Oceanus
IMy Dear Violet,--So you "gather from the tone of two or three recentletters that my spirit is creeping back to light and warmth again"?Well, after a fashion you are right. I shall never laugh again as Iused to laugh before Harry's death. The taste has gone out of thatcarelessness, and I turn even from the remembrance of it. But I can becheerful, with a cheerfulness which has found the centre of gravity.I am myself again, as people say. After months of agitation in whatseemed to be chaos the lost atom has dropped back to its place in thescheme of things, and even aspires (poor mite!) to do its infinitesimalbusiness intelligently. So might a mote in a sunbeam feel itself at onewith God!But when you assume that my recovery has been a gradual process, you arewrong. You will think me more than ever deranged; but I assure you thatit has been brought about, not by long strivings, but suddenly--withoutpreparation of mine--and by the immediate hand of our dead brother.Yes; you shall have the whole tale. The first effect of the news ofHarry's death in October last was simply to stun me. You may rememberhow once, years ago when we were children, we rode home together acrossthe old Racecourse after a long day's skating, our skates swinging atour saddle-bows; how Harry challenged us to a gallop; and how, midway,the roan mare slipped down neck over crop on the frozen turf and hurledme clean against the face of a stone dyke. I had been thrown fromhorseback more than once before, but somehow had always found the earthfairly elastic. So I had griefs before Harry died and took some reboundof hope from each: but that cast repeated in a worse degree the oldshock--the springless brutal jar--of the stone dyke. With him the sunwent out of my sky.I understand that this torpor is quite common with men and womensuddenly bereaved. I believe that a whole week passed before my brainrecovered any really vital motion; and then such feeble thought as Icould exert was wholly occupied with the desperate stupidity of thewhole affair. If God were indeed shaping the world to any end, if anydesign of His underlay the activities of men, what insensate waste toquench such a heart and brain as Harry's!--to nip, as it seemed out ofmere blundering wantonness, a bud which had begun to open so generously:to sacrifice that youth and strength, that comeliness, that enthusiasm,and all for nothing! Had some campaign claimed him, had he been spentto gain a citadel or defend a flag, I had understood. But that heshould be killed on a friendly mission; attacked in ignorance by thoseEast Coast savages while bearing gifts to their king; deserted by theporters whose comfort (on their own confession) he had studiedthroughout the march; left to die, to be tortured, mutilated--and allfor no possible good: these things I could not understand. At the endhe might have escaped; but as he caught hold of his saddle by the bandbetween the holsters, it parted: it was not leather, but faced paper,the job of some cheating contractor. I thought of this, too. And Harryhad been through Chitral!But though a man may hate, he cannot easily despise God for long."He is great--but wasteful," said the American. We are the dust on Hisgreat hands, and fly as He claps them carelessly in the pauses of Hiswork. Yet this theory would not do at all: for the unlucky particlesare not dust, not refuse, but exquisite and exquisitely fashioned,designed to live, and to every small function of life adapted with theminutest care. There were nights indeed when, walking along the shorewhere we had walked together on the night before Harry left England andlooking from the dark waters which divided me from his grave up to thenightly moon and to the stars around her, I could well believe Godwasteful of little things. Sirius flashing low, Orion's belt with thegreat nebula swinging like a pendant of diamonds; the ruby stars,Betelgueux and Aldebaran--my eyes went up beyond these to Perseusshepherding the