Orpheus in Mayfair, and Other Stories and Sketches Part 17

And William said he would try with all his might to conquer the faery kingdom, and he asked what the three tasks might be.

The maiden, who was none other than Proserpine, Queen of the Fairies, told him that the first task was to pluck the crystal apple from the laughing tree, and second to pluck the blood-red rose from the fiery rose tree, and the third to cull the white poppy from the quiet fields.

William asked her how he was to set about these tasks. Proserpine told him that he had but to accept the quest and all would be made clear. So he accepted the quest without further talk.

Immediately Proserpine vanished, and William found himself in a large green garden of fruit trees, and in the distance he heard the noise of rippling laughter. He walked along many paths to the place whence he thought the laughter came, until he found a large fruit tree which grew by itself. It was laden with fruit, and from one of its boughs hung a crystal apple which shone with all the colours of the rainbow.

But the tree was guarded by a hideous old hag, covered with sores and leprous scales, loathsome to behold. And a laughing voice came from the tree saying: "He who would pluck the crystal apple must embrace its guardian." And William looked at her and felt no loathing but rather a deep pity, so that tears welled in his eyes and dropped on her, and he took her face in his hands to embrace her, and as he did so she changed into a beautiful maiden with veiled eyes, who plucked the crystal apple from the tree and gave it to him and vanished.

Then the garden changed its semblance, and all around him there seemed to be a hedge of smoking thorns and before him a fiery tree on which blood-red roses shone like rubies. The tree was guarded by a maiden with long grey eyes and flowing hair, and of spun moonshine, beautiful exceedingly, and a moaning voice came from the tree, saying: "He who would pluck the rose must slay its guardian." On the gra.s.s beneath the tree lay an unsheathed sword. William took the sword in his hands, but the maiden looked at him piteously and wept, so that he hesitated; then, hardening himself, he plunged the sword into her heart and a great moan was heard, and the fire disappeared, and only a withered rose-tree stood before him. Then he heard the voice say that he must pierce his own heart with a thorn from the tree and let the blood fall upon its roots.

This he did, and as he did so he felt the sharpness of Death, as though the last dreadful moment had come; but as the drops of blood fell on the roots the beautiful maiden with veiled eyes, whom he had seen before stood before him and gave him the blood-red rose, and she touched his wound and straightway it was healed.

Then the garden vanished altogether, and he stood before a dark porch and a gate beyond which he caught a pale glimmer. And by the porch stood a terrible shape: a hooded skeleton bearing a scythe, with white sockets of fire which had no eyes in them but which were so terrible that no mortal could look on them and live. And here he heard a voice saying: "He who would cull the white poppy must look into the eyes of its guardian and take the scythe from the bony hands." And William seized the scythe and an icy darkness descended upon him, and he felt dizzy and faint; yet he persisted and wrestled with the skeleton, although the darkness seemed to be overwhelming him. He tore the hood from the bony head and looked boldly into the fiery sockets.

Then with a crash of thunder the skeleton vanished, and the maiden with veiled eyes led him through the gate into the quiet fields, and there he culled the white poppy. Then the maiden turned to him and unveiled herself, and it was Proserpine, the Queen of the Fairies.

"You have conquered," she said, "and the faery kingdom is yours for ever, and you shall visit it and dwell in it whenever you desire, and reveal its sounds and its sights to the mortals of the world: and in my kingdom you shall see, as though in a mirror, the pageant of mankind, the scroll of history, and the story of man which is writ in brave, golden and glowing letters, of blood and tears and fire. And there is nothing in the soul of man that shall be hid from you; and you shall speak the secrets of my kingdom to mortal men with a voice of gold and of honey. And when you grow weary of life you shall withdraw for ever into the island of faery voices which lies in the heart of my kingdom.

And as for me I go to the everlasting Limbo."

Then Proserpine vanished, and William awoke from his dream, and went home to his butcher's shop.

