Chapter 6

The sunrise blooms and withers on the hillLike any hill-flower, and the noblest trothDies here to dust....

That the rose must shed its petals and turn to a lonely autumn berry is surely nothing against the reality of the rose. It was real enough in June.

Yes, it is because I feel so deeply the reality of this dream that has passed away that I wish Miranda would let me keep her beautiful record of it. If it had been real no other way, it would be real in her words, for beautiful words make all things real, and are, perhaps, the longest lived of all realities. So long as Miranda’s letters survive, our dream is not dead. It has only ascended into the finer life of words. But once her letters are gone, the dream is dead indeed; for, even though my poor letters should survive—well! I never could write a love-letter. The writing of love-letters is a woman’s art, and Miranda,in these precious pages which she demands of me, has proven herself a great artist.

As I think of this, of the art I mean, with which she has embodied our dream, I wonder if I have any right to return her letters; whether, in fact, it is not my duty, in defiance of misapprehension, to retain and guard them in the interests of art, and, even, humanity. For, you see, there is but one fate for Miranda’s letters the moment they leave my hands to return to hers—the crematorium. She will probably burn them with charming fanciful rites, after her whimsical, picturesque nature; load the bier on which they are consumed with cassia and myrrh and all the chief spices—but, however sweet-smelling the savour with which they return to the elemental spaces from which they drew down their radiant energy, there will, none the less, remain of them upon the earth, but a little fluttering pile of perfumed ashes—the ashes of a dream.

Now, have I the right to allow such destruction of a beautiful thing, such a holocaustof heavenly words? My mind misgives me no little as to this. Meanwhile, I shall temporise with Miranda, make some plausible excuse for delay, if only that I may read through the fairy tale once more from beginning to end, before, if needs must, I send it back to her.

Another problem: I am wondering, as I turn over page after page of our brilliantly written past, whether Miranda will expect me to return also the many flowers that every now and again fall out from between the fragrant sheets. Even supposing that she can remember every letter she has written to me, and is capable of detecting me should I filch a single one, she can hardly remember the flowers of eight summers! Yes, eight summers. I said that our dream was a very long and beautiful one; and, indeed, it is hard to understand why, when a dream has lasted so long, it should not last forever. But such is the way of dreams, and surely Miranda and I were fortunate in that ours lasted so long.

Here is a flower I certainly shall keep, whatever happens. This arrowhead, with its keen, beautiful leaf beside it. Do you remember the day we gathered this, Miranda? How I climbed down from the little bridge, and picked my way over the stones of the brook that went singing out of the sun into the cool darkness? It grew right in the shadow of the rough stone arch, and when I came out with it in my hand, there were you standing on a stepping-stone just behind me; and some treacherous gold pin had loosened the wheatsheaf of your hair, and, as we stood together on those quaking stones in the middle of the little stream, we looked into each other’s eyes. And just then a catbird began singing in a meadow nearby. Do you remember? And may I keep this arrowhead, Miranda?

And this flower, too—this strange, waxen flower that made us a little afraid because we said it looked beautiful as death, not knowing then how near we had come to its name. We found it growing in the depths ofthe woods, a haunted, lonely thing, and we plucked it as one might pluck mandragora, almost expecting weird cries and lamentations rising from the ground. The innocent children call it “Indian’s-pipe.” Some call it “corpse-flower.” What shall we call it, Miranda?

And here again is a flower no one shall rob me of. A simple, childish flower indeed. Only a spray of Crimson Rambler. At least you will let me keep that, Miranda. You will not deprive me of that.

I have just found something else pressed between the pages of a letter: another kind of flower—a butterfly. A great, yellow butterfly with tails to his wings. I caught it for fun, not meaning to hurt it; and then suddenly an impulse came over me, and I crushed it between the pages of a book we were reading, as though one should capture a sunbeam of some summer-day on which we were very happy. When I opened the book again—Do you remember the book?—the flower wings were quiet as any other petals,and we both looked at each other with a feeling of fear, of omen. We who hated cruelty and abhorred death had killed a little, beautiful, innocent creature; and we felt afraid, and said little as we went homeward; but our eyes said:

“Suppose it were love we killed to-day, that ‘Psyche,’ that frail butterfly thing—Animula, Vagula, blandela!”

I wonder again, as the little wings fall from the folded sheet. At all events, that was our last day together in the fields. Since then the arrowhead has flowered in the brook—but not for us. That was our last summer-day.

