The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy

by Brian Stableford

  “Mystery! mystery!” groaned the horrified Astrologer, “The Russian war cry! oh Slogdod! Slogdod! what hast thou done?” He stood expectant, tremulous; but no sound met his anxious ear; nothing but the ceaseless dribble of the far-off waterfall. At length a voice said “now!” and at the word the right-hand cat fell with a heavy thump to the earth. Then an Awful Form was seen, dimly looming through the darkness: it prepared to speak, but a universal cry of “corkscrews!” resounded through the cave, three voices cried “yes!” at the same moment, and it was light. Dazzling light, so that the Magician shuddering closed his eyes, and said, “It is a dream, oh that I could wake!” He looked up, and cave, Form, cats, everything were gone: nothing remained before him but the magic scroll and pen, a stick of red sealing wax, and a lighted wax taper.

  “August potatoe!” he muttered, “I obey your potent voice.” Then sealing up the mystic roll, he summoned a courier, and dispatched it: “Haste for thy life, post! haste! haste! for thy life post! haste!” were the last words the frightened man heard dinned in his ears as he galloped off.

  Then with a heavy sigh the great magician turned back into the gloomy cave, murmuring in a hollow tone, “Now for the toad!”

  Chapter VI

  “HUSH!” The Baron slumbers! two men with stealthy steps are removing his strong-box. It is very heavy, and their knees tremble, partly with the weight, partly with fear. He snores and they both start: the box rattles, not a moment is to be lost, they hasten from the room. It was very, very hard to get the box out of the window but they did it at last, though not without making noise enough to waken ten ordinary sleepers: the Baron, luckily for them, was an extraordinary sleeper.

  At a safe distance from the castle they set down the box, and proceeded to force off the lid. Four mortal hours did Mr Milton Smith and his mysterious companion labour thereat: at sunrise it flew off with a noise louder than the explosion of fifty powder-magazines, which was heard for miles and miles around. The Baron sprang from his couch at the sound, and full furiously did he ring his bell: up rushed the terrified domestic, and tremblingly related when he got down stairs again, how “his Honour was wisibly frustrated, and pitched the poker at him more than ordinary savage-like!” But to return to our two adventurers: as soon as they recovered from the swoon into which the explosion had thrown them, they proceeded to examine the contents of the box. Mr M. Smith drew a long breath, and ejaculated, “Well! I never!” “Well! you never!” angrily repeated the other, “what’s the good of going on like that? just tell us what’s in the box, and don’t make such an ass of yourself!” “My dear fellow!” interposed the poet, “I give you my honour -” “I wouldn’t give twopence for your honour,” retorted his friend, savagely tearing up the grass by handfuls, “give me what’s in the box, that’s a deal more valuable.” “Well but you won’t hear me out, I was just going to tell you; there’s nothing whatever in the box but a walking-stick! and that’s a fact; if you won’t believe me, come and look yourself!” “You don’t say so!” shouted his companion, springing to his feet, his laziness gone in a moment, “surely there’s more than that!” “I tell you there isn’t!” replied the poet rather sulkily, as he stretched himself on the grass.

  The other one however turned the box over, and examined it on all sides before he would be convinced, and then carelessly twirling the stick on his forefinger he began: “I suppose it’s no use taking this to Baron Muggzwig? it’ll be no sort of use.” “Well, I don’t know!” was the somewhat hesitating reply, “it might be as well - you see he didn’t say what he expected -” “I know that, you donkey!” interrupted the other impatiently, “but I don’t suppose he expected a walking-stick! if that had been all, do you think he’d have given us ten dollars a piece to do the job?” “I’m sure I can’t say,” muttered the poet: “Well! do as you please then!” said his companion angrily, and flinging the walking-stick at him as he spoke he walked hastily away.

  Never had he of the hat and cloak thrown away such a good opportunity of making his fortune! At twelve o’clock that day a visitor was announced to Baron Muggzwig, and our poet entering placed the walking-stick in his hands. The Baron’s eyes flashed with joy, and hastily placing a large purse of gold in his hand he said, “Adieu for the present, my dear friend! you shall hear from me again!” and then he carefully locked up the stick muttering, “nothing is now wanting but the toad!”

