"We think with only a small part of the past, but it is with our
entire past, including the original bent of our soul, that we desire,
will, and act."
--HENRI BERGSON
The balance of his fellow-passengers were not distinguished. There was a
company of French tourists gong to Naples, and another lot of Germans
bound for Athens, some business folk for Smyrna and Constantinople, and a
sprinkling of Russians going home via Odessa, Batoum, or Novorossisk.
In his own stateroom, occupying the upper berth, was a little
round-bodied, red-faced Canadian drummer, "traveling" in
harvest-machines. The name of the machine, its price, and the terms of
purchase were his universe; he knew them in several languages; beyond
them, nothing. He was good-natured, conceding anything to save trouble.
"D'ye mind the light for a bit while I read in bed?" asked O'Malley.
"Don't mind anything much," was the cheery reply. "I'm not particular;
I'm easy-going and you needn't bother." He turned over to sleep. "Old
traveler," he added, his voice muffled by sheets and blankets, "and take
things as they come." And the only objection O'Malley found in him was
that he took things as they came to the point of not taking baths at all,
and not even taking all his garments off when he went to bed.
The Captain, whom he knew from previous voyages, a genial, rough-voiced
sailor from Sassnitz, chided him for so nearly missing the boat--"as
usual."
"You're too late for a seat at my taple," he said with his laughing
growl; "it's a pidy. You should have led me know py telegram, and I then
kepd your place. Now you find room at the doctor's taple howefer
berhaps...!"
"Steamer's very crowded this time," O'Malley replied, shrugging his
shoulders; "but you'll let me come up sometimes for a smoke with you
on the bridge?"
"Of course, of course."
"Anybody interesting on board?" he asked after a moment's pause.
The jolly Captain laughed. "'Pout the zame as usual, you know. Nothing to
stop ze ship! Ask ze doctor; he knows zooner than me. But, anyway, the
nice ones, they get zeazick always and dizappear. Going Trebizond this
time?" he added.
"No; Batoum."
"Ach! Oil?"
"Caucasus generally--up in the mountains a bit."
"God blenty veapons then, I hope. They shoot you for two pfennig up
there!" And he was off with his hearty deep laugh and rather ponderous
briskness toward the bridge.
Thus O'Malley found himself placed for meals at the right hand of
Dr. Stahl; opposite him, on the doctor's left, a talkative Moscow
fur-merchant who, having come to definite conclusions of his own about
things n general, was persuaded the rest of the world must share them,
and who delivered verbose commonplaces with a kind of pontifical
utterance sometimes amusing, but usually boring; on his right a
gentle-eyed, brown-bearded Armenian priest from the Venice monastery that
had sheltered Byron, a man who ate everything except soup with his knife,
yet with a daintiness that made one marvel, and with hands so graceful
they might almost have replaced the knife without off offence. Beyond the
priest sat the rotund Canadian drummer. He kept silence, watched the
dishes carefully lest anything should escape him, and--ate. Lower down on
the opposite side, one or two nondescripts between, sat the big, blond,
bearded stranger with his son. Diagonally across from himself and the
doctor, they were in full view.
O'Malley talked to all and sundry whom his voice could reach, being
easily forthcoming to people whom he was not likely to see again. But
he was particularly pleased to find himself next to the ship's doctor,
Dr. Heinrich Stahl, for the man both attracted and antagonized him, and
they had crossed swords pleasantly on more voyages than one. There
was a fundamental contradiction in his character due--O'Malley
divined--to the fact that his experiences did not tally as he wished them
to do with his beliefs, or vice versa. Affecting to believe in nothing,
he occasionally dropped remarks that betrayed a belief in all kinds of
things, unorthodox things. Then, having led the Irishman into confessions
of his own fairy faith, he would abruptly rule the whole subject out of
order with some cynical phrase that closed discussion. In this sarcastic
attitude O'Malley detected a pose assumed for his own protection. "No man
of sense can possibly accept such a thing; it is incredible and foolish."
Yet, the biting way he said the words betrayed him; the very thing his
reason rejected, his soul believed....
These vivid impressions the Irishman had of people, one wonders how
accurate they were! In this case, perhaps, he was not far from the
truth. That a man with Dr. Stahl's knowledge and ability could be
content to hide his light under the bushel of a mere _Schiffsarzt_
required explanation. His own explanation was that he wanted leisure for
thinking and writing. Bald-headed, slovenly, prematurely old, his beard
stained with tobacco and snuff, under-sized, scientific in the
imaginative sense that made him speculative beyond mere formulae, his was
an individuality that inspired a respect one could never quite account
for. He had keen dark eyes that twinkled, sometimes mockingly, sometimes,
if the word may be allowed, bitterly, yet often too with a good-humored
amusement which sympathy with human weaknesses could alone have
caused. A warm heart he certainly had, as more than one forlorn
passenger could testify.
