 CHAPTER IX Nature is never spent. There lives the dearest freshness deep down things, and though the last lights from the black west went, O morning at the brown-brink eastward springs. Gerard Manley Hopkins. As she fled through the coloured counties under the steady radiance of an august sun, Constance had within her the astonished and friendly voice of the watcher, saying, See how the splendid trees stand up in the field. Ah, look at the curves, the lines, the incredible shapes. Open your eyes. Look, look. Do not let so much of the beauty escape you. Your poor vague senses are letting it slip by. It is far too wonderful for that. Seize it. Feed on it. Use the best of your body whilst you can. She let him have his way with her, for she was bewildered and tired, and he, since his sudden awakening to the wonderful experience of pity, had cast off something of the arrogant inquisitiveness which had led him to drive her senses so remorselessly and exclusively in the interests of his own investigations. Now he offered her a share in his adventures. There had been a reversal of their positions, so that she was mainly conscious of looking through his nature at the world, and not as before of lending her eyes and her brain to his purposes. Her summer holiday had come, and she was out with a sense of wild freedom that hardly felt the body's weight scurrying through an incredible world. With a release from the monotony of work, there had come also a release from the craving for humanity. She threw it behind her, Andrew and Muriel, Helen Reed, who had lately made advances toward intimacy, and all the anodines which she had clutched in her loneliness to lull the appetite for natural joy. She was eager to take up the heritage of sun and air, nestled in a corner of the third class carriage, and let the pageant of England slip by her. As for the watcher, he saw for the first time with human eyes the most divine treasure of humanity, an earth not wholly smeared with toil, a fresh and flowery country of waving grasses, set with solemn elms, of ripening harvest, rose set hedges, and cropped downs. He and his friend, cuddled together, looked joyously and dreamily into the sacred heart of living things. The black blur of leaves that takes from its neighbouring fields the very colour of hope, the entangled world of the West Riding, where hell-mouth seems to have broken out in a singularly inappropriate place, these moved them only to a gentle interest. He was invaded by a new spirit of tolerance, and she, very tired, felt something of that agreeable, light-headedness which comes with a certain quality of fatigue. In the early afternoon they came to the frontiers of the North, the austere and stony country of Ribblesdale, the sun lingered south of them in the more fertile and responsive Midlands, and here there was a little cloud spread very thinly over the sky. In that cold, strong, light the rocks cropping here and there from the tight earth looked blue, pale, and curious. They forced themselves up from the grass with a menacing air which reminded man's body of its softness and instability. They seemed to be saying, verily we are the people, remembering that when it came to the battle of the dust, St. Stephen was crushed back to primal earth, but the stones of martyrdom remained. Vera, head out of the window, said, I think those rock-to-ghosts which growl at me. The watcher whispered, they are your mother and your father. On that womb you came out and to that womb you will return, for dust is the foundation of the dream. The scamper of the train brought them through the land of stone and into the country of the pine woods, and Constance, looking with her friend at the shapes of dark trees against the brightening sky, found them charged with a terrible significance. They seemed the proper guardians of some immemorial secret of an ancient land, a land of earth sorcery which the scumbling brush of man had hardly touched. Already London was far distant, already sanity, clear visions, and the healthy exultation of the hills began. She looked forward with great eagerness, having now obtained that sense of a door eternally ajar, which prepares the soul for romance, mystery, and all unreasonable truth. When at last the train stopped at their small and windswept station, she leapt out with a clear apprehension that some mighty and definitive destination had been reached. The place to which they had been brought was perched at the very margin of the fells. Those nude angels of the north dominated the little village, faint and wonderful shapes lifted up from the business of earth, and running day by day the whole gamut of prophetic emotions from the regal gloom of lamentations to the radiant expectation of Isaiah. Driven perhaps to opposition by their splendors, the sowing and reaping world which crept to their feet had a sharpness of detail that had put the most meticulous pre-Raphaelite to shame. The middle distance stood as distinct as some print by Durer. With black woods and the stripe and check of fields and hedges, each tree in the setting sun was a sharp, dark, insistent shape, one out of many scattered sentinels that seemed to guard the cramped-figured fells from the profane investigation of field glass, camera, and exploring feet. For instance, her luggage safely bestowed and early supper ordered, walked along the high road which ran with prosaic straightness to Penrith, and saw this mighty panorama unrolled in its infinite detail. A weary London woman tossed suddenly into this may well feel a certain flutter of the heart, confronted by the stupendous sacrament of natural beauty, that spotless and ineffable host which earth, the virgin mother, eternally brings forth and offers an oblation on the altar of life. An ecstasy that was not holy joy invaded her spirit, something she knew was being offered, something which her hard and work-worn hands could scarcely grasp, the watcher was hushed, and asked no questions, for curiosity cannot survive in the presence of awe. There was a hay-rick in the neighbouring field, its patient shape responsive to the play of slanting light. In the hedge by which they walked the sharp and eager fingers of a hawthorn were stretched out against the greenish sky. Its clean, crisp edges were instinct with vitality, and with beauty which is the spiritual aspect of intense life. His leaves and behind them the teeming earth with all its children cried out for recognition to this sister of theirs, this impassioned amateur of experience. Constance was glad with a vicarious vanity to think her mother so beautiful, proud that she who was of the family might show to her visitor one of the lovelier moments of the dear earth. As she lingered the sun first left the valley, then crept from the summit of the hills, at once the angels wrapped their blue veils around them, being dazzled by the radiant sky where the game of green and rose colour had already begun. Then the changeful play of the celestial opal, immortally bright, was offered for a moment as if to exhibit the true and natural darkness of the earth, gazing at the magic funeral of the sun, and carrying little where she stepped, Constance's foot came sharply on some soft uneven thing that gave beneath it. She moved quickly, and Vera, forced by the gathering dust who abandoned the quest for wild raspberries, pounced and held up a few pitiful feathers kept together by that which had once been the wonder of flesh. Look, she said, what fun, a dead bird, you trod on it! Constance looked and felt bitterly grieved, ashamed, sickened by her own action. Absorbed in a selfish feeding upon beauty she had insulted that poor little memorial of a radiant life. Out of its corruption it rebuked her. She turned from the sunset and the imperial hills that were putting on the purple mantle in which they greaked the night. Clouds were coming to them now, tall violet grey battalions leaning towards their goal and observing a steady and unhurried march from the southwest. They came and rested on the summit of the fell, sank into the valleys, and cast fleecy folds about the pikes. Behind them the purple angels muttered angrily. They were preparing to pour forth cleansing waters on an unwilling world. She walked back to the village and having her face set towards it, where it spread itself with a northern amplitude and independence about its central green. She saw it in its unity. One or two lights appeared in the windows, creating an instant opposition between the dark and eternal hills and this little transitory superficial patch of human habitation. Human dreams. The hills, the darkening fields, were the more alive, the more insistent they pressed on her attention. The watcher whispered, how they crowd about one at this hour. She said, what do you mean? He answered, those who came first. It was she now who said, I do not understand. He replied, but surely you know them, surely you are with them. If one must not be alone, and if one must love, it cannot be that you have only the soul still entangled in their bodies from whom to choose your friends. She repeated, I do not understand. Nevertheless fear outran comprehension. He went on. I see them, on the hills, how wild they are and how surprised at life. Their stones are there, the little dusty marks that they erected, and so they cannot get away. Your friends have made no mark, they have not rubbed out the life that came before. It mingles with them yet. Do you mean that they do not know, do not see it, just because the dusty covering is not here? He asked, are you talking of the dead? She shivered a little, for a triumphant vitality hates to meet a ghost. He answered, why, yes, the liberated ones, and you're busy gobbling up of one another. Do you take no notice of the part you cannot slay? Tonight the liberated hosts are in the hills. I see them at strange rites, behind the hedges. I hear their patter on the road. Oh, the little antique spirits of slain children. The mothers of the people, the keepers of the herds, they are here. Nothing has changed. You have chased them from the cities or smothered them. Perhaps it may be that. I'm not sure. Because of this they are all the thicker about the immemorial valleys. They come down to drink at the changeless rivers they have always known. Here are battlefields. Here in these wide valleys they surge to and fro and rehearse the great drama of life. Troops of victorious souls that escaped from bleeding bodies under these hills and deep in the bracken which their hands tore up to staunch the cruel wounds. She answered, yes, yes, of course, in a way the past is always with us. Not past, he said. The dead have no past. They live in the eternal now. It is progress. They are nearer to the real. These I knew first before I had eyes to see the poor souls still imprisoned in their dust. They have gone on. They are the leaders of your army. Surely you acknowledge their presence. Surely you owe them your homage and your help. She was hastening towards the friendly houses now for the twilight deepened and the conversation was little to her taste. They came past the low wall of the churchyard. A slab of new white marble peeped over the coping stone. She did not like it. It seemed a pale hand stretched out from the other side. But he would not let her by. He broke his exhortation and asked her, what is that? She said. It is the graveyard, I suppose. He asked again. Is that where the worn out bodies are put away? Then it occurred to her that the watcher had never seen a place of burial before. For London, the polite centre of a secular civilisation, is remarkable for its tactful concealment of the dead. The mind that is bred in the hills knows no such artifice. It is of the opinion of the sillierist that it were ill to be unkind to a Jonathan, though in dust, and therefore