I suppose most men, even in old age, feel a certain anxiety, conscious or not, as they overtake a woman whose back view is in the least attractive.I confess that I felt a more than usual, indeed a quite irrational, perturbation of the blood, as, coming level with her, I dared to look into her face.As I did so she involuntarily turned to look at me--turned to look at me, did Isay? "To look" is a feeble verb indeed to express the unexpected shock of beauty to which I was suddenly exposed.Icannot describe her features, for somehow features always mean little to me.They were certainly beautifully moulded, and her skin was of a lovely pale olive, but the life of her face was in her great violet eyes and her wonderful mouth.Thus suddenly to look into her face was like unexpectedly to come upon moon and stars reflected in some lonely pool.I suppose the look lasted only a second or two; but it left me dazzled as that king in the Eastern tale, who seemed to have lived whole dream-lives between dipping his head into a bowl of water and taking it out again.
Similarly in that moment I seemed to have dived into this unknown girl's eyes, to have walked through the treasure palaces of her soul, to have stood before the flaming gates of her heart, to have gathered silver flowers in the fairy gardens of her dreams.
I had followed her white-robed spirit across the moonlit meadows of her fancy, and by her side had climbed the dewy ladder of the morning star, and then suddenly I had been whirled up again to the daylight through the magic fountains of her eyes.
I'll tell you more about that look presently! Meanwhile the gig approached, and the two girls exchanged affectionate greetings.
"Tom hasn't come with you, then?" said the other girl, who was evidently her sister, and who was considerably more rustic in style and accent.She said it with a curious mixture of anxiety and relief.
"No," answered the other simply, and I thought I noticed a slight darkening of her face.Tom was evidently her husband.So she was married!
"Yes!" said a fussy hypocrite of reason within me, "and what's that to do with you?""Everything, you fool!" answered a robuster voice in my soul, kicking the feeble creature clean out of my head on the instant.
For, absurd as it may sound, with that look into those Arabian Nights' eyes, had come somewhere out of space an overwhelming intuition, nay, an unshakable conviction, that the woman who was already being rolled away from me down the road in that Dis's car of a farmer's gig, was now and for ever and before all worlds the woman God had created for me, and that, unless I could be hers and she mine, there would be no home, no peace for either of us so long as we lived.
And yet she was being carried away further and further every moment, while I gazed after her, aimlessly standing in the middle of the road.Why did I not call to her, overtake her? In a few moments she would be lost to me for ever--Though I was unaware of it, this hesitation was no doubt owing to a stealthy return of reason by the back-door of my mind.In fact, he presently dared to raise his voice again."I don't deny," he ventured, ready any moment to flee for his life, "that she is written yours in all the stars, and particularly do I see it written on the face of the moon; but you mustn't forget that many are thus meant for each other who never meet, not to speak of marrying.It is such contradictions between the purposes and performance of the Creator that make life--life;you'll never see her again, so make your mind easy--"At that moment the gig was on the point of turning a corner into a dark pine-wood; but just ere it disappeared,--was it fancy?--Iseemed to have caught the flash of a momentarily fluttering handkerchief."Won't I? you fool!" I exclaimed, savagely smiting reason on the cheek, as I sprang up wildly to wave mine;but the road was already blank.
At this a sort of panic possessed me, and like a boy I raced down the road after her.To lose her like this, at the very moment that she had been revealed to me.It was more than I could bear.
Past the dreary lake, through the little pine-wood I ran, and then I was brought to a halt, panting, by cross-roads and a finger-post.An involuntary memory of Nicolete sang to me as Iread the quaint names of the villages to one of which the Vision was certainly wending.Yes! I was bound on one more journey to the moon, but alas! there was no heavenly being by my side to point the way.Oh, agony, which was the road she had taken?
It never occurred to me till the following day that I might have been able to track her by the wheel-marks of the gig on the dusty summer road.Instead I desperately resorted to the time-honoured expedient of setting up a stick and going in the direction of its fall.Like most ancient guide-posts, it led me quite wrong, down into a pig's-trough of a hamlet whither I felt sure she couldn't have been bound.Then I ran back in a frenzy, and tried the other road,--as if it could be any use, with at least three quarters of an hour gone since I had lost sight of her.Of course I had no luck; and finally, hot and worn out with absurd excitement, I threw myself down in a meadow and called myself an ass,--which I undoubtedly was.
For of all the fancies that had obsessed my moonstruck brain, this was surely the maddest.Suppose I had overtaken the girl, what could I have said to her? And, suppose she had listened to me, how did I know she was the girl I imagined her to be? But this was sheer reason again, and has no place in a fantastic romance.So I hasten to add that the mood was one of brief duration, and that no cold-water arguments were able to quench the fire which those eyes had set aflame within me, no daylight philosophy had any power to dispel the dream of a face which was now my most precious possession, as I once more took up my stick and listlessly pursued my way to Yellowsands.
For I had one other reason than my own infatuation, or thought Ihad.Yes, brief and rapid as our glance at each other had been, I had fancied in her eyes a momentary kindling as they met mine, a warm summer- lightning which seemed for a second to light up for me the inner heaven of her soul.
Of one feeling, however, I was sure,--that on my side this apocalyptic recognition of her, as it had seemed, was no mere passionate correspondence of sex, no mere spell of a beautiful face (for such passion and such glamour I had made use of opportunities to study), but was indeed the flaming up of an elemental affinity, profounder than sex, deeper than reason, and ages older than speech.
But it was a fancy, for all that? Yes, one of those fancies that are fancies on earth, but facts in heaven.Perhaps you don't believe in them.Well, I'm afraid that cannot be helped.
