“I walked away, and after a while turned to go back to her. We had been quarrelling, at least I had made my pitiable remarks, just where we are standing now. But when I returned she had gone. An insane conceit made me want to hurt her. I wanted to break her spirit—to make her believe in me first: then I would try to alter my views. Already I could see the truth of her remarks. I brooded, and my vitality was sapped. My pride, or conceit, faltered. Then, when I determined to crave her pity, I found she had gone away to Devon with her father. I wrote a bitter letter to her and left my home. I never wrote again to Louise, nor did she write to me. Not for a year. Then she wrote to me. And I came back. I was already a changed man. Her letter was short, and in it she said that she wished and prayed for my happiness. I came back humbly to see her——”
He put a shaky hand up to his forehead, wet with moisture. His anguish was unbearable. I looked away to the yellow houses with their blue-gray roofs of slate; another tram passed in the High Street.
“She had died,” he muttered. “Little sweet Louise had pined away and become ill. One day she got wet through and developed rapid consumption. She was only eighteen—a child. They said it was consumption, but I knew better. I killed her. I, the self-flaunted idealist, my eyes brimming for humanity, had neglected every one around me. I only realised it then. She had known it all the while, because love was a far holier and greater thing to her than it was to me. I thought because I had wanted to pour out my heart’s blood at her feet that therefore my love was not selfish, but real, divine! Ah, what did I know about love! I went to the churchyard and saw the mounded grave with a simple stone at the head, and it seemed to me that she was near, wearing the print frock and standing among the buttercups that reflected a gold vapour about her, her eyes dark with a shadow. The maiden eyes, the eyes soft with love, and yet so sad, regarded me, and so sharp was the impression of her standing there that I could hear her pleading, ‘Julien, for my sake now, Julien!’ In the churchyard I stood alone, looking at her, while in an orchard near the blossom was shaken by the fluttering of goldfinches. Spring was in the hearts of the wild birds I loved, but my heart was dead. What was there left? To recreate that love and cruelty, and write out of my sorrow and folly! Greater than all written art is life and happiness: a simple living with a beloved and the joy of children’s young voices. By the grassy mound I stayed with the shadows. My heart was broken, the more irretrievably because I had broken it myself. Remorse, remorse!”
Memory ceased. Again the dry whisper of the leaf overbore the wintry solitude and song-silence in that little wood in Whitefoot Lane, where the bark of the trees was stripped, and all undergrowth was trampled down. The green woodpeckers would laugh no more in spring: only a few poor wind-flowers and bluebells would tell of past loveliness. The pale visitant was gone, and with no sound of footfall.
The leaf spun insistently as the wind passed wearily onwards, and beside me the long green grasses held their drops of light-laden water, nor was there any mark as of feet having pressed there, nor any trail leading away.
With a vague mournfulness I turned and went along the miry path to the roadway, where a tattered fence gaped forlornly. The land would be sold, the trees cut down, and useful houses erected. Perhaps the spirit of the dead haunted that wilderness of torn branches and charred fire-circles, to find rest only where all was changed. Never again would I go back among those poor trees, where in the cruel days of youth sweet hopes had been crushed like a wood-anemone under careless and unknowing feet.
PROSERPINE’S MESSAGE
(Written during the spring-like days of October, 1921, when the prolonged drought had been broken by the rains following the equinoctial gales.)
Some happy goldfinches flew twittering to the loosened thistle-heads on the sward of the promontory. Their wings fluttered as they took the seeds; they were timorous of alighting on the down, such a soft couch it was, too; their lives were wild and restless. Soon the flock rose and went to other haunts. The brief visitation gave me time to observe the crimson faces, the yellow bars on the wings—they were gone, and I was alone with the spirit of the apple blossom and the blue sky. On the trees of the inland orchards the ungathered apples were ready to fall. Goldfinches always associate themselves in my mind with the May month, when their nests are in the apple trees, but it is only when summer is gone that the wild beauty of spring—apple bloom time—is yearned for. The goldfinches that now flocked to the headland for the thistledown brought with them a thought of blossom.
For Proserpine has returned—with a child-god in her arms. The nuts in the lane are ready for gathering, the blackberries are luscious, and the partridge coveys have been broken up many weeks. On the ledges of their precipice colony the gulls are no more, the swallows have followed the sun. Many times have I searched the flawless bell-flower of the sky for these ragtailed vagrants, but not even one is to be seen. I cannot understand it; my heart is heavy. Why have they gone so suddenly? The sun shines, and insects are plentiful. Usually the hosts foregather on the single telegraph wire that never ceases to hum between the sun-bleached posts in the sunken lane. This autumn there were no preparations for the great southerly flight. One night, in the quiet starlight, they disappeared, speeding down the silver stain of the Milky Way towards the big lantern star Fomalhaut. Did they flee the coming of the spring goddess? Other things have welcomed her. The lesser celandine flowers are in the hedge-banks, the sorrel is rising, the wild arum will shortly show its purple club in the green sheath, pink campion is blooming. Proserpine, the goddess of spring, has returned to see how her children are faring; and a little child-god is in her arms. With her, too, is the spirit of the apple blossom, symbolling felicity, whispered to me by those fairy heralds, the goldfinches; the loved swallows have not waited to see her. Again I wonder to myself if the penalty of meeting an Immortal is death. Dear swallows, already they brave much during their migrations—the storms, the waves, and the electric wires erected by a debased portion of humanity along their airlines.