The boy began. “ ‘Standing aloof in giant ignorance.’ ”
His father laughed again—roared. “One for you, my son! ‘Standing aloof in giant ignorance!’ I never knew these poets talked sense. Just describes you. Here, Bons, you go in for poetry. Put him through it, will you, while I fetch up the whisky?”
“Yes, give me the Keats,” said Mr. Bons. “Let him say his Keats to me.”
So for a few moments the wise man and the ignorant boy were left alone in the smoking-room.
“ ‘Standing aloof in giant ignorance, of thee I dream and of the Cyclades, as one who sits ashore and longs perchance to visit——’ ”
“Quite right. To visit what?”
“ ‘To visit dolphin coral in deep seas,’ ” said the boy, and burst into tears.
“Come, come! why do you cry?”
“Because—because all these words that only rhymed before, now that I’ve come back they’re me.”
Mr. Bons laid the Keats down. The case was more interesting than he had expected. “You?” he exclaimed, “This sonnet, you?”
“Yes—and look further on: ‘Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light, and precipices show untrodden green.’ It is so, sir. All these things are true.”
“I never doubted it,” said Mr. Bons, with closed eyes.
“You—then you believe me? You believe in the omnibus and the driver and the storm and that return ticket I got for nothing and——”
“Tut, tut! No more of your yarns, my boy. I meant that I never doubted the essential truth of Poetry. Some day, when you read more, you will understand what I mean.”
“But Mr. Bons, it is so. There is light upon the shores of darkness. I have seen it coming. Light and a wind.”
“Nonsense,” said Mr. Bons.
“If I had stopped! They tempted me. They told me to give up my ticket—for you cannot come back if you lose your ticket. They called from the river for it, and indeed I was tempted, for I have never been so happy as among those precipices. But I thought of my mother and father, and that I must fetch them. Yet they will not come, though the road starts opposite our house. It has all happened as the people up there warned me, and Mr. Bons has disbelieved me like every one else. I have been caned. I shall never see that mountain again.”
“What’s that about me?” said Mr. Bons, sitting up in his chair very suddenly.
“I told them about you, and how clever you were, and how many books you had, and they said, ‘Mr. Bons will certainly disbelieve you.’ ”
“Stuff and nonsense, my young friend. You grow impertinent. I—well—I will settle the matter. Not a word to your father. I will cure you. To-morrow evening I will myself call here to take you for a walk, and at sunset we will go up this alley opposite and hunt for your omnibus, you silly little boy.”
His face grew serious, for the boy was not disconcerted, but leapt about the room singing, “Joy! joy! I told them you would believe me. We will drive together over the rainbow. I told them that you would come.” After all, could there be anything in the story? Wagner? Keats? Shelley? Sir Thomas Browne? Certainly the case was interesting.
And on the morrow evening, though it was pouring with rain, Mr. Bons did not omit to call at Agathox Lodge.
The boy was ready, bubbling with excitement, and skipping about in a way that rather vexed the President of the Literary Society. They took a turn down Buckingham Park Road, and then—having seen that no one was watching them—slipped up the alley. Naturally enough (for the sun was setting) they ran straight against the omnibus.
“Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Bons. “Good gracious heavens!”
It was not the omnibus in which the boy had driven first, nor yet that in which he had returned. There were three horses—black, gray, and white, the gray being the finest. The driver, who turned round at the mention of goodness and of heaven, was a sallow man with terrifying jaws and sunken eyes. Mr. Bons, on seeing him, gave a cry as if of recognition, and began to tremble violently.
The boy jumped in.
“Is it possible?” cried Mr. Bons. “Is the impossible possible?”
“Sir; come in, sir. It is such a fine omnibus. Oh, here is his name—Dan some one.”
Mr. Bons sprang in too. A blast of wind immediately slammed the omnibus door, and the shock jerked down all the omnibus blinds, which were very weak on their springs.
“Dan…Show me. Good gracious heavens! we’re moving.”
“Hooray!” said the boy.
Mr. Bons became flustered. He had not intended to be kidnapped. He could not find the door-handle, nor push up the blinds. The omnibus was quite dark, and by the time he had struck a match, night had come on outside also. They were moving rapidly.
