Holidays

‘THIS,’ said we, ‘is slavery.’

We had found Queen Victoria doing her endless knitting in the warm shade of the honeysuckle vines that clustered round the porch of a New Zealand hostel, and we had been living under her régime.

I was her Peel, her Palmerston, her Disraeli, and I held her wool. Virginia was one of those unfortunate women of the Court, who must be continually retrimming their old hats in order to hold the regal favor. We were both quite surely sinking to an ‘Albert state of mind.’

’Let us,’ we said, ‘upset the royal ménage and assert our independence. This vine-perfumed cottage, where an old Queen sets the fashion, has stolen our wills. To-morrow we will take the road and seek adventure. We will go south, by the highway where the larches turn silver in the sun, and look over the edge of the hills.’

So at break of day we started out. We went over the stile that the bull once climbed, and along the road between the blue gums. There was the soft noise of bees, and a breeze chased in and out, touching sometimes our hair, sometimes our eyes, and always cool, like sweet water dashed into our faces. As we looked around, we saw white farmhouses that stood the other side of softly clicking gates, where sweet peas ran gayly up, winking their colored eyes at us and jauntily tilting and turning on their long graceful stems to the gentle push of the summer wind.

But when we reached the top, we saw only more hills going on and on, so we dropped down the other side, into a valley by a brook, where the willows stood on either side and trailed their long green fingers in the water. The air was heavy, so we sat and leaned against a rock. This was a sweet season, when the hills were waving with tall grass, waving a silent lullaby for one to dream to; so we forgot the Queen’s monotonous needles, and fashioned fancies for ourselves out of the pleasant noises the brown water made as it ran by the stones. Now, as we watched and listened, we saw come sailing down, bobbing and curling and madly swirling round, what seemed to be a pure-white giant butterfly, and getting nearer, turned into a paper boat upon a desperate voyage. Then, as we waited for its pilot to appear, we saw it was a folded piece of paper, and Virginia, quickly curious, seized one of its white sails and rescued it.

We found it was a letterhead from some Swiss mountain hospital — one of those hospitals where sick people bathe their limbs in sunlight all day long, and, when their chief helper disappears, sink behind horizons into discouraged dreams of illness. There was just one short paragraph on it; the rest was gone, or it had never been. It said just this: —

‘Yesterday there was a scarlet fluttering in the wind, a drooping wilted shape, a spark of restlessness defeated and laughed at by the breeze. In walking up the village street, I saw it hanging from a balcony, a gay flag of distress to passers-by; and later, rumor, which spreads faster than color on the autumn leaves, whispered that a woman, finding life a dreary thing, had left it, jeering, in a scarlet dress.'

‘Paul,’ said Virginia, ‘it is as if the brook were tears and this had floated down it from the heart of sorrow.’

As we sat there wondering how such a thing had come in such a place, a man came down the stream. We saw him striding toward us, looking neither to the right nor to the left, absorbed apparently by something in his mind. And this, besides, we noticed. His step, while large, was heavy, as if he carried care like irons shackled to his ankles.

As he approached us, he raised his head, which had been bent. I could not say that he looked at us, for something seemed to stand before his eyes, which blurred his vision, and gave him the far-searching helpless look one sees sometimes about the blind. Virginia says he was not more than thirty-five, with short black hair and gray eyes, and had the color of hearty weather in his cheeks; but all I can remember is that Pain had stripped herself of all her compensating rags, and shone in her undecorated nakedness from out his face.

He asked us if we ‘d seen a paper in the stream, and as we handed him the letterhead, he turned to go without a word. Virginia called to him in a clear ringing voice. I heard her words, but all my mind was bound up in my sight, so that it was as if the pencil of a slate had written on a sheet of paper; and yet, if I seek down those long black corridors of semiconscious memory, there comes a sharpness struck across the blank, and then a sigh of some such sounds as words like ‘don’t’ or ‘wait’ would make.

