Faces in the Fire Part 10

And, having all this in mind, is it not pleasant to notice that the very last chapter of the Bible tells of the tree that waves by the side of the river of life? There is something sacramental about trees. George Gissing says that Odysseus cutting down the olive in order to build for himself a home is a picture of man performing a supreme act of piety.

'Through all the ages,' he says, 'that picture must retain its profound significance.' The trees of Medicine Woods yielded up their life to the Harvester's axe, that he and his dream-girl might dwell in security and bliss. And, on a green hill far away without a city wall, another tree was cut down years ago, that it might represent to all men everywhere the means of grace and the hope of glory. And even more than all the other trees, the leaves of _that_ tree are for the healing of the nations.

IV

SPOIL!

We were sitting round the fire last night when a boy came rus.h.i.+ng up the street shouting, 'The latest war news.' I went to the door, bought a paper, and settled down again to read it. All at once the word 'siege'

caught my eye, and, after glancing over the cablegram to which it referred, I lay back in the chair and allowed my mind to roam among the romantic recollections that the great word had suggested. I thought of the Siege of Lucknow in the East, of the Siege of Mexico in the West, and of the Siege of Londonderry midway between. Who that has once read the thrilling narratives of these famous exploits can resist the temptation occasionally to set his fancy free to revisit the scenes of those tremendous struggles? My reverie was rudely interrupted.

'Run along, Wroxie, dear, it's past bedtime!' a maternal voice from the opposite chair suddenly expostulated.

'But, mother, I _must_ do my Scripture-lesson, and I've _nearly_ finished!'

'What have you to do, Wroxie?' I inquired, appointing myself arbitrator on the instant.

'I have to learn these eight verses of the hundred and nineteenth Psalm!'

'Well, read them aloud to us, and then run off to bed!' I commanded.

She read. I am afraid I had no ears for any of the later verses. For among the very first words that she read were these: '_I rejoice at Thy Word as one that findeth great spoil_.' I had read those familiar words hundreds of times, but it was like pa.s.sing a closed door. But to-night my memories of the great historic sieges supplied me with the key. 'As one that findeth great _spoil_' ... 'findeth great _spoil_' ... 'great _spoil_.' That one word '_spoil_' supplied me with the magic key. I applied it; the door flew open; and I saw _that_ in the text which I had never seen before. The lesson came to an end; the girlish tones subsided; the reader kissed me good-night, and scampered off to bed, her mother leaving the room in her company; and I was left once more to my own imaginings.

But my fancy flew in quite a fresh direction. The text had done for my imprisoned mind what Noah did for the imprisoned dove. It had opened a window of escape, and I was at liberty to go where I had never been before. '_Spoil_!'--at the sound of that magic word the doors of truth swung open as the great door of the robbers' dungeon in _The Forty Thieves_ yielded to the sound of 'Open, Sesame!' A landscape may be mirrored in a dewdrop; and here, in this arresting phrase, I suddenly discovered all the picturesque colour and stirring movement of a great siege. I saw the bastions and the drawbridges; the fortified walls and the frowning ramparts; the lofty parapets and the stately towers. I watched the fierce a.s.sault of the besiegers and the tumultuous sally of the garrison. I heard the clash and din of strife. I marked the long, grim struggle against impending starvation. And then, at last, I saw the white flag flown. The proud city has fallen; the garrison has surrendered; the gates are thrown open to the investing forces; and the conqueror rides triumphantly in to seize his splendid prize! His followers fall eagerly upon their booty, and grasp with greedy hands at every glint of treasure that presents itself to their rapacious eyes.

Spoil; _spoil_; SPOIL! 'I rejoice at Thy Word as _one that findeth great spoil_!'

I

Now the most notable point about this metaphor is that the city only yields up its treasure after long resistance. The besieger does not find the city waiting with open gates to welcome him. It slams those gates in his face; bars, bolts, and barricades them; and settles down to keep him at bay as long as possible. The stubbornness of its brave resistance lends an added sweetness to the final triumph of its conqueror; but, whilst it lasts, that resistance is very baffling and vexatious. All the best things in life follow the same strange law. See how the soil resists the farmer! It stiffens itself against his approach, so that only in the sweat of his brow can he plough and harrow it. It garrisons itself with swarms of insect pests, so that his attempts to subjugate it shall be rendered as ineffective and unfruitful as possible. It extends eager hospitality to every noxious seed that falls upon its surface. It encourages all the farmer's enemies, and fights against all his allies.

Labour makes the harvest sweeter, it is true; but whilst it is in progress it is none the less exhausting. It is only by breaking down the obstinate resistance of the unwilling soil that the farmer achieves the golden triumph of harvest-time. The miner pa.s.ses through the same trying experience. The earth has nothing to gain by holding her gold and her diamonds, her copper and her coal, in such a tight clutch. Yet she makes the work of the miner a desperate and dangerous business. He takes his life in his hand as he descends the shaft. The peril and the toil add a greater value to the booty, I confess; but the work of the dark mine is none the less trying on that account. He who would grasp the treasures that lie buried in the bowels of the earth must first break down the most determined and dogged resistance. And the treasures of the mind also follow this curious law. There is no royal road to learning.

