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Title: The Garden God: A Tale of Two Boys

Author: Forrest Reid

Release date: August 12, 2018 [eBook #57673]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed
        Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
        produced from scanned images of public domain material
        from the Google Books project.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GARDEN GOD: A TALE OF TWO BOYS ***




Produced by Donald Cummings and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Books project.)









                         _By the same Writer_

                        THE KINGDOM OF TWILIGHT




                            THE GARDEN GOD




                            THE GARDEN GOD

                          A Tale of Two Boys


                                  BY

                             FORREST REID


                  ‘Take this kiss upon the brow!’
                                          EDGAR ALLAN POE


                  ‘Yea, to Love himself is pour’d
                     This frail song of hope and fear.
                   Thou art Love, of one accord
                     With kind Sleep to bring him near,
                     Still-eyed, deep-eyed, ah, how dear!
                         Master, Lord,
                     In his name implor’d, O hear!’
                                           D. G. ROSSETTI


                          _SECOND IMPRESSION_


                                LONDON
                        Published by DAVID NUTT
                       At the Sign of the Phœnix
                               LONG ACRE
                                 1906




        Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty




                                  TO
                              HENRY JAMES
                           THIS SLIGHT TOKEN
                              OF RESPECT
                            AND ADMIRATION




I


    ‘My dear Allingham,’ he wrote, ‘it is very charming of you
    to think of venturing into this remote corner of the world
    for no other reason than to renew our friendship, and I must
    beg of you to let as little time as possible elapse between
    your promise and its fulfilment. Not only do I consider your
    idea a delightful one, but also I venture to find it really
    courageous, since to look me up again, after so many years,
    must be to take something remarkably like a leap in the dark.
    Well! at all events I hope――perhaps I should say fear――that
    you may not discover in me any extraordinary change. Indeed,
    from this moment I throw myself entirely upon your mercy,
    plead guilty to all the charges you bring against me in your
    letter. It is perfectly true that in living here the life of
    a hermit――a hermit, I hasten to add, with a taste for the
    philosophy of Epicurus and Anatole France――I have not in the
    least fulfilled my duties as a good citizen. Doubtless I am
    not a good citizen. Doubtless, as you so kindly hint, I ought
    to have married; but I suppose even _you_ will admit that it
    is now too late――too late for me to think of following your
    excellent example. I cannot, alas! even pretend that I want to
    follow it, want to forsake my wilderness. Ah, my dear fellow,
    I am incorrigible, and you need not expect to find in the
    middle-aged Graham Iddesleigh an any more satisfactory person
    than him you found so _un_satisfactory at Oxford. Do you
    remember all that I used to be in the old days?――unreasonable,
    impractical, quite a worthless fellow! Do you ever remember
    the old days at all? But of course you must, or you would not
    have desired to renew them. For myself, you know, it is the
    one great privilege, the one great occupation of my life――I
    mean remembering. You will scarce be pleased to learn this, I
    suppose;――that is, unless you are, with increasing years, grown
    more tolerant of idleness――a weakness which I confess I do not
    exactly gather from your letter. But you must forgive me for
    this and countless other faults. Yes――I remember! Sometimes
    I remember too much!――remember, in other words, what never
    really _was_; what, alas! only might have been. You see, the
    dividing line is so apt to shift a little, grow dimmer, as
    the years pass.... And after all, it is only a kind of feline
    habit that was born in me, and that keeps me, like a cat, quiet
    in the sun, or before my fire, dreaming, wandering in the
    endless woods of Persephone. Over those woods a gentle twilight
    broods, and the soft shady paths wind about, meet and cross one
    another, and lose themselves again in cool leafy distances.

    ‘Nevertheless, there have been times――moments of dreadful
    egotism let me call them――when I have told myself, as you so
    flatteringly tell me, that had I been born the son of a poor
    man I might have done something in the world, though exactly
    what, I am as careful as you yourself are to leave undefined.
    No! I’m afraid all my gifts may be reduced to this single
    capacity for sitting in the sun――a capacity that is not of
    immense value to other people, whatever pleasure it may give
    to myself. I have an idea, however, that had I lived in the
    days of Plato, he would have employed me to sweep the walks
    of the Academe, or mow the grass, or do something of that
    kind. Possibly, even to make myself useful by illustrating the
    doctrine of reminiscence, like the boy in the _Meno_; or I
    might have taken care of the books.

    ‘This last, certainly; for I have a sneaking fondness for the
    very cobwebs that gather in the corners of a library. Last
    night I spent two or three delicious hours in looking over my
    own volumes, taking down one after another from the shelf,
    and slowly turning their leaves. Many of them, most of them
    in fact――for my tastes have not greatly changed――I had loved
    in my boyhood, and these were, I confess, the ones I lingered
    over longest. And, in a sense, turning their pages again in the
    light of this darker-risen day was like holding up a lamp to
    the past; and the soft, gentle dust of the dead years fell all
    about me, floated in the air I breathed, delicate, sweet, and
    sad.

    ‘O wondrous seed of poetry! Happy the child into whose tender
    soul you have dropped at his birth! May he keep until his death
    the innocence and the heart of a boy, and may the burden of
    years and the cares of the world fall lightly upon him!...’

He laid down his pen and turned toward the window, while a smile, a
little sad, but singularly sweet and gentle, passed across his face.

After all!... Well, he supposed the years _had_ fallen lightly upon
him. If he took the trouble to look in the glass he must see that his
hair was turning grey, that his shoulders were a little stooped, that
there were lines about his mouth and eyes.... And his life?――that
too, perhaps, had taken a greyish tinge.... Monotonous?... ah yes,
monotonous in truth: but even now he had only to close his eyes to
bring up the light――the light....

The view of the years that opened up behind him was in fact tranquil
and pleasant enough; uneventful; like a broad, shady garden, an
old-world, sleepy garden full of flowers still sweet and fresh. He had
done little. As Allingham had pointed out (with something of the air
of a man who has made a wonderful discovery), the years of his life
had simply floated away from him――floated away just as in autumn dead
leaves float down a river.

But there had been many things that had given him pleasure. On the
whole he had been happy――happy after his fashion: and he had known,
had felt, the most beautiful thing of all, ‘the ecstasy and sorrow of
love....’

       *       *       *       *       *

He looked out into the quiet evening. The garden lay before him,
stretching from the window in the pale half-light. A fine misty rain
had begun to fall and was slowly shutting out the world. Presently
his gaze wandered back again to the room wherein he sat. It rested on
dark oak carvings; on the sheen and sombreness of fine bindings; on a
chipped and broken statue of a boy, in yellowish marble; and, lastly,
on a modern portrait hanging above the great fireplace.

This was the only picture in the room, and the fading light had
drawn most of the colour out of it, but his memory held up a lamp――a
lamp of soft flame――by which he beheld the full length figure of
a boy――a boy of fifteen, sixteen, slight, dark-complexioned, with
delicately oval face, and long silky hair falling in a single great
wave over his forehead. The features were very finely moulded; the
mouth especially being quite perfect. A somewhat exotic looking
youngster, extraordinarily aristocratic one imagined, even a little
disdainful,――yes, that too, perhaps, despite the wonderful charm of
expression.

Harold, youngest son of Aubrey Stewart Brocklehurst, Esquire. He
remembered the name as he had seen it in a catalogue of the Royal
Academy――how long ago? He remembered the strange conversation he had
had later on with his father, when he must have laid bare his soul a
little; he remembered the morning when, on coming downstairs, he had
found the picture there, awaiting him.

Twenty――thirty years ago!――it seemed like yesterday. Surely his father
had been very good to him! The picture, from what he had since heard of
the character of Mr. Brocklehurst, had not been bought for nothing....
And Harold!...

Thus he had been when he had first met him; thus he was now; thus he
would be for ever! For he would never grow old――he would be a boy
always. Summer would follow summer and the fields would grow white to
harvest, but Time would thread no silver in the dusk of his dark hair,
nor dim his smile, nor make unshapely his shapely body.

Graham lay back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had already
forgotten his unfinished letter to Allingham; he had forgotten
everything――everything save the curious fantastic dream that had filled
up the first part of his life――the great light――the light beyond....

How had it begun?... Had it always been?... He tried to remember....

Presently he made a movement to light a cigar. Nothing now was visible
in the room save, very faintly, the broken statue, an antique version
of the famous Spinario, which his father had come by, he knew not how,
long ago, in one of his many wanderings through Greece. And it came
suddenly into Graham’s mind that this statue was the centre from which
everything had radiated; the touchstone around which his whole life
had revolved. _It_ was the beginning, then――the starting point. And
yet――had it only begun with his life here? Had it not been before?...
Two thousand years ago?... But the veil had descended――he could not see.

This Greek boy, at all events, had been his secret playmate throughout
his childhood, the companion who had shared his numerous adventures,
the companion of his dreams――day-dreams and sleeping-dreams. And his
mind leapt back to the dawn of his life. He had been brought up by his
father (his mother had died in giving him birth), brought up here,
in this house; and until he had gone to school he had had no friend
of his own age. His father had himself undertaken his education, had
taught him to read Greek at an age when most boys are stumbling through
the first page of their grammar, and before Graham had ever heard of
either Shakespeare or Milton, he had read again and again many of the
writings of Sophocles and Plato.

Given such influences――his unconventional upbringing, his ignorance
of the world, his beautiful surroundings――was it a wonder that that
strange faculty for dreaming with which he had been born should have
been perfected――perfected until in broad daylight he would slip
unconsciously from one world to the other, and gravely tell his father
of marvellous happenings, fantastic adventures, which never could have
taken place? Yes, there had been magic influences at work in that
sleepy garden, in those broad, soft lawns and quiet trees,――a magic,
above all, in the dim rich music of the sea.

For through all his childhood a subtle music had whispered like an
undersong――the music of water, the music of running water, of sighing
water――seeming to shape his very soul, making it pliant, graceful,
gentle and pure, giving to it that gift or malady of reverie, which was
itself like the endless flowing away of a stream. The noise of water
had been ever in his ears. At night, if he had chanced to awaken, he
had heard the low sad wash of the waves; in the daytime he had often
lain for hours on the bank of a stream that flowed among the roots of
water-willows by the foot of the apple-orchard,――lain there and let his
thoughts run on and on with the running water, so fresh! so clear! so
pure! And in the rose-garden there was an old moss-stained fountain,
a fountain that sang in the sunshine, and wept in the twilight, and
sobbed in the night――a fountain that murmured through the noontide to
a lazy boy, whispering of the wanderings of Odysseus, and of Jason
and the golden fleece――a fountain that curved up against the blue and
splashed back into a basin of broad green leaves――a fountain coloured
by the rainbow of romance, and brushed by the outstretched wings of
Love.

