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THE VALLEY OF VISION

A Book Of Romance

And Some Half-Told Tales


By Henry Van <DW18>


   _"Your old men shall dream dreams,
    Your young men shall see visions."_






TO MY CHILDREN

AND CHILDREN'S CHILDREN

WHO MAY REMEMBER THESE TROUBLOUS TIMES WHEN WE ARE GONE ON NEW ADVENTURE




PREFACE


"Why do you choose such a title as _The Valley of Vision_ for
your book," said my friend; "do you mean that one can see farther
from the valley than from the mountain-top?"

This question set me thinking, as every honest question ought to
do. Here is the result of my thoughts, which you will take for what
it is worth, if you care to read the book.

The mountain-top is the place of outlook over the earth and the sea.
But it is in the valley of suffering, endurance, and self-sacrifice
that the deepest visions of the meaning of life come to us.

I take the outcome of this Twentieth Century War as a victory over
the mad illusion of  world-dominion which the Germans saw from
the peak of their military power in 1914. The united force of the
Allies has grown, through valley-visions of right and justice and
human kindness, into an irresistible might before which the German
"will to power" has gone down in ruin.

There are some Half-Told Tales in the volume--fables, fantasies--mere
sketches, grave and gay, on the margin of the book of life,


    "Where more is meant than meets the ear."


Dreams have a part in most of the longer stories.  That is because
I believe dreams have a part in real life. Some of them we remember
as vividly as any actual experience. These belong to the imperfect
sleep. But others we do not remember, because they are given to
us in that perfect sleep in which the soul is liberated, and goes
visiting. Yet sometimes we get a trace of them, by a happy chance,
and often their influence remains with us in that spiritual refreshment
with which we awake from profound slumber. This is the meaning of
that verse in the old psalm: "He giveth to His beloved in sleep."

The final story in the book was written before the War of 1914
began, and it has to do with the Light of the World, leading us
through conflict and suffering towards Peace.

AVALON, November 24, 1918.




CONTENTS

     A Remembered Dream
     Antwerp Road
     A City of Refuge
     A Sanctuary of Trees
     The King's High Way
     HALF-TOLD TALES
         The Traitor in the House
         Justice of the Elements
         Ashes of Vengeance
     The Broken Soldier and the Maid of France
     The Hearing Ear
     Sketches of Quebec
     A Classic Instance
     HALF-TOLD TALES
         The New Era and Carry On
         The Primitive and His Sandals
         Diana and the Lions
     The Hero and Tin Soldiers
     Salvage Point
     The Boy of Nazareth Dreams




ILLUSTRATIONS

The sails and smoke-stacks of great shift were visible, all passing
out to sea

The cathedral spire... was swaying and rocking in the air like the
mast of a ship at sea

All were fugitives, anxious to be gone... and making no more speed
than a creeping snail's pace of unutterable fatigue

"I will ask you to choose between your old home and your new home
now"

"I'm going to carry you in,'spite of hell"

"I was a lumberjack"

"I am going to become a virtuous peasant, a son of the soil, a
primitive"

The Finding of Christ in the Temple





A REMEMBERED DREAM


This is the story of a dream that came to me some five-and-twenty
years ago. It is as vivid in memory as anything that I have ever
seen in the outward world, as distinct as any experience through
which I have ever passed. Not all dreams are thus remembered. But
some are. In the records of the mind, where the inner chronicle of
life is written, they are intensely clear and veridical. I shall
try to tell the story of this dream with an absolute faithfulness,
adding nothing and leaving nothing out, but writing the narrative
just as if the thing were real.

Perhaps it was. Who can say?

In the course of a journey, of the beginning and end of which
I know nothing, I had come to a great city, whose name, if it was
ever told me, I cannot recall.

It was evidently a very ancient place. The dwelling-houses and
larger buildings were gray and beautiful with age, and the streets
wound in and out among them wonderfully, like a maze.

This city lay beside a river or estuary--though that was something
that I did not find out until later, as you will see--and the newer
part of the town extended mainly on a wide, bare street running
along a kind of low cliff or embankment, where the basements of
the small houses on the water-side  went down, below the level of
the street, to the shore. But the older part of the town was closely
and intricately built, with gabled roofs and heavy carved facades
hanging over the narrow stone-paved  ways, which here and there
led out suddenly into open squares.

It was in what appeared to be the largest and most important of
these squares that I was standing,  a little before midnight. I
had left my wife and our little girl in the lodging which we had
found, and walked out alone to visit the sleeping town.

