Then as I looked, there stepped from the house a man, or one whom I took to be a man. This man stood in the cool, fresh morning, and gazed at the sun, now rising above the tops of the great trees. He smiled gently, and taking in each hand a little water from a tiny stream that flowed near by, he raised his hands, and still smiling, offered tribute of the water to the sun. I saw the water falling down from his hands in a small stream of silver drops, shining brightly. It was the way of the land, the Singing Mouse said; for they thought that as the water came from the sky and returned to it, so did man and the thoughts of man, and the fruits of his progress; never to be destroyed.
At all this I looked almost in fear, for the thought came that perhaps this was not Man as we knew him, but the successor of Man. “Where is this land,” I asked of the Singing Mouse, “and what is this time upon which we have come?”
The Singing Mouse looked at the green trees, and at the kind sun, and at the blue sky and the pleasant waters, and it said to me slowly: “There was once a city where these trees now stand.”
The Bell and | ||
Melody unformulate, music immaterial, such was thevoice of the Singing Mouse; faint, small and clear, a piping offifes so fine, a touching of strings so delicate, that it seemed tocome from instruments of beryl and of diamond, a phantom music,impossible to fetter with staff or bar, and past the hope of compassingin words. It was the last night of the year, and the bell upon the church nearby had made many strokes the last time it had been heard; many heavystrokes which throbbed sullenly, mournfully on the air. The presence ofpassing Time was at hand. The year soon would join theyears gone by. Regret, remorse, despair, abandonment, the hopelessnessof humanity—was it the breath of these which arose and burdenedheavily the note of the chronicling bell? Where were the chimesof joy? | ||
“These shadows that you see are not upon the wall,” said the Singing Mouse. “They are very much beyond the windows. If only we will look out from our windows, there are always great pictures waiting for us—pictures in pearl and opal, in liquid argent, in crimson and gold. But always there must be the shadows. Without these, there can be no picture anywhere.
“Have you not seen what the shadows do? Have you not seen them trooping through the oak forest in the evening, through the pine forest in open day, across the prairies under the moon at night, legions of them, armies of them? Have you never seen them march across the grass-lands in the daytime, cohort after cohort, hurrying to the call of the unseen trumpets? In the woods, have you never heard strange sounds, when you put your ear to the ground—sounds untraceable to any animate life? Have you never heard vague voices in the trees? Have you not heard distant, mysterious noises in the forest, whose cause you could never learn, seek no matter how you might? These were the voices of the shadows, the people who live there. Who else should it be to whisper and sing to you and make you happy when you are there? Without these people, what would be the woods, the prairies, the waters, the sky, the world?
“Without the shadows, too, what would be our lives? Thoughts, thoughts and remembrances, what have we that is sweeter than these? Have you never seen the smile upon the lips of those who have died? They say they are looking upon the Future. Perhaps they look also upon the Past, and therefore smile in happiness, seeing again Youth, and Hope, and Faith, and Trust; which are tender and beautiful things. Life has no actuality of its own, and in material sense is only a continual change. But the shadows of thought and of remembrance do not change. It is only the shadows that are real.”