IV

THAT, as you know, took place a dozen years ago and more, when I was

thirty-two, and time, in the interval, has wrought unexpected ends

out of the material of my life. My trade as a soldier has led me to

an administrative post in a distant land where, apparently, I have

deserved well of my King and Country, as they say in the obituaries.

At any rate, the cryptic letters following my name, bear witness to

some kind of notoriety attained.

You were the first to welcome my success, and your congratulations

were the first I looked for, as surely as they were more satisfying

than those our mother sent. You knew me better, it seems, than she

did. For you expressed the surprise that I, too, felt, whereas mother

assured me she had "always known you would do well, my boy, and you

have only got your deserts in this tardy recognition." To her, of

course, even at forty-five, I was still her "little boy." You,

however, guessed shrewdly that Luck had played strong cards in

bringing me this distinction, and I will admit at once that it was,

indeed, due to little born in me, but, rather, to some adventitious

aid that, curiously, seemed never lacking at the opportune moment.

And this adventitious aid was new.

This is the unvarnished truth. A mysterious power dealt the cards for

me with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events placing

in my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clear

opportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could have

disregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as though

with superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I could

never have reached by my own skill and judgment.

So, at least, you and I, knowing my limited abilities, consent to

attribute my success to luck, to chance, to fate, or to any other

name for the destiny that has placed me on a height my talent never

could have reached alone. You, and I, too, for that matter, are as

happy over the result as our mother is; only you and I are surprised,

because we judge it, with some humour, out of greater knowledge.

More--you, like myself, are a little puzzled, I think. We ask

together, if truth were told: Whose was the unerring, guiding hand?

Amid this uncertainty I give you now another curious item, about which

you have, of course, been uninformed. For none could have detected it

but myself: namely, that apart from these opportunities chance set

upon my path, an impulse outside myself--and an impulse that was

new--drove me to make use of them. Sometimes even against my personal

inclination, a power urged me into decided, and it so happened,

always into faultless action. Amazed at myself, I yet invariably

obeyed.

How to describe so elusive a situation I hardly know, unless by

telling you the simple truth: I felt that somebody would be pleased.

And, with the years, I learned to recognize this instinct that never

failed when a choice, and therefore an element of doubt, presented

itself. Invariably I was pushed towards the right direction. More

singular still, there rose in me unbidden at these various junctures,

a kind of inner attention which bade me wait and listen for the

guiding touch. I am not fanciful, I heard no voice, I was aware of

nothing personal by way of guidance or assistance; and yet the

guidance, the assistance, never failed, though often I was not

conscious that they had been present until long afterwards. I felt,

as I said above, that somebody would be pleased.

For it was a consistent, an intelligent guidance; operating, as it

were, out of some completer survey of the facts at a given moment

than my own abilities could possibly have compassed; my mediocre

faculties seemed gathered together and perfected--with the result, in

time, that my "intuition," as others called it, came to be regarded

with a respect that in some cases amounted to half reverence. The

adjective "uncanny" was applied to me. The natives, certainly, were

aware of awe.

I made no private use of this unearned distinction; there is nothing

in me of the charlatan that claimed mysterious power; but my

subordinates, ever in growing numbers as my promotions followed, held

me in greater respect, apparently, on that very account. The natives,

especially, as I mentioned, attributed semi-deific properties to my

poor personality. Certainly my prestige increased out of all

proportion to anything my talents deserved with any show of justice.

I have said that, so far as I was concerned, there lay nothing

personal in this growth of divining intuition. I must now qualify

that a little. Nothing persuaded me that this guidance, so

infallible, so constant, owed its origin to what men call a being; I

certainly found no name for it; exactness, I think, might place its

truest description in some such term as energy, inner force or

inspiration; yet I must admit that, with its steady repetition, there

awoke in me an attitude towards it that eluded somewhere also an

emotion. And in this emotion, in its quality and character, hid

remotely a personal suggestion: each time it offered itself, that is,

I was aware of a sharp quiver of sensitive life within me, and of

that sensation, extraordinarily sweet and wonderful, which

constitutes a genuine thrill.

