The Collected Fiction of William Hope Hodgson: The Dream Of X & Other Fantastic Visions (3 page)

Then, still kneeling, he cried out: “Hark!” And they all listened; but the farmer and his wife heard only a far distant moan, like the cry of the night wind rising.

The old man hasted to his feet.

“I must be goin’,” he said. “Ther Voice ’s callin’.”

He placed his hat upon his head.

“Till we meet in ther valley ’o ther ’arth’s lost childer,” he cried, and went from them into the surrounding dusk.

III

Twenty years had added their count to Eternity, and Abra’m and his wife Sus’n had come upon old age. The years had dealt hardly with the twain of them, and disaster overshadowed them in the shape of foreclosure; for Abra’m had been unable to pay off the mortgage, and latterly the interest had fallen in arrears.

There came a bitter time of saving and scraping, and of low diet; but all to no purpose. The foreclosure was effected, and a certain morning ushered in the day when Abra’m and Sus’n were made homeless.

He found her, a little after dawn, kneeling before the ancient press. She had the lowest drawer open, and a little heap of clothing filled her lap. There was a tiny guernsey, a small shoe, a wee, wee pair of baby boy’s trousers, and the knees were stained with clay. Then, with about it a most tearful air of manfulness, a “made” shirt, with “real” buttoning wristbands; but it was not at any of these that the woman looked. Her gaze, passing through half-shed tears, was fixed upon something which she held out at arm’s length. It was a diminutive pair of braces, so terribly small, so unmistakably the pride of some manly minded baby-boy—and so little worn!

For the half of a minute Abra’m said no word. His face had grown very stern and rugged during the stress of those twenty years’ fight with poverty; yet a certain steely look faded out of his eyes as he noted that which his wife held.

The woman had not seen him, nor heard his step; so that, unconscious of his presence, she continued to hold up the little suspenders. The man caught the reflection of her face in a little tinsel-framed mirror opposite, and saw her tears, and abruptly his hard features gave a quiver that made them almost grotesque: it was such an upheaval of set grimness. The quivering died away, and his face resumed its old, iron look. Probably it would have retained it, had not the woman, with a sudden extraordinary gesture of hopelessness, crumpled up the tiny braces and clasped them in her hands above her hair. She bowed forward almost on to her face, and her old knuckles grew tense with the stress she put upon that which she held. A few seconds of silence came and went; then a sob burst from her, and she commenced to rock to and fro upon her knees.

Across the man’s face there came again that quivering upheaval, as unaccustomed emotions betrayed their existence; he stretched forth a hand, that shook with half-conscious longing, toward an end of the braces which hung down behind the woman’s neck and swayed as she rocked.

Abruptly, he seemed to come into possession of himself and drew back silently. He calmed his face and, making a noise with his feet, stepped over to where his wife kneeled desolate. He put a great, crinkled hand upon her shoulder.

“Et wer’ a powerful purty thought o’ yon valley o’ ther lost childer,” he said quietly, meaning to waken her memory to it.

‘‘Aye! aye!’’ she gasped between her sobs. “But—’’ and she broke off, holding out to him the little suspenders.

For answer the man patted her heavily on the shoulder, and thus a space of time went by, until presently she calmed.

A little later he went out upon a matter to which he had to attend. While he was gone she gathered the wee garments hastily into a shawl, and when he returned the press was closed, and all that he saw was a small bundle which she held jealously in one hand.

They left shortly before noon, having singly and together visited a little mound at the foot of the hill. The evening saw them upon the verge of a great wood. They slept that night upon its outskirts, and the next day entered into its shades.

Through all that day they walked steadily. They had many a mile to go before they reached their destination— the shanty of a distant relative with whom they hoped to find temporary shelter.

Twice as they went forward Sus’n had spoken to her husband to stop and listen; but he declared he heard nothing.

“Kind o’ singin’ et sounded like,” she explained.

That night they camped within the heart of the wood, and Abra’m made a great fire, partly for warmth, but more to scare away any evil thing which might be lurking amid the shadows.

They made a frugal supper of the poor things which they had brought with them, though Sus’n declared she had no mind for eating and, indeed, she seemed wofully tired and worn.

Then, it was just as she was about to lie down for the night, she cried out to Abra’m to hark.

“Singin’,” she declared. “Milluns o’ childer’s voices.”

Yet still her husband heard nothing beyond the whispering of the trees one to another, as the night wind shook them.

For the better part of an hour after that she listened; but heard no further sounds, and so, her weariness returning upon her, she fell asleep; the which Abra’m had done a while since.

Some time later she woke with a start. She sat up and looked about her, with a feeling that there had been a sound where now all was silent. She noticed that the fire had burned down to a dull mound of glowing red. Then, in the following instant, there came to her once more a sound of children singing—the voices of a nation of little ones. She turned and looked to her left, and became aware that all the wood on that side was full of a gentle light. She rose and went forward a few steps, and as she went the singing grew louder and sweeter. Abruptly, she came to a pause; for there right beneath her was a vast valley. She knew it on the instant. It was the Valley of the Lost Children. Unlike the old man, she noted less of its beauties than the fact that she looked upon the most enormous concourse of Little Ones that can be conceived.

“My b’y! My b’y!” she murmured to herself, and her gaze ran hungrily over that inconceivable army.

“Ef on’y I cud get down,” she cried, and in the same instant it seemed to her that the side upon which she stood was less steep. She stepped forward and commenced to clamber down. Presently she walked. She had gotten halfway to the bottom of the valley when a little naked boy ran from out of the shadow of a bush just ahead of her.

