Chapter III: Part 3

“Do you like stories? Shall I tell you one?”

“Is it true?”

“Naturally. How could it be otherwise? Do you think I can create out of 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.”

“Yes. You’re quiet and shrewd. I’ve watched you a long time. Your life here is a dog’s life. You are ticketed as the man――who was found out. Now there’s very little risk in this; practically none. For if the thing fails I don’t think the law can touch you. Of course your reputation would be gone; but then you’ve damaged that already, and he doesn’t forget it, any more than you do, does he?”

“Naturally he does not.”

“If it succeeds, and I think it will, then I will give you enough of the proceeds to give you a real “fresh start” in America. My name will never appear; it will never be traced who paid you the money; you will simply reserve a sum agreed on between us. That’s tempting to you, isn’t it? It means freedom, and a clean record in another country. That’s tempting?”

“I think so. Will you give me twenty-four hours to think it over?”

“As long as you like in moderation.”

“It’s only that I feel rather played out and tired, that’s all. I funk at anything that is fresh; anything that needs thought and smartness.”

“Ask for a holiday; rest and think it over.”

So the man asked for a holiday, and was granted forty-eight hours; not more, because there was haste to produce the world-compelling pamphlet. He thought he would walk five miles to the forest, and live two days and nights in solitude under the open sky. He started in the dark, with a knapsack strapped to his shoulders. It was dawn when he reached the forest, and crossed a stretch of heath, whence the sea could be smelt, salt and pungent; and the island, too, could be seen, lying, indigo-blue, in the clear distance.

It was a very clear dawn, as clear as crystal, and sights and sounds and smells had a bell-like clean-cut purity that struck the soul at first hand, so that one hardly realised the perception of them came by way of the body. There was a winding ribbon-like road, which crossed the heath after it crept out of the thick forest, and along it a red-painted mailcart went. Behind the cart ran an old dog, lured neither to the right nor to the left in his steady following. The cart clattered over a railless wooden bridge which crossed a slow stream in which watergrasses waved; there were two moor-fowl swimming on it, and its banks were shining with water forget-me-nots.

He passed the mailcart and crossed the bridge; then he reached the woods and left the road. He wanted a quiet place in which to think; he had brought with him, in his knapsack, bread and cheese and apples,――enough food for two days. He walked down a turf path, climbed a gate, walked through two straight pine avenues, and gained the “open forest,” a great silent glade solemn and wonderful in the breathless waiting of dawn. Here companies of rabbits were feeding; here were huge spring-flushed oaks, twisted thorns, delicate birches glowing with the marvel of young leafage. Here too was gorse ablaze with the fire of God, and on the top-most twig of a larch, outlined against the sky, was a thrush, a-quiver with a passion of song, telling a marvellous secret of the heart of things, as only those can tell who do not understand the uttermost meaning of their speech.

He had walked through the place looking at nothing until now; he had an important decision to make. But now he stopped as though a great hand had gripped him, and he stared at the bird with his eyes half-shut. It was so clear; he could see the little feathers a-tremble at its quivering throat, as the notes bubbled up like drops of bright water from a well of joy.

He stared and listened till the thrush flew away.

He came to a little grove of holly trees; and there, on the round circle of oozing wood where a great apple tree had been felled, he lay down and ate some bread and an apple. Then he went to sleep, and when he woke it was noon; the glade was a marvel of dappled shade and shine.

There was a blue tit swinging on the holly bough above him; and a fox was trotting demurely through the fern a few yards away. It was all sacredly, wonderfully still. The place taught nothing; said nothing; it was itself――it was what it was. That was all.

He heard a quick patter of rain; and the leaves shone with diamonds; he watched them a-glitter in the sun, when it shone forth again. A drove of shaggy cream-coloured cattle came by, crashing through the tangle, and passing the little grove of hollies, all a-shine in the sun, where he lay.

When they passed he rose and wandered down a turf alley till the pines hid the wide stretch of the open forest; then he lay with his face hidden on the great cushions of the moss; and listened half-unconsciously to the silence――the wonderful sounding silence――of the wood.

