the day before his journey to join the gussets in london, gabriel awoke in one of his errant and aspiring moods. finality had oppressed him of late. the world seemed to have narrowed to the tangible prosaicisms of excess. the cry of his old romanticism awoke within him that morning an arthurian spirit, the wistful questing after a mysterious unknown. beauty gleamed anew in the wild twilight of romance. the present cringed in the dust.
noon found him heading for the sea over the wooded hills that rolled north to rilchester. a brisk breeze tempered the summer heat and reclaimed the hour from languor. gabriel had certain roman ruins as his goal—a mouldering wall, some scattered capitols, broken strands of stone, the flower-grown site of an old forum. ruins accorded with the spirit of romance, though sentiment is not always disinterested in the consideration of things inanimate. could troy spare the glamour of a helen? on the hills above rilchester dark trees held within their shadows a house that was magical for elemental reasons. perhaps gabriel could have gainsaid his soul the relics of an ancient empire. instincts more ancient perpetuated in him their power.
the woods had poured down to possess this city of the dead. crumbling flints showed amid the claws of some huge oak’s roots. the old walls were bowered in green, mantled in ivy, plumed with gilliflower, snap-dragon, and flowering grass. the forum, an open square closed with grass banks, stood almost free of the trees. its roadway and the foundation of its shops still showed in the turf. fragments of pillars and pediments lay sunken in the sward. flowers bloomed over the dead pavements, a mist of daisies, harebells, and golden ragwort. on the summit of the central mound stood the ruins of an altar, wreathed and overrun by masses of purple nightshade. southward the sea glimmered. around rolled the wooden hills, nebulous and haze-wrapped, guardians of mystery.
gabriel climbed the altar mound and sentinelled himself on the mouldering stone. to the romantic mind a tender melancholy wraps the infinite with all the idyllic colors of twilight. to the eye of the poet seas are bluer, skies more splendid, moons more magical, roses more ravishing to the soul. it is only the dullard who beholds in a cloud nothing but visible vapor. primeval man was more spiritual in many of his notions than the commercial gentleman of to-day.
hope is often father to the fact. desire and dream of a thing, and in some strange fashion the imagined fruit bends sudden to the hand. day-dreams are the first dawn-shafts of great minds. those who live for the present deserve nothing of the future. as for gabriel, the stars would have fallen in his lap if his dreams had gotten a proportionate reward.
thought-waves or no, there is some strong influence flowing from importunate thought. spiritual waves of desire move betwixt soul and soul, drawing them imperceptibly towards each other. love beacons unto love, even over hill and sea. as water to the moon, so joan gildersedge had been drawn from her home that day. some vibrating lustre-light of the soul had set her wandering on the hills above the sea. even from childhood she had haunted the gray ruins by the woods, weaving idyls out of the past, listening like joan of france to the mysterious utterances of nature.
thus it befell that morning that gabriel, seated on the crumbling altar, saw the figure of a girl moving in the shadows under the trees. she moved slowly, with eyes downcast. even in miniature her form had that superb eloquence of grace that was more than grecian, seeing that a more than grecian spirit abode there in the flesh.
gabriel’s memory hailed her with that hurrying of the heart that comes with the inspiration of the breath of life. his cheeks burned in the sun. fear touched him as with the finger of prophecy. scoff who will, there is a divine dread that seizes on strong men in the sanctuary of passion. even as the harp trembles as it bears the burden of some solemn song, so the highly strung soul vibrates to melodies, perilous yet divine. only clay is passive and unfearful. the mere animal loves with his loins, and is of the earth earthy. that man is indeed to be pitied who has never felt the splendid awe that the pure loveliness of a woman can inspire.
gabriel left the mound, color in his cheeks and on his lips a half-shy smile. if he had never believed in schopenhauer, the faith of a pessimist failed him ignominiously at that moment. he was medi?val to the core. nor did he believe shakespeare to be a fool.
a warmer color had risen to joan gildersedge’s face. her eyes had a lustre in the sunlight, such a light that makes a woman a thousand times more desirable than of yore.
“you are a long way from home,” she said, considering him with an ingenuous gravity that was very magical, “and yet i had a presentiment that i should meet you here to-day.”
“and so you came?”
“yes.”
they turned back with spontaneous consent, climbed the mound together, and seated themselves side by side upon the altar stone. the scene seemed utterly natural, yet quick with a rare unreality that kindled beauty. joan unpinned her hat and laid it beside her. a great oak overarched the mound and reared a shadowy canopy above them.
“it is nearly a month since we met,” she said.
gabriel was staring over the sea. a wilderness of romance had risen about his soul, a wild shadow-land drowned in moonlight, swept by a complaining wind.
“it seems as yesterday,” he answered her.
“strange that we should meet so.”
“perhaps.”
she smiled, half mysteriously, yet with a frankness that imaged truth.
