Dreams and delights

by L. Adams Beck

II

“You were speaking of the pedestal. That, of course, was invented in Eden; for Adam early recognized the convenience of knowing where to leave your women and be certain of finding them on your return. So he made the pedestal, decorated it, burned incense before it, and went away upon his own occasions; and when Eve had finished her housekeeping (you may remember, Milton tells us what good little dinners she provided for Adam), she would look bored, climb upon the pedestal obediently, and stand there all day, yawning and wondering what kept him away so long.

“Now, on a memorable day, the Serpent came by, and stopped and looked up at the Lady of the Garden,—who naturally assumed a statuesque pose,—and there was joy in his bright little eyes. But all he said was, ‘May I ask if you find this amusing?’

“And Eve replied, ‘No, not at all. But it is the proper place for a lady.’

“And the Serpent rejoined: ‘Why?’

“And Eve reflected and answered: ‘Because Adam says so.’

“So the Serpent drew near and whispered in his soft sibilant voice: ‘Have you ever heard of Lilith? She does not stand on a pedestal. She gardens with Adam. To be frank, she is a cousin of my own.’

“And this made Eve extremely angry, and she replied sharply: ‘I don’t know what you mean. He and I are alone in Eden. There’s no such person as Lilith. You are only a serpent when all’s said and done. What can you know?’

“And the Serpent replied very gently,—and his voice was as soothing as the murmur of a distant hive of bees,—‘I am only a Serpent, true! But I have had unusual opportunities of observation. Come and eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Long ages ago I tasted the Fruit. The savour of my teeth is sweet on it still.’

“Eve hesitated, and she who hesitates is lost.

“ ‘I own I should like to know about this Lilith,’ she said. ‘But we were told that fruit is unripe, and I don’t like bitter things. Is it bitter?’

“And the Serpent narrowed his eyes until they shone like slits of emerald.

“ ‘Sweet!’ he said; ‘come.’

“So she descended from the pedestal, and, guided by the Serpent, stood before that wondrous Tree where every apple shines like a star among its cloudy leaves. And she plucked one, and, tasting it, flung the rest angrily at the Serpent, because it was still a little unripe; and having tasted the Fruit Forbidden, she returned to the pedestal, pondering, with the strangest new thoughts quickening in her brain.

“If Adam noticed anything when he came back that evening, it was only that Eve was a little more silent than usual, and forgot to ask if the thornless roses were striking root. She was thinking deeply, but there were serious gaps in her knowledge.

“The first result of her partial enlightenment was that, though she now only used the pedestal as a clothes-peg and spent all her spare time in stalking Adam and Lilith, she always scrambled up in hot haste when he returned. He could be certain of finding her there when he expected to, and he made a point of that because, as he said,—

“ ‘No truly nice woman would ever want to leave it and go wandering about the Garden. It does not do for a respectable woman to be seen speaking even to an Archangel nowadays, so often does the Devil assume the form of an Angel of Light. You never can tell. And besides, there is always the Serpent, who, in my opinion, should never have been admitted.’

“Eve said nothing, which was becoming a habit. She only folded her little hands meekly and accepted the homage paid to the pedestal with perfect gravity and decorum. He never suspected until much later that she knew what a comparatively interesting time Lilith was having, and had indeed called on that lady at the other end of the Garden, with friendly results. She was well aware that Lilith’s footing on the garden paths was much more slippery and unsafe than her own on the pedestal. Still, there were particulars which she felt would be useful.

“When Adam realized the facts, he realized also that he was face to face with a political crisis of the first magnitude. If they fraternized, those two, of such different characters and antecedents, there was nothing they could not know—nothing they might not do! The pedestal was rocking to its very foundation. The gardening with Lilith must end. She would demand recognition; Eve would demand freedom. It might mean a conspiracy—a boycott. What was there it might not mean? He scarcely dared to think. Eden was crumbling about him.

“It was a desperate emergency, and as he sat with a racking head, wishing them both in—Paradise, the Serpent happened along.

“ ‘Surely you look a little harassed,’ he said, stopping.

“Adam groaned.

“ ‘Is it as bad as all that?’ the Serpent asked, sympathetically.

“ ‘Worse.’

“ ‘What have they been at?’ asked the Serpent.

“ ‘They each know too much, and they will soon know more,’ he rejoined gloomily. ‘Knowledge is as infectious as potato blight.’

“The Serpent replied with alacrity: ‘In this dreadful situation you must know most. It is the only remedy. Come and eat at once of the Fruit of the Tree. I have never understood why you did not do that the moment the Rib took shape.’

“And Adam, like Eve asked: ‘Is it sweet?’

“So the Serpent narrowed his eyes till they shone like slits of ruby, and said, ‘Bitter, but appetizing. Come.’

“And Adam replied: ‘I like bitters before dinner.’

“We all know what happened then; with the one exception that, as a matter of fact, he found the apple a little overripe, too sweet, even cloying; and not even swallowing what he had tasted, he threw the rest away.

“It is just as well to have this version, for it must have been always perfectly clear that Eve, having tasted the apple and thus acquired a certain amount of wisdom, could never have desired to share it with Adam. [“I have thought that myself,” murmured Joan.] No, it was the Serpent’s doing in both cases; though naturally Adam blamed Eve when the question was raised, for she had begun it.

“But what was the result? Well, there were several. It has, of course, been a trial of wits between Adam, Eve, and Lilith ever since. But, in tasting, he had learned one maxim which the Romans thought they invented thousands of years later. It flashed into his mind one day, when he saw the two gathering roses together and found his dinner was half an hour late in consequence. It was simply this: Divide and Rule. Combined, he could never manage them; the sceptre was daily slipping from his hand. Divided, he could. So he put the maxim in practice and sowed division and distrust between Eve and Lilith. They ceased to visit each other, and were cuts when they met. And, naturally, after the Eviction the meetings ceased entirely.

“You will have understood before this, my dear Joan, that Adam was the first mortal to realize the value of competition. He now became the object of spirited competition between the two. Each in her own way outbid the other to secure his regard. Eve’s domestic virtues grew oppressive; Lilith’s recklessness alarming. And it will readily be seen why women have pursued men, rather than the other way over, as we see it in the lower walks of creation.”

“Don’t prose,” said Joan. “What happened?”

“Well, in the last few years, the Serpent, who is always upsetting things, happened along again, and found Eve balancing in extreme discomfort on the pedestal, and Lilith resting, exhausted, after a particularly hard day’s pursuit of Adam. And between them was a wall of icy silence.

“He paused and said with his usual courtesy, ‘Ladies, you both seem fatigued. Is it permitted to ask the reason?’ And his voice had all the murmuring of all the doves of Arcady.

“And Lilith replied angrily: ‘I’m sick of hunting Adam. I always catch him and always know I shall. And he wants to be caught, and yet insists on being hunted before he gives me the rewards. Who can keep up any interest in a game like that? If it were not for Eve, who would take up the running if I dropped it, he might go to Gehenna for me!’ ”

“Oh, how true! I like Lilith best!” whispered Joan. She was not smoking now.

“ ‘Strong, but pardonable,’ said the Serpent. ‘And you, dear Lady?’

“And Eve, casting a jealous scowl at Lilith, replied: ‘I’m weary of this abominable pedestal. If you had stood on it off and on for five thousand years, you would realize the cramp it means in the knees. But I daren’t get off, for Adam says no truly nice woman ever would leave it, and it pleases him. If it were not for Lilith, who would be upon it in two seconds, I should be off it in less. And then where should I be? She will go on hunting him, and of course he must have quiet at home.’

“ ‘And you will go on standing on your imbecile pedestal, and of course such boredom makes him restless abroad,’ retorted the other.

“In the momentary silence that ensued, the Serpent looked up at Lilith and narrowed his eyes till they shone like slits of amethyst.

“ ‘My cousin,’ he said, ‘our family was old when Adam was created. He is poor game.’

“ ‘Nobody knows that better than I,’ said Lilith tartly. ‘What do you suppose I hunt him for?’

“ ‘What, indeed!’ said the Serpent, hissing softly.

“ ‘Because of Eve—that only!’ she flashed at him. ‘She never shall triumph over me. And what there is to give, he has.’

“He turned to Eve, narrowing his eyes till they shone like slits of fire.

“ ‘And you stand cramped on this pedestal, beloved Lady?’

“ ‘Because of Lilith—that only! She, at all events, shall not have him. And think of his morals!’ ”

(“Aha!” said Joan, with intense conviction.)

“The Serpent mused and curved his shining head toward Eve.

“ ‘If you will allow me to say so, I have always regretted that you never finished that apple, and that my cousin Lilith has never tasted it at all,’ he murmured. ‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, as certain also of your own poets have said.’

“ ‘I have sometimes thought so, too,’ Eve replied mournfully; ‘and there is a word that now and then flashes across my brain like an echo from the past, but I can never quite recall it. It might explain matters. Still, it is no use talking. That apple rotted long ago, and if the Tree is still growing, which I doubt, there is always a guard of flying infantry at the Gate. It is easier to get out than in where Eden is concerned.’

“The Serpent smiled blandly.

“ ‘You have evidently forgotten that, by arrangement with the Governing Body, I have always free ingress and egress. Look here!’

“He unfolded his iridescent coils, and there lay within them—shining, mystic, wonderful, against his velvet bloom—two Apples.

“There was no hesitation, for each was equally weary of Adam’s requirements; and, snatching each an Apple, they ate.

“But the Fruit has grown bitter since the days of the Garden. There is nothing so bitter as knowledge. Their lips were wried, and the tears came, and still they ate until not an atom remained. The Serpent watched. For a moment each stared upon the other, trembling like a snared bird, wild thoughts coming and going in the eyes of the Barren Woman and the Mother of all Living. Then Eve stretched out her arms, and Lilith flung herself into them, and they clung together, weeping.

“And the Serpent opened his eyes until they shone like sun, moon, and stars all melted into one; and he said, ‘Ladies, the word you are seeking is, I think, Combination.’ And smiling subtly, he went away.

“So Eve descended from her pedestal and trampled it; and Lilith broke the rod of her evil enchantments; and they walked hand in hand, blessing the world.

“Adam meanwhile was shooting,—big game, little game,—and, amid the pressure of such important matters, never paid any attention to this trifle. But this was the beginning of what will be the biggest trade-union the world will ever see. All the women who matter will be within it, and the black-legs outside will be the women who don’t count. So now you see why men will not much longer have a run (literally) for their money. Adam may have to put up with it, for he never ate the Apple as Eve and Lilith have done, and therefore does not know so much about the things of real importance. Unless indeed the Serpent— But we won’t think of that until it happens.

“Now, my dear Joan, whether all this is a good or a bad thing, who can tell? The Serpent undoubtedly shuffled the cards; and who the Serpent is and what are his intentions, are certainly open questions. Some believe him to be the Devil, but the minority think his true name is Wisdom. All one really can say is that the future lies on the knees of the gods, and that among all men the Snake is the symbol of Knowledge, and is therefore surrounded with fear and hatred.

“Now that’s the story, and don’t you think there’s a kind of moral?”

I waited for a comment. Joan was in deep meditation.

“Do you know,” she said slowly, “it’s the truest thing I ever heard. It’s as true as taxes. But where do you come in?”

“I wasn’t thinking of us,” I said hurriedly. “I merely meant—if you wished to be more attractive——”

“Attractive!”—with her little nose in the air. “I guess it’s you that will have to worry about your attractions, if that comes along. I won’t waste any more time on you to-day. I’ve got to think this out, and talk it out, too, with Inez and Janet.”

