“_Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth,
Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea;
Thy face remembered is from other worlds.
It has been died for, though I know not when,
It has been sung of, though I know not where.
It has the strangeness of the luring West,
And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee
I am aware of other times and lands,
Of birth far back, of lives in many stars._”
--“Marpessa” (Stephen Phillips).
During sleep, however, the heavier emotions had sunk to the bottom,
the lighter had risen to the top. I woke with a feeling of vigour, and
with the sense called “common” distinctly in the ascendant. Through the
open window came sunshine in a flood, the crisp air sparkled. I could
taste it from my bed. Youth ran in my veins and ten years seemed to
drop from my back as I sprang up and thrust my face into the radiant
morning. Drawing a deep draught into my lungs, I must at the same time
have unconsciously exclaimed, for the peasant girl gathering vegetables
below--the garden, such as it was, merged into the pastures--looked
up startled. She had been singing to herself. I withdrew my pyjamaed
figure hurriedly, while she, as hurriedly, let drop the skirts the dew
had made her lift so high; and when I peeped a moment later, she had
gone. I, too, felt inclined to sing with happiness, so invigorating was
the clear brilliance of the opening day. A joyful irresponsibility, as
of boyhood, coursed in my tingling blood. Everything in this enchanted
valley seemed young and vigorous; the stream ran gaily past the shining
trees; the meadows glistened; the very mountains wore a lustre as of
life that ran within their solid frames.
It was impossible to harbour the slightest thought of dread before
such peace and beauty; all ominous forebodings fled away; this joy and
strength of Nature brought in life. Even the “Dog-Man” smiled with eyes
unclouded when, a little later, he brought a small pail of boiling
water, and informed me that there was a pool in the forest close at
hand where I could bathe. He nosed about the room--only thus can I
describe his friendly curiosity for my welfare--fussed awkwardly with
my boots and clothes, looked frankly into my eyes with an expression
that said plainly “How are _you_ this morning? I’m splendid!” grunted,
sniffed, almost wagged his tail for pleasure--and trotted out. And he
went, I declare, as though he had heard a rabbit and must be after it.
The laughter in me was only just suppressed, for I could have sworn
that he expected me to pat him, with the remark “Good fellow! Sik ’em,
then!” or words to that effect.
The secluded valley, walled-in from the blustering world like some
wild, primitive garden, was drenched in sunshine by the time I went
downstairs; the limestone cliffs a mile away of quite dazzling
brilliance; and the pine woods across the meadow-land scented the whole
interior of the little châlet. But for stray wisps of autumn mist
that still clung along the borders of the stream, it might have been
a day in June the mountains still held prisoner. My heart leaped with
the beauty. This lonely region of woods and mountain tops suggested
the presence of some Nature Deity that presided over it, and as I
stood a moment on the veranda, I turned at a sound of footsteps to
see the figure of my imagination face to face. “If _she_ is of equal
splendour!” flashed instantly through my mind. For Julius wore the
glory of the morning in his eyes, the neck was bare and the shirt a
little open; standing there erect in his mountain clothes, he was
as like the proverbial Greek god as any painter could have possibly
desired.
“Whether I slept well?” I answered his inquiry. “Why, Julius, I feel
positively like a boy again. This place has worked magic on me while I
slept. There’s the idea in me that one must live for ever.”
And, even while I said it, my eyes glanced over his shoulder into the
hall for a sight of someone who any moment might appear. Excitement was
high in me.
Julius quietly held my hand in his own firm grasp a second.
“Life came to you in sleep,” he said. “I told you--I warned you,
the channels here were open and easily accessible. All power--all
powers--everywhere are natural. Our object is to hold them, isn’t it?”
“You mean control them?” I said, still watching the door behind him.
“They visit the least among us; they touch us, and are gone. The
essential is to harness them--in this case before they harness
us--again.”
I made no reply. The other excitement was too urgent in me.
Linking his arm in mine, he led me towards a corner of the main room,
half hall, half kitchen, where a white tablecloth promised breakfast.
The “man” was already busying himself to and fro with plates and a
gleaming metal pot that steamed. I smelt coffee and the fragrance
of baked bread. But I listened half-heartedly to my host’s curious
words because every minute I expected the door to open. There was a
nervousness in me what I should find to say to such a woman when she
came.
