Chapter 2.XIII. Dreams.
"Tell me what a soul desires, and I will tell you what it is." So runsthe phrase.
"Tell me what a man dreams, and I will tell you what he loves." Thatalso has its truth.
For, ever from the earliest childhood to the latest age, day by day, andstep by step, the busy waking life is followed and reflected by the lifeof dreams--waking dreams, sleeping dreams. Weird, misty, and distortedas the inverted image of a mirage, or a figure seen through the mountainmist, they are still the reflections of a reality.
On the night when Gregory told his story Waldo sat alone before thefire, his untasted supper before him. He was weary after his day'swork--too weary to eat. He put the plate down on the floor for Doss,who licked it clean, and then went back to his corner. After a time themaster threw himself across the foot of the bed without undressing, andfell asleep there. He slept so long that the candle burnt itself out,and the room was in darkness. But he dreamed a lovely dream as he laythere.
In his dream, to his right rose high mountains, their tops crowned withsnow, their sides clothed with bush and bathed in the sunshine. At theirfeet was the sea, blue and breezy, bluer than any earthly sea, likethe sea he had dreamed of in his boyhood. In the narrow forest that ranbetween the mountains and the sea the air was rich that the scent of thehoney-creeper that hung from dark green bushes, and through the velvetygrass little streams ran purling down into the sea.
He sat on a high square rock among the bushes, and Lyndall sat by himand sang to him. She was only a small child, with a blue pinafore, anda grave, grave, little face. He was looking up at the mountains, thensuddenly when he looked round she was gone. He slipped down from hisrock, and went to look for her, but he found only her little footmarks;he found them on the bright green grass, and in the moist sand, andthere where the little streams ran purling down into the sea. In andout, in and out, and among the bushes where the honey-creeper hung,he went looking for her. At last, far off, in the sunshine, he saw hergathering shells upon the sand. She was not a child now, but a woman,and the sun shone on her soft brown hair, and in her white dress she putthe shells she gathered. She was stooping, but when she heard his stepshe stood up, holding her skirt close about her, and waited for hiscoming. One hand she put in his, and together they walked on over theglittering sand and pink sea-shells; and they heard the leaves talking,and they heard the waters babbling on their way to the sea, and theyheard the sea singing to itself, singing, singing.
At last they came to a place where was a long reach of pure white sand;there she stood still, and dropped on to the sand one by one theshells that she had gathered. Then she looked up into his face with herbeautiful eyes. She said nothing; but she lifted one hand and laid itsoftly on his forehead; the other she laid on his heart.
With a cry of suppressed agony Waldo sprung from the bed, flung open theupper half of the door, and leaned out, breathing heavily.
Great God! it might be only a dream, but the pain was very real,as though a knife ran through his heart, as though some treacherousmurderer crept on him in the dark! The strong man drew his breath like afrightened woman.
"Only a dream, but the pain was very real," he muttered, as he pressedhis right hand upon his breast. Then he folded his arms on the door, andstood looking out into the starlight.
The dream was with him still; the woman who was his friend was notseparated from him by years--only that very night he had seen her. Helooked up into the night sky that all his life long had mingled itselfwith his existence. There were a thousand faces that he loved lookingdown at him, a thousand stars in their glory, in crowns, and circles,and solitary grandeur. To the man they were not less dear than to theboy they had been not less mysterious; yet he looked up at them andshuddered; at last turned away from them with horror. Such countlessmultitudes stretching out far into space, and yet not in one of them allwas she! Though he searched through them all, to the furthest, faintestpoint of light, nowhere should he ever say, "She is here!" Tomorrow'ssun would rise and gild the world's mountains, and shine into itsthousand valleys; it would set and the stars creep out again. Year afteryear, century after century, the old changes of nature would go on, dayand night, summer and winter, seed-time and harvest; but in none of themall would she have part!
He shut the door to keep out their hideous shining, and because thedark was intolerable lit a candle, and paced the little room, faster andfaster yet. He saw before him the long ages of eternity that would rollon, on, on, and never bring her. She would exist no more. A dark mistfilled the little room.