Kids westward along the Milky way. From the rightAndromeda flashed signals to him: and above sat Cassiopeia, her mother,resting her jewelled wrists on the arms of her throne. Low in the eastJupiter trailed his satellites in the old moon's path. As they allmoved, silent, looking down on me out of the hollow spaces of the night,I could believe no splendid waste too costly for their perfection: andthe Artificer who hung them there after millions of years of patienteffort, if more intelligible than a God who produced them suddenly atwill, certainly not less divine. But walking the same shore by daylightI recognised that the shells, the mosses, the flowers I trampled on,were, each in its way, as perfect as those great stars: that on these--and on Harry--as surely as on the stars--God had spent, if not infinitepains, then at least so superlative a wisdom that to conceive of them aswastage was to deny the mind which called them forth.There they were: and that He who had skill to create them could blunderin using them was simply incredible.But this led to worse: for having to admit the infallible design, I nowbegan to admire it as an exquisite scheme of evil, and to accuse God ofemploying supreme knowledge and skill to gratify a royal lust ofcruelty. For a month and more this horrible theory justified itself inall innocent daily sights. Throughout my country walks I "saw blood."I heard the rabbit run squeaking before the weasel; I watched thebutcher crow working steadily down the hedge. If I turned seaward Ilooked beneath the blue and saw the dog-fish gnawing on the whiting.If I walked in the garden I surprised the thrush dragging worms from theturf, the cat slinking on the nest, the spider squatting in ambush.Behind the rosy face of every well-nourished child I saw a lamb gazingup at the butcher's knife. My dear Violet, that was a hideous time!And just then by chance a book fell into my hands--Lamartine's Chuted'un Ange. Do you know the Seventh and Tenth Visions of that poem,which describe the favourite amusements of the Men-gods? Before theDeluge, beyond the rude tents of the nomad shepherds, there rose cityupon city of palaces built of jasper and porphyry, splendid and utterlycorrupt; inhabited by men who called themselves gods and explored thesubtleties of all sciences to minister to their vicious pleasures.At ease on soft couches, in hanging gardens set with fountains, thesebeings feasted with every refinement of cruelty. Kneeling slaves weretheir living tables; while for their food--Tous les oiseaux de l'air, tous les poissons de l'onde,Tout ce qui vole ou nage ou rampe dans le monde,Mourant pour leur plaisir des plus cruels trepasDe sanglantes savours composent leurs repas. . . .In these lines I believed that I discerned the very God of the universe,the God whom men worship--Dans les infames jeux de leur divin loisirLe supplice de l'homme est leur premier plaisir.Pour que leur oeil feroce a l'envi s'en repaisseDes bourreaux devant eux en immolent sans cesse.Tantot ils font lutter, dans des combats affreux,L'homme contre la brute et les hommes entre eux,Aux longs ruisseaux de sang qui coulent de la veine,Aux palpitations des membres sur l'arene,Se levant a demi de leurs lits de reposDes frissons de plaisir fremissent sur leurs peaux.Le cri de la torture est leur douce harmonie,Et leur oeil dans son oeil boit sa lente agonie.I charged the Supreme Power with a cruelty deliberate, ruthless, serene.Nero the tyrant once commanded a representation in grim earnest of theFlight of Icarus; and the unhappy boy who took the part, at his firstattempt to fly, fell headlong beside the Emperor's couch and spatteredhim with blood and brains. For the Emperor, says Suetonius, perraropraesidere, ceterum accubans, parvis primum foraminibus, deinde totopodio adaperto, spectare consuerat. So I believed that on the stage ofthis world men agonised for the delight of one cruel intelligence whichwatched from behind the curtain of a private box.
