laid a finger on her and never uttered one word of reproach though
he despised her; never grudged her a thing in reason when things
were going well with him. It’s God Almighty’s own true gospel—they
never had a quarrel in all the twelve years they was wed, and I don’t
believe they ever had an angry word, but how he kept his hands off her
I don’t know. I couldn’t have done it, but I was never married—I was
too independent for that work. He’d contradict her sometimes, for she
_would_ talk, and Ted was one of your silent sorts, but _she_—she
would talk for ever more. She was so artful that she used to invent all
manners of tomfoolery on purpose to make him contradict her; believe
you, she did, even on his death-bed.
I used to go and sit with him when he was going, poor Ted, for I
knew he was done for; and on the day he died, she said to him—and I
was there and I heard it: “Is there anything you would like me to
do, dear?” And he said, “No.” He was almost at his last gasp, he
had strained his heart, but she was for ever on at him, even then,
an unresting woman. It was in May, I remember it, a grand bright
afternoon outside, but the room itself was dreadful, it didn’t seem to
be afternoon at all; it was unbearable for a strong man to be dying
in such fine weather, and the carts going by, and though we were a
watching him, it seemed more as if something was watching us.
And she says to him again: “Isn’t there anything you would like me to
do?”
Ted says to her: “Ah! I’d like to hear you give one downright good damn
curse. Swear, my dear!”
“At what?” she says.
“Me, if you like.”
“What for?” she says. I can see her now, staring at him.
“For my sins.”
“What sins?” she says.
Now did you ever hear anything like that? What sins! After a while she
began at him once more.
“Ted, if anything happens to you I’ll never marry again.”
“Do what you like,” says he.
“I’ll not do that,” she says, and she put her arms round him, “for
you’d not rest quiet in your grave, would you, Ted?”
“Leave me alone,” he says, for he was a very crusty sick man, very
crusty, poor Ted, but could you wonder? “You leave me alone and I’ll
rest sure enough.”
“You can be certain,” she cries, “that I’d never, never do that, I’d
never look at another man after you, Ted, never; I promise it solemnly.”
“Don’t bother me, don’t bother at all.” And poor Ted give a grunt and
turned over on his side to get away from her.
At that moment some gruel boiled over on the hob—gruel and brandy was
all he could take. She turned to look after it, and just then old Ted
gave a breath and was gone, dead. She turned like a flash, with the
steaming pot in her hand, bewildered for a moment. She saw he had gone.
Then she put the pot back gently on the fender, walked over to the
window and pulled down the blind. Never dropped a tear, not one tear.
Well, that was the end of Ted. We buried him, one or two of us. There
was an insurance on his life for fifty pounds, but Ted had long before
mortgaged the policy and so there was next to nothing for her. But what
else could the man do? (Molly always swore the bank defrauded her!) She
put a death notice in the paper, how he was dead, and the date, and
what he died of: “after a long illness, nobly and patiently borne.” Of
course, that was sarcasm, she never meant one word of it, for he was a
terror to nurse, the worst that ever was; a strong man on his back is
like a wasp in a bottle. But every year, when the day comes round—and
it’s ten years now since he died—she puts a memorial notice in the same
paper about her loving faithful husband and the long illness nobly and
patiently borne!
And then, as I said, the insurance man and the parson began to call
again on that foolish woman, but she would not alter her ways for
any of them. Not one bit. The things she had once enjoyed before her
marriage, the things she had wanted her own husband to do but were all
against his grain, these she could nohow bring herself to do when he
was dead and gone and she was alone and free to do them. What a farce
human nature can be! There was an Italian hawker came along with rings
in his ears and a coloured cart full of these little statues of Cupid,
and churches with spires a yard long and red glass in them, and heads
of some of the great people like the Queen and General Gordon.
“Have you got a head of Lord Beaconsfield?” Molly asks him.
He goes and searches in his cart and brings her out a beautiful head on
a stand, all white and new, and charges her half a crown for it. Few
days later the parson calls on the job of persuading her to return to
his flock now that she was free to go once more. But no. She says: “I
can never change now, sir, it may be all wrong of me, but what my man
thought was good enough for me, and I somehow cling to that. It’s all
wrong, I suppose, and you can’t understand it, sir, but it’s all my
life.”
Well, Twamley chumbled over an argument or two, but he couldn’t move
her; there’s no mortal man could ever more that woman except Ted—and he
didn’t give a damn.
“Well,” says parson, “I have hopes, Mrs. Wickham, that you will come
to see the matter in a new light, a little later on perhaps. In fact,
I’m sure you will, for look, there’s that bust,” he says, and he points
to it on the mantelpiece. “I thought you and he were all against
Gladstone, but now you’ve got his bust upon your shelf; it’s a new one,
I see.”
