The Works of "Fiona Macleod", Volume IV

We stood looking at the stone-breaker, who was gazing curiously at us. Suddenly he laughed.

"Why do you laugh?" asked the Soul.

"Well, I'm not for knowing that. But I'll tell you this: if you two wish to go into the town, you have only to follow this road. And if you want to come to One-Ash Farm, then you must come this other way with me."

"Do not go," whispered the Soul.

But the Body, with an impatient gesture, drew aside. "Leave me," he added: "I wish to go with this man. I will meet you to-morrow morning at the first bridge to the westward of the little town yonder, just where the stream slackens over the pebbles."

With reluctant eyes the two companions saw their comrade leave. For a long time the Will watched him with a bitter smile. Redeeming love was in the longing eyes of the Soul.

When the Body and the stone-breaker were alone, as they walked towards the distant farm-steading, where already were lights, and whence came a lowing of kye in the byres, for it was the milking hour, they spoke at intervals.

"Who were those with you?" asked the man.

"Friends. We have come away together."

"What for?"

"Well, as you would say, to see the world."

"To see the world?" The man laughed. "To see the world! Have you money?"

"Enough for our needs."

"Then you will see nothing. The world gives to them that already have, an' more than have."

"What do you hope for to-night?"

"To be drunk."

"That is a poor thing to hope for. Better to think of the laugh and the joke by the fireside; and of food and drink, too, if you will: of the pipes, and dancing, and pretty girls."

"Do as you like. As for me, I hope to be drunk."

"Why?"

"Why? Because I'll be another man then. I'll have forgotten all that I now remember from sunrise to sundown. Can you think what it is to break a hope in your heart each time you crack a stone on the roadside? That's what I am, a stone-breaker, an' I crack stones inside as well as outside. It's a stony place my heart, God knows."

"You are young to speak like that, and you speak like a man who has known better days."

"Oh, I'm ancient enough," said the man, with a short laugh.

"What meaning does that have?"

"What meaning? Well, it just means this, that I'm as old as the Bible. For there's mention o' me there. Only there I'm herding swine, an' here I'm breaking stones."

"And is your father living?"

"Ay, he curses me o' Sabbaths."

"Then it's not the same as the old story that is in the Bible?"

"Oh, nothing's the same an' everything's the same – except when you're drunk, an' then it's only the same turned outside in. But see, yonder's the farm. Take my advice, an' drink. It's better than the fireside, it's better than food, it's better than kisses, ay it's better than love, it's as good as hate, an' it's the only thing you can drown in except despair."

Soon after this the Body entered the house of the Beann Marsanta Macdonald, and with laughter and delight met Morag Cameron, and others whom his heart leaped to see.

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 God pierce the mind, slay the spirit," the Will murmured, staring with dull anger at the white multitude.

"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 God 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 God 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 pass 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 God 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 God 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 grassy links where clusters of white geese huddled in sleep, and across the windy common where a tethered ass 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 hoarsely. 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 lass, 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 God."

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 prone 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 God."

"In the love of God?"

"In the love of God."

"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 hoarsely, 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-dyked field; and a night-jar creeping forward on a juniper, uttering his whirring love-note; and he blessed their sweet, innocent lust. 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 God. 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 passing 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 passive, 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 analogues of the Heart's Desire.

V

At dawn we woke. A movement of gladness was in the lovely tides of morning – delicate green, and blue, and gold. The spires of the grasses were washed in dew; the innumerous was as one green flower that had lain all night in the moonshine.

We had agreed to meet at the bridge over the stream where it lapsed through gravelly beaches just beyond the little town.

There the Soul and the Will long awaited the Body. The sun was an hour risen, and had guided a moving multitude of gold and azure waters against the long reaches of yellow-poppied sand, and to the bases of the great cliffs, whose schist shone like chrysolite, and whose dreadful bastions of black basalt loomed in purple shadow, like suspended thunder-clouds on a windless afternoon.

The air was filled with the poignant sweetness of the loneroid or bog-myrtle, meadow-sweet, and white wild-roses. The green smell of the bracken, the delicate woodland odour of the mountain-ash, floated hitherward and thitherward on the idle breath of the wind, sunwarm when it came across the sea-pinks and thyme-set grass, cool and fresh when it eddied from the fern-coverts, or from the heather above the hillside-boulders where the sheep lay, or from under the pines at the bend of the sea-road where already the cooing of grey doves made an indolent sweetness.

