“But when we shall no longer be here to know it,” I made answer quickly, yet as calmly as I could, “and when we shall have passed to some other place—to other conditions—where we shall not recognise the joy and wonder. When barriers of mist shall have rolled between us—our love and passion so made-over that we shall not know each other”—the words rushed out feverishly, half beyond control—“and perhaps shall not even dare to speak to each other of our deep desire—”
I broke off abruptly, conscious that I was speaking out of some unfamiliar place where I floundered, helpless among strange conditions. I was saying things I hardly understood myself. Her bigger, deeper mood spoke through me, perhaps.
Her darling face came back again; she moved close within reach once more.
“Hush, hush!” she whispered, terror and love both battling in her eyes. “It is the truth, perhaps, but you must not say such things. To speak them brings them closer. A chain is about our hearts, a chain of fashioning lives without number, but do not seek to draw upon it with anxiety or fear. To do so can only cause the pain of wrong entanglement, and interrupt the natural running of the iron links.” And she placed her hand swiftly upon my mouth, as though divining that the bleak attack of anguish was again upon me with its throbbing rush of darkness.
But for once I was disobedient and resisted. the physical pain, I realised vividly, was linked closely with this spiritual torture. One caused the other somehow. the disordered brain received, though brokenly, some hints of darker and unusual knowledge. It had stammered forth in me, but through her it flowed easily and clear. I saw the change move more swiftly then across her face. Some ancient look passed into both her eyes.
And it was inevitable; I must speak out, regardless of mere bodily well-being.
“We shall have to face them some day,” I cried, although the effort hurt abominably, “then why not now?” And I drew her hand down and kissed it passionately over and over again. “We are not children, to hide our faces among shadows and pretend we are invisible. At least we have the Present—the Moment that is here and now. We stand side by side in the heart of this deep spring day. This sunshine and these flowers, this wind across the lake, this sky of blue and this singing of the birds—all, all are ours now. Let us use the moment that Time gives, and so strengthen the chain you speak of that shall bring us again together times without number. We shall then, perhaps, remember. Oh, my heart, think what that would mean—to remember!”
Exhaustion caught me, and I sank back among my cushions. But Marion rose up suddenly and stood beside me. And as she did so, another Sky dropped softly down upon us both, and I smelt again the incense of old, old gardens that brought long-forgotten perfumes, incredibly sweet, but with it an ache of far-off, passionate remembrance that was pain. This great ache of distance swept over me like a wave.
I know not what grand change then was wrought upon her beauty, so that I saw her defiant and erect, commanding Fate because she understood it. She towered over me, but it was her soul that towered. the rush of internal darkness in me blotted out all else. the familiar, present sky grew dim, the sunshine faded, the lake and flowers and poplars dipped away. Conditions a thousand times more vivid took their place. She stood out, clear and shining in the glory of an undressed soul, brave and confident with an eternal love that separation strengthened but could never, never change. the deep sadness I abruptly realised, was very little removed from joy—because, somehow, it was the condition of joy. I could not explain it more than that.
And her voice, when she spoke, was firm with a note of steel in it; intense, yet devoid of the wasting anger that passion brings. She was determined beyond Death itself, upon a foundation sure and lasting as the stars. the heart in her was calm, because she knew. She was magnificent.
“We are together—always,” she said, her voice rich with the knowledge of some unfathomable experience, “for separation is temporary merely, forging new links in the ancient chain of lives that binds our hearts eternally together.” She looked like one who has conquered the adversity Time brings, by accepting it. “You speak of the Present as though our souls were already fitted now to bid it stay, needing no further fashioning. Looking only to the Future, you forget our ample Past that has made us what we are. Yet our Past is here and now, beside us at this very moment. Into the hollow cups of weeks and months, of years and centuries, Time pours its flood beneath our eyes. Time is our schoolroom.… Are you so soon afraid? Does not separation achieve that which companionship never could accomplish? And how shall we dare eternity together if we cannot be strong in separation first?”