Soon after this he left his native village and went to London, where he became well known; although how his surname shall be spelt is a matter of dispute, some spelling it Shakespeare, some Shakespere, and some Shaksper.

THE IKON

Ferroll was an intellectual, and he prided himself on the fact. At Cambridge he had narrowly missed being a Senior Wrangler, and his princ.i.p.al study there had been Lunar Theory. But when he went down from Cambridge for good, being a man of some means, he travelled. For a year he was an honorary Attache at one of the big Emba.s.sies. He finally settled in London with a vague idea of some day writing a _magnum opus_ about the stupidity of mankind; for he had come to the conclusion by the age of twenty-five that all men were stupid, irreclaimably, irredeemably stupid; that everything was wrong; that all literature was really bad, all art much overrated, and all music tedious in the long run.

The years slipped by and he never began his _magnum opus_; he joined a literary club instead and discussed the current topic of the day.

Sometimes he wrote a short article; never in the daily Press, which he despised, nor in the reviews (for he never wrote anything as long as a magazine article), but in a literary weekly he would express in weary and polished phrases the unemphatic boredom or the mitigated approval with which the works of his fellow-men inspired him. He was the kind of man who had nothing in him you could positively dislike, but to whom you could not talk for five minutes without having a vague sensation of blight. Things seemed to shrivel up in his presence as though they had been touched by an insidious east wind, a subtle frost, a secret chill.

He never praised anything, though he sometimes condescended to approve.

The faint puffs of blame in which he more generally indulged were never sharp or heavy, but were like the smoke rings of a cigarette which a man indolently smoking blows from time to time up to the ceiling.

He lived in rooms in the Temple. They were comfortably, not luxuriously furnished; a great many French books--French was the only modern language worth reading he used to say--a few modern German etchings, a low Turkish divan, and some Egyptian antiquities, made up the furniture of his two sitting-rooms. Above all things he despised Greek art; it was, he said decadent. The Egyptians and the Germans were, in his opinion, the only people who knew anything about the plastic arts, whereas the only music he could endure was that of the modern French School. Over his chimney-piece there was a large German landscape in oils, called "Im Walde"; it represented a wood at twilight in the autumn, and if you looked at it carefully and for a long time you saw that the objects depicted were meant to be trees from which the leaves were falling; but if you looked at the picture carelessly and from a distance, it looked like a man-of-war on a rough sea, for which it was frequently taken, much to Ferrol's annoyance.

One day an artist friend of his presented him with a small Chinese G.o.d made of crystal; he put this on his chimney-piece. It was on the evening of the day on which he received this gift that he dined, together with a friend named Sledge who had travelled much in Eastern countries, at his club. After dinner they went to Ferrol's rooms to smoke and to talk. He wanted to show Sledge his antiquities, which consisted of three large Egyptian statuettes, a small green Egyptian G.o.d, and the Chinese idol which he had lately been given. Sledge, who was a middle-aged, bearded man, frank and unconventional, examined the antiquities with care, p.r.o.nounced them to be genuine, and singled out for special praise the crystal G.o.d.

"Your things are very good," he said, "very good. But don't you really mind having all these things about you?"

"Why should I mind?" asked Ferrol.

"Well, you have travelled a good deal, haven't you?"

"Yes," said Ferrol, "I have travelled; I have been as far east as Nijni-Novgorod to see the Fair, and as far west as Lisbon."

"I suppose," said Sledge, "you were a long time in Greece and Italy?"

"No," said Ferrol, "I have never been to Greece. Greek art distresses me. All cla.s.sical art is a mistake and a superst.i.tion."

"Talking of superst.i.tion," said Sledge, "you have never been to the Far East, have you?"

"No," Ferrol answered, "Egypt is Eastern enough for me, and cannot be bettered."

"Well," said Sledge, "I have been in the Far East. I have lived there many years. I am not a superst.i.tious man; but there is one thing I would not do in any circ.u.mstances whatsoever, and that is to keep in my sitting-room the things you have got there."

