unnaturally, added contempt to their dislike. “The truth is,” they said
to her, “that you are not one of us. The rest of us can all point to a
long and distinguished ancestry. Everybody knew our parents and knows
us. We are welcome wherever we go, and are readily admitted into the
best society. But as for you, your birth is wrapt in mystery. Whether
it is the fact that the poet is your father is open to question, but at
any rate there is no question whatever of the character of the Greek
woman your mother. You had better,” they would conclude, “return whence
you came, where, among persons of your own kind, you will no doubt be
at ease.”
The poet, meanwhile, only dimly aware of his golden visitor, continued
to fumble among his ready-for-service shelves. This was the easier for
him as all his ideas were of stock size, and were in consequence easily
fitted by the poetic slops. But as time went on the poet became more
and more acutely aware of something that waited expression--some queer
new-shaped Jack o’ lanthorn of a thought that none of his ready-made
suits would fit. One after another he took them down, and they seemed
incorrigibly stale and shop-soiled. Even the most daring patterns in
the earlier Brooke design seemed inadequate, out at the seams and
unfresh.
He blamed his liver. Then he blamed his wife, and last--most horrible
thought of all--he blamed his inspiration. “I have written myself out,”
he cried to the pool of light that the lamp cast on his solitary desk.
“This is the end.” He rehearsed in a high tragic voice some of his
most notable triumphs, as for example:
“Now that the roses are over
And the last white rose is dead,
Quiet returns to the lover
Instead....
“Instead of love freely given
To love that asked for no price,
Instead of a boy in Heaven
And a girl in Paradise,
“Now that the roses are over
And the last white rose is dead,
Quiet returns to the lover
Instead.
“My God!” he cried to the unreceptive almond blossoms on the
wall-paper. “What genius I had when I wrote that.”
He sat down at the desk and looked severely at the virgin page. No neat
rhymes again, no passion tied up in brown paper and looped with string
for a finger, no beauty sent home with the first delivery. “This,” he
repeated with melancholy grandeur, “is the end.”
And at that directly minute he saw a line form itself in letters of
flame along the page, as though a candle wrote it--a lovely line with
the sovereign note of Cleopatra’s cry:
“O infinite virtue, comest thou smiling from
the world’s great snare uncaught?”
For one wild moment his spirit, overlaid with swathe upon swathe of
rubbish, moved upwards to the light. For whatever he was now, he had
once been a poet, if only in his hopes. In that luminous instant he
almost guessed his failure. “The end,” he muttered; “suppose it were
the beginning?” With that the old lines that had suffered defeat
resumed their empire. “Yes, the beginning,” he cried, “the beginning,”
and radiant he began to write, sure of his inspiration:
“It’s the call of love: ‘Oh follow
where my golden footsteps tread!’
But the call of love is hollow
by the calling of the dead.”
So, with head bent, he continued writing through the night. And while
he wrote the other lines turned upon the bastard and drove her into
the dark.
* * * * *
“What a beautiful poem,” said the editor of his favourite journal when
it was sent to him. “Not so bad,” said the poet modestly. “The fact
is, it all started with a line--a direct inspiration.” “What was it?”
inquired the editor languidly. “Well, to be perfectly honest,” replied
the poet, “I’ve forgotten it.”
XXXI
QUANTITY IS BETTER THAN QUALITY
“This is the thirty-first story,” said the publisher; “how many more
do you propose to write?” “The question you should have asked,”
replied the author, “is how many less?” “Less than what?” inquired the
publisher irritably. “Less than what I could if I’m not stopped. I am
like the princess who when she opened her mouth breathed jewels, which
her detractors alleged were toads--jewels, I would observe, four words
long which on the stretched forefinger----” “I have my own opinion,”
said the publisher firmly, “on the question of jewels and toads! I
think forty would constitute a full drove or clutch, or whatever a
group of that species is called.” “Very well,” said the author, deeply
affronted, “I will now tell you the sad incident which I am bound, in
view of your attack upon me, to call ‘Quantity is better than Quality.’
