The Black Dog, and Other Stories

by A. E. Coppard

Simon passed his hand across his brow. “I see ... ah, well, I saw it. I saw something ... but I forget.”

“Ah, you have forgotten your happiness,” said the scholar in a soft voice: “Yes, yes.” He went on speaking to himself: “Death is a naked Ethiope with flaming hair. I don’t want to live for ever, but I want to live.”

He took off his coat and gave it to Simon, who thanked him and put it on. It seemed a very heavy coat.

“Maybe,” the old man mumbled, “I’ll get a lift on the way.”

“May it be so. And good-bye to you,” said the scholar, “’Tis as fine a day as ever came out of Eden.”

They parted so, and old Simon had not been gone an hour when the scholar gave a great shout and followed after him frantic, but he could not come up with him, for Simon had gone up in a lift to heaven—a lift with cushions in it, and a bright young girl guiding the lift, dressed like a lad, but with a sad stern voice.

Several people got into the lift, the most of them old ladies, but no children, so Simon got in too and sat on a cushion of yellow velvet. And he was near sleeping when the lift stopped of a sudden and a lady who was taken sick got out. “Drugs and lounge!” the girl called out, “Second to the right and keep straight on. Going up?”

But though there was a crowd of young people waiting nobody else got in. They slid on again, higher and much higher. Simon dropped into sleep until the girl stopped at the fourth floor: “Refreshments,” she said, “and Ladies’ Cloak Room!” All the passengers got out except Simon: he sat still until they came to the floor of heaven. There he got out, and the girl waved her hand to him and said “Good-bye.” A few people got in the lift. “Going down?” she cried. Then she slammed the door and it sank into a hole and Simon never laid an eye on it or her from that day for ever.

Now it was very pleasant where he found himself, very pleasant indeed and in no ways different from the fine parts of the earth. He went onwards and the first place he did come to was a farmhouse with a kitchen door. He knocked and it was opened. It was a large kitchen; it had a cracked stone floor and white rafters above it with hooks on them and shearing irons and a saddle. And there was a smoking hearth and an open oven with bright charred wood burning in it, a dairy shelf beyond with pans of cream, a bed of bracken for a dog in the corner by the pump, and a pet sheep wandering about. It had the number 100 painted on its fleece and a loud bell was tinkling round its neck. There was a fine young girl stood smiling at him; the plait of her hair was thick as a rope of onions and as shining with the glint in it. Simon said to her: “I’ve been a-walking, and I seem to have got a bit dampified like, just a touch o’ damp in the knees of my breeches, that’s all.”

The girl pointed to the fire and he went and dried himself. Then he asked the girl if she would give him a true direction, and so she gave him a true direction and on he went. And he had not gone far when he saw a place just like the old forest he had come from, but all was delightful and sunny, and there was the house he had once built, as beautiful and new, with the shining varnish on the door, a pool beyond, faggots and logs in the yard, and inside the white shelves were loaded with good food, the fire burning with a sweet smell, and a bed of rest in the ingle. Soon he was slaking his hunger; then he hung up his coat on a peg of iron, and creeping into the bed he went into the long sleep in his old happy way of sleeping.