Part 8

But it seems a curious irony of fate that so soon after I have written about the road to happiness this phantasmal and unreal ghost should ‘arise to poison joy.’ This, at any rate, is not exaggerated language, for the thought of the house tenanted once more lay like a shadow over my spirits. I was wholly unable (or at any rate I thought I was, which comes to the same thing) to banish the shadow from my mind, and it haunted both waking and sleeping thoughts with a dull never-ceasing weight. I, who hardly ever dream, and then only of astounding and mirthful adventure, groped nightly about ill-lit passages, which I believed to be passages in that house, in intolerable apprehension.

Sometimes, so it seemed to me, certain rooms were vividly lit inside, and through cracks below the door, or through the chink of the door ajar, I saw that there were bright lights inside the rooms, which yet cast no filtering illumination into the passages through which I had to feel my way. At other times the whole house was wrapped in a misty obscurity, which was not the light of early morning nor yet the dusk of falling night, but something almost palpable to the touch; it was as if the gray veil of the future brushed across my eyes, some unseen hand stirring it, as if to lift it away, and in my dreams my eyes would strain into the darkness for the light that should show me what agencies moved about me.

These dreams, which were very persistent and occurred in dim sequence many times during the night, always opened in the same way. On falling asleep I passed straight into the nebulous atmosphere I have tried to describe, and was walking up to Margery’s house. For the darkness, I never could see more of it than its square shape, a blot against the blotted sky; the door was always open, and the groping in the passages began. I was conscious always of many presences close round me, but the dusk hid them, and into the lighted rooms I never could enter, for it was somehow forbidden. Then one night an entirely new dream came, sandwiched between the dreams of dusk, and in that I was going along the road to the house, not wrapped in obscurity, but in brilliant sunshine. Birds trilled in the bushes, flowers of extraordinary brilliance grew in the hedgerows, and I thought with an upleap of exultation that the passages would be blind no longer. Then I turned the corner and came on the house, and though I knew it was the right one, yet it had changed almost beyond recognition. The steps that led to the front-door were cracked and moss-ridden; the creepers had so grown that they hung in curtains over the windows; an indescribable air of age had passed over it. But the room over the front-door--Margery’s room--was untouched by the gray hand of Time: the walls were still smooth, and it seemed to me the bricks newly-pointed; the creepers were cut back from the window, which was wide open, and from inside came a voice singing. It sang a song that Margery always loved, and though the voice was like hers, yet it was not quite like.

It was with the wildest hopes and expectations that I entered the house, but once again, though all was bright outside, the passages were dark. But I groped my way upstairs, and saw that the door of Margery’s room stood open, and there, framed in the misty obscurity, stood a figure that must be hers. Line for line it repeated that form I knew so well; the slight bend of the neck, the outward sweep of the shoulders, were all hers. And in the darkness I gazed and gazed, for the veil seemed to brush upwards against my eyes, but it did not lift, and in an agony I cried out, ‘Margery, Margery, is it you?’ And my own voice, I suppose, awoke me, for I found myself seated up in bed, and the night outside was still very dark and hot, and I heard the hissing of steady rain on the shrubs.

So I lay down again, and must have gone to sleep immediately, for, without conscious pause, I was back in the dark passages as usual. But once again on that same night a new factor appeared in my dreams, for the presences, though still invisible, were inaudible no longer, and their footsteps passed about and around me very close. For a long time I listened, but heard none that concerned me; but at last there came one which I knew to be Dick’s, and with it went another that was Margery’s, and they passed near me and went out--I suppose to the garden. It never occurred to me to follow, for I was outside their lives somehow, and if we came near each other it was that they came near to me. After that the steps of many strangers passed and repassed, and then once more I heard Margery’s footstep alone. But when it came close I knew it was not Margery’s, but like it, as the singing voice was like hers. Then slowly, as at the hint of dawn, the dim passages began to grow bright, and I looked to see where Margery was. But the brightness as it grew showed me only the walls and furniture of my own room, and through the open window came in the pale light of early day, as the morning breeze flapped the blind.

Now, by this time the dreams of the dark passages had lasted about a week, and the days betwixt the nights had been full of a corresponding depression; for by night it was the darkness that troubled me, and by day the shadow of the new folk who were coming to live there. Then came that night which I have described, and simultaneously both the dream of the dark passages and the depression by day ceased entirely and altogether. I went back at once to the dreamless nights to which I was accustomed, and my days were once more a mosaic of happy hours. But the heaviness of those days and the ill-defined fear of those nights was so blackening to the spirit that at the time I soberly thought that some madness had begun to lay its finger on my brain; and now that I no longer fear that, I find myself wondering what could have induced this melancholy. The weather, it is true, was extremely hot and depressing, and for the whole week it is also true I was working against time at a piece of work I did not wish to do. Before I had been a day at it, I knew that it was distasteful; before I had been two at it, I felt sure it was not worth while to do it at all.

