Fifty-One Tales Read online

  Produced by Anne Reshnyk, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franksand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

  FIFTY-ONE TALES

  by Lord Dunsany

  1915

  CONTENTS

  The Assignation

  Charon

  The Death of Pan

  The Sphinx at Giza

  The Hen

  Wind and Fog

  The Raft-Builders

  The Workman

  The Guest

  Death and Odysseus

  Death and the Orange

  The Prayer of the Flower

  Time and the Tradesman

  The Little City

  The Unpasturable Fields

  The Worm and the Angel

  The Songless Country

  The Latest Thing

  The Demagogue and the Demi-monde

  The Giant Poppy

  Roses

  The Man With the Golden Ear-rings

  The Dream of King Karna-Vootra

  The Storm

  A Mistaken Identity

  The True History of the Hare and the Tortoise

  Alone the Immortals

  A Moral Little Tale

  The Return of Song

  Spring In Town

  How the Enemy Came to Thlunrana

  A Losing Game

  Taking Up Picadilly

  After the Fire

  The City

  The Food of Death

  The Lonely Idol

  The Sphinx in Thebes (Massachusetts)

  The Reward

  The Trouble in Leafy Green Street

  The Mist

  Furrow-Maker

  Lobster Salad

  The Return of the Exiles

  Nature and Time

  The Song of the Blackbird

  The Messengers

  The Three Tall Sons

  Compromise

  What We Have Come To

  The Tomb of Pan

  THE ASSIGNATION

  Fame singing in the highways, and trifling as she sang, with sordidadventurers, passed the poet by.

  And still the poet made for her little chaplets of song, to deck herforehead in the courts of Time: and still she wore instead the worthlessgarlands, that boisterous citizens flung to her in the ways, made out ofperishable things.

  And after a while whenever these garlands died the poet came to herwith his chaplets of song; and still she laughed at him and wore theworthless wreaths, though they always died at evening.

  And one day in his bitterness the poet rebuked her, and said to her:"Lovely Fame, even in the highways and the byways you have notforeborne to laugh and shout and jest with worthless men, and I havetoiled for you and dreamed of you and you mock me and pass me by."

  And Fame turned her back on him and walked away, but in departingshe looked over her shoulder and smiled at him as she had not smiledbefore, and, almost speaking in a whisper, said:

  "I will meet you in the graveyard at the back of the Workhouse in ahundred years."

  CHARON

  Charon leaned forward and rowed. All things were one with hisweariness.

  It was not with him a matter of years or of centuries, but of widefloods of time, and an old heaviness and a pain in the arms that hadbecome for him part of the scheme that the gods had made and wasof a piece with Eternity.

  If the gods had even sent him a contrary wind it would have dividedall time in his memory into two equal slabs.

  So grey were all things always where he was that if any radiancelingered a moment among the dead, on the face of such a queenperhaps as Cleopatra, his eyes could not have perceived it.

  It was strange that the dead nowadays were coming in such numbers.They were coming in thousands where they used to come in fifties. Itwas neither Charon's duty nor his wont to ponder in his grey soul whythese things might be. Charon leaned forward and rowed.

  Then no one came for a while. It was not usual for the gods to sendno one down from Earth for such a space. But the gods knew best.

  Then one man came alone. And the little shade sat shivering on alonely bench and the great boat pushed off. Only one passenger:the gods knew best. And great and weary Charon rowed on and onbeside the little, silent, shivering ghost.

  And the sound of the river was like a mighty sigh that Grief in thebeginning had sighed among her sisters, and that could not die likethe echoes of human sorrow failing on earthly hills, but was as oldas time and the pain in Charon's arms.

  Then the boat from the slow, grey river loomed up to the coast ofDis and the little, silent shade still shivering stepped ashore, andCharon turned the boat to go wearily back to the world. Then thelittle shadow spoke, that had been a man.

  "I am the last," he said.

  No one had ever made Charon smile before, no one before had evermade him weep.

  THE DEATH OF PAN

  When the travellers from London entered Arcady they lamented one toanother the death of Pan.

  And anon they saw him lying stiff and still.

  Horned Pan was still and the dew was on his fur; he had not the lookof a live animal. And then they said, "It is true that Pan is dead."

  And, standing melancholy by that huge prone body, they looked forlong at memorable Pan.

  And evening came and a small star appeared.

  And presently from a hamlet of some Arcadian valley, with a soundof idle song, Arcadian maidens came.

  And, when they saw there, suddenly in the twilight, that old recumbentgod, they stopped in their running and whispered among themselves."How silly he looks," they said, and thereat they laughed a little.

  And at the sound of their laughter Pan leaped up and the gravel flewfrom his hooves.

  And, for as long as the travellers stood and listened, the crags andthe hill-tops of Arcady rang with the sounds of pursuit.

  THE SPHINX AT GIZEH

  I saw the other day the Sphinx's painted face.

  She had painted her face in order to ogle Time.

