by M. P. Shiel
Themangal-stove in the south hall I have never once lit.
The length, I should say, is 19 miles; the breadth 10, or thereabouts;and the highest mountains should reach a height of some 2,000 ft.,though I have not been all over it. It is very densely wooded in mostparts, and I have seen large growths of wheat and barley, obviouslydegenerate now, with currants, figs, valonia, tobacco, vines in rankabundance, and two marble quarries. From the palace, which lies on asunny plateau of beautifully-sloping swards, dotted with the circularshadows thrown by fifteen huge cedars, and seven planes, I can see onall sides an edge of forest, with the gleam of a lake to the north, andin the hollow to the east the rivulet with its little bridge, and a fewclumps and beds of flowers. I can also spy right through----
* * * * *
It shall be written now:
I have this day heard within me the contention of the Voices.
* * * * *
I thought that they were done with me! That all, all, all, was ended! Ihave not heard them for twenty years!
But to-day--distinctly--breaking in with brawling impassionedsuddenness upon my consciousness.... I heard.
This late _far niente_ and vacuous inaction here have been underminingmy spirit; this inert brooding upon the earth; this empty life, andbursting brain! Immediately after eating at noon to-day, I said tomyself:
'I have been duped by the palace: for I have wasted myself in building,hoping for peace, and there is no peace. Therefore now I shall fly fromit, to another, sweeter work--not of building, but of destroying--not ofHeaven, but of Hell--not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy.Constantinople--beware!' I tossed the chair aside, and with a stamp wason my feet: and as I stood--again, again--I heard: the startlinglysudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble controversy,till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: 'Go! go!'and the other: 'Not there...! where you like, ... but not there...! foryour life!'
I did not--for I could not--go: I was so overcome. I fell upon the couchshivering.
These Voices, or impulses, plainly as I felt them of old, quarrel withinme now with an openness new to them. Lately, influenced by my longscientific habit of thought, I have occasionally wondered whether what Iused to call 'the two Voices' were not in reality two stronginstinctive movements, such as most men may have felt, though with lessforce. But to-day doubt is past, doubt is past: nor, unless I be verymad, can I ever doubt again.
* * * * *
I have been thinking, thinking of my life: there is a something which Icannot understand.
There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time,when I must have been very young--I fancy at some college or school inEngland, and his name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lostin the vast limbo of past things. But he used to talk continually aboutcertain 'Black' and 'White' Powers, and of their strife for this world.He was a short man with a Roman nose, and lived in fear of growing apaunch. His forehead a-top, in profile, was more prominent than thenose-end, he parted his hair in the middle, and had the theory that themale form was more beautiful than the female. I forget what his namewas--the dim clear-obscure being. Very profound was the effect of hiswords upon me, though, I think, I used to make a point of slightingthem. This man always declared that 'the Black' would carry off thevictory in the end: and so he has, so he has.
But assuming the existence of this 'Black' and this 'White' being--andsupposing it to be a fact that my reaching the Pole had any connectionwith the destruction of my race, according to the notions of thatextraordinary Scotch parson--then it must have been the power of '_theBlack_' which carried me, in spite of all obstacles, to the Pole. So farI can understand.
But _after_ I had reached the Pole, what further use had either White orBlack for me? Which was it--White or Black--that preserved my lifethrough my long return on the ice--and _why_? It _could_ not have been'the Black'! For I readily divine that from the moment when I touchedthe Pole, the only desire of the Black, which had previously preserved,must have been to destroy me, with the rest. It must have been 'theWhite,' then, that led me back, retarding me long, so that I should notenter the poison-cloud, and then openly presenting me the _Boreal_ tobring me home to Europe. But his motive? And the significance of theserecommencing wrangles, after such a silence? This I do not understand!
Curse Them, curse Them, with their mad tangles! I care nothing for Them!Are there any White Idiots and Black Idiots--_at all_? Or are theseVoices that I hear nothing but the cries of my own strained nerves, andI all mad and morbid, morbid and mad, mad, my good God?
