CORNIE. Cudn’t a been better ef I’d a put ’em up m’se’f, Tip. Yummmm.
JIM. I hear none-a your folks is comin’ to th’ funeral, Tip. rip. I... reckon not.
ALT. So I heard. How come, Tip?
TIP. They didn’t like Minnie none. They said she was alius too smart. She was alius tryin’t’ git me t’ pull my freight an’ git away from ’em. Minnie was plannin’ big on that. Th’ day she died she got a letter from Montana or somewheres ‘bout new land. She even drawed a plan for a new house out there. My folks didn’t like that none.
JIM. Well... us folks all liked Minnie real well. Mighty well.
ALT. Us folks, too.
MEL. Minnie was alius smilin’. I never seen her when she wasn’t smilin’.
TIP. She cudn’t tolerate none-a my folks none. I reckon my folks was as good as hern.
JIM (pointing with his pipe-stem at
TIP). Wasn’t nobody good as Minnie Tip.
TIP. I... reckon not.
(Silence.)
MEL. Who put that rose on her coffin in thur, Tip?
TIP. She done et herse’f.
JIM. She done et?
ALT. How’d she do et, Tip? up. Couple-a years ago she set them posies out in th’ back yard. An’ she says to me: “Ef I ever die when those-there roses are in bloom, Tippy dear, put one of them on my coffin.” So... her ma went an’ done et.
JIM. Et looks mighty perty and simple. Naturally I don’t go much on beauty. But that-there was a beautiful idea, I say.
MEL. My Haley’s that-a-way, too. Women-folks is durned funny critters.
CORNIE. They shore put th’ trimmin’s on a feller.
ALT. I didn’t ’mount to a durn b’fore I was married.
JIM. Y’ don’t ’mount t’ much more now, do you, Alt?
ALT. I reckon me and you is on a par, ain’t we, Jim?
JIM. That suits me, Alt.
(The men laugh loudly.)
CORNIE. Oh, hummmm. Kinda sleepy. You reckon th’ corpse is all right, in there?
ALT. Take a look, Mel.
MEL. Et makes me creepy t’ snoop ’round a corpse. Cornie, you look.
CORNIE. Nothin’ to that, Mel. (He goes to the left door and opens it.) They ain’t nothin’ could hurt a person ’bout a corpse.
MEL. Mebby not. But they’re like cold mashed p’taters; they ain’t got no life to ’em.
CORNIE. Ever’thing’s all O.K. ’s fur’s I can see. Minnie’s women-folks is snorin’ like all-git-out in th’ spare bedroom. Sounds like a hog-pen.
TIP. Et is... with them in it.
CORNIE (looking in). You got a nice front-rooin in there, Tip. Fixed up a sight better’n ourn is at home.
TIP. Et was... her.
CORNIE (closing the door). Whur’d you git th’ pianner at?
TIP. She got et. She usta thump on et in th’ evenings. “In th’ Gloamin’” and “Darlin’ Nellie Gray” and such.
JIM. Must-a cost a sight. Emmy got a parler-organ and et kept me poverty-struck for five years hand-runnin’.
TIP. Didn’t cost me nothin’. She got et with her butter ’n egg money. Took seven years. There et is in there now. Doin’ nobody no good. She was just thet-a-way.
ALT. You cain cut et up for kindlin’ wood, Tip.
CORNIE. Et’d make a good hen-coop for yer little chickens. All you got t’ do is t’ take out th’ works and put a strip-a tar paper on top.
TIP. May do that.
MEL. Well... who’s goin’t’ write out that card? There et is on th’ table.
JIM. I cain’t write so’s a person can read et.
TIP. Don’t worry... nobody’s goin’ to read et.
CORNIE. I can’t draw my X’s so’s a person can make ’em out. And my Z’s has got curley-cues on ’em. You write et out, Alt.
ALT. I wud... but I sprained my ankle an’ I’m stiff all over so’s I can’t even scratch my own back.
JIM. A-course, we couldn’t ask Tip t’ do et.