I came to look for this "thrill," to lie in wait with anticipatory

wonder for its advent; and in a sense this pause in me, that was both

of expectancy and hope, grew slowly into what I may almost call a

habit. There was an emptiness in my heart before it came, a sense of

peace and comfort when it was accomplished. The emptiness and then

the satisfaction, as first and last conditions, never failed, and

that they took place in my heart rather than in my mind I can affirm

with equal certainty.

The habit, thus, confirmed itself. I admitted the power. Let me be

frank--I sought it, even longing for it when there was no decision

to be made, no guidance therefore needed: I longed for it because of

the great sweetness that it left within my heart. It was when I

needed it, however, that its effect was most enduring. The method

became quite easy to me. When a moment of choice between two courses

of action presented itself, I first emptied my heart of all personal

inclination, then, pausing upon direction, I knew--or rather

felt--which course to take. My heart was filled and satisfied with an

intention that never wavered. Some energy that made the choice for me

had been poured in. I decided upon this or that line of action. The

Thrill, always of an instantaneous nature, came and went--and

somebody was pleased.

Moreover--and this will interest you more particularly--the emotion

produced in me was, so far as positive recognition went, a new

emotion; it was, at any rate, one that had lain so feebly in me

hitherto that its announcement brought the savour of an emotion

before unrealized. I had known it but once, and that long

years before, but the man's mind in me increased and added to it. For

it seemed a development of that new perception which first dawned

upon me during my brief period of married life, and had since lain

hidden in me, potential possibly, but inactive beyond all question,

if not wholly dead. I will now name it for you, and for myself, as

best I may. It was the Thrill of Beauty.

I became, in these moments, aware of Beauty, and to a degree, while it

lasted, approaching revelation. Chords, first faintly struck long

years before when my sense of Marion's forgiveness and generosity

stirred worship in me, but chords that since then had lain,

apparently, unresponsive, were swept into resonance again. Possibly

they had been vibrating all these intervening years, unknown to me,

unrecognized. I cannot say. I only know that here was the origin of

the strange energy that now moved me to the depths. Some new worship

of Beauty that had love in it, of which, indeed, love was the

determining quality, awoke in the profoundest part of me, and even

when the "thrill" had gone its way, left me hungry and yearning for

its repetition. Here, then, is the "personal" qualification that I

mentioned. The yearning and the hunger were related to my deepest

needs. I had been empty, but I would be filled. For a passionate

love, holding hands with a faith and confidence as passionate as

itself, poured flooding into me and made this new sense of beauty seem

a paramount necessity of my life.

Will you be patient now, if I give you a crude instance of what I

mean? It is one among many others, but I choose it because its very

crudeness makes my meaning clear.

In this fevered and stricken African coast, you may know, there is

luxuriance in every natural detail, an exuberance that is lavish to

excess. Yet beauty lies somewhat coyly hid--as though suffocated by

over-abundance of crowding wonder. I detect, indeed, almost a touch

of the monstrous in it all, a super-expression, as it were, that

bewilders, and occasionally even may alarm. Delicacy, subtlety,

suggestion in any form, have no part in it. During the five years of

my exile amid this tropical extravagance I can recall no single

instance of beauty "hinting" anywhere. Nature seems, rather,

audaciously abandoned; she is without restraint. She shows her all,

tells everything--she shouts, she never whispers. You will understand

me when I tell you that this wholesale lack of reticence and modesty

involves all absence in the beholder of--surprise. A sudden

ravishment of the senses is impossible. One never can experience that

sweet and troubling agitation to which a breathless amazement

properly belongs. You may be stunned; you are hardly ever "thrilled."

