The uttermost star : and other gleams of fancy

Part I Chap

I. THE SIGNAL-BOX .

II. THE UTTERMOST STAR .

III. PICKING UP THE PILE LIGHT

IV. MARJORIE V. CAMOUFLAGE

VI. THE WHALER VII. A BOX OF PERFUME VIII. SLIPPERS IX. THE MISER OF MURDSTONE CREEK X. THE SECRET .

XI. MARY GOLDING

PAGE

38 48

89 100

no

Part II

I. DRIFTING APART .

II. THE WILL-o'-THE-WISP

III. THE doctor's CONVERSION

IV. HEATHER AND BLUEBELLS V. THE VILLAGE GREEN

VI. THE SIEVE .

. 123

. 144 . 156 , 167 . 180

Contents

Part III Chap

II. THE FOUR IDOLS .

III. HIS WORSHIP THE MAYOR

IV. THE LANTERN IN THE LANE V. THE HOLLY-TREE .

VI. RIFTS OF BLUE VII. A DIVIDED DIACONATE .

VIII. WHEN THE TIDE TURNS

BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

An author putting the finishing touches to his manuscript and writing his Introduction resembles a hostess preparing to receive her guests. For weeks she has been engaged in making the most careful preparations for their entertainment. Now the evening has arrived; her great hour has come; she is about to take up her position at the door. Her anxious eye wanders restlessly over the polished floors, the pictured walls, the cosy chairs, the faultless tables — everything. She sees that every flower is showing to the best advantage; that every noble vase and marble statuette is in its place; and that every lamp is casting its softest, loveliest glow.

But what is that? The sound of wheels! They draw up at the gate ! Throw the doors wide open ! The first guests are arriving !

Welcome! a thousand welcomes! If those who accept the hospitality of these pages find in them half the pleasure that their preparation has afforded me, I shall count myself the happiest of hosts.

FRANK W. BOREHAM.

Armadale, Melbourne, Australia, Easter, 1919.

Part I The Signal-box

When I was a small boy in my Kentish home, I was occasionally missing — even at meal-times. As the years wore on, the alarm created by these mysterious disappearances of mine gradually subsided, not by reason of any dwindling value or importance attached to my person, but simply because a very shrewd conjecture could be formed as to my whereabouts. For at the foot of our garden, separated from it by a high bank, which was itself a romantic wilderness of blackberries, ran the railway. And just beside the railway line, not more than a hundred yards from the bottom of the garden, was the signal-box. Few things delighted me more than to spend an hour in that old signal-box. It was close to the mouth of the tunnel. I loved to hear the bell go ring-a-ting-ting when the train entered the tunnel on the far side, and to watch for its emergence on our side. It seemed to me positively uncanny that the signalman could tell by all these clanging tokens just where all the trains were. I liked to see him swing the great levers backwards and forwards, pulling the signals up and down, and at night-time lo The Uttermost Star

causing the green and red lights to shine from the tall signal-posts. As I sat beside his great roaring fire on winter evenings, and saw him stop the trains or let them pass, just as he pleased, I thought he must surely be one of the most important men in the country. I could scarcely imagine that the Prime Minister had greater authority or responsibility. And I remember, as clearly as though it were yesterday, that I used to sit on the stool beside that fire — face in hands and elbows on knees — wondering if I might hope, one great day, to attain to the glory of being a signalman. And, surely enough, I have !

For I have come to see, as the days have gone by, that we humans are expert and inveterate signalmen. We have a perfect genius for concocting mysterious codes; we revel in flashing out cryptic heliograms; we glory in receiving occult messages. We even communicate in this abstruse and recondite fashion with our own selves. A man will twist a piece of string round his finger, or tie a knot in the corner of his pocket-handkerchief, or stick a scrap of stamp-paper on the face of his watch, to remind him of something that has nothing whatever to do with string or handkerchief or stamp-paper. It is his secret code, and in the terms of that code this inveterate signalman is signalling to himself, that is all !

Moreover, we not only signal to ourselves, but we are fascinated by the spectacle of other people signalling to themselves. A novel becomes invested

The Signal-Boz n

with a new interest when its plot suddenly turns upon the weird phenomena of a witch's cavern or the mysterious ritual of a gipsy camp. By means of her viper, her owl, her toad, her cauldron, her tripod, her herbs, and all the rest of it, the withered crone in the dimly lighted cave is signalling to herself from morning to night; by means of the crossed sticks where the roads fork the gipsies leave tokens for themselves and each other. Many a man will wear a charm hanging round his neck, or suspended to his watch-chain, of which nobody knows the significance but himself. Luther went down to his grave without revealing even to his wife the meaning of the five mystic initials that he had carved over the portal of his house. They are, he explained, the initials of five German words; but what those words were he alone knew. The signals stand to this day over the portal ; the code was locked up in the great reformer's breast, and, deposited there, it descended with him to his tomb.

