by Whit Burnett
gently, like a wake that sings, like the drops that fall from an
oar blade.' A little later she asked them : 'Is it not a sweet thing
to think that, if only you have patience, all that has ever
been, will come back to you?' Shortly afterwards the old lady
died."
The party now broke up, the sailors gave Charlie their hands
and thanked him for the rum and the story. Charlie wished
them all good luck. "You forgot your bag," said the captain,
and picked up Charlie's portmanteau with the manuscript in it.
"No," said Charlie, "I mean to leave that with you, till we are to
sail together." The captain looked at the initials on the bag. "It
is a heavy bag," he said. "Have you got anything of value in it?"
"Yes, it is heavy, God help me," said Charlie, "but that shall
not happen again. Next time it will be empty.'' He got the name
of the captain's ship, and said good-bye to him.
As he came out he was surprised to find that it was nearly
morning. The long spare row of street lamps held up their melancholy heads in the grey air.
A thin young girl with big black eyes, who had been walking
up and down in front of the inn, came up and spoke to him,
and, when he did not answer, repeated her invitation in English. Charlie looked at her. "She too," he thought, "belongs to the ships, like the mussels and seaweeds that grow on their
bottoms. Within her many good seamen, who escaped the deep,
have been drowned. But all the same she will not run aground,
and if I go with her I shall still be safe." He put his hand in his
pocket, but found only one shilling left there. "Will you let me
have a shilling's worth?" he asked the girl. She stared at him.
The Young Man with the Carnation • 9 1
Her face did not change as he took her hand, pulled down
her old glove and pressed the palm, rough and clammy as fishskin, to his lips and tongue. He gave her back her hand, placed a shilling in it, and walked away.
For the third time he walked along the street between the
harbour and the Queen's Hotel. The town was now waking up,
and he met a few people and carts. The windows of the hotel
were lighted. When he came into the hall there was no one
there, and he was about to walk up to his room, when, through
a glass door, he saw his wife sitting in a small, lighted dining
room next to the hall. So he went in there.
When his wife caught sight of him her face cleared up. "Oh,
you have come !" she cried. He bent his head. He was about to
take her hand and kiss it when she asked him : "Why are you so
late?" "Am I late?" he exclaimed, highly surprised by her question, and because the idea of time had altogether gone from him. He looked at a clock upon the mantelpiece, and said: "It
is only ten past seven." "Yes, but I thought you would be here
earlier!" said she. "I got up to be ready when you came."
Charlie sat down by the table. He did not answer her, for he
had no idea what to say. "Is it possible," he thought, "that she
has the strength of soul to take me back in this way?"
"Will you have some coffee?" said his wife. "No, thank you,"
·said he, "I have had coffee." He glanced round the room. Although it was nearly light and the blinds were up, the ga5 lamps were still burning, and from his childhood this had always
seemed to him a great luxury. The fire on the fireplace played
on a somewhat worn Brussels carpet and on the red plush
chairs. His wife was eating an egg. As a little boy he had had an
egg on Sunday mornings. The whole room, that smelled of
coffee' and fresh bread, with the white tablecloth and the shining
coffee-pot, took on a sabbath-morning look. He gazed at his
wife. She had on her grey travelling cloak, her bonnet was
lying beside her, and her yellow hair, gathered in a net, shone
in the lamplight. She was bright in her own way, a pure light
came from her, and she seemed enduringly fixed on the sofa.
the one firm object in a turbulent world.
An idea came to him : "She is like a lighthouse," he thought,
"the firm, majestic lighthouse that sends out its kindly light. To
all ships it says: 'Keep off.' For where the lighthouse stands,
there is shoal water, or rocks. To all floating objects the approach means death." At this moment she looked up, and found his eyes on her. "What are you thinking of?'' she asked
him. He thought: "I will tell her. It is better to be honest
with her, from now, and to tell her all.'' So he said, slowly : "I
am thinking that you are to me, in life, like a lighthouse. A
steady light, instructing me how to steer my course." She
9Z • Nineteen Tales ol Terror
looked at him, then away, and her eyes filled with tears. J:le
became afraid that she was going to cry, even though till now
she had been so brave. "Let us go up to our own room," he
said, for it would be easier to explain things to her when they
were alone.
They went up together, and the stairs, which, last night, had
been so long to climb, now were so easy, that his wife said:
"No, you are going up too high. We are there." She walked
ahead of him down the corridor, and opened the door to their
room.
The first thing that he noticed was that there was no longer
any smell of violets in the air. Had she thrown them away in
anger? Or had they all faded when he went away? She
came up to him and laid her hand on his shoulder and her face
on it. Over her fair hair, in the net, he looked round, and stood
quite still. For the dressing-table, on which, last night, he had
put his letter for her, was in a new place, and so, he found, was
the bed he had lain in. In the comer there was now a chevalglass which had not been there before. This was not his room.
