The Mayor of Troy

by Arthur Quiller-Couch

That good man, it is perhaps superfluous to say, had not sought his bed. He was a widower, and had no one to dissuade him from keeping vigil until daybreak. At ten o'clock, therefore, having seen to the trimming of his lamp and dismissed the servants to rest, he lit his study fire, set the kettle upon it, and having mixed himself a bowl of brandy-punch (in the concoction of which all Troy acknowledged him to be an expert), drew his arm-chair close to the genial blaze, and sat alternately sipping his brew and conning for the thousandth time the annotated pamphlet in which he had demonstrated exhaustively, redundantly, irrefutably, beyond possibility of disbelief or doubt, that with the morrow the world's great age must be renewed and the Millennium dawn upon earth.

For an hour and a half, or maybe three-quarters, he sat reading and reassuring himself that the armour of his proof was indeed proof-armour and exposed no chink to assault; and then—

The Vicar was a man of clean conscience and regular habits. He closed his eyes to review the argument. By and by his chin dropped forward on his chest. He slept. He dreamt. His dreams were formless, uneasy; such as one might expect who deserts his bed and his course of habit to sleep upright in an arm-chair. A vague trouble haunted them; or, rather, a presentiment of trouble. It grew and grew; and almost as it became intolerable, a bell seemed to clang in his ears, and he started up, awake, gripping his chair, his brow clammy with a sudden sweat. He glanced around him. The fire was cold, his lamp burned low, his book had fallen to the floor. Was it this that had aroused him? No; surely a bell had clanged in his ears. His brain kept the echo of it yet.

He listened. The clang was not repeated; but gradually his ears became aware of a low murmuring, irregular yet continuous; a sound, it seemed, of voices, yet not of human voices; a moaning, and yet not quite a moaning, but rather what the French would call a mugissement. Yes, it resembled rather the confused lowing of cattle than any other sound known to him. But that was inconceivable.…

He stepped to the window-curtains through which the pale dawn filtered; pulled them aside and started back with a cry of something more than dismay. The Vicarage faced upon the churchyard; and the churchyard was filled—packed—with cattle! Oxen and cows, steers, heifers, and young calves; at least thirty score were gathered there, a few hardier phlegmatic beasts cropping the herbage on the graves; but the mass huddled together, rubbing flanks, swaying this way and that in the pressure of panic as corn is swayed by flukes of summer wind.

The Vicar was no coward. Recovering himself, he ran to the passage, caught his hat down from the peg, and flung wide the front door.

A little beyond his gate a lime-tree walk led down through the churchyard to the town. But gazing over the chines of the herd beyond his garden railing, he saw that through this avenue he could not hope to force a passage; it was crowded so densely that dozen upon dozen of the poor brutes stood with horns interlocked, unable to lift or lower their heads.

To the right a line of cottages bounded the churchyard and overlooked it; and between them and the churchyard wall there ran a narrow cobbled lane known as Pease Alley (i.e., pis aller, the Vicar was wont to explain humorously). Through this he might hope to reach the Lower Town and discover some interpretation of the portent. He opened the gate boldly.

It was obvious, whatever might be the reason, that terror possessed the cattle. At the creaking of the gate the nearest brutes retreated, pressing back against their fellows, lowering their heads; and yet not viciously, but as though to meet an unknown danger.

"Soh!" called the Vicar. "Soh, then!… upon my word," he went on whimsically, answering the appeal in their frightened, liquid eyes, "it's no use your asking me. You can't possibly be worse puzzled than I am!"