At the end of the week the little steamer dropped her anchor in the
harbor and the Irishman booked his passage home. He was standing on the
wharf to watch the unloading when a hand tapped him on the shoulder and
he heard a well-known voice. His heart leaped with pleasure. There were
no preliminaries between these two.
"I am glad to see you safe. You did not find your friend, then?"
O'Malley looked at the bronzed face beside him, noted the ragged
tobacco-stained beard, and saw the look of genuine welcome in the
twinkling brown eyes. He watched him lift his cap and mop that familiar
dome of bald head.
"I'm safe," was all he answered, "because I found him."
For a moment Dr. Stahl looked puzzled. He dropped the hand he held so
tightly and led him down the wharf.
"We'll get out of this devilish sun," he said, leading the way among
the tangle of merchandise and bales, "it's enough to boil our brains."
They passed through the crowd of swarthy, dripping Turks, Georgians,
Persians, and Armenians who labored half naked in the heat, and moved
toward the town. A Russian gunboat lay in the Bay, side by side with
freight and passenger vessels. An oil-tank steamer took on cargo. The
scene was drenched in sunshine. The Black Sea gleamed like molten
metal. Beyond, the wooded spurs of the Caucasus climbed through haze
into cloudless blue.
"It's beautiful," remarked the German, pointing to the distant coastline,
"but hardly with the beauty of those Grecian Isles we passed together.
Eh?" He watched him closely. "You're coming back on our steamer?" he
asked in the same breath.
"It's beautiful," O'Malley answered ignoring the question, "because
it lives. But there is dust upon its outer loveliness, dust that has
gathered through long ages of neglect, dust that I would sweep away--I've
learnt how to do it. He taught me."
Stahl did not even look at him, though the words were wild enough. He
walked at his side in silence. Perhaps he partly understood. For this
first link with the outer world of appearances was difficult for him to
pick up. The person of Stahl, thick-coated with the civilization whence
he came, had brought it, and out of the ocean of glorious vision in his
soul, O'Malley took at random the first phrases he could find.
"Yes, I've booked a passage on your steamer," he added presently,
remembering the question. It did not seem strange to him that his
companion ignored both clues he offered. He knew the man too well
for that. It was only that he waited for more before he spoke.
They went to the little table outside the hotel pavement where several
weeks ago they had drunk Kakhetian wine together and talked of deeper
things. The German called for a bottle, mineral water, ice, and
cigarettes. And while they sipped the cooling golden liquid, hats off and
coats on the backs of their chairs, Stahl gave him the news of the world
of men and events that had transpired meanwhile. O'Malley listened
vaguely as he smoked. It seemed remote, unreal, almost fantastic, this
long string of ugly, frantic happenings, all symptoms of some disordered
state that was like illness. The scream of politics, the roar and rattle
of flying-machines, financial crashes, furious labor upheavals, rumors of
war, the death of kings and magnates, awful accidents and strange turmoil
in enormous cities. Details of some sad prison life, it almost seemed,
pain and distress and strife the note that bound them all together. Men
were mastered by these things instead of mastering them. These
unimportant things they thought would make them free only imprisoned
them.
They lunched there at the little table in the shade, and in turn the
Irishman gave an outline of his travels. Stahl had asked for it and
listened attentively. The pictures interested him.
"You've done your letters for the papers," he questioned him, "and now,
perhaps, you'll write a book as well?"
"Something may force its way out--come blundering, thundering out in
fragments, yes."
"You mean you'd rather not--?"
"I mean it's all too big and overwhelming. He showed me such blinding
splendors. I might tell it, but as to writing--!" He shrugged his
shoulders.
And this time Dr. Stahl ignored no longer. He took him up. But not with
any expected words or questions. He merely said, "My friend, there's
something that I have to tell you--or, rather, I should say, to show
you." He looked most keenly at him, and in the old familiar way he placed
a hand upon his shoulder. His voice grew soft. "It may upset you; it may
unsettle--prove a shock perhaps. But if you are prepared, we'll go--"
"What kind of shock?" O'Malley asked, startled a moment by the gravity of
manner.
"The shock of death," was the answer, gently spoken.
The Irishman only knew a swift rush of joy and wonder as he heard it.
"But there is no such thing!" he cried, almost with laughter. "He
taught me that above all else. There is no death!"
"There is 'going away,' though," came the rejoinder, spoken low;
"there is earth to earth and dust to dust--"
"That's of the body--!"
