin, that the very contrast made me think of them. The thought came to me that they would look fantastic among these tidier fields, and then it occurred to me that I was leaving the country I knew and riding among landmarks that I had never seen before. And still the fox ran straight with the south-west wind behind him. Sometimes we had news of him. A countryman shouted: “A fine big dog fox.”

  “How long is he gone?” called out the Master, galloping by.

  “A fine great dog fox, glory be to God,” replied the countryman.

  “How long is he gone?” shouted the Master again.

  But an excited man cannot easily he
ar what is shouted among galloping horses.

  “Big as a lion,” shouted the countryman.

  And the hunt swept on.

  And then we came to wilder country again, where brown lands, marshy and rushy, intruded amongst the green. For a while we saw no houses or roads, or even hedges, and our only obstacles were wide bog-drains. A small neat cottage appeared, thatched and white-walled, with a tiny garden beside it. We went by within a few yards of it, and a man and a woman came out and an astonished dog. Perhaps they would have seen three or four men or women pass that way in a week, and suddenly there were two hundred galloping by. For a while that lonely spot was populous, then it would be silent again. What did they make of us? Only the thoughts of their dog could one be sure of. And his sole thought was defence, his duty to that white cottage.

  Then the green fields again, of the grazing country; hedges and trees once more. I had no idea where I was. We saw a river shining, large enough to have a name that one must have known. But what it was I knew not. I was now a long way from home. My horse was going well, but dropping back towards the tail of the hunt, for I would not push him. Sweat was white on the horses wherever straps touched them. And then came our first check. It was very welcome to me. I came up to the field in which hounds were nosing thoughtfully, and dismounted at once. Almost immediately we were on again, but my horse was probably fresher for those moments of quiet breathing, and I had all that distance in hand from the head to the tail of the hunt, towards which I could drop back slowly, as my horse tired. For I realised now, if I had not done so before, that only by taking the utmost care of my horse should I see the end of this hunt that had come so far already and that gave rise to wonderful hopes that it might be one of those events that, though seldom told of in books, are topics of conversation in counties for years, and rare gold in old memories.

  There were no longer clusters in gateways, with steam welling up from the horses into one column; we went through singly now. One met with riders turning away from the hunt on horses that could do no more, horses with no more foam on their necks, but looking as if they had just been bathed all over in mud and water, which several of them had. One had to be careful whom one followed now, for fear he was turning home. These must have been riders heavier than I was, which is likely enough at my age; it can hardly have been that they had not recognised as soon as I had, with all my inexperience, that this was going to be a long hunt, unless the words that I had with the witch could really have taught me anything. The short evening was beginning to wear away. There was no more rest for my horse in the gaps in high hedges, where one had earlier to take one’s turn among twenty or thirty: one crossed alone now, or followed one other. But one was closer to hounds without these delays, and able to go easier. And still my horse pounded on, treading good turf in which the hoof-marks of those in front of me were cut clear and dry. The late light hovering at the close of day seemed to over-arch a calm through which we galloped, as dreams might glide through the still of a summer’s night; and I remembered a heathen religion of Northern lands that told of endlessly riding through everlasting twilight. From this thought I turned away, but it came back more than once.

  What the time was I did not know, but it must have been after four, and that meant we must have been galloping over two hours. The meet had been at eleven, but we had not moved off till after the half-hour; then we had spent some time going up to the gorse-covert and drawing it blank, and it was nearly a quarter to one by the time we returned to the village. From Gurraghoo to the covert beyond Clonrue had taken us over an hour, and the fox had left about two o’clock. The fences at first had seemed things to watch and pick carefully, when horses were fit and fresh; yet now, when the time must be coming near when one’s horse would fall at one of them and lie still, breathing heavily, now they seemed no more than those strange old furrows lying wide and green, the relic of ancient ploughing, that one sometimes meets in a field. And as every fence was past that same joy rose like a flame, the same exultation at an obstacle passed and the chance of being up at the end of the hunt brought nearer. Still the hounds ran with the south-west wind behind them. A little more and the fading light would add so much to our difficulties that any fence would beat us. And suddenly above the bare green fields, and clear of hedges and trees, I saw a small town shining on a hill, in light that was flung up there from the last of the sunset. A row of houses below, then two streets running up the sides of the hill; all the town white; and, set among those two streets and the houses below, like an emerald the hill’s summit. I did not know that, except in old pictures of Italy, towns were built like this upon hills. Certainly I never thought of seeing one, but believed that they belonged to poetry or romance, or to times long past or countries far away. Hounds were going straight for the hill; if I went round it, in the fading light I should lose them, but a hill at the end of that eighteen or twenty miles was more than my horse could do. Heaven and earth seemed against us, light fading and the land sloping. It was time to pull out and turn home; and I should not see the end of that wonderful hunt. And suddenly in my dejection a strange thought struck me, so that I reined back to a slow canter and soon lost sight of hounds, but I watched instead the white walls of the houses that were gleaming along the hill. I took two more fences, open ditches, and just got across. And suddenly as I gazed at the little town I saw the fox himself going up the slope to the houses. Then the hounds. He seemed making straight for the streets: what shelter he looked for there I could not imagine. And then the hounds got him.

