Mrs. Owen always brought “her music” with her when she went out to dine, because it was always quite certain that she would be asked to sing, and she always consented, saying that she did happen to have brought a song or two which was in the hall with her cloak. She always said hall, especially if it happened to be a very narrow passage with a barometer on one side and a hat rack on the other and a rich smell of cooking coming from kitchen stairs at the end. For she was incapable of sarcasm, and thus if the hall happened to be an artery of this description, it merely made her hosts think that the “entry” was larger than they had supposed. Canon Alington, however, in his commodious vicarage had a hall, and almost immediately after joining the ladies in the drawing-room he, with Ambrose again prancing in front of him, went to fetch “the music” in. Ambrose asked to be allowed to carry it, and this boon was granted him. Mrs. Owen always played her own accompaniments, and Ambrose, who was full of treats to-night, turned over for her, being already able to follow music if it did not go too fast, which Mrs. Owen’s songs did not. But at the end of this particular combination of orchards, tribulation and heaven above, he was terribly torn in half, for on the one hand Mrs. Owen was perfectly willing to sing again, and on the other bedtime was inexorably fixed for half-past nine, so that the longer Mrs. Owen sang the less he would hear of his father’s paper for the Literific. So with the simplicity of childhood he settled that “mamma should choose,” and mamma, as she could hardly fail to do, chose another song first.
There was no time for Hugh to sing after this, if the tests of immortality in literature and art were to be really inquired into, and, indeed, he had with some adroitness protested that it would be too hard to make him sing after Mrs. Owen, feeling quite sure that no sarcastic intention could possibly be imputed to him, since both his sister and Dick considered that Mrs. Owen sang with more expression than anyone they had ever heard, professional or amateur. Thus there was a full half-hour of reading for Ambrose before half-past nine sounded, and a full half-hour of reading for the rest of them afterwards, for the author’s suggestion that he should leave out or abridge his work was strongly deprecated by Mrs. Owen if he was quite sure it did not hurt his throat, and he felt perfectly certain it did not.
Hugh went up to bed that night rather early, though, as a matter of fact, he felt particularly wakeful, for he wanted, somewhere deep down inside him, to get away alone, to lie on his bed and think, or, better still—a plan which he put into operation—to get behind the curtains of his window and lean out into the night. He wanted to be alone, but to be in the presence of the very simple things of the world, the night, the large silent sky, the things that grew unconsciously and did not improve themselves or anyone else, and, he added rather viciously to himself, did not sing. He had passed his evening with perfectly sincere and unaffected people (with the exception of Ambrose, for with the best will in the world he could not believe that Ambrose really liked giving his strawberries to an old woman, and even if he did, a child had no right to be unselfish and kind at that age, and ought to be smacked for it), yet in spite of their sincerity he felt that the whole evening had been unreal. He was sure that Mrs. Owen was genuine in her musical tastes, but it was not real music that she liked, but false sentiment. He was sure that his brother-in-law was desperately in earnest on the true tests of immortality in art, but what he really liked was writing about it. He was certain that Agnes was genuinely interested in parish work, true tests of immortality, music and all the topics of the evening, but not of her own self, only because they were of interest to her husband. All the sincerity, he felt, was second-hand; they none of them cared for things quite simply and passionately with the mere love of life for the things of life. There had been, too, whole lumps of knowledge flying about all evening in every direction: they had all kept up a perfect fusillade of facts; but what of wisdom? Where should wisdom be found? He had once compared his brother-in-law’s mind to a rich sort of cake, that consists entirely of other things—you came upon an almond one moment, a raisin the next, a piece of spice, or sometimes a large hard stone. These were all (except the stone) proper ingredients for making cake, but, somehow, there wasn’t any cake: it was all ingredients. There was his golf, his gardening, his literary abilities, his fragments of rock from Nazareth, his mottoes, his knowledge of the galleries of Venice, but where was It, the man, the personality, the deeps? And all the time he was aware that both Agnes and Dick felt that he himself wanted deepening, and very likely Mrs. Owen and Ambrose thought so, too. And he felt himself injured and inflamed at the thought, so that he was moved to say out loud: “Thank God, I don’t want any of your deepening, not at any price.” As likely as not Dick and his sister were talking over the evening now, feeling, dear, good souls! that amusement had been combined with instruction, and that sun of culture had shone on the scene without intermission.