Now, being temporarily bored with one’s work is one thing; radical disapproval is another. It may easily happen that, to bring about a situation rightly, several chapters of what seems to one at the time (and very likely is) sorry stuff have to be hammered into shape. Due preparation for the situation has to be made without giving the situation away; only when it comes the reader should say to himself: ‘Of course it must be so; why didn’t I think of it?’ But radical disapproval is a far different matter. It is rank immorality to go on spending time and pains over what is worthless or worse, and that rank immorality I committed. Then, when the work in question, the oppressive weather, and the disordered dreams, which began simultaneously, also ended simultaneously, I felt that it was highly probable that they were all bound up together. Certainly, it is more than possible that they all reacted on each other--that the thunder in the skies led to a general depression that made my immorality sit heavy on me, and induced a gloom by day that was carried over into the night. Again, the fact that I slept in the shadows brought shadows into the day; and the fact that I spent the hours unprofitably, and knew it, predisposed to gloomy visions. At the same time, the persistence of the same dream was curious, and the society that collects nightmares are at liberty to put it on a pin. Such, however, is the record of what happened during the first week of August.

Thereafter ensued three spoilt days, spoilt not by outside agencies, but by fussy stupidity on my part. To the ordinary citizen such spoiling means nothing, for in all probability he will never experience it, and thus to him the trials of these three days are senseless. But given that your household comprises only a plain (very plain) cook, and what would be called in London a ‘general’--though such have no idea of campaign--it will appeal to the minority to know that the question of what one wanted for ten days at Bayreuth, and perhaps a week’s wandering in Germany, was crucial. It was no use saying vaguely--as I suppose one does to a valet--‘I shall be away for ten days; pack’; but seriatim I had to think of all that I should conceivably want. The result was that early on the second day I found that I had packed all the necessaries of life, and had to unpack them all again. This, and the subsequent repacking, took the whole of the third day. Even then, since I had to leave at cockcrow to catch the evening boat to Ostend, there were many things insoluble. Were there baths at Bayreuth, or should I take an indiarubber bath? Were there washerwomen, or should I take as much linen as there were days? _Seigneur, quelle vie!_

Now, though I regret these pin-points of indecision, yet I defend them. For if one is going abroad for six months, all that is necessary to do is to put out every stick and button you have in the world, and bid the grand portmanteaux advance. But for ten days or a fortnight surely such equipment is beyond the mark. Therefore one has to select. Here comes in the worst of an imaginative mind. One can easily picture circumstances, even in the course of ten days, in which one will want each single suit of clothes one possesses. For instance, there may quite easily be a cold spell of weather, and therefore it is necessary to take one suit of thick clothes, also to be worn on the night journey. But supposing one gets caught during this cold spell by a sudden storm? The cold spell continues, but the thick clothes are wet. Therefore one must take two suits of thick clothes. However, warm weather is more likely, and there must be at least two suits of flannels. Four suits. Then for emergencies of the social kind one must not be found defenceless, and some sort of tailed apparatus must come. Five suits. Dress-clothes. Six. Also there is excellent trout-fishing not far from Bayreuth, and I have been particularly told to bring a rod. That entails knickerbockers and a Norfolk jacket. Seven suits.

At this point I paused; I was taking seven suits in order to clothe my unworthy body for a space of ten days in a Bavarian village. Yet where was the flaw? Of all things in the world I hate to be away from home, wanting something which I have forgotten to take, and, which is worse, decided not to take. Time was when it was so simple to put in that article, but the opportunity is mine no longer, and I sigh for the undenuded wardrobes.

I scorn to reproduce more of these indecisions; I would sooner reproduce French as spoken in the hot bath, and it will suffice to say that, having spent hours which will never return in process of careful selection, I eventually discarded selection altogether, and filled all the portmanteaux I possess. However, for the future I shall waste no more time in thinking what I shall want on short journeys, for I know I shall end in taking all I have, and it saves trouble to begin with that.

