Although Batoum is a small place, and the trains that leave it during
the day are few enough, O'Malley knew that to search for his friend by
the methods of the ordinary detective was useless. It would have been
also wrong. The man had gone deliberately, without attempting to say
good-bye--because, having come together in the real and inner sense,
real separation was not possible. The vital portion of their beings,
thought, feeling, and desire, were close and always would be. Their
bodies, busy at different points of the map among the casual realities
of external life, could make no change in that. And at the right moment
they would assuredly meet again to begin the promised journey.
Thus, at least, in some fashion peculiarly his own, was the way the
Irishman felt; and this was why, after the first anger with his German
friend, he resigned himself patiently to the practical business he had in
hand.
The little incident was characteristically revealing, and shows how
firmly rooted in his imaginative temperament was the belief, the
unalterable conviction rather, that his life operated upon an outer and
an inner plane simultaneously, the one ever reacting upon the other. It
was as if he were aware of two separate sets of faculties, subtly linked,
one carrying on the affairs of the physical man in the "practical" world,
the other dealing with the spiritual economy in the subconscious. To
attend to the latter alone was to be a useless dreamer among men,
unpractical, unbalanced; to neglect it wholly for the former was to be
crassly limited, but half alive; to combine the two in effective
co-operation was to achieve that high level of a successful personality,
which some perhaps term genius, some prophet, and others, saint. It
meant, at any rate, to have sources of inspiration within oneself.
Thus he spent the day completing what was necessary for his simple
outfit, and put up for the night at one of the little hotels that spread
their tables invitingly upon the pavement, so that dinner may be enjoyed
in full view of one of the most picturesque streams of traffic it is
possible to see.
The sultry, enervating heat of the day had passed and a cool breeze
came shorewards over the Black Sea. With a box of thin Russian
cigarettes before him he lingered over the golden Kakhetian wine and
watched the crowded street. Knowing enough of the language to bargain
smartly for his room, his pillows, sheets, and samovar, he yet could
scarcely compass conversation with the strangers about him. Of Russian
proper, besides, he heard little; there was a Babel of many tongues,
Armenian, Turkish, Georgian, explosive phrases of Swanetian, soft
gliding Persian words, and the sharp or guttural exclamations of the
big-voiced, giant fellows, all heavily armed, who belonged to the
bewildering tribes that dwelt among the mountains beyond. Occasionally
came a broken bit of French or German; but they strayed in, lost and
bizarre, as fragments from some distant or forgotten world.
Down the pavement, jostling his elbows, strode the constant, gorgeous
procession of curious, wild, barbaric faces, bearded, with hooked
noses, flashing eyes, burkas flowing; cartridge-belts of silver and ivory
gleaming across chests in the glare of the electric light; bashliks of
white, black, and yellow wool upon the head, increasing the stature;
evil-looking Black Sea knives stuck in most belts, rifles swung across
great supple shoulders, long swords trailing; Turkish gypsies, dark and
furtive-eyed, walking softly in leather slippers--of endless and
fascinating variety, many colored and splendid, it all was. From time to
time a droschky with two horses, or a private carriage with three,
rattled noisily over the cobbles at a reckless pace, stopping with the
abruptness of a practiced skater; and officers with narrow belted waists
like those of women, their full-skirted cloaks reaching half-way down
high boots of shining leather, sprang out to pay the driver and take a
vacant table at his side; and once or twice a body of soldiers, several
hundred strong, singing the national songs with a full-throated vigor,
hoarse, wild, somehow half terrible, passed at a swinging gait away into
the darkness at the end of the street, the roar of their barbaric singing
dying away in the distance by the sea where the boom of waves just caught
it.
And O'Malley loved it all, and "thrilled" as he watched and listened.
From his hidden self within something passed out and joined it. He felt
the wild pulse of energetic life that drove along with the tumult of it.
The savage, untamed soul in him leaped as he saw; the blood ran faster.
Sitting thus upon the bank of the hurrying stream, he knew himself
akin to the main body of the invisible current further out; it drew him
with it, and he experienced a quickening of all his impulses toward some
wild freedom that was mighty--clean--simple.
Civilian dress was rare, and noticeable when it came. The shipping agents
wore black alpaca coats, white trousers, and modern hats of straw. A few
ship's officers in blue, with official caps gold-braided, passed in and
out like men without a wedding garment, as distressingly out of the
picture as tourists in check knickerbockers and nailed boots moving
through some dim cathedral aisle. O'Malley recognized one or two from
his own steamer, and turned his head the other way. It hurt. He caught
himself thinking, as he saw them, of Stock Exchanges, two-penny-tubes,
Belgravia dinner parties, private views, "small and earlies," musical
comedy, and all the rest of the dismal and meager program. These
harmless little modern uniforms were worse than ludicrous, for they
formed links with the glare and noise of the civilization he had left
behind, the smeared vulgarity of the big cities where men and women
live in their possessions, wasting life in that worship of external
detail they call "progress"...
