Chapter VII

AGAIN the morning star stood high over the Hertfordshire hills, and the apse-window glimmered over the garden, as Marion, again in her cloak and hood, came stepping out to see the dawn of the day that was to decide the whole of her future. Max was coming today: she had had a wire from him last night.

It was curious how this habit of awaking early had grown upon her. It had begun in those torturing days that had followed her disaster: she had lain awake, she had tossed to and fro; she had seen misery in every facet of life: then at last she had fallen asleep again, and awakened late, heavy and depressed. Now she awoke quietly, as if a nurse's hand had been put gently on her arm, into tranquillity. Usually she lay, thinking, but without perturbation; three or four times lately, when she heard the first calling of the birds she slipped out of the house, walked awhile in the garden, and presently returned.

For she was beginning to understand what an amazingly strange place a garden, or even the whole world, can be, when the influence of humanity is withdrawn. During the day it is all but impossible to find a spot, even in the deepest woods, that is not impregnated with man. Sometimes on a moor — on the roof of the world — she remembered — such a place could be found: sometimes in the heart of a wood, where a busy stream talks to itself. Yet at night, and, above all, when night begins to yield to the dawn, that living loneliness can be found anywhere — even in the heart of a sleeping town. But, for her, the garden was enough.

This morning she came out just as the dawn-breeze was beginning to ruffle the leaves. It came and went by long sighs, as she walked up and down. First it rose in the heatjs of the tall limes that fringed the church on one side and the hedge on the other, like the sound of a thrush rising hi the most delicate crescendo that can be conceived. Ten thousand light leaves aloft shivered a little and whispered, as that soft invisible hand went over them. Then, perhaps three or four times there was no more: it died as it had risen. But the next time it continued: it sank lower and lower till the whole garden was astir and the ivy itself shook in the breath of it. Then, again, silence fell.

Meanwhile the light was broadening.

The sky was by now of an opaque light blue, tinged with green: it was hard to conceive of the Morning Star except as a clear jewel set in enamel. But, so far the light could draw only subdued tints from the colours of earth. The very flowers were subnormal in colour; the yews with all their blackness glowed as through a very fine grey veil: the grass was of the tone of the very veil itself. The garden had that elusive quality of a garden remembered from a dream. A very light tinge of dew showed on the grass, bristling a little. The atmosphere, for all its paleness, was a clear illuminant: every blade of grass seemed detached and single, sprouting upwards from amongst the tiny black coils of earth thrown by a myriad worms: the few leaves, fallen since last night, were already upright and rigid in the beginning of their journey underground. And, over all this tinted sketch of line and colour, breathed an air of delicious and indescribable freshness that tasted like spring water in the lips and throat, and quickened every sense.

It is strange, and yet evident, that the world has as many messages as there are those to whom these are sent. To the mourner a garden at dawn is a place of desolation; to the child, a terrifyingly delightful treasure-house of adventure; to the lover it is a secret chamber where Love walks. It was as this secret chamber to Marion.

For there had returned to her, not her past, but all that had given keenness to her past, expanding now into an unknown future. First, there had come back to her that which is the hardest of all experiences to describe — a consciousness of a Personality that is to other personalities as is the sun to the stars — a Personality difficult to grasp, even inconceivable it would appear to some natures, not because it is sub-real but super-real. (That, at least, is the claim that is made.) As to the Name of this Personality, there is a variety of opinions in the religious world: for Marion there was no question that the lamp seen through the church-window indicated His Presence beneath it in one manner, as the Morning Star was a symbol of His Presence in another manner in the world of Nature. Such a belief may appear foolishness to some who do not share it: a serious doubt concerning it would have appeared foolishness to Marion.

She dated the beginning of this revived experience to her terror in the dark church on the night after Maggie's funeral; for round every great Presence, as it approaches, hangs a veil of fear. It was an air to which she had grown unaccustomed; she had walked on lower levels and the high atmosphere caused her blood to tingle and her breath to fail. Yet it was an air which she had once known, so it was not all strange, and she quickly found herself again. Then had come her first walk in the early dawn: and there again she had penetrated a little deeper, finding that there is no such thing as loneliness to the soul that is beginning to understand what it is. Then, one after the other, had come two exterior helps — first the re-reading of her own letters, and the recovery, therefore, to some extent of her earlier point of view; and then that which was no less than a revelation — the reading of Maggie's diary.

