Part 9

To him it was not at all like a vault, but like an engine disconnected from its power. The mind abhors a vacuum, and he was striving to fill the emptiness all about him, thronging the auditorium with imaginary people, and struggling to occupy the magic area of light in which he stood. In vain: he was impotent. He felt trapped.

"Let us go," he said.

On the stairs they met the manager.

"Hullo, Tilly," he said. "You're a good girl."

"Thanks."

Old Mole hated the young man, for he was common and loose in manner and in no way worthy of the enchanted Matilda or of the marvelous organism, the theater, in which she seemed to live so easily and freely.

His thoughts were much too confused for him to impart them to her, and he was vastly relieved when they left the theater and she became his Matilda.

That night he read to her. He had been delighting in "Lucretius," and he had marked passages, and he turned to that beginning:

"Iam iam non domus accipiet te læta, neque uxor Optima. . . ."

He translated for her:

" 'Now no more shall a glad home and a true wife welcome thee, nor darling children race to snatch thy first kisses and touch thy heart with a sweet silent content; no more mayest thou be prosperous in thy doings and a defence to thine own; alas and woe!' say they, 'one disastrous day has taken all these prizes of thy life away from thee'--but thereat they do not add this, 'and now no more does any longing for these things assail thee.' This did their thought but clearly see and their speech follow they would deliver themselves from much burning of the heart and dread. 'Thou, indeed, as thou art sunk in the sleep of death, wilt so be for the rest of the ages, severed from all weariness and pain.' . . .

"Yet again, were the nature of things to utter a voice and thus with her own lips upbraid one of us, 'What ails thee, O mortal, that thou fallest into such vain lamentation? Why weep and wail at death? For has thy past life and overspent been sweet to thee, and not all the good thereof, as though poured into a cracked pitcher, has run through and perished without joy, why dost thou not retire like a banqueter filled with life, and, calmly, O fool, take thy sleep? But if all thou hast had is perished and spilled and thy life is hateful, why seekest thou yet to add more which shall once again all perish and fall joylessly away? Why not rather make an end of life and labor? For there is nothing more that I can contrive and invent for thy delight; all things are the same forever. Even were thy body not yet withered, nor thy limbs weary and worn, yet all things remain the same, didst thou live on through all the generations. Nay, even wert thou never doomed to die'--what is our answer?"

"Don't you believe in God?" asked Matilda.

It came like a question from a child, and he had the adult's difficulty in answering it, the doubt as to the interpretation that will be put upon his reply.

"I believe," he said slowly, "in the life everlasting, but my life has a beginning and an end."

"And you don't think you go to Heaven or Hell when you're--when you're dead?"

"Into the ground," he said.

Matilda shivered, and she looked crushed and miserable.

"Why did you read that to me?" she said at last. "I was so happy before. . . . I've always had a feeling that you weren't like ordinary people."

And she seemed to wait for him to say something, but his mind harped only on the words: "For there is nothing more that I can contrive and invent for thy delight," and he said nothing. She rose wearily and took her hat and coat and the musquash collar that had been her pride, and left him.