"Oh, little hand! oh, little voice! oh, little form!" he cried; "oh,little soul that walked with mine! oh, little soul, that looked sofearlessly down into the depths, do you exist no more for ever--forall time?" He cried more bitterly: "It is for this hour--this--that menblind reason, and crush out thought! For this hour--this, this--theybarter truth and knowledge, take any lie, any creed, so it doesnot whisper to them of the dead that they are dead! Oh, God! for aHereafter!"
Pain made his soul weak; it cried for the old faith. They are the tearsthat fall into the new-made grave that cement the power of the priest.For the cry of the soul that loves and loses is this, only this: "Bridgeover Death; blend the Here with the Hereafter; cause the mortal to robehimself in immortality; let me not say of my Dead that it is dead! Iwill believe all else, bear all else, endure all else!"
Muttering to himself, Waldo walked with bent head, the mist in his eyes.
To the soul's wild cry for its own there are many answers. He began tothink of them. Was not there one of them all from which he might suckone drop of comfort?
"You shall see her again," says the Christian, the true Bible Christian."Yes, you shall see her again. 'And I saw the dead, great and small,stand before God. And the books were opened, and the dead were judgedfrom those things which were written in the books. And whosoever was notfound written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire, whichis the second death.' Yes; you shall see her again. She died so--withher knee unbent, with her hand unraised, with a prayer unuttered, in thepride of her intellect and the strength of her youth. She loved and shewas loved; but she said no prayer to God; she cried for no mercy; sherepented of no sin! Yes; you shall see her again."
In his bitterness Waldo laughed low:
Ah, he had long ceased to hearken to the hellish voice.
But yet another speaks.
"You shall see her again," said the nineteenth-century Christian, deepinto whose soul modern unbelief and thought have crept, though he knowsit not. He it is who uses his Bible as the pearl-fishers use theirshells, sorting out gems from refuse; he sets his pearls after hisown fashion, and he sets them well. "Do not fear," he says; "hell andjudgment are not. God is love. I know that beyond this blue sky aboveus is a love as wide-spreading over all. The All-Father will show her toyou again; not spirit only--the little hands, the little feet you loved,you shall lie down and kiss them if you will. Christ arose, and dideat and drink, so shall she arise. The dead, all the dead, raisedincorruptible! God is love. You shall see her again."
It is a heavenly song, this of the nineteenth-century Christian. Aman might dry his tears to listen to it, but for this one thing--Waldomuttered to himself confusedly:
"The thing I loved was a woman proud and young; it had a mother once,who, dying, kissed her little baby, and prayed God that she might see itagain. If it had lived the loved thing would itself have had a son, who,when he closed the weary eyes and smoothed the wrinkled forehead of hismother, would have prayed God to see that old face smile again in theHereafter. To the son heaven will be no heaven if the sweet worn faceis not in one of the choirs; he will look for it through the phalanx ofGod's glorified angels; and the youth will look for the maid, and themother for the baby. 'And whose then shall she be at the resurrection ofthe dead?'"
"Ah, God! ah, God! a beautiful dream," he cried; "but can any one dreamit not sleeping?"
Waldo paced on, moaning in agony and longing.
> He heard the Transcendentalist's high answer.
"What have you to do with flesh, the gross and miserable garment inwhich spirit hides itself? You shall see her again. But the hand, thefoot, the forehead you loved, you shall see no more. The loves, thefears, the frailties that are born with the flesh, with the flesh theyshall die. Let them die! There is that in man that cannot die--a seed,a germ an embryo, a spiritual essence. Higher than she was on earth, asthe tree is higher than the seed, the man than the embryo, so shall youbehold her; changed, glorified!"
High words, ringing well; they are the offering of jewels to the hungry,of gold to the man who dies for bread. Bread is corruptible, gold isincorruptible; bread is light, gold is heavy; bread is common, gold israre; but the hungry man will barter all your mines for one morsel ofbread. Around God's throne there may be choirs and companies of angels,cherubim and seraphim, rising tier above tier, but not for one of themall does the soul cry aloud. Only perhaps for a little human woman fullof sin, that it once loved.
"Change is death, change is death!" he cried. "I want no angel, onlyshe; no holier and no better, with all her sins upon her, so give her meor give me nothing!"
And, truly, does not the heart love its own with the strongest passionfor their very frailties? Heaven might keep its angels if men were butleft to men.
