The Leithen Stories

by John Buchan

  ‘They will not be content with one divinity,’ he broke in. ‘They await a double epiphany, remember – the Koré and the Kouros. That is the point of the occasion. We must be faithful to the letter of the rite. After all they know less of me than of you. They saw me win a race, a figure very much like the others in the moonlight … To those who may recognise me I am an unknown hillman of Akte. Why should not the Kouros have revealed himself the day before, and be also the Basileus?’

  She looked at him curiously as if seeing him for the first time as a bodily presence. I can fancy that for the first time she may have recognised his beauty and strength.

  ‘But you are not like me,’ she urged. ‘You have not an old burden to get rid of. I am shaking off the incubus of my youth, and going free, like the Gods. What you call the epiphany is not only for Plakos but for myself, and nothing matters, not even death. I can play the part, but can you? To me it is going to be the beginning of life, but to you it can only be an adventure. Chivalry is not enough.’

  ‘To me also it is the beginning of life,’ he answered. Then he returned to the tale of his boyhood’s dream. ‘When it vanished in the storm a few nights ago I hated it, for I felt that it had stolen years from my life. But now I know that nothing is wasted. The door of the last of the dream-rooms has opened and you have come in. And we are going to begin life – together.’

  A strange pair of lovers, between whom no word of love had yet been spoken! By very different roads both had reached a complete assurance, and with it came exhilaration and ease of mind. Maris during the long spring day might roam about restlessly, and Mitri and Elise fall to their several prayers, but Vernon and Koré had no doubts. While I, outside the wall, was at the mercy of old magics, a mere piece of driftwood tossed upon undreamed-of tides, the two in the House had almost forgotten Plakos. It had become to them no more than a background for their own overmastering private concerns. The only problem was for their own hearts; for Koré to shake off for good the burden of her past and vindicate her fiery purity, that virginity of the spirit which could not be smirched by man or matter; for Vernon to open the door at which he had waited all his life and redeem the long preparation of his youth. They had followed each their own paths of destiny, and now these paths had met and must run together. That was the kind of thing that could not be questioned, could not even be thought about; it had to be accepted, like the rising sun. I do not think that they appreciated their danger, as I did, for they had not been, like me, down in the shadows. They were happy in their half-knowledge, and in that blessed preoccupation which casts out fear.

  But some time in the afternoon he drew for the girl a picture of the ancient rite, and he must have been inspired, for, as she once recounted it to me, he seems to have made his book learning like the tale of an eye-witness.

  ‘Why do you tell me this?’ she asked.

  ‘Because if we are to play our part we must understand that there is beauty as well as terror in this worship.’

  ‘You speak as if you were a believer.’

  He laughed. ‘There is truth in every religion that the heart of man ever conceived. It is because of that that we shall win.’

  But I think his confidence was less complete than hers. I judge from what Maris told me that, though Vernon was what the Scotch call ‘fey’ during those last hours, he retained something of his old careful prevision. As the twilight fell he took Maris aside and gave him his pistol. ‘Mitri has orders as soon as he gets out of the House to take a lantern to the cliffs and make the signal for my boat. He has a key and will open the door in the oliveyard wall. Miss Arabin and I are staking everything on a mighty gamble. If it succeeds, I think that the people will be in a stupor and we shall have an opportunity to join you. But if it fails – well, they will tear us to pieces. You must be close to us and await events. If the worst happens, one of these bullets is for the lady. ‘Swear to me on your honour as a soldier.’

  EIGHTEEN

  I TAKE UP the tale now (said Leithen) at the point where I fell in with Maris in the avenue which led to the gap in the wall. As I have told you, I had stumbled through the undergrowth with the blazing House making the place an inferno of blood-red aisles and purple thickets. Above the roar of the flames I heard the noise of panic-driven feet, of men plunging in haste – two indeed I had met, who seemed to be in the extremity of fear. For myself I was pretty nearly at the end of my tether. I was doddering with fatigue, and desperate with anxiety, and the only notion in my head was to use the dregs of my strength to do something violent. I was utterly in the dark, too. I did not know but that Koré might be already beyond my help, for that crimson grove seemed to reek of death.

