little object he had passed across to her. She had taken it, obeying,
it seemed, an inner compulsion and authority which were inevitable,
fore-ordained. Lowering her face she examined it in the dusk--a small
green leaf of fern--fingered it with tender caution as it lay in her
palm, gazed for some seconds closely at the tiny thing.... When she
looked up again the stranger, the seller of dreams, as she now imagined
him, had moved some yards away from the gate, and was moving still, a
leisurely quiet tread that stirred no dust, a shadowy outline soft with
dusk and starlight, moving towards the sunrise end, whence he had first
appeared.
Her heart gave a sudden leap, as once again the burden of the years
assailed her. Her words seemed driven out:
"Who are you? Before you go--your name! What is your name?"
His voice, now faint with distance as he melted from sight against the
dark fringe of hazel trees, reached her but indistinctly, though its
meaning was somehow clear:
"The dream," she heard like a breath of wind against her ear, "shall
bring its own name with it. I wait...." Both sound and figure trailed
off into the unknown space beyond the eastern end, and, leaning against
the wicket-gate as usual, the white dust settling about his heavy boots,
the tea-pail but just ceased from rattling, was--old Purdy.
Unless the mind can fix the reality of an event in the actual instant of
its happening, judgment soon dwindles into a confusion between memory
and argument. Five minutes later, when old Purdy had gone his way again,
she found herself already wondering, reflecting, questioning. Yearning
had perhaps conjured with emotion to fashion both voice and figure out
of imagination, out of this perfumed dusk, out of the troubled heart's
desire. Confusion in time had further helped to metamorphose old Purdy
into some legendary shape that had stolen upon her mood of reverie from
the shadows of her beloved lane.... Yet the dream she had accepted from
a stranger hand, a little fern leaf, remained at any rate to shape a
delightful certainty her brain might criticize while her heart believed.
The fern leaf assuredly was real. A fairy gift! Those who eat of this
fern-seed, she remembered as she sank into sleep that night, shall see
the fairies! And, indeed, a few hours later she walked in dream along
the familiar curve between the hedges, her own childhood taking her
by the hand as she played with the flowers, the butterflies, the glad
swallows beckoning while they flashed. Without the smallest sense of
surprise or unexpectedness, too, she met at the eastern end--two
figures. They stood, as she with her childhood stood, hand in hand, the
seller of dreams and her lover, waiting since time began, she realized,
waiting with some great unuttered question on their lips. Neither
addressed her, neither spoke a word. Dick looked at her, ambition, hard
and restless, shining in his eyes; in the eyes of the other--dark,
gentle, piercing, but extraordinarily young for all the ragged hair
about the face the shabby clothes, the ravaged and unkempt appearance--a
brightness as of the coming dawn.
A choice, she understood, was offered to her; there was a decision she
must make. She realized, as though some great wind blew it into her
from outer space, another, a new standard to which her judgment must
inevitably conform, or admit the purpose of her life evaded finally. The
same moment she knew what her decision was. No hesitation touched her.
Calm, yet trembling, her courage and her patience faced the decision and
accepted it. The hands then instantly fell apart, unclasped. One figure
turned and vanished down the lane towards the departing end, but with
the other, now hand in hand, she rose floating, gliding without effort,
a strange bliss in her heart, to meet the sunrise.
"He has awakened ... so he cannot stay," she heard, like a breath of
wind that whispered into her ear. "I, who bring you this dream--I wait."
She did not wake at once when the dream was ended, but slept on long
beyond her accustomed hour, missing thereby Melancey, Averill, old Purdy
as they passed the wicket-gate in the early hours. She woke, however,
with a new clear knowledge of herself, of her mind and heart, to all of
which in simple truth to her own soul she must conform. The fern-seed
she placed in a locket attached to a fine gold chain about her neck.
During the long, lonely, expectant yet unsatisfied years that followed
she wore it day and night.
2
She had the curious feeling that she remained young. Others grew older,
but not she. She watched her contemporaries slowly give the signs,
while she herself held stationary. Even those younger than herself went
past her, growing older in the ordinary way, whereas her heart, her
mind, even her appearance, she felt certain, hardly aged at all. In a
room full of people she felt pity often as she read the signs in their
faces knowing her own unchanged. Their eyes were burning out, but hers
burned on. It was neither vanity nor delusion, but an inner conviction
she could not alter.