"Change is death," he cried, "change is death! Who dares to say the bodynever dies, because it turns again to grass and flowers? And yetthey dare to say the spirit never dies, because in space some strangeunearthly being may have sprung up upon its ruins. Leave me! Leave me!"he cried in frantic bitterness. "Give me back what I have lost, or giveme nothing."
For the soul's fierce cry for immortality is this--only this: Return tome after death the thing as it was before. Leave me in the Hereafter thebeing that I am today. Rob me of the thoughts, the feelings, the desiresthat are my life, and you have left nothing to take. Your immortality isannihilation, your Hereafter is a lie.
Waldo flung open the door, and walked out into the starlight, hispain-stricken thoughts ever driving him on as he paced there.
"There must be a Hereafter because man longs for it!" he whispered. "Isnot all life from the cradle to the grave one long yearning for thatwhich we never touch? There must be a Hereafter because we cannot thinkof any end to life. Can we think of a beginning? Is it easier to say'I was not' than to say 'I shall not be'? And yet, where were we ninetyyears ago? Dreams, dreams! Ah, all dreams and lies! No ground anywhere."
He went back into the cabin and walked there. Hour after hour passed,and he was dreaming.
For, mark you, men will dream; the most that can be asked of them is butthat the dream be not in too glaring discord with the thing they know.He walked with bent head.
All dies, all dies! the roses are red with the matter that once reddenedthe cheek of the child; the flowers bloom the fairest on the last year'sbattleground; the work of death's finger cunningly wreathed over is atthe heart of all things, even of the living.
Death's finger is everywhere. The rocks are built up of a life that was.Bodies, thoughts, and loves die: from where springs that whisper to thetiny soul of man, "You shall not die." Ah, is there no truth of whichthis dream is shadow?
He fell into perfect silence. And, at last, as he walked there with hisbent head, his soul passed down the steps of contemplation into thatvast land where there is always peace; that land where the soul, gazinglong, loses all consciousness of its little self, and almost feels itshand on the old mystery of Universal unity that surrounds it.
"No death, no death," he muttered; "there is that which neverdies--which abides. It is but the individual that perishes, the wholeremains. It is the organism that vanishes, the atoms are there. It isbut the man that dies, the Universal Whole of which he is part reworkshim into its inmost self. Ah, what matter that man's day be short!--thatthe sunrise sees him, and the sunset sees his grave; that of which heis but the breath has breathed him forth and drawn him back again. Thatabides--we abide."
For the little soul that cries aloud for continued personal existencefor itself and its beloved, there is no help. For the soul which knowsitself no more as a unit, but as a part of the Universal Unity of whichthe Beloved also is a part; which feels within itself the throb of theUniversal Life; for that soul there is no death.
"Let us die, beloved, you and I, that we may pass on forever through theUniversal Life! In that deep world of contemplation all fierce desiresdie out, and peace comes down." He, Waldo, as he walked there, saw nomore the world that was about him; cried out no more for the thing thathe had lost. His soul rested. Was it only John, think you, who saw theheavens open? The dreamers see it every day.
Long years before the father had walked in the little cabin, andseen choirs of angels, and a prince like unto men, but clothed inimmortality.
The son's knowledge was not as the father's, therefore the dream wasnew-tinted, but the sweetness was all there, the infinite peace that menfind not in the little cankered kingdom of the tangible. The bars ofthe real are set close about us; we cannot open our wings but they arestruck against them, and drop bleeding. But, when we glide between thebars into the great unknown beyond, we may sail forever in the gloriousblue, seeing nothing but our own shadows.
So age succeeds age, and dream succeeds dream, and of the joy of thedreamer no man knoweth but he who dreameth.
Our fathers had their dream; we have ours; the generation that followswill have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist.
Chapter 2.XIV. Waldo Goes Out to Sit in the Sunshine.
It had been a princely day. The long morning had melted slowly into arich afternoon. Rains had covered the karoo with a heavy coat of greenthat hid the red earth everywhere. In the very chinks of the stone wallsdark green leaves hung out, and beauty and growth had crept even intothe beds of the sandy furrows and lined them with weeds. On the brokensod walls of the old pigsty chick-weeds flourished, and ice-plantslifted heir transparent leaves. Waldo was at work in the wagon-houseagain. He was making a kitchen table for Em. As the long curls gatheredin heaps before his plane, he paused for an instant now and again tothrow one down to a small naked nigger, who had crept from itsmother, who stood churning in the sunshine, and had crawled into thewagon-house.
