The Blue Flower [57]
felt it, Hermas, this burden, this need, this
unsatisfied longing. I think I know what it means. It is
gratitude--the language of the heart, the music of happiness.
There is no perfect joy without gratitude. But we have never
learned it, and the want of it troubles us. It is like being
dumb with a heart full of love. We must find the word for it,
and say it together. Then we shall be perfectly joined in
perfect joy. Come, my dear lord, let us take the boy with us,
and give thanks."
Hermas lifted the child in his arms, and turned with
Athenais into the depth of the garden. There was a dismantled
shrine of some forgotten fashion of worship half-hidden among the
luxuriant flowers. A fallen image lay beside it, face downward
in the grass. They stood there, hand in hand, the boy drowsily
resting on his father's shoulder.
Silently the roseate light caressed the tall spires of the
cypress-trees; silently the shadows gathered at their feet;
silently the tranquil stars looked out from the deepening arch
of heaven. The very breath of being paused. It was the hour
of culmination, the supreme moment of felicity waiting for its
crown. The tones of Hermas were clear and low as he began,
half-speaking and half-chanting, in the rhythm of an ancient
song:
"Fair is the world, the sea, the sky, the double kingdom
of day and night, in the glow of morning, in the shadow of
evening, and under the dripping light of stars.
"Fairer still is life in our breasts, with its manifold
music and meaning, with its wonder of seeing and hearing and
feeling and knowing and being.
"Fairer and still more fair is love, that draws us together,
mingles our lives in its flow, and bears them along like a river,
strong and clear and swift, reflecting the stars in its bosom.
"Wide is our world; we are rich; we have all things. Life
is abundant within us--a measureless deep. Deepest of all is
our love, and it longs to speak.
"Come, thou final word; Come, thou crown of speech! Come,
thou charm of peace! Open the gates of our hearts. Lift the
weight of our joy and bear it upward.
"For all good gifts, for all perfect gifts, for love, for
life, for the world, we praise, we bless, we thank--"
As a soaring bird, struck by an arrow, falls headlong from
the sky, so the song of Hermas fell. At the end of his flight
of gratitude there was nothing--a blank, a hollow space.
He looked for a face, and saw a void. He sought for a
hand, and clasped vacancy. His heart was throbbing and
swelling with passion; the bell swung to and fro within him,
beating from side to side as if it would burst; but not a
single note came from it. All the fulness of his feeling,
that had risen upward like a fountain, fell back from the empty
sky, as cold as snow, as hard as hail, frozen and dead. There
was no meaning in his happiness. No one had sent it to him.
There was no one to thank for it. His felicity was a closed
circle, a wall of ice.
"Let us go back," he said sadly to Athenais; "the child is
heavy upon my shoulder. We will lay him to sleep, and go into
the library. The air grows chilly. We were mistaken. The
gratitude of life is only a dream. There is no one to thank."
And in the garden it was already night.
V
No outward change came to the House of the Golden Pillars.
Everything moved as smoothly, as delicately, as prosperously,
as before. But inwardly there was a subtle, inexplicable
transformation. A vague discontent, a final and inevitable
sense of incompleteness, overshadowed existence from that
night when Hermas realised that his joy could never go beyond
itself.
The next morning the old man whom he had seen in the Grove
of Daphne, but never since, appeared mysteriously at the door
of the house, as if he had been sent for, and entered like an
invited guest.
Hermas could not but make him welcome, and at first he
tried to regard him with reverence and affection as the one
through whom fortune had come. But it was impossible. There
was a chill in
unsatisfied longing. I think I know what it means. It is
gratitude--the language of the heart, the music of happiness.
There is no perfect joy without gratitude. But we have never
learned it, and the want of it troubles us. It is like being
dumb with a heart full of love. We must find the word for it,
and say it together. Then we shall be perfectly joined in
perfect joy. Come, my dear lord, let us take the boy with us,
and give thanks."
Hermas lifted the child in his arms, and turned with
Athenais into the depth of the garden. There was a dismantled
shrine of some forgotten fashion of worship half-hidden among the
luxuriant flowers. A fallen image lay beside it, face downward
in the grass. They stood there, hand in hand, the boy drowsily
resting on his father's shoulder.
Silently the roseate light caressed the tall spires of the
cypress-trees; silently the shadows gathered at their feet;
silently the tranquil stars looked out from the deepening arch
of heaven. The very breath of being paused. It was the hour
of culmination, the supreme moment of felicity waiting for its
crown. The tones of Hermas were clear and low as he began,
half-speaking and half-chanting, in the rhythm of an ancient
song:
"Fair is the world, the sea, the sky, the double kingdom
of day and night, in the glow of morning, in the shadow of
evening, and under the dripping light of stars.
"Fairer still is life in our breasts, with its manifold
music and meaning, with its wonder of seeing and hearing and
feeling and knowing and being.
"Fairer and still more fair is love, that draws us together,
mingles our lives in its flow, and bears them along like a river,
strong and clear and swift, reflecting the stars in its bosom.
"Wide is our world; we are rich; we have all things. Life
is abundant within us--a measureless deep. Deepest of all is
our love, and it longs to speak.
"Come, thou final word; Come, thou crown of speech! Come,
thou charm of peace! Open the gates of our hearts. Lift the
weight of our joy and bear it upward.
"For all good gifts, for all perfect gifts, for love, for
life, for the world, we praise, we bless, we thank--"
As a soaring bird, struck by an arrow, falls headlong from
the sky, so the song of Hermas fell. At the end of his flight
of gratitude there was nothing--a blank, a hollow space.
He looked for a face, and saw a void. He sought for a
hand, and clasped vacancy. His heart was throbbing and
swelling with passion; the bell swung to and fro within him,
beating from side to side as if it would burst; but not a
single note came from it. All the fulness of his feeling,
that had risen upward like a fountain, fell back from the empty
sky, as cold as snow, as hard as hail, frozen and dead. There
was no meaning in his happiness. No one had sent it to him.
There was no one to thank for it. His felicity was a closed
circle, a wall of ice.
"Let us go back," he said sadly to Athenais; "the child is
heavy upon my shoulder. We will lay him to sleep, and go into
the library. The air grows chilly. We were mistaken. The
gratitude of life is only a dream. There is no one to thank."
And in the garden it was already night.
V
No outward change came to the House of the Golden Pillars.
Everything moved as smoothly, as delicately, as prosperously,
as before. But inwardly there was a subtle, inexplicable
transformation. A vague discontent, a final and inevitable
sense of incompleteness, overshadowed existence from that
night when Hermas realised that his joy could never go beyond
itself.
The next morning the old man whom he had seen in the Grove
of Daphne, but never since, appeared mysteriously at the door
of the house, as if he had been sent for, and entered like an
invited guest.
Hermas could not but make him welcome, and at first he
tried to regard him with reverence and affection as the one
through whom fortune had come. But it was impossible. There
was a chill in