“Scarred, and torn, and pierced, denied, disfigured and defaced by human hands, she yet smiles, and waits.” So he said to himself. Truly Nature is justified of her children.
Flinging himself down upon the grass Sidney strove to find some gateway of escape from the awkwardness of his position, and gradually the accumulated nervousness of the last few days died away.
Nature’s beautiful breast seemed to pulsate visibly and audibly beneath him, and he grew calm.
And so he lay for some time, and then slowly but imperatively other thoughts grew and gathered in his heart. The great primitive Want—spontaneous as it flamed up in the heart of the first man, resistless as its co-equal, Time, pinioned with the impulses of ages, sped by the impetus of æons—rose within him, knitting together all his strengths, all his weaknesses, into one desire.
He rose to his feet; surely his very bodily stature was greater?
He looked about upon the hills with brotherly eyes; deep in their bosoms beneath the grass the old elemental fires still slept. They could sympathize with him.
“Vashti—Vashti,” he murmured. Out of his wildered musings there had grown the dream of the woman he loved, as the phœnix draws from out the ashes.
He looked again upon the village. Slowly, slowly winding along its ways, he saw a black stream of people and slow-stepping horses—Len Simpson’s last journey through the familiar little streets. A chill shuddered through Sidney’s veins. He had looked athwart the smiling champaigns of Love’s country, and sullying its fairness he saw the black lake of mourners from which the sombre stream was flowing to the churchyard—saw it slowly gather there as the waters of a lake in a new basin. Here and there it had left stains along its course, as incurious or hurried units in the procession deflected towards their homes without waiting for the final solemnities.
It wrung Sidney’s heart to think she was there in the gloom, whilst he, absorbed in selfish introspection, was aloof in the glory of the Sun. He must go down to her at once.
How little his generous soul dreamed that there was painful symbolism in that descent of his! That he poised upon the pinnacles, whilst she grovelled in the dust of her own desires, he never imagined. Indeed throughout all his life a merciful veil hung between these two, and hid the real Vashti from his loving eyes.