At any rate, the man turned round; and then, because we had no better thing to say, we asked him if he would not help us eat our cherry jam and rolls; and he consented, with a half-ungracious shrug, as if to say, ‘What does it matter?’

We sat and ate and talked a little, quietly as one does when meeting strangers. And then, quite suddenly, because Virginia had turned her large dark eyes on him, regarding him intently, he asked this question of her. He said: —

‘Child, how many of your friends, think you, would you be sure you knew, if, when you died, you were transported to the world of spirits and your body left behind to feed the earth? Have you ever wondered when you saw “Character" stealing his way in and out among a crowd, how many of your friends you know so well that you could name them if you saw their spirits? Would it not be good to come so close to one’s belovèd, that he or she could be quick-recognized without the help of voice or eyes or hair? Yet could it ever be so?’

Virginia looked at him, bewildered. But he seemed to see beyond her eyes into the heart of the brown waving grass, as if it had been turned inside his mind to a regiment of spirits marching past, and still he kept on talking: —

‘How curious it is, our deep dependence on externals. We are conscious of this one or that one from the color of his tie or the way her hair is coiled; and if they change these superficial ornaments, we are directly puzzled as to whether we have seen our friend or no. We boast to ourselves and to our Gods that the soul is what we love the most; and yet, what lover will not forgive a rival who has crushed the spirit from his rose and left the petals of his flower unimpaired. Can we explain it.? Perhaps the tie and hair and spotless flower-leaves are simply the expression of the soul. We know that everything we do or say or think expresses what we are, no matter what we try to hide; and so the suit we wear may betray us to our neighbors if they have the key to our translation. But therein our safety lies.

‘It is the multitude of things our spirits are when they disrobe that would confuse us entering another world. We put away so many things in order to keep them from all eyes; so many fancies, thoughts, and longings, that we cover them with veils for different reasons. Sometimes because we ‘re shy, sometimes because we do not wish to brand ourselves as too unlike our neighbors. But when a soul is seen without its garments, would not all these things stand clustering about? would not the traits we never knew our friends possessed make strangers of them? It is, of course, the thoughts and desires of our souls that are most hid, even from our best belovèd. Perhaps once or twice in a whole life we get a glimpse of what other persons really mean in living us they do, what their sincerest thoughts are, what they think the point of life is. I wonder if, out of a hundred thousand other spirits on the other side, that for the most part would be much alike, I wonder if we could pick the small distinctions of which we caught so slight a glimpse on earth, and find, by those wee variations on the theme of human souls, that which made up our most truly loved.

‘Why would not a horrid loneliness gape round us? Or, what is worse, confusion worse confounded? Not a noise as we conceive it, but a loud spiritual tumult, when we were suddenly immersed in a great sea of souls, all of whom were utter strangers to each other. We should come pouring in with all the thousand others, from our world and all the other worlds that sing about the heavens, like mead out of a jug. And does not a still more dreadful thought lead on from that? For, if we are a drop of liquid poured into a sea, we mingle straightway to form a solid whole, and who would lose his individuality?

‘The idea holds no charm. Think, child, of your neighbors. How many of them would you wish to be tied to in spirit? How many could you bear to cling to as one drop clings to another? If we find one soul in all the world, in all our years, that we feel thus about, we call ourselves true blessèd. How impossible, how utterly miserable, to conceive ourselves joined irrevocably to a solid mass of uncongenial spirits through eternity!

‘And there would be another disappointment. For when we’re full of life and the beauty of the earth the Gods have given us, and yet, when we are snatched away, when the Reaper cuts us down in the heyday of our youth and glory, we give ourselves, to help us through the grim high gates of Death, a compensating thought. We say: —

‘“When we have reached this land we ‘ve heard so much about, when we have taken Charon’s boat across the Styx, at least we ‘ll see our heroes waiting in the shades; at least we ‘ll rise or sink to their equality. We can converse with kings and sigh with queens and brush against the garments of the great philosophers. At last we ‘ll know the Tsar of Russia’s feelings as he died, and see the beauty of the Queen of Scots. We ‘ll walk with Livingstone, and talk with Rhodes, and fight Clive’s battles through again.”