For hours he sat over the fire, brooding, flashing occasionally into clear logical sequences of thought, but for the most part browsing and drowsing, turning over in his mind women and marriage and the theater and genius, the authentic voice of the nature of things, the spirit of the universe that sweeps into a man's brain and heart and burns away all the thoughts of his own small life and fills him with a music that rings out and resounds and echoes and falls for the most part upon deaf ears or upon ears filled only with the clatter of the marketplace or the sweet whisperings of secret, treacherous desires. And he thought of the engines in that city, day and night, ceaselessly humming and throbbing, weaving stuffs and forging tools and weapons for the clothing and feeding of the bodies of men: the terrifying ingenuity of it all, the force and the skill, the ceaseless division and subdivision of labor, the multiplication of processes, the ever-increasing variety of possessions and outward shows and material things. But through all the changes in the activities of men, behind all their new combinations of forces "all things are the same forever and ever. . . ." He remembered then that he had hurt Matilda, that she had resented his not being "like ordinary people," resented, that is, his acceptance of the unchanging order of things, his refusal to confuse surface change with the mighty ebb and flow of life. It was, he divined, that she had never reached up to any large idea and had never conceived of any life, individual or general, outside her own. To her, then, the life everlasting must mean _her_ life, and he regretted having used that phrase. She was concerned, then, entirely with her own existence--(and with his in so far as it overlapped hers)--and life to her was either "fun" or something unthinkable. . . . . It seemed to him that he was near understanding her, and he loved her more than ever, and a rare warmth flooded his thoughts and they took on a life of their own, were bodied forth, and in a sort of ecstasy, thrilling and triumphant, he had the illusion of being lifted out of himself, of soaring and roaming free and with a power altogether new to him, a power whereof he was both creator and creature, he saw out of his own circumscribed area of life into another life that was no replica of this, but yet was of the same order, smaller, neater, trimmer, concentrated, and distilled. There was brilliant color in it and light and shade sharply distinct, and everything in it--houses, trees, mountains, hills, clouds--was rounded and precise: there was movement in it, but all ordered and purposeful. The sun shone, and round the corner there was a selection of moons, full, half, new, and crescent, and both sun and moon could be put away so that there should be darkness. As for stars, there were as many as he chose to sprinkle on the sky. . . . At first he could only gaze at this world in wonder. It sailed before him in a series of the most dignified evolutions, displaying all its treasures to him; mountains bowed and clouds curtseyed, and Eastern cities came drifting into view, and ships and islands; and there were palaces and the gardens of philosophers, sea beaches whereon maidens sang and mermaids combed their hair; and there were great staircases up and down which moved stately personages in silence, so that it was clear there was some great ceremony toward, but before he could discover the meaning of it all the world moved on and displayed another aspect of its seemingly endless variety. And he was sated with it and asked for it to stop, and at last with a mighty effort he became more its creator than its creature, and, as though he had just remembered the Open Sesame, it stayed in its course. It stayed, and in a narrow, dark street, with one flickering light in it, and the brilliant light of a great boulevard at the end of it, he saw an old white-bearded man with a pack on his back and a staff in his hand. And the old man knew that he was there, and he beckoned to him to come into the street. So he went and followed him, and without a word they turned through a little dark gateway and across up a courtyard and up into a garret, and the old man gave him a sack to sit on and lifted his packet from his back and out of it built up a little open box, and hung a curtain before it. Old Mole settled on his sack and opened his lips to speak to the old man, but he had disappeared.

The curtain rose.

III

INTERLUDE

_I may have lost my judgment and my wits, but I must confess I liked that play. There was something in it._

THE SEAGULL

III

INTERLUDE

_Go now, go into the land Where the mind is free and the heart Blooms, and the fairy band Airily troops to the dusty mart; And the chatter and money-changing Die away. In fancy ranging, Let all the inmost honey of the world Sweeten thy faith, to see unfurl'd Love's glory shown in every little part Of life; and, seeing, understand._

BY a roadside, at the end of a village, beneath the effigy of a god, sat a lean, brown old man. He had no covering for his head and the skin of the soles of his feet was thickened and scarred. In front of him were two little boxes, and on his knees there lay open a great book from which he was reading aloud in an unknown tongue.

From the village there came a young man, richly clad and gay, attended by two slaves. He saluted the effigy of the god and asked the old man what he might be reading. The old man replied that it was the oldest book in the world and the truest, and when he was questioned about the boxes he said that one of them contained riches and the other power. The young man looked into them and saw nothing. He laughed and spoke to one of his slaves, saying the old and the poor must have their fancies since there was nothing else for them, and, upon his orders, the slave filled the boxes with rice, and at once there sprung up two mighty trees. The slaves fled howling and the young man abased himself before the effigy of the god and stole away on his knees, praying. The old man raised his hands in thanksgiving for the shade of the trees, lifted them out of the boxes, and once more arranged them before him.

In the wood hard by arose the sound of high words and out upon the road, brawling and storming, tumbled two youths, comely and tall and strong. They stopped before the old man and appealed to him.

"Our father," said he who first found breath, "is a poor man of this village, and I am Peter and my brother is Simon. Two days ago, on a journey, we saw the picture of the loveliest maiden in the world. We do not know her name, but we are both determined to marry her, and there is no other desire left in us. We have fought and wrestled and swum for her, but can reach no conclusion. I will not yield and he will not yield. Is all our life to be spent in wrangling?"

The old man closed his book and replied:

"The loveliest maiden in the world is Elizabeth, daughter of the greatest of emperors. If you are the sons of poor men how can you ever hope to lift eyes to her? Look now into these boxes and you shall be raised to a height by which you shall see the Emperor's daughter and not be hidden in the dust of her chariot."

They looked into the boxes, and Simon saw in the one a piece of gold, but Peter looked as well into the other, and in it he saw the face of his beloved princess and had no thought of all else. Simon asked for the first box and Peter for the second, and they received them and went their ways, Simon to the village and Peter out into the world, each gazing fascinated into his box.

"To him who desireth little, little is given," said the old man. "And to him who desireth much, much is given; but to neither according to the letter of his desire."