  The Master and two whips were there when I came up, and eight or nine others. The dead fox had already been taken from the hounds by the Master, and his head and brush removed, but I was in time to see the rest of him thrown back to them, and to hear their voices change to that deep roar to the tune of which a fox is torn in pieces and eaten. Then one by one a hound with a bit of a leg or a rib walked away from the rest to eat his morsel alone; and the whips with their ruddy faces looked on with a deep contentment, faces that nearly matched the skirts of their coats, which the sweat of horses and the water of ditches were gradually turning to the colour of fuchsias. Now window after window up on the hill shone a deep gold. It was the hour of the steaming kettle, of warmth and the gathering of families; but doors opened and children came running out down the hill, and soon they were gazing at all these strangers, by now twenty or thirty of us, who had come from they knew not where, tired and triumphant, and had brought a new way of life to their very doors.

  I have had like other men my ups and downs; Fate has given me much and taken much away; but that day Fate gave me the brush. From the hand of the Master I had it, the brush of the finest fox that was known in all that country for many a year. I have it still, what is left of it, in the very room in which I write, and many an argument I have with Monsieur Alphonse, who says that to keep this tail of a fox, now in such poor repair, shows that I am no serious politician. Nor am I, but I argue with him for the sake of my memories, and because I have never known him really serious himself, and because I would burn every political paper of both of us if in the smoke of that burning I could see by any necromancy some vision of the hunt that we rode that day across twenty miles of some of the finest pasture of the old Ireland I knew. There it hangs on the wall, and I turn from it once again to the scene that still shines in my memory; the whips collecting the hounds together again, men climbing up again on to tired horses, the children gazing silently, the town above us now glowing with lights, and I turning round and asking its name as we rode slow down the hill. “Clonnabrann,” sang the children.

  CHAPTER XIV

  All the colour went out of the earth and into the sky. Fields grew dull, trees very black, and grey mists slipped abroad like ghosts going out to a gathering. We spoke little, riding home; there was little that words could do. Someone spoke of another great hunt that there had been, but it was long ago and in another country. Then talk died down again. The sky in the west was green, with bright layers
of scarlet and gold. I was staring into it for nearly a mile as we rode, and when I dropped my gaze to the hedges I realised that down there night was already among us. A horse struck a spark with his hoof, and the illumination from that single spark showed that day was indeed gone. Then red coats went black. White patches on hounds bobbing down the road were visible, but all other objects only added a darkness to night. And then a spark again flashed out from a horse-shoe, a golden glow among dark shapes, shining but for a moment, yet lighting vistas in my memory still. And here’s a theme for the follower of almost any art, a spark in the night. Its huge appearance, its beauty, the mystery of shapes gathered round it, and of the darkness beyond; its brevity; and, all things being material for art, its eternity, lingering in memories and having its obscure effects through them upon later years, and handing these effects down the generations, at which point perhaps the philosopher takes it over. The scientist too has a little to say about it, trying to destroy the mystery upon which the artist works, but no more able to do so than the artist is able to say the last word about it. We must just leave it glowing. But tired and happy men followed no such speculations. They saw the glow, it added its beauty to the deep content of their mood, and they rode on thinking, if not too tired to think, of poached eggs at their journey’s end.

  I was a neighbour of all these people, as well as the son of a member of the Hunt committee, yet hitherto I had been among them something such as is called up in my mind by the words one reads now and then in the foreign news, a minister without portfolio; who is probably in reality a hearty and well-contented person, though always pictured by me as a man lacking something. But to-day with that brush in my pocket, and for so long as it lasted; longer than that, as long as that day’s memory lasted; I had my portfolio. Henceforth I was one of them; and that year, young as I was, I was made a member of the Hunt.