Hamer found an odd difficulty in beginning his conversation.
"Look here," he said awkwardly, "I want to know--what was that thing you were playing just now?"
The man smiled .... With his smile the world seemed suddenly to leap into joyousness ....
188 Agatha Christie
"It was an old tune--a very old tune Years
old--
centuries
old."
He
spoke with an odd purity and distinctness of enunciation,
giving equal value to each syllable. He was clearly not
an Englishman, yet Hamer was puzzled as to his nationality.
"You're
not English? Where do you come from?"
Again
the broad joyful smile.
"From
over the sea, sir. I came--a long time ago--a very
long time ago."
"You
must have had a bad accident. Was it lately?"
"Some
time now, sir."
"Rough
luck to lose both legs."
"It
was well," said the man very calmly. He turned his eyes
with a strange solemnity on his interlocutor. "They were
evil."
Hamer
dropped a shilling in his hand and turned away. He
was puzzled and vaguely disquieted. "They were evil!" What
a strange thing to say! Evidently an operation for some form
of disease, but--how odd it had sounded.
Hamer
went home thoughtful. He tried in vain to dismiss the
incident from his mind. Lying in bed, with the first incipient
sensation of drowsiness stealing over him, he heard
a neighbouring clock strike one. One clear stroke and then
silence--silence that was broken by a faint familiar sound.
·.. Recognition came leaping. Hamer felt his heart beating
quickly. It was the man in the passageway playing, somewhere
not far distant ....
The notes came gladly, the slow turn with its joyful call,
the same haunting little phrase .... "It's uncanny," murmured
Hamer; "it's uncanny. It's got wings to it .... "
Clearer and clearer, higher and higher--each wave rising
above the last, and catching him up with it. This time he
did not struggle; he let himself go .... Up--up .... The
waves of sound were carrying him higher and higher.
... Triumphant and free, they swept on.
Higher and higher They
had passed the limits of human
sound now, but they still continued--rising, ever rising
.... Would they reach the final goal, the full perfection of
height?
Rising...
THE CALL OF WINGS
189
Something was pulling--pulling him downwards. Something big and heavy and insistent. It pulled remorse-lessly--pulled
him back, and down.., down ....
He lay in bed gazing at the window opposite. Then, breathing heavily and painfully, he stretched an arm out of
bed. The movement seemed curiously cumbrous to him.
The softness of the bed was oppressive; oppressive, too,
were the heavy curtains over the window that blocked out
light and air. The ceiling seemed to press down upon him.
He felt stifled and choked. He moved slightly under the bedclothes, and the weight of his body seemed to him the
most oppressive of all ....
II
"I want your advice, Seldon."
Seldon pushed back his chair aninch or so from the table. He had been wondering what was the object of this
t6te-h-tte dinner. He had seen little of Hamer since the
winter, and he was aware tonight of some indefinable change
in his friend.
"It's just this," said the millionaire. "I'm worried about myself."
Seldon smiled as he looked across the table.
"You're looking in the pink of condition."
"It's not that." Hamer paused a minute, then added quietly, "I'm afraid I'm going mad.".
The nerve specialist glanced up with a sudden keen interest. He poured himself out a glass of port with a rather
slow movement, and then said quietly, but with a sharp
glance at the other man: "What makes you think that?"
"Something that's happened to me; Something inexplicable, unbelievable. It can't be true, so I must be going
mad."
never have. But this thing... Well, I'd better tell you the
whole story from the beginning. It began last winter one
evening after I had dined with you."
Then briefly and concisely he narrated the events of his
190 Agatha Christie
walk home and the strange sequel.
"That was the beginning of it all. I can't explain it to
you properly--thc feeling, I mcan--but it was wonderful!
Unlike anything I've cvcr felt or dreamed. Well, it's gone
on ever since. Not every night, just now and then. The
music, the feeling of being uplifted, the soaring flight.., and
then the terrible drag, the pull back to earth, and afterwards the pain, the actual physical pain of the awakening. It's like
coming down from a high mountain--you know the pains
in the cars one gets? Well, this is the same thing, but in-tcnsified--and
with it goes the awful sense of weight--of being hemmed in, stifled .... "
He broke off and there was a pause.
"Already the servants think I'm mad. I couldn't bear the
roof and the walls--I've had a place arranged up at the top
of the house, open to the sky, with no furniture or carpets,
or any stifling things .... But even then the houses all round
arc nearly as bad. It's open country I want, somewhere
wberc one can breathe .... "He looked across at Seldon.