“No, no, that isn’t Gladstone,” cried Molly, all of a tremble, “that
isn’t Gladstone, it’s Lord Beaconsfield!”
“Indeed, but pardon me, Mrs. Wickham, that is certainly a bust of Mr.
Gladstone.”
So it was. This Italian chap had deceived the silly creature and palmed
her off with any bust that come handy, and it happened to be Gladstone.
She went white to the teeth, and gave a sort of scream, and dashed the
little bust in a hundred pieces on the hearth in front of the minister
there. O, he had a very vexing time with her.
That was years ago. And then came the fire, and then the bullseye shop.
For ten years now I’ve prayed that woman to marry me, and she just
tells me: No. She says she pledged her solemn word to Ted as he lay
a-dying that she would not wed again. It was his last wish—she says.
But it’s a lie, a lie, for I heard them both. Such a lie! She’s a mad
woman, but fond of him still in her way, I suppose. She liked to see
Ted make a fool of himself, liked him better so. Perhaps that’s what
she don’t see in me. And what I see in her—I can’t imagine. But it’s
a something, something in her that sways me now just as it swayed me
then, and I doubt but it will sway me for ever.
_Tanil_
A Great while ago a man in a stripéd jacket went travelling almost
to the verge of the world, and there he came upon a region of green
fertility, quiet sounds, and sharp colour; save for one tiny green
mound it was all smooth and even, as level as the moon’s face, so flat
that you could see the sky rising up out of the end of everything like
a blue dim cliff. He passed into a city very populous and powerful, and
entered the shop of a man who sold birds in traps of wicker, birds of
rare kinds, the flame-winged antillomeneus and kriffs with green eyes.
“Sir,” said he to the hawker of birds, “this should be a city of great
occasions, it has the smell of opulence. But it is all unknown to me, I
have not heard the story of its arts and policy, or of its people and
their governors. What annalists have you recording all its magnificence
and glory, or what poets to tell if its record be just?”
The hawker of birds replied: “There are tales and the tellers of tales.”
“I have not heard of these,” said the other, “tell me, tell me.”
The bird man drew finger and thumb downwards from the bridge of his
long nose to its extremity, and sliding the finger across his pliant
nostrils said: “I will tell you.” They both sat down upon a coffer
of wheat. “I will tell you,” repeated the bird man, and he asked the
other if he had heard of the tomb in which none could lie, nor die, nor
mortify.
“No,” said he.
“Or of the oracle that destroys its interpreter?”
“No,” answered the man in the stripéd jacket, and a talking bird in a
cage screamed: “No, no, no, no!” The traveller whistled caressingly to
the bird, tapping his finger nail along the rods of its cage, while the
bird man continued: “Or of Fax, Mint, and Bombassor, the three faithful
brothers?”
“No,” replied he again.
“They had a sister of beauty, of beauty indeed, beyond imagination.
(_Soo-eet! soo-eet!_ chirped the oracular bird.) It smote even the
hearts of kings like a reaping hook among grass, and her favour was a
ransom from death itself, as I will tell you.”
“Friend,” said he of the stripéd jacket, “tell me of that woman.”
“I will tell you,” answered the other; and he told him, and this was
the way of it.
* * * * *
There was once a king of this country, mighty with riches and homage,
with tribute from his enemies—for he was a great warrior—and the favour
of many excellent queens. His ancestors were numberless as the hairs
of his black beard; so ancient was his lineage that he may have sprung
from divinity itself, but he had a heart of brass, his bowels were of
lead, and at times he was afflicted with madness.
One day he called for his captain of the guard, Tanil, a valiant,
debonair man of much courtesy, and delivered to him his commands.
Tanil took a company of the guard and they marched to that green hill
on the plain—it is but a league away. At the foot of the hill they
crossed a stream; beyond that was a white dwelling and a garden; at
the gate of the garden was a stumbling stone; a flock grazed on the
hill. The soldiers threw down the stone and, coming into the vineyard,
they hacked down the vines until they heard a voice call to them. They
saw at the door of the white dwelling a woman so beautiful that the
weapons slid from their hands at the wonder of it. “Friends, friends!”
said she. Tanil told her the King’s bidding, how they must destroy
the vineyard, the dwelling, and the flock, and turn Fax, Mint, and
Bombassor, with the foster sister Flaune, out from the kingdom of Cumac.
“You have denied the King tribute,” said he.
