A Night on the Moor and Other Tales of Dread

by R. Murray Gilchrist

  ‘ ,Twas thou who wakened this folly in me!’ she said. ‘Thou, who are nothing but a leaden image!’

  She thrust away the withered roses, replacing them with fresh buds wet and heavy. When this was done, she went to the tall jet d'eau, and leaning over the rim of the basin strove to catch reflection of her face. The moonlit ripples shook beauty into grotesqueness; she returned again to the hedge and threw herself on the sward at Dryas’s feet.

  ‘Surely there is some truth in ancient tales,’ she said. ‘Why should it not be that the thing which hath wrought this strangeness in me, may at times be warm with human life . . . ,Tis the likeness of a perfect man - a god!’

  She rose, raised her arms, and caught the faun about the neck, kissing the brow where her hand had pressed. The metal was key-cold to her lips; with many sighs she went away again.

  A boy’s laughing face moved in the shadow; his eyes followed her past the fountain to the sunken court where the cedars grew; then, seeing her rest there on the lowermost stair, he moved to the niche and swung the gilded Dryas aside and stood himself upon the pedestal . . .

  Lady Greenleaf was tortured with fantastic madness. Her breast rose and fell quickly; her hands were out-thrust as if to embrace. About her shoulders, from which the shawl had slipped, her hair hung in long tresses, swayed to-and-fro by the light breeze.

  Ere long she began to weep and to beat her bosom. ‘True happiness is denied me!’ she whimpered. ‘Only today hath the sleeping love awakened!’

  Once more she hastened to the niche. The wind had scattered the roses, the faun’s head was unadorned. She knelt, her hands pressed to her face. ‘Waken! waken!’ she prayed.

  The strenuous note in her voice startled her; her head drooped; the tears trickled faster between her fingers and fell to the grass.

  ‘Have compassion on me! Thou alone has brought forth my love!’

  There came a sound as if one nearby sighed in deep delight . . . surely ‘twas the soul, coming down from that pastoral heaven, where the demigods sing and play in everlasting noontide. She redoubled her clamours.

  ‘Waken, ’tis a woman who cries!’

  She rose fearfully; she threw her arms around his neck - found it no longer cold, hut pulsing with living veins. For the first moment she was awed; then her voice rose with sharper pleading.

  The glittering arms were outstretched slowly; she felt the motion, but saw naught, for her eyes were dimmed. She heard the beating of a heart; she felt a warm breath touching her cheek.

  ‘One kiss, such as thou givest the nymphs of heaven,’ she murmured.

  The faun’s lips met hers; one hand buried itself in her hair. At the contact an odd fear overcame her; she remembered the story of Jove and Semele, and with a sudden motion freed herself and flew, trembling, back to the house. Another time, perchance, when the glory had grown more familiar . . . who knows? She closed her chamber door, threw herself upon the bed, and fell into a heavy sleep, from which she did not waken until noontide.

  She looked around strangely. Her pantoufles lay at the bedside, as when she had first retired; nothing in the place was changed. She went to the window and gazed along the vista of the rose-garden, and saw the gilded Dryas still resting in his niche.

  She began to laugh so loudly that her waiting-woman was alarmed, and ran in from the ante-room.

  ‘I have had the oddest dream!’ cried Lady Greenleaf. ‘A miracle of a dream!’

  The abigail pressed her to reveal it, bidding her hurry meanwhile, for the guest was leaving; but she laughed again. ‘Nay, ’tis all mine own; none shall ever know it.’

  She dressed hastily, lest her husband’s godson should suspect some discourtesy. As soon as she was made ready, she went to the library where he waited, and made due apologies to him. ‘An incubus hath troubled me,’ she said. ‘I slept ill and woke late.’

  Her eyes met his; he was smiling and blushing.

  ‘The most wonderful dream woman ever had!’ she continued, drawing him to the window. ‘You see yon gilded statue? Methought ’twas tenanted by a soul - a god’s soul.’

  ‘Such things are possible,’ he replied. ‘Have not we the precedent of the sculptor and the maid of stone?’

  ‘Ay, but that was in the days when the gods really visited the earth. My dream was stranger.’

  He grasped her fingers roughly; she withdrew them with some sharpness.

