which shows how the editor again visits
Jessica in the country, and how love
is buffeted between philosophy
and religion.
XXXVII
PHILIP TO JESSICA
WRITTEN ON RETURNING FROM HIS VISIT TO MORNINGTOWN
Here I am back in my own room, in this solitude of books; and how different is this home-coming from that other when I brought with me only bitterness and despair!
Shall I tell you, sweetheart, some of the things I learned during my three days in Morningtown? First of all, I discovered that you are clothed with wonderful beauty. In a dim way I knew this before, but the full mystery of your loveliness was not revealed to me until this third time. Can it be that love has transformed you a little and added grace to grace, or is it only my vision that has been purged of its earthly dulness? I could love a homely woman whose spirit was fair, but to love one who is altogether beautiful, in whose perfect grace I can find no spot or blemish—that is the miracle of my blessedness. There was a strange light in your eyes that haunts me yet. Such a light I have seen on a lonely pool when the evening sunlight slanted upon it from over the brown hills of autumn, but nowhere else. My soul would bathe in that pure water and be baptised into the new faith.
For my faith, of which I boasted so valiantly, has changed since I have seen you. Faith, I had thought, was a form of insight into the illusion of earthly things, of transient joys and fears. And always a little dread would creep into my heart lest love, too, should prove to be such an illusion, the last great deception of all, binding the bewildered soul in a web of phantom desires. So I still felt as I walked with you that first evening out into the circle of your trees. And there, dear Jessica, in the waiting silence and the grey shadows of that seclusion I put my arms about you and would have drawn you to my heart. Ah, shall I not remember the wild withdrawing of your eyes as I stooped over your face! And then with a cry of defiance and one swift bound, you tore yourself loose from me and ran like a frightened dryad deeper into the forest. That was a mad chase, and forever and forever I shall see your lithe form darting on before me through the mingled shadow and light. And when at last I caught you and held you fast, shall I not remember how you panted and fluttered against me like a bird in the first terror of captivity! And then, suddenly, you were still, and looked up into my face, and in your eyes I beheld the wonder of a strange mystery which no words can name. Only I knew that my dread was forever at end. It was for a second—nay, an eternity, I think—as if we two were rapt out of the world, out of ourselves, into some infinite abysm of life. It was as if the splendour of the apocalypse broke upon us, and poured upon our eyes the ineffable whiteness of heaven. I knew in that instant that love is not an illusion, but the one reality, the one power that dispels illusion, the very essence of faith. I shuddered when the vision passed; but its memory shall never fade. So much I learned on that day.