  And he has spared no other painted face in all the world but hers.

  Delilah was younger than she, and Delilah is dust. Time hath lovednothing but this worthless painted face.

  I do not care that she is ugly, nor that she has painted her face, sothat she only lure his secret from Time.

  Time dallies like a fool at her feet when he should be smiting cities.

  Time never wearies of her silly smile.

  There are temples all about her that he has forgotten to spoil.

  I saw an old man go by, and Time never touched him.

  Time that has carried away the seven gates of Thebes!

  She has tried to bind him with ropes of eternal sand, she had hopedto oppress him with the Pyramids.

  He lies there in the sand with his foolish hair all spread about her paws.

  If she ever finds his secret we will put out his eyes, so that he shallfind no more our beautiful things--there are lovely gates in Florencethat I fear he will carry away.

  We have tried to bind him with song and with old customs, but theyonly held him for a little while, and he has always smitten us andmocked us.

  When he is blind he shall dance to us and make sport.

  Great clumsy time shall stumble and dance, who liked to kill littlechildren, and can hurt even the daisies no longer.

  Then shall our children laugh at him who slew Babylon's winged bulls,and smote great numbers of the gods and fairies--when he is shornof his hours and his years.

  We will shut him up in the Pyramid of Cheops, in the great chamberwhere the sarcophagus is. Thence we will lead him out when wegive our feasts. He shall ripen our corn for us and do menial work.

  We will kiss they painted face, O Sphinx, if thou wilt betray to us Time.

  And yet I fear th
at in his ultimate anguish he may take hold blindlyof the world and the moon, and slowly pull down upon him theHouse of Man.

  THE HEN

  All along the farmyard gables the swallows sat a-row, twitteringuneasily to one another, telling of many things, but thinking only ofSummer and the South, for Autumn was afoot and the North windwaiting.

  And suddenly one day they were all quite gone. And everyonespoke of the swallows and the South.

  "I think I shall go South myself next year," said a hen.

  And the year wore on and the swallows came again, and the yearwore on and they sat again on the gables, and all the poultry discussedthe departure of the hen.

  And very early one morning, the wind being from the North, theswallows all soared suddenly and felt the wind in their wings; and astrength came upon them and a strange old knowledge and a morethan human faith, and flying high they left the smoke of our cities andsmall remembered eaves, and saw at last the huge and homeless sea,and steering by grey sea-currents went southward with the wind. Andgoing South they went by glittering fog-banks and saw old islands liftingtheir heads above them; they saw the slow quests of the wanderingships, and divers seeking pearls, and lands at war, till there came inview the mountains that they sought and the sight of the peaks theyknew; and they descended into an austral valley, and saw Summersometimes sleeping and sometimes singing song.

  "I think the wind is about right," said the hen; and she spread herwings and ran out of the poultry-yard. And she ran fluttering out onto the road and some way down it until she came to a garden.

  At evening she came back panting.

  And in the poultry-yard she told the poultry how she had gone Southas far as the high road, and saw the great world's traffic going by,and came to lands where the potato grew, and saw the stubble uponwhich men live, and at the end of the road had found a garden, andthere were roses in it--beautiful roses!--and the gardener himself wasthere with his braces on.

  "How extremely interesting," the poultry said, "and what a reallybeautiful description!"

  And the Winter wore away, and the bitter months went by, and theSpring of the year appeared, and the swallows came again.

  "We have been to the South," they said, "and the valleys beyondthe sea."

  But the poultry would not agree that there was a sea in the South:"You should hear our hen," they said.

  WIND AND FOG

  "Way for us," said the North Wind as he came down the sea on anerrand of old Winter.

  And he saw before him the grey silent fog that lay along the tides.

  "Way for us," said the North Wind, "O ineffectual fog, for I amWinter's leader in his age-old war with the ships. I overwhelmthem suddenly in my strength, or drive upon them the huge seafaringbergs. I cross an ocean while you move a mile. There is mourning ininland places when I have met the ships. I drive them upon the rocksand feed the sea. Wherever I appear they bow to our lord the Winter."

  And to his arrogant boasting nothing said the fog. Only he rose upslowly and trailed away from the sea and, crawling up long valleys,took refuge among the hills; and night came down and everything wasstill, and the fog began to mumble in the stillness. And I heard himtelling infamously to himself the tale of his horrible spoils. "Ahundred and fifteen galleons of old Spain, a certain argosy that wentfrom Tyre, eight fisher-fleets and ninety ships of the line, twelvewarships under sail, with their carronades, three hundred andeighty-seven river-craft, forty-two merchantmen that carried spice,four quinquiremes, ten triremes, thirty yachts, twenty-one battleshipsof the modern time, nine thousand admirals...." he mumbled and chuckledon, till I suddenly arose and fled from his fearful contamination.

  THE RAFT-BUILDERS

  All we who write put me in mind of sailors hastily making rafts upondoomed ships.