There was a big beech tree near; it blazed with the green fire of spring; at its foot were the shining sticky brown sheaths that once shielded the young leaves. The oaks were pink, they were as rosy as the dawn sky when he reached the forest. From the wood――only he was too tired to rise and seek them――he could smell some late primroses yet lingering on the sweet wet earth, from which the young grass sprang. He heard a wood-pigeon’s slow, sleepy note a-purr from a little grove of larches. Presently, with a strong beat of blue-grey wings the bird flew between him and the sky. Then a jay swung silently from the pines and perched on a bough above him; the conscienceless bird chuckled and preened his feathers; a tiny blue black-barred wonder fluttered down on the man’s chest.

Lying so, he could see the stiff, straight stems of the uncurling bracken, quite differently from the fashion in which they are seen when they are looked at from above; they stood rank by rank, straight, stiff, and green, with their little brown cowled heads bent like monks in prayer.

There was a much bigger life than his unfolding its affairs there in the wood; and it made no turmoil or fuss about it; it lived and reasoned not; it kept the commandments because it was not aware they were apart from itself. And what were the commandments of the wood? Certainly they were kept, whatever they were, for the place was full of beauty and of rest.

The shadows grew long; it was time to eat some bread and cheese; he ate some, and drank from a little stream. It struck him he had not been thinking of the things he came there to think about; but after all he should probably accept the offer, and he was very tired. He had not realised before how much he was over-worked. To-morrow he would think. In the meantime he would walk through the darkening pine avenue, and see the dusk, like a purple-robed giant, stalk over the land.

He walked on and on; the pine walks were unending. Each walk was cut and crossed by another vista of mystery; and always there was some hint of wonders veiling unseen marvels. Sometimes a milky-white bush of blackthorn; sometimes a little stream; sometimes a circle of great dead oaks like frosted silver, all ringed about by frost-bleached grass, through which the new green blades were pushing, and walled by dark pines touched by the little sticky buds of spring growth. Sometimes there was a pool of water shimmering in the shadow of the trees, set about with rose-pink blossoming bog-myrtle, and white bog-cotton, and wonderful little flat leaves shining like emeralds.

But at last he reached the gate. Beyond the gate was a stretch of green heather; and thereon forest ponies feeding, and cows with sleepily tolling bells. On it, too, great raised mounds; bracken and heather-clothed barrows where rabbits burrowed in the grave of some long-dead fighter. To the right was a curved line of woods that seemed to be made of dusky red and green jewels. Before him was the island glowing like sapphire; in the foreground on the open barren heath was a little dark wind-twisted pine clear-cut against the sky; and the sky ablaze with the colour that is the parting blessing of the Lord of Light.

It was a pale sky of dream-blue; in the west it shone with crimson and orange flame, fading into green like a breath of some secret mystery of tenderness, and pinks like a dream of the love of God; and a violet so faint, pure, and holy that the heart quivered at the sight of it. Colour that speaks the tongue of the gods when thought falls dead and the sound of speech is mere hollowness.

When the colour faded big purple clouds began to drift up over the pale yellow sky until it was all a wonderful thick purple-blue darkness in which sounds were both clear and muffled; faraway sounds were clear, and sounds close at hand were muffled and eerie; pale milk-grey lights began to slide through the darkness.

There were no stars; only the warm, dark, sweet-smelling half-silence. He could not see a yard before his face, and yet he felt the darkness was a big, far-reaching space about him.

There was a dry ditch among the pines; it was full of yellow-brown pine-needles. He lay down there and heard the noises of the night; the snapping of twigs, the rustle of little night-prowling beasts. Once a badger stole by; once a night-bird shrieked; the owls called hoo-hoo in the branches. Once there echoed a cry of pain and fear through the wood, the death-shriek of some tiny citizen. Once a night-jar purred in the tree above his head; and once the magic of the nightingale trembled through the warm dark air in a limpid river of sound.

