A Dreamer's Tales

  BLAGDAROSS

  On a waste place strewn with bricks in the outskirts of a town twilightwas falling. A star or two appeared over the smoke, and distant windowslit mysterious lights. The stillness deepened and the loneliness. Then allthe outcast things that are silent by day found voices.

  An old cork spoke first. He said: "I grew in Andalusian woods, but neverlistened to the idle songs of Spain. I only grew strong in the sunlightwaiting for my destiny. One day the merchants came and took us all awayand carried us all along the shore of the sea, piled high on the backs ofdonkeys, and in a town by the sea they made me into the shape that I amnow. One day they sent me northward to Provence, and there I fulfilled mydestiny. For they set me as a guard over the bubbling wine, and Ifaithfully stood sentinel for twenty years. For the first few years in thebottle that I guarded the wine slept, dreaming of Provence; but as theyears went on he grew stronger and stronger, until at last whenever a manwent by the wind would put out all his might against me, saying, 'Let mego free; let me go free!' And every year his strength increased, and hegrew more clamourous when men went by, but never availed to hurl me frommy post. But when I had powerfully held him for twenty years they broughthim to the banquet and took me from my post, and the wine arose rejoicingand leapt through the veins of men and exalted their souls within themtill they stood up in their places and sang Provencal songs. But me theycast away--me that had been sentinel for twenty years, and was still asstrong and staunch as when first I went on guard. Now I am an outcast in acold northern city, who once have known the Andalusian skies and guardedlong ago Provencal suns that swam in the heart of the rejoicing wine."

  An unstruck match that somebody had dropped spoke next. "I am a child ofthe sun," he said, "and an enemy of cities; there is more in my heart thanyou know of. I am a brother of Etna and Stromboli; I have fires lurking inme that will one day rise up beautiful and strong. We will not go intoservitude on any hearth nor work machines for our food, but we will takeout own food where we find it on that day when we are strong. There arewonderful children in my heart whose faces shall be more lively than therainbow; they shall make a compact with the North wind, and he shall leadthem forth; all shall be black behind them and black above them, and thereshall be nothing beautiful in the world but them; they shall seize uponthe earth and it shall be theirs, and nothing shall stop them but our oldenemy the sea."

  Then an old broken kettle spoke, and said: "I am the friend of cities. Isit among the slaves upon the hearth, the little flames that have been fedwith coal. When the slaves dance behind the iron bars I sit in the middleof the dance and sing and make our masters glad. And I make songs aboutthe comfort of the cat, and about the malice that is towards her in theheart of the dog, and about the crawling of the baby, and about the easethat is in the lord of the house when we brew the good brown tea; andsometimes when the house is very warm and slaves and masters are glad, Irebuke the hostile winds that prowl about the world."

  And then there spoke the piece of an old cord. "I was made in a place ofdoom, and doomed men made my fibres, working without hope. Therefore therecame a grimness into my heart, so that I never let anything go free whenonce I was set to bind it. Many a thing have I bound relentlessly formonths and years; for I used to come coiling into warehouses where thegreat boxes lay all open to the air, and one of them would be suddenlyclosed up, and my fearful strength would be set on him like accurse, andif his timbers groaned when first I seized them, or if they creaked aloudin the lonely night, thinking of woodlands out of which they came, then Ionly gripped them tighter still, for the poor useless hate is in my soulof those that made me in the place of doom. Yet, for all the things thatmy prison-clutch has held, the last work that I did was to set somethingfree. I lay idle one night in the gloom on the warehouse floor. Nothingstirred there, and even the spider slept. Towards midnight a great flockof echoes suddenly leapt up from the wooden planks and circled round theroof. A man was coming towards me all alone. And as he came his soul wasreproaching him, and I saw that there was a great trouble between the manand his soul, for his soul would not let him be, but went on reproachinghim.

  "Then the man saw me and said, 'This at least will not fail me.' When Iheard him say this about me, I determined that whatever he might requireof me it should be done to the uttermost. And as I made this determinationin my unfaltering heart, he picked me up and stood on an empty box that Ishould have bound on the morrow, and tied one end of me to a dark rafter;and the knot was carelessly tied, because his soul was reproaching him allthe while continually and giving him no ease. Then he made the other endof me into a noose, but when the man's soul saw this it stoppedreproaching the man, and cried out to him hurriedly, and besought him tobe at peace with it and to do nothing sudden; but the man went on with hiswork, and put the noose down over his face and underneath his chin, andthe soul screamed horribly.

  "Then the man kicked the box away with his foot, and the moment he didthis I knew that my strength was not great enough to hold him; but Iremembered that he had said I would not fail him, and I put all my grimvigour into my fibres and held by sheer will. Then the soul shouted to meto give way, but I said:

  "'No; you vexed the man.'

  "Then it screamed for me to leave go of the rafter, and already I wasslipping, for I only held on to it by a careless knot, but I gripped withmy prison grip and said:

  "'You vexed the man.'

  "And very swiftly it said other things to me, but I answered not; and atlast the soul that vexed the man that had trusted me flew away and lefthim at peace. I was never able to bind things any more, for every one ofmy fibres was worn and wrenched, and even my relentless heart was weakenedby the struggle. Very soon afterwards I was thrown out here. I have donemy work."

  So they spoke among themselves, but all the while there loomed above themthe form of an old rocking-horse complaining bitterly. He said: "I amBlagdaross. Woe is me that I should lie now an outcast among these worthybut little people. Alas! for the days that are gathered, and alas for theGreat One that was a master and a soul to me, whose spirit is now shrunkenand can never know me again, and no more ride abroad on knightly quests. Iwas Bucephalus when he was Alexander, and carried him victorious as far asInd. I encountered dragons with him when he was St. George, I was thehorse of Roland fighting for Christendom, and was often Rosinante. Ifought in tournays and went errant upon quests, and met Ulysses and theheroes and the fairies. Or late in the evening, just before the lamps inthe nursery were put out, he would suddenly mount me, and we would gallopthrough Africa. There we would pass by night through tropic forests, andcome upon dark rivers sweeping by, all gleaming with the eyes ofcrocodiles, where the hippopotamus floated down with the stream, andmysterious craft loomed suddenly out of the dark and furtively passedaway. And when we had passed through the forest lit by the fireflies wewould come to the open plains, and gallop onwards with scarlet flamingoesflying along beside us through the lands of dusky kings, with goldencrowns upon their heads and scepters in their hands, who came running outof their palaces to see us pass. Then I would wheel suddenly, and the dustflew up from my four hooves as I turned and we galloped home again, and mymaster was put to bed. And again he would ride abroad on another day tillwe came to magical fortresses guarded by wizardry and overthrew thedragons at the gate, and ever came back with a princess fairer than thesea.

  "But my master began to grow larger in his body and smaller in his soul,and then he rode more seldom upon quests. At last he saw gold and nevercame again, and I was cast out here among these little people."

  But while the rocking-horse was speaking two boys stole away, unnoticed bytheir parents, from a house on the edge of the waste place, and werecoming across it looking for adventures. One of them carried a broom, andwhen he saw the rocking-horse he said nothing, but broke off the handlefrom the broom and thrust it between his braces and his shirt on the leftside. Then he mounted the rocking-horse, and drawing forth the broomstick,which was sharp and spiky at the end, said, "Saladin i
s in this desertwith all his paynims, and I am Coeur de Lion." After a while the other boysaid: "Now let me kill Saladin too." But Blagdaross in his wooden heart,that exulted with thoughts of battle, said: "I am Blagdaross yet!"