"But why?" asked Ferrol.

"Well," said Sledge, "nearly all of them have come from the tombs of the dead, and some of them are G.o.ds. Such things may have attached to them heaven knows what spooks and spirits."

Ferrol shut his eyes and smiled, a faint, seraphic smile. "My dear boy,"

he said, "you forget. This is the Twentieth Century."

"And you," answered Sledge, "forget that the things you have here were made before the Twentieth Century. B.C."

"You don't seriously mean," said Ferrol, "that you attach any importance to these--" he hesitated.

"Children's stories?" suggested Sledge.

Ferrol nodded.

"I have lived long enough in the East," said Sledge, "to know that the sooner you learn to believe children's stories the better."

"I am afraid, then," said Ferrol, with civil tolerance, "that our points of view are too different for us to discuss the matter." And they talked of other things until late into the night.

Just as Sledge was leaving Ferrol's rooms and had said "Good-night," he paused by the chimney-piece, and, pointing to the tiny Ikon which was lying on it, asked: "What is that?"

"Oh, that's nothing," said Ferrol, "only a small Ikon I bought for twopence at the Fair of Nijni-Novgorod."

Sledge said "Good-night" again, but when he was on the stairs he called back: "In any case remember one thing, that East is East and West is West. Don't mix your deities."

Ferrol had not the slightest idea what he was alluding to, nor did he care. He dismissed the matter from his mind.

The next day he spent in the country, returning to London late in the evening. As he entered his rooms the first thing which met his eye was that his great picture, "Im Walde," which he considered to be one of the few products of modern art that a man who respected himself could look at without positive pain in the eyes, had fallen from its place over the chimney-piece to the floor in front of the fender, and the gla.s.s was shattered into a thousand fragments. He was much vexed. He sought the cause of the accident. The nail was a strong one, and it was still in its place. The picture had been hung by a wire; the wire seemed strong also and was not broken. He concluded that the picture must have been badly balanced and that a sudden shock such a door banging had thrown it over. He had no servant in his rooms, and when he had gone out that morning he had locked the door, so no one could have entered his rooms during his absence.

Next morning he sent for a framemaker and told him to mend the frame as soon as possible, to make the wire strong, and to see that the picture was firmly fixed on the wall. In two or three days' time the picture returned and was once more hung on the wall over the chimney-piece immediately above the little crystal Chinese G.o.d. Ferrol supervised the hanging of the picture in person. He saw that the nail was strong, and firmly fixed in the wall; he took care that the wire left nothing to be desired and was properly attached to the rings of the picture.

The picture was hung early one morning. That day he went to play golf.

He returned at five o'clock, and again the first thing which met his eye was the picture. It had again fallen down, and this time it had brought with it in its fall the small Chinese G.o.d, which was broken in two.

The gla.s.s had again been shattered to bits, and the picture itself was somewhat damaged. Everything else on the chimney-piece, that is to say, a few matchboxes and two candle-sticks, had also been thrown to the ground--everything with the exception of the little Ikon he had bought at Nijni-Novgorod, a small object about two inches square on which two Saints were pictured. This still rested in its place against the wall.

Ferrol investigated the disaster. The nail was in its place in the wall; the wire at the back of the picture was not broken or damaged in any way. The accident seemed to him quite inexplicable. He was greatly annoyed. The Chinese G.o.d was a valuable thing. He stood in front of the chimney-piece contemplating the damage with a sense of great irritation.

"To think that everything should have been broken except this beastly little Ikon!" he said to himself. "I wonder whether that was what Sledge meant when he said I should not mix my deities."

Next morning he sent again for the framemaker, and abused him roundly.

The framemaker said he could not understand how the accident had happened. The nail was an excellent nail, the picture, Mr. Ferrol must admit, had been hung with great care before his very eyes and under his own direct and personal supervision. What more could be done?