Chapter V: Preface (5)

Such monasteries as Novy Afon are true institutions of Christianity; they do more for the real welfare of a people than much else on which immense sums of money are spent. It is a matter of real charity and real hospitality both of hand and mind combined. The great monastery sits there among the hills like some immense mother for all the rude, rough-handed tribes that live about. In her love she sets an example. By her open-handedness she makes her guests her own children; they learn of her. Not only does she say with Christ her Master, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," but she makes of all those who come to her, be they fierce of aspect or bearded like the pard, her own children. When the night-bell has rung and all are in their beds--the five hundred brethren, the many lay workers, the hundreds of guests gathered from all parts of Russia--the spirit of the monastery spreads itself out over all of them and keeps them all warm. The whole monastery is a home, and all those who are within are brothers and sisters.

V

Though Novy Afon is new, it is built upon an old site. There was a Christian church there in the second and third centuries, but it was destroyed by the Persian fire-worshippers; it was restored by the Emperor Justinian, but destroyed once more by the Turks. So completely did the Moslem take possession of the country that Christianity entirely lapsed till the Russian monks sailed down there two years before the Russo-Turkish war of 1877. Novy Afon is without Christian traditions. It takes its stand completely in the new, and is part of that Russian faith which has no past, but only a future. The third century ruins of the cathedral and the Roman battlements are indeed of great interest, and many people climb the two thousand feet high crag to look out from the ancient watch-tower. But the attitude of the monastery is well explained in the words of a monk:

"People come here to worship God, and we stand here as a witness of God, to pray continually for the coming of the Kingdom, and to succour those who come to us. It would be a sign of disrespect to our church if people came here merely to see the ancient remains."

I for my part, being of the old though also of the new, was eager to climb the steep stone way along which in ancient days had ridden crusaders and mediaeval warriors. Great trees now grew through the rent wall of the cathedral, and slender birches grew straight up in the nave to the eternal roof which had supplanted that of time--to heaven itself....

But alas for romance, the Russians are restoring the church, clearing away the old stones, chopping down the trees. An ikon has been set up within the old building, and the latter is already a place of worship. Once more: to the eye of a monk a ruined temple is somewhat of an insult to God. There is no fond antiquarianism; all the old Latin inscriptions and bas-reliefs that have been found have been mortared together at random into one wall; all the human bones that have been unearthed, and they are many, have been thrown unceremoniously into an open box. Even on the bare white ribs and ancient crumbling skulls, bourgeois visitors have written their twentieth-century names. Some ancient skeletons have been preserved in a case from pre-Mahometan times, and under them is written:

With love, we ask you, look upon us.
We were like you; you will be like us.

The recommendation is unavailing. The bones have been picked up, passed from hand to hand, scrawled upon, joked over. They are probably the remains of strong warriors and early Christians, and one can imagine with what peculiar sensations they, in their day, would have regarded this irreverence to their bones could they but have looked forward a thousand years or so.

It seemed to me, looking out from the watch-tower of Iver over the diminished monastery buildings and the vast and glorious sea, on that which must change and on that which in all ages remains ever the same, some reverence might have been begotten for that in the past which shows what we shall be in the future. The monks might have spared the bones and buried them; they might have left the ruins as they were.

I am told that in a few years the work of restoration will be completely achieved, services will be held regularly on the mountain top, and peasant pilgrims will gladly, if patiently, climb morning and evening up the stone way to the church, having no thoughts of any time but that in which they are worshipping. The Russian is racially young. He is in the morning and full of prophecy; only in the evening will his eye linger here in the emotions of romance.

Life at the monastery is new life; it is morning there--it is indeed only a little after the dawn. The day is as yet cool and sweet, and it gives many promises. We can see what the morning is like if we will journey thither.

III

I

THE BOY WHO NEVER GROWS OLD

Up to Christmas we are walking with the kings to the Babe's cradle, to the birth of new life and new hope. High in the heavens, and yet before us over the hard frost-bitten way, gleams the guiding star whose promise we divine. After Christmas we are walking with the spring, with a new, young, whispering child-life in the old heart. Though the winds be cold and snow sweep over the land, we know that winter and death are spent. Whilst the light grows stronger in the sky, something in us that is wooed by light responds. New eyes open in the soul. Spring comes, and then the tramp is marching with the summer. Down come the floods, and often for hours one takes shelter from the rain, and it seems as if all we hope for were being inundated. But, as I wrote before, "the spring is not advanced by rain, but it gathers strength in the rain to proceed more quickly when the sun comes out: so also with the tramp." Summer is the year itself, all that the other seasons have laboured for. It is the glory of the year. Then may the tramp cease marching, for in the height of summer nature also must cease, must cease from going forward to turn back. He may rest in the sun and mature his fruits. Autumn is coming and all the year's beauties must yield to death.

