for ever dropping the luncheon packages, which she picked up again and
tried to stuff into his pockets. For she refused to carry anything at
all. “It’s _my_ day out, not yours, remember! _I_ do no work to-day!”
And he caught her happiness, pausing to watch her while she picked
flowers and leaves and all the rest, and disentangling without the least
impatience that soft fluttering thing she wore when it caught in thorns,
and even talking with her about this wild spring glory as though she
were just the companion that he needed out of all the world. He no
longer felt quite so conscious of her objective presence as at first. In
the train, for instance, he had felt so vividly aware that she was
there. Alternately he had forgotten and remembered her presence. Now it
was better. They were more together, as it were. “I wish I were alone,”
he thought once more as the beauty of the spring called to him
tumultuously and he longed to lie and dream it all, unhampered by
another’s presence. Then, even while thinking it, he realised that he
was--alone. It was curious.
This happened even in their first wood when they went downhill into
Amersham. As they left it and passed again into the open it came. And on
its heels, as he watched her moving here and there, light-footed as a
child or nymph, there came this other instinctive thought--“I wish I
were ten years younger than I am!”--the first time in all his life,
probably, that such a thought had ever bothered him. Apparently he said
it aloud, laughingly, as he watched her dancing movements. For she
turned and ran up to his side quickly, her little face quite grave
beneath the big hat’s rim. “You _are_!” That answer struck him as rather
wonderful. Who was she after all ...?
And in Amersham they hired from the Griffin a rickety old cart, drawn by
a still more rickety horse, to drive them to Penn’s Woods. She, with her
own money, bought stone-bottle ginger-beer--two bottles. It made her day
complete to have those bottles, though unless they had driven she would
have done without them. The street was deserted, drenched in blazing
sunshine. Rooks were cawing in the elms behind the church. Not a soul
was about as they crawled away from the houses and passed upwards
between hedges smothered in cow-parsley over the hill. She had kept her
picture-paper. It lay on her lap all the way. She never opened it or
turned a single page; but she held it in her lap. They drove in
silence. The old man on the box was like a faded, weather-beaten farmer
dressed in somebody else’s cast-off Sunday coat. He flicked the horse
with a tattered whip. Sometimes he grunted. Plover rose from the fields,
cuckoos called, butterflies danced sideways past the carriage, eyeing
them ... and, as they passed through Penn Street, Le Maitre started
suddenly and said something. For, again, he had quite forgotten she was
there. “What a selfish beast I am! Why can’t I forget myself and my own
feelings, and look after her and make her feel amused and happy? It’s
_her_ day out, not mine!” This, somehow, was the way he put it to
himself, just as any ordinary man would have put it. But, when he turned
to look at her, he received a shock. Here was something new and
unexpected. With a thud it dropped down into his mind--crash!
For at the sound of his voice she looked up confused and startled into
his face. She had forgotten _him_! For the first time in all the years
together, years of work, of semi-official attention to his least desire,
yet of personal devotion as well, because she respected him and thought
him wonderful--she had forgotten _he_ was there. She had forgotten his
existence beside her as a separate person. She, too, had been--alone.
It was here, perhaps, he first realised this singular thing that set
this day apart from every other day that he had ever known. In reality,
of course, it had come far sooner--begun with the exquisite spring dawn
before either of them was awake, had tentatively fluttered about his
soul even while he stood waiting for her in the station, come softly
nearer all the way in the train, dropped threads of its golden web about
him, especially in that first beech wood, then moved with its swifter
yet unhurried rush--until, here, now, in this startling moment, he
realised it fully. Thus steal those changes o’er the sky, perhaps, that
the day itself knows at sunrise, but that unobservant folk do not notice
till the sun bursts out with fuller explanation, and they say, “The
weather’s changed; how delightful! how unexpected!” Le Maitre had never
been observant very--of people.
And then in this deep, lonely valley, too full of sunshine to hold
anything else, it seemed, they stopped where the beech woods trooped to
the edge of the white road. No wind was here; it was still and silent;
the leaves glittered, motionless. They entered the thick trees together,
she carrying the ginger-beer bottles _and_ that picture-paper. He
noticed that: the way she held it, almost clutched it, still unopened.