At last he slept; and he woke to a wild rush of rain. The wood was full of a pale cool light; the pine-needles dripped; he heard the gurgle of a hurry of water in the ditch beyond the gate. He got up; the livid greenish-purple clouds were rushing across the sky; the island was veiled in a white mist of rain; the forest ponies galloped for some scant shelter; some of the herd turned disconsolate noses from the rush of waters; some squealed and kicked and bit at each other; others endured in meekness. A big ants’ nest near the gate was flooded; pools stood in the heather; and a heap of cream-white foam swirled on the brown water in the ditch.

Light wisps of cloud fled across the background of livid green-purple. He stood under shelter of the trees and watched the storm.

It passed; the clouds flew seawards; the sky grew a pale even grey; then a cool, soft wind began to blow. The east grew faint pink, then yellow-grey; then a long line of light quivered over the heather. The new day had come. The birds were stirring and singing; the rabbits hopped out to feed; a stoat darted across the track; and the clang of a cow-bell echoed across the moor.

He found the slowly moving stream he crossed yesterday; there he bathed; then he ate some of the food he had brought with him. Finally he walked down a path of silver-grey sand, skirting a wood of oaks.

It waxed very warm and still; there were no clouds; the air shimmered over the heather; white and little brown butterflies skipped over it; the island was veiled in a soft white haze with violet shadows in it. Snakes slid out into the open to sun themselves; the air was full of slanting gleams of gossamer and little drifting lives of insects that lived a day and never knew the night.

He sat among the pines and saw the brown lizards and the squirrels and watched the golden lights flit over the dry pine-needles; the boles of the trees shone red, and in among the far-off oaks was a mist of pale green.

In the afternoon he walked through the oak wood over dry leaves of last year, and cushions of bright emerald moss, set with scarlet, purple, and orange fungi.

At sunset he stood by a little clearing; it was near a ranger’s cottage. He could smell woodsmoke and see its swaying blue column rise above the thatched roof covered with stonecrop and little ferns. Here were rows of hives where lived the bees whose soft organ-like drone he had heard mingling with the ’cellos of the pines.

The sky was less brilliant than it had been the night before; it was bluish-white and the long slender clouds on the horizon were violet and pink. The sky grew paler and more pale; the silver of the evening star glimmered out, a tiny point of light. The pines were very dark; they looked black against the sky; a bat flickered over them.

He walked over the moor to the shore; he saw the ghost-white of the foam, and heard the rush and draw of the tide on the smooth pebbles. The moon was up when he walked back.

This night he did not try to sleep; not because he was worried and thoughtful; he had not thought all day, and he did not think all night. It was very still and cloudless, and the moon was full; when it set the sky was solemnest blue; the stars and the white fire made the mystery of space more wonderful. It was one of those nights which are living symbols of largest patience; of breadth that includes all things, of silence whose root is the wisdom that knows; of that mighty indifference that is indifferent because of its tenderness rather than its coldness. A night sky that was a symbol of a Holy Catholic Church of the entire universe; not tolerant――because, after all, tolerance is a little, narrow, patronising invention of man’s aggressive superiority. That which is all-inclusive is not tolerant; it is omnipotent, omniscient, Alpha and Omega; the first but also the last.

He did not think of these things; he never mused on such matters; he did not think at all that night nor notice anything particularly. He sat under the sky, his hands clasping his knees; he was not sleepy, because to be out of doors two days and nights after a life spent chiefly within walls is apt quite naturally to cause wakefulness.

He saw three shooting stars slide through the blue heart of the night. At dawn he saw a fox, a vixen, and four little furry creatures with sharp, bright eyes; they played together and rolled in the heather without fear of man. He began wandering through the wood looking for birds’ nests; he found four before the sun rose.

When it rose he began to walk back, for the forty-eight hours’ holiday from the world-compelling pamphlet was ended.

He reached the house at seven o’clock; had a bath, dressed himself, ate a moderate breakfast, and began to open and arrange his employer’s letters. That was at 8.30.

At nine o’clock his employer’s guest on his way to breakfast looked into the library. He nodded, came in, and shut the door.

“Good morning, Dexter,” he said. “You’ve got back, I see. I suppose I know your answer?”

“No, I believe you don’t; for I think I’ll go on here.”

“You don’t mean that?”

