Part 23

“The minutes melt,” he was saying constantly, “yet the strength has not yet been given to my right hand.”

Once he cried to his father, almost in despair, “Soon my veins will open and the life within me will melt, and yet my labours are scarcely begun. I have already gathered rare and great knowledge for my authorship, yet alas! I cannot lift the pen.”

“In this matter, I am barren of all counsel,” said his father, “for my right hand also, although nurtured in wisdom, has never received the strength to grasp the pen.”

“The swift minutes speed headlong away,” cried the young man anxiously, “yet I tarry over-long upon my path.”

Day by day the dire need of achieving his destiny burned in his veins. Yet the fleet hours sped, and his mighty task was no nearer to fulfilment. All day he would traverse the streets of the great city, and when the evening came he would labour in its slums. But at last as the spring of the year came again, and the sky grew more clement, and the trees and the earth began to shine with green, a new passion came upon this labourer even as he toiled.

It happened that one evening, just as the fœtid little mission-room had been cleared for the night, the young man turned abruptly to his co-worker, that stalwart, the sight of whom had first drawn him there.

“Farewell, my kind friend,” he said, “I pass from among you to-night.”

“My dear Jordan,” said his fellow-worker, “you will be wise to refrain from working among us for a while. You are one who burns the candle too freely. You will do well to learn to husband your strength.”

“In order,” said William Jordan, with his secret and beautiful smile, which many had learned to watch for, but none to understand, “that I may achieve that which lies before me?”

“That is true,” said the chief of the mission. “You must know that you are a worker of miracles in this parish.”

“And yet,” said William Jordan, “this is the last time the worker of miracles can enter this parish of yours.”

His stalwart and somewhat grim companion seemed to stagger at these words.

“Why--why, Jordan,” he said, “does this mean that you are going to desert us altogether?”

“I fear so,” said William Jordan. “To-night as I sat among you I heard a voice in my ears. To-morrow at dawn I go upon my way.”

“But, Jordan,” said his fellow-worker, “I beg you, I beseech you to return to us. We cannot part from you; we cannot do without you down here.”

“Alas!” said William Jordan, “I heard the voice as I worked among you to-night. A term has been placed to my days; it has almost expired; and yet my destiny is only half complete.”

The chief of the mission took the frail hands of the young man in the grip of a giant.

“We cannot possibly let you go from among us,” he said sternly. “We shall not; we need you; we need you. You have a touch of the magic; you are a born evangelist; you go into regions where none can follow.”

“Nature has spoken,” said William Jordan softly. “At dawn I obey her decree.”

“No, no, no!” cried his comrade, “your work lies here. You were born for this. Nature formed you to labour for your kind; and you must labour for them all your days.”

“You speak truly,” said William Jordan, “but then my labours are not yet begun.”

“Are not these your labours?” cried his fellow-worker. “Can you not wield your power upon those whom we others know not how to approach? Have you not worked wonders among us during the few short months in which you have laboured?”

“Wonders,” said William Jordan, with a tender melancholy in his voice. “Can you tell me what are these wonders in comparison with those that I have still to perform?”

“I do not understand you, I do not follow you,” said the other.

“No,” said William Jordan, “you do not understand, yet perhaps it is well.”

“But I swear to heaven,” cried his fellow-worker, with hoarse passion, “you shall not go from among us like this.”

The passion of this stalwart man was such that all unthinkingly he seized the frail form of the young man, and in the might of his conviction shook it fiercely.

Immediately William Jordan, for the first time in that place, was attacked by a violent frenzy of coughing. A spray of bright red blood was cast upon his lips. He spat it upon the floor.

His fellow-worker recoiled from the sight of it with a cry of dismay.

“Arterial blood,” he gasped.

“Nature’s mandate,” said the young man, with his secret and beautiful smile.

His fellow-worker in the noble prime of his manhood, gave a low cry and sank back against the wall of the room.

“Oh,” he cried wildly, pressing his hands across his heart, “I wish now you had never come among us at all!”

XLI

Outside the mission-hall in the gently-raining April night, James Dodson, with his coat collar turned up over his ears and his hat pulled down over his eyes, lay in waiting for his friend. Upon beholding this woe-begone figure William Jordan gave a start of surprise.

“Why, Jimmy,” he said, “why do you come here now?”

“As I was half-way through the performance at the Alcazar,” said Jimmy Dodson apprehensively, “I had a sort of presentiment. Something seemed to tell me, Luney, that after to-night I might never see you again. Something seemed to tell me that you were going away.”

