Tales of Wonder

by Lord Dunsany

  The Exiles Club

  It was an evening party; and something someone had said to me hadstarted me talking about a subject that to me is full of fascination,the subject of old religions, forsaken gods. The truth (for allreligions have some of it), the wisdom, the beauty, of the religionsof countries to which I travel have not the same appeal for me; forone only notices in them their tyranny and intolerance and the abjectservitude that they claim from thought; but when a dynasty has beendethroned in heaven and goes forgotten and outcast even among men,one's eyes no longer dazzled by its power find something very wistfulin the faces of fallen gods suppliant to be remembered, somethingalmost tearfully beautiful, like a long warm summer twilight fadinggently away after some day memorable in the story of earthly wars.Between what Zeus, for instance, has been once and the half-rememberedtale he is today there lies a space so great that there is no changeof fortune known to man whereby we may measure the height down whichhe has fallen. And it is the same with many another god at whom oncethe ages trembled and the twentieth century treats as an old wives'tale. The fortitude that such a fall demands is surely more thanhuman.

  Some such things as these I was saying, and being upon a subject thatmuch attracts me I possibly spoke too loudly, certainly I was notaware that standing close behind me was no less a person than theex-King of Eritivaria, the thirty islands of the East, or I would havemoderated my voice and moved away a little to give him more room. Iwas not aware of his presence until his satellite, one who had fallenwith him into exile but still revolved about him, told me that hismaster desired to know me; and so to my surprise I was presentedthough neither of them even knew my name. And that was how I came tobe invited by the ex-King to dine at his club.

  At the time I could only account for his wishing to know me bysupposing that he found in his own exiled condition some likeness tothe fallen fortunes of the gods of whom I talked unwitting of hispresence; but now I know that it was not of himself he was thinkingwhen he asked me to dine at that club.

  The club would have been the most imposing building in any street inLondon, but in that obscure mean quarter of London in which they hadbuilt it it appeared unduly enormous. Lifting right up above thosegrotesque houses and built in that Greek style that we call Georgian,there was something Olympian about it. To my host an unfashionablestreet could have meant nothing, through all his youth wherever he hadgone had become fashionable the moment he went there; words like theEast End could have had no meaning to him.

  Whoever built that house had enormous wealth and cared nothing forfashion, perhaps despised it. As I stood gazing at the magnificentupper windows draped with great curtains, indistinct in the evening,on which huge shadows flickered my host attracted my attention fromthe doorway, and so I went in and met for the second time the ex-Kingof Eritivaria.

  In front of us a stairway of rare marble led upwards, he took methrough a side-door and downstairs and we came to a banqueting-hall ofgreat magnificence. A long table ran up the middle of it, laid forquite twenty people, and I noticed the peculiarity that instead ofchairs there were thrones for everyone except me, who was the onlyguest and for whom there was an ordinary chair. My host explained tome when we all sat down that everyone who belonged to that club was byrights a king.

  In fact none was permitted, he told me, to belong to the club untilhis claim to a kingdom made out in writing had been examined andallowed by those whose duty it was. The whim of a populace or thecandidate's own misrule were never considered by the investigators,nothing counted with them but heredity and lawful descent from kings,all else was ignored. At that table there were those who had oncereigned themselves, others lawfully claimed descent from kings thatthe world had forgotten, the kingdoms claimed by some had even changedtheir names. Hatzgurh, the mountain kingdom, is almost regarded asmythical.

  I have seldom seen greater splendour than that long hall providedbelow the level of the street. No doubt by day it was a little sombre,as all basements are, but at night with its great crystal chandeliers,and the glitter of heirlooms that had gone into exile, it surpassedthe splendour of palaces that have only one king. They had come toLondon suddenly most of those kings, or their fathers before them, orforefathers; some had come away from their kingdoms by night, in alight sleigh, flogging the horses, or had galloped clear with morningover the border, some had trudged roads for days from their capital indisguise, yet many had had time just as they left to snatch up somesmall thing without price in markets, for the sake of old times asthey said, but quite as much, I thought, with an eye to the future.And there these treasures glittered on that long table in thebanqueting-hall of the basement of that strange club. Merely to seethem was much, but to hear their story that their owners told was togo back in fancy to epic times on the romantic border of fable andfact, where the heroes of history fought with the gods of myth. Thefamous silver horses of Gilgianza were there climbing their sheermountain, which they did by miraculous means before the time of theGoths. It was not a large piece of silver but its workmanshipoutrivalled the skill of the bees.

