A Dreamer\'s Tales
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Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett] >> A Dreamer\'s Tales
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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 wind 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 clamourous 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 Provencal 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 Provencal 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
out 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 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 accurse, 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 unfaltering 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 by sheer will. Then the soul shouted to me
to give way, but I said:
"'No; you vexed the man.'
"Then it screamed for 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 tournays 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 scepters 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 hooves 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 pyjamas, and I am Coeur 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 recognized 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?"
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 her 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 momentarily 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 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 here 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 if 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.
"Now since then have I seen my city alive; but once I met with a traveler
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 to me 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 in to 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.
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 hold 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 for gotten. 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 fairway, and there came instead old wind-uprooted trees
in all their natural simplicity.
At last I was aware that somewhere near me a blade of grass was growing,
and the moss began to appear all over the dead houses. One day some
thistledown went drifting over the river.
For some years I watched these signs attentively, until I became certain
that London was passing away. Then I hoped once more, and all along both
banks of the river there was anger among the lost things that anything
should dare to hope upon the forsaken mud. Gradually the horrible houses
crumbled, until the poor dead things that never had had life got decent
burial among the weeds and moss. At last the may appeared and the
convolvulus. Finally, the wild rose stood up over mounds that had been
wharves and warehouses. Then I knew that the cause of Nature had
triumphed, and London had passed away.
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