THE KEEPER OF THE HOUSE

Waikato Times, Volume 98, Issue 16096, 20 September 1924, Page 11 (Supplement)

THE KEEPER OF THE HOUSE

SHADOWS THAT OVERSHADOW. (By Darius.) What is the meaning of this Fear that comes to us all at times, making of the fleshly tabernacle a gloomy and ghost-haunted house ringed about with morose and gloomy pines and moaning cypresses, between which the air moves like a slow, chill current, and into which the midnight stars glance eerily, and move on, making way for the curious and following multitude? Were I closely wedded to a belief in mundane re-incarnations, I should certainly' arraign myself for some remote or recent manslaughter, ■■ which has gone uriconfessed, undiscovered, and unpunished, down the backward-look-ing vistas of the centuries. It is said that want may come as an armed man, but Fear comes as a foul and hispid shape—apish, gibbering, monstrously unshapen, clawed and' fanged with bared and 'ready Terror. The first faint, nervous thrill of fear comes to us, I believe, from the bearing mother-flesh. Even in that dim and holy chamber of the living body, shadow is overshadowed with presaging shades, ,etching the law, "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly ' upward." In the consuming draught of physical combustion all his being goes up finally as if in smoke —a murkiness ending in invisibility.' 0 Death and Life, how inextricably art thou in mysterious fellowship, and how closely accompanied by the Keeper of the House, Impervious to thrust or blow through< armour of invulnerable bodiless-nothingness.

Uncreated and Inherent.

•■ In the first dream of the first sleep, ere the eyes have opened without any wonder upon the great array of material things, they behold the phantom Fear, and plaintive whimperings of begotten being acknowledge his dominion. • The first toddling footsteps of the adventuring body are made between Love and Fear, and daily as the love-bequeathed human document strives to express itself in action, the touch extended trustfully is withdrawn at the reproof of pain, the agent of the Remorseless One. No matter how cloistered the white soul may he,,- there, shall spring upon it from some wayside covert the Spectral Thing. The hob-goblin awareness is not created bv sign, or token, or word. It is'inherent through the influence of air the ages that have passed, nor shall it cease to- be so until perfect Love shall cast it out utterly and forever. Marooned with Fear. ~ There, upon a small, sea-girt island, stands a man. He has never looked upon a human face. He has no memory of infancy, of childhood, of manhood, or of womanhood. He lives upon abundant and luscious fruits of the earth. There is no animal life, but the birds are full to' over-flowing with bird-song. He has broken no Mosaic commandment. Wherefore should he lie, or kill, or steal? In the> midst of such abundance wherefore should he envy. Possessing all, why should he covet? Having had no ill wrought upon him, nor any enemy insinuating harm, should he not be ciay-long and night-long happy and greatly contented? And yet I say unto you, that he, even as you and I, feels at times the direful oppressions of impending calamity. There the sun's face is never hidden by day. There, unclouded, the moon and the stars shine by night. The very movement of wind and waves makes melody, yet no Dante in his mad imaginations of Inferno ever limned such spectres upon the moveless arras of night, as this man, marooned in his Pacific Eden —and why, but because each mortal is a ghost-haunted body? Legionaries Strange and Vague.

Now, nightly, as I lie down, unrobed for sleep, the ghost comes at the snuffing out of the candle-flame, and who shall lay it? Each, in his own soul knows that only the mother-voice has power, because through all, only the mother had no fear of Fear. No matter'how incredulous we may have become concerning other things, we cannot but believe in the divine influence exercised upon us from babyhood by motherly kindness. I have now in my mind times of infant terrors in delirium, through which no menacing and unhealthy shapes moved, but stable material things indulged in action. The very light became a menace , mocking, derisive, leering, Satanic—now drawing near and then retiring. The patterns on the. wallpapers writhed and wrestled with each other, grappling, intertwining, throwing each other about, disengaging, in a cruel riot of lines and squares and circles. The walls drew in, the ceiling lowered, to the compass of a narrowing pen, until agony of fear found voice calling a name, and at the answering and comforting, saving voice the angles took up their order, the circles stood still, the multitude of eyes was lidded out of sight—confusion returned to order, delirium vanished in unhaunted sleep; Gorgons and Hydras and chimeras dire were no more. The sun-wash of Love had cleansed the brain with an illumination of Peace. Bond Souls of the Principality. And all this foregoing has been set down, not as a relation of personal encounter, to entertain with awe, but because of the .little children—those you nurse and play with, and sing to sleep, teach in kindergarten (a lovely word), and educate in schools; dear sensitive souls, of whom we are but larger types, though less credulous and more unbelieving; do not hold over them terrors of the peopled dark —savagely inhabited with headless bear, black man, or ape. Yet it is not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants that make all the dire mischief, and create terrors in the children.

Some, as I have already said, who have been brought up with the most scrupulous exclusion of tainting superstitions, who were never allowed to hear of goblin or apparition, or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read of any distressing story, find all this world of "Fear" in their own thickcoming fancies, and from his little mid-night pillow, the muse-child of optimism will start at shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sweats to which the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tranquility. I charge you to beware and consider the •message in your communication alike to child and man and woman. If you, by a brave look, a,hand-clasp denoting and giving courage, help to allay this phantom in a human son! you mar he surf- that when vou acknowledge by another name than that oriven here, the conqueror who is Love >' r »i arc not taking that name in vain-