this simple man lived lonely in a hut in the depths of a forest, just underneath three hovering trees, a pine tree and two beeches. the sun never was clear in the forest, but the fogs that rose in its unshaken shade were neither sweet nor sour. lonely was simon, for he had given up all the sweet of the world and had received none of the sweet of heaven. old now, and his house falling to ruin, he said he would go seek the sweet of heaven, for what was there in the mortal world to detain him? not peace, certainly, for time growled and scratched at him like a mangy dog, and there were no memories to cherish; he had had a heavy father, a mother who was light, and never a lay-by who had not deceived him. so he went in his tatters and his simplicity to the lord of the manor.
“i’m bound for heaven, sir,” says simon, “will you give me an old coat, or an odd rag or so? there’s a hole in my shoe, sir, and good fortune slips out of it.”
no—the lord of the manor said—he could not give him a decent suit, nor a shoe, nor the rags neither. had he not let him dwell all life long in his forest? with not a finger of rent coming? snaring the conies—(may your tongue never vex you, sir!)—and devouring the birds—(may god see me, sir!)—and cutting the fuel, snug as a bee in a big white hive. (never a snooze of sleep, with the wind howling in the latch of it and the cracks gaping, sir!) what with the taxes and the ways of women—said the lord—he had but a scrimping time of it himself, so he80 had. there was neither malt in the kiln nor meal in the hopper, and there were thieves in the parish. indeed, he would as lief go with simon, but it was such a diggins of a way off.
so simon went walking on until he came to the godly man who lived in a blessed mansion, full of delights for the mind and eye as well as a deal of comfort for his belly.
no—the godly man said—he would not give him anything, for the lord took no shame of a man’s covering.
“ah, but your holiness,” said simon, “i’ve a care to look decent when i go to the king of all.”
“my poor man, how will you get there, my poor man?” he said.
“maybe,” says simon, “i’ll get a lift on my way.”
“you’ll get no lift,” the godly man said, “for it’s a hard and lonely road to travel.”
“my sorrow! and i heard it was a good place to go to!”
“it is a good place, my simple man, but the road to it is difficult and empty and hard. you will get no lift, you will lose your way, you will be taken with a sickness.”
“ah, and i heard it was a good kind road, and help in the end of it and warmth and a snap of victuals.”
“no doubt, no doubt, but i tell you, don’t be setting yourself up for to judge of it. go back to your home and be at peace with the world.”
“mine’s all walk-on,” said simon, and turning away he looked towards his home. distant or near there was nothing he could see but trees, not a glint81 of sea, and little of sky, and nothing of a hill or the roof of a friendly house—just a trap of trees as close as a large hand held before a large face, beeches and beeches, pines and pines. and buried in the middle of it was a tiny hut, sour and broken; in the time of storms the downpour would try to dash it into the ground, and the wind would try to tear it out. well, he had had his enough of it, so he went to another man, a scholar for learning, and told him his intentions and his wishes.
“to heaven!” said the scholar. “well, it’s a fair day for that good-looking journey.”
“it is indeed a fine day,” said simon. as clear as crystal it was, yet soft and mellow as snuff.
“then content you, man simon, and stay in it.”
“ah, sir,” he says, “i’ve a mind and a will that makes me serve them.”
“cats will mouse and larks will sing,” the scholar said, “but you are neither the one nor the other. what you seek is hidden, perhaps hidden for ever; god remove discontent and greed from the world: why should you look on the other side of a wall—what is a wall for?”
the old man was silent.
“how long has this notion possessed you?”
the old man quavered “since ... since ...” but he could say no more. a green bird flew laughing above them.
“what bird is that—what is it making that noise for?”
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“it is a woodpecker, sir; he knows he can sing a song for sixpence.”
the scholar stood looking up into the sky. his boots were old—well, that is the doom of all boots, just as it is of man. his clothes were out of fashion, so was his knowledge; stripped of his gentle dignity he was but dust and ashes.
“to travel from the world?” he was saying. “that is not wise.”
“ah, sir, wisdom was ever deluding me, for i’m not more than half done—like a poor potato. first, of course, there’s the things you don’t know; then there’s the things you do know but can’t understand; then there’s the things you do understand but which don’t matter. saving your presence, sir, there’s a heap of understanding to be done before you’re anything but a fool.”
“he is not a fool who is happy; mortal pleasures decline as the bubble of knowledge grows; that’s the long of it, and it’s the short of it too.”
simon was silent, adding up the buttons on the scholar’s tidy coat. he counted five of them, they shone like gold and looked—oh, very well they looked.
“i was happy once,” then he said. “ah, and i remember i was happy twice, yes, and three times i was happy in this world. i was not happy since....”
“yes, since what?” the scholar asked him: but the old man was dumb.
“tell me, simon, what made you happy.”
