Part 24

Through the brakes of the green woods through which he passed the notes of each bird as it sang were as familiar in his ears as the many and subtle voices of the wind. He could now read the face of the fruitful Earth, his mother, like an open page. All her sweet little mysteries he could decipher; he knew the shapes of her trees, the odours of her flowers, the habits and tracks of all her nimble wild creatures. Yet in his veins the passion was ever rising; he felt it was no longer meet for him to tarry. No more did it beseem him to while away the glad hours with this old gossip. Ere the winter came again he must return to the streets of the great city, and thence to the sanctuary in which he was wont to kneel; and to the white-haired man, his father; and to that other faithful friend who loved him tenderly.

In the gorgeous heat of the midsummer he found himself again upon the mountains of the west. But now the passion was mounting hourly in the veins of the wayfarer, and soon he was to know that it had claimed as its fuel a portion of his vital power. His frame had never been so dauntless and so full of a divine vigour; his brain was like a crystal; but he seemed to know that his power of sight was not what it was.

Upon these heights of the west he brought his power of vision to the proof. He found himself again in those altitudes, which previously he had trod when the hues of autumn were upon them. At that time he was able to discern clearly the adjacent peaks by which they were surrounded; yet on this day of midsummer, although the bright sky was like a mirror of opals, he knew not even their outlines. And he seemed to divine, by a clear foreknowledge, that all about him would soon be dark.

Without hurry, and without fear, although the passion was ever mounting in his veins, the wayfarer turned his eyes to the east, towards the little sanctuary within the heart of the streets of the great city. Mile by mile he retraced the well-remembered steps. Although he could not now discern all that lay about him, as when a twelvemonth since he trod these ways, for his eyes were no longer faithful to him; yet, as his unfaltering limbs overcame the brakes and the thickets, the downs and the pastures, the new and puissant sense of kinship with the Earth, his mother, endued his veins with the strength of heroes.

He could hardly see as he walked through the woodland places, but the joy and the music by which Nature celebrated her noble freedoms, the pæans of his ever-youthful mother filled his ears. The loud and deep voice, that was so clear and so heroical, made the wayfarer nod and smile at her as he took his way. Pressing ever on and on over hill and dale, through impenetrable fastnesses, by marsh and stream, he rejoiced aloud in her noble fecundity. “Sing, goddess, sing,” he chanted continually, “and I will sing to thee!”

The heart of the wayfarer was entranced with gladness as he begged his bread from door to door. And as he came nearer and nearer to the streets of the great city, he began to sing to the Earth, his mother, in a wonderful kind of speech which he knew was pleasant to her ear. And she requited him with her own resonant and golden music, those strange, rapt cadences of her own childlike voice; and these cradled him in sleep, and he dreamed by the wise and gracious light of the stars.

“Kiss me, ever young and gentle one,” he whispered to her, as one evening he lay down on the dry mosses of an autumnal wood. “I can scarce see thee now, my mother,” he said as he turned his eyes towards the bole of a great tree, under whose wide-spreading branches he lay; “but thy ample speech was never so great in my veins. To-night I shall dream of thee constantly, sweet and gentle virgin which hath had strange issue.”

As he lay that night asleep under the great tree, the voice of the Earth, his mother, breathed in his ears. “Return, O Achilles,” it said, “to the streets of the great city, without another instant of tarrying, for in my tenderness for thee, thou brave one, I have endowed thy right hand with strength.”

These words awoke the wayfarer. He arose and knelt before the gnarled trunk of the great tree which had been the pillow of his dreams. Pressing his eyes to the green moss over which the ages had passed, he said joyfully, “I heed thee, my mother. Thou who hast lain with the stars in their courses, I will bear myself as the fruit of thy caresses.”

The wayfarer drove the pains of sleep from his limbs, and turned his dim eyes towards the east.

“Achilles, thy son, heeds thee, my mother,” he said as the bracken began to yield to his steps; “he will not tarry until he has made the streets of the great city, so that when he returns into sanctuary he may find the strength in his right hand.”

With bold and quick steps, as light as those of a deer, the wayfarer went his way through the chill dawn. When he came out into the beautiful expanse of the fields, the east shone with morning.

