There was a Being whom my spirit oft
Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft,
In the clear golden prime of my youth’s dawn,
Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn,
Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves
Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves
Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor
Paved her light steps;—on an imagined shore
Under the grey beak of some promontory
She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,
That I beheld her not
_Epipsychidion_
One afternoon in late September he made his way alone across the hills.
Clouds blew thinly over a sky of watery blue, driven by an idle wind the
roses had left behind. It seemed a day strayed from out the summer that
now found itself, thrilled and a little confused, in the path of
autumn—and summer had sent forth this soft wind to bring it back to the
fold.
The ‘Crack’ was always near at hand on such a day, and Paul slipped in
without the least difficulty. He found himself in a valley of the Blue
Mountains hitherto unknown, and, so wandering, came presently to a bend
of the river where the sand stretched smooth and inviting.
For a moment he stopped to watch the slanting waves and listen, when to
his sudden amazement he saw upon the shore, half concealed by the reeds
near the bank—a human figure. A second glance showed him that it was the
figure of a young girl, lying there in the sun, her bare feet just
beyond reach of the waves, and her yellow hair strewn about the face so
as to screen it almost entirely from view. A white dress covered her
body; she was slim, he saw, as a child. She was asleep.
Paul stood and stared.
‘Shall I wake her?’ was his first thought. But his second thought was
truer: ‘Can I help waking her?’ And then a third came to him, subtle and
inexplicable, yet scarcely shaping itself in actual language: ‘Is she
after all _a stranger_?’
Flying memories, half-formed, half-caught, ran curiously through his
brain. What was it in the turn of the slender neck, in the lines of the
little mouth, just visible where he stood, that seemed familiar? Did he
not detect upon that graceful figure lying motionless in repose some
indefinable signature that recalled his outer life? Or was it merely
that fancy played tricks, and that he reconstructed a composite picture
from the galleries of memory, with the myriad expression and fugitive
magic of dream or picture—ideal figures he had conjured with in the past
and set alive in some inner frame of his deepest thoughts? He was
conscious of a delicious bewilderment. A singular emotion stirred in his
heart. Yet the face and figure he sought utterly evaded him.
Then, the first sharp instinct to turn aside passed. He accepted the
adventure. Stooping down for a stone, he flung it with a noisy splash
into the river. The girl opened her eyes, threw her hair back in a
cloud, and sat up.
At once a wave of invincible shyness descended upon Paul, rendering
words or action impossible; he felt ridiculously embarrassed, and sought
hurriedly in his mind for ways of escape. But, before any feasible plan
for undoing what was already done suggested itself, he became aware of a
very singular thing—the face of the girl was covered! He could not see
it clearly. Something, veil-like and misty, hung before it so that his
eyes could not focus properly upon the features. The recognition he had
half anticipated, therefore, did not come.
And this helped to restore his composure. It was, in any case, futile to
pretend he did not see her. For one thing, he realised that she was
staring at him just as hard as he was staring at her. The very next
instant she rose and came across the hot sand towards him, her hair
flying loose, and both hands outstretched by way of greeting. Again, the
half-recognition that refused to complete itself swept confusingly over
him.
But this spontaneous and unexpected action had an immediate effect upon
him of another kind. His embarrassment vanished. What she did seemed
altogether right and natural, and the beauty of the girl drove all minor
emotions from his mind. His whole being rose in a wave of unaffected
delight, and almost before he was aware of it, he had stepped forward
and caught both her hands in his own.
This strange golden happiness at first troubled his speech.
‘But surely I know you!’ he cried. ‘If only I could see your face——!’
‘You ought to know me,’ she replied at once with a laugh as of old
acquaintance, ‘for you have called for me often enough, I’m sure!’ Her
voice was soft; curiously familiar accents rang in it; yet, as with the
face, he knew not whose it was.
She looked up at him, and though he could not make out the features, he
discerned the expression they wore—an expression of peace and
confidence. The girl trusted him delightfully.
‘Then what hides you from me?’ he insisted.
She answered him so low that he hardly caught the words. Certainly, at
the moment he did not understand them, for happiness still confused him.
‘The body,’ she murmured; ‘the veil of the body.’
She returned the firm and equal pressure of his hands, and allowed him
to draw her close. Their faces approached, and he looked searchingly
down upon her, trying to pierce the veil in vain. The hot sunshine fell
in a blaze upon their uncovered heads. The next moment the girl raised
her lips to his, and almost before he knew it they had kissed.
