Part 13

He was a gaunt, tall, round-shouldered, queer old fellow with a gray beard and a matted moustache, colored with the brown stain of cigarette smoke. As ugly, I thought, as ugly as--oh, Socrates. And yet with something lovable about him. And his combination of dress was certainly odd enough: a frayed, cutaway coat with extremely long tails, dripping wet and dangling cylindrically like sections of melted stovepipe; mussy, baggy old gray trousers; a blue plush waistcoat; a black, but clean muffler pinned tight up under his chin with a safety pin of the brassiest; and a broad-brimmed black slouch hat, so broad of brim that he walked forever in its shadow. This hat he kept on all the time. His hands were long and clean and white--the virile, sensitive hands of a poet, I thought. The eyes were the fascinating feature of the man. I said to myself right away, "This man is a mystic." Though they burned brightly in their sockets, they had a trick of turning abruptly dim; a sort of film or veil, closed over them. "Druid or old Celt," I murmured. "Give him a bit of mistletoe and he'd call his gods right down into my _demi-tasse_ and scare the poker game into fits."

He swallowed his whole glass of absinthe in five gulps--a performance that it would make a cow shudder to watch--threw back his head, and, with a hoarse burr, called for another. This time he spoke English; but the burr was decidedly Scotch. Pigalle now looked around at him--gross, pleasant, Provençal Pigalle--and nodded; then went on placidly shuffling the tiny cards in his great fat hands.

When the second absinthe came the old man took it slowly; settled himself back on his shoulder-blades and the tail of his spine, and pulled his hat down level with his eyes, as if he intended to spend a considerable time with us. He called for a package of French cigarettes--_cigarettes jaunes_--and proceeded to color his moustache a riper brown. "Now my adventure has knocked and come in," I thought. "If he is my adventure, I cannot help him--nor can I keep him off. He is the _primum mobile_. It is up to him."

Suddenly my ears were shocked with a sharp argument between two young fellows at the poker table. No, it was not about the game. One said something; the other shrieked his answer; the first shouted back; the second in a violent burst that had a finality about it slammed down his cards and said something curt, with a solemn rolling of his eyes.

To my amazement, the odd old fish across from me boomed out with equal violence: "_Ben trovato_!" None of them paid any attention to him.

I may have shown some of my surprise at his action, for he turned suddenly to me, and asked: "Did you understand what he said?"

I replied that I did not.

"He said, roughly translated: 'Sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour.' Yes. And it is true. Sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour, young man. There's many an artist who must--" he stopped short and began biting his finger ends.

My mind reverted to Bernhardt's film and the question about the moth. "Who must--what?" I prodded. "Content himself with this catch phrase?"

"Content himself? Damnation, no! Must feel the keener triumph in a piece of work, young man, just because it _is_ perishable." He thumped the table and breathed hard. I got the full paregoric reek of his drink. "What is this stork-legged Verlaine going to say?" I thought to myself. But he contented himself with breathing for a few moments and that odd film dropped over his eyes. "Just because the thing is ended, and dies out of men's minds almost as soon as it is ended"--he seemed to be feeling slowly for the words--"_if_ the work was right, was masterly done, there's a sort of higher joy in knowing that it triumphed--and was suddenly gone--like a sunset, like a light on the water, like a summer." He asked abruptly: "You think I have 'spiders on my ceiling'--you think I am crazy?"

"On the contrary. Can you make this clearer to me, this--?"

"My agreement that sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour?" He sipped his absinthe. "With your patience. Let me see. I can give you a favorite example of mine, about a friend of mine named Andy Gordon--something like a story?" Now in his eyes there was an eager shine.

"Go on."

"You know, my friend, I am Highland Scotch." (He pronounced it Heeland.) "I may be queer. That all depends. But don't be alarmed at the way I put things. I am not out of my head. Now this yarn about Andy Gordon. Remember," said he, tapping the table with his long white finger, and smiling at me in a charming manner, "sufficient unto eternity is the glory of the hour. By the way, that young fellow over there who said that is a violoncellist. 'Grand ducal 'cello to the imperial violin,' you know."

I reconsidered him in the wink of an eye. He is not Socrates and he is not Verlaine, I said to myself. This old lovable scarecrow is the Ancient Mariner, and he is going to hold me with his glittering eye and I am going to listen like a three years' child. The very fellow: the "skinny hand," the "long gray beard"--and doubtless, too, the true Ancient Mariner smelled of tobacco and drink. Certainly he talked poetry. And so did my old man, miraculously, almost without effort. So I sat back and listened, while he told his story.