His feet unconsciously sought the well-remembered tracks of his previous way. The will seemed not to direct the steps of the wayfarer, yet not once did they stray from the path upon which formerly they had come. At noon the weather turned bitterly inclement. The winds blew piercingly from every quarter, and presently the first flakes of the winter’s snow were shaken out of the adverse heavens. But the wayfarer pressed on and on into the very teeth of the gale. Asking neither shelter nor refreshment, his frame, in its puissance, consumed the miles, for he feared lest the sight of his eyes should desert him ere he could cross the threshold of the sanctuary that awaited him and the strength he bore in his right hand.

As the sombre light of the afternoon was waning his feet were once more upon the pavements of the streets of the great city. The wind whistled round the corners of the gaunt houses; the air was thickened by gusts of sleet, which pierced his skin, and stung his frame to new endeavours.

He recalled all the objects he passed with a strange kind of exaltation; the houses and shops that he could so indistinctly see; the hurrying crowds of people in the streets--the “street-persons” of his childhood, who were “street-persons” no more. The roar of the traffic filled his surprised ears, yet only to enkindle them with a high and grave joy; for it was another manifestation of that to which his whole being owed its entrancement, the universal voice of the Earth, his mother.

XLIV

The lamps were being lighted in the streets, yet he could hardly see them. Not once, however, did his feet stray from the path of his well-remembered way.

With the autumnal sleet ever beating upon his bared head, he found himself again in the streets of the great city. On the threshold of a public-house, flaring with many garish lights, he saw a boy selling matches. He was whimpering with the cold, and his teeth were chattering, for he had neither shoes nor stockings; indeed, his only garments were a pair of ragged trousers and a shirt. As the wayfarer discerned this unhappy figure he stayed his steps, and, pulling off his own broken boots and threadbare stockings, bade the boy sit down and put them on. When the boy had obeyed, the wayfarer took from his own shoulders the shepherd’s shawl which he wore, and wrapped it about him.

Thereafter it was in the scantiest of raiment that he took his way. Yet ere he had come to the threshold of the little room, which he seemed only to have left the day before yesterday, he was destined to take part in a curious adventure.

It happened as he turned into a familiar thoroughfare, a street long and narrow, and wondrously busy with a great press of people and traffic, that he suddenly became aware of a strange clamour that was arising before him. Cries of consternation resounded on every side; they overcame the shrieks of the piercing winds as they swept round the houses and shops. With his dim eyes the wayfarer could perceive the drivers of the vehicles make frantic efforts to escape from an oncoming danger that threatened them.

Suddenly there came through the failing light of the afternoon the great form of a horse, a huge animal attached to a heavy railway van. There was no driver, the reins were dangling loose; with tossing mane and wild nostrils, the mighty horse was devouring the roadway with furious strides. It escaped a tramcar as by a miracle; it crashed into a milk-seller’s cart, and sent milk-cans with their contents rolling in all directions. Yet still it kept its course unchecked, a menace to all whom it passed.

The passers-by, huddling together as far away from the kerb as they could squeeze themselves, were then astonished by a strange sight. A ragged, half-naked beggar, hatless, coatless, without shoes and stockings, and with long, matted hair which fell down upon his shoulders, moved off the pavement. He appeared to turn his back upon the mad thing that was approaching him, and then, with a leap of superhuman courage and address, seemed to fling himself at the head of the infuriated brute as it grazed his bare ankles with its hoofs. He was seen to take the reins in his grasp, and, leaping along at the side of the horse, began an attempt to control its furious speed that was little short of miraculous. In the struggle he was several times carried completely off his feet, and borne yards at a time without touching the earth. And though man and brute and vehicle swayed and rocked in all directions, no obstacles intervened to shatter them; and at almost every yard he was borne the man seemed to gain a firmer purchase on the brute.

For half the length of the thoroughfare the titanic struggle was waged between the man and the brute on the slippery, circumscribed and narrow road. At times it seemed that the man must be hurled away from the brute altogether; at other times it seemed that he must be flung beneath the hoofs of the brute and trampled lifeless; while, again, in the frantic efforts of the animal to be rid of its burden, it seemed that they must both be hurled through the windows of the shops.

Ere long, however, the fury of the horse began to spend itself. And as it did so, with the man still retaining his grasp of the reins, two policemen, stalwart and hardy, and finely-grown men, stepped from the pavement, and, lending their aid at a timely moment, the poor animal was brought under control.

“Well done, my lad,” said the policemen to the half-naked beggar in a kind of generous wonder. “Well done, well done! Are you sure you are all right?”

Among the witnesses of the incident was a tall, bronzed man, with closely-cropped hair, who was dressed with remarkable care, and whose bearing was that of a soldier. At his side was a slight, youthful, handsome woman, who was breathless with excitement.

