"_The parting genius is with sighing sent._"
#Milton's# _Hymn on the Nativity._
It was high noon, blue and hot. The little town upon the southern slope
of the hills that shut in the great plain glared white in the intense
sunlight. The beds of the brooks in the valleys that cut their way
through the hill-clefts were dry and dusty; and the sole shade visible
lay upon the orchard floors, where the thick branches above cast
blue-black shadows upon the golden tangle of grasses at their feet. A
soft murmur of hidden creature-things rose like an invisible haze from
earth, and nothing moved in all the horizon save the black kites high in
the blue air and the white butterflies over the drowsy meadows. The
poppies that flecked the yellow wheat fields drooped heavily, spilling
the wine of summer from their cups. Nature stood at drowsy-footed pause,
reluctant to take up again the vital whirr of living.
At the edge of the orchard, near the dusty highway, under a huge
misshapen olive tree sat a boy, still as a carven Buddha save that his
eyes stood wide, full of dreams. His was a sensitive face, thoughtful
beyond his childish years, full of weariness when from time to time he
closed his eyes, full of dark brooding when the lids lifted again.
Presently he rose to his feet, and his two hands clenched tightly into
fists.
"I hate it!" he muttered vehemently.
At his side the grasses stirred and a portion of the blue shadow of the
tree detached itself and became the shadow of a man.
"Hate?" questioned a golden, care-free voice at his side. "Thou'rt
overyoung to hate. What is it thou dost hate?"
A young man had thrown himself down in the grass at the boy's side.
Shaggy locks hung about his brown cheeks; his broad, supple chest and
shoulders were bare; his eyes were full of sleepy laughter; and his
indolent face was now beautiful, now grotesque, at the color of his
thoughts. From a leathern thong about his neck hung a reed pipe, deftly
fashioned, and a bowl of wood carved about with grape-bunches dangled
from the twisted vine which girdled his waist. In one hand he held a
honey-comb, into which he bit with sharp white teeth, and on one arm he
carried branches torn from fig and almond trees, clustered with green
figs and with nuts. The two looked long at each other, the boy gravely,
the man smiling.
"Thou wilt know me another time," said the man with a throaty laugh.
"And I shall know thee. I have been watching thee a long time--I know
not why. But what is it thou dost hate? For me, I hate nothing. Hate is
wearisome."
The boy's gaze fixed itself upon the bright, insouciant face of the man
with a fascination he endeavored to throw off but could not. Presently
he spoke, and his voice was low and clear and deliberate.
"Hate is evil," he said.
"I know not what evil may be," said the man, a puzzled frown furrowing
the smooth brow for a swift moment. "Hunger, now, or lust, or sleep--"
"Hate is the thing that comes up in my throat and chokes me when I think
of tyranny," interrupted the boy, his eyes darkening.
"Why trouble to hate?" asked the man. He lifted his pipe to his lips and
blew a joyous succession of swift, unhesitant notes, as throbbing as the
heat, as vivid as the sunshine. His lithe throat bubbled and strained
with his effort, and his warm vitality poured through the mouthpiece of
the pipe and issued melodiously at the farther end. Noon deepened
through many shades of hot and slumberous splendor, the very silence
intensified by the brilliant pageant of sound. A great hawk at sail
overhead hung suddenly motionless upon unquivering wings. Every sheep in
the pasture across the road lifted a questioning nose, and the entire
flock moved swiftly nearer on a sudden impulse. And then the man threw
down his pipe, and the silence closed in softly upon the ebbing waves of
sound.
"Why trouble to hate?" he asked again, and sank his shoulder deeper into
the warm grass. His voice was as sleepy as the drone of distant bees,
and his dream-filmed eyes looked out through drooping lids. "I hate
nothing. It takes effort. It is easier to feel friendly with all
things--creatures, and men, and gods."
"I hate with a purpose," said the child, his eyes fixed, and brooding
upon an inward vision. The man rose upon his elbow and gazed curiously
at the boy, but the latter, unheeding, went on with his thoughts. "Some
day I shall be a man, and then I shall kill tyranny. Aye, kill! It is
tyranny that I hate. And hatred I hate; and oppression. But how I shall
go about to kill them, that I do not yet know. I think and think, but I
have not yet thought of a way."
