Swords & Steam Short Stories

by S. T. Joshi

  It was true! He knew it with a shining certainty that had upon it not the shadow of a shadow – but how much his desire to believe entered into this certainty who can tell?

  He looked at the chateau. Of course! It was that whose ruins loomed out of the darkness when the flares split the night – in whose cellars he had longed to sleep. Death – oh, the foolish, fearful hearts of men! – this death? This glorious place of peace and beauty? And this wondrous girl whose brown eyes were the keys of heart’s desire! Death – he laughed and laughed again.

  Another thought struck him, swept through him like a torrent. He must get back, must get back to the trenches and tell them this great truth he had found. Why, he was like a traveler from a dying world who unwittingly stumbles upon a secret to turn that world dead to hope into a living heaven!

  There was no longer need for men to fear the splintering shell, the fire that seared them, the bullets, or the shining steel. What did they matter when this – this – was the truth? He must get back and tell them. Even those two Scots would lie still on the wires when he whispered this to them.

  But he forgot – they knew now. But they could not return to tell – as he could. He was wild with joy, exultant, lifted up to the skies, a demigod – the bearer of a truth that would free the devil-ridden world from its demons; a new Prometheus who bore back to mankind a more precious flame than had the old.

  “I must go!” he cried. “I must tell them! Show me how to return – swiftly!”

  A doubt assailed him; he pondered it.

  “But they may not believe me,” he whispered. “No. I must show them proof. I must carry something back to prove this to them.”

  The Lady of Tocquelain smiled. She lifted a little knife from the table and, reaching over to a rose-tree, cut from it a cluster of buds; thrust it toward his eager hand.

  Before he could grasp it the maid had taken it.

  “Wait!” she murmured. “I will give you another message.”

  There was a quill and ink upon the table, and Peter wondered how they had come; he had not seen them before – but with so many wonders, what was this small one? There was a slip of paper in the Demoiselle Lucie’s hand, too. She bent her little, dusky head and wrote; blew upon the paper, waved it in the air to dry; sighed, smiled at Peter, and wrapped it about the stem of the rosebud cluster; placed it on the table, and waved back Peter’s questing hand.

  “Your coat,” she said. “You’ll need it – for now you must go back.”

  She thrust his arms into the garment. She was laughing – but there were tears in the great, brown eyes; the red mouth was very wistful.

  Now the older woman arose, stretched out her hand again; Laveller bent over it, kissed it.

  “We shall be here waiting for you, my son,” she said softly. “When it is time for you to – come back.”

  He reached for the roses with the paper wrapped about their stem. The maid darted a hand over his, lifted them before he could touch them.

  “You must not read it until you have gone,” she said – and again the rose flame burned throat and cheeks.

  Hand in hand, like children, they sped over the greensward to where Peter had first met her. There they stopped, regarding each other gravely – and then that other miracle which had happened to Laveller and that he had forgotten in the shock of his wider realization called for utterance.

  “I love you!” whispered Peter Laveller to this living, long-dead Demoiselle de Tocquelain.

  She sighed, and was in his arms.

  “Oh, I know you do!” she cried. “I know you do, dear one – but I was so afraid you would go without telling me so.”

  She raised her sweet lips, pressed them long to his, drew back.

  “I loved you from the moment I saw you standing here,” she told him, “and I will be here waiting for you when you return. And now you must go, dear love of mine; but wait –”

  He felt a hand steal into the pocket of his tunic, press something over his heart.

  “The messages,” she said. “Take them. And remember – I will wait. I promise. I, Lucie de Tocquelain –”

  There was a singing in his head. He opened his eyes. He was back in his trench, and in his ears still rang the name of the demoiselle, and over his heart he felt still the pressure of her hand. His head was half turned toward three men who were regarding him.

  One of them had a watch in his hand; it was the surgeon. Why was he looking at his watch? Had he been gone long? he wondered.

  Well, what did it matter, when he was the bearer of such a message? His weariness had gone; he was transformed, jubilant; his soul was shouting paeans. Forgetting discipline, he sprang toward the three.

  “There is no such thing as death!” he cried. “We must send this message along the lines – at once! At once, do you understand! Tell it to the world – I have proof –”

  He stammered and choked in his eagerness. The three glanced at each other. His major lifted his electric flash, clicked it in Peter’s face, started oddly – then quietly walked over and stood between the lad and his rifle.

  “Just get your breath a moment, my boy, and then tell us all about it,” he said.

  They were devilishly unconcerned, were they not? Well, wait till they had heard what he had to tell them!

  And tell them Peter did, leaving out only what had passed between him and the demoiselle – for, after all, wasn’t that their own personal affair? And gravely and silently they listened to him. But always the trouble deepened in his major’s eyes as Laveller poured forth the story.

  “And then – I came back, came back as quickly as I could, to help us all; to lift us out of all this” – his hands swept out in a wide gesture of disgust – “for none of it matters! When we die – we live!” he ended.

  Upon the face of the man of science rested profound satisfaction.

  “A perfect demonstration; better than I could ever have hoped!” he spoke over Laveller’s head to the major. “Great, how great is the imagination of man!”