II

Andy Gordon was for all his years a weaver in the mills at Glastonbury; just an ordinary human stick or stone, as you might call it, doing his mechanical work at the machine like a machine--until one day he drew his pay, before you could say Jack Robinson, and started off walking anywhere. He did it of a sudden and without seeming cause, but inwardly there was a pressing retraction upon his soul that told him to get away from the mechanical actualities.

He was feeling himself tired to death that day he drew his money; and, of course, he was still young. And when a young man really wants very much to die, he always comes out of that valley (at any rate, so people say) with something new in his heart. Andy walked off anywhere, just so he got to the hills.

And when he arrived at the hills, it was all very, very sweet. They were just coming light yellow and the bluebirds were there before him, touring the air just for the fun of it. And he made right away a queer discovery--he knew for the first time that New Year's is not the first day of January, at all. It's the first day of spring. Men are right silly, Andy thought, calling some dead and sodden day in mid-winter by the fancy, saucy name of New. The thing that is New, of course, is the Green. The New Year is the Green Year.

Well, he had a hunk of bread in his pocket and some onions, and a man can walk a long way upon the strength of that; so he went along up a road when he felt like it and over a hill when he felt like that. But most of the time his heart was very sad in his body and his mind took no pleasure of the bluebirds. For he was thinking that his life wasn't very much. He could see nothing in working year after year at the mill. And yet that was all he was good for (so he thought).

On and on and on walked Andy. There were parts of those hills where he walked that probably nobody, not even the Indian, ever traversed. Anything could happen there--where the woods are dark with pine or sunny with birch, and where echoes are the only memory (and they never last long). It was so far away, up in through there; as I've said, anything could happen there and we would never hear of it. All day long the cold brooks run down, brown from the juices of the hemlock bark, over browned stones--but of course they never talk and tell anything.

About noon, Andy found himself upon an old disused and overgrown road, that for years had been traveled only by rabbits and skunks and woodchucks and deer. And in a clearing at one side he saw an old log cabin which had not been lived in for years and years. There was a bit of brook at the back and an old wind-break of pine trees.

"Now I will eat a snack here," Andy said to himself, "and afterward, may God have mercy on my soul, I will lie down and nap under the pine and try to sleep off whatever it is that is bothering me."

And he did so, lying down beneath the pine--

He closed one eye gently and slowly (like letting a lid down on a box of playthings) and then he closed the other eye the same way; and then he knew nothing at all until suddenly a Voice came clap out of the blue sky, calling his name, "Andy Gordon, man! Andy Gordon!" over the hills and far.

Andy was amazed, of course, and said: "Here I am," with all his might, but without making a bit of sound (just as we all do in dreams).

"The thing the matter with you," went on the great Voice, without any introduction or anything of the sort but coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, "is that you need Work. You are tired to death with work; work-with-a-little-'w' is killing the soul out of you, Andy; work-with-a-little-'w' always does that to men, if you give it the whole chance. But that can't be helped. You're bound to have a whole lot of it in your life But--_if_ you don't mix some Big-'W' Work in with it, then indeed and indeed your life will be disastrous and your days will be dead."

Andy did not know but what he was a-dreaming, though his eyes were now wide open and he could see a robin hopping on the sod. "What is it you mean by Big-'W' Work?" he asked.

"Of course, that's the Work you love for the Work's sake. It's Work you do because you love the thing itself you're working for."

"You make that hard to understand," said Andy.

"Well, and it will be hard for people to understand _you_ when you're at that sort of Work. They know well enough what you're about as long as you turn 'em out yards of flannel down at Glastonbury, don't they?"

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Andy.

"And it would be the same way if you were a smith and turned 'em out horse shoes, or a bill clerk and turned 'em out bills. They'd understand _that_."

"Oh, yes, indeed," said Andy.

"But the trouble with that work-with-a-little-'w' is that you do it only for the pay there is in it--never for the love of it--that's why it seems to you a shame to waste your whole life at it, you know."

"Indeed it does, and that's why I'm here away from it all," said Andy.

"All very well for a while," said the Voice. "But you'll have to keep on at it somewhat--say, half your life at work-with-a-little-'w,' sitting at your machine down yonder at the mill, turning 'em out the stuff they know to be useful."

