The Street Called Straight Part 11

"What for? What good will it do? You won't see anything straight. It's no use trying to see daylight two hours before dawn. People are foolish enough sometimes to make the attempt, but they only strain their eyesight. For every step you've got to take there'll be something to show you the line to follow."

"What?" She asked the question chiefly for the sake of humoring him. She was not susceptible to this kind of comfort, nor did she feel the need of it.

"W-well," the old man answered, slowly, "it isn't easy to tell you in any language you'd understand."

"I can understand plain English, if that would do."

"You can make it do, but it doesn't do very well. It's really one of those things that require what the primitive Christians called an unknown tongue. Since we haven't got that as a means of communication--"

He broke off, stroking his long beard with a big handsome hand, but presently began again.

"Some people call it a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Some people have described it by other figures of speech. The description isn't of importance--it's the _Thing_."

She waited a minute, before saying in a tone that had some awe in it, as well as some impatience: "Oh, but I've never seen anything like that. I never expect to."

"That's a pity; because it's there."

"There? Where?"

"Just where one would look for it--if one looked at all. When it moves,"

he went on, his hand suiting the action to the word, on a level with his eyes, "when it moves, you follow it, and when it rests, you wait. It's possible--I don't know--I merely throw out the suggestion--no one can really _know_ but yourself, because no one but yourself can see it--but it's possible that at this moment--for you--it's standing still."

"I don't know what I gain either by its moving or its standing still, so long as I don't see it."

"No, neither do I," he a.s.sented, promptly.

"Well, then?" she questioned.

"Shall I tell you a little story?" He smiled at her behind his stringy, sandy beard, while his kind old eyes blinked wistfully.

"If you like. I shall be happy to hear it." She was not enthusiastic.

She was too deeply engrossed with pressing, practical questions to find his mysticism greatly to the point.

He took a turn around the drawing-room before beginning, stopping to caress the glaze of one of the K'ang-hsi vases on the mantelpiece, while he arranged his thoughts.

"There was once a little people," he began, turning round to where she sat in the corner of a sofa, her hands clasped in her lap--"there was once a little people--a mere handful, who afterward became a race--who saw the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night, and followed it. That is to say, some of them certainly saw it, enough of them to lead the others on. For a generation or two they were little more than a band of nomads; but at last they came to a land where they fought and conquered and settled down."

"Yes? I seem to have heard of them. Please go on."

"It was a little land, rather curiously situated between the Orient and the West, between the desert and the sea. It had great advantages both for seclusion within itself and communication with the world outside. If a divine power had wanted to nourish a tender shoot, till it grew strong enough to ripen seed that would blow readily into every corner of the globe, it probably couldn't have done better than to have planted it just there."

She nodded, to show that she followed him.

"But this little land had also the dangers attendant on its advantages.

To the north of it there developed a great power; to the south of it another. Each turned greedy eyes on the little buffer state. And the little buffer state began to be very wise and politic and energetic. It said, 'If we don't begin to take active measures, the a.s.syrian, or the Egyptian, whoever gets here first, will eat us up. But if we buy off the one, he will protect us against the other.'"

"That seems reasonable."

"Yes; quite reasonable: too reasonable. They forgot that a power that could lead them by fire and cloud could protect them even against conscript troops and modern methods of fighting. They forgot that if so much trouble had been taken to put them where they were, it was not that--a.s.suming that they behaved themselves--it was not that they might be easily rooted out. Instead of having confidence within they looked for an ally from without, and chose Egypt. Very clever; very diplomatic.

There was only one criticism to be made on the course taken--that it was all wrong. There was a man on the spot to tell them so--one of those fellows whom we should call pessimists if we hadn't been taught to speak of them as prophets. 'You are carrying your riches,' he cried to them, 'on the shoulders of young a.s.ses, and your treasures on the bunches of camels, to a people that shall not profit you. For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose. Your strength is--_to sit still_!'" As he stood looking down at her his kindly eyes blinked for a minute longer, before he added, "Do you see the point?"