  And then I blundered into Maris, saw something in his face which gave me a surge of hope, and with his hand on my arm turned my eyes up the avenue.

  The back part of the House and the outbuildings were by this time one roaring gust of flame, but the front was still untouched, and the fan of fire behind it gave it the concave darkness of a shell – a purple dark which might at any moment burst into light. The glow beyond the façade was reflected farther down the avenue, which was as bright as day, but the House end was shadowed, and the two figures which I saw seemed to be emerging from a belt of blackness between two zones of raw gold. I therefore saw them first as two dim white forms, which, as they moved, caught tints of flame …

  Put it down to fatigue, if you like, or to natural stupidity, but I did not recognise them. Besides, you see, I knew nothing of Vernon’s presence there. My breath stopped and I felt my heart leap to my throat. What I saw seemed not of the earth – immortals, whether from Heaven or Hell, coming out of the shadows and the fire in white garments, beings that no elements could destroy. In that moment the most panicky of the guards now fleeing from the demesne was no more abject believer than I.

  And then another fugitive barged into me, and Maris caught him by the arm and cuffed his ears. I saw that it was Janni, but the sight meant nothing to me. The corporal seemed to be whimpering with terror, and Maris talked fiercely to him, but I did not listen. He quieted him, and then he took us both by an arm and hurried us with him towards the gap. It was what I wanted to do. I dared not look again on that burning pageant.

  The next I knew I was beyond the wall on the edge of the Dancing Floor. I do not know how I got there, for my legs seemed to have no power in them, and I fancy that Maris dragged us both. The scared guards must have preceded us, for behind was emptiness, save for the presences in the avenue. The thick trees partly blanketed the fire, but the light from the burning roof fell beyond them and lit up redly the scarp on which we stood. A rival light, too, was coming into being. The rising moon had already flooded the far hills, and its calm radiance was sweeping over the hollow packed with the waiting multitude.

  At first I saw only the near fringes of the people – upturned faces in the uncanny light of the fire. But as I looked, the unfeatured darkness beyond changed also into faces – faces spectral in the soft moonshine. I seemed to be standing between two worlds, one crimson with terror and the other golden with a stranger spell, but both far removed from the kindly works of men.

  Maris had pulled us aside out of the line of the breach in the wall, where the avenue made a path for the glow of the fire. We were in full view of the people, but they had no eyes for us, for their gaze was concentrated on the breach. The fugitive guards had by this time been absorbed, and their panic had not communicated itself to the great multitude. For a second I forgot my own fears in the amazing sight before me … The crowded Dancing Floor was silent; in face of that deep stillness the crackle and roar of the fire seemed no more than the beating of waves on a far-away coast. Though the moon made the hills yellow as corn, it left the upturned faces pale. I was looking down on a sea of white faces – featureless to me, masks of strained expectation. I felt the influence from them beat upon me like a wind. The fierce concentration of mingled hope and fear – wild hope, wilder fear – surged up to me, and clutched a
t my nerves and fired my brain. For a second I was as exalted as the craziest of them. Fragments of the dithyramb which Vernon had translated came unbidden to my lips – ‘Io, Kouros most great … Come, O come, and bring with thee – holy hours of thy most holy Spring.’

  The spell of the waiting people made me turn, as they had turned, to the gap in the wall. Through it, to the point where the glow of the conflagration mingled with the yellow moonlight, came the two figures.

  I think I would have dropped on my knees, but that Maris fetched me a clout on the back, and his exultant voice cried in my ear. ‘Bravo,’ he cried. ‘By the Mother of God, they win! That is a great little lady!’

  There was something in the familiarity, the friendly roughness of the voice which broke the spell. I suddenly looked with seeing eyes, and I saw Koré.

  She was dressed in white, the very gown which had roused Vernon’s ire at my cousin’s dance the summer before. A preposterous garment I had thought it, the vagary of an indecent fashion. But now – ah now! It seemed the fitting robe for youth and innocence – divine youth, heavenly innocence – clothing but scarcely veiling the young Grace who walked like Persephone among the spring meadows. Vera incessu patuit Dea. It was not Koré I was looking at, but the Koré, the immortal maiden, who brings to the earth its annual redemption.

