The Crown of Wild Olive
being fair that the little ones should always be nearest?' Well, you
were then all being crystallised. When you ran in from the garden, and
against one another in the passages, you were in what mineralogists
would call a state of solution, and gradual confluence; when you got
seated in those orderly rows, each in her proper place, you became
crystalline. That is just what the atoms of a mineral do, if they can,
whenever they get disordered: they get into order again as soon as may
be.
I hope you feel inclined to interrupt me, and say, 'But we know our
places; how do the atoms know theirs? And sometimes we dispute about
our places; do the atoms--(and, besides, we don't like being compared to
atoms at all)--never dispute about theirs?' Two wise questions these, if
you had a mind to put them! it was long before I asked them myself, of
myself. And I will not call you atoms any more. May I call you--let me
see--'primary molecules?' (_General dissent, indicated in subdued but
decisive murmurs._) No! not even, in familiar Saxon, 'dust?'
(_Pause, with expression on faces of sorrowful doubt_; LILY
_gives voice to the general sentiment in a timid 'Please
don't._')
No, children, I won't call you that; and mind, as you grow up, that you
do not get into an idle and wicked habit of calling yourselves that. You
are something better than dust, and have other duties to do than ever
dust can do; and the bonds of affection you will enter into are better
than merely 'getting into order.' But see to it, on the other hand, that
you always behave at least as well as 'dust;' remember, it is only on
compulsion, and while it has no free permission to do as it likes, that
_it_ ever gets out of order; but sometimes, with some of us, the
compulsion has to be the other way--hasn't it? (_Remonstratory whispers,
expressive of opinion that the_ LECTURER _is becoming too personal._)
I'm not looking at anybody in particular--indeed I am not. Nay, if you
blush so, Kathleen, how can one help looking? We'll go back to the
atoms.
'How do they know their places?' you asked, or should have asked. Yes,
and they have to do much more than know them: they have to find their
way to them, and that quietly and at once, without running against each
other.
We may, indeed, state it briefly thus:--Suppose you have to build a
castle, with towers and roofs and buttresses, out of bricks of a given
shape, and that these bricks are all lying in a huge heap at the bottom,
in utter confusion, upset out of carts at random. You would have to draw
a great many plans, and count all your bricks, and be sure you had
enough for this and that tower, before you began, and then you would
have to lay your foundation, and add layer by layer, in order, slowly.
But how would you be astonished, in these melancholy days, when children
don't read children's books, nor believe any more in fairies, if
suddenly a real benevolent fairy, in a bright brick-red gown, were to
rise in the midst of the red bricks, and to tap the heap of them with
her wand, and say: 'Bricks, bricks, to your places!' and then you saw in
an instant the whole heap rise in the air, like a swarm of red bees,
and--you have been used to see bees make a honeycomb, and to think that
strange enough, but now you would see the honeycomb make itself!--You
want to ask something, Florrie, by the look of your eyes.
FLORRIE. Are they turned into real bees, with stings?
L. No, Florrie; you are only to fancy flying bricks, as you saw the
slates flying from the roof the other day in the storm; only those
slates didn't seem to know where they were going, and, besides, were
going where they had no business: but my spell-bound bricks, though they
have no wings, and what is worse, no heads and no eyes, yet find their
way in the air just where they should settle, into towers and roofs,
each flying to his place and fastening there at the right moment, so
that every other one shall fit to him in his turn.
LILY. But who are the fairies, then, who build the crystals?
L. There is one great fairy, Lily, who builds much more than crystals;
but she builds these also. I dreamed that I saw her building a pyramid,
the other day, as she used to do, for the Pharaohs.
ISABEL. But that was only a dream?
L. Some dreams are truer than some wakings, Isabel; but I won't tell it
you unless you like.
ISABEL. Oh, please, please.
L. You are all such wise children, there's no talking to you; you won't
believe anything.
LILY. No, we are not wise, and we will believe anything, when you say we
ought.
L. Well, it came about this way. Sibyl, do you recollect that evening
when we had been looking at your old cave by Cumae, and wondering why you
didn't live there still; and then we wondered how old you were; and
Egypt said you wouldn't tell, and nobody else could tell but she; and
you laughed--I thought very gaily for a Sibyl--and said you would
harness a flock of cranes for us, and we might fly over to Egypt if we
liked, and see.
SIBYL. Yes, and you went, and couldn't find out after all!
L. Why, you know, Egypt had been just doubling that third pyramid of
hers;[146] and making a new entrance into it; and a fine entrance it
was! First, we had to go through an ante-room, which had both its doors
blocked up with stones; and then we had three granite portcullises to
pull up, one after another; and the moment we had got under them, Egypt
signed to somebody above; and down they came again behind us, with a
roar like thunder, only louder; then we got into a passage fit for
nobody but rats, and Egypt wouldn't go any further herself, but said we
might go on if we liked; and so we came to a hole in the pavement, and
then to a granite trap-door--and then we thought we had gone quite far
enough, and came back, and Egypt laughed at us.
EGYPT. You would not have had me take my crown off, and stoop all the
way down a passage fit only for rats?
