No More Learning

The woman in the bed still
slept on in her death-like sleep, but the woman who sat by her head
crossed herself and grew pale, and the youngest of the old men cried
out: 'A devil has gone into him, and we must begone or it will go into
us also. ' Before they could rise from their knees, a resonant chanting
voice came from the lips that had crowed and said: 'I am not a devil,
but I am Hermes the Shepherd of the Dead, and I run upon the errands of
the gods, and you have heard my sign, that has been my sign from the
old days. Bow down before her from whose lips the secret names of the
immortals, and of the things near their hearts, are about to come, that
the immortals may come again into the world. Bow down, and understand
that when they are about to overthrow the things that are to-day and
bring the things that were yesterday, they have no one to help them,
but one whom the things that are to-day have cast out. Bow down and
very low, for they have chosen for their priestess this woman in whose
heart all follies have gathered, and in whose body all desires have
awaked; this woman who has been driven out of Time and has lain upon
the bosom of Eternity. After you have bowed down the old things shall
be again, and another Argo shall carry heroes over sea, and another
Achilles beleaguer another Troy. '

The voice ended with a sigh, and immediately the old man awoke out of
sleep, and said: 'Has a voice spoken through me, as it did when I fell
asleep over my Virgil, or have I only been asleep? '

The oldest of them said: 'A voice has spoken through you. Where has
your soul been while the voice was speaking through you? '

'I do not know where my soul has been, but I dreamed I was under the
roof of a manger, and I looked down and I saw an ox and an ass; and I
saw a red cock perching on the hay-rack; and a woman hugging a child;
and three old men, in armour studded with rubies, kneeling with their
heads bowed very low in front of the woman and the child. While I was
looking the cock crowed and a man with wings on his heels swept up
through the air, and as he passed me, cried out: "Foolish old men, you
had once all the wisdom of the stars. " I do not understand my dream or
what it would have us do, but you who have heard the voice out of the
wisdom of my sleep know what we have to do. '

Then the oldest of the old men told him they were to take the
parchments they had brought with them out of their pockets and spread
them on the ground. When they had spread them on the ground, they took
out of their pockets their pens, made of three feathers, which had
fallen from the wing of the old eagle that is believed to have talked
of wisdom with St. Patrick.
'He meant, I think,' said the youngest, as he put their ink-bottles
by the side of the rolls of parchment, 'that when people are good the
world likes them and takes possession of them, and so eternity comes
through people who are not good or who have been forgotten. Perhaps
Christianity was good and the world liked it, so now it is going away
and the immortals are beginning to awake. '

'What you say has no wisdom,' said the oldest, 'because if there are
many immortals, there cannot be only one immortal. '

Then the woman in the bed sat up and looked about her with wild eyes;
and the oldest of the old men said: 'Lady, we have come to write down
the secret names,' and at his words a look of great joy came into her
face. Presently she began to speak slowly, and yet eagerly, as though
she knew she had but a little while to live, and in the Gaelic of their
own country; and she spoke to them many secret powerful names, and of
the colours, and odours, and weapons, and instruments of music and
instruments of handicraft belonging to the owners of those names; but
most about the Sidhe of Ireland and of their love for the Cauldron, and
the Whetstone, and the Sword, and the Spear. Then she tossed feebly
for a while and moaned, and when she spoke again it was in so faint a
murmur that the woman who sat by the bed leaned down to listen, and
while she was listening the spirit went out of the body.

Then the oldest of the old men said in French to the woman who was
still bending over the bed: 'There must have been yet one name which
she had not given us, for she murmured a name while the spirit was
going out of the body,' and the woman said, 'She was but murmuring
over the name of a symbolist painter she was fond of. He used to go to
something he called the Black Mass, and it was he who taught her to see
visions and to hear voices. She met him for the first time a few months
ago, and we have had no peace from that day because of her talk about
visions and about voices. Why! It was only last night that I dreamed I
saw a man with a red beard and red hair, and dressed in red, standing
by my bedside. He held a rose in one hand, and tore it in pieces with
the other hand, and the petals drifted about the room, and became
beautiful people who began to dance slowly. When I woke up I was all in
a heat with terror. '

This is all the old men told me, and when I think of their speech and
of their silence, of their coming and of their going, I am almost
persuaded that had I gone out of the house after they had gone out of
it, I should have found no footsteps on the snow. They may, for all I
or any man can say, have been themselves immortals: immortal demons,
come to put an untrue story into my mind for some purpose I do not
understand. Whatever they were, I have turned into a pathway which
will lead me from them and from the Order of the Alchemical Rose.