Behind The Veil

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First Edition, $00 Copies, August 1906
BEHIND THE VEIL
The thanks of the writer are due to the Editors of
'The Anglo-Saxon Review,' 'The Atlantic Monthly,'

'The Speaker,' and 'The Week's Survey,' for their
courtesy in giving permission to republish four of the
stories included in this Volume.

,^Z^<^n^c^>^*«oe,
BEHIND THE VEIL^^^
WRITTEN BY
ETHEL ROLT I.WHEELER
ILLUSTRATED BY
AUSTIN O. SPARE
PUBLISHED AT THE SIGN OF THE PHCENIX

LONDON, BY DAVID NUTT, 1906
(îb?=^
CONTENTS
Page
PAST INCARNATIONS 3
THROUGH THE MYSTIC DOORS-

THE CURL 43
THE WHEELS REVERSED 55
AN AUTUMN TRYST 69
THE MURKY POOL 83
THE LEPER'S WINDOW . 88

PAST INCARNATIONS
STONE-COLD, STONE -QUIET, THE KING
OF KINGS SAT ON HIS MARBLE CHAIR
Page 2
:
I
CROSS the columns of sunshine, falling on
the heads of the musicians between the
columns of stone, I felt the eyes of the
African weighing like lead upon my quiver-
ing eyelids. The place of the musicians was
on the left side of the steps of the throne
but by reason of the faint delicacy of the notes of my in-
strument, my seat was set at the extreme limit of the line
dividing the slave boundary from the court of the King of
Kings. As I waited the turn of my five-stringed instrument,
I could see, through lowered lashes, the rainbow-glimmer
of those marble throne steps sometimes the purple shadow

;
of the royal robes seemed to touch with a sombre glory the

edge of vision; but the eyes of the African weighed like
lead upon my quivering eyelids, which pulsed fiercely to be
raised ; though for a slave to look upon the face of the King
of Kings, bore the penalty of death by torture.
Day after day, when the gold of afternoon cut its tiger-
stripes upon the shadowy floors, we passed silent-footed
through the cool corridors about the Throne-Chamber, into
the awful silence of the Presence itself. The air thrilled
with the terrible quiet of power; a fear that was splendid
because of the mightiness of its cause, wrapped the limbs
Page 3
4 PAST INCARNATIONS
like a garment unworthy and forbidden to
; lift eyes towards
the blinding majesty of the equal of the gods, yet the mere
force of so glorious a proximity fluttered the being to its
depths, and the emotions beat like imprisoned butterflies,
and like imprisoned butterflies the eyelids quivered to rise.
Sometimes, because of the languor that comes of extreme
trembling, my had scarce strength to strike the
fingers
sweetness out of those strings in whose music they were so
skilled. The note would falter into the stillness, hesitating,
faint with timidity; and only the sharp realisation of the
mighty listener could nerve the fingers to their appointed
task. Then, answering to the memories in my mind, I drew
from my instrument echo after echo of mountain -music,
sounds loud as the cataract, and low as the surge of wind
in grass, that floated into the air, strong and clear and
pure; and I, who was doomed to walk for ever with bent
head and with eyes that for ever sought the earth, sent my
few wild messengers with more than mortal daring to climb
the great stairs of the throne, and penetrate into the very
heart of the King.
I had heard in my distant home, whence they had taken me
for the music that was in my throat, and in my fingers, that
the King was a mighty hunter, and loved the sense of open
spaces. And I deemed he heard my music, because it held
the call of forces only less splendid than his own and in ;
the dreadful pauses of silence, when I with

sat dizzy
sickness for the scenes of my lost freedom that I had been
building into harmonies, the desire to lift my eyes to the
face of him who so transcended them in majesty, became
PAST INCARNATIONS 5
a torture in repression that grew in poignancy with every

moment.
Sometimes the anguish of the controlled eyelids became so
tense, that they must have transgressed my will-power, and
hurried me to a horrible death, but for the weight that the
giant African set upon them. He stood at the other end of
the group of musicians, to keep watch over our glances,
lest any of them should stray but there seemed no moment
;
that I was His ugly stolidity of alert-

free of his observation.
ness, though it from the mad promptings of my
saved me
heart, did but increase the torment it precluded that half-
;
glimpse through half-shut eyelids that I might have thought

to dare. And with every day the prick of desire became
more importunate with every day more racking the agony
;
of control.
One evening I played late into the sunset, and the large
metal plates that hung from my belt, interlinked by chains

into long bands, caught on their surfaces the ruddy glow.
And as I ceased playing, and began to shift my downward
glance, a metal plate that lay aslant my knee shone with a
—
glory more magnificent than the sun's, a splash of purple
radiance, glinting and changing as I stirred,— the very
splendour of heaven, a reflected light from the purple robes
of the King of Kings.
My body seemed to flush through my thin white draperies,
as with eyes riveted on that royal glow the full tide of
possibilities coursed through my being. By a little wisdom
in the calculation of the angle, I should be able without
fatality to achieve the sum of my desire resolve the vague
:
6 PAST INCARNATIONS
purple of the disc into lines and folds sharpen the floating
;
glints of red and green into the jewels of the diadem and;
fix that pale halo of light— the blurred image of the King's
—
own face into the definition of his god-like features, on
whose radiance I might feast unhindered, nor die the
dreadful death.
But though I polished the metals until they shone like
moonlight, my fingers lacked both courage and skill on the
succeeding day to set the disc, so that it should receive the
splendid vision. Again and again my hand stole towards
the appointed plate, sending a mist over its surface, and
moved the position with infinite terror, lest the chain should
jangle but it cleared to a shining vacancy, or the dull con-
;
fusion of stone - reflections, and only once the shadow of

purple swept darkly across its moving.
On the afternoon that followed, I set the plate against the
edge of my instrument, and bending low over it, the whole
throne suddenly shone on me, minute, as if far away, but
clear with the clearness of distance in dreams. I saw in the
silver unreality, remote,but sharp cut as the lines of crisp
water, the sublime form of him who was the equal of the
gods, and ruler of the world. He leaned back in his marble
chair, with his arms resting upon it the purple draperies of
;
his robes overflowed the steps. There was the calm of a

terrible indifference about him—a gravity of aloofness, as
cold as the stars. The dark face, moulded like a god's,
stone-quiet the dose-shut hands, the stillness of the form,
;
implied a power the more awful, because of its absolute

silence. I had known the loftiness of mountains and the
;
PAST INCARNATIONS 7
solitude of wildernesses, but never a loneliness so terrible

and so remote. It seemed the very pathos of divinity ; and
while my soul rose in worship before this dreadfulness of
majesty, I felt my eyes grow dim with tears, that I dared not
think to be of human pity.
That far perspective in its silver atmosphere followed me
through my waking hours and through my dreams, so that
my mind, rejecting all lesser images, became at last a shrine
for the holding of one jewel. I set the mirror of my metal
day after day towards its source of light; I brooded with
ever-increasing agony of rapture on the changeless immo-
bility of that awful calm stone-cold, stone-quiet, the King
:
of Kings sat on his marble chair, and all the powers of death
and the grave lay in his unlifted finger. Against the ice of
his presence, my body burned as in a fever: a frenzy of
love, that was half-adoration and half-passion, shook me, as
though I were an aspen leaf in thrills of wind.
His was the face of a god, perfect of beauty and of strength.
At least my madness was a sublime madness, though its
boldness were sacrilegious and yet it was no more than a
;
far reflection I worshipped, a tiny surface-combination of

lines and lights, removed an infinite distance in space, while
the breathing reality was but a stone's-throw off, for ever,
even to vision, inaccessible.
Here was the root of bitterness : for the moment came when
the throne-reflection seemed thin as a painted image— dis-
torted and inadequate as the shadow beside the substance.
My mere curiosity
eyelids no longer ached with the stress of
it was the soul that hungered for some nourishment beyond
8 PAST INCARNATIONS
the film of dreams. Before, the restlessness of ignorance
had pricked me now the knowledge of my deprivation filled
;
me with a vaster anguish. The metal mirror had lit a fire

that could never cease, and that it could never satisfy and;
not the eyes of the African, but a new and overwhelming fear
lest they should dare, and be blinded with the lightning of
the gods, set a weight upon my eyelids.
There came a long pause of war, wherein my being languished
and flickered as though it would go out. After followed the
Feast of Victory, and music, late into the night. Torches
were set in the Throne-Chamber, and my belt threw off their
flames. They burned still in that crowded stillness, and all
the air was tense like a string that is strained. The influ-
ence of his presence that I had lacked so long, more terrible
and more potent, sent a wild inspiration through my every
nerve. My notes sprang alive, buoyant, from my fingers, and
my voice rose like the voice of a winged bird, and I sang the
chant of victory that they sing to the chiefs in my distant
home, and the song of the maidens to their lovers who
return from battle, and of the lovers to their maidens, that
my lover had once sung to me. Then suddenly I felt the
fierce fire of the King's eyes burn to my soul, and they called
to mine for answer, loud, insistent, all-compelling and in a
;
sublime moment I found our glances fast interlocked, his

and mine in one sublime moment I touched the very core
;
of emotion, and saw into the depths of that cold aloofness,

which was yet human, gloriously human, beyond the shining
image of my thought. He was not altogether god— he was
man and the human love, winning over the divine, leapt to
;
—
PAST INCARNATIONS 9
him from my eyes. For sharp rapture of poignancy, the
moment seemed eternity ;the eyes held me dose,— close,
eyes icy in their indifference, terrible in their uncomprehend-
ing calm. Then a finger lifted, and the African was beside
me, and my passing from the chamber did not break its
silence.
I
HE flash of the brook was like a sword.
Between bank and bank the brook cut
division, —
division of the sword,— for my
people dwelt on one side, and my lover's
people on the other, and bitter war was
between them. But neither here nor
there was there room for me, for I had left my own house
at call of the great chief of the enemy's host, and when
my father would have had me back, I would not come and ;
now my lover was dead, killed in battle, by treachery as

I knew, for in arms he was unconquerable; and his folk
shamed me, the stranger woman, shutting me away from

the pomp of his obsequies, so that my grief preyed upon
itself almost to madness, and but for the manchild I had
borne him, I must have died. Then the great ones of his
tribe brought me with the baby to the border that they might
deliver me again to my own people and across the brook in
;
the fierce light of noon I saw my father's face set like a stone,
and the hard glint of his eyes. The words between the
warrior parties were short and sharp, and I was bidden to
leap the brook. Thrice I hesitated, that if there were pity
;
PAST INCARNATIONS ii
in heaven or earth it might have time to work for me a

miracle at last, stung by a taunt, I sprang across. And as
:
I sprang, the baby in my arms, a gleaming sword seemed
with a swish to fall athwart my life, killing my lover in me

with a yet more terrible pang, killing happiness and youth,
so that I staggered from the blow, and went up the bank
feebly like an old woman. My father and the men with him
—
had no hand to help me they let me totter and sway, and
when I joined them, turned their faces homeward without a
word. ... So I, that had left my country crowned with the
superb triumph of love, returned a stricken thing, an outcast,
accounted a traitor to my kin and to my land.
Yet I had known an ecstasy beyond the reach of any woman
in the long stretches of the past I had been the chosen one
:
of the greatest warrior of all time his son lay in my arms.

:
The child was very fair, and for one so young, very strong
—
he was fierce in temper like his father, even in the chiefs
gentler moments there had been the stress, as well as the
glow, of noon. The same love, which in the man almost hurt
by reason of its greatness, came sweet beyond words through
the touch of baby-fingers and the cooing baby-voice. What
dreams I had dreamed, blazing with light and glory, before
the child was born and after, no dream seemed too wild for
!
fulfilment, no hope too remote.

. .And now the little hillocks effaced themselves, one after
.
the other, like crouching slaves !