“There was once,” said the author, “in the eastern marches of a
highly-constitutionalised monarchy, a society whose members were
pledged to breathe only once a week. They aspired by the force of
this remarkable example to discourage the distressing continuity
of breathing among the lower classes. Now it must be obvious at
once that even well-born persons could only impose this limitation
upon themselves if assisted by nature. And nature had assisted
them. For to reveal the truth (which they had concealed from the
warm-blooded proletariat), they were not only blue-blooded but actually
cold-blooded. It will be seen therefore that their action, though
in itself meritorious, involved a less sacrifice than was commonly
represented by their champions.
“From the outset their efforts were openly derided by the lowest
classes, who, so far from ceasing to breathe, if anything breathed
more and louder than ever. But fortunately in that country there was
a middling class--known for purposes of reference as the backbone of
the country--who knew how to value their social superiors. These,
therefore, with much agony and spiritual exercise, began to practise
the new mode, letting it be gradually understood that breathing was
vulgar. Their contortions, as may well be imagined, afforded much
amusement to the society and received, as was right, a considerable
measure of public approbation at their hands. Unluckily, however, the
middling class tended to carry the matter too far. For in their excess
of zeal they not only reduced the amount of their breathing, but even
ceased breathing altogether. In such cases the formula ‘He (or she) is
not dead but sleeps’ was generally applied. For no one would admit the
social disgrace of being dead.
“Nobody knows how long this engaging state of affairs would have
continued if it had not been for a cessation of work by the Banded
Guild of Sextons and Gravediggers. These simple fellows naturally
welcomed the increase of business that came their way as the result
of the new fashion. But unhappily they became involved in a serious
demarcation dispute with another association--“The Society of Critics,
Essayists and Writers of Belles Lettres.” This latter body, it had
always been recognised, were alone entitled to bury the living (with
a subsidiary function of resurrecting the dead). They protested
accordingly with the greatest vigour against the invasion of their
sphere by a guild whose affair was solely (as their own rules showed)
with the dead.
“The Government of the country, quite properly and according to the
accepted practice, attempted to hush the matter up. But the Society of
Critics were able by virtue of their association with the newspaper
press to defeat this laudable endeavour. To the disgust of the
remainder of the middling class, and in spite of the advice freely
tendered by some of the older soldiers among the upper class, to the
effect that the matter should be decided by the general execution
of all members of both rival bodies, the question was remitted for
decision to an impartial arbitrator. After a long hearing and the most
anxious consideration this gentleman issued his award. It was a long
and cogently written document, and aroused general dissatisfaction.
For among other illuminating observations, he pointed out that if a
man is only as old as he feels, then, _a fortiori_, he is only as dead
as he admits. This was generally regarded by the critics as a decision
in their favour. On the other hand, the sextons drew attention to
another portion of the report, in which the arbitrator eloquently
reminded those who had appointed him that his countrymen, whose proud
boast was that they did not know when they were beaten, would still
less be likely to know when they were dead. His final recommendation
was, however, equally distasteful to both parties. For he concluded
by observing that to those who were of like mind with him there was
no death. He would refer to M. Maeterlinck, the well-known Belgian
expert on bees: ‘Death,’ he began in a passage long after quoted in the
schools, ‘is the door of life.’
“The issue being thus left in doubt, the sextons--warm-blooded as
they were and breathing noisily--cut the knot by a general cessation
of work. The critics, though invited by an enthusiastic press to show
their quality, restricted themselves to stating publicly that the pen
was mightier than the spade, and leaving it there.
“The deadlock was only resolved by announcement on the part of the
head of the Government (the coldness of whose blood was sufficiently
established to condone any eccentricity) that in future he for one
would breathe continuously. To which an even colder (and bluer)
blooded colleague of ducal rank added that he would not merely breathe
but actually snore.
“It was, however, made clear that this announcement was entirely
spontaneous and had no connection with the deplorable stoppage of work.
In the result the middling class resumed their breathing. The sextons
returned to their diminished labours, and the critics, discovering a
new and living novelist of genius, set about his interment with renewed
vigour. And thus,” concluded the author, “we see that Quantity is
better than Quality.”
“Talking of toads,” said the publisher. “Yes,” replied the author, “let
us talk of them. I remember that they have jewels in their foreheads.”
