The Wind That Tramps the World (collection)/The Wind That Tramps the World
The Wind That Tramps the World
The little City of the Big Winds lies on the very roof of the world, among the bleak, barren storm-blown peaks of the Himalayas, as though flung there by some monstrous frenzied hand, or snapped from the tip of a whip in the hand of a giant. A grayer or more desolate spot would be hard to imagine, or a spot where the tumult of discord is more frightful.
At first John Steppling had been unable to sleep upon his arrival in the City. It was like being in another world, living in a cloud-land of drifting shadows, where every breath was an effort and prolonged exertion an almost physical impossibility. He felt like an empty box, strained to the breaking point by external things, in danger of collapsing at any moment. At night as he gazed toward the stars, he almost imagined that he could extend his hand and pick them out of the sky much as one might pick blue-white flowers in a fragrant garden. The sky was so intensely clear, it was breath-taking. It almost made him gasp. Though possibly the rarefied air may have made him gasp in any case. He had arrived at the City quite by chance during an exploring expedition in Northern India. He had intended remaining in the weird little town only for a single day, and yet somehow he could not bring himself to leave it. There was a wild attraction about the bleak town which he could not define.
For the most part the inhabitants of the City were as poor as church-mice, poorer in truth, for they had only the roughest type of mud-thatched huts wherein to live. By occupation they were shepherds. They watched over thin and sickly flocks of sheep and goats that scraped out a meagre existence from the barren, half-frozen soil. They were filthy-looking individuals, illiterate, stolid, totally lacking in humor. They never bathed. In lieu thereof they smeared their entire bodies with grease. Water was scarce. They did not waste it, besides the grease had a tendency to keep them warm. It kept them odoriferous as well but to people unused to the sweet perfumes of which the inhabitants of the lands lying to the south were so fond, it did not matter. Among all the shepherds, Steppling could not find a single person who understood his language, nor did any of them seem to care. As long as they did not bother him, he did not bother them. Their visions were so limited they were unable to grasp anything beyond their usual scope. When they married, the bride married all the brothers of the family. Naturally in their connubial arrangements most of the brothers were diplomatic enough to be away much of the time.
Steppling was charmed by the spirit of mystery that hovered over everything. He longed to get beneath the mask which each person seemed to wear. They seemed totally lacking in personality, yet personality of some sort they must have. When they went into their huts did they just pass into blackness like candles blown out? Did they have any home life at all? He doubted it. Were their affections, hopes, desires, loves, all blunted? Did they ever read? It was like being in a dead city. No one approached him. No one talked to him. He seldom heard a human voice for the voices of the people were usually drowned by the frightful screeching of the wind through the mountain passes. Fortunately he had sufficient food with him to last him another month. When that was gone he intended to endeavor to buy food from the natives. When he bought food in what currency could he pay for it? English currency would be of little use among these savage hillsmen. He was outside British domains. The people did not value money. What they gloated over was food. Money was a rather questionable commodity. Although illiterate and dull they were able to appreciate how fundamentally useless gold is after all.
Each day he roamed for hours about the wind swept mountain passes. He climbed to lofty pinnacles almost as sharp as needles. Sometimes he rambled over a table of rock so vast that the greatest giants of legend might have sat down comfortably around it without bumping elbows. Not infrequently he even ventured to walk about the native haunts of the City, where sod-thatched huts were mute testimony of the poverty of the people. But the inhabitants looked at him hostilely as he passed. They were not pleased with his manner. They did not like to be the pivots of his scrutiny. He did not mind their attitude. He had traveled much. He was used to eccentricities. And yet he felt ill at ease. Such walks were not enjoyable.
Nevertheless one day he walked farther than usual. The City was small. At last the houses grew less frequent until finally he arrived at the country beyond. Even then he did not stop until he reached a long low house, Chinese in style. In the center was what seemed to be a tall pagoda whose colorful façade was at strange variance with the drab little city through which he had just passed. Before the doorway of the house sat an old Chinaman. He was so old, shrivelled and shrunken, and his face was so criss-crossed with lines he appeared almost like a mummy. Age seemed to have turned him to stone. He sat without blinking. His parchment-like skin was as brown as tanned leather. On his chin was a wisp of a beard which eddied fantastically about in the sun. His lips were compressed into a thin line. His eyes looked dully out from half-closed lids. His slant brows would have made his face distinctive even if it had not been distinctive in any case. He was completely wrapped in a great cloak of a tantalizing color. It was blue, like the midnight sky yet sometimes as the light struck it it seemed to flame green. On his head was a square hat, small and black, although oblong would perhaps be more descriptive of it. It was like a great black ebony domino.
