A Tramp's Sketches Part 19

"When I learned to love, I felt like a G.o.d--just as when the sun learned to warm, he knew that he was a sun. I became like a sun over a little world, and people who did not understand basked in my light and heat.

"But one day love was lost in a cloud, as the sun is lost in a mist which it itself has raised from the earth, and I thought: 'What a fool am I, content to dwell among such people, and be as a king over _them_. All that divides me from them is that I know that I know not, and they do not even know that. For they rank their earth knowledge as something more worthy than all their ignorance. I will go forth into the world, and seek for those who are like myself, irreconcilable in front of the inexplicable.'

"I sought them in towns and found them not, for the people, like foolish virgins forgetful of the bridegroom, slumbered and slept. I sought them upon deserts and mountains, and upon the wild plains, but there man was of the earth and beautiful, though not aware of his kingdom beyond the earth. But in the country places I met wise old men who kept candles burning before my shrine, and in the houses of the poor I met the body-wearied, world-defeated, and they, having lost all, found the one hope that I cherished. And in the pages of books, by converse with the dead, I found the great spiritual brotherhood.

"We are many upon the world--we irreconcilables. We cry inconsolably like lost children, 'Oh, ye G.o.ds, have ye forgotten us? Oh, ye G.o.ds, or servants of G.o.ds, who abandoned us here, remember us!'

"For perhaps we are kidnapped persons. Perhaps thrones lie vacant on some stars because we are hidden away here upon the earth. I for one have a royal seal on my bosom, a mysterious mark, the sign of a royal house. Ah, my brothers, we are all scions of that house.

"One day I met a man who voluntarily sought death in order to penetrate the mystery of the beyond. But no sign showed itself forth to us, and we know not whether by his desperate deed he won what we have lost, or whether, perchance, he lost all that we can ever win.

"The burden of my ignorance is hard to bear," he cried. The burden of our ignorance is hard to bear. Thus we cry, but there comes no answer, and the eternal silence which enfolds the earth is unbroken. Yet the stars still shine, promising but not fulfilling.

We have become star-gazers, we irreconcilables; expecters of signs and wonders. We live upon every ridge of the world, and have made of every mountain a watch-tower; and from the towers we strain our eyes to see past the stars.

For the stars are perchance but the flowers in a garden, or the lights upon the walls of a garden, and beyond them is the palace of our fathers.

"And since the early days till now," said my companion, "I have wandered about the world, sometimes sojourning a while in a town, but seldom for long. For the town is not a good place."

Then I told him how the town had tempted me, and we compared experiences. We told of the times when we had come nigh forgetting.

"Just think," said I to him, "I should never have found you had I been swallowed up in the town."

"And I should never have lain at your feet in the sun," he replied.

"You would never have noticed me in the town."

IV. "HOW THE TOWNSMAN TEMPTED ME"

"Once I was tempted by a townsman," said the wanderer, "but instead of converting me with his town, he was himself converted by the country.

"For many years I wandered by seash.o.r.es, asking questions of the sea.

When I came to the sea it was singing its melancholy song, the song that it has sung from its birth, and it paused neither to hear nor to answer me. Ever rolling, ever breaking, ever weeping, it continued its indifferent labour. I walked along its far-stretching sands, leaving footprints which it immediately effaced. I clambered upon its cliffs and sat looking out to sea for days, my eyes shining like lighthouse fires. But the sea revealed not itself to me. Or perhaps it had no self to reveal. And I could not reveal myself to it; but the sea expressed itself to me as a picture of my mystery.

"I wandered inland to placid lakes, the looking-gla.s.ses of the clouds.

I threw pebbles into their waters, disturbing their pure reflections, but the disturbances pa.s.sed away harmlessly into nothingness, and the lakes once more reflected the sky.

"Then I said to my heart, 'We must wander over all the world in search of my homeland, but chance shall not be my guide. I shall loose the reins to thee. Where thou leadest I will follow.'

"I followed my heart through verdant valleys up into a mountain high above a great town. And there for some while I made my abiding place.

For I had learned that from a mountain I could see further than from a valley. In the towns my horizons had been all walls, but from this high mountain I looked far over the world.

"One day there came towards my mountain a townsman who tried to lure me to the city below. He was too tired to climb up to me, but from low down he called out,' You unhappy one, come down out of the height and live with us in the town. We have learnt the art of curing all sorrow. Let us teach you to forget it, and live among our many little happinesses.'

"And I answered him, 'It is our glory that we shall never forget.'

Nevertheless I was tempted and came down.

