The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 16 December 1915, Page 3

The Storyteller

RECONSTRUCTION

T he light of his western windows having grown too dim for further service, Stephen Rowe neatly placed in his portfolio his day’s work closely written pages indicative of his closely packed thoughts. . ’ Julia, his sister, would be returning shortly, so lie forbore to ring for the lights. During this*last hour .of fading daylight brother and sister usually gossiped together over what he had just accomplished-what thought, what writing; or over Julia’s less august but lively social and philanthropic activities; or over their several common interests.

One of the —the choice of a new dwelling was now a dominant concern. The noisy, growing city had virtually crowded them from their old home. Hence for some time both, but especially Julia, had been questing for new quarters. ‘ Two quiet, amiable people ought easily to find a new nest in such a large city,’ their friends observed. ‘ We could if there were really but two of us,’ Julia laughingly retorted, ‘but you know there’s also Stephen’s large family of books. The eighteenth and nineteenth century philosophers would need for themselves a whole room of the dimensions prevailing in most of the apartments—— say nothing of the ancient sages and the historians ! They simply can’t fit comfortably into small quarters. Then you know we do not fancy any of the old-fashioned houses except our own.’ You prefer your own ghosts?’ one friend queried, then, 1 Oh, I forgot that no self-respecting ghost would cross Stephen’s threshold. I can see his sceptical eyebrows lift and frighten any intruding spook off the place— ’ *

‘ He would more likely invite it in, submit it to the test of polite scepticism, and, escorting it to the door, courteously tell it that it simply did not exist.’ For all their amiability these quips were doubleedged, cutting both at the Rowes’ difficulty in suitably re-housing themselves and also at Stephen Rowe’s wellknown mental attitude. Long known to a small circle as an exceptional intellect, in recent years he had won a larger if what some had deemed a not entirely enviable fame, through his books of philosophical essays. From some sources these had won approval. Elsewhere they had elicited sharp argument. At least, they were not negligible— adverse criticism from one of the most conservative journals regretted ‘so much vigor, originality, and sincerity wrongly directed.’ Stephen Rowe was one of the men whom the active scientific speculation of the nineteenth century had swung forth upon a wrong current! Instead of widening his spiritual vision, enriching his knowledge with the faith which transcends knowledge and opens new vistas of understanding, his study had rendered him an incomplete service. It had landed him on a reef of scepticism, not violent, blasphemous unbelief, but one to some extent all the worse because of its cool, often speciously keen arguments which made him welcome in certain camps, but which deeply distressed certain of his old friends. , *

Meanwhile, there was a sincerity about the man which comforted those who cared more for him than for his recent ideas. » Because he loved truth so sincerely and so well, those who loved him trusted that truth which had seemed to elude him would some day come back and meet him half way. To his quest for truth his whole appearance testified. ‘ That “large family’’ of books around his wall, they also in their quality and number witnessed to their , owner’s intellectual range and energy. However, many of them bore testimony to the fact that their reader’s mind was still in the questioning rather than the resting stage. Shelf after shelf affirmed St. Augustine’s words; ‘ Thou hast created xis for Thyself, therefore our hearts are restless till-they rest in Thee.’ V.. : ;

