by Lord Dunsany
“There’s a lot of the bog we didn’t cover last time,” I said.
“Begob,” said Marlin, “you wouldn’t cover it in a week.”
So we set off, and, getting the wind right, we walked t’wards the same green hills that had been before us on the previous day.
I got more snipe this time, and all the while with every shot, whether I missed or hit, I was learning, though imperceptibly, how to shoot snipe.
But it was not so much to shoot snipe that I had come to-day as to meet again that mighty traveller the grey lag; and, as we sat having lunch on a tussock of heather, I on sandwiches as usual and Marlin on whiskey, I asked him of the prospects of seeing the geese that night.
“Begob, they might come,” he said.
“What does your mother think?” I asked.
“Ah, begob, she doesn’t know,” said Marlin.
“I thought she did,” I said.
“Sure, she does on days when she knows,” said Marlin. “But to-day she knows nothing.”
What kind of power was it, I wondered, but did not ask, that Mrs. Marlin had? And if she knew nothing that day, what was troubling her as I saw her standing beside the stream that morning? For something was. Looking backward I know no more than I knew then, but I think that some shadow cast from the future must have darkened on her and those fields.
As evening began to come down on the bog, scruples that I had felt about not returning to Eton faded with the bright sunlight, for an enchantment came with the gloaming over all those miles of heather, an enchantment that no picture of any bog can show you, nor any words of mine; and at the time I knew of no parallel to that dim calm, haunted with fading colours of earth and sky, but sometimes now I think that I find a parallel to it when I hear the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven; for somewhere near the beginning of the fourth movement there is a quiet glory and a calm not of this world, that always reminds me, though so far in time and in place, of evening blessing those miles of heather and moss and water. And the curlews began to drop in with their wandering voices, bringing news down gleaming reaches of the sky, of the happening of events that concern curlews, news of which I could interpret nothing; their clear cries thrilled through the evening, giving me again and again some message that I almost understood, till I began to think and I lost it. In huge grandeur the sun set, and an awe went over the waste and reached me from the horizon, and a chill seemed to grip the air, and I felt there were bodings of things of which I should never know anything. Did Mrs. Marlin know? If she knew nothing of that hush that comes sometimes at sunset, that unseen finger lifted to still the world, if she drew no hint from the meaning with which it seemed overflowing, and understood no word of the shriek of the curlews, she was then an ordinary woman; but, if she knew any of these things, she had a book open before her from which she might have learned at least as much as anything that I suspected. Watching those sunsets sometimes and hearing the curlews I have often wondered only at my ignorance, and no whit at her knowledge, so much did that light and those voices seem to be telling, if only some sense just beyond our five were not sleeping.
In that great stillness through the glow of the evening we walked to the Marlins’ cottage, whose walls seemed gathering in bright remnants of fading light, while the smoke from the chimney soared straight into quiet air. I saw her staring straight at the crimson layers over the sunset, in a sky pale blue or green, and we entered the cottage without her turning her head. When she came in later I felt she was going to prophesy, and in the end she said never a word, so that I drank my tea in silence, and soon set out with Marlin back to the bog, to the place at which we were going to wait for the geese.
“I think the doctor will give me a certificate,” I said as we went.
“Sure, of course he will,” said Marlin.
To Marlin the giving of such a certificate to a man who needed one was no different from giving him a tonic; but it is not for me to point out Marlin’s simplicity: my own conscience is not entirely clear about the business, even after all these years. At any rate I did not explain to him that such a point of view was wrong: I was more truant than prig.
The air, cool on my face after the heat of the great fire in the small room, blew out of the gathering darkness, full of those promises that such lands seem always to offer to those that leave walls and roofs at about this hour, for hills and skies and horizons. I went straight for the old place where I had shot the goose before, but Marlin said at once: “Not there, Master Char-les. They’ve been shot at from there.”
“Mightn’t others come?” I asked.
“They’d go to their own place,” said Marlin. “And the ones you fired at will have shifted.”
So we went further into the bog. And Marlin found a place for me, and there I waited, with no thought but for the coming of the geese, while Earth darkened and the sky became like the jewel of a magician in which some apprentice to magic gazes deeply, but comprehends nothing. And while I waited the hush of the evening seemed to deepen, until quite suddenly into that luminous stillness there stepped the rim of the moon, stepped flashing like the footstep of a princess of faery coming into our world from her own, shod in glittering silver. And, as it rose, it slowly became golden, a vast orb holding me breathless, no pallid wanderer of the wide sky now, but huge on the edge of Earth like an idol of gold on its altar. I gazed at that magical radiance, forgetting the geese. And just as the lower edge of the great disc left the horizon I turned to Marlin to say something of what I felt, but said no more than: “It is a fine moonrise, Marlin.”
But I had no need to say more: Marlin’s eyes were fixed on that silent glory, staring straight into the face of the moon. For some moments he did not speak, hushed as all things else seemed to be by this wonderful visitor. And then he shook his head and said: “It’s not for us, Master Char-les.”
“Why, Marlin?” I asked.