"If," said the man, "thou could'st love as royally as thou could'st
hate, what a lover thou would'st become! For me, I love but lightly, and
hate not at all, yet have I been a man for aeons. How near art thou to
manhood?"
"I have lived nearly twelve years."
Like a flash the man leaped to his feet and turned his face westward
towards the sea with outstretched arms, and a look and gesture of utter
yearning gave poignancy and spirit to the careless, sleepy grace of his
face and figure. He seized the boy's arm. "See now," he cried, his voice
trembling upon the verge of music, "it is nearly twelve years that I
have been a wanderer, shorn of my strength and my glory! Look you, boy,
at the line of hills yonder. Behind those hills lie the blue sea-ridges,
and still beyond, lies the land where I dwelt. Ye gods, the happy
country!" Like a great child he stood, and his breast broke into sobs,
but his eyes glowed with splendid visions. "Apollo's golden shafts
could scarce penetrate the shadowy groves, and Diana's silver arrows
pierced only the tossing treetops. And underfoot the crocus flamed, and
the hyacinth. Flocks and herds fed in pastures rosy with blossoms, and
there were white altars warm with flame in every thicket. There were
dances, and mad revels, and love and laughter"--he paused, and the
splendor died from his face. "And then one starry night--still and clear
it was, and white with frost--fear stalked into the happy haunts, and an
ontreading mystery, benign yet dreadful. And something, I know not what,
drove me forth. _Aie! Aie!_ There is but the moaning of doves when the
glad hymns sounded, and cold ashes and dead drifted leaves on the once
warm altars!"
A sharp pull at his tunic brought his thoughts back to the present. The
child drew him urgently down into the long grass, and laid a finger upon
his lip; and at the touch of the small finger the man trembled through
all his length of limbs, and lay still. Up the road rose a cloud of dust
and the sound of determined feet, and presently a martial figure came in
sight, clad in bronze and leather helmet and cuirass, and carrying an
oblong shield and a short, broad-bladed sword of double edge. Short yet
agile, a soldier every inch, he looked neither to the right nor to the
left, but marched steadily and purposefully upon his business. His
splendid muscles, shining with sweat, gleamed satinwise in the hot sun.
A single unit, he was yet a worthy symbol of a world-wide efficiency.
The man and boy beneath the tree crouched low. "Art afraid?" whispered
the man. And the boy whispered back, "It is he that I hate, and all his
kind." His child-heart beat violently against his side, great beads
stood out upon his forehead, and his hands trembled. "If you but knew
the sorrow in the villages! Aye, in the whole country--because of him!
He takes the bread from the mouths of the pitiful poor--and we are all
so poor! The women and babes starve, but the taxes must be paid. Upon
the aged and the crippled, even, fall heavy burdens. And all because of
him and his kind!"
The man looked at the flushed face and trembling limbs of the boy, and
his own face glowed in a golden smile that was full of a sudden and
unaccustomed tenderness. "Why, see now," he whispered, "that is easily
overcome. Look! I will show thee the way." Lifting himself cautiously,
he crouched on all fours in the grass, slipping and sliding forward so
hiddenly that the keen ear and eagle eye of the approaching soldier took
note of no least ripple in the quiet grass by the roadside. It was the
sinuous, silent motion of a snake; and suddenly his eyes narrowed, his
lips drew back from his teeth, his ears pricked forward, along the ridge
of his bare back the hair bristled, and the locks about his face waved
and writhed as though they were the locks of Medusa herself. Ah, and
were those the flanks and feet of a man, or of a beast, that bore him
along so stealthily? The child watched him in a horror of fascination,
rooted to the spot in terror.
With the quickness of a flash it all happened--the martial traveller
taken unaware, the broad-bladed sword wrenched from his hand by
seemingly superhuman strength, a sudden hideous grip at his throat,
blows rained upon his head, sharp sobbing breaths torn from his panting
breast ... a red stain upon the dusty road ... a huddled figure ...
silence. And he who had been a man indeed a few brief, bright years, was
no more now than carrion; and he who through all his boasted aeons had
not yet reached the stature of a man stood above the dead body, his face
no longer menacing, but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed.
