No More Learning

Behind the two, and half hidden by
trees, was a little monastery. It had been burned down a long while
before by sacrilegious men of the Queen's party, but had been roofed
anew with rushes by the boy, that the old man might find shelter in his
last days. He had not set his spade, however, into the garden about it,
and the lilies and the roses of the monks had spread out until their
confused luxuriancy met and mingled with the narrowing circle of the
fern. Beyond the lilies and the roses the ferns were so deep that a
child walking among them would be hidden from sight, even though he
stood upon his toes; and beyond the fern rose many hazels and small oak
trees.

'Master,' said the boy, 'this long fasting, and the labour of beckoning
after nightfall with your rod of quicken wood to the beings who dwell
in the waters and among the hazels and oak-trees, is too much for
your strength. Rest from all this labour for a little, for your hand
seemed more heavy upon my shoulder and your feet less steady under
you to-day than I have known them. Men say that you are older than
the eagles, and yet you will not seek the rest that belongs to age. '
He spoke in an eager, impulsive way, as though his heart were in the
words and thoughts of the moment; and the old man answered slowly and
deliberately, as though his heart were in distant days and distant
deeds.

'I will tell you why I have not been able to rest,' he said. 'It is
right that you should know, for you have served me faithfully these
five years and more, and even with affection, taking away thereby a
little of the doom of loneliness which always falls upon the wise. Now,
too, that the end of my labour and the triumph of my hopes is at hand,
it is the more needful for you to have this knowledge. '

'Master, do not think that I would question you. It is for me to keep
the fire alight, and the thatch close against the rain, and strong,
lest the wind blow it among the trees; and it is for me to take the
heavy books from the shelves, and to lift from its corner the great
painted roll with the names of the Sidhe, and to possess the while an
incurious and reverent heart, for right well I know that God has made
out of His abundance a separate wisdom for everything which lives, and
to do these things is my wisdom. '

'You are afraid,' said the old man, and his eyes shone with a momentary
anger.

'Sometimes at night,' said the boy, 'when you are reading, with the
rod of quicken wood in your hand, I look out of the door and see, now
a great grey man driving swine among the hazels, and now many little
people in red caps who come out of the lake driving little white cows
before them.
I do not fear these little people so much as the grey man;
for, when they come near the house, they milk the cows, and they drink
the frothing milk, and begin to dance; and I know there is good in the
heart that loves dancing; but I fear them for all that. And I fear the
tall white-armed ladies who come out of the air, and move slowly hither
and thither, crowning themselves with the roses or with the lilies,
and shaking about their living hair, which moves, for so I have heard
them tell each other, with the motion of their thoughts, now spreading
out and now gathering close to their heads. They have mild, beautiful
faces, but, Aengus, son of Forbis, I fear all these beings, I fear the
people of the Sidhe, and I fear the art which draws them about us. '

'Why,' said the old man, 'do you fear the ancient gods who made the
spears of your father's fathers to be stout in battle, and the little
people who came at night from the depth of the lakes and sang among
the crickets upon their hearths? And in our evil day they still watch
over the loveliness of the earth. But I must tell you why I have fasted
and laboured when others would sink into the sleep of age, for without
your help once more I shall have fasted and laboured to no good end.
When you have done for me this last thing, you may go and build your
cottage and till your fields, and take some girl to wife, and forget
the ancient gods. I have saved all the gold and silver pieces that were
given to me by earls and knights and squires for keeping them from
the evil eye and from the love-weaving enchantments of witches, and
by earls' and knights' and squires' ladies for keeping the people of
the Sidhe from making the udders of their cattle fall dry, and taking
the butter from their churns. I have saved it all for the day when my
work should be at an end, and now that the end is at hand you shall not
lack for gold and silver pieces enough to make strong the roof-tree of
your cottage and to keep cellar and larder full. I have sought through
all my life to find the secret of life. I was not happy in my youth,
for I knew that it would pass; and I was not happy in my manhood, for
I knew that age was coming; and so I gave myself, in youth and manhood
and age, to the search for the Great Secret. I longed for a life
whose abundance would fill centuries, I scorned the life of fourscore
winters. I would be--nay, I _will_ be! --like the Ancient Gods of the
land. I read in my youth, in a Hebrew manuscript I found in a Spanish
monastery, that there is a moment after the Sun has entered the Ram
and before he has passed the Lion, which trembles with the Song of the
Immortal Powers, and that whosoever finds this moment and listens to
the Song shall become like the Immortal Powers themselves; I came back
to Ireland and asked the fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they knew
when this moment was; but though all had heard of it, there was none
could find the moment upon the hour-glass. So I gave myself to magic,
and spent my life in fasting and in labour that I might bring the Gods
and the Fairies to my side; and now at last one of the Fairies has told
me that the moment is at hand.