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_A Dreamer’s Tales_
[Illustration: WE WOULD GALLOP THROUGH AFRICA]
_A Dreamer’s Tales_
BY
_Lord Dunsany_
_With Illustrations by_
S. H. SIME
BOSTON
JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_Preface_
I hope for this book that it may come into the hands of those that were
kind to my others and that it may not disappoint them.
To the Editor of the _Saturday Review_ my thanks are due for permission
to republish here those of the following tales which have appeared in
his columns, and, more than that, for the opportunity afforded me by his
review of reaching a wider public than my books have attained to yet.
_Contents_
PAGE
POLTARNEES, BEHOLDER OF OCEAN 1
BLAGDAROSS 23
THE MADNESS OF ANDELSPRUTZ 32
WHERE THE TIDES EBB AND FLOW 40
BETHMOORA 50
IDLE DAYS ON THE YANN 59
THE SWORD AND THE IDOL 93
THE IDLE CITY 105
THE HASHISH MAN 116
POOR OLD BILL 127
THE BEGGARS 138
CARCASSONNE 144
IN ZACCARATH 168
THE FIELD 175
THE DAY OF THE POLL 182
THE UNHAPPY BODY 188
_List of Illustrations_
WE WOULD GALLOP THROUGH AFRICA _Frontispiece_
ROMANCE COMES DOWN OUT OF HILLY WOODLANDS _To face page_ 4
THE SOUL OF ANDELSPRUTZ “ “ 34
THE TERRIBLE MUD “ “ 42
BIRD OF THE RIVER “ “ 60
THE GATE OF YANN “ “ 90
THE SILENCE OF GED “ “ 108
THUBA MLEEN “ “ 122
LITTLE COTTAGES ... WHOSE LOOKS WE DID NOT LIKE “ “ 128
_Poltarnees,
Beholder of Ocean_
Toldees, Mondath, Arizim, these are the Inner Lands, the lands whose
sentinels upon their borders do not behold the sea. Beyond them to the
east there lies a desert, for ever untroubled by man: all yellow it is,
and spotted with shadows of stones, and Death is in it, like a leopard
lying in the sun. To the south they are bounded by magic, to the west by
a mountain, and to the north by the voice and anger of the Polar wind.
Like a great wall is the mountain to the west. It comes up out of the
distance and goes down into the distance again, and it is named
Poltarnees, Beholder of Ocean. To the northward red rocks, smooth and
bare of soil, and without any speck of moss or herbage, slope up to the
very lips of the Polar wind, and there is nothing else there but the
noise of his anger. Very peaceful are the Inner Lands, and very fair are
their cities, and there is no war among them, but quiet and ease. And
they have no enemy but age, for thirst and fever lie sunning themselves
out in the mid-desert, and never prowl into the Inner Lands. And the
ghouls and ghosts, whose highway is the night, are kept in the south by
the boundary of magic. And very small are all their pleasant cities, and
all men are known to one another therein, and bless one another by name
as they meet in the streets. And they have a broad, green way in every
city that comes in out of some vale or wood or downland, and wanders in
and out about the city between the houses and across the streets; and
the people walk along it never at all, but every year at her appointed
time Spring walks along it from the flowery lands, causing the anemone
to bloom on the green way and all the early joys of hidden woods, or
deep, secluded vales, or triumphant downlands, whose heads lift up so
proudly, far up aloof from cities.
Sometimes waggoners or shepherds walk along this way, they that have
come into the city from over cloudy ridges, and the townsmen hinder them
not, for there is a tread that troubleth the grass and a tread that
troubleth it not, and each man in his own heart knoweth which tread he
hath. And in the sunlit spaces of the weald and in the wold’s dark
places, afar from the music of cities and from the dance of the cities
afar, they make there the music of the country places and dance the
country dance. Amiable, near and friendly appears to these men the sun,
and as he is genial to them and tends their younger vines, so they are
kind to the little woodland things and any rumour of the fairies or old
legend. And when the light of some little distant city makes a slight
flush upon the edge of the sky, and the happy golden windows of the
homesteads stare gleaming into the dark, then the old and holy figure of
Romance, cloaked even to the face, comes down out of hilly woodlands and
bids dark shadows to rise and dance, and sends the forest creatures
forth to prowl, and lights in a moment in her bower of grass the little
glowworm’s lamp, and brings a hush down over the grey lands, and out of
it rises faintly on far-off hills the voice of a lute. There are not in
the world lands more prosperous and happy than Toldees, Mondath, Arizim.
From these three little kingdoms that are named the Inner Lands the
young men stole constantly away. One by one they went, and no one knew
why they went save that they had a longing to behold the Sea. Of this
longing they spoke little, but a young man would become silent for a few
days, and then, one morning very early, he would slip away and slowly
climb Poltarnees’s difficult slope, and having attained the top pass
over and never return. A few stayed behind in the Inner Lands and became
old men, but none that had ever climbed Poltarnees from the very
earliest times had ever come back again. Many had gone up Poltarnees
sworn to return. Once a king sent all his courtiers, one by one, to
report the mystery to him, and then went himself; none ever returned.
