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Wayfarers · Incredible Adventures

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  Section eleven Have Incredible Adventures by Algernon Blackwood. This LibriVox recordings in the public
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  domain read by Ben Tucker Wayfarers. I missed the train at Evian, and
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  after infinite trouble, discovered a motor that would take me I Saxon all to
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  Geneva. By hurrying, the connection might be just possible. I telegraphed a
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  Hadden to meet me at the station and lay back comfortably, dreaming of the
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  precipices of Haute Sauvoir. We made good time. The roads were excellent traffic
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  of the slightest wind crash there was an instant's excruciating pain. The sun went
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  out like a snuffed candle, and I fell into something as soft as a
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  bed of flowers, and as yielding to my weight as warm water. It
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  was very warm. There was a perfume of flowers. My eyes opened,
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  focused vividly upon a detailed picture for a moment, then closed again. There
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  was no context, at least none that I could recall for the scene,
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  though familiar as home, brought nothing that I definitely remembered, broken away from
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  any sequence, unattached to any past, on where even of my own identity,
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  I simply saw this picture as a camera snaps it off from the world,
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  a scene apart, with meaning only for those who knew the context.
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  The warm, soft thing I lay in was a bed, big, deep,
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  comfortable, and the perfume came from flowers that stood beside it on a
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  little table. It was in a stately ancient chamber with lofty ceiling and immense
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  open fireplace of stone. Old fashioned pictures, familiar portraits and engravings on you
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  intimately hung upon the walls. The floor was bare, with dignified carved furniture
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  of oak and mahogany, huge chairs and massive cupboards. And there were latticed
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  windows set within deep embrasures of gray stone, where clambering roses patterned the sunshine
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  that cast their moving shadows on the polished boards. With the perfume of the
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  flowers. There mingled too, that delicate, elusive odor of age, of
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  wood, of musty tapestries, and spacious halls and corridors, and of chambers
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  long unopened to the sun and air. By the door that stood ajar far
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  away at the end of the room, very far away, it seemed an
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  old lady wearing a little cap of silk embroidery was whispering to a man of
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  stern, uncompromising figure, who, as he listened, bent down to her
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  with a grave and even solemn face. A wide stone corridor was just visible
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  through the crack of the open door behind her. The picture flashed and vanished.
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  The numerous details I took in because they were well known to me already
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  that I could not supply the context was merely a trick of the mind,
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  the kind of trick at dreams play. Darkness swamped vision again. I sank
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  back into the warm, soft, comfortable bed of delicious oblivion. There was
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  not the slightest desire to know. Sleep and soft forgetfulness were all I craved.
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  But a little later, or was it a very great deal later,
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  when I opened my eyes again, there was a thin trail of memory.
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  I remembered my name and age. I remembered, vaguely, as though from
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  some unpleasant dream, that I was on the way to meet a climbing friend
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  in the Alps of how To Savoir, and that there was need to hurry
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  and be very active. Something had gone wrong. It seemed there had been
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  a stupid, violent disaster pain in it somewhere, an accident Where were my
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  belongings? Where, for instance, was my precious ice axe, tried old
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  instrument on which my life in safety depended. A rush of jumbled questions poured
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  across my mind. The effort to assort them hurt atrociously. A figure stood
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  beside my bed. It was the same old lady I had seen a moment
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  ago, or was it a month ago? Even last year perhaps? And
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  this time she was alone. Yet, though familiar to me as my own
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  right hand, I could not, for the life of me attract her name.
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  Searching for it brought the pain again. Instead, I asked an easier
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  question. It seemed the most important. Somehow, though a feeling of shame
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  came with it, as though I knew I was talking nonsense. Ay,
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  ice ACKs is a safe It should have stood any ordinary strain its ash.
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  My voice failed, absurdly, caught away by a whisper half way down my
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  throat. What was I talking about? There was vile confusion somewhere. She
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  smiled tenderly, sweetly as she placed her small, cool hand upon my forehead.
