Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts | Page 3

le monde, Mourant pour leur plaisir des plus
cruels trepas De sanglantes savours composent leurs repas. . . .
In these lines I believed that I discerned the very God of the universe,
the God whom men worship--
Dans les infames jeux de leur divin loisir Le supplice de l'homme est
leur premier plaisir. Pour que leur oeil feroce a l'envi s'en repaisse Des
bourreaux devant eux en immolent sans cesse. Tantot ils font lutter,
dans des combats affreux, L'homme contre la brute et les hommes entre
eux, Aux longs ruisseaux de sang qui coulent de la veine, Aux
palpitations des membres sur l'arene, Se levant a demi de leurs lits de
repos Des frissons de plaisir fremissent sur leurs peaux. Le cri de la
torture est leur douce harmonie, Et leur oeil dans son oeil boit sa lente
agonie.

I charged the Supreme Power with a cruelty deliberate, ruthless, serene.
Nero the tyrant once commanded a representation in grim earnest of the
Flight of Icarus; and the unhappy boy who took the part, at his first
attempt to fly, fell headlong beside the Emperor's couch and spattered
him with blood and brains. For the Emperor, says Suetonius, perraro
praesidere, ceterum accubans, parvis primum foraminibus, deinde toto
podio adaperto, spectare consuerat. So I believed that on the stage of
this world men agonised for the delight of one cruel intelligence which
watched from behind the curtain of a private box.
II
In this unhappy condition of mind, then, I was lying in my library chair
here at Sevenhays, at two o'clock on the morning of January 4th. I had
just finished another reading of the Tenth Vision and had tossed my
book into the lap of an armchair opposite. Fire and lamp were burning
brightly. The night outside was still and soundless, with a touch of
frost.
I lay there, retracing in thought the circumstances of Harry's last parting
from me, and repeating to myself a scrap here and there from the three
letters he wrote on his way--the last of them, full of high spirits,
received a full three weeks after the telegram which announced his
death. There was a passage in this last letter describing a wonderful ride
he had taken alone and by moonlight on the desert; a ride (he protested)
which wanted nothing of perfect happiness but me, his friend, riding
beside him to share his wonder. There was a sentence which I could not
recall precisely, and I left my chair and was crossing the room towards
the drawer in the writing-table where I kept his letters, when I heard a
trampling of hoofs on the gravel outside, and then my Christian name
called--with distinctness, but not at all loudly.
I went to the window, which was unshuttered; drew up the blind and
flung up the sash. The moon, in its third quarter and about an hour short
of its meridian, shone over the deodars upon the white gravel. And
there, before the front door, sat Harry on his sorrel mare Vivandiere,
holding my own Grey Sultan ready bridled and saddled. He was
dressed in his old khaki riding suit, and his face, as he sat askew in his

saddle and looked up towards my window, wore its habitual and happy
smile.
Now, call this and what follows a dream, vision, hallucination, what
you will; but understand, please, that from the first moment, so far as I
considered the matter at all, I had never the least illusion that this was
Harry in flesh and blood. I knew quite well all the while that Harry was
dead and his body in his grave. But, soul or phantom-- whatever
relation to Harry this might bear--it had come to me, and the great joy
of that was enough for the time. There let us leave the question. I
closed the window, went upstairs to my dressing-room, drew on my
riding-boots and overcoat, found cap, gloves, and riding-crop, and
descended to the porch.
Harry, as I shall call him, was still waiting there on the off side of Grey
Sultan, the farther side from the door. There could be no doubt, at any
rate, that the grey was real horseflesh and blood, though he seemed
unusually quiet after two days in stall. Harry freed him as I mounted,
and we set off together at a walk, which we kept as far as the gate.
Outside we took the westward road, and our horses broke into a trot. As
yet we had not exchanged a word; but now he asked a question or two
about his people and his friends; kindly, yet most casually, as one
might who returns after a week's holidaying. I answered as well as I
could, with trivial news of their health. His mother had borne the