Short Stories 1895-1926

by Walter De la Mare

  It was just now that a little breeze moved, lifting the hair upon my head and letting it fall. By and by it came again, fluttered, and fell; and again, like the breath of a Polar bear. Soon it blew briskly and steadily. ‘Put up your collar, Count,’ said I. ‘Fortune defend us from rain!’

  So gently was the city ascending that it seemed she was being wafted onward by the gentle wind. In a little while she emerged quite out of the haze and revealed to us her remoter pinnacles and towers, fair and lucid, and of gossamer airiness. Her course was not the moon’s course, and at no time did she rise many degrees above the skyline. Her progress (whither, who can say?) must have been very slow, so much my bones on the morrow painfully testified, but zest is time’s sharpest rowel, and when morn came, putting out the vision, the night seemed only too soon to have come to an end.

  This while the Count, in his own conceit, was Commander-in-Chief of the celestial aliens. He growled commands, stormed, and soliloquized. He squandered his virile vocabulary upon trembling aides-de-camp. His pose was heroic. In his dun mackintosh, at attention – so far as his leg would permit him – upon his own gatepost he cut a figure droll enough.

  In some measure his isolation warranted his boast. As fortunate as inexplicable was our solitude. Even the woman to whom we were now come near, was not at all disturbed, but lay fast asleep, her face upturned to the pale sky, quite regardless of the miracle, grossly unabashed by these ‘minions of the moon’. Perhaps she entertained in her dreams other visitors – silks, and ease, and plenty – as rare and as pleasing.

  Upon the Count and the sleeper, however, I wasted little attention. Troop after troop of horse, of somewhat gloomy equipment, were defiling between the gates of the city; some to join the main body, now distent in a crescent, some to spread fanwise on either flank of the moon-army. It chanced, moreover, that while I was watching there fell a lull in the procession; those horsemen who were just beyond the portal looked back and sharply drew in against the wall; and, presently after, a rider with cloak astream, bearing despatches (perchance) from one in authority or from council convened in secret debate, burst solitary and precipitate out of the shadow, curved upward, dwindled to a spark under the sprawling Bear, went out – and the horsemen trooped on orderly between the city gates.

  The contingents despatched before, whom we had espied on the horizon, had seized the south, and with tight rein were stretching in towards the centre, driving before them isolated stragglers (‘scouts,’ said the Count) of the moon-army. This latter, constantly being recruited by these few and others from above, was now swollen to quite formidable bulk.

  ‘How are the chances, Count?’ said I.

  ‘I like it not, I like it not,’ said he, astutely wagging his head. ‘I wonder,’ he continued, ‘if a cockcrow would reach their ears! England expects! Ma foi, what city is this of marvellous architecture? Now it minds me of a black pearl, now of a dreamed Babylon. I say, I say!’

  ‘What now?’ said I. A troop of horse was wheeling in the black north in stealthiest fashion.

  ‘See you there? See you the main gate?’ said the Count, with antic gesticulations.

  ‘The main gate?’ said I. One of my men had fallen headlong.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Count; ‘yes; well, look back, fifty yards or so, to that sheeny dome where the grey birds are fluttering; now to the right a little – ken ye a turret? It is the king; it is the king.’

  I left watching my troop, and followed his directions. Nearby the ramparts, in full view of the battlefield, upon a turret, was a little gorgeous company, with heads sapiently inclined each to each, gossiping together with restrained gestures; and a little afore them upon that turret, alone, a man, very sombre and regal and elect. Whether king or city mayor or grand vizier. ‘Ho!’ bawled the Count, ‘old lamps for new.’ No answer came. ‘Sky wolves,’ he howled in a frenzy, ‘birds of battle, show us of things. Turn your faces agleam. Whence came you out? Is time there? Passes the night? Ho, Ho, Ho!’

  We waited for but the stir of a finger to betray them; but, even did they hear, they took no heed. Indeed, it seemed that all the combatants were clean without knowledge of the earth. Theirs only was the universe. If I may again quote the Count: ‘Why, sir, even the camp followers are Napoleons’ – which is fanciful, but this is just. ‘I have walked the world this three-score and ten, and tonight see soldiers.’