I think of my autumn on the way to Jerusalem, and all that a day told me then. The skies became grey at last, and cold searching winds stole into the summer weather. Many things that by sunlight I should have rejoiced in became sombre and ugly in the shade. The tobacco farms, with their myriad tobacco leaves drying and rotting from green into yellow, became ill-kept and untidy, the peasants harvesting them surly and unwashed: the sky spread over them no glamour.

I was walking over the swamps of Sukhum, and I noticed all that I disliked--the deep dust on the road, the broken-down bridges, the streams that cattle had befouled. It was perhaps a district that lacked charm even in fine weather.

There were some compensations. In a wilderness of wilted maize fields, and mud or wattle-built villages, one's eyes rested with affection upon slender trees laden with rosy pomegranates--the pomegranate on the branch is a lovely rusty-brown fruit, and the tree is like a briar with large berries. Then the ancient Drandsky Monastery was a fair sight, white-walled and green-roofed against the background of black mountains, the mountains in turn shown off against the snowy ranges of the interior Caucasus. The clouds hung unevenly over the climbing mountains, so that far snow-bestrewn headlands looked like the speckly backs of monsters stalking up into the sky.

I walked through miles and miles of brown bracken and rosy withered azalea leaves. There came a day of rain, and I spent thirty-six hours in a deserted house, staring most of the time at the continuous drench that poured from the sky. I made myself tea several times from the rainwater that rushed off the roof. I crouched over a log fire, and wondered where the summer had gone.

It needed but a day of rain to show how tired all nature was. The leaves that were weighed down with water failed to spring back when the rain had passed. The dry and dusty shrubs did not wash green as they do in the spring. All became yellower and browner. That which had come out of the earth took a long step back towards the earth again.

Tramping all day through a sodden forest, I also experienced the autumnal feeling, the promise of rest, a new gentleness. All things which have _lived_ through the summer welcome the autumn, the twilight of the long hot day, the grey curtain pulled down over a drama which is played out.

All day the leaves blew down as if the trees were preparing beds for the night of winter. In a month all the woods would be bare and stark, the bushes naked, the wild flowers lost in the copse; nought green but the evergreens. And yet but a week ago, rhododendrons at New Athos, wild roses and mallow in full bloom at Gudaout, acres of saffron hollyhocks, and evening primroses at Sotchi!

I had entered an exposed country, colder than much of the land that lay far to the north.

Two days later the clouds moved away, the zenith cleared, and after it the whole sky, and then along the west and the south, as far as eye could see, was a great snow-field, mountain after mountain, and slope after slope all white to the sky. A cold wind, as of January, blew keenly from the snow, and even froze the puddles on the road. It seemed we had journeyed thus suddenly not only to autumn, but to winter itself.

But at noon the sun was hot again. The new-born brimstone butterflies were upon the wing, a flutter of lambent green. They were of the time, and young. They must live all winter and waken every sunny day till next spring--the ambassadors of this summer to the next.

All that belongs to the past is tired, and even at the bidding of the sun insect life is loth to rise. The grasshopper is tired, the dragon-fly loves to crouch among the shadows, the summer-worsted fritillary butterflies pick themselves out of their resting-places to flutter a little further; their wings, once thick with yellow down and shapely, are now all broken, transparent, ragged.

The tramp's summer also is over. He will not lie full length in the sun till the spring comes round again. For the ground is wet, and the cold is searching. I walked more miles in the cold fortnight that took me to Batoum than in a whole month before New Athos. There was in the air a sting "that bids nor sit nor stand, but go."

Yet thoughts were plentiful, and many memories of past autumns came back to me. How many are the rich, melancholy afternoons of late October or early November, golden afternoons that occur year after year, when one feels one's thoughts parting from the mind easily and plentifully without urging, as overripe fruit falling at last since no one has grasped it before.

