The Blessing of Pan

by Lord Dunsany

  And still it seemed to him that such a thing, if it happened at all, should have happened to some other parish.

  “They said he was dead, you know. They said he was dead. Something like two thousand years ago.”

  “Did they?” she muttered.

  “It wasn’t true,” he sighed.

  But all this was leading them nowhere.

  “What will you do?” she said directly.

  “Perkin will come tomorrow,” he said.

  “And then?” she asked.

  “I’ll wait for Perkin.”

  An inner estimate of the enormous effort required of him made him dally a little longer. And he still clung a little to his habit of looking for help. A weakness perhaps. And yet, was he not right to report to the Bishop? Was he not right to consult the greatest scholar in the diocese and to expect sound advice from Hetley? They had failed him, and he waited for Perkin now. And Monday came but not Perkin.

  On Tuesday Augusta reminded him gently of his resolution.

  “Perkin could only have come yesterday,” he said, “if he had started the moment he got my wire. The full week will only be up this evening.”

  On Wednesday evening she said to him suddenly: “Do you think Perkin will come?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I am sure of it.”

  Next day she repeated the question.

  “Give him one more day,” he said.

  On Friday he scarcely spoke all the morning. And in the afternoon he suddenly rose from his chair and said: “I am going to prepare my sermon.” And left the drawing-room and went across to his study.

  She knew then by his voice, which in that short sentence went all the way from despair to resolution, that he was going to struggle at last, manfully and alone.

  Yes it was come to that. All had failed him now. And if his parish was to be saved it must be saved by his own effort. He must preach to them. He must expose in clear unsparing words the error of their heresy. And then he must lead them back to the ways from which they had strayed, by argument as sound as learning could make it and simple enough to harmonise with the thoughts of the simplest of his parishioners. But first it must be sound and logical, and well based upon Holy Writ.

  He had his Bible before him and all his books of reference, and his white sheet of foolscap and the red and black ink-pots; but not a word would come. He sat there for an hour, and still the paper was blank. Still he sat on. It is seldom that a man tries as Anwrel was trying now, and finds that nothing comes as the fruit of such intensity. Yet nothing came to Anwrel. He needed the spirit of Euclid with the research of Macaulay. He needed instances, whether in the Bible itself, or in the writings of the early fathers, or in some modern work of learned ecclesiastics, that should confound this heresy; and then he required to prove, for it was of no use merely quoting, that these great authorities were indubitably right. But no such instance could he find upon which to build his argument. Nothing on which even to begin the long proof that should convince the minds of his people that they had been doing utterly wrong; without which convincing he knew now that they would go so far astray, that when the scandal spread to the ears of those that should have helped him, it would be all too late. He read and he reasoned. But when he left his study late that evening, worn with the strain of work, the sheet of foolscap was still untouched on his desk. He had not even found a text.

  And Saturday came, the day on which he always prepared his sermons, and he sat in his study all the morning. And at first he thought of Hetley, and the Bishop, and Perkin, trying to reason out the advice they would have given him if they had not all failed him, for on that morning he still turned a little to his desire for help, though that desire was no more than a memory now. Perkin he dismissed first from his mind, for it was sound logic and clear convincing argument that he needed now; and there was none of that in Perkin. What books would Hetley recommend, he wondered? What line of reasoning would the Bishop suggest? But soon he put these phantoms of help away and turned solely to his own energies. In such a crisis, and to such self-reliance, Fortune surely should have come. But she was far away that day, perhaps helping a child to find a lost toy boat in some reeds, too busy to aid this lone champion of Christianity; and the incisive argument, the instances delved out of history, came never upon the foolscap

  CHAPTER XXIX

  THE STRUGGLE

  AND Sunday came, and his bells were ringing as the vicar went to church, ringing and beating back from the walls of the houses, as though their influence pouring from the tall tower of flint had flooded all the valley. It was all as it had been Sunday after Sunday since ever Anwrel knew Wolding; as it had been times out of mind. In those mellow notes all that was lovely in old years seemed to linger, like bright dust that time had frayed from some golden filigree, caught in the cobwebs of a deserted house and held there still when all other gold was gone. Through that ancient triumphing melody, to which even bricks and slates were answering clearly, no sound of any pipes could come, thought the vicar; and new hopes, whose roots were in the echoing music, rose in him suddenly. Yet still he had no text, no telling argument, not a word of his sermon.

