On a fallen stone, under the shelter of a rough, loosely-piled wall,
Graham sat. All around him the landscape stretched, field after field,
bleak and bare in the cold wintry light of a February afternoon,
while dark heavy clouds blew like puffs of smoke across the dull grey
sky. From time to time a passing breath of wind shivered through the
dry grass, and from time to time a pale yellowish light, like a dim
reflection of some wan remote sunshine, washed through the clouds,
brightening the country for a few moments. The boy’s chin was supported
between his hands, and he gazed out across the monotonous fields and
naked hedges, listlessly, a little sadly, thinking of home, of the
past. He felt tired; there was a dampness, a heaviness, in the air,
which weighed upon his spirit; and something of his dejection was
visible in the mere drooping of his head.
He had passed from the golden quiet of his home into the midst of a
large public school, into a busier, noisier world, where the real and
the ideal no longer melted into a single dreamy haze; and when he
looked back across the narrow stream of time――those few intervening
weeks!――he could not but marvel at its depth. His former life had
fallen from him like the sinking of a picture in the fire, and he knew
that it would never come again. It was over!... finished!... done
with!... How strange!... Yet when he closed his eyes it unrolled itself
like a broad scroll, clear in every detail.... Then, when the voice of
water, and the whisper of the wind in the trees and in the grass had
been for him almost as the sound of human voices, and the broad open
sky and sea as the sight of human faces――then, when such things had
seemed to have the power to speak to him directly, to speak from their
own soul to his――when Pan and his followers had been in every thicket
by the way! Ah! gazing back upon it all from his present position, he
found time to wonder――to wonder gravely, doubtfully――if that clear,
pure atmosphere would ever again droop its wings above him, if things
would ever be again, even for a little, as before. Those long, peaceful
summer days, and cool, lingering evenings, when he had sat upon the
steps beside his father, watching him smoke his pipe, and chattering to
him of the different ideas and plans that danced, or lingered in his
mind, while the trees seemed to rest so softly in the quiet air, so
softly against the sky!... A sudden wild longing for it all, for all
his old life, arose within him, and in a passion of homesickness he
flung himself down in the swaying, sapless grass, and seemed to hear
the moaning of a sea that was breaking, miles and miles away, upon a
curved rocky shore, to hear the harsh screams of the sea-gulls as they
flew restlessly over the grey bare waste of water, and dipped to the
tumbling waves.
All at once he was aroused by a foot-fall, a rustle in the grass, and
still half-blinded by his dream, turned to face the intruder.
‘What is the matter? Can I help you at all?’
The words were very gently spoken, and came to Graham with a curious
familiarity and charm. But instead of answering he sat quite still,
gazing fixedly at the stranger, his colour gradually deepening.
Fascinated, spell-bound, his lips parted, his eyes opened wide, he
hardly dared to move lest the vision should vanish. For some moments
indeed he scarce drew his breath; for some moments it seemed as though
his whole vital force were concentrated into one long steadfast gaze.
He who stood before him, nevertheless, was but a boy of about his own
age and height, though more slightly built. For Graham, however, he
was beautiful as an angel――was, in truth, a kind of angel, a ‘son of
the morning.’ His skin――contrasting with the broad linen collar he
wore――was of that dark, olive-brown hue which the Greeks, in their own
boys, believed to be indicative of courage; his eyes were blue and dark
and clear, his nose straight, his mouth extraordinarily fine, delicate;
his dark hair, soft and silky, falling in a single great wave over his
shapely forehead.
‘Who are you?’ Graham faltered.
The boy began to blush a little――then to smile. ‘My name is
Brocklehurst――Harold Brocklehurst.... Why do you look at me so
strangely?’
His question made Graham suddenly conscious of his rudeness, and
also of the childishness, the impossibility of the idea that had
floated into his mind. ‘I did not mean to,’ he stammered, covered with
confusion. ‘I beg your pardon.’ Then, with his eyes lowered: ‘You
remind me very much of some one I know.... It is rather queer ... and
... and you took me by surprise.... I was so unprepared.’
‘Unprepared!’
‘Yes.... I was thinking of him――of the other――when you came up.... You
don’t understand, of course. It is the extraordinary likeness――and it
_is_ extraordinary’――he could not help looking at the boy again.
‘But likeness to whom?’ Brocklehurst wondered. ‘And why should it
startle you?’
‘Ah, to whom?’ Graham echoed enigmatically. His strange fancy still
hung there in the air before him, hung about his interlocutor like a
light, like a blaze of dazzling sunlight. ‘I don’t know,’ he softly
added.
‘You don’t know!’ Brocklehurst paused, just a little taken aback. Then
as he noticed the other’s seriousness he began to laugh. ‘Aren’t you a
rather queer fellow?’ he suggested with a kind of charming easiness.
