were all silent, and some made to go off. She bade them mend their
ways, and went back to her lover. When the thongs were loosened from
Tanil he begged them to give him a little food for he was empty and
weak, but they scolded him and went hastily away. Their shadows were
long, a hundred-fold.
Tanil travelled on wings. Yali was to die at fall of night. He hastened
like a lover, but sickness and hunger overcame him; at noon he lay down
in a cool cavern to recover. No other travellers came by him and no
homes were near, for he was passing across the fringe of a desert to
shorten his journey, and the highway crooked round far to the eastward.
Nothing that man could eat was there to sustain him, but he slept. When
he rose his legs weakened and he limped onwards like a slow beggar
whose life lies all behind him. Again he sank down, again he could not
keep from sleeping. The sun was setting when he awoke, the coloured
towers of his city shone only a league away. Then in his heart despair
leaped and maddened him—Yali had died while he tarried.
Searching through a thicket for some place where he could hang himself
he came upon a river, and saw, close to the shore, a small ship
standing slowly down towards the straits from which he had come. Under
her slack sail a man was playing on a pipe; with him was a monkey
gazing sorrowfully from the deck at the great glow in the sky.
“Shipman,” cried Tanil, “will you give me bread, I am at an end?”
The man with a smile of malice held up from the deck a dish of fruits
and said: “Take. I have done.”
But the hungry man could not reach it. “Throw it to me,” he cried,
following the ship. But the sailor had no mind to throw it upon the
shore; he went leaning against his mast, piping an air, while the
monkey peered at him and gabbled. Tanil plunged into the river and swam
beneath the ship’s keel. Taking a knife from his girdle he was for
mounting by a little hawser, but the man beflogged him with a cudgel
until he fell back into the water. There he would have died but that a
large barque presently catched him up on board and recovered him.
The ship carried Tanil from the river past the straits and so to the
great sea, where for the space of a year he was borne in absence,
willy-nilly, while the ship voyaged among the archipelagos, coasted
grim seaboards, or lay against strange wharves docking her cargo of
oil. Faithfully he laboured for wages under this ship’s captain,
being a man of pith and limb, valiant in storm, and enamoured of the
uncouth work: the haul of anchor, and men singing; setting, reefing,
furling, and men singing; the watch, the sleep, the song; the treading
of unknown waters, the crying gust, the change to glassy endless calm,
and the change again from green day to black night and the bending
of the harsh sheet in a starry squall, the crumpling of far thunder,
the rattle of halyard and block, the howl of cordage. Grand it was in
some bright tempest to watch the lubber wave slide greenly to the bows
and crack in showers of flying diamonds, but best of all was the long
crunch in from the vast gulfs, and the wafture to some blue bay sighing
below a white dock and the homes of men.
Forgotten was Yali his loved sister, but that proud living Flaune who
had brought Yali to her death, she was not forgotten. He sailed the
seas and he sailed the seas, but she was ever a soft recalling wonder
in his breast, the sound of a bell of glass beaten by a spirit.
After a year of hazards the ship by chance docked in that harbour where
Tanil had heard the crier crying of Yali and her doom. Looking about
him he espied an old sailor sitting in his boat playing a game of
checkers with a young man. The crier bawled in the market place, but he
had no news for Tanil. Standing again amid the merchants and the kind
coloured sweetness of streets and people, this bliss of home so welled
up in his breast that he hastened back to the ship. “Master,” he said,
“give me my wages, and let me go.” The shipman gave him his wages, and
he went back to the town.
But only nine days did he linger there, for joy, like truth, lives in
the bottom of a well, and he cast in his wages. Then he went off with
a hunter to trap leopards in a forest. A month they were gone, and
they trapped the leopards and sold them, and then, having parted from
the hunter, Tanil roved back to the port to spend his gains among the
women of the town. Often his soul invited him to return to that city of
Cumac, but death awaited him there and he did not go. Now he was come
to poverty, but he was blithe, and evil could not chain him. “Surely,”
said Tanil, “life is a hope unquenched and a tree of longing. There
is none so poor but he can love himself.” With a stolen net he used
to catch fish and live. Then he lost the net at dicing. So he went to
bake loaves for certain scholars, but they were unmonied men and he
desisted, and went wandering from village to village snaring birds, or
living like the wild dogs, until a friendly warrior enlisted him to
convoy a caravan across the desert to the great lakes. When he came
again to the harbour town two years had withered since he had flown
from Cumac’s city.