Conversation at their table was slow at first. It began at the lower end
where the French tourists chattered briskly over the soup, then crept
upwards like a slow fire o'erleaping various individuals who would not
catch. For instance, it passed the harvest-machine man; it passed the
nondescripts; it also passed the big light-haired stranger and his son.
At the table behind, there was a steady roar and buzz of voices; the
Captain was easy and genial, prophesying to the ladies on either side
Of him a calm voyage. In the shelter of his big voice even the shy found
it easy to make remarks to their neighbors. Listening to fragments of
the talk O'Malley found that his own eyes kept wandering down the
table--diagonally across--to the two strangers. Once or twice he
intercepted the doctor's glance traveling in the same direction, and on
these occasions it was on the tip of his tongue to make a remark about
them, or to ask a question. Yet the words did not come. Dr. Stahl, he
felt, knew a similar hesitation. Each, wanting to speak, yet kept
silence, waiting for the other to break the ice.
"This _mistral_ is tiresome," observed the doctor, as the tide of talk
flowed up to his end and made a remark necessary. "It tries the nerves
of some." He glanced at O'Malley, but it was the fur-merchant who
replied, spreading a be-ringed hand over his plate to feel the warmth.
"I know it well," he said pompously in a tone of finality; "it lasts
three, six, or nine days. But once across the Golfe de Lyons we shall be
free of it."
"You think so? Ah, I am glad," ventured the priest with a timid smile
while he adroitly balanced meat and bullet-like green peas upon his
knife-blade. Tone, smile, and gesture were so gentle that the use of
steel in any form seemed incongruous.
The voice of the fur-merchant came in domineeringly.
"Of course. I have made this trip so often, I _know_. St. Petersburg to
Paris, a few weeks on the Riviera, then back by Constantinople and the
Crimea. It is nothing. I remember last year--" He pushed a large pearl
pin more deeply into his speckled tie and began a story that proved
chiefly how luxuriously he traveled. His eyes tried to draw the whole
end of the table into his circle, but while the Armenian listened
politely, with smiles and bows, Dr. Stahl turned to the Irishman again.
It Vas the year of Halley's comet and he began talking interestingly
about it.
"... Three o'clock in the morning--any morning, yes--is the best time,"
the doctor concluded, "and I'll have you called. You must see it through
my telescope. End of this week, say, after we leave Catania and turn
eastwards..."
And at this instant, following a roar of laughter from the Captain's
table, came one of those abrupt pauses that sometimes catch an entire
room at once. All voices hushed. Even the merchant, setting down his
champagne glass, fell silent. One heard only the beating of the steamer's
screw, the rush of water below the port-holes, the soft scuffle of the
stewards' feet. The conclusion of the doctor's inconsiderable sentence
was sharply audible all over the room--
"... crossing the Ionian Sea toward the Isles of Greece."
It rang across the pause, and at the same moment O'Malley caught the eyes
of the big stranger lifted suddenly and fixed upon the speaker's face as
though the words had summoned him.
They shifted the same instant to his own, then dropped again to his
plate. Again the clatter of conversation drowned the room as before; the
merchant resumed his self-description in terms of gold; the doctor
discussed the gases of the comet's tail. But the swift-blooded Irishman
felt himself caught away strangely and suddenly into another world.
Out of the abyss of the subconscious there rose a gesture prophetic and
immense. The trivial phrase and that intercepted look opened a great
door of wonder in his heart. In a second he grew "absent-minded." Or,
rather, something touched a button and the whole machinery of his
personality shifted round noiselessly and instantaneously, presenting an
immediate new facet to the world. His normal, puny self-consciousness
slipped a moment into the majestic calm of some far larger state that
the stranger also knew. The Universe lies in every human heart, and he
plunged into that archetypal world that stands so close behind all
sensible appearances. He could neither explain nor attempt to explain,
but he sailed away into some giant swimming mood of beauty wherein
steamer, passengers, talk, faded utterly, the stranger and his son
remaining alone real and vital. He had seen; he could never forget.
Chance prepared the setting, but immense powers had rushed in and availed
themselves of it. Something deeply buried had flamed from the stranger's
eyes and beckoned to him. The fire ran from the big man to himself and
was gone.
