by Lord Dunsany
They scattered then, leaving one to quench the fire; and all went back by different ways to the village, every one of them hushed and delighted by the burden of their great secret. And little they spoke all day at their work on the farms, for their thoughts were away with their plan on the slope of Wold Hill at sunset.
And the day passed, as even years will pass, and the long shadows came stalking down from the hill; and Willie Latten’s band of young men slipped away from their homes, with that altered air about every one that there is on a dog going poaching. Their gathering-place was the circle of grey ash where their fire had been in the morning. They had brought paper and matches to light it again and were gathering bits of old bramble, when Willie Latten stopped them. There must be no fire, he said: the smoke would be seen over the hedge by Duffin. This disappointed the rest, but the secrecy of the precaution appealed to their sense of mystery, and seemed to bring everything for which they waited much nearer. From this gathering-place Willie Latten sent off at once the six that were to wait in the wood on the top of the hill, between Tommy Duffin and the Old Stones of Wolding. They went up the hill along the side of the hedge, all stooping so as to be completely hidden from anyone on the wild part of the slope. And with them went the three that were to come from the clematis lane: for the lane just touched the very end of the wood before sending an open path to straggle on over the grassy slope; and they could reach it unseen by going through the wood all along the top of the hill. When these had gone Willie Latten sent down to the village the three that were to come up from below after Duffin had come to the hill, telling them to hang about by the back of the forge until he gave them the signal. Then leaving by the ashes of the old fire the three that were to come along the hill from the South he went down into the valley himself, to watch young Duffin’s movements; and there were few in the village, young or old, who could watch without being seen like Willie Latten.
CHAPTER XV
THEY COME TO THE OLD STONES
ON that day just after sunset Tommy Duffin left Valley Farm, going quietly out of the house and loitering away, only quickening his pace as soon as he was out of sight of the windows. He went swiftly and furtively, avoiding roads and open spaces, preferring hedges and shadows, like a fox at the edge of the woods; but whenever anyone saw him he dropped at once into a certain aimless gait, as though he were one with listless formal folk, returning as soon as their eyes were off him to his purposeful prowl again. So he passed along the outskirts of the village, and often he passed unseen. But today some wisdom he seemed to share with the wild, some lore that is known to the creatures dwelling apart from man, was hinting again and again to him that he was followed. He stopped and looked round: nothing was stirring behind him, but still that feeling that he was being watched. So he went on; then stopped and turned suddenly. And still he saw nothing. And still the strange wisdom warned him.
When he tried a third time and yet could see no watcher, he ignored the wisdom though he could not forget it; and went on, and came to Wold Hill, and climbed it until the wild slope was all about him with its briar and thorn and long grasses; and all the wild roses seemed to welcome him. He sat down then where a low briar-rose just hid him from the windows of Wolding, and turning first towards the house that stood out of sight behind the waves of wild clematis he put his pipes to his lips and played one call. The clear call came to the house and made Lily gasp, and the old woman wondered again; and the vicar heard it and sighed; and it passed right over the village bringing its tumult of thoughts, and it wandered away through the air till it grew so faint that it only stirred strange fancies in minds that were not aware that the notes had come to their hearing. Lily put down a tray that she had in her hands and came quietly away at once. Mrs. Airland said nothing now: she had some while ceased to do more about that wonderful music that we do about meteorites. The vicar sighed again. Down in the village their thoughts went wandering awhile to far times and curious rites. Girls stole away up the hill. And there came a thrill to the band of Willie Latten, as when an army hears a foreign trumpet blowing a call towards them that they have not heard before. He blew another call and the girls came running. Then with Lily beside him, and the rest seated near, a crescent of young girls among the wild roses, Tommy Duffin softly played a tune on his pipes that was like the sound of young streams running fresh from small mountains, heard in dreams or imagination, with birds fluting along the banks on some wonderful morning that are none of the birds we know, or ever shall. So faint was the tune that held those girls wondering, so magical and so new, that when a gust of it ceased, it seemed all to have been but a dream, such as comes and passes in the moment of waking upon some radiant morning; and nothing remained to show that it had been real but the darkened pupils of the wondering eyes of the thrilled girls that had listened.
