The Purple Cloud

by M. P. Shiel

answer, sitting with her backhalf toward me, cracking almonds, continually striking one step with theball of her outstretched foot. In the clarid gold of the platform I sawher fez and corals reflected as an elongated blotch of florid red. Sheturned and drank some wine from the great gold Jarvan goblet which I hadbrought from the temple of Boro Budor, her head quite covered in by it.Then, the little hairs at her lip-corners still wet, says she:

  'Vices and climes, climes and vices. Always the same. What were theseclimes and vices?'

  'Robberies of a hundred sorts, murders of ten hundred--'

  'But what made them _do_ them?'

  'Their evil nature--their base souls.'

  'But _you_ are one of them, _I_ am another: yet you and I live heretogether, and we do no vices and climes.'

  Her astounding shrewdness! Right into the inmost heart of a matter doesher simple wit seem to pierce!

  'No,' I said, 'we do no vices and crimes, because we lack _motive_.There is no danger that we should hate each other, for we have plenty toeat and drink, dates, wines, and thousands of things. (Our danger israther the other way.) But _they_ hated and schemed, because they werevery numerous, and there arose a question among them of dates and wine.'

  'Was there not, then, enough land to grow dates and wine for all?'

  'There was--yes: much more than enough, I fancy. But some got hold of avast lot of it, and as the rest felt the pinch of scarcity, there arose,naturally, a pretty state of things--including the vices and crimes.'

  'Ah, but then,' says she, 'it was not to their bad souls that the vicesand climes were due, but only to this question of land. It is certainthat if there had been no such question, there would have been no vicesand climes, because you and I, who are just like them, do no vices andclimes here, where there is no such question.'

  The clear limelight of her intelligence! She wriggled on her seat in hereffort of argument.

  'I am not going to argue the matter,' I said. 'There _was_ that questionof dates and wine, you see. And there always must be on an earth wheremillions of men, with varying degrees of cunning, reside.'

  'Oh, not at all necessalily!' she cries with conviction: 'not at all, atall: since there are much more dates and wine than are enough for all.If there should spling up more men now, having the whole wisdom,science, and expelience of the past at their hand, and they made anallangement among themselves that the first man who tlied to take morethan he could work for should be killed, and sent to dleam anonsense-dleam, the question could never again alise!'

  'It arose before--it would arise again.'

  'But no! I can guess clearly how it alose before: it alose thlough thesheer carelessness of the first men. The land was at first so vely, velymuch more than enough for all, that the men did not take the tlouble tomake an allangement among themselves; and afterwards the habit ofcarelessness was confirmed; till at last the vely oliginal carelessnessmust have got to have the look of an allangement; and so the stleamwhich began in a little long ended in a big long, the long glowing moreand more fixed and fatal as the stleam lolled further flom the source. Isee it clearly, can't you? But now, if some more men would spling, theywould be taught--'

  'Ah, but no more men will _spling_, you see--!'

  'There is no telling. I sometimes feel as if they must, and shall. Thetlees blossom, the thunder lolls, the air makes me lun and leap, theglound is full of lichness, and I hear the voice of the Lord God walkingall among the tlees of the folests.'

  As she said this, I saw her under-lip push out and tremble, as when sheis near to crying, and her eyes moisten: but a moment after she lookedat me full, and smiled, so mobile is her face: and as she looked, itsuddenly struck me what a noble temple of a brow the creature has,almost pointed at the uplifted summit, and widening down like abell-curved Gothic arch, draped in strings of frizzy hair which anon sheshakes backward with her head.

  'Clodagh,' I said after some minutes--'do you know why I called youClodagh?'

  'No? Tell me?'

  'Because once, long ago before the poison-cloud, I had a lover calledClodagh: and she was a....'

  'But tell me first,' cries she: 'how did one know one's lover, or one'swife, flom all the others?'

  'Well, by their faces....'

  'But there must have been many faces--all alike--'

  'Not all alike. Each was different from the rest.'