‘We are both a little queer,’ Graham answered. ‘At least ... I beg your
pardon――――’
‘Oh, it’s all right.’
‘You see――you see I have known you for so long that――that――――’ His
explanation, whatever it might have been, died away.
‘You mean you have _really_ known me. Then you must have met me
somewhere before to-day!’ He tried to recall the occasion, but without
success.
‘It was not here,’ Graham went on slowly, gravely. ‘I――I can’t tell
you.’ He looked with a wistful, questioning helplessness into his
companion’s face. ‘If I were to tell you, should you laugh?’
‘I don’t know. At any rate you _want_ to tell me?’
‘Yes, I want to.’
‘Well, fire away then.’
‘It is something that is rather hard for me to say.... It will make
you think me so childish, so silly.... You see you couldn’t very well
believe it unless――unless you yourself were to remember, just as I
do――unless it were true――――’
Brocklehurst glanced at him quickly. ‘Remember having seen _you_
somewhere? But I may easily have forgotten. As a matter of fact I have
forgotten――so now.’
‘Yes――so now.... But I know you, for all that――the sound of your voice
even, the way you speak and stand there.’
‘I only came back this morning. I do not think you were here before
Christmas.’
Graham shook his head. ‘It was not here,’ he murmured. Then suddenly
gathering courage, and with his eyes half closed: ‘It was far away
... in a garden.... Oh, I can’t tell you ... I can’t, unless you
help me.... It slips from me so quickly.... When I try to reach
it, it fades from me, though I know it is still there ... there,
somewhere’――he smiled a little timidly. ‘Do you wonder what I am
talking about?... I am only trying to remember a dream――a dream I have
had so often.’
‘And _I_ have something to do with it?’
‘Oh yes; everything’――he spoke quietly, simply. ‘You were always there,
you know. It belongs to you as much as it belongs to me. You have been
meeting me there for years!’
There was that in his voice which made Brocklehurst, with exquisite
tact, look carefully away from him. ‘I don’t quite follow you,’ he said
softly. ‘I don’t think I quite know what you mean.’
‘My meaning is only that,’ Graham replied; ‘only what I have just told
you.’ He paused as if trying to make it out more clearly for himself.
‘Don’t _you_ sometimes dream?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Well! has it never seemed to you that there must be another world than
this we are living in now?――a world outside this, I mean, but still a
real world?’
‘A dreamland?’
‘Call it what you like. Yes――a dreamland. But while we are there, you
know, _it_ is the real world, there is no other.’
Brocklehurst looked at him curiously. ‘But you don’t believe that, do
you?’
‘Yes, I believe it――or I used to believe it. There is something about
it in the _Theætetus_ of Plato.’
‘You have read Plato?’
‘Only a little. I used to read him with my father.’
‘And that is where you got your idea?’
‘Oh no; I have always had it. It has been like a part of my life....
You see my dreams are rather peculiar ... I go back in them always to
the same place――this garden――and I carry the memory of one life with me
into the other.... Do you understand now? I can’t put it any plainer,
because I am a little confused myself. Some day it may become clearer,
and I may be able to tell you better.’
‘Well!――till then――――’ and Brocklehurst drew himself up on to the wall
and drummed with his heels against the stones.
‘Till then?’
‘Do you talk in this way to every one?’
‘You mean I had better not? How should I talk to other people, when
even you do not understand me?’
The other boy was silent. He was thinking. ‘What was I like?’ he asked
presently――‘in your dreams, I mean?’ Then quickly, and before his
companion could reply, ‘No; you need not tell me.’
‘You do not care for me to talk to you in this way?’ Graham questioned
half sadly, and with a strange feeling of loneliness creeping over him.
‘You were beautiful,’ he whispered under his breath; ‘more beautiful
than any one I have ever seen.’
A long silence followed. If Brocklehurst were surprised by his new
friend’s last words, he at least showed nothing. The wind stirred
faintly above their heads, and a flock of rooks flew homeward across
the grey sky. It was already getting late. The world seemed to have
floated into a clinging frosty haze, through which a golden moon
gleamed, rising slowly up above the bare, desolate fields.
‘We had better be going back,’ Brocklehurst said. ‘It is getting dark.’
They walked slowly toward the school through the gathering dusk. To
feel his companion close beside him, and to be alone with him like
this, gave Graham an exquisite pleasure. If only he could be brave
enough to put his hand upon his shoulder! All the way home he kept
telling himself he would do so when they reached such and such a point
in the road; but each time a curious shyness deterred him, each time
his courage failed him; and when they at last reached the school,
and his opportunity was gone, he felt as if he had allowed something
precious and unrecoverable to slip away for ever.