  ‘We countrywomen are simple,’ she said. ‘The little courtesies of your world are unknown to us. Ah, they have brought your coach! -is it not in your power to stay longer? I am afraid that your visit has been unconscionably dull. Will not you dine - perhaps my husband may return soon?’

  ‘I should be most happy if I could; but tomorrow I must be at Court. I bade your servants not waken you, though I hated the thought of leaving sans adieu. As for your entertainment, I was never so well content; I shall bear to my death the recollection of your kindness.’

  ‘My lord will be sorely disappointed,’ she said. ‘He hath often spoken of you.’

  For reply he stooped and gave her a warm kiss. She drew back, white with annoyance. ‘You are officious!’ she cried.

  ‘Do not you remember?’ he whispered.

  She had regained her composure. ‘It was indeed an honour to entertain you,’ she said, in a voice filled with wonder. ‘And now, when I reflect on my endeavours to instruct you in the art of building pagodas, I can only praise your patience.’

  The house-steward came to the doorway. ‘Your lordship’s coach waits.’

  The lad offered his arm; Lady Greenleaf touched it lightly and accompanied him to the forecourt. Ere taking his place, he murmured in her ear: ‘Do not you remember?’

  She frowned, racking her brains. ‘I cannot understand, unless it be that the music was excellent.’

  So he smiled gravely, and kissed her hand in a very formal way. Inside the coach he leaned back on the cushions, gazing with perplexed eyes into nothing . . .

  Noel returned mourning before nightfall; but she drove away all his grief for the loss of his sister, with a thousand quaint descriptions

  of the gambols of fauns and nymphs, of the shower of coins that fell upon Jove’s mistress, and of Venus’s shame in the golden net. Such scenes Verrio had depicted on the ceilings, and the walls of the staircases; but Lady Greenleaf talked as if her own eyes had beheld.

  ‘You might have dwelt in classic times!’ said Noel.

  He held her at arm’s length, wondering at the beauty that had ripened even since yesterday.

  ‘Who knows that I was not a goddess or a nymph?’ said she.

  The Priest's Pavan

  Yesternight I took my viol, and made my way over the limestone cliffs to the concave where stand the ruins of Woodsetts, the house Vignola - he who designed Saint Angelo’s Castle in Rome - had built beside the fallen abbey, for his boon-fellow, Bateman de Caus. And as I sat, drawing the strings together, nigh the pedestal of the Goddess of Plenty in the white summer-house, behold, the overgrown yew and privet bushes that had once been clipped in forms of dragon and hippogriff, shrank again to their old preciseness, and the terminal statues rose from the grass, and the wreathed columns bore again their garment of midsummer roses.

  I played ‘The Priest’s Pavan’ that I had learned from the Book of Airs, and at the first note the fire-stains on the frontispiece vanished, and one by one the gaping windows donned their lattices, and the leaden roof shone above the parapet, and the light of a thousand sconces fell about me in broken rillocks of gold.

  ... It was no longer the burr of my viol that rang in my ears, but the chirping of a virginals in music that was conceived by a divinity.

  One noontide, more than ten years ago, my lord came to the town and found me by the table in my chamber, copying in fair hand the suite of dances that I had made for Daphne’s wedding. His tumid red face shone unctuously; his attire was disordered with the heat.

  He flung a parchment book upon the table, and laughed, as he ever laugh
ed, like one drunk with wine.

  ‘T’other morning, when they took up a stone that had cracked in the monk’s chapel,’ said he, ‘my steward found this in a brazen casket. A set of dances such as are not used nowadays - of music far superior to aught such crickets as you create!’

  I could not demur, for my lord was a cognoscento, and although he ofttimes affected liking for my work, and professed to find genius therein, I knew that ’twas but humble in his regard. His life had been spent in the great world; players and singers had been damned by his

  frown. So I took up the book, and opening its pages saw quaintly-shapen notes ranged up and down like little coffins draped in scarlet and black.

  ‘ ’Tis in lute tabulation,’ I said. ‘A book of the airs ecclesiastics loved ere the Reformation brought them low!’