[Illustration: ROMANCE COMES DOWN OUT OF HILLY WOODLANDS]
Now, it was the wont of the folk of the Inner Lands to worship rumours
and legends of the Sea, and all that their prophets discovered of the
Sea was writ in a sacred book, and with deep devotion on days of
festival or mourning read in the temples by the priests. Now, all their
temples lay open to the west, resting upon pillars, that the breeze from
the Sea might enter them, and they lay open on pillars to the east that
the breezes of the Sea might not be hindered but pass onward wherever
the Sea list. And this is the legend that they had of the Sea, whom none
in the Inner Lands had ever beholden. They say that the Sea is a river
heading towards Hercules, and they say that he touches against the edge
of the world, and that Poltarnees looks upon him. They say that all the
worlds of heaven go bobbing on this river and are swept down with the
stream, and that Infinity is thick and furry with forests through which
the river in his course sweeps on with all the worlds of heaven. Among
the colossal trunks of those dark trees, the smallest fronds of whose
branches are many nights, there walk the gods. And whenever its thirst,
glowing in space like a great sun, comes upon the beast, the tiger of
the gods creeps down to the river to drink. And the tiger of the gods
drinks his fill loudly, whelming worlds the while, and the level of the
river sinks between its banks ere the beast’s thirst is quenched and
ceases to glow like a sun. And many worlds thereby are heaped up dry and
stranded, and the gods walk not among them evermore, because they are
hard to their feet. These are the worlds that have no destiny, whose
people know no god. And the river sweeps onwards ever. And the name of
the river is Oriathon, but men call it Ocean. This is the Lower Faith of
the Inner Lands. And there is a Higher Faith which is not told to all.
According to the Higher Faith of the Inner Lands the river Oriathon
sweeps on through the forests of Infinity and all at once falls roaring
over an Edge, whence Time has long ago recalled his hours to fight in
his war with the gods; and falls unlit by the flash of nights and days,
with his flood unmeasured by miles, into the deeps of nothing.
Now as the centuries went by and the one way by which a man could climb
Poltarnees became worn with feet, more and more men surmounted it, not
to return. And still they knew not in the Inner Lands upon what mystery
Poltarnees looked. For on a still day and windless, while men walked
happily about their beautiful streets or tended flocks in the country,
suddenly the west wind would bestir himself and come in from the Sea.
And he would come cloaked and grey and mournful and carry to someone the
hungry cry of the Sea calling out for bones of men. And he that heard it
would move restlessly for some hours, and at last would rise suddenly,
irresistibly up, setting his face to Poltarnees, and would say, as is
the custom of those lands when men part briefly, “Till a man’s heart
remembereth,” which means “Farewell for a while;” but those that loved
him, seeing his eyes on Poltarnees, would answer sadly, “Till the gods
forget,” which means “Farewell.”
Now the King of Arizim had a daughter who played with the wild wood
flowers, and with the fountains in her father’s court, and with the
little blue heaven-birds that came to her doorway in the winter to
shelter from the snow. And she was more beautiful than the wild wood
flowers, or than all the fountains in her father’s court, or than the
blue heaven-birds in their full winter plumage when they shelter from
the snow. The old wise kings of Mondath and of Toldees saw her once as
she went lightly down the little paths of her garden, and, turning their
gaze into the mists of thought, pondered the destiny of their Inner
Lands. And they watched her closely by the stately flowers, and standing
alone in the sunlight, and passing and repassing the strutting purple
birds that the king’s fowlers had brought from Asagéhon. When she was of
the age of fifteen years the King of Mondath called a council of kings.
And there met with him the kings of Toldees and Arizim. And the King of
Mondath in his Council said:
“The call of the unappeased and hungry Sea (and at the word ‘Sea’ the
three kings bowed their heads) lures every year out of our happy
kingdoms more and more of our men, and still we know not the mystery of
the Sea, and no devised oath has brought one man back. Now thy daughter,
Arizim, is lovelier than the sunlight, and lovelier than those stately
flowers of thine that stand so tall in her garden, and hath more grace
and beauty than those strange birds that the venturous fowlers bring in
creaking waggons out of Asagéhon, whose feathers are alternate purple
and white. Now, he that shall love thy daughter, Hilnaric, whoever he
shall be, is the man to climb Poltarnees and return, as none hath ever
before, and tell us upon what Poltarnees looks; for it may be that thy
daughter is more beautiful than the Sea.”
Then from his Seat of Council arose the King of Arizim. He said: “I fear
that thou hast spoken blasphemy against the Sea, and I have a dread that
ill will come of it. Indeed I had not thought she was so fair. It is
such a short while ago that she was quite a small child with her hair
still unkempt and not yet attired in the manner of princesses, and she
would go up into the wild woods unattended and come back with her robes
unseemly and all torn, and would not take reproof with humble spirit,
but made grimaces even in my marble court all set about with fountains.”
Then said the King of Toldees:
“Let us watch more closely and let us see the Princess Hilnaric in the
season of the orchard-bloom when the great birds go by that know the
Sea, to rest in our inland places; and if she be more beautiful than the
sunrise over our folded kingdoms when all the orchards bloom, it may be
that she is more beautiful than the Sea.”
And the King of Arizim said:
“I fear this is terrible blasphemy, yet will I do as you have decided in
council.”
