Fantasy literature; Short stories; Supernatural -- Fiction
As for my school-mates, though I had very little to say to them, or
they to me, I used to watch them very closely, and, as I have said,
came to weave them into my dreams. Some figured as heroes, some as
magnanimous allies, some as malignant enemies, some who struck me as
beautiful received of me the kind of idolatry, the insensate
self-surrender which creatures of my sort have always offered up to
beauty of any sort. I remember T----e, a very shapely and
distinguished youth. I worshipped him as a god, and have seen him
since--alas! I remember B---- also, a tall, lean, loose-limbed young
man. He was a great cricketer, a good-natured, sleepy giant, perfectly
stupid (I am sure) but with marks of breed about him which I could not
possibly mistake. Him, too, I enthroned upon my temple-frieze; he
would have figured there as Meleager had I been a few years older. As
it was, he rode a blazoned charger, all black, and feutred his lance
with the Knights of King Arthur's court. Then there was H----n, a
good-looking, good-natured boy, and T----r, another. Many and many a
day did they ride forth with me adventuring--that is, spiritually they
did so; physically speaking, I had no scot or lot with them. We were
in plate armour, visored and beplumed. We slung our storied shields
behind us; we had our spears at rest; we laughed, told tales, sang as
we went through the glades of the forest, down the rutted
charcoal-burner's track, and came to the black mere, where there lay a
barge with oars among the reeds. I can see, now, H----n throw up his
head, bared to the sky and slanting sun. He had thick and dark curly
hair and a very white neck. His name of chivalry was Sagramor. T----r
was of stouter build and less salient humour. He was Bors, a brother
of Lancelot's. I, who was moody, here as in waking life, was Tristram,
more often Tramtris.
Of other more sinister figures I remember two. R----s, who bullied me
until I was provoked at last into facing him; a greedy, pale,
lecherous boy, graceless, a liar, but extremely clever. I had a horror
of him which endures now. If he, as I have, had a dweller in the deeps
of him, his must have been a satyr. I cannot doubt it now. Disastrous
ally for mortal man! Vice sat upon his face like a grease; vice made
his fingers quick. He had a lickorous tongue and a taste for sweet
things which even then made me sick. So repulsive was he to me, so
impressed upon my fancy, that it was curious he did not haunt my inner
life. But I never met him there. No shape of his ever encountered me
in the wilds and solitary places. In the manifest world he afflicted
me to an extent which the rogue-fairy in the wood could never have
approached. Perhaps it was that all my being was forearmed against
him, and that I fought him off. At any rate he never trespassed in my
preserves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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