"The Isles of Greece--" The words were simple enough, yet it seemed to
O'Malley that the look they summoned to the stranger's eyes ensouled
them, transfiguring them with the significance of vital clues. They
touched the fringe of a mystery, magnificent and remote--some
transcendent psychical drama in the 'life of this man whose "bigness"
and whose "loneliness that must be whispered" were also in their way
other vital clues. Moreover, remembering his first sight of these two
upon the upper deck a few hours before, he understood that his own
spirit, by virtue of its peculiar and primitive yearnings, was involved
in the same mystery and included in the same hidden passion.
The little incident illustrates admirably O'Malley's idiosyncrasy of
"seeing whole." In a lightning flash his inner sense had associated the
words and the glance, divining that the one had caused the other. That
pause provided the opportunity.... If Imagination, then it was creative
imagination; if true, it was assuredly spiritual insight of a rare
quality.
He became aware that the twinkling eyes of his neighbor were observing
him keenly. For some moments evidently he had been absent-mindedly
staring down the table. He turned quickly and looked at the doctor
with frankness. This time it was impossible to avoid speech of some
kind.
"Following those lights that do mislead the morn?" asked Dr. Stahl
slyly. "Your thoughts have been traveling. You've heard none of my last
remarks!"
Under the clamor of the merchant's voice O'Malley replied in a lowered
tone:
"I was watching those two half-way down the table opposite. They interest
you as well, I see." It was not a challenge exactly; if the tone was
aggressive, it was merely that he felt the subject was one on which they
would differ, and he scented an approaching discussion. The doctor's
reply, indicating agreement, surprised him a good deal.
"They do; they interest me greatly." There was no trace of fight in the
voice. "That should cause _you_ no surprise."
"Me--they simply fascinate," said O'Malley, always easily drawn. "What is
it? What do you see about them that is unusual? Do you, too, see them
'big'?" The doctor did not answer at once, and O'Malley added, "The
father's a tremendous fellow, but it's not that--"
"Partly, though," said the other, "partly, I think."
"What else, then?" The fur-merchant, still talking, prevented their
being overheard. "What is it marks them off so from the rest?"
"Of all people _you_ should see," smiled the doctor quietly. "If a man
of your imagination sees nothing, what shall a poor exact mind like
myself see?" He eyed him keenly a moment. "You really mean that you
detect nothing?"
"A certain distinction, yes; a certain aloofness from others. Isolated,
they seem in a way; rather a splendid isolation I should call it--"
And then he stopped abruptly. It was most curious, but he was aware
that unwittingly in this way he had stumbled upon the truth, aware at
the same time that he resented discussing it with his companion--because
it meant at the same time discussing himself or something in himself he
wished to hide. His entire mood shifted again with completeness and
rapidity. He could not help it. It seemed suddenly as though he had been
telling the doctor secrets about himself, secrets moreover he would not
treat sympathetically. The doctor had been "at him," so to speak,
searching the depths of him with a probing acuteness the casual language
had disguised.
"What are they, do you suppose: Finns, Russians, Norwegians, or what?"
the doctor asked. And the other replied briefly that he guessed they
might be Russians perhaps, South Russians. His tone was different. He
wished to avoid further discussion. At the first opportunity he neatly
changed the conversation.
It was curious, the way proof came to him. Something in himself, wild as
the desert, something to do with that love of primitive life he discussed
only with the few who were intimately sympathetic toward it, this
something in his soul was so akin to a similar passion in these
strangers that to talk of it was to betray himself as well as them.
Further, he resented Dr. Stahl's interest in them, because he felt it was
critical and scientific. Not far behind hid the analysis that would lay
them bare, leading to their destruction. A profound instinctive sense of
self-preservation had been stirred within him.
Already, mysteriously guided by secret affinities, he had ranged himself
on the side of the strangers.
V
"Mythology contains the history of the archetypal world. It comprehends
Past, Present, and Future."
--NOVALIS, _Flower Pollen, Translated by U.C.B.
In this way there came between these two the slight barrier of a
forbidden subject that grew because neither destroyed it. O'Malley had
erected it; Dr. Stahl respected it. Neither referred again for a time to
the big Russian and his son.
In his written account O'Malley, who was certainly no constructive
literary craftsman, left out apparently countless little confirmatory
details. By word of mouth he made me feel at once that this mystery
existed, however; and to weld the two together is a difficult task. There
nevertheless was this something about the Russian and his boy that
excited deep curiosity, accompanied by an aversion on the part of the
other passengers that isolated them; also, there was this competition on
the part of the two friends to solve it, from opposing motives.