“i was happy, sir, when i first dwelled in the wood and made with my own hands a house of boards. why—you’d not believe—but it had a chimney then, and was no ways draughty then, and was not creaky83 then, nor damp then; a good fine house with a door and a half door, birds about it, magpies and tits and fine boy blackbirds! a lake with a score of mallards on it! and for conies and cushats you could take your oath of a meal any day in the week, and twice a day, any day. but ’tis falling with age and weather now, i see it go; the rain wears it, the moss rots it, the wind shatters it. the lake’s as dry as a hen’s foot, and the forest changes. what was bushes is timber now, and what was timber is ashes; the forest has spread around me and the birds have left me and gone to the border. as for conies, there’s no contriving with those foxes and weasels so cunning at them; not the trace of a tail, sir, nothing but snakes and snails now. i was happy when i built that house; that’s what i was; i was then.”
“ah, so, indeed. and the other times—the second time?”
“why, that was the time i washed my feet in the lake and i saw....”
“what, man simon, what did you see?”
simon passed his hand across his brow. “i see ... ah, well, i saw it. i saw something ... but i forget.”
“ah, you have forgotten your happiness,” said the scholar in a soft voice: “yes, yes.” he went on speaking to himself: “death is a naked ethiope with flaming hair. i don’t want to live for ever, but i want to live.”
he took off his coat and gave it to simon, who thanked him and put it on. it seemed a very heavy coat.
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“maybe,” the old man mumbled, “i’ll get a lift on the way.”
“may it be so. and good-bye to you,” said the scholar, “’tis as fine a day as ever came out of eden.”
they parted so, and old simon had not been gone an hour when the scholar gave a great shout and followed after him frantic, but he could not come up with him, for simon had gone up in a lift to heaven—a lift with cushions in it, and a bright young girl guiding the lift, dressed like a lad, but with a sad stern voice.
several people got into the lift, the most of them old ladies, but no children, so simon got in too and sat on a cushion of yellow velvet. and he was near sleeping when the lift stopped of a sudden and a lady who was taken sick got out. “drugs and lounge!” the girl called out, “second to the right and keep straight on. going up?”
but though there was a crowd of young people waiting nobody else got in. they slid on again, higher and much higher. simon dropped into sleep until the girl stopped at the fourth floor: “refreshments,” she said, “and ladies’ cloak room!” all the passengers got out except simon: he sat still until they came to the floor of heaven. there he got out, and the girl waved her hand to him and said “good-bye.” a few people got in the lift. “going down?” she cried. then she slammed the door and it sank into a hole and simon never laid an eye on it or her from that day for ever.
now it was very pleasant where he found himself, very pleasant indeed and in no ways different from the85 fine parts of the earth. he went onwards and the first place he did come to was a farmhouse with a kitchen door. he knocked and it was opened. it was a large kitchen; it had a cracked stone floor and white rafters above it with hooks on them and shearing irons and a saddle. and there was a smoking hearth and an open oven with bright charred wood burning in it, a dairy shelf beyond with pans of cream, a bed of bracken for a dog in the corner by the pump, and a pet sheep wandering about. it had the number 100 painted on its fleece and a loud bell was tinkling round its neck. there was a fine young girl stood smiling at him; the plait of her hair was thick as a rope of onions and as shining with the glint in it. simon said to her: “i’ve been a-walking, and i seem to have got a bit dampified like, just a touch o’ damp in the knees of my breeches, that’s all.”
the girl pointed to the fire and he went and dried himself. then he asked the girl if she would give him a true direction, and so she gave him a true direction and on he went. and he had not gone far when he saw a place just like the old forest he had come from, but all was delightful and sunny, and there was the house he had once built, as beautiful and new, with the shining varnish on the door, a pool beyond, faggots and logs in the yard, and inside the white shelves were loaded with good food, the fire burning with a sweet smell, and a bed of rest in the ingle. soon he was slaking his hunger; then he hung up his coat on a peg of iron, and creeping into the bed he went into the long sleep in his old happy way of sleeping.
