And the tears glistened in our eyes, as we pressed each other's hand in that dreary inn bedroom, with the shadow of we knew not what for Colin over us—for our comradeship had been very good, day by day, together on the open road.
Our train did not go till midnight, so we had a long melancholy evening before us; but the doctor had given Colin some mysterious potion containing rest, and presently, as I sat by his side in the gray twilight, he fell into a deep sleep—a sleep, alas! of fire and wandering talk. It was pitiful to hear him, poor fellow—living over again in dreams the road we had travelled, or making pictures of the road he still dreamed ahead of us. Never before had I realized how entirely his soul was the soul of a painter—all pictures and colour.
"O my God!" he would suddenly exclaim, "did you ever see such blue in your life!" and then again, evidently referring to some particularly attractive effect in the phantasmagoria of his fever, "it's no use—you must let me stop and have a shot to get that, before it goes."
One place that seemed particularly to haunt him was—Mauch Chunk. He had been there before, and, as we had walked along, had often talked enthusiastically of it. "Wait till we get to Mauch Chunk," he said; "then the real fun will begin." And now, over and over again, he kept making pictures of Mauch Chunk, till I could have cried.
"Dramatic black rocks," he would murmur, "water rushing from the hills in every direction—clean-cut, vivid scenery—like theatres—the road runs by the side of a steel-blue river at the bottom of a chasm, and there is hardly room for it—the houses cling to the hillside like swallows' nests—here and there patches of fresh green grass gleam among the rocks, and, high up in the air on some dizzy ledge, there is a wild apple-tree in blossom—it is all black rocks and springs and moss and tumbling water—"
Then again his soul was evidently walking in the Blue Mountains, and several times he repeated a phrase of mine that had taken his fancy: "And now for the spacious corridors of the Highlands, and the lordly gates of the Hudson."
Then he would suddenly half awaken and turn to me, realizing the truth, and say:
"O our beautiful journey—to end like this!" and fall asleep again.
And once more I fell to thinking of fairy springs by the roadside, and apples falling innocently from the bough, and how the beautiful journey we call life might some day suddenly end like this, with half the beautiful road untravelled—the rest sleep and perchance dreams.
* * * * *