Had either of the strangers fallen seasick, the advantage would have
been easily with Dr. Stahl--professionally, but since they remained well,
and the doctor was in constant demand by the other passengers, it was
the Irishman who won the first move and came to close quarters by making
a personal acquaintance. His strong desire helped matters of course; for
he noticed with indignation that these two, quiet and inoffensive as they
were and with no salient cause of offence, were yet rejected by the main
body of passengers. They seemed to possess a quality that somehow
insulated them from approach, sending them effectually "to Coventry," and
in a small steamer where the travelers settle down into a kind of big
family life, this isolation was unpleasantly noticeable.
It stood out in numerous little details that only a keen observer closely
watching could have taken into account. Small advances, travelers'
courtesies, and the like that ordinarily should have led to conversation,
in their case led to nothing. The other passengers invariably moved away
after a few moments, politely excusing themselves, as it were, from
further intercourse. And although at first the sight of this stirred in
him an instinct of revolt that was almost anger, he soon felt that the
couple not merely failed to invite, but even emanated some definite
atmosphere that repelled. And each time he witnessed these little scenes,
there grew more strongly in him the original picture he had formed of
them as beings rejected and alone, hunted by humanity as a whole, seeking
escape from loneliness into a place of refuge that they knew of,
definitely at last _en route_.
Only an imaginative mind, thus concentrated upon them, could have
divined all this; yet to O'Malley it seemed plain as the day. With the
certitude, moreover, came the feeling, ever stronger, that the refuge
they sought would prove to be also the refuge he himself sought, the
difference being that whereas they knew, he still hesitated.
Yet, in spite of this secret sympathy, imagined or discovered, he found
it no easy matter to approach the big man for speech. For a day and a
half he merely watched; attraction so strong excited caution; he paused,
waiting. His attention, however, was so keen that he seemed always to
know where they were and what they were doing. By instinct he was
aware in what part of the ship they would be found--for the most part
leaning over the rail alone in the bows, staring down at the churned
water together by the screws, pacing the after-deck in the dusk or early
morning when no one was about, or hidden away in some corner of the
upper deck, side by side, gazing at sea and sky. Their method of walking,
too, made it easy to single them out from the rest--a free, swaying
movement of the limbs, a swing of the shoulders, a gait that was
lumbering, almost clumsy, half defiant, yet at the same time graceful,
and curiously rapid. The body moved along swiftly for all its air of
blundering--a motion which was a counterpart of that elusive appearance
of great bulk, and equally difficult of exact determination. An air
went with them of being ridiculously confined by the narrow little decks.
Thus it was that Genoa had been made and the ship was already half
way on to Naples before the opportunity for closer acquaintance presented
itself. Rather, O'Malley, unable longer to resist, forced it. It
seemed, too, inevitable as sunrise.
Rain had followed the _mistral_ and the sea was rough. A rich land-taste
came about the ship like the smell of wet oaks when wind sweeps their
leaves after a sousing shower. In the hour before dinner, the decks
slippery with moisture, only one or two wrapped-up passengers in
deck-chairs below the awning, O'Malley, following a sure inner lead,
came out of the stuffy smoking-room into the air. It was already dark
and the drive of mist-like rain somewhat obscured his vision after the
glare. Only for a moment though--for almost the first thing he saw
was the Russian and his boy moving in front of him toward the aft
compasses. Like a single figure, huge and shadowy, they passed into the
darkness beyond with a speed that seemed as usual out of proportion
to their actual stride. They lumbered rapidly away. O'Malley caught that
final swing of the man's great shoulders as they disappeared, and,
leaving the covered deck, he made straight after them. And though neither
gave any sign that they had seen him, he felt that they were aware of his
coming--and even invited him.
As he drew close a roll of the vessel brought them almost into each
other's arms, and the boy, half hidden beneath his parent's flowing
cloak, looked up at once and smiled. The saloon light fell dimly upon
his face. The Irishman saw that friendly smile of welcome, and lurched
forward with the roll of the deck. They brought up against the bulwarks,
and the big man put out an arm to steady him. They all three laughed
together. At close quarters, as usual again, the impression of bulk had
disappeared.
And then, at first, utterly unlike real life, they said--nothing. The
boy moved round and stood close to his side so that he found himself
placed between them, all three leaning forward over the rails watching
the phosphorescence of the foam-streaked Mediterranean.
