Part 3

Lulled by the monotonous throbbing of the machinery,--the systole and diastole of the steamer's heart,--I sank to sleep and dreamed; but the spectra of the woods filled all my dreams. It seemed to me that I was floating,--lying as in a canoe, and all alone,--down some dark and noiseless current,--between forests endless and vast,--under an unearthly light. White mosses drooped to sweep my face; phantoms of cypress put forth long hands to seize. Again I saw the writhing and the nodding of the palms: they elongated their bodies like serpents; they undulated quiveringly, as cobras before the snake-charmer. And all the moss-hung shapes of fear took life, and moved like living things,--slowly and monstrously, as polyps move. Then the vision changed and magnified; the river broadened Amazonianly; the forests became colossal,--preternatural,--world-shadowing at last,--meeting even over the miles of waters; and the sabals towered to the stars. And still I drifted with the mighty stream, feeling less than an insect in those ever-growing enormities; and a thin Voice like a wind came weirdly questioning: '_Ha! thou dreamer of dreams!--hast ever dreamed aught like unto this?--This is the Architecture of God!_'

_May_ 6, 188-

How divine the coming of the morning,--the coming of the Sun,--exorcising the shadowy terrors of the night with infinite restoration of color! I look upon the woods, and they are not the same: the palms have vanished; the cypresses have fled away; trees young and comely and brightly green replace them. A hand is laid upon my shoulder,--the hand of the gray Captain: 'Go forward, and see what you have never seen before.' Even as he speaks, our boat, turning sharply, steams out of the green water into--what can I call it?--a flood of fluid crystal,--a river of molten diamond,--a current of liquid light?

'It will be like this for eight miles,' observed the Captain. Eight miles!--eight miles of magic,--eight miles of glory! O the unspeakable beauty of it! It might be fifty feet in depth at times; yet every pebble, every vein of the water-grass blades, every atom of sparkling sand, is clearly visible as though viewed through sun-filled air; and but for the iridescent myriads of darting fish, the scintillations of jewel-color, we might well fancy our vessel floating low in air, like a balloon whose buoyancy is feeble. Water-grasses and slippery moss carpet much of the channel with a dark verdure that absorbs the light; the fish and the tortoises seem to avoid those sandy reaches left naked to the sun, as if fearful the great radiance would betray them, or as though unable to endure the force of the beams descending undimmed through all the translucent fathoms of the stream. It has no mystery this laughing torrent, save the mystery of its subterranean birth; it doffs all veils of shadow; the woods gradually withdraw from its banks; and the fires of the Southern sun affect not the delicious frigidity of its waves. Almost irresistible its fascination to the swimmer; one envies the fishes that shoot by like flashes of opal, even the reptiles that flee before the prow; a promise of strange joy? of electrical caress, seems to smile from those luminous deeps,--like the witchery of a Naiad, the blandishment of an Undine.

And so we float at last into a great basin, dark with the darkness of profundities unfathomed by the sun;--the secret sources of the spring, the place of its mystic fountain-birth, and the end of our pilgrimage. Down, down, deep, there is a mighty quivering visible; but the surface remains unmoved; the giant gush expends its strength far beneath us. From what unilluminated caverns,--what subterranean lakes,--burst this prodigious flow? Go ask the gnomes! Man may never answer. This is the visible beginning indeed; but of the invisible beginning who may speak?--not even the eye of the Sun hath discerned it; the light of the universe hath never shone upon it.--Earth reveals much to the magicians of science; but the dim secret of her abysses she keeps forever.

A TROPICAL INTERMEZZO

_The broken memory of a tale told in the last hours of a summer's night to the old Mexican priest by a dying wanderer from the Spanish Americas. Much the father marvelled at the quaintness of the accent of the man? which was the quaintness of dead centuries_...

Now the land of which I tell thee is a low land, where all things seem to have remained unchanged since the beginning of the world,--a winterless land where winds are warm and weak, so that the leaves are not moved by them,--a beshadowed land that ever seemeth to mourn with a great mourning. For it is one mighty wold, and the trees there be all hung with drooping plants and drooling vines, and dribbling mossy things that pend queerly from the uppermost branchings even to the crankling roots. And there be birds in that wold which do sing only when the moon shineth full,--and they have voices, like to monks,--and measured is their singing, and solemn, and of vasty sound,--and they are not at all afraid. But when the sun shineth there prevaileth such quiet as if some mighty witchcraft weighed upon the place; and all things drowse in the great green silence.