"Well, what do you say? Can you explain it?"
"H'm," said Seldon. "Plenty of explanations. You've been hypnotized, or you've hypnotized yourself. Your nerves
have gone wrong. Or it may be merely a dream."
Hamer shook his head. "None of those explanations will
do."
"And there are others," said Seldon slowly, "but they're
not generally admitted."
"You arc prepared to admit them?"
"On the whole, yes! There's a great deal we can't understand
which can't possibly be explained normally. We've
any amount to find out still, and I for one believe in keeping
an open mind."
"What do you advise me to do?" asked Hamer after a
silence.
Scldon leaned forward briskly. "One of several things. Go away from London, seek out your 'open country.' The
dreams may cease."
"I can't do that," said Hamer quickly. "It's come to this
that I can't do without them. I don't want to do without
THE CALL OF WINGS
191
"Ah! I guessed as much. Another alternative, find this
fellow, this cripple. You're endowing him now with all
sorts of supernatural attributes. Talk to him. Break the spell."
Hamer shook his head again.
"Why not?"
"I'm afraid," said Hamer simply.
Seldon made a gesture of impatience. "Don't believe in
it all so blindly! This tune now, the medium that starts it
all, what is it like?"
Hamer hummed it, and Seldon listened with a puzzled
frown.
"Rat
her like a bit out of the overture to Rienzi. There is something uplifting about it--it had wings. But I'm not
carried off the earth! Now, these flights of yours, are they
all exactly the same?"
"No, no." Hamer leaned forward eagerly. "They develop.
Each time I see a little more. It's difficult to explain.
You see, I'm always conscious of reaching a certain point--the
music carded me there--not direct, but by a succession
of waves, each reaching higher than the last, until the highest
point where one can go no further. I stay there until I'm
dragged back. It isn't a place, it's more a state. Well, not
just at first, but after a little while, I began to understand
that there were other things all round me waiting until I was
able to perceive them. Think of a kitten. It has eyes, but at
first it can't see with them. It's blind and had to learn to
see. Well, that was what it was to me. Mortal eyes and ears
were no good to me, but there was something corresponding
to them that hadn't yet been developed--something that
wasn't bodily at all. And little by little that grew.., there
were sensations of light.., then of sound.., then of colour
.... All very vague and unformulated. It was more the
knowledge of things than seeing or hearing them. First it
was light, a light that grew stronger and clearer.., then
sand, great stretches of reddish sand.., and here and there
straight, long lines of water like canals--"
Seldon drew in his breath sharply. "Canals! That's interesting.
Go on."
"But these things didn't matter--they didn't count any
longer. The real things were the things I couldn't see yet--
Agatha Christie
but I heard them .... It was a sound like the rushing of
wings... Somehow, I can't explain why, it was glorious!
There's nothing like it here. And then came another glory--
I saw them--thc Wings! Oh, Seldon, the Wings!"
"But what were they? Men--angels--birds?"
"I don't know. I couldn't see--not yet. But the colour
of them! Wing colour--we haven't got it here--it's a wonderful
colour."
"Wing colour?" repeated Seldon. "What's it like?"
Hamer flung up his hand impatiently. "How can I tell
you? Explain the colour blue to a blind person! It's a colour
you've never seen--Wing colour!"
"Well?"
"Well? That's all. That's as far as I've got. But each
time the coming back has been worse--more painful. I
can't understand that. I'm convinced my body never leaves
the bed. In this place I get to I'm convinced I've got no
physical presence. Why should it hurt so confoundedly thenT'
Seldon shook his head in silence.
"It's something awful--the coming back. The pull of
it--then the pain, pain in every limb and every nerve, and
my ears feel as though they were bursting. Then everything
presses so, the weight of it all, the dreadful sense of im-prisonmenL'I
want light, air, space--above all space to
breathe in! And I want freedom."
"And what," asked Seldon, "of all the other things that
used to mean so much to you?"
"That's the worst of it. I care for them still as much as,
if not more than, ever. And these things, comfort, luxury,
pleasure, seem to pull opposite ways to the Wings. It's a
perpetual struggle between them--and I can't see how it's
going to end."
Seldon sat silent. The strange tale be had been listening
to was fantastic enough in all truth. Was it all a delusion,
a wild hallucination--or could it by any possibility be true?