Sometimes in the evenings he would sit for a while with his father
on the lawn before the house, or play a game of croquet with him;
and sometimes in the mornings he did his lessons there, or in the
side-garden, while the scent of roses, and the low booming whisper
of the bees, drifted slowly past. And whenever he looked up he would
see, stretching away from him, trim dark walks, and soft green turf,
and brilliant flower-beds, all very still and quiet under a yellow
summer sun――he would see arches of climbing roses, dahlias with their
petals opened wide to the heat, the sunlight itself, like a stream of
daffodils, falling from the deep blue sky. A place to dream the sleepy
hours away! a place suggestive of, leading to, that inner contemplative
life, to the boy, even then, so precious! And looking at it now, in
retrospect, he was conscious of a drowsy calm that had hung everywhere
and over everything, hardly stirring with the faint wind; an absolute
freedom from all troublous things, from all the tumult and discord
of the world. Attuned to such surroundings he had grown up; on hot
afternoons lying in the dark, cool, fragrant shadow of a great beech
tree that grew close to the house――not reading, feeling rather than
thinking, letting the impression of everything about him sink into
his soul, to be afterwards an ever-present picture there, a picture
of perfect beauty, of that ideal or spiritual beauty which, according
to Plato, must lift one’s spirit to God――willing to live and die just
there, never wandering quite so far afield even, as those dark blue
hills one could see, from the upper windows, melting into the sky.

A rather sensuous boy perhaps! One, certainly, for whom the actual
colour, the physical charm of life, of the visible world, meant much. A
gentle boy too; warm-hearted, loving and happy, innocent and pure....

The visible world!――was it not almost sentient? From the trees and the
sky, from the restless sea and the wind had emerged, at any rate, that
imaginary playmate who had made his life beautiful; the messenger of
Eros; the fair boy who had come to him from his strange garden, his
meadow of asphodel.

And then――he had gone to school.




II


They had indeed often discussed it. It had been perpetually there――a
source of wonder and many questions――a thing which hovered and danced,
drew near and retreated, a thing which could be referred to at any
moment without notice or introduction, a kind of enchanted castle which
grew up into the sky with lightning-like rapidity, and as quickly
vanished. It had not been, however, until he was close on sixteen that
the decisive step had been actually taken, that the vision had given
place to reality.

His father brought him and departed again, leaving Graham with a
sinking heart in the midst of his new world. How dreadfully different
from anything he had ever known it was all going to be! For the first
time in his life he felt thoroughly miserable.

Yet, in a way, he was to be singularly fortunate. Far sooner than
might have been expected he dropped into his new life. He had never,
of course, played either cricket or football, but he was naturally
strong and agile, and in the former game he now made rapid progress. It
was then that he learned how ready his new companions were with their
praise and encouragement. If he had known more of the world, indeed, he
might have marvelled not a little at his almost immediate popularity,
for doubtless, at first, he could not but have seemed ‘rather queer’ to
the others. Nevertheless they liked him, liked to be with him, and if
they occasionally found him alarmingly innocent――well! somehow, it was
only charming that he should be so. To be sure he _was_, now and again,
made fun of in a way; but that way was quite the kindliest in the
world, the very opposite from the way they might have taken had they
been so minded, had their desire been to hurt, to torment him.

All this, however, the fact that his new friends had so at once and
unreservedly welcomed him, had made it so tremendously easy for him,
seemed to Graham to be merely natural, and thus, in a sense, it
probably defeated his father’s main object in sending him to school at
all; that object being, presumably, to familiarise him with the ways of
actual life. From Graham, somehow, actual life was as far away as ever.
It was all so bright, so charming; every one was so ‘decent’ to him, so
nice; how in the world was he to know that ‘niceness’ wasn’t a thing to
be counted upon; and that he, Graham Iddesleigh, wonderfully had been
made an exception of? There seemed in fact to be hardly a boy who was
not anxious to help him, who did not take a pleasure in watching him
drop into the ways of the place; while such things as he really did
do well――swimming, diving, running, leaping, translating Greek――were
elaborately overpraised. The masters liked him also; and, what was more
significant, the older boys, who ignored his contemporaries, took an
interest in him, asked him to their studies, looked after him, wanted
him to do the school credit.

He was happy. The days passed very quickly. Nevertheless, he had not
quite learned to live the life the others lived, and there were times
when he felt homesick. One thing in particular he noticed (though he
had made too many new friends to find much leisure for regret), and
that was just that the old playmate of his dreams had ceased to visit
him, that he could no longer even call up very clearly his image,
remember what he was like. It was as if the change which had come into
his everyday world had extended on into the dusky ways of sleep, and
though he did not dwell upon it at all, yet he felt, obscurely, that
something that had been had ceased to be, and that there was a blank,
a void in his existence, which none of the many new pleasures and
interests in his life would ever be able to fill.




III


On a fallen stone, under the shelter of a rough, loosely-piled wall,
Graham sat. All around him the landscape stretched, field after field,
bleak and bare in the cold wintry light of a February afternoon,
while dark heavy clouds blew like puffs of smoke across the dull grey
sky. From time to time a passing breath of wind shivered through the
dry grass, and from time to time a pale yellowish light, like a dim
reflection of some wan remote sunshine, washed through the clouds,
brightening the country for a few moments. The boy’s chin was supported
between his hands, and he gazed out across the monotonous fields and
naked hedges, listlessly, a little sadly, thinking of home, of the
past. He felt tired; there was a dampness, a heaviness, in the air,
which weighed upon his spirit; and something of his dejection was
visible in the mere drooping of his head.

He had passed from the golden quiet of his home into the midst of a
large public school, into a busier, noisier world, where the real and
the ideal no longer melted into a single dreamy haze; and when he
looked back across the narrow stream of time――those few intervening
weeks!――he could not but marvel at its depth. His former life had
fallen from him like the sinking of a picture in the fire, and he knew
that it would never come again. It was over!... finished!... done
with!... How strange!... Yet when he closed his eyes it unrolled itself
like a broad scroll, clear in every detail.... Then, when the voice of
water, and the whisper of the wind in the trees and in the grass had
been for him almost as the sound of human voices, and the broad open
sky and sea as the sight of human faces――then, when such things had
seemed to have the power to speak to him directly, to speak from their
own soul to his――when Pan and his followers had been in every thicket
by the way! Ah! gazing back upon it all from his present position, he
found time to wonder――to wonder gravely, doubtfully――if that clear,
pure atmosphere would ever again droop its wings above him, if things
would ever be again, even for a little, as before. Those long, peaceful
summer days, and cool, lingering evenings, when he had sat upon the
steps beside his father, watching him smoke his pipe, and chattering to
him of the different ideas and plans that danced, or lingered in his
mind, while the trees seemed to rest so softly in the quiet air, so
softly against the sky!... A sudden wild longing for it all, for all
his old life, arose within him, and in a passion of homesickness he
flung himself down in the swaying, sapless grass, and seemed to hear
the moaning of a sea that was breaking, miles and miles away, upon a
curved rocky shore, to hear the harsh screams of the sea-gulls as they
flew restlessly over the grey bare waste of water, and dipped to the
tumbling waves.

All at once he was aroused by a foot-fall, a rustle in the grass, and
still half-blinded by his dream, turned to face the intruder.

‘What is the matter? Can I help you at all?’

The words were very gently spoken, and came to Graham with a curious
familiarity and charm. But instead of answering he sat quite still,
gazing fixedly at the stranger, his colour gradually deepening.
Fascinated, spell-bound, his lips parted, his eyes opened wide, he
hardly dared to move lest the vision should vanish. For some moments
indeed he scarce drew his breath; for some moments it seemed as though
his whole vital force were concentrated into one long steadfast gaze.

He who stood before him, nevertheless, was but a boy of about his own
age and height, though more slightly built. For Graham, however, he
was beautiful as an angel――was, in truth, a kind of angel, a ‘son of
the morning.’ His skin――contrasting with the broad linen collar he
wore――was of that dark, olive-brown hue which the Greeks, in their own
boys, believed to be indicative of courage; his eyes were blue and dark
and clear, his nose straight, his mouth extraordinarily fine, delicate;
his dark hair, soft and silky, falling in a single great wave over his
shapely forehead.

‘Who are you?’ Graham faltered.

The boy began to blush a little――then to smile. ‘My name is
Brocklehurst――Harold Brocklehurst.... Why do you look at me so
strangely?’

His question made Graham suddenly conscious of his rudeness, and
also of the childishness, the impossibility of the idea that had
floated into his mind. ‘I did not mean to,’ he stammered, covered with
confusion. ‘I beg your pardon.’ Then, with his eyes lowered: ‘You
remind me very much of some one I know.... It is rather queer ... and
... and you took me by surprise.... I was so unprepared.’

‘Unprepared!’

‘Yes.... I was thinking of him――of the other――when you came up.... You
don’t understand, of course. It is the extraordinary likeness――and it
_is_ extraordinary’――he could not help looking at the boy again.

‘But likeness to whom?’ Brocklehurst wondered. ‘And why should it
startle you?’

‘Ah, to whom?’ Graham echoed enigmatically. His strange fancy still
hung there in the air before him, hung about his interlocutor like a
light, like a blaze of dazzling sunlight. ‘I don’t know,’ he softly
added.

‘You don’t know!’ Brocklehurst paused, just a little taken aback. Then
as he noticed the other’s seriousness he began to laugh. ‘Aren’t you a
rather queer fellow?’ he suggested with a kind of charming easiness.

‘We are both a little queer,’ Graham answered. ‘At least ... I beg your
pardon――――’

‘Oh, it’s all right.’

‘You see――you see I have known you for so long that――that――――’ His
explanation, whatever it might have been, died away.

‘You mean you have _really_ known me. Then you must have met me
somewhere before to-day!’ He tried to recall the occasion, but without
success.

‘It was not here,’ Graham went on slowly, gravely. ‘I――I can’t tell
you.’ He looked with a wistful, questioning helplessness into his
companion’s face. ‘If I were to tell you, should you laugh?’

‘I don’t know. At any rate you _want_ to tell me?’

‘Yes, I want to.’

‘Well, fire away then.’

‘It is something that is rather hard for me to say.... It will make
you think me so childish, so silly.... You see you couldn’t very well
believe it unless――unless you yourself were to remember, just as I
do――unless it were true――――’

Brocklehurst glanced at him quickly. ‘Remember having seen _you_
somewhere? But I may easily have forgotten. As a matter of fact I have
forgotten――so now.’

‘Yes――so now.... But I know you, for all that――the sound of your voice
even, the way you speak and stand there.’

‘I only came back this morning. I do not think you were here before
Christmas.’

Graham shook his head. ‘It was not here,’ he murmured. Then suddenly
gathering courage, and with his eyes half closed: ‘It was far away
... in a garden.... Oh, I can’t tell you ... I can’t, unless you
help me.... It slips from me so quickly.... When I try to reach
it, it fades from me, though I know it is still there ... there,
somewhere’――he smiled a little timidly. ‘Do you wonder what I am
talking about?... I am only trying to remember a dream――a dream I have
had so often.’