Yet that kiss seemed the most natural thing in the world; at a stroke it
killed the last vestige of shyness. Youth ran in his veins like fire.
‘Now, tell me exactly who you are, please,’ he cried, standing back a
little for an inspection, but still holding her hands. They swung out at
arm’s length like children.
‘I think first you should tell me who you are,’ she laughed. ‘I want to
be a mystery a little longer. It’s so much more interesting!’
Leaning backwards with her hair tumbling down her neck, she looked at
him out of eyes that he half imagined, half knew. Laughter and
gentleness played over her like sunlight. Standing there, framed against
the reeds of the river bank, with the blue waters behind and the wind
and sky about her head, Paul thought that never till this moment had he
understood the whole magic of a woman’s beauty. Yet at the same time he
somehow divined that she was as much child as woman, and that something
of eternal youthfulness mingled exquisitely with her suggestion of
maturity.
‘Of course,’ he laughed in return, like a boy in mid-mischief, ‘that’s
your privilege, isn’t it? My name, then, is——’
But there he stuck fast. It seemed so foolish to give the name he owned
in that other tinsel world; it was merely a disguise like a frock-coat
or evening dress, or the absurd uniform he had once assumed to deceive
the children with. He almost felt ashamed of the name he was known by in
that world!
‘Well?’ she asked slyly, ‘and have you forgotten it quite?’
‘I’m the _Man who saw the Wind_, for one thing,’ he said at length;
‘and, after that, well—I suppose I’m the man who’s been looking for you
without knowing it all his life! Now do you know me?’ he concluded
triumphantly.
‘You foolish creature! Of course _I_ know you!’
She came closer; the sunshine and the odour of the flowers seemed to
come with her. ‘It’s _you_ who couldn’t find _me_! I’ve been waiting for
you to claim me ever since—either of us can remember.’
A queer, faint rush of memory rose upon him from the depths—and was
gone. For an instant it seemed that her face half cleared.
‘Then, in the name of beauty,’ he cried, starting forward, ‘why can’t I
see your face and eyes? Why do I only see you partly——?’
She hesitated an instant and drew back; she lowered her eyes—he felt
that—and the voice dropped very low again as she answered:
‘Because, as yet, you only know me—partly.’
‘As through a glass, darkly, you mean?’ he said, half grave, half
laughing.
The girl took both his hands and pressed them silently for a moment.
‘When you know me as I know you,’ she whispered softly, ‘then—we shall
know one another—see one another—face to face. But even now, in these
few minutes, you have come to know me better than you ever did before.
And that is something, isn’t it?’
She moved quite close, passing her hands down his bronzed cheeks and
shaking his head playfully as one might do to a loved child.
‘You take my breath away!’ gasped the delighted man, too bewildered in
his new happiness to let the strangeness of her words perplex him long.
‘But, tell me again,’ he added, slowly releasing himself, ‘how it is
that you know me so well? Tell me again and again!’
She replied demurely, standing before him like a teacher before a
backward pupil. ‘Because I have always watched, studied, and loved
you—from within yourself. It was not my fault that you failed to know me
when I spoke. Perhaps, even now, you would not have found me unless—in
certain ways—through the children—you had begun to come into your own——’
Paul interrupted her, taking her in his arms, while she made no effort
to escape, but only laughed. ‘And I’ll take good care I never lose you
again after this!’ he cried.
‘You know, I wasn’t really asleep just now on the sand,’ she told him a
little later. ‘I heard you coming all the time; only I wanted to see if
you would pass me by as you always did before.’
‘It’s very odd and very wonderful,’ he said, ‘but I never noticed you
till to-day.’
‘And very natural,’ she added under her breath, so low that he did not
hear.
And Paul, moving beside her, murmured in his beard, ‘If she’s not my
Ideal, set mysteriously somehow into the framework of one I already
love—I swear I don’t know who she is!’
They made their way along the sandy shores of the river, the waves
breaking at their feet, the wind singing among the reeds; never had the
sunlight seemed so brilliant, the day so wonderful and kind. All nature
helped them; playing their great game as if it was the only game worth
playing in the whole world—the game loved from one eternity to another.
‘So the children have told you about me, have they?’ he whispered into
the ear that came just level with his lips.
‘And all you love, as well. Your dreams and thoughts more than anything
else—especially your thoughts. You must be very careful with those; they
mould me; they make me what I am. If you didn’t think nicely of
me—verynicelyindeed——’
‘But I shall always think nicely, beautifully, of you,’ he broke in
eagerly, not noticing the familiar touch of language.
