Chapter I: Walked in Arden (2)

They went together down the hill towards the inn, which had already a light in its windows. The screams from the barn had ceased, and a cart passed them full of young pigs, bloody and subdued. The hill began to resume its old dominion of soft sounds. It was nearly nine o’clock, and one anxious farmer still made hay although, on this side of the down, day had declined, and with a greyness that came not from the sky, but crept up from the world. From the quiet hill, as the last skein of cocks was carted to the stack, you could hear dimly men’s voices and the rattle of their gear.

* * * * *

PIFFINGCAP

* * * * *

PIFFINGCAP

Piffingcap had the cup from an old friend, a queer-minded man. He had given it to him just before he had gone out of this continent, not for the first but for the last time--a cup of lead with an inscription upon it in decent letters but strange words.

“Here, Elmer,” said his old friend to the barber of Bagwood, “have this--there’s the doom of half a million beards in it!”

Piffingcap laughed, but without any joy, for his heart was heavy to lose his friend.

“There is in it too,” continued Grafton, offering the pot and tapping it with his forefinger, “a true test of virtue--a rare thing, as you know, in these parts. Secondly, there is in it a choice of fortunes; and thirdly, it may be, a triple calamity and--and--and very serious, you know, but there you are.” He gave it into the barber’s hand with a slight sigh. While his friend duly admired the dull gift the traveller picked up his walking stick and winked at himself in the mirror.

And Elmer Piffingcap, the barber of Bagwood, took his friend’s cup, set it in a conspicuous place upon the shelf of his shop, and bade that friend good-bye, a little knot rolling into his lungs as they shook their two hands together.

“It is true then,” said he, staring at the shining baldness of his friend who stood with hat and stick in hand--for as Piffingcap dared not look into his friend’s eyes, the gleam of the skull took his gaze, as a bright thing will seize the mind of a gnat--“it is true, then, I shall see you no more?”

“No more again,” said the wanderer affably, replacing his hat--disliking that pliant will-less stare of the barber’s mournful eyes. This wandering man had a heart full of bravery though he could not walk with pride, for the corns and bunkles he suffered would have crippled a creature of four feet, leave alone two. But--would you believe it--he was going now to walk himself for all his days round and round the world. O, he was such a man as could put a deceit upon the slyest, with his tall hat and his jokes, living as easy as a bird in the softness and sweetness of the year.

“And if it rains, it rains,” he declared to Polly, “and I squat like a hare in the hedge and keep the blessed bones of me dry and my feet warm--it’s not three weeks since it happened to me; my neck as damp as the inside of an onion, and my curly locks caught in blackberry bushes--stint your laughing, Polly!--the end of my nose as cold as a piece of dead pork, and the place very inconvenient with its sharp thorns and nettles--and no dockleaf left in the whole parish. But there was young barley wagging in the field, and clover to be smelling, and rooks to be watching, and doves, and the rain heaving its long sigh in the greyness--I declare to my God it was a fine handsome day I had that day, Polly!”

In the winter he would be sleeping in decent nooks, eating his food in quiet inns, drying his coat at the forge; and so he goes now into the corners of the world--the little husky fat man, with large spectacles and fox-coloured beard and tough boots that had slits and gouts in them--gone seeking the feathers out of Priam’s peacock. And let him go; we take no more concern of him or his shining skull or his tra-la-la in the highways.

The barber, who had a romantic drift of mind, went into his saloon, and taking up the two cracked china lather mugs he flung them from the open window into his back garden, putting the fear of some evil into the mind of his drowsy cat, and a great anticipation in the brains of his two dusty hens, who were lurking there for anything that could be devoured. Mr. Piffingcap placed the pot made of lead upon his convenient shelf, laid therein his brush, lit the small gas stove under the copper urn, and when Polly, the child from the dairy, arrived with her small can for the barber’s large jug she found him engaged in shaving the chin of Timmy James the butcher, what time Mr. James was engaged in a somewhat stilted conversation with Gregory Barnes about the carnal women of Bagwood.

Polly was a little lean girl, eight or nine years old, with a face that was soft and rosy and fresh as the bud of gum on the black branches of the orchard. She wore a pretty dimity frock and had gay flowers in her hat. This was her last house of call, and, sitting down to watch Mr. Piffingcap, the town’s one barber, shaving friends and enemies alike, she would be the butt of their agreeable chaff because of her pleasant country jargon--as rich as nutmeg in a homely cake--or her yellow scattered hair, or her sweet eyes that were soft as remembered twilight.

“Your razor is roaring, Mr. Piffingcap!”--peeping round the chair at him. “Oh, it’s that Mr. James!” she would say in pretended surprise. Mr. James had a gruff beard, and the act of removing it occasioned a noise resembling that of her mother scraping the new potatoes.

“What have you got this pot for?” she chattered; “I don’t like it, it’s ugly.”

“Don’t say that now,” said Mr. Piffingcap, pausing with his hand on the butcher’s throttle, “it was Mr. Grafton’s parting gift to me; I shall never see him again, nor will you neither; he’s gone round the world for ever more this time!”