The Soul was silent. He had not slept, but, after his playing in the dark, peace had come to him.

Before dawn he had gone into the room where the Will lay, and had looked long at his comrade. In sleep the Will more resembled him, as when awake he the more resembled the Body. A deep pity had come upon the Soul for him whom he loved so well, but knew so little.

Why was it, he wondered, that he felt less alien from the Body? Why was it that this strange, potent, inscrutable being, whom both loved, should be so foreign to each? The Body feared him. As for himself, he, too, feared him at times. There were moments when all his marvellous background of the immortal life shrank before the keen gaze of his friend. Was it possible that Mind could have a life apart from mortal substances? Was it possible? If so —

It was here that the Will awoke, and smiled at his friend.

He gave no greeting, but answered his thought.

"Yes," he said gravely, and as though continuing an argument, "it is impossible, if you mean the mortal substance of our brother, the Body. But yet not without material substance. May it not be that the Mind may have an undreamed-of shaping power, whereby it can instantly create?"

"Create what?"

"A new environment for its need? Drown it in the deepest gulfs of the sea, and it will, at the moment it is freed from the body, sheathe itself in a like shape, and habit itself with free spaces of air, so that it may breathe, and live, and emerge into the atmosphere, there to take on a new shape, to involve itself in new circumstances, to live anew?"

"It is possible. But would that sea-change leave the mind the same or another?"

"The Mind would come forth one and incorruptible."

"If in truth, the Mind be an indivisible essence?"

"Yes, if the mind be one and indivisible."

"You believe it so?"

"Tell me, are you insubstantial? You, yourself, below this accident of mortality?"

"I know not what you mean."

"You were wondering if, after all, it were possible for me to have a life, a conscious, individual continuity, apart from this mortal substance in which you and I now share – counterparts of that human home we both love and hate, that moving tent of the Illimitable, which at birth appears a speck on sands of the Illimitable, and at death again abruptly disappears. You were wondering this. But, tell me: have you yourself never wondered how you can exist, as yourself, apart from something of this very actuality, this form, this materialism to which you find yourself so alien in the Body?"

"I am spirit. I am a breath."

"But you are you?"

"Yes, I am I."

"The surpassing egotism is the same, whether in you, the Soul, who are but a breath; or in me, the Will, who am but a condition; or in our brother, the Body, a claimant to Eternal Life while perishing in his mortality!"

"I live in God. Whence I came, thither shall I return."

"A breath?"

"It may be."

"Yet you shall be you?"

"Yes; I."

"Then that breath which will be you must have form, even as the Body must have form."

"Form is but the human formula for the informulate."

"Nay, Form is life."

"You have ever one wish, it seems to me, O Will: to put upon me the heavy yoke of mortality."

"Not so: but to lift it from myself."

"And the Body?"

"Where did you leave him last night?"

"You remember what he said about the Three Companions of Night: Laughter, and Wine, and Love? I left him with these."

"They are also called Tears, and Weariness, and the Grave. He has his portion. Perhaps he does well. Death intercepts many retributions."

"He, too, has his dream within a dream."

"Yes, you played to it, in the silence and the darkness."

"You heard my playing – you here, I there?"

"I heard."

"And did you sleep or wake, comforted?"

"I heard a Wind. I have heard it often. I heard, too, my own voice singing in the dark."

"What was the song?"

"This: —

In the silences of the woodsI have heard all day and all nightThe moving multitudesOf the Wind in flight.He is named Myriad:And I am sadOften, and often I am glad;But oftener I am whiteWith fear of the dim broodsThat are his multitudes."

"And then, when you had heard that song?"

"There was a rush of wings. My hair streamed behind me. Then a sudden stillness, out of which came moonlight; and a star fell slowly through the dark, and as it passed my face I felt lips pressed against mine, and it seemed to me that you kissed me."

"And when I kissed you, did I whisper any word?"

"You whispered: 'I am the Following Love.'"

"And you knew then that it was the Breath of God, and you had deep peace, and slept?"

"I knew that it was the Following Love, – that is the Breath of God, and I had deep peace, and I slept."

The Soul crossed from the window to the bed, and stooped, and kissed the Will.

"Beloved," he whispered, "the star was but a dewdrop of the Peace that passeth understanding. And can it be that to you, to whom the healing dew was vouchsafed, shall be denied the water-springs?"