holds fast to this the most intimate and pathetic keepsake of its emigrated friends. This church and its quiet company stood, as is their usual, at the entrance to the village, a gentle, uninsistent link between two worlds. With another step or two they were at the lynch-gate, and saw the dim path which approached a plain doorway, then branched and skirted the wall of the nave. There had been here no artificial levelling of earth. From its small eminences and dimpling hollows the plain old gravestones peered with a gracious and natural effect, as if they were indeed at one with the land. Around the church this land rose suddenly in a slope of rough grass unbroken as yet by the making of little homes. Clearly an upland field had lately been added to the graveyard in the interests of a generation yet to come. At its highest point a monolith shot up against the skyline, a strange, great, formless thing, growing as it were from the ground and bearing no resemblance to the civil futilities of the monumental mason and his art. Light was upon them, and already the grass was grey, the little village church vague in the dusk. Earth now seemed built of some primal stuff that existed in chaos before there was light. Constance, unnerved by the evening's conversation, would have hastened to sanctuary, but she felt the spur of her guest who could not leave so great a matter unexplored. He quelled her natural desire for the neighborhood of houses and living things. And under his direction she scrambled and slipped in the twilight up the steep, dry, grassy slope. Coming to its summit she saw a wider sky where brightness lingered on the horizon line. Beneath it she divined the folded hills, knew that the deeper blackness hid the woods. She peered at the battered, standstone pillar which had beckoned her to the solitary place, and saw that it was an armless cross, once covered, no doubt, with the plated patterns and lost symbols of the Celtic church, now only retaining upon its roughened surface a memory of the artifice of man. It stood upon a new pedestal, and in the step of the pedestal there was an inscription cut, although now the light was very nearly gone, she stooped and with eye and finger traced the words. This runic cross, work of the first Christians of Ireland, was discovered in the foundations of the church. It is now again set up by the village which it once protected, as a memorial of the nameless dead. The watcher remarked, I knew that you were mistaken. You see, they are remembered after all, or given a gathering place. The night breeze had sprung up, and blew from the hills upon the churchyard. It seemed to Constance's fancy that the wind was full of life, antique, barbaric life, the life of those old Christians of the hills, that they were coming to a tristing place, and that the watcher already discerned them. There were more words upon the pedestal, and though her instinct was all for the village and humanity, she made haste to decipher them that she might the sooner be gone. They seemed lacking in flavor after that which went before, and she deplored the uncertainty of clerical taste, even when it is combined with a passion for archaeology. By thy precious death and burial, good Lord, deliver us. It was only a fragment from the litany. She could not be impressed, but the watcher's comment on those words struck her as peculiar. He said, So the idea did once break through. And yet you do not understand. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 How Those Who Lose Themselves Often Find Something More Valuable That light did lead me on, more surely than the shining of noontide, where well I knew that one did for my coming bide, where he abode might none but he abide. St. John of the Cross, the dark night of the soul. Nothing would do, but they must go, all three of them, into the heart of the thels, and qualify the distant glamour of the familiar touch. The village produced a rough cart, and a short thick pony of the kind that embarks willingly upon cross-country exploration, and they were off, in the vivid afternoon, through the tangle of dark woods, and bright cornfields which lay between them and the road that runs along the hills. There was a little stirring breeze, and the pale green barley danced in the wind with a delicate, airy ecstasy as they passed, so that the watcher in his nest reached out to this new loveliness with a gesture that was almost adoration. The oats faintly blue with aquamarines seemed of a more sober habit. They made minuet steps with tiny tossings of the head. The deeper blue of the turnip fields brought inappropriate hints of the wild ocean to the least idyllic processes of agriculture. Behind the stately hills marched with them, on one hand the sharp lake mountains, on the other the fells. Presently, they plunged to the lowest point of the valley, a little breathless, I think, because of their apprehension of the beauty that they might find. For this was a wonderful day on which anything might happen, and the least credible of discoveries might be made. They swung through space on a jewelled planet, and it was for them that the caskets were flung opened and the secret gems disclosed. They crossed the beck where it ran through deep hayfields to the river beyond, a little eager splashing thing that called all other children to join in its play. There was a heavenly inflorescence at its margin, all made up of those very simple plants which are too dignified and too beautiful to compel the casual eye. It was the watcher who called his friend's attention to the dear golden fluff of yellow bed straw and to the wound-wort and betony standing up like purple spears in the soft grass. Then because her eyes were directed to that marvellous and incomparable population she saw with his delight to help her vision, the dyers green wood, disowned, plantagonate, and the towering wild angelica whose mighty branches hint of old forests made of flowering things. And since respectability is no more the norm of hedges than of human life, she saw also the ivory crown of the meadowsweet, that fascinating child of joy whose daintiness in the eyes of the marigolds is very certainly the measure of her sin. There they were in their essential reality their unsullied radiance, matter for the exploration of many eons, tossed into the patent of one sunny afternoon. Because he was unaffected by man's arrogant standard of size, the watcher was at once satisfied and subjugated by this luxuriant outpouring of beauty. It woke the slumbering virtue of humility and washed his eyes so that he caught, as it were, a side-long glimpse of God. It was a definitive hour for both of them, this first sight of the flowered meadows of the north. There life cloths herself in haste and rushes out to meet the sun in her short moment of fertility. And hence the significant personalities of the plants assert themselves as nowhere else in the full splendor of their triumphant individuality. They blaze forth and hit the heart which opens itself to receive that holy wound. They climbed from the valley to dusty roads that ran between stone walls. There they saw the Lady of the Hills, the great wild cranespill, lifting her blue pattern to the sky. Constance began to wonder why she had so long neglected the easy and perfect friendship of the flowers. It raised the heart to some loosened and gentle plain of being, beyond the fevers and anxieties of human intercourse. So dreaming she allowed the pony to ramble at loose, rain among the tangled roads. Life seemed divine, the future mattered little. She was invaded by the consciousness of heavenly peace. Laura had left the cart to make dashes into hedge, ditch, and bypass, clutching vainly at scuttling beetles and nimble flies. She was at her best under these circumstances of action. There the animal aspect seemed in place, and nature justified the course and tireless frame. They came presently to a gap in the stone wall and a wheel track that went as it seemed directly to the fells. Who had the Londoners' shadowy belief that all roads lead, somehow, to the right way. Divined in this byway the shortcut which her landlord had described to her as going back toward the village by way of the hills. She turned the cart into the short rough grass, and they trundled slowly in and out of ruts, and through gates, and by deep dark bracket that stretched clawing fingers up the side of the sage-colored hill. Soon they were a long way from all roads and other memories of civilization, being indeed upon an outpost of the fells. The sun sloped, twilight began to come, but there was no hint in their vague and wandering path of a return to human habitations. The pony lost his eager and exploratory manner. He lingered and stopped doubtfully. The sun went, and a chill came to the air. Then Vera, a little way ahead, stopped to cry, "'Tanta! Make the pony come quicker. He's going dreadful slow. It's dark and nasty, and I want my tea.' Constance answered, "'I'm afraid he's getting tired and wants a rest,' Vera said with petulance. "'Horrid little horse! He shan't be tired. He's ours. He got to go. I want my tea.' Then Constance, dragged back to the unlovely cares of common sense, halted, looked round, and noticed for the first time their solitary position, the woman and child, and the weary little animal, with the great and pathless earth stretching from them on every side, rough, billowy, and very desolate. She forgot that they had come but a few miles from the road. She had no knowledge of the quarter in which the destination lay. She did not mind, for they had achieved the object of their expedition, hidden in the hills. Already ancient mysteries peeped from the stunted bushes, whispering fragments of the primeval ritual of the wild. Anything might stir and rise suddenly in the break, for if conscious life were concealed there, it was a life, she felt sure, far removed from the human plane. The watcher said, "'It is well to be here. One discerns again the music of the stars.' Her peaceful heart repeated, "'It is well.' She was brought to a new place, immersed in a new experience, and that contented her. But Vera was not content. She flung herself into the card, crying crawlerlessly, "'Do let us go home. I'm tired. I want my tea. I think it is a very nasty drive.' Ben Constance suggested to the pony that his respite was at an end, but the encouraging rain and very gentle lash had no effect on his tired limbs and stubborn mind. He hung his head and planted his feet more firmly on the ground. She said, "'I am afraid we must let him rest a little more.' Vera stamped her foot and cried, "'I won't. I shan't. I hate him. I want to go home, to my tea.' She dashed from the cart and into the bracken, snatched a loose stick, which lay there, and hit the weird pony with all her angry strength across its ears. It leapt forward, and Vera jumped into the rocking-card crying gaily, "'There! He only wanted hitting. I knew I'd make him go.' The pony went indeed. A poor, bothered, fevered thing, blindly and without sense of direction. It ran with a sort of convulsive strength, with miserable shudderings and settings back of ears. So they were flung into hollows and up little hills, jerked this way and that. Constance had the reins, but her strength was no match for a frightened, moreland pony who sensed the neighborhood of the fell. She put her arm firmly about Vera and resigned herself to the event. During a period that seemed infinite, the cart raced through the twilight, tilting, leaping, twisting, but by some miracle never overturned. They fled past a swift dissolving vista of immense gray fields, looming trees and shadowy corners, and passed a sudden black pinewood, a thing of terror in the dusk. Far off they saw white roads that rushed from an invisible highway into the heart of a dim, failed