The night sky was clear, save for a few filmy clouds, which floated
over the face of the full moon, obscuring it for an instant, but
never completely hiding it--like veils in a shadow dance. The spire
of the great cathedral was silver filigree on the moonlit side, and
on the other side, black lace.  The square was empty. But on the
broad, shallow steps in front of the main entrance of the cathedral
two heroic figures were seated. At first I thought they were statues.
Then I perceived they were alive, and talking earnestly together.

They were like Greek gods, very strong and beautiful, and naked
but for some slight drapery that fell snow-white around them. They
glistened in the moonlight. I could not hear what they were saying;
yet I could see that they were in a dispute which went to the very
roots of life.

They resembled each other strangely in form and feature--like twin
brothers. But the face of one was noble, lofty, calm, full of a vast
regret and compassion. The face of the other was proud, resentful,
drawn with passion. He appeared to be accusing and renouncing his
companion, breaking away from an ancient friendship in a swift,
implacable  hatred. But the companion seemed to plead with him,
and lean toward him, and try to draw him closer.

A strange fear and sorrow shook my heart. I felt that this
mysterious contest was something of immense importance; a secret,
ominous strife; a menace to the world.

Then the two figures stood up, marvellously alike in strength and
beauty, yet absolutely different in  expression and bearing, the
one serene and benignant,  the other fierce and threatening. The
quiet one was still pleading, with a hand laid upon the other's
shoulder. But he shook it off, and thrust his companion away with
a proud, impatient gesture.

At last I heard him speak.

"I have done with you," he cried. "I do not believe in you. I have
no more need of you. I renounce  you. I will live without you. Away
forever  out of my life!"

At this a look of ineffable sorrow and pity came upon the great
companion's face.

"You are free," he answered. "I have only besought  you, never
constrained you. Since you will have it so, I must leave you, now,
to yourself."

He rose into the air, still looking downward with wise eyes full
of grief and warning, until he vanished  in silence beyond the thin
clouds.

The other did not look up, but lifting his head with a defiant
laugh, shook his shoulders as if they were free of a burden. He
strode swiftly around the corner of the cathedral and disappeared
among the deep shadows.

A sense of intolerable calamity fell upon me. I said to myself:

"That was Man! And the other was God!  And they have parted!"

Then the multitude of bells hidden in the lace-work of the high
tower began to sound. It was not the aerial fluttering music of
the carillon that I remembered hearing long ago from the belfries
of the Low Countries. This was a confused and strident  ringing,
jangled and broken, full of sudden tumults and discords, as if the
tower were shaken and the bells gave out their notes at hazard, in
surprise  and trepidation.

It stopped as suddenly as it began. The great bell of the hours
struck twelve. The windows of the cathedral glowed faintly with a
light from within.

"It is New Year's Eve," I thought--although I knew perfectly well
that the time was late summer. I had seen that though the leaves
on the trees of the square were no longer fresh, they had not yet
fallen.

I was certain that I must go into the cathedral.  The western
entrance was shut. I hurried to the south side. The dark, low door
of the transept was open. I went in. The building was dimly lighted
by huge candles which flickered and smoked like torches. I noticed
that one of them, fastened against a pillar, was burning crooked,
and the tallow  ran down its side in thick white tears.

The nave of the church was packed with a vast throng of people,
all standing, closely crowded together,  like the undergrowth in
a forest. The rood-screen  was open, or broken down, I could not
tell which. The choir was bare, like a clearing in the woods, and
filled with blazing light.

On the high steps, with his back to the altar, stood Man, his face
gleaming with pride.

"I am the Lord!" he cried. "There is none above me! No law, no God!
Man is power.  Man is the highest of all!"

A tremor of wonder and dismay, of excitement and division, shivered
through the crowd. Some  covered their faces. Others stretched
out their hands. Others shook their fists in the air. A tumult  of
voices broke from the multitude--voices  of exultation, and anger,
and horror, and strife.

The floor of the cathedral was moved and lifted by a mysterious
ground-swell. The pillars trembled and wavered. The candles flared
and went out.  The crowd, stricken dumb with a panic fear, rushed
to the doors, burst open the main entrance, and struggling in furious
silence poured out of the building.  I was swept along with them,
striving to keep on my feet.

One thought possessed me. I must get to my wife and child, save
them, bring them out of this accursed city.

As I hurried across the square I looked up at the cathedral spire.
It was swaying and rocking in the air like the mast of a ship
at sea. The lace-work fell from it in blocks of stone. The people
rushed screaming through the rain of death. Many were struck down,
and lay where they fell.

I ran as fast as I could. But it was impossible to run far. Every
street and alley vomited men--all struggling together, fighting,
shouting, or shrieking,  striking one another down, trampling over
the fallen--a hideous melee. There was an incessant rattling noise
in the air, and heavier peals as of thunder shook the houses. Here
a wide rent yawned in a wall--there a roof caved in--the windows
fell into the street in showers of broken glass.