‘And yet how can we? For we never knew their souls. How can we know which one is which, and whether we are speaking to the Queen or to the cook. We ‘ve simply caught at this far end of the world’s years a whisper of the character of each. A low cry of Job, a hint of Pontius Pilate, a scrap of Socrates. We know their faces, forms, and features, we know their dress, we know the kind of food they ate and what they talked about; and yet, where is the key to fit in the translation and show us how to recognize our friends and heroes by their spirits?

‘Child, you will bring comfort to yourself by saying: —

‘ “I shall be a spirit, too; and as in this life my soul held sympathy with other souls, so in the next will the ones we loved be drawn toward us, and we toward them.”

‘And yet, if we cannot tell whether it is the soul we seek or some other one that lived a thousand years ago and yet held sympathy with us, how desolate our state will be, forever wandering through immense eternity, dumbly looking for that which we can never find, or, if we find it, not know that we have done so. Think, child, would you recognize the spirit of your best belovèd if you saw him wandering past, a shapeless shadow without eyes to see or ears to hear, or mouth to kiss you with?’

Virginia looked at me and laughed a little; but she could not answer. On her lips I read a question: —

‘Paul,’ it said, ‘is this poor man a little mad?’

I shook my head, and then I spoke to him.

‘ Will you tell us,’ I said, ‘what makes your mind turn on such subjects?'

He put his hand deep in his pocket and drew forth the letterhead from that Swiss hospital.

‘This,’he said. And after: ‘Did you read it?'

We nodded.

‘Then I will tell you all the story.'

There was silence for a minute, and then he went on: —

‘She killed herself, that girl, from lack of self-expression. I do believe that earnestly. For is not that the horse the whole world wants to ride, the nag of self-expression? But most of them don’t know it. They think they ‘re seeking after love, or money, or success; but they are wrong. What they do really need is just to find a medium in which to pour the goods they have accumulated from the outside world, the thoughts and passions and imaginings. If one is continually collecting, and cannot find a medium into which he can transmit his discoveries and give them to the world; or if by circumstance his medium is forbidden him, he curses fate, but cannot tell us why he is unhappy. She was a Russian, beautiful, I think, as the young princesses, and full of delicacy, gentleness, and charm. She came there ill before the war; and while the sun was showing her the path to health, a man, a Russian, too, and a musician, fell in love with her. Then came the war, and on its heels the Revolution, taking all she had. It was after this that she consented to be married to the man who loved her there. Almost everybody wondered at it, because it was well known that she did not care for him. But here is a point I think they never thought of. The girl wrote plays and stories. Loved it. Good or bad, it does n’t matter; the only thing that really counted was that they expressed her, and everything stored up within her found a natural vent. So, do you see it? There she was, a girl whose brain was wise enough to see that, if you stole her self-expression from her, you must steal her life, and yet having to face “work by the piece,” and an eight-hour day, to keep herself alive. She did what she thought best. She sold her body for the price of eight long hours every day alone. This was agreed upon before she married him; and then she found her husband was dishonest. He stole that which she had bargained and paid dearly for, and would not give her any recompense. That was inevitable, and she should have known. Yes, but she was young, and youth is never cautious. Then, of course, not being able to find freedom through the tracery of her pencil, her self-expression flew to other channels, and this led to worse disaster. She visited her sister who lived at Interlaken, and there she fell in love. For a while it did not matter, for she found an outlet to the springs that welled up in her mind, and she was content to talk, just endlessly to talk, and feel a quiet sympathy. You see, she was a sensitive child, who imbibed impressions, thoughts, and ideas, as thirsty ground does water; and all that she took in she must, of necessity, find an escape for. But talk won’t do forever between lovers, and lips must meet if hearts and minds do. Presently her husband heard, and went straightway to Interlaken and brought her back with him. I wonder sometimes whether he was just an idiot, or whether he perhaps has in his being the refined cruelty that enjoys the sight of lingering torture. At any rate, he loved her, desperately they tell me — so much, in fact, that now they think he will go mad with grief. Perhaps he was a little mad already; that would account for his stupidity or malice.

