Short Stories 1895-1926

by Walter De la Mare

  ‘A pretty white room, lassie,’ said I.

  ‘Sure it be very quiet,’ said she, ‘and sometimes I think there be talkers in the air, and sometimes, as it were, birds at sundown. When I be lying wake i’ the long nights, I do think the blackness will some day come down upon me, and cover me up out o’ sight.’

  I sat on the little bed and looked at the ceiling, and I saw night frowning upon the child.

  ‘But God is with you,’ said I, and when I had said it I looked for Him at my side and found Him gone. I turned to the maid, and knew the child’s solitude, and heard the echoes of the talkers and the hovering winds. I pined to see her lips blossom into smiles. And, as in languid negligence she smoothed her hair before the open casement, I bethought me of a precious jewel – one which I had set great store by – a gem of lustre and elegance, a delight for young eyes. I searched my wallet and found the gem. This I fastened at the throat of the maid. My heart grew sick at its lack of lustre. The smile of the maid was the smile of autumn in a garden of flowers.

  ‘Oh!’ cried I, ‘jewels glitter brightest at dawn. Wait till the sun like a giant comes out of the east. Wait for the lark and the new flowers of dawn. Then we will be gay, you and I.’

  ‘After the night, sir,’ said the maid.

  I looked out upon the dolorous garden, upon the lazy crone, upon the gilded fields.

  ‘After the night,’ said I, taking the maid’s hand in mine. She put on her white bonnet and we went out of the room. Opposite to us was a door ajar. Of late inquisitiveness had grown upon me. I had much difficulty in refraining from pampering the habit. I pushed the door a little wider and peeped in. I looked into a darkened room; I saw in the gloaming a tumbled bed. A still sick man eyed me with glassy eyes. I felt that one more wrinkle was scrawled upon my face.

  The sun was ripe for setting as the maid and I set out upon the white road between the hedges. The doors of the cottages were shut. The flowers in the gardens were in rank disorder and choked with rank weeds. Only one man we saw. He sat outside his cottage door with his grindstone in front of him – a very old shrunken man, busily grinding his scythe. But his fingers were so weak that the steel scarcely grated upon the stone, and made only a low humming sound, soft as the hum of bees in a distant hive.

  ‘’Tis Simon, the mower,’ said the maid; ‘he be for ever grinding his scythe, but, la he’st too weak to snap a twig,’ she smiled compassionately.

  The grinder never turned his bent head nor stayed his profitless labour.

  ‘All day long,’ said the maid, ‘all day long sings the drone of his scythe; and the childer used to sit quiet at the window watching wi’ their eyes of mice for the sparks to skip fro’ the stone. Their yellow hair was just golden in the green. But the childer a’ gone back fro’ the window, and all the white summer day the buzz shakes i’ the air. Ay, and i’ winter. Oh, sir, the sun climbs up sick and sulky, and crawls lik’ a fat snail i’ the blue, and goes down by the Black Mill, and the darkness eats him up. I do feel that my heart is o’ glass and be nigh to breaken’ when the chill night sneaks in at the keyhole. I do miss the cluck’n’ hens in the sunny dust and the doucesmell’n hay.’

  I spied furtively at the glazed windows, but no children looked out upon us thence, and the forsaken nests of birds in the thatch were draggled and in wisps like a widow’s weeds. Not long after the maid and I came to the village well. The hoary stones were green in patches. The brown shreds of a broken pitcher lay in the dust at our feet. There I was fain to sit and muse, looking into the still black waters, which seemed to have in hiding the silence of the dead. But my friend called me, and we journeyed on together hand in hand. With each step upon our way I seemed to draw nearer to the thoughts of the antiquated maid at my side. Myself was not left behind, for the pleasure and lustiness of youth took a new colour. Feeble knees and waning courage were carrying me out of the ken of the world. Yet my mind’s calm was rather the calm of a child’s awakening to the morn than the lazy ease of falling to sleep at the slow coming of night. We climbed a steep and rocky way, full of ruts and holes, and upon our eyes, when we turned an angle of the road and came out from under the gloomy cedars, suddenly shone the red windows of a house standing gaunt and solitary and watchful upon a crest of the hill.