  There was a tinge of awe in his voice.

  Imagination? Peter was cut to the sensitive, vibrant soul of him.

  They didn’t believe him! He would show them!

  “But I have the proof!” he cried.

  He threw open his greatcoat, ran his hand into his tunic-pocket; his fingers closed over a bit of paper wrapped around a stem. Ah – now he would show them!

  He drew it out, thrust it toward them.

  “Look!” His voice was like a triumphal trumpet-call.

  What was the matter with them? Could they not see? Why did their eyes search his face instead of realizing what he was offering them? He looked at what he held – then, incredulous, brought it close to his own eyes, gazed and gazed, with a sound in his ears as though the universe were slipping away around him, with a heart that seemed to have forgotten to beat. For in his hand, stem wrapped in paper, was no fresh and fragrant rosebud cluster his brown-eyed demoiselle’s mother had clipped for him in the garden.

  No – there was but a sprig of artificial buds, worn and torn and stained, faded and old!

  A great numbness crept over Peter.

  Dumbly he looked at the surgeon, at his captain, at the major whose face was now troubled indeed and somewhat stern.

  “What does it mean?” he muttered.

  Had it all been a dream? Was there no radiant Lucie – save in his own mind – no brown-eyed maid who loved him and whom he loved?

  The scientist stepped forward, took the worn little sprig from the relaxed grip. The bit of paper slipped off, remained in Peter’s fingers.

  “You certainly deserve to know just what you’ve been through, my boy,” the urbane, capable voice beat upon his dulled hearing, “after such a reaction as you have provided to our little experiment.” He laughed pleasantly.

  Experiment?
Experiment? A dull rage began to grow in Peter – vicious, slowly rising.

  “Monsieur!” called the major appealingly, somewhat warningly, it seemed, to his distinguished visitor.

  “Oh, by your leave, major,” went on the great man, “here is a lad of high intelligence – of education, you could know that by the way he expressed himself – he will understand.”

  The major was not a scientist – he was a Frenchman, human, and with an imagination of his own. He shrugged; but he moved a little closer to the resting rifle.

  “We had been discussing, your officers and I,” the capable voice went on, “dreams that are the half-awakened mind’s effort to explain some touch, some unfamiliar sound, or what not that has aroused it from its sleep. One is slumbering, say, and a window nearby is broken. The sleeper hears, the consciousness endeavors to learn – but it has given over its control to the subconscious. And this rises accommodatingly to its mate’s assistance. But it is irresponsible, and it can express itself only in pictures.

  “It takes the sound and – well, weaves a little romance around it. It does its best to explain – alas! Its best is only a more or less fantastic lie – recognized as such by the consciousness the moment it becomes awake.

  “And the movement of the subconsciousness in this picture production is inconceivably rapid. It can depict in the fraction of a second a series of incidents that if actually lived would take hours – yes, days – of time. You follow me, do you not? Perhaps you recognize the experience I outline?”

  Laveller nodded. The bitter, consuming rage was mounting within him steadily. But he was outwardly calm, all alert. He would hear what this self-satisfied devil had done to him, and then –

  “Your officers disagreed with some of my conclusions. I saw you here, weary, concentrated upon the duty at hand, half in hypnosis from the strain and the steady flaring and dying of the lights. You offered a perfect clinical subject, a laboratory test unexcelled –”

  Could he keep his hands from his throat until he had finished? Laveller wondered. Lucie, his Lucie, a fantastic lie –

  “Steady, mon vieux” – it was his major whispering. Ah, when he struck, he must do it quickly – his officer was too close, too close. Still – he must keep his watch for him through the slit. He would be peering there, perhaps, when he, Peter, leaped.

  “And so” – the surgeon’s tones were in his best student-clinic manner – “and so I took a little sprig of artificial flowers that I had found pressed between the leaves of an old missal I had picked up in the ruins of the chateau yonder. On a slip of paper I wrote a line of French – for then I thought you a French soldier. It was a simple line from the ballad of ‘Aucassin and Nicolette’ –”

  And there she waits to greet him

  When all his days are run.

  “Also, there was a name written on the title-page of the missal, the name, no doubt, of its long-dead owner – ‘Lucie de Tocquelain’ –”

  Lucie! Peter’s rage and hatred were beaten back by a great surge of longing – rushed back stronger than ever.

  “So I passed the sprig of flowers before your unseeing eyes; consciously unseeing, I mean, for it was certain your subconsciousness would take note of them. I showed you the line of writing – your subconsciousness absorbed this, too, with its suggestion of a love troth, a separation, an awaiting. I wrapped it about the stem of the sprig, I thrust them both into your pocket, and called the name of Lucie de Tocquelain into your ear.

  “The problem was what your other self would make of those four things – the ancient cluster, the suggestion in the line of writing, the touch, and the name – a fascinating problem, indeed!