land. Far up they saw the fell, but they were caught in the debatable land between the two, and in this situation there seemed for them no hope. Then one of the great limestone boulders that pushed out from the earth on the lower slopes stood suddenly in their path, and the dazed and worried pony could not elude it. Almost before the peril reached their minds, one wheel met the obstacle with a crash. The cart tried to mount it, failed, tottered, and was overturned. Constance and the child, half leapt, half tumbled from the low seat to the ground. There they lay, huddled in a bewilderment that excluded the more natural sensations of despair. Amidst a litter of broken shafts, a wheel torn from its axle, and a pony which was kicking its way to freedom as quickly as it might. Constance rose, shook herself, and examined Vera. Routine took charge of her, and she acted without thought and therefore with decision. The child was sobbing with fear, anger, and fatigue, but she was unhurt. Constance suddenly alert to the realities of the situation said to her, Stop crying, get up quickly, it's nearly dark and we have got to find our way home. She went to the crestfallen and panting pony, dedicated his limbs from the entangled harness, took a handful of bracken, and rubbed him down. She said to Vera, I'm going to put you on the pony, don't be frightened, hold tight, and let him go the pace he likes. You will have a lovely ride, just like a grown-up lady, and we shall soon find a cottage to get tea. She dared not to ask herself yet in which direction she should go to find it, or what were her chances of success, for their course had been a twisted one with doubling to and fro and the tracing of wild circles, and she had no knowledge of the sky to help her. At this instant the voice of the watcher said urgently, the light, we must go to the light. Then she looked up and saw with deep thankfulness a little sharp star that had flashed into being and shone low down in the hills. Unquestionably it called to them, offering at least a certainty of human life. It was no great matter to quiet the pony, and place Vera upon his back, she did it, and set out to wander up the pathless fell without any sensation of anxiety. She was still sustained by the mystic's delightful conviction that nothing really matters in the least. What funny little things happen to us, said the watcher, and what infinite shades of experience you have packed within the limits of this dream. I like these dark and lonely places where the foolish, bustling people never come. She might have agreed with him, for indeed the wild and darkling earth about them cried messages of wonder to the eager mind. But the vague, increscent miseries of a cross-country walk unwillingly undertaken in the dusk quelled her thirst for adventure. She was hardly in training, and sooner than she had thought it possible she grew breathless. This brought, in its train, indifference, fatigue, at last, exasperation. The approach to the light was very long. As they went it seemed to retreat from them into the bosom of the hills. It led them upwards with many miserable slippings and scramblings on the dried heather, sudden sinkings into bracken and clamouring up harsh and disconcerting stones to a saucer-like valley scooped out from a spur of the fell. There its presence seemed to create a greater darkness, a terrible and mysterious gloom. There were two little hillocks at the entrance, guarding perhaps the citadel of some primeval and inhuman life. The watcher whispered, Press on, press on, we are drawing very near. He was like a hound upon the scent, eager, excited. But she could not respond. She stood dissociated from him at this moment and felt the lonelier for his evident air of being at home. She was invaded too by a panic terror, for there was nothing in her past experience which could help her in dealing with the circumstances of this hour. A hare sat sentinel on one of the little hillocks, it moved as they came up to it, and Vera screamed. That scream made their condition seem unsafe, but they plodded on. When they were come a little farther they saw beyond the saucer-like valley a narrower crevice in the hill, and within it the dark shape of a building, and the slit of radiant window which had been their guiding light. It was the child, sharp-eyed, who exclaimed with a sob of rage and hunger, oh, Tanta, how perfectly hateful it's only a church after all! Constance then was aware of a certain sinking of the heart and a sense of helplessness, a distrust of her situation which the unpeopled hills had been powerless to induce. The fears of the traveller faded before the fears of the lost. Man had been there, and left his mark, and was a hieroglyphic that she had no skill to read. But the watcher still cried, go to the light, it is real, it calls us, you cannot, you must not retreat. That drove her on, and she led the pony up the last slopes of Heather to the little limestone chapel which stood solitary on its knoll. There was a sudden uprising of shadowy gray forms from under the wall as they came to it, and a horse cry and a scuttering in the dusk which jarred her weary nerves, and brought strange choking sensations to her throat. Then the frightened sheep ran toward the hills, and they were again alone. The door of the place was shut, and through the keyhole that mysterious light looked out on them. She was past further adventure, and when her first casual exploration failed to discover the latch of the door, she abandoned it. The watcher murmured, this is a place of safety, all is well. But her heart did not echo his words. Because there seemed nothing else to do, she lifted Vera from the depressed and weary pony. It rambled the yard or so away, stopped, and began to crop at the short grass. Presently, it turned the corner of the church and disappeared. A man came out from the lean two cottage which was concealed at the little church's eastern end. When he saw the bridled pony, he was surprised. He went quickly towards the entrance, with such rising feelings of anger and distress as might possess a lover whose secret there was suddenly unmasked. When he was come round the northwest angle, he saw a figure that sat upon the threshold of the chapel and leaned against the door. He perceived it to be the form of a very weary woman, and a remark about damned tourists died stillborn. Instead, he approached and said to her very gently, that is Lancelot's attitude, but won't you come inside? The watcher took Constance's lips for his own purposes and whispered, yes. Vera exclaimed with petulant relief, oh, here's a man! How lovely! Time to do ask him if we can't come in and have some tea. The man said, poor child, of course you shall be fed. And then he put his hand to an inconspicuous boss, pressed it and opened the church door. He held it and allowed Constance to pass him, followed her and knelt upon the ground, an act which at once made Miss Tyro feel awkward and obtrusive. But before she had time to digest these unpleasant emotions and an amazing thing happened. A force stronger than herself brought her, too, to her knees, and to an active profound, though involuntary, adoration. She knew not what she worshipped, but knew that worship she must, the hushed voice of the watcher whispered within her, it is the idea. She could not rise, she forgot to be self-conscious, she knew only that her weariness was strangely healed. When she had knelt with bowed head for a few moments, feeling the unseen waves beating upon her brow, she looked up and saw that she was in a plain and oblong chamber, built of rough stones and floored with beaten earth. There were in it no pews, no place for priests and choir, none of the customary conveniences of piety. Hence the attention, undistracted, ran straight to the essential point, to the one object which lifted the sanctuary from a squalid desolation to an ordered austerity. There was at the eastern end a little table and on it a red brocaded cloth, heavy like a pole, and touching the ground. This table bore no crucifix, no flowers, no candles, so that Constance said to herself, if this place is Church of England it must be very low. But on the simple altar there was a curious metal case, a silver inlaid with plaited patterns, angels, and mysterious animals whose wings were made of enamels, gems, and gold. The doors of it stood open, so that one looked within as into a little shrine. Inside there was a rough glass cup without a base, and with one clumsy handle. A kitchen teacup might have provided its model, but not the strange sheen of purple, black, and gold which ran through the glass. With sudden and inappropriate memories of South Kensington she said to herself, Phoenician, I am sure of it. But what is it doing here? Then she perceived that this antique vessel was the thing to which she knelt, the link with eternity which her lodger adored. Even whilst she fought its influence and speculated upon its meaning, it cast its spells upon her soul. There was nothing else within the chapel, unless it were the lighted wick in its clay saucer which had guided them to this place. Centuries slid from her, and she found herself united to the primitive worship of the hills. Outside in the dusk those hills and their inhabitants were gathering, brooding above the chapel, as if they would guard its enigmatic treasure from the peering vision of the modern world. Within, she, a daughter of that world, little suited to such company and such rites, knelt with a man and a spirit who had been caught into some ecstatic and unheard of communion by a symbol which only invoked in her the vague sensations of wonder, of desire, and of unrest. She glanced at the man, he still knelt at her side and had clearly forgotten that she was there, a circumstance which contradicted all that she knew of human life. He gazed at the glass cup with an ardent love which was without a taint of fatuousness. His glance pierced through it to something beyond, clearly seen and intimately known. He was young, spare, vivid, superbly alive. There was a sudden shriek from the doorway behind them and Vera cried in panic, oh, get up and speak to me quick! Tanta, it's lonely, it's queer, there's dreadful boogies in the hills. I hate your nastory prayers, I want my tea!" He instantly rose to his feet and said, Come, we are forgetting, there's the child to be fed. She followed him from the chapel with an unwillingness that she could not understand. When they were in the two-roomed cottage and he was cutting bread and setting milk to boil, he said to her, You are the first that has come. She replied, We lost our way and wrecked the cart, and then we saw your light upon the hill. He said, That may have been the manner of it, but it could not be the cause, and because she looked at him strangely he added, Surely you know what it is you have seen tonight? She answered, No. But I think it was real and mattered very much. Real, he said, I should think so. In the last resort it is our earnest of the only thing that matters, the transcendent link with reality. You, no less than Parsifil, have looked upon the holy grail. She gazed at him in amazement, and the feeble voice of common sense muttered that he must certainly be mad, or at least hysteric of the religious type. He caught her eye, laughed at her, and said, Oh yes, of course all knowing people would think I was insane, but you cannot because you knelt down. I didn't do it on purpose. All the better, that count's one to us. To us? Yes, to the angel's side. She said tentatively, for of course it might be desirable to humor him. Oh, but it can't be, you know, at least not really. It's absurd, incredible, and besides, how could you possibly be sure? There was an alarming note of obstinacy in his reply. No one can doubt who has experienced