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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Parables Of A Province, by Gilbert Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Parables Of A Province
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Last Updated: March 13, 2009
+Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #6242]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PARABLES OF A PROVINCE ***
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+PARABLES OF A PROVINCE
+
+By Gilbert Parker
+
+
+
+   THE GOLDEN PIPES
+   THE GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE
+   BY THAT PLACE CALLED PERADVENTURE
+   THE SINGING OF THE BEES
+   THE WHITE OMEN
+   THE SOJOURNERS
+   THE TENT OF THE PURPLE MAT
+   THERE WAS A LITTLE CITY
+   THE FORGE IN THE VALLEY
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLDEN PIPES
+
+They hung all bronzed and shining, on the side of Margath Mountain--the
+tall and perfect pipes of the organ which was played by some son of God
+when the world was young. At least Hepnon the cripple said this was so,
+when he was but a child, and when he got older he said that even now
+a golden music came from the pipes at sunrise and sunset. And no one
+laughed at Hepnon, for you could not look into the dark warm eyes,
+dilating with his fancies, or see the transparent temper of his face,
+the look of the dreamer over all, without believing him, and reproving
+your own judgment. You felt that he had travelled ways you could never
+travel, that he had had dreams beyond you, that his fanciful spirit had
+had adventures you would give years of your dull life to know.
+
+And yet he was not made only as women are made, fragile and trembling
+in his nerves. For he was strong of arm, and there was no place in the
+hills to be climbed by venturesome man, which he could not climb with
+crutch and shrivelled leg. Also, he was a gallant horseman, riding with
+his knees and one foot in stirrup, his crutch slung behind him. It
+may be that was why rough men listened to his fancies about the Golden
+Pipes. Indeed they would go out at sunrise and look across to where the
+pipes hung, taking the rosy glory of the morning, and steal away
+alone at sunset, and in some lonely spot lean out towards the flaming
+instrument to hear if any music rose from them. The legend that one of
+the Mighty Men of the Kimash Hills came here to play, with invisible
+hands, the music of the first years of the world, became a truth, though
+a truth that none could prove. And by-and-by, no man ever travelled the
+valley without taking off his hat as he passed the Golden Pipes--so had
+a cripple with his whimsies worked upon the land.
+
+Then, too, perhaps his music had to do with it. As a child he had only a
+poor concertina, but by it he drew the traveller and the mountaineer
+and the worker in the valley to him like a magnet. Some touch of the
+mysterious, some sweet fantastical melody in all he played, charmed
+them, even when he gave them old familiar airs. From the concertina he
+passed to the violin, and his skill and mastery over his followers
+grew; and then there came a notable day when up over a thousand miles of
+country a melodeon was brought him. Then a wanderer, a minstrel outcast
+from a far country, taking refuge in those hills, taught him, and there
+was one long year of loving labour together, and merry whisperings
+between the two, and secret drawings, and worship of the Golden Pipes;
+and then the minstrel died, and left Hepnon alone.
+
+And now they said that Hepnon tried to coax out of the old melodeon the
+music of the Golden Pipes. But a look of sorrow grew upon his face, and
+stayed for many months. Then there came a change, and he went into the
+woods, and began working there in the perfect summer weather; and the
+tale went abroad that he was building an organ, so that he might play
+for all who came, the music he heard on the Golden Pipes--for they had
+ravished his ear since childhood, and now he must know the wonderful
+melodies all by heart, they said.
+
+With consummate patience Hepnon dried the wood and fashioned it into
+long tuneful tubes, beating out soft metal got from the forge in the
+valley to case the lips of them, tanning the leather for the bellows,
+stretching it, and exposing all his work to the sun of early morning,
+which gave every fibre and valve a rich sweetness, like a sound fruit of
+autumn. People also said that he set all the pieces out at sunrise and
+sunset that the tone of the Golden Pipes might pass into them, so that
+when the organ was built, each part should be saturated with such melody
+as it had drawn in, according to its temper and its fibre.
+
+So the building of the organ went on, and a year passed, and then
+another, and it was summer again; and soon Hepnon began to build
+also--while yet it was sweet weather--a home for his organ, a tall nest
+of cedar added to his father's house. And in it every piece of wood, and
+every board had been made ready by his own hands, and set in the sun and
+dried slowly to a healthy soundness; and he used no nails of metal, but
+wooden pins of the iron-wood or hickory tree, and it was all polished,
+and there was no paint or varnish anywhere; and when you spoke in this
+nest your voice sounded pure and strong.
+
+At last the time came when, piece by piece, the organ was set up in its
+home; and as the days and weeks went by, and autumn drew to winter, and
+the music of the Golden Pipes stole down the flumes of snow to their
+ardent lover, and spring came with its sap, and small purple blossoms,
+and yellow apples of mandrake, and summer stole on luxurious and dry;
+the face of Hepnon became thinner and thinner, a strange deep light
+shone in his eyes, and all his person seemed to exhale a kind of glow.
+He ceased to ride, to climb, to lift weights with his strong arms, as he
+had--poor cripple--been once so proud to do. A delicacy came upon him,
+and more and more he withdrew himself to his organ, and to those lofty
+and lonely places where he could see--and hear--the Golden Pipes boom
+softly over the valley.
+
+At last it all was done, even to the fine-carved stool of cedar whereon
+he should sit when he played his organ. Never yet had he done more than
+sound each note as he made it, trying it, softening it by tender devices
+with the wood; but now the hour was come when he should gather down the
+soul of the Golden Pipes to his fingers, and give to the ears of
+the world the song of the morning stars, the music of Jubal and his
+comrades, the affluent melody to which the sons of men, in the first
+days, paced the world in time with the thoughts of God. For days he
+lived alone in the cedar-house--and who may know what he was doing
+dreaming, listening, or praying? Then the word went through the valley
+and the hills, that one evening he would play for all who came; and that
+day was "Toussaint," or the Feast of All Souls.
+
+So they came both old and young, and they did not enter the house,
+but waited outside, upon the mossy rocks, or sat among the trees, and
+watched the heavy sun roll down and the Golden Pipes flame in the light
+of evening. Far beneath in the valley the water ran lightly on,
+but there came no sound from it, none from anywhere; only a general
+pervasive murmur quieting to the heart.
+
+Now they heard a note come from the organ--a soft low sound that seemed
+to rise out of the good earth and mingle with the vibrant air, the
+song of birds, the whisper of trees, and the murmuring water. Then
+came another, and another note, then chords, and chords upon these,
+and by-and-by, rolling tides of melody, until, as it seemed to the
+listeners, the air ached with the incomparable song; and men and women
+wept, and children hid their heads in the laps of their mothers, and
+young men and maidens dreamed dreams never to be forgotten. For one
+short hour the music went on, then twilight came. Presently the sounds
+grew fainter, and exquisitely painful, and now a low sob seemed to pass
+through all the heart of the organ, and then silence fell, and in the
+sacred pause, Hepnon came out among them all, pale and desolate. He
+looked at them a minute most sadly, and then lifting up his arms towards
+the Golden Pipes, now hidden in the dusk, he cried low and brokenly:
+
+"O my God, give me back my dream!"
+
+Then his crutch seemed to give way beneath him, and he sank upon the
+ground, faint and gasping.
+
+They raised him up, and women and men whispered in his ear
+
+"Ah, the beautiful, beautiful music, Hepnon!" But he only said: "O my
+God, O my God, give me back my dream!" When he had said it thrice, he
+turned his face to where his organ was in the cedar-house, and then his
+eyes closed, and he fell asleep: and they could not wake him. But at
+sunrise the next morning a shiver passed through him, and then a cold
+quiet stole over him, and Hepnon and the music of the Golden Pipes
+departed from the Voshti Hills, and came again no more.
+
+
+
+
+THE GUARDIAN OF THE FIRE
+
+"Height unto height answereth knowledge."
+
+His was the first watch, the farthest fire, for Shaknon Hill towered
+above the great gulf, and looked back also over thirty leagues of
+country towards the great city. There came a time again when all the
+land was threatened. From sovereign lands far off, two fleets were
+sailing hard to reach the wide basin before the walled city, the one to
+save, the other to destroy. If Tinoir, the Guardian of the Fire, should
+sight the destroying fleet, he must light two fires on Shaknon Hill,
+and then, at the edge of the wide basin, in a treacherous channel, the
+people would send out fire-rafts to burn the ships of the foe. Five
+times in the past had Tinoir been the Guardian of the Fire, and five
+times had the people praised him; but praise and his scanty wage were
+all he got.
+
+The hut in which he lived with his wife on another hill, ten miles from
+Shaknon, had but two rooms, and their little farm and the garden gave
+them only enough to live--no more. Elsewhere there was good land in
+abundance, but it had been said years ago to Tinoir by the great men,
+that he should live not far from Shaknon, so that in times of peril he
+might guard the fire and be sentinel for all the people. Perhaps Tinoir
+was too dull to see that he was giving all and getting naught; that
+while he waited and watched he was always poor, and also was getting
+old. There was no house or home within fifty miles of them, and only
+now and then some wandering Indians lifted the latch, and drew in beside
+their hearth, or a good priest with a soul of love for others, came
+and said Mass in the room where a little Calvary had been put up. Two
+children had come and gone, and Tinoir and Dalice had dug their graves
+and put them in a warm nest of maple leaves, and afterwards lived upon
+the memories of them. But after these two, children came no more; and
+Tinoir and Dalice grew closer and closer to each other, coming to look
+alike in face, as they had long been alike in mind and feeling. None
+ever lived nearer to nature than they, and wild things grew to be their
+friends; so that you might see Dalice at her door tossing crumbs with
+one hand to birds, and with the other bits of meat to foxes, martens,
+and wild dogs, which came and went unharmed by them. Tinoir shot no
+wild animals for profit--only for food and for skins and furs to wear.
+Because of this he was laughed at by all who knew, save the priest of
+St. Sulpice, who, on Easter Day, when the little man came yearly to Mass
+over two hundred miles of country, praised him to his people, and made
+much of him, though Tinoir was not vain enough to see it.
+
+When word came down the river, and up over the hills to Tinoir, that war
+was come and that he must go to watch for the hostile fleet and for the
+friendly fleet as well, he made no murmur, though it was the time
+of harvest, and Dalice had had a sickness from which she was not yet
+recovered.
+
+"Go, my Tinoir," said Dalice, with a little smile, "and I will reap the
+grain. If your eyes are sharp you shall see my bright sickle moving in
+the sun."
+
+"There is the churning of the milk too, Dalice," answered Tinoir; "you
+are not strong, and sometimes the butter comes slow; and there's the
+milking also."
+
+"Strength is coming to me fast, Tinoir," she said, and drew herself up;
+but her dress lay almost flat on her bosom. Tinoir took her arm and felt
+it above the elbow.
+
+"It is like the muscle of a little child," he said.
+
+"But I will drink those bottles of red wine the Governor sent the last
+time you watched the fire on Shaknon," she said, brightening up, and
+trying to cheer him. He nodded, for he saw what she was trying to do,
+and said: "Also a little of the gentian and orange root three times a
+day-eh, Dalice?"