Was there, as well, among my bolder feelings, a faint suspicion of
something else--something so slight and vague it hardly left a trace,
while yet I was aware that it had been there? I could not honestly say.
I only knew that, again, there stirred about my heart unconsciously
a delicate spider-web of resentment, envy, disapproval--call it what
one may, since it was too slight to own a definite name--that seemed
to wake some ghost of injustice, of a grievance almost, in the hidden
depths of me. It passed, unexplained, untraceable. Perhaps I smothered
it, perhaps I left it unacknowledged. I know not. So elusive an emotion
I could not retain a second, far less label. “Julius has found her; she
is his,” was the clear thought that followed it. No more than that. And
yet--like the shadow of a leaf, it floated down upon me, darkening,
though almost imperceptibly, some unknown corner of my heart.
And, remembering my manners, I asked after her indisposition, while he
laughed and insisted upon our beginning breakfast; she would presently
join us; I should see her for myself. He looked so happy that I yielded
to the momentary temptation.
“Julius,” I said, by way of compliment and somewhat late
congratulation, “she must be wonderful. I’m so--so very pleased--for
you.”
“Yes,” he said, as he poured coffee and boiling milk into my wooden
bowl, “and we have waited long. But the opportunity has come at last,
and this time we shall not let it slip.”
The simple words were not at all the answer I expected. There was a
mingling of relief and anxiety in his voice; I remembered that she “did
not always like it here,” and I wondered again what my “understanding”
was to be that he had promised would “come later.” What determined her
change of mood? Why did she sometimes like it, and sometimes not like
it? Was it loneliness, or was it due to things that--happened? Any
moment now she would be in the room, holding my hand, looking into my
eyes, expecting from me words of greeting, speaking to me. I should
hear her voice. Twice I turned quickly at the sound of an opening
door, only to find myself face to face with the “man”; but at length
came a sound that was indisputably the rustle of skirts, and, with
a quickening of the heart, I pushed my plate away, and rose from my
chair, turning half way to greet her.
Disappointment met me again, however, for this time it was merely
the peasant girl I had seen from my window; and once more I sat down
abruptly, covering my confusion with a laugh and feeling like a
schoolboy surprised in a foolish mistake. And then a movement from
Julius opposite startled me. He had risen from his seat. There was a
new expression on his face, an extraordinary expression--observation
the most alert imaginable, anxiety, question, the tension of various
deep emotions oddly mingled. He watched me keenly. He watched us both.
“My wife,” he said quietly, as the figure advanced towards us. Then,
turning to her: “And this is my friend, Professor Mason.” He indicated
myself.
I rose abruptly, startled and dismayed, nearly upsetting the chair
behind me in my clumsiness. The “Professor Mason” sounded ludicrous,
almost as ludicrous as the “Mrs. LeVallon” he had not uttered. I
stared. She stared. There was a moment of blank silence. Disappointment
petrified me. There was no distinction, there was no beauty. She was
tall and slim, and the face, of a commonplace order, was slightly
pockmarked. I forgot all manners.
She was the first to recover. We both laughed. But if there was
nervousness of confused emotion in my laugh, there was in hers a happy
pleasure, frankly and naturally expressed.
“How do you do, sir--Professor?” she instantly corrected herself,
shaking me vigorously, yet almost timidly, by the hand. It was a
provincial and untutored voice.
“I’m--delighted to see you,” my lips stammered, stopping dead before
the modern title. The control of my breath was not quite easy for a
moment.
We sat down. In her words--or was it in her manner, rather?--there
was a hint of undue familiarity that tinged my disappointment with
a flash of disapproval too, yet caught up immediately by a kind of
natural dignity that denied offence, or at any rate, corrected it.
Another impression then stole over me. I was aware of charm. The
voice, however, unquestionably betrayed accent. Of the “lady,” in the
restricted, ordinary meaning of the word, there was no pretence. A
singular revulsion made me tremble. For a moment she had held my hand
with deliberate pressure, while her eyes remained fixed upon my face
with a direct, a searching intentness. She too, like her husband,
watched me. If she formed a swift, intuitive judgment regarding myself,
nothing at first betrayed it. I was aware, however, at once, that,
behind the decision of her natural frankness, something elusive
hovered. The effect was highly contradictory, even captivating,
certainly provocative of curiosity. Accompanying her laughter was a
delicate, swift flush, and the laugh, though loud in some other sense
than of sound alone, was not unmusical. A breath of glamour, seductive
as it was fleeting, caught me as I heard.
