FORTY-EIGHT HOURS

We are in Thee who art strength:Give us Thy strength!We are in Thee who art love:Give us Thy love!We are in Thee who art power:Give us Thy power!We are in Thee who art peace:Give, Lord, Thy peace!We are in Thee who dost wait:Teach us to wait!Litany of the Wood.

We are in Thee who art strength:

Give us Thy strength!

We are in Thee who art love:

Give us Thy love!

We are in Thee who art power:

Give us Thy power!

We are in Thee who art peace:

Give, Lord, Thy peace!

We are in Thee who dost wait:

Teach us to wait!

Litany of the Wood.

Therewere three men in the large square, solidly furnished room. Two of them were talking; the third was silent. It was a comfortable room—a library well filled with books. The men who talked were the host and his guest; he who was silent was the secretary, who wrote in the large bow window looking on the terrace, where sparrows quarrelled in the ivy, and the daffodils and nancies nodded in the soft blustering wind of late spring.

The secretary was a pale, shrewd-faced young man of twenty-eight; he was of middle height, not plain, nor yet comely, except for his eyes, which were very clear and quiet, and of a striking yellowish-grey. He was unobtrusively dressed, and very impassive, not to say dull, in manner. He was civil, however, attentive when he was spoken to; his voice was pleasant, and rather conciliatory in tone, as though he was deprecating anger.

He was writing letters in a small, neat hand, and showed no sign of hearing any conversation that was not addressed to him.

His employer was talking; he was a good talker, and a good lecturer. He was a very public-spirited person full of affairs and had just written a certain world-compelling pamphlet, which was intended to revolutionise thought in various unexpected quarters. He was a very well-known, much-applauded, and generally respected person.

He was talking to a guest who was less applauded because he was held to be soberly commonplace; nevertheless he too was generally respected, for he did nothing in particular, whether of good or evil, and was known to be very rich and growing richer.

He listened to his host, but an observant person would have noticed that he often glanced at the secretary.

When the host proposed a stroll before luncheon he rose; he was silent till they were on the terrace, then he said carelessly:

“That man of yours, Dexter, is a steady-looking fellow.”

“O yes; he’s steady and shrewd too. I believe him to be a good fellow in the main. Not quite reliable—as regards money matters some years ago. However, he was young, and he paid the penalty. I gave him a fresh start, and I’ve never repented it. I think bygones should be bygones.”

“Quite so,” said the guest.

The host had a “carrying voice”; it “carried” into the room where the secretary sat.

He had finished the letters; he was sorting and arranging the MS. of the world-compelling pamphlet, before proceeding to type it. The writer was a religiously-disposed man and a church-goer; he liked to preface his pamphlets with a motto, generally a text. This one was a text; it ran: “Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you.”

He was an excellent man; but he never stopped to think whether he was in the habit of making a catalogue of his past offences to his listening friends and new acquaintances or whether he would like to know that they did so on his behalf.

There was once a converted heathen who was much cleverer than those who converted him. He told the bishop of the diocese that he and his fellow-converts were in the habit of gathering together to make public confession of their sins.

“An excellent discipline, doubtless,” said the good bishop, “but such public confession must be painful.”

“By no means,” said the simple penitent. “Because we do not confess our own sins, but each others’.”

The bishop mused on the childlike simplicity of the convert; but—was the former heathen as guileless as he sounded?

The secretary heard the words of his employer; his hands began to shake. Presently he dropped the MS. and sat staring out of the window. It was seven years since he had “paid the penalty,” seven solid years of dull drudgery and loneliness, and they were still discussing it, and his “fresh start.”

He sighed; picked up his pencil (he was numbering chaotic scraps of a very badly written MS.), let it slide to the carpet, rested his arms on the table, and his head on his arms, and sighed, and sighed, and sighed again; a sigh sadder than a sob, because it spoke of a greater weariness, and a more utter depression and spiritlessness.

The door opened; the guest appeared; he shut the door quietly and stood looking at the secretary. At last he said softly:

“Dexter.”

The man started and sprang up; his eyes looked nervous and ashamed.

“That’s all right,” said the other. “I only want to tell you what I’ve been leading up to for days. You knew I’d been leading up to something.”

“I thought you were. I don’t know what it is.”

“I should not have come in here when I was supposed to be writing letters and talked to you, unless I had been trying to size you up. I shouldn’t size you up unless I wanted you for something.”

“Want me! For what?”

“I’ll tell you.”

The guest sat in the bow window and began to talk in a low voice. It does not matter specially what he said: it was a plan of action which a man of fair repute could only have told to one whose reputation for honesty was smirched. It was a very creditable scheme from the point of view of a skilful speculator and financier who was not particular about his methods.