“Oh!” gurgled the child in a manner that hung between pain and delight, “has he gone to Rinjigoffer land?”

“Gone where?” roared Timothy James, lifting his large red neck from the rest.

“He’s told me all about it,” said the child, ignoring him.

“Well, he’s not gone there,” interrupted the barber.

And the child continued, “It’s where the doves and the partridges are so fat that they break down the branches of the trees where they roost....”

“Garn with yer!” said Mr. James.

“... and the hares are as big as foxes....”

“God a mercy!” said Mr. James.

“... yes, and a fox was big and brown and white like a skewbald donkey--he! he! he! And oo yes,” continued Polly, shrilling with excitement, “there was a king badger as would stop your eyes from winking if you met him walking in the dawn!”

“Lord, what should the man be doing telling you them lies,” ejaculated Timothy, now wiping his chin on the napkin. “Did he give you that cup, Piff?”

“Yes,” replied the barber, “and if what he says is true there’s a power o’ miracle in it.”

The butcher surveyed it cautiously and read the inscription:

NE SAMBRA DIVORNAK

“That’s a bit o’ Roosian, I should say,” he remarked as he and Gregory left the saloon.

Polly picked up her empty can and looked at Mr. P.

“Won’t he come back no more?”

“No, Polly, my pigeon, he won’t come back.”

“Didn’t he like us?” asked the child.

The barber stood dumb before her bright searching eyes.

“He was better than my father,” said the child, “or me uncle, or the schoolmaster.”

“He’s the goodest man alive, Polly,” said Mr. P.

“Didn’t he like us?” again she asked; and as Mr. P. could only look vaguely about the room she went out and closed the latch of the door very softly behind her.

In the succeeding days the barber lathered and cut or sat smoking meditatively in his saloon; the doom began to work its will, and business, which for a quarter of a century had flourished like a plant, as indeed it was, of constant and assured growth, suddenly declined. On weekdays the barber cleaned up the chins of his fellow townsmen alone, but on Sunday mornings he would seek the aid of a neighbour, a youngster whom he called Charleyboy, when four men would be seated at one time upon his shaving-chairs, towel upon breast and neck bared for the sacrifice, while Charleyboy dabbed and pounded their crops into foam. Mr. Piffingcap would follow him, plying his weapon like the genius he was, while Charleyboy again in turn followed _him_, drying with linen, cooling with rhum, or soothing with splendid unguent. “Next gent, please!” he would cry out, and the last shorn man would rise and turn away, dabbing his right hand into the depths of his breeches pocket and elevating that with his left before producing the customary tribute.

But the genius of Piffingcap and the neat hand of Charley languished in distress. There was no gradual cessation, the thing completely stopped, and Piffingcap did not realize until too late, until, indeed, the truth of it was current in the little town everywhere but in his own shop, that the beards once shaven by him out of Grafton’s pot grew no more in Bagwood; and there came the space of a week or so when not a soul entered the saloon but two schoolboys for the cutting of hair, and a little housemaid for a fringe net.

Then he knew, and one day, having sat in the place the whole morning like a beleaguered rat, with ruin and damnation a hands-breath only from him, he rushed from his shop across to the hardware merchant’s and bought two white china mugs, delicately lined with gold and embossed with vague lumps, and took them back to the saloon.

At dinner time he put the cup of lead into his coat pocket and walked down the street in an anxious kind of way until he came to the bridge at the end of the town. It was an angular stone bridge, crossing a deep and leisurely flowing river, along whose parapet boys had dared a million times, wearing smooth, with their adventuring feet, its soft yellow stone. He stared at the water and saw the shining flank of a tench as it turned over. All beyond the bridge were meads thick with ripe unmown grass and sweet with scabious bloom. But the barber’s mind was harsh with the rancour of noon heats and the misfortunes of life. He stood with one hand resting upon the hot stone and one upon the heavy evil thing in his pocket. The bridge was deserted at this hour, its little traffic having paused for the meal. He took, at length, the cup from his pocket, and whispering to himself “God forgive you, Grafton,” he let it fall from his fingers into the water; then he walked sharply home to his three daughters and told them what he had done.

“You poor loon!” said Bersa.

“O man! man!” moaned Grue.

“You’re the ruin of us all!” cried Mavie.

Three fine women were Grue and Mavie and Bersa, in spite of the clamour of the outlandish Piffingcap names, and their father had respect for them and admired their handsomeness. But they had for their father, all three of them, the principal filial emotion of compassion, and they showed that his action had been a foolish action, that there were other towns in the world besides Bagwood, and that thousands and millions of men would pay a good price to be quit of a beard, and be shaved from a pot that would complete the destruction of all the unwanted hairiness of the world. And they were very angry with him.

“Let us go and see to it ... what is to be done now ... bring us to the place, father!”

He took them down to the river, and when they peered over the side of the bridge they could see the pot lying half sunk in some white sand in more than a fathom of water.

“Let us instruct the waterman,” they said, “he will secure it for us.”

