Part 19

“Terry and I and Louise became fast friends, and so we grew up. I went away to London in order to learn the tea trade. Terry stopped here with his father, and, instead of sitting on a stool in a dim office, helped with the sowing and the reaping. One day in summer Louise and I were walking over the Seven Fields, and by a stile I put my arm round her, and she said, ‘No, Julien, not yet,’ but said it so softly and timidly that I knew she loved me. And I held her, the little thing that she was, in my arms, just to feel her making a small struggle, and to watch her shy eyes and tinted cheeks. But she would not let me kiss her, so I pretended to say farewell to her, but she pressed my hand and told me to stay. And when I asked her if she loved me, she would not answer.

“‘Would you break my heart, Louise?’ I said. ‘You know I love you.’

“‘No, Julien,’ she answered very softly, ‘but I do not want you to break your own.’

“‘What do you mean, Louise?’

“But she would not say immediately, and when the time came for us to go back to the cottage, she kissed me nervously on the cheek and whispered that she might be enough for me now, but not later on; that she was only a silly girl. Of course I loved her all the more, and thinking of her, could not work much during the day at the tea trade, but wrote books at night feverishly in order to immortalise my love. All that summer we walked among the flowers, and one day I asked her to marry me. She shook her head, and her eyes were wet and sorrowful.

“‘Not yet,’ she whispered.

“‘I don’t want to marry you now,’ I cried, the impetuous, eager fool that I was, ‘I only want to know if you love me enough to marry me some day. I want to feel that I possess you.’

“She laughed a little shaky laugh, and I took her close to kiss her; but she drew back slightly, and immediately I felt that I wasn’t wanted, and to cover my humiliation I spoke coldly and brutally. Fool that I was!” he cried bitterly.

The drone of a tramcar passing towards Catford along the newly-made high road a mile below the wood rose in pitch as it went faster with its first burden of artisans and factory hands. The stranger brooded, thinking of that time before the field had been built upon. And yet he was still a youth, alone with me in the early hours of the winter morning, standing in the long grass at the eastern edge of the wood. Almost immediately he went on: his voice became wild with yearning.

“Spring came again, with the larks battling over the Seven Fields and the wind anemones rising like wan-white stars above the dead leaves. I fretted with brooding why she withheld herself. I was intensely poetical and equally egoistical. The great artist rises above egoism, the little one is killed by it, and becomes embittered--egoism narrows the view and ruins happiness. But I could not help it--I was held in chains by the tyranny of my own immature thoughts. Ah, God, if I had only known!”

His thin hands covered the pale face, his shoulders shook, and once again the bean-sticks were a smudge.

“One day I kissed her brutally and suddenly--Louise, more fragile of spirit than the tenderest windflower. One day I crushed her lips with my mouth. She struggled away, and the tenderest girl became a spitfire. She reviled me for a weakling. She said that I had no sense of honour, that I was not worthy of being a man--and then she seemed to shrink, her expression of anger fled, and the tears streaming down her face, she sobbed,--

“‘Julien, Julien, won’t you make a great effort to kill your egoism? Cannot you see that your intolerance of all people because they have not the same fervour about poetry as yourself will eventually cripple all your powers? You sneer at Terry, who is one of the dearest boys, because he doesn’t want to hear you quote “The Hound of Heaven”; you sneer at your own father because you say that he doesn’t understand you. Oh, Julien, won’t you try to alter things for your own sake?’

“‘Not for yours?’ I sneered.

“‘For your own, Julien,’ she replied quietly.

“‘You don’t love me?’

“‘Not as you love me, Julien.’

“‘No, of course not! You don’t know what love is! I can eat my heart out for you; dream, dream, dream in London all the time, pine in the smoke, and no one understands me. No one! The poet is always the outcast, from Christ downwards. The world smashes and destroys genius--the genius that is always trying to make others see the beauty in the world, and make humanity happier.’

“‘No, not an outcast, Julien: a beloved friend who will rise above introspection, and be happy. But if that man be caged by egoism, isn’t it best to try to undo the door of that cage? Oh, Julien, if only you would believe.’

“She was distressed, and at the thought of hurting her a devil in me rejoiced. She had called Terry one of the dearest of boys. I seized upon the remark.

“‘No doubt you are in love with Terry, who is blue-eyed and has such nice wavy hair. Well, go and marry him. I shall never ask you to marry me again. Good-bye, Louise.’

“I walked away, and after a while turned to go back to her. We had been quarrelling, at least I had made my pitiable remarks, just where we are standing now. But when I returned she had gone. An insane conceit made me want to hurt her. I wanted to break her spirit--to make her believe in me first: then I would try to alter my views. Already I could see the truth of her remarks. I brooded, and my vitality was sapped. My pride, or conceit, faltered. Then, when I determined to crave her pity, I found she had gone away to Devon with her father. I wrote a bitter letter to her and left my home. I never wrote again to Louise, nor did she write to me. Not for a year. Then she wrote to me. And I came back. I was already a changed man. Her letter was short, and in it she said that she wished and prayed for my happiness. I came back humbly to see her----”

He put a shaky hand up to his forehead, wet with moisture. His anguish was unbearable. I looked away to the yellow houses with their blue-gray roofs of slate; another tram passed in the High Street.

“She had died,” he muttered. “Little sweet Louise had pined away and become ill. One day she got wet through and developed rapid consumption. She was only eighteen--a child. They said it was consumption, but I knew better. I killed her. I, the self-flaunted idealist, my eyes brimming for humanity, had neglected every one around me. I only realised it then. She had known it all the while, because love was a far holier and greater thing to her than it was to me. I thought because I had wanted to pour out my heart’s blood at her feet that therefore my love was not selfish, but real, divine! Ah, what did I know about love! I went to the churchyard and saw the mounded grave with a simple stone at the head, and it seemed to me that she was near, wearing the print frock and standing among the buttercups that reflected a gold vapour about her, her eyes dark with a shadow. The maiden eyes, the eyes soft with love, and yet so sad, regarded me, and so sharp was the impression of her standing there that I could hear her pleading, ‘Julien, for my sake now, Julien!’ In the churchyard I stood alone, looking at her, while in an orchard near the blossom was shaken by the fluttering of goldfinches. Spring was in the hearts of the wild birds I loved, but my heart was dead. What was there left? To recreate that love and cruelty, and write out of my sorrow and folly! Greater than all written art is life and happiness: a simple living with a beloved and the joy of children’s young voices. By the grassy mound I stayed with the shadows. My heart was broken, the more irretrievably because I had broken it myself. Remorse, remorse!”

Memory ceased. Again the dry whisper of the leaf overbore the wintry solitude and song-silence in that little wood in Whitefoot Lane, where the bark of the trees was stripped, and all undergrowth was trampled down. The green woodpeckers would laugh no more in spring: only a few poor wind-flowers and bluebells would tell of past loveliness. The pale visitant was gone, and with no sound of footfall.

The leaf spun insistently as the wind passed wearily onwards, and beside me the long green grasses held their drops of light-laden water, nor was there any mark as of feet having pressed there, nor any trail leading away.

With a vague mournfulness I turned and went along the miry path to the roadway, where a tattered fence gaped forlornly. The land would be sold, the trees cut down, and useful houses erected. Perhaps the spirit of the dead haunted that wilderness of torn branches and charred fire-circles, to find rest only where all was changed. Never again would I go back among those poor trees, where in the cruel days of youth sweet hopes had been crushed like a wood-anemone under careless and unknowing feet.

PROSERPINE’S MESSAGE