and his thoughts went roaming back to the great woods he had left behind, woods where the naked streams ran shouting and lawless, where the trees had not learned self-consciousness, and where no little tame folk trotted on velvet feet through trim and scented gardens.
And the virgin glory of the morning entered into him with that searching sweetness which is almost suffering, just as a few hours before the Night had bewitched him with the mystery of her haunted caverns. For the beauty of Nature that comes to most softly, with hints, came to him with an exquisite fierce fever that was pain,—with something of the full-fledged glory that burst upon Shelley—and to bear it, unrelieved by expression, was a perpetual torment to him.
But, after long musing that led he scarcely knew where, Paul came back to himself—and laughed. Laughter was better than sighing, and he was too much of a child to go long without the sense of happiness coming uppermost. He lit his pipe—that most delicious of all, the pipe before breakfast—and wandered out into the sea of yellow gorse, thinking aloud, laughing, talking to himself.
Something in the performance of Mrs. Tompkyns awakened the train of thought of the night before. The sublime acting of the animal—he dared not call it ‘beast’—linked him on to the children’s world. They, too, had a magnificent condescension for the mere grown-up person. But he—he was not grown up. It made him sigh and laugh to think of it. He was a great, overgrown child, playing with gorgeously coloured dreams while the world of ordinary life passed him by.
The animals and the children linked on again, of course, with the region of fantasy and make-believe, the world of creation, the world of eternity, the world where thoughts were alive, and strong belief was a creative act.
‘That’s where I still belong,’ he said aloud, picking his way among the waves of yellow sea, ‘and I shall never get out till I die, my visions unexpressed, my singing dumb.’ He laughed and threw a stone at a bush that had no blossoms. ‘Oh, if only I knew how to link on with the normal world of fact without losing the other! To turn all these seething dreams within me to some account. To show them to others!’
He ran and cleared a low gorse-bush with a flying jump.
‘That would be worth living for,’ he continued, panting; ‘to make these things real to all the people who live in little cages. By Jove, it would open doors and windows in thousands of cages all over the world, besides providing me with the outlet I must find some day or—’ he sprang over a ditch, slipped, and landed head first into prickles—‘or explode!’ he concluded with a shout of laughter that no one heard but the cuckoos and the yellow-hammers. Then he fell into a reverie, and his thoughts travelled farther still—into the Beyond.
Quickly recovering himself, and picking up his pipe, he went on towards the house; and, as he emerged from the pine copse again, the sound of a gong, ringing faintly in the distance, brought him back to earth with a shock almost as abrupt as the ditch. Mrs. Tompkyns appeared simultaneously, wearing an aspect of pristine innocence, admirably assumed the instant she caught sight of him.
‘Fancy your being out here!’ was the expression of her whole person, ‘and coming, too, in just as the gong sounds!’