Читать книгу The Land of Far-Beyond - Enid blyton - Страница 6

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The children went down the steps to the beach, for the river was low at that time. The Stranger carried the dog in his arms, and they watched him whilst he bathed its leg. He said comforting things to it, and the children were astonished. They had never been taught to be kind to animals, and when they saw a cat, dog, or bird, their first thought was always to throw something at it!

“I wonder who hurt you,” said the Stranger, as he bound up the leg with a strip of linen torn from his handkerchief. “This is a dreadful City! I have seen horses slashed for not going up hills quickly enough. I have seen cats so thin that they can surely only live on what is in dustbins, and cannot have good homes. I have seen dirty, ragged children who should be at school—children with no manners, no kindness in them, whose hard little faces have no beauty. I have seen grown-ups careless and dishonest, selfish and hard—how can the children learn to be anything else! How I wish I had never left my own land!”

The children listened as the Stranger talked to himself and the dog. “Where do you come from?” asked Anna, boldly.

“I come from the Land of Far-Beyond,” said the Stranger. “My name is Wanderer, but my home is there. I cannot stay in one place for long. I have to see what the world is like, and take the news back to my own land. I heard many things of the great City of Turmoil, so I came to see it on my way to the country beyond. But I wish I had never come here. It is a city of great burdens!”

“Great burdens! What do you mean?” asked Peter, scornfully. “A burden is a load, isn’t it? There are no burdens in our city.”

“You all carry a terrible burden in your hearts,” said the Stranger, sadly. “The burden of selfishness, untruthfulness, dishonesty, uncleanliness, deceit, greed, disloyalty—ah, I could tell you many, many more. Your hearts must be heavy, even as mine is light. Have I seen a happy or a kind face since I first entered this city? Not one!”

“I haven’t got a burden,” said Peter. “You are talking nonsense, Stranger!”

The Stranger looked at him out of his deep eyes, and Peter felt uncomfortable. “You are only a boy,” said the tall man. “But you have a terrible burden already! Ah, if you could see that burden, how astonished and dismayed you would be!”

“You are telling fibs!” said Peter, rudely. “You show me my burden if you can! I’ll believe you then!”

“Show me mine, too!” cried Anna.

“And mine!” said Patience. The other children said nothing. The felt a little frightened, for the Stranger’s eyes gleamed with such a curious light.

“I can show you your burdens if you like,” said the Stranger, slowly. “But if I do, you will feel their dreadful weight.”

“Go on. Show us!” cried Anna, impatiently.

“Shut your eyes, and think of nothing!” said Wanderer, commandingly, looking at the three children in turn. “Empty your minds so that I may fill them with good and beautiful thoughts, that will push from your heart the evil burden there!”

The children did as they were told. They stood there, with their eyes shut, thinking of nothing. And into their heads came thoughts they had never known—thoughts of loving-kindness, thoughts of beauty, shining, wonderful thoughts—and at the same time a pain came round their hearts, as the burden they carried there of wrong and shameful things began to move and writhe.

“Open your eyes!” commanded the Stranger in such a sad voice that the children opened their eyes in amazement. Why was he so unhappy?

They felt a terrible weight on their backs, a weight that almost dragged them down. Anna groaned.

“Oh, what’s the matter with me!” she cried, trying to see what was on her back.

“It is your burden,” said Wanderer. “The burden that you did not believe in. The burden of all the ugly things you have said and done and thought in your life!”

“Oh, Peter has a burden, too; a great load on his back!” cried Lily, staring in wonder at a great burden across Peter’s shoulders. “Peter, isn’t it terribly heavy?”

“Yes,” said Peter, trying to straighten his shoulders. “Wanderer, I believe you now. Take this load away from me. I can’t bear it.”

“I cannot take it away,” said Wanderer. “It can only be taken from you if you go to the Land of Far-Beyond, and reach my city, the City of Happiness. No one can take it away from you here.”

Peter, Patience, and Anna stared at the Stranger in horror and dismay.

“We haven’t got to carry these loads all the time, have we?” cried Anna. “Oh, do, do take them away. You made them come. You can surely take them away.”

“I didn’t make them come,” said Wanderer. “You made them yourselves. I only gave them shape, to show you how heavy they were.”

The children began to cry bitterly, for they were frightened. Some grown-ups, attracted by the little crowd, came down the steps to see what was the matter. Peter saw that one was a friend of his mother’s.

“Miss Grumble! Tell this man to take away this load from my back!” he begged her. “He made it come! Tell him to take it away!”

Lily explained what had happened and the grown-ups listened in amazement. They tried to take the burdens from the backs of the three children but they cried out in pain. “Don’t! Don’t! It hurts when you try to pull them away.”

“The burdens are their own, as much a part of them as their hair and their nails,” said Wanderer, gravely. “You cannot remove them. They can only lose them by going to the Land of Far-Beyond, through difficult ways and hard paths. Otherwise they must carry them for the rest of their lives—and, alas, they will grow bigger and bigger, for there is no chance of losing a burden of this kind, in the wicked City of Turmoil.”