~,,. Meanwhile, for this particular inquirer .and his books, evidently a : place: of satisfactory mundane sojourn was not much longer to be lacking— Julia soon appeared at the -study door, singing out: ' Thanks Ararat is in sight! I believe I have actually found what we want.' . » ' -As. she removed hat and coat, her delight in the fortunate discovery continued to express itself: 'lt's rather far up-town. But it has more of the requisites than any place we have seen—roomy, clean, sanitary, aesthetic. -Especially the- latter, for the rooms are well spaced and proportioned —hold your breath ! —a beauteous tract of green lies across the street from what will likely be your study. I didn't dare let the agent see- my joy—he would certainly have raised the rent. When can you come and decide on it?' Stephen Rowe's satisfaction in the new apartment matched his sister's. The rooms were all that his ' family' of philosophers and historians could ask; and, above all, the green tract across the street fulfilled Julia's report. It was a sheer delight through the autumn and winter, its green or russet rested Stephen's eyes after their hours of close application. In the early spring the freshening green often drew and held his gaze with its beauty, its miracle of rebirth. It came to Be one more book for Stephen to read— ever open book. The loveliness of the grass, the open space, soothed his vision and refreshed his spirit with something which often served him better than the volumes around him. But just as the green field had thus become one more book for his perusal, one morning he was shocked to find that he was to lose it. After a few hours' work; so concentrated as to prevent his hearing any unusual commotion in the street, he went to the window for one of his now habitual refreshing glances only, however, to experience a disturbing vision. There, now, in the precious little plot many laborers were assembled. Obviously, some work of excavation was under way. It was too much for Stephen's curiosity and feeling—ordinarily, nothing could drag him forth before luncheon, but now he rushed out to his sister with the question : ' Whatever going on over there?' ' Oh my ! they are going to build ! T forgot to tell you last night. And what do you think they are going to build V 'Lord knows!' groaned Stephen. 'A church!' answered Julia 'I do hope it will not spoil your light! I just feel as though I can't move again or house-hunt any more for five years.' 'What would be the use V retorted Stephen, sitting in a whimsical dejection matching Julia's. ' There aren't any more apartments like this! There are no more green swards left in this awful city wilderness!' 'Well, that one does not exist any longer. I don't see why I did not ask before we moved if anybody was going to build there.' 'What good would it have clone unless you expected to buy the lot yourself?' ' I'd have put all my money in it' 'You probably have less than half enough. lam sure I couldn't pay the taxes.' Despite the whimsical humor with which the two discussed the matter this first day of Julia's perturbed announcement, they really did have a serious feeling of regret for the loss of what had been a- playground for their eyes and spirits. ' Nobody who has not lived in a large city beggared of green plots knows what it is thus to be defrauded of such an oasis. For many weeks Stephen Rowe's loss was to be daily emphasised. During his mornings' walk he continued to lift his eyes from his books or writing and gaze to the sward across the street. Morning after morning he felt the same disillusion and regret at the sight of that wide quiet field broken by pick and spade and.drill and all the other wretched implements which

.were depriving his eyes of their accustomed refreshment, his spirit of its now habitual liberation within the plot's green, russet, or snow-covered purlieus'. There, where the children playing like young fairies had delighted his eyes, now a corps of toiling men went to and fro—heaving great clods of earth, splintering the rocks for their foundation. Viewing them at first with irritation, Stephen gradually became resigned to their presence. As his tired eyes now glanced in their direction he had but a dim consciousness of them, just a general sense of busy laborers, like the figures in a dream of Toil. But as the great dredges scooped shovel after shovel of earth and the waggons began bringing the building materials, and rock began to rise upon rock, frame upon frame, the eyes of the scholar who during the past year had gazed thither in a kind of. dreamy abstraction suddenly became more sharply aware of what was happening in his marred green plot. With unwonted vividness he realised the energy and the purpose of yonder vigorous men hoisting stone upon stone, fitting angle to angle, bringing form and mass to life before his eyes —even as he there upon his table shaped intangible blocks of thought into convincing order, outline, plausibility. It was his first observation—at so close a range —of construction on so significant a scale. And now his active mind, his intelligent curiosity were roused to interest. What at first had been a source of irritation and resentment became one of distinct fascination Whereas hitherto his eyes had glanced across the street only in moments of relaxation, now he often deliberately rose, walked to the window, stood engrossed by the activity in progress on the other side of the street His eyes followed group after group of workmen in their special labors, every man doing his particular part, yet all. contributing to some future great unity. With almost a child's eagerness Stephen watched the shaping of the stone, the gradual but steady rising of the foundation out of the deep earth to the street's surface. Day by day he took a keen pleasure in noting how far the line of stone had risen. Again and again the analogies between that building and the coral reefs of his own words and ideas impressed him, delighted and inspired him. From a few moments' contemplation of those other builders he could frequently turn back to his own table invigorated, enabled more successfully to hew his own thoughts into clear shape, to impose idea and argument one upon the other till his page stood forth—as he hoped—a" solid stable structure of scholarship and convincing dissertation. Often when his pen slackened or his thinking flagged he would rise, go over and glance forth at those fellow toilers whose muscular efficiency stimulated his own intellectualforces. When at last the walls began to rise, the act of watching them became not only an occasional diversion but almost an occupation. Once or twice to Julia's surprise Stephen during his usually absorbed working hours had put on his hat and gone over to view the building at closer range. Julia occasionally saw him interviewing the workmen— though he were a contemporary novelist gathering copy for an industrial novelinstead of being the writer he was, of philosophical essays dealing with abstract thought, and paradoxically enough, thought directed rather against just the ideas to which the present building was to be a testimony in stone. During one of the morning excursions Julia observed him talking on the pavement to an interestinglooking man who, she was to learn, was one of the architectsßalph Mead— whom both had heard. ' He's an agreeable sort,' observed Stephen when he reported the meeting at luncheon time. 'We might have him in to dinner some time.' ' Rather like the lion and the lamb fore-gathering, isn't it? Does he know who you are?' asked Julia. • Oh, yes,' answered Stephen. ' But he does not seem the least afraid of my jaws.'