The age she held to was the year she had received the fern-seed from
old Purdy, or rather, from an imaginary figure her reverie had set
momentarily in old Purdy's place. That figure of her reverie, the dream
that followed, the subsequent confession to Dick Messenger, meeting his
own half-way--these marked the year when she stopped growing older. To
that year she seemed chained, gazing into the sunrise end--waiting, ever
waiting.
Whether in her absent-minded reverie she had actually plucked the bit
of fern herself, or whether, after all, old Purdy had handed it to
her, was not a point that troubled her. It was in her locket about her
neck still, day and night. The seller of dreams was an established
imaginative reality in her life. Her heart assured her she would meet
him again one day. She waited. It was very curious, it was rather
pathetic. Men came and went, she saw her chances pass; her answer was
invariably "No."
The break came suddenly, and with devastating effect. As she was
dressing carefully for the party, full of excited anticipation like some
young girl still, she saw looking out upon her from the long mirror a
face of plain middle-age. A blackness rose about her. It seemed the
mirror shattered. The long, long dream, at any rate, fell in a thousand
broken pieces at her feet. It was perhaps the ball dress, perhaps the
flowers in her hair; it may have been the low-cut gown that betrayed the
neck and throat, or the one brilliant jewel that proved her eyes now
dimmed beside it--but most probably it was the tell-tale hands, whose
ageing no artifice ever can conceal. The middle-aged woman, at any rate,
rushed from the glass and claimed her.
It was a long time, too, before the signs of tears had been carefully
obliterated again, and the battle with herself--to go or not to go--was
decided by clear courage. She would not send a hurried excuse of
illness, but would take the place where she now belonged. She saw
herself, a fading figure, more than half-way now towards the sunset end,
within sight even of the shadowed emptiness that lay beyond the sun's
dipping edge. She had lingered over-long, expecting a dream to confirm a
dream; she had been oblivious of the truth that the lane went rushing
just the same. It was now too late. The speed increased. She had waited,
waited for nothing. The seller of dreams was a myth. No man could need
her as she now was.
Yet the chief ingredient in her decision was, oddly enough, itself a
sign of youth. A party, a ball, is ever an adventure. Fate, with her
destined eyes aglow, may be bidden too, waiting among the throng,
waiting for that very one who hesitates whether to go or not to go. Who
knows what the evening may bring forth? It was this anticipation,
faintly beckoning, its voice the merest echo of her shadowy youth, that
tipped the scales between an evening of sleepless regrets at home and
hours of neglected loneliness, watching the young fulfil the happy
night. This and her courage weighed the balance down against the
afflicting weariness of her sudden disillusion.
Therefore she went, her aunt, in whose house she was a visitor,
accompanying her. They arrived late, walking under the awning alone into
the great mansion. Music, flowers, lovely dresses, and bright happy
faces filled the air about them. The dancing feet, the flashing eyes,
the swing of the music, the throng of graceful figures expressed one
word--pleasure. Pleasure, of course, meant youth. Beneath the calm
summer stars youth realized itself prodigally, reckless of years to
follow. Under the same calm stars, some fifty miles away in Kent, her
stretch of deserted lane flowed peacefully, never pausing, passing
relentlessly out into unknown space beyond the edge of the world. A girl
and a middle-aged woman bravely watched both scenes.
"Dreadfully overcrowded," remarked her prosaic aunt. "When I was a young
thing there was more taste--always room to dance, at any rate."
"It is a rabble rather," replied the middle-aged woman, while the girl
added, "but I enjoy it." She had enjoyed one duty-dance with an elderly
man to whom her aunt had introduced her. She now sat watching the rabble
whirl and laugh. Her friend, behind unabashed lorgnettes, made
occasional comments.
"There's Mabel. Look at her frock, will you--the naked back. The way he
holds her, too!"
She looked at Mabel Messenger, exactly her own age, wife of the
successful engineer, yet bearing herself almost like a girl.
"_He's_ away in Mexico, as usual," went on her aunt, "with somebody
else, also as usual."
"I don't envy her," mentioned the middle-aged woman, while the girl
added, "but she did well for herself, anyhow."
