Chapter IV (4)

A Great while ago a man in a stripéd jacket went travelling almost to the verge of the world, and there he came upon a region of green fertility, quiet sounds, and sharp colour; save for one tiny green mound it was all smooth and even, as level as the moon’s face, so flat that you could see the sky rising up out of the end of everything like a blue dim cliff. He passed into a city very populous and powerful, and entered the shop of a man who sold birds in traps of wicker, birds of rare kinds, the flame-winged antillomeneus and kriffs with green eyes.

“Sir,” said he to the hawker of birds, “this should be a city of great occasions, it has the smell of opulence. But it is all unknown to me, I have not heard the story of its arts and policy, or of its people and their governors. What annalists have you recording all its magnificence and glory, or what poets to tell if its record be just?”

The hawker of birds replied: “There are tales and the tellers of tales.”

“I have not heard of these,” said the other, “tell me, tell me.”

The bird man drew finger and thumb downwards from the bridge of his long nose to its extremity, and sliding the finger across his pliant nostrils said: “I will tell you.” They both sat down upon a coffer of wheat. “I will tell you,” repeated the bird man, and he asked the other if he had heard of the tomb in which none could lie, nor die, nor mortify.

“No,” said he.

“Or of the oracle that destroys its interpreter?”

“No,” answered the man in the stripéd jacket, and a talking bird in a cage screamed: “No, no, no, no!” The traveller whistled caressingly to the bird, tapping his finger nail along the rods of its cage, while the bird man continued: “Or of Fax, Mint, and Bombassor, the three faithful brothers?”

“No,” replied he again.

“They had a sister of beauty, of beauty indeed, beyond imagination. (_Soo-eet! soo-eet!_ chirped the oracular bird.) It smote even the hearts of kings like a reaping hook among grass, and her favour was a ransom from death itself, as I will tell you.”

“Friend,” said he of the stripéd jacket, “tell me of that woman.”

“I will tell you,” answered the other; and he told him, and this was the way of it.

* * * * *

There was once a king of this country, mighty with riches and homage, with tribute from his enemies—for he was a great warrior—and the favour of many excellent queens. His ancestors were numberless as the hairs of his black beard; so ancient was his lineage that he may have sprung from divinity itself, but he had a heart of brass, his bowels were of lead, and at times he was afflicted with madness.

One day he called for his captain of the guard, Tanil, a valiant, debonair man of much courtesy, and delivered to him his commands.

Tanil took a company of the guard and they marched to that green hill on the plain—it is but a league away. At the foot of the hill they crossed a stream; beyond that was a white dwelling and a garden; at the gate of the garden was a stumbling stone; a flock grazed on the hill. The soldiers threw down the stone and, coming into the vineyard, they hacked down the vines until they heard a voice call to them. They saw at the door of the white dwelling a woman so beautiful that the weapons slid from their hands at the wonder of it. “Friends, friends!” said she. Tanil told her the King’s bidding, how they must destroy the vineyard, the dwelling, and the flock, and turn Fax, Mint, and Bombassor, with the foster sister Flaune, out from the kingdom of Cumac.

“You have denied the King tribute,” said he.

“We are wanderers from the eastern world,” Flaune answered. “Is not the mountain a free mountain? Does not this stream divide it from Cumac’s country?”

She took Tanil into the white dwelling and gave a pitcher of wine to his men.

“Sir,” said she to Tanil, “I will go to your King. Take me to your King.”

And when Tanil agreed to do this she sent a message secretly to her brothers to drive the flock away into a hiding-place. So while Flaune was gone a-journeying to the palace with Tanil’s troup, Fax, Mint, and Bombassor set back the stumbling stone and took away the sheep.

The King was resting in his palace garden, throwing crumbs into the lake, and beans to his peacocks, but when Flaune was brought to him he rose and bowed himself to the pavement at her feet. The woman said nothing, she walked to and fro before him, and he was content to let his gaze rest upon her. The carp under the fountain watched them, the rose drooped on its envious briar, the heart of King Cumac was like a tree full of chirping birds.

Tanil confessed his fault; might the King be merciful and forgive him! but the lady had taken their trespass with a soft temper and policy that had overcome both his loyalty and his mind. It was unpardonable, but it was not guilt, it was infirmity, she had bewitched him. Cumac grinned and nodded. He bade Tanil return to the vineyard and restore the vines, bade him requite the brothers and confirm them in those pastures for ever. But as to this Flaune he would not let her go.

She paces before him, or she dips her palm into the fountain, spilling its drops upon the ground; she smiles and she is silent.

Cumac gave her into the care of his groom of the women, Yali, the sister of Tanil, and thereafter, every day and many a day, the King courted and coveted Flaune. But he could not take her; her pride, her cunning words, and her lustre bore her like an anchored boat upon the tide of his purpose. At one moment full of pride and gloom, and in the next full of humility and love, he would bring gifts and praises.

“I will cover you,” he whispered, “with green garnets and jargoons. A collar of onyx and ruby, that is for you; breastknots of beryl, and rings for the finger, wrist, and ear. Take them, take them! For you I would tear the moon asunder.”

But all her desire was only to return to the green mountain and her brothers and the flock by the stumbling stone. The King was merged in anger and in grief.

