until I protest that a thought awoke in my mind as if it wanted to be
somebody. Be Somebody. It was as if it came alive, quite without my
will, so that almost I could see it. It was a friend conferring in my
head. Perhaps it was the Custodian herself, come outside to that white
porch of the moon.
"Peter," I said, "I think I'm going to tell you a story."
For I longed to make him patient with Miggy, as men, who understand
these things first, are not always patient with women, who often and
often understand too late.
He listened to the story as I am setting it down here--the story of the
New Village. But in it I could say nothing of how, besides by these
things celestial, cosmic, I was touched by the simple, human entreaty of
the big, baffled man and that about his hands and the way his hair
sticks up at the back.
XVI
THE NEW VILLAGE
Once upon a time there was a village which might have been called
The-Way-Certain-Folk-Want-It-Now. That, however, was not its name--it
had a proper, map-sounding name. And there every one went to and fro
with a fervour and nimbleness which proved him to be skilfully intent
upon his own welfare.
The village had simple buildings and white walls, lanes and flowering
things and the flow of pure air. But the strange thing about the town
was that there each inhabitant lived alone. Every house had but one
inmate and he well content. He liked everything that he owned and his
taste was all-sufficient and he took his pleasure in his own walls and
loved best his own ways. The day was spent in lonely selling or lonely
buying, each man pitted against all others, and advantage and
disadvantage were never equal, but yet the transactions were dreary,
lacking the picturesqueness of unlicensed spoliation. The only greeting
which folk exchanged in passing was, "Sir, what do you do for
yourself?" There were no assemblings of the people. The town kept itself
alive by accretion from without. When one died another appeared and took
his place gladly, and also others arrived, like precept added to precept
and not like a true flowering. There were no children. And the village
common was overgrown and breast-high with weeds. When the day was done
every one retired to his own garden and saw his flowers blossoming for
him and answering to the stars which came and stood over his head. There
was in the town an epidemic of the intensive, only the people thought of
it as the normal, for frequently epidemics are so regarded.
In one soul the contagion did not prevail. The soul was the lad Matthew,
whose body lived on the town's only hill. When others sat at night in
their gardens Matthew was wont to go up an airy path which he had made
to the upper spaces and there wander conjecturing about being alive. For
this was a detail which he never could take wholly for granted, in the
manner in which he had become wonted to door-mats, napkin-rings,
oatmeal, and mirrors. Therefore he took his thought some way nearer to
the stars, and there he found so much beauty that he longed to fashion
it to something, to create of it anew. And as he opened his heart he
began to understand that there is some one of whom he was the
offspring. As he was companioned by this idea, more and more he longed
for things to come nearer. Once, in his walking a hurrying bird brushed
his face, grew confused, fluttered at his breast, and as he would have
closed it in his hands he found that the bird was gone and his hands
were empty, but beneath them his own heart fluttered and throbbed like a
thing apart.
One night, so great was the abstraction of the boy, that instead of
taking the upper path he fared down into the town. It was a curious way
to do--to go walking in the town as if the thing were common property,
but then the walls were very high and the gates were fast closed and
bound round with creeping things, which grow very quickly. Matthew
longed to enter these gardens, and he wondered who lived in the houses
and what might be in their hearts.
Amazingly, at the turn of a white wall, a gate was opened and she who
had opened it leaned into the night as if she were looking for
something. There was a fluttering in the breast of Matthew so that he
looked down to see if the bird had come back. But no bird was there. And
it smote him that the lady's beauty, and surely her goodness, were great
enough so that of them something might be created, as he would fain have
created marvels from the sky.
"I would like to make your beauty into something other," he said to
her. "I cannot think whether this would be a song or a picture or a
vision."
She looked at him with as much pleasure as if he had been an idea of her
own.
"Tell me about my beauty," she bade him. "What thing is that?"
"Nay, that will take some while," Matthew said. "If I do that, I must
come in your garden."
