The Dedalus Book of British Fantasy

by Brian Stableford

  “But - Caroline - why?” A smile of ineffable satisfaction stole over his face which she did not see. He would have been delighted to fall on his knees in order to show the depth of his gratitude. But he refrained and composed himself. At all event he would play the lover to the end, as he had begun. It was due, in fact, to the lady as well as to himself.

  “Jocelyn,” she said frankly, yet with some confusion in her eyes, “I have made a great mistake. Listen a moment, and forgive me if you can. It is now eight years since a certain man fell in love with me - and I with him. My poor boy! I have never felt - I know it now - towards you as I did towards him. We could not marry because neither of us had any money. And then he went abroad. But he has come back - and - and - I have money now, if he has not - and oh! Jocelyn - do you understand, now?”

  “You have met him” - oh! rare and excellent Slave! - “you have met him Caroline, and you love each other still.” He wanted to dance and jump, but he did not: he spoke slowly, with a face of extraordinary gravity.

  “Oh! Jocelyn.” Could this be the same Caroline? Why, she was soft-eyed and tearful, her cheeks were glowing, and her lips trembled. “Oh! Jocelyn. Can you forgive me? You loved me, too, poor boy, because you thought me, perhaps, better and wiser than many other women. Better, you see, I am not, though I may be wiser than some.”

  He gave her his hand.

  “Caroline,” he said heroically, “what does it matter for me, if only you are happy?”

  “Then you do forgive me, Jocelyn? I cannot bear to think that you will break your heart over this - that I am the cause -”

  “Forgive you? Caroline, you are much too good for me. I should never have made you happy. As for me -” he gulped a joyful laugh and choked - “as for me, do not think of me. I shall - in time - perhaps…Meantime, Caroline, we remain friends.”

  “Yes - always friends - yes,” she replied hurriedly. Then she burst into tears. “I did not know, Jocelyn, I did not know! I thought I had forgotten him, indeed I did.”

  He lifted her hand and kissed it with reverence. Then he left her, went to the Club, and had a pint of champagne to pull himself together. As for what people said, when it became known, that mattered nothing, because, whatever they said, they did not say openly to him.

  It may be mentioned that no alteration was made in the date of the double wedding, only that one of the bridegrooms was changed. It was a beautiful wedding, and nobody noticed Sir Jocelyn, who was up in the gallery, his countenance wreathed with smiles.

  When he left Caroline, Jocelyn went back to his chambers and prepared a little ceremony. He first lit the fire; then he took out the Cap and wrapped it in his uncle’s letter. Then he solemnly placed both Cap and letter in the flames.

  “You are free, my friend,” he said. “An old Cap and an old Slave are more trouble than they are worth. Perhaps, now that the cap is burned, you will recover your youth.”

  There was no answer or any sign. And now nothing remains to Jocelyn of the family heirloom, except the picture of Sir Jocelyn de Haultegresse and Ali Ibn Yûssûf, otherwise called Khanjar ed Dîn, or the Ox Goad of Religion.

  F. ANSTEY was the pseudonym foisted on Thomas Anstey Guthrie (1856-1934) by the error of a typesetter (he had intended to sign himself “T. Anstey”). In the last decades of the century Anstey established himself as the master of Victorian comic fantasy with a series of novels in which magical objects cause havoc by disrupting the supremely conventional lives of assorted individuals, each of whom is in his own way typical of the mores and folkways of Victorian England. The first of these novels was the much-imitated and much-dramatised Vice Versa; or, a Lesson to Fathers (1882), in which a businessman trades bodies with his scapegrace of a son. This was followed by The Tinted Venus (1885), in which a hairdresser places a ring on the finger of a statue of Aphrodite and finds the reanimated goddess an extremely inconvenient fiancée; A Fallen Idol (1886), in which a young painter suffers the attentions of a malevolent Idol mistakenly elevated to godhood by unwary Jains; and The Brass Bottle (1900) in which a newly-liberated genie cannot be prevented from showering his rescuer with an extremely inconvenient embarrassment of riches.

