The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories — John Shaqi
The Sword of Welleran and Other StoriesDunsany, Lord
Science
The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories
Dunsany, Lord
Fantasy fiction, English
‘Then I would like to be called Terrible North Wind, or Star in the
Waters,’ she said.
‘No, no, no,’ said Dean Murnith; ‘that is quite impossible. We could
call you Miss Rush if you like. How would Mary Rush do? Perhaps you had
better have another name—say Mary Jane Rush.’
So the little Wild Thing with the soul of the marshes took the names
that were offered her, and became Mary Jane Rush.
‘And we must find something for you to do,’ said Dean Murnith.
‘Meanwhile we can give you a room here.’
‘I don’t want to do anything,’ replied Mary Jane; ‘I want to worship
God in the cathedral and live beside the marshes.’
Then Mrs. Murnith came in, and for the rest of that day Mary Jane
stayed at the house of the Dean.
And there with her new soul she perceived the beauty of the world; for
it came grey and level out of misty distances, and widened into grassy
fields and ploughlands right up to the edge of an old gabled town;
and solitary in the fields far off an ancient windmill stood, and his
honest hand-made sails went round and round in the free East Anglian
winds. Close by, the gabled houses leaned out over the streets, planted
fair upon sturdy timbers that grew in the olden time, all glorying
among themselves upon their beauty. And out of them, buttress by
buttress, growing and going upwards, aspiring tower by tower, rose the
cathedral.
And she saw the people moving in the streets all leisurely and slow,
and unseen among them, whispering to each other, unheard by living men
and concerned only with bygone things, drifted the ghosts of very long
ago. And wherever the streets ran eastwards, wherever were gaps in the
houses, always there broke into view the sight of the great marshes,
like to some bar of music weird and strange that haunts a melody,
arising again and again, played on the violin by one musician only, who
plays no other bar, and he is swart and lank about the hair and bearded
about the lips, and his moustache droops long and low, and no one knows
the land from which he comes.
All these were good things for a new soul to see.
Then the sun set over green fields and ploughland and the night came
up. One by one the merry lights of cheery lamp-lit windows took their
stations in the solemn night.
Then the bells rang, far up in a cathedral tower, and their melody fell
on the roofs of the old houses and poured over their eaves until the
streets were full, and then flooded away over green fields and plough,
till it came to the sturdy mill and brought the miller trudging to
evensong, and far away eastwards and seawards the sound rang out over
the remoter marshes. And it was all as yesterday to the old ghosts in
the streets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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