In the afternoon Grue met the waterman, who was a sly young fellow, and she instructed him, but at tea-time word was brought to Piffingcap that the young waterman was fallen into the river and drowned. Then there was grief in his mind, for he remembered the calamity which Grafton had foretold, and he was for giving up all notions of re-taking the cup; but his daughter Bersa went in a few days to a man was an angler and instructed him; and he took a crooked pole and leaned over the bridge to probe for the cup. In the afternoon word was brought to Piffingcap that the parapet had given way, and the young angler in falling through had dashed out his brains on the abutment of the bridge. And the young gaffer whom Mavie instructed was took of a sunstroke and died on the bank.

The barber was in great grief at these calamities; he had tremors of guilt in his mind, no money in his coffers, and the chins of the Bagwood men were still as smooth as children’s; but it came to him one day that he need not fear any more calamities, and that a thing which had so much tricks in it should perhaps be cured by trickery.

“I will go,” he said, “to the Widow Buckland and ask her to assist me.”

The Widow Buckland was a wild strange woman who lived on a heath a few miles away from Bagwood; so he went over one very hot day to the Widow and found her cottage in the corner of the heath. There was a caravan beside the cottage--it was a red caravan with yellow wheels. A blackbird hung in a wicker cage at the door, and on the side of the roof board was painted

FEATS & GALIAS ATENDED
AGLAURA BUCKLAND

There was nobody in the caravan so he knocked at the cottage door; the Widow Buckland led him into her dim little parlour.

“It ’ull cost you half a James!” says she when Mr. Piffingcap had given her his requirements.

“Half a what?” cried he.

“You are _not_,” said the gipsy, “a man of a mean heart, are you?” She said it very persuasively, and he felt he could not annoy her for she was a very large woman with sharp glances.

“No,” said Piffingcap.

“And you’ll believe what I’m telling you, won’t you?”

“Yes,” said Piffingcap.

“It ’ull maybe some time before my words come true, but come true they will, I can take my oath.”

“Yes,” again said Piffingcap.

“George!” she bawled to someone from the doorway, “wher’d yer put my box?”

There was an indistinct reply but she bawled out again, “Well, _fetch_ it off the rabbit hutch.”

“And a man like you,” she continued, turning again to the barber, “doesn’t think twice about half a sovereign, and me putting you in the way of what you want to know, _I’m_ sure.”

And Piffingcap mumbled dubiously “No,” producing with difficulty some shillings, some coppers, and a postal order for one and threepence which a credulous customer had that morning sent him for a bottle of hairwash.

“Let’s look at your ’and,” she said; taking it she reflected gravely:

“You’re a man that’s ’ad your share o’ trouble, aint you?”

Piffingcap bowed meekly.

“And you’ve ’ad your ’appy days, aint you?”

A nod.

“Well listen to me; you’ve got more fortune in store for you if you know how to pluck it ... you understand my meaning, don’t you?... than any man in the town this bleedun minute. Right, George,” she exclaimed, turning to a very ugly little hunchbacked fellow--truly he was a mere squint of a man, there was such a little bit of him for so much uncomeliness. The Widow Buckland took the box from the hunchback and, thrusting him out of the room, she shut fast the door and turned the key in the lock. Then she drew up a bit of a table to the window, and taking out of the box a small brass vessel and two bottles she set them before her.

“Sit down there, young feller,” she said, and Piffingcap sat down at the end of the table facing the window. The Widow turned to the window, which was a small square, the only one in the room, and closed over it a shutter. The room was clapped in darkness except for a small ray in the middle of the shutter, coming through a round hole about as large as a guinea. She pulled Mr. Piffingcap’s shoulder until the ray was shining on the middle of his forehead; she took up the brass vessel, and holding it in the light of the ray polished it for some time with her forefinger. All her fingers, even her thumbs, were covered with rich sinister rings, but there were no good looks in those fingers for the nails had been munched almost away, and dirty skin hid up the whites. The polished vessel was then placed on the table directly beneath the ray; drops from the two phials were poured into it, a green liquid and a black liquid; mixing together they melted into a pillar of smoke which rose and was seen only as it flowed through the beam of light, twisting and veering and spinning in strange waves.

The Widow Buckland said not a word for a time, but contemplated the twisting shapes as they poured through the ray, breathing heavily all the while or suffering a slight sigh to pass out of her breast. But shortly the smoke played the barber a trick in his nose and heaving up his chin he rent the room with a great sneeze. When he recovered himself she was speaking certain words:

“Fire and water I see and a white virgin’s skin. The triple gouts of blood I see and the doom given over. Fire and water I see and a white virgin’s skin.”

She threw open the shutter, letting in the light; smoke had ceased to rise but it filled the parlour with a sweet smell.

“Well ...” said Mr. Piffingcap dubiously.

And the Widow Buckland spoke over to him plainly and slowly, patting his shoulder at each syllable,

“Fire and water and a white virgin’s skin.”

Unlatching the door she thrust him out of the house into the sunlight. He tramped away across the heath meditating her words, and coming to the end of it he sat down in the shade of a bush by the side of the road, for he felt sure he was about to capture the full meaning of her words. But just then he heard a strange voice speaking, and speaking very vigorously. He looked up and observed a man on a bicycle, riding along towards him, talking to himself in a great way.

