II
“The luminous
Star-inwrought, beautiful
Folds of the Veil.”
Many have written of the journey down to the dark river; few have told of the road backward from the river’s brink; a road of sudden ecstasies and sordid pitfalls.
For the radiance lay over the earth when he turned his face to it again. Nothing was ever sweeter than the sight of palm leaves against the blue upon the banks of the Nile. As the shores streamed past, with the rosy hills and yellow lights above them, winged feluccas furling sail, or sweeping like birds across the blue, with the roaring of the swiftness of their motion, he could lie and look—weary with rapture—watching the figures sprung from the old Palestinian story—a rugged Peter wrapping his fisher’s cloak about him, or urging his fellows “I go a-fishing.” But slowly, imperceptibly, the walls of the world closed in again; the sun beat pitilessly down; the heavens were brass, the earth iron. Now and again they would open out at the sight of the sapphire sparkle of the Mediterranean, or the deep, green growth under blossoming orchards of France. The wind became the life-giving breath of the spirit, and the soul would “beat” against “mortal bars,” seeing infinite power, infinite possibility, lying but just beyond the frail partition; a touch, and he might glide from the mountain side down over the trees that slept in the noonday of the valley; a hand on the eyes, and they would see to the truth that lies beneath form and colour of earthly things; a finger on the ear, and he would hear the very meaning of the wind and of the trickle of the stream—the gift of tongues would be an imaginably natural incident.
Yet next day, at some trifling ailment, death and its terrors compass him about, and the man shakes as with ague under the fear of it and shame of cowardice. Or he wakes every morning seemingly refreshed, only to fall by midday into a gulf of blackness and mistrust, sordid, not tragic, not dignified; and he sits tongue-tied, seeing a sneer in every smile, marvelling that men do not see the loathsomeness and terror that lie around them, but walk unconcerned among the dangers that encompass. Then again life returns in full flood, and the fears and the terrors are as the fabric of a dream.
A long, strange way, full of inexplicable joys and sorrows, hopes and fears—a far longer path to travel in the spirit than that by which he came “out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt,” to the cool airs and sweet quiet of an old English country house in wooded downs touched by the freshness of the sea. There in the south, after the first bound towards health, life had stood still; the parched, sapless land could yield dry, clear air, sharp bright sunlight, but no refreshment of health and of spirit, nothing that could be compared to the misty mornings, and soft dewy evenings of a mild English spring. There the spring brings no refreshment; March reaps her harvest and the palm leaves hang dry and yellowish: here all life was stirring after the winter sleep, and earth was striving in her own finite way to make all things new. It was long since he had seen an English spring, and the eye could not be satisfied with gazing.
He first noticed it when, looking on the wintry copses, he saw that a thin ripple of life had run over the ground; among brown stalks and withered leaves so slight a flush of green that you could hardly say, “It is here” or “It is there,” nor surely know the change was worked to the outer eye or noted by the reanimate perception. Then the fine veil of skeleton branches against the sky, through, under, beyond which he could see the blue downs of the coast, thickened, and they warmed in colour; till the brown of the elm became purple, and the brown of the beeches red, and the willow golden: then the elm burst into its little purple rosettes but the others stayed. And now crept out those little silvery creatures which the children call palms; like little downy animals, so sweet, so comfortable that the child must half believe they are alive. Early in April the clumps of crocus in the turf, purple and yellow, were dying, but the daffodils were beginning to take their place, strewing the rough grass with flowers of milky gold. A week later the snake-heads were drawing themselves out of the turf, with head curved downwards like a swan preening its breast; primroses were waking in the lanes, the larch was hanging “rosy plumelets,” the silver leaf buds of the apple were out, and the flower of the peach.
This was cuckoo day, and punctual to the moment they hooted in the wood below; they had come in good time for the later nests, for the wagtails had taken their last year’s tenement again in the ivied wall, and the untidy sparrows were littering lawn and garden.
Again a week, and the cherry buds showed fawn coloured; two days they stayed so, then a little tree burst into flower. Two days more, and the orchard looked as if a snow shower had lightly fallen. At last one windy day white blossoms came drifting down among the scarlet tulips, and after this a rose-tinge passed over the trees, like a faint sunset on the snow, and then the glory was gone. But the expanding spirit could not bewail the glory gone, for warmer weather came with sun like summer, so that the plum-tree on the wall burst into flower one morning while one sat under it; a purple iris appeared, the blackthorn whitened, and in the garden beds the peonies and lilies shot up, anemones dozed half their radiant life away in royal groups, purple and scarlet. The remembrance of trembling and helplessness fell from the man, and he laughed to see the peacock’s grave and measured dance and the fierce cock chaffinch wooing in his bright spring coat.
So the spring returned, unfolding infinite new delights, sometimes hurrying, sometimes delaying; the copses clothed themselves in foliage as light as a birch grove, with all fine gradations of colour from the grey palms grown old, to the golden oaks beginning, and all life and all activity responded. Though storms and chill might check the budding, the renewal of the spring moved in man and nature, as man and nature shook off the memory of death and winter, warmed and revivified in the waxing power of the sun.
And the world found voice for its joy, and it was joy to lie awake in the hour before dawn, while the last fine song of the nightingale still lingered in the memory, and hear the untutored song echo from bush to bush; when the thrush and the blackbird waked, and the starling chattered, and the cock chimed in with the lusty bar of music of his bugle call, and all in chorus welcomed the day, and ceased.
And one morning, as the man leaned out of his window to drink the sweet air of growing things, he saw suddenly, that the desire of spring was satiate. The trees had burst their buds and made a glory of golden leaves. Life no longer pulsed, stayed, hurried on, but flowed in the full tide of summer. Summer would burst into glories of beauty and odour on this side and on that, but the fresh impulse of spring was over. And the man leaned out and revelled in it. The rough bank had covered its scars with lush green grass; and leaves, stems, and branches were hidden. He revelled in the odorous, sun-warmed air, in the pleasant kindly earth with its beauties, in the sight and sound of the happy living things, and he looked away towards the hills, but they were hidden. Then all at once he saw the blindness of content, and he cried out “Oh my soul, where are the heavenly horizons and the distant misty hills?”
For while he gazed, the veil had fallen; at first translucent, radiant; threads fine as gossamer shining with light, so that they seemed but to illuminate the distance. Then the veil was inwrought with flowers and as each new beauty came, he said “This is God’s work, and I can see Him in this; all this symbolizes the light of His countenance, and I see Him in His world.” And of each human interest and activity he said, “This is God’s work, for it is the work of His children.” So it fell fold on fold, thickening imperceptibly, full of sweet odours as it fell, and the voices of birds; and he did not know that the focus of his view was contracting, and that he was beginning to look not through the veil but at it. And he did not see that there was another hand at work and other threads in the web, grosser, more earthly, and darker yet; and that as it was woven, warp and woof, other hands threw the shuttle.
So it fell, closing out the heavenly vision, hiding too the clouds and darkness round God’s seat; and he found himself gazing on the veil which men call this world. Then with a great struggle he cried, “In the time of our wealth, good Lord deliver us.”