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  Her touch calmed me as it always did, and the pain retreated a
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  little. All your things are safe, she answered, in a voice so
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  soft beneath the distant ceiling. It was like a bird's note singing in the
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  sky. And you are also safe. There is no danger now, the
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  bullet has been taken out, and all is going well. Only you must
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  be patient and lie very still and rest. And then she added the morsel
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  of delicious comfort she knew quite well. I waited for Marian is near you
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  all day long, and most of the night. Besides, she rarely leaves
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  you. She is in and out all day. I stared, thirsting for
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  more memory. Put certain pieces in their place again. I heard them click
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  together as they joined, but they only tried to join. There were several
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  pieces missing. They must have been lost in the disaster. The pattern was
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  too ridiculous, I ought to tell a telegraph. I began seizing in a
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  fragment that poked its end up, then plunged out of sight again. Before
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  I could read more of it, the pieces fell apart. They would not
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  hold together without these missing fragments. Anger flamed up in me. They're badly
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  made, I said, with a petulance. I was secretly ashamed of You've
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  chosen the wrong pieces. I'm not a child to be treated A shock of
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  heat tore through me, led by a point of iron with blasting pain.
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  Sleep, my poor dear Felix, Sleep, she murmured soothingly, while her
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  tiny hand stroked my forehead, just in time to prevent that pointed hot thing
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  entering my heart. Sleep again, now and a little later, you shall
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  tell me their names, and I will send on horseback quickly telegraph, I
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  tried to say, but the word went lost before I could pronounce it.
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  It was a nonsense word, caught up from dreams. Thought fluttered and went
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  out. I will send, she whispered, in the quickest possible way.
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  You shall explain to Marian. Sleep first, a little longer. Promise me
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  to lie quite still and sleep. When you wake again, she will come
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  to you at once. She sat down gently on the edge of the enormous
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  bed, so that I saw her outline against the window where the roses clambered
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  to come in. She bent over me, or was it a rose that
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  bent in the wind across the stone embrasure? I saw her clear blue eyes,
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  or was it two rain drops upon a withered rose leaf that mirrored the
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  summer sky? Thank you, my voice murmured with intense relief. As everything
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  sank away in the old world garden seemed to enter by latticed windows, for
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  there was a power in her way that made obedient sweet. And her little
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  hand besides cushioned the attack of that cruel iron point, so that I hardly
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  felt its entrance before the fierce heat could reach me. Darkness again put out
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  the world. Then, after a prodigious interval, my eyes once more open
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  to the stately old world chamber that I knew so well, And this time
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  I found myself alone, and my brain was a stinging, splitting sensation,
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  as though memory shook her pieces together with angry violence. Pieces moreover made of
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  clashing metal, A degrading nausea almost vanquished me. Against my feet was a
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  heated metal body too heavy for me to move, and bandages were tight round
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  my neck. In the back of my head, dimly it came back to
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  me that hands had been about me hours ago, soft ministering hands, that
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  I loved. Their perfume lingered, still faces and names fled in swift procession
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  passed me. Yet without making any attempt to bid them stay, I asked
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  myself no questions. Efforts of any sort was utterly beyond me. I lay
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  and watched and waited, helpless and strangely weak. One or two things alone
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  were clear. They came too without the effort to think them. There had
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  been a disaster. They had carried me into the nearest house, and the
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  mountain heights so keenly longed for, were suddenly denied me. I was being
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  cared for by kind people somewhere far from the world's highest routes. They were
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  familiar people, yet for the moment I had lost the name. But it
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  was the bitterness of losing my holiday climbing that chiefly savaged me. So that
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  strong desire returned upon itself, unfulfilled, and knowing the danger of frustrated yearnings
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  and the curious states of mind they may engender, my tumbling brain registered a
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  decision. Automatically, keep careful upon yourself, it whispered. For I saw
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  the peaks that towered above the world, and felt the wind rise from the
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  hidden valleys. The perfume of lonely ridges came to me, and I saw
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  the snow against the blue black sky. Yet I could not reach them.
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  I lay, instead, broken and useless, upon my back in a soft,
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  deep, comfortable bed, and I loathed the thought a dull and evil
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  fury rose within me. Where was Hatten? He would get me out of
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  it if any one could. And where was my dear, old trusted ice
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  axe above all? Who were these gentle old world people who cared for me?
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  And with this last thought came some fairy touch of sweetness, so delicious
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  that I was conscious of sudden resignation, more even of delight and joy.