Again he blew on the pipes; a tune like the voices of blackbirds heard from far valleys, telling over among themselves some happy tale too light and wild for any affair of man; from far, far valleys, too far to come to our hearing, and only reaching us through memory, where such things are stored far back amongst dust of our earliest years. As that rapt audience sat still as briar and thorn the three young men that were to come from below began to move up the hill.
Suddenly Lily saw them. She sprang up and screamed to Tommy. All the other girls rose and looked round angrily, staring at those three men as though they thought some of Medusa’s power were theirs. Then they saw the others from the clematis lane, and soon some more on their left: they stood irresolute then. And Willie Latten’s young men closed in as he had planned. Tommy had risen too, and was standing with his pipes in his hand hanging down at his right side, while Lily was clutching at his other arm trying to drag him away. But Tommy was standing like a man in thought, though he was not thinking, but he seemed unconscious of Lily or any around him, while, with head lifted in stillness he let some influence from the hills pour into his heart.
It was not till the men were quite close that Lily realised she could not move him; then she stood still and gazed at Tommy, knowing it was too late for anything she could do, and falling back on her trust in him as the only hope she had; and all the other girls stood still and uncertain. The men had come softly enough at first, but they were all hurrying now. And then Tommy Duffin raised his pipes again, and blew clear on them when all the men were close. And at the first bar of that music something came over Willie Latten’s men that was quite new to them, and their thoughts went wandering away to it, and would have stayed awhile, for it was so strange; then they put it away and came on a little further. But now some mystery from beyond the hills and out of old ages had surely beckoned to them, and had something to say; and they paused then, feeling they must hear it. Now all the slope was ringing loud with the music. They gazed round as though to see from what part of the circle of hills that hidden thing had come near. Still they saw nothing: still they felt that something had come out of the deeps of the twilight and moved nearer to them along the notes of Tommy Duffin’s pipes. And suddenly they knew that the mystery of the hills, and the deep enchantment of evening, had found a voice and would speak with them. They stood very still then, and listened. And their thoughts went far from their gathering by the fire, and far from Tommy Duffin, and went roaming away to memories so remote that they passed those gates that we commonly name forgetfulness, to remember things that their great-great grandfathers knew, old tales carried over the years by legend awhile, and dropped at last till the grave believed it had harvested all. These ancient things they remembered, standing there, with the evening all around them full of a meaning it had barely hinted before. All were stock still and silent, girls and boys, all but Tommy Duffin pouring out the notes of that inspiration that passed by him on its way from unknown to unknown. He paused, and turned in the hush, his face now to the rising slope and the black of the woods. And then he played a time that was utterly new to him, and strode away up the hill. They looked to each other to ask if they should fol
low: none gave the word, none spoke. All followed. It was not strange that they followed; for the new tune that Tommy Duffin was playing was the march of the things of the wild. There were calls in it that are known to birds that migrate, which their leaders utter at the turn of the wind that shall carry them on their journey; there were notes that were taken from the quavering ending of howls that have summoned packs; there were notes of earthly trumpets and, following after, clear answers from elfin horns. All manner of tides of life had moved to the notes of that music; it was no wonder they followed.
And following Tommy Duffin they came to the dark wood; and the pipes set its nooks and hollows astir with a sudden magic. The lads that waited for him in the wood heard that magic coming nearer: it seemed as if all the mystery that lurked among aged trees had suddenly stirred from its sleep, and were calling to them aloud after so long a silence. Nearer it came till the very bracken all round them rang with its wonder. They forgot their quest, they forgot the plans by the fire; the wood was full of the voices of old magics, all echoing with tales of far away, all echoing with a wonder and a beauty such as no tales had had since they were very young. They rose as the piper went by them, standing voiceless and still; and after him they went away through the wood. And he and all that little following went up the slope over the gnarled old beech-roots, and over the crest and down through the dark of the pines, till the single trunks stood out before them, each against fading sky. And so the piper led them all through the wood, till they came to the valley beyond, where the Old Stones lay in a field, dark shapes in the dimness of evening.
When Tommy Duffin saw the Old Stones of Wolding he knew why he had come that way, knew then that ancient rites about those old stones were luring him back to them from right across Wold Hill and from ages and ages ago. Then he blew a tune that the pen cannot keep pace with, that words cannot overtake, yet it spoke to his little following with strange wordless meanings. The time was now like a wind blowing over the downs at night, and blowing over the ages, a shrill sad wind with a voice too laden with wisdom for words. It seemed to hold for them some ancient secret, so that curiosity alone would have drawn them if there were no other force; but an awe and a holiness were welling up from the tune and blessing the old dark stones, so that they could not draw back from them, and all the while the music was lifting and lifting their feet, and their reason was long since lulled and was all asleep. So they came to the tune of pipes to the Old Stones of Wolding.