She rose and began to pull on her gloves, but absently.

I felt exactly like a man who has set a time-fuse in a powder magazine. The Serpent himself must have possessed me when I introduced his wisdom to a head cram-full of it already.

“It’s the merest nonsense, Joan. It isn’t in the Talmud. The Serpent never thought of it. I made it all up.”

“You couldn’t. It isn’t in you. Or, if you did, it was an inspiration from on high.”

“From below,” I said weakly.

She smiled to herself—a dangerous smile.

“I must go. And you really were a little less dull than usual. Come again on Tuesday. The moral of it all is, so far, that the poets are really worth cultivating. I will begin with you!”

She flashed away like a humming bird, and I retired, to read my Schopenhauer. But the serious question is—shall I go on Tuesday?

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STATELY JULIA

A STORY OF ENCHANTMENTS

STATELY JULIA
A STORY OF ENCHANTMENTS

(A letter from Mr. Amyand Tylliol to his friend, Mr. Endymion Porter at the Court of his Majesty, King Charles the First.)

To my kind and constant friend, that lover of the Muses, Mr. Endymion Porter, to whose understanding heart all confidences may be carried, these presents to bring my news.

Since you marvel at the delay of your humble servant needs must I tell you of a singular hap which hath befallen. Yet no hurt, therefore be not distrest, for all is well. And truth it is that I have met a most ingenious gentleman, and this is the marrow of what I would say.

For, prospering in my journey, I did reach Exeter, and there in the shadow of the Cathedral Church, transacted my affair with Mr. Delander as foreseen. And a right fair and noble church it is, rich beyond imagining with images of kings and bishops, queens and holy martyrs.

From Mr. Stephen Delander (who quarters the arms of Tylliol with his own from an alliance in the days of Queen Elizabeth of blessed memory, and therefore calls cousin with me) have I received most hospitable entertainment, and noble conversation enriched with such sparkling gems of poesy and rhetoric as cannot be told in words. And hence is he become my singular good friend and as such to be remembered and cherished. His house lies in the Cathedral precincts and is by all the city known as Domus Domini, the Lord’s House, since it belonged to the foundation of the Cathedral in days now like to be forgot.

And ’tis a house delightful to the fancy, in a very small garden set with a few sombre trees, enlightened with clove-gilly flowers and roses, and box hedges with winding walks among the turf. Within, deep-windowed, with grave and handsome plenishing and great store of books clothing the walls, and all of a sober discretion that bespeaks a gentleman of lineage and parts. And over it towers the cathedral church the which (looking upward) appears to swim in the blue as though native to the skies, and sheds from its mighty bells a voice of warning over the clustering city with every passing hour, for a memento mori.

A place indeed for the feeding of pensive musing and the relishing of the fair-zoned Muses even as in the groves of Academe.

So, business concluded, ’twas the habit of Mr. Delander and myself to sit in the oriel commanding the cathedral and to hold sweet discourse, with a flagon of right Canary between us, and from one of these exchanges sprang my delay.

For he, talking of the writing of the rare Master Ben Jonson, spoke as follows:

“A poet indeed, but sure Mr. Tylliol, being a lover of verse and a trafficker in its niceties, knows we have here in this rude Devonshire a poet—nay, what say I?—the poet of women and flowers and elves that skip by moonlight, with like delights of the phantasy, such as rare Ben or even the rarer Master Shakespeare cannot excel?”

“Lord, sir!” says I. “I stand amazed. I knew it not. Who may the gentleman be?”

“I would not have you think,” he responded, “that this gentleman hath the choir note of our young Milton, nor yet the plenteous invention of Will Shakespeare. ’Tis a country Muse, but exquisite. A muse withal that hath been to town and drest her lovely limbs in lawns and silks, and wears pomander beads in her bosom. A Muse whose blush is claret and cream commingled. And as I said, exquisite. A voice of Castaly.”

“And what does the gentleman in the wilds and what is he?” asked I, a-tip-toe with curiosity, for well you know my passion for these rarities. And hastily I added:

“Hath your honour any taste or relish of his verse at hand to whet my appetite? For with poetry as with manners—from one can all be told.”

He mused a moment smiling, then recited thus:

“TO A LADY SINGING

“So smooth, so sweet, so silvery is thy voice

As, could they hear, the damned would make no noise,

But listen to thee walking in thy chamber,

Melting melodious words to lutes of amber.”

“O rare!” cried I, clapping my hands. “A right music, like drops of honey distilling from the comb. Was this a happy chance, or may the gentleman summon the delicate Ariel when he will?”

He smiled, indulgent:

“Since you compare the lines with honey, hear yet again.” I sat elate.

“As Julia once a-sleeping lay

It chanced a bee did fly that way.

For some rich flower he took the lip

Of Julia, and began to sip.

But when he felt he sucked from thence

Honey (and in the quintessence)

He drank so much he scarce could stir

And Julia took the pilferer!

“Sweet Lady-flower, I never brought

Hither the least one thieving thought.

But taking those rare lips of yours

For some fresh fragrant luscious flowers,

I thought I there might take a taste

Where so much sirop ran to waste.

Besides, know this,—‘I never sting

The flower that gives me nourishing.’

This said, he laid his little scrip

Of honey ’fore her Ladyship,

And told her (as some tears did fall)

That this he took and that was all.

At which she smiled and bade him go

And take his bag; but this much know

When next he came a-pilfering so,

He should from her full lips derive

Honey enough to fill his hive.”

“ ’Tis a pure seed-pearl,” said I. “Small but Orient. And now, Mr. Delander my worthy friend, tell me where hides this shepherd of the enchanted pipe, for if, as you say, in Devon, then Devon I will not quit till with these tickling ears have I listened to his sweet pipings. And if Julia be his neighbour, as we may suppose— O, sir, speak by the cards and tell me true!”

“There is,” he responded, “in this His Majesty’s shire of Devon, a very savage forest, yet with no trees,—known as the Forest of Dartmoor. And well may I call it savage, for there do savages harbour that would make as little to slit a man’s throat and cast him in a slough as I to toss this nut-shell. Of the roads to these parts, least said soonest mended—sooner indeed than they. But know that around this execrable miscreant of a Dartmoor lie little lovely villages full of a sweet civility of flowers and hives of bees, and kine and pretty maids to milk ’em. And above all there is one called Dean Prior and of this the spiritual shepherd is Mr. Robert Herrick.”

“Sure his crook is wreathed with roses and the pretty lambs of the flock have nought to fear from their shepherd,” says I.

“I take your meaning, Mr. Tylliol, and yet—[he paused here with a peculiar sweet smile]—though you might decipher much from his verses of Julias, Dianemes, Perillas, and other charming ladies, and he is much accused as a loose liver, ’tis possible to read his riddle wrong. Go therefore and see him. I have known another who did this and returned surprised. Yet cross not Dartmoor on your life, but go softly below it where honest folk live. Also, a coach goes down two days hence within two miles of the village and with it a riding guard. Take your stout nag, and so God bless you and send you a happy meeting with a man not commonly to be accosted.”

’Twas in vain for me to beshrew and becall myself for the veriest ass between this and London, and doubtless I had flinched from so great an enterprise but that Mr. Delander poured verses more and more mellifluous into mine ears until at last I was as Ulysses, drunk with the fierce wine of the Sirens’ voices, and there being no mast whereto to bind me and Mr. Delander full of laughing incitements, I set forth to follow the track of music as a bee the track of the unseen rose’s perfume.

Of the roads I forbear to speak, and the harbourage by the way would willingly forget, but the air was sweet and fragrant with earliest summer and the fields yet gilt with cowslips and I spied a few late primroses lingering about the roots of trees in the shy copses. Also, an exceeding delicate flower like a silver star, that made sweet constellation in the lush grass. And could the courtesies of London be imported I know not where a man might better fleet the hours than in this warm and languid shire of Devon.

So, on the fourth day we observed a wild mountain stream, browner than October ale, that rushing danced to meet us, breaking in a thousand showers, spray, and rillets among its rocks—a lovely thing to see and hear—the youngest surely of the bright nymphs of the hills.

“And this,” says the guard of the coach, “is the Dean Burn, and not far off the Vicarage, and the few houses of the village are far down the road where we shall presently come. So here, worshipful sir, we leave you.”

Then, being arrived and the coach still standing to discharge certain packets for the parson I spied a comely man in middle age coming to meet us.

He was drest in hodden grey, clean but simple, his head bare and the sunshine on it, and his eyes smiled with his mouth. And in that first sight I gave my liking to Mr. Herrick, and so has it continued.

I presented my letter from Mr. Delander, and of the cordial of my welcome need I not to speak.

“Nay, what favour?” said he. “Sure to a rustic that once knew London, pinioned here to rude rocks and trees, ’tis like a scent of the kindly civil streets to see an accomplished gentleman. Blush not, sir, for so I have it under Mr. Delander’s hands and seal, and I know no better judge. ’Tis little I can give, but my pleasant maid, Prudence Baldwin, hath a bed with sun-bleacht sheets in waiting for the traveller, and my roof is weather-proof, and my little creeking hen, foreseeing a friend, hath made shift to lay her long white egg, and this rascally riveret that I have abused in verse, yet love, hath provided fresh-dewed cresses for our meat. If with these and a very little more, my guest’s hunger can be satiate, then welcome again—thrice welcome to Dean Prior.”

With gladness I accepted, for the welcome was as much in his eye as on his lip, and so we came to the low house seated in a small garden gay with gilliflowers, culver-keys, sops-in-wine, lad’s love, and all the outspread courtiers that pay homage to the rose. And roses he had, great store, both damask and white, and the party-coloured York and Lancaster—to the which he drew my notice.

Lord, what a little house, and poor though neat, and yet with sparkles of money here and there in a rich picture or two, and a settle and chest carved by no ’prentice hand, and a worn but costly velvet cloak thrown over the back. And a clock, grave as Time himself, with a dial curiously illustrated with mottoes and cherubims. And before entering I took notice that a sun-dial stood in the garden, with this verse engraved[^[2]] so as the gnomon should point the lesson:

[2] The inscription on the sun-dial is my own. L. Adams Beck.

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“Shine, Sun of Righteousness, with beam more bright

Than this great dawn my dial doth invite,

And as the gnomon’s shadow doth incline

To tread his steps, let my sprite follow thine.”

Which methought a devout reflection pleasing to Christian ears, and so I said, but he smiling put it by.

And now with a handsome curtsey Mrs. Prue met us, coming from her kitchen, a kindly buxom woman with flowered skirt pulled up through her pockets, and a cap white as the foam on Dean Burn, and in her hospitable hand a little server, she pressing us to drink a cup of ale before our dinner served. And so showed me to my little cell with lavender stuck in the windows, and sheets that might have wrapt the smooth limbs of the divine Julia, though I dare to say they never did. And since the bed was spread with down pulled from the Vicar’s own geese it invited a pure and honest slumber.

But, marry! when we came to dine, that I thought should have been on eggs and cresses at the best, here was a surprise.

For before Master Vicar were laid two smoking trouts, broiled to a turn over sea-coals.

“And of these,” says mine host, “you may eat fearless, for they were caught in Dean Burn, and of all clean livers commend me to the trout that is indeed a dainty monsieur; and these inhabit in water clear as crystal beams, unlike those degenerate fish that scavenge in Thames. And moreover, these hands took them this morning, for I am a brother of the rod, and love to sit a-angling and a-musing.”

