XLII
Whenin 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 werealso 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 motherthe 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.