by Lord Dunsany
Now it was time to end. So he gathered together his poor sentences, and rounded them to some kind of conclusion, while only Augusta listened.
The last word of his sermon was said; and, as he said it, before he turned round to the East for the dedicatory conclusion, Augusta got up from her seat and followed the rest.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE WOODS OF APPLE
THEN Anwrel glanced once all round the church and saw no one, and turned to the East in the silence as Augusta’s steps hurried away, and said the final words. As he said the amen that completely concluded his sermon, there came from the shadows of pillars at the dim end of the church a clear voice saying approvingly: “Very good. Very good.”
For the space of a moment Anwrel stood perfectly still; then, coming down from his pulpit, saw past a pillar, and there was Perkin, alone in the furthest pew, sitting leaning forward with both hands clasped on his stick. The lonely vicar ran down the aisle towards him. “Perkin,” he said. “Yes,” said Perkin. “Very good.”
“But they would not hear me. They have all gone. I have failed,” said Anwrel.
“Hist,” said Perkin. “Not yet.”
“But they’re gone,” said Anwrel. “Gone away to the hill. Even...” But he could not say it.
“Yes. All gone,” said Perkin in his rich voice, with eyes twinkling.
“Oh, why did you not come sooner?” cried the vicar.
“There were forces opposed to that journey of which this world knows nothing.”
“How did you come?” asked the vicar.
“I overcame them,” said Perkin.
And the vicar at that moment of such complete failure could do no more than repeat, “Oh, why did you not come sooner?”
“Why! But you’re doing famously,” said Perkin. “A very good sermon.”
“But they’re all gone,” wailed Anwrel.
“You strengthened their illusions well,” said Perkin. “And they must have illusions, you know.”
“Strengthened them!” exclaimed Anwrel. “They’ve forsaken everything!”
“That’s because the other illusion is stronger,” said Perkin.
At this Anwrel groaned.
“Why, yes,” said Perkin. “When you strengthened your illusions he had to strengthen his. Didn’t you hear his pipes? And so there are better illusions on earth than there were. Very good.”
“He? Who?” muttered Anwrel.
“That other fellow you spoke of.”
“The enemy. Oh, the enemy,” moaned the vicar.
“He has some good illusions,” replied Perkin.
But Anwrel without answering led the way to the vestry along one aisle of the deserted church. He feared now he was past the help of even the fertile mind of this curious man, and yet was loath to leave him and face loneliness. As they left the vestry on the way to the vicarage there seemed something in Perkin’s mood that was far from despair; and some reflected hope shone faintly on Anwrel, in spite of all that defeat and reason told him.
Again Perkin spoke of illusions.
“You must have some, you know. If you don’t, they get to hear of it outside Earth. Aye, and beyond Neptune.”
“Then why have you none yourself?” Anwrel blurted out in his bitterness.
“I? Because I can see through all illusions. All but one. And even that one, I know what it is made of. Dust and ashes. All dust and ashes.”
So sadly spoke Perkin, that all the bitterness of the taste of defeat, of that deep draught of disappointment, vanished from Anwrel, and all at once he was thinking only of Perkin.
“What illusion was that?” he asked kindly.
“My love for Mary,” said the grey wanderer. Anwrel laid a hand on his shoulder.
“No love such as that,” he said, for he saw it clearly glowing in the deep eyes, “no great love, none, can be dust and ashes ever.”
“Wrong there, parson. Wrong there,” said Perkin. “For a parson came, and one a lot older than you, and said those very words. Those were the very words he said over Mary.”
Anwrel sighed, and kept his hand on the wanderer’s shoulder.
“Yes,” the old man went on, “and before that all things had meanings, but they all joined up into one meaning. Now they only have meanings; each one by itself. All separate, all separate; ever since the parson said those words over Mary.”
And still Anwrel could do nothing but grip the old man’s shoulder as he walked in silence beside him, hearing those broken words thrown up from the storm of an old sorrow.
“And I’m always glad to help a parson,” the wanderer went on, “for I never bore him a grudge for what he said. It was true enough, true enough. Mary is dust and ashes.”
Then they walked for a while both silent. And then Anwrel sighed and said: “But you won’t believe in our Heaven.”
“Not believe in it! Not believe in it!” said Perkin. “Why, I was there last night.”
“You were there?” gasped Anwrel.
“Yes, I couldn’t sleep. Things wouldn’t let me be. Small troubles roaming the air, that vex folk without reason. They were skipping and hovering foolishly over Seldham, and they wouldn’t let me be. And then, just as I thought I was getting to sleep at last, just as I was going off, my spirit started wandering. So there was no more sleep for me that night.”
“And then?” said the vicar, for Perkin had stopped and seemed going to say no more.
“I wandered and wandered,” said Perkin. “And, oh, then I came to Heaven.”
“How did you know?” asked the vicar.
“Well, first of all, you could see it wasn’t Earth. The colours alone, you know.”
“More intense, I suppose,” said the vicar. “Hills on Earth are bluish sometimes,” continued Perkin, “but not sheer bright blue. And then there were the prayers wobbling up in faint gold streaks, and sounding like violins.”
