“Then he looked upon her pearls and the chalcedony and barred the doors of her house against his love in the robe of white linen.
“And her heart brake, but he drank of the wine in the ewers and forgat.”
The red flame fell into the crimson fire and the Arch-Priest said: “O Master Mammon, O Breaker and Maker of hearts, O shaper of ways and wielder of destinies!”
Thereon came a priest bearing a yellow flame and he said:
“This is the soul of a man who was the favourite Vizier of the King, who had raised him up from the poor of his city and set him within his gates.
“The King gave him of his lands and much power besides, wherefore his house was almost as rich as the palace of his master.
“But this Vizier had a wife who had also been of the poor of the King’s city and could not rise to fit her place. And the Vizier left her and she grew old as a crone.
“Then he cast his eyes upon the King’s wife, who was fair and wore a tiara of emeralds on her head. And the King’s wife looked upon him and he won her favours, for she was vain and his tongue was subtle.
“And one night as he was secretly in the Queen’s closet, he gazed about him at the rare traceries of gems and gold, and said:
“ ‘My house is not so great nor my wife so young and lovely. There is priceless treasure within the treasure-chambers. Why should not I wear the royal cloak and crown and make this woman my Queen?’
“Then he rose up from her arms and stole privily into the bed-chamber of the King and stabbed him to death in his sleep.”
And the Arch-Priest cast the yellow flame into the scarlet pit, chanting: “All the flowers of the world’s envy and the fruits of the world’s passion are woven into thy garland, Master Mammon!”
But I was sickened, and turned away and went over to the Baal that stood in the fiery furnace at the left end of the hall.
And lo! here too were priests bearing the soul-flames. Only their vessels were not of gold and silver, but of iron and steel. And the head of the Moloch was different, for it was that of a boar. From his jaws protruded two great tusks like spikes and from them burst alternate flame and smoke, amid an angry roaring that clattered through all his tremendous iron bulk.
But the High-Priest before him was as the one before the image of Mammon and had a cloven foot also.
And he chanted: “O Master Mars,X O Master Mars, all nature is thy pawn. Thou battenest upon the weak in the numberless degrees of thy strength. Thou art the lord of the sharp fang, the ravenous maw, the piercing beak, the leaping beast. The Christs, Messiahs and prophets, the priests and angels fail before thee. The rot of thy carrion and the stench of thy carcasses ascend unto the portals of Heaven and their hellish incense defies the rose-haunted closes of Paradise …
“Thou art the lord of the Valley of the Shadow, the moving scythe of death; thy arms grapple with youth immortally. Thou art the despoiler of the divine in Man; thou demandest unending sacrifice and lo! it is given. For every son of woman, every creature of earth and sea and air are thine, thou Ravisher of the Eternities!”
And there came a priest bearing a flame, who said, “Lord, this is the soul of a young man who was the only son of his mother and she a widow.
“They dwelt happily together, for he tilled her field and gat her oil and cracknelsXI with the labour of his hands; while she gloried in the strength of him and the hair which was a gold fleece on his head and as the hair of the lover of her youth.
“But the great Kings quarrelled in high places. They carried division into the land and laid it waste and despoiled its maidens.
“Then the young husbandman said: ‘My mother, I must lay by the plough-share and the pruning-hook and seize a lance and buckler in their stead. Farewell!’
“She clung to him, tearless and numb for the greatness of her sorrow, and said: ‘Haste home to me again. For thou art my all in the world and there is no other footfall that comes to me over the hills.’
“He said: ‘I will return.’
“But he never came, for the sling-stone of a foeman struck his temple and he was trampled out of human semblance and into blood and mire by the stampeding chargers of the King’s horsemen.
“And his mother died alone of her broken heart.”
Then the Arch-Priest seized the flame and hurled it in, saying:
“May this fair fume arise to thee, my Sire! Thine is the sweet first-fruit of all manhood. Thine the eye-apple of maternity, thine the throne-jewels of a Sultan’s vassalry.”
Next there came a second priest, with a blood-red flame.
He said: “This is the soul of one who was the maker of machines of torment and torture.
“He pored by night and by day to evolve strange gases that slay and metal monsters that devour.