"The townsman was exceedingly glad, and even before I reached the gates of his city he said to me, 'In after years you will remember me as the man who saved you.'

"'How?' said I. 'Am I already saved?'

"'No,' he replied. 'But in the town is your salvation. You will find work to do, and you will not need to return to your mountain to pray.

You will understand that work itself is prayer--_laborare est orare_.

Your prayer towards the sky was barren and profitless, but prayer towards the earth, _work_, will give full satisfaction to your soul.'

"And I mocked him.

"'What lie is this?' I said. 'How do you dare to confuse labour and prayer? Learn from me, my friend, that work is work, and prayer is prayer. It is written in the old wisdom--"Six parts of thy time shalt thou work for thy bread, and on the seventh thou shalt pray." _Orare est orare; laborare est laborare_.'

"On the outskirts of the town there were men paving the streets.

'Behold how these men pray!' exclaimed my companion. 'They pave the streets; that is their prayer. They do not gaze at the stars; their eyes are ever on the earth, their home. They have forgotten that there are any stars. They are happy!'

"'Their souls sleep,' I answered him.

"'Quite so,' he replied, 'their souls sleep and thus they are happy.

They had no use for their souls, therefore we purveyed them sleep, "balm of hurt minds." We gave them narcotics.'

"'Tell me your narcotics.'

"'The Gospel of Progress--that is our opium; it gives deep sleep and sweet dreams. It is the most powerful of drugs. When a man takes it once he takes it again, for it tempts him with the prospect of its dreams.'

"'I shall not taste of it,' said I, 'for I prize Truth above all dreams. What other narcotics have you, sleep-inducing?'

"My companion paused a moment, then replied:

"' There are two sovereign remedies for the relief of your sorrow, a life of work, or a life of pleasure. But work needs to be done under the influence of the Gospel of Progress. Without a belief in progress, man cannot believe that work is prayer, and that G.o.d is a taskmaster.

His soul wakes up. He commits suicide or crime. Or he deserts the city, and goes, as you have done, up into the mountains.'

"'One narcotic helps out the other,' I hazarded.

"'Quite so. Pleasure is the alternative remedy, a perfectly delightful subst.i.tute for your life: wine, the theatre, art, women. But as in taking laudanum, one must graduate the doses--take too much and you are poisoned--'

"'Wine,' I said. 'I have heard of it. It has been praised by the poets, and its service is that it makes one forget! The theatre, its comedies and farces and cunning amus.e.m.e.nts all designed to help me to forget! Art with its seductions is to obsess the soul with foreign thoughts! Women who languish upon one's eyes and tempt with their beauties, they also would steal away our memories. I will have none of them.'

"'I spoke of women in general,' said my tempter. 'But think of one woman marvellously wrought for thee, the achiever and finisher of thy being, the answer to all thy questionings, the object of all thy yearnings. In the town thou wilt find the woman for thee, and she will bear thee children.'

"'You misinterpret my needs, O friend of the town,' I said. 'I do not look to the stars to find a woman. My yearnings are not towards a woman of this earth. Well do I know that you have offered me the most deadly delusion in this woman, _perfectly wrought for my being_. You have taken hold of all my inexpressible yearning and have written over it the word _woman_. And when one of us irreconcilables marries, it often happens that he forgets his loneliness and loses the sense of his mystery. His wife becomes a little house which he lives inside, and his soul is covered up and lost by her. Where he used to see the eternal stars, he sees a woman, and as he understands her, he thinks he understands himself."

"'But consider,' proceeded my tempter, 'the woman who is exactly the complement of yourself, a woman marvellously and uniquely fashioned to round you off and supply your deficiencies, and use your superfluities.'

"'If such there be,' I replied, 'I shall not seek her in the town.

I know what you mean. I ought to make a home and rear up the second generation. I ought to renounce my own future and dedicate myself to a child so that the mistakes in the old may be set right in the new. I must try to put a child on the road that I missed when I myself was a child, put it in the old coach, perhaps, with a pa.s.sport in its hand.

Even so, that solves no problem, rather multiplies my own problem.

What is deathless in man is not answered in that way. What does it profit man that mankind goes on? We cannot tell. But it is clear that we learn nothing new thereby. Rather, as it seems, we forget what we have learned.'

"My friend smiled and said, 'You will think differently later.'

Meanwhile he brought me into the heart of his town, a great city of idolaters and opium-eaters. And he took me to the gaming tables of pleasure and the gaming tables of work, and he sought to enchant me with figures and hypnotise me with the gleam of gold. He showed me how fortunes were made in roulette and in commerce, and tried to bring upon me the gambler's madness. And I smiled and said: