His eyes, however, never for one instant left her own. Alarm, she was able to remind herself, she did not feel. She only recognized that this ragged figure laid something upon her spirit she could not fathom, yet was compelled to face.
His next words startled her. She drew, if unconsciously, upon her courage:
"A dream."
The voice was deep, yet still with the faintness as of distance in it.
His hand, she saw, was moving slowly from the empty sack. A strange attraction, mingled with pity, with yearning too, stirred deeply in her.
The face, it seemed, turned soft, the eyes glowed with some inner fire of feeling. Her heart now beat unevenly.
"Something--to--sell to me," she faltered, aware that his glowing eyes upon her made her tremble. The same instant she was ashamed of the words, knowing they were uttered by a portion of her that resisted, and this was not the language he deserved.
He smiled, and she knew her resistance a vain make-believe he pierced too easily, though he let it pa.s.s in silence.
"There is, I mean, a price--for every dream," she tried to save herself, conscious delightfully that her heart was smiling in return.
The dusk enveloped them, the corncrakes were calling from the fields, the scent of honeysuckle and wild roses lay round her in a warm wave of air, yet at the same time she felt as if her naked soul stood side by side with this figure in the infinitude of s.p.a.ce beyond the sunrise end.
The golden stars hung calm and motionless above them. "That price"--his answer fell like a summons she had actually expected--"you pay to another, not to me." The voice grew fainter, farther away, dropping through empty s.p.a.ce behind her. "All dreams are but a single dream. You pay that price to----"
Her interruption slipped spontaneously from her lips, its inevitable truth a prophecy:
"To myself!"
He smiled again, but this time he did not answer. His hand, instead, now moved across the gate towards her.
And before she quite realized what had happened, she was holding a little object he had pa.s.sed across to her. She had taken it, obeying, it seemed, an inner compulsion and authority which were inevitable, fore-ordained. Lowering her face she examined it in the dusk--a small green leaf of fern--fingered it with tender caution as it lay in her palm, gazed for some seconds closely at the tiny thing.... When she looked up again the stranger, the seller of dreams, as she now imagined him, had moved some yards away from the gate, and was moving still, a leisurely quiet tread that stirred no dust, a shadowy outline soft with dusk and starlight, moving towards the sunrise end, whence he had first appeared.
Her heart gave a sudden leap, as once again the burden of the years a.s.sailed her. Her words seemed driven out:
"Who are you? Before you go--your name! What is your name?"
His voice, now faint with distance as he melted from sight against the dark fringe of hazel trees, reached her but indistinctly, though its meaning was somehow clear:
"The dream," she heard like a breath of wind against her ear, "shall bring its own name with it. I wait...." Both sound and figure trailed off into the unknown s.p.a.ce beyond the eastern end, and, leaning against the wicket-gate as usual, the white dust settling about his heavy boots, the tea-pail but just ceased from rattling, was--old Purdy.
Unless the mind can fix the reality of an event in the actual instant of its happening, judgment soon dwindles into a confusion between memory and argument. Five minutes later, when old Purdy had gone his way again, she found herself already wondering, reflecting, questioning. Yearning had perhaps conjured with emotion to fashion both voice and figure out of imagination, out of this perfumed dusk, out of the troubled heart"s desire. Confusion in time had further helped to metamorphose old Purdy into some legendary shape that had stolen upon her mood of reverie from the shadows of her beloved lane.... Yet the dream she had accepted from a stranger hand, a little fern leaf, remained at any rate to shape a delightful certainty her brain might criticize while her heart believed.
The fern leaf a.s.suredly was real. A fairy gift! Those who eat of this fern-seed, she remembered as she sank into sleep that night, shall see the fairies! And, indeed, a few hours later she walked in dream along the familiar curve between the hedges, her own childhood taking her by the hand as she played with the flowers, the b.u.t.terflies, the glad swallows beckoning while they flashed. Without the smallest sense of surprise or unexpectedness, too, she met at the eastern end--two figures. They stood, as she with her childhood stood, hand in hand, the seller of dreams and her lover, waiting since time began, she realized, waiting with some great unuttered question on their lips. Neither addressed her, neither spoke a word. d.i.c.k looked at her, ambition, hard and restless, shining in his eyes; in the eyes of the other--dark, gentle, piercing, but extraordinarily young for all the ragged hair about the face the shabby clothes, the ravaged and unkempt appearance--a brightness as of the coming dawn.
A choice, she understood, was offered to her; there was a decision she must make. She realized, as though some great wind blew it into her from outer s.p.a.ce, another, a new standard to which her judgment must inevitably conform, or admit the purpose of her life evaded finally. The same moment she knew what her decision was. No hesitation touched her.
