The Works of Fiona Macleod Part 5

At midnight, the Will sat in a room in a little inn, and read out of two books, now out of one, now out of the other. The one was the Gaelic Bible, the other was in English and was called _The One Hope_.

He rose, as the village clock struck twelve, and went to the window. A salt breath, pungent with tide-stranded seaweed, reached him. In the little harbour, thin shadowy masts ascended like smoke and melted. A green lantern swung from one. The howling of a dog rose and fell. A faint lapping of water was audible. On a big fishing-coble some men were laughing and cursing.

Overhead was an oppressive solemnity. The myriad stars were as the incalculable notes of a stilled music, become visible in silence. It was a relief to look into unlighted deeps.

"These idle lances of G.o.d pierce the mind, slay the spirit," the Will murmured, staring with dull anger at the white mult.i.tude.

"If the Soul were here," he added bitterly, "he would look at these glittering mockeries as though they were harbingers of eternal hope. To me they are whited sepulchres. They say _we live_, to those who die; they say _G.o.d endures,_ to Man that perisheth; they whisper the Immortal Hope to Mortality." Turning, he went back to where he had left the books. He lifted one, and read:--

"_Have we not the word of G.o.d Himself that Time and Chance happeneth to all: that soon or late we shall all be caught in a net, we whom Chance hath for his idle sport, and upon whom Time trampleth with impatient feet? Verily, the rainbow is not more frail, more fleeting, than this drear audacity._"

With a sigh he put the book down, and lifted the other. Having found the page he sought, he read slowly aloud:--

"_... but Time and Chance happeneth to them all. For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare, even so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them._"

He went to the window again, brooding darkly. A slight sound caught his ear. He saw a yellow light run out, leap across the pavement and pa.s.s like a fan of outblown flame. Then the door closed, and we heard a step on the stone flags. He looked down. The Soul was there.

"Are you restless? Can you not sleep?" he asked.

"No, dear friend. But my heart is weary because of the Body. Yet before I go, let me bid you read that which follows upon what you have just read. It is not only Time and Chance upon which to dwell; but upon this, that G.o.d knows that which He does, and the hour and the way, and sees the end in the beginning."

And while the Soul moved softly down the little windy street, the Will opened the Book again, and read as the Soul had bidden.

"It may be so," he muttered, "it may be that the dreamer may yet wake to behold his dream--As thou knowest not what is the way of the wind, even so thou knowest not the work of G.o.d Who doeth all?"

With that he sighed wearily, and then, afraid to look again at the bitter eloquence of the stars, lit a candle as he lay down on his bed, and watched the warm companionable flame till sleep came upon him, and he dreamed no more of the rue and cypress, but plucked amaranths in the moonshine.

Meanwhile the Soul walked swiftly to the outskirts of the little town, and out by the gra.s.sy links where cl.u.s.ters of white geese huddled in sleep, and across the windy common where a tethered a.s.s stood, with drooping head, his long, twitching ears now motionless. In the moonlight, the shadow of the weary animal stretched to fantastic lengths, and at one point, when the startled Soul looked at it, he beheld the shadow of the Cross.

When he neared One-Ash Farm he heard a loud uproar from within. Many couples were still dancing, and the pipes and a shrill flute added to the tumult. Others sang and laughed, or laughed and shouted, or cursed hoa.r.s.ely. Through the fumes of smoke and drink rippled women's laughter.

He looked in at a window, with sad eyes. The first glance revealed to him the Body, his blue eyes aflame, his face flushed with wine, his left arm holding close to his heart a bright winsome la.s.s, with hair dishevelled, and wild eyes, but with a wonderful laughing eagerness of joy.

In vain he called. His voice was suddenly grown faint. But what the ear could not hear, the heart heard. The Body rose abruptly.

"I will drink no more," he said.

A loud insensate laugh resounded near him. The stone-breaker lounged heavily from a bench, upon the servant's table.

"I am drunk now, my friend," the man cried with flaming eyes. "I am drunk, an' now I am as reckless as a king, an' as serene as the Pope, an' as heedless as G.o.d."

The Soul turned his gaze and looked at him. He saw a red flame rising from grey ashes. The ashes were his heart. The flame was his impotent, perishing life.

Stricken with sorrow, the Soul went to the door, and entered. He went straight to the stone-breaker, who was now lying with head and arms p.r.o.ne on the deal table.

He whispered in the drunkard's ear. The man lifted his head, and stared with red, brutish eyes.

