In the slow weeks that followed my Grandmother's death I never came face to face with my own sorrow. My brain told me the sorrow was there, but my will, reinforced by a numbness that possessed my spirit, forbade my facing or feeling it. Never did I dare to summon the vision. It was mockery. It had been a mockery all through.
But the soul lives on, leaves death behind, is the same for ever: can we not be together still, Robbie on the other side of death, Mary on this? The notion came fearfully at first, then boldlier. Dare I try to discover? Does God permit us to love across the grave?—Even so, in my innermost heart, I knew that a love which could bridge the gulf would still be a love not quite completed, since not completed and perfected between us both together here on earth.—Could I then bring him back to life? Instinct intimated and Prayer confirmed. On Christmas Night, now two or three weeks ahead, I would seek him just as before. Till then I must possess my soul in emptiness.
The literal loneliness of the dead house helped to hush my spirit. There were still some years of the lease of Number Eight to run; I decided for the present to live on there, absolutely alone. With Grandmother's and Aunt Jael's income—all of which save a small legacy to Aunt Martha from the former came to me—added to the little fortune that Great-Uncle John had left me, I was now a young woman of independent means. How different was realization from anticipation. Money could buy me everything, save the only thing in heaven or earth I wanted. Independence liberated me to roam throughout the world, and I remained desolate in this mournful forbidding house, the slave of my sick heart's memories and desires. Sister Briggs continued to come in for the mornings, to help me with the housework and in the kitchen. I had no plans, and, if Christmas failed me, no hopes. I was in a kind of spiritual stupor; I was but halfalive. I had nothing to live for, and no hope to seek from death. Death, and then some other existence: but always life—always a Me.
There was, however, at moments, a certain mystical freedom of spirit in this cloistral utter loneliness. After about half-past one, when she had washed up the dinner things, I knew that I was rid of Sister Briggs until the morrow, and I could fill the desolate house with myself. I would wander from empty room to empty room, sit for half-an-hour here, half-an-hour there, pray, read, talk to myself, meditate, most often do nothing at all.
Aunt Jael's front parlour I still shunned, except when the blinds were up and in the broadest daylight, for Benamuckee's eyes could still move, his face still leer. A heathen image, which men in savage forests have worshipped and sacrificed to, can never be quite inanimate wood or stone. The Devil is alive in his likenesses on earth.
The sound of my own voice in the silent echoing rooms brought me time after time to the verge of the old Expectation. I would shout, cry aloud; till the mystery of self was almost discovered, and I ceased praying to God. He was too near.
One day the noise of shouts and supplications brought the next-door neighbour—that same clergyman who that far-off vinous day had been drawn by Aunt Jael's agonies—knocking at the door.
"Er—excuse me. Is any one ill? I fancied I heard cries—"
"Thank you. I am not ill. I am crying to God. Thank you all the same. Good-morning."
The healing power of the Church of England as by law established stops short at saner souls than mine. He skedaddled with Pilate gesture down the garden path. He had flushed when I used the word God.
Thus in prayer and madness and reading of the Word I panned out the weeks till Christmas. Once or twice I sought to recover the ancient Rapture of the Lord's Presence. But at the approaching moment a voice always intervened: The Great Happiness is coming back to you, butin some other way. He that loveth not knoweth not God: for God is Love.No man hath seen God at any time. But when perfect love for another human soul shall be perfected in you, then God, more rapturously than at Jordan, will enter your soul, and dwell within you for ever.
What other way? It could only be Christmas.
Christmas came, announced by the calendar but by no other outward sign, unless it was that Sister Briggs left before instead of after dinner. The silence was stranger, more complete than ever. Through all the afternoon and evening I read, to prevent myself hoping. As I turned over pages of print, staring uncomprehendingly, one question absorbed all my being: I did not consciously think of it, for it was myself, all of myself, and the brain cannot think of the soul:Can love then bridge the grave?
Suddenly, late in the afternoon, as dusk was turning to darkness, an insane notion stormed my brain, which woke at once to feverish activity.