  I was a sane man once more, and filled with another kind of exaltation. I have never felt so sharp a sense of joy. God had not failed us. I knew that Koré was now not only safe but triumphant.

  And then I recognised Vernon.

  I did not trouble to think by what mad chance he had come there. It seemed wholly right that he should be there. He was dressed like the runner of the day before, but at the moment I did not connect the two. What I was looking at was an incarnation of something that mankind has always worshipped – youth rejoicing to run its race, that youth which is the security of this world’s continuance and the earnest of Paradise.

  I recognised my friends and yet I did not recognise them, for they were transfigured. In a flash of insight I understood that it was not the Koré and the Vernon that I had known, but new creations. They were not acting a part, but living it. They, too, were believers; they had found their own epiphany, for they had found themselves and each other. Each other! How I knew it I do not know, but I realised that it was two lovers that stood on the brink of the Dancing Floor. And I felt a great glow of peace and happiness.

  With that I could face the multitude once more. And then I saw the supreme miracle.

  People talk about the psychology of a crowd, how it is different in kind from the moods of the men who compose it. I dare say that is true, but if you have each individual strained to the extreme of tension with a single hope, the mood of the whole is the same as that of the parts, only multiplied a thousandfold. And if the nerve of a crowd goes there is a vast cracking, just as the rending of a tree-trunk is greater than the breaking of a twig.

  For a second – not more – the two figures stood on the edge of the Dancing Floor in the sight of the upturned eyes. I do not think that Koré and Vernon saw anything – they had their own inward vision. I do not know what the people saw in the presences that moved out of the darkness above them.

  But this I saw. Over the multitude passed a tremor like a wind in a field of wheat. Instead of a shout of triumph there was a low murmur as of a thousand sighs. And then there came a surge, men and women stumbling in terror. First the fringes opened and thinned, and in another second, as it seemed to me, the whole mass was in precipitate movement. And then it became panic – naked veritable panic. The silence was broken by hoarse cries of fear. I saw men running like hares on the slopes of the Dancing Floor. I saw women dragging their children as if fleeing from a pestilence … In a twinkling I was looking down on an empty glade with the Spring of the White Cypress black and solitary in the moonlight.

  I did not doubt what had happened. The people of Plakos had gone after strange gods, but it was only for a short season that they could shake themselves free from the bonds of a creed which they had held for a thousand years. The resurgence of ancient faiths had obsessed but had not destroyed the religion into which they had been born. Their spells had been too successful. They had raised the Devil and now fled from him in the blindest terror. They had sought the outlands, had felt their biting winds, had had a glimpse of their awful denizens, and they longed with the passion of children for their old homely shelters. The priest of Kynaetho would presently have his fill of stricken penitents.

  Maris was laughing. I dare say it was only a relief from nervous strain, but it seemed to me an impiety. I turned on him angrily. ‘There’s a boat somewhere. See that everybody is aboard – the whole household. And bring it round to the harbour where we first landed.’

  ‘Not to the oliveyards?’ he asked.

  ‘No, you fool. To the harbour. Plakos is now as safe for us as the streets of Athens.’

  Koré and Vernon stood hand in hand like people in a dream. I think they were already dimly aware of what had happened, and were slowly coming back to the ordinary world. The virtue was going out of them, and with the ebbing of their exaltation came an immense fatigue. I never saw human faces so pale.

  Vernon was the first to recover. He put his arm round Koré’s waist, for without it she would have fallen, but he himself was none too steady on his feet. He recognised me.

  ‘Ned,’ he said, in a stammering voice, like a sleepwalker’s. ‘I heard you were here. It was good of you, old man … What do you think … now … the boat …’

  ‘Come along,’ I cried, and I took an arm of each. ‘The sooner you are on board the better. You want to sleep for a week.’ I started them off along the edge of the Dancing Floor.