“Do not so,” he pleaded, “I have given freedom to your men; will you not give freedom to me?”

“What freedom, Cumac?” she asked him.

And he said: “Love.”

“How may the bound give freedom?”

“With the gift of love.”

“The spirit of the gift lies only in the giver.” Her voice was mournful and low.

He was confused and cast down. “You humble me with words, but words are nothing, beautiful one. Put on your collar of onyx, and fasten your breastknots of beryl. Have I not griefs, fierce griefs, that crash upon my brain, and frenzies that shoot in fire! Does not your voice—that rest-recovering lure—allay them, your presence numb them! I cannot let you go, I cannot let you go.”

“He who woos and does not win,” so said Flaune, “wins what he does not woo for.”

“Though I beg but a rose,” murmured the King, “do you offer me a sword?”

“Time’s sword is laid at the breast of every rose.”

“But I am your lowly servant,” he cried. “You have that which all secretly seek and denyingly long for; it is seen without sight and affirmed without speech.”

“What is the thing you seek and long for?”

“Purity,” said he.

“Purity!” She seemed to muse upon it as a theme of mystery. “If you found purity, what would you match it with?”

“My sins!” he cried again. “Would you waste purity on purity, or mingle sin with sin?”

“Cumac,” said the wise woman, with no pride then but only pity, “you seek to conquer that which strikes the conqueror dead.”

Then, indeed, for a while he was mute, and then for a while he talked of his sickness and his frenzy. “Are there not charms,” he asked, “or magic herbs, to find and bind these demons?”

There was no charm—she told him—but the mind, and no magic but in the tranquillity of freedom.

“I do not know this,” he sighed, “it will never be known.”

The unknown—she told him—was better than the known.

“Alas, then,” sighed the King again, “I shall never discover it.”

“It is everywhere,” said Flaune, “but it is like a sweet herb that withers in the ground. All may gather it—and it is not gathered. All may see it—and it is not seen. All destroy it—and it never dies....”

“Shall I be a little wind,” laughed Cumac, “and gush among this grass?”

“It is the wind’s way among the roses. It has horns of bright brass and quiet harps of silver. Its golden boats flash in every tossing bay.”

Cumac laughed again, but still he would not let her go. “The fox has many tricks, the cat but one,” he said, and caused her ankles to be fastened with two jewelled links tied with a hopple of gold. But in a day he struck them from her with his own hands, and hung the hopple upon her lustrous neck.

And still he would not let her go; so Yali and Tanil connived to send news to the brothers, and in a little time Bombassor came to her aid.

Bombassor was a dancer without blemish, in beauty or movement either. He came into the palace to Cumac who did not know him, and the King’s household came to the beaten gongs to witness the art of Bombassor. Yali brought Flaune a harp of ivory, and to its music Bombassor caracoled and spun before the delighted King. Then Flaune (who spoke as a stranger to him) asked Bombassor if he would dance with her, and he said they would take the dance of “The Flying Phœnix.” The King was enchanted; he vowed he would grant any wish of Bombassor’s, any wish; yes, he would cut the moon in half did he desire it. “I will dance for your pledge,” said Bombassor.

It seemed to the King then as if a little whirling wind made of flame, and a music that was perfume, gyred and rose before him: the tapped gongs, the tinkle of harp, the surprise of Flaune’s swaying and reeling, now coy, now passionate, the lure of her wooing arms, the rhythm of her flying feet, the chanting of the onlookers, and the flashing buoyance of Bombassor, so thrilled and distracted him that he shouted like an eager boy.

But when Bombassor desired Cumac to give him the maiden Flaune, the King was astonished. “No, no,” he said, “but give him an urn full of diamonds,” and Bombassor was given an urn full of diamonds. He let it fall at the King’s feet, and the gems clattered upon the pavement like a heap of peas. “Give him Yali, then,” Cumac shouted. Yali was a nymph of splendour, but Bombassor called aloud, “No, a pledge is a pledge!”

Then the King’s joy went from him and, like a star falling, left darkness and terror.

“Take,” he cried, “an axe to his head and pitch it to the crows.”

And so was Bombassor destroyed, while the King continued ignorantly to woo his sister. Silent and proud was she, silent and proud, but her beauty began to droop until Yali and Tanil, perceiving this, connived again to send to her brothers, and in a little time Mint came. To race on foot he was fleeter than any of Cumac’s champions; they strove with him, but he was like the unreturning wind, and although they cunningly moved the bounds of the course, and threw thorns and rocks under his feet, he defeated them all, and the King jeered at his own champions. Then Mint called for an antelope to be set in the midst of the plain and cried: “Who will catch this for the King?” All were amazed and Cumac said: “Whoever will do it I will give him whatever a King may give, though I crack the moon for it.”

The men let go the hind and it swooped away, Mint pursuing. Fast and far they sped until no man’s gaze could discern them, but in a while Mint returned bearing the breathing hind upon his back. “Take off his shoes,” cried the King, “and fill them with gold.” But when this was done Mint spilled the gold back at the King’s feet.

“Give me,” said he, “this maiden Flaune.”

The King grinned and refused him.

“Was it not in the bond?” asked Mint.

“Ay,” replied Cumac, “but choose again.”

“Is this then a King’s bond?” sneered Mint.