He went to lodge at the inn, and as he paced in the evening along the
wharf a man accosted him, called him by name, and would not let him go,
and then Tanil knew it was Fax, the brother of that Flaune. His heart
rocked in his breast when he took Fax to the inn and related all his
adventure. “Tell me the tidings of our city, what comes or goes there,
what lives or dies.” And Fax replied: “I have wandered in the world
searching after you from that time. I bring a greeting from my sister
Flaune,” he said, “and from your sister Yali, my beloved.”
The wonder then, the joy and shame of Tanil, cannot be told: he threw
himself down and wept, and begged Fax to tell him of the miracle:
“For,” said he, “my mind has misused me in this.”
“Know then,” proceeded Fax, “that after the unlocking of the door
my sister flees in darkness to the green mountain. I go watching and
lurking, and learn that the King is in jealous madness, for your enemy
spreads a slander and Cumac is deceived. He believes that my sister’s
love has been cozened by you. Yali is caught fast in his net. My heart
quivers in fear of his bloody intent, and I say to Flaune: ‘What shall
follow if Tanil return not?’ And she smiles and says ever: ‘He will
return.’ And again I say: ‘He tarries. What if he be dead?’ And she
smiles and says ever: ‘He is not dead.’ But you come not, your steps
are turned from us, no one has seen you, you are like a hare that has
fallen into a pit, and you do not come. Then in that last hour Flaune
goes to Cumac. He raves of deceit and treachery. ‘It is my sin,’ my
sister pleads, ‘the blame is mine. Spare but this Yali and I will wash
out the blame.’ ’Ay, you will wash it out with words!‘ ’I will pay the
debt in kind,’ says my sister Flaune, ‘if Tanil does not return.’ But
the cunning King will not yield up Yali unless my sister yield in love
to him. So thus it stands even now, but whether they live in peace and
love I do not know. I only know that Yali lives and serves her in the
palace there. But they wait, and I too wait. Now the thread is ravelled
to its end; I have lived only to seek you. My flock is lost, perished;
my vineyard fades, but I came seeking.”
“Brother,” cried Tanil in grief, “all shall be as before. Yali shall
rest in your bosom.”
At dawn then they sailed over the straits and landed, and having
bargained with a wine carrier for two asses they rode off in the
direction of the city. Tanil’s heart was filled with joy and love, his
voice carolled, his mind hummed like a homing bee. “Surely,” he said,
“life is a hope unquenched, a tree of longing. It yields its branches
into a little world of summer. The asp and the dragon appear, but the
tree buds, the enriching bough cherishes its leaves, and, lo, the fruit
hangs.”
But the heart of Fax was very grave within him. “For,” thought he,
“this man will surely die. Yet I would rather this than lose the love
of Yali, and though they slay him I will bring him there.”
So they rode along upon the asses, and a great bird on high followed
them and hovered on its wings.
“What bird is that?” asked the one. And the other, screening his eyes
and peering upwards, said:
“A vulture.”
When King Cumac heard that they were come he ordered them to be bound,
and they were bound, and the guard clustered around them. Tanil saw
that his enemy was now captain of the men, and that the King was sour
and distraught.
“You come!” cried Cumac, “why do you come?”
They told him it was to redeem the bond and make quittance.
“Bonds and quittances! What bond can lie between a King and faithless
subjects?”
Said Fax: “It lies between the King and my sister Flaune.”
“How if I kill you both?”
“The bond will hold,” said Fax.
“Come, is a bond everlasting then, shall nothing break it?”
“Neither everlasting, nor to be broken.”
“What then?”
“It shall be fulfilled.”
“Can nothing amend it?”
“Nothing,” said Fax.
“Nothing? Nothing? Fools!” laughed the King, “the woman is happy, and
desires not to leave me!”
Tanil stood bowed in silence and shame, and Cumac turned upon him.
“What says this rude passionate beast!” The King’s anger rose like a
blast among oaks. “Has he no talk of bonds, this toad that crawled into
my heart and drank my living blood? Has he nothing to restore? or gives
he and takes he at the will of the wind?”
“I have a life to give,” said Tanil.
“To give! You have a life to lose!”
“Take it, Cumac,” said he.
The King sprang up and seized Tanil by the beard, rocking him, and
shouting through his gritting teeth: “Ay, bonds should be kept—should
they not?—in truth and trust—should they not?”
Then he flung from him and went wailing in misery, swinging his hands,
and raging to and fro, up and down.
