Cut of this tumult and clearly audible above the chorus and the rustling feet rang out suddenly, in a sweetly fluting tone, the leader’s voice:
“The Fire! But first the hands!”
A rush of figures set instantly towards a thicket where the underbrush stood densest. Skins, trailing flowers, bare waving arms and tossing hair swept past on a burst of perfume. It was as though the trees themselves sped by. And the torrent of voices shook the very air in answer:
“The Fire! But first – the hands!”
Across this roaring volume pierced then, once again, that wailing sound which seemed both human and nonhuman – the anguished cry as of some lonely wolf in metamorphosis, apart from the collective safety of the pack, abjectly terrified, feeling the teeth of the final trap, and knowing the helpless feet within the steel. There was a crash of rending boughs and tearing branches. There was a tumult in the thicket, though of brief duration – then silence.
He stood watching, listening, overmastered by a diabolical sensation of expectancy he knew to be atrocious. Turning in the direction of the cry, his straining eyes seemed filled with blood; in his temples the pulses throbbed and hammered audibly. The next second he stiffened into a stone-like rigidity, as a figure, struggling violently yet half collapsed, was borne hurriedly past by a score of eager arms that swept it towards the beech tree, and then proceeded to fasten it in an upright position against the trunk. It was a man bound tight with thongs, adorned with leaves and flowers and trailing green. The face was hidden, for the head sagged forward on the breast, but he saw the arms forced flat against the giant trunk, held helpless beyond all possible escape; he saw the knife, poised and aimed by slender, graceful fingers above the victim’s wrists laid bare; he saw the – hands.
“An eye for an eye,” he heard, “a tooth for a tooth!” It rose in awful chorus. Yet this time, although the words roared close about him, they seemed farther away, as if wind brought them through the crowding trees from far off.
“Light the fire! Prepare the sacrifice!” came on a following wind; and, while strange distance held the voices as before, a new faint sound now audible was very close. There was a crackling. Some ten feet beyond the tree a column of thick smoke rose in the air; he was aware of heat not meant for modern purposes; of yellow light that was not the light of stars.
The figure writhed, and the face swung suddenly sideways. Glaring with panic hopelessness past the judge and past the hanging knife, the eyes found his own. There was a pause of perhaps five seconds, but in these five seconds centuries rolled by. The priest of Today looked down into the well of time. For five hundred years he gazed into those twin eyeballs, glazed with the abject terror of a last appeal. They recognized one another.
The centuries dragged appallingly. The drama of civilization, in a sluggish stream, went slowly by, halting, meandering, losing itself, then reappearing. Sharpest pains, as of a thousand knives, accompanied its dreadful, endless lethargy. Its million hesitations made him suffer a million deaths of agony. Terror, despair and anger, all futile and without effect upon its progress, destroyed a thousand times his soul, which yet some hope – a towering, indestructible hope – a thousand times renewed. This despair and hope alternately broke his being, ever to fashion it anew. His torture seemed not of this world. Yet hope survived. The sluggish stream moved onward, forward . . .
There came an instant of sharpest, dislocating torture. The yellow light grew slightly brighter. He saw the eyelids flicker.
It was at this moment he realized abruptly that he stood alone, apart from the others, unnoticed apparently, perhaps forgotten; his feet held steady; his voice no longer sang. And at this discovery a quivering shock ran through his being, as though the will were suddenly loosened into a new activity, yet an activity that halted between two terrifying alternatives.
It was as though the flicker of those eyelids loosed a spring.
Two instincts, clashing in his being, fought furiously for the mastery. One, ancient as this sacrifice, savage as the legendary figure brooding in the heavens above him, battled fiercely with another, acquired more recently in human evolution, that had not yet crystallized into permanence. He saw a child, playing in a Kentish orchard with toys and flowers the little innocent hands made living . . . he saw a lowly manger, figures kneeling round it, and one star shining overhead in piercing and prophetic beauty.