the power of great relics, and this is the mightiest relic of them all. And besides, there is tradition, and I am those who hold that tradition may be misread, but cannot lie. Here, you know, in the Westmoreland Hills was the last stronghold of the Celtic Church. Here my predecessors in her priesthood lingered with their treasures and their rites. Long after Italian bishops came to the North and the Isle of Saints was saintless, and the great monastic hives had been disbursed. With them was hid, adored, kept safe, the lost key of the Middle Ages, that grail which was sought by all the chivalry of God, sought mystically, and also sought actually, because of the undying tradition of its loss. But now? But now, he exclaimed, it was given to me, me, the meanest of its lovers, to find, hold, and cherish. Never mind how. Grace did it, and that is enough. As any man of our generation a dearer destiny, do you think? I am permitted to stand sentinel between it and a world that would not understand. We must keep our realities safe where we are able, from moth and rust, from thieves that break in and steal, worse, from possible museums. There are certain things spread up and down the world, you know, which enshrine the only secret, and keep it safe. These are the most sacred of all trusts, and all who have eyes to see them are born to their guardianship. Some are in good hands. Others are of such a nature that they cannot be perceived by those who do not love, and therefore they will never be profane. But some are known only at their own peril. I have brought one such here to hide it. It is safe in the bosom of our hills, in the nest which has hid it so long. He went to a cupboard, brought cups and plates, and gave them warm milk, bread and butter, and oat-cake. Miss Tyrell looked at the little neat common-place cottage, and then at this eager man with hot blue eyes who spoke the language of fairyland with fervor and conviction. Side by side with her rebellious reason the spirit of the watcher looked out on this new slice of experience, and he, she perceived, had left his perennial aspect of astonishment. He seemed as one who, so journing in barbarous lands, where all is bizarre and difficult to accept, suddenly hears the dear accents of home. Furthermore, here is something, someone, whose presence in that home had long been desired, long needed, but never attained. They were within the field of some mighty and spiritual magnet whose powers transcended time and space. She had always eluded dogma, with an agility which she doubtless owed to her excellent education. But here, in this crevice of the hills, was something which she could not elude. The watcher cried in ecstasy, the real, the real! She raised her head with a gesture of a trapped and frightened thing, and again the man laughed. Tiresome, is it not, he said, but inevitable, I assure you, you had better acquiesce. The finger of God is not to be escaped. It pursues, it caresses, it touches where it will. It was the old and hateful message, God is not mocked. He was not. He had met her in the city, he had chased her to the hills, he waited inexorable behind the veil. Here there was a rent in that veil, and through it a hand was stretched forth, which offered her a gift. She was too far away to see the wound upon that generous hand, and as for the gift, a woman of her superior intelligence could only look upon it as the fruit of fantastic, even perverse imagination. It was merely a cup of rough glass, curiously iridescent and stained with the colors of an imperial grief. CHAPTER X Nothing would do but they must go, all three of them, into the heart of the fells, and qualify the distant glamour of the familiar touch. The village produced a rough cart, and a short thick pony of the kind that embarks willingly upon cross-country exploration, and they were off, in the vivid afternoon, through the tangle of dark woods, and bright cornfields which lay between them and the road that runs along the hills. There was a little stirring breeze, and the pale green barley danced in the wind with a delicate airy ecstasy as they passed, so that the watcher, in his nest, reached out to this new loveliness with a gesture that was almost adoration. The oats faintly blue with aquamarines seemed of a more sober habit. They made minuet steps, with tiny tossings of the head. The deeper blue of the turnip fields brought inappropriate hints of the wild ocean to the least idyllic processes of agriculture. Behind the stately hills marched with them, on one hand the sharp lake mountains, on the other the fells. Presently they plunged to the lowest point of the valley, a little breathless, I think, because of their apprehension of the beauty that they might find. For this was a wonderful day on which anything might happen, and the least credible of discoveries might be made. They swung through space on a jeweled planet, and it was for them that the caskets were flung open, and the secret gems disclosed. They crossed the beck where it ran through deep hayfields to the river beyond, a little eager splashing thing that called all other children to join in its play. There was a heavenly inflorescence at its margin, all made up of those very simple plants which are too dignified and too beautiful to compel the casual eye. It was the watcher who called his friend's attention to the dear golden fluff of yellow bedstraw and to the wound-wort and betony standing up like purple spears in the soft grass. Then because her eyes were directed to that marvelous and incomparable population she saw with his delight to help her vision, the dyers greenwood, disowned, plantaginette, and the towering, wild angelica whose mighty branches hint of old forests made of flowering things. And since respectability is no more the norm of hedges than of human life she saw also the ivory crown of the meadow-sweet that fascinating child of joy whose daintiness in the eyes of the marigolds is very certainly the measure of her sin. There they were in their essential reality their unsullied radiance matter for the exploration of many eons tossed into the pageant of one sunny afternoon. As he was unaffected by man's arrogant standard of size the watcher was at once satisfied and subjugated by this luxuriant outpouring of beauty. It woke the slumbering virtue of humility and washed his eyes so that he caught, as it were, a side-long glimpse of God. It was a definitive hour for both of them, this first sight of the flowered meadows of the north. There life cloths herself in haste and rushes out to meet the sun in her short moment of fertility. And hence the significant personalities of the plants assert themselves as nowhere else in the full splendor of their triumphant individuality. They blaze forth and hit the heart which opens itself to receive that holy wound. They climbed from the valley to dusty roads that ran between stone walls. There they saw the Lady of the Hills, the great wild cranesbill, casting her blue pattern to the sky. Constance began to wonder why she had so long neglected the easy and perfect friendship of the flowers. It raised the heart to some loosened and gentle plain of being, beyond the fevers and anxieties of human intercourse. So dreaming she allowed the pony to ramble at loose, rain among the tangled roads. Life seemed divine. The future mattered little. She was invaded by the consciousness of heavenly peace. Vera had left the cart to make dashes into hedge, ditch, and bypass, clutching vainly at scuttling beetles and nimble flies. She was at her best under these circumstances of action. There the animal aspect seemed in place, and nature justified the course and tireless frame. They came presently to a gap in the stone wall and a wheel track that went, as it seemed, directly to the fells. Constance, who had the Londoner's shadowy belief that all roads lead, somehow, to the right way, divined in this byway the shortcut which her landlord had described to her as going back toward the village by way of the hills. She turned the cart into the short rough grass, and they trundled slowly in and out of ruts, and through gates, and by deep dark bracken that stretched clawing fingers up the side of the sage-coloured hill. Soon they were a long way from all roads and other memories of civilization, being, indeed, upon an outpost of the fells. The sun sloped, twilight began to come, but there was no hint in their vague and wandering path of a return to human habitations. The pony lost his eager exploratory manner, he lingered and stopped doubtfully. The sun went, and a chill came to the air. Then Vera, a little way ahead, stopped to cry, Tanta! Make the pony come quicker! He's going dreadful slow, it's dark and nasty, and I want my tea! Constance answered, I'm afraid he's getting tired and wants a rest. Vera said, with petulance, Horrid little horse! He shan't be tired, he's ours, he got to go! I want my tea! Then Constance, dragged back to the unlovely cares of common sense, halted, looked round, and noticed for the first time their solitary position, the woman and child and the weary little animal, with a great and pathless earth stretching from them on every side, rough, billowy, and very desolate. She forgot that they had come but a few miles from the road. She had no knowledge of the quarter in which the destination lay. She did not mind, for they had achieved the object of their expedition, hidden in the hills. Already ancient mysteries peeped from the stunted bushes, whispering fragments of the primeval ritual of the wild. Anything might stir and rise suddenly in the break, for if conscious life were concealed there, it was a life, she felt sure, far removed from the human plane. The watcher said, It is well to be here. And discerns again the music of the stars. Her peaceful heart repeated, It is well. She was brought to a new place, immersed in a new experience, and that contented her. But Vera was not content. She flung herself into the card crying crawlerlessly, Do let us go home! I'm tired, I want my tea! I think it is a very nasty drive. Captain Constance suggested to the pony that his respite was at an end, but the encouraging rain and very gentle lash had no effect on his tired limbs and stubborn mind. He hung his head and planted his feet more firmly on the ground. She said, I'm afraid we must let him rest a little more. Vera stamped her foot and cried, I won't, I shan't, I hate him, I want to go home, to my tea. She dashed from the cart and into the bracken, snatched a loose stick, which lay there, and hit the weird pony with all her angry strength across its ears. It leapt forward, and Vera jumped into the rocking-card crying gaily, There! He only wanted hitting. I knew I'd make him go. The pony went indeed, a poor, bothered, fevered thing, blindly and without sense of direction. It ran with a sort of convulsive strength, with miserable shudderings and settings back of years. So they were flung into hollows and up little hills, jerked this way and that. Constance had the reins, but her strength was no match for a frightened, moreland pony who sensed the neighborhood of the fell. She put her arm firmly about Vera and resigned herself to the event. During a period that seemed infinite, the cart raced through the twilight, tilting, leaping, twisting, but by some miracle never overturned. They fled past a swift dissolving vista of immense gray fields, looming trees and shadowy corners, and passed a sudden black pine-wood, a thing of terror in the dusk. Far off they saw white roads that rushed from an invisible highway into the heart of a dim, failed land. Far up they saw the fell. But they were caught in the debatable land between the two, and in this situation there seemed for them no hope. Then one of the great limestone boulders that pushed out from the earth on the lower