From time to time the little animal lifted its fat hand as it expecteda fresh shower of curls; till Doss, jealous of his master's noticing anyother small creature but himself, would catch the curl in his mouth androll the little Kaffer over in the sawdust, much to that small animal'scontentment. It was too lazy an afternoon to be really ill-natured, soDoss satisfied himself with snapping at the little nigger's fingers,and sitting on him till he laughed. Waldo, as he worked, glanced down atthem now and then, and smiled; but he never looked out across the plain.He was conscious without looking of that broad green earth; it made hiswork pleasant to him. Near the shadow at the gable the mother of thelittle nigger stood churning. Slowly she raised and let fall the stickin her hands, murmuring to herself a sleepy chant such as her peoplelove; it sounded like the humming of far-off bees.
A different life showed itself in the front of the house, where TantSannie's cart stood ready inspanned and the Boer-woman herself sat inthe front room drinking coffee.
She had come to visit her stepdaughter, probably for the last time, asshe now weighed two hundred and sixty pounds, and was not easily ableto move. On a chair sat her mild young husband nursing the baby--apudding-faced, weak-eyed child.
"You take it and get into the cart with it," said Tant Sannie. "What doyou want here, listening to our woman's talk?"
The young man arose, and meekly went out with the baby.
"I'm very glad you are going to be married, my child," said Tant Sannie,as she drained the last drop from her coffee cup. "I wouldn't say sowhile that boy was here, it would make him too conceited; but marriageis the finest thing in the world. I've been at it three times, and if itpleased God to take this husband from me I should have another. There'snothing lik
e it, my child; nothing."
"Perhaps it might not suit all people, at all times, as well as it suitsyou, Tant Sannie," said Em. There was a little shade of weariness in thevoice.
"Not suit every one!" said Tant Sannie. "If the beloved Redeemer didn'tmean men to have wives what did He make women for? That's what I say.If a woman's old enough to marry, and doesn't, she's sinning against theLord--it's a wanting to know better than Him. What, does she think theLord took all that trouble in making her for nothing? It's evident Hewants babies, otherwise why does He send them? Not that I've done muchin that way myself," said Tant Sannie, sorrowfully; "but I've done mybest."
She rose with some difficulty from her chair, and began moving slowlytoward the door.
"It's a strange thing," she said, "but you can't love a man till you'vehad a baby by him. Now there's that boy there, when we were firstmarried if he only sneezed in the night I boxed his ears; now if he letshis pipe-ash come on my milk-cloths I don't think of laying a fingeron him. There's nothing like being married," said Tant Sannie, as shepuffed toward the door. "If a woman's got a baby and a husband she'sgot the best things the Lord can give her; if only the baby doesn't haveconvulsions. As for a husband, it's very much the same who one has. Somemen are fat, and some men are thin; some men drink brandy, and some mendrink gin; but it all comes to the same thing in the end; it's all one.A man's a man, you know."
Here they came upon Gregory, who was sitting in the shade before thehouse. Tant Sannie shook hands with him.
"I'm glad you're going to get married," she said. "I hope you'll have asmany children in five years as a cow has calves, and more too. I thinkI'll just go and have a look at your soap-pot before I start," she said,turning to Em. "Not that I believe in this new plan of putting sodain the pot. If the dear Father had meant soda to be put into soap whatwould He have made milk-bushes for, and stuck them all over the veld asthick as lambs in the lambing season?"
She waddled off after Em in the direction of the built-in soap-pot,leaving Gregory as they found him, with his dead pipe lying on the benchbeside him, and his blue eyes gazing out far across the flat, like onewho sits on the seashore watching that which is fading, fading from him.
Against his breast was a letter found in the desk addressed to himself,but never posted. It held only four words: "You must marry Em." He woreit in a black bag round his neck. It was the only letter she had everwritten to him.
"You see if the sheep don't have the scab this year!" said Tant Sannieas she waddled after Em. "It's with all these new inventions that thewrath of God must fall on us. What were the children of Israel punishedfor, if it wasn't for making a golden calf? I may have my sins, but Ido remember the tenth commandment: 'Honour thy father and mother that itmay be well with thee, and that thou mayest live long in the land whichthe Lord thy God giveth thee!' It's all very well to say we honour them,and then to be finding out things that they never knew, and doing thingsin a way that they never did them! My mother boiled soap with bushes,and I will boil soap with bushes. If the wrath of God is to fall uponthis land," said Tant Sannie, with the serenity of conscious virtue, "itshall not be through me."
