Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land

by John Crowley

  To this she appended only a signature, so rapid and brief as to suggest she could not have easily writ more, had she more to add; and Ali studied it with a sense of a door shutting fast, and a bar fallen. Dead! The Sun, now set, never again to rise! For a time Ali felt the dead cluster unrefusably about him, as though to claim him forever for their own—his mother—and Lady Sane—his ancestors—Lord Corydon hardly yet cold in his grave—to claim him, to drain from his veins the warm blood, and from his sinews their natural vigour—yet to withhold from him the one gift he would ask of them—their sleep, their blessed ignorance! Instead, a turmoil, a rage of consciousness seemed to fill him—he thrust the letter within his pocket, and ordered the last of his baggage put upon the coach that went the North-ward way, and within the hour was upon the road to Scotland. Yet the wheels of that conveyance seemed to turn as slowly as the chariot of Sisera, and Ali by his constant turnings and twistings in his seat, attempted to push it along the faster, that it might carry him from himself and all that he was and knew. Toward one goal he bent all his thought—and that lay at the journey’s end, in his Father’s stronghold.

  When that pile appeared, at eve, it seemed not a place that any heart would chuse to rush upon—indeed, it warned him away. Its gloomy walls and far watchtower seemed to have fallen deeper into desuetude & decline even than before, and projected far abroad an air of utter desolation (I have at times wondered why so many words suggestive of sadness and neglect, falling-off and faltering, begin with the letter D. What curse fell in the beginning upon the fourth letter, that it must be the one to carry so many dread associations?). Through the emptied halls he strode, past the shadowed walls where the brighter squares still showed that pictures had once hung there—of the frightened servants he came upon, he asked only and without preface for the whereabouts of the Laird—was misdirected—and at length found the man, in his billiards-room, bent over the table, which almost alone of the furnishings he had seen fit to keep.

  ‘You have been quick upon the road,’ said Lord Sane calmly, as he took his shot. ‘I did not expect you for some days yet.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Ali. ‘I am in receipt of certain news that—that have shocked and distressed me in the highest degree. I am led to think that you know something of these matters, though I hope you are innocent of any machinations against me, or my happiness, or that of some I hold in the highest regard.’

  ‘A strange way to address me,’ said his father without undue excitement. ‘You must be more frank, Sir, and say plainly what you mean. Of what persons do you speak?’

  Ali related to him those matters of which he had not for a moment ceased to think since he had heard of them—of Lord Corydon’s death in Portugal, his former exemptions having been mysteriously withdrawn—and Susanna’s impending marriage to one whom he could not think a guarantor of her happiness, to say nothing of the dashing of his own feelings and hopes, though these had never been spoken—and as he told of these things, he observed minutely his father’s face, for some sign upon it of complicity in them.

  ‘I am sorry to hear of your friend’s demise,’ said Lord Sane, as he studied his position upon the baize. ‘Yet dulce et decorum est, of course. I have been a Soldier myself, and asked for no such exemptions as he so easily had. As to his sister, I congratulate her. A fine Match—an old rich man who will make upon her few demands, and will strive by every means to keep her good opinion of himself. As I remember the man, he is somewhat deaf as well—he will observe little, and hear nothing. She may do as she likes—as all the world likes.’

  ‘Withdraw those words!’ Ali cried. ‘They are offensive, and shall not stand!’

  His father, then busy chalking his cue, seemed to take no notice of this demand—indeed he regarded Ali as though nothing at all had been said to him. ‘I recommend her example to yourself,’ he then said. ‘You are now deeper in debt than before—your College expenses have been far beyond any present means I have to pay them—therefore I have had to sign certain instruments in your name, with persons in the City whom I have not liked to deal with, but to whom I have, in point of fact, had recourse myself in former times. These deficits shall be added to the other costs of your Minority, which (as I have said) have not been small.’

  ‘You have placed me in debt without my knowledge? How is that possible?’

