The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories - Lord Dunsany
Her work was to tend a creature smaller, but infinitely more
cunning.
It took the strip of wool that the giants had threshed, and whirled
it round and round until it had twisted it into hard thin thread.
Then it would make a clutch with fingers of steel at the thread that
it had gathered, and waddle away about five yards and come back with
more.
It had mastered all the subtlety of skilled workers, and had
gradually displaced them; one thing only it could not do, it was
unable to pick up the ends if a piece of the thread broke, in order
to tie them together again. For this a human soul was required, and
it was Mary Jane's business to pick up broken ends; and the moment
she placed them together the busy soulless creature tied them for
itself.
All here was ugly; even the green wool as it whirled round and round
was neither the green of the grass nor yet the green of the rushes,
but a sorry muddy green that befitted a sullen city under a murky
sky.
When she looked out over the roofs of the town, there too was
ugliness; and well the houses knew it, for with hideous stucco
they aped in grotesque mimicry the pillars and temples of old
Greece, pretending to one another to be that which they were not.
And emerging from these houses and going in, and seeing the pretence
of paint and stucco year after year until it all peeled away, the
souls of the poor owners of those houses sought to be other souls
until they grew weary of it.
At evening Mary Jane went back to her lodgings. Only then, after the
dark had fallen, could the soul of Mary Jane perceive any beauty in
that city, when the lamps were lit and here and there a star shone
through the smoke. Then she would have gone abroad and beheld the
night, but this the old woman to whom she was confided would not let
her do. And the days multiplied themselves by seven and became
weeks, and the weeks passed by, and all days were the same. And all
the while the soul of Mary Jane was crying for beautiful things, and
found not one, saving on Sundays, when she went to church, and left
it to find the city greyer than before.
One day she decided that it was better to be a wild thing in the
lovely marshes, than to have a soul that cried for beautiful things
and found not one. From that day she determined to be rid of her
soul, so she told her story to one of the factory girls, and said to
her:
'The other girls are poorly clad and they do soulless work; surely
some of them have no souls and would take mine.'
But the factory girl said to her: 'All the poor have souls. It is
all they have.'
Then Mary Jane watched the rich whenever she saw them, and vainly
sought for some one without a soul.
One day at the hour when the
machines rested and the human beings that tended them rested too,
the wind being at that time from the direction of the marshlands,
the soul of Mary Jane lamented bitterly. Then, as she stood outside
the factory gates, the soul irresistibly compelled her to sing, and
a wild song came from her lips, hymning the marshlands. And into her
song came crying her yearning for home, and for the sound of the
shout of the North Wind, masterful and proud, with his lovely lady
the Snow; and she sang of tales that the rushes murmured to one
another, tales that the teal knew and the watchful heron. And over
the crowded streets her song went crying away, the song of waste
places and of wild free lands, full of wonder and magic, for she had
in her elf-made soul the song of the birds and the roar of the organ
in the marshes.
At this moment Signor Thompsoni, the well-known English tenor,
happened to go by with a friend. They stopped and listened; everyone
stopped and listened.
'There has been nothing like this in Europe in my time,' said Signor
Thompsoni.
So a change came into the life of Mary Jane.
People were written to,
and finally it was arranged that she should take a leading part in
the Covent Garden Opera in a few weeks.
So she went to London to learn.
London and singing lessons were
better than the City of the Midlands and those terrible machines.
Yet still Mary Jane was not free to go and live as she liked by the
edge of the marshlands, and she was still determined to be rid of
her soul, but could find no one that had not a soul of their own.
One day she was told that the English people would not listen to her
as Miss Rush, and was asked what more suitable name she would like
to be called by.
'I would like to be called Terrible North Wind,' said Mary Jane, 'or
Song of the Rushes.'
When she was told that this was impossible and Signorina Maria
Russiano was suggested, she acquiesced at once, as she had
acquiesced when they took her away from her curate; she
knew nothing of the ways of humans.
At last the day of the Opera
came round, and it was a cold day of the winter.
And Signorina Russiano appeared on the stage before a crowded house.
And Signorina Russiano sang.
And into the song went all the longing of her soul, the soul that
could not go to Paradise, but could only worship God and know the
meaning of music, and the longing pervaded that Italian song as the
infinite mystery of the hills is borne along the sound of distant
sheep-bells. Then in the souls that were in that crowded house arose
little memories of a great while since that were quite quite dead,
and lived awhile again during that marvellous song.
