Chapter 17

Save for a time, near Cairo, I did not once stop on that homeward voyage, but turned into the little harbour at Imbros at a tranquil sunset on the 7th of March (as I reckon), and I moored the _Speranza_ to the ring in the little quay, and I raised the battered motor from the hold with the middle air-engine (battered by the typhoon in the mid-Pacific, which had broken it from the rope-fastenings and tumbled it head-over-heels to port), and I went through the windowless village-street, and up through the plantains and cypresses which I knew, and the Nile mimosas, and mulberries, and Trebizond palms, and pines, and acacias, and fig-trees, till the thicket stopped me, and I had to alight: for in those two years the path had finally disappeared; and on, on foot, I made my way, till I came to the board-bridge, and leant there, and looked at the rill; and thence climbed the steep path in the sward toward that rolling table-land where I had built with many a groan; and half-way up, I saw the tip of the crane-arm, then the blazing top of the south pillar, then the shed-roof, then the platform, a blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting sun. But the tent, and nearly all that it contained, was gone.

* * * * *

For four days I would do nothing, simply lying and watching, shirking a load so huge: but on the fifth morning I languidly began something: and I had not worked an hour, when a fever took me--to finish it, to finish it--and it lasted upon me, with only three brief intervals, nearly seven years; nor would the end have been so long in coming, but for the unexpected difficulty of getting the four flat roofs water-tight, for I had to take down half the east one. Finally, I made them of gold slabs one-and-a-quarter inch thick, smooth on both sides, on each beam double gutters being fixed along each side of the top flange to catch any leakage at the joints, which are filled with slaters'-cement. The slabs are clamped to the top flanges by steel clips, having bolts set with plaster-of-Paris in holes drilled in the slabs. These clips are 1-1/2 in. by 3/17 in., and are 17 in. apart. The roofs are slightly pitched to the front edges, where they drain into gold-plated copper-gutters on plated wrought-iron brackets, with one side flashed up over the blocks, which raise the slabs from the beam-tops, to clear the joint gutters.... But now I babble again of that base servitude, which I would forget, but cannot: for every measurement, bolt, ring, is in my brain, like a burden: but it is past, it is past--and it was vanity.

* * * * *

Six months ago to-day it was finished: six months more protracted, desolate, burdened, than all those sixteen years in which I built.

I wonder what a man--another man--some Shah, or Tsar, of that far-off past, would say now of me, if eye could rest upon me! With what awe would he certainly shrink before the wild majesty of these eyes; and though I am not lunatic--for I am not, I am not--how would he fly me with the exclamation: 'There is the very lunacy of Pride!'

For there would seem to him--it must be so--in myself, in all about me, something extravagantly royal, touched with terror. My body has fattened, and my girth now fills out to a portly roundness its broad Babylonish girdle of crimson cloth, minutely gold-embroidered, and hung with silver, copper and gold coins of the Orient; my beard, still black, sweeps in two divergent sheaves to my hips, flustered by every wind; as I walk through this palace, the amber-and-silver floor reflects in its depths my low-necked, short-armed robe of purple, blue, and scarlet, a-glow with luminous stones. I am ten times crowned Lord and Emperor; I sit a hundred times enthroned in confirmed, obese old Majesty. Challenge me who will--challenge me who dare! Among those myriad worlds upon which I nightly pore, I may have my Peers and Compeers and Fellow-denizens ... but _here_ I am Sole; Earth acknowledges my ancient sway and hereditary sceptre: for though she draws me, not yet, not yet, am I hers, but she is mine. It seems to me not less than a million million aeons since other beings, more or less resembling me, walked impudently in the open sunlight on this planet, which is rightly mine--I can indeed no longer picture to myself, nor even credit, that such a state of things--so fantastic, so far-fetched, so infinitely droll--could have existed: though, at bottom, I suppose, I know that it must have been really so. Up to ten years ago, in fact, I used frequently to dream that there were others. I would see them walk in the streets like ghosts, and be troubled, and start awake: but never now could such a thing, I think, occur to me in sleep: for the wildness of the circumstance would certainly strike my consciousness, and immediately I should know that the dream was a dream. For now, at least, I am sole, I am lord. The golden walls of this palace which I have built look down, enamoured of their reflection, into a lake of the choicest, purplest wine.