slopes stood suddenly in their path and the dazed and worried pony could not elude it. Almost before the peril reached their minds one wheel met the obstacle with a crash. The cart tried to mount it, failed, tottered, and was overturned. Once in the child half leapt half tumbled from the low seat to the ground. There they lay, huddled, in a bewilderment that excluded the more natural sensations of despair. Amidst a litter of broken shafts, a wheel torn from its axle, and a pony which was kicking its way to freedom as quickly as it might. Constance rose, shook herself, and examined Vera. Routine took charge of her, and she acted without thought and therefore with decision. The child was sobbing with fear, anger, and fatigue, but she was unhurt. Constance suddenly alert to the realities of the situation said to her, Stop crying, get up quickly, it's nearly dark and we have got to find our way home. She went to the crestfallen and panting pony, extricated his limbs from the entangled harness, took a handful of bracken, and rubbed him down. She said to Vera, I'm going to put you on the pony, don't be frightened, hold tight, and let him go the pace he likes. You will have a lovely ride, just like a grown-up lady, and we shall soon find a cottage to get tea. She dared not to ask herself yet in which direction she should go to find it, or what were her chances of success, for their course had been a twisted one with doubling to and fro and the tracing of wild circles, and she had no knowledge of the sky to help her. At this instant the voice of the watcher said urgently, the light, we must go to the light. Then she looked up and saw with deep thankfulness a little sharp star that had flashed into being and shone low down in the hills. Unquestionably it called to them, offering at least a certainty of human life. It was no great matter to quiet the pony, and place Vera upon his back, she did it, and set out to wander up the pathless fell without any sensation of anxiety. She was still sustained by the mystic's delightful conviction that nothing really matters in the least. What funny little things happen to us, said the watcher, and what infinite shades of experience you have packed within the limits of this dream. I like these dark and lonely places where the foolish, bustling people never come. She might have agreed with him, for indeed the wild and darkling earth about them cried messages of wonder to the eager mind. But the vague, increscent miseries of a cross-country walk unwillingly undertaken in the dusk quelled her thirst for adventure. She was hardly in training, and sooner than she had thought it possible she grew breathless. Breathlessness brought in its train indifference, fatigue, at last exasperation. The approach to the light was very long. As they went it seemed to retreat from them into the bosom of the hills. It led them upwards with many miserable slippings and scramblings on the dried heather, sudden sinkings into braken and clamouring up harsh and disconcerting stones to a saucer-like valley scooped out from a spur of the fell. There its presence seemed to create a greater darkness, a terrible and mysterious gloom. There were two little hillocks at the entrance, guarding perhaps the citadel of some primeval and inhuman life. The watcher whispered, Press on! Press on! We are drawing very near. He was like a hound upon the scent, eager, excited. But she could not respond. She stood dissociated from him at this moment, and felt the lonelier for his evident air of being at home. She was invaded too by a panic terror, for there was nothing in her past experience which could help her in dealing with the circumstances of this hour. A hare sat sentinel on one of the little hillocks. It moved as they came up to it, and Vera screamed. That scream made their condition seem unsafe, but they plodded on. When they were come a little farther they saw beyond the saucer-like valley a narrower crevice in the hill, and within it the dark shape of a building, and the slit of radiant window which had been their guiding light. It was the child, sharp-eyed, who exclaimed with a sob of rage and hunger, O Tanta! How perfectly hateful! It's only a church, after all! Constance then was aware of a certain sinking of the heart, and a sense of helplessness, a distrust of her situation which the unpeopled hills had been powerless to induce. The fears of the traveller faded before the fears of the lost. Man had been there, and left his mark, and was a hieroglyphic that she had no skill to read. But the watcher still cried, Go to the light! It is real! It calls us! You cannot! You must not retreat! That drove her on, and she led the pony up the last slopes of heather to the little limestone chapel which stood solitary on its knoll. There was a sudden uprising of shadowy grey-forms from under the wall as they came to it, and a horse cry and a scuttering in the dusk which jarred her weary nerves, and brought strange, choking sensations to her throat. Then the frightened sheep ran toward the hills, and they were again alone. The door of the place was shut, and through the keyhole that mysterious light looked out on them. She was past further adventure, and when her first casual exploration failed to discover the latch of the door, she abandoned it. The watcher murmured, This is a place of safety, all is well. But her heart did not echo his words. Because there seemed nothing else to do, she lifted Vera from the depressed and weary pony. It rambled the yard or so away, stopped, and began to crop at the short grass. Suddenly it turned the corner of the church and disappeared. A man came out from the lean-took cottage which was concealed at the little church's eastern end. When he saw the bridled pony he was surprised. He went quickly towards the entrance, with such rising feelings of anger and distress as might possess a lover whose secret there was suddenly unmasked. When he was come round the northwest angle he saw a figure that sat upon the thresholds of the chapel and leaned against the door. He perceived it to be the form of a very weary woman, and a remark about damned tourists died stillborn. Instead he approached and said to her very gently, That is Lancelot's attitude. But won't you come inside? The watcher took Constance's lips for his own purposes and whispered, Yes. Vera exclaimed with petulant relief, Oh, here's a man! How lovely! Time to do ask him if we can't come in and have some tea. The man said, Poor child, of course you shall be fed. And then he put his hand to an inconspicuous boss, pressed it and opened the church door. He held it and allowed Constance to pass him, followed her and knelt upon the ground, an act which at once made Miss Tyro feel awkward and obtrusive. But before she had time to digest these unpleasant emotions and an amazing thing happened. A force stronger than herself brought her, too, to her knees, and to an active profound, though involuntary, adoration. She knew not what she worshipped, but knew that worship she must, the hushed voice of the watcher whispered within her. It is the idea. She could not rise. She forgot to be self-conscious. She knew only that her weariness was strangely healed. When she had knelt with bowed head for a few moments, feeling the unseen waves beating upon her brow, she looked up and saw that she was in a plain and oblong chamber, built of rough stones and floored with beaten earth. There were in it no pews, no place for priests and choir, none of the customary conveniences of piety. Hence the attention, undistracted, ran straight to the essential point, to the one object which lifted the sanctuary from a squalid desolation to an ordered austerity. There was at the eastern end a little table and on it a red brocaded cloth heavy like a pole and touching the ground. This table bore no crucifix, no flowers, no candles, so that Constance said to herself, if this place is Church of England it must be very low. But on the simple altar there was a curious metal case, a silver inlaid with plaited patterns, angels, and mysterious animals whose wings were made of enamels, gems, and gold. The doors of it stood open, so that one looked within as into a little shrine. Inside there was a rough glass cup without a base and with one clumsy handle. A kitchen teacup might have provided its model, but not the strange sheen of purple, black, and gold which ran through the glass. With sudden and inappropriate memories of South Kensington she said to herself, Phoenician, I am sure of it! But what is it doing here? Then she perceived that this antique vessel was the thing to which she knelt, the link with eternity which her lodger adored. Even whilst she fought its influence and speculated upon its meaning, it cast its spells upon her soul. There was nothing else within the chapel, unless it were the lighted wick in its clay saucer which had guided them to this place. Centuries slid from her, and she found herself united to the primitive worship of the hills. Outside in the dusk those hills and their inhabitants were gathering, brooding above the chapel, as if they would guard its enigmatic treasure from the peering vision of the modern world. Within she, a daughter of that world, little suited to such company and such rights, knelt with a man and a spirit who had been caught into some ecstatic and unheard of communion by a symbol which only invoked in her the vague sensations of wonder, of desire, and of unrest. She glanced at the man, he still knelt at her side and had clearly forgotten that she was there, a circumstance which contradicted all that she knew of human life. He gazed at the glass cup with an ardent love which was without a taint of fatuousness. His glance pierced through it to something beyond, clearly seen and intimately known. He was young, spare, vivid, superbly alive. There was a sudden shriek from the doorway behind them and Vera cried in panic, oh, get up and speak to me quick! Tanta, it's lonely, it's queer, there's dreadful boogies in the mills, I hate your nasty prayers, I want my tea. He instantly rose to his feet and said, come, we are forgetting, there's the child to be fed. She followed him from the chapel, with an unwillingness that she could not understand. When they were in the two-roomed cottage and he was cutting bread and setting milk to boil, he said to her, you are the first that has come. She replied, we lost our way and wrecked the cart and then we saw your light upon the hill. He said, that may have been the manner of it, but it could not be the cause, and because she looked at him strangely he added, Surely, you know what it is you have seen tonight? She answered, no. But I think it was real and mattered very much. Real, he said, I should think so. In the last resort it is our earnest of the only thing that matters, the transcendent link with reality. You, no less than Parsifil, have looked upon the holy grail. She gazed at him in amazement, and the feeble voice of common sense muttered that he must certainly be mad, or at least hysteric of the religious type. He caught her eye, laughed at her and said, oh, yes, of course all knowing people would think I was insane, but you cannot because you knelt down. I didn't do it on purpose, all the better, that counts one to us. To us? Yes, to the angel's side. She said tentatively, for, of course, it might be desirable to humor him, oh, but it can't be, you know, at least, not really, it's absurd, incredible, and besides, how could you possibly be sure? There was an alarming note of obstinacy in his reply. No one can doubt who has experienced the power of great relics, and this is the mightiest relic of them all. And besides, there is tradition, and I am those who hold that tradition may be misread, but cannot lie. Here, you know, in the Westmoreland Hills was the last stronghold