For a moment or two my senses certainly reeled. It seemed that swift
shutters rose and fell before my eyes. One screen rolled up, another
dropped, vistas opened, vanishing before their depths showed anything.
The châlet, with our immediate surroundings, faded; I was aware of
ourselves only, chiefly, however, of her. This first sight of her had
the effect that years before Julius had produced: the peculiar sense of
“other places.” And this in spite of myself, without any decided belief
of my own as yet to help it....
The confusion of my senses passed then, and consciousness focused
clearly once more on my surroundings. The disturbed emotions,
however, refused wholly to quiet down. Her face, I noted, beneath the
disfiguring marks, was rosy, and the grey-green eyes were very bright.
They were luminous, changing eyes, their hue altering of its own accord
apart from mere play or angle of the light. Sometimes their grey merged
wholly into green, but a very wonderful deep green that made them like
the sea; later, again, they were distinctly blue. They lit the entire
face, its expression changing when they changed. The frank and open
innocence of the child in them was countered, though not injuriously,
by an unfathomed depth that had its effect upon the whole physiognomy.
An arresting power shone in them as if imperiously. There were two
faces there.
And the singular and fascinating effect of these dominating eyes left
further judgment at first disabled. I noticed, however, that her mouth
had that generous width that makes for strength rather than for beauty;
that the teeth were fine and regular; and that the brown hair, tinged
with bronze, was untidy about the neck and ears. A narrow band of
black velvet encircled the throat; she wore a blouse, short skirt,
and high brown boots with nails that clattered on the stone flooring
when she moved. Since gathering vegetables in the dawn she had changed
her costume, evidently. A certain lightness, I saw now, had nothing of
irresponsibility in it, but was merely youth, vitality, and physical
vigour. She was fifteen years younger than Julius, if a day, and I
judged her age no more than twenty-five perhaps.
“It’s a pore house to have your friends to,” she said in her breezy,
uncultivated voice, “but I hope you managed all right with your
room--Professor?” It was the foundation of the voice that had the
uncultivated sound; on the top of it, like a layer of something
imitated or acquired, there was refinement. I got the impression that,
unconsciously, she aped the better manner of speech, yet was not aware
she did so.
Burning questions rose within me as I listened to this opening
conversation: How much she knew, and believed, of her husband’s vast
conceptions; what explanation of my visit he had offered her, what
explanation of myself; chief of all, how much--if anything--she
remembered? For our coming together in this hidden Jura valley under
conditions that seemed one minute ludicrous, and the next sublime, was
the alleged meeting of three Souls who had not recognised each other
through bodily, human eyes for countless centuries. And our purpose,
if not madness, held a solemnity that might well belong to a forgotten
method of approaching deity.
“He’s told me such a lot about you, Julius has,” she continued half
shyly, jerking her thumb in the direction of her husband, “that I
wanted to see what you were like.” It was said naturally, as by a
child; yet the freedom might equally have been assumed to conceal
an admitted ignorance of manners. “You’re such--very old friends,
aren’t you?” She seemed to look me up and down. I thought I detected
disappointment in her too.
“We were together at school and university, you see,” I made reply,
shirking the title again, “but it’s a good many years now since we met.
We’ve been out of touch for a long time. I hadn’t even heard of his
marriage. My congratulations are late, but most sincere.”
I bowed. Strange! Both in word and gesture some faintest hint of
sarcasm or resentment forced itself against my conscious will. The
blood rose--I hoped unnoticed--to my cheeks. My eyes dropped quickly
from her face.
“That’s reely nice of you,” she said simply, and without a touch of
embarrassment anywhere. She cut a lump of bread from the enormous loaf
in front of us and broke it in little pieces into her bowl of milk. Her
spoon remained standing in her coffee cup. It seemed impossible for
me to be unaware of any detail that concerned her, either of gesture
or pronunciation. I noticed every tiniest detail whether I would or
no. Her charm, I decided, increased. It was wholly independent of her
looks. It took me now and again by surprise, as it were.