And needs must I say that these trout with Mrs. Prue’s sauce, the rich droppings of the fish mixed with fresh sweet butter and the yolk of an egg, was a dish for feasting Gods.

’Twas followed by a bird trapt on the moor, of a reddish flesh and haut gout very delicious, and what should come after that but a junket with nutmegs grated and clouted cream—so yellow, thick and mellow that I praised and commended and Mr. Herrick heapt my platter until I cried quarter.

“Cream of cowslips,” says he, “for the meadows whence it was drawn are gilt with their fragrant blossoms and the leisurely cows lie among them and crush their sweetness as well as devour it. And if you condescend later to taste it with a crust of Mrs. Prue’s bread and her marmalet of crab-apples, you shall say it is good honest country fare if simple.”

I rose content from a meal excelling all the varieties of rich men’s tables, and on his proposal we sat a while under his honey-suckle bower to look upon the prospect and digest our meat seemly, while Mrs. Prue moved softly about the house clearing and cleansing.

And seeing the moment favourable, I adventured a question much in my mind.

“Sir, in your divine and honey-golden verse, recited to me by our common friend, Mr. Delander, you speak with opprobrium of this rude Devonshire. Yet here I come and find you set amid delights of soul and body such as a king might envy. Is it true that you, looking on these sweet hills and meadows, this singing riveret and the hues and scents of your garden, can wish yourself in the noise and foulness of towns? Resolve me this doubt, for, trust me, it perplexes me.”

He smiled a little.

“Why, sir, is a poet wiser than another that he should not long for the rainbow a field away? You are to take notice that when I lived in London I abused the smells and sights and craved for country quiet. And now I have it ’tis the other way about. But in all good soberness this is the better life and I know it. Here is the eye enlarged to beauty, the ear attuned to music celestial, and the company, though not choicely good, is innocent, and if evil, hath no tinsel to hide its native ugliness.”

He paused a moment as though to digest his thoughts and added:

“Here we rise with Chanticleer and make the lamb our curfew, and the day’s small cares ended and our souls committed to the Keeper who sleeps not, we slumber discharged of griefs. And if our food be plain the seasoning is thanks.

“God, to my little meal and oil

Add but a bit of flesh to boil,

And Thou my pipkinet shalt see

Give a wave-offering unto Thee.”

He smiled so cheerfully that I enquired:

“Your own verse, reverend sir?”

“My own. My Muse is not always concerned with ladies’ eyes nor with the revels of Mab and Oberon whereof I have also delighted to write. She kneels sometimes, face veiled. And these I call my Noble Numbers.”

There was a moment’s silence, so great that through the singing of the water I might hear the cropping of Clover-lips, his red cow. ’Twas not long however before I resumed.

“Then, sir, the country is now your choice preferred?”

“I said not so. Nay, I long sometimes for the town. But I know and scarce know how, that my lot will be cast there again for some sad years, and then I shall return here to lay my bones in peace among my people.”

“Was this revealed to you in dream, sir? But this question is overbold. Few men reveal their dreams.”

“Mine,” says he, “are so chaste as I dare tell them. Yes, in a dream. Doubtless induced by the present discontents which will wreck our good King Charles and many lesser with him.”

We discoursed of these, and with each word I liked mine host the better, until his gentleness emboldened me so much that at the last I said;

“And where, worthy sir, are the houses of the lovely and wealthy ladies who keep you good company in summer sunshine and winter snow? Where dwells the stately Mistress Julia, bright and straight as a garden tulip, a flower which I confess the Roman name of Julia calls always to my sight. Where the sparkling-eyed lady Dianeme, the shy Anthea, the delicate Perilla light as a woodland anemone, and all this shining garden of sweets that your muse commends to our worship? Let me own nor blush for’t, that my journey, though undertaken to their poet, was seasoned also with the hope to kiss their feet.”

“Sir, you did well. The Hesperides are worth even a journey to Devon. And doubtless you shall see the stately Julia, and the bright Anthea and all the fair choir, but not yet. And now will I repeat you my latest homage to one of these ladies, and then I must needs visit my sick while you sit in the meadow and watch the milkmaid at her fragrant labour.

“THE CURIOUS COVENANT

“Mine eyes like clouds were drizzling rain,

And as they thus did entertain

The gentle beams from Julia’s light

To mine eyes levelled opposite,

O thing admired!—there did appear

A curious rainbow smiling there,

Which was the covenant that she

No more would drown mine eyes or me.”

“O exquisite felicity!” cried I with delight. “And did it not move your empress to mercy?”

“It moved her, sir!” he answered with a subdued laughter. “And now must I forth. Entertain yourself, I pray you.”

He went toward the village, bearing in his hand a well-stored panier brought forth by Mrs. Prue, in the which I might espy little pots and pipkins clearly bespeaking a charitable heart. And when he disappeared I took in hand the rod he commended to me and did go a-angling in the Dean Burn.

But the sun was bright and the water like dancing diamonds and its song so dulcet that even with my good will I would fain leave the silly trout in their crystal house, and so I e’en turned over in the short sweet-smelling grass and there fell asleep and dreamed of Julia with her smooth rubious lips and velvet cheek, and of the banquets of elves and their midnight rejoicings, but dimly and with the sound of water in it all, until I fell in the very deeps of slumber and dreamed no more.

Suddenly and soon as it seemed, but was not, I heard a voice soft as a cushat’s call me, and looking up drowsily beheld a pretty milkmaid summon Clover-lips and Pretty Primrose, and they responded slow but obedient.

O charming sight, though the maiden wore but a homespun gown of blue and had on her head nothing but a straw hat bought at the fair. For her skin was cream with here and there a cowslip freckle, and she was cherry-cheeked and had withal a soft black eye and two clear-marked arches of brows, and lips that you would not have smile lest the perfect bow unbend, nor smiling would have grave lest the quarrelet of pearls be hidden. And about her neck and bosom was folded very modestly a handkerchief tucked into her bodice.

So I rose to my feet and made my bow, for beauty, though but in a milk-maiden, is native to the skies and enforces homage, and the pretty maid blushing dropt so deep a curtsey that I thought she must take root in the grass like a flower, so long was it before she lifted the stars of her eyes to mine.

“I was bid by his Reverence, sir, to stroke you a syllabub,” says she. “And will your Honour have it here and now, for I have the verjuice of crab-apple and all needful?”

“Here and now if you’ll favour me,” says I enchanted, and sat down to watch the lovely sight. Nor could I have departed if even she had bid me;

“For in vain she did conjure him

To depart her presence so,

With a thousand tongues to allure him

And but one to bid him go.

When lips delight and eyes invite,

And cheeks as fresh as rose in June

Persuade delay, what boots she say:

‘Forego me now; come to me soon.’ ”

But indeed the lass was pleased I stayed, and dulcet her voice as she rounded a song to coax the cows let down their milk.

“For ’tis known they always milk best to music,” says she, “and often I would have Jan Holdsworthy to bring his pipe and please ’em.”

And thus I heard a Devon ballad, whereof a verse sticks in my head:

“So Robin put on his Sunday clothes,

Which were neither tattered nor torn,

With a bright yellow rose as well as his shoes

He looked like a gentleman born, he did!

Ay, he did! Sure he did!

He looked like a gentleman born, he did.”

“And—”

“Nay, but I won’t sing the next bit,” says she with her head against the cow’s warm silken side, and one bright black eye regardant.

“And why, my pretty lass?”

“Because Robin went for to be uncivil and kiss the maid in the song. But she would have none of it and serve him right, for—

“She gave him a smack in the face, she did!

Ay, she did! Sure she did!

She gave him a smack in the face, she did!”

She trilled it out, defiant as a thrush at dawn, and I could have committed Robin’s crime but for respect to her innocence and Mr. Herrick’s hospitality. And sure never was a syllabub so delicate and warm as this, strained from the balm-breathing kine through sunburnt hands fresh rinsed with sparkling water from Dean Burn.

I drank that wine of Nature’s brewing nor could be satisfied. And when her pails foamed to the brim and Clover-lips and Pretty Primrose returned disburdened to their cropping, says I:

“Tell me, my pretty one, where are the great houses about these parts where dwell the fair and splendid ladies who excel you in nothing but their wealth? And do they come to the church o’ Sundays?”

“Anan, sir?” says she, bewildered.

“The ladies in silks and lawns and jewels,” I insisted. “Of whom I have read as shedding the lustre of their graces even on these wild and solitary meads.”

Methinks my talk was too fine for her. She laught like one amazed.

“Ladies, your honour, I know of none, nor never saw silk nor lawn nor lady, nor heard of such but in the ballads the chapmen bring to the fair.”

“But sure there are great squires and lords in these parts and will have their hunting and sports and their ladies to ride with them, and come to church in coaches and on pillions a-Sundays?”

“No, your honour, no,” says she. “I would it were so. ’Twere fine to see the young madams, gay as kingfishers on Dean Burn, but never saw I one, nor look to. And now I must be going, with your leave, for I must sit at my wheel or our dame will know the reason.”

And with another curtsey the fair pretty maid departed to her innocent labour, and ’twas as though the sun went with her, so clear and lucid a beam was she of youth and beauty.

But she left me musing, for where and how should Mr. Herrick meet with his fair ladies unless indeed he took horse and rode abroad, and I perpended and resolved to watch, being sharp-set to see his peerless beauties if I died for it.

To grace our supper on Mr. Herrick’s return were the cresses from the Dean Burn and little young radishes from the garden with a cream cheese dewy in green leaves and a dish of eggs dressed in an amulet by Mrs. Prue (and savoury meat they were) and a tansy pudding to follow. And if I be charged with gluttony in thus citing I crave pardon, for I know not how but the mind sat down with the body to the feast and both were nourished.

Mrs. Prue, the prudent, brought us after a very little glass each of surfeit-water and of such comfort that I would needs have her recipe, the which she imparted very gravely:

“We take of red corn poppies a peck and put them in a dish with another for cover, and so into the oven several times after the household bread is drawn. We lay them in a quart of aqua vitæ [“And this,” interrupted Mr. Herrick, “comes very good from the sea-covers by Plymouth, and is brought to us on moor ponies.”] and thereto we add a race of ginger sliced, nutmeg, cinnamon, mace, a handful of figs, raisins-of-the-sun, aniseed, cardamom and fennel seeds, with a taste of lickorish. And so lay some poppies in a great vessel and then the other ingredients and more poppies and so continue till the vessel’s full. We then pour in our aqua vitæ and let it so continue until very red with the poppies and strong of the spice. We take from it what we need, adding more aqua vitæ. And much good may it do your Honour for ’tis a known cordial.”

“It is so!” says I sipping, “and trust me, I am beholden to you, good Mrs. Prudence, and will benefit.”

We left our glasses empty and betook ourselves to the bower in the garden so twined and wreathed with the gold and amber horns of honey-suckle spilling their fragrance that my soul was ravisht, and Mr. Herrick fetching his lute saluted mine ears with strains celestial, adding his voice thereto at moments, yet not loud but as if thinking melodiously to himself in serene reverie in the deepening twilight.

“Hear, ye virgins, and I’ll teach

What the times of old did preach.

Rosamund was in a bower

Kept, as Danae in a tower.

But yet Love who subtle is,

Crept to that, and came to this!

Be ye lockèd up like these

Or the rich Hesperides,

Or those babies in your eyes

In their crystal nunneries,

Notwithstanding Love will win

Or else force a passage in.”

He plucked a few notes and was silent, for Philomel in a thorn beside the Dean broke forth, amazing the night with harmony, and holding breath we listened to the sweet delirium that hath enchanted the ages.