Now, this new sensitiveness to Beauty I have mentioned has opened me

to that receptiveness which is aware of subtlety and owns to sharp

surprise. The thrill is of its very essence. It is unexpected. Out of

the welter of prolific detail Nature here glories in, a delicate hint

of wonder and surprise comes stealing. The change, of course, is in

myself, not otherwise. And on the particular "crude" occasion I will

briefly mention, it reached me from the most obvious and banal of

conditions--the night sky and the moon.

Here, then, is how it happened: There had arisen a situation of grave

difficulty among the natives of my Province, and the need for taking

a strong, authoritative line was paramount. The reports of my

subordinates from various parts of the country pointed to very

vigorous action of a repressing, even of a punitive, description. It

was not, in itself, a complicated situation, and no Governor, who was

soldier too, need have hesitated for an instant. The various

Stations, indeed, anticipating the usual course of action indicated

by precedent, had automatically gone to their posts, prepared for the

"official instructions" it was known that I should send, wondering

impatiently (as I learned afterwards) at the slight delay. For delay

there was, though of a few hours only; and this delay was caused by

my uncomfortable new habit--pausing for the guidance and the

"thrill." Intuition, waiting upon the thrill of Beauty that guided it,

at first lay inactive.

My behaviour seemed scarcely of the orthodox, official kind, soldierly

least of all. There was uneasiness, there was cursing, probably;

there were certainly remarks not complimentary. Prompt, decisive

action was the obvious and only course... while I sat quietly in the

Headquarters Bungalow, a sensitive youth again, a dreamer, a poet,

hungry for the inspiration of Beauty that the gorgeous tropical night

concealed with her excess of smothering abundance.

This incongruity between my procedure and the time-honoured methods of

"strong" Governors must have seemed exasperating to those who waited,

respectful, but with nerves on edge, in the canvassed and tented

regions behind the Headquarters clearing. Indeed, the Foreign Office,

could it have witnessed my unpardonable hesitation, might well have

dismissed me on the spot, I think. For I sat there, dreaming in my

deck-chair on the verandah, smoking a cigarette, safe within my net

from the countless poisonous mosquitoes, and listening to the wind in

the palms that fringed the heavy jungle round the building.

Smoking quietly, dreaming, listening, waiting, I sat there in this

mood of inner attention and expectancy, knowing that the guidance I

anticipated must surely come.

A few clouds sprawled in their beds of silver across the sky; the

heat, the perfume, were, as always, painfully, excessive; the

moonlight bathed the huge trees and giant leaves with that habitual

extravagance which made it seem ordinary, almost cheap and

wonderless. Very silent the wooden house lay all about me, there were

no footsteps, there was no human voice. I heard only the wash of the

heavy-scented wind through the colossal foliage that hardly stirred,

and watched, as a hundred times before, the immense heated sky,

drenched in its brilliant and intolerable moonlight. All seemed a

riot of excess, an orgy.

Then, suddenly, the shameless night drew on some exquisite veil, as

the moon, between three-quarters and the full, slid out of sight

behind a streaky cloud. A breath, it seemed, of lighter wind woke all

the perfume of the burdened forest leaves. The shouting splendour

hushed; there came a whisper and, at last--a hint.

I watched with relief and gratitude the momentary eclipse, for in the

half-light I was aware of that sharp and tender mood which was

preparatory to the thrill. Slowly sailing into view again from behind

that gracious veil of cloud--

"The moon put forth a little diamond peak, No bigger than an

unobserved star, Or tiny point of fairy scimitar; Bright signal that

she only stooped to tie Her silver sandals, ere deliciously She bowed

into the heavens her timid head."

And then it came. The Thrill stole forth and touched me, passing like

a meteor through my heart, but in that lightning passage, cleaving it

open to some wisdom that seemed most near to love. For power flowed

in along the path that Beauty cleft for it, and with the beauty came

that intuitive guidance I had waited for.

The inspiration operated like a flash. There was no reasoning; I was

aware immediately that another and a better way of dealing with the

situation was given me.

