Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land

by John Crowley

  No—my interest was aroused in the Mesmerist, for other reasons—and soon enough I learned more:—that the child was not the Doctor’s own, nor related to him in any way—that he had come upon her in circumstances dark, but not beyond imagining—that he had from the promptings of Charity rescued her from these, and only after had discovered her to possess talents & powers of a remarkable sort. You may believe that, by that time, I possessed an Anthology of gossip, report, thief-taker’s tales, &c., none of which satisfied me—had been to see a small Body brought out of the Thames by hook—and an unfortunate child coffin’d in a low dwelling in Southwark—neither of them she. Yet this tale started in my mind a certainty, I know not why, and in not too long a time I had found the supposed Doctor’s residence, and a way of effecting entrance that raised no alarm—many are the small skills in force, fraud, uttering, and lock-picking I have acquired in my travels, to my shame. The house seemed empty—and as a Spy within the enemy’s camp, I opened doors without a sound—until one opened onto a sitting-room, and there upon a tuffet sat a girl-child, in a dress of white, a paper daisy-chain in her lap—alone. And thereupon I opened wide the door, and entered in.

  Why did I suppose she would not flee, or raise the alarm? I know not, but in the event I was right. The child kept to her seat with a strange stillness to see me approach—not the frozen stillness of a Deer who thinks itself stalked—tho’ watchful indeed—no, ’twas a reserve not childlike, nor mature neither, but (as it may be) angelic, if we think of angels as beings we cannot alarm or grieve. It would not be the last time her regard has struck me thus. ‘Who are you?’ quoth she, to which I at first would not give answer, but asked her of her daisy-chain, and her Doll, which sat propped before her. I cannot say she resembles me—she may, and I perceive it not in such a form—purged, as it were, of all that I see in my Glass—into which I have looked but rarely in the best of times. I know she is dark, like you—how she comes by her colour I know not, unless it is because her mother was not fair. Willing she was to have a conversation with me on topics of interest to her, without further inquiry as to who I was that should speak to her here; but at length—her Patience tried—she linked her hands, and struck them most definitely into her lap, and let me know that ‘no-one was to come into this room but persons of the household’, and I must tell her at once who I was.

  ‘I am your father,’ I said.

  This took a long moment in passing through to her mind, though she seemed not astonished to find it arriving there. ‘Then,’ said she to me, ‘you are a Mahometan.’

  ‘Indeed I am not,’ said I. ‘I think it need not be true of your father—if so you meant it.’

  ‘My father is a sort of Turk,’ she said, ‘and Turks are Mahometans.’

  As there was no disputing her syllogism, I made no reply for some time, and she herself continued. ‘I am a Mahometan,’ says she. ‘Why, how so?’ says I. ‘I am half Mahometan anyway,’ says she, ‘and all Mahometan because I say so. I have read about Mahometans and it is nothing at all to be one, but to say Allah and not God, and that is all.’ So she asserted—as near as I can now recount her argument, which struck me as subtle indeed. ‘However,’ she continued then, ‘I have told no-one, as they would not like it at all if they knew.’

  ‘I dare say.’

  ‘I did not know my father was like you,’ she said.

  Here was a new subject, and one I was prepared to treat. I asked if I alarmed her, and I had reasons to hand—even a Gift, a rich one too, to produce at need—to show her she ought not to be; but she averred she was not alarmed. And then I must ask her the question that lingered in my mind—why she was not surprised that I should have come before her here, at long last. And she said to me, ‘She had that very morning beseeched Allah, as she did every morning, to bring me to her.’

  Do you laugh? I swear that I did not—for I bethought me of those many mornings when she had prayed, and had not been answered. Now that I had come—however little I was whom she had expected, or desired—I must by some means persuade her that she must flee her present situation, and go on in my company—a fellow of no seeming promise. Though her regard was indeed cool, and she did not embrace me—nor would I have expected she should—still I sensed the possibility of a Pact between us, if I but played my own part right. And, Brother, I falter’d! I have, you may believe, a clear consciousness of my own nature—of the Crimes and Passions that are entangled in it—yet never before had I felt what I then felt, which was unworthy—as though my taking her hand, or winning her Favour, would stain her with that History, of which she was herself entirely innocent—the only thing I have ever touch’d, that was or might remain so! She gazed upon me—so that I forgot the enticements and suchlike that I had thought to put before her—lies, and pretences, that I thought necessary—and wished only to ask her Forgiveness—though for what, if not for her plain existence, of which I was the Author, I by no means knew!

  By an act of will I became myself again—if indeed that is who this black fellow is—but too late—for just as I had made it clear to the child that I wished her to come away with me—that I would bring her straightaway again to those who loved and cared for her—and that the Doctor in whose keeping she now was, was an evil Fairy King, from whom she must with my aid escape—of a sudden the Door flew open, and the man himself whom I had just done characterizing, stood upon the threshold! I knew him by report, and also by the great authority that radiated from him—from his electrified white hair, his glittering Spectacles, and the largest hands I have ever seen on a gentleman, if indeed he was such. I rose to face him, prepared to tell him a Tale he might believe, or—failing that—to knock him down, when of a sudden Una too rose, and interposed herself between us.