Not that I made it of wine because wine is rare; nor the walls of gold because gold is rare: that would have been too childish: but because I would match for beauty a human work with the works of those Others: and because it happens, by some persistent freak of the earth, that precisely things most rare and costly are generally the most beautiful.

The vision of glorious loveliness which is this palace now risen before my eyes cannot be described by pen and paper, though there _may_ be words in the lexicons of language which, if I sought for them with inspired wit for sixteen years, as I have built for sixteen years, might as vividly express my thought on paper, as the stones-of-gold, so grouped and built, express it to the eye: but, failing such labours and skill, I suppose I could not give, if there were another man, and I tried to give, the faintest conception of its celestial charm.

It is a structure positively as clear as the sun, and as fair as the moon--the sole great human work in the making of which no restraining thought of cost has played a part: one of its steps alone being of more cost than all the temples, mosques and besestins, the palaces, pagodas and cathedrals, built between the ages of the Nimrods and the Napoleons.

The house itself is very small--only 40 ft. long, by 35 broad, by 27 high: yet the structure as a whole is sufficiently enormous, high uplifted: the rest of the bulk being occupied by the platform, on which the house stands, each side of this measuring at its base 480 ft., its height from top to bottom 130 ft, and its top 48 ft. square, the elevation of the steps being just nearly 30 degrees, and the top reached from each of the four points of the compass by 183 low long steps, very massively overlaid with smooth molten gold--not forming a continuous flight, but broken into threes and fives, sixes and nines, with landings between the series, these from the top looking like a great terraced parterre of gold. It is thus an Assyrian palace in scheme: only that the platform has steps on all sides, instead of on one. The platform-top, from its edge to the golden walls of the house, is a mosaic consisting of squares of the glassiest clarified gold, and squares of the glassiest jet, corner to corner, each square 2 ft. wide. Around the edge of the platform on top run 48 square plain gold pilasters, 12 on each side, 2 ft. high, tapering upwards, and topped by a knob of solid gold, pierced with a hole through which passes a lax inch-and-a-half silver chain, hung with little silver balls which strike together in the breeze. The mansion consists of an outer court, facing east toward the sea, and the house proper, which encloses an inner court. The outer court is a hollow oblong 32 ft. wide by 8 ft. long, the summit of its three walls being battlemented; they are 18-1/2 ft. in height, or 8-1/2 ft. lower than the house; around their gold sides, on inside and outside, 3 ft. from the top, runs a plain flat band of silver, 1 ft. wide, projecting 2/3 in., and at the gate, which is a plain Egyptian entrance, facing eastwards, 2-1/2 ft. narrower at top than at bottom, stand the two great square pillars of massive plain gold, tapering upwards, 45 ft. high, with their capital of band, closed lotus, and thin plinth; in the outer court, immediately opposite the gate, is an oblong well, 12 ft. by 3 ft, reproducing in little the shape of the court, its sides, which are gold-lined, tapering downward to near the bottom of the platform, where a conduit of 1/8 in. diameter automatically replenishes the ascertained mean evaporation of the lake during the year, the well containing 105,360 litres when nearly full, and the lake occupying a circle round the platform of 980 ft. diameter, with a depth of 3-1/2 ft. Round the well run pilasters connected by silver chains with little balls, and it communicates by a 1/8 in. conduit with a pool of wine let into the inner court, this being fed from eight tall and narrow golden tanks, tapering upwards, which surround it, each containing a different red wine, sufficient on the whole to last for all purposes during my lifetime. The ground of the outer court is also a mosaic of jet and gold: but thenceforth the jet-squares give place throughout to squares of silver, and the gold-squares to squares of clear amber, clear as solidified oil. The entrance is by an Egyptian doorway 7 ft. high, with folding-doors of gold-plated cedar, opening inwards, surrounded by a very large projecting coping of plain silver, 3-1/2 ft. wide, severe simplicity of line throughout