THIS, then, was somewhat my state of mind, when, after our late tea on
the verandah, I strolled out on to the lawn to enjoy my pipe in the
quiet of the garden paths. I felt dissatisfied and disappointed, yet
knew not entirely perhaps, the reason. I wished to be alone, but was
hungry for companionship as well. Mother saw me go and watched
attentively, but said no word, merely following me a moment with her
eyes above the edge of the Times she read, as of old, during the hours
between tea and dinner. The Spectator, her worldly Bible, lay ready to
her hand when the Times should have been finished. They were,
respectively, as always, her dictionary of opinion, and her
medicine-chest. Before I had gone a dozen yards, her head disappeared
behind the printed sheet again. The roses flowed between us.
I felt her following glance, as I felt also its withdrawal. Then I
forgot her.... A touch of melancholy stole on me, as the garden took me
in its charge. For a garden is a ghostly place, and an old-world garden,
above all, leads thought backwards among vanished memories rather than
forward among constructive hopes and joys.
I yielded, in any case, a little to this subtle pressure from the past,
and I must have strolled among the lilac and laburnums for a longer time
than I knew, since the gardener who had been trimming the flower-beds
with a hand lawn-mower was gone, and dusk already veiled the cedars,
when I found myself leaning against the wooden gate that opened into the
less formal part beyond the larches.
The house was not visible from where I stood. I smelt the May, the
lilac, the heavy perfume everywhere of the opening year; it rose about
me in waves, as though full-bosomed summer lay breathing her great
promises close at hand, while spring, still lingering, with bright eyes
of dew,' watched over her. Then, suddenly, behind these richer scents, I
caught a sweeter, wilder tang than anything they contained, and turning,
saw that the pines were closer than I knew. A waft of something purer,
fresher, reached my nostrils on a little noiseless wind, as, leaning
across the gate, I turned my back upon the cultivated grounds and gazed
into a region of more natural, tangled growth.
The change was sudden. It was exquisite, sharp and unexpected, too, as
with a little touch of wonder. There was surprise in it. For the garden,
you will remember, melts here insensibly into a stretch of scattered
pines, where heather and bracken cover wide reaches of unreclaimed and
useless land. Irregular trails of whitish sand gleamed faintly before
the shadows swallowed them, and in the open patches I saw young
silver-birches that made me think of running children arrested in
mid-play. They stood outlined very tenderly against the sky; their
slender forms still quivered; their feathery hair fell earthwards as
they drew themselves together, bending their wayward little heads before
the approaching night. Behind them, framed by the darker pines into a
glowing frieze, the west still burned with the last fires of the sunset;
I could see the heather, rising and falling like a tumbled sea against
the horizon, where the dim heave of distant moorland broke the
afterglow.
And the dusk now held this region in its magic. So strange, indeed, was
the contrast between the ebony shadows and the pools and streaks of
amberish light, that I looked about me for a moment, almost sharply.
There was a touch of the unearthly in this loveliness that bewildered
sight a little. Extraordinarily still the world was, yet there seemed
activity close upon my footsteps, an activity more than of inanimate
Nature, yet less than of human beings. With solidarity it had nothing to
do, though it sought material expression. It was very near. And I was
startled, I recognized the narrow frontier between fear and wonder. And
then I crossed it.
For something stopped me dead. I paused and stared. My heart began to
beat more rapidly. Then, ashamed of my moment's hesitation, I was about
to move forward through the gate, when again I halted. I listened, and
caught my breath. I fancied the stillness became articulate, the shadows
stirred, the silence was about to break.
I remember trying to think; I wanted to relieve the singular tension by
finding words, if only inner words,--when, out of the stillness, out of
the silence, out of the shadows--something happened. Some faculty of
judgment, some attitude in which I normally clothed myself, were
abruptly stripped away. I was left bare and sensitive. I could almost
have believed that my body had dropped aside, that I stood there naked,
unprotected, a form-less spirit, stirred and lifted by the passing
breeze.
And then it came. As with a sword-thrust of blinding sweetness, I was
laid open. Yet so instant, and of such swiftness, was the stroke, that I
can only describe it by saying that, while pierced and wounded, I was
also healed again.
