The old man in the Oriental-looking robe was being moved on by the
police, and it was this that attracted to him and the parcel under his
arm the attention of Mr. Sladden, whose livelihood was earned in the
emporium of Messrs. Mergin and Chater, that is to say in their
establishment.
Mr. Sladden had the reputation of being the silliest young man in
Business; a touch of romance--a mere suggestion of it--would send his
eyes gazing away as though the walls of the emporium were of gossamer
and London itself a myth, instead of attending to customers.
Merely the fact that the dirty piece of paper that wrapped the old
man's parcel was covered with Arabic writing was enough to give Mr.
Sladden the idea of romance, and he followed until the little crowd
fell off and the stranger stopped by the kerb and unwrapped his parcel
and prepared to sell the thing that was inside it. It was a little
window in old wood with small panes set in lead; it was not much more
than a foot in breadth and was under two feet long. Mr. Sladden had
never before seen a window sold in the street, so he asked the price
of it.
"Its price is all you possess," said the old man.
"Where did you get it?" said Mr. Sladden, for it was a strange window.
"I gave all that I possessed for it in the streets of Baghdad."
"Did you possess much?" said Mr. Sladden.
"I had all that I wanted," he said, "except this window."
"It must be a good window," said the young man.
"It is a magical window," said the old one.
"I have only ten shillings on me, but I have fifteen-and-six at home."
The old man thought for a while.
"Then twenty-five-and-sixpence is the price of the window," he said.
It was only when the bargain was completed and the ten shillings paid
and the strange old man was coming for his fifteen-and-six and to fit
the magical window into his only room that it occurred to Mr.
Sladden's mind that he did not want a window. And then they were at
the door of the house in which he rented a room, and it seemed too
late to explain.
The stranger demanded privacy when he fitted up the window, so Mr.
Sladden remained outside the door at the top of a little flight of
creaky stairs. He heard no sound of hammering.
And presently the strange old man came out with his faded yellow robe
and his great beard, and his eyes on far-off places. "It is finished,"
he said, and he and the young man parted. And whether he remained a
spot of colour and an anachronism in London, or whether he ever came
again to Baghdad, and what dark hands kept on the circulation of his
twenty-five-and-six, Mr. Sladden never knew.
Mr. Sladden entered the bare-boarded room in which he slept and spent
all his indoor hours between closing-time and the hour at which
Messrs. Mergin and Chater commenced. To the Penates of so dingy a room
his neat frock-coat must have been a continual wonder. Mr. Sladden
took it off and folded it carefully; and there was the old man's
window rather high up in the wall. There had been no window in that
wall hitherto, nor any ornament at all but a small cupboard, so when
Mr. Sladden had put his frock-coat safely away he glanced through his
new window. It was where his cupboard had been in which he kept his
tea-things: they were all standing on the table now. When Mr. Sladden
glanced through his new window it was late in a summer's evening; the
butterflies some while ago would have closed their wings, though the
bat would scarcely yet be drifting abroad--but this was in London: the
shops were shut and street-lamps not yet lighted.
Mr. Sladden rubbed his eyes, then rubbed the window, and still he saw
a sky of blazing blue, and far, far down beneath him, so that no sound
came up from it or smoke of chimneys, a mediaeval city set with
towers; brown roofs and cobbled streets, and then white walls and
buttresses, and beyond them bright green fields and tiny streams. On
the towers archers lolled, and along the walls were pikemen, and now
and then a wagon went down some old-world street and lumbered through
the gateway and out to the country, and now and then a wagon drew up
to the city from the mist that was rolling with evening over the
fields. Sometimes folks put their heads out of lattice windows,
sometimes some idle troubadour seemed to sing, and nobody hurried or
troubled about anything. Airy and dizzy though the distance was, for
Mr. Sladden seemed higher above the city than any cathedral gargoyle,
yet one clear detail he obtained as a clue: the banners floating from
every tower over the idle archers had little golden dragons all over a
pure white field.
He heard motor-buses roar by his other window, he heard the newsboys
howling.
