nothingness? The story in itself must be true, if I could understand
it. But I shall have to grope after it, and translate it for you; and I
shall do it badly, no doubt. Still――shall I tell it?”
“Do,” said the playwright. Whereupon the man began as follows:
“Years ago, perhaps a couple of centuries or so, there was
a village in the north of England, which remains little
altered to this day. It has never been touched by that
change in the method of viewing truth which some call the
Reformation, and others name after a different fashion.
This was partly because it is an isolated moorland village;
partly because it was, and is, owned by a family whose
representative at that time was not only a very rich and
influential man, but also of the type with whom other men,
and even Church and State, do not very readily interfere.
He was grave and discreet, sober of speech and very devout,
and he ruled his village with a most benevolent despotism.
He was especially filled with devotion for the Virgin
Mother, “the blossoming Tree, the Mother of Christ,” in
whose honour he had built a small but most beautiful chapel
in his grounds; here the rites celebrated were of the
highest perfection of reverent elaboration, and here the
devout builder retired daily for prayer and meditation.
“One day as he came from prayer his servants brought him
a vagabond gipsy lad who had been selling songs in the
village or offering them in exchange for food. This outcast
was very little past his boyhood; his garments were worn,
and faded with sun and rain, his feet were bare, and in his
cap was fastened a bough stolen from a blossoming fruit
tree.
“At that time the once persecuted had become the
persecutors; coarse, bitter, and profane songs were
written, and sold to be sung in taverns and at country
fairs, which mocked at things which were by many people
justly held sacred. Among this stroller’s songs were two
which spoke profanely of Her whom the king of the little
moorland village reverenced. When therefore he read them
he became very angry; he bade that the songs――one and
all――should be destroyed; he told his servants that the
gipsy should be whipped, set in the stocks, and finally
pelted from the place after being ducked in the pond
which was on the village green. Then the lad begged for
mercy; he pleaded that he could not read, that he knew no
difference between faith and faith, but only the crafts of
the wood and the lore of his people. He bought and sold in
ignorance, partly because he must eat, but chiefly because
he wished to buy a string of red beads for his sweetheart,
which he had promised her, because she desired to hang them
round her throat.
“But the devout man, being wounded by the insults to his
faith, for the verses were both coarse and flippant, would
not listen. The lad was punished; his songs were destroyed;
and at the time of sunset he fled, followed by the hoots
of the villagers, bruised, bleeding, breathless, and half
drowned.
“Now a year later his judge was riding, at nightfall,
through a strange district of the south, whither he had
come on business. He met a sober man in the dress of a
preacher, and rode with him because the hour was late and
the roads dangerous because of highwaymen. After a while
they began to talk of grave matters touching their faith,
and the salvation of their souls. Thus it happened that
very soon they quarrelled, and well nigh came to reviling
each other, in speech as well as in thought, the one for
a blasphemous idolater, the other for a vile heretical
outcast from the faith. At last they found that, in the
heat of argument, they had missed the way, and were on a
swampy bridle path in the depths of a misty oak wood.
“Then they called a truce, and reflected what they should
do; as they considered thus they heard one coming through
the wood who whistled. Soon he drew near; it was a young
man, little more than a boy; as he came nearer he began
to hoot like an owl, and the owls in the wood called back
to him. When he was quite near and saw the faces of the
riders he seemed as though he would fly; then he pulled his
cap from his head, and came towards them, pleading that
he was doing no ill. The ruler of the northern village
saw he was the lad whom he had caused to be punished. He
saw, moreover, that the gipsy knew him; therefore he told
him very sternly that if, in revenge for a well-merited
punishment, he played them evil tricks and directed them
wrongly he should most bitterly repent it. But when the
gipsy raised his eyes to his and asked simply:
“‘Why should I lie to you, sir, about the way?’ he felt
ashamed and was silent. Then the preacher asked if there
was any house at hand where they might purchase food and
lodging. The gipsy answered:
“‘Good gentlemen, there is a farm a mile hence where this
morning the farmer set his dog at me, thinking I would
rob his hen-roost; when the dog did not bite me he kicked
him. But he will gladly receive two worthy gentlemen with
purses. Shall I guide you?’
“‘Guide us,’ said the preacher, ‘and we will pay you.’ So
the boy went before them whistling. He was a wonderful
whistler, and he seemed to have bat’s eyes that could see
in the dark.