“It was a living bond,” said the King, “but death can sever it. Let this dog be riven in sunder and his bowels spilled to the foxes.” Mint died on the moment, and Cumac continued ignorantly to woo his sister.

Then Flaune conferred with Tanil and with Yali about a means of escape. Tanil feared to be about this, but he loved Flaune, and his sister Yali persuaded him. He showed them a great door in the back of the palace, a concealed issue through the city wall, from which Flaune might go in a darkness could but the door be opened. But it had not been opened for a hundred years, and they feared the hinges would shriek and the wards grind in the lock and so discover them.

“Let us bring oil to-morrow,” they said, “and oil it.”

In the morning they brought oil to the hinge and brushed it with drops from a cock’s feather. The hinge gave up its squeak but yet it groaned. They filled Yali’s thimble that was made of tortoise horn and poured this upon it. The hinge gave up its groan but yet it sighed. They filled the eggshell of a goose with oil and poured upon the hinge until it was silent. Then they turned to the lock, which, as they threw back the wards, cried clack, clack. Tanil lapped the great key with ointment, but still the lock clattered. He filled his mouth with oil and spat into the hole, but still it clinked. Then Flaune caught a grasshopper which she dipped in oil and cast into the lock. After that the lock was silent too.

On the mid of night Tanil ushered Flaune to the great door, and it opened in peace. She said “Farewell” to him tenderly, and vanished away into the darkness, and so to the green mountain. As he stooped, watching her until his eyes could see no more, the door suddenly closed and locked against him, leaving him outside the wall. Lights came, and an outcry and a voice roaring: “Tanil is fled with the King’s mistress. Turn out the guard.” Tanil knew it to be the voice of a jealous captain, and, filled with consternation, he too turned and fled away into the night; not towards the mountains, but to the sea, hoping to catch a ship that would deliver him.

Throughout the night he was going, striving or sleeping, and it was stark noon before he came to the shore and passed over the strait in a ship conveying merchants to a fair where no one knew him and all were friendly. He hobnobbed with the merchants for several days, feeding and sleeping in the booths until the morning of the sixth day, and on that day a crier came into the fair ringing and bawling, bawling and ringing, and what he cried was this:

That King Cumac, Lord of the Forty Kingdoms, Prince of the Moon, and Chieftain under God, laid a ban upon all who should aid or relieve his treacherous servant Tanil, who had conspired against the King and fled. Furthermore it was to be known that Yali, the sister of Tanil, was taken as hostage for him, that if he failed to redeem her and deliver up his own body Yali herself was doomed to perish at sunset of the seventh day after his flight.

Tanil scarcely waited to hear the conclusion, for he had but one day more and he could suffer not his sister Yali to die. He turned from the fair and ran to the sea. As he ran he slipped upon a rock and was stunned, but a good wife restored him and soon he reached the harbour. Here none of the sailors would convey him over the strait, for they were bound to the merchantmen who intended not to sail that day. Having so little time to reckon Tanil offered them bribes (but in vain), and threats (but they would not), and he was in torment and anguish until he came to an old man who said he would take him within the hour if the wind held and the tide turned. But if the wind failed, although the tide should ebb never so kindly, yet he would not go: and even should the tide ebb strongly, yet if the wind wavered from its quarter he would not go: and if by mysterious caprice (for all was in the hands of God and a great wonder) the tide itself should not turn, then the wind might blow a dainty squall but he would not be able to undertake him. Upon this they agreed, and Tanil and the old sailor sat down in the little ship to play at checkers. Alas, fortune was against Tanil, he could not conquer the sailor, so he made to pay down his loss.

“Friend,” said the sailor, “a game is but a game, put up your purse.”

Tanil would not put back the money and the sailor said: “Let us then play on, friend; double or quits.” They played on, and again Tanil lost, and, as before, tendered his money. “Nay,” said the sailor, “a game is but a pastime, put back your money.” But Tanil laid it in a heap upon one of the thwarts. The old sailor sighed and said: “Come, you are now at the turn of fortune; is not an egg made of water and a stone of fire: let us play once more; double or quits.” And so continually, until it was long past noon ere they began to sail in a course for Cumac’s shore, two leagues over the strait. Now they had accomplished about three parts of this voyage when the wind slackened away like a wisp of smoke; slowly they drifted onwards until at eve the boat lay becalmed, and as yet some way out from the land. “Friend,” said the old sailor, laying out the checkers again, “let us tempt the winds of fortune.” But, full of grief at having squandered the precious hours, Tanil leaped into the sea and swam towards the shore. Soon the tide checked and was changed, and a current washed him far down the strait until the fading of day; then he was cast upon a crooking cape of sand in such darkness of night and such weariness of mind and body that he could not rise. He lay there for a while consumed with languor and hunger until the peace refreshed him; the winds of night were lulled and the waves; but though there were stars in the sky they could not guide him.

“Alas,” he groaned, “darkness and the oddness of the coast deceive me. Whether I venture to the right hand or the left, how shall I make my way? How little is man’s power; the fox and the hare may wander deceitfully but undeterred, yet here in this darkness I go groping like a worm laid upon a rock. Yali, my sister, how shall I preserve you?”

He went wandering across a hill away from the sea until he stumbled upon a hurdle and fell; and where he fell he lay still, sleeping.