  ‘There be the Grey House,’ said the maid, kneeling down amidst the long green grass.

  The evening was glorious.

  Here was left behind the toil and fret of men’s business. And while I was looking under my hand towards the brightness, a strange company of men defiled between the iron gates of the house, carrying a burden upon their shoulders. I sat down with the maid by the roadside, and waited until the procession should come up with us. When they were come near I shouted, ‘Is Mr Basil Gray at home?’

  The weedy men paused. They put down their burden in the dust. They shot furtive glances the one to the other.

  ‘Ay, sir, “at home” that he be,’ shrilly laughed a wizened little man who led the way with a lighted lantern and a mattock.

  The maid turned to the west. I bent over the box, and read my friend’s name upon the lid. Death took me by the hand. Presently the little band proceeded on their way. The maid and I followed afar off … When darkness was come I tottered to my musty snowy chamber in the little inn. The wan child led the way, carrying a candle. I sat at the open window. For a long time I watched the sexton labouring by the stilly light of his lantern and the yellow crescent moon in the graveyard of the ‘Village of Old Age’.

  1 First published in Cornhill Magazine, September 1896, New York Evening Post, September 1896, and Living Age, 31 October 1896, ‘by Walter Ramal’; later published in Eight Tales, ed. Edward Wagenknecht, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1971.

  The Moon’s Miracle1

  As when, to warn proud cities, war appears

  Waged in the troubled sky, and armies rush

  To battle in the clouds; before each van

  Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears,

  Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms

  From either end of heaven the welkin burns.

  Paradise Lost, Book II, 533

  How the Count saw a city in the sky and men in harness issuing thereout – Of the encampment of the host of the moonsmen – Of how the battle was joined – The Count’s great joy thereat and of how the fight sped.

  The housekeeper’s matronly skirts had sounded upon the staircase. The maidens had simpered their timid ‘Good-night, sir,’ and were to bed. Nevertheless, the Count still sat imperturbable and silent. A silence of frowns, of eloquence on the simmer; a silence that was almost a menace.

  ‘Bed-time, Count,’ I suggested.

  His thinking had dishevelled his hair. He peered at me with wrathful disapprobation. ‘How glum,’ he muttered, ‘how desperately glum!’ and again fell silent.

  ‘I fancied that it was getting late,’ said I.

  ‘Late, late?’ he grunted, ‘Am I the slave of the clock? Bed for old women.’

  ‘May I ask what is wrong, sir?’ said I.

  The floodgates were opened.

  ‘I am in the blues, boy, unfathomable. All is wrong: that I am old and full of wear, that Life, the sorceress, is wearying of me; soon she will play the jilt. And here I sit, cudgelling my jaded brains for to evade the one event. But even the Count is mortal, and his palace of youth evanished in a golden mist of memories. Now the worms’ banqueting hour is at hand, now wails the Banshee.’ The Count was smiling and frowning. He limped over to me and sat down beside me, under the candles at the window.

  ‘I am in the blues, boy; call it what you will – indigestion or homesickness of soul. The green of the past is out of sight, the pitiless sands of old age stretch out to the brink – and a certain Bird is patient.’ He leaned forward and tapped me upon the knee. ‘I will fight,’ said he between his teeth, ‘fingers against beak till the white bones show.’

  Then back was flung his head with his familiar guffaw. ‘Tut! here am I l
avishing my hoarded experience on a raw youth who sucks at his book as though it were the fruit of the tree of Life. Laughing, are you? So am I. It is the candles, the candles, the candles. They conjure up musty shrines and greedy heirs. Shut your book, raw youth, and draw aside the curtains; we will hob a nob with the moon.’

  The moon was high above the housetop, so that only a faint twilight trickled into the room; but, upon the grassy stretch of common, whose skirt was twinkling fair with distant lamps, she shone cold and bleak. The trees, indecorously clothed this autumn-time, feebly shivered in their rags. Upon the other side the common, over against the Swan Pond, the potboy was putting up the shutters of the ‘Green Man’; and, as he drew to an end, one by one its lights went out as a man might shut his eyes. And when this landmark was thus silently withdrawn, it seemed that we were suddenly left the sole companions of the night.