of the Celtic Church. Here my predecessors in her priesthood lingered with their treasures and their rites. Long after Italian bishops came to the North, and the Isle of Saints was saintless, and the great monastic hives had been disbursed. With them was hid, adored, kept safe, the lost key of the Middle Ages, that grail which was sought by all the chivalry of God, sought mystically, and also sought actually because of the undying tradition of its loss. But now? But now, he exclaimed, it was given to me, me, the meanest of its lovers, to find hold and cherish. Never mind how. Grace did it, and that is enough. As any man of our generation and dearer destiny, do you think? I am permitted to stand sentinel between it and a world that would not understand. We must keep our reality safe, where we are able, from moth and rust, from thieves that break in and steal, worse, from possible museums. There are certain things spread up and down the world, you know, which enshrine the only secret, and keep it safe. These are the most sacred of all trusts, and all who have eyes to see them are born to their guardianship. Some are in good hands, others are of such a nature that they cannot be perceived by those who do not love, and therefore they will never be profaned. But some are known only at their own peril. I have brought one such here to hide it. It is safe in the bosom of our hills, in the nest which has hid it so long. He went to a cupboard, brought cups and plates, and gave them warm milk, bread and butter, and oat-cake. Miss Tyrell looked at the little neat common-place cottage, and then at this eager man with hot blue eyes who spoke the language of fairyland with fervor and conviction. Side by side, with her rebellious reason, the spirit of the watcher looked out on this new slice of experience, and he, she perceived, had left his perennial aspect of astonishment. He seemed as one who, so journeying and barbarous lands, where all is bizarre and difficult to accept, suddenly hears the dear accents of home. More, here is something someone whose presence in that home had long been desired, long needed, but never attained. They were within the field of some mighty and spiritual magnet whose powers transcended time and space. She had always eluded dogma with an agility which she doubtless owed to her excellent education. But here, in this crevice of the hills, was something which she could not elude. The watcher cried in ecstasy, the real, the real. She raised her head with a gesture of a trapped and frightened thing, and again the man laughed. Tiresome, is it not, he said, but inevitable, I assure you, you had better acquiesce. The finger of God is not to be escaped. It pursues, it caresses, it touches where it will. It was the old and hateful message God has not mocked. He was not. He had met her in the city, he had chased her to the hills, he waited inexorable behind the veil. Here there was a rent in that veil, and through it a hand was stretched forth, which offered her a gift. She was too far away to see the wound upon that generous hand, and as for the gift a woman of her superior intelligence could only look upon it as the fruit of fantastic, even perverse, imagination. It was merely a cup of rough glass, curiously iridescent and stained with the colors of an imperial grief. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of The Column of Dust by Evelyn Underhill This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, recording by Josh Middledorf. Chapter 11 Martin Upon Reality On cette jonction et en cette joie advient souvent de grand bonheur à l'homme, et même mes stérieux et secrètes merveilles des trésors de vin sont manifestés et découvertes. Royce Black l'admirable, l'aunement des nostres spirituelles. From this disposition, from this joy, man's great good fortune so often derives many mysteries, many secret marvels are manifested and divine secrets uncovered. Jean van Royce Black was a Flemish mystic of the 14th century. He brought them late at night by an invisible path, to the point at which they could see their village close beneath them. He wrapped the sleepy Vera in his old and faded plaid and carried her down the fell, saying, Though my name is Martin, we will not divide the cloak tonight. At the first hint of field and road he parted from them and turned again toward his friendly hills and the watchful lamp which was before the shrine. It was during this last solitary stage of their descent that the watcher, returning to his long-abandoned mood of mockery, almost as if he, too, were overtired, had whispered within Miss Tyrell's mind certain bitter, surprising, and contemptuous words. So, he said, It appears that you know too much to be deceived by reality when at last you meet it. It is well indeed that they have fed you with illusions, since this is all that you are able to digest, the killing, eating, earning, quarreling, the meaningless wriggles of life. That is acceptable, it seems, but not the idea. It is offered to you. It is present. It penetrates your very modes of being. Even in the adventures of your body you may meet it face to face. But you prefer the more rational illusions, fashion, and morality, and the intellectual life. I have laughed tonight, real laughter, which is another thing than your disordered mirth. One of you, I suppose, once knew of it, the one who spoke about the laughter of the gods. You have cherished the phrase, and the man, you thought it clever, did you not? Is it clever to perceive one own humiliation in perspective? She, made meek by the experiences of the day, said, Oh, I know that I am blind and limited, but why were you able to apprehend something wonderful there? Then he replied more gently, Because I have dwelt always within it. Although, till I had sunk into life, I did not notice, did not understand, seen against the darkness one can hardly fail to recognize the light. This was but an ill preparation for the return to practical matters, to their lodging, and to an agitated landlady in whom abruptly relieved anxiety effervesced as wrath of a quality difficult to appease. Constance's assurance, as to the safety of the pony, was received with distrust, and her apparent inability to describe its present whereabouts did but exacerbate the situation, as a fact it had been left in Martin's care, with an undertaking that she should go herself the next day to retrieve it. Martin had said, I dare not risk discovery by your village. It is full of summer visitors who go to and fro seeking what secret beauty they may destroy. They call it an object for a walk. They would think that my hidden treasure house was very quaint, and the more cultured and pestilent amongst them would write descriptions of it and publish them in the spectator and the Westminster gazette. As it is, the place is well concealed. I have passed many summers in safety. Do not betray me. That were a treachery to two worlds. She, seeing in vision with a housewife's eye the necessary general shop, the soap and soda, pepper, sugar, rice, and also the flour mill and the weekly butcher's cart which certainly could never climb the fell, said to him, How do you manage if you never come? He replied, I have another route over the hills and far away to a little lonely, uncommunicative place. There the people accept my existence and wish to know no more. He'll folk have so little curiosity their own concerns suffice them. I go down amongst them, lend a hand if there is need, buy what I require, and back again by the sheep-tracks. No one thinks it worth while to follow and question me. A taste for solitude is no novelty in the north. They're well accustomed to dour, folk. Ill-tempered anchorites and people stowed away in odd nooks. Likely enough I am catalogued as daft. But were I sick and asked help? They would give it. You see, they have wintered me and summered me many a time, and I am part of their landscape now. Part of hers, too, he was destined to become, though the fitting of him was a matter of hard pushing and urgent faith. When she woke upon the following morning and looked round her attic bedroom, where relics of medieval discomfort were mitigated by an aggressive wallpaper and chromoliths of the Good Shepherd, Mother's Sweetheart, and the coronation of Edward VII, she seemed far indeed from the austere chapel in the fells. How could a sensible and industrious woman whose investigations of philosophy had ranged from Aristotle to Schopenhauer find room in her consciousness for that incredible cup, its fantastic guardian. True, she found room there for the more impossible, watcher. But the camel, as usual, had left little place for the gnat. The watcher after all came from another universe where anything might happen and anything be true. But Martin's claim involved the readjustment of a dimension as to which she had already made up her mind. Although she would have repudiated scholasticism with a violence which was proper to her education, she was still a dualist at heart. Vera slept hard after her adventure, and Constance left her in bed, dressed, and descended to the presence of a landlord whose low opinion of Londoners had been confirmed by yesterday's performance. She breakfasted in haste and discomfort, being one of those who can ill endure the disapproval of their inferiors. But there was an encouraging voice within which said to her, Dear friend, why let yourself be troubled? Are we not going back to the real? As she came out in her short skirt and tamer shanter, she met the postmen and received from him a fat letter and a hand that she did not know. She took it with her to read upon the way, and at the first halt after the sharp hot scramble which put a patch of heather between her and the cultivated land, she sat upon a boulder and spread it on her knee. The letter was from Mrs. Reed, one of those lengthy and intimate letters which are produced, not by overpowering affection, but by long periods of leisure enjoyed in an uncongenial spot. It was dated from the Villa Medici boarding establishment, Sand Hill Unsea, a place which, as Mrs. Reed observed in her opening paragraphs, had no soul and not even a desirable body, being but the dreary evolutionary product of gulf, gasworks, and red brick. Of course, she said, it is all Maya illusion, nevertheless, I own that an inexpressible disgust makes me sad when I see nature playing the Piccadilly harlot by the sea with the added horror of a deliberate winsomeness. Here one perceives the educative influence of phenomena in its negative aspect, the materialistic qualities of the modern seaside resort producing its appropriate population. I see young men and young women who have no thought beyond the sphere of Malcouth, in whom the universal medicine has never worked. They rushed to and fro without hats, and did they but know it, also without hope. All their dreams, all their ideals are concerned with physical things, the movement of muscles and the touching of lips. Fortunately, the air is very good and my husband benefits. He spends many hours daily in a bath-chair upon the promenade. You, I hope, are climbing happily the letter of dream in the lovely arena of the North, for I am sure that you are born with a vision that can look upon the stars. Are they not the eyes of Isis, the maternal one, and are not our illusions a progress to her arms? There is no one here to whom one can talk, and I spend much time in preparing the lectures for my autumn class, The Egyptian Underworld, as an English Over-Belief. Mr. and Mrs. Vince passed through the town and in their motor the other day en route for the South Downs and Arendelle, I think, but they only remained a few hours with us. He was very healthy and wore mud-colored clothes marked with grease. Is it a sin against the light to say that this seemed appropriate? He spoke