by Lucas Malet
X
As he pulled the edge of the heavy, leather-lined curtain towards him,Laurence laughed a little, in part at his own eagerness, in part defiantof scruples. Waking in the small hours, as a baby-child, he had oftenimagined that, could he climb the high rails of his cot and steal backunperceived to the day-nursery, he would find all his toys alive andstirring, at play on their own account. And this conception of thereversal of the natural order of things, while it frightened him, yetenchanted his fancy. Something of that childish alarm and enchantmentarose in him now. He felt about to bid farewell to common-sense,possibly--to usual established habits of thought, assuredly. He wasabout to commit himself to an untried element; offering himself as sportto seas unsounded as yet, to unknown forces which might prove malign andmerciless. While the promise, by which he had so lately bound himself,introduced into the coming experience an element of secrecy thatmade--as enforced secrecy so often does make--for a rather dangerousdegree of personal liberty.
So he turned the door-handle not without expectation. And this timeexpectation suffered no disappointment. In front of the tall, satin-woodescritoire, her back towards him, her delicate hands wandering anxiouslyover the painted and polished surface, he beheld once more the slender,rose-clad figure.
Laurence drew in his breath with a sigh of satisfaction. He crossed theroom boldly to-night and stood beside her; and her pale, etherealloveliness entranced him as he spoke.
"Listen to me," he said. "We are strangers to one another--so strangelystrangers that I half distrust the evidence of my senses, as, only tooconceivably, you distrust the evidence of yours. I don't pretend tounderstand what distance of time, or space, or conditions, separates us.I only know that I see you, and that you are unhappy, and that yousearch for something you are unable to find.--Look here, lookhere--listen to me and try to lay hold of this idea--that I am a friend,not an enemy; that I come to help, not to hinder you. Try to enter intosome sort of relation with me. Try to cross the gulf which seems to liebetween us. Try to believe that you have found some one who will keepfaith with you, and do his best to serve you; and believing that, putsorrow out of your face--"
He stopped suddenly. When he began speaking he might have beenaddressing a sleep-walker or a person in a trance. There was nospeculation in her sweet eyes. They were wild with a wondering distress,looking on him as though not seeing him. But as he continued to pleadwith her--speaking slowly, pausing at the close of each sentence in thehope that the sense of his words might so reach and arrest her--agradual change came over her aspect, as of one awakening from prolongedand troubled slumber. There was a dawning of intelligence in herexpression, as in that of a little child first struggling to apprehendand measure, not by means of its senses merely, but in obedience to theconscious effort of its mind. The drooping corners of the mouthstraightened, turned upward, the lips breaking into a timid, questioningsmile. She stretched herself a little, clenched her fists gently, rubbedher eyes with them in innocent, baby fashion, stretched again, and thenlooked full at Laurence--a woman shy, diffident, but in possession ofher faculties, expectant, and alive.
"Yes--yes--there, that's right. Now you look, as you used to, look asyou should," he exclaimed, his voice low, shaken with very vitalexcitement. He felt as when--once or twice--bringing a racing yacht into the finish, a fair spread of blue water between her stern and hercompetitor's bows, he had felt her pace quicken while the tillerthrobbed and danced under his hand. A buoyancy of heart, a deliciousconviction of successful attainment was upon him. Sportsman and poetalike rejoiced in Laurence just then, and the spiritual side of hisnature was touched as well. He seemed to have witnessed a gladresurrection, enforcing belief in the immortality of the soul, as hegazed on this lovely face in which reason, hope, even gaiety, were sovisibly born anew.
"Never mind about that which you have lost," he said. "Let it be for thepresent. We will arrive at it in time sure enough--leave all that to me.You want these drawers opened, their locks picked?--Well, that shall bedone all in good time. But whatever treasures we find there will be buta trifle, it strikes me, compared with that which we have already foundto-night. For I have found you--found you once more--and you, thank God,have found yourself."