+
+After arranging for certain signs, by little fires, which they were to
+light upon the hills and so speak with each other, they said, "Good
+day, Dalice," and "Good day, Tinoir," drank a glass of the red wine,
+and added: "Thank the good God;" then Tinoir wiped his mouth with his
+sleeve, and went away, leaving Dalice with a broken glass at her feet,
+and a look in her eyes which it was well that Tinoir did not see.
+
+But as he went he was thinking how, the night before, Dalice had lain
+with her arm round his neck hour after hour as she slept, as she did
+before they ever had a child; and that even in her sleep, she kissed him
+as she used to kiss him before he brought her away from the parish of
+Ste. Genevieve to be his wife. And the more he thought about it the
+happier he became, and more than once he stopped and shook his head in
+pleased retrospection. And Dalice thought of it too as she hung over the
+churn, her face drawn and tired and shining with sweat; and she shook
+her head, and tears came into her eyes, for she saw further into things
+than Tinoir. And once as she passed his coat on the wall, she rubbed
+it softly with her hand, as she might his curly head when he lay beside
+her.
+
+From Shaknon Tinoir watched; but of course he could never see her bright
+sickle shining, and he could not know whether her dress still hung
+loose upon her breast, or whether the flesh of her arms was still like a
+child's. If all was well with Dalice a little fire should be lighted at
+the house door just at the going down of the sun, and it should be at
+once put out. If she was ill, a fire should be lit and then put out two
+hours after sundown. If she should be ill beyond any help, this fire
+should burn on till it went out.
+
+Day after day Tinoir, as he watched for the coming fleet, saw the fire
+lit at sundown, and then put out. But one night the fire did not come
+till two hours after sundown, and it was put out at once. He fretted
+much, and he prayed that Dalice might be better, and he kept to his
+post, looking for the fleet of the foe. Evening after evening was this
+other fire lighted and then put out at once; and a great longing came to
+him to leave this guarding of the fire, and go to her--"For half a day,"
+he said--"just for half a day!" But in that half day the fleet might
+pass, and then it would be said that Tinoir had betrayed his country. At
+last sleep left him, and he fought a demon night and day; and always he
+remembered Dalice's arm about his neck, and her kisses that last night
+they were together. Twice he started away from his post to go to her,
+but before he had gone a hundred paces he came back.
+
+At last one afternoon he saw ships, not far off, rounding the great cape
+in the gulf, and after a time, at sunset, he knew by their shape it was
+the fleet of the foe; and so he lighted his great fires, and they were
+answered leagues away towards the city by another beacon.
+
+Two hours after sunset of this day the fire in front of Tinoir's home
+was lighted, and was not put out, and Tinoir sat and watched it till
+it died away. So he lay in the light of his own great war-fire till
+morning, for he could not travel at night, and then, his duty over, he
+went back to his home. He found Dalice lying beside the ashes of her
+fire, past hearing all he said in her ear, unheeding the kiss he set
+upon her lips.
+
+Two nights afterwards, coming back from laying her beside her children,
+he saw a great light in the sky towards the city, as of a huge fire.
+When the courier came to him bearing the Governor's message and the
+praise of the people, and told of the enemy's fleet destroyed by the
+fire-rafts, he stared at the man, then turned his head to a place where
+a pine cross showed against the green grass, and said:
+
+"Dalice--my wife--is dead."
+
+"You have saved your country, Tinoir," answered the courier kindly.
+
+"I have lost Dalice!" he said, and fondled the rosary Dalice used to
+carry when she lived; and he would speak to the man no more.
+
+
+
+
+BY THAT PLACE CALLED PERADVENTURE
+
+By that place called Peradventure in the Voshti Hills dwelt Golgothar
+the strong man, who, it was said, could break an iron pot with a blow,
+or pull a tall sapling from the ground.
+
+"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go and
+conquer Nooni, the city of our foes."
+
+Because he had not the hundred men he did not go; and Nooni still sent
+insults to the country of Golgothar, and none could travel safe between
+the capitals. And Golgothar was sorry.
+
+"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would build a
+dyke to keep the floods back from the people crowded on the lowlands."
+
+Because he had not the hundred men, now and again the floods came down,
+and swept the poor folk out to sea, or laid low their habitations. And
+Golgothar pitied them.
+
+"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would clear the
+wild boar from the forests, that the children should not fear to play
+among the trees."
+
+Because he had not the hundred men the graves of children multiplied,
+and countless mothers sat by empty beds and mourned. And Golgothar put
+his head between his knees in trouble for them.
+
+"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would with great
+stones mend the broken pier, and the bridge between the islands should
+not fall." Because he had not the hundred men, at last the bridge gave
+way, and a legion of the king's army were carried to the whirlpool,
+where they fought in vain. And Golgothar made a feast of remembrance to
+them, and tears dripped on his beard when he said: "Hail and Farewell!"
+
+"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go against
+the walls of chains our rebels built, and break them one by one."
+
+Because he had not the hundred men, the chain walls blocked the only
+pass between the hills, and so cut in two the kingdom: and they who
+pined for corn went wanting, and they who yearned for fish stayed
+hungry. And Golgothar, brooding, said his heart bled for his country.
+
+"If I had a hundred men so strong," said Golgothar, "I would go among
+the thousand brigands of Mirnan, and bring again the beloved daughter of
+our city."
+
+Because he had not the hundred men the beloved lady languished in her
+prison, for the brigands asked as ransom the city of Talgone which they
+hated. And Golgothar carried in his breast a stone image she had given
+him, and for very grief let no man speak her name before him.
+
+"If I had a hundred men so strong--" said Golgothar, one day, standing
+on a great point of land and looking down the valley.
+
+As he said it, he heard a laugh, and looking down he saw Sapphire, or
+Laugh of the Hills, as she was called. A long staff of iron-wood was
+in her hands, with which she jumped the dykes and streams and rocky
+fissures; in her breast were yellow roses, and there was a tuft of
+pretty feathers in her hair. She reached up and touched him on the
+breast with her staff, then she laughed again, and sang a snatch of song
+in mockery:
+
+            "I am a king,
+             I have no crown,
+             I have no throne to sit in--"
+
+"Pull me up, boy," she said. She wound a leg about the staff, and,
+taking hold, he drew her up as if she had been a feather.
+
+"If I had a hundred mouths I would kiss you for that," she said, still
+mocking; "but having only one, I'll give it to the cat, and weep for
+Golgothar."
+
+"Silly jade," he said, and turned towards his tent.
+
+As they passed a slippery and dangerous place, where was one strong
+solitary tree, she suddenly threw a noose over him, drew it fast and
+sprang far out over the precipice into the air. Even as she did so, he
+jumped behind the tree, and clasped it, else on the slippery place he
+would have gone over with her. The rope came taut, and presently he drew
+her up again to safety, and while she laughed at him and mocked him, he
+held her tight under his arm, and carried her to his lodge, where he let
+her go.
+
+"Why did you do it, devil's madcap?" he asked.
+
+"Why didn't you wait for the hundred men so strong?" she laughed.
+
+"Why did you jump behind the tree?
+
+       "'If I had a hundred men, heigho,
+        I would buy my corn for a penny a gill.
+        If I had a hundred men or so,
+        I would dig a grave for the maid of the hill, heigho!'"
+
+He did not answer her, but stirred the soup in the pot and tasted it,
+and hung a great piece of meat over the fire. Then he sat down, and only
+once did he show anger as she mocked him, and that was when she thrust
+her hand into his breast, took out the little stone image, and said:
+
+       "If a little stone god had a hundred hearts,
+        Would a little stone goddess trust in one?"
+
+Then she made as if she would throw it into the fire, but he caught her
+hand and crushed it, so that she cried out for pain and anger, and said:
+
+"Brute of iron, go break the posts in the brigands' prison-house, but
+leave a poor girl's wrist alone. If I had a hundred men--" she added,
+mocking wildly again, and then, springing at him, put her two thumbs
+at the corners of his eyes, and cried: "Stir a hand, and out they will
+come--your eyes for my bones!"
+
+He did not stir till her fury was gone. Then he made her sit down and
+eat with him, and afterwards she said softly to him, and without a
+laugh: "Why should the people say, 'Golgothar is our shame, for he has
+great strength, and yet he does nothing but throw great stones for sport
+into the sea'?"
+
+He had the simple mind of a child, and he listened to her patiently,
+and at last got up and began preparing for a journey, cleaning all his
+weapons, and gathering them together. She understood him, and she
+said, with a little laugh like music: "One strong man is better than
+a hundred--a little key will open a great door easier than a hundred
+hammers. What is the strength of a hundred bullocks without this?" she
+added, tapping him on the forehead.
+
+Then they sat down and talked together quietly for a long time; and at
+sunset she saw him start away upon great errands.
+
+Before two years had gone, Nooni, the city of their foes, was taken; the
+chain wall of the rebels opened to the fish and corn of the poor; the
+children wandered in the forest without fear of wild boars; the dyke was
+built to save the people in the lowlands; and Golgothar carried to
+the castle the King had given him the daughter of the city, freed from
+Mirnan.
+
+"If Golgothar had a hundred wives--" said a voice to the strong man as
+he entered the castle gates. Looking up he saw Sapphire. He stretched
+out his hand to her in joy and friendship.
+
+"--I would not be one of them," she added, with a mocking laugh, as she
+dropped from the wall, leaped the moat by the help of her staff, and
+danced away laughing. There are those who say, however that tears fell
+down her cheeks as she laughed.
+
+
+
+
+THE SINGING OF THE BEES
+
+"Mother, didst thou not say thy prayers last night?"
+
+"Twice, my child."
+
+"Once before the little shrine, and once beside my bed--is it not so?"
+
+"It is so, my Fanchon. What hast thou in thy mind?"
+
+"Thou didst pray that the storm die in the hills, and the flood cease,
+and that my father come before it was again the hour of prayer. It is
+now the hour. Canst thou not hear the storm and the wash of the flood?
+And my father does not come!"
+
+"Dear Fanchon, God is good."
+
+"When thou wast asleep I rose from my bed, and in the dark I kissed
+the feet of--Him--on the little Calvary; and I did not speak, but in my
+heart I called."
+
+"What didst thou call, my child?"
+
+"I called to my father: 'Come back-come back!'"
+
+"Thou shouldst have called to God, my Fanchon."
+
+"I loved my father, and I called to him."
+
+"Thou shouldst love God."
+
+"I knew my father first. If God loved thee, He would answer thy prayer.
+Dost thou not hear the cracking of the cedar trees and the cry of the
+wolves--they are afraid. All day and all night the rain and wind come
+down, and the birds and wild fowl have no peace. I kissed--His feet, and
+my throat was full of tears; but I called in my heart. Yet the storm and
+the dark stay, and my father does not come."
+
+"Let us be patient, my Fanchon."
+
+"He went to guide the priest across the hills. Why does not God guide
+him back?"