‘And _I_ have something to do with it?’

‘Oh yes; everything’――he spoke quietly, simply. ‘You were always there,
you know. It belongs to you as much as it belongs to me. You have been
meeting me there for years!’

There was that in his voice which made Brocklehurst, with exquisite
tact, look carefully away from him. ‘I don’t quite follow you,’ he said
softly. ‘I don’t think I quite know what you mean.’

‘My meaning is only that,’ Graham replied; ‘only what I have just told
you.’ He paused as if trying to make it out more clearly for himself.
‘Don’t _you_ sometimes dream?’ he asked.

‘Yes, of course.’

‘Well! has it never seemed to you that there must be another world than
this we are living in now?――a world outside this, I mean, but still a
real world?’

‘A dreamland?’

‘Call it what you like. Yes――a dreamland. But while we are there, you
know, _it_ is the real world, there is no other.’

Brocklehurst looked at him curiously. ‘But you don’t believe that, do
you?’

‘Yes, I believe it――or I used to believe it. There is something about
it in the _Theætetus_ of Plato.’

‘You have read Plato?’

‘Only a little. I used to read him with my father.’

‘And that is where you got your idea?’

‘Oh no; I have always had it. It has been like a part of my life....
You see my dreams are rather peculiar ... I go back in them always to
the same place――this garden――and I carry the memory of one life with me
into the other.... Do you understand now? I can’t put it any plainer,
because I am a little confused myself. Some day it may become clearer,
and I may be able to tell you better.’

‘Well!――till then――――’ and Brocklehurst drew himself up on to the wall
and drummed with his heels against the stones.

‘Till then?’

‘Do you talk in this way to every one?’

‘You mean I had better not? How should I talk to other people, when
even you do not understand me?’

The other boy was silent. He was thinking. ‘What was I like?’ he asked
presently――‘in your dreams, I mean?’ Then quickly, and before his
companion could reply, ‘No; you need not tell me.’

‘You do not care for me to talk to you in this way?’ Graham questioned
half sadly, and with a strange feeling of loneliness creeping over him.
‘You were beautiful,’ he whispered under his breath; ‘more beautiful
than any one I have ever seen.’

A long silence followed. If Brocklehurst were surprised by his new
friend’s last words, he at least showed nothing. The wind stirred
faintly above their heads, and a flock of rooks flew homeward across
the grey sky. It was already getting late. The world seemed to have
floated into a clinging frosty haze, through which a golden moon
gleamed, rising slowly up above the bare, desolate fields.

‘We had better be going back,’ Brocklehurst said. ‘It is getting dark.’

They walked slowly toward the school through the gathering dusk. To
feel his companion close beside him, and to be alone with him like
this, gave Graham an exquisite pleasure. If only he could be brave
enough to put his hand upon his shoulder! All the way home he kept
telling himself he would do so when they reached such and such a point
in the road; but each time a curious shyness deterred him, each time
his courage failed him; and when they at last reached the school,
and his opportunity was gone, he felt as if he had allowed something
precious and unrecoverable to slip away for ever.




IV


Graham lay upon his back, his eyes wide open. All around him he could
hear the silence――a silence broken every now and again by some faint
sound from one or another of the boys who shared his dormitory. It
was more than an hour since the lights had been put out, and all save
himself were fast asleep; but he lay awake still, thinking of the
afternoon that had just passed, and of the strange emotion it had
swept into his life. He wondered how it could have come about, and he
pondered old tales he had read――some of them long ago――tales of a pagan
world, in which this wonderful passion of friendship, then so common,
had played its part. Returning to him now, they wore a new and added
beauty, a meaning he had only dreamed before, but which at present
filled his mind with a kind of heavenly radiance. Might not his own
friendship be just the same?... Might not it, too, be something more
than a mere romantic reverie, than the shadow of a beautiful dream?
He felt an exquisite happiness in giving way to his tenderness, in
letting his imagination run on and on, like a swift, strong river, in
an ever-changing dream of love. It was as if by merely stretching out
his hand he had touched the poetry, the soul of existence; it was as if
by stretching out his hand he had awakened another spirit to beat its
wings within his own.

    ‘Spirit of Beauty, that dost consecrate
     With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon.’

So he might have sung had he known the lines. For he felt himself
raised up as on the strong, swift wings of the morning, lifted to the
very gate of Heaven. It was on such a love as this that the Platonic
philosophy had been built; and now――now in his own life――it had come
true. Fair, and pure, and holy――down from the garden of God――it had
fallen into his soul, had poured through the open gates of Heaven,
to bathe him in its light. He turned upon his pillow and smiled. He
stretched out his arms wide to the great, fragrant mother-night, and
she bent down over him, cool and dark and silent, and kissed him softly
on his forehead, and on his mouth and eyes.

He could not sleep. A strange restlessness, a ‘spirit in his feet,’
seemed to draw him from his bed, and leaving his cubicle, he stood in
his night-dress on the cold floor. A flood of moonlight lay across the
room, and he watched it falling through the air, a silent, rapid stream.

How still everything was! how light! Softly, softly, on tip-toe, he
made his way to the window, and climbing on to a chair, looked out.

In the grounds it was light with that same cold light, clear, yet not
quite clear, earth and sky seeming to be blended in one strange misty
radiance, pale, bluish, almost white. And the moonlight lay, still and
dreamy, everywhere, more tangible, yet more shadowy, than the light of
day. If one stretched out one’s hands, one might almost feel it, he
thought, might almost brush it away like a great white silky cobweb
of woven flame. The stone gable of the house stood out sharply black
against the sky, and the shadows on the grass were black as ink. Above
the long row of still and leafless trees he saw the belt of Orion, and
to the right of that, the white, broken moon faintly edged with blue.
It was like the dawning of some wonderful, icy day upon an unexplored,
a new and mysterious world; and through the cold misty light he half
expected to see the moving forms of those who live in the unknown.

He did indeed see a figure――a figure coming toward him, stepping slowly
down a wide silver stair that reached from Heaven――a figure clad in
fair armour, and with dark hair floating out against the stars.... He
was calling to him from without ... he beckoned with his hands ... he
waited, waited....

A shudder ran through Graham’s body: he seemed no longer to be in the
dormitory, but to stand somewhere beyond the gates of death. He clasped
the bars of the window with his hands; he leaned against the iron bars;
then he opened out his arms wide and smiled....

‘What are you doing?... Iddesleigh!... Graham!’ It was Brocklehurst’s
voice. His cubicle was next the window, and he had been awakened.

‘Nothing; nothing,’ Graham answered, startled, turning quickly round.
‘I was looking out.... I forgot.... Why are you not asleep?’ He went
over to his friend, and sat down by his side. Brocklehurst had already
cuddled under the clothes again.

‘I was asleep until you wakened me. Why are you not in your bed?’ he
whispered. ‘Why were you standing there? What a mad thing to do at this
time of year! You might kill yourself!’

‘Oh, I don’t take cold easily. I suppose I wasn’t thinking of what I
was doing.’

‘But you should have put on your dressing-gown. You are only in your
night-dress. At first I thought you were walking in your sleep. You
looked like a white ghost there at the window. You will catch your
death of cold now if you stay there. Come in here beside me if you want
to talk.’

Graham got into the bed. ‘I was thinking of you,’ he said softly.

‘You’re a very strange fellow――aren’t you?’ Brocklehurst murmured.

‘Yes; I suppose so.’

‘Hush! Speak lower. If you were caught here with me, you know, there’d
be the most frightful row.... What were you looking at out of the
window?’

‘I don’t know.... I seemed to see――――’

‘What?’

‘I can’t tell you. I almost forget.’

‘You _must_ tell me.’

‘It was a knight ... a young knight in armour.’

‘Out there on the grass?’

‘It was you.... Oh, I know there wasn’t really anything there,’ he
added hastily――‘only the light of the moon on the ground.’

‘And all that you told me this afternoon――it, too, was nothing?’

‘Yes――yes, it was. Some day I will tell you all about it, from the very
beginning, but not now. It would take too long.... You see I was so
much by myself before I came here. I had no one. And――and――I could not
help speaking to you this afternoon.... You don’t understand how――how
much it is all a part of my life――how much it means to me――――’ He
broke off abruptly, and for a little Brocklehurst said nothing.

‘Tell me about what you used to do at home, if you don’t mind,’ he
whispered presently. Then he lay still, listening to a rather broken
and wandering story, which very soon he grew too sleepy to follow. ‘You
had better go back to your own bed now,’ he murmured drowsily. ‘It
wouldn’t do for you to drop off asleep here. Don’t make any noise: some
other chap may be awake.’

Graham rose obediently, but he still lingered in the cubicle, held by
a vague yet very strong desire――desire to unburden himself of that
which filled his soul, and which a feeling of shyness kept locked up
in his breast. Then suddenly he overcame his cowardice, and kneeling
down on the floor beside the bed, he kissed his friend as he lay there
half asleep. That was all: he could not have spoken if he had tried
to: even as it was his eyes were wet with tears. But he felt a kind of
ecstasy of happiness as he stole back to his own bed, for it seemed to
him that just then, when his lips had touched Harold’s cheek, he had
given himself to him for better or worse, had given him his life, his
trust. In the morning, he knew, all would be a little different; in the
morning he should have to come back to an everyday world. But he should
be no longer alone there; oh, he should never be alone again. With his
face buried in his pillow, and his cheek still a little damp, he prayed
that all might be well, prayed that Harold might come to care for him;
and day was breaking when at last he fell asleep.




V


He awoke with a feeling of delightful joyousness, a sense that
something beautiful had happened. It was as if the summer were quite
suddenly and unexpectedly come; as if the whole world were full of
happiness and sunshine.

Then he remembered――remembered it all; and a strange passionate
tenderness filled his heart. Yes! it _was_ the summer――summer
indeed――the sun shone all around him. At the same time he felt within
him a deep and unaccountable shyness, which kept him from joining his
friend, which kept him alone with his own thoughts until morning school
was finished.

By then he had turned things over in his mind, by then he had come
even to wonder a little at his first bewilderment. It all seemed now
so natural, so only what he had awaited, had come here for. Already
a thing without beginning, without end! It was simply there――there
like the air he breathed――something that had wrapped itself about his
life, his whole being. And it slid back and back, without a break,
without a pause, back into the past. There had been no first meeting
at all; he had no need even to ask a question; there was no ambiguity
to be explained, still less an anomaly. He knew, he felt; and as day
followed day, and week followed week, he knew and felt more and more.
He listened to the undertone, listened to it growing deeper and more
melodious, becoming at times almost articulate, pointing the way; only
when he strained his ear for the word, the word at last, definite,
decisive, it died back again into silence.

