 A Dream of Wild Bees by Olive Schreiner Recorded for Dreams Collection 1 Stories and Poems by Newgate Novelist This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org A Dream of Wild Bees by Olive Schreiner A mother sat alone at an open window. Through it came the voices of the children as they played under the acacia trees and the breath of the hot afternoon air. In and out of the room flew the bees, the wild bees, with their legs yellow with pollen, going to and from the acacia trees, droning all the while. She sat on a low chair before the table and dawned. She took her work from the great basket that stood before her on the table. Some lay on her knee and half covered the book that rested there. She watched the needle go in and out, and the dreary hum of the bees and the noise of the children's voices became a confused murmur in her ears as she worked slowly and more slowly. Then the bees, the long-legged wasp-like fellows who make no honey, flew closer and closer to her head, droning. Then she grew more and more drowsy, and she laid her hand with the stocking over it on the edge of the table and leaned her head upon it. And the voices of the children outside grew more and more dreamy, came now far, now near. Then she did not hear them, but she felt under her heart where the ninth child lay. Bent forward and sleeping there, with the bees flying about her head, she had a weird brain picture. She thought the bees lengthened and lengthened themselves out and became human creatures and moved round and round her. Then one came to her softly, saying, Let me lay my hand upon my side where the child sleeps. If I touch him, he shall be as I. She asked, Who are you? And he said, I am health. Whom I touch will have always the red blood dancing in his veins. He will not know weariness nor pain. Life will be a long laugh to him. No, said another, Let me touch, for I am wealth. If I touch him, material care shall not feed on him. He shall live on the blood and sinews of his fellow men, if he will, and what his eye lusts for his hand will have. He shall not know I want, and the child lay still like lead. And another said, Let me touch him, I am fame. The man I touch I lead to a high hill where all men may see him. When he dies he is not forgotten, his name rings down the centuries. Each echoes it on to his fellows. Think not to be forgotten through the ages. And the mother lay breathing steadily, but in the brain picture they pressed closer to her. Let me touch the child, said one, For I am love. If I touch him he shall not walk through life alone. In the greatest dark when he puts out his hand he shall find another hand by it. When the world is against him another shall say, You and I. And the child trembled. But another pressed close and said, Let me touch for I am talent. I can do all things that have been done before. I touch the soldier, the statesman, the thinker, and the politician who succeed, and the writer who is never before his time and never behind it. If I touch the child he shall not weep for failure. About the mother's head the bees were flying, touching her with their long tapering limbs. And in her brain picture out of the shadow of the room came one with a shallow face, deep lined, the cheeks drawn into hollows, and a mouth smiling quiveringly. He stretched out his hand, and the mother drew back and cried, Who are you? He answered nothing, and she looked up between his eyelids, and she said, What can you give the child? Health? And he said, The man I touch there wakes up in his blood a burning fever that shall lick his blood as fire. The fever that I will give him shall be cured when his life is cured. You give wealth? He shook his head. The man whom I touch when he bends to pick up gold, he sees suddenly a light over his head in the sky, while he looks up to see it the gold slips from between his fingers, or sometimes another passing takes it from them. Fame? He answered, likely not. For the man I touch there is a path traced out in the sand by a finger which no man sees. That he must follow. Sometimes it leads almost to the top, and then turns down suddenly into the valley. He must follow it, though none else sees the tracing. Love? He said, He shall hunger for it, but he shall not find it. When he stretches out his arms to it and would lay his heart against a thing he loves, then, far off along the horizon, he shall see a light play. He must go towards it. The thing he loves will not journey with him. He must travel alone. When he presses somewhat to his burning heart crying, Mine, mine, my own, he shall hear a voice. Renounce, renounce, this is not vine. He shall succeed. He said, He shall fail. When he runs with others they shall reach the goal before him. For strange voices shall call to him, and strange lights shall beckon him, and he must wait and listen. And this shall be the strangest. Far off across the burning sands where, to other man, there is only the desert's waste, he shall see a blue sea. On that sea the sun shines always, and the water is blue as burning amethyst, and the foam is white on the shore. A great land rises from it, and he shall see upon the mountaintops, burning gold. The mother said, He shall reach it, and he smiled curiously. She said, Is it real? And he said, What is real? And she looked up between his half-closed eyelids and said, Touch, and he leaned forward and laid his hand upon the sleeper, and whispered to it, Smiling, and this only she heard. This shall be thy reward, that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the child trembled, but the mother slept on heavily, and her brain picture vanished. But deep within her, the antinatal thing that lay here had a dream. In those eyes that had never seen the day, in that half-shaped brain was a sensation of light, light that it never had seen, light that perhaps it never should see, light that existed somewhere, and already it had its reward. The ideal was real to it. London. End of A Dream of Wild Bees by Olive Shreiner. A Remembered Dream by Henry Van Dyke, read for Dreams Collection 1, stories and poems. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Remembered Dream by Henry Van Dyke. This is the story of a dream that came to me some five and twenty years ago. It is as vivid in memory as anything that I have ever seen in the outward world, as distinct as any experience through which I have ever passed. Not all dreams are thus remembered. But some are. In the records of the mind, where the inner chronicle of life is written, they are intensely clear and baritical. I shall try to tell the story of this dream with an absolute faithfulness, adding nothing and leaving nothing out, but writing the narrative just as if the thing were real. Perhaps it was. Who can say? In the course of a journey, of the beginning and end of which I know nothing, I had come to a great city, whose name, if it was ever told me, I cannot recall. It was evidently a very ancient place. The dwelling houses and larger buildings were gray and beautiful with age, and the streets wound in and out among them wonderfully, like a maze. This city lay beside a river or estuary, though that was something that I did not find out until later, as you will see. And the newer part of the town extended mainly on a wide bare street running along a kind of low cliff or embankment, where the basements of the small houses on the water side went down below the level of the street to the shore. But the older part of the town was closely and intricately built, with gabled roofs and heavy carved facades hanging over the narrow stone paved ways, which here and there led out suddenly into open squares. It was in what appeared to be the largest and most important of these squares that I was standing, a little before midnight. I had left my wife and our little girl in the lodging which we had found, and walked out alone to visit the sleeping town. The night sky was clear, for a few filmy clouds, which floated over the face of the full moon, obscuring it for an instant, but never completely hiding it, like veils in a shadow dance. The spire of the great cathedral was silver filigree on the moonlit side, and on the other side, black lace. The square was empty, but on the broad shallow steps in front of the main entrance of the cathedral, two heroic figures were seated. At first I thought there were statues. Then I perceived they were alive, and talking earnestly together. They were like Greek gods, very strong and beautiful and naked, but for some slight drapery that fell snow-white around them. They glistened in the moonlight. I could not hear what they were saying, yet I could see that they were in a dispute which went to the very roots of life. They resembled each other strangely in form and feature, like twin brothers, but the face of one was noble, lofty, calm, full of a vast regret and compassion. The face of the other was proud, resentful, drawn with passion. He appeared to be accusing and renouncing his companion, breaking away from an ancient friendship and a swift, implacable hatred. But the companion seemed to plead with him and lean toward him and try to draw him closer. A strange fear and sorrow shook my heart. I felt that this mysterious contest was something of immense importance, a secret, ominous strife, a menace to the world. Then the two figures stood up, marvelously alike in strength and beauty, yet absolutely different in expression and bearing, the one serene and benignant, the other fierce and threatening. The quiet one was still pleading, with a hand laid upon the other's shoulder, but he shook it off and thrust his companion away with a proud and patient gesture. At last I heard him speak. I have done with you, he cried. I do not believe in you. I have no more need of you. I renounce you. I will live without you, away, forever out of my life. At this a look of ineffable sorrow and pity came upon the great companion's face. You are free, he answered. I have only besought you, never constrained you. Since you will have it so, I must leave you, now, to yourself. He rose into the air, still looking downward, with wise eyes full of grief and warning, until he vanished in silence beyond the thin clouds. The other did not look up, but lifting his head with a defiant laugh, shook his shoulders as if they were free of a burden. He strode swiftly around the corner of the cathedral and disappeared among the deep shadows. A sense of intolerable calamity fell upon me. I said to myself, that was man, and the other was God, and they have parted. Then the multitude of bells hidden in the lacework of the high tower began to sound. It was not the aerial, fluttering music of the carillon, which I remembered hearing long ago from the bell-freeze of the low countries. This was a confused and strident ringing, jangled and broken, full of sudden tummels and discords, as if the tower were shaken and the bells gave out their notes at hazard, in surprise and trepidation. It stopped as suddenly as it began. The great bell of the hour struck twelve. The windows of the cathedral glowed faintly with a light from within. It is New Year's Eve, I thought, although I knew perfectly well that the time was late summer. I had seen that, though the leaves on the trees of the square were no longer fresh, they had not yet fallen. I was certain that I must go into the cathedral. The western entrance was shut. I hurried to the south side. The dark, low door of the transept was open. I went in. The building was dimly lighted by huge candles which flickered and smoked like torches. I noticed that one of them, fastened against a pillar, was burning crooked, and the tallow ran down its side in thick white tears. The nave of the church was packed with a vast throng of people, all standing closely crowded together, like the undergrowth in a forest. The rude screen was open or broken down, I could not tell which. The choir was bare like a clearing in the woods and filled with blazing light. On the high steps, with his back to the