Part 7 (1/2)
The long journey was over. A company of grave-faced men had met Joseph at a little wayside station. On one side stretched the sea, on the other great mountains towered up into the still, morning air.
It was early dawn. The sun in its first glory sent floods of joyous light over the placid waters. How splendid the air was--this ozone-laden breeze of the ocean--how cool, invigorating, and sweet!
Joseph turned to a tall, white-haired old man who seemed to be the leader of the band of people who stood upon the platform.
”I have come to a new world,” he said simply.
”Blessed be the name of the Lord who has sent you to Wales,” came the answer in deep and fervent tones.
Joseph looked at the man and his companions with astonishment. Why had Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious recluse and hermit of the mountains, sent these people to meet him? Why was there such a look of respect, almost of awe, upon the face of each man there, such eagerness and antic.i.p.ation? It was all incomprehensible, utterly strange. He felt at a loss what to do or say.
He bowed, and then, as if in a dream, mingled with the group and pa.s.sed out of the station. A carriage with two horses was waiting. By the side of it stood the station-master; the man's peaked cap was in his hand, and his face was lit up with welcome.
”The Teacher is waiting for you, sir,” he said.
In a state of mind which was almost hypnotic Joseph was helped into the carriage. Three of the people who had come to meet him entered also, and they started up along the white mountain-road. Joseph felt that this progress was all too slow. He was going to a definite goal; he had come this vast distance to meet some one, and he was impatient of delay.
He looked up. High above his head the great slate mountain towered into the sky, a white cap of cloud hid the summit.
The prospect was august, and it thrilled him strangely. In that great cloud--like the cloud upon Sinai--what might lie hid? He was conscious of strange unseen forces, whose depths, measures, or intensity he could not understand, round him and controlling him. His life was utterly changed. The hard wall of materialism against which he had leant his sick life for support was melting and dissolving.
He gazed upwards once more at the great mountain.
Lluellyn Lys, the mysterious Teacher, was there! Who and what was this man of the mountains, this teacher who was so revered? Mary's brother, the brother of the beautiful girl who had saved him and sent him to these wild solitudes of Wales.
Mary's brother, yes; but what besides? And what was Lluellyn Lys to be to him?
They came to a point at which the road ended and died away into a mere gra.s.s track.
The old man who sat by Joseph's side rose from his seat and left the carriage.
”Master,” he said, and, as he said it, Joseph bowed his head and could not look at him. ”Master, here the road ends, and we must take you up the mountain-side to the Teacher by a steep path.”
Another deep Celtic voice broke in upon the old man's speech.
”Ay, it is a steep path to the Teacher, Lluellyn is ever near to Heaven!”
Joseph had never heard Welsh before. He did not know a single word of that old tongue which all our ancestors of Britain used before ever St.
Augustine came to England's sh.o.r.es with the news and message of Christ's death and pa.s.sion.
Yet, at that moment Joseph _understood exactly what the man said_. The extraordinary fact did not strike him at the time, it was long afterwards that he remembered it as one of the least of the wondrous things that had befallen him.
He answered at once without a moment's pause.
”Lead on,” he said; ”I am with you. Take me to Lluellyn, the Teacher!”
Joseph turned. He saw that by the wayside there was a rough arm-chair hung between two long poles. Still moving as a man in a dream, he sat down on it. In a moment he was lifted up on the shoulders of four men, and began to ascend a narrow, winding path among the heather.
On and up! On and up!