IIIn this unhappy condition of mind, then, I was lying in my library chairhere at Sevenhays, at two o'clock on the morning of January 4th. I hadjust finished another reading of the Tenth Vision and had tossed my bookinto the lap of an armchair opposite. Fire and lamp were burningbrightly. The night outside was still and soundless, with a touch offrost.I lay there, retracing in thought the circumstances of Harry's lastparting from me, and repeating to myself a scrap here and there from thethree letters he wrote on his way--the last of them, full of highspirits, received a full three weeks after the telegram which announcedhis death. There was a passage in this last letter describing awonderful ride he had taken alone and by moonlight on the desert; a ride(he protested) which wanted nothing of perfect happiness but me, hisfriend, riding beside him to share his wonder. There was a sentencewhich I could not recall precisely, and I left my chair and was crossingthe room towards the drawer in the writing-table where I kept hisletters, when I heard a trampling of hoofs on the gravel outside, andthen my Christian name called--with distinctness, but not at all loudly.I went to the window, which was unshuttered; drew up the blind and flungup the sash. The moon, in its third quarter and about an hour short ofits meridian, shone over the deodars upon the white gravel. And there,before the front door, sat Harry on his sorrel mare Vivandiere, holdingmy own Grey Sultan ready bridled and saddled. He was dressed in his oldkhaki riding suit, and his face, as he sat askew in his saddle andlooked up towards my window, wore its habitual and happy smile.Now, call this and what follows a dream, vision, hallucination, what youwill; but understand, please, that from the first moment, so far as Iconsidered the matter at all, I had never the least illusion that thiswas Harry in flesh and blood. I knew quite well all the while thatHarry was dead and his body in his grave. But, soul or phantom--whatever relation to Harry this might bear--it had come to me, and thegreat joy of that was enough for the time. There let us leave thequestion. I closed the window, went upstairs to my dressing-room, drewon my riding-boots and overcoat, found cap, gloves, and riding-crop, anddescended to the porch.Harry, as I shall call him, was still waiting there on the off side ofGrey Sultan, the farther side from the door. There could be no doubt,at any rate, that the grey was real horseflesh and blood, though heseemed unusually quiet after two days in stall. Harry freed him as Imounted, and we set off together at a walk, which we kept as far as thegate.Outside we took the westward road, and our horses broke into a trot.As yet we had not exchanged a word; but now he asked a question or twoabout his people and his friends; kindly, yet most casually, as onemight who returns after a week's holidaying. I answered as well as Icould, with trivial news of their health. His mother had borne thewinter better than usual--to be sure, there had been as yet no coldweather to speak of; but she and Ethel intended, I believed, to startfor the south of France early in February. He inquired about you.His comments were such as a man makes on hearing just what he expects tohear, or knows beforehand. And for some time it seemed to be tacitlytaken for granted between us that I should ask him no questions."As for me--" I began, after a while.He checked the mare's pace a little. "I know," he said, lookingstraight ahead between her ears; then, after a pause, "it has been a badtime for you, You are in a bad way altogether. That is why I came.""But it was for you!" I blurted out. "Harry, if only I had known whyyou were taken--and what it was to you!"He turned his face to me with the old confident comforting smile."Don't you trouble about that. That's nothing to make a fuss about.Death?" he went on musing--our horses had fallen to a walk again--"It looks you in the face a moment: you put out your hands: you touch--and so it is gone. My dear boy, it isn't for us that you need worry.""For whom, then?""Come," said he, and he shook Vivandiere into a canter.
IIII cannot remember precisely at what point in our ride the country hadceased to be familiar. But by-and-by we were climbing the lower slopesof a great down which bore no resemblance to the pastoral country aroundSevenhays. We had left the beaten road for short turf--apparently of acopper-brown hue, but this may have been the effect of the moonlight.The ground rose steadily, but with an easy inclination, and we climbedwith the wind at our backs; climbed, as it seemed, for an hour, or maybetwo, at a footpace, keeping silence. The happiness of having Harrybeside me took away all desire for speech.This at least was my state of mind as we mounted the long lower slopesof the down. But in time the air, hitherto so exhilarating, began tooppress my lungs, and the tranquil happiness to give way to a vaguediscomfort and apprehension."What is this noise