Calm, yet trembling, her courage and her patience faced the decision and accepted it. The hands then instantly fell apart, unclasped. One figure turned and vanished down the lane towards the departing end, but with the other, now hand in hand, she rose floating, gliding without effort, a strange bliss in her heart, to meet the sunrise.
"He has awakened ... so he cannot stay," she heard, like a breath of wind that whispered into her ear. "I, who bring you this dream--I wait."
She did not wake at once when the dream was ended, but slept on long beyond her accustomed hour, missing thereby Melancey, Averill, old Purdy as they pa.s.sed the wicket-gate in the early hours. She woke, however, with a new clear knowledge of herself, of her mind and heart, to all of which in simple truth to her own soul she must conform. The fern-seed she placed in a locket attached to a fine gold chain about her neck.
During the long, lonely, expectant yet unsatisfied years that followed she wore it day and night.
2
She had the curious feeling that she remained young. Others grew older, but not she. She watched her contemporaries slowly give the signs, while she herself held stationary. Even those younger than herself went past her, growing older in the ordinary way, whereas her heart, her mind, even her appearance, she felt certain, hardly aged at all. In a room full of people she felt pity often as she read the signs in their faces knowing her own unchanged. Their eyes were burning out, but hers burned on. It was neither vanity nor delusion, but an inner conviction she could not alter.
The age she held to was the year she had received the fern-seed from old Purdy, or rather, from an imaginary figure her reverie had set momentarily in old Purdy"s place. That figure of her reverie, the dream that followed, the subsequent confession to d.i.c.k Messenger, meeting his own half-way--these marked the year when she stopped growing older. To that year she seemed chained, gazing into the sunrise end--waiting, ever waiting.
Whether in her absent-minded reverie she had actually plucked the bit of fern herself, or whether, after all, old Purdy had handed it to her, was not a point that troubled her. It was in her locket about her neck still, day and night. The seller of dreams was an established imaginative reality in her life. Her heart a.s.sured her she would meet him again one day. She waited. It was very curious, it was rather pathetic. Men came and went, she saw her chances pa.s.s; her answer was invariably "No."
The break came suddenly, and with devastating effect. As she was dressing carefully for the party, full of excited antic.i.p.ation like some young girl still, she saw looking out upon her from the long mirror a face of plain middle-age. A blackness rose about her. It seemed the mirror shattered. The long, long dream, at any rate, fell in a thousand broken pieces at her feet. It was perhaps the ball dress, perhaps the flowers in her hair; it may have been the low-cut gown that betrayed the neck and throat, or the one brilliant jewel that proved her eyes now dimmed beside it--but most probably it was the tell-tale hands, whose ageing no artifice ever can conceal. The middle-aged woman, at any rate, rushed from the gla.s.s and claimed her.
It was a long time, too, before the signs of tears had been carefully obliterated again, and the battle with herself--to go or not to go--was decided by clear courage. She would not send a hurried excuse of illness, but would take the place where she now belonged. She saw herself, a fading figure, more than half-way now towards the sunset end, within sight even of the shadowed emptiness that lay beyond the sun"s dipping edge. She had lingered over-long, expecting a dream to confirm a dream; she had been oblivious of the truth that the lane went rushing just the same. It was now too late. The speed increased. She had waited, waited for nothing. The seller of dreams was a myth. No man could need her as she now was.
Yet the chief ingredient in her decision was, oddly enough, itself a sign of youth. A party, a ball, is ever an adventure. Fate, with her destined eyes aglow, may be bidden too, waiting among the throng, waiting for that very one who hesitates whether to go or not to go. Who knows what the evening may bring forth? It was this antic.i.p.ation, faintly beckoning, its voice the merest echo of her shadowy youth, that tipped the scales between an evening of sleepless regrets at home and hours of neglected loneliness, watching the young fulfil the happy night. This and her courage weighed the balance down against the afflicting weariness of her sudden disillusion.
Therefore she went, her aunt, in whose house she was a visitor, accompanying her. They arrived late, walking under the awning alone into the great mansion. Music, flowers, lovely dresses, and bright happy faces filled the air about them. The dancing feet, the flashing eyes, the swing of the music, the throng of graceful figures expressed one word--pleasure. Pleasure, of course, meant youth. Beneath the calm summer stars youth realized itself prodigally, reckless of years to follow. Under the same calm stars, some fifty miles away in Kent, her stretch of deserted lane flowed peacefully, never pausing, pa.s.sing relentlessly out into unknown s.p.a.ce beyond the edge of the world. A girl and a middle-aged woman bravely watched both scenes.
"Dreadfully overcrowded," remarked her prosaic aunt. "When I was a young thing there was more taste--always room to dance, at any rate."