I need not weary you with details. It seemed contrary to precedent,

advice, against experience too, yet it was the right, the only way.

It threatened, I admit, to destroy the prestige so long and

laboriously established, since it seemed a dangerous yielding to the

natives that must menace the white life everywhere and render trade in

the Colony unsafe. Yet I did not hesitate.... There was bustle at

once within that Bungalow; the orders went forth; I saw the way and

chose it--to the dismay, outspoken, of every white man whose welfare

lay in my official hands.

And the results, I may tell you now without pride, since, as we both

admit, no credit attaches to myself--the results astonished the

entire Colony.... The Chiefs came to me, in due course, bringing

fruit and flowers and presents enough to bury all Headquarters, and

with a reverential obedience that proved the rising scotched to

death--because its subtle psychological causes had been marvellously

understood.

Full comprehension, as I mentioned earlier in this narrative, we

cannot expect to have. Its origin, I may believe, lies hid in the

nature of that Beauty which is truth and love--in the source of our

very life, perhaps, which lies hid again with beauty very far

away.... But I may say this much at least: that it seemed, my inspired

action had co-operated with the instinctive beliefs of these

mysterious tribes--cooperated with their primitive and ancient sense

of Beauty. It had, inexplicably to myself, fulfilled their sense of

right, which my subordinates would have outraged. I had acted with,

instead of against, them.

More I cannot tell you. You have the "crude instance," and you have

the method. The instances multiplied, the method became habit. There

grew in me this personal attitude towards an impersonal power I

hardly understood, and this attitude included an emotion--love. With

faith and love I consequently obeyed it. I loved the source of my

guidance and assistance, though I dared attach no name to it. Simple

enough the matter might have been, could I have referred its origin

to some name--to our mother or to you, to my Chief in London, to an

impersonal Foreign Office that has since honoured me with money and a

complicated address upon my envelopes, or even, by a stretch of

imagination, to that semi-abstract portion of my being some men call

a Higher Self.

To none of these, however, could I honestly or dishonestly ascribe it.

Yet, as in the case of those congratulatory telegrams from our mother

and yourself, I was aware--and this feeling never failed with each

separate occurrence--aware that somebody, other than ourselves

individually or collectively--was pleased.

V

WHAT I have told you so far concerns a growth chiefly of my inner life

that was almost a new birth. My outer life, of event and action, was

sufficiently described in those monthly letters you had from me

during the ten years, broken by three periods of long-leave at home,

I spent in that sinister and afflicted land. This record, however,

deals principally with the essential facts of my life, the inner; the

outer events and actions are of importance only in so far as they

interpret these, since that which a man feels and thinks alone is

real, and thought and feeling, of course, precede all action.

I have told you of the Thrill, of its genesis and development; and I

chose an obvious and rather banal instance, first of all to make

myself quite clear, and, secondly, because the majority were of so

delicate a nature as to render their description extremely difficult.

The point is that the emotion was, for me, a new one. I may honestly

describe it as a birth.

I must now tell you that it first stirred in me some five years after

I left England, and that during those years I had felt nothing but

what most other men feel out here. Whether its sudden birth was due

to the violent country, or to some process of gradual preparation

that had been going forward in me secretly all that time, I cannot

tell. No proof, at any rate, offered itself of either. It came

suddenly. I do know, however, that from its first occurrence it has

strengthened and developed until it has now become a dominating

influence of a distinctly personal kind.

My character has been affected, perhaps improved. You have mentioned

on several occasions that you noted in my letters a new tenderness, a

new kindness towards my fellow-creatures, less of criticism and more

of sympathy, a new love; the "birth of my poetic sense" you also

spoke of once; and I myself have long been aware of a thousand fresh

impulses towards charity and tolerance that had, hitherto, at any

rate, lain inactive in my being.