“Nature has certainly spoken to me,” said William Jordan.

“That doesn’t mean, Luney, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson in a voice not the least like his own, “that you intend to desert an old friend?”

“To-morrow at dawn I obey her decree,” said William Jordan.

“You don’t mean to say you are going away!” cried Jimmy Dodson.

“Yes--for a little while.”

“But--but,” said Jimmy Dodson, “I don’t think I could bear it if you were never to come back. You see, Luney, old boy--well, you see--well, somehow, I can’t explain it--_but--if--you--were--never--to--come --back_!”

The voice of Jimmy Dodson was slow-drawn like a wail. It pierced William Jordan to the heart. Tears leaped to the eyes of the young man, but in the darkness his stricken companion could not see them.

“Luney,” said Jimmy Dodson, “will you promise that you will come back?”

“I promise,” said the young man.

“Honour bright, you know, honest Injun,” said Dodson anxiously.

“Honest Injun, Jimmy,” said William Jordan, with a strange smile in his eyes.

“Give me your hand on it, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson; “although I am sure you wouldn’t play it low down on an old pal.”

William Jordan yielded to his friend’s importunity.

Dodson shuddered.

“Why, old boy,” he said, “it is so cold--so cold. Ugh, it is like ice.”

William Jordan kissed his friend in the darkness.

“And--and,” cried Dodson, “your lips burn like a fire.”

The two friends walked along in a silence. After they had proceeded a long distance in this fashion through the wet midnight streets, the thin and high-strung tones of Jimmy Dodson were heard again in the darkness.

“Luney,” he said in a voice that seemed to over-tax his powers of utterance, “I always used to wonder what made me take up with a chap like you; but since you came out of prison I have done nothing but wonder what made you take up with a chap like me.”

“You are one of the links in the chain,” said William Jordan, “one of the stages in the journey.”

“I don’t understand you at all,” said Jimmy Dodson.

“Perhaps it is well,” said William Jordan.

“And yet you know, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “when I first knew you, I didn’t understand you then. But I always accounted for it by the fact that you were not quite all there. Well, I don’t understand you a bit better now, although I have come now to account for it by the fact that I am not quite all there. I don’t know why I have come round towards you like I have. At first I thought you were rather less than the ordinary, and that you didn’t count at all; but now I consider you to be the finest chap I’ve ever known, and that you have got something about you that more than makes up for what you lack.”

“May you not have entered upon another phase?” said William Jordan.

“I don’t quite know what you mean, old boy,” said Jimmy Dodson, “unless you mean that I’ve changed. At least I had that kind of thought as I sat this evening at the Alcazar. The wrestling bored me, the songs were rotten, and I didn’t think much of the ballet. And I thought the band was out of tune--all except John Dobbs. In fact, I began to wonder why I came. And then suddenly I thought of that night, old boy, when you sat at my side, and I took you round to see Hermione----”

“Ah, the goddess!” exclaimed William Jordan softly.

“I have often thought since,” said his friend, “that it was not right to play it on you as we did. And what Hermione said about you afterwards, old boy, rather turned me against her. But she was pretty low down, was Hermione; yes, she doesn’t dance in the ballet now-a-days. All the same she rather knocked you, old boy, didn’t she?”

“I thought her to be divine,” said William Jordan simply.

The two friends stayed their steps under a flickering gas-lamp in the City. The steady rain continued. The clock of a neighbouring church told the hour.

“It will be a long and wet walk to Peckham, Jimmy,” said William Jordan.

“It will, old boy,” said his friend; “but what do you suppose I care, now that you have given me your promise to come back? By the way, old boy, do you think it would be asking too much, as a special favour, for you to write me a line now and then just to say that you are alive?”

The gaze of William Jordan grew heavy with a darkness that was veiled from his friend.

“You must forgive me, Jimmy, if I don’t,” he said.

“As a special favour,” pleaded his friend. “You know, old boy, I have never had a line of yours. I have always been meaning to ask you for your autograph--that is before the trouble came--and--and now the trouble has come I intend to ask you for it. Send me a line, old boy, to say you are alive.”

“I cannot promise to do that,” said William Jordan, “because the strength has not yet been given to my right hand. But I do promise to return; and when I do return I shall listen for your tap upon the shutters; and then I will let you in as far as the threshold of the little room.”

The friends said their last farewells as the clocks chimed the hour of two.

XLII

When in the middle of the night, William Jordan regained the little room, he found the aged man, his father, seated there. The Book was on the table open. The dagger, the chalice, and the stylus were also displayed. But in the face of the aged man was the mute despair which was ever upon it when these articles came to be brought forth.

