When star passes star once in a thousand years, or perhaps once in the
forever, and does not meet again, what a tale has each to tell! So
with tramps and wanderers when two meet upon the road, what a tale
of life is due from one to the other. Many tramps have I met in the
world. Far from the West I have met those who came far from the East,
and men have passed me coming from the South, and men from the North.
And sometimes men have suddenly appeared on my way as if they had
fallen from the sky, or as if they had started up out of the earth.
One morning when I was dwelling in a cave between a mountain and a
river I met him who tells this story. Probably the reader has never
lived in a cave and does not appreciate cave life--the crawling in at
night, the long and gentle sleep on the soft grey sand, the crawling
out again at morning, the washing in the river, the stick-collecting
and kettle-boiling, the berry-gathering, the lazy hours of noon, the
lying outstretched on the springy turf, sun-drinking, the wading in
the river and the plashing of the rushing water over one's legs; sunny
days, grey days, rainy days, the joyous delight in the beautiful
world, the exploration of one's own heart, the sadness of
self-absorption.
It was on a grey day when I met the strange tramp whose life-mystery
is here told. I came upon him on a quiet forenoon, and was surprised
by him. He came, as it were, out of thin air. I had been looking at
the river with eyes that saw not--I was exploring my own heart and its
memories--when suddenly I turned round and saw him, smiling, with a
greeting on his countenance.
It was long since I had looked upon a man; for though quite near the
highway, no one had found me out in my snug cave. I was like a bird
that had built a nest within earshot of a road along which many
schoolboys ran. And any one discovering my little house was like to
say, "Fancy, so near to the road, so unsuspected!"
"Good-morning, friend," said I, "and greeting! You are the first who
has found his way to this cave. You are a wanderer like myself, I
perceive. Come, then, and share my noonday solitude, and in return
give me what you have to share."
"Forgive me," said he, "I thought I heard a voice; that was why I
came. I thought I heard a call, a cry."
I looked at him. He was a strange man, but with something peculiarly
familiar in his figure. His dark hair spread over a brow whiter than
mine, and veiled two deep and gentle eyes; and his sun-tanned face and
dusty hat made him look like a face such as one sometimes sees in a
dream.
"You heard not me," I answered, "unless it was my thoughts that you
heard."
He smiled. I felt we need not say more. I sat with my back to the sun
and he lay stretched in front of me, and thus we conversed; thus two
wanderers conversed, two like spirits whose paths had crossed.
"Now tell me," said I, "who you are, dear wanderer, stretched out at
my feet like a shadow, and like a shadow of my own life. How long have
you been upon the road, when did you set out, where is your home and
why did you leave it?"
The tramp smiled.
"I am a wanderer and a seeker," he replied. "In one sense the whole
world is my home, in that I know all its roads and am nowhere a
stranger. In another sense I have no home, for I know not where I
began or where I come from. I do not belong to this world."
"What!" said I, starting up suddenly and consequently disturbing my
companion. "You are then an apparition, a dream-face, a shadow. You
came out of thin air!"
I stood up, and he turned familiarly about me and whispered like an
echo in my ear, "Out of thin air." And he laughed.
"And you?" he went on. "On what star did you begin? Can _you_ tell me?
Never yet have I found a man who could answer that question. But we
do not know, because we cannot remember. My conscious life began one
evening long ago when I stepped out of a coach on to a high road,
this same road by which you have your cave. I had come from
God-knows-where. I went backward, I came forward; I went all about and
round about, and never found my kith and kin. I was absorbed into the
world of men and shared its illusions, lived in cities, worked for
causes, worshipped idols. But thanks to the bright wise sun I always
escaped from those 'gloomy agreeable nooks.' It has now become my
religion to avoid the town, the places where men make little homes
which make us forget that in truth we have no homes. I have learned to
do without the town, without the great machine that provides man with
a _living._ I have sucked in a thousand rains, and absorbed a thousand
suns, lain on many thousand banks of the earth. I have walked at the
foot of mountains along long green valleys, I have climbed great
ranges and peeped over them, I have lived in barren and in fertile
places, and my road-companion has been Nature herself."
I smiled upon my visitor and said, "How like you are to me, my friend!
Stay with me and let us talk awhile. Grey days come, and rain, and we
shall live in this cave together and converse. In you I see a brother
man. In you as in a clear mirror I see the picture of my own soul, a
darling shadow. Your songs shall be the words of my happiness, your
yearning shall be the expression of my own aching heart. I shall break
bread with you and we shall bathe together in the river. I shall sleep
with you and wake with you, and be content to see you where'er I
turn."
That evening at sunset he crawled with me into the cave. And he slept
so sweetly that I held him in my own heart. Next morning at sunrise we
clambered out together, and together we gathered sticks, and together
bent over the fire and blew into its struggling little flames. Life
was rich. We hob-nobbed together. We doubled all our happinesses, and
we promised to share all our griefs. Sitting on the rocks--there were
many of them about, of all shape and size--we taught one another
songs. I wrote songs; he sang them. I told him of places where I had
been; he described them to me so that they lived again before me.
I told him of beauteous women I had met; he had met them also and
revealed to me their loving hearts. He could give the leaping love
in my heart a precious name. I verily believe that when the sun was
setting golden behind a great cliff, he could bid it stop and shine
upon us an hour longer.
Timid and shy at first, he grew more daring afterwards and interpreted
my wishes even before I was myself aware of them. He was constantly
devising some new happiness. His bird's heart was a fast overflowing
fountain.
Then when rainy days came we crouched together in the cave like
night-birds sheltered from the day, and we whispered and recounted
and planned. I scribbled in my diary in pencil, and he re-wrote my
scribbling in bright-coloured chalks, and drew side pictures and wrote
poems. Many are the pages we thus wrote together; some he wrote, some
I wrote, and there are many from both of us in this volume. When
I thought to make a book he laughed and said, "You are making to
yourself a graven image." He held it idolatry to imagine that
beautiful visions could be represented in words.
"I shall not worship the book," I urged.
"Other people may, or they may revile it," he answered, laughing.
"It's the same sin."
"Lest they worship or revile idolatrously, I shall write a notice,"
said I. "For though I praise Nature ill, and express her ill, she, the
wonderful spirit, is beyond all praise or blame." And I wrote these
words: "_Lest any one should think that in these pages life itself is
accounted for, any beauty set down in words, any yearning defined, or
sadness utterly plumbed, it is hereby notified that such appreciation
is false--that in these pages lies only the symbol of life, the
guide-post to the hearts of those who wrote the words. Follow, gentle
reader, the directions we have given; tread the roads that we have
trod, and see again what we have seen._"
To which I added this note: "_The poetry is from my companion's pen,
the prose from mine._"
And my companion, not content with that, wrote a postscript: "_There
is no prose, and the pen by itself writes nothing at all._"