Weird and Witty Tales of Mystery (13 page)

Darcy was far too interested to interrupt, though there was a question
he would have liked to ask, and Frank went on:

"Well, for the moment I was terrified, terrified with the impotent
horror of nightmare, and I stopped my ears and just ran from the place
and got back to the house panting, trembling, literally in a panic.
Unknowingly, for at that time I only pursued joy, I had begun, since I
drew my joy from Nature, to get in touch with Nature. Nature, force,
God, call it what you will, had drawn across my face a little gossamer
web of essential life. I saw that when I emerged from my terror, and I
went very humbly back to where I had heard the Pan-pipes. But it was
nearly six months before I heard them again."

"Why was that?" asked Darcy.

"Surely because I had revolted, rebelled, and worst of all been
frightened. For I believe that just as there is nothing in the world
which so injures one's body as fear, so there is nothing that so much
shuts up the soul. I was afraid, you see, of the one thing in the world
which has real existence. No wonder its manifestation was withdrawn."

"And after six months?"

"After six months one blessed morning I heard the piping again. I
wasn't afraid that time. And since then it has grown louder, it has
become more constant. I now hear it often, and I can put myself into
such an attitude toward Nature that the pipes will almost certainly
sound. And never yet have they played the same tune, it is always
something new, something fuller, richer, more complete than before."

"What do you mean by 'such an attitude toward nature'?" asked Darcy.

"I can't explain that; but by translating it into a bodily attitude it
is this."

Frank sat up for a moment quite straight in his chair, then slowly sank
back with arms outspread and head drooped.

"That," he said, "an effortless attitude, but open, resting, receptive.
It is just that which you must do with your soul."

Then he sat up again.

"One word more," he said, "and I will bore you no further. Nor unless
you ask me questions shall I talk about it again. You will find me, in
fact, quite sane in my mode of life. Birds and beasts you will see
behaving somewhat intimately to me, like that moor-hen, but that is
all. I will walk with you, ride with you, play golf with you, and talk
with you on any subject you like. But I wanted you on the threshold to
know what has happened to me. And one thing more will happen."

He paused again, and a slight look of fear crossed his eyes.

"There will be a final revelation," he said, "a complete and blinding
stroke which will throw open to me, once and for all, the full
knowledge, the full realization and comprehension that I am one, just
as you are, with life. In reality there is no 'me,' no 'you,' no 'it.'
Everything is part of the one and only thing which is life. I know that
that is so, but the realization of it is not yet mine. But it will be,
and on that day, so I take it, I shall see Pan. It may mean death, the
death of my body, that is, but I don't care. It may mean immortal,
eternal life lived here and now and for ever. Then having gained that,
ah, my dear Darcy, I shall preach such a gospel of joy, showing myself
as the living proof of the truth, that Puritanism, the dismal religion
of sour faces, shall vanish like a breath of smoke, and be dispersed
and disappear in the sunlit air. But first the full knowledge must be
mine."

Darcy watched his face narrowly.

"You are afraid of that moment," he said.

Frank smiled at him.

"Quite true; you are quick to have seen that. But when it comes I hope
I shall not be afraid."

For some little time there was silence; then Darcy rose.

"You have bewitched me, you extraordinary boy," he said. "You have been
telling me a fairy-story, and I find myself saying, 'Promise me it is
true.'"

"I promise you that," said the other.

"And I know I sha'n't sleep," added Darcy.

Frank looked at him with a sort of mild wonder as if he scarcely
understood.

"Well, what does that matter?" he said.

"I assure you it does. I am wretched unless I sleep."

"Of course I can make you sleep if I want," said Frank in a rather
bored voice.

"Well, do."

"Very good: go to bed. I'll come upstairs in ten minutes."

Frank busied himself for a little after the other had gone, moving the
table back under the awning of the veranda and quenching the lamp. Then
he went with his quick silent tread upstairs and into Darcy's room. The
latter was already in bed, but very wide-eyed and wakeful, and Frank
with an amused smile of indulgence, as for a fretful child, sat down on
the edge of the bed.

