Thursday's Serial: “The Centaur” by Algernon Blackwood (in English) - XVIII

 

CHAPTER XLI

Summer blazed everywhere and the sea lay like a blue pool of melted sky and sunshine. The summits of the Caucasus soon faded to the east and north, and to the south the wooded hills of the Black Sea coast accompanied the ship in a line of wavy blue that joined the water and the sky indistinguishably.

The first-class passengers were few; O'Malley hardly noticed their existence even. An American engineer, building a railway in Turkey, came on board at Trebizond; there were one or two light women on their way home from Baku, and the attaché of a foreign embassy from Teheran. But the Irishman felt more in touch with the hundred peasant-folk who joined the ship at Ineboli from the interior of Asia Minor and were bound as third-class emigrants for Marseilles and far America. Dark-skinned, wild-eyed, ragged, very dirty, they had never seen the sea before, and the sight of a porpoise held them spellbound. They lived on the after-deck, mostly cooking their own food, the women and children sleeping beneath a large tarpaulin that the sailors stretched for them across the width of deck. At night they played their pipes and danced, singing, shouting, and waving their arms--always the same tune over and over again.

O'Malley watched them for hours together. He also watched the engineer, the over-dressed women, the attaché. He understood the difference between them as he had never understood it before. He understood the difficulty of his task as well. How in the world could he ever explain a single syllable of his message to these latter, or waken in them the faintest echo of desire to know and listen. The peasants, though all unconscious of the blinding glory at their elbows, stood far nearer to the truth.

"Been further east, I suppose?" the engineer observed, one afternoon as the steamer lay off Broussa, taking on a little extra cargo of walnut logs. He looked admiringly at the Irishman's bronzed skin. "Take a better sun than this to put that on!"

He laughed in his breezy, vigorous way, and the other laughed with him. Previous conversations had already paved the way to a traveler's friendship, and the American had taken to him.

"Up in the mountains," he replied, "camping out and sleeping in the sun did it."

"The Caucasus! Ah, I'd like to get up there myself a bit. I'm told they're a wonderful thing in the mountain line."

Scenery for him was evidently a commercial commodity, or it was nothing. It was the most up-to-date nation in the world that spoke--in the van of civilization--representing the last word in progress due to triumph over Nature.

O'Malley said he had never seen anything like them. He described the trees, the flowers, the tribes, the scenery in general; he dwelt upon the vast uncultivated spaces, the amazing fruitfulness of the soil, the gorgeous beauty above all. "I'd like to get the overcrowded cities of England and Europe spread all over it," he said with enthusiasm. "There is room for thousands there to lead a simple life close to Nature, in health and peace and happiness. Even your tired millionaires could escape their restless, feverish worries, lay down their weary burden of possessions, and enjoy the earth at last. The poor would cease to be with us; life become true and beautiful again--" He let it pour out of him, building the scaffolding of his dream before him in the air and filling it in with beauty.

The American listened in patience, watching the walnut logs being towed through the water to the side of the ship. From time to time he spat on them, or into the sea. He let the beauty go completely past him.

"Great idea, that!" he interrupted at length. "You're interested, I see, in socialism and communistic schemes. There's money in them somewhere right enough, if a man only could hit the right note at the first go off. Take a bit of doing, though!"

One of the women from Baku came up and leaned upon the rails a little beyond them. The sickly odor of artificial scent wafted down. The attaché strolled along the deck and ogled her.

"Get a few of that sort to draw the millionaires in, eh?" he added vulgarly.

"Even those would come, yes," said the Irishman softly, realizing for the first time within his memory that his gorge did not rise, "for they too would change, grow clean and sweet and beautiful."

The engineer looked sharply into his face, uncertain whether he had not missed a clever witticism of his own kind. But O'Malley did not meet his glance. His eyes were far away upon the snowy summit of Olympus where a flock of fleecy clouds hung hovering like the hair of the eternal gods.

"They say there's timber going to waste that you could get to the coast merely for the cost of drawing it--Caucasian walnut, too, to burn," the other continued, getting on to safer ground, "and labor's dirt cheap. There's every sort of mineral too God ever made. You could build light railways and run the show by electricity. And water-power for the asking. You'd have to get a Concession from Russia first though," he added, spitting down upon a huge floating log in the clear sea underneath, "and Russia's got palms that want a lot of greasing. I guess the natives, too, would take a bit of managing."