  ‘You have no idea, Sir, of what is possible. Perhaps, however, upon reflection, you may now chuse to attend to my former instructions, and look for a wife who may unburden you. I have lately noted the appearance upon the stage of Society of several new-fledged Birds, among them a certain Miss Delaunay—Catherine Delaunay—of whom I have heard that she is chaste, demure, common-sensical and rich—attend me in my Study tomorrow, and you shall learn more of her.’

  ‘Indeed I shall not.’

  His father now replaced his stick upon the rack, with slow care, and the air of a man who has at last decided to address an annoyance. ‘Failing that,’ he said, approaching his son, ‘you may apply at the Kirk, and be given a licence to beg, and a blue gown to wear—there are several of this parish who do well enough in the position—perhaps you may have a talent in that way.’ He had now drawn close to his son, and of a sudden, reaching inside his son’s coat, took hold of his clothes in a firm grip. ‘Or does your hesitation at the prospect of a wedded life perhaps turn on other fears—of an inadequacy of Body—if so, an examination may dispel them’—here his hands searched intimately his son’s person—‘Let us reassure ourselves you are as other men—Nay! Resist me not!’

  ‘Have done!’ cried Ali, thrusting him away. ‘Have done, or I will—’

  ‘What shall you do? What shall you do? Have a care, Sir! Remember—all in a moment, and in defiance of consequence, I gave thee life—all in a moment I can take it away again. “The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away.” ’

  ‘Devil!’

  ‘Ah!’ said Lord Sane. ‘You know that exalted Being is said to have a knack for quoting Scripture to his own purposes. Here is another—“If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out”—therefore challenge me not, Sir, not though you be the apple of mine own!’

  ‘I warn you, provoke me not further,’ Ali said, lifting his balled fist before the great Lord’s face, ‘or indeed I know not what I may do. I have borne more than flesh can bear, and I am no more than flesh!’

  ‘Raise not your hand against me,’ said his father. ‘’Twould be a sin of dreadful note—moreover, ’twould be useless—for weapons can do nothing against me—no—I see you shudder to hear it, yet ’tis true—hanging also would be inefficacious—for, you see, I cannot die!’

  Now he had come to loom over the slighter figure of his son—and the fire in the grate threw up his even greater shadow upon the wall—and he cried this in a loud voice—I cannot die!—and laughed in his son’s face—and went on laughing, as it were the laughter of his cognomen himself, at the futile resistance of Men—as Ali, amazed and furious, turned on his heel, and threw himself from the room.

  It was that night, then, that Lord Sane summoned his carriage, and his Coachman, and without further intercourse with his son, betook him to a nearby Town, with what purposes he did not say. Ali would learn nothing further from him, not of his plans, nor his past actions, nor indeed of anything—for on the night of the following day, his son kept watch beneath the Moon upon the Abbey’s battlements, as has been here recounted—and went abroad in the deep midnight, fast asleep, to find ‘Satan’ Porteus dead, and hanged up within his own watchtower—a clear and irrefutable contradiction to that man’s awful claim to his son:—‘It is useless to hang me—I cannot die!’

  NOTES FOR THE 5TH CHAPTER

  Athens upon the Fens: Lord Byron briefly attended Cambridge University, though he took no degree. There he met, among others, Mr Scrope Berdmore Davies, and Mr John Cam Hobhouse, who would be among his loyallest friends. Mr Davies will later appear in the person of Peter Piper, Esq., one of the story’s droller creations, though how much like life i
t may be, I know not.

  still pool: There is a weir of the river Cam above Grantchester that is still called ‘Byron’s pool’. I wonder if a guide to all these sites, from here to Constantinople, ought not to be gathered in one Almanac, not only the genuine but the supposed ones, for those who wish to make the pilgrimage conveniently. Though for all I know such a guide exists, and has escaped my notice.

  my family: It appears to me a notable thing that, in the entirety of this romance, there is not a family left whole—Father, Mother, and children. Authors, of course, have the right, as they have the power, to simplify their stories, by pruning the family trees they introduce, and by a convenient fall from a horse, or a sudden fever, to bring about what circumstance they need to advance them. Still I wonder if my father had the power to imagine a family unbroken, or other than eccentric, or incomplete.

  chariot of Sisera: I know not what is here referred to, and no book of reference upon which I can easily lay my hands can tell me. It does not burnish an author’s intended effect to employ comparisons to whose import the common reader has not a clue.

  the letter D: Disgrace, degeneration, distress, decline, despair, dread; disappointment, disgust, detriment, deprivation, disability, darkness (but also day!); dirt, dearth, desolation, desuetude, doubt, and death.

