The Human Chord | Page 4

had been struck at once.
"How do you do, sir? This is the train you mentioned, I think?"
Spinrobin heard his own thin voice speaking, by way, as it were, of
instinctive apology that he should have put such a man to the trouble of
coming to meet him. He said "sir," it seemed unavoidable; for there
was nothing of the clergyman about him--bishop, perhaps, or
archbishop, but no suggestion of vicar or parish priest. Somewhere, too,
in his presentment he felt dimly, even at the first, there was an element
of the incongruous, a meeting of things not usually found together. The
vigorous open-air life of the mountaineer spoke in the great muscular
body with the broad shoulders and clean, straight limbs; but behind the
brusqueness of manner lay the true gentleness of fine breeding.
And even here, on this platform of the lonely mountain station,
Spinrobin detected the atmosphere of the scholar, almost of the recluse,
shot through with the strange fires that dropped from the large, lambent,
blue eyes. All these things rushed over the thrilled little secretary with
an effect, as already described, of a certain bewilderment, that left no
single, dominant impression. What remained with him, perhaps, most
vividly, he says, was the quality of the big blue eyes, their luminosity,
their far-seeing expression, their kindliness. They were the eyes of the
true visionary, but in such a personality they proclaimed the mystic
who had retained his health of soul and body. Mr. Skale was surely a
visionary, but just as surely a wholesome man of action--probably of
terrific action. Spinrobin felt irresistibly drawn to him.
"It is not unpleasant, I trust," the other was saying in his deep tones, "to
find some one to meet you, and," he added with a genial laugh, "to
counteract the first impression of this somewhat melancholy and
inhospitable scenery." His arm swept out to indicate the dreary little
station and the bleak and lowering landscape of treeless hills in the
dusk.
The new secretary made some appropriate reply, his sense of loneliness
already dissipated in part by the unexpected welcome. And they fell to

arrangements about the luggage. "You won't mind walking," said Mr.
Skale, with a finality that anticipated only agreement. "It's a short five
miles. The donkey-cart will take the portmanteau." Upon which they
started off at a pace that made the little man wonder whether he could
possibly keep it up. "We shall get in before dark," explained the other,
striding along with ease, "and Mrs. Mawle, my housekeeper, will have
tea ready and waiting for us." Spinrobin followed, panting, thinking
vaguely of the other employers he had known--philanthropists, bankers,
ambitious members of Parliament, and all the rest--commonplace
individuals to a man; and then of the immense and towering figure
striding just ahead, shedding about him this vibrating atmosphere of
power and whirlwind, touched so oddly here and there with a vein of
gentleness that was almost sweetness. Never before had he known any
human being who radiated such vigor, such big and beneficent
fatherliness, yet for all the air of kindliness something, too, that touched
in him the sense of awe. Mr. Skale, he felt, was a very unusual man.
They went on in the gathering dusk, talking little but easily. Spinrobin
felt "taken care of." Usually he was shy with a new employer, but this
man inspired much too large a sensation in him to include shyness, or
any other form of petty self-consciousness. He felt more like a son than
a secretary. He remembered the wording of the advertisement, the
phrases of the singular correspondence--and wondered. "A remarkable
personality," he thought to himself as he stumbled through the dark
after the object of his reflections; "simple--yet tremendous! A giant in
all sorts of ways probably--" Then his thought hesitated, floundered.
There was something else he divined yet could not name. He felt out of
his depth in some entirely new way, in touch with an order of
possibilities larger, more vast, more remote than any dreams his
imagination even had yet envisaged. All this, and more, the mere
presence of this retired clergyman poured into his receptive and eager
little soul.
And very soon it was that these nameless qualities began to assert
themselves, completing the rout of Spinrobin's moderate powers of
judgment. No practical word as to the work before them, or the duties
of the new secretary, had yet passed between them. They walked along

together, chatting as equals, acquaintances, almost two friends might
have done. And on the top of the hill, after a four-mile trudge, they
rested for the first time, Spinrobin panting and perspiring, trousers
tucked up and splashed yellow with mud; Mr. Skale, legs apart, beard
flattened by the wind about his throat, and thumbs in the slits