“He joyed when the fields ran foul with gore and entrails, where myriads of men had stood an hour a-gone, because of his devices.
“He was crowned with glory and given great rewards by the ruler of his land.”
And the Arch-Priest cast it in, saying: “O Mars, thou unknitter of bones, thou destroyer of flesh, thou glutton of limbs, thou wine-bibber of blood: accept thy sacrament!”
Yet there came another priest, bearing a flame that was almost black upon a platter of iron.
He spake: “This is the soul of a mighty King.
“His palaces were gemmed with the riches of the world, his ships traversed the seven seas, his merchants sate in conclave, his armies were strong as the hosts of heaven, his throne was firm as the plinth of the sun.
“He dreamed long beneath his canopies of his exceeding wealth, all things were at his service and decree. One day as he sat thus upon the dais of his pleasure-palace, idly toying with his scepter, he said unto his minister: ‘Hast thou ever seen a greater ruby or one of more brilliance than that upon my head-band?’
“The counsellor replied: ‘Yea, my Liege, for there is a larger one of more surpassing luster in the fillet of the King of the Yonder-Land.’
“The King said: ‘Have it brought unto me!’
“But the minister replied: ‘I cannot, for it belongeth to this King and is the heirloom of his heritage.’
“The King asked: ‘Hath he other jewels?’
“The counsellor answered: ‘His is the only realm which rivalleth thine. His caskets overflow, his daughters are fair, his kingdom is peaceful, his people happy and toil pleasantly in the fertile fields.’
“But the King’s face grew dark with envy and his nostrils distended.
“He said: ‘Call out my guards and mariners, for I will wrest his kingdom from him. There shall be no other King but me, no other Empire but mine own; I will rule unto the four ends of the earth.’
“And he sent his rushing armies upon the Yonder-Land. Its rich fields were turned to seas of mud, its houses and temples to ruins, its castles looted, its Kings and young men slain, its Virgins defiled, its children and old women murdered.
“But the ruby of the Yonder-Land glowed beside the other ruby in the head-band of the baleful King.
“And he cried to his overseers and chamberlains: ‘My Empire hath grown greater and there are now no other Kings on land or sea.
“Whip up my slaves with your scourges, O overseers; tax my people, O satraps, and let them rebuild the Yonder-Land and found new palaces unto my paramours and temples to my gods.’ ”
And the Arch-Priest cast the flame into the fire, saying: “Thou art the King of the blood-stained places, of the desolate and razed cities; thine are the women killed with child, the ravished, the brutally slaughtered. Thine are tyranny and persecution, the anguish of wounded beasts, the offerings of the oppressed and tithed. Thine are the groans of slaves, the whistle of whips, the sweats of exceeding labour, O Master Mars, O God of War!”
Then sorrow seized upon me and I ran forth as one possessed from that sable House of Mammon and Mars, with its dirging priests, its jeering litanies, its ceaseless sacrifices of human souls, its molten Swine-Gods
amid its howling, insatiable fires.
As I sped out through the brazen gates and over the drawbridge, I heard again the baying of dogs and monotonous moaning.
And as I reached the Long Lane of the Lost, there swept past me a pack of hounds in full cry.
Some were yellow as flame, some red as fire and others black as night. And they belledXII and raced like the wind.
As I gazed at them aghast, there came a clattering of hooves and behold! upon a great white horse, which had a crystal jewel set between its eyes and whose mane flew out in the storm, rode an Angel clad in black, who blew that wailing music upon a silver horn.
He had neither saddle nor stirrup nor rein, and yet rode fleetly after the manner of God’s legionaries.
I caught at his robe, crying: “Huntsman! Huntsman!”
He paused a moment, saying: “What wouldst thou?”
And I saw that his face was white and sad as that of one whom chill winds have beaten. His hair was dewy and his great wings draggled with rain.
I said: “What pack be this?”
He said: “The sleuth-hounds of God are passing down the Long Lane of the Lost. The black hounds are the moments of Pain, the red of Passion and the yellow of Remorse. We are hard upon the heels of a human soul that is seeking for the House of Mammon and Mars.”
I said: “O Huntsman, who art thou?”
Then he smiled upon me with the sadness of his eyes, and answered: “The Eternal Conscience.”