"It's a mistake to wait too long," was a suggestion she did not comment
on.
The host's brother came up and carried off her aunt. She was left alone.
An old gentleman dropped into the vacated chair. Only in the centre of
the brilliantly lit room was there dancing now; people stood and talked
in animated throngs, every seat along the walls, every chair and sofa in
alcove corners occupied. The landing outside the great flung doors was
packed; some, going on elsewhere, were already leaving, but others
arriving late still poured up the staircase. Her loneliness remained
unnoticed; with many other women, similarly stationed behind the
whirling, moving dancers, she sat looking on, an artificial smile of
enjoyment upon her face, but the eyes empty and unlit.
Two pictures she watched simultaneously--the gay ballroom and the lane
that ran east and west.
Midnight was past and supper over, though she had not noticed it. Her
aunt had disappeared finally, it seemed. The two pictures filled her
mind, absorbed her. What she was feeling was not clear, for there was
confusion in her between the two scenes somewhere--as though the
brilliant ballroom lay set against the dark background of the lane
beneath the quiet stars. The contrast struck her. How calm and lovely
the night lane seemed against this feverish gaiety, this heat, this
artificial perfume, these exaggerated clothes. Like a small, rapid
cinema-picture the dazzling ballroom passed along the dark throat of
the deserted lane. A patch of light, alive with whirling animalculae,
it shone a moment against the velvet background of the midnight
country-side. It grew smaller and smaller. It vanished over the edge
of the departing end. It was gone.
Night and the stars enveloped her, and her eyes became accustomed to the
change, so that she saw the sandy strip of lane, the hazel bushes, the
dim outline of the cottage. Her naked soul, it seemed again, stood
facing an infinitude. Yet the scent of roses, of dew-soaked grass came
to her. A blackbird was whistling in the hedge. The eastern end showed
itself now more plainly. The tops of the trees defined themselves. There
came a glimmer in the sky, an early swallow flashed past against a
streak of pale sweet gold. Old Purdy, his tea-pail faintly rattling, a
stir of thick white dust about his feet, came slowly round the curve. It
was the sunrise.
A deep, passionate thrill ran through her body from head to feet. There
was a clap beside her--in the air it seemed--as though the wings of the
early swallow had flashed past her very ear, or the approaching sunrise
called aloud. She turned her head--along the brightening lane, but also
across the gay ballroom. Old Purdy, straightening up his bent shoulders,
was gazing over the wicket-gate into her eyes.
Something quivered. A shimmer ran fluttering before her sight. She
trembled. Over the crowd of intervening heads, as over the spiked top of
the little gate, a man was gazing at her.
Old Purdy, however, did not fade, nor did his outline wholly pass. There
was this confusion between two pictures. Yet this man who gazed at her
was in the London ballroom. He was so tall and straight. The same moment
her aunt's face appeared below his shoulder, only just visible, and he
turned his head, but did not turn his eyes, to listen to her. Both
looked her way; they moved, threading their way towards her. It meant an
introduction coming. He had asked for it.
She did not catch his name, so quickly, yet so easily and naturally the
little formalities were managed, and she was dancing. The same sweet,
dim confusion was about her. His touch, his voice, his eyes combined
extraordinarily in a sense of complete possession to which she yielded
utterly. The two pictures, moreover, still held their place. Behind the
glaring lights ran the pale sweet gold of a country dawn; woven like a
silver thread among the strings she heard the blackbirds whistling; in
the stale, heated air lay the subtle freshness of a summer sunrise.
Their dancing feet bore them along in a flowing motion that curved from
east to west.
They danced without speaking; one rhythm took them; like a single person
they glided over the smooth, perfect floor, and, more and more to her,
it was as if the floor flowed with them, bearing them along. Such
dancing she had never known. The strange sweetness of the confusion
that half-entranced her increased--almost as though she lay upon her
partner's arms and that he bore her through the air. Both the sense of
weight and the touch of her feet on solid ground were gone delightfully.
The London room grew hazy, too; the other figures faded; the ceiling,
half transparent, let through a filtering glimmer of the dawn. Her
thoughts--surely he shared them with her--went out floating beneath this
brightening sky. There was a sound of wakening birds, a smell of
flowers.
