The Blessing of Pan

by Lord Dunsany

  “Well,” answered Hetley, “very few of those rites, or any really authentic appearance of Pan, seem to have come down to them past the Peloponnesian War, which as you may possibly remember was where my period began.”

  “Your period began there?” said Anwrel so faintly that the Rector did not hear him.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  “You only began at the Peloponnesian War,” Anwrel repeated.

  “Yes,” said Hetley, “I never studied earlier than that. It’s a big period you know, the time of the Greeks. It’s practically from the dawn of civilisation right up to broad morning.”

  “Oh, yes,” Anwrel agreed.

  “No, I never read anything earlier than the Peloponnesian War,” said Hetley.

  “And they worshipped Pan no more?” asked Anwrel.

  “Well, they kept his fire alight for a while, perhaps for a hundred years. But...”

  “His fire?” said Anwrel.

  “A fire on an altar that they had in a cave not far from the Acropolis. But they let it out in a few generations.”

  “Then you think Pan never influenced them any later than that?” Anwrel asked.

  “No, no,” said Hetley, alarmed at being committed to any large statement he had not made, for he had a very considerable reputation. “I didn’t say that. An influence is another matter. Of influences one may say that the more powerful the influence, whatever it is, the longer it will last. I can’t say how long the influence came down, only that there seem to have been no authentic renewals of it in my period, the period I studied. They do not appear to have kept it alive themselves with any important rites; and Pan himself does not appear to have.... But I am speaking as though he really existed; one does sometimes speak from that point of view if one has been thoroughly immersed in the folklore of another age.”

  “Mr. Hetley,” said Anwrel, “you never heard of the Reverend Arthur Davidson?”

  “No,” said Hetley, “I don’t think I did.”

  “He did great harm in Wolding,” said Anwrel, “before I came. In fact he absconded. And I succeeded him. He did great harm there. And it is his influence, working now, his influence, that is turning my poor folk to the most heathen fancies. They still come to church, as you saw, but spiritually they are little better off than many that missionaries travel far to convert. And they are getting worse. They are getting worse.”

  “Well,” said the Rector, “of course you preach to them. That is obvious. But if I may give a word of advice...”

  “It is what I have come for,” said Anwrel earnestly.

  “You spoke of their spiritual needs,” said Hetley. “I have always found that spiritual things follow very closely the physical. I remember being very much struck once by seeing some light white clouds over a range of hills; they took the shape of the hills exactly. What more ethereal than white clouds, what more material than rocky hills? And yet so it was. It was this chance observation that set me observing more; and I began to see in my own parish that boys that did not take exercise, boys who would not play games, were not merely less robust, which I had thought was the doctor’s business, but were spiritually weaker and often had nasty minds, though they might be in the choir. It made me far more mundane. I had thought that the pulpit was my one strong place from which to attack sin, I now found a more impregnable place on the cricket-field. It was perhaps a humbling discovery, if I had credited myself with any learning, but having found it I held on to it.”

  “Yes; yes, I see,” said Anwrel with a hopelessness in his tones that Hetley missed.

  “Yes, I got them fit, and keen on the game,” continued Hetley. “It’s a queer thing, but I can only give you the fact; they were much better choir-boys. Now of course in cricket one must proceed intelligently, as in anything else; and, do you know, I found nobody all round me, teaching boys to play cricket, who ever taught them anything but batting. Sometimes perhaps they taught them to field as well, but that was all. Now just consider: supposing you have a team of boys that you’ve taught to bat: they can all bat a bit, but supposing you’ve taught them to bat a little bit better. What happens? They play another parish and make a lot of runs. Another day they play and make very few runs. Why? Simply because one parish had a bowler and the other hadn’t. A thing that everybody leaves merely to chance. But you can make bowlers.”

  “Yes, I see,” said Anwrel mournfully.

  But Hetley did not hear him.

  “You can make them,” he continued. “Choose a boy with long delicate fingers. Don’t waste time with the others. And merely show him where to put those fingers. Why! There are boys who don’t know what the seam of the ball is for. Tell them. And after that there is only one thing more. Pitch. Do you know what I give them to bowl at? A white handkerchief flat on the ground. If they knock the stumps down I leave them down. But if the handkerchief gets moved, back it goes at once. Pitch is everything. And if a boy can put five balls out of the six on to that handkerchief, he is a great bowler. Teach him to work his fingers on top of that, and he is invincible. Where are your village batsmen then? You get only one such boy on your team, and you’ll win all your matches. You’ll be able to do anything with your parish then.”

  “I fear it’s too late,” said Anwrel.

  “Eh?”

  “Too late.”

  CHAPTER XXII

  ANWREL LOOKS AT THE ENEMY

  ANWREL left as soon as he could; shown out to the wicket gate, the best stiles and the readiest track pointed out to him, all with the utmost kindness; yet he left with more melancholy in his heart than I wish to tell, even if each vague trouble that harassed his thoughts could be reduced to coherent words. And equally vague were his hopes; for the cathedral was at first but a landmark to him, and the idea came only gradually to him to enter it, and therein to be assured, as he had been a week ago, that the conquest by Christianity was complete, and that so late in time as this, in these islands at any rate, there remained no enemy able to question it.

