Part 4

The freethinker’s habit in the spring months of the year was to take an early turn along the quiet and flowery streets. The clean and morning beauty was for him an anodyne, and when he was certain of escaping observation he would on occasion slip through a small postern gate in the cathedral and brood happily upon the base uses to which a structure so noble had been addressed. During one of these intrusions he observed that the cloth was laid on the high altar and that the priest was preparing the communion service. As no worshippers appeared, the freethinker drew near to the altar in order to satisfy himself by personal witness of the futility of the celebration.

The priest did not observe (or did not appear to observe) his visitor, but completed the ritual as though in the company of a great host. “Buffoonery!” muttered the freethinker, struggling angrily against the radiant charm of the sun falling through old glass. “Bad enough,” he continued in an audible whisper, “to serve bread to those who do not need it, but to serve it to nobody at all----!!”

“Are you sure,” said the priest, who had finished the service, “that it is for nobody?” and he pointed smiling to the tiny grey communicants nibbling the crumbs. “Do I understand,” inquired the freethinker icily, “that you perform this service for the sake of the mice?” “Why not,” said the priest; “as you do to the least of these----” “This,” said the freethinker, quite properly indignant, “is what I should call blasphemy.” “And of that,” said the priest, turning to go to the vestry, “you should be no mean judge.”

* * * * *

“Sir,” said the verger to the priest later in the day, “them mice have been about again. I see two of them at the sacred bread. I wish you would let me set traps.” “Why,” said the priest, “I have already set one.” “And did you catch anything?” asked the verger. “I think so,” said the priest.

XXX

IN FOR A PENNY IN FOR A POUND

There was once a beautiful line of poetry who had by an unfortunate accident lodged herself in the brain of an extremely inferior poet. To her great discomfort the line found herself driven to associate with a disorderly mob of worn-out and shabby phrases. Nor was this all. While her companions were for ever being taken out and aired, and on occasion finding their way into the public prints, she remained neglected and disused.

The other lines, who had from the first disliked her, now, not unnaturally, added contempt to their dislike. “The truth is,” they said to her, “that you are not one of us. The rest of us can all point to a long and distinguished ancestry. Everybody knew our parents and knows us. We are welcome wherever we go, and are readily admitted into the best society. But as for you, your birth is wrapt in mystery. Whether it is the fact that the poet is your father is open to question, but at any rate there is no question whatever of the character of the Greek woman your mother. You had better,” they would conclude, “return whence you came, where, among persons of your own kind, you will no doubt be at ease.”

The poet, meanwhile, only dimly aware of his golden visitor, continued to fumble among his ready-for-service shelves. This was the easier for him as all his ideas were of stock size, and were in consequence easily fitted by the poetic slops. But as time went on the poet became more and more acutely aware of something that waited expression--some queer new-shaped Jack o’ lanthorn of a thought that none of his ready-made suits would fit. One after another he took them down, and they seemed incorrigibly stale and shop-soiled. Even the most daring patterns in the earlier Brooke design seemed inadequate, out at the seams and unfresh.

He blamed his liver. Then he blamed his wife, and last--most horrible thought of all--he blamed his inspiration. “I have written myself out,” he cried to the pool of light that the lamp cast on his solitary desk. “This is the end.” He rehearsed in a high tragic voice some of his most notable triumphs, as for example:

“Now that the roses are over And the last white rose is dead, Quiet returns to the lover Instead....

“Instead of love freely given To love that asked for no price, Instead of a boy in Heaven And a girl in Paradise,

“Now that the roses are over And the last white rose is dead, Quiet returns to the lover Instead.

“My God!” he cried to the unreceptive almond blossoms on the wall-paper. “What genius I had when I wrote that.”

He sat down at the desk and looked severely at the virgin page. No neat rhymes again, no passion tied up in brown paper and looped with string for a finger, no beauty sent home with the first delivery. “This,” he repeated with melancholy grandeur, “is the end.”

