“Yes.... Both of us what we dreamed to be. Neither of us what we dreamed to be.”
The week went. The last day came. They decided to go to New York together. They packed each his bag and sent it ahead to the station. They were free-footed under the last free morning.
The field was a gash of brilliance across the wooded forehead of day. The trees were very tall: their feet dwelt in dawn, their heads touched the noon. August—and David’s mother dead since May. The field was a gash of light in David’s mind....
He loved his mother. But his love remained at the depth where it began: one with his needs when he was an infant and she nursed him, a child bruised against the world and she consoled him. She was gone: but the glow of her motherhood still warmed through his life. Like his love, his loss was mute. He did not know how deeply he loved, he did not know how deeply he had lost his mother.
He wound up his affairs—or rather he watched while the benign agency of his uncle wound them up for him. He pocketed a fabulous mass of bills. Almost in the spirit of a wanderer after Beauty he came away.
The spirit of one who believes in the presence of Peace like the running on of the wind, like the running on of a river, like the spreading of flowers upon the fields of the world.
He had come to this lake, gemmed in green purpling hills. His calm came with him. He listened to neighbors’ talk, he wondered pleasantly before the world. All of it was a thing outside. He saw himself at work in a repair shop, at table with the gentle woman whose breath was a well of feeling. He lived in a dream that was real and was not yet over.
Sudden this man! Walking beside him now, upon the gash of the world, his new experience was a hand that touched him—brushed back the hair from his sleepy eyes—pressed fever to his brow—grasped his throat so it was hard to breathe—struck him!
David found he walked in a hurting wonder: the woods were part of this wonder: the man beside him was part of a whirling wonder. He was like a slumberous water that the wind struck sudden from all sides. The waves of his feelings were up and down. His deep self—his past—rose through the lashed fissures of his mood. He knew that his old life was dead and how he loved it: that his new life was being born and how he feared it! At the day’s close the night: at that day’s close the City!
The day was gleaming glad but David walked in storm.