TYPHON discovered that in many cases the kings of the forest were wiser than men, for they sucked earth knowledge from below and received upon their foliage the wisdom of the wind, the message of the rain, and the illumination of the planets. They had, however, their limitations, and some were narrow-minded and some were selfish; some were foolish and some absurdly vain; but the great trees, who numbered their years by centuries, had nothing small about them. They took large and generous views, as became creatures that have lived so long; their philosophy was unsubtle, but their motto lacked not dignity. “Be patient and endure,” said the forest giants, “for nothing quicklier shortens life, or makes it of less value, than impatience.” They were prone to contemplation and had more to think about and remember than, from their sedentary existence, might have been imagined.
As for Typhon, while the months passed he lost his adolescent beauty, for now the muscles of his fine body began to mark their plan. The silky smoothness of his limbs was gone. He had grown hard as iron and tough as steel. He was tall for a Greek, and his austere life and ceaseless exercise had built him into an athlete. There was not a weak spot about him except his brain, and that daily grew stronger under the tuition of his simple life. He had felt lonely for a season, and still at times there came a desire for human companionship; but his old life, seen from the standpoint of the new, offered no great temptations or regrets. Here was liberty without security; there had been security without liberty. “Slaves,” thought he, “enjoy security without liberty; and, doubtless, to the greater number of men, security is all-important and they would barter freedom for it. Yet to Typhon, who has now tasted liberty and the raw delight of living on his wits, a stuffy security and urban comfort possess no charm.” He reflected, however, that with the advent of age and weakness the case might be altered.
“How Dion and the Pythoness scuttled back to security!” laughed Typhon to himself.
For many months, until falling leaves made aureoles for beech and elm and gold dust flew again from the larches, he pursued his search and failed to find Soter, or learn where the herb might dwell. He had climbed a little, but as yet not travelled aloft beyond the habitations of men. Then he descended, willing to let be his enterprise awhile until he had kept his promise to the old oak.
The tree was glad to see him once more.
“None too soon you come,” he declared. “My harvest is generous, but the wood pigeons, the golden pheasants and the wild swine have already taken handsome toll thereof. Seek now for twelve prime acorns, hard and sound, and convey them to Dodona in Epirus at some future time.”
Typhon obeyed, stored the fruit of the great oak in a little bag, which he kept to hold his few possessions, and then prepared to depart again.
“Dion and Omphale did not return — I imagine?” he inquired.
“They did not,” replied the oak. “Nor will they.”
A month later a tremendous adventure befell Typhon, for now he set his face to the high hills and found himself face to face with dark and dreadful mysteries. Indeed his own life might well have paid forfeit, as he learned when the peril was past.
In a mood somewhat melancholy there came a day when the young man accosted a mighty stone pine. The tree stood beside a sort of rough way hammered by many four-footed creatures through the woods upon a mountain-side, and here he towered above his neighbours, who also were pines of great girth and age, yet not so huge as he. Life had used him sternly, but straight as a spear he rose to his dark crown; for he had only battled to his present eminence by exercise of unsleeping will and with aid from an iron constitution.
“Tell me, grand tree, if you know Soter,” begged Typhon. “Him I seek, and thus far, though I have toiled heartily enough and wearied my backbone through many days, as yet I neither find the little plant, nor meet with man or tree who has ever heard of him. This is wearisome work, and sometimes my spirit faints a little, and I find myself in doubt. I am unlucky, or else stupid — perhaps both.”
“Never air your misfortunes before witnesses, young Typhon,” answered the pine. “That is ignoble and will sap your self-respect. Disappointments must come; they are a part of life and nothing that exists but suffers them, though the martyred one may not be able to put a name to the evil. Patience and endurance is the motto for pine and boy. Face all tribulation bravely, and remember the size of suffering is determined by the quality of the sufferer. Make trouble seem small by comparison with yourself, and never despair when faring ill, for that may be the only road towards faring well. I have not heard of Soter; but perchance he is a dweller in the highest places and will tax all your courage and strength. Faint not if your task be worth pursuing and was set you by the wise.”