"Look at me," he said, and Darcy looked.

"The birds are sleeping in the brake," said Frank softly, "and the
winds are asleep. The sea sleeps, and the tides are but the heaving of
its breast. The stars swing slow, rocked in the great cradle of the
Heavens, and—"

He stopped suddenly, gently blew out Darcy's candle, and left him
sleeping.

Morning brought to Darcy a flood of hard commonsense, as clear and
crisp as the sunshine that filled his room. Slowly as he woke he
gathered together the broken threads of the memories of the evening
which had ended, so he told himself, in a trick of common hypnotism.
That accounted for it all; the whole strange talk he had had was under
a spell of suggestion from the extraordinary vivid boy who had once
been a man; all his own excitement, his acceptance of the incredible
had been merely the effect of a stronger, more potent will imposed on
his own. How strong that will was he guessed from his own instantaneous
obedience to Frank's suggestion of sleep. And armed with impenetrable
commonsense he came down to breakfast. Frank had already begun, and was
consuming a large plateful of porridge and milk with the most prosaic
and healthy appetite.

"Slept well?" he asked.

"Yes, of course. Where did you learn hypnotism?"

"By the side of the river."

"You talked an amazing quantity of nonsense last night," remarked
Darcy, in a voice prickly with reason.

"Rather. I felt quite giddy. Look, I remembered to order a dreadful
daily paper for you. You can read about money markets or politics or
cricket matches."

Darcy looked at him closely. In the morning light Frank looked even
fresher, younger, more vital than he had done the night before, and the
sight of him somehow dinted Darcy's armour of commonsense.

"You are the most extraordinary fellow I ever saw," he said. "I want to
ask you some more questions."

"Ask away," said Frank.

For the next day or two Darcy plied his friend with many questions,
objections and criticisms on the theory of life and gradually got out
of him a coherent and complete account of his experience. In brief
then, Frank believed that "by lying naked," as he put it, to the force
which controls the passage of the stars, the breaking of a wave, the
budding of a tree, the love of a youth and maiden, he had succeeded in
a way hitherto undreamed of in possessing himself of the essential
principle of life. Day by day, so he thought, he was getting nearer to,
and in closer union with the great power itself which caused all life
to be, the spirit of nature, of force, or the spirit of God. For
himself, he confessed to what others would call paganism; it was
sufficient for him that there existed a principle of life. He did not
worship it, he did not pray to it, he did not praise it. Some of it
existed in all human beings, just as it existed in trees and animals;
to realize and make living to himself the fact that it was all one, was
his sole aim and object.

Here perhaps Darcy would put in a word of warning.

"Take care," he said. "To see Pan meant death, did it not?"

Frank's eyebrows would rise at this.

"What does that matter?" he said. "True the Greeks were always right,
and they said so, but there is another possibility. For the nearer I
get to it, the more living, the more vital and young I become."

"What then do you expect the final revelation will do for you?"

"I have told you," said he. "It will make me immortal."

But it was not so much from speech and argument that Darcy grew to
grasp his friend's conception as from the ordinary conduct of his life.
They were passing, for instance, one morning down the village street,
when an old woman, very bent and decrepit but with an extraordinary
cheerfulness of face, hobbled out from her cottage. Frank instantly
stopped when he saw her.

"You old darling! How goes it all?" he said.

But she did not answer, her dim old eyes were riveted on his face; she
seemed to drink in like a thirsty creature the beautiful radiance which
shone there. Suddenly she put her two withered old hands on his
shoulders.

"You're just the sunshine itself," she said, and he kissed her and
passed on.

But scarcely a hundred yards further a strange contradiction of such
tenderness occurred. A child running along the path toward them fell on
its face, and set up a dismal cry of fright and pain. A look of horror
came into Frank's eyes, and, putting his fingers in his ears, he fled
at full speed down the street and did not pause till he was out of
hearing. Darcy, having ascertained that the child was not really hurt,
followed him in bewilderment.