enormously multiplying the effect of richness of material. The interior resembles, I believe, rather a Homeric, than an Assyrian or Egyptian house--except for the 'galleries,' which are purely Babylonish and Old Hebrew. The inner court, with its wine-pool and tanks, is a small oblong of 8 ft. by 9 ft., upon which open four silver-latticed window-oblongs in the same proportion, and two doors, before and behind, oblongs in the same proportion. Round this run the eight walls of the house proper, the inner 10 ft. from the outer, each parallel two forming a single long corridor-like chamber, except the front (east) two, which are divided into three apartments; in each side of the house are six panels of massive plain silver, half-an-inch thinner in their central space, where are affixed paintings, 22 or else 21 taken at the burning of Paris from a place called 'The Louvre,' and 2 or else 3 from a place in England: so that the panels have the look of frames, and are surrounded by oval garlands of the palest amethyst, topaz, sapphire, and turquoise which I could find, each garland being of only one kind of stone, a mere oval ring two feet wide at the sides and narrowing to an inch at the top and bottom, without designs. The galleries are five separate recesses in the outer walls under the roofs, two in the east façade, and one in the north, south, and west, hung with pavilions of purple, blue, rose and white silk on rings and rods of gold, with gold pilasters and banisters, each entered by four steps from the roof, to which lead, north and south, two spiral stairs of cedar. On the east roof stands the kiosk, under which is the little lunar telescope; and from that height, and from the galleries, I can watch under the bright moonlight of this climate, which is very like lime-light, the for-ever silent blue hills of Macedonia, and where the islands of Samothraki, Lemnos, Tenedos slumber like purplish fairies on the Aegean Sea: for, usually, I sleep during the day, and keep a night-long vigil, often at midnight descending to bathe my coloured baths in the lake, and to disport myself in that strange intoxication of nostrils, eyes, and pores, dreaming long wide-eyed dreams at the bottom, to return dazed, and weak, and drunken. Or again--_twice_ within these last void and idle six months--I have suddenly run, bawling out, from this temple of luxury, tearing off my gaudy rags, to hide in a hut by the shore, smitten for one intense moment with realisation of the past of this earth, and moaning: 'alone, alone ... all alone, alone, alone ... alone, alone....' For events precisely resembling eruptions take place in my brain; and one spangled midnight--ah, how spangled!--I may kneel on the roof with streaming, uplifted face, with outspread arms, and awe-struck heart, adoring the Eternal: the next, I may strut like a cock, wanton as sin, lusting to burn a city, to wallow in filth, and, like the Babylonian maniac, calling myself the equal of Heaven.

* * * * *

But it was not to write of this--of all this--!

Of the furnishing of the palace I have written nothing.... But why I hesitate to admit to myself what I _know_, is not clear. If They speak to me, I may surely write of Them: for I do not fear Them, but am Their peer.

Of the island I have written nothing: its size, climate, form, vegetation.... There are two winds: a north and a south wind; the north is cool, and the south is warm; and the south blows during the winter months, so that sometimes on Christmas-day it is quite hot; and the north, which is cool, blows from May to September, so that the summer is hardly ever oppressive, and the climate was made for a king. The mangal-stove in the south hall I have never once lit.

The length, I should say, is 19 miles; the breadth 10, or thereabouts; and the highest mountains should reach a height of some 2,000 ft., though I have not been all over it. It is very densely wooded in most parts, and I have seen large growths of wheat and barley, obviously degenerate now, with currants, figs, valonia, tobacco, vines in rank abundance, and two marble quarries. From the palace, which lies on a sunny plateau of beautifully-sloping swards, dotted with the circular shadows thrown by fifteen huge cedars, and seven planes, I can see on all sides an edge of forest, with the gleam of a lake to the north, and in the hollow to the east the rivulet with its little bridge, and a few clumps and beds of flowers. I can also spy right through----

* * * * *

It shall be written now:

I have this day heard within me the contention of the Voices.

