Sons of the Morning

by Eden Phillpotts

"An' Tommy Bates here be all for joinin' of 'em," laughed Samuel Pinsent; "but I tell un as he turns out his toes tu far to do any credit to hisself in such a wild course of life."

CHAPTER XII.

LIGHT

Beside his sleeping wife did Stapledon recline, and endeavoured, through the hours of a weary night, to gather the significance of those great things that he had gleaned. Sometimes he surprised his own thought—as a man's conscience will often burst in roughly upon his mind—and found himself hoping that this news was untrue and that Christopher Yeoland filled a coffin, if not at Little Silver. But the edifice of probability so carefully reared by Mark Endicott showed no flaw, and even amid the mazes of his present doubt Myles found time to marvel at the ratiocination of the old man. Before this explanation it seemed difficult to believe that another clue to the puzzle existed. A note of inner unrest, a question within a question, finally brought Myles out of bed at dawn. He rose, soon stood in the air, and, through the familiar early freshness of day, walked upwards to the Moor for comfort. What was it to him if this harebrained soul had thus played at death? He, at least, was no dreamer, and moved upon solid ground. He passed beside the kingdom of the blue jasione and navel-wort on the old wall, while above him wind-worn beeches whispered in the dawn wind. From force of habit he stood at a gate and rested his arms upon the topmost bar, while his great dog roved for a rabbit. Now the man's eyes were lighted to the depths of their disquiet from the east, and at sight of the distant woods his thoughts turned back to that meeting responsible for his child's death. He had yet to learn from Honor whether his uncle's suspicion was correct concerning the incident, but little doubt existed within his mind, and he breathed heavily, and his emotions almost bordered upon malignity. Better such a futile soul under the earth in sober earnest. So ill-regulated a human machine looked worse than useless, for his erratic course impeded the progress of others more potent, and was itself a menace and a danger. This man had killed his little son—that child of many petitions and wide hopes; had crushed him, like a sweet wild flower under the heel of a fool. So bitterly he brooded; then pondered as to how his wife would receive this tremendous message.

Upon the first heather ridges the cold breath of the Moor touched the man to patience and brought him nearer himself. He looked out into the dayspring; noted where one little flame-coloured forerunner of dawn already shone upon lofty granite afar off; and saw the Mist Mother rise from the ruddy seeding rushes of her sleeping-place. He beheld the ancient heron's grey pinion brighten to rose beside the river; heard cry of curlew and all the manifold music of the world waking again. Above him the sky flushed to the colours of the woodbine, while upon earth arose an incense and a savour of nightly dews sun-kissed. From marsh and moss, from the rush beds and the peat beds; from glimmering ridges cast upward by workers long gone by; from the bracken and the heather, and the cairns of the old stone men; from the gold eyes of the little tormentils, the blue eyes of the milkworts, the white stars of the galiums woven and interwoven through the texture of the budding heath—from each and all, to the horizon-line of peak and pinnacle, a risen sun won worship. Then did Stapledon's eyes soften somewhat and his brow clear in the great light, for there came songs from the Sons of the Morning—they who in time past had welcomed him as a brother; and their music, floating from the high places, soothed his troubled heart. Under that seraphic melody the life of man, his joys and his sorrows, peaked and dwindled to their just proportions; gradually he forgot his kind, and so thought only of the solemn world-order outspread, and the round earth rolling like an opal about the lamp of the sun, through God's own estate and seigniory of space.

That hour and the steadfast nature of him presently retrieved his patience; then Myles shone forth unclouded as the morning. Recollection of his recent fret and passion surprised him. Who was he to exhibit such emotion? The Moor was his exemplar, and had been so since his boyish eyes first swept it understandingly. For him this huge, untamed delight was the only picture of the God he did not know, yet yearned to know; and now, as oftentimes of old, it cooled his blood, exalted his reflections, adjusted the distortions of life's wry focus, and sent him home in peace.

Duty was the highest form of praise that he knew, and he prepared to fall back upon that. Let others order their brief journeys on lines fantastical or futile, he at least was wiser and knew better. He reflected that the folly of the world can injure no soul's vital spots. Only a man's self can wound himself mortally. He would live on agreeably to Nature—obedient as the granite to the soft, tireless touch of wind and rain; prompt as the bursting bud and uncurling tendril; patient as the cave spirits that build up pillars of stalagmite through unnumbered ages; faithful as the merle, whose music varies not from generation to generation. Life so lived would be life well guarded and beyond the power of outer evil to penetrate.

So he believed very earnestly, and knew not that his noble theory asked a noble nature to practise it. Only a great man can use perfectly a great tool; and this obtains with higher rules of conduct than Stapledon's; for of all who profess and call themselves Christians, not one in a thousand is mentally equipped to be the thing he pretends, or even to understand the sweep and scope of what he professes. It is not roguery that makes three parts of Christendom loom hypocrite in a thinker's eyes, but mental and constitutional inability to grasp a gospel at once the most spiritual and material ever preached and misunderstood. Centuries of craft stretch between man and the Founder's meaning; confusion bred of passion has divided the House against itself; politics and the lust of power have turned religion into a piece of state machinery; and the rot at the root of the cumbrous fabric will, within half a century, bring all down in far-flung conflagration and ruin. Then may arise the immortal part out of the holocaust of the Letter, and Christianity, purged of churchcraft as from a pestilence, fly back to brood upon the human heart once more in the primal, rainbow glory of the Sermon on the Mount, preached under heaven by a Man to men.

That day Myles Stapledon, with all caution and such choice of words as he had at command, broke the story to Honor, and his tactful language, born of love, was so skilful that the shock brought no immediate collapse with it. The narrative asked for some art, yet he developed it gradually, and found his reward where Mark had predicted. First Honor learnt what she herself had seen upon that fateful night; and when, in a very extremity of amazement, she confessed to the secret of a fancied spectre, Myles went further and led her to understand that what she had witnessed was flesh and blood, that a confusion, probably not intentional, had been created, and that Christopher Yeoland might be suspected still to live. Stapledon spared himself nothing in this narrative. Asked by his wife as to the reason that could have prompted her former lover to a step so extravagant, he reminded her of her own determination to marry neither of them; he explained how he had begged Christopher to come back, that her life might be as it had been; and added that doubtless the wanderer on his side, and for love of her alone, had put this trick upon them in the belief that such a course would contribute to her final happiness. Having set out this much with extreme impartiality, a human question burst from the heart of the man.

"For you he did this thing, love; he only thought of you and not of the thousand preposterous tangles and troubles likely to spring from such an action. Your happiness—that was all he saw or cared to see. And did he see it? Tell me, dear Honor—here on the threshold of his return perhaps—tell me; was it for your happiness? Thank God, I think I know; yet I should like to hear from your own lips the truth and that I am right."