“He is a political fellow rehearsing a speech,” said Mr. Piffingcap to himself, “or perhaps he is some holy-minded person devising a sermon.”

It was a very bald man and he had a long face hung with glasses; he had no coat and rode in his shirt and knickerbockers, with hot thick stockings and white shoes. The barber watched him after he had passed and noted how his knees turned angularly outwards at each upward movement, and how his saddle bag hung at the bottom of his back like some ironical label.

“Fool!” exclaimed Mr. Piffingcap, rising angrily, for the man’s chatter had driven his mind clean away from the Widow Buckland’s meaning. But it was only for a short while, and when he got home he called one of his daughters into the saloon.

“My child,” said Piffingcap, “you know the great trouble which is come on me?” and he told Bersa his difficulty and requested her aid, that is to say: would she go down in the early morning in her skin only and recover the pot?

“Indeed no, father!” said his daughter Bersa, “it is a very evil thing and I will not do your request.”

“You will not?” says he.

“No!” says she, but it was not in the fear of her getting her death that she refused him.

So he called to another of his daughters.

“My child,” said he, “you know the great trouble that is come on me,” and he told Mavie his desire and asked for her aid.

“Why, my father,” says she, “this is a thing which a black hag has put on us all and I will get my death. I love you as I love my life, father, but I won’t do this!”

“You will not?” says he.

“No!” says she, but it was not for fear of her death she refused him.

And he went to his third daughter Grue and tried her with the same thing. “My child, you know the trouble that’s come on me?”

“Oh, will you let me alone!” she says, “I’ve a greater trouble on me than your mouldy pot.” And it is true what she said of her trouble, for she was a girl of a loose habit. So the barber said no more to them and went to his bed.

Two days later, it being Saturday, he opened in the morning his saloon and sat down there. And while he read his newspaper in the empty place footsteps scampered into his doorway, and the door itself was pushed open just an inch or two.

“Come in,” he said, rising.

The door opened fully.

“Zennybody here?” whispered Polly walking in very mysteriously, out of breath, and dressed in a long mackintosh.

“What is the matter, my little one?” he asked, putting his arm around her shoulders, for he had a fondness for her. “Ach, your hair’s all wet, what’s the matter?”

The little girl put her hand under the macintosh and drew out the leaden pot, handing it to the barber and smiling at him with inarticulate but intense happiness. She said not a word as he stared his surprise and joy.

“Why Polly, my _dear_, how _did_ you get it?”

“I dived in and got it.”

“You never ... you princess ... you!”

“I just bin and come straight here with it.”

She opened and shut the mackintosh quickly, displaying for a brief glance her little white naked figure with the slightest tremulous crook at the sharp knees.

“Ah, my darling,” exclaimed the enraptured barber, “and you’re shivering with not a rag on you but them shoes ... run away home, Polly, and get some things on, Polly ... and ... Polly, Polly!” as she darted away, “come back quick, won’t you?”

She nodded brightly back at him as she sprang through the doorway. He went to the entrance and watched her taking her twinkling leaps, as bonny as a young foal, along the pavement.

And there came into the barber’s mind the notion that this was all again a piece of fancy tricks; but there was the dark pot, and he examined it. Thoughtfully he took it into his backyard and busied himself there for a while, not telling his daughters of its recovery. When, later, Polly joined him in the garden he had already raised a big fire in an old iron brazier which had lain there.

“Ah, Polly my dear, I’m overjoyed to get it back, but I dasn’t keep it ... it’s a bad thing. Take it in your fingers now, my dear little girl, and just chuck it in that fire. Ah, we must melt the wickedness out of it,” he said, observing her disappointment, “it’s been the death of three men and we dasn’t keep it.”

They watched it among the coals until it had begun to perish drop by drop through the grating of the brazier.

Later in the day Mr. Piffingcap drove Polly in a little trap to a neighbouring town to see a circus, and the pair of them had a roaring dinner at the Green Dragon. Next morning when Polly brought the milk to the saloon there were Timmy James and Gregory Barnes being shaved, for beards had grown again in Bagwood.

* * * * *

THE KING OF THE WORLD

* * * * *

THE KING OF THE WORLD

Once upon a time, yes, in the days of King Sennacherib, a young Assyrian captain, valiant and desirable, but more hapless than either, fleeing in that strange rout of the armies against Judah, was driven into the desert. Daily his company perished from him until he alone, astride a camel, was left searching desperately through a boundless desert for the loved plains of Shinar, sweet with flocks and rich with glittering cities. The desolation of ironic horizons that he could never live to pierce hung hopelessly in remote unattainable distances, endless as the blue sky. The fate of his comrades had left upon him a small pack of figs and wine, but in that uncharted wilderness it was but a pitiable parrying of death’s last keen stroke. There was no balm or succour in that empty sky; blue it was as sapphires, but savage with rays that scourged like flaming brass. Earth itself was not less empty, and the loneliness of his days was an increasing bitterness. He was so deeply forgotten of men, and so removed from the savour of life, from his lost country, the men he knew, the women he loved, their temples, their markets and their homes, that it seemed the gods had drawn that sweet and easy world away from his entangled feet.

