Alpine valley was the place. It didn't seem to me in the least suitable
for such occurrences, except that it was Catholic, and the "Church," I
understand--at least, scholars who ought to know have told me so--has
subtle Pagan origins incorporated unwittingly in its observations of
certain Saints' Days, as well as in certain ceremonials. All this
kind of thing is Dutch to me, a form of poetry or superstition, for
I am interested chiefly in the buying and selling of exchange, with
an office in New York City, just off Wall Street, and only come to
Europe now occasionally for a holiday. I like to see the dear old musty
cities, and go to the Opera, and take a motor run through Shakespeare's
country or round the Lakes, get in touch again with London and Paris
at the Ritz Hotels--and then back again to the greatest city on earth,
where for years now I've been making a good thing out of it. Repton
and Cambridge, long since forgotten, had their uses. They were all
right enough at the time. But I'm now "on the make," with a good fat
partnership, and have left all that truck behind me.
My half-brother, however--he was my senior and got the cream of the
family wholesale chemical works--has stuck to the trade in the Old
Country, and is making probably as much as I am. He approved my taking
the chance that offered, and is only sore now because his son, Arthur,
is on the stupid side. He agreed that finance suited my temperament far
better than drugs and chemicals, though he warned me that all American
finance was speculative and therefore dangerous. "Arthur is getting
on," he said in his last letter, "and will some day take the director's
place you would be in now had you cared to stay. But he's a plodder,
rather." That meant, I knew, that Arthur was a fool. Business, at any
rate, was not suited to his temperament. Five years ago, when I came
home with a month's holiday to be used in working up connections in
English banking circles, I saw the boy. He was fifteen years of age at
the time, a delicate youth, with an artist's dreams in his big blue
eyes, if my memory goes for anything, but with a tangle of yellow hair
and features of classical beauty that would have made half the young
girls of my New York set in love with him, and a choice of heiresses at
his disposal when he wanted them.
I have a clear recollection of my nephew then. He struck me as
having grit and character, but as being wrongly placed. He had his
grandfather's tastes. He ought to have been, like him, a great scholar,
a poet, an editor of marvellous old writings in new editions. I
couldn't get much out of the boy, except that he "liked the chemical
business fairly," and meant to please his father by "knowing it
thoroughly" so as to qualify later for his directorship. But I have
never forgotten the evening when I caught him in the hall, staring up
at his grandfather's picture, with a kind of light about his face, and
the big blue eyes all rapt and tender (almost as if he had been crying)
and replying, when I asked him what was up: "_That_ was worth living
for. He brought Beauty back into the world!"
"Yes," I said, "I guess that's right enough. He did. But there was no
money in it to speak of."
The boy looked at me and smiled. He twigged somehow or other that deep
down in me, somewhere below the money-making instinct, a poet, but a
dumb poet, lay in hiding. "You know what I mean," he said. "It's in you
too."
The picture was a copy--my father had it made--of the presentation
portrait given to Baliol, and "the grandfather" was celebrated in his
day for the translations he made of Anacreon and Sappho, of Homer, too,
if I remember rightly, as well as for a number of classical studies
and essays that he wrote. A lot of stuff like that he did, and made a
name at it too. His _Lives of the Gods_ went into six editions. They
said--the big critics of his day--that he was "a poet who wrote no
poetry, yet lived it passionately in the spirit of old-world, classical
Beauty," and I know he was a wonderful fellow in his way and made the
dons and schoolmasters all sit up. We're proud of him all right. After
twenty-five years of successful "exchange" in New York City, I confess
I am unable to appreciate all that, feeling more in touch with the
commercial and financial spirit of the age, progress, development and
the rest. But, still, I'm not ashamed of the classical old boy, who
seems to have been a good deal of a Pagan, judging by the records we
have kept. However, Arthur peering up at that picture in the dusk, his
eyes half moist with emotion, and his voice gone positively shaky, is a
thing I never have forgotten. He stimulated my curiosity uncommonly. It
stirred something deep down in me that I hardly cared to acknowledge on
Wall Street--something burning.
And the next time I saw him was in the summer of 1910, when I came
to Europe for a two months' look around--my wife at Newport with the
children--and hearing that he was in Switzerland, learning a bit of
French to help him in the business, I made a point of dropping in upon
him just to see how he was shaping generally and what new kinks his
mind had taken on. There was something in Arthur I never could quite
forget. Whenever his face came into my mind I began to think. A kind of
longing came over me--a desire for Beauty, I guess, it was. It made me
dream.