“We are wanderers from the eastern world,” Flaune answered. “Is not the
mountain a free mountain? Does not this stream divide it from Cumac’s
country?”
She took Tanil into the white dwelling and gave a pitcher of wine to
his men.
“Sir,” said she to Tanil, “I will go to your King. Take me to your
King.”
And when Tanil agreed to do this she sent a message secretly to her
brothers to drive the flock away into a hiding-place. So while Flaune
was gone a-journeying to the palace with Tanil’s troup, Fax, Mint, and
Bombassor set back the stumbling stone and took away the sheep.
The King was resting in his palace garden, throwing crumbs into the
lake, and beans to his peacocks, but when Flaune was brought to him he
rose and bowed himself to the pavement at her feet. The woman said
nothing, she walked to and fro before him, and he was content to let
his gaze rest upon her. The carp under the fountain watched them, the
rose drooped on its envious briar, the heart of King Cumac was like a
tree full of chirping birds.
Tanil confessed his fault; might the King be merciful and forgive him!
but the lady had taken their trespass with a soft temper and policy
that had overcome both his loyalty and his mind. It was unpardonable,
but it was not guilt, it was infirmity, she had bewitched him. Cumac
grinned and nodded. He bade Tanil return to the vineyard and restore
the vines, bade him requite the brothers and confirm them in those
pastures for ever. But as to this Flaune he would not let her go.
She paces before him, or she dips her palm into the fountain, spilling
its drops upon the ground; she smiles and she is silent.
Cumac gave her into the care of his groom of the women, Yali, the
sister of Tanil, and thereafter, every day and many a day, the King
courted and coveted Flaune. But he could not take her; her pride, her
cunning words, and her lustre bore her like an anchored boat upon the
tide of his purpose. At one moment full of pride and gloom, and in the
next full of humility and love, he would bring gifts and praises.
“I will cover you,” he whispered, “with green garnets and jargoons.
A collar of onyx and ruby, that is for you; breastknots of beryl, and
rings for the finger, wrist, and ear. Take them, take them! For you I
would tear the moon asunder.”
But all her desire was only to return to the green mountain and her
brothers and the flock by the stumbling stone. The King was merged in
anger and in grief.
“Do not so,” he pleaded, “I have given freedom to your men; will you
not give freedom to me?”
“What freedom, Cumac?” she asked him.
And he said: “Love.”
“How may the bound give freedom?”
“With the gift of love.”
“The spirit of the gift lies only in the giver.” Her voice was mournful
and low.
He was confused and cast down. “You humble me with words, but words are
nothing, beautiful one. Put on your collar of onyx, and fasten your
breastknots of beryl. Have I not griefs, fierce griefs, that crash upon
my brain, and frenzies that shoot in fire! Does not your voice—that
rest-recovering lure—allay them, your presence numb them! I cannot let
you go, I cannot let you go.”
“He who woos and does not win,” so said Flaune, “wins what he does not
woo for.”
“Though I beg but a rose,” murmured the King, “do you offer me a sword?”
“Time’s sword is laid at the breast of every rose.”
“But I am your lowly servant,” he cried. “You have that which all
secretly seek and denyingly long for; it is seen without sight and
affirmed without speech.”
“What is the thing you seek and long for?”
“Purity,” said he.
“Purity!” She seemed to muse upon it as a theme of mystery. “If you
found purity, what would you match it with?”
“My sins!” he cried again. “Would you waste purity on purity, or mingle
sin with sin?”
“Cumac,” said the wise woman, with no pride then but only pity, “you
seek to conquer that which strikes the conqueror dead.”
Then, indeed, for a while he was mute, and then for a while he talked
of his sickness and his frenzy. “Are there not charms,” he asked, “or
magic herbs, to find and bind these demons?”
There was no charm—she told him—but the mind, and no magic but in the
tranquillity of freedom.
“I do not know this,” he sighed, “it will never be known.”
The unknown—she told him—was better than the known.
“Alas, then,” sighed the King again, “I shall never discover it.”
“It is everywhere,” said Flaune, “but it is like a sweet herb that
withers in the ground. All may gather it—and it is not gathered. All
may see it—and it is not seen. All destroy it—and it never dies....”
“Shall I be a little wind,” laughed Cumac, “and gush among this grass?”
“It is the wind’s way among the roses. It has horns of bright brass and
quiet harps of silver. Its golden boats flash in every tossing bay.”
Cumac laughed again, but still he would not let her go. “The fox has
many tricks, the cat but one,” he said, and caused her ankles to be
fastened with two jewelled links tied with a hopple of gold. But in a
day he struck them from her with his own hands, and hung the hopple
upon her lustrous neck.