Now this diary was not in the least remarkable in itself. Some of the impulsive irresolution that character-ised Maggie in action, characterised her also in her self-communing. There were absurd details about the price of coffee; queries as to whether a glazed eye in a parrot signified any latent disease; emphatic reminders to herself not to forget certain matters which, judging from later entries, had been forgotten after all. There was all this kind of thing in it; but there was a great deal besides; and, chief among all the rest, was the expression of a passionate love for Marion herself, and a no less passionate gratitude for the extraordinary blessing which, apparently, she considered the friendship of Marion to be. It was this that had flung open doors to the girl as she read. She had known, indeed, that Maggie had loved her; but then Maggie loved anything and everybody which she did not happen to hate: the cottage at Standing, Mrs. Grant, the smell of a garden, Rhadamanthus, the darkness of a church, the priesthood generally — the greater part, in fact, of both nature and grace — these things had appeared to Marion to occupy the same kind of place in Maggie's affections: there had seemed no distances or relative values; and it had been this opinion that had caused the girl to think the elder woman a little superficial, in spite of her lovableness. She had thought that Maggie had loved her as she loved everything else.

But, with the reading of the diary, the whole thing had fallen into perspective: there appeared two things, and only two, that stood out as supreme — God and Marion....

Little by little then — or, rather, in great waves the tide had come back, flooding the girl's soul, as the sea rushes back over level sands. After all, it had not been long away: the ebb had begun in Munich, perhaps two years ago, and had gone out with the swiftness that promised as swift a return. She had thirsted, she knew now, yet she had not known how great had been that thirst, since the violent excitements of the stage had served to distract her. Now and again, as she had glanced at her soul, she had seen the parched levels and the unfruitful dry ness; and she had turned away again to the joy of her art. Then her art had failed her, and, all but unknown to herself, she had yearned again for refreshment. When it came, therefore, she drank it.

One unsolved problem, and one only remained; and it's name was Max. It was unsolved; for, on the one side she loved him — loved him passionately, indeed: and, in the other, he was not yet fitted into her new scheme. To continue the metaphor, he stood up in the flowing tide, and she could not tell whether he would be submerged, or himself swept along with it. Yet, so great was her assurance that all would be well, she was content to wait until she saw him. She must tell him what had come back to her; she must try to put into words this extraordinary experience; she even smiled a little as she contemplated the certain bewilderment with which he would receive it.

Ah! how puzzled he would be! How singularly incompatible, superficially, that is to say, appeared the two visions — Max in his honest breeziness, Max as she had first been drawn to him upon the Scotch moors, Max even listening to Lohengrin and thinking that he really was beginning to understand it — and this new astounding world that was opening to her, in which emptiness is crammed with life and loneliness with company! At present she could not conceive how she would express it. Yet it must be expressed....

Ill

The dawn was brightening now; and the garden began to take on itself something of that air and scale of tints which a garden shows for about five minutes immediately after sunset. The colours were beginning to differentiate themselves. The spectator began to consider how evidently green the lawn was: how evidently pink the phlox; how brightly yellow the small sunflowers. A blackbird skipped over the yews and paused on the lawn, regarding this strange visitor with his head on one side; a violent scolding of sparrows from beneath the eaves of the cottage began to hint that peace could not be expected to be eternal: a belated cock crew far away, and a chorus of sarcastic answers came back, ending with the shrill thin cry of that cock who, on such occasions, always answers across miles of sunlit air and closes the discussion.

The girl watched and listened with a distracted kind of delight, appreciating every detail: yet following her own train of thought; and that train of thought, in these moments, happened to be dealing with Lohengrin. It was her consideration of Max that had put it into her head.

Certainly the parallel was not perfect; but it seemed to her that she could make it fit.

