Curse of the Wise Woman, The by Dunsany Lord

Author:Dunsany, Lord [Dunsany, Lord]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Fiction, Novel, Classics
Publisher: Valancourt Books
Published: 1933-01-15T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVIII

I drove home in the huge quiet moonlight, wondering as we went at things that I wonder at still. I find it hard to tell what they are, for I am not a poet nor painter nor musician, but only an idle man jotting down memories, in which there is poetry, because they are memories of youth, but not through skill of mine; and the things that I would preserve upon this paper if I could are things that painters, musicians and poets handle, especially I think musicians, because words always seem to elude these things. But, briefly, I wondered if all that dome of sky, just washed, as it seemed to have been, with liquid gold, and the moon and its mountains, and the dark hills of Earth, and all the awe and the mystery that seemed floating between the two, were the real and vital things, as every emotion seemed to be telling me, or whether truth walked only in paths that the reason could follow. Well, I never worked it out and I cannot now. I’ll write down facts instead; there is never any difficulty with them. When we got to the lodge I saw two men standing outside with rifles slung over their shoulders; I saw what it was before they spoke: I had been given police protection. And it has always struck me that one of the readiest ways of estimating a country’s regard for law is to notice what arms the officers of the law are carrying: in England it is little batons, in France swords, in many countries revolvers, and in Russia the police used to have artillery.

“We’ve come to protect you, sir,” said one of them.

“So I see, sergeant,” I said. “But what if they come by the other lodge?”

“We’ve two more men there, sir,” he said.

“And what if they get over the wall?” I asked him.

“We have a man in the house,” he said. “And we patrol the desmesne every few hours.”

“Good night,” I said. And we drove on to the house.

This was evidently Major Wainwright’s doing, and I did not like the idea of police protection at all. I felt that it would be ineffective; but, what was much worse than that, it made me a marked man, quite possibly tempting people to have a shot at me who would not have thought of it otherwise.

The presence of the police was a topic that Ryan avoided and I was left with my own thoughts. And what I thought was that, trouble now having been thrust towards me, I might come to need the protection that my father had had, and that had saved his life; and that I must find the way of the secret door for myself, for my father would never put it in a letter to be read by perhaps the very men that had sent the four to High Gaut.

I heard again from the butler about the police. Two were to sleep in the lodge

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