The Garden of Survival

by

Algernon Blackwood

I

IT will surprise and at the same time possibly amuse you to know thatI had the instinct to tell what follows to a Priest, and might havedone so had not the Man of the World in me whispered that fromprofessional Believers I should get little sympathy, and probablyless credence still. For to have my experience disbelieved, orattributed to hallucination, would be intolerable to me. Psychicalinvestigators, I am told, prefer a Medium who takes no cashrecompense for his performance, a Healer who gives of his strangepowers without reward. There are, however, natural-born priests whoyet wear no uniform other than upon their face and heart, but since Iknow of none I fall back upon yourself, my other half, for in writingthis adventure to you I almost feel that I am writing it to myself. 

The desire for confession is upon me: this thing must out. It is astory, though an unfinished one. I mention this at once lest, frightened by the thickness of the many pages, you lay them asideagainst another time, and so perhaps neglect them altogether. Astory, however, will invite your interest, and when I add that it istrue, I feel that you will bring sympathy to that interest: thesetogether, I hope, may win your attention, and hold it, until youshall have read the final word. 

That I should use this form in telling it will offend your literarytaste--you who have made your name both as critic and creativewriter--for you said once, I remember, that to tell a story inepistolary form is a subterfuge, an attempt to evade the difficultmatters of construction and delineation of character. My story, however, is so slight, so subtle, so delicately intimate too, that aletter to some one in closest sympathy with myself seems the onlyform that offers. 

It is, as I said, a confession, but a very dear confession: I burn totell it honestly, yet know not how. To withhold it from you would beto admit a secretiveness that our relationship has never known--outit must, and to you. I may, perhaps, borrow--who can limit thesharing powers of twin brothers like ourselves?--some of the skillyour own work spills so prodigally, crumbs from your writing-table, so to speak; and you will forgive the robbery, if successful, as youwill accept lie love behind the confession as your due. 

Now, listen, please! For this is the point: that, although my wife isdead these dozen years and more--I have found reunion and I love. Explanation of this must follow as best it may. So, please mark tiepoint which for the sake of emphasis I venture to repeat: that I knowreunion and I love. 

With the jealous prerogative of the twin, you objected to thatmarriage, though I knew that it deprived you of no jot of myaffection, owing to the fact that it was prompted by pity only, leaving the soul in me wholly disengaged. Marion, by her steadyrefusal to accept my honest friendship, by her persistent admirationof me, as also by her loveliness, her youth, her singing, persuadedme somehow finally that I needed her. The cry of the flesh, whichher beauty stimulated and her singing increased most strangely, seemed raised into a burning desire that I mistook at the moment forthe true desire of the soul. Yet, actually, the soul in me remainedaloof, a spectator, and one, moreover, of a distinctly lukewarm kind. It was very curious. On looking back, I can hardly understand it evennow; there seemed some special power, some special undiscovered tiebetween us that led me on and yet deceived me. It was especiallyevident in her singing, this deep power. She sang, you remember, toher own accompaniment on the harp, and her method, though so simpleit seemed almost childish, was at the same time charged with a greatmelancholy that always moved me most profoundly. The sound of hersmall, plaintive voice, the sight of her slender fingers that pluckedthe strings in some delicate fashion native to herself, the tiny footthat pressed the pedal--all these, with her dark searching eyes fixedpenetratingly upon my own while she sang of love and love'sendearments, combined in a single stroke of very puissant andseductive kind. Passions in me awoke, so deep, so ardent, soimperious, that I conceived them as born of the need of one soul foranother. I attributed their power to genuine love. The followingreactions, when my soul held up a finger and bade me listen to herstill, small warnings, grew less positive and of ever less duration. The frontier between physical and spiritual passion is perilouslynarrow, perhaps. My judgment, at any rate, became insecure, thenfloundered hopelessly. The sound of the harp-strings and of Marion'svoice could overwhelm its balance instantly. 

Mistaking, perhaps, my lukewarm-ness for restraint, she led me at lastto the altar you described as one of sacrifice. And your instinct, more piercing than my own, proved only too correct: that which I heldfor love declared itself as pity only, the soft, affectionate pity ofa weakish man in whom the flesh cried loudly, the pity of a man whowould be untrue to himself rather than pain so sweet a girl byrejecting the one great offering life placed within her gift. Shepersuaded me so cunningly that I persuaded myself, yet was not awareI did so until afterwards. I married her because in some manner Ifelt, but never could explain, that she had need of me. 

And, at the wedding, I remember two things vividly: the expression ofwondering resignation on your face, and upon hers--chiefly in theeyes and in the odd lines about the mouth--the air of subtle triumphthat she wore: that she had captured me for her very own at last, andyet--for there was this singular hint in her attitude andbehaviour--that she had taken me, because she had this curious deepneed of me. 

This sharply moving touch was graven into me, increasing thetenderness of my pity, subsequently, a thousandfold. The necessitylay in her very soul. She gave to me all she had to give, and in sodoing she tried to satisfy some hunger of her being that lay beyondmy comprehension or interpretation. For, note this--she gave herselfinto my keeping, I remember, with a sigh. 

It seems as of yesterday the actual moment when, urged by my vehementdesires, I made her consent to be my wife; I remember, too, thedoubt, the shame, the hesitation that made themselves felt in mebefore the climax when her beauty overpowered me, sweeping reflectionutterly away. I can hear to-day the sigh, half of satisfaction, yethalf, it seemed, of pain, with which she sank into my arms at last, as though her victory brought intense relief, yet was not whollygamed in the way that she had wanted. Her physical beauty, perhaps, was the last weapon she had wished to use for my enslavement; sheknew quite surely that the appeal to what was highest in me had notsucceeded. .. 

The party in our mother's house that week in July included yourself;there is no need for me to remind you of its various members, nor ofthe strong attraction Marion, then a girl of twenty-five, exercisedupon the men belonging to it. Nor have you forgotten, I feel sure, the adroit way in which she contrived so often to find herself alonewith me, both in the house and out of it, even to the point ofsometimes placing me in a quasi-false position. That she tempted meis, perhaps, an overstatement, though that she availed herself ofevery legitimate use of feminine magic to entrap me is certainly thetruth. Opportunities of marriage, it was notorious, had beenfrequently given to her, and she had as frequently declined them; shewas older than her years; to inexperience she certainly had no claim:and from the very first it was clear to me--if conceited, I cannotpretend that I was also blind--that flirtation was not her object andthat marriage was. Yet it was marriage with a purpose that shedesired, and that purpose had to do, I felt, with sacrifice. Sheburned to give her very best, her all, and for my highest welfare. Itwas in this sense, I got the impression strangely, that she had needof me. 

The battle seemed, at first, uneven, since, as a woman, she did notpositively attract me. I was first amused at her endeavours and herskill; but respect for her as a redoubtable antagonist soon followed. This respect, doubtless, was the first blood she drew from me, sinceit gained my attention and fixed my mind upon her presence. From thatmoment she entered my consciousness as a woman; when she was near meI became more and more aware of her, and the room, the picnic, thegame of tennis that included her were entirely different from suchoccasions when she was absent, I became self-conscious. It wasimpossible to ignore her as formerly had been my happy case. 

It was then I first knew how beautiful she was, and that her beautymade a certain difference to my mood. The next step may seem a bigone, but, I believe, is very natural: her physical beauty gave medefinite pleasure. And the instant this change occurred she was awareof it. The curious fact, however, is that, although aware of thisgain of power, she made no direct use of it at first. She did not drawthis potent weapon for my undoing; it was ever with her, but was eversheathed. Did she discern my weakness, perhaps, and know that thesubtle power would work upon me most effectively if left to itself?Did she, rich in experience, deem that its too direct use might wakena reaction in my better self? I cannot say, I do not know. .. . Everyfeminine art was at her disposal, as every use of magic pertaining toyoung and comely womanhood was easily within her reach. As you and Imight express it bluntly, she knew men thoroughly, she knew everytrick; she drew me on, then left me abruptly in the wrong, puzzled, foolish, angry, only to forgive me later with the most enchantingsmile or word imaginable. But never once did she deliberately makeuse of the merciless weapon of her physical beauty although--perhapsbecause--she knew that it was the most powerful in all her armoury. 

For listen to this: when at last I took her in my arms with passionthat would not be denied, she actually resented it. She even soughtto repel me from her touch that had undone me. I repeat what I saidbefore: She did not wish to win me in that way. The sigh of happinessshe drew in that moment--I can swear to it--included somewhere, too, the pain of bitter disappointment. 

The weapon, however, that she did use without hesitation was hersinging. There was nothing special either in its quality or skill; itwas a voice untrained, I believe, and certainly without ambition; herrepertoire was limited; she sang folk-songs mostly, the simplelove-songs of primitive people, of peasants and the like, yet sangthem with such truth and charm, with such power and conviction, somehow, that I knew enchantment as I listened. This, too, sheinstantly divined, and that behind my compliments lay hid a weaknessof deep origin she could play upon to her sure advantage. She did sowithout mercy, until gradually I passed beneath her sway. 

I will not now relate in detail the steps of my descent, or if youlike it better, of my capture. This is a summary merely. So let mesay in brief that her singing to the harp combined with therevelation of her physical beauty to lead me swiftly to the pointwhere I ardently desired her, and that in this turmoil of desire Isought eagerly to find real love. There were times when I deceivedmyself most admirably; there were times when I plainly saw the truth. During the former I believed that my happiness lay in marrying her, but in the latter I recognised that a girl who meant nothing to mybetter self had grown of a sudden painfully yet exquisitelydesirable. But even during the ascendancy of the latter physicalmood, she had only to seat herself beside the harp and sing, for theformer state to usurp its place, I watched, I listened, and Iyielded. Her voice, aided by the soft plucking of the strings, completed my defeat. Now, strangest of all, I must add one otherthing, and I will add it without comment. For though sure of itstruth, I would not dwell upon it. And it is this: that in her singing, as also in her playing, in the "colour" of her voice as also in thevery attitude and gestures of her figure as she sat beside theinstrument, there lay, though marvellously hidden, something gross. It woke a response of something in myself, hitherto unrecognized, that was similarly gross. .. . 

It was in the empty billiard-room when the climax came, a calm eveningof late July, the dusk upon the lawn, and most of the house-partyalready gone upstairs to dress for dinner. I had been standing besidethe open window for some considerable time, motionless, and listeningidly to the singing of a thrush or blackbird in the shrubberies--whenI heard the faint twanging of the harp-strings in the room behind me, and turning, saw that Marion had entered and was there beside theinstrument. At the same moment she saw me, rose from the harp andcame forward. During the day she had kept me at a distance. I washungry for her voice and touch; her presence excited me--and yet Iwas half afraid. 

"What! Already dressed!" I exclaimed, anxious to avoid a talk a deux. "I must hurry then, or I shall be later than usual. "

I crossed the room towards the door, when she stopped me with hereyes. 

"Do you really mean to say you don't know the difference between anevening frock and--and this, " she answered lightly, holding out theskirt in her fingers for me to touch. And in the voice was that hintof a sensual caress that, I admit, bewildered both my will andjudgment. She was very close and her fragrance came on me with herbreath, like the perfume of the summer garden. I touched the materialcarelessly; it was of softest smooth white serge. It seemed I touchedherself that lay beneath it. And at that touch some fire oflightning ran through every vein. 

"How stupid of me, " I said quickly, making to go past her, "but it'swhite, you see, and in this dim light I----"

"A man's idea of an evening frock is always white, I suppose, orblack. " She laughed a little. "I'm not coming to dinner to-night, "she added, sitting down to the harp. "I've got a headache and thoughtI might soothe it with a little music. I didn't know any one washere. I thought I was alone. "

Thus, deftly, having touched a chord of pity in me, she began to play;her voice followed; dinner and dressing, the house-party and mymother's guests, were all forgotten. I remember that you looked in, your eyes touched with a suggestive and melancholy smile, and asquickly closed the door again. But even that little warning failed tohelp me. I sat down on the sofa facing her, the world forgotten. And, as I listened to her singing and to the sweet music of the harp, thespell, it seemed, of some ancient beauty stole upon my spirit. Thesound of her soft voice reduced my resistance to utter impotence. Anaggressive passion took its place. The desire for contact, physicalcontact, became a vehement aching that I scarcely could restrain, andmy arms were hungry for her. Shame and repugnance touched me faintlyfor a moment, but at once died away again. I listened and I watched. The sensuous beauty of her figure and her movements, swathed in thatsoft and clinging serge, troubled my judgment; it seemed, as I sawher little foot upon the pedal, that I felt with joy its pressure onmy heart and life. Something gross and abandoned stirred in me; Iwelcomed her easy power and delighted in it. I feasted my eyes andears, the blood rose feverishly to my head. She did not look at me, yet knew that I looked at her, and how. No longer ashamed, but with afiery pleasure in my heart, I spoke at last. Her song had ended. Shesoftly brushed the strings, her eyes turned downwards. 