+
+"My Fanchon, let us be patient."
+
+"The priest was young, and my father has grey hair."
+
+"Wilt thou not be patient, my child?"
+
+"He filled the knapsack of the priest with food better than his own,
+and--thou didst not see it--put money in his hand."
+
+"My own, the storm may pass."
+
+"He told the priest to think upon our home as a little nest God set up
+here for such as he."
+
+"There are places of shelter in the hills for thy father, my Fanchon."
+
+"And when the priest prayed, 'That Thou mayst bring us safely to this
+place where we would go,' my father said so softly, 'We beseech Thee to
+hear us, good Lord!'"
+
+"My Fanchon, thy father hath gone this trail many times."
+
+"The prayer was for the out-trail, not the in-trail, my mother."
+
+"Nay, I do not understand thee."
+
+"A swarm of bees came singing through the room last night, my mother. It
+was dark and I could not see, but there was a sweet smell, and I heard
+the voices."
+
+"My child, thou art tired with watching, and thy mind is full of
+fancies. Thou must sleep."
+
+"I am tired of watching. Through the singing of the bees as they passed
+over my bed, I heard my father's voice. I could not hear the words, they
+seemed so far away, like the voices of the bees; and I did not cry out,
+for the tears were in my throat. After a moment the room was so still
+that it made my heart ache."
+
+"Oh, my Fanchon, my child, thou dost break my heart! Dost thou not know
+the holy words?"
+
+"'And their souls do pass like singing bees, where no man may follow.
+These are they whom God gathereth out of the whirlwind and the desert,
+and bringeth home in a goodly swarm.'"
+
+Night drew close to the earth, and as suddenly as a sluice-gate drops
+and holds back a flood the storm ceased. Along the crest of the hills
+there slowly grew a line of light, and then the serene moon came up
+and on, persistent to give the earth love where it had had punishment.
+Divers flocks of clouds, camp-followers of the storm, could not abash
+her. But once she drew shrinking back behind a slow troop of them;
+for down at the bottom of a gorge lay a mountaineer, face upward and
+unmoving, as he had lain since a rock loosened beneath him, and the
+depths swallowed him. If he had had ears to hear, he would have answered
+the soft, bitter cries which rose from a but on the Voshti Hills above
+him:
+
+"Michel, Michel, art thou gone?"
+
+"Come back, oh, my father, come back!"
+
+But perhaps it did avail that there were lighted candles before a little
+shrine, and that a mother, in her darkness, kissed the feet of One on a
+Calvary.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHITE OMEN
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, Monsieur, come quick!"
+
+"My son, wilt thou not be patient?"
+
+"But she--my Fanchon--and the child!"
+
+"I knew thy Fanchon, and her father, when thou wast yet a child."
+
+"But they may die before we come, Monsieur."
+
+"These things are in God's hands, Gustave."
+
+"You are not a father; you have never known what makes the world seem
+nothing."
+
+"I knew thy Fanchon's father."
+
+"Is that the same?"
+
+"There are those who save and those who die for others. Of thy love thou
+wouldst save--the woman hath lain in thine arms, the child is of this.
+But to thy Fanchon's father I was merely a priest--we had not hunted
+together nor met often about the fire, and drew fast the curtains for
+the tales which bring men close. He took me safely on the out-trail, but
+on the home-trail he was cast away. Dost thou not think the love of him
+that stays as great as the love of him that goes?"
+
+"Ah, thou wouldst go far to serve my wife and child!"
+
+"Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the
+stars, its feet for the swords; it continueth, though an army lay waste
+the pasture; it comforteth when there are no medicines; it hath the
+relish of manna; and by it do men live in the desert."
+
+"But if it pass from a man, that which he loves, and he is left alone,
+Monsieur?"
+
+"That which is loved may pass, but love hath no end."
+
+"Thou didst love my Fanchon's father?"
+
+"I prayed him not to go, for a storm was on, but there was the thought
+of wife and child on him--the good Michel--and he said: 'It is the
+home-trail, and I must get to my nest.' Poor soul, poor soul! I who
+carry my life as a leaf in autumn for the west wind was saved, and
+he--!"
+
+"We are on the same trail now, Monsieur?"
+
+"See: how soft a night, and how goodly is the moon!"
+
+"It is the same trail now as then, Monsieur?"
+
+"And how like velvet are the shadows in the gorge there below--like
+velvet-velvet."
+
+"Like a pall. He travelled this trail, Monsieur?"
+
+"I remember thy Fanchon that night--so small a child was she, with deep
+brown eyes, a cloud of hair that waved about her head, and a face that
+shone like spring. I have seen her but once since then, and yet thou
+sayest thy Fanchon has now her great hour, that she brings forth?"
+
+"Yes. In the morning she cried out to me twice, for I am not easy of
+waking--shame to me--and said: 'Gustave, thou shalt go for the priest
+over the hills, for my time is at hand, and I have seen the White Omen
+on the wall.' The White Omen--you know, Monsieur?"
+
+"What does such as she with the legend of the White Omen, Gustave?"
+
+"Who can tell what is in the heart of a mother? Their eyes are not the
+eyes of such as we."
+
+"Neither the eyes of man nor priest--thou sayest well. How did she see
+it?"
+
+"She was lying in a soft sleep, when something like a pain struck
+through her eyes, and she waked. There upon the wall over the shrine was
+the white arrow with the tuft of fire. It came and went three times, and
+then she called me."
+
+"What tale told the arrow to thy Fanchon, Gustave?"
+
+"That for the child which cometh into the world a life must go from the
+world."
+
+"The world is wide and souls are many, Gustave."
+
+"Most true; but her heart was heavy, and it came upon her that the child
+might be spared and herself taken."
+
+"Is not that the light of thy home--yonder against the bunch of firs?"
+
+"Yes, yes, good father, they have put a light in the window. See, see,
+there are two lights. Ah, merci, merci, they both live! She hath had her
+hour! That was the sign our mother promised me."
+
+"Michel's wife--ah, yes, Michel's wife! Blessed be God. A moment,
+Gustave; let us kneel here..."
+
+... "Monsieur, did you not see a white arrow shoot down the sky as the
+prayer ended?"
+
+"My son, it was a falling star."
+
+"It seemed to have a tuft of fire."
+
+"Hast thou also the mind of a woman, Gustave?"
+
+"I cannot tell. If it was not a human soul it was a world, and death is
+death."
+
+"Thou shalt think of life, Gustave. In thy nest there are two birds
+where was but one. Keep in thy heart the joy of life and the truth of
+love, and the White Omen shall be naught to thee."
+
+"May I say 'thou' as I speak?"
+
+"Thou shalt speak as I speak to thee."
+
+"Thy face is pale-art thou ill, mon pere?"
+
+"I have no beard, and the moon shines in my face."
+
+"Thy look is as that of one without sight."
+
+"Nay, nay, I can see the two lights in thy window, my son."
+
+"Joy--joy, a little while, and I shall clasp my Fanchon in my arms!"
+
+"Thy Fanchon, and the child--and the child."
+
+The fire sent a trembling glow through the room of a hut on a Voshti
+hill, and the smell of burning fir and camphire wood filtered through
+the air with a sleepy sweetness. So delicate and faint between the
+quilts lay the young mother, the little Fanchon, a shining wonder still
+in her face, and the exquisite touch of birth on her--for when a child
+is born the mother also is born again. So still she lay until one who
+gave her into the world stooped, and drawing open the linen at her
+breast, nestled a little life there, which presently gave a tiny cry,
+the first since it came forth. Then Fanchon's arms drew up, and, with
+eyes all tenderly burning, she clasped the babe to her breast, and as
+silk breast touched silk cheek, there sprang up in her the delight and
+knowledge that the doom of the White Omen was not for herself. Then
+she called the child by its father's name, and said into the distance:
+"Gustave, Gustave, come back!"
+
+And the mother of Fanchon, remembering one night so many years before,
+said, under her breath: "Michel, Michel, thou art gone so long!"
+
+With their speaking, Gustave and the priest entered on them; and Fanchon
+crying out for joy, said:
+
+"Kiss thy child--thy little Gustave, my husband." Then, to the priest:
+
+"Last night I saw the White Omen, mon pere; and one could not die, nor
+let the child die, without a blessing. But we shall both live now."
+
+The priest blessed all, and long time he talked with the wife of the
+lost Michel. When he rose to go to bed she said to him: "The journey has
+been too long, mon pere. Your face is pale and you tremble. Youth has no
+patience. Gustave hurried you."
+
+"Gustave yearned for thy Fanchon and the child. The White Omen made him
+afraid."
+
+"But the journey was too much. It is a hard, a bitter trail."
+
+"I have come gladly as I went once with thy Michel. But, as thou sayest,
+I am tired--at my heart. I will get to my rest."
+
+Near dawn Gustave started from the bed where he sat watching, for he
+saw the White Omen over against the shrine, and then a voice said, as it
+were out of a great distance:
+
+"Even me also, O my father!"
+
+With awed footsteps, going to see, he found that a man had passed out
+upon that trail by which no hunter from life can set a mark to guide a
+comrade; leaving behind the bones and flesh which God set up, too heavy
+to carry on so long a journey.
+
+
+
+
+THE SOJOURNERS
+
+"My father, shall we soon be there?"
+
+The man stopped, and shading his eyes with his hand, looked long before
+him into the silver haze. They were on the southern bank of a wide
+valley, flanked by deep hills looking wise as grey-headed youth, a
+legion of close comrades, showing no gap in their ranks. They seemed
+to breathe; to sit, looking down into the valley, with heads dropped on
+their breasts, and deep overshadowed eyes, that never changed, in mist
+or snow, or sun, or any kind of weather: dark brooding lights that knew
+the secrets of the world, watchful yet kind. Races, ardent with longing,
+had come and gone through the valley, had passed the shining porches
+in the North on the way to the quiet country; and they had never come
+again, though shadows flitted back and forth when the mists came down:
+visiting spirits, hungering on the old trail for some that had dropped
+by the way. As the ages passed, fewer and fewer travelled through the
+valley-no longer a people or a race, but twos and threes, and sometimes
+a small company, like soldiers of a battered guard, and oftener still
+solitary pilgrims, broken with much travel and bowed with loneliness.
+But they always cried out with joy when they beheld far off in the
+North, at the end of the long trail, this range of grey and violet hills
+break into golden gaps with scarlet walls, and rivers of water ride
+through them pleasantly. Then they hurried on to the opal haze that hung
+at the end of the valley--and who heard ever of any that wished to leave
+the Scarlet Hills and the quiet country beyond!
+
+The boy repeated his question: "My father, shall we soon be there?"
+
+The man withdrew his hand from over his eyes, and a strange smile came
+to his lips.
+
+"My son," he answered, "canst thou not see? Yonder, through the gentle
+mist, are the Scarlet Hills. Our journey is near done."
+
+The boy lifted his head and looked. "I can see nothing but the mist, my
+father--not the Scarlet Hills. I am tired, I would sleep."