  Soldiers indeed they were; their callous persistency, their vigorous order and array, and their trim machinal manoeuvres alarmed me (down here in safety) not a little. But this not so much as the silence. For not until near break of day did the wind grow turbulent, and bluster and grumble at the chimney tops, and shrill in the bare twigs. Meanwhile the small voice of a cricket in the stable-wall sounded continuously in my ear, although my eyes were dazzled and giddy, and my wits in a maze with watching of the ever-moving host. I wondered at the Count’s temerity. ‘Ah,’ said he, ‘my uncle the Major would have enjoyed this! Their wings beat in my heart. Do but put out a finger, it would touch them. Bah, blockheads! Blockheads! Stretch him against a wall. I will have ’em all court-martialled. Skirted misses! Weanlings! Ha, a devilish fine fellow! He knows his business, he knows his business.’ Thus the Count dittied, now to the skies, now to me.

  Slowly, in an icy silence, the armies drew together. Of a thousand warriors of old, spent, heart-sick Sisera alone came to my mind and Deborah’s Song of Victory – ‘They fought from heaven; the stars in their courses fought against Sisera,’ thrilled down the centuries to the clap of timbrels, as though I had been the traitress Jael herself. Indeed, myself was fanatical, up in arms. Doubtless our cramped position, the cold, the solitude, and the seeing of nought earthly but here a tree-top, now a glossy roof, in some measure cut us off from life’s corporeity, gave us wings; it is, nevertheless, remarkable that these extramundane noctivagators should have so convinced us that (as the Count said) this fat, palpable, complacent world suddenly grew spectre-thin and stalked out of reality into a mist of dreams. We were like flies upon the ceiling of a ballroom watching the motley festivities, save that the feet of the dancers (the celestial hosts) trod our air. How vast seemed the circuit of the skies.

  ‘I give them twenty minutes to get into action,’ said the Count.

  The minutes passed by exceeding slowly. The night was wind-swept and very clear; everything plotted to assist and entrance our observation. Hitherto, we had been quite undisturbed, but when a half of the Count’s twenty minutes was gone by, suddenly I heard a loud shouting. I looked with some vexation across the common; a man with his hands clapped upon his head was violently running over the grass, crying out shrilly as he ran. ‘Here’s a wretch at last who calls “Fall on us,”’ said the Count. The intruder came on with many a stumble and now and then a fall, for the moon played tricks with her shadows upon the unequal ground.

  ‘Hollo,’ I shouted, ‘hold your tongue – hold your tongue!’

  The intruder threw back his head with a gasp (he was then twenty paces distant), and seeing that the sudden voice was human and not, as he might think, from the clouds, quickly trotted towards us and soon was cowering at the pedestal, his hand upon the Count’s boot. The Count was on a roar, and roared the louder when the woman, awakened by the fellow’s clamour, put back her head to yawn, and saw the sky. She waited not to scream, but lifting her skirts that they should not impede her, whipped round and in a wink was nimbly footing it over the grass towards this, the only haven, like a startled bat. When she reached us, she hid her face in a corner of her ulster and gabbled incessantly, like a woman possessed.

  ‘Chut! hold your tongue, ma’am,’ said the Count testily, ‘you desecrate the silence.’

  Her voice fell to a low continuous moaning. The street musician, for such was the first-comer, after the first flush of terror, quickly recovered his wits. In high feather he perched himself upon the stable-wall, and thence commanded a wider view to the south than ourselves. This he used to advantage, crying us news when detachmen
ts thereabouts swooped out of our sight. Nor were we the only watchers: the walls of the night-begotten city were black with still onlookers viewing the battle from afar off.

  Now the last moment was come. My heart stood still in panic expectancy. Even the Count henceforward held his peace; even things inanimate seemed to bow beneath the burden of the silence; and the trees crouched under the moving skies like huddled beasts at the thunder. All sudden the blood gushed warm in my body. All sudden a weltering wave of horsemen rocked against the stars. Then the armies of the sky met.

