EVERY year they visited Scotland and brought new stores of happiness
to the dell where they had first discovered it. Always, René declared,
through their joy there ran the song of the burn, and the wind in the
trees, the beauty that had first awakened him. They made high holiday.
Cathleen liked to stroll about the woods or lie in them with a book
(she could hardly get him to read at all). He loved to wander over the
moors alone or to go striding over the hills, and to come back to her
in the evening. When they spent their days apart they would meet in
the dell, and, as of old time, he would make a couch of bracken for
her. And he would lie by her side and rejoice in her beauty, fondle
her, praise her, tease her.
"I don't believe," he would say, "we shall ever be old."
"Not when you look at the children" (they had three) "and see how they
grow?"
"Least of all then. I watch them and discover new worlds in them, and
often through them I discover new wonders in you."
"Don't you know me by this time?"
"Every day I find you more astonishing and strange. Sometimes I come
into your room in the morning and watch you sleeping, and I feel very
lonely then. You are so remote. It is like waiting for the dawn. Then
I see consciousness waking in you. Then your eyes open and you gaze
innocently out upon the world. And you see me and are satisfied."
"And you?"
"I know that another day has come, another opportunity, a new turn in
the adventure."
"Is it always an adventure?"
"Always. Unending desire."
"For me," she said, "it is peace and knowledge. It would be stifling
if I had not you to kindle them."
René kissed her and laughed:
"The whole duty of man," he said, "to keep the flame alight in woman."
She became serious on that.
"It's true, René. You nearly let me wither away, and my life dwindle
to ashes. I am often sick with fear when I think of it, how near I
came to being one of your failures."
On such evenings they would talk until darkness crept into the woods,
and they woke to their mysterious night life when their sweetest songs
are sung, and they are filled with magic snares and lurking dangers
and conflicts. Sweet comfort was it to be together then amid so much
menace and alien power, and they would go warily hand in hand until
they came within sight of the lights of the great house. Then they
would almost run until they reached the open lawn where the free air
would beat upon their faces.
"I always feel," René said once, "as though we had had a narrow
escape."
"In the woods, do you mean, or in life?"
"Both."
"Escape from what, my dear?"
"I know," he said. "This is the truth of us. Escape from sleep and
death."