The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever (24 page)

This story, which I admit to be in its brevity a fairly complex piece of work, was not intended to touch on the supernatural. Yet more than one critic has been inclined to take it in that way, seeing in it an attempt on my part to give the fullest scope to my imagination by taking it beyond the confines of the world of living, suffering humanity. But as a matter of fact my imagination is not made of stuff so elastic as all that. I believe that if I attempted to put the strain of the Supernatural on it, it would fail deplorably and exhibit an unlovely gap. But I could never have attempted such a thing, because all my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. The world of the living contains enough marvels and mysteries as it is; marvels and mysteries acting upon our emotions and intelligence in ways so inexplicable that it would almost justify the conception of life as an enchanted state. No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvelous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; an outrage on our dignity.

Whatever my native modesty may be it will never condescend so low as to seek help for my imagination within those vain imaginings common to all ages and that in themselves are enough to fill all lovers of mankind with unutterable sadness. As to the effect of a mental or moral shock on a common mind, it is quite a legitimate subject for study and description. Mr. Burns’ moral being receives a severe shock in his relations with his late captain, and this in his diseased state turns into a mere superstitious fancy compounded of fear and animosity. This fact is one of the elements of the story, but there is nothing supernatural in it, nothing so to speak from beyond the confines of this world, which in all conscience holds enough mystery and terror in itself.

Perhaps if I had published this tale, which I have had for a long time in my mind, under the title of “First Command” no suggestion of the Supernatural would have been found in it by any impartial reader, critical or otherwise. I will not consider here the origins of the feeling in which its actual title, “The Shadow-Line,” occurred to my mind. Primarily the aim of this piece of writing was the presentation of certain facts, which certainly were associated with the change from youth, carefree and fervent, to the more self-conscious and more poignant period of maturer life. Nobody can doubt that before the supreme trial of a whole generation I had an acute consciousness of the minute and insignificant character of my own obscure experience. There could be no question here of any parallelism. That notion never entered my bead. But there was a feeling of identity, though with an enormous difference of scale—as of one single drop measured against the bitter and stormy immensity of an ocean. And this was very natural too. For when we begin to meditate on the meaning of our own past it seems to fill all the world in its profundity and its magnitude. This book was written in the last three months of the year 1916. Of all the subjects of which a writer of tales is more or less conscious within himself this is the only one I found it possible to attempt at the time. The depth and the nature of the mood with which I approached it is best expressed perhaps in the dedication which strikes me now as a most disproportionate thing—as but another instance of the overwhelming greatness of our own emotion to ourselves.

This much having been said, I may pass on now to a few remarks about the mere material of the story. As to locality it belongs to that part of the Eastern Seas from which I have carried away into my writing life the greatest number of suggestions. From my statement that I thought of this story for a long time under the title of “First Command” the reader may guess that it is concerned with my personal experience. And as a matter of fact it is personal experience seen in perspective with the eye of the mind and coloured by that affection one can’t help feeling for such events of one’s life as one has no reason to be ashamed of. And that affection is as intense (I appeal here to universal experience) as the shame, and almost the anguish with which one remembers some unfortunate occurrences, down to mere mistakes in speech, that have been perpetrated by one in the past. The effect of perspective in memory is to make things loom large because the essentials stand out isolated from their surroundings of insignificant daily facts which have naturally faded out of one’s mind. I remember that period of my sea-life with pleasure because begun inauspiciously it turned out in the end a success from a personal point of view, leaving a tangible proof in the terms of the letter the owners of the ship wrote to me two years afterwards when I resigned my command in order to come home. This resignation marked the beginning of another phase of my seaman’s life, its terminal phase, if I may say so, which in its own way has coloured another portion of my writings. I didn’t know then how near its end my sea-life was, and therefore I felt no sorrow except at parting with the ship. I was sorry also to break my connection with the firm who owned her and who were pleased to receive with friendly kindness and give their confidence to a man who had entered their service in an accidental manner and in very adverse circumstances. Without disparaging the earnestness of my purpose I suspect now that luck had no small part in the success of the trust reposed in me. And one cannot help remembering with pleasure the time when one’s best efforts were seconded by a run of luck.

The words “Worthy of my undying regard” selected by me for the motto on the title page are quoted from the text of the book itself; and, though one of my critics surmised that they applied to the ship, it is evident from the place where they stand that they refer to the men of that ship’s company: complete strangers to their new captain and who yet stood by him so well during those twenty days that seemed to have been passed on the brink of a slow and agonizing destruction. And
that
is the greatest memory of all! For surely it is a great thing to have commanded a handful of men worthy of one’s undying regard.

I

I saw a slowly-stepping train—

Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar—

Following in files across a twilit plain

A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II

And by contagious throbs of thought

Or latent knowledge that within me lay

And had already stirred me, I was wrought

To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III

The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,

At first seemed man-like, and anon to change

To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,

At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

IV

And this phantasmal variousness

Ever possessed it as they drew along:

Yet throughout all it symboled none the less

Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

V

Almost before I knew I bent

Towards the moving columns without a word;

They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,

Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:—

VI

“O man-projected Figure, of late

Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?

Whence came it we were tempted to create

One whom we can no longer keep alive?

VII

“Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,

We gave him justice as the ages rolled,

Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,

And long suffering, and mercies manifold.

VIII

“And, tricked by our own early dream

And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,

Our making soon our maker did we deem,

And what we had imagined we believed.

IX

“Till, in Time’s stayless Stealthy swing,

Uncompromising rude reality

Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,

Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

X

“So, toward our myth’s oblivion,

Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope

Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,

Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

XI

“How sweet it was in years far hied

To scan the wheels of day with trustful prayer,

To lie down liegely at the eventide

And feel a blest assurance he was there!

XII

“And who or what shall fill his place?

Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes

For some fixed star to stimulate their pace

Towards the goal of their enterprise?”…

XIII

Some in the background then I saw,

Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,

Who chimed: “This is a counterfeit of straw,

This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!”

XIV

I could not buoy their faith: and yet

Many I had known: with all I sympathized;

And though struck speechless, I did not forget

That what was mourned for, I, too, long had prized.

XV

Still, how to hear such loss I deemed

The insistent question for each animate mind,

And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed

A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

XVI

Whereof, to lift the general night,

A certain few who stood aloof had said,

“See you upon the horizon that small light—

Swelling somewhat?” Each mourner shook his head.

XVII

And they composed a crowd of whom

Some were right good, and many nigh the best…

Thus dazed and puzzled ’twixt the gleam and gloom

Mechanically I followed with the rest.