by Lord Dunsany
My Lord [he began]. I have been able to collect certain facts touching the matter upon which I wrote last week.
And then through the air that an owl only rarely disturbed, right through the scents of the flowers, and across the paths of the hawk-moths, went once again the tune that he so much dreaded. As it ripped through the fading twilight it stirred again longings that the vicar had hoped he would feel no more, as though almost, had it not been so absurd, he would have gone away over the hill to dance fantastic dances to a tune that was unlike anything in all music, and unlike any other lure that he knew. The tune ceased all of a sudden, leaving only a few echoes dancing softly along far hills; then silence came where that strange music had been. For a while the vicar’s thoughts ran on like the echoes, from cliff to cliff in far places, then he turned back to his letter. How make the Bishop understand?
He took another sheet and wrote thus.
MY LORD,
I am now fully recuperated from any fatigue I may have incurred from my work in this parish. The air of Brighton was most restorative, and both my wife and I have benefited from it greatly. I shall not trouble your lordship further unless anything should ever arise in this little parish of Wolding that should be of sufficient importance to warrant such a step.
I am, my lord,
Your lordship’s obedient servant,
ELDERICK ANWREL.
With a sigh he put it into an envelope, addressed it and stamped it, and laid it on the left of his table, where his letters were always put when ready to post. When he turned from it back to his blotting-paper to write to a seedsman about some small need of his garden it was one of those final moments of which History knows nothing, when an episode in a humble life is over.
But Marion broke in before he could take his pen. “Will you want me any more, sir, this evening?” she said. “Because...”
He listened to her no further.
“Marion,” he said, “have you not a young man in Yorkshire?”
“Yes, sir,” said Marion. “But, oh, you could never understand.”
Then she was gone.
Marion too. He must fight this out alone. And for that he must know exactly what was against him. His immediate enemy was the awful lure of that music. And the music came from the pipes of Tommy Duffin. Of its ultimate origin he had no longer a doubt. But one thing still remained for him to discover: by what means had the tune been inspired by him that had passed as the Reverend Arthur Davidson?
CHAPTER XII
THE WARNING
THAT night when all in Valley Farm were asleep Tommy Duffin crept home through a window, the latch of which he had partly unfastened earlier so that the blade of a knife could open it. It was after midnight and he was fast asleep in his small room over the honeysuckle, when he heard coming clear through dreams the sounds of repeated tapping: Louder the tapping grew and fainter the dreams; until the tapping, which had been no more than one of many realities, all more gorgeous than it, became now the only reality. It was the sound of small gravel upon his window-pane. When it went on and on he opened the window, and there was Lily signing to him to come down.
“Tommy,” she said in a low voice when he came, “I heard two young fellows talking when I went home by the lane. I came to warn you about it.”
“Talking?” he said heavily for he was barely yet awake and he never had the sharp wits that move swiftly.
“They were talking about you, Tommy. One of them was Willie Latten.”
The tone of her voice did more to waken his wits than the words.
“They were planning to stop you going to the hill any more. They don’t like you playing to us.”
They moved further away from the house, lest anyone should wake up and hear their voices; and came to the meadow where the cattle were lying, dark shapes by the stream, their breath going up pale grey to damp air that lay over the water.
“What are they going to do?” he asked.
But she would not say that they intended to beat him. It seemed too dreadful to her, and she would not say it. For those pipes had taken the place in her heart of all other things, and were sacred.
Instead she said: “Oh Tommy, you must never stop the pipes, never stop playing, never, never. We must go further away where they will not hear you. But they must not stop the pipes.”
Yet where was there to go? Others would hear those pipes wherever he went. Tommy was thinking now: his wits were at last awake.
“Are there only two?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “All the young fellows are coming. We must go further away.”
He did not answer: he was thinking deeply. He had not yet seen the other young men of Wolding while playing his pipes on the hill: none of them seemed as yet to be sure it was he. All the parish had felt the curiously magical lure that there was in the strange music; and the girls had obeyed it without any question and had gone at once to the hill. But the men had thought over it and talked of it, and had not yet gone; and it was lonely for them in the village at evening with all the girls away on the hill in the dark. One or two had crept up the hill to watch, but Tommy Duffin had gone away over the slope and thought that they had not seen him. And now they were all coming. And little wonder. Well, it had to be sooner or later.