But at last upon a day he was astonished and cheered by the sight of a black butterfly flickering in the air before him, and towards evening he espied a giant mound lying lonely in the east. He drove his camel to it, but found only a hill of sand whirled up by strange winds of the desert. He cast himself from the camel’s back and lay miserably in the dust. His grief was extreme, but in time he tended his tired beast and camped in the shadow of the hill. When he gave himself up to sleep the night covering them was very calm and beautiful, the sky soft and streaming with stars; it seemed to his saddened mind that the desert and the deep earth were indeed dead, and life and love only in that calm enduring sky. But at midnight a storm arose with quickening furies that smote the desert to its unseen limits, and the ten thousand stars were flung into oblivion; winds flashed upon him with a passion more bitter than a million waves, a terror greater than hosts of immediate enemies. They grasped and plunged him into gulfs of darkness, heaped mountains upon him, lashed him with thongs of snakes and scattered him with scimitars of unspeakable fear. His soul was tossed in the void like a crushed star and his body beaten into the dust with no breath left him to bemoan his fate. Nevertheless by a miracle his soul and body lived on.

It was again day when he recovered, day in the likeness of yesterday, the horizons still infinitely far. Long past noon, the sun had turned in the sky; he was alone. The camel was doubtless buried in the fathoms he himself had escaped, but a surprising wonder greeted his half-blinded eyes; the hill of sand was gone, utterly, blown into the eternal waste of the desert, and in its track stood a strange thing--a shrine. There was a great unroofed pavement of onyx and blue jasper, large enough for the floor of a temple, with many life-size figures, both men and women, standing upon it all carved in rock and facing, at the sacred end, a giant pillared in black basalt, seven times the height of a man. The sad captain divined at once that this was the lost shrine of Namu-Sarkkon, the dead god of whom tradition spoke in the ancient litanies of his country. He heaved himself painfully from the grave of sand in which he had lain half-buried, and staggering to the pavement leaned in the shade of one of those figures fronting the dead god. In a little time he recovered and ate some figs which he carried in a leather bag at his hip, and plucked the sand from his eyes and ears and loosened his sandals and gear. Then he bowed himself for a moment before the black immobile idol, knowing that he would tarry here now until he died.

Namu-Sarkkon, the priestless god, had been praised of old time above all for his gifts of joy. Worshippers had gathered from the cities of Assyria at this his only shrine, offering their souls for a gift to him who, in his time and wisdom, granted their desires. But Namu-Sarkkon, like other gods, was a jealous god, and, because the hearts of mankind are vain and destined to betrayal, he turned the bodies of his devotees into rock and kept them pinioned in stone for a hundred years, or for a thousand years, according to the nature of their desires. Then if the consummation were worthy and just, the rock became a living fire, the blood of eternity quickened the limbs, and the god released the body full of youth and joy. But what god lives for ever? Not Namu-Sarkkon. He grew old and forgetful; his oracle was defamed. Stronger gods supplanted him and at last all power departed save only from one of his eyes. That eye possessed the favour of eternity, but only so faintly that the worshipper when released from his trap of stone lived at the longest but a day, some said even but an hour. None could then be found to exchange the endurances of the world for so brief a happiness. His worship ceased, Namu-Sarkkon was dead, and the remote shrine being lost to man’s heart was lost to man’s eyes. Even the tradition of its time and place had become a mere fantasy, but the whirlwinds of uncounted years sowing their sands about the shrine had left it blameless and unperishable, if impotent.

Recollecting this, the soldier gazed long at the dead idol. Its smooth huge bulk, carved wonderfully, was still without blemish and utterly cleansed of the sand. The strange squat body with the benign face stood on stout legs, one advanced as if about to stride forward to the worshipper, and one arm outstretched offered the sacred symbol. Then in a moment the Assyrian’s heart leaped within him; he had been staring at the mild eyes of the god--surely there was a movement in one of the eyes! He stood erect, trembling, then flung himself prostrate before Namu-Sarkkon, the living god! He lay long, waiting for his doom to eclipse him, the flaming swords of the sun scathing his weary limbs, the sweat from his temples dripping in tiny pools beside his eyes. At last he moved, he knelt up, and shielding his stricken eyes with one arm he gazed at the god, and saw now quite clearly a black butterfly resting on the lid of one of Sarkkon’s eyes, inflecting its wings. He gave a grunt of comprehension and relief. He got up and went among the other figures. Close at hand they seemed fashioned of soft material, like camphor or wax, that was slowly dissolving, leaving them little more than stooks of clay, rough clod-like shapes of people, all but one figure which seemed fixed in coloured marble, a woman of beauty so wondrous to behold that the Assyrian bent his head in praise before her, though but an image of stone. When he looked again at it the black butterfly from the eyelid of the god fluttered between them and settled upon the girl’s delicately carved lips for a moment, and then away. Amazedly watching it travel back to the idol he heard a movement and a sigh behind him. He leaped away, with his muscles distended, his fingers outstretched, and fear bursting in his eyes. The beautiful figure had moved a step towards him, holding out a caressing hand, calling him by his name, his name!

