Beautiful end

by Constance Holme

But, beautiful as the journey had been, he was beginning to wish that it would come to an end. That sudden shock seemed to have drained his strength and left him afraid of the fear within a fear. He would have nothing to say to the house if he was tired, and no number of perfect after-days could make up for the wonder of that first glad hour. He might even miss the first sight of it, perhaps, if his eyes should remember that they were really old. His brain might be numb or vacant at the first crossing of the door. It might be only a tired old man that would stagger in, thinking of nothing but supper and then bed....

He tried to rest his eyes by shutting them for a while, but found that he suffered more from the jolting of the trap. Every jerk of the horse seemed to startle his heart and hurt his bones, as well as stirring again the thought of that sleeping fear. And yet, as soon as he opened his eyes, his mind was off once more. Even the grass could not grow, nor the road wind, without setting his memories running out of the past.

It was strange that he should have the fear of the sea so strong on him to-night, when all around him was calm and evening gold. He had never been afraid of the sea when he had it under his feet. Once he had gone to play at a dance across the sands, and had sailed home again at break of day. He had come away from the hot room with the dancing still in his brain, and gone down to the forsaken, dream-like shore. It was black under the chestnuts roofing the narrow path, but a grey light stood over the tide that seemed to grow upward from the sea. The water broke crisply and coolly at his feet as he stumbled over the beach and came to the sand. Near to him, like a figure flung on a cloud, a man was holding a vague and ghostly boat, and out on the dim tide where it merged into the air, a shadowy ship pulled at a shadowy rope. She, too, was the merest phantasm of herself, with her spidery cords and nebulous mast and spars. It was impossible to believe that she could support the pressure of a foot, so that the life and lift in her as he scrambled aboard came with a shock of exquisite surprise. His body and brain felt heavy as lead against the lightness of her build, and yet the effect of his weight was merely an increased impression of her buoyant strength. His mind, that was still full of whirling sounds, swayed to the water-floor on which she rode. From the elastic spring of her under his feet, it seemed as if she must leap into the air as soon as she was released. Turned as she was on her anchor to meet the tide, she swung on her heel the moment she felt the sail, and was off like a racer before the flag is down. The boat dropped from them and became a blur, and the line of shore was blurred, and the climbing town. The few dim lights that burned were still to be seen after the shapes of the houses had been painted out, showing mistily yellow above the sea, like lamps in the long slits of a castle wall. Then they, too, went as if suddenly blown out, and only the cap of pine that crowned the hill spoke to the presence of earth against the sky. Kit was a crouched shadow in the boat, staring ahead of him for a sight of the marsh, but the great, grey wing of the sail seemed spread across the world. The wind was behind them and they fled hushed, as shadows of clouds move silently on the sea. The motion was easing as sleep, and healing as still prayer. He thought of the dancing figures in the town which had seemed so beautiful to him while he watched, yet were earthy and clumsy and slow compared with this. Even the music—even the fiddle itself—seemed noisy beside that delicate wash at the keel. This was the peace of the sea of which men spoke, this great and painless detachment from things of the earth. In the wide spaces how easily God was found! On the water, as in the mountains and on the Hill of Light, it was good for men to be there. Sometimes he slept for a few moments, and awakened again and slept, but the man at the tiller neither moved nor slept. He was like a statue set in the low stern, with the straight shadow of the helm stretching between them like a bar. His eyes were lifted a little towards the sail, and the slack of the sheet lay in his quiet hand. Each time that Kit awoke the grey had changed, because of the light over the hills that as yet he could not see. The light came into it as out of an emptied cup, like a white wine teemed in a sombre, misted pool. Slowly, as the land came back to the sea, he could see the lake mountains piled into the sky, all turned to wait for the coming light from the east, but even before he could trace them he was sure they turned. It was strange to look into the blackness where he knew them to be, and think of the dark shapes waiting in a crowd. So huge they were, and solid and old, homes alike for the short-living and the long dead. Perhaps they saw, whom others, through the mist of morning, could not see. It was like being watched by giants with many eyes.

But he was altogether alone when he forgot the hills, because the steersman was only a part of the boat. Even the wind had nothing to say in this silent world, and the water was like a monster moving floor, rushing them poised on its expanse. So light they felt, he and the boat, and yet through every plank he could feel the passionate quiver of taut strength. The sail whitened as the light whitened, and the mast grew yellow instead of grey. Then a level line cut across the threads of rope, and behind it arose the misty country of the marsh.

