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-
THRESHOLD of the GODS
BY
MAURICE THOMPSON.
NEW YORK:
JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER,
303 Pearl Street.
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THE THRESHOLD OF THE GODS.
" Silva alta Jovis, lucusve Diana."
How shall we account for the old mytholo¬
gies, or shall we attempt to account for them
at all ? That beauty is imperishable, and that
whatever fills the measure of logic may be
taken as demonstrated, has somehow come to be
accepted by wise men as true. But shall we
receive or reject the gods of the ancients on
the score of beauty on the one hand or of logic
on the other? Who ever did believe in the
gods ? Were they men of feeble minds or
debilitated physiques—a lot of degenerate
clods without any fixedness of character ?
Was Agamemnon a fool, Homer a dunce,
Pythagoras a ninny, or Caesar a weakling ?
These may at first view seem questions both
trite and uninteresting; but I purpose sketch¬
ing presently, as best I may, the outlines of a
quiet little adventure which led me to ponder
deeply over the proposition, Was there ever
any foundation in fact for this belief in the
gods ? I will not say that I believe there ever
was, nor can I own to a total disregard for
certain rather obscure and mysterious evi¬
dences in nature of the existence of beings
whose tenure of material bodies is as certain
and indestructible as the bodies are shadowy,
and whose power is somehow held, for some
reason hard to discover, in abeyance. If
gods ever were they now are. They may not
be now palpable or visible or audible, but
BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES.
give to all those immortals the power of ren¬
dering themselves visible, and when it was
exhausted by man's encroachments they fell
away into invisibility. And if some hidden
cave in the world could now be found where
nature has never been disturbed by even the
simplest art, may be there might be discovered
one or two happy deities revelling in the mer¬
est pool, so to speak, of what was once the
great ocean of their " peculiar element." If
this theory is true the gods are invisible, not
dead, and they are invisible not from their
own choice, but because their " peculiar ele¬
ment " is exhausted which, while it lasted,
made visibility possible.
I have no certain recollection of having
been poring over this or any similar train of
semi-reasoning, nor have I the faintest knowl¬
edge of what I was thinking of, when my
guide, halting suddenly and knocking the
ashes from his pipe into the hollow of his
great brown hand, said, " Well, here we are."
At the sound of his rather gentle though deep
and sonorous voice, I looked around, feeling
as if I had been aroused from a dreamful slum¬
ber, without power to recall any definite idea
of my dreams.
Every one has experienced this feeling when
straying in an idle, musing way through some
still grove or quiet meadow. Suddenly, as if
by a spell of enchantment everything looks
strange. Even the sunlight is unlike itself.
The sough of the wind is peculiarly impressive.
Even . the color of the grass is changed.
You rub your eyes; but it is some time before
you see, hear and feel natural.
So with me just then. I was well aware, to be
THE THRESHOLD OF THE GODS. 79
sure, that starting from the guide's cabin we
had walked over a high ridge, almost a moun¬
tain, following for our way a zigzag path or
trail that led us back and forth among vast
fragments of variegated granite under wide-
spreading boughs of low cedar trees. Now,
however, we stood on the bank of a little river
whose water crept past us in a slow but re¬
markably limpid tide as clear as glass, into
which I gazed with an indistinct vision, and
feeling a vague sense of the strangeness of
everything about me. A pirogue lay moored
at our feet. The guide motioned me to get in.
I obeyed at once, but had time in so doing to
note how old and frail, indeed how rotten the
boat appeared to be. The guide accidentally
tossed the pipe-ashes from his hand down upon
one of the gunwales where they seemed natu¬
rally to disappear, mingling with the loose
mould and minute fungi of the decaying wood.
In this frail vessel we purposed passing over a
dangerous rapid of the stream some distance
below ; for it was the spirit of adventure had
brought me here. I was in no condition, how¬
ever, to realize the possibilities of the step I
was about to take. I shook myself, rubbed
my eyes and strove to get rid of this hazy
mood; but succeeded only when the guide by
a vigorous paddle-stroke sent us straight out
to the stream's middle. Then I began to feel
naturally and fell to making a close study of
the guide and the boat.
What a taciturn, grimly selfish-looking fel¬
low the man was ! His face was not a bad
one, however, and his form was ease and
strength incarnate. You could not guess
such a man's age. Not a gray hair on his head,
80 B Y- WA YS AND BIRD-NO TES.
not a wrinkle, denoting years, in his brow or
cheeks, and yet you suspected he was old. It
might have been the rather hard glitter of his
calm, gray eyes, or the half stolid way in which
he kept closed his immense hirsute lips, which
suggested something of senility coupled with
unusual strength. His bodily movements, too,
though full of elasticity of a certain sort,
lacked the ready suppleness of youth, suggest¬
ing instead the half-automatic, perfunctory
agility of long experience. You occasionally
see such old men by the sea or in the moun¬
tains. They are men whom age cannot con¬
quer—the men of perfect health. But his boat
was not so impervious to time and exposure, it
seemed. A kind of dry rot had attacked it,
apparently years ago. This, however, seemed
to have added to its buoyancy, for it danced
upon the water like a bubble or a feather. I
could not help, as I glanced from man to boat,
imagining a sort of rapport between them, and
presently the odd fancy that, like the centaur
and the horse, they were really one, took hold
on my mind so forcibly that I could not re¬
strain a low laugh as we began to glide down
the stream, so ludicrously did the blending of
the guide's gray, old clothes with the sides and
bottom of the gray, old boat, in color and text¬
ure, enforce the whimsical thought.