"Ah, beautiful dreamer of dreams, bewilder me no more with your lovely sophistries. See, it is already late, and we have to meet the Body at the shore-bridge over the little stream!"

It was then that the two, having had a spare meal of milk and new bread, left the inn, and went, each communing with his own thoughts, to the appointed place.

They heard the Body before they saw him, for he was singing as he came. It was a strange, idle fragment of a song – "The Little Children of the Wind" – a song that some one had made, complete in its incompleteness, as a wind-blown blossom, and, as a blossom discarded by a flying bird, thrown heedlessly on the wayside by its unknown wandering singer: —

I hear the little children of the windCrying solitary in lonely places:I have not seen their faces,But I have seen the leaves eddying behind,The little tremulous leaves of the wind.

The Soul looked at the Will.

"So he, too, has heard the Wind," he said softly.

VI

All that day we journeyed westward. Sometimes we saw, far off, the pale blue films of the Hills of Dream, those elusive mountains towards which our way was set. Sometimes they were so startlingly near that, from gorse upland or inland valley, we thought we saw the shadow-grass shake in the wind's passage, or smelled the thyme still wet with dew where it lay under the walls of mountain-boulders. But at noon we were no nearer than when, at sunrise, we had left the little sea-town behind us: and when the throng of bracken-shadows filled the green levels between the fern and the pines – like flocks of sheep following fantastic herdsmen – the Hills of the West were still as near, and as far, as the bright raiment of the rainbow which the shepherd sees lying upon his lonely pastures.

But long before noon we were glad because of what happened to one of us.

The dawn had flushed into a wilderness of rose as we left the bridge by the stream. Long shafts of light, plumed with pale gold, were flung up out of the east: everywhere was the tremulous awakening of the new day. A score of yards from the highway a cottage stood, sparrows stirring in the thatch, swift fairy-spiders running across the rude white-washed walls, a redbreast singing in the dew-drenched fuchsia-bush. The blue peat-smoke which rose above it was so faint as to be invisible beyond the rowan which stood sunways. The westward part of the cottage was a byre: we could hear the lowing of a cow, the clucking of fowls.

In every glen, on each hillside, are crofts such as this. There was nothing unusual in what we saw, save that a collie crouched whimpering beyond a dyke on the farther side of the rowan.

"All is not well here," said the Will.

"No," murmured the Soul, "I see the shadowy footsteps of those who serve the Evil One. Await me here."

With that the Soul walked swiftly towards the cottage, and looked in at the little window. His thought was straightway ours, and we knew that a woman lay within and was about to give birth to a child. We knew, also, that those who had dark, cruel eyes, and wore each the feather of a hawk, had no power within, but were baffled, and roamed restlessly outside the cottage on the side of shadow. The Fuath himself was not there, but when his call came the evil spirits rose like a flock of crows and passed away. Then we saw our comrade stand back, and bow down, and fall upon his knees.

When he rejoined us we were for a moment as one, and saw seven tall and beautiful spirits, starred and flame-crested, hand-clasped and standing circlewise round the cottage. They were Sons of Joy, who sang because in that mortal hour was born an immortal soul who in the white flame and the red of mortal life was to be a spirit of gladness and beauty. For there is no joy in the domain of the Spirit like that of the birth of a new joy.

A long while we walked in silence. In the eyes of the Soul we saw a divine and beautiful light: in the eyes of the Will we saw rainbow-spanned depths: in the eyes of the Body we saw gladness.

"We are one!"

None knew who spoke. For a moment I heard my own voice, saw my own shadow in the grass; then, in the twinkling of an eye, three stood, looking at each other with startled gaze.

"Let us go," said the Soul; "we have a long way yet to travel."

Each dreaming his own dream, we walked onward. Suddenly the Soul turned and looked in the eyes of the Body.

"You are thinking of your loneliness," he said gravely.

"Yes," answered the Body.

"And I too," said the Will.

For a time no word more was said.

"I am indeed alone." This I murmured to myself after a long while, and in a moment the old supreme wisdom sank, and we were not one but three.

"But you, O Soul," said the Will, "how can you be alone when in every hour you have the company of the invisible, and see the passage of powers and influence, of demons and angels, creatures of the triple universe, souls, and the pale flight of the unembodied?"