On Nothing & Kindred Subjects Part 15

In his High Town that Faery is And stands on Harcourt Lea; To summon him up his arrier-ban His writ beyond the mountain ran.

My father was his serving-man; Although the farm was free.

Before the angry wars began He was a friend to me!

In his High Town that Faery is And stands on Harcourt bay; The Fisher driving through the night Makes harbour by that castle height And moors him till the day: But with the broadening of the light It vanishes away.

So the Faery Castle comes in by an illusion in the Ballad of the Battle of Val-es-Dunes.

What is this vision which our race has so symbolised or so seen and to which are thus attached its oldest memories? It is the miraculous moment of intense emotion in which whether we are duped or transfigured we are in touch with a reality firmer than the reality of this world. The Faery Castle is the counterpart and the example of those glimpses which every man has enjoyed, especially in youth, and which no man even in the dust of middle age can quite forget. In these were found a complete harmony and satisfaction which were not negative nor dependent upon the absence of discord--such completion as criticism may conceive--but as positive as colour or as music, and clothed as it were in a living body of joy.

The vision may be unreal or real, in either case it is valid: if it is unreal it is a symbol of the world behind the world. But it is no less a symbol; even if it is unreal it is a sudden seeing of the place to which our faces are set during this unbroken marching of years.

Once on the Sacramento River a little before sunrise I looked eastward from a boat and saw along the dawn the black edge of the Sierras. The peaks were as sharp as are the Malvern from the Cotswold, though they were days and days away. They made a broad jagged band intensely black against the glow of the sky. I drew them so. A tiny corner of the sun appeared between two central peaks:--at once the whole range was suffused with glory. The sun was wholly risen and the mountains had completely disappeared,--in the place where they had been was the sky of the horizon.

At another time, also in a boat, I saw beyond a spit of the Tunisian coast, as it seemed a flat island. Through the heat, with which the air trembled, was a low gleam of sand, a palm or two, and, less certainly, the flats and domes of a white native village. Our course, which was to round the point, went straight for this island, and, as we approached, it became first doubtful, then flickering, then a play of light upon the waves. It was a mirage, and it had melted into the air.

There is a part of us, as all the world knows, which is immixed with change and by change only can live. There is another part which lies behind motion and time, and that part is ourselves. This diviner part has surely a stronghold which is also an inheritance. It has a home which perhaps it remembers and which certainly it conceives at rare moments during our path over the moor.

This is that Faery Castle. It is revealed at the sound of a trumpet; we turn our eyes, we glance and we perceive it; we strain to reach it--in the very effort of our going the doom of human labour falls upon us and it vanishes away.

It is real or unreal. It is unreal like that island which I thought to see some miles from Africa, but which was not truly there: for the ship when it came to the place that island had occupied sailed easily over an empty sea. It is real, like those high Sierras which I drew from the Sacramento River at the turn of the night and which were suddenly obliterated by the rising sun.

Where the vision is but mirage, even there it is a symbol of our goal; where it stands fast and true, for however brief a moment, it can illumine, and should determine the whole of our lives. For such sights are the manifestation of that glory which lies permanent beyond the changing of the world. Of such a sort are the young pa.s.sionate intentions to relieve the burden of mankind, first love, the mood created by certain strains of music, and--as I am willing to believe--the Walls of Heaven.

ON A SOUTHERN HARBOUR

The ship had sailed northward in an even manner and under a sky that was full of stars, when the dawn broke and the full day quickly broadened over the Mediterranean. With the advent of the light the salt of the sea seemed stronger, and there certainly arose a new freshness in the following air; but as yet no land appeared. Until at last, seated as I was alone in the fore part of the vessel, I clearly saw a small unchanging shape far off before me, peaked upon the horizon and grey like a cloud. This I watched, wondering what its name might be, who lived upon it, or what its fame was; for it was certainly land.

I watched in this manner for some hours--perhaps for two--when the island, now grown higher, was so near that I could see trees upon it; but they were set spa.r.s.ely, as trees are on a dry land, and most of them seemed to be thorn trees.