—the over-scented air was
slack and tame ! What place was there for my son amongst
these keepers of sheep, who fought, not for joy, but for
necessity ?
12 PAST INCARNATIONS
A sharp pang went through me, as I saw the misery of his
fate, and at the same moment a cry struck the air. Had I
uttered it, or the child ? He answered me with cry after cry,
beating his hands with violence, and working himself to a
passion greater than I had ever seen. I did not seek to
check this outburst of nature the child might have of it
;
relief. My father turned uneasily now and again as we

neared the encampment at last he hissed,—* You must stop
:
the crying.*
I had been wont to soothe my baby by the singing of lullabies,
but the low crooning airs were vain against his cries. Striving
only to dominate his voice, I broke into the fierce, quick strain
of a war-chant, and then let the notes swell into long wails,
such as they use in mourning the dead. Presently the loud
monotony of song overbore the sobbing, and I let myself go
in a frenzy of abandonment. The grief that had been eating
into my heart all these black days rushed forth in a tempest
of music that seemed to storm the world. I felt a sudden
—
ease a sudden lessening of pain. My song rose into the
air, an agony turned into sound, a wild hymn of triumph
rooted in the bitterness of defeat— the passion of love with

death at its core. I walked as one in trance, almost in
ecstasy the child ceased crying, and then smiled and then
:
laughed.
So lost was I, that I did not perceive we were passing
through a line of men and women, until the insult of their
words became too loud to be ignored. They were muttered
still, for my father was powerful, but once aware of the
hostility on either hand, I saw under my lids the rage in

PAST INCARNATIONS 13
their eyes that they dared not voice. My song rose into
defiance as the whispers thickened, until my father turned,
and scowlingly bade me to cease. One warrior spoke
roughly, saying itwas shame to let me flaunt in their
faces my enemy— shame for them to
grief for their dead
hearken to the dirge that made their victory but of him
:
and of the others I took little heed, for a terrible weariness

had come upon me with the flnishing of the song. My limbs
ached pitifully, and my head was a burning pain. I went a
short way further, and fell.
After a month was gone, they forbade my singing of the
lullaby. It was no lullaby, they said, but some barbaric
lament that I had learned of the savage tribe among whom
I had dwelt. The insolence of my woe was a mock to them.
I had recked little how they took my song I had recked
;
little that its rapture of anguish left me after it was done
like a reed beaten by the wind for I thought that by my fire

:
of singing I might nourish the boy with the stress of mighty

emotions, so that as he grew in years he might grow in
strength of arm and of spirit to prevail at last in the councils
and battles of this weak race. Sometimes also I had to use
the counter violence of my song against the violence of his
child's passion, which increased in this land which was cruel
and alien to him. And, therefore, for all reasons I found it
hard to follow the decree that had gone forth against the
singing: I felt myself become spiritless without its spur,
lapsing once more into dull, brooding misery and the child
:
drooped beforemy eyes.

Then it became my practice to take him out into the wilder-
ness, away beyond the hearing of men, and there to sing my
lullaby under the bare skies and by the blank pools,— to make
myself empty as a shell and let the sounds of the world pour
through me, and all the sorrow that has ever been for love
that is lost, which is held in the core of the wind. The child
would laugh, and his eyes brighten, and the colour return to
his cheeks, for he was of that glorious race to whom fierce-
ness of emotion is a greatness and a joy. With evening we
would make our way back, he shouting in my arms, I
staggering under his weight, very weak, but not wholly
wretched.
This thing became known, and they followed me, and once
more forbade the lullaby with cruel threats that if the decree
were broken again the child and I should be left in the
wilderness to perish.
So I let the child pine and fret, and in the watches of the
night, instead of my singing, the people heard its crying and
;
once when I went past two women gossiping at the well the
malice of their whisper reached me — *They will surely die.'
Then I saw how worn and pale the boy was, and my own
shadow how thin and I wondered if it were better to go out
;
like a sick fire, or in one great flash, like the lightning.

That night I felt my heart breaking with the loneliness and
longing of love. The child tossed and moaned, and now I
had pity for him, and I murmured at first a low lullaby,
hardly above my breath, to soothe him, for it was long long—
— —
long since he had slept. But he took no heed until the
song increased in force, and even then he did not sleep at
once and by that time the tide of music welled so fiercely in
;
me that it was beyond me to control. Once more I abandoned

myself to the dreadful rapture of the lullaby, uttering the
misery of us both into the air in one last, desperate agony.
Now there was movement outside and the clash of arms, and
I knew that the threshold was passed, and that nothing
could save us. A great recklessness came upon me, and

seizing the child in my arms I went out into the night, and
up and down between the tents, up and down, up and down,
chanting the war-chant of the enemy, wailing the long notes
of sorrow for the dead. I saw the glitter of eyes watching
me everywhere, like the eyes of beasts in a jungle, but all
the night there was no spring of beast, nor fastening of
tooth or claw. At dawn men closed in upon me painfully,
confusedly, and brought me, still carrying the child, with
horrid din into the open. A bitter way they forced me with
words and curses then I remember silence where they left
:
me, and the sharpness of stone against my naked feet. I

stumbled on in a world empty except for the bare skies
and the blank pools where we had come to die numbly I :
watched the light flicker from night to day and from day to
night. . . .
THE CRUCIFIX GAVE, NIGHT AND DAY,
A PALE INTERIOR LIGHT
<5^
Page 18
^•^>^
III
|H£ crucifix gave, night and day, a pale

interior light, so that I was independent
of the outer light that only sparsely
penetrated to me. I had been built into
my cell, which was within the convent
church: walls ten feet high were about
me, and over them flowed in great waves the rolling music
of the Mass. The atmosphere was heavy and sacred with
incense: a darkness almost tangible, washed with misty
gold, reached me when the candles burned on the high
altar, and the attenuated day came to me a clouded grey,
that held at its core some reminiscence of holy colour
still
—of blue and of red and of green— out of those great

stained windows that I could not see, that told the tale of
the Birth, and the Death, and the Resurrection.
I had chosen the rule of the anchoress in my order, as being
the most strict to discipline my weakness, that I might

receive no distraction from the outer world but the food
necessary to keep the body in life, and the one word with
the sister who passed it through the grating. For, when I
took my vows, the flesh was strong against the spirit, and
I knew I should find no peace until earthly desires were dug
out to the very roots and wholly consumed. And so I shut

Page 19
;
away the visible temptations and glories of the world, and
raised barriers of stone between myself and that possessing
face, whose fierce and passionate entreaty threatened my sal-
vation, and whose importunity I found no other way to resist.
But at first the walls availed me nothing the world that I
;
had renounced beset my senses with a more sharp intensity

the face that I should never see again recurred and recurred
in memory, stabbing me with the anguish of irretrievable
loss. All the impressions of sights and of sounds that I
had thought would prove evanescent, came tumultuously
back upon me with a vividness and poignancy exciting
almost to frenzy. Those few flagstones of holy church
were turned to a battlefield where the fiends fought for my
soul; they stuffed my ears with the blare of trumpet at
tourney, so that for whole days the healing music of the
Mass went by me unheeded; they filled my eyes with the
pomp of processions,— the splendour of faces virile with the
pride of life, —the wonder of rich brocades, —the glitter of
arms nor could even the crucifix prevail against the intoler-
;
able movement and brilliance that tortured my imagination.

Sometimes, at the suggestion of the evil ones, hideous
blasphemies rose to my lips, and I told my rosary beads to
curses, or arraigned heaven with madness of imprecation.
Yet the strength that lay deeper than their power could reach
never wholly failed, and at last the worst paroxysms gave
place to an ecstasy of prayer, that partook too much of the
violence it succeeded,— that strove to clutch at heaven, but
only in the hope of finding a brief respite from hell. Then
I would kneel before the crucifix for days together, pressing
—a
my hands against the nails that nailed the feet to the Cross,
until the blood flowed from my lacerated palms; and out
of this pain there grew with the lapse of time an intimate
mystical comprehension of His sufferings, and my own grew
less and less as my sympathies slowly widened to embrace
this Crucified Figure that came to save a crucified world.
He took upon Himself my anguish, and the salt bitterness
ebbed away, leaving behind a great radiance of peace, —
peace terrible in its sweetness, that led me over heights
infinitely pale and lonely. And now the music of the chants
stirred within me visions and emotions more penetrating and
marvellous than those which arrive through the channels of
the senses the clink of the swinging censer, and the sound
:
of the bell at the elevation of the Host, lifted me ever higher

into the unbearable zone of light that is around the throne.
The sweep of the nuns' dresses over the stones, bringing
me back to earth, was balm to my immeasurable weakness
— Ineeded the sense of gentle human presences after the
tension of a bliss I could not yet sustain.
Then followed, one after the other, long years of inter-
cession and of praise. In periods of trance the days and
nights flitted by me with the brush of angels' wings
flights intricate with silver and shadow, followed by vague
confusion of golden pinions beating through the dark. Yet
lest my feeble powers should dissipate in the vast regions
which were so near to me, and my prayers fall short and lose
their efficacy, wanting a definite form, I chose to make the
village near by, which clung about the hill where my father's
castle stood, the centre of my entreaties, praying for the
poor and the miserable and the diseased, that I had half-
seen down foetid alleys as I rode forth to the chase. So for
these people, for these my people, I importuned Heaven
with passionate fervour, with persistency of appeal, implor-
ing pity for their sufferings, forgiveness for their sins;
imposing upon myself penances for their misdeeds, taking
upon myself the burdens that oppressed them, bearing for
their sakes the cross of affliction, and the frequent darkness
of spiritual despair. So I agonised for them during the
years and ten times the awful masses of Good Friday fell
;
upon the soul, monotonous, like the falling of earth upon a

grave. But after this a strange light began to mingle with
my vision of the little village in the faces of the people, still
;
vivid tomy imagination, there appeared a new peace; the

very stones of the streets and the rafters of the houses were
luminous. Sometimes the hill seemed to uproot itself and
hang before me suspended, transfigured, in a radiance that
was not of earth and I took this for a sign that my prayers
;
had been heard in high heaven, and that the blessing of God
rested upon the people for whom I so fervently strove. Yet
my ardour never relaxed, and the music often Easter Sundays
crowned me with more and more triumphal acclaim. Then
I heeded time no longer, living above it in the peace that
passes all understanding.

Thus the unwonted sounds of the noise of the falling of
great masses of masonry, the wild cries of the nuns, and
raucous laughter, beat for some time against my conscious-
ness before penetrating it. At last I was aware that I was
in the midst of some horrible tragedy, and thought that hell
had engulfed us all. Only the outline of my cell in the dim

light,the roof of the convent church, the shining crucifix,
forced me to grope back to the realities of material life.
Now I knew that I had had no food for a long time, and that
some overwhelming misfortune must have threatened and
had fallen. Tales came back to me out of the past, of
convents that were sacked and the nuns carried off: I
recognised with dreadful certainty that this unthinkable evil
was actually upon our house, and threw myself before the
crucifix in anguished prayer for my sisters that were beyond
all human help, and that God was calling to Himself through
the most terrible of martyrdoms. My way of death by starva-
tion would be slower, unless the divine mercy allowed in this
cataclysm of horror the soul to escape from my quivering
body that writhed on the stones, helpless, beyond all power
of spiritual control.
The glare of red lights began to leap over the walls of the
cell. I think I must have swooned, for I heard no more,
until a volume of sound in my very ears roused me. . . .
They were digging me out of my grave. With a supreme

. . .
effort I dragged myself up from the ground to face them,

and a horde of men rushed in upon the spot I had made holy
with my penances and my prayers. In the fierce light of the
torches they waved before me I caught glimpses of faces
dreadful, bestial, glutted with lust and with blood. But they
came no nearer; one laughed loudly, almost wildly; the
others fell back, and as I staggered towards them, gave me
way, and I crossed the church, aflare with riot, unmolested,
and fell somewhere on grass outside.
Next I foiind myself wandering, dazed and swaying, in a
littlewood. It was daytime; the air struck upon my face

with a softness so healing and delicious that tears came to
my eyes: dimly between these there floated before me a
world exquisite and radiant, and I half deemed myself in
Paradise. A tiny stream, coloured with the sky, babbled
along the sky itself stood shyly at the top of the slopes
;
where the trees opened. The crystal note of a bird seemed

to buoy itself along reaches of sunshine, and in the branches,
and in the red leaves on the ground, there was the rustle
of life.
Then suddenly there broke through the underwood beyond

the stream a woman, and after her a man in pursuit and I;
remembered all that had passed, and old thoughts came

back to me, how beauty was but an illusion to snare the
soul into false delights. The village lay, as I fancied,
beyond the near and if my strength could attain it, my
hill,
people, to whom I had given my life, would succour my

distress, and build for me a little cell on the outskirt of the
wood, where I might see the sky and hear the birds, who
after all are God's creatures too.
I could scarce make any way against the weight of my long
garments, heavy with the dew; a faintness was upon me,
but my will was strong to see once more before I died, in
very reality, the little village of my vision, transfigured by
my prayers, clinging to the hillside in a halo of light.
Struggling along almost unconscious, with pitiful ache in
every limb, I perceived at length a landscape of more familiar
outline but I thought the veil of death was already on my
;
eyes, for the village was blurred, and swam uncertainly

before me. The nearness of the goal spurred me to one last
effort, and I took the smoke that almost blinded me for the
shadows of the Great Valley. My bare feet felt the cobble-
stones, —a burning rafter crashed in my path. Instinctively
I drew within a deep embrasure, and saw, one flash of
in
wretched
realisation, the piled corpses in the streets, the
people driven out by the flames to be slaughtered without
distinction of age or sex. For these I had agonised, for
these I had wrestled in prayer, for these I had poured out
my life-blood before the throne.
Then, through that red carnage and heat, a cold wind struck
me, and as I shivered I stiffened.
THE SEA HAD ALWAYS
POSSESSED MY THOUGHTS
Page 28
LAY along the rocks, and leaned my hand
over till it reached the waters. The grey
sky was low upon the grey sea. I shut
my eyes, and felt the cold, slow movement

of the waves through all my body. What
far strands did they touch, these waves,
remote from the monotony of our shores ?
The sea had always possessed my thoughts. In childhood
it was haunted to me by the black and terrifying mystery
that ever threatened its horizon. For when they took me