Not until the dawn did Tanil wake; then he lay shivering in bonds, with a company of sheep watchers that stood by and mocked at him. Their shadows were long, a hundred-fold, for day was but newly dawned.

Their master was not yet risen from his bed, but the watchers carried Tanil to the door of his house and called to him.

“Master, we have caught a robber of the flock, lying by the fold and feigning sleep.”

Now the sleepy master lay with a new bride, and he would not stir.

“Come, master, we have taken a robber,” they cried again. And still he did not move, but the bride rose and came to the window.

“What sheep has he stole?”

They answered her: “None, for we swaddled him; behold!”

She looked down at Tanil with her pleasant eyes, and bade the men unbind him.

“Who guards now the sheep from robbers and wolves?” she called. They were all silent, and some made to go off. She bade them mend their ways, and went back to her lover. When the thongs were loosened from Tanil he begged them to give him a little food for he was empty and weak, but they scolded him and went hastily away. Their shadows were long, a hundred-fold.

Tanil travelled on wings. Yali was to die at fall of night. He hastened like a lover, but sickness and hunger overcame him; at noon he lay down in a cool cavern to recover. No other travellers came by him and no homes were near, for he was passing across the fringe of a desert to shorten his journey, and the highway crooked round far to the eastward. Nothing that man could eat was there to sustain him, but he slept. When he rose his legs weakened and he limped onwards like a slow beggar whose life lies all behind him. Again he sank down, again he could not keep from sleeping. The sun was setting when he awoke, the coloured towers of his city shone only a league away. Then in his heart despair leaped and maddened him—Yali had died while he tarried.

Searching through a thicket for some place where he could hang himself he came upon a river, and saw, close to the shore, a small ship standing slowly down towards the straits from which he had come. Under her slack sail a man was playing on a pipe; with him was a monkey gazing sorrowfully from the deck at the great glow in the sky.

“Shipman,” cried Tanil, “will you give me bread, I am at an end?”

The man with a smile of malice held up from the deck a dish of fruits and said: “Take. I have done.”

But the hungry man could not reach it. “Throw it to me,” he cried, following the ship. But the sailor had no mind to throw it upon the shore; he went leaning against his mast, piping an air, while the monkey peered at him and gabbled. Tanil plunged into the river and swam beneath the ship’s keel. Taking a knife from his girdle he was for mounting by a little hawser, but the man beflogged him with a cudgel until he fell back into the water. There he would have died but that a large barque presently catched him up on board and recovered him.

The ship carried Tanil from the river past the straits and so to the great sea, where for the space of a year he was borne in absence, willy-nilly, while the ship voyaged among the archipelagos, coasted grim seaboards, or lay against strange wharves docking her cargo of oil. Faithfully he laboured for wages under this ship’s captain, being a man of pith and limb, valiant in storm, and enamoured of the uncouth work: the haul of anchor, and men singing; setting, reefing, furling, and men singing; the watch, the sleep, the song; the treading of unknown waters, the crying gust, the change to glassy endless calm, and the change again from green day to black night and the bending of the harsh sheet in a starry squall, the crumpling of far thunder, the rattle of halyard and block, the howl of cordage. Grand it was in some bright tempest to watch the lubber wave slide greenly to the bows and crack in showers of flying diamonds, but best of all was the long crunch in from the vast gulfs, and the wafture to some blue bay sighing below a white dock and the homes of men.

Forgotten was Yali his loved sister, but that proud living Flaune who had brought Yali to her death, she was not forgotten. He sailed the seas and he sailed the seas, but she was ever a soft recalling wonder in his breast, the sound of a bell of glass beaten by a spirit.

After a year of hazards the ship by chance docked in that harbour where Tanil had heard the crier crying of Yali and her doom. Looking about him he espied an old sailor sitting in his boat playing a game of checkers with a young man. The crier bawled in the market place, but he had no news for Tanil. Standing again amid the merchants and the kind coloured sweetness of streets and people, this bliss of home so welled up in his breast that he hastened back to the ship. “Master,” he said, “give me my wages, and let me go.” The shipman gave him his wages, and he went back to the town.

But only nine days did he linger there, for joy, like truth, lives in the bottom of a well, and he cast in his wages. Then he went off with a hunter to trap leopards in a forest. A month they were gone, and they trapped the leopards and sold them, and then, having parted from the hunter, Tanil roved back to the port to spend his gains among the women of the town. Often his soul invited him to return to that city of Cumac, but death awaited him there and he did not go. Now he was come to poverty, but he was blithe, and evil could not chain him. “Surely,” said Tanil, “life is a hope unquenched and a tree of longing. There is none so poor but he can love himself.” With a stolen net he used to catch fish and live. Then he lost the net at dicing. So he went to bake loaves for certain scholars, but they were unmonied men and he desisted, and went wandering from village to village snaring birds, or living like the wild dogs, until a friendly warrior enlisted him to convoy a caravan across the desert to the great lakes. When he came again to the harbour town two years had withered since he had flown from Cumac’s city.

He went to lodge at the inn, and as he paced in the evening along the wharf a man accosted him, called him by name, and would not let him go, and then Tanil knew it was Fax, the brother of that Flaune. His heart rocked in his breast when he took Fax to the inn and related all his adventure. “Tell me the tidings of our city, what comes or goes there, what lives or dies.” And Fax replied: “I have wandered in the world searching after you from that time. I bring a greeting from my sister Flaune,” he said, “and from your sister Yali, my beloved.”