And a strange chill went into the blood of all that listened, as
though they stood on the border of bleak marshes and the North Wind
blew.
And some it moved to sorrow and some to regret, and some to an
unearthly joy,--then suddenly the song went wailing away like the
winds of the winter from the marshlands when Spring appears from the
South.
So it ended. And a great silence fell fog-like over all that house,
breaking in upon the end of a chatty conversation that Cecilia,
Countess of Birmingham, was enjoying with a friend.
In the dead hush Signorina Russiano rushed
from the stage; she appeared again running among the audience, and
dashed up to Lady Birmingham.
'Take my soul,' she said; 'it is a beautiful soul. It can worship
God, and knows the meaning of music and can imagine Paradise. And if
you go to the marshlands with it you will see beautiful things;
there is an old town there built of lovely timbers, with ghosts in
its streets.'
Lady Birmingham stared. Everyone was standing up. 'See,' said
Signorina Russiano, 'it is a beautiful soul.'
And she clutched at her left
breast a little above the heart, and there was the soul shining in
her hand, with the green and blue lights going round and round and
the purple flare in the midst.
'Take it,' she said, 'and you will love all that is beautiful, and
know the four winds, each one by his name, and the songs of the
birds at dawn. I do not want it, because I am not free. Put it to
your left breast a little above the heart.'
Still everybody was
standing up, and Lady Birmingham felt uncomfortable.
'Please offer it to some one else,' she said.
'But they all have souls already,' said Signorina Russiano.
And everybody went on standing up. And Lady Birmingham took the soul
in her hand.
'Perhaps it is lucky,' she said.
She felt that she wanted to pray.
She half-closed her eyes, and said '_Unberufen_'. Then she put the
soul to her left breast a little above the heart, and hoped that the
people would sit down and the singer go away.
Instantly a heap of clothes collapsed before her. For a moment, in
the shadow among the seats, those who were born in the dusk hour
might have seen a little brown thing leaping free from the clothes,
then it sprang into the bright light of the hall, and became
invisible to any human eye.
It dashed about for a little, then found the door, and presently was
in the lamplit streets.
To those that were born in the dusk hour it might have been seen
leaping rapidly wherever the streets ran northwards and eastwards,
disappearing from human sight as it passed under the lamps and
appearing again beyond them with a marsh-light over its head.
Once a dog perceived it and gave chase, and was left far behind.
The cats of London, who are all born in the dusk hour, howled
fearfully as it went by.
Presently it came to the meaner streets, where the houses are
smaller. Then it went due north-eastwards, leaping from roof to roof.
And so in a few minutes it came to more open spaces, and then to the
desolate lands, where market gardens grow, which are neither town
nor country. Till at last the good black trees came into view, with
their demoniac shapes in the night, and the grass was cold and wet,
and the night-mist floated over it. And a great white owl came by,
going up and down in the dark. And at all these things the little
Wild Thing rejoiced elvishly.
And it left London far behind it, reddening the sky, and could
distinguish no longer its unlovely roar, but heard again the noises
of the night.
And now it would come through a hamlet glowing and comfortable in
the night; and now to the dark, wet, open fields again; and many an
owl it overtook as they drifted through the night, a people friendly
to the Elf-folk. Sometimes it crossed wide rivers, leaping from star
to star; and, choosing its way as it went, to avoid the hard rough
roads, came before midnight to the East Anglian lands.
And it heard
there the shout of the North Wind, who was dominant and angry, as he
drove southwards his adventurous geese; while the rushes bent before
him chaunting plaintively and low, like enslaved rowers of some
fabulous trireme, bending and swinging under blows of the lash, and
singing all the while a doleful song.
And it felt the good dank air that clothes by night the broad East
Anglian lands, and came again to some old perilous pool where the
soft green mosses grew, and there plunged downward and downward into
the dear dark water till it felt the homely ooze once more coming
up between its toes. Thence, out of the lovely chill that is in the
heart of the ooze, it arose renewed and rejoicing to dance upon the
image of the stars.
I chanced to stand that night by the marsh's edge, forgetting in my
mind the affairs of men; and I saw the marsh-fires come leaping up
from all the perilous places. And they came up by flocks the whole
night long to the number of a great multitude, and danced away
together over the marshes.
And I believe that there was a great rejoicing all that night among
the kith of the Elf-folk.
