Dreams

A mother sat alone at an open window. Through it came the voices of the
children as they played under the acacia-trees, and the breath of the
hot afternoon air. In and out of the room flew the bees, the wild bees,
with their legs yellow with pollen, going to and from the acacia-trees,
droning all the while. She sat on a low chair before the table and
darned. She took her work from the great basket that stood before her
on the table: some lay on her knee and half covered the book that rested
there. She watched the needle go in and out; and the dreary hum of the
bees and the noise of the children’s voices became a confused murmur
in her ears, as she worked slowly and more slowly. Then the bees, the
long-legged wasp-like fellows who make no honey, flew closer and closer
to her head, droning. Then she grew more and more drowsy, and she laid
her hand, with the stocking over it, on the edge of the table, and
leaned her head upon it. And the voices of the children outside grew
more and more dreamy, came now far, now near; then she did not hear
them, but she felt under her heart where the ninth child lay. Bent
forward and sleeping there, with the bees flying about her head, she had
a weird brain-picture; she thought the bees lengthened and lengthened
themselves out and became human creatures and moved round and round her.
Then one came to her softly, saying, “Let me lay my hand upon thy side
where the child sleeps. If I shall touch him he shall be as I.”

She asked, “Who are you?”

And he said, “I am Health. Whom I touch will have always the red blood
dancing in his veins; he will not know weariness nor pain; life will be
a long laugh to him.”

“No,” said another, “let me touch; for I am Wealth. If I touch him
material care shall not feed on him. He shall live on the blood and
sinews of his fellow-men, if he will; and what his eye lusts for, his
hand will have. He shall not know ‘I want.’” And the child lay still
like lead.

And another said, “Let me touch him: I am Fame. The man I touch, I
lead to a high hill where all men may see him. When he dies he is not
forgotten, his name rings down the centuries, each echoes it on to his
fellows. Think--not to be forgotten through the ages!”

And the mother lay breathing steadily, but in the brain-picture they
pressed closer to her.

“Let me touch the child,” said one, “for I am Love. If I touch him he
shall not walk through life alone. In the greatest dark, when he puts
out his hand he shall find another hand by it. When the world is against
him, another shall say, ‘You and I.’” And the child trembled.

But another pressed close and said, “Let me touch; for I am Talent. I
can do all things--that have been done before. I touch the soldier, the
statesman, the thinker, and the politician who succeed; and the writer
who is never before his time, and never behind it. If I touch the child
he shall not weep for failure.”

About the mother’s head the bees were flying, touching her with their
long tapering limbs; and, in her brain-picture, out of the shadow of
the room came one with sallow face, deep-lined, the cheeks drawn into
hollows, and a mouth smiling quiveringly. He stretched out his hand. And
the mother drew back, and cried, “Who are you?” He answered nothing; and
she looked up between his eyelids. And she said, “What can you give the
child--health?” And he said, “The man I touch, there wakes up in his
blood a burning fever, that shall lick his blood as fire. The fever that
I will give him shall be cured when his life is cured.”

“You give wealth?”

He shook his head. “The man whom I touch, when he bends to pick up gold,
he sees suddenly a light over his head in the sky; while he looks up to
see it, the gold slips from between his fingers, or sometimes another
passing takes it from them.”

“Fame?”

He answered, “likely not. For the man I touch there is a path traced
out in the sand by a finger which no man sees. That he must follow.
Sometimes it leads almost to the top, and then turns down suddenly into
the valley. He must follow it, though none else sees the tracing.”

“Love?”

He said, “He shall hunger for it--but he shall not find it. When he
stretches out his arms to it, and would lay his heart against a thing
he loves, then, far off along the horizon he shall see a light play.
He must go towards it. The thing he loves will not journey with him;
he must travel alone. When he presses somewhat to his burning heart,
crying, ‘Mine, mine, my own!’ he shall hear a voice--‘Renounce!
renounce! this is not thine!’”

“He shall succeed?”

He said, “He shall fail. When he runs with others they shall reach the
goal before him. For strange voices shall call to him and strange lights
shall beckon him, and he must wait and listen. And this shall be the
strangest: far off across the burning sands where, to other men, there
is only the desert’s waste, he shall see a blue sea! On that sea the sun
shines always, and the water is blue as burning amethyst, and the foam
is white on the shore. A great land rises from it, and he shall see upon
the mountain-tops burning gold.”

The mother said, “He shall reach it?”

And he smiled curiously.

She said, “It is real?”

And he said, “What IS real?”

And she looked up between his half-closed eyelids, and said, “Touch.”

And he leaned forward and laid his hand upon the sleeper, and whispered
to it, smiling; and this only she heard--“This shall be thy reward--that
the ideal shall be real to thee.”

And the child trembled; but the mother slept on heavily and her
brain-picture vanished. But deep within her the antenatal thing that
lay here had a dream. In those eyes that had never seen the day, in that
half-shaped brain was a sensation of light! Light--that it never had
seen. Light--that perhaps it never should see. Light--that existed
somewhere!

And already it had its reward: the Ideal was real to it.

London.