I had only Aunt Martha's word for it. Her information came certainly from Uncle Simeon, Uncle Simeon was a liar, a cur, a cruel scoundrel. He had invented that Robbie was dead, had lied to Aunt Martha, knowing that she would convey the lie to me, knowing how it would afflict me. Robbie was alive, alive! Why had it not struck me before? My heart fainted with hope. I prayed God that he would make me unconscious till midnight, for I did not know how I could live through those waiting hours.
Live somehow I did. There was even time for Doubt to raise his unwearying head. He was dead after all: what reason had Uncle Simeon had to lie, who could never have really divined what Robbie was to me? And if he were dead, Oh Christ, was it possible he could come to me?
After supper I went upstairs to bed. There was a bright moon. I pulled the curtains wide from the window that the room might be filled with moonlight as the Torribridge room eleven years before.
I sat up in bed and prayed God passionately to be merciful, to deal with me lovingly: to send me Robbie, whether from this world or the next.
Imperceptibly, in the luminous silence, the spiritualsluggishness of the latter days disappeared; physical being fell from me like a cloak; my mind became clear and radiant, my heart breathless with hope. Faith possessed me, and as I prayed, I waited.
There was a soft tread in the room: I knew whose, should know it at the end of Eternity. There was no terror in me this time, no dreadful thought that it might be Uncle Simeon. Nor was there any soul's illusion, as in the hundred other times the need of my heart and the power of my imagination had created his presence. For the little white nightgowned figure standing at the door was there,in plain reality, as he had been at the Torribridge door eleven years before.
And now, in this moment when the actual physical presence I had for ever prayed and longed for was achieved, the whole structure of my love collapsed. A disappointment too sudden, too infinite to bear, filled my heart, from which the life seemed to be ebbing away. I understood the difference between the child I had loved on the Torribridge night, and the vision I had built with my love. One was dead and returned to earth for a moment, the other had never lived except in my heart. I was a woman, this was a little boy.
At the supernatural fact of his resurrection for this night I never stopped to marvel: only at my own folly in not having paused to think that the physical shape of Robbie returning to earth must needs be the physical shape in which he had left it. I was a woman, this was a little boy.
The vision had been real, but it was not Robbie. My heart still loved the darling of its dreams, but my darling was not Robbie.
"I cannot come nearer, Mary," he said softly, and at the sound of his remembered voice my pulse beat faster, and life flowed back into my heart, and my child's love in its first simplicity, without the added passion of the years, came back to me again. "I have returned for a moment only. Do not grieve because God did not let me grow to be a man on earth below. I loved you that happy once, and I love you still. Do not think, dear, that because I had gone to Heaven, all the times you have called for me since, and when I have come to you, have not been true. Each time you have called I have answered you in Heaven. Each time my spirit hasbeen with you. But God never meant me for this world: He never meant me to be His this-world's love for you. Your happiness is coming."
"When, Robbie? How?"
"Very soon. You will see. You will be very happy."
"Come nearer, and kiss me Good-bye."
"No, Mary; you are a living woman, and I am a little boy whose life was long ago.Hewill kiss you."
I watched the white form dissolve in the moonlight. I knew the room was empty. The crystal clearness of my heart was suddenly dimmed. The cloak of physical existence once more enveloped my soul. I was back in the world.
At my Grandmother's funeral Lord Tawborough had said: "Miss Traies, if ever you need any advice or service of any kind, write and let me know, will you? It is the only kindness I would presume to ask." On the morrow of Christmas Night I thought often—only—of these words. I did not write. Something told me that I had no need to.
The whole of that wintry morrow I was alone in the cold house. Even for Sister Briggs it was Boxing-Day: I had told her to take advantage of a day that even for oilmen (and Christians) should be a holiday, and to stay at home with her husband, as I could very well fend for myself.
I waited. It was foolish, impossible, one more Maryish notion of magic, madness, moonshine. It was possible, probable, inevitable, immediate.
The bell rang; with clamant heart and hurrying feet I sped to the door.
There were preliminary embarrassments and explanations. Trivial matters, to which we both gave grateful over-measure of zeal and zest, filled the awkwardest first moments, tided them capably over. "The snow on your coat: I must dry it"—"May the coachman come in and wait? The weather is bad"—"Certainly, there is the kitchen fire: for coat and coachman too"—"Thank you"—"I will get you a cup of tea."