And the season of the orchard-bloom appeared. One night the King of
Arizim called his daughter forth on to his outer balcony of marble. And
the moon was rising huge and round and holy over dark woods, and all the
fountains were singing to the night. And the moon touched the marble
palace gables, and they glowed in the land. And the moon touched the
heads of all the fountains, and the grey columns broke into fairy
lights. And the moon left the dark ways of the forest and lit the whole
white palace and its fountains and shone on the forehead of the
Princess, and the palace of Arizim glowed afar, and the fountains became
columns of gleaming jewels and song. And the moon made a music at his
rising, but it fell a little short of mortal ears. And Hilnaric stood
there wondering, clad in white, with the moonlight shining on her
forehead; and watching her from the shadows on the terrace stood the
kings of Mondath and Toldees. They said:
“She is more beautiful than the moonrise.”
And on another day the King of Arizim bade his daughter forth at dawn,
and they stood again upon the balcony. And the sun came up over a world
of orchards, and the sea-mists went back over Poltarnees to the Sea;
little wild voices arose in all the thickets, the voices of the
fountains began to die, and the song arose, in all the marble temples,
of the birds that are sacred to the Sea. And Hilnaric stood there, still
glowing with dreams of heaven.
“She is more beautiful,” said the kings, “than morning.”
Yet one more trial they made of Hilnaric’s beauty, for they watched her
on the terraces at sunset ere yet the petals of the orchards had fallen,
and all along the edge of neighbouring woods the rhododendron was
blooming with the azalea. And the sun went down under craggy Poltarnees,
and the sea-mist poured over his summit inland. And the marble temples
stood up clear in the evening, but films of twilight were drawn between
the mountain and the city. Then from the Temple ledges and eaves of
palaces the bats fell headlong downwards, then spread their wings and
floated up and down through darkening ways; lights came blinking out in
golden windows, men cloaked themselves against the grey sea-mist, the
sound of small songs arose, and the face of Hilnaric became a
resting-place for mysteries and dreams.
“Than all these things,” said the kings, “she is more lovely: but who
can say whether she is lovelier than the Sea?”
Prone in a rhododendron thicket at the edge of the palace lawns a hunter
had waited since the sun went down. Near to him was a deep pool where
the hyacinths grew and strange flowers floated upon it with broad
leaves, and there the great bull gariachs came down to drink by
starlight, and, waiting there for the gariachs to come, he saw the white
form of the Princess leaning on her balcony. Before the stars shone out
or the bulls came down to drink he left his lurking place and moved
closer to the palace to see more nearly the Princess. The palace lawns
were full of untrodden dew, and everything was still when he came across
them, holding his great spear. In the farthest corner of the terraces
the three old kings were discussing the beauty of Hilnaric and the
destiny of the Inner Lands. Moving lightly, with a hunter’s tread, the
watcher by the pool came very near, even in the still evening, before
the Princess saw him. When he saw her closely he exclaimed suddenly:
“She must be more beautiful than the Sea.”
When the Princess turned and saw his garb and his great spear she knew
that he was a hunter of gariachs.
When the three kings heard the young man exclaim they said softly to one
another:
“This must be the man.”
Then they revealed themselves to him, and spoke to him to try him. They
said:
“Sir, you have spoken blasphemy against the Sea.”
And the young man muttered:
“She is more beautiful than the Sea.”
And the kings said:
“We are older than you and wiser, and know that nothing is more
beautiful than the Sea.”
And the young man took off the gear of his head, and became downcast,
and knew that he spake with kings, yet he answered:
“By this spear, she is more beautiful than the Sea.”
And all the while the Princess stared at him, knowing him to be a hunter
of gariachs.
Then the King of Arizim said to the watcher by the pool:
“If thou wilt go up Poltarnees and come back, as none have come, and
report to us what lure or magic is in the Sea, we will pardon thy
blasphemy, and thou shalt have the Princess to wife and sit among the
Council of the Kings.”
And gladly thereunto the young man consented. And the Princess spoke to
him, and asked him his name. And he told her that his name was Athelvok,
and great joy arose in him at the sound of her voice. And to the three
kings he promised to set out on the third day to scale the slope of
Poltarnees and to return again, and this was the oath by which they
bound him to return:
“I swear by the Sea that bears the worlds away, by the river of
Oriathon, which men call Ocean, and by the gods and their tiger, and by
the doom of the worlds, that I will return again to the Inner Lands,
having beheld the Sea.”
And that oath he swore with solemnity that very night in one of the
temples of the Sea, but the three kings trusted more to the beauty of
Hilnaric even than to the power of the oath.