Again his companion stretched, and passed her hands across her eyes,while her lips parted in a soundless sigh. Silence held her yet, butthat appeared to make singularly little difference in their intercourse.For he perceived that she understood, that she sympathised, that she toowas penetrated with quick, intimate joy, and an exquisite and innocentgood-fellowship, as plainly as though a very torrent of eloquentexplanation and asseveration had issued from her mouth. Indeed, thiswordlessness had for him an extraordinary charm. Far from a power beinglacking, it was to him as though a new power had been granted, and thatthe most subtle and convincing to the heart.
Laurence stood tall, upright, in the full pride of his young manhood, ofhis virile energy and strength, before this slender fairy-lady, with hersoftly gleaming jewels, her dainty frills and laces, her clingingrose-red, old-world, silken gown, and held out his hands to her.
"Come," he said, "the night is fair and windless and full of stars.Shall we go out into it and read the great poem of the sky and thewoodland while all men sleep, you and I--good comrades, old friends,though as most mortals count meeting, we have met each other, it wouldseem, but twice?--You have known sad things. Well, forget them. You havesearched vainly for lost things. Well, forget them too. The finest houseat best remains somewhat of a prison, and this room is pervaded bymelancholy memories. Leave it. Let us give the past, give convention,give reason even, the slip for once--and go."
For a minute or more she hesitated, looking at Laurence profoundly, asthough trying to read his inmost thought. Then she laid her hand in his.It had neither weight nor substance, but touched his palm as a lightsummer wind might have touched his cheek, or a butterfly's wings mighthave fluttered, with a just perceptible pulsation, within the hollow ofhis hands.
And so Laurence threw open the high French window, and together theypassed out onto the grey, semicircular flight of steps. Immediatelybelow lay the Italian garden--its formal flower-borders, its faintlydripping fountains, its black, spire-like cypresses, white balustradesand statues, vague, mysterious, in the starlight. The great lawnsstretched away beyond, crossed by the broad gravel walk, which showedpale for some fifty yards, and then was lost in the dusky shadow of thegrove of lime-trees. In the north was a wide, white lighttravelling--since the March nights now grew short--along the horizon,through the quiet hours, from the last death-flush of sunset to thefirst birth-flush of the dawn.
Lawrence watched his companion anxiously as her little feet in theirdiamond-powdered slippers crossed the window-sill. With that impalpablehand in his, that scarcely perceptible flutter--as of a captivebutterfly--against his fingers, he could not but entertain fears thatthe strong open air might work some change in her; that she might bedrawn up and absorbed by the sharp, glittering starlight; that shemight be resolved into nothingness by the keen breath of the night, orthat some sturdy sea-breeze might arise and blow her quite away. Butsuch as she was--woman, or sprite, or visitant from beyond the gates ofthe grave--she remained by his side. And together they passed down thegarden alleys, and lingered by the dripping fountains watching thesleepless fish that moved--silent as the dainty lady herself--throughthe water of the lichen-encrusted, stone basins. They stood togetherbeneath the dark cypresses which, even on winter nights, smell dry andwarm of the south, and talk in husky, whispering accents of classiclands--of marble columns mellow with age, and saffron-plastered walls,over which great vines hang, and in the hot cracks of which scorpionsbreed, and light-footed lizards glance and scamper. And, still together,they went on--the unspoken sympathy between them growing,deepening--down the second flight of steps and along the broad,gravelled way. Here, in the open space, the whole panorama of theheavens was disclosed; and then, almost in spite of himself, Laurencebroke into utterance. He talked, as never, even in h
is most brilliantmoments, he had talked before. The scene was so majestic, and moreoverhe had so perfect a listener, every movement of whose graceful body,every glance of whose profound and gentle eyes expressed comprehension,accord--as when the violin strings answer, in exquisite melody, to theskilfully handled bow.