And yet he had had other moments――moments when he had seen, or had
seemed to see, that Brocklehurst understood little enough of all that
their friendship meant to him. How _could_ he understand? Graham, at
least, could never tell him. Ah, no one, no one but himself understood,
no one but himself knew how the gentle tone of his friend’s voice had
a power to draw the tears to his eyes, a power to sink into his inmost
soul. Oh, he loved him so dearly! There was something in the very
secrecy of his affection that permitted him to keep it passionately
apart from everything else, from his life of everyday, from any vulgar
or prosaic encroachment. He kept it in a place sacred, beautiful,
quiet; a chapel within his own spirit, a chapel into whose soft light
he passed from time to time to worship, to be alone there, alone there
with his love, alone there before the altar he had decked with candles
and flowers, with the white stainless flowers of his boyish admiration,
his innocence and faith....

Nevertheless, little by little, it was forced upon him――incredulous at
first, reluctant to believe――that Brocklehurst’s reputation was not a
good one. Nothing very precise as yet; only a few vague rumours; but
he knew, could easily see, that his friend was not liked. At first
he had found this hard to credit, inconceivable almost; but when one
boy after another practically advised him to drop his chum he could
no longer close his eyes to the fact. Naturally he felt tremendously
angry. It seemed so mean, so cowardly, so unfair; for no one, though
all were willing enough to hint, to suggest, appeared able to tell
him anything definite. He knew, of course, that Brocklehurst had been
absent from the school for a while――had been removed, more than one boy
quite plainly told him――but even were this the case (and Brocklehurst
himself had never alluded to it), the fact of his having been brought
back again, in Graham’s opinion, openly, triumphantly, established
his innocence. And innocence of what? When all was said and done, one
could be sent away for merely asserting what one believed to be one’s
rights――for impatience of routine, a hundred things that did not in
the least imply any serious fault. It must be confessed that in his
heart of hearts he now and then wondered if assertion of his rights,
any more than impatience of routine, could very greatly imperil a boy’s
popularity; but it was not until some time had elapsed that it actually
occurred to him that he ought, after all, to speak to Brocklehurst
himself of the matter, not telling him of course how far public opinion
was against him, but putting him a little on his guard, giving him a
little advice.

It was on a Sunday afternoon when they were out walking together――one
of the latter days of spring――that he finally made up his mind to adopt
this line of conduct; and he approached the subject at once, though at
first a little hesitatingly, and in a rather roundabout fashion.

‘What are you going to be, Harold, when you grow up,’ he asked――‘when
you leave school and college, I mean?’

Brocklehurst looked somewhat surprised. ‘Be!’ he echoed. ‘Oh, I can’t
tell you that. I haven’t even thought about it yet.... Besides I don’t
want to be anything in particular. I shall be myself, I suppose――just
what I have always been.’

‘But I mean what shall you do?’ Graham persisted. ‘You’ll do
_something_, of course. What do you think about when you are all alone?’

Brocklehurst smiled. ‘Very often of you,’ he said lightly. ‘Oh, I dare
say I shall manage to drift along somehow or other. That is what I do
now, you know.’

‘Drift?’

‘Yes. Don’t you think it rather charming?’ He spoke in the half-lazy,
half-ironic fashion Graham had now grown accustomed to, but which he
had noticed to have a curiously irritating effect upon other people.
It was indeed just one of the innocent causes of Brocklehurst’s
unpopularity that he had thought of alluding to, especially since it,
more than anything else, tended to make his masters dislike him.

‘I haven’t any very strong hold upon things,’ Brocklehurst amplified.
‘Everything seems nice enough until I actually do it; but immediately
afterwards it begins to bore me a little. As soon as you’ve tried a
thing, you know, it’s apt to become the least bit tiresome. That is why
I shouldn’t care to tie myself down to anything in particular.’

‘But you must, for all that, follow some definite way of life,’ Graham
answered, dissatisfied.

‘My dear fellow, I only want to follow you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. I’m not joking at all. Since I’ve known you a great deal has
changed. You’ve made me see things in a different way. It’s perhaps
rather extraordinary, but it’s true. You’re so――what shall I call
it?――good.’

‘But you don’t see them in _my_ way,’ Graham objected.

‘I know――I know. I dare say not even in a way you’d care for. But still
there is a great difference from the old way. Only I can’t exactly tell
you what it is, nor how long it will last. Probably just as long as our
friendship. That is why I want to keep close to you. I’ve been friends
with other boys than you, you see,――even with some of those who try now
to make you drop me. Look at those two rows of trees, Graham, running
side by side for a little, and then suddenly branching off in opposite
directions.’

‘Well?’

‘Well: they are like our destinies.’

Graham glanced at him. ‘Why do you say that?’ he asked a little
strangely.

Brocklehurst smiled. ‘That is, if our friendship is ever to be broken,’
he explained.

‘A real friendship can never be broken,’ answered Graham slowly. ‘If
you think that ours can, then it is not a very great one――even now.’

Brocklehurst nodded his head. ‘I wonder what you call a real
friendship!’

‘Oh, if you have to ask――――!’

‘It is only because I want you to tell me,’ he said softly.

Graham smiled. Then suddenly he saw the opening for which he had been
waiting. ‘One of the signs of a real friendship is not to be afraid to
speak openly to your friend of all that concerns both him and you.’

‘Ah, that means you have something rather unpleasant to tell me,
doesn’t it?’ Brocklehurst inquired with a not unkindly irony. ‘Friends
should have no secrets from each other, I expect?’

‘They ought to share everything,’ Graham replied simply; ‘and more than
anything else they ought to share their thoughts.’

Brocklehurst paused. ‘Shall we sit down here,’ he asked, with a faint
sigh, ‘before we begin?’

‘You make it very hard for me,’ Graham murmured, colouring a little.

‘Ah, you mustn’t mind that.’

They seated themselves on the trunk of a fallen tree, and a rather
awkward silence followed.

Below them the ground sloped down, forming a little glen of trees and
brambles, through which a narrow stream ran. The sunlight threading its
way between the branches turned the raindrops upon the mossy grass to
tiny globes of fire; and everywhere there was the fresh, life-giving
smell of spring, of earth and moist vegetation. Brocklehurst sat with
his chin between his hands; and his face, absolutely immobile, might
have been carved in bronze. The corners of his mouth were drooped; and
a deep line was drawn down his forehead between his eyes; his eyes,
almost black in colour, gazed out straight before him. He appeared to
be completely oblivious to Graham’s presence, to everything save his
own thoughts, and the latter began to wonder a little as to what was
passing in his mind.

And as he wondered a new world seemed to dawn upon his consciousness――a
world where good and evil no longer stood so very far apart, were no
longer so fixedly opposed to each other, so indissoluble as they had
been, but were, rather, bound up together, inexplicably and hopelessly,
almost defying disentanglement. A moment ago everything had been so
clear, so plain before him; now, when he looked up, the sun was a
little clouded over, and the whole colour and meaning of life stained
with a darker hue. It seemed to him that he had been living in an
atmosphere of dreamy idealism, the fruit of a plentiful lack of
knowledge; and it did not occur to him that his ignorance had been
beautiful, springing, as it did, not from stupidity, but from a peculiar
type of mind, and an inexperience of life, of evil, even of sorrow. And
a great compassion for the boy beside him welled up in his heart.

‘Do you think I tell you everything, then?’ Brocklehurst asked
suddenly, a half-mocking smile hovering at the corners of his mouth,
but in his voice just the faintest tremor.

Graham kept his eyes carefully averted from him. ‘I think you would
like to,’ he answered slowly.

Brocklehurst shook his head. ‘No; I shouldn’t like to.’

‘Well then, you――you can’t trust me very much.’

‘Ah, but I do trust you.... Why do you want to be so serious?’ He
smiled faintly. ‘I notice that you keep all your seriousness for me,
who am nevertheless supposed to be your chum.’

Graham looked doubtfully at him. ‘Tell me that everything is all
right,’ he said, ‘and I will believe you.’

‘Everything is all right.’

There was a silence.

‘Do you think you are keeping your promise?’ Brocklehurst asked, with a
little laugh.

‘No; I suppose not.’

‘What do you want to hear? What do you want me to tell you? It is
foolish, isn’t it, to bother about what is horrid, when there is so
much that isn’t?’

‘In you, do you mean?’

‘In me, if you like.’

Graham turned away while he tried to puzzle it out. Then once more
facing his companion, he seemed to himself to risk everything in a
single question: ‘Why were you sent home?’

Brocklehurst just perceptibly coloured. ‘You haven’t, you know,
considering that you are my friend, a very overwhelming confidence in
me.’

Graham looked down. ‘Yes, I have,’ he answered suddenly, impulsively.
‘You must forgive me. I am a pretty low kind of chap to have ever
doubted you; but I’ll never do so again.’

‘Not even if another fellow comes along and tells you things?’

‘Never, so long as I live.... What a beast you must think me.’

Brocklehurst shook his head. ‘I only think that some one has been doing
his best to turn you against me. I dare say it is natural enough....
You see, I used to get out at night――not very often, but now and
again――and they didn’t understand.’

‘Get out?’

‘Yes; through one of the windows.... And because I didn’t take anybody
into my confidence, they were sure I was up to no good.... I _had_ to
go.... I can’t explain.’

‘You mean, it _wasn’t_ to do any harm?’

‘It was only to be out there――to breathe the air, to be under the sky.’

‘But in the daytime――couldn’t you――――’

‘No. I wanted to run in the moonlight; to run over the meadows; to
bathe in the river; to be free.’

‘But why didn’t you tell them――when you knew what they thought?’

‘Oh, they are welcome to their thoughts. I’ve never in my life
explained any of my actions, and I’m not going to begin now. Do you
know――――?’ he hesitated.

‘Know what?’

‘Only a strange fancy I used to have at such moments. It was rather
queer’――he smiled shyly. ‘I used to feel just as if I had gone back to
the life I had always been accustomed to――as if I had just awakened, if
you can understand――while the other, my ordinary life, appeared to be a
kind of dull dream, a kind of captivity which I should have to return
to, but which, nevertheless, was not real.’

Graham watched him a moment in silence. ‘Suppose――suppose your fancy
were the truth!’

‘The truth! Oh, nonsense! How could it be?’

‘Suppose you really did, long ago, live a life like that!’

‘Among woods and meadows and streams?’

‘Long ago, long ago――――’

Brocklehurst shook his head.

‘The grass was soft under your feet,’ Graham whispered dreamily, ‘and
there was the humming of bees――――’

‘Where?――Where do you mean?’

‘And you played on the flute of Pan; and you bathed in the streams....
Do you remember?’

‘It was there that we first met?’

‘It was there that we ran in the sunlight over the green grass.’