And at that directly minute he saw a line form itself in letters of flame along the page, as though a candle wrote it--a lovely line with the sovereign note of Cleopatra’s cry:

“O infinite virtue, comest thou smiling from the world’s great snare uncaught?”

For one wild moment his spirit, overlaid with swathe upon swathe of rubbish, moved upwards to the light. For whatever he was now, he had once been a poet, if only in his hopes. In that luminous instant he almost guessed his failure. “The end,” he muttered; “suppose it were the beginning?” With that the old lines that had suffered defeat resumed their empire. “Yes, the beginning,” he cried, “the beginning,” and radiant he began to write, sure of his inspiration:

“It’s the call of love: ‘Oh follow where my golden footsteps tread!’ But the call of love is hollow by the calling of the dead.”

So, with head bent, he continued writing through the night. And while he wrote the other lines turned upon the bastard and drove her into the dark.

* * * * *

“What a beautiful poem,” said the editor of his favourite journal when it was sent to him. “Not so bad,” said the poet modestly. “The fact is, it all started with a line--a direct inspiration.” “What was it?” inquired the editor languidly. “Well, to be perfectly honest,” replied the poet, “I’ve forgotten it.”

XXXI

QUANTITY IS BETTER THAN QUALITY

“This is the thirty-first story,” said the publisher; “how many more do you propose to write?” “The question you should have asked,” replied the author, “is how many less?” “Less than what?” inquired the publisher irritably. “Less than what I could if I’m not stopped. I am like the princess who when she opened her mouth breathed jewels, which her detractors alleged were toads--jewels, I would observe, four words long which on the stretched forefinger----” “I have my own opinion,” said the publisher firmly, “on the question of jewels and toads! I think forty would constitute a full drove or clutch, or whatever a group of that species is called.” “Very well,” said the author, deeply affronted, “I will now tell you the sad incident which I am bound, in view of your attack upon me, to call ‘Quantity is better than Quality.’

“There was once,” said the author, “in the eastern marches of a highly-constitutionalised monarchy, a society whose members were pledged to breathe only once a week. They aspired by the force of this remarkable example to discourage the distressing continuity of breathing among the lower classes. Now it must be obvious at once that even well-born persons could only impose this limitation upon themselves if assisted by nature. And nature had assisted them. For to reveal the truth (which they had concealed from the warm-blooded proletariat), they were not only blue-blooded but actually cold-blooded. It will be seen therefore that their action, though in itself meritorious, involved a less sacrifice than was commonly represented by their champions.

“From the outset their efforts were openly derided by the lowest classes, who, so far from ceasing to breathe, if anything breathed more and louder than ever. But fortunately in that country there was a middling class--known for purposes of reference as the backbone of the country--who knew how to value their social superiors. These, therefore, with much agony and spiritual exercise, began to practise the new mode, letting it be gradually understood that breathing was vulgar. Their contortions, as may well be imagined, afforded much amusement to the society and received, as was right, a considerable measure of public approbation at their hands. Unluckily, however, the middling class tended to carry the matter too far. For in their excess of zeal they not only reduced the amount of their breathing, but even ceased breathing altogether. In such cases the formula ‘He (or she) is not dead but sleeps’ was generally applied. For no one would admit the social disgrace of being dead.

“Nobody knows how long this engaging state of affairs would have continued if it had not been for a cessation of work by the Banded Guild of Sextons and Gravediggers. These simple fellows naturally welcomed the increase of business that came their way as the result of the new fashion. But unhappily they became involved in a serious demarcation dispute with another association--“The Society of Critics, Essayists and Writers of Belles Lettres.” This latter body, it had always been recognised, were alone entitled to bury the living (with a subsidiary function of resurrecting the dead). They protested accordingly with the greatest vigour against the invasion of their sphere by a guild whose affair was solely (as their own rules showed) with the dead.