  He had brought with him the notes of a sermon made two or three years ago, when a thunder-storm had kept all away from the church except five or six, and those few had barely heard it amongst the peals of the thunder: Augusta had reminded him of it and knew where to find the notes. It was a kindly, friendly, human little sermon, and, in face of the trouble that threatened Wolding now, perfectly useless; as Augusta knew; but she knew that he must still preach to the very last, until the end whose approaching shadow she felt, though what it would be she knew not.

  So he went into the vestry with his notes, no better equipped to deal with what confronted him than would a soldier be that should attack with a butterfly-net.

  All through the service moods passed through his mind, so that sometimes, when he saw that the pews were full, as far as he could discern down the long dim aisle, he believed that the just cause held his people yet; and sometimes despairs with all their terrible certainly assured him that they only drifted there, driven idly by custom, as in parishes that he had heard of folk came to service still, whose faith had withered long since and only habit remained to them.

  But when he went up into the pulpit and spread out his notes, and looked up from them at the families he had known so long and well, and saw in their faces as they watched him lines made by sorrows and mirths in which he had had his share, then all those moods departed and only a pity was left to him, so deep that he knew if he spoke it would all well over in tears. So he stood silent, fumbling his useless notes. And then he said: “Oh, my people.”

  For a moment more he held back the words that were coming, breaking loose under that great pity, as frozen streams pour down at last, in the warmth of some sudden Spring. For he must give them a text. But he had no text to give them. So he quoted part of a sentence from memory out of the prayer-book. “In their time, and in the old time before them.” And whatever meaning the incomplete words may have lacked, they carried his own thoughts back, as though by a little golden bridge thrown far over troubled years, to the quieter days of which he would speak with them. And he spoke to them of their own gardens, of lanes they knew and the hedges all white at the end of May, the wild rose in the midst of the year, then the hazel nuts on the uplands, and the journey that the stream made all the while, going quietly on through Wolding like the ages, the stream on whose banks the white-haired farmers there had all sat once on a time angling for minnows. By easy ways and by paths that they all loved he drew them surely back to the old time.

  The old ways were best, he said, the faith of their fathers and of the old time before them. He told them how the moss came over grave-stones like a visible benediction; he told them where first the anemones stole out in the early Spring, and where the hyacinths rioted, and where the old bonfire had been long ago on the hill: these were his arguments, these his allusions from history. And a
s no arguments would ever have dragged them, so these simple memories led them, till their thoughts were far away with the old time. Were not those days best, he asked them. And before their minds had time to make any comparison their hearts had all answered him. He appealed to them without any rhetoric, and making use of no learning; he stretched out his hands and appealed to them to abide by the old ways. And a hush came down on the simple people of Wolding, like the hush of those who were living now in their memories. Insects that glittered in the streaming sunlight beyond the open door could be heard through the silence singing their own small song. And in that silence at last Augusta hoped.

  And now the very thoughts in the vicar’s heart were hand in hand with their thoughts, and in sunny gardens of the old lost years their memories went where he led them. Go back through those years, he said, as far as they would in memory, and they would find the old faith still blessing them. What would guide them, he asked them, in the days to come, with all their unseen troubles and unguessed changes, if they deserted the light that had led them so long. Not a dress rustled, not a child stirred or sighed. Softly at first, soft as Spring coming to meadows, soft as birds heard far off by children at play, and strange as the music of ice that the noon and a wind have broken, the sound of pipes rose slowly above the words of the preacher.

