Brushwood Rabnon
The bright spring sun made it a different France than we had tramped two weeks before. Then it had been dark; cold rain had made our cassocks cling like gowns of soft lead, half-frozen roads had cut and blistered our feet. But now, the sky was blue everywhere, and the light sparkled from wet leaves and the little pools that lay along the road. I felt reborn into the full flush of youth: I loved the countryside, the Order which had sent me there, the man with whom I was travelling. I loved the ooze of cool mud that squirted between my toes and splashed about ankles tired from walking. Eleven miles that morning had been a pleasure such as we rarely enjoyed. Our spirits were coming out of their hibernation, with all nature.
I turned at last, as we came over the crest of a hill, and broke the friendly silence that had been between us for some time.
“Look, Rabnon, there is the town. I had not expected it to be so beautiful.”
We stopped to gaze out down the road, for it was beautiful indeed, and we were always willing to stand resting awhile. Below us a shallow valley ran from side to side, its furrow lined by the twistings of a small stream which joined at right angles with the sharper twistings of our present thoroughfare. Where these two met, the village spread itself in an irregular T shape, the larger buildings in the center outlining their tops against the sky, while their lesser, peripheral neighbors snuggled unostentatiously into the flattened background of hill and river. Upstream, on higher and less cultivated ground stood the modest fortress of the Lord of Camereau, its round brown walls unremarkable save by a drawbridge which was half up and half down, so that it rested in relief against a light spot in the woods with a curious air of suspense, and a white pennon which waved in the blue its allegiance to the King of France. Like the pools and foliage at the roadside, roofs and rocks as far as we could see glistened with moisture from the night’s rain and the steaming earth. The stream was aribbon of alternating coruscance and tree-shaded brown water. The sharp sound of a hammer on planks came distinctly across the intervening mile and told us that some one was repairing his home from the ravages of water. Altogether, everything looked as if in the process of being fixed up and made ready for an event; the valley was as rejuvenated as myself.
“Neither had I,” said Rabnon gruffly, and it was impossible to tell whether or not he felt that immanent something as I did.
It had not occurred to me to look closely at him before this morning, and I turned now as he stood gazing down the road to make sure it was the same Rabnon of a fortnight ago. As you know, this strange director of my dreams appears in surprising forms, and, while matters in dreams are usually matters of course, yet I never began a night’s escapade with him without a little misgiving lest he take some such terrible shape as the pirate who guided my pen in that devastating evening a year back. However, the benign countenance of my fellow-friar could hide no malice to-day, I thought. His grey hood was thrown back over sturdy shoulders, discovering an impressive head of white hair; the face was seamed, and set in a kindly, immobile expression. His eyes alone did not betray his age, for their deep-set glitter was as eager and querulous as I supposed must have come from mine.
We walked on down toward the town, and I began a conversation on a subject which seemed to have been a long time on my mind.
“Rabnon,” I said, “I don’t for a minute doubt the good work our Order is doing, and I feel as whole-heartedly pledged to its cause as in the first days of enthusiasm, but sometimes I grow a little squirmish under its restrictions. I am no longer a boy, but I am still a young man, and it is spring. There is something in my blood that is not as celibate as my body.”
“My boy,” said Rabnon, “love of God and love of woman are as opposite as Heaven and Hell. You cannot serve God and Mammon, and, to speak in pagan terms, you cannot serve Zeus and Aphrodite.”
“But Aphrodite was both daughter and servant to Zeus,” I replied, perhaps a little anxious to show my learning followed his.He only laughed. “Oh, come! We are neither scholars, nor scholists to argue angels off the needle’s point. I mean that if either of us allowed ourselves a woman’s love, there would be moments when God’s purpose would be farthest from our minds. St. Francis knew it as well as anyone, wherefore it is something you must suffer. My blood was hot enough in my day; I used to consider the dissatisfaction of it a part of my martyrdom.” He laughed again, and so disputing we came at length into the street of the town, and to the inn.