“Did she not come to me, come to me? Was it not agreed? Bonds and again
bonds! Yet when I woo her she denies me still. O, honesty in petticoats
is a saint with a devil’s claw. The bitter virginal thing turned her
wild heart to this piece of cloven honour. Bonds, more bonds! Spare me
these supple bonds! O, you spread cunning nets, but what fowler ever
thrived in his own snare? Did she not come to me? Was it not agreed?”
Suddenly he stopped and made a sign through a casement. “Is all ready?”
“Ay,” cried a voice.
“Now I will make an end,” said King Cumac. “Prop them against the
casements.” They carried Tanil to a casement on his right hand, and Fax
to a casement on his left hand. Tanil saw Flaune standing in the palace
garden amid a troop of Ethiopians, each with a green turban and red
shoes and a tunic coloured like a stone, but she half-clad with only
black pantaloons, and her long dark locks flowing. And Fax saw Yali in
fetters amid another troop of black soldiers.
Again a sigh from the King; two great swords flashed, and Tanil, at one
casement, saw the head of Flaune turn over backwards and topple to the
ground, her body falling after with a great swathe of shorn tresses
floating over it. Fax at the other casement saw Yali die, screaming a
long cry that it seemed would never end. Tanil swayed at the casement.
Then Cumac turned with a moan of grief, his madness all gone. “The bond
is ended. I have done. I say I have done.” He seemed to wake as from
sleep, and, seeing the two captive men, he asked: “Why did they come?
What brought them here? Take them away, the bond is ended, I say I have
done. There shall be no more bonds given in the world. But take them
out of the city gate and unbind them and cast them both loose; then
clap fast the gate again. No more death, I would not have them die; let
them wander in the live world, and dog each other for ever. Tanil, you
rotten core of constancy, Fax brought you here and so Flaune, bitter
and beautiful, dies. But Fax still lives—do you not see him?—I give Fax
to you: may he die daily for ever. Fax, blundering jackal, you spoke of
bonds. The bond is met, and so Yali is dead, but Tanil still lives: I
give you Tanil as an offering, but not of peace. May he die daily for
ever.”
So the guard took Fax and Tamil out of the city, struck off their
shackles, and left them there together.
* * * * *
The bird man finished; there was a silence; the other yawned. “Did
you hear this?” asked the bird man. And the man in the stripéd jacket
replied: “Ay, with both ears, and so may God bless you.” So saying, he
rose and went out singing.
_The Devil in the Churchyard_
“Henry Turley was one of those awkward old chaps as had more money than
he knowed what to do wi'. Shadrach we called him, the silly man. He had
worked for it, worked hard for it, but when he was old he stuck to his
fortune and wouldn’t spend a sixpence of it on his comforts. What a
silly man!”
The thatcher, who was thus talking of Henry Turley (long since dead and
gone) in the “Black Cat” of Starncombe, was himself perhaps fifty years
old. Already there was a crank of age or of dampness or of mere custom
in most of his limbs, but he was bluff and gruff and hale enough, with
a bluffness of manner that could only offend a fool—and fools never
listened to him.
“Shadrach—that’s what we called him—was a good man wi’ cattle, a
masterpiece; he would strip a cow as clean as a tooth and you never
knowed a cow have a bad quarter as Henry Turley ever milked. And when
he was buried he was buried with all that money in his coffin, holding
it in his hand, I reckon. He had plenty of relations—you wouldn’t know
’em, it is thirty years ago I be speaking of—but it was all down in
black and white so’s no one could touch it. A lot of people in these
parts had a right to some of it, Jim Scarrott for one, and Issy Hawker
a bit, Mrs. Keelson, poor woman, ought to have had a bit, and his own
brother, Mark Turley; but he left it in the will as all his fortune was
to be buried in the coffin along of him. ’Twas cruel, but so it is and
so it will be, for whenever such people has a shilling to give away
they goes and claps it on some fat pig’s haunches. The foolishness!
Sixty pounds it was, in a canister, and he held it in his hand.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said a mild-faced man sitting in the
corner. “Henry Turley never did a deed like that.”
“What?” growled the thatcher with unusual ferocity.
“Coorse I’m not disputing what you’re saying, but he never did such a
thing in his life.”
“Then you calls me a liar?”
“Certainly not. O no, don’t misunderstand me, but Henry Turley never
did any such thing, I can’t believe it of him.”
“Huh! I be telling you facts, and facts be true one way or another. Now
you waunts to call over me, you waunts to know the rights of everything
and the wrongs of nothing.”