And if so, why Hamer, of all men... ? Surely the materialist,
the man who loved the flesh and denied the spirit,
was the last man to see the sights of another world.
Across the table Hamer watched him anxiously.
"I suppose," said Seidon slowly, "that you can only wait.
Wait and see what happens."
THE CALL OF WINGS
193
"I can't! 'tell you I can't! Your saying that shows you
don't understand. It's tearing me in two, this awful strug
gle-this killing, long-drawn-out fight between--be
tween--'' He hesitated.
"The flesh and the spirit?" suggested Seldon.
Hamer stared heavily in front of him. "I suppose one
might call it that. Anyway, it's unbearable I
can't get
free .... "
Again
Bernard Seldon shook his head. He was caught up
in the grip of the inexplicable. He made one more suggestion.
"If
I were you," he advised, "I would get hold of that cripple."
But
as he went home, he muttered to himself: "Canals--I
wonder."
III
Silas
Hamer went out of the house the following morning with
a new determination in his step. He had decided to take
Seldon's advice and find the legless man. Yet inwardly he
was convinced that his search would be in vain and that the
man would have vanished as completely as though the earth
had swallowed him up.
The
dark buildings on either side of the passageway shut out
the sunlight and left it dark and mysterious. Only in one place,
halfway up it, there was a break in the wall, and through
it there fell a shaft of golden light that illuminated with
radiance a figure sitting on the ground. A figure--yes, it
was the man!
The
instrument of pipes leaned against the wall beside his
crutches, and he was covering the paving stones with designs
in coloured chalk. Two were completed, sylvan scenes
of marvellous beauty and delicacy, swaying trees and
a leaping brook that seemed alive.
And again
Hamer doubted. Was this man a mere street musician, a
pavement artist? Or was he something more... ?
Suddenly
the millionaire's self-control broke down, and he
cried fiercely and angrily: "Who are you? For God's sake,
who are you?"
194 Agatha Christie
The man's eyes met is, smiling.
"Why don't you answer? Speak, man, speak!"
Then he noticed that the man was drawing with incredible
rapidity on a bare slab of stone. Hamer followed the movement
with his eyes .... A few bold strokes, and giant trees
took form. Then, seated on a boulder.., a man.., playing
an instrument of pipes. A man with a strangely beautiful
face--and goat's legs ....
The cripple's hand made a swift movement. The man
still sat on the rock, but the goat's legs were gone. Again
his eyes met Hamer's.
"They were evil," he said.
Hamer stared, fascinated. For the face before him was
the face of the picture, but strangely and incredibly beautified
Purified
from all but an intense and exquisite joy
of
living.
Hamer
turned and almost fled down the passageway into the
bright sunlight, repeating to himself incessantly: "It's impossible.
Impossible .... I'm
mad--dreaming!" But the face
haunted him--the face of Pan ....
He
went into the park and sat on a bench. It was a deserted hour.
A few nursemaids with their charges sat in the shade of
the trees, and dotted here and there in the stretches of green,
like islands in a sea, lay the recumbent forms of men
....
The
words "a wretched tramp" were to Hamer an epitome of
misery. But suddenly, today, he envied them ....
They
seemed to him of all created beings the only free ones.
The earth beneath them, the sky above them, the world to wander
in... they were not hemmed in or chained.
Like a
flash it came to him that that which bound him so remorselessly
was the thing he had worshipped and prized above all
others--wealth! He had thought it the strongest thing on
earth, and now, wrapped round by its golden strength, he
saw the truth of his words. It was his money that held
him in bondage ....
But was
it? Was that really, it? Was there a deeper and more
pointed truth that he had not seen? Was it the money or
was it his own love of the money? He was bound in fetters
of his own making; not wealth itself, but love of wealth
was the chain.
THE CALL OF WINGS
19
He knew now clearly the two forces that were tearing
him, the warm composite strength of materialism that er
closed and surrounded him, and, opposed to it, the cle
imperative call--he named it to himself the Call of th
Wings.
And while the one fought and clung, the other scome
war and would not stoop to struggle. It only called--calle
unceasingly He
heard it so clearly that it almost spok
in
words.
"You
cannot make terms with Me," it seemed to say
"For
I am above all other things. If you follow my call
you
must give up all else and cut away the forces that hol
you.
For only the Free shall follow where I lead "
"I