“Presently the man who had so severely condemned him called
to him.
“‘Come here,’ he said, ‘and walk at my horse’s head.’
“The boy came obediently; at first he was afraid and loth
to speak, but he seemed to be shy rather than sullen,
and after a while he talked fearlessly and simply of
such things as he knew; of the lore of his race, and of
the customs of the peoples of the wood, sometimes called
dumb brutes by those who cannot speak their tongue. His
simplicity and gentleness, and his forgetfulness of the
harshness of his former judge, won upon the man. He felt
remorse, and asked him what he had done when his songs were
destroyed, ‘For I might,’ said he, ‘have left those to you
in which I found no offence.’ The gipsy answered simply
that he went hungry for three days; also his sweetheart
followed another because he could not give her the beads he
had promised her. There were tears in his eyes as he spoke
and yet he laughed.
“They went on for a while in silence; at last the lad
stopped, and said:
“‘Gentlemen, I am sorry. The wood is very strange to-night,
and I have missed my way. I meant to lead you right. Do
not think evil of me. I know now that you who are not of
our race quarrel among yourselves. But in this you agree.
To curse us who are not of any faith, and to believe evil
of us because we live under the sky and have other ways
and thoughts than yours. But――but I am very tired of being
cursed.’
“‘You shall not be cursed by me,’ said the man by whose
side he walked. ‘Nor will I believe you wilfully led us
wrong.’
“Then the gipsy took courage; he listened a little while,
and cried:
“‘I hear the crackle of a camp fire. Perhaps some of my
people are hereabouts. If so, do not fear us; we will
welcome you if you trust us, and give you what we have to
share.’
“The others heard nothing, but the lad led them towards the
sound his ears caught, and soon they saw he was right. They
came to an open space in the wood; there was a circle of
huge grey stones, a temple of the gods of a vanished faith;
within the circle was turf, where rabbits leaped and ate;
in the centre a pool twenty feet deep, crystal clear, and
green as pale chrysolite; had it been day each tiny weed
that grew in the depth, each little stone that lay there,
would have shone clear. In the centre of the pool was an
islet, and on the isle a little ruined chapel dedicated to
the Mother of God; in the chapel was a gipsy fire streaming
upwards towards the great starlit sky, and causing wondrous
shadows to leap and chase on the ruined walls. A thin slab
of rock rose from the depths of the pool to the surface of
the water, so that there was a narrow perilous pathway from
the shore to the isle. In the chapel by the fire there sat
on the broken pavement a young barefooted woman, clad in a
peasant dress of blue frieze, a cloak about her shoulders,
her hair falling veilwise around her, and a young child
sleeping in her arms. The boy called to her in Romany;
she rose and came to the shore of the isle, her child in
her arms, and answered him in the same tongue. She was a
beautiful brown-haired young woman; her solemn eyes were
grey, and as clear as the pool by which she stood.
“‘Bid her speak in a tongue we can understand,’ said the
preacher.
“The boy did so; asking whether she could direct them.
“‘I could, little brother,’ she answered in a sweet voice.
‘But you and these gentlemen might not understand me well.
Better to shelter by these stones to-night, or cross the
water to my fire; to-morrow you may seek your own way.’
“‘Have you any food, mother,’ said the lad, ‘food fit to
offer such worshipful gentlemen?’
“‘Scarcely is it fit, brother,’ said the gipsy woman. ‘I
have here bread, and a little wine, and one cup only in
which to serve it.’
“‘If I had known you camped here, sister,’ said the boy,
‘and if you had no man to see that all is well with you and
the child, I could have set snares in the fern, and you
would have supped better.’
“‘I know it,’ she answered. ‘Had I asked it of you, you
would have set snares for these little children. Nay, then,
brother, you would have shared all you trapped till you
went supperless yourself. Therefore you shall eat of my
bread and drink the wine I have to give. Cross the water to
me.’
“‘But these good gentlemen, mother?’ asked the boy.
“‘They may take you by the hand,’ she said, ‘and cross the
water to me.’
“‘I do not think they can tread a path so narrow as this
rock. It is slippery. Sister, I will cross and bring to
them what you have of food and drink, and fire that we may
build a fire by the stone.’