to the little church, and I heard the people praying, God,'
I clamoured to know
!
deliver us from the wild Northmen '
what the prayer meant and they told me how at times the
;
sea would grow dark with pirate-ships, and part before the
fierceness of their onslaught and how the sea-wolves who
;
manned them would bring fire and ruin to quiet places,

slaying the men, and carrying off the women to slavery.
These words, not rightly understood, filled me with the huge
and vague imaginings that make childhood horrible, and
night was big with indefinable fears. For whole months I
dared not lift my eyes over the sea lest a still more terrifying
reality should meet them. Perhaps it was because I avoided
the sight of the sea, that it claimed an increasing empire
Paê 29
'
over my thoughts. As I grew older I used to join with
passionate, if uncomprehending, fervour in the prayer that
came straight out of the hearts of the people,—* God, deliver
us from the wild Northmen 1
My feeling towards the sea changed, I think, on a day of

silver, when the calmness quivered a little, and faint clouds
floated in a high, liquid sky. I remember looking out over
the waters, half-curious, half-fearful. How wonderful, how
thrilling, if I were to see the first shadow of one of those
strange ships, coming, no man knew whence, to return, no
man knew whither I played with the thought, excited and
!
trembling. I was yet a child: and to stand ever on the

threshold of so dreadful a possibility, lent a glamour to the
long dulness of the empty days. And now the prayer,
!
*
God, deliver us from the wild Northmen sent through the '
tedium of the service a sharp emotion; my imagination

heard shrieks and the din of weapons, and saw flames leap-
ing in a deep night.
So I passed from childhood to girlhood; and after long
freedom from danger the fear of a raid began to fade from
men's minds. Still they prayed the prayer, but in repetition
it had grown mechanical travellers no more came carrying
;
tales of villages destroyed by these devastators, whose force

and courage was as the sea's in storm; and day followed
changeless day, and month, month; year grew into year,
each the exact counterpart of the last. A weariness was
upon me, because of this endless monotony of shifting time.
And since the danger was now no more thought of, it
seemed to me no wrong, as I lay along the rocks, touching
the waters with my fingers, to dream of those pirates who

grasped life at its hot intensity, felt the fire and the sting of
it, and terrible as the elements, roused in men a frenzy of
fear. I thought of these sea-wolves the more gladly, in that

our men were tame and spiritless, sunk in lethargy, and only
to be stirred by the stress of vital peril. And soon a bitter
impatience was upon me, and I sprang up and scanned the
clouded horizon. It was darkening towards twilight, and
the tract of cheerless sea was bare. What did I seek?
What did I desire ? What shadow did I strive to image in
the far sea-mist ?
Night came down upon an empty world. Now I had
fathomed my being to its depths; and the prayer of the
people, 'God, deliver us from the wild Northmen!' must
henceforth be a mockery on my lips for I knew that my
;
soul cried out for this one supreme moment of ecstasy and
anguish— my blood craved this last wild gallop of excite-
ment; I knew that I longed for the coming of the black
vessels upon the barren line of sea, and for the leaping of
the pirate-wolves upon our tame strands. Even in child-
hood this imagination had taken hold of me, turning all my
terrors in one direction and now these terrors had changed
;
to a sharp-edged romance. No prisoner had returned out

of that viking land, to say what manner of place it was the :
secret of its mystery was dark and unfathomable as the

grave. These men came, inevitable as death, and went,
leaving death along their track. I realised how, beside
this mystery, the common life had come to mean so mono-

tonous and poor a thing I understood wh the men who
;
wooed me appeared so thin of substance and so weak of
spirit.
Then rumours drifted to us, blown know
not whence, that
I
the raids had begun again, fiercer and more daring than
before. A stillness of terror was upon our village, and in all
men's faces the strain and pallor of fear. Many planned for
a flight to the woods at the first certainty of danger, for
even the boldest hearts deemed resistance to be impossible.
One night there came a fugitive flying from a village which
used to stand not thirty miles distant— which stood no
more, but was marked by smouldering ashes. Of all that
village he only had escaped but power was gone from him
;
to make a tale that was clear, or to say what might help to

wise action the minds of our chief men. But on his story
many of the villagers fled to the woods, taking with them
what provisions and goods they could bear; a few others,
deeming that the pirates might have put again to sea, or
might not come our way, stayed in the village, and I with
them. Often now men and women stood on the low line of
rocks, scanning the horizon yet I was the first to see that
;
dark shadow, over which I had brooded so long, turn from

dream into actuality. Some seconds I thrilled to the con-
sciousness of this supreme danger, swiftly, irrevocably
approaching upon us then with little moans and frightened
;
cries the others fled away, and I watched the viking-ship

alone. Almost I could discern its movement, almost I
could divine the gleaming helmet-lights, when a hand was
laid roughly on my shoulder, and turning, I saw him who
of all others had been most persistent in his wooing.
;
Come he commanded in a voice that was strange to me

!
'
'
and through my excitement I saw him taller and nobler

than before —
so changed, that I hardly knew him. But
nevertheless, shaking him off with scorn, I told him I would
wait the coming of the ship for that the soul of me craved
;
to see men that were indeed men, and not hares. He grew
pale at this, and made as if to seize me by force I sprang
:
on the extreme verge of rock, and dared his approach.

Muttering to himself words, amongst which I heard
*
Death!' and 'Shame!' he came a step closer. 'Not
—
shame,' I answered him, 'not shame, but death!* For
now, when almost the keel grated upon the strand, my heart
failed me lest the tragedy should show itself not sublime, as
I had dreamed it, but only ugly, as I now saw possible ; and
I was minded to throw myself into the sea. But he was too
quick for me, and clasping me, drew me from the edge.
*
Death for both, if you will it so, beloved,' he whispered.
My eyes were drawn to his, and then my wildest dreams,
my fairest imaginings, were surpassed: I touched the
highest point of being, and all things were forgotten in an
eternity that lasted one brief moment.
Then I saw men running towards us over the sands, and the
evil of their eyes my lover's knife gleamed above me, and
:
struck.
—
]H£ chill light of dawn stolethrough the

shutterless window. We had broken up
the shutters for firewood in the long frost.
The room looked very dreary. On the
table were the bits of black bread we had
tried to eat overnight, but we were both
too tired, and the hard food choked us. The thimbleful
of milk I had managed to get for Jean's supper was not
quite dry on the board where he had knocked it over.
Neither of us had undressed before going to bed. Through
the numbness that was upon me after extreme fatigue
for had been working all day in the fields— I felt dimly
I
how Jean was tossing and tossing beside me through the

short night; but my senses were dulled, and till dawn I
lay in semi - oblivion. But with waking, if waking it
could be called, came misery. I dragged myself up, my
limbs trembling and aching beneath me; and to the old

hopelessness that faced me was added a new horror of
myself that I should have grown so careless as to lie down
in my earth-soiled clothes without brushing my hair, or
setting the room tidy. I had blamed other women when
hardship had made them abandon their struggles after dean-
34
;
:
liness and decency yet many of these had to see the hunger
;
of their children, and to bear the harshness of their

husbands. —
We had no children, and Jean . . Last
.
night, it is true, he was impatient . . unlike himself; but

.
then, he had been doing a long corvee for the lord, and the
forced labour exhausted his mind with indignation as well
as his body with fatigue. I went over to the bed. He was
asleep now, but very restless, muttering words and plucking
at the clothes. I noticed in the grey light how terribly drawn
and thin his young face had grown. Well, at least no ugly
sight should meet his waking I would put on a fresh dress,
:
I would borrow some milk from a neighbour for his break-
fast. I might leave him to sleep, perhaps, an hour longer
then he must get up, for unless we were to strain every

muscle, we could not keep starvation at bay.
A cold mist lay on the land as I took the bucket to the well.
The wretched harvest, not yet cut, shivered in the low fields.
All the summer, hailstones and cruel drought had been
fighting against the earth, and the thin poverty of the rye
and oats that survived was scarcely life. There was not a
touch of gold in the colour, and the stretch of fields looked
bleared and haggard. The water spilled about the well
nourished a rich growth of nettles and docks, which none
had the energy to clear. I filled my bucket, but after I had
carried it a few steps I had to rest. All my strength had
ebbed out of me. Going very slowly, and with frequent
pauses, I nearly got it to the cottage. Then I tripped and
overturned it. I sat down on the bank, and the stupor came
over me, so that it seemed impossible I should move all day
'
but after what must have been a considerable time I roused
myself and went again to the well. In lowering the bucket
my wedding-ring slipped off my finger into the water. I felt
a pang and a fear, and looked with curiosity at my shrunken
hand but indifference quickly followed, and with a little
;
water in the bottom of the bucket I returned home. It was

with great weariness of effort that I put on a washed dress,
and made the room tidy. There was no time now to get the
milk,— the neighbours were a long way off, and Jean must
not sleep longer. I put my hand softly on his shoulder.
*Jean, Jean!' I said. He did not answer. I shook him

gently, and he waked. *Let me be,' he answered sullenly.
*You must get up,— it is late, you have slept too long —
already,' I said, but he turned away from me. I shall sleep '
all day,' he told me.

*
But the work,—the work I exclaimed, I could do so little,
!
'
*
—and now I can do no more.' It 's no use, it 's all over,' he

'
muttered. *
We
've tried,we 've done our best but this is the ;
end. Leave me, for God's sake I think I can get to sleep.'
;
'Dear, it is not the end yet,— it need never be the end. Rouse
yourself, Jean,—you must, you must 1
He shook me off. 'It's no use, no use ever again,' he

murmured, * I meant to tell you last night but I couldn't. . . .
. .Can't you see I'm weary to death?

. Let me get a
moment of rest while I can.'
. . .
He looked so ill and so worn that a great pity came over me

for him and a great surge of love. Forgetting all wise and
practical cares, I laid my cheek against his cheek. It was
burning with fever. How after that could I make him go
!
out into the chill fields? . And yet, and yet. . .

. . . We
should never be able to make good these days. The wolf
pursued so close behind that even a brief halt would bring
him up, ready to spring. And then ... it was dreadful to
me that Jean should stay in bed. So Pierre had stayed in
bed, since it seemed to him useless to get up, and his wife
and his children,— and they had died. But that was in the
winter, and bed at least was a little warm. I remembered
how in the spring Marcel had stayed in bed ... it meant
the abandonment of the last hope, the final surrender. And
now Jean! He was tired, I knew, tired to the point of
fever but if the will once gave, I did not see how it would
;
ever be able to resume power. That meant drifting lower

and lower, until death clutched one. I was not afraid of
death if I could meet it with self-respect, but to lapse into it
through self-indulgence, degradation, dirt! . .
. Jean must
get up, he must get up
But now he had fallen into a deep peace. He breathed
evenly, and there was content in his face. I could not wake
him again.
I opened the door. A dim sun flitted like the ghost of itself
about the fields. It struck a sense of warmth into me, and I
leaned against the lintel, and allowed myself to taste the
deliciousness of giving in. No more frantic strain, no more
spurring the rebellious body to impossible tasks; no more
hideous cares for the future, but absolute quiescence, un-
broken rest. The sun's heat still tempered, the sun's light
still veiled, penetrated my body, soothing it inexpressibly;
and I fell into a doze, leaning against the lintel of the door.
' I
I awoke to the tonic quality of a voice ringing in my
partially
ears. was so full of vigour and of joyous health that even
It
to listen to the tone of it sent the blood coursing more
quickly through the veins. The voices of the neighbours
were thin, — even the voices of the young men had a
querulous note :the voice I waked to was in itself a
stimulant to the senses, and at first I did not hear the words
that were spoken, but listened immovable to the voice, with
closed eyes. Another voice broke upon the first— a voice I
—
recognised with terror the voice of the lord's overseer, a
man who bore upon the poor people with a cruel oppression.
*
It is Jean Bonvoisin's cottage,' the overseer was saying,
*
the man who dared to speak to your lordship yesterday.'
*
The insolent dog who defied me exclaimed the first voice,
!
'
*
—
and that young woman by the door, who is she ?
'
His wife, seigneur,' replied the overseer.
'
Much too pretty and delicate a flower for a cottage garden,'
broke in another young man's voice. 'Come, Henri, that
—
low-born ruffian deserves some punishment, let us give his
charming lady a ride to the castle.'
*
I bade them trample down his field,' said the lord, but your
*
suggested punishment offers promise of better sport. Wake

her, and bring her to us.*
... If I were to scream, Jean would come out, and they
would kill him. I had no knife to kill myself. I opened my
eyes as the overseer seized me. The lord, as I guessed him
to be,and another lord, were sitting on horseback in the
road. It seemed they had just come from the chase, —
could hear the distant baying of the hounds. I had never
seen men so full-blooded and handsome, or such richness of

dress. I knew a mortal terror.
'Well, my pretty one,' said the lord, 'this fine husband of
yours has no doubt told you of his own undoing, and my
mind was to ruin you both but then, I had not guessed how
;
graceful a lily flowered under his cottage-roof.'