The Highwaymen
Tom o' the Roads had ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the
night. From where he was, a man might see the white recumbent sheep
and the black outline of the lonely downs, and the grey line of the
farther and lonelier downs beyond them; or in hollows far below him,
out of the pitiless wind, he might see the grey smoke of hamlets
arising from black valleys. But all alike was black to the eyes of
Tom, and all the sounds were silence in his ears; only his soul
struggled to slip from the iron chains and to pass southwards into
Paradise. And the wind blew and blew.
For Tom tonight had nought but the wind to ride; they had taken his
true black horse on the day when they took from him the green fields
and the sky, men's voices and the laughter of women, and had left
him alone with chains about his neck to swing in the wind for ever.
And the wind blew and blew.
But the soul of Tom o' the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains, and
whenever it struggled to escape it was beaten backwards into the
iron collar by the wind that blows from Paradise from the south.
And swinging there by the neck, there fell away old sneers from off
his lips, and scoffs that he had long since scoffed at God fell from
his tongue, and there rotted old bad lusts out of his heart, and
from his fingers the stains of deeds that were evil; and they all
fell to the ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And
when these ill things had all fallen away, Tom's soul was clean
again, as his early love had found it, a long while since in spring;
and it swung up there in the wind with the bones of Tom, and with
his old torn coat and rusty chains.
And the wind blew and blew.
And ever and anon the souls of the sepultured, coming from
consecrated acres, would go by beating up wind to Paradise past the
Gallows Tree and past the soul of Tom, that might not go free.
Night after night Tom watched the sheep upon the downs with empty
hollow sockets, till his dead hair grew and covered his poor dead
face, and hid the shame of it from the sheep. And the wind blew and
blew.
Sometimes on gusts of the wind came someone's tears, and beat and
beat against the iron chains, but could not rust them through.
And the wind blew and blew.
And every evening all the thoughts that Tom had ever uttered came
flocking in from doing their work in the world, the work that may
not cease, and sat along the gallows branches and chirrupped to the
soul of Tom, the soul that might not go free. All the thoughts that
he had ever uttered! And the evil thoughts rebuked the soul that
bore them because they might not die. And all those that he had
uttered the most furtively, chirrupped the loudest and the shrillest
in the branches all the night.
And all the thoughts that Tom had ever thought about himself now
pointed at the wet bones and mocked at the old torn coat. But the
thoughts that he had had of others were the only companions that his
soul had to soothe it in the night as it swung to and fro. And they
twittered to the soul and cheered the poor dumb thing that could
have dreams no more, till there came a murderous thought and drove
them all away.
And the wind blew and blew.
Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence, lay in his white sepulchre of
marble, facing full to the southwards towards Paradise. And over
his tomb was sculptured the Cross of Christ, that his soul might
have repose. No wind howled here as it howled in lonely tree-tops
up upon the downs, but came with gentle breezes, orchard scented,
over the low lands from Paradise from the southwards, and played
about forget-me-nots and grasses in the consecrated land where lay
the Reposeful round the sepulchre of Paul, Archbishop of Alois and
Vayence. Easy it was for a man's soul to pass from such a
sepulchre, and, flitting low over remembered fields, to come upon
the garden lands of Paradise and find eternal ease.
And the wind blew and blew.
In a tavern of foul repute three men were lapping gin. Their names
were Joe and Will and the gypsy Puglioni; none other names had they,
for of whom their fathers were they had no knowledge, but only dark
suspicions.
Sin had caressed and stroked their faces often with its paws, but
the face of Puglioni Sin had kissed all over the mouth and chin.
Their food was robbery and their pastime murder. All of them had
incurred the sorrow of God and the enmity of man. They sat at a
table with a pack of cards before them, all greasy with the marks of
cheating thumbs. And they whispered to one another over their gin,
but so low that the landlord of the tavern at the other end of the
room could hear only muffled oaths, and knew not by Whom they swore
or what they said.
These three were the staunchest friends that ever God had given unto
a man. And he to whom their friendship had been given had nothing
else besides, saving some bones that swung in the wind and rain, and
an old torn coat and iron chains, and a soul that might not go free.
But as the night wore on the three friends left their gin and stole
away, and crept down to that graveyard where rested in his sepulchre
Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence. At the edge of the
graveyard, but outside the consecrated ground, they dug a hasty
grave, two digging while one watched in the wind and rain. And
the worms that crept in the unhallowed ground wondered and waited.
And the terrible hour of midnight came upon them with its fears, and
found them still beside the place of tombs. And the three friends
trembled at the horror of such an hour in such a place, and shivered
in the wind and drenching rain, but still worked on. And the wind
blew and blew.
