Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil

skins that riot with luscious color and deep, burning blood. Humanity is packed dense in high piles of close-knit homes that lie in layers above gray shops of food and clothes and drink, with here and there a moving-picture show. Orators declaim on the corners, lovers lark in the streets, gamblers glide by the saloons, workers lounge wearily home. Children scream and run and frolic, and all is good and human and beautiful and ugly and evil, even as Life is elsewhere. * * * * * And then--the Veil. It drops as drops the night on southern seas--vast, sudden, unanswering. There is Hate behind it, and Cruelty and Tears. As one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old, old design, one sees blood and guilt and misunderstanding. And yet it hangs there, this Veil, between Then and Now, between Pale and Colored and Black and White--between You and Me. Surely it is a thought-thing, tenuous, intangible; yet just as surely is it true and terrible and not in our little day may you and I lift it. We may feverishly unravel its edges and even climb slow with giant shears to where its ringed and gilded top nestles close to the throne of God. But as we work and climb we shall see through streaming eyes and hear with aching ears, lynching and murder, cheating and despising, degrading and lying, so flashed and fleshed through this vast hanging darkness that the Doer never sees the Deed and the Victim knows not the Victor and Each hates All in wild and bitter ignorance. Listen, O Isles, to these Voices from within the Veil, for they portray the most human hurt of the Twentieth Cycle of that poor Jesus who was called the Christ! * * * * * There is something in the nature of Beauty that demands an end. Ugliness may be indefinite. It may trail off into gray endlessness. But Beauty must be complete--whether it be a field of poppies or a great life,--it must end, and the End is part and triumph of the Beauty. I know there are those who envisage a beauty eternal. But I cannot. I can dream of great and never-ending processions of beautiful things and visions and acts. But each must be complete or it cannot for me exist. On the other hand, Ugliness to me is eternal, not in the essence but in its incompleteness; but its eternity does not daunt me, for its eternal unfulfilment is a cause of joy. There is in it nothing new or unexpected; it is the old evil stretching out and ever seeking the end it cannot find; it may coil and writhe and recur in endless battle to days without end, but it is the same human ill and bitter hurt. But Beauty is fulfilment. It satisfies. It is always new and strange. It is the reasonable thing. Its end is Death--the sweet silence of perfection, the calm and balance of utter music. Therein is the triumph of Beauty. So strong is the spell of beauty that there are those who, contradicting their own knowledge and experience, try to say that all is beauty. They are called optimists, and they lie. All is not beauty. Ugliness and hate and ill are here with all their contradiction and illogic; they will always be here--perhaps, God send, with lessened volume and force, but here and eternal, while beauty triumphs in its great completion--Death. We cannot conjure the end of all ugliness in eternal beauty, for beauty by its very being and definition has in each definition its ends and limits; but while beauty lies implicit and revealed in its end, ugliness writhes on in darkness forever. So the ugliness of continual birth fulfils itself and conquers gloriously only in the beautiful end, Death. * * * * * At last to us all comes happiness, there in the Court of Peace, where the dead lie so still and calm and good. If we were not dead we would lie and listen to the flowers grow. We would hear the birds sing and see how the rain rises and blushes and burns and pales and dies in beauty. We would see spring, summer, and the red riot of autumn, and then in winter, beneath the soft white snow, sleep and dream of dreams. But we know that being dead, our Happiness is a fine and finished thing and that ten, a hundred, and a thousand years, we shall lie at rest, unhurt in the Court of Peace. _The Prayers of God_ Name of God's Name! Red murder reigns; All hell is loose; On gold autumnal air Walk grinning devils, barbed and hoofed; While high on hills of hate, Black-blossomed, crimson-sky'd, Thou sittest, dumb. Father Almighty! This earth is mad! Palsied, our cunning hands; Rotten, our gold; Our argosies reel and stagger Over empty seas; All the long aisles Of Thy Great Temples, God, Stink with the entrails Of our souls. And Thou art dumb. Above the thunder of Thy Thunders, Lord, Lightening Thy Lightnings, Rings and roars The dark damnation Of this hell of war. Red piles the pulp of hearts and heads And little children's hands. Allah! Elohim! Very God of God! Death is here! Dead are the living; deep--dead the dead. Dying are earth's unborn-- The babes' wide eyes of genius and of joy, Poems and prayers, sun-glows and earth-songs, Great-pictured dreams, Enmarbled phantasies, High hymning heavens--all In this dread night Writhe and shriek and choke and die This long ghost-night-- While Thou art dumb. Have mercy! Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners! Stand forth, unveil Thy Face, Pour down the light That seethes above Thy Throne, And blaze this devil's dance to darkness! Hear! Speak! In Christ's Great Name-- I hear! Forgive me, God! Above the thunder I hearkened; Beneath the silence, now,-- I hear! (Wait, God, a little space. It is so strange to talk with Thee-- Alone!) This gold? I took it. Is it Thine? Forgive; I did not know. Blood? Is it wet with blood? 