Her face, he saw, was pale. Or was it merely the contrast of the shade?
The trees were very big and wonderful. No birds sang, the network of
dazzling sunshine-patches in the gloom bewildered a little.
At first they did not talk at all, and then in hushed voices. But it was
only when they were some way into the wood, and she had put down the
bottles--though not the paper--to pick a flower or spray of leaves, that
he traced the singular secret thrill to its source and understood why he
had felt--no, not uneasy, but so strangely moved. For he had asked the
sleepy driver of the way, and how they might best reach Beaconsfield
across these Penn Woods, and the old man’s mumbled answer took no note
of--her:
“It’s a bit rough, maybe, on t’other side, stony like and steep, but
that ain’t nothing for a gentleman--when he’s alone ...!”
The words disturbed him with a sense of darkness, yet of wonder. As
though the old man had not noticed her; almost as though he had seen
only one person--himself.
They lunched among heather and bracken just beside a pool of sunshine.
In front lay a copse of pines, with little beeches in between. The roof
was thick just there, the stillness haunting. All the country-side, it
seemed, this Sunday noon, had gone to sleep, he and she alone left out
of the deep, soft dream. He watched those pines, mothering the slim
young beeches, the brilliant fresh green of whose lower branches, he
thought, were like little platforms of level sunlight amid the general
gloom--patches that had left the ground to escape by the upper air and
had then been caught.
“Look,” he heard, “they make one think of laughter crept in unawares
among a lot of solemn monks--or of children lost among grave elder
beings whose ways are dull and sombre!” It was his own thought continued
... yet it was she, lying there beside him, who had said it....
And all that wonderful afternoon she had this curious way of picking the
thoughts out of his mind and putting them into words for him. “Look,”
she said again later, “you can always tell whether the wind loves a tree
or not by the way it blows the branches. If it loves them, it tries to
draw them out to go away with it. The others it merely shakes carelessly
as it passes!” It was the very thought in his own mind, too. Indeed, he
had been on the point of saying it, but had desisted, feeling she would
not understand--with the half wish--though far less strong than
before--that he were alone to enjoy it all in his own indulgent way.
Then, even more swiftly, came that other strange sensation that he _was_
alone all the time; more--that he was for the first time in his life
most wonderfully complete and happy, all sense of isolation gone.
He turned quickly the instant she had said it. But not quickly enough.
By the look in her great grey eyes, by the expression on the face where
the discarded hat no longer hid it, he read the same amazing enigma he
had half divined before. She, too, was--alone. She had forgotten him
again--forgotten his presence--radiant and happy without him, enjoying
herself in her own way. She had merely uttered her delightful thought
aloud, as if speaking to herself!
How the afternoon, with its long sunny hours, passed so quickly away, he
never understood, nor how they made their way eventually to Beaconsfield
through other woods and over other meadows. He remembers only that the
whole time he kept forgetting that she was with him, and then suddenly
remembering it again. And once on the grass, when they rested to drink
the cold tea from his rather musty flask, he lit his pipe, and after a
bit he--dozed. He actually slept; for ten minutes at her side, yes, he
slept. He heard her laughing at him, but the laughter was faint and very
far away; it might just as well have been the wind in the cow-parsley
that said, “If you sleep, I shall change you--change you while you
sleep!” And for some minutes after he woke again, it hardly seemed queer
to him that he did not see her, for when he noticed her coming towards
him from the hedgerow, her arms full of flowers and things, he only
thought, “Oh, there she is”--as though her absence, or his own absence
in sleep, were not quite the common absences of the world.
And he remembered that on the walk to the village her shoe hurt her, and
he offered to carry her, and that then she took her shoe off and ran
along the grass beside the lane the whole way. But it was at the inn
where they had their supper that the oddest thing of all occurred, for
the deaf and rather stupid servant girl would insist on laying the table
on the lawn for--one.
“Oh, expectin’ some one, are yer?” she said at last. “Is that it?” and
so brought plates and knives for two. The girl never once looked at his
companion--almost as though she did not see her and seemed unaware of
her presence. Le Maitre began to feel that he was dreaming. This was a
dream-country, where the people had curious sight. He remembered the
driver....