The chalice was half-full of the red blood; the quill was dipped therein and held in the hand. But not a stroke had been committed to the virgin page of vellum.

“Will it never be done?” said the old man tremulously, “will it never be accomplished? Answer me, Achilles.”

“I know not, my father,” said the young man. “I am not so learned in the Book as I once was.”

“Yet our knowledge of the Book increases with our years and our stature,” said the old man, as if in amazement. “Answer me, Achilles, is it not so?”

“Yes and no,” said the young man. “The Book of the Ages, my father, is an expression of the invisible forces of nature. And I am unfit to discourse thereupon until I have spoken with my mother the Earth, who is wise and of their kin. As my veins rapidly devour this third and last phase upon which I am entered, they draw me nearer and nearer to her. Never have I been so near to her as I am to-night. As soon as the bright east announces the dawn I go to lie at the soft brown bosom of my mother. If she will give suck to the first of her children, perhaps it may be that the strength will come into his right hand.”

As the young man spoke these words, he walked to the window of the little room and drew back the shutters.

“I see a faint light in the east,” he said, with a subdued excitement. “The hour is at hand when I go upon my way.”

“You will return, O Achilles?” said his aged father apprehensively. “I am lonely and my hairs are white.”

“Yes, my father, I will return,” said William Jordan, “I will return to our little room. When I have gone out and lain at the breasts of my mother the Earth; and I have walked in her wildernesses, and I have traversed her seas, and I have surprised the last of her secrets, which may be no secrets at all, I will return, my father, to our little room.”

“That is well, beloved one,” said the aged man, pressing his pale lips to the forehead of the young man.

Yet in the emotion generated by his words of farewell, the young man was seized again with a paroxysm.

“What--what do I see upon your lips, Achilles?” cried the aged man, his father, peering with a curious horror in his dim eyes.

“Nature’s mandate, my father,” said the young man, with his secret and beautiful smile.

XLIII

As William Jordan went forth of the little room and took his ways, the east had still no more than a few faint grey flecks, which were hardly more than vaunt-couriers of the hues of dawn. Into the ruck of the streets he took his way. He plunged into them headlong, without calculation, without attempting to discriminate. Yet there was neither hurry of the flesh nor of the spirit; both were rational, temperate, responsible.

The rain had ceased; but the black pavements were slippery and unwholesome, and there was the stench of a thousand drains. Street after street he passed through at the same regulated pace, which was neither slow nor fast. Rows upon rows of houses which he had never seen before came into view; and at last, as all the sky was bright with the new day, he saw the green lanes, and began to taste the pure woodland airs.

As soon as he knew himself to be free of the great city, he left the highways and struck a direct course across the green fields. Over the hedgerows and across the pastures he bent his steps; across morasses and through tangled places, not knowing nor desiring to know whither; past hamlets with thatched roofs, and crooked rustic churches; past farm steadings; past stately mansions; over upland and fen, until the sun had reached its zenith in the heavens. He then sat on the hospitable earth, and for a space rested his weariness on the fringe of a green wood, in a dry warm place, under a splendid tree, alive with sap and the melody of birds.

When again he went his way the sun was still high in the April heaven, though pursuing a steady track towards the west. The wayfarer followed it in a straight line, over hedgerow and pasture, sometimes crossing a brook with his naked feet; at other times leaping a ditch, or breaking through barriers of thorn and timber which seemed insurmountable.

The wayfarer paid no heed to the miles that he made. As the light of the sun began to fail, he found himself upon the wealds and uplands, with the generous sweet-smelling earth ever beneath him. The evening airs seemed to blow with a sharper sweetness; the houses and hamlets grew fewer, yet nature’s spontaneity grew ever richer and more rare.

When it was almost dark he reached a little and solitary house on the edge of a great wood. It seemed to be interminable, and full of pungent yet delicately odorous trees. He knocked at the door of the little house. His summons was answered by an old woman in a grey shawl; and for a penny she gave him a cake of bread and a cup of water. He drank the water like one who thirsts; and then he bore his limbs, which now ached with weariness, into the gloomy precincts of the wood. Groping about in the darkness, he found a dry and sheltered place amid the fresh flowering furze; and here, with his head propped against the bole of a young pine, he ate his food slowly, and then straightway fell into a profound sleep.