"Let them make their steam-wagons and their fire-carriages; let them goon as though the dear Lord didn't know what he was about when He gavehorses and oxen legs--the destruction of the Lord will follow them. Idon't know how such people read their Bibles. When do we hear of Mosesor Noah riding in a railway? The Lord sent fire-carriages out of heavenin those days: there's no chance of His sending them for us if we goon in this way," said Tant Sannie sorrowfully, thinking of the splendidchance which this generation had lost.
Arrived at the soap-pot she looked over into it thoughtfully.
"Depend upon it you'll get the itch, or some other disease; the blessingof the Lord'll never rest upon it," said the Boer-woman. Then suddenlyshe broke forth. "And she eighty-two, and goats, and rams, and eightthousand morgen, and the rams real angora, and two thousand sheep, and ashort-horn bull," said Tant Sannie, standing upright and planting a handon each hip.
Em looked at her in silent wonder. Had connubial bliss and the joys ofmotherhood really turned the old Boer-woman's head?
"Yes," said Tant Sannie; "I had almost forgotten to tell you. By theLord if I had him here! We were walking to church last Sacrament Sunday,Piet and I. Close in front of us with old Tant Trana, with dropsy andcancer, and can't live eight months. Walking by her was something withits hands under its coat-tails, flap, flap, flap; and its chin in theair, and a stick-up collar, and the black hat on the very back of thehead. I knew him! 'Who's that?' I asked. 'The rich Englishman that TantTrana married last week.' 'Rich Englishman! I'll rich Englishman him,' Isaid; 'I'll tell Tant Trana a thing or two. My fingers were just in hislittle white curls. If it hadn't been the blessed Sacrament, he wouldn'thave walked so sourka, sourka, sourka, any more. But I thought. Waittill I've had it, and then--. But he, sly fox, son of Satan, seed of theAmalekite, he saw me looking at him in the church.
"The blessed Sacrament wasn't half over when he takes Tant Trana by thearm, and out they go. I clap my baby down to its father, and I go afterthem. But," said Tant Sannie, regretfully, "I couldn't get up to them;I am too fat. When I got to the corner he was pulling Tant Trana upinto the cart. 'Tant Trana,' I said, 'you've married a Kaffer's dog,a Hottentot's brakje.' I hadn't any more breath. He winked at me; hewinked at ME," said Tant Sannie, her sides shaking with indignation,"first with one eye, and then with the other, and then drove away. Childof the Amalekite!" said Tant Sannie, "if it hadn't been the blessedSacrament. Lord, Lord, Lord!"
Here the little Bush-girl came running to say that the horses wouldstand no longer, and still breathing out vengeance against her oldadversary she laboured toward the cart. Shaking hands and affectionatelykissing Em, she was with some difficulty drawn up. Then slowly the cartrolled away, the good Boer-woman putting her head out between the sailsto smile and nod.
Em stood watching it for a time, then as the sun dazzled her eyes sheturned away. There was no use in going to sit with Gregory! he likedbest sitting there alone, staring across the the green karoo; and tillthe maid had done churning there was nothing to do; so Em walked awayto the wagon-house, and climbed on to the end of Waldo's table, andsat there, swinging one little foot slowly to and fro, while the woodencurls from the plane heaped themselves up against her black print dress.
"Waldo," she said at last, "Gregory has given me the money he got forthe wagon and oxen, and I have fifty pounds besides that once belongedto some one. I know what they would have liked to have done with it. Youmust take it and go to some place and study for a year or two."
"No, little one, I will not take it," he said, as he planed slowly away;"the time was when I would have been very grateful to any one who wouldhave given me a little money, a little help, a little power of gainingknowledge. But now, I have gone so far alone I may go on to the end. Idon't want it, little one."
She did not seem pained at his refusal, but swung her foot to and fro,the little old wrinkled forehead more wrinkled up than ever.