Here indeed was an Elsa with the world gathering round her in storm, and not a friend to stand by her, unless her knight should come again, that knight who had already come, in fact, but in homespun, not in shining armour. All else had left her; she had not a friend in the world so far as she knew, since Maggie was dead; even her art had left her at last. These little garden-hedges and the walls of the tiny cottage were the boundaries of her world, unless her knight should enlarge them for her. There was not one living being, except Max, to whom she could open all her heart. She had written to old Sir Robert Mainwaring, in a reaction she had had last week — just a friendly, impersonal little note which, while it contained not one word of self-pity, was one cry for compassion, that her loneliness might be broken. He had not even answered; and she understood why well enough: he meant to tell her by his silence, no doubt ever so kindly, that she must not demand interest unless she could make herself interesting. If, henceforth, she were to remain within her garden and house, the world would not know it. She had risen like a meteor, and, like a meteor, sunk again into darkness: she was already of the past; and yet, two months ago she had sung at Covent Garden. She had had letters, indeed, of condolence; but there was not one to which her whole heart answered: one had impressed her with its pathos; another with its courtesy; a third with its hopeless want of comprehension: but there was not one that even tempted her with a desire to answer with her own confidence. She was just alone — except for her Lohengrin; and to that Lohengrin she was bound now to put the question on which all must depend. Indeed she was to ask his name to-day — (he would come, not in a swan-boat but by the four-seven train) — she was to ask him, that is-, to disclose what he really was. And what when she had asked it?

Then, on a sudden, the inevitable thought came to her.

She had slipped off her shoes by now, and was walking barefoot over the delicious dew-laden grass, when the rim of the sun looked between the windmills and struck her long pale shadow into life before her as she walked. She turned and faced the sun, smiling; and saw how the world was alight. Where, before, had hung a veil of greyness on bush and grass, now sparkled a veil set with ten thousand diamonds: where, before, red blossoms had glowed like embers, now they burned like flames; where the dark foliage of yew and ivy had appeared in blots of sombre colour, now living trees stood in their place and living wreaths writhed up the wall. With a chatter of joy the blackbird skimmed back over the churchyard wall; and a couple of finches began their sweet quarrelling in a high elm. The world had come back to life; and with it had come a sudden perception.

With one part of her being she desired Max so furiously that her heart shook; there pierced her with swift joy the knowledge that it was to-day indeed that she would see him, before that steady sun had moved across the cloudless heavens and gone down again behind her little house. He would come through that little house into this very garden where she walked; she would see him with that anxious smile coming across the grass to where she would await him: they would talk together again in that very place where they had talked so short a while before, in terms of time, such ages before in terms of experience. Yes: Maggie and Guy had gone to see the church: she and Max had remained here.

Yet she perceived now that there was some new chamber in her being where Max, at any rate, had not yet penetrated, and which yet was not unoccupied — a chamber whose existence she had indeed suspected in those old school-girl days of devotion and sentiment, round whose door she had hung wistfully, yet into whose heart she had never wholly come. And now the door was opening; or, at least, she knew it was- no longer locked. There it was: she knew it now; and that she had found her way to it through sorrow; and that the bitter-sweet taste of loneliness had been the first sign of her approach to it. It was not until first her art and then her friend had been taken from her that she had cared even to search for it; and, behold! it had been here all the while.

And now the day was come on which all must depend. By the time that glorious sun had set, the question would have been answered. She would show the door of her new home to her lover and invite him in, for he alone had a right to enter there. She would tell him what dwelt within and beg him to share it with her. And, if he understood, and entered, then even this world would have no more to give her. And, if not

She stood with her eyes half-closed, and in them her tears were gathering. Then she felt a soft body rubbing against her ankle; and her tears fell quickly as she stooped, caught up the little cat and kissed him. He was very dishevelled after a night out; but she did not mind that.

" Mr. Merival will be here to tea," said Marion nearly six hours later, as she went in to interview Mrs. Grant. " I want Charlie to drive in and meet him by the four-seven. He may possibly stay and dine: I don't know yet. Anything will do. And I shall want Charlie to drive him back."

" Yes, Miss."

" Will you tell Jenny to bring tea out into the garden at half-past four, just before Mr. Merival arrives?"

" Yes, Miss."

" Then I think that's everything for to-day," said Marion. She hesitated. " Oh! no; there's one more thing. Please keep Maximilian in the kitchen all the time that Mr. Merival's here."