The sun came, bringing the clean first colour of all, that for its purity alone is sufficient miracle and joy. Slowly at first, and then faster and faster all the time it lifted the earth out of the many-shaded grey. Here and there and then there the land showed itself awake, glowing in great breadths in this place and then in that. Not all at once was the colour painted in, but gradually, as if waiting for the eye to catch the effect of green stretches and white walls, and the sudden blue-grey of jutting rock. The mountains weighed heavier and heavier upon the earth, showing their great bones and russet bracken slopes.

The kiss of the sun on the sail seemed to waken the statue into life, showing him wiry and lithe, with the blue of a warmer water in his eyes. After the marsh stood up he came about, and at once the world was all struggle and noise, straining and drumming canvas overhead, and hissing and bubbling water under the bow. The boat felt stiff from stem to stern, a passionate live thing set against control. She leaned over, as if bent on ridding herself of her human freight, and let the water line up and slap itself over their feet. The sail was gleaming now, and the bay deepening into blue, and suddenly Kit saw the dazzling front of his home, with the yew sharp-cut and black against its side. It had the rippling tide before it and the shining river behind, and where there was neither river nor tide there were green fields and thick hedges and white roads.... Faint at the upstairs window, he thought he saw a face....

Now they had found the channel and were coming at the house, rushing and winged as they had been before, such a flying thing of the deep as Agnes had once seen. It seemed to Kit, as it had seemed to her, that they would ride on that moving water straight into the house itself. The boat raced towards it as a horse towards a fence, only smoother and swifter and keener than any horse. He clambered out to the bow and knelt on the seat, and felt the ride and lift of her over the carrying sea. Kneeling, he thought of ancient figureheads, and knew what they had felt and why they stood for the whole exultation of the world.... It was plain to him what he should do when they rose at the house. The flung-back casement upstairs was like a sign, and behind it the face still glimmered and watched and leaned. Straight out of the boat, as she lifted under his feet, he would step unhurriedly into the room....

He rose from his knees and stood erect, supremely prepared, and fell in a clutching heap as they came about. For a moment he sat still, grasping at his wits, confounded by violent defraudation and shock. Now they were hove to under the farmyard wall, but it did not seem to him that they had really arrived. The boat seemed limp and broken, injured though not dead, a flapping, fretting thing checked in its flight before the goal was reached. He felt a blinding spasm of rage as if he had been robbed, and even when he stood on the shore and watched the boat beat back, he was still cheated and angry in his heart. Now he was conscious that he was very tired, just a weary player coming home in the dawn. He turned at last and walked slowly to the house, and was glad of the open doorway in his path. As he walked he looked at the window upstairs, but without either exaltation or desire. He had been so near perfection, as it seemed, and at the impossible moment it had escaped. The room was still there, but his passionate impulse towards it had died down. In youth one seeks one’s sacred place on wings; it is only in later life that it is sweet to climb to it by a homely stair.

Bob had stopped the horse and scrambled down, and was busy with the latch of a gate. Kit brought himself back to the present with a jerk, though the floor of the trap was still the light, curving timbers of the yacht. In front of him was a long, green road, a wide alley hedged on either side, with the dykes beside the hedges so full of growth that they looked almost level with the level road. The hedges themselves, as far as he could see, were pink with little rose-faces and purple with vetch. Now they were nearly home; the green road always meant that they were nearly home. Bob took the horse by the head and called to his father to take the reins, and he gathered them up shakingly, glad, after so long, to feel the touch of the rough leather against his hands. But all the time he was troubled by a sense of something amiss, in spite of the green road that meant the journey’s end. He wondered why he had lived again that vivid experience on the boat. The shadow of that disillusionment long ago seemed stretching also across this perfect hour.

And then gradually his mind cleared again, and set the warning and creeping trouble aside. There came back to him like a repeated song the sweetness of this tranquil evening return. The grass crushed softly underneath the wheels, and on the quiet road there was peace for the creaking bones of the ancient trap. He felt warm in the sun and soothed and freshened by the tender air. The light was gold on the dark coat of the horse, and on Bob’s stooping shoulders and bent head. Yet behind all the comfort of renewed content he felt continually that he was very tired. The journey had been a long one—longer than he had thought; perhaps he would never have come if he had known how long. Those mind-travels of his had been easier by far, when his body was left behind and nothing jolted or jarred. He was perfectly certain that he could never face it again, but then he was done with all his journeying now. He was at home; he had escaped Marget; he was at home. It did not matter how tired you were when once you had reached home.