Dreams - Olive Schreiner (latest novels to read TXT) 📗

her with his hands—clasp her!

 

He laughed in the merry sunshine, and sang loud. Victory was very near.

Nevertheless, after a while the path grew steeper. He needed all his

breath for climbing, and the singing died away. On the right and left rose

huge rocks, devoid of lichen or moss, and in the lava-like earth chasms

yawned. Here and there he saw a sheen of white bones. Now too the path

began to grow less and less marked; then it became a mere trace, with a

footmark here and there; then it ceased altogether. He sang no more, but

struck forth a path for himself, until it reached a mighty wall of rock,

smooth and without break, stretching as far as the eye could see. “I will

rear a stair against it; and, once this wall climbed, I shall be almost

there,” he said bravely; and worked. With his shuttle of imagination he

dug out stones; but half of them would not fit, and half a month’s work

would roll down because those below were ill chosen. But the hunter worked

on, saying always to himself, “Once this wall climbed, I shall be almost

there. This great work ended!”

 

At last he came out upon the top, and he looked about him. Far below

rolled the white mist over the valleys of superstition, and above him

towered the mountains. They had seemed low before; they were of an

immeasurable height now, from crown to foundation surrounded by walls of

rock, that rose tier above tier in mighty circles. Upon them played the

eternal sunshine. He uttered a wild cry. He bowed himself on to the

earth, and when he rose his face was white. In absolute silence he walked

on. He was very silent now. In those high regions the rarefied air is

hard to breathe by those born in the valleys; every breath he drew hurt

him, and the blood oozed out from the tips of his fingers. Before the next

wall of rock he began to work. The height of this seemed infinite, and he

said nothing. The sound of his tool rang night and day upon the iron rocks

into which he cut steps. Years passed over him, yet he worked on; but the

wall towered up always above him to heaven. Sometimes he prayed that a

little moss or lichen might spring up on those bare walls to be a companion

to him; but it never came.

 

And the years rolled on; he counted them by the steps he had cut—a few for

a year—only a few. He sang no more; he said no more, “I will do this or

that”—he only worked. And at night, when the twilight settled down, there

looked out at him from the holes and crevices in the rocks strange wild

faces.

 

“Stop your work, you lonely man, and speak to us,” they cried.

 

“My salvation is in work, if I should stop but for one moment you would

creep down upon me,” he replied. And they put out their long necks

further.

 

“Look down into the crevice at your feet,” they said. “See what lie there-

-white bones! As brave and strong a man as you climbed to these rocks.”

And he looked up. He saw there was no use in striving; he would never hold

Truth, never see her, never find her. So he lay down here, for he was very

tired. He went to sleep forever. He put himself to sleep. Sleep is very

tranquil. You are not lonely when you are asleep, neither do your hands

ache, nor your heart. And the hunter laughed between his teeth.

 

“Have I torn from my heart all that was dearest; have I wandered alone in

the land of night; have I resisted temptation; have I dwelt where the voice

of my kind is never heard, and laboured alone, to lie down and be food for

you, ye harpies?”

 

He laughed fiercely; and the Echoes of Despair slunk away, for the laugh of

a brave, strong heart is as a death blow to them.

 

Nevertheless they crept out again and looked at him.

 

“Do you know that your hair is white?” they said, “that your hands begin to

tremble like a child’s? Do you see that the point of your shuttle is

gone?—it is cracked already. If you should ever climb this stair,” they

said, “it will be your last. You will never climb another.”

 

And he answered, “I know it!” and worked on.

 

The old, thin hands cut the stones ill and jaggedly, for the fingers were

stiff and bent. The beauty and the strength of the man was gone.

 

At last, an old, wizened, shrunken face looked out above the rocks. It saw

the eternal mountains rise with walls to the white clouds; but its work was

done.

 

The old hunter folded his tired hands and lay down by the precipice where

he had worked away his life. It was the sleeping time at last. Below him

over the valleys rolled the thick white mist. Once it broke; and through

the gap the dying eyes looked down on the trees and fields of their

childhood. From afar seemed borne to him the cry of his own wild birds,

and he heard the noise of people singing as they danced. And he thought he

heard among them the voices of his old comrades; and he saw far off the

sunlight shine on his early home. And great tears gathered in the hunter’s

eyes.

 

“Ah! they who die there do not die alone,” he cried.

 

Then the mists rolled together again; and he turned his eyes away.