At that Andy fell silent and was sad again. Where would he find a beginning at the Big-"W" Work? he asked himself.

But the Voice seemed to know what was in his mind, and answered him: "I can give you that sort of Work. But it will take the best there is in you to do that sort of Work; and the Work will surely die as soon as you've accomplished it. And there will be no money in it for you, at all, and a great deal of pain, care and weariness. But you will find great love in your Work, and for your Work; and though it all vanishes at once you will experience so wonderful a joy that it will seem as if, night and day, God is whispering the secrets of life in your ear."

"What is the Work like?" asked Andy.

"Would you be willing to try it? Remember, it is difficult and wearying and is dead as soon as it is born."

"Yes, by glory, I would," shouted Andy.

"_Then dress this maid until you die!_" commanded the Voice.

At the words, my friend, there was music of a million armies of all sorts of birds, whistling and whirring over the green earth; and the echoes of their tremendous singing shook all the trillions of tiny new leaves and made the waves of air to dance--how shall I say?--like the waves of a sea of music running out forever.

And there, on the grass, sure enough, was a little naked baby girl just able to stand.

Very quiet, she was, and she looked up at Andy with eyes of a fairy blue--as if they'd been colored by that very same fairy that goes about with a brush coloring all the violets we ever see. (The ones we never see, you know, are never colored.)

"We-e-ell!" cried Andy, puckering up his lips and squinting up his eye-lids. "And who are you?"

"I'm early Summer," she lisped. "And I'm in a dreadful hurry. I'd like some lemon-colored silk--for a mantle, you know?--And some apple-green tassels for my hair. And please do be quick about it. I'm due, you see. So I'll be ever so much obliged if you'll only hurry."

Andy whistled ruefully. "Now, _that_ would take some weaving, miss." He hesitated. "I don't think I'm that skillful."

The little goddess looked hurriedly away over her shoulder as if she were about to depart.

"And then," Andy continued, "I have no loom up here; and no warp; and no filling. Nothing at all to work with, you see. I--"

But while he was stumbling about with his excuses, he saw the little one actually fading away before his eyes; and a pain most bitter caught at his heart, as if he were losing all his life. So he cried out:

"But I'll _try_ miss. Give me a little time, miss. Oh, please, my wee bairn. I have an old handloom of my grandfather's; and I can go and hurry and fetch all the stuff up here somehow and I'll work as fast as I can. Indeed, I'll try my best."

Whereat, you see, the babe came back to him, smiling as sweetly as early Summer ever smiled. "There really isn't such an awful hurry," she said. "We can always have Weather, you know, and hold these things back a bit."

That was the beginning of it.

Andy was about twenty-eight years old then, and he really had an awful time of it at first trying to work out by hand the wonderful stuffs and colors. There was the fern-design, spangled with Sweet William, for instance. It was only to be the edging on a shawl for her, but he spent three days and two nights on it; and then she asked him to make it over with jack-in-the-pulpit inset, because she was sure to grow tired very soon of Sweet William; then she changed her mind about jack-in-the-pulpit and decided on wintergreen berries. This is just a sample of one teeny bit of what she demanded. And Andy was very awkward; so naturally he began complaining of his shuttles being too clumsy for such fine work and the cobwebby filling getting tangled up in his thumbs and after a bit of chewing his nails in despair he swore the thing never could be done by hand.

No sooner had he got that out, than he heard the Voice roar loud like an emperor's voice and say:

"The Big-'W' Work you love to do _must_ be done by hand. It _can't_ be done any other way. That is why you were given thumbs, when the other beasts got none."

So Andy found it was no use quarreling with the tools. He looked at his hands, holding them up before him, and he thought: "Well, the Voice is right. My hands wouldn't be any good without my thumbs. I have hands and thumbs both and surely they were given me for the reason the Voice mentions. At any rate, I know no better."

That made Andy set to work all the harder, for the idea of Thumb-and-Craft was new to him; and that made his craft very interesting to him, so that he became determined to stick to it until he got the beauty out of it. (All the same, it was a frightfully backward Summer that year; and nobody--except Andy--thought very well of her.)

He found indeed that he would have to work as fast as his fingers could go. For the little Summer grew big and bigger in an amazingly short time; and she kept throwing things away as fast as she put them on just as the Voice had foretold.

