XVI THE NEW VILLAGE

Once upon a time there was a village which might have been called The-Way-Certain-Folk-Want-It-Now. That, however, was not its name—it had a proper, map-sounding name. And there every one went to and fro with a fervour and nimbleness which proved him to be skilfully intent upon his own welfare.

The village had simple buildings and white walls, lanes and flowering things and the flow of pure air. But the strange thing about the town was that there each inhabitant lived alone. Every house had but one inmate and he well content. He liked everything that he owned and his taste was all-sufficient and he took his pleasure in his own walls and loved best his own ways. The day was spent in lonely selling or lonely buying, each man pitted against all others, and advantage and disadvantage were never equal, but yet the transactions were dreary, lacking the picturesqueness of unlicensed spoliation. The only greeting which folk exchanged[Pg 259] in passing was, "Sir, what do you do for yourself?" There were no assemblings of the people. The town kept itself alive by accretion from without. When one died another appeared and took his place gladly, and also others arrived, like precept added to precept and not like a true flowering. There were no children. And the village common was overgrown and breast-high with weeds. When the day was done every one retired to his own garden and saw his flowers blossoming for him and answering to the stars which came and stood over his head. There was in the town an epidemic of the intensive, only the people thought of it as the normal, for frequently epidemics are so regarded.

In one soul the contagion did not prevail. The soul was the lad Matthew, whose body lived on the town's only hill. When others sat at night in their gardens Matthew was wont to go up an airy path which he had made to the upper spaces and there wander conjecturing about being alive. For this was a detail which he never could take wholly for granted, in the manner in which he had become wonted to door-mats, napkin-rings, oatmeal, and mirrors. Therefore he took his thought some way nearer to the stars, and there he found so much beauty that he longed to fashion it to something, to create of it anew. And as he opened his heart he began to understand that there is some one of[Pg 260] whom he was the offspring. As he was companioned by this idea, more and more he longed for things to come nearer. Once, in his walking a hurrying bird brushed his face, grew confused, fluttered at his breast, and as he would have closed it in his hands he found that the bird was gone and his hands were empty, but beneath them his own heart fluttered and throbbed like a thing apart.

One night, so great was the abstraction of the boy, that instead of taking the upper path he fared down into the town. It was a curious way to do—to go walking in the town as if the thing were common property, but then the walls were very high and the gates were fast closed and bound round with creeping things, which grow very quickly. Matthew longed to enter these gardens, and he wondered who lived in the houses and what might be in their hearts.

Amazingly, at the turn of a white wall, a gate was opened and she who had opened it leaned into the night as if she were looking for something. There was a fluttering in the breast of Matthew so that he looked down to see if the bird had come back. But no bird was there. And it smote him that the lady's beauty, and surely her goodness, were great enough so that of them something might be created, as he would fain have created marvels from the sky.

"I would like to make your beauty into [Pg 261]something other," he said to her. "I cannot think whether this would be a song or a picture or a vision."

She looked at him with as much pleasure as if he had been an idea of her own.

"Tell me about my beauty," she bade him. "What thing is that?"

"Nay, that will take some while," Matthew said. "If I do that, I must come in your garden."

Now, such a thing had never happened in the town. And as this seemed why it never happened, it seemed likely to go on never happening indefinitely. But loneliness and the longing to create and the conjecture about life have always been as potent as battles; and beauty and boredom and curiosity have had something to do with history as well.

"Just this once, then," said the lady, and the gate closed upon the two.

Here was a garden like Matthew's own, but indefinitely atmosphered other. It spoke strangely of a wonted presence, other than his own. In his own garden he fitted as if the space for him were niched in the air, and he went as a man accustomed will go without thinking. But here he moved free, making new niches. And whereas on his own walks and plots he looked with lack-lustre eye as a man looks on his own gas-jet or rain pipe, now Matthew looked on all that he saw as on strange flame and sweet waters. And it was not the shrubs[Pg 262] and flowers which most delighted him, but it was rather on a garden bench the lady's hat and gloves and scissors.

"How pleasing!" said he, and stopped before them.

"Do you find them so?" asked the lady.

And when he told her about her beauty, which was more difficult to do than he had imagined and took a longer time, she said:—

"There can be no other man in the world who would speak as you speak."

On which he swore that there was no man who would not speak so, and likewise that no man could mean one-half what he himself meant. And he looked long at her house.

"In those rooms," he said, "you go about. I wish that I could go about there."

But that frightened her a little.

"In there," he said, "are the lamps you light, the plates you use, the brush that smooths your hair. How strange that is."

"Does it seem strange?" she asked.

"Sometime I will go there," said he, and with that he thought that the bird once more was fluttering at his breast. And again there was no bird.

When the time was come that he must leave her, this seemed the most valiant thing to do that ever he had done. It was inconceivable to accept that[Pg 263] though now she was with him, breathing, sentient, yet in another moment he would be out alone in the empty night. Alone. For the first time the word became a sinister thing. It meant to be where she was not.

"How is this to go on," he said, "I living where you do not live?"

