Fifty-One Tales | Page 5

and
putting a sovereign in his hand. "Don't let it be chicory," said he.
The waiter brought the coffee, and the young man dropped a tabloid of

some sort into his cup.
"I don't suppose you come here very often," he went on. "Well, you
probably want to be going. I haven't taken you much out of your way,
there is plenty for you to do in London."
Then having drunk his coffee he fell on the floor by a foot of the empty
chair, and a doctor who was dining in the room bent over him and
announced to the anxious manager the visible presence of the young
man's guest.

DEATH AND ODYSSEUS
In the Olympian courts Love laughed at Death, because he was
unsightly, and because She couldn't help it, and because he never did
anything worth doing, and because She would.
And Death hated being laughed at, and used to brood apart thinking
only of his wrongs and of what he could do to end this intolerable
treatment.
But one day Death appeared in the courts with an air and They all
noticed it. "What are you up to now?" said Love. And Death with some
solemnity said to Her: "I am going to frighten Odysseus"; and drawing
about him his grey traveller's cloak went out through the windy door
with his jowl turned earthwards.
And he came soon to Ithaca and the hall that Athene knew, and opened
the door and saw there famous Odysseus, with his white locks bending
close over the fire, trying to warm his hands.
And the wind through the open door blew bitterly on Odysseus.
And Death came up behind him, and suddenly shouted.
And Odysseus went on warming his pale hands.

Then Death came close and began to mouth at him. And after a while
Odysseus turned and spoke. And "Well, old servant," he said, "have
your masters been kind to you since I made you work for me round
Ilion?"
And Death for some while stood mute, for the thought of the laughter
of Love.
Then "Come now," said Odysseus, "lend me your shoulder," and he
leaning heavily on that bony joint, they went together through the open
door.

DEATH AND THE ORANGE
Two dark young men in a foreign southern land sat at a restaurant table
with one woman.
And on the woman's plate was a small orange which had an evil
laughter in its heart.
And both of the men would be looking at the woman all the time, and
they ate little and they drank much.
And the woman was smiling equally at each.
Then the small orange that had the laughter in its heart rolled slowly off
the plate on to the floor. And the dark young men both sought for it at
once, and they met suddenly beneath the table, and soon they were
speaking swift words to one another, and a horror and an impotence
came over the Reason of each as she sat helpless at the back of the
mind, and the heart of the orange laughed and the woman went on
smiling; and Death, who was sitting at another table, tête-à-tête with an
old man, rose and came over to listen to the quarrel.

THE PRAYER OF THE FLOWERS

It was the voice of the flowers on the West wind, the lovable, the old,
the lazy West wind, blowing ceaselessly, blowing sleepily, going
Greecewards.
"The woods have gone away, they have fallen and left us; men love us
no longer, we are lonely by moonlight. Great engines rush over the
beautiful fields, their ways lie hard and terrible up and down the land.
"The cancrous cities spread over the grass, they clatter in their lairs
continually, they glitter about us blemishing the night.
"The woods are gone, O Pan, the woods, the woods. And thou art far, O
Pan, and far away."
I was standing by night between two railway embankments on the edge
of a Midland city. On one of them I saw the trains go by, once in every
two minutes, and on the other, the trains went by twice in every five.
Quite close were the glaring factories, and the sky above them wore the
fearful look that it wears in dreams of fever.
The flowers were right in the stride of that advancing city, and thence I
heard them sending up their cry. And then I heard, beating musically up
wind, the voice of Pan reproving them from Arcady--
"Be patient a little, these things are not for long."

TIME AND THE TRADESMAN
Once Time as he prowled the world, his hair grey not with weakness
but with dust of the ruin of cities, came to a furniture shop and entered
the Antique department. And there