The next day Athelvok came to the palace of Arizim with the morning,
over the fields to the East and out of the country of Toldees, and
Hilnaric came out along her balcony and met him on the terraces. And she
asked him if he had ever slain a gariach, and he said that he had slain
three, and then he told her how he had killed his first down by the pool
in the wood. For he had taken his father’s spear and gone down to the
edge of the pool, and had lain under the azaleas there waiting for the
stars to shine, by whose first light the gariachs go to the pools to
drink; and he had gone too early and had had long to wait, and the
passing hours seemed longer than they were. And all the birds came in
that home at night, and the bat was abroad, and the hour of the duck
went by, and still no gariach came down to the pool; and Athelvok felt
sure that none would come. And just as this grew to a certainty in his
mind the thicket parted noiselessly and a huge bull gariach stood facing
him on the edge of the water, and his great horns swept out sideways
from his head, and at the ends curved upwards, and were four strides in
width from tip to tip. And he had not seen Athelvok, for the great bull
was on the far side of the little pool, and Athelvok could not creep
round to him for fear of meeting the wind (for the gariachs, who can see
little in the dark forests, rely on hearing and smell). But he devised
swiftly in his mind while the bull stood there with head erect just
twenty strides from him across the water. And the bull sniffed the wind
cautiously and listened, then lowered its great head down to the pool
and drank. At that instant Athelvok leapt into the water and shot
forward through its weedy depths among the stems of the strange flowers
that floated upon broad leaves on the surface. And Athelvok kept his
spear out straight before him, and the fingers of his left hand he held
rigid and straight, not pointing upwards, and so did not come to the
surface, but was carried onward by the strength of his spring and passed
unentangled through the stems of the flowers. When Athelvok jumped into
the water the bull must have thrown his head up, startled at the splash,
then he would have listened and have sniffed the air, and neither
hearing nor scenting any danger he must have remained rigid for some
moments, for it was in that attitude that Athelvok found him as he
emerged breathless at his feet. And, striking at once, Athelvok drove
the spear into his throat before the head and the terrible horns came
down. But Athelvok had clung to one of the great horns, and had been
carried at terrible speed through the rhododendron bushes until the
gariach fell, but rose at once again, and died standing up, still
struggling, drowned in its own blood.
But to Hilnaric listening it was as though one of the heroes of old time
had come back again in the full glory of his legendary youth.
And long time they went up and down the terraces, saying those things
which were said before and since, and which lips shall yet be made to
say again. And above them stood Poltarnees beholding the Sea.
And the day came when Athelvok should go. And Hilnaric said to him:
“Will you not indeed most surely come back again, having just looked
over the summit of Poltarnees?”
Athelvok answered: “I will indeed come back, for thy voice is more
beautiful than the hymn of the priests when they chant and praise the
Sea, and though many tributary seas ran down into Oriathon and he and
all the others poured their beauty into one pool below me, yet would I
return swearing that thou wert fairer than they.”
And Hilnaric answered:
“The wisdom of my heart tells me, or old knowledge or prophecy, or some
strange lore, that I shall never hear thy voice again. And for this I
give thee my forgiveness.”
But he, repeating the oath that he had sworn, set out, looking often
backwards until the slope became too steep and his face was set to the
rock. It was in the morning that he started, and he climbed all the day
with little rest, where every foot-hole was smooth with many feet.
Before he reached the top the sun disappeared from him, and darker and
darker grew the Inner Lands. Then he pushed on so as to see before dark
whatever thing Poltarnees had to show. The dusk was deep over the Inner
Lands, and the lights of cities twinkled through the sea-mist when he
came to Poltarnees’s summit, and the sun before him was not yet gone
from the sky.
And there below him was the old wrinkled Sea, smiling and murmuring
song. And he nursed little ships with gleaming sails, and in his hands
were old regretted wrecks, and masts all studded over with golden nails
that he had rent in anger out of beautiful galleons. And the glory of
the sun was among the surges as they brought driftwood out of isles of
spice, tossing their golden heads. And the grey currents crept away to
the south like companionless serpents that love something afar with a
restless, deadly love. And the whole plain of water glittering with late
sunlight, and the surges and the currents and the white sails of ships
were all together like the face of a strange new god that has looked a
man for the first time in the eyes at the moment of his death; and
Athelvok, looking on the wonderful Sea, knew why it was that the dead
never return, for there is something that the dead feel and know, and
the living would never understand even though the dead should come and
speak to them about it. And there was the Sea smiling at him, glad with
the glory of the sun. And there was a haven there for homing ships, and
a sunlit city stood upon its marge, and people walked about the streets
of it clad in the unimagined merchandise of far sea-bordering lands.
An easy slope of loose crumbled rock went from the top of Poltarnees to
the shore of the Sea.
For a long while Athelvok stood there regretfully, knowing that there
had come something into his soul that no one in the Inner Lands could
understand, where the thoughts of their minds had gone no farther than
the three little kingdoms. Then, looking long upon the wandering ships,
and the marvellous merchandise from alien lands, and the unknown colour
that wreathed the brows of the Sea, he turned his face to the darkness
and the Inner Lands.
At that moment the Sea sang a dirge at sunset for all the harm that he
had done in anger and all the ruin wrought on adventurous ships; and
there were tears in the voice of the tyrannous Sea, for he had loved the
galleons that he had overwhelmed, and he called all men to him and all
living things that he might make amends, because he had loved the bones
that he had strewn afar. And Athelvok turned and set one foot upon the
crumbled slope, and then another, and walked a little way to be nearer
to the Sea, and then a dream came upon him and he felt that men had
wronged the lovely Sea because he had been angry a little, because he
had been sometimes cruel; he felt that there was trouble among the tides
of the Sea because he had loved the galleons who were dead. Still he
walked on and the crumbled stones rolled with him, and just as the
twilight faded and a star appeared he came to the golden shore, and
walked on till the surges were about his knees, and he heard the
prayer-like blessings of the Sea. Long he stood thus, while the stars
came out above him and shone again in the surges; more stars came
wheeling in their courses up from the Sea, lights twinkled out through
all the haven city, lanterns were slung from the ships, the purple night
burned on; and Earth, to the eyes of the gods as they sat afar, glowed
as with one flame. Then Athelvok went into the haven city; there he met
many who had left the Inner Lands before him; none of them wished to
return to the people who had not seen the Sea; many of them had
forgotten the three little kingdoms, and it was rumoured that one man,
who had once tried to return, had found the shifting, crumbled slope
impossible to climb.
