And so when the days of my mourning for Nicolete were ended (and in this sentence I pass over letters to and fro,—letters wild from Nicolete, letters wise from Aucassin, letters explanatory and apologetic from the Obstacle—how the Major-General had suddenly come home quite unexpectedly and compelled her to explain Nicolete's absence, etc., etc. Dear Obstacle! I should rather have enjoyed a pilgrimage with her too)—I found myself one afternoon again upon the road. The day had been very warm and dusty, and had turned sleepy towards tea-time.
I had now pretty clearly in my mind what I wanted. This time it was, all other things equal, to be "a woman who had suffered," and to this end, I had, before starting out once more, changed my age back again at the inn and written "Aetat. 30" after my name in the visitors' book. As a young man I was an evident failure, and so, having made the countersign, I was speedily transformed to my old self; and I must say that it was a most comfortable feeling, something like getting back again into an old coat or an old pair of shoes. I never wanted to be young again as long as I lived. Youth was too much like the Sunday clothes of one's boyhood. Moreover, I had a secret conviction that the woman I was now in search of would prefer one who had had some experience at being a man, who would bring her not the green plums of his love, but the cunningly ripened nectarines, a man to whom love was something of an art as well as an inspiration.
It was in this frame of mind that I came upon the following scene.
The lane was a very cloistral one, with a ribbon of gravelly road, bordered on each side with a rich margin of turf and a scramble of blackberry bushes, green turf banks and dwarf oak-trees making a rich and plenteous shade. My attention was caught firstly by a bicycle lying carelessly on the turf, and secondly and lastly by a graceful woman's figure, recumbent and evidently sleeping against the turf bank, well tucked in among the afternoon shadows. My coming had not aroused her, and so I stole nearer to her on tiptoe.
She was a pretty woman, of a striking modern type, tall, well-proportioned, strong, I should say, with a good complexion that had evidently been made just a little better. But her most striking feature was an opulent mass of dark red hair, which had fallen in some disorder and made quite a pillow for her head. Her hat was off, lying in its veil by her side, and a certain general abandon of her figure,—which was clothed in a short cloth skirt, cut with that unmistakable touch which we call style—betokened weariness that could no longer wait for rest.
Poor child! she was tired out. She must never be left to sleep on there, for she seemed good to sleep till midnight.
I turned to her bicycle, and, examining it with the air of a man who had won silver cups in his day, I speedily discovered what had been the mischief. The tire of the front wheel had been pierced, and a great thorn was protruding from the place. Evidently this had been too much for poor Rosalind, and it was not unlikely that she had cried herself to sleep.
I bent over her to look—yes, there were traces of tears. Poor thing! Then I had a kindly human impulse. I would mend the tire, having attended ambulance classes, do it very quietly so that she wouldn't hear, like the fairy cobblers who used to mend people's boots while they slept, and then wait in ambush to watch the effect upon her when she awoke.
What do you think of the idea?
But one important detail I have omitted from my description of the sleeper. Her left hand lay gloveless, and of the four rings on her third finger one was a wedding-ring.
"Such red hair,—and a wedding-ring!" I exclaimed inwardly. "How this woman must have suffered!"
Moving the bicycle a little away, so that my operations upon it might not arouse her, I had soon made all right again, and when I laid it once more where she had left it, she was still sleeping as sound as ever. She had only to sleep long enough, a sly thought suggested, to necessitate her ending her day's journey at the same inn as myself, some five miles on the road. One virtue at least the reader will allow to this history,—we are seldom far away from an inn in its pages. When I thought of that I sat stiller than ever, hardly daring to turn over the pages of Apuleius, which I had taken from my knapsack to beguile the time, and, I confess, to give my eyes some other occupation than the dangerous one of gazing upon her face, dangerous in more ways than one, but particularly dangerous at the moment, because, as everybody knows, a steady gaze on a sleeping face is apt to awake the sleeper. And she wasn't to be disturbed!
"No! she mustn't waken before seven at the latest," I said to myself, holding my breath and starting in terror at every noise. Once a great noisy bee was within an ace of waking her, but I caught him with inspired dexterity, and he buzzed around her head no more.