TIP. Stick th’ durned flowers on without a card. Who cares for style? I been a-gettin’ my belly-full-a style fer th’ past ten years.
CORNIE. Just’s you say, Tip. We just thunk et’d be kind-a nice, that’s all.
(MEL looks out the window.)
MEL. Et’s gettin’ daylight out, boys. I got t’ be goin’ on home.
JIM. Me, too. Them calves got t’ be tended to.
(The men start to put on their coats and hats.)
TIP. You fellers is comin’ back t’ carry th’ woman to th’ grave, ain’t you?
CORNIE. I reckon so. We was ’pointed pall-bearers. Won’t be hard to carry Minnie. She didn’t weigh no more’n a bag-a feathers.
ALT. I guess I orta be hikin’ on home, too. I got some chores t’ do.
JIM. You goin’ my way, Cornie?
CORNIE. Guess I’ll cut across the hog pasture—it’s shorter.
MEL. Whut’ll you do without Minnie to do your milkin’ now, Tip?
TIP. Reckon I’ll have t’... git me another woman.
(The men stop still.)
CORNIE. You... got anybody... in mind, Tip?
TIP. I got Annie Smith in mind.
JIM. Ab Smith’s doctor?
TIP. Yeh. I’ve had her in mind for some time. When I seen Minnie was... ailin’.
(The men look at one another. They say nothing. Silence.)
ALT. Well... I... I guess I’ll be... goin’ on, boys.
JIM. Me too, Alt.
TIP. I may need you fellers later t’ help me bust up that planner in there... when we git Minnie out of the way.
CORNIE. Any time. Ef I ain’t doin somethin’.
ALT. Me, too. Most likely I wont be.
MEL. I guess... I’ll just take another look... at Minnie in there... b’fore I go.
JIM. Me... too.
(MEL opens the door. The men look in.)
MEL. Th’ sun... looks perty... shinin’ on that... rose, Tip.
JIM. Shore... does.
ALT. Et’s tough luck t’ lose a woman like Minnie.
MEL. She was alius smilin’ and bright.
TIP. I’ll git over et all right. Don’t worry none ’bout me.
CORNIE. I reckon... we won’t... much.
(ALT opens the outside door. The men start out.)
ALT (turning toward tip). I s’pose th’ baby is inside th’ coffin with Minnie, ain’t it?
TIP. It’s layin’ on her breast. (Pause.) They wa’n’t no use wastin’ two coffins.
(The men leave, TIP resumes his reading and rocking. The sunlight washes out the pale of the lamplight.)
THE CURTAIN FALLS SLOWLY
H. G. Wells
The Pearl of Love
Love conquers all? Not according to H. G. Wells (1866—1946), who, as Great Britain’s most famous science-fantasist, wrote such unforgettable novels and tales as The Invisible Man, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. The great tomb in his little-known tale “The Pearl of Love” inevitably brings to mind India’s Taj Mahal.
THE PEARL is lovelier than the most brilliant of crystalline stones, the moralist declares, because it is made through the suffering of a living creature. About that I can say nothing because I feel none of the fascination of pearls. Their cloudy lustre moves me not at all. Nor can I decide for myself upon that age-long dispute whether The Pearl of Love is the cruellest of stories or only a gracious fable of the immortality of beauty.
Both the story and the controversy will be familiar to students of mediaeval Persian prose. The story is a short one, though the commentary upon it is a respectable part of the literature of that period. They have treated it as a poetic invention and they have treated it as an allegory meaning this, that, or the other thing. Theologians have had their copious way with it, dealing with it particularly as concerning the restoration of the body after death, and it has been greatly used as a parable by those who write about aesthetics. And many have held it to be the statement of a fact, s
imply and baldly true.
The story is laid in North India, which is the most fruitful soil for sublime love stories of all the lands in the world. It was in a country of sunshine and lakes and rich forests and hills and fertile valleys; and far away the great mountains hung in the sky, peaks, crests, and ridges of inaccessible and eternal snow. There was a young prince, lord of all the land; and he found a maiden of indescribable beauty and delightfulness and he made her his queen and laid his heart at her feet. Love was theirs, full of joys and sweetness, full of hope, exquisite, brave and marvellous love, beyond anything you have ever dreamt of love. It was theirs for a year and a part of a year, and then suddenly, because of some venomous sting that came to her in a thicket, she died.
She died and for a while the prince was utterly prostrated. He was silent and motionless with grief. They feared he might kill himself, and he had neither sons nor brothers to succeed him. For two days and nights he lay upon his face, fasting, across the foot of the couch which bore her calm and lovely body. Then he arose and ate, and went about very quietly like one who has taken a great resolution. He caused her body to be put in a coffin of lead mixed with silver, and for that he had an outer coffin made of the most precious and scented woods wrought with gold, and about that there was to be a sarcophagus of alabaster, inlaid with precious stones. And while these things were being done he spent his time for the most part by the pools and in the garden-houses and pavilions and groves and in those chambers in the palace where they two had been most together, brooding upon her loveliness. He did not rend his garments nor defile himself with ashes and sackcloth as the custom was, for his love was too great for such extravagances. At last he came forth again among his councillors and before the people, and told them what he had a mind to do.
He said he could never more touch woman, he could never more think of them, and so he would find a seemly youth to adopt for his heir and train him to his task, and that he would do his princely duties as became him; but that for the rest of it, he would give himself with all his power and all his strength and all his wealth, all that he could command, to make a monument worthy of his incomparable, dear, lost mistress. A building it should be of perfect grace and beauty, more marvellous than any other building had ever been or could ever be, so that to the end of time it should be a wonder, and men would treasure it and speak of it and desire to see it and come from all the lands of the earth to visit and recall the name and the memory of his queen. And this building he said was to be called the Pearl of Love.
And this his councillors and people permitted him to do, and so he did.
Year followed year and all the years he devoted himself to building and adorning the Pearl of Love. A great foundation was hewn out of the living rock in a place whence one seemed to be looking at the snowy wilderness of the great mountain across the valley of the world. Villages and hills there were, a winding river, and very far away three great cities. Here they put the sarcophagus of alabaster beneath a pavilion of cunning workmanship; and about it there were set pillars of strange and lovely stone and wrought and fretted walls, and a great casket of masonry bearing a dome and pinnacles and cupolas, as exquisite as a jewel. At first the design of the Pearl of Love was less bold and subtle than it became later. At first it was smaller and more wrought and encrusted; there were many pierced screens and delicate clusters of rosy hued pillars, and the sarcophagus lay like a child that sleeps among flowers. The first dome was covered with green tiles, framed and held together by silver, but this was taken away again because it seemed close, because it did not soar grandly enough for the broadening imagination of the prince.
For by this time he was no longer the graceful youth who had loved the girl queen. He was now a man, grave and intent, wholly set upon the building of the Pearl of Love. With every year of effort he had learnt new possibilities in arch and wall and buttress; he had acquired greater power over the material he had to use and he had learnt of a hundred stones and hues and effects that he could never have thought of in the beginning. His sense of colour had grown finer and colder; he cared no more for the enamelled gold-lined brightness that had pleased him first, the brightness of an illuminated missal; he sought now for blue colourings like the sky and for the subtle hues of great distances, for recondite shadows and sudden broad floods of purple opalescence and for grandeur and space. He wearied altogether of carvings and pictures and inlaid ornamentation and all the little careful work of men. “Those were pretty things,” he said of his earlier decorations; and had them put aside into subordinate buildings where they would not hamper his main design. Greater and greater grew his artistry. With awe and amazement people saw the Pearl of Love sweeping up from its first beginnings to a superhuman breadth and height and magnificence. They did not know clearly what they had expected, but never had they expected so sublime a thing as this. “Wonderful are the miracles,” they whispered, “that love can do,” and all the women in the world, whatever other loves they had, loved the prince for the splendour of his devotion.
