The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 46

I am getting used to walking all day; anything so long as one doesn't have the agonizing worry about starvation. I am ill, but I shall keep at it, and answer advertis.e.m.e.nts meanwhile by mail, till I get something better.

I am going out to sit by the river. I can not stand the heat and stench in this room. To-morrow is Sunday. I shall have a long rest.

June 2d.

I did not go back to distribute soap to-day. I have given up the work. I have just seventy cents left in my pocket. The rent of this room is up on June 6th, and the money will last me until then.

On June 6th I am going to die.

--To-day I went to the publisher's. I said: "On June 6th I am going out of town. (Grim humor, that!) On June 6th you will have had the ma.n.u.script three weeks and more. I shall have to ask you to have a report by that date, or to return it to me now." He said: "You shall have the report."

If they will publish the poem, I shall wait. If not, I shall die on June 6th. That is settled.

PART III. THE END

Listen to me now. I must soon get to the end of this. I mean to tell you about it. I have spent yesterday and to-day going over this journal, explaining things that I had written too briefly, putting in things that ought to be there. I mean to tell everything.

When I began this journal it was with the idea that I should be famous, and that then it would be published. Of late I have written it from habit, mainly, never expecting that any one would see it. Now I write again for a reader, _to_ a reader. I know that it will be published.

The night before last I went down by the river. As well as I can remember, these were the thoughts that came to me.

It was a calm, still night, and I sat watching the lights on the water.

Then suddenly I recollected the night when the yacht had pa.s.sed, and I had heard the woman singing. It came back to me like an apparition, that voice and that melody. I heard it again more plainly than words can tell, dying away over the water; and a perfect sea of woe rolled over my soul.

I thought of that night, what I had been that night, what hopes I had had, what fervor, what purpose, what faith. That was, you remember, just when I was at the height of my work; and the memory came back to me, as it has never come back to me since the day that I came out of the forest with my book. It simply overwhelmed me, it shook me to the very depths of my being.

I buried my face and burst out sobbing. It shook away from me all the hideous dulness that had mastered me. I saw myself as I was, ruined, lost.

I cried out: "Oh, my Father in heaven, it is gone! It is gone, and it will never come back! I am a lost soul! I am a traitor, I am ruined!"

So I went on, feverishly, twisting my hands together. "I have given up the fight! I have been beaten--oh, my G.o.d--beaten! Think of those raging hours in the woods, those hours of defiance, of glory! I gazed at commonplaceness and dulness--I mocked at it; and now it has conquered me! I am trampled down, beaten! It is all gone out of me!" And then I cried out in despair and terror: "Oh, no, it can't be! It _can't_ be!"

But even while I cried that, my thoughts fled back to the horror to which I was tied, to the samples of soap and to the filthy hole next to a drunken laborer. The thing overwhelmed me, even while I stood there trying to resolve.

I was frenzied. "I have done everything," I panted, "I have fought and toiled and struggled--I have wept and prayed, and even begged. And yet I have been beaten--I have gone down--down! And what more is there that I can do? I shall be beaten down again! Oh, what shall I do? Is there any hope, any new plan that I can try? Shall I go through the streets and shriek it; shall I lay hold upon some man and _make_ him hear me? Is there anything--_anything_?"

To make them understand what I have! To make them understand what they are doing! G.o.d gave me a vision--it may not come again for a century, it can never come again--it is mine--_mine only_! And they grind it into the dust! This demon power that is in me--don't you suppose I know what it is?

This thing that roars like the wind upon the mountains, that runs like the great billows on the sea!

I was pacing back and forth in the silent night. I had all the world about me, I cried out to it, I gripped it, to make it hear me. "Fools! oh fools!"

I cried, "what is it that you _do_ believe in? Blind creatures that you are, this raging faith of mine--this fervent ardor--you do not believe in _that_! You do not believe in enthusiasm, you do not believe in ecstasy, you do not believe in genius! You think that I am mad, poor raving poet! You see me sick, haggard, dragging myself about.

