The Book of Wonder by Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
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Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany >> The Book of Wonder
Despite the advertisements of rival firms, it is probable that every
tradesman knows that nobody in business at the present time has a
position equal to that of Mr. Nuth. To those outside the magic circle
of business, his name is scarcely known; he does not need to
advertise, he is consummate. He is superiour even to modern
competition, and, whatever claims they boast, his rivals know it. His
terms are moderate, so much cash down when when the goods are
delivered, so much in blackmail afterwards. He consults your
convenience. His skill may be counted upon; I have seen a shadow on a
windy night move more noisily than Nuth, for Nuth is a burglar by
trade. Men have been known to stay in country houses and to send a
dealer afterwards to bargain for a piece of tapestry that they saw
there--some article of furniture, some picture. This is bad taste: but
those whose culture is more elegant invariably send Nuth a night or
two after their visit. He has a way with tapestry; you would scarcely
notice that the edges had been cut. And often when I see some huge,
new house full of old furniture and portraits from other ages, I say
to myself, "These mouldering chairs, these full-length ancestors and
carved mahogany are the produce of the incomparable Nuth."
It may be urged against my use of the word incomparable that in the
burglary business the name of Slith stands paramount and alone; and of
this I am not ignorant; but Slith is a classic, and lived long ago,
and knew nothing at all of modern competition; besides which the
surprising nature of his doom has possibly cast a glamour upon Slith
that exaggerates in our eyes his undoubted merits.
It must not be thought that I am a friend of Nuth's; on the contrary
such politics as I have are on the side of Property; and he needs no
words from me, for his position is almost unique in trade, being among
the every few that do not need to advertise.
At the time that my story begins Nuth lived in a roomy house in
Belgrave Square: in his inimitable way he had made friends with the
caretaker. The place suited Nuth, and, whenever anyone came to inspect
it before purchase, the caretaker used to praise the house in the
words that Nuth had suggested. "If it wasn't for the drains," she
would say, "it's the finest house in London," and when they pounced on
this remark and asked questions about the drains, she would answer
them that the drains also were good, but not so good as the house.
They did not see Nuth when they went over the rooms, but Nuth was
there.
Here in a neat black dress on one spring morning came an old woman
whose bonnet was lined with red, asking for Mr. Nuth; and with her
came her large and awkward son. Mrs. Eggins, the caretaker, glanced up
the street, and then she let them in, and left them to wait in the
drawing-room amongst furniture all mysterious with sheets. For a long
while they waited, and then there was a smell of pipe-tobacco, and
there was Nuth standing quite close to them.
"Lord," said the old woman whose bonnet was lined with red, "you did
make me start." And then she saw by his eyes that that was not the way
to speak to Mr. Nuth.
And at last Nuth spoke, and very nervously the old woman explained
that her son was a likely lad, and had been in business already but
wanted to better himself, and she wanted Mr. Nuth to teach him a
livelihood.
First of all Nuth wanted to see a business reference, and when he was
shown one from a jeweller with whom he happened to be hand-in-glove
the upshot of it was that he agreed to take young Tonker (for this was
the surname of the likely lad) and to make him his apprentice. And the
old woman whose bonnet was lined with red went back to her little
cottage in the country, and every evening said to her old man,
"Tonker, we must fasten the shutters of a night-time, for Tommy's a
burglar now."
The details of the likely lad's apprenticeship I do not propose to
give; for those that are in the business know those details already,
and those that are in other businesses care only for their own, while
men of leisure who have no trade at all would fail to appreciate the
gradual degrees by which Tommy Tonker came first to cross bare boards,
covered with little obstacles in the dark, without making any sound,
and then to go silently up creaky stairs, and then to open doors, and
lastly to climb.
Let it suffice that the business prospered greatly, while glowing
reports of Tommy Tonker's progress were sent from time to time to the
old woman whose bonnet was lined with red in the labourious
handwriting of Nuth. Nuth had given up lessons in writing very early,
for he seemed to have some prejudice against forgery, and therefore
considered writing a waste of time. And then there came the
transaction with Lord Castlenorman at his Surrey residence. Nuth
selected a Saturday night, for it chanced that Saturday was observed
as Sabbath in the family of Lord Castlenorman, and by eleven o'clock
the whole house was quiet. Five minutes before midnight Tommy Tonker,
instructed by Mr. Nuth, who waited outside, came away with one
pocketful of rings and shirt-studs. It was quite a light pocketful,
but the jewellers in Paris could not match it without sending
specially to Africa, so that Lord Castlenorman had to borrow bone
shirt-studs.