"It is a rabble rather," replied the middle-aged woman, while the girl added, "but I enjoy it." She had enjoyed one duty-dance with an elderly man to whom her aunt had introduced her. She now sat watching the rabble whirl and laugh. Her friend, behind unabashed lorgnettes, made occasional comments.
"There"s Mabel. Look at her frock, will you--the naked back. The way he holds her, too!"
She looked at Mabel Messenger, exactly her own age, wife of the successful engineer, yet bearing herself almost like a girl.
"_He"s_ away in Mexico, as usual," went on her aunt, "with somebody else, also as usual."
"I don"t envy her," mentioned the middle-aged woman, while the girl added, "but she did well for herself, anyhow."
"It"s a mistake to wait too long," was a suggestion she did not comment on.
The host"s brother came up and carried off her aunt. She was left alone.
An old gentleman dropped into the vacated chair. Only in the centre of the brilliantly lit room was there dancing now; people stood and talked in animated throngs, every seat along the walls, every chair and sofa in alcove corners occupied. The landing outside the great flung doors was packed; some, going on elsewhere, were already leaving, but others arriving late still poured up the staircase. Her loneliness remained unnoticed; with many other women, similarly stationed behind the whirling, moving dancers, she sat looking on, an artificial smile of enjoyment upon her face, but the eyes empty and unlit.
Two pictures she watched simultaneously--the gay ballroom and the lane that ran east and west.
Midnight was past and supper over, though she had not noticed it. Her aunt had disappeared finally, it seemed. The two pictures filled her mind, absorbed her. What she was feeling was not clear, for there was confusion in her between the two scenes somewhere--as though the brilliant ballroom lay set against the dark background of the lane beneath the quiet stars. The contrast struck her. How calm and lovely the night lane seemed against this feverish gaiety, this heat, this artificial perfume, these exaggerated clothes. Like a small, rapid cinema-picture the dazzling ballroom pa.s.sed along the dark throat of the deserted lane. A patch of light, alive with whirling animalculae, it shone a moment against the velvet background of the midnight country-side. It grew smaller and smaller. It vanished over the edge of the departing end. It was gone.
Night and the stars enveloped her, and her eyes became accustomed to the change, so that she saw the sandy strip of lane, the hazel bushes, the dim outline of the cottage. Her naked soul, it seemed again, stood facing an infinitude. Yet the scent of roses, of dew-soaked gra.s.s came to her. A blackbird was whistling in the hedge. The eastern end showed itself now more plainly. The tops of the trees defined themselves. There came a glimmer in the sky, an early swallow flashed past against a streak of pale sweet gold. Old Purdy, his tea-pail faintly rattling, a stir of thick white dust about his feet, came slowly round the curve. It was the sunrise.
A deep, pa.s.sionate thrill ran through her body from head to feet. There was a clap beside her--in the air it seemed--as though the wings of the early swallow had flashed past her very ear, or the approaching sunrise called aloud. She turned her head--along the brightening lane, but also across the gay ballroom. Old Purdy, straightening up his bent shoulders, was gazing over the wicket-gate into her eyes.
Something quivered. A shimmer ran fluttering before her sight. She trembled. Over the crowd of intervening heads, as over the spiked top of the little gate, a man was gazing at her.
Old Purdy, however, did not fade, nor did his outline wholly pa.s.s. There was this confusion between two pictures. Yet this man who gazed at her was in the London ballroom. He was so tall and straight. The same moment her aunt"s face appeared below his shoulder, only just visible, and he turned his head, but did not turn his eyes, to listen to her. Both looked her way; they moved, threading their way towards her. It meant an introduction coming. He had asked for it.
She did not catch his name, so quickly, yet so easily and naturally the little formalities were managed, and she was dancing. The same sweet, dim confusion was about her. His touch, his voice, his eyes combined extraordinarily in a sense of complete possession to which she yielded utterly. The two pictures, moreover, still held their place. Behind the glaring lights ran the pale sweet gold of a country dawn; woven like a silver thread among the strings she heard the blackbirds whistling; in the stale, heated air lay the subtle freshness of a summer sunrise.
Their dancing feet bore them along in a flowing motion that curved from east to west.
They danced without speaking; one rhythm took them; like a single person they glided over the smooth, perfect floor, and, more and more to her, it was as if the floor flowed with them, bearing them along. Such dancing she had never known. The strange sweetness of the confusion that half-entranced her increased--almost as though she lay upon her partner"s arms and that he bore her through the air. Both the sense of weight and the touch of her feet on solid ground were gone delightfully.
The London room grew hazy, too; the other figures faded; the ceiling, half transparent, let through a filtering glimmer of the dawn. Her thoughts--surely he shared them with her--went out floating beneath this brightening sky. There was a sound of wakening birds, a smell of flowers.
They had danced perhaps five minutes when both stopped abruptly as with one accord.