“Thank you,” answered Typhon rather shortly. “I know all that; but there are times when other people’s wisdom is merely an added grievance. What you say is perfectly true; but I want to meet somebody with imagination enough to look at this fruitless hunt from my point of view. No doubt you are old and have been up in the sky under the stars for such a long time that the affairs of small people fail to interest you.”
“It may be as you say,” replied the pine. “It is exceedingly likely that I cannot enter into your feelings; but good-will crosses many a gulf of age and experience, where nothing else may be counted to do so. In a sense man is one of our many natural enemies, Typhon. You are aware how he regards us, and at any moment some midget passing through the forest and observing my mighty trunk soaring so true and straight aloft may covet the timber and set a blaze upon me and plan my death. Yet I bear no hatred to the woodman, since it is part of the order of things that we minister to man and lessen his problems. From cradle to pyre we companion him; the osier twines to make his first resting-place; the faggot burns that he too may become ashes and sink in seemly fashion back to his mother, the earth. Without us, during his brief pilgrimage, where would he be? We make his couch and his bed, the handle of his tools for peace and war, his ships and the pillars of his roof. It would take too long to tell you all he owes the cone-bearers alone.”
Typhon flung himself down at the mossy bole of the tree and grew calmer, while the pine, whose fragrance scented his homely speech, discoursed amiably with him and insensibly cheered his spirit.
“I think the loneliness of my life may be darkening thought a little,” explained the youth. “Sometimes I crave solitude and hate the thought of returning to cities; but, on other occasions, it is not so, and then I feel that an hour in the circus would cheer me.”
“Loneliness and solitude are two different things,” explained the stone pine. “How anybody can be lonely in a world so full of his fellow-creatures, I know not; but solitude has great force in formation of character. It should be a part of life to withdraw as far as possible from one’s own kind, at any rate sometimes, and permit internal growth. We trees understand this, and though elbow to elbow, as you say, yet have we an art to hide ourselves within ourselves and so mature each his own vigour of native thought, which appears in the originality of his outward form and the arrangement of his limbs and general phasis, or appearance. In the eyes of each other we display movement, emotion, and divers qualities of inspiration; but our life is long, our gestures are deliberate and in consonance with our many days. To us the agility of man, both in mind and body, is a ceaseless entertainment, and the wild creatures, whose life is a battle to preserve life, similarly amuse us. We, too, battle, but our struggles, our victories and failures are concealed, save for the sympathy and understanding of one another.
“However, we were speaking of solitude, and I can assure you that to withdraw yourself, as you are doing now, from the concourse of your kind will prove a wise and fruitful experiment. Solitude is a shrewd solvent of character, Typhon; and those of metal to endure it win value from such an experience; while the majority, who find it beyond their power thus to live, are to man as the coneys and herb-eaters among the beasts, the starlings and plovers of the air — worthy and admirable in their gregarious way, but they move lowlier than the others. Solitude is cathartic to a sound system: it fortifies and strengthens. It clears a muddy brain and lights a lazy eye. I have heard the folk talk of going to cities to rub off their rust; never of haunting the forest for that purpose. Doubtless there is a danger in solitude — yet such healthy peril all should seek. Therefore, be it your good sense to fly man, fly his opinions, fly his philosophy, his books, his treasures, his politics, his ideals. Put them behind you for a season and face reality, that when you return to the hive you may take back with you new and strange honey worthy of humanity’s mental table. Solitude is a great sweetener: it teaches that to think evil of yourself, or anybody else, is to fling away good time and waste good energy. Neither happiness nor tranquillity can come of it, but only the seeds of wrinkles on torehead and in brain. Thinking evil poisons the heart; therefore, if you must think on others, or much upon yourself, be charitable, make allowance for native infirmity; consider how to help rather than how to censure, satirise or wound. Such thoughts alone bless the thinker.”
The pine chattered on and Typhon drowsed pleasantly under his scented words.
Then, Olympus being a thought ever at the back of the young man’s mind, since there is no solitude unshared by the high gods, he invited the vast tree for an opinion on that subject.
