The Blessing of Pan

by Lord Dunsany

  I will not chronicle such mournful thoughts. Let us follow instead the body, the dark coat and the felt hat, that they drove onwards. We do not always see the spirit clearly outlined in that shadow that it casts on earth, and that has chief honours here, the human body; but it was clear enough in the appearance of Anwrel, a woebegone figure. One of the conquered indeed; for in every neglected thing he passed, as he strode swiftly again through the village, he saw something that, if it were only a neatness about a garden or a tidiness about a path, was a part of the olden ways now overthrown, and a new joy had come to the village, a joy in which he could take no part while anathema had any meaning to him. He saw young men with circles of roses on their bare heads: he passed them hurriedly. And as he climbed Wold Hill beyond the village he saw, running over the slope t’wards Mrs. Airland’s, Lily wearing a wreath of convolvulus in her hair. Then he knew that he should find them gone from the Old Stones, and he pressed on to find what traces he could see of this new worship; how far they had got; well knowing that, when the ceremonial of it became more intricate or in any way ampler than that of the lawful and right service he held, it would be the end of his ministrations. What they did at the Old Stones he knew not, not even knowing of their ritual dance: one thing he dreaded more than everything else, barely letting his thoughts hint it; he dreaded lest they should make sacrifice there, offering burnt offerings unto heathen gods. After that, if it came to that, after that they would never come to his church again.

  When the vicar came to the beeches amongst which gnarled yew-trees stood, that had known the hill before ever the beech-trees came, night seemed to enter the wood with him. For some while now the Evening Star had been seen, but the sky was still full of daylight; and, like a pale sapphire in a setting of diamonds, the planet was shining through that other light. To the hushed wood the daylight came no longer, and the flash of the Evening Star above the branches was the only clear light that the vicar saw, as he went uphill over the twisted roots. At the top he rested, sitting down on a root, alone with those ceaseless thoughts. And for some while he stayed there, for it was a steep climb up from the village, though the last part of it was of necessity slow because of the dark of the wood. Then he rose and went down the far slope past beech and pine, going softly without a sound, a spy in his own parish. And so he came to the edge of the wood and looked out on the other valley, standing behind a tree and peering carefully round it at the Old Stones of Wolding clustered below in their field. No one was there, but there was a glow on the stones.

  He walked towards them and saw the sides turned inwards, those that were furthest from him, glowing like ruddy faces. And soon he saw the soft dance of wavering shadows, that had not danced perhaps for ages and ages, flickering up and down whenever a breeze would dance with them. And there on the long flat stone was a flame as light as a fairy, lucidly burning in the midst of the circle with the steady light that comes from spirit or oil, with which someone had soaked some rags, and had left them to burn all night. And an awful memory of something Hetley had said of a cave near the Acropolis struck the vicar as sudden and chill as the wind that blows before thunder.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  MRS. DUFFIN TAKES SUNDAY SCHOOL

  ‘“THOSE were anxious days for the vicar, and yet he did nothing useful. He investigated and watched. He saw the village drifting all that week, like a derelict galleon, with cable rusted through, that a current takes away out of a harbour, slowly to cold grey distance. And, as lights and landmarks would vanish one by one from the sight of any mariner lost with the galleon, some derelict of the race of men, doomed to the derelict ship; so many a custom, many an ancient way, many remembered trifles, that were always the first to welcome the homing thoughts of absent Wolding men, faded away that week and were lost in the wastes of Time. It especially pained the vicar, although he could not say why, that Blegg was no longer clipping the yew in his garden to keep it shaped like a peacock. In another garden the hollyhocks drooped and broke, through not being properly tied. And nowhere was the hay being properly cut. And the heathen rites continued. All this the vicar watched, a melancholy figure haunting the evening, but still he did nothing himself.

  Had physical action been demanded he would have taken his part, at his age, and even against a hundred men. For everywhere the physical is limited. But this was spiritual and he looked for help, had looked for it ever since this story began, and was waiting for it yet. The telegram had undoubtedly been sent; it was one of the last that anyone had troubled to send from Wolding; and no message had come to say it had not been delivered. So he knew that the brief address had been sufficient to find that curious figure. There seemed nothing to do but to wait.

  Sometimes he thought that Augusta, by some silence, implied that he ought to act himself. But how? No one less than a bishop, he felt, could advise him in such a spiritual crisis. Or Perkin. A man perpetually tossed on spiritual storms. A mariner of the unknown.

  So he waited, and prayed for Perkin. Once in that week he forlornly climbed the hill on his side of the valley, and went over the downs to see Welkin. He found him in a field.

  “Well,” he said, “Welkin; those warts getting any better?”

  “No, sir. She can’t cure ’em.”

  It was as the vicar had feared.

  “She’s lost the knack of it, sir,” Welkin went on.

  “She could do it,” broke out the vicar, “only she won’t.”

  “It’s my belief, sir,” said Welkin, “as she can’t.”