Those who do not know Rabnon and me from before must be told of a feminine face I have never been able to remember for description, there in my dreams without the sanction of my most unconscious sense I am sure, delightfully haunting, agonizingly beyond my control. Imagine, then, my surprise in the light of our travel’s talk when I saw a young cavalier in the courtyard helping dismount a lady with such a face and a familiar figure. Imagine, too, the furtive glances of a rebellious celibate, following them through the gate into the high-raftered room where mine host greeted us all from among his many tables. A significant sleeve-plucking from my friend was necessary to make me leave staring after the pair and join him in a corner, where we ordered an ale. And I did not talk more easily with him because the cavalier and his companion were seated at the head of a long table before us, so that I was to be observing them for the duration of our stay.
While we waited for the ale, I looked at that elusive face, and took up the discussion with Rabnon, at the same time. “Now the pretty waitress,” I pointed to the girl who had taken our order—she was then engaged in repartee with my flashy nobleman—“she has probably had more than one lover, and neither she nor they have taken more than the moment’s concentration from their more serious occupations. Yet the youth and the man in them have been satisfied, and—”
“Hold on,” Rabnon interrupted. “Now you are bringing up a different question.”
“Am I?” said I, disinterestedly. The girl’s expression, I thought, was strangely sad, her eyes remarkably wide and frightened, for one in such gay attire and with such dashing company.She should be laughing with her companion, and draining her wine with vigor to mine host, but I saw her fingers tremble as the glass went to her lips, and she sits, quite out of the merriment, her thoughts apparently somewhere beyond the leaded windows.
“You are,” said Rabnon. “The question of passion without love. And it doesn’t work, old man.Ican tell you that. It’s a sure way to get into trouble, and more distraction fromourwork than—”
I cut him short. “Rabnon, you are talking of love, and I am writing of it. Does either of us know anything about it? I have heard that the God of the mystics is perhaps only the effect of psychological actions. Something comes welling up in a man: it is the love of God, whom he sees, as the days go on, more and more clearly through the mists of his own consciousness. Suddenly the idea—is it really God from outside? we wonder—takes the predominant position in his mind; he is in love with God, and he cannot help this. Men have been in love also with other ideas than God. Is it not thus that love of woman comes? Doesn’t it explain ‘love at first sight’? If you had been obsessed by an idea, and it had been forming and churning in your mind for days and days, and suddenly—presto!—there it is in the flesh—” I waved my hand, and turned back to my scrutiny of my lady. “Some day, I am going to remember and write that face,” I finished.
While we were talking, the escort of the lady had risen and advanced to the waitress, who stood before the fire. Everyone in the room could conjecture his intent, and everyone could see that she was frightened; he was big and burly, fitter for battle than for love. Rabnon put his hand on my arm to call my attention to the movement, and we watched silently, with the rest of the room, this sudden dramatic turn of events. It was evident that the man was drunk.
The two by the fire had stood whispering a moment, when the girl, who was strong and buxom, hit her assailant resoundingly across the face. He replied by taking her in his arms, and a struggle ensued for his punitive kiss. The waiting audience roared and clapped, with a great pounding of pottery and dishes. For myself, I was disgusted thoroughly, and I saw Rabnon’s greatfist close tightly where it lay upon the table. “I don’t like this atmosphere,” he said presently. “Let’s get out upon our way again.”
But as we got up, the sad lady who had been with the attacker of waitresses rose too, and we stood by our benches, interested in this new complication. She had been watching, I had noticed, with more active distaste than ourselves, her escort’s proceedings. Now she ran lightly to the struggling pair, and laid her hand on the man’s shoulder. “Come Camereau,” she said, “you are attracting a great deal too much attention, and we are late. I did not agree to accompany you on any such doings as these. Let us get on, or I shall go without you.”
I am not fully conscious to what passed during the next few moments. I know that the brute struck her, with an oath, and that she fell back, supporting herself against the table. Rabnon told me later that the maid screamed. I did not hear it; I found myself across the room, with the gallant by the throat. “Were you not so drunk,” I was saying, “I should wad you up the chimney flue with the rest of the waste.”
The man shook himself free, and we stood glaring a moment, while he poured out torrents of abusive threats to me of a more eternal sort of flame. Then he seemed to recollect himself and drew up, straightening the prettiness of his attire. “You should think twice, friend friar,” he said, “before interfering in other people’s affairs. Do you know who I am?”
I stood facing him, my hands on my hips. “I ought to,” I replied. “But you do not know me, Sir Guy.”
“You ought. I am the Guy of Camereau, and my soldiers are everywhere in the village. And why, then, should I be interested in your identity?”
