LII
Thepoet and his father passed that night together, as they had passed so many others, in the little room. The blind man, seated by the fire, alternately dreamed and mused, while his father connedthe book which was spread open on the table. For the last time he conned it with the blood like water in his veins. Yet in him now was the mute acceptance of those who have passed through the whole gamut of their suffering, upon whom experience has nothing more to confer.
In the dead of the night, while the dying poet was murmuring strange words in his sleep, the old man took for the last time from their receptacle the chalice, the bistoury and the stylus. A hundred times had his flesh been pierced in vain by that inexorable point, yet again this night he made trial of it, and for the last time.
And now his trial was not without reward. No sooner had he dipped the stylus in the red blood of his veins than it began to traverse the page. For the first time since those fingers had grasped the pen, the fruit of eighty years of vicissitude upon the wonderful earth flowed to the parchment. Line by line grew the writing. That which he had laboured these long years to express, that for which he had prayed, fasted and kept vigil, was now born without a pang in this brief but magic hour.
Faint with joy, yet also filled with a nameless fear, the old man addressed the poet as soon as he awoke.
“Achilles,” he said, “wilt thou write thy page in the Book of the Ages, in order that our dynasty may continue itself?”
“Nay, my father,” said the poet, with a noble conviction; “it is not for me to inscribe my page in the Book. For are not the conditions fulfilled by which our dynasty shall cease? A thousand years, my father, has it striven to affirm itself; and it is written that in the magic hour it shall achieve its apotheosis, it shall be effaced, in obedience to Universal Law. Yet be of good courage, O my father, for it perishes only to achieve re-embodiment in an ampler notation. In the hour this little treatise upon human life is wrought, the archives of our dynasty are as seed scattered broadcast uponthe four winds for the service of all the peoples in the world.”
Such words of high authority proceeding from those revered lips filled the old man with a courage and a resolute acceptance of that which was about to befall, which he had never hoped to achieve.
“Is it seemly, O Achilles,” said the old man, having derived a vital strength from the poet’s wisdom, “to efface the means by which a new lustre is given to the heavens?”
“It is as seemly, O my father,” the poet answered, “as it is to pluck the ripe fruit from the stalk.”
It was therefore in no mood of passion, of wild soul-searching, that the old man yielded those magic parchments which for a thousand years had been as the archives of his race. He bowed to the decree of fate with that calm acceptancy which, in the end, had ever been the crown that awaited each individual destiny.
Yet, when this volume, which was a thousand years old, had passed for ever from the precincts of the little room, he did not reveal the marvellous circumstance to him who was blind.
However, in the evening of that day, the poet said, as if armed by a prophetic vision, “My father, why dost thou turn no more to the Book of the Ages?”
The old man took the poet’s fragile hand to his lips with a humble gesture of obeisance.
“Because, O Achilles,” he said, “is it not seemly, since thou thyself wouldst have it so, that when the ripe fruit is plucked the stalk shall be discarded?”
“Verily, my father, thy wisdom is commendable,” said the poet, speaking in the perfect simplicity of the blood royal.