CHAPTER XXV
Clink of metals striking together, hammer sound, sound of the wheel,sound of the fed furnace, sound of voices among metals. Diccon Dawn,worker in rich metals with Jankin to help and a boy to help Jankin. Allday were voices in the long room, footsteps to and fro, sound of thecraft. Richard Englefield beginning again to make beautiful things.
As he worked he saw a lace-maker. Rich and beautiful lace.
He saw Wander forest, he saw the ruined farm, he saw Middle Forest, theprison there and the house by the river.
He worked from dawn to dusk. Work,--let some ease come that way! He wasartist at work and some lightening came. One must love all.
The nights at first brought him long and faintly terrible dreams. Hecould not remember them in sequence, but some had horror and some hadbeauty, and now and again his brain caught from them small, vividpictures.
Then, one night, he saw, half he thought in dream and half not indream, a furnace and seated within it a man with a hammer and an anvil,and on the anvil a man, and they were both the one man, only the manwith the hammer was the greater in aspect.
Work, work, and at last, after terrible dreams, pray! But no setprayers, only a wild cry upward to the man with the hammer.
The street lay baked clay under the sun, the street darkened beneathcloud. Rain poured down, cleansing and sweetening, making brooks ofgutters, pattering and driving, singing the clean and the fresh,turning when out came the sun into uncounted glistening or rainboworbs. Wind swept the street, a great bellows quickening life. Fog stolein, and the familiar became a foreigner, strange, remote, chill; surelythe world was dying! Then came the sun, and the world was not dying.
He went to Old Anchor. The street of half ruinous houses was filledwith a crowd of voices of sea-going and from-sea-returning folk. Awoman with a child told him where to find her. She sat with bobbins inher hand, at a lace pillow. “Thou’rt pale! Weave, weave like this allday long!”
“So I buy bread. I do well.”
“So wretched a place! Morgen, come to my house. Richard and AliceDawn--brother and sister.”
“No--no!”
They talked, they parted. Old Anchor and Thames side and street ofthe smiths. That night, lying awake, suddenly he saw her life; hepassed into a calm and wide and lifted moment and saw it spread fromchildhood. Seeing so, it appeared his own experience,--not appeared,but was. Something like a great shutter closed upon that moment, thenthere opened another as wide and as deep. Space, there was space! “Ihave standing and moving room again!”
After a week he went once more to Old Anchor. “Morgen, I betterunderstand your life and my life. This place harms you. Come into thesmiths’ street and to the house where I am and where there is all room.We have need to be together and to learn together.”
“No--no!”
Again he went away. The next day, suddenly, while he was turning inhis hands a bar of silver, his thoughts for a moment ran gold. He wasback with a certain day in his stone workroom at Silver Cross and hewas making a cup for Abbot Mark to give to a bishop. The great picturewas in his thoughts, the Blessed among women. There were rolling fieldsand the villages of Palestine. Palestine? Everywhere she was, she waseverywhere! That day had been two years ago. Now again to-day he sawthat everywhere she was, that she was everywhere. Everywhere! In allrealms, upper and lower, afar and near, great and small. Everywhere.Who had hurt her? No one and nothing. Naught!
Who had hurt him? No one.
That night he saw a great thorny field and two wanderers. Each had agreat burden on his shoulders and each a staff. There seemed a path ofpilgrimage. And now one came full upon it and pursued it and now theother. But they were not together, and there seemed a desolateness.Each fell away into the thorns and came again with toil. The mistclosed all away. Again Richard Englefield prayed. “If it be in God thatwe are together--”
Night passed, day passed. Night again in the street of the smiths. Alight through the window, a cry in the street, a bell that leaped intoclanging. Fire! Fire!
Diccon Dawn hurrying on clothing, went with the rest. It seemed to beon the water side and to the eastward,--a great fire. When they cameto the Thames they saw that it was a stretch of old buildings, a mazewhere the poor lived, together with seafaring folk. So joined were thehouses that it might be one, or they might be ten. Old Anchor--OldAnchor!
The sky was murk and flame, any face might be read; the fire-oceanleaped in breakers, roared, licked up and sucked under. All the air wassound, all the bells were ringing, all the heart was bursting. MiddleForest! A heap of fagots by town cross.
Old Anchor, and many heroic things done that night by men and women andchildren. But a man, a goldsmith, entered farthest, endured longest,brought forth in his arms whom he had gone to seek, out of the heartof it. “Is she dead? No! Dead with the smoke, and fire has touchedher arms and her breast and her sides. Who is she? The man’s sister.Where will he take her? He will carry her through the street to hishouse. Diccon Dawn, a goldsmith. He will nurse her there--oh, tenderly,tenderly.”
It was so.
He nursed here there, oh, tenderly, and she came back to life and tostrength through much suffering.
“It hurts? I would that I could take that!”
“Oh, aye, it hurts sore! But I will keep it and bear it and see itchange.”
“So much more I know about thee than I used to know! Thou hastcourage.”
“So much more I know of thee. Thou hast strength, patience. If I moanwith the pain, it helps me to utter it.”
“See thou, it is meant for us to be together.”