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  This joy and anger ran races for possession of my mind, and I knew
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  not which to follow. Both seemed real, and both seemed true. The
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  cruel confusion was an added torture. Two sets of places and people seemed to
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  mingle. Keep a careful watch upon yourself, repeated the automatic caution. Then,
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  with returning blissful darkness, came another thing, a tiny point of wonder
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  where light entered in. I thought of a woman. It was a vehement,
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  commanding thought, And though at first it was very close and real,
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  as much of to day as Haddon and my precious ice Axe, the next
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  second it was leagues away in another world, somewhere yet before the confusion twisted
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  it all askew, I knew her. I remembered clearly even where she lived,
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  that I knew her husband too, had stayed with them in in Scotland,
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  Yes, in Scotland. Yet no word in this life had ever crossed
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  my lips, for she was not free to come. Neither of us,
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  with eyes or lips or gesture, had ever betrayed a hint to the other
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  of our deeply hidden secret. And although for me she was the woman my
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  great yearning, long long ago, it was in early youth, had been
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  sternly put aside and buried with all the vigor nature gave me. Her husband
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  was my friend as well. Only now the shock had somehow strained the prison
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  bars, and the yearning escaped for a moment, full fledged and vehement,
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  with passion long denied, the inhibition was destroyed. The knowledge swept deliciously upon
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  me that we had the right to be together, because we always were together.
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  I had the right to ask for her. My mind was certainly a
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  mere field of confused, ungoverned images. No thinking was possible, for it
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  hurt too vilely. But this one memory stood out with violence. I distinctly
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  remember that I called to her to come, and that she had the right
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  to come, because my need was so peremptory to the one most loved of
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  all this life had brought me yet to whom I had never spoken, because
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  she was in another's keeping. I called for help and called, I verily
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  believe aloud, please come. Then close upon its heels, the automatic warning
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  again, keep close watch upon yourself. It was as though one great yearning
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  had loosed the other that was even greater, and had set it free.
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  Disappearing consciousness then followed the cry for an incalculable distance down into subterraneans within myself
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  that were positively frightening. It plunged away, but the cry was real.
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  The yearning appeal held authority in it as of command. Love gave the right,
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  supplied the power as well, For it seemed to me A tiny answer
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  came, but from so far away that it was scarcely audible, and names
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  were nowhere in it, either an answer or appeal. I am always here.
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  I have never never left you. The unconsciousness that followed was not complete.
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  Apparently there was a memory of effort in it, of struggle, and
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  as it were, of searching. Some one was trying to get at me.
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  I tossed in a troubled sea, upon a piece of wreckage that another
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  swimmer also fought to reach. Huge waves of transparent green now brought this figure
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  nearer. Now concealed it, but it came steadily on, holding out a
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  rope. My exhaustion was too great for me to respond. Yet this swimmer
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  swept up nearer, brought by enormous rollers that threatened to engulf us both.
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  The rope was for my safety too. I saw hands outstretched in the deep
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  water. I saw the outline of the body, and once I even saw
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  the face, but for a second merely the wave that bore it crashed with
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  a horrible roar that smothered us both, and swept me from my piece of
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  wreckage and the violent flood of water. The rope whipped against my feeble hands.
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  I grasped it. A sense of divine security at once came over me,
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  an intolerable sweetness, of utter bliss and comfort, thin blackness and suffocation
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  as of the grave. The white hot point of iron struck me. It
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  beat audibly against my heart. I heard the knocking. The pain brought me
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  up to the surface, and the knocking of my dreams was in reality and
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  knocking on the door. Some one was gently tapping. Such was the confusion
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  of images in my pain racked mind that I expected to see the old lady
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  enter, bringing ropes and ice axes, and followed by Haddon, my mountaineering
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  friend. For I thought that I had fallen down a deep crevasse and had
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  waited hours for help in the cold, blue darkness of the ice. I
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  was too weak to answer, and the knocking, for that matter, was
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  not repeated. I did not even hear the opening of the door, so
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  softly did she move into the room. I only knew that before I actually
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  saw her. This wave of intolerable sweetness drenched me once again with bliss and
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  peace and comfort. My pain retreated, and I closed my eyes, knowing
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  I should feel that cool and soothing hand upon my head. The same minute
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  I did feel it. There was a perfume of old gardens in the air.