The old man sat and gazed before him. He seemed to be peering into the future, an old prognosticator crouching before his house. John Steppling stood and stared at the ancient figure. He was so small he resembled a child, a very old child with a wisp of a beard.
Steppling was curious. Who was this ancient stranger, this man so different to all the other inhabitants of the desolate city? Nothing that he had beheld since crossing the mountain barriers had so completely captivated his interest. "Perhaps," he thought, "this man may understand English." Despite his extreme age there was an undeniable air of culture about him.
"I wonder," said Steppling, "why they call this town the City of the Big Winds."
The old man did not stir. He seemed carved of stone.
Steppling repeated the sentence. There was no response. Then he repeated it again in a louder voice.
Finally the old man turned. He shook his shoulders in a peculiar manner as though trying to escape from his reveries, from the visions which his imagination had conjured up for him.
"What do you wish?" he asked finally in quaintly accented though perfectly pronounced English.
Steppling was nonplussed. He did not know what to answer. He was surprised that the old Chinaman understood English. So long had it been since he had conversed with anyone, the question was rather a shock to him. But at last he succeeded in getting his cosmos readjusted.
"If I am not presuming," he said, "I should like to know what you are gazing at so intently."
The old man's eyes were like slits. They gleamed in his rough brown face as though they were lighted lamps.
"Looking?" he repeated slowly. "Looking? I was not looking. I was listening to the ceaseless voices of the wind. Most men of earth who believe their sense of hearing is very acute are in reality stone-deaf. To listen truly, is a fine art. Anyone can hear a mountain fall but only a genius can hear the music of a flower unfolding in the sun, a flower fringed with nectar-cooled dew."
He paused for a moment and gazed off toward the jagged, knife-edged cliffs. But presently he spoke again.
"I am Hi Ling," he said. "To my house you are welcome. No human soul dwells with me. And yet there are other voices besides my own constantly echoing through my house for every night I open my windows so that all the great winds can blow through. They are whispering, forever they are whispering. Can you not stay with me awhile?"
"Nothing would give me greater pleasure," replied Steppling quickly and he felt as though he could howl with glee. But he was careful to hide the intensity of his jubilant spirits.
It was with a feeling of keen elation therefore that he followed the old Chinaman who now arose and entered the house, if house it could be called, for it was a huge ambling affair of mystery and shadows. Together they groped their way through multitudinous rooms, silent, weird vast through which scarcely even the faintest suggestion of daylight penetrated.
"I keep my house forever dark and shadowy," explained Hi Ling, "in order that it may always be in harmony with life."
"You think, then," said Steppling, "that life is clothed in shadows."
"I do indeed," was the quick response. "The shadows of earth quite outweigh the pleasures. Over almost everyone there is a shadow constantly hanging."
As he spoke they emerged into a great room which somehow suggested a shrine to Steppling. The air was fragrant with the pungent perfumes of the East, preeminent among which was the incense of aloes-wood and musk. In the center of a slightly raised black platform there stood a jade green vase. In the vase was a single branch, withered and old, a branch whose shrivelled appearance somehow suggested the gaunt face of Hi Ling. The flower if flower there had been had long since fallen from it. Above the vase hung a soft-toned yellow lantern, as round and coolly brilliant as an autumn moon, first rising above a range of blue-mist-crested hills.
Hi Ling prostrated himself flat on his face before the altar. He chanted some jumbled garish Chinese verses in a sad monotone. For perhaps ten minutes or it might have been longer, he remained thus. Then he rose to his feet. Without a word he walked across the room. He threw open a great heavily draped window. Then he did the same to a window on the other side of the room.
Instantly pandemonium broke loose. It was as though all the winds of earth had congregated outside that window and now came crashing through. They shrieked and laughed in a thousand fantastic tongues. It was frightful because it was so intense, so unrestrained. Sometimes Steppling imagined he detected a low moan in the wind, almost a sob, but at once it was drowned by the awful fiendish laughter.
The wind came crashing madly through as though it would wreck the very building. It caught up the fragrant perfume from the musk-scented air and bore it off into measureless distances. The yellow moon-lantern swayed back and forth as ceaselessly as a pendulum. Only the jade vase remained stationary. The entire building shuddered but still the vase did not move.
