I feel, I see
Those eyes which burn through smiles that fade in tears,
Like stars half quenched in mists of silver dew.
_Prometheus Unbound._
The readjustment of self—the renewal—that follows upon great bereavement
having thus been faced courageously, Paul threw himself into his work
with energy. Every Friday night he came down to the house under the
hill, and every Monday morning he returned to London. But the details of
the work, beyond the fact that their fulfilment blessed both himself and
those for whom he laboured, are not essential to the story of what
followed. For the history of Paul’s education is more than anything else
a history of Aventures of the inner life. Outwardly, his existence was
quiet and uneventful.
Almost immediately with the disappearance of his little friend, for
instance, he discovered that the region through the Crack—the land
betweenyesserdayandtomorrow—became more real, more extraordinarily real,
than ever before. The entrances now seemed everywhere and always close;
it was the ways of exit that were difficult to find. He lived in it.
Even in London he moved among those fields of flowers, and the winter
gloom that depressed the majority only enhanced the bright sunshine that
lay about his path. His thoughts were continually following the windings
of the river to the far horizon; and the horizon, too, was wider, more
enticing and mysterious, more suggestive than ever of that blue sea
beyond where he had sailed with that other Companion.
The land became mapped out and known with an intimacy that must seem
little short of marvellous to those who have never even dreamed of the
existence of so fair a country. For, the truth was, his Companion, who
was now his guide and leader, had suddenly revealed herself.
It came about a few days after the funeral—when the emptiness and hush
of sorrow that lay over the house found its exact spiritual
correspondence in the silence and sense of desolation that filled his
own heart. He was in his bedroom, battling with that loneliness in
loneliness which at the first had threatened to overwhelm him. He had
just left his sister’s side, having soothed her with what comfort he
could into the sleep of weariness and exhaustion. By the open window, as
so often before, he stood, staring into the damp winter night. Smoke
moved restlessly to and fro behind him, sometimes sitting down to wash,
sometimes jumping on the bed and sofa as though to search for something
it could never find. Mrs. Tompkyns, who had scratched at the door a few
minutes before, for the first time in her life, and for reasons known to
none but herself and her black companion, lay at last curled up before
the fire.
The room was filled with a soft presence, once silvery and fragrant, but
now draped with the newly woven shadows that rendered it invisible. The
invasion was irresistible. His heart ached. He knew quite well that his
own soul, too, was being measured for its garment of shadow—garment
that, unlike ordinary clothes, fits better and closer with every year.
He was in that dangerous mood when such measurements are made only too
easily, and the lassitude of grief accepts the trying-on with a kind of
soft, almost pleasurable, acquiescence—when, sharply and suddenly, a
sound was audible outside the window that instantly galvanised him into
a state of resistance. The night, hitherto still as the grave, sighed in
response to a rising wind. And through his being at the same moment ran
the answering little Wind of Inspiration some one had taught him to find
always when he sought it.
And the sound brought comfort. It was as though an invisible hand had
reached down inside him and touched the source of joy!
Paul turned quickly. Mrs. Tompkyns was awake on the mat. Smoke rubbed
against his legs. On the table, where he had spread them a few minutes
before, were the black tie, the mended socks, the unused bottle for
nettle stings and scratches, and beside them the faded spray of birch
leaves, now withered and shrivelled. And, as he looked, the wind entered
the room behind him, and he saw that the brown branch turned half over
towards him. It rattled faintly as it moved. He was just in time to
rescue it from Smoke, who saw in the sound and movement an invitation to
play. He pinned it out of reach upon the wall over the mantelpiece.
And it was just as he finished, that this sound of wind sighing through
the dripping and leafless trees outside was followed by another
sound—one that he recognised.... There was a rush and a leap, a swift,
whistling roar—and the next second he found himself among the sunny
fields of flowers that he knew, and heard the water lapping at his
feet ... through the Crack!
‘Everybody’s thin _somewhere_,’ was what he almost expected to hear; but
what he did hear was another sentence, followed by merry and delicious
laughter: ‘Everybody can be happy somewhere!’
And close in front of him, rising, it seemed, out of the reeds and waves
and yellow sands, stood—that veiled Companion whom he knew to be a part
of himself.
She was turned away from him so that he could not see her face, yet he
instantly divined a movement of her whole body towards him. Something
within himself rushed out to meet her half-way. His life stirred
mightily. The thrill of discovery came close. The next second his arms
were about her and she was looking straight into his eyes.
But her own eyes were no longer veiled; her laughing face was clear as
the day; the figure that he held so close was Nixie, child and woman. If
ever it can be possible for two beings to melt into one, it was possible
then. Each possessed the other; each slipped into the other.
‘Face to face at last!’ he heard himself cry. ‘Bless your little fairy
heart! Why in the world didn’t I guess you sooner?’
A flame of happiness sped through him, and grief ran away utterly. The
sense of loss that had numbed his soul vanished. And when she only
answered him by the old mischievous laughter, he asked again: ‘But how
did you disguise yourself so well—your voice, and everything——? Even if
your face _was_ veiled I ought to have recognised you! It’s too
wonderful!’
‘It was you who disguised me!’ she replied, standing up close in front
of him, and playing with his waistcoat buttons as of old. ‘Your thoughts
about me got twisted—sometimes. You thought too much. You should have
_felt_ only.’
‘They never shall again,’ he exclaimed.
‘They never can. We are face to face now.’
Paul turned to look again more closely. He saw her with extraordinary
detail and vividness. It was indeed Nixie, but Nixie exactly as he had
always wanted her, without quite knowing it himself; at least, without
acknowledging it. No gulf of age was there to separate them now. She was
the perfect Companion, for he had made her so. He smoothed her hair as
they turned to walk by the river, and he caught the old childish perfume
of it as it spread untidily over his shoulder, her eyes like dropped
stars shining through it.
‘Isn’t it awfully jolly?’ she whispered: ‘we can have twice as many
aventures now, and you can go on writing them for Jonah and Toby just
the same as before, only faster.’
He felt her hand steal into his; his heart became most strangely merged
with hers. He had known a similar experience in Canadian forests, when
the beauty of Nature had sometimes caught him up till he scarcely felt
himself distinct enough from it to realise that he was separate. He now
knew himself as close to her as that. It was exquisite and yet so simple
that a little child might have felt it—without perplexity. Perhaps it
was precisely what children always _did_ feel towards what they loved,
animate or inanimate.
‘But how is it you can come so close?’ he asked, though he fancied that
he thought, rather than spoke, the question.
‘Because, in the important sense, you are still a child,’ he caught the
answer, ‘and always have been, and always will be.’
The whole world belonged to him. In the midst of the sea of sorrow he
had discovered the little island of happiness.
‘We never can lose each other—_now_!’ he said.
‘As long as you think about me,’ she answered. ‘Please always think
hard, veryhardindeed thoughts. Through the Crack you can find everything
that’s lost——.’
‘And we’re through the Crack now.’
‘Rather!’
* * * * *