I need not flatter myself complacently, yet a change there is, and it

may be an improvement. Whether big or small, however, I am sure of

one thing: I ascribe it entirely to this sharper and more extended

sensitiveness to Beauty, this new and exquisite receptiveness that

has established itself as a motive-power in my life. I have changed

the poet's line, using prose of course: There is beauty everywhere

and therefore joy.

And I will explain briefly, too, how it is that this copybook maxim is

now for me a practical reality. For at first, with my growing

perception, I was distressed at what seemed to me the lavish waste,

the reckless, spendthrift beauty, not in nature merely but in human

nature, that passed unrecognized and unacknowledged. The loss seemed

so extravagant. Not only that a million flowers waste their sweetness

on the desert air, but that such prodigal stores of human love and

tenderness remain unemployed, their rich harvest all

ungathered--because, misdirected and misunderstood, they find no

receptacle into which they may discharge.

It has now come to me, though only by & slow and almost imperceptible

advance, that these stores of apparently unremunerative beauty, this

harvest so thickly sown about the world, unused, ungathered--prepare

yourself, please, for an imaginative leap--ore used, are gathered,

are employed. By Whom?

I can only answer: By some one who is pleased; and probably by many

such. How, why, and wherefore--I catch your crowd of questions in

advance--we need not seek exactly to discover, although the answer

of no uncertain kind, I hear within the stillness of a heart that has

learned to beat to a deeper, sweeter rhythm than before.

Those who loved beauty and lived it in their lives, follow that same

ideal with increasing power and passion afterwards--and for ever.

The shutter of black iron we call Death hides the truth with terror

and resentment; but what if that shutter were, after all,

transparent?

A glorious dream, I hear you cry. Now listen to my answer. It is, for

me, a definite assurance and belief, because--I know.

Long before you have reached this point you will, I know, have reached

also the conclusion (with a sigh) that I am embarked upon some

commonplace experience of ghostly return, or, at least, of posthumous

communication. Perhaps I wrong you here, but in any case I would at

once correct the inference, if it has been drawn. You remember our

adventures with the seance-mongers years ago? ... I have not changed

my view so far as their evidential value is concerned. Be sure of

that.

The dead, I am of opinion, do not return; for, while individuals may

claim startling experiences that seem to them of an authentic and

convincing kind, there has been no instance that can persuade us

all--in the sense that thunderstorm convinces us all. Such individual

experiences I have always likened to the auto-suggestion of those few

who believe the advertisements of the hair-restorers--you will forgive

the unpoetic simile for the sake of its exactitude--as against the

verdict of the world that a genuine discovery of such a remedy would

leave no single doubter in Europe or America, nor even in the London

Clubs! Yet each time I read the cunning article (I have less hair

than when I ran away from Sandhurst that exciting July night and met

you in the Strand!), and look upon the picture of the man, John Henry

Smith, "before and after using," I admit the birth of an unreasonable

belief that there may be something in it after all.

Of such indubitable proof, however, there is, alas, as yet no sign.

And so with the other matter--the dead do not "return." My story,

therefore, be comforted, has no individual instance to record. It

may, on the other hand, be held to involve a thread of what might be

called--at a stretch--posthumous communication, yet a thread so

tenuous that the question of personal direction behind it need hardly

be considered at all. For let me confess at once that, the habit of

the "thrill" once established, I was not long in asking myself point

blank this definite question: Dared I trace its origin to my own

unfruitful experience of some years before?--and, discovering no

shred of evidence, I found this positive answer: Honestly I could

not.

That "somebody was pleased" each time Beauty offered a wisdom I

accepted, became an unanswerable conviction I could not argue about;

but that the guidance--waking a responsive emotion in myself of

love--was referable to any particular name I could not, by any

stretch of desire or imagination, bring myself to believe.