Steppling gripped Hi Ling's arm. "What does it mean?" he cried. He pitched his voice to the highest key possible and even then it seemed as weak as a whisper. "Is it a tornado, a cyclone?"
Hi Ling shook his head. His ghastly brown face looked more like that of a mummy than ever.
"Listen intently," he said, "can you not hear voices in the wind?"
How long the havoc continued Steppling did not know. At that moment time had lost its importance. Something supernatural seemed to have clutched them up in its grip. Steppling felt numb, powerless, almost without the power to move. At last Hi Ling walked across the room and closed the windows. He had to fight until he was practically exhausted to get the mad wind out again. But at last the windows were tightly barred. And peace seemed to sweep down over the room like a caress. The yellow lantern ceased its swaying. The pungent perfume bloomed forth again.
That night John Steppling sat down to the simplest meal he had ever partaken of in his life. It was simply rice cakes and tea. The rice cakes were as crisp as mountain air and the tea was pungent as it was delicious. They ate in a room lit only by a single lamp which spluttered feebly as though protesting against the limitless darkness which enveloped the house like a shroud.
After the meal was finished, the old man produced several pipes. They were very black and ominously small. Into the bowl of each, Hi Ling rolled a black gummy pellet which he had shaped in the palms of his hand.
He held out one to John Steppling. "Smoke?" he said curtly.
But Steppling refused the proffered pipe.
"I would prefer to hear you talk?" he said.
"Why do you not listen to the myriads of voices in the wind?" asked Hi Ling drowsily.
"Because my ear is not timed to catch the sound."
"You do not try. If you really listened, you could hear."
"I would rather hear your voice."
"That is foolish," declared Hi Ling. "No human voice is as softly alluring as the voices one sometimes discovers in the wind."
"Nevertheless," repeated Steppling stubbornly, "I would rather hear you talk."
Hi Ling shrugged his shoulders. He could not understand how anyone should prefer the natural voice to magic.
"What do you wish me to say?" he asked finally.
"Tell me the story of your life," replied John Steppling bluntly, "the story of the jade vase and the moon lantern."
Hi Ling hesitated. "I have never told that to a living soul," he said slowly.
"Nevertheless, you must tell it to me."
"You would only smile," said Hi Ling. "You would hold my story up to ridicule, and if you did I would kill you. I should hate to do that Never in my life has the blood of any animal been upon my hand."
"Scarcely a compliment," drawled Steppling, "to call Ime an animal." He was not angry. He merely made the comment to draw on conversation.
"I meant no offense," Hi Ling hastened to assure him. "Although I spoke the truth for surely if you are neither a fish nor a fowl you must be an animal."
"You are right," agreed Steppling. "I agree with you on every point. Therefore I think it but fitting for you to tell me your story."
Again Hi Ling hesitated. But finally he acquiesced.
"Years ago," he began, "I lived in Southern China. I was very wealthy. My ancestors had all contributed their share to the measure of my holdings. By profession I was a horticulturist. Even though forty years have passed the glory of my garden is still recounted throughout Southern China in innumerable little quaint tales of fantasy which have almost become legends. I raised all sorts of flowers but I specialized in jasmine, eglantine and wistaria blossoms. Particularly the last. I had a passion for the flowers as great as that of any renowned Sultan for the veiled ladies of his harem. So intent was I on the contemplation of my flowers I seldom left the garden. Sometimes I did not even return to my house to sleep. Instead I reclined in a charming grove at the back of my buildings where I could hear the tinkle of a tiny rivulet and where hundreds of gorgeous flowers breathed onto the air a perfume that made me drowsy, that caressed me to sleep, all care and worry forgotten. To me that garden was filled with countless soft-sweet voices. Flowers talk or rather perhaps it would be more descriptive to say, they sing, but it is given to few people of earth to hear their wondrous melodies. Of this few I was one. Day by day I studied the language of flowers. I became a hermit. As time went on I never left my garden. All else was forgotten in the contemplation of gorgeous orchids, sweet-scented jasmine and seductive eglantine. I forsook human life for floral, and in my renouncing I gained much. In my garden there grew a single fragile flower, orchid-like in glory, but of a species quite different to any I had ever chanced upon before. It was of the soft warm color of a tea rose with a tint of carmine, faintly suggested in the petals which were as velvet soft as the cheek of any maiden. By the hour I used to sit and listen to the sweet singing of that perfect flower. It was unlike any sound ever heard by man. The tinkle of a fairy bell would almost seem harsh by comparison. Is it any wonder then that I fell in love with that flower? The wonder is that the flower seemed equally enamored of me. It glowed more beauteously as I approached it. It swayed toward me. As I put down my head to breathe of the exotic fragrance it gently caressed my lips and the caress was softer than the kiss of the loveliest woman. In time I grew to call the flower, 'Dawn-Girl.' I idolized it. No lover of romance was more enraptured by his dear one than I. That garden became for me a sacred place. Great peace stole into my heart. The miracle of love had been performed anew. Like night and day it goes on endlessly. When love dies out on earth then will the sun grow cold.