Now, such a thing had never happened in the town. And as this seemed why
it never happened, it seemed likely to go on never happening
indefinitely. But loneliness and the longing to create and the
conjecture about life have always been as potent as battles; and beauty
and boredom and curiosity have had something to do with history as well.
"Just this once, then," said the lady, and the gate closed upon the two.
Here was a garden like Matthew's own, but indefinitely atmosphered
other. It spoke strangely of a wonted presence, other than his own. In
his own garden he fitted as if the space for him were niched in the air,
and he went as a man accustomed will go without thinking. But here he
moved free, making new niches. And whereas on his own walks and plots he
looked with lack-lustre eye as a man looks on his own gas-jet or rain
pipe, now Matthew looked on all that he saw as on strange flame and
sweet waters. And it was not the shrubs and flowers which most
delighted him, but it was rather on a garden bench the lady's hat and
gloves and scissors.
"How pleasing!" said he, and stopped before them.
"Do you find them so?" asked the lady.
And when he told her about her beauty, which was more difficult to do
than he had imagined and took a longer time, she said:--
"There can be no other man in the world who would speak as you speak."
On which he swore that there was no man who would not speak so, and
likewise that no man could mean one-half what he himself meant. And he
looked long at her house.
"In those rooms," he said, "you go about. I wish that I could go about
there."
But that frightened her a little.
"In there," he said, "are the lamps you light, the plates you use, the
brush that smooths your hair. How strange that is."
"Does it seem strange?" she asked.
"Sometime I will go there," said he, and with that he thought that the
bird once more was fluttering at his breast. And again there was no
bird.
When the time was come that he must leave her, this seemed the most
valiant thing to do that ever he had done. It was inconceivable to
accept that though now she was with him, breathing, sentient, yet in
another moment he would be out alone in the empty night. Alone. For the
first time the word became a sinister thing. It meant to be where she
was not.
"How is this to go on," he said, "I living where you do not live?"
But she said, "Such things have never been any other way," and closed
the gate upon him.
It is a mighty thing when one who has always lived alone abruptly finds
himself to have a double sense. Here is his little box of ideas, neatly
classified, ready for reference, which have always methodically bobbed
out of their own will the moment they were mentioned. Here are his own
varieties of impression ready to be laid like a pattern upon whatever
presents itself to be cut out. Here are his tastes, his sentiments, his
beliefs, his longings, all selected and labelled and established. And
abruptly ideas and impressions and tastes are thrown into rapt disorder
while he wonders what this other being would think, and his sentiment
glows like a lamp, his belief embraces the world, his longing becomes
only that the other being's longing be cast in counterpart. When he
walks abroad, the other's step accompanies him, a little back, and
invisible, but as authentic as his own. When he thinks, his thought,
without his will, would share itself. All this is a new way of
consciousness. All this makes two universes where one universe had
previously been competent to support life.
Back on his hill Matthew went through his house as if he were seeing it
for the first time. There was the garden that he had planted, and she
was not walking there. There was his window, and she was not looking
from it; his table, and she was not sitting beside it; his book which he
could not read for wondering if she had read. All the tools of his home,
what could they not become if she touched them? The homely tasks of the
cupboard, what joy if she shared them? But what to do? He thought that
it might be something if they exchanged houses, so that he could be
where she had been, could use what she had used, could think of her in
her setting. But yet this did not wholly delight him, either.
And now his house stifled him, so that he rushed out upon that airy path
of his that he had made to reach the upper spaces, and he fled along,
learning about being alive. Into the night he went, farther than ever he
had gone before, till the stars looked nearer to him than houses
commonly look, and things to think about seemed there waiting for him.
So it adventured that he came abruptly upon the New Village. It lay upon
the air as lightly as if strong, fair hands were uniting to bear it up,
and it was not far from the stars and the clear places. Before he
understood its nearness, the night was, so to say, endued with this
village, and he entered upon its lanes as upon light.
This was a town no larger than his own and no more fortuned of Nature.
