It was then my habit, on reaching the top of any eminence, to exclaim facetiously “And who will stand on either hand and keep the bridge with me?” at the same moment violently agitating my arms or casting my wide-awake eyes at an imaginary foe. Emily and the friend received my sally as usual, nor could I detect any insincerity in their mirth. Yet I was convinced that someone was present who did not think I had been funny, and any public speaker will understand my growing uneasiness.
I was somewhat cheered by Emily’s mother, who puffed up exclaiming, “Kind Harry, to carry the things! What should we do without you, even now! Oh, what a view! Can you see the dear Cathedral? No. Too hazy. Now I’m going to sit right on the rug.” She smiled mysteriously. “The downs in September, you know.”
We gave some perfunctory admiration to the landscape, which is indeed only beautiful to those who admire land, and to them perhaps the most beautiful in England. For here is the body of the great chalk spider who straddles over our island—whose legs are the south downs and the north downs and the Chilterns, and the tips of whose toes poke out at Cromer and Dover. He is a clean creature, who grows as few trees as he can, and those few in tidy clumps, and he loves to be tickled by quickly flowing streams. He is pimpled all over with earthworks, for from the beginning of time men have fought for the privilege of standing on him, and the oldest of our temples is built upon his back.
But in those days I liked my country snug and pretty, full of gentlemen’s residences and shady bowers and people who touch their hats. The great sombre expanses on which one may walk for miles and hardly shift a landmark or meet a genteel person were still intolerable to me. I turned away as soon as propriety allowed and said “And may I now prepare the cup that cheers?”
Emily’s mother replied: “Kind man, to help me. I always do say that tea out is worth the extra effort. I wish we led simpler lives.” We agreed with her. I spread out the food. “Won’t the kettle stand? Oh, but make it stand.” I did so. There was a little cry, faint but distinct, as of something in pain.
“How silent it all is up here!” said Emily.
I dropped a lighted match on the grass, and again I heard the little cry.
“What is that?” I asked.
“I only said it was so silent,” said Emily.
“Silent, indeed,” echoed the little friend.
Silent! the place was full of noises. If the match had fallen in a drawing-room it could not have been worse, and the loudest noise came from beside Emily herself. I had exactly the sensation of going to a great party, of waiting to be announced in the echoing hall, where I could hear the voices of the guests, but could not yet see their faces. It is a nervous moment for a self-conscious man, especially if all the voices should be strange to him, and he has never met his host.
“My dear Harry!” said the elder lady, “never mind about that match. That’ll smoulder away and harm no one. Tea‑ee‑ee! I always say—and you will find Emily the same—that as the magic hour of five approaches, no matter how good a lunch, one begins to feel a sort of—”
Now the Faun is of the kind who capers upon the Neo-Attic reliefs, and if you do not notice his ears or see his tail, you take him for a man and are horrified.
“Bathing!” I cried wildly. “Such a thing for our village lads, but I quite agree—more supervision—I blame myself. Go away, bad boy, go away!”
“What will he think of next!” said Emily, while the creature beside her stood up and beckoned to me. I advanced struggling and gesticulating with tiny steps and horrified cries, exorcising the apparition with my hat. Not otherwise had I advanced the day before, when Emily’s nieces showed me their guinea pigs. And by no less hearty laughter was I greeted now. Until the strange fingers closed upon me, I still thought that here was one of my parishioners and did not cease to exclaim, “Let me go, naughty boy, let go!” And Emily’s mother, believing herself to have detected the joke, replied, “Well I must confess they are naughty boys and reach one even on the rug: the downs in September, as I said before.”
Here I caught sight of the tail, uttered a wild shriek and fled into the beech copse behind.
“Harry would have been a born actor,” said Emily’s mother as I left them.
I realized that a great crisis in my life was approaching, and that if I failed in it I might permanently lose my self-esteem. Already in the wood I was troubled by a multitude of voices—the voices of the hill beneath me, of the trees over my head, of the very insects in the bark of the tree. I could even hear the stream licking little pieces out of the meadows, and the meadows dreamily protesting. Above the din—which is no louder than the flight of a bee—rose the Faun’s voice saying, “Dear priest, be placid, be placid: why are you frightened?”
“I am not frightened,” said I—and indeed I was not. “But I am grieved: you have disgraced me in the presence of ladies.”
“No one else has seen me,” he said, smiling idly. “The women have tight boots and the man has long hair. Those kinds never see. For years
