Complete Works of G K Chesterton, page 341
“The light’s gone out, oh, the light’s gone out,” moaned the turnips. The Gardener retired into the house, and came out again with a short candle burning in each hand. He made his way through the lines of turnips. Opening a door in the back of their heads, he placed the light inside, and instantly two pairs of eyes glared out as fiercely as ever. Back came the Gardener, taking half a mile at a stride over the wide downs of his kitchen-garden, and as he came back he saw Jack, who was peeping through the wooden paling.
“Who are you?” he roared with a voice like thunder.
“I am Jack Horner,” replied that intrepid individual.
The nursery rhymes had not formed part of the Gardener’s course of reading, so he knitted his brow and bellowed. “Do you know where you are?”
“Well, not altogether,” replied the boy. “Where am I?”
“This,” replied the tall Gardener, “is the garden of the turnip- ghosts. They are grown and sent to Covent Garden every morning. They have a great sale among people of your race, but none of your race ever came here before, or shall again. Come, you won’t object to being buried up to the neck and having a candle put inside your head, will you?”
“Indeed, I shall object very much,” replied Jack stoutly. “And what’s more, I shan’t do it.”
“Shan’t is rude,” said the tall Gardener, showing a row of gleaming teeth, and, making a sudden dart, he lifted Jack by the collar and dropped him inside the enclosure. Jack, however, was not beaten so easily, but running full tilt at the Gardener he upset him with a bang among the turnips, sending his long rake flying ten miles off. But the Giant was on his feet again in a moment, and, snatching his largest flower-pot, he hurled it so as to come down neatly enclosing Jack underneath; but the boy kicked it to pieces and clutching the nearest missiles, two large turnips, which he tore up by the roots, he hurled them at the head of his enemy, who sent them back with additions. Then began a battle worthy of an epic. For days and nights they fought each other all over the hills, tearing up the turnips by thousands and flinging them pell-mell about the land. And at the end of a week’s fighting, there was not a turnip lighted or growing in the land, but here and there a dying candle would make a dismal flame in the chaotic darkness. And the Gardener went aimlessly about the world, looking for his hat, and Jack continued his pilgrimage.
And at last he came to a strange land, where the rocks and mountain crests seemed as ragged and fantastic as the clouds of sunset, where wild and sudden lights, breaking out in nooks and clefts, were all that lit the sombre twilight of the world. And one day, as he wandered over the rocks and dales, he heard, suddenly, sounding through the darkness from over his head, a kind of long, shrill, demoniac neigh, which echoed weirdly over the lonely hills. And perched upon a hill- crest far above the dark mists, he could see the outline of what looked like a grey foal, looking down into the valley. The next moment the wild sound echoed again and it disappeared. Then he said to himself, “I am near the nest of the Grey Mare.”
And after walking for a long time there came a fierce glare of light behind the hills, and he saw on the loftiest and most mysterious crest the fantastic head and mane of a great grey mare, perched in a nest like an eagle’s. After a long climb he came to the base of the cliff on which the nest was perched and he could see the Grey Mare rolling her fiery eyes far over the lonely world; and scattered over the crags beneath her weird brood of mares were playing their demoniac gambols. And farthest of all, on the brink of an awful precipice, was the long black form and floating mane of the Nightmare, the darkest and most hideous of all. And when he saw it he gave a cry and ran towards it. All the grey mares, wandering like ghosts about the slopes, eyed him doubtfully as he went past, but the Nightmare, when she saw him, gave a scream like thunder and skipped wildly down the other side of the hill, whither Jack followed her. Then began a chase in which leagues and months were covered. Now the Nightmare would be flying far ahead of him, like a startled deer, far over the level plain and moors, now, with a still more maddening agility, she would be dancing indolently a few feet in front of him, in and out among the rocks, seeming to suggest by the very tossing of her long tail her contempt for human pursuit. Sometimes she would stand on her head a few yards off and smile at him till he came near, then flash off and grin at him round the corner of a rock. But neither his failure nor her scorn could make the stubborn little boy give up his appointed task, and in time he began to see the reward for his persistence.
