As a man of leisure, Gabriel Strong had suffered in strength from the enervation of parental patronage. Like many men of considerable mental culture, he was content to endure the small tryannies of life, not troubling to assert his individuality against people by whom he was misunderstood. Silence is the best harness to baffle fools. He was free in his own world of thought, a serf in the domain of domestic trifles. He was amiable, somewhat indolent, a detester of argument. His father’s platitudes bored but did not rouse him. He was sleepily indifferent to trivial criticism. Consequently he had earned in the domestic circle a reputation for docility which was undeserved. The parental prejudices were beneath his horizon. He ignored them by being reservedly amiable. It was not in his nature to quarrel about the number of pips in an orange.
A two hours’ pilgrimage, and the cliffs rose solemn and stupendous above the azured silver of the sea. Sinuously strong the waves rolled with lambent thunder upon the black bosoms of the rocks. Gulls winged pearl-bright over the blue. Arcs of smooth greensward cut the heavens. A solemn noise, like the superstitious murmurs of a world, rose with a multitudinous monotony from the strand.
Gabriel, weary yet exultant, stretched himself on a hillock that verged the cliff. To the east dense banks of gorse were bursting into flame. To the west a deep indenture in the rocks crescented a bay whose threshold of foam and pavement of gilded sand stretched solemn under the adamantine shadows of the cliffs. Bulwarked by great buttresses of stone, a small lagoon lay sheltered from the waves. Amber, purple, and green, it glimmered in the manifold lights and shadows of the place. At flood the sea poured strife into its calm; at ebb, a fathom deep, it took its temper from the sky.
Gabriel Strong lay and stared at the clouds in a stupor of sensuous delight. The sun beat upon him warm and beneficent, a guerdon of gold. The sea sang like a Norse giant; the wind tossed the torches of the gorse upon the downs. Liberty seemed to tread the waves; her feet smote foam from the green, brilliant billows.
The heart of the man upon the cliff expanded in the sunshine; his soul awoke in the wind and pinioned through a more splendid atmosphere. He read lyrics, sang, shouted to the sea, saw gulls wheeling at the sound of his voice. Snatches of Shakespearian verse, stately and tender, moved in his brain. He could fancy Tristram’s sails rising out of the west or Spanish galleons ploughing solemn under the sun.
Possibly he had never comprehended to the full the prophetic pain of his own emotions. As yet he had suffered no bruising by the world; nor had he learned the ignominies that assail a generous instinct and sentiment too rich for barter. Sad are the revelations that meet the idealist in the Gehenna of actuality. Like Dante, he will often discover himself an exile wandering through the world with eyes fixed on a dream face cloistered in heaven.
Coincidences astonish us; we smite our breasts and call upon that mysterious genius named of men Providence. Gabriel, turning upon his elbow and resting his head on his palm, gazed absorbedly at the sea and sand clasped by the black crescent of the rocks. As from the illumined pages of a book, a poem in the flesh gleamed out to confront his philosophy.
The bay shone solitary as some inlet echoing to a primeval sea. Yet sudden from behind a giant bowlder stranded under the umbrage of the cliff a white figure came pillaring the yellow sand. With hair blowing over bosom, stringing the breeze with golden scourges, a girl ran towards the margin of the lagoon. Her limbs gleamed snowy in the sun. The waters received her with a gush of foam, and a myriad dimples tonguing diamond-like over the pool. White arms glimmered amid a wheel of streaming hair. The man on the cliff crouched low and crimsoned like one caught in the act of theft.
Again, bewildered as a mortal who had seen Diana bathing in some forest mere, he watched the girl rise pure and radiant from the waters. He saw her wring the salt sea from her streaming hair, her large, fair face turned wistfully towards the south. He saw all this, conceived great awe and sudden sanctity of soul. And when the rocks had hidden her from sight, he arose and turned homeward towards Saltire and the woods, a strange melancholy, an indefinite sadness burdening his being.