  Now at full speed, in silence, the nightsmen swept down upon the moonsmen, surging in their onslaught almost within touch of the moon. Now steadily with grim stubbornness, in silence of deep seas, the moonsmen drove back their assailants and falling and leaping, leaping and falling, regained their magic circle. The sky was rimpled over with galloping horsemen as foam rides in on wind-beaten waves. The spark-spitting hoofs, the pulse of moonlit wings, the fury of brandished weapons, though without sound, rang in my inward ears. All this night the moon wended her steep way in a girdle of glittering warriors.

  Albeit here was the very acme of the battle, yet to me the outlying troops of horsemen far down in the heavens until they almost grazed roof, were more engrossing. Sometimes in one of these petty fights most ingenious tactics were evident. Like falcon and heron, two would flutter, swoop, hover, fall; in a trice, without a sound. Such a duel as this took place immediately above our heads. Even the woman, seated upon the Count’s mackintosh, left her wailing and thereafter gave little rest to her small quick eyes.

  Now a vehement squadron sped higher, highmost until the sight yearned in vain. Now a luckless horseman in the full heat of fight fell like a meteor into our unfriendly air and silently, like a meteor, disappeared. Fleet soaring skirmishers, slow compact regiments, disarrayed frenzied fugitives, hither and thither, to and fro, put out the stars and filled the air with lightnings. Without sound, undaunted, and more gloriously ablaze in their swift decadence, a thousand fell out of silence into nothingness. And if a legion in grim magnificence should in its tactics droop from on high to within some few spire-lengths of the earth, then a giant shadow would sweep the moonbeams from the dewy grass, and would transiently dull the glitter of the Count’s round eyes. I noticed, also, more than once, that at some extreme point of vantage the troops would muster innumerably until, like a wolf-harried flock, a tangled tumultuous mass would rear itself fantastically upon the horizon, and ere long, trembling, would sink out of sight.

  Once, a bird, out of the ivy of the house, with low chirrups of dismay, went fluttering from tree to tree – it seemed like a voice from the dead. Ever and anon, the eye, debauched with movement, returned to that silent city, black with her people upon her walls, whom every accident of the fight, whether of victory or defeat, visibly moved. (‘Alack, the brave mothers!’ said the Count.) The king, too, austere and motionless, with finger upon cheek – his brain, I wager, on an itch to be doing – was a sight for young eyes.

  ‘My friend,’ afterwards said the Count, ‘I almost wept that I was not a boy!’

  All the night through the battle waged and the moon fell lower towards her setting: all the night through silent battalions sped and met and scattered: all the night through the ‘pedestalled’ Count, and the woman, and the street musician, and I myself, in a little company, watched the wonder. Throughout the night we kept our watch while our good neighbours, orthodox and sceptical alike, on the other side their shining windows snored in comfortable and decorous ignorance, slumbered then and slumber now – I doubt if death himself shall open their eyes.

  It may be debated if this prodigy were visible outside of the Count’s Wimbledon. At some miles distant the horsemen might appear like clouds, the city a cloud, and would call for little attention. Maybe (and the Count thinks it) some solitary astrologer at a window wielded a telescope; some boy watching, ate apples. But, of all men, none could have deeper joy of the thing than the Count. Perhaps it were not amiss to the military reader here to be presented with the Count’s full diagrams, and technical utterances, relating to the event; but so abstruse were his explanations, so voluble and incoherent (and so drastic) his censures and approofs, his charts so profoundly ‘impressionistic’, that I despaired even of understanding them, far more of fitly and authoritatively setting them down. Wherefore this account is brief and merely my own. The end of the matter I may not know; even the cause of the battle is hid from me. The Count was afterwards cocksure of the city’s victory. It is better known to them who blackened her walls and kept watch; to her king himself.

  The vision faded with the stars in the east-south-east, and was put out at the coming of day. At the first doubtful peep of dawn’s grey eye the city seemed to tremble and the horsemen to wax pale, as a cheek grows pale with fear. We sorrowfully watched their passing. Ere long the tyrant sun, preceded by a garish retinue, rose in the east, and the city with her history and her people and her wonder, as she had come out of the night, went forth into the day, and we saw her no more. Maybe the combatants fought on, and the world left them behind; maybe they are superior inhabitants of far places and will appear to us no more; but perhaps, if like monsters in the deep seas we shall watch in patience for the repassing of such craft sailing in silence our long nights, our expectations will be not altogether vain. Now, however, morning smoke was rising; London was out of bed; and moonsmen and nightsmen had disappeared as if they were mere creatures of the imagination.