The wonder then, the joy and shame of Tanil, cannot be told: he threw himself down and wept, and begged Fax to tell him of the miracle: “For,” said he, “my mind has misused me in this.”

“Know then,” proceeded Fax, “that after the unlocking of the door my sister flees in darkness to the green mountain. I go watching and lurking, and learn that the King is in jealous madness, for your enemy spreads a slander and Cumac is deceived. He believes that my sister’s love has been cozened by you. Yali is caught fast in his net. My heart quivers in fear of his bloody intent, and I say to Flaune: ‘What shall follow if Tanil return not?’ And she smiles and says ever: ‘He will return.’ And again I say: ‘He tarries. What if he be dead?’ And she smiles and says ever: ‘He is not dead.’ But you come not, your steps are turned from us, no one has seen you, you are like a hare that has fallen into a pit, and you do not come. Then in that last hour Flaune goes to Cumac. He raves of deceit and treachery. ‘It is my sin,’ my sister pleads, ‘the blame is mine. Spare but this Yali and I will wash out the blame.’ ’Ay, you will wash it out with words!‘ ’I will pay the debt in kind,’ says my sister Flaune, ‘if Tanil does not return.’ But the cunning King will not yield up Yali unless my sister yield in love to him. So thus it stands even now, but whether they live in peace and love I do not know. I only know that Yali lives and serves her in the palace there. But they wait, and I too wait. Now the thread is ravelled to its end; I have lived only to seek you. My flock is lost, perished; my vineyard fades, but I came seeking.”

“Brother,” cried Tanil in grief, “all shall be as before. Yali shall rest in your bosom.”

At dawn then they sailed over the straits and landed, and having bargained with a wine carrier for two asses they rode off in the direction of the city. Tanil’s heart was filled with joy and love, his voice carolled, his mind hummed like a homing bee. “Surely,” he said, “life is a hope unquenched, a tree of longing. It yields its branches into a little world of summer. The asp and the dragon appear, but the tree buds, the enriching bough cherishes its leaves, and, lo, the fruit hangs.”

But the heart of Fax was very grave within him. “For,” thought he, “this man will surely die. Yet I would rather this than lose the love of Yali, and though they slay him I will bring him there.”

So they rode along upon the asses, and a great bird on high followed them and hovered on its wings.

“What bird is that?” asked the one. And the other, screening his eyes and peering upwards, said:

“A vulture.”

When King Cumac heard that they were come he ordered them to be bound, and they were bound, and the guard clustered around them. Tanil saw that his enemy was now captain of the men, and that the King was sour and distraught.

“You come!” cried Cumac, “why do you come?”

They told him it was to redeem the bond and make quittance.

“Bonds and quittances! What bond can lie between a King and faithless subjects?”

Said Fax: “It lies between the King and my sister Flaune.”

“How if I kill you both?”

“The bond will hold,” said Fax.

“Come, is a bond everlasting then, shall nothing break it?”

“Neither everlasting, nor to be broken.”

“What then?”

“It shall be fulfilled.”

“Can nothing amend it?”

“Nothing,” said Fax.

“Nothing? Nothing? Fools!” laughed the King, “the woman is happy, and desires not to leave me!”

Tanil stood bowed in silence and shame, and Cumac turned upon him. “What says this rude passionate beast!” The King’s anger rose like a blast among oaks. “Has he no talk of bonds, this toad that crawled into my heart and drank my living blood? Has he nothing to restore? or gives he and takes he at the will of the wind?”

“I have a life to give,” said Tanil.

“To give! You have a life to lose!”

“Take it, Cumac,” said he.

The King sprang up and seized Tanil by the beard, rocking him, and shouting through his gritting teeth: “Ay, bonds should be kept—should they not?—in truth and trust—should they not?”

Then he flung from him and went wailing in misery, swinging his hands, and raging to and fro, up and down.

“Did she not come to me, come to me? Was it not agreed? Bonds and again bonds! Yet when I woo her she denies me still. O, honesty in petticoats is a saint with a devil’s claw. The bitter virginal thing turned her wild heart to this piece of cloven honour. Bonds, more bonds! Spare me these supple bonds! O, you spread cunning nets, but what fowler ever thrived in his own snare? Did she not come to me? Was it not agreed?”

Suddenly he stopped and made a sign through a casement. “Is all ready?”

“Ay,” cried a voice.

“Now I will make an end,” said King Cumac. “Prop them against the casements.” They carried Tanil to a casement on his right hand, and Fax to a casement on his left hand. Tanil saw Flaune standing in the palace garden amid a troop of Ethiopians, each with a green turban and red shoes and a tunic coloured like a stone, but she half-clad with only black pantaloons, and her long dark locks flowing. And Fax saw Yali in fetters amid another troop of black soldiers.

Again a sigh from the King; two great swords flashed, and Tanil, at one casement, saw the head of Flaune turn over backwards and topple to the ground, her body falling after with a great swathe of shorn tresses floating over it. Fax at the other casement saw Yali die, screaming a long cry that it seemed would never end. Tanil swayed at the casement.

