A Dreamer's Tales

by Lord Dunsany

  WHERE THE TIDES EBB AND FLOW

  I dreamt that I had done a horrible thing, so that burial was to be deniedme either in soil or sea, neither could there be any hell for me.

  I waited for some hours, knowing this. Then my friends came for me, andslew me secretly and with ancient rite, and lit great tapers, and carriedme away.

  It was all in London that the thing was done, and they went furtively atdead of night along grey streets and among mean houses until they came tothe river. And the river and the tide of the sea were grappling with oneanother between the mud-banks, and both of them were black and full oflights. A sudden wonder came in to the eyes of each, as my friends camenear to them with their glaring tapers. All these things I saw as theycarried me dead and stiffening, for my soul was still among my bones,because there was no hell for it, and because Christian burial was deniedme.

  They took me down a stairway that was green with slimy things, and so cameslowly to the terrible mud. There, in the territory of forsaken things,they dug a shallow grave. When they had finished they laid me in thegrave, and suddenly they cast their tapers to the river. And when thewater had quenched the flaring lights the tapers looked pale and small asthey bobbed upon the tide, and at once the glamour of the calamity wasgone, and I noticed then the approach of the huge dawn; and my friendscast their cloaks over their faces, and the solemn procession was turnedinto many fugitives that furtively stole away.

  Then the mud came back wearily and covered all but my face. There I layalone with quite forgotten things, with drifting things that the tideswill take no farther, with useless things and lost things, and with thehorrible unnatural bricks that are neither stone nor soil. I was rid offeeling, because I had been killed, but perception and thought were in myunhappy soul. The dawn widened, and I saw the desolate houses that crowdedthe marge of the river, and their dead windows peered into my dead eyes,windows with bales behind them instead of human souls. I grew so wearylooking at these forlorn things that I wanted to cry out, but could not,because I was dead. Then I knew, as I had never known before, that for allthe years that herd of desolate houses had wanted to cry out too, but,being dead, were dumb. And I knew then that it had yet been well with theforgotten drifting things if they had wept, but they were eyeless andwithout life. And I, too, tried to weep, but there were no tears in mydead eyes. And I knew then that the river might have cared for us, mighthave caressed us, might have sung to us, but he swept broadly onwards,thinking of nothing but the princely ships.

  At last the tide did what the river would not, and came and covered meover, and my soul had rest in the green water, and rejoiced and believedthat it had the Burial of the Sea. But with the ebb the water fell again,and left me alone again with the callous mud among the forgotten thingsthat drift no more, and with the sight of all those desolate houses, andwith the knowledge among all of us that each was dead.

  In the mournful wall behind me, hung with green weeds, forsaken of thesea, dark tunnels appeared, and secret narrow passages that were clampedand barred. From these at last the stealthy rats came down to nibble meaway, and my soul rejoiced thereat and believed that he would be freeperforce from the accursed bones to which burial was refused. Very soonthe rats ran away a little space and whispered among themselves. Theynever came any more. When I found that I was accursed even among the ratsI tried to weep again.

  Then the tide came swinging back and covered the dreadful mud, and hid thedesolate houses, and soothed the forgotten things, and my soul had easefor a while in the sepulture of the sea. And then the tide forsook meagain.

  To and fro it came about me for many years. Then the County Council foundme, and gave me decent burial. It was the first grave that I had everslept in. That very night my friends came for me. They dug me up and putme back again in the shallow hold in the mud.

  Again and again through the years my bones found burial, but always behindthe funeral lurked one of those terrible men who, as soon as night fell,came and dug them up and carried them back again to the hole in the mud.

  And then one day the last of those men died who once had done to me thisterrible thing. I heard his soul go over the river at sunset.

  And again I hoped.

  A few weeks afterwards I was found once more, and once more taken out ofthat restless place and given deep burial in sacred ground, where my soulhoped that it should rest.

  Almost at once men came with cloaks and tapers to give me back to the mud,for the thing had become a tradition and a rite. And all the forsakenthings mocked me in their dumb hearts when they saw me carried back, forthey were jealous of me because I had left the mud. It must be rememberedthat I could not weep.