of water running?"I reined up Grey Sultan as I put the question. At the same moment itoccurred to me that this sound of water, distant and continuous, hadbeen running in my ear for a long while.Harry, too, came to a halt. With a sweep of the arm that embraced thedim landscape around and ahead, he quoted softly--en detithei potamoio mega spenos Okeanoioantyga par pymaten sakeos pyka poietoio . . . .and was silent again.I recalled at once and distinctly the hot summer morning ten years back,when we had prepared that passage of the Eighteenth Book together in ourstudy at Clifton; I at the table, Harry lolling in the cane-seatedarmchair with the Liddell and Scott open on his knees; outside, thesunny close and the fresh green of the lime-trees.Now that I looked more attentively the bare down, on which we climbedlike flies, did indeed resemble a vast round shield, about the rim ofwhich this unseen water echoed. And the resemblance grew more startlingwhen, a mile or so farther on our way, as the grey dawn overtook us,Harry pointed upwards and ahead to a small boss or excrescence nowlifting itself above the long curve of the horizon.At first I took it for a hummock or tumulus. Then, as the day whitenedabout us, I saw it to be a building--a tall, circular barrack not unlikethe Colosseum. A question shaped itself on my lips, but something inHarry's manner forbade it. His gaze was bent steadily forward, and Ikept my wonder to myself, and also the oppression of spirit which hadnow grown to something like physical torture.When first the great barrack broke into sight we must have been at leasttwo miles distant. I kept my eyes fastened on it as we approached, andlittle by little made out the details of its architecture. From base tosummit--which appeared to be roofless--six courses of many hundredarches ran around the building, one above the other; and between eachpair a course, as it seemed, of plain worked stone, though I afterwardsfound it to be sculptured in low relief. The arches were cut in deeprelief and backed with undressed stone. The lowest course of all,however, was quite plain, having neither arches nor frieze; but atintervals corresponding to the eight major points of the compass--so faras I who saw but one side of it could judge--pairs of gigantic stonefigures supported archways pierced in the wall; or sluices, rather,since from every archway but one a full stream of water issued andpoured down the sides of the hill. The one dry archway was that whichfaced us with open gate, and towards which Harry led the way; foroppression and terror now weighted my hand as with lead upon GreySultan's rein.Harry, however, rode forward resolutely, dismounted almost in the veryshadow of the great arch, and waited, smoothing his mare's neck.But for the invitation in his eyes, which were solemn, yet without atrace of fear, I had never dared that last hundred yards. For above therush of waters I heard now a confused sound within the building--thethud and clanking of heavy machinery, and at intervals a human groan;and looking up I saw that the long friezes in bas-relief represented menand women tortured and torturing with all conceivable variety of methodand circumstance--flayed, racked, burned, torn asunder, loaded withweights, pinched with hot irons, and so on without end. And it added tothe horror of these sculptures that while the limbs and even the dressof each figure were carved with elaborate care and nicety of detail, thefaces of all--of those who applied the torture and of those who lookedon, as well as of the sufferers themselves--were left absolutely blank.On the same plan the two Titans beside the great archway had no faces.The sculptor had traced the muscles of each belly in a constriction ofanguish, and had suggested this anguish again in moulding the neck, evenin disposing the hair of the head; but the neck supported, and the locksfell around, a space of smooth stone without a feature.Harry allowed me no time to feed on these horrors. Signing to me todismount and leave Grey Sultan at the entrance, he led me through thelong archway or tunnel. At the end we paused again, he watching, whileI drew difficult breath. . . .I saw a vast amphitheatre of granite, curving away on either hand andreaching up, tier on tier, till the tiers melted in the grey skyoverhead. The lowest tier stood twenty feet above my head; yet curvedwith so lordly a perspective that on the far side of the arena, as Ilooked across, it seemed almost level with the ground; while the humanfigures about the great archway yonder were diminished to the size ofants about a hole. . . For there were human figures busy in the arena,though not a soul sat in any of the granite tiers above. A million eyeshad been less awful than those empty benches staring down in the colddawn; bench after bench repeating the horror of the featureless carvingsby the entrance-gate--repeating it in series without end, and unbroken,save at one point midway along the semicircle on my