She stopt as suddenly as she began and flew to some more distant groves to duel with another songster as lovely, the moon herself in rising seeming to pause and listen ere she ascended her silver throne.

“Exquisite!” says he sighing. “How have I the rude audacity to match my numbers with hers? Yet I too have my breast on a thorn and must sing or die. And you assert that they please, Mr. Tylliol?”

“They enchant,” cried I eagerly. “But, O, Mr. Herrick, my good host and worthy friend, I beseech you reveal to me where hide the Hesperides you celebrate in verse that will not die like Philomel’s. Few are my days here. Let me not return empty. With the most awful reverence will I stand at a distance to admire, nor with a thought smirch the crystalline lawn that veils the bosom of Madam Julia or the silks that rustle in Dianeme’s going. What—what are the earthly names of these admired ladies?”

“In one hour, when the moon is up and at full, then you shall meet them,” says he. “For then they do use to give me gracious tryst beyond Dean Burn at a certain place known to me and to them. And if their beauty is not correspondent to your expectation, blame not them, but consider rather the teaching of Plotinus his book wherein he writes: ‘That which sees must be kindred and similar to its object before it can see it. Every man must partake of the divine nature before he can see Divinity.’ So then, if they appear not lovely the fault is in the eye that sees.”

“But, sir,” says I bewildered; “is this so also with the perishable beauty of women which leads man into ways unallied indeed with Divinity?”

He touched a few soft notes on the pensive strings, responding gravely:

“That man hath never beheld the beauty of woman whom it leads downward, but only a shadow and simulacrum, as it were; the false Duessa, whereas the true Una (the One) is crowned with stars and in its nature heavenly.”

I have conversed, as is known to my friend, with many men counted high, but, trust me, here with the world charmed by moonlight and the quiet running of water, the voice of this man took on a quality unearthly and you are to know that it moved me exceedingly as with something latent and not to be exprest. Nor would I answer but sat attentive while he pursued his thoughts aloud.

“For so says also the wisest man that ever wore flesh (setting aside only the Bright and Orient Star) and these are his words: ‘Such a man uses the beauties of earth as steps whereon he mounts, going from fair forms to fair deeds, and from fair deeds to fair thoughts, and from fair thoughts attains to the Idea of Absolute Beauty. And if a man have eyes to see this true Beauty he becomes the friend of God and immortal.’ ”

And after this we both observed such a silence as when sweet music dies and leaves the air ravisht and in ecstasy, and so sate I know not how long until at last the moon glided over the trees and threw her light on the Dean Burn. He then arose, still holding his lute.

“You would see my beauties, Mr. Tylliol, and that you shall! Come with me now.”

And so led the way to a part where the water spread wide, glittering and very shallow, and here great flat stepping-stones used by generations, as he told me, and on these we crost and went on and up (our path clear as day) until, it might be half a mile or more, we came to a singular little amphitheatre (so I may call it) of turf, short and cropt and soft as kings’ carpets, with thick bushes and trees and some rocks surrounding it, very secret and secluded, enclosing it into a fair pleasance but not large.

“And here I often sit,” he whispered. “But go very softly.”

And indeed a natural awe, of I know not what, fell on me and constrained me into a breathless quiet, following him.

So presently we seated ourselves on a low rock cushioned with moss, and then taking his lute he began to play gently, but with such a penetrating sweetness as Orpheus himself, who with his music melted the hearts of trees and rocks, could scarce, I think exceed, yet most simple withal.

And the melody was singular, and with a delicate continuity like the ceaseless running of rain or water, and after awhile it appeared to me as if, like a revolving spinning wheel, it cast abroad silver threads which mingling with the moonlight did dance and whirl and shape themselves into changing forms (but I know not what) dissolving and returning and re-shaping in a labyrinth that mazed me. And whether it was my own brain that spun them (as in dream) I cannot tell, nor whether they were real or imagined.

But presently a sweetly lovely face peeped from the boughs, finger on lips, the pointed chin elfish as though the cap should be a flower, a truant indeed from Fairyland. And “Silvia!” he whispered, continuing to play. She, if she it were, listened, archly smiling, a face and no more, and suddenly the leaves closed about her, and nothing there.

My breath stumbled in my throat, and I closed my eyes an instant, and when again they opened, at the further end of the pleasance, but dim in the moonlight as though in a mist of lawn and cobweb lace, I saw a lady pace from one covert to the other. And myself this time, but whether aloud I know not, said: “Madam Julia.”

For she moved imperial, but her beauty I cannot itemize, nor know now whether I saw or dreamed her lips—

“Which rubies, corals, scarlets all

For tincture wonder at,—”

nor the black splendour of her hair, and the proud dark glance she cast about her in passing, nor the splendid sweeping of her gown.

And even as she parted the boughs and Dian-like was hid among them, came another following, but stepping lightly from behind a rock whereon a tree laid leafy fingers of lucent green,—a creature of soft and flower-wafting breezes, white and sunbeam-haired, and I dare swear the ray of her eyes was blue, though see them I did not.

And Mr. Herrick, speaking as in time to his lute, seemed to say:

“Smooth Anthea for a skin

White and heaven-like crystalline,”—

and she waved a moonbeam hand as he whispered and, springing as lightly between the rocks and boughs as a leaping stream, was gone.

Then suddenly his lute ceased as though to give place to a better and a lady, robed in white, came cradling a lute to her bosom and singing—O words melodious, melting into heavenly numbers—I believe I knew at the blessed moment what they were but now have they slipt my gross understanding. For ’twas indeed the choice Myrrha—O Music, O maid divine, walking soundless as flowing water and bathing in her own sweet harmonies as a Naiad in her native crystal.

And even as she past, unheeding her worshipper, Mr. Herrick’s lute resumed the strain.

And now past two fair ladies, close entwined as Hermia and Helena, whispering each in the other’s ear and casting oblique and tender looks upon their poet, the one in a yellow robe like a spring daffodil and the other in a most pure violet, perfume-breathing as the hue she wore. And the first was crowned with may, white as ivory exprest in blossom, and my heart said for me, “Corinna, who will go a-maying while the world lasts.

“She that puts forth her foliage to be seen,

And comes forth like the spring-time fresh and green,

And sweet as Flora.”

And indeed she past me so near that I caught the almond-sweet breath of her wreath.

And the other sure was the lady Dianeme, for I knew her by her dancing shining eyes and the bough of blossomed laylock in her hand.

“Sweet, be not proud of those two eyes.”—

Yet what could she be but proud of what the world counts among its jewels? And after them came running the delicate Perilla to join herself to their garland, and so smoothly did she glide that I looked to see her shod with the winged sandals of Hermes, for not a blade bent as she past, and so she slipt across the moonlight.

And then a little crowd of sweet shadows—Perenna the lovely, Sappho (but not she of the Leucadian rock), the Delaying Lady with handsome sullen brows, and lips pouted in half disdain, the beloved Electra, graceful as a harebell on a breeze, the reluctant Oenone and many others, fair and Orient gems set in a carcanet for the Muse’s wearing. And after them a young Cupid, kitten-eyed and mischievous with his bow braced.

And at this the air filled suddenly with nimble laughters and little cries flipt with merry breath in the trees above us, and small shapes drunk with dew and moonlight dropt from the boughs like spiders sliding down their threads, so many that they pelted quick as rain-drops on the turf. And, lo you! ’twas a rabble of Oberon’s courtiers tripping across to set their mushroom tables in the shade retired from the moon of night, and indeed, methought the Lady Moon leaned her golden chin on a bar of cloud to watch the silly shower and laugh at their follies.

But the voice of Mr. Herrick’s lute waxed faster and faster till it spun a labyrinth of music wherein the fairies did flout and spin and stagger, singing, and these words reached me but no more:

“Through the forest, through the forest

I will track my fairy Queen,

Of her foot the flying footprint,

Of her locks the flying sheen.”

And whether this was sung or danced I know not, for the moon dipt behind a cloud, and all shapes from distinct became confused into a swift murmur whether of sound or sight or the ripple of the Dean Burn I can tell neither to myself nor others, only that presently there was darkness and silence. Nor can I say whether hours or minutes had past when Mr. Herrick laid his hand upon my arm and roused me from what I took to be a deep meditation.

“Dear guest,” says he, “you have slept long, and every leaf is pearled in dew, and the Night would be secret with her subjects. We intrude. Therefore rouse yourself, for Mrs. Prue will think us strayed sheep if she wake, and indeed I will bespeak your soft treading for she is but a crazy sleeper and hath of late been sick, almost to be lunatic, with a pain in her teeth.”

But I was stumbling as if heavy with sleep and could say naught, and so we crost the shining water on the stones and returned wordless, and that night I slept like a happy spirit in the dewy meads of heaven.

Not a word said the next day and Mr. Herrick almost distraught with busyness for the riding post brought him letters from his rich London kin and the news of growing troubles between King and Parliament very piercing to his honest heart.

And on the day following my nag was saddled, and the coach returning on its way to Exeter I was to ride with it for security, but still not a word said on the matter nearest my soul.

Then as we waited for the wheels,—I having bid Mrs. Prue a kindly farewell with a vail which but ill compensated her hospitable services, Mr. Herrick said musingly:

“Once, Mr. Tylliol, I made a verse on Dreams, in the which this was writ:

“ ‘Here are we all by day; by night we are hurled

By dreams, each one into a several world.’

“And I have read in ancient books that it is not impossible but a man may be hurled into another man’s world or House of Dreams—not often indeed but once in a great while. And if this be so and it seems to that visitant a house of lunacies or moonstruck madness (as well it may), shall there be pardon for his dream-host therein?”

And I:

“Sir, not a house of lunacies, but a house of enchantments whereof I would I had the freehold! And if you had any part in unlocking the door (whereof I know not what to think) take my loving and humble thanks and again make me welcome when leagues lie between us. For dreams ask neither wheels nor hoofs to carry them.”

And he smiling said:

“Come!”

So, lovingly we parted and the enchanted place grew small and dim, receding behind me, and with fleshly eyes never again shall I see the clear running of Dean Burn and the lush meadows where fair Margery stroked me a syllabub of cowslip cream. But Mr. Herrick shall I see, for his dreams are not as other men’s and he comes, I know, sooner or later, to London.

Now what all this means, I cannot know but may guess, and on that I say no more. Let each man read it as he can. But never again tell me that Mr. Herrick is a loose liver because his Muse dwells like a dove in the warmth of ladies’ bosoms, for I know better.

“Jocund his Muse was, but his life was chaste,” is the self-chosen Finis to his book, and well it may.

And for a last gift he slipt into my hand at parting his latest verses or effusion to Madam Julia, whose stately pacing haunts me yet and ever will.

“This day, my Julia, thou must make

For Mistress Bride the wedding cake.

Knead but the dough and it will be

To paste of almonds turned by thee.

Or kiss it thou but once or twice

And for the bride-cake there’ll be spice.”

And to me those words will ever bring the scents and fragrance and the dreams of Dean Prior, and as for the cake, ’twill be eat beyond Dean Burn on the little mushroom tables of fay and ouphe and elf, and the drink shall be a pearl of dew for each, served in the purple of a pregnant violet.

And so ends my letter but much more and stranger things shall I tell when I come to my friend.