But despite the providential loneliness of the road, there were one or two terrors that could not be disposed of so summarily. The worst of all was a heavy miller's cart which one could hardly crush to silence in one's handkerchief; but it went so slowly, and both man and horses were so sleepy, that they passed unheard and unnoticing.
A sprightly tramp promised greater difficulty, and nothing but some ferocious pantomime and a shilling persuaded him to forego a choice fantasia of cockney humour.
A poor tired Italian organ-grinder, tramping with an equally tired monkey along the dusty roads, had to be bought off in a similar manner,—though he only cost sixpence. He gave me a Southern smile and shrug of comprehension, as one acquainted with affairs of the heart,—which was a relief after the cockney tramp's impudent expression of, no doubt, a precisely similar sentiment.
And then at last, just as my watch pointed to 6.50 (how well I remember the exact moment!) Rosalind awoke suddenly, as women and children do, sitting straight up on the instant, and putting up her hands to her tousled hair, with a half-startled "Where am I?" When her hair was once more "respectable," she gave her skirts a shake, bent sideways to pull up her stockings and tighten her garters, looked at her watch, and then with an exclamation at the lateness of the hour, went over, with an air of desperate determination, to her bicycle.
"Now for this horrid puncture!" were the first words I was to hear fall from her lips.
She sought for the wound in the india-rubber with growing bewilderment.
"Goodness!" was her next exclamation, "why, there's nothing wrong with it. Can I have been dreaming?"
"I hope your dreams have been pleasanter than that," I ventured at this moment to stammer, rising, a startling apparition, from my ambush behind a mound of brambles; and before she had time to take in the situation I added that I hoped she'd excuse my little pleasantry, and told her how I had noticed her and the wounded bicycle, et cetera, et cetera, as the reader can well imagine, without giving me the trouble of writing it all out.
She was sweetness itself on the instant.
"Excuse you!" she said, "I should think so. Who wouldn't? You can't tell the load you've taken off my mind. I'm sure I must have groaned in my sleep—for I confess I cried myself to sleep over it."
"I thought so," I said with gravity, and eyes that didn't dare to smile outright till they had permission, which, however, was not long withheld them.
"How did you know?"
"Oh, intuition, of course—who wouldn't have cried themselves to sleep, and so tired too!"
"You're a nice sympathetic man, anyhow," she laughed; "what a pity you don't bicycle!"
"Yes," I said, "I would give a thousand pounds for a bicycle at this moment."
"You ought to get a good one for that," she laughed,—"all bright parts nickel, I suppose; indeed, you should get a real silver frame and gold handle-bars for that, don't you think? Well, it would be nice all the same to have your company a few miles, especially as it's growing dark," she added.
"Especially as it's growing dark," I repeated.
"You won't be going much farther to-night. Have you fixed on your inn?" I continued innocently. She had—but that was in a town too far to reach to-night, after her long sleep.
"You might have wakened me," she said.
"Yes, it was stupid of me not to have thought of it," I answered, offering no explanation of the dead bee which at the moment I espied a little away in the grass, and saying nothing of the merry tramp and the melancholy musician.
Then we talked inns, and thus she fell beautifully into the pit which I had digged for her; and it was presently arranged that she should ride on to the Wheel of Pleasure and order a dinner, which she was to do me the honour of sharing with me.
I was to follow on foot as speedily as might be, and it was with a high heart that I strode along the sunset lanes, hearing for some time the chiming of her bell in front of me, till she had wheeled it quite out of hearing, and it was lost in the distance.
I never did a better five miles in my life.
When I reached the Wheel of Pleasure, I found Rosalind awaiting me in the coffee-room, looking fresh from a traveller's toilette, and with the welcome news that dinner was on the way. By the time I had washed off the day's dust it was ready, and a merry meal it proved. Rosalind had none of Alastor's objections to the wine-list, so we drank an excellent champagne; and as there seemed to be no one in the hotel but ourselves, we made ourselves at home and talked and laughed, none daring to make us afraid.
At first, on sitting down to table, we had grown momentarily shy, with one of those sudden freaks of self-consciousness which occasionally surprise one, when, midway in some slightly unconventional situation to which the innocence of nature has led us, we realise it—"for an instant and no more."