"That's of the body, yes," the older man repeated darkly.
"There is only 'going home,' escape and freedom. I tell you there's
only that. It's nothing but joy and splendor when you really understand."
But Dr. Stahl made no immediate answer, nor any comment. He paid
the bill and led him down the street. They took the shady side. Passing
beyond the skirts of the town they walked in silence. The barracks where
the soldiers sang, the railway line to Tiflis and Baku, the dome and
minarets of the church, were left behind in turn, and presently they
reached the hot, straight dusty road that fringed the sea. They heard the
crashing of the little waves and saw the foam creamily white against the
dark grey pebbles of the beach.
And when they reached a small enclosure where thin trees were
planted among sparse grass all brown and withered by the sun, they
paused, and Stahl pointed to a mound, marked at either end by rough
stone boulder. A date was on it, but no name. O'Malley calculated the
difference between the Russian Calendar and the one he was accustomed
to. Stahl checked him.
"The fifteenth of June," the German said.
"The fifteenth of June, yes," said O'Malley very slowly, but with
wonder and excitement in his heart. "That was the day that Rostom
tried to run away--the day I saw him come to me from the trees--the
day we started off together ... to the Garden...."
He turned to his companion questioningly. For a moment the rush
of memory was quite bewildering.
"He never left Batoum at all, you see," Stahl continued, without
looking up. "He went straight to the hospital the day we came into port.
I was summoned to him in the night--that last night while you slept
so deeply. His old strange fever was upon him then, and I took him
ashore before the other passengers were astir. I brought him to the
hospital myself. And he never left his bed." He pointed down to the
little nameless grave at their feet where a wandering wind from the sea
just stirred the grasses. "That was the date on which he died."
"He went away in the early morning," he added in a low voice that
held both sadness and sympathy.
"He went home," said the Irishman, a tide of joy rising tumultuously
through his heart as he remembered. The secret of that complete and
absolute Leadership was out. He understood it all. It had been a
spiritual adventure to the last.
Then followed a pause.
In silence they stood there for some minutes. There grew no flowers on
that grave, but O'Malley stooped down and picked a strand of the withered
grass. He put it carefully between the pages of his notebook; and then,
lying flat against the ground where the sunshine fell in a patch of white
and burning glory, he pressed his lips to the crumbling soil. He kissed
the Earth. Oblivious of Stahl's presence, or at least ignoring it, he
worshipped.
And while he did so he heard that little sound he loved so well--which
more than any words or music brought peace and joy, because it told his
Passion all complete. With his ears close to the earth he heard it, yet
at the same time heard it everywhere. For it came with the falling of the
waves upon the shore, through the murmur of the rustling branches
overhead, and even across the whispering of the withered grass about him.
Deep down in the center of the mothering Earth he heard it too in faintly
rising pulse. It was the exquisite little piping on a reed--the ancient
fluting of the everlasting Pan....
And when he rose he found that Stahl had turned away and was gazing at
the sea, as though he had not noticed.
"Doctor," he cried, yet so softly it was a whisper rather than a call, "I
heard it then again; it's everywhere! Oh, tell me that you hear it too!"
Stahl turned and looked at him in silence. There was a moisture in his
eyes, and on his face a look of softness that a woman might have worn.
"I've brought it back, you see, I've brought it back. For that's the
message--that's the sound and music I must give to all the world. No
words, no book can tell it." His hat was off, his eyes were shining, his
voice broke with the passion of joy he yearned to share yet knew so
little how to impart. "If I can pipe upon the flutes of Pan the millions
all will listen, will understand, and--follow. Tell me, oh, tell me, that
_you_ heard it too!"
"My friend, my dear young friend," the German murmured in a voice of real
tenderness, "you heard it truly--but you heard it in your heart. Few hear
the Pipes of Pan as you do. Few care to listen. Today the world is full
of other sounds that drown it. And even of those who hear," he shrugged
his shoulders as he led him away toward the sea,--"how few will care to
follow--how fewer still will _dare._"
And while they lay upon the beach and watched the line of foam against
their feet and saw the seagulls curving idly in the blue and shining air,
he added underneath his breath--O'Malley hardly caught the murmur of his
words so low he murmured them:--
"The simple life is lost forever. It lies asleep in the Golden Age, and
only those who sleep and dream can ever find it. If you would keep your
joy, dream on, my friend! Dream on, but dream alone!"