I found him at an English tutor's--a lively old dog, with a fondness
for the cheap native wines, and a financial interest in the tourist
development of the village. The boys learnt French in the mornings,
possibly, but for the rest of the day were free to amuse themselves
exactly as they pleased and without a trace of supervision--provided
the parents footed the bills without demur.
This suited everybody all round; and as long as the boys came home with
an accent and a vocabulary, all was well. For myself, having learned
in New York to attend strictly to my own business--exchange between
different countries with a profit--I did not deem it necessary to
exchange letters and opinions with my brother--with no chance of profit
anywhere. But I got to know Arthur, and had a queer experience of my
own into the bargain. Oh, there was profit in it for me. I'm drawing
big dividends to this day on the investment.
I put up at the best hotel in the village, a one-horse show, differing
from the other inns only in the prices charged for a lot of cheap
decoration in the dining-room, and went up to surprise my nephew with
a call the first thing after dinner. The tutor's house stood some way
back from the narrow street, among fields where there were more flowers
than grass, and backed by a forest of fine old timber that stretched
up several thousand feet to the snow. The snow at least was visible,
peeping out far overhead just where the dark line of forest stopped;
but in reality, I suppose, that was an effect of foreshortening,
and whole valleys and pastures intervened between the trees and the
snow-fields. The sunset, long since out of the valley, still shone
on those white ridges, where the peaks stuck up like the teeth of a
gigantic saw. I guess it meant five or six hours' good climbing to get
up to them--and nothing to do when you got there. Switzerland, anyway,
seemed a poor country, with its little bit of watch-making, sour wines,
and every square yard hanging upstairs at an angle of 60 degrees used
for hay. Picture postcards, chocolate and cheap tourists kept it going
apparently, but I dare say it was all right enough to learn French
in--and cheap as Hoboken to live in!
Arthur was out; I just left a card and wrote on it that I would be very
pleased if he cared to step down to take luncheon with me at my hotel
next day. Having nothing better to do, I strolled homewards by way of
the forest.
Now what came over me in that bit of dark pine forest is more than I
can quite explain, but I think it must have been due to the height--the
village was 4,000 feet above sea-level--and the effect of the rarefied
air upon my circulation. The nearest thing to it in my experience is
rye whisky, the queer touch of wildness, of self-confidence, a kind
of whooping rapture and the reckless sensation of being a tin god of
sorts that comes from a lot of alcohol--a memory, please understand,
of years before, when I thought it a grand thing to own the earth and
paint the old town red. I seemed to walk on air, and there was a smell
about those trees that made me suddenly--well, that took my mind clean
out of its accustomed rut. It was just too lovely and wonderful for me
to describe it. I had got well into the forest and lost my way a bit.
The smell of an old-world garden wasn't in it. It smelt to me as if
some one had just that minute turned out the earth all fresh and new.
There was moss and tannin, a hint of burning, something between smoke
and incense, say, and a fine clean odour of pitch-pine bark when the
sun gets on it after rain--and a flavour of the sea thrown in for luck.
That was the first I noticed, for I had never smelt anything half so
good since my camping days on the coast of Maine. And I stood still to
enjoy it. I threw away my cigar for fear of mixing things and spoiling
it. "If that could be bottled," I said to myself, "it'd sell for two
dollars a pint in every city in the Union!"
And it was just then, while standing and breathing it in, that I got
the queer feeling of some one watching me. I kept quite still. Some one
was moving near me. The sweat went trickling down my back. A kind of
childhood thrill got hold of me.
It was very dark. I was not afraid exactly, but I was a stranger in
these parts and knew nothing about the habits of the mountain peasants.
There might be tough customers lurking around after dark on the chance
of striking some guy of a tourist with money in his pockets. Yet,
somehow, that wasn't the kind of feeling that came to me at all, for,
though I had a pocket Browning at my hip, the notion of getting at it
did not even occur to me. The sensation was new--a kind of lifting,
exciting sensation that made my heart swell out with exhilaration.