  ‘Ay,’ commented my lord. ‘Mayhap the work of the white monk who haunts the precincts o’ nights - him the humble folk call Ambrose. The very sight of that page evokes pictures of woodmen’s wives, oddly gowned, hey-trix-come-go-trixing in the cloisters! But farewell to this light talk! Madam, when I put it in her hand (she hath a rage for antiquities), sat her down to the harpsichord, and played things that drove away the scene before our eyes and set us a-wandering in strange places. She fell a-longing, and by her whim all the plans for music at our little mistress’s nuptials are changed. That which you have done shall be brought to light when the lass gives her master a fine boy. Her mother hath sworn to revive all the dances -see, here at the end is the description - and our guests are being taught galliards, lavoltas, pavans .. . What I have come to tell is that naught will content her save that the musicians (receiving their due pay) be disbanded, and that you alone will sit in the gallery and tinkle an ancient virginals from sunset to midnight, whilst we, poor fools! hop and scurry like grigs.’

  My heart was burdened with disappointment, but I held my peace. Daphne had been my pupil; I had taught her rosy fingers to dash like firedrakes over the keys, to draw softer notes than the wood-dove’s. I had not seen the bridegroom (the m: ch was made at Court), or perchance the excellence of my music might have been marred. As it was, I had thrown into each chord a speech of my devotion to the maid. She had ever known that I regarded her with great tenderness; and being endowed, despite her green youth, with a keener insight than her fellows, had twined wreaths of laurel for my grey head, and made my chamber ever bright with flowers. The knowledge that he whom her parents had chosen was a man of advanced years and more than evil fame, had distressed me for the while; but the child, from her very innocence, had hitherto displayed no t ; .taste when she spoke of the future.

  My lord gave me a folded paper. ‘Madam hath writ here the order of the dances,’ he said. ‘There is but short time for you to study, since, the wedding-day being Thursday, the book must be returned to her on the morrow. “The Priest’s Pavan” is the last - ’tis the wildest thing in the world - all strutting and curtseying and twisting the arms and pointing downwards with the thumbs! Anan, master fiddler, I must leave you, for my son-in-law waits below, too gouty to climb your stairs. Be sure no harm comes to the book; for, if I may believe madam, it has worth above rubies.’

  He descended, panting, to his chariot; peering from my casement, I saw, beside the opened panel, the face of the bridegroom, wrinkled, yellow, and unholy, with the dull eyes that only sparkle at the sight of the table or of a woman’s loveliness. His lace cravat hung beneath his chin like the beard of an African ape. He poked his fingers betwixt my lord’s ribs, and cackled foolishly.

  * ,Tis a wench you keep there!’ he cried. ‘To the deuce with your talk of music-men! A sweet morsel, red and creamy as Temple’s nectarines, and with hair soft and light as tow! Send for her down, so that I may look on your choice. A minx, I vow! Madam shall know - ’ I heard no more, for the stone-horses leaped forward and the chariot lurched away towards the market-place, where the fresh huckster wenches from the uplands stood beside their stores. When the bystreet was quiet again, I passed to my harpsichord, and played the music of the Book of Airs from end to end, finding at the very first that a masterpiece of either good or evil genius lay before me on the stand.

  . . . Never before had I dreamed of melody so exquisitely pleasurable, so bitterly painful. In each were two things - the flitting of white angels over the lawns of Heaven, and the dancing of fiends around the tormenting fires of Hell. The fragrance of ever-blooming flowers, and the stench of brimstone, hovered about in ghostly clouds. I heard the laughter of pure children, and the cachinnations of imps. Ere long half my chamber was filled with a radiance infinitely brighter than the dying sun’s; the other half was lost in impenetrable blackness. My body was sick and trembling, but my spirit was full of eager delight.

  At ‘The Priest’s Pavan’ I was overcome with frenzy and with ecstasy. This told of the war between Heaven and Hell, of the clashing of archangels’ lances - of devils rushing forward and falling back - of breaches made in golden ramparts - of Apollyon leading his myrmidons almost to the battlements. But the voice of God was lifted in thunder; and Hell with its warriors sank seething together through Chaos.

  My fingers curled like the talons of a bird; my head sank till my chin lay upon my breast. This was no budget of dances, no toy to please madam the countess withal, but an epic of Divinity׳. Perchance it had passed from generation to generation of churchmen, as our Bible in later years hath passed to us. ’Twas music such as is heard at the triumphal feasts of Cherubim.