I hurried along the road, full of sad thoughts. The year was growing to be an old man. It looked back at spring, at the early days when it first felt the promises of life's glory and scarcely dared believe them true, at laughing May, at wide and spacious June, and then the turning of the year.

It almost seemed to me that I had grown old with the year, that I had even gathered in my fruits, as indeed I had, only they were more the year's fruits than mine: I had been the guest of the year.

I walked as within sight of a goal. In my imagination I saw ahead of me the winter stretches of country that I should come to, all white with snow, the trees all hoar, the people all frosted. I had literally become aware of the fact that I was travelling not only over land but over time. In the far horizon of the imagination I looked to the snowy landscapes of winter, and they lay across the road, hiding it, so that it seemed I should go no further.

Old age, old age; I was an old, bearded, heavy-going, wrinkled tramp, leaning on a stout stick; my grey hairs blew about my old red ears in wisps. I stopped all passers-by upon the road, and chuckled over old jokes or detained them with garrulity.

But no, not old; nor will the tramp ever be old, for he has in his bosom that by virtue of which, even in old age, he remains a boy. There is in him, like the spring buds among the withered leaves of autumn, one never-dying fountain of youth. He is the boy who never grows old.

Father Time, when he comes and takes some of us along his ways into middle-age, will have to pull. Time is a dotard, an aged parent; some boys that are very strong and young are almost too much for him; when he comes to take them from the garden of boyhood they kick and punch; when Time tries to coax them, pointing out the advantages of middle-age, they turn their heads from him and refuse to listen. If at last they are taken away by main force, it is with their backs to the future, and their faces all angry, twisted, agonised, looking back at the garden in which they want to stay.

II

THE STORY OF ZENOBIA

I have known her in summer and in winter--in summer flushed and gorgeous like the wild rose, in winter lily-pale, or grey and haggard as the town she lived in. She was a beautiful daughter of the Earth, a wondrous flower. The summer night was in her dark hair, the south wind in her eyes. Whoever looked upon her in silence knew himself in the presence of the mystery of beauty, of the mystery of an imperious inner beauty. It was because of this, because of some majestic spirit manifest in her, shining through her in soul's colours, that I called her Zenobia, naming her after that Blythedale Zenobia who always wore the rich hot-house flower in her bosom. And it was to me as if my Zenobia wore that flower there also, and in silence, a new flower each day, wondrous and rich. Never could she be seen without that flower there, and it was as if on that flower depended her very life. Should the flower at any time be wanting, then all were wanting.

I remember her as she was one June when we gathered eglantine together, and the richest and deepest of all reds in roses. In the midsummer afternoons we plucked our garlands and brought them home at sunset time. Such afternoons they were, tempting all living things into the symphony of glory, such afternoons of splendour that now, looking back, it seems to be the very acme of their glory that we also were to be found there in those woods with all the rest. We came, soft stepping into the scene, and Nature, which moves continuously, harmoniously, did in the same moment build a throne and take us in it. At once the life from us flowed out, and the life about flowed in. Surely these were days of large orchestras, and of wonderful and complex melodies. Zenobia moved like a queen over the scene, her rich garments sweeping over the soft grass, her graceful arms swinging as with secret blessings. All the living things of the day seemed eager to be her pages; she was indeed a queen. The world needed her and the world went well because of her. The birds sang, they had not sung so sweetly but for her; the sun shone, it had not shone so brightly but for her; the roses stood on tiptoe on the bushes asking to be picked by her; the very air played lovingly about her, stealing and giving freshness.

The memory of all this comes out to me with a rush whenever I open a book of poems at a certain page, and with it comes the odour of sweet-brier and honeysuckle. It was in a June, one of the past Junes when we also were June glory, beautiful, full-blossoming, and not more self-conscious than the brier itself. I think now of the greens and crimsons, the blaze of holy living colour in which we were able to exist and breathe....The afternoon passed, the evening came. Light unfolded silken banners of crimson floated down over the sky; crimson flower torches danced upwards from Zenobia's hands, living rose glowed from out her cheeks. About us and around floated lambent reds and blues and greens. The deep lake looked into her eyes, the trees nodded to her, birds flew over her, the first stars peeped at her.