  Chapter VII

  The Baron Muggzwig was fat. Far be it from the humble author of these pages to insinuate that his fatness exceeded the bounds of proportion, or the manly beauty of the human figure, but he certainly was fat, and of that fact there is not the shadow of a doubt. It may perhaps have been owing to this fatness of body that a certain thickness and obtuseness of intellect was at times perceptible in the noble Baron. In his ordinary conversation he was, to say the least of it, misty and obscure, but after dinner or when at all excited his language certainly verged on the incomprehensible. This was perhaps owing to his liberal use of the parenthesis without any definite pause to mark the different clauses of the sentence. He used to consider his arguments unanswerable, and they certainly were so perplexing, and generally reduced his hearers to such a state of bewilderment and stupefaction, that few ever ventured to attempt an answer to them.

  He usually however compensated in length for what his speeches wanted in clearness, and it was owing to this cause that his visitors, on the morning we are speaking of had to blow the trumpet at the gate three times before they were admitted, as the footman was at that moment undergoing a lecture from his master, supposed to have reference to the yesterday’s dinner, but which, owing to a slight admixture of extraneous matter in the discourse, left on the footman’s mind a confused impression that his master had been partly scolding him for not keeping a stricter watch on the fishing trade, partly setting forth his own private views on the management of railway shares, and partly finding fault with the bad arrangement of financial affairs in the moon.

  In this state of mind it is not surprising that his first answer to their question, “Is the Baron at home?” should be, “The fish, sir, was the cook’s affair, I had nothing whatsumdever to do with it,” which on reflection he immediately afterwards corrected to, “the trains was late, so it was unpossible as the wine could come sooner.” “The man is surely mad or drunk!” angrily exclaimed one of the strangers, no other than the mysterious man in a cloak: “Not so,” was the reply in gentle voice, as the great magician stepped forward, “but let me interrogate him - ho! fellow!” he continued in a louder tone, “is thy master at home?” The man gazed at him for a moment like one in a dream, and then suddenly recollecting himself he replied, “I begs pardon, gentleman, the Baron is at home: would you please to walk in?” and with these words he ushered them up stairs.

  On entering the room they made a low obeisance, and the Baron starting from his seat exclaimed with singular rapidity, “And even if you have called on behalf of Slogdod that infatuated wretch and I’m sure I’ve often told him -” “We have called,” gravely interrupted the Magician, “to ascertain whether -” “Yes,” continued the excited Baron, “scores of times aye scores of times I have and you may believe me or not as you like for though -” “To ascertain,” persisted the Magician, “whether you have in your possession, and if so -” “But yet” broke in Muggzwig, “he always would and as he used to say if -” “And if so,” shouted the man in a cloak despairing of the Magician ever getting through the sentence, “to know what you would like to be done with regard to Signor Blowski.” So saying, they retired a few steps, and waited for the Baron’s reply, and their host, without further delay delivered the following remarkable speech: “And though I have no wish to provoke the enmity which considering the provocations I have received and really if you reckon them up they are more than any mortal man let alone a Baron for the family temper has been known for years to be beyond nay the royal family themselves will hardly boast of considering too that he has so long a time kept which I
shouldn’t have found out only that rascal Blowski said and how he could bring himself to tell all those lies I can’t think for I have always considered him quite honest and of course wishing if possible to prove him innocent and the walking-stick since it is absolutely necessary in such matters and begging your pardon I consider the toad and all that humbug but that’s between you and me and even when I had sent for it by two of my bandits and one of them bringing it to me yesterday for which I gave him a purse of gold and I hope he was grateful for it and though the employment of bandits is at all times and particularly in this case if you consider the but even on account of some civilities he showed me though I daresay there was something and by-the-bye perhaps that was the reason he pitched himself I mean him out of the window for -” here he paused, seeing that his visitors in despair had left the room. Now, Reader, prepare yourself for the last chapter.

  Chapter VIII and last

  All was silence. The Baron Slogdod was seated in the hall of his ancestors, in his chair of state, but his countenance wore not its usual expression of calm content: there was an uncomfortable restlessness about him which betokened a mind ill at ease, for why? closely packed in the hall around, so densely wedged together as to resemble one vast living ocean without a gap or hollow, were seated seven thousand human beings: all eyes were bent upon him, each breath was held in eager expectation, and he felt, he felt in his inmost heart, though he vainly endeavoured to conceal his uneasiness under a forced and unnatural smile, that something awful was about to happen. Reader! if your nerves are not adamant, turn not this page!

  Before the Baron’s seat there stood a table: what sat thereon? well knew the trembling crowds, as with blanched cheek and tottering knees they gazed upon it, and shrank from it even while they gazed: ugly, deformed, ghastly and hideous it sat, with large dull eyes, and bloated cheeks, the magic toad!