L. It was not the crown, Egypt--you know that very well. It was the
flounces that would not let you go any farther. I suppose, however, you
wear them as typical of the inundation of the Nile, so it is all right.
ISABEL. Why didn't you take me with you? Where rats can go, mice can. I
wouldn't have come back.
L. No, mousie; you would have gone on by yourself, and you might have
waked one of Pasht's cats.[147] and it would have eaten you. I was very
glad you were not there. But after all this, I suppose the imagination
of the heavy granite blocks and the underground ways had troubled me,
and dreams are often shaped in a strange opposition to the impressions
that have caused them; and from all that we had been reading in Bunsen
about stones that couldn't be lifted with levers, I began to dream about
stones that lifted themselves with wings.
SIBYL. Now you must just tell us all about it.
L. I dreamed that I was standing beside the lake, out of whose clay the
bricks were made for the great pyramid of Asychis.[148] They had just
been all finished, and were lying by the lake margin, in long ridges,
like waves. It was near evening; and as I looked towards the sunset, I
saw a thing like a dark pillar standing where the rock of the desert
stoops to the Nile valley. I did not know there was a pillar there, and
wondered at it; and it grew larger, and glided nearer, becoming like the
form of a man, but vast, and it did not move its feet, but glided like a
pillar of sand. And as it drew nearer, I looked by chance past it,
towards the sun; and saw a silver cloud, which was of all the clouds
closest to the sun (and in one place crossed it), draw itself back from
the sun, suddenly. And it turned, and shot towards the dark pillar;
leaping in an arch, like an arrow out of a bow. And I thought it was
lightning; but when it came near the shadowy pillar, it sank slowly down
beside it, and changed into the shape of a woman, very beautiful, and
with a strength of deep calm in her blue eyes. She was robed to the feet
with a white robe; and above that, to her knees, by the cloud which I
had seen across the sun; but all the golden ripples of it had become
plumes, so that it had changed into two bright wings like those of a
vulture, which wrapped round her to her knees. She had a weaver's
shuttle hanging over her shoulder, by the thread of it, and in her left
hand, arrows, tipped with fire.
ISABEL (_clapping her hands_). Oh! it was Neith, it was Neith! I know
now.
L. Yes; it was Neith herself; and as the two great spirits came nearer
to me, I saw they were the Brother and Sister--the pillared shadow was
the Greater Pthah.[149] And I heard them speak, and the sound of their
words was like a distant singing. I could not understand the words one
by one; yet their sense came to me; and so I knew that Neith had come
down to see her brother's work, and the work that he had put into the
mind of the king to make his servants do. And she was displeased at it;
because she saw only pieces of dark clay: and no porphyry, nor marble,
nor any fair stone that men might engrave the figures of the gods upon.
And she blamed her brother, and said, 'Oh, Lord of truth! is this then
thy will, that men should mould only four-square pieces of clay: and the
forms of the gods no more?' Then the Lord of truth sighed, and said,
'Oh! sister, in truth they do not love us; why should they set up our
images? Let them do what they may, and not lie--let them make their clay
four-square; and labour; and perish.'
Then Neith's dark blue eyes grew darker, and she said, 'Oh, Lord of
truth! why should they love us? their love is vain; or fear us? for
their fear is base. Yet let them testify of us, that they knew we lived
for ever.'
But the Lord of truth answered, 'They know, and yet they know not. Let
them keep silence; for their silence only is truth.'
But Neith answered, 'Brother, wilt thou also make league with Death,
because Death is true? Oh! thou potter, who hast cast these human things
from thy wheel, many to dishonour, and few to honour; wilt thou not let
them so much as see my face; but slay them in slavery?'
But Pthah only answered, 'Let them build, sister, let them build.'
And Neith answered, 'What shall they build, if I build not with them?'
And Pthah drew with his measuring rod upon the sand. And I saw suddenly,
drawn on the sand, the outlines of great cities, and of vaults, and
domes, and aqueducts, and bastions, and towers, greater than obelisks,
covered with black clouds. And the wind blew ripples of sand amidst the
lines that Pthah drew, and the moving sand was like the marching of men.
But I saw that wherever Neith looked at the lines, they faded, and were
effaced.
'Oh, Brother!' she said at last, 'what is this vanity? If I, who am
Lady of wisdom, do not mock the children of men, why shouldst thou mock
them, who art Lord of truth?' But Pthah answered, 'They thought to bind
me; and they shall be bound. They shall labour in the fire for vanity.'
And Neith said, looking at the sand, 'Brother, there is no true labour
here--there is only weary life and wasteful death.'
And Pthah answered, 'Is it not truer labour, sister, than thy sculpture
of dreams?'
Then Neith smiled; and stopped suddenly.
She looked to the sun; its edge touched the horizon-edge of the desert.
Then she looked to the long heaps of pieces of clay, that lay, each with
its blue shadow, by the lake shore.
'Brother,' she said, 'how long will this pyramid of thine be in
building?'
'Thoth will have sealed the scroll of the years ten times, before the
summit is laid.'
'Brother, thou knowest not how to teach thy children to labour,'
answered Neith. 'Look! I must follow Phre beyond Atlas; shall I build
your pyramid for you before he goes down?' And Pthah answered, 'Yea,