Джон Стейнбек - Cup of Gold [Золотая чаша]

Henry blushed deeply. "Who told you I thought at all of the little rat?" he cried. "Who is it says at all that I care for her?"

"Oh, the wind whispered something," said Merlin; "and then there was some word of it in your talking cheeks and your blustering just now. I think you should be speaking to Elizabeth, not to me. Your father should have known better?' His voice died away. When he spoke again it was with sad earnestness.

"Must you leave your father, boy-and he so sure alone in the valley of men who are not like him? Yes, I think that you must go. The plans of boys are serious things and unchangeable. But what can I say to you to keep you here, young Henry? Your father sends me a task difficult to fulfill.

"I went out on a tall Spanish ship a thousand years ago-it must be more than that, or perhaps I did not go at all and only dreamed it. We came at last on these green Indies, and they were lovely but unchanging. Their cycle is a green monotony. If you go there you must give up the year; must lose the pang of utter dread in the deep winter with its boding that the world has fled solar fealty to go careening into lonely space so that Spring may never come again. And you must lose that wild, excited quickening when the sun turns back, the joy of it flooding over you like the surge of a warm wave and choking you with pleasure and relief. No change there; none at all. Past and future mingle in an odious, eternal now."

"But there is no change here," young Henry interposed. "Year on top of year are the crops put in and new calves licked by their mothers; year on top of year is a pig slaughtered and the hams smoked.

Spring comes surely, but nothing happens."

"True enough, blind boy; and I see that we are talking of different things." Merlin looked out of his windows to the mountains and the valleys, and a great love for the land shone in his eyes; but when he turned back to the boy there was the look of pain in his face. His voice took on the cadence of a song.

"I will plead with you for this dear Cambria where time is piled mountain high and crumbling, ancient days about its base," he cried passionately. "Have you lost your love of wild Cambria that you would leave it when the blood of your thousand ancestors has gone soaking into the soil to keep it Cambria for always?

Have you forgotten that you are of the Trojan race? Ah, but they wandered too, didn't they, when Pergamus fell in?"

Henry said, "I have lost no love, sir, but my dream is over the sea that I do not know. I know Cambria."

"But, boy, here great Arthur lived who drove his standards into Rome and sailed away undying to dear Avalon. And Avalon itself lies off our coasts, somewhere over the sunken cities; there it floats endlessly.

And have you not heard them, Henry, the ghosts of all those good, brave quarrelsome, inefficient men-Llew Llaw Giffes and Belerius and Arthur and Cadwallo and Brute? They walk like clouds through the land and guard it from the high places. There are no ghosts in the Indies, and no Tylwyth Teg.

"In these wild, black hills there are a million mysteries. Have you found out the Chair of Arthur or the meaning of the circling stones? Have you heard the voices that cry out triumph in the night, and the hunters of souls with their screaming horns and their packs of blue hounds who rush into the villages on the storm?"

"I have heard them," said Henry, shuddering. He glanced shyly at the dog asleep on the floor and spoke in a lower tone. "The Curate says these things are lies. He says the Red Book is a book for little children before the fire and a shame for men and big boys to be believing in. He told us at church school these were lying tales, and unchristian. Arthur was an unimportant chieftain, he said, and Merlin, whose name you bear, a figment of the mad brain of Jeffery of Monmouth. He spoke ill of the Tylwyth Teg and of the corpse-candles, and of such as his Honor, your dog, here."

"Oh, the fool!" cried Merlin in disgust. "The fool breaking these things! And he offers instead a story to the world by twelve collaborators with rather slovenly convictions in some matters. Why must you go boy? Do you not see that the enemies of Cambria fight no more with the sword, but with little pointed tongues?" The harps sang his question, then slowly ceased their throbbing, and there was silence in the round house.

Henry studied the floor with drawn brows. At last he said, "There is so much bother about me. I cannot seem to talk of this thing, Merlin. I will come back. Surely I will when this burning for new things is quenched. But don't you see that I must go, for it seems that I am cut in half and only one part of me here. The other piece is over the sea, calling and calling me to come and be whole. I love Cambria, and I will come back when I am whole again."

Merlin searched the boy's face closely. Sadly he looked up at his harps. "I think I understand," he said softly. "You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man-if only you remain a little child. All the world's great have been little boys who wanted the moon running and climbing, they sometimes caught a firefly. But if one grow to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could.-and so, it catches no fireflies.

"But did you never want the moon?" asked Henry in a voice hushed with the room's quiet.

"I wanted it. Above all desires I wanted it. I reached for it and then-then I grew to be a man, and a failure. But there is this gift for the failure; folk know he has failed, and they are sorry and kindly and gentle. He has the whole world with him; a bridge of contact with his own people; the cloth of mediocrity.

But he who shields a firefly in his hands, caught in reaching for the moon, is doubly alone; he only can realize his true failure, can realize his meanness and fears and evasions.

"You will come to your greatness, and it may be in time you will be alone in your greatness and no friend anywhere; only those who hold you in respect or fear or awe. I am sorry for you, boy with the straight, clear eyes which look upward longingly. I am sorry for you, and-Mother Heaven! how I envy you."

Dusk was stealing into the mountain creases, filling them with purple mist. The sun cut itself on a sharp hill and bled into the valleys. Long shadows of the peaks crept out into the fields like stalking gray cats.

When Merlin spoke, it was with a little laugh.

"Do not think deeply of my words," he said, "for I myself am not at all sure of them. Dreams you may know by a quality we call inconsistency-but how could you classify the lightning?" Now the night was closing in quickly, and Henry jumped to his feet.

"Oh, but I must be going! The dark is in!"

"Yes, you must go, but do not think closely of my words. I may have been trying to impress you with these words. Old men need a certain silent flattery when they have come to distrust that which is spoken.

Only remember that Merlin talked with you. And if you come on the Welsh folk anywhere, singing my songs that were made so long ago, tell them that you know me; tell them that I am a glorious creature with blue wings. I don't want to be forgotten, Henry. That is greater horror to an old man than death-to be forgotten."

Henry said, "I must be going now; it's really dark. And thank you, sir, for telling me these things, but you see, I must be sailing outward to the Indies."

Merlin laughed softly. "Of course you must, Henry. And catch a big firefly, won't you. Good-by, child."

Henry looked back once as the black silhouette of the house sank behind the crag's shoulder, but no light had flashed behind the windows. Old Merlin sat there pleading with his harps, and they echoed him jeeringly.

The boy quickened his steps down the path. All below was a black lake; and the farm lights stars' reflections in its deep. The wind had died, leaving a thick silence on the hills. Everywhere the sad, soundless ghosts flitted about their haunting. Henry walked carefully, his eyes on the path which glimmered pale blue before him.