Hilnaric never married. But her dowry was set aside to build a temple
wherein men curse the ocean.
Once every year, with solemn rite and ceremony, they curse the tides of
the Sea; and the moon looks in and hates them.
_Blagdaross_
On a waste place strewn with bricks in the outskirts of a town twilight
was falling. A star or two appeared over the smoke, and distant windows
lit mysterious lights. The stillness deepened and the loneliness. Then
all the outcast things that are silent by day found voices.
An old cork spoke first. He said: “I grew in Andalusian woods, but never
listened to the idle songs of Spain. I only grew strong in the sunlight
waiting for my destiny. One day the merchants came and took us all away
and carried us all along the shore of the sea, piled high on the backs
of donkeys, and in a town by the sea they made me into the shape that I
am now. One day they sent me northward to Provence, and there I
fulfilled my destiny. For they set me as a guard over the bubbling wine,
and I faithfully stood sentinel for twenty years. For the first few
years in the bottle that I guarded the wine slept, dreaming of Provence;
but as the years went on he grew stronger and stronger, until at last
whenever a man went by the wine would put out all his might against me,
saying: ‘Let me go free; let me go free!’ And every year his strength
increased, and he grew more clamorous when men went by, but never
availed to hurl me from my post. But when I had powerfully held him for
twenty years they brought him to the banquet and took me from my post,
and the wine arose rejoicing and leapt through the veins of men and
exalted their souls within them till they stood up in their places and
sang Provençal songs. But me they cast away—me that had been sentinel
for twenty years, and was still as strong and staunch as when first I
went on guard. Now I am an outcast in a cold northern city, who once
have known the Andalusian skies and guarded long ago Provençal suns that
swam in the heart of the rejoicing wine.”
An unstruck match that somebody had dropped spoke next. “I am a child of
the sun,” he said, “and an enemy of cities; there is more in my heart
than you know of. I am a brother of Etna and Stromboli; I have fires
lurking in me that will one day rise up beautiful and strong. We will
not go into servitude on any hearth nor work machines for our food, but
we will take our own food where we find it on that day when we are
strong. There are wonderful children in my heart whose faces shall be
more lively than the rainbow; they shall make a compact with the North
wind, and he shall lead them forth; all shall be black behind them and
black above them, and there shall be nothing beautiful in the world but
them; they shall seize upon the earth and it shall be theirs, and
nothing shall stop them but our old enemy the sea.”
Then an old broken kettle spoke, and said: “I am the friend of cities. I
sit among the slaves upon the hearth, the little flames that have been
fed with coal. When the slaves dance behind the iron bars I sit in the
middle of the dance and sing and make our masters glad. And I make songs
about the comfort of the cat, and about the malice that is towards her
in the heart of the dog, and about the crawling of the baby, and about
the ease that is in the lord of the house when we brew the good brown
tea; and sometimes when the house is very warm and slaves and masters
are glad, I rebuke the hostile winds that prowl about the world.”
And then there spoke the piece of an old cord. “I was made in a place of
doom, and doomed men made my fibres, working without hope. Therefore
there came a grimness into my heart, so that I never let anything go
free when once I was set to bind it. Many a thing have I bound
relentlessly for months and for years; for I used to come coiling into
warehouses where the great boxes lay all open to the air, and one of
them would be suddenly closed up, and my fearful strength would be set
on him like a curse, and if his timbers groaned when first I seized
them, or if they creaked aloud in the lonely night, thinking of
woodlands out of which they came, then I only gripped them tighter
still, for the poor useless hate is in my soul of those that made me in
the place of doom. Yet, for all the things that my prison-clutch has
held, the last work that I did was to set something free. I lay idle one
night in the gloom on the warehouse floor. Nothing stirred there, and
even the spider slept. Towards midnight a great flock of echoes suddenly
leapt up from the wooden planks and circled round the roof. A man was
coming towards me all alone. And as he came his soul was reproaching
him, and I saw that there was a great trouble between the man and his
soul, for his soul would not let him be, but went on reproaching him.
“Then the man saw me and said, ‘This at least will not fail me.’ When I
heard him say this about me, I determined that whatever he might require
of me it should be done to the uttermost. And as I made this
determination in my unaltering heart, he picked me up and stood on an
empty box that I should have bound on the morrow, and tied one end of me
to a dark rafter; and the knot was carelessly tied, because his soul was
reproaching him all the while continually and giving him no ease. Then
he made the other end of me into a noose, but when the man’s soul saw
this it stopped reproaching the man, and cried out to him hurriedly, and
besought him to be at peace with it and to do nothing sudden; but the
man went on with his work, and put the noose down over his face and
underneath his chin, and the soul screamed horribly.