“i have passed through trouble since i spoke with you by the river,” she said.
gabriel listened in silence as she spoke to him of much that had passed at the house amid the yews. the twain might have been in each other’s hearts for years. when he questioned her at the end thereof she showed him her hands, less white than of yore and roughened with toil.
“i am alone now,” she said.
“no one to help.”
“i do all for my father’s sake. it is better so. he is growing very decrepit.”
“you must be utterly lonely.”
“i am—at times.”
“and yet you have no friends?”
“none.”
“it is over hard.”
she smiled, and there was a look of strange happiness upon her face. perhaps the man’s sympathy was more to her than either of them had realized. gabriel had forgotten for a moment the eternal bathos of modernity.
“i would that i could help you,” he said.
joan’s eyes were turned suddenly to his.
“you have helped me,” she answered.
“i?”
“yes.”
“how?”
“you have often been in my thoughts,” she said. “pardon me if i seem too much a child. i have never been taught the shame of speaking what is uppermost in my mind. i am vastly ignorant.”
“you are wiser than i am.”
“no.”
“pardon me, the world has not stiffened you with its multitudinous hypocrisies. we society fools are jointed up in false affectations. we cannot live like honest human beings.”
“you do not seem false to me,” she said.
“god forbid!” he answered, with a sudden stirring of his conscience.
they were both silent a season. the girl’s words had rent the sky above the man’s head. he was conscious of the perilous egotism that had taken the guise of a darkling vision to lead him onward into a shadow-land of desire.
“you should not dream too much,” he said.
his voice startled her; she looked him in the face, her instincts probing his meaning.
“why do you say that?” she said.
“by reason of a certain melancholy wisdom.”
“and yet—”
“i have been a dreamer,” he said, “but i have played the traitor to my dreams. i suppose it was inevitable in a land such as this. one cannot always stand with one’s back to the wall and fight orthodox dullards. i have not the energy to exist as a living protest against philistinism. we men are often fools. have you ever read of tantalus?”
she pondered a moment and her face lightened.
“tantalus?”
“the man in hades.”
“who clutched at grapes when thirst tormented him, but was baffled ever.”
“even so.”
“cursed by the gods.”
“i am tantalus,” he said.
she looked into the woods, solemn as a prophetess lost in dreams. a cloud had fallen upon gabriel’s face. the girl felt its presence, though she had not looked into his eyes again.
“i should not have imagined it,” she said; “you did not seem to me to be unhappy.”
“perhaps not.”
“i am sorry.”
“i do not deserve that you should be sorry for my sake.”
“i cannot think that.”
gabriel mastered self with a grimness that would have served him well on certain other occasions had he been more the man. in negative fashion this girl gave him strength to adjudicate against his own dreams. she inspired and condemned by the same pure ravishment of beauty.
“i would have you know,” he said, “that i am a man bound by chains of my own forging. the blame is mine; i accept it. i may not say, ‘lo, here is my heart; i may surrender it into the hand of her whose head touches the stars.’ my eyes must remain mute, my soul untongued. i am no longer myself. think over these words and you may understand in measure.”
joan gildersedge did not answer him for several minutes.
“i understand,” she said; “and yet you are not happy.”
“that is the mockery of life. men think i have everything; i have nothing.”
“then we are both lonely.”
“nor may we help each other.”
the sky had darkened; a cloud seemed to have dimmed the sun. a wind woke restless in the woods and the flowers shivered in the waning sunlight. joan had risen from the altar. she held her hat in her hand, but did not look at gabriel as he stood in silence at her side.
“i wonder if i shall ever see you again,” she said.
the man had grown pale, and his eyes were stern, yet miserable.
“perhaps,” he answered.
“i shall think of you.”
“and i also.”
“good-bye.”
as by a sudden inspiration he kissed her hand as he had kissed it by the mallan water. when she had left him he remained by the crumbling altar, with its screen of purple nightshade, staring out over the sea. man-wise, he would have given heaven to have left unsaid the words he had spoken to the girl that day.
the same night he read a letter from ophelia, a letter garrulous with vapid passion, decreeing the day when they should wed. gabriel sat by the window as the dusk came down and watched the night embalm the world in gloom. a sonnet fell from his lips as he brooded. he wrote it down, a rough scrawl in the twilight.
??“shall i despair because the day is dead,
and all thy strange, sad witchery has passed
into the gold of visions! shall i cast
my soul to where the hands of night outspread
those cosmic epics, the emotions dread
of panting planets and of stars aghast!
shall i bemoan the raptures that outlast
the sun’s swift splendors that so soon are sped!
“have i not felt the magic of thy hand,
and watched the sun make amber of thy hair!
have i not touched thee! for thy laughter planned,
and delved thy glances with a grand despair!
never near mine may thy pure bosom sleep.
since thou art woe, then let me live to weep.”