The woman beyond had shifted several feet nearer, and after a pause the Irishman found no words to fill, his companion turned to address a remark to her. O'Malley took the opening and moved away.

"Here's my card, anyway," the American added, handing him an over-printed bit of large pasteboard from a fat pocket-book that bore his name and address in silver on the outside. "If you develop the scheme and want a bit of money, count me in."

He went to the other side of the vessel and watched the peasants on the lower deck. Their dirt seemed nothing by comparison. It was only on their clothes and bodies. The odor of this unwashed humanity was almost sweet and wholesome. It cleansed the sickly taint of that other scent from his palate; it washed his mind of thoughts as well.

He stood there long in dreaming silence, while the sunlight on Olympus turned from gold to rose, and the sea took on the colors of the fading sky. He watched a dark Kurd baby sliding down the tarpaulin. A kitten was playing with a loose end of rope too heavy for it to move. Further off a huge fellow with bared chest and the hands of a colossus sat on a pile of canvas playing softly on his wooden pipes. The dark hair fell across his eyes, and a group of women listened idly while they busied themselves with the cooking of the evening meal. Immediately beneath him a splendid-eyed young woman crammed a baby to her naked breast. The kitten left the rope and played with the tassel of her scarlet shawl.

And as he heard those pipes and watched the grave, untamed, strong faces of those wild peasant men and women, he understood that, low though they might be in scale of evolution, there was yet absent from them the touch of that deteriorating something which civilization painted into those other countenances. But whether the word he sought was degradation or whether it was shame, he could not tell. In all they did, the way they moved, their dignity and independence, there was this something, he felt, that bordered on being impressive. Their wants were few, their worldly possessions in a bundle, yet they had this thing that set them in a place apart, if not above, these others:--beyond that simpering attaché for all his worldly diplomacy, that engineer with brains and skill, those painted women with their clever playing upon the feelings and desires of their kind. There was this difference that set the ragged dirty crew in a proud and quiet atmosphere that made them seem almost distinguished by comparison, and certainly more desirable. Rough and untutored though they doubtless were, they still possessed unspoiled that deeper and more elemental nature that bound them closer to the Earth. It needed training, guidance, purifying; yes; but, in the last resort, was it not of greater spiritual significance and value than the mode of comparatively recently-developed reason by which Civilization had produced these other types?

He watched them long. The sun sank out of sight, the sea turned dark, ten thousand stars shone softly in the sky, and while the steamer swung about and made for peaked Andros and the coast of Greece, he still stood on in reverie and wonder. The wings of his great Dream stirred mightily ... and he saw pale millions of men and women trooping through the gates of horn and ivory into that Garden where they should find peace and happiness in clean simplicity close to the Earth....

 

 

CHAPTER XLII

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.

Wednesday's Good Reading: “Sagrado Coração de Jesus” by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira (in Portuguese)

 

    Legionário, N.º 458, 22 de junho de 1941

    Insistentemente, tem os Santos Padres recomendado que a humanidade intensifique o culto que presta ao Sagrado Coração de Jesus a fim de que, regenerado o homem pela graça de Deus e compreendendo que deve ser Deus o centro de seus afetos, possa reinar novamente no mundo aquela tranquilidade da ordem, da qual mais distante estamos, quanto mais o mundo descamba pela anarquia.

    Assim, não poderia um jornal católico deixar despercebida a festa que há dias transcorreu do Sagrado Coração. Não se trata apenas de um dever de piedade imposto pela própria ordem das coisas, mas de um dever que a tragédia contemporânea torna mais tragicamente premente.

