by Beech, Mark
The god laughed cheerfully, and Gordon said: “I do not wish to seem at all impolite, but it is certainly a little strange that you, of all others, should be the only survivor.”
“I don’t wonder at your surprise,” said the god. “The worshippers of Apollo are able to rise to an airy height which I can hardly conceive; and, like the man who went up to heaven on a beetle, they think that we poor children of earth look very small from that distance. Nevertheless, it almost seems as if there must be some everlasting quality about my worshippers and me. For I am certainly alive, and a god lives only so long as he has worshippers.”
“And who are his worshippers?” asked Gordon.
“Those who are like him,” said the god.
“But what, then, is the everlasting quality of which you spoke?”
The god sat silent for a time, with the puzzled look of a ploughboy when the parson inquires after his spiritual condition.
“Can you imagine,” he answered at length, “a quality which is common to wild animals and children and the poor? shall we add women, too? perhaps it were wiser not.”
“I can indeed dimly apprehend some such quality,” said Gordon, “but I could give it no name.”
“Neither can I give it a name,” said the god, “any more than you can give a name to your own soul. I can but repeat what once the Great Mother told me. There are, she said, certain classes of beings which seem to stand at the meeting-place of many far-reaching and divergent powers. They appear to be haunted by dim associations, unconscious relationships. The fibres of their roots seem still to spring from the womb of earth, and with her breasts they are fed. But on another side they are no less full of promises of something beyond the rest of nature, as though they were always reaching out towards mysterious powers which may never be realised. As a reasonable fact we know there are certain things they will not and cannot do. But if they did them, it would be absurd to feel much surprise. Those two ponies on which you and your friend rode up from the village—how full of zeal and rivalry the younger of them was! trembling with energy, maddened by reproof, exalted by praise, dashing hot-blooded into every difficulty, and struggling through it with tempestuous impatience. How small was the difference between him and a boy warrior, the glory of his men, whom his passionate mistakes so often lead into death! And the old mare, so wise and humble, trustworthy at every step—was she not a nurse of ninety years? That shepherd, too, whom you met on the way; night and day he lives with his flock; did he not seem to be one with the winds and hills? It would not have seemed strange if his sheep had said, Good morning, and he had bleated.”
“It is an old conceit of satirists,” said Gordon, “that many men would more fully express their emotions by neighing, or howling, or braying.”
“Ah, yes, those satirists!” said the god; “they were always much too clever for humble people like me. But let me rather tell you of a sight I once saw when the Great Mother suffered me to look into the inmost recess of her strange old workshop. She was standing, with a large apron on, before a kind of kneading-trough, and was fashioning mortal things. On one side of her, quicker than thought, flew a current of a brilliant blue element, hardly denser than air. On the other moved a sluggish and heavy stream of dark-red mud. And from it issued the fragrance of a fresh-ploughed field after rain. Into these two streams the Mother kept dipping a hand on each side, and clutching up random quantities; but the greater part of both went by unused, and what became of it I could not see. After each dip the Mother brought her hands sharply together, and the two substances rushed into each other with a cry of joy, and became joined—oh, more closely than ever lovers were! She then began to mould them into shape in her trough. But they, in their passionate desire for living, continually thwarted her skill, so that in despair she often let them have it their own way. For she was in much haste, grudging every wave of the streams that passed unused. I saw her making a second Achilles, but his struggles to begin life so delayed her that she just finished him off as a wolf-hound, keen of eye and swift of foot. Another Cleopatra, too, was almost moulded, when she writhed away without her legs and arms, and lived alone in an island jungle as a magical white snake. The legs and arms were used for another woman, who drove men mad, and nobody knew why. And sometimes, after the Mother had begun upon an animal, the humour would take her to convert it into a man, whence come those people whom we naturally call bearish, or swinish, or apish, or proud as peacocks. But as for those whom, according to her intent, she succeeded in making into men in spite of their wrigglings, I observed that at times she appeared especially pleased with her results, like a dyer when he has hit just the right proportions for his dye. For then the two substances in their passionate union were converted into a kind of warmblooded marble, and out of that she made the most excellent sorts of man.”
“Such as the poets, I suppose?” said Gordon.
“One or two of them, perhaps, were poets,” answered the god: “but there were others, nor were they uncommon, though often they slipped away unnoticed into some unexplored recess of time. Whether or not they did anything memorable appeared to be merely a matter of circumstance; for all that they did sprang from the very composition of their nature, so that their greatest achievements were in fact no less natural than their eating and drinking. About them hung a sense of security and assurance, as of a sunshiny day, and they acted not in compliance with maxims but under an impulse derived from the wholesome admixture of their own being, like the divine instinct which guides a dog or pigeon home without the aid of Fingerposts or governmental charts.”
“If all were like that,” said Gordon, “we should be a community of saints indeed!”