Her days, though, went happily along, all full of sweet smells out of cups and umbels of flowers and from the liquor of the leaves as they steeped in the hot sun; and Andy himself felt quite happy (when he wasn't terribly interested in his Work, and then he paid attention to nothing at all save what was between his thumb and forefinger). But while he worked and the Summer danced or dozed and grew before him, he noticed something he had never noticed until then--As the Summer grew older, she kept asking him for darker blues. While she was little she had liked light greens, but week by week as time went on she insisted more and more that he put in plenty of blue.

"Bluer and bluer," muttered Andy, and a wee shot of pain hit his heart. "Yes, it's bluer and bluer, all right, I know. And finally some day 'twill all be steel-blue everywhere--in the snow-drifts and in the skies--and neither the lass nor I will be here then."

Well may you believe that the departing of that first Summer was a sad matter to him. He had done his best, you see, and a whole new world of trying had been thrown open to him. And really he was beginning to get the knack of that kind of weaving. And she was a fine big apple-cheeked woman now, and--

"Well, if I do say it myself," growled Andy, "she looks very handsome in those dresses; and for the first time in my life I take a Pride in my Work."

But in spite of all that the Voice came, you must know, and told him this little dream-girl must die, and there would be another, a different little girl next year; and all the weaving must be gone through with again.

"Shall I be weaving this lass her shroud?" asked Andy of the Voice.

But the Voice did not answer him.

When Andy told all this to _her_, his first Summer cried for a whole week in amongst the trees and over the pastures and meadows--

And then one morning, she was no longer there.

Andy sat in the doorway of the cabin and stared across the hills. He saw pine trees, ever green, and he made up his mind she had not died but had gone into one of them so as to live forever. And then he fell to thinking how there were so many millions of pine trees, and he guessed to himself how each of the millions of Summers we have had must have gone into one of those trees so as never to die but to be always of the Green Folk, ever green. Well, he rocked back and forth keening soft to himself, when he happened to hear the Voice again and the Voice said:

"You must see by now, Andy, it's just as I told you. You've no money now, have you? You have spent it all, buying stuff to weave her garments from. And she has worn the garments and has thrown them away; so there is nothing left. Nothing left except the joy of good work well done, and the feeling that God has really whispered in your ear. Now you'll have to go back down to Glastonbury and the work with-the-little-'w.' You'll have to stay there through the winter, Andy, and save your pay. But when the time comes again, I'll call you."

So Andy put a padlock on the old log cabin where his loom was set up and went back down to the mill-town. And being as he was a clever man, he was put back on his job right away. And the gray mists of winter packed down on the gray town and on the little gray people in the town. And Andy worked at his machine.

The next spring he got the call, just as the Voice had said he would. He drew his pay and, now that he knew a bit of what was required of him, he laid in a fair supply of what he should need. Then he was off into the hills. And one day there came the birds riding up on the winds like cavaliers with feathers dancing about; and when they began their keen bugling it pierced here and there and everywhere and made the walls of Winter to tumble down the same as Jericho's did. And sure enough, there a new babe teetered on her toes in the midst of the grass. Naked as a flower she was, and she smiled up at him.

So he wove for her with the lightest heart you can ever imagine. But, afterward, she went away in tears, the same as the other had done and as all Summers do; and Andy picked out a new pine tree and guessed she was keeping it green.

"Shall I be weaving _this_ lass her shroud?" he had asked again. But again the Voice had made no answer.

So, naturally, the Summers came and came; and Andy wove and Worked and clad them. In time he became, as you may well believe, the finest hand-weaver (of Summer things, I mean) that was on earth in his day. He became so good at his hand-work that in winter, at the mill, he was actually clumsy at his machine! So it was just 'tother way round, as you see, from what it was when he started. He was so clumsy then with his hands that he thought everything had to be done by machine you remember. But now he could outdo with his mortal hands anything that was ever done by machine.

And another queer thing happened to him; he got so he had a totally different idea of what work was. For his mates down in Glastonbury told him, "You work only during the winter, don't you?"

Whereas, he found himself answering: "Why, no. 'Tis just the other way around. I can work only during the summer. I can't work at all during the winter. I'm dead all winter long--like all the Green Things." Then his comrades spoke wildly of him and touched their heads. They had learned the American idea, you see. Andy was crazy and he was lazy; and he didn't know when he had a good job; and there was no money in loafing. And all that sort of thing.