“Maybe--I suppose he didn’t know where you were,” she added, as Julius
volunteered no word. “But he was shore you’d come if you got the
letter.”
“It was a promise,” her husband put in quietly. Evidently he wished us
to make acquaintance in our own way. He left us alone with purpose,
content to watch and show his satisfaction. The relationship between
them seemed natural and happy, utterly devoid of the least sign of
friction. She certainly--had I perhaps, anticipated otherwise?--showed
no fear of him.
The “man” came in with a plate of butter, clattering out noisily again
in his heavy boots. He gave us each a look in turn, of anxiety first,
and then of pleasure. All was well with us, he felt. His eyes, however,
lingered longest on his mistress, as though she needed his protective
care more than we did. It was the attitude and expression of a faithful
dog who knows he has the responsibility of a child upon his shoulders,
and is both proud and puzzled by the weight of honour.
A pause followed, during which I made more successful efforts to subdue
the agitation that was in me. I broke the silence by a commonplace,
expressing a hope that my late arrival the night before had not
disturbed her.
“Lord, no!” she exclaimed, laughing gaily, while she glanced from me to
Julius. “Only I thought you and he’d like to be alone for a bit after
such a long time apart.... Besides, I didn’t fancy my food somehow--I
get that way up here sometimes,” she added, “don’t I, Julius?”
“You’ve been here some time already?” I asked sympathetically, before
he could reply.
“Ever since the wedding,” she answered frankly. “Seven--getting on for
eight--months ago, it is now--we came up straight from the Registry
Office. At times it’s a bit funny, an’ no mistake--lonely, I mean,”
she quickly corrected herself. And she looked at her husband again
with a kind of childish mischief in her expression that I thought most
becoming.
“It’s not for ever, is it?” he laughed with her.
“And I understand you chose it, didn’t you?” I fell in with her mood.
“It must be lonely, of course, sometimes,” I added.
“Yes, we chose it,” she replied. “We choose everything together.” And
they looked proudly at each other like two children. For a moment
it flashed across me to challenge him playfully, yet not altogether
playfully, for burying a young wife in such a deserted place. I did not
yield to the temptation, however, and Mrs. LeVallon continued breezily
in her off-hand manner:
“Julius wanted you badly, I know. You must stay here now we’ve got
you. There’s reelly lots to do, once you get used to it; only it
seems strange at first after city life--like what I’ve had, and
sometimes”--she hesitated a second--“well, of an evening, or when it
gets stormy--the thunder-storms are something awful--you feel wild
and want to do things, to rush about and take your clothes off.” She
stopped; and the deep green of the sea came up into her eyes. Again,
for an instant, I caught two faces in her. “It turns you wild here when
the wind gets to blowing,” she added, laughing, “and the lightning’s
like loose, flying fire.” The way she said it made me forget the
physical disabilities. There was even a hint of fascination somewhere
in the voice.
“It takes you back to the natural, primitive state,” I said. “I can
well believe it.” And no amount of restraint could keep the admiration
out of my eyes. “Civilisation is easily forgotten in a place like this.”
“Oh, is that it?” she said shortly, while we laughed, all three
together. “Civilisation--eh?”
I got the impression that she felt left out of something, something she
knew was going on, but that didn’t include her quite. Her intuition, I
judged, was very keen. Beneath this ordinary conversation she was aware
of many things. She was fully conscious of a certain subdued excitement
in the three of us, and that between her husband and her guest there
was a constant interplay of half-discovered meaning, half-revealed
emotion. She was reading me too. Yet all without deliberation; it was
intuitive, the mind took no conscious part in it. And, when she spoke
of the effect of the valley upon her, I saw her suddenly a little
different, too--wild and free, untamed in a sense, and close to the
elemental side of life. Her enthusiasm for big weather betrayed it.
During the whole of breakfast, indeed, we all were “finding” one
another, Julius in particular making notes. For him, of course, there
was absorbing interest in this meeting of three souls whom Fate had
kept so long apart--the signs of recognition he detected or imagined,
the sympathy, the intimacy betrayed by the way things were _taken for
granted_ between us. He said no word, however. He was very quiet.