"Marion, " I said, agitation making my voice sound unfamiliar, "Marion, dear, I am enthralled; your voice, your beauty----"

I found no other words; my voice stopped dead; I stood up, tremblingin every limb. I saw her in that instant as a maid of olden time, singing the love-songs of some far-off day beside her nativeinstrument, and of a voluptuous beauty there was no withstanding. Thehalf-light of the dusk set her in a frame of terrible enchantment. 

And as I spoke her name and rose, she also spoke my own, my Christianname, and rose as well. I saw her move towards me. Upon her face, inher eyes and on her lips, was a smile of joy I had never seen before, though a smile of conquest, and of something more besides that I mustcall truly by its rightful name, a smile of lust. God! thosemovements beneath the clinging dress that fell in lines of beauty toher feet! Those little feet that stepped upon my heart, upon my verysoul. .. . For a moment I loathed myself. The next, as she touched meand my arms took her with rough strength against my breast, myrepugnance vanished, and I was utterly undone. I believed I loved. That which was gross in me, leaping like fire to claim her gloriousbeauty, met and merged with that similar, devouring flame in her; butin the merging seemed cunningly transformed into the call of soul tosoul: I forgot the pity. .. . I kissed her, holding her to me sofiercely that she scarcely moved. I said a thousand things. I knownot what I said. I loved. 

Then, suddenly, she seemed to free herself; she drew away; she lookedat me, standing a moment just beyond my reach, a strange smile on herlips and in her darkened eyes a nameless expression that held bothjoy and pain. For one second I felt that she repelled me, that sheresented my action and my words. Yes, for one brief second she stoodthere, like an angel set in judgment over me, and the next we hadcome together again, softly, gently, happily; I heard that strange, deep sigh, already mentioned, half of satisfaction, half, it seemed, of pain, as she sank down into my arms and found relief in quietsobbing on my breast. 

And pity then returned. I felt unsure of myself again. This was the loveof the body only; my soul was silent. Yet--somehow, in some strangehidden way, lay this ambushed meaning--that she had need of me, and thatshe offered her devotion and herself in sacrifice. 

II

THE brief marriage ran its course, depleting rather than enriching me, and I know you realized before the hurried, dreadful end that my tiewith yourself was strengthened rather than endangered, and that I tookfrom you nothing that I might give it to her. That death shouldintervene so swiftly, leaving her but an interval of a month between thealtar and the grave, you could foreknow as little as I or she; yet inthat brief space of time you learned that I had robbed you of nothingthat was your precious due, while she as surely realized that theamazing love she poured so lavishly upon me woke no response--beyond adeep and tender pity, strangely deep and singularly tender I admit, butassuredly very different from love. 

Now this, I think, you already know and in some measure understand; butwhat you cannot know--since it is a portion of her secret, of thatambushed meaning, as I termed it, given to me when she lay dying--is thepathetic truth that her discovery wrought no touch of disenchantment inher. I think she knew with shame that she had caught me with her lowestweapon, yet still hoped that the highest in her might complete andelevate her victory. She knew, at any rate, neither dismay nordisappointment; of reproach there was no faintest hint. She did not evenonce speak of it directly, though her fine, passionate face made meaware of the position. Of the usual human reaction, that is, there wasno slightest trace; she neither chided nor implored; she did not weep. The exact opposite of what I might have expected took place before myvery eyes. 

For she turned and faced me, empty as I was. The soul in her, realizingthe truth, stood erect to meet the misery of lonely pain that inevitablylay ahead--in some sense as though she welcomed it already; and, strangest of all, she blossomed, physically as well as mentally, into afuller revelation of gracious loveliness than before, sweeter and moreexquisite, indeed, than anything life had yet shown to me. Moreover, having captured me, she changed; the grossness I had discerned, thatwhich had led me to my own undoing, vanished completely as though itwere transmuted into desires and emotions of a loftier kind. Somepurpose, some intention, a hope immensely resolute shone out of her, andof such spiritual loveliness, it seemed to me, that I watched it in akind of dumb amazement. 

I watched it--unaware at first of my own shame, emptied of any emotionwhatsoever, I think, but that of a startled worship before the grandeurof her generosity. It seemed she listened breathlessly for the beatingof my heart, and hearing none, resolved that she would pour her own lifeinto it, regardless of pain, of loss, of sacrifice, that she might makeit live. She undertook her mission, that is to say, and this mission, insome mysterious way, and according to some code of conduct undivined byme, yet passionately honoured, was to give--regardless of herself or ofresponse. I caught myself sometimes thinking of a child who wouldinstinctively undo some earlier grievous wrong. She loved memarvellously. 

I know not how to describe to you the lavish wealth of selfless devotionshe bathed me in during the brief torturing and unfulfilled periodbefore the end. It made me aware of new depths and heights in humannature. It taught me a new beauty that even my finest dreams had leftunmentioned. Into the region that great souls inhabit a glimpse wasgiven me. My own dreadful weakness was laid bare. And an eternal hungerwoke in me--that I might love. 

That hunger remained unsatisfied. I prayed, I yearned, I suffered; Icould have decreed myself a deservedly cruel death; it seemed Istretched my little nature to unendurable limits in the fierce hope thatthe Gift of the Gods might be bestowed upon me, and that her divineemotion might waken a response within my leaden soul. But all in vain. My attitude, in spite of every prayer, of every effort, remained no morethan a searching and unavailing pity, but a pity that held no seed of amere positive emotion, least of all, of love. The heart in me layunredeemed; it knew ashamed and very tender gratitude; but it did notbeat for her. I could not love. 

I have told you bluntly, frankly, of my physical feelings towards Marionand her beauty. It is a confession that I give into my own safe keeping. I think, perhaps, that you, though cast in a finer mould, may notdespise them utterly, nor too contemptuously misinterpret them. Thelegend that twins may share a single soul has always seemed to megrotesque and unpoetic nonsense, a cruel and unnecessary notion too: aman is sufficiently imperfect without suffering this further subtractionfrom his potentialities. And yet it is true, in our own case, that youhave exclusive monopoly of the ethereal qualities, while to me are givenchiefly the physical attributes of the vigorous and healthy male--theanimal: my six feet three, my muscular system, my inartistic andpedestrian temperament. Fairly clean-minded, I hope I may be, but beyondall question I am the male animal incarnate. It was, indeed, thethousand slaveries of the senses, individually so negligible, collectively so overwhelming, that forced me upon my knees before herphysical loveliness. I must tell you now that this potent spell, alternating between fiery desire and the sincerest of repugnance, continued to operate. I complete the confession by adding briefly, thatafter marriage she resented and repelled all my advances. A deep sadnesscame upon her; she wept; and I desisted. It was my soul that she desiredwith the fire of her mighty love, and not my body. .. . And again, sinceit is to myself and to you alone I tell it, I would add this vital fact:it was this "new beauty which my finest dreams have left unmentioned"that made it somehow possible for me to desist, both against my animalwill, yet willingly. 

I have told you that, when dying, she revealed to me a portion of her"secret. " This portion of a sacred confidence lies so safe within myeverlasting pity that I may share it with you without the remorse of abetrayal. Full understanding we need never ask; the solution, I amconvinced, is scarcely obtainable in this world. The message, however, was incomplete because the breath that framed it into broken wordsfailed suddenly; the heart, so strangely given into my unworthy keeping, stopped beating as you shall hear upon the very edge of full disclosure. The ambushed meaning I have hinted at remained--a hint. 

III

THERE was, then, you will remember, but an interval of minutes betweenthe accident and the temporary recovery of consciousness, betweenthat recovery again and the moment when the head fell forward on myknee and she was gone. That "recovery" of consciousness I feel boundto question, as you shall shortly hear. Among such curious things Iam at sea admittedly, yet I must doubt for ever that the eyes whichpeered so strangely into mine were those of Marion herself--as I hadalways known her. You will, at any rate, allow the confession, andbelieve it true, that I--did not recognize her quite. Consciousnessthere was, indubitably, but whether it was "recovery" ofconsciousness is another matter, and a problem that I must for everquestion though I cannot ever set it confidently at rest. It almostseemed as though a larger, grander, yet somehow a less personal, soullooked forth through the fading eyes and used the troubled breath. 

In those brief minutes, at any rate, the mind was clear as day, thefaculties not only unobscured, but marvellously enhanced. In the eyesat first shone unveiled fire; she smiled, gazing into my own withlove and eager yearning too. There was a radiance in her face I mustcall glory. Her head was in my lap upon the bed of rugs we hadimprovised inside the field: the broken motor posed in a monstrousheap ten yards away; and the doctor, summoned by a passing stranger, was in the act of administrating the anaesthetic, so that we mightbear her without pain to the nearest hospital--when, suddenly, sheheld up a warning finger, beckoning to me that I should listenclosely. 

I bent my head to catch the words. There was such authority in thegesture, and in the eyes an expression so extraordinarily appealing, and yet so touched with the awe of a final privacy beyond language, that the doctor stepped backwards on the instant, the needle shakingin his hand--while I bent down to catch the whispered words that atonce began to pass her lips. 

The wind in the poplar overhead mingled with the little sentences, asthough the breath of the clear blue sky, calmly shining, was mingledwith her own. 

But the words I heard both troubled and amazed me:

"Help me! For I am in the dark still!" went through me like a sword. "And I do not know how long. "

I took her face in both my hands; I kissed her. "You are withfriends, " I said. "You are safe with us, with me--Marion!" And Iapparently tried to put into my smile the tenderness that clumsywords forswore. Her next words shocked me inexpressibly: "Youlaugh, " she said, "but I----" she sighed--"I weep. "

I stroked her face and hair. No words came to me. 

"You call me Marion, " she went on in an eager tone that surely beliedher pain and weakness, "but I do not remember that. I have forgottennames. " Then, as I kissed her, I heard her add in the clearestwhisper possible, as though no cloud lay upon her mind: "Yet Marionwill do--if by that you know me now. "

There came a pause then, but after it such singular words that I couldhardly believe I heard aright, although each syllable sank into mybrain as with pointed steel:

"You come to me again when I lie dying. Even in the dark I hear--howlong I do not know--I hear your words. "

She gave me suddenly then a most piercing look, raising her face alittle towards my own. I saw earnest entreaty in them. "Tell me, " Imurmured; "you are nearer, closer to me than ever before. Tell mewhat it is?"

"Music, " she whispered, "I want music----"

I knew not what to answer, what to say. Can you blame me that, in mytroubled, aching heart, I found but commonplaces? For I thought ofthe harp, or of some stringed instrument that seemed part of her. 

"You shall have it, " I said gently, "and very soon. We shall carry younow into comfort, safety. You shall have no pain. Another momentand----"

"Music, " she repeated, interrupting, "music as of long ago. "

It was terrible. I said such stupid things. My mind seemed frozen. 

"I would hear music, " she whispered, "before I go again. "

"Marion, you shall, " I stammered. "Beethoven, Schumann, --what wouldplease you most? You shall have all. "

"Yes, play to me. But those names"--she shook her head--"I do notknow. "

I remember that my face was streaming, my hands so hot that her headseemed more than I could hold. I shifted my knees so that she mightlie more easily a little. 

"God's music!" she cried aloud with startling abruptness; then, lowering her voice again and smiling sadly as though something cameback to her that she would fain forget, she added slowly, withsomething of mournful emphasis:

"I was a singer . .. "

As though a flash of light had passed, some inner darkness was cleftasunder in me. Some heaviness shifted from my brain. It seemed theyears, the centuries, turned over like a wind-blown page. And out ofsome hidden inmost part of me involuntary words rose instantly:

"You sang God's music then . .. "

The strange, unbidden sentence stirred her. Her head moved slightly;she smiled. Gazing into my eyes intently, as though to dispel a mistthat shrouded both our minds, she went on in a whisper that yet wasstartlingly distinct, though with little pauses drawn out between thephrases: "I was a singer. .. In the Temple. I sang--men--into evil. You . .. I sang into . .. Evil. "

There was a moment's pause, as a spasm of inexplicable pain passedthrough my heart like fire, and a sense of haunting things whereof noconscious memory remained came over me. The scene about me waveredbefore my eyes as if it would disappear. 

"Yet you came to me when I lay dying at the last, " I caught her thinclear whisper. "You said, 'Turn to God!'"

The whisper died away. The darkness flowed back upon my mind andthought. A silence followed. I heard the wind in the poplar overhead. The doctor moved impatiently, coming a few steps nearer, then turningaway again. I heard the sounds of tinkering with metal that thedriver made ten yards behind us. I turned angrily to make asign--when Marion's low voice, again more like the murmur of the windthan a living voice, rose into the still evening air:

"I have failed. And I shall try again. "

She gazed up at me with that patient, generous love that seemedinexhaustible, and hardly knowing what to answer, nor how to comforther in that afflicting moment, I bent lower--or, rather, she drew myear closer to her lips. I think her great desire just then was toutter her own thought more fully before she passed. Certainly it wasno avowal or consolation from myself she sought. 

