“Because they cannot express what I would have them.”
The friar pondered, his fingers laced in his beard. To-day, in the dreariness of the elemental turmoil without, he longed intensely to touch some chord in this lonely man that would vibrate to confidence.
“What would you have them express?” he asked at length.
“A dream of mine last night, Padre.”
A dream! Dreams were but the reflex of the waking mind. The friar felt suddenly nearer his goal.
“Will you tell it to me, my son?”
Gordon rose, went to the window and looked out as the other had done. His face was still turned seaward as he began:
“It was a dream of darkness. The sun was extinguished, and moon and stars went wandering into space. It was not the darkness of storm and night, Padre, for in them is movement. In my dream there was none. Without the sun, rivers and lakes lay stagnant. The waves were dead, the tides were in their graves. Ships rotted on the sea till their masts fell. The very winds were withered. Darkness was everything—it was the universe! That was my dream.”
“There is no darkness in God’s universe,” said Padre Somalian, after a pause. “It is only in the human heart. ‘Men love darkness rather than light’ says the Book. Did men welcome it in your dream?”
“Morning came,” went on Gordon; “came, and went, and came, but it was not day. Men forgot their hates and passions. They prayed only for light—but it did not come. They lived by watch-fires, and when their fuel was gone, they put the torch to their own homes to see one another’s faces. Huts and palaces and thrones blazed for beacons. Whole cities burned at once. The forests were set on fire and their crackling trunks dropped and faded hour by hour. As the ember-flashes fell by fits on the men who watched them, their faces looked unearthly. Some lay down in the ashes and howled and hid their eyes. Some rested their chins on their clenched hands and smiled. Others hurried to and fro feeding the flames, looking up only to curse the sky—the pall of a past world. Wild birds fluttered on the baked ground, and brutes crawled tame and tremulous. Vipers hissed under foot and did not sting. They were killed for food. War was everywhere, for every meal was bought with blood, and each man sat apart sullenly, and gorged himself in the darkness. One thought ruled—death, quick and ignominious. Famine came. Men died and lay unburied. The starving devoured the starved. There was no human love left. There was only one unselfish, faithful thing. It was a dog, and he was faithful to a corpse. He had no food himself, but he kept beasts and famished men at bay till he too died, licking his master’s dead hand.”