  Logically, a fact in Wolding was a fact for ever, and to look back at it from Snichester would not alter it. But distressed minds call on logic little more than men with broken legs send for the carpenter. The cathedral was growing enormous as he neared it, while Wolding was but a little thought in his mind, however vivid and painful. The cathedral with all the weight of material things, with all its vast bulk and its buttresses, imposed its point of view on all, far and wide over Snichester, and had done so, far through time. It was not merely a frail spiritual thing, like a poet’s sonnet that the materialist could deride; it had weight and bulk and splendour. It was not easy to stand in those fields just where they lapped against Snichester, and to feel that the cathedral’s cause had been defeated. So Anwrel found himself going towards the cathedral, as outposts worsted in some little encounter fall back on a fortress.

  One purpose he had in approaching it, as soon as that purpose grew clear, and that was to see in the vast fane that all his fears were wrong: he wished a fact to become unenacted. And this illusion would have surely come to him amongst those quiet aisles, lit by dim light through pale windows and by the red glow through the dress of St. Ethelbruda. But coming to it by the way that he came, and not by the narrow street right underneath it by which he had come before, he looked upward more often, and saw far more of the great temple’s exterior than he had ever thought about. It looked like a different land up there, raised up above our earth, a land of hills and valleys, with one great tower amongst them, and dozens of pinnacles; and even, as one came near, a white population, peering round high comers and over the tops of the walls, bright white like angels. He came nearer, still gazing upwards. But they were not angels. As he walked slowly round the precipitous walls gazing up at the leering faces, all desire to enter the cathedral went; for among the things carved near the summit of that fortress of Christianity, among the things that Christian hands had fashioned, and that Christian minds must have known, was the very enemy that the Bishop would not
fight, that Hetley would but half recognise, the conqueror of Wolding, goat-hooved Pan.

  “You are looking at the gargoyles, sir?” said a verger, coming up to that motionless figure gazing there.

  “Yes,” said Anwrel.

  “That’s Pan,” said the verger.

  “Yes.”

  The verger waited, ready to take him up the worn stone spiral staircase, to show him the gargoyles in which he seemed so interested. But Anwrel remained silent; till he said: “Do you think...?” But did not complete his sentence and went away.

  “Queer old bird,” thought the verger, and went to find someone else to take up to the roof to see his favourite gargoyles.

  But Anwrel thought:— “They have known it.

  They have had this very thing in their consciousness. Christian men at work on a cathedral. And simple minds, not inventors or poets.”

  It made a world of difference. If he had feared, thought of, or seen, some fantastic thing that no one else had imagined, there was nothing in the telling of the story to separate it from the symptoms of delirium. But, terribly strange as was the experience that had befallen his parish, the actual influence came from a thing that no Christian had thought it strange to carve in stone, and that none were surprised to see whenever they went to attend the service in the cathedral. The Bishop could not say to him now, “What? Hooves did you say?” or “What! Reed pipes?” for the thing had been known for ages. He would go and see the Bishop.

  So he went by curious houses, whose roofs the ages had undulated, by by-ways and narrow streets, and the bridge over the Snale, and marched up to the Palace. He rang the bell resolutely; and, when the butler appeared, said: “Could I see the Bishop?”

  “I will see, sir,” said the butler, somehow conveying by his tones and his air that this most extravagant request would receive the kindliest consideration. And Anwrel was left with his thoughts, which were still resolute. He had been almost cowed by the awful loneliness of his disaster. Never had such a thing happened to any other parish. Never had anyone else’s imagination been burdened with the thing that burdened his. So he had felt till he saw Pan carved on the very cathedral wall. But now the loneliness at least had lifted: the thing had been known for ages. Dreadful it still was; but he would not have to explain it detail by detail to a doubting mind. It was known like murder, shocking, but credible enough. And, if anyone thought that the tale he told, as he had it from Mrs. Tichener, was a figment of delirium, he need only point to the cathedral.

  The butler returned with the chaplain. He was dark-haired, very large, a bit younger than Anwrel, and very ruddy in the face.

  “I am Anwrel from Wolding,” said the vicar, “and I wanted to see the Bishop.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” said the chaplain.

  “I’m afraid it’s rather early to call, but...”

  “Well, of course that is the trouble,” said the chaplain. “The Bishop’s very busy this morning. In fact he’s receiving a deputation. It’s rather important, and may take some time. But if you would care to have a talk with me, I’m very much in with the Bishop’s plans. And of course he has told me all about Wolding.”

  “All about it?” said Anwrel.

  “Well, yes,” said the chaplain. “You had a little trouble with some of your more frivolous parishioners I remember. My name’s Porton. You know I wrote to you?”

  “Yes,” said Anwrel.

  “But won’t you come in here?” And the chaplain led the way to a room adjoining the hall. “We smoke in here. Will you have a cigar?”

  Anwrel declined it.