Hugh felt rather better when he had announced to the night that he did not wish to be subjected to this process of deepening, and leaned further out into the soft darkness. The moon was not yet risen, but behind the gray square Norman tower of the church that rose on the right the sky was dove-coloured and the stars burned with a half-quenched light, showing that moon-rise would not be long delayed. Just below his windows stretched the herbaceous bed that led down each side of the road to the gate, and in the deep dusk of this summer night it was only white flowers like the tobacco-plant and the Madonna lily that could be distinguished in the fragrant huddle of the summer. A little breeze stirred there occasionally, making the purple clematis that climbed up on each side of his window tremble and vibrate, and like wavelets lisping on the edge of a calm sea it whispered and bore to him the veiled odours of the beds and the damp smell of the dew-drenched lawn. Beyond lay the water-meadows of the Kennet, with wisps and streamers of white mist lying here and there like gauzy raiment of the fairies hung out to dry, while down the centre wandered the steel-coloured stream; and again, but with diminished viciousness, Hugh thought to himself that he was glad that he knew nothing whatever about the formation of dew or the cooling that made the moisture of the atmosphere condense. His own enjoyment and appreciation of it, his mental likening it to fairy raiment was quite enough for him, nor did he believe he would be deeper if he knew about its formation. To the left stood the elms of the hedgerow, black blots against the sky, and outlined with stars, while glimmering here and there against the black hillside he caught glimpses of the white road along which he had walked that morning. Far away, too, in another grove of trees there glimmered a light or two from the windows of the house he had visited that morning.
He had been conscious all day that somewhere deep inside him, far below the superficial perceptions and interests that had gone to make up the ordinary mental life of the others, a current was moving slowly and irresistibly in one direction. He knew, too, that it called to him to come down out of the sunlight and surface of things, and though he longed to obey this summons which all the time he knew he could not resist, yet he feared it, with the awe that hangs about the unknown. Ever since that evening of June a month ago, when he had come into the lit tent where dinner was in progress on the lawn at Cookham, the call of the deep had been in his ears, very softly at first and very distantly, but gradually getting more insistent, till the whole air by now had become thick with it. All this month, too, another hidden river had been flowing within him—his worship, for it was no less than that, for the beautiful unknown mind which had spoken to him so often and so intimately across the footlights. This morning those two rivers had met and joined; they flowed down mingled together now, and the two voices were one. The river had its name too; it was River Edith.
And with that, swift as a stone falls through the divided air, he took the plunge that had been so long delayed, down from the surface of everyday happenings, from the comedies and the pleasant sunny ways of life, into the depths and well-springs of being, surrendering himself and all he was or had, and by the very completeness of surrender unfolding the banner of the conqueror.
All this, this leap into the infinite, was measured in the world of time but by one deep-drawn breath and drunk in with the full inspiration of the singer, head back so that song could come from the open throat, and next moment whispered below his breath, yet with each note round and shining as a pearl, came the first line of the Schumann song he had sung to her and Peggy on that evening by the riverside. But now he sang it alone, but he sang it to her; wherever she was, he was there too, his spirit enfolded and embraced hers. He sang no more than that first line; it was all there on the birthday of his life.
And then, swift as the plunge itself, which had been a spiritual thing, there rushed in (for the mind is mated with the spirit and acts but infinitesimally less quickly) the stubborn actuality, and he was heaved back into the confines of things probable and real, and the humility, the knowledge of utter unworthiness that always goes hand in hand with the winged irresistible god came to him. How had he ever allowed himself to imagine, though only for this one second or two, that she could ever look at him presenting himself in the capacity of lover? She would not laugh at him, for she was too kind for that, but how gently her heart would pity him, and how that pity would hurt! How kindly and with what real regret—for he could assert that they were friends, which is a big word—would she look at him out of those wonderful eyes; how softly, how tremulously perhaps for she was so kind, would her mouth say the inevitable word! How gently would she reject him! And then—somehow he felt sure she would not find it necessary to speak those unspeakable banalities about hoping that they would still remain great friends. Her wisdom would do better than that. Yet what could it do? She would know.
But love never acquiesces long in that sort of surrender; its true surrender is the surrender he had felt before, when above his head as he gave up his sword floated the scarlet and gold of the triumphant banner. Again, as he looked out across the water-meadows hung with the skeins and wisps of mist, to where a light or two still burned very small and distantly in the house among the trees, the imperiousness of love that admits no defeat, and in thought breaks any obstacle or impossibility away as a heedless foot breaks away the gossamer webs that are woven in the dark between stems of meadow grass, invaded and occupied him. And, had he but known it, even then by a window the light of which had been that moment quenched there stood another also looking out into the velvet dusk of the night across those same meadows between them toward the house from which he looked. And, as she let the blind fall again over the open sash, she said below her breath that first line of song which he had whispered to the night and her.
The moon by now had risen and the shadow of the window-bars lay black on the blind she had drawn down. Outside the air was very still, but every now and then the little breeze that had stirred among the flowers in the garden at St. Olaf’s moved here also, and tapped with the wooden roller of the blind against the window-frame as the soft leaden-footed hours passed. But though she lay without closing her eyes until the dawn began to lift tired eyelids in the east, she was conscious of none of the tedium and fret that often goes with watchfulness. She had not the wish to sleep even, the desire for it was as remote from her as the power. She lay there thinking intently. She wanted first of all to find out and lay before herself as before the tribunal of her mind exactly what had happened.