The Story of an African Farm Part 26

"Then in a moment there arose before him the image of the thing he had loved, and his hand dropped to his side.

"'Oh, come to us!' they cried.

"But he buried his face.

"'You dazzle my eyes,' he cried, 'you make my heart warm; but you cannot give me what I desire. I will wait here--wait till I die. Go!'

"He covered his face with his hands and would not listen; and when he looked up again they were two twinkling stars, that vanished in the distance.

"And the long, long night rolled on.

"All who leave the valley of superst.i.tion pa.s.s through that dark land; but some go through it in a few days, some linger there for months, some for years, and some die there."

The boy had crept closer; his hot breath almost touched the stranger's hand; a mystic wonder filled his eyes.

"At last for the hunter a faint light played along the horizon, and he rose to follow it; and he reached that light at last, and stepped into the broad suns.h.i.+ne. Then before him rose the almighty mountains of Dry-facts and Realities. The clear suns.h.i.+ne played on them, and the tops were lost in the clouds. At the foot many paths ran up. An exultant cry burst from the hunter. He chose the straightest and began to climb; and the rocks and ridges resounded with his song. They had exaggerated; after all, it was not so high, nor was the road so steep! A few days, a few weeks, a few months at most, and then the top! Not one feather only would he pick up; he would gather all that other men had found--weave the net--capture Truth--hold her fast--touch her with his hands--clasp her!

"He laughed in the merry suns.h.i.+ne, and sang loud. Victory was very near.

Nevertheless, after a while the path grew steeper. He needed all his breath for climbing, and the singing died away. On the right and left rose huge rocks, devoid of lichen or moss, and in the lava-like earth chasms yawned. Here and there he saw a sheen of white bones. Now too the path began to grow less and less marked; then it became a mere trace, with a footmark here and there; then it ceased altogether. He sang no more, but struck forth a path for himself, until it reached a mighty wall of rock, smooth and without break, stretching as far as the eye could see. 'I will rear a stair against it; and, once this wall climbed, I shall be almost there,' he said bravely; and worked. With his shuttle of imagination he dug out stones; but half of them would not fit, and half a month's work would roll down because those below were ill chosen.

But the hunter worked on, saying always to himself, 'Once this wall climbed, I shall be almost there. This great work ended!'

"At last he came out upon the top, and he looked about him. Far below rolled the white mist over the valleys of superst.i.tion, and above him towered the mountains. They had seemed low before; they were of an immeasurable height now, from crown to foundation surrounded by walls of rock, that rose tier above tier in mighty circles. Upon them played the eternal suns.h.i.+ne. He uttered a wild cry. He bowed himself on to the earth, and when he rose his face was white. In absolute silence he walked on. He was very silent now. In those high regions the rarefied air is hard to breathe by those born in the valleys; every breath he drew hurt him, and the blood oozed out from the tips of his fingers.

Before the next wall of rock he began to work. The height of this seemed infinite, and he said nothing. The sound of his tool rang night and day upon the iron rocks into which he cut steps. Years pa.s.sed over him, yet he worked on; but the wall towered up always above him to heaven.

Sometimes he prayed that a little moss or lichen might spring up on those bare walls to be a companion to him; but it never came." The stranger watched the boy's face.

"And the years rolled on; he counted them by the steps he had cut--a few for a year--only a few. He sang no more; he said no more, 'I will do this or that'--he only worked. And at night, when the twilight settled down, there looked out at him from the holes and crevices in the rocks strange wild faces.

"'Stop your work, you lonely man, and speak to us,' they cried.

"'My salvation is in work, if I should stop but for one moment you would creep down upon me,' he replied. And they put out their long necks further.

"'Look down into the crevice at your feet,' they said. 'See what lie there--white bones! As brave and strong a man as you climbed to these rocks.' And he looked up. He saw there was no use in striving; he would never hold Truth, never see her, never find her. So he lay down here, for he was very tired. He went to sleep forever. He put himself to sleep. Sleep is very tranquil. You are not lonely when you are asleep, neither do your hands ache, nor your heart. And the hunter laughed between his teeth.

"'Have I torn from my heart all that was dearest; have I wandered alone in the land of night; have I resisted temptation; have I dwelt where the voice of my kind is never heard, and laboured alone, to lie down and be food for you, ye harpies?'

"He laughed fiercely; and the Echoes of Despair slunk away, for the laugh of a brave, strong heart is as a death blow to them.

"Nevertheless they crept out again and looked at him.

"'Do you know that your hair is white?' they said, 'that your hands begin to tremble like a child's? Do you see that the point of your shuttle is gone?--it is cracked already. If you should ever climb this stair,' they said, 'it will be your last. You will never climb another.'

"And he answered, 'I know it!' and worked on.

"The old, thin hands cut the stones ill and jaggedly, for the fingers were stiff and bent. The beauty and the strength of the man was gone.