“Then yours,” snarled the publisher, “must have turned their backs.”
XXXII
CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME
From time to time, or rather from eternity to eternity, Ormuzd finds
himself inconvenienced by the perpetual praise offered up to him by
the blesséd. Though he is very anxious not to hurt their feelings, he
cannot but wonder whether such complete absence of the critical faculty
constitutes the best of company.
It is in this mood that Ahriman, always sensitive to the All-Highest
emotions, ventures to appear and exchange insults with the Senior
Power. And he has a double reason. He has a perfectly devilish capacity
for feeling sorry for himself in exile. It is, however, more than that.
Like Ormuzd, he is concerned not to wound the susceptibilities of his
constituents, but some eternities he permits himself to ask whether
uninterrupted blasphemies may not jar an ear specially designed for
their reception.
“This constant preoccupation with another place,” he would think, “is
not very flattering to me.”
“And so, my poor Ahriman,” Ormuzd would say on these occasions, “you
are still dissatisfied? But I do not see what more I can do for you. I
have given you rule over half the universe. I cannot give you the power
to enjoy it.”
“No, sire,” replies the impudent fiend, “since charity begins at
home--if I may describe heaven by so inappropriate a title.”
“Shall I tell you,” says Ormuzd, “what really ails you, Ahriman? It
is not that evil is a mocker, not that it tears down idols, and least
of all that it is outrageously clever. The painful truth, on the
contrary,” says Ormuzd gently, “is that evil is so stupid.” This, as
may be supposed, wounds Ahriman in a very tender spot.
“Sire,” says he, “if it were possible for you to be unjust I should so
describe that observation. For consider! All round with the docility
of inspired sheep the blameless lift their monotonous outcries. They
worship what is worshipful, I allow, but how without perception of
its subtleties, of its trembling poise upon the edge of disaster. The
blessed croon like old women before the fire, but they do not guess (or
care) that the roots of the flame are in hell.”
“But you are still stupid,” answers Ormuzd, “for these adore what they
do not understand, while you hate what you insist on misunderstanding.
Here am I, Ormuzd--a symbol, a golden knob on a door that none can
press--a veil of silver--and here are you, Ahriman, also an ebon
metaphor of what is too dark to be apprehended. And yet, poor Ahriman,
you being so dark a ghost rail upon me being a ghost so bright. But
what of that which is behind us both?”
“Ormuzd,” says Ahriman, “you cannot cheat me thus. You are a thing in
my mind, as I am a thing in yours, and if our thoughts cease, both of
us cease with them. After us the Deluge.”
“It is true,” says Ormuzd, “that the thing you see is made up of your
sight, but it is not true of me. For that is the difference between
good and evil. I know that I am nothing, but you believe (falsely) that
you are everything.”
“Humility,” sneers the fiend, “sits ill on the thundering lips of
Ormuzd.”
“Truth,” replies Ormuzd, “is neither proud nor humble; it is.”
“What is truth?” mocks the fiend, preparing to go. “I suppose that you
will tell me that you are the truth.”
“No,” says Ormuzd, “it is because you deny that I am truth and secretly
believe it that you are Ahriman, but it is because I know that I am not
the truth that I am Ormuzd.”
“I have enjoyed our little chat,” says Ahriman, “but you lack ambition.”
“By that sin----” begins Ormuzd.
“Oh, nonsense,” cries Ahriman hotly, and then repents of his rudeness.
“Forgive me, sire, but I could believe in you if you believed in
yourself.”
“Ahriman, Ahriman,” says Ormuzd, laughing lightly, “still tempting me!”
“I bear you no grudge,” says Ahriman. “The truth is----”
“Yes?” asks Ormuzd.
“That you are too clever for me.”
“I thought we should come to it in the end,” says Ormuzd.
