My mind being thus full of all those wild adventures and wondrous exploits I had seen and shared, when, as I was strolling one idle morning down Faulkener’s dusty museum corridor, and sampling as I went his precious tomes, that thing happened to which you owe this book. I dipped into his missals and vellums as I sauntered from shelf to shelf, and soon I found there was scarcely a page, scarcely a passage within their mothy leathern covers that did not touch me nearly, or set me thinking of something old and wonderful. There was not a page in all that fingered, scholar-marked library, it seemed to me, upon which I could not find something better or nearer to the shining truth to say than they had who wrote those cupboard histories and philosophies; and first I was only sad to see so much inaccurate set down, and then I fell to sighing, as I turned the leaves of quaint treatise and pedantic monkish diary, that they should write who knew so little, and I, who knew so much, should be so dumb. And thus vague fancies began to form within my mind, and, backed by the brooding memories strong within, began to egg me on to write myself! Jove! I had not touched a pen for many hundred years, and yet here was the budding hunger for expression rising strong within me, and I laughed and went over to old Faulkener’s great oak table by the mullioned window, and took up his quill, and turned it here and there, and looked on both ends of it, then presently set it down with a shake of the head as a weapon past my wielding. I felt the texture of his vellums and peered into the depth of his inkpot, as though there were to see therein all those glowing facts and fancies that I yearned to draw therefrom. But it would not do; not even the challenge of those piled tomes, not even the handy means to the end I coveted, could for a time break down my diffidence.
So I fell melancholy again, and wandered down that quaintly stocked museum library, gazing ruefully on each sad remnant of humanity, and thinking how quaint it was that I should come to dust my kinsmen’s skulls and tabulate those grim old heads that had so often wagged in praise of me, then back again to the shelves, and pored and pondered over the many-authored books, until, by hap, my eyes lit upon a passage in an Eastern tale that was so pregnant with experience, so fine, it seemed to my mood, in fancy and philosophy, that it entranced me and fired my zeal to a point naught else had done.
The ancient Arabian narrator is telling how one came, in mid desert, upon a splendid, ruined city—a silent, unpeopled town of voiceless palaces and temples—and wandered on by empty street and fallen greatness until, in the stateliest court of a thousand stately palaces, he found an iron tablet, and on it was written these words:
In the name of God, the Eternal, the Everlasting throughout all ages: in the name of God, who begetteth not, and who is not begotten, and unto whom there is none like: in the name of God, the Mighty and Powerful: in the name of the Living who dieth not. O thou who arrivest at this place, be admonished by the misfortunes and calamities that thou beholdest, and be not deceived by the world and its beauty, and its falsity and calumny, and its fallacy and finery; for it is a flatterer, a cheat, a traitor. Its things are borrowed, and it will take the loan from the borrower; and it is like the confused visions of the sleeper, and the dream of the dreamer. These are the characteristics of the world: confide not therefore in it, nor incline to it; for it will betray him who dependeth upon it, and who in his affairs relieth upon it. Fall not into its snares, nor cling to its skirts. For I possessed four thousand bay horses in a stable; and I married a thousand damsels, all daughters of Kings, high-bosomed virgins, like moons; and I was blessed with a thousand children; and I lived a thousand years, happy in mind and heart; and I amassed riches such as the Kings of the earth were unable to procure, and I imagined that my enjoyments would continue without failure. But I was not aware when there alighted among us the terminator of delights, the separator of companions, the desolator of abodes, the ravager of inhabited mansions, the destroyer of the great and the small, and the infants, and the children, and the mothers. We had resided in this palace in security until the event decreed by the Lord of all creatures, the Lord of the heavens, and the Lord of the earths, befell us, and the thunder of the Manifest Truth assailed us, and there died of us every day two, till a great company of us had perished. So when I saw that destruction had entered our dwellings, and had alighted among us, and drowned us in the sea of deaths, I summoned a writer, and ordered him to write these verses and admonitions and lessons, and caused them to be engraved upon these doors and tablets and tombs. I had an army comprising a thousand thousand bridles, composed of hardy men, with spears, and coats of mail and sharp swords, and strong arms; and I ordered them to clothe themselves with the long coats of mail, and to hang on the keen swords, and to place in rest the terrible lances, and mount the high-blooded horses. Then, when the event appointed by the Lord of all creatures, the Lord of the earth and the heavens, befell us, I said, O companies of troops and soldiers, can ye prevent that which hath befallen me from the Mighty King? But the soldiers and troops were unable to do so, and they said, How shall we contend against Him from whom none hath secluded, the Lord of the door that hath no doorkeeper? So I said, Bring to me the wealth! (And it was contained in a thousand pits, in each of which were a thousand hundredweights of red gold, and in them were varieties of pearls and jewels, and there was the like quantity of white silver, with treasures such as the Kings of the earth were unable to procure.) And they did so; and when they had brought the wealth before me, I said to them, Can ye deliver me by means of all these riches, and purchase for me therewith one day during which I may remain alive? But they could not do so. They resigned themselves to destiny, and I submitted to God with patient endurance of fate and affliction until he took my soul and made me to dwell in my grave. And if thou ask concerning my name, I am Khoosh, the son of Sheddád, the son of ’Ad the Greater.
“Oh, well written!” I cried. “Well written, Khoosh, the son of Sheddád, the son of ’Ad the Greater, well and wisely written, and also I will write, for I have much to tell, and I too may some day be as thou art!”
Thus was the beginning of this book. I got pen and ink and a volume of unwritten leaves forthwith, and carried them away to a lonely chamber in the thickness of a turret wall, a little forgotten cell some six poor feet across, and there solitary I have written, and still write, peopling by the flickering yellow lamp-light that stony niche with all the brilliant memories that I harbor, letting my recollection wander unshackled down the wondrous path that I have come, and step by step, by episodes of pain and pleasure, by wild adventure and strange mischance down, far down, from the ancient times I have brought you until now, when my ink is still wet upon the events of yesterday, and I cease for the moment.
This, then, is all that there is to say, all but one suggestive line. I and yonder fair damsel have plighted troth under the apple-trees out in her orchard! We have broken a ring, and she has one half of it and I have the other. To-morrow will we tell her father, and presently be married. ’Tis a right sweet and winsome maid, and together, hand in hand, we will rehabilitate this ancient pile, and dock that desert garden, and get us friends, and troops of curly-headed children, and lie and bask in the jolly sunshine of contentment—and so go hand in hand forever down the pleasant ways of peaceful dalliance.
Jove!—my pen, and a few poor minutes more from the bottom dregs of life! It is over! all the long combat and turmoil, all the success and disappointment, all the hoping and fearing. That which I thought was a beginning turns out to be but an ending. My hand shakes as I write, my life throbs, and my blood is on fire within me; I am dying, friendless and alone as I have lived, dying in a niche in the wall with my great unfinished diary before me—and, with the grim briefness of my necessity, this is how it has happened.
I had wooed and won Elizabeth Faulkener, and, on the day after she had come down into the forge, as was her wont, sweet and virginal; and I was there at work, and took her into my arms; and, while we dallied thus, there entered on us the ancient scholar and the swart steward. Gods! that villain blanched and scowled to see us so till his swart face was whiter than the furnace ashes.