The Nightmare began to lose her temper and try to get rid of him, thereby denoting that she no longer felt herself equal to the race, till at length, when they came to the strand of a moaning sea, close under a level face of cliffs, the Nightmare ran along at a quick trot till she came to a round hole in the rocks, which looked ten times too small for her, gave a squirm and vanished inside. Jack began to feel that things were even getting a little, as it were, unusual, if one may say so, but he clenched his hands and crept into the hole, which only just held him, and crawled along a dark low passage, at the end of which, upon a heap of skulls and bones, sat the Nightmare with gleaming eyes and teeth, and he knew that she was at bay. But Jack, who always felt compassion at inopportune moments, was willing to make an amicable arrangement. “Why do you object to my riding on you?” he asked. “I wish you no harm, but rather that we may both help each other. All things should help each other. It is the will of the Central Board.”
“Mortal,” replied the Nightmare, with a hideous laugh. “Dost though not know that I am no common mare. The Nightmare am I, the child of horror, and mine is it to ride upon thee. Many myriads of thy race have I ridden and made them my slaves, oppressing them with visions.” And with that her eyes flamed terribly and her nose seemed to grow longer and longer as she came towards him. The next moment they were struggling for the mastery, rolling over one another, so that now one was uppermost and now the other.
And when Jack was undermost, with the black fiend sitting grinning on his chest, strange trances fell upon him and he fancied that he was falling from heights and fleeing down interminable roads, with a strange hopelessness in everything. And when, with a mighty effort, he cast them off, and threw his enemy under him, he found himself upon a silent moor under the starlight. So, through a long night, they kept changing places, till at last, after one fierce, foaming struggle- side by side, Jack rose uppermost, and tossed back his dishevelled hair, and the Nightmare sank helpless beneath him. She appeared to have fainted, and, after what the poor lady had gone through, it was perhaps not to be wondered at.
And Jack took the big, ugly head in his lap and kissed it and guarded it in silence, till at last the Nightmare opened her eyes, now as mild as the Mooncalf s, whinnied sorrowfully and rubbed her head against him. At last the Nightmare rose and stood silent and ready and Jack sprang upon her back and they rode away. And as they went, they passed by the Mooncalf, who was sitting on a stone, singing, with his tail feebly beating time.
“On thy poor offspring thy pale beams be given,
Turning the dull moor to white halls of heaven,
And in my songs, O Cow, from your memory slide off
The painful effects of the tune that you died of.
We sit here alone, but a joy to each other,
The light to the child and the songs to the mother.”
He feared at first lest the grisly form of the Nightmare should frighten the poor Mooncalf, as indeed it frightened everything else on his way, but fears, like every other emotion save the filial, were unknown to the pale and lonely monstrosity. He was quite content, gazing plaintively up to the moon, and let the grim Nightmare go by as if it were the most conventional of quadrupeds. Once men had tried to domesticate the Mooncalf by taking it into the land of sunlight and decorating it with laurels, but it pined and wailed pathetically for the moon, which was proverbially absurd. And at last it broke loose from the everyday world and wandered away again into the land of moonshine, far more happy than many people would believe.
Meanwhile Jack and his dark steed had made their way to the wall and the notice-board, and re-entered the land of the real. But before he had gone far over the hard fields and stony ways of the old world, Jack saw that the poor Nightmare was limping and stumbling lamentably, and remembered that shoes were not provided in the vicinity of which she had been an inhabitant. Leading her with all speed to the nearest town he interviewed a blacksmith, who agreed to shoe her for the usual consideration. But the curious, not to say discommoding, part of the proceeding was that the Nightmare, who walked as mildly as a lamb while Jack himself was holding her, no sooner did the latter let go and the blacksmith approached her with a shoe than she gave a demoniac roar and kicked him through the roof. The apprentices and bystanders made a rush to secure the animal, but she fired out like a prize fighter; her legs appeared to have about twenty joints, from the way in which they flashed and curled about, knocking down man after man.
She appeared to thoroughly enjoy the fight, which was more than they did: her eyes glared with a lurid flame, her teeth and tongue pro- traded derisively, she appeared to grow more frightful every moment. None of the men dared approach her, as she sat viciously rubbing her nose with her hoof and grinning at them.