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  I opened my eyes to look the gratitude I could not utter, and
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  saw close against me, not the old lady, but the young and lovely
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  face my worship had long made familiar, with lips that smiled their yearnings,
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  and eyes of brown that held tears of sympathy. She sat down beside me
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  on the bed. The warmth and fragrance of her atmosphere enveloped me. I
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  sank away into a garden where spring melts magically into summer. Her arms were
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  round my neck, her face dropped down so that I felt her hair upon
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  my cheek and eyes, and then, whispering my name twice over, she
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  kissed me on the lips. Marian, I murmured, hush, mother sends
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  you this, She answered softly. You are to take it all. She
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  made it with her own hands, but I bring it to you. You
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  must be quite obedient. Please. She tried to rise, but I held
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  her against my breast. Kiss me again, and I'll promise obedience always,
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  I strove to say, but my voice refused so long a sentence, And
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  anyhow, her lips were on my own before I could have finished it.
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  Slowly, very carefully, she disentangled herself, and my arms sank back upon
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  the coverlet I sighed in happiness. A moment longer, she stood beside my
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  bed, gazing down with love and deep anxiety into my face. And when
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  all is eaten, all mind all, she smiled, You are to sleep
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  until the doctor comes this afternoon. You are much better. Soon you shall
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  get up, only remember shaking her finger with a sweet pretense of looking stern.
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  I shall exact complete obedience. You must yield your will utterly to mine.
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  You are in my heart, and my heart must be kept very warm
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  and happy. Her eyes were tender as her mother's, and I loved the
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  authority and strength that were so real in her. I remembered how it was
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  the strength that had sealed the contract. Her beauty first drew up for me
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  to sign. She bent down once more to arrange my pillows. What happened
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  to to the motor? I asked, hesitatingly, For my thoughts would not
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  regulate themselves. The mind pretended such incongruous fragments. The what she asked evidently
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  puzzled. The word seemed strange to her. What is that? She repeated,
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  anxiety in her eyes. I made an effort to tell her, but
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  I could not. Explanation was suddenly impossible. The whole idea dived away out
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  of sight. It utterly evaded me. I had again invented a word that
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  was without meaning. I was talking nonsense. In its place. My dream
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  came up. I tried to tell her how I dreamed of climbing dangerous heights
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  with a stranger, and had spoken another language. With him than my own
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  English, was it, at any rate? Not my native French? Darling,
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  She whispered close into my ear. The bad dreams will not come back.
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  You are safe here, quite safe. She put her little hand like
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  a flower on my forehead and drew it softly down the cheek. Your wound
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  is already healing. They took the bullet out four days ago. I've got
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  it, she added, with a touch of shy embarrassment, and kissed me
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  tenderly upon my eyes. How long have you been away from me, I
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  asked, feeling exhaustion, coming back never once for more than ten minutes,
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  was the reply. I watched with you all night. Only this morning,
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  while mother took my place, I slept a little, but hush, she
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  said, with dear authority. Again, you are not to talk so much.
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  You must eat what I have brought. Then sleep again. You must
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  rest and sleep. Goodbye, goodbye, my love. I shall come back
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  in an hour, and I shall always be within reach of your dear voice.
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  Her tall, slim figure, dressed in the gray I loved, crossed
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  silently to the door. She gave me one more look. There was all
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  the tenderness of passionate love in it, and then was gone. I followed
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  instructions meekly, and when a delicious sleep stole over me soon afterwards, I
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  had forgotten utterly the ugly dream that I was climbing dangerous heights with another man.
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  Forgotten as well everything else, except that it seemed so many days since
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  my love had come to me, and that my bullet wound would, after
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  all be healed in time for our wedding, on the days so long,
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  so eagerly waited for. And when several hours later her mother came in with
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  the doctor, his face less, grave and solemn. This time, the
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  news that I might get up next day and lie a little in the garden
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  did more to heal me than a thousand bandages, or twice that quantity of
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  medical instructions. I watched them as they stood a moment by the open door.
