As William 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; across morasses
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 beautiful stars. 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 long hours, 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 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.