Positively, I think that in the embarrassment of that instant I had made some inspired remark to Rosalind about the lovely country which lay dreamy in the afterglow outside our window. Oh, yes, I remember the very words. They were "What a heavenly landscape!" or something equally striking.
"Yes," Rosalind had answered, "it is almost as beautiful as the Strand!"
If I'd known her better, I should have exclaimed, "You dear!" and I think it possible that I did say something to that effect,—perhaps "You dear woman!" At all events, the veil of self-consciousness was rent in twain at that remark, and our spirits rushed together at this touch of London nature thus unexpectedly revealed.
London! I hadn't realised till this moment how I had been missing it all these days of rustication, and my heart went out to it with a vast homesickness.
"Yes! the Strand," I repeated tenderly, "the Strand—at night!"
"Indeed, yes! what is more beautiful in the whole world?" she joined in ardently.
"The wild torrents of light, the passionate human music, the hansoms, the white shirts and shawled heads, the theatres—"
"Don't speak of them or you'll make me cry," said Rosalind.
"The little suppers after the theatre—"
"Please don't," she cried, "it is cruel;" and I saw that her eyes were indeed glistening with tears.
"But, of course," I continued, to give a slight turn aside in our talk, "it is very wrong of us to have such sophisticated tastes. We ought to love these lonely hills and meadows far more. The natural man revels in solitude, and wants no wittier company than birds and flowers. Wordsworth made a constant companion of a pet daisy. He seldom went abroad without one or two trotting at his side, and a skylark would keep Shelley in society for a week."
"But they were poets," retorted Rosalind; "you don't call poets natural. Why, they are the most unnatural of men. The natural person loves the society of his kind, whereas the poet runs away from it."
"Well, of course, there are poets and poets, poets sociable and poets very unsociable. Wordsworth made the country, but Lamb made the town; and there is quite a band of poets nowadays who share his distaste for mountains, and take London for their muse. If you'll promise not to cry again, I'll recall some lines by a friend of mine which were written for town-tastes like ours. But perhaps you know them?"
It will gratify my friend to learn that Rosalind had the verses I refer to by heart, and started off humming,—
"Ah, London, London, our delight,Great flower that opens but at night,Great city of the midnight sun,Whose day begins when day is done...Like dragon-flies the hansoms hoverWith jewelled eyes to catch the lover;"
and so on, with a gusto of appreciation that must have been very gratifying to the author had he been present.
Thus perceiving a taste for a certain modern style of poetry in my companion, I bethought me of a poem which I had written on the roadside a few days before, and which, I confess, I was eager to confide to some sympathetic ear. I was diffident of quoting it after such lines as Rosalind had recalled, but by the time we had reached our coffee, I plucked up courage to mention it. I had, however, the less diffidence in that it would have a technical interest for her, being indeed no other than a song of cycling a deux which had been suggested by one of those alarmist danger-posts always placed at the top of the pleasantest hills, sternly warning the cyclist that "this hill is dangerous,"—just as in life there is always some minatory notice-board frowning upon us in the direction we most desire to take.
But I omit further preface and produce the poem:—
"This hill is dangerous," I said,As we rode on togetherThrough sunny miles and sunny milesOf Surrey heather;"This hill is dangerous—don't you thinkWe'd better walk it?""Or sit it out—more danger still!"She smiled—"and talk it?"
"Are you afraid?" she turned and criedSo very brave and sweetly,—Oh that brave smile that takes the heartCaptive completely!
"Afraid?" I said, deep in her eyesRecklessly gazing;"For you I'd ride into the sunAnd die all blazing!"
"I never yet saw hill," I said,"And was afraid to take it;I never saw a foolish law,And feared to break it.Who fears a hill or fears a lawWith you beside him?Who fears, dear star, the wildest seaWith you to guide him?"
Then came the hill—a cataract,A dusty swirl, before us;The world stood round—a village world—In fearful chorus.Sure to be killed! Sure to be killed!O fools, how dare ye!Sure to be killed—and serve us right!Ah! love, but were we?