  Anstey’s shorter fantasies are more various in kind and tone. Early stories collected in The Black Poodle and Other Tales (1884) and The Talking Horse and Other Tales (1892) includes some broadly comic parodies of the popular ghost stories of the day, most notably “The Wraith of Barnjum” (1879) and “The Curse of the Catafalques” (1882), but later stories collected in Salted Almonds (1906) tend more to the grotesque and the sardonic. The early collections also include a number of stories for children, most of which are sentimental to the point of sickliness. “The Siren” is one of a small group of stories which contrive to combine all three of the major modes of nineteenth century fantasy: the moralistic, the comic and the sentimental.

  THE SIREN

  By F. Anstey

  Long, long ago, a siren lived all alone upon a rocky little island far out in the Southern Ocean. She may have been the youngest and most beautiful of the original three sirens, driven by her sisters’ jealousy, or her own weariness of their society, to seek this distant home; or she may have lived there in solitude from the beginning.

  But she was not unhappy; all she cared about was the admiration and worship of mortal men, and these were hers whenever she wished, for she had only to sing, and her exquisite voice would float away over the waters, until it reached some passing vessel, and then every one that heard was seized instantly with the irresistible longing to hasten to her isle and throw himself adoringly at her feet.

  One day as she sat upon a low headland, looking earnestly out over the sparkling blue-green water before her, and hoping to discover the peak of some far-off sail on the hazy sea-line, she was startled by a sound she had never heard before - the grating of a boat’s keel on the pebbles in the little creek at her side.

  She had been too much absorbed in watching for distant ships to notice that a small bark had been gliding round the other side of her island, but now, as she glanced round, she saw that the stranger who had guided it was already jumping ashore and securing his boat.

  Evidently she had not attracted him there, for she had been too indolent to sing of late, and he did not seem even to have seen her, or to have landed from any other motive than curiosity.

  He was quite young, gallant-looking and sunburnt, with brown hair curling over his forehead, an open face and honest grey eyes. And as she looked at him, the fancy came to her that she would like to question him and hear his voice; she would find out, if she could, what manner of beings these mortals were over whom she possessed so strange a power.

  Never before had such a thought entered her mind, notwithstanding that she had seen many mortals of every age and rank, from captain to the lowest galley slave; but then she had only seen them under the influence of her magical voice, when they were struck dumb and motionless, after which - except as proofs of her power - they did not interest her.

  But this stranger was still free - so long as she did not choose to enslave him; and for some reason she did not choose to do so just yet.

  As he turned towards her, she beckoned to him imperiously, and he saw the slender figure above for the first time, - the fairest maiden his eyes had ever beheld, with an unearthly beauty in her wonderful dark blue eyes, and hair of the sunniest gold, - he stood gazing at her in motionless uncertainty, for he thought he must be cheated by a vision.

  He came nearer, and, obeying a careless motion of her hand, threw himself down on a broad shelf of rock a little below the spot where she was seated; still he did not dare to speak lest the vision should pass away.

  She looked at him for some time with an innocent, almost childish, curiosity shining under her long lashes. At last she gave a low little laugh: “Are you afraid of me?” she asked; “why don’t you speak? but perhaps,” she added to herself, “mortals cannot speak.”

  “I was silent,” he said, “lest by speaki
ng I should anger you - for surely you must be some goddess or sea-nymph?” “Ah, you can speak!” she cried. “No, I am no goddess or nymph, and you will not anger me - if only you will tell me many things I want to know!”

  And she began to ask him all the questions she could think of: first about the great world in which men lived, and then about himself, for she was very curious, in a charmingly wilful and capricious fashion of her own.

  He answered frankly and simply, but it seemed as if some influence were upon him which kept him from being dazzled and overcome by her loveliness, for he gave no sign as yet of yielding to the glamour she cast upon all other men, nor did his eyes gleam with the despairing adoration the siren knew so well.