There was happiness in it. A cloud that _weighed_ seemed to roll off my
mind, same as that light-hearted mood when the office door is locked
and I'm off on a two months' holiday--with gaiety and irresponsibility
at the back of it. It was invigorating. I felt youth sweep over me.
I stood there, wondering what on earth was coming on me, and half
expecting that any moment some one would come out of the darkness and
show himself; and as I held my breath and made no movement at all the
queer sensation grew stronger. I believe I even resisted a temptation
to kick up my heels and dance, to let out a flying shout as a man
with liquor in him does. Instead of this, however, I just kept dead
still. The wood was black as ink all round me, too black to see the
tree-trunks separately, except far below where the village lights came
up twinkling between them, and the only way I kept the path was by the
soft feel of the pine-needles that were thicker than a Brussels carpet.
But nothing happened, and no one stirred. The idea that I was being
watched remained, only there was no sound anywhere except the roar of
falling water that filled the entire valley. Yet some one was very
close to me in the darkness.
I can't say how long I might have stood there, but I guess it was the
best part of ten minutes, and I remember it struck me that I had run
up against a pocket of extra-rarefied air that had a lot of oxygen in
it--oxygen or something similar--and that was the cause of my elation.
The idea was nonsense, I have no doubt; but for the moment it half
explained the thing to me. I realised it was all _natural_ enough, at
any rate--and so moved on. It took a longish time to reach the edge
of the wood, and a footpath led me--oh, it was quite a walk, I tell
you--into the village street again. I was both glad and sorry to get
there. I kept myself busy thinking the whole thing over again. What
caught me all of a heap was that million-dollar sense of beauty, youth,
and happiness. Never in my born days had I felt anything to touch it.
And it hadn't cost a cent!
Well, I was sitting there enjoying my smoke and trying to puzzle it
all out, and the hall was pretty full of people smoking and talking
and reading papers, and so forth, when all of a sudden I looked up and
caught my breath with such a jerk that I actually bit my tongue. There
was grandfather in front of my chair! I looked into his eyes. I saw him
as clear and solid as the porter standing behind his desk across the
lounge, and it gave me a touch of cold all down the back that I needn't
forget unless I want to. He was looking into my face, and he had a cap
in his hand, and he was speaking to me. It was my grandfather's picture
come to life, only much thinner and younger and a kind of light in his
eyes like fire.
"I beg your pardon, but you _are_--Uncle Jim, aren't you?"
And then, with another jump of my nerves, I understood.
"You, Arthur! Well, I'm jiggered. So it is. Take a chair, boy. I'm
right glad you found me. Shake! Sit down." And I shook his hand and
pushed a chair up for him. I was never so surprised in my life. The
last time I set eyes on him he was a boy. Now he was a young man, and
the very image of his ancestor.
He sat down, fingering his cap. He wouldn't have a drink and he
wouldn't smoke. "All right," I said, "let's talk then. I've lots to
tell you and I've lots to hear. How are you, boy?"
He didn't answer at first. He eyed me up and down. He hesitated. He was
as handsome as a young Greek god.
"I say, Uncle Jim," he began presently, "it _was_ you--just now--in the
wood--wasn't it?" It made me start, that question put so quietly.
"I _have_ just come through that wood up there," I answered, pointing
in the direction as well as I could remember, "if that's what you mean.
But why? _You_ weren't there, were you?" It gave me a queer sort of
feeling to hear him say it. What in the name of heaven did he mean?
He sat back in his chair with a sigh of relief.
"Oh, that's all right then," he said, "if it _was_ you. Did you see,"
he asked suddenly; "did you see--anything?"
"Not a thing," I told him honestly. "It was far too dark." I laughed.
I fancied I twigged his meaning. But I was not the sort of uncle to
come prying on him. Life must be dull enough, I remembered, in this
mountain village.
But he didn't understand my laugh. He didn't mean what I meant.
And there came a pause between us. I discovered that we were talking
different lingoes. I leaned over towards him.
"Look here, Arthur," I said in a lower voice, "what is it, and what do
you mean? I'm all right, you know, and you needn't be afraid of telling
me. What d'you mean by--did I see anything?"
We looked each other squarely in the eye. He saw he could trust me, and
I saw--well, a whole lot of things, perhaps, but I felt chiefly that he
liked me and would tell me things later, all in his own good time. I
liked him all the better for that too.