“The Government of the country, quite properly and according to the accepted practice, attempted to hush the matter up. But the Society of Critics were able by virtue of their association with the newspaper press to defeat this laudable endeavour. To the disgust of the remainder of the middling class, and in spite of the advice freely tendered by some of the older soldiers among the upper class, to the effect that the matter should be decided by the general execution of all members of both rival bodies, the question was remitted for decision to an impartial arbitrator. After a long hearing and the most anxious consideration this gentleman issued his award. It was a long and cogently written document, and aroused general dissatisfaction. For among other illuminating observations, he pointed out that if a man is only as old as he feels, then, _a fortiori_, he is only as dead as he admits. This was generally regarded by the critics as a decision in their favour. On the other hand, the sextons drew attention to another portion of the report, in which the arbitrator eloquently reminded those who had appointed him that his countrymen, whose proud boast was that they did not know when they were beaten, would still less be likely to know when they were dead. His final recommendation was, however, equally distasteful to both parties. For he concluded by observing that to those who were of like mind with him there was no death. He would refer to M. Maeterlinck, the well-known Belgian expert on bees: ‘Death,’ he began in a passage long after quoted in the schools, ‘is the door of life.’

“The issue being thus left in doubt, the sextons--warm-blooded as they were and breathing noisily--cut the knot by a general cessation of work. The critics, though invited by an enthusiastic press to show their quality, restricted themselves to stating publicly that the pen was mightier than the spade, and leaving it there.

“The deadlock was only resolved by announcement on the part of the head of the Government (the coldness of whose blood was sufficiently established to condone any eccentricity) that in future he for one would breathe continuously. To which an even colder (and bluer) blooded colleague of ducal rank added that he would not merely breathe but actually snore.

“It was, however, made clear that this announcement was entirely spontaneous and had no connection with the deplorable stoppage of work. In the result the middling class resumed their breathing. The sextons returned to their diminished labours, and the critics, discovering a new and living novelist of genius, set about his interment with renewed vigour. And thus,” concluded the author, “we see that Quantity is better than Quality.”

“Talking of toads,” said the publisher. “Yes,” replied the author, “let us talk of them. I remember that they have jewels in their foreheads.” “Then yours,” snarled the publisher, “must have turned their backs.”

XXXII

CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME

From time to time, or rather from eternity to eternity, Ormuzd finds himself inconvenienced by the perpetual praise offered up to him by the blesséd. Though he is very anxious not to hurt their feelings, he cannot but wonder whether such complete absence of the critical faculty constitutes the best of company.

It is in this mood that Ahriman, always sensitive to the All-Highest emotions, ventures to appear and exchange insults with the Senior Power. And he has a double reason. He has a perfectly devilish capacity for feeling sorry for himself in exile. It is, however, more than that. Like Ormuzd, he is concerned not to wound the susceptibilities of his constituents, but some eternities he permits himself to ask whether uninterrupted blasphemies may not jar an ear specially designed for their reception.

“This constant preoccupation with another place,” he would think, “is not very flattering to me.”

“And so, my poor Ahriman,” Ormuzd would say on these occasions, “you are still dissatisfied? But I do not see what more I can do for you. I have given you rule over half the universe. I cannot give you the power to enjoy it.”

“No, sire,” replies the impudent fiend, “since charity begins at home--if I may describe heaven by so inappropriate a title.”

“Shall I tell you,” says Ormuzd, “what really ails you, Ahriman? It is not that evil is a mocker, not that it tears down idols, and least of all that it is outrageously clever. The painful truth, on the contrary,” says Ormuzd gently, “is that evil is so stupid.” This, as may be supposed, wounds Ahriman in a very tender spot.

“Sire,” says he, “if it were possible for you to be unjust I should so describe that observation. For consider! All round with the docility of inspired sheep the blameless lift their monotonous outcries. They worship what is worshipful, I allow, but how without perception of its subtleties, of its trembling poise upon the edge of disaster. The blessed croon like old women before the fire, but they do not guess (or care) that the roots of the flame are in hell.”

