Philip Van Doren Stern (ed)

by Travelers In Time

  Then we began to go through the MS. line by line; Charlie parrying every objection and correction with:

  "Yes, that may be better, but you don't catch what I'm driving at."

  Charles was, in one way at least, very like one kind of poet.

  There was a pencil scrawl at the back of the paper and "What's that?" I said.

  "Oh that's not poetry at all. It's some rot I wrote last night before I went to bed and it was too much bother to hunt for rhymes; so I made it a sort of blank verse instead."

  Here is Charlie's "blank verse":

  "We pulled for you when the wind was against us and the sails were low.

  Will you never let us go? We ate bread and onions when you took towns or ran aboard quickly when you were beaten back by the foe,

  The captains walked up and down the deck in fair weather singing songs, but we were below,

  We fainted with our chins on the oars and you did not see that we were idle for we still swung to and fro.

  Will you never let us go?

  The salt made the oar handles like sharkskin; our knees were cut to the bone with salt cracks; our hair was stuck to our foreheads; and our lips were cut to our gums and you whipped us because we could not row. Will you never let us go?

  But in a little time we shall run out of the portholes as the water runs along the oarblade, and though you tell the others to row after us you will never catch us till you catch the oar-thresh and tie up the winds in the belly of the sail. Aho!

  Will you never Jet us go?" "H'm. What's oar-thresh, Charlie?"

  "The water washed up by the oars. That's the sort of song they might sing in the galley, y'know. Aren't you ever going to finish that story and give me some of the profits?"

  "It depends on yourself. If you had only told me more about your hero in the first instance it might have been finished by now. You're so hazy in your notions."

  "I only want to give you the general notion of it—the knocking about from place to place and the fighting and all that. Can't you fill in the rest yourself? Make the hero save a girl on a pirate-galley and marry her or do something."

  "You're a really helpful collaborator. I suppose the hero went through some few adventures before he married."

  "Well then, make him a very artful card—a low sort of man—a sort of political man who went about making treaties and breaking them—a black-haired chap who hid behind the mast when the fighting began."

  "But you said the other day that he was red-haired."

  "I couldn't have. Make him black-haired of course. You've no imagination."

  Seeing that I had just discovered the entire principles upon which the half-memory falsely called imagination is based, I felt entitled to laugh, but forbore, for the sake of the tale.

  "You're right. You're the man with imagination. A black-haired chap in a decked ship," I said.

  "No, an open ship—like a big boat." This was maddening.

  "Your ship has been built and designed, closed and decked in; you said so yourself," I protested.

  "No, no, not that ship. That was open, or half decked because---------------------

  By Jove you're right. You made me think of the hero as a red-haired chap. Of course if he were red, the ship would be an open one with painted sails."

  Surely, I thought, he would remember now that he had served in two galleys at least—in a three-decked Greek one under the black-haired "political man," and again in a Viking's open sea-serpent under the man "red as a red bear" who went to Markland. The devil prompted me to speak.

  "Why 'of course,' Charlie?" said I.

  "I don't know. Are you making fun of me?"

  The current was broken for the time being. I took up a notebook and pretended to make many entries in it.

  "It's a pleasure to work with an imaginative chap like yourself," I said, after a pause. "The way that you've brought out the character of the hero is simply wonderful."

  "Do you think so?" he answered, with a pleased flush. "I often tell myself that there's more in me than my mo—than people think."

  "There's an enormous amount in you."

  "Then, won't you let me send an essay on The Ways of Bank-Clerks to Tit-Bits, and get the guinea prize?"

  "That wasn't exactly what I meant, old fellow: perhaps it would be better to wait a little and go ahead with the galley-story."

  "Ah, but I sha'n't get the credit of that. Tit-Bits would publish my name and address if I win. What are you grinning at? They would."

  "I know it. Suppose you go for a walk. I want to look through my notes about our story."

  Now this reprehensible youth who left me, a little hurt and put back, might for aught he or I knew have been one of the crew of the Argo—had been certainly slave or comrade to Thorfin Karlsefne. Therefore he was deeply interested in guinea competitions. Remcmbering what Grish Chunder had said I laughed aloud. The Lords of Life and Death would never allow Charlie Meats to speak with full knowledge of his pasts, and I must even piece out what he had told me with my own poor inventions while Charlie wrote of the ways of bank-clerks.

  I got together and placed on one file all my notes; and the net result was not cheering. I read them a second time. There was nothing that might not have been compiled at secondhand from other people's books—except, perhaps, the story of the fight in the harbor. The adventures of a Viking had been written many times before; the history of a Greek galley-slave was no new thing, and though I wrote both, who could challenge or confirm the accuracy of my details? I might as well tell a tale of two thousand years hence. The Lords of Life and Death were as cunning as Grish Chunder had hinted. They would allow nothing to escape that might trouble or make easy the minds of men. Though I was convinced of this, yet I could not leave the tale alone. Exaltation followed reaction, not once, but twenty times in the next few weeks. My moods varied with the March sunlight and flying clouds. By night or in the beauty of a spring morning I perceived that I could write that tale and shift continents thereby. In the wet, windy afternoons, I saw that the tale might indeed be written, but would be nothing more than a faked, false-varnished, sham-rusted piece of Wardoun Street work at the end. Then I blessed Charlie in many ways—though it was no fault of his. He seemed to be busy with prize competitions, and I saw less and less of him as the weeks went by and the earth cracked and grew ripe to spring, and the buds swelled in their sheaths. He did not care to read or talk of what he had read, and there was a new ring of self-assertion in his voice. I hardly cared to remind him of the galley when we met; but Charlie alluded to it on every occasion, always as a story from which money was to be made.