“My name must never appear,” he said, “though of course I am the backer of the concern. If you will run the thing for me as your own, you understand, then—I will make it worth your while. I don’t mind, to speak quite frankly, broaching the matter to you, because my reputation stands high, and I can back it with a big cheque. If you were to say I had spoken to you thus, you would not be believed if I denied it. You would be thought a blackmailer, that’s all.”

“I suppose so. I’m not likely to tell any one. I don’t talk much; and I should only get into fresh trouble if I talked of this.”

“Yes. You’re quiet and shrewd. I’ve watched you a long time. Your life here is a dog’s life. You are ticketed as the man—who was found out. Now there’s very little risk in this; practically none. For if the thing fails I don’t think the law can touch you. Of course your reputation would be gone; but then you’ve damaged that already, and he doesn’t forget it, any more than you do, does he?”

“Naturally he does not.”

“If it succeeds, and I think it will, then I will give you enough of the proceeds to give you a real “fresh start” in America. My name will never appear; it will never be traced who paid you the money; you will simply reserve a sum agreed on between us. That’s tempting to you, isn’t it? It means freedom, and a clean record in another country. That’s tempting?”

“I think so. Will you give me twenty-four hours to think it over?”

“As long as you like in moderation.”

“It’s only that I feel rather played out and tired, that’s all. I funk at anything that is fresh; anything that needs thought and smartness.”

“Ask for a holiday; rest and think it over.”

So the man asked for a holiday, and was granted forty-eight hours; not more, because there was haste to produce the world-compelling pamphlet. He thought he would walk five miles to the forest, and live two days and nights in solitude under the open sky. He started in the dark, with a knapsack strapped to his shoulders. It was dawn when he reached the forest, and crossed a stretch of heath, whence the sea could be smelt, salt and pungent; and the island, too, could be seen, lying, indigo-blue, in the clear distance.

It was a very clear dawn, as clear as crystal, and sights and sounds and smells had a bell-like clean-cut purity that struck the soul at first hand, so that one hardly realised the perception of them came by way of the body. There was a winding ribbon-like road, which crossed the heath after it crept out of the thick forest, and along it a red-painted mailcart went. Behind the cart ran an old dog, lured neither to the right nor to the left in his steady following. The cart clattered over a railless wooden bridge which crossed a slow stream in which watergrasses waved; there were two moor-fowl swimming on it, and its banks were shining with water forget-me-nots.

He passed the mailcart and crossed the bridge; then he reached the woods and left the road. He wanted a quiet place in which to think; he had brought with him, in his knapsack, bread and cheese and apples,—enough food for two days. He walked down a turf path, climbed a gate, walked through two straight pine avenues, and gained the “open forest,” a great silent glade solemn and wonderful in the breathless waiting of dawn. Here companies of rabbits were feeding; here were huge spring-flushed oaks, twisted thorns, delicate birches glowing with the marvel of young leafage. Here too was gorse ablaze with the fire of God, and on the top-most twig of a larch, outlined against the sky, was a thrush, a-quiver with a passion of song, telling a marvellous secret of the heart of things, as only those can tell who do not understand the uttermost meaning of their speech.

He had walked through the place looking at nothing until now; he had an important decision to make. But now he stopped as though a great hand had gripped him, and he stared at the bird with his eyes half-shut. It was so clear; he could see the little feathers a-tremble at its quivering throat, as the notes bubbled up like drops of bright water from a well of joy.

He stared and listened till the thrush flew away.

He came to a little grove of holly trees; and there, on the round circle of oozing wood where a great apple tree had been felled, he lay down and ate some bread and an apple. Then he went to sleep, and when he woke it was noon; the glade was a marvel of dappled shade and shine.

There was a blue tit swinging on the holly bough above him; and a fox was trotting demurely through the fern a few yards away. It was all sacredly, wonderfully still. The place taught nothing; said nothing; it was itself—it was what it was. That was all.

He heard a quick patter of rain; and the leaves shone with diamonds; he watched them a-glitter in the sun, when it shone forth again. A drove of shaggy cream-coloured cattle came by, crashing through the tangle, and passing the little grove of hollies, all a-shine in the sun, where he lay.

When they passed he rose and wandered down a turf alley till the pines hid the wide stretch of the open forest; then he lay with his face hidden on the great cushions of the moss; and listened half-unconsciously to the silence—the wonderful sounding silence—of the wood.

There was a big beech tree near; it blazed with the green fire of spring; at its foot were the shining sticky brown sheaths that once shielded the young leaves. The oaks were pink, they were as rosy as the dawn sky when he reached the forest. From the wood—only he was too tired to rise and seek them—he could smell some late primroses yet lingering on the sweet wet earth, from which the young grass sprang. He heard a wood-pigeon’s slow, sleepy note a-purr from a little grove of larches. Presently, with a strong beat of blue-grey wings the bird flew between him and the sky. Then a jay swung silently from the pines and perched on a bough above him; the conscienceless bird chuckled and preened his feathers; a tiny blue black-barred wonder fluttered down on the man’s chest.