* * *

    Não há quem não se alarme com os extremos de crueldade a que pode chegar o homem contemporâneo. Essa crueldade não se atesta apenas nos campos de batalha. Ela transparece a cada passo, nos grandes e nos pequenos incidentes da vida de todo o dia, através da extraordinária dureza e frieza de coração com que a generalidade das pessoas trata seus semelhantes. As mães em cujas entranhas decresce de intensidade o amor pelos filhos; os maridos que atiram à desgraça um lar inteiro, com o único intuito de satisfazer seus próprios instintos e paixões; os filhos que, indiferentes à miséria ou ao abandono moral em que deixam seus pais, voltam todas as suas vistas para a fruição dos prazeres desta vida; os profissionais que se enriquecem às custas do próximo, mostram muitas vezes uma crueldade fria e calculada, que causa muito mais horror do que os extremos de furor a que a guerra pode arrastar os combatentes.

    Realmente, se bem que na guerra os atos de crueldade se possam mais facilmente aquilatar, os que os praticam tem, se não a desculpa, ao menos a atenuante de que são impelidos pela violência do combate. Mas aquilo que se trama e se realiza na tranquilidade da vida quotidiana não pode muitas vezes beneficiar-se de igual atenuante. E isto sobretudo quando não se trata de ações isoladas, mas de hábitos inveterados que multiplicam indefinidamente as más ações.

    A guerra, tal qual ela é hoje feita, é um índice de crueldade, mas está longe de ser a única manifestação da dureza moral contemporânea.

* * *

    Quem diz crueldade diz egoísmo. O homem só prejudica seu próximo por egoísmo, por desejar beneficiar-se de vantagens a que não tem direito. Assim, pois, o único meio de extirpar a crueldade consiste em extirpar o egoísmo.

    Ora, a teologia nos ensina que o homem só pode ser capaz de verdadeira e completa abnegação de si mesmo quando seu amor ao próximo é baseado no amor de Deus. Fora de Deus não há, para os afetos humanos, estabilidade nem plenitude. Ou o homem ama a Deus a ponto de se esquecer de si mesmo, e neste caso ele saberá realmente amar o próximo; ou o homem se ama a ponto de se esquecer de Deus, e, neste caso, o egoísmo tende a dominá-lo completamente.

    Assim, é só aumentando nos homens o amor de Deus, que se poderá conseguir deles uma profunda compreensão de seus deveres para com o próximo. Combater o egoísmo é tarefa que implica necessariamente em “dilatar os espaços do amor de Deus”, segundo a belíssima frase de Santo Agostinho.

    Ora, a festa do Sagrado Coração de Jesus é, por excelência, a festa do amor de Deus. Nela, a Igreja nos propõe como tema de meditações e como alvo de nossas preces o amor terníssimo e invariável de Deus que, feito homem, morreu por nós. Mostrando-nos o Coração de Jesus a arder de amor a despeito dos espinhos com que O circundamos por nossas ofensas, a Igreja abre para nós a perspectiva de um perdão misericordioso e largo, de um amor infinito e perfeito, de uma alegria completa e imaculada, que devem constituir o encanto perene da vida espiritual de todos os verdadeiros católicos.

    Amemos o Sagrado Coração de Jesus. Esforcemo-nos por que essa devoção triunfe autenticamente (e não apenas através de alguns simbolismos da realidade) em todos os lares, em todos os ambientes e, sobretudo, em todos os corações. Só assim conseguiremos reformar o homem contemporâneo.

* * *

    “Ad Jesum per Mariam”. Por Maria é que se vai a Jesus. Escrevendo sobre a festa do Sagrado Coração, como não dizer uma palavra de comoção filial ante esse Coração Imaculado que, melhor do que qualquer outro, compreendeu e amou o Divino Redentor? Que Nossa Senhora nos obtenha algumas faíscas daquela imensa devoção que tinha ao Sagrado Coração de Jesus. Que Ela consiga atear em nós um pouco daquele incêndio de amor com que Ela ardeu tão intensamente, são nossos votos dentro desta oitava suave e confortadora.

Thursday's Serial: “The Centaur” by Algernon Blackwood (in English) - the end.

 

CHAPTER XLV

And here the crowded, muddled notebooks come to an end. The rest was action--and inevitable disaster.

The brief history of O'Malley's mad campaign may be imagined. To a writer who found interest in the study of forlorn hopes and their leaders, a detailed record of this particular one might seem worth while. For me personally it is too sad and too pathetic. I cannot bring myself to tell, much less to analyze the story of a broken heart, when that heart and story are those of a close and deeply admired intimate, a man who gave me genuine love and held my own.