  She was quick to perceive this, and it piqued her. She paid less and less attention to the answers he gave her, and ceased at last to question him further.

  Presently she said, with a strange smile that showed her cruel little teeth gleaming between her scarlet lips, “Why don’t you ask me who I am, and what I am doing here alone? do not you care to know?”

  “If you will deign to tell me,” he said.

  “Then I will tell you,” she said; “I am a siren - are you not afraid now?”

  “Why should be afraid?” he asked, for the name had no meaning in his ears.

  She was disappointed; it was only her voice - nothing else, then - that deprived men of their senses; perhaps this youth was proof even against that; she longed to try, and yet she hesitated still.

  “Then you have never heard of me,” she said; “you don’t know why I sit and watch for the great gilded ships you mortals build for yourselves?”

  “For your pleasure, I suppose,” he answered. “I have watched them myself many a time; they are grand as they sweep by, with their sharp brazen beaks cleaving the frothing water, and their painted sails curving out firm against the sky. It is good to hear the measured thud of the great oars and the cheerful cries of the sailors as they clamber about the cordage.”

  She laughed disdainfully. “And you think I care for all that!” she cried. “Where is the pleasure of looking idly on and admiring? - that is for them, not for me. As these galleys of yours pass, I sing - and when the sailors hear, they must come to me. Man after man leaps eagerly into the sea, and makes for the shore - until at last the oars grind and lock together, and the great ship drifts helplessly on, empty and aimless. I like that.”

  “But the men?” he asked, with an uneasy wonder at her words.

  “Oh, they reach the shore - some of them, and then they lie at my feet, just as you are lying now, and I sing on, and as they listen they lose all power or wish to move, nor have I ever heard them speak as you speak; they only lie there upon the sand or rock, and gaze at me always, and soon their cheeks grow hollower and hollower, and their eyes brighter and brighter - and it is I who make them so!”

  “But I see them not,” said the youth, divided between hope and fear; “the beach is bare; where, then, are all those gone who have lain here?”

  “I cannot say,” she replied carelessly; “they are not here for long; when the sea comes up it carries them away.”

  “And you do not care!” he cried, struck with horror at the absolute indifference in her face; “you do not even try to keep them here?”

  “Why should I care?” said the siren lightly; “I do not want them. More will always come when I wish. And it is so wearisome to see the same faces, that I am glad when they go.”

  “I will not believe it, siren,” groaned the young man, turning from her in bitter anguish; “oh, you cannot be cruel!”

  “No, I am not cruel,” she said in surprise. “And why will you not believe me? It is true!”

  “Listen to me,” he said passionately: “do you know how bitter it is to die, - to leave the sunlight and the warm air, the fair land and the changing sea?”

  “How can I know?” said the siren. “I shall never die - unless - unless something happens which will never be!”

  “You will live on, to bring this bitterness upon others for your sport. We mortals lead but short lives, and life, even spent in sorrow, is sweet to most of us; and our deaths when they come bring mourning to those who cared for us and are left behind. But you lure men to this isle and look on unmoved as they are borne away!”

  “No, you are wrong,” she said; “I am not cruel, as you think me; when they are no longer pleasant to look at, I leave them. I never see them borne away. I never thought what became of them at last. Where are they now?”

  “They are dead, siren” he said sadly, “drowned. Life was dear to them; far away there were women and children to whom they had hoped to return, and who have waited and wept for them since. Happy years were before them, and to some at least - but for you - a restful and honoured old age. But you called them, and as they lay here the greedy waves came up, dashed them from these rocks and sucked them, blinded, suffocating, battling painfully for breath and life, down into the dark green depths. And now their bones lie tangled in the sea-weed, but they themselves are wandering, sad, restless shades, in the shadowy world below, where is no sun, no happiness, no hope - but only sighing evermore, and the memory of the past!”