* * * * *

I do not know whether we are all descended from gipsies, but certainly in most people something of the instinct which loves to wander, to make a journey merely for the joy of going, survives. True it is that punctual trains (the South-Eastern, however, has a good deal of admirable romance and uncertainty about it) and well-appointed steamboats, which leave stone-jettied ports at regular and ascertainable times, have sucked much of the unknown from travel, and so robbed this instinct of its fruition, but they cannot quite starve it. Even though you travel in a Pullman car, and sit on plush with your head among voluptuous gildings, and gaze into looking-glasses which show you the country and the telegraph-posts reeling giddily backwards, yet you still travel; and, at any rate, if you are going where you have never been before, something new and unknown waits for you behind the advancing line of the horizon. Thus, the one thing I never need on a journey is a book; it is sufficient entertainment for me merely to look out of the window and see new country--vale and glen or plain and mountain-peak--come up to greet me in endless procession. So swiftly one moves that it is hardly possible to weary of what one sees before it is gone, and every bend in the line may show something admirable. But above all things the headlong passage through the station of a large town delights me. First comes a mile of sordid house-backs built on to the line; then a short tunnel at which the engine screams; then a wider glance of the town, with perhaps a gray cathedral tower watching over it all; then close against the window slanting lines of people, like rain, on the gray, tapering platform, the name of the station hidden, like a plum in a bun from its refreshment-room, in plasters of advertisement; the signal-box with its rows of gleaming semaphores; the mile of sordid house-roofs again; and out into the green fields. Then at a stile giving on to the line there wait a couple of children, whom in all human probability you will never see again, waving their hats at the gay express. For a glimpse only you saw them, but they have their lives in front of them, fraught with momentousness to themselves at least, and perhaps to others. It is even possible that in years to come the lines of your life may cross theirs--that tragedy or comedy is already weaving the ropes that will bind you together in love or death or laughter. For of all phrases ‘a chance meeting’ is the most illogical. If chance exists at all, nothing exists except chance. Your most careful plan may be spoiled ‘by chance,’ as you will say. Then, your careful plan was chance, too, since chance can wreck it.

The backwaters of life, like the backwaters of streams, have an enormous fascination for me, for both are extraordinarily pleasing to the eye and restful to the mind. The great stream of progress hurries by them, while they revolve gently under shelter in sedate eddies, and sometimes sticks and straws from the stream get flung aside into them, and at once they join that slow, unhurrying circle. Such a backwater is Bayreuth; a tram-line and an advertisement of Sunlight Soap are the only touches of modernity I noticed in the town, for the theatre stands apart from it, a mile away beneath the pine-woods of the pleasant Bavarian hills. But otherwise it is a backwater of the purest type, not ancient and not modern, any more than is a backwater in a stream, but merely existent and unhurrying.

The inhabitants, we must suppose, buy and sell things from each other; some are richer than others, but apparently not much, and none, I should think, are either very rich or very poor. Some also are better-looking than others, but not much; some rather wider-awake, but all seem to have set as a seal on their foreheads a ruminating mediocrity in all points and qualities which the human mind is able to conceive. Apart from the festival, it is impossible to imagine being either very happy or very unhappy in Bayreuth; ‘very,’ in fact, is a word which is without meaning there.

Yet here, by a strange irony of fate, is planted the cult of perhaps the most ‘very’ mind that ever existed, for the brick theatre on the hill-side is the casket which holds that heart of flame and song. Critics have beggared dictionaries to express their feelings about Wagner, and whether it is synonyms for ‘charlatan’ they have searched for, or synonyms for ‘sublime,’ none have yet thought of levelling at him the charge of dulness or mediocrity. Indeed, to discuss him at all seems to imply that you are not in that calm frame of mind in which alone can discussion be profitable, and the violence which marks his music and drama seem at once to infect the mind of his critic. Strangest of all, even Tolstoi--who of all great writers seems to be almost utterly devoid of any sense of beauty, though in matters of sordidness and ugliness the skill of his art is worthy to stand by Shakespeare’s--has allowed himself to be drawn into the mad circle, and has given us in his volume on Art a dozen pages which for sheer ineptitude of criticism, complete ignorance of his subject, and utter incompetence to deal with it, must rank for ever with the colossal failures of the world, such as the Panama Canal and the fall of Napoleon. But the calm frame of mind deserts me; discussion is not profitable.

* * * * *

It was after the second act of ‘Parsifal,’ and from the cool darkness of the theatre we streamed silently out into the brilliant sunshine of the late afternoon. The sun was near to its setting, and the whole plain below us was steeped and stupefied in the level rays. A blue haze of heat-mist lay over the further hills, emphasizing the enlacement of their ridges, which stood out like the muscles of some strong arm.

Above the theatre rose the quiet pine-woods, hardly whispering, so still was the evening, and it was to them that my friend and I turned, for the poisonous enchantment of Klingsor’s garden had to be expelled, and we neither of us cared to join in shrill discussions about the exquisite phrasing of Kundry, since it was the seduction of her phrases that more occupied us. For an hour the evil flowers had bloomed, and that evil was not of the foul sort that makes one turn from it, but of the seemingly innocent welcome of maidens that wear flowers, and of an evil woman who spoke not of evil things, but of sacred things--a mother’s love, and her own love for him who was pure.