"Your forgiveness, " I heard distinctly, "I need your fullforgiveness. "

It was for me a terrible and poignant moment. The emptiness of my pitybetrayed itself too mercilessly for me to bear; yet, before mybewilderment enabled me to frame an answer, she went on hurriedly, though with a faultless certainty: the meaning to her was clear asday:

"Born of love . .. The only true forgiveness. .. "

A film formed slowly. Her eyes began to close, her breath died offinto a sigh; she smiled, but her head sank lower with her fadingstrength. And her final words went by me in that sigh:

"Yet love in you lies unawakened still. .. And I must try again. .. . "

There was one more effort, painful with unexpressed fulfilment. Aflicker of awful yearning took her paling eyes. Life seemed tostammer, pause, then flush as with this last deep impulse to yield asecret she discerned for the first time fully, in the very act ofpassing out. The face, with its soft loveliness, turned grey in death. Upon the edge of a great disclosure--she was gone. 

I remember that for a space of time there was silence all about us. The doctor still kept his back to us, the driver had ceased hiswretched hammering, I heard the wind in the poplar and the hum ofinsects. A bird sang loudly on a branch above; it seemed miles away, across an empty world. .. . Then, of a sudden, I became aware that theweight of the head and shoulders had dreadfully increased. I dared notturn my face lest I should look upon her whom I had deeplywronged--the forsaken tenement of this woman whose matchless love nowbegged with her dying breath for my forgiveness!

A cowardly desire to lose consciousness ran through me, to forgetmyself, to hide my shame with her in death; yet, even while this wasso, I sought most desperately through the depths of my anguished pityto find some hint, if only the tiniest seed, of love--and found itnot. .. . The rest belonged to things unrealized. .. . 

I remember a hand being laid upon me. I lifted my head which hadfallen close against her cheek. The doctor stood beside me, his graveand kindly face bent low. He spoke some gentle words. I saw himreplacing the needle in its little leathern case, unused. 

Marion was dead, her deep secret undisclosed. That which she yearnedto tell me was something which, in her brief period of devotion, shehad lived, had faithfully acted out, yet herself only dimly aware ofwhy it had to be. The solution of this problem of unrequited love layat last within her grasp; of a love that only asked to give of itsunquenched and unquenchable store, undismayed by the total absence ofresponse. 

She passed from the world of speech and action with this intensedesire unsatisfied, and at the very moment--as with a drowning manwho sees his past--when the solution lay ready to her hand. She sawclearly, she understood, she burned to tell me. Upon the edge of fulldisclosure, she was gone, leaving me alone with my aching pity andwith my shame of unawakened love. 

"I have failed, but I shall try again. .. . "

IV

THAT, as you know, took place a dozen years ago and more, when I wasthirty-two, and time, in the interval, has wrought unexpected endsout of the material of my life. My trade as a soldier has led me toan administrative post in a distant land where, apparently, I havedeserved well of my King and Country, as they say in the obituaries. At any rate, the cryptic letters following my name, bear witness tosome kind of notoriety attained. 

You were the first to welcome my success, and your congratulationswere the first I looked for, as surely as they were more satisfyingthan those our mother sent. You knew me better, it seems, than shedid. For you expressed the surprise that I, too, felt, whereas motherassured me she had "always known you would do well, my boy, and youhave only got your deserts in this tardy recognition. " To her, ofcourse, even at forty-five, I was still her "little boy. " You, however, guessed shrewdly that Luck had played strong cards inbringing me this distinction, and I will admit at once that it was, indeed, due to little born in me, but, rather, to some adventitiousaid that, curiously, seemed never lacking at the opportune moment. And this adventitious aid was new. 

This is the unvarnished truth. A mysterious power dealt the cards forme with unfailing instinct; a fortunate combination of events placingin my hands, precisely at the moment of their greatest value, clearopportunities that none but a hopeless blunderer could havedisregarded. What men call Chance operated in my favour as thoughwith superb calculation, lifting me to this miniature pinnacle I couldnever have reached by my own skill and judgment. 

So, at least, you and I, knowing my limited abilities, consent toattribute my success to luck, to chance, to fate, or to any othername for the destiny that has placed me on a height my talent nevercould have reached alone. You, and I, too, for that matter, are ashappy over the result as our mother is; only you and I are surprised, because we judge it, with some humour, out of greater knowledge. More--you, like myself, are a little puzzled, I think. We asktogether, if truth were told: Whose was the unerring, guiding hand?

Amid this uncertainty I give you now another curious item, about whichyou have, of course, been uninformed. For none could have detected itbut myself: namely, that apart from these opportunities chance setupon my path, an impulse outside myself--and an impulse that wasnew--drove me to make use of them. Sometimes even against my personalinclination, a power urged me into decided, and it so happened, always into faultless action. Amazed at myself, I yet invariablyobeyed. 

How to describe so elusive a situation I hardly know, unless bytelling you the simple truth: I felt that somebody would be pleased. 

And, with the years, I learned to recognize this instinct that neverfailed when a choice, and therefore an element of doubt, presenteditself. Invariably I was pushed towards the right direction. Moresingular still, there rose in me unbidden at these various junctures, a kind of inner attention which bade me wait and listen for theguiding touch. I am not fanciful, I heard no voice, I was aware ofnothing personal by way of guidance or assistance; and yet theguidance, the assistance, never failed, though often I was notconscious that they had been present until long afterwards. I felt, as I said above, that somebody would be pleased. 

For it was a consistent, an intelligent guidance; operating, as itwere, out of some completer survey of the facts at a given momentthan my own abilities could possibly have compassed; my mediocrefaculties seemed gathered together and perfected--with the result, intime, that my "intuition, " as others called it, came to be regardedwith a respect that in some cases amounted to half reverence. Theadjective "uncanny" was applied to me. The natives, certainly, wereaware of awe. 

I made no private use of this unearned distinction; there is nothingin me of the charlatan that claimed mysterious power; but mysubordinates, ever in growing numbers as my promotions followed, heldme in greater respect, apparently, on that very account. The natives, especially, as I mentioned, attributed semi-deific properties to mypoor personality. Certainly my prestige increased out of allproportion to anything my talents deserved with any show of justice. 

I have said that, so far as I was concerned, there lay nothingpersonal in this growth of divining intuition. I must now qualifythat a little. Nothing persuaded me that this guidance, soinfallible, so constant, owed its origin to what men call a being; Icertainly found no name for it; exactness, I think, might place itstruest description in some such term as energy, inner force orinspiration; yet I must admit that, with its steady repetition, thereawoke in me an attitude towards it that eluded somewhere also anemotion. And in this emotion, in its quality and character, hidremotely a personal suggestion: each time it offered itself, that is, I was aware of a sharp quiver of sensitive life within me, and ofthat sensation, extraordinarily sweet and wonderful, whichconstitutes a genuine thrill. 

I came to look for this "thrill, " to lie in wait with anticipatorywonder for its advent; and in a sense this pause in me, that was bothof expectancy and hope, grew slowly into what I may almost call ahabit. There was an emptiness in my heart before it came, a sense ofpeace and comfort when it was accomplished. The emptiness and thenthe satisfaction, as first and last conditions, never failed, andthat they took place in my heart rather than in my mind I can affirmwith equal certainty. 

The habit, thus, confirmed itself. I admitted the power. Let me befrank--I sought it, even longing for it when there was no decisionto be made, no guidance therefore needed: I longed for it because ofthe great sweetness that it left within my heart. It was when Ineeded it, however, that its effect was most enduring. The methodbecame quite easy to me. When a moment of choice between two coursesof action presented itself, I first emptied my heart of all personalinclination, then, pausing upon direction, I knew--or ratherfelt--which course to take. My heart was filled and satisfied with anintention that never wavered. Some energy that made the choice for mehad been poured in. I decided upon this or that line of action. TheThrill, always of an instantaneous nature, came and went--andsomebody was pleased. 

Moreover--and this will interest you more particularly--the emotionproduced in me was, so far as positive recognition went, a newemotion; it was, at any rate, one that had lain so feebly in mehitherto that its announcement brought the savour of an emotionbefore unrealized. I had known it but once, and that longyears before, but the man's mind in me increased and added to it. Forit seemed a development of that new perception which first dawnedupon me during my brief period of married life, and had since lainhidden in me, potential possibly, but inactive beyond all question, if not wholly dead. I will now name it for you, and for myself, asbest I may. It was the Thrill of Beauty. 

I became, in these moments, aware of Beauty, and to a degree, while itlasted, approaching revelation. Chords, first faintly struck longyears before when my sense of Marion's forgiveness and generositystirred worship in me, but chords that since then had lain, apparently, unresponsive, were swept into resonance again. Possiblythey had been vibrating all these intervening years, unknown to me, unrecognized. I cannot say. I only know that here was the origin ofthe strange energy that now moved me to the depths. Some new worshipof Beauty that had love in it, of which, indeed, love was thedetermining quality, awoke in the profoundest part of me, and evenwhen the "thrill" had gone its way, left me hungry and yearning forits repetition. Here, then, is the "personal" qualification that Imentioned. The yearning and the hunger were related to my deepestneeds. I had been empty, but I would be filled. For a passionatelove, holding hands with a faith and confidence as passionate asitself, poured flooding into me and made this new sense of beauty seema paramount necessity of my life. 

Will you be patient now, if I give you a crude instance of what Imean? It is one among many others, but I choose it because its verycrudeness makes my meaning clear. 

In this fevered and stricken African coast, you may know, there isluxuriance in every natural detail, an exuberance that is lavish toexcess. Yet beauty lies somewhat coyly hid--as though suffocated byover-abundance of crowding wonder. I detect, indeed, almost a touchof the monstrous in it all, a super-expression, as it were, thatbewilders, and occasionally even may alarm. Delicacy, subtlety, suggestion in any form, have no part in it. During the five years ofmy exile amid this tropical extravagance I can recall no singleinstance of beauty "hinting" anywhere. Nature seems, rather, audaciously abandoned; she is without restraint. She shows her all, tells everything--she shouts, she never whispers. You will understandme when I tell you that this wholesale lack of reticence and modestyinvolves all absence in the beholder of--surprise. A suddenravishment of the senses is impossible. One never can experience thatsweet and troubling agitation to which a breathless amazementproperly belongs. You may be stunned; you are hardly ever "thrilled. "

Now, this new sensitiveness to Beauty I have mentioned has opened meto that receptiveness which is aware of subtlety and owns to sharpsurprise. The thrill is of its very essence. It is unexpected. Out ofthe welter of prolific detail Nature here glories in, a delicate hintof wonder and surprise comes stealing. The change, of course, is inmyself, not otherwise. And on the particular "crude" occasion I willbriefly mention, it reached me from the most obvious and banal ofconditions--the night sky and the moon. 

Here, then, is how it happened: There had arisen a situation of gravedifficulty among the natives of my Province, and the need for takinga strong, authoritative line was paramount. The reports of mysubordinates from various parts of the country pointed to veryvigorous action of a repressing, even of a punitive, description. Itwas not, in itself, a complicated situation, and no Governor, who wassoldier too, need have hesitated for an instant. The variousStations, indeed, anticipating the usual course of action indicatedby precedent, had automatically gone to their posts, prepared for the"official instructions" it was known that I should send, wonderingimpatiently (as I learned afterwards) at the slight delay. For delaythere was, though of a few hours only; and this delay was caused bymy uncomfortable new habit--pausing for the guidance and the"thrill. " Intuition, waiting upon the thrill of Beauty that guided it, at first lay inactive. 

My behaviour seemed scarcely of the orthodox, official kind, soldierlyleast of all. There was uneasiness, there was cursing, probably;there were certainly remarks not complimentary. Prompt, decisiveaction was the obvious and only course. .. While I sat quietly in theHeadquarters Bungalow, a sensitive youth again, a dreamer, a poet, hungry for the inspiration of Beauty that the gorgeous tropical nightconcealed with her excess of smothering abundance. 

This incongruity between my procedure and the time-honoured methods of"strong" Governors must have seemed exasperating to those who waited, respectful, but with nerves on edge, in the canvassed and tentedregions behind the Headquarters clearing. Indeed, the Foreign Office, could it have witnessed my unpardonable hesitation, might well havedismissed me on the spot, I think. For I sat there, dreaming in mydeck-chair on the verandah, smoking a cigarette, safe within my netfrom the countless poisonous mosquitoes, and listening to the wind inthe palms that fringed the heavy jungle round the building. 

Smoking quietly, dreaming, listening, waiting, I sat there in thismood of inner attention and expectancy, knowing that the guidance Ianticipated must surely come. 

A few clouds sprawled in their beds of silver across the sky; theheat, the perfume, were, as always, painfully, excessive; themoonlight bathed the huge trees and giant leaves with that habitualextravagance which made it seem ordinary, almost cheap andwonderless. Very silent the wooden house lay all about me, there wereno footsteps, there was no human voice. I heard only the wash of theheavy-scented wind through the colossal foliage that hardly stirred, and watched, as a hundred times before, the immense heated sky, drenched in its brilliant and intolerable moonlight. All seemed ariot of excess, an orgy. 