  She listened with drooping lids, and her chin resting upon her soft palm; at last she said with a slight quiver in her voice, “I did not know - I did not mean them to die. And what can I do? I cannot keep back the sea.”

  “You can let them sail by unharmed,” he said.

  “I cannot!” she cried. “Of what use is my power to me if I may not exercise it? Why do you tell me of men’s sufferings - what are they to me?”

  “They give you their lives,” he said; “you fill them with a hopeless love and they die for it in misery - yet you cannot even pity them!”

  “Is it love that brings them here?” she said eagerly. “What is this that is called love? For I have always known that if I ever love - but then only - I must die, though what love may be I know not. Tell me, so that I may avoid it!”

  “You need not fear, siren,” he said, “for, if death is only to come to you through love, you will never die!”

  “Still, I want to know,” she insisted; “tell me!”

  “If a stranger were to come some day to this isle, and when his eyes meet yours, you feel your indifference leaving you, so that you have no heart to see him lie ignobly at your feet, and cannot leave him to perish miserably in the cold waters; if you desire to keep him by your side - not as your slave and victim, but as your companion, your equal, for evermore - that will be love!”

  “If that is love,” she cried joyously, “I shall indeed never die! But that is not how men love me?” she added.

  “No,” he said; “their love for you must be some strange and enslaving passion, since they will submit to death if only they may hear your voice. That is not true love, but a fatal madness.”

  “But if mortals feel love for one another,” she asked, “they must die, must they not?”

  “The love of a man for a maiden who is gentle and good does not kill - even when it is most hopeless,” he said; “and where she feels it in return, it is well for both, for their lives will flow on together in peace and happiness.”

  He had spoken softly, with a far away look in his eyes that did not escape the siren.

  “And you love one of your mortal maidens like that?” she asked. “Is she more beautiful than I am?”

  “She is mortal,” he said, “but she is fair and gracious, my maiden; and it is she who has my love, and will have it while I live.”

  “And yet,” she said, with a mocking smile, “I could make you forget her.”

  Her childlike waywardness had left her as she spoke the words, and a dangerous fire was shining in her deep eyes.

  “Never!” he cried; “even you cannot make me false to my love! And yet,” he added quickly, “I dare not challenge you, enchantress that you are; what is my will against your power?”

  “You do not love me yet,” she said; “you have called
me cruel, and reproached me; you have dared to tell me of a maiden compared with whom I am nothing! You shall be punished. I will have you for my own, like the others!”

  “Siren,” he pleaded, seizing one of her hands as it lay close to him on the hot grey rock, “take my life if you will - but do not drive away the memory of my love; let me die, if I must die, faithful to her; for what am I, or what is my love, to you?”

  “Nothing,” she said scornfully, and yet with something of a caress in her tone, “yet I want you; you shall lie here, and hold my hand, and look into my eyes, and forget all else but me.”

  “Let me go,” he cried, rising, and turning back to regain his bark; “I choose life while I may!”

  She laughed. “You have no choice,” she said, “you are mine!” she seemed to have grown still more radiantly, dazzlingly fair, and presently, as the stranger made his way to the creek where his boat was lying, she broke into the low soft chant whose subtle witchery no mortals had ever resisted as yet.

  He started as he heard her, but still he went on over the rocks a little longer, until at last he stopped with a groan, and turned slowly back: his love across the sea was fading fast from his memory; he felt no desire to escape any longer; he was even eager at last to be back on the ledge at her feet and listen to her for ever.

  He reached it and sank down with a sigh, and a drowsy delicious languor stole over him, taking away all power to stir or speak.

  Her song was triumphant and mocking, and yet strangely tender at times, thrilling him as he heard it, but her eyes only rested now and then, and always indifferently, upon his upturned face.

  He wished for nothing better now than to lie there, following the flashing of her supple hands upon the harp-strings and watching every change of her fair face. What though the waves might rise round him and sweep him away out of sight, and drown her voice with the roar and swirl of waters? it would not be just yet.