In the dusk they made their way to the station. They spoke no word. He
kept losing sight of her. Once or twice he forgot who he was. But the
whole amazing thing blazed into him most strongly, showing how it had
seized upon his mind, when he stood before the ticket-window and
hesitated--for a second--how many tickets he should buy. He stammered at
length for two first-class, but he was absurdly flustered for a second.
It had actually occurred to him that they needed only one ticket....
And suddenly in the train he understood--and his heart came up in his
throat. They were alone. He turned to her where she lay in the corner,
feet up, weary, crumpled among the leaves and flowers she had gathered.
Like a hedgerow flower she looked, tired by the sunshine and the wind.
In one hand was the picture-paper, still unopened and unread, symbol of
everyday reality. She was dozing certainly, if not actually asleep. So
he woke her with a touch, calling her name aloud.
There were no words at first. He looked at her, coming up very close to
do so, and she looked back at him--straight into his eyes--just as she
did at home when they were working and he was explaining something
important. And then her own eyes dropped, and a deep blush spread over
all her face.
“I wasn’t asleep--really,” she said, as he took her at last into his
arms; “I was wondering--when--you’d find out----”
“Come to myself, you mean?” he asked tremblingly.
“Well,” she hesitated, as soon as she got breath, “that I _am_
yourself--and that you are me. Of course, we’re really only one. I knew
it years--oh, years and years ago....”
XV
ANCIENT LIGHTS
From Southwater, where he left the train, the road led due west. That he
knew; for the rest he trusted to luck, being one of those born walkers
who dislike asking the way. He had that instinct, and as a rule it
served him well. “A mile or so due west along the sandy road till you
come to a stile on the right; then across the fields. You’ll see the red
house straight before you.” He glanced at the post-card’s instructions
once again, and once again he tried to decipher the scratched-out
sentence--without success. It had been so elaborately inked over that no
word was legible. Inked-out sentences in a letter were always enticing.
He wondered what it was that had to be so very carefully obliterated.
The afternoon was boisterous, with a tearing, shouting wind that blew
from the sea, across the Sussex weald. Massive clouds with rounded,
piled-up edges, cannoned across gaping spaces of blue sky. Far away the
line of Downs swept the horizon, like an arriving wave. Chanctonbury
Ring rode their crest--a scudding ship, hull down before the wind. He
took his hat off and walked rapidly, breathing great draughts of air
with delight and exhilaration. The road was deserted; no horsemen,
bicycles, or motors; not even a tradesman’s cart; no single walker. But
anyhow he would never have asked the way. Keeping a sharp eye for the
stile, he pounded along, while the wind tossed the cloak against his
face, and made waves across the blue puddles in the yellow road. The
trees showed their under leaves of white. The bracken and the high new
grass bent all one way. Great life was in the day, high spirits and
dancing everywhere. And for a Croydon surveyor’s clerk just out of an
office this was like a holiday at the sea.
It was a day for high adventure, and his heart rose up to meet the mood
of Nature. His umbrella with the silver ring ought to have been a sword,
and his brown shoes should have been top-boots with spurs upon the
heels. Where hid the enchanted Castle and the princess with the hair of
sunny gold? His horse....
The stile came suddenly into view and nipped adventure in the bud.
Everyday clothes took him prisoner again. He was a surveyor’s clerk,
middle-aged, earning three pounds a week, coming from Croydon to see
about a client’s proposed alterations in a wood--something to ensure a
better view from the dining-room window. Across the fields, perhaps a
mile away, he saw the red house gleaming in the sunshine; and resting on
the stile a moment to get his breath he noticed a copse of oak and
hornbeam on the right. “Aha,” he told himself, “so that must be the wood
he wants to cut down to improve the view? I’ll ’ave a look at it.” There
were boards up, of course, but there was an inviting little path as
well. “I’m not a trespasser,” he said; “it’s part of my business, this
is.” He scrambled awkwardly over the gate and entered the copse. A
little round would bring him to the field again.