Lying so, he could see the stiff, straight stems of the uncurling bracken, quite differently from the fashion in which they are seen when they are looked at from above; they stood rank by rank, straight, stiff, and green, with their little brown cowled heads bent like monks in prayer.

There was a much bigger life than his unfolding its affairs there in the wood; and it made no turmoil or fuss about it; it lived and reasoned not; it kept the commandments because it was not aware they were apart from itself. And what were the commandments of the wood? Certainly they were kept, whatever they were, for the place was full of beauty and of rest.

The shadows grew long; it was time to eat some bread and cheese; he ate some, and drank from a little stream. It struck him he had not been thinking of the things he came there to think about; but after all he should probably accept the offer, and he was very tired. He had not realised before how much he was over-worked. To-morrow he would think. In the meantime he would walk through the darkening pine avenue, and see the dusk, like a purple-robed giant, stalk over the land.

He walked on and on; the pine walks were unending. Each walk was cut and crossed by another vista of mystery; and always there was some hint of wonders veiling unseen marvels. Sometimes a milky-white bush of blackthorn; sometimes a little stream; sometimes a circle of great dead oaks like frosted silver, all ringed about by frost-bleached grass, through which the new green blades were pushing, and walled by dark pines touched by the little sticky buds of spring growth. Sometimes there was a pool of water shimmering in the shadow of the trees, set about with rose-pink blossoming bog-myrtle, and white bog-cotton, and wonderful little flat leaves shining like emeralds.

But at last he reached the gate. Beyond the gate was a stretch of green heather; and thereon forest ponies feeding, and cows with sleepily tolling bells. On it, too, great raised mounds; bracken and heather-clothed barrows where rabbits burrowed in the grave of some long-dead fighter. To the right was a curved line of woods that seemed to be made of dusky red and green jewels. Before him was the island glowing like sapphire; in the foreground on the open barren heath was a little dark wind-twisted pine clear-cut against the sky; and the sky ablaze with the colour that is the parting blessing of the Lord of Light.

It was a pale sky of dream-blue; in the west it shone with crimson and orange flame, fading into green like a breath of some secret mystery of tenderness, and pinks like a dream of the love of God; and a violet so faint, pure, and holy that the heart quivered at the sight of it. Colour that speaks the tongue of the gods when thought falls dead and the sound of speech is mere hollowness.

When the colour faded big purple clouds began to drift up over the pale yellow sky until it was all a wonderful thick purple-blue darkness in which sounds were both clear and muffled; faraway sounds were clear, and sounds close at hand were muffled and eerie; pale milk-grey lights began to slide through the darkness.

There were no stars; only the warm, dark, sweet-smelling half-silence. He could not see a yard before his face, and yet he felt the darkness was a big, far-reaching space about him.

There was a dry ditch among the pines; it was full of yellow-brown pine-needles. He lay down there and heard the noises of the night; the snapping of twigs, the rustle of little night-prowling beasts. Once a badger stole by; once a night-bird shrieked; the owls called hoo-hoo in the branches. Once there echoed a cry of pain and fear through the wood, the death-shriek of some tiny citizen. Once a night-jar purred in the tree above his head; and once the magic of the nightingale trembled through the warm dark air in a limpid river of sound.

At last he slept; and he woke to a wild rush of rain. The wood was full of a pale cool light; the pine-needles dripped; he heard the gurgle of a hurry of water in the ditch beyond the gate. He got up; the livid greenish-purple clouds were rushing across the sky; the island was veiled in a white mist of rain; the forest ponies galloped for some scant shelter; some of the herd turned disconsolate noses from the rush of waters; some squealed and kicked and bit at each other; others endured in meekness. A big ants’ nest near the gate was flooded; pools stood in the heather; and a heap of cream-white foam swirled on the brown water in the ditch.

Light wisps of cloud fled across the background of livid green-purple. He stood under shelter of the trees and watched the storm.

It passed; the clouds flew seawards; the sky grew a pale even grey; then a cool, soft wind began to blow. The east grew faint pink, then yellow-grey; then a long line of light quivered over the heather. The new day had come. The birds were stirring and singing; the rabbits hopped out to feed; a stoat darted across the track; and the clang of a cow-bell echoed across the moor.

He found the slowly moving stream he crossed yesterday; there he bathed; then he ate some of the food he had brought with him. Finally he walked down a path of silver-grey sand, skirting a wood of oaks.