‘It was there that we lay in the shadow of the trees.’

‘The deep sea: the dark sky: the sunshine: the waving branches: the
garden:――it is just as if I could see the reflection of them all in
your eyes.... _Do_ you remember?’

Brocklehurst shook his head again. ‘Only when you tell me,’――he laughed
somewhat ruefully. ‘After all, it is _your_ garden, you know. I can’t
get there by myself.’

‘If we really could get there!’

‘Oh, well, I’ll come with you any time if you’ll show me the way.’

‘Suppose you had a dream,’ Graham said slowly, thoughtfully, ‘and
in your dream you saw there was only _one_ way――should you have the
courage to take it? I mean, if it was a way that seemed to lead into
the darkness?――death!’

‘Death!’ Brocklehurst looked at him as he repeated the word. ‘No,’ he
half whispered, ‘not that――I hate the idea of it. I hate everything
connected with it.’

‘Still――――’

‘Have you ever seen a dead person?’

‘No.’

‘I have, then――once.... I was made to look.... It was my
grandfather.... But I’ll never look again at anything of that
kind――never――never――never.... He was so changed――you can’t think....
His face and hands were like wax.... His hands.... Oh, I didn’t like
them.... I saw them that night after I had gone to bed ... they were on
the bedclothes ... they came closer and closer ... it was horrible....
No, no, there was no garden for him, believe me!――nothing――nothing any
more.’




VI


And it seemed to Graham that nowhere, save only in a few poems, and
in one or two passages of Plato, he could find the expression of a
sentiment even approximating to that he felt for his friend. Many books
he turned over, and such lines as caught his fancy he read again and
again until he knew them by heart. Those portions of the _Sonnets_ of
Shakespeare which were least rhetorical, which appeared to spring from
a genuine feeling, he learned in this way. Was not _his_ friend, too,
the ‘lord of his love,’ the ‘herald of the spring,’ the ‘lovely boy,’
the ‘rose of beauty,’ ‘music to hear’?――

    ‘For all that beauty that doth cover thee
     Is but the seemly raiment of my heart.’

And again:――

    ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
     Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
     Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
     And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
            *       *       *       *       *
     But thy eternal summer shall not fade.’

Nevertheless, it was in two poems by Rossetti, two poems of
unsurpassable beauty, _The Stream’s Secret_ and _Love’s Nocturn_, that
he found, or thought he found, what he himself actually felt; their
suggestion of a kind of impassioned mysticism appealing to him, being
indeed but an echo of that curious vein of mysticism which from the
first had entered into and made more wonderful his own love. These
poems, altering the gender of the personal pronouns, and thinking of
Harold while he said them, he repeated over and over to himself, until
in the end they became in his mind so bound up with his friend that he
could not have imagined them in any other connection, that he could not
have heard them without seeing Harold’s face.

The spring passed quickly; summer was already here; and as Graham,
fallen now completely into the ways of his new life, watched one day
after another glide swiftly from him, sometimes he longed to stretch
out his hand to stay this or that particular hour and keep it with him
for ever.

On an afternoon in the beginning of July he had flung himself down in
the shade, and was lying on his back among the long, sweet-smelling
grass. He had been fielding out for more than an hour under a deep,
cloudless sky, and he was a little tired and hot. His straw hat lay on
the ground beside him, and he gazed up at the sky through the leafy
branches of a tree that stretched above him like a gigantic parasol.
The delicious summer heat, the stillness, made him feel rather drowsy;
and he let his thoughts wander hither and thither on the wings of every
idle fancy. Already the shouts from the cricketers reached him only as
a far-off murmur, blended dreamily in his mind with the humming of a
great black and yellow striped bee, which flitted noisily from cup to
cup of a group of purple fox-gloves growing close at hand.

Days like this were very beautiful, he thought, and this old volcanic
earth with its bright delicate covering, like a carpet, of grass and
trees and flowers. And life!――yes; and life itself was beautiful! For
the same life that was moving joyously within his young warm blood,
was moving in the sap of tree and grass. What was it all? Whence did
it spring? Every day a miracle was wrought when some delicate leaf,
or the spiral of a new-born fern, unfolded itself in the soft air, or
pushed up through the dark clinging soil. And this was life! And he was
alive! He found an exquisite happiness in the thought that he himself
was thus a part of nature, so close to nature in her simpler forms. It
was as if――always alive to the charm of such things――he understood now
for the first time the full meaning of the old Greek ‘tree-worship,’
realised, as it were, its origin, in his own emotions. That faculty
for noting the listening soul, the spirit that is in leaf or plant,
seemed to be a part of his very human nature, seemed as some ancient
bond of relationship that bound him then, and would bind him for ever,
to stiller and less perfect forms of life――to a whole world of pastoral
divinities――the great god Pan himself; the Hamadryads, who inhabit
the forest trees; and Oreads, and Naiads, and Hyades――the deities of
water-springs, and streams, and showers of summer rain.

As he thought of it a wave of joy seemed to raise him up suddenly
on its strong, full flood; a deep happiness that had come to him
often before in his solitude, and which, for the time at any rate,
was sufficient. To live! to live! to live! it seemed to cry――that
was enough; there was nothing else in the world. Ah, surely he must
be happy so long as the sun shone and all nature sang with that
great rhythmic chaunt of sensuous life! He closed his eyes that the
exquisitely fresh and living smell of the earth, his mother, the cool
sweet green smell of the swaying grass, might creep into his very
being. How delicious it was just to lie there in the lush green grass,
among the clear, floating shadows――to lie and think his thoughts as
they drifted into his mind from the outer sunshine.

When he chose to look in their direction, he could see his schoolfellows
eager still over their game of cricket; but he was content to watch
them, content to look on, lazily, dreamily, through his half-closed
eyelids, following every now and then the swift curving passage of the
ball through the air, when it rose above the fielders’ heads.

And in everything, though in a somewhat misty fashion, he seemed to
feel the personality, the influence, of Harold Brocklehurst. Was
it not all――his extraordinarily vivid sense of life――bound up in
some subtle way with the beauty of their friendship? Had not their
friendship helped him to realise the mystery and loveliness of nature;
helped him to make things out; helped to unseal his eyes? It was the
force of a temperament that found expression very easily, which he
felt to be working now upon his own simpler nature, his spirit, his
mind,――altering everything around him, awakening a new beauty in
familiar things, suggesting a wider, deeper, more mystical beauty
where before he had only been conscious of a material impression.
It carried with it, too, a hundred hints, memories, of a strangely
familiar paganism, of a fresher, younger world; a hundred touches of
poetry:――the sun, the climbing plant: Apollo, Dionysus:――strong,
beautiful, swift. This boy!――what had he to do with them? Why should
he suggest them? And then, in the background, a haunting sense of
something darker, more fateful――tragic even!――again the legend of
Dionysus; but more pitiable, quite human, vaguely pathetic and
bewildering.

By and by he opened a copy of the _Phaedrus_, which he had worked
through with his father, and began to read.

They had studied together most of the shorter dialogues, and the
whole of the _Republic_, but the _Phaedrus_ Graham cared for most.
In its pages he had taken his first peep at philosophy――philosophy,
as conceived by him, so near to, so replete with, poetry;――‘Really,
Phaedrus, you make a most charming guide.’ Nay, it _was_ poetry! deep,
impassioned poetry! for with Plato, even the trees and streams, all the
lovely things of the visible world, were made to play their parts. It
was as if they possessed active and living souls. They had at least,
the boy felt, a wonderful share in the development of one’s _own_ soul:
they seemed to breathe about it an atmosphere of light and purity and
happiness. In Plato’s philosophy――so far as he understood it――there was
little he could not accept. On one very hot, still day, for instance,
a passing breath of wind on his face had suddenly awakened in him the
recollection of a prior existence――faintly, vaguely, perhaps, but still
quite clearly enough to stamp a definite impression on his mind.

And for him, of all writers, this old Greek had the most delightfully
personal charm. As he read him, indeed, it seemed as if the peculiar
beauty of his nature were exhaled gently from the printed pages――gently
and very delicately――like, say, the faint perfume of a spray of
sweet-briar he had dried a few days ago between them, and which now
as he came suddenly upon it and held it to his lips, breathed still
the ghostly shadow of its former fragrance. Surely no other books
were so fair and sweet, so wise and true. In the charmed circle of
their range, the coarser qualities of things were forgotten, the
light was cleansed, the whole realm of the soul lay clear. He knew no
other writings that flowed in with so gracious a charm upon one’s
spirit, filling it with a love for all that is beautiful and good,
watering its ‘wing-feathers’: no others that exercised so humanising
an influence upon one’s character. For it was, in truth, before all
else, a philosophy of life, of the highest life one may hope to lead
here upon earth, or later on in heaven. A philosophy of love, too,
necessarily!――and of beauty. Of all earthly things beauty approximated
most nearly to its eternal idea: and love!――well, all desire for good
and happiness, nay, even the working of philosophy itself――all that was
only the gracious power of love. On these the path was builded, the
Platonic ladder reaching from earth to heaven; for one climbed, after
all, to those pure, colourless regions, to that radiant world of ideas,
by Phaedo’s golden hair.

Well! such a doctrine met most of the needs of his own spirit, and
awakened in him, naturally, a very friendly feeling for its author; the
kind of affection we have for any one who has thought just the same
thought, felt just the same joy or sorrow, that we are thinking and
feeling now. As a young boy will linger long beside some deep pool
of sea-water he finds among the rocks, peering down into its minute
caverns and among its seaweeds for unknown curiosities and treasures,
so Graham lingered over these pages, trying to learn all things from
them, a rule of life for himself, a rule whereby he might, as far as
was possible, enter into and judge the lives of others, might discover
what to cling to, what to throw away. Over the dark still well of Life
he leaned, and through that deep cool water, ruffled gently by the
soft warm breath of youth, the face of Love himself arose, his hair
streaming back like a flame, his sad grey eyes full of an infinite pity.

And he began to dream of an immortal love which, though unable to
realise itself perfectly in this world, yet might be strong enough to
draw two souls together, after death, in some far heaven. Far! But
in truth it seemed quite near just now:――was here, a soft radiance,
in his own spirit, in the warm air that blew about his face, in
the sunlight, in the trees, in the voices of his playmates. Only
afterwards――afterwards there would be that untroubled and perfect
communion which hovered now before him as an unattainable ideal, a
light behind the clouds, a flame on the horizon; ‘for then, and not
till then, the soul will be parted from the body and exist in herself
alone.’

Plato’s theories blew just like a cool wind upon the dust gathered in
one’s mind. They entered one’s mind easily and at once, sinking down
into the very depths of one’s spirit, to be a light there for ever, to
sing there for ever, as the morning stars sang together.