Then Cumac turned with a moan of grief, his madness all gone. “The bond is ended. I have done. I say I have done.” He seemed to wake as from sleep, and, seeing the two captive men, he asked: “Why did they come? What brought them here? Take them away, the bond is ended, I say I have done. There shall be no more bonds given in the world. But take them out of the city gate and unbind them and cast them both loose; then clap fast the gate again. No more death, I would not have them die; let them wander in the live world, and dog each other for ever. Tanil, you rotten core of constancy, Fax brought you here and so Flaune, bitter and beautiful, dies. But Fax still lives—do you not see him?—I give Fax to you: may he die daily for ever. Fax, blundering jackal, you spoke of bonds. The bond is met, and so Yali is dead, but Tanil still lives: I give you Tanil as an offering, but not of peace. May he die daily for ever.”

So the guard took Fax and Tamil out of the city, struck off their shackles, and left them there together.

* * * * *

The bird man finished; there was a silence; the other yawned. “Did you hear this?” asked the bird man. And the man in the stripéd jacket replied: “Ay, with both ears, and so may God bless you.” So saying, he rose and went out singing.

_The Devil in the Churchyard_

“Henry Turley was one of those awkward old chaps as had more money than he knowed what to do wi'. Shadrach we called him, the silly man. He had worked for it, worked hard for it, but when he was old he stuck to his fortune and wouldn’t spend a sixpence of it on his comforts. What a silly man!”

The thatcher, who was thus talking of Henry Turley (long since dead and gone) in the “Black Cat” of Starncombe, was himself perhaps fifty years old. Already there was a crank of age or of dampness or of mere custom in most of his limbs, but he was bluff and gruff and hale enough, with a bluffness of manner that could only offend a fool—and fools never listened to him.

“Shadrach—that’s what we called him—was a good man wi’ cattle, a masterpiece; he would strip a cow as clean as a tooth and you never knowed a cow have a bad quarter as Henry Turley ever milked. And when he was buried he was buried with all that money in his coffin, holding it in his hand, I reckon. He had plenty of relations—you wouldn’t know ’em, it is thirty years ago I be speaking of—but it was all down in black and white so’s no one could touch it. A lot of people in these parts had a right to some of it, Jim Scarrott for one, and Issy Hawker a bit, Mrs. Keelson, poor woman, ought to have had a bit, and his own brother, Mark Turley; but he left it in the will as all his fortune was to be buried in the coffin along of him. ’Twas cruel, but so it is and so it will be, for whenever such people has a shilling to give away they goes and claps it on some fat pig’s haunches. The foolishness! Sixty pounds it was, in a canister, and he held it in his hand.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said a mild-faced man sitting in the corner. “Henry Turley never did a deed like that.”

“What?” growled the thatcher with unusual ferocity.

“Coorse I’m not disputing what you’re saying, but he never did such a thing in his life.”

“Then you calls me a liar?”

“Certainly not. O no, don’t misunderstand me, but Henry Turley never did any such thing, I can’t believe it of him.”

“Huh! I be telling you facts, and facts be true one way or another. Now you waunts to call over me, you waunts to know the rights of everything and the wrongs of nothing.”

“Well,” said the mild-faced man, pushing his pot toward the teller of tales, “I might believe it to-morrow, but it’s a bit of a twister now, this minute!”

“Ah, that’s all right then”—the thatcher was completely mollified. “Well the worst part of the case was his brother Mark. Shadrach served him shameful, treated him like a dog. (Good health!) Ah, like a dog. Mark was older nor him, about seventy, and he lived by himself in a little house out by the hanging pust, not much of a cottage, it warn’t—just wattle and daub wi’ a thetch o’ straa'—but the lease was running out (‘twas a lifehold affair) and unless he bought this little house for fifty pound he’d got to go out of it. Well, old Mark hadn’t got no fifty pounds, he was ate up wi’ rheumatics and only did just a little light labour in the woods, they might as well a’ asked him for the King’s crown, so he said to his master: Would he lend him the fifty pounds?

“‘No, I can’t do that,’ his master says.

“‘You can reduct it from my wages,’ Mark says.

“‘Nor I can’t do that neither,’ says his master, ‘but there’s your brother Henry, he’s worth a power o’ money, ask him.‘ So Mark asks Shadrach to lend him the fifty pounds, so’s he could buy this little house. ’No,’ says Henry, ‘I can’t.’ Nor he wouldn’t. Well—old Mark says to him: ‘I doan wish you no harm Henry,’ he says, ‘but I hope as how you’ll die in a ditch.’ (Good health!) And sure enough he did. That was his own brother, he were strooken wi’ the sun and died in a ditch, Henry did, and when he was buried his fortune was buried with him, in a little canister, holding it in his hand, I reckons. And a lot of good that was to him! He hadn’t been buried a month when two bad parties putt their heads together. Levi Carter, one was, he was the sexton, a man that was half a loony as I always thought. O yes, he had got all his wits about him, somewheres, only they didn’t often get much of a quorum, still he got them—somewheres. T’other was a chap by the name of Impey, lived in Slack the shoemaker’s house down by the old traveller’s garden. He wasn’t much of a mucher, helped in the fieldwork and did shepherding at odd times. And these two chaps made up their minds to goo and collar Henry Turley’s fortune out of his coffin one night and share it between theirselves. ’Twas crime, ye know, might a been prison for life, but this Impey was a bad lot—he’d the manners of a pig, pooh! filthy!—and I expects he persuaded old Levi on to do it. Bad as body-snatchen, coorse ’twas!