"I only meant," he answered slowly, "whether you really
_saw_--anything?"
"No," I said straight, "I didn't see a thing, but, by the gods, I
_felt_ something."
He started. I started too. An astonishing big look came swimming over
his fair, handsome face. His eyes seemed all lit up. He looked as if
he'd just made a cool million in wheat or cotton.
"I knew--you were that sort," he whispered. "Though I hardly remembered
what you looked like."
"Then what on earth was it?" I asked.
His reply staggered me a bit. "It was just that," he said--"the Earth!"
And then, just when things were getting interesting and promising a
dividend, he shut up like a clam. He wouldn't say another word. He
asked after my family and business, my health, what kind of crossing
I'd had, and all the rest of the common stock. It fairly bowled me
over. And I couldn't change him either.
I suppose in America we get pretty free and easy, and don't quite
understand reserve. But this young man of half my age kept me in my
place as easily as I might have kept a nervous customer quiet in my
own office. He just refused to take me on. He was polite and cool and
distant as you please, and when I got pressing sometimes he simply
pretended he didn't understand. I could no more get him back again to
the subject of the wood than a customer could have gotten me to tell
him about the prospects of exchange being cheap or dear--when I didn't
know myself but wouldn't let him see I didn't know. He was charming, he
was delightful, enthusiastic and even affectionate; downright glad to
see me, too, and to chin with me--but I couldn't draw him worth a cent.
And in the end I gave up trying.
And the moment I gave up trying he let down a little--but only a very
little.
"You'll stay here some time, Uncle Jim, won't you?"
"That's my idea," I said, "if I can see you, and you can show me round
some."
He laughed with pleasure. "Oh, rather. I've got lots of time. After
three in the afternoon I'm free till--any time you like. There's a lot
to see," he added.
"Come along to-morrow then," I said. "If you can't take lunch, perhaps
you can come just afterwards. You'll find me waiting for you--right
here."
"I'll come at three," he replied, and we said good-night.
2
He turned up sharp at three, and I liked his punctuality. I saw him
come swinging down the dusty road; tall, deep-chested, his broad
shoulders a trifle high, and his head set proudly. He looked like a
young chap in training, a thoroughbred, every inch of him. At the same
time there was a touch of something a little too refined and delicate
for a man, I thought. That was the poetic, scholarly vein in him, I
guess--grandfather cropping out. This time he wore no cap. His thick
light hair, not brushed back like the London shop-boys, but parted on
the side, yet untidy for all that, suited him exactly and gave him a
touch of wildness.
"Well," he asked, "what would you like to do, Uncle Jim? I'm at your
service, and I've got the whole afternoon till supper at seven-thirty."
I told him I'd like to go through that wood. "All right," he said,
"come along. I'll show you." He gave me one quick glance, but said no
more. "I'd like to see if I feel anything this time," I explained.
"We'll locate the very spot, maybe." He nodded.
"You know where I mean, don't you?" I asked, "because you saw me
there?" He just said yes, and then we started.
It was hot, and air was scarce. I remember that we went uphill,
and that I realised there was considerable difference in our ages.
We crossed some fields first--smothered in flowers so thick that I
wondered how much grass the cows got out of it!--and then came to a
sprinkling of fine young larches that looked as soft as velvet. There
was no path, just a wild mountain side. I had very little breath on
the steep zigzags, but Arthur talked easily--and talked mighty well,
too: the light and shade, the colouring, and the effect of all this
wilderness of lonely beauty on the mind. He kept all this suppressed
at home in business. It was safety valves. I twigged _that_. It was
the artist in him talking. He seemed to think there was nothing in the
world but Beauty--with a big B all the time. And the odd thing was he
took for granted that I felt the same. It was cute of him to flatter
me that way. "Daulis and the lone Cephissian vale," I heard; and a few
moments later--with a sort of reverence in his voice like worship--he
called out a great singing name: "_Astarte!_"
"Day is her face, and midnight is her hair,
And morning hours are but the golden stair
By which she climbs to Night."
It was here first that a queer change began to grow upon me too.
"Steady on, boy! I've forgotten all my classics ages ago," I cried.
He turned and gazed down on me, his big eyes glowing, and not a sign of
perspiration on his skin.