'If you will show mercy and pardon him, seigneur,' I
murmured, though I could hardly speak the words for fear,
'we will pray for you every day of our lives.'
'
You are the price,' said the lord, I pardon your husband
'
if you come with me.*
Lift her on my horse

!
' cried the other lord, to parley on
'
'
these matters is absurd.'

'
I do not go,' I whispered. But the overseer had me in his
arms. I did not call to Jean. There were three men, and
he was only one. The end would be the same, but I should
see him killed first. He must be sleeping very soundly, for
the lords spoke in loud voices, and the tramping of the
horses made a sound like thunder. Then the other lord took
hold of me by the arms to lift me up beside him. With a
sudden movement I managed to slip from his grasp, and fell
on the ground under the horse's feet. I think the horse
bolted, for I heard a cry, and a great whirring of noise then
:
the hoof of the other horse struck my forehead with a heavy

blow.
THROUGH THE MYSTIC DOORS
A LOCK OF HAIR, BROUGHT ME IN THAT
TENDER WAY BY THE BILL OF A BIRD
Page 42
:
THE CURL
were sitting on the terrace of an old
French chateau, sipping coffee and smok-
ing cigarettes. It was a hot autumn after-
noon. The tapestries of the woods were
worked in the faded colours of decay they
;
rustled with the sentiment of the lost, the

past, and the dead. The warm sun had raised a wavering
veil of moisture about them, and in allowing for its influence
one was inclined to exaggerate the definition of leaf-line
—
underneath, that delicate definition, incident on the sparse-
ness of autumn, which charges the smiling abundance of
summer with the first exquisite thinness of renunciation, to
sharpen later into the hard features of winter asceticism.
Beneath the tobacco smoke my old friend's face showed
shrivelled and wrinkled with a like delicacy of line. Its
sentiment of expression was almost one with the sentiment
of this essentially French moment of the year. The woods
were sad, but they were more happy than sad; with them
it was the time of dreams, and they were haunted by the
fragile loves of a vanished spring. The sorrow that was in

—
them was plaintive, wistful, almost a tender impersonation
theirs was the sentiment of sorrow, its iridescence and play,
unconscious of any depth or darkness of suffering.
Page 43
44 THROUGH THE MYSTIC DOORS
It was I had met Louis de Brissac.
forty years since In
Paris, asyoung men, we had been close friends. I had gone
over to study in the French capital, and from the very first
Louis had won me to him by the charming romance of his
friendship for me. Since that time, during the long years in
India, men had come near to the fibre and core of me through
mutual danger and mutual endurance I had felt the stir of
;
those silent friendships whose most open manifestation is

a firmer hand-grip, an understanding eye-glance. Beside
these hidden vital emotions the memories of my Paris friend
were as pale-coloured as his autumn woods, but yet in these
far-off memories there was a sweet fragrance which the
robuster attachments lacked. Louis had written to me
regularly for years and years I had whole boxes of letters
:
in his fine, pointed handwriting. He was expansive, and

thought no detail too trivial for my interest not only was I
:
familiar with the administration of his estate down to the

minutest particular, but also his whole mental life, with all
its philosophic doubts and conjectures, was laid open before
me. The letters were written with flow and lucidity they ;
were full of keen observation and admirable criticism of life

and books. But partly through lack of time, partly through
difficulty of composition in the French language, and mostly
through constitutional self-repression, my replies were, I
fear, somewhat bald and brief. Then, during a period of
extended travel, I missed several of his letters, and, having
no incentive to write to him, I let the correspondence end.
On my return from India the London doctors advised me
to try the waters at Vichy, and thither I repaired, intending
' — !
THE CURL 45
to find out if my old friend still lived in the neighbourhood.

On the very first evening I came across him unexpectedly.
I had dropped into the Cercle Priv^ to watch the gambling,
and amid the grasping and repulsive faces of those present
my attention was attracted by an old man of great bene-
volence of aspect. I could not be mistaken. I knew him at
once, in spite of his white hair and his wrinkles. The
peculiar charm, the dash of melancholy happiness, that had
always belonged to Louis, were there still, more marked than
ever. He was playing the game with a childish pleasure,
staking deliberately, but not high. He had evidently set a
limit to his losses, for presently he came over, with a pleasant
word to a friend or two, toward the window where I was
standing.
!
*
Louis I said, touching his arm.
'
He looked at me for a moment quite blankly. Then his face

Richard he said, pronouncing the name
!
grew irradiated. * '
French fashion. It is Richard,— my friend Richard Wright

*
My poor Richard, but how you have changed !
I smiled. Well, it is forty years,' I replied.

'
*
And to meet you here he continued. I always dine here
!
'
*
when I come to Vichy on business. And I play a little. It

is excitement. If you win, excitement if you lose, more ;
excitement. My friend Richard Wright

. . . I am over- ! . . .
whelmed! You must come home with me to-night.

. . .
Why, I insist,— I absolutely insist. My carriage is here.
There is a room ready for you. It is too great happiness to

have you with me at the Chateau de La Tour.'
There was no resisting the pressure of his invitation, his
' '

faithfulness of friendship. I consented, though quizzically,
half doubtful what manner of welcome I should receive from
Madame or Mademoiselle de Brissac. I supposed, of course,
that Louis had married in the long interval since we had
—
ceased to correspond, that he had children. But I was
wrong. I found the chateau presided over by an old butler
and his wife, who superintended the servants.
And so, on the next day, looking out on that delicate autumn
landscape, so full of vague and lovely regrets, I felt impelled
to break our silence with the remark, *
So there never was a
woman in your life ?
A came into my friend's face. 'Yes,
greater sweetness
Richard, there was,— and is,* he replied. *I will tell you
about her when we go in. You will think it —you may think
it —rather Perhaps you will only laugh
a delightful story.
at me. . . . And you, my
you have never married
friend, —
either? No, no ... do not answer me. I see I have
touched pain. I would not have you speak out of a sore

wound. I want to know no more. Forgive me, forgive —
me!'
'
You are— happy in her ? I asked in a low voice.
'
*
But you must hear the beginning,—you must see,' said
Louis. Tell me, did my last letters make mention of any
*
hobby of mine ?
I reflected a moment. 'A hobby?' I repeated, a little
puzzled.
'Why, yes: one must have a hobby, — birds' eggs,' said
Louis. '
It is a hobby full of poetry, of romance, of senti-
ment. When I was young, it took me out into the open
THE CURL 47
woods, out in the springtime, out in the early morning.

Every specimen I collected made me more exquisitely aware
of the marvels of creation, and woke in me new wonder for
nature's supreme artistry of colour and curve. Have you ever
—
pondered over a bird's egg, Richard, over the frail brittle-
ness that encloses the germ of sublime music? As the
crinkled shell is characteristic of the crisp ocean,— as it is
thin, but of infinite resistance, and shaded mainly with the
—
yellow and red hues of sand, so the bird's egg is charac-
teristic of the softer contours of the land, and memories
of leaves and skies are blended in the greens and blues
of its shell.'
'That seems to me . . . just a little fanciful,' I protested;
'but to tell the truth, I have not given the subject any
attention.'
*
I show you my collection presently,' said Louis.
will I '
am arranging and classifying it now. Of course I am too

old to get any more specimens myself, and I fear to employ
the village lads, lest they should be lacking in wise dis-
cretion. But believe me, Richard, on the most bitter
winter's day my birds' eggs are potent to bring the spring
vividly before me. Within these fragile cases, I whisper
to myself, there lives in essence the whole magic of spring
—its crystal-dear calls, its high and liquid notes, its flash
of lark mounting into the sky, all its varieties of faint
flutterings among new leaves. I touch my eggs and say,
"Thrush, finch, wood-dove": and the pressure of woven

nests grows round me, and I see the green-cradled baby-
hood of birds.'
' ;

'
I wonder,' said,
I *
that you ever found the will to take and
blow the eggs ?
'Ah,' Louis replied, 'you are too prosaic. I take but one
egg many with us scientific interest does not necessarily
of ;
kill sentiment. And the birds do not resent it; they have
been kind to me, kind beyond expression. They have given
me a gift. I have told you this that you may be in the right
mood to understand. Come in, now I will show you.' ;
Together we went into the chateau. It seemed to me

charged with an atmosphere of old-world sentiment, con-
ventionalised by the lines of ancient perpendicular wall
papers, of panels and parquets of oak,— dim hand-worked
tapestries reproduced within-doors the rapture of autumnal
decay. A sombre richness had grown about the greens and
blues of the threads, like an emergent shadow there was ;
the pallor of exhaustion in the blanched yellows and waning

whites. Everywhere huge potpourri of roses renewed about
the corridors the sentiment of the lost, the past, the dead
giving for the passionate beauty of June an attenuated
sweetness, grown a little sickly in heavy confinement.
Louis led me up the stone staircase to a long, bare room,
arranged as a museum, with a number of cases containing
birds' eggs. It was inconceivable to me how any one could
extract a dream of springtime from so arid a spectacle.
Louis drew me over to a table upon which stood a casket
jewelled with small turquoises this he opened with a key.
:
Within lay a curl of golden hair tied with a piece of faded

blue ribbon.
'She is with me always,' he said dreamily; 'her sunny
THE CURL 49
presence pervades the house I almost think, at times, I see

;
her flitting up and down the staircase. Before, I was lonely,

— lonely and often bitter,— but since she came all has been
changed.'
'Your dead wife,' I said reverently, for the moment for-
getting.
'
No, no ; I was never married. I told you that. But I did
not tell you why. There was consumption in our family. I
consulted a doctor after you left Paris. ... I did not think
I was justified '
I grasped Louis' hand. My friend, my friend, how could I

*
guess at so deep a tragedy?' I exclaimed, deeply moved.

Here indeed was courage, heroism. I fancied,— forgive me,
'
— I fancied you had not known real suffering. My own

case ... I have loved too.'
'
But ... let me finish. I think you mistake. I never loved
... in the flesh,' he interrupted hastily. That would have *
been terrible, terrible. I could not have conquered a great

passion. I think I should have killed myself.' He touched
the curl. I never saw her,' he went on.
'
I found this *
. . .
just as it is now tied up with blue ribbon ... in the

. . .
nest of a bird. That is my romance, Richard, the whole of —

my romance.*
*
But— I don't understand I gasped. !
'
*
It gave me something tangible to build upon,— a lock of
hair, brought me in that tender way by the bill of a bird,
associated with all that is dear and and wonderful beautiful
to me. I think this bit of sunshine in the soft moss of a
:
nest, a golden pillow for wee feathered things. She would

G
'

be pretty, with such hair! She has blue eyes and gentle
ways she has changed a little during the long years she has
;
been with me, but always she is young, always she is sweet
and lovable, with golden hair. Her gentle companionship
has grown dearer to me, and dearer her voice is the blended
;
voice of all birds, and the lightness of the birds is in her step,
and their timidity and soft, nestling ways.'
!
'
But it is a dream I exclaimed.
'
*
Perhaps. Still, there is the curl,' he said. Then he put his
hand on my arm. '
It puzzles you,' he continued, with a
whimsical smile. No Englishman is like that you are
'
:
material, and must have the substance you do not under- ;
stand that a dream has as actual an existence as a reality.

We have the better of you, dear Richard, in this we have :
found one secret of happiness.'

'
If there had ever really been a woman,' I began.
*
I know. This could not have happened,' he said gravely,
'it could never have happened in that case, and I should
—
have suffered like you.'
I took up the curl, examining it curiously. At one time I
had given some study to physiology. But this is not '
woman's hair,' I remarked, without thought.

Louis grew pale. Not woman's hair
'
I
Then I realised the mischief I had done. I cursed myself

inwardly that in a moment of recklessness I had shattered
the whole fabric of his life's dream. It is, of course, easy
enough to tell from a lock of hair the age and sex of the
owner when it was cut off, and it was quite evident that this
curl had been taken from the head of a young child. But
' —
THE CURL 51
why had not had the wit to keep the discovery to myself?
I
Why I burst in with my crude science upon this

must
delicate, incomprehensible romance ?
!
'
Not woman's repeated Louis.
hair '
'
the hair of a child,— of a young child,— about seven
It is
years old,' I said dully. 'O Louis, I should not have
spoken."
He looked dazed, bewildered. The next moment he was
wringing my hand ecstatically. There were tears in his eyes.
*
Richard, Richard,' he cried, I had never thought of that, '
a child ! We
pass the time ... for loving women, and some-
times I have felt lately. that an old grey- haired
. . . . .
curmudgeon like myself has no right to let his fancies run

for ever on golden-haired maidens. But a child, a little girl
— one is never too old to love a child It is what the chateau !
—
wants beyond all else childish laughter, the patter of
childish feet. O Richard, think what you have given me—
a little child, to be with me always till I die It is good !
it is good that you came

!
He leaned on me, almost overcome. But I ... I could not

understand. Only in my heart was a great void— a pitiful
cry for that childish laughter, the patter of childish feet,
which I should never hear.
Itwas twilight when we reached the staircase. The wind
was in the tapestries on the walls. They rustled like a
shower of Suddenly Louis touched my arm.
falling leaves.
And down amid the fantastic
at the bottom of the stairs,
movings of the hangings, I thought for one moment I saw a
brief vision of a little golden-haired child.
HE LOOKED OUT FOR SOME TIME
INTO THE SILVERING DARKNESS
Page 54
THE WHEELS REVERSED
E have been friends for exactly ten years,'
said Thornhill Morris in a low voice, it
*
is time to say good-bye.'