* * * * *

I thought that they were done with me! That all, all, all, was ended! I have not heard them for twenty years!

But to-day--distinctly--breaking in with brawling impassioned suddenness upon my consciousness.... I heard.

This late _far niente_ and vacuous inaction here have been undermining my spirit; this inert brooding upon the earth; this empty life, and bursting brain! Immediately after eating at noon to-day, I said to myself:

'I have been duped by the palace: for I have wasted myself in building, hoping for peace, and there is no peace. Therefore now I shall fly from it, to another, sweeter work--not of building, but of destroying--not of Heaven, but of Hell--not of self-denial, but of reddest orgy. Constantinople--beware!' I tossed the chair aside, and with a stamp was on my feet: and as I stood--again, again--I heard: the startlingly sudden wrangle, the fierce, vulgar outbreak and voluble controversy, till my consciousness could not hear its ears: and one urged: 'Go! go!' and the other: 'Not there...! where you like, ... but not there...! for your life!'

I did not--for I could not--go: I was so overcome. I fell upon the couch shivering.

These Voices, or impulses, plainly as I felt them of old, quarrel within me now with an openness new to them. Lately, influenced by my long scientific habit of thought, I have occasionally wondered whether what I used to call 'the two Voices' were not in reality two strong instinctive movements, such as most men may have felt, though with less force. But to-day doubt is past, doubt is past: nor, unless I be very mad, can I ever doubt again.

* * * * *

I have been thinking, thinking of my life: there is a something which I cannot understand.

There was a man whom I met once in that dark backward and abysm of time, when I must have been very young--I fancy at some college or school in England, and his name now is far enough beyond scope of my memory, lost in the vast limbo of past things. But he used to talk continually about certain 'Black' and 'White' Powers, and of their strife for this world. He was a short man with a Roman nose, and lived in fear of growing a paunch. His forehead a-top, in profile, was more prominent than the nose-end, he parted his hair in the middle, and had the theory that the male form was more beautiful than the female. I forget what his name was--the dim clear-obscure being. Very profound was the effect of his words upon me, though, I think, I used to make a point of slighting them. This man always declared that 'the Black' would carry off the victory in the end: and so he has, so he has.

But assuming the existence of this 'Black' and this 'White' being--and supposing it to be a fact that my reaching the Pole had any connection with the destruction of my race, according to the notions of that extraordinary Scotch parson--then it must have been the power of '_the Black_' which carried me, in spite of all obstacles, to the Pole. So far I can understand.

But _after_ I had reached the Pole, what further use had either White or Black for me? Which was it--White or Black--that preserved my life through my long return on the ice--and _why_? It _could_ not have been 'the Black'! For I readily divine that from the moment when I touched the Pole, the only desire of the Black, which had previously preserved, must have been to destroy me, with the rest. It must have been 'the White,' then, that led me back, retarding me long, so that I should not enter the poison-cloud, and then openly presenting me the _Boreal_ to bring me home to Europe. But his motive? And the significance of these recommencing wrangles, after such a silence? This I do not understand!

Curse Them, curse Them, with their mad tangles! I care nothing for Them! Are there any White Idiots and Black Idiots--_at all_? Or are these Voices that I hear nothing but the cries of my own strained nerves, and I all mad and morbid, morbid and mad, mad, my good God?

This inertia here is _not good_ for me! This stalking about the palace! and long thinkings about Earth and Heaven, Black and White, White and Black, and things beyond the stars! My brain is like bursting through the walls of my poor head.

To-morrow, then, to Constantinople.