“So they goos together one dark night, ’long in November it was, and well you knows, all of you, as well as I, that nobody can’t ever see over our churchyard wall by day let alone on a dark night. You all knows that, don’t you?” asserted the thatcher, who appeared to lay some stress upon this point in his narrative. There were murmurs of acquiescence by all except the mild-faced man, and the thatcher continued: “‘Twere about nine o’clock when they dug out the earth. ’Twarn’t a very hard job, for Henry was only just a little way down. He was buried on top of his old woman, and she was on top of her two daughters. But when they got down to the coffin Impey didn’t much care for that part of the job, he felt a little bit sick, so he gives the hammer and the screwdriver to Levi and he says: ’Levi,’ he says, ‘are you game to make a good job o’ this?’

“‘Yes, I be,’ says old Levi.

“‘Well, then,’ Impey says, ‘yous’ll have my smock on now while I just creeps off to old Wannaker’s sheep and collars one of they fat lambs over by the 'lotments.’

“‘You’re not going to leave me here,’ says Carter, ‘what be I going to do?’

“‘You go on and finish this ’ere job, Levi,’ he says, ‘you get the money and put back all the earth and don’t stir out of the yard afore I comes or I’ll have yer blood.’

“‘No,’ says Carter, ‘you maun do that.’

“‘I ’ull do that,’ Impey says, ‘he’ve got some smartish lambs I can tell ’ee, fat as snails.’

“‘No,’ says Carter, ‘I waun’t have no truck wi’ that, tain’t right.’

“‘You will,’ says Impey, ‘and I ’ull get the sheep. Here’s my smock. I’ll meet ’ee here again in ten minutes. I’ll have that lamb if I ’as to cut his blasted head off.’ And he rooshed away before Levi could stop him. So Carter putts on the smock and finishes the job. He got the money and putt the earth back on poor Henry and tidied it up, and then he went and sat in the church poorch waiting for this Impey to come back. Just as he did that an oldish man passed by the gate. He was coming to this very place for a drop o’ drink and he sees old Levi’s white figure sitting in the church poorch and it frittened him so that he took to his heels and tore along to this very room we be sittin’ in now—only 'twas thirty years ago.

“‘What in the name of God’s the matter wi’ you?‘ they says to him, for he’d a face like chalk and his lips was blue as a whetstone. ’Have you seen a goost?’

“‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I have seen a goost, just now then.’

“‘A goost?’ they says, ‘a goost? You an’t seen no goost.’

“‘I seen a goost.’

“‘Where a’ you seen a goost?’

“So he telled ’em he seen a goost sitting up in the church poorch.

“‘I shan’t have that,’ says old Mark Turley, for he was a setting here.

“‘I tell you ’twas then,’ says the man.

“‘Can’t be nothing worse’n I be myself,’ Mark says.

“‘I say as ’tis,’ the man said, and he was vexed too. ‘Goo and see for yourself.’

“‘I would goo too and all,’ said old Mark, ‘if only I could walk it, but my rheumatucks be that scrematious I can’t walk it. Goosts! There’s ne’er a mortal man as ever see’d a goost. I’d go, my lad, if my legs ’ud stand it.’ And there was a lot of talk like that until a young sailor spoke up—Irish he was, his name was Pat Crowe, he was on furlough. I dunno what he was a-doing in this part of the world, but there he was and he says to Mark: ‘If you be game enough, I be, and I’ll carry you up to the churchyard on my back.’ A great stropping feller he was. ‘You will?’ says Mark. ‘That I will,’ he says. ‘Well I be game for ’ee,’ says Mark, and so they ups him on to the sailor’s shoulders like a sack o’ corn and away they goos, but not another one there was man enough to goo with them.

“They went slogging up to the churchyard gate all right, but when they got to staggering along ’tween the gravestones Mark thought he could see a something white sitting in the poorch, but the sailor couldn’t see anything at all with that lump on his shoulders.

“‘What’s that there?’ Mark whispers in Pat’s ear. And Pat Crowe whispers back, just for joking: ‘Old Nick in his nightshirt.’

“‘Steady now,’ Mark whispers, ‘go steady Pat, it’s getting up and coming.’ Pat only gives a bit of a chuckle and says: ‘Ah, that’s him, that’s just like him.’

“Then Levi calls out from the poorch soft like: ‘You got him then! Is he a fat ’un?’

“‘Holy God,’ cried the sailor, ‘it _is_ the devil!’ and he chucks poor Mark over his back at Levi’s feet and runs for his mortal life. He was the most frittened of the lot ’cos he hadn’t believed in anything at all—but there it was. And just as he gets to the gate he sees someone else coming along in the dark carrying a something on its shoulder—it was Impey wi’ the sheep. ‘Powers above,’ cried Pat Crowe, ‘it’s the Day of Judgment come for sartin!’ And he went roaring the news up street like a madman, and Impey went off somewheres too—but I dunno where Impey went.