‘ Perhaps he thinks he may convert von.’ ‘ Perhaps. By the way, he’s a writer, too. He’s publishing a book shortly' on ecclesiastical architecture?’

That’s interesting,’ Julia answered with an amused expression on her lips and in her eyes. She never could regard her brother as the terrible heretic he seemed to some critics. She was perhaps close enough to him to discern certain traits of intellect and temperament which, she firmly believed would ultimately lead him in the right direction. Meanwhile, when Ralph Mead began coming to see them he proved to be as interesting as Stephen had prophesied. The two men purveyed excellent conversation and sometimes discussion. Ralph was evidently a scholar in his profession, and it was a delight to see him and Stephen cross swords over certain historical points. Though Julia was persuaded that Stephen was one of the world’s shining sages she was impressed by his simplicity, his eagerness for new knowledge as Ralph initiated him into some points of architectural detail, some data about great churches or other structures. Several interesting and rare books Ralph occasionally brought them: and eventually he brought his own—an excellent combination of professional knowledge, aesthetic feeling, and idealism, devoted to a special aspect of ecclesiastical art.

And even as this pleasant association proceeded, wall and buttress drew into (lie scene across the street. Spires began to flower and soar. And now what at first had been the object of Stephen Rowe’s casual morning observations, became the subject of frequent contemplation and speculation in the waning afternoons or late moonlit evenings when the church’s outlines were printed in increasing beauty upon the air.

Those outlines were more and more becoming a visible, palpable, materialisation of ideas which, not infrequently, Stephen Rowe’s writing had questioned if indeed not combated. And though .it was by no means necessary that ideas become concrete to permit Stephen to handle them—in the world of abstraction he was like an amphibian in water—somehow that brick and stone embodiment of certain ideas to which his mind had ceased to be hospitable now gave him pause. The church rising there before him, the books which Ralph Mead brought him, had made him take thought anew of ideas and ideals of whose present vigor and place in the world’s history he had ceased to have any vivid conception. So absorbed had he been in his own narrow if earnest line of speculation, that he had generalised about certain other systems of thought. Here now, however, was unmistakable evidence of a strong current moving in a direction contrary to his own. ■

This was a realisation his intellectual honesty could not ignore. He must grapple with it. He must try to see it as it was. He must see it in relation to his bwn conviction, but he must give it cool detached consideration. He had swung to the far extreme of individual judgment, of free-ranging thought. That church yonder was a symbol of something definite, of a creed accepted not as one man’s satisfactory speculation but' as a goal for multitudes. For, as the numerous workmen day after day through v the several mouths had energetically gone thither, realising the architect’s dream and the purpose of those whose money was to pay for the structure, Stephen’s imagination had come to see the church as the expression of the faith and desire of many. Of multitudes, in fact, for a lesser imagination than his own might have deduced from its noble proportions that it was to serve not merely for a day and the people of a day. It was a monument such as any logical mind would estimate as having been erected by men of definite convictions, whose permanent values demanded just such an expression, as yonder stable, beautiful mass of brick and stone, of earth-based, buttress, heaven climbing spire.