  ‘Not that way,’ he gasped. ‘Too risky …’

  ‘There is no danger anywhere in this blessed island. Come along. You want food and clothes. It’s getting on for midnight and you’re both only half-dressed.’

  They were like two children pulled out of bed and too drowsy to walk, and I had my work cut out getting them along the ridge. The Dancing Floor was empty, and when we entered the road which led from Kynaetho to the main gate of the House there was also solitude. Indeed, we had to pass through a segment of the village itself, and the place was silent as the grave. I knew where the people were – in and around the church, grovelling in the dust for their sins.

  Our going was so slow that by the time we looked down on the harbour the boat was already there. I stopped for a moment and glanced back, for far behind me I heard voices. There was a glow as from torches to the south where the church stood, and a murmur which presently swelled into an excited clamour. Suddenly a bell began to ring, and it seemed as if the noise became antiphonal, voices speaking and others replying. At that distance I could make out nothing, but I knew what the voices said. It was ‘Christ is risen – He is risen indeed.’

  The moon had set before we put to sea. My last recollection of Plakos is looking back and seeing the House flaming like a pharos on its headland. Then, as we beat outward with the wind, the fire became a mere point of brightness seen at a great distance in the vault of night.

  I had no wish or power to sleep. Koré and Vernon, wrapped each in a heap of cloaks, lay in the bows. It was the quietest place, but there was no need of precautions, for they slept like the drugged. Elise, whose nerves had broken down, was in Vernon’s berth. Black George had the helm and old Mitri and Janni snored beside him.

  I sat amidships and smoked. When the moon went down a host of stars came out, pale and very remote as they always seem in a spring sky. The wind was light and the water slid smoothly past; I knew roughly our bearings, but I had a sense of being in another world and on seas never before sailed by man. The last week had been for me a time of acute anxiety and violent bodily exertion, but a sponge seemed to have passed over the memory of it. Something altogether different filled my mind. I had with my own eyes seen Fate take a hand in the game and move the pieces on the board. The
two sleepers in the bows had trusted their destiny and had not been betrayed.

  I thought with contrition of my cynicism about Vernon’s dream. No doubt it had been a will-o’-the-wisp, but it had been true in purpose, for it had made him wait, alert and aware, on something which had been prepared for him, and if that something was far different from his forecast the long expectation had made him ready to seize it. How otherwise could he, with his decorous ancestry and his prudent soul, have become an adventurer? … And Koré? She had stood grimly to the duty which she conceived Fate to have laid upon her, and Fate, after piling the odds against her, had relented. Perhaps that is the meaning of courage. It wrestles with circumstance, like Jacob with the angel, till it compels its antagonist to bless it.

  I remembered a phrase which Vernon had once used about ‘the mailed virgin’. It fitted this girl, and I began to realise the meaning of virginity. True purity, I thought, whether in woman or man, was something far more than the narrow sex thing which was the common notion of it. It meant keeping oneself, as the Bible says, altogether unspotted from the world, free from all tyranny and stain, whether of flesh or spirit, defying the universe to touch even the outworks of the sanctuary which is one’s soul. It must be defiant, not the inert fragile crystal, but the supple shining sword. Virginity meant nothing unless it was mailed, and I wondered whether we were not coming to a better understanding of it. The modern girl, with all her harshness, had the gallantry of a free woman. She was a crude Artemis, but her feet were on the hills. Was the blushing sheltered maid of our grandmother’s day no more than an untempted Aphrodite?

  These were queer reflections, I know, for a man like me, but they gave me contentment, as if I had somehow made my peace with life. For a long time I listened to the ripple of the water and watched the sky lighten to dim grey and the east flush with sunrise. It had become very cold and I was getting sleepy, so I hunted about for a mattress to make myself a bed. But a thought made me pause. How would these two, who had come together out of the night, shake down on the conventional roads of marriage? To the end of time the desire of a woman should be to her husband. Would Koré’s eyes, accustomed to look so masterfully at life, ever turn to Vernon in the surrender of wifely affection? As I looked at the two in the bows I wondered.