She smiled and nodded. "Yes. It isn't very obscure. Otherwise expressed it might be, When in doubt, do nothing."

"Exactly; do nothing--till the pillar of cloud begins to move."

Out of the old man's parable she extracted just one hint that she considered useful. In the letter which she proceeded to write Rupert Ashley as soon as she was alone, a letter that would meet him on his arrival in New York, she gave a statement of such facts as had come to her knowledge, but abstained from comments of her own, and from suggestions. She had intended to make both. She had thought it at first her duty to take the initiative in pointing out the gulf of difficulties that had suddenly opened up between her lover and herself. It occurred to her now that she might possibly discern the leading of the pillar of cloud from self-betrayal on his part. She would note carefully his acts, his words, the expressions of his face. She had little doubt of being able to read in them some indication of her duty. This in itself was a relief. It was like being able to learn a language instead of having to invent one. Nevertheless, as she finished her letter she was impelled to add:

"We have asked some three hundred people to the church for the 28th.

Many of them will not be in town, as the season is still so early; but I think it wisest to withdraw all invitations without consulting you further. This will leave us free to do as we think best after you arrive. We can then talk over everything from the beginning."

With the hint thus conveyed she felt her letter to be discreetly worded.

By the time she had slipped down the driveway to the box at the gate and posted it with her own hands her father had returned.

She had ordered tea in the little oval sitting-room they used when quite alone, and told the maid to say she was not receiving if anybody called.

She knew her father would be tired, but she hoped that if they were undisturbed he would talk to her of his affairs. There was so much in them that was mysterious to her. Notwithstanding her partial recovery from the shock of the morning, she still felt herself transported to a world in which the needs were new to her, and the chain of cause and effect had a bewildering inconsequence. For this reason it seemed to her quite in the order of things--the curiously inverted order now established, in which one thing was as likely as another--that her father should stretch himself in a comfortable arm-chair and say nothing at all till after he had finished his second cup of tea. Even then he might not have spoken if her own patience had held out.

"So you didn't go away, after all," she felt it safe to observe.

"No, I didn't."

"Sha'n't you _have_ to go?"

There was an instant's hesitation.

"Perhaps not. In fact--I may almost definitely say--_not_. I should like another cup of tea."

"That makes three, papa. Won't it keep you awake?"

"Nothing will keep me awake to-night."

The tone caused her to look at him more closely as she took the cup he handed back to her. She noticed that his eyes glittered and that in either cheek, above the line of the beard, there was a hectic spot. She adjusted the spirit-lamp, and, lifting the cover of the kettle, looked inside.

"Has anything happened?" she asked, doing her best to give the question a casual intonation.

"A great deal has happened." He allowed that statement to sink in before continuing. "I think"--he paused long--"I think I'm going to get the money."

She held herself well in hand, though at the words the old familiar landmarks of her former world seemed to rise again, rosily, mistily, like the walls of Troy to the sound of Apollo's lute. She looked into the kettle again to see if the water was yet boiling, taking longer than necessary to peer into the quiet depth.

"I'm so glad." She spoke as if he had told her he had shaken hands with an old friend. "I thought you would."

"Ah, but you never thought of anything like this."

"I knew it would be something pretty good. With your name, there wasn't the slightest doubt of it."

Had he been a wise man he would have let it go at that. He was not, however, a wise man. The shallow, br.i.m.m.i.n.g reservoir of his nature was of the kind that spills over at a splash.

"The most extraordinary thing has happened," he went on. "A man came to my office to-day and offered to lend me--no, not to lend--practically to _give_ me--enough money to pull me through."

She held a lump of sugar poised above his cup with the sugar-tongs. Her astonishment was so great that she kept it there. The walls of the city which just now had seemed to be rising magically faded away again, leaving the same unbounded vacancy into which she had been looking out all day.