"Why is it always so, Waldo, always so?" she said; "we long for things,and long for them, and pray for them; we would give all we have to comenear to them, but we never reach them. Then at last, too late, justwhen we don't want them any more, when all the sweetness is taken out ofthem, then they come. We don't want them then," she said, foldingtheir hands resignedly on her little apron. After a while she added: "Iremember once, very long ago, when I was a very little girl, my motherhad a workbox full of coloured reels. I always wanted to play with them,but she would never let me. At last one day she said I might take thebox. I was so glad I hardly knew what to do. I ran round the house, andsat down with it on the back steps. But when I opened the box all thecottons were taken out."
She sat for a while longer, till the Kaffer maid had finished churning,and was carrying the butter toward the house. Then Em prepared to slipoff the table, but first she laid her little hand on Waldo's. He stoppedhis planing and
looked up.
"Gregory is going to the town tomorrow. He is going to give in our bansto the minister; we are going to be married in three weeks."
Waldo lifted her very gently from the table. He did not congratulateher; perhaps he thought of the empty box, but he kissed her foreheadgravely.
She walked away toward the house, but stopped when she got half-way. "Iwill bring you a glass of buttermilk when it is cool," she called out;and soon her clear voice came ringing out through the back windows asshe sang the "Blue Water" to herself, and washed the butter.
Waldo did not wait till she returned. Perhaps he had at last reallygrown weary of work; perhaps he felt the wagon-house chilly (for he hadshuddered two or three times), though this was hardly likely in thatwarm summer weather; or, perhaps, and most probably, one of his olddreaming fits had come upon him suddenly.
He put his tools together, ready for tomorrow, and walked slowly out. Atthe side of the wagon-house there was a world of bright sunshine, anda hen with her chickens was scratching among the gravel. Waldo seatedhimself near them with his back against the red-brick wall. The longafternoon was half spent, and the kopje was just beginning to cast itsshadow over the round-headed yellow flowers that grew between it and thefarmhouse. Among the flowers the white butterflies hovered and on theold kraal mounds three white kids gambolled, and at the door of one ofthe huts an old grey-headed Kaffer-woman sat on the ground mending hermats. A balmy, restful peacefulness seemed to reign everywhere. Even theold hen seemed well satisfied. She scratched among the stones and calledto her chickens when she found a treasure; and all the while tucked toherself with intense inward satisfaction.
Waldo, as he sat with his knees drawn up to his chin and his armsfolded on them, looked at it all and smiled. An evil world, a deceitful,treacherous, mirage-like world it might be; but a lovely world for allthat, and to sit there gloating in the sunlight was perfect. It wasworth having been a little child, and having cried and prayed so onemight sit there. He moved his hands as though he were washing them inthe sunshine. There will always be something worth living for whilethere are shimmery afternoons. Waldo chuckled with intense inwardsatisfaction as the old hen had done--she, over the insects and thewarmth; he, over the old brick walls, and the haze, and the littlebushes. Beauty is God's wine, with which He recompenses the souls thatlove Him; He makes them drunk.
The fellow looked, and at last stretched out one hand to a littleice-plant that grew on the sod wall of the sty; not as though he wouldhave picked it, but as it were in a friendly greeting. He loved it. Onelittle leaf of the ice-plant stood upright, and the sun shone throughit. He could see every little crystal cell like a drop of ice in thetransparent green, and it thrilled him.
There are only rare times when a man's soul can see Nature.
So long as any passion holds its revel there, the eyes are holden thatthey should not see her.
Go out if you will and walk alone on the hillside in the evening, but ifyour favourite child lies ill at home, or your lover comes tomorrow, orat your heart there lies a scheme for the holding of wealth, then youwill return as you went out; you will have seen nothing. For Nature,ever, like the Old Hebrew God, cries out, "Thou shalt have no other godsbefore me." Only then, when there comes a pause, a blank in your life,when the old idol is broken, when the old hope is dead, when the olddesire is crushed, then the Divine compensation of Nature is mademanifest. She shows herself to you. So near she draws you, that theblood seems to flow from her to you, through a still uncut cord: youfeel the throb of her life.
When that day comes, that you sit down broken, without one humancreature to whom you cling, with your loves the dead and theliving-dead; when the very thirst for knowledge through long-continuedthwarting has grown dull; when in the present there is no craving, andin the future no hope, then, oh, with a beneficent tenderness, Natureinfolds you.