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  They went out very slowly, together, speaking in whispers. But the
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  only thing I caught was the mother's voice, talking brokenly of the great wars
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  Napoleon. The doctor was saying, in a low, hushed tone, was
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  in full retreat from Moscow, though the news had only just come through.
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  They passed into the corridor then, and there was a sound of weeping.
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  As the old lady murmured something about her son and the cruelty of heaven,
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  both will be taken from me. She was sobbing softly while he stooped to
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  comfort her, one in marriage and the other in death. They closed the
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  door then, and I heard no more one. Convalescence seemed to follow very
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  quickly then, for I was utterly obedient, as I had promised, and
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  never spoke of what could excite me to my own detriment, the wars and
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  my own unfortunate part in them. We talked instead of our love, our
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  already too long engagement, and of the sweet dream of happiness that life held
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  waiting for us in the future. And indeed I was sufficiently weary of the
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  world to prefer repose to much activity, for my body was almost incessantly in
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  pain. And this old garden, where we lay between high walls of stone,
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  aloof from the busy world, and very peaceful, was far more to
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  my taste just then than wars and fighting. The orchards were in blossom,
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  and the winds of spring showered their rain of petals upon the long new grass.
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  We lay, half in sunshine, half in shade. Beneath the poplars
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  that lined the avenue towards the lake, and behind us rose the ancient gray
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  stone towers, where the jackdaws nested in the ivy and the pigeons cooed and
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  fluttered from the woods beyond. There was loveliness everywhere, but there was sadness
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  too, For though we both knew that the wars had taken her brother,
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  whence there is no return, and that only her aged, failing mother's life
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  stood between ourselves and the stately property, there hit a sadness yet deeper than
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  either of these thoughts, in both our hearts. And it was, I
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  think, the sadness that comes with spring, For Spring, with her lavish,
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  short lived promises of eternal beauty, is ever a symbol of passing human
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  happiness. Incomplete and always unfulfilled. Promises made on earth are playthings, after
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  all, for children. Even while we make them so solemnly, we seem
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  to know they are not meant to hold. They are made as spring is
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  made, with a glory of soft, radiant blossoms that pass away before there
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  is time to realize them. And yet they come again with the return of
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  spring, as unashamed and glorious, as if time had utterly forgotten. And
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  this sadness was in her too. I mean, it was part of her,
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  and she was part of it. Not that our love could change,
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  to pass or die, but that its sweet, so long desired accomplishment must
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  hold away, and like the spring, must melt and vanish. Before it
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  had been fully known, I did not speak of it. I well understood
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  that the depression of a broken body can influence the spirit with its poisonous melancholy,
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  but it must have betrayed itself in my words and gestures, even in
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  my manner too. At any rate, she was aware of it. I
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  think, if truth be told, she felt it too. It seemed so
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  painfully inevitable. My recovery, meanwhile, was rapid, and from spending an
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  hour or two in the garden, I soon came to spend the entire day,
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  for the spring came on with a rush, and the warmth increased deliciously.
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  While the cuckoos called to one another in the great beech woods behind the
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  chateau, we sat and talked, and sometimes had our simple meals or coffee
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  there together, And I particularly recall the occasion when solid food was first permitted
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  me, and she gave me a delicate young bundel, fresh caught that very
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  morning in the lake. There were leaves of sweet crisp lettuce with it,
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  and she picked the bones out for me with her own white hands. The
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  day was radiant, with a sky of cloudless blue. Soft airs stirred the
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  poplar crusts. The little waves fell on the pebbly beach not fifty meters away,
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  and the orchard floor was carpeted with flowers that seemed to have caught from
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  heaven stars the patterns of their yellow blossoms. The bees droned peacefully among the
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  fruit trees. The air was full of musical, deep hummings. My former
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  vigor stirred delightfully in my blood, and I knew no pain beyond occasional dull
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  twinges in the head that came with a rush of temporary darkness over my mind.