Knowledge resists the intruder. It presents an exterior that is altogether revolting, and only the brave persist in the attack. The text-books of the schools are rarely set to music; they do not tingle with romance. They look as dry as dust, and they are often even more arid than they look. I remember that, in my college days, the student who sat next to me on the old familiar benches suddenly died. He was brilliant; I was not. And when I heard that he had gone, the first thought that occurred to me was a peculiar one. Had all his knowledge perished with him? I asked myself. I thought of the problems that he had mastered, but with which I was still grappling. Could he not have bequeathed to me the fruits of his patient and hard-won victories? No; it could not be. The city must be patiently besieged and gallantly stormed before it will surrender. The coveted diploma may be all the sweeter afterwards as a result of so long and persistent a struggle; but that fact does not at the time relieve the tedium or lessen the intolerable drudgery. Knowledge seems so good and so desirable a thing; yet it resists the aspiring student with such pitiless and unsympathetic pertinacity.

Even love behaves in the same way. The lady keeps her lover at arm's length. She would rather die than not be his, but she must guard her modesty at all hazards. She must not make herself too cheap. She a.s.sumes a frigidity that is in hopeless conflict with the warmth of her real sentiments. Her apparent indifference and repeated rebuffs nearly drive her poor wooer to distraction. Her kisses are all the sweeter later on when she is delightfully and avowedly his own; but whilst the siege of her affections lasts the torment almost wrecks his reason. It is really no hypocrisy on her part. It is the recognition of a true instinct. All the best things resist us, and their resistance has to be overcome. And the psalmist declares that even the divine Word treated him in the selfsame way. It did not entice, allure, fascinate; that is usually the policy of evil things. No; it repelled, resisted, dared him! And it was not until he had conquered that hostility that he entered into his triumph. It was in the carcase of the fierce lion he had previously destroyed that Samson found the honey that was so sweet to his taste. We generally find our spoil in the cities that slammed their great gates in our faces.

II

But the city capitulates for all that. It may hold out stubbornly, and for long, but it always yields at the last. It was so ordained. The soil was meant to resist the farmer; but it was also meant to yield to the farmer at length, and to furnish him with his proud and delightful prize. The minerals are hidden so cleverly, and buried so deeply, not that they may successfully elude the vigilance and skill of the heroic miner, but in order that he may justly prize the precious metals when they fall at last into his hands. The student's tedious struggle after knowledge is made so painful a process, not to deter or defeat him, but so that, side by side with the acquisition of learning, he may develop those faculties of brain and intellect which can alone qualify him to wield with wisdom the erudition that he is now so laboriously ama.s.sing.

The lady treats her poor lover with such seeming disdain, not by any means to dishearten him, but that she may make quite sure that his ardour is no mere pa.s.sing whim, but a deep and enduring attachment. In each case capitulation is agreed upon if only the besieger is sufficiently gallant and persistent. The best things, and even the holiest things, 'hold us off that they may draw us on'--to use Tennyson's expressive phrase.

To cite a single example, what a wonder-story is that of the Syro-Phoenician woman! The Master conceals Himself from her; treats her anguish with apparent indifference; preserves a frigid silence in face of her pa.s.sionate entreaty; and offers exasperating rebuffs in reply to her desperate arguments! But did He design to destroy her faith? Let us see! Like a gallant besieger, she sat down before the city with indomitable courage and patience. Beaten back at one gate, she instantly stormed another. Resisted at one redoubt, she mustered all her forces in the effort to reduce a second. And at last 'Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith; be it unto thee even as thou wilt!'

The capitulation was a predetermined policy; but the courage and pertinacity of the besieger must be tested to the utmost before the gates can be finally thrown open.

III

And then the victors fly upon the spoil! The repelling Word yields, and is found to contain wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. 'I rejoice at Thy Word as one that findeth great spoil.' _Spoil_! We have all felt the thrill of those tremendous pages in which Gibbon describes the sack of Rome by the all-victorious Goths. We seem to have witnessed with our own eyes the glittering wealth of the queenly city poured at the feet of the rapacious conqueror. Or, in Prescott's stately stories, we have watched the fabulous h.o.a.rds of Montezuma, and the heaped-up gold of Atahuallpa, piled at the feet of Cortes and Pizarro. Or if, forsaking the s.h.i.+ning spoils of the Goths in Europe and the gleaming argosies which the Spaniards brought from the West, we turn to a later date and an Eastern clime, we instinctively recall the glowing periods of Macaulay in his story of the conquests of Clive. After his amazing victory at Pla.s.sey, 'the treasury of Bengal was thrown open to him.

There were piled up, after the usage of Indian princes, immense ma.s.ses of coin. Clive walked between heaps of gold and silver, crowned with rubies and diamonds, and was at liberty to help himself. He accepted between two and three hundred thousand pounds.' He was afterwards accused of greed. He replied by describing the countless wealth by which he was that day surrounded. Vaults piled with gold and with jewels were at his mercy. 'To this day,' he exclaimed, 'I stand astonished at my own moderation!'