Soon they had finished. And at once they left the hungry grave with
all its worms unfed, and went away over the wet fields stealthily
but in haste, leaving the place of tombs behind them in the
midnight. And as they went they shivered, and each man as he
shivered cursed the rain aloud. And so they came to the spot where
they had hidden a ladder and a lantern. There they held long debate
whether they should light the lantern, or whether they should go
without it for fear of the King's men. But in the end it seemed to
them better that they should have the light of their lantern, and
risk being taken by the King's men and hanged, than that they should
come suddenly face to face in the darkness with whatever one might
come face to face with a little after midnight about the Gallows
Tree.
On three roads in England whereon it was not the wont of folk to go
their ways in safety, travellers tonight went unmolested. But the
three friends, walking several paces wide of the King's highway,
approached the Gallows Tree, and Will carried the lantern and Joe
the ladder, but Puglioni carried a great sword wherewith to do the
work which must be done. When they came close, they saw how bad was
the case with Tom, for little remained of that fine figure of a man
and nothing at all of his great resolute spirit, only as they came
they thought they heard a whimpering cry like the sound of a thing
that was caged and unfree.
To and fro, to and fro in the winds swung the bones and the soul of
Tom, for the sins that he had sinned on the King's highway against
the laws of the King; and with shadows and a lantern through the
darkness, at the peril of their lives, came the three friends that
his soul had won before it swung in chains. Thus the seeds of Tom's
own soul that he had sown all his life had grown into a Gallows Tree
that bore in season iron chains in clusters; while the careless
seeds that he had strewn here and there, a kindly jest and a few
merry words, had grown into the triple friendship that would not
desert his bones.
Then the three set the ladder against the tree, and Puglioni went up
with his sword in his right hand, and at the top of it he reached up
and began to hack at the neck below the iron collar. Presently, the
bones and the old coat and the soul of Tom fell down with a rattle,
and a moment afterwards his head that had watched so long alone
swung clear from the swinging chain. These things Will and Joe
gathered up, and Puglioni came running down his ladder, and they
heaped upon its rungs the terrible remains of their friend, and
hastened away wet through with the rain, with the fear of phantoms
in their hearts and horror lying before them on the ladder. By two
o'clock they were down again in the valley out of the bitter wind,
but they went on past the open grave into the graveyard all among
the tombs, with their lantern and their ladder and the terrible
thing upon it, which kept their friendship still. Then these three,
that had robbed the Law of its due and proper victim, still sinned
on for what was still their friend, and levered out the marble slabs
from the sacred sepulchre of Paul, Archbishop of Alois and Vayence.
And from it they took the very bones of the Archbishop himself, and
carried them away to the eager grave that they had left, and put
them in and shovelled back the earth. But all that lay on the
ladder they placed, with a few tears, within the great white
sepulchre under the Cross of Christ, and put back the marble slabs.
Thence the soul of Tom, arising hallowed out of sacred ground, went
at dawn down the valley, and, lingering a little about his mother's
cottage and old haunts of childhood, passed on and came to the wide
lands beyond the clustered homesteads. There, there met with it all
the kindly thoughts that the soul of Tom had ever had, and they flew
and sang beside it all the way southwards, until at last, with
singing all about it, it came to Paradise.
But Will and Joe and the gypsy Puglioni went back to their gin, and
robbed and cheated again in the tavern of foul repute, and knew not
that in their sinful lives they had sinned one sin at which the
Angels smiled.
In The Twilight
The lock was quite crowded with boats when we capsized. I went down
backwards for some few feet before I started to swim, then I came
spluttering upwards towards the light; but, instead of reaching the
surface, I hit my head against the keel of a boat and went down
again. I struck out almost at once and came up, but before I reached
the surface my head crashed against a boat for the second time, and
I went right to the bottom. I was confused and thoroughly
frightened. I was desperately in need of air, and knew that if I hit
a boat for the third time I should never see the surface again.
Drowning is a horrible death, notwithstanding all that has been said
to the contrary. My past life never occurred to my mind, but I
thought of many trivial things that I might not do or see again if I
were drowned. I swam up in a slanting direction, hoping to avoid the
boat that I had struck. Suddenly I saw all the boats in the lock
quite clearly just above me, and every one of their curved varnished
planks and the scratches and chips upon their keels. I saw several
gaps among the boats where I might have swam up to the surface, but
it did not seem worthwhile to try and get there, and I had forgotten
why I wanted to. Then all the people leaned over the sides of their
boats: I saw the light flannel suits of the men and the coloured
flowers in the women's hats, and I noticed details of their dresses
quite distinctly. Everybody in the boats was looking down at me;
then they all said to one another, 'We must leave him now,' and they
and the boats went away; and there was nothing above me but the
river and the sky, and on either side of me were the green weeds
that grew in the mud, for I had somehow sunk back to the bottom
again. The river as it flowed by murmured not unpleasantly in my
ears, and the rushes seemed to be whispering quite softly among
themselves. Presently the murmuring of the river took the form of
words, and I heard it say, 'We must go on to the sea; we must leave
him now.'