"I was supremely happy, but my happiness was not to last. Into my life there came a shadow as come it does into the life of every man. 'The Wind that Tramps the World' chanced to blow through the garden. He beheld the exquisite beauty of 'Dawn-Girl' and paused. For the first time in years he was subdued and silent. He had tramped through every country and clime of the world, over every mountain and every sea. He had beheld the grandeur of Greece and Rome and all the other fabulous cities. But never had he chanced upon any sight comparable to that of 'Dawn-Girl' for loveliness. From that day forth he wooed her arduously. Each night he came to the garden, singing love lyrics of fervid intensity. He brought her all the rarest perfumes and tapestries of dazzling sunlight which he tossed on the ground before her. He even impregnated the cool night dew with all the famed perfumes of earth so that as it fell upon her it would be more enticing than even the sun-glare. But it availed him not. She cared not at all for his gifts, continuing to bend toward me as of yore. This greatly incensed 'The Wind that Tramped the World.' He who had wrecked cities, had levelled trees and stately palaces, now was impotent before this lovely girl-flower. His anger was frightful. He roared about the city so ferociously that the people fled to their homes in fear, dreading the force of the tropical storm which they imagined was about to engulf them. The great Wind planned vengeance. One night while I slept, he whisked 'Dawn-Girl' from her branch and with a shriek of joy, he sped off on his endless tramp which never ends.
"In the morning I awakened with an unaccountable fear clutching my heart. As usual I had slept in the grove. I jumped to my feet and rushed toward the bush where 'Dawn-Girl' dwelt but it was empty. And my heart, my life was empty also. The shadow of doom had descended upon me. For three days I wept in the garden. And all my flower friends closed their glorious petals in sympathy. The entire garden wept. It was a place of mourning. Some of the flowers even died of grief.
"On the morning of the fourth day I went with heavy step to the house of an old Hindu philosopher who had lived for a hundred and forty years. He was known to be the oldest living man in the world and also the wisest. He listened to my story. When I had finished he told me to come to this city in the Himalayas where all the great winds congregate. Here comes every wind of importance at some time or other. To this place he declared must some day come 'The Wind that Tramps the World.' When it does, he suggested that I steal 'Dawn-Girl' from the Wind even as the Wind had stolen 'Dawn-Girl' from me. So I sold my garden although it tore my soul to do so, and came up here to 'The City of the Big Winds.' I had this huge house built. It cost a vast sum of money. All the wood and material it contains had to be laboriously carried over the winding mountain passes that divide this country from India. I had two great windows built in the room of 'The Jade Vase.' When these windows are flung open all the winds come crashing through. I have been here for thirty years, thirty years have I failed, and even so I have not lost courage. There is always tomorrow and tomorrow rolling on endlessly. Some day 'The Wind that Tramps the World' will come and when he does I shall be ready for him."
Thus the old Chinaman ended his story and Steppling did not comment upon it. There seemed nothing to say. Words at best are rather futile. He was surprised at the story but then he had traveled much in the world and much had he heard that surprised him. It set many unanswerable queries to floating in his mind. Was Hi Ling sane? For that matter was he sane himself?
All through that night he sat at the door of the house of Hi Ling. He could not sleep. His brain was a cauldron of seething fantastic thoughts. He was on the roof of the world. Much could he see that was invisible to the millions of people down in the Valleys of Earth. The sky was as brilliant as a diamond-studded crown. It bore down upon him, crushing him beneath the weight of its splendor. He was breathing hard. The air was so rarefied that even in the night he could see for miles about him. From the jagged mountain peaks came the constant din and babble of the winds. On up they came from the Valleys on a constant trail that is nobody knows how old.