right, where theimperial seat stood out, crowned like a catafalque with plumes of purplehorse-hair, and screened close with heavy purple hangings. I saw thesecurtains shake once or twice in the morning wind.The floor of this amphitheatre I have spoken of as an arena; but as amatter of fact it was laid with riveted sheets of copper that recalledthe dead men's shelves in the Paris morgue. The centre had beenraised some few feet higher than the circumference, or possibly thewhole floor took its shape from the rounded hill of which it was theapex; and from an open sluice immediately beneath the imperial throne aflood of water gushed with a force that carried it straight to thisraised centre, over which it ran and rippled, and so drained back intothe scuppers at the circumference. Before reaching the centre it brokeand swirled around a row of what appeared to be tall iron boxes orcages, set directly in face of the throne. But for these ugly boxes thewhole floor was empty. To and from these the little human figures werehurrying, and from these too proceeded the thuds and panting and thefrequent groans that I had heard outside.While I stood and gazed, Harry stepped forward into the arena."This also?" I whispered.He nodded, and led the way over the copper floor, where the water ranhigh as our ankles and again was drained off, until little dry spacesgrew like maps upon the surface, and in ten seconds were flooded again.He led me straight to the cages, and I saw that while the roof and threesides of these were of sheet iron, the fourth side, which faced thethrone, lay open. And I saw--in the first cage, a man scourged withrods; in the second, a body twisted on the rack; in the third, a womanwith a starving babe, and a fellow that held food to them and withdrewit quickly (the torturers wore masks on their faces, and whenever bloodflowed some threw handfuls of sawdust, and blood and sawdust togetherwere carried off by the running water); in the fourth cage, a man tied,naked and helpless, whom a masked torturer pelted with discs of gold,heavy and keen-edged; in the fifth a brasier with irons heating, and agirl's body crouched in a corner--"I will see no more!" I cried, and turned towards the great purplecanopy. High over it the sun broke yellow on the climbing tiers ofseats. "Harry! someone is watching behind those curtains! Is it--HE?"Harry bent his head."But this is all that I believed! This is Nero, and ten times worsethan Nero! Why did you bring me here?" I flung out my hand towards thepurple throne, and finding myself close to a fellow who scatteredsawdust with both hands, made a spring to tear his mask away. But Harrystretched out an arm."That will not help you," he said. "The man has no face.""No face!""He once had a face, but it has perished. His was the face of thesesufferers. Look at them."I looked from cage to cage, and now saw that indeed all thesesufferers--men and women--had but one face: the same wrung brow, thesame wistful eyes, the same lips bitten in anguish. I knew the face.We all know it."His own Son! O devil rather than God!" I fell on my knees in thegushing water and covered my eyes."Stand up, listen and look!" said Harry's voice."What can I see? He hides behind that curtain.""And the curtain?""It shakes continually.""That is with His sobs. Listen! What of the water?""It runs from the throne and about the floor. It washes off the blood.""That water is His tears. It flows hence down the hill, and washes allthe shores of earth."Then as I stood silent, conning the eddies at my feet, for the firsttime Harry took my hand."Learn this," he said. "There is no suffering in the world butultimately comes to be endured by God."Saying this, he drew me from the spot; gently, very gently led me away;but spoke again as we were about to pass into the shadow of the arch--"Look once back: for a moment only."I looked. The curtains of the imperial seat were still drawn close, butin a flash I saw the tiers beside it, and around, and away up to thesunlit crown of the amphitheatre, thronged with forms in white raiment.And all these forms leaned forward and bowed their faces on their armsand wept.So we passed out beneath the archway. Grey Sultan stood outside, and asI mounted him the gate clashed behind. . . .
IVI turned as it clashed. And the gate was just the lodge-gate ofSevenhays. And Grey Sultan was trampling the gravel of our own drive.The morning sun slanted over the laurels on my right, and while Iwondered, the stable clock struck eight.The rest I leave to you; nor shall try to explain. I only know that,vision or no vision, my soul from that hour has gained a calm it neverknew before. The sufferings of my fellows still afflict me; but always,if I stand still and listen, in my own room, or in a crowded street, orin a waste spot among the moors, I can hear those waters moving roundthe world--moving on their "priest-like task "--those lustral divinetears which are Oceanus.
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