Mysterious, breathless, was the summer night. An influence of the time seemed to press upon us; something exhaled from the mystery of flowers drew sleep down upon us. Twilight lay upon the eyebrows of the girl, and the cloud of her dark hair nodded over it like the oncoming night. We sat down upon a grass mound. We ourselves, Nature around us, all things of the day, seemed under a spell. Sleep lay about the roses, the bushes mused inwardly, the honeysuckle exhaled enchantment and was itself enchanted. Then the things of the night came. The myriad midges performed their rites over the blackthorn and the oak, and blackthorn and oak looked as if changed into stone. The mice and the shrews crept safely over the toes of the blackberry bushes, the rabbits came tumbling along through banks of inanimate grass. And fat night-moths sucked honey from half-conscious flowers, and the same moths whirred duskily round our gathered roses or darted daringly into our faces. We were like the flowers and the grass and the blackberry and blackthorn. The night which had overtaken them and put them to sleep had settled upon us also, and the things of the night came out securely at our feet. For a moment, a sport of habit had betrayed us to the old Eden habits, had taken us a step into a forgotten harmony. But below the surface the old fought secretly with the new, that old that seems so much the newest of the new, that new that really is so old and stale. The new must have won, and in me first, for I rose suddenly, brusquely, as if somehow I felt I had unawares been acting unaccountably foolishly. I looked at my companion; the mood was still upon her, and I believe she might easily have slumbered on into the night, but as she saw me rise, the new in her gained reinforcement, and she too rose in a sort of mild surprise. Now I think I might have left her there to awaken late in the night, a new Titania with the moonbeams coming through the forest branches to her.

I awakened her. I think she has often been awakened since then, but indeed it is seldom now that she is allowed to slip into such slumber. We walked home and I said some poems on the way; she heard. I think she heard in the same way as a flower feels the touch of a bee. No words had she, no poetry of words to give back. She had not awakened to articulateness. She had no thoughts; she breathed out beauty. She understood no thoughts; she breathed in beauty from around.

* * * * *

This was Zenobia, this was her aspect when she was taken, when the change came over her life.

That marvellous mechanism, the modern state, with its mysterious springs and subterranean attractions and exigencies, drew her in to itself. The modern state, whose every agent is called Necessity, had appealed to her. And she had been taken. She settled on the outskirts of a city and half her life was spent under a canopy of smoke, whilst in the other half she courted morning and evening twilights. In the first June of this time, in afternoons and evenings, we had lived together among the roses, and she had stood at the zenith of her glory. But with the coming on of autumn the roses withered, and something of the old dreaminess left her eyes. A little melancholy settled upon her, and she discovered she was lonely. But the town had seen her, and henceforth the town took charge of her. It sent its angels to her. One might wonder what the town used her for, this inarticulate one--it made her a teacher because of her good memory. Then it regarded her as "good material." It sent its angels, those voluntary servants of the state, the acquaintances who call themselves friends. These at first approved of her, always misunderstood her, and at length despised her. They misunderstood her, because a person truly inarticulate was incomprehensible to them. Her naïveté they mistook for insolence, her dreaminess for disrespect. They confused her memory with her understanding. They gave her books to read, brought her to lectures, sat her at the theatre, took her to hear sermons, prayed with her and drank with her the holy wine. And some would say, "Isn't she coming on?" or "Isn't she developing?" and others, more perceiving, would say, "Well, even if she isn't getting anything from it, at least she's seeing life"; while others, more perceiving still, gave her up as past hope. "She has no brains," they said. Others, still more perceiving, said she had no soul, no love; she cared for no one, understood nothing. She, for her part, went on almost as ever, and remained next to inarticulate. Only now and again the hubbub of battle in the schoolroom would awaken her to some sort of conscious exasperation. She would appeal to her class, staring at them with eyes from which all gentleness and affection had merged into astonishment and indignation. For the rest, lack of life, lack of sun, lack of life influence told upon her beauty. She did not understand the influence of the ill-constituted around her, and did not understand the pain which now and again thrilled through her being, provoking sighs and word-sighs. Then those friend-acquaintances, ever on the alert for an expression of real meaning, interpreted her sighs and longings for week-ends in the country.