Through the middle of the building ran a great aisle, a vista, that the prince came to care for more and more. From the inner entrance of the building he looked along the length of an immense pillared gallery and across the central area from which the rose-hued columns had long since vanished, over the top of the pavilion under which lay the sarcophagus, through a marvellously designed opening, to the snowy wildernesses of the great mountain, the lord of all mountains, two hundred miles away. The pillars and arches and buttresses and galleries soared and floated on either side, perfect yet unobtrusive, like great archangels waiting in the shadows about the presence of God. When men saw that austere beauty for the first time they were exalted, and then they shivered and their hearts bowed down. Very often would the prince come to stand there and look at that vista, deeply moved and not yet fully satisfied. The Pearl of Love had still something for him to do, he felt, before his task was done. Always he would order some little alteration to be made or some recent alteration to be put back again. And one day he said that the sarcophagus would be clearer and simpler without the pavilion; and after regarding it very steadfastly for a long time, he had the pavilion dismantled and removed.
The next day he came and said nothing, and the next day and the next. Then for two days he stayed away altogether. Then he returned, bringing with him an architect and two master craftsmen and a small retinue.
All looked, standing together silently in a little group, amidst the serene vastness of their achievement. No trace of toil remained in its perfection. It was as if the God of nature’s beauty had taken over their offspring to himself.
Only one thing there was to mar the absolute harmony. There was a certain disproportion about the sarcophagus. It had never been enlarged, and indeed how could it have been enlarged since the early days? It challenged the eye; it nicked the streaming lines. In that sarcophagus was the casket of lead and silver, and in the casket of lead and silver was the queen, the dear immortal cause of all this beauty. But now that sarcophagus seemed no more than a little dark oblong that lay incongruously in the great vista of the Pearl of Love. It was as if someone had dropped a small valise upon the crystal sea of heaven.
Long the prince mused, but no one knew the thoughts that passed through his mind.
At last he spoke. He pointed.
“Take that thing away,” he said.
Not of This World
Ghosts, fiends, dimensional riptides, Asian spirits, disembodied limbs, amorous vampires, and other nightmarish critters infest this portion of Lovers & Other Monsters. It should come as no surprise, then, that in such shady company the reader may look forward to tantalizing promises of Hellish ecstasy. But caveat lector! for in the following dozen stories, where profane pleasure lurks, pain is seldom far behind...
H. P. Lovecraft
The Strange High
House in the Mist
H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937) was one of America’s most important twentieth-century fantasists.
Despite his apposite name, he did not write much about the darker aspects of love. “The Strange High House in the Mist” (tangentially connected with HPL’s earlier story “The Terrible Old Man”) comes closest with its shadowy hints of perilous transdimensional revels.
IN THE MORNING, mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs beyond Kingsport. White and feathery it comes from the deep to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures and caves of leviathan. And later, in still summer rains on the steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of those dreams, that men shall not live without rumor of old strange secrets, and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the night. When tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conchs in seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and oceanward eyes on the rocks see only a mystic whiteness, as if the cliff’s rim were the rim of all earth, and the solemn bells of buoys tolled free in the aether of faery.
Now north of archaic Kingsport the crags climb lofty and curious, terrace on terrace, till the northernmost hangs in the sky like a gray frozen wind-cloud. Alone it is, a bleak point jutting in limitless space, for there the coast turns sharp where the great Miskatonic pours out of the plains past Arkham, bringing woodland legends and little quaint memories of New England’s hills. The sea-folk in Kingsport look up at that cliff as other sea-folk look up at the pole-star, and time the night’s watches by the way it hides or shows the Great Bear, Cassiopeia, and the Dragon. Among them it is one with the firmament, and truly, it is hidden from them when the mist hides the stars or the sun. Some of the cliffs they love, as that whose grotesque profile they call Father Neptune, or that whose pillared steps they term “The Causeway”; but this one they fear because it is so near the sky. The Portuguese sailors coming in from a voyage cross themselves when they first see it, and the old Yankees believe it would be much graver matter than death to climb it, if indeed that were possible. Nevertheless there is an ancient house on that cliff, and at evening men see lights in the small-paned windows.
Lovers and Other Monsters Page 17