"The fifteenth of June, yes," said O'Malley very slowly, but with wonder and excitement in his heart. "That was the day that Rostom tried to run away—the day I saw him come to me from the trees—the day we started off together … to the Garden…."
He turned to his companion questioningly. For a moment the rush of memory was quite bewildering.
"He never left Batoum at all, you see," Stahl continued, without looking up. "He went straight to the hospital the day we came into port. I was summoned to him in the night—that last night while you slept so deeply. His old strange fever was upon him then, and I took him ashore before the other passengers were astir. I brought him to the hospital myself. And he never left his bed." He pointed down to the little nameless grave at their feet where a wandering wind from the sea just stirred the grasses. "That was the date on which he died."
"He went away in the early morning," he added in a low voice that held both sadness and sympathy.
"He went home," said the Irishman, a tide of joy rising tumultuously through his heart as he remembered. The secret of that complete and absolute Leadership was out. He understood it all. It had been a spiritual adventure to the last.
Then followed a pause.
In silence they stood there for some minutes. There grew no flowers on that grave, but O'Malley stooped down and picked a strand of the withered grass. He put it carefully between the pages of his notebook; and then, lying flat against the ground where the sunshine fell in a patch of white and burning glory, he pressed his lips to the crumbling soil. He kissed the Earth. Oblivious of Stahl's presence, or at least ignoring it, he worshipped.
And while he did so he heard that little sound he loved so well—which more than any words or music brought peace and joy, because it told his Passion all complete. With his ears close to the earth he heard it, yet at the same time heard it everywhere. For it came with the falling of the waves upon the shore, through the murmur of the rustling branches overhead, and even across the whispering of the withered grass about him. Deep down in the center of the mothering Earth he heard it too in faintly rising pulse. It was the exquisite little piping on a reed—the ancient fluting of the everlasting Pan….
And when he rose he found that Stahl had turned away and was gazing at the sea, as though he had not noticed.
"Doctor," he cried, yet so softly it was a whisper rather than a call, "I heard it then again; it's everywhere! Oh, tell me that you hear it too!"