  The Count drew a deep breath. ‘How good!’ said he, ‘how good! ’Tis a blue bowl of moonlight; let us drink to the dregs. ’Gad! a mere eyeshot of my Wimbledon is a recompense for all our woe. A lovable rogue is life, but a jilt, a jilt.’ He surveyed the world with a mother’s eyes. One by one, in the silence, our neighbour’s cocks began to crow. The Count’s face grew merry again.

  ‘Now the cocks do shout the midnight,’ he chanted. ‘How quiet is the air! but yet I’ll wager to a keener ear a thousand fairy harps are rippling. And mark you that crook-backed elm; what a pose, a personality she has in her tattered petticoat. You would think – but Dryads are out of fashion in this age of gilt.’ (I was listening now with little attention.) ‘Sing hey for shrewd Mrs Grundy though she see no farther than the Ultimate Plumes. Down soul, down! and out of the drawing-room. So the gaffer’s tongue wags, for equivocation must drown doubt; yet had I a tittle of certainty (just the glimmer of a ghost) I would ecstatically die and my hearse should be a veritable Car of Triumph. Alas! many an old comrade have I seen swagger into eternity, but never a one has bugled clear to me from his shadowy bourne.’

  (‘It is an optical delusion,’ I muttered.)

  ‘Are their eagle spirits snuffed out into blindness and silence? Do they — ?’

  Out of the misty far away rose the mere echo of a cockcrow.

  ‘Whist!’ said I, ‘whist!’

  The Count’s rhapsody was cut short. We stood agape at the window.

  The north-west brought it forth. In this direction alongside of the roadway, is a row of poplars. And it was just here, above their topmost twigs, that, when the Count was in the midst of his talking, I saw the first sign in the sky. ‘Mirage,’ said the Count curtly, polishing the glass with his sleeve. His aged grey eyes were wide-open as a child’s at a Christmas tree. ‘A thing common enough, common enough, but —’

  A policeman loosely sauntering on the pathway overlooked by the house, to my astonishment, seemed to notice nothing uncommon. I was near calling out to him as street boys call to one another at the appearance of a balloon. But in the weighing of the matter in my mind I let him saunter on, out of hearing. When he was well gone I was glad to have kept silence. The intense stillness of the city’s surreption of the night-sky for a while assured me of its unreality; but soon it was impossible so to think. Out of space the city had risen upon us. Out of the night she sallied forth like a bride.

  ‘Look, look!’ said the Count hotly.

  The city was now hovering at a span above the Home for the Dying. A sudden light shone in a window to the north. Maybe it was set shining by a mother fetching milk for her baby or by some one awakened out of nightmare, for soon it was extinguished.

  ‘The silence is like a wary beast,’ said the Count. ‘D’ye think, is it the dust of the air (my eyes are dim), or do I see men moving upon the ramparts and busy about the gates? That pinnacle grows clearer every minute; it pricks the sky. Really it is very odd. What? What says the boy? And yet, mark you, not an inch of it is moonlit. Some inner light glimmers upon the stone, or a sister moon is prowling in her rear.’

  ‘Men, men!’ said I.

  Very slowly the world’s circumference dipped in the sky until the city hung free of all earthly excrescences, as though she were swinging by a cord, as swings a seagull, out of space. Like a huge, still summer-cloud lazily lolling on the horizon near before sunset was the city, save that upon her walls and buildings was the light of a wintry dawn fluttering.

  Presently winged men in a multitude were to be clearly seen, and also upon the right of the main gate flanked by smooth turrets, a multitude of horsemen likewise with outstretching wings. Again I searched the common that I might point out the wonder to some chance passer-by and be convinced. To me it seemed a traitorous deed to extinguish the candle of science in a breath, to trample Newton’s grave. A woman upon a seat near at hand was inert and asleep; none stirred anywhere. But while my eyes went vainly roaming the extremities of the common they lighted upon slow moving blotches in the darkness of the northeast. These I pointed out to the Count.

  ‘My field-glasses in the green leather case,’ said he.

  ‘In the old cabinet,’ said I.

  But neither of us stirred a pace from the window.

  ‘Horsemen? Yes, horsemen!’ said I. ‘How they ride!’

  ‘Like secrets,’ said the Count.

