He understood now that laborious utterance of his friend upon the steamer, and why his difficulty with words was more than he could overcome.
Like a current in the sea he still preserved identity, yet knew the freedom of a boundless being. And meanwhile the tide was ever rising. With this singular companion he neared that inner realization which should reveal them as they were—Thoughts in the Earth's old Consciousness too primitive, too far away, too vital and terrific to be confined in any outward physical expression of the "civilized" world today…. The earth shone, glittered, sang, holding them close to the rhythm of her gigantic heart. Her glory was their own. In the blazing summer of the inner life they floated, happy, caught away, at peace … emanations of her living Self.
* * * * *
The valleys far below were filled with mist, cutting them off literally from the world of men, but the beauty of the upper mountains grew more and more bewilderingly enticing. The scale was so immense, while the brilliant clearness of the air brought distance close before the eyes, altered perspective, and robbed "remote" and "near" of any definite meaning. Space fled away. It shifted here and there at pleasure, according as they felt. It was within them, not without. They passed, dispersed and swift about the entire landscape, a very part of it, diffused in terms of light and air and color, scattered in radiance, distributed through flowers, spread through the sky and grass and forests. Space is a form of thought. But they no longer "thought": they felt…. O, that prodigious, clean, and simple Feeling of the Earth! Love that redeems and satisfies! Power that fills and blesses! Electric strength that kills the germ of separateness, making whole! The medicine of the world!
For days and nights it was thus—or was it years and minutes?—while they skirted the slopes and towers of the huge Dykh-Taou, and Elbrous, supreme and lonely in the heavens, beckoned solemnly. The snowy Kochtan-Taou rolled past, yet through, them; Kasbek superbly thundered; hosts of lesser summits sang in the dawn and whispered to the stars. And longing sank away—impossible.
"My boy, my boy, could you only have been with me…!" broke his voice across the splendid dream, bringing me back to the choking, dingy room I had forgotten. It was like a cry—a cry of passionate yearning.
"I'm with you now," I murmured, some similar rising joy half breaking in my breast. "That's something—"
He sighed in answer. "Something, perhaps. But I have got it always; it's all still part of me. Oh, oh! that I could give it to the world and lift the ache of all humanity…!" His voice trembled. I saw the moisture of immense compassion in his eyes. I felt myself swim out into universal being.
"Perhaps," I stammered half beneath my breath, "perhaps some day you may…!"
He shook his head. His face turned very sad.