altar, stood man, his face gleaming with pride. I am the Lord, he cried. There is none above me, no law, no God. Man is power, man is the highest of all. A tremor of wonder and dismay, of excitement and division, shivered through the crowd. Some covered their faces, others stretched out their hands, others shook their fists in the air. A tumult of voices broke from the multitude, voices of exultation and anger and horror and strife. The floor of the cathedral was moved and lifted by a mysterious groundswell. The pillars trembled and wavered, the candles flared and went out. The crowd, stricken dumb with a panic fear, rushed to the doors, burst open the main entrance, and struggling in furious silence poured out of the building. I was swept along with them, striving to keep on my feet. One thought possessed me, I must get to my wife and child, save them, bring them out of this accursed city. As I hurried across the square, I looked up at the cathedral spire. It was swaying and rocking in the air like the mast of a ship at sea. The lacework fell from it in blocks of stone. The people rushed screaming through the rain of death. Many were struck down and lay where they fell. I ran as fast as I could, but it was impossible to run far. Every street and alley vomited men, all struggling together, fighting, shouting or shrieking, striking one another down, trembling over the fallen, a hideous melee. There was an incessant rattling noise in the air, and heavier peals as of thunder shook the houses. Here a wide rent yawned in a wall, there a roof caved in. The windows fell into the street and showers of broken glass. How I got through this inferno I do not know. Buffeted and blinded, stumbling and scrambling to my feet again, turning this way or that way to avoid the thickest centers of the strife, oppressed and paralyzed by a feeling of impotence that put an iron band around my heart, driven always by the intense longing to reach my wife and child. Somehow I had a sense of struggling on. Then I came into a quieter quarter of the town and ran until I reached the lodging where I had left them. They were waiting just inside the door, anxious and trembling. But I was amazed to find them so little panic-stricken. The little girl had her doll in her arms. What is it? asked my wife. What must we do? Come, I cried. Something frightful has happened here. I can explain now. We must get away at once. Come, quickly. Then I took a hand of each and we hastened through the streets, vaguely staring away from the center of the city. Presently we came into that wide new street of mean houses, of which I have already spoken. There were a few people in it, but they moved heavily and feebly, as if some mortal illness lay upon them. Their faces were pale and haggard with a helpless anxiety to escape more quickly. The houses seemed half deserted. The shades were drawn, the doors closed. But since it was all so quiet, I thought we might find some temporary shelter there, so I knocked at the door of a house where there was a dim light behind the drawn shade in one of the windows. After a while the door was opened by a woman who held the end of her shawl across her mouth. All that I could see was the black sorrow of her eyes. Go away. She said slowly. The plague is here. My children are dying of it. You must not come in. Go away. So we hurried on through the plague smitten street, burdened with a new fear. Soon we saw a house on the riverside, which looked absolutely empty. The shades were up, the windows open, the doors stood ajar. I hesitated, plucked up my courage, resolved that we must get to the waterside in some way in order to escape from the net of death which encircled us. Come, I said. Let us try to go down through this house, but cover your mouths. We groped through the empty passageway and down the basement stair. The thick cobwebs swept my face. I noted them with joy, for I thought they proved that the house had been deserted for some time, and so perhaps it might not be infected. We descended into a room which seemed to have been the kitchen. There was a stove dimly visible at one side and an old broken kettle on the floor over which we stumbled. The back door was locked, but it swung outward as I broke it open. We stood upon a narrow, dingy beach, where the small waves were lapping. By this time the little day had begun to whiten the eastern sky. A pallid light was diffused. I could see westward down to the main harbour beside the heart of the city. The sails and smokestacks of the great ships were visible, all passing out to sea. I wished that we were there. Here in front of us the water seemed shallower. It was probably only a tributary or backwater of the main stream, but it was sprinkled with smaller vessels, sloops and yalls and luggers, all filled with people and slowly creeping seaward. There was one little boat quite near to us, which seemed to be waiting for someone. There were some people on it, but it was not crowded. Come, I said, this is for us. We must wade out to it. So I took my wife by the hand and the child in the other arm and we went into the water. Soon it came up to our knees, to our waists. Hurry! shouted the old man at the tiller. No time to spare. Just a minute more, I answered, only one minute. That minute seemed like a year. The sail of the boat was shaking in the wind. When it filled she must move away. We waded on and at last I grasped the gunwale of the boat. I lifted the child in and helped my wife to climb over the side. They clung to me. The little vessel began to move gently away. Get in! cried the old man sharply. Get in quick! But I felt that I could not. I dared not. I let go of the boat. I cried goodbye and turned away to shore. I was compelled to go back to the doomed city. I must know what would come of the parting of man from God. The tide was running out more swiftly. The water swirled around my knees. I awoke. But the dream remained with me, just as I have told it to you. End of a remembered dream by Henry Van Dyke.