“Well, poor old Mark laid on the ground, he were a game old cock, but he could hardly speak, he was strook dazzled. And Levi was frittened out of his life in the darkness and couldn’t make anythink out of nothink. He just creeps along to Mark and whispers: ‘Who be that? Who be that?’ And old Mark looks up very timid, for he thought his last hour was on him, and he says: ‘Be that you, Satan?’ Drackly Levi heard that all in a onexpected voice he jumped quicker en my neighbour’s flea. He gave a yell bigger nor Pat Crowe and he bolted too. But as he went he dropped the little tin canister and old Mark picked it up. And he shook the canister, and he heerd money in it, and then something began to dawn on him, for he knowed how his brother’s fortune had been buried.

“‘I rede it, I rede it,’ he says, ‘that was Levi Carter, the dirty thief! I rede it, I rede it,’ he says. And he putt the tin can in his pocket and hopped off home as if he never knowed what rheumatucks was at all. And when he opened that canister there was the sixty golden sovereigns in that canister. Sixty golden sovereigns! ‘Bad things ’ull be worse afore they’re better,’ says Mark, ‘but they never won’t be any better than this.’ And so he stuck to the money in the canister, and that’s how he bought his cottage arter all. ’Twarn’t much of a house, just wattle and daub, wi’ a thetch o’ straa', but ’twas what he fancied, and there he ended his days like an old Christian man. (Good health!)”

_Huxley Rustem_

Huxley Rustem settled himself patiently upon the hairdresser’s waiting bench to probe the speculation that jumped grasshopper-like into the field of his inquisitorial mind: ’Why does a man become a barber? Well, what _is_ it that persuades a man, not by the mere compulsion of destiny, but by the sweet reasonableness of inclination, to dedicate his activities to the excision of other people’s pimples and the discomfiture of their hairy growths? He had glanced through the two papers, _Punch_ and _John Bull_, handed him by the boy in buttons, and now, awaiting his turn, posed himself with this inquiry. There was a girl at it, too, at the end of the saloon. She seemed to have picked him out from the crowd of men there; he caught her staring, an attractive girl. It seemed insoluble; misfortunate people may, indeed must, by the pressure of circumstances, become sewermen, butchers, scavengers, and even clergymen, but the impulse to barbery was, he felt, quite indelicately ironic. How that girl stared at him—if she was not very careful she would be clipping the fellow’s ear—did she think she knew him? He rather hoped she would have to attend to him; would he be lucky enough? Huxley tried to estimate the chances by observing the half-dozen toilets in progress, but his calculations did not encourage the hope at all. It was very charming for an agreeable woman, a stranger, too, to do that kind of service for you. He remembered that, after his marriage five years ago, he had tried to persuade his wife to lather and shave him, “just for a lark, you know,” but she was adamant, didn’t see the joke at all! Well, well, he decided that the word barber derived in some ironic way from the words barbarism or barbarity, expressing, unconsciously perhaps, contempt on the part of the barber for a world that could only offer him this imposture for a man’s sacred will to order and activity. Yet it didn’t seem so bad for women—that splendid young creature there at the end of the saloon! The boy in buttons approached, and Huxley Rustem was ushered to that vacant chair at the end; the splendid young thing had placed a wrapper about him—she had almost “cuddled” it round his neck—and stood demurely preparing to do execution upon his poll, turning her eyes mischievously upon his bright-hued socks, which, by a notable coincidence, were the same colour as her own handsome hose. Huxley had a feeling that she had cunningly arranged the succession of turns in order to secure him to her chair—which shows that he was still young and very impressionable. Such a feeling is one of the customary assumptions of vanity, the natural and prized, but much-denied, possession of all agreeable people. Huxley, as the girl had already noted, and now saw more vividly in the mirror fronting them, _was_ agreeable, was attractive. (My dear reader, both you and Huxley Rustem are right, the dainty barbaress _had_ laid her nets for this particular victim.)

“How would you like it cut, sir?” she asked, placing a hand upon each of his shoulders, and peering round at him with enamouring eyes.

“Oh, with a pair of scissors, don’t you think?” he replied at a venture, for he was not often waggish. But it was a very successful sally, the girl chuckled with rapture, loose fringes of her hair tickled his cheek, and he caught puffs of her sweet-scented breath. She was gold-haired, not very tall, and had pleasant turns about her neck and face and wrists that almost fascinated him. When they had agreed upon the range and extent of his shearing, the girl proceeded to the accomplishment of the task in complete silence, almost with gravity. Huxley began wondering how many hundreds and thousands of crops were squeezed annually by the delicious fingers, how many polls denuded by those competent shears. Very sad. Once a year, he supposed, she would go holidaying for a week or ten days; she would go to Bournemouth for the bathing or for whatever purpose it is people go to Bournemouth, Barmouth, or Blackpool. He determined to come in again the day after to-morrow and be shaved by her.

At the conclusion of the rite she brushed his coat collar very meticulously, tiptoeing a little, and remarked in a bright manner upon the weather, which was also bright. Then she went back to shave what Huxley described to himself as a “red-faced old cockalorum,” whom he at once disliked very thoroughly. She had given him a check with a fee marked upon it; he took this down the stairs and paid his dues to “a bald-headed old god-like monster”—Huxley felt sure he was—who sat in the shop below, surrounded by fringe-nets, stuffings, moustache wax, creams, toothbrushes, and sponges.