Then the large white snow-flakes as they flutter down, softly, one byone, whisper soothingly, "Rest, poor heart, rest!" It is as though ourmother smoothed our hair, and we are comforted.
And yellow-legged bees as they hum make a dreamy lyric; and the light onthe brown stone wall is a great work of art; and the glitter through theleaves makes the pulses beat.
Well to die then; for, if you live, so surely as the years come, sosurely as the spring succeeds the winter, so surely will passions arise.They will creep back, one by one, into the bosom that has cast themforth, and fasten there again, and peace will go. Desire, ambition,and the fierce agonizing flood of love for the living they will springagain. Then Nature will draw down her veil; with all your longing youshall not be able to raise one corner; you cannot bring back thosepeaceful days. Well to die then!
Sitting there with his arms folded on his knees, and his hat sloucheddown over his face, Waldo looked out into the yellow sunshine thattinted even the very air with the colour of ripe corn, and was happy.
He was an uncouth creature with small learning, and no prospect in thefuture but that of making endless tables and stone walls, yet it seemedto him as he sat there that life was a rare and very rich thing. Herubbed his hands in the sunshine. Ah, to live on so, year after year,how well! Always in the present; letting each day glide, bringing itsown labour, and its own beauty; the gradual lighting up of the hills,night and the stars, firelight and the coals! To live on so, calmly, farfrom the paths of men; and to look at the lives of clouds and insects;to look deep into the heart of flowers, and see how lovingly the pistiland the stamens nestle there together; and to see in the thorn-pods howthe little seeds suck their life through the delicate curled-up string,and how the little embryo sleeps inside! Well, how well, to sit so onone side taking no part in the world's life; but when great men blossominto books looking into those flowers also, to see how the world of mentoo opens beautifully, leaf after leaf. Ah! life is delicious; well tolive long, and see the darkness breaking, and the day coming! The daywhen soul shall not thrust back soul that would come to it; when menshall not be driven to seek solitude because of the crying-out of theirhearts for love and sympathy. Well to live long and see the new timebreaking. Well to live long; life is sweet, sweet, sweet! In his breastpocket, where of old the broken slate used to be, there was now a littledancing shoe of his friend who was sleeping. He could feel it when hefolded his arm tight against his breast; and that was well also. Hedrew his hat lower over his eyes and sat so motionless that the chickensthought he was asleep, and gathered closer around him. One even venturedto peck at his boot, but he ran away quickly. Tiny, yellow fellow thathe was, he knew that men were dangerous; even sleeping they mightawake. But Waldo did not sleep, and coming back from his sunshiny dream,stretched out his hand for the tiny thing to mount. But the chicken eyedthe hand, and then ran off to hide under its mother's wing, and frombeneath it it sometimes put out its round head to peep at the greatfigure sitting there. Presently its brothers ran off after a littlewhite moth and it ran out to join them; and when the moth fluttered awayover their heads they stood looking up disappointed, and then ran backto their mother.
Waldo through his half-closed eyes looked at them. Thinking, fearing,craving, those tiny sparks of brother life, what were they, so realthere in that old yard on that sunshiny afternoon? A few years--wherewould they be? Strange little brother spirits! He stretched his handtoward them, for his heart went out to them; but not one of the littlecreatures came nearer him, and he watched them gravely for a time;then he smiled, and began muttering to himself after his old fashion.Afterward he folded his arms upon his knees, and rested his forehead onthem. And so he sat there in the yellow sunshine, muttering, muttering,muttering, to himself.
It was not very long after when Em came out at the back door with atowel thrown across her head, and in her hand a cup of milk.
"Ah," she said, coming close to him, "he is sleeping now. He will findit when he wakes, and be glad of it."
She put it down upon the ground beside him. The mother-hen was at workstill among the stones, but the chickens had climbed about him and
wereperching on him. One stood upon his shoulder, and rubbed its little headsoftly against his black curls: another tried to balance itself on thevery edge of the old felt hat. One tiny fellow stood upon his hand, andtried to crow; another had nestled itself down comfortably on the oldcoat-sleeve and gone to sleep there.
Em did not drive them away; but she covered the glass softly at hisside. "He will wake soon," she said, "and be glad of it."
But the chickens were wiser.
The Story of an African Farm Page 28