‘You have so far, at any rate,’ she replied, ‘for the yearning and
desire of your imagination have created me afresh.’ And he discerned the
smile upon her veiled face as one may see the sun only through troubled
glass, yet know its warmth and brilliance.
‘Then it is because you are part and parcel of my inner self that you
seem so real and intimate and—true?’ he asked passionately.
‘Of course. I am in your very blood; I beat in your heart; I understand
your every passion and emotion, because I am present at their birth. The
most fleeting of your dreams finds its reflection in me; your spirit’s
faintest aspiration runs through me like a trumpet call; and, now that
you have found me, we need never, we _can_ never, separate!’
The passion of her words broke over his heart like a wave. He felt
himself trembling.
‘But it is all so swift and wonderful that it makes me almost
afraid—afraid it cannot last,’ he objected, knowing all the time that
his words were but a common device to make his pleasure the more real.
‘If only, oh, if only I could carry you away with me into that outer
world——!’
She laughed deliciously in his face. ‘It is from that very “outer world”
that you have carried me _in here_,’ she told him softly, ‘for I am
always with you.’ And with the words came that fugitive trick of voice
and gesture that made him certain he knew her—then was gone again. ‘In
the house with your sister and the children,’ she continued; ‘when you
write your Aventures and your verses; in your daily round of duties,
small and great; and when you lie down at night—ah! especially then—I
curl up beside you in your heart, and fly with you through all your
funny dreamland, and wake your dear eyes with a kiss so soft you never
know it. In your early morning rambles, as in your reveries of the dusk,
I never leave you—because I cannot. All day long I am beside you, though
you little realise my presence. I share half your pleasures and all your
pains. And in return you hand over to me half that soul whose unuttered
prayers have thus created me afresh for your salvation.’
‘But it must be my own voice speaking,’ he cried inwardly, satisfied and
happy beyond belief. ‘It is the words of my own thoughts that I hear!’
‘Because I am your own thoughts speaking,’ she replied instantly, as
though he had uttered aloud. ‘I lie, you see, behind your inmost
thoughts!’
They walked through sunny meadows, picking their way among islands of
wild flowers. There was no sound but the murmur of wind and river, and
the singing of birds. Fleecy clouds, here and there in the blue, hung
cool and white, watching them. The whole world, Paul felt, listened
without shyness.
‘And so it is that you love me without shyness,’ she went on,
marvellously linking in with his thought; ‘I am intimate with you as
your own soul, and our relations are pure with the purity that was
before man. There can be no secrets between us, or possibility of
secrets, for your most hidden dreams are also mine. So mingled with your
ultimate being am I, in fact, that sometimes you dare not recognise me
as separate, and all that appears on the surface of your dear mind must
first filter through myself. Why!’ she cried, with a sudden rush of
mischievous laughter, ‘I even know what you are made of; why your queer
heart has never been able to satisfy itself—to “grow up,” as you call
it; and all about this endless desire you have to find God, which is
really nothing but the search to find your true inner Self.’
‘Tell me! tell me!’ he cried.
‘Besides the sun,’ she went on with a strange swiftness of words,
‘there’s the wind and the rain in you; yes, and moon and stars as well.
That’s why the fire and restlessness of the imagination for ever tear
you. No mere form of expression can ever satisfy _that_, but only
increase it; for it means your desire to know reality, to know beauty,
to know your own soul; to know—God! Your blood has kinship with those
tides that flow through all space, even to the gates of the stars; dawns
and sunsets, moonrise and meteors haunt your thoughts with their magic
lights; wild flowers of the fields and hillside nod beside you while you
sleep; and the winds, laughing and sighing, lift your dreams upon vast
wings and flash with them beyond the edges of the universe!’
‘Stop,’ he cried with passion, ‘you are telling all my secrets.’
‘I am telling them only to myself,’ she laughed, ‘and therefore to you.
For I know all the fevers of your soul. The wilderness calls you and the
great woods. You are haunted by the faces of the world’s forgotten
places. Your imagination plays with the lightning about the mountain
tops, and seeks primeval forests and the shores of desolate seas....’
Paul listened spellbound while she put some of the most intangible of
his fancies into the language of poetry. Yet she spoke with the quiet
simplicity of true things. The man felt his soul shake with delight to
hear her. Again and again, while she spoke, the feeling came to him that
in another moment her face must clear and he would know her; yet the
actual second of recognition never appeared. The girl’s true identity
continued to evade him. The enticing uncertainty added enormously to her
charm. It evoked in him even the sense of worship.