“Possy,” she cried out. “Possy.”

He turned and raced towards her, laughing gleefully. He leapt into her arms, and so a little while of extraordinary contentment passed.

Presently, she loosed him and bade him stand back from her.

“Eh!” she said, “yew’ve not growed one bit!”

She laid her bundle on the ground and commenced to undo it.

“Guess they’ll fet ye same’s ever,” she murmured, and held up the little trousers for him to see; but the boy showed no eagerness to take them.

She put out her hand to him, but he ran from her. Then she ran after him, carrying the little trousers with her. Yet she could not catch him, for he eluded her with an elf-like agility and ease.

“No, no, no,” he screamed out in a very passion of glee.

She ceased to chase him and came to a stand, hands upon her hips.

“Come yew ‘ere, Possy, immediate!” she called in a tone of command. “Come yew ‘ere!”

But the baby elf was in a strange mood, and disobeyed her in a manner which made her rejoice that she was his mother.

“Oo tarnt ketch me,” he cried, and at that she dropped the little knickers and went a-chase of him. He raced down the remaining half of the slope into the valley, and she followed, and so came to a country where there are no trousers—where youth is, and age is not.

IV

When Abra’m waked in the early morn he was chill and stiff; for during the night he had taken off his jacket and spread it over the form of his sleeping wife.

He rose with quietness, being minded to let her sleep until he had got the fire going again. Presently he had a pannikin of steaming tea ready for her, and he went across to wake her; but she waked not, being at that time chased by a chubby baby-boy in the Valley of Lost Children.

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Date 1965: Modern Warfare

[Extract from the “Phono-Graphic.”]

T
he new war machine, coming as it has so promptly after the remarkable speech by Mr. John Russell, M.P., in the House on the 20th of last month, will find the narrow path of Public Opinion paved for its way into actual use.

As Mr. Russell put the matter:—

“A crisis has come which must be faced. The modern fighting-man, soldier, butcher, call him what you will, has made definite representations that he must know in what way he benefits the community at large, by killing or being killed in the gigantic butcheries which follow in the wake of certain political ‘talkee-talkees.’ In fact, like the prisoners of last century, if he must tread the mill—in his case the mill of death—he is desirous of knowing that it is doing some actual work. He has become an individual, thinking unit—a unit capable of using the brain of which he is possessed. He has risen above the semi-hysterical fervour of the ignoramus of half a century ago, who went forth to kill, with the feeling that he was engaged in a glorious—nay, the most glorious vocation to which man can be called: a state of mind which was carefully fostered by men of higher attainments; though not always of higher intellect. These latter put forward in favour of the profession of human butcher, that the said butchery of their fellows, as the running of the same risk, were the best means of developing all that is highest and most heroic in man. We of this age ‘ha’e oor doots;’ though, even now, there be some who still swear by the ancient belief, pointing to the Nations of the Classics, and showing that when they ceased to be soldiers they fell from the heights they had gained by arms, and became soft of fibre and heart. To the first of these I would reply that in these days of high national intellectuality we are realizing that the killing of some mother’s son does not help the logical solution of the question: To whom should the South Pole belong? More, that the power of Universal Law (the loom of which even now we can see) will usurp the place of the ancient butcher—in other words, that intellectual sanity will reign in place of unreasoning, foolish slaughter.

“To the second danger, that of becoming soft of fibre and heart, I will oppose the fact that to lead the life of a civilian in this present century of ours, calls for as much sheer pluck, heroic courage, and fortitude as was possessed by the most blood-drunken human butcher of the old days.

“If any have doubts on this point, let them try to imagine the ancient Roman soldier-hero facing the problem of 270 miles per hour in one of our up-to-date mono-rail cars; or, further, a trip round the earth in one of the big flying boats, at a speed of from 600 to 800 miles an hour, and they will, I think, agree that there is some little reason with me.

“ ‘Oh,’ I hear the cry, ‘that’s because we’re used to it. Let them get used to it, and they wouldn’t mind.’

“True, my friends; but so were the Ancients used to slaughter; almost as much so as we’re used to our mono-rail and flying boats. Yet there were cowards then, who shirked fighting, and never won free from their cowardice; for all that they lived in a very atmosphere of war. There are cowards today, who have never travelled above the puny rate of 100 miles an hour, and who never will; though all about them is the roar of our higher speeds; for the rest, the courage of the man of today is well suited to the needs of his time; far more so than if he were gifted with the sort possessed by some ancient hero.

“But to get back to our muttons, as an ancient saying has it. War is still with us. So long as nations remain separate, having separate and conflicting interests, so long will the profession of human-butcher remain a hideous fact, until the time when we are agreed to form a World-Nation, policed, instead of butchered, into order.

“A World-Nation is the cure for the causeless slaughter which obtains at the present date; yet it is a cure that lies in the future, and our aim at present is to make the best of that which we cannot escape. To this end I have two propositions to make; though they might both come under one head, and that is Economy.

“The first would deal with expenditure. It will be remembered that up to the summer of ’51 the ‘gay’ uniform was not entirely discarded among the home regiments. On that date, however, it was finally abandoned, and universal brown became the accepted covering. Yet, in many ways this uniform is needlessly expensive, and I would suggest in place thereof the usual butcher’s blue overalls. This only by the way. I would dismiss all officers, and appoint in place thereof, to each hundred men, a head butcher. This will be sufficient for the present. I will explain later other ways in which the expenditure might be still further cut down.