It waxed very warm and still; there were no clouds; the air shimmered over the heather; white and little brown butterflies skipped over it; the island was veiled in a soft white haze with violet shadows in it. Snakes slid out into the open to sun themselves; the air was full of slanting gleams of gossamer and little drifting lives of insects that lived a day and never knew the night.

He sat among the pines and saw the brown lizards and the squirrels and watched the golden lights flit over the dry pine-needles; the boles of the trees shone red, and in among the far-off oaks was a mist of pale green.

In the afternoon he walked through the oak wood over dry leaves of last year, and cushions of bright emerald moss, set with scarlet, purple, and orange fungi.

At sunset he stood by a little clearing; it was near a ranger’s cottage. He could smell woodsmoke and see its swaying blue column rise above the thatched roof covered with stonecrop and little ferns. Here were rows of hives where lived the bees whose soft organ-like drone he had heard mingling with the ’cellos of the pines.

The sky was less brilliant than it had been the night before; it was bluish-white and the long slender clouds on the horizon were violet and pink. The sky grew paler and more pale; the silver of the evening star glimmered out, a tiny point of light. The pines were very dark; they looked black against the sky; a bat flickered over them.

He walked over the moor to the shore; he saw the ghost-white of the foam, and heard the rush and draw of the tide on the smooth pebbles. The moon was up when he walked back.

This night he did not try to sleep; not because he was worried and thoughtful; he had not thought all day, and he did not think all night. It was very still and cloudless, and the moon was full; when it set the sky was solemnest blue; the stars and the white fire made the mystery of space more wonderful. It was one of those nights which are living symbols of largest patience; of breadth that includes all things, of silence whose root is the wisdom that knows; of that mighty indifference that is indifferent because of its tenderness rather than its coldness. A night sky that was a symbol of a Holy Catholic Church of the entire universe; not tolerant—because, after all, tolerance is a little, narrow, patronising invention of man’s aggressive superiority. That which is all-inclusive is not tolerant; it is omnipotent, omniscient, Alpha and Omega; the first but also the last.

He did not think of these things; he never mused on such matters; he did not think at all that night nor notice anything particularly. He sat under the sky, his hands clasping his knees; he was not sleepy, because to be out of doors two days and nights after a life spent chiefly within walls is apt quite naturally to cause wakefulness.

He saw three shooting stars slide through the blue heart of the night. At dawn he saw a fox, a vixen, and four little furry creatures with sharp, bright eyes; they played together and rolled in the heather without fear of man. He began wandering through the wood looking for birds’ nests; he found four before the sun rose.

When it rose he began to walk back, for the forty-eight hours’ holiday from the world-compelling pamphlet was ended.

He reached the house at seven o’clock; had a bath, dressed himself, ate a moderate breakfast, and began to open and arrange his employer’s letters. That was at 8.30.

At nine o’clock his employer’s guest on his way to breakfast looked into the library. He nodded, came in, and shut the door.

“Good morning, Dexter,” he said. “You’ve got back, I see. I suppose I know your answer?”

“No, I believe you don’t; for I think I’ll go on here.”

“You don’t mean that?”

“I do.”

“Afraid?”

“No.”

“Moral scruples?”

“No.”

“What then?”

The other hesitated, because he really did not know the answer. At last he said:

“I have my Sundays free. And I think I should miss the forest if I went away. I haven’t any other reason—that I know of.”

L’ENVOIPower of the wave and the light,Power of the wind and the dawn,Fanned by the strength of thy breathMan’s soul is born.Power of the song of the lark,Power of the gold of the corn,By perfume and silence and speechMan’s soul is born.Power of the whispering rain,Power of the day when it dies,By magic of sunset and duskMan’s soul doth rise!Power of the stars and the night,When singing and sighing shall ceaseBy the unknown span of thy restMan’s soul knows peace!

L’ENVOI

Power of the wave and the light,Power of the wind and the dawn,Fanned by the strength of thy breathMan’s soul is born.

Power of the wave and the light,

Power of the wind and the dawn,

Fanned by the strength of thy breath

Man’s soul is born.

Power of the song of the lark,Power of the gold of the corn,By perfume and silence and speechMan’s soul is born.

Power of the song of the lark,

Power of the gold of the corn,

By perfume and silence and speech

Man’s soul is born.

Power of the whispering rain,Power of the day when it dies,By magic of sunset and duskMan’s soul doth rise!

Power of the whispering rain,

Power of the day when it dies,

By magic of sunset and dusk

Man’s soul doth rise!

Power of the stars and the night,When singing and sighing shall ceaseBy the unknown span of thy restMan’s soul knows peace!

Power of the stars and the night,

When singing and sighing shall cease

By the unknown span of thy rest

Man’s soul knows peace!

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