“I do.”

“Afraid?”

“No.”

“Moral scruples?”

“No.”

“What then?”

The other hesitated, because he really did not know the answer. At last he said:

“I have my Sundays free. And I think I should miss the forest if I went away. I haven’t any other reason――that I know of.”

L’ENVOI

Power of the wave and the light,
Power of the wind and the dawn,
Fanned by the strength of thy breath
Man’s soul is born.

Power of the song of the lark,
Power of the gold of the corn,
By perfume and silence and speech
Man’s soul is born.

Power of the whispering rain,
Power of the day when it dies,
By magic of sunset and dusk
Man’s soul doth rise!

Power of the stars and the night,
When singing and sighing shall cease
By the unknown span of thy rest
Man’s soul knows peace!

THE BREATH UPON THE SLAIN

Shall these bones live? God knows.
The prophet saw such clothed with flesh and skin.
A wind blew on them, and Life entered in;
They shook and rose.
Shorten the time, O Lord! Blot out their sin!
Let Life begin!
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

The wind was blowing through the heather, singing softly from the distant sea. The tiny tinkling sound of the purple bells was like faint music of faery.

They lay on an ancient barrow――three men on a summer holiday by the southern sea.

One was a thin, nervous-looking man, who knew much of the purlieus of the “primrose path,” wherein he strayed to gather up its wreckage and mend it if he might, by the power of a God in whom he said he did not believe.

The second was an ascetic, devout, and hard-working priest of the Anglican Church.

The third was a man still young, but looking even younger than his years. Dennis Barra was his name; a man with a smooth, boyish face, strange yellow-grey eyes, and thick hair streaked a little with grey; it gave the effect of dark hair lightly powdered, and added to the lack of modernity about the face. It was not a modern face; it had delicate irregular features, and a wide, thin-lipped mouth; the face looked curiously luminous in the strong sunlight.

The first man――Ralph Ingram――was speaking.

“No, Cardew,” he said to the priest, “I tell you if I did not hold to that belief I should go mad. If it be not thus, the world is based on injustice. If we climb a ladder rung by rung, if we work out the result of our deeds――that’s just. But no other theory is. What! a man murders and wipes out all his past by ‘grace at the last,’ ‘forgiveness of sins’ and ‘faith’ which his victim never had.

“You speak of these things as though they were outer contracts or a mental attitude,” said the priest, “whereas they are real spiritual forces, definite powers of the unseen. I do not see that you can parcel out guilt thus, according to your system. If life be as you say it is, the fine threads of cause and effect, of will, speech, thought, impulse, action, are endless. It appears to me that by pushing ‘causes’ so far back, you have complicated everything so hopelessly that you need some universal solvent to melt the bonds. If you accept Adam as collective man rather than as an individual ancestor, then Man――collective, heavenly man――has chosen his own lot; he has chosen his fall. His true life is elsewhere; in some mysterious Eden of the spirit he views all our inequalities with a wider view. Our misfortunes may be his opportunity; and our happiness his slough of despond. The view of man spiritual and man carnal may be diametrically opposed. His justice may be your injustice.”

“Well! I should as soon believe in the sea-serpent as in the doctrine of regeneration, grace, and faith.”

At this point Dennis Barra laughed.

“Are you laughing at Ingram or at me?” said the priest.

“I was laughing because I believe I once saw a sea-serpent off the coast of Scotland, and I would say so if I were not afraid of Ingram. And I was also laughing because I thought you didn’t see that your views fit and where they fit. Ingram believes in the law which governed the past and governs the majority in the present; you believe in a possibility of the present――the certain law of the future.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well! because it struck me it was true! And regeneration is a possibility, regeneration of body and soul; and grace is a fact, and the swift transmutation of the sinner into the saint I believe to be possible.”

“Are these things facts? I don’t believe they are.”

“Will you believe me if I tell you a story?”

“If you vouch for it.”

“I do vouch for it. I know it’s true. There was a man once who had just come out of prison. He deserved his punishment. His friends cut him――quite justly; and he did not greatly care, save that he was angry. He had some means; he was not in want; he was independent both of work and friends. He drank a little when he came out of prison, not much. He would drink for a day or two, and then keep sober for a week. In the place where he was, a mission was being held; and with no great result.”