“Then the man kicked the box away with his foot, and the moment he did
this I knew that my strength was not great enough to hold him; but I
remembered that he had said I would not fail him, and I put all my grim
vigour into my fibres and held him by sheer will. Then the soul shouted
to me to give way, but I said:
“‘No; you vexed the man.’
“Then it screamed to me to leave go of the rafter, and already I was
slipping, for I only held on to it by a careless knot, but I gripped
with my prison grip and said:
“‘You vexed the man.’
“And very swiftly it said other things to me, but I answered not; and at
last the soul that vexed the man that had trusted me flew away and left
him at peace. I was never able to bind things any more, for every one of
my fibres was worn and wrenched, and even my relentless heart was
weakened by the struggle. Very soon afterwards I was thrown out here. I
have done my work.”
So they spoke among themselves, but all the while there loomed above
them the form of an old rocking-horse complaining bitterly. He said: “I
am Blagdaross. Woe is me that I should lie now an outcast among these
worthy but little people. Alas! for the days that are gathered, and alas
for the Great One that was a master and a soul to me, whose spirit is
now shrunken and can never know me again, and no more ride abroad on
knightly quests. I was Bucephalus when he was Alexander, and carried him
victorious as far as Ind. I encountered dragons with him when he was St.
George, I was the horse of Roland fighting for Christendom, and was
often Rosinante. I fought in tourneys and went errant upon quests, and
met Ulysses and the heroes and the fairies. Or late in the evening, just
before the lamps in the nursery were put out, he would suddenly mount
me, and we would gallop through Africa. There we would pass by night
through tropic forests, and come upon dark rivers sweeping by, all
gleaming with the eyes of crocodiles, where the hippopotamus floated
down with the stream, and mysterious craft loomed suddenly out of the
dark and furtively passed away. And when we had passed through the
forest lit by the fireflies we would come to the open plains, and gallop
onwards with scarlet flamingoes flying along beside us through the lands
of dusky kings, with golden crowns upon their heads and sceptres in
their hands, who came running out of their palaces to see us pass. Then
I would wheel suddenly, and the dust flew up from my four hoofs as I
turned and we galloped home again, and my master was put to bed. And
again he would ride abroad on another day till we came to magical
fortresses guarded by wizardry and overthrew the dragons at the gate,
and ever came back with a princess fairer than the sea.
“But my master began to grow larger in his body and smaller in his soul,
and then he rode more seldom upon quests. At last he saw gold and never
came again, and I was cast out here among these little people.”
But while the rocking-horse was speaking two boys stole away, unnoticed
by their parents, from a house on the edge of the waste place, and were
coming across it looking for adventures. One of them carried a broom,
and when he saw the rocking-horse he said nothing, but broke off the
handle from the broom and thrust it between his braces and his shirt on
the left side. Then he mounted the rocking-horse, and drawing forth the
broomstick, which was sharp and spiky at the end, said, “Saladin is in
this desert with all his paynims, and I am Cœur de Lion.” After a while
the other boy said: “Now let me kill Saladin too.” But Blagdaross in his
wooden heart, that exulted with thoughts of battle, said: “I am
Blagdaross yet!”
_The Madness of Andelsprutz_
I first saw the city of Andelsprutz on an afternoon in spring. The day
was full of sunshine as I came by the way of the fields, and all that
morning I had said, “There will be sunlight on it when I see for the
first time the beautiful conquered city whose fame has so often made for
me lovely dreams.” Suddenly I saw its fortifications lifting out of the
fields, and behind them stood its belfries. I went in by a gate and saw
its houses and streets, and a great disappointment came upon me. For
there is an air about a city, and it has a way with it, whereby a man
may recognize one from another at once. There are cities full of
happiness and cities full of pleasure, and cities full of gloom. There
are cities with their faces to heaven, and some with their faces to
earth; some have a way of looking at the past and others look at the
future; some notice you if you come among them, others glance at you,
others let you go by. Some love the cities that are their neighbours,
others are dear to the plains and to the heath; some cities are bare to
the wind, others have purple cloaks and others brown cloaks, and some
are clad in white. Some tell the old tale of their infancy, with others
it is secret; some cities sing and some mutter, some are angry, and some
have broken hearts, and each city has her way of greeting Time.
I had said: “I will see Andelsprutz arrogant with her beauty,” and I had
said: “I will see her weeping over her conquest.”
I had said: “She will sing songs to me,” and “she will be reticent,”
“she will be all robed,” and “she will be bare but splendid.”
But the windows of Andelsprutz in her houses looked vacantly over the
plains like the eyes of a dead madman. At the hour her chimes sounded
unlovely and discordant, some of them were out of tune, and the bells of
some were cracked, her roofs were bald and without moss. At evening no
pleasant rumour arose in her streets. When the lamps were lit in the
houses no mystical flood of light stole out into the dusk, you merely
saw that there were lighted lamps; Andelsprutz had no way with her and
no air about her. When the night fell and the blinds were all drawn
down, then I perceived what I had not thought in the daylight. I knew
then that Andelsprutz was dead.
I saw a fair-haired man who drank beer in a cafe, and I said to him:
“Why is the city of Andelsprutz quite dead, and her soul gone hence?”
He answered: “Cities do not have souls and there is never any life in
bricks.”
And I said to him: “Sir, you have spoken truly.”