  'Still, it must have been vely clever to tell. I can hardly conceiveany face, except yours and mine.'

  'Ah, because you are a little goose, you see.'

  'What was a goose like?'

  'It was a thing like a butterfly, only larger, and it kept its toesalways spread out, with a skin stretched between.'

  'Leally? How caplicious! And am I like that?--but what were you sayingthat your lover, Clodagh, was?'

  'She was a Poisoner.'

  'Then why call me Clodagh, since _I_ am not a poisoner?'

  'I call you so to remind me: lest you--lest you--should becomemy--lover, too.'

  'I am your lover already: for I love you.'

  'What, girl?'

  'Do I not love you, who are mine?'

  'Come, come, don't be a little maniac!' I went. 'Clodagh was a_poisoner_....'

  'Why did she poison? Had she not enough dates and wine?'

  'She had, yes: but she wanted more, more, more, the silly idiot.'

  'So that the vices and climes were not confined to those that lackedthings, but were done by the others, too?'

  'By the others chiefly.'

  'Then I see how it was!'

  'How was it?'

  'The others had got _spoiled_. The vices and climes must havebegun with those who lacked things, and then the others, always seeingvices and climes alound them, began to do them, too--as when one rottenolive is in a bottle, the whole mass soon becomes collupted: butoriginally they were not rotten, but only became so. And all though alittle carelessness at the first. I am sure that if more men couldspling now--'

  'But I _told_ you, didn't I, that no more men will spring? Youunderstand, Clodagh, that originally the earth produced men by a longprocess, beginning with a very low type of creature, and continuallydeveloping it, until at last a man stood up. But that can never happenagain: for the earth is old, old, and has lost her producing vigour now.So talk no more of men _splinging_, and of things which you do notunderstand. Instead, go inside--stop, I will tell you a secret: to-dayin the wood I picked some musk-roses and wound them into a wreath,meaning to give them you for your head when you came to-morrow: and itis inside on the pearl tripod in the second room to the left: go,therefore, and put it on, and bring the harp, and play to me, my dear.'

  She ran quick with a little cry, and coming again, sat crowned,incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her hometo her lonely yali, till the pale and languished moon, weary ofall-night beatitudes, sank down soft-couched in quilts of curdling opalsto the Hesperian realms of her rest.

  So sometimes we speak together, she and I, she and I.

  * * * * *

  That ever I should write such a thing! I am driven out from Imbros!

  I was walking up in a wood yesterday to the west--it was a calm clearevening about seven, the sun having just set. I had the book in which Ihave written so far in my hand, for I had thought of making a sketch ofan old windmill to the north-west to show her. Twenty minutes before shehad been with me, for I had chanced to meet her, and she had come, butkept darting on ahead after peeping fruit, gathering armfuls ofamaranth, nenuphar, and red-berried asphodel, till, weary of my life, Ihad called to her: 'Go away! out of my sight'--and she, with suddenlypushed under-lip, had walked off.

  Well, I was continuing my stroll, when I seemed to feel some quaking ofthe ground, and before one could count twenty, it was as if the islandwas bent upon wracking itself to pieces. My first thought was of her,and in great scare I went running, calling in the direction which shehad gone, staggering as on the deck of some labouring ship, falling,picking mysel
f up, running again. The air was quite full of uproar, andthe land waving like the sea: and as I went plunging, not knowingwhither, I saw to my right some three or four acres of forest droop andsink into a gulf which opened to receive them. Up I flung my arms,crying out: 'Good God! save the girl!' and a minute later rushed out, tomy surprise, into open space on a hill-side. On the lower ground I couldsee the palace, and beyond it, a small space of white sea which had theawful appearance of being higher than the land. Down the hill-side Istaggered, driven by the impulse to fly somewhither, but about half waydown was startled afresh by a shrill pattering like musical hail, andthe next moment saw the entire palace rush with the jangling clatter ofa thousand bells