Henrik Ibsen, too, the great Norwegian dramatist, kept on his writing-table a small ivory tray containing a number of grotesque figures, a wooden bear, a tiny devil, two or three cats — one of them playing a fiddle — and some rabbits. T never write a single line of any of my dramas,' Ibsen used to say, 'without having that tray and its occupants before me on my table. I could not write without them. But why I use them and how, this is my own secret.' Here was a great and brilliant thinker happy in being able to flash covert messages to himself by a code which no one but himself ever knew ! I instance these — the witch's cavern, the gipsy's ritual, the reformer's portal, and the dramatist's tray — to show that our passion for signalling is so ingrained and deep-seated that, if we cannot satisfy it in cryptic communication with others, we atone for the deficiency by signalling to ourselves.

After all, there is but one really universal language. It was spoken in the world's first morning, and men will still be speaking it when they are startled by the shocks of doom. It was the language of the Stone Age, and it will be the language of the Golden Age. It is spoken all the world over by men of all kinds, classes, colours, and conditions; and if either Mars or the moon is really inhabited, it is spoken there too. The little child speaks it before he is able to lisp one single word of our clumsier dictionary speech ; and the aged speak it long after the palsied lip has lost its utterance. It is equally intelligible to the English merchant on the London market, to the Indian trapper in the Western forests, to the Chinese mandarin in the far interior of Asia, to the South Sea Islander basking in the rays of an equatorial sun, and to the Eskimo in his frozen hut amidst the blinding whiteness of the icy North. It is known even to the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; they understand it, and sometimes even speak it. The universal language is the language of gesture. The shrug of the shoulders; the

The Signal-Boz 13

flash of the eye; the knitting of the brows; the curling of the Hp; the stamping of the foot; the clenching of the fist; the nodding of the head; the pointing of the hand, — here is a language which is known to every one. It has no alphabet, no grammar, and no syntax ; but the simplest can understand it. Indeed, the simplest understand it best. The savage is a master of gesture. He speaks with every nerve and muscle. And the little child is no less eloquent. Playing with her doll on the floor behind my chair is a small scrap of humanity who has as yet uttered no word that a lexicographer would recognize. And yet it would be absurd to say that she has not spoken. Her pushings and pullings, her beckonings and pointings, her smilings and poutings, are as expressive as anything in any of your vocabularies. She has found a speech for which the builders of Babel sighed in vain — a speech that can be understood by men and women of every nation under heaven. It is the language of signals.

We are living in a universe that is constantly trying to talk. It does not understand any of your artificial or manufactured languages — your Hebrew or Greek or Latin; your English or German or French — but it understands the universal language, the language of gestures, the language of signals. *The air,' says Emerson, *is full of sounds, the sky of tokens; the ground is all memoranda and signatures ; and every object is covered over with hints which speak to the intelligent.' The stars above my head are signalling ; the astronomer masters the code and reads the secrets of the universe. The stones that I tread beneath my feet are signalling ; the geologist unravels the code and interprets the romance of ages.

All Nature is one intricate system of signals, as any naturalist will tell you. Let Richard Jefferies speak for them all. In discussing the birds that shelter in the ivy under his gable, he says that often a robin or a wren will pounce upon a caterpillar whilst the grub is still concealed among the grass. How is it done? It is all a matter of signals. *The bird's eyes, ever on the watch for food, learn to detect the slightest indication of its presence. Slugs, caterpillars, and such creatures, in moving among the grass, cause a slight agitation of the grassblades; they lift up a leaf by crawling under it, or depress it with their weight by getting on it. This enables the bird to detect their presence, even when quite hidden by the herbage, experience having taught it that, when grass is moved by the wind, broad patches sway simultaneously, whilst, when an insect or caterpillar is the agent, only a single leaf or blade is stirred.' The birds learn the code and readily interpret the signals. Those who live near to Nature soon acquire the same habit. The poetry of the countryside abounds with rhymes and couplets that are, after all, only expositions of Nature's signals.

When elm leaves are as big as a shilling,

You may sow French beans if you be willing.

The Signal-Boz 15

What is this but the interpretation of the code? The whispering elm leaves are the farmer's signalflags. The universe, like the baby on my study floor, is always pathetically trying to talk to me; and the pity of it is that I am so slow to understand.