And they were so bound up with ordinary existence, with the affairs of
every day! They stretched out from their idealism a friendly hand to
which he could cling when struggling along the rough muddy roads of
the world. But above all, he was charmed with the theory of natural
suggestion, the influence beautiful things have upon one in childhood
and boyhood in the building-up and equipment of one’s character. The
grouping of clouds about a sunset, the noise of running water――these,
and other things like these, were working always, working delicately,
upon one’s mind and temper, shading them, as it were, to fairer colours
and softer outlines. For material beauty is at least one rung,
though it be the lowest, in the Platonic ladder. Higher fair souls;
fair virtues higher still; and highest of all the pure idea of Beauty
itself, invisible to the eye of sense, but lying bright and clear
before the vision of the mind, a glorious sight, to be viewed by those
alone who have cleansed their souls of earthly passions:――‘Blessed are
the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’

When he had finished the little introduction he closed the book and
laid it upon the grass beside him. Nothing he had ever read, he
thought, called up more vividly the impression, the very sound and
smell of life out of doors. In each word was an exquisite suggestion
of nature, of the open air, of the trees and green grass, and the cool
shallow stream up which Socrates and Phaedrus had walked. The spirits
that had haunted the bank under the plane-tree seemed now to haunt the
pages of the dialogue. And indeed, as though magically changed, the
elm above him had suddenly become a plane-tree. Nay! he could hear,
actually hear, the trickle of the stream――could hear the chirping
of the grasshoppers. And Phaedrus and Socrates!――yes, Phaedrus and
Socrates were talking still: if he listened very intently he could make
out the tones of their voices, even their words――if he closed his eyes
he could see them.

    ‘Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give
    me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward
    man be at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and
    may I have such a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he
    only can bear and carry.――Phaedrus, need we anything more? The
    prayer I think is enough for me....’

       *       *       *       *       *

The sounds about him drew farther and farther away as though fading
back into dreamland. A clear light, pale green, like a reflection from
some deep pool, was in the sky. The whole world was changed, and he
seemed to be wandering in a country of gentle streams and meadows,
while the green grass was gay with yellow daffodils.

       *       *       *       *       *

The sunlight slanted lower, falling on the upper windows of the school.
Was his dream less real than that soft light, he wondered? Did not
both come from somewhere in the clouds? It explained so much; it pushed
back, as it were, the horizon. Plato had believed in it. Could it be,
then, that there were certain persons――like Plato, like himself――who
were actually nearer to the unseen than others were? Surely things came
to him, with the scent of flowers, with the sighing of wind, with the
splash of the sea! There was a spirit which breathed upon him from the
rustling trees and from the grass under his feet.




VII


When the summer holidays came round he brought his companion home with
him. Hot and dusty after their journey and the long drive from the
station, they were glad enough to catch a glimpse of the house when
yet some distance away. And as the evening sun, washing the beeches
with soft red-gold, fell obliquely on the upper windows, the effect for
the young visitor was one of a singularly peaceful beauty, such as he
had never before known. Standing back among the trees in the midst of
that green terraced garden――a house of stillness and of charm――to him
it appeared to be, as indeed it was, cut off completely from the outer
world――the world, at least, as it had been for him; a London life, a
hurried, anyhow existence when he joined his people in the holidays.

For Graham, also, to be home here once more was very pleasant. They
dined in the great oak dining-room――the light of sunset streaming in
across the table, catching the whiteness of damask, the deep crimson
of roses half buried in their dark green leaves, the gleam of glass
and old silver, and making the shaded candles to be but ornamental. On
the dark panelled walls hung a few choice Dutch ‘genre’ paintings:――an
‘Interior,’ by Pieter de Hooch; a ‘Music Lesson,’ by Gerard Terburg; a
‘Frost Scene,’ by Adriaen van de Velde; a ‘Portrait,’ by Gerard Dou;
but no picture, Graham thought, could ever be half so charming as the
young boy sitting opposite him, the softly blended light playing upon
his beautiful face, his delicate hands. Graham watched him with a
curious feeling of pride. He noticed his delightful courteousness, his
perfect breeding, his wonderful distinction. Yes, there was a great
deal in birth, in blood! For even in his short experience of school
life he had learned something of the hopelessness and vulgarity of a
spreading democracy. And he saw with pleasure that his father had taken
to the boy, that he was not insensible to the deference of Harold’s
manner, his efforts to please, his easy grace.

       *       *       *       *       *

After dinner the two boys wandered out of doors again, but went no
further than the porch. Both were a little tired. Brocklehurst sat on
one of the steps, and Graham half sat, half lay, a little below him,
tracing with the point of a stick fantastic lines and figures in the
gravel of the carriage sweep. The quiet of evening, of the perfect
ending of a day, was all about them; and they sat in silence, that
strange silence which seems to listen for the faint footfall of the
hour that is approaching, the hour that is to be, the hour as yet so
full of mystery, of hope, of the unknown.

The lawn stretched below them, smooth, greyish in the waning light.
Upon its shaven surface clumps of laurel, barbary, and rhododendron
stood out as darker, bordering patches――stood out a little stiffly in
the nearly windless air; and against the clear pale sky the trees of
the avenue were still.

‘How close that cloud is!’ Graham murmured. ‘Isn’t it almost as if we
ourselves were floating up to it?’

Yet notwithstanding the dreaminess of his mood, his senses were
curiously alert. Remote sounds and faint perfumes reached him, which
at another hour he would not have been conscious of. And he noticed
Brocklehurst’s hands as they rested on the stone step: he noticed the
fineness of the skin, darkened to a rich golden-brown by the sun; the
tapering fingers; the tiny blue vein, scarce visible, on the inside
of the wrist. His hands were extraordinarily living, extraordinarily
sensitive, expressive. They seemed made to touch the strings of musical
instruments, to play upon some delicate lute or viol. He imagined that
they must have some power in them to allay pain; he imagined them, cool
and soothing, laid softly upon his own forehead, or over his mouth and
eyes.

And suddenly Harold began to speak. ‘It is very quiet here....
How strange you must have found everything when you first came to
school!――after having been accustomed to this for so long.’

Graham smiled lazily. He felt very happy. It was as though a day he
had long awaited had at last begun to break within his spirit, as
though some perfect hour of life were here. And his present gladness
was mingled somehow with all the happiness that had been before; with
all the happiness he had ever known. He watched the dark leaves scarce
tremulous against the sky; he watched the dark grass, the gathering
dusk everywhere; the night wind was soft upon his face.

The light grew more and more subdued; the outlines of things vaguer and
vaguer.

‘I cannot tell you how glad I am to have you here, Harold,’ he
whispered shyly.

‘It was very good of your father to ask me.’

‘To ask you! But it all belongs to you! It has all been waiting
for you for so long――and now, at last, you have come.’ He spoke
half-laughingly, but all his childish imaginings and dreams were
stirring within him.

‘How dark it is getting!’

The last glimmer of twilight had in truth died out of the sky, and
only a dim pallor seemed to hang in the air, a faint reflection from
the hidden moon.

‘Listen!’

‘It is my father. He plays to himself every evening; he is very fond of
music.’

The soft, clear notes of a violin were drawn out slowly across the
stillness. The darkness, the charm of the night, helped to make them
wonderfully expressive, and Brocklehurst almost held his breath to
listen. When a pause came he gave a little sigh. ‘Why is beautiful
music always so sad?’ he wondered; ‘so much sadder than anything else?’

‘Is it?’ Graham asked. ‘And yet you like it!’

‘Yes; there is nothing else I like so well.... I used to sing in the
choir at school until my voice broke; but I have never learned very
much.’

Graham raised himself a little. He leaned his chin on his companion’s
shoulder and looked out into the darkness. And he felt Brocklehurst’s
soft, warm cheek against his own.

‘You went to school when you were very young, Harold, didn’t you?’ he
murmured.

‘No younger than most fellows. You, you know, came peculiarly late.’

‘My father liked to have me here ... I have not been at school a year
yet ... but all those other years before I went seem very far away.
I can look back at the past as if it had only been a single hour.
Everything slips together into one golden point.... I wonder if, when
a man is dying, it is like that――if, when he looks back, all his life
gathers together into one long, long day――if all seems but a summer
day――yesterday between sunrise and sunset――――’




VIII


Gradually, as he rowed, the familiar landmarks grew smaller and the
scene widened out, while the sprinkling of little cottages slid closer
together. Beyond these, the spire of the church rose like a slender
thread into the dark blue sky.

Brocklehurst’s eyes rested upon his face, but he appeared to be quite
unconscious of this, his own dark grey eyes fixed on some point in the
remote.

At length he drew in his oars.

How far away the land seemed! All around, sea――sea unspotted by a
single sail――sea stretching from world to world.

He lay back in the bow of the boat, and for a time appeared to have
fallen into one of those reveries his companion knew so well.

And Brocklehurst began to murmur to himself while he dabbled his hand
in the water.

‘What?――What do you say?’ At the sound of his friend’s voice breaking
through the fine meshes of his dream, Graham roused himself and made a
movement to sit up.

Brocklehurst smiled. ‘Nothing――nothing. I was only talking to myself.’

Graham looked at him. ‘Doesn’t it seem as if we were quite out of the
world here, Harold? We shall never be more alone together than we are
now. I can hardly remember when we came.... Do you think we shall ever
go back?’

‘Perhaps the sea round Ireland is haunted, like the sea of the Ancient
Mariner.’

‘And the sea across which Odysseus sailed. Surely almost every place is
haunted by this time. If we rowed on a little further we might come to
Circé’s Island, or to the land of the Lotus-eaters, or to the home of
Nausicaa.’

And even while he spoke they seemed to drift into a stiller air――or
was it his fancy? His thoughts seemed to be borne into his mind from
somewhere far away, and the faint lapping of the water against the boat
recalled to him his dream.

‘Last night I went back there, Harold――I found the old way.... Shall I
tell you?... You remember the curious dream that filled up so much of
my life here.... I think it must be beginning to open out again.’

‘You mean about the boy whom you used to fancy as being in some way
connected with me?’

Graham met his eyes. ‘Are you quite sure he wasn’t?’ he asked softly.
‘You must tell me, because just now, somehow, I am not quite certain
myself.’

‘What has changed you, then? You used, you know, to be sufficiently
sure.... Do you remember the day I found you out in the fields?’

‘The day you came to me?... You came when I called.’

‘Well, you were very certain then, weren’t you?’ He laughed a little at
the other boy’s gravity.

‘That was the beginning,’ Graham murmured. ‘Do you know that from that
day until last night I have never dreamed of you, nor of the place
where I used to find you ... never till last night.’

‘And last night you _did_?’

Graham glanced up at his companion. ‘It all came back,’ he answered
simply. ‘You were there――just as before I went to school――but
changed――a little changed.’ He tried to remember. ‘I can’t exactly say
what the difference was,’ he went on slowly, turning it over in his
mind. Then he paused, in his effort to puzzle it out? ‘_Why_ should
you have come back?――after so long, I mean. Why, if you _were_ coming,
should you not have come sooner?’