  “She could do it,” the vicar repeated bitterly. “She could do it.” And he went away mumbling the same words to himself, and brooding on the failure of help wherever it was most due.

  Once in these days he met Tommy Duffin, out on the hill in the morning, and stopped and spoke with him, and realised from the unintelligent face that here was no young genius leading people away from ways that were wearing out to things that were new; but that the body and brain of Tommy Duffin were but the halting-place of some strayed power, that was moving out of the past on a journey none knew whither.

  “Going to play those pipes again this evening, Tommy?” he asked directly.

  “I don’t know, sir,” said Tommy.

  “What, you’re not going to play them this evening?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sir.”

  Yes that was it. A strayed power. And Tommy no more than a mossy stone in a stream, on which a traveller rests his foot for a moment. How should the moss know why?

  And all that week the little eternal things were coming softly back; bindweed was climbing up to daylight above the tops of the hedges, weeds visited gardens and stayed unmolested with their more gorgeous kin, tiny plants found homes unreproved in crevices amongst steps, tendrils exploring the air began to lean out across paths; moss heard the news and came quietly to chosen places, unnoticed and almost invisible, but dreaming of long long sojourn and quiet growth that should conquer all but the outlines of all whereon it seized; and ivy heard, and planned or hoped or trusted, for, while each small leaf is caring for nothing but to turn out to the sun, the deep core of the ivy that drives the sap to the tendrils dreams sullenly and alone of the overthrowing of cities. And rabbits came upon little lawns, and grew bolder and found the lettuces; and something taught foxes that they could come further down the slopes; for an awe was departing from man in the village of Wolding, now that he was turning back from the path that steam and steel had shown him, to ways that were more of the Earth that the foxes knew.

  All that week the little weeds came straggling back like the soldiers of a scattered army returning after defeat, and rallying on the lost field once again, as indeed they were; for the war with the weeds is won wherever a village is made, though the beaten green army comes back at last in the end.

  And all these days, with the village going from bad to worse, the vicar believed that his cause was not lost yet; for he clung to a hope that Mrs. Duffin, a steady church-going woman, would yet reprove her son
and put an end to the piping. If that hope failed him, nothing remained but Perkin.

  And it came round to Sunday, five days after the wire had gone to Perkin, six days, counting the day on which he must have got it; and seven days from Snichester to Wolding made an easy walk, even for an elderly man: it might be done in less.

  And they came to church again.

  All, then, was by no means lost. The vicar wondered that he could see no trace of gladness in Augusta’s face, sitting in a pew before him.

  He did not preach any special words to them. There was no need to, for he awaited advice from Perkin as to what line to take; and he had his hopes of Mrs. Duffin, whose bonnet he could clearly see; so that this trouble might all blow over yet. It was her turn to take Sunday School today. If she still did that, and still came to church, things were not so bad with the village as they might look at first sight, whatever Mrs. End did. Sunday School was at three: he would go and see Mrs. Duffin there: he had meant to see her before.

  Though he did not preach to them with any especial appeal that should lure them homeward from their perilous straying, yet he read the first two commandments with a gravity such as he seldom used. Indeed, after the first commandment, which he uttered in a voice that was thrillingly clear, he paused for some moments that the words might sink through the silence. And perhaps their effect was felt; but more than this was needed in such a crisis. And when the service was over Augusta said never a word of this. He knew then that she felt that he should make some great effort himself. Well, he would when Perkin came.

  Again they met Mr and Mrs. Duffin coming away from church, though Tommy was not with them.

  “You’re taking Sunday School today,” said the vicar. “Aren’t you, Mrs. Duffin?”

  “Well, sir,” began Mrs. Duffin.

  “Yes, you’re going. You said so this morning,” said Duffin. “Yes, she’s going to be there, sir.”

  “Well, yes, I’m going,” said Mrs. Duffin, “but—”

  It was all he wanted to hear. “Oh, that’s all right,” said the vicar.

  Up at the vicarage Anwrel sat down to lunch full of a cheerfulness that for many days had wandered far away from him. Sunday School, after all, more than counterbalanced the defection of Mrs. End. While Sunday School continued and people came to church he still held the parish for the cause that was right and just, whatever enemy might prowl on its borders. With Mrs. Duffin holding out at the Sunday School, and the arrival of his new ally daily expected, things might come right even yet. The vicar’s spirits rose, but Augusta sat silent with a look on her face that, if you caught it with a sidelong glance, not staring at it direct, seemed almost a look of dread.

  Somehow the time seemed to drag rather heavily; but when it came near three the vicar left the house, and walked down the hill to receive and to give encouragement in the little schoolroom where he pictured the Christian cause holding back for long the forces of paganism. The road was oddly empty. Not a soul did he see till he met with old Mrs. Tichener, coming away from the Sunday School. The old woman saw where he was going.

  “I shouldn’t go there, sir,” she said.