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but all this time the scholar was following after him, searching under the sun, and from here to there, calling out high and low, and questioning the travelling people: had they seen a simple man, an old man who had been but three times happy?—but not a one had seen him. he was cut to the heart with anxiety, with remorse, and with sorrow, for in a secret pocket of the coat he had given to simon he had left—unbeknown, but he remembered it now—a wallet of sowskin, full of his own black sins, and nothing to distinguish them in any way from any other man’s. it was a dark load upon his soul that the poor man might be punished with an everlasting punishment for having such a tangle of wickedness on him and he unable to explain it. an old man like that, who had been happy but the three times! he enquired upon his right hand, and upon his left hand he enquired, but not a walking creature had seen him and the scholar was mad vexed with shame. well, he went on, and on he went, but he did not get a lift on the way. he went howling and whistling like a man who would frighten all the wild creatures down into the earth, and at last he came by a back way to the borders of heaven. there he was, all of a day behind the man he was pursuing, in a great wilderness of trees. it began to rain, a soft meandering fall that you would hardly notice for rain, but the birds gave over their whistling and a strong silence grew everywhere, hushing things. his footfall as he stumbled through briars and the wild gardens of the wood seemed to thump the whole earth, and he could hear all the small noises like the tick of a beetle and87 the gasping of worms. in a grove of raspberry canes he stood like a stock with the wonder of that stillness. clouds did not move, he could but feel the rain that he could not see. each leaf hung stiff as if it was frozen, though it was summer. not a living thing was to be seen, and the things that were not living were not more dead than those that lived but were so secret still. he picked a few berries from the canes, and from every bush as he pulled and shook it a butterfly or a moth dropped or fluttered away, quiet and most ghostly. “an old bit of a man”—he kept repeating in his mind—“with three bits of joy, an old bit of a man.”
suddenly a turtle dove with clatter enough for a goose came to a tree beside him and spoke to him! a young dove, and it crooed on the tree branch, croo, croo, croo, and after each cadence it heaved the air into its lungs again with a tiny sob. well, it would be no good telling what the bird said to the scholar, for none would believe it, they could not; but speak it did. after that the scholar tramped on, and on again, until he heard voices close ahead from a group of frisky boys who were chasing a small bird that could hardly fly. as the scholar came up with them one of the boys dashed out with his cap and fell upon the fledgling and thrust it in his pocket.
now, by god, that scholar was angry, for a thing he liked was the notes of birds tossed from bush to bush like aery bubbles, and he wrangled with the boy until the little lad took the crumpled bird out of his pocket and flung it saucily in the air as you would fling a stone. down dropped the bird into a gulley88 as if it was shot, and the boys fled off. the scholar peered into the gulley, but he could not see the young finch, not a feather of it. then he jumped into the gulley and stood quiet, listening to hear it cheep, for sure a wing would be broken, or a foot. but nothing could he see, nothing, though he could hear hundreds of grasshoppers leaping among the dead leaves with a noise like pattering rain. so he turned away, but as he shifted his foot he saw beneath it the shattered bird: he had jumped upon it himself and destroyed it. he could not pick it up, it was bloody; he leaned over it, sighing: “poor bird, poor bird, and is this your road to heaven? or do you never share the heaven that you make?” there was a little noise then added to the leaping of the grasshoppers—it was the patter of tears he was shedding from himself. well, when the scholar heard that he gave a good shout of laughter, and he was soon contented, forgetting the bird. he was for sitting down awhile but the thought of the old man simon, with that sinful wallet—a rare budget of his own mad joys—urged him on till he came by the end of the wood, the rain ceasing, and beyond him the harmony of a flock roaming and bleating. every ewe of the flock had numbers painted on it, that ran all the way up to ninety and nine.
soon he came to the farmhouse and the kitchen and the odd sheep and a kind girl with a knot of hair as thick as a twist of bread. he told her the thing that was upon his conscience.
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“help me to come up with him, for i’m a day to the bad, and what shall i do? i gave him a coat, an old coat, and all my sins were hidden in it, but i’d forgotten them. he was an old quavering man with but three spells of happiness in the earthly world.” he begged her to direct him to the man simon. the smiling girl gave him a good direction, the joyful scholar hurried out and on, and in a score of minutes he was peeping in the fine hut, with his hand on the latch of the half door, and simon snoring in bed, a quiet decent snore.
“simon!” he calls, but he didn’t wake. he shook him, but he didn’t budge. there was the coat hanging down from the iron peg, so he went to it and searched it and took out the wallet. but when he opened it—a black sowskin wallet it was, very strong with good straps—his sins were all escaped from it, not one little sin left in the least chink of the wallet, it was empty as a drum. the scholar knew something was wrong, for it was full once, and quite full.
“well, now,” thought he, scratching his head and searching his mind, “did i make a mistake of it? would they be by chance in the very coat that is on me now, for i’ve not another coat to my name?” he gave it a good strong search, in the patch pockets and the inside pockets and in the purse on his belt, but there was not the scrap of a tail of a sin of any sort, good or bad, in that coat, and all he found was a few cachous against the roughening of his voice.
“did i make another mistake of it,” he says again, “and put those solemn sins in the fob of my fancy waistcoat? where are they?” he shouts out.
simon lifted his head out of sleeping for a moment.90 “it was that girl with the hair,” simon said. “she took them from the wallet—they are not allowed in this place—and threw them in the pigwash.”
with that he was asleep again, snoring his decent snore.
“glory be to god,” said the scholar, “am i not a great fool to have come to heaven looking for my sins!”
he took the empty wallet and tiptoed back to the world, and if he is not with the saints yet, it is with the saints he will be one day—barring he gets another budget of sins in his eager joy. and that i wouldn’t deny him.