"What is that?" he cried.

"Your mother was pure and holy. She died to give you her life. What will it be like on the day she asks for it again?"

The man raised an averting arm. There was a stare of horror in his eyes.

"I know you, you devil. Your name is Conscience."

The Soul looked at the Speaker. "I do not know," he answered simply; "but I believe in G.o.d."

"In the love of G.o.d?"

"In the love of G.o.d."

"He dwells everywhere?"

"Everywhere."

"Then I will find Him, I will find His love, _here_"--and with that the man raised the deathly spirit to his lips again, and again drank. Then, laughing and cursing, he threw the remainder at the feet of his unknown friend.

"Farewell!" he shouted hoa.r.s.ely, so that those about him stared at him and at the new-comer.

The Soul turned sadly, and looked for his strayed comrade, but he was nowhere to be seen. In a room upstairs that friend whom he loved was whispering eager vows of sand and wind; and the girl Morag, clinging close to him, tempted him as she herself was tempted, so that both stood in that sand, and in the intertangled hair of each that wind blew.

The Soul saw, and understood. None spoke to him, a stranger, as he went slowly from the house, though all were relieved when that silent, sad-eyed foreigner withdrew.

Outside, the cool sea-wind fell freshly upon him. He heard a corncrake calling harshly to his mate, where the corn was yellowing in a little stone-d.y.k.ed field; and a night-jar creeping forward on a juniper, uttering his whirring love-note; and he blessed their sweet, innocent l.u.s.t. Then, looking upward, he watched for a while the white procession of the stars. They were to him the symbolic signs of the mystery of G.o.d.

He bowed his head. "Dust of the world," he muttered humbly, "dust of the world."

Moving slowly by the house--so doubly noisy, so harshly discordant, against the large, serene, nocturnal life--he came against the gable of an open window. On the ledge lay a violin, doubtless discarded by some reveller. The Soul lifted it, and held it up to the night-wind. When it was purified, and the vibrant wood was as a nerve in that fragrant darkness, he laid it on his shoulder and played softly.

What was it that he played? Many heard it, but none knew what the strain was, or whence it came. The Soul remembered, and played. It is enough.

The soft playing stole into the house as though it were the cool sea-wind, as though it were the flowing dusk. Beautiful, unfamiliar sounds, and sudden silences pa.s.sing sweet, filled the rooms. The last guests left hurriedly, hushed, strangely disquieted. The dwellers in the farmstead furtively bade good-night, and slipt away.

For an hour, till the sinking of the moon, the Soul played. He played the Song of Dreams, the Song of Peace, the three Songs of Mystery. The evil that was in the house ebbed. Everywhere, at his playing, the secret obscure life awoke. Nimble aerial creatures swung, invisibly pa.s.sive, in the quiet dark. From the brown earth, from hidden sanctuaries in rocks and trees, green and grey lives slid, and stood intent. Out of the hillside came those of old. There were many eager voices, like leaves lapping in a wind. The wild-fox lay down, with red tongue lolling idly: the stag rose from the fern, with dilated nostrils; the night-jar ceased, the corncrake ceased, the moon-wakeful thrushes made no single thrilling note. The silence deepened. Sleep came stealing softly out of the obscure, swimming dusk. There was not a swaying reed, a moving leaf. The strange company of shadows stood breathless. Among the tree-tops the loosened stars shone terribly--lonely fires of silence.

The Soul played. Once he thought of the stone-breaker. He played into his heart. The man stirred, and tears oozed between his heavy lids. It was his mother's voice that he heard, singing-low a cradle-sweet song, and putting back her white hair that she might look earthward to her love. "Grey sweetheart, grey sweetheart," he moaned. Then his heart lightened, and a moonlight of peace hallowed that solitary waste place.

Again, at the last, the Soul thought of his comrade, heavy with wine in the room overhead, drunken with desire. And to him he played the imperishable beauty of Beauty, the Immortal Love, so that, afterwards, he should remember the glory rather than the shame of his poor frailty.

What he played to the girl's heart only those women know who hear the whispering words of Mary the Mother in sleep, when a second life breathes beneath each breath.

When he ceased, deep slumber was a balm upon all. He fell upon his knees and prayed.

"Beauty of all Beauty," he prayed, "let none perish without thee."

It was thus that we three, who were one, realised how Prayer and Hope and Peace, how Dream and Rest and Longing, how Laughter and Wine and Love, are in truth but shadowy a.n.a.logues of the Heart's Desire.

V