This inertia here is _not good_ for me! This stalking about the palace!and long thinkings about Earth and Heaven, Black and White, White andBlack, and things beyond the stars! My brain is like bursting throughthe walls of my poor head.
To-morrow, then, to Constantinople.
* * * * *
Descending to go to the ship, I had almost reached the middle of theeast platform-steps, when my foot slipped on the smooth gold: and thefall, though I was not walking carelessly, had, I swear, all theviolence of a fall caused by a push. I struck my head, and, as I rolleddownward, swooned. When I came to myself, I was lying on the very bottomstep, which is thinly washed by the wine-waves: another roll and Isuppose I must have drowned. I sat there an hour, lost in amazement,then crossed the causeway, came down to the _Speransa_ with the motor,went through her, spent the day in work, slept on her, worked againto-day, till four, at both ship and time-fuses (I with only 700 fusesleft, and in Stamboul alone must be 8,000 houses, without countingGalata, Tophana, Kassim-pacha, Scutari, and the rest), started out at5.30, and am now at 11 P.M. lying motionless two miles off the northcoast of the island of Marmora, with moonlight gloating on the water, afaint north breeze, and the little pale land looking immenselystretched-out, solemn and great, as if that were the world, and therewere nothing else; and the tiny island at its end immense, and the_Speranza_ vast, and I only little. To-morrow at 11 A.M. I will moor the_Speranza_ in the Golden Horn at the spot where there is that low dampnook of the bagnio behind the naval magazines and that hill where thepalace of the Capitan Pacha is.
* * * * *
I found that great tangle of ships in the Golden Horn wonderfullypreserved, many with hardly any moss-growths. This must be due, Isuppose, to the little Ali-Bey and Kezat-Hanah, which flow into the Hornat the top, and made no doubt a constant current.
Ah, I remember the place: long ago I lived here some months, or, it maybe, years. It is the fairest of cities--and the greatest. I believe thatLondon in England was larger: but no city, surely, ever _seemed_ solarge. But it is flimsy, and will burn like tinder. The houses are madeof light timber, with interstices filled by earth and bricks, and someof them look ruinous already, with their lovely faded tints of greenand gold and red and blue and yellow, like the hues of withered flowers:for it is a city of paints and trees, and all in the little windingstreets, as I write, are volatile almond-blossoms, mixed withmaple-blossoms, white with purple. Even the most splendid of theSultan's palaces are built in this combustible way: for I believe thatthey had a notion that stone-building was presumptuous, though I haveseen some very thick stone-houses in Galata. This place, I remember,lived in a constant state of sensation on account of nightly flares-up;and I have come across several tracts already devastated by fires. Theministers-of-state used to attend them, and if the fire would not goout, the Sultan himself was obliged to be there, in order to encouragethe firemen. Now it will burn still better.
But I have been here six weeks, and still no burning: for the placeseems to plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why Idid not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmareyears; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and sincethen there has been an irritating whisper at my ear which said: 'It isnot really like the great King that you are, this burning, but like a
foolish child, or a savage, who liked to see fireworks: or at least, ifyou must burn, do not burn poor Constantinople, which is so charming,and so very old, with its balsamic perfumes, and the blossomy trees ofwhite and light-purple peeping over the walls of the cloistered paintedhouses, and all those lichened tombs--those granite menhirs and regionsof ancient marble tombs between the quarters, Greek tombs, Byzantine,Jew, Mussulman tombs, with their strange and sacredinscriptions--overwaved by their cypresses and vast plane-trees.' Andfor weeks I would do nothing: but roamed about, with two minds in me,under the tropic brilliance of the sky by day, and the vast dreamynights of this place that are like nights seen through azure-tintedglasses, and in each of them is not one night, but the thousand-and-onelong crowded nights of glamour and fancy: for I would sit on the immenseesplanade of the Seraskierat, or the mighty grey stones of the porch ofthe mosque of Sultan Mehmed-fatih, dominating from its