Not even rumour whispered the name of Nuth. Were I to say that this
turned his head, there are those to whom the assertion would give
pain, for his associates hold that his astute judgment was unaffected
by circumstance. I will say, therefore, that it spurred his genius to
plan what no burglar had ever planned before. It was nothing less than
to burgle the house of the gnoles. And this that abstemious man
unfolded to Tonker over a cup of tea. Had Tonker not been nearly
insane with pride over their recent transaction, and had he not been
blinded by a veneration for Nuth, he would have--but I cry over spilt
milk. He expostulated respectfully; he said he would rather not go; he
said it was not fair; he allowed himself to argue; and in the end, one
windy October morning with a menace in the air found him and Nuth
drawing near to the dreadful wood.
Nuth, by weighing little emeralds against pieces of common rock, had
ascertained the probable weight of those house-ornaments that the
gnoles are believed to possess in the narrow, lofty house wherein they
have dwelt from of old. They decided to steal two emeralds and to
carry them between them on a cloak; but if they should be too heavy
one must be dropped at once. Nuth warned young Tonker against greed,
and explained that the emeralds were worth less than cheese until they
were safe away from the dreadful wood.
Everything had been planned, and they walked now in silence.
No track led up to the sinister gloom of the trees, either of men or
cattle; not even a poacher had been there snaring elves for over a
hundred years. You did not trespass twice in the dells of the gnoles.
And, apart from the things that were done there, the trees themselves
were a warning, and did not wear the wholesome look of those that we
plant ourselves.
The nearest village was some miles away with the backs of all its
houses turned to the wood, and without one window at all facing in
that direction. They did not speak of it there, and elsewhere it is
unheard of.
Into this wood stepped Nuth and Tommy Tonker. They had no firearms.
Tonker had asked for a pistol, but Nuth replied that the sound of a
shot "would bring everything down on us," and no more was said about
it.
Into the wood they went all day, deeper and deeper. They saw the
skeleton of some early Georgian poacher nailed to a door in an oak
tree; sometimes they saw a fairy scuttle away from them; once Tonker
stepped heavily on a hard, dry stick, after which they both lay still
for twenty minutes. And the sunset flared full of omens through the
tree trunks, and night fell, and they came by fitful starlight, as
Nuth had foreseen, to that lean, high house where the gnoles so
secretly dwelt.
All was so silent by that unvalued house that the faded courage of
Tonker flickered up, but to Nuth's experienced sense it seemed too
silent; and all the while there was that look in the sky that was
worse than a spoken doom, so that Nuth, as is often the case when men
are in doubt, had leisure to fear the worst. Nevertheless he did not
abandon the business, but sent the likely lad with the instruments of
his trade by means of the ladder to the old green casement. And the
moment that Tonker touched the withered boards, the silence that,
though ominous, was earthly, became unearthly like the touch of a
ghoul. And Tonker heard his breath offending against that silence, and
his heart was like mad drums in a night attack, and a string of one of
his sandals went tap on a rung of a ladder, and the leaves of the
forest were mute, and the breeze of the night was still; and Tonker
prayed that a mouse or a mole might make any noise at all, but not a
creature stirred, even Nuth was still. And then and there, while yet
he was undiscovered, the likely lad made up his mind, as he should
have done long before, to leave those colossal emeralds where they
were and have nothing further to do with the lean, high house of the
gnoles, but to quit this sinister wood in the nick of time and retire
from business at once and buy a place in the country. Then he
descended softly and beckoned to Nuth. But the gnoles had watched him
though knavish holes that they bore in trunks of the trees, and the
unearthly silence gave way, as it were with a grace, to the rapid
screams of Tonker as they picked him up from behind--screams that came
faster and faster until they were incoherent. And where they took him
it is not good to ask, and what they did with him I shall not say.
Nuth looked on for a while from the corner of the house with a mild
surprise on his face as he rubbed his chin, for the trick of the holes
in the trees was new to him; then he stole nimbly away through the
dreadful wood.
"And did they catch Nuth?" you ask me, gentle reader.
"Oh, no, my child" (for such a question is childish). "Nobody ever
catches Nuth."