We did not look at each other. In the dining-room we continued to speak of trifles, pouncing with eager dexterity and emulous speed upon any sudden silence that showed its head. Covertly once or twice I dared to look at the well-remembered face: fed swiftly on the manliness, the gentleness; the proud grey hair, the noble forehead, the charitable eyes; the mouth. My heart beat tempestuously.
Then God, in His Goodness, performed a miracle within me.
The mystical delight seized me. As on Jordan morning, I knew I should reach the Rapture. All love was one, and the Stranger was my Robbie. His face was the face of myvisions, the face I had called Robbie's, that was not Robbie's. I knew that all the torrential affection which in dream and diary I had poured forth upon my vision, had been for my Love who stood before me now. The magical moment for which I had been born was at last upon me—oh, hope too hard to bear—but he must speak the word. He alone could complete the miracle, fulfil the hope, carry love's banners to their ultimate victory in my heart.
The silences grew longer and more shameless. My heart throbbed, my body trembled, my spirit was faint with expectation. He got up from his chair and began pacing up and down the room, talking of something, talking of nothing, moistening his parched lips, seeking through moments of unbearable longing for the words that would not come.
At this moment of time, which is present in my heart more clearly than any other of the memorable moments I have tried to describe in this record of twenty-two years, I was sitting on the old horsehair Chesterfield couch against the window; around me were the familiar objects of this chiefly familiar room—Aunt Jael's traditional chair, and my Grandmother's; the faded rosewood piano, the ancient chiffonièr, the odour of my childhood, the taste of religion and many meals, the all-pervading gloom. God was everywhere around me, the God of my childhood, the God of Beatings.
He stopped in his pacing up and down. I knew that his heart had stopped. His voice was husky, faint with passion and hope and fear.
"Miss Traies, may I ask you a question?"
I could not look up. My heart was near breaking point. I could not speak. Perhaps I nodded.
"Will you—promise me this? That if the answer to the question is 'No,' you will forgive me for having asked it, and like and respect me not less well than now?"
This longer sentence came a little more easily: words gave courage to each other. The first question had been harder; though the hardest was yet to come.
"What-is-the-question?" I still looked downwards. My voice was as husky as his, my heart as hungry.
"You know it."
"What-is-the-question?" repeated obstinately, mechanically, and because—for one-millionth part—I was not sure. I knew the question, my heart had answered it already; but I was a woman, and my mouth could not speak for my heart till the man had achieved his task—foundhismouth courage to speak for his heart. I knew, my heart knew; but my brain waited for the serene absolute certainty which his words alone could give. To complete the miracle this word was needed.
"What-is-the-question?" I repeated mechanically.
His heart stopped again for the last effort, the ultimate moment of life. "Will you—once—one time only—before you go abroad again—before I am old—one single time—" (how fondly each poor broken conciliatory qualification seemed to ease his task, break his amorous fall, make easier my way to the answer his soul sought)—"kiss me?"
A spasm of spiritual joy went through me from head to foot. His soul was mine, and mine was his: we were one soul, one double-soul inhabiting each body.
The winter was past, the rain was over and gone.
"Yes," I whispered. My voice was unsure, my eyes were filled with tears of happiness, my heart was fondling the two flawless words with which he had transformed me.
More bravely, easily, surely: "When?"
"Soon."
"Very soon?"
"Now."
He came swiftly to me, his arms were round me, our mouths were together in a tender infinite embrace. My soul and body were singing. Love, garlanded with lilies, marched with God's paradisal banner of Perfect Happiness through all my heart.
He was kneeling by my side. His head was against my breast. I was kissing his hair, brushing my lips across his eyes.
After a very long while I spoke. My voice fell strangely and softly upon my own ears. My new heart had fashioned me a new voice worthy to do its bidding.
"Oh my dear, unhappiness is gone for ever. Now I am full of joy. You are near, you are completely in understanding. Look me in the eyes, dear; tell me it is not a dream."
"Mary, it is a dream. Today I have passed out of a land of unreality into one of wonderful dreams. Now I am part of another, my soul is part of hers, and can never be torn away. Time cannot do it, and what is more powerful than time?"
"Eternity," I said.
And I found as I uttered that word, that for the first time it held no terror.
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.