I stayed in the house all the evening, but I could not read, and so I
sat down to write to Katherine. I wrote for more than an hour, though I
was very doubtful whether, in the end, I should post my letter. It was
the first time in my life I had ever written to anybody. Of course I
cannot remember now what I said: I can remember the sense of it, or the
nonsense, possibly, but not how I expressed it. Very badly, I suppose,
for I tore my first attempt up, and began another, over which I must
have spent an even longer time, since, to finish it, I was obliged to
get up and light the lamp. When I went out to the post it was quite
dark, and immediately after I had dropped my letter in the box I had a
strong desire to get it back again. Why had I been in such a hurry? I
should have kept it till morning. Then, as I pictured Katherine reading
it, a thrill of pleasure swept through my timidity.
I did not go home, but strolled, instead, over the golf-links in the
direction of the sea. At such an hour they were absolutely deserted,
and the pale sand-hills, stretching away in the moonlight and beside
a dark waste of water, wore an unfamiliar, a slightly weird aspect,
suggestive of some desolate lunar landscape. I wandered on, utterly
oblivious to time, till I found a comfortable spot between two of these
hills, on a gentle slope that was almost like a couch. I was filled
with a passionate sense of life, and lying there, with the long thin
sapless grass about me and above me, and the soft white powdery sand
beneath, I could look out over the sea, and feel myself perfectly
alone. The water was a dark mass under the moon, darker than the beach,
darker than the sky, but not so dark as the Mourne Mountains, which
rose away on my left in smooth, bold, black curves.
There was no wind. Down in the hollow where I lay I was as sheltered
as I should have been in bed. The night was washed through with the
soft sound of the waves as they splashed in a long curving line on
the flat strand that stretched on round to Dundrum, three miles away.
Moths hovered above me with a beating of pale delicate wings; and all
around, like a vast background for the sound of the sea, was the deep,
rich, summer silence of the slumbering world, a silence of unending
music, as though the great, living earth were breathing softly in its
sleep. I lay on my back, and above me was the vast, deep vault of the
sky, full of a floating darkness, in which the white moon hovered like
a ghost. And I lay there in luxurious enjoyment of the night, and of
the life that was running through my own body. It seemed to me at that
moment as if my spirit were no longer merely passively receptive of
what was borne in upon it, but that it had actually taken wing, had
grown lighter, more volatile, were flowing out through the surrounding
atmosphere, through the sky and the sea, were moving with the movement
of the water. The earth beneath me was living and breathing, and,
obedient to some obscure prompting of my body, I turned round and
pressed my mouth against the dry grass, closer and closer, in a long
silent embrace.
It was very well there was no one to observe this exhibition of
primitive and eternal instinct. I felt a passionate happiness and
excitement. My head was bare, the salt sharp smell of the sea seemed
to have set all my nerves tingling, and I unfastened my shirt that
my breast might be bare also. All the past had slipped from me, and I
lived in this moment, squeezing out its ecstasy to the last drop, as I
might the juice of some ripe fruit. It seemed to me that I was on the
brink of finding something for which all my previous existence had been
but one long preparation and search. I was fumbling at the door of an
enchanted garden: in a moment it would swing open: already the perfume
of unknown flowers and fruits was in my nostrils. My feeling was deep
and pure and clear as a forest pool. In my mind I went over the story
of Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis.” I thought of the shepherd-boy
Endymion. I imagined myself Endymion, as I lay there half naked in the
moonlight. My eyes dimmed and the blood raced through my veins; it was
as if the heart of the summer had suddenly opened out, like a gorgeous
flower, and brought me some strange rapture....
* * * * *
When I awakened to more commonplace things I knew that it was very late
indeed. I wondered what had possessed me, and what story I should tell
my father standing there in the hall, holding up a candle, looking at
me before he turned round to fasten the chain. I raced home to the
fulfilment of this vision, but it was already past midnight, and my
father would not listen to my excuses. He was very angry indeed, but
his anger could not come between me and my happiness. I listened to
it in a kind of dream, and as soon as a pause came, slipped away from
it and on upstairs. In the dark, as I undressed, the delicate scent
of heather still clinging to my clothes filled the small bedroom,
and seemed to bring the whole day back to me from the beginning.
Comfortably between the cool sheets I went over every incident of
it, while the scent of heather still floated about me; and now I had
acquired an extraordinary bravery; I gave utterance to every thought
arising in my mind; the embrace which had been so impossible was
perfectly easy. One by one exquisite pictures drifted in through the
windows of my closed eyes; one by one they opened out before me, like
flowers, full of delicious sweetness, and in the midst of them I fell
asleep.
But my sleep was only a completer realization of my waking thoughts. I
was again with Katherine, and again we were alone on the mountain-side.
We were coming home and I was a little behind her, when she stooped
to gather a handful of heather. But instead of fastening it into her
dress she turned and flung it at me, and then ran on down the hill.
I followed quickly, and all at once she stopped running and we stood
there, hot and panting and laughing. Then she impulsively lifted her
face, and I kissed her. I held her close to me and kissed her again and
again.... And the scent of heather floated about my bed, the heather of
reality mingling with the heather of my dream.