My Favorite Valentine Story

The Golden Key, by George MacDonald, is my favorite love story. It's about a boy, Mossy, and a  girl, Tangle, who meet as children, fall in love, marry, enjoy numerous adventures as they age and journey together toward “the land from which the shadows fall.” (Tangle knows that she can safely travel with Mossy because he has in his pocket the golden key, a symbol of Jesus). In the end Mossy and Tangle are separated by death and Mossy must trudge on alone for seven long years. Finally, wearied by time and life, he comes to a great mountain that stands in his path and impedes his journey. On it he spies a door and a keyhole...

 

“Mossy tried the key. It fitted. It turned. A great clang and clash, as of iron bolts on huge brazen caldrons, echoed thunderously within. He drew out the key. The rock in front of him began to fall. He retreated from it as far as the breadth of the platform would allow. A great slab fell at his feet. In front was still the solid rock, with this one slab fallen forward out of it. But the moment he stepped upon it, a second fell, just short of the edge of the first, making the next step of a stair, which thus kept dropping itself before him as he ascended into the heart of the precipice. It led him into a hall fit for such an approach-irregular and rude in formation, but floor, sides, pillars, and vaulted roof, all one mass of shining stones of every color that light can show. In the centre stood seven columns, ranged from red to violet. 

 

And on the pedestal of one of them sat a woman, motionless, with her face bowed upon her knees. Seven years had she sat there waiting. She lifted her head as Mossy drew near. It was Tangle. Her hair had grown to her feet, and was rippled like the windless sea on broad sands. Her face was beautiful, like her grandmother's, and as still and peaceful as that of the old Man of the Fire. Her form was tall and noble. Yet Mossy knew her at once. "How beautiful you are, Tangle!" he said, in delight and astonishment. "Am I?" she returned. "Oh, I have waited for you so long! But you, you are the old Man of the Sea. No. You are like the old Man of the Earth. No, no. You are like the oldest man of all. You are like them all. And yet you are my own old Mossy! How did you come here? What did you do after I lost you? Did you find the keyhole? Have you got the key still? She had a hundred questions to ask him, and he a hundred more to ask her. They told each other all their adventures, and were as happy as man and woman could be. For they were younger and better, and stronger and wiser, than they had ever been before.”

 

I  think of E.B.Browning’s lines, words I quoted to Carolyn this morning: “I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears and all of my life and…I shall but love thee better after death.”

 

David