Then the river went away, and both its banks; and the
rushes whispered, 'Yes, we must leave him now.' And they too
departed, and I was left in a great emptiness staring up at the blue
sky. Then the great sky bent over me, and spoke quite softly like a
kindly nurse soothing some little foolish child, and the sky said,
'Goodbye. All will be well. Goodbye.' And I was sorry to lose the
blue sky, but the sky went away. Then I was alone, with nothing
round about me; I could see no light, but it was not dark--there was
just absolutely nothing, above me and below me and on every side. I
thought that perhaps I was dead, and that this might be eternity;
when suddenly some great southern hills rose up all round about me,
and I was lying on the warm, grassy slope of a valley in England. It
was a valley that I had known well when I was young, but I had
not seen it now for many years. Beside me stood the tall flower of
the mint; I saw the sweet-smelling thyme flower and one or two wild
strawberries. There came up to me from fields below me the beautiful
smell of hay, and there was a break in the voice of the cuckoo.
There was a feeling of summer and of evening and of lateness and of
Sabbath in the air; the sky was calm and full of a strange colour,
and the sun was low; the bells in the church in the village were all
a-ring, and the chimes went wandering with echoes up the valley
towards the sun, and whenever the echoes died a new chime was born.
And all the people of the village walked up a stone-paved path under
a black oak porch and went into the church, and the chimes stopped
and the people of the village began to sing, and the level sunlight
shone on the white tombstones that stood all round the church. Then
there was a stillness in the village, and shouts and laughter came
up from the valley no more, only the occasional sound of the organ
and of song. And the blue butterflies, those that love the chalk,
came and perched themselves on the tall grasses, five or six
sometimes on a single piece of grass, and they closed their wings
and slept, and the grass bent a little beneath them. And from the
woods along the tops of the hills the rabbits came hopping out and
nibbled the grass, and hopped a little further and nibbled again,
and the large daisies closed their petals up and the birds began
to sing.
Then the hills spoke, all the great chalk hills that I loved, and
with a deep and solemn voice they said, 'We have come to you to say
Goodbye.'
Then they all went away, and there was nothing again all round about
me upon every side. I looked everywhere for something on which to
rest the eye. Nothing. Suddenly a low grey sky swept over me and a
moist air met my face; a great plain rushed up to me from the edge
of the clouds; on two sides it touched the sky, and on two sides
between it and the clouds a line of low hills lay. One line of hills
brooded grey in the distance, the other stood a patchwork of little
square green fields, with a few white cottages about it. The plain
was an archipelago of a million islands each about a yard square or
less, and everyone of them was red with heather. I was back on the
Bog of Allen again after many years, and it was just the same as
ever, though I had heard that they were draining it. I was with an
old friend whom I was glad to see again, for they had told me that
he died some years ago. He seemed strangely young, but what
surprised me most was that he stood upon a piece of bright green
moss which I had always learned to think would never bear. I was
glad, too, to see the old bog again, and all the lovely things that
grew there--the scarlet mosses and the green mosses and the firm
and friendly heather, and the deep silent water. I saw a little
stream that wandered vaguely through the bog, and little white
shells down in the clear depths of it; I saw, a little way off, one
of the great pools where no islands are, with rushes round its
borders, where the duck love to come. I looked long at that
untroubled world of heather, and then I looked at the white cottages
on the hill, and saw the grey smoke curling from their chimneys and
knew that they burned turf there, and longed for the smell of
burning turf again. And far away there arose and came nearer the
weird cry of wild and happy voices, and a flock of geese appeared
that was coming from the northward. Then their cries blended into
one great voice of exultation, the voice of freedom, the voice of
Ireland, the voice of the Waste; and the voice said 'Goodbye to you.
Goodbye!' and passed away into the distance; and as it passed, the
tame geese on the farms cried out to their brothers up above them
that they were free. Then the hills went away, and the bog and the
sky went with them, and I was alone again, as lost souls are alone.