PAGE 10
Kalinin
by
“Yes. At least I am THAT; many like me do not exist.”
“Pardon me; I have met several.”
“Perhaps you have.” After which utterance, doubtfully drawled, the speaker added more sticks to the fire.
Eventide was falling with tardy languor, but, as yet, the sun, though become a gigantic, dull, red lentil in appearance, was not hidden, and the waves were still powerless to besprinkle his downward road of fire. Presently, however, he subsided into a cloud bank; whereupon darkness flooded the earth like water poured from an empty basin, and the great kindly stars shone forth, and the nocturnal profundity, enveloping the world, seemed to soften it even as a human heart may be rendered gentle.
“Good-bye!” I said as I pressed my companion’s small, yielding hand: whereupon he looked me in the eyes in his open, boyish way, and replied:
“I wish I were going with you!”
“Well, come with me as far as Gudaout.”
“Yes, I will.”
So we set forth once more to traverse the land which I, so alien to its inhabitants, yet so at one with all that it contained, loved so dearly, and of which I yearned to fertilise the life in return for the vitality with which it had filled my own existence.
For daily, the threads with which my heart was bound to the world at large were growing more numerous; daily my heart was storing up something which had at its root a sense of love for life, of interest in my fellow-man.
And that evening,as we proceeded on our way, the sea was singing its vespertinal hymn, the rocks were rumbling as the water caressed them, and on the furthermost edge of the dark void there were floating dim white patches where the sunset’s glow had not yet faded– though already stars were glowing in the zenith. Meanwhile every slumbering treetop was aquiver, and as I stepped across the scattered rain-pools, their water gurgled dreamily, timidly under my feet.
Yes, that night I was a torch unto myself, for in my breast a red flame was smouldering like a living beacon, and leading me to long that some frightened, belated wayfarer should, as it were, sight my little speck of radiancy amid the darkness.