Besides, although a curious chapter in uncommon human nature, it is not by any means a new one. It is the true story of many a poet and dreamer since the world began, though perhaps not often told nor even guessed. And only the poets themselves, especially the little poets who cannot utter half the fire that consumes them, may know the searing pain and passion and the true inwardness of it all.

Most of those months it chanced I was away, and only fragments of the foolish enterprise could reach me. But nothing, I think, could have stopped him, nor any worldly selfish wisdom made him even pause. The thing possessed him utterly; it had to flame its way out as best it could. To high and low, he preached by every means in his power the Simple Life; he preached the mystical life as well--that the true knowledge and the true progress are within, that they both pertain to the inner being and have no chief concern with external things. He preached it wildly, lopsidedly, in or out of season, knowing no half measures. His enthusiasm obscured his sense of proportion and the extravagance hid the germ of truth that undeniably lay in his message.

To put the movement on its feet at first he realized every possession that he had. It left him penniless, if he was not almost so already, and in the end it left him smothered beneath the glory of his blinding and unutterable Dream. He never understood that suggestion is more effective than a sledge-hammer. His faith was no mere little seed of mustard, but a full-fledged forest singing its message in a wind of thunder. He shouted it aloud to the world.

I think the acid disappointment that lies beneath that trite old phrase "a broken heart" was never really his; for indeed it seemed that his cruel, ludicrous failure merely served to strengthen hope and purpose by making him seek for a better method of imparting what he had to say. In the end he learned the bitter lesson to the full. But faith never trailed a single feather. Those jeering audiences in the Park; those empty benches in many a public hall, those brief, ignoring paragraphs in the few newspapers that filled a vacant corner by labeling him crank and long-haired prophet; even the silence that greeted his pamphlets, his letters to the Press, and all the rest, hurt him for others rather than for himself. His pain was altruistic, never personal. His dream and motive, his huge, unwieldy compassion, his genuine love for humanity, all were big enough for that.

And so, I think, he missed the personal mortification that disappointment so deep might bring to dreamers with an aim less unadulteratedly pure. His eye was single to the end. He attributed only the highest motives to all who offered help. The very quacks and fools who flocked to his banner, eager to exploit their smaller fads by joining them to his own, he welcomed, only regretting that, as Stahl had warned him, he could not attract a better class of mind. He did not even see through the manoeuvres of the occasional women of wealth and title who sought to conceal their own mediocrity by advertising in their drawing-rooms the eccentricities of men like himself. And to the end he had the courage of his glorious convictions.

The change of method that he learned at last, moreover, was characteristic of this faith and courage.

"I've begun at the wrong end," he said; "I shall never reach men through their intellects. Their brains today are occupied by the machine-made gods of civilization. I cannot change the direction of their thoughts and lusts from outside; the momentum is too great to stop that way. I must get at them from within. To reach their hearts, the new ideas must rise up from within. I see the truer way. I must do it from the other side. It must come to them--in Beauty."

For he was to the last convinced that death would merge him in the being of the Earth's Collective Consciousness, and that, lost in her deep eternal beauty, he thus might reach the hearts of men in some stray glimpse of nature's loveliness, and register his flaming message. He loved to quote from Adonais:

 

"He is made one with Nature: there is heard:

His voice in all her music, from the moan

Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;

He is a presence to be felt and known

In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,

 

Spreading itself where'er that Power may move

Which has withdrawn his being to its own.

He is a portion of the loveliness

Which once he made more lovely: he doth bear

His part, while the one Spirit's plastic stress

Sweeps through the dull dense world..."

 

And this thought, phrased in a dozen different ways, was always on his lips. To dream was right and useful, even to dream alone, because the beauty of the dream must add to the beauty of the Whole of which it is a part and an interpretation. It was not really lost or vain. All must come back in time to feed the world. He had known gracious thoughts of Earth too big to utter, almost too big to hold. Such thoughts could not ever be really told; they were incommunicable. For the mystical revelation is incommunicable. It has authority only for him who feels it. A corporate revelation is impossible. Only those among men could know, in whose hearts it rose intuitively and made its presence felt as innate ideas. Inspiration brings it, and beauty is the vehicle. Their hearts must change before their minds could be reached.

