The Works of "Fiona Macleod", Volume IV. Sharp Elizabeth Amelia

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СКАЧАТЬ 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?"

      "I do not know loneliness because of what I see or do not see, but because of what I feel. When I walk here with you side by side it is as though I walked along a narrow shore between a fathomless sea and fathomless night."

      The thought of one was the thought of three. I shivered with that great loneliness. The Body glanced sidelong at the Will, the Will at the Soul.

      "It is not good to dwell upon that loneliness," said the last.

      "To you, O Body, and to you, O Will, as to me, it is the signal of Him whom we have lost. Listen, and in the deepest hollow of loneliness we can hear the voice of the Shepherd."

      "I hear nothing," said the Body.

      "I hear an echo," said the Will: "I hear an echo; but so, too, I can hear the authentic voice of the sea in a hollow shell. Authentic! … when I know well that the murmur is no eternal voice, no whisper of the wave made one with pearly silence, but only the sound of my flowing blood heard idly in the curves of ear and shell?"

      "Ah!" … cried the Body, "it is a lie, that cruel word of science. The shell must ever murmur of the sea; if not, at least let us dream that it does. Soon, soon we shall have no dream left. How am I to know that all, that everything, is not but an idle noise in my ears? How am I to know that the Hope of the Will, and the Voice of the Soul, and the message of the Word, and the Whisper of the Eternal Spirit, are not one and all but a mocking echo in that shell which for me is the Shell of Life, but may be only the cold inhabitation of my dreams?"

      "Yet were it not for these echoes," the Soul answered, "life would be intolerable for you, as for you too, my friend."

      The Will smiled scornfully.

      "Dreams are no comfort, no solace, no relief from weariness even, if one knows them to be no more than the spray above the froth of a distempered mind."

      Suddenly one of us began in a low voice a melancholy little song: —

      I hear the sea-song of the blood in my heart,

      I hear the sea-song of the blood in my ears;

      And I am far apart,

      And lost in the years.

      But when I lie and dream of that which was

      Before the first man's shadow flitted on the grass —

      I am stricken dumb

      With sense of that to come.

      Is then this wildering sea-song but a part

      Of the old song of the mystery of the years —

      Or only the echo of the tired Heart

      And of Tears?

      But none answered, and so again we walked onward, silent. The wind had fallen, and in the noon-heat we began to grow weary. It was with relief that we saw the gleam of water between the branches of a little wood of birches, which waded towards it through a tide of bracken. Beyond the birks shimmered a rainbow; a stray cloud had trailed from glen to glen, and suddenly broken among the tree-tops.

      "There goes Yesterday!" cried the Body laughingly – alluding to the saying that the morning rainbow is the ghost of the day that passed at dawn. The next moment he broke into a fragment of song: —

      Brother and Sister, wanderers they

      Out of the Golden Yesterday —

      Thro' the dusty Now and the dim To-morrow

      Hand-in-hand go Joy and Sorrow.

      "Yes, joy and sorrow, O glad Body," exclaimed the Will – "but it is the joy only that is vain as the rainbow, which has no other message. It should be called the Bow of Sorrow."

      "Not so," said the Soul gently, "or, if so, not as you mean, dear friend: —

      It is not Love that gives the clearest sight:

      For out of bitter tears, and tears unshed,

      Riseth the Rainbow of Sorrow overhead,

      And 'neath the Rainbow is the clearest light.

      The Will smiled: —

      "I too must have my say, dear poets: —

      Where rainbows rise through sunset rains

      By shores forlorn of isles forgot,

      A solitary Voice complains

      'The World is here, the World is not.'

      The Voice may be the wind, or sea,

      Or spirit of the sundown West:

      Or, mayhap, some sweet air set free

      From off the Islands of the Blest:

      It may be; but I turn my face

      To that which still I hold so dear;

      And lo, the voices of the days —

      'The World is not, the World is here.'

      'Tis the same end whichever way

      And either way is soon forgot:

      The World is all in all, To-day:

      'To-morrow all the World is not.'

VII

      In the noon-heat we lay, for rest and coolness, by СКАЧАТЬ