+
+"Thou shalt sleep soon. The wise men told us of the Delightful Chateau
+at the gateway of the hills. Courage, my son! If I gave thee the golden
+balls to toss, would it cheer thee?"
+
+"My father, I care not for the golden balls; but if I had horse and
+sword and a thousand men, I would take a city."
+
+The man laid his hand upon the boy's shoulder.
+
+"If I, my son," he said, "had a horse and sword and a thousand men, I
+would build a city."
+
+"Why dost thou not fly thy falcon, or write thy thoughts upon the sand,
+as thou didst yesterday, my father?"
+
+The man loosed the falcon from his wrist, and watched it fly away.
+
+"My son, I care not for the falcon, nor any more for writing on the
+sands."
+
+"My father, if thou didst build a city, I would not tear it down, but I
+would keep it with my thousand men.
+
+"Thou hast well said, my son." And the man stooped and kissed the lad on
+the forehead.
+
+And so they travelled on in silence for a long time, and slowly they
+came to the opal haze, which smelled sweet as floating flowers, and gave
+their hearts a halcyon restfulness. And glancing down at him many times,
+the father saw the lad's face look serenely wise, without becoming old,
+and his brown hair clustered on his forehead with all the life of youth
+in it. Yet in his eyes the lad seemed as old as himself.
+
+"My father," said the lad again, "wouldst thou then build a city?"
+
+And the father answered: "Nay, my son, I would sow seed, and gather it
+into harvest--enough for my needs, no more; and sit quiet in my doorway
+when my work was done, and be grateful to the gods."
+
+The lad waited a moment, then answered: "When thou wast a governor in
+our own country, thou hadst serfs and retainers without number, and
+fifty men to beat upon the shields of brass to tell of thy coming
+through the gates of the King's house; now thou wouldst sow a field and
+sit quiet in thy doorway, like the blind seller of seed-cakes 'gainst
+the temple."
+
+"Even so, my son." Then he stooped down, knelt upon his knees, and
+kissed the earth solemnly, and when he rose there was a smile upon his
+face.
+
+Then the lad said: "When I was the son of a governor I loved to play
+with the golden balls, to shoot at the target for pearls, and to ride
+the flamingo down; now I would grind the corn which thou didst reap, and
+with oil make seed-cakes for our supper, and sit quiet with thee in thy
+doorway." Then he too stooped down and kissed the earth, and rose up
+again with a smile upon his face.
+
+And as they went the earth seemed suddenly to blossom anew, the glory
+of the Scarlet Hills burst upon them, and they could hear bugles calling
+far off and see giant figures trooping along the hills, all scarlet too,
+with streaming hair. And presently, near to a lake, there was a
+great gateway, and perched upon a rock near it a chateau of divine
+proportions, on which was written above the perfect doorway:
+
+"The Keeper of the House awaits thee. Enter into Quiet."
+
+And they entered, and were possessed of an incomparable peace. And then
+came to them an old man of noble countenance, with eye neither dimmed
+nor sunken, and cheek dewy as a child's, and his voice was like an organ
+when it plays the soft thanksgiving of a mother.
+
+"Why did ye kiss the earth as ye travelled?" he asked. Then they told
+him, each with his own tongue, and he smiled upon them and questioned
+them of all their speech by the way; and they answered him all honestly
+and with gladness, for the searching of their hearts was a joy and
+relief. But he looked most lovingly upon the lad.
+
+"Wouldst thou, then, indeed enter the quiet country?" he asked.
+
+And the lad answered: "I have lived so long in the noise!"
+
+"Thou hast learned all, thou hast lived all," he answered the boy.
+"Beyond the Hills of Scarlet there is quiet, and thou shalt dwell there,
+thou and he. Ye have the perfect desire--Go in peace, and know that
+though ye are of different years, as men count time, God's clock strikes
+the same for both; for both are of equal knowledge, and have the same
+desire at last."
+
+Then, lifting up his hands, he said: "O children of men! O noisy world!
+when will ye learn the delectable way?"
+
+Slowly they all three came from the Chateau, and through the great
+gateway, and passed to the margin of a shining lake. There the two
+stepped into a boat that waited for them, of which the rowers were nobly
+fashioned, like the Keeper of the House, and as they bowed their heads
+to a melodious blessing, the boat drew away. Soon, in the sweet haze,
+they looked transfigured and enlarged, majestic figures moving through
+the Scarlet Hills to the quiet country. Now the valley through which
+they had passed was the Valley of Death, where the young become old, and
+the old young, and all become wise.
+
+
+
+
+THE TENT OF THE PURPLE MAT
+
+The Tent stands on the Mount of Lost Winters, in that bit of hospitable
+land called the Fair Valley, which is like no other in the North. Whence
+comes the soft wind that comforts it, who can tell? It swims through the
+great gap in the mountains, and passing down the valley, sinks upon the
+prairie of the Ten Stars, where it is lost. What man first placed the
+Tent on the Mount none knows, though legends are many. It has a
+clear outlook to the north, whence comes the gracious wind, and it is
+sheltered at the south by a stout wall of commendable trees; yet these
+are at some small distance, so that the Tent has a space all about it,
+and the figure of the general land is as that of an amphitheatre.
+
+It is made of deerskin, dyed by a strange process which turned it white,
+and doctored by some cunning medicine. It is like a perfect parchment,
+and shows no decay. It has a centre-pole of excellent fir, and from its
+peak flies a strip of snake-skin, dyed a red which never fades. For the
+greater part of the year the plateau whereon the Tent stands is covered
+with a sweet grass, and when the grass dies there comes a fine white
+frost, ungoverned by the sun, in which the footstep sinks, as into an
+unfilled honeycomb.
+
+The land has few clouds, and no storms, save of the lightest-rain which
+is as mist, and snow which is as frosty haze. The sun cherishes the
+place continually, and the moon rises on it with a large rejoicing.
+
+Yet no man dwells in the valley. It is many scores of leagues from any
+habitation, from the lodges of the Indians or the posts of the Company's
+people. There are few tribes that know of it, and these go not to it as
+tribes, but as one man or one woman has need. Men say that beyond it,
+in another amphitheatre of the hills, is the White Valley, the Place of
+Peace, where the sleepers are, and the Scarlet Hunter is sentinel. Yet
+who knows--since any that have been there are constrained to be silent,
+or forget what they have seen?
+
+But this valley where the Tent stands is for those who have broken the
+commandment, "Thou shalt not sell thy soul." Hither they come and wait
+and desire continually; and this delightful land is their punishment,
+for they have no relish for goodly things, the power to enjoy going from
+them when they bargained their souls away. The great peace, the noble
+pasturage, the equal joy of day and night wherein is neither heat
+nor cold, where life is like the haze on a harvest-field, are for
+chastisement, till that by great patience and striving, some one, having
+the gift of sacrifice, shall give his life to buy back that soul. For
+it is in the minds of this people of the North that for every life
+that comes into the world one passes out, and for every soul which is
+bartered away another must be set free ere it can be redeemed.
+
+Men and women whom life and their own sins had battered came seeking the
+Tent; but they were few and they were chiefly old, for conscience cometh
+mostly when man can work and wanton no more. Yet one day, when the
+sight of the valley was most fair to their eyes, there came out of the
+southmost corner a girl, who, as soon as she set foot in the valley,
+laid aside her knapsack in the hollow of a tree, also her moccasins and
+a little cap of fur, and came on with bare head and feet towards the
+Mount of the Lost Winters.
+
+She was of good stature, ripely made, not beautiful of face, but with
+a look which would make any man turn twice to see, a very glory of
+fine hair, and a hand which spoke oftener than the lips. She had come a
+month's travel, scarcely halting from sunrise to sunset, and she was as
+worn in body as in spirit. Now, as she passed up the valley she stood
+still several times, and looked round in a kind of dream, as well one
+might who had come out of an inclement south country to this sweet
+nourishment. Yet she stood not still for joy and content, but for
+pain. Once or twice she lifted up her hands above her head as though
+appealing, but these pauses were only for brief moments, for she kept
+moving on towards the mountain with a swift step. When she had climbed
+the plateau where the delicate grass yielded with a tender spring to the
+feet, she paused long and gazed round, as though to take a last glance
+at all; then, turning to the Tent, looked steadfastly at it, awe and
+wonder, and something more difficult of interpretation, in her face. At
+last she slowly came to the curtain of the Tent, and lifting it, without
+a pause stepped inside, the curtain falling behind her.
+
+The Tent was empty save for the centre-pole, a wooden trough of dried
+fruit, a jar of water, and a mat of the most gentle purple colour, which
+was laid between the centre-pole and the tent-curtain. The mat was of
+exquisite make, as it seemed from the chosen fibres of some perfect
+wood, and the hue was as that of a Tyrian dye. A soft light pervaded
+the place, perhaps filtered through the parchment-like white skin of the
+Tent, for it seemed to have no other fountain. Upon the farther side
+a token was drawn in purple on the tentskin, and the girl, seeing it,
+turned quickly to the curtain through which she had passed. Upon the
+curtain were other signs. She read them slowly, and repeated them out
+loud in a low uncertain voice, like a bird's note blundering in a flute:
+
+"Four hours shalt thou look northward, kneeling on the Mat of Purple,
+and thinking of the Camp of the Delightful Fires, around which is the
+Joyous City; four hours shalt thou lie prone, thy face upon the soothing
+earth, desiring sleep; and four hours shalt thou look within thine own
+breast, thinking of thy sin; four hours also shalt thou go through the
+valley, calling out that thou art lost, and praying the Scarlet Hunter
+to bring thee home. Afterwards thou shalt sleep, and thou shalt comfort
+thyself with food when thou wilt. If the Scarlet Hunter comes not, and
+thy life faileth for misery, and none comprehending thy state offereth
+his life, that thy soul may be free once more--then thou shalt gladly
+die, and, yielding thine own body, shall purchase back thy soul; but
+this is not possible until thou hast dwelt here a year and a day."
+
+Having read, the girl threw herself face forward on the ground, her body
+shaking with grief, and she cried out a man's name many times with great
+bitterness "Ambroise! Ambroise! Ambroise!"
+
+A long time she lay prone, crying so; but at last arose and, folding
+back the curtain with hot hands, began her vigil for the redemption of a
+soul.
+
+And while her sorrow grew, a father mourned for his daughter and called
+his God to witness that he was guiltless of her loss, though he had said
+hard words to her by reason of a man called Ambroise. Then, too, the
+preacher had exhorted her late and early till her mind was in a maze--it
+is enough to have the pangs of youth and love, to be awakened by the
+pain of mere growth and knowledge, without the counsel of the overwise
+to go jolting through the soul.
+
+The girl was only eighteen. She had never known her mother, she had
+lived as the flowers do, and when her hour of trial came she felt
+herself cast like a wandering bird out of the nest. In her childhood she
+had known no preachers, no teaching, save the wholesome catechism of a
+father's love and the sacred intimacy of Nature. Living so, learning by
+signs the language of law and wisdom, she had indrawn the significance
+of legend, the power of the awful natural. She had made her own
+commandments.