Here were buildings not too unlike, and white walls and flowering things
and the flow of pure air. But here was also the touch of bells. And he
saw that every one went to and fro in a manner of quiet purpose that was
like a garment.
"Sir, what do you do for yourself?" he asked courteously of one who was
passing.
The citizen gave him greeting.
"I make bread for my family," said he, "and, it may be, a dream or two."
Matthew tried hard to perceive, and could make nothing of this.
"Your family," he said, "what thing is that?"
The citizen looked at him narrowly.
"I see that you rebuke me," said he, gently; "but I, too, labor for the
community, so that the day shall become a better day."
"Community," said Matthew. "Now I know not at all what that may be,
either."
Then the man understood that here was one who would learn about these
things, and in the New Village such a task is sacred and to be assumed
on the moment by any to whom the opportunity presents. So the man took
Matthew with him.
"Come," he said, "this is the day when we meet together."
"Together," said Matthew, and without knowing why he liked what he felt
when he said that.
They went first to the market-place, trodden of many feet, and about it
a fair green common planted in gracious lines. Here Matthew found men in
shops that were built simply and like one another in fashion, but with
pleasant devices of difference, and he found many selling together and
many buying, and no one was being robbed.
"How can these things be?" he asked. "Here every man stands with the
others."
"Inside of all things," the citizen answered, "you will find that it is
so written."
On the common many were assembled to name certain projects and purposes:
the following of paths to still clearer spaces, the nurturing of certain
people, ways of cleanliness, purity of water, of milk, wide places for
play, the fashioning of labour so that the shrines within be not
foregone, the freeing of fountains, the planting of green things.
"Why will all this be?" asked Matthew. "For these things a man does in
his own garden or for his own house, and no other interferes."
"Nay, but look deep within all things, Friend," the citizen said, "and
you will never find it written so."
"Friend," repeated Matthew, "_friend_...."
Then the citizen went to his own house, and Matthew with him. The wall
was no wall, but a hedge, and the garden was very beautiful. And lo,
when they went in, there came tumbling along the path little beings made
in the image of the citizen himself. And with them a woman of exceeding
beauty and power, which the little ones also bore. As if the citizen had
chosen her beauty and power to make them into something other.
It was as it had been when the bird was fluttering and beating at the
boy's breast, but he did not even heed.
"Tell me!" he cried. "These--do they live here with you? Are they
yours?"
"We are one another's," said the citizen.
Matthew sat among them, and to pleasure him they did many sweet tasks.
They brought him to eat and drink in the garden. The woman gave quiet
answers that had in them something living, and alive, too, some while
after she had spoken. ("So _she_ could answer," Matthew thought, "and
better, too, than that.") And the children brought him a shell, a pretty
stone, a broken watch, and a little woolly lamb on three wheels, and the
fourth wheel missing. The lamb had a sound to make by squeezing, and
this sound Matthew made a great many times, and every time the children
laughed. And when they did that Matthew could think of nothing to say
that seemed a thing to be said, but he was inscrutably elated, and did
the trick again.
And when he rose to take his leave:--
"Is it for them that you make bread and a dream or two?" he asked.
He knew that he should always like to remember the citizen's smile as he
answered.
They stood at the opening of the hedge and folk were going by.
"Are they not jealous of you?" Matthew asked.
"They have families and bread and dreams of their own," said the
citizen. "Every house is filled with them."
Matthew looked breathlessly along the street of the New Village, and he
saw men, as they went, giving one another greeting: "Friend, is much
accomplished?" or, "Peace to you, Friend." And they talked together, and
entered gardens where were those who came to meet them or who waited
within. They were a fine company, moving as to some secret way of being,
and as if they had all looked deep within to see how it is written. And
as he watched, something in Matthew would have cried out that he, too,
was offspring of their Father, that for all this had he too been
created, and that for this would he live, joying and passioning and
toiling in the common destiny. But when he spoke, all that he could say
was:--
"Every man, then, may sit down now with a lamb with three wheels and the
fourth wheel missing...."