So we sat in the pine-woods, and let the fermenting vat of sin lose its effervescence, and waited till the sour-smelling bubbles broke no more on its iridescent surface. And the sun sank till it touched the hills, and where it touched they changed to semi-transparent amber, and a crescent moon rose in the east, and one bird fluted in the bush. Then the first trumpet from below sounded the _motif_ of the ‘Love-feast,’ and down we went. From the mad fires of the sunset we passed into the cool gloom of the theatre, and the doors were shut, and soon the curtain rose on the last act.

* * * * *

So were the wanderings of Parsifal accomplished, yet he remained still the pure youth who once, in ignorance of suffering, had shot a swan as it circled above a lake, wantonly and without thought. Yet when he saw it dead, then for the first time had pity knocked a little on the door of his heart. Since then had years sped by, and temptations hideous and beautiful and strong and subtle had been ever about his path and about his bed. Yet he was still without guile, nor was there spot or stain on his virgin soul. Albeit he was very weary, and for years had he been very weary, and sometimes he had prayed that he might die, not knowing what he prayed, for the flesh was weak. But the Sacred Spear which he bore ever with him, that spear which had pierced the side of our Blessed Lord, was his strength and his firm defence, as it had ever been since he had won it from Klingsor the magician, unarmed except for the armour of his pure heart.

So it came about that on the dawning of that day on which our Blessed Lord was crucified his wanderings led him back to that place from which they had started, ere yet he had confounded the sorcerer Klingsor, and in the garden of seduction had resisted the wiles of Kundry, who laughed at our Blessed Lord what time He bore the cross of our redemption to Calvary, and thus henceforth could never weep, but by her laughter lured the souls of men to hell. Weary beyond all speech was he with his wanderings, in which he ever fought against the powers of evil, and he wot not whither he had come, nor that it was the Blessed Friday on which he had come thither, for, in that he did ever his dear Lord’s work, that it was now the day on which He suffered on the cross for our redemption was less to him than the work of salvation which he himself daily accomplished. Nor saw he the brightness of the meadows, nor read the joyous message that Spring wrote on the blossoming hawthorn and on the green places of the earth. For the turning Year had put on her fresh mantle, and like some fair maiden had dressed herself against the coming of her lover. The brooks all down the valley of Monsalvat--for to Monsalvat he was come again--were no more thick or tainted with the melted snows, nor had summer yet made them run low or less melodiously; but they brimmed through the meadows, combing the waving grasses that leaned to them and drank of their coolness, and over their pebbly beds they glanced and sparkled like young things at play. Between the stems of the trees were strown carpets of hyacinths and wind-blossoms, and from thicket to thicket the merry thrush glanced in and out, and filled his throbbing throat and sang of love and of summer. From morn till night did all God’s creatures thank Him for the beautiful days He had given them, and at eve the nightingale made the song which is as old as time and as young as when time itself was young.

Yet for very weariness did Parsifal reck naught o the spring music, but he only journeyed on, steadfast in the might of the Spear; for he knew that at the appointed time would his Gracious Lord guide his steps back to Monsalvat, his heart enlightened by pity, by which, though he hated sin, he ever loved the sinner. And even on this very morning his perfect work was done, and in naught had he brought shame upon the Holy Spear which shed the precious blood of his dear Lord, and wrought our salvation; and so had God guided him back to the vale of Monsalvat, though as yet he knew not whither he had come. Once, indeed, he had seen a swan wheeling in blue heaven above him, and a faint chord of memory twanged in his heart and was silent again. Yet he had inward peace, which he would not have exchanged for the wealth of the world nor for the wisdom of Solomon, for it was passing knowledge.

Yet, though all Nature held high festival and rejoiced, little did the brethren of the Holy Grail rejoice with her. For King Titurel, who for long years had lived but in the chapel of the Grail, wondrously kept alive by the feast of Love which our Saviour instituted, was dead, and even on this day was to be his burial. And his son, King Amfortas, was also nigh to death, for the grievousness of the wound wherewith years agone the magician Klingsor had wounded him; for Amfortas had yielded to sin and to sleep, and while he slept in Klingsor’s garden of sorceries the magician had thrust at him with the Sacred Spear, and only by the touch of the Spear could his wound be healed. And as often as Amfortas would essay to unveil to the knights the radiance of the Holy Grail did the wound break out afresh, and thus for long time had they been without that strengthening and refreshing of their souls for the lack of which the King Titurel, starved of that spiritual meat and holy drink, had died.