The Book of Wonder

by Lord Dunsany

  THE CORONATION OF MR. THOMAS SHAP

  It was the occupation of Mr. Thomas Shap to persuade customers thatthe goods were genuine and of an excellent quality, and that asregards the price their unspoken will was consulted. And in order tocarry on this occupation he went by train very early every morningsome 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 abook, but as truths are revealed to one's instinct) the verybeastliness of his occupation, and of the house that he slept in, itsshape, make and pretensions, and even of the clothes that he wore; fromthat moment he withdrew his dreams from it, his fancies, hisambitions, everything in fact except that ponderable Mr. Shap thatdressed in a frock-coat, bought tickets and handled money and could inturn 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 atall.

  He used to take little flights of fancy at first, dwelt all day in hisdreamy way on fields and rivers lying in the sunlight where it strikesthe world more brilliantly further South. And then he began to imaginebutterflies there; after that, silken people and the temples theybuilt to their gods.

  They noticed that he was silent, and even absent at times, but theyfound no fault with his behaviour with customers, to whom he remainedas plausible as of old. So he dreamed for a year, and his fancy gainedstrength as he dreamed. He still read halfpenny papers in the train,still discussed the passing day's ephemeral topic, still voted atelections, though he no longer did these things with the wholeShap--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 andlogical mind, so that he often said, "Why should I pay my twopence atthe electric theatre when I can see all sorts of things quite easilywithout?" Whatever he did was logical before anything else, and thosethat knew him always spoke of Shap as "a sound, sane, level-headedman."

  On far the most important day of his life he went as usual to town bythe early train to sell plausible articles to customers, while thespiritual Shap roamed off to fanciful lands. As he walked from thestation, dreamy but wide awake, it suddenly struck him that the realShap 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 oldand Eastern city that rose up sheer from the sand, and against whichthe desert lapped with one eternal wave. He used to fancy the name ofthat 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, theimportance and value of method. He did not let his fancy roam too faruntil it perfectly knew its first surroundings. Particularly heavoided the jungle--he was not afraid to meet a tiger there (after allit was not real), but stranger things might crouch there. Slowly hebuilt up Larkar: rampart by rampart, towers for archers, gateway ofbrass, and all. And then one day he argued, and quite rightly, thatall the silk-clad people in its streets, their camels, their waresthat came from Inkustahn, the city itself, were all the things of hiswill--and then he made himself King. He smiled after that when peopledid not raise their hats to him in the street, as he walked from thestation to Business; but he was sufficiently practical to recognizethat it was better not to talk of this to those that only knew him asMr. Shap.

  Now that he was King in the city of Larkar and in all the desert thatlay to the East and North he sent his fancy to wander further afield.He took the regiments of his camel-guards and went jingling out ofLarkar, with little silver bells under the camels' chins, and came toother cities far-off on the yellow sand, with clear white walls andtowers, uplifting themselves in the sun. Through their gates he passedwith his three silken regiments, the light-blue regiment of thecamel-guards being upon his right and the green regiment riding at hisleft, the lilac regiment going on before. When he had gone through thestreets of any city and observed the ways of its people, and had seenthe way that the sunlight struck its towers, he would proclaim himselfKing there, and then ride on in fancy. So he passed from city to cityand from land to land. Clear-sighted though Mr. Shap was, I think heoverlooked the lust of aggrandizement to which kings have so oftenbeen victims; and so it was that when the first few cities had openedtheir gleaming gates and he saw peoples prostrate before his camel,and spearmen cheering along countless balconies, and priests come outto do him reverence, he that had never had even the lowliest authorityin the familiar world became unwisely insatiate. He let his fancy rideat inordinate speed, he forsook method, scarce was he king of a landbut he yearned to extend his borders; so he journeyed deeper anddeeper into the wholly unknown. The concentration that he gave to thisinordinate progress through countries of which history is ignorant andcities so fantastic in their bulwarks that, though their inhabitantswere human, yet the foe that they feared seemed something less ormore; the amazement with which he beheld gates and towers unknown evento art, and furtive people thronging intricate ways to acclaim him astheir sovereign--all these things began to affect his capacity forBusiness. He knew as well as any that his fancy could not rule thesebeautiful lands unless that other Shap, however unimportant, were wellsheltered and fed: and shelter and food meant money, and money,Business. His was more like the mistake of some gambler with cunningschemes who overlooks human greed. One day his fancy, riding in themorning, came to a city gorgeous as the sunrise, in whose opalescentwall 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 amelody all around the wall; that morning Mr. Shap, the bodily Shap inLondon, forgot the train to town.

  Until a year ago he had never imagined at all; it is not to bewondered at that all these things now newly seen by his fancy shouldplay tricks at first with the memory of even so sane a man. He gave upreading the papers altogether, he lost all interest in politics, hecared less and less for things that were going on around him. Thisunfortunate missing of the morning train even occurred again, and thefirm spoke to him severely about it. But he had his consolation. Werenot Arathrion and Argun Zeerith and all the level coasts of Oora his?And even as the firm found fault with him his fancy watched the yakson weary journeys, slow specks against the snow-fields, bringingtribute; and saw the green eyes of the mountain men who had looked athim strangely in the city of Nith when he had entered it by the desertdoor. Yet his logic did not forsake him; he knew well that his strangesubjects did not exist, but he was prouder of having created them withhis brain, than merely of ruling them only; thus in his pride he felthimself something more great than a king, he did not dare to thinkwhat! He went into the temple of the city of Zorra and stood some timethere alone: all the priests kneeled to him when he came away.

  He cared less and less for the things we care about, for the affairsof Shap, the business-man in London. He began to despise the man witha royal contempt.

  One day when he sat in Sowla, the city of the Thuls, throned on oneamethyst, he decided, and it was proclaimed on the moment by silvertrumpets all along the land, that he would be crowned as king over allthe lands of Wonder.

  By that old temple where the Thuls were worshipped, year in, year out,for over a thousand years, they pitched pavilions in the open air. Thetrees that blew there threw out radiant scents unknown in any countriesthat know the map; the stars blazed fiercely for that famous occasion. Afountain hurled up, clattering, ceaselessly into the air armfuls onarmfuls of diamonds. A deep hush waited for the golden trumpets, theholy coronation night was come. At the top of those old, worn steps,going down we know not whither, stood the king in the emerald-and-amethystcloak, the ancient garb of the Thuls; beside him lay that Sphinx thatfor the last few weeks had advised him in his affairs.

  Slowly, with music when the trumpets sounded, came
up towards him fromwe know not where, one-hundred-and-twenty archbishops, twenty angelsand two archangels, with that terrific crown, the diadem of the Thuls.They knew as they came up to him that promotion awaited them allbecause of this night's work. Silent, majestic, the king awaited them.

  The doctors downstairs were sitting over their supper, the warderssoftly slipped from room to room, and when in that cosy dormitory ofHanwell they saw the king still standing erect and royal, his faceresolute, they came up to him and addressed him:

  "Go to bed," they said--"pretty bed." So he lay down and soon was fastasleep: the great day was over.