The hill was dangerous, we knew,And knew that we must take it;The law was strong,—that too we knewYet dared to break it.And those who'd fain know how we faredFollow and find us,Safe on the hills, with all the worldSafely behind us.
Rosalind smiled as I finished. "I'm afraid," she said, "the song is as dangerous as the hill. Of course it has more meanings than one?"
"Perhaps two," I assented.
"And the second more important than the first."
"Maybe," I smiled; "however, I hope you like it."
Rosalind was very reassuring on that point, and then said musingly, as if half to herself, "But that hill is dangerous, you know; and young people would do well to pay attention to the danger-board!"
Her voice shook as she spoke the last two or three words, and I looked at her in some surprise.
"Yes, I know it," she added, her voice quite broken; and before I realised what was happening, there she was with her beautiful head down upon the table, and sobbing as if her heart would break.
"Forgive me for being such a fool," she managed to wring out.
Now, usually I never interrupt a woman when she is crying, as it only encourages her to continue; but there was something so unexpected and mysterious about Rosalind's sudden outburst that it was impossible not to be sympathetic. I endeavoured to soothe her with such words as seemed fitting; and as she was crying because she really couldn't help it, she didn't cry long.
These tears proved, what certain indications of manner had already hinted to me, that Rosalind was more artless than I had at first supposed. She was a woman of the world, in that she lived in it, and loved its gaieties, but there was still in her heart no little of the child, as is there not in the hearts of all good women—or men?
And this you will realise when I tell you the funny little story which she presently confided to me as the cause of her tears.
For Rosalind was no victim of the monster man, as you may have supposed her, no illustration of his immemorial perfidies. On the contrary, she was one half of a very happy marriage, and, in a sense, her sufferings at the moment were merely theoretical, if one may so describe the sufferings caused by a theory. But no doubt the reader would prefer a little straightforward narrative.
Well, Rosalind and Orlando, as we may as well call them, are two newly married young people who've been married, say, a year, and who find themselves at the end of it loving each other more than at the beginning,—for you are to suppose two of the tenderest, most devoted hearts that ever beat as one. However, they are young people of the introspective modern type, with a new theory for everything.
About marriage and the law of happiness in that blessed estate, they boasted the latest philosophical patents. To them, among other matters, the secret of unhappy marriages was as simple as can be. It was in nothing more or less than the excessive "familiarity" of ordinary married life, and the lack of personal freedom allowed both parties to the contract. Thus love grew commonplace, and the unhappy ones to weary of each other by excessive and enforced association. This was obvious enough, and the remedy as obvious,—separate bedrooms, and a month's holiday in each year to be spent apart (notoriously all people of quality had separate bedrooms, and see how happy they were!). These and similar other safeguards of individual liberty they had in mock-earnest drawn up and signed on their marriage eve, as a sort of supplemental wedding service.
It would not be seemly to inquire how far certain of these conditions had been kept,—how often, for example, Orlando's little hermit's bed had really needed remaking during those twelve months! Answer, ye birds of the air that lie in your snug nests, so close, so close, through the tender summer nights, and maybe with two or three little ones besides,—unless, indeed, ye too have felt the influence of the Zeit-geist, and have taken to sleeping in separate nests.
The condition with which alone we have here to concern ourselves was one which provided that each of the two lovers, hereafter to be called the husband of the one part and the wife of the other part, solemnly bound themselves to spend one calendar month of each year out of each other's society, with full and free liberty to spend it wheresoever, with whomsoever, and howsoever they pleased; and that this condition was rigidly to be maintained, whatever immediate effort it might cost, as the parties thereto believed that so would their love the more likely maintain an enduring tenderness and an unwearied freshness. And to this did Orlando and his Rosalind set their hands and hearts and lips.
Now, wisdom is all very well till the time comes to apply it; and as that month of June approached in which they had designed to give their love a holiday, they had found their courage growing less and less. Their love didn't want a holiday; and when Orlando had referred to the matter during the early days of May, Rosalind had burst into tears, and begged him to reconsider a condition which they had made before they really knew what wedded love was. But Orlando, though in tears himself (so Rosalind averred), had a higher sense of their duty to their ideal, and was able, though in tears, to beg her look beyond the moment, and realise what a little self-denial now might mean in the years to come. They hadn't kept any other of their resolutions,—thus Rosalind let it out!—this must be kept.