My own feelings, meanwhile, seemed tossed together in too great
and violent confusion for immediate disentanglement. My sense of
the dramatic fitness of things was worse than unsatisfied--it was
shattered. Julius unquestionably had married a superior domestic
servant.
“Is the bread to your liking, Professor?”
“I think it’s quite delicious, Mrs. LeVallon. It tempts me even to
excess,” I added, facetious in my nervousness. I had used her name at
last, but with an effort.
“I made it,” she said proudly. “Mother taught me that before I was
fifteen.”
“And the butter, too?” I asked.
“No,” she laughed, with a touch of playful disappointment. “We get that
from a farm five miles down the valley. It’s in special honour of your
arrival, this.”
“Our nearest contact with the outside world,” added Julius, “and
over a thousand feet below us. We’re on a little plateau here all by
ourselves----”
“Put away like,” she interrupted gaily, “as though we’d been naughty,”
and then she added, “or for something special and very mysterious.”
She looked into his face half archly, half inquisitively, as if aware
of something she divined yet could not understand. Her honesty and
sincerity made every little thing she said seem dignified. I was again
aware of pathos.
“The peace and quiet,” I put in quickly, conscious of something within
me that watched and listened intently, “must be delightful--after the
cities--and with the great storms you mention to break the possible
monotony.”
She looked at me a full moment steadily, and in her eyes, no longer
green but sky-blue, I read the approach of that strange expression I
called another “face,” that in the end, however, did not fully come.
But the characteristic struck me, for Julius had it too.
“Oh, you find out all about yourself in a place like this,” she said
slowly, “a whole lot of things you didn’t know before. You’ll like it;
but it’s not for everybody. It’s very élite.” She turned to Julius.
“The Professor’ll love it, won’t he? And we must keep him,” she
repeated, “now we’ve got him.”
Something moved between the three of us as she said it. There was no
inclination in me to smile, even at the absurd choice of a word. An
upheaving sense of challenge came across the air at me, including
not only ourselves at the breakfast table, but the entire valley as
well. Against some subterranean door in me rose sudden pressure, and
the woman’s commonplace words had in them something incalculable that
caused the door to yield. Out rushed a pouring, bursting flood. A wild
delight of beauty ran suddenly in my civilised veins; I felt uplifted,
stimulated, carried off my feet.
It was but the flash and touch of a passing mood, of course, yet it
marked a change in me, another change. _She_ was aware of elemental
powers even as her husband was. First through him, but now through her,
I, too, was becoming similarly--aware.
I glanced at Julius, calmly devouring bread and milk beyond all reach
of comedy--Julius who recognised an “old soul” in a servant girl with
the same conviction that he invoked the deific Powers of a conscious
Nature; to whom nothing was trivial, nothing final, the future
magnificent as the past, and behind whose chair stood the Immensities
whispering messages of his tireless evolutionary scheme. And I saw him
“unclassable”--merely an eternal, travelling soul, working out with
myself and with this other “soul” some detail long neglected by the
three of us. Marriage, class, social status, education, culture--what
were they but temporary external details, whose sole value lay in their
providing conditions for acquiring certain definite experiences? Life’s
outer incidents were but episodic, after all.
And this flash of insight into his point of view came upon me thus
suddenly through _her_. The mutual sympathy and understanding between
the three of us that he so keenly watched for had advanced rapidly.
Another stage was reached. The foundations seemed already established
here among us.
Thus, while surprise, resentment and distress fought their battle
within me against something that lay midway between disbelief and
acceptance, my mind was aware of a disharmony that made judgment
extremely difficult. Almost I knew the curious feeling that one of us
had been fooled. It was all so incongruous and disproportioned, on the
edge of the inconceivable. And yet, at the same time, some sense of
keen delight awoke in me that satisfied. Joy glowed in some depth I
could not reach or modify.
Had the “woman” proved wonderful in some ordinary earthly way, I
could have continued to share in a kind of dramatic make-believe
LeVallon’s imagination of an “old soul” returned. The sense of fitness
would have felt requited. Yet what so disconcerted me was that this
commonplace disclosure of the actual facts did not destroy belief, but
even increased it! This unexpected and banal _dénouement_, denying,
apparently, all the requirements of his creed, fell upon me with a
crash of reality that was arresting in an entirely unexpected way. It
made the conception so much more likely--possible--true!