Then, suddenly, the shameless night drew on some exquisite veil, asthe moon, between three-quarters and the full, slid out of sightbehind a streaky cloud. A breath, it seemed, of lighter wind woke allthe perfume of the burdened forest leaves. The shouting splendourhushed; there came a whisper and, at last--a hint. 

I watched with relief and gratitude the momentary eclipse, for in thehalf-light I was aware of that sharp and tender mood which waspreparatory to the thrill. Slowly sailing into view again from behindthat gracious veil of cloud--

"The moon put forth a little diamond peak, No bigger than anunobserved star, Or tiny point of fairy scimitar; Bright signal thatshe only stooped to tie Her silver sandals, ere deliciously She bowedinto the heavens her timid head. "

And then it came. The Thrill stole forth and touched me, passing likea meteor through my heart, but in that lightning passage, cleaving itopen to some wisdom that seemed most near to love. For power flowedin along the path that Beauty cleft for it, and with the beauty camethat intuitive guidance I had waited for. 

The inspiration operated like a flash. There was no reasoning; I wasaware immediately that another and a better way of dealing with thesituation was given me. 

I need not weary you with details. It seemed contrary to precedent, advice, against experience too, yet it was the right, the only way. It threatened, I admit, to destroy the prestige so long andlaboriously established, since it seemed a dangerous yielding to thenatives that must menace the white life everywhere and render trade inthe Colony unsafe. Yet I did not hesitate. .. . There was bustle atonce within that Bungalow; the orders went forth; I saw the way andchose it--to the dismay, outspoken, of every white man whose welfarelay in my official hands. 

And the results, I may tell you now without pride, since, as we bothadmit, no credit attaches to myself--the results astonished theentire Colony. .. . The Chiefs came to me, in due course, bringingfruit and flowers and presents enough to bury all Headquarters, andwith a reverential obedience that proved the rising scotched todeath--because its subtle psychological causes had been marvellouslyunderstood. 

Full comprehension, as I mentioned earlier in this narrative, wecannot expect to have. Its origin, I may believe, lies hid in thenature of that Beauty which is truth and love--in the source of ourvery life, perhaps, which lies hid again with beauty very faraway. .. . But I may say this much at least: that it seemed, my inspiredaction had co-operated with the instinctive beliefs of thesemysterious tribes--cooperated with their primitive and ancient senseof Beauty. It had, inexplicably to myself, fulfilled their sense ofright, which my subordinates would have outraged. I had acted with, instead of against, them. 

More I cannot tell you. You have the "crude instance, " and you havethe method. The instances multiplied, the method became habit. Theregrew in me this personal attitude towards an impersonal power Ihardly understood, and this attitude included an emotion--love. Withfaith and love I consequently obeyed it. I loved the source of myguidance and assistance, though I dared attach no name to it. Simpleenough the matter might have been, could I have referred its originto some name--to our mother or to you, to my Chief in London, to animpersonal Foreign Office that has since honoured me with money and acomplicated address upon my envelopes, or even, by a stretch ofimagination, to that semi-abstract portion of my being some men calla Higher Self. 

To none of these, however, could I honestly or dishonestly ascribe it. Yet, as in the case of those congratulatory telegrams from our motherand yourself, I was aware--and this feeling never failed with eachseparate occurrence--aware that somebody, other than ourselvesindividually or collectively--was pleased. 

V

WHAT I have told you so far concerns a growth chiefly of my inner lifethat was almost a new birth. My outer life, of event and action, wassufficiently described in those monthly letters you had from meduring the ten years, broken by three periods of long-leave at home, I spent in that sinister and afflicted land. This record, however, deals principally with the essential facts of my life, the inner; theouter events and actions are of importance only in so far as theyinterpret these, since that which a man feels and thinks alone isreal, and thought and feeling, of course, precede all action. 

I have told you of the Thrill, of its genesis and development; and Ichose an obvious and rather banal instance, first of all to makemyself quite clear, and, secondly, because the majority were of sodelicate a nature as to render their description extremely difficult. The point is that the emotion was, for me, a new one. I may honestlydescribe it as a birth. 

I must now tell you that it first stirred in me some five years afterI left England, and that during those years I had felt nothing butwhat most other men feel out here. Whether its sudden birth was dueto the violent country, or to some process of gradual preparationthat had been going forward in me secretly all that time, I cannottell. No proof, at any rate, offered itself of either. It camesuddenly. I do know, however, that from its first occurrence it hasstrengthened and developed until it has now become a dominatinginfluence of a distinctly personal kind. 

My character has been affected, perhaps improved. You have mentionedon several occasions that you noted in my letters a new tenderness, anew kindness towards my fellow-creatures, less of criticism and moreof sympathy, a new love; the "birth of my poetic sense" you alsospoke of once; and I myself have long been aware of a thousand freshimpulses towards charity and tolerance that had, hitherto, at anyrate, lain inactive in my being. 

I need not flatter myself complacently, yet a change there is, and itmay be an improvement. Whether big or small, however, I am sure ofone thing: I ascribe it entirely to this sharper and more extendedsensitiveness to Beauty, this new and exquisite receptiveness thathas established itself as a motive-power in my life. I have changedthe poet's line, using prose of course: There is beauty everywhereand therefore joy. 

And I will explain briefly, too, how it is that this copybook maxim isnow for me a practical reality. For at first, with my growingperception, I was distressed at what seemed to me the lavish waste, the reckless, spendthrift beauty, not in nature merely but in humannature, that passed unrecognized and unacknowledged. The loss seemedso extravagant. Not only that a million flowers waste their sweetnesson the desert air, but that such prodigal stores of human love andtenderness remain unemployed, their rich harvest allungathered--because, misdirected and misunderstood, they find noreceptacle into which they may discharge. 

It has now come to me, though only by & slow and almost imperceptibleadvance, that these stores of apparently unremunerative beauty, thisharvest so thickly sown about the world, unused, ungathered--prepareyourself, please, for an imaginative leap--ore used, are gathered, are employed. By Whom?

I can only answer: By some one who is pleased; and probably by manysuch. How, why, and wherefore--I catch your crowd of questions inadvance--we need not seek exactly to discover, although the answerof no uncertain kind, I hear within the stillness of a heart that haslearned to beat to a deeper, sweeter rhythm than before. 

Those who loved beauty and lived it in their lives, follow that sameideal with increasing power and passion afterwards--and for ever. 

The shutter of black iron we call Death hides the truth with terrorand resentment; but what if that shutter were, after all, transparent?

A glorious dream, I hear you cry. Now listen to my answer. It is, forme, a definite assurance and belief, because--I know. 

Long before you have reached this point you will, I know, have reachedalso the conclusion (with a sigh) that I am embarked upon somecommonplace experience of ghostly return, or, at least, of posthumouscommunication. Perhaps I wrong you here, but in any case I would atonce correct the inference, if it has been drawn. You remember ouradventures with the seance-mongers years ago? . .. I have not changedmy view so far as their evidential value is concerned. Be sure ofthat. 

The dead, I am of opinion, do not return; for, while individuals mayclaim startling experiences that seem to them of an authentic andconvincing kind, there has been no instance that can persuade usall--in the sense that thunderstorm convinces us all. Such individualexperiences I have always likened to the auto-suggestion of those fewwho believe the advertisements of the hair-restorers--you will forgivethe unpoetic simile for the sake of its exactitude--as against theverdict of the world that a genuine discovery of such a remedy wouldleave no single doubter in Europe or America, nor even in the LondonClubs! Yet each time I read the cunning article (I have less hairthan when I ran away from Sandhurst that exciting July night and metyou in the Strand!), and look upon the picture of the man, John HenrySmith, "before and after using, " I admit the birth of an unreasonablebelief that there may be something in it after all. 

Of such indubitable proof, however, there is, alas, as yet no sign. 

And so with the other matter--the dead do not "return. " My story, therefore, be comforted, has no individual instance to record. Itmay, on the other hand, be held to involve a thread of what might becalled--at a stretch--posthumous communication, yet a thread sotenuous that the question of personal direction behind it need hardlybe considered at all. For let me confess at once that, the habit ofthe "thrill" once established, I was not long in asking myself pointblank this definite question: Dared I trace its origin to my ownunfruitful experience of some years before?--and, discovering noshred of evidence, I found this positive answer: Honestly I couldnot. 

That "somebody was pleased" each time Beauty offered a wisdom Iaccepted, became an unanswerable conviction I could not argue about;but that the guidance--waking a responsive emotion in myself oflove--was referable to any particular name I could not, by anystretch of desire or imagination, bring myself to believe. 

Marion, I must emphasise, had been gone from me five years at leastbefore the new emotion gave the smallest hint of its new birth; andmy feeling, once the first keen shame and remorse subsided--I confessto the dishonouring truth--was one of looking back upon a painfulproblem that had found an unexpected solution. It was chiefly relief, although a sad relief, I felt. .. . And with the absorbing work of thenext following years (I took up my appointment within six months ofher death) her memory, already swiftly fading, entered an oblivionwhence rarely, and at long intervals only, it emerged at all. In theordinary meaning of the phrase, I had forgotten her. You will see, therefore, that there was no desire in me to revive an unhappymemory, least of all to establish any fancied communication with onebefore whose generous love I had felt myself dishonoured, if notactually disgraced. Even the remorse and regret had long since failedto disturb my peace of mind, causing me no anxiety, much less pain. Sic transit was the epitaph, if any. Acute sensation I had none atall. This, then, plainly argues against the slightest predispositionon my part to imagine that the loving guidance so strangely givenowned a personal origin I could recognize. That it involved a"personal emotion" is quite another matter. 

The more remarkable, therefore, is the statement truth now compels meto confess to you--namely, that this origin is recognizable, and thatI have traced in part the name it owns to. My next sentence youdivine already; you at once suspect the name I mean. I hear you sayto yourself with a smile--"So, after all. .. !"

Please, wait a moment, and listen closely now; for, in reply to yoursuspicion, I can give neither full affirmation or full denial. Yet ananswer of a certain kind is ready: I have stated my firm convictionthat the dead do not return; I do not modify it one iota; but Imentioned a moment ago another conviction that is mine because I know. So now let me supplement these two statements with a third: the dead, though they do not return, are active; and those who lived beauty intheir lives are--benevolently active. 

This may prepare you for a further assurance, yet one less easy toexpress intelligibly. Be patient while I make the difficult attempt. 

The origin of the wisdom that now seeks to shape and guide my lifethrough Beauty is, indeed, not Marion, but a power that stands behindher, and through which, with which, the energy of her being acts. Itstood behind her while she lived. It stands behind not only her, butequally behind all those peerless, exquisite manifestations of self-lesslove that give bountifully of their best without hope or expectation ofreward in kind. No human love of this description, though it find noobject to receive it, nor one single flower that "wastes" its sweetnesson the desert air, but acknowledges this inexhaustible and spendthriftsource. Its evidence lies strewn so thick, so prodigally, about ourworld, that not one among us, whatever his surroundings and conditions, but sooner or later must encounter at least one marvellous instance ofits uplifting presence. Some at once acknowledge the exquisite flash andare aware; others remain blind and deaf, till some experience, probablyof pain, shall have prepared and sensitized their receptive quality. Toall, however, one day, comes the magical appeal. As in my own case, there was apparently some kind of preparation before I grew conscious ofthat hunger for beauty which, awakening intuition, opened the heart totruth and so to wisdom. It then came softly, delicately, whispering likethe dawn, yet rich with a promise I could, at first, not easily fathom, though as sure of fulfilment as that promise of day that steals upon theworld when night is passing. 

I have tried to tell you something of this mystery. I cannot add tothat. I was lifted, as it were, towards some region or some state ofbeing, wherein I was momentarily aware of a vaster outlook upon life, ofa deeper insight into the troubles of my fellow-creatures, where, indeed, there burst upon me a comprehension of life's pains anddifficulties so complete that I may best describe it as that fullunderstanding which involves also full forgiveness, and that sympathywhich is love, God's love. 

This exaltation passed, of course, with the passing of the thrill thatmade it possible; it was truly instantaneous; a point of ecstasy, perhaps, in some category not of time at all, but of some state ofconsciousness that lifted me above, outside of, self. But it was real, as a thunderstorm is real. For, with this glimpse of beauty that I callthe "thrill, " I touched, for an instant so brief that it seemed timelessin the sense of having no duration, a pinnacle of joy, of vision, beyondanything attainable by desire or by. Intellect alone. I stood aware ofpower, wisdom, love; and more, this power, wisdom, love were mine todraw upon and use, not in some future heaven, but here and now. 

VI

I RETURNED to England with an expectant hunger born of this love ofbeauty that was now ingrained in me. I came home with the belief thatmy yearning would be satisfied in a deeper measure; and more--that, somehow, it would be justified and explained. I may put it plainly, if only to show how difficult this confession would have been to anyone but yourself; it sounds so visionary from a mere soldier and manof action such as I am. For my belief included a singular dream that, in the familiar scenes I now revisited, some link, already halfestablished, would be strengthened, and might probably be realized, even proved. 