  “And hardly had I withdrawn my hand, almost before my lips closed on the word I had whispered – you had turned to us shouting that there was no such thing as death, and pouring out, like one inspired, that remarkable story of yours – all, all built by your imagination from –”

  But he got no further. The searing rage in Laveller had burst all bounds, had flared forth murderously and hurled him silently at the surgeon’s throat. There were flashes of flame before his eyes – red, sparkling sheets of flame. He would die for it, but he would kill this cold-blooded fiend who could take a man out of hell, open up to him heaven, and then thrust him back into hell grown now a hundred times more cruel, with all hope dead in him for eternity.

  Before he could strike strong hands gripped him, held him fast. The scarlet, curtained flares before his eyes faded away. He thought he heard a tender, golden voice whispering to him:

  “It is nothing! It is nothing! See as I do!”

  He was standing between his officers, who held him fast on each side. They were silent, looking at the now white-faced surgeon with more than somewhat of cold, unfriendly sternness in their eyes.

  “My boy, my boy” – that scientist’s poise was gone; his voice trembling, agitated. “I did not understand – I am sorry – I never thought you would take it so seriously.”

  Laveller spoke to his officers – quietly. “It is over, sirs. You need not hold me.”

  They looked at him, released him, patted him on the shoulder, fixed again their visitor with that same utter contempt.

  Laveller turned stumblingly to the parapet. His eyes were full of tears. Brain and heart and soul were nothing but a blind desolation, a waste utterly barren of hope or of even the ghost of the wish to hope. That message of his, the sacred truth that was to set the feet of a tormented world on the path to paradise – a dream.

  His Lucie, his brown-eyed demoiselle who had murmured her love for him – a thing compounded of a word, a touch, a writing, and an artificial flower!

  He could not, would not believe it. Why, he could feel still the touch of her soft lips on his, her warm body quivering in his arms. And she had said he would come back – and promised to wait for him.

  What was that in his hand? It was the paper that had wrapped the rosebuds – the cursed paper with which that cold devil had experimented with him.

  Laveller crumpled it savagely – raised it to hurl it at his feet.

  Someone seemed to stay his hand.

  Slowly he opened it.

  The three men watching him saw a glory steal over his face, a radiance like that of a soul redeemed from endless torture. All its sorrow, its agony, was wiped out, leaving it a boy’s once more.

  He stood wide-eyed, dreaming.

  The major stepped forward, gently drew the paper from Laveller.

  There were many star-shells floating on high now, the trench was filled with their glare, and in their light he scanned the fragment.

  On his face when he raised it there was a great awe – and as they took it from him and read this same awe dropped down upon the others like a veil.

  For over the line the surgeon had written were now three other lines – in old French: –

  “Nor grieve, dear heart, nor fear the seeming –

  Here is waking after dreaming.

  – She who loves you, Lucie.”

  That was McAndrews’s story, and it was Hawtry who finally broke the silence that followed his telling of it.

  “The lines had been on the paper, of course,” he said; “they were probably faint, and your surgeon had not noticed them. It was drizzling, and the dampness brought them out.”

  “No,” answered McAndrews; “they had not been there.”

  “But how can you be so sure?” remonstrated the Psychologist.

  “Because I was the surgeon,” said McAndrews quietly. “The paper was a page torn from my note book. When I wrapped it about the sprig it was blank – except for the line I myself had written there.

  “But there was one more bit of – well, shall we call it evidence, John? – the hand in which Laveller’s message was penned was the hand in the missal in which I had found the flowers – and the signature ‘Lucie’ was
that same signature, curve for curve and quaint, old-fashioned angle for angle.”

  A longer silence fell, broken once more by Hawtry, abruptly.

  “What became of the paper?” he asked. “Was the ink analyzed? Was –”

  “As we stood there wondering,” interrupted McAndrews, “a squall swept down upon the trench. It tore the paper from my hand; carried it away. Laveller watched it go; made no effort to get it.”

  “ ‘It does not matter. I know now,’ he said – and smiled at me, the forgiving, happy smile of a joyous boy. ‘I apologize to you, doctor. You’re the best friend I ever had. I thought at first you had done to me what no other man would do to another – I see now that you have done for me what no other man could.’

  “And that is all. He went through the war neither seeking death nor avoiding it. I loved him like a son. He would have died after that Mount Kemmel affair had it not been for me. He wanted to live long enough to bid his father and sister goodbye, and I – patched him up. He did it, and then set forth for the trench beneath the shadow of the ruined old chateau where his brown-eyed demoiselle had found him.”

  “Why?” asked Hawtry.

  “Because he thought that from there he could – go back – to her more quickly.”

  “To me an absolutely unwarranted conclusion,” said the psychologist, wholly irritated, half angry. “There is some simple, natural explanation of it all.”

  “Of course, John,” answered McAndrews soothingly – “of course there is. Tell us it, can’t you?”

  But Hawtry, it seemed, could not offer any particulars.

  Pen Dragons

  Dan Micklethwaite

  A boy of about nine years old tracks through the grass and the moss and the reeds of the swamp. These are the Marches. Rough country, unless you get used to it quickly. Grow up within it, rather than staying apart. His mother would have preferred him to remain in the keep, by the fire, with the old women watching over. His father pushed him out of the door as soon as he could walk.

  “You’ll have to be strong, boy, if you want to follow me.”