of carburetors and appeared to be happy. As for Muriel, she wore her dear look of detachment, but such a holiday, I think, can mean little to her. Within the sublime heart of things, all must, of course, be unity, one knows it, but it is hard to realize the absolute at Sandhill. Constance put the letter in her pocket, and from the height upon which she was poised, dipped dreamily into that other life, she had been conscious of an egoistic pang when she came upon the image of Andrew so far away, enjoying himself so completely. She had no point of contact with that prosperous and modern life which she took for granted, with hotels and motor-cars, all the imperative claims of petrol tanks, maps, lunch-basket, the delightful intricacies of cylinders and speeds, hence these things seemed to lift him far from her sphere to constitute a slur upon their friendship. Muriel tied up in soft veils and whisked through the air, his hands upon the steering wheel, the one barrier between her exquisite body and death, could hardly fail to be warmed to something like womanhood by such a contact with the simple elements of life, each drawn closer to the other was probably drawn father from her, a gloomy idea indeed for the woman outside their life who had learned to depend on them. Andrew, between his carburetor and his darling, with outlets for every energy holding life by each hand, must be far from the mood in which he had said to her, I'm lonely, it's just that, and awakened by this cruel appeal, a sympathy that he did not really need. She looked sorrowfully at the hills, which were gray, cold, and sad, and at the close roof of trees lying tufty beneath her. She got up with a sigh, for existence had again become arduous. She had ceased to acquiesce. Then she turned to the ascent, and the water once more raised his head, plumed himself as it were. He understood now the dignity and joy of energy, of earth, moving on earth, spirit driving it, mental concepts, and determinations realized if only in the dust. But the odd entanglements of humanity were still beyond him, as we, whilst we feed, exercise, and cherish our pet animals, hardly extend our sympathy to their friendships, love affairs, and hidden griefs. Hence his friend, when she turned to her fellow creatures, still turned from him. And whilst he was grieved by her troubles, he offered his condolences at a threshold, which he might not cross. The sheep-track, which she followed, took her around the village of the hill, and behind a knoll that hid the village from her sight. Then she stepped quickly from the credible to the actual, being hemmed in by the barren and majestic earth, roofed by a very gentle morning sky, beckoned on by the first glimpse of a tiny gable peering above the heathered slope. She knew that in another instance she would see the little window and the faint glimmer of its ritual light. She felt like a traveller whose feet have come to the brink of a fairy ring, who, remembering the magic, was invested in the dusk, hesitates, even in the daylight, to cross a frontier which may delimitate that country from which no wanderer returns unchanged. She completed the ascent of the last little hillock, and saw beneath her the chapel in its dell. Martin was feeding his chickens. He wore tweed tinkerbockers, and looked fresh, brisk, and British. The pony stood near, comfortably tethered upon a patch of appetizing ground. It was as simple, as ordinary, and yet as unfamiliar, as no white's housekeeping might have seemed to a casual tourist happening upon the cottage in the wood. Martin glanced upward. He evidently possessed the hermit's instinct for those delicate noises which herald the approach of new life. When he saw her standing on the hill he smiled at her and cried, Wait! I am coming to show you the easy way down. She watched him as he came up the steep and invisible track with that effortless stride of a being whose powers are perfectly adjusted to his needs. When he was at her side he said, Well, in the morning light I wondered whether I had dreamed you. You, I suppose, were quite sure that you had dreamed me. Acknowledge that you were difficult. That remark connotes rather a severe self-criticism, doesn't it? Oh no, she said, I am justified. Consider, all your circumstances are so strange. You have so long been parted from the world that you forget, this chapel, for instance, serving no village, no farm even, all by itself in the pathless hills, who could have conceived of its existence. It is unreasonable and yet appropriate, like Mallory, perhaps, but not like life. He replied, it is like unspoiled life. The life of the West and the North, and the wild and ardent hearts which they have bred. These secret little chapels that they build, desolate places alone in the wild, far from any habitation, are they unreasonable? To say so were cynicism indeed. They were meant to serve God, not man, to offer, not to ask. It is the Celtic spirit, I think, the austere sentiment of lonely adoration. One sees the same thing in Brittany, you know. Cornwall has yet the wrecks of one or two, but she does not use them, of course. Her Methodism finds a nicer nook between the grocer's shop and the police station. As for this place, I found it one day in my wanderings a forgotten ruin so miserable that it was not even picturesque. The door was broken down, and sheep came in for shelter. I bring them here, still in the winter, when the snow is very deep. Into the church, exclaimed Constance, she had considerable reverence for the externals of religion in which she did not believe. Yes, into the church. Why not? I cannot think that the lamb would refuse a roof to his poor relations in their need. He who was born in a stable must be very patient with the habits of the beasts. Of course, I clean up after them. One likes the work. It brings Bethlehem to the English hills. Once a little lamb was born here, right before the altar. That was a wonderful night, nature at work renewing the eternal symbols. The snow was so deep that everything was very silent, but I heard the gloria in the air. She stared at him in growing discomfort. Her doubt as to his sanity had returned. He said, Oh yes, of course it seems mad. I know that. But do not be afraid. My manias are quite harmless. There was no other way for me. No will there be for you, I think, once you have grasped. The world has come to that point in his perversion of reality, at which one can hardly be natural unless one is insane. I am not the first person, after all, who has tried to domicile the truths of one plane and the symbols of another. And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountain green, and was the holy Lamb of God on England's pleasant pasture seen? Do you remember that? Blake knew as he knew all things. He who touched the sky with his finger would not have been surprised. She said, I don't understand one bit. It is like hearing the middle ages through a gramophone. The watcher asked her anxiously. Is that a patch of time when men were near the real? She answered in confusion. Perhaps. I do not know. They descended to the chapel, and again with shaking heart she entered the door and knelt down. Then her lodger, as if friendship itself must give way before this mighty opportunity, seized her mind, her powers, in his old passionate spirit of domination. He threw himself as it were, and these with him, humble, eager, and full of joy, at the feet of that power which had been brought to a point in this place. By her side another spirit rose beyond him, transfigured, made ardent by that same vivid and penetrating love. When they were come out, she said to Martin, Ah, what is it? What is it? There is more here than any mere relic, any dead symbol, I think. He answered in the voice of one who tells his dearest secret, Yes, you are in a lover's lair. And what is it, this elusive thing you love? The watcher whispered, Why, the idea! What else could one love? Martin, to her surprise, corroborated him, saying, Your mind is still clouded by practical things. The breath of the world has tarnished it. If it were not so, you could hardly help but see, for the elusive thing, which you have such difficulty in accepting, is just the one thing that truly exists. As for loving it, am I not a priest? And are not all priests in their essence just lovers, deeply in love, but only with ideas? And she, thinking of the ministers of many denominations which she had met in the course of her work, could not agree with him. Oh, yes they are, he said, at least the real ones, and the others do not count. I'll tell you the life of a priest. He watches and waits, and serves the beloved thing, and steals his heart against the misery of seeing it despised and rejected of men. And after a time it happens that he cannot bear the waiting and the watching any more, and so he runs away with his darling to a desert and a secret place, there to enter into possession of his joy. That is the story of the hermits, and of many and many a person who is supposed to have a morbid hatred of his kind. Humanity is insulted and says bitter things of them, just as many a mother is insulted when her son first casts his eyes upon a woman, and wants to leave his home and make a nest for her somewhere in the world. He feels the impulse, he knows he has got to go, and so do we. It is the next stage to leave the mother of all of us and turn from her to the one and only love for whose possession she has raised us up. And is that what brought you here? Yes. Even before I found the cup, I think that I was destined to come. Sometimes down there, I dreamed I was a poet, and then suddenly I woke and knew that I was a person. One couldn't combine them. So I aped St. Francis, stripped off my clerical clothes, and went wandering. Because I was detached, my destiny came. The love token was put into my hand, and I was forced to find a nook where I might hide it. He broke off, and looked at her with authority. You are judging me, he said. But why shouldn't I act thus? I defy you to say why I should not have done it. You, she retorted, are judging me. And through me the race, and why pray should not I have done it? How can I say? You have not unveiled your idol. She answered, her name is Life. But unbelievers have another word for that aspect to which I made my oblation. Was it a happy love? She glanced back and then said, no. Not really. Only exciting. Since I have seen you and because you are sharp edged and simple, I know that my worship fell short. It was ugly, and had no shape. Oh, no, he said, with great gentleness. If it was worship, it could not have been ugly. You may have seen it in ugly terms, of course. Wasn't that it? Real worship is always beautiful. The eternal object of it sees to that. But we, when we would judge what we are doing, will mix ourselves up with the picture. We do not stand far enough away. She interrupted him. But there is no standing far away when it's life. That is the terrible part. One lives up to that religion. It is no mere academic creed. One must plunge in, bathe in it. It is like the initiation of Mithra. Every adept must be baptized in the hot, horrible torrent of blood. Endure it to the dregs. Sometimes, you know, that leaves a stain, an unexpected stain, which cannot be effaced. The sharp blue eyes looked at her, and then he answered quietly. I know. It is horribly painful. But not in the least criminal, of course. My initiation, she said, and stopped. Then she began a different subject. Did you notice the child who was with me last night? Yes. An animal thing. That's all right. There are many such up here. They are left over. They linger in the corner. Sometimes they are fresh created by mistake. She was. Ah, well. You must not be fastidious. Your goddess is not always in her best bib and tucker. Cannot be always