  The Count was very cold and nigh helpless. ‘I have seen the sign,’ said he anagogically. ‘What heroes! what a fight! My brothers in arms in the to be.’ He chafed his gouty fingers and continued with emotion. ‘We have seen – you and I. Valhalla! Dust to — ? Ha! that Rascal besashed, that Press-gangsman.’ He fetched a deep breath. ‘Now, ma’am, and you, sir,’ he added, with kindly nods to our fellow-watchers, ‘’tis nipping and raw, pray walk in.’

  We entered the house together. The Count walked in upon the musician’s arm, deploring as he went the silence of the night. ‘What did it lack say I? – a band, my friend – a skyey drum-and-fife band. Think on’t – drum-taps like cowards’ teeth, a brazen war-blast out of the sky deeps.’

  ‘Fireworks without the pop,’ replied the musician, more than confident after his fears.

  ‘Ah, sir, I perceive you are a man of the world,’ said the Count.

  The musician tittered.

  The Count’s visitors were hospitably regaled with rum-and-water. The musician, before his departure, entertained us with a tune. Soon they were gone away with a bit of silver in their pockets, not bound, I trust, for a lunatic asylum. The Count and I tried vainly to converse upon topics befitting the breakfast table. We eyed each other askance, each suspicious of the other’s credulity. Conversation was flat and unprofitable, and the ingressive sun a sorry mockery. Optimism is not unfrequently the harbinger of pessimism.

  At the first stir of the housekeeper’s rising the Count made morosely for bed.

  1 First published in Cornhill Magazine, April 1897, ‘by Walter Ramal’; selected for inclusion in R (1923) but finally omitted; later published in Eight Tales, ed. Edward Wagenknecht, Sauk City, Wisconsin, 1971. It is the earliest printed ‘Count’ story: cf ‘The Almond Tree’ and ‘The Count’s Courtship’ (R (1923)), and ‘A Beginning’ (Beg (1955)).

  The Giant1

  Peter lived with his aunt, and his sister Emma, in a small house near Romford. His aunt was a woman of very fair complexion, her heavy hair was golden-brown, her eyes blue; on work days she wore a broad printed apron. His sister Emma helped her aunt in the housework as best she could, out of school-time. She would sometimes play at games with Peter, but she cared for few in which her doll could take no part. Still, Peter knew games which he might play by himself; and although sometimes he played with Emma and her doll, yet generally they played apart, she alone with her doll, and he with the people of his own imagining.

  The rose-papered room above the kitch
en (being the largest room upstairs) was his aunt’s bedroom. There Emma also slept, in a little bed near the window. For, although in the great double bed was room enough (her aunt being but a middle-sized woman), yet the other pillow was always smooth and undinted, and that half of the bed was always undisturbed. On May-day primroses were strewn here, and a sprig of mistletoe at Christmas.

  On a bright morning in July (for not withstanding the sun shone fiercely in the sky, yet a random wind tempered his heat), Peter went to sit under the shadow of the wall to read his book in the garden. But when he opened the door to go out, something seemed strange to him in the garden. Whether it was the garden itself that looked or sounded strange, or himself and his thoughts that were different from usual, he could not tell. He stood on the doorstep and looked out across the grass. He wrinkled up his eyes because of the fervid sunshine that glanced bright even upon the curved blades of grass. And, while he looked across towards the foot of the garden, almost without his knowing it his eyes began to travel up along the trees, till he was looking into the cloudless skies. He quickly averted his eyes, with water brimming over, it was so bright above. But yet, again, as he looked across, slowly his gaze wandered up from the ground into the dark blue. He fumbled the painted covers of his book and sat down on the doorstep. He could hear the neighbouring chickens clucking and scratching in the dust, and sometimes a voice in one of the gardens spoke out in the heat. But he could not read his book for glancing out of his eye along the garden. And suddenly, with a frown, he opened the door and ran back into the kitchen.

  Emma was in the bedroom making the great bed. Peter climbed upstairs and began to talk to her, and while he talked drew gradually nearer and nearer to the window. And then he walked quickly away, and took hold of the brass knob of the bedpost.