But she said, "Such things have never been any other way," and closed the gate upon him.

It is a mighty thing when one who has always lived alone abruptly finds himself to have a double sense. Here is his little box of ideas, neatly classified, ready for reference, which have always methodically bobbed out of their own will the moment they were mentioned. Here are his own varieties of impression ready to be laid like a pattern upon whatever presents itself to be cut out. Here are his tastes, his sentiments, his beliefs, his longings, all selected and labelled and established. And abruptly ideas and impressions and tastes are thrown into rapt disorder while he wonders what this other being would think, and his sentiment glows like a lamp, his belief embraces the world, his longing becomes only that the other being's longing be cast in counterpart. When he walks abroad, the other's step accompanies him, a little back, and invisible, but as authentic as his own. When he thinks, his thought, without his will, would share itself. All this is a[Pg 264] new way of consciousness. All this makes two universes where one universe had previously been competent to support life.

Back on his hill Matthew went through his house as if he were seeing it for the first time. There was the garden that he had planted, and she was not walking there. There was his window, and she was not looking from it; his table, and she was not sitting beside it; his book which he could not read for wondering if she had read. All the tools of his home, what could they not become if she touched them? The homely tasks of the cupboard, what joy if she shared them? But what to do? He thought that it might be something if they exchanged houses, so that he could be where she had been, could use what she had used, could think of her in her setting. But yet this did not wholly delight him, either.

And now his house stifled him, so that he rushed out upon that airy path of his that he had made to reach the upper spaces, and he fled along, learning about being alive. Into the night he went, farther than ever he had gone before, till the stars looked nearer to him than houses commonly look, and things to think about seemed there waiting for him.

So it adventured that he came abruptly upon the New Village. It lay upon the air as lightly as if[Pg 265] strong, fair hands were uniting to bear it up, and it was not far from the stars and the clear places. Before he understood its nearness, the night was, so to say, endued with this village, and he entered upon its lanes as upon light.

This was a town no larger than his own and no more fortuned of Nature. Here were buildings not too unlike, and white walls and flowering things and the flow of pure air. But here was also the touch of bells. And he saw that every one went to and fro in a manner of quiet purpose that was like a garment.

"Sir, what do you do for yourself?" he asked courteously of one who was passing.

The citizen gave him greeting.

"I make bread for my family," said he, "and, it may be, a dream or two."

Matthew tried hard to perceive, and could make nothing of this.

"Your family," he said, "what thing is that?"

The citizen looked at him narrowly.

"I see that you rebuke me," said he, gently; "but I, too, labor for the community, so that the day shall become a better day."

"Community," said Matthew. "Now I know not at all what that may be, either."

Then the man understood that here was one who would learn about these things, and in the New[Pg 266] Village such a task is sacred and to be assumed on the moment by any to whom the opportunity presents. So the man took Matthew with him.

"Come," he said, "this is the day when we meet together."

"Together," said Matthew, and without knowing why he liked what he felt when he said that.

They went first to the market-place, trodden of many feet, and about it a fair green common planted in gracious lines. Here Matthew found men in shops that were built simply and like one another in fashion, but with pleasant devices of difference, and he found many selling together and many buying, and no one was being robbed.

"How can these things be?" he asked. "Here every man stands with the others."

"Inside of all things," the citizen answered, "you will find that it is so written."

On the common many were assembled to name certain projects and purposes: the following of paths to still clearer spaces, the nurturing of certain people, ways of cleanliness, purity of water, of milk, wide places for play, the fashioning of labour so that the shrines within be not foregone, the freeing of fountains, the planting of green things.

"Why will all this be?" asked Matthew. "For these things a man does in his own garden or for his own house, and no other interferes."

[Pg 267]

"Nay, but look deep within all things, Friend," the citizen said, "and you will never find it written so."

"Friend," repeated Matthew, "friend...."

Then the citizen went to his own house, and Matthew with him. The wall was no wall, but a hedge, and the garden was very beautiful. And lo, when they went in, there came tumbling along the path little beings made in the image of the citizen himself. And with them a woman of exceeding beauty and power, which the little ones also bore. As if the citizen had chosen her beauty and power to make them into something other.

It was as it had been when the bird was fluttering and beating at the boy's breast, but he did not even heed.

"Tell me!" he cried. "These—do they live here with you? Are they yours?"

"We are one another's," said the citizen.

Matthew sat among them, and to pleasure him they did many sweet tasks. They brought him to eat and drink in the garden. The woman gave quiet answers that had in them something living, and alive, too, some while after she had spoken. ("So she could answer," Matthew thought, "and better, too, than that.") And the children brought him a shell, a pretty stone, a broken watch, and a little woolly lamb on three wheels, and the fourth[Pg 268] wheel missing. The lamb had a sound to make by squeezing, and this sound Matthew made a great many times, and every time the children laughed. And when they did that Matthew could think of nothing to say that seemed a thing to be said, but he was inscrutably elated, and did the trick again.

And when he rose to take his leave:—

"Is it for them that you make bread and a dream or two?" he asked.

He knew that he should always like to remember the citizen's smile as he answered.