  Nobody doubted that it was Tommy Duffin: they could hear his hob-nailed boots on the square red tiles that paved the path through the churchyard.

  He was playing louder now. The first notes had come like the beckoning of a hand, or like a call in a whisper. But the music was rising now like a conqueror’s trumpet, who blows at the borders of an unknown land, calling his followers on. A moment ago and their thoughts had been all about Anwrel, leading them back into the calm of the past, among things no stranger than the glow of old hollyhocks, at the end of the gloaming gathering the last of the light, or than hawk-moths darting silently out of space to poise themselves upon air by a bell-mouthed flower, or than the simple wonder of may. But wonders of which he knew nothing were luring them now; and if the music of those pipes were beating from shores that no learning of his had ever touched, and from regions beyond his dreaming, what hope could there be for those poor simple folk to know where they were going before it was all too late? Too late! At such a thought he faltered, and even paused for a while. In the pause the pipes played on. Then stillness outside the church and stillness in it, and they heard Tommy Duffin’s boots as he marched away.

  CHAPTER XXX

  THE BATTLE IS LOST AND WON

  AUGUSTA looked up at the vicar, but he did not need that glance: it was the hour of his effort. If he should fail them now, if they should lose the faith to roam after pagan fantasies, he would be like a shepherd that could not make hurdles upon old wolf-haunted downs. They should not stray, these simple people committed to his charge; he would hold them yet.

  There was a stir in the church; heads were turned round away from him; a half-witted boy stole out.

  By some movement of his hands he called back their wandering glances. By some tone in his voice he held them, by that ring as he spoke that was like an echo of triumph heard faintly in the voices of the just, rejoicing in happy ardours far from our sphere, and unburdened by our perplexities or only remembering them dreamily. Whatever it was, whenever that rare elation, he knew it when it came, knew that from all the wide and mysterious region of thought his utmost powers were gathering now to help him. It was as it should be; his greatest effort was now; he would win this struggle with all the might that was in him, or fail as forlorn hopes fail, because the last blow is spent and the enemy was the stronger. Thus he spoke to them in his power: thus he appealed to them still.

