The Crock of Gold by James Stephens (simple ebook reader txt) 📖

by there was a house of rugged stone. Long years ago it had been a castle, and, even now, though patched by time and misfortune its front was warlike and frowning. While he sat a young woman came along the road and stood gazing earnestly at this house. Her hair was as black as night and as smooth as still water, but her face came so stormily forward that her quiet attitude had yet no quietness in it. To her, after a few moments, the Philosopher spoke.

“Girl,” said he, “why do you look so earnestly at the house?”

The girl turned her pale face and stared at him.

“I did not notice you sitting under the tree,” said she, and she came slowly forward.

“Sit down by me,” said the Philosopher, “and we will talk. If you are in any trouble tell it to me, and perhaps you will talk the heaviest part away.”

“I will sit beside you willingly,” said the girl, and she did so.

“It is good to talk trouble over,” he continued. “Do you know that talk is a real thing? There is more power in speech than many people conceive. Thoughts come from God, they are born through the marriage of the head and the lungs. The head moulds the thought into the form of words, then it is borne and sounded on the air which has been already in the secret kingdoms of the body, which goes in bearing life and come out freighted with wisdom. For this reason a lie is very terrible, because it is turning mighty and incomprehensible things to base uses, and is burdening the life-giving element with a foul return for its goodness; but those who speak the truth and whose words are the symbols of wisdom and beauty, these purify the whole world and daunt contagion. The only trouble the body can know is disease. All other miseries come from the brain, and, as these belong to thought, they can be driven out by their master as unruly and unpleasant vagabonds; for a mental trouble should be spoken to, confronted, reprimanded and so dismissed. The brain cannot afford to harbour any but pleasant and eager citizens who will do their part in making laughter and holiness for the world, for that is the duty of thought.”

While the Philosopher spoke the girl had been regarding him steadfastly.

“Sir,” said she, “we tell our hearts to a young man and our heads to an old man, and when the heart is a fool the head is bound to be a liar. I can tell you the things I know, but how will I tell you the things I feel when I myself do not understand them? If I say these words to you ‘I love a man’ I do not say anything at all, and you do not hear one of the words which my heart is repeating over and over to itself in the silence of my body. Young people are fools in their heads and old people are fools in their hearts, and they can only look at each other and pass by in wonder.”

“You are wrong,” said the Philosopher. “An old person can take your hand like this and say, ‘May every good thing come to you, my daughter.’ For all trouble there is sympathy, and for love there is memory, and these are the head and the heart talking to each other in quiet friendship. What the heart knows to-day the head will understand to-morrow, and as the head must be the scholar of the heart it is necessary that our hearts be purified and free from every false thing, else we are tainted beyond personal redemption.”

“Sir,” said the girl, “I know of two great follies-they are love and speech, for when these are given they can never be taken back again, and the person to whom these are given is not any richer, but the giver is made poor and abashed. I gave my love to a man who did not want it. I told him of my love, and he lifted his eyelids at me; that is my trouble.”

For a moment the Philosopher sat in stricken silence looking on the ground. He had a strange disinclination to look at the girl although he felt her eyes fixed steadily on him. But in a little while he did look at her and spoke again.

“To carry gifts to an ungrateful person cannot be justified and need not be mourned for. If your love is noble why do you treat it meanly? If it is lewd the man was right to reject it.”

“We love as the wind blows,” she replied.

“There is a thing,” said the Philosopher, “and it is both the biggest and the littlest thing in the world.”

“What is that?” said the girl.

“It is pride,” he answered. “It lives in an empty house. The head which has never been visited by the heart is the house pride lives in. You are in error, my dear, and not in love. Drive out the knave pride, put a flower in your hair and walk freely again.”

The girl laughed, and suddenly her pale face became rosy as the dawn and as radiant and lovely as a cloud. She shed warmth and beauty about her as she leaned forward.

“You are wrong,” she whispered, “because he does love me; but he does not know it yet. He is young and full of fury, and has no time to look at women, but he looked at me. My heart knows it and my head knows it, but I am impatient and yearn for him to look at me again. His heart will remember me to-morrow, and he will come searching for me with prayers and tears, with shouts and threats. I will be very hard to find to-morrow when he holds out his arms to the air and the sky, and is astonished and frightened to find me nowhere. I will hide from him to-morrow, and frown at him when he speaks, and turn aside when he follows me: until the day after to-morrow when he will frighten me with his anger, and hold me with his furious hands, and make me look at him.”

Saying this the girl arose and prepared to go away.

“He is in that house,” said she, “and I would not let him see me here for anything in the world.”

“You have wasted all my time,” said the Philosopher, smiling.

“What else is time for?” said the girl, and she kissed the Philosopher and ran swiftly down the road.

She had been gone but a few moments when a man came out of the grey house and walked quickly across the grass. When he reached the hedge separating the field from the road he tossed his two arms in the air, swung them down, and jumped over the hedge into the roadway. He was a short, dark youth, and so swift and sudden were his movements that he seemed to look on every side at the one moment although he bore furiously to his own direction.

The Philosopher addressed him mildly.

“That was a good jump,” said he.

The young man spun around from where he stood, and was by the Philosopher’s side in an instant.

“It would be a good jump for other men,” said he, “but it is only a little jump for me. You are very dusty, sir; you