"At last, an old, wizened, shrunken face looked out above the rocks. It saw the eternal mountains rise with walls to the white clouds; but its work was done.

"The old hunter folded his tired hands and lay down by the precipice where he had worked away his life. It was the sleeping time at last.

Below him over the valleys rolled the thick white mist. Once it broke; and through the gap the dying eyes looked down on the trees and fields of their childhood. From afar seemed borne to him the cry of his own wild birds, and he heard the noise of people singing as they danced. And he thought he heard among them the voices of his old comrades; and he saw far off the sunlight s.h.i.+ne on his early home. And great tears gathered in the hunter's eyes.

"'Ah! They who die there do not die alone,' he cried.

"Then the mists rolled together again; and he turned his eyes away.

"'I have sought,' he said, 'for long years I have laboured; but I have not found her. I have not rested, I have not repined, and I have not seen her; now my strength is gone. Where I lie down worn out other men will stand, young and fresh. By the steps that I have cut they will climb; by the stairs that I have built they will mount. They will never know the name of the man who made them. At the clumsy work they will laugh; when the stones roll they will curse me. But they will mount, and on my work; they will climb, and by my stair! They will find her, and through me! And no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself.'

"The tears rolled from beneath the shrivelled eyelids. If Truth had appeared above him in the clouds now he could not have seen her, the mist of death was in his eyes.

"'My soul hears their glad step coming,' he said; 'and they shall mount!

they shall mount!' He raised his shrivelled hand to his eyes.

"Then slowly from the white sky above, through the still air, came something falling, falling, falling. Softly it fluttered down, and dropped on to the breast of the dying man. He felt it with his hands. It was a feather. He died holding it."

The boy had shaded his eyes with his hand. On the wood of the carving great drops fell. The stranger must have laughed at him, or remained silent. He did so.

"How did you know it?" the boy whispered at last. "It is not written there--not on that wood. How did you know it?"

"Certainly," said the stranger, "the whole of the story is not written here, but it is suggested. And the attribute of all true art, the highest and the lowest, is this--that it rays more than it says, and takes you away from itself. It is a little door that opens into an infinite hall where you may find what you please. Men, thinking to detract, say: 'People read more in this or that work of genius than was ever written in it,' not perceiving that they pay the highest compliment. If we pick up the finger and nail of a real man, we can decipher a whole story--could almost reconstruct the creature again, from head to foot. But half the body of a Mumboo-jumbow idol leaves us utterly in the dark as to what the rest was like. We see what we see, but nothing more. There is nothing so universally intelligible as truth.

It has a thousand meanings, and suggests a thousand more."

He turned over the wooden thing.

"Though a man should carve it into matter with the least possible manipulative skill, it will yet find interpreters. It is the soul that looks out with burning eyes through the most gross fleshly filament.

Whosoever should portray truly the life and death of a little flower--its birth, sucking in of nourishment, reproduction of its kind, withering and vanis.h.i.+ng--would have shaped a symbol of all existence.

All true facts of nature or the mind are related. Your little carving represents some mental facts as they really are, therefore fifty different true stories might be read from it. What your work wants is not truth, but beauty of external form, the other half of art." He leaned almost gently toward the boy. "Skill may come in time, but you will have to work hard. The love of beauty and the desire for it must be born in a man; the skill to reproduce it he must make. He must work hard."

"All my life I have longed to see you," the boy said.

The stranger broke off the end of his cigar, and lit it. The boy lifted the heavy wood from the stranger's knee and drew yet nearer him. In the dog-like manner of his drawing near there was something superbly ridiculous, unless one chanced to view it in another light. Presently the stranger said, whiffing, "Do something for me."

The boy started up.

"No; stay where you are. I don't want you to go anyowhere; I want you to talk to me. Tell me what you have been doing all your life."

The boy slunk down again. Would that the man had asked him to root up bushes with his hands for his horse to feed on; or to run to the far end of the plain for the fossils that lay there, or to gather the flowers that grew on the hills at the edge of the plain; he would have run and been back quickly--but now!

"I have never done anything," he said.

"Then tell me of that nothing. I like to know what other folks have been doing whose word I can believe. It is interesting. What was the first thing you ever wanted very much?"

The boy waited to remember, then began hesitatingly, but soon the words flowed. In the smallest past we find an inexhaustible mine when once we begin to dig at it.

A confused, disordered story--the little made large and the large small, and nothing showing its inward meaning. It is not till the past has receded many steps that before the clearest eyes it falls into co-ordinate pictures. It is not till the I we tell of has ceased to exist that it takes its place among other objective realities, and finds its true niche in the picture. The present and the near past is a confusion, whose meaning flashes on us as it slinks away into the distance.

The stranger lit one cigar from the end of another, and puffed and listened with half-closed eyes.

"I will remember more to tell you if you like," said the boy.