Without hint or warning, Beauty swept me with a pain and happiness well
nigh intolerable. It drenched me and was gone. No lightning flash could
have equalled the swiftness of its amazing passage; something tore in
me; the emotion was enveloping but very tender; it was both terrible yet
dear. Would to God I might crystallize it for you in those few mighty
words which should waken in yourself--in every one!--the wonder and the
joy. It contained, I felt, both the worship that belongs to awe and the
tenderness of infinite love which welcomes tears. Some power that was
not of this world, yet that used the details of this world to manifest,
had visited me.
No element of surprise lay in it even. It was too swift for anything but
joy, which of all emotions is the most instantaneous: I had been empty,
I was filled. Beauty that bathes the stars and drowns the very universe
had stolen out of this wild morsel of wasted and uncared-for English
garden, and dropped its transforming magic into--me. At the very moment,
moreover, when I had been ready to deny it altogether. I saw my
insignificance, yet, such was the splendour it had wakened in me, knew
my right as well. It could be ever thus; some attitude in myself alone
prevented....
And--somebody was pleased.
This personal ingredient lay secure in the joy that assuredly remained
when the first brief intolerable ecstasy had passed. The link I desired
to recognize was proved, not merely strengthened. Beauty had cleft me
open, and a message, if you will, had been delivered. This personal hint
persisted; I was almost aware of conscious and intelligent direction.
For to you I will make the incredible confession, that I dare phrase the
experience in another fashion, equally true: In that flashing instant I
stood naked and shelterless to the gaze of some one who had looked upon
me. I was aware of sight; of eyes in which "burning memory lights love
home." These eyes, this sight had gazed at me, then turned away. For in
that blinding sweetness there was light, as with the immediate
withdrawal again there was instant darkness. I was first visible, then
concealed. I was clothed again and covered.
And the thick darkness that followed made it appear as though night, in
one brief second, had taken the place of dusk.
Trembling, I leaned across the wooden gate and waited while the darkness
settled closer. I can swear, moreover, that it was neither dream, nor
hope, nor any hungry fantasy in me that then recognized a further
marvel--I was no longer now alone.
A presence faced me, standing breast-high in the bracken. The garden had
been empty; somebody now walked there with me.
It was, as I mentioned, the still hour between the twilight and the
long, cool dark of early summer. The little breeze passed whispering
through the pines. I smelt the pungent perfume of dry heather, sand, and
bracken. The horizon, low down between the trunks, shone gold and
crimson still, but fading rapidly. I stood there for a long time
trembling; I was a part of it; I felt that I was shining, as though my
inner joy irradiated the world about me. Nothing in all my life has been
so real, so positive. I was assuredly not alone....
The first sharp magic, the flash that pierced and burned, had gone its
way, but Beauty still stood so perilously near, so personal, that any
moment, I felt, it must take tangible form, betray itself in visible
movement of some sort, break possibly into audible sound of actual
speech. It would not have surprised me--more, it would have been natural
almost--had I felt a touch upon my hands and lips, or caught the murmur
of spoken words against my ear.
Yet from such direct revelation I shrank involuntarily and by instinct.
I could not have borne it then. I had the feeling that it must mar and
defile a wonder already great enough; there would have lain in it, too,
a betrayal of the commonplace, as of something which I could not
possibly hold for true. I must have distrusted my own senses even, for
the beauty that cleft me open dealt directly with the soul alone,
leaving the senses wholly disengaged. The Presence was not answerable to
any lesser recognition.
Thus I shrank and turned away, facing the familiar garden and the "wet
bird-haunted English lawn," a spiritual tenderness in me still dreading
that I might see or hear or feel, destroying thus the reality of my
experience. Yet there was, thank God, no speech, no touch, no movement,
other than the shiver of the birches, the breath of air against my
cheek, the droop and bending of the nearer pine boughs. There was no
audible or visible expression; I saw no figure breast-high in the
bracken. Yet sound there was, a moment later. For, as I turned away, a
bird upon a larch twig overhead burst into sudden and exultant song.