“It seems always necessary,” I said, “to reiterate that I am the author of all these adventures, and that I am the Creator of you all, for am I not dreaming and writing you even as we speak? Great gingoes, man! I notice now that I have forgotten to give you a face, and you prate to me of soldiers and sovereignty! Come now, I shall need to put a physiognomy on you so as to have the pleasure of marring it.”
His hair was black and oily, and hung down about his shoulders in round artificial curls. Black, heavy-browed eyes looked out surlily from above fat bags of dissipation upon his cheeks. His nose was heavy, and seemed turned under at the end, so that he was always smelling his thick mustaches which were curled at either extremity. His lower lip hung down exactly like a grizzled old bulldog’s mouth, and it was there that I hit him while he mumbled more grotesqueries. They were picking him up, unconscious, when I turned about and his lady fell fainting into my arms.
With the feel of that soft arm in silks under my hand, forgotten was Rabnon, and the inn, and the crowd. I picked her lightness up; people were about me, but I shouted, “Make way,” and we two were soon alone by the spring in the courtyard. I was bathing her face with her own small handkerchief, and sobbing. “At last! I have touched you at last, you whom I have seen in so many guises, and who have escaped my grasp as often as you have eluded my pen. Oh, perfection! It cannot be that you are a part of my dreams, for there is nothing within me as perfect as you. Oh, my dear, my dear; I cannot imagine you, I cannot move you, and now, I cannot help you, when, in these hours, it would be my power to awaken anyone else!” And I went on mumbling and mixing my tears with the water I poured on her dainty wrists.
Presently she opened her eyes, and looked at me. “You!” she said. “Why have you always vanished from my dreams just as I was becoming interested in you? I have always suspected you of being not one of my creatures, for I had no control over you whatsoever, and when you were about, my own dream-people did amazing things. You are not at all like anyone of my imaginings, yet I like you far better than the lot of them.”
I would have taken her pretty lips to mine, she was so natural and so weak now, but I remembered my cloth and kept myself kissing her hands. Then I burst out laughing: “The Brushwood Boy!” She smiled. “Were you thinking that too? I’m so glad you have read it. Buttheyhad no trouble meeting in their dreams. Look, we must talk this matter out, now, for combined, we can make our evenings bring us together as muchas we desire—” And she put her lovely arm about my neck and pulled my head down. “I think I should like to be together with you—in my dreams—forever—”
I had known she would say something of the kind and had steeled myself against it. Women always speak first. “To-night,” I said, “which is todreamday,—I should like to start a long series of dream-days together. And it is true that whatever one wants badly enough may be materialized in a dream; it is thus that we have at last gotten together.
“But to-night I am a friar, and sworn to the observance of celibacy; to-night I have duties elsewhere, so I must see you safely cared for and fare onward into the dusky places of the dream.” She rose, sorrowfully, and supporting her on my arm, I continued, “We can only hope for another meeting at another time. Neither of us can be untrue now to the artistry we have begun. You too must have your destiny to-night?”
“Your Camereau had spoiled it,” she said, as we turned again to the gate. “I was looking, it seemed, for a lover to-night, but he met me on the road.”
I could not help interjecting a smile. “A Freudian pickup!” I laughed. But she would have no levity. “My evening is over,” she said. “I shall stop writing, and awake. Let me precede you into the inn.” And with a vague little glance she turned and went in; I did not see her again.
Shortly, Rabnon came out, and we went on our way again, but my blood was no longer boiling with the spring, and I had no carnal arguments, for I was thinking neither of philosophy nor of Franciscan tenets. After we had walked a mile or so I turned to Rabnon and said, “You are right. A woman will drive our God out of the heart of a man. For a woman is God to a man who is in love.” Rabnon very seriously and apparently irrelevantly, answered as he looked into my face, “We must travel far to-day, my friend.”
And because I was a maudlin artist I could not help writing a soft breeze into the trees that stood by the wayside so that they sighed and shivered as we went down a hill and left Camereau behind us.
I look up and see that dawn is coming in at the window; dawn is here, and a moment ago I was dreading the sunset. For we must travel far, Rabnon and I, to escape from love and laughter, and to do God’s work....
Yet, I am waiting for another dream on another day, where love only is God.
D. G. CARTER.