  “Go where, Mrs. Tichener?” he asked, not crediting her with having seen his gaze fixed full at the school, nor his deliberate pace, still less with having known the thoughts that were troubling him, or with being able to put two and two together more rapidly than he would even see one of the twos.

  “School, sir,” said Mrs. Tichener.

  “Not go to the school!” said the vicar. “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, sir.”

  “But why not?”

  “Oh, it was only a fancy of mine, sir.”

  Oh, the mystery of these villagers, when you asked them a plain question. Again and again he had noticed it. It was like a wall suddenly erected; no, something more primitive than that; like a hurdle suddenly lifted to keep out a wolf. It was thus that they would bar any further encroachment of an educated mind, if once they began to fear it was coming towards them. She had wished to tell him something, but any sudden enquiry from him, and it was like the wolf coming nearer: up went the barrier, and no questions of his would get him further now. What fancy of hers, what trivial treasure of her mind, would he have hurt if he had been allowed a little nearer to her thoughts? Well, it was no use trying to get further. He would go and see for himself.

  And still she stood and watched him and seemed to wish to dissuade him. Tiresome old woman: why couldn’t she give her reason? No, their queer old lore was enough for these old women: they never cared about reasons.

  “I wouldn’t go, sir,” she called after him. As he went by a window he saw Mrs. Duffin seated at the desk, and the school-room, as far as he could see, very much fuller than usual. Many of the older lads were there, though children were there too. Mrs. Duffin with her jet brooch and black bonnet, sitting there at the desk, gave him for a moment a confidence in the inviolability of the old order of things, such as a banner suddenly blown might have given to soldiers, rallying in ancient wars. And then a curious sound made him stand still to listen. Mrs. Duffin was chanting. She was chanting words slowly. And the words were not entirely English. “Egg, oh, pan, pan, tone, tone,” they went, and a little further. Then she stopped and repeated them. It was thus that the vicar was able to get a part of them accurately— “Egg, oh, pan, pan, tone, tone, lofone, R. K. D.” Then the chant went on to words that he could not remember. But there were memories for him in it. Here a word and there a word, and each one calling him back like old chimes to Cambridge. Why! It was Greek. He did not count himself a scholar. But he had not forgotten all his Greek, from the old days at Cambridge. And it was queer how the sound of those words after all these years brought back the Cam to him and the boats; and, oh dear me, youth. But Greek here, in the school-room at Wolding! What was she doing. And suddenly the words came to him. The few syllables he could remember at the beginning of the strange chant ran together and formed words, and the words made a fragment of a coherent sentence. meant: he looked it up afterwards and found that it was slopes. Meanwhile he guessed valleys and was not far out. “I Pan, of all the Arcadian valleys, King So that was what she was teaching them. Something so beautiful and strange and, aye, damnable, that it had lingered on and on for all these years in her memory. And the vicar shouted aloud: “The accursed blessing of Pan!”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  ARMING FOR THE STRUGGLE

  WHEN Anwrel returned to the vicarage that afternoon, and Augusta looked up at him from her chair without saying anything, he answered her thoughts with the words:— “Yes, I must do something myself.”

  When he said that he must do something, it went without saying, considering the enemy that he faced, that it must be the very utmost of which human effort was capable.

  Augusta nodded.

  “But why, why did he come here?” cried Anwrel.

  She looked out at the pleasant slope across the valley, with the sun on the grass, all wild, not harmed at all by anything that had changed the world in the restless 19th century. It got the sun all the morning and all the afternoon, and at evening the shadows came stealing down from the wood. In late summer the thyme would go rioting over the slope like bands of fairy children, and all the golden evening air would be heavy with its wild scent. And all through early summer the briar rose so scented passing breezes that she wondered how far the wandering fragrance went, and whether it came, if only perceived in dreams, to cities where folk knew nothing of briar rose. Not to men perhaps; but certainly to moths, that with their green eyes shining sailed up that stream of fragrance. It was indeed a pleasant slope.

  “Why not?” she said. “If he came back at all.”

  And still his mind was full of all the other places he might have gone to, with his sly pretence of being a clergyman. Why not to one of them instead of Wolding? Such thoughts are common to all troubles.

  “There’s something about the valley he must have liked,” she said.

 
“Weren’t there hundreds of other valleys for him?” he asked bitterly, and unreasonably. For he gave no thought to a factory here, a factory there, and a whole new town in the next place; and villas going up on hill-side after hill-side, arising out of no feeling in any human mind and reflecting no feeling back, brief monuments to pretentiousness, that would be down in two hundred years; and everywhere machinery with teeth and claws of steel getting its grip on the earth, that had belonged but a while ago to Man and his poor relations. There were not so many valleys, after all, that were unspoiled like this one.

  But still he uttered the cry of all minds that first come on a trouble: “Why here?”

  “There must be something about it,” she said.

  “But what?” he asked.

  “Don’t you remember,” she said, “how a wandering goat came to Wold Hill some years ago, and seemed to like it and stayed. It only died there last year. There must be something about the hill.”