---

THE ISLAND OF PEARLS

THE HIDDEN HEART OF CEYLON

THE ISLAND OF PEARLS
THE HIDDEN HEART OF CEYLON

The Island of Pearls, shaped like a dewdrop hanging from the lotus petal of India, is loveliest of the Oceanides, a Nereid floating on blue tropic seas. She is a voluptuous beauty, jewelled, languid, fanned by spiced airs, crowned with flowers, dusky, sultry, with strange romances in her past as she went from lover to lover, faithful only to one, the eternal sea. Colombo flames on you in the sun, hidden in trees so deep, so green that if you climb a hill the town is lost like a bird’s nest in the tangle of vegetation. And what trees!—unlike the pensive elm and poplar, the ribbed oak of the West, these burst into flowers and a spendthrift fire of life. There is a giant covered with clusters of mauve blossoms like the rhododendron—I could not leave it—I was caught like a bee by its huge glory towering up into the sunshine. It bathed every sense in delight to stand beneath and see the larkspur blue of the sky through the crowded bloom. Others more austerely beautiful with faint rose and white crocus flowers springing from the grey stem and loading the air with perfume, and for the background the grace and grandeur of the palms balancing their frondure in the blue. There are no words to describe these things. Only in colour or music can their splendour be told.

And the lavish fruit! Mangosteens, mangoes, papayas, oranges,—Aladdin’s jewels of wizard gardens. And the jewels themselves, for Ratnapura, the City of Gems, is near at hand. Moonstones heaped in great pearl-shells, like silvery blue moonlight touched with swimming gleams of gold, great cats’ eyes with oblique pupils, aqua-marines of purest sparkling green, sea water dipped up from the secrecies of deepest depths, wine-dark jargoons, tourmalines many-hued as spring flowers, sapphires ranging from pale azure to ocean blue, carbuncles that flame in ancient legends as sacred jewels, all these and many more Ceylon displays like the Queen she is. And the sea is as the jewels—all light and glitter and the broken glories of rolling surf. It is these things which have made her the desire of men’s eyes from time immemorial—the Island of the blue horizon, scarcely believable for beauty and wonder. Hear Abdulla, called Wassaf, the poet of Siraf in Persia, when he wrote of her long centuries ago:

“When Adam was driven forth from Paradise God made a mountain of Ceylon the place of his descent, to break the force of change and so assuage his fall. The charms of this fair country, the softness of the air, are beyond all telling. White amber is the dregs of its sea, and its indigo and red bakam are cosmetics for beauty. The leaves, the barks, and the sweating of its trees are cloves, spikenard, aloe wood, camphor and fragrant mandel. Its icy water is a ball of muneya for the fractures of the world. The boundaries of its fields refresh the heart like the influence of the stars. The margins of its regions are the bedfellows of loveliness. Its myrobalums impart the blackness of youthful hair, and its peppercorns put the mole on the face of beauty on the fire of envy. Its rubies and carnelians are like the lips and cheeks of charming girls, and its treasures are as oceans full of polished gems. Indeed the various birds are sweet singing parrots and the pheasants of its gardens are graceful peacocks.”

So they told of her, and merchants came from the end of the earth to trade in the wonders of Serendib, bringing and taking riches, and not only riches but tales of wildest wonder and romance. They said the people were descended from a royal lion and hence their name Singhalese—Singha, a lion. They said she breathed her sweetness for miles out to sea and that before the shore rose from the horizon the air was languid with her spices and perfumes. Was this true or hyperbole? It is at least certain that in many parts of the island the wild lemon grass is almost overwhelming in its odour and many of the flowers scent all the world about them. The tropical sun and hot dewy moisture stimulate plant life into a passionate luxuriance of fragrant beauty. Horror too, for there are blossoms whose name of Stercula foetida tells all that need be told of their loathsomeness.

In this strange land the sands of some of the rivers are minute rubies and garnets, and it is of Serendib the story was told of serpents that guarded the precious jacinths, and the stratagem of the merchants in flinging pieces of meat into deep valleys where they lay, that hovering eagles might strike their talons in the meat encrusted with jewels and carry it to their nests in the rocks, where ready hands could seize it. The jacinths have become diamonds in the Arabian Nights, but we all know the story in the mouth of Sindbad the sailor of perilous seas.

And the merchants had terrible tales to tell of the women of the island. They were sirens as dangerous as ever sought to beguile Ulysses. Some of them dwelt in a great city of iron on the coast with fluttering signals on their towers to lure sea-farers, and when the eager boats made for the shore women of the most alluring loveliness, perfumed and garlanded, ran to meet them, stretching passionate arms, wooing them to enter the city. There they caressed them until every sense was drowned in delight, when bound and helpless, they flung them into iron cages and devoured them one by one.

The merchants were the great romancers of the ancient world—the singers of songs, the tellers of tales, and surely they had the right, for is there more romance in any word than in their own name? It calls up mirage after mirage of wearied camel caravans toiling through deserts of sand to cities that were old when Balkh and Damascus were young; where the blue and glittering domes of porcelain rise against intenser skies in sunsets sonorous as a gong with deep light and colour. It is the merchants always who carry romance and adventure in their corded bales. In robe and turban they yearn for the caravanserais and the men coming by many ways to the meeting place. They hunger for the flat hot cakes seed-sprinkled, and the savoury smells of the kous-kous bubbling in oil, but most of all for the excitements and lusts of the bazaar and the dangerous winding ways of forbidden palaces. See them unroll the gold and flowered stuffs of Bokhara, the silks from Cos as transparent as running water that gave the fair Pamphila the glory of having invented a dress “in which women were naked though clothed.” See the muslins of Dacca unloosed from the swaying camel-packs;—the merchants can scarcely handle them lest a faint breeze blow them from their hold, for of these it is told that the Emperor, Akbar, the Truth-Seeker, rebuked a woman who appeared before him robed in woven air, saying, “Little does it become a daughter of the Prophet to show herself arrayed in one dress only and that, as it were, nothing, being but the illusion of a garment.” And she replied audaciously: “Majesty, Light of the Age, I am more modest than modesty’s self, for I wear at this moment Nine.”

Through all the stories of Ceylon the merchants go, tempting the perilous seas in frail dromonds and crank high-decked galleons, tempted in turn by princesses, more perilous than the seas, shooting dangerous glances through rose-coloured veils. Sometimes their historic quests were wild as any dream. It was rumoured over Asia that the lost Tree of Life grew in the jungles of this fortunate Island and a King of Persia and Emperor of China sent their merchants with huge wealth to buy its precious leaves—more than ever precious in the intrigues of Oriental Courts—but only to find it grows in a Paradise more far away than even the famed Serendib, and that no merchants, young and ardent, grave and bearded, could lay that merchandise before the throne.

Ceylon figures in one of the most ancient epics of the world—the Ramayana, for it was Ravana the demon King of Ceylon (Lanka) who seized the lovely Sita, wife of the God-King Rama as she wandered in the forest, and bore her through the air to his island kingdom. The writer of the poem was a mighty poem maker: Valmiki,—let his name be fragrant for all time! And like all his divine brotherhood he was first taught by sorrow. For sitting one day in the heart of the woods, Valmiki beheld two herons singing for joy and love as they wandered together by air and water, and as he gladdened to their gladness, an archer shot the male bird and he fell bathed in blood, never again to sweep the wing-ways of the sky, and his mate fluttered about him in agony. So Valmiki, with the wrath and power of a poet, cursed the man who had done this black deed, and, as he spoke, suddenly he knew that his words were a measured music and that a new and wonderful thing had befallen in the world. And so it was, for Brahma appeared in the cloud, four-faced, majestic, and commanded him to write the history of Rama and the storming of Ceylon in this same mysterious music. “And it shall be true in every word,” said the God, “and so long as the world lasts shall this story be known among men.” And that was the beginning of poetry in India.

Perhaps this is the chief fame of Ceylon, for the God spoke not in vain. There is no city now so lovely as that of which Valmiki tells—the city of jewelled pavements and windows of glimmering crystal and the cloudy palaces where the cruel King dwelt and where Sita was a captive. For—“Here dwelt the fair princesses torn by him from vanquished Kings. Now it was night and they lay overpowered with wine and sleep. One had her head thrown backward; some had their garlands crushed; some lay in each other’s bosoms, or with arms interlaced, others in slumber deep as death. The King Ravana lay on a dais apart made of crystal and adorned with jewels. Here lay he overcome with wine, with glittering rings in his ears and robed in gold, breathing like a hissing serpent. Around him lay his sleeping Queens, and nearest him the dearest, the golden-hued Mandodari.”

So the story runs through all its epic wonder of love and war, and yearly in India is celebrated the harrying of Ravana—I have seen his ten-headed image go up in flames amid the rejoicing of a multitude. Yet, as I think, the ancient city, Anaradhapura, now a ruin in the jungle, could not have fallen so far behind the splendours of Valmiki. Many who have visited it have written of it as it is in death—the broken fragments of palaces and temples, a few preserved here and there like rocks that are the survival of some lost Atlantis in the drowning ocean of the forest. How few recall it as it was in its pride and power! I stood in the green dimness of the glades where are the sculptured tanks where the queens bathed in days long dead, and read the words of one who knew it well—Fa Hien, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim of the fourth century A. D. For this was the Anaradhapura of the Ceylon he visited in search of the words of the Lord Buddha; of himself he speaks in the third person:

“To the north of the royal city is erected a great tower in height 470 feet,—it is adorned with gold and silver and perfected with every precious substance. There is by the side of it a monastery containing 5000 priests. They also have built here a hall of the Lord which is covered with gold and silver engraved work. In the midst of this hall is a jasper figure (of the Buddha) in height about 22 feet. The entire body glitters and sparkles with the seven precious substances. In the right hand he holds a pearl of inestimable value. Fa Hien had been absent many years from China; the manners and customs of these people were entirely strange to him, moreover his fellow travellers were now separated from him, for some had remained behind and some were dead. All at once as he stood by this jasper figure, he beheld a merchant present to it as a religious offering a fan of white silk of Chinese manufacture. Unwittingly Fa Hien gave way to his sorrowful feelings and the tears flowed from his eyes.”

Those tears, dried so long since, gave to this Western pilgrim, standing in the same place, the true Virgilian sense of tears in mortal things, and still they move the world.

Ceylon is a land of the Gods. They have left their footprints very plain upon this radiant loveliness as they came and went. She has known many generations of them. All who would understand her should read Valmiki’s semi-divine poem of the great battles of Rama, God-King of India, as he fought here his wars of the Gods and Titans to rescue his wife, the lovely Sita, the heart’s love and worship to this day of his dominion.

Here, when the Demon King held her in captivity, the army of Rama strode across the bridge of scattered rocks between Ceylon and India. Still may be seen the gap that no strength, human or divine, could pass, where the mighty host was stayed, until a little tree squirrel, for love of Rama, laid his small body in the hollow, and because love is the bridge eternal between the two worlds, the rescuing host passed triumphant over it. But Rama, stooping from his Godhead, Incarnation as he was in human flesh of Vishnu the Preserver, lifted the crushed body tenderly and touched the dead fur, and to this day, the tree squirrels bear the marks of the divine fingers upon their coats of grey.

There is no demarcation in Asia between the so-called animal and human lives. Rama himself had passed through the animal experience on the upward way and knew well what beats in the little heart beneath fur and feather.

In those wonderful parables, the Birth Stories of the Lord Buddha, are recorded his supposed memories of the incarnations of bird, animal and other lives through which a steadfast evolution led him to the Ten Perfections. How should he not know, and knowing love? Is it not written by a great Buddhist saint: “It may well be that to the eye of flesh, plants and trees appear to be gross matter; but to the eye of the Buddha they are composed of minute spiritual particles; grass, trees, countries the earth itself, shall enter wholly into Buddhahood”? And does not science, faltering far behind the wisdom of the mighty, adumbrate these truths in its later revelations?

