This, on the night of his perfect day. Noreen Cardinegh had given him every moment of her time in Paris, not even saying good-by to her friends.... It was not the mystery in India; not the swift failing of Jerry Cardinegh, which his daughter felt, though she had not seen; not the White Mustache nor the creaking chair—these merely wove into a garment of nettles. The premonition was not even his own. It was Noreen Cardinegh’s, and had to do with his leaving her and hurrying back to India.... “It has come to me, Routledge-san, that you are to go very quickly!”... The great frieze coat was wet with Channel mists and Channel spray when the half-dawn developed the Dover pier, and the eyes of the wanderer were filled once more with the seven shades of English gray.... Noreen was out before the full day.
“Let’s take the earlier train for Charing Cross,” she said. “I believe we still have time. Our luggage is checked through, and we can breakfast en route.”
He brought his bag, and Noreen took his arm companionably as he appeared on the main-deck again.... She was all in gray like the morning, save for a touch of yellow ruching at her throat and her hair’s golden wonder-work.... Routledge turned on the pier at a step behind. It was the White Mustache in light-travelling order, hastening to make the early train.
A breakfast-table was between them. “Routledge-san,” she said, leaning toward him critically, “you don’t look the least bit tired, but I doubt if you’ve slept since I left you. Beside, your coat is all wet.”
“I did smell the Channel a bit,” he replied, thinking that a man who looked dull and worn in the presence of Noreen Cardinegh would be incapable of reflecting light of any kind. “I couldn’t? feel more fit and keep my self-control. Though I am not an Englishman, it thrills to see England again.” He glanced from his plate to her eyes and then out upon the winter fields, sweeping by the window like an endless magic carpet. “Some time, when there are no more wars,” he added, “we shall write an essay and call it, ‘Grape-fruit and Kentish Gardens.’”
They separated at Charing Cross, to meet again in the evening at the Army and Navy reception. Routledge repaired to his old lodgings in Bookstalls Road and sat down before his grate-fire in the midst of old trophies and treasures. Bookstalls was a crowded part of London, rushing with many small businesses, and convenient to vast tracts of unbroken undesirability. It was a gorge that boomed continual clamor. Even at night, when the protest from the cobble-stones should have sunk to its stillest, the neighboring fire-department was wont to burst open at intervals like the door of a cuckoo-clock and pour forth tons of clangorous polished metal. Whistles from the far river whipped the smoky air when the small factories were at peace; night-shifts of workmen kept the pavements continually animate. There was an iron-tongued guard in the belfry of Old Timothy’s Church that never let an hour go by without brutally hammering it flat, and then bisecting it; and on Sundays and Saints’ days, the same bell sent a continual crashing through the gorge with a hurting, tangible vibration, like a train in a subway.
Bookstalls had been decadent for decades. When grandfathers were little boys it had been a goodly place of residence, but small factories had long been smoking it out. Indeed, it sat in venerable decrepitude by the fires of its shops. Certain habitués lived on, nor noted the progress of decay, more than an old rat perceives the rotting mould sink deeper into his confining walls, or the crumble of his domestic plasters.
Routledge in London was one of the habitués. The place was associated to him with dim beginnings—a store-room of sentiments and war-relics kept by the year. Before this fire he had written his first views of London for an American newspaper, and here he had brought various reminders of travel. To Bookstalls he returned from his first journey to India—returned with the old brown Mother’s mystic whisperings in his brain, her mystic winds filling the sails of his soul. Gazing at this same grate-fire, tranced as by the heart of crystal, he had sunk into his first meditations, murmuring the star-reaching OM—until the boy within him, crude with Europe, broke the spell in fright, lest his divided bodies join together no more. Those days he had drunk deep of the Vedas; and the Bhagavad Gita was one with him according to his light. Out of these he came to see and feel the great Wheel of Births and Deaths and Re-Births moving true and eternal in the cogs of Karma. And, having once sensed and discovered this, the little problems of the earth’s day and generation are but gentle calisthenics for the mind.
Routledge looked back upon those pure days wistfully now. It is given a man but once in this life to follow the Way. When manhood is fresh and sensitive, retaining all its delicate bloom and unhurt power; and when, full of a hunger that never falls below the diaphragm, the young man turns for Truth to the masters and sages—this is the time to choose between the world and the stars! This is the time that the world gives battle to detain the searching soul. “Look, yonder is a Joseph climbing to God!” cries the old Flesh-mother; and, gathering her minions of enchantment and her dragons of fear, she scorns the lower cities, all safely swarming to her tribute, to pluck at the skirts of the Heaven-called.... What red flowers of passion she strews before him on the rocky, upland way; what songs of conquest she summons from the lower groves; with what romances does she stir his rest, all fragrant-lipped and splendor-eyed; what a Zion she rears of cloud and clay to hold his eyes from the Heights—are not all these written, aye, burned, into the history of Man?
Who goes beyond? A valiant few.... If the enchantments fail to hold him, and if his clear eyes penetrate the illusions of sense; lo, the path grows steep and dark before him, and there are dragons in the way! The faith of the youth must be as Daniel’s now, which is tetanus for lions and palsy for every monster. He has not lingered with the lusts. Will he not falter before the fears?