“‘You may take them fire,’ she answered, ‘but for food and
drink they must cross to me. They cannot walk with your
feet; they must use their own. They must cross barefoot, or
they will fall into the pool.’
“After a while the man who ruled this little northern
village determined to cross; he was hungry, and preferred
the scantiest fare to fasting; besides he saw the cross on
the ruined altar, and he desired to enter the chapel and
pray. The preacher demurred at the depth of the cold still
water; the chapel was a former place of Popish worship, the
cross on the altar offended him, and he was not yet very
hungry, besides he had a little food still in his wallet.
He tethered the horses and sat down to eat, while his two
companions crept, hand in hand, inch by inch over the
narrow rock path that was just visible above the shifting
shimmer of the pool’s surface.
“Entering the chapel they sat side by side on the broken
pavement. The woman, sitting beside the fire, broke her
cakes of bread; she gave them each a portion, and ate some
herself; she drank from the cup and handed it to them.
“‘Till the sun rises,’ she said, ‘I shall rest here, I and
my child. Rest you here, also, and sleep or watch as you
will. Through the night my fire will burn; at dawn I shall
let it die. It will have lighted and warmed us till the sun
shall rise.’
“The preacher, having prayed, wrapped himself in his cloak,
and sat at the foot of a great stone, watching the horses
as they cropped the turf, lest they should stray and be
lost; he mused profitably and seriously on his labours and
doctrine. He heard the cropping of the horses, the murmur
of the wind, and the trickle of a stream, fed by the deep
still pool. He heard the woman singing softly to her child,
in crooning snatches, in seeming unmindfulness of what she
sang:
“‘He that is down need fear no fall,’ she crooned. ‘He that
is low no pride――――’
“She whispered wordless music as she rocked to and fro;
then her song changed:
“‘O Tree of Beauty――Tree of Might,’ she sang, clear, faint,
and high, in a monotonous chant, such as the chapel must
have echoed to in the days when priests served before its
ruined altar, and men and women knelt at the little shrine
above which was the statue of a Mother and Child, ‘O Tree
of Beauty――Tree of Beauty――Tree of Might――――’
“The gipsy boy lay near the fire rejoicing in the warmth,
looking sometimes up to the starlit sky, across which many
a meteor flamed and died, sometimes at the shadows that
leaped on the walls, sometimes into the woman’s face.
“‘What do you sing, sister?’ he said. ‘It is not a song of
our people.’
“‘It is a song of all peoples, brother,’ she answered. ‘But
they sing it in many tongues, and to many tunes.’
“The lad looked at her wonderingly; then he began to watch
the stars again, and the little thin clouds that flew
across the dark sky. At last he went to sleep with his head
resting on his arm; sometimes he laughed and whispered as
he slept, and thrice he sobbed. The woman bent down and
cast over him a fold of her cloak, as he lay and dreamed
under the stars.
“As for the third traveller, he, mindful of the sacredness
of the place, stood not alone barefooted (for to cross the
rock it had been needful to lay aside all covering of his
feet), but also bareheaded he turned his face to the East,
and perceiving the little side altar with the statue of
the Mother, he approached and knelt before it, making the
sign of the cross. There he knelt till dawn, for he was
one used to prayer and vigil. The woman sat motionless,
guarding the leaping flames; bread in her hands, the wine
cup at her feet, her cloak enfolding the sleeping outcast,
the swaddled babe on her knees. Now of her thoughts, which
were measureless, there is no record I can read; nor can I
tell of the gipsy boy’s dreams. But it is said the other
two wanderers saw the place in very different fashion, and
this is what they saw. The preacher beheld the dark circle
of the enclosing oak trees, stirred by the wind; he saw the
great grey stones reared by the dead pagans; he saw the
turf, the horses, and the wild rabbits; he saw the pool
shining in the firelight, the ruined chapel, the leaping
flame, and the woman sitting beside it with her child on
her knee, and the sleeping lad lying at her feet. And his
eyes rested on her till he forgot the strife of creeds; he
watched till she seemed to him the image or forthshowing of
the motherhood of the world; and when next he preached he
spoke no harsh doctrine, nor railed at idolatrous worship
of a creature rather than of the Creator, as he was wont to
do; but he spoke of the Love of God shown forth in human
love, and above all in the great love of a mother for
her little children; for this pure love, said he, is an
example to us of the love that gives rather than takes, it
is a symbol of the Divine Love, that, motherlike, feeds,
sustains, and preserves all creatures.