It may as well be stated here that the stream
upon which we were now afloat ran past the
guide's cabin over on the other side of the
ridge. But to do so it had to make a complete
double round a great point, after dashing
through a deep, hidden valley, down stony
precipices and between the close-drawn walls
of a resounding gorge.
THE THRESHOLD OF THE GODS. 8i
My seat was forward near the prow of the
boat, and I could look straight ahead over the
little, decaying staff which, in imitation of a
bowsprit, slanted off from the pirogue's beak.
A glance down the river showed me how near
to the dizzy escarpments of the mountain its
current flowed, whilst over against this vast
wall a wooded country, almost flat, swept off to
a range of low green hills a mile distant.
The guide propelled our frail craft with a
short, broad paddle which must have been
very old, for the wood of which it was made
had turned green and was curiously creased
with worm-furrows and slimy with fungus or
moss. Besides this paddle, a long cane rod,
for use when the process of polling was ne¬
cessary, lay at hand. But, so sensitive seemed
our ancient pirogue to even the least impulse,
there was little need of any engine, more than
the stream's own current, to propel us withal.
Noiselessly and evenly we slipped down the
tide, much like the shadowy figures of a dream,
it seemed to me, between the fern-braided
banks. We scarcely made a ripple as we
went. My habit of close observation soon
prevailed over the dreamy mood that had set¬
tled upon me, and I began a minute study of
the shores as they stole, by apparent motion,
to the rear of us. Below the wild tangles of
ferns and semi-fluviatic plants beautifully
waved lines of parachrose stones lay in blend¬
ing strata, as if half-welded by some process
of fluxion long since ended—a dim polychrome
rendered doubly effective by our motion. On
the side opposite to the ridge the bank was
quite low, giving us free insight to the farthest
6
82 B Y- IVA YS AND BIRD-NO TES.
glooms of the woods, where wild flowers of
many kinds grew in profusion.
We had proceeded but a few hundred yards
when I caught sight of a pretty, dappled fawn
peering out at us with its great, mellow eyes
from a clump of green shrubs. I now felt
deeply vexed with myself for allowing the un¬
reasonable importunities of the guide to cause
me to leave my trusty rifle behind at his cabin.
But a moment later, when the lissom, young
animal against which I was aiming imaginary
bullets sped away like the very spirit of merri-
ness, I did not regret the gun. The common
wild birds of the woods were everywhere.
Blue jays and yellow finches, fly-catchers,
nut-hatches and thrushes made a great chirp¬
ing and twittering along with the mingled
rustlings of their wings. I noted six or seven
varieties of woodpecker, among them the
ivory-bill and that great, scarlet-crested, black
king of the woods named by the naturalists
Hylotomus pileatus. Water fowls of the
smaller kinds flew up before us, and occasion¬
ally a blue heron or a small wader of the bit¬
tern kind took wing in its peculiarly stately
way.
A belted kingfisher, that most beautiful of
all our birds of the streams, suddenly appeared
in the air just in front of me, where he hov¬
ered for a moment as if doubtful whether to
fly over us and go up the river or to turn
about and retreat before us. He chose the
latter. As he did so he uttered that sharp
little laugh every angler has heard. O beauti¬
ful bird! your laugh has an evil ring! O
halcyon / there is a great icicle in your heart,
no matter how fine the weather you bring.
THE THRESHOLD OF THE GODS. 91
effort. We were nearly opposite a grand
opening in those stately trees, out of which
seemed to issue the silvery line which cut the
river. I leaned forward, with suspended
breath, to catch a glimpse right down it as we
should pass. The gods were there, I knew
they were ; I should see some one of them, at
least, if only a sylvan faun or satyr, or a dryad
slowly withdrawing into the heart of a tree.
Deus ecce! Deus.
That great white bird came out of the shad¬
ows of the woods again, and curving its flight
down the stream seemed to melt into the mist.