Sceptics of less generous minds might have seen the whole structure as a pitiable folly, a massive testimony to pathetic wrong-headedness. But to Stephen’s order of mind a different and a more worthy reaction ’ -.A V. .... r :

occurred. To him the impressive church stood as evidence of a certain kind .of human nature alien to his own, yet so distinct a thing as to engage his intellectual curiosity and to justify the serious scholarly investigation he was accustomed to give any dignified, earnest phase of human thought or feeling which came under his observation. Straightway he applied himself to find a new angle for the study of church-build-ing and the beliefs of those who erected the great structures of the great church-building epochs. With a fervor and a specialisation which amazed Ralph Mead, he consumed volume after volume suggested by the young architect at his request. And the more he read the less he looked forth with cool detached vision at the mass and detail which now neared completion across the street. Now both general form and detail of the exterior and all the interior beauty began to speak to him in a language different from that which they had .first spoken. Outsider though he was, he had begun to enter into the richness of meaning which a noble church possesses for those to whom it by right belongs. Now as in the twilight or star-lit evening he gazed outward, he was conscious of unwonted spiritual apprehensions. . He, the .well-known, cool-headed sceptic, was beginning to share the richly poetical mood, almost the spiritual feeling by which a little Catholic child is blessed when the beauty and significance of his Lord’s words appeal to him. Into that beauty and significance, so rich but so simple, the days were accomplishing Stephen Rowe’s initiation. Earth based but soaring skyward, the new church, his so expressive neighbor, was revealing itself as true symbol of man’s worship and aspiration—up from earth to the Great Mystery, God.

Stephen Rowe’s idealism was touched to a new quality by the realisation. There stood a concrete embodiment of his abstract speculations. The people whose money built that church, many of the workmen whose hands had helped to uplift it, the multitudes who through its portals would soon begin a long procession of-the generations, all these—and the thought came to him with something of a shock—all these, though perhaps lesser minds than he, had somehow the secret of a clearer, more definite thinking than he, the rather famous scholar and writer. Ralph Mead, younger man than he, younger student, he, too, had this secret, this singular secret of some relation between the human soul and Something supreme above it, source of its aspiration, reverence, trust. What better formula than that could scientific idealism- arrange ? None, he told himself. So, was it not true that if he were consistent he should really be among those who, by crossing the threshold of the church when it was finished, would but show a willingness to give outward sign of their inward faith in their Maker, their God? If the many who would pass through the church’s doors could give such loyal testimony, was he to be one aloof ? Rid such aloofness show any superior intellectuality, or rather did it not reflect on his spiritual imagination, his philosophical understanding of the links that bind humanity by a community of noble ideas —patriotism for instance, loyalty, religion? With these thoughts sweeping him far away from his once avowed scepticism,, he stood one evening looking out upon the church, now almost completed. Deep in such thought Ralph Mead found him, and startled him indeed by saying : ‘I- believe you like your great neighbor pretty well, after all.’

Ralph Mead, who had learned to admire profoundly the serious scholarly man by his side, thought he had, never seen a human countenance more impressive than that which Stephen Rowe now turned toward him, repeating his question : ‘Like it? Yes, I like it very much.’ He regarded the young architect a moment with grave benignity, adding at.last; ‘Do you know, my young friend, you in erecting your church have builded perhaps better than you know

The two men stood silent a moment, Ralph scarcely daring to hope what he half divined. v v >

■■.,-.,■ 'Yes,' ■•■ continued" Stephen, ' you have done . double •; work; you have builded and re-builded. You laid the' cornerstone - over there, and another one here,' and he pointed to his own breast, as he spoke. 'Those flying buttresses give stability to. your walls— they have reinforced the ramparts of a man's soul.' Your —they go up as if to the sky sueh nights as this. And such nights as this —many such nights of late—my old earth-bound, contracted brain has soared up with them ' to the region of new understanding. Why, man, will you believe it ?—cramped in my own snail-shell of thinking, I had forgotten what churches were for. I had practically forgotten that there were any.' ' ' Till we came and planted one under 'your nose,' said Ralph, laughing gently. 'Till you came and preached me a sermon in stone. Julia was afraid you would cut off my light —you have let in light upon dark places, upon the night of my narrowness, scepticism, self-centered pedantry.' - * 'I don't believe it was as bad as all that, or the victim would not so freely confess.' •' 'Quite as bad,' insisted Stephen, 'but the victim claims still one more benevolence from you —to be permitted to go with you to. the first service hold in the church whose .building has coincided with his own spiritual reconstruction.'. Too gratified for many words, Ralph grasped the hand of the older man, whose eyes-now looked admiringly at spires pricked out. in clear, shapely outlines against the starry dark-blue of the summer night. —The Magnificat.