And I asked the same question of another man, and he gave me the same
answer, and I thanked him for his courtesy. And I saw a man of a more
slender build, who had black hair, and channels in his cheeks for tears
to run in, and I said to him:
“Why is Andelsprutz quite dead, and when did her soul go hence?”
[Illustration: THE SOUL OF ANDELSPRUTZ]
And he answered: “Andelsprutz hoped too much. For thirty years would she
stretch out her arms toward the land of Akla every night, to Mother Akla
from whom she had been stolen. Every night she would be hoping and
sighing, and stretching out her arms to Mother Akla. At midnight, once a
year, on the anniversary of the terrible day, Akla would send spies to
lay a wreath against the walls of Andelsprutz. She could do no more. And
on this night, once in every year, I used to weep, for weeping was the
mood of the city that nursed me. Every night while other cities slept
did Andelsprutz sit brooding here and hoping, till thirty wreaths lay
mouldering by her walls, and still the armies of Akla could not come.
“But after she had hoped so long, and on the night that faithful spies
had brought the thirtieth wreath, Andelsprutz went suddenly mad. All the
bells clanged hideously in the belfries, horses bolted in the streets,
the dogs all howled, the stolid conquerors awoke and turned in their
beds and slept again; and I saw the grey shadowy form of Andelsprutz
rise up, decking her hair with the phantasms of cathedrals, and stride
away from her city. And the great shadowy form that was the soul of
Andelsprutz went away muttering to the mountains, and there I followed
her—for had she not been my nurse? Yes, I went away alone into the
mountains, and for three days, wrapped in a cloak, I slept in their
misty solitudes. I had no food to eat, and to drink I had only the water
of the mountain streams. By day no living thing was near to me, and I
heard nothing but the noise of the wind, and the mountain streams
roaring. But for three nights I heard all round me on the mountain the
sounds of a great city: I saw the lights of tall cathedral windows flash
momently on the peaks, and at times the glimmering lantern of some
fortress patrol. And I saw the huge misty outline of the soul of
Andelsprutz sitting decked with her ghostly cathedrals, speaking to
herself, with her eyes fixed before her in a mad stare, telling of
ancient wars. And her confused speech for all those nights upon the
mountain was sometimes the voice of traffic, and then of church bells,
and then of the bugles, but oftenest it was the voice of red war; and it
was all incoherent, and she was quite mad.
“The third night it rained heavily all night long, but I stayed up there
to watch the soul of my native city. And she still sat staring straight
before her, raving; but her voice was gentler now, there were more
chimes in it, and occasional song. Midnight passed, and the rain still
swept down on me, and still the solitudes of the mountain were full of
the mutterings of the poor mad city. And the hours after midnight came,
the cold hours wherein sick men die.
“Suddenly I was aware of great shapes moving in the rain, and heard the
sound of voices that were not of my city nor yet of any that I ever
knew. And presently I discerned, though faintly, the souls of a great
concourse of cities, all bending over Andelsprutz and comforting her,
and the ravines of the mountains roared that night with the voices of
cities that had lain still for centuries. For there came the soul of
Camelot that had so long ago forsaken Usk; and there was Ilion, all girt
with towers, still cursing the sweet face of ruinous Helen; I saw there
Babylon and Persepolis, and the bearded face of bull-like Nineveh, and
Athens mourning her immortal gods.
“All these souls of cities that were dead spoke that night on the
mountain to my city and soothed her, until at last she muttered of war
no longer, and her eyes stared wildly no more, but she hid her face in
her hands and for some while wept softly. At last she arose, and,
walking slowly and with bended head, and leaning upon Ilion and
Carthage, went mournfully eastwards; and the dust of her highways
swirled behind her as she went, a ghostly dust that never turned to mud
in all that drenching rain. And so the souls of the cities led her away,
and gradually they disappeared from the mountain, and the ancient voices
died away in the distance.
“Never since then have I seen my city alive; but once I met with a
traveller who said that somewhere in the midst of a great desert are
gathered together the souls of all dead cities. He said that he was lost
once in a place where there was no water, and he heard their voices
speaking all the night.”
But I said: “I was once without water in a desert and heard a city
speaking to me, but knew not whether it really spoke or not, for on that
day I heard so many terrible things, and only some of them were true.”
And the man with the black hair said: “I believe it to be true, though
whither she went I know not. I only know that a shepherd found me in the
morning faint with hunger and cold, and carried me down here; and when I
came to Andelsprutz it was, as you have perceived it, dead.”
_Where the Tides Ebb and Flow_
I dreamt that I had done a horrible thing, so that burial was to be
denied me either in soil or sea, neither could there be any hell for me.
I waited for some hours, knowing this. Then my friends came for me, and
slew me secretly and with ancient rite, and lit great tapers, and
carried me away.
It was all in London that the thing was done, and they went furtively at
dead of night along grey streets and among mean houses until they came
to the river. And the river and the tide of the sea were grappling with
one another between the mud-banks, and both of them were black and full
of lights. A sudden wonder came into the eyes of each, as my friends
came near to them with their glaring tapers. All these things I saw as
they carried me dead and stiffening, for my soul was still among my
bones, because there was no hell for it, and because Christian burial
was denied me.
