ON THE CLOUD
It was about the third week in January that Peter reached a certain
town named Congleton, and leaving it behind him, walked towards a
mountain named the Cloud.
The weather was now inclement; cold winds blew, driving showers of
sleet and rain assailed him, making the progress of the vagabond Peter
far from pleasant.
Bundle on back, his hands deep in the pockets of a rough frieze
overcoat he had purchased some three months previously, he tramped
along the road, Democritus at his heels. It might well be wondered
why Peter did not seek some lodging during these inclement months,
and in answer there is nothing to say beyond the fact that a certain
odd strain in him led him to continue his present mode of living. He
preferred inclemency of weather, entire isolation, to life under
a roof, with the chance of meeting his fellow-men. Perhaps it was
strange, but after all had he not already spent more than two years
on the roads, so may not the love of the open have taken possession
of him? At all events it is not what he might have done, but what he
actually did, with which this history has to deal.
Somewhere up on the top of the Cloud, with its back to a small wood of
pines and with a strip of moorland and then the road in front of it,
stands a small deserted hut. It is no more than a hovel of one tiny
room, and perhaps at one time it was used as a shepherd's shelter.
It was drawing on to the wintry dusk when Peter saw it in the gloom,
lying to the left of him from the road. He crossed the strip of
moorland and went towards it. He found it, as he had fancied he might,
entirely empty. There was a hole in the roof through which the rain
was driving and the broken door rattled on its hinges. It was very
different from a cottage he had discovered some months previously, but
it was at all events some kind of shelter, and the cold without was
bitter.
"We'll take possession," said Peter to Democritus. "It cannot be
styled a princely habitation--in fact, it's uncommonly wretched. But I
fancy it will be more desirable than the road to-night."
He unfastened his bundle and set it on the earth floor. Outside the
wind howled in fury; mist, rain, and gathering dusk blotted out the
landscape beyond the road.
"Ugh!" said Peter with a shudder, "it's remarkably unpleasant."
He unpacked his bundle. There was half a loaf of bread, a tin of
sardines, a bottle of water, a small flask of whisky, and a bone with
some meat on it for Democritus.
They finished their meal together, and then Peter still sat with
his back to the wall, as far away from the broken door as possible,
watching the rain that fell through the hole in the roof. For nearly
the first time since he had begun his wanderings he was physically
wretched. Fate had for a short time lifted his mental loneliness from
him, only to plunge him deeper into it. Mental loneliness, however,
he had done his best to accept with what philosophy he might, but now
physical loneliness, entire discomfort, and bodily depression were
weighing hard upon him. He felt he had lost the grit to fight further.
A quixotic action of long ago suddenly presented itself to him as an
entirely idiotic proceeding on his part. Why on earth had he ruined his
own life, cut himself off from communion with his fellow-men, for a
mere romantic notion?
"I'm beaten," said Peter to himself, "done! I fancied I was doing a
fine thing. I thought myself, no doubt, a bit of a hero; and now I'm a
coward, a turncoat, who'd give a very great deal to undo the past."
He was wretched, entirely wretched, and even the soft warm tongue of
Democritus against his hand was of no smallest comfort to him.
He looked at the bundle on the ground beside him. It contained his
manuscript, fair, complete but for the title and signature and the
dedication should he choose to give it one. It brought him no atom of
pleasure; it appeared to him worthless, a thing of false sentiment,
talking of high courage, of nobility of thought, which in reality
vanished like a pricked air-bubble the moment the finger of fact was
laid upon it.
How in the name of fortune had he kept his spirits buoyed up all these
years? And why in Heaven's name had the buoyancy suddenly deserted him?
Peter turned about in his mind for a solution of the problem. Presently
he found it. It came with something like a shock. He was older, that
was the reason. Close on six years had rolled over his head since the
day he had surrendered all for an extravagant notion. It is the young,
Peter reflected sagely, who take their all and throw it with both
hands on the altar of sacrifice. They do not realize--how should they
in their youthful optimism?--what they are giving up. They have never
known monotony, the grey years that roll by with nothing in heaven or
earth to break their dulness.