  All feared and loathed it, save the Baron only, who rousing himself at intervals from his gloomy meditations, would raise his toe, and give it a sportive kick, of which it took not the smallest notice. He feared it not, no, deeper terrors possessed his mind, and clouded his brow with anxious thought.

  Beneath the table was crouched a quivering mass, so abject and grovelling as scarce to bear the form of humanity: none regarded, and none pitied it.

  Then outspake the Magician: “The man I accuse, if man indeed he be, is - Blowski!” At the word, the shrunken form arose, and displayed to the horrified assembly the well-known vulture face: he opened his mouth to speak, but no sound issued from his pale and trembling lips …a solemn stillness settled on all around… the Magician raised the walking-stick of destiny, and in thrilling accents pronounced the fatal words: “Recreant vagabond! misguided reprobate! receive thy due deserts!” … Silently he sank to the earth…all was dark for a moment, … returning light revealed to their gaze…a heap of mashed potatoe…a globular form faintly loomed through the darkness, and howled once audibly, then all was still. Reader, our tale is told.

  WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896) was the most prolific British fantasy writer of the nineteenth century, and the fact that he produced the first full-length Secondary World fantasy, The Wood Beyond the World (1894), has moved him to a central position in the tradition in the eyes of commentators like Lin Carter. Morris met Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Swinburne while he was at Oxford, and there became a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood; he subsequently became a devout socialist. He helped to found the Oxford and Cambridge Magazine in 1856 and most of his early writings appeared there, including poems later reprinted in The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858) and several prose romances, including “A Dream” and the strange allegorical novella “The Hollow Land”.

  Morris’s verse epics include the classical fantasies The Life and Death of Jason (1867) and The Earthly Paradise (1868). He became greatly enamoured with the Icelandic sagas, which he imitated in The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs (1876). A Dream of John Ball (1888) is a historical fantasy; The House of the Wolfings (1888) and The Roots of the Mountains (1889) are pseudo-sagas. His later fantastic romances were issued by his own Kelmscott Press between 1891 and 1897. The last two, The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897) and the unfinished The Sundering Flood (1897) were dictated in the months before his death and are somewhat rough-hewn, but The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891) is a highly original re-casting of the story of Orpheus, and the long allegory The Well at the World’s End (1896) is also interesting. Child Christopher and Goldilind the Fair (1895) re-casts the legend of Havelock the Dane.

  None of these works were as successful in their own day as Morris’s Utopian romance News from Nowhere (1890) - one of several replies in kind to Edward Bellamy’s hugely successful Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888) - but the fashionability of contemporary Secondary World fantasy has helped to redeem their reputation and bring them back into print.

  A DREAM

  By William Morris

  I dreamed once, that four men sat by the winter fire talking and telling tales, in a house that the wind howled round.

  And one of them, the eldest, said: “When I was a boy, before you came to this land, that bar of red sand rock, which makes a fall in our river, had only just been formed; for it used to stand above the river in a great cliff, tunnelled by a cave about midway between the green-growing grass and the green-flowing river; and it fell one night, when you had not yet come to this land, no, nor your fathers.

  “Now, concerning this cliff, or pike rather (for it was a tall slip of rock and not part of a range), many strange tales were told; and my father used to say, that in his time many would have explored that cave, either from covetousness (expecting to find gold therein), or from that love of wonders which most young men have, but fear kept them back. Within the memory of man, however, some had entered, and, so men said, were never seen on earth again; but my father said that the tales told concerning such, very far from deterring him (then quite a youth) from the quest of this cavern, made him all the more earnestly long to go; so that one day in his fear, my grandfather, to prevent him, stabbed him in the shoulder, so that he was obliged to keep his bed for long; and somehow he never went, and died at last without ever having seen the inside of the cavern.

  “My father told me many wondrous tales about the place, whereof for a long time I have been able to remember nothing; yet, by some means or another, a certain story has grown up in my heart, which I will tell you something of: a story which no living creature ever told me, though I do not remember the time when I knew it not. Yes, I will tell you some of it, not all perhaps, but as much as I am allowed to tell.”