 

“I have sought,” he said, “for long years I have laboured; but I have not

found her. I have not rested, I have not repined, and I have not seen her;

now my strength is gone. Where I lie down worn out other men will stand,

young and fresh. By the steps that I have cut they will climb; by the

stairs that I have built they will mount. They will never know the name of

the man who made them. At the clumsy work they will laugh; when the stones

roll they will curse me. But they will mount, and on my work; they will

climb, and by my stair! They will find her, and through me! And no man

liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself.”

 

The tears rolled from beneath the shrivelled eyelids. If Truth had

appeared above him in the clouds now he could not have seen her, the mist

of death was in his eyes.

 

“My soul hears their glad step coming,” he said; “and they shall mount!

they shall mount!” He raised his shrivelled hand to his eyes.

 

Then slowly from the white sky above, through the still air, came something

falling, falling, falling. Softly it fluttered down, and dropped on to the

breast of the dying man. He felt it with his hands. It was a feather. He

died holding it.

 

III. THE GARDENS OF PLEASURE.

 

She walked upon the beds, and the sweet rich scent arose; and she gathered

her hands full of flowers. Then Duty, with his white clear features, came

and looked at her. Then she ceased from gathering, but she walked away

among the flowers, smiling, and with her hands full.

 

Then Duty, with his still white face, came again, and looked at her; but

she, she turned her head away from him. At last she saw his face, and she

dropped the fairest of the flowers she had held, and walked silently away.

 

Then again he came to her. And she moaned, and bent her head low, and

turned to the gate. But as she went out she looked back at the sunlight on

the faces of the flowers, and wept in anguish. Then she went out, and it

shut behind her for ever; but still in her hand she held of the buds she

had gathered, and the scent was very sweet in the lonely desert.

 

But he followed her. Once more he stood before her with his still, white,

death-like face. And she knew what he had come for: she unbent the

fingers, and let the flowers drop out, the flowers she had loved so, and

walked on without them, with dry, aching eyes. Then for the last time he

came. And she showed him her empty hands, the hands that held nothing now.

But still he looked. Then at length she opened her bosom and took out of

it one small flower she had hidden there, and laid it on the sand. She had

nothing more to give now, and she wandered away, and the grey sand whirled

about her.

 

IV. IN A FAR-OFF WORLD.

 

There is a world in one of the far-off stars, and things do not happen here

as they happen there.

 

In that world were a man and woman; they had one work, and they walked

together side by side on many days, and were friends—and that is a thing

that happens now and then in this world also.

 

But there was something in that star-world that there is not here. There

was a thick wood: where the trees grew closest, and the stems were

interlocked, and the summer sun never shone, there stood a shrine. In the

day all was quiet, but at night, when the stars shone or the moon glinted

on the tree-tops, and all was quiet below, if one crept here quite alone

and knelt on the steps of the stone altar, and uncovering one’s breast, so

wounded it that the blood fell down on the altar steps, then whatever he

who knelt there wished for was granted him. And all this happens, as I

said, because it is a far-off world, and things often happen there as they

do not happen here.

 

Now, the man and woman walked together; and the woman wished well to the

man. One night when the moon was shining so that the leaves of all the

trees glinted, and the waves of the sea were silvery, the woman walked

alone to the forest. It was dark there; the moonlight fell only in little

flecks on the dead leaves under her feet, and the branches were knotted

tight overhead. Farther in it got darker, not even a fleck of moonlight

shone. Then she came to the shrine; she knelt down before it and prayed;

there came no answer. Then she uncovered her breast; with a sharp two-edged stone that lay there she wounded it. The drops dripped slowly down

on to the stone, and a voice cried, “What do you seek?”

 

She answered, “There is a man; I hold him nearer than anything. I would

give him the best of all blessings.”

 

The voice said, “What is it?”

 

The girl said, “I know not, but that which is most good for him I wish him

to have.”

 

The voice said, “Your prayer is answered; he shall have it.”

 

Then she stood up. She covered her breast and held the garment tight upon

it with her hand, and ran out of the forest, and the dead leaves fluttered

under her feet. Out in the moonlight the soft air was blowing, and the

sand glittered on the beach. She ran along the smooth shore, then suddenly

she stood still. Out across the water there was something moving. She

shaded her eyes and looked. It was a boat; it was sliding swiftly over the

moonlit water out to sea. One stood upright in it; the face the moonlight

did not show, but the figure she knew. It was passing swiftly; it seemed

as if no one propelled it; the moonlight’s shimmer