On which he ceased for very shame. But the citizen understood and smiled
once more, and said to him: "Come you here again, Brother."
With that word Matthew was off, down from the clear upper spaces, to
where, lonely on its hill, his own house stood among its lonely
neighbours. And Matthew strode shouting down the deserted streets and
calling at every gate; and, it being now day, every one came forth to
his lonely toil.
Matthew went and stood on the common where the weeds were high, and so
amazed were the folk that they came about him, each suspecting the other
of secret connivance in this strange business. For nothing had ever been
done so.
"Men and brothers," cried Matthew, "it is not so that it was meant. I
pray you look deep within, and see how the meaning was written. Is it
that you should live, each pitted against another, wounding the other,
advantaging himself? Join now each his hand with that of a neighbour.
_His neighbour._ Make the thing of which, it seems, the world is made;
a family. Let the thing come alive which is greater than the family: the
community. Oh, my comrades, let us work together for the coming of the
kingdom of God."
In the murmur that rose were the words which have been spoken since time
began:--
"It is not so that it was done in the old time...."
"It is not seemly that we change...."
"If every one did this ... but we cannot do it alone."
"Have you thought what will become of our business?"
And again and yet again: "It is not so that it was done in the old
time."
And when the most would have none of it, Matthew made his way sadly
through the throng--of whom were many who smiled (kindly!)--to the edge
of the common, where stood a woman, trembling.
"Come," he said.
She went with him, and she with many little frightened breaths, but he
had no pity, for he read deep within and saw that it was written that
she wanted none. When they reached her own house, she would have
entered.
"Go we in here," she besought him, "I will show you the rooms where I go
about and the lamps that I light."
"We are past all that now," said Matthew, gently, "I will not go on
living where you do not live."
He took her to his own house, through the garden that he had planted. He
made her look from his window, sit by his table, open his books; and he
bade her to a little task at the cupboard and laughed for joy that she
performed it.
"Oh, come away," he cried. "And now we will go quickly to the New
Village, that one which I have found or another, where men know all this
happiness and more."
But she stood there by Matthew's cupboard and shook her head.
"No," she said gravely, "here we will stay, you and I, in your house.
Here we will live--and it may be there is a handful of others who
understand. And here we will do what we can."
"But I must show you," Matthew cried, "the way the others live--the
things they strive for: the following of paths to clearer spaces, the
freeing of shrines."
"All that," she said, "we will do here."
"But," he urged, "you must see how else they do--the shell, the pretty
stone, the watch, the woolly lamb on three wheels and one wheel
missing...."
"All that," she said, "is in my heart."
Matthew looked in her face and marvelled, for he saw that beside her
beauty there was her power, and to that he bowed himself as to a far
voice. And again it was as when the bird was at his breast, but now he
knew what this would be.
So they live there in Matthew's house. And a handful besides understand
and toil for the fairer order. And this will come; and then that New
Village, in the clear upper spaces, will hang just above every
village--nay, will come down to clothe it like a garment.
When I had done,
"Peter," I said--I nearly called him Matthew!--"these are the things
that Miggy does not understand. And that she will understand."
He knew. He said nothing; but he knew how it is written.
"Peter," I said, "I suppose Miggy will never have been to your house?"
I knew that she could not have been there.
"Some day soon," I said--"before you go away--ask us to come there. I
should like her to sit by your table and look from your window."
For how can one be sure that divine non-interference is always divine?
Peter drew his breath long.
"Would you?" he said; "would you? So many times I've thought maybe that
would make her think of me as if I _was_ me."
Yes, that might help. If only Miggy knew how to shake hands as Elfa
shook hands with Nicholas Moor, that might help, too. How did it begin,
this pride of individualism in a race which does not know its own
destiny save as the great relationships, human and divine, can reveal
that destiny? But Peter knows! And the hope of the world is that so many
do know.