CHAPTER XVI
THEY DANCE TO THE PIPES OF REED
THE vicar in his study had listened to those clear notes going over the hill so wildly. He had listened with hearing sharpened by the long strain of worry, and had waited for the wild music to come to a sudden end; but it had merely faded away, going on to haunt further valleys, as he feared only too rightly. They had listened, too, in the village: they could not choose but listen. And as portentous things are noticed in stirring times, when the upheavals of Nature or war force strange changes upon the notice of those that look for no changes, so they noticed now that neither in streets nor houses were there any young men or girls. For long enough they had known that something strange was afoot, for long enough they had mistrusted that music, and doubted their daughters when they told them where they had gone late in the long evenings; but their lives for some while now had been lived according to reason and by the light of queer old traditions, and the effort to recognise that there was something amongst them now, that had nothing to do with reason or any tradition they knew, was too much for them till it came and stared in their faces. And it was staring them in their faces now. There were no young men in the street, no girls in the houses, and that music was haunting the hill, and its echoes drifting like ghosts of an unknown people up and down their familiar streets and below the eaves of their houses. And while they wondered and guessed, something more strange than their wonder and far afield of their guesses was taking place on the other side of the wood whose blackness now darkened Wolding. For when Tommy Duffin came to the Old Stones he changed his tune again, and began to dance round the circle, weaving the steps of his dance in and out of the old stones, inside one, outside the next, till he had gone round all twelve. This he did three times, and they all followed. And the steps of their dance came easy, though they had known none like it before; and the tune seemed some melody they had known of old, before some change had come which they could not remember. And a great planet came shining out like silver, and all the stars appeared. Then Tommy Duffin wept to the long flat stone that lay in the midst of the circle, and stood by it piping, and they all danced on and on. And then he drew them all past the central stone; for, so strong was the grip of the music, he was able to do that; and they all came by and bowed to the flat stone as they passed it. Nobody thought to bow, and none questioned why he had done it: it had been the thing to bow to the old flat stone far back in the dark of time, and somehow the music was lighting up the ways of that bygone day. And, as the tune drew gradually down the ages the ritual to which the Old Stones were accustomed once, wilder dances and stranger rites came back to that valley after so long a while, for the music disturbed the heavy sleep of oblivion that history could not stir. So there danced about those old, remembering stones, this way and that way as the strange music swept them, like fallen leaves on varying gusts of wind, Willie Latten and all his men, who had thought to break the pipes with a twist of the hand; and with them went the girls they had planned to free; for there was in the pipes a power that drew to the Old Stones, as in Summer the North draws swallows. The eyes of the beasts in the wood peered out and saw them; light breezes touched them that go down valleys at night, unfelt, unknown by men, upon secret errands of nature, carrying pollen for flowers, floating green-eyed moths on their journeys: all the whispering things of the night were about them now. And nearer, it seemed, than ever they were before; as though the fear of man, with which he has clothed himself in the course of the centuries, with all his speed and his noise, were thrown away when he went to the Old Stones.
They rested awhile, the pipes playing softly on, and all the tides of night flowed over them; winds, and the scent of flowers, a white owl floating by, the particular tribe of moths whose hour it was, and the imperceptible march of all the stars. And tired though they were with dancing, and full as they were with the wonder that haunted the night, the magic of those reed pipes and the mystery of the Old Stones, yet still they felt there was something more to be done. And they gazed at the long flat stone, looking anxiously at it, all fixing their eyes on its grey shape seen by starlight. At last Willie Latten spoke, voicing what they all felt.
“It has an empty look, the old flat stone.”
“An empty look,” they all said.
They were thinking of sacrifices such as reddened old stones in times of which none had taught them.
And the pipes went on and on with their low monotony, calling up such memories as these, that were lying deep in the ages, and that came as rarely to the light of our day as the soft white things that lived under the silent stones.
“An empty look,” they repeated.
And Willie Latten’s men began muttering of sacrifice. One hinted a sheep, in tones hushed by the awe of the long stone. “It should be a bull,” said another.