In Africa, as you know, I had been set upon the clue at home inEngland. Among the places and conditions where this link had beenfirst established in the flesh, must surely come a fuller revelation. Beauty, the channel of my inspiration, but this time the old sweetEnglish beauty, so intimate, so woven through with the fresh wonderof earliest childhood days, would reveal the cause of my firstfailure to respond, and so, perhaps, the intention of those finalpathetic sentences that still haunted me with their freight ofundelivered meaning. In England, T believed, my "thrill" must bringauthentic revelation. 

I came back, that precarious entity, a successful man. I was to bethat thing we used to laugh about together in your Cambridge days, adistinguished personality; I should belong to the breed of littlelions. Yet, during the long, tedious voyage, I realized that thisheld no meaning for me; I did not feel myself a little lion, the ideaonly proved that the boy in me was not yet dead. My one desire, though inarticulate until this moment of confessing it, was to renewthe thrills, and so to gather from an intenser, sweeter beauty somemeasure of greater understanding they seemed to promise. It was apersonal hope, a personal desire; and, deep at the heart of it, Memory, passionate though elusive, flashed her strange signal of apersonal love. In this dream that mocked at time, this yearning thatforgot the intervening years, I nursed the impossible illusion that, somehow or other, I should become aware of Marion. 

Now, I have treated you in this letter as though you were a woman whoreads a novel, for in my first pages I have let you turn to the endand see that the climax is a happy one, lest you should faint by theway and close my story with a yawn. You need not do that, however, since you already know this in advance. You will bear with me, too, when I tell you that my return to England was in the nature of afailure that, at first, involved sharpest disappointment. I wasunaware, as a whole, of the thrills I had anticipated with suchlonging. The sweet picture of English loveliness I had cherished withsentimental passion during my long exile hardly materialized. 

That I was not a lion, but an insignificant quasi-colonial adventureramong many others, may have sprinkled acid upon my daily diet ofsensation, but you will do me the justice to believe that thiswounded vanity was the smallest item in my disenchantment. Ten years, especially in primitive, godforsaken Africa, is a considerableinterval; I found the relationship between myself and my belovedhome-land changed, and in an unexpected way. 

I was not missed for one thing, I had been forgotten. Except from ourmother and yourself, I had no welcome. But, apart from this immediatecircle, and apart from the deep, comfortable glow experienced at thefirst sight of the "old country, " I found England and the Englishdull, conventional, and uninspired. There was no poignancy. Thehabits and the outlook stood precisely where I had left them. TheEnglish had not moved. They played golf as of yore, they went to theraces at the appointed time and in the appointed garb, they gaveheavy dinner-parties, they wrote letters to the Times, and ignored anoutside world beyond their island. Their estimate of themselves andof foreigners remained unaltered, their estimate of rich orinfluential neighbours was what it always had been, there were manymore motor-cars and a few more peers, it was more difficult thanformerly to get into a good club; but otherwise, God bless them, theywere worthier than ever. The "dear old country, " that which "outthere" we had loved and venerated, worked and fought for, was stolidand unshaken; the stream of advancing life that elsewhere rushed, hadleft England complaisantly unmoved and unresponsive. 

You have no idea how vividly--and in what curious minor details--thegeneral note of England strikes a traveller returning after aninterval of years. Later, of course, the single impression ismodified and obscured by other feelings. I give it, therefore, beforeit was forgotten. England had not budged. Had it been winter insteadof early spring, I might sum up for you what I mean in one shortsentence: I travelled to London in a third-class railway carriagethat had no heating apparatus. 

But to all this, and with a touch of something akin to pride in me, Ispeedily adjusted myself. I had been exiled, I had come home. As ourold nurse, aged and withered, but otherwise unaltered, said to mequietly by way of greeting: "Well, they didn't kill you, MasterRichard!" I was, therefore, alive. It was for me, the unimportantatom, to recover my place in the parent mass. I did so. I wasEnglish. I recovered proportion. I wore the accustomed mask; I hidboth my person and my new emotions, as was obviously expected of me. Having reported my insignificance to the Foreign Office. .. . I camedown to the Manor House. 

Yet, having changed, and knowing that I had changed, I was aware of acleft between me and my native stock. Something un-English was alivein me and eager to assert itself. Another essence in my blood hadquickened, a secret yearning that I dared not mention to my kind, anew hunger in my heart that clamoured to be satisfied, yet remained, speaking generally, un-nourished. Looking for beauty among mysurroundings and among my kith and kin, I found it not; there was nogreat Thrill from England or from home. The slowness, the absence ofcolour, imagination, rhythm, baffled me, while the ugliness of commonthings and common usages afflicted my new sensitiveness. Not that Iam peculiarly alert to beauty, nor claim superior perception--I am noartist, either by virtue of vision or power of expression--but that acertain stagnant obtuseness, a kind of sordid and conservativeveneration of the ugly that the English favour, distressed and eventortured me in a way I had never realized formerly. They were soproud to live without perception. An artist was a curiosity, not aleader, far less a prophet. There was no imagination. 

In little things, as I said, a change was manifest, however. Much thattradition had made lovely with the perfume of many centuries I foundmodernized until the ancient spirit had entirely fled, leaving ashell that was artificial to the point of being false. The sanctionof olden time that used to haunt with beauty was deceived by a mockeryI found almost hideous. The ancient inns, for instance, adapted toweek-end motor traffic, were pretentious and uncomfortable, their"menus" of inferior food written elaborately in French. Thecourtliness had vanished, and the cost had come. Telephoneseverywhere not only destroyed privacy, but brought dismay intocountless gentle intimacies, their nuisance hardly justified by theirusefulness. Life, it seemed, in a frantic hurry, had been cheapened, not improved; there was no real progress, but only more unrest. England--too solid to go fast, had made ungainly efforts; but she hadmoved towards ungraciousness where she had moved at all; I found hera cross between a museum and an American mushroom town thatadvertises all the modern comforts with a violent insistence that ismeant to cloak their very absence. 

This, my first impression, toned down, of course, a little later; butit was my first impression. The people, however, even in thecountryside, seemed proud both of mushroom and museum, and commercialugliness, greedy and unashamed, now distorted every old-worldvillage. The natives were pleased to the point of vanity. 

For myself, I could not manage this atrocious compromise, and lookingfor the dear old England of our boyhood days, I found it not. Thechange, of course, was not in the country only, but in myself. Thesoul in me, awakened to a new standard, had turned round to faceanother way. 

The Manor House was very still when I arrived from London--& late Mayevening between the sunset and the dark. Mother, as you know, met meat the station, for they had stopped the down-train by specialorders, so that I stepped out upon the deserted platform of thecountryside quite alone, a distinguished man, with my rug andumbrella. A strange footman touched his hat, an old, stooping porterstared hard at me, then smiled vaguely, while the guard, eyeingrespectfully the individual for whom his train had halted, waved hisred flag, and swung himself into the disappearing van with theapproved manner we once thought marvellous. I left the emptyplatform, gave up my ticket to an untidy boy, and crossed the gloomybooking-hall. The mournfulness of the whole place was depressing. Iheard a blackbird whistle in a bush against the signal-box. It seemedto scream. 

Mother I first saw, seated in the big barouche. She was leaning back, but sat forwards as I came. She looked into my face across the wideinterval of years now ended, and my heart gave a great boyish leap, then sank into stillness again abruptly. She seemed to me exactlythe same as usual--only so much smaller. We embraced with a kind ofdignity:

"So here you are, my boy, at last, " I heard her say in a quiet voice, and as though she had seen me a month or two ago, "and very, verytired, I'll be bound. "

I took my seat beside her. I felt awkward, stiff, self-conscious;there was disappointment somewhere. 

"Oh, I'm all right, mother, thanks, " I answered. "But how are you?" Andthe next moment, it seemed to me, I heard her asking if I washungry;--whereupon, absurd as it must sound, I was aware of an immenseemotion that interfered with my breathing. It broke up through somerepressive layer that had apparently concealed it, and made mefeel--well, had I been thirty-five years younger, I could havecried--for pleasure. Mother, I think, forgot those years perhaps. To herI was still in overalls and wanted food. We drove, then, in comparativesilence the four miles behind the big pair of greys, the only remarkthat memory credits me with being an enquiry about the identity of thecoachman whose dim outline I saw looming in the darkness just above me. The lamplight showed one shoulder, one arm, one ear, the rest concealed;but the way he drove was, of course, unmistakeable; slowly, morecautiously, perhaps, but with the same flourish of the whip, the sameair of untold responsibility as ever. And, will you believe it, my chiefmemory of all that scene of anticipated tenderness and home-emotion isthe few words he gave in reply to my enquiry and recognition when atlength the carriage stopped and I got out:

"Well, Brown, I'm glad to see you again. All well at home, I hope?"followed by something of sympathy about his beloved horses. 

He looked down sideways at me from the box, touching his cockade withthe long yellow whip in his thick, gloved hand. I can hear his warm, respectful answer now; I can see the gleam of proud pleasure in his eye:

"Yes, sir, thank you, Sir Richard, and glad to see you back again, sir, and with such success upon you. "

I moved back to help our mother out. I remember thinking how calm, howsolid, how characteristically inarticulate it all was. Did I wish itotherwise? I think not. Only there was something in me beating its wingsimpatiently like a wild bird that felt the bars close round it. .. . Mother, I realized, could not have said even what the old coachman hadsaid to save her life, and I remember wondering what would move her intothe expression of natural joy. All that half-hour, as the hoofs echoedalong the silence of the country road, and the old familiar woods andfields slid past, no sign of deep emotion had escaped her. She had askedif I was hungry. .. . 

And then the smells! The sweet, faint garden smell in the Englishtwilight:--of laurels and laurestinus, of lilac, pinks, and the heavyscent of May, wall-flowers and sweet william too--these, with thepoignant aroma of the old childhood house, were the background offamiliar loveliness against which my subsequent disillusion of thehomeland set itself in such afflicting contrast. I remember, as weentered the dim hall, the carriage lamps fell on, the floweringhorse-chestnut by the door; the bats were flitting; a big white mothwhirred softly against the brilliant glass as though you and I wereafter it again with nets and killing-bottles. .. And, helping mother out, I noticed, besides her smallness, how slow and aged her movements were. 

"Mother, let me help you. That's what I've come home for, " I said, feeling for her little hand. And she replied so quietly, so calmly itwas almost frigid, "Thank you, dear boy; your arm, perhaps--a moment. They are so stupid about the lamps in the hall, I've had to speak sooften. There, now! It is an awkward step. " I felt myself a giant besideher. She seemed so tiny now. There was something very strong in hersilence and her calm; and though a portion of me liked it, anotherportion resented it and felt afraid. Her attitude was like a refusal, adenial, a refusal to live, a denial of life almost. A tinge ofdepression, not far removed from melancholy, stole over my spirit. Thechange in me, I realized then, indeed, was radical. 

Now, lest this narrative should seem confused, you must understand thatmy disillusions with regard to England were realized subsequently, whenI had moved about the counties, paid many solid visits, and tasted theland and people in some detail. And the disappointment was the keenerowing to the fact that very soon after my arrival in the old Home Place, the "thrill" came to me with a direct appeal that was disconcerting. Forcoming unexpectedly, as it did, in this familiar scene where yetpreviously I had never known it, it had the effect of marking the changein me with a certainty from which there was no withdrawal possible. Itstandardized this change. The new judgment was made uncompromisinglyclear; people and places must inevitably stand or fall by it. And thefirst to fall--since the test lies beyond all control of affection orrespect--was our own dear, faithful mother. 

You share my reverence and devotion, so you will feel no pain that Iwould dishonour a tie that is sacred to us both in the old Bible sense. But, also, you know what a sturdy and typical soul of England she hasproved herself, and that a sense of beauty is not, alas, by any stretchof kindliest allowance, a national characteristic. Culture and knowledgewe may fairly claim, no doubt, but the imaginative sense of beauty is orare among us that its possession is a peculiarity good form wouldsuppress. It is a pose, an affectation, it is unmanly--it is notEnglish. We are too strong to thrill. And that one so near and dear tome, so honoured and so deeply loved, should prove herself to my newstandard thus typically English, while it came as sharpest pain, oughtnot, I suppose, to have caused me the surprise it did. It made me aware, however, of the importance of my new criterion, while at the same timeaware of a lack of sympathy between us that amounted to disenchantment. It was a shock, to put it plainly. A breath of solitude, of isolation, stole on me and, close behind it, melancholy. 

From the smallest clue imaginable the truth came into me, from a clue sosmall, indeed, that you may smile to think I dared draw such bigdeductions from premises so insignificant. You will probably deny me asense of humour even when you hear. So let me say at once, before youjudge me hastily, that the words, and the incident which drew themforth, were admittedly inadequate to the deduction. Only, mark this, please--I drew no deduction. Reason played no part. Cause and effectwere unrelated. It was simply that the truth flashed into me. I knew. 