Marion, I must emphasise, had been gone from me five years at least

before the new emotion gave the smallest hint of its new birth; and

my feeling, once the first keen shame and remorse subsided--I confess

to the dishonouring truth--was one of looking back upon a painful

problem that had found an unexpected solution. It was chiefly relief,

although a sad relief, I felt.... And with the absorbing work of the

next following years (I took up my appointment within six months of

her death) her memory, already swiftly fading, entered an oblivion

whence rarely, and at long intervals only, it emerged at all. In the

ordinary meaning of the phrase, I had forgotten her. You will see,

therefore, that there was no desire in me to revive an unhappy

memory, least of all to establish any fancied communication with one

before whose generous love I had felt myself dishonoured, if not

actually disgraced. Even the remorse and regret had long since failed

to disturb my peace of mind, causing me no anxiety, much less pain.

Sic transit was the epitaph, if any. Acute sensation I had none at

all. This, then, plainly argues against the slightest predisposition

on my part to imagine that the loving guidance so strangely given

owned a personal origin I could recognize. That it involved a

"personal emotion" is quite another matter.

The more remarkable, therefore, is the statement truth now compels me

to confess to you--namely, that this origin is recognizable, and that

I have traced in part the name it owns to. My next sentence you

divine already; you at once suspect the name I mean. I hear you say

to yourself with a smile--"So, after all...!"

Please, wait a moment, and listen closely now; for, in reply to your

suspicion, I can give neither full affirmation or full denial. Yet an

answer of a certain kind is ready: I have stated my firm conviction

that the dead do not return; I do not modify it one iota; but I

mentioned a moment ago another conviction that is mine because I know.

So now let me supplement these two statements with a third: the dead,

though they do not return, are active; and those who lived beauty in

their lives are--benevolently active.

This may prepare you for a further assurance, yet one less easy to

express intelligibly. Be patient while I make the difficult attempt.

The origin of the wisdom that now seeks to shape and guide my life

through Beauty is, indeed, not Marion, but a power that stands behind

her, and through which, with which, the energy of her being acts. It

stood behind her while she lived. It stands behind not only her, but

equally behind all those peerless, exquisite manifestations of self-less

love that give bountifully of their best without hope or expectation of

reward in kind. No human love of this description, though it find no

object to receive it, nor one single flower that "wastes" its sweetness

on the desert air, but acknowledges this inexhaustible and spendthrift

source. Its evidence lies strewn so thick, so prodigally, about our

world, that not one among us, whatever his surroundings and conditions,

but sooner or later must encounter at least one marvellous instance of

its uplifting presence. Some at once acknowledge the exquisite flash and

are aware; others remain blind and deaf, till some experience, probably

of pain, shall have prepared and sensitized their receptive quality. To

all, however, one day, comes the magical appeal. As in my own case,

there was apparently some kind of preparation before I grew conscious of

that hunger for beauty which, awakening intuition, opened the heart to

truth and so to wisdom. It then came softly, delicately, whispering like

the dawn, yet rich with a promise I could, at first, not easily fathom,

though as sure of fulfilment as that promise of day that steals upon the

world when night is passing.

I have tried to tell you something of this mystery. I cannot add to

that. I was lifted, as it were, towards some region or some state of

being, wherein I was momentarily aware of a vaster outlook upon life, of

a deeper insight into the troubles of my fellow-creatures, where,

indeed, there burst upon me a comprehension of life's pains and

difficulties so complete that I may best describe it as that full

understanding which involves also full forgiveness, and that sympathy

which is love, God's love.

This exaltation passed, of course, with the passing of the thrill that

made it possible; it was truly instantaneous; a point of ecstasy,

perhaps, in some category not of time at all, but of some state of

consciousness that lifted me above, outside of, self. But it was real,

as a thunderstorm is real. For, with this glimpse of beauty that I call

the "thrill," I touched, for an instant so brief that it seemed timeless

in the sense of having no duration, a pinnacle of joy, of vision, beyond

anything attainable by desire or by. intellect alone. I stood aware of

power, wisdom, love; and more, this power, wisdom, love were mine to

draw upon and use, not in some future heaven, but here and now.