  • SIX •

  In which the Reader is reliev’d from his tenter-hooks, and Ali from his dungeon

  NOW, GENTLE PERUSER of these ungentle pages, whosoever thou might’st be (and here I extend a ghostly Hand to thee, and a spiritual Salute to thy perceiving eye—my compliments, on thy perseverance!), Ali’s tale has all been told, to the moment of his Confinement, by the pitiless (and not altogether sober) Magistrate, within the dungeon of the Tolbooth that stands by the sea in the Royal and Ancient Burgh wherein the Abbey of the Sanes lay—and no doubt still lies. And surely it will not be wondered at, if Ali, lock’d up in his stone Apartment all alone, in the hours remaining of a darkness more utter than any he had known, should think it possible that, in his dream, he had truly done what he was charged with. Had he not slain Lord Sane a hundred times in his mind? Had he not arisen from his bed—armed himself—found his way asleep to the mountain’s height, before some good angel woke him? And might it not be that though in his dream he was on his way upward to the fatal tower, he was in actual fact on his way down again, having only just committed—Ah!—but no! Impossible! What—in sleep, struggle with a living man of more than normal strength, subdue, strangle, bind—hoist, like a calf in a butcher’s window—no! And yet the visions raced through his brain, and the utter darkness seemed almost to stroke his face with icy fingers, and night had no end. We may say, of a dreadful hour, that it seemed a dream; but though we may believe we are in waking life when we dream, when awake we know—we weep, we rage to know!—that we dream not. The cold and sweating walls were real—his dead father—all too real—the Turnkey’s footstep without—the farther sound of the sea on the rocks below. Oppressed with horror of the real, he groaned aloud, and at the sound the heavy tread without paused, and then commenced again.

  At length on the meagre pallet allotted him he threw himself, and slept—but only struggled the more in dreams with his father—drew on him—slew him; dreamed that he awoke, and found his father before him, ‘in his habit as he lived’ and grinning upon him—awoke then in truth, and for a fearful time recked not where he was—in the grave—in Hell—in a ship’s hold (for the sea had risen toward the dawn, and beat against the prison’s base)—or nowhere—nonexistence—a blind eye only, and a beating heart. We would not, truly, live our lives again, except to regain some hour or two at the most of heightened life—but if to have those we must endure again one such night as Ali then endured, we would instead leave all our days where ever Saturn keeps them, and seek them not.

  But now a clamour of some kind in the halls beyond his cell shook him from unhealthful sleep. The shackles upon him, dependent from a great staple in the wall, would not permit him quite to reach the tiny barred window in the oaken cell-door, past which he perceived the Turnkey’s terrified cries—crash and clatter of a stool, or a weapon—then no more cries—a silence. Then the rattle of the great ring of keys, just at his door, and Ali knew for certain that the lock of his cell was being tried, in a manner slow and methodical, with each iron key in turn. He waited and watched: and the door was pushed open.

  The dull light of the lamp in the passage beyond illuminated the shape of a man in the doorway—a man, and not yet further to be known. He entered in, his step seeming certain, and yet blind, and Ali drew back from him in wonder, for now by the small moonlight entering in at the window-slit, he perceived the man before him to be a Herculean Negro, shirtless, in a long black and ragged surtout.