“A strange, a memorable adventure,” he said, surveying the interior of the omnibus, which was large, roomy, and constructed with extreme regularity, every part exactly answering to every other part. Over the door (the handle of which was outside) was written, “Lasciate ogni baldanza voi che entrate”—at least, that was what was written, but Mr. Bons said that it was Lashy arty something, and that baldanza was a mistake for speranza. His voice sounded as if he was in church. Meanwhile, the boy called to the cadaverous driver for two return tickets. They were handed in without a word. Mr. Bons covered his face with his hand and again trembled. “Do you know who that is!” he whispered, when the little window had shut upon them. “It is the impossible.”
“Well, I don’t like him as much as Sir Thomas Browne, though I shouldn’t be surprised if he had even more in him.”
“More in him?” He stamped irritably. “By accident you have made the greatest discovery of the century, and all you can say is that there is more in this man. Do you remember those vellum books in my library, stamped with red lilies? This—sit still, I bring you stupendous news!—this is the man who wrote them.”
The boy sat quite still. “I wonder if we shall see Mrs. Gamp?” he asked, after a civil pause.
“Mrs.——?”
“Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris. I like Mrs. Harris. I came upon them quite suddenly. Mrs. Gamp’s bandboxes have moved over the rainbow so badly. All the bottoms have fallen out, and two of the pippins off her bedstead tumbled into the stream.”
“Out there sits the man who wrote my vellum books!” thundered Mr. Bons, “and you talk to me of Dickens and of Mrs. Gamp?”
“I know Mrs. Gamp so well,” he apologized. “I could not help being glad to see her. I recognized her voice. She was telling Mrs. Harris about Mrs. Prig.”
“Did you spend the whole day in her elevating company?”
“Oh, no. I raced. I met a man who took me out beyond to a race-course. You run, and there are dolphins out at sea.”
“Indeed. Do you remember the man’s name?”
“Achilles. No; he was later. Tom Jones.”
Mr. Bons sighed heavily. “Well, my lad, you have made a miserable mess of it. Think of a cultured person with your opportunities! A cultured person would have known all these characters and known what to have said to each. He would not have wasted his time with a Mrs. Gamp or a Tom Jones. The creations of Homer, of Shakespeare, and of Him who drives us now, would alone have contented him. He would not have raced. He would have asked intelligent questions.”
“But, Mr. Bons,” said the boy humbly, “you will be a cultured person. I told them so.”
“True, true, and I beg you not to disgrace me when we arrive. No gossiping. No running. Keep close to my side, and never speak to these Immortals unless they speak to you. Yes, and give me the return tickets. You will be losing them.”
The boy surrendered the tickets, but felt a little sore. After all, he had found the way to this place. It was hard first to be disbelieved and then to be lectured. Meanwhile, the rain had stopped, and moonligh
t crept into the omnibus through the cracks in the blinds.
“But how is there to be a rainbow?” cried the boy.
“You distract me,” snapped Mr. Bons. “I wish to meditate on beauty. I wish to goodness I was with a reverent and sympathetic person.”
The lad bit his lip. He made a hundred good resolutions. He would imitate Mr. Bons all the visit. He would not laugh, or run, or sing, or do any of the vulgar things that must have disgusted his new friends last time. He would be very careful to pronounce their names properly, and to remember who knew whom. Achilles did not know Tom Jones—at least, so Mr. Bons said. The Duchess of Malfi was older than Mrs. Gamp—at least, so Mr. Bons said. He would be self-conscious, reticent, and prim. He would never say he liked any one. Yet when the Wind flew up at a chance touch of his head, all these good resolutions went to the winds, for the omnibus had reached the summit of a moonlit hill, and there was the chasm, and there, across it, stood the old precipices, dreaming, with their feet in the everlasting river. He exclaimed, “The mountain! Listen to the new tune in the water! Look at the camp fires in the ravines,” and Mr. Bons, after a hasty glance, retorted, “Water? Camp fires? Ridiculous rubbish. Hold your tongue. There is nothing at all.”