And thus it had come about that Orlando had gone off for his month's holiday with a charming girl, who, with the cynic, will no doubt account for his stern adherence to duty; and Rosalind had gone off for hers with a pretty young man whom she'd liked well enough to go to the theatre and to supper with,—a young man who was indeed a dear friend, and a vivacious, sympathetic companion, but whom, as a substitute for Orlando, she immediately began to hate. Such is the female heart!
The upshot of the experiment, so far as she was concerned, was that she had quarrelled with her companion, and had gone off in search of her husband, on which search she was embarked at the moment of my encountering her. The tears, therefore,—that is, the first lot of tears by the roadside,—had not been all on account of the injured bicycle, you see.
Now the question was, How had Orlando been getting on? I had an intuition that in his case the experiment had proved more enjoyable, but I am not one to break the bruised reed by making such a suggestion. On the contrary, I expressed my firm conviction that Orlando was probably even more miserable than she was.
"Do you really think so?" she asked eagerly, her poor miserable face growing bright a moment with hope and gratitude.
"Undoubtedly," I answered sententiously. "To put the case on the most general principles, apart from Orlando's great love for you, it is an eternal truth of masculine sentiment that man always longs for the absent woman."
"Are you quite sure?" asked Rosalind, with an unconvinced half-smile.
"Absolutely."
"I thought," she continued, "that it was just the other way about; that it was presence and not absence that made the heart of man grow fonder, and that if a man's best girl, so to say, was away, he was able to make himself very comfortable with his second-best!"
"In some cases, of course, it's true," I answered, unmoved; "but with a love like yours and Orlando's, it's quite different."
"Oh, do you really mean it?"
"Certainly I do; and your mistake has been in supposing that an experiment which no few every-day married couples would be only too glad to try, was ever meant for two such love-birds as you. Laws and systems are meant for the unhappy and the untractable, not for people like you, for whom Love makes its own laws."
"Yes, that is what we used to say; and indeed, we thought that this was one of love's laws,—this experiment, as you call it."
"But it was quite a mistake," I went on in my character as matrimonial oracle. "Love never made a law so cruel, a law that would rob true lovers of each other's society for a whole month in a year, stretching them on the rack of absence—" There my period broke down, so I began another less ambitiously planned.
"A whole month in a year! Think what that would mean in a lifetime. How long do you expect to live and love together? Say another fifty years at the most. Well, fifty ones are fifty. Fifty months equal—four twelves are forty-eight and two over—four years and two months. Yes, out of the short life God allows even for the longest love you would voluntarily throw away four years and two months!"
This impressive calculation had a great effect on poor Rosalind; and it is a secondary matter that it and its accompanying wisdom may have less weight with the reader, as for the moment Rosalind was my one concern.
"But, of course, we have perfect trust in each other," said Rosalind presently, with charming illogicality.
"No doubt," I said; "but Love, like a good householder (ahem!), does well not to live too much on trust."
"But surely love means perfect trust," said Rosalind.
"Theoretically, yes; practically, no. On the contrary, it means exactly the opposite. Trust, perfect trust, with loved ones far away! No, it is an inhuman ideal, and the more one loves the less one lives up to it. If not, what do these tears mean?"
"Oh, no!" Rosalind retorted, with a flush, "you mustn't say that. I trust Orlando absolutely. It isn't that; it's simply that I can't bear to be away from him."
What women mean by "trusting" might afford a subject for an interesting disquisition. However, I forbore to pursue the matter, and answered Rosalind's remark in a practical spirit.
"Well, then," I said, "if that's all, the thing to do is to find Orlando, tell him that you cannot bear it, and spend the rest of your holiday, you and he, together."
"That's what I thought," said Rosalind.
"Unfortunately," I continued, "owing to your foolish arrangement not to tell each other where you were going and not to write, as being incompatible with Perfect Trust, you don't know where Orlando is at the present moment."