“Could you hear the words?” asked the vicar. “Words? No,” said Perkin.
“How did you know they were prayers?”
“The tone of them,” said Perkin. “They couldn’t have been anything else.”
“What was it like?” asked the vicar.
“I was in a wood.”
“What trees?” asked the vicar.
“Apple.”
“Yes.”
“And I could see the far hills shining through the wood, bright blue as I said. And angels were there with great gold haloes on, like harvest moons rising and rising up through the wood. And St. Ethelbruda was playing amongst the angels.”
“How did you know it was her?” the vicar asked.
“We all know her in these parts,” said Perkin.
“Yes,” said the vicar. “Go on.”
“She was playing amongst the angels,” Perkin continued.
“What were they playing at?” the vicar asked. For he had a trust in this wandering man that he would have given to his bishop, or to the learning of Hetley, but all had deserted him except this one strange man.
And Perkin answered him: “There was a wind blowing from Earth, with a touch of sharpness in it that nearly shrivelled the prayers but could not hurt the blossoms of that wood.”
“How could cold reach Heaven from here?” the vicar asked, anxious to learn what he could from that wandering spirit that had seen the land of which he had taught so long.
“It wasn’t cold,” said the wanderer. “It was jealousy.”
“Jealousy!” exclaimed the vicar. “That cannot ever touch the angels.”
“No,” explained Perkin. “They were playing at it.”
“Playing at it?”
“Yes, they were leaning towards that wind blowing out of Earth, and remembering tiny things and mundane ways, and toying with earthly emotions, and trying to remember what they would have felt in our fields, centuries since, in jealousy of the sanctity and the miracles of Ethelbruda, had jealousy been possible to them. That is what they were playing at.”
The vicar was silent
a moment. Then he said, “I do not doubt your word; but I think you must be mistaken in what you saw. Angels and blessed spirits could never be so trivial.”
“There’s nothing so volatile as an angel,” shouted the wanderer. “Upon any mere whim of righteousness, or fancy of charity, their spirits will float for hours. And, as for being mistaken, they are more transparent than gossamer. They were playing at jealousy; and probably had been for ages. For, you know, she does work miracles; and they had been holy for ages before she was heard of, yet they’ve never been able to do a half of what she can. Not a half of it. There was plenty of stuff to play with. They were looking down at our fields and playing at that: and the fields seemed even tinier than jealousy, though they all seem so big here.
“And it never really troubled them, though they felt it blowing from Earth: it would have put their haloes out if it had: one knew that. I told you how it sort of shrivelled the prayers.
“And then as they played, as in my opinion they had been playing for ages (the same game all that time), the wind suddenly ceased. Not a puff to make them remember, not a breath to try in vain to trouble the apple-blossoms. And the angels sat still as wild roses under their harvest moons, with nothing whatever to play at.
“I knew what that was. She’s beaten, I said. She can’t work miracles any more, and there’s not enough left to make jealousy even in play. Who’d beat her, I said? Why, that goat-legged fellow you were speaking of, who was here before her time. And then I thought of you, and I left Heaven, and I came on here at once. He’ll want me now, I said.”
“Thank you,” said Anwrel. “Thank you.”
And they walked on then in silence and so came to his empty home.
CHAPTER XXXII
PERKIN SEEKS AN ILLUSION
ANWREL, seeking at first helplessly and even despairingly in cupboards and along shelves, came at last on bread, cheese and butter, and part of a cold chicken. And soon he and his strange companion were sitting at dinner in the deserted house, and now a little of his despair was lifting from the vicar, rest and quiet and food all having their share in this; but chiefly that slight lifting, like one wisp of mist swirling away from a shrouded field, was caused by his trust in Perkin. He had recognised from the first the strong far-travelling mind, while others saw only the cut of his clothes and hat; and from the very first Perkin had come to him when all others deserted. He had reason enough to trust him with all his intuitions. But now plodding after those intuitions, as it ever plods behind, came logic to approve the trust he had felt. For, however Perkin had gone, he had come back from wherever he went with definite information that the vicar himself could corroborate, though it came from far beyond the confines of Earth and outside the scope of time: St. Ethelbruda could no longer work miracles.
Could anyone have told him, thought the vicar? Who would tell such things to Perkin? Who would talk at all to that crazed wanderer? No, that was impossible. But the angels: they could have told him, or spirits of the blessed. It was clear that his mind was perpetually mazed by spirits. And was it not to just such as him that the angels were wont to speak, when they spoke to anyone on our earth at all?
“You were right about St. Ethelbruda,” he said.
“Right?” said the wanderer. “Didn’t I tell you I saw her? And a look on her face pretending to vaunt herself. For such things can only be pretence, where she is. And the angels all round her playing at jealousy. And then the look went out of her face. And I knew she’d no more to boast of even in play.”
“Yes, yes,” said the vicar. “All true.”
The wanderer leaned forward suddenly and gripped the vicar’s knee.
“I couldn’t have been mistaken,” he exclaimed.