  ‘I will not play it,’ I said. ‘Although I lose my lord’s favour, I’ll be no party to profanity. Tis not meet that such a group about the Court should caper to its passion!’

  In the night-time, as I lay sleepless, the parchment shone like touchwood. I rose - hid it in a coffer, yet still I knew of its glittering, and the obsession remained. At dawn I enclosed it in my leathern wallet, and prepared to start for Woodsetts. But on the threshold I was met by Daphne, hooded so that until she had unknotted the throat-strings none might have known her for the bride.

  ‘The women rose betimes, to gather midsummer dew,’ she said, ‘and I stole apart and ran, so that I might bid my master farewell, and tell him how that I shall ever pray for his fame.’

  The maid was pale as death; her eyes were red with restlessness and weeping. I drew her into the chamber, and there, as she had still the ways of a child, she sat upon my knee, and passed her fingers through my hair, and kissed my forehead.

  ‘ ’Tis a long farewell,’ she whispered. ‘Who knows that I may ever return? I have fear at times that my life must shortly reach its term. I would fain have you think of me sometimes.’

  ‘I am old and withered, Mistress Daphne,’ I made answer, ‘and there is no hope of fame for old men; but as long as I have breath you shall lie in the innermost cabinet.’

  Big tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘Ah, master,’ she sighed, ‘ ’tis hard to go away from the folk here to a strange country with one I understand nothing of, and to know that he will be with me always! My mother tells me to have no fear, for my husband will hold me as the apple of his eye. Alack! to be without young playmates!’

  She dried her face with her kerchief, and rose; her glance fell on the book in the wallet.

  ‘Will not you play to me of that music?’ she said. ‘Tomorrow night all dance to it. We are being instructed in the oddest steps.’

  I shook my head. ‘Nay, little one, you must never hear it. This morning I take it back to your lady mother with word that I cannot follow her behest.’

  Daphne sank to her knees and clasped my neck. ‘Then play it to me but once,’ she pleaded. ‘I was ever an apt learner, and it may be that I shall understand. When I heard before, out of the harshness came a curious joy; but you will turn each note into a strung jewel.’

  I gave her no naysay, but moved to the harpsichord and played. And behind me at first I heard a sound of moaning, then of breath leaping after breath; but when I came to ‘The Priest’s Pavan’, Daphne was silent as the gr
ave. I turned, to find her standing erect, with rapt countenance, her hands clasped over burgeoning breasts.

  A while passed ere she spoke; her voice came low and trembling. * ’Tis my desire, master, that you play thus at my nuptials.’ And she left the chamber with no other word.

  So it was that on the appointed night I sat alone in the musicians’ gallery of the ballroom at Woodsetts. This place had in long-past times been the refectory of the monks, and the master-builder, Vignola, had chosen that save for the new floor of oak that swung on iron chains, all should remain unaltered. Behind the tapestries of the Gobelins, which my lord’s father had purchased, still might be found dim wall-pictures of Christ at Gethsemane, of the Virgin, and of the Aposdes; the light of the candles showed the company from the Court, all bedizened with trinkets and plumes and brocades, moving to and fro in clusters.

  Madam came secretly up the narrow staircase, and beckoned me into the shadow, not deeming it fit that the wedding guests should see her converse with one so inferior. The lines of her forehead were eloquent of caprice and satisfaction.

  ‘No chance had I to speak with you before,’ she said. ‘The whirl of this merry day hath held me every moment. What think you of the bride - almost a woman now, tomorrow on the way to matronhood?’

  Looking down, I saw Daphne, quivering affrightedly, like a white culver amongst ravens. At hand sauntered the groom, simpering, whispering to the men-folk behind screening fingers.

  ‘I know not what to think,’ I said.

  Madam gave no heed. ‘Impatient for the signal of withdrawal, I protest! See how restlessly she stirs! But, master, what of the music? What of my plan of giving life again to these ancient dances? ’Tis vastly taking. Duchess Mary (she who wears the sombre gown with yellow leaves) declares that her recollection tells that not according to the teachings of the book were galliards and lavoltas danced! They say her age exceeds the century! The beldam dotes; but, even if she be right, why, ’tis a fine thing to dance in styles past human memory. And even if, as she fears, they be enchanted dances, ’tis so much the better. It may be that ghosts will rise!’