"Are you without pity then?" he asked.

Frank shook his head impatiently.

"Can't you see?" he asked. "Can't you understand that that sort of
thing, pain, anger, anything unlovely throws me back, retards the
coming of the great hour! Perhaps when it comes I shall be able to
piece that side of life on to the other, on to the true religion of
joy. At present I can't."

"But the old woman. Was she not ugly?"

Frank's radiance gradually returned.

"Ah, no. She was like me. She longed for joy, and knew it when she saw
it, the old darling."

Another question suggested itself.

"Then what about Christianity?" asked Darcy.

"I can't accept it. I can't believe in any creed of which the central
doctrine is that God who is Joy should have had to suffer. Perhaps it
was so; in some inscrutable way I believe it may have been so, but I
don't understand how it was possible. So I leave it alone; my affair is
joy."

They had come to the weir above the village, and the thunder of riotous
cool water was heavy in the air. Trees dipped into the translucent
stream with slender trailing branches, and the meadow where they stood
was starred with midsummer blossomings. Larks shot up caroling into the
crystal dome of blue, and a thousand voices of June sang round them.
Frank, bare-headed as was his wont, with his coat slung over his arm
and his shirt sleeves rolled up above the elbow, stood there like some
beautiful wild animal with eyes half-shut and mouth half-open, drinking
in the scented warmth of the air. Then suddenly he flung himself face
downward on the grass at the edge of the stream, burying his face in
the daisies and cowslips, and lay stretched there in wide-armed
ecstasy, with his long fingers pressing and stroking the dewy herbs of
the field. Never before had Darcy seen him thus fully possessed by his
idea; his caressing fingers, his half-buried face pressed close to the
grass, even the clothed lines of his figure were instinct with a
vitality that somehow was different from that of other men. And some
faint glow from it reached Darcy, some thrill, some vibration from that
charged recumbent body passed to him, and for a moment he understood as
he had not understood before, despite his persistent questions and the
candid answers they received, how real, and how realized by Frank, his
idea was.

Then suddenly the muscles in Frank's neck became stiff and alert, and
he half-raised his head, whispering, "The Pan-pipes, the Pan-pipes.
Close, oh, so close."

Very slowly, as if a sudden movement might interrupt the melody, he
raised himself and leaned on the elbow of his bent arm. His eyes opened
wider, the lower lids drooped as if he focused his eyes on something
very far away, and the smile on his face broadened and quivered like
sunlight on still water till the exultance of its happiness was
scarcely human. So he remained, motionless and rapt for some minutes,
then the look of listening died from his face, and he bowed his head
satisfied.

"Ah, that was good," he said. "How is it possible you did not hear? Oh,
you poor fellow! Did you really hear nothing?"

A week of this outdoor and stimulating life did wonders in restoring to
Darcy the vigour and health which his weeks of fever had filched from
him, and as his normal activity and higher pressure of vitality
returned, he seemed to himself to fall even more under the spell which
the miracle of Frank's youth cast over him. Twenty times a day he found
himself saying to himself suddenly at the end of some ten minutes'
silent resistance to the absurdity of Frank's idea: "But it isn't
possible; it can't be possible," and from the fact of his having to
assure himself so frequently of this, he knew that he was struggling
and arguing with a conclusion which already had taken root in his mind.
For in any case a visible living miracle confronted him, since it was
equally impossible that this youth, this boy, trembling on the verge of
manhood, was thirty-five. Yet such was the fact.

July was ushered in by a couple of days of blustering and fretful rain,
and Darcy, unwilling to risk a chill, kept to the house. But to Frank
this weeping change of weather seemed to have no bearing on the
behaviour of man, and he spent his days exactly as he did under the
suns of June, lying in his hammock, stretched on the dripping grass, or
making huge rambling excursions into the forest, the birds hopping from
tree to tree after him, to return in the evening, drenched and soaked,
but with the same unquenchable flame of joy burning within him.