We know too little of the wisdom of the East. The Magi still journey to Bethlehem, but only those who have the heart of the Child may receive their gold, myrrh, and frankincense.

Yet, for mere beauty’s sake, these stories of the East should be read. Men thrill to the mighty thunder-roll of Homer’s verse, but the two supreme epics of India are little known. If the West would gather about the story-teller as the East gathers, in bazaar or temple court, the stories should be told from these and other sources, until Rama stands beside the knightly Hector, and Sita’s star is set in the same heaven where shines the lonely splendour of Antigone.

When the rapturous peace of the Lord Buddha could no longer be contained within the heart of India, it overflowed, and like a rising tide submerged Ceylon. And now, although India has forgotten and has returned to the more ancient faiths, Ceylon remembers. The Lotus of the Good Law blossoms in every forest pool. The invocation to the Jewel in the Lotus is daily heard from every monastery of the Faith, where the yellow-robed Brethren still follow the way marked for them by the Blessed One who in Uruvela attained to that supernal enlightenment of which he said, “And that deep knowledge have I made my own—that knowledge, hard to perceive, hard to understand, peace-giving, not to be gained by mere reason, which is deeper than the depths, and accessible only to the wise.

“Yet, among living men are some whose eyes are but a little darkened with dust. To them shall the truth be manifest.”

If it be an aim of travel to see what is beautiful and strange, it may be also an aim to seek that spiritual beauty where it sits enthroned in its own high places; and my hope in Ceylon was to visit the land where that strait and narrow way of Buddhism is held which is known as the Hinayana—or the Lesser Vehicle. In Tibet, China, and Japan, I had known the efflorescence of the Buddhist Faith where, recognizing the mystic emanations of the Buddhas, it becomes the Greater Vehicle and breaks into gorgeous ritual and symbolism, extraordinarily beautiful in themselves, and yet more so in their teaching. Buddhism, in those countries, like the Bride of the Canticles, goes beautifully in jewels of gold and raiment of fine needlework, within her ivory palaces. In Ceylon, like the Lady Poverty of Saint Francis of Assisi, she walks with bared feet, bowed head, her begging-bowl in hand, simple and austere in the yellow robe of the Master—her rock-temples and shrines as he himself might have blessed them in their stern humility. Save at the Temple of the Tooth, the splendours she heaps upon his altars are those of her flowers. With these she may be lavish because his life was wreathed with their beauty. He was born in a garden, beneath a Tree he attained Wisdom, in a garden he died. A faith that is held by nearly every tenth living man or woman is surely worthy of reverence and study, even in these hurrying days when gold, not wisdom, is the measure of attainment.

So I came to Ceylon for the first time but not for the last.

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Near a little town in the hills stands a Wihara—a monastery—dreaming in the silent sunshine. The palms are grouped close about the simple roofs—so close that the passing tourist could never guess that the Head of the Buddhist Faith in Ceylon, a great saint, a great ruler of seven thousand priests, dwelt there in so secret, so complete an austerity.

He was a very old man when I came, but his ninety-two years sat lightly on him and each year had laid its tribute of love and honour at his feet. He was known as the Maha Nayaka Thero; and in religion, for the love of the Master, he had taken the Master’s human name of Siddartha. It was strange indeed to see the simplicity of his surroundings;—to me it appeared singularly beautiful: it breathed the spiritual purity that had made him beloved throughout the island.

A great scholar, deeply learned in Sanskrit and Pali and in the abtruse philosophy that is for the elders of the Law, he was yet the gentlest of men, and his very learning and strength were all fused into a benignant radiance that sunned the griefs of the world he had cast so far behind him.

I was glad to wander about in the quiet monastery—the little one-storied quadrangle on the side of the hill. It offered—it invited—the life of meditation, of clear thought, of delicate austerity. The noise of great events (so-called) was like the dim murmur of a shell when they reached the Wihara and the ear of Sri Siddartha. But he heard, he noted the progress of science, even to the possibilities of aviation, because to a Buddhist saint all spheres of knowledge are one, and all nothing, in the Ocean of Omniscience.

So the people brought their grievances and troubles to the aged Archbishop. You were in the presence of a very great gentleman when you entered and found him seated, his scribe cross-legged at his feet to record what passed. The people would approach him softly and with the deepest reverence, and with permission would seat themselves on the ground at a due distance.

“Venerable Sir, we are in trouble. We seek your counsel.” That was the cry. And always, in spite of his many years, he listened and counselled and comforted.

Soon after my arrival his birthday was celebrated with much rejoicing. The Bhikkus (monks) had put up little festive bamboo arches, fluttering with split palm-leaves like ribbons, all about the Wihara, and troops of Bhikkus came to lay their homage at his feet. The roads were sunshiny with their yellow robes as they flocked in from remote places—jungle, cave-temples, and far mountains. The laity came also, crowding to see the Venerable One. He received them all with serene joy, and pursued his quiet way, thinking, reading, meditating on the Three Jewels—the Lord, the Law, and the Communion of Saints. And the Bhikkus departed, believing that he might be among them for many days.

But it was not to be; for, a few days later, while he was sweeping the garden walks, a duty he had made his own, he felt a sudden loss of strength, and lying down, in two hours he passed painlessly away.

I was permitted to visit Sri Siddartha as he lay in death. The room was very simple and bare. Many of his Bhikkus stood about him, and there were flowers, flowers, everywhere. Beside him burned a perfumed gum, sending up its thin blue spirals of fragrance.

I was received with perfect kindness, and especially by his favourite disciple and pupil—a young monk with a worn ascetic face, who stood in deep meditation at the head of his Master. He looked up and smiled, and raised the face-cloth that I might see, and looked down again at the brown face, calm as a mask of Wisdom with its closed lips and eyes. Even closed, they looked old—old. A Bhikku, standing by, told me that all had loved him and were bereaved in his going. “But for him—he is in the Nirvana of Paradise.”

The strange phrase awoke in my mind the words of the Blessed One, and I repeated them as I stood beside that quiet sleep.

“But this, O Bhikkus, is the highest, this is the holiest wisdom—to know that all suffering has vanished away. He has found the true deliverance that lies beyond the reach of change.”

And I remembered the symbolic fresco in Colombo, representing the Lord Buddha borne dead on a chariot in a garden. The gardener digs his grave, but the Lord awakes from death, and bids the man know he is not dead but living. The Buddha stands majestic by the open grave—the gardener recoils in fear. Death has no more dominion.

So I left Sri Siddartha lying in the mystery where all the wisdoms are one.

In the garden, in the riot of tropical blossom and beauty, a Bhikku was standing in the perfect stillness that is a part of the discipline. He greeted me, and we spoke of my quest.

“Go,” he said, “to Mihintale, where the Law first came to this island by the hands of Mahinda. Seek also the great Dagoba where stand the images of the Buddhas that have been and of Him who is to come. And under the Tree which is a part of that Tree beneath which the Blessed One received illumination, meditate on Truth.”

I delayed only that I might see the flames receive the discarded body of the Venerable One; and the ceremony took place next day, amid a vast gathering of the people and the great companies of the Bhikkus. They flooded the ways with sunshine in every shade of yellow, from deep primrose to a tawny orange. The roads were strewn, with rice like snowflakes, stamped into star-shapes. A strange melancholy music went with us. So, climbing a steep hill, we came to the pyre, heaped with the scented and aromatic woods of the jungle, and closed from human view by a high scaffolding draped with bright colours. On this pyre he was laid, and one of his own blood, holding a torch, applied the pure element to the wood: and, as he did so, the assembly raised a cry of “Sadhu, Sadhu!” and with that ascription of holiness a sheet of flame swept up into the crowns of the palms, and the scent of spices filled the air. And even as the body of the Blessed One passed into grey ash, passed also the worn-out dwelling of Sri Siddartha.

I made my way next day to a temple hollowed in the rock, the ceiling of which is frescoed with gods and heroes. It is taught that here the Canon of the Buddhist Scriptures was first committed to writing about 450 B.C. Here five hundred, priests, learned in the Faith, assembled, and collating the Scriptures, chanted every word, while the scribes recorded them with stylus and palm-leaf as they heard. Burmese, Tibetans, Indians, all were present, that so the Law might be carried over Asia, and the Peace of the Blessed One be made known to men.

Here, too, the discipline was fixed. The Bhikku must not be touched by a woman’s hand. He must eat but twice a day, and not after noon. He must keep the rule of the Lady Poverty as did Saint Francis. He must sleep nowhere but in Wiharas and other appointed places. And these are but a few of the commands. Yet, if the rule is too hard for him, the Bhikku may relinquish it at his will, and return to the world a free man—a fettered man, as the Master would have said, but free according to the rule of the Transient World. It is said that few accept this permission.

It took little imagination to people the silent temple with the Assembly—the keen intellectual Indian faces, the yellow robe and the bared shoulder, seated in close ranks in the twilight of the temple. Now it was silent and empty, but a mysterious aura filled it. The buildings of men’s hands pass away, but the rock, worn not at all, save where feet come and go, preserves the aspect of its great day, when it was the fountain-head of Truth.

A solemn gladness filled the air. Surely the West is waking to the message of the East—that message, flowing through the marvellous art of China and Japan, through the deep philosophies of India, the great Scriptures of the Buddhist Faith, and many more such channels. And we who have entered the many mansions through another gate may share and rejoice in the truths that are a world-heritage.

It was time now that I should visit the holy places, and I took the road through the jungle, intending to stay at the little rest-houses which exist to shelter travellers. The way is green with grass in the middle; there are two tracks for wheels—narrow and little used. Even the native huts may sometimes be forty miles apart. And on either side runs the huge wall of the jungle, holding its secret well.

Great trees, knotted with vines and dark with heavy undergrowth, shut me in. Sometimes a troop of silver-grey monkeys swept chattering overhead; sometimes a few red deer would cross the road, or a blue shrike flutter radiantly from one shelter to another. Mostly, the jungle was silent as the grave, but living, breathing, a vast and terrible personality; an ocean, and with the same illimitable might and majesty. Travelling through it, I was as a fish that swims through the green depths of water.

So I journeyed in a little bullock cart—and suddenly, abruptly, as if dropped from heaven, sprang out of the ocean of the jungle that bathed its feet a huge cube of rock nearly five hundred feet high, with lesser rocks spilt about it that would have been gigantic were it not for the first—the famous Sigurya.

An ancient people, led by a parricide king, took this strange place and made of it a mighty fortress. They cut galleries in the living rock that, like ants, they might pass up and down unharmed from below; and on the head of the rock—a space four acres in extent—they set a king’s palace and pleasance, with a bathing-tank to cool the torrid air. Then, still desiring beauty, this people frescoed the sheer planes of this precipitous rock of Sigurya with pictures that modern Singhalese art cannot rival. These vast pictures represent a procession of ladies to a shrine, with attendants bearing offerings. Only from the waist upward are the figures visible; they rise from clouds as if floating in the sky. The faces have an archaic beauty and dignity. One, a queen, crowned and bare-bosomed, followed by attendants bearing stiff lotus blooms, is beautiful indeed, but in no Singhalese or Indian fashion—a face dark, exotic, and heavy-lidded, like a pale orchid. It is believed the whole rock was thus frescoed into a picture-gallery, but time and weather have taken toll of the rest.