“Maybe for you for a little while,” he said thoughtfully. “Yes, maybe for you, Master Char-les. For a year or two, then no more. But we’re all ageing here. It’s only for youth, and for those that are young for ever. It’s to brighten the apple-blossoms in the Land of the Young, and to shine on the faces of kings and queens of the Irish, who have cast old age away, with the lumber of time, on the rocks and roads of the world. It’s to glow in their eyes and to gleam in their hair, Master Char-les.”
And young though I was, and full of the wonder of the moon, I felt that there was in the miles of gold on the water, and in the enormous gaze of the moon itself, something, as Marlin said, that was not for us.
“It comes up huge,” he continued, “on the hills of Tir-nan-Og, rising up in the West as it sets here, and larger than the shield of the oldest giant, and brighter than we have seen it and full of music. And they hear its music in the Land of the Young.”
And somehow I felt there was music in the moon, all those years ago when I was not yet seventeen. And I said to Marlin: “Does it make music?”
And Marlin stared towards it in the hushed evening; then shook his head again, and said: “Not for us.”
I got no geese that night. They came before the moon was much higher, and passed near, and I heard their voices; but, though the sky seemed brimming with light, things only a little way off were swallowed up in the darkness. I heard them come down on the bog, where night lay black and heavy; I heard their wings beating the air as they stopped their flight, and for a while the sound of their voices, then silence. I thought that I could stalk them in the dark, and told Marlin so in a whisper. He told me I could not do it, but I had to learn for myself. And a difficult time I had getting through the bog in the night, till the geese began to cackle, and very soon after that they were gone.
The moon helped us out of the bog, and in half an hour we were back at the cottage, where Marlin’s mother was standing outside, a dark shape against the glowing wall, gazing silently at the moon. When Marlin came up to her he turned and followed her gaze, and they both together stared at the moon in silen
ce, while I stood near them, not speaking. And at last Marlin spoke. “It’s glorious upon the apple-blossom,” he said, “in the orchards of Tir-nan-Og.”
“It’s for Ireland it shines,” said his mother. “No other lands have such light from it. Not even Tir-nan-Og. And when Ireland’s free we will build cities with golden spires that will flash back a light at which the moon will wonder.”
“Not all the gold of the cities,” said Marlin, “nor the gold that is still in the earth, can equal the glow of the blossoms of Tir-nan-Og when the orchards answer the moonlight. It’s for the Land of the Young that it’s shining.”
“It’s for Ireland,” shouted his mother.
I had never seen them quarrel before, and did not know what to say. And now Marlin was gazing far over the bog and no longer listening to her.
“It’s for Ireland,” she repeated. “Look at the golden water. Look at the hills under the moon. And listen to that!”
For a white owl went by hooting.
“Aye, he knows,” she said. “He knows.”
And the owl gave one more cry, far off, and went out of hearing.
And she turned sharply to Marlin: “Do you still say,” she asked, “that any land but ours has such light from the moon?”
But he was gazing, gazing away, and never heard her.
“Good night, Marlin,” I said.
But he did not speak.
“Good night, Mrs. Marlin,” I said then.
But she was still shouting at Marlin: “It’s for Ireland. Ireland, I say.”
And so I left them.
CHAPTER XVIII
I drove home in the huge quiet moonlight, wondering as we went at things that I wonder at still. I find it hard to tell what they are, for I am not a poet nor painter nor musician, but only an idle man jotting down memories, in which there is poetry, because they are memories of youth, but not through skill of mine; and the things that I would preserve upon this paper if I could are things that painters, musicians and poets handle, especially I think musicians, because words always seem to elude these things. But, briefly, I wondered if all that dome of sky, just washed, as it seemed to have been, with liquid gold, and the moon and its mountains, and the dark hills of Earth, and all the awe and the mystery that seemed floating between the two, were the real and vital things, as every emotion seemed to be telling me, or whether truth walked only in paths that the reason could follow. Well, I never worked it out and I cannot now. I’ll write down facts instead; there is never any difficulty with them. When we got to the lodge I saw two men standing outside with rifles slung over their shoulders; I saw what it was before they spoke: I had been given police protection. And it has always struck me that one of the readiest ways of estimating a country’s regard for law is to notice what arms the officers of the law are carrying: in England it is little batons, in France swords, in many countries revolvers, and in Russia the police used to have artillery.
“We’ve come to protect you, sir,” said one of them.
“So I see, sergeant,” I said. “But what if they come by the other lodge?”
“We’ve two more men there, sir,” he said.
“And what if they get over the wall?” I asked him.
“We have a man in the house,” he said. “And we patrol the desmesne every few hours.”
“Good night,” I said. And we drove on to the house.
This was evidently Major Wainwright’s doing, and I did not like the idea of police protection at all. I felt that it would be ineffective; but, what was much worse than that, it made me a marked man, quite possibly tempting people to have a shot at me who would not have thought of it otherwise.