Verily it is true, one cannot serve God and mammon. There was no health forthcoming through this compromise with life. She merely felt more pain. She continued her work in the town, and was enrolled and fixed in many little circles where little wheels moved greater wheels in the great state-machine. Ostensibly, always now, whatever new she did was a step toward saving her soul. I met her one January night; she was going to a tea-meeting in connection with a literary society. Very grey her face looked. Many of the old beautiful curves were gone, and mysteries about her dimples and black hair-clusters seemed departed irrevocably. Still much in her slept safe, untouched as ever, and, as ever, she was without thoughts. Her memory suggested what she should say to me. "It will be interesting," she remembered. I helped her off with coat and furs. She was dressed wonderfully. The gown she wore--of deep cinnamon and gold--was still the dress of Zenobia, and at her bosom the strange flower exhaled its mystery. I went in with her to the hot room. She was evidently a queen here, as in the forest glades. And her pale face lit up as she moved about among the "little-worldlings" and exchanged small-talk and cakes and tea. She was evidently in some way responsible for the entertainment, for the chairman said "they all owed her so much." I watched her face, it showed no sign of unusual gratification; had he slighted her, I am sure she would have listened as equably. What a mask her face was! The look of graciousness was permanent, and probably only to me did she betray her continuous sleepiness and lack of interest in the whole affair. Members propounded stupendously solemn questions about the "salvation of man," the "state of progress," the mystic meaning of passages of the Bible, and the like; and I watched her draw on her memory for answers. She was never at a loss, and her interlocutors went away, and named their little child-thoughts after her.

I took her away at last and whispered some things in her ears, and showed her what could be seen of moon and stars from the narrow street, and something of the old summer feeling came over us. How the old time sang sorrowfully back, plaintively, piteously. Our steps sounded along some silent streets, the doors of the little houses were shut and dark. They might have been the under doors of tombs. Silently we walked along together, and life sang its little song to us from the depths of its prison. It sounded like the voice of a lover now lost for ever, one worth more beyond compare than any that could come after.

There is no going back. I saw her to her little home and touched her tenderly at Goodbye.

She went in. The door closed and I was left standing alone in front of the closed door, and there was none around but myself. Then I was aware of a gust in the night-breeze blowing up for rain. Time had changed. Something had been taken from the future and something had been added to the past. The spiral gusts lifted the unseen litter of the street, and with them the harpies rose in my breast. And words impetuous would have burst out like the torrents of rain which the dark sky threatened.

The torrent came.

A girl like this simply grows like a flower on a heath, blossoms, fades, withers, and is lost. No more than that. I scarcely tell what I want to say. Oh, how strongly I would whisper it into the inmost heart! Life is not thoughts, is not calm, is not sights, is not reading or music, is not the refinement of the senses,--Life is--life. This is the great secret. This is the original truth, and if we had never begun to think, we should never have lost our instinctive knowledge. In one place flowers rot and die; in another, bloom and live. The truth is that in this city they rot and die. This is not a suitable place for a strong life; men and women here are too close together, there is not enough room for them, they just spring up thinly and miserably, and can reach no maturity, and therefore wither away. All around are the ill-constituted, the decaying, the dying. What chance had fresh life coming into the tainted air of this stricken city--this city where provision is made only for the unhealthy? For here, because something is the matter, every one has begun conscience-dissecting--thinking--and a rumour has got abroad that we live to get thoughts of God. And because thoughts of God are novel and comforting, they have been raised up as the great desideratum. And the state of society responsible for the production of these thoughts is considered blessed. The work of intensifying the characteristics of that society is thought blessed, and because in ease we think not, we prefer to live in disease. And the progress of disease we call Progress. So Progress and Thought are substituted for Life.

There _is_ a purpose of God in this city, but there is as much purpose in the desert. There is no astonishingly great purpose. The disease will work itself out. And I know God's whole truth to man was revealed long since, and any one of calm soul may know it. The hope of learning the purpose through the ages, the following of the gleam, is the preoccupation of the insane.

What do all these people and this black city want to make of _her_? She, and ten thousand like her, need life. Life, not thought, or progress, just the same old human life that has always been going on.

The rain was pouring heavily and I took shelter. I felt calmer; I had unpacked myself of words. Rather mournfully I now looked out into the night, and, as it were, ceased to speak to it, and became a listener. A song of sorrow came from the city, the wailing of mothers uncomforted, of children orphaned, uncared for, of forsaken ones. I heard again the old reproach of the children sitting in the market. "Here surely," I said, "where so many are gathered together, there is more solitude and lonely grief than in all the wide places of the earth!" Voices came up to me from thousands in a city where thousands of hands were uplifted to take a cup of comfort that cannot be vouchsafed.