  ‘See, Doctor dearest,’ cries she, in all innocence, ‘here is my Father, come to take me away with him!’

  You may imagine the good Doctor’s response to this observation. Approaching me as a Boxer might a slighter but an unknown opponent, he held his great hands apart and at the ready, and turned with care to face me. ‘Who are you, and what do you do in this house?’ he asked of me, in a voice low and yet unmistakable in its Command.

  ‘It is as the child has said,’ I replied, as ready as he for a contest. ‘I am her father; she will come away with me.’

  ‘To prison?’ he said, with a viperish hatred. ‘It is where you are bound. You are in Trespass, Sir, upon my property.’

  ‘Stand aside,’ I said. ‘We will be gone.’

  Then a change came over his features, as though he quickly changed one mask for another, and he held out a hand to Una—‘Come close, Child,’ whispered he. ‘He shall not harm thee. Come, come and stand by me.’ With a strange reluctance, and yet with eyes fixed upon his, she did so—and when she had approached near enough, he moved his hands about her head, all the while gazing into her eyes, as though piercing into her Soul with an awl! In a breath, she had grown entirely still—her eyes lost their light, tho’ they closed not—her arms lifted somewhat from her sides, but will-lessly, as though she floated in water. Now and only now, Brother, did fear come upon me—for you know I have seen such things done, and worse—I have myself directed the Will-less—and here stood one able to steal a Soul, it seemed, and make it his!

  Yet I was not without weapons—crude tho’ they were—and produced a decidedly unspiritual Pistol from within my clothes, and cock’d the hammer. At that the Magician—for such he was—back’d away. I demanded he release Una’s spirit—reverse the charm he had placed upon her—but he only back’d further from me—out the door and to the Passage beyond. ‘Touch her not, on your life,’ said he to me. ‘If you wake her she will die upon the instant. Kill me, and she will never wake. The house is raised. You have no escape!’ With that he turned, and fled along the hall, crying Help, help! in a loud voice, and I heard voices and hollas from below.

  There we were then, my Brother, she and I—she frozen in a Dream, and I unwilling and unable to desert her. I admit
my powers had come to an end, and I knew not whither to turn. What happened in the next moment was, of all things I might have projected—were I able to project anything—the last. For no sooner had the Doctor turned and run away than the pixie beside me awoke—no, not so, for she had never been asleep!—she ceased her play, became in less than an instant a human child again, and with a mighty motion slammed shut the Door—which upon our side had its key in the lock—the which she turned, took out, and held up to me in triumph! Then without ado she went to the window of the room, and flung up the sash—it happened that we were upon the second storey—and only then did she speak to me. ‘Can you climb well?’ she asked me.

  ‘Like a monkey,’ said I.

  ‘I too,’ said she, ‘tho’ they mayn’t know it.’ She and I look’d then together out the window—where thick Vines clung to the ancient stone, and sharp Cornices extended a foothold, as from a rocky cliff—and a Trellis of climbing flowers afforded a ladder. ‘I shall go first,’ said my fellow Conspirator, ‘and you follow after.’—‘Nay,’ said I, ‘for if I go first, and I fall, you will fall on me—which is better than the other choice.’ At this she nodded solemnly, seeing my reasoning, and I climbed out the window, upon the strong branches, a Romeo in reverse, and took her small body in my arms to help her out. There will be much I may forget, of all that I have done in all the years of my life—much that, if Providence be kind, I shall forget—but not that, that she leapt so bravely from the place of her confinement into my arms—my arms!—that never held such a Prize before—indeed, never before a prize at all!

  The questions you may now ask—whether she ever truly sleep-walked and sleep-spoke at the Doctor’s command, or only play’d the Part—how she had come to learn to prophesy as she did, if she did—how the Doctor had found her at the first, and how carried her off—to none of these have I an answer as yet, for we only fled as fast as we could without arousing undue attention, to the Docks, where at Wapping I had Confederates, at work finding us passage away, with all necessary for a journey in one direction only. Through all this—flight with a strange man, the prospect of a Sea-journey, forsaking all she had known, the vanishing of my promises to take her home—she was as cool as any desperado, with the noblesse of a fairy queen. When I myself took note of my pledge to return her to her Relations, she dismissed the idea—they were the last people in whose care she desired to be—we Mahometans ought to stick together—so she imply’d.

  So there she sleeps, in her berth upon Thames’ bosom—all her inheritance (to date) kept in a leathern Satchel, beneath my feet—for servants a Bear, and a Nurse I thought to engage, whom we may put ashore with the pilot’s boat at Greenwich, as Una thinks her superfluous. For me, my ‘occupation’s gone’—I must learn another, suited to the lands to which I go. I cannot liberate a World, or free from bondage a People—these ambitions I here renounce, and my title to them I pass to you—they are all the bequest I make you. But do not fear—we are Friends now, and so nothing can harm you.