  The man stopped and pondered awhile, leaning over the fire where the flames slept under the caked coal: he was an old man, and his hair was quite white. He spoke again presently. “And I have fancied sometimes, that in some way, how I know not, I am mixed up with the strange story I am going to tell you”. Again he ceased, and gazed at the fire, bending his head down till his beard touched his knees; then, rousing himself, said in a changed voice (for he had been speaking dreamily hitherto): “That strange-looking old house that you all know, with the limes and yew-trees before it, and the double line of very old yew-trees leading up from the gateway-tower to the porch - you know how no one will live there now because it is so eerie, and how even that bold bad lord that would come there, with his turbulent followers, was driven out in shame and disgrace by invisible agency. Well, in times past there dwelt in that house an old grey man, who was lord of that estate, his only daughter, and a young man, a kind of distant cousin of the house, whom the lord had brought up from a boy, as he was the orphan of a kinsman who had fallen in combat in his quarrel. Now, as the young knight and the young lady were both beautiful and brave, and loved beauty and good things ardently, it was natural enough that they should discover as they grew up that they were in love with one another; and afterwards, as they went on loving one another, it was, alas! not unnatural that they should sometimes have half-quarrels,
very few and far between indeed, and slight to lookers-on, even while they lasted, but nevertheless intensely bitter and unhappy to the principal parties thereto. I suppose their love then, whatever it has grown to since, was not so all-absorbing as to merge all differences of opinion and feeling, for again there were such differences then. So, upon a time it happened, just when a great war had arisen, and Lawrence (for that was the knight’s name) was sitting and thinking of war, and his departure from home; sitting there in a very grave, almost a stern mood, that Ella, his betrothed, came in, gay and sprightly, in a humour that Lawrence often enough could little understand, and this time liked less than ever, yet the bare sight of her made him yearn for her full heart, which he was not to have yet; so he caught her by the hand, and tried to draw her down to him, but she let her hand lie loose in his, and did not answer the pressure in which his heart flowed to hers; then he arose and stood before her, face to face, but she drew back a little, yet he kissed her on the mouth and said, though a rising in his throat almost choked his voice, “Ella, are you sorry I am going?” “Yea,” she said, “and nay, for you will shout my name among the swordflashes, and you will fight for me.” “Yes,” he said, “for love and duty, dearest.” “For duty? ah! I think, Lawrence, if it were not for me, you would stay at home and watch the clouds, or sit under the linden-trees singing dismal love ditties of your own making, dear knight: truly, if you turn out a great warrior, I too shall live in fame, for I am certainly the making of your desire to fight.” He let drop his hands from her shoulders, where he had laid them, and said, with a faint flush over his face, “You wrong me, Ella, for, though I have never wished to fight for the mere love of fighting, and though,” (and here again he flushed a little) “and though I am not, I well know, so free of the fear of death as a good man would be, yet for this duty’s sake, which is really a higher love, Ella, love of God, I trust I would risk life, nay honour, even if not willingly, yet cheerfully at least.” “Still duty, duty,” she said; “you lay, Lawrence, as many people do, most stress on the point where you are weakest; moreover, those knights who in time past have done wild, mad things merely at their ladies’ word, scarcely did so for duty; for they owed their lives to their country surely, to the cause of good, and should not have risked them for a whim, and yet you praised them the other day.” “Did I?” said Lawrence; “well, and in a way they were much to be praised, for even blind love and obedience is well; but reasonable love, reasonable obedience is so far better as to be almost a different thing; yet, I think, if the knights did well partly, the ladies did altogether ill: for if they had faith in their lovers, and did this merely from a mad longing to see them do “noble” deeds, then had they but little faith in God, Who can, and at His good pleasure does give time and opportunity to every man, if he will but watch for it, to serve Him with reasonable service, and gain love and all noble things in greater measure thereby: but if these ladies did as they did, that they might prove their knights, then surely did they lack faith both in God and man. I do not think that two friends even could live together on such terms but for lovers - ah! Ella, Ella, why do you look so at me? on this day, almost the last, we shall be together for long; Ella, your face is changed, your eyes - O Christ! help her and me, help her, good Lord.” “Lawrence,” she said, speaking quickly and in jerks, “dare you, for my sake, sleep this night in the cavern of the red pike? for I say to you that, faithful or not, I doubt your courage.” But she was startled when she saw him, and how the fiery blood rushed up to his forehead, then sank to his heart again, and his face became as pale as the face of a dead man: he looked at her and said, ’Yes, Ella, I will go now; for what matter where I go?” He turned and moved toward the door; he was almost gone, when that evil spirit left her, and she cried out aloud, passionately, eagerly: “Lawrence, Lawrence, come back once more, if only to strike me dead with your knightly sword.” He hesitated, wavered, turned, and in another moment she was lying in his arms weeping into his hair.