The presence of the police was a topic that Ryan avoided and I was left with my own thoughts. And what I thought was that, trouble now having been thrust towards me, I might come to need the protection that my father had had, and that had saved his life; and that I must find the way of the secret door for myself, for my father would never put it in a letter to be read by perhaps the very men that had sent the four to High Gaut.
I heard again from the butler about the police. Two were to sleep in the lodge by which I had come, two more would somehow find room to lie down in a smaller lodge, by a gate that we seldom used, and one had a bed in the house. I dined as soon as possible, then went to the library, and for the rest of the evening I occupied myself with the frame of the mirror, examining each square inch with the methodical care by which I felt sure that any secret, or any formula even, of mathematics or science, must in the end be discovered. Previously I had looked at likely places, edges of ornaments that gave a ready hold to the fingers, nobs that the thumb might press, loose bits of aged carving, and even cracks in which a knife might perhaps be used as a key; I had sought for perhaps three-quarters of an hour, till the irksomeness of the work had defeated my curiosity. But now a stronger motive than curiosity urged me, and I went over every piece of the frame with the same care with which the man who gilded it must have gone so many years ago. I only omitted such parts of it as my father could not have reached swiftly and easily, for he had gone as quickly and quietly as a man walking through mist. It was as though he had walked through the wall. And those words were really the key to the secret, for it was by walking that it was done, not by drawing of bolts or the handling of hidden locks; but it was many hours before that phrase chanced to enter my mind, and a long time after that before it was any guidance to me. But at last I tried walking straight to the mirror, as I had heard my father walk into silence. I did it for no other purpose than to see what part of the mirror, walking thus, was brought most readily to my hand, for all that night I was looking for something to handle. And I kept at it, for I thought that I would indeed want that secret, and soon. And dawn came, as I could see through chinks in the shutters, and I was still at it. I drew the curtains and put out the lamps, and when the dawn grew stronger I saw a picture before me that seemed slightly different from the one I had studied all night. I thought I had tried everything; now different tiny features about the carving showed themselves, and I tried them all again. And then in the brighter light, as I walked again and again towards the mirror, to see what would come easily and naturally to my hand as I walked, I began to notice a few inches of the design of the carpet that was different from the rest. It was pointed like the point of one’s shoe, and I began to step on it. I think the secret was well enough hidden: I had been eight and a half hours at it, doing nothing else all the time, when the mirror dropped before me in absolute silence, but for the tiny splash of two drops of oil. It worked neatly, but very simply; all you had to do was to walk straight towards it as though you were going through, and you did go through. The left foot, two paces away from the secret door, had to rest exactly on the mark in the carpet, after that the length of one’s next two paces tended to be regulated by the distance remaining between the marked step and the mirror; and, if you made those two paces right, the third alighted on a piece of iron, shaped like the sole of a boot and painted white, about a foot below the level of the room on the far side of the mirror. Stepping on this white mark closed the door. I saw then how my father must have walked silently away in the very few seconds before the men came into the library.
I stepped through on to the white and obvious mark, the mirror lifted behind me, and I was in a dark passage of stone. I could feel large grey stones in the walls, that is to say I could feel they were limestone, but I had no matches. Wherever the passage led I now had a hiding-place, and no doubt an easy way out at the end, if I always kept matches on me; for there would be no object in having the exit secret; but without matches it was a slow walk in the dark, for I knew that there must somewhere be steps, the library being on the first floor and my father having got out-of-doors from it. I had to slide each foot along the stone floor, and at last I came to the steps, some spiral ones that took me to ground level and ended against a wall. But on the wall there was a handle easily found at about the same height as the handle on any
door and, when I had pulled hard enough at it, it slid to the right, and a narrow part of the wall swung a little outwards, leaving just enough aperture for me to go through. Outside the first thing I did was to close the stone door, then looking about me I found myself standing under an ivy-covered wall that I knew well enough, and noticed now that the main trunk of the ivy had been twisted long ago away from the crack at the top of the door, and that tendrils that would have crossed the door so as to hinder its opening had been neatly cut, as though by a pocket-knife, not all in a straight line. The leaves leaned across the crack, though the tendrils did not, and standing a yard away there was no sign of a door. Cracks that I could see when I looked close seemed once to have been smeared over with mortar, which must have flaked away when my father left, and I resolved to put a touch of mortar where needed before the ivy was clipped again by the gardener. It was bleak and early morning now, and there seemed no way whatever of opening the door of stone from the outside. I felt all the colder for having had a night without sleep, and was wondering how to get in, when I caught sight of a column of smoke above one of the chimneys. So I went round to the back. Even then I found it difficult to make sufficient noise to attract the attention of Mary in the kitchen without alarming the policeman, who was there for the purpose of anticipating such efforts as mine to get in, and to act against them quickly. And a great deal of noise I had to make before Mary came; but in the end I got in without waking the policeman. To Mary I said: “I’ve been taking a look round the house to see that there are none of those men about;” keeping altogether away from the means by which I got out of the house; and, however much Mary wondered, she could have come no nearer to that. I went to bed then and slept till late. And after breakfast I went to have a talk with the constable.