They took me down a stairway that was green with slimy things, and so
came slowly to the terrible mud. There, in the territory of forsaken
things, they dug a shallow grave. When they had finished they laid me in
the grave, and suddenly they cast their tapers to the river. And when
the water had quenched the flaring lights the tapers looked pale and
small as they bobbed upon the tide, and at once the glamour of the
calamity was gone, and I noticed then the approach of the huge dawn; and
my friends cast their cloaks over their faces, and the solemn procession
was turned into many fugitives that furtively stole away.
Then the mud came back wearily and covered all but my face. There I lay
alone with quite forgotten things, with drifting things that the tides
will take no farther, with useless things and lost things, and with the
horrible unnatural bricks that are neither stone nor soil. I was rid of
feeling, because I had been killed, but perception and thought were in
my unhappy soul. The dawn widened, and I saw the desolate houses that
crowded the marge of the river, and their dead windows peered into my
dead eyes, windows with bales behind them instead of human souls. I grew
so weary looking at these forlorn things that I wanted to cry out, but
could not, because I was dead. Then I knew, as I had never known before,
that for all the years that herd of desolate houses had wanted to cry
out too, but, being dead, were dumb. And I knew then that it had yet
been well with the forgotten drifting things if they had wept, but they
were eyeless and without life. And I, too, tried to weep, but there were
no tears in my dead eyes. And I knew then that the river might have
cared for us, might have caressed us, might have sung to us, but he
swept broadly onwards, thinking of nothing but the princely ships.
[Illustration: THE TERRIBLE MUD]
At last the tide did what the river would not, and came and covered me
over, and my soul had rest in the green water, and rejoiced and believed
that it had the Burial of the Sea. But with the ebb the water fell
again, and left me alone again with the callous mud among the forgotten
things that drift no more, and with the sight of all those desolate
houses, and with the knowledge among all of us that each was dead.
In the mournful wall behind me, hung with green weeds, forsaken of the
sea, dark tunnels appeared, and secret narrow passages that were clamped
and barred. From these at last the stealthy rats came down to nibble me
away, and my soul rejoiced thereat and believed that he would be free
perforce from the accursed bones to which burial was refused. Very soon
the rats ran away a little space and whispered among themselves. They
never came any more. When I found that I was accursed even among the
rats I tried to weep again.
Then the tide came swinging back and covered the dreadful mud, and hid
the desolate houses, and soothed the forgotten things, and my soul had
ease for a while in the sepulture of the sea. And then the tide forsook
me again.
To and fro it came about me for many years. Then the County Council
found me, and gave me decent burial. It was the first grave that I had
ever slept in. That very night my friends came for me. They dug me up
and put me back again in the shallow hole in the mud.
Again and again through the years my bones found burial, but always
behind the funeral lurked one of those terrible men who, as soon as
night fell, came and dug them up and carried them back again to the hole
in the mud.
And then one day the last of those men died who once had done to me this
terrible thing. I heard his soul go over the river at sunset.
And again I hoped.
A few weeks afterwards I was found once more, and once more taken out of
that restless place and given deep burial in sacred ground, where my
soul hoped that it should rest.
Almost at once men came with cloaks and tapers to give me back to the
mud, for the thing had become a tradition and a rite. And all the
forsaken things mocked me in their dumb hearts when they saw me carried
back, for they were jealous of me because I had left the mud. It must be
remembered that I could not weep.
And the years went by seawards where the black barges go, and the great
derelict centuries became lost at sea, and still I lay there without any
cause to hope, and daring not to hope without a cause, because of the
terrible envy and the anger of the things that could drift no more.
Once a great storm rode up, even as far as London, out of the sea from
the South; and he came curving into the river with the fierce East wind.
And he was mightier than the dreary tides, and went with great leaps
over the listless mud. And all the sad forgotten things rejoiced, and
mingled with things that were haughtier than they, and rode once more
amongst the lordly shipping that was driven up and down. And out of
their hideous home he took my bones, never again, I hoped, to be vexed
with the ebb and flow. And with the fall of the tide he went riding down
the river and turned to the southwards, and so went to his home. And my
bones he scattered among many isles and along the shores of happy alien
mainlands. And for a moment, while they were far asunder, my soul was
almost free.
Then there arose, at the will of the moon, the assiduous flow of the
tide, and it undid at once the work of the ebb, and gathered my bones
from the marge of sunny isles, and gleaned them all along the mainland’s
shores, and went rocking northwards till it came to the mouth of the
Thames, and there turned westwards its relentless face, and so went up
the river and came to the hole in the mud, and into it dropped my bones;
and partly the mud covered them and partly it left them white, for the
mud cares not for its forsaken things.
Then the ebb came, and I saw the dead eyes of the houses and the
jealousy of the other forgotten things that the storm had not carried
thence.
And some more centuries passed over the ebb and flow and over the
loneliness of things forgotten. And I lay there all the while in the
careless grip of the mud, never wholly covered, yet never able to go
free, and I longed for the great caress of the warm Earth or the
comfortable lap of the Sea.
Sometimes men found my bones and buried them, but the tradition never
died, and my friends’ successors always brought them back. At last the
barges went no more, and there were fewer lights; shaped timbers no
longer floated down the fair-way, and there came instead old
wind-uprooted trees in all their natural simplicity.