CHAPTER XI

During the morning my father kept me working in the garden where he was erecting a kind of arch of trellis-work above the gate, but after our early dinner I went up to Derryaghy. Ever since I had awakened, my mind had been filled with the letter I had written, and with guesses as to how it would affect Katherine. I hurried along, for our dinner was at two, while their lunch was at one, and I had made no appointment, so that when I reached the house, and found they were all gone out, I was not greatly surprised. Katherine and Gerald had gone out riding; they would be back for tea. I left a message to say I would call some time in the evening and went upstairs to choose a book. In the silent library the faint sound of my feet on the thick carpet made little more noise than the rustle of a ghost, and when I had found what I wanted I paused with the book unopened in my hand. Through the window I could look out into the afternoon garden, sunlit and mellow, but in the house itself the silence of those upper rooms struck me, as always, with a suggestion of a faint, bygone life, of spiritual presences, unseen, yet watching and listening. I walked slowly down the passage, looking at the portraits, and trying to picture the lives of those who had sat for them. Were they aware of my scrutiny, of my curiosity, possibly indiscreet? did I disturb the dust of the past, did they welcome or, perchance, resent my intrusion into that delicate dream-life that had fallen upon them? I loved to amuse myself with such fancies, idle enough, not to be communicated to others. The air seemed heavy with a kind of still, intense reverie, through which there came the vibration of a hidden mysterious life. Were I the true son of the house, I told myself, a sign of recognition might have been given to me; but I was a stranger, an intruder, and my robuster, noisier presence could but disturb their ethereal existence. There was something almost vulgar in being physically alive among that shadowy company. I longed to pass the threshold of their world and learn its secrets. Perhaps if I were really to love that dark, sweet lady, Prudence Carroll, to declare my love, to kiss her painted lips, I might be admitted to it. Would she be jealous when I left her? To love a dream, a memory, that was very possible; but to be faithful to it? Through the door I had left ajar a golden stream of sunlight, filled with floating specks of dust, swam across the shadowed passage, and just touched the flowers in her hand. But my ghosts had never been afraid of sunlight: they were not afraid to walk in the deserted garden or to pass me on the stairs or in the hall. Often I had felt them to be there, and some day, I knew, I should see them. With this thought there came to me a desire to revisit their own garden, a walled place of dark green graves, where they wandered undisturbed.

I went out, forgetting after all my book, and took a short cut across the fields and down a disused, mossy lane, purple with tall foxgloves, and sleepy with droning bees, which brought me out abruptly at the old church. Service was still held here, and as I came up I saw the door was open. I went inside, and an old woman who was dusting the pews wished me good-day. I talked to her for a few minutes and then began to wander idly about, trying my Latin on the inscriptions, peeping behind doors and through windows. A church on a week-day was for me quite a different thing from a church on a Sunday. Its quiet appealed to me, a sort of homely, gentle charm that was at once dissipated by the entrance of a congregation. I went into the pulpit and imagined myself preaching, while the old woman, Margaret Beattie, leaned on the handle of her broom and watched me.

“You’d make the queer fine curate, Master Peter,” she said, evidently seeing in this exhibition the betrayal of a vocation.

“They’ll never get me, Margaret,” I replied. “The Church is not what it was. I believe you are an old witch,” I went on, for she was half-deaf, “and when you have done your mischief here, you will ride away on that broomstick.”

I went out into the sunshine and pottered about among the graves. All were old, for nobody was ever buried here now. Most of the head-stones were stained green with age and weather, and the lettering was so worn that it was often necessary to peer close to read a name or a date. I lingered in the corner where lay the bones of some of those fine ladies and gentlemen whose pictures I had been looking at. Well, it was a pleasant place....

Margaret came out, locking the door after her. I heard her shambling feet on the gravel, followed by the clanging of the iron gate that left me to myself. Had my ghosts preceded me here, or did they still linger in the upper rooms at Derryaghy? I threaded my way among the graves to the low, sun-warmed wall, all golden and green and grey with velvet moss on weathered stone. Before me lay the broad open country I must cross to go home, rich and dark in the late afternoon light. The gleam of water, of pool and stream, shone palely amid long grass and darker gorse bushes: and beyond were trees, black and soft against the western sky, as if rubbed in by a dusky thumb. Distant hills stood out from the grey clouds and the softer, deeper background of luminous sky. Everything shimmered and gleamed in a kind of romantic richness and divine softness that I was to see later in dreamy landscapes by Perugino. And over all was a great sea of light and sky――grey, faint green, and deeper, warmer yellow, with clear silver where the water lay.

I turned from it and sat down on the wall, facing the churchyard. It was a quiet spot, designed for contemplation. The faint wind in the trees was like a low pleasant tune, and there was nothing melancholy in its charm. To me it had a kind of happy beauty which I loved. I had fallen into a mood when I seemed close to my dreamland. It lay beyond an enchanted sea, whose shore was that bright cloud there. I could hear the low, continuous sound of surf breaking on the pale glistening sand; I could see deep lagoons, and sleepy rivers winding slowly down through green lawns and meadowlands. I tried to draw nearer, but it swam away from me, leaving only a broken cloud, and beyond that the endless sky. Had it already been, or was it still to come? Was all this world, apparently so solid under my feet, but my dream, and should I presently awaken to that other? I had a sudden temptation to risk everything: the fascination of death stole over me, quickening my curiosity to know what lay beyond. Only _should_ I know? Death might not really solve anything! If I tried to force an entrance I might lose my only chance of finding one. A large, splendid butterfly, a red admiral, flitted over the wall and perched on one of the grave-stones, spreading his gorgeous wings, black and crimson, flat against the grey, sun-baked stone. He remained there with the stillness of a painted thing, drinking in the heat, knowing nothing save that.

The afternoon was waning. The sun had crept down the sky till he was almost hidden, and the violet shadows were blurred on the tangled grass. Again one of those strange, breathless silences seemed to wash up as from some depth of Time, and I listened――listened for a sign, a word, for in the stillness the faintest whisper would have reached me. What were they, these strange pauses in life, in everything――these feelings of suspense, of expectation? A kind of ineffable happiness and peace descended upon me. A delicate spirit of beauty seemed to be wandering through the unmown grass, which bent beneath its feet, wandering under the broad-leaved trees, beside the grey old church. Surely there was something of which all this was only the reflection! I could feel it; I knew it. What did it mean? what was I waiting for? what was it I desired? I thought of my soul as a little candle-flame, hovering at my lips, ready to take flight. If I blew it from me it might flicker away over the grass, down into the graves, up into the air, a tiny tongue of flame, no bigger than a piece of thistledown. I thought of the old, silent, listening house, darkening now to twilight, mysterious, haunted, with its closed doors and brown portraits: a dream-thing that, too, and all the ghosts who lived there.