The grown-ups laughed. One of them, Mr. Scornful, challenged Wanderer to produce a burden on his back too. “I suppose you think I’ve a burden of sin in my heart too!” he said. “Well, I haven’t! I am a happy man, rich and powerful, with a big house and many horses. I have no burden! You cannot do your tricks on me!”

Wanderer looked round at the group of five grown-ups and five children. “You shall each see your burdens,” he said, and every one fell silent. They shut their eyes when he commanded, their minds became empty, and a pain began to stir around their hearts, just as it had done before with the three children. And lo and behold when they opened their eyes again, each one of them was weighted down with a great burden on his back. And the biggest one of all was that on Mr. Scornful’s shoulders!

“So you are a happy man?” said Wanderer, sadly, looking at the dismayed Mr. Scornful. “You did not feel the weight of the dishonest ways in which you got your money. You did not feel the burden of your scorn for other’s feelings, your selfishness that made you trample others under so that you might get the wealth and power you wanted. Now you know the burden you carried in your hard heart!”

The dog came and licked Wanderer’s hand. It still limped on three legs. “We must go,” said Wanderer, patting the dog. “You will come with me, little friend? Good-bye, poor beasts of burden. Carry your loads as best you may, and do not add to them, or you will limp like this dog all your life long!”

He picked up his staff and went up the steps of the embankment. The group stared at him, and then Mr. Scornful called after him.

“Don’t leave us like this! You must help us! We can’t go about with these loads on our backs.”

“Then go to the Land of Far-Beyond, and get rid of them!” called back the Stranger. “Leave the city by the west gate, and make for the hill you will see in the distance. Good-bye!”

Mr. Scornful started after him, clambering up the steps with difficulty. The others climbed up too. They tried to run after Wanderer, and they shouted loudly. He stood still and looked back at them, the dog by his side, wagging his tail.

“Take us with you!” cried Mr. Scornful, who somehow felt that this man with the shining face was the only person who could possibly help him. “Let us travel with you. Take us to the Land of Far-Beyond!”

“I cannot do that,” said Wanderer. “You will travel so slowly with the burdens on your backs. I must go swiftly. Set out in a company, keep together, and help one another. Farewell for the last time!”

He disappeared down the street, taking long strides, the dog running beside him on three legs. Peter, Anna, and Mr. Scornful tried to run after him—but it was impossible to run far with their great burdens. They stopped, panting.

“Maybe our burdens will disappear in the night,” said Mr. Scornful, who could hardly believe that such a queer thing could happen to him. “Let us all go home. If our loads are still with us in the morning, we will meet here and discuss what had better be done. This is a strange and terrible thing to happen.”

The party split up and went slowly back to their different homes. Anna, Patience, and Peter went to tell their mother what had happened, but she could not believe what they said, and thought that they were making up a tale for her. She tried to wrench their burdens from their backs, and they shouted with pain.

“Mother, don’t! It hurts. Our burdens are part of us. The Stranger said so. Let us lie down and sleep. We are so tired. To-morrow perhaps these burdens will have gone.”

The three children lay down on their beds. They could not undress. They could not lie very comfortably because their burdens seemed to get in the way.

THEY PASSED UNDER THE STONE ARCHWAY, AND FOUND THEMSELVES OUTSIDE THE CITY

In the morning, alas, the loads were still there! The children wept as they ate their breakfast. What was to become of them? They must leave the City of Turmoil and try to find the Land of Far-Beyond. There was nothing else to do. They could neither work nor play with such burdens on their backs.

It was the same with the other seven. John and Lily still had their burdens, and the five grown-ups had theirs too. Mr. Scornful’s had even grown a little bigger, because he had lost his temper half the night, and had added to his burden. With solemn, grave faces they met beside the river.

There were the five children—Peter, Anna, Patience, John, and Lily. There was Mr. Scornful. There was his brother, Mr. Fearful, and his cousin, Miss Simple. There was another man, a young one, called Dick Cowardly, and his sister, Gracie Grumble. The little group looked at one another and their burdens, and then the grown-ups talked together, deciding what they and the five children were to do.

“There is only one thing to do,” said Mr. Scornful. “We must try to find our way to the Land of Far-Beyond. After all, if that stranger was able to come here from that land, then we can surely go there. We will all go together. I have plenty of money to buy food and shelter. We will start out this very morning.”

“We have to go by the west gate,” said Gracie Grumble. “Oh, dear, of course it would be the one farthest from here! Well, let’s start.”

They set off down the streets, a sorry company, going slowly because of the heavy weight on their backs. People stared at them as they went, and wondered where they were going. At last they reached the big west gate. They passed under the stone archway, and found themselves outside the city. The noise died away as they stood there, trying to see the hill to which they had to go.

“I’ve no doubt we shall find some one there who will give us more directions,” said Mr. Scornful. “Look—there is the hill. It doesn’t look very far. We must cheer up, for maybe the Land of Far-Beyond is not so far away as we think!”

They set off down a winding path that led in the direction of the distant hill. It reared its head against the sky, and seemed very high. Peter thought sadly that it would be very tiring to climb the hill with such a burden on his back.

“Come along,” he said to Anna, holding out his hand. “We must keep together. Maybe we will have plenty of adventures on the way to the Land of Far-Beyond!”