Despairs Last Journey | Page 8

of the nerves. The tide of
habitual conviction set strongly against a superstitious fancy. None the
less the Solitary spent many hours in tender and remorseful musings
over the lost father, and all day long he wondered at the voice which
had seemed to answer him.
'It would be well for me, perhaps,' he said, when he had spent
two-thirds of the day under the spell of these clear recollections--'it
would be well for me, perhaps, if I could think it true.'

An inward voice said, as if with deliberate emphasis, 'It is true.'
The words did not seem to be his own, and the thought was not his own,
and he was startled, almost wildly. But he had been much given to
introspection. He was accustomed to the study of his own mind's
working, and the inward voice impressed him less than if he had been a
man of simpler intellect. The intelligence of man plays many curious
tricks upon itself, and he was ready with explanations. He pored upon
these, turned them over, criticised them, sat secure in them.
The inward voice said 'Paul,' and nothing more. No call had sounded on
the waking ear, and yet an echo seemed to live in the air, as if a real
voice had spoken. His heart thrilled and his breast ached with a great
longing. He subdued himself, sitting with bowed head and closed eyes,
his chin sunk upon his folded hands. There was a bitter pain in his
throat.
'No,' he said half aloud, as if he had need to form his thoughts in words;
'it is all at an end, dear old dad It was well for you that you died with
that good hope in your mind It shed a ray of peace on your heart in the
last dark hour. It would be well for me if I could think that you were
here.. I could stand the pain of it I could bear, I think, to turn my whole
life's stream back upon itself if that would bring you peace. I could bear
to repent if my repentance could avail But you are gone into the great
dark. You will be sad no more and glad no more. I broke your heart,
and you tried to patch it with that futile hope. And you were not the
man to ask me to be a coward, and a liar to my own soul. I will keep
what little rag of manliness I have.'
The inward voice seemed to say 'Wait.'
'It would be easy to go mad,' he said, rising wearily. '"They rest from
their labours, and their works do follow them."'
He had wandered a mile or two from his tent, along the track, and now
turned his footsteps home again. The afternoon light was mellowing. A
great range of hills, with a line of cloud shining across the breast of it
like a baldric of silver, lifted parcel-coloured masses of white and violet

into a rolling billowy glory of cloud which half obscured and half
relieved them. The sky above was of an infinite purity. He stood and
looked, until his heart yearned.
The yearning spoke itself in words which had been familiar since
childhood:
'"Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at
rest!"'
'Old earth,' he said, 'why is it? You seem to long for me. You seem to
stretch out hands to me, as if you would say, "Sleep here!" We belong
to one another, I suppose. This flesh and bone, this breathing, thinking
apparatus, grew out of the slime of you, old world, and will go back to
your dust and flourish in grass and flower, and float in cloud and fall in
rain. You have hidden in your green breast all the millions who have
gone before me. Fecund mother! kind grave! And you, too, for all so
green and kisty as you look, you are dying. Your life is longer than
mine, but you are no Immortal. Your hills roll down to your valleys.
Every stream that tumbles from their heights wears away a little. The
light snow and lighter air are heavy on those heights of steel, and will
make them into dust at last. Your inward fires will cool, and the air that
clothes you like a delicate robe will shrink and vanish, and leave you
naked to the sun. I shall come to your bosom and be quiet, and you will
find the bourne of death likewise, and we shall swing together round
and round And the fires of the sun will cool, and you will go spinning
in blackness, and split in silent explosions of cold in the blind dark.
Dying heart, beating strong in full manhood! dying