By the time he reached his village Simon had five gold pieces in his pocket, and as soon as he took one piece from the box another came in its place. He lent money to every one in the village at a large rate of interest and was soon the master of it. There began to be talk of him in the town ten leagues away and there came men to ask him for money. He moved to the town and built himself a big house, and it was not long before he began to look to the capital of the country.

When he moved to the capital he had six houses in different parts of the country, racehorses, picture galleries, mines, factories, newspapers, and he headed the list of subscribers to the hospitals patronized by the Royal Family. At first, in the great city, he was diffident and shy among the illustrious personages with whom he fraternized, but it was not long before he discovered that they were just as susceptible to the pinch of money as the carpenter and the priest and the bailiff and the fruiterer in his village. It was quite easy to buy the control of these important people without their ever having to face the unpleasant fact. More than one beautiful lady, among them a duchess and a prima donna of surpassing loveliness, endeavored to cajole him and to discover his secret. In vain; he could not forget the Princess Elizabeth, and now ambition spurred him on. He was wearying of the ease with which fame and position and the highest society could be bought, and began to lust for power. With his native peasant shrewdness he saw that society consisted of the People, of persons of talent and cunning above them, of the descendants of persons of talent and cunning left high and dry beyond the reach of want, of ornamental families set at the head of the nations, of a few ingenious minds who (so far as there was any direction) governed the workings and interlockings of all the parts of the whole. They had control of all the sources of money except his box, and he determined, to relieve his boredom and also as a means of reaching his Princess, to pit his power against theirs.

He was never ashamed of his mother, and she came to stay with him once a year for a week, but she never ceased to lament the loss of her other son, Peter, from whom no word had come. One night she had a dream, and she dreamed she saw Peter lying wounded in a thicket, and she knew perfectly where it was and said she must go to find him. Simon humored her and gave her money for a long voyage. She went back to her own village and out upon the road until she came to the effigy of the god, for this was the only god she knew, and she prayed to him. The old man appeared before her and told her to go to her home, for Peter would return to her before she died. At this she was comforted, and went home to her husband and sent Simon back his money, because she was afraid to keep so large a sum in the house.

It was said in the capital that the land of the greatest of emperors was the richest of all countries, but the people were the stupidest and had no notion of its wealth. The financiers were continually sending concessionaires and adventurers, but they came away empty-handed. Simon had now paid his way into the royal circle, and for defraying the debt on the royal stable had been ennobled. He suggested to the King that he should send an embassy to invite the greatest of emperors and his daughter to pay a visit to the capital to see the wonders of their civilization.

The embassy was sent, the invitation accepted, and the Emperor and the Princess arrived and their photographs were in all the illustrated papers. They did not like this, for in their own country only one portrait of the Emperor was painted, and that was the life work of the greatest artist of the time. The Princess was candor itself, and said frankly what she liked and what she did not like. She liked very little, and after she had been driven through the capital she sent for the richest man in the country, and Simon was brought to her. He bowed before her and trembled and told her that all his wealth was at her service. So she told him to pull down all the ugly houses and the dark streets and to make gardens and cottages and to give every man in them a piece of gold.

"They will only squander it," said Simon.

"Let them," replied the Princess Elizabeth. "Surely even the most miserable may have one moment of pleasure."

"In your country are there no poor?"

"There are no rich men. There are good men and bad men, and the good are rewarded, and honored."

As she ordered, so it was done, and the poor blessed the Princess Elizabeth, but the financiers muttered among themselves, and they arranged that one of their agents should go to the Emperor's country, stir up sedition, and be arrested. Then they announced in their newspapers international complications, said day after day that the national honor was besmirched, and demanded redress. The Emperor and the Princess Elizabeth hurriedly left the capital and returned to their own country. Simon had declared his admiration for the Princess and she had snubbed him. His newspapers added to the outcry, and he ordered a poet to write a national song, which became very popular:

_We ain't a fighting nation, But when we do, we do. We've got the ships, we've got the cash, We've got the soldiers, too._

_So look out there and mind your eye, We're out to do, we're out to die, For God and King and country._

But in the Emperor's country all the songs were in praise of the Princess Elizabeth, and when she heard that ships of war were on the seas and huge vessels transporting soldiers, she consulted with the Minister and gave orders for all weapons to be buried and for all houses to be prepared to receive the guests and the great hall of the palace to be made ready for a banquet.