Out of some depth in me I could not summon to the bar of judgment
or analysis rose the whisper that in reality the union of these two
was not so incongruous and outrageous as it seemed. To a penetrating
vision such as his, what difference could that varnish of the mind
called “education” pretend to make? Or how could he be deceived by the
surface tricks of “refinement,” in accent, speech, and manner, that so
often cloak essential crudeness and vulgarity? These were to him but
the external equipment of a passing To-day, whereas he looked for the
innate acquirements due to real experience--age in the soul itself.
Her social status, education and so forth had nothing to do with--her
actual Self. In some ultimate region that superficial human judgment
barely acknowledges the union of these two seemed right, appropriate
and inevitably true.
This breakfast scene remains graven in my mind. LeVallon talked little,
even as he ate little, while his wife and I satisfied our voracious
appetites with the simple food provided. She chattered _sans gêne_,
eating not ungracefully so much as in a manner untaught. Her smallest
habits drew my notice and attention of their own accord. I watched the
velvet band rising and falling as she swallowed--noisily, talking and
drinking with her mouth full, and holding her knife after the manner of
the servants’ hall. Her pronunciation at times was more than marked.
For instance, though she did not say “gime,” she most assuredly did
not say “game,” and her voice, what men call “common,” was undeniably
of the upper servant class. While guilty now and again of absurd
solecisms, she chose words sometimes that had an air of refinement
above the ordinary colloquial usage--the kind affected by a lady’s-maid
who has known service in the “upper suckles” of the world--“close”
the door in place of simply “shut” it, “commence” in preference to
the ordinary “begin,” “costume” rather than merely “clothes,” and a
hundred others of similar kind. Sofa, again, was “couch.” She missed a
sentence, and asked for it with “What say?” while her “if you please”
and “pardon” held a suspicion of that unction which, it seemed, only
just remembered in time not to add “sir,” or even “my lady.” She halted
instinctively before a door, as though to let her husband or myself
pass out in front, and even showed surprise at being helped at the
table before ourselves. These and a thousand other revealing touches
I noticed acutely, because I had expected something so absolutely
different. I was profoundly puzzled.
Yet, while I noted closely these social and mental disabilities, I
was aware also of their flat and striking contradiction; and her
beautifully-shaped hands, her small, exquisite feet and ankles, her
natural dignity of carriage, gesture, bearing, were the least of these.
Setting her beside maid or servitor, my imagination recoiled as from
something utterly ill-placed. I could have sworn she owned some secret
pedigree that no merely menial position could affect, most certainly
not degrade. In spite of less favourable indications, so thick about
her, I caught unmistakable tokens of a superiority she herself ignored,
which yet proclaimed that her soul stood erect and four-square to the
winds of life, independent wholly of the “social position” her body
with its untutored brain now chanced to occupy.
Exactly the nature of these elusive signs of innate nobility I find
it more than difficult to describe. They rose subtly out of her, yet
evaded separate subtraction from either the gestures or conversation
that revealed them. They explained the subtle and increasing charm.
They were of the soul.
For, even thus early in our acquaintance, there began to emerge
these other qualities in this simple girl that at first the shock of
disappointment and surprise had hidden from me. The apparent emptiness
of her face was but a mask that cloaked an essential, native dignity.
From time to time, out of those strange, arresting eyes that at first
had seemed all youth and surface, peered forth that other look,
standing a moment to query and to judge, then, like moods of sky which
reveal and hide a depth of sea, plunged out of sight again. It betrayed
an inner, piercing sight of a far deeper kind. Out of this deeper part
of her I felt she watched me steadily--to wonder, ask, and weigh. It
was hence, no doubt, I had the curious impression of two faces, two
beings, in her, and the moments when I surprised her peering thus
were, in a manner, electrifying beyond words. For then, into tone
and gesture, conquering even accent and expression, crept flash-like
this “something” that would not be denied, hinting at the distinction
of true spiritual independence superior to all local, temporary, or
worldly divisions implied in mere “class” or “station.”
This girl, behind her ignorance of life’s snobbish values, possessed
that indefinable spiritual judgment best called “taste.” And taste,
I remember Julius held, was the infallible evidence of a soul’s
maturity--of age. The phrase “old soul” acquired more meaning for me as
I watched her. I recalled that strange hint of his long years before,
that greatness and position, as the world accepts them, are actually
but the kindergarten stages for the youngest, crudest souls of all. The
older souls are not “distinguished” in the “world.” They are beyond it.
