Algernon Blackwood

“ The spring wonder was melting into the peace of the long summer days when the end came. The vineyards had begun to dress themselves in green, and the forest in those soft blues when individual trees lose their outline in the general body of the mountain. The lake was indistinguishable from the sky; the Jura peaks and ridges gone a-soaring into misty distances; the white Alps withdrawn into inaccessible and remote solitudes of heaven. ”

“ The forest just there was scented with wild lilies of the valley which carpeted the more open spaces with their white bells and big, green leaves; patches of violets and pale anemone twinkled down the mossy stairways of every glade; and through slim openings among the pine-stems I saw the shadowed blues of the lake beyond and the far line of the high Alps, soft and cloud-like in the sky. ”

“ And, while I took my place some little way off upon a fallen stem, and the dog sat looking up into his face with its eyes of yearning and affection, Perret “Comment-va” would take a leaf from the nearest ivy, raise it between tightly pressed palms to his lips and begin that magic sound that seemed to rise out of the forest-voices themselves rather than to be a thing apart. ”

“ And once, in that very lonely stretch above the mountain railway, towards Montmollin, where the trees are spaced apart with an effect of cathedral aisles and Gothic arches, he caught me suddenly and did something that for a moment caused me a thrill of genuine alarm.
Wild lilies of the valley grow very thickly thereabouts, and the ground falls into a natural hollow that shuts it off from the rest of the forest with a peculiar and delightful sense of privacy ”

“ The general appearance of soft blue pine woods is deceptive. The Boudry cliffs, slashed here and there with inaccessible couloirs, are undeniably grand, and in the sweep of the Creux du Van precipices there is a splendid terror quite as solemn as that of the Matterhorn itself. The shadows of its smooth, circular walls deny the sun all day, and the winds, caught within the 700ft. sides of its huge amphitheatre, as in the hollow of some awful cup, boom and roar with the crying of lost thunders. ”

“ For it was unmistakable; the man played, not mere tunes and melodies, but the clean, strong, elemental sounds of Nature⁠—especially the crying voices of wind. It was the raw material, if you like, of what the masters have used here and there⁠—Wagner, and so forth⁠—but by him heard closely and wonderfully, and produced with marvellous accuracy. ”

“ Pour sûr! I play it all over the world”⁠—he looked about him down the slopes of villages and vineyards⁠—“and for those who understand⁠—those who belong⁠—to come.”
He was, I felt sure, going to say more, perhaps to unbosom himself to me a little; and I might have learned something of the ritual this self-appointed priest of Pan followed in his forest temples⁠—when, the sound of the bells swelled suddenly on the wind, and he turned with an angry gesture and made to go. Their insolence, penetrating even to the privacy of his secret woods, was too much for him.
“And you find many?” I asked. ”

“ Yet I feel sure there was no inherent maliciousness in the Man who Played upon the Leaf, and that his hatred of an “alien” faith was akin to the mistaken zeal that in other days could send poor sinners to the stake for the ultimate safety of their souls. ”

“ Already the woods were drawing the dusk out of the earth to cloak themselves for sleep, and in the east a rising moon stared close over the ground between the big trees, dropping trails of faint and yellowish silver along the moss. ”

“ My efforts to find a home for the dog delayed my departure, I remember, several days; but in the autumn when I returned it was only to hear that the creature had refused to stay with anyone, and finally had escaped into the forest and deliberately starved itself to death. They found its skeleton, Louis Favre told me, in a rocky hollow on the lower slopes of Mont Racine in the direction of Montmollin. But Louis Favre did not know, as I knew, that this hollow had received other sacrifices as well, and was consecrated ground. ”

“ In the village he was known as Perret “Comment-va,” the Man Who Plays on the Leaf; but when the people wished to be more explicit they described him as the man “without parents and without God.” The origin of “Comment-va” I never discovered, but the other titles were easily explained⁠—he was illegitimate and outcast. ”

“ The Man Who Played Upon the Leaf Where the Jura pine-woods push the fringe of their purple cloak down the slopes till the vineyards stop them lest they should troop into the lake of Neuchâtel, you may find the village where lived the Man Who Played upon the Leaf. ”

“ I learned afterwards, too, that among the almost unrecognizable remains on the railway, untouched by the devouring terror of the iron, they had found a hand⁠—tightly clasping in its dead fingers a crumpled ivy leaf.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ The stamp of the outcast was mercilessly upon him. But the eyes were dark and fine. They proclaimed the possession of something that was neither worn nor broken, something that was proud to be outcast, and welcomed it.
“He’s cracky, you know,” explained Favre, “and half blind. He lives in that hut on the edge of the forest”⁠—pointing with his thumb toward Côtendard⁠—“and plays on the leaf for what he can earn.”
We listened for five minutes perhaps while this singular being stood there in the dusk and piped his weird tunes ”

“ I think the villagers were not conscious of their severity; the older generation of farmers and vignerons had pity, but the younger ones and those of his own age were certainly guilty, if not of deliberate cruelty, at least of a harsh neglect and the utter withholding of sympathy. ”

“ Grospierre muttered as he turned with the gesture of surly impatience to the wine and the rye bread. “It makes me dream at night. Ooua!”
The man, paying no attention to the gibes, came closer, continuing his leaf-music, and as I watched and listened the thrill that had first stirred in me grew curiously. To look at, he was perhaps forty, perhaps fifty; worn, thin, broken ”