“But you are still stupid,” answers Ormuzd, “for these adore what they do not understand, while you hate what you insist on misunderstanding. Here am I, Ormuzd--a symbol, a golden knob on a door that none can press--a veil of silver--and here are you, Ahriman, also an ebon metaphor of what is too dark to be apprehended. And yet, poor Ahriman, you being so dark a ghost rail upon me being a ghost so bright. But what of that which is behind us both?”

“Ormuzd,” says Ahriman, “you cannot cheat me thus. You are a thing in my mind, as I am a thing in yours, and if our thoughts cease, both of us cease with them. After us the Deluge.”

“It is true,” says Ormuzd, “that the thing you see is made up of your sight, but it is not true of me. For that is the difference between good and evil. I know that I am nothing, but you believe (falsely) that you are everything.”

“Humility,” sneers the fiend, “sits ill on the thundering lips of Ormuzd.”

“Truth,” replies Ormuzd, “is neither proud nor humble; it is.”

“What is truth?” mocks the fiend, preparing to go. “I suppose that you will tell me that you are the truth.”

“No,” says Ormuzd, “it is because you deny that I am truth and secretly believe it that you are Ahriman, but it is because I know that I am not the truth that I am Ormuzd.”

“I have enjoyed our little chat,” says Ahriman, “but you lack ambition.”

“By that sin----” begins Ormuzd.

“Oh, nonsense,” cries Ahriman hotly, and then repents of his rudeness. “Forgive me, sire, but I could believe in you if you believed in yourself.”

“Ahriman, Ahriman,” says Ormuzd, laughing lightly, “still tempting me!”

“I bear you no grudge,” says Ahriman. “The truth is----”

“Yes?” asks Ormuzd.

“That you are too clever for me.”

“I thought we should come to it in the end,” says Ormuzd.

XXXIII

DIS ALITER VISUM

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, somewhere in Germany there was a neat little town with gabled houses and a platform for the stork in the market-place. There was nothing remarkable about this town or its people. By day the houses slumbered cosily and the men went about their cobbling, saddling, and carpentry with the best will in the world. At evening lights were shown at the windows, and within doors the husbands smoked their long pipes with their pot of beer close at hand, and the wives sewed innumerable patches on innumerable small pants. In spring and summer tables were set in the trim garden, and at evening a stranger passing down the cobbled street would have seen amiable family groups each under their linden-tree absorbing their evening meal. And sometimes one more given to sentiment than another might divide the calm evening air with some monotonous ditty locally assumed to be music. But the great day was Sunday. Then the whole township, with bent heads, moved to the church, where the pastor preached the virtues of the ideal, of charity, and of peace. And his flock, as harmless as any other sheep, from time to time bleated sympathetically and with the air of impending sleep. And later in the day the same pastor, who was something of a poet, would often collect a group round him in the schoolroom and tell them one of the “Märchen,” to which even the grown-ups were never tired of listening.

As you may suppose, among other stories he would often tell them the tale of “Schneevitchen,” or, as we call it, “Snow-white.” The jealous stepmother, the mirror of beauty, the poisoned apple, the dwarfs and the sleeping lovely were murmured into the inner conscience of his audience. And so all might have continued till the end of time. The little town might have dusked and shone night and day, the quiet inhabitants have gone about their business, lived and died, and new storks replaced the old ones on the platform. All this, I say, might have happened if two strangers had not come to the little town and settled in a vacant house almost next door to that of the pastor. They were, so it was understood, husband and wife, though many wondered how two persons so repulsive could ever have endured that relationship. The man was not otherwise ill-looking, but so thin that in certain lights you would have sworn that you could see his very bones, and there were those who declared that the wind would have whistled through him if it had not been for his absurdly ill-fitting clothes. The woman, on the other hand, was fat, not with a comfortable tissue, but with a gross hardness that forbade all friendliness. She was not a monstrosity, save at meals, when she ate like a beast out of the woods, hugely, violently, and with the worst manners in the world.