“Oh, don’t be too sure!” said the god, smiling. “One or two saints were certainly of this kind, but all were not saints. Only, whether their deeds were good or evil, there was something inevitable and simple about them, as about the powers of nature, whether destructive or benign. However, it was not of them I wished to speak, but of two other kinds in whom I perceived every degree and variety of being, except that all fell short of that ultimate grace. For it would often happen that, when the Mother clutched a handful of the flowing mud, some would ooze through her fingers and be lost. Then she would sigh over the resulting forms, though they were of a strange and fantastic beauty, and seemed even to shine with a delicate light of their own, like sea-things two or three days dead. Indeed, I was quite overcome by their elegance and charm, for they tripped away into the world with an airy step, and every moment I expected to see them take flight and hover down the path like butterflies. So in my wonder I asked the Mother why she sighed over them. But she was trying to squeeze some heavy lumps of mud into shape, and answered: ‘I can hardly tell you now, for I’m busy knocking a little decency into these silly monsters. But if you look at those pretty creatures a little closer you will find they are like bricks made without straw, having little constancy and endurance. And though they are now as gay as gossamers, and congratulate themselves aloud on their superiority to these other queer beings of mine, their fate is not really enviable.’
“So I watched awhile, and found that her words came true. For on reaching the harsh atmosphere of the upper world these delicate figures appeared like people who have ventured abroad in the cold too thinly clad. They shivered at every breath, and smarted even when nothing touched them. The common sights and sounds of earth appeared to them all too rude and crude. Over some, indeed, poverty extended a covering of its own, and the encrusting mire of daily necessity served as skin and cloak. But the most contrived to avoid poverty, and if common dirt touched them they carefully scraped it off, leaving their flesh quivering and sore. And some were so deluded as confidently to maintain their own super-excellence, and to publish guides whereby others might strive to approach it. Like the fox which had lost its tail, they proclaimed it the duty of everybody to become like themselves, and they dared to pity those who had not reached that state. Therefore they called themselves friends of man,
but took care to retain a scrupulous distance between themselves and the objects of their friendship. Others, standing more decidedly aloof, choked up the vulgar channels of sense by delicious artifices, like the crew of Ulysses, though it was not Sirens that they feared. They devoted themselves mainly to the practice of a quality called Intellectuality, about which people like me may hardly venture to speak. Indeed, their solemnity much impressed me, and, like the initiated they seemed to possess some inner secret which gave a value to their words and ways; for it is impious to suppose them created in vain.
“But in the end, even in their case, I learnt the reason of the Mother’s sighs, seeing that, for want of due admixture with the earthly loam, the glimmering blue substance itself began to grow thin and pale, being lost in air, or fading like a dyed cloth too often washed. The best and unhappiest among them, conscious of the native beauty of their souls, but shrinking from this boisterous world, turned to contemplation of themselves and criticism of their own growth or decay. Thus the soul was diverted to devour its own substance with a kind of lustful appetite, amidst unimaginable suffering, and the day of death alone put an end to the torment. So far-seeing and subtle did they become that in face of choice they could hesitate for ever. Many a one have I seen, at the meeting of two suburban roads, bewailing his lot and crying: ‘Here I stand. I can do either. The devil damn me!’ No poison of Colchis or Median torture was ever so cruel as the suffering of such hesitation, and the sharpness of the pain did not deaden the gnawings of a vanity unappeased as the eagle of Prometheus. Nevertheless, unlike the cheery crowd which flings away life for a straw, the victims clung to it with pitiless anxiety, shuddering at hardship or danger. And so, with pain and disgust they trod their own blood in the wine-press, and prayed that their torment might never cease.”
“It is surely,” said Gordon, “some circle of hell you describe, and not a race of the living.”
“I describe what I saw,” answered the god; “and yet it is perhaps hard for me to be kindly towards them; for between them and my worshippers there is war without herald.”
“Again I ask you,” said Gordon, “who these worshippers of yours may be?”
The god smiled to himself, and gently rubbed his shaggy legs together.
“Ah,” he said, “I have told you that my worshippers are like myself; but indeed I do not know whether I ought not rather to call myself the worshipper of them. In love, you know, it is hard to say which is the lover and which the beloved. And so it is with the gods and their worshippers. And, as a lover pines when his mistress is far away, or is debarred from him by some separable spite, so that he can hardly be said to live till he can again touch the hem of her garment, so should I pine and wither without those quaint lovers of mine; and if they were to cease altogether, I should necessarily die. But it is impious to have such fears, though to some people my fears are hopes.”
“What fears or what hopes?” asked Gordon.
“Let us go back,” said the god, “to the Great Mother at her kneading-trough. You remember, we left her laughing over some lumps of mud, into which she was trying to knock a little decency. In their making it appeared that part of the blue ethereal substance had streamed away like smoke, and vanished before the union was complete. Grotesque and ungainly creatures they were, moving heavily along, very close to the ground, from which, in fact, they seldom dared to look up for fear of missing their sustenance. Mingled with them swarmed the insects and water-things and birds, and wild beasts innumerable. All had a share in the ethereal substance, but in some, as in slugs and shellfish, it was almost hidden, whereas in the others it burnt and shone with a kind of longing, like a prisoner behind bars. And whenever I saw that look, whether in the eye of rat or bird or lion, a strange affection possessed me, as though the creatures were parts of myself, and had been separated from me recently and by accident. And I could have taken them to my heart, as a girl takes her baby, only that I feared the laughter of the superior gods. But the Great Mother smiled, and said: ‘My dear Pan, if you would do me a service, continue to watch over these wild things. You see how sweet and excellently fashioned they are. Nevertheless, this will not be your greatest task.’