Is there a way out for _her_? Is there a way out for them? "For her perhaps, for them not," something whispered within me inexorably. "And Death?" The wind caught up the whisper "death" caressingly and took it away from me over the city, and wove it in and out through all the streets and all the dark lanes, and about the little chimneys, and the windows.

Is there a way out for her?--Perhaps. There are some beings so full of life that even the glutton Death must disgorge them.

III

THE LITTLE DEAD CHILD

In the little town of Gagri on the Caucasian shore of the Black Sea there is a beautiful and wonderful church surviving from the sixth century, a work of pristine Christianity. It is but the size of a cottage, and just the shape of a child's Noah's Ark, but made of great rough-hewn blocks of grey stone. One comes upon the building unexpectedly. After looking at Gagri's ancient ruins, her fortresses, her wall built by Mithridates, one sees suddenly in a shadowy close six sorrowful little cypresses standing absolutely still--like heavily dressed guardsmen--and behind the cypresses and their dark green brooms, the grey wall of the church, solid, eternal. One's eyes rest upon it as upon a perfect resting-place. If Gagri has an organic life, this church must be its beating heart.

I came to Gagri one Saturday afternoon after the first two hundred and fifty miles tramping of my pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and at this little church I witnessed a strange sight. I had hardly admired the grey interior, the bare walls growing into the roof in unbroken curves, the massive stone rood-screen, the sorrowful faces in the holy pictures, when a little procession filed into the church; four girls carrying a flower-bedecked coffin, half a dozen elders, and a pack of children carrying candles--a sight at once terrible and diurnal, a child's funeral.

Russian churches, having no chairs, have the appearance of being almost empty. In the centre of this emptiness at Gagri church two trestles were put up, and the open coffin placed upon them; in the coffin, lying in a bed of fresh flowers and dressed in delicate white garments, was a little dead child. The coffin was perfectly and even marvellously arranged; it would be difficult to imagine anything more beautiful, and at the same time more terrible.

A girl of about four years, she lay in the coffin as in bed, with her head somewhat raised, and the face looking directly at the altar and at the sorrowful pictures; on her head was a cream silk embroidered bonnet, on her forehead, from ear to ear, a paper _riza_ with delicate line drawings of the story of the girl's angel, St. Olga. A high lighted candle stood at her head, two little ones at each side, and two at her feet. The bonnet and the dress were tied with little bits of pink ribbon; the child's hands, small, white, all lovely, lay one upon another, and in one of them was a little white cross. The face and arms were the colour of fine grey wax, the lips thin, dark red and set--the little dead girl looked steadfastly at the Ikons.

I stood and wondered. Round about the coffin were a score of people, mostly little children, who every now and then nicked away flies that were about to settle on the dead body. The grey church and its beauty melted away. There was only a little grey wax figure lying poised before the face of Christ, and little children flicking away flies.

Among the flowers in the coffin I noticed a heavy metal cross--it would be buried with her. Hanging over the trestles at each of the four corners were gorgeous hand-embroidered towels. "This is some rich person's child," I thought as I waited--it was twenty minutes before the father, the mother, and the priest arrived. I was mistaken; this was the child of ordinary peasants.

* * * * *

I wonder the mother was allowed to come to church; she was frantic with grief. When she came into the church she fell down on her knees and hugged the dead body and kissed it and sobbed--sobbed so horribly that except for the children there was no one present who kept dry eyes. The husband stood with his hands dangling at his side, his lips all puckered, his hair awry, and the tears streaming down his red cheeks.

But when the priest came in he took the good woman aside and quieted her, and in his words surely was comfort. "Those who die as children are assured of that glorious life above, for of them Christ said, 'Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, _for of such is the kingdom of heaven._' Least of all should we grieve when a child dies."

I held a candle with the others and joined in the little service, and when the service was over ate of the boiled rice and grapes that were handed round to save us from evil spirits.

The candles were put out, the priest retired, and then the sobbing broke forth once more, the people crowded round the coffin and one by one kissed the little dead one, kissed her again and again. Most of all the little children kissed her, and the father in distraction stood by, calling out in broken treble, "Say good-bye to her, children, say good-bye!"

Last of all, the wild mother said good-bye, and was only taken away by sheer force. Then the lid was put on the coffin, and the four girls--they were each about twelve years old--lifted it on the embroidered towels and carried it out of the church.