“Upon my word,” said the man, “that is the best thing I ever saw. That chap deserves a medal.”

The woman, with a strange, dancing brightness in her eyes, looked up wistfully into the face of her companion. “Get him one,” she said.

Stimulated by their generous curiosity, they walked up to the spot where a small crowd was rapidly collecting around the unkempt and extraordinary figure that was almost naked.

“Better take his name and address,” said the tall, bronzed man to the two police constables in a slow and calm voice which caused them to touch their helmets.

The tall, bronzed man then proceeded to survey the circle of interested bystanders at a dignified leisure, and said in the same tone, “Suppose we send round the hat?”

Removing his own immaculately-ironed silk head-gear, he proceeded with an air of exaggerated self-possession, which the conspiracy of the circumstances rendered bizarre, to drop several pieces of gold into its interior, and then, standing bare-headed, so that the sleet glistened upon the pomatum of his hair, handed his hat to a man near to him, who was of a similar type to himself. However, while this gentleman, also with extraordinary nonchalance, was adding further pieces of gold to the hat, this somewhat impressive munificence was frustrated.

The half-naked beggar appeared suddenly to realize that he was the cynosure of all eyes. He gave a gaunt look all about him, and then, with a motion of indescribable rapidity, he passed through the ring that had been formed. With a swiftness so great that his flight could hardly be followed, the mists of the evening received him.

The bare-headed man gave a glance of courteous deprecation, which almost took the form of a personal apology, to the man who was placing pieces of gold in his hat.

“Rather a pity,” he said; “rather a pity to let him go.”

“Yes, a pity,” said the other, wiping a speck of sleet off the brim of the hat very carefully with his glove, and handing it back.

As with an air of disappointment the crowd dispersed reluctantly, the slight, youthful, handsome woman turned with an eager gesture to the owner of the hat. Her cheeks, under their powder, were the colour of snow.

“Did you--did you see his face?” said she in quick, nervous accents. “I shall carry it to my grave. It was--it was the most beautiful face in the world.”

The owner of the hat gave the woman a little smile of affectionate indulgence, in which, however, pride was uppermost, and handed her very carefully into a hansom.

XLV

As the bare-footed beggar passed away into the traffic, far from the circle of the curious, before they could impede him, he was able to discern that his thin hands had been lacerated by the reins during the struggle he had waged with the horse. The blood was flowing freely from his torn fingers, but at the sight of it a flush of gladness overspread his cheeks.

“I thank thee, Mighty One,” he said, “that thou hast given the strength to my right hand.”

It was with bruised and numbed feet that the returned wayfarer came at last to the threshold of the little room.

The aged man, his father, gave a cry of joy when he beheld the apparition that had entered, for, dim as his eyes were, he knew it for the form of one.

The old and the young man embraced one another.

“I have been desolate, Achilles,” said the old man with the plaintiveness of age; “I have been desolate. But I knew, O Achilles, that thou wouldst return.”

A brave fire was burning upon the hearth, the candles, also, were bright of lustre in the little room.

The young man stretched his wounded hands to the warmth, and then, with a kind of composed passion, he spread them out before his father.

“Dost thou see, my father?” he said. “Earth, my mother, has given the strength to my right hand. I think now, my father, I shall be among the English authors.”

As he spoke the secret and beautiful smile crept across his wan lips.

“Thou wilt write in the Book, O Achilles?” said the old man, pointing to the table where the mighty tome lay open.

“First, I must write my little treatise upon human life, my father,” said the returned wayfarer in the simple accents of his childhood. “And, perchance, my father, when that is written, if the strength is still given to my right hand, I may, or I may not, write in the Book.”

“I myself have not yet written in it, O Achilles,” said the aged man, his father, with a look of despair. “And I begin to fear that it may not be given to me to write therein. I am old, Achilles; I am old.”

The young man appeared hardly to heed the words of his aged father.

“I will eat,” he said, “and then until midnight is told upon the clocks I will repose, and then I will write my little treatise upon human life.”

Half-naked and unkempt and bare-footed as he was, the returned wayfarer ate and drank; and he then fell asleep in a chair at the side of the bright hearth with his feet stretched out before the embers.

While the returned wayfarer slept profoundly, the aged man, his father, heaped up the fire with coals. Then he went forth into the shop, and took from its recesses the materials for writing.