‘And this shall be the earnest of our ideal companionship,’ she
whispered, holding up a spray of leaves which she proceeded to fasten
into the buttonhole of his coat; ‘the symbol by which you shall always
know me—the sign of my presence in your heart.’
The top of her head, as she bent over the task, was on a level with his
lips, and when he stooped to kiss it the perfumes of the earth—flowers,
trees, wind, water—rose about her like a cloud. Her hair was hot with
sunshine, all silken with the air of summer. They were one being,
growing out of the earth that he loved—the old, magical, beautiful earth
that fed so great a part of his secret life from perennial springs.
As she drew away again from his caress he glanced down and saw that what
she had pinned into his coat was a little cluster of leaves from the
branch of a silver birch tree.
‘Then I, too, shall give you a sign,’ he said, ‘that shall mean the same
as yours.’ And he picked a twig of pine needles from a tree beside them
and twined it through a coil of her hair. Then, seizing her hands, he
swung her round in a dance till they fell upon the river bank at last,
tired out, and slept the sleep of children.
And after that, for a whole day it seemed, they wandered through this
summer landscape, following the river to its source in the mountains,
and then descending on the farther side to the shores of a blue-rimmed
sea.
‘There are the ships,’ she cried, pointing to the shining expanse of
water; ‘and, see, there is _our_ ship coming for us.’
And as she stood there, laughing with excitement like a child, a barque
with painted figure-head and brown sails yielding to the wind, came
towards them over the waves, the bales of fruit upon her decks scenting
the air, the smell of rope and tar and salty wood enticing them to
distance and adventure. Through the cordage the very sound of the wind
called to them to be off.
‘So at last we start upon our long, long voyage together,’ she said
mysteriously, blushing with pleasure, and leading him down towards the
ship.
‘And where are we to sail to?’ he asked; for the flap of the sails and
the waves beating against the sides made resistance impossible. The
sea-smells were in his nostrils. He glanced down at the veiled face
beside him.
‘First to the Islands of the Night,’ she whispered so low that not even
the wind could carry it away; ‘for there we shall be alone.’
‘And then——?’
‘And then to the Islands of Delight,’ she murmured more softly still;
‘for there we shall find the lost children of the world—_our_ children,
and so be happy with them ever after, like the people in the fairy
tales.’
With something like a shock he realised that some one else was walking
beside him, talking of things that were real in a very different sense.
He had been out walking longer than he knew, and had reached the house
again. The autumnal mist already drew its gauze curtains about the old
building. The smoke rose in straight lines from the chimneys, melting
into dusk. That other place of sunshine and flowers had faded—sea, ship,
islands, had all sunk beneath the depths within him. And this other
person had been saying things for some minutes....
‘I don’t believe you’ve been listening to a single word, Paul. You stand
there with your eyes fixed on vacancy, and only nod your head and
grunt.’
‘I assure you, Margaret, dear,’ he stammered, coming to the surface as
from a long swim under water, ‘I rarely miss anything you say. Only the
Crack came so very suddenly. You were saying that Dick’s niece was
coming to us—Joan—er—Thingumybob, and——’
‘So you heard some of it,’ she laughed quietly, relenting. ‘And I hope
the Crack you speak about is in your head, not in mine.’
‘It’s everywhere,’ he said with his grave humour. ‘That’s the trouble,
you see; one never knows——’ Then, seeing that she was looking anxiously
at the walls of the house and at the roof, he dropped his teasing and
came back to solid earth again. ‘And how soon do you expect her?’ he
asked in his most practical voice. ‘When does she arrive upon the
scene?’
‘Why, Paul, I’ve already told you twice! You really are getting more
absent-minded every day. Joan comes to-morrow, or the day after—she’s to
telegraph which—and stays here for as long as she can manage—a fortnight
or so, I expect. She works herself to death, I believe, in town with
those poor children, and I want her to get a real rest before she goes
back.’
‘Waifs, aren’t they?’ he asked, picking up the thread of the discourse
like a thing heard in a dream, ‘lost children of the slums?’
‘Yes. You’ll see them for yourself probably, as she has some of them
down usually for a day in the country. One can be of use in that way—and
it’s so nice to help. Dick, you know, was absorbed in the scheme. You
will help, won’t you, when the time comes?’
He promised; and they went in together to tea.