Speaker 1: The Highwayman by Lord Duncanet. Tom O the Roads had
ridden his last ride, and was now alone in the night.
From where he was, a man might see the white
recumbent sheep, and the black outline of the lonely downs,
and the gray line of the further and lonelier downs
beyond them, Or in the hollows far below him, out
of the pitiless wind, he might see the gray smoke
of hamlets arising from black valleys. But all alike were
black to the eyes of tom and all the sounds
were silence in his ears. Only his soul struggled to
slip from the iron chains and to pass southwards into paradise,
and the wind blue and blue. For Tom tonight had
not but the wind to ride. They had taken his
true black horse on the day when they took from
him the green fields and the sky men's voices and
the laughter of women, and had left him alone with
chains around his neck to swing in the wind forever.
And the wind blew and bleww. But the soul of
tom O the Roads was nipped by the cruel chains,
and whenever it struggled to escape, it was beaten backwards
into the iron collar. By the wind that blows from
Paradise from the south, and swinging there by the neck.
There fell away old sneers from off his lips, and
scoffed that he had long since scoffed at God, fell
from his tongue, and there rotted old bad lusts out
of his heart, and from his fingers the stains of
deeds that were evil, and they all fell to the
ground and grew there in pallid rings and clusters. And
when these ill things had all fallen away, Tom's soul
was clean again, as his early love had found it
a long while since in spring. And it swung up
in the wind with the bones of Tom, and with
his old torn coat and rusty chains, and the wind
blue and blue and ever and anon the souls of
the sepulcherd came from consecrated acres, would go by beating
up the wind to Paradise, past the gallows tree, and
past the soul of Tom that might not go free.
Night after night, Tom watched the sheep upon the downs
with empty hollow sockets, until his dead hair grew and
covered his poor face and hid the shame of it
from the sheep. And the wind blue and blue. Sometimes
on gusts of the wind came someone's tears, and beat
and beat against the iron chains, but could not rust
them through, And the wind blew and blue, and every
evening all the thoughts that Tom had ever uttered came
flocking in from doing their work in the world, the
work that might not cease, and sat along the gallows
branches and shirruped to the soul of Tom, the soul
that might not go free. All the thoughts that he
had ever uttered, and the evil thoughts rebuked the soul
that bore them because they might not die. And all
those that he had uttered the most furtively chirruped the
loudest and the shrillest in the branches all the night,
And all the thoughts that Tom had ever thought about
himself now pointed at the wet bones and mocked the
old torn coat. But the thoughts that he had thought
of others were the only companions that his soul had
to soothe it in the night as it swam to
and fro. And they twittered to the soul and cheered
the poor dumb thing that could have dreams no more
till there came a murderous thought and drove them all away,
and the wind blew and blew. Paul, Archbishop of Alloy
and Vallennes, lay in his white sepulcher of marble, facing
full to the southward toward Paradise, and over his tomb
was sculpted the Cross of Christ, that his soul might
have repose. No wind howled here as it howled in
the lonely tree tops up upon the downs, but came
with gentle breezes orchards scented over the lowlands from Paradise
from the southwards, and played about forget me nots and
grasses in the consecrated land where lay the poseful round
the sepulcher of Paul, Archbishop of Alloy and Vayense. Easy
it was for a man's soul to pass from such
a sepulcher, and, flitting low over remembered fields, to come
upon the garden lands of Paradise and find eternal ease,
and the wind blew and blue. In a tavern of
foul repute, three men were lapping gin. Their names were
Joe and Will, and the gipsy PUGLIONI. None other names
had they for of whom their fathers were. They had
no knowledge, but only dark suspicions. Sin had caressed and
stroked their faces, often with its paw, but the face
of Puglioni, Sin had kissed all over the mouth and chin.
Their food was robbery, and their pastime murder. All of
them had incurred the sorrow of God and the enmity
of man. They sat at a table with a pack
of cards before them, all greasy with marks of cheating thumbs,
and they whispered to one another over their gin, but
so low that the landlord of the tavern at the
other end of the room could only hear muffled oaths,
and knew not by whom they swore or what they said.