Yet, under his eyes, a rainbow formed, compounded not of sunlight and storm, but of moonlight and the spray of the river. The three horses put their feet upon it. He thought it the finest rainbow he had seen, but did not dare to say so, since Mr. Bons said that nothing was there. He leant out—the window had opened—and sang the tune that rose from the sleeping waters.
“The prelude to Rhinegold?” said Mr. Bons suddenly. “Who taught you these leit motifs?” He, too, looked out of the window. Then he behaved very oddly. He gave a choking cry, and fell back on to the omnibus floor. He writhed and kicked. His face was green.
“Does the bridge make you dizzy?” the boy asked.
“Dizzy!” gasped Mr. Bons. “I want to go back. Tell the driver.”
But the driver shook his head.
“We are nearly there,” said the boy, “They are asleep. Shall I call? They will be so pleased to see you, for I have prepared them.”
Mr. Bons moaned. They moved over the lunar rainbow, which ever and ever broke away behind their wheels. How still the night was! Who would be sentry at the Gate?
“I am coming,” he shouted, again forgetting the hundred resolutions. “I am returning—I, the boy.”
“The boy is returning,” cried a voice to other voices, who repeated, “The boy is returning.”
“I am bringing Mr. Bons with me.”
Silence.
“I should have said Mr. Bons is bringing me with him.”
Profound silence.
“Who stands sentry?”
“Achilles.”
And on the rocky causeway, close to the springing of the rainbow bridge, he saw a young man who carried a wonderful shield.
“Mr. Bons, it is Achilles, armed.”
“I want to go back,” said Mr. Bons.
The last fragment of the rainbow melted, the wheels sang upon the living rock, the door of the omnibus burst open. Out leapt the boy—he could not resist—and sprang to meet the warrior, who, stooping suddenly, caught him on his shield.
“Achilles!” he cried, “let me get down, for I am ignorant and vulgar, and I must wait for that Mr. Bons of whom I told you yesterday.”
But Achilles raised him aloft. He crouched on the wonderful shield, on heroes and burning cities, on vineyards graven in gold, on every dear passion, every joy, on the entire image of the Mountain that he had discovered, encircled, like it, with an everlasting stream. “No, no,” he protested, “I am not worthy. It is Mr. Bons who must be up here.”
But Mr. Bons was whimpering, and Achilles trumpeted and cried, “Stand upright upon my shield!”
“Sir, I did not mean to stand! something made me stand. Sir, why do you delay? Here is only the great Achilles, whom you knew.”
Mr. Bons screamed, “I see no one. I see nothing. I want to go back.” Then he cried to the driver, “Save me! Let me stop in your chariot. I have honoured you. I have quoted you. I have bound you in vellum. Take me back to my world.”
The driver replied, “I am the means and not the end. I am the food and not the life. Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save you. For poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth.”
Mr. Bons—he could not resist—crawled out of the beautiful omnibus. His face appeared, gaping horribly. His hands followed, one gripping the step, the other beating the air. Now his shoulders emerged, his chest, his stomach. With a shriek of “I see London,” he fell—fell against the hard, moonlit rock, fell into it as if it were water, fell through it, vanished, and was seen by the boy no more.
“Where have you fallen to, Mr. Bons? Here is a procession arriving to honour you with music and torches. Here come the men and women whose names you know. The mountain is awake, the river is awake, over the race-course the sea is awaking those dolphins, and it is all for you. They want you——”
There was the touch of fresh leaves on his forehead. Some one had crowned him.
TELOS
From the Kingston Gazette, Surbiton Times, and Paynes Park Observer.
The body of Mr. Septimus Bons has been found in a shockingly mutilated condition in the vicinity of the Bermondsey gas-works. The deceased’s pockets contained a sovereign-purse, a silver cigar-case, a bijou pronouncing dictionary, and a couple of omnibus tickets. The unfortunate gentleman had apparently been hurled from a considerable height. Foul play is suspected, and a thorough investigation is pending by the authorities.