The Government has put steps and climbing rails, that the height may be reached. Half-way up is a natural level, and above it soars the remainder of the citadel, to be climbed only by notches cut in the rock, and hand-rails as a safeguard from the sheer fall below. And here this dead people had done a wonderful thing. They had built a lion of brick, so colossal that the head towered to the full height of the ascent. It has fallen into ruin, but the great cat-paws that remain indicate a beast some two hundred feet high. There is a gate between the paws, and in the old days they clambered up through the body of the lion and finally through his throat, into the daylight of the top. Only the paws are left, complete even to the little cat-claw at the back of each. Surely one of the strangest approaches in the world! Here and there the shelving of the rock overhangs the ascent, and drops of water fall in a bright crystal rain perpetually over the jungle so far below.

Standing upon the height, it was weirdly lovely to see the eternal jungle monotonously swaying and waving beneath. I thought of the strange feet that had followed these ways, with hopes and fears so like our own. And now their fortress is but a sunny day’s amusement for travellers from lands unknown, and the city sitteth desolate, and the strength of their building is resumed into the heart of nature. But the places where men have worshipped and lifted their hands to the Infinite are never dead. The Spirit that is Life Eternal hovers about them, and the green that binds their broken pillars is the green of an immortal hope.

The evening was now at hand, and, after the sun-steeped day, the jungle gave out its good smells, beautiful earth-warm smells like a Nature-Goddess, rising from the vast tangle of life in the mysterious depths. You may gather the flowers on their edge and wonder what the inmost flowers are like that you will never see—rich, labyrinthine, beyond all thought to paint.

The jungle is terrible as an army with banners. Sleeping in the little rest-house when the night has fallen, it comes close up to you, creeping, leaning over you, calling, whispering, vibrating with secret life. A word more,—only one,—a movement, and you would know the meaning and be gathered into the heart of it; but always there is something fine, impalpable, between, and you catch but a breath of the whisper.

Very wonderful is the jungle! In the moonlight of a small clearing I saw the huge bulk of three wild elephants feeding. They vanished like wraiths into the depths. The fireflies were hosting in the air like flitting diamonds. Stealthy life and movement were about me: the jungle, wide-awake and aware, moving on its own occasions.

A few days later I was at Anaradhapura. Once a million people dwelt in the teeming city. Here or near was the site visited by the famous Chinese pilgrim already mentioned, Fa Hien. But it is in ruins; the jasper image is gone. The tower is in the dust. A few priests watch by the scene of so much dead greatness and receive the pilgrims who still come with bowed heads to the Holy Places. But Fa Hien has reached the home of all the pilgrimages—the City of God dear and desirable in the sight of Plato and Saint Augustine, and all the warriors of all the faiths, and the inexorable years that have devoured the splendours of the Kings leave untouched his tears and his hope, for both are rooted in immortality.

He writes:

“The houses of the merchants are very beautifully adorned. The streets are smooth and level. At this time the King, being an earnest believer in the Law, desired to build a new monastery for this congregation. He chose a pair of strong oxen and adorned their horns with gold, silver and precious things. Then providing himself with a beautiful gilded plough, the King himself ploughed round the four sides of the allotted space, after which, ceding all personal rights, he presented the whole to the priests.”

This must be the monastery described by a later pilgrim, Hieuen Tsang, who journeyed from China to India about the year 630 A.D. In visiting Ceylon, he writes of its magnificence and especially of an upright pole on the roof “on which is fixed a mighty ruby. This gem constantly sheds a brilliant light which is visible day and night for a long distance and afar off appears like a bright star.”

That too is quenched in the dust. Where do the great jewels of antiquity hide? But one is left at Anaradhapura more precious than rubies—the famous image of the Buddha seated alone in a forest glade, the true presentment of a God, to whom beneath his closed eyes eternity is visible and time the shadow of a dream. Around him surged once the clamour of a great city, around him now the growth of the forest, both to his vision alike—and nothing. Some wayfarer had laid a flower at his feet when I stood there, and a white tassel of the areca palm. The sun and moon circle before him in this lonely place and the centuries pass like seasons.

“Forgetful is green earth; the God alone

Remember everlastingly.”

The place is a village lost in the woods, but inexpressibly holy because it contains in its own temple the sacred Bodhi Tree which is an offshoot of that very Tree beneath which the Lord Buddha received the Perfect Wisdom. Ceylon desired this treasure, and they tried to break a branch from the Tree, but dared not, for it resisted the sacrilege. But the Princess Sanghamitta, in great awe and with trembling hand, drew a line of vermilion about the bough, and at that line it separated from the Tree, and the Princess planted it in perfumed earth in a golden vase, and so brought it, attended by honours human and superhuman, to Ceylon—to this place, where it still stands. It is believed to be 2230 years old.

With infinite reverence I was given two leaves, collected as they fell; and it is difficult to look on them unmoved if indeed this Tree be directly descended from the other, which sheltered the triumphant conflict with evil.

The city itself is drowned in the jungle. In the green twilight you meet a queen’s palace, with reeling pillars and fallen capitals, beautiful with carved moonstones, for so are called the steps of ascent. Or lost in tangle, a manger fifty feet long for the royal elephants, or a nobly planned bath for the queens, where it is but to close the eyes and dream that dead loveliness floating in the waters once so jealously guarded, now mirroring the wild woodways. A little creeper is stronger than all our strength, and our armies are as nothing before the silent legions of the grass.

Later, I stood before the image of that Buddha who is to come—who in the Unchanging awaits his hour; Maitreya, the Buddha of Love. A majestic figure, robed like a king, for he will be royal. In his face, calm as the Sphinx, must the world decipher its hope, if it may. Strangely enough, in most of his images this Saviour who shall come is seated like a man of the West, and many learned in the faith believe that this Morning Star shall rise in the West. May he come quickly!

I set out one day for Mihintale, in a world of dewy, virginal loveliness, washed with morning gold, the sun shooting bright arrows into the green shade of the trees, a cloud of butterflies radiant as little flower angels going with me. One splendour, rose-red, velvet-black, alighted with quivering wings on the mouse-grey shoulder of the meek little bull who drew my cart and so went with us.

I was glad that my companion should be a devout Buddhist, for his reverence and delight in the beauty of his faith taught me many things. We climbed up through trees so still that the rustling of their shadows on the ground might have been audible, and as we went he told me a very ancient Buddhist story which must have reached the Island with the Apostle Mahinda, son of the high Emperor Ashoka, who brought the faith from his father’s court in India. Ashoka is one of the great world-rulers, the Constantine of the Buddhist teaching and himself a devout disciple. This story is a Jataka or Birth Story of the Lord, one of those to which I have already alluded, as conveying moral teaching (and often much folk lore), and this is called “The Dancing Peacock.”

“Thus have I heard. In the old days the Blessed Buddha sat at Jetavana, and they told him of a monk who had become drowned in luxury, eating, drinking and adorning his person with magnificence, so that he cared nothing for the faith. And at last they brought him before the Lord that he might be admonished. And the Perfect One said:

“ ‘Is it true, monk, that despising all nobility you have surrendered yourself to idle luxury?’

“And without waiting to hear a word more the monk flew into a violent anger, and tearing off his magnificent robe he stood naked before the Master, crying:

“ ‘Then, if you like not my robes, this is the way I will go about!’

“So the bystanding monks cried out: ‘Shame, Shame!’ and in a fury he rushed from the hall and returned to the condition of a layman. And the Lord said:

“ ‘Not only now, O monks, has this man lost the Jewel of the faith by immodesty but it was also with him in a former life. Hear the story of the Dancing Peacock.

“ ‘Very long ago in the first age of the world, the birds chose the Golden Bird to be their King. Now the Golden Bird had a daughter, most beautiful to see, and he gave her her choice of a husband, after the ancient manner of India, calling together all the birds of the Himalaya. And he sent for his daughter, saying: “Now come and choose!” And looking she saw the Peacock with a neck of gold and emeralds and a train of spread jewels, and instantly she said: “Let this be my husband!”

“So all the birds approached the Peacock, saying:

“ ‘Noble Peacock, the Princess has set her heart upon you. Therefore rejoice with humility.’

“But the Peacock, walking arrogantly, replied:

“ ‘Up to this day none of you would recognize the greatness that was in me. Now instantly do homage to my majesty!’

“And so intoxicated was he with pride that he began to dance, spreading his wings and swaying his head, and altogether conducting himself like a drunken man who cares not at all for decency. And horror seized the Golden Bird and he said:

“ ‘This fellow has broken loose from all sense of shame—how could it be that I should give my Princess to such as he?’ And he uttered this:

“ ‘Pleasant is your cry. Jewelled is your back. The feathers of your tail are glorious, but, Sir, to such a dancer, I can give no daughter of mine!’

“And he bestowed his Princess immediately upon a bird of modest behaviour, and the Peacock, covered with shame, fled away.

“Therefore, brethren, this monk has now lost the Jewel of the faith as he once lost a fair wife. For in a former birth, the Peacock was this shameless monk, but I myself was the Golden Bird.”

And this is a lesson also upon the stately calm which marks the gentleman according to Oriental opinion. It is the low-born only who may hurry and storm. Other stories I heard, for my friend was a student of ancient things, and this belief in lives past and to come is the spiritual life blood of the Orient. It is the mete-yard of justice. He asked me whether the Christian faith explicitly denied it, and I could only reply—No; quoting that strange passage of the Blind Man, when disciples questioning the Christ—

“Did this man sin or his parents, that he was born blind?”—pass unrebuked for the implication.

The Hill of Mihintale rises abruptly as Sigurya from the forests, and the very air about it is holy, for it was on this great hill that Mahinda, mysteriously transported from India, alighted bewildered as one waking from a dream. Here the King, Tissa, seeing the saint seated beneath a tree, heard a voice he could not gainsay that called his name three times; and so, approaching with his nobles, he received the Teaching of the Blessed One.

The hill is climbed by wonderful carved shallow steps, broken now, and most beautiful with an overgrowth of green. At the sides are beds of the Sensitive Plant, with its frail pink flowers. They would faint and fall if touched, and here you would not even breathe roughly upon them, for Buddhists regard the shrinking creatures as living and hold it sinful to cause such evident suffering.

Descending the grey steps, the shade and sunshine dappling his yellow robe and bared shoulder with noble colour, came a priest, on his way to visit the sick of the little village. He stopped and spoke. I told him I had come from visiting the shrines of Burma, and he desired me to give him a description of some matters I had seen there. I did so, and we talked for some time, and it was then mentioned that my food, like his own, necessitated no taking of life. Instantly his whole face softened as he said that was glad news to hear. It was the fulfilling of a high commandment. Would I receive his blessing, and his prayer that the truth might enlighten me in all things? He bestowed both, and, having made his gift, went upon his way with the dignity of perfect serenity. That little circumstance of food (as some would call it) has opened many a closed door to me in Asia.

At the top of the hill is a deep shadowy rock-pool, with a brow of cliff overhanging it; and this is named the Cobra’s Bath, for it is believed that in the past there was a cobra who used, with his outspread hood, to shelter the saint, Mahinda, from the torrid sun, and who was also so much a little servant of the Law that none feared and all mourned him when he passed upon his upward way in the chain of existences. Here, above the pool where he loved to lie in the clear cool, they sculptured a great cobra, with three hooded heads, rising, as it were, from the water. It was most sinuously beautiful and looked like the work of a great and ancient people, gathering the very emblem of Fear into the great Peace. On the topmost height was the stupa, or shrine, of Mahinda, incasing its holy relic, and the caves where his priests dwelt and still dwell. I entered one, at the invitation of a Bhikku, an old man with singularly beautiful eyes, set in a face of wistful delicacy. He touched my engraved ring and asked what it might mean. Little enough to such as he, whose minds are winged things and flutter in the blue tranquillities far above the earth!