But the moment he passed among the trees the wind ceased shouting and a
stillness dropped upon the world. So dense was the growth that the
sunshine only came through in isolated patches. The air was close. He
mopped his forehead and put his green felt hat on, but a low branch
knocked it off again at once, and as he stooped an elastic twig swung
back and stung his face. There were flowers along both edges of the
little path; glades opened on either side; ferns curved about in damper
corners, and the smell of earth and foliage was rich and sweet. It was
cooler here. What an enchanting little wood, he thought, turning down a
small green glade where the sunshine flickered like silver wings. How it
danced and fluttered and moved about! He put a dark blue flower in his
buttonhole. Again his hat, caught by an oak branch as he rose, was
knocked from his head, falling across his eyes. And this time he did
not put it on again. Swinging his umbrella, he walked on with uncovered
head, whistling rather loudly as he went. But the thickness of the trees
hardly encouraged whistling, and something of his gaiety and high
spirits seemed to leave him. He suddenly found himself treading
circumspectly and with caution. The stillness in the wood was so
peculiar.
There was a rustle among the ferns and leaves and something shot across
the path ten yards ahead, stopped abruptly an instant with head cocked
sideways to stare, then dived again beneath the underbrush with the
speed of a shadow. He started like a frightened child, laughing the next
second that a mere pheasant could have made him jump. In the distance he
heard wheels upon the road, and wondered why the sound was pleasant.
“Good old butcher’s cart,” he said to himself--then realised that he was
going in the wrong direction and had somehow got turned round. For the
road should be behind him, not in front.
And he hurriedly took another narrow glade that lost itself in greenness
to the right. “That’s my direction, of course,” he said; “the trees has
mixed me up a bit, it seems”--then found himself abruptly by the gate he
had first climbed over. He had merely made a circle. Surprise became
almost discomfiture then. And a man, dressed like a gamekeeper in browny
green, leaned against the gate, hitting his legs with a switch. “I’m
making for Mr. Lumley’s farm,” explained the walker. “This _is_ his
wood, I believe----” then stopped dead, because it was no man at all,
but merely an effect of light and shade and foliage. He stepped back to
reconstruct the singular illusion, but the wind shook the branches
roughly here on the edge of the wood and the foliage refused to
reconstruct the figure. The leaves all rustled strangely. And just then
the sun went behind a cloud, making the whole wood look otherwise. Yet
how the mind could be thus doubly deceived was indeed remarkable, for it
almost seemed to him the man had answered, spoken--or was this the
shuffling noise the branches made?--and had pointed with his switch to
the notice-board upon the nearest tree. The words rang on in his head,
but of course he had imagined them: “No, it’s not his wood. It’s ours.”
And some village wit, moreover, had changed the lettering on the
weather-beaten board, for it read quite plainly, “Trespassers will be
persecuted.”
And while the astonished clerk read the words and chuckled, he said to
himself, thinking what a tale he’d have to tell his wife and children
later--“The blooming wood has tried to chuck me out. But I’ll go in
again. Why, it’s only a matter of a square acre at most. I’m bound to
reach the fields on the other side if I keep straight on.” He
remembered his position in the office. He had a certain dignity to
maintain.
The cloud passed from below the sun, and light splashed suddenly in all
manner of unlikely places. The man went straight on. He felt a touch of
puzzling confusion somewhere; this way the copse had of shifting from
sunshine into shadow doubtless troubled sight a little. To his relief,
at last, a new glade opened through the trees and disclosed the fields
with a glimpse of the red house in the distance at the far end. But a
little wicket gate that stood across the path had first to be climbed,
and as he scrambled heavily over--for it would not open--he got the
astonishing feeling that it slid off sideways beneath his weight, and
towards the wood. Like the moving staircases at Harrod’s and Earl’s
Court, it began to glide off with him. It was quite horrible. He made a
violent effort to get down before it carried him into the trees, but his
feet became entangled with the bars and umbrella, so that he fell
heavily upon the farther side, arms spread across the grass and nettles,
boots clutched between the first and second bars. He lay there a moment
like a man crucified upside down, and while he struggled to get
disentangled--feet, bars, and umbrella formed a regular net--he saw the
little man in browny green go past him with extreme rapidity through the
wood. The man was laughing. He passed across the glade some fifty yards
away, and he was not alone this time. A companion like himself went
with him. The clerk, now upon his feet again, watched them disappear
into the gloom of green beyond. “They’re tramps, not gamekeepers,” he
said to himself, half mortified, half angry. But his heart was thumping
dreadfully, and he dared not utter all his thought.