“It was good of you to come away,” said the vicar. “You might have forgotten me and stopped to see, to see Mary, you know.”
“No,” said the old wanderer clutching a flap of his coat and thrusting it forward into Anwrel’s notice. “Not in this kit. Too far for it.”
“Too far?” said the vicar.
“Too far for this outfit,” said the wanderer. “She’d be away in one of those cities beyond the wood. Little cities with spires all over the bright blue hills. I might have got there perhaps, if you hadn’t wanted me. But I’d never have got back to this old suit if I had. Some day, perhaps. Some day. But not with these boots and bones.”
“Ah, dear me,” said the vicar, stung by the contrast of all his despairs and perplexities, and the bright blue hills with their spires shining over the apple-blossom, “it is a hard world to come back to.”
“World? It’s a bin,” said the wanderer. “All full of dust and ashes.”
A purpose came suddenly into the wanderer’s eyes, and he slowly rose from the table. He moved to the door. [BLESSING OF PAN BOOK]
“Where are you going?” asked Anwrel.
“Seeking,” said Perkin.
“What for?” asked Anwrel.
“The old search,” said the wanderer. “Looking for illusions. And this one’s taken all your parish away. Who knows? It might hold me yet.”
And he spoke with a wistfulness and a quiet that was almost like the tones of one not afflicted by dreams. And he looked through the window at Wold Hill, all shimmering in the sun.
“But what shall I do? What shall I do?” cried Anwrel.
“Why, what does one need but illusions?” answered Perkin.
“They’re gone. I’ve lost them,” said the vicar. “One can’t hold them all alone.” He spread his hands to the emptiness of his room. “I’ve none to help me now.”
“Plenty of friends over there,” said Perkin, pointing to Wold Hill. “Plenty of illusions.”
“But,” gasped Anwrel, “but they’re the enemy’s!”
“They’re yours if you want them,” said Perkin.
“What!” cried the vicar.
But the door shut and Perkin was gone.
All alone now. And plenty of time for reflection. But nothing to reflect upon that had not been all worked over and over and found vain. And Perkin, in whom he had trusted so much, who was all he had left to trust to, had given him advice against which his mind was shut: come what may he would not go to Wold Hill, to those unhallowed rites and the heathen stones. Those were the very words that passed through his mind; but underneath them thoughts surged to and fro, a multitude too many and moving too swiftly for the thinker himself to discern them. All the afternoon in the empty house the lonely thoughts raced on. And then, about five o’clock, came a slight sound on the gravel, and a rustling inside the hall: and the door was opened and Augusta walked in.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
But she was not apologising for anything she had done; there was no trace of that in her voice. She was only sorry for him. For herself, she seemed to have slipped from her the weight of all that worry, the burden of which had grown harder day after day, till the lines of her face were all drawn taut with the strain of it. But now the look of strain in her face had gone, and she looked composed at last, as though all the anxiety of those weeks was over.
“Augusta,” he said. No other words came to say to her.
“I stayed till you finished,” she said.
He looked at her and did not speak; so she spoke instead.
“I thought...” she began.
“What did you think?” he said at last.
“I thought you would have come too,” she said.
“I?” he asked.
“We all thought so,” she answered.
Was everyone and everything driving him to the old stones beyond Wold Hill? He remained silent.
“You wouldn’t come?” she asked.
“Never,” he said.
“It’s almost a pity,” she said.
“A pity!” exclaimed Anwrel.
“Only,” she said, “because they were thinking of sacrificing a bull. And you would have done it so well.”
He looked round at the walls of the room with their litt
le religious prints, and their secular ornaments upon velvet-hung brackets, so hallowed by fashion in such myriad homes, that these secular knick-knacks were now as ritual as the religious. Yes, it was the walls of a vicarage, amidst which such words were said to him!
“They are going to get Mudden to do it if you don’t come,” she said. “And he’s not the man for a thing like that. One doesn’t want only a butcher.”
And as she said this she went over and rang the bell. “We’ll have some tea,” she added.
“It’s no use ringing,” he said. “There’s no one there.”
“Oh, they’re all back now,” she said.
Well, Pan had won, thought the vicar. But there was one that he had not taken captive yet. He would hold out alone.
But what good would that do?
And there came over him the loneliness of surrounded men, that fight on still and know that their cause is lost.
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE SMILE OF THE PALÆOLITH
AUGUSTA and the vicar said little that evening. The vicar sat grave with thought; while Augusta seemed waiting for him to come to some decision, a decision that she seemed expecting to hear at any moment, and that somehow seemed to be clear enough in her mind.
Yet what could he do? If he were not a parson he might have taken Augusta seriously when she spoke so strangely about a bull: he might have followed Perkin’s advice and abandoned his lonely struggle and found happiness again amongst his fellow-men, listening to music whose magic had entranced him already as much as any of them.
There was no longer any strain in Augusta’s face; no perplexities left any mark there.
How could things seem so simple to Augusta? The slightest shadow of the embarrassment caused by their silence lay at times across her expression, but no sign of any worry. How could things be so clear to her, while to him they remained so intricate as to show no right path for him through the mazes of the dark future?