Now on the night of which I tell thee, we had camped there; and it seemed to me that we might in sooth have voyaged beyond the boundaries of the world; for even the heavens were changed above us, and the stars were not the same; and I could not sleep for thinking of the strangeness of the land and of the sky. And about the third watch I rose and went out under those stars, and looked at them, and listened to the psalmody of the wonderful birds chanting in the night like friars. Then a curious desire to wander alone into the deep woods came upon me.--_En chica hora Dios obra_!--In that time I feared neither man nor devil; and our commander held me the most desperate in that desperate band; and I strode out of the camp without thought of peril. The grizzled sentry desired to question me;--I cursed him and passed on.

And I was far away from the camp when the night grew pale, and the fire of the great strange Cross of stars, about which I have told thee, faded out, and I watched the edge of the East glow ruddy and ruddier with the redness of iron in a smithy; until the sun rose up, yellow like an orange is, with palm-leaves sharply limned against his face. Then I heard the Spanish trumpets sounding their call through the morning; but I did not desire to return. Whether it was the perfume of the flowers, or the odors of unknown spice-trees or some enchantment in the air, I could not tell thee; but I do remember that, as I wandered on, a sudden resolve came to me never to rejoin those comrades of mine. And a stranger feeling grew upon me like a weakness of heart,--like a great sorrow for I knew not what; and the fierceness of the life that I had lived passed away from me, and I was even as one about to weep. Wild doves whirred down from the trees to perch on my casque and armored shoulders; and I wondered that they suffered me to touch them with my hands, and were in no wise afraid.

So day broadened and brightened above me; and it came to pass that I found myself following a path where the trunks of prodigious trees filed away like lines of pillars, reaching out of sight,--and their branches made groinings like work of arches above me, so that it was like a monstrous church; and the air was heavy with a perfume like incense. All about me blazed those birds which are not bigger than bees, but do seem to have been made by God out of all manner of jewels and colored fire; also there were apes in multitude, and reptiles beyond reckoning, and singing insects, and talking birds. Then I asked myself whether I were not in one of those lands old Moors in Spain told of,--lands near the sinking of the sun, where fountains of magical water are. And fancy begetting fancy, it came to pass that I found me dreaming of that which Juan Ponce de Leon sought.

Thus dreaming as I went on, it appeared to me that the green dimnesses deepened, and the forest became loftier. And the trees now looked older than the deluge; and the stems of the things that coiled and climbed about them were enormous and gray; and the tatters of the pendent mosses were blanched as with the hoariness of ages beyond reckoning. Again I heard the trumpet sounding,--but so far off that the echo was not louder than the droning of the great flies; and I was gladdened by the fancy that it would soon have no power to reach mine ears.

And all suddenly I found myself within a vast clear space,--ringed about by palms so lofty that their tops appeared to touch the sky, and their shadows darkened all within the circle of them. And there was a great silence awhile, broken only by the whispering of waters. My feet made no sound, so thick was the moss I trod upon; and from the circle of the palms on every side the ground sloped down to a great basin of shimmering water. So clear it was that I could perceive sparkles of gold in the sands below; and the water seemed forced upward in a mighty underflow from the centre of the basin, where there was a deep, dark place. And into the bright basin there trickled streamlets also from beneath the roots of the immense trees; and I became aware of a great subterrene murmuring, as if those waters--which are beneath the earth--were all seeking to burst their way up to the sun.

Then, being foredone with heat and weariness, I doffed my armor and my apparel and plunged into the pool of the fountain. And I discovered that the brightness of the water had deluded me; for so deep was it that by diving I could not reach the bottom. Neither was the fountain tepid as are the slow river currents of that strange land, but of a pleasant frigidness,--like those waters that leap among the rocks of Castile. And I felt a new strength and a puissant joy, as one having long traveled with burning feet through some fevered and fiery land feeleth new life when the freshness of sea-winds striketh against his face, and the jocund brawling of the great billows smiteth his ears through the silence of desolation. And the joyousness I knew as a boy seemed to flame through all my blood again,--so that I sported in the luminous ripples and laughed aloud, and uttered shouts of glee; and high above me in the ancient trees wonderful birds mocked my shoutings and answered my laughter hoarsely, as with human voices. And when I provoked them further, they did imitate my speech till it seemed that a thousand echoes repeated me. And, having left the fount, no hunger nor weariness weighed upon me,--but I yielded unto a feeling of delicious drowsihead, and laid me down upon the moss to sleep as deeply as an infant sleepeth.