I listened while a flood of memories broke up through film upon film and layer upon layer that had long covered them.
“This Present that we seem to hold between our hands,” she went on in that earnest, distant voice, “is our moment of sweet remembrance that you speak of, of renewal, perhaps, too, of reconciliation—a fleeting instant when we may kiss again and say good-bye, but with strengthened hope and courage revived. But we may not stay together finally—wecannot—until long discipline and pain shall have perfected sympathy and schooled our love by searching, difficult tests, that it may last for ever.”
I stretched my arms out dumbly to take her in. Her face shone down upon me, bathed in an older, fiercer sunlight. the change in her seemed in an instant then complete. Some big, soft wind blew both of us ten thousand miles away. the centuries gathered us back together.
“Look, rather, to the Past,” she whispered grandly, “where first we knew the sweet opening of our love. Remember, if you can, how the pain and separation have made it so worth while to continue. And be braver thence.”
She turned her eyes more fully upon my own, so that their light persuaded me utterly away with her. An immense new happiness broke over me. I listened, and with the stirrings of an ampler courage. It seemed I followed her down an interminable vista of remembrance till I was happy with her among the flowers and fields of our earliest pre-existence.
Her voice came to me with the singing of birds and the hum of summer insects.
“Have you so soon forgotten,” she sighed, “when we knew together the perfume of the hanging Babylonian Gardens, or when the Hesperides were so soft to us in the dawn of the world? And do you not remember,” with a little rise of passion in her voice, “the sweet plantations of Chaldea, and how we tasted the odor of many a drooping flower in the gardens of Alcinous and Adonis, when the bees of olden time picked out the honey for our eating? It is the fragrance of those first hours we knew together that still lies in our hearts today, sweetening our love to this apparent suddenness. Hence comes the full, deep happiness we gather so easily Today.… the breast of every ancient forest is torn with storms and lightning…that’s why it is so soft and full of little gardens. You have forgotten too easily the glades of Lebanon, where we whispered our earliest secrets while the big winds drove their chariots down those earlier skies.…”
There rose an indescribable tempest of remembrance in my heart as I strove to bring the pictures into focus; but words failed me, and the hand I eagerly stretched out to touch her own, met only sunshine and the rain of apple blossoms.
“The myrrh and frankincense,” she continued in a sighing voice that seemed to come with the wind from invisible caverns in the sky, “the grapes and pomegranates—have they all passed from you, with the train of apes and peacocks, the tigers and the ibis, and the hordes of dark-faced slaves? And this little sun that plays so lightly here upon our woods of beech and pine—does it bring back nothing of the old-time scorching when the olive slopes, the figs and ripening cornfields heard our vows and watched our love mature?… Our spread encampment in the Desert—do not these sands upon our little beach revive its lonely majesty for you, and have you forgotten the gleaming towers of Semiramis…or, in Sardis, those strange lilies that first tempted our souls to their divine disclosure…?”
Conscious of a violent struggle between pain and joy, both too deep for me to un
derstand, I rose to seize her in my arms. But the effort dimmed the flying pictures. the wind that bore her voice down the stupendous vista fled back into the caverns whence it came. And the pain caught me in a vice of agony so searching that I could not move a muscle. My tongue lay dry against my lips. I could not frame a word of any sentence.…
Her voice presently came back to me, but fainter, like a whisper from the stars. the light dimmed everywhere; I saw no more the vivid, shining scenery she had summoned. A mournful dusk instead crept down upon the world she had momentarily revived.
“…we may not stay together,” I heard her little whisper, “until long discipline shall have perfected sympathy, and schooled our love to last. For this love of ours is for ever, and the pain that tries it is the furnace that fashions precious stones.…”
Again I stretched my arms out. Her face shone a moment longer in that forgotten fiercer sunlight, then faded very swiftly. the change, like a veil, passed over it. From the place of prodigious distance where she had been, she swept down towards me with such dizzy speed. As she was Today I saw her again, more and more.
