Strange Roads & With the Gods in Spring/With the Gods in Spring
WITH THE GODS IN SPRING
With the
Gods
in Spring
Arthur
Machen
Sketches by H. R. Millar
We shall go on seeking it to the end, so long as there are men on the earth. We shall seek it in all manner of strange ways; some of them wise, and some of them unutterably foolish. But the search will never end.
"It?" "It" is the secret of things; the real truth that is everywhere hidden under outward appearances; the end of the story, as it were; the few final words that make every doubtful page in the long book plain, that clear up all bewilderments and all perplexities, and show how there was profound meaning and purpose in passages apparently obscure and purposeless. These are the words which, once read, throw their light and radiance back over all the book; as the furnace fires blazing up suddenly at night in my own country in the west, shine far away among woods, and in dark valleys, and discover his path to the wanderer in a wild, dim world.
Doubtless there is a secret, an illuminating secret, hidden beneath all the surfaces of things; and perhaps the old alchemists were thinking of that secret when they spoke of the Powder of Projection, the Philosopher's Stone, that turned all it touched into gold.
There are many ways of the great quest of the secret. Some of them fill me with an immeasureable weariness. Not very long ago, there was a picture in a daily paper with an odd history attached to it. The picture was a head of the Christ. It was a photograph of a painting done by a lady who was said to have no artistic skill whatever. But she had worked under "spirit control," and produced this marvel. The great spiritualist authorities said it was the finest head of the Christ that had ever been painted.
Well, I looked at it, and said, "alas!" within my soul. I am not a painter-man myself, nor a critic of painter-men. But—if one has looked at certain of the masterworks with a humble heart, one has learnt a little, a very little, no doubt, but still something of the elements. The L.C.C. schoolboy learns at quite an early age that "dog" is not spelt "c-a-t;" and nothing will move him from this secure faith. So I, with this newspaper photograph of Mrs. or Miss Somebody's head
of the Christ. I could see that it was feeble, sentimental, sloppy, with about as much relation to painting or religion as the poems of the late Miss Frances Ridley Havergal have to literature or the faith. Painting men told me that, technically, the work was far from good; and I have no doubt that they were right.
Well, a few days afterwards, another photograph appeared in the newspaper. This also was of a painting of the head of the Christ. This had been painted by another lady, a Swede, I think, some years ago; also, it was said, under spirit influence. It was obvious that picture number one had been suggested by picture number two, and indeed it was stated that the English spirit artist had had opportunities of seeing the work of the Swedish spirit artist. And then the English artist said that she had nothing to do with spirits.
There it is; and it is no matter, as old Mr. Kemble, the actor, used to observe. But the secret is not to be found by that foolish way.
It is long years ago; but I once saw a little glint of the secret, merely a flash of the great radiance, noted at the time, and adored, yet forgotten in a moment, and yet never at all forgotten, but remembered still through all the heavy years that have gone by, and growing clearer, it seems, as the days darken and the shadows lengthen on the hill.
A long while ago; forty years ago, or near it, my two friends, Bill and Jack and I set out for a walk early of an afternoon in March. We are all white-haired now; we have been grilled and roasted and boiled and fried in the fire of life; then, we were raw and merry, and I was the youngest and the rawest of the three. But we were all in the mood of adventure; we would go to Usk—a little town in our country, far in the west—and go to it by a new way. Now, one ascertains the surest 'bus route, or the quickest tubes, and sticks to the way when found; I should hate anyone who proposed to me the theory that it would be fun to get into the City from St. John's Wood by way of Clerkenwell or Pentonville; but we have come to the age of iron. So, then, Bill and Jack and I set out for Usk, and would find a new way of getting to that noble city of two thousand souls or thereabouts. It was governed by a Portreeve in those days; I severed my connection with the Liberal Party when Lord Rosebery brought in a Bill about Unreformed Corporations, and, like an evil enchanter, turned the Portreeve and Bailiffs into a Local Government Board.
So we set out for Usk, and we took the high road that led to Pontypool under the mountains—not a bit like the road to Usk—and then left it by a lane which seemed likely to bear towards our desired end. Likely so to bear, but quite as likely not so to bear; for lanes twist and turn and bend in the land of Gwent; still, we were going to Usk, and therefore—mark that "therefore," rationalist—therefore, we knew that all lanes led to Usk: Bill and Jack and I.
It was a great day of March. The
wind shrilled and rustled and shivered and shook all the dead woods. Though it was so keen and cold, it came, if I remember well, over the wall of the great and high mountain of the west, and drove the white and grey rolling clouds before it to eastward over the billows of the land, over those hidden valleys where the little brooks rush clear and swift under the alders, over the hills where the pine trees stand, over the solemn, hanging woods that were still and sombre in their winter wear. We went along our lane, laughing, because we knew—note that "because," atheist—that it was most unlikely that we should ever get to Usk, and because we knew that we should most certainly get there.
Presently the lane grew too probable. It seemed as if it were really leading us in the right direction. This was not to be endured, and so we chose the first stile that offered itself. I will say, frankly, that reason was not absolutely outraged; it was not infallibly certain that the path opening from the stile was more likely to lead to Constantinople than to Usk; still, it seemed an improbable track, and so we took it gaily.
I wish I could remember all that way. Ah! in these dim and late and dreary hours; if one could recollect the splendour of the dawn. But, to be true, I remember very little; only the wonder, which is always a wonder, of passing through a new land and seeing things which are strange, and thereby receiving a revelation of the unknown; and this revelation you may get as surely in a country lane as if you went to the uttermost parts of the earth. But somewhere on this walk, as we talked of Moll and Meg and strange experiences, unfit for ladies, that glint and twinkling of the high supernal light came to me.
We were skirting a wild little hill. It was a place of rough grass, winter withered; of bracken clumps turned brown; of brambles that had forgotten autumn berries, black and rich; of the twisted, ancient thorn tree, dark and dreaming of
fairyland. And as we passed on our way, while the keen wind shook the bare, brown boughs as it went roaring down the valley to the brook, while the huge clouds rolled on to the sea; there I saw on the hillside, under a low black thorn bush rising from withered bracken, the green leaves and pale yellow blossoms of a daffodil, shaking in that high, cold wind.
Vere Deus. It was forgotten as Bill and Jack and I came infallibly by our impossible way over the bridge into the street of Usk, and to the Three Salmons, that inn of old and happy memory. Forgotten then, but remembered always: the shining apparition of the god.