“Well,” said the mild-faced man, pushing his pot toward the teller of
tales, “I might believe it to-morrow, but it’s a bit of a twister now,
this minute!”
“Ah, that’s all right then”—the thatcher was completely mollified.
“Well the worst part of the case was his brother Mark. Shadrach served
him shameful, treated him like a dog. (Good health!) Ah, like a dog.
Mark was older nor him, about seventy, and he lived by himself in
a little house out by the hanging pust, not much of a cottage, it
warn’t—just wattle and daub wi’ a thetch o’ straa'—but the lease was
running out (‘twas a lifehold affair) and unless he bought this little
house for fifty pound he’d got to go out of it. Well, old Mark hadn’t
got no fifty pounds, he was ate up wi’ rheumatics and only did just a
little light labour in the woods, they might as well a’ asked him for
the King’s crown, so he said to his master: Would he lend him the fifty
pounds?
“‘No, I can’t do that,’ his master says.
“‘You can reduct it from my wages,’ Mark says.
“‘Nor I can’t do that neither,’ says his master, ‘but there’s your
brother Henry, he’s worth a power o’ money, ask him.‘ So Mark asks
Shadrach to lend him the fifty pounds, so’s he could buy this little
house. ’No,’ says Henry, ‘I can’t.’ Nor he wouldn’t. Well—old Mark says
to him: ‘I doan wish you no harm Henry,’ he says, ‘but I hope as how
you’ll die in a ditch.’ (Good health!) And sure enough he did. That
was his own brother, he were strooken wi’ the sun and died in a ditch,
Henry did, and when he was buried his fortune was buried with him, in a
little canister, holding it in his hand, I reckons. And a lot of good
that was to him! He hadn’t been buried a month when two bad parties
putt their heads together. Levi Carter, one was, he was the sexton, a
man that was half a loony as I always thought. O yes, he had got all
his wits about him, somewheres, only they didn’t often get much of a
quorum, still he got them—somewheres. T’other was a chap by the name of
Impey, lived in Slack the shoemaker’s house down by the old traveller’s
garden. He wasn’t much of a mucher, helped in the fieldwork and did
shepherding at odd times. And these two chaps made up their minds to
goo and collar Henry Turley’s fortune out of his coffin one night and
share it between theirselves. ’Twas crime, ye know, might a been prison
for life, but this Impey was a bad lot—he’d the manners of a pig,
pooh! filthy!—and I expects he persuaded old Levi on to do it. Bad as
body-snatchen, coorse ’twas!
“So they goos together one dark night, ’long in November it was, and
well you knows, all of you, as well as I, that nobody can’t ever see
over our churchyard wall by day let alone on a dark night. You all
knows that, don’t you?” asserted the thatcher, who appeared to lay
some stress upon this point in his narrative. There were murmurs
of acquiescence by all except the mild-faced man, and the thatcher
continued: “‘Twere about nine o’clock when they dug out the earth.
’Twarn’t a very hard job, for Henry was only just a little way down.
He was buried on top of his old woman, and she was on top of her two
daughters. But when they got down to the coffin Impey didn’t much care
for that part of the job, he felt a little bit sick, so he gives the
hammer and the screwdriver to Levi and he says: ’Levi,’ he says, ‘are
you game to make a good job o’ this?’
“‘Yes, I be,’ says old Levi.
“‘Well, then,’ Impey says, ‘yous’ll have my smock on now while I just
creeps off to old Wannaker’s sheep and collars one of they fat lambs
over by the 'lotments.’
“‘You’re not going to leave me here,’ says Carter, ‘what be I going to
do?’
“‘You go on and finish this ’ere job, Levi,’ he says, ‘you get the
money and put back all the earth and don’t stir out of the yard afore I
comes or I’ll have yer blood.’
“‘No,’ says Carter, ‘you maun do that.’
“‘I ’ull do that,’ Impey says, ‘he’ve got some smartish lambs I can
tell ’ee, fat as snails.’
“‘No,’ says Carter, ‘I waun’t have no truck wi’ that, tain’t right.’
“‘You will,’ says Impey, ‘and I ’ull get the sheep. Here’s my smock.
I’ll meet ’ee here again in ten minutes. I’ll have that lamb if I ’as
to cut his blasted head off.’ And he rooshed away before Levi could
stop him. So Carter putts on the smock and finishes the job. He got
the money and putt the earth back on poor Henry and tidied it up, and
then he went and sat in the church poorch waiting for this Impey to
come back. Just as he did that an oldish man passed by the gate. He was
coming to this very place for a drop o’ drink and he sees old Levi’s
white figure sitting in the church poorch and it frittened him so that
he took to his heels and tore along to this very room we be sittin’ in
now—only 'twas thirty years ago.