Moreover, during the course of this singular first meal together, while
she used the phraseology of the servant class and betrayed the manners
of what men call “common folk,” it was borne in upon me that she, too,
unknowingly, touched the same vast sources of extended life that her
husband claimed to realise, and that her being unknowingly swept that
region of elemental Powers with which he now sought conscious union.
In her infectious vitality beat the pulse of vaster tides than she yet
knew.
Already, in our conversation, this had come to me; it increased
from minute to minute as our atmospheres combined and mingled.
The suggestion of what I must call great exterior Activities that
always accompanied the presence of Julius made themselves felt also
through the being of this simple and uneducated girl. Winds, cool and
refreshing, from some elemental region blew soundlessly about her. I
was aware of their invigorating currents. And this came to me with my
first emotions, and was not due to subsequent reflection. For, in my
own case, too, while resenting the admission, I felt something more
generously scaled than my normal self, scientifically moulded, trying
to urge up as with great arms and hands that thrust into my mind. What
hitherto had seemed my complete Self opened, as though it were but a
surface tract, revealing depths of consciousness unguessed before.
And this, I think, was the disquieting sensation that perplexed
me chiefly with a sense of unstable equilibrium. The idea of
pre-existence, with its huge weight of memory lost and actions
undischarged, pressed upon a portion of my soul that was trying to
awake. The foundations of my known personality appeared suddenly
insecure, and what the brain denied, this other part accepted, even
half remembered. The change of consciousness in me was growing. While
observing Mrs. LeVallon, listening to the spontaneous laughter that ran
between her sentences, meeting her quick eyes that took in everything
about them, these varied and contradictory judgments of my own worked
their inevitable effect upon me. The quasi-memory, with its elusive
fragrance of far-off, forgotten things; the promised reconstruction of
passionate emotions that had burned the tissues of our earlier bodies
before even the foundations of these “eternal” hills were laid; the
sense of being again among ancient friends, netted by deathless forces
of spiritual adventure and desire--Julius, his wife, myself, mutually
involved in the intricate pattern of our souls’ development:--all this,
while I strove to regard it as mere telepathic reflection from his own
beliefs, yet made something in me, deeper than any ratiocination, stand
up and laugh in my face with the authoritative command that it was
absolutely--true.
Our very intimacy, so readily established as of its own
accord--established, moreover, among such unlikely and half
antagonistic elements--seemed to hint at a relationship resumed,
instead of now first beginning. The fact that the three of us took so
much for granted almost suggested memory. For the near presence of this
woman--I call her woman, though she was but girl--disturbed me more
than uncommonly; and this curious, soft delight I felt raging in the
depths of me--whence did it come? Whence, too, the depth and power of
other feelings that she roused in me, their reckless quality, their
certainty, the haunting pang and charm that her face, not even pretty
apart from its disfigurement, stirred in my inmost being? There was
mischief and disaster in her sea-green eyes, though neither mischief
nor disaster quite of this material world.
I confessed--the first time for many years--to something moving beyond
ordinary. More and more I longed to learn of her first meeting with the
man she had married, and by what method he claimed to have recognised
in this servant girl the particular ancient soul he waited for, and
by what unerring instinct he had picked her out and set her upon so
curious a throne.
I watched the velvet band about the well-shaped neck....
“_I have been here before,
But when or how I cannot tell:
I know the grass beyond the door,
The sweet keen smell,
The sighing sound, the lights around the shore._
“_You have been mine before,
How long ago I may not know:
But just when at that swallow’s soar
Your neck turned so ...
Some veil did fall--I knew it all of yore._”
“And now,” she exclaimed, springing up and turning to her husband, “I’m
going to leave you and the Professor together to talk out all your old
things without me intervening! Besides I’ve got the bread to make,” she
added with a swift, gay smile in my direction, “that bread you called
delicious. I generally do it of a morning.”
With a swinging motion of her lithe young body she was gone; the room
seemed strangely empty; the disfiguring marks upon her girlish face
were already forgotten; and a sense of companionship within me turned
somehow lonely and bereft.