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  The scar was healed, however, and the hair had grown over it
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  again. This temporary darkness alarmed her more than it alarmed me. There were
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  grave complications, apparently that I did not know of, But the deep lying
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  sadness in me seemed independent of the glorious weather, due to causes so intangible,
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  so far off that I never could dispel them by arguing them away,
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  for I could not discover what they actually were. There was a vague,
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  distressing sense of restlessness, that I ought to have been elsewhere, and otherwise,
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  that we were together for a few days only, and that these few
• 24:25
  days I had snatched unlawfully from stern imperative duties. These duties were immediate,
• 24:30
  but neglected in a sense I had no right to this spring tide of bliss
• 24:34
  or presence brought me. I was playing truant somehow somewhere. It was not
• 24:40
  my absence from the regiment that I know. It was infinitely deeper, sat
• 24:45
  to some enormous scale that vaguely frightened me while it deepened the sweetness of the
• 24:48
  stolen joy. Like a child, I sought to pin the sunny hours against
• 24:53
  the sky and make them stay. They passed with such a mocking swiftness,
• 24:59
  snatch momentarily from some big oblivion. The twilights swallowed our days together before they
• 25:04
  had been properly tasted, And on looking back, each afternoon of happiness seemed
• 25:10
  to have been a mere moment in a flying dream. And I must have
• 25:14
  somehow betrayed the aching mood, for Marian turned of a sudden and gazed into
• 25:18
  my face with yearning and anxiety in the sweet brown eyes. What is it,
• 25:22
  dearest, I asked, And why do your eyes bring questions? You?
• 25:27
  Sighed? She answered, smiling a little sadly, and sighed so deeply.
• 25:33
  You are in pain again. The darkness perhaps is over you, and
• 25:37
  her hands stole out to meet my own. You are in pain, not
• 25:41
  physical pain, I said, and not thee darkness either. I see you
• 25:48
  clearly and would have told her more as I carried her soft fingers to my
• 25:52
  lips, had I not divined from the expression in her eyes that she read
• 25:56
  my heart and knew all my strange, mysterious forebodings in herself, I know,
• 26:02
  she whispered before I could find speech, for I feel it too.
• 26:06
  It is the shadow of separation that oppresses you. Yet of no common,
• 26:11
  measurable separation you can understand? Is it not that? Leaning over? Then
• 26:15
  I took her close into my arms, Since words in that moment were mere
• 26:19
  foolishness. I held her so that she could not get away. But even
• 26:25
  while I did so, it was like trying to hold the spring or fasten
• 26:27
  the flying hour with a fierce desire, all slipped from me and my arms
• 26:33
  caught at the sunshine and the wind. We have both felt it all these
• 26:37
  weeks, she said bravely, as soon as I had released her, and
• 26:41
  we both have struggled to conceal it. But now she hesitated for a second,
• 26:47
  and with so exquisite a tenderness that I would have caught her to me
• 26:49
  again, but for my anxiety to hear her further words. Now that you
• 26:53
  are well, we may speak plainly to each other, and so lessen our
• 26:57
  pain by sharing it. And then she added, still more softly, you
• 27:02
  feel there is something that shall take you from me. Yet what it is
• 27:07
  you cannot discover nor divine tell me. Felix all your thought, that I
• 27:11
  in turn may tell you mine. Her voice floated about me in the sunny
• 27:15
  air. I stared at her, striving to focus the dear face more clearly
• 27:19
  from my sight. A shower of apple blossoms fell about us, and her
• 27:25
  words seemed floating past me like those passing petals of white. They drifted away.
• 27:30
  I followed them, with difficulty and confusion. With the wind, I
• 27:34
  fancied a veil of indefinable change slipped across her face and eyes, Yet nothing
• 27:41
  that could alter feeling, I answered, for she had expressed my own thought
• 27:45
  completely, nor anything that either of us can control, only perhaps that everything
• 27:51
  must fade and pass away, just as this glory of the spring must fade
• 27:56
  and pass away, yet leaving its sweetness in us. She caught me up
• 28:00
  passionately, and to come again, my beloved, to come again in every
• 28:04
  subsequent life, each time with an added sweetness in it too. Her little
• 28:10
  face showed suddenly the courage of a lion in its eyes. Her heart was
• 28:14
  ever braver than my own, a vigorous fighting soul. She spoke of lives,
• 28:19
  I prattled of days and hours. Merely a touch of shame stole over
• 28:23
  me. But that delicate, swift change in her spread too, with a
• 28:29
  thrill of ominous warning. I noticed how it rose and grew about her from
• 28:33
  within onwards. It seemed to pass like a shadow of great blue distance.
