Chapter 44

Peter and Miranda were looking out over the selfsame burning water into which she had lately dismissed him. Six to seven months had passed, and on the morning of that day they had quietly been married in London. Now they stood high upon the cliffs overhanging a small western bay.

It was early September, and the night was warm. The water was lightly wrinkled. It shimmered from the extreme height at which they viewed it, like beaten metal. The light rapidly died down, and already the lit rooms of a house were brighter than the sky. The house was beneath them, alone upon the side of a steep hill, its windows wide to the sea.

Peter was alone with Miranda for the first time that day. Hardly a week ago he had been eagerly looking each morning towards England. From the time he had landed, and Miranda had seen in him a soul swept clean, a will straining towards her, he had lived in the clutch of preparation and routine. All was now ready, every unessential thing put away.

In long days upon the deck of his yacht Peter had come to distinguish between the physical unrest of his late years—vague and impersonal, afflicting him like hunger or the summer heat—and[Pg 330] the perfect passion of his need for Miranda.

Gradually, too, in these long weeks upon the sea Peter began to see steadily things which hitherto had wavered. He had touched reality at last. He overleaped the categories in a burning sense that life was very vast and very near; that the virtue of men could not easily be measured and ranked; that the wonder of existence began when it ceased consciously to confront itself, to probe its deep heart, and absurdly to appoint itself a law. He went through his adventures of the last few years with a smile for his ready infatuation with small aspects of men and things. He had attempted to inspect the discipline of the world, calling mankind to attention as though it were a regiment. He had been a Socialist, and then very nearly a Tory. Now, between sky and water, he vainly tried to constrain things to a formula. He found that he no longer desired to do so. He began to understand his mother's deep, instinctive acceptance of time and fate. All now seemed unreal, except the quiet, happy, and assured act of life itself. Craning at the Southern stars, he no longer desired to measure or to track their passage. He felt them rather as kindred points of energy. The pedantry and pride of knowledge, the ambition to assess, the need to round off heaven, to group mankind in a definite posture and take for himself a firmly intelligible attitude in his own time and way—these things had suddenly left him. Life was now [Pg 331]emotionally simple, and it therefore had ceased to be intellectually difficult. He had found humour and peace—an absolute content to receive the passing day. Life itself mattered so much to him—so brimmed him with the passion of being—that all he had thought or read was now rebuked as an insolent effort to contain the illimitable.

Interminably, of course, he thought of his personal quest. It all seemed very simple now. He had had some unhappy and trivial adventures. Their sole importance was to make him measure truly the high place of love. In the beginning was blind desire. Then the soul, with eyes for beauty and the power to elect, turned an instinct of the herd to a passion of the individual will—a passion whose fruit was loyalty and sacrifice, the treasures of art and the face of nature wrought into a countenance friendly and beautiful. So mighty had this passion grown that now it could command, as an instrument, the need out of which it came.

Love was now the measure of a man. Either it put him among creatures, groping uneasily till driven by appetite or fear, or it lifted him among the inheritors of passion, a gift rare as genius, a sanctuary from the driven flesh.

To-night, as Peter sat with Miranda looking towards the sea, the substance of these thoughts lay under the surface of his joy. He wondered if for ever he could beat his wings so high. Surely to die soon would be the perfect mating. They[Pg 332] were now upon a peak whence it was only possible to come down.

They sat quietly as the moments drifted. Words between them suddenly broke upon notes trembling on the edge of silence. To the passion of his adolescence—the passion of five years ago, recovered in Indian seas and among lonely islands of the Pacific—was added now something so intimate and personal that Peter saw in the fall of Miranda's dress and the poise of a comb in her hair syllables to make him wise. Her beauty had seemed, moments ago, to fill him, but still it poured from her.

He feared to think that this was only a beginning. How could he suffer more happiness and live? He could dwell for ever upon the line of her throat; and when he took her hands it seemed as if she gave to him all he could endure to possess. He feared to be stunned and blinded with her light, and he felt in himself an equal energy to dazzle and consume. It must surely be death to touch her to the heart, to pierce rashly to the secret of her power.

Into his happiness there intruded, when it gave him leave, a profound gratitude. He felt the need of a visible Power to thank. Almost it seemed he had supernaturally been led to this perfect moment, to encounter it perfectly. All his youth was gathered up. He would plunge at once to the heart of love, his soul unblunted, no step of his adventure known. Many times, during his[Pg 333] days at sea, he had trembled to think how near he had come to losing the unspoiled mystery of the gift Miranda kept. He had marvelled at the delicate justice and complete right of her wish that he should clear his soul of all memories they did not share before they intimately met.

Now in the falling dark they sat looking sometimes to sea, sometimes to the light that beckoned them home, sometimes to the secret which ever more insistently urged and troubled them. They felt the call of their marriage, bidding them closer yet. It shone upon them out of Miranda's window in the house below. To this window he had sailed alone in his ship for long nights. Now that it shone so near, imperiously beckoning, it hardly seemed an earthly lamp, but one that, when he stepped towards it, must suddenly go out or move away.

But the lure was true, for he found it also in Miranda—the look he had seen in her eyes years ago when first he had kissed her. She seemed to be giving herself to him—to give and give again, with treasures uncounted to follow. Yet it was not mere giving, but a passing of virtue from one to the other.

"I am glad we waited until now," Peter said in a note so low that it hardly reached her. "Why were you so wise to send me away? Each day has added to you. I cannot believe I shall ever hold you. It seems like wanting the whole world." He waved his hand at the sea.

[Pg 334]

"I could not endure to be less than the whole world," she quickly answered.

"I could die with you now. Life can never again be so wonderful."

Then, suddenly, words were foolish, and he abruptly ceased.

The last light of a day, which to-night had lain very late upon the water, had gone quite out. Hardly could they see each other; and missing the lost message of their eyes they pressed closely together. The beckoning window shone more brightly in the dark. Soon it put out land and sky. It could not be avoided. Together they read and answered the steady call. It put between them a growing distress.

"Kiss me, my husband, and let me go."

Her heart, as Peter took her in his arms, was beating like a creature caught and held.

She almost disappeared into the dark as she went down; but he followed her with his eyes, alert for every step of her passage. At last she had reached the house, and soon Peter could see the light of her room waver with her moving to and fro.

Only Miranda's window was shining now.

Then, with a swiftness that struck mortally at his heart, Miranda's window also was dark, or so it seemed, for the light went down.

Peter spread his arms and stood full breathing for a moment, fighting desperately with an unknown power. He had a swift vision of her [Pg 335]waiting. Then he went down the hill, and felt the earth like a carpet spread for his marriage. He turned once only at the door to take, as he felt, a last look at the stars. They seemed like a handful of dust he had flung at the sky.