His step from the door-sill to the gravel had the nature of a plunge from land to water, so different was the hush outside, to the ordered, companionable stillness of the house. His heart beat high. The night was one of heavy calm, the sea beneath the sandy terraces was almost silent. A few stars showed, and the hollow sky was full of the wandering cries of peewits wheeling inland above the salt marshes and the crumbling dunes. The little faun was very cold and very still in the dark. He laid the little silken, throbbing bodies of the mice in the curved stone fingers, and they cowered there without a movement.
“There’s no dancing to-night,” said Launce to himself, leaning his little dark face above the drowsing face of stone. Nothing moved in the plantations; nothing flickered on the lawn. Faunus was no more than a cunning stone carved long ago by men forgotten. “He’s not here to-night,” said Launce gravely to the mice, “he’s gone away. I must make haste.”
The mice cuddled closer. All sense of imminent life was gone from the faun. Launce glanced into the darkness. Was he free of the stone at last, let loose, a little flitting shape, stone-white yet shadowy—a swift beast-shape half-fashioned into man—snuffing at Lucia’s bed of daffodils, cutting down the irises with heedless hooves, peering into the windows with wrinkled eyelids, calling wordlessly in the night—a happy thing of darkness, knowing neither hope nor regret? Launce took out some rose-leaves from the pot-pourri jar, and the bottle of wine; he drew the cork with his teeth, and it squeaked and made him jump. He held it in readiness.
“O Faun,” whispered Launce, shakily, in a desperate hurry, “I salute you. Hail, O Faun. Drink, and remember. Vale.” And he poured out the wine.
He stood staring, waiting for the miracle, and the wine ran in a dark stain on the little faun’s breast, as if he were hurt to death. There came no wonder but the wonder of the wind.
The hush seemed to thrill, and the herald of the great gust ran rustling through the garden, stirring the leaves to the sound of innumerable little hurrying hooves. Launce felt that he was ringed round by hundreds of capering creatures suddenly imprisoned. But the force let loose was only the wind.
The great gust seemed to leap from the heart of the sky. The stars reeled and went out. Sand and surf the wind caught up as with hands and flung across the wall. For a moment all the powers of the night seemed to be let loose in storm and ruin. Then with a great voice they passed out to sea, and there was stillness again, save for the noise as of numberless little pattering feet among the restless leaves. Launce snatched the mice and ran up the larch plantation like a rabbit, toward the lighted windows of the house. The whole night and all it held seemed to be sweeping after him on threatening wings.
There were voices and footsteps on the gravel, and a beam of light from the gun-room window. His godfather and uncle Will were walking there and talking together. Launce, a mouse in each hand, was just going to fling himself upon them regardless of the result, when something in his uncle’s voice, something in the younger man’s attitude as he listened, held him back. Just what was passing he neither saw nor heard. But he saw Geoffrey swing round as quick as thought and strike the other heavily.
Launce fell on his knees in the shadow of the trees. He was too frightened to move. He longed to hide his eyes or his ears, but he had to hold the restless little mice. His world was breaking and falling.
His uncle caught the raised hand, and his own was swung back for the answering blow. Launee could see Geoffrey’s face, steady and white as he waited for it, his uncle’s flushed and dark. “Are you mad, Geoffrey?” he asked, breathlessly.