Dr. Wallscourt gazed at him for a mo-
ment in speechless amazement. 'Look
here, Thornhill, I'm not fool enough to
suppose that you want to break with me simply because I
happened to turn idiotic in our climbing expedition to-day.
It was a nasty bit, and— well, my nerve isn't what it was.
... I know I nearly killed you, and myself into the bargain.
Oh, I am willing readily to accept the lesson. I 'm getting
old— my forty years are beginning to tell; no more giddy
heights for me. It's a stage we've all got to come to
sooner or later, and your cooler head and greater powers of
endurance hardly justify you in so very blatant a piece of
cynicism as your remark implies.'
Morris, who looked a good deal younger than the doctor,
drew his chair closer to his friend and laid a hand upon his
arm. He had a grave and pleasing face, which would have
looked quite ordinary, but for some indefinable quality of
melancholy, that gave it an elusive, haunting interest. His
actions were usually marked by a certain old-world stateli-
ness, but to-night his native dignity had deserted him ;— he
seemed agitated and restless.
Page 55
'Dear old Edward, don't let's misunderstand each other
he said, I 've not got to tell you that
after all these years,' '
your friendship has been just one of the best things in

. . .
my life. As to getting old ... to say truth I envy you your

every sense of pain, your every ache of stiffness. This I
don't expect you to understand. But indeed there are
reasons —cogent reasons—why we should part.'
'
You do not deny that these reasons are connected with the
question of age,' observed Wallscourt.
'
Not . . . way you mean,' Morris replied. His
not in the
he got up and went to the window.
voice faltered ;
They were in the smoking-room of the hotel at Wast-

dale Head, which that night they happened to have to
themselves.
Morris looked out for some time into the silvering darkness,
his faceworking then he turned towards his friend.
;
*
Edward, I want you to take my word on trust,—have faith
in me, —
faith just this once, in my judgment for us both. It
is better indeed it is essential—that we go separate
. . .
ways.'
'
take nothing on trust,' answered Wallscourt. His pale
I
face,square in build, which gained its character, its expres-

sion of concentrated force, from the shape and lines of the
overhanging brow, assumed a sterner aspect; there came
an alertness of light in the somewhat weary blue eyes. I '
take nothing on trust,' he repeated, 'I have the right to

demand an explanation. I gave you ... all that one man
can give to another: you had free passage into my most
secret thoughts. And now now you suggest airily that it—
I:

is time to say good-bye. Tell me frankly that you are tired
of me, that you have outgrown me, and I suppose I must
shrug my shoulders and accept the somewhat bitter inevit-
able. But understand, Thornhill, you owe me the truth, —
insist upon my right to the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth.'
*
Have I not given in equal proportion ? asked Thornhill, '
*
you know well how much I admire
. . . how much I . . .
love .'
. His voice broke.
. . do not talk of such
. .
'
We
things. But Edward, there are reasons. ... I can-
. . .
—
not give you the reasons you would think me mad. . . .
Has it never occurred to you, never for a moment, that I am

not quite like other men? Can't you see something . . .
different about me? Look, look at my face. . . . Don't be

harsh, old friend, — I am desperately unhappy.'
He stooped, almost kneeling, beside Wallscourt's chair.
The doctor scanned his features closely in the lamplight.
There was a perceptible pause, then Wallscourt spoke
*
You are talking, you are behaving, like an emotional school-
boy,' he said brightly, moved by the signs of suffering he
saw, as well as by a strange, pathetic touch of youthful-
ness in his friend's expression. 'You are certainly very
different to-night from the Thornhill I recollect when we met
here first, by chance, some ten years ago. I was a youngster
of thirty then, and you awed me by something staid, almost
Early-Victorian, about your appearance and manner. I took
you to be a good deal older than myself, I was proud you
should seek —
my acquaintance, your brilliance of conversa-
tion, your extraordinary range of knowledge, fascinated
' ' ;'

me. So we became friends, you were my guide, my ideal. —
Then, with years, we seemed to grow into closer equality
you had lifted me up to your intellectual level, and our
friendship assumed its rare and perfect intimacy. But lately
— I suppose am
ageing too rapidly we have drifted a little
I —
apart. You have become prey to a curious melancholy;
you brood, you keep away from your friends. And to-night
the position actually reversed. I am the aged wiseacre,
is
and you you look like a mere sentimental boy, instead

. . .
of a sober, middle-aged man of at least forty winters. Come,

Thornhill, what is distressing you ? Why not confide in me ?
Morris stood up. 'Honestly ... I appeared more or less
like other men ?
'Why, certainly, —a more in the clouds, a little more
little
fastidious, perhaps ; more impatient for change, more hope-

less of result : yes, no doubt. You stood aloof from all the
movements of the time; you spoke out of what seemed
an almost abnormal experience. It was part of your
magnetism, though you puzzled me occasionally, I confess
and on reflection,— yes, once or twice I was aware of some
element in your character utterly new and bewildering to
me. What is the secret, Thornhill, since you allow there
is one ?
Thornhill Morris went over again to the window. The moon
had by this time risen over Scawfell. He spoke in a dreamy
voice, without turning round. You were talking just now '
about getting old. I hear a great deal on all sides about the
fearsomeness of getting old. It is a commonplace of con-
versation. To lose the fire, the enthusiasm, the wild fresh-
THE WHEELS REVERSED S9
ness of morning! To know the keen edge of pleasure
blunted once for all Then gradually for the limbs to grow
!
stiff, the faculties to decay,— how sad, how ghastly, how
gruesome You are familiar with all that kind of stuff,

! . . .
Edward ? There was a time I uttered such rubbish myself.'

'
Unfortunately, the coming on of age is a sober fact,' said
the doctor, rather testily. He suspected an artifice in the
renewal of this subject. 'You can't get away from it by
calling it bad names.'
Thornhill faced round. *Have you ever thought how it
would feel to be getting young instead of getting old ? he '
asked. Will you for a moment try and think of this possi-
*
bility, not as a golden impracticability, but as a harsh,

unavoidable reality? The years as they recede gather about
them a halo, which is the mere mist of distance you would ;
realise this quickly enough

you could reverse the dial
if
and go backwards. ..." Oh that I were twenty-five "

!
. . .
" Oh that I were twenty " sighs the middle-aged world but
!
;
would any sane person choose in actuality to live again

through those periods of acute suffering— suffering unpro-
portioned, because it has no standard that imprisons our —
untried faculties in a maze of disillusion and mystery to
which we have not yet found the key ? Oh, youth has dazzling
heights too, and we fall from them down, down, down into
the abyss Edward, can you remember when you first came
!
to know the evil and the cruelty of the world ? That is the
most awful moment of life no individual pain can ever after
:
equal the shrinking horror that confronts at that moment

the naked and trembling soul.'
6o THROUGH THE MYSTIC DOORS
'What has all this to do with our friendship?' asked
Wallscourt, after a pause.
*
me finish. Try for one moment to credit my supposi-
Let
tion, admit for one moment the possibility of going back-
wards; contemplate as a near future the torturing doubts,
the quivering faiths of youth regard as an approaching
;
experience the deceptive imaginings, the tortured awaken-

ings of childhood. It is not so much the tyranny of the
nursery that daunts, with its puzzling, unmeaning restric-
tions, the ceaselessness of its petty slavery; what appals
is the thought of traversing again that impossible child-
world, that trackless country of vague and impalpable
perils where we wandered during the first twelve years of
our lives. To pass from middle-age to old age, is to float
along a series of fair and gentle slopes towards a securer,
serener landscape but to return to childhood is to plunge
;
down precipice after precipice, to change from one Protean

shape to another, to lose all sense of continuity or identity,
and to live in a land peopled by childish terrors, compared
with which the worst visions of delirium are mere graceful
fancies.*
'
Allowing your proposition to be true,' said Wallscourt, I '
hold your statement to be absurdly exaggerated. You are

imagining the case of an over-sensitive organism, the —
ordinary healthy child has compensations that far outweigh
its momentary fears.'
*
put the case rather strongly, perhaps,' answered Morris,
I
'but you will grant that it is nearer truth than "the trailing
clouds of glory " or the " golden age " representations. It is,
' ' ' —
THE WHEELS REVERSED 6l
a great deal nearer.

in fact, Edward, Edward thank . . . —
God that age lies before you, not youth,— not childhood,—
not— infancy !
There was a drawn look on the doctor's face. ' What has
put such thoughts into your head ? ' he asked.
'
You said . . . that when you first . . . knew me, I seemed
older than you were,' faltered Morris, 'and that now the
position ... is reversed. . .
.'
Wallscourt lifted the lamp and went over to where Morris

stood. Once more he scrutinised intently his friend's face.
A mad notion was taking form in his mind— an unheard-of
absurdity, from which he sought to free himself. He put
down the lamp.
'
You look barely thirty,' he said abruptly.
'I am in fact twenty-nine to-night,' breathed Thornhill
slowly.
*
And when I first met you ?
'
I was thirty-nine.'
'
Man ! Impossible !
*
If you calculate by the number of years I have lived, I am
one hundred and twenty years old.'
The doctor began pacing the room uneasily, and Thornhill
went on :
—
If you come to think of it, there 's nothing so
'
wonderful in living one hundred and twenty years. Science

asserts that, if properly treated, the body should be good for,
at least, twice the term of years it lasts at present. And
leaving out of account unproved legends, such as that of the
Wandering Jew, we have almost incontrovertible evidence
that certain secret societies—the Rosicrucians, for example
discovered the means of prolonging life indefinitelybeyond
the usual limit. Only, in the case of a disciple endowed with
this quasi-immortality, the growth and the decay of faculty
and function are arrested the world rushes past him with
;
its changes of season and of seas, but he remains ever the

same, growing neither younger nor older, unrestricted by the
conditions that bind most of us slaves of change and time.'
'Thornhill, this is hallucination,' interjected the doctor,
'
you are ill. . .
.'
Morris passed his hand wearily across his brow. I was '
seventy-five when I discovered the secret,' he continued,

*
it was in the year 1861. But I made some mistake, some
fatal mistake. Instead of merely attaining to a continuation
of life, I reversed the life-process; instead of suspending
the wheels of mortality, by some
inexplicable error I caused
them to work backwards.
have been getting youngerI
for the last forty-five years. Edward, you know all the
. . .
horrible conceptions formed of those whose lives have

been magically, or, if you will, scientifically prolonged, the —
shock of incongruity that a Rip van Winkle must feel, the
endless lassitude of the Wandering Jew, the grasping de-
generacy of the harpies in Gulliver's Travels. But no one
in his wildest dreams has ever conceived such a tragedy as
I have to face: the tragedy of losing, one by one, all my
painfully acquired weapons of defence, all the comfort of

philosophy and experience,— the tragedy of drifting back
through chaos into the unknown. I cannot think of it. . . .
It would be better to kill myself.'

'What you tell me is incredible,' said the doctor, 'and
—
yet when look at you ... I remember once

I you . . .
spoke, as from personal knowledge, of certain obscure

if
effects of the Napoleonic wars you expounded to me some

;
medical theories of Coleridge that, wishing to refer to in my

lectures, I found it impossible to trace. I remember. .'
. .
A whole flood of recollections swept across the doctor's

mind. He recalled Thornhill's social aloofness, his invari-
able method of tracing daily events to remote origins,
his extraordinary intellectual range, and the vitality and
minutiae in his descriptions of events a century old. It
struck him now for the first time, that in all their ten
years of closest intimacy, he had never learned anything
of his friend's relatives or connections. He knew him to
be, like himself, without family, and further curiosity never
occurred to him. But now the realisation came upon him
with a strange significance. Strongest evidence of all,
he had seen Thornhill growing visibly younger before his
eyes. . That very day, when there had nearly been an
. .
accident in the gully, Thornhill had shown a nerve, a

reliance upon his muscle, and a power of endurance, surely
impossible to any one unless in the full prime of early
manhood. ... 'So you see,' Thornhill broke in upon his
meditations, *it is time to say good-bye. My friendships
have all been limited to ten years, else it would have been
impossible for me to keep my secret: from sixty to fifty,
from fifty to forty, the alteration in appearance is not so
very perceptible. But now, from thirty to twenty, I shall
change yearly, perhaps even more rapidly, and after that . . .
I have never told any one before ; but our comradeship had
—

been so much more to me than any other and oh, . . . . . .
this is a sore time You forced the confession from me,

! . . .
I could not have you think of me with unkindness. .'