'Tis from my brother's hands. (I know; his hands are mine.) It flowed for Thee, O Lord. War? Not so; not war-- Dominion, Lord, and over black, not white; Black, brown, and fawn, And not Thy Chosen Brood, O God, We murdered. To build Thy Kingdom, To drape our wives and little ones, And set their souls a-glitter-- For this we killed these lesser breeds And civilized their dead, Raping red rubber, diamonds, cocoa, gold! For this, too, once, and in Thy Name, I lynched a Nigger-- (He raved and writhed, I heard him cry, I felt the life-light leap and lie, I saw him crackle there, on high, I watched him wither!) _Thou?_ _Thee?_ _I lynched Thee?_ Awake me, God! I sleep! What was that awful word Thou saidst? That black and riven thing--was it Thee? That gasp--was it Thine? This pain--is it Thine? Are, then, these bullets piercing Thee? Have all the wars of all the world, Down all dim time, drawn blood from Thee? Have all the lies and thefts and hates-- Is this Thy Crucifixion, God, And not that funny, little cross, With vinegar and thorns? Is this Thy kingdom here, not there, This stone and stucco drift of dreams? Help! I sense that low and awful cry-- Who cries? Who weeps? With silent sob that rends and tears-- Can God sob? Who prays? I hear strong prayers throng by, Like mighty winds on dusky moors-- Can God pray? Prayest Thou, Lord, and to me? _Thou_ needest me? Thou _needest_ me? Thou needest _me_? Poor, wounded soul! Of this I never dreamed. I thought-- _Courage, God, I come!_ X THE COMET He stood a moment on the steps of the bank, watching the human river that swirled down Broadway. Few noticed him. Few ever noticed him save in a way that stung. He was outside the world--"nothing!" as he said bitterly. Bits of the words of the walkers came to him. "The comet?" "The comet----" Everybody was talking of it. Even the president, as he entered, smiled patronizingly at him, and asked: "Well, Jim, are you scared?" "No," said the messenger shortly. "I thought we'd journeyed through the comet's tail once," broke in the junior clerk affably. "Oh, that was Halley's," said the president; "this is a new comet, quite a stranger, they say--wonderful, wonderful! I saw it last night. Oh, by the way, Jim," turning again to the messenger, "I want you to go down into the lower vaults today." The messenger followed the president silently. Of course, they wanted _him_ to go down to the lower vaults. It was too dangerous for more valuable men. He smiled grimly and listened. "Everything of value has been moved out since the water began to seep in," said the president; "but we miss two volumes of old records. Suppose you nose around down there,--it isn't very pleasant, I suppose." "Not very," said the messenger, as he walked out. "Well, Jim, the tail of the new comet hits us at noon this time," said the vault clerk, as he passed over the keys; but the messenger passed silently down the stairs. Down he went beneath Broadway, where the dim light filtered through the feet of hurrying men; down to the dark basement beneath; down into the blackness and silence beneath that lowest cavern. Here with his dark lantern he groped in the bowels of the earth, under the world. He drew a long breath as he threw back the last great iron door and stepped into the fetid slime within. Here at last was peace, and he groped moodily forward. A great rat leaped past him and cobwebs crept across his face. He felt carefully around the room, shelf by shelf, on the muddied floor, and in crevice and corner. Nothing. Then he went back to the far end, where somehow the wall felt different. He sounded and pushed and pried. Nothing. He started away. Then something brought him back. He was sounding and working again when suddenly the whole black wall swung as on mighty hinges, and blackness yawned beyond. He peered in; it was evidently a secret vault--some hiding place of the old bank unknown in newer times. He entered hesitatingly. It was a long, narrow room with shelves, and at the far end, an old iron chest. On a high shelf lay the two missing volumes of records, and others. He put them carefully aside and stepped to the chest. It was old, strong, and rusty. He looked at the vast and old-fashioned lock and flashed his light on the hinges. They were deeply incrusted with rust. Looking about, he found a bit of iron and began to pry. The rust had eaten a hundred years, and it had gone deep. Slowly, wearily, the old lid lifted, and with a last, low groan lay bare its treasure--and he saw the dull sheen of gold! "Boom!" A low, grinding, reverberating crash struck upon his ear. He started up and looked about. All was black and still. He groped for his light and swung it about him. Then he knew! The great stone door had swung to. He forgot the gold and looked death squarely in the face. Then with a sigh he went methodically to work. The cold sweat stood on his forehead; but he searched, pounded, pushed, and worked until after what seemed endless hours his hand struck a cold bit of metal and the great door swung again harshly on its hinges, and then, striking against something soft and heavy, stopped. He had just room to squeeze through. There lay the body of the vault clerk, cold and stiff. He stared at it, and then felt sick and nauseated. The air seemed unaccountably foul, with a strong, peculiar odor. He stepped forward, clutched at the air, and fell