"That's nothing," he exclaimed in his musical, deep voice. "You know
it, or you'd never have felt things in this wood last night; and you
wouldn't have wanted to come out with me _now_!"
"How?" I gasped. "How's that?"
"You've come," he continued quietly, "to the only valley in
this artificial country that has atmosphere. This valley is
_alive_--especially this end of it. There's superstition here, thank
God! Even the peasants know things."
I stared at him. "See here, Arthur," I objected. "I'm not a Cath. And I
don't know a thing--at least it's all dead in me and forgotten--about
poetry or classics or your gods and pan--pantheism--in spite of
grandfather----"
His face turned like a dream face.
"Hush!" he said quickly. "Don't mention _him_. There's a bit of him in
you as well as in me, and it was here, you know, he wrote----"
I didn't hear the rest of what he said. A creep came over me. I
remembered that this ancestor of ours lived for years in the isolation
of some Swiss forest where he claimed--he used that setting for his
writing--he had found the exiled gods, their ghosts, their beauty,
their eternal essences--or something astonishing of that sort. I had
clean forgotten it till this moment. It all rushed back upon me, a
memory of my boyhood.
And, as I say, a creep came over me--something as near to awe as
ever could be. The sunshine on that field of yellow daisies and blue
forget-me-nots turned pale. That warm valley wind had a touch of snow
in it. And, ashamed and frightened of my baby mood, I looked at Arthur,
meaning to choke him off with all this rubbish--and then saw something
in his eyes that scared me stiff.
I admit it. What's the use? There was an expression on his fine big
face that made my blood go curdled. I got cold feet right there. It
mastered me. In him, behind him, near him--blest if I know which,
_through_ him probably--came an enormous thing that turned me
insignificant. It downed me utterly.
It was over in a second, the flash of a wing. I recovered instantly. No
mere boy should come these muzzy tricks on me, scholar or no scholar.
For the change in me was on the increase, and I shrank.
"See here, Arthur," I said plainly once again, "I don't know what your
game is, but--there's something queer up here I don't quite get at. I'm
only a business man, with classics and poetry all gone dry in me twenty
years ago and more----"
He looked at me so strangely that I stopped, confused.
"But, Uncle Jim," he said as quietly as though we talked tobacco
brands, "you needn't be alarmed. It's natural you should feel the
place. You and I belong to it. We've both got _him_ in us. You're just
as proud of him as I am, only in a different way." And then he added,
with a touch of disappointment: "I thought you'd like it. You weren't
afraid last night. You felt the beauty _then_."
Flattery is a darned subtle thing at any time. To see him standing
over me in that superior way and talking down at my poor business
mind--well, it just came over me that I was laying my cards on the
table a bit too early. After so many years of city life----!
Anyway, I pulled myself together. "I was only kidding you, boy," I
laughed. "I feel this beauty just as much as you do. Only, I guess,
you're more accustomed to it than I am. Come on now," I added with
energy, getting upon my feet, "let's push on and see the wood. I want
to find that place again."
He pulled me with a hand of iron, laughing as he did so. Gee! I wished
I had his teeth, as well as the muscles in his arm. Yet I felt younger,
somehow, too--youth flowed more and more into my veins. I had forgotten
how sweet the winds and woods and flowers could be. Something melted in
me. For it was Spring, and the whole world was singing like a dream.
Beauty was creeping over me. I don't know. I began to feel all big and
tender and open to a thousand wonderful sensations. The thought of
streets and houses seemed like death....
We went on again, not talking much; my breath got shorter and shorter,
and he kept looking about him as though he expected something. But we
passed no living soul, not even a peasant; there were no chalets, no
cattle, no cattle shelters even. And then I realised that the valley
lay at our feet in haze and that we had been climbing at least a
couple of hours. "Why, last night I got home in twenty minutes at the
outside," I said. He shook his head, smiling. "It seemed like that," he
replied, "but you really took much longer. It was long after ten when I
found you in the hall." I reflected a moment. "Now I come to think of
it, you're right, Arthur. Seems curious, though, somehow." He looked
closely at me. "I followed you all the way," he said.
"You followed me!"
"And you went at a good pace too. It was your feelings that made it
seem so short--you were singing to yourself and happy as a dancing
faun. We kept close behind you for a long way."
I think it was "we" he said, but for some reason or other I didn't care
to ask.