“‘What in the name of God’s the matter wi’ you?‘ they says to him, for
he’d a face like chalk and his lips was blue as a whetstone. ’Have you
seen a goost?’
“‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I have seen a goost, just now then.’
“‘A goost?’ they says, ‘a goost? You an’t seen no goost.’
“‘I seen a goost.’
“‘Where a’ you seen a goost?’
“So he telled ’em he seen a goost sitting up in the church poorch.
“‘I shan’t have that,’ says old Mark Turley, for he was a setting here.
“‘I tell you ’twas then,’ says the man.
“‘Can’t be nothing worse’n I be myself,’ Mark says.
“‘I say as ’tis,’ the man said, and he was vexed too. ‘Goo and see for
yourself.’
“‘I would goo too and all,’ said old Mark, ‘if only I could walk
it, but my rheumatucks be that scrematious I can’t walk it. Goosts!
There’s ne’er a mortal man as ever see’d a goost. I’d go, my lad, if
my legs ’ud stand it.’ And there was a lot of talk like that until a
young sailor spoke up—Irish he was, his name was Pat Crowe, he was on
furlough. I dunno what he was a-doing in this part of the world, but
there he was and he says to Mark: ‘If you be game enough, I be, and
I’ll carry you up to the churchyard on my back.’ A great stropping
feller he was. ‘You will?’ says Mark. ‘That I will,’ he says. ‘Well I
be game for ’ee,’ says Mark, and so they ups him on to the sailor’s
shoulders like a sack o’ corn and away they goos, but not another one
there was man enough to goo with them.
“They went slogging up to the churchyard gate all right, but when they
got to staggering along ’tween the gravestones Mark thought he could
see a something white sitting in the poorch, but the sailor couldn’t
see anything at all with that lump on his shoulders.
“‘What’s that there?’ Mark whispers in Pat’s ear. And Pat Crowe
whispers back, just for joking: ‘Old Nick in his nightshirt.’
“‘Steady now,’ Mark whispers, ‘go steady Pat, it’s getting up and
coming.’ Pat only gives a bit of a chuckle and says: ‘Ah, that’s him,
that’s just like him.’
“Then Levi calls out from the poorch soft like: ‘You got him then! Is
he a fat ’un?’
“‘Holy God,’ cried the sailor, ‘it _is_ the devil!’ and he chucks poor
Mark over his back at Levi’s feet and runs for his mortal life. He was
the most frittened of the lot ’cos he hadn’t believed in anything at
all—but there it was. And just as he gets to the gate he sees someone
else coming along in the dark carrying a something on its shoulder—it
was Impey wi’ the sheep. ‘Powers above,’ cried Pat Crowe, ‘it’s the Day
of Judgment come for sartin!’ And he went roaring the news up street
like a madman, and Impey went off somewheres too—but I dunno where
Impey went.
“Well, poor old Mark laid on the ground, he were a game old cock, but
he could hardly speak, he was strook dazzled. And Levi was frittened
out of his life in the darkness and couldn’t make anythink out of
nothink. He just creeps along to Mark and whispers: ‘Who be that? Who
be that?’ And old Mark looks up very timid, for he thought his last
hour was on him, and he says: ‘Be that you, Satan?’ Drackly Levi heard
that all in a onexpected voice he jumped quicker en my neighbour’s
flea. He gave a yell bigger nor Pat Crowe and he bolted too. But as he
went he dropped the little tin canister and old Mark picked it up. And
he shook the canister, and he heerd money in it, and then something
began to dawn on him, for he knowed how his brother’s fortune had been
buried.
“‘I rede it, I rede it,’ he says, ‘that was Levi Carter, the dirty
thief! I rede it, I rede it,’ he says. And he putt the tin can in his
pocket and hopped off home as if he never knowed what rheumatucks was
at all. And when he opened that canister there was the sixty golden
sovereigns in that canister. Sixty golden sovereigns! ‘Bad things ’ull
be worse afore they’re better,’ says Mark, ‘but they never won’t be
any better than this.’ And so he stuck to the money in the canister,
and that’s how he bought his cottage arter all. ’Twarn’t much of a
house, just wattle and daub, wi’ a thetch o’ straa', but ’twas what he
fancied, and there he ended his days like an old Christian man. (Good
health!)”
_Huxley Rustem_