They had danced perhaps five minutes when both stopped abruptly as with
one accord.
"Shall we sit it out--if you've no objection?" he suggested in the very
instant that the same thought occurred to her. "The conservatory, among
the flowers," he added, leading her to the corner among scented blooms
and plants, exactly as she herself desired. There were leaves and ferns
about them in the warm air. The light was dim. A streak of gold in the
sky showed through the glass. But for one other couple they were alone.
"I have something to say to you," he began. "You must have thought it
curious--I've been staring at you so. The whole evening I've been
watching you."
"I--hadn't noticed," she said truthfully, her voice, as it were, not
quite her own. "I've not been dancing--only once, that is."
But her heart was dancing as she said it. For the first time she became
aware of her partner more distinctly--of his deep, resonant voice, his
soldierly tall figure, his deferential, almost protective manner. She
turned suddenly and looked into his face. The clear, rather penetrating
eyes reminded her of someone she had known.
At the same instant he used her thought, turning it in his own
direction. "I can't remember, for the life of me," he said quietly,
"where I have seen you before. Your face is familiar to me, oddly
familiar--years ago--in my first youth somewhere."
It was as though he broke something to her gently--something he was sure
of and knew positively, that yet might shock and startle her.
The blood rushed from her heart as she quickly turned her gaze away. The
wave of deep feeling that rose with a sensation of glowing warmth
troubled her voice. "I find in you, too, a faint resemblance to--someone
I have met," she murmured. Without meaning it she let slip the added
words, "when I was a girl."
She felt him start, but he saved the situation, making it ordinary again
by obtaining her permission to smoke, then slowly lighting his cigarette
before he spoke.
"You must forgive me," he put in with a smile, "but your name, when you
were kind enough to let me be introduced, escaped me. I did not catch
it."
She told him her surname, but he asked in his persuasive yet somehow
masterful way for the Christian name as well. He turned round instantly
as she gave it, staring hard at her with meaning, with an examining
intentness, with open curiosity. There was a question on his lips, but
she interrupted, delaying it by a question of her own. Without looking
at him she knew and feared his question. Her voice just concealed a
trembling that was in her throat.
"My aunt," she agreed lightly, "is incorrigible. Do you know I didn't
catch yours either? Oh--I meant your surname," she added, confusion
gaining upon her when he mentioned his first name only.
He became suddenly more earnest, his voice deepened, his whole manner
took on the guise of deliberate intention backed by some profound
emotion that he could no longer hide. The music, which had momentarily
ceased, began again, and a couple, who had been sitting out diagonally
across from them, rose and went out. They were now quite alone. The sky
was brighter.
"I must tell you," he went on in a way that compelled her to look up and
meet his intent gaze. "You really must allow me. I feel sure somehow
you'll understand. At any rate," he added like a boy, "you won't laugh."
She believes she gave the permission and assurance. Memory fails her a
little here, for as she returned his gaze, it seemed a curious change
came stealing over him, yet at first so imperceptibly, so vaguely, that
she could not say when it began, nor how it happened.
"Yes," she murmured, "please----" The change defined itself. She stopped
dead.
"I know now where I've seen you before. I remember." His voice vibrated
like a wind in big trees. It enveloped her.
"Yes," she repeated in a whisper, for the hammering of her heart made
both a louder tone or further words impossible. She knew not what he was
going to say, yet at the same time she knew with accuracy. Her eyes
gazed helplessly into his. The change absorbed her. Within his outline
she watched another outline grow. Behind the immaculate evening clothes
a ragged, unkempt figure rose. A worn, ravaged face with young burning
eyes peered through his own. "Please, please," she whispered again very
faintly. He took her hand in his.
His voice came from very far away, yet drawing nearer, and the scene
about them faded, vanished. The lane that curved east and west now
stretched behind him, and she sat gazing towards the sunrise end, as
years ago when the girl passed into the woman first.
"I knew--a friend of yours--Dick Messenger," he was saying in this
distant voice that yet was close beside her, "knew him at school, at
Cambridge, and later in Mexico. We worked in the same mines together,
only he was contractor and I was--in difficulties. That made no
difference. He--he told me about a girl--of his love and admiration, an
admiration that remained, but a love that had already faded."