+
+When Ambroise the courier came, she had looked into his eyes and seen
+her own--indeed, it was most wonderful, for those two pairs of eyes were
+as those of one person. And each, as each looked, smiled--that smile
+which is the coming laughter of a heart at itself. Yet they were
+different--he a man, she a woman; he versed in evil, she taught in
+good; he a vagrant of the snows, the fruit of whose life was like the
+contemptible stones of the desert; she the keeper of a goodly lodge,
+past which flowed a water that went softly, making rich the land, the
+fountain of her perfect deeds. He, looking into her eyes, saw himself
+when he had no sin on his soul; and she into his--as it seemed, her own
+always--saw herself as it were in a cobweb of evils which she could not
+understand. As his heart grew lighter, hers grew sick, even when
+she knew that these were the only eyes in which she could ever see
+happiness.
+
+It grew upon her that Ambroise's sins were hers and not his; that she,
+not he, had bartered a soul for the wages of sin. When they said at the
+Fort that her eyes and Ambroise's, and her face and his, were as of one
+piece, the pain of the thought deepened, and other pains came likewise,
+for her father and the preacher urged that a man who had sold himself to
+the devil was no comrade for her in little or much. Yet she loved him as
+only they can who love for the first time, and with the deep primitive
+emotions which are out of the core of nature. But her heart had been
+cloven as by a wedge, and she would not, and could not, lie in his
+arms, nor rest her cheek to his, nor seek that haven where true love
+is fastened like a nail on the wall of that inn called home. He was
+herself, he must be brought back; and so, one night, while yet the
+winter was on, she stole away out of the Fort, pausing at his door a
+moment only, laying her hand upon it as one might tenderly lay it on
+the brow of a sick sleeper. Then she stepped away out on the plains,
+pointing her course by the moon, for the Mount of Lost Winters and the
+Tent of the Purple Mat.
+
+When the people of the Fort waked, and it was found that she was gone,
+search parties sallied out, but returned as they went after many days.
+And at last, because Ambroise suffered as one ground between rolling
+stones, even the preacher and the father of the girl relented towards
+him. After some weeks there came word through a wandering tribe that the
+body of a girl had been found on the Child o' Sin River, and black pelts
+were hung as mourning on the lodges and houses and walls of the Fort,
+and the father shut himself in his room, admitting no one. Still, they
+mourned without great cause.
+
+But, if the girl had taken the sins of Ambroise with her, she had left
+him beside that soft flowing river of her goodness; and the savour of
+the herbs on its banks was to him like the sun on a patch of pennyroyal,
+bringing medicine to the sick body through the nostrils. So one morning,
+after many months, having crept from the covert of remorse, he took
+a guide to start him in the right trail, and began his journey to the
+Valley, whither she had gone before him, though he knew it not. From
+the moment that his guide left him dangers beset him, and those spirits
+called the Mockers, which are the evil deeds of a man crying to Heaven,
+came crying about him from the dead white trees, breathing through
+the powdery air, whistling down the moonlight; so that to cheer him he
+called out again and again, like any heathen:
+
+       "Keeper, O Keeper of the Kimash Hills!
+        I am as a dog in the North Sea,
+        I am as a bat in a cave,
+        As a lizard am I on a prison wall,
+        As a tent with no pole,
+        As a bird with one wing;
+        I am as a seal in the desert,
+        I am as a wild horse alone.
+        O Scarlet Hunter of the Kimash Hills!
+        Thou hast an arm like a shooting star,
+        Thou hast an eye like the North Sky fires,
+        Thou hast a pouch for the hungry,
+        Thou hast a tent for the lost:
+        Hear me, O Keeper of the Kimash Hills!"
+
+And whether or not this availed him, who can tell? There be many names
+of the One Thing, and the human soul hath the same north and south, if
+there be any north and south and east and west, save in the words of
+men. But something availed; and one day a footworn traveller, entering
+the Valley at the southmost corner, laid his cap and bag, moccasins,
+bow and arrow, and an iron weapon away in a hollow log, seeing not that
+there were also another bag and cap, and a pair of moccasins there.
+Then, barefooted and bareheaded, he marched slowly up the Valley, and
+all its loveliness smote him as a red iron is buffeted at the forge;
+and an exquisite agony coursed through his veins, so that he cried out,
+hiding his face. And yet he needs must look and look, all his sight
+aching with this perfection, never overpowering him, but keeping him
+ever in the relish of his torture.
+
+At last he came to the door of the Tent in the late evening, and, intent
+not only to buy back the soul he had marketed--for the sake of the
+memory of the woman, and believing that none would die for him and that
+he must die for himself--he lifted the curtain and entered. Then he gave
+a great cry, for there she lay asleep, face downward, her forehead on
+the Purple Mat.
+
+"Sherah! Sherah!" he cried, dropping on his knees beside her and lifting
+up her head.
+
+"Ambroise!" she called out faintly, her pale face drawing away from his
+breast.
+
+"Sherah, why didst thou come here?" he said. "Thou! thou!"
+
+"To buy back my soul, Ambroise. And this is the last day of the year
+that I have spent here. Oh, why, why didst thou come? To-morrow all
+should have been well!"
+
+"To buy back thy soul--thou didst no wrong!" But at that moment their
+eyes drew close, and changed, and he understood.
+
+"For me--for me!" he whispered.
+
+"Nay, for me!" she replied.
+
+Then they noticed that the Purple Mat on which they knelt was red under
+their knees, and a goodly light shone through the Tent, not of the day
+or night. And as they looked amazed, the curtain of the Tent drew open,
+and one entered, clothed in red from head to foot; and they knew him to
+be the Scarlet Hunter, the lover of the lost, the Keeper of the Kimash
+Hills.
+
+Looking at them steadfastly he said to Sherah: "Thou has prevailed.
+To-night, at the setting of the sun, an old man died in Syria who
+uttered thy name as in a dream when he passed. The soul of Ambroise hath
+been bought back by thee."
+
+Then he spoke to Ambroise. "Because thy spirit was willing, and for the
+woman's sake thou shalt have peace; but this year which she has spent
+for thee shall be taken from thy life, and added to hers. Come, and I
+will start ye on the swift trail to your own country, and ye shall come
+here no more."
+
+As they rose, obeying him, they saw that the red of the Mat had gone a
+perfect white, and they knew not what to think, for they had acted after
+the manner of the heathen; but that night, as they travelled with joy
+towards that Inn called Home, down at the Fort, a preacher with rude
+noise cried to those who would hear him: "Though your sins be as scarlet
+they shall become whiter than snow."
+
+
+
+
+THERE WAS A LITTLE CITY
+
+It lay between the mountains and the sea, and a river ran down past it,
+carrying its good and ill news to a pacific shore, and out upon soft
+winds, travelling lazily to the scarlet east. All white and a tempered
+red, it nestled in a valley with other valleys on lower steppes, which
+seemed as if built by the gods, that they might travel easily from the
+white-topped mountains, Margath, Shaknon, and the rest, to wash their
+feet in the sea. In the summer a hot but gracious mistiness softened the
+green of the valleys, the varying colours of the hills, the blue of the
+river, the sharp outlines of the cliffs. Along the high shelf of the
+mountain, muletrains travelled like a procession seen in dreams--slow,
+hazy, graven yet moving, a part of the ancient hills themselves; upon
+the river great rafts, manned by scarlet-vested crews, swerved and
+swam, guided by the gigantic oars which needed five men to lift and
+swayargonauts they from the sweet-smelling forests to the salt-smelling
+main. In winter the little city lay still under a coverlet of pure
+white, with the mists from the river and the great falls above frozen
+upon the trees, clothing them as graciously as with white samite; so
+that far as eye could see there was a heavenly purity upon all, covering
+every mean and distorted thing. There were days when no wind stirred
+anywhere, and the gorgeous sun made the little city and all the land
+round about a pretty silver kingdom, where Oberon and his courtiers
+might have danced and been glad. Often, too, you could hear a distant
+wood-cutter's axe make a pleasant song in the air, and the wood-cutter
+himself, as the hickory and steel swung in a shining half-circle to
+the bole of balsam, was clad in the bright livery of frost, his breath
+issuing in grey smoke like life itself, mystic and peculiar, man, axe,
+tree, and breath one common being. And when, by-and-by, the woodcutter
+added a song of his own to the song his axe made, the illusion was not
+lost, but rather heightened; for it, too, was part of the unassuming
+pride of nature, childlike in its simplicity, primeval in its suggestion
+and expression. The song had a soft monotony, swinging backwards and
+forwards to the waving axe like the pendulum of a clock. It began with a
+low humming, as one could think man made before he heard the Voice which
+taught him how to speak. And then came the words:
+
+       "None shall stand in the way of the lord,
+        The lord of the Earth--of the rivers and trees,
+        Of the cattle and fields and vines!
+        Hew!
+        Here shall I build me my cedar home,
+        A city with gates, a road to the sea
+        For I am the lord of the Earth!
+        Hew! Hew!
+        Hew and hew, and the sap of the tree
+        Shall be yours, and your bones shall be strong,
+        Shall be yours, and your heart shall rejoice,
+        Shall be yours, and the city be yours,
+        And the key of its gates be the key
+        Of the home where your little ones dwell.
+        Hew and be strong! Hew and rejoice!
+        For man is the lord of the Earth,
+        And God is the Lord over all!"
+
+And so long as the little city stands will this same wood-cutter's name
+and history stand also. He had camped where it stood now, when nothing
+was there save the wild duck in the reeds, the antelopes upon the hills,
+and all manner of furred and feathered things; and it all was his. He
+had seen the yellow flashes of gold in the stream called Pipi, and he
+had not gathered it, for his life was simple, and he was young enough
+to cherish in his heart the love of the open world, beyond the desire of
+cities and the stir of the market-place. In those days there was not
+a line in his face, not an angle in his body--all smoothly rounded and
+lithe and alert, like him that was called "the young lion of Dedan." Day
+by day he drank in the wisdom of the hills and the valleys, and he wrote
+upon the dried barks of trees the thoughts that came as he lay upon the
+bearskin in his tent, or cooled his hands and feet, of a hot summer day,
+in the moist sandy earth, and watched the master of the deer lead his
+cohorts down the passes of the hills.
+
+But by-and-by mule-trains began to crawl along the ledges of Margath
+Mountain, and over Shaknon came adventurers, and after them, wandering
+men seeking a new home, women and children coming also. But when these
+came he had passed the spring-time of his years, and had grown fixed in
+the love of the valley, where his sole visitors had been passing tribes
+of Indians, who knew his moods and trespassed not at all on his domain.
+The adventurers hungered for the gold in the rivers, and they made it
+one long washing-trough, where the disease that afflicted them passed on
+from man to man like poison down a sewer. Then the little city grew, and
+with the search for gold came other seekings and findings and toilings,
+and men who came as one stops at an inn to feed, stayed to make their
+home, and women made the valley cheerful, and children were born, and
+the pride of the place was as great as that of some village of the
+crimson East, where every man has ancestors to Mahomet and beyond.