They stood at the opening of the hedge and folk were going by.

"Are they not jealous of you?" Matthew asked.

"They have families and bread and dreams of their own," said the citizen. "Every house is filled with them."

Matthew looked breathlessly along the street of the New Village, and he saw men, as they went, giving one another greeting: "Friend, is much accomplished?" or, "Peace to you, Friend." And they talked together, and entered gardens where were those who came to meet them or who waited within. They were a fine company, moving as to some secret way of being, and as if they had all looked deep within to see how it is written. And as he watched, something in Matthew would have cried out that he, too, was offspring of their Father, that[Pg 269] for all this had he too been created, and that for this would he live, joying and passioning and toiling in the common destiny. But when he spoke, all that he could say was:—

"Every man, then, may sit down now with a lamb with three wheels and the fourth wheel missing...."

On which he ceased for very shame. But the citizen understood and smiled once more, and said to him: "Come you here again, Brother."

With that word Matthew was off, down from the clear upper spaces, to where, lonely on its hill, his own house stood among its lonely neighbours. And Matthew strode shouting down the deserted streets and calling at every gate; and, it being now day, every one came forth to his lonely toil.

Matthew went and stood on the common where the weeds were high, and so amazed were the folk that they came about him, each suspecting the other of secret connivance in this strange business. For nothing had ever been done so.

"Men and brothers," cried Matthew, "it is not so that it was meant. I pray you look deep within, and see how the meaning was written. Is it that you should live, each pitted against another, wounding the other, advantaging himself? Join now each his hand with that of a neighbour. His neighbour. Make the thing of which, it seems, the world is made;[Pg 270] a family. Let the thing come alive which is greater than the family: the community. Oh, my comrades, let us work together for the coming of the kingdom of God."

In the murmur that rose were the words which have been spoken since time began:—

"It is not so that it was done in the old time...."

"It is not seemly that we change...."

"If every one did this ... but we cannot do it alone."

"Have you thought what will become of our business?"

And again and yet again: "It is not so that it was done in the old time."

And when the most would have none of it, Matthew made his way sadly through the throng—of whom were many who smiled (kindly!)—to the edge of the common, where stood a woman, trembling.

"Come," he said.

She went with him, and she with many little frightened breaths, but he had no pity, for he read deep within and saw that it was written that she wanted none. When they reached her own house, she would have entered.

"Go we in here," she besought him, "I will show you the rooms where I go about and the lamps that I light."

[Pg 271]

"We are past all that now," said Matthew, gently, "I will not go on living where you do not live."

He took her to his own house, through the garden that he had planted. He made her look from his window, sit by his table, open his books; and he bade her to a little task at the cupboard and laughed for joy that she performed it.

"Oh, come away," he cried. "And now we will go quickly to the New Village, that one which I have found or another, where men know all this happiness and more."

But she stood there by Matthew's cupboard and shook her head.

"No," she said gravely, "here we will stay, you and I, in your house. Here we will live—and it may be there is a handful of others who understand. And here we will do what we can."

"But I must show you," Matthew cried, "the way the others live—the things they strive for: the following of paths to clearer spaces, the freeing of shrines."

"All that," she said, "we will do here."

"But," he urged, "you must see how else they do—the shell, the pretty stone, the watch, the woolly lamb on three wheels and one wheel missing...."

"All that," she said, "is in my heart."

Matthew looked in her face and marvelled, for he saw that beside her beauty there was her power, and[Pg 272] to that he bowed himself as to a far voice. And again it was as when the bird was at his breast, but now he knew what this would be.

So they live there in Matthew's house. And a handful besides understand and toil for the fairer order. And this will come; and then that New Village, in the clear upper spaces, will hang just above every village—nay, will come down to clothe it like a garment.

When I had done,

"Peter," I said—I nearly called him Matthew!—"these are the things that Miggy does not understand. And that she will understand."

He knew. He said nothing; but he knew how it is written.

"Peter," I said, "I suppose Miggy will never have been to your house?"

I knew that she could not have been there.

"Some day soon," I said—"before you go away—ask us to come there. I should like her to sit by your table and look from your window."

For how can one be sure that divine non-interference is always divine?

Peter drew his breath long.

"Would you?" he said; "would you? So many times I've thought maybe that would make her think of me as if I was me."

[Pg 273]

Yes, that might help. If only Miggy knew how to shake hands as Elfa shook hands with Nicholas Moor, that might help, too. How did it begin, this pride of individualism in a race which does not know its own destiny save as the great relationships, human and divine, can reveal that destiny? But Peter knows! And the hope of the world is that so many do know.

Since he said his grateful good night and rushed away, I have been trying to readjust my impression of Peter. For I can no longer think of him in connection with Miggy and the cannery and my neighbour's lawn and the village. Now he is a figure ranging the ample intervals of a field fraternal to the night and to the day. Fraternal, too, to any little moon-washed area, won from the void, where it is easy to be in conference with the spirit without and within. Truly, it is as if the meaning of the universe were passioning for the comradeship of hearts that can understand.