CHAPTER XL

In the morning Tony’s familiar scratching at my door reminded me that I was home again, and this time for two long, idle months. I was very sleepy, but I struggled out of bed with half-open eyes, and let him in. As I closed the door again, I trod on one of his paws. He gave a sharp yelp, and then a great wagging of his tail to show that he knew it had been an accident. Jumping on to the bed he scrambled between the sheets, and I followed, taking what room he would give me. I lay trying to go to sleep, while he sprawled over me. Then when he had thoroughly wakened me up he went to sleep himself.

I lay listening to the sea and thinking of what I should do that day. I would bathe after breakfast; I would take Tony with me, which would mean bathing off the sand, for Tony could not dive, and had a foolish habit, when on the rocks, of trying to lap the sea up to the level he wanted it at. But I had forgotten my plastered head; bathing, I supposed, would be out of the question for at least a week. So, when breakfast was over, I stuffed a book into my jacket pocket, and strolled in the direction of Derryaghy woods. I had the long June day before me, and perfect freedom to do just as I pleased with it. The book I had chosen was “Twelfth Night,” the influence of Count Tolstoy, so far as I was concerned, having suffered an eclipse. I had read no second work by him, and the questionings stirred up by “Anna Karénine” had sunk quietly to sleep. Owen, a day or two ago, had got hold of “Katia,” and “The Kreutzer Sonata,” but I, I regret to say, had not a line of the master’s in my possession.

In truth, I was but a degenerate disciple, and moreover unfaithful. For Owen and I had sent the great man a letter for the New Year, protesting allegiance, and had actually received a reply, which, considering it had almost moved Owen to tears, I had allowed him to keep. He regarded it with the kind of veneration that, in earlier days, a devout pilgrim may have regarded some relic of a saint. I shouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he wore it, tied up in a little bag, somewhere beneath his clothes. Really it had been quite decent; though that a man of world-wide fame, who must have been besieged by communications of all kinds and from all sorts of persons, should have found time to understand and reply kindly to the epistle of a couple of youngsters, far away in a benighted island, I’m afraid did not strike me then as quite the wonderful thing it was. The letter, however, was not to me, and Owen, at all events, had found it wonderful enough. In spite of my share in the matter, the spirit of our enterprise had been Owen’s. The epistle we had concocted had expressed Owen, and Owen alone, and it was delightfully intelligent of the master to have seen behind its crudity something worth encouraging. He had actually asked us――that is Owen――to write again――not at once and under the immediate influence of his letter, but in a month or two. And Owen had written again. By that time I had had the sense to recognize that I was only a shadow in this matter, and to give him a free field. He had waited the full two months, which I, had I felt his enthusiasm, could never have done, and had then written the second letter. This letter I had insisted must be private. I had refused to take any part in its composition, or even to read it when it was finished, though Owen had told me all that was in it――a complete account of himself, of his father’s position, of his own acquirements and abilities, his prospects, his ideals, ending up with a petition for advice as to the direction his studies ought to take, and as to what career lay open to him. The reply to this effusion had not yet come or I should have heard of it, but I hadn’t the slightest doubt that when it did turn up Owen would follow its instructions minutely, down to the smallest particulars, even were that to entail the wearing of peas in his shoes. It was the sort of thing that was completely beyond me. I could not have borne to admit, even to myself, that anybody was so much my superior as all that. And then, very softly, at the bottom of my soul, I preferred “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to “Anna Karénine.” I not only preferred it, but I was sure it was a work of far finer genius. Of course I was always sure that the things I happened to prefer were far finer, but in this particular instance I have not altered my opinion.

* * * * *

As I wandered up into the woods, followed by the lagging Tony, I knew it was going to be a very hot day, though it was not nearly so hot at present as Tony pretended. I hunted about till I had found a pleasant place――where the rising ground formed a kind of natural couch, covered with golden moss and bracken, and where the sun at noon would not be too strong as it dropped down through thick green beech branches. I took my book from my pocket, but it was only to make myself more comfortable, not with any intention of reading. I lay there and let the green summer morning steal into my soul, staining my mind to its own deep cool colour, while Tony gnawed at the trunk of a fallen tree, stripping off the bark in sheets, till he was tired and hot, when he came over beside me and stretched himself on the bracken, with his red tongue hanging out and his eyes nearly closed. And I lay on in the enchanted morning, my hands under my head, gazing up through the flat, shady branches, and thinking “long, long thoughts.” Already I seemed to have cast from me, as a snake his old skin, the weight and grime of a year of town life; already I felt better, cleaner, felt the sap of my youth fresh and strong within me.

After an hour or two I opened my book and began to read:――

“If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. That strain again! it had a dying fall; O! it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour....”

I was lost in that world of poetry and music, of lingering melodies and songs, dreamy and happy and sad. Romance! romance! I felt it stirring in my blood, singing within me! This play of passion, where passion is never stormy, but a kind of dreaming of love, exactly suited my present mood. Love was the world I lived in, love was in the rustling of the beech-leaves, love was in the breaking of the invisible sea, love was even in the snores of Tony.

I closed the book, my mind filled with laughter and love and poetry. Beautiful figures glided before me through the sun-washed, leaf-green air――Viola in her boy’s clothes――Olivia――moving in an atmosphere of sensuous sweetness. I imagined myself a page, visiting Olivia in her palace; I imagined her falling in love with me; I began to weave a romance of my own, in which scenes from other romances lingered, the music of their words....

The sunlight splashed through the beech-leaves on to the green moss, and where it fell the green took a hue of gold. Green arcades opened out into the heart of the summer woods. Rarely came the note of a bird, but the woods were full of life; the flashing whites and grays of rabbits appeared on the clearing nearer the house; there were mysterious movements in the brushwood. I roused reluctant Tony and we went down to the stream. We were out in the broad sunshine here, and the rocks were quite hot. The dark green silky waterweed spread out, seeming to flow with the rapid, shallow water, and sleepy summer noon held me spell-bound. In the shadow of the rocks were deep pools, where the water looked almost black. Tony waded out into mid-stream and began to lap up the water. Then he lifted his head, his red, dripping tongue still hanging out, his dark, beautiful eyes half-closed, and looked at me while he panted. The woods on either side were full of green shadow and mystery. We walked home over soft turf and across a blazing field dotted with fly-tormented cows. Tony was too hot even to give them a passing bark. On the right the ground sloped down gently, forming a vast meadow, with scattered trees and flaming gorse-bushes; and beyond, under the deep blue sky, the great glorious sea danced and gleamed, blue also, with a long white line where the surf curled up over the flat, sun-drenched sand.

I felt lazy and contented, conscious only of the warmth of the sun and the beauty of this world, wrapped in a kind of sleepy happiness. In the afternoon I would go in search of some of my old friends; go out, perhaps, with Willie Breen in his boat, though as a rule boating in any form bored me to death. Trivial and bizarre thoughts passed through my mind. I wished the world was the way it is in old romances and fairy-tales. I was sure that this was the very day on which some wonderful thing would happen; when one might find a magic door leading into a strange world that was yet quite close at hand; for all my life long I had had the feeling that such a world was there.