HOW ONE CAME, AS WAS FORETOLD, TO THE CITY OF NEVER
The child that played about the terraces and gardens in sight of the
Surrey hills never knew that it was he that should come to the
Ultimate City, never knew that he should see the Under Pits, the
barbicans and the holy minarets of the mightiest city known. I think
of him now as a child with a little red watering-can going about the
gardens on a summer's day that lit the warm south country, his
imagination delighted with all tales of quite little adventures, and
all the while there was reserved for him that feat at which men
wonder.
Looking in other directions, away from the Surrey hills, through all
his infancy he saw that precipice that, wall above wall and mountain
above mountain, stands at the edge of the World, and in perpetual
twilight alone with the Moon and the Sun holds up the inconceivable
City of Never. To read its streets he was destined; prophecy knew it.
He had the magic halter, and a worn old rope it was; an old wayfaring
woman had given it to him: it had the power to hold any animal whose
race had never known captivity, such as the unicorn, the hippogriff
Pegasus, dragons and wyverns; but with a lion, giraffe, camel or
horse, it was useless.
How often we have seen that City of Never, that marvel of the Nations!
Not when it is night in the World, and we can see no further than the
stars; not when the sun is shining where we dwell, dazzling our eyes;
but when the sun has set on some stormy days, all at once repentant at
evening, and those glittering cliffs reveal themselves which we almost
take to be clouds, and it is twilight with us as it is for ever with
them, then on their gleaming summits we see those golden domes that
overpeer the edges of the World and seem to dance with dignity and
calm in that gentle light of evening that is Wonder's native haunt.
Then does the City of Never, unvisited and afar, look long at her
sister the World.
It had been prophecied that he should come there. They knew it when
the pebbles were being made and before the isles of coral were given
unto the sea. And thus the prophecy came unto fulfilment and passed
into history, and so at length to Oblivion, out of which I drag it as
it goes floating by, into which I shall one day tumble. The
hippogriffs dance before dawn in the upper air; long before sunrise
flashes upon our lawns they go to glitter in light that has not yet
come to the World, and as the dawn works up from the ragged hills and
the stars feel it they go slanting earthwards, till sunlight touches
the tops of the tallest trees, and the hippogriffs alight with a
rattle of quills and fold their wings and gallop and gambol away till
they come to some prosperous, wealthy, detestable town, and they leap
at once from the fields and soar away from the sight of it, pursued by
the horrible smoke of it until they come again to the pure blue air.
He whom prophecy had named from of old to come to the City of Never,
went down one midnight with his magic halter to a lake-side where the
hippogriffs alighted at dawn, for the turf was soft there and they
could gallop far before they came to a town, and there he waited
hidden near their hoofmarks. And the stars paled a little and grew
indistinct; but there was no other sign as yet of the dawn, when there
appeared far up in the deeps of the night two little saffron specks,
then four and five: it was the hippogriffs dancing and twirling around
in the sun. Another flock joined them, there were twelve of them now;
they danced there, flashing their colours back to the sun, they
descended in wide curves slowly; trees down on earth revealed against
the sky, jet-black each delicate twig; a star disappeared from a
cluster, now another; and dawn came on like music, like a new song.
Ducks shot by to the lake from still dark fields of corn, far voices
uttered, a colour grew upon water, and still the hippogriffs gloried
in the light, revelling up in the sky; but when pigeons stirred on the
branches and the first small bird was abroad, and little coots from
the rushes ventured to peer about, then there came down on a sudden
with a thunder of feathers the hippogriffs, and, as they landed from
their celestial heights all bathed with the day's first sunlight, the
man whose destiny it was as from of old to come to the City of Never,
sprang up and caught the last with the magic halter. It plunged, but
could not escape it, for the hippogriffs are of the uncaptured races,
and magic has power over the magical, so the man mounted it, and it
soared again for the heights whence it had come, as a wounded beast
goes home. But when they came to the heights that venturous rider saw
huge and fair to the left of him the destined City of Never, and he
beheld the towers of Lel and Lek, Neerid and Akathooma, and the cliffs
of Toldenarba a-glistening in the twilight like an alabaster statue of
the Evening. Towards them he wrenched the halter, towards Toldenarba
and the Under Pits; the wings of the hippogriff roared as the halter
turned him. Of the Under Pits who shall tell? Their mystery is secret.
It is held by some that they are the sources of night, and that
darkness pours from them at evening upon the world; while others hint
that knowledge of these might undo our civilization.