"I can work it better from the other side--from that old, old Garden which is the Mother's heart. In this way I can help at any rate...!"

 

 

CHAPTER XLVI

It was at the close of a wet and foggy autumn that we met again, winter in the air, all London desolate; and his wasted, forlorn appearance told me the truth at once. Only the passionate eagerness of voice and manner were there to prove that the spirit had not weakened. There glowed within a fire that showed itself in the translucent shining of the eyes and face.

"I've made one great discovery, old man," he exclaimed with old, familiar, high enthusiasm, "one great discovery at least."

"You've made so many," I answered cheerfully, while my real thoughts were busy with his bodily state of health. For his appearance shocked me. He stood among a litter of papers, books, neckties, nailed boots, knapsacks, maps and what-not, that rolled upon the floor from the mouth of the Willesden canvas sack. His old grey flannel suit hung literally upon a bag of bones; all the life there was seemed concentrated in his face and eyes--those far-seeing, light blue eyes. They were darker than usual now, eyes like the sea, I thought. His hair, long and disordered, tumbled over his forehead. He was pale, and at the same time flushed. It was almost a disembodied spirit that I saw.

"You've made so many. I love to hear them. Is this one finer than the others?"

He looked a moment at me through and through, almost uncannily. He looked in reality beyond me. It was something else he saw, and in the dusk I turned involuntarily.

"Simpler," he said quickly, "much simpler."

He moved up close beside me, whispering. Was it all imagination that a breath of flowers came with him? There was certainly a curious fragrance in the air, wild and sweet like orchards in the spring.

"And it is--?"

"That the Garden's everywhere! You needn't go to the distant Caucasus to find it. It's all about this old London town, and in these foggy streets and dingy pavements. It's even in this cramped, undusted room. Now at this moment, while that lamp flickers and the thousands go to sleep. The gates of horn and ivory are here," he tapped his breast. "And here the flowers, the long, clean open hills, the giant herd, the nymphs, the sunshine and the gods!"

 

So attached was he now to that little room in Paddington where his books and papers lay, that when the curious illness that had caught him grew so much worse, and the attacks of the nameless fever that afflicted him turned serious, I hired a bedroom for him in the same house. And it was in that poky, cage-like den he breathed his last.

His illness I called curious, his fever nameless, because they really were so and puzzled every one. He simply faded out of life, it seemed; there was no pain, no sleeplessness, no suffering of any physical kind. He uttered no complaint, nor were there symptoms of any known disorder.

"Your friend is sound organically," the doctor told me when I pressed him for the truth there on the stairs, "sound as a bell. He wants the open air and plenty of wholesome food, that's all. His body is ill-nourished. His trouble is mental--some deep and heavy disappointment doubtless. If you can change the current of his thoughts, awaken interest in common things, and give him change of scene, perhaps--" He shrugged his shoulders and looked very grave.

"You think he's dying?"

"I think, yes, he is dying."

"From--?"

"From lack of living pure and simple," was the answer. "He has lost all hold on life."

"He has abundant vitality still."

"Full of it. But it all goes--elsewhere. The physical organism gets none of it."

"Yet mentally," I asked, "there's nothing actually wrong?"

"Not in the ordinary sense. The mind is clear and active. So far as I can test it, the process of thought is healthy and undamaged. It seems to me--"

He hesitated a moment on the doorstep while the driver wound the motor handle. I waited with a sinking heart for the rest of the sentence.

"...like certain cases of nostalgia I have known--very rare and very difficult to deal with. Acute and vehement nostalgia, yes, sometimes called a broken heart," he added, pausing another instant at the carriage door, "in which the entire stream of a man's inner life flows to some distant place, or person, or--or to some imagined yearning that he craves to satisfy."

"To a dream?"

"It might be even that," he answered slowly, stepping in. "It might be spiritual. The religious and poetic temperament are most open to it, and the most difficult to deal with when afflicted." He emphasized the little word as though the doubt he felt was far less strong than the conviction he only half concealed. "If you would save him, try to change the direction of his thoughts. There is nothing--in all honesty I must say it--nothing that I can do to help."