“Talakku! Talakku!”

She stood thus almost as if again turned to stone, until his fear left him and he saw only her beauty, and knew only her living loveliness in a tunic of the sacred purple fringed with tinkling discs, that was clipped to her waist with a zone of gold and veiled, even in the stone, her secret hips and knees. The slender feet were guarded with pantoffles of crimson hide. Green agates in strings of silver hung beside her brows, depending from a fillet of gems that crowned and confined the black locks tightly curled. Buds of amber and coral were bound to her dusky wrists with threads of copper, and between the delicacy of her brown breasts an amulet of beryl, like a blue and gentle star, hung from a necklace made of balls of opal linked with amethysts.

“Wonder of god! who are you?” whispered the warrior; but while he was speaking she ran past him sweetly as an antelope to the dark god. He heard the clicking of her beads and gems as she bent in reverence kissing the huge stone feet of Sarkkon. He did not dare to approach her although her presence filled him with rapture; he watched her obeisant at the shrine and saw that one of her crimson shoes had slipped from the clinging heel. What was she--girl or goddess, phantom or spirit of the stone, or just some lunatic of the desert? But whatever she was it was marvellous, and the marvel of it shocked him; time seemed to seethe in every channel of his blood. He heard her again call out his name as if from very far away.

“Talakku!”

He hastened to lift her from the pavement, and conquering his tremors he grasped and lifted her roughly, as a victor might hale a captive.

“Pretty antelope, who are you?”

She turned her eyes slowly upon his--this was no captive, no phantom--his intrepid arms fell back weakly to his sides.

“You will not know me, O brave Assyrian captain,” said the girl gravely. “I was a weaver in the city of Eridu....”

“Eridu!” It was an ancient city heard of only in the old poems of his country, as fabulous as snow in Canaan.

“Ai ... it is long since riven into dust. I was a slave in Eridu, not ... not a slave in spirit....”

“Beauty so rare is nobility enough,” he said shyly.

“I worshipped god Namu-Sarkkon--behold his shrine. Who loves Namu-Sarkkon becomes what he wishes to become, gains what he wishes to gain.”

“I have heard of these things,” exclaimed the Assyrian. “What did you gain, what did you wish to become?”

“I worshipped here desiring in my heart to be loved by the King of the World.”

“Who is he?”

She dropped her proud glances to the earth before him.

“Who was this King of the World?”

Still she made no reply nor lifted her eyes.

“Who are these figures that stand with us here?” he asked.

“Dead, all dead,” she sighed, “their destinies have closed. Only I renew the destiny.”

She took his hand and led him among the wasting images.

“Merchants and poets, dead; princesses and slaves, dead; soldiers and kings, they look on us with eyes of dust, dead, all dead. I alone of Sarkkon’s worshippers live on enduringly; I desired only love. I feed my spirit with new desire. I am the beam of his eye.”

“Come,” said the Assyrian suddenly, “I will carry you to Shinar; set but my foot to that lost track ... will you?”

She shook her head gravely; “All roads lead to Sarkkon.”

“Why do we tarry here? Come.”

“Talakku, there is no way hence, no way for you, no way for me. We have wandered into the boundless. What star returns from the sky, what drop from the deep?”

Talakku looked at her with wonder, until the longing in his heart lightened the shadow of his doom.

“Tell me what I must do,” he said.

She turned her eyes towards the dark god. “He knows,” she cried, seizing his hands and drawing him towards the idol, “Come, Talakku.”

“No, no!” he said in awe, “I cannot worship there. Who can deny the gods of his home and escape vengeance? In Shinar, beloved land, goes not one bee unhived nor a bird without a bower. Shall I slip my allegiance at every gust of the desert?”

For a moment a look of anguish appeared in her eyes.

“But if you will not leave this place,” he continued gently, “suffer me to stay.”

“Talakku, in a while I must sink again into the stone.”

“By all the gods I will keep you till I die,” he said. “One day at least I will walk in Paradise.”

“Talakku, not a day, not an hour; moments, moments, there are but moments now.”

“Then, I am but dead,” he cried, “for in that stone your sleeping heart will never dream of me.”

“O, you whip me with rods of lilies. Quick, Talakku.” He knew in her urgent voice the divining hope with which she wooed him. Alas for the Assyrian, he was but a man whose dying lips are slaked with wise honey. He embraced her as in a dream under the knees of towering Sarkkon. Her kisses, wrapt in the delicate veils of love, not the harsh brief glister of passion, were more lulling than a thousand songs of lost Shinar, but the time’s sweet swiftness pursued them. Her momentary life had flown like a rushing star, swift and delighting but doomed. From the heel of the god a beetle of green lustre began to creep towards them.