"But I am caged, I tell you,--I am caged! You are killing me as you would kill some animal; and I am never to sing that song--I am never to sing that song!"

The thing was a madness to me. "No, no!" I rushed on, "I will! I will get free--I say I will! If I must, I will go out and beg on the streets, before I will let this thing die! Show me the vilest of you--I will get down upon my knees before him--I will kiss his feet and beg him to let me live! There is no degradation of my _self_ that I will not bear! I!--what am I?

I am a worm--I am filth--I am vanity and impertinence and delusion. But _this_ thing--this is _G.o.d_! Oh you man with a carriage, will _you_ not give me a little? For a hundred or two of dollars I can live for a year! And you--why, see that ring on your finger! You would not think twice if you lost it; and yet think what I could do with that bauble! Oh, see how you abuse life--how you mock it, how you trample upon it--how you trample upon _G.o.d_!

--"So I go about all day, haunted all the time, raging, l.u.s.ting for my task. And you who believe in genius in the past, and do not believe in it in the present! Some of you had this faith when you were young; but I have it always--it is _I_! I was born for that, I will die for that! It is my love, my food, my health, my breath, my life! It comes to me wherever I am--carrying trays in a restaurant--pacing back and forth by the river--sitting here in my room and writing of it!"

So I thought, so I cried out; and each time as the thing surged in me, I sank down and moaned and sobbed. "No, it is all lost. I am helpless. I am beaten! I am walled in and tortured! I am a slave, I am a prisoner--I--"

--And so the torrent of my thoughts sped on, and so I rushed with it--rushed to my fate. For suddenly I came to four words--four fearful words that roared in my soul like the thunder!--

"I AM A CAPTIVE!"

It was like the falling of a bolt from the sky. It came with a sound that stunned me, with a flash that lit in one instant the whole horizon of my mind.

"I am a captive! I am _The_ Captive! Fool that I am,--pent here in these prison-walls of tyranny, and beating out my brains against them!

Panting--praying--cursing--pining to be free! And I am The Captive!"

The thing struck terror into the last chambers of my soul. I stood stock still; I felt my flesh quiver, I felt my very hair move. I saw a pair of demon eyes glaring into mine--I saw all the wildness and the fearfulness of life in that one instant.

"I wrote a book, I tried to make it true--and, oh, my G.o.d, how have I succeeded!"

I do not know what I did, I was half-crazed, as in a nightmare. I fought and struggled; but I was in the grip of a truth, and though it set my brain on fire, I had to face it.

I was The Captive! I was The Captive! And I was crying out against circ.u.mstances--I was crying out against my fate--and all the time there it stood and faced me--the truth, the iron truth:

--_I was to die!_

A sudden fury swept over me--my whole being flamed with wrath. "What!" I cried. "I shall go on in this servitude--in this degradation! I shall go on playing the lackey to the filthy pleasures of men, cringing, crouching before any insult--begging for my bread--begging to keep my miserable self alive! And I shall see one by one my virtues die in me, my powers, my consecrations! I shall sink into a beast of burden, into a clod of the earth, into a tool of men!

"And I, who wrote The Captive--my G.o.d, who wrote The Captive! I, who stood upon that height, drank in that glory, sang with those angels and G.o.ds! I, who was n.o.ble and high-born--pure and undefiled--seer and believer--I! I walked with Truth--and now I am a slave; a whimpering, beaten hound! They have made a eunuch of me, they have cut away my manhood! They have put me with their swine, they have fed me upon husks, they have bid me drink their swill! And I bear it, by G.o.d, I bear it! And why?--"

"_I bear it that I may live!_"

"Come here, come here! Look at this!" The thing seized me by the shoulders and shook me, the thing with the fiery eyes. "Did you _mean_ it, all that you wrote in that book--did you mean it, those vows that you swore in the forest? Were they the truth of your soul as you faced your G.o.d--or were they shams that you dallied with to please your vanity? Answer me!

_Answer_!"