And then, pulling at the grey tuft on his chin and looking keenly at me a moment over his glasses,--"Those flowers," he said hesitatingly, "you might move those flowers from the room, perhaps. Their perfume is a trifle strong ... It might be better." Again he looked sharply at me. There was an odd expression in his eyes. And in my heart there was an odd sensation too, so odd that I found myself bereft a moment of any speech at all, and when my tongue became untied, the carriage was already disappearing down the street. For in that dingy sick-room there were no flowers at all, yet the perfume of woods and fields and open spaces had reached the doctor too, and obviously perplexed him.

"Change the direction of his thoughts!" I went indoors, wondering how any honest and even half-unselfish friend, knowing what I knew, could follow such advice. With what but the lowest motive, of keeping him alive for my own happiness, could I seek to change his thoughts of some imagined joy and peace to the pain and sordid facts of an earthly existence that he loathed?

But when I turned I saw the tousled yellow-headed landlady standing in the breach. Mrs. Heath stopped me in the hall to inquire whether I could say "anythink abart the rent per'aps?" Her manner was defiant. I found three months were owing.

"It's no good arsking 'im," she said, though not unkindly on the whole. "I'm sick an' tired of always being put off. He talks about the gawds and a Mr. Pan, or some such gentleman who he says will look after it all. But I never sees 'im--not this Mr. Pan. And his stuff up there," jerking her head toward the little room, "ain't worth a Sankey-moody 'ymn-book, take the lot of it at cost!"

I reassured her. It was impossible to help smiling. For some minds, I reflected, a Sankey hymn-book might hold dreams that were every bit as potent as his own, and far less troublesome. But that "Mr. Pan, or some such gentleman" should serve as a "reference" between lodger and landlady was an unwitting comment on the modern point of view that made me want to cry rather than to laugh. O'Malley and Mrs. Heath between them had made a profounder criticism than they knew.

And so by slow degrees he went, leaving the outer fury for the inner peace. The center of consciousness gradually shifted from the transient form which is the true ghost, to the deeper, permanent state which is the eternal reality. For this was how he phrased it to me in one of our last, strange talks. He watched his own withdrawal.

In bed he would lie for hours with fixed and happy eyes, staring apparently at nothing, the expression on his face quite radiant. The pulse sank often dangerously low; he scarcely seemed to breathe; yet it was never complete unconsciousness or trance. My voice, when I found the heart to try and coax his own for speech, would win him back. The eyes would then grow dimmer, losing their happier light, as he turned to the outer world to look at me.

"The pull is so tremendous now," he whispered; "I was far, so far away, in the deep life of Earth. Why do you bring me back to all these little pains? I can do nothing here; there I am of use..."

He spoke so low I had to bend my head to catch the words. It was very late at night and for hours I had been watching by his side. Outside an ugly yellow fog oppressed the town, but about him like an atmosphere I caught again that fragrance as of trees and flowers. It was too faint for any name--that fugitive, mild perfume one meets upon bare hills and round the skirts of forests. It was somehow, I fancied, in the very breath.

"Each time the effort to return is greater. In there I am complete and full of power. I can work and send my message back so splendidly. Here," he glanced down at his wasted body with a curious smile, "I am only on the fringe--it's pain and failure. All so ineffective."

That other look came back into the eyes, more swiftly than before.

"I thought you might like to speak, to tell me--something," I said, keeping the tears with difficulty from my voice. "Is there no one you would like to see?"

He shook his head slowly, and gave the peculiar answer:

"They're all in there."

"But Stahl, perhaps--if I could get him here?"

An expression of gentle disapproval crossed his face, then melted softly into a wistful tenderness as of a child.

"He's not there--yet," he whispered, "but he will come too in the end. In sleep, I think, he goes there even now."

"Where are you really then?" I ventured, "And where is it you go to?"

The answer came unhesitatingly; there was no doubt or searching.

"Into myself, my real and deeper self, and so beyond it into her--the Earth. Where all the others are--all, all, all."

And then he frightened me by sitting up in bed abruptly. His eyes stared past me--out beyond the close confining walls. The movement was so startling with its suddenness and vigor that I shrank back a moment. The head was sideways. He was intently listening.

"Hark!" he whispered. "They are calling me! Do you hear...?"