The language of signals is, I have shown, the one universal language. That is why, when man has something really great to say, he says it, not audibly, but visibly. The lover abandons the dictionary; he can say what he wishes to say so much more expressively by means of signals, A look; a pressure of the hand; a ring; a kiss, — what vocabulary could compare with a code like this? And it is a code that is comprehended in every nation under heaven. Or what man could express in so many words all that he feels, when, for example, he waves his country's flag? *Have not I,' Carlyle makes Herr Teufelsdrockh inquire, *have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crow's meat for a piece of glazed cotton which they call their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen ? Did not the whole Hungarian nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown, an implement, as was sagaciously observed, in size and commercial value little differing from a horseshoe ? It is in and through symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being; those ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can the best recognize symbolic worth and prize it the highest. For is not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the Godlike?* When, that is to say, man has something really great to say he says it by some mute sign or silent symbol. Similarly, when God has something to say to the Jew alone. He may perhaps cause His messenger to say it in the Hebrew tongue ; but when He has something to say to all men everywhere, He always speaks the universal language, the language of gesture and symbol and sign. He speaks to the universal heart by means of the Ark, the Scapegoat, the Passover, the Mercy Seat, the Serpent in the Wilderness, the Cities of Refuge. Such signs need no translation; they speak to men of every clime and time. In the New Testament the same principle holds true.

He talked of lilies, vines, and corn,

The sparrow and the raven, And tales so natural, yet so wise,

Were on men's hearts engraven.

And yeast and bread and flax and cloth,

And eggs and fish and candles ; See, how the whole familiar world

He most divinely handles.

When God has something really vital to say to man. He says it in a language that requires no translation or interpretation. He says it in a way that all men can comprehend. *The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.' All

The Signal-Box 17

men everywhere can see the awful and profound significance of such a signal. A man may be unable to grasp the doctrine of the Atonement; but where is the heart that does not respond to the Vision of the Cross ?

We are inveterate signalmen. We begin to make signals as soon as we crawl from our cradles ; we are still making them when tottering down to our graves.

*It may be, master/ said Richard Bannatyne, John Knox's faithful serving-man, *it may be that you will still be able to recognize my voice after you have become oblivious to every other sight and sound. When you are apparently unconscious, I shall bend over you and ask if you have still the hope of glory. Will you promise, if you are able to give me some signal, that you will do so ?'

The old reformer made the promise, and, a few days later, turned into his room to die.

Grim in his deep death-anguish the stern old champion lay, And the locks upon his pillow were floating thin and grey, And, visionless and voiceless, with quick and labouring breath, He waited for his exit through life's dark portal, death.

'Hast thou the hope of glory ?' They bowed to catch the thrill That through some languid token might be responsive still, Nor watched they long nor waited for some obscure reply. He raised a clay-cold finger and pointed to the sky.

So the death-angel found him, what time his brow he bent, To give the struggling spirit a sweet enfranchisement.

So the death-angel left him, what time earth's bonds were

riven, The cold, stark, stiffening finger still pointing up to heaven.

It is a great thing when the signalman's last signals are as unequivocal as that.

II

I HAVE been on a visit to the uttermost star. You will search all your learned astronomical volumes in vain for any reference to such a sphere. No observatory has descried it; it never swam into the field of even the most powerful telescope. The fact is that I discovered it myself. I was longing one day for a bird's-eye view of the universe. You do not get a satisfactory conception of the architecture of a cathedral by attending evening worship. You must see the glorious structure in the daytime and from a distance. Similarly, you do not know the universe till you have seen it from afar. You cannot see things in their right perspective. A sparrow on a housetop looks as big as a star in the sky. Tf,' I said to myself that morning, *if only I could get right away from all the worlds, and if only I could view the universe from some point out beyond the universe, I should be able to compile a new standard of values. The little things that seem large because they are so near at hand will all vanish, and I shall know what those things are that still stand bravely out when everything else is lost in the infinite distance.'

And so I set out on my breathless flight. I cannot tell you how far I went. In a second or two I lost sight of the houses and the trees; in another I could no longer distinguish between the mountains and the plains. When next I glanced over my shoulder, the sea and the dry land were all as one. I could not tell where the one ended and the other began. And a moment later I had some difficulty in identifying the earth at all. I left the sun and the moon behind me before I paused for the first time ; and I paused many and many a time before I reached my journey's end. At last the space before me was one vast unbroken void. All the whirling globes were circling behind me. I went on and on, day after day, through nothing but one boundless and terrific wilderness of solitude.