Thought was impossible; he saw these symbols only, as the two contrary instincts, alternately hidden and revealed, fought for permanent possession of his soul. Each strove to dominate him; it seemed that violent blows were struck that wounded physically; he was bruised, he ached, he gasped for breath; his body swayed, held upright only, it seemed, by the awful appeal in the fixed and staring eyes.
The challenge had come at last to final action; the conqueror, he well knew, would remain an integral portion of his character, his soul.
It was the old, old battle, waged eternally in every human heart, in every tribe, in every race, in every period, the essential principle indeed, behind the great world-war. In the stress and confusion of the fight, as the eyes of the victim, savage in victory, abject in defeat – the appealing eyes of that animal face against the tree stared with their awful blaze into his own, this flashed clearly over him. It was the battle between might and right, between love and hate, forgiveness and vengeance, Christ and the Devil. He heard the menacing thunder of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, then above its angry volume rose suddenly another small silvery voice that pierced with sweetness: – “Vengeance is mine, I will repay . . .” sang through him as with unimaginable hope.
Something became incandescent in him then. He realized a singular merging of powers in absolute opposition to each other. It was as though they harmonized. Yet it was through this small, silvery voice the apparent magic came. The words, of course, were his own in memory, but they rose from his modern soul, now re-awakening. . . . He started painfully. He noted again that he stood apart, alone, perhaps forgotten of the others. The woman, leading a dancing throng about the blazing brushwood, was far from him. Her mind, too sure of his compliance, had momentarily left him. The chain was weakened. The circuit knew a break.
But this sudden realization was not of spontaneous origin. His heart had not produced it of its own accord. The unholy tumult of the orgy held him too slavishly in its awful sway for the tiny point of his modern soul to have pierced it thus unaided. The light flashed to him from an outside, natural source of simple loveliness – the singing of a bird. From the distance, faint and exquisite, there had reached him the silvery notes of a happy thrush, awake in the night, and telling its joy over and over again to itself. The innocent beauty of its song came through the forest and fell into his soul. . . .
The eyes, he became aware, had shifted, focusing now upon an object nearer to them. The knife was moving. There was a convulsive wriggle of the body, the head dropped loosely forward, no cry was audible. But, at the same moment, the inner battle ceased and an unexpected climax came. Did the soul of the bully faint with fear? Did his spirit leave him at the actual touch of earthly vengeance? The watcher never knew. In that appalling moment when the knife was about to begin the mission that the fire would complete, the roar of inner battle ended abruptly, and that small silvery voice drew the words of invincible power from his reawakening soul. “Ye do it also unto me . . .” pealed o’er the forest.
He reeled. He acted instantaneously. Yet before he had dashed the knife from the hand of the executioner, scattered the pile of blazing wood, plunged through the astonished worshippers with a violence of strength that amazed even himself; before he had torn the thongs apart and loosened the fainting victim from the tree; before he had uttered a single word or cry, though it seemed to him he roared with a voice of thousands – he witnessed a sight that came surely from the Heaven of his earliest childhood days, from that Heaven whose God is love and whose forgiveness was taught him at his mother’s knee.
With superhuman rapid
ity it passed before him and was gone. Yet it was no earthly figure that emerged from the forest, ran with this incredible swiftness past the startled throng, and reached the tree. He saw the shape; the same instant it was there; wrapped in light, as though a flame from the sacrificial fire flashed past him over the ground. It was of an incandescent brightness, yet brightest of all were the little outstretched hands. These were of purest gold, of a brilliance incredibly shining.