  Soon, it was a difficult matter to keep watch on all these things. The concourse of people about the city’s gates was increasing. Mustered in rigid order, they stood like an army prepared for battle. For a little while I was apprehensive lest a trumpet should sound and should wake the world, fetching men and women, all in a panic, in nightcap and gown, from the warren of houses into this open place.

  But no sound fell. The vast assemblage was silent. The horsemen upon the sky’s verge were making stealthy progress. Clearly some tumult was toward.

  ‘Such business means the devil to pay,’ said the Count. ‘No peaceable city that, my friend. See how tense is the bustle, even the watching of it clenches the fists. I know the heart-gnaw, the rat at the pit of the stomach. Chut! My pension for new blood. Every man of ’em writes hazard in every movement. If that be an outflanking ruse,’ he continued, pointing a ludicrously gaunt finger towards the left, ‘the enemy must be encamped in mid-sky. They go the pace. Mettlesome beasts they be. And observe the order, line upon line, with nice interspacing. Mark the ease of their seat, horse and man – one, like a hawk, confident of every wrought muscle. Line upon line they ride, hugging the shadow. A fit body of men – and the beasts!’

  ‘Ay,’ said I, ‘you are right, Count, it is a rear attack. They are making profit of the earth’s shadow. Their accoutrements are dull too. Are they not purpureal, sir? ‘Cute enough!’

  ‘In night khaki,’ said the Count, like one inspired.

  ‘Yes,’ said I, ‘you are right. The enemy must be in mid-sky, overhead.’

  We turned quickly, the one towards the other. ‘Round about the moon!’ we shouted together.

  Pretty certainly we were to be justified of our surmise, unless far westward, out of the world’s ken, lay their goal. The Count was already hurrying out of the room. In his heat and boisterous haste he overstrained his leg, but, careless of the pain, and leaning upon my arm while he flourished the candle on high in his left hand to light our way (and assist the placid scrutiny of his ancestors), he pushed forward down the passage. The eyes of the pictures were exceeding dull painted it seemed to me. (‘I owe them this night,’ was the Count’s rebuke of my levity.) On our way, because of the bend in the hallway, we saw the dwarf city speed, as it were, across the fanlight of the door.

  ‘Ha! d’ye see, a manoeuvre to the sou’-west, too!’ said the Count.

  In our anxiety to shoot back the bolts of the door, we much incommoded one another, whereupon the Count fiercely swore at me in a flurry of anger. He was another man. With the forethought that is sometimes twin with excitement, I seized a mackintosh which hung upon a peg at the doorway, and with this followed near after the Count, who, impatient of my help, with never a step without a gro
an, was wrathfully hobbling down the steps into the garden. In our short absence, the walls and towers of the skycity had waxed plainer yet. But, though nearer at hand – the very war men’s faces were discernible – yet the utmost limits of the city I could not see, since round about her the stars were obscured; for there hovered London’s smoke. And now we were free of the shadow of the house. By clambering upon the stone pilasters nearby the yews where lies the stableyard, we could sight nigh the whole firmament. Here, simultaneously, we bleated amazement at the tents of the army encamped about the moon.

  The tents were of divers pale colours, some dove-grey, others saffron and moth-green, and those on the farther side, of the colour of pale violets, and all pitched in a vast circle whose centre was the moon. I handed the mackintosh to the Count and insisted upon his donning of it. ‘The dew hangs in the air,’ said I, ‘and unless the world spin on too quickly we shall pass some hours in watching.’

  ‘Ay,’ said he in a muse, ‘but it seems to me the moon-army keeps infamous bad watch. I see not one sentinel. Those wings travel sure as a homing bird; and to be driven back upon their centre be defeat for the – lunatics. Give me but a handful of such cavalry, I would capture the Southern Cross. Magnificent! magnificent! I remember when I was in —’

  For, while he was yet deriding, from points a little distant apart, single, winged horsemen dropped from the far sky, whither, I suppose, they had soared to keep more efficient watch; and though we heard no whisper of sound, by some means (inaudible bugle call, positively maintains the Count) the camp was instantly roused and soon astir like seething broth. Tents were struck and withdrawn to the rear. Arms and harness, bucklers and gemmy helms sparkled and glared. All was orderly confusion.