  And again he led their thoughts to the olden years; again he awoke from their sleep or gathered back from their straying, the memories that were living amongst this people of his, illuminating days that had now no other light. He showed them how all the little things they had loved had been guided each to its place in the valleys of Wolding by the old faith of their fathers. Not a lawn they knew, not a rose on a cottage wall, could have come down the years to them without that guidance. The old ways had them in their holding yet. He besought them not to turn away from that guidance after things that were evil and new. And all the while that he besought them he mourned lest through fault of his, through any weakness of reasoning, through any word unsaid, these neighbours of his that he looked upon as his children should stray away far from salvation. He mourned as he spoke, and they felt his sorrow throbbing from every word, vibrating along his sentences, his fear lest because of him this evil should fall on them. He found no fault with them: the fault would all be his, if the good that he had preached to them all these years should be suddenly lost to them utterly. He blamed them no more than a shepherd blames his sheep. And always he turned back to the bygone years; for the faith and the ancient ways were one to him, and were like a garden glowing in soft light, safely fenced from all the cares that perplex our days. He never can have reflected that it was out of those bygone years that the rites of Pan had reached them as well as the Faith, going down time together, as butterfly and pursuing bird go down the same wind. And they recked little of that, for their imaginations did not reach so far as the origin of anything (if, indeed, any human imagination can), and it was only a fight in their minds between the memory of Wolding as Anwrel pictured it, long ago, as the elders knew it, a village whose ways seemed somehow turned towards blessings as its hills sloped to the sunlight, and the memory of that music that all had heard just now, barely ten yards away from the very door. Which memory would hold them? Echoes in the high rafters had scarcely ceased to mutter of that strange music, while the other memory lived in the vicar’s voice. And now they seemed turning back to that memory, for it was upon their heartstrings that he was playing, with his strong voice like a violinist’s bow. And, as they seemed to turn to him, he told them the story of Wolding through the last generation, the unwritten chronicles of a village of which History had never known. No scholar could have preached to them of any victorious city, or of the glories or learning of any noble age, as he preached to this people of the affairs of Wolding; for he had known all their sorrows, and many a tiny joy, as well as the larger rejoicings when all the village kept holiday. And over all that trivial chronicle as he told it; as though it were gleaming upon every word, or as though the sound of his words broke all the while through the glow of it, hung the old faith, like the gloaming above the valley in summer. Now, with their faces all turned to him, now with his words amongst their inmost thoughts that they thought alone to themselves, sitting late by the fire in winter, he besought them yet again, then stood for a moment gazing silently into their faces. A handkerchief was drawn quietly out in a pew, all white against the dark of the Sunday clothes; and two more. Then three young men with their handkerchiefs to their faces, as though their noses were bleeding, walked out of the church. The younger ones saw them and imitated at once. There was a stir in the pews, and two more handkerchiefs were brought flashing out, in preparation for the stale excuse; when Lily rose up from her seat, and, walking along the pew past Mrs. Airland, stood in the aisle. Standing there in the slenderness of youth, with the splendour of her assurance, she lifted her head and glanced once round the church. Mrs. Airland in the first seat by the aisle was sitting beside her while she stood for that proud moment: she reached out a hand towards the girl to detain her, but the hand driven by an aged uncertain impulse barely reached Lily’s dress and gripped nothing. Then Lily walked down the aisle like the bride of a toreador, leaving a bull-ring still resounding with cheers, like a fairy queen stepping at moonrise out of a forest to pursue some magical thing that her forces had routed, like a royal priestess newly initiated in mysteries to be fathomed alone by her. If the way of a step and the poise of a head can hint such things as these, Lily hinted them as she went, to wondering imaginations.

  “Lily,” gasped Mrs. Airland when she found her hand had not held her,
“that is not the way to go out of church.”

  But then the thought of that time called Mrs. Airland; not exactly the actual notes of it, but Wold Hill suddenly hallowed by that strange music, and glowing a long way off, deep green with blue shadows, under a haze of gold of that very tint that had seemed to hang between Earth and the fairy hills of tales that were told to her when she was very young. And Wold Hill seemed to call her to come at once, and to leave her pony-trap that would be waiting outside, and to go straight up the slope, not by the slanting path that led to her house, but right to the woods and over the top of the hill; and to go blithely, as she would have gone long ago, forgetting many years, and everything but that music.

  Young men and girls were streaming out of the church, with no more pretences now that Lily had gone.

  The vicar paused, and there was only the sound of feet. He glanced at Mrs. Airland, seeming to hope that her example might stay some, and that he could yet preach on to a little group.

  Mrs. Airland was putting her things together tidily, her prayer-book and hymn-book, small hand-bag and parasol. Then she muttered aloud: “It seems a long while ago.” And nobody that heard her knew quite what she meant. Then the old neat figure rose up, and walked trimly away.

  Anwrel preached on. He did not appeal to them now to remember old gardens, lit by gloamings of long ago, gladdening the last few years of folk that this congregation had known, sleeping now, outside, in the faith, under huge yew-trees. There are aphorisms, quotations, maxims and phrases, common to many a sermon preached by men whose honest hearts were made without one ingredient of oratory. Anwrel knew, now, he had failed. Nothing remained for him but to preach on still. So he preached the old aphorisms, the smooth-worn sayings, to the last of his congregation as their heels rapped down the aisles. With resolute mastery that held down the tears in his voice he preached them the thin bare phrases whose texture had once held thought. He preached on till all seemed gone, all but Augusta. She alone. In such a defeat her steadfastness barely brought comfort to him.