Mr. Sladden grew dreamier than ever after that on the premises, in the
establishment of Messrs. Mergin and Chater. But in one matter he was
wise and wakeful: he made continuous and careful inquiries about the
golden dragons on a white flag, and talked to no one of his wonderful
window. He came to know the flags of every king in Europe, he even
dabbled in history, he made inquiries at shops that understood
heraldry, but nowhere could he learn any trace of little dragons _or_
on a field _argent_. And when it seemed that for him alone those
golden dragons had fluttered he came to love them as an exile in some
desert might love the lilies of his home or as a sick man might love
swallows when he cannot easily live to another spring.
As soon as Messrs. Mergin and Chater closed, Mr. Sladden used to go
back to his dingy room and gaze though the wonderful window until it
grew dark in the city and the guard would go with a lantern round the
ramparts and the night came up like velvet, full of strange stars.
Another clue he tried to obtain one night by jotting down the shapes
of the constellations, but this led him no further, for they were
unlike any that shone upon either hemisphere.
Each day as soon as he woke he went first to the wonderful window, and
there was the city, diminutive in the distance, all shining in the
morning, and the golden dragons dancing in the sun, and the archers
stretching themselves or swinging their arms on the tops of the windy
towers. The window would not open, so that he never heard the songs
that the troubadours sang down there beneath the gilded balconies; he
did not even hear the belfries' chimes, though he saw the jack-daws
routed every hour from their homes. And the first thing that he always
did was to cast his eye round all the little towers that rose up from
the ramparts to see that the little golden dragons were flying there
on their flags. And when he saw them flaunting themselves on white
folds from every tower against the marvelous deep blue of the sky he
dressed contentedly, and, taking one last look, went off to his work
with a glory in his mind. It would have been difficult for the
customers of Messrs. Mergin and Chater to guess the precise ambition
of Mr. Sladden as he walked before them in his neat frock-coat: it was
that he might be a man-at-arms or an archer in order to fight for the
little golden dragons that flew on a white flag for an unknown king in
an inaccessible city. At first Mr. Sladden used to walk round and
round the mean street that he lived in, but he gained no clue from
that; and soon he noticed that quite different winds blew below his
wonderful window from those that blew on the other side of the house.
In August the evenings began to grow shorter: this was the very remark
that the other employees made to him at the emporium, so that he
almost feared that they suspected his secret, and he had much less
time for the wonderful window, for lights were few down there and they
blinked out early.
One morning late in August, just before he went to Business, Mr.
Sladden saw a company of pikemen running down the cobbled road towards
the gateway of the mediaeval city--Golden Dragon City he used to call
it alone in his own mind, but he never spoke of it to anyone. The next
thing that he noticed was that the archers were handling round bundles
of arrows in addition to the quivers which they wore. Heads were
thrust out of windows more than usual, a woman ran out and called some
children indoors, a knight rode down the street, and then more pikemen
appeared along the walls, and all the jack-daws were in the air. In
the street no troubadour sang. Mr. Sladden took one look along the
towers to see that the flags were flying, and all the golden dragons
were streaming in the wind. Then he had to go to Business. He took a
bus back that evening and ran upstairs. Nothing seemed to be happening
in Golden Dragon City except a crowd in the cobbled street that led
down to the gateway; the archers seemed to be reclining as usual
lazily in their towers, and then a white flag went down with all its
golden dragons; he did not see at first that all the archers were
dead. The crowd was pouring towards him, towards the precipitous wall
from which he looked; men with a white flag covered with golden
dragons were moving backwards slowly, men with another flag were
pressing them, a flag on which there was one huge red bear. Another
banner went down upon a tower. Then he saw it all: the golden dragons
were being beaten--his little golden dragons. The men of the bear were
coming under the window; what ever he threw from that height would
fall with terrific force: fire-irons, coal, his clock, whatever he
had--he would fight for his little golden dragons yet. A flame broke
out from one of the towers and licked the feet of a reclining archer;
he did not stir. And now the alien standard was out of sight directly
underneath. Mr. Sladden broke the panes of the wonderful window and
wrenched away with a poker the lead that held them. Just as the glass
broke he saw a banner covered with golden dragons fluttering still,
and then as he drew back to hurl the poker there came to him the scent
of mysterious spices, and there was nothing there, not even the
daylight, for behind the fragments of the wonderful window was nothing
but that small cupboard in which he kept his tea-things.
And though Mr. Sladden is older now and knows more of the world, and
even has a Business of his own, he has never been able to buy such
another window, and has not ever since, either from books or men,
heard any rumour at all of Golden Dragon City.