And still he would not let her go; so Yali and Tanil connived to send
news to the brothers, and in a little time Bombassor came to her aid.
Bombassor was a dancer without blemish, in beauty or movement either.
He came into the palace to Cumac who did not know him, and the King’s
household came to the beaten gongs to witness the art of Bombassor.
Yali brought Flaune a harp of ivory, and to its music Bombassor
caracoled and spun before the delighted King. Then Flaune (who spoke
as a stranger to him) asked Bombassor if he would dance with her, and
he said they would take the dance of “The Flying Phœnix.” The King was
enchanted; he vowed he would grant any wish of Bombassor’s, any wish;
yes, he would cut the moon in half did he desire it. “I will dance for
your pledge,” said Bombassor.
It seemed to the King then as if a little whirling wind made of
flame, and a music that was perfume, gyred and rose before him: the
tapped gongs, the tinkle of harp, the surprise of Flaune’s swaying
and reeling, now coy, now passionate, the lure of her wooing arms,
the rhythm of her flying feet, the chanting of the onlookers, and the
flashing buoyance of Bombassor, so thrilled and distracted him that he
shouted like an eager boy.
But when Bombassor desired Cumac to give him the maiden Flaune, the
King was astonished. “No, no,” he said, “but give him an urn full of
diamonds,” and Bombassor was given an urn full of diamonds. He let it
fall at the King’s feet, and the gems clattered upon the pavement like
a heap of peas. “Give him Yali, then,” Cumac shouted. Yali was a nymph
of splendour, but Bombassor called aloud, “No, a pledge is a pledge!”
Then the King’s joy went from him and, like a star falling, left
darkness and terror.
“Take,” he cried, “an axe to his head and pitch it to the crows.”
And so was Bombassor destroyed, while the King continued ignorantly to
woo his sister. Silent and proud was she, silent and proud, but her
beauty began to droop until Yali and Tanil, perceiving this, connived
again to send to her brothers, and in a little time Mint came. To race
on foot he was fleeter than any of Cumac’s champions; they strove with
him, but he was like the unreturning wind, and although they cunningly
moved the bounds of the course, and threw thorns and rocks under his
feet, he defeated them all, and the King jeered at his own champions.
Then Mint called for an antelope to be set in the midst of the plain
and cried: “Who will catch this for the King?” All were amazed and
Cumac said: “Whoever will do it I will give him whatever a King may
give, though I crack the moon for it.”
The men let go the hind and it swooped away, Mint pursuing. Fast and
far they sped until no man’s gaze could discern them, but in a while
Mint returned bearing the breathing hind upon his back. “Take off his
shoes,” cried the King, “and fill them with gold.” But when this was
done Mint spilled the gold back at the King’s feet.
“Give me,” said he, “this maiden Flaune.”
The King grinned and refused him.
“Was it not in the bond?” asked Mint.
“Ay,” replied Cumac, “but choose again.”
“Is this then a King’s bond?” sneered Mint.
“It was a living bond,” said the King, “but death can sever it. Let
this dog be riven in sunder and his bowels spilled to the foxes.” Mint
died on the moment, and Cumac continued ignorantly to woo his sister.
Then Flaune conferred with Tanil and with Yali about a means of escape.
Tanil feared to be about this, but he loved Flaune, and his sister Yali
persuaded him. He showed them a great door in the back of the palace, a
concealed issue through the city wall, from which Flaune might go in a
darkness could but the door be opened. But it had not been opened for
a hundred years, and they feared the hinges would shriek and the wards
grind in the lock and so discover them.
“Let us bring oil to-morrow,” they said, “and oil it.”
In the morning they brought oil to the hinge and brushed it with drops
from a cock’s feather. The hinge gave up its squeak but yet it groaned.
They filled Yali’s thimble that was made of tortoise horn and poured
this upon it. The hinge gave up its groan but yet it sighed. They
filled the eggshell of a goose with oil and poured upon the hinge until
it was silent. Then they turned to the lock, which, as they threw
back the wards, cried clack, clack. Tanil lapped the great key with
ointment, but still the lock clattered. He filled his mouth with oil
and spat into the hole, but still it clinked. Then Flaune caught a
grasshopper which she dipped in oil and cast into the lock. After that
the lock was silent too.
On the mid of night Tanil ushered Flaune to the great door, and it
opened in peace. She said “Farewell” to him tenderly, and vanished
away into the darkness, and so to the green mountain. As he stooped,
watching her until his eyes could see no more, the door suddenly closed
and locked against him, leaving him outside the wall. Lights came, and
an outcry and a voice roaring: “Tanil is fled with the King’s mistress.