. . . . .
*
I cannot believe anything so preposterous,' the doctor said,
rousing himself, 'but even if it were so, there is all the

greater reason for continuing our friendship. You will need
me, my help, my advice even as a young man; you will
want my protection as a boy. Thornhill, you must not go
out of my life, you must not face these terrors of youth
if such indeed there be —
without one near you who under-
stands. That you exaggerate these troubles is more than
evident, but to some extent I realise that they exist. Our
relationship must be altered, I admit, but it will be as close
as before.'
Morris grasped the doctor's hand. My friend ... my '
father!' he murmured. Then with an almost whimsical

smile that was full of pathos, he added But you don't :
*
know what you 're undertaking. I may fall in love, I was —

a gallant in those old days and oh, all the miseries I went
;
through! We
laugh at lovers' pains— in retrospect. . . .
But if we feared a recurrence ? Reflect, Edward, I shall

. . .
—
love passionately it was in my nature and yet my terrible —
secret must keep me apart from every good woman. I can
never marry. This mattered nowise in my studious middle
life, but . who can gauge the folly of youth ? I had best
. .
end it once for all— or shut myself up in a monastery.'

'
Was there ever any one any one that mattered ? asked
. . . '
Wallscourt with hesitation.

*Yes; her grave is in the little churchyard outside. It is
' —
THE WHEELS REVERSED 6S

dated 1814. Shall I tell you the story? My long, long life
has been clouded by it. She was only the daughter of a
farmer. I stayed at her father's farm in those far-off days,
when I was discovering the climbs that we have since done
together. We loved each other devotedly. There is no . . .
question here of the halo of Time. I have never met any one
like her— any one so high-spirited, so pure-minded She had
all the virility of the mountains, yet an exquisite grace and
delicacy, like the passing of cloud shadows over a sun-

parched landscape. O my friend, is not the tale somewhat
too stale for you ? It is so old, so trite, so eternal in its
ruthless recrudescence through all time. .'
. .
*
Go on, please,' said the doctor.
'A mesalliance in those days was almost an impossi-
bility: besides, I was poor, and practically dependent. I
lacked courage; to speak more honestly, I was a coward.
The whole force of family influence was brought to the

separation of us. I was a dastard, Edward,— a scoundrel,
a mean cur. ... It was a hundred years ago, my friend,
remember and have pity on me. Since I might not
that,
have her as my wife, I asked her ... I insulted her by
asking ... I shall never forget the look on her face. She
loved me, and I had killed her soul. I left her without
another word, and I never saw her again. A year after-
wards I heard of her death. She was lost upon Great Gable.
How she fell was never known. I was in Italy at the time-
but O God!
. . .Edward, how it all comes back to
. . .
me . . . the delirium of grief, the anguish of remorse ! . . .
Must I live through it all again ?

'

'As you say yourself, the story is nearly a hundred years
old/ the doctor reminded him.
And I have gone back into the very heart of it, the wheel
*
—
has come full circle. I was twenty-nine then, I am twenty-
nine now. The pain is as vital, as fresh, as unbearable. . . .
Edward, come out, and I will show the very gate where we
used to meet. The moon is still up we can find our way
;
through the meadows in spite of the mist. To take you

there will help to make me realise that the past is truly
dead . will help me to disentangle
. . .' He passed his
. .
hand over his brow with the old movement. 'Come,. . .
Edward, you are not too tired ?

Wallscourt shook his head, and together they went out into
the moonlight. The mountains rose dark and indistinct
against a rapidly clouding sky. The drifts veiled and dis-
closed the moon alternately, throwing mist-wraiths into the
valley. The silence and dimness lent to the scene an even
greater than its wonted mystery, while the hazy mist-move-
ment distilled an impression of unknown and hostile pre-
sences lurking close at hand. Wallscourt was several
times on the point of suggesting a return to the hotel, but
Morris pressed on, finding his way as if by instinct to a
rough tree-trunk bridging a stream, which he crossed, and
then followed a path that led to a ruined gatepost.
'
Come here, Edward, here. This is where we stood by this
broken gate— she on that side, I here. She met me once
on just such a night as this. Her grey dress looked silver
in the moonlight: she wore a large, shady hat tied with
blue ribbons, and her face was radiant like light upon dark
' '
THE WHEELS REVERSED (fj
waters. I remember hearing the rustling of the grass as
she came towards me. What was that?' Thornhill . . .
gripped his friend's hand. You heard ? *

. .
.
Wallscourt nodded. There had been a perfectly distinct

sound) like the swishing of skirts over grass. The next
moment, he could almost have sworn he saw the shadowy
form of a girl flit past on the opposite side of the hedge. . . .
It was, of course, the misty light, the silent hour, the strange
tale. . . .
*You saw it?* whispered Thornhill, tightening his grasp,

'young as ever, lovely as ever,—ghosts don't get old, you
know. Well, she hardly thought to find her lover in
the flesh, waiting at the gate, the same— after a hundred
years. I too am a ghost, what else? Look, it is — . . .
coming back this way ... at this side of the hedge

! . . .
now, you see the grey dress that looks like silver ? you . . .
hear the rustling ?

'Thornhill, this is folly,— let us go back. We are both
overwrought, hysterical ... we imagine .'
. .
'She has turned,— she will not meet me, even her ghost —
disdains me. How it all comes back For I love her more !
than ever I must speak to her.

! . . . Yes, yes, I know . . .
it's only a ghost what matter? ... I must tell her

. . .
that I have suffered that I have been faithful . . . . . .
always. . .
.'
Before Wallscourt could stop him, he had leapt the barrier.

Immediately he was engulfed in the darkness, which was by
this time complete. The doctor followed hastily, calling
aloud his friend's name. Once or twice he fancied he heard
a reply; several times, so quickened was his imagination,
the swishing robe seemed to brush by him. He stumbled
on, striking himself against the branches of trees, founder-
ing in swampy places. Quite unexpectedly he came upon
the stream, and slipped into one of the shallower pools:
he managed to scramble out somehow, and going more
cautiously—still calling to Thornhill— he saw at last the
welcome light of a lantern, moving over the meadows in his
direction.
'
My friend have lost my friend
! I
!
cried the doctor to the
'
figure approaching him. He was almost inarticulate with

anxiety and foreboding, and pointed unconsciously in the
direction of the lake. The man, who had been sent from
the hotel to look for the visitors, asked one or two sharp
questions, to which Wallscourt could only return vague and
unsatisfactory replies.
'It's dangerous ground about here at night, I warn you,'
the man said, and it was decided that Wallscourt, lantern in
assistance.
• ••••••
hand, should go back to the hotel, and return with more
The white dawn found Wallscourt trailing back weary steps

in the wake of a search-party whose efforts had been . . .
vain.
The mountains flushed faintly in the growing light, but the
face of the lake was black — inscrutable. . . . Perhaps it was
the fairer part of childhood, the nobler part of youth, that
Thornhill was to experience after all.
AN AUTUMN TRYST
HE drifted through the woods like a faded leaf.
The world was lit with the faint, golden
radiance of autumn. A dim cinnamon flame,
like the fire in marble, crept through the
arches of the bracken, that were lifted
beyond the tree-stems: the leaves of the
beeches, losing the sap that had made them luminous screens
to the sun, now burned with a pale light of their own. The
soul of the year, half-freed from the bondage of material
things, seemed delicately poised for flight in the woods the
:
sky-spaces opened wider and wider. As yet there had been

no tussle with the elements, no pangs of dissolution ; and
the exquisite moment of acquiescence lingered.
Dr. Eraser leaned against a beech-trunk, and looked im-
patiently up the glade. He was a man about thirty-five,
rugged in figure and countenance. His face showed that
determination which is based on a profound knowledge of
the certainties of Science. His present eagerness, and a
certain softness of emotion, sat strangely upon him.
Presently he saw her approaching down the vista of dead
leaves. She wore a brown holland dress—the day was very
warm —and a drooping hat of brown straw. She came
swiftly, but there was languor in her movements.
'
Onora I 'They clasped hands.
Holding her two hands, he looked down into her face. A chill
went to his heart. Was this indeed the woman he had
wooed in the spring,—this thin, faded creature? Surely
some illusion of autumn must be infecting his seeing; his
eyes, filled with the colour of withering gold, must be trans-
ferring to her, qualities which belonged instead to the
landscape and the season. It was impossible that all her
fresh beauty should have waned, in so short a time, to this
frail sweetness.
She led him to a spot where the trees gave a sparse shade,
and where there was a view of the open. Her dress rustled
and crackled over the leaves. They sat down under a beech-
tree, and Onora threw off her hat. Under the flitting leaf-
shadows, the doctor fancied he saw threads of silver in her
hair of clouded gold.
'
Dear, tell me,— have you been ill ? he asked. '
'You find me different?' she said gravely, 'do I look ill,

Oliver?'
*A little pale, a little tired,' he replied. In point of fact,
she did not look Her eyes retained their vivid blue—the
ill.
same colour as this autumn sky her flesh had the delicate
;
hue and contour of health, though it was wanting in the

richer tones, but she looked unaccountably worn she —
looked almost old.
'
Do you mind that I am changed ? ' she asked.
'
AN AUTUMN TRYST 71
*
I want you as I have always known you,' said Dr. Fraser, * I
mind, of course, if you have been lonely anxious.' —

'Oliver, I did not think you would notice so soon. . . .
Perhaps I ought to have told you in the spring, only I fancied

that love might turn the current of my existence into the
normal direction.' She began toying with the fallen beech-
leaves, and then looked out over the undulating bracken.
*
The year she said.
is fading,'
*
What can you mean, Onora ? Surely your love for me is
not altering, is not growing cold ?

'
No, no, indeed no. It is the one real thing, the one unmis-
takable reality. Only my blood runs more feebly at this
season than at any other; my life wanes, a little, with the
life of the leaves.'
'You find it more difficult to love me in autumn than in
spring?'
'How can I explain it to you, Oliver? I am sensitive,
strangely sensitive, to the influences of the earth : spring,
summer, autumn, and winter go to the very roots of my
being. In every year I experience youth, and maturity, and
age.'
'
Dear, you have lived too much alone, in too close contact
with Nature,' said the doctor, a little uneasily, 'these are
the fancies born of brooding in solitude.'
'
But you yourself see how the autumn works in me,' said
the girl, '
—
only my eyes keep young the rest of me fades
like a leaf; and I can show you white hairs that I found last
winter. In winter I am quite old, my face is pinched— even
wrinkled. —
But then winter this is the compensation,
'

Oliver, for you as well, I think— winter is the most spiritual
moment of my life. There are no leaves, no earthly screens,

to keep away the sense of the surrounding sky. I feel
clothed, more than at other times, with sunlight and starlight
and moonlight.'
'
Dear, this is a poetical statement, not a physical fact,' began
the doctor.
*
It is a physical fact, Oliver, capable, I believe, of scientific
explanation,' said Onora. have inherited from both sides a
'
I
rare sensitiveness that subdues my body to the seasons. My

—
mother was a peasant, for centuries her ancestors had
lived in close communion with the earth, which had yielded
its intimate secrets to their dumb keeping. My father was
a poet, —a great poet, as you know— and there is something
of him me, though, like my mother, I have no words. Then
in
from my earliest years he gave me loving and peculiar
insight into the ways of Nature: I feel that the Earth-
Mother has entered in an unusual degree into my parentage,
and has given me a right beyond others to claim kinship
with all these lovely things of the world.*
*
If your hypothesis were true,' said the doctor, 'do you
realise that your case would stand as a reversion to a primi-
tive type, and that you would be retrogressing to a point in
the evolution of humanity that has long been overpassed ?
'You have yet to prove,' said Onora smiling, 'that the
ancient peoples who lived close to Nature were not wiser
and happier than ourselves.'
'
The thing is self-evident, Onora. Freedom is the first stage
of all progress. We
have triumphed over Nature,—subdued
' ' ' ' —
AN AUTUMN TRYST 73
her, made ourselves independent of her smiles and frowns,
shaken off the trammels of the seasons. It is only in detach-
ment that thought can take shape, only in detachment that
we can attain the undreamed heights of Science and Philo-
sophy. Why should you pride yourself on the weight of
chain that drags you to the earth ?
*
I believe that in the earth is the only wisdom,' murmured
Onora, I am sure that in the earth is the only happiness.
*
I am no materialist, Oliver but to-day, when all the ancient

;
heavens are crumbling around us, I recognise the heaven

beyond all these imaginings in the daily glory of the world
the woods, and the fields, and the skies. Does this seem to
you fanciful, foolish ?
'
That you should find joy in Nature, that you should dis-
cover the spiritual behind the material, this I can well
understand but not that you should be willing to abnegate
;
your personality to the stray impulses of the moment, not —

that you should choose to submit yourself to the caprice of
the seasons.'
*
You speak the matter were under my control. Oliver,
as if
Oliver,—you won't let it make any difference to our love?

