The Human Chord | Page 6

echoed from the rocks as though voices
followed them down from the mountains. The darkness swallowed
them, they left the wind behind; the silence that dwells in the folded
hills fell about their steps; the air grew less keen; the trees multiplied,
gathering them in with fingers of mist and shadow. Only the clatter of
their boots on the rocky path, and the heavy bass of the clergyman's
voice shouting instructions from time to time, broke the stillness.
Spinrobin followed the big dark outline in front of him as best he could,
stumbling frequently. With countless little hopping steps he dodged
along from point to point, a certain lucky nimbleness in his twinkling
feet saving him from many a tumble.
"All right behind there?" Mr. Skale would thunder.
"All right, thanks, Mr. Skale," he would reply in his thin tenor, "I'm
coming."
"Come along, then!" And on they would go faster than before, till in
due course they emerged from the encircling woods and reached the
more open ground about the house. Somehow, in the jostling relations
of the walk, a freedom of intercourse had been established that no
amount of formal talk between four walls could have accomplished.
They scraped their dirty boots vigorously on the iron mat.

"Tired?" asked the clergyman, kindly.
"Winded, Mr. Skale, thank you--nothing more," was the reply. He
looked up at the square mass of the house looming dark against the sky,
and the noise his companion made opening the door--the actual rattle of
the iron knob did it--suddenly brought to him a clear realization of two
things: First, he understood that the whole way from the station Mr.
Skale had been watching him closely, weighing, testing, proving him,
though by ways and methods so subtle that they had escaped his
observation at the time; secondly, that he was already so caught in the
network of this personality, vaster and more powerful than his own,
that escape if he desired it would be exceedingly difficult. Like a man
in a boat upon the upper Niagara river, he already felt the tug and
suction of the current below--the lust of a great adventure drawing him
forward. Mr. Skale's hand upon his shoulder as they entered the house
was the symbol of that. The noise of the door closing behind him was
the passing of the last bit of quiet water across which a landing to the
bank might still have been possible.
Faint streamers from the dark, inscrutable house of fear reached him
even then and left their vague, undecipherable signatures upon the
surface of his soul. The forces that vibrated so strangely in the
atmosphere of Mr. Skale were already playing about his own person,
gathering him in like a garment. Yet while he shuddered, he liked it.
Was he not already losing something of his own insignificant and
diminutive self?
IV
The clergyman, meanwhile, had closed the heavy door, shutting out the
darkness, and now led the way across a large, flagged hall into a room,
ablaze with lamp and fire, the walls lined thickly with books, furnished
cozily if plainly. The laden tea table, and a kettle hissing merrily on the
hob, were pleasant to look upon, but what instantly arrested the gaze of
the secretary was the face of the old woman in cap and
apron--evidently the housekeeper already referred to as "Mrs."
Mawle--who stood waiting to pour out tea. For about her worn and
wrinkled countenance there lay an indefinable touch of something that

hitherto he had seen only in pictures of the saints by the old masters.
What attracted his attention, and held it so arrestingly, was this singular
expression of happiness, aye, of more than mere happiness--of joy and
peace and blessed surety, rarely, if ever, seen upon a human face alive,
and only here and there suggested behind that mask of repose which
death leaves so tenderly upon the features of those few who have lived
their lives to noblest advantage.
Spinrobin caught his breath a little, and stared. Aged and lined as it
unquestionably was, he caught that ineffable suggestion of radiance
about it which proclaimed an inner life that had found itself and was in
perfect harmony with outer things: a life based upon certain knowledge
and certain hope. It wore a gentle whiteness he could find only one
word to describe--glory. And the moment he saw it there flashed across
him the recognition that this was what Mr. Skale also possessed. That
giant, athletic, vigorous man, and this bent, worn old woman both had
it. He wondered with a rush of sudden joy what produced it;--whether it
might perhaps one day be his too. The flame of his own spirit leapt
within him.
And, so wondering, he turned to look at the clergyman. In the softer