These three were the staunchest friends that ever God had
given unto a man, and he to whom their friendship
had been given, had nothing else besides save some bones
that swung in the wind and rain, and an old
torn coat and iron chains, and a soul that might
not go free. But as the night wore on, the
three friends left their gin and stole away and crept
down to the graveyard, where rested in his sepulcher, Paul,
Archbishop of Alloy and Venet at the edge of the graveyard,
But outside the consecrated ground, they dug a hasty grave,
two digging while one watched in the wind and rain,
and the worms that crept in the unhallowed ground wondered
and waited. And the terrible hour of midnight came upon
them with his fears, and found them still beside the
place of tombs. And the three friends trembled at the
horror of such an hour in such a place, and
shivered in the wind and drenching rain, and still worked on,
and the wind blew and blew. Soon they had finished,
and at once they left the hungry grave, with all
its worms unfed, and went over to the wet fields,
stealthily but in haste, leaving the place of tombs behind
them in the midnight. And as they went they shivered,
each man as he shivered, cursing the rain aloud. And
so they came to the spot where they had hidden
a ladder and a lantern. There they held a long
debate whether they should light the lantern or whether they
should go without it for fear of the king's men.
But in the end it seemed to them better that
they should have the light of their lantern and risk
being taken by the King's men, and hanged then that
they should come suddenly face to face in the darkness
with whatever one might come face to face with a
little after midnight about the Gallows Tree on three roads
in England, whereupon it was not the wont of folks
to go their ways in safety. Travelers tonight went unmolested.
But the three friends walked several paces wide of the
King's Highway approaching the Gallows Tree. And Will carried the lamp,
and Joe the latter, but Puglioni carried a great sword,
wherewith to do the work that must be done. When
they came close, they saw how bad was the case
with Tom, for little remained of the fine figure of
a man, and nothing at all of his great, resolute spirit.
Only as they came they thought they heard a whimpering cry,
like the sound of a thing that was caged and unfree.
To and fro to and fro in the winds swung
the bones and soul of Tom for the sins that
he had sinned on the King's Highway against the laws
of the King. And with shadows and a lantern through
the darkness, at the peril of their lives, came the
three friends that his soul had won before it swung
in chains. Thus the seeds of Tom's own soul that
he had sown all his life had grown into a
gallows tree that bore in season iron chains in clusters,
while the careless seeds that he had strewn here and
there a kindly jest and a few merry words had
grown into a triple friendship that would not desert his bones.
Then the three set the ladder against the tree, and
Puglione went up with his sword in his right hand,
and at the top of it he reached up and
began to hack at the neck below the iron collar. Presently,
the bones and the old coat and the soul of
Tom fell down with a rattle, and a moment afterwards
his head, which had washed so long alone, swung clear
from the swinging chain. These things, Will and Joe gathered up,
and Puglione came running down his ladder, and they heaped
upon its rungs the terrible remains of their friend, and
hastened away, wet with the rain, with the fear of
phantoms in their heart, and horror lying before them on
the ladder. By two o'clock they were down again in
the valley out of the bitter wind. But they went
on past the open grave into the graveyard, all among
the tombs, and with their lantern and their ladder, and
the terrible thing upon it which kept their friendship still.
Then these three that had robbed the law of its
due and proper victim, still sinned on for what was
still their friend, and levered out the marble slabs from
the sacred sepulcher of Paul, Archbishop of Aloi and the yuns.
And from it they took the very bones of the
archbishop himself and carried them away to the eager grave
that they had left, and put them in and shoveled
back the earth. But all that lay on the ladder
they placed, with a few tears, within the great white
sepulcher under the cross of Christ, and put back the
marble slabs. Thence the soul of tom A, rising hallowed
out of the sacred ground, went at dawn down the valley, and,
lingering a little about his mother's cottage and old haunts
of childhood, passed on and came to the wide lands
beyond the clustered homesteads. There there met with all the
kindly thoughts that the soul of Tom had ever had,
and they flew and sang beside it all the way southward,
until at last, with singing all about it, it came
to paradise. But Will and Joe and the gipsy Paglione
went back to their gin, and robbed and cheated again
in the tavern of foul repute, and knew not that
in their sinful lives they had sinned, one sin at
which the angels smiled. The end of the Highwayman by
Lord Dunsanet