It was at this moment that a man who had been singing to himself in a low tone aft came up to me and told me that this island was called the Island of Goats and that there were no men upon it to his knowledge, that it was a lonely place and worth little. But by this time there had risen beyond the Island of Goats another and much larger land.

It lay all along the north in a mountainous belt of blue, and any man coming to it for the first time or unacquainted with maps would have said to himself: "I have found a considerable place." And, indeed, the name of the island indicates this, for it is called Majorca, "The Larger Land." Towards this, past the Island of Goats, and past the Strait, we continued to sail with a light breeze for hours, until at last we could see on this sh.o.r.e also spa.r.s.e trees; but most of them were olive trees, and they were relieved with the green of cultivation up the high mountain sides and with the white houses of men.

The deck was now crowded with people, most of whom were coming back to their own country after an exile in Africa among un-Christian and dangerous things. The little children who had not yet known Europe, having been born beyond the sea, were full of wonder; but their parents, who knew the shortness of human life and its trouble, were happy because they had come back at last and saw before them the known jetties and the familiar hills of home. As I was surrounded by so much happiness, I myself felt as though I had come to the end of a long journey and was reaching my own place, though I was, in reality, bound for Barcelona, and after that up northward through the Cerdagne, and after that to Perigord, and after that to the Channel, and so to Suss.e.x, where all journeys end.

The harbour had about it that Mediterranean-go-as-you-please which everywhere in the Mediterranean distinguishes harbours. It was as though the men of that sea had said: "It never blows for long: let us build ourselves a rough refuge and to-morrow sail away." We neared this harbour, but we flew no flag and made no signal. Beneath us the water was so clear that all one need have done to have brought the vessel in if one had not known the channel would have been to lean over the side and to keep the boy at the helm off the very evident shallows and the crusted rocks by gestures of one's hands, for the fairway was like a trench, deep and blue. So we slid into Palma haven, and as we rounded the pier the light wind took us first abeam and then forward; then we let go and she swung up and was still. They lowered the sails.

The people who were returning were so full of activity and joy that it was like a hive of bees; but I no longer felt this as I had felt their earlier and more subdued emotion, for the place was no longer distant or mysterious as it had been when first its sons and daughters had come up on deck to welcome it and had given me part of their delight. It was now an evident and noisy town; hot, violent, and strong. The houses had about them a certain splendour, the citizens upon the quays a satisfied and prosperous look. Its streets, where they ran down towards the sea, were charmingly clean and cared for, and the architecture of its wealthier mansions seemed to me at once unusual and beautiful, for I had not yet seen Spain.

Each house, so far as I could make out from the water, was entered by a fine sculptured porch which gave into a cool courtyard with arcades under it, and most of the larger houses had escutcheons carved in stone upon their walls.

But what most pleased me and also seemed most strange was to see against the East a vast cathedral quite Northern in outline, except for a severity and discipline of which the North is incapable save when it has steeped itself in the terseness of the cla.s.sics.

This monument was far larger than anything in the town. It stood out separate from the town and dominated it upon its seaward side, somewhat as might an isolated hill, a sh.o.r.e fortress of rock. It was almost bare of ornament; its stones were very carefully worked and closely fitted, and little waves broke ceaselessly along the base of its rampart. Landwards, a ma.s.s of low houses which seemed to touch the body of the building did but emphasise its height. When I had landed I made at once for this cathedral, and with every step it grew greater.

We who are of the North are accustomed to the enormous; we have unearthly sunsets and the clouds magnify our hills. The Southern men see nothing but misproportion in what is enormous. They love to have things in order, and violence in art is odious to them. This high and dreadful roof had not been raised under the influences of the island; it had surely been designed just after the re-conquest from the Mohammedans, when a turbulent army, not only of Gascons and Catalans, but of Normans also and of Frisians, and of Rhenish men, had poured across the water and had stormed the sea-walls. On this account the cathedral had about it in its sky-line and in its immensity, and in the Gothic point of its windows, a Northern air.