He quickly took in more details. There was no longer a canopy
to the bed, but above it a steel-engraving of the Belgian Royal
family that till now he had never seen. "Did you sleep here last
night?" he asked. "Yes," said his wife. "But not well. I was wor..:
ried when you did not come; I feared that you were having a
bad crossing." "Did nobody disturb you?" he asked again.
"No," she said. "My door was locked. And this is a quiet hotel,
I believe."
As Charlie now looked back on the happenings of the night,
with the experienced eye of an author of fiction, they moved
him as mightily as if they had been out of one of his own books.
He drew in his breath deeply. "Almighty God," he said from
the bottom of his heart, "as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are thy short stories higher than our short stories."
He went through all the details slowly and surely, as a
mathematician sets up and solves an equation. First he felt, like
honey on his tongue, the longing and the triumph of the young
man with the carnation. Then, like the grip of a hand round his
throat, but with hardly less artistic enjoyment, the terror of the
lady in the bed. As if he himself had possessed a pair of firm
young breasts he was conscious of his heart stopping beneath
them. He stood perfectly still, in his own thoughts, but his face
took on such an expression of rapture
, laughter and delight
that his wife, who had lifted her head from his shoulder, asked
him in surprise : "What are you thinking of now?"
Charlie took her hand, his face still radiant. "I am thinking,"
he said very slowly, "of the Garden of Eden, and the cherubim
with the flaming sword. Nay," he went on in the same way, "I
Tlte Young Man with the Carnation • 93
am thinking of Hero and Leander. Of Romeo and Juliet. Of
Theseus and Ariadne, and the Minotaur as well. Have you ever
tried, my dear, to guess how, upon the occasion, the Minotaur
was feeling?"
"So you are going to write a love story, Troubadour?" she
asked, smiling back upon him. He did not answer at once, but
he let go her hand, and after a while asked : "What did you
say?" "I asked you if you were going to write a love story?" she
repeated timidly. He went away from her, up to the table, and
put his hand upon it.
The light that had fallen upon him last night was coming
back, and from all sides now-from his own lighthouse as well,
he thought confusedly. Only then it had shone onward, upon
the infinite world, while at this moment it was turned inwards,
and was lightening up the room of the Queen's Hotel. It was
very bright; it seemed that he was to see himself, within it, as
God saw him, and under this test he had to steady himself by
the table.
While he stood there the situation developed into a dialogue
between Charlie and the Lord.
The Lord said: "Your wife asked you twice if you are going
to write a love story. Do you believe that this is indeed what
you are going to do?" "Yes, that is very likely," said Charlie.
"Is it," the Lord asked, "to be a great and sweet tale, which will
live in the hearts of young lovers?" "Yes, I should say so," said
Charlie. "And are you content with that?" asked the Lord.
"0 Lord, what are you asking me?'' cried Charlie. "How can
I answer yes? Am I not a human being, and can I write a love
story without longing for that love which clings and embraces,
and for the softness and warmth of a young woman's body in
my arms?" "I gave you all that last night," said the Lord. "It
was you who jumped out of bed, to go to the end of the world
from it." "Yes, I did that," said Charlie. "Did you behold it and
think it very good? Are you going to repeat it on me? Am I
to be, forever, he who lay in bed with the mistress of the young
man with the carnation, and, by the way, what has become of
her, and bow is she to explain things to him? And who went
off, and wrote to her: 'I have gone away. Forgive me, if you
can.' " "Yes," said the Lord.
"Nay, tell me, now that we are at it," cried Charlie, "am I,
while I write of the beauty of young women, to get, from the
live women of the earth, a shilling's worth, and no more?"
"Yes," said the Lord. "And you are to be content with that."
Charlie was �rawing a pattern with his finger on the table; he
said nothing. It seemed that the discourse was ended here, when
again the Lord spoke.
"Who made the ships, Charlie?" he asked. "Nay, I know
94 • Nineteen Tales of Tenor
not," said Charlie, "did you make them?" "Yes," said the Lord,
"I made the ships on their keels, and all floating things. The
moon that sails in the sky, the orbs that swing in the universe,
the tides, the generations, the fashions. You make me laugh,
for I have given you all the world to sail and float in, and you
have run aground here, in a room of the Queen's Hotel to seek
a quarrel."