A well-known German voice crashed through his dream.
"Already at the wine! These Caucasian vintages are good; they really
taste of grapes and earth and flowers. Yes, thanks, I'll join you for a
moment if I may. We only lie three days in port and are glad to get
ashore."
O'Malley called for a second glass, and passed the cigarettes.
"I prefer my black cigars, thank you," was the reply, lighting one.
"You push on tomorrow, I suppose? Kars, Tiflis, Erzerum, or somewhere
a little wilder in the mountains, eh?"
"Toward the mountains, yes," the Irishman said. Dr. Stahl was the only
person he could possibly have allowed to sit next him at such a time. He
had quite forgiven him now, and though at first he felt no positive
welcome, the strange link between the two men quickly asserted itself and
welded them together in that odd harmony they knew in spite of all
differences. They could be silent together, too, without distress or
awkwardness, sure test that at least some portion of their personalities
fused.
And for a long time they remained silent, watching the surge and
movement of the old, old types about them. They sipped the yellow
wine and smoked. The stars came out; the carriages grew less; from far
away floated a deep sonorous echo now and then of the soldiers singing
by their barracks. Sometimes a steamer hooted. Cossacks swung by.
Often some wild cry rang out from a side street. There were heavy,
unfamiliar perfumes in the air. Presently Stahl began talking about the
Revolution of a few years before and the scenes of violence he had
witnessed in these little streets, the shooting, barricades, bombs thrown
into passing carriages, Cossacks charging down the pavements with
swords drawn, shouting and howling. O'Malley listened with a part of
his mind at any rate. The rest of him was much further away.... He
was up among the mountain fastnesses. Already, it seemed, he knew the
secret places of the mist, the lair of every running wind....
Two tall mountain tribesmen swaggered past close to their table; the
thick grey burkas almost swept their glasses. They walked magnificently
with easy, flowing stride, straight from the hips.
"The earth here," said O'Malley, taking advantage of a pause in the
other's chatter, "produces some splendid types. Look at those two; they
make one think of trees walking--blown along bodily before a wind."
He watched them with admiration as they swung off and disappeared
among the crowd.
Dr. Stahl, glancing keenly at him, laughed a little.
"Yes," he said; "brave, generous fellows too as a rule, who will shoot
you for a pistol that excites their envy, yet give their life to save one
of their savage dogs. They're still--natural," he added after a
moment's hesitation; "still unspoiled. They live close to Nature with a
vengeance. Up among the Ossetians on the high saddles you'll find true
Pagans who worship trees, sacrifice blood, and offer bread and salt to
the nature-deities."
"Still?" asked O'Malley, sipping his wine.
"Still," replied Stahl, following his example.
Over the glasses' rims their eyes met. Both smiled, though neither
quite knew why. The Irishman, perhaps, was thinking of the little city
clerks he knew at home, pigeon-breasted, pale-faced, under-sized. One
of these big men, so full of rushing, vigorous life, would eat a dozen at
a sitting.
"There's something here the rest of the world has lost," he murmured
to himself. But the doctor heard him.
"You feel it?" he asked quickly, his eyes brightening. "The awful,
primitive beauty--?"
"I feel--something, certainly," was the cautious answer. He could
not possibly have said more just then; yet it seemed as though he heard
far echoes of that voice that had been first borne to his ears across the
blue Ægean. In the gorges of these terrible mountains it surely sounded
still. These men must know it too.
"The spell of this strange land will never leave you once you've felt
it," pursued the other quietly, his voice deepening. "Even in the towns
here--Tiflis, Kutais--I have felt it. Hereabouts is the cradle of the
human race, they say, and the people have not changed for thousands
of years. Some of them you'll find"--he hunted for a word, then said
with a curious, shrugging gesture, "terrific."
"Ah--" said the Irishman, lighting a fresh cigarette from the dying
stump so clumsily that the trembling of the hand was noticeable.
"And akin most likely," said Stahl, thrusting his face across the table
with a whispering tone, "to that--man--who--tempted you."
O'Malley did not answer. He drank the liquid golden sunshine in his
glass; his eyes lifted to the stars that watched above the sea; between
the surge of human figures came a little wind from the grim, mysterious
Caucasus beyond. He turned all tender as a child, receiving as with a
shock of sudden strength and sweetness a thousand intimate messages from
the splendid mood of old Mother-Earth who here expressed herself in such
a potent breed of men and mountains.