What did I know? Perhaps that the gulf between us lay as wide as thatbetween the earth and Sirius; perhaps that we were, individually, of akind so separate, so different, that mutual understanding wasimpossible; perhaps that while she was of To-day and proud of it, I wasof another time, another century, and proud of that. I cannot sayprecisely. Her words, while they increased my sense of isolation, ofsolitude, of melancholy, at the same time also made me laugh, asassuredly they will now make you laugh. 

For, while she was behind me in the morning-room, fingering some letterson the table, I stood six feet away beside the open window, listening tothe nightingales--the English nightingales--that sang across the quietgarden in the dusk. The high-pitched clamour of the jungle choruses withtheir monstrous turmoil, their prolific detail, came back to me instartling contrast. This exquisite and delicious sound I now heardbelonged still to England. And it had not changed. "No hungrygenerations tread thee down. .. " rose in some forgotten corner of mymind, and my yearning that would be satisfied moved forth to catch thenotes. 

"Listen, mother, " I said, turning towards her. 

She raised her head and smiled a little before reading the rest of theletter that she held. 

"I only pray they won't keep you awake, dear boy, " she answered gently. "They give us very little peace, I'm afraid, just now. "

Perhaps she caught some expression in my face, for she added a triflemore quickly: "That's the worst of the spring--our English spring--itis so noisy!" Still smiling, she picked up her letter again, while I, though still listening by the window, heard only the harsh scream andrattle of the jungle voices, thousands and thousands of miles awayacross the world. 

VII

IT was some little time after my arrival, as I shall presently relate, that the experience I call the thrill came to me in England--and, like all its predecessors, came through Nature. It came, that is, through the only apparatus I possessed as yet that could respond. 

The point, I think, is of special interest; I note it now, on lookingback upon the series as a whole, though at the time I did not noteit. 

For, compared with yourself at any rate, the aesthetic side of me issomewhat raw; of pictures, sculpture, music I am untaught andignorant; with other Philistines, I "know what I like, " but nothingmore. It is the honest but uncultured point of view. I am thatprimitive thing, the mere male animal. It was my love of Nature, therefore, that showed me beauty, since this was the only apparatusin my temperament able to respond. Natural, simple things, as before, were the channel through which beauty appealed to that latent storeof love and wisdom in me which, it almost seemed, were being slowlyeducated. 

The talks and intimacies with our mother, then, were largely over; there-knitting of an interrupted relationship was fairly accomplished;she had asked her questions, and listened to my answers. All thedropped threads had been picked up again, so that a pattern, similarto the one laid aside, now lay spread more or less comfortably beforeus. Outwardly, things seemed much as they were when I left home somany years ago. One might have thought the interval had been one ofmonths, since her attitude refused to recognize all change, andchange, and growth, was abhorrent to her type. For whereas I hadaltered, she had remained unmoved. 

So unsatisfying was this state of things to me, however, that I feltunable to confide my deepest, as now I can do easily to you--so thatduring these few days of intercourse renewed, we had said, it seemed, all that was to be said with regard to the past. My health was mostlovingly discussed, and then my immediate and remoter future. I wasaware of this point of view--that I was, of course, her own dear son, but that I was also England's son. She was intensely patriotic in theinsular sense; my soul, I mean, belonged to the British Empire ratherthan to humanity and the world at large. Doubtless, a very right andnatural way to look at things. .. . She expressed a real desire to "seeyour photographs, my boy, of those outlandish places where they sentyou"; then, having asked certain questions about the few women(officers' wives and so forth) who appeared in some of them, sheleaned back in her chair, and gave me her very definite hopes about"my value to the country, " my "duty to the family traditions, " evento the point, finally, of suggesting Parliament, in what she termedwith a certain touch of pride and dignity, "the true Conservativeinterest. "

"Men like yourself, Richard, are sorely needed now, " she added, looking at me with a restrained admiration; "I am sure the Partywould nominate you for this Constituency that your father and yourgrandfather both represented before you. At any rate, they shall notput you on the shelf!"

And before I went to bed--it was my second or third night, Ithink--she had let me see plainly another hope that was equally dearto her: that I should marry again. There was an ominous reference tomy "ample means, " a hint of regret that, since you were unavailable, and Eva dead, our branch of the family could not continue to improvethe eastern counties and the world. At the back of her mind, indeed, Ithink there hovered definite names, for a garden party in my honourwas suggested for the following week, to which the Chairman of theLocal Conservatives would come, and where various desirableneighbours would be only too proud to make my acquaintance and pressmy colonial and distinguished fingers. 

In the interval between my arrival and the "experience" I shallpresently describe, I had meanwhile renewed my acquaintance with thecountryside. The emotions, however, I anticipated, had even cherishedand eagerly looked forward to, had not materialized. There was achill of disappointment over me. For the beauty I had longed forseemed here so thickly veiled; and more than once I surprised in myheart a certain regret that I had come home at all. I caught myselfthinking of that immense and trackless country I had left; I evencraved it sometimes, both physically and mentally, as though, for allits luscious grossness, it held something that nourished andstimulated, something large, free and untamed that was lacking in thisorderly land, so neatly fenced and parcelled out at home. 

The imagined richness of my return, at any rate, was unfulfilled; thetie with our mother, though deep, was uninspiring; while that othermore subtle and intangible link I had fondly dreamed might bestrengthened, if not wholly proved, was met with a flat denial thatseemed to classify it as nonexistent. Hope, in this particularconnection, returned upon me, blank and unrewarded. .. . The familiarscenes woke no hint of pain, much less of questing sweetness. Theglamour of association did not operate. No personal link wasstrengthened. 

And, when I visited the garden we had known together, the shady pathbeneath the larches; saw, indeed, the very chairs that she and I hadused, the framed portrait in the morning-room, the harp itself, nowset with its limp and broken strings in my own chamber--I was unawareof any ghostly thrill; least of all could I feel that "somebody waspleased. "

Excursion farther afield deepened the disenchantment. The gorse wasout upon the Common, that Common where we played as boys, thinking itvast and wonderful with the promise of high adventure behind everyprickly clump. The vastness, of course, was gone, but the power ofsuggestion had gone likewise. It was merely a Common that deservedits name. For though this was but the close of May, I found it worninto threadbare patches, with edges unravelled like those of some oldcarpet in a seaside lodging-house. The lanes that fed it were alreadythick with dust as in thirsty August, and instead of eglantine, wild-roses, and the rest, a smell of petrol hung upon hedges thatwere quite lustreless. On the crest of the hill, whence we oncethought the view included heaven, I stood by those beaten pines wenamed The Fort, counting jagged bits of glass and scraps of fadednewspaper that marred the bright green of the sprouting bracken. 

This glorious spot, once sacred to our dreams, was like a greatbackyard--the Backyard of the County--while the view we loved as thebirthplace of all possible adventure, seemed to me now withoutspaciousness or distinction. The trees and hedges cramped the littlefields and broke their rhythm. No great winds ever swept them clean. The landscape was confused: there was no adventure in it, suggestionleast of all. Everything had already happened there. 

And on my way home, resentful perhaps yet eager still, I did adreadful thing. Possibly I hoped still for that divine sensationwhich refused to come. I visited the very field, the very poplar . .. I found the scene quite unchanged, but found it also--lifeless. Theglamour of association did not operate. I knew no poignancy, desirelay inert. The thrill held stubbornly aloof. No link wasstrengthened. .. . I came home slowly, thinking instead of my mother'splans and wishes for me, and of the clear intention to incorporate mein the stolid and conventional formulas of what appeared to me asuninspired English dullness. My disappointment crystallized intosomething like revolt. A faint hostility even rose in me as we sattogether, talking of politics, of the London news just come to hand, of the neighbours, of the weather too. I was conscious of oppositionto her stereotyped plans, and of resentment towards the lack ofunderstanding in her. I would shake free and follow beauty. Theyearning, for want of sympathy, and the hunger, for lack ofsustenance, grew very strong and urgent in me. 

I longed passionately just then for beauty--and for that revelation ofit which included somewhere the personal emotion of a strangely eagerlove. 

VIII

THIS, then, was somewhat my state of mind, when, after our late tea onthe verandah, I strolled out on to the lawn to enjoy my pipe in thequiet of the garden paths. I felt dissatisfied and disappointed, yetknew not entirely perhaps, the reason. I wished to be alone, but washungry for companionship as well. Mother saw me go and watchedattentively, but said no word, merely following me a moment with hereyes above the edge of the Times she read, as of old, during the hoursbetween tea and dinner. The Spectator, her worldly Bible, lay ready toher hand when the Times should have been finished. They were, respectively, as always, her dictionary of opinion, and hermedicine-chest. Before I had gone a dozen yards, her head disappearedbehind the printed sheet again. The roses flowed between us. 

I felt her following glance, as I felt also its withdrawal. Then Iforgot her. .. . A touch of melancholy stole on me, as the garden took mein its charge. For a garden is a ghostly place, and an old-world garden, above all, leads thought backwards among vanished memories rather thanforward among constructive hopes and joys. 

I yielded, in any case, a little to this subtle pressure from the past, and I must have strolled among the lilac and laburnums for a longer timethan I knew, since the gardener who had been trimming the flower-bedswith a hand lawn-mower was gone, and dusk already veiled the cedars, when I found myself leaning against the wooden gate that opened into theless formal part beyond the larches. 

The house was not visible from where I stood. I smelt the May, thelilac, the heavy perfume everywhere of the opening year; it rose aboutme in waves, as though full-bosomed summer lay breathing her greatpromises close at hand, while spring, still lingering, with bright eyesof dew, ' watched over her. Then, suddenly, behind these richer scents, Icaught a sweeter, wilder tang than anything they contained, and turning, saw that the pines were closer than I knew. A waft of something purer, fresher, reached my nostrils on a little noiseless wind, as, leaningacross the gate, I turned my back upon the cultivated grounds and gazedinto a region of more natural, tangled growth. 

The change was sudden. It was exquisite, sharp and unexpected, too, aswith a little touch of wonder. There was surprise in it. For the garden, you will remember, melts here insensibly into a stretch of scatteredpines, where heather and bracken cover wide reaches of unreclaimed anduseless land. Irregular trails of whitish sand gleamed faintly beforethe shadows swallowed them, and in the open patches I saw youngsilver-birches that made me think of running children arrested inmid-play. They stood outlined very tenderly against the sky; theirslender forms still quivered; their feathery hair fell earthwards asthey drew themselves together, bending their wayward little heads beforethe approaching night. Behind them, framed by the darker pines into aglowing frieze, the west still burned with the last fires of the sunset;I could see the heather, rising and falling like a tumbled sea againstthe horizon, where the dim heave of distant moorland broke theafterglow. 

And the dusk now held this region in its magic. So strange, indeed, wasthe contrast between the ebony shadows and the pools and streaks ofamberish light, that I looked about me for a moment, almost sharply. There was a touch of the unearthly in this loveliness that bewilderedsight a little. Extraordinarily still the world was, yet there seemedactivity close upon my footsteps, an activity more than of inanimateNature, yet less than of human beings. With solidarity it had nothing todo, though it sought material expression. It was very near. And I wasstartled, I recognized the narrow frontier between fear and wonder. Andthen I crossed it. 

For something stopped me dead. I paused and stared. My heart began tobeat more rapidly. Then, ashamed of my moment's hesitation, I was aboutto move forward through the gate, when again I halted. I listened, andcaught my breath. I fancied the stillness became articulate, the shadowsstirred, the silence was about to break. 

I remember trying to think; I wanted to relieve the singular tension byfinding words, if only inner words, --when, out of the stillness, out ofthe silence, out of the shadows--something happened. Some faculty ofjudgment, some attitude in which I normally clothed myself, wereabruptly stripped away. I was left bare and sensitive. I could almosthave believed that my body had dropped aside, that I stood there naked, unprotected, a form-less spirit, stirred and lifted by the passingbreeze. 

And then it came. As with a sword-thrust of blinding sweetness, I waslaid open. Yet so instant, and of such swiftness, was the stroke, that Ican only describe it by saying that, while pierced and wounded, I wasalso healed again. 

Without hint or warning, Beauty swept me with a pain and happiness wellnigh intolerable. It drenched me and was gone. No lightning flash couldhave equalled the swiftness of its amazing passage; something tore inme; the emotion was enveloping but very tender; it was both terrible yetdear. Would to God I might crystallize it for you in those few mightywords which should waken in yourself--in every one!--the wonder and thejoy. It contained, I felt, both the worship that belongs to awe and thetenderness of infinite love which welcomes tears. Some power that wasnot of this world, yet that used the details of this world to manifest, had visited me. 