It was no earthly child that stretched forth these arms of generous forgiveness and took the bewildered prisoner by the hand just as the knife descended and touched the helpless wrists. The thongs were already loosened, and the victim, fallen to his knees, looked wildly this way and that for a way of possible escape, when the shining hands were laid upon his own. The murderer rose. Another instant and the throng must have been upon him, tearing him limb from limb. But the radiant little face looked down into his own; she raised him to his feet; with superhuman swiftness she led him through the infuriated concourse as though he had become invisible, guiding him safely past the furies into the cover of the trees. Close before his eyes, this happened; he saw the waft of golden brilliance, he heard the final gulp of it, as wind took the dazzling of its fiery appearance into space. They were gone . . .
9
He stood, watching the disappearing motor-cars, wondering uneasily who the occupants were and what their business, whither and why did they hurry so swiftly through the night? He was still trying to light his pipe, but the damp tobacco would not burn.
The air stole out of the forest, cooling his body and his mind; he saw the anemones gleam; there was only peace and calm about him, the earth lay waiting for the sweet, mysterious stars. The moon was higher; he looked up; a late bird sang. Three strips of cloud, spaced far apart, were the footsteps of the South Wind, as she flew to bring more birds from Africa. His thoughts turned to gentle, happy hopes of a day when the lion and the lamb should lie down together, and a little child should lead them. War, in this haunt of ancient peace, seemed an incredible anachronism.
He did not go farther; he did not enter the forest; he turned back along the quiet road he had come, ate his food on a farmer’s gate, and over a pipe sat dreaming of his sure belief that humanity had advanced. He went home to his hotel soon after midnight. He slept well, and next day walked back the four miles from the hospitals, instead of using the car. Another hospital searcher walked with him. They discussed the news.
“The weather’s better anyhow,” said his companion. “In our favour at last!”
“That’s something,” he agreed, as they passed a gang of prisoners and crossed the road to avoid saluting.
“Been another escape, I hear,” the other mentioned. “He won’t get far. How on earth do they manage it? The M.O. had a yarn that he was helped by a motor-car. I wonder what they’ll do to him.”
“Oh, nothing much. Bread and water and extra work, I suppose?”
The other laughed. “I’m not so sure,” he said lightly. “Humanity hasn’t advanced very much in that kind of thing.”
A fugitive memory flashed for an instant through the other’s brain as he listened. He had an odd feeling for a second that he had heard this conversation before somewhere. A ghostly sense of familiarity brushed his mind, then vanished. At dinner that night the table in front of him was unoccupied. He did not, however, notice that it was unoccupied.
The Punishment
Lord Dunsany
Location: Potsdam, Germany.
Time: October, 1918.
Eyewitness Description: “Had you been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, you would have seen an imperious figure passing from place to place looking on many scenes. He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded, and the phantom said to him, ‘Come!.’. . .”
Author: Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, (1878–1957) was a larger-than-life Irish nobleman, big-game hunter and chess champion, who became a major writer of fantasy fiction, often ranked with J. R. R. Tolkien and Mervyn Peake. The military traditions of his ancient family naturally enough saw Dunsany fight in the Boer War, take up arms in the Irish Easter Rising in 1916, when he was hit by a bullet in the head, and then see service in France during the First World War. His outlook on life was, though, deeply soured by what he experienced in the trenches and this is very evident in his subsequent collections of short stories, Tales of War (1918), Unhappy Far-Off Things (1919) and Tales of Three Hemispheres (1919). Among these tales, “The Punishment” is significant for two reasons. Firstly, because it is reminiscent of one of Charles Dickens’ classic stories, A Christmas Carol. Secondly, because it was first published – prophetically – in October 1918 when revolutionary feeling against the war was growing in Germany. Indeed, a month later, on 9 November, the Kaiser abdicated, and two days later, the Armistice was signed between the warring nations.
An exhalation arose, drawn up by the moon, from an old battlefield after the passing of years. It came out of very old craters and gathered from trenches, smoked up from Noman’s Land and the ruins of farms; it rose from the rottenness of dead brigades, and lay for half the night over two armies, but at midnight the moon drew it up all into one phantom, and it rose and trailed away eastwards.