+
+And he, Felion, who had been lord and master of the valley, worked with
+them, but did not seek for riches, and more often drew away into the
+hills to find some newer place unspoiled by man. But again and again he
+returned; for no fire is like the old fire, and no trail like the old
+trail. And at last it seemed as if he had driven his tent-peg in the
+Long Valley for ever; for, from among the women who came, he chose one
+comely and wise and kind, and for five years the world grew older, and
+Felion did not know it. When he danced his little daughter on his knee,
+he felt that he had found a new world.
+
+But? a day came when trouble fell upon the little city, for of a sudden
+the reef of gold was lost, and the great crushing-mills stood idle, and
+the sound of the hammers was stayed. And they came to Felion, because in
+his youth he had been of the best of the schoolmen; and he got up from
+his misery--only the day before his wife had taken a great and lonely
+journey to that Country which welcomes, but never yields again--and
+leaving his little child behind, he went down to the mines. And in three
+days they found the reef once more; for it had curved like the hook of a
+sickle, and the first arc of the yellow circle had dropped down into the
+bowels of the earth.
+
+And so he saved the little city from disaster, and the people blessed
+him at the moment; and the years went on.
+
+Then there came a time when the little city was threatened with a woeful
+flood, because of a breaking flume; but by a simple and wise device
+Felion stayed the danger.
+
+And again the people blessed him; and the years went on.
+
+By-and-by an awful peril came, for two-score children had set a great
+raft loose upon the river, and they drifted down towards the rapids in
+the sight of the people; and mothers and helpless fathers wrung their
+hands, for on the swift tide no boat could reach them, and none could
+intercept the raft. But Felion, seeing, ran out upon the girders of a
+bridge that was being builded, and there, before them all, as the raft
+passed under, he let himself fall, breaking his leg as he dropped among
+the timbers of the fore-part of the raft; for the children were all
+gathered at the back, where the great oars lay motionless, one dragging
+in the water behind. Felion drew himself over to the huge oar, and with
+the strength of five men, while the people watched and prayed, he kept
+the raft straight for the great slide, else it had gone over the dam and
+been lost, and all that were thereon. A mile below, the raft was brought
+to shore, and again the people said that Felion had saved the little
+city from disaster.
+
+And they blessed him for the moment; and the years went on.
+
+Felion's daughter grew towards womanhood, and her beauty was great, and
+she was welcome everywhere in the valley, the people speaking well of
+her for her own sake. But at last a time came when of the men of the
+valley one called, and Felion's daughter came quickly to him, and with
+tears for her father and smiles for her husband, she left the valley and
+journeyed into the east, having sworn to love and cherish him while she
+lived. And her father, left solitary, mourned for her, and drew away
+into a hill above the valley in a cedar house that he built; and having
+little else to love, loved the earth, and sky, and animals, and the
+children from the little city when they came his way. But his heart was
+sore; for by-and-by no letters came from his daughter, and the little
+city, having prospered, concerned it self no more with him. When he came
+into its streets there were those who laughed, for he was very tall and
+rude, and his grey hair hung loose on his shoulders, and his dress was
+still a hunter's. They had not long remembered the time when a grievous
+disease, like a plague, fell upon the place, and people died by scores,
+as sheep fall in a murrain. And again they had turned to him, and he,
+because he knew of a miraculous medicine got from Indian sachems, whose
+people had suffered of this sickness, came into the little city, and by
+his medicines and fearless love and kindness stayed the plague.
+
+And thus once more he saved the little city from disaster, and they
+blessed him for the moment; and the years went on.
+
+In time they ceased to think of Felion at all, and he was left alone;
+even the children came no more to visit him; and he had pleasure only
+in hunting and shooting and in felling trees, with which he built a high
+stockade and a fine cedar house within it. And all the work of this
+he did with his own hands, even to the polishing of the floors and the
+carved work of the large fireplaces. Yet he never lived in the house,
+nor in any room of it, and the stockade gate was always shut; and when
+any people passed that way they stared and shrugged their shoulders, and
+thought Felion mad or a fool. But he was wise in his own way, which
+was not the way of those who had reason to bless him for ever, and who
+forgot him, though he had served them through so many years. Against the
+little city he had an exceeding bitterness; and this grew, and had it
+not been that his heart was kept young by the love of the earth, and the
+beasts about him in the hills, he must needs have cursed the place and
+died. But the sight of a bird in the nest with her young, and the smell
+of a lair, and the light of the dawn that came out of the east, and the
+winds that came up from the sea, and the hope that would not die kept
+him from being of those who love not life for life's sake, be it in ease
+or in sorrow. He was of those who find all worth the doing, even all
+worth the suffering; and so, though he frowned and his lips drew
+tight with anger when he looked down at the little city, he felt that
+elsewhere in the world there was that which made it worth the saving.
+
+If his daughter had been with him he would have laughed at that which
+his own hands had founded, protected, and saved. But no word came from
+her, and laughter was never on his lips--only an occasional smile when,
+perhaps, he saw two sparrows fighting, or watched the fish chase each
+other in the river, or a toad, too lazy to jump, walk stupidly like
+a convict, dragging his long, green legs behind him. And when Felion
+looked up towards Shaknon and Margath, a light came in his eyes, for
+they were wise and quiet, and watched the world, and something of their
+grandeur drew about him like a cloak. As age cut deep lines in his face
+and gave angles to his figure, a strange, settled dignity grew upon
+him, whether he swung his axe by the balsams or dressed the skins of
+the animals he had killed, piling up the pelts in a long shed in the
+stockade, a goodly heritage for his daughter, if she ever came back.
+Every day at sunrise he walked to the door of his house and looked
+eastward steadily, and sometimes there broke from his lips the words:
+"My daughter-Carille!" Again, he would sit and brood with his chin in
+his hand, and smile, as though remembering pleasant things.
+
+One day at last, in the full tide of summer, a man, haggard and
+troubled, came to Felion's house, and knocked, and, getting no reply,
+waited; and whenever he looked down at the little city he wrung his
+hands, and more than once he put them up to his face and shuddered, and
+again looked for Felion. Just when the dusk was rolling down, Felion
+came back, and, seeing the man, would have passed him without a word,
+but that the man stopped with an eager, sorrowful gesture and said:
+"The plague has come upon us again, and the people, remembering how you
+healed them long ago, beg you to come."
+
+At that Felion leaned his fishing-rod against the door and answered:
+
+"What people?"
+
+The other then replied: "The people of the little city below, Felion."
+
+"I do not know your name," was the reply; "I know naught of you or of
+your city."
+
+"Are you mad?" cried the man. "Do you forget the little city down there?
+Have you no heart?"
+
+A strange smile passed over Felion's face, and he answered: "When one
+forgets, why should the other remember?"
+
+He turned and went into the house and shut the door, and though the man
+knocked, the door was no opened, and he went back angry and miserable;
+and the people could not believe that Felion would no come to help them,
+as he had done all his life. A dawn three others came, and they found
+Felion looking out towards the east, his lips moving as though he
+prayed. Yet it was no prayer, only a call, that was on his lips. They
+felt a sort of awe in his presence, for now he seemed as if he had lived
+more than a century, so wise and old was the look of his face, so white
+his hair, so set and distant his dignity. They begged him to come, and,
+bringing his medicines, save the people, for death was galloping through
+the town, knocking at many doors.
+
+"One came to heal you," he answered--"the young man of the schools,
+who wrote mystic letters after his name; it swings on a brass by his
+door-where is he?"
+
+"He is dead of the plague," they replied, "and the other also that came
+with him, who fled before the sickness, fell dead of it on the roadside,
+going to the sea."
+
+"Why should I go?" he replied, and he turned threateningly to his
+weapon, as if in menace of their presence.
+
+"You have no one to leave behind," they answered eagerly, "and you are
+old."
+
+"Liars," he rejoined, "let the little city save itself!" and he wheeled
+and went into his house, and they saw that they had erred in not
+remembering his daughter, whose presence they had once prized. They saw
+that they had angered him beyond soothing; and they went back in grief,
+for two of them had lost dear relatives by the fell sickness. When they
+told what had happened, the people said: "We will send the women; he
+will listen to them--he had a daughter."
+
+That afternoon, when all the hills lay still and dead, and nowhere did
+bird or breeze stir, the women came, and they found him seated with his
+back turned to the town. He was looking into the deep woods, into the
+hot shadows of the trees.
+
+"We have come to bring you to the little city," they said to him; "the
+sick grow in numbers every hour."
+
+"It is safe in the hills," he answered, not looking at them. "Why do the
+people stay in the valley?"
+
+"Every man has a friend, or a wife, or a child, ill or dying, and every
+woman has a husband, or a child, or a friend, or a brother. Cowards have
+fled, and many of them have fallen by the way."
+
+"Last summer I lay sick here many weeks and none came near me--why
+should I go to the little city?" he demanded austerely. "Four times I
+saved it, and of all that I saved none came to give me water to
+drink, or food to eat, and I lay burning with fever, and thirsty and
+hungry--God of heaven, how thirsty!"
+
+"We did not know," they answered humbly; "you came to us so seldom, we
+had forgotten; we were fools."
+
+"I came and went fifty years," he answered bitterly, "and I have
+forgotten how to rid the little city of the plague!"
+
+At that one of the women, mad with anger, made as if to catch him by his
+beard, but she forbore, and said: "Liar--the men shall hang you to your
+own rooftree!"
+
+His eyes had a wild light, but he waved his hand quietly, and answered:
+"Begone, and learn how great a sin is ingratitude."
+
+He turned away from them gloomily, and would have entered his home,
+but one of the women, who was young, plucked his sleeve, and said
+sorrowfully: "I loved Carille, your daughter."
+
+"And forgot her and her father. I am three-score and ten years, and she
+has been gone fifteen, and for the first time I see your face," was his
+scornful reply.
+
+She was tempted to say: "I was ever bearing children and nursing them,
+and the hills were hard to climb, and my husband would not go;" but she
+saw how dark his look was, and she hid her face in her hands and turned
+away to follow after the others. She had five little children, and her
+heart was anxious for them and her eyes full of tears.
+
+Anger and remorse seized on the little city, and there were those who
+would have killed Felion, but others saw that the old man had been
+sorely wronged in the past, and these said: "Wait until the morrow and
+we will devise something."
+
+That night a mule-train crept slowly down the mountain side and entered
+the little city, for no one who came with them knew of the plague. The
+caravan had come from the east across the great plains, and not from the
+west, which was the travelled highway to the sea. Among them was a woman
+who already was ill of a fever, and knew naught of what passed round
+her. She had with her a beautiful child; and one of the women of the
+place devised a thing. "This woman," she said, "does not belong to the
+little city, and he can have nothing against her; she is a stranger.
+Let one of us take this beautiful lad to him, and he shall ask Felion to
+come and save his mother."
+
+Every one approved the woman's wisdom, and in the early morning she
+herself, with another, took the child and went up the long hillside in
+the heavy heat; and when they came near Felion's house the women stayed
+behind, and the child went forward, having been taught what to say to
+the old man.