No element of surprise lay in it even. It was too swift for anything butjoy, which of all emotions is the most instantaneous: I had been empty, I was filled. Beauty that bathes the stars and drowns the very universehad stolen out of this wild morsel of wasted and uncared-for Englishgarden, and dropped its transforming magic into--me. At the very moment, moreover, when I had been ready to deny it altogether. I saw myinsignificance, yet, such was the splendour it had wakened in me, knewmy right as well. It could be ever thus; some attitude in myself aloneprevented. .. . 

And--somebody was pleased. 

This personal ingredient lay secure in the joy that assuredly remainedwhen the first brief intolerable ecstasy had passed. The link I desiredto recognize was proved, not merely strengthened. Beauty had cleft meopen, and a message, if you will, had been delivered. This personal hintpersisted; I was almost aware of conscious and intelligent direction. For to you I will make the incredible confession, that I dare phrase theexperience in another fashion, equally true: In that flashing instant Istood naked and shelterless to the gaze of some one who had looked uponme. I was aware of sight; of eyes in which "burning memory lights lovehome. " These eyes, this sight had gazed at me, then turned away. For inthat blinding sweetness there was light, as with the immediatewithdrawal again there was instant darkness. I was first visible, thenconcealed. I was clothed again and covered. 

And the thick darkness that followed made it appear as though night, inone brief second, had taken the place of dusk. 

Trembling, I leaned across the wooden gate and waited while the darknesssettled closer. I can swear, moreover, that it was neither dream, norhope, nor any hungry fantasy in me that then recognized a furthermarvel--I was no longer now alone. 

A presence faced me, standing breast-high in the bracken. The garden hadbeen empty; somebody now walked there with me. 

It was, as I mentioned, the still hour between the twilight and thelong, cool dark of early summer. The little breeze passed whisperingthrough the pines. I smelt the pungent perfume of dry heather, sand, andbracken. The horizon, low down between the trunks, shone gold andcrimson still, but fading rapidly. I stood there for a long timetrembling; I was a part of it; I felt that I was shining, as though myinner joy irradiated the world about me. Nothing in all my life has beenso real, so positive. I was assuredly not alone. .. . 

The first sharp magic, the flash that pierced and burned, had gone itsway, but Beauty still stood so perilously near, so personal, that anymoment, I felt, it must take tangible form, betray itself in visiblemovement of some sort, break possibly into audible sound of actualspeech. It would not have surprised me--more, it would have been naturalalmost--had I felt a touch upon my hands and lips, or caught the murmurof spoken words against my ear. 

Yet from such direct revelation I shrank involuntarily and by instinct. I could not have borne it then. I had the feeling that it must mar anddefile a wonder already great enough; there would have lain in it, too, a betrayal of the commonplace, as of something which I could notpossibly hold for true. I must have distrusted my own senses even, forthe beauty that cleft me open dealt directly with the soul alone, leaving the senses wholly disengaged. The Presence was not answerable toany lesser recognition. 

Thus I shrank and turned away, facing the familiar garden and the "wetbird-haunted English lawn, " a spiritual tenderness in me still dreadingthat I might see or hear or feel, destroying thus the reality of myexperience. Yet there was, thank God, no speech, no touch, no movement, other than the shiver of the birches, the breath of air against mycheek, the droop and bending of the nearer pine boughs. There was noaudible or visible expression; I saw no figure breast-high in thebracken. Yet sound there was, a moment later. For, as I turned away, abird upon a larch twig overhead burst into sudden and exultant song. 

IX

NOW, do not be alarmed lest I shall attempt to describe a list offanciful unrealities that borrowed life from a passing emotionmerely; the emotion was permanent, the results enduring. Pleasebelieve the honest statement that, with the singing of that bird, thepent-up stress in me became measurably articulate. Some bird in myheart, long caged, rang out in answering inner song. 

It is also true, I think, that there were no words in me at themoment, and certainly no desire for speech. Had a companion been withme, I should probably have merely lit my pipe and smoked in silence;if I spoke at all, I should have made some commonplace remark: "It'slate; we must be going in to dress for dinner. .. . " As it was, however, the emotion in me, answering the singing of the bird, became, as I said, measurably articulate. I give you simple facts, as thoughthis were my monthly Report to the Foreign Office in days gone by. Ispoke no word aloud, of course. It was rather that my feelings foundutterance in the rapturous song I listened to, and that my thoughtsknew this relief of vicarious expression, though of inner andinaudible expression. The beauty of scene and moment were adequatelyrecorded, and for ever in that song. They were now part of me. 

Unaware of its perfect mission the bird sang, of course because itcould not help itself; perhaps some mating thrush, perhaps a commonblackbird only; I cannot say; I only realized that no human voice, nohuman music, even of the most elaborate and inspired kind, could havemade this beauty, similarly articulate. And, for a moment I knew myformer pain that I could not share this joy, this beauty, with othersof my kind, that, except for myself, the loveliness seemed lost andwasted. There was no spectator, no other listener; the sweet springnight was lavish for no audience; the revelation had been repeated, would be repeated, a thousand thousand times without recognition andwithout reward. 

Then, as I listened, memory, it seemed, took yearning by the hand, andled me towards that inner utterance I have mentioned. There was novoice, least of all that inner voice you surely have anticipated. Butthere was utterance, as though my whole being combined with nature inits birth. 

Into the mould of familiar sentences of long ago it ran, yet nearer atlast to full disclosure, because the pregnant sentences had altered:

"I need your forgiveness born of love. .. " passed through me with thesinging of the bird. 

I listened with the closest inner attention I have ever known. Ipaused. My heart brimmed with an expectant wonder that was happiness. And the happiness was justified. For the familiar sentence haltedbefore its first sorrowful completion; the poignant close remainedunuttered--because it was no longer true. 

Out of deep love in me, new-born, that held the promise of fulfilment, the utterance concluded:

". .. I have found a better way. .. . "

Before I could think or question, and almost as though a whisper ofthe wind went past, there rose in me at once this answeringrecognition. It seemed authentically convincing; it was glorious; itwas full of joy:

"That beauty which was Marion lives on, and lives for me. "

It was as though a blaze of light shone through me; somewhere in mybody there were tears of welcome; for this recognition was to mereunion. 

It must seem astonishing for me, a mere soldier and Colonial Governor, to confess you that I stood there listening to the song for a longinterval of what I can only term, with utmost sincerity, communion. Beauty and love both visited me; I believe that truth and wisdomentered softly with them. As I wrote above, I saw my owninsignificance, yet, such was the splendour in me, I knew my right aswell. It could be ever thus. My attitude alone prevented. I was notexcluded, not cut off. This Beauty lay ready to my hand, alwaysavailable, for ever, now. It was not unharvested. But more--it couldbe shared with others; it was become a portion of myself, and thatwhich is part of my being must, inevitably and automatically, be givenout. 

It was, thus, nowhere wasted or unharvested; it offered with prodigalopportunity a vehicle for that inspiration which is love, and beinglove of purest kind, is surely wisdom too. The dead, indeed, do notreturn, yet they are active, and those who lived beauty in theirlives are still, through that beauty, benevolently active. 

I will give you now the change instantaneously produced in me:

There rose in me another, deeper point of view that dispelled as bymagic the disenchantment that had chilled these first days of myreturn. I stood here in this old-world garden, but I stood also inthe heart of that beauty, so carefully hidden, so craftily screenedbehind the obvious, that strong and virile beauty which is England. Within call of my voice, still studying by lamplight now the symbolsof her well-established strength, burning, moreover, with the steadyfaith which does not easily break across restraint, and loving theman as she had loved the little boy, sat one, not wondering perhapsat my unspoken misunderstanding, yet hoping, patiently and insilence, for its removal in due time. In the house of our boyhood, ofour earliest play and quarrels, unchanged and unchangeable, knowingsimply that I had "come home again to her, " our mother waited. .. . 

I need not elaborate this for you, you for whom England and our motherwin almost a single, undivided love. I had misjudged, but the causeof my misjudgment was thus suddenly removed. A subtler understandinginsight, a sympathy born of deeper love, something of greater wisdom, in a word, awoke in me. The thrill had worked its magic as of old, but this time in its slower English fashion, deep, andcharacteristically sure. To my country (that is, to my firstexperience of impersonal love) and to my mother (that is, to myearliest acquaintance with personal love) I had been ready, in myimpatience, to credit an injustice. Unknown to me, thus, there hadbeen need of guidance, of assistance. Beauty, having cleared the way, had worked upon me its amazing alchemy. 

There, in fewest possible words, is what had happened. 

I remember that for a long time, then, I waited in the hush of mychildhood's garden, listening, as it were, with every pore, andconscious that some one who was pleased interpreted the beauty to mysoul. It seemed, as I said, a message of a personal kind. It wasregenerative, moveover, in so far that life was enlarged and liftedupon a nobler scale; new sources of power were open to me; I saw abetter way. Irresistibly it came to me again that beauty, far frombeing wasted, was purposive, that this purpose was of a redeemingkind, and that some one who was pleased co-operated with it for mypersonal benefit. No figure, thank God, was visible, no voice wasaudible, but a presence there indubitably was, and, whether Iresponded or otherwise, would be always there. 

And the power was such that I felt as though the desire of the planetitself yearned through it for expression. 

X

I WATCHED the little bird against the paling sky, and my thoughts, following the happy singing, went slowly backwards into thehalf-forgotten past. .. . They led me again through the maze ofgorgeous and mysterious hopes, un-remembered now so many years, thathad marked my childhood. Few of these, if any, it seemed, had knownfulfilment. .. . I stole back with them, past the long exile in greatAfrica, into the region of my youth and early boyhood. .. . 

And, as though a hand uncovered it deliberately, I recalled anearliest dream--strangest, perhaps, of all the mysterious dreams ofthat far time. It had, I thought, remained unrealized, as, certainly, till this moment, it had lain forgotten--a boyish dream that behindthe veils of the Future some one waited for me with the patience of aperfect love that was my due. 

The dream reached forward towards some one who must one day appear, and whose coming would make life sweet and wonderful, fulfilling, even explaining, the purpose of my being. This dream which I hadthought peculiarly my own, belongs, I learned later, to many, if notto the race in general, and, with a smile at my own incurable vanity(and probably a grimace at being neatly duped), I had laid it on oneside. At any rate, I forgot it, for nothing happened to keep itactive, much less revive it. 

Now, however, looking backwards, and listening to the singing in thesky, I recalled what almost seemed to have been its attempt atrealization. Having recovered its earliest appearance, my thoughtnext leaped forward to the moment that might possibly have been itsreappearance. For memory bore me off without an effort on my part, and set me abruptly within a room of the house I had come home to, where Marion sat beside me, singing to the harp she loved. The scenerose up before me as of yesterday. .. The emotions themselvesreconstituted. I recalled the deep, half-sad desire to be worthy ofher, to persuade myself I loved as she did, even the curious impulseto acknowledge an emotion that came and went before it could bewholly realized--the feeling, namely, that I ought to love herbecause--no more, no less is the truth--because she needed it: andthen the blank dismay that followed my failure, as with a kind ofshameful horror before a great purpose that my emptiness leftunfulfilled. 

The very song came back that moved me more than any else shesang--her favourite it was as well. I heard the twanging of thestrings her fingers plucked. I heard the words:

 "About the little chambers of my heart Friends have been coming--going--many a year. The doors stand open there. Some, lightly stepping, enter; some depart. Freely they come and go, at will. The walls give back their laughter; all day long They fill the house with song. One door alone is shut, one chamber still. "

With each repetition of the song, I remembered, how at that time myboyhood's dream came back to me, as though its fulfilment were atlast at hand; as though, somehow, that "door" must open, that "stillchamber" welcome the sweetness and the loveliness of her who sang. For I could not listen to the music, nor watch her fingers movingdown the strings, her slender wrist and rounded arm, her foot upon thepedal as she held the instrument so close--without this poignantyearning that proved ever vain, or this shame of unshed tears myheart mysteriously acknowledged. To the end, as you know, that doorremained unopened, that chamber still. 

It was the singing of this sweet English bird, making articulate forme the beauty I could not utter, that brought back to memory thescene, the music, and the words. .. . 

I looked round me; I looked up. As I did so, the little creature, withone last burst of passionate happiness, flew away into the darkness. And silence followed, so deep that I could hear the murmur of myblood. .. An exquisite joy ran through me, making me quiver withexpectancy from head to foot. .. . 

And it was then suddenly I became aware that the long-closed door atlast was open, the still chamber occupied. Some one who was pleased, stretching a hand across the silence and the beauty, drew me withinthat chamber of the heart, so that I passed behind the door that wasnow a veil, and now a mist, and now a shining blaze of light. .. Passed into a remote and inner stillness where that direct communionwhich is wordless can alone take place. 

It was, I verily believe, a stillness of the spirit. At the centre ofthe tempest, of the whirlpool, of the heart's commotion, there ispeace. I stood close against that source of our life which lies hidwith beauty very far away, and yet so near that it is enclosed inevery hope, in every yearning, and in every tear. For the whisper cameto me, beyond all telling sure. 