Here, then, is the magic key that opens to us the secret in the psalmist's mind. 'I rejoice at Thy Word as one that findeth great spoil.' The besiegers pour into the city. Every house is ransacked. In the most unlikely places the citizens have concealed their treasures, and in the most unlikely places, therefore, the invaders come upon their spoils. Out from queer old drawers and cupboards, out of strange old cracks and crannies, the precious h.o.a.rd is torn. As the besiegers rush from house to house you hear the shout and the laughter with which another and yet another find is greeted. So was it with his conquest of the Word, the psalmist tells us. At first it resisted and repelled him.

But afterwards its gates were opened to his challenge. He entered the city and began his search for spoil. And, lo, from out of every promise and precept, out of every innocent-looking clause or insignificant phrase, the treasures of truth came pouring, until he found himself possessed at length of a wealth compared with which the pomp of princes is the badge of beggary.

V

A PHILOSOPHY OF FANCY-WORK

'"What course of lectures are you attending now, ma'am?" said Martin Chuzzlewit's friend, turning again to Mrs. Jefferson Brick.

'"The Philosophy of the _Soul_, on Wednesdays," replied Mrs. Brick.

'"And on Mondays?"

'"The Philosophy of _Crime_."

'"On Fridays?"

'"The Philosophy of _Vegetables_."

'"You have forgotten Thursdays; the Philosophy of _Government_, my dear," observed a third lady.

'"No," said Mrs. Brick, "that's Tuesdays."

'"So it is!" cried the lady. "The Philosophy of _Matter_ on Thursdays, of course."

'"You see, Mr. Chuzzlewit, our ladies are fully employed," observed his friend.'

They were indeed; but for the life of me I cannot understand why, amidst so many philosophies, the Philosophy of _Fancy-work_ was so cruelly ignored. I should have thought it quite as suitable and profitable a study for Mrs. Jefferson Brick and her lady friends as some of the subjects to which they paid their attention.

'Whatever are you making now, dear?' asked a devoted husband of his spouse the other evening.

'Why, an antimaca.s.sar, George, to be sure; can't you see?'

'And what on earth is the good of an antimaca.s.sar, I should like to know?'

'Stupid man!'

Stupid man, indeed! But there it is! And for the cra.s.s stupidity of their husbands, Mrs. Jefferson Brick and her philosophical friends have only themselves to blame. If they had included the Philosophy of Fancy-work in their syllabus of lectures, they might have acquired such a grasp of a great and vital subject that they would have been able to convince their husbands that there is nothing in the house quite so useful as an antimaca.s.sar. The pots and the pans, the chairs and the tables, are nowhere in comparison. The antimaca.s.sar is the one indispensable article in the establishment. Let no man attempt to deride or belittle it.

As it is, however, Mrs. Jefferson Brick and her friends have never really studied the Philosophy of Fancy-work, and have never therefore been in a position to enlighten the darkened minds of their benighted husbands. As an inevitable consequence, those husbands continue to regard the busy needles as an amiable frailty pertaining to the s.e.x of their better halves. In writing thus, I am thinking of the better-tempered husbands. Husbands of the other variety regard fancy-work as an unmitigated nuisance. Mark Rutherford has familiarized us with a husband who so regarded his wife's delicate traceries and ornamentations. I refer, of course, to _Catherine Furze_. We all remember Mrs. Furze's parlour at Eastthorpe. 'There was a sofa in the room, but it was horse-hair with high ends both alike, not comfortable, which were covered with curious complications called antimaca.s.sars, that slipped off directly they were touched, so that anybody who leaned upon them was engaged continually in warfare with them, picking them up from the floor or spreading them out again. There was also an easy chair, but it was not easy, for it matched the sofa in horse-hair, and was so ingeniously contrived that, directly a person placed himself in it, it gently shot him forwards. Furthermore, it had special antimaca.s.sars, which were a work of art, and Mrs. Furze had warned Mr. Furze off them.

"He would ruin them," she said, "if he put his head upon them." So a Windsor chair with a high back was always carried by Mr. Furze into the parlour after dinner, together with a common kitchen chair, and on these he took his Sunday nap.' The reader is made to feel that, on these interesting occasions, Mr. Furze wished his wife and her antimaca.s.sars at the bottom of the deep blue sea; and one rather admires his self-restraint in not explicitly saying so. Mr. Furze is the natural representative of all those husbands who see no rhyme or reason in fancy-work. If only Mrs. Jefferson Brick had included that phase of philosophy on her programme, and had pa.s.sed on the illumination to some member of the sterner s.e.x! But let us indulge in no futile regrets.

That there is a Philosophy of Fancy-work goes without saying. To begin with, think of the relief to the overstrung nerves and the over-wrought emotions, at the close of a trying day, in being able to sit down in a cosy chair, and, when the eyes are too tired for reading, to finger away at the needles, and get on with the antimaca.s.sar. Our grandmothers went in for antimaca.s.sars instead of neurasthenia. 'It is astonis.h.i.+ng,'