‘Ah, I can’t tell you,’ smiled Brocklehurst. ‘Perhaps if you had asked
me last night――――!’

‘You would have told me?... You did tell me, but I don’t remember what
you said. Somehow it has all grown very dim. Your being with me here, I
think, has thrown the other back.’

‘But wasn’t it to tell you something that I returned?’

A peculiar, half-baffled expression passed across Graham’s face. ‘I
thought I was going to remember,’ he sighed, ‘but it has gone again....
I suppose I shall never know now.’

‘Ah, well, I can’t help you any further.’ Brocklehurst watched him with
some amusement.

‘No.’ He sighed again. Then he looked across once more at his
companion. ‘As soon as I fell asleep I saw him――my dream-boy. I awoke,
it seemed, on the sea-shore, at the very gate of his garden. And I
heard his voice calling me――calling, calling.... Oh, I remembered his
voice so well! I opened the gate, and he was there.’

He paused a moment, and his eyes grew dark with a strange shadow. And
it was through this shadow that his next words seemed to drop, his
voice becoming lower and lower, till at length it was scarce audible,
scarce more than a whisper.

‘Who he is, what he is; if he indeed be your spirit, or if you only
remind me of him, I suppose I shall never know. At times I think he
must have been born with me, and have grown with the growth of my soul.
Until I went to school, at any rate, as I have already told you, he
was my only playmate. When I was a little boy I used to pretend he was
in the garden with me, and I used to look for him here and there, just
as if he were hiding from me in some game.... At night, I remember,
when I had got into bed I used to wonder where he was just then, and if
he would be waiting for me when I woke up in his country. And he always
_was_ waiting――standing there patiently, smiling, ready to welcome
me.... Now and then I even went to bed earlier than usual, to see if I
could by any chance get there before him; but I never could, because, I
suppose, he lived there....

‘And last night――I don’t know why――it was just the same. Everything
happened as in the old days.... It is rather strange, for of late it
had all grown a little dim and far away――faint, unreal even, when I
tried to bring it back.... And I remember he took me to the edge of a
pool, and when I looked into the water I saw reflected there my own
room――a boy lying asleep in the bed――myself――――’

He paused, smiling faintly, his whole face filled with the light of
his memory. Brocklehurst watched him curiously.

‘Sometimes,’ he went on, ‘sometimes the wind, when it is not too loud,
seems to bring back the sound of his voice ... and his voice is just
like yours, Harold.... Once, at school, I remember, I was sitting
before the fire, half asleep and half awake, when suddenly he seemed to
come very close to me, to be in the room, to be leaning over the back
of my chair. Then I shut my eyes and I felt his soft hair brush against
my cheek――and I waited――and oh, I felt so happy.... All at once the
door opened and you came in.... And you leaned over my chair just as he
had done, while you talked to me.’

‘You are making me feel very jealous,’ said Brocklehurst with pretended
seriousness. ‘I expect you like him much better than you like me!’

‘There is no difference ... except――――’ He stopped short while
Brocklehurst began to laugh.

‘Well, what were you going to say?’

Graham coloured a little. ‘Let us change places. You can row back.’

Brocklehurst obeyed him, but he still kept his eyes fixed on Graham’s
face. ‘What is the difference?’ he persisted. ‘What were you going to
tell me?’

‘Nothing――nothing,’ Graham answered almost confusedly. ‘It is just in
his――his manner.’

‘That means, I suppose, that he _is_ nicer――after all!’

‘No, it doesn’t mean anything of the kind.’

‘Well, it must mean something, you know. And if not that, why are you
afraid to tell me?’

‘I’m not afraid to tell you.... It means just that he likes――me.’ He
gazed down through the water.

Brocklehurst regarded him a little strangely. For a moment he seemed
about to speak, but in the end, without saying anything, he dipped his
oars and began to row back.

A long silence followed.

‘Where shall we go now?’ Brocklehurst asked gently. The boat was
heading for the cliffs, which rose, dark and naked, out of the clear
water.

‘There is a place a little to the left where I think we can land if you
would care to bathe.’

Brocklehurst brought the boat round to the desired spot, and they
scrambled out on to a broad flat shelf of rock where, having made fast
the rope, they sat for a while dangling their feet over the edge.

The sunlight made the water very clear and tempting. Floating faintly
through the still afternoon came the notes of the church clock. From
everywhere the salt, invigorating smell of seaweed just uncovered by
the ebb tide was blown into their faces, and long trailing branches of
it, golden-brown and grass-green in the sunlight, rose and sank with
the swell. Here and there, a little lower down, sprays of a brighter
colour were visible――pink and red and orange, like delicate, feathery
coral.

‘This place and this weather are pleasant enough for Pan,’ Graham
murmured. ‘Next month it will be all over, and we shall be going back
to school. I wonder if it will ever be just so nice again.’

After their bathe they sat on the rocks, baking in the hot sun. ‘How
brown your hands and face and neck are!’ said Graham lazily. ‘The rest
of you seems so white.... I wonder if the Greeks ever made a statue of
a diver? I don’t remember one.’ Then a sudden thought seemed to strike
him and he sprang to his feet, his drowsiness suddenly gone. ‘Wait a
moment,’ he cried. ‘Stand there.... Turn round just a little.... You
must lean against the rock and hold this bit of seaweed in your hand;
and you must cross your feet――like that. Oh! if you just had pointed
ears, or the least little bit of a tail!... A Faun! A Faun! A young
woodland Faun!... You are far nicer than the statue.’ And a look almost
of wonder came into Graham’s face.

Next, making him sit down, he put him in the posture of the ‘Spinario,’
his old favourite; and then, raising him to his feet once more, he made
him stand like the praying boy of the Berlin Museum, the ‘Adorante,’
his face and hands uplifted to the joy of the morning.

‘And now what else?’ he murmured. ‘You are too young for an athlete.
Your body is too slender. I will make you into a youthful Dionysus
instead. Let me put this seaweed in your hair. It is a wreath of vine.’

He placed him so that he leaned against the black, smooth rock, and the
soft melting lines of the boy’s body shone out with an extraordinary
beauty from the sombre background. Graham paused for a moment, and
stepping back, shaded his eyes with his hand while he gazed fixedly at
his work. A faint colour came into his cheeks and he advanced again.
Very gently he pulled the brown waving hair over the boy’s forehead,
and a little lower still, giving to his face a more feminine oval,
like that of Leonardo’s ‘Bacchus.’ He pulled his head, too, slightly
forward, bending it from the shapely neck; and with delicate fingers
he half lowered the lids of the dark, clear blue eyes, till the upper
lashes, long and curling, cast a shadow on the cheek below; and he
parted the lips, ever so softly, till a strange dreamy smile seemed to
play upon them.

The accuracy of his touch almost startled him, and his colour deepened
as the boy’s beauty flowed in upon him, filling him with a curious
pleasure. He laughed aloud. ‘You are just like one of the young gods,’
he cried. ‘I wonder if you really are one. Perhaps if we stay much
longer we shall draw the others down from heaven.’

‘Isn’t that what you would like? I expect you still, deep down, have a
kind of faith in them.’

‘Ah, how can I help having faith when one stands living before my eyes?
All hail, dear Dionysus! child of fire and dew, and the creeping,
delicate vine!... Should we not offer up a sacrifice, Harold? I have
nothing here but these dry sea-flowers which I gathered from the rock,
but it is into the heart of the giver, and not at the gift, that the
gods look.... Let us offer our slender garland to the presiding deity
of the place.’

He knelt down, and laid the few sea-pinks, and the seaweed with which
he had adorned his friend, on a little shelf of rock. ‘That is the
altar,’ he said smiling, but more than half serious. Then he took
Brocklehurst’s hand and pulled him down to kneel beside him while he
prayed.

‘What god shall I give them to?’ he whispered. ‘You see they have so
few worshippers left that they may be a little jealous of one another.
We do not want the waves to rise up against us as they rose against
Hippolytus.’

‘Give them to the unknown God.’

‘Hush!――they will hear you: they must be drawing very near.――O gods
of Hellas! If anything in our lives have found favour in your sight,
accept this, our gift, which, though it be poor, is given with our
love; and we beg that you will grant to each of us that thing which
may be best for him.... Harold, “need we anything more? The prayer, I
think, is enough for me.”’




IX


He could not quite say how it had happened. It had come so suddenly,
so suddenly. And now, a few steps behind the others, he was walking
toward the house. He had a feeling of sickness, of horror: a helpless
misery, the meaning of which he shrank from realising, darkened his
mind. Only he remembered――he could not help remembering: it was there
before him with a curious vividness――the light of the afternoon sun on
the long white road; the glare, the heat, something dark and motionless
stretched in the dust――still, very still....

Brocklehurst had been walking a few paces behind him, and close to the
hedge. He had been pulling some wildflowers――a few had been scattered
about him as he lay there on the road, so strangely quiet and white,
a thin stream of red blood creeping through his hair and widening
out, forming a little patch of mud.... And when he had lifted him, the
curious whiteness of his face!

Yet in a way he had escaped wonderfully. None of the wheels had touched
him: just that single kick a little above his left ear....

They had been walking slowly, Brocklehurst close to the hedge, he,
Graham, in the middle of the road, when the terrified horses had come
dashing round the corner, the drag swaying violently behind them, one
of the reins hanging broken and useless. He remembered jumping to one
side. His foot had slipped on something, and he had fallen. The dust,
the noise, a wheel just touching his coat as he rolled himself out of
the way.... He knew now that Brocklehurst had sprung at the horses’
heads, had given him, it might be, that one extra moment....

And now it was all over. Their long afternoon in the boat; on the
rocks; their little act of pagan worship;――all that had been _this_
afternoon, and it was over. He was walking, a few steps behind the
others, up the avenue toward the house.




X


Night at last.

Every one at length gone away; everything arranged; the house still and
solemn.

His father had left him alone for a little with the dead boy. At
last!...

His sorrow, which before the strangers he had kept swallowed down, he
need hide no longer. There was no one to hear, no one to see. And he
knelt beside the bed and stroked the smooth cold cheek. He kissed the
cold mouth and stroked the soft dark hair from which all stain had been
washed; and he put his arms about the body. And he remembered the boy
as he had stood before him that afternoon in all his wonderful beauty.
His tears fell fast and blindingly. The sobs rising to his throat
almost choked him.




XI


Day followed day. Brocklehurst had been buried in the village
churchyard; his father and one of his brothers (all of his family who
had come over) were returned home again; the blinds were drawn up;
the quiet flow of life, so harshly and unexpectedly interrupted, had
dropped back into its accustomed channel; only for one boy a light had
gone out for ever from the sky; a glory and a beauty, as he had known
them once, had vanished from the world.

