The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories

The Punishment

Lord Dunsany

Location: Potsdam, Germany.

Time: October, 1918.

Eyewitness Description: “Had you been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, you would have seen an imperious figure passing from place to place looking on many scenes. He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded, and the phantom said to him, ‘Come!.’. . .”

Author: Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron Dunsany, (1878–1957) was a larger-than-life Irish nobleman, big-game hunter and chess champion, who became a major writer of fantasy fiction, often ranked with J. R. R. Tolkien and Mervyn Peake. The military traditions of his ancient family naturally enough saw Dunsany fight in the Boer War, take up arms in the Irish Easter Rising in 1916, when he was hit by a bullet in the head, and then see service in France during the First World War. His outlook on life was, though, deeply soured by what he experienced in the trenches and this is very evident in his subsequent collections of short stories, Tales of War (1918), Unhappy Far-Off Things (1919) and Tales of Three Hemispheres (1919). Among these tales, “The Punishment” is significant for two reasons. Firstly, because it is reminiscent of one of Charles Dickens’ classic stories, A Christmas Carol. Secondly, because it was first published – prophetically – in October 1918 when revolutionary feeling against the war was growing in Germany. Indeed, a month later, on 9 November, the Kaiser abdicated, and two days later, the Armistice was signed between the warring nations.

An exhalation arose, drawn up by the moon, from an old battlefield after the passing of years. It came out of very old craters and gathered from trenches, smoked up from Noman’s Land and the ruins of farms; it rose from the rottenness of dead brigades, and lay for half the night over two armies, but at midnight the moon drew it up all into one phantom, and it rose and trailed away eastwards.

It passed over men in grey that were weary of war, it passed over a land once prosperous, happy and mighty, in which were a people that were gradually starving, it passed by ancient belfries in which there were no bells now, it passed over fear and misery and weeping, and so came to the Palace at Potsdam. It was the dead of the night, between midnight and dawn, and the Palace was very still that the emperor might sleep, and sentries guarded it who made no noise and relieved others in silence. Yet it was not so easy to sleep. Picture yourself a murderer who had killed a man. Would you sleep ? Picture yourself the man who made this war. Yes, you sleep, but nightmares come.

The phantom entered the chamber. “Come,” it said.

The Kaiser leaped up at once as obediently as when he came to attention on parade, years ago, as a subaltern in the Prussian Guard, a man whom no woman or child as yet had ever cursed; he leaped up and followed. They passed the silent sentries, none challenged and none saluted; they were moving swiftly over the town as the felon Gothas go; they came to a cottage in the country. They drifted over a little garden gate, and there in a neat little garden the phantom halted, like a wind that has suddenly ceased. “Look,” it said.

Should he look? Yet he must look. The Kaiser looked, and saw a window shining and a neat room in the cottage: there was nothing dreadful there: thank the good German God for that; it was all right, after all. The Kaiser had had a fright, but it was all right, there was only a woman with a baby sitting before the fire; and two small children and a man. And it was quite a jolly room. And the man was a young soldier; and, why, he was a Prussian Guardsman; there was his helmet hanging on the wall; so everything was all right. They were jolly German children, that was well. How nice and homely the room was. There shone before him, and showed far off in the night, the visible reward of German thrift and industry. It was all so tidy and neat, and yet they were quite poor people. The man had done his work for the Fatherland and yet beyond all that had been able to afford all those little knick-knacks that make a home so pleasant and that in their humble little way were luxury. And while the Kaiser looked the two young children laughed as they played on the floor, not seeing that face at the window.

Why! look at the helmet. That was lucky. A bullet-hole right through the front of it. That must have gone very close to the man’s head. How ever did it get through? It must have glanced upwards, as bullets sometimes do. The hole was quite low in the helmet. It would be dreadful to have bullets coming by close like that.

The firelight flickered, and the lamp shone on, and the children played on the floor, and the man was smoking out of a china pipe; he was strong and able and young, one of the wealth-winners of Germany.

“Have you seen?” said the phantom.

“Yes,” said the Kaiser. It was well, he thought, that a Kaiser should see how his people lived.

At once the fire went out and the lamp faded away, the room fell sombrely into neglect and squalor, and the soldier and the children faded away with the room; all disappeared phantasmally, and nothing remained but the helmet in a kind of glow on the wall, and the woman sitting all by herself in the darkness.

“It has all gone,” said the Kaiser.

“It has never been,” said the phantom.

The Kaiser looked again. Yes, there was nothing there, it was just a vision. There were the grey walls all damp and uncared for, and that helmet standing out solid and round, like the only real thing among fancies. No, it had never been. It was just a vision.

“It might have been,” said the phantom.

Might have been? How might it have been?

“Come,” said the phantom.

They drifted away down a little lane that in summer would have had roses, and came to an Uhlan’s house, in times of peace a small farmer. Farm buildings in good repair showed even in the night, and the black shapes of haystacks: again a well-kept garden lay by the house. The phantom and the Kaiser stood in the garden; before them a window glowed in a lamp-lit room.

“Look,” said the phantom.

The Kaiser looked again and saw a young couple, the woman played with a baby, and all was prosperous in the merry room. Again the hard-won wealth of Germany shone out for all to see; the cosy, comfortable furniture spoke of acres well cared for, spoke of victory in the struggle with the seasons, on which wealth of nations depends.

“It might have been,” said the phantom.

Again the fire died out and the merry scene faded away, leaving a melancholy ill-kept room with poverty and mourning haunting dusty corners and the woman sitting alone.

“Why do you show me this?” said the Kaiser. “Why do you show me these visions?”

“Come,” said the phantom.

“What is it?” said the Kaiser. “Where are you bringing me?”

“Come,” said the phantom.

They went from window to window, from land to land. You had seen, had you been out that night in Germany, and able to see visions, an imperious figure passing from place to place looking on many scenes. He looked on them, and families withered away, and happy scenes faded; and the phantom said to him: “Come.” He expostulated, but obeyed; and so they went from window to window of hundreds of farms in Prussia, till they came to the Prussian border and went on into Saxony; and always you would have heard, could you hear spirits speak, “It might have been,” “It might have been,” repeated from window to window.

They went down through Saxony heading for Austria.

And for long the Kaiser kept that callous imperious look. But at last he, even he, at last he nearly wept. And the phantom turned then and swept him back over Saxony, and into Prussia again and over the sentries’ heads, back to his comfortable bed where it was so hard to sleep. And though they had seen thousands of merry homes, homes that can never be merry now, shrines of perpetual mourning; though they had seen thousands of smiling German children, who will never be born now, but were only the visions of hopes blasted by him; for all the leagues over which he had been so ruthlessly hurried, dawn was yet barely breaking.

He had looked on the first few thousand homes of which he had robbed all time, and which he must see with his eyes before he may go hence. The first night of the Kaiser’s punishment was accomplished.