“It is an interesting fact,” replied the pine, “that we all make god in our own image. A pious jackdaw, of which there are but few, lifts his beak to a giant and blue-eyed jackdaw above the stars; just as a man sees in the artist’s statue of gold and ivory, or painted marble, a glorious apotheosis of himself and calls it the image of his god. The mountain conceives of deity as a prodigious and snow-crowned peak with mightier glaciers and gorges, greater waterfalls and loftier precipices than those of earth; the river’s god is a sublime stream, crystal bright running for ever over floors of agate, and without one stain or ripple in its vast purity; to the diamond, god is a precious stone of a million facets and as big as your head; to the fish, he is a silvery-scaled and goggle-eyed leviathan reigning over the depths of the blue, salt sea; to the squirrel, whom I know well, god eats nuts as large as melons all day long, and whisks behind him a tail like a fiery comet; and so forth; and so forth.”
“And what is the true shape, figure and substance of god?” inquired Typhon.
“Can you ask? I thought the problem was virtually determined,” replied the pine. “God’s real and vital quality is and can only be arboreal. At one time we actually regarded him as a majestic tree, and during earlier stages of earth’s progress the question merely turned upon whether or no deity belonged to any particular genus of the forest. Some inclined to the oak; some to the ash; others to the pine; while a great body of opinion firmly believed that deity, could we behold it, would appear as a rhododendron some ten miles high with leaves a quarter of a mile long — golden upon one side and silver on the other. The blossoms, or bells, from which rang thunder and the music of the spheres, were suspected to be about a hundred yards in diameter and probably three hundred in depth. They were thought by some to shine azure blue, with white anthers; by others to be crimson, with yellow anthers. The magnitude of the conception, if you are a horticulturist, may appeal to you; but, needless to say, with time these rather crude, dendromorphic fancies gave place to a higher and nobler conception. It was first decided that the true tree god belonged to no earthly genus whatsoever. Then successive generations of the forest elevated and purified our god idea until we perceived only the great, gracious principles of the good and perfect tree, and pretended no longer to picture an object only manifested by its phenomena to our gaze. Further we could not go in the way of idealisation, for facts are facts, and though fables ever command swifter attention and wider allegiance, the reality that god must be a tree is quite capable of proof.”
“How so?” inquired Typhon.
“Because he can be no other,” replied the stone pine. “Divine roots must exist, to hold the framework of the world together. Adamant and enormous roots there must be, firmly to clutch the world in their embrace, otherwise the whole affair would fall to pieces. Then what is dawn? It is an opening flower-bud on a bough of god. We see its rose and amber light wax into glory, then fade before the blaze of day. The petals fall and the fruit, which you call the sun, appears, shines, brings growth and life to all created things. Then each sun in turn mellows to the ripening. Flower-light of dawn gives place to fruit-light of even, and the perfected sun, his bulk increased, his work above ground accomplished, sinks into earth, or sea, and returns to feed the god roots that gave him birth. Deity is thus entirely self-supporting. Each day a flower opens and a fruit is set; while, when night comes, we may look up into the incomparable ramage of divine arborescence, to see the golden buds of countless leaves, flowers and fruits to come already glimmering above the arch of heaven. So we have god at last — the true, inscrutable and orbicular image of god after long æons of reflection upon the matter. It is instructive to remember that once we grew hot and savage about our god, permitted ourselves to torment and persecute each other, and took sides until the forest’s dignity was gone and we heard nothing but the chatter of opposing forces. The believers in a Deciduous God fought against those who held him to be an Evergreen; while innumerable, grotesque, minor schisms, involving flowers and fruit and fragrance, all begotten from lawlessness and diversity of opinion, are also to be recorded against us. I am old enough to remember the sect of the Junipers, who claimed (and proved by mathematics) that god could only be of their ridiculous genus; while even the daisies and tiny folk struck in sometimes and declared the true god must be a composite, since his sky was full of stars.
“However, now we know the absolute truth. To be in the line of godhead is the proud privilege of everything that grows upon its own roots; and you detached orders of creation must accept these verities with the best grace you may, seeing that you are one and all quite incapable of proving otherwise.”
“Perhaps Soter will throw light on this subject,” ventured the young man, and then the tree dismissed him.
“Concerning Soter I can tell you nothing. But now I perceive that there is an Event happening through the height and depth of nature — one happily not common, but tremendous when it comes. Therefore go upon your way, and when it touches you, keep your nerve and seek some concealed spot, where you may lie hidden and safe until all is over.”
