There followed four days then of sea, Greece left behind, Messina and the
Lipari Islands past; and the blue outline of Sardinia and Corsica began
to keep pace with them as they neared the narrow straits of Bonifacio
between them. The passengers came up to watch the rocky desolate shores
slip by so close, and Captain Burgenfelder was on the bridge.
Grey-headed rocks rose everywhere close about the ship; overhead the
seagulls cried and circled; no vegetation was visible on either shore, no
houses, no abode of man--nothing but the lighthouses, then miles of
deserted rock dressed in those splendors of the sun's good-night. The
dinner-gong had sounded but the sight was too magnificent to leave,
for the setting sun floated on an emblazoned sea and stared straight
against them in level glory down the narrow passage. Unimaginable
colors painted sky and wave. The ruddy cliffs of bleak loneliness rose
from a bed of flame. Soft airs fanned the cheeks with welcome coolness
after the fierce heat of the day. There was a scent of wild honey in the
air borne from the purple uplands far, far away.
"I wonder, oh, I wonder, if they realized that a god is passing
close...!" the Irishman murmured with a rising of the heart, "and that
here is a great mood of the Earth-Consciousness inviting them to peace!
Or do they merely see a yellow sun that dips beneath a violet sea...?"
The washing of the water past the steamer's sides caught away the rest
of the half-whispered words. He remembered that host of many thousand
heads that bowed in silence while a god swept by.... It was almost
a shock to hear a voice replying close beside him:--
"Come to my cabin when you're ready. My windows open to the west.
We can be alone together. We can have there what food we need. You
would prefer it perhaps?"
He felt the touch of that sympathetic hand upon his shoulder, and
bent his head to signify agreement.
For a moment, face to face with that superb sunset, he had known a deep
and utter peace in the vast bosom of this greater soul about him. Her
consciousness again had bruised and fringed his own. Across that
delicately divided threshold the beauty and the power of the gods had
poured in a flood into his being. And only there was peace, only there
was joy, only there was the death of those ancient yearnings that
tortured his little personal and separate existence. The return to the
world was aching pain again. The old loneliness that seemed more than he
could bear swept icily through him, contracting life and freezing every
spring of joy. For in that single instant of return he felt pass into him
a loneliness of the whole travailing world, the loneliness of countless
centuries, the loneliness of all the races of the Earth who were exiled
and had lost the way.
Too deep it lay for words or tears or sighs. The doctor's invitation
came most opportunely. And presently in silence he turned his back
upon that opal sky of dream from which the sun had gone, and walked
slowly down the deck toward Stahl's cabin.
"If only I can share it with them," he thought as he went; "if only
men will listen, if only they will come. To keep it all to myself, to
dream alone, will kill me."
And as he stood before the door it seemed he heard wild rushing
through the sky, the tramping of a thousand hoofs, a roaring of the
wind, the joy of that free, torrential passage with the Earth. He turned
the handle and entered the cozy room where weeks before they held the
inquest on the little empty tenement of flesh, remembering how that
other figure had once stood where he now stood--part of the sunrise,
part of the sea, part of the morning winds.
* * * * *
They had their meal almost in silence, while the glow of sunset filled
the cabin through the western row of port-holes, and when it was over
Stahl made the coffee as of old and lit the familiar black cigar.
Slowly O'Malley's pain and restlessness gave way before the other's
soothing quiet. He had never known him before so calm and gentle, so
sympathetic, almost tender. The usual sarcasm seemed veiled in sadness;
there was no irony in the voice, nor mockery in the eyes.
Then to the Irishman it came suddenly that all these days while he
had been lost in dreaming the doctor had kept him as of old under close
observation. The completeness of his reverie had concealed from him this
steady scrutiny. He had been oblivious to the fact that Stahl had all the
time been watching, investigating, keenly examining. Abruptly he now
realized it.
And then Stahl spoke. His tone was winning, his manner frank and
inviting. But it was the sadness about him that won O'Malley's confidence
so wholly.
"I can guess," he said, "something of the dream you've brought with
you from those mountains. I can understand--more, perhaps, than you
imagine, and I can sympathize--more than you think possible. Tell me
about it fully--if you can. I see your heart is very full, and in the
telling you will find relief. I am not hostile, as you sometimes feel.
Tell me, my dear, young clear-eyed friend. Tell me your vision and your
hope. Perhaps I might even help ... for there may be things that I could
also tell to you in return."
Something in the choice of words, none of which offended; in the
atmosphere and setting, no detail of which jarred; and in the degree of
balance between utterance and silence his world of inner forces just then
knew, combined to make the invitation irresistible. Moreover, he had
wanted to tell it all these days. Stahl was already half convinced. Stahl
would surely understand and help him. It was the psychological moment
for confession. The two men rose in the same moment, Stahl to
lock the cabin doors against interruption, O'Malley to set their chairs
more closely side by side so that talking should be easiest.
And then without demur or hesitation he opened his heart to this
other and let the floodgates of his soul swing wide. He told the vision
and he told the dream; he told his hope as well. And the story of his
passion, filled in with pages from those notebooks he ever carried in
his pocket, still lasted when the western glow had faded from the sky
and the thick-sown stars shone down upon the gliding steamer. The
hush of night lay soft upon the world before he finished.
He told the thing complete, much, I imagine, as he told it all to me upon
the roof of that apartment building and in the dingy Soho restaurant. He
told it without reservations--his life-long yearnings: the explanation
brought by the presence of the silent stranger upon the outward voyage:
the journey to the Garden: the vision that all life--from gods to
flowers, from men to mountains--lay contained in the conscious Being of
the Earth, that Beauty was but glimpses of her essential nakedness; and
that salvation of the world's disease of modern life was to be found in a
general return to the simplicity of Nature close against her mothering
heart. He told it all--in words that his passionate joy chose
faultlessly.
And Heinrich Stahl in silence listened. He asked no single question.
He made no movement in his chair. His black cigar went out before
the half of it was smoked. The darkness hid his face impenetrably.
And no one came to interrupt. The murmur of the speeding steamer,
and occasional footsteps on the deck as passengers passed to and fro in
the cool of the night, were the only sounds that broke the music of that
incurable idealist's impassioned story.