Emily Pauline Johnson (1861–1913), known by the literary community as either E. Pauline Johnson or Tekahionwake, was a Canadian poet who often performed her poetry onstage. Her mother was English and her father was a member of the Mohawk tribe, and Johnson considered herself Indian above all else. At the time she began her writing career, most Indigenous writers were men who focused on critical essays about history and politics. She, however, cared more about the creative world of fiction and poetry and how it could be used to showcase the lives of Indigenous peoples. She performed her poetry in Canada, the United States, and even in London, and today her work is viewed as a landmark of Indigenous feminism. “The Legend of the Ice Babies” first appeared in 1911 in Mother’s Magazine.
The Legend of the Ice Babies
E. Pauline Johnson
AS YOU JOURNEY across Canada from east to west, and have been absorbed in the beauty of the St. Lawrence, the Great Lakes, the prairies, the Rockies, the Selkirks, and finally the fiercely rugged grandeur of the Frazer River, as you are nearing the rim of the gentle Pacific, you will pass through one of the most fruitful valleys in all the Great Dominion. Orchards and vineyards, gardens and blossoming flowers stretch on every side, and in the misty distance there circles a band of bubbling mountains, and great armies of the giant Douglas firs and cedars that only the Western slope could ever give birth to. Through this valley stretches many a lazy arm of the sea, but there are also to be found several beautiful little fresh-water lakes. One in particular is remarkably lovely. It is small, and the shores so precipitous that winds seldom ruffle its clear blue-green waters. The majestic old forest trees, the mosses, the trailing vines, the ferns and bracken crowd so closely down to the margin that they are mirrored in the lake in all their rich coloring and exquisite design. In looking on this secluded beauty one instinctively feels the almost sanctity of purity that can be found only in the undefiled forest lands. Nature has not been molested, and the desecrating hand of man has not yet profaned it. A happy chance had taken me along the shores of this perfect little gem, molded in its rocky setting, and one day when the Klootchman and I sat together on the sands watching the Pacific as it slept under an autu
mn sun, I spoke to her of the little fresh-water jewel up in the Chilliwack Valley.
“You have seen it?” she asked with great interest. I nodded.
“I am very glad. We Squamish women love it. The mothers love it most. We call it the Lake of the Ice Babies.”
I remarked on the beauty of the name, and then on its oddity. “For,” I said, “surely it does not freeze there!”
“Yes,” she replied, “it always freezes over at least once in the winter, if only for a day. The lake is so still there is no wind now to keep it open from the frost.”
I caught at the word “now.” “Was there ever a wind there?” I ventured, for one must voice his thoughts delicately if one hopes to extract a tradition from my good old reticent Klootchman.
“Yes, once it used to be very stormy, terrible gales would get imprisoned in that cup of the mountains, and they would sweep round and round, lashing up the waters of the lake like a chained wild animal,” she answered. Then she added that ever-present pitiful remark: “But that was long ago—before the white man came.” It has been the redskin’s cry for more than a century, that melancholy “Before the white man came.”
Presently she picked up a handful of silver sand, and while she trailed it leisurely from palm to palm, threading it between her thin, dark fingers, her voice fell into the sonorous monotone, the half whisper, half chant, in which she loved to relate her quaint stories, while I sat beside her sun-bathed and indolent, and listened to the
“LEGEND OF THE ICE BABIES”
“There were two of them, two laughing, toddling little children but just released from the bands of their cradle baskets. Girls, both of them, and cousins, of the same age, happy-hearted and playful, and the treasures of their mothers’ lives. It was a warm, soft day of late autumn, a day like this, when not a leaf stirred, not a wave danced, that the wandering band of Squamish encamped in the bluffs about the little lake, and prepared to stay the night. The men cut branches and built a small lodge. The women gathered firewood and cooked venison and grouse, and the children and babies played about, watching their elders, and sometimes replenishing the camp fires. The evening wore on, and with the twilight came a gentle rising wind, that whispered at first through the pines and cedars like a mother singing very softly to her sleeping child. Then the wind-voice grew louder, it began to speak harshly. The song in it died, and the mighty voices of the trees awoke like the war cry of many tribes in battle. The little lake began to heave and toss, then lash itself into a fury; whirlpools circled, waves rose and foamed and fought each other. The gale was shut within the cup of shores and could not release itself.
The Big Book of Classic Fantasy Page 91