"No; but I have a good guess," said Rosalind. "There's a smart little watering-place, not so many miles from here, called Yellowsands, a sort of secret little Monaco, which not many people know of, a wicked-innocent gay little place, where we've often talked of going. I think it's very likely that Orlando has gone there; and that's just where I was going when we met."
I will tell the reader more about Yellowsands in the next chapter. Meanwhile, let us complete Rosalind's arrangements. The result of our conversation was that she was to proceed to Yellowsands on the morrow, and that I was to follow as soon as possible, so as to be available should she chance to need any advice, and at all events to give myself the pleasure of meeting her again.
This arranged, we said good-night, Rosalind with ever such a brightened-up face, of which I thought for half an hour and then fell asleep to dream of Yellowsands.
On the morrow, at the peep of day, Rosalind was off to seek her lord. An hour or so after I started in leisurely pursuit.
Yellowsands! I had heard in a vague way of the place, as a whim of a certain young nobleman who combined brains with the pursuit of pleasure. Like most ideas, it was simple enough when once conceived. Any one possessing a mile or two of secluded seaboard, cut off on the land side by precipitous approaches, and including a sheltered river mouth ingeniously hidden by nature, in the form of a jutting wall of rock, from the sea, might have made as good use of these natural opportunities as the nobleman in question, had they only been as wise and as rich. William Blake proposed to rebuild Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land. My lord proposed to erect a miniature Babylon amid similar pleasant surroundings, a little dream-city by the sea, a home for the innocent pleasure-seeker stifled by the puritanism of the great towns, refugium peccatorum in this island of the saints.
"Once it was the Puritan Fathers who left our coasts," he is recorded to have said; "nowadays it is our Prodigal Sons."
No doubt it was in further elaboration of this aphorism that the little steamboat that sailed every other day from Yellowsands to the beckoning shores of France was called "the Mayflower."
My lord's plan had been simple. By the aid of cunning architects he had first blasted his harbour into shape, then built his hotels and pleasure-palaces, and then leased them to dependants of his who knew the right sort of people, and who knew that it was as much as their lease was worth to find accommodation for teetotal amateur photographers or wistful wandering Sunday-school treats. As, unfortunately, the Queen's highway ran down in tortuous descent to the handful of fishermen's cottages that had clung there limpet-like for ages, there was always a chance of such a stray visitation; but it was remote, and the whole place, hand and heart, was in the pocket of my lord.
So much to give the reader some idea of the secret watering-place of Yellowsands, situated at the mouth of that romantic little torrent, the river Sly. Such further description as may be needed may be kept till we come within sight of its gilded roofs and marble terraces.
I reckoned that it would take me two or three days, leisurely walking, to reach Yellowsands. Rosalind would, of course, arrive there long before me; but that I did not regret, as I was in a mood to find company in my own thoughts.
Her story gave me plenty to think of. I dwelt particularly on the careless extravagance of the happy. Here were two people to whom life had given casually what I was compelled to go seeking lonely and footsore through the world, and with little hope of finding it at the end; and yet were they so little aware of their good fortune as to risk it over a trumpery theory, a shadow of pseudo-philosophy. Out of the deep dark ocean of life Love had brought them his great moon-pearl, and they sat on the boat's edge carelessly tossing it from one to the other, unmindful of the hungry fathoms on every side. A sudden slip, and they had lost it for ever, and might only watch its shimmering fall to the bottom of the world. Theories! Theories are for the unknown and the unhappy. Who will trouble to theorise about Heaven when he has found Heaven itself? Theories are for the poor-devil outcast,—for him who stands outside the confectioner's shop of life without a penny in his pocket, while the radiant purchasers pass in and out through the doors,—for him who watches with wistful eyes this and that sugared marvel taken out of the window by mysterious hands, to bless some happy customer inside. He is not fool enough even to hope for one of those glistering masterpieces of frosted sugar and silk flowers, which rise to pinnacles of snowy sweetness, white mountains of blessedness, rich inside, they say, with untold treasures for the tooth that is sweet. No! he craves nothing but a simple Bath-bun of happiness, and even that is denied him.