on her knees. She must work and sometimes soil her hands in the process. As for me, because I have lived close to the breeding earth for many years, I have been taught to abandon that delicacy which demands a constant crop of lilies, but cannot tolerate manure. It is all so splendid, so holy. Oh, it really is, even one's own experience. The true lover, I fancy, can afford to see his mistress at the dustbin, and love her nonetheless. And so it is with life, with God. That's different. No, not really. Right through existence, from beginning to end, and in every relation, one always, as a matter of fact, loves in the same way. Thinking of the foolish enthusiasm of the past, she said. No. I hope not. Oh, yes. But we do, he answered. Why, isn't that just our job to get the little loves right so that the big love may be in order to? Friend, lover, toy, ambition, and sacramental divinity, we really turn the same face to them all. Watch a woman with her sweetheart, and you may guess pretty accurately her attitude to her God, don't you know? Some love in gusts of overpowering devotion, and some steadily and quietly, like a well-trimmed flame. Some give, give, give all the while, and never ask back. These, I think, are already divine. Some cry, Love me, only show that you love me. Just that, every minute of the day. Some love sternly, soakly, but unquenchably. They turn the arrows of arrows upon themselves, and wound themselves cruelly, drawing the barbs through their flesh with a strange, fierce joy. And that which each does in the human relation will govern his action toward the absolute, too. She looked at him, rather puzzled. I never thought of it that way, she said. The watcher stirred within her and muttered, Of course! It is a training-ground, a school. What else could it possibly be? The idea must be there, underneath. Why did I not perceive that before? This, then, is the meaning of the foolish and deluded human loves. Martin went on. You see, all that, the joining up of things, the matching of the outside with the inner meaning. One learns in these quiet places as nowhere else. In the cities it is difficult and confusing, but here the silence helps it, at the meek determination of the earth. When one is quite alone, one hears it say so many beautiful things. This is the secret of that contempt of the bustling, practical world, which comes with such great simplicity to the saints. I think I shall never quite forget the cleansing of my own eyes on the day that I brought the cup to its home. It was a grey morning, and misty, the sky was soft. And behind its softness one divined a gleam. All the world seemed a little different, I thought. I was so warmed towards it by that which I held to my breast. I wondered to myself, what was its place in that love, and how near the dutiful and patient plants, the little simple beasts, were drawn to him. Then I looked up, and knew, for I saw across the meadows and the forests the majestic figure of a priest, who passed to and for with unhurried steps, and fed his creatures, some with bitter bread and some with sweet. All the flowers spread their corollas at his coming. All the little creatures raised soft faces, and opened trustful mouths for the receiving of this host. And it was of their substance and of his. Now I see this God, this priest, in all his aspects. I see him laughing in the riot of Dionysus did. I find him passionate as a lover in the oratory, austere as a judge in the confessional, gentle as a mother at the grave. Shall I not attribute to him the same range of emotions as I find in his creation? Why limit his immanence and his effect? Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, as surely he shares our conquests and our joys. Oh no, she said, not that. Think they are so childish, so absurd. You have no right, exclaimed Martin, thus to stigmatize the pleasures of your God. How arrogant we are, turning back upon our parents, imposing our little creeds upon their source. Remember, if omnipotence enjoyed a game of marbles, he would not be less, but the game of marbles would be more. Is it not the Holy Ghost who looks through our eyes at earthly beauty and guides the hand of the artist, the bridge-builder? Yes, and of the cricketer too. Does he not exult in the tempest and taste rapture in the dance? Have you ever thought that as we can only know him in moments of ecstasy like knowing like? So the divine life must be one long ecstasy of being, marked by the spinning of the words, and we ever so godlike as in the moments where we abandon ourselves without condition to those rhythms of the universe. A dangerous doctrine, she said. Sometimes that abandonment breeds what the world's called sin. Yes, because the world generally judges sin backwards, by its bodily seeming, as if one could sin with the body alone, absurd. You might as well say that your clothes could sin of themselves. The body is nothing after all, only a little heap of dust wrapped round to hide the soul. Then, because his last words roused in her vivid and overwhelming memories, and in her larger the ecstatic recognition of a fellow exile who really understood, she said to him suddenly, I think that I am going to tell you something. He replied, I thought you would have to when I saw you come. I know that about the body, about the dust, truly know what I mean, and it has made everything seem unreal and useless except the times when I managed to forget. The watcher corrected her, saying, but has it not disclosed the real? Such knowledge anticipates death, said Morton gravely. She answered, yes, and it comes of meddling with the fringe of things. Life was so dull, so flat, so lonely, I thought that I must have adventure, must anticipate, I could not be quiet, I longed to know, I did not think it would be real, could be, and now I am possessed by a reality from which I can never escape. If you loved it, surely you wouldn't wish to escape. I don't love it. Morton said, the things one does not love are better left alone. But I did not think that it was really there. How could I, on our sane and normal earth, where everything fits and every crevice is concealed? How could I conceive that the dust would break down, at a word, a ceremony, a wish, a song, and another universe intrude? Really, he said, if your materialism was so narrow and so arrogant as that, one cannot be very sorry about its fall. I know that little knot of case-hardened and well-educated rejectors of experience from which you have come. They are like a party of old ladies sitting in the drapery department of the stores, who sees a man rush hastily through bearing a pile of tin saucepans. When he is gone, they rub their eyes and decide that he must be in hallucination, because tin saucepans have nothing to do with drapery. They forget that the universe, too, may have other departments. I can't, for my tin saucepan is always there. He said very gently, Will you not tell me? And she, drowning the clamorous voice of the water, who was insulted by this too-sudden dip into homely metaphor, told him. The sun had broken from its morning mists, and poured radiance upon a singularly definite earth, and there, sitting in the narrow line of shade beneath the north wall of the chapel, with the delicious roughness of the heather caressing her bare hand, and in her ears the soft noise of the pony's steady munching, she related the history of her evocation and its answer, of the column of dust and its wild-eyed inhabitant, of her horror and her wavering will, of the invasion of the watcher, and her bewildering, dual life. As she told it, the tale assumed for her a shape that she had not perceived in it before. She apprehended a thread within it, the history of a progress for both of them, which, had she been a Darwinian, she might have explained to herself as the natural result of a changed environment. She saw clearly for the first time the slow humanizing of the watcher, which had turned him from an intruder to a friend, warm interest replacing his chill curiosity, sympathy modifying his super sensual contempt. In herself also she saw a change, the liberation within her of some thing, some power, which could dispute his dominion, could meet him on his own plane. At the ending of the tale Martin said to her, well, you have found a destiny, little cause for discontent with that goddess of yours, she has treated you handsomely enough, giving you no casual help from her stockpot, but served you a special plat, you know, I suppose, what you are in for. The saving of souls has always been looked upon as a fairly big business, but you have got something less usual than a soul to save. Do you think so, she stared at him. Think, it is obvious. But how to do it? How? Oh, don't worry about that, just live. Your goddess has a way of solving these problems as she comes up to them. Sometimes she cuts her way, but she always does something, always goes on, always arrives. Constance replied rather sadly, it is easy to be optimistic here. Oh no, not easy. The horizon even here is over wide, and one sees many grievous and difficult things, but hope is one of my three duties, and without it the other two could hardly be performed. She exclaimed involuntarily, how sure you are. And this lodger of mine, he apprehends your secret. He loves it too, although I cannot find the link and understand. He replied, there is nothing odd in that, really. It belongs to his world, of course. It came to the spirits in prison as well as to the seed-grounds of earth. The curious thing, the interesting aspect, is that he was forced to come here to find and recognize the liberating hand. Behind those terrible myths, how could he find it there, in symbols that deal with nothing but the most hideous animal accidents of our nature, dying, torment, and blood? Surely the real, the divine, what one longs for, what one needs, is a reading of reality that shall be radiant, permanent, serene, that shall offer a promise of deathless and beautiful things. He took her by the shoulders. Poor, squeamish child, he said. Go back to nature. Watch her at the eternal game of death and birth. Life, you say, is your idol? Listen to her, then, as she expounds existence. She is a difficult mistress. She offers no self-evident syllogism to the pupils that she loves. She has put one formula and that a paradox. It is the paradox of creation, the folly of the cross. In the afternoon, as she led the pony down the hill, she knew herself too to be led in a new spirit of acceptance, back again from the heights to life, to work, to the constant struggle for beauty, shape, and significance. Behind her in the mountain, the light burned, and the cup reigned on its little altar, remote, magical, and serene. A ray of that light went with her, illuminating certain recesses of her spirit which had lurked in the twilight till this day. As Martin bade her goodbye, he had said to her in a low, indifferent tone, yet almost with an accent of entreaty, oh, learn to love, do please learn to love. It's such a terrible waste if you don't. You are made of the stuff that does things thoroughly, and this is the one thing which is worth doing well. These words had moved constants strangely, making her feel humble, cowed, and ineffectual. They had even brought unwilling tears to her eyes. Somehow they reminded her of the shining tree, and the more actual image of creative pain which had crossed it. They addressed themselves to that sleepy inhabitant which had roused itself at that moment to struggle for the possession of her will. That inhabitant took little interest in her personal wants and failures. It was eager to endure all that might be before it, eager to cooperate with life. Vera met her in the garden, joyous and muddy. Tanta, she cried, I drowned a chicken. And the mother did squeak. End of Chapter 11