There watched him ceaselessly from the Under Pits those eyes whose
duty it is; from further within and deeper, the bats what dwell there
arose when they saw the surprise in the eyes; the sentinels on the
bulwarks beheld that stream of bats and lifted up their spears as it
were for war. Nevertheless when they perceived that that war for which
they watched was not now come upon them, they lowered their spears and
suffered him to enter, and he passed whirring through the earthward
gateway. Even so he came, as foretold, to the City of Never perched
upon Toldenarba, and saw late twilight on those pinnacles that know no
other light. All the domes were of copper, but the spires on their
summits were gold. Little steps of onyx ran all this way and that.
With cobbled agates were its streets a glory. Through small square
panes of rose-quartz the citizens looked from their houses. To them as
they looked abroad the World far-off seemed happy. Clad though that
city was in one robe always, in twilight, yet was its beauty worthy of
even so lovely a wonder: city and twilight were both peerless but for
each other. Built of a stone unknown in the world we tread were its
bastions, quarried we known not where, but called by the gnomes
_abyx_, it so flashed back to the twilight its glories, colour for
colour, that none can say of them where their boundary is, and which
the eternal twilight, and which the City of Never; they are the
twin-born children, the fairest daughters of Wonder. Time had been
there, but not to the domes that were made of copper, the rest he had
left untouched, even he, the destroyer of cities, by what bribe I know
not averted. Nevertheless they often wept in Never for change and
passing away, mourning catastrophes in other worlds, and they built
temples sometimes to ruined stars that had fallen flaming down from
the Milky Way, giving them worship still when by us long since
forgotten. Other temples they have--who knows to what divinities?
And he that was destined alone of men to come to the City of Never was
well content to behold it as he trotted down its agate street, with
the wings of his hippogriff furled, seeing at either side of him
marvel on marvel of which even China is ignorant. Then as he neared
the city's further rampart by which no inhabitant stirred, and looked
in a direction to which no houses faced with any rose-pink windows, he
suddenly saw far-off, dwarfing the mountains, an even greater city.
Whether that city was built upon the twilight or whether it rose from
the coasts of some other world he did not know. He saw it dominate the
City of Never, and strove to reach it; but at this unmeasured home of
unknown colossi the hippogriff shied frantically, and neither the
magic halter nor anything that he did could make the monster face it.
At last, from the City of Never's lonely outskirts where no
inhabitants walked, the rider turned slowly earthward. He knew now why
all the windows faced this way--the denizens of the twilight gazed at
the world and not at a greater than them. Then from the last step of
the earthward stairway, like lead past the Under Pits and down the
glittering face of Toldenarba, down from the overshadowed glories of
the gold-tipped City of Never and out of perpetual twilight, swooped
the man on his winged monster: the wind that slept at the time leaped
up like a dog at their onrush, it uttered a cry and ran past them.
Down on the World it was morning; night was roaming away with his
cloak trailed behind him, with mists turned over and over as he went,
the orb was grey but it glittered, lights blinked surprisingly in
early windows, forth over wet, dim fields went cows from their houses:
even in this hour touched the fields again the feet of the hippogriff.
And the moment that the man dismounted and took off his magic halter
the hippogriff flew slanting away with a whirr, going back to some
airy dancing-place of his people.
And he that surmounted glittering Toldenarba and came alone of men to
the City of Never has his name and his fame among nations; but he and
the people of that twilit city well know two things unguessed by other
men, they that there is another city fairer than theirs, and he--a
deed unaccomplished.
THE CORONATION OF MR. THOMAS SHAP
It was the occupation of Mr. Thomas Shap to persuade customers that
the goods were genuine and of an excellent quality, and that as
regards the price their unspoken will was consulted. And in order to
carry on this occupation he went by train very early every morning
some few miles nearer to the City from the suburb in which he slept.
This was the use to which he put his life.
From the moment when he first perceived (not as one reads a thing in a
book, but as truths are revealed to one's instinct) the very
beastliness of his occupation, and of the house that he slept in, its
shape, make and pretensions, and even the clothes that he wore; from
that moment he withdrew his dreams from it, his fancies, his
ambitions, everything in fact except that ponderable Mr. Shap that
dressed in a frock-coat, bought tickets and handled money and could in
turn be handled by the statistician. The priest's share in Mr. Shap,
the share of the poet, never caught the early train to the City at
all.