‘When she came back, he passed a sentence on her. He made her come and sit beside him in a darkened room, while he composed for hour after hour, sometimes a whole day long. What for? He said it gave him inspiration. Lord knows he needed it: I heard him play once! But there she sat, without a thing to do, in that half-lighted room, listening to an imbecile or madman search for notes — and always find the wrong ones. They say she kept herself in hand, she never lost her dignity or pride; but finally so many things piled into her heart, it burst for lack of room to hold them, and the result was what you read there.’

He dropped to silence for a while, and Virginia leaned over to him.

‘But how,’ she asked in a low voice, ‘came you to know all this?’

‘I was the man who loved her afterwards,’ he answered, ‘and there is little that a lover cannot know. I have friends there still, and sometimes I get letters. But all that does not matter now. You see, she went to meet her heroes on the other side; but what I want to know is, will she find them? And, what is more than all the world and life and love and beauty, how am I to know her, look for her, discover it is she, when I am dead?’

Virginia sat still a moment and then looked up to me.

’Paul,’ she said, ‘what shall we tell this man who is so sorrowful? You and I have sat with Death and Morning on the Silver Horns; surely there is something. We have seen green valleys at our feet, with big dog violets heaped in velvet piles on the grass. Fields like robes of kings embroidered in scarlet and gold. Villages of chalets and a river between, and beyond, through a mist of blue, — smoked blue, which is the color of adventure, — the mountains covered with snow tinted to the shade of angels’ wings. Surely there sit the ones who rule our world in the places between earth and heaven, playing games with human hearts and collecting them when they are broken, to play there, too, and make the sky ring with high laughter.

‘There one finds the Hymn to Proserpine sung by silence. I wonder, Paul, if I am right. Perhaps the child who hung herself in her scarlet dress had sat and listened, and caught the far end of a whisper of it as it passed from height to height. Perhaps she caught a whisper, Paul, and found it irresistible. Do you think that, if she had heard a song sung by a God from a mountain peak that she could stay? Listen, would not this blown across the valley lure her?

’And then, Paul, the breath catches, and following after, when there is perfume round her and poppies before her eyes, comes the song to a close, softly: —

‘Then she followed the song; but we, who can but see through a glass darkly, call it Tragedy in a Red Dress. So,’ said Virginia, turning to the man, ‘you will find your lady in the end. For no matter what you say about the sea of souls, there is always this. It’s a sure fact that, if a magnet has a mighty force and if the thing it draws has also power, they will rush together across worlds irresistibly, and scatter what is less to right and left; and they will be so closely joined by their great force, that nothing in the spheres can come between. Paul, could not what I say be so?’

I did not answer instantly, and when I raised my head, I saw that curious stranger take Virginia’s hand and kiss its finger-tips before he rose and walked away.

‘Virginia,’ I whispered, ‘how very wise you are! Let us go back now and watch Victoria do her knitting.'

And as we went along the dusty highway, we noticed things we had not seen before. We saw those larches, with the wind turning their leaves the wrong way to, pretending they were wrought in silver. The hills before the darkening sky stood clear against low rolling heaps of clouds, and creeping up the valleys there were pines, black clumps of trees like fluffy blots of ink spilled On a paper. Close by the road grew gardens, where roses leaned their weary heads over the gates and fences. We saw them straggling in and out between the rails and lying lightly on the grass.

Just as we turned into the hostel gates, the moon rose, swinging like a yellow bubble through the darkstemmed trees.