Beauty had touched me, Wisdom come to birth; and Love, whisperingthrough the silence those marvellous words that sum up all spiritualexperience, proved it to me:

"Be still--and know. .. . "

I found myself moving slowly across the lawn again towards the house. Ipresently heard the wind mousing softly in the limes. The air was freshand cool. The first stars were out. I saw the laburnum drooping, asthough thick clusters of these very stars had drifted earthwards amongthe branches; I saw the gleam of the lilac; across the dim tangle of theearly roses shone the familiar windows, cosy now with the glow oflighted lamps. .. And I became suddenly, in a very intimate sense, "aware" of the garden. The Presence that walked beside me moved abruptlycloser. This Presence and the garden seemed, as in some divinemysterious way, inseparable. 

There was a stirring of the dimmest and most primitive associationspossible. Memory plunged back among ancestral, even racial, shadows. Irecalled the sweet and tender legend of the beginnings of the world, when something divine, it was whispered, was intimate with man, andcompanioning his earliest innocence, walked with him in that happierstate those childlike poets called--a garden. That childhood of theworld seemed very near. 

I found again the conditions of innocence and pristine wonder--ofsimplicity. There was a garden in my heart, and some one walked with metherein. For Life in its simplest form--of breathing leaves and growingflowers, of trees and plants and shrubs--glowed all about me in thedarkness. The blades of grass, the blossoms hanging in the air, strongstems and hidden roots, fulfilled themselves with patience upon everyside, brimming with beauty and stillness did not seek to advertise. Andof this simplest form of life--the vegetable kingdom--I became vividlyaware, prodigal, mysterious, yet purposive. The outer garden merged withthe inner, and the Presence walked in both of them. .. . 

I was led backwards, far down into my own being. I reached the earliest, simplest functions by which I myself had come to be, the state where thefrontier lies between that which is dead and that which is alive. Somewhere between the mineral and vegetable worlds, I knew, thatfrontier lay. For the vegetable kingdom alone possesses the power ofconverting the mineral or the chemical into the living organism byabsorption; and here, among the leaves and roots and flowers, that powerwas sweetly, irresistibly, at work. 

It seemed I reached that frontier, and I passed it. Beauty came throughthe most primitive aspect of my being. 

And so I would tell you, you alone of all the world, that the Presencewalking beside me in the scented darkness came suddenly so close that Iwas aware of it in what seemed my earliest and most innocent state ofsoul. 

Beside me, in that old-world garden, walked the Cause of all things. TheBeauty that in you was truth, in Marion tenderness, was harvested: andsomebody was pleased. 

XI

ALL this I have told to you because we have known together the closestintimacy possible to human beings--we have shared beauty. 

They said, these many days ago, that you had gone away, that you weredead. The wind on the Downs, your favourite Downs, your favouritesouthwest wind, received your dust, scattering it like pollen intospace. No sign has come to me, no other sign than this I tell you nowin my long letter. It is enough. I know. 

There were thus two loves, one unrecognized till afterwards, the otherrealized at the time. .. . In the body there was promise. There is nowaccomplishment. 

It is very strange, and yet so simple. Beauty, I suppose, opens theheart, extends the consciousness. It is a platitude, of course. Youwill laugh when I tell you that afterwards I tried to reason it allout. I am not apparently intellectual. The books I read would fillyour empty room--on aesthetics, art, and what not. I got no resultfrom any of them, but rather a state of muddle that was, no doubt, congestion. None of the theories and explanations touched the root ofthe matter. I am evidently not "an artist"--that at any rate Igathered, and yet these learned people seemed to write aboutsomething they had never "lived. " I could almost believe that thewriters of these subtle analyses have never themselves feltbeauty--the burn, the rapture, the regenerating fire. They haveknown, perhaps, a reaction of the physical nerves, but never thislight within the soul that lifts the horizons of the consciousness andmakes one know that God exists, that death is not even separation, and that eternity is now. 

Metaphysics I studied too. I fooled myself, thirty years after theproper time for doing so, over the old problem whether beauty lies inthe object seen or in the mind that sees the object. And in the end Icame back hungrily to my simple starting-point--that beauty moved me. It opened my heart to one of its many aspects--truth, wisdom, joy, and love--and what else, in the name of heaven, mattered!

I sold the books at miserable prices that made Mother question myjudgment: coloured plates, costly bindings, rare editions, and all. Aesthetics, Art, rules and principles might go hang for all I caredor any good they did me. It was intellect that had devised all these. The truth was simpler far. I cared nothing for these scholarlyexplanations of beauty's genesis and laws of working, because I feltit. Hunger needs no analysis, does it? Nor does Love. Could anythingbe more stultifying? Give to the first craving a lump of bread, andto the second a tangible man or woman--and let those who have thetime analyse both cravings at their leisure. 

For the thrill I mean is never physical, and has nothing in commonwith that acute sensation experienced when the acrobat is seen tomiss the rope in mid-air as he swings from bar to bar. There is noshock in it, for shock is of the nerves, arresting life; the thrill Ispeak of intensifies and sets it rising in a wave that flows. It is ofthe spirit. It wounds, yet marvellously. It is unearthly. Therein, Ithink, lies its essential quality; by chance, as it were, in writingthis intimate confession, I have hit upon the very word: it isunearthly, it contains surprise. Yes, Beauty wounds marvellously, then follows the new birth, regeneration. There is a ravishment ofthe entire being into light and knowledge. 

The element of surprise is certainly characteristic. The thrill comesunheralded--a sudden uprush of convincing joy loosed from some storethat is inexhaustible. Unlike the effect of a nervous shock which canbe lived over and reconstituted, it knows no repetition; its climaxis instantaneous, there is neither increase nor declension; it isunrecoverable; it strikes and is gone. Breaking across thephantasmagoria of appearances, it comes as a flash of reality, alightning recognition of something that cannot be travestied. It isnot in time. It is eternity. 

I suspect you know it now with me; in fact I am certain that youdo. .. . 

I remember how, many years ago--in that delightful period betweenboyhood and manhood when we felt our wings and argued about theuniverse--we discovered this unearthly quality in three differentthings: the song of a bird, the eyes of a child, and a wild-flowercome upon unexpectedly in a scene of desolation. For in all three, weagreed, shines that wonder which holds adoration, that joy which isspontaneous and uncalculated, and that surprise which pertains toEternity looking out triumphantly upon ephemeral things. 

So, at least, in our youthful eagerness, we agreed; and to this dayone in particular of the three--a bird's song--always makes me thinkof God. That divine, ecstatic, simple sound is to me ever bothsurprising and unearthly. Each time it takes me by surprise--thatpeople do not hush their talk to kneel and listen. .. . And of the eyesof little children--if there is any clearer revelation granted to usof what is unearthly in the sense of divinity brought close, I do notknow it. Each time my spirit is arrested by surprise, then filledwith wondering joy as I meet that strange open look, so stainless, accepting the universe as its rightful toy, and, as with the bird andflower, saying Yes to life as though there could not possibly exist aNo. 

The wildflower too: you recall once--it was above Igls when theTyrolean snows were melting--how we found a sudden gentian on thedead, pale grass? The sliding snows had left the coarse tufts strokedall one way, white and ugly, thickly streaked with mud, no singleblade with any sign of life or greenness yet, when we came upon thatstar of concentrated beauty, more blue than the blue sky overhead, thewhole passion of the earth in each pointed petal. A distantavalanche, as though the hills were settling, the bustle of thetorrent, the wind in the pines and larches, only marked by contrastthe incredible stillness of the heights--then, suddenly, this star ofblue blazing among the desolation. I recall your cry and myown--wonder, joy, as of something unearthly--that took us bysurprise. 

In these three, certainly, lay the authentic thrill I speak of; whileit lasts, the actual moment seems but a pedestal from which the eyesof the heart look into Heaven, a pedestal from which the soul leapsout into the surrounding garden of limitless possibilities which areits birthright, and immediately accessible. And that, indeed, is theessential meaning of the thrill--that Heaven is here and now. Thegates of ivory are very tiny; Beauty sounds the elfin horns thatopens them; smaller than the eye of a needle is that opening--uponthe diamond point of the thrill you flash within, and the Garden ofEternity is yours for ever--now. 

I am writing this to you, because I know you listen with your heart, not with your nerves; and the garden that I write about you know nowbetter than I do myself. I have but tasted it, you dwell therein, unaged, unageing. And so we share the flowers; we know the light, thefragrance and the birds we know together. .. . They tell me--even ourmother says it sometimes with a sigh--that you are far away, notunderstanding that we have but recovered the garden of our earlychildhood, you permanently, I whenever the thrill opens the happygates. You are as near to me as that. Our love was forged insidethose ivory gates that guard that childhood state, facing four ways, and if I wandered outside a-while, puzzled and lonely, the thrill ofbeauty has led me back again, and I, have found your love unchanged, unaged, still growing in the garden of our earliest memories. I didbut lose my way for a time. .. . 

That childhood state must be amazingly close to God, I suppose, forthough no child is consciously aware of beauty, its whole being criesYes to the universe and life as naturally and instinctively as aflower turns to the sun. The universe lies in its overall pocket ofalpaca, and beauty only becomes a thing apart when the growingconsciousness, hearing the world cry No, steps through the gates toenquire and cannot find the entrance any more. Beauty then becomes asignpost showing the way home again. Baudelaire, of course, meant Godand Heaven, instead of "genius" when he said, "Le genie n'est quel'enfance retrouvee a volonte. .. . "

And so when I write to you, I find myself again within the garden ofour childhood, that English garden where our love shared all thelight and fragrance and flowers of the world together. "Time's but agolden wind that shakes the grass, " and since my thought is with you, you are with me now. .. And now means always or it means nothing. 

So these relationships are real still among a thousand shadows. Yourbeauty was truth, hers was unselfish love. The important thing is toknow you still live, not with regret and selfish grief, but with thatjoy and sure conviction which makes the so-called separation atemporary test, perhaps, but never a final blow. What are the fewyears of separation compared to this certainty of co-operation ineternity? We live but a few years together in the flesh, yet if thosefew are lived with beauty and beautifully, the tie is unalterablyforged which fastens us lovingly together for ever. Where, how, under what precise conditions it were idle to enquire andunnecessary--the wrong way too. Our only knowledge (in the scientificsense) comes to us through our earthly senses. To forecast our futurelife, constructing it of necessity upon this earthly sensoryexperience, is an occupation for those who have neither faith norimagination. All such "heavens" are but clumsy idealizations of thepresent--"Happy Hunting Grounds" in various forms: whereas we knowthat if we lived beauty together, we shall live it always--"afterwards, "as our poor time-ridden language phrases it. For Beauty, once known, cannot exclude us. We cooperated with the Power that makes the universealive. 

And, knowing this, I do not ask for your "return, " or for anyso-called evidence that you survive. In beauty you both live now withless hampered hands, less troubled breath, and I am glad. 

Why should you come, indeed, through the gutter of my worn, familiar, personal desires, when the open channel of beauty lies ever at theflood for you to use? Coming in this way, you come, besides, formany, not for me alone, since behind every thrill of beauty stand thecountless brave souls who lived it in their lives. They have enteredthe mighty rhythm that floats the spiral nebulae in space, as it turnsthe little aspiring Nautilus in the depths of the sea. Having oncefelt this impersonal worship which is love of beauty, they are linkedto the power that drives the universe towards perfection, the powerthat knocks in a million un-advertised forms at every human heart:and that is God. 

With that beneficent power you cooperate. I ask no other test. I craveno evidence that you selfishly remember me. In the body we did notknow so closely. To see into your physical eyes, and touch your hand, and hear your voice--these were but intermediary methods, symbols, atthe best. For you I never saw nor touched nor heard. I felt you--inmy heart. The closest intimacy we knew was when together we sharedone moment of the same beauty; no other intimacy approaches thereality of that; it is now strengthened to a degree unrealizedbefore. For me that is enough. I have that faith, that certainty, that knowledge. Should you come to me otherwise I must disown you. Should you stammer through another's earthly lips that you now enjoya mere idealized repetition of your physical limitations, I shouldknow my love, my memory, my hope degraded, nay, my very faithdestroyed. 

To summon you in that way makes me shudder. It would be to limit yourlarger uses, your wider mission, merely to numb a selfish grief bornof a faithless misunderstanding. 

Come to me instead--or, rather, stay, since you have never left--bewith me still in the wonder of dawn and twilight, in the yearningdesire of inarticulate black night, in the wind, the sunshine, andthe rain. It is then that I am nearest to you and to your beneficentactivity, for the same elemental rhythm of Beauty includes us both. The best and highest of you are there; I want no lesser assurance, nobroken personal revelation. Eternal beauty brings you with anintimacy unknown, impossible, indeed, to partial disclosure. I shouldabhor a halting masquerade, a stammering message less intelligibleeven than our intercourse of the body. 

Come, then! Be with me, your truth and Marion's tenderness linkedtogether with what is noblest in myself. Be with me in the simpleloveliness of an English garden where you and I, as boys together, first heard that voice of wonder, and knew the Presence walking withus among the growing leaves. 

THE END