  And the years went by seawards where the black barges go, and the greatderelict centuries became lost at sea, and still I lay there without anycause to hope, and daring not to hope without a cause, because of theterrible envy and the anger of the things that could drift no more.

  Once a great storm rode up, even as far as London, out of the sea from theSouth; and he came curving into the river with the fierce East wind. Andhe was mightier than the dreary tides, and went with great leaps over thelistless mud. And all the sad forgotten things rejoiced, and mingled withthings that were haughtier than they, and rode once more amongst thelordly shipping that was driven up and down. And out of their hideous homehe took my bones, never again, I hoped, to be vexed with the ebb and flow.And with the fall of the tide he went riding down the river and turned tothe southwards, and so went to his home. And my bones he scattered amongmany isles and along the shores of happy alien mainlands. And for amoment, while they were far asunder, my soul was almost free.

  Then there arose, at the will of the moon, the assiduous flow of the tide,and it undid at once the work of the ebb, and gathered my bones from themarge of sunny isles, and gleaned them all along the mainland's shores,and went rocking northwards till it came to the mouth of the Thames, andthere turned westwards its relentless face, and so went up the river andcame to the hole in the mud, and into it dropped my bones; and partly themud covered them, and partly it left them white, for the mud cares not forits forsaken things.

  Then the ebb came, and I saw the dead eyes of the houses and the jealousyof the other forgotten things that the storm had not carried thence.

  And some more centuries passed over the ebb and flow and over theloneliness of things for gotten. And I lay there all the while in thecareless grip of the mud, never wholly covered, yet never able to go free,and I longed for the great caress of the warm Earth or the comfortable lapof the Sea.

  Sometimes men found my bones and buried them, but the tradition neverdied, and my friends' successors always brought them back. At last thebarges went no more, and there were fewer lights; shaped timbers no longerfloated down the fairway, and there came instead old wind-uprooted treesin all their natural simplicity.

  At last I was aware that somewhere near me a blade of grass was growing,and the moss began to appear all over the dead houses. One day somethistledown went drifting over the river.

  For some years I watched these signs attentively, until I became certainthat London was passing away. Then I hoped once more, and all along bothbanks of the river there was anger among the lost things that anythingshould dare to hope upon the forsaken mud. Gradually the horrible housescrumbled, until the poor dead things that never had had life got decentburial among the weeds and moss. At last the may appeared and theconvolvulus. Finally, the wild rose stood up over mounds that had beenwharves and warehouses. Then I knew that the cause of Nature hadtriumphed, and London had passed away.

  The last man in London came to the wall by the river, in an ancient cloakthat was one of those that once my friends had worn, and peered over theedge to see that I still was there. Then he went, and I never saw menagain: they had passed away with London.

  A few days after the last man had gone the birds came into London, all thebirds that sing. When they first saws me they all looked sideways at me,then they went away a little and spoke
among themselves.

  "He only sinned against Man," they said; "it is not our quarrel."

  "Let us be kind to him," they said.

  Then they hopped nearer me and began to sing. It was the time of therising of the dawn, and from both banks of the river, and from the sky,and from the thickets that were once the streets, hundreds of birds weresinging. As the light increased the birds sang more and more; they grewthicker and thicker in the air above my head, till there were thousands ofthem singing there, and then millions, and at last I could see nothing buta host of flickering wings with the sunlight on them, and little gaps ofsky. Then when there was nothing to be heard in London but the myriadnotes of that exultant song, my soul rose up from the bones in the hole inthe mud and began to climb heavenwards. And it seemed that a lane-wayopened amongst the wings of the birds, and it went up and up, and one ofthe smaller gates of Paradise stood ajar at the end of it. And then I knewby a sign that the mud should receive me no more, for suddenly I foundthat I could weep.

  At this moment I opened my eyes in bed in a house in London, and outsidesome sparrows were twittering in a tree in the light of the radiantmorning; and there were tears still wet upon my face, for one's restraintis feeble while one sleeps. But I arose and opened the window wide, andstretching my hands out over the little garden, I blessed the birds whosesong had woken me up from the troubled and terrible centuries of my dream.