Would I ever find my Bath-bun? I disconsolately asked myself. I had been seeking it now for some little time, and seemed no nearer than when I set out. I had seen a good many Bath-buns on my pilgrimage, it is true. Some I have not had space to confide to the reader; but somehow or other they had not seemed the unmistakably predestined for which I was seeking.
And oh, how I could love a girl, if she would only give me the chance,—that is, be the right girl! Oh, Sylvia Joy! where art thou? Why so long dost thou remain hidden "in shady leaves of destiny"?
"Seest thou thy lover lowly laid,Hear'st thou the sighs that rend his breast?"
And then, as the novelists say, "a strange thing happened."
The road I was tramping at the moment was somewhat desolate. It ran up from a small market town through a dreary undulating moorland, forking off here and there to unknown villages of which the horizon gave no hint. Its cheerless hillocks were all but naked of vegetation, for a never very flourishing growth of heather had recently been burnt right down to the unkindly-looking earth, leaving a dwarf black forest of charred sticks very grim to the eye and heart; while the dull surface of a small lifeless-looking lake added the final touch to the Dead-Sea mournfulness of the prospect.
Suddenly I became aware of the fluttering of a grey dress a little ahead of me. Unconsciously I had been overtaking a tall young woman walking in the same direction as myself, with a fine athletic carriage of her figure and a noble movement of her limbs.
She walked manfully, and as I neared her I could hear the sturdy ring of her well-shod feet upon the road. There was an air of expectancy about her walk, as though she looked to be met presently by some one due from the opposite direction.
It was curious that I had not noticed her before, for she must have been in sight for some time. No doubt my melancholy abstraction accounted for that, and perhaps her presence there was to be explained by a London train which I had listlessly observed come in to the town an hour before. This surmise was confirmed, as presently,—over the brow of a distant undulation in the road, I descried a farmer's gig driven by another young woman. The gig immediately hoisted a handkerchief; so did my pedestrian. At this moment I was within a yard or two of overtaking her. And it was then the strange thing happened.
Distance had lent no enchantment which nearness did not a hundred times repay. The immediate impression of strength and distinction which the first glimpse of her had made upon me was more and more verified as I drew closer to her. The carriage of her head was no whit less noble than the queenly carriage of her limbs, and her glorious chestnut hair, full of warm tints of gold, was massed in a sumptuous simplicity above a neck that would have made an average woman's fortune. This glowing description, however, must be lowered or heightened in tone by the association of these characteristics with an undefinable simplicity of mien, a certain slight rusticity of effect. The town spoke in her well-cut gown and a few simple adornments, but the dryad still moved inside.
I suppose most men, even in old age, feel a certain anxiety, conscious or not, as they overtake a woman whose back view is in the least attractive. I confess that I felt a more than usual, indeed a quite irrational, perturbation of the blood, as, coming level with her, I dared to look into her face. As I did so she involuntarily turned to look at me—turned to look at me, did I say? "To look" is a feeble verb indeed to express the unexpected shock of beauty to which I was suddenly exposed. I cannot describe her features, for somehow features always mean little to me. They were certainly beautifully moulded, and her skin was of a lovely pale olive, but the life of her face was in her great violet eyes and her wonderful mouth. Thus suddenly to look into her face was like unexpectedly to come upon moon and stars reflected in some lonely pool. I suppose the look lasted only a second or two; but it left me dazzled as that king in the Eastern tale, who seemed to have lived whole dream-lives between dipping his head into a bowl of water and taking it out again. Similarly in that moment I seemed to have dived into this unknown girl's eyes, to have walked through the treasure palaces of her soul, to have stood before the flaming gates of her heart, to have gathered silver flowers in the fairy gardens of her dreams. I had followed her white-robed spirit across the moonlit meadows of her fancy, and by her side had climbed the dewy ladder of the morning star, and then suddenly I had been whirled up again to the daylight through the magic fountains of her eyes.
I'll tell you more about that look presently! Meanwhile the gig approached, and the two girls exchanged affectionate greetings.
"Tom hasn't come with you, then?" said the other girl, who was evidently her sister, and who was considerably more rustic in style and accent. She said it with a curious mixture of anxiety and relief.