Now, when I opened mine eyes again, I wondered greatly to behold a woman bending over me,--and presently I wondered even much more, for never until then had it been given me to look upon aught so comely. Begirdled with flowers she was, but all ungarmented,--and lithe to see as the rib of a palmleaf is,--and so aureate of color that she seemed as one created of living gold. And her hair was long and sable as wing-feathers of ravens are, with shifting gleams of blue,--and was interwoven with curious white blossoms. And her eyes, for color like to her hair, I could never describe for thee,--that large they were, and limpid, and lustrous, and sweet-lidded! So gracious her stature and so wonderful the lissomeness of her, that, for the first time, I verily knew fear,--deeming it never possible that earthly being might be so goodly to the sight. Nor did the awe that was upon me pass away until I had seen her smile,--having dared to speak to her in my own tongue, which she understood not at all. But when I had made certain signs she brought me fruits fragrant and golden as her own skin; and as she bent over me again our lips met, and with the strange joy of it I felt even as one about to die,--for her mouth was--

['Nay, my son,' said the priest, preventing him, 'dwell not upon such things. Already the hand of death is on thee; waste not these priceless moments in speech of vanity,--rather confess thee speedily that I may absolve thee from thy grievous sin.']

So be it, _padre mio_, I will speak to thee only of that which a confessor should know. But I may surely tell thee those were the happiest of my years; for in that low dim land even Earth and Heaven seemed to kiss; and never did other mortal feel the joy I knew of, love that wearies never and youth that passeth never away. Verily, it was the Eden-garden, the Paradise of Eve. Fruits succulent and perfume were our food,--the moss, springy and ever cool, formed our bed, made odorous with flowers; and for night-lamps we prisoned those wondrous flies that sparkle through darkness like falling stars. Never a cloud or tempest,--no fierce rain nor parching heat, but spring everlasting, filled with scent of undying flowers, and perpetual laughter of waters, and piping of silver-throated birds. Rarely did we wander far from that murmuring hollow. My cuirass, and casque, and good sword of Seville, I allowed to rust away; my garments fell into dust; but neither weapon nor garment were needed where all was drowsy joy and unchanging warmth. Once she whispered to me in my own tongue, which she had learned with marvelous ease, though I, indeed, never could acquire hers: 'Dost know, _Querido mio_, here one may never grow old?' Then only I spake to her about that fountain which Juan Ponce de Leon sought, and told her the marvels related of it, and questioned her curiously about it. But she smiled, and pressed her pliant golden fingers upon my lips, and would not suffer me to ask more,--neither could I at any time after find heart to beseech her further regarding matters she was not fain to converse of.

Yet ever and anon she bade me well beware that I should not trust myself to stray alone into the deep dimness beyond the dale of the fountains: '_Lest the Shadows lay hold upon thee_,' she said. And I laughed low at her words, never discerning that the Shadows whereof she spake were those that Age and Death cast athwart the sunshine of the world.

['Nay, nay, my son,' again spoke the priest; 'tell me not of Shadows, but of thy great sins only; for the night waneth, and thine hour is not far off.']

Be not fearful, father; I may not die before I have told thee all.... I have spoken of our happiness; now must I tell thee of our torment--the strangest thing of all? Dost remember what I related to thee about the sound of the trumpet summoning me? Now was it not a ghostly thing that I should hear every midnight that same summons,--not faintly as before, but loud and long--once? Night after night, ever at the same hour, and ever with the same sonority, even when lying in her arms, I heard it--as a voice of brass, rolling through the world. And whensoever that cursed sound came to us, she trembled in the darkness, and linked her arms more tightly about me, and wept, and would not be comforted till I had many times promised that I should not forsake her. And through all those years I heard that trumpet-call--years, said I?--nay, _centuries_ (since in that place there is not any time nor any age)--I heard it through long centuries after all my comrades had been laid within their graves.

[And the stranger gazed with strange inquiry into the priest's face; but he crossed himself silently, and spoke no word.]

And nightly I strove to shut out the sound from my ears and could not; and nightly the torment of hearing it ever increased like a torment of hell--_ay de mit_ nightly, for uncounted generations of years! So that in time a great fury would seize me whenever the cursed echoes came; and, one dark hour, when she seemed to hear it not, and slept deeply, I sought my rusted blade, and betook me toward the sound,--beyond the dale of fountains--into the further dimness of swaying mosses,--whither, meseems, the low land trendeth southward and toward those wan wastes which are not land nor water, yet which do quake to a great and constant roaring as of waves in wrath.

[A moment the voice of the aged man failed him, and his frame quivered as in the beginning of agony.]

Now I feel, padre, that but little time is allotted me to speak. I may never recount to thee my wanderings, and they, indeed, are of small moment.--Enough to tell thee that I never again could find the path to the fountains and to her, so that she became lost to me. And when I found myself again among men, lo! the whole world was changed, and the Spaniards I met spake not the tongue of my time, and they mocked the quaintness of my ways and jibed at the fashion of my speech. And my tale I dared tell to none, through fear of being confined with madmen, save to thee alone, and for this purpose only I summoned thee. Surely had I lived much in this new age of thine men must have deemed me bereft of reason, seeing that my words and ways were not like unto theirs; but I have passed my years in the morasses of unknown tropics, with the python and the cayman,--and in the dark remoteness of forests inhabited by monstrous things,--and in forgotten ruins of dead Indian cities,--and by shores of strange rivers that have no names,--until my hair whitened and my limbs were withered and my great strength was utterly spent in looking for her.