And then suddenly the spell that held the child was broken, and he
leaped out upon the murderer and beat and beat and beat upon him with
helpless, puny child-fists, and all a child's splendid and ineffectual
rage. And at that the man turned and thrust the child from him in utter
astonishment, and the boy fell heavily back upon the road, the second
quiet figure lying there. And again the man's face changed, became
vacant, bewildered, troubled; and stooping, he lifted the boy in his
arms, and ran with him westward along the road, through the fields of
dead-ripe wheat, across the stubble of the garnered barley, fleet-footed
as a deer, till he could run no more.
In a little glen of hickory and oak, through whose misty-mellow depths a
small stream trickled, he paused at last and laid the boy upon a soft
and matted bed of thick green myrtle, and brought water in his two hands
to bathe the bruised head, whimpering the while. Then he chafed the
small bare feet and warmed them in his own warm breast; and gathering
handfuls of pungent mint and the sweet-scented henna, he crushed them
and held them to the boy's nostrils. And these devices failing, he sat
disconsolate, the curves of his mobile face falling into unwonted lines
of half-weary, half-sorrowful dejection. "I know not how it may be," he
said to himself, smiling whimsically, "but I seem to have caught upon my
lips the bitter human savor of repentance."
Utter silence held the little glen. The child lay unconscious, and the
man sat with his head in his hands, as one brooding. When the sun at
last neared the place of his setting, the boy's eyes opened. His gaze
fell upon his companion, and crowded and confused thoughts surged
through him. For some time he lay still, finding his bearings. And at
length the hatred that had all day, and for many days, filled his young
breast, melted away in a divine pity and tenderness, and the tears of
that warm melting rolled down his cheeks. The man near him, who had
watched in silence, gently put a questioning finger upon the wet cheeks.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Repentance," said the boy.
"I pity thee. Repentance is bitter of taste."
"No," said the boy. "It is warm and sweet. It moves my heart and my
understanding."
"What has become of thy hatred?"
"I shall never hate again."
"What wilt thou do, then?"
"I shall love," said the boy. "_Love_," he repeated softly. "_How came I
never to think of that before?_"
"Wilt thou love tyranny and forbear to kill the tyrant?"
The boy rose to his feet, and his young slenderness was full of strength
and dignity, and his face, cleared of its sombre brooding, was full of a
bright, untroubled decision. The cypresses upon the hilltops stood no
more resolutely erect, the hills themselves were no more steadfast.
"Nay," he said, laughing a little, boyishly, in pure pleasure at the
crystal fixity of his purpose. "Rather will I love the tyrant, and the
tyranny will die of itself. Oh, it is the way! It is the way! And I
could not think of it till now! Not till I saw thee killing and him
bleeding. Then I knew." Then, more gravely, he added, "I will begin by
loving thee."
"Thou hast the appearance of a young god," said the man slowly, "but if
thou wert a god, thou would'st crush thine enemies, not love them." He
sighed, and his face strengthened into a semblance of power. "I was a
god once myself," he added after some hesitation.
"What is thy name?" asked the boy.
"They called me once the Great God Pan. And thou?"
"My father is Joseph the carpenter. My mother calls me Jesus."
"_Ah_ ..." said Pan, "... _is it Thou?_"
Quietly they looked into each other's eyes; quietly clasped hands. And
with no more words the man turned westward into the depths of the glen,
drawing the sun's rays with him as he moved, so that the world seemed
the darker for his going. And as he went he blew upon his pipe a
tremulous and hesitating melody, piercing sweet and piercing sorrowful,
so that whosoever should hear it should clutch his throat with tears at
the wild pity of it, and the strange and haunting beauty. And the boy
stood still, watching, until the man was lost upon the edge of night.
Then he turned his face eastward, whence the new day comes, carrying
forever in his heart the echoes of a dying song.