And blowing a mournful “Halloo! Hallo!” upon his silver horn, he shook me loose and was gone after the yelping pack.
And I cried out in terror and awoke.
Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945) was a lifelong Virginian, a suffragist, a prolific author, and a Pulitzer Prize winner for her 1942 novel In This Our Life, which was considered groundbreaking for its realistic portrayals of African Americans and the injustice they suffered. Most of her work was set in the post-Reconstruction South, and this story—which first appeared in her 1923 collection The Shadowy Third and Other Stories—is a fine example of early Southern Gothic and has been compared to Edgar Allan Poe’s 1839 “The Fall of the House of Usher.”
Jordan’s End by Ellen Glasgow
At the fork of the road there was the dead tree where buzzards were roosting, and through its boughs I saw the last flare of the sunset. On either side the November woods were flung in broken masses against the sky. When I stopped they appeared to move closer and surround me with vague, glimmering shapes. It seemed to me that I had been driving for hours; yet the ancient negro who brought the message had told me to follow the Old Stage Road till I came to Buzzard’s Tree at the fork. “F’om dar on hit’s moughty nigh ter Marse Jur’dn’s place,” the old man had assured me, adding tremulously, “en young Miss she sez you mus’ come jes’ ez quick ez you kin.” I was young then (that was more than thirty years ago), and I was just beginning the practice of medicine in one of the more remote counties of Virginia.
My mare stopped, and leaning out, I gazed down each winding road, where it branched off, under half bared boughs, into the autumnal haze of the distance. In a little while the red would fade from the sky, and the chill night would find me still hesitating between those dubious ways which seemed to stretch into an immense solitude. While I waited uncertainly there was a stir in the boughs overhead, and a buzzard’s feather floated down and settled slowly on the robe over my knees. In the effort to drive off depression, I laughed aloud and addressed my mare in a jocular tone:
“We’ll choose the most God-forsaken of the two, and see where it leads us.”
To my surprise the words brought an answer from the trees at my back. “If you’re goin’ to Isham’s store, keep on the Old Stage Road,” piped a voice from the underbrush.
Turning quickly, I saw the dwarfed figure of a very old man, with a hunched back, who was dragging a load of pine knots out of the woods. Though he was so stooped that his head reached scarcely higher than my wheel, he appeared to possess unusual vigour for one of his age and infirmities. He was dressed in a rough overcoat of some wood brown shade, beneath which I could see his overalls of blue jeans. Under a thatch of grizzled hair his shrewd little eyes twinkled cunningly, and his bristly chin jutted so far forward that it barely escaped the descending curve of his nose. I remember thinking that he could not be far from a hundred; his skin was so wrinkled and weather-beaten that, at a distance, I had mistaken him for a negro.
I bowed politely. “Thank you, but I am going to Jordan’s End,” I replied.
He cackled softly. “Then you take the bad road. Thar’s Jur’dn’s turnout.” He pointed to the sunken trail, deep in mud, on the right. “An’ if you ain’t objectin’ to a little comp’ny, I’d be obleeged if you’d give me a lift. I’m bound thar on my own o’ count, an’ it’s a long ways to tote these here lightwood knots.”
While I drew back my robe and made room for him, I watched him heave the load of resinous pine into the buggy, and then scramble with agility to his place at my side.
“My name is Peterkin,” he remarked by way of introduction. “They call me Father Peterkin along o’ the gran’child’en.” He was a garrulous soul, I suspected, and would not be averse to imparting the information I wanted.
“There’s not much travel this way,” I began, as we turned out of the cleared space into the deep tunnel of the trees. Immediately the twilight enveloped us, though now and then the dusky glow in the sky was still visible. The air was sharp with the tang of autumn; with the effluvium of rotting leaves, the drift of wood smoke, the ripe flavour of crushed apples.
“Thar’s nary a stranger, thoughten he was a doctor, been to Jur’dn’s End as fur back as I kin recollect. Ain’t you the new doctor?”
“Yes, I am the doctor.” I glanced down at the gnomelike shape in the wood brown overcoat. “Is it much farther?”
“Naw, suh, we’re all but thar jest as soon as we come out of Whitten woods.”I
“If the road is so little travelled, how do you happen to be going there?”