Dusk lay over the sea; the shores of Italy not near enough to be visible;
the mist, the hour, the loneliness of the deserted decks, and something
else that was nameless, shut them in, these three, in a little world of
their own. A sentence or two rose in O'Malley's mind, but without finding
utterance, for he felt that no spoken words were necessary. He was
accepted without more ado. A deep natural sympathy existed between
them, recognized intuitively from that moment of first mutual inspection
at Marseilles. It was instinctive, almost as with animals. The action
of the boy in coming round to his side, unhindered by the father, was
the symbol of utter confidence and welcome.
There came, then, one of those splendid and significant moments that
occasionally, for some, burst into life, flooding all barriers, breaking
down as with a flaming light the thousand erections of shadow that close
one in. Something imprisoned in himself swept outwards, rising like a
wave, bringing an expansion of life that "explained." It vanished, of
course, instantly again, but not before he had caught a flying remnant
that lit the broken puzzles of his heart and left things clearer. Before
thought, and therefore words, could overtake, it was gone; but there
remained at least this glimpse. The fire had flashed a light down
subterranean passages of his being and made visible for a passing second
some clue to his buried primitive yearnings. He partly understood.
Standing there between these two this thing came over him with a
degree of intelligibility scarcely captured by his words. The man's
qualities--his quietness, peace, slowness, silence--betrayed somehow that
his inner life dwelt in a region vast and simple, shaping even his
exterior presentment with its own huge characteristics, a region wherein
the distress of the modern world's vulgar, futile strife could not
exist--more, could never _have_ existed. The Irishman, who had never
realized exactly why the life of Today to him was dreadful, now
understood it in the presence of this simple being with his atmosphere of
stately power. He was like a child, but a child of some pre-existence
utterly primitive and utterly forgotten; of no particular age, but of
some state that antedates all ages; simple in some noble, concentrated
sense that was prodigious, almost terrific. To stand thus beside him was
to stand beside a mighty silent fire, steadily glowing, a fire that fed
all lesser flames, because itself close to the central source of fire. He
felt warmed, lighted, vivified--made whole. The presence of this stranger
took him at a single gulp, as it were, straight into Nature--a Nature
that was alive. The man was part of her. Never before had he stood so
close and intimate. Cities and civilization fled away like transient
dreams, ashamed. The sun and moon and stars moved up and touched him.
This word of lightning explanation, at least, came to him as he breathed
the other's atmosphere and presence. The region where this man's spirit
fed was at the center, whereas today men were active with a scattered,
superficial cleverness, at the periphery. He even understood that his
giant gait and movements were small outer evidences of this inner fact,
wholly in keeping. That blundering stupidity, half glorious, half
pathetic, with which he moved among his fellows was a physical
expression of this psychic fact that his spirit had never learned the
skilful tricks taught by civilization to lesser men. It was, in a way,
awe-inspiring, for he was now at last driving back full speed for his own
region and--escape.
O'Malley knew himself caught, swept off his feet, momentarily driving
with him....
The singular deep satisfaction of it, standing there with these two in
the first moment, he describes as an entirely new sensation in his
life--an awareness that he was "complete." The boy touched his side and
he let an arm steal round to shelter him. The huge, bearded parent rose
in his massiveness against his other shoulder, hemming him in. For a
second he knew a swift and curious alarm, passing however almost at
once into the thrill of a rare happiness. In that moment, it was not the
passengers or the temper of Today who rejected them; it was they who
rejected the world: because they knew another and superior one--more,
they were in it.
Then, without turning, the big man spoke, the words in heavy accented
English coming out laboriously and with slow, exceeding difficulty as
though utterance was a supreme effort.
"You ... come ... with ... us?" It was like stammering almost. Still
more was it like essential inarticulateness struggling into an utterance
foreign to it--unsuited. The voice was a deep and windy bass, merging
with the noise of the sea below.
"I'm going to the Caucasus," O'Malley replied; "up into the old, old
mountains, to--see things--to look about--to search--" He really wanted
to say much more, but the words lay dead or beyond reach.
The big man nodded slowly. The boy listened.
"And yourself--?" asked the Irishman, hardly knowing why he faltered and
trembled.
The other smiled; a beauty that was beyond all language passed with that
smile across the great face in the dusk.
"Some of us ... of ours ..." he spoke very slowly, very brokenly,
quarrying out the words with real labor, "... still survive... out
there.... We ... now go back. So very ... few ... remain.... And
you--come with us ..."