You loved me in the spring— surely it was not only the
spring in me you loved ?
*
Dear, I loved you— the you that still exists under all these
hallucinations.'
!
'
Hallucinations
'I must attribute these fancies to a powerful imagination
working in solitude. There are many instances of imagina-
tion working on the physical medium.'
' —

'When spring comes, I shall be young again, Oliver,
fresh as when you first knew me. ... It has always hap-
pened. I see you dread the fact that every year I must
grow old. . .
.*
'
It is unnatural, Onora, abnormal.'
'
And rather than have me abnormal, you would believe me
not quite sane ?
'I simply believe that the poetical impulse carries you a

little too far.'
*I had dreamed myself privileged, blessed beyond others,'

murmured Onora, *
I have known such great peace, such
happiness.'
*
Don't think me hard, unsympathetic. My daily experience
in cases of hysteria makes me perhaps over-emphasise
the importance of perfect balance, of the divine average.
I have always been impatient of mysteries. Dear, it is
your own sweet personality that is precious to me I cannot :
reconcile myself to these metamorphoses which transform

you into a species of hamadryad, or wood-nymph. I feel
that it requires only an effort of will to free yourself from the
chains that bind you to the earth, that separate us.'
'
I am neither a hamadryad nor a wood-nymph, Oliver. I am
—
a woman a woman who loves you.'
She laid her hand upon his arm. The doctor was startled
by the thrill of passion in her voice. The character of the
day had changed.
The sky was filled with hurrying clouds, and from between
them a fierce storm -light travelled over the landscape.
The sweep of languorous radiance sharpened into colour-
' ;
AN AUTUMN TRYST 75
and rust-brown in light.
contrasts, deep indigo in shadow,
The bracken turned from cinnamon to bronze, the beech-
leaves from yellow to copper. Suddenly, a tide of sunset-red
flooded land and sky. The was
world, no longer submissive,
summoning its last vitality to fling a bold defiance at Death,
whose wings could already be heard rustling in the far
tree-tops.
Onora sprang up, flushed with a fire that did not seem of
the sunset. The red glow was in her hair. Her eyes had lost
their clear morning blue, and were shadowed by dusky flame
a splendour of determination characterised her expression,
and the voice that had sounded so thin, rang out in clear,
low notes.
she cried, I will break my bonds, as
!
'
I love you, I love you '
*
you call them,—will do even this, if only so I may reach

you. But you are sure, Oliver, sure that you would have me
ordinary, like other women? You are sure that I shall
lose nothing in your eyes, by shutting off from myself the
fountainhead of all beauty ?
*
It is you that are beautiful, Onora. The fountainhead is in
yourself,' exclaimed the doctor. I ask nothing extreme but
*
;
— —
yes I would have you as other women. At present the
world of Nature absorbs too much of you the fields and the ;
sky are my too powerful rivals. I want you to be mine, mine

alone. Oh, I am not all selfish it is partly for your sake.*
:
'
I love you, Oliver ; this is the strongest thing in me,' said
Onora, what need of more words ?
' Meet me to-morrow
here at twelve o'clock. No, dear I must do what has
. . . ;
to be done alone. There is peasant-blood in me, remember,

:

and hereditary knowledge of certain rites, which you would
call superstitions.'
'
Oh, be glad when all this is laid aside, when we can
I shall
meet on common ground!' exclaimed the doctor, a little
impatiently.
*You will not have to wait long . . . to-morrow, at twelve
o'clock.'
After he had seen her to the gate of the Manor House, the
doctor paced for a considerable time the twilight woods. It
irked him that he could not disentangle a clear image of
Onora from the three distinct impressions she had left upon
his mind. The picture that had dwelt with him all the
summer, of a creature of exquisite possibilities, of radiant
promise, could not be reconciled with the woman of to-day,
either in her mood of languid quietude, or in her accession of
passionate splendour. And as he pondered over these later
manifestations, he came slowly to realise the fulness and
range of an exceptional temperament —a temperament cap-
able of vibrating to every variety of emotion. was her
It
naive joy in her buoyancy of spirit,
life, that had drawn
him then she had captivated his fancy,
to her in the spring :
but now the depth and richness of her nature began to work
upon the more virile stuff of his being. This woman of
strong and delicate maturity made appeal to a higher man
than the girl had been able to touch and the doctor felt ;
exalted in the thought that was love for him that had
it
wrought this change in her. The correspondence of her

mood with the mood of the year, was probably no more than
one of those curious coincidences, of which life is so full
AN AUTUMN TRYST 77
intensely sensitive, intensely imaginative, she attributed to

her body experiences which were only of the mind. The
doctor could not for a moment admit the possibility that this
winter should see her old, and the following spring make
her young again. Love had come to her in the spring, and
had ripened her personality by the time of autumn; but
had she loved first in autumn, spring would have brought
maturity. That she should hold herself free of the seasons
was greatly to be desired, else they might impose all manner
of fanciful complications upon their wedded life; and the
doctor ardently hoped that her foolish rites might prompt
*
'
the initial effort of will necessary to cast off this imagined

tyranny.
The next morning was misty and dank. The leaves on the
ground lay formless in moisture; the leaves on the trees
huddled shapeless in the wet fog. The doctor shuddered lest
Onora also should pass under the sway of this chill autumn
mood. At the first glance he was partially reassured. She
looked almost as young as she had looked in the spring.
But she seemed to lack spirit, and came droopingly towards
him.
She held up her face to be kissed. The expression was
diffident,appealing. There had always been a glamour
about their former meetings, a glamour which had per-
sisted even under yesterday's first shock of disappointment.
To-day a painful sense of the commonplace overmastered his
emotion at seeing her.
'
Are you pleased with me, dearest ? are you satisfied ? she '
whispered anxiously.
' ;

'
Always, always,' said the doctor, marvelling at the difficulty
of speaking with conviction. For she had grown young
again for him, young as by miracle, yet not young as when
he had first known her. Then she had been young with the
poetry, the sentiment of youth now she was young only
;
through lack of years.

'Oliver, beloved, you have taken away from me all my old
supports,' said Onora. Dear, I have only you now, only
*
—
you. Your love is my whole life, everything. Tell me that
you love me, give me something to cling to, I feel so weak,
so helpless.'
*
I love you, Onora,' murmured the doctor. Where was her
old charm, the magic of her loveliness ? He
looked down at
the pretty graceful creature clinging to his arm with agitated
insistence. All that was individual, the grip of independ-
ence, the vigour of personality, had gone and instead there
;
was a colourless entity, sweet and good and gentle, no

left
doubt, but with no initiative, no impulse to development, a

thing to be shaped by circumstance, by environment, by any
stronger will that chose to mould it.
'
Oliver, speak to me, give me your assurances.*
'
Dear, what need have we of vows and protestations ? said '
the doctor miserably, have we not always understood

'
. . .
without words ?
*
It is different now, —
different, different now
!
said Onora
'
* yesterday
I had the great Mother-Earth to lean on. I drew
strength from the character of the day. Your love was an

episode, oh! the central episode, the great episode, in the
glorious procession of the year. Now you have emptied
' '
AN AUTUMN TRYST 79
my life of everything but you. Oliver, it is terrible, it is
terrible I
' Why terrible, Onora ?

*
It makes your responsibility too great'
The doctor shuddered. He knew he could never fill the
void he had made, especially now, when he had only pity to
give. 'I was never one to shirk responsibility, you know,*
he said, the more so when it is of my own creating. Indeed,
'
you distress yourself unnecessarily. . .

.'
*
Oh, it is not right for women to love overmuch cried 1
'
Onora, 'our roots should be in the heaven or in the earth,

not in the heart of a fellow-creature. women have need We
of some other anchorage than a man's love.'
'Dear, calm yourself: these doubts and fears are strangers
to you.'
'
I was not less human, I was not less worthy of you, when
the seasons flowed in my veins,—when I had kinship with

the beauty and joy of earth. But if it is love you want,
all there is of me is love for you. So be satisfied,— be
satisfied.'
The doctor suppressed a groan as he thought of the vigour
and glory of personality that might have been his, and that
through his own fault seemed gone for ever.
'
But, Onora, it is not possible that in one short night you
should have cut yourself from Nature so absolutely, so
effectively.'
*Don't say it was a mistake. Yes, yes, it is done. I have —
reached that higher point in the evolution of the race, I have
thrown off the trammels of the seasons. I am become a
—
8o THROUGH THE MYSTIC DOORS

shadow to myself, without blood or substance. And oh, you
look so differently upon me Yet I am as you said you would
1
have me, like other women. . .

.'
'You are yourself, that is enough for me,' said the doctor
bravely, 'and in time you may grow sensitive again to the
beauty of the world, sensitive to the invigorating influences,
from which, ignorantly and selfishly, I tore you.'
Onora shook her head. Then she looked up at him with a
wistful smile. ' Perhaps,' she said, if some day I should
'
be drawn very close to the great forces of Death, of Birth

—
who knows? I might again enter into the spirit of the
Earth, which is peace and happiness. .'
. .
And in the anticipation of this possibility, the doctor was

able for one moment to forget the glorious goddess he had
lost, in the gentle, insignificant woman at his side.
Page 82
THE MURKY POOL
WAS exploring the byways of the Docks
at Rotherhithe for the purpose of catching
local colour upon my mental palette, to be
afterwards transferred to the pages of the
realistic novel I was engaged upon, 'The
Submerged Soul.'
I had chosen an unpropitious night, if I sought for realism.
The mist, thinned and radiant with moonlight, set a
haze of beauty over the commonest objects: the prosaic
glare of infrequent street lamps softened into misty sugges-
tion; the warehouses were turned to rich darkness, or
glimmered with silver dreaminess ahead. I passed through
woodyards whose alleys were lined with straw-coloured
gold, whose turrets towered into a white immensity. I
caught, up vistas, the frail lines of mast and rope inter-

tangling spars in airy crucifixion.It was as if the souls of
inanimate things had escaped from bondage, and hung, half-
materialised in the medium of the moon, about the deserted
wharves and ways.
I came in my wanderings upon a murky pool, back of the
river, surrounded on all sides by tall warehouses, except

where it communicated under a dilapidated bridge with an
ancient stagnant canal. There was desolation about the
Page 83
;

place—on all sides the oppressive narrowness of blind walls,
hemming in a stillness and a darkness as of death.
As I stood on the parapet looking into the murky water,
there spread over its face a phosphorescence like the phos-
phorescence that hovers above decay. It shot from end to
end, a woven splendour of confused tints, purer and more
vivid than those we make
out of our granular earths. And
as I watched, the colours sorted themselves into familiar
combinations. I caught glimpses of the pageant of life, the
shows of the streets and of spring. A never-ending proces-
sion of vague flowers shifted before my eyes in the procession
of the months — snowdrops, violets, primroses, bluebells
then the hues of all these were piled together, glimmering
from street barrows in fog— then I saw the hurrying of vast
multitudes, neutral -tinted, and gaudy traffic, half- caught
suggestions of moor aflame with gorse, of moonlight-crinkled
sea— the whole a shifting phantasmagoria, indeflnite, confus-
ing, shallow.
Above all, shallow. I never lost consciousness of that murky
pool, whose very murkiness gave cause to this surface-play.
There seemed some secret lurking in the depth of the water
which this transient flitting of impressions served only to
cover. The longer I watched, the more certainly I became
convinced of this hidden secret. It called to me from the
bottom of the pool. I felt as if this iridescence were drawing
a veil between me and some compelling reality. I moved to
see if it were less disturbing where the shadow fell thickest,
and so came upon an old man sitting motionless on the
parapet and gazing intently into the pool.
'
THE MURKY POOL 85
He glanced up as I approached, and addressed me. Don't '
you think,' he said, 'that the sense - impressions are

clearing ?
He looked unearthly in the moonlight,— a small-built man
with flowing white hair and beard, and an expression of
such intense wistfulness in his blue eyes that he reminded
me of elves and faery creatures that yearn after some sublime
tragedy they can never know. His eyes were again fixed
on the pool, patient and searching. There was habit in his
whole attitude,— in the crouching figure, in the poise of the
head; I knew he must have sat there night after night,
perhaps for years.
—
*The pool is clearing, it is decidedly clearing,* he murmured.
*
How do you account for the extraordinary phenomenon of
iridescence ? *
I inquired.
He answered me without moving his eyes. '
You notice,' he
said, '
the thick murkiness of this pool : it is always in a
material nature that the sense-impressions are most vivid,
and I take it a tangible symbol of the present
that this pool is
—
material age, perplexed and wearied by a variety of fleeting
impressions, thin and substanceless as reflections in a mirror.
Note how the colours change and flash, how beautiful they —
are, how elusive Yet they stifle the real life, the inner
!
life, the life of the soul, which exists, which I wait for, which
I shall one day see. Night after night I watch for the
symbol of the soul of man to float up out of those murky
depths . night after night
. . night after night.'
. . .
His appearance had not led me to guess that he was mad,

and I felt the surge of an infinite pity. There is nothing so
pathetic as the snapping of chords just because they are
strung too high in our aim after the subtlest music. The
strange old man seemed to have in him the instinct both of
philosopher and poet, but he had gazed too long upon the
dazzling mystery of the water, and in its glamour reason
and reality had slowly ebbed away.
Whether it were that at this moment the moonlight in-
creased in fervour, or that the fog lifted somewhat, there
could at least be no doubt that the colours upon the water
began to pale and grow dim. The old man clutched my arm,
and a glittering excitement took the place of the still
patience that had previously shone from his eyes.
'
I am not mistaken the pool is clearing ? he whispered
. . . '
hoarsely.
'
It is clearing,' I replied.
At last the colours seemed only as a shimmer of cobweb over
the glassy water; then they were gone altogether. The
pool lay before us, blank, dark, inscrutable.
Something rose from the depths to the surface something —
that glimmered radiant and white— rose, and sank again.
*
The soul, the soul murmured the old man.
!
'
*
The Submerged Soul. The title of my book flashed
. .
.'
involuntarily into my mind but aloud I said, It is some one

;
'
who has been drowned.'