And so forgetting himself, ceasing to exercise thatreticence--half-humorous, half-reverent--with which, as with a cloak,modern, civilised man strives to hide the noblest and purest of histhought, Laurence laid bare his heart and soul to his sweet companion.He told her tender, trivial incidents of his youth and childhood--inthemselves of little moment, yet such as leave an indelible mark on theimagination and character. He told her of the splendid hopes of hisopening manhood, when, with the magnificent self-confidence ofinexperience, the whole world seemed his to conquer if he pleased. Hetold her of those plays and poems, so full of promise that, could hehave realised the fulness of his own conceptions, they must haverendered his name famous through all the coming years. He told her,too, of those brief, fugitive moments of spiritual illumination, when hehad felt himself draw very near to the ultimate meaning and purpose ofthings; when he had apprehended God as the Eternal Lover, the soul ofman as the Eternal Bride, and how, in the light of that blessedapprehension, all confusion had ceased, all life, all death, becoming atonce very simple and very holy, guiltless alike of suffering and ofshame.
Then--as they wandered yet further into the thin shadow of the stillleafless lime-trees, and, sitting for a while upon the stone benchbeside the broad, dim walk, looked forth under the down-sweepingbranches, to the vast expanse of the distant country--he descended fromdiscourse of these high matters. He told her of the joys of manly sportsand pastimes, and of the still greater joys of travel and adventure, infar countries, among alien peoples, by land and sea.
Thus did the hours pass in glad and fearless communion of heart withheart, and soul with soul, while upon the horizon the white light walkedslowly, surely eastward. And then, at last, it seemed as though somedisturbing thought invaded his fairy-lady's mind, causing her attentionto waver, her gentle gaiety to wane. The purport of that thoughtLaurence failed to read, and this troubled him with a sensation ofhelplessness, as though a gulf was once again opening between his stateof being and hers, which he was powerless to cross. She rose from herplace beside him and moved restlessly to and fro. And when he pleadedwith and questioned her, she moved yet further from him, and stood withone hand raised as imploring silence. She appeared to listen for somecall, some summons, quite other than welcome, for he could see thecorners of her dear mouth droop once more, while her eyes grew shy andwild. Unwillingly as though constrained by some force she did not loveyet must obey, she passed out on to the clear, smooth spaces of thegreat lawns. The grass blades were touched with a whiteness of frost;but Laurence observed that neither her footsteps, nor the little frillsbordering her gown as they swept it, left any track upon the spangledturf.
Sheep bells sounded plaintively from some far-off fold. Rabbits slippedout timorously from the edge of the wood to take their morning feed,and, perceiving no threatening presence, waxed bold, skipping andgambolling upon the frosty grass. Then with a sullen roar, breaking upthe gracious quiet of nature with the hoarse voice of man's business,man's necessity of labour, and unappeasable unrest, a train thunderedalong the valley, leaving a long trail of pale smoke hanging among thegrey-brown masses of the indistinguishable trees.
The roar died out as it had come, sullen and imperative to the last.There followed a pause as though for a minute or two all nature, allliving creatures, held their breath. And then from the near stables, andfrom distant homestead and farm, cocks challenged one another--some intones high and shrill, some faint and low--heralding the sunrise andtelling all the world that day was once more born.
Immediately, to his consternation, Laurence beheld his lovely companionand friend turn away; and, without farewell, without smallest apparentrecollection of his presence, flit--as some bird, or rather as somerose-red rose-leaf driven by a storm wind--across the lawns, past thedripping fountains and sighing cypresses of the Italian garden, back,back, up the grey steps and in at the open window of the silent house.
He followed her rapidly. The sun-rays shot up into the eastern sky as hecrossed the window-sill. Within, the glory of the sunrise struggled withthe unyielding glare of the electric light. Every object, every cornerand recess, was clearly seen. But the room was vacant. Once again hisfairy-lady had vanished leaving no trace, her sweet presence was removedand Laurence found himself alone.
