by C. A. Frazer
CHAPTER XIX.
The quiet days were passing slowly. Bertram's wound did not heal, andhis strength grew less. The unseen powers that throng the air and watchour ways arranged about him the phantasmagoria of dissolution. It wasthe waning of the moon. A tender mist, which had long veiled a mountaincrest, now unfolded its depths and was wafted away. A star shot acrossthe welkin and was no more seen. Summer blossoms faded with the dyingseason. The music of the pine-boughs had a more melancholy cadence, andbirds of passage took their flight. Atma marked these things, and oftenwithdrew to lament.
One evening they watched the shadows lengthening. Atma's heart wasoppressed, but Bertram looked on the shifting scene with happy undauntedsmile. In voice pathetic only from mortal weakness and strong withimmortality he said:
"When mists and dreams and shadows flee, And happy hills so far and high Bend low in benedicite, I know the break of day is nigh.
Thus have I watched in daisied mead A grayer heaven bending low, And heard the music of a brook In meet response more softly flow, Until at mystic signal given From realm entranced the spell was riven, The sunbeams glanced, The wavelets danced, And gladness spread from earth to heaven.
This little flower Right bravely blooming at my feet So dainty, sweet, Has missed the spirit of the hour. But stay, the tender calyx thrills, It feels the silence of the hills, Behold it droops, in haste to be At one with that hushed company."
_Atma:_
"Not day, but night, beloved friend, Long doleful night, The shadows of the eve portend."
_Bertram:_
"Watcher unseeing! what of the night! 'Tis past and gone. I know th' advance and joy of light! Look how for it all things put on Such hues as in comparison The earth and sky to darkness turn, Hues of the sard, and chrysolite And sapphire herald in the morn."
_Atma:_
"Ah! woe is me for day so quickly past, For morning fled, and noontide unexpressed."
_Bertram:_
"The subtly-quickening breath of morn my inmost being is borne, And I behold th' unearthly train Of solemn splendours that pertain To seraph state, Such as our glories symbolize. They sweep in countless bright convoys Athwart my blissful view, they seem Completion of all pleasure known Or loved, and of our fairest dream End and interpretation."
_Atma:_
"Let be, my friend; so it be morn to thee I make no moan, though thy day's dawn shall be Night of desertion and lament to me."
CHAPTER XX.
Death, whether it be day or night, overtook Bertram in the mountainfastness, and Atma knew once more that the human soul is lonely, whichhe had been fain to doubt or deny in the pleasant delusion offriendship. He lived alone, and, after a while, with returning mentalhealth, he sometimes gave way to bitter reflection on these, his wasteddays, though knowing himself unable still to take up the broken threadof active existence. But, growing stronger, he was at last able toperceive that this apparently barren season was the best harvest time ofhis life, for, adrift from human ties and from religions, he was at lastalone with God. His battles were sore to fight, the solid earth seemedgone from beneath his feet, and the heavens were become an illusion.There was a time when he cried out that "all men are liars," as we haveall cried, but the instinct of the soul happily arrested him then.Happily, for it is strangely true that he who loses faith in man willsoon lose faith in God. It is as if the great heart of the Race,recoiling from suicidal impulse, warned the individual from treasonagainst his kind--a suggestion of the unity underlying all createdthings. This the best religions have known, and have founded on it a lawthat he who loves God must love his brother also. Apprehending this,Atma grew again in heart to forgive his fellowmen who had so sorelysinned against him, and, musing on their ways he pitied them, and knewthat the true attitude towards humanity is one of pity. He pitied men intheir crimes, in their unbeliefs, and in their faiths, and presently hesaw in these faiths which he had decried a spiritual beauty. His owncreed, grown hateful to him as the vainest of delusions, reasserted itsclaims to reverence, and the voice that had cried to his childhood outof the desert of silence and mystery that surrounds every human soulspoke to him again as a voice of inspiration. Every man's faith is thefaith of his fathers, the faith learned on his mother's knee. He, who,increasing knowledge, discerns the different degrees of darkness thatcharacterize our religious theories, and chooses for himself one fromamong them, increases his soul's sorrow, for our light is darkness, andGod is not to be found for searching. "It is not by our feet or changeof place that men leave Thee nor return unto Thee." The quietness ofhabit is more conducive to spirituality than the progress whose gain isso infinitesimal, and whose heavy price is the destruction of the habitof faith. It is better to believe a falsehood than to doubt a truth. Thehabitual attitude of the soul, its upward gaze is more important thanthe quality of the veil through which it discerns the Eternal. Duringthe days when Atma lived without the religion which was so mortal thatit died in his heart because he found that its friends were false, heknew God, for this veil was removed, and when the weakness of humannature again demanded the support of habit and formula, he turned to themystic rites and prayers endeared and hallowed by association, but heknew now that God is a spirit, for spirit with spirit had met. Asilence, born of great reverence, rested upon him, and he no moreclamoured to save the world. The fall of the Khalsa no longer meant thedownfall of God, and in time even the heartache for the vanquishment ofhis early dreams disappeared.
And the memory of his love? Love is transient, but frozen lips andclosed eyes can speak with a power unknown to the living, and the powerabides to a longer day than the living voice had controlled. And so thenight of his mourning was long, but the longest night has a dawn, and itseems to me that the saddest thing I can say in ending my tale is thatthe morning dawned and grief was forgotten. It is sad that we forgetjoys; it is sadder to forget sorrows.
And so this story of religion that called itself heavenly, and love thatwas most mortal, is over. Atma had had of earth's most beautiful things,
"O Love, Religion, Music--all That's left of Eden upon earth,"--
but no--Love and Religion are not left.
THE END.