The Journal of Arthur Stirling : ("The Valley of the Shadow") Part 5

I am wild to-day. Oh, how can I bear this--why should I have to contend with such things as this! Is it not hard enough--the agony that I have to bear, the task that takes all my strength and more? And must I be torn to pieces by such hideous degradation as this? Oh, my G.o.d, if my life is not soon clear of these things I shall die!

Oh, it is funny--yes, funny!--Let us laugh at it. The dance-hall musician has brought home his 'cello! I heard him come b.u.mping up the stairs with it--G.o.d d.a.m.n his soul! And there he sits, sawing away at some loathsome jig tunes! And he has two friends in there--I listen to their wit between the tunes.

Here I sit, like a wild beast pent in a cage. I tell you I can bear any work in the world, but I can not bear things such as this. That I, who am seeking a new faith for men--who am writing, or trying to write, what will mean new life to millions--should have my soul ripped into pieces by such loathsome, insulting indignities!

Oh, laugh!--but _I_ can't laugh--I sit here foaming at the lips, and crying! And suppose he's lost his position, and does this every day!

Now every day I must lay aside what I am doing and sit and shudder when I hear him coming up the steps--and wait for him to begin this! I tell you, I demand to be free--I _demand_ it! I want nothing in this world but to be let alone. I don't want anybody to wait on me.--_I don't want anything from this h.e.l.lish world but to be let alone!_

It is pouring rain outside, and my overcoat is thin; but I must go out and pace the streets and wait until a filthy Dutchman gets through sc.r.a.ping ragtime on a 'cello.

All day wasted! All day! Does it not seem that these things persecute you by system? I came in, cold and wet, and got into bed, and then he began again! And the friends came back and they had beer, and more music. And I had to get up and put on the wet clothes once more.

May 2d.

I was crouching out on one of the docks last night. I had no place else to go. I can think anywhere, if it is quiet.

A wonderful thing is the night. I bless Thee for the night, oh "_susse, heilige Natur_"!

It was a voice in my soul, as clear as could be.

--She can not bear too long the sight of men, sweet, holy Nature: the swarming hives--the millions of tiny creatures, each drunk and blind with his own selfishness; and so she lays her great hand upon it all, and hides it out of her sight.

Once it was all silent, and formless as the desert; soon it shall all be silent and formless again; and meanwhile--the night, the night!

Oh, I hunger for the desert! I do not care for beauty--I have no time for beauty, I want the earth stern and forbidding. Give me some place where no one else would want to go--an iron crag where the oceans beat--a mountain-top where the lightning splinters on the rocks.

I go at it again. But I am nervous--these things get me into such a state that I simply can not do anything. It was not merely yesterday--I have it constantly. The dirty chambermaid singing, or yelling down to the landlady; the drunken man swearing at his wife; the boys screaming in the street and kicking a tomato-can about. When I think of how much beauty and power has been shattered in my life by such things as these, it brings tears of impotent rage into my eyes.

I must be free--oh, I must be free!

It comes strangely from the author of The Captive, does it not?

I give all my life to my work, and sometimes, when I am broken like this, I wonder if I do not give too much. Once I climbed to a dizzy height, and I cried out a dizzy truth:

"O G.o.d, how as nothing in Thy sight are my writings!"

I do not know if I shall ever reach that height again.

May 3d.

I have not one single beautiful memory in my life. I have nothing in my life that, when I think of it, does not make me _writhe_.

To all that I have lived, and known, and seen, I have but one word, one cry--Away! Away! Let me get away from it! Let me get away from cities, let me get away from men, let me out of my cage! Let me go with my G.o.d, let me forget it all--put it away forever and ever! Let me no longer have to plot and plan, to cringe and whimper, to barter my vision and my hours for bread!

Who knows what I suffer--who has any idea of it? To have a soul like a burning fire, to be hungry and swift as the Autumn wind, to have a heart as hot as the wild bird's, and wings as eager--and to be chained here in this seething h.e.l.l of selfishness, this orgy of folly.

Ah, and then I shut my hands together. No, I am not weak, I do not spend my time chafing thus! I have fought it out so far--

"I was ever a fighter, so one fight more!"

I will go back, and I will hammer and hammer again--grimly--savagely--day by day. And out of the furnace of my soul I will forge a weapon that will set me free in the end--I think.

May 4th.

I wrote a little poem once. I remembered two lines of it--a nature description; they were not great lines, but there flashed over me to-day an application of them that was a stroke of genius, I believe. I was pa.s.sing the Stock Exchange. It was a very busy day. I climbed one of the pillars, in spirit, and wrote high above the portals:

Where savage beasts through forest midnight roam, Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy.

May 5th.

A dreadful thing is unbelief! A dreadful thing it is to be an infidel!

--That is what all men cry nowadays--there is so much infidelity in the world--it is the curse of our modern society--it is everywhere--it is all-prevailing!

I had a strange experience to-day, Sunday. I went into a church, and high up by the altar, dressed in solemn garb and offering prayers to G.o.d--I saw an infidel!

He preached a sermon. The theme of his sermon was "Liberalism."

"These men," cried the preacher, "are blinding our eyes to our salvation, they are undermining, day by day, our faith! They tell us that the sacred word of G.o.d is 'literature'! And they show us more 'literature'; but oh, my friends, what new _Bible_ have they shown us!"

As I got up and went out of that church, I whispered: "What a dreadful thing it is to be an infidel!"

Oh Dante and Goethe and Shakespeare--oh Wordsworth and Sh.e.l.ley and Emerson!

Oh thrice-anointed and holy spirits! What a dreadful thing it is to be an infidel!

What a dreadful thing it is to believe in a Bible, and not to believe in literature--to believe in a Bible and not to believe in a G.o.d!

You think that this world lives upon the revelation of two thousand years ago! Fool--this world lives as your body lives by the beating of its heart--upon the revelation and the effort of each instant of its life. And to-day or to-morrow the great Revealer might send to some lonely thinker in his garret a new word that would scatter to dust and ashes all laws and all duties that now are known to men.