  "I think I deserve twenty-five per cent., don't I, at least," he said, with beautiful frankness. "I supplied all the ideas, didn't I?"

  This greediness for silver was a new side in his nature. I assumed that it had been developed in the City, where Charlie was picking up the curious nasal drawl of the underbred City man.

  "When the thing's done we'll talk about it. I can't make anything of it at present. Red-haired or black-haired hero is equally difficult."

  He was sitting by the fire staring at the red coals. "I can't understand what you find so difficult. It's all as clear as mud to me," he replied. A jet of gas puffed out between the bars, took light and whistled softly. "Suppose we take the red-haired hero's adventures first, from the time that he came south to my galley and captured it and sailed to the Beaches."

  I knew better now than to interrupt Charlie. I was out of reach of pen and paper, and dared not move to get them lest I should break the current. The gas-jet puffed and whinnied, Charlie's voice dropped almost to a whisper, and he told a tale of the sailing of an open galley to Furdurstrandi, of sunsets on the open sea, seen under the curve of the one sail evening after evening when the galley's beak was notched into the centre of the sinking disc, and "we sailed by that for we had no other guide," quoth Charlie. He spoke of a landing on an island and explorations in its woods, where the crew killed three men whom they fo
und asleep under the pines. Their ghosts, Charlie said, followed the galley, swimming and choking in the water, and the crew cast lots and threw one of their number overboard as a sacrifice to the strange gods whom they had offended. Then they ate sea-weed when their provisions failed, and their legs swelled, and their leader, the red-haired man, killed two rowers who mutinied, and after a year spent among the woods they set sail for their own country, and a wind that never failed carried them back so safely that they all slept at night. This, and much more Charlie told. Sometimes the voice fell so low that I could not catch the words, though every nerve was on the strain. He spoke of their leader, the red-haired man, as a pagan speaks of his God; for it was he who cheered them and slew them impartially as he thought best for their needs; and it was he who steered them for three days among floating ice, each floe crowded with strange beasts that "tried to sail with us," said Charlie, "and we beat them back with the handles of the oars."

  The gas-jet went out, a burned coal gave way, and the fire settled down with a tiny crash to the bottom of the grate. Charlie ceased speaking, and I said no word.

  "By Jove!" he said, at last, shaking his head. "I've been staring at the fire till I'm dizzy. What was I going to say?"

  "Something about the galley."

  m

  "I remember now. It's twenty-five per cent, of the profits, isn't it?"

  "It's anything you like when I've done the tale."

  "I wanted to be sure of that. I must go now. I've—I've an appointment." And he left me.

  Had my eyes not been held I might have known that that broken muttering over the fire- was the swan-song of Charlie Mears. But I thought it the prelude to fuller revelation. At last and at last I should cheat the Lords of Life and Death!

  When next Charlie came to me I received him with rapture. He was nervous and embarrassed, but his eyes were very full of light, and his lips a little parted.

  "I've done a poem," he said; and then, quickly: "it's the best I've ever done. Read it." He thrust it into my hand and retreated to the window.

  I groaned inwardly. It would be the work of half an hour to criticise—that is to say praise—the poem sufficiently to please Charlie. Then I had good reason to groan, for Charlie, discarding his favorite centipede metres, had launched into shorter and choppier verse, and verse with a motive at the back of it. This is what I read:

  "The day is most fair, the cheery wind

  Halloos behind the hill, Where he bends the wood as seemeth good,

  And the sapling to his will! Riot O wind; there is that in my blood

  That would not have thee still!

  "She gave me herself, O Earth, O Sky; Grey sea, she is mine alone! Let the sullen boulders hear my cry, And rejoice tho' they be but stonel

  "Mine! I have won her O good brown earth, Make merry! 'Tis hard on Spring; Make merry; my love is doubly worth

  All worship your fields can bring! Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth At the early harrowing."

  "Yes, it's the early harrowing, past a doubt," I said, with a dread at my heart. Charlie smiled, but did not answer.

  "Red cloud of the sunset, tell it abroad; I am victor. Greet me O Sun, Dominant master and absolute lord Over the soul of one!"

  "Well?" said Charlie, looking over my shoulder.

  I thought it far from well, and very evil indeed, when he silently laid a photograph on the paper—the photograph of a girl with a curly head, and a foolish slack mouth.

  "Isn't it—isn't it wonderful?" he whispered, pink to the tips of his ears, wrapped in the rosy mystery of first love. "I didn't know; I didn't think—it came like a thunderclap."