"Come," said the Lord again, "I will make a covenant between me and you. I, I will not measure· you out any more distress than you need to write your books." "Oh, indeed!" said Charlie. "What did you say?" asked the Lord. "Do you want
any less than that?" "I said nothing," said Charlie. "But you
are to write the books," said the Lord. "For it is I who want
them written. Not the public, not by any means the critics," but
MEl" "Can I be certain of that?" Charlie asked. "Not always,"
said the Lord. "You will not be certain of it at all times. But I
tell you now that it is so. You will have to hold on to that."
"0 good God," said Charlie. "Are you going," said the Lord,
"to thank me for what I have done for you tonight?" "I think,"
said Charlie, "that we will leave it at what it is, and say no more
about it."
His wife now went and opened the window. The cold, raw
morning air streamed in, with the din of carriages from the
street below, human voices and a great chorus of sparrows, and
with the smell of smoke and horse manure.
When Charlie bad finished his talk with God, and while it was
still so vivid to him that be might have written it down, he went
to the window and looked out. The morning colours of the
grey town were fresh and delicate, and there was a faint promise of sunshine in the sky. People were about; a young woman in a blue shawl and slippers was walking away quickly; and the
omnibus of the hotel, with a white horse to it, was halting below, while the porter helped out the travellers and took down their luggage. Charlie gazed down into the street, a long way
under him.
"I shall thank the Lord for one thing all the same," he
thought. "That I did not lay my hand on anything that belonged
to my brother, the young man with the carnation. It was within
my reach, but I did not touch it." He stood for a while in the
window and saw the omnibus drive away. Where, he wondered,
amongst the houses in the pale morning, was now the young
man of last night?
"0 the young man," he thought. "Ah, le pauvre jeune
homme
a
.
.
l'reillet."
ROBERT W. COCHRAN
FOOT OF THE G IANT
THE sun was just showing in the east when a
noisy Ford overtook me and stopped. I had walked all night
and was dog tired and welcomed the driver's invitation to
climb in.
Without looking at me, he asked, "Goin' south?"
"Yes," I said. "This is the right road, isn't it?"
He nodded slowly, and there was a dreamy, faraway look on
his face as he put the car in gear. The back seat was piled with
empty burlap bags. I thought the old man had probably been
to Lexington with a load of produce. We bounced along, the
silence broken only by the rattle and creak of the old car over
the ruts. I could feel myself gradually dozing off.
He spoke again in his soft southern drawl. "People 'round
here think I'm queer."
"Most of us are," I said.
He thought that over while we covered maybe a mile, and as
though satisfied, he asked, "You been 'round much? Seen
things?"
I wanted to make the right answer. At last I said, "Some."
His lips tightened as he steered around a bog hole filled with
caked mud. Then, still without looking at me, he said softly,
"Me, I ain't been 'round, but I've seen things. Folks 'round
here don't believe me; most o' 'em call me queer."
"Some people won't
believe anything they can't see for themselves," I told him.
His mild blue eyes gave me a grateful look. "There's them
won't believe what they see with their own eyes." He wet his
lips with his tongue, and I felt he was glad to have someone to
talk to.
"No, sir," he repeated, "I ain't been 'round much; fact is, I
ain't never been no farther'n Lexington, but I've seen things.
Say, what's the biggest man you ever saw?"
95
16
lllnetun Tales of Terror
•
"You mean the tallest or the heaviest?" I asked, not caring
much what I said, just so long as he didn't get mad.
He half turned in the seat to face me. "Don't matter; put
'em both together."
I tried then to think, but decided that accuracy didn't matter,
and answered, "I saw a man nine feet tall at the circus, and the
fat man weighed six hundred pounds."
His head shook mournfully. "You won't believe neither. But
you might," he added after a pause, his face brightening,
"you've been places. I saw a man once more'n twenty foot
from the top o' his head to the soles o' his feet."
I said, "Some man," and was wide awake instantly.
He nodded emphatically. "Yup, twenty foot from his heels
to the crown o' his head. I marked him on the floor and measured it with a tape. It'd been more if I'd marked him sooner."
"On the floor?" I asked.
"Yup, he was lyin' on the floor. I took soap and marked all
way 'round him."
"Was he dead?"
"No," he let the word out slowly, "you wouldn't rightly call
him dead. I don't know as you'd call him dead now, but he's
gone."
"Did anyone else see him?" I asked, and felt curiosity rise in
me like a tide.
Again he shook his head. "If I c'ld only got someone to look
at him, or maybe had a pitcher made of himl"
"Where'd he come from?" I thought I could befuddle the
odd man easily enough.
"I never put no thought to that," he said innocently.
"Where'd he go?"
His placid face was perfectly serious as he said, "That's the
funny part; he didn't go."
"But you just told me he was gone," I said.
"Yup, he's gone, but he didn't go. I was as close to him as I
am to you right now."