When he awoke the sky was alive with beautiful stars. With all of these he was familiar. He rose; and by the delicate light of the heavens, which melted the dark canopies above him, pressed through the brakes and thickets into the heart of the forest. Many were the nimble-footed wild creatures that crossed his path, and in the darkness startled him; he was sensible all about him of weird cries and wonderful voices; they came upon him from every side; but he still pressed on and on into the untrodden darkness of the wood. In his progress his garments were rent and his hands bled freely.

In the process of time, the pathlessness which confronted him everywhere grew less impenetrable. The dawn crept again into the east, the birds took up their loud songs, and flowers and herbs and all the wild things of nature were spread before him in the morning light.

Pressing ever on and on, he came out at last upon the fringe of this great wood, and by now the sun had risen to warm his veins. The wayfarer was now come to the breast of the mighty mother; and on this second day he reposed many hours on the green, dry earth of the forest, looking all about him into its dark recesses, and observing in a kind of secret joy the ways of the rich, wild life of whom he claimed kinship.

Towards evening he came upon another little house in the heart of the great wood, and then he remembered that he was hungry. Here he obtained from another aged woman a hunch of white bread and a bowl of delicious milk. And then for the second time he lay down and slept in the heart of the great wood.

Days and days did he pass in his wanderings. Sometimes he was in the woodland places, sometimes upon the weald. He would lie in the fallows in the burning afternoon sun; and now and again in the chill of the night, if he could not find warmth in the thickets, he would enjoy the protection of a barn or a cowhouse, or, if these were to seek, he would walk in a joyful silence through the long hours, until the morning was again in his eyes.

One day in his ceaseless journeying he suddenly beheld the sea. It was at noon upon a delicious day of midsummer. He ran down to the beach, with a noble rapture in his veins, and, flinging off his clothes, he waded out into the cool water. For many days he kept ever by the side of the sea. He could not forsake that marvellous companion; and on several occasions, when he found old men in boats upon the beach, he persuaded them to row him out upon the many-smiling wilderness.

Even after the summer had waned his wanderings continued. They bore him into all kinds of wonderful and unexpected places. Sometimes he found himself in the high and mountainous country; and here the grandeur, the solitude, and the marvellous hues and the deep-breathing silences would endue him with the awe of his inheritance. And wherever he was borne by the irresponsible passion of his steps, he beheld infinite wonders. He saw great pits sunk into the bowels of the earth; he saw curious and grimy peoples, yet it cost him no pang to admit them into all-embracing kinship with himself, and with the Earth, his mother.

When as the tints of autumn fell about the quiet earth, and he felt the shrewd airs of the tall mountains of the west, he heard their voices in such wise in his ears, as never before had addressed them. With a loud, fervent cry, he flung himself down upon the fruitful brown soil, and pressed his lips rapturously to the bosom of Earth, his mother.

The wonderful hues of the autumn deepened in their silent rapidity, until the ruthless winter was come. Then the wayfarer persuaded an old shepherd to give him his shawl, and clad therein, and moving ever upon the peaks of the mountains, he came into the north. And there he learned many of the cunning but simple arts of these wise mountain peoples--those hardy children who wrested but a reluctant nourishment from the bare ground.

It was here that, driven by the stress of winter, the wayfarer shared the hospitality of the fisherman’s hut, the ploughman’s byre, and the rude hearth of the crofter and the shepherd. It was in these altitudes that he renewed the garments for his back and the shoes for his feet. His scant store of pieces of silver had been consumed long ago, but, like one of his kin in a remote age, he did not fear to beg his bread from door to door. Now and again he would requite his hosts, who asked nought in return, as he sat in the chimney-place, warmed by a fire of peats and a basin of food, with wonderful tales out of the past, and glorious stories of the youth of the world. And these he would clothe in such wise that the simple hearts of his friends would swell with gladness.

He did not fear the snow in the dales, the ice in the burns, nor the barren and implacable wastes which confronted him everywhere. Many and curious were the deeds he performed, strange were the sights that he witnessed. He made acquaintance with the red deer, and the mountain sheep, and the fowls of the moorland; he learned to speak every man in his own tongue; and never once in all these vicissitudes, although he had no piece of silver in his coat, did he suffer denial.

He was ragged and unkempt; he was almost as frail as a phantom; his skin was coloured a deep brown by exposure to the weather; his hair, thick and matted, came down to his shoulders, and his large and bright eyes seemed to envelop the whole of his face. By the time the spring came round again, and the cycle of the seasons had completed itself, he found his feet again upon the yellow shores of the loud-sounding sea. Yet now he did not linger within its magical thrall. For a long dormant passion had again begun to stir within him, and he knew that the hour was near when he must return to the aged man, his father, and to the little room.