  Where may you seek us, should you ever desire to? When I was a Seaman, and had conversation with men of all lands, I knew a German pilot who, if not in Drink, was a raconteur in his own tongue—whereby I learn’d a word or two—and it seem’d to me a fine thing, that he would name the Indies, toward which we sail’d, by the term Abendland, which is Evening Land—there where the Sun goes at end of day—yet it was not Poetic in him, but meant only the plain West we name in our tongue. We shall proceed, then, to the Evening Land—the last remnant of our house—myself—the Bear, grown hoary (tho’ you mayn’t have known it, your black Bear can grow grey, even as his Ward)—and she—the daughter of a Cripple and a Madwoman, and yet herself as sound and as sane as a gold dollar. She I was able to liberate, and carry to freedom—whatever Freedom may mean—self-government is to be a part of it—of that I have evidence already. She is the heiress of the Sanes—the only there will ever be—tho’ she dwell where her Nobility means nothing, and will mean nothing to her, nor to her own Descendants—if she have any—the which I intend to assure her she may—if so she chuse. Already I know that what I chuse for her, and what direction I give, will not be as law to her, however I may regard the matter—and this too is the legacy of the Sanes, is it not? And one that, unlike her Title, she may pass on to the latest generation—may they profit by it.

  We are bound first for Charleston Bay, and whither thence? I am sorry I shall not be able to view General Washington, who lies asleep now with the world’s true heroes—‘Washington was killed in a duel with Burke,’ I once heard one say at a conversazione in Venice, and could not think what, in the name of folly, the fellow meant by saying it—until I remembered Burr, who slew Hamilton and not the greater man—no matter—I am myself just as ignorant of that country in many ways, an ignorance I delight in, for I have done with the world I am not ignorant of. Perhaps we shall go down the Mississippi, as Lord Edward Fitzgerald did—the only pure hero I have ever known, or known of—and like him look even farther, past the gulph of Mexico, to Darien, the Brazils, the Orinoco—I know not.

  And so farewell. I am not so foolish as to think America is a Physician, or a Priest—I know that all diseases are not cured there, nor all sins forgiven. And yet on this morning I feel as one who has nightlong in a dream struggled with an enemy, and has waked at last, to find his arms are empty.—ÆNGUS

  There was no more. Ali, who had read this missive as he stood upon the great stone bridge over the river named ——, in the ancient city of ——, Capital of the nation of ——, now tore and cast it upon the waves, and chin in hand he watched the remnants float a time, and then sink away.—You see that I do not name the place, for it may be that this Manuscript of the tale of his adventures will come to light, in not too long a time, and therefore to reveal these things would endanger my Hero—engaged upon the work he has been given—which, if it was at first to tear down, in his own conception no longer was—he had hopes, tho’ they were only hopes, that by his actions the Lucifers might one day contrive to unbind Prometheus—their old foregoer—the Brother of that cloven-hooved naysayer, their Namesake—and bring a new, and a better, Dispensation, tho’ it take a hundred years. Not he—not Una—but perhaps her child, and a child of mine own child, might live to look upon that world. Such is my hope—you may open my heart, and see it graven there, if you would, the only thing not vain that there remains.

  But I have drawn my pen across that foolish paragraph—or certainly soon shall—signifying that it must form no part of the tale, nor see printer’s ink. Yet ’tis just as foolish to suppose that any of this tale, of Ængus and Ali, of Iman and Susanna, Catherine and Una, will ever be set in type, or fall beneath the gaze of readers. Whatever Poets say of outlasting ‘marble and the gilded monuments of Princes’, it is all but paper, and has its enemies—the sea, fire, chance, malice, and I know not what. These pages may be lost, or may survive only to furnish a Grocer the means of wrapping a parcel—as we read that the MS of Richardson’s Pamela was used, to wrap up a rasher of Bacon for a Gypsy later proved to be a murderess. Well—’twould be enough—Solomon promises no more to all our efforts. Yet if thus these sheets must be used, kind Grocer, let it not be for greasy bacon—wrap Eve’s red apple in them, or a golden plum, or any sweet fruit, and put it into a young Maid’s hands!

  NOTES FOR THE LAST CHAPTER

  Mesmer, Puységur, Combe, & Spurzheim: This miscellanæum is as random as a quack Doctor’s ought to be. Anton Mesmer is of course the developer of the now-exploded theory of Animal Magnetism; Armand Puységur his follower; George Combe, the modern developer of Phrenology; Johann Casper Spurzheim, the phrenological doctor who examined my father (see above, what Chapter I know not, I cannot seek it now).

  a Steam-engine: Captain Trelawney says that Ld. B. was indeed once solicited to invest in a flying-machine with a steam-engine, and did not. Even now such a thing may not be possible. I thought once when a child

  beseeched Allah: I missed his love, and more, his gov
ernance—but not only for myself—the love and governance he could have given to his wife, if he had chosen. They smashed something that would surely have broken by itself soon or late. And yet that thing was mine, too, and not theirs alone—they had not all rights in it