*
O God, O God have we! indeed killed our souls ? Is this
the reading of your allegory?' said the old man, rocking
himself to and fro on the parapet. Is this the revelation of
'
the pool? And have I waited hopeful through the years

only to see a dead thing at the last ? But I will not believe
'
THE MURKY POOL 87
that the soul is dead. What we saw was asleep ... or

unborn.'
'
Hush exclaimed.
!
' I
It rose to the surface again. This time it did not seem like
some one that was drowned. On the contrary, it impressed
me some essence of vitality, stripped of colour and form.
as
The thing was too dimly seen to attain to the seat of con-
sciousness through the senses but it reached the inner
;
vision independently of them, and filled it with a pale,

spiritual light. Illusion, no doubt, but extraordinary, in-
explicable. peered more closely into the water, repeating
I
the words of the old man, 'Asleep ... or unborn ?'

When for the third time it rose, he stood up on the parapet.
*
Bride of the world,' he cried, 'supreme Beauty, hidden too
long under the tinsel of our earthly shows, wait for me I !
come !
He would have sprung into the water, but I held him back,
and dragged him struggling from the spot. I do not know
by what ways we went, but we reached at last a sordid,
flaring little street, hideous with the noise of the closing of
public-houses. Here he managed to slip from me nor could ;
I ever find again the murky pool, to investigate by chemical

tests the cause of its strange iridescence nor did I ever ;
obtain tidings of the oldman who had sought to elude the

trammels of the senses, and wed with the submerged soul of
the human race.
;
THE LEPER'S WINDOW

HE shivered as she entered the church.
*
How chill it strikes !
' she said.
They had come into this grey, empty gloom,
already dusked by the approaching twi-
light, out of the vivid glory of an autumn
day. Basil Kent was writing a short mono-
graph on Milton, and he and Sybilla Deering, to whom he
was engaged, had planned a country excursion under the
pretext of visiting Milton's cottage at Chalfont St. Giles and
the old village church. The walk from the station would be
for ever memorable to them both. It was as full of enchant-
ment as the time of Haroun al Raschid the distant fields
;
opened in great rifts of jewels, emerald and ruby the trees ;
flapped languidly with ruddy flame that defied the daylight

mystery lurked in the azure and opalescent distances, and
an autumnal glamour transfigured the veriest grass-blade.
The changing changelessness of the world carried them back
in imagination to ancient epochs. They looked upon the
landscape with eyes borrowed from Saxon, from Plan-
tagenet, from Tudor times they were Crusaders that found
;
in the gorgeous colouring reminiscences of the barbaric

East, or Puritans meditating on divine mysteries as they
88
—:
THE LEPER'S WINDOW 89
walked across the fields to visit Milton. And through all

these fancies Sybilla saw, as through a halo, the dear reality
the keen, sweet face of Basil Kent— a face stern, austere in
outline, softened and shadowed with the tenderness of love.
But as she entered the church a chill struck through her
a physical sensation that yet affected the mind with some-
thing like a sense of foreboding. The marvellous glamour
of the day became in memory ominous it seemed like the
;
Celtic glow that precedes disaster. She felt as if she had

been walking upon the fragile edge of a beauty that would
shatter into winter and death.
This was the first day that Basil Kent had become fully
aware of her extreme sensitiveness to impressions. The
variations in leaf-tint seemed to excite in her subtly differ-
ing emotions she caught the spirit of the past times they
;
had chatted about with an exact insight that threw sudden

illumination on his year-long studies. In Milton's Puritanic
little room she had closed her eyes that she might enter into
the soul of the blind poet and when she opened them to
;
tell him that she had seen visions of divine glory, it did not
occur to him to suggest the misty gold of autumn lingering

on the retina: she seemed so near to deep, inexpressible
things that she might well be able to pierce into the very
heart of their mystery and meaning. And how potently the
church impressed her, vague in the dusk, dumb with the
weight of years !Her exquisite face, cut against the smooth
stone pillar, was pale as ivory a transient fatigue showed
;
upon it vaguely, like the shadows on ivory, and some of the

light was gone out of her starry eyes.
M
'

The little old caretaker pointed out to them the ancient
frescoes on the walls, the brasses, and the tombs. He then
led them to the chancel and showed them a small window,
through which could be witnessed, from without, the service
of the church. Such windows, known as lepers' squints,'
*
have been built into many churches, so that when leprosy was
common in England its wretched outcasts could, through
this means, participate distantly in the divine service, and re-
ceive distantly the Church's forgiveness and blessing.
At sight of the window Sybilla grew rigid with horror. The
whole tragedy of a leper's life was borne in suddenly upon
her mind— its awful loneliness, its frustrate aspirations.
But her realisationwas merely intellectual— emotionally
the sufferings of such an outcast were beyond the pale of
her comprehension. Her sympathies went out rather to the
ignorant people of past ages, possessed with an unreason-
ing terror and driven to unreasoning cruelty. She under-
stood their condition of mind, and excused it. She felt that
thus to refuse her sympathy to a life of such dreadful agony
was unworthy of her she strove to think of the leper as a
;
fellow-being, with thoughts and feelings like herself; in

—
vain her reason had lost all power, and she shuddered from
head to foot.
She sat down on the altar steps opposite the window,
trembling and exhausted. I am tired, Basil, and will rest
'
here a little,' she said. Will you come back and fetch me
*
when you have been round the church and churchyard ?

They left her, and the darkness grew about her. It clung to
the arches with a shadowy sense of fear. It assumed body
—
in the darker ingles, developing into lurking shapes. Sybilla

was in that condition of physical fatigue when the imagina-
tion is preternaturally active — unlessshe controlled her
thoughts she knew they would evolve into horrid presences.
With an effort of will she forced her mind into other channels
— she conjured up the ancient celebrations of mass, the
solemn chantings of other days. The scene grew before
her: the swinging censers, the tinkling bells, the priest in
his gorgeous vestments, raising the Host above the kneeling
worshippers. She wondered if he ever glanced at that
window—the lepers' window? . .God in Heaven! there
.
was a face there now— a face white as death, white as snow.

She sprang up terrified. It did not pass away. It was no
illusion of the brain, no hysterical fancy. The face shone in
upon her through the gloom with dreadful whiteness a
familiar face, but distorted with horror. She grasped the
altar-rail to save herself from falling. Then it was gone.
Something had come into the church and was approach-
ing her. She gave a half-stifled shriek as it loomed nearer.
Could it be Basil? Was it his face she had seen at the
window, so horrible, so white ?
It was too dark now for him to notice her emotion. He
came quite close up to her and spoke in a low, hoarse voice.
*
Sybilla,' he said, '
I have had a terrible shock. I looked
—
in at the leper's window just now I wanted to put myself in
—
the place of a leper, to imagine how a leper felt and, Sybilla
— the horror of it —
the scene was familiar
! —absolutely
familiar down to the smallest detail! I recognised the
curious perspective and angle of pillar, the shape of window,

' —

the proportion and colour of altar, and reiterated flashes of
some forgotten existence leaped and leaped through my
brain. I saw mistily the celebration of a shadowy mass
it was a torture of mysteries beyond my comprehension, of
promises beyond my hope; I experienced a misery which
even in memory racks my whole being. I knew an exist-
ence different to its roots from the one I now know; my
thoughts were many-coloured, limited, grotesque my ideas ;
strangely concrete. Sybilla, in some past life I must have

been one of those dreadful outcasts I must have been a —
leper think of it, a leper
: Sybilla, are you ill ?
! . . .
He caught her in his arms as she fell, and carried her, half-
fainting, into the open air. A new moon cut sharply the
softness of lingering sunset, and there was sufficient light to
see the rigidity, the painful tension, of her face. He cursed
his rash impetuosity that had led him to jar her nerves with
his horrid tale,knowing how sensitive she was, how easily
overwrought. She breathed more freely in the fresh air, and
presently opened her eyes then involuntarily shrank away
;
from his touch.

*
Are you better, dearest ? ' he asked anxiously.
A flood of tears came She sat down on a
to her relief.
tombstone and sobbed and sobbed. Kent stood watching
her in dire distress. He had never seen her other than calm
and bright, and her agony of emotion alarmed him. He
knelt beside her and strove to take her hand. 'Sybilla,
!
Sybilla he pleaded.
'
She stood up and moved a few paces away from him.

*
Basil, shall I ever be able to explain to you ? she '
murmured, *I saw you at the window, white —white as
snow,' she continued, in a low whisper, 'your face, I did not
know it ; but it was horrible, horrible !Basil, I shall never
see you any other way again.'
is madness I was pale and
!
'
Sybilla, this cried Kent,
'
'
horror-stricken because of that strange illusion I told you

about— the illusion of familiarity; but now, in the clear
evening light, I am myself again; you must forget that
ghostly glimpse of me. Come, dearest, say I am forgiven
for causing you so cruel a fright.'
* I am
very sorry, Basil,' she replied, but, indeed, it can *
never be the same. I did love you now, you only inspire —
me with fear. I know, I know. It is foolish, irrational,
unkind. But it is stronger than I am and here I must bid ;
you good-bye.'
'You are still under the influence of the shock,' he said,
*
the terror of it will pass away. In a day, in a week, the
memory will be dim you will forget, you must forget.'
;
'Basil, I cannot reason, I can only feel. We must be . . .
brave, and part here and now.'

It was the voice of one who is heartbroken.
!
'
Sybilla ' . . .
*I want you to get me a carriage at the inn,' she said gently,

'
I am very tired, and I will drive to the station. You must
not come with me, Basil. ... I must travel by myself.'
FINIS
Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty

at the Edinburgh University Press
PsOS
University of Caiifomia
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—

T"** ^'^'^ 'Tj j-'-"^-" MBWtllMWlWlli>>«W«MWWWWw*i^<»»w^w»*>S»%^«WMOa»iWti^^

'The Anglo-Saxon Review,' 'The Atlantic Monthly,'

courtesy in giving permission to republish four of the

stories included in this Volume.

PUBLISHED AT THE SIGN OF THE PHCENIX

THROUGH THE MYSTIC DOORS-

THE WHEELS REVERSED 55

THE MURKY POOL 83

THE LEPER'S WINDOW . 88

of those marble throne steps sometimes the purple shadow

of the royal robes seemed to touch with a sombre glory the

the dreadful pauses of silence, when I with

a torture in repression that grew in poignancy with every

that I was His ugly stolidity of alert-

glimpse through half-shut eyelids that I might have thought

metal plates that hung from my belt, interlinked by chains

fusion of stone - reflections, and only once the shadow of

his robes overflowed the steps. There was the calm of a

implied a power the more awful, because of its absolute

solitude of wildernesses, but never a loneliness so terrible

far reflection I worshipped, a tiny surface-combination of

me with a vaster anguish. The metal mirror had lit a fire

sublime moment I found our glances fast interlocked, his

of emotion, and saw into the depths of that cold aloofness,

now my lover was dead, killed in battle, by treachery as

shamed me, the stranger woman, shutting me away from

in heaven or earth it might have time to work for me a

I sprang, the baby in my arms, a gleaming sword seemed

with a swish to fall athwart my life, killing my lover in me

of the greatest warrior of all time his son lay in my arms.

fulfilment, no hope too remote.

the other, like crouching slaves !

relief. My father turned uneasily now and again as we

rooted in the bitterness of defeat— the passion of love with

hostility on either hand, I saw under my lids the rage in

and of the others I took little heed, for a terrible weariness

little that its rapture of anguish left me after it was done

like a reed beaten by the wind for I thought that by my fire

of singing I might nourish the boy with the stress of mighty

drooped beforemy eyes.

like a sick fire, or in one great flash, like the lightning.

me that it was beyond me to control. Once more I abandoned

could save us. A great recklessness came upon me, and

me, and the sharpness of stone against my naked feet. I

|H£ crucifix gave, night and day, a pale

—of blue and of red and of green— out of those great

the most strict to discipline my weakness, that I might

out to the very roots and wholly consumed. And so I shut

had renounced beset my senses with a more sharp intensity

able movement and brilliance that tortured my imagination.

of the bell at the elevation of the Host, lifted me ever higher

upon the soul, monotonous, like the falling of earth upon a

vivid tomy imagination, there appeared a new peace; the

passes all understanding.

had engulfed us all. Only the outline of my cell in the dim

until a volume of sound in my very ears roused me. . . .

They were digging me out of my grave. With a supreme

effort I dragged myself up from the ground to face them,

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