  When we break up under the heavy years and go down into eternitywith all that is ours our thoughts like small lost rafts float on awhileupon Oblivion's sea. They will not carry much over those tides, ournames and a phrase or two and little else.

  They that write as a trade to please the whim of the day, they are likesailors that work at the rafts only to warm their hands and to distracttheir thoughts from their certain doom; their rafts go all to piecesbefore the ship breaks up.

  See now Oblivion shimmering all around us, its very tranquility deadlierthan tempest. How little all our keels have troubled it. Time in its deepsswims like a monstrous whale; and, like a whale, feeds on the littlestthings--small tunes and little unskilled songs of the olden, goldenevenings--and anon turneth whale-like to overthrow whole ships.

  See now the wreckage of Babylon floating idly, and something therethat once was Nineveh; already their kings and queens are in thedeeps among the weedy masses of old centuries that hide the soddenbulk of sunken Tyre and make a darkness round Persepolis.

  For the rest I dimly see the forms of foundered ships on the sea-floorstrewn with crowns.

  Our ships were all unseaworthy from the first.

  There goes the raft that Homer made for Helen.

  THE WORKMAN

  I saw a workman fall with his scaffolding right from the summit ofsome vast hotel. And as he came down I saw him holding a knifeand trying to cut his name on the scaffolding. He had time to try anddo this for he must have had nearly three hundred feet to fall. And Icould think of nothing but his folly in doing this futile thing, for notonly would the man be unrecognizably dead in three seconds, but thevery pole on which he tried to scratch whatever of his name he hadtime for was certain to be burnt in a few weeks for firewood.

  Then I went home for I had work to do. And all that evening I thoughtof the man's folly, till the thought hindered me from serious work.

  And late that night while I was still at work, the ghost of the workmanfloated through my wall and stood before me laughing.

  I heard no sound until after I spoke to it; but I could see the greydiaphanous form standing before me shuddering with laughter.

  I spoke at last and asked what it was laughing at, and then the ghostspoke. It said: "I'm a laughin' at you sittin' and workin' there."

  "And why," I asked, "do you laugh at serious work?"

  "Why, yer bloomin' life 'ull go by like a wind," he said, "and yer 'olesilly civilization 'ull be tidied up in a few centuries."

  Then he fell to laughing again and this time audibly; and, laughingstill, faded back through the wall again and into the eternity fromwhich he had come.

  THE GUEST

  A young man came into an ornate restaurant at eight o'clock inLondon.

  He was alone, but two places had been laid at the table which wasreserved for him. He had chosen the dinner very carefully, by lettera week before.

  A waiter asked him about the other guest.

  "You probably won't see him till the coffee comes," the young mantold him; so he was served alone.

  Those at adjacent tables might have noticed the young man continuallyaddressing the empty chair and carrying on a monologue with itthroughout his elaborate dinner.

  "I think you knew my father," he said to it over the soup.

  "I sent for you this evening," he continued, "because I want you todo me a good turn; in fact I must insist on it."

  There was nothing eccentric about the man except for this habit ofaddressing an empty chair, certainly he was eating as good a dinneras any sane man could wish for.

  After the Burgundy had been served he became more voluble in hismonologue, not that he spoiled his wine by drinking excessively.

  "We have several acquaintances in common," he said. "I met King Setia year ago in Thebes. I think he has altered very little since you knewhim. I thought his forehead a little low for a king's. Cheops has left thehouse that he built for your reception, he must have prepared for youfor years and years. I suppose you have seldom been entertained likethat. I ordered this dinner over a week ago. I thought then that a ladymight have come with me, but as she wouldn't I've asked you. She maynot after all be as lovely as Helen of Troy. Was Helen very lovel
y? Notwhen you knew her, perhaps. You were lucky in Cleopatra, you musthave known her when she was in her prime.

  "You never knew the mermaids nor the fairies nor the lovely goddessesof long ago, that's where we have the best of you."

  He was silent when the waiters came to his table, but rambled merrilyon as soon as they left, still turned to the empty chair.

  "You know I saw you here in London only the other day. You wereon a motor bus going down Ludgate Hill. It was going much too fast.London is a good place. But I shall be glad enough to leave it. It wasin London that I met the lady I that was speaking about. If it hadn'tbeen for London I probably shouldn't have met her, and if it hadn'tbeen for London she probably wouldn't have had so much besidesme to amuse her. It cuts both ways."

  He paused once to order coffee, gazing earnestly at the waiter andputting a sovereign in his hand. "Don't let it be chicory," said he.

  The waiter brought the coffee, and the young man dropped a tabloidof some sort into his cup.

  "I don't suppose you come here very often," he went on. "Well, youprobably want to be going. I haven't taken you much out of your way,there is plenty for you to do in London."

  Then having drunk his coffee he fell on to the floor by a foot of theempty chair, and a doctor who was dining in the room bent overhim and announced to the anxious manager the visible presence ofthe young man's guest.