And then, just as I was thinking of taking my observations and returning, I found a new world! It was a lonely little world, a kind of astral outpost; the Ultima Thule of all the stellar systems. There it hung, poised in space, on the fringe of a vacant infinity! And there I paused. From the shores of this prodigal planet I surveyed the distant universe. There was something weirdly fantastic in seeing that universe, not as my dwelling-place enfolding me, but as a remote object on a far horizon. And what could I see of it? What were the things that stood clearly out, now that all the details were obscured? Of all the myriad objects that confused my sight when I dwelt upon the earth, I could now see clearly only two things.

I had a vision of wondrous harmony! All things kept their course in perfect and glorious unity. There was no clash, no confusion, no discord anywhere. This, surely, was what the patriarch meant when he said that the morning stars sang together! This, surely, was what the poet meant when he wrote of the music of the spheres! Out here, on the shores of the uttermost star, I was listening to the melodies of the universe; the song of the morning stars; the music of the spheres!

And I had a vision of wondrous light! The only other thing that I could see was that the universe was luminous. Some of the worlds, I had noticed in passing, were blazing in appalling splendours of their own ; others were dead and cold, yet reflecting in their very barrenness the fierce glare that fell upon them from their brilliant neighbours. But at this distance I could not distinguish between the worlds that shone with a borrowed radiance and those that flamed with a lustre of their own. All that I could see was that the universe was all alight. Every world twinkled, glittered, burned, and shone !

Harmony — perfect, ceaseless, unbroken!

Light — soft, resplendent, beautiful!

These were the only things that were still discernible as I surveyed the universe from this lonely outpost. These, therefore, are the two greatest things upon it.

II

I have been on a visit to the Orient. And one memorable afternoon, when the sky was a vault of cloudless blue and all the earth was fair, I found myself wandering aimlessly but joyously among the soft green Syrian hills. I sat down on the side of a grassy knoll and feasted my eyes on the quiet beauty of this idyllic scene. Not many yards below me a little stream flowed gently past the foot of the sloping hillside and meandered through the silent valley. There was no laughter in its waters; they moved slowly and peacefully on. Reeds and rushes grew plentifully along its banks. All at once I realized that I was not alone. I heard first the bleating of sheep, and then, a little later, human footsteps. A shepherd came round the curve of the knoll, sauntering slowly, with his flock following at his heels. He was leading them down through the green pastures to the still waters. He did not notice me ; his attention seemed to be fastened on the reeds flourishing beside the stream. When he reached them he began to look about, examining them with a critical eye. One, a tall one, was bent, and drooped towards him. The sheep may have broken it in browsing there the day before; or perhaps a gust of wind had caught it. Anyway, it was broken. With a rough hand he snatched at it; looked it up and down disdainfully; doubled it at the point at which it was damaged before; and tossed it out on to the gently moving waters. Then he cut for himself another reed, a sturdier one, without flaw or fault of any kind. And as he led his flock gently along the banks of the stream, watching the poor broken reed floating away on the sluggish current, he worked away with deft and practised fingers, and out of the faultless reed he fashioned for himself a flute. And when it was finished he put it to his lips, and, lo, the sweet, clear music filled all that peaceful valley !

Harmony! It was a vision of Harmony!

When he paused to take breath and to look around upon his flock, I rose and approached him. Until then he had been unconscious of my presence. I sat sometimes talking with him and sometimes listening to the soft, sweet strains of his flute, until the approach of sunset reminded us that it was time to be moving. I walked with him up to the fold. The sheep appeared to resent my presence, and did not follow so closely at his heels as on their way down the valley earlier in the day. I watched him as he counted them and secured them for the night. And then he took me to his shepherd-hut some distance up the hillside. It was dusk by the time we reached it. He took down a lamp from the shelf and lit it. It was an odd little lamp, shaped like a tiny urn, and the wick protruded from the spout. It smoked horribly. He had gone to the back of the hut for some sticks with which to Hght his fire. When he returned and found the place reeking with the evil odour of the smoke, he was angry with the lamp, and, lighting another, he blew this one out and flung it unceremoniously back to the shelf. The second lamp burned beautifully; the fire blazed up; and all the room was bright.

Light! It was a vision of Light!

After awhile the shepherd walked with me up the valley to my temporary home. It was a glorious starlit night : such a night as only the Orient knows. I bade him good-night at the door; and we parted. He went back to his hut and to his fold. I, tired out, went straight to bed. And that night I dreamed.

I dreamed of the broken reed, crushed and crumpled in the shepherd's hands, that I had seen floating away on the stream.