“Farewell, Talakku,” cried the girl. She stood again in her place before Namu-Sarkkon. “Have no fear, Talakku, prince of my heart. I will lock up in your breast all my soft unsundering years. Like the bird of fire they will surely spring again.”

He waited, dumb, beside her, and suddenly her limbs compacted into stone once more. At the touch of his awed fingers her breast burned with the heat of the sun instead of the wooing blood. Then the vast silence of the world returned upon him; he looked in trembling loneliness at the stark sky, the unending desert, at the black god whose eye seemed to flicker balefully at him. Talakku turned to the lovely girl, but once more amazement gathered in all his veins. No longer stood her figure there--in its place he beheld only a stone image of himself.

“This is the hour, O beauteous one!” murmured the Assyrian, and, turning again towards the giant, he knelt in humility. His body wavered, faltered, suddenly stiffened, and then dissolved into a little heap of sand.

The same wind that unsealed Namu-Sarkkon and his shrine returning again at eve covered anew the idol and its figures, and the dust of the Assyrian captain became part of the desert for evermore.

* * * * *

ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME

* * * * *

ADAM AND EVE AND PINCH ME

... and in the whole of his days, vividly at the end of the afternoon--he repeated it again and again to himself--the kind country spaces had _never_ absorbed _quite_ so rich a glamour of light, so miraculous a bloom of clarity. He could feel streaming in his own mind, in his bones, the same crystalline brightness that lay upon the land. Thoughts and images went flowing through him as easily and amiably as fish swim in their pools; and as idly, too, for one of his speculations took up the theme of his family name. There was such an agreeable oddness about it, just as there was about all the luminous sky today, that it touched him as just a little remarkable. What _did_ such a name connote, signify, or symbolize? It was a rann of a name, but it had euphony! Then again, like the fish, his ambulating fancy flashed into other shallows, and he giggled as he paused, peering at the buds in the brake. Turning back towards his house again he could see, beyond its roofs, the spire of the Church tinctured richly as the vane: all round him was a new grandeur upon the grass of the fields, and the spare trees had shadows below that seemed to support them in the manner of a plinth, more real than themselves, and the dykes and any chance heave of the level fields were underlined, as if for special emphasis, with long shades of mysterious blackness.

With a little drift of emotion that had at other times assailed him in the wonder and ecstasy of pure light, Jaffa Codling pushed through the slit in the back hedge and stood within his own garden. The gardener was at work. He could hear the voices of the children about the lawn at the other side of the house. He was very happy, and the place was beautiful, a fine white many-windowed house rising from a lawn bowered with plots of mould, turretted with shrubs, and overset with a vast walnut tree. This house had deep clean eaves, a roof of faint coloured slates that, after rain, glowed dully, like onyx or jade, under the red chimneys, and half-way up at one end was a balcony set with black balusters. He went to a French window that stood open and stepped into the dining room. There was no-one within, and, on that lonely instant, a strange feeling of emptiness dropped upon him. The clock ticked almost as if it had been caught in some indecent act; the air was dim and troubled after that glory outside. Well, now, he would go up at once to his study and write down for his new book the ideas and images he had accumulated--beautiful rich thoughts they were--during that wonderful afternoon. He went to mount the stairs and he was passed by one of the maids; humming a silly song she brushed past him rudely, but he was an easy-going man--maids were unteachably tiresome--and reaching the landing he sauntered towards his room. The door stood slightly open and he could hear voices within. He put his hand upon the door ... it would not open any further. What the devil ... he pushed--like the bear in the tale--and he pushed, and he pushed--was there something against it on the other side? He put his shoulder to it ... some wedge must be there, and _that_ was extraordinary. Then his whole apprehension was swept up and whirled as by an avalanche--Mildred, his wife, was in there; he could hear her speaking to a man in fair soft tones and the rich phrases that could be used only by a woman yielding a deep affection to him. Codling kept still. Her words burned on his mind and thrilled him as if spoken to himself. There was a movement in the room, then utter silence. He again thrust savagely at the partly open door, but he could not stir it. The silence within continued. He beat upon the door with his fists, crying; “Mildred, Mildred!” There was no response, but he could hear the rocking arm chair commence to swing to and fro. Pushing his hand round the edge of the door he tried to thrust his head between the opening. There was not space for this, but he could just peer into the corner of a mirror hung near, and this is what he saw: the chair at one end of its swing, a man sitting in it, and upon one arm of it Mildred, the beloved woman, with her lips upon the man’s face, caressing him with her hands. Codling made another effort to get into the room--as vain as it was violent. “Do you hear me, Mildred?” he shouted. Apparently neither of them heard him; they rocked to and fro while he gazed stupefied. What, in the name of God, ... What this ... was she bewitched ... were there such things after all as magic, devilry!