“Pain and separation, then, are welcome,” I tried to stammer, “and we will desire them”—but my thought got no further into expression than the first two words. Aching blotted out coherent utterance.
She bent down very close against my face. Her fragrance was about my lips. But her voice ran off like a faint thrill of music, far, far away. I caught the final words, dying away as wind dies in high branches of a wood. And they reached me this time through the droning of bees and of waves that murmured close at hand upon the shore.
“…for our love is of the soul, and our souls are moulded in Eternity. It is not yet, it is not now, our perfect consummation. Nor shall our next time of meeting know it. We shall not even speak.… For I shall not be free.…” was what I heard. She paused.
“You mean we shall not know each other?” I cried, in an anguish of spirit that mastered the lesser physical pain.
I barely caught her answer:
“My discipline then will be in another’s keeping—yet only that I may come back to you…more perfect…in the end.…”
The bees and waves then cushioned her whisper with their humming. the trail of a deeper silence led them far away. the rush of temporary darkness passed and lifted. I opened my eyes. My love sat close beside me in the shadow of the poplars. One hand held both my own, while with the other she arranged my pillows and stroked my aching head. the world dropped back into a tiny scale once more.
“You have had the pain again,” Marion murmured anxiously, “but it is better now. It is passing.” She kissed my cheek. “You must come in.…”
But I would not let her go. I held her to me with all the strength that was in me. “I had it, but it’s gone again. An awful darkness came with it,” I whispered in the little ear that was so close against my mouth. “I’ve been dreaming,” I told her, as memory dipped away, “dreaming of you and me—together somewhere—in old gardens, or forests—where the sun was—”
But she would not let me finish. I think, in any case, I could not have said more, for thought evaded me, and any language of coherent description was in the same instant beyond my power. Exhaustion came upon me, that vile, compelling nausea with it.
“The sun here is too strong for you, dear love,” I heard her saying, “and you must rest more. We have been doing too much these last few days. You must have more repose.” She rose to help me move indoors.
“I have been unconscious then?” I asked, in the feeble whisper that was all I could manage.
“For a little while. You slept, while I watched over you.”
“But I was away from you! Oh, how could you let me sleep, when our time together is so short?”
She soothed me instantly in the way she knew we both loved so. I clung to her until she released herself again.
“Not away from me,” she smiled, “for I was with you in your dreaming.”
“Of course, of course you were”; but already I knew not exactly why I said it, nor caught the deep meaning that struggled up into my words from such unfathomable distance.
“Come,” she added, with her sweet authority again, “we must go in now. Give me your arm, and I will send out for the cushions. Lean on me. I am going to put you back to bed.”
“But I shall sleep again,” I said petulantly, “and we shall be separated.”
“We shall dream together,” she replied, as she helped me slowly and painfully towards the old grey walls of the château.
II
Half an hour later I slept deeply, peacefully, upon my bed in the big stately chamber where the roses watched beside the latticed windows.
And to say I dreamed again is not correct, for it can only be expressed by saying that I saw and knew. the figures round the bed were actual, and in life. Nothing could be more real than the whisper of the doctor’s voice—that solemn, grave-faced man who was so tall—as he said, sternly yet brokenly, to someone: “You must say good-bye; and you had better say it now.” Nor could anything be more definite and sure, more charged with the actuality of living, than the figure of Marion, as she stooped over me to obey the terrible command. For I saw her face float down towards me like a star, and a shower of pale spring blossoms rained upon me with her hair. the perfume of old, old gardens rose about me as she slipped to her knees beside the bed and kissed my lips—so softly it was like the breath of wind from lake and orchard, and so lingeringly it was as though the blossoms lay upon my mouth and grew into flowers that she planted there.
“Good-bye, my love; be brave. It is only separation.”
“It is death,” I tried to say, but could only feebly stir my lips against her own.
I drew her breath of flowers into my mouth…and there came then the darkness which is final.
