CHAPTER VI
Ralston was on the scene—Ralston in ripe middle age, massive and short of stature, with a square head and a billowy, sable-silvered head of hair; full lips, richly shadowed by his beard; an eye which twinkled like some bland star of humour at one minute and pierced like a gimlet at the next; a manner suavely dogged, jovially wilful, calmly hectoring, winning as the wiles of a child; a voice of husky sweetness, like a fog-bound clarion at times; a learning which, if it embraced nothing wholly, had squeezed some spot of vital juice out of well-nigh everything; wise, loquacious, masterful, bon-vivant; the most perfect talker of his day in England; half parson and half journalist; loyal to the bone; courageous to the bone; not an originating man, but original; a receiver, and, through his own personality, a transmitter of great thoughts to the masses; a fighting theologian; a fighting politician; a howling scoff to orthodoxy; a flying flag and peal of trumpet and tuck of drum to freedom everywhere. This was Ralston.
What should bring Paul from the inky apron, and the dusty type-cases, and the battered old founts of metal, and the worm-eaten old founts of wood, and the slattern bankrupt office into the society of such a man as this?
The Exile dreamed his dream, and a year was gone in a breath.
The Armstrong household was asleep. It was one o’clock—noon of the slumberous hours. Paul slipped downstairs in his stocking-feet, struck a match, lit the kitchen gas, and drew on his boots. Then back came the creaking bolts of the door which led to the garden. Out went the gas, and Paul, matchbox in hand, sped stealthily to the office, the summer dews falling and the weeds smelling sweet. The battered padlock on the staple of the door had been a pure pretence for years past. It locked and opened as well without the aid of a key as with it Paul lifted the outer edge of the door in both hands and swung it back cautiously, to avoid the shriek it gave when merely thrust open, and then lifted it to its former place. He mounted the stairs—there was not a nail in his boots which did not know each shred of fraying timber in them—thridded an unerring way through the outspread lumber on the floor to the stand at which he commonly worked, set the gas-bracket blazing there, and began to stack type as if for dear life, but without a copy. The clock at Trinity struck the hours half a mile away. The clock at Christ’s followed a second or two later, nearer and clearer. Then a mile off, soft and mellow, but unheard unless the ear waited for them, the bells of the Old Church chimed. Three o’clock was sounding, and the summer dark was at its deepest, when Paul secured a first proof of the work on which he had been engaged, and hid away the forme in a hollow beneath the stairs.
In this wise he stole two hours from sleep nightly for a month; and at the end of that time, lo! a printed poem, molten and cast, and re-molten and re-cast, chiselled and fined and polished, and all in Paul’s brain-factory, without a guiding touch of pen or pencil—the work of a year.
The night after the completion of this task Ralston lectured for the Young Men’s Christian Institute, and Paul was there. He was there right early, and secured a seat in the front row. The theme was ‘In Memoriam.’ Ralston talked and Paul listened. In five minutes Ralston was talking to Paul. Even now, in this strange review of the things that had helped or daunted him in all his days, the self-exiled Solitary, perched alone in his eyrie in the Rocky Mountains, encompassed by amorphous smoke-cloud, whilst the unseen river gnashed on its rocky teeth and howled—even now he felt the controlling magic of the voice and manner, even now he felt the triumph which sprang from the knowledge that this man chose him from the throng, played on him with splendid improvisations, made him the receptive and distributive instrument for his thoughts.
‘I know,’ said the living Paul Armstrong, looking back on the dead aspiring creature he had been. ‘Not a self-accusing thought! Pure worship in the eyes. And the visage! not this battered mask, but the face of eighteen! Not an ounce of alcohol ever fired his blood from his cradle till now. A meagre table all his life through—enough and barely enough. Clean hands and a pure heart, and burning ardour in the eyes. I could talk to a lad like that. Eh, me!’
The lecture was over; the audience had drained away; the great man and the Secretary were closeted for a minute; there was a chinking sound of gold. Ralston came out with a cheery ‘Good-night,’ and Paul was waiting at the head of the stairs.
‘Mr. Ralston,’ said Paul.