The sun had burned for some hours in the heavens, when bleeding with
thorns and on fire with nettles and stinking mayweed, I dragged myself
out of the undergrowth into a low-lying corner of the desolate garden.
Near by lay a pool of water under an old ruinous wall, swept by the
foliage of an ash. On a flat, shelving stone at its brink I knelt down,
bathed my face, and drank.
All that day I spent in the neighbourhood of the water, overhung with
the colourless trumpets of convolvulus. Occasionally I edged on, but
only to keep pace with the sunbeams, for I was deathly cold, and as soon
as shadow drew over me, fits of shivering returned. For some hours I
slept, but so shallowly that I heard my own voice gabbling in dreams.
When I awoke, the western sky was an ocean of saffron and gold. Amidst
its haze, stood up the distant clustered chimneys of Wanderslore: and I
realized I must be in an outlying hollow of the park--farthest from
Beechwood Hill. I sat up, bound back my hair, and, bathing my swollen
feet in the dark, ice-cold water, I watched the splendour fade.
While there was still light in the sky I set out for the cottage again,
but soon found myself in such distress amongst the tangled weeds and
grasses, which at every movement flung their stifling dust and seeds and
pollen over me, that I was compelled to give up the attempt. With
senseless tears dropping down my cheeks, I returned to the pool, and
made my bed in the withered bracken.
So passed the next days. When once more the cloudless heat of the sun
had diminished, I made another attempt to press back by the way I had
come, if only to look up at those windows again. But I was dazed and
exhausted; lost my way; and, keeping watch until daybreak, I returned
again to the pool. Sitting there, I tried to control my misery and be
calm. "Wait, wait; I am coming," was my one inarticulate thought.
Surely that other solitude must be the easier to bear. But it was in
vain. He was dead; and I had killed him--pride, vanity, greed,
obstinacy, lovelessness. Every flower and fading leaf bore witness
against me.
Now and again I quenched my thirst and rambled off a little way in
search of a few fallen hazel nuts and blackberries, and attempted to
ease the pain and distress I was in. But I knew in my heart that a few
such days must see the last of me, and I had no other desire. Evening
came with its faint stars. My mind at last seemed to empty itself of
thought; and until dark fell, a self sat at the windows of my eyes
gazing heedlessly out over that peace and beauty without consciousness
even of grief and despair. Nocturnal creatures began to stir in weed and
thicket; a thin mist to rise. For a while I kept watch until sense left
me, and I slept.
A waning misshapen moon hung over the garden when I awoke, my mind
still, clear, empty. So empty that I might but just have re-entered the
world after the lapse of ages. In this silvery hush of night, winged
shapes were wheeling around and above me, piercing the air with mad,
strident cries. With sight strangely sharpened and powerful, I gazed
tranquilly up, and supposed for a while these birds were swallows. Idly
I watched them, scarcely conscious whether they were real or creatures
of the imagination.
Darting, swooping in the mild blaze of the moonlight, with gaping beaks
and whirring wings, they swept, wavered, tumbled above their motionless
pastures; ghostly-fluttering, feathery-plumed moths their prey. At last,
a continuous churring, like the noise of a rattle, near at hand,
betrayed them. I lay in my solitude in the midst of a whirling flock of
nightjars, few in number, but beside themselves with joy, on the eve of
their autumnal flight.
I can only grope my way now through vague and baffling memories. Maybe
it was the frenzied excitement of these madly happy birds that shed
itself into my defenceless mind, after rousing me into the night I knew
too well. With full, vigilant eyes I am standing again a few paces from
the brink of the pool, looking up into a moonlit bush of deadly
nightshade, its noxious flowering over, and hung with its black,
gleaming, cherry-like fruit. I cannot recall having ever given a thought
to this poisonous plant in Wanderslore during my waking hours, though
in my old happy reconnoitrings of the garden I had sometimes chanced on
the coral-red clusters of the woody nightshade--the bittersweet, and had
afterwards seen it in blossom.
It may be that only a part of my mind was fully awake, while the rest
dreamed on. Yet, as I strive to return in imagination to that solitary
hour, I am certain that a complete realization was mine of the power
distilled into those alluring light-glossed berries; and, slave of my
drowsy senses, I fixed gaze and appetite on them as though, from
childhood up, they had been my one greed and desire. Even then, as if
for proof that they were real, my eyes wandered; recognized, low in the
west, glaring Altair amid the faint outspread wings of Aquila; pondered
on the spark-like radiance struck out by the moonbeams from the
fragments of tile that protruded here and there from the crumbling wall
beyond the pool; and softly returned once more to the evil bush.
Then, for an instant, I fancied that out of the nearer shadows a
half-seen form had stolen up close behind me, and was watching me. Fancy
or not, it caused me no fear. I turned about where I stood, and from
this gentle eminence scanned the immense autumnal garden with its
coursing night-birds and distant motionless woods. No; I was alone; by
my Self; conscious only of an unfathomable quiet; and I stooped and took
up one of the ripe fruits that had fallen to the ground. "Ah, ah!"
called a far-away voice within me. "Ah, ah! What are you at now?"--a
voice like none I had ever heard in the world until that moment. Yet I
raised the fruit to my lips.
Its bitter juices jetted out upon cheek, mouth, and tongue, for ever
staining me with their dye. Their very rancour shocked my body wide
awake. Struck suddenly through with frightful cold and terror, I flung
the vile thing down, and scoured my mouth with the draggled hem of my
skirt. "Oh God! oh God!" I cried; then turned, ran a few steps, tripped,
turned back and cast myself down, crushing my eyes with my hands; and in
helpless confusion began to pray.
Minutes, hours, passed--I know not. But at last, with throat parched and
swollen, and hands and cheeks and scalp throbbing with an unnatural
heat, I raised my eyes. Two moons were in the sky, hideously revolving
amid interwoven arcs of coloured light, and running backward and
forward. I called out in the silence. A gigantic nightjar swirled on me,
plucking at my hair. A maddening vertigo seized me. I went stumbling and
staggering down to my stone and drenched head and breast in the flashing
black and silver water.
It was a momentary refreshment, and in its influence memory began
droning of the past. Confused abhorrent images mocked my helpless
dreamings. There was a place--beyond--out of these shadows,
unattainable. A piercing, vindictive voice was calling me. No hope now.
I was damned. In senseless hallucination I began systematically,
laboriously, a frenzied search. Leaf, pebble, crawling
night-creature--with slow, animal-like care, I turned them over one by
one, seeking and seeking.