* * * *
The voices grew louder. I heard a man struggling with an unfamiliar language. Turning restlessly, I opened my eyes—upon a little, stuffy room, with white walls whereon no pictures hung. It was very hot. A woman was standing beside the bed, and the bed was very short. I stretched, and my feet kicked against the boarding at the end.
“Yes, he is awake,” the woman said in French. “Will you come in? the doctor said you might see him when he woke. I think he’ll know you.” She spoke in French. I just knew enough to understand.
And of course I knew him. It was Haddon. I heard him thanking her for all her kindness, as he blundered in. His French, if anything, was worse than my own. I felt inclined to laugh. I did laugh.
“By Jove! old man, this is bad luck, isn’t it? You’ve had a narrow shave. This good lady telegraphed—”
“Have you got my ice-axe? Is it all right?” I asked. I remembered clearly the motor accident—everything.
“The ice-axe is right enough,” he laughed, looking cheerfully at the woman, “but what about yourself? Feel bad still? Any pain, I mean?”
“Oh, I feel all right,” I answered, searching for the pain of broken bones, but finding none. “What happened? I was stunned, I suppose?”
“Bit stunned, yes,” said Haddon. “You got a nasty knock on the head, it seems. the point of the axe ran into you, or something.”
“Was that all?”
He nodded. “But I’m afraid it’s knocked our climbing on the head. Shocking bad luck, isn’t it?”
“I telegraphed last night,” the kind woman was explaining.
“But I couldn’t get here till this morning,” Haddon said. “The telegram didn’t find me till midnight, you see.” And he turned to thank the woman in his voluble, dreadful French. She kept a little pension on the shores of the lake. It was the nearest house, and they had carried me in there and got the doctor to me all within the hour. It proved slight enough, apart from the shock. It was not even concussion. I had merely been stunned. Sleep had cured me, as it seemed.
“Jolly little place,” said Haddon, as he moved me that afternoon to Geneva, whence, after a few days’
rest, we went on into the Alps of Haute Savoie, “and lucky the old body was so kind and quick. Odd, wasn’t it?” He glanced at me.
Something in his voice betrayed he hid another thought. I saw nothing “odd” in it at all, only very tiresome.
“What’s its name?” I asked, taking a shot at a venture.
He hesitated a second. Haddon, the climber, was not skilled in the delicacies of tact.
“Don’t know its present name,” he answered, looking away from me across the lake, “but it stands on the site of an old château—destroyed a hundred years ago—the Château de Bellerive.”
And then I understood my old friend’s absurd confusion. For Bellerive chanced also to be the name of a married woman I knew in Scotland—at least, it was her maiden name, and she was of French extraction.
ACCESSORY BEFORE THE FACT
At the moorland crossroads Martin stood examining the signpost for several minutes in some bewilderment. the names on the four arms were not what he expected, distances were not given, and his map, he concluded with impatience, must be hopelessly out of date. Spreading it against the post, he stooped to study it more closely. the wind blew the corners flapping against his face.
The small print was almost indecipherable in the fading light. It appeared, however—as well as he could make out—that two miles back he must have taken the wrong turning.
He remembered that turning. the path had looked inviting; he had hesitated a moment, then followed it, caught by the usual lure of walkers that it “might prove a short cut.” the short-cut snare is old as human nature. For some minutes he studied the signpost and the map alternately.
Dusk was falling, and his knapsack had grown heavy. He could not make the two guides tally, however, and a feeling of uncertainty crept over his mind. He felt oddly baffled, frustrated. His thought grew thick. Decision was most difficult. “I’m muddled,” he thought; “I must be tired,” as at length he chose the most likely arm. “Sooner or later it will bring me to an inn, though not the one I intended.” He accepted his walker’s luck, and started briskly. the arm read, “Over Litacy Hill” in small, fine letters that danced and shifted every time he looked at them; but the name was not discoverable on the map. It was, however, inviting like the short cut. A similar impulse again directed his choice. Only this time it seemed more insistent, almost urgent.
The First Algernon Blackwood Megapack Page 143