The Return of the Shadow. Christopher Tolkien

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СКАЧАТЬ the Ring in his hand, and then with an effort of will he made a movement as if to throw it in the fire; but he found he had put it back in his pocket.

      Gandalf laughed. ‘You see? You have always regarded it as a great treasure, and an heirloom from Bilbo. Now you cannot easily get rid of it. Though as a matter of fact, even if you took it to an anvil and summoned enough will to strike it with a heavy hammer, you would make no dint on it. Your little wood-fire, of course, even if you blew all night with a bellows would hardly melt any gold. But old Adam Hornblower the smith down the road could not melt it in his furnace. They say only dragonfire can melt them – but I wonder if that is not a legend, or at any rate if there are any dragons now left in which the old fire is hot enough. I fancy you would have to find one of the Cracks of Earth in the depths of the Fiery Mountain, and drop it down into the Secret Fire, if you really wanted to destroy it.’²⁰

      ‘After all your talk,’ said Bingo, half solemnly and half in pretended annoyance, ‘I really do want to destroy it. I cannot think how Bilbo put up with it for so long, if he knew as much – but he actually used it sometimes, and joked about it to me.’

      ‘The only thing to do with such perilous treasures that Adventure has bestowed on you is to take them lightheartedly,’ said Gandalf. ‘Bilbo never used the ring for any serious purpose after he came back. He knew that it was too serious a matter. And I think he taught you well – after he had chosen you as his heir from among all the hobbits of his kindred.’

      There was a long silence again, while Gandalf puffed at his pipe in apparent content, though under his lids his eyes were watching Bingo intently. Bingo gazed at the red embers, that began to glow as the light faded and the room grew slowly dark. He was thinking about the fabled Cracks of Earth and the terror of the Fiery Mountain.

      ‘Well?’ said Gandalf at last. ‘What are you thinking about? Are you making any plans or getting any ideas?’

      ‘No,’ said Bingo coming back to himself, and finding to his surprise that he was in the dark. ‘Or perhaps yes! As far as I can see I have got to leave Hobbiton, leave the Shire, leave everything and go away and draw the danger after me. I must save the Shire somehow, though there have been times when I thought it too stupid and dull for anything, and fancied a big explosion or an invasion of dragons might do it good! But I don’t feel like that now. I feel that as long as the Shire lies behind safe and comfortable, I shall find wandering and adventures bearable. I shall feel there is some foothold somewhere, even if I can’t ever stand on it myself again. But I suppose I must go alone. I feel rather minute, don’t you know, and extremely uprooted, and, well, frightened, I suppose. Help me, Gandalf, best of friends.’

      ‘Cheer up, Bingo, my lad,’ said Gandalf, throwing two small logs of wood on the fire and puffing it with his mouth. Immediately the wood blazed up and filled the room with dancing light. ‘No, I don’t think you need or should go alone. Why not ask your three best friends to, beg them to, order them to (if you must) – I mean the three, the only three who you have (perhaps indiscreetly but perhaps with wise choice) told about your secret Ring: Odo, Frodo, and Marmaduke [written above: Meriadoc]. But you must go quickly – and make it a joke, Bingo, a joke, a huge joke, a resounding jest. Don’t be mournful and serious. Jokes are really in your line. That’s what Bilbo liked about you (among other things), if you care to know.’

      ‘And where shall we go, and what shall we steer by, and what shall be our quest?’ said Bingo, without a trace of a smile or the glimmer of a jest. ‘When the huge joke is over, what then?’

      ‘At present I have no idea,’ said Gandalf, quite seriously and much to Bingo’s surprise and dismay. ‘But it will be just the opposite of Bilbo’s adventure – to begin with, at any rate. You will set out on a journey without any known destination; and as far as you have any object it will not be to win new treasure but to get rid of a treasure that belongs (one might say) inevitably to you. But you cannot even start without going East, West, South, or North; and which shall we choose? Towards danger, and yet not too rashly or too straight towards it. Go East. Yes, yes, I have it. Make first for Rivendell, and then we shall see. Yes, we shall see then. Indeed, I begin to see already!’ Suddenly Gandalf began to chuckle. He rubbed his long gnarled hands together and cracked the finger-joints. He leant forward to Bingo. ‘I have thought of a joke,’ he said. ‘Just a rough plan – you can set your comic wits to work on it.’ And his beard wagged backwards and forwards as he whispered long in Bingo’s ear. The fire burned low again – but suddenly in the darkness an unexpected sound rang out. Bingo was rocking with laughter.

      NOTES

       1 My father’s own thought is surely transparent here. Bingo introduces the subject of the Ring as if it had some connection with the Riders, whereas he is obviously intended to appear as quite unable even to guess at their significance; and there is no suggestion in the drafts that the Ring had been mentioned before this point.

       2 (in the Shire): my father first wrote ‘except Gandalf’. The words ‘(in the Shire)’ probably mean no more than that: i.e., no one save Bilbo and Bingo, and outside the Shire only Gandalf, and anyone else whom Gandalf might possibly have told.

3 This is probably the first time that the expression The Lord of the Ring was used; and The Lord of the Rings occurs below (note 6). (My father gave The Lord of the Ring as the title of the new work in a letter to Allen and Unwin of 31 August 1938).

4 Hence the asking for Baggins: this is not mentioned in the manuscript drafts, but see the typescript version, p. 54 and note 9. The following sentence, ‘But somehow the search for Baggins failed, and then something must have been discovered about you’ perhaps explains the story that Frodo Took met a Black Rider on the North Moor as early as the previous spring (see p. 71).

       5 My father first wrote here that the clothing of one who has thus become permanently invisible was invisible also, but rejected the statement as soon as written.

6 This seems to be the first appearance of the expression The Lord of the Rings; see note 3.

       7 After this sentence my father wrote: ‘Gollum I think some sort of distant kinsman of the goblin sort.’ Since this is contradicted in the next sentence it was obviously rejected in the act of writing; he crossed it out later.

8 ninety years and more: see pp. 31–3.

9 At no point in this text is there any further mention of Bingo’s ‘worry’; and the advice that he asks is entirely based on what Gandalf now tells him and which is obviously entirely new to him. There is also no further reference to the ‘strange signs and portents of trouble brewing’ spoken of in the next sentence, nor any explanation of Gandalf’s remark (p. 81) that ‘Gollum is very likely the beginning of our present trouble.’

      10 This ends the first page of the manuscript. At the head of the second page my father wrote in pencil: ‘Gandalf and Bingo discuss Rings and Gollum’, and ‘Draft: Later used in Chapter II’, and he numbered the pages (previously unnumbered) in Greek letters, beginning at this point. Thus the first page is left out. But these pencillings were clearly put in long after, and in my view they cast no doubt on the validity of the opening section as an integral part of the text. May СКАЧАТЬ