“Aha,” she said, scornfully, “worms of mortal race, would ye lift your puny iron machinery against the living machinery of infernal life. Well may ye tremble, for my shadow is in your doors, and I will eat out your hearts with terror.” Just at this promising stage of affairs, Jack came quietly forward with a hammer in one hand and the shoe in the other. The moment the flaring eyes of the monster encountered his face, she moaned and bowed her head, and Jack, taking the tools into his own hand, shoed her himself and rode away. And as he passed through the streets all the people murmured and hooted, and one man incautiously got in the way, whereupon the Nightmare spurned him over the chimney pots and the rest preserved a respectful distance.
Now it so happened that the King was resolved to hold a great display of tournaments in the town, to which came all the knights and warriors of his and the neighbouring countries. And when the lists were ready under the throne and bannered galleries and canopies, there rode forth on either side, with flaming crests and snorting chargers, the mightiest tilters of the land. And third of those who entered the lists, after the Prince Valentine of Vandala, and Lord Breacan of the Lance, rode a wild-eyed bare-headed boy, on a lank, black mare, broken- kneed, with a mane and tail brushing the ground. And all the while the broken-kneed mare and her rider stood silent. Suddenly, at the turning point of the fight, when Prince Valentine threw down his strongest opponent and rose victorious over the thick of the fray, the strange boy shook the hair from his forehead, levelled his rude spear and whispered something to his dismal and shabby steed. The mare gave a piercing yell that made the whole company jump out of their skin, and went like a thunderbolt, so that the boy’s spear smote Prince Valentine on the vizor and laid him neatly on his back.
The Prince sprang up, amid the shouts, and flew at him, sword in hand, but ere either could strike, the Nightmare, who now stood as dismal as ever, showed its frightful teeth and, biting the weapon off short, munched it up with much apparent enjoyment. The Prince retired cursing, but Breacan of the Lance, a mailed giant, with a spear like a ship’s mast, galloped down upon them. The Nightmare gave a hideous grin and, shooting forward, squirmed and vanished suddenly, rider and all, between the front legs of the giant’s horse, so that in another moment he was suddenly shot head over heels and rolled on the ground.
The boy rode forward to the King’s throne. “Give me the prize,” he cried. “I and my good steed have vanquished the victors.”
The King started to his feet, and his brow was dark. “There is some sorcery,” he said, “in this boy and his black jade. Secure him.”
The boy laughed. “Secure me yourself, liar,” he said. “While I ride my mare, you may try.” He was about to turn away, but the Nightmare took matters into her own hands. With a roar like a clap of thunder she shot forward, upset throne and King and the next moment was miles away on the moors. “Come,” said the boy dismounting, “since men will not receive us, we will go on our way together. Perhaps we will visit the Mooncalf again and see your mother and your brothers.”
“My master,” said the Nightmare, sitting down at his feet. “I have no mother nor brothers. I know no one but you, who does not shrink from me. But you are my master and I will go with you whither you will.”
The Long Bow
Come, let us tell each other stories. There was once a king who was very fond of listening to stories, like the king in the Arabian Nights. The only difference was that, unlike that cynical Oriental, this king believed all the stories that he heard. It is hardly necessary to add that he lived in England. His face had not the swarthy secrecy of the tyrant of the thousand tales; on the contrary, his eyes were as big and innocent as two blue moons; and when his yellow beard turned totally white he seemed to be growing younger. Above him hung still his heavy sword and horn, to remind men that he had been a tall hunter and warrior in his time: indeed, with that rusted sword he had wrecked armies. But he was one of those who will never know the world, even when they conquer it. Besides his love of this old Chaucerian pastime of the telling of tales, he was, like many old English kings, specially interested in the art of the bow. He gathered round him great archers of the stature of Ulysses and Robin Hood, and to four of these he gave the whole government of his kingdom. They did not mind governing his kingdom; but they were sometimes a little bored with the necessity of telling him stories. None of their stories were true; but the king believed all of them, and this became very depressing. They created the most preposterous romances; and could not get the credit of creating them. Their true ambition was sent empty away. They were praised as archers; but they desired to be praised as poets. They were trusted as men, but they would rather have been admired as literary men.
