Peter and Miranda were looking out over the selfsame burning water into
which she had lately dismissed him. Six to seven months had passed, and
on the morning of that day they had quietly been married in London. Now
they stood high upon the cliffs overhanging a small western bay.
It was early September, and the night was warm. The water was lightly
wrinkled. It shimmered from the extreme height at which they viewed it,
like beaten metal. The light rapidly died down, and already the lit
rooms of a house were brighter than the sky. The house was beneath them,
alone upon the side of a steep hill, its windows wide to the sea.
Peter was alone with Miranda for the first time that day. Hardly a week
ago he had been eagerly looking each morning towards England. From the
time he had landed, and Miranda had seen in him a soul swept clean, a
will straining towards her, he had lived in the clutch of preparation
and routine. All was now ready, every unessential thing put away.
In long days upon the deck of his yacht Peter had come to distinguish
between the physical unrest of his late years--vague and impersonal,
afflicting him like hunger or the summer heat--and the perfect passion
of his need for Miranda.
Gradually, too, in these long weeks upon the sea Peter began to see
steadily things which hitherto had wavered. He had touched reality at
last. He overleaped the categories in a burning sense that life was very
vast and very near; that the virtue of men could not easily be measured
and ranked; that the wonder of existence began when it ceased
consciously to confront itself, to probe its deep heart, and absurdly to
appoint itself a law. He went through his adventures of the last few
years with a smile for his ready infatuation with small aspects of men
and things. He had attempted to inspect the discipline of the world,
calling mankind to attention as though it were a regiment. He had been a
Socialist, and then very nearly a Tory. Now, between sky and water, he
vainly tried to constrain things to a formula. He found that he no
longer desired to do so. He began to understand his mother's deep,
instinctive acceptance of time and fate. All now seemed unreal, except
the quiet, happy, and assured act of life itself. Craning at the
Southern stars, he no longer desired to measure or to track their
passage. He felt them rather as kindred points of energy. The pedantry
and pride of knowledge, the ambition to assess, the need to round off
heaven, to group mankind in a definite posture and take for himself a
firmly intelligible attitude in his own time and way--these things had
suddenly left him. Life was now emotionally simple, and it therefore
had ceased to be intellectually difficult. He had found humour and
peace--an absolute content to receive the passing day. Life itself
mattered so much to him--so brimmed him with the passion of
_being_--that all he had thought or read was now rebuked as an insolent
effort to contain the illimitable.
Interminably, of course, he thought of his personal quest. It all seemed
very simple now. He had had some unhappy and trivial adventures. Their
sole importance was to make him measure truly the high place of love. In
the beginning was blind desire. Then the soul, with eyes for beauty and
the power to elect, turned an instinct of the herd to a passion of the
individual will--a passion whose fruit was loyalty and sacrifice, the
treasures of art and the face of nature wrought into a countenance
friendly and beautiful. So mighty had this passion grown that now it
could command, as an instrument, the need out of which it came.
Love was now the measure of a man. Either it put him among creatures,
groping uneasily till driven by appetite or fear, or it lifted him among
the inheritors of passion, a gift rare as genius, a sanctuary from the
driven flesh.
To-night, as Peter sat with Miranda looking towards the sea, the
substance of these thoughts lay under the surface of his joy. He
wondered if for ever he could beat his wings so high. Surely to die soon
would be the perfect mating. They were now upon a peak whence it was
only possible to come down.
They sat quietly as the moments drifted. Words between them suddenly
broke upon notes trembling on the edge of silence. To the passion of his
adolescence--the passion of five years ago, recovered in Indian seas and
among lonely islands of the Pacific--was added now something so intimate
and personal that Peter saw in the fall of Miranda's dress and the poise
of a comb in her hair syllables to make him wise. Her beauty had seemed,
moments ago, to fill him, but still it poured from her.
He feared to think that this was only a beginning. How could he suffer
more happiness and live? He could dwell for ever upon the line of her
throat; and when he took her hands it seemed as if she gave to him all
he could endure to possess. He feared to be stunned and blinded with her
light, and he felt in himself an equal energy to dazzle and consume. It
must surely be death to touch her to the heart, to pierce rashly to the
secret of her power.
Into his happiness there intruded, when it gave him leave, a profound
gratitude. He felt the need of a visible Power to thank. Almost it
seemed he had supernaturally been led to this perfect moment, to
encounter it perfectly. All his youth was gathered up. He would plunge
at once to the heart of love, his soul unblunted, no step of his
adventure known. Many times, during his days at sea, he had trembled to
think how near he had come to losing the unspoiled mystery of the gift
Miranda kept. He had marvelled at the delicate justice and complete
right of her wish that he should clear his soul of all memories they did
not share before they intimately met.
Now in the falling dark they sat looking sometimes to sea, sometimes to
the light that beckoned them home, sometimes to the secret which ever
more insistently urged and troubled them. They felt the call of their
marriage, bidding them closer yet. It shone upon them out of Miranda's
window in the house below. To this window he had sailed alone in his
ship for long nights. Now that it shone so near, imperiously beckoning,
it hardly seemed an earthly lamp, but one that, when he stepped towards
it, must suddenly go out or move away.
But the lure was true, for he found it also in Miranda--the look he had
seen in her eyes years ago when first he had kissed her. She seemed to
be giving herself to him--to give and give again, with treasures
uncounted to follow. Yet it was not mere giving, but a passing of virtue
from one to the other.
"I am glad we waited until now," Peter said in a note so low that it
hardly reached her. "Why were you so wise to send me away? Each day has
added to you. I cannot believe I shall ever hold you. It seems like
wanting the whole world." He waved his hand at the sea.
"I could not endure to be less than the whole world," she quickly
answered.
"I could die with you now. Life can never again be so wonderful."
Then, suddenly, words were foolish, and he abruptly ceased.
The last light of a day, which to-night had lain very late upon the
water, had gone quite out. Hardly could they see each other; and missing
the lost message of their eyes they pressed closely together. The
beckoning window shone more brightly in the dark. Soon it put out land
and sky. It could not be avoided. Together they read and answered the
steady call. It put between them a growing distress.
"Kiss me, my husband, and let me go."
Her heart, as Peter took her in his arms, was beating like a creature
caught and held.
She almost disappeared into the dark as she went down; but he followed
her with his eyes, alert for every step of her passage. At last she had
reached the house, and soon Peter could see the light of her room waver
with her moving to and fro.
Only Miranda's window was shining now.
Then, with a swiftness that struck mortally at his heart, Miranda's
window also was dark, or so it seemed, for the light went down.
Peter spread his arms and stood full breathing for a moment, fighting
desperately with an unknown power. He had a swift vision of her
waiting. Then he went down the hill, and felt the earth like a carpet
spread for his marriage. He turned once only at the door to take, as he
felt, a last look at the stars. They seemed like a handful of dust he
had flung at the sky.