“Now the other traveller passed into profound musing, till
his outer senses were locked as though in sleep; and he
saw the place in which he was after the following manner
and semblance. He saw the girdle of trees as the wall of
a great temple, therein there were three courts, and at
the centre a shrine. In the first court was the image
of a woman bearing a child in her arms; about her were
lights burning and the smell of incense, and the song of
human praise; priests in rich vestments celebrated solemn
rites, and worshippers, both male and female, old and
young, bowed down before this mother and child. In the
second court there was a dimness as of a starlit night;
there was no incense save the smell of earth and flowers,
no song but the song of birds, and of streams, and the
boom of waves like the tones of an organ; no lights but
strange fires that gleamed and flickered through the night,
no worshippers save dim forms of the gracious ‘hidden
peoples,’ the gods of wood and orchard, plain and tilth.
“In the third court was a turmoil of cold flame; those who
served and worshipped there (if servitors and worshippers
there were), were many-hued, transparent, flame-like; here
was no human being――neither was there male nor female, but
in that turmoil of fires were strange forms moving in time
to music, and wonderful shapes that changed and gleamed and
moved in marvellous sort with a motion and rhythm that had
therein nothing earthly whereof tongue can rightly speak or
pen set down; but throughout the turmoil of this wondrous
dance there was an order and a purpose, for they moved in
time to a great song that seemed like silence.
“But in the Shrine there was nothing visible; only from it
a voice was heard crying:
“‘She who is worshipped in this temple is the Mother of all
Faiths, past and present. She is worshipped as the Divine
Mother of the Worlds, as the Power of Wisdom, as the Secret
Rose, as star-strewn space, as Mary the Virgin, Mother of
God; as the deep waters of the sea, also; and some there
be who think of Her as woman. She is the Form Divine,
Memory and Time; She is angel and man, woman and child,
beast and bird, sky and cloud and flower, song of bird,
dew, sunshine and rain, wind and water, snow and frost,
tree and stream, priests’ chant and sacred writ, learning
and holy rites. She is the Sacred Mirror of God, in Whom
are all things visible and invisible. They who toil in Her
service worship and praise Her, and of Her the Holy Child
is born in every human heart. She, the sacred cup, and the
holy bread; She, the lily of flame set in the waters of
space; She, the waters whence it springs; She, the hearts
of men, and their souls and bodies; She, the Holy Cave, the
consecrated Manger wherein the Babe is cradled; She is the
Mother of the Sacred Humanity whereby we enter the mystery
of the Godhead. She, then is Nature and Beauty, the Power
of God, the Builder of all Forms, the Mother of all Tales.
Those sing of Her and praise Her who love to worship God
as Divine Form rather than as hidden all-sustaining Life.
For He, though he be One, is likewise manifold; and those
who adore Him in the many praise Him in the sacred Form,
eternal in the heavens when all earthly forms have passed
like spray driven by the wind; Mary the Ever-Virgin, the
Root of all the worlds, one with the life that sustains
them, eternally inseparate from It. She is the Temple of
God, the glorified body of the saint, the celestial garden
of the souls made one; She is the Sacred Wood of the Cross,
the Tree of Might and Beauty――――’”
* * * * *
The man who told this tale ceased to speak. He was silent till the
playwright touched his arm; he started:
“Is that the end?” said the playwright.
“It is the end,” said the man, dreamily. “There is nothing more to
tell.”
FORTY-EIGHT HOURS
We are in Thee who art strength:
Give us Thy strength!
We are in Thee who art love:
Give us Thy love!
We are in Thee who art power:
Give us Thy power!
We are in Thee who art peace:
Give, Lord, Thy peace!
We are in Thee who dost wait:
Teach us to wait!
_Litany of the Wood._
There were three men in the large square, solidly furnished room.
Two of them were talking; the third was silent. It was a comfortable
room――a library well filled with books. The men who talked were the
host and his guest; he who was silent was the secretary, who wrote in
the large bow window looking on the terrace, where sparrows quarrelled
in the ivy, and the daffodils and nancies nodded in the soft blustering
wind of late spring.