He examined the wicket gate, convinced it was a trick gate somehow--then
went hurriedly on again, disturbed beyond belief to see that the glade
no longer opened into fields, but curved away to the right. What in the
world had happened to him? His sight was so utterly at fault. Again the
sun flamed out abruptly and lit the floor of the wood with pools of
silver, and at the same moment a violent gust of wind passed shouting
overhead. Drops fell clattering everywhere upon the leaves, making a
sharp pattering as of many footsteps. The whole copse shuddered and went
moving.
“Rain, by George,” thought the clerk, and feeling for his umbrella,
discovered he had lost it. He turned back to the gate and found it lying
on the farther side. To his amazement he saw the fields at the far end
of the glade, the red house, too, ashine in the sunset. He laughed then,
for, of course, in his struggle with the gate, he had somehow got turned
round--had fallen back instead of forwards. Climbing over, this time
quite easily, he retraced his steps. The silver band, he saw, had been
torn from the umbrella. No doubt his foot, a nail, or something had
caught in it and ripped it off. The clerk began to run; he felt
extraordinarily dismayed.
But, while he ran, the entire wood ran with him, round him, to and fro,
trees shifting like living things, leaves folding and unfolding, trunks
darting backwards and forwards, and branches disclosing enormous empty
spaces, then closing up again before he could look into them. There were
footsteps everywhere, and laughing, crying voices, and crowds of figures
gathering just behind his back till the glade, he knew, was thick with
moving life. The wind in his ears, of course, produced the voices and
the laughter, while sun and clouds, plunging the copse alternately in
shadow and bright dazzling light, created the figures. But he did not
like it, and he went as fast as ever his sturdy legs could take him. He
was frightened now. This was no story for his wife and children. He ran
like the wind. But his feet made no sound upon the soft mossy turf.
Then, to his horror, he saw that the glade grew narrow, nettles and
weeds stood thick across it, it dwindled down into a tiny path, and
twenty yards ahead it stopped finally and melted off among the trees.
What the trick gate had failed to achieve, this twisting glade
accomplished easily--carried him in bodily among the dense and crowding
trees.
There was only one thing to do--turn sharply and dash back again, run
headlong into the life that followed at his back, followed so closely
too that now it almost touched him, pushing him in. And with reckless
courage this was what he did. It seemed a fearful thing to do. He turned
with a sort of violent spring, head down and shoulders forward, hands
stretched before his face. He made the plunge; like a hunted creature he
charged full tilt the other way, meeting the wind now in his face.
Good Lord! The glade behind him had closed up as well; there was no
longer any path at all. Turning round and round, like an animal at bay,
he searched for an opening, a way of escape, searched frantically,
breathlessly, terrified now in his bones. But foliage surrounded him,
branches blocked the way; the trees stood close and still, unshaken by a
breath of wind; and the sun dipped that moment behind a great black
cloud. The entire wood turned dark and silent. It watched him.
Perhaps it was this final touch of sudden blackness that made him act so
foolishly, as though he had really lost his head. At any rate, without
pausing to think, he dashed headlong in among the trees again. There was
a sensation of being stiflingly surrounded and entangled, and that he
_must_ break out at all costs--out and away into the open of the blessed
fields and air. He did this ill-considered thing, and apparently charged
straight into an oak that deliberately moved into his path to stop him.
He saw it shift across a good full yard, and being a measuring man,
accustomed to theodolite and chain, he ought to know. He fell, saw
stars, and felt a thousand tiny fingers tugging and pulling at his hands
and neck and ankles. The stinging nettles, no doubt, were responsible
for this. He thought of it later. At the moment it felt diabolically
calculated.
But another remarkable illusion was not so easily explained. For all in
a moment, it seemed, the entire wood went sliding past him with a thick
deep rustling of leaves and laughter, myriad footsteps, and tiny little
active, energetic shapes; two men in browny green gave him a mighty
hoist--and he opened his eyes to find himself lying in the meadow beside
the stile where first his incredible adventure had begun. The wood stood
in its usual place and stared down upon him in the sunlight. There was
the red house in the distance as before. Above him grinned the
weather-beaten notice-board: “Trespassers will be prosecuted.”