She saw only the ragged outline within the well-groomed figure of the
man who spoke. The young eyes that gazed so piercingly into hers
belonged to him, the seller of her dream of years before. It was to this
ragged stranger in her lane she made her answer:
"I, too, now remember," she said softly. "Please go on."
"He gave me his confidence, asking me where his duty lay, and I told him
that the real love comes once only; it knows no doubt, no fading. I told
him this----"
"We both discovered it in time," she said to herself, so low it was
scarcely audible, yet not resisting as he laid his other hand upon the
one he already held.
"I also told him there was only one true dream," the voice continued,
the inner face drawing nearer to the outer that contained it. "I asked
him, and he told me--everything. I knew all about this girl. Her
picture, too, he showed me."
The voice broke off. The flood of love and pity, of sympathy and
understanding that rose in her like a power long suppressed, threatened
tears, yet happy, yearning tears like those of a girl, which only the
quick, strong pressure of his hands prevented.
"The--little painting--yes, I know it," she faltered.
"It saved me," he said simply. "It changed my life. From that moment I
began--living decently again--living for an ideal." Without knowing that
she did so, the pressure of her hand upon his own came instantly.
"He--he gave it to me," the voice went on, "to keep. He said he could
neither keep it himself nor destroy it. It was the day before he sailed.
I remember it as yesterday. I said I must give him something in return,
or it would cut friendship. But I had nothing in the world to give. We
were in the hills. I picked a leaf of fern instead. 'Fern-seed,' I told
him, 'it will make you see the fairies and find your true dream.' I
remember his laugh to this day--a sad, uneasy laugh. 'I shall give it to
her,' he told me, 'when I give her my difficult explanation.' But I
said, 'Give it with my love, and tell her that I wait.' He looked at me
with surprise, incredulous. Then he said slowly, 'Why not? If--if only
you hadn't let yourself go to pieces like this!'"
An immensity of clear emotion she could not understand passed over her
in a wave. Involuntarily she moved closer against him. With her eyes
unflinchingly upon his own, she whispered: "You were hungry, thirsty,
you had no clothes.... You waited!"
"You're reading my thoughts, as I knew one day you would." It seemed as
if their minds, their bodies too, were one, as he said the words. "You,
too--you waited." His voice was low.
There came a glow between them as of hidden fire; their faces shone;
there was a brightening as of dawn upon their skins, within their eyes,
lighting their very hair. Out of this happy sky his voice floated to her
with the blackbird's song:
"And that night I dreamed of you. I dreamed I met you in an English
country lane."
"We did," she murmured, as though it were quite natural.
"I dreamed I gave you the fern leaf--across a wicket-gate--and in front
of a little house that was our home. In my dream--I handed to you--a
dream----"
"You did." And as she whispered it the two figures merged into one
before her very eyes. "See," she added softly, "I have it still. It is
in my locket at this moment, for I have worn it day and night through
all these years of waiting." She began fumbling at her chain.
He smiled. "Such things," he said gently, "are beyond me rather. I have
found you. That's all that matters. That"--he smiled again--"is real at
any rate."
"A vision," she murmured, half to herself and half to him, "I can
understand. A dream, though wonderful, is a dream. But the little fern
you gave me," drawing the fine gold chain from her bosom, "the actual
leaf I have worn all these years in my locket!"
He smiled as she held the locket out to him, her fingers feeling for the
little spring. He shook his head, but so slightly she did not notice
it.
"I will prove it to you," she said. "I must. Look!" she cried, as with
trembling hand she pressed the hidden catch. "There! There!"
With heads close together they bent over. The tiny lid flew open. And as
he took her for one quick instant in his arms the sun flashed his first
golden shaft upon them, covering them with light. But her exclamation of
incredulous surprise he smothered with a kiss. For inside the little
locket there lay--nothing. It was quite empty.
XV
"VENGEANCE IS MINE"
1
An active, vigorous man in Holy orders, yet compelled by heart trouble
to resign a living in Kent before full middle age, he had found suitable
work with the Red Cross in France; and it rather pleased a strain of
innocent vanity in him that Rouen, whence he derived his Norman blood,
should be the scene of his activities.