  ‘Who are you?’ Ali asked this dusky personage. ‘Who has sent you?’ But answer came there none—the black man was deaf, or seemed so—blind, too, for the great yellow eyes in his dark face look’d seemingly at nothing—and yet saw, as though by another sense. After a moment’s unmoving hesitation—when he seemed to listen for what he knew he must find within the cell—he knelt before Ali, and, as he had into the door’s lock, he began to fit in turn each of the keys of the great ring he carried into the locks of Ali’s shackles, until at length the cuffs fell open.

  Before Ali could demand more of his strange saviour, the great black figure turned, and out the now-yawning door he went on bare feet; then he looked back, or turned back at any rate, as though his sightless eyes could tell if Ali followed or no—just as the bear who (as Ali dreamt) led him to his father’s corse had done—but Ali did not immediately follow. Reason was indeed far from him at that moment; caution and prudence he had none of; sweet freedom lay ahead the way the sable fellow led: and yet by some sense whose workings he could not perceive, he was at first held back—some apperception that by fleeing now he would certify to the world his guilt for the murder of Lord Sane. But then again—said this un-sensed sense to him—was he not now believed guilty by the world? And if not yet by all the world, enough of it to hang him thoroughly? And was he friended at all? Without the least pondering—of which he was at that moment incapable—Ali knew the right answer to all these questions, and others like them; and so he rose, a fire as though banked in his bosom flaring up, and went out.

  Down the drear corridor they went, he and his guide. The Turnkey lay stunned in a corner, overcome, whether by Fear, or the force of a blow, Ali did not consider. The black’s naked feet fell upon the flags with no more sound than a cat’s pad; his stride was long and sure, and yet he held out his arms somewhat before him, as though to learn of obstacles in his path. The wide front doors of the Tolbooth whereat Ali had first come in stood heaved ajar, and they went out into the street, and along that street not a window of a house was lit. ‘Where do you take me?’ Ali whispered to his guide. ‘Whose man are you?’ But—without insolence, yet not turning back his look—the man went only on, down to the Harbour of the town, where the rising tide had lifted the crowd of small sail, which lay on the softly-heaving bosom of the sea asleep as kine. Unhesitating, the black man stept from the wharf into a small open boat, not waiting for Ali to precede him, and—as though remembering the use of tools he once upon a time knew well—he took the Oars, slipped them in the locks, and was already pulling as Ali climbed aboard.

  Last bright stars of Morning! White thighs of Aurora, carelessly spread, created each day afresh by Apollo’s gaze from beneath the world’s edge! The small craft made for the Harbour’s mouth, and the breeze freshened; the Charon (as he might be, and Ali care not then) shipped his oars, made sail, and took the tiller and the boom. Ali knew his part—though the rôles he and the black might have been expected to play were reversed—and he lowered the oars and rowed with a will; and it may have been only the steady labour of his hands that stilled his heart, and made him glad. In not too long a while they were able to round the point that marked the Harbour’s limit, and it was not yet full day when they came i
n sight of a Ship at anchor in the farther cove—toward which the helmsman of their craft now guided them. And as they came near, a light winked in the forecastle, once, and then again.

  Even as it became evident to Ali that the ship waited there upon his arrival, the mainsails rose to the arms, and tightened in the breeze—the anchor-chain could be heard ringing round the capstan as the anchor was weighed—and a ladder was dropt from the gunwales with a clatter, just when the small craft with Ali aboard was laid against it. There was no question what next he ought to do, and above him as he stood in the rocking boat to take the dangling ropes of the ladder, there appeared a pair of faces, each topped by a hat, and encouraging gestures were made. On that uncertain stair Ali lifted his body—his spirit arose of itself—and in a moment he was taken hold of by hands above, and pulled aboard. Looking down, he saw the Negro, sitting as though a carven figurehead, regarding nothing: till Ali was secure—whereupon he turned his tiller, swung round his sail, and was taken by the breeze from the ship’s side, with never a backward look. Ali was of a mind to call to him, but knew not what to call—nor why—nor whether the fellow would hear. He turned instead to the two Gentlemen who had made sure his boarding, and ‘Thank you,’ said he, knowing not what else he might add.