Her Minister was Peter, and she delighted in his wisdom and never wearied of listening to the tale of his adventures, how in his quest he had been cheated, and robbed, and beaten, and cast into prison, and scourged, and bastinadoed, and incarcerated for a lunatic, and mocked and despised, nearly drowned by a mountain torrent, all but crushed by a huge boulder that came crashing down a hillside and carried away the tree beneath which he was sleeping; and how all these afflictions did but intensify his vision of that which he loved, so that the pain and the terror of them fell away and he was left with the glorious certainty of being near his goal. He did not tell her what that was because it was very sweet to serve her, and he knew that she was proud and had rejected the hands of the greatest and handsomest princes of her father's dependencies. It was very pleasant for him to see her emotion as he told his tale, and when she almost wept on the final adventure, how, as he neared her father's city, he was set upon by a band of peasants, who believed him to be a blasphemer and a wizard because of his box, and left for dead, and how he awoke to find her bending over him, then he could scarcely contain himself, and he would hide his face and hasten from her presence.

He had a little house in one of her private parks, and whenever she was in any difficulty she came to consult him, for his sufferings had made him sensible, and his devotion to a single idea gave him a nobility which she found not in her other courtiers.

It was he, then, who advised the cordial reception of the hostile armies, for he had observed, in the numerous assaults of which he had been the victim, that when he hit back he only incensed his adversary and roused him to a madder pitch of cruelty. Also he had lived among soldiers and knew them to be slaves of their bellies and no true servants of any cause or idea. Therefore, he gave this counsel, and it was followed, and the army was disbanded, and the citizens prepared their houses and decorated the city against the coming of the army. When they arrived, all the populace turned out to see them, and the generals and captains were met by the chief men, the poets, and the philosophers, and the scholars, and made welcome. There were feasting and fireworks, and the harlots devoted themselves to the service of the country, and by night a more drunken army was never seen. Their guns and ammunition were thrown into the harbor, and next day they were allowed to choose whether they would return to their own country or stay and become citizens of this. Nine-tenths of the soldiers chose to stay, many of them married and made honest women of the devoted creatures who had been their pleasure, and thus the causes of virtue and peace were served at once. The soldiers and their wives were scattered up and down the country, work was found for them, and both lost the rudeness and brutality induced by their former callings.

The other tenth returned to their own country. Simon and the financiers heard their galling story and told the people that a glorious victory had been won and the nation's flag, after horrible carnage, planted over yet another outpost of the Empire. There was immense enthusiasm. Shiploads of Bibles were sent out, and a hundred missionaries from the sixty-five different religious denominations.

Peter's advice was sought, and he ordered a cellar to be prepared. The Bibles were stored in this, and the missionaries were set to translate them back into the original languages. They had got no further than the twentieth chapter of Genesis when they declared their willingness to be converted to the religion of the country; but there was no professed religion, for, when the Princess had asked Peter what her father could best do to serve his subjects and make his name blessed among them, he had replied:

"Let him abolish that which most engenders hypocrisy. Let him establish the right of every man to be himself. Let there be good men and bad men--since there must be good and bad--but no hypocrites. Let him withdraw his support from that religion which maintains priests, superstition and prejudice, and it will topple down. Faith is an act of living, not a creed."

At first the Emperor was afraid that if the State religion toppled he would come crashing down, but he could deny his daughter nothing, and he withdrew his support. In less than a year there was not a sign of the professed religion, and no one noticed its absence. There was a marked improvement in the behavior of the people and their good sense, which made it possible for Peter's advice to be followed in dealing with the foreign army. There was a notable decrease in crime, and litigation became so infrequent that half the Courts of Justice were closed, and the Attorneys and Advocates retired into the country or adopted the profession of letters. With the money released by the disestablished religion and the reduced Courts of Justice the Emperor founded universities and schools and set apart money to endow maternity and medicine, saying: "We have all money enough for our pleasure, but it is when the shadow of a natural crisis comes over us that we are in need."

The Princess was loud in praise of her Minister, and the people and the men of letters declared that the Emperor really was the greatest ruler the world had ever seen. The Emperor swallowed it all as a good monarch should, but Peter was overcome with tenderness for his Princess, and, dreading lest he should betray his secret, he asked her leave to depart for a while, and betook him to his own country and his village to see his mother.

She lay upon her deathbed and was very feeble. Simon had sent her some calf's-foot jelly, but was too deeply engaged to come. Peter sat by her bedside and told her about his Princess, and she patted his hand and laughed merrily, and said:

"You always were a bonny liar, laddie. Kiss me and take my blessing."

Peter kissed her and took her blessing, and she died.

He went to the roadside where he had come by his box and his vision, but the old man was not there, the trees were cut down, and the effigy of the god had rotted away and only the stump of it was left. He planted an acorn in the place to mark the beginning of his joy in life, but, knowing that the act of breathing is prayer enough, he decided to go away and think no more about his good fortune or his bad fortune, or the profit he had drawn from both. He sighed over the thousands of miles that separated him from his Princess, and decided each day to reduce them by at least thirty.