“They needed you there, Barra!”

The young man smiled.

“The people were indifferent. Something was lacking. The mission was to last a week. The clergy paraded the streets each night with a cross and the choir and banners. On the third night the man of whom I speak joined the procession and entered the church. It was a gloomy church; the singing was bad; the preacher had little power. There was nothing to stir the emotions. It was dull; the man was just sitting there, bored. He was thinking he would go out, when something――Something, I say――Some one――stood beside him. He saw no one, but some one was there; and that some one laid a hand upon his head. What that touch did to him he did not know; he never knew. It revolutionised him mentally, morally, yes, and bodily. There came to that man a bodily change, as though he was fused and re-made in a crucible of the spirit,――a cup of the Holy Graal. The only words which were clear to him were: ‘The Fire of the Sacred Heart, the Fire of the Heart of the Ascended.’ They were not spoken, but he knew they were there. And he knew too, that he, the drunkard, the criminal, the man fresh from gaol, must speak to the people. It was not a case of what spiritualists call ‘control.’ No; but God had laid a measure of His power in the trembling hands of that sinner, and said to him: ‘Own thy sins in humbleness, and then――not thyself but Myself; give Me to my children!’

“He stood up and walked to the pulpit steps; the preacher was just coming down and he laid his hand on his arm and said: ‘Let me speak to them.’

“It seems little less than a miracle; for it was a church of the Established Church in England and he an unknown layman. But the preacher let him stand on the altar steps and speak. He told them very quietly and briefly who he was, and what was his character, and that he was sorry; and then he spoke.

“He had not spoken for three minutes before the women were sobbing, and the men were white as ashes, and many of them shaking like reeds in a wind. There was a great ‘revival,’ and people laid themselves, body, soul, and spirit, at the Feet of God.”

“It must have been such a power as I have known you wield over people, Barra.”

“It was the Fire of the Lord that had struck one man, and he passed it on. Of course some went back; but others didn’t, and their lives were changed. But what I want to make you see is that what happened to that man could happen to all men; and his sins and his past were made naught when God’s Hand touched him. It didn’t matter so much that he didn’t know how it was done. It was done. That is a living Power that could work in the world at any minute if the time was ripe; and if and when it does we shall have a new heaven and a new earth.”

“It seems to me hard that this fellow’s sins and past were blotted out, and not those of the other poor wretches. Why should he escape suffering he had earned by the touch of a hand on his head? You say he deserved what he got. I daresay he deserved much more. Most likely he was a scoundrel who deserved the cat.”

“Very likely he did. He never thought anything else. He always admitted his sins. But don’t mistake. I never said he escaped suffering. The sins of the other poor wretches were blotted out _in him_ for the time being only, of course. They swept into him like a tide of foulness and anguish, and the Fire burned them. They were its fuel; so that it swept out in a fuller flood and touched the people with its power and cleansed them. Escaped suffering! People who feel the burden of their own sins and sorrows to be too much to bear, little realise what it means to feel other people’s as well. Do you know there are simple, unlearned, unknown women, secluded from the world, who _pray_ the temptations of the strong (the ‘vibrations’ or ‘magnetisms,’ to use the popular shibboleth) into their own bodily frames, and then endure their anguish to ease others’ burdens? They _endure_ them, I say; they offer them to be transmuted in their own bodies and souls by the spiritual force they call the Blood of Christ; and that Force flows out from them to the people for whom they pray. That is true, possible, a fact. Many a time, maybe, have those very people laughed at their inactive lives, simple faith, superstitious creeds, and all the rest of it. They’d be wallowing deep in mud, many of those strong ones, if it were not for that very superstitious creed that prompts the women’s prayers. That is the real meaning of the Cross to these women; that is the vital, poignant meaning to them of being crucified with Christ.”

The wind muttered in the heather, and the corncrake called from a distant field. The speaker’s voice deepened a little; but it was quite steady, there was in it neither emotion nor excitement.