I looked at my watch, and found that it was after ten o’clock, but how long I had been standing at the gate, I had no idea; whether an hour or ten minutes. I had been dreaming again, lost in imaginative delights; until the reminder of this new urgency had brought me back to a reality that demanded from me an energy of participation and of initiative.
I wished that Anne would come—and by way of helping her should she, indeed, have come out to look for me, I strolled back to the Farm, and then round to the front of the house.
The windows of the sitting-room had been closed but the blinds were not drawn. The lamp had been lit and splayed weak fans of yellow light on to the gravel, and the flower-beds of the grass plot. The path of each beam was picked out from the diffused radiance of the moonlight, by the dancing figures of the moths that gathered and fluttered across the prisms of these enchanted rays. But I did not approach the windows. In the stillness of the night I could hear Anne’s clear musical voice. She was still there in the sitting-room, still soothing and persuading her father. Her actual words were indistinguishable, but the modulations of her tone seemed to convey the sense of her speech, as a melody may convey the ideas of form and colour.
I returned to my vigil at the gate and to thoughts of Anne—to romantic thoughts of worship and service; of becoming worthy of her regard; of immense faithfulness to her image when confronted with the most provocative temptations; to thoughts of self-sacrifice and bravado, of humility and boasting; of some transcending glorification of myself that should make me worthy of her love.
I was arrested in the midst of my ecstatic sentimentalism by the sight of the Hall, the lights of which were distantly visible through the trees. The path by the wood was not the direct line from the Hall to the Farm; the sanctities of the Park were not violated by any public right of way. The sight of the place pulled me up, because I was suddenly pierced by the reflection that perhaps old Jervaise had thus postured to win the esteem of his daughter’s governess. He, it is true, had had dignity and prestige on his side, but surely he must have condescended to win her. Had he, too, dreamed dreams of sacrifice at the height of his passion? Had he alternately grovelled and strutted to attract the admiration of his lady? I found the reflection markedly distasteful. I was sorry again, now, for the old man. He had suffered heavy penalties for his lapse. I remembered Mrs. Banks’s hint that his wife had adopted Brenda in the first place in order that he might have before him a constant reminder of his disgrace. I could believe that. It was just such a piece of chicane as I should expect from that timid hawk, Mrs. Jervaise. But while I pitied the man, I could not look upon his furtive gratifications of passion with anything but distaste.
No; if my love for Anne was to be worthy of so wonderful an object, I must not stupefy myself with these vapours of romance. The ideal held something finer than this, something that I could not define, but that conveyed the notion, however indeterminately, of equality. I thought of my fancy that we had “recognised” each other the night before. Surely that fancy contained the germ of the true understanding, of the conceptions of affinity and remembrance.
No tie of our present earth life could be weighed against that idea of a spirit love, enduring through the ages; a love transcending and immortal, repeating itself in ever ascending stages of rapture. The flesh was but a passing instrument of temporal expression, a gross medium through which the spirit could speak only in poor, inarticulate phrases of its magnificent recognition of an eternal bond. … Oh! I was soon high in the air again, riding my new Pegasus through the loftiest altitudes of lonely exaltation. I was a conqueror while I had the world to myself. But when at last I heard the rustle of a woman’s dress on the path behind me, I was nothing more than a shy, self-conscious product of the twentieth century, all too painfully aware of his physical shortcomings.
She came and stood beside me at the gate, without speaking; and my mind was so full of her, so intoxicated with the splendour of my imaginings, that I thought she must surely share my newfound certainty that we had met once more after an age of separation. I waited, trembling, for her to begin. I knew that any word of mine would inevitably precipitate the bathos of a civilised conversation. I was incapable of expressing my own thought, but I hoped that she, with her magic voice, might accomplish a miracle that was beyond my feeble powers. Indeed, I could imaginatively frame for her, speech that I could not, myself, deliver. I knew what I wanted her to say—or to imply. For it was hardly necessary for her to say anything. I was ready, wholly sympathetic and receptive. If she would but give me the least sign that she understood, I could respond, though I was so unable to give any sign myself.
I came down from my clouds with a feeling of bitter disappointment, a sense of waking from perfect dreams to the realisation of a hard, inimical world, when she said in a formal voice.