During the days that followed John Steppling felt as though he were living in a dream. The house, the moon-lantern, Hi Ling all seemed but wraiths in a rather pleasant sleep. Hi Ling had not insisted on his staying, though he took his continued presence as a matter of course. Every night before they supped, Hi Ling opened the massive windows of the room of 'The Jade Vase' and the Winds came tumbling through. Night after night the self-same happenings were repeated and yet they never seemed to grow monotonous. Hi Ling endeavored to teach him the art of listening, but his efforts were in vain.
One night as Hi Ling opened the windows the blast that drove in was so intense that it shook the house as though it had been on rockers. It bellowed and roared like a lion with a thorn in its foot. It seemed wild. By comparison the other winds which had drifted through seemed to possess much culture. The moon-lantern swayed perilously.
Hi Ling seized Steppling's arm. His face was more cadaverous and drawn than ever. His fingers bit into the flesh like talons.
"It is the Wind!" he muttered hoarsely.
How can one describe the events that followed? Hi Ling seemed to have gone stark raving mad. He pranced about the room as agilely as an ape in a jungle swamp. His mouth was drawn back until his decayed yellow teeth showed like fangs. All the while he chanted a wild weird refrain which occasionally rose above the howling of 'The Wind that Tramps the World.' Involuntarily John Steppling stepped back into the shadows of the farthest corner of the room. He shivered. He was gripped by a crushing, an unexplainable fear, which he could not shake from him. He knew that events of great portent in the life of Hi Ling were about to happen. For thirty years or was it longer, Hi Ling had waited for this moment.
Fascinated Steppling watched the actions of the old Chinaman. At times he gyrated about like a whirling dervish of India. Sometimes he sprang into the air as though clutching for the moon-lantern. And all the time he drooled at the mouth. Froth foamed horribly in the corners of his lips.
As the actions of Hi Ling grew more fanatical, the intensity of the wind increased. It struck against the ears like something solid so great was the shock. And all the time Steppling listened, listened more intensely than he had ever listened before. And eventually he thought he heard the sound of singing, in a voice sweet-low and sadder than the autumn breeze through the tree-tops. He strained every effort. His heart even slowed down to catch the melody so superb was its beauty. At first he imagined that his ears were at fault, that the beautiful notes existed only in his subconscious mind, but even as the thought occurred to him, he banished it. A sound so beautiful could not be buried in his subconsciousness, for never in his life had he heard music of such haunting beauty. The subconscious mind contains only impressions which have passed at some time or other through one's consciousness. At that moment he became almost as mad as Hi Ling. He knew that he had heard the voice of 'Dawn-Girl' and he did not wonder that Hi Ling had renounced all else in the world for love of her. For a while longer the singing continued, then it ceased. It ended on a final beautiful note that seemed almost a moan. With a start, Steppling came back to reality. The room was now in total darkness. The moon-lantern had been ruthlessly torn from its hanging and as it fell it had spluttered out. Now the fury of the Wind increased, if increase it could. Occasionally Hi Ling uttered a cry of excitement, of anger or delight. And the Wind roared back in a tremendous voice which Steppling construed as a threat. How long the fight continued, John Steppling could not tell. He crouched in his corner as nervous as a new-born kitten that is snatched from its mother.
Sunrise came at last. As it did so the Wind passed out of the window to return no more. As the first shafts of the sun cut over the jagged mountain peaks and crept into the room, John Steppling gazed cautiously about him. Hi Ling lay prone on the floor before the altar. At once Steppling rushed to his side. He turned the limp body over, but it was useless. He could do nothing. The chest had been completely stove in. Hi Ling had collapsed even as an old frail house might collapse in a cyclone. For a moment Steppling gazed down upon the face but it was no longer old and lined with age. It was the face of a youth. There was a bit of warm red color in the cheeks and the lips were smiling. Steppling gazed slowly toward the jade vase. The withered branch was withered no longer. Life had come to it again for on the branch was a flower of the soft warm color of a tea rose but unlike any flower he had ever known before. The fragrant cool petals were as velvet soft as the cheek of any maiden. Again John Steppling turned to Hi Ling and he was not surprised that even in death he looked young. For youth had come to him in the return of 'Dawn-Girl.' Old age at best is mainly a matter of attitude.
An hour later John Steppling left the long ambling old house. But before he went he again lighted the moon-lantern and placed the lovely flower on the breast of Hi Ling. Even as he left he heard the sound of singing and the notes were joyous and wonderfully sweet.