Our last summer-day! I let your letters fall from my hands, Miranda, as I say over to myself, “Our last summer-day”—for it is again summer, “a summer-day in June.” How strange it seems, after all: summer again, and no Miranda. I could almost say with the sad Irish poet:

“Has summer come without the rose,And left the bird behind?”

For you, Miranda, seemed very summer herself. The sun-goddess you seemed, the blonde young mother of the green boughs and the knee-deep grass. When you looked upon the meadows they filled like the sky at evening with blue flowers, and when you spoke, the woods rang with a thousand birds. The very fish leaped up out of the talking stream to catch a glimpse of your shining hair. Wherever you passed life sprang up, abundant, blossoming, filled with the laughter of immortal summer.

Ah! to what enchanted youth, this “summer-day in June,” in what Broceliande of green boughs, or nymph-haunted secrecy of rocky pools, are you teaching the lesson of summer?

“A summer-day in June!” As I say those words over to myself, do you wonder, Miranda, that I should sorrow to part with the beautiful history of eight summers?

I suppose that I must send that history back, whatever my feelings as an art custodian may be. Miranda loves someone elseand feels it only right to him. And I love someone else, and should, I suppose, feel it only right to her. Actually I have neither feeling. On the contrary, I hold that new love should be grateful to the old love for the lesson in loving which it has taught.

One might adapt the old song and say:

“I could not love thee so, dear love,Had I not loved before.”

So, I confidently believe that Miranda could not have loved her new love so adequately had she not loved me inadequately before. And, on the other hand, I am well aware that I could never have loved my true love as I do, had it not been for my eight years apprenticeship to Miranda.

Love is a mysterious spiritual training, and we are apt to learn its lessons too late to apply them. Surely it is not too late for Miranda. I can only hope that it is not too late for me.

Having finally decided, both against my heart and my artistic judgment, that Miranda’s request for her letters must be accededto, I am not yet out of the wood. One more problem, and that not the least, remains to be solved. By what method of transportation shall I transmit so precious and so distinguished a consignment?

I am well aware that there are men alive to-day, who, in all the simple Philistinism of their natures, would commit Miranda’s letters to the care of a stoutly-stringed, brown paper parcel, under the insured promise of a responsible express company. We all have our ways of doing things. That would, of course, be an absolutely secure way. Miranda would surely get her letters back that way, or claim the insurance. No doubt this method of transportation would be as satisfactory to Miranda as any other, for the letters we write mean so little to us—when they come back.

However, I cannot reconcile myself to returning Miranda’s letters in any such commonplace way. I simply couldn’t return Miranda’s letters in a brown paper parcel.

How then shall I return them?

I have thought of three ways.

Remember that these letters are to me more precious, more important, than the secret messages of kings. They must be delivered with appropriate ceremony.

Three ways have I thought of:

First, I thought that I would place them in an urn of bronze wreathed round with laurel, and that six white horses should bring them to Miranda’s door.

Then I wondered if this way would not be the best: That a thousand carrier pigeons should fly to Miranda’s window in the dawn, each with a letter in his beak.

But the way I should like best, and I think that it might appeal to Miranda, too, would be for me to deliver them myself at the address of a certain oak tree in a certain unforgotten woodland, “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.” I have already found for them a beautiful coffin, a little carved chest in which a long-dead queen of Arabia kept the sweet smelling essences and unguents of her beauty. The box is fragrant yet with memories of her rose-petal face. In thisbox I will place Miranda’s letters, and there will still be room enough left for mine.

Then, if Miranda will consent, I will meet her in that woodland at the rising of the moon, and, if she will bring with her my letters, we will place them in the same box with hers, and then I will dig a grave beneath the oak tree, and in it we will place the box together and cover it over with the fragrant summer mould, and leaves, and blossoms, and tears; and we will go our way, she through one green gate of the wood and I through another.

And great Nature, who gave us our dream, will thus take it back into her bosom; and Miranda’s lovely thoughts will blossom again in anemone and violet, and out of that grave of beautiful words, as spring follows spring, two young oak trees will grow, inextricably entwined in root and branch, and there the birds will sing more sweetly than in any other part of the wood, and there the silence will be like the silence of a temple, and to those who sit and listen there will come soothing messages of the spirit out of the stillness.

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