He used to take little flights of fancy at first, dwelt all day in his
dreamy way on fields and rivers lying in the sunlight where it strikes
the world more brilliantly further South. And then he began to imagine
butterflies there; after that, silken people and the temples they
built to their gods.
They noticed that he was silent, and even absent at times, but they
found no fault with his behaviour with customers, to whom he remained
as plausible as of old. So he dreamed for a year, and his fancy gained
strength as he dreamed. He still read halfpenny papers in the train,
still discussed the passing day's ephemeral topic, still voted at
elections, though he no longer did these things with the whole
Shap--his soul was no longer in them.
He had had a pleasant year, his imagination was all new to him still,
and it had often discovered beautiful things away where it went,
southeast at the edge of the twilight. And he had a matter-of-fact and
logical mind, so that he often said, "Why should I pay my twopence at
the electric theatre when I can see all sorts of things quite easily
without?" Whatever he did was logical before anything else, and those
that knew him always spoke of Shap as "a sound, sane, level-headed
man."
On far the most important day of his life he went as usual to town by
the early train to sell plausible articles to customers, while the
spiritual Shap roamed off to fanciful lands. As he walked from the
station, dreamy but wide awake, it suddenly struck him that the real
Shap was not the one walking to Business in black and ugly clothes,
but he who roamed along a jungle's edge near the ramparts of an old
and Eastern city that rose up sheer from the sand, and against which
the desert lapped with one eternal wave. He used to fancy the name of
that city was Larkar. "After all, the fancy is as real as the body,"
he said with perfect logic. It was a dangerous theory.
For that other life that he led he realized, as in Business, the
importance and value of method. He did not let his fancy roam too far
until it perfectly knew its first surroundings. Particularly he
avoided the jungle--he was not afraid to meet a tiger there (after all
it was not real), but stranger things might crouch there. Slowly he
built up Larkar: rampart by rampart, towers for archers, gateway of
brass, and all. And then one day he argued, and quite rightly, that
all the silk-clad people in its streets, their camels, their wares
that come from Inkustahn, the city itself, were all the things of his
will--and then he made himself King. He smiled after that when people
did not raise their hats to him in the street, as he walked from the
station to Business; but he was sufficiently practical for recognize
that it was better not to talk of this to those that only knew him as
Mr. Shap.
Now that he was King in the city of Larkar and in all the desert that
lay to the East and North he sent his fancy to wander further afield.
He took the regiments of his camel-guard and went jingling out of
Larkar, with little silver bells under the camels' chins, and came to
other cities far-off on the yellow sand, with clear white walls and
towers, uplifting themselves in the sun. Through their gates he passed
with his three silken regiments, the light-blue regiment of the
camel-guards being upon his right and the green regiment riding at his
left, the lilac regiment going on before. When he had gone through the
streets of any city and observed the ways of its people, and had seen
the way that the sunlight struck its towers, he would proclaim himself
King there, and then ride on in fancy. So he passed from city to city
and from land to land. Clear-sighted though Mr. Shap was, I think he
overlooked the lust of aggrandizement to which kings have so often
been victims; and so it was that when the first few cities had opened
their gleaming gates and he saw peoples prostrate before his camel,
and spearmen cheering along countless balconies, and priests come out
to do him reverence, he that had never had even the lowliest authority
in the familiar world became unwisely insatiate. He let his fancy ride
at inordinate speed, he forsook method, scarce was he king of a land
but he yearned to extend his borders; so he journeyed deeper and
deeper into the wholly unknown. The concentration that he gave to this
inordinate progress through countries of which history is ignorant and
cities so fantastic in their bulwarks that, though their inhabitants
were human, yet the foe that they feared seemed something less or
more; the amazement with which he beheld gates and towers unknown even
to art, and furtive people thronging intricate ways to acclaim him as
their sovereign--all these things began to affect his capacity for
Business. He knew as well as any that his fancy could not rule these
beautiful lands unless that other Shap, however unimportant, were well
sheltered and fed: and shelter and food meant money, and money,
Business. His was more like the mistake of some gambler with cunning
schemes who overlooks human greed. One day his fancy, riding in the
morning, came to a city gorgeous as the sunrise, in whose opalescent
wall were gates of gold, so huge that a river poured between the bars,
floating in, when the gates were opened, large galleons under sail.
Thence there came dancing out a company with instruments, and made a
melody all around the wall; that morning Mr. Shap, the bodily Shap in
London, forgot the train to town.