'Verily, my son,' spake the confessor, 'any save a priest might well deem thee mad,--though thy speech and thy story be not of to-day. Yet I do believe thy tale. Awesome it is and strange; but the traditions of the Holy Church contain things that are not less strange: witness the legend of the Blessed Seven of Ephesus, whose lives were three hundred and sixty years preserved that the heresy concerning the resurrection of the flesh might be confounded forever. Even in some such way hath the Lord preserved thee through the centuries for this thine hour of repentance. Commend, therefore, thy soul to God, repentingly, and banish utterly from thee that evil spirit who still tempts thee in the semblance of woman.'

'Repent!' wonderingly spake the wanderer, whose great black eyes flamed up again as with the fires of his youth; 'I do not repent, I shall never repent,--nor did I summon thee hither that thou shouldst seek to stir me to any repentance.--Nay! more than mine own soul I love her,--unutterably, unswervingly, everlastingly! Aye! greater a thousand fold is my love of her than is thy hope of heaven, thy dread of death, thy fear of hell.--Repent--beyond all time shall I love her, through eternity of eternities,--aye! as thou wouldst say, even _por los siglos de los siglos_.'

Kneeling devoutly, the confessor covered his face with his hands, and prayed even as he had never prayed before. When he lifted his eyes again, lo! the soul had passed away unshriven;--but there was such a smile upon the dead face that the priest marveled, and murmured, with his lips: '_Surely he hath found Her at last_!'--Faintly, with the coming of the dawn, a warm south wind moved the curtains, and bare into the chamber rich scent of magnolia and of jessamine and of those fair blossoms whose odor evoketh beloved memory of long-dead bridal-mornings,--until it seemed that a weird sweet Presence invisible had entered, all silently, and stood there even as a Watcher standeth. And all the East brightened;--and, touched by the yellow magic of the sun, the vapors above the place of his rising formed themselves into a Fountain of Gold.

A NAME IN THE PLAZA

_June_ 3, 18--

I

Sometimes, in that Gloaming that divides deep sleep from the awakening,--when out of the world of wavering memories the first thin fancies begin to soar, like neuroptera, rising on diaphanous wing from a waste of marsh-grasses,--there suddenly comes an old, old longing that stings thought into nervous activity with a sharp pain. The impression in the first moment of wakefulness might be likened to a sense of nostalgia,--but the nostalgia which is rather a world-sickness than a homesickness; there is something in it also resembling the vain regret for what has been left perhaps twenty-years' journey behind us, and has now become a tropical remembrance because we have traveled so far toward the Northern Circle of life. Yet the longing I refer to is more puissant and more subtle than these definable feelings are;--it has almost the force of an impulse; it has no real affinity with the recognizable Past; its visions are archipelagoes which never loomed for us over the heaving of any remembered seas; it is like an unutterable wish to flee away from the Present into the Unknown,--a beautiful unknown, radiant with impossible luminosities of azure and sun-gold! I do not know how to account for this impulse,--unless as an unexplained Something in Man corresponding to the instinct of migration in lower forms of life--especially in those happy winged creatures privileged to follow the perfumed Summer round about the world. And I think it comes to us usually either with the first lukewarm burst of spring, or with the windy glories of autumn. Nevertheless, in the morning it came, out of season, and remained with me, while I watched from the balcony birds and ships alike fleeting tropicward with many-colored wings outspread, and thought of a tame crane at home,--with one wing hopelessly maimed,--that used to cry out bitterly to processions of his wild kindred sailing above the city roofs on their way to other skies.

Why these longings for lands in which we shall never be?--why this desire for that azure into which we cannot soar?--whence our mysterious love for that tumultuous deep into whose emerald secrets we may never peer?--Can it be that through countless epochs of the immemorial phylogenesis of man,--through all those myriad changes suggested by the prenatal evolution of the human heart,--through all the slow marvelous transition from fish to mammal,--there have actually persisted impulses, desires, sensations, whereof the enigma may be fully interpreted by some new science only,--a future science of psychical dysteleology?...

So musing, I found my way to the Plaza.

Has it not often seemed to you that the more antiquated and the more unfamiliar an object or a place is, the more it appears at first sight to live,--to possess a sort of inner being, a fetish-spirit, a soul? I thought that morning the ancient Plaza had such a soul, and that it spoke to me in its mysterious dumb way, as if saying: 'Come look at me, because I am very, very old;--but do not look at the sulphur fountain which the Americans have made, nor at the monument they have built; for those are not of the centuries to which I belong.'