Wondering at this speech, Typhon ascended into the woods that here wound a covering about the granite knees of a little bald-headed hill. He observed that the day was darkened, yet not with clouds, for the sun himself took on a sickly pallor and the air was full of contrary currents, that eddied together and drew up the dust of the hill-track into brief whirlwinds. They gyrated a moment, then all was still and the dust again dropped down. A silence contrary to nature fell upon the world, through which, suddenly piercing it, there rolled the sound of music so hideous, so suffering, so full of pangs and achings, cramps and spasms, that it struck to the very heart of the earth and created a convulsion from which not the living rocks themselves escaped. Leaves and fruits fell from the trees untimely; their boughs writhed with terror of this agonising melody; while the creatures of pad and hoof and wing rushed squealing, roaring and screaming in a cataract down the hill-side and through the air.
For a little, greatly daring, yet conscious of a strange thrust at the heart-strings, Typhon held his way; then sudden dusk enshrouded the hill and the music writhed until he could actually behold it, pulsing snaky into the air. It griped and gnawed his stomach; it tore his ear-holes and poured into his head like molten metal. He reached a naked rock above a precipice, and his heart, his brain, his body were melted as it seemed in a very acme of terror before what he saw.
A Creature existed there — a being dark, shapeless, enormous — part spider it seemed, in that tremulous light, part horned goat, part bear — an amorphous and monstrous lump, as high as a thunder-cloud, with eyes like moons of white fire, that burned through the gloom cloven by great glaring pupils more golden than gold. The Creature had arms and thighs, and it smote the ground with hooves of steel until landslides broke from the mountains and thundered to the vales; while from above there toppled down boulders and sundered crags. Then It lifted a great head to the shuddering and eclipsed sun and held to the darkness of its mighty face some object unseen. Whereupon pealed out the accursed music again and Typhon’s hair tried to tear itself from his head; his heart strove to leap from his bosom; his blood froze in his veins, only to rush madly onward again. Strange emotions — huge, strangling, wonderful yet horrible — poured through his brain and made it swell and palpitate as though it were bursting from his skull. He tried to scream, to fling himself over the precipice, to burrow into the earth; but then some watchful deity, desiring his life should not end in so dreadful a manner, set his legs and his wits to work, so that he turned from this great horror of the forest and fled with all else that could flee.
He ran and ran until the excruciating melody had sunk to a whisper, and then, finding nature grow more calm and discovering himself once more at the grey foot of the stone pine, he threw himself down beside it and found, to his amazement, that fear had vanished and only a desolate despair remained. Such was his exceeding misery that he wept, and for the first time since childhood felt burning tears upon his cheek.
“O light and life and hope! what has overtaken the earth?” he cried: and the pine answered him. The great tree was quite calm.
“Is this, then, a new experience to you, young Typhon? Have you never heard of the Terror so tremendous that Reason herself totters before it? Have you never seen the trees shudder together, sigh, press to each other for companionship and hold their sweet breath awhile? Have you never marked the birds suddenly stop their singing; the creatures thrust up frightened heads and twitching ears, cease from their business and gallop madly together, hunters and hunted side by side, with bare teeth, glaring eyes, sweating flanks through fen and thicket, dene and glade? Have you not seen the waterfalls stand still like ropes of silver in the cliff faces; the clouds huddle to hide the turrets of the hills, or wing wildly when no winds blow? It is the passion of Pan — Pan in his terrific, hopeless, frenzied mood, with old earth forgotten, and only the agony of his own affairs convulsing his divine heart.
“At such times he makes rivers run uphill and trees fling down green fruits. He drives the cud-chewing folk to thirst for blood and the panthers to eat mushrooms. He flings the furry people into the ocean and brings the fishes to hobble on their tails over the green meadows. He freezes hot blood and warms the snake and lizard till they burn. He confounds all categories, throws cosmos into chaos, and plays the mischief so profoundly that one wishes very much he could get his blessed Syrinx and give the world peace.
“Happily he is not often thus. As the kindly god of flocks and herds — the beneficent, benignant Pasturer — we know him oftenest and best. In those moods he has not seldom sat where now you lie, in likeness of an amiable and hairy faun, cracked his jokes, played such music on his pipes as we can understand without curdling and fainting, and shared his wisdom with beast and herb. Then we love him and are the happier for his coming.”