The look of joy that broke over the face like sunshine made me hold my breath. Something in his low voice thrilled me beyond all I have ever known. I listened too. Only the rumble of the traffic down the distant main street broke the silence, the rattle of a nearer cart, and the footsteps of a few pedestrians. No other noises came across the night. There was no wind. Thick yellow fog muffled everything.

"I hear nothing," I answered softly. "What is it that you hear?"

And, making no reply, he presently lay down again among the pillows, that look of joy and glory still upon his face. It lay there to the end like sunrise.

The fog came in so thickly through the window that I rose to close it. He never closed that window, and I hoped he would not notice. For a sound of wretched street-music was coming nearer--some beggar playing dismally upon a penny whistle--and I feared it would disturb him. But in a flash he was up again.

"No, no!" he cried, raising his voice for the first time that night. "Do not shut it. I shan't be able to hear then. Let all the air come in. Open it wider... wider! I love that sound!"

"The fog--"

"There is no fog. It's only sun and flowers and music. Let them in. Don't you hear it now?" he added. And, more to bring him peace than anything else, I bowed my head to signify agreement. For the last confusion of the mind, I saw, was upon him, and he made the outer world confirm some imagined detail of his inner dream. I drew the sash down lower, covering his body closely with the blankets. He flung them off impatiently at once. The damp and freezing night rushed in upon us like a presence. It made me shudder, but O'Malley only raised himself upon one elbow to taste it better, and--to listen.

Then, waiting patiently for the return of the quiet, trance-like state when I might cover him again, I moved toward the window and looked out. The street was empty, save for that beggar playing vilely on his penny whistle. The wretch came to a standstill immediately before the house. The lamplight fell from the room upon his tattered, broken figure. I could not see his face. He groped and felt his way.

Outside that homeless wanderer played his penny pipe in the night of cold and darkness.

Inside the Dreamer listened, dreaming of his gods and garden, his great Earth Mother, his visioned life of peace and simple things with a living Nature...

And I felt somehow that player watched us. I made an angry sign to him to go. But it was the sudden touch upon my arm that made me turn round with such a sudden start that I almost cried aloud. O'Malley in his night-clothes stood close against me on the floor, slight as a spirit, eyes a-shine, lips moving faintly into speech through the most wonderful smile a human face has ever shown me.

"Do not send him away," he whispered, joy breaking from him like a light, "but tell him that I love it. Go out and thank him. Tell him I hear and understand, and say that I am coming. Will you...?"

Something within me whirled. It seemed that I was lifted from my feet a moment. Some tide of power rushed from his person to my own. The room was filled with blinding light. But in my heart there rose a great emotion that combined tears and joy and laughter all at once.

"The moment you are back in bed," I heard my voice like one speaking from a distance, "I'll go--"

The momentary, wild confusion passed as suddenly as it came. I remember he obeyed at once. As I bent down to tuck the clothes about him, that fragrance as of flowers and open spaces rose about my bending face like incense--bewilderingly sweet.

And the next second I was standing in the street. The man who played upon the pipe, I saw, was blind. His hand and fingers were curiously large.

I was already close, ready to press all that my pockets held into his hand--ay, and far more than merely pockets held because O'Malley said he loved the music--when something made me turn my head away. I cannot say precisely what it was, for first it seemed a tapping at the window of his room behind me, and then a little noise within the room itself, and next--more curious than either,--a feeling that something came out rushing past me through the air. It whirled and shouted as it went...

I only remember clearly that in the very act of turning, and while my look still held that beggar's face within the field of vision, I saw the sightless eyes turn bright a moment as though he opened them and saw. He did most certainly smile; to that I swear.

But when I turned again the street immediately about me was empty. The beggar-man was gone.

And down the pavement, moving swiftly through the curtain of fog, I saw his vanishing figure. It was large and spreading. In the fringe of light the lamp-post gave, its upper edges seemed far above the ground. Someone else was with him. There were two figures.

I heard that sound of piping far away. It sounded faint and almost flute-like in the air. And in the mud at my feet the money lay--spurned utterly. I heard the last coins ring upon the pavement as they settled. But in the room, when I got back, the body of Terence O'Malley had ceased to breathe.