Since he said his grateful good night and rushed away, I have been
trying to readjust my impression of Peter. For I can no longer think of
him in connection with Miggy and the cannery and my neighbour's lawn and
the village. Now he is a figure ranging the ample intervals of a field
fraternal to the night and to the day. Fraternal, too, to any little
moon-washed area, won from the void, where it is easy to be in
conference with the spirit without and within. Truly, it is as if the
meaning of the universe were passioning for the comradeship of hearts
that can understand.
XVII
ADOPTION
The big window of my sitting room is an isle of sirens on whose shore
many of my bird neighbours are continually coming to grief. For, from
without, the window makes a place of soft skies and seductive leaves
where any bird might think to wing a way. And in that mirrored deep
there is that curious atmosphere which makes In-a-looking-glass a better
thing than the room which it reflects--an elusive sense which Little
Child might call Isn't-any-such-placeness. I think that I might call it
so too. And so, evidently, the birds would call it, for they are always
trying to find there some path of flight.
A morning or two ago, when I heard against the pane the soft thud of an
eager little body, I hurried out to see lying under the window an
oriole. It was too terrible that it should have been an oriole. For days
I had seen him hanging here and there, back downward, on this limb and
that, and heard his full-throated note ringing from the innermost air,
so that the deeps of air could never again be wholly alien to me. And
now he lay, his wings outstretched, his eyes dim, his breast hardly
moving. I watched him, hoping for the breath to begin to flutter and
labour. But though the great Nature was with him, herself passioning in
all the little fibres to keep life pulsing on, yet her passion was not
enough; and while I looked the little life went out.
... I held the tiny body in my hand, and it was almost as if the
difference between living and not living slipped through my fingers and
was gone. If only that one within me, who watches between the seeing and
the knowing, had been a little quicker, I might almost have
understood....
"Them little things go out like a match," said my neighbour.
She was standing on the other side of the box hedge, and I caught a look
on her face that I had seen there once or twice before, so that my heart
had warmed to her; and now, because of that look, she fitted within the
moment like the right word.
"It don't seem like anybody could _mean_ 'em to die before their time,"
she said. "Ain't it almost as if it happened when Everything somehow
couldn't help it?"
It was this, the tragedy of the Unfulfilled Intention, that was in my
mind while I hollowed the little grave under the hedge. And when we had
finished, my neighbour, who had stepped informally over the box to help
me, looked up with a return of that fleeting expression which I had
noted.
"I guess we've found one now for sure," she said.
"Found one?" I puzzled.
"I thought you knew," she told me. "I thought everybody knew--we've been
looking for one so long. For a baby."
She never had told me and no one had told me, but I loved her for
thinking that all the world knew. There are abroad a multitude of these
sweet suspicions as well as the sad misgivings of the hunted. She had
simply let me know, that early morning in the garden, her sorrow that
there was "no little thing runnin' round." And now she told me for how
long they had been trying to find one to adopt, consciously serving no
social need, but simply hungering for a child whom they could "take to."
It was a story of fruitless visits to the homes in the city, the news
sent of this little waif or that, all proving too old or of too sad an
inheritance. To me it would seem that the more tragic the inheritance
the more poignantly sounds the cry for foster-folk. And this may be
extreme, I know, but virtue, I find, does not lie exclusively in the
mean, either. It lies partly in one's taste in extremes. However, this
special extreme I find not generally believed in as I believe in it; and
my neighbour, not sharing it, had waited on with empty arms.
And now, after all the long hoping, she had found a baby--a baby who
filled all the requirements and more. First of all, he was a boy;
second, he was of healthful Scotch parentage; third, he was six weeks
old; and, fondest I could see in my neighbour's heart, he was good to
look at. When she told me this she produced, from beneath her apron, a
broken picture post-card. The baby was lying on a white blanket spread
on the grass, and he was looking up with the intentness of some little
soul not yet embodied; or as if, having been born, some shadow-thing,
left over from his source of shadows, yet detained his attention.
"William," it said beneath the picture.