"Something will happen to make up to us," they cry. But--so
Peter reflected from the wisdom of his present vast age (he was
two-and-thirty be it stated)--nothing does happen. We burn our all
heroically, and then are surprised to find that there is no life in the
grey ashes left to us. His optimism had gone, vanished, and nothing but
a deep pessimism remained to him.
"It's no use, Democritus," he said, as with tongue and wagging tail the
small creature tried to cheer this terrible mood that had fallen upon
his master, "it's no use. I've made a mull of things, and perhaps it's
just as well to know when I am beaten. And yet if----"
Unpleasant little word, which so often prefaces all the joys that might
have been and are not.
Bear with Peter in his present mood. The marvel is it had never fallen
upon him before, and that it had not must be accounted for by the fact
that youth, health, and what had appeared as indomitable good spirits
were all in his favour.
It is useless, however, to dwell on his misery. Picture him, if you
will, as wretched as man well could be. He was, after all, only human,
and up till now he had fought his fight bravely.
He slept little throughout the night. About midnight the wind dropped
suddenly, and by the light of a candle he saw snowflakes falling
through the hole in the roof. He was trying to console himself with
Conard's life of Beethoven, which he had purchased; but with the
remembrance of the woman who had recommended him to read it before his
mind, the consolation was not overgreat.
Towards morning he fell into a fitful slumber which lasted till dawn.
Then he awakened, roused himself, yawned and stretched. The memory of
his mood of the previous night recurred to his mind. He felt suddenly
ashamed, though there had been none but his own soul and Democritus to
witness it. Courage, high-handed, sprang again within him. He flung
last night's mood behind him, and brave-eyed faced the future. And with
what is to follow it is good to think that he did so.
He got up, and went to the cottage door.
The earth lay snow-covered and very still. Since midnight the air had
been thick with feathery flakes falling gently, silently. Just before
dawn they had ceased, and now the world lay under the soft mantle.
White and spectre-like the trees reared their branches against the
cold grey sky. Only here and there the berries of the holly and the
rowan-tree gleamed scarlet against the snow. A little stream that
in summer made faint music as it wended its way to the right of the
hut, finally losing itself in the shadow of the pinewood, was now
frost-bound and silent. Over everything lay an intense stillness, an
unearthly purity. The ground before the hut was covered with curious
little star-like lines imprinted in the snow, the impress of the feet
of feathered wayfarers seeking for food which was not to be found.
And then through the silent frosty air came clear sounds--the barking
of a sheepdog, the clarion note of a cock in an outlying farmyard, and,
very distant, the sound of a church clock chiming the hour.
The eastern sky began to flush with colour. An amber light stole upward
through the grey, turning to rose and then to deeper crimson. The white
earth pulsated, breathed, awakened. Softly it reflected the crimson
of the sky, and then slowly, majestically, the sun, a glowing ball of
fire, came up over the horizon.
Peter stood gazing at the fairy magic of the scene. It was a pure
transformation after the bleak dreariness of the previous night.
And then suddenly he saw a man coming along the road--a man tall,
broad-shouldered, of a build akin to his own. A thick coat covered him,
its fur collar well pulled up to his ears; a cloth cap was on his head.
"Hullo," said Peter to himself, "he's early a-foot!"
The man paused, looked in the direction of the hut, then turned and
tramped quickly across the snow towards him. As he came nearer Peter
saw a pleasant freckled face, brown eyes like a dog's, a firm short
chin, and a small reddish moustache.
Within three or four yards of him the stranger halted and spoke.
"Is your name, by good luck, Peter Carden?"
"It is," said Peter, surprised, wondering.
"Thank Heaven!" murmured he of the freckles piously. "I've found you at
last! Come along back to the hotel with me and we'll talk as we go. I'm
famishing for breakfast."