The secretary was a pale, shrewd-faced young man of twenty-eight; he
was of middle height, not plain, nor yet comely, except for his eyes,
which were very clear and quiet, and of a striking yellowish-grey.
He was unobtrusively dressed, and very impassive, not to say dull, in
manner. He was civil, however, attentive when he was spoken to; his
voice was pleasant, and rather conciliatory in tone, as though he was
deprecating anger.
He was writing letters in a small, neat hand, and showed no sign of
hearing any conversation that was not addressed to him.
His employer was talking; he was a good talker, and a good lecturer.
He was a very public-spirited person full of affairs and had just
written a certain world-compelling pamphlet, which was intended to
revolutionise thought in various unexpected quarters. He was a very
well-known, much-applauded, and generally respected person.
He was talking to a guest who was less applauded because he was held to
be soberly commonplace; nevertheless he too was generally respected,
for he did nothing in particular, whether of good or evil, and was
known to be very rich and growing richer.
He listened to his host, but an observant person would have noticed
that he often glanced at the secretary.
When the host proposed a stroll before luncheon he rose; he was silent
till they were on the terrace, then he said carelessly:
“That man of yours, Dexter, is a steady-looking fellow.”
“O yes; he’s steady and shrewd too. I believe him to be a good fellow
in the main. Not quite reliable――as regards money matters some years
ago. However, he was young, and he paid the penalty. I gave him a fresh
start, and I’ve never repented it. I think bygones should be bygones.”
“Quite so,” said the guest.
The host had a “carrying voice”; it “carried” into the room where the
secretary sat.
He had finished the letters; he was sorting and arranging the MS. of
the world-compelling pamphlet, before proceeding to type it. The writer
was a religiously-disposed man and a church-goer; he liked to preface
his pamphlets with a motto, generally a text. This one was a text; it
ran: “Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.”
He was an excellent man; but he never stopped to think whether he
was in the habit of making a catalogue of his past offences to his
listening friends and new acquaintances or whether he would like to
know that they did so on his behalf.
There was once a converted heathen who was much cleverer than those
who converted him. He told the bishop of the diocese that he and his
fellow-converts were in the habit of gathering together to make public
confession of their sins.
“An excellent discipline, doubtless,” said the good bishop, “but such
public confession must be painful.”
“By no means,” said the simple penitent. “Because we do not confess our
own sins, but each others’.”
The bishop mused on the childlike simplicity of the convert; but――was
the former heathen as guileless as he sounded?
The secretary heard the words of his employer; his hands began to
shake. Presently he dropped the MS. and sat staring out of the window.
It was seven years since he had “paid the penalty,” seven solid years
of dull drudgery and loneliness, and they were still discussing it, and
his “fresh start.”
He sighed; picked up his pencil (he was numbering chaotic scraps of a
very badly written MS.), let it slide to the carpet, rested his arms
on the table, and his head on his arms, and sighed, and sighed, and
sighed again; a sigh sadder than a sob, because it spoke of a greater
weariness, and a more utter depression and spiritlessness.
The door opened; the guest appeared; he shut the door quietly and stood
looking at the secretary. At last he said softly:
“Dexter.”
The man started and sprang up; his eyes looked nervous and ashamed.
“That’s all right,” said the other. “I only want to tell you what I’ve
been leading up to for days. You knew I’d been leading up to something.”
“I thought you were. I don’t know what it is.”
“I should not have come in here when I was supposed to be writing
letters and talked to you, unless I had been trying to size you up. I
shouldn’t size you up unless I wanted you for something.”
“Want me! For what?”
“I’ll tell you.”
The guest sat in the bow window and began to talk in a low voice. It
does not matter specially what he said: it was a plan of action which
a man of fair repute could only have told to one whose reputation for
honesty was smirched. It was a very creditable scheme from the point
of view of a skilful speculator and financier who was not particular
about his methods.
“My name must never appear,” he said, “though of course I am the backer
of the concern. If you will run the thing for me as your own, you
understand, then――I will make it worth your while. I don’t mind, to
speak quite frankly, broaching the matter to you, because my reputation
stands high, and I can back it with a big cheque. If you were to say I
had spoken to you thus, you would not be believed if I denied it. You
would be thought a blackmailer, that’s all.”
“I suppose so. I’m not likely to tell any one. I don’t talk much; and I
should only get into fresh trouble if I talked of this.”