It passed over men in grey that were weary of war, it passed over a land once prosperous, happy and mighty, in which were a people that were gradually starving, it passed by ancient belfries in which there were no bells now, it passed over fear and misery and weeping, and so came to the Palace at Potsdam. It was the dead of the night, between midnight and dawn, and the Palace was very still that the emperor might sleep, and sentries guarded it who made no noise and relieved others in silence. Yet it was not so easy to sleep. Picture yourself a murderer who had killed a man. Would you sleep ? Picture yourself the man who made this war. Yes, you sleep, but nightmares come.
The phantom entered the chamber. “Come,” it said.
The Kaiser leaped up at once as obediently as when he came to attention on parade, years ago, as a subaltern in the Prussian Guard, a man whom no woman or child as yet had ever cursed; he leaped up and followed. They passed the silent sentries, none challenged and none saluted; they were moving swiftly over the town as the felon Gothas go; they came to a cottage in the country. They drifted over a little garden gate, and there in a neat little garden the phantom halted, like a wind that has suddenly ceased. “Look,” it said.
Should he look? Yet he must look. The Kaiser looked, and saw a window shining and a neat room in the cottage: there was nothing dreadful there: thank the good German God for that; it was all right, after all. The Kaiser had had a fright, but it was all right, there was only a woman with a baby sitting before the fire; and two small children and a man. And it was quite a jolly room. And the man was a young soldier; and, why, he was a Prussian Guardsman; there was his helmet hanging on the wall; so everything was all right. They were jolly German children, that was well. How nice and homely the room was. There shone before him, and showed far off in the night, the visible reward of German thrift and industry. It was all so tidy and neat, and yet they were quite poor people. The man had done his work for the Fatherland and yet beyond all that had been able to afford all those little knick-knacks that make a home so pleasant and that in their humble little way were luxury. And while the Kaiser looked the two young children laughed as they played on the floor, not seeing that face at the window.
Why! look at the helmet. That was lucky. A bullet-hole right through the front of it. That must have gone very close to the man’s head. How ever did it get through? It must have glanced upwards, as bullets sometimes do. The hole was quite low in the helmet. It would be dreadful to have bullets coming by close like that.
The firelight flickered, and the lamp shone on, and the children played on the floor, and the man was smoking out of a china pipe; he was strong and able and young, one of the wealth-winners of Germany.
“Have you seen?” said the phantom.
“Yes,” said the Kaiser. It was well, he thought, that a Kaiser should see how his people lived.
At once the fire went out and the lamp faded away, the room fell sombrely into neglect and squalor, and the soldier and the children faded away with the room; all disappeared phantasmally, and nothing remained but the helmet in a kind of glow on the wall, and the woman sitting all by herself in the darkness.
“It has all gone,” said the Kaiser.
“It has never been,” said the phantom.
The Kaiser looked again. Yes, there was nothing there, it was just a vision. There were the grey walls all damp and uncared for, and that helmet standing out solid and round, like the only real thing among fancies. No, it had never been. It was just a vision.
“It might have been,” said the phantom.
Might have been? How might it have been?
“Come,” said the phantom.
They drifted away down a little lane that in summer would have had roses, and came to an Uhlan’s house, in times of peace a small farmer. Farm buildings in good repair showed even in the night, and the black shapes of haystacks: again a well-kept garden lay by the house. The phantom and the Kaiser stood in the garden; before them a window glowed in a lamp-lit room.
“Look,” said the phantom.
The Kaiser looked again and saw a young couple, the woman played with a baby, and all was prosperous in the merry room. Again the hard-won wealth of Germany shone out for all to see; the cosy, comfortable furniture spoke of acres well cared for, spoke of victory in the struggle with the seasons, on which wealth of nations depends.
“It might have been,” said the phantom.
Again the fire died out and the merry scene faded away, leaving a melancholy ill-kept room with poverty and mourning haunting dusty corners and the woman sitting alone.
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories Page 28