He drew back and held himself quite steadily. The chair stopped swaying, and the room grew awfully still. The sharp ticking of the clock in the hall rose upon the house like the tongue of some perfunctory mocker. Couldn’t they hear the clock? ... Couldn’t they hear his heart? He had to put his hand upon his heart, for, surely, in that great silence inside there, they would hear its beat, growing so loud now that it seemed almost to stun him! Then in a queer way he found himself reflecting, observing, analysing his own actions and intentions. He found some of them to be just a little spurious, counterfeit. He felt it would be easy, so perfectly easy to flash in one blast of anger and annihilate the two. He would do nothing of the kind. There was no occasion for it. People didn’t really do that sort of thing, or, at least, not with a genuine passion. There was no need for anger. His curiosity was satisfied, quite satisfied, he was certain, he had not the remotest interest in the man. A welter of unexpected thoughts swept upon his mind as he stood there. As a writer of books he was often stimulated by the emotions and impulses of other people, and now his own surprise was beginning to intrigue him, leaving him, O, quite unstirred emotionally, but interesting him profoundly.

He heard the maid come stepping up the stairway again, humming her silly song. He did not want a scene, or to be caught eavesdropping, and so turned quickly to another door. It was locked. He sprang to one beyond it; the handle would not turn. “Bah! what’s _up_ with ’em?” But the girl was now upon him, carrying a tray of coffee things. “O, Mary!” he exclaimed casually, “I....” To his astonishment the girl stepped past him as if she did not hear or see him, tapped upon the door of his study, entered, and closed the door behind her. Jaffa Codling then got really angry. “Hell! were the blasted servants in it!” He dashed to the door again and tore at the handle. It would not even turn, and, though he wrenched with fury at it, the room was utterly sealed against him. He went away for a chair with which to smash the effrontery of that door. No, he wasn’t angry, either with his wife or this fellow--Gilbert, she had called him--who had a strangely familiar aspect as far as he had been able to take it in; but when one’s servants ... faugh!

The door opened and Mary came forth smiling demurely. He was a few yards further along the corridor at that moment. “Mary!” he shouted, “leave the door open!” Mary carefully closed it and turned her back on him. He sprang after her with bad words bursting from him as she went towards the stairs and flitted lightly down, humming all the way as if in derision. He leaped downwards after her three steps at a time, but she trotted with amazing swiftness into the kitchen and slammed the door in his face. Codling stood, but kept his hands carefully away from the door, kept them behind him. “No, no,” he whispered cunningly, “there’s something fiendish about door handles today, I’ll go and get a bar, or a butt of timber,” and, jumping out into the garden for some such thing, the miracle happened to him. For it was nothing else than a miracle, the unbelievable, the impossible, simple and laughable if you will, but having as much validity as any miracle can ever invoke. It was simple and laughable because by all the known physical laws he should have collided with his gardener, who happened to pass the window with his wheelbarrow as Codling jumped out on to the path. And it was unbelievable that they should not, and impossible that they _did_ not collide; and it was miraculous, because Codling stood for a brief moment in the garden path and the wheelbarrow of Bond, its contents, and Bond himself passed apparently through the figure of Codling as if he were so much air, as if he were not a living breathing man but just a common ghost. There was no impact, just a momentary breathlessness. Codling stood and looked at the retreating figure going on utterly unaware of him. It is interesting to record that Codling’s first feelings were mirthful. He giggled. He was jocular. He ran along in front of the gardener, and let him pass through him once more; then after him again; he scrambled into the man’s barrow, and was wheeled about by this incomprehensible thick-headed gardener who was dead to all his master’s efforts to engage his attention. Presently he dropped the wheelbarrow and went away, leaving Codling to cogitate upon the occurrence. There was no room for doubt, some essential part of him had become detached from the obviously not less vital part. He felt he was essential because he was responding to the experience, he was re-acting in the normal way to normal stimuli, although he happened for the time being to be invisible to his fellows and unable to communicate with them. How had it come about--this queer thing? How could he discover what part of him had cut loose, as it were? There was no question of this being death; death wasn’t funny, it wasn’t a joke; he had still all his human instincts. You didn’t get angry with a faithless wife or joke with a fool of a gardener if you were dead, certainly not! He had realized enough of himself to know he was the usual man of instincts, desires, and prohibitions, complex and contradictory; his family history for a million or two years would have denoted that, not explicitly--obviously impossible--but suggestively. He had found himself doing things he had no desire to do, doing things he had a desire not to do, thinking thoughts that had no contiguous meanings, no meanings that could be related to his general experience. At odd times he had been chilled--aye, and even agreeably surprised--at the immense potential evil in himself. But still, this was no mere Jekyl and Hyde affair, that a man and his own ghost should separately inhabit the same world was a horse of quite another colour. The other part of him was alive and active somewhere ... as alive ... as alive ... yes, as _he_ was, but dashed if he knew where! What a lark when they got back to each other and compared notes! In his tales he had brooded over so many imagined personalities, followed in the track of so many psychological enigmas that he _had_ felt at times a stranger to himself. What if, after all, that brooding had given him the faculty of projecting this figment of himself into the world of men. Or was he some unrealized latent element of being without its natural integument, doomed now to drift over the ridge of the world for ever. Was it his personality, his spirit? Then how was the dashed thing working? Here was he with the most wonderful happening in human experience, and he couldn’t differentiate or disinter things. He was like a new Adam flung into some old Eden.