+
+Felion sat just within his doorway, looking out into the sunlight which
+fell upon the red and white walls of the little city, flanked by young
+orchards, with great, oozy meadows beyond these, where cattle ate,
+knee-deep in the lush grass and cool reed-beds. Along the riverside,
+far up on the high banks, were the tall couches of dead Indians, set
+on poles, their useless weapons laid along the deerskin pall. Down the
+hurrying river there passed a raft, bearing a black flag on a pole, and
+on it were women and children who were being taken down to the sea from
+the doomed city. These were they who had lost fathers and brothers; and
+now were going out alone with the shadow of the plague over them, for
+there was none to say them nay. The tall oarsmen bent to their task, and
+Felion felt his blood beat faster when he saw the huge oars swing high,
+then drop and bend in the water, as the raft swung straight in its
+course and passed on safe through the narrow slide into the white rapids
+below, which licked the long timbers as with white tongues, and tossed
+spray upon the sad voyagers. Felion remembered the day when he left his
+own child behind and sprang from the bridge to the raft whereon were the
+children of the little city, and saved them.
+
+And when he tried to be angry now, the thought of the children as they
+watched him, with his broken leg striving against their peril, softened
+his heart. He shook his head, for suddenly there came to him the memory
+of a time, three-score years before, when he and the foundryman's
+daughter had gone hunting flag-flowers by the little trout stream; of
+the songs they sang together at the festivals, she in her sweet Quaker
+garb and demure Quaker beauty, he lithe, alert, and full of the joy of
+life and loving. As he sat so, thinking, he wondered where she was, and
+why he should be thinking of her now, facing the dreary sorrow of this
+pestilence and his own anger and vengeance. He nodded softly to the
+waving trees far down in the valley, for his thoughts had drifted on
+to his wife as he first saw her. She was standing bare-armed among
+the grape-vines by a wall of rock, the dew of rich life on her lip and
+forehead, her grey eyes swimming with a soft light; and looking at her
+he had loved her at once, as he had loved, on the instant, the little
+child that came to him later; as he had loved the girl into which the
+child grew, till she left him and came back no more. Why had he never
+gone in search of her?
+
+He got to his feet involuntarily and stepped towards the door, looking
+down into the valley. As his eyes rested on the little city his face
+grew dark, but his eyes were troubled and presently grew bewildered, for
+out of a green covert near there stepped a pretty boy, who came to him
+with frank, unabashed face and a half-shy smile.
+
+Felion did not speak at first, but stood looking, and presently the
+child said: "I have come to fetch you."
+
+"To fetch me where, little man?" asked Felion, a light coming into his
+face, his heart beating faster.
+
+"To my mother. She is sick."
+
+"Where is your mother?"
+
+"She's in the village down there," answered the boy, pointing.
+
+In spite of himself, Felion smiled in a sour sort of way, for the boy
+had called the place a village, and he relished the unconscious irony.
+
+"What is the matter with her?" asked Felion, beckoning the lad inside.
+
+The lad came and stood in the doorway, gazing round curiously, while the
+old man sat down and looked at him, moved, he knew not why.
+
+The bright steel of Felion's axe, standing in the corner, caught the
+lad's eye and held it. Felion saw, and said: "What are you thinking of?"
+
+The lad answered: "Of the axe. When I'm bigger I will cut down trees and
+build a house, a bridge, and a city. Aren't you coming quick to help my
+mother? She will die if you don't come."
+
+Felion did not answer, and from the trees without two women watched him
+anxiously.
+
+"Why should I come?" asked Felion curiously. "Because she's sick, and
+she's my mother."
+
+"Why should I do it because she's your mother?"
+
+"I don't know," the lad answered, and his brow knitted in the attempt to
+think it out, "but I like you." He came and stood beside the old man
+and looked into his face with a pleasant confidence. "If your mother
+was sick, and I could heal her, I would--I know I would--I wouldn't be
+afraid to go down into the village."
+
+Here were rebuke, love, and impeachment, all in one, and the old man
+half started from his seat.
+
+"Did you think I was afraid?" he asked of the boy, as simply as might a
+child of a child, so near are children and wise men in their thoughts.
+
+"I knew if you didn't it'd be because you were angry or were afraid, and
+you didn't look angry."
+
+"How does one look when one is angry?"
+
+"Like my father."
+
+"And how does your father look?"
+
+"My father's dead."
+
+"Did he die of the plague?" asked Felion, laying his hand on the lad's
+shoulder.
+
+"No," said the lad quickly, and shut his lips tight.
+
+"Won't you tell me?" asked Felion, with a strange inquisitiveness.
+
+"No. Mother'll tell you, but I won't." The lad's eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Poor boy--poor boy!" said Felion, and his hand tightened on the small
+shoulder.
+
+"Don't be sorry for me; be sorry for mother, please," said the boy, and
+he laid a hand on the old man's knee, and that touch went to a heart
+long closed against the little city below; and Felion rose and said: "I
+will go with you to your mother."
+
+Then he went into another room, and the boy came near the axe and ran
+his fingers along the bright steel, and fondled the handle, as does a
+hunter the tried weapon which has been his through many seasons. When
+the old man came back he said to the boy: "Why do you look at the axe?"
+
+"I don't know," was the answer; "maybe because my mother used to sing
+a song about the wood-cutters." Without a word, and thinking much, he
+stepped out into the path leading to the little city, the lad holding
+one hand. Years afterwards men spoke with a sort of awe or reverence
+of seeing the beautiful stranger lad leading old Felion into the
+plague-stricken place, and how, as they passed, women threw themselves
+at Felion's feet, begging him to save their loved ones. And a drunkard
+cast his arm round the old man's shoulder and sputtered foolish
+pleadings in his ear; but Felion only waved them back gently, and said:
+"By-and-by, by-and-by--God help us all!"
+
+Now a fevered hand snatched at him from a doorway, moanings came from
+everywhere, and more than once he almost stumbled over a dead body;
+others he saw being carried away to the graveyard for hasty burial. Few
+were the mourners that followed, and the faces of those who watched the
+processions go by were set and drawn. The sunlight and the green trees
+seemed an insult to the dead.
+
+They passed into the house where the sick woman lay, and some met him at
+the door with faces of joy and meaning; for now they knew the woman
+and would have spoken to him of her; but he waved them off, and put his
+fingers upon his lips and went where a fire burned in a kitchen, and
+brewed his medicines. And the child entered the room where his mother
+lay, and presently he came to the kitchen and said: "She is asleep--my
+mother."
+
+The old man looked down on him a moment steadily, and a look of
+bewilderment came into his face. But he turned away again to the
+simmering pots. The boy went to the window and, leaning upon the sill,
+began to hum softly a sort of chant, while he watched a lizard running
+hither and thither in the sun. As he hummed, the old man listened, and
+presently, with his medicines in his hands and a half-startled look, he
+came over to the lad.
+
+"What are you humming?" he asked.
+
+The lad answered: "A song of the wood-cutters."
+
+"Sing it again," said Felion.
+
+The lad began to sing:
+
+       "Here shall I build me my cedar house,
+        A city with gates, a road to the sea--
+        For I am the lord of the Earth! Hew! Hew!"
+
+The old man stopped him. "What is your name?"
+
+"My name is Felion," answered the lad; and he put his face close to the
+jug that held the steaming tinctures: but the old man caught the little
+chin in his huge hand and bent back the head, looking long into the
+lad's eyes. At last he caught little Felion's hand and hurried into the
+other room, where the woman lay in a stupor. The old man came quickly to
+her and looked into her face. Seeing, he gave a broken cry and said:
+
+"Carille, my daughter! Carille!"
+
+He drew her to his breast, and as he did so he groaned aloud, for
+he knew that inevitable Death was waiting for her at the door. He
+straightened himself up, clasped the child to his breast, and said: "I,
+too, am Felion, my little son."
+
+And then he set about to defeat that dark, hovering Figure at the door.
+
+For three long hours he sat beside her, giving her little by little his
+potent medicines; and now and again he stopped his mouth with his hand,
+lest he should cry out; and his eyes never wavered from her face, not
+even to the boy, who lay asleep in the corner.
+
+At last his look relaxed its vigilance, for a dewy look passed over the
+woman's face, and she opened her eyes and saw him, and gave a little cry
+of "Father!" and was straightway lost in his arms.
+
+"I have come home to die," she said.
+
+"No, no, to live!" he answered firmly. "Why did you not send me word all
+these long years?"
+
+"My husband was in shame, in prison, and I in sorrow," she answered
+sadly. "I could not."
+
+"He did evil? He is--" he paused.
+
+"He is dead," she said. "It is better so." Her eyes wandered round the
+room restlessly, and then fixed upon the sleeping child, and a smile
+passed over her face. She pointed to the lad.
+
+The old man nodded. "He brought me here," he said gently. Then he got to
+his feet. "You must sleep now," he added, and he gave her a cordial. "I
+must go forth and save the sick."
+
+"Is it a plague?" she asked.
+
+He nodded. "They said you would not come to save them," she continued
+reproachfully. "You came to me because I was your Carille, only for
+that?"
+
+"No, no," he answered; "I knew not who you were. I came to save a mother
+to her child."
+
+"Thank God!" she said.
+
+With a happy smile she hid her face in the pillow. At last, leaving her
+and the child asleep, old Felion went forth into the little city,
+and the people flocked to him, and for many days he came and went
+ceaselessly.
+
+And once more he saved the city, and the people blessed him: and the
+years go on.
+
+
+
+
+THE FORGE IN THE VALLEY
+
+He lay where he could see her working at the forge. As she worked she
+sang:
+
+       "When God was making the world,
+         (Swift is the wind and white is the fire)
+        The feet of his people danced the stars;
+        There was laughter and swinging bells,
+
+        And clanging iron and breaking breath,
+        The hammers of heaven making the hills,
+        The vales on the anvil of God.
+         (Wild is the fire and low is the wind.)"
+
+His eyes were shining, and his face had a pale radiance from the
+reflected light, though he lay in the shadow where he could watch her,
+while she could not see him. Now her hand was upon the bellows, and the
+low, white fire seethed hungrily up, and set its teeth upon the iron
+she held; now it turned the iron about upon the anvil, and the sparks
+showered about her very softly and strangely. There was a cheerful
+gravity in her motions, a high, fine look in her face.
+
+They two lived alone in the solitudes of Megalon Valley.
+
+It was night now, and the pleasant gloom of the valley was not broken
+by any sound save the hum of the stream near by, and the song, and the
+ringing anvil. But into the workshop came the moist, fragrant smell of
+the acacia and the maple, and a long brown lizard stretched its neck
+sleepily across the threshold of the door opening into the valley.
+
+The song went on:
+
+       "When God had finished the world
+         (Bright was the fire and sweet was the wind)
+        Up from the valleys came song,
+        To answer the morning stars,
+        And the hand of man on the anvil rang;
+        His breath was big in his breast, his life
+        Beat strong on the walls of the world.