The mother fainted and was taken into the open air, where one woman helped to revive her by pouring water on her head out of an old kettle, and another by drinking water and spurting it out again in her face. Meanwhile the father took eight nails--he had them in his pocket--and with all the crowd looking on, he nailed down the lid of the coffin. The girls once more lifted their burden upon the beautiful towels, and they bore it away to the grave. The crowd followed them with hymns--

All we like dust go down into the grave,

the sound of their singing almost drowned by the beating of their uneven steps. The music modulated and died away to the silence of the evening. The little church remained grey and ancient, and the six cypresses stood unmoved, unmoving, like guards before some sacred portal....

And the pilgrim goes on his way.

IV

HOW THE OLD PILGRIM REACHED BETHLEHEM

At New Athos monastery in one of the common hostels there were some hundred peasant men and women, mostly pilgrims. It was after supper; some of the company were melting away to the dormitories, others remained talking.

There was one topic of conversation common to all. An old greybeard palmer had broken down that afternoon and died. He had been almost his whole life on the road to Jerusalem, and we all felt sad to think that he had been cut off when he was truly nearing the Holy Land.

"He wished to go since he was a little boy," said old Jeremy, an aged pilgrim in a faded crimson shirt. Every one paid respect to Jeremy and listened to him. He was a placid greybeard who had spent all his life upon the road, full of wisdom, gentle as a little child, and very frail.

"He wished to go when he was a little boy--that means he began to go when he was a little boy, for whenever you begin to wish you begin the pilgrimage. After that, no matter where you are, you are sure to be on the way. Up in the north the rivers flow under the earth, and no one sees them. But suddenly the river appears above the land, and the people cry out, 'See, the river is flowing to the sea.' But it began to go to the sea long ago. So it was with Mikhail. All his life he was a pilgrim. He lived in a distant land. He was born of poor parents, not here, but far away in the Petchora province--oh, far, far away."

Grandfather Jeremy waved his hand to signify how far.

"Four thousand versts at least, and he hasn't come straight by a long way. Most of the way he walked, and sometimes he got a lift, sometimes a big lift that took him on a long way."

"Ah, ah!" said a youngster sympathetically, "and all in vain, all in vain--_naprasno, naprasno_--"

Jeremy paid no attention.

"Big lifts," his voice quavered. "And now he is there. Yes, now he is there."

"Where, grandfather?"

"There, where he wished to be, in the Holy City. He had got very tired, and God had mercy on him. God gave him his last lift. He is there now, long before us."

"I don't see how you make that out," said a young man, a visitor, not a pilgrim. "God, I reckon, cheated him."

"God never cheats," said Jeremy calmly.

"God..." said the visitor, and was about to raise a discussion and try to convert these pilgrims from their superstition. But Jeremy interrupted him. For the old man, though a peasant, had a singular dignity.

"Hush! Pronounce not His name lightly. I will tell you a story."

"Silence now!" cried several. "Hear grandfather's story!"

The old man then told the story of an aged pilgrim who had died on his way to Jerusalem. I thought he was repeating the story of the life of Mikhail, so like were his present words to those that had gone before. But the issue was different. In this case the pilgrim died and was buried in a little village near Odessa.

He was a penniless beggar. In grandfather's picturesque language, "he had no money; instead of which he bore the reproach of Christ. He found other men's charity....

"All his life he wandered towards Bethlehem. He used to say he pilgrimaged not towards Calvary, but towards Bethlehem. The thought that the Roman officials had treated Christ as a thief was too much for him to bear.

"He who possessed all things they treated as one who had stolen a little thing...."

The old man paused at this digression, and stared around him with an expression of terror and stupefaction.

There was a silence.

"Go on, Jeremy," said some one impatiently.

Jeremy proceeded.

"He always journeyed towards Bethlehem, and whenever he saw a little child, a little baby, he would say to the mother that it foretold him what it would be like for him at the Holy Land. And of the cradles he would always say they were just the shape of the manger where the baby Christ was laid.

"He was very dear to mothers, you may be sure, and he never lacked their blessing.

"He travelled very slowly, for in Moscow a motor-car ran over his foot, and he always needed a strong staff. He was ill-treated sometimes in the towns, where the dogs bit him and the street children aimed stones. But he never took offence. He smiled, and thought how little his sufferings had been compared with those of the saints.

"So he grew old.