XXXIII
DIS ALITER VISUM
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, somewhere in Germany there
was a neat little town with gabled houses and a platform for the stork
in the market-place. There was nothing remarkable about this town or
its people. By day the houses slumbered cosily and the men went about
their cobbling, saddling, and carpentry with the best will in the
world. At evening lights were shown at the windows, and within doors
the husbands smoked their long pipes with their pot of beer close at
hand, and the wives sewed innumerable patches on innumerable small
pants. In spring and summer tables were set in the trim garden, and
at evening a stranger passing down the cobbled street would have seen
amiable family groups each under their linden-tree absorbing their
evening meal. And sometimes one more given to sentiment than another
might divide the calm evening air with some monotonous ditty locally
assumed to be music. But the great day was Sunday. Then the whole
township, with bent heads, moved to the church, where the pastor
preached the virtues of the ideal, of charity, and of peace. And his
flock, as harmless as any other sheep, from time to time bleated
sympathetically and with the air of impending sleep. And later in the
day the same pastor, who was something of a poet, would often collect a
group round him in the schoolroom and tell them one of the “Märchen,”
to which even the grown-ups were never tired of listening.
As you may suppose, among other stories he would often tell them the
tale of “Schneevitchen,” or, as we call it, “Snow-white.” The jealous
stepmother, the mirror of beauty, the poisoned apple, the dwarfs and
the sleeping lovely were murmured into the inner conscience of his
audience. And so all might have continued till the end of time. The
little town might have dusked and shone night and day, the quiet
inhabitants have gone about their business, lived and died, and new
storks replaced the old ones on the platform. All this, I say, might
have happened if two strangers had not come to the little town and
settled in a vacant house almost next door to that of the pastor. They
were, so it was understood, husband and wife, though many wondered how
two persons so repulsive could ever have endured that relationship. The
man was not otherwise ill-looking, but so thin that in certain lights
you would have sworn that you could see his very bones, and there were
those who declared that the wind would have whistled through him if it
had not been for his absurdly ill-fitting clothes. The woman, on the
other hand, was fat, not with a comfortable tissue, but with a gross
hardness that forbade all friendliness. She was not a monstrosity,
save at meals, when she ate like a beast out of the woods, hugely,
violently, and with the worst manners in the world.
At the outset they were regarded with suspicion. For though they were
good customers of the shops and paid cash, no one could deny that they
were ugly customers. There was, further, something queer about their
name. It was not a decent German one with a flavour of wurst about it,
but was a queer foreign one. For it was plain that the baker, who had
written it down as Tod, must have misheard the gentleman, while the
grocer must have equally misunderstood the lady when he entered her
upon his books as Krieg. Moreover, though the man let it be understood
that he was widely known as a preacher, they did not at first attend
service with the rest of the community.
It is probable that their influence would never have attained any
hold if the old pastor had lived. For first and last, though he was
the gentlest of men, he would none of them. But as is the way with
the gentlest as with those most rude, he fell upon a heavy sickness.
The physician of the town was in despair, and finally, hearing that
the stranger had a great reputation as a healer, invited him into
consultation. In this way, for the first time, Herr Todt (if that were
his name) crossed the old pastor’s threshold.
“We meet at last,” said the stranger. “Aye,” said the dying man,
looking him fearlessly in the sunken eyes, “but you have no sting for
me.” “I fear,” said the stranger, turning to the local physician, “that
he is delirious; I can do nothing.” “You have done all you can,” cried
the good old man, “and you have failed. But oh, my flock, my flock!”
“They are in safe hands,” said the stranger mildly. “See, rest yours in
them and feel how easy they are.” With a wild gesture the pastor swept
them away. “Retro me, Sathanas,” he cried madly; “not into your hands,”
but, with a deep peace stealing over him, “in tuas manus, Domine.”
The whole town attended the burial, and in the absence of any other
priest the stranger, who, it was understood, had taken holy orders,
committed the body to the earth. There was a profound grief for the
loss of one so simple, so friendly, so full of harmless kindness and
dreams. But more than that, many of the older men felt that a period
had ended with their pastor’s death. “There,” said one returning
homewards, “lies old Germany.”