"No," answered the other simply, and I thought I noticed a slight darkening of her face. Tom was evidently her husband. So she was married!
"Yes!" said a fussy hypocrite of reason within me, "and what's that to do with you?"
"Everything, you fool!" answered a robuster voice in my soul, kicking the feeble creature clean out of my head on the instant.
For, absurd as it may sound, with that look into those Arabian Nights' eyes, had come somewhere out of space an overwhelming intuition, nay, an unshakable conviction, that the woman who was already being rolled away from me down the road in that Dis's car of a farmer's gig, was now and for ever and before all worlds the woman God had created for me, and that, unless I could be hers and she mine, there would be no home, no peace for either of us so long as we lived.
And yet she was being carried away further and further every moment, while I gazed after her, aimlessly standing in the middle of the road. Why did I not call to her, overtake her? In a few moments she would be lost to me for ever—
Though I was unaware of it, this hesitation was no doubt owing to a stealthy return of reason by the back-door of my mind. In fact, he presently dared to raise his voice again. "I don't deny," he ventured, ready any moment to flee for his life, "that she is written yours in all the stars, and particularly do I see it written on the face of the moon; but you mustn't forget that many are thus meant for each other who never meet, not to speak of marrying. It is such contradictions between the purposes and performance of the Creator that make life—life; you'll never see her again, so make your mind easy—"
At that moment the gig was on the point of turning a corner into a dark pine-wood; but just ere it disappeared,—was it fancy?—I seemed to have caught the flash of a momentarily fluttering handkerchief. "Won't I? you fool!" I exclaimed, savagely smiting reason on the cheek, as I sprang up wildly to wave mine; but the road was already blank.
At this a sort of panic possessed me, and like a boy I raced down the road after her. To lose her like this, at the very moment that she had been revealed to me. It was more than I could bear.
Past the dreary lake, through the little pine-wood I ran, and then I was brought to a halt, panting, by cross-roads and a finger-post. An involuntary memory of Nicolete sang to me as I read the quaint names of the villages to one of which the Vision was certainly wending. Yes! I was bound on one more journey to the moon, but alas! there was no heavenly being by my side to point the way. Oh, agony, which was the road she had taken?
It never occurred to me till the following day that I might have been able to track her by the wheel-marks of the gig on the dusty summer road. Instead I desperately resorted to the time-honoured expedient of setting up a stick and going in the direction of its fall. Like most ancient guide-posts, it led me quite wrong, down into a pig's-trough of a hamlet whither I felt sure she couldn't have been bound. Then I ran back in a frenzy, and tried the other road,—as if it could be any use, with at least three quarters of an hour gone since I had lost sight of her. Of course I had no luck; and finally, hot and worn out with absurd excitement, I threw myself down in a meadow and called myself an ass,—which I undoubtedly was.
For of all the fancies that had obsessed my moonstruck brain, this was surely the maddest. Suppose I had overtaken the girl, what could I have said to her? And, suppose she had listened to me, how did I know she was the girl I imagined her to be? But this was sheer reason again, and has no place in a fantastic romance. So I hasten to add that the mood was one of brief duration, and that no cold-water arguments were able to quench the fire which those eyes had set aflame within me, no daylight philosophy had any power to dispel the dream of a face which was now my most precious possession, as I once more took up my stick and listlessly pursued my way to Yellowsands.
For I had one other reason than my own infatuation, or thought I had. Yes, brief and rapid as our glance at each other had been, I had fancied in her eyes a momentary kindling as they met mine, a warm summer-lightning which seemed for a second to light up for me the inner heaven of her soul.
Of one feeling, however, I was sure,—that on my side this apocalyptic recognition of her, as it had seemed, was no mere passionate correspondence of sex, no mere spell of a beautiful face (for such passion and such glamour I had made use of opportunities to study), but was indeed the flaming up of an elemental affinity, profounder than sex, deeper than reason, and ages older than speech.
But it was a fancy, for all that? Yes, one of those fancies that are fancies on earth, but facts in heaven. Perhaps you don't believe in them. Well, I'm afraid that cannot be helped.