At the outset they were regarded with suspicion. For though they were good customers of the shops and paid cash, no one could deny that they were ugly customers. There was, further, something queer about their name. It was not a decent German one with a flavour of wurst about it, but was a queer foreign one. For it was plain that the baker, who had written it down as Tod, must have misheard the gentleman, while the grocer must have equally misunderstood the lady when he entered her upon his books as Krieg. Moreover, though the man let it be understood that he was widely known as a preacher, they did not at first attend service with the rest of the community.

It is probable that their influence would never have attained any hold if the old pastor had lived. For first and last, though he was the gentlest of men, he would none of them. But as is the way with the gentlest as with those most rude, he fell upon a heavy sickness. The physician of the town was in despair, and finally, hearing that the stranger had a great reputation as a healer, invited him into consultation. In this way, for the first time, Herr Todt (if that were his name) crossed the old pastor’s threshold.

“We meet at last,” said the stranger. “Aye,” said the dying man, looking him fearlessly in the sunken eyes, “but you have no sting for me.” “I fear,” said the stranger, turning to the local physician, “that he is delirious; I can do nothing.” “You have done all you can,” cried the good old man, “and you have failed. But oh, my flock, my flock!” “They are in safe hands,” said the stranger mildly. “See, rest yours in them and feel how easy they are.” With a wild gesture the pastor swept them away. “Retro me, Sathanas,” he cried madly; “not into your hands,” but, with a deep peace stealing over him, “in tuas manus, Domine.”

The whole town attended the burial, and in the absence of any other priest the stranger, who, it was understood, had taken holy orders, committed the body to the earth. There was a profound grief for the loss of one so simple, so friendly, so full of harmless kindness and dreams. But more than that, many of the older men felt that a period had ended with their pastor’s death. “There,” said one returning homewards, “lies old Germany.”

After this Herr Dr. Todt and his wife moved into the presbytery, and in some way never fully explained he became the officiating priest. It became noticeable almost at once that while the older men found him increasingly distasteful, all the younger men and most of the older women fell entirely under his sway. Nor was this surprising, for he preached a new and striking doctrine. In his first sermon he took for his text, “I come to bring, not peace, but a sword,” and for the first time in the quiet cobbled streets there was a faint far-off echo of trampling steel. He went from strength to strength, till for those who followed him he seemed almost more than human--almost a new Saint John, but one who, in preparing the way for his Lord, made it rough for all feet save His. But yet among the older men there were those that murmured unquietly of blasphemy and those who said openly that he declared himself the way of salvation, and even called him the Antichrist. But Dr. Todt cared for none of these things.

Nor was this all, for his wife began to exercise an influence equal to, if not greater than, her husband’s. (She had, by the way, cleared away the muddle as to names by explaining that she was a geborene Krieg, and had assumed her husband’s name on marriage.) Frau Dr. Todt continued the Sunday evening meetings in the schoolroom, but they were no longer a place where old men turned from the fireside to listen to the memories of childhood. Far from it. The talk she held was of glory, of the old wars, and of a helmetted god called Wotan. And it was observed that in a strange indefinable way for those who attended her meetings she lost her ugliness. They swore that she was not old, nor fat, nor a guzzler, but young and slender and endowed with the swift feet of the Valkyries. So fair did the young men find her that they began even to forget their loves. But when their sweethearts complained the young men put them aside, saying that she was not a rival but their mother. “Your mother!” cried the young women, “are you mad?” “It is only a way of speaking,” said the young men. “She is the voice of Germany. Have you not heard the new gospel?” and one among them repeated the strange, harsh lines:

“You have conquered, Arminius! The Roman world has grown red with your breath, and its beauty is perished and no man wonders or weeps at its death!

“Again as the meshes drew near us you heard the buccina crack on the last high whisper, ‘O Varrus, give me my legions back!’