“I have seen him,” gasped Typhon, his panic terror abated and his tears dried.
“If you have actually stumbled into the Presence and yet live, you are fortunate and must have powerful friends,” replied the pine. “To have saved you alive under such circumstances was no common feat. You should have turned your eyes within your mantle and implored pardon for your trespass.”
“I could do nothing,” replied the lad.
“All is well that ends well then; and remember this: there is a panic trust as dangerous in its way as panic terror. Extremes of fear or irrational credulity are equally unworthy of reason. But now you will be wise to hasten hence. I must not detain you, for still you stand upon dangerous ground. Evening is at hand and the wolves, bound hither presently on the road to their supper, will be in a wild and uncompromising mood after this wave of emotion. It is their thoroughfare; they have driven it here under the patter of many paws; and neither your looks nor good-will can hope to carry any weight with the pack or their ferocious leader.”
“I had thought to sleep at your feet in the moss, for I am spent and weary,” answered the boy; but even as he did so, through the gloaming and returned peace of the forest, there came a distant, gentle and harmonious sound — the ululation of the grey hunters.
“Are there any homes of men here about?” asked Typhon, and the pine answered that there were not.
“From the line of approach,” he said, “I should judge the wolf brethren have picked up your scent, and since to them, as to all other meat-eaters, variety is charming, they may double their efforts and run you down despite your native strength and agility. In the forest four legs are often better than two; therefore, if I may advise, you will attempt no trial of speed in which the price of defeat would be so painful. Rather climb into my branches, where you will find safety and a measure of comfort.”
Even as he spoke, from a glade but two hundred yards distant, running, nose down, upon the way by which Typhon had returned, there spilled a tawny stream of hungry folk. They were running like a muddy river in spate, for the scent was warm. Typhon, wasting not a moment, sprang with uplifted arms to a bough just within reach of his fingers, fastened on it and drew himself beyond his pursuers, just in time.
Then the wolf leader accosted the stone pine. He was an immense creature, with white teeth, a lean and snake-like head, built for speed and endurance, with more than average wolf-sense in his red-rimmed eyes. Nor did he lack for humour of a sort.
“Hail, stone pine!” said he. “Your branches bear a new fruit since yester-even. But it is fruit that belongs to the enemies of your species; therefore throw it down to us, who can put the creature to some purpose. The spawn of men should be better dead than living from your point of view; for let this fine fellow grow a little larger and he will doubtless cast you down and make fire of you. Therefore be beforehand in the matter and cast him to us instead. Regarded as a whet for appetite he will serve us well enough and justify his existence.”
“I cannot cast him down, thou cynic,” replied the pine. “Mighty as I am, I have no power to remove this young man from the bough on which he now reclines. But since I myself invited him to ascend, I should not cast him down, even did I possess the power.”
The master wolf had not reached his eminence for nothing. He was wise and his mind moved as quickly as his body.
“Since you cannot cast him down, it matters not a fir-cone whether you would or no,” he replied. “Wolves waste no words over an accomplished fact.”
Then he whirled away, with his disappointed company after him, and many of meaner mind than their leader did waste words by cursing both Typhon and his protector.
They had scarcely departed when the wanderer fell asleep, after thanking the tree for such good service; and there, safely and easily, he slumbered through the hours of night and dreamed a dream of home, in which he saw his kind parents take the message that he had sent them to Epicurus, that the philosopher might know all was well with him. He both saw and heard them in his vision; and when Epicurus learned from the mother of Typhon that her son had thus far failed of his mission, he smiled and answered: “Fear nothing, Elpenice; Typhon shall find Soter and shall not find Soter.”
Thereupon he awoke to feel the foreglow already brushing his forehead with a rosy gleam that flowed among the tree-tops, and he cried in despair: “This is even worse than the Oracle of Apollo, for how shall a man find a thing and yet not find it?”
Then, descending, he spoke seemly words to his saviour and undertook never to forget such timely aid.
But the pine exacted an immediate return. “Give me your promise,” said he, “as payment for my service, that you will not, while you live, destroy a tree.”
And Typhon promised.