The Indian Lily and Other Stories Part 38

Stonier grows the way, an eternal up and down over cliffs and through chasms.... The edges of the weathered stones become steps for our feet. Breathlessly we climb the peaks. Beyond them we clatter into new abysms.

My feet bleed. My limbs jerk numbly like those of a jumping-jack. An earthy taste is on my lips. I have long lost all sense of progress.

One cliff is like another in its jagged nakedness; one abysm dark and empty as another. Perhaps I wander in a circle. Perhaps this brown hand is leading me wildly astray, this hand whose grasp has penetrated my flesh, and has grown into it like the fetter of a slave.

Suddenly I am alone.

I do not know how it came to pa.s.s.

I drag myself to a peak and look about me.

There spreads in the crimson glow of dawn the endless, limitless rocky desert--an ocean turned to stone.

Jagged walls tower in eternal monotony into the immeasurable distance which is hid from me by no merciful mist. Out of invisible abysms arise sharp peaks. A storm from the south lashes their flanks from which the cracked stone fragments roll to become the foundations of new walls.

The sun, hard and sharp as a merciless eye, arises slowly in this parched sky and spreads its cloak of fire over this dead world.

The stone upon which I sit begins to glow.

The storm drives splinters of stone into my flesh. A fiery stream of dust mounts toward me. Madness descends upon me like a fiery canopy.

Shall I wander on? Shall I die?

I wander on, for I am too weary to die. At last, far off, on a ledge of rock, I see the figure of a man.

Like a black spot it interrupts this sea of light in which the very shadows have become a crimson glow.

An unspeakable yearning after this man fills my soul. For his steps are secure. His feet are scarcely lifted, yet quietly does he fare down the chasms and up the heights. I want to rush to meet him but a great numbness holds me back.

He comes nearer and nearer.

I see a pallid, bearded countenance with high cheek-bones, and emaciated cheeks.... The mouth, delicate and gentle as a girl's, is drawn in a quiet smile. A bitterness that has grown into love, into renunciation, even into joy, s.h.i.+nes in this smile.

And at the sight of it I feel warm and free.

And then I see his eye which is round and sharp as though open through the watches of many nights. With moveless clearness of vision he measures the distances, and is careless of the way which his foot finds without groping. In this look lies a dreaming glow which turns to waking coldness.

A tremour of reverence seizes my body.

And now I know who this man is who fares through the desert in solitary thought, and to whom horror has shown the way to peace. He looks past me! How could it be different?

I dare not call to him. Movelessly I stare after him until his form has vanished in the guise of a black speck behind the burning cliffs.

Then I wander farther ... and farther ... and farther....

It was on a grayish yellow day of autumn that I sat again after an interval on the upholstery of the famous _cafe_, I looked gratefully up at the brown slave-girl in the picture who blew upon her flutes as sleepily and dully as ever. I had come to see her.

I start for I feel a tap on my shoulder.

In brick-red gloves, his silk-hat over his forehead, a little more tired and world-worn than ever, that bosom friend whose name I have now definitely forgotten stood before me.

"Where the devil have you been all this time?" he asks.

"Somewhere," I answer laughing. "In the desert." ...

"Gee! What were you looking for there?"

"_Myself_."...

Chapter V.

And ever swifter grows the beat of time's wing. My breath can no longer keep the same pace.

Thoughtless enjoyment of life has long yielded to a life and death struggle.

And I am conquered.

Wretchedness and want have robbed me of my grasping courage and of my laughing defiance. The body is sick and the soul droops its wings.

Midnight approaches. The smoky lamp burns more dimly and outside on the streets life begins to die out. Only from time to time the snow crunches and groans under the hurrying foot of some belated and freezing pa.s.ser-by. The reflection of the gas lamps rests upon the frozen windows as though a yellow veil had been drawn before them.

In the room hovers a dull heat which weighs upon my brain and even amid s.h.i.+vering wrings the sweat from my pores.

I had the fire started again toward night for I was cold. Now I am no longer cold.

"Take care of yourself," my friend the doctor said to me, "you have worked yourself to pieces and must rest."

"Rest, rest"--the word sounds like a gnome's irony from all the corners of my room, for my work is heaping up on all sides and threatens to smother me.

"Work! Work!" This is the voice of conscience. It is like the voice of a brutal waggoner that would urge a dead a.s.s on to new efforts.

My paper is in its place. For hours I have sat and stared at it brooding. It is still empty.

A disagreeably sweetish odour which arises impudently to my nose makes me start.

There stands the pitcher of herb tea which my landlady brought in at bedtime.

The dear woman.

"Man must sweat," she had declared. "If the whole man gets into a sweat then the evil humours are exuded, and the healthy sap gets a chance to circulate until one is full of it."