As the old man was conveying these articles, with every precaution that he might not disturb the sleeper, to the table of the little room, he heard a stealthy knocking, with which he had grown familiar, upon the outer shutters of the shop.

Therefore, as soon as the old man had discharged his burdens, he went to the door of the shop and opened it. Upon the outer threshold was a small, wizened man with a shrewd countenance and a short, bristling moustache.

“Has he come back?” asked the man with an eager whisper.

“Yes, he has returned,” said the old man; “but he now sleeps.”

“Let me see him,” said the other in a voice of anguish. “I will not disturb his sleep, and I will not try to cross the threshold of your little room.”

“You may follow,” said the old man, leading the way through the shop to the threshold of the little room, “but I would entreat you not to proceed beyond this.”

“Yes, I will bear it in mind,” said the other in a voice of curious excitement.

When the man from the street came to stand upon the threshold of the little room, and to peer within at him who lay there asleep, the cry of joy that he could not repress was mingled with an intense consternation.

“Why, where has he been?” he whispered in tones of horror. “See--see, he is all in rags! His feet are bruised and cut and quite bare. And his hair hangs down upon his shoulders like a mane. And his ragged shirt exposes his chest. And his fingers are all covered with dried blood. Tell me, why has he returned like this?”

“He is about to communicate the story of his wanderings,” said the old man, pointing to the materials for writing that were spread upon the table of the little room. “He is about to make them into a treatise; when the clocks tell the hour of midnight he will commence author. Therefore does it not behove us to be patient? When his task is accomplished, I doubt not that we shall be privileged to learn all that has befallen him.”

“Ah, yes, I remember,” said the man from the street. “I always suspected that one day he might set up on his own account as an author. He has a lot of out-of-the-way knowledge. He looks in a dreadful state to-night, and I shouldn’t wonder if he didn’t write the better for it. He’s evidently been out and seen a bit of life; and you’ve got to see a bit of life to be an author. At least, Murtle says so; and Murtle ought to know.”

“Yes, yes,” said the old man softly. “We shall doubtless be informed of all that has befallen him when he comes to take the pen in his right hand.”

The man from the street bade good-night to the old man, and begged to be allowed to return the next evening to the threshold of the little room, that he might have speech with him who slept.

XLVI

The returned wayfarer, ragged, bare-footed, and dishevelled, continued in his profound sleep by the side of the fire. Not a sound escaped him, not once did he change his posture; and as the hour of midnight approached, the old man, his father, began to have a fear that he would not waken again. But at the first stroke of the clocks, as they told the midnight hour, the wanderer opened his eyes to the full, and, rising immediately from his chair, without pain, and without weariness, sat down exactly as he was before the materials for writing that were spread upon the table, and commenced author.

At first, as he dipped the pen in the ink, and it sought the virgin sheets of white paper, his face was calm and untroubled, and about his lips was a happy smile of peace. Lightly, easily, deftly at first, his right hand, that was now so strong, ran across the paper, without a moment of hesitation, without a single pause, or any kind of uncertainty.

Page upon page was traversed by his strong right hand. Not once did it falter, no fault did it commit; and neither blot, nor erasure, nor substitution of one word for another, defiled the fair copy that grew, minute by minute, under the slender, blood-stained fingers. Hour after hour passed; and the aged man, his father, sat by the side of the fire with his dim and incredulous eyes fixed upon him who wrote. In them was a kind of entrancement.

The beams of the morning stole through the top of the shutters of the little room, but the author did not look up an instant from his labours, and not once did he change the attitude in which he wrote. Neither did he ask to have the shutters thrown back, and the bright lamp removed, even when it was twelve o’clock in the day. From time to time the old man plied the hearth with fuel, and also he procured a second lamp, newly replenished with oil.

In the afternoon the old man went forth of the little room, and making no sound, so that his movements might not be regarded, he penetrated, candle in hand, to a deep cellar below the shop.

In a corner of this chill vault, all covered with cobwebs and grime, was a bottle of a great and aged wine. This the old man removed from the place it had occupied full many years, and bore it, with a care as nice as a woman bears a sleeping infant, up the dark stairs to the little room.

The old man placed the wine near to him who wrote; but, as though unconscious of the action, the returned wayfarer pursued his labours.

The old man, his father, then returned to his place beside the bright hearth. The hours passed. All that day the shutters were not taken down from the shop, which was shrouded in complete darkness in the broad light; while in the room behind it a lamp was burning continually, even when the sun was high at noon.