A sensation of dewy coolness crept over me,
as if shaken from the rorid sandals of some
passing naiad. The bank of the river opposite
to the ridge's precipice now presented a gay,
almost fantastic appearance. • Tall, aquatic
grasses, thinly interspersed with certain scar¬
let-spiked riparian weeds, were sown at the
water's verge; their long slender stalks and
semi-translucent leaves, waving to the impulse
of air and water-ripple, sent forth a sort of
shimmer like that which Virgil intended to
describe with the phrase " Turn silvis scena
coruscis "—a waving motion with light flashing
and flickering through. Right opposite this a
narrow, vertical rent intersected the ridge, and
through it an almost level finger of the sun
reached to caress the grass. Just as we passed
I noted, by an instantaneous glance, a strange
and beautiful thing—a troop of dragon-flies,
purple-bodied and silver-winged, filing rapidly,
in open order of ones and twos, across the
sunlight into the dewy recesses of the river's
fringe. Each gaudy insect, as it flew, wavered
in the air so dreamily and eccentrically that
92 BY-WAYS AND BIRD-NOTES.
somehow I was reminded by their course of
those shadowy, silvery lines in the blades of
Damascus daggers.
We slipped on and on, still following the
now madly careering halcyon. For the mer¬
est point of time, not long enough for an eye
to twinkle, we were opposite the rift in the
woods and trembling on the verge of mystery.
I looked down the open vista and saw some¬
thing, I know not what—a form or a shadow,
an image conjured up by my imagination, or
only a blending of the glooms and gleams by
force of distance and velocity—but a new ele¬
ment was added to my nature, I felt a great
thrill. A new joy took root in my heart. A
new flower blew open in my soul. Accipio
agnoscoque deos /
It seemed that down that aisle I could look
to the remotest age of time; and out of it,
blowing into my eager face, I felt the un¬
changed, the unchangeable spirit of Eld!
Was it, or not, a face that I saw ? Can I ever
know? The flowing hair, like blown supple
ringlets of gold floss, the gray deep eyes, the
divinely smiling lips; were they not there ?
And the shining body and agile limbs, did I
only fancy I saw them ? How shall I ever be
sure ? O ! Dea certe. An indescribable some¬
thing, as of that whole landscape melting and
vanishing, by a sudden and noiseless deflagra¬
tion, followed close upon this fortunate mo¬
ment. With a harsh, maniacal cry of delight,
the belted halcyon leaped over the coruscating
line into the silvery mist beyond. And, like
an arrow flung from the bent bow of the river,
we were whirled after him into the vast fanged
jaws of the canon.
THE THRESHOLD OF THE GODS. 93
I felt our pirogue leap and shiver; I heard
awful noises, as of battles and storms and tu¬
multuous applaudings, as of a million clapping
hands, as we rushed down into the rent hill.
Sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras ! All above us the
mist and spume boiled and rolled; all below
us the mad waves leaped and fought; all
round us the gray, wet fragments of granite
offered destruction. Nature's wildest frenzy
of passion was bearing us down, down, down !
O, the calm madness that seized me ! It was
awe traced in marble—it was terror frozen in
ice! O, the sweet vision, so suddenly mine,
so abruptly gone ! A mysterious joy, like the
memory of a heavenly dream, lingered in my
heart, down deeper than any fear of death
could go.
Deeper and deeper we plunged down be¬
tween the dank, fantastically grooved jaws of
the gorge, till the mist and darkness blended
into one, and the thunder of the stream in its
agony was appalling. Even this did not
drown the metallic laugh of the halcyon as it
led on through that horrid tumult. I felt a
wet wind rushing over me, I saw the spume
sparkle like phosphor, whilst the shark-like
teeth of the walls on either hand drew closer
upon me.
How deep the ecstasy below us ! How far-
reaching the immitigable storm-mist above us!
How old and worn the stolid stones about us !
O threshold of the gods, what a distance be¬
hind us! O sweet, calm, every-day world,
how infinitely removed from us!
Finally we felt a mighty swell lift us and
savagely shake us. A heavy spray dashed
over us, and our frail vessel quivered and
94 B Y- WA YS AND BIRD-NO IBS.
quaked, as if in a convulsion of pain. Sud¬
denly the gorge closed up till the slimy walls
thereof oppressed us and its jagged teeth
grazed us on either side. But on we rushed,
tempest behind us, thunder before us, the
blackness of utter darkness all about us, and
at last, with a mighty explosion of all terrors,
we were hurled like a missile from some giant
engine—a very missile, indeed—forth from
the grim, stony lips of that awful fissure, reel¬
ing and spinning far out upon the swift, level
bosom of the little river lapsing into the open
country.
The evening farewell of the sun was glorify¬
ing the distant mountain lines, the sweet
maple trees on either side of us were waving
betwixt gloom and splendor, and the breeze
was a deep, tender sigh of relief.
" Unde h<zc tarn clara repente
Tempestas ? "
The belted halcyon turned aside in his flight,
and perching upon a bough laughed his fill at
us as we drew past him. The roar of the rap¬
ids receded and faded, leaving at last in my
heart a tender melody which never can depart.
I had hovered on the Threshold of the
Gods '
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