Turn out the guard.” Tanil knew it to be the voice of a jealous
captain, and, filled with consternation, he too turned and fled away
into the night; not towards the mountains, but to the sea, hoping to
catch a ship that would deliver him.
Throughout the night he was going, striving or sleeping, and it was
stark noon before he came to the shore and passed over the strait in a
ship conveying merchants to a fair where no one knew him and all were
friendly. He hobnobbed with the merchants for several days, feeding
and sleeping in the booths until the morning of the sixth day, and on
that day a crier came into the fair ringing and bawling, bawling and
ringing, and what he cried was this:
That King Cumac, Lord of the Forty Kingdoms, Prince of the Moon, and
Chieftain under God, laid a ban upon all who should aid or relieve his
treacherous servant Tanil, who had conspired against the King and
fled. Furthermore it was to be known that Yali, the sister of Tanil,
was taken as hostage for him, that if he failed to redeem her and
deliver up his own body Yali herself was doomed to perish at sunset of
the seventh day after his flight.
Tanil scarcely waited to hear the conclusion, for he had but one day
more and he could suffer not his sister Yali to die. He turned from
the fair and ran to the sea. As he ran he slipped upon a rock and was
stunned, but a good wife restored him and soon he reached the harbour.
Here none of the sailors would convey him over the strait, for they
were bound to the merchantmen who intended not to sail that day. Having
so little time to reckon Tanil offered them bribes (but in vain), and
threats (but they would not), and he was in torment and anguish until
he came to an old man who said he would take him within the hour if the
wind held and the tide turned. But if the wind failed, although the
tide should ebb never so kindly, yet he would not go: and even should
the tide ebb strongly, yet if the wind wavered from its quarter he
would not go: and if by mysterious caprice (for all was in the hands of
God and a great wonder) the tide itself should not turn, then the wind
might blow a dainty squall but he would not be able to undertake him.
Upon this they agreed, and Tanil and the old sailor sat down in the
little ship to play at checkers. Alas, fortune was against Tanil, he
could not conquer the sailor, so he made to pay down his loss.
“Friend,” said the sailor, “a game is but a game, put up your purse.”
Tanil would not put back the money and the sailor said: “Let us then
play on, friend; double or quits.” They played on, and again Tanil
lost, and, as before, tendered his money. “Nay,” said the sailor, “a
game is but a pastime, put back your money.” But Tanil laid it in a
heap upon one of the thwarts. The old sailor sighed and said: “Come,
you are now at the turn of fortune; is not an egg made of water and
a stone of fire: let us play once more; double or quits.” And so
continually, until it was long past noon ere they began to sail in a
course for Cumac’s shore, two leagues over the strait. Now they had
accomplished about three parts of this voyage when the wind slackened
away like a wisp of smoke; slowly they drifted onwards until at eve the
boat lay becalmed, and as yet some way out from the land. “Friend,”
said the old sailor, laying out the checkers again, “let us tempt the
winds of fortune.” But, full of grief at having squandered the precious
hours, Tanil leaped into the sea and swam towards the shore. Soon the
tide checked and was changed, and a current washed him far down the
strait until the fading of day; then he was cast upon a crooking cape
of sand in such darkness of night and such weariness of mind and body
that he could not rise. He lay there for a while consumed with languor
and hunger until the peace refreshed him; the winds of night were
lulled and the waves; but though there were stars in the sky they could
not guide him.
“Alas,” he groaned, “darkness and the oddness of the coast deceive
me. Whether I venture to the right hand or the left, how shall I make
my way? How little is man’s power; the fox and the hare may wander
deceitfully but undeterred, yet here in this darkness I go groping like
a worm laid upon a rock. Yali, my sister, how shall I preserve you?”
He went wandering across a hill away from the sea until he stumbled
upon a hurdle and fell; and where he fell he lay still, sleeping.
Not until the dawn did Tanil wake; then he lay shivering in bonds, with
a company of sheep watchers that stood by and mocked at him. Their
shadows were long, a hundred-fold, for day was but newly dawned.
Their master was not yet risen from his bed, but the watchers carried
Tanil to the door of his house and called to him.
“Master, we have caught a robber of the flock, lying by the fold and
feigning sleep.”
Now the sleepy master lay with a new bride, and he would not stir.
“Come, master, we have taken a robber,” they cried again. And still he
did not move, but the bride rose and came to the window.
“What sheep has he stole?”
They answered her: “None, for we swaddled him; behold!”
She looked down at Tanil with her pleasant eyes, and bade the men
unbind him.