But in its austerity and in its magnificence it was Spaniard.

As I pa.s.sed the little porch of entry in the side wall I saw a man.

He was standing silent and alone; he was not blind and perhaps not poor, and as I pa.s.sed he begged the charity not of money but of prayers. When I had entered the cool and darkness of the nave, his figure still remained in my mind, and I could not forget it. I remembered the straw hat upon his head and the suit of blue canvas which he wore, and the rough staff of wood in his hand. I was especially haunted by his expression, which was patient and masqued as though he were enduring a pain and chose to hide it.

The nave was empty. It was a great hollow that echoed and re-echoed; there were no shrines and no lamps, and no men or women praying, and therefore the figure at the door filled my mind more and more, until I went out and asked him if he was in need of money, of which at that moment I had none. He answered that his need was not for money but only for prayers.

"Why," said I, "do you need prayers?"

He said it was because his fate was upon him.

I think he spoke the truth. He was standing erect and with dignity, his eyes were not disturbed, and he repeatedly refused the alms of pa.s.sers-by.

"No one" said I, "should yield to these moods."

He answered nothing, but looked pensive like a man gazing at a landscape and remembering his life.

But it was now the hour when the ship was to be sailing again, and I could not linger, though I wished very much to talk more with him. I begged him to name a shrine where a gift might be of especial value to him. He said that he was attached to no one shrine more than to any other, and then I went away regretfully, remembering how earnestly he had asked for prayers.

This was in Palma of Majorca not two years ago. There are many such men, but few who speak so humbly.

When I had got aboard again the ship sailed out and rounded a lighthouse point and then made north to Barcelona. The night fell, and next morning there rose before us the winged figures that crown the Custom House of that port and are an introduction to the glories of Spain.

ON A YOUNG MAN AND AN OLDER MAN

A Young Man of my acquaintance having pa.s.sed his twenty-eighth birthday, and wrongly imagining this date to represent the Grand Climacteric, went by night in some perturbation to an Older Man and spoke to him as follows:

"Sir! I have intruded upon your leisure in order to ask your advice upon certain matters."

The Older Man, whose thoughts were at that moment intently set upon money, looked up in a startled way and attempted to excuse himself, suffering as he did from the delusion that the Young Man was after a loan. But the Young Man, whose mind was miles away from all such trifling things, continued to press him anxiously without so much as noticing that he had perturbed his Senior.

"I have come, Sir," said he, "to ask your opinion, advice, experience, and guidance upon something very serious which has entered into my life, which is, briefly, that I feel myself to be growing old."

Upon hearing this so comforting and so reasonable a statement the Older Man heaved a profound sigh of relief and turning to him a mature and smiling visage (as also turning towards him his person and in so doing turning his Polished American Hickory Wood Office Chair), answered with a peculiar refinement, but not without sadness, "I shall be happy to be of any use I can"; from which order and choice of words the reader might imagine that the Older Man was himself a Colonial, like his chair. In this imagination the reader, should he entertain it, would be deceived.

The Younger Man then proceeded, knotting his forehead and putting into his eyes that troubled look which is proper to virtue and to youth:

"Oh, Sir! I cannot tell you how things seem to be slipping from me!

I smell less keenly and taste less keenly, I enjoy less keenly and suffer less keenly than I did. Of many things which I certainly desired I can only say that I now desire them in a more confused manner. Of certain propositions in which I intensely believed I can only say that I now see them interfered with and criticised perpetually, not, as was formerly the case, by my enemies, but by the plain observance of life, and what is worse, I find growing in me a habit of reflection for reflection's sake, leading nowhere--and a sort of sedentary att.i.tude in which I watch but neither judge nor support nor attack any portion of mankind."

The Older Man, hearing this speech, congratulated his visitor upon his terse and accurate methods of expression, detailed to him the careers in which such habits of terminology are valuable, and also those in which they are a fatal fault.