“I’m not going further off,” he said.
“Tommy, Tommy, you don’t understand,” she said frantically. “They’ll smash the pipes, Tommy.”
But he was like a man of genius, if even a little more simple; like a man with some strange power; and simple though such men be, they would have to be simple indeed if they knew nothing at all of that power, however strange. He knew little enough, and perhaps after all that’s all that there is to be known of any of these strange things. Only he knew enough to trust in the power.
“They can’t smash the pipes, Lily,” he said, and knew not why he had said it. Yet no boast seemed too great for that wonderful music that could answer the riddles of night, and hush the mysteries that lurked upon darkening hills, and seemed to beckon the spirit of man to stray from the paths it knew. She drew a little warmth from his confidence, but she was still all shaken with fear. It seemed to her dreadful that anyone should dare to attack those pipes, or the player upon them, in whom was centred to her all that incomprehensible wonder that rang in the tune; their project to her seemed outrageous and sacrilegious. And if it succeeded! How could she go back then to the drab ways she had known? For all ways of life that she knew, and all that she guessed, seemed equally desolate to her, if Tommy’s inspiration should die and the pipes become silent.
“I think they mean to try tomorrow,” she said, looking anxiously in his face in the luminous summer night.
There are moments, as when an orator rises to speak, or the big-game hunter looks along the sights of his rifle and two yellow eyes stare back, when all previous fears or anxieties are over and the master’s skill has free and exultant play. As hunter or orator might look on the spur of one of those moments, so Tommy’s puddingy face seemed to look just then. It was the humble recognition of an unaccountable power, and he was trusting to it, as we do well to trust those glittering things when any such powers come near us. And that trust and the imminence of that power transformed his face, till the rather vacant smile was drawn to a narrower feature and the unintelligent eyes were awed to a sombre gaze. It was like this that Lily mostly knew him; it was thus that he looked as he blew those bursts of unearthly music, and thus she had seen him gaze from Wold Hill into the darkness as though at things inscrutable to her, as though there were some dim secret that he shared alone with Fate.
Strangely unlike was this lad that she knew on the hill to the Tommy Duffin that they knew in the village; and more than ever now was this strange unlikeness manifest, so that the eager pensive face that was close to hers was scarce to be recognised even in a better light for the uninspired red face that his father and mother knew.
And gradually Tommy’s blind faith in his strange power spread i
ts influence over Lily, till both were trusting in a force of which neither knew anything, which had come to one of them from they knew not where.
CHAPTER XIII
THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGE
WHATEVER vacillations Anwrel had shown” he resolutely held to his main purpose. The attitude that the Bishop had taken had been to the vicar like some sheer cliff, met suddenly by a hunter on his way through tropical forests: he tries to climb it and cannot; he goes to the left and comes back and tries to the right: but however often he hesitate before that sudden ending to every path he does not for an instant abandon his quest, but holds on till he finds some cleft of river or earthquake opening for him a way, and so comes through to achieve whatever it is that a fancy afire in his blood has been urging him onward to do. And as the feet of the hunter pass down new tracks, so Anwrel’s thoughts followed on from fact to fact: they scarcely ever ceased but were travelling always towards the clear light of reason that Anwrel felt sure must lie beyond all this mystery. It was clear that the Duffins were untroubled by anything dreadful overhanging them or menacing their posterity, and yet amongst their memories might well be found, unregarded in all the lumber of the past, the very thing for which the vicar sought. So in the morning after the day of his sudden return from Snichester he left his house, for the third time seeking the Duffins. And, having no excuse for calling on them again so soon after his last visit, he went by a footpath that led by the side of Duffin’s best hayfield, believing that if he walked slowly he was sure to see the farmer, either as he went or returned, going to look at the ripening of his hay; for it drew near to the season of haymaking. And sure enough he soon found him, gazing over his hay, his face full of anxiety.
“You’ve a fine crop there,” called the vicar.
“Aye, sir,” said Duffin, coming towards the footpath. “A thunderstorm any time this week will lay it flat.”
“But we’re having glorious weather,” said the vicar. “Glorious.”
“It’s the hot weather that brings the thunderstorms, sir,” Duffin replied.
Duffin was no croaker, but the hay was exceptionally good, further on by some days than he had ever known it, and the approaching wealth seemed to come with clouds of anxieties. These anxieties Anwrel could have brushed away, as he had done with so many during his years in Wolding, but his cheery spirit was weighted too much with his own, and with one of those jerks unusual in conversation he went straight to the matter in hand.
“About your boy, Duffin,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Duffin, “he’s been giving a lot of trouble of late.”
“If it isn’t entirely his fault,” the vicar answered. “If there should be any influence affecting him of which we know nothing. Why, then we shouldn’t be too hard on him, should we?”
“Oh, it isn’t nothing of that, sir,” said Duffin.
“But the past, you know,” said the vicar. “All sorts of things come out of the past. More than we think. And they’re very strong, some of them. If there was anything influencing a man from a long way back, it might have a terrible hold on him. One never knows.”
“Oh, there’s nothing of that sort affecting Tommy,” was all Duffin said.
“Now can you remember,” the vicar asked, “if the Reverend Arthur Davidson ever came to this house?”
“Him, sir,” said Duffin. “No, never.”
“Ah,” said the vicar. “Then did you see much of him at any time, anywhere else?”
“Only in church, sir,” said the mystified Duffin.
“Only in church,” urged the vicar. “You’re quite sure?”
“Sure as I can be, sir. But what has him to do with Tommy?”
“You’re quite sure — you know the kind of man they say he was — you’re quite sure he never at any time laid any curse on you or on this house. Nothing of that sort ever happened so far as you know?”
“A curse, sir?” said Duffin. “A curse? What should he do that for?”
“Well, you know the sort of things they say of him,” answered the vicar. “You knew him. You’d know better than me.”
“What sort of things?” asked Duffin.
“That he mightn’t stop short of doing a thing like that,” the vicar replied.
“Well, yes, sir,” Duffin admitted. “I have heard that sort of talk. But he’d never have done such a thing as that. Would he, sir?”
“He doesn’t seem to have been quite what he appeared,” was all the vicar said.
“Well, he never had a chance of doing it as far as I know, sir,” said Duffin. “But that couldn’t have affected Tommy, could it, sir?”
“You never know with a curse,” said the vicar.
“Ah, that’s where it is,” said Duffin. “We don’t even know if there are such things.”
“Then I may take it you are quite sure he never had any opportunity of putting any sort of curse upon either of you.”
“Not unless he did it to a score or so of other people at the same time,” said Duffin, “for we never saw him except in church. I heard him read our banns a few times. And very soon he left.”
“And then, of course, he married you,” said the vicar.
“Oh, yes, he married us, sir,” said Duffin, and added, “I shall never forget that service.”
“Yes, it’s a beautiful service,” said the vicar. “It wasn’t the service I meant, sir,” Duffin replied. “It was when he spoke to us at the end in the original language.”
“The original language?” said the vicar. “That’s what they said it must be, sir. He suddenly lifted his voice at the end of the service and said those beautiful words. You should have heard them, sir.”
“But what words?” asked Anwrel.
“Ah, that I don’t know, sir: they was all foreign. But you should have heard them, sir; you should indeed. There came a ring in his voice and he spoke to the missus and me, and he said those words same as if they were his own language, as though he loved them. They got you by the heart; they did indeed.”
“But what did they sound like?”
“Ah, you should ask the missus that,” said Duffin. “She used to remember them. She used to sing them. You couldn’t say them quite: they was all music. But she sang them many a time the first year we was married. She’d sit and sing them at evening, all in the original language, not knowing a word of what any one of them meant. I used to think the world of her singing in those days. I thought the whole world of it. But I knew even then that she couldn’t touch the Reverend Davidson. Oh, the voice he had.”
“The curse!” exclaimed Anwrel.
“It wasn’t no curse, sir,” said Duffin.
“I fear it,” said the vicar.
So silent the vicar stood, amongst grave thoughts, that the farmer said never a word; and so the two men stayed for many long moments.
“Duffin,” said the vicar at last, “we are law-abiding men. We must stick to the law whatever it is.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” said Duffin.
“And if there is anything in all this,” said the vicar, “in any way touching on witchcraft, you know there are laws against that still on the statute-book. Magistrates are still sworn to punish it when they first take their oath. New or old, it’s the law, and we must abide by it, Duffin. If there’s anything of that sort wrong with Tommy, it’s the duty of all of us to put a stop to it.”
And at last a clear way showed to the farmer out of all these strange perplexities into which the vicar was leading him.
“Whatever it is, sir,” he said, “that young Tommy is up to there’ll be an end to it all this evening.”
“An end to it?” said the vicar, with a feeling, about his heart, of a burden shifting, such a feeling as Alpine slopes may have in Spring before the avalanche leaves them.
“An end to it, sir,” said Duffin.
CHAPTER XIV
THE GATHERING ABOUT THE FIRE
AND, even as Duffin and the vicar talked, the plan that Duffin knew of was holding a litt
le circle of young men like a spell. On the slope of the hill, not far from Valley Farm, they were gathered about a fire under a hedge, some seated, some standing, all carrying sticks, ten or a dozen lads about Tommy’s age that had gone up there to be alone with their plan. The object of the fire, they said, was to cook their food in case they should be out there a long time; but the serious business of that fire was to give a touch of mystery to their project, and to link them with all adventurers that had ever set out from comfortable homes and had gone to the hills to hunt man. For these lads that the fire united, and welded into a band, were hunting Tommy Duffin. Each one had reason enough to join that band that was gathered now about the fire of sticks, planning to stop the pipes, for each had brooded about Tommy Duffin often in lonely evenings; at first denying that he had any strange power, then jealous that such a power should ever have come to him, perhaps feeling that, when it had come so near themselves, it passed only by blind injustice to Tommy Duffin; and the loneliness of the long evenings had made the broodings bitterer. Each one had grievance enough. And yet when they spoke by the fire it was not of this. For the little group by the fire took no heed of personal grievance: the old ways were in danger; something strange had come and was threatening the old ways, and they were gathered there to defend the things they knew, the old familiar ways that were threatened now by this tune that troubled the evenings. They thought of the days when this had never been, when none went to the hill at dusk, and no strange longings arose to draw them westwards, and there was nothing to puzzle them; and as they thought of these days they seemed the best, and they swore they should be again. And so they planned to come on Tommy Duffin at once, and to catch him that evening and to take away his pipes, and so make an end of the longings that haunted the hill. Already they had watched him at evening and knew his habits, knew by what path he would steal away to the hill, and when to expect his coming, as the hunter in wild lands knows the hour of his quarry. And now each lad by the fire had his place appointed to him by their leader, Willie Latten. A hedge went up from the village right up Wold Hill: to the left of it men ploughed and sowed the slope, but to the right it was all wild hill, too steep to plough, and it was here that young Duffin used to come with his pipes, playing among the wild-rose trees. Five of them were to go along this hedge as soon as they heard the pipes; and, keeping on the side of the tended fields, were to get as near as they could to Tommy Duffin without letting him see them. Three more of them were to come straight up the hill, more to the right, below where Tommy Duffin would be; using what cover there was, and getting as near as they could without being seen by the piper or by the girls that usually sat there a little below him. And away on the right three more were to come by the clematis lane, past the little house in which Lily was parlourmaid; then spreading out over the hill. As soon as Tommy Duffin saw any one of them all the rest were to close in. They knew which way he would go. They had seen him take alarm in the dusk before. He would go up the hill through the woods, and away towards the other side where the old stones were; and they would have half a dozen lads in the wood behind him, and more if they could find them by evening. There would be no escape for Tommy Duffin. These were the plans of the band of lads by the fire, the orders of Willie Latten; and they were received by the rest as by an army, and a band of conspirators, and knights pledged to a quest, for somehow romance rose up in the smoke of the wood-fire and blessed them. But, however much anything fanciful had come to them out of the past, their plans were sufficiently practical: romance was the inspiration of their project, but practical common sense went to the carrying out of it, a very potent alliance. None who knows the hill on which Tommy Duffin used to play his pipes of reed will doubt that by this plan he would be as completely surrounded as might be.