CHAPTER X

I stayed in the house all the evening, but I could not read, and so I sat down to write to Katherine. I wrote for more than an hour, though I was very doubtful whether, in the end, I should post my letter. It was the first time in my life I had ever written to anybody. Of course I cannot remember now what I said: I can remember the sense of it, or the nonsense, possibly, but not how I expressed it. Very badly, I suppose, for I tore my first attempt up, and began another, over which I must have spent an even longer time, since, to finish it, I was obliged to get up and light the lamp. When I went out to the post it was quite dark, and immediately after I had dropped my letter in the box I had a strong desire to get it back again. Why had I been in such a hurry? I should have kept it till morning. Then, as I pictured Katherine reading it, a thrill of pleasure swept through my timidity.

I did not go home, but strolled, instead, over the golf-links in the direction of the sea. At such an hour they were absolutely deserted, and the pale sand-hills, stretching away in the moonlight and beside a dark waste of water, wore an unfamiliar, a slightly weird aspect, suggestive of some desolate lunar landscape. I wandered on, utterly oblivious to time, till I found a comfortable spot between two of these hills, on a gentle slope that was almost like a couch. I was filled with a passionate sense of life, and lying there, with the long thin sapless grass about me and above me, and the soft white powdery sand beneath, I could look out over the sea, and feel myself perfectly alone. The water was a dark mass under the moon, darker than the beach, darker than the sky, but not so dark as the Mourne Mountains, which rose away on my left in smooth, bold, black curves.

There was no wind. Down in the hollow where I lay I was as sheltered as I should have been in bed. The night was washed through with the soft sound of the waves as they splashed in a long curving line on the flat strand that stretched on round to Dundrum, three miles away. Moths hovered above me with a beating of pale delicate wings; and all around, like a vast background for the sound of the sea, was the deep, rich, summer silence of the slumbering world, a silence of unending music, as though the great, living earth were breathing softly in its sleep. I lay on my back, and above me was the vast, deep vault of the sky, full of a floating darkness, in which the white moon hovered like a ghost. And I lay there in luxurious enjoyment of the night, and of the life that was running through my own body. It seemed to me at that moment as if my spirit were no longer merely passively receptive of what was borne in upon it, but that it had actually taken wing, had grown lighter, more volatile, were flowing out through the surrounding atmosphere, through the sky and the sea, were moving with the movement of the water. The earth beneath me was living and breathing, and, obedient to some obscure prompting of my body, I turned round and pressed my mouth against the dry grass, closer and closer, in a long silent embrace.

It was very well there was no one to observe this exhibition of primitive and eternal instinct. I felt a passionate happiness and excitement. My head was bare, the salt sharp smell of the sea seemed to have set all my nerves tingling, and I unfastened my shirt that my breast might be bare also. All the past had slipped from me, and I lived in this moment, squeezing out its ecstasy to the last drop, as I might the juice of some ripe fruit. It seemed to me that I was on the brink of finding something for which all my previous existence had been but one long preparation and search. I was fumbling at the door of an enchanted garden: in a moment it would swing open: already the perfume of unknown flowers and fruits was in my nostrils. My feeling was deep and pure and clear as a forest pool. In my mind I went over the story of Shakespeare’s “Venus and Adonis.” I thought of the shepherd-boy Endymion. I imagined myself Endymion, as I lay there half naked in the moonlight. My eyes dimmed and the blood raced through my veins; it was as if the heart of the summer had suddenly opened out, like a gorgeous flower, and brought me some strange rapture....

* * * * *

When I awakened to more commonplace things I knew that it was very late indeed. I wondered what had possessed me, and what story I should tell my father standing there in the hall, holding up a candle, looking at me before he turned round to fasten the chain. I raced home to the fulfilment of this vision, but it was already past midnight, and my father would not listen to my excuses. He was very angry indeed, but his anger could not come between me and my happiness. I listened to it in a kind of dream, and as soon as a pause came, slipped away from it and on upstairs. In the dark, as I undressed, the delicate scent of heather still clinging to my clothes filled the small bedroom, and seemed to bring the whole day back to me from the beginning. Comfortably between the cool sheets I went over every incident of it, while the scent of heather still floated about me; and now I had acquired an extraordinary bravery; I gave utterance to every thought arising in my mind; the embrace which had been so impossible was perfectly easy. One by one exquisite pictures drifted in through the windows of my closed eyes; one by one they opened out before me, like flowers, full of delicious sweetness, and in the midst of them I fell asleep.

But my sleep was only a completer realization of my waking thoughts. I was again with Katherine, and again we were alone on the mountain-side. We were coming home and I was a little behind her, when she stooped to gather a handful of heather. But instead of fastening it into her dress she turned and flung it at me, and then ran on down the hill. I followed quickly, and all at once she stopped running and we stood there, hot and panting and laughing. Then she impulsively lifted her face, and I kissed her. I held her close to me and kissed her again and again.... And the scent of heather floated about my bed, the heather of reality mingling with the heather of my dream.