And I dreamed of the lamp, the smoking lamp, extinguished so ruthlessly by the shepherd's hand, that I had seen thrown in disdain back to the shelf.

Ill

I have been on a visit to the Land of Long Ago. In a trice I crossed wellnigh thirty centuries. I found myself in old Jerusalem. And near the Beautiful Gate of the Temple I saw a crowd gathered together. And with wild, seraphic fire a prophet was addressing them. *He is coming!' he cried. 'He is coming ! The King is coming ! The

Redeemer is coming! The Messiah is coming! He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall He not break, and the smoking lamp shall He not quench — '

I was so startled that I hurried back across the centuries and sat down in this quiet study of mine to think.

*A bruised reed shall He not break !' I thought of the reed, crumpled in the shepherd's hand, that I had seen floating on that Syrian stream.

*A smoking lamp shall He not quench!' I thought of the lamp tossed in contempt upon the shepherd's shelf.

What could it mean? What could it mean?

IV

And then I saw what it all meant. The shepherd's way is the easy way. He snatches at the bruised reed, crushes it, and tosses it away on to the moving waters. And he takes another that has never been bruised, and from it he draws his melodies. He flings the smoking lamp back to the shelf and takes a new and faultless one, and from it he gets the light that fills his home with brightness. Anybody could do that. But the Good Shepherd of whom the prophet speaks takes the hard way. With infinite pity and infinite patience He works away at the bruised reed until from it He woos the eternal harmonies. With infinite pity and infinite patience

He trims and cleans the smoking lamp until from it He draws the light that never was on sea or shore.

The bruised reed! The bruised reed represents the things that have never been of any use; the things that are marred in the making. From the bruised reed He gets His choicest harmony !

The smoking lamp! The smoking lamp represents the things that have been useful, but have lost the usefulness they had. Once luminous, they have become loathsome; once shining, they now smoke. From the smoking lamp He gets His clearest light!

From the bruised reed — Harmony!

From the smoking lamp — Light!

And Harmony and Light, as I saw from the shores of the uttermost star, are the two greatest things in the universe.

Ill

To passengers below — dressing in the cabins or breakfasting in the saloon — the measured and rhythmic throb of the engines was the only indication that the great ship was in motion. After a smooth and uneventful run across the Bass Straits, the Loongana was gliding swiftly across the broad, unruffled waters of Port Philip Bay. In an hour's time we confidently hoped to be greeting friends ashore. But just then, to our profound disappointment, the unexpected happened. Right ahead of us a long, low, leaden bank of fog lay languidly across the waters, blotting out all trace of land. The Loongana pushed her bows straight into it, and in a few minutes we could scarcely see the vessel's length in any direction. Clouds of grey, misty vapour drifted to and fro; and nothing was visible to us but a narrow circle of sea. The bells in the engine-room rang out sharply, communicating to the powerful turbines below the will of the officer high up on the bridge. The ship perceptibly slackened her pace. The bells rang out again, and the ship moved still more slowly. She simply crawled. Her loud and raucous syren proclaimed to all the craft in the vicinity her sure approach. Every few minutes great, ghostly ships, lying at anchor, sprang suddenly out of the mist. We were almost up to them before we saw their tall and shadowy masts looming spectrally above us. More ringing of bells, and the engines stopped altogether. Then, after a pause, we crept cautiously forward again, like a man groping his way in the dark. The apparitions that came suddenly upon us, and that as suddenly vanished again, were all of them the ghosts of things movable. From not one of them could we glean any sure knowledge as to our exact position. Here is a clumsy old dredge; there lies a tall ship riding at anchor; yonder is a snorting little motor-boat. But nothing fixed; nothing stable; nothing reliable. We are whelmed in uncertainty. A little later came the change which I have set out to describe ; but at this stage we were enveloped in the haze and surrounded by objects from which our position could not with confidence be reckoned.

Such an experience has three perils. There is the danger of getting into shallow water and going aground; there is the danger of running down some other vessel; and there is the danger of being ourselves run down. All three of these disasters are fairly common. I fancy I have noticed that the people who get into the shallows of life, and become stranded there, are invariably people who were getting on very rapidly without being quite certain of their course. Although the horizon was by no means clear, and no fixed objects stood bravely out to guide them, they found a certain exhilaration in continuing at topmost speed. Unhappily, in such cases, the exhilaration does not last ; there is nothing particularly exhilarating in being stuck in the mud ! And, worse still, there is certainly nothing very exhilarating in being fast on a jagged reef! In either of these situations, a ship becomes a misery to herself and a menace to all the craft around her.