"'You are old, grandfather; you will never reach Jerusalem,' the peasant women told him. But he always smiled and said, 'As God wills. Perhaps if I die I shall see it sooner.'

"And he died, poor, wretched, uncared for, in the streets of a little village near Odessa, and children came and beat off the hungry dogs from his body with sticks.

"'What is this?' said one policeman to another.

"'A _Bogo-moletz_ (God-prayer) dead, that's all,' was the reply.

"'No money?'

"'None. If he had any his pockets have been picked.'

"By his passport he belonged to Petchora province, far away. No one knew him. No one claimed him.

"'It means he must be buried at the public expense,' said the head man of the village, and spat upon the ground.

"In the whole village only the coffin maker rejoiced, and he had small cause, since a pauper's coffin costs but a shilling.

"'He must be buried on the common,' said the head man. 'There's no room in the churchyard.'

"'But a pilgrim,' said an objector. 'You must bury him in consecrated ground; you can't shut him out of the Heavenly Kingdom.'

"'No matter. Ask the priest. If the dead man can pay for a plot of ground for a grave, well and good; or if the villagers will subscribe....'

"The head man looked at the little crowd assembled. They were a poor and needy crowd. No one answered him. Then, without doing any more, the head man walked away, and the dead body remained in the street.

"It seemed no one would pay for the grave, but in the afternoon a woman who lived on the outskirts came and claimed the pilgrim as a distant relative. He could scarcely have been a relative, except inasmuch as we are all descended from Adam.

"The head man and the village priest rejoiced, and the woman took the dead body home and washed it, and clothed it in white linen, and she ordered a three-rouble coffin covered with purple cloth.

"But she was a very poor woman, and when she had paid for the grave she had no money to pay for singers and for prayers.

"'God will have mercy,' she said. 'And belike he was a good man, a pilgrim.'

"And that woman was a virgin," added Jeremy abruptly and, as I thought, irrelevantly. But the chambers of that old man's mind were strangely furnished.

"She was a virgin. What remains to be said? She hired a man to dig a grave, and another to wheel the barrow with the coffin. She had no friends who would follow the coffin with her, but in the main street she found a cripple whom she had once befriended, and two little boys who liked to sing the funeral chant.

"Thus the old pilgrim was taken to the grave, and in his honour a simple woman, two street children, and a cripple followed his corse."

* * * * *

There was a long pause.

"You think he died," old Jeremy went on. "Oh, no; he did not die, he only went on more quickly. When he fell down dead in the street his soul suddenly began a new life, a life like a dream. Whilst the dogs were barking and snapping at his old legs he suddenly saw in front of him in the darkness a great bright star beckoning him, and in his new life he got up from the road and rushed towards that star--rushed, for he felt young again, younger than any boy, and all the lameness and tiredness were passed away.

"Suddenly, in front of him, and coming to meet him, he saw a horse, draped all in silk, and attendants. A man came up to him and saluted him, offered him a crown, and bade him rise up upon the horse. He sat upon the horse, and, looking at himself, saw that he was dressed in cloth of gold. Behind him was a great train of attendants, carrying gifts. And they all journeyed forward, towards the star.

"Eh, brothers," said Jeremy, looking round, "what a change in the estate of our poor friend! He has now become one of the first, because on earth he was one of the last. He is a king."

The listeners were all silent, and the narrator enjoyed a triumph.

* * * * *

Jeremy's cracked old voice went on, and now again somewhat irrelevantly. "And the woman, who was a virgin, conceived and bore a child, and she was so poor that the child was laid in a manger. And three kings arrived, bearing precious gifts, and they did homage unto the child. It was at Bethlehem. One of these kings was the poor pilgrim who died on his way to the Holy Land."

"What woman was this?" said the visitor contemptuously. "Your wits are wandering, old man. Do you mean it was the same woman who buried him?"

"The same," said Jeremy huskily, "only in a different world. There are other worlds, you know. But it is very true. He came as one of the kings. And the woman now has a beautiful child. She knows.... So we shan't be very sad about Mikhail. I think he also to-day is following that star, and will be at Bethlehem to-night."

"Only it doesn't happen to be Christmas Eve," said the sceptical visitor.

"Eh, hey," said another pilgrim, breaking in, "there's a man--he doesn't know that it is Christmas every day in the year at Bethlehem."

IV

THE WANDERER'S STORY