* * * * *

Descending to go to the ship, I had almost reached the middle of the east platform-steps, when my foot slipped on the smooth gold: and the fall, though I was not walking carelessly, had, I swear, all the violence of a fall caused by a push. I struck my head, and, as I rolled downward, swooned. When I came to myself, I was lying on the very bottom step, which is thinly washed by the wine-waves: another roll and I suppose I must have drowned. I sat there an hour, lost in amazement, then crossed the causeway, came down to the _Speransa_ with the motor, went through her, spent the day in work, slept on her, worked again to-day, till four, at both ship and time-fuses (I with only 700 fuses left, and in Stamboul alone must be 8,000 houses, without counting Galata, Tophana, Kassim-pacha, Scutari, and the rest), started out at 5.30, and am now at 11 P.M. lying motionless two miles off the north coast of the island of Marmora, with moonlight gloating on the water, a faint north breeze, and the little pale land looking immensely stretched-out, solemn and great, as if that were the world, and there were nothing else; and the tiny island at its end immense, and the _Speranza_ vast, and I only little. To-morrow at 11 A.M. I will moor the _Speranza_ in the Golden Horn at the spot where there is that low damp nook of the bagnio behind the naval magazines and that hill where the palace of the Capitan Pacha is.

* * * * *

I found that great tangle of ships in the Golden Horn wonderfully preserved, many with hardly any moss-growths. This must be due, I suppose, to the little Ali-Bey and Kezat-Hanah, which flow into the Horn at the top, and made no doubt a constant current.

Ah, I remember the place: long ago I lived here some months, or, it may be, years. It is the fairest of cities--and the greatest. I believe that London in England was larger: but no city, surely, ever _seemed_ so large. But it is flimsy, and will burn like tinder. The houses are made of light timber, with interstices filled by earth and bricks, and some of them look ruinous already, with their lovely faded tints of green and gold and red and blue and yellow, like the hues of withered flowers: for it is a city of paints and trees, and all in the little winding streets, as I write, are volatile almond-blossoms, mixed with maple-blossoms, white with purple. Even the most splendid of the Sultan's palaces are built in this combustible way: for I believe that they had a notion that stone-building was presumptuous, though I have seen some very thick stone-houses in Galata. This place, I remember, lived in a constant state of sensation on account of nightly flares-up; and I have come across several tracts already devastated by fires. The ministers-of-state used to attend them, and if the fire would not go out, the Sultan himself was obliged to be there, in order to encourage the firemen. Now it will burn still better.

But I have been here six weeks, and still no burning: for the place seems to plead with me, it is so ravishing, so that I do not know why I did not live here, and spare my toils during those sixteen nightmare years; for two whole weeks the impulse to burn was quieted; and since then there has been an irritating whisper at my ear which said: 'It is not really like the great King that you are, this burning, but like a foolish child, or a savage, who liked to see fireworks: or at least, if you must burn, do not burn poor Constantinople, which is so charming, and so very old, with its balsamic perfumes, and the blossomy trees of white and light-purple peeping over the walls of the cloistered painted houses, and all those lichened tombs--those granite menhirs and regions of ancient marble tombs between the quarters, Greek tombs, Byzantine, Jew, Mussulman tombs, with their strange and sacred inscriptions--overwaved by their cypresses and vast plane-trees.' And for weeks I would do nothing: but roamed about, with two minds in me, under the tropic brilliance of the sky by day, and the vast dreamy nights of this place that are like nights seen through azure-tinted glasses, and in each of them is not one night, but the thousand-and-one long crowded nights of glamour and fancy: for I would sit on the immense esplanade of the Seraskierat, or the mighty grey stones of the porch of the mosque of Sultan Mehmed-fatih, dominating from its great steps all old Stamboul, and watch the moon for hours and hours, so passionately bright she soared through clear and cloud, till I would be smitten with doubt of my own identity, for whether I were she, or the earth, or myself, or some other thing or man, I did not know, all being so silent alike, and all, except myself, so vast, the Seraskierat, and the Suleimanieh, and Stamboul, and the Marmora Sea, and the earth, and those argent fields of the moon, all large alike compared with me, and measure and space were lost, and I with them.

* * * * *