  "Yes. It comes like a thunderclap. Are you very happy, Charlie?"

  "My God—she—she loves me!" He sat down repeating the last words to himself. I looked at the hairless face, the narrow shoulders already bowed by desk-work, and wondered when, where, and how he had loved in his past lives.

  "What will your mother say?" I asked, cheerfully.

  "I don't care a damn what she says."

  At twenty the things for which one does not care a damn should, properly, be many, but one must not include mothers in the list. I told him this gently; and he described Her, even as Adam must have described to the newly named beasts the glory and tenderness and beauty of Eve. Incidentally I learned that She was a tobacconist's assistant with a weakness for pretty dress, and had told him four or five times already that She had never been kissed by a man before.

  Charlie spoke on and on, and on; while I, separated from him by thousands of years, was considering the beginnings of things. Now I understood why the Lords of Life and Death shut the doors so carefully behind us. It is that we may not remember our first wooings. Were it not so, our world would be without inhabitants in a hundred years.

  "Now, about that galley-story," I said, still more cheerfully, in a pause in the rush of the speech. Charlie looked up as though he had been hit. "The galley—what galley? Good heavens, don't joke, man! This is serious! You don't know how serious it is!"

  Grish Chunder was right. Charlie had tasted the love of woman that kills remembrance, and the finest story in the world would never be written.

  From Etched in Moonlight, by James Stephens, reprinted by permission of The Macmillan Company, New York, and Macmillan & Co. Ltd., London.

  Etcked in Moonligkt

  By JAMES STEPHENS

  HE WAVED HIS PIPE AT ME ANGRILY :

  "Words," he said. "We are doped with words, and we go to sleep on them and snore about them. So with dream. We issue tomes about it, and we might as well issue writs for all the information we give."

  I halted him there, for I respect science and love investigation.

  "Scientists don't claim to give answers to the riddles of existence," I expostulated, "their business is to gather and classify whatever facts are available, and when a sufficient number of these have been collected there is usually found among them an extra thing which makes examination possible."

  "Hum!" said he.

  "The difficulty lies in getting all the facts, but when these are given much more is given; for if a question can be fully stated the answer is conveyed in the question."

  "That's it," said he, "they don't know enough, but there is a wide

  pretence---- "

  "More a prophecy than a pretence. They really state that this or that thing is knowable. It is only that you live hurriedly, and you think everything else should be geared up to your number."

  "And they are so geared, or they would not be visible and audible and tangible to me. But a ghost is geared differently to me; and I think that when I am asleep and dreaming I am geared differently to the person who is talking to you here." "Possibly."

  "Certainly. Look at the time it has taken you and I to chatter our mutual nonsense. In an instant of that time I could have had a dream; and, in its infinitesimal duration, all the adventures and excitements of twenty or forty years could take place in ample and leisurely sequence. Someone has measured dream, and has recorded that elaborate and complicated dreams covering years of time can take place while you would be saying knife."

  "It was du Prell," I said.

  "Whoever it was, I've seen a person awake and talking, but sleepy; noted that person halt for the beat of a word in his sentence, and continue with the statement that he has had a horrible dream. It must have taken place in the blink of an eye. There is no doubt that while we are asleep a power is waking in us which is more amazing than any function we know of in waking life. It is lightning activity, lightning order, lightning intelligence; and that is not to be considered as rhetoric, but as sober statement. The proposition being, that in sleep the mind does actually move at the speed of lightning."

  He went on more soberly:

  "Last night I had a dream, and in it twenty good years were lived through with all their days and nights in the proper places; and a whole chain of sequential incidents working from the most definite beginning to the most adequate end—a
nd perhaps it all took place between the beginning and the ending of a yawn."

  "Well, let us have the dream," said I; "for it is clear that you are spoiling to tell it."

  He devoted himself anew for a few moments to his pipe and to his thoughts, and, having arranged that both of these were in working order, he recommenced:

  "After all this you will naturally expect that something dramatic or astonishing should follow; but it is not surprise, not even interest that is the centre of my thought about this dream. The chief person in the dream was myself; that is certain. The feeling of identity was complete during the dream; but my self in the dream was as unlike my self sitting here as you and I are unlike each other. I had a different physique in the dream; for, while I am now rather dumpish and

  fair and moonfaced, I was, last night, long and lean as a rake, with a black thatch sprouting over a hatchet head. I was different mentally; my character was not the one I now recognise myself by; and I was capable of being intrigued by events and speculations in which the person sitting before you would not take the slightest interest."

  He paused for a few seconds as though reviewing his memories; but, on a movement from me, he continued again, with many pauses, and with much snorings on his pipe, as tho' he were drawing both encouragement and dubiety from it.

  "Of course I am romantically minded. We all are; the cat and the dog are. All life, and all that is in it, is romantic, for we and they and it are growing into a future that is all mystery out of a past not less mysterious; and the fear or hope that reaches to us from these extremes are facets of the romance which is life or consciousness, or whatever else we please to name it.