Three More John Silence Stories | Page 2

cruel bell that woke them on winter mornings at five
o'clock and summoned them to the stone-flagged Waschkammer, where
boys and masters alike, after scanty and icy washing, dressed in
complete silence.
From this his mind passed swiftly, with vivid picture-thoughts, to other
things, and with a passing shiver he remembered how the loneliness of
never being alone had eaten into him, and how everything--work, meals,
sleep, walks, leisure--was done with his "division" of twenty other boys
and under the eyes of at least two masters. The only solitude possible
was by asking for half an hour's practice in the cell-like music rooms,
and Harris smiled to himself as he recalled the zeal of his violin studies.
Then, as the train puffed laboriously through the great pine forests that
cover these mountains with a giant carpet of velvet, he found the
pleasanter layers of memory giving up their dead, and he recalled with
admiration the kindness of the masters, whom all addressed as Brother,
and marvelled afresh at their devotion in burying themselves for years
in such a place, only to leave it, in most cases, for the still rougher life
of missionaries in the wild places of the world.
He thought once more of the still, religious atmosphere that hung over
the little forest community like a veil, barring the distressful world; of
the picturesque ceremonies at Easter, Christmas, and New Year; of the
numerous feast-days and charming little festivals. The Beschehr-Fest,
in particular, came back to him,--the feast of gifts at Christmas,--when
the entire community paired off and gave presents, many of which had
taken weeks to make or the savings of many days to purchase. And
then he saw the midnight ceremony in the church at New Year, with the
shining face of the Prediger in the pulpit,--the village preacher who, on

the last night of the old year, saw in the empty gallery beyond the organ
loft the faces of all who were to die in the ensuing twelve months, and
who at last recognised himself among them, and, in the very middle of
his sermon, passed into a state of rapt ecstasy and burst into a torrent of
praise.
Thickly the memories crowded upon him. The picture of the small
village dreaming its unselfish life on the mountain-tops, clean,
wholesome, simple, searching vigorously for its God, and training
hundreds of boys in the grand way, rose up in his mind with all the
power of an obsession. He felt once more the old mystical enthusiasm,
deeper than the sea and more wonderful than the stars; he heard again
the winds sighing from leagues of forest over the red roofs in the
moonlight; he heard the Brothers' voices talking of the things beyond
this life as though they had actually experienced them in the body; and,
as he sat in the jolting train, a spirit of unutterable longing passed over
his seared and tired soul, stirring in the depths of him a sea of emotions
that he thought had long since frozen into immobility.
And the contrast pained him,--the idealistic dreamer then, the man of
business now,--so that a spirit of unworldly peace and beauty known
only to the soul in meditation laid its feathered finger upon his heart,
moving strangely the surface of the waters.
Harris shivered a little and looked out of the window of his empty
carriage. The train had long passed Hornberg, and far below the
streams tumbled in white foam down the limestone rocks. In front of
him, dome upon dome of wooded mountain stood against the sky. It
was October, and the air was cool and sharp, woodsmoke and damp
moss exquisitely mingled in it with the subtle odours of the pines.
Overhead, between the tips of the highest firs, he saw the first stars
peeping, and the sky was a clean, pale amethyst that seemed exactly the
colour all these memories clothed themselves with in his mind.
He leaned back in his corner and sighed. He was a heavy man, and he
had not known sentiment for years; he was a big man, and it took much
to move him, literally and figuratively; he was a man in whom the
dreams of God that haunt the soul in youth, though overlaid by the

scum that gathers in the fight for money, had not, as with the majority,
utterly died the death.
He came back into this little neglected pocket of the years, where so
much fine gold had collected and lain undisturbed, with all his
semispiritual emotions aquiver; and, as he watched the mountain-tops
come nearer, and smelt the forgotten odours of his boyhood, something
melted on the surface of his soul and left him sensitive to a degree he
had not known since, thirty years before, he had lived here