+         (Glad is the wind and tall is the fire.)"
+
+He put his hands to his eyes, and took them away again, as though to
+make sure that the song was not a dream. Wonder grew upon his thin,
+bearded face, he ran his fingers through his thick hair in a dazed way.
+Then he lay and looked, and a rich warm flush crept over his cheek, and
+stayed there.
+
+There was a great gap in his memory.
+
+The evening wore on. Once or twice the woman turned towards the room
+where the man lay, and listened--she could not see his face from where
+she stood. At such times he lay still, though his heart beat quickly,
+like that of an expectant child. His lips opened to speak, but still
+they remained silent. As yet he was like a returned traveller who does
+not quickly recognise old familiar things, and who is struggling with
+vague suggestions and forgotten events. As time went on, the woman
+turned towards the doorway oftener, and shifted her position so that she
+faced it, and the sparks, flying up, lighted her face with a wonderful
+irregular brightness.
+
+"Samantha," he said at last, and his voice sounded so strange to him
+that the word quivered timidly towards her.
+
+She paused upon a stroke, and some new note in his voice sent so sudden
+a thrill to her heart that she caught her breath with a painful kind of
+joy. The hammer dropped upon the anvil, and, in a moment, she stood in
+the doorway of his room.
+
+"Francis, Francis," she responded in a low whisper. He started up from
+his couch of skins. "Samantha, my wife!" he cried, in a strong proud
+voice.
+
+She dropped beside him and caught his head, like a mother, to her
+shoulder, and set her warm lips on his forehead and hair with a kind of
+hunger; and then he drew her face down and kissed her on the lips. Tears
+hung at her eyes, and presently dropped on her cheeks, a sob shook her,
+and then she was still, her hands grasping his shoulders.
+
+"Have I been ill?" he asked.
+
+"You have been very ill, Francis."
+
+"Has it been long?"
+
+Her fingers passed tenderly through his grizzled hair. "Too long, too
+long, my husband," she replied.
+
+"Is it summer now?"
+
+"Yes, Francis, it is summer."
+
+"Was it in the spring, Samantha?--Yes, I think it was in the spring," he
+added, musing.
+
+"It was in a spring."
+
+"There was snow still on the mountain-top, the river was running high,
+and wild fowl were gathered on the island in the lake--yes, I remember,
+I think."
+
+"And the men were working at the mine," she whispered, her voice shaking
+a little, and her eyes eagerly questioning his face.
+
+"Ah, the mine--it was the mine, Samantha!" he said abruptly, his eyes
+flashing up. "I was working at the forge to make a great bolt for the
+machinery, and some one forgot and set the engine in motion. I ran out;
+but it was too late... and then..."
+
+"And then you tried to save them, Francis, and you were hurt."
+
+"What month is this, my wife?"
+
+"It is December."
+
+"And that was in October?"
+
+"Yes, in October."
+
+"I have been ill since? What happened?"
+
+"Many were killed, Francis, and you and I came away."
+
+"Where are we now? I do not know the place."
+
+"This is Megalon Valley. You and I live alone here."
+
+"Why did you bring me here?"
+
+"I did not bring you, Francis; you wished me to come. One day you said
+to me: 'There is a place in Megalon Valley where, long ago, an old man
+lived, who had become a stranger among men--a place where the blackbird
+stays, and the wolf-dog troops and hides, and the damson grows as thick
+as blossoms on the acacia. We will go there.' And I came with you."
+
+"I do not remember. What of the mine? Was I a coward and left the mine?
+There was no one understood the ways of the wheel, and rod, and steam,
+save me.
+
+"The mine is closed, Francis," she answered gently. "You were no coward,
+but--but you had strange fancies.
+
+"When did the mine close?" he said, with a kind of sorrow; "I put hard
+work and good years into it." At that moment, when her face drew close
+to his, the vision of her as she stood at the anvil came to him with a
+new impression, and he said again in a half-frightened way: "When did it
+close, Samantha?"
+
+"The mine was closed--twelve years ago, my own dear husband."
+
+He got to his feet and clasped her to his breast. A strength came to him
+which had eluded him twelve years, and she, womanlike, delighted in that
+strength, and, with a great gladness, changed eyes and hands with him;
+keeping her soul still her own, brooding and lofty, as is the soul of
+every true woman, though, like this one, she labours at a forge, and in
+a far, untenanted country is faithful friend, ceaseless apothecary to a
+comrade with a disordered mind; living on savage meats, clothing herself
+and the other in skins, and, with a divine persistence, keeping a
+cheerful heart, certain that the intelligence which was frightened from
+its home would come back one day. It should be hers to watch for the
+great moment, and give the wanderer loving welcome, lest it should hurry
+madly away again into the desert, never to return.
+
+She had her reward, yet she wept. She had carried herself before him
+with the bright ways of an unvexed girl these twelve years past; she had
+earned the salt of her tears. He was dazed still, but, the doublet of
+his mind no longer unbraced, he understood what she had been to him, and
+how she had tended him in absolute loneliness, her companions the wild
+things of the valley--these and God.
+
+He drew her into the workshop, and put his hand upon the bellows and
+churned them, so that the fire roared joyously up, and the place was red
+with the light. In this light he turned her to him and looked at her.
+The look was as that of one who had come back from the dead--that naked,
+profound, unconditional gaze which is as deep and honest as the primeval
+sense. His eyes fell upon her rich, firm, stately body; it lingered for
+a moment on the brown fulness of her hair; then her look was gathered to
+his, and they fell into each other's arms.
+
+For long they sat in the solemn silence of their joy, and so awed were
+they by the thing which had come to them that they felt no surprise when
+a wolf-dog crawled over the lizard on the threshold, and stole along
+the wall with shining, bloody eyes to an inner room, and stayed there
+munching meat to surfeit and drowsiness, and at last crept out and lay
+beside the forge in a thick sleep. These two had lived so much with
+the untamed things of nature, the bellows and the fire had been so long
+there, and the clang of the anvil was so familiar, that there was a
+kinship among them, man and beast, with the woman as ruler.
+
+"Tell me, Samantha," he said at last, "what has happened during these
+twelve years, all from the first. Keep nothing back. I am strong now."
+He looked around the workshop, then, suddenly, at her, with a strange
+pain, and they both turned their heads away for an instant, for the same
+thought was on them. Then, presently, she spoke, and answered his shy,
+sorrowful thought before all else. "The child is gone," she softly said.
+
+He sat still, but a sob was in his throat. He looked at her with a kind
+of fear. He wondered if his madness had cost the life of the child. She
+understood. "Did I ever see the child?" he asked.
+
+"Oh yes, I sometimes thought that through the babe you would be yourself
+again. When you were near her you never ceased to look at her and fondle
+her, as I thought very timidly; and you would start sometimes and gaze
+at me with the old wise look hovering at your eyes. But the look did not
+stay. The child was fond of you, but she faded and pined, and one day
+as you nursed her you came to me and said: 'See, beloved, the little
+one will not wake. She pulled at my beard and said, "Daddy," and fell
+asleep.' And I took her from your arms.... There is a chestnut tree
+near the door of our cottage at the mine. One night you and I buried her
+there; but you do not remember her, do you?"
+
+"My child, my child!" he said, looking out into the night; and he lifted
+up his arms and looked at them. "I held her here, and still I never held
+her; I fondled her, and yet I never fondled her; I buried her, yet--to
+me--she never was born."
+
+"You have been far away, Francis; you have come back home. I waited, and
+prayed, and worked with you, and was patient.... It is very strange,"
+she continued. "In all these twelve years you cannot remember our past,
+though you remembered about this place--the one thing, as if God had
+made it so--and now you cannot remember those twelve years."
+
+"Tell me now of the twelve years," he urged.
+
+"It was the same from day to day. When we came from the mountain, we
+brought with us the implements of the forge upon a horse. Now and again
+as we travelled we cut our way through the heavy woods. You were changed
+for the better then; a dreadful trouble seemed to have gone from your
+face. There was a strong kind of peace in the valley, and there were so
+many birds and animals, and the smell of the trees was so fine, that we
+were not lonely, neither you nor I."
+
+She paused, thinking, her eyes looking out to where the Evening Star was
+sailing slowly out of the wooded horizon, his look on her. In the pause
+the wolf-dog raised its big, sleepy eyes at them, then plunged its head
+into its paws, its wildness undisturbed by their presence.
+
+Presently the wife continued: "At last we reached here, and here we
+have lived, where no human being, save one, has ever been. We put up the
+forge, and in a little hill not far away we found coal for it. The days
+went on. It was always summer, though there came at times a sharp frost,
+and covered the ground with a coverlet of white. But the birds were
+always with us, and the beasts were our friends. I learned to love even
+the shrill cry of the reed hens, and the soft tap-tap of the wood-pecker
+is the sweetest music to my ear after the song of the anvil. How often
+have you and I stood here at the anvil, the fire heating the iron, and
+our hammers falling constantly! Oh, Francis, I knew that only here with
+God and His dumb creatures, and His wonderful healing world, all sun,
+and wind, and flowers, and blossoming trees, working as you used to
+work, as the first of men worked, would the sane wandering soul return
+to you. The thought was in you, too, for you led me here, and have been
+patient also in the awful exile of your mind."
+
+"I have been as a child, and not as a man," he said gravely. "Shall I
+ever again be a man, as I once was, Samantha?"
+
+"You cannot see yourself," she said. "A week ago you fell ill, and since
+then you have been pale and worn; but your body has been, and is, that
+of a great strong man. In the morning I will take you to a spring in the
+hills, and you shall see yourself, beloved."
+
+He stood up, stretched himself, went to the door, and looked out into
+the valley flooded with moonlight. He drew in a great draught of air,
+and said: "The world--the great, wonderful world, where men live, and
+love work, and do strong things!"--he paused, and turned with a trouble
+in his face. "My wife," he said, "you have lived with a dead man twelve
+years, and I have lost twelve years in the world. I had a great thought
+once--an invention--but now--" he hung his head bitterly. She came to
+him, and her hands slid up along his breast to his shoulders, and rested
+there; and she said, with a glad smile: "Francis, you have lost nothing.
+The thing--the invention--was all but finished when you fell ill a week
+ago. We have worked at it for these twelve years; through it, I think,
+you have been brought back to me. Come, there is a little work yet to,
+do upon it;" and she drew him to where a machine of iron lay in the
+corner. With a great cry he fell upon his knees beside it, and fondled
+it.
+
+Then, presently, he rose, and caught his wife to his breast.
+
+Together, a moment later, they stood beside the anvil. The wolf-dog fled
+out into the night from the shower of sparks, as, in the red light, the
+two sang to the clanging of the hammers:
+
+       "When God was making the world
+         (Swift is the wind and white is the fire)"
+
+
+
+   ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+   Counsel of the overwise to go jolting through the soul
+   Love knows not distance; it hath no continent
+   When a child is born the mother also is born again
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Parables Of A Province, by Gilbert Parker
+
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