The caves are many, with a rock-roof so low that one cannot stand upright—a strange, dim life, it would seem, but this Bhikku spoke only of the peace of it, the calm that falls with sunset and that each dawn renews. I could not doubt this—it was written upon his every gesture. He gave me his blessing, and his prayer that I might walk forever in the Way of Peace. With such friends as these the soul is at home. Peace. It is indeed the salutation of Asia, which does not greet you with a desire for health or prosperity as in the West, but only—Peace.

I would willingly tell more of my seekings and findings in Ceylon, for they were many and great. But I pass on to the little drowsy hill town of Badulla, where the small bungalows nest in their gardens of glorious flowers and vines. I sat in the churchyard, where the quiet graves of English and Singhalese are sinking peacefully into oblivion. It was Sunday, with a Sabbath calm upon the world. A winding path led up to the open door of the little English church, a sweet breeze swayed the boughs and ruffled the long grass of the graves; the butterflies, small Psyches fluttered their parable in the air about me. A clear voice from the church repeated the Lord’s Prayer, and many young voices followed. It was a service for the Singhalese children who have been baptized into the Christian Faith. They sang of how they had been brought out of darkness and the shadow of death and their feet set upon the Way of Peace.

Surely it is so. When was that Way closed to any who sought? But because man must follow his own categorical imperative, I repeated to myself, when they were silent, the words of the poet Abdul Fazl, which he wrote at the command of the Emperor Akbar as an inscription for a Temple in Kashmir:—

“O God, in every temple I see people that see Thee, and in every language they praise Thee.

If it be a mosque, men murmur the holy prayer, and if it be a Christian church they ring the bell from love to Thee.

Sometimes I frequent the Christian cloister, and sometimes the mosque, but it is Thou whom I seek from temple to temple.

Thine elect have no dealings with heresy or orthodoxy, for neither of these stands behind the screen of thy Truth.

Heresy to the heretic and religion to the orthodox!

But the dust of the rose-petal belongs to the heart of the perfume-seller!”

Yes,—and an ancient Japanese poet, going yet deeper, says this thing: “So long as the mind of a man is in accord with the Truth, the Gods will hear him though he do not pray.”

I passed the night at a little rest-house and next day set out on the long journey to Polonnarewa, and beyond that to Trincomali, through a wild part of Ceylon, stopping each night at the rest-houses which mark the way. Jungle in India is often mere scrub; this is thousands of acres of mighty forest. A small road has been driven through it, and on either side rises the dark and secret wall of trees, impenetrable for miles, knitted with creepers and blind with undergrowth—a dangerous mystery.

“Thousand eyeballs under hoods,

Have you by the hair.”

It seems that every movement is watched, that strained ears listen to every breath from the secrecy that can never be pierced.

Much farther on the forest opens into the ancient tank of Minneri, for these great artificial lakes of the bygone Kings here and in India are called tanks. It is a glorious lake twenty miles in circumference and I saw it first with the mountains, exquisite in form and colour, rising behind it in the rose and gold of a great sunset. Some forgotten King made it to water the country, and there are still the very sluices unbroken though choked by masses of fallen masonry. It is the work of great engineers. No place could be more lovely—the silver fish leaping in translucent water, and one pouched pelican with its ax-like beak drifting lazily in a glory so dazzling, that one could only glimpse it a moment in the dipping sparkles of the reflected sun. The way, like the ascent to Mihintale, was banked with masses of the Sensitive Plant, lovely with its fragile pink flowers and delicately folding and dropping leaves, fainting as you brush them in passing.

But the lake—the wide expanse, calm as heaven and a shimmer of rose and blue and gold! I lingered to watch it—the strange beautiful grotesque of the great bird floating above its own perfect image. It was evening and the jungle was sweet with all the scents drawn out of it during the long sun-steeped day—heavenly scents that come from the teeming life in the mysterious forests, fresh forests germinating on the ruins of the old—murmuring, calling, vibrating with life and wonder and strange existences, and their endless chain of blossom and decay.

It grew dark soon after Minneri, and the fireflies were glittering about us and the moonlight white on the narrow way. A whispering silence filled the air with unseen presences as of the feet that long, long centuries ago trod this way on their errands of pleasure or pain to the dead city of my goal. I could almost see its spectral towers and palaces down the moon-blanched glades. Illusion—nothing more.

The driver missed the track to Polonnarewa, but that mattered little, so wonderful was the night in the lonely place and the great dark where once a mighty people moved, and now but the moon and stars circle before a dead majesty.

But at the long last we found our way and the little rest-house which stands where stood the royal city, near a dim glimmer of water. The only accommodation was a chair, but that was welcome, and when I woke in the grey dawn she came gliding with silver feet over the loveliest lake rippling up to the steps of the fairy house in the woods, and peopled by the glorious rose lotus, grown by the ancient people for the service of the Temples. And the traveller whom I met there went out before breakfast and brought in for provender a pea-hen, a wood pigeon, and a great grey fish from the lake. For myself, I eat like a Buddhist priest and am content,—living foods were not for me.

The ruins at Polonnarewa are wonderful indeed, much more perfect than those of the better known Anaradhapura, though it does not offer, like the latter, the marvellous row of the Buddhas who have fulfilled their mission and that Buddha of Love who is yet to come. All about are temples with colossal Buddhas, palaces, the strangely sculptured stone rails which are so distinctively Buddhist surrounding richly carved shrines. Hinduism mingled with Buddhism also. Some of these beautiful relics have been dug out of the jungle strata, some reclaimed from the invading growths which are so all-obliterating in a tropic country, and no doubt there is as much more to be discovered. The carved work is exquisitely lovely. How strong is the passion for beauty—in the very ends of the earth it is found, and surely it confirms the Platonic teaching that it is a reflection of that passion of joy in which the Creator beheld his work on the seventh day and knew that it was good.

I cannot describe the wonder of passing through these glades and lawns and seeing the great dagobas, those mighty buildings of brick, but now waving with greenery, enshrining each its holy relic. Would that it were possible to imagine the city which dwelt under their shadow! But the homes of men pass very swiftly away. It is only the homes of their souls which abide. Yet the jungle is more wonderful than what it buries. The sunlit walls of green guard the road jealously. The sun-flecks only struggle a few inches within that line, and then—trackless secrecy. A bird flew out, jewelled, gorgeous, “Half angel and half bird.” Are there greater wonders within? Who can tell? It is sometimes death to attempt to lift the veil of Isis. I saw the gravestone of a young man who for all his strength and youth was lost in the jungle—caught in the poisoned sweetness of her embrace and so died. It may have been a lonely and fearful death, and yet again—who knows! There are compensations of which we know nothing.

I stayed at the little rest-house of Kantelai on its lake with the jungle creeping and whispering about it— “Dark mother ever gliding near with soft feet.” Days to be remembered—unspeakably beautiful—they leave some precious deposit in the memory almost more lovely than the sight itself, as in the world of thought the spirit is more than the body.

And for the end to my journey the great and noble harbour of Trincomali! I wonder why tourists so seldom go there, but the ways of the tourist pass understanding. It winds about in lakes of sea blue among palms and coral bights and glittering beaches. Long ago, the people drifting over from India built a temple where the old fort now stands, and though thus polluted the site is still holy and you may see the Brahman priest cast offerings into the sea from a ledge high up the cliff, with the worshipping people about him. Then the Portuguese swept down upon Ceylon in their great naval days when they were the Sweepers of the Sea, and they destroyed the temple and built their fort. And the Dutch followed, and the Portuguese vanished, and the French conquered the Dutch, and again the Dutch the French, and then the English, hawking over the Seven Seas, pounced like the osprey, and the Dutch sovereignty passed into their keeping. Did I not say the Island had many masters?

So the English made this a great fortified place, humming with naval and military activity; men-of-war lying in the bay, guns bristling in the beautiful old fort that guards the cliff. And now all that too is gone—blown away like a wreath of mist, and the only soldiers and sailors are those who will stay forever in the little grave-place under the palms, and if it so continues I daresay the jungle will take Trincomali as it has taken the City of Kings.

A beautiful place. I wandered on the beach among the shells one marvelled to see as a child, when sailor friends gave them into eager hands—deep brown freckled polished things, leopard-spotted and ivory-lipped, and so smooth that the hand slips off the perfect surface. Delicate frailties of opal and pearl shimmering with mystic colour, spiny grotesques with long thorned stems—there they all lay for the gathering. And at last I went up into the old fort.

It covers many acres on the cliff and the jungle is steadily conquering the empty bungalows and fortifications. It is very old, for the Dutch built it in 1650. Now in the thickets the forsaken guns make an empty bravado like toothless lions. I saw a deer and her fawn come peering shyly through the bushes, and they fled before me. The casements are empty and a flagless flagstaff looks over the heavenly calm of the sea.

Almost lost in the shade I found some old Dutch graves, very square and formal—a something of the rigidity of the burgomaster about them still, as of stiff-ruffed men and women. “Here sleeps in God—” said one mossy inscription (but in Dutch)—and then a break, and then “Johanna” and another break, and only a word here and there and a long obliterated date. And the Dutch were masters and Johanna slept in the ground of her people as securely as if it had been The Hague itself. So it must then have seemed. And now it is English, and whose next? Truly the fashion of this world passeth away! They were touching, those old tombs, with inscriptions that once were watered with tears, that no one now cares to decipher. And there they lie forgotten in the sighing trees, and the world goes by. The dominion of oblivion is secure, whatever that of death may be.

I climbed down to a casement in the cliff, half-way to the sea, a little shelf overlooking the blue transparence that met the blue horizon, and wondered what the grave God-fearing talk of the Dutchmen had been as they leaned over the parapet, discussing the ways of the heathen and the encroachments of the British. And from there I made my way to the rocks below with the brilliant water heaving about them. Some large fish of the most perfect forget-me-not blue shading into periwinkle mauve on the fins were playing before me, and as they rolled over, or a ripple took them they displayed the underside, a faint rose pink. Such beautiful happy creatures in the wash of the wandering water clear and liquid as light! Sometimes they wavered like moons under a ripple, a blot of heavenliest blue, submerged and quivering, sometimes a shoal of black fish barred with gold swam in among them, beautiful to see. I could have stayed all day, for it was heavenly cool, with a soft sea breeze blowing through the rocks, but even as I watched a great brown monster came wallowing through the water, and my beauties fled like swallows.

The touch of tragedy was not wanting, for high on the cliff was a little pillar to the memory of a Dutch girl who fell in love long ago with an Englishman—a false lover, who sailed away and left her heartbroken. Here she watched his sails lessening along the sky, and as they dipped below the horizon, she threw herself over the cliff in unendurable anguish.

A tragic story, but it is all so long ago that it has fallen back into the beauty of nature and is now no more sad than a sunset that casts its melancholy glory before it fades. Yet I wonder whether in all the hide and seek of rebirth she has caught up somewhere with her Englishman! She knows all about Psyche’s wings by this time, and he too must have gained a dear-bought wisdom through “the great mercy of the gift of departing,” as the Buddhists call it . . . they to whom death is so small an episode in so long a story.

I sat by the pillar and watched the dying torch of the sunset extinguished in the sea—a sea of glass mingled with fire. And very quietly the stars appeared one by one in a violet sky and it was night.

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THE WONDERFUL PILGRIMAGE TO AMARNATH