XLIII
AsWilliam 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; acrossmorasses 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 beautifulstars. 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 longhours, 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.
Through the brakes of the green woods throughwhich 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 discernall 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 oftarrying, 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.