All day long he tried to be alone, tried to avoid his father; and
whenever an opportunity presented itself he would escape to his own
room or to some solitary place out of doors. It was almost as if he
were afraid of human companionship, afraid of the sound of his own
voice. And a curious unwillingness to mention Harold’s name, or to
allude to him in any way whatever, seemed to have taken possession of
him, though he spent daily a longer and longer time at the boy’s grave,
remaining there for hours, until his father, who knew of these visits,
grew anxious for his health and wished to take him away from home,
offered to take him abroad――France, Italy, Greece――anywhere he liked.
But Graham pleaded so desperately to be allowed to stay where he was
that Mr. Iddesleigh had not the heart to refuse him――feared, indeed,
that in his present state of mind it might do him more harm than good.

Little wonder that the boy’s health began to give way; that he looked
so pale and tired! The holidays were now almost over, but as yet
nothing had been said about his going back to school, though Graham
himself lived in secret dread of what he knew could not be put off
for much longer. How, on the other hand, could he possibly resume the
old life? The thought of what had been and never would be again――oh!
that, he felt, he should not be able to bear――the dreariness, the
loneliness, the hopelessness. Doubtless when he had first gone to
school he had also been alone――but the difference, the difference now
would be incalculable. There were days, in truth, when it almost seemed
to him that it would have been better if he had never been given his
happiness, since so soon it was to be snatched from him; and even
though deep in his heart he knew he would not forget it if he could,
there were days when he thought it would be well if all the past could
be effaced from his mind, rubbed out as figures are rubbed from a
child’s slate.

       *       *       *       *       *

One afternoon he was sitting with his father in the library. It had
been raining for the greater part of the day, and a fine drizzle was
still falling, though the sky was beginning to clear. It had been
raining, and the soft sound of the rain――the soft, dripping sound,
and the sight of the blurred landscape, had somehow a soothing effect
upon him. On his knee he held an open book over which his head was
bent closely. A lassitude, mental and physical, was visible in his
every little movement, even in the way he sat; and between his eyes
and the printed page he looked at, there floated a dead boy’s face. A
physical weakness weighed heavily upon him, a kind of stagnation of
the very sources of his life, the vital elements, sapping all power
to rise above a certain fixed and gloomy train of thought;――it was
as if some spring within him had been choked, dried up.... It was
finished!――finished!――finished! The word repeated itself wearily in
his mind, like the monotonous beating of a metronome. He felt hot and
feverish, and there was a dull pain at the back of his head. It was
almost as if he were sickening for something....

Tired out, for his sleep of late was become very restless and broken,
presently he fell into a kind of doze, from which he awakened, a few
minutes later, to find his father gazing anxiously at him; and with
sudden contrition he saw how selfish he had been in giving way thus to
his grief.

‘Are you very tired?’ Mr. Iddesleigh asked gently. ‘Come over here and
sit by me.’ He drew his son to him as he spoke, and Graham sat down on
a stool at his feet.

‘What were you doing all this morning? Were you in the cemetery?’

Graham nodded.

Mr. Iddesleigh laid his hand on the boy’s head. ‘You go there so often!’
he expostulated. ‘It is not good for you, Graham. What do you think
about when you go there all alone? What do you go there for?’

Graham hesitated. He clasped his hands about his knees, while he sat
gazing out of the window. The rain had ceased and a pale sun was
beginning to peep out between the heavy clouds. For some moments he
did not answer his father. The familiarity of everything about him was
borne into his mind. How often he and his father had sat just as they
were sitting now!――in this same room! It seemed to him that his life
had been moving in a circle, and that he was beginning to return on a
path he already knew. For a little the wings of some great spirit had
drooped softly about his head.... ‘Too like the lightning....’ His eyes
filled and he bent down to hide his face.

‘What is the matter?’ Mr. Iddesleigh asked, but still without getting
any reply. ‘Tell me, Graham, are you thinking about Harold?’

‘Do you wonder I never speak of him?’

‘Is it too near?... But your silence makes you brood over it all the
more.’

‘I cannot help thinking of him,’ Graham whispered. ‘He gave me his
life.’ He rose from his stool, and walking to the window pressed his
forehead against the cold glass.

The rain was still dripping from the trees, and there was a damp smell
in the air; but the sky was clearing, and the sun was growing stronger
and stronger. Presently, and without further word, the boy left the
room.




XII


For a while he lingered near the house, restlessly, forlornly, but by
and by he went down to the rocks, where he stood looking out over the
sea.

Piled up on the horizon, like a vast range of purple-black hills,
heavy masses of cloud drifted, scarce perceptibly, from east to west
of the pale slate-blue sky; and where these rugged heaps were broken
the heavens sank away in limitless wells of pure pale light, each edged
with a border of bright grass-green. All the light of the day seemed
gathered there――like a reflection from a world beyond――and Graham, as
he stood at gaze before it, began to wonder if he should ever come any
nearer to it than he was just there and then. In the _Phaedo_ he had
found many arguments for the immortality of the soul, but more lately
he had realised, in his own life, the only one perhaps that actually
counted――and this no argument at all; but merely a very simple human
desire, a desire to look again upon the face of his friend, the face of
him who was buried in the grave.

He stooped down and leaned over the slowly-heaving water, watching it
rise and sink back, and rise again and sink――over the dark, cold water
that seemed nearly black against the rocks――lower still, and lower,
till his hair almost brushed the surface.

      ‘O water whispering
       Still through the dark into mine ears,――
    As with mine eyes, is it not now with his?――
       Mine eyes that add to thy cold spring,
    Wan water, wandering water weltering,
       This hidden tide of tears.’

Presently he went on a little farther, clambering back over the
rocks, and taking a rough path which brought him eventually to the
church. The place was quite deserted, as it almost always was, and he
pushed open the gate. He walked over the soft grass till he came to
Brocklehurst’s grave, where he knelt down. The murmur of the sea rose
from below――monotonous, very peaceful. Ah, were they not happiest who
slept here with that dim music drawing them farther and farther from
the world? An infinite melancholy drew its sombre wings about the boy’s
forehead――a melancholy not wholly sprung from his recent sorrow, but a
kind of broader pity for all the suffering bound up with life:――pity,
above all, for the young boy who lay now under the heavy earth, yet
who had once been so bright and active upon it. He found it curiously
hard to think of him as dead, out of existence. Was he not still, even
in that dim shadowy world whither he had passed, conscious, sentient?
Could he not still feel some faint emotion, some faint stirring of
hushed joy or sorrow? Was not his heart still beating softly under
the grass? He stretched himself upon the grave, lying full length,
motionless. Face to face they lay, only a little earth between them;
and far below he seemed to hear a breath drawn almost silently, to hear
the slow, sad stream of a boy’s tears falling, falling evermore. In the
stillness he could hear his own heart beat――beat with the life that
was flowing away from him in a wide, clear flame, the flame of a lamp
burning swiftly up into the night.

The sun had set when he turned to go home. But as he passed the church
door he noticed that it stood ajar, and went in. A bucket of water and
a broom were in the porch, left there evidently for some purpose; but
the church itself was empty.

He sat down for a while in one of the pews; then he knelt, leaning his
face between his hands. A strong desire to pray had come over him. But
pray to whom? Was this then, at last, to be the hour of the unknown
God?... And a few words floated into his mind, came to him again and
again, like a memory of some old tune, or line of poetry: ‘Little
children, love one another....’ It seemed as if some one were stooping
down over him, it seemed as if some one had kissed him, kissed him
softly, had laid a gentle hand upon his head.

And a feeling of ineffable peace began to creep into his heart.
Could it possibly be, then, that he was really nearer to the unseen
world than others were? Now, surely, in some inexplicable way he had
been drawn very very close――closer than ever before. He had a sense
that something was about to happen, and that it would be something
great, momentous, supreme. It was as if he were upon the eve of some
stupendous discovery; and he waited――waited till the signal should be
given him――some sign which, unlike any others he had hitherto received,
would come, this time, he knew, from without.

A profound stillness had fallen upon the church, like the closing in of
heavy waters. The murmur of the sea had stopped.

Then across the hush there came a low sigh――a whisper as of the
brushing together of innumerable leaves――a whisper which grew deeper
and deeper, till at last it seemed the music of some wonderful summer,
and Graham raised his head. Surely the light had grown marvellously
clear and soft. A scent of many flowers was in the air; a murmur of a
fountain.

And as he knelt, motionless, the walls of the church sank away from
before him, and there――standing there in that radiance of perfect
light――ah, there, at last, was Harold!

He stood in his garden, and he was more beautiful than Graham had
ever yet beheld him ... he stretched out his hands ... he smiled....
His feet were pale on the dark rich grass with its powder of crocuses.
Above his head the branches of the trees almost met, forming a
delicate roof, a roof of green leaves, a green trellis very finely
woven, through which the light, mingled with a falling music of little
feathered throats, floated down soft and cool. All around him was that
wonderful liquid light, and the music of water, listless, plashing,
as it dropped into some dim, cool, green-lipped basin of stone. And
over everything there hung a calm so deep, and pure, and holy, that
all Graham’s sorrow seemed to melt away before it into one impassioned
sense of gratitude, and love, and peace.

‘Oh, I am coming――I am coming,’ he sobbed, rising to his feet, and
taking a step forward, quickly, blindly. For a moment he stood there,
swaying with a curious movement from side to side; then he gave a
little moan and fell forward heavily on his face.




XIII


When he opened his eyes he was lying in bed, in his own room. The light
was darkened: there was a faint smell of drugs in the air: and a figure
was moving noiselessly about, preparing something at a small table. He
had been ill, then!... but for how long?

He heard a slight noise as of the door being very carefully opened, and
he saw his father come into the room, walking on tiptoe. Graham kept
his eyes closed that they might not know he had awakened. Things were
beginning to come back to him, and for just a few minutes longer he
wanted to keep that cool darkness about him.

He felt a strange languor through all his body; he felt too weak to
do anything but lie there in the softened light, and in the twilight
of his soul. It would be soon enough to awaken in a little――not just
yet――in a little....

       *       *       *       *       *

And all that was thirty years ago. His father was long dead. Every one
was dead.

Dawn had crept into the room, grey and ghostly. He shivered and looked
round. His letter, unfinished, lay there on the table. Everything
seemed cold, desolate, lifeless. He got up and stretched himself, for
he felt stiff and cramped. Scarce worth while, now, to go to bed! He
walked over to the window and looked out into the breaking day. The
world seemed very old and cheerless. Was it the chill of approaching
age in his own blood, he wondered, that made him find it so? He smiled
a strange, dim little smile. Best, then, to sit by the fire and doze!

He came back to the table, and leaning over it, buried his face in his
hands.


THE END




 Transcriber’s Notes:

 ――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

 ――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

 ――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

 ――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.








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