  A yellow Emperor had brought out of the East a piece of thatincomparable porcelain that had made his dynasty famous though alltheir deeds are forgotten, it had the exact shade of the right purple.

  And there was a little golden statuette of a dragon stealing a diamondfrom a lady, the dragon had the diamond in his claws, large and of thefirst water. There had been a kingdom whose whole constitution andhistory were founded on the legend, from which alone its kings hadclaimed their right to the scepter, that a dragon stole a diamond froma lady. When its last king left that country, because his favoritegeneral used a peculiar formation under the fire of artillery, hebrought with him the little ancient image that no longer proved him aking outside that singular club.

  There was the pair of amethyst cups of the turbaned King of Foo, theone that he drank from himself, and the one that he gave to hisenemies, eye could not tell which was which.

  All these things the ex-King of Eritivaria showed me, telling me amarvelous tale of each; of his own he had brought nothing, except themascot that used once to sit on the top of the water tube of hisfavorite motor.

  I have not outlined a tenth of the splendour of that table, I hadmeant to come again and examine each piece of plate and make notes ofits history; had I known that this was the last time I should wish toenter that club I should have looked at its treasures moreattentively, but now as the wine went round and the exiles began totalk I took my eyes from the table and listened to strange tales oftheir former state.

  He that has seen better times has usually a poor tale to tell, somemean and trivial thing has been his undoing, but they that dined inthat basement had mostly fallen like oaks on nights of abnormaltempest, had fallen mightily and shaken a nation. Those who had notbeen kings themselves, but claimed through an exiled ancestor, hadstories to tell of even grander disaster, history seeming to havemellowed their dynasty's fate as moss grows over an oak a great whilefallen. There were no jealousies there as so often there are amongkings, rivalry must have ceased with the loss of their navies andarmies, and they showed no bitterness against those that had turnedthem out, one speaking of the error of his Prime Minister by which hehad lost his throne as "poor old Friedrich's Heaven-sent gift oftactlessness."

  They gossiped pleasantly of many things, the tittle-tattle we all hadto know when we were learning history, and many a wonderful story Imight have heard, many a side light on mysterious wars had I not madeuse of one unfortunate word. That word was "upstairs."

  The ex-King of Eritivaria having pointed out to me those unparalleledheirlooms to which I have alluded, and many more besides, hospitablyasked me if there was anything else that I would care to see, he meantthe pieces of plate that they had in the cupboards, the curiouslygraven swords of other princes, historic jewels, legendary seals, butI who had had a glimpse of their marvelous staircase, whose balustradeI believed to be solid gold and wondering why in such a stately housethey chose to dine in the basement,
mentioned the word "upstairs." Aprofound hush came down on the whole assembly, the hush that mightgreet levity in a cathedral.

  "Upstairs!" he gasped. "We cannot go upstairs."

  I perceived that what I had said was an ill-chosen thing. I tried toexcuse myself but knew not how.

  "Of course," I muttered, "members may not take guests upstairs."

  "Members!" he said to me. "We are not the members!"

  There was such reproof in his voice that I said no more, I looked athim questioningly, perhaps my lips moved, I may have said "What areyou?" A great surprise had come on me at their attitude.

  "We are the waiters," he said.

  That I could not have known, here at last was honest ignorance that Ihad no need to be ashamed of, the very opulence of their table deniedit.

  "Then who are the members?" I asked.

  Such a hush fell at that question, such a hush of genuine awe, thatall of a sudden a wild thought entered my head, a thought strange andfantastic and terrible. I gripped my host by the wrist and hushed myvoice.

  "Are they too exiles?" I asked.

  Twice as he looked in my face he gravely nodded his head.

  I left that club very swiftly indeed, never to see it again, scarcelypausing to say farewell to those menial kings, and as I left the doora great window opened far up at the top of the house and a flash oflightning streamed from it and killed a dog.