Without turning his head, the old man wagged his crescent shaped profile. “Oh, I live on the place. My son Tony works a slice of the farm on shares, and I manage to lend a hand at the harvest or corn shuckin’, and, now-and-agen, with the cider. The old gentleman used to run the place that away afore he went deranged, an’ now that the young one is laid up, thar ain’t nobody to look arter the farm but Miss Judith. Them old ladies don’t count. Thar’s three of ’em, but they’re all addle-brained an’ look as if the buzzards had picked ’em. I reckon that comes from bein’ shut up with crazy folks in that thar old tumbledown house. The roof ain’t been patched fur so long that the shingles have most rotted away, an’ thar’s times, Tony says, when you kin skearcely hear yo’ years fur the rumpus the wrens an’ rats are makin’ overhead.”
“What is the trouble with them—the Jordans, I mean?”
“Jest run to seed, suh, I reckon.”
“Is there no man of the family left?”
For a minute Father Peterkin made no reply. Then he shifted the bundle of pine knots, and responded warily. “Young Alan, he’s still livin’ on the old place, but I hear he’s been took now, an’ is goin’ the way of all the rest of ’em. ’Tis a hard trial for Miss Judith, po’ young thing, an’ with a boy nine year old that’s the very spit an’ image of his pa. Wall, wall, I kin recollect away back yonder when old Mr. Timothy Jur’dn was the proudest man any whar aroun’ in these parts; but arter the War things sorter begun to go down hill with him, and he was obleeged to draw in his horns …”II
“Is he still living?”
The old man shook his head. “Mebbe he is, an’ mebbe he ain’t. Nobody knows but the Jur’dn’s, an’ they ain’t tellin’ fur the axin’.”
“I suppose it was this Miss Judith who sent for me?”
“ ’T would most likely be she, suh. She was one of the Yardlys that lived over yonder at Yardly’s Field; an’ when young Mr. Alan begun to take notice of her, ’twa
s the first time sence way back that one of the Jur’dn’s had gone courtin’ outside the family. That’s the reason the blood went bad like it did, I reckon. Thar’s a sayin’ down aroun’ here that Jur’dn an’ Jur’dn won’t mix.” The name was invariably called Jurdin by all classes; but I had already discovered that names are rarely pronounced as they are spelled in Virginia.
“Have they been married long?”
“Ten year or so, suh. I remember as well as if ’twas yestiddy the day young Alan brought her home as a bride, an’ thar warn’t a soul besides the three daft old ladies to welcome her. They drove over in my son Tony’s old buggy, though ’twas spick an’ span then. I was goin’ to the house on an arrant, an’ I was standin’ right down thar at the ice pond when they come by. She hadn’t been much in these parts, an’ none of us had ever seed her afore. When she looked up at young Alan her face was pink all over and her eyes war shinin’ bright as the moon. Then the front do’ opened an’ them old ladies, as black as crows, flocked out on the po’ch. Thar never was anybody as peart-lookin’ as Miss Judith was when she come here; but soon arterwards she begun to peak an’ pine, though she never lost her sperits an’ went mopin’ roun’ like all the other women folks at Jur’dn’s End. They married sudden, an’ folks do say she didn’t know nothin’ about the family, an’ young Alan didn’t know much mo’ than she did. The old ladies had kep’ the secret away from him, sorter believin’ that what you don’t know cyarn’ hurt you. Anyways they never let it leak out tell arter his chile was born. Thar ain’t never been but that one, an’ old Aunt Jerusly declars he was born with a caul over his face,III so mebbe things will be all right fur him in the long run.”
“But who are the old ladies? Are their husbands living?”
When Father Peterkin answered the question he had dropped his voice to a hoarse murmur. “Deranged. All gone deranged,” he replied.
I shivered, for a chill depression seemed to emanate from the November woods. As we drove on, I remembered grim tales of enchanted forests filled with evil faces and whispering voices. The scents of wood earth and rotting leaves invaded my brain like a magic spell. On either side the forest was as still as death. Not a leaf quivered, not a bird moved, not a small wild creature stirred in the underbrush. Only the glossy leaves and the scarlet berries of the holly appeared alive amid the bare interlacing branches of the trees. I began to long for an autumn clearing and the red light of the afterglow.
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