“And so, as the poets say, it is I who hear the shrill cries of the eagles robbed of their brood. I help the goat in her labour, and teach her to lick the kid all over with her blue tongue. I lurk in the forest when the tigers are full of love. I am in the look of the dog whom his master kicks. I count all the sorrows of the over-driven horse.”
“One would suppose,” said Gordon, “that this charge alone gave you plenty to do.”
“Yes,” said the god; “but you forget that I am both a god and a dog-of-all-work. This charge is but a small part of my labours. For, as I told you, I stand at the meeting of many ways, and each of them stretches to an invisible distance, like the high roads from Delphi, which is the navel of the earth. The same is true of my worshippers, who, as you remember, must necessarily be like me. It is as hard to find the limits on them as on my form, or to say which part is beast, which is man, and which is god. For into my especial care the Mother also delivered all those strange human figures which looked so brutish—nay, more brutish than the brutes. All of them are my working charge, and the poets were right in not limiting my loving kindness to the shepherds of these hills alone. I sit beside the fisher all night, far out at sea in his lonely boat. He is rough and heavy, twisted with wet and cold; he smells of nets and fishes’ scales; to me he is more beautiful than the great marble Poseidon of Melos. I stand with the hunter, waiting in the snow till the furry creatures pass. I know their swift pains and his joys, both. Grizzled, and dried like leather, in his old blue coat and bits of skins, he is fairer to me than naked Artemis. I am with the miner, hewing in his gallery under the earth; when the roof falls in, I hold his battered head. His mates say: ‘He wasn’t a bad sort of man; now he must be buried.’ His wife and children cry, and I cry with them, more than for dead Zeus or an assassinated king. I hold the ploughshare with the ploughman, rejoicing in the damp earth and in the man who is so like it; no perfumed Dionysus smells so sweet. I teach queer tunes to the blind piper who raises a feeble whistle in your streets; trim Apollo, for all his lyre, never woke such music. I bathe with the boys in your brown river. The police carry off their scrappy shirts and trousers. They run naked over the slimy stones, more alert than Hermes, and more eloquent. I am with the soldier on the cool morning of battle, when he eats and drinks and curses, all for the last time. Beside him, Ares was a theatrical poser. I am with the tanned woman in the field, when she makes haste to feed her child, and cannot be quick enough, till suddenly it is still. Her eyes are softer than a cow’s or Here’s. But really you will think my worshippers a most disreputable and vulgar lot, quite incapable of understanding those joys of contemplation and the rigid selection of emotions by which you set so much store.”
“That’s unfair,” said Gordon; “none but the vulgar would accuse such people of vulgarity.”
“Nay, my son,” said the god, looking kindly on him, “if I mock you, it is in self-defence. I care not, it is true, for the disdain with which your refined friends would regard me. With them I take delight in thrusting out my hoofs and displaying my goatish side. But alone, or among my worshippers, do you suppose I do not rejoice over our gleams of inexplicable reason, our consciousness of a yearning for we know not what, our moments of transforming passion, elevating us to the infinity of gods? Those translucent regions at which you aim may well have beauties and joys that we can hardly picture. I only ask to be remembered. It was the petition I sent to the old Athenians in their most pellucid air. Be not of those who from their sphere of white ideas cannot spare a glance into my world of sombre colours flecked with crimson. Is there no cause for marvel in that warm obscurity where I with my poor charges dwell amid the dust and slime of old earth? Like a torchlit cave, it is illumined with half-lights shed from rare sparkles of the eternal fire. Is it no cause for worship that, unprotecte
d in our gloom and squalor, from the midst of the daily efforts to stave off death by a little food and warmth, we who have been so long called ignoble, insensate, brutal, and depraved, should still for the most part find time for kindliness and laughter—for a sort of decency, if not beauty—and for a thing you might almost call virtue? O my son, keep your ear close against the ground, and you may still hear strange music. As in old days, when these Arcadians said I danced and sang in the valleys, you may still hear intermingled sounds of trampling and song echoing from all parts of the earth—the cries of birth and death, the rush of panic, and at times a sweet piping, ringing clear above the dirge of confused wailings and the alarms of drums. It is the wild and unpremeditated music of my children which you hear—the melody and recitative of old earth’s opera, performed from age to age by an unconscious orchestra and choir, clustered around me at that meeting-place of profound and untraceable powers which lead far backward and far onward, repellent and opposite to all seeming, but ever striving to unite into a harmony of joy and sorrow.”