Tales of Wonder | Page 9

which he drank off like the first
without any water, and almost at once he was a different man. The trembling in his hands
stopped altogether, his eye became as quick as a younger man's, he answered my
questions readily and frankly, and, what was more important to me still, his old memory
became alert and clear for even minutest details. His gratitude to myself I need not
mention, for I make no pretence that I bought the bottle of whiskey that the old shepherd
enjoyed so much without at least some thought of my own advantage. Yet it was pleasant
to reflect that it was due to me that he had pulled himself together and steadied his
shaking hand and cleared his mind, recovered his memory and his self-respect. He spoke
to me quite clearly, no longer slurring his words; he had seen the city first one moonlight
night when he was lost in the mist on the big moor, he had wandered far in the mist, and
when it lifted he saw the city by moonlight. He had no food, but luckily had his flask.
There never was such a city, not even in books. Travellers talked sometimes of Venice
seen from the sea, there might be such a place or there might not, but, whether or no, it
was nothing to the city on Mallington Moor. Men who read books had talked to him in
his time, hundreds of books, but they never could tell of any city like this. Why, the place
was all of marble, roads, walls and palaces, all pure white marble, and the tops of the tall
thin spires were entirely of gold. And they were queer folk in the city even for foreigners.

And there were camels, but I cut him short for I thought I could judge for myself, if there
was such a place, and, if not, I was wasting my time as well as a pint of good whiskey. So
I got him to speak of the way, and after more circumlocution than I needed and more talk
of the city he pointed to a tiny track on the black earth just beside us, a little twisty way
you could hardly see.
I said the moor was trackless; untrodden of man or dog it certainly was and seemed to
have less to do with the ways of man than any waste I have seen, but the track the old
shepherd showed me, if track it was, was no more than the track of a hare--an elf-path the
old man called it, Heaven knows what he meant. And then before I left him he insisted on
giving me his flask with the queer strong rum it contained. Whiskey brings out in some
men melancholy, in some rejoicing, with him it was clearly generosity and he insisted
until I took his rum, though I did not mean to drink it. It was lonely up there, he said, and
bitter cold and the city hard to find, being set in a hollow, and I should need the rum, and
he had never seen the marble city except on days when he had had his flask: he seemed to
regard that rusted iron flask as a sort of mascot, and in the end I took it.
I followed that odd, faint track on the black earth under the heather till I came to the big
grey stone beyond the horizon, where the track divides into two, and I took the one to the
left as the old man told me. I knew by another stone that I saw far off that I had not lost
my way, nor the old man lied.
And just as I hoped to see the city's ramparts before the gloaming fell on that desolate
place, I suddenly saw a long high wall of whiteness with pinnacles here and there thrown
up above it, floating towards me silent and grim as a secret, and knew it for that evil thing
the mist. The sun, though low, was shining on every sprig of heather, the green and
scarlet mosses were shining with it too, it seemed incredible that in three minutes' time all
those colours would be gone and nothing left all round but a grey darkness. I gave up
hope of finding the city that day, a broader path than mine could have been quite easily
lost. I hastily chose for my bed a thick patch of heather, wrapped myself in a waterproof
cloak, and lay down and made myself comfortable. And then the mist came. It came like
the careful pulling of lace curtains, then like the drawing of grey blinds; it shut out the
horizon to the north, then to the east and west; it turned the whole