How I got through this inferno I do not know.  Buffeted and blinded,
stumbling and scrambling to my feet again, turning this way or
that way to avoid the thickest centres of the strife, oppressed and
paralyzed by a feeling of impotence that put an iron band around
my heart, driven always by the intense longing to reach my wife and
child, somehow I had a sense of struggling on. Then I came into a
quieter quarter of the town, and ran until I reached the lodging
where I had left them.

They were waiting just inside the door, anxious and trembling. But
I was amazed to find them so little panic-stricken. The little girl
had her doll in her arms.

[Illustration with caption: The cathedral spire... was swaying and
rocking in the air like the mast of a ship at sea.]   "What is it?"
asked my wife. "What must we do?"

"Come," I cried. "Something frightful has happened  here. I can't
explain now. We must get away at once. Come, quickly."

Then I took a hand of each and we hastened through the streets,
vaguely steering away from the centre of the city.

Presently we came into that wide new street of mean houses, of
which I have already spoken.  There were a few people in it, but
they moved heavily  and feebly, as if some mortal illness lay upon
them. Their faces were pale and haggard with a helpless anxiety to
escape more quickly. The houses seemed half deserted. The shades
were drawn, the doors closed.

But since it was all so quiet, I thought that we might find some
temporary shelter there. So I knocked at the door of a house where
there was a dim light behind the drawn shade in one of the windows.

After a while the door was opened by a woman who held the end of
her shawl across her mouth.  All that I could see was the black
sorrow of her eyes.

"Go away," she said slowly; "the plague is here.  My children are
dying of it. You must not come in! Go away."

So we hurried on through that plague-smitten street, burdened
with a new fear. Soon we saw a house on the riverside which looked
absolutely empty. The shades were up, the windows open, the door
stood ajar. I hesitated; plucked up courage;  resolved that we
must get to the waterside in some way in order to escape from the
net of death which encircled us.

"Come," I said, "let us try to go down through this house. But
cover your mouths."

We groped through the empty passageway, and down the basement-stair.
The thick cobwebs swept my face. I noted them with joy, for I thought
they proved that the house had been deserted for some time, and so
perhaps it might not be infected.

We descended into a room which seemed to have been the kitchen.
There was a stove dimly visible at one side, and an old broken
kettle on the floor, over which we stumbled. The back door was
locked.  But it swung outward as I broke it open. We stood upon a
narrow, dingy beach, where the small waves were lapping.

By this time the "little day" had begun to whiten the eastern sky;
a pallid light was diffused; I could see westward down to the main
harbor, beside the heart of the city. The sails and smoke-stacks
of great ships were visible, all passing out to sea. I wished that
we were there.

Here in front of us the water seemed shallower.  It was probably only
a tributary or backwater of the main stream. But it was sprinkled
with smaller vessels--sloops, and yawls, and luggers--all filled
with people and slowly creeping seaward.

There was one little boat, quite near to us, which seemed to be
waiting for some one. There were some people on it, but it was not
crowded.

"Come," I said, "this is for us. We must wade out to it."

So I took my wife by the hand, and the child in the other arm,
and we went into the water.  Soon it came up to our knees, to our
waists.

"Hurry," shouted the old man at the tiller.  "No time to spare!"

"Just a minute more," I answered, "only one minute!"

That minute seemed like a year. The sail of the boat was shaking
in the wind. When it filled she must move away. We waded on, and
at last I grasped the gunwale of the boat. I lifted the child in
and helped my wife to climb over the side.  They clung to me. The
little vessel began to move gently away.

"Get in," cried the old man sharply; "get in quick."

But I felt that I could not, I dared not. I let go of the boat. I
cried "Good-by," and turned to wade ashore.

I was compelled to go back to the doomed city.  I must know what
would come of the parting of Man from God!

The tide was running out more swiftly. The water swirled around my
knees. I awoke.

But the dream remained with me, just as I have told it to you.






ANTWERP ROAD


[OCTOBER, 1914]

Along the straight, glistening road, through a dim arcade of drooping
trees, a tunnel of faded green and gold, dripping with the misty
rain of a late October afternoon, a human tide was flowing, not
swiftly, but slowly, with the patient, pathetic slowness of weary
feet, and numb brains, and heavy hearts.

Yet they were in haste, all of these old men and women, fathers
and mothers, and little children; they were flying as fast as
they could; either away from something that they feared, or toward
something  that they desired.

That was the strange thing--the tide on the road flowed in two
directions.

Some fled away from ruined homes to escape the perils of war. Some
fled back to ruined homes to escape the desolation of exile. But
all were fugitives,  anxious to be gone, striving along the road
one way or the other, and making no more speed than a creeping