  “I’m sorry the Bishop won’t be disengaged all the morning,” said Porton, “but it’s a rather important meeting. It’s about those words, you know, in the National Anthem. Scatter his enemies. There’s a wide-spread feeling that that is no Christian sentiment and cannot be reconciled with Christian feeling. The Liberal party are almost solid about it. And it is felt that either the words should be altered and the thing expressed far more mildly, or, better still, that the whole of that verse should be re-written, by someone with a taste for writing verse, in such a manner as to give no offence to anybody, at home or abroad. I believe that will be done. Meanwhile the Bishop has to decide what recommendation should go up from this diocese.”

  “I see,” said Anwrel.

  “But you wished to talk about Wolding.”

  “Yes,” said Anwrel.

  “I hope you found those little lodgings all you could desire.”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And everything was all right when you got back to Wolding.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Not quite,” said Porton. “Dear me.”

  “No,” said Anwrel.

  “And what was it that was not quite as it should be?”

  “The way that they practise the rites of Pan instead of the Christian faith,” Anwrel answered.

  “Dear me,” said the chaplain. “They shouldn’t do that of course. Not at all. But are you quite sure it’s as bad as that? Are you sure they really, that they really do?”

  “You’ve heard of the Old Stones of Wolding. Something Druidic, or earlier. Pagan at any rate. They do some sort of worship there.”

  The chaplain’s method of getting through the great amount of business he had to do was to make everything as jolly as possible, and for this he was well adapted. But he did not look jovial now; his eyes looked a little frightened.

  “I think the Bishop will be able to see you in about an hour,” he said. “Could you come back in an hour’s time?”

  “Oh yes,” said Anwrel.

  “And I should get them to play cricket as much as possible,” said the chaplain. “Get them interested in that, and they’ll give up any silliness with those stones.”

  “Very well. I will,” said Anwrel.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  THE WOODS OF THE NIGHT

  ANWREL went out into the street with a fear, now growing into a certainty, that a situation too terrible to be faced would be dealt with merely by never being admitted. Ways of escape seemed to lead away from it, mostly towards the cricket-ground. For others, but not for him. He began to see that those charged with administrative duties might, for all their skill, make nothing of such a situation. He greatly feared that they might refuse to admit it, turning away from it altogether, rather than risk their strength in a losing fight. But these fears that none would help him, and the assumption that Pan must win, came partly from an oversight of some importance in any difficulty: it was half past two and he had forgotten his lunch. This he remedied at The Green Man, an inn that had never borrowed from French palaces the foreign name of hôtel, but called itself in honest English an inn; whose bow window on its first storey bulged out over the street, and where cold roast beef was ready. Here he waited long, and pulled out his pipe and smoked after his meal, and thought with none to disturb him.

  He was determined to persist in his demand for help, whatever the Bishop’s attitude. What puritanical fire was it that urged him on to fight so resolutely against that music that had entered his heart with its wild appeal and its pagan inspirations as much as anybody else’s in Wolding? Beautiful though it was, heart-soothing, and satisfying to yearnings that nothing else could appease, he knew it for the enemy and would not give in.

  When it was time for him to return to the Palace he arrived at the door punctually.

  “This way, sir,” said the butler.

  They came to a room in which the Bishop was sitting.

  “Ah,” said the Bishop after shaking hands, “my chaplain told me you had some difficulty in Wolding.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I remember you writing to me. There was some music you heard sometimes, and not quite the kind of music that... well a fantastic kind of thing, that rather excites the mind than performs the true function of music, which is of course the exact opposite.”

  “Just so, my lord.”

  “Whoever plays it would be better o
ccupied,” said the Bishop.

  “Yes, my lord; if I were able to persuade him.”

  “Exactly. And your own occupations? You have plenty of interests for light diversion in your leisure hours, which are no doubt few?”

  “I collect flowers, my lord, at this time of year.”

  “Ah, yes. I have Sowerby here if you would ever like to look up anything.”

  “I’m afraid,” said Anwrel, “that mine is an entirely unscientific collection. What we do is, my wife and I, we have a bowl which we fill with orchids when they first come out, the twayblade and the helleborine. Then we get the spotted orchid and the Man, and the scented orchid and a little later the pyramid orchid and the bee. We try to have as many different kinds as we can in the bowl together all the summer through.”

  “Do you ever get the fly?”

  “Oh, yes, sometimes,” said Anwrel.

  “Ah, I heard that they grew with you,” said the Bishop.

  “And sometimes,” said Anwrel, getting interested, “we get the Butterfly. There’s a wood near Wolding...”

  “Better not say a word about that,” said the Bishop, “not even to me. It’s wonderful how such information spreads, and if it got to London you’d have twenty people coming down one Saturday to dig it up, or at any rate tear its roots Out”; “That is quite true, my lord,” said Anwrel warmly, for he loved to talk with men that understood flowers. But the Bishop left that subject.

  “And in the Autumn and Winter?” he asked. “Are you able to find plenty of interests through those months too?”

  “I collect worked flints,” he said.

  “Ah,” said the Bishop; “well, you couldn’t live in a better place for it. Wolding has, I believe, a name amongst the geologists. It’s on the hills that you find them I suppose?”

  “Yes, my lord. Especially the eoliths.”

  “Ah. Yes. Well, they provide very interesting discussions. You know some of them maintain that they have not been worked by man at all?”