At last, in an hour of desperation, they formed themselves into a club or conspiracy with the object of inventing some story which even the king could not swallow. They called it The League of the Long Bow; thus attaching themselves by a double bond to their motherland of England, which has been steadily celebrated since the Norman Conquest for its heroic archery and for the extraordinary credulity of its people.
At last it seemed to the four archers that their hour had come. The king commonly sat in a green curtained chamber, which opened by four doors, and was surmounted by four turrets. Summoning his champions to him on an April evening, he sent out each of them by a separate door, telling him to return at morning with the tale of his journey. Every champion bowed low, and, girding on great armour as for awful adventures, retired to some part of the garden to think of a lie. They did not want to think of a lie which would deceive the king; any lie would do that. They wanted to think of a lie so outrageous that it would not deceive him, and that was a serious matter.
The first archer who returned was a dark, quiet, clever fellow, very dexterous in small matters of mechanics. He was more interested in the science of the bow than in the sport of it. Also he would only shoot at a mark, for he thought it cruel to kill beasts and birds, and atrocious to kill men. When he left the king he had gone out into the wood and tried all sorts of tiresome experiments about the bending of branches and the impact of arrows; when even he found it tiresome he returned to the house of the four turrets and narrated his adventure. “Well,” said the king, “what have you been shooting?”
“Arrows,” answered the archer. “So I suppose,” said the king smiling; “but I mean, I mean what wild things have you shot?”
“I have shot nothing but arrows,” answered the bowman obstinately. “When I went out on to the plain I saw in a crescent the black army of the Tartars, the terrible archers whose bows are of bended steel, and their bolts as big as javelins. They spied me afar off, and the shower of their arrows shut out the sun and made a rattling roof above me. You know, I think it wrong to kill a bird, or worm, or even a Tartar. But such is the precision and rapidity of perfect science that, with my own arrows, I split every arrow as it came against me. I struck every flying shaft as if it were a flying bird. Therefore, Sire, I may say truly, that I shot nothing but arrows.” The king said, “I know how clever you engineers are with your fingers.” The archer said, “Oh,” and went out.
The second archer, who had curly hair and was pale, poetical, and rather effeminate, had merely gone out into the garden and stared at the moon. When the moon had become too wide, blank, and watery, even for his own wide, blank, and watery eyes, he came in again. And when the king said “What have you been shooting?” he answered with great volubility, “I have shot a man; not a man from Tartary, not a man from Europe, Asia, Africa, or America; not a man on this earth at all. I have shot the Man in the Moon.”
“Shot the Man in the Moon?” repeated the king with something like a mild surprise. “It is easy to prove it,” said the archer with hysterical haste. “Examine the moon through this particularly powerful telescope, and you will no longer find any traces of a man there.” The king glued his big blue idiotic eye to the telescope for about ten minutes, and then said, “You are right: as you have often pointed out, scientific truth can only be tested by the senses. I believe you.” And the second archer went out, and being of a more emotional temperament burst into tears.
The third archer was a savage, brooding sort of man with tangled hair and dreamy eyes, and he came in without any preface, saying, “I have lost all my arrows. They have turned into birds.” Then as he saw that they all stared at him, he said, “Well, you know everything changes on the earth; mud turns into marigolds, eggs turn into chickens; one can even breed dogs into quite different shapes. Well, I shot my arrows at the awful eagles that clash their wings round the Himalayas; great gold eagles as big as elephants, which snap the tall trees by perching on them. My arrows fled so far over mountain and valley that they turned slowly into fowls in their flight. See here,” and he threw down a dead bird and laid an arrow beside it. “Can’t you see they are the same structure. The straight shaft is the backbone; the sharp point is the beak; the feather is the rudimentary plumage. It is merely modification and evolution.” After a silence the king nodded gravely and said, “Yes; of course everything is evolution.” At this the third archer suddenly and violently left the room, and was heard in some distant part of the building making extraordinary noises either of sorrow or of mirth.