After this Herr Dr. Todt and his wife moved into the presbytery, and
in some way never fully explained he became the officiating priest. It
became noticeable almost at once that while the older men found him
increasingly distasteful, all the younger men and most of the older
women fell entirely under his sway. Nor was this surprising, for he
preached a new and striking doctrine. In his first sermon he took
for his text, “I come to bring, not peace, but a sword,” and for the
first time in the quiet cobbled streets there was a faint far-off
echo of trampling steel. He went from strength to strength, till for
those who followed him he seemed almost more than human--almost a new
Saint John, but one who, in preparing the way for his Lord, made it
rough for all feet save His. But yet among the older men there were
those that murmured unquietly of blasphemy and those who said openly
that he declared himself the way of salvation, and even called him the
Antichrist. But Dr. Todt cared for none of these things.
Nor was this all, for his wife began to exercise an influence equal to,
if not greater than, her husband’s. (She had, by the way, cleared away
the muddle as to names by explaining that she was a geborene Krieg, and
had assumed her husband’s name on marriage.) Frau Dr. Todt continued
the Sunday evening meetings in the schoolroom, but they were no longer
a place where old men turned from the fireside to listen to the
memories of childhood. Far from it. The talk she held was of glory, of
the old wars, and of a helmetted god called Wotan. And it was observed
that in a strange indefinable way for those who attended her meetings
she lost her ugliness. They swore that she was not old, nor fat, nor
a guzzler, but young and slender and endowed with the swift feet of
the Valkyries. So fair did the young men find her that they began even
to forget their loves. But when their sweethearts complained the young
men put them aside, saying that she was not a rival but their mother.
“Your mother!” cried the young women, “are you mad?” “It is only a way
of speaking,” said the young men. “She is the voice of Germany. Have
you not heard the new gospel?” and one among them repeated the strange,
harsh lines:
“You have conquered, Arminius! The Roman
world has grown red with your breath,
and its beauty is perished and no man
wonders or weeps at its death!
“Again as the meshes drew near us
you heard the buccina crack
on the last high whisper, ‘O Varrus,
give me my legions back!’
“You had twisted your web together
in triumph, but Wotan was dumb,
for he watched a gold eagle’s feather,
and he saw the lost legions come.
“Since scarce had the Northern Valkyries
been whistled by Wotan home
ere the eagles flew back to their eyries,
on the hills of a greater Rome.
“And Wotan to Arminius leaning,
whispered, ‘Though conquest is sweet
you have lost your own soul in the winning,
now capture the world’s in defeat.’
“You have conquered but only the bodies,
and the spirit is more than the flesh;
now weave for the soul and where God is
deep in the heart the mesh.”
“You are all mad together,” cried the girls. “This means nothing. What
is Wotan to us or we to him?” “This is the new world which we are
making,” said the young men, and returned to the feet of their teacher.
But there was one girl in the town who would not give up the fight so
easily. She was the daughter of the old pastor, and for her fairness
and gentleness and soft beauty had been called “Schneevitchen.” Like
her father before her, she had steady grey eyes, and like him she knew
the old songs of Germany that (some said) were echoes of the song of
the Niebelung--gold girls in the river Rhine. She alone could hold her
head against the now predominant pair, and she became in consequence
the object of their deadly hate. For often, when the young men crowded
round her, Frau Todt geborene Krieg would look into the young men’s
eyes as into a mirror and say:
“Mirror, mirror on the wall,
am I fairest of them all?”
And she would see in their eyes the shadow of “Schneevitchen.” She and
her husband consulted together, and finally they compounded an apple
of sweet essences, which she pretended had grown on a tree in the
Hesperides, but to her husband she confessed that it was no such thing
and that its real name was Discord. This she gave not to Snow-white to
eat, but to the young men, and straightway they were poisoned. For they
began to have ugly dreams and see swart visions, and always in the dark
heart of them was Snow-white, no longer pure, gentle and loving, but
the Lorelei drawing into her whirlpool drowning men.
There are many tales of how she came to perish in the broad river.
Some say she drowned herself, some say the young men, bewildered, cast
her into the waters, and others that the strangers flung her into the
great body of the stream. None knows. But what is known is that with
her death in that little town and in many other towns great and small
the old pastor and his daughter were forgotten, and in their place
ruled over hearts and minds Herr Doktor Todt and his wife, the geborene
Krieg.
XXXIV
PARALLEL LINES DO NOT MEET
This is quite a different sort of story. It is about a princess who
disbelieved in arithmetic.
“Was she a French princess?” inquired the publisher.