• 28:38
  Shadow was somewhere in it, so that she dimmed a little before my very
• 28:42
  eyes. The dreadful yearning searched and shook me, for I could not understand
• 28:48
  it, try as I would. She seemed going from me drifting like her
• 28:53
  words, and like the apple blossoms. But when we shall no longer be
• 28:59
  here to know it, I made answer quickly, yet as calmly as I
• 29:03
  could. And when we shall have passed to some other place, to other
• 29:07
  conditions, where we shall not recognize the joy, and wonder, when barriers
• 29:11
  of mist shall have rolled between us, our love and passion so made over
• 29:17
  that we shall not know each other. The words rushed out feverishly, half
• 29:21
  beyond control, and perhaps shall not even dare to speak to each other of
• 29:25
  our deep desire. I broke off abruptly, conscious that I was speaking out
• 29:29
  of some unfamiliar place, where I floundered, helpless among strange conditions. I
• 29:33
  was saying things I hardly understood myself. Her bigger, deeper mood spoke through
• 29:37
  me. Perhaps her darling face came back again. She moved close within reach
• 29:44
  once more. Hush, hush, she whispered, Terror and love both battling
• 29:48
  in her eyes. It is the truth, perhaps, but you must not
• 29:52
  say such things. To speak them brings them closer. A chain is about
• 29:56
  our hearts, a chain of fashioning lives without no But do not seek to
• 30:00
  draw upon it with anxiety or fear to do so can only cause the pain
• 30:04
  of wrong entanglement and interrupt the natural running of the iron lynx. And she
• 30:11
  placed her hand swiftly upon my mouth, as though divining that the bleak attack
• 30:15
  of anguish was again upon me, with its throbbing rush of darkness. But
• 30:19
  for once I was disobedient and resisted. The physical pain, I realized vividly
• 30:26
  was linked closely with this spiritual torture. One caused the other. Somehow,
• 30:30
  the disordered brain received, though brokenly, some hints of darker and unusual knowledge
• 30:37
  it had stammered forth in me. But through her it flowed easily and clear.
• 30:41
  I saw the change move more swiftly than across her face. Some ancient
• 30:47
  look passed into both her eyes, and it was inevitable I must speak out,
• 30:52
  regardless of mere bodily well being. We shall have to face them some
• 30:56
  day, I cried, although the effort hurt abominably. Then why now?
• 31:03
  And I drew her hand down and kissed it passionately, over and over again.
• 31:07
  We are not children to hide our faces among shadows and pretend we are
• 31:11
  invisible. At least we have the present, the moment that is here,
• 31:15
  and now we stand side by side in the heart of this deep spring day.
• 31:19
  This sunshine and these flowers, this wind across the lake, the sky
• 31:23
  of blue, and the singing of the birds. All all are hours.
• 31:29
  Now, let us use the moment that time gives, and so strengthen the
• 31:33
  chain you speak of that shall bring us again together times without number. We
• 31:37
  shall then perhaps remember, oh, my heart, think what this would mean
• 31:44
  to remember. Exhaustion caught me, and I sank back among my cushions.
• 31:48
  But Marian rose up suddenly and stood beside me, And as she did so,
• 31:53
  another sky dropped softly down upon us both and I smelt again the incense
• 31:59
  of old, old gardens that brought long forgotten perfumes incredibly sweet, but with
• 32:05
  it an ache of far off, passionate remembrance that was pain. This great
• 32:09
  ache of distance swept over me like a wave. I know not what grand
• 32:15
  change then was wrought upon her beauty, so that I saw her defiant and
• 32:20
  erect, commanding fate. Because she understood it. She towered over me.
• 32:24
  But it was her soul that towered. The rush of internal darkness in me
• 32:29
  blotted out all else. The familiar present sky grew dim, the sunshine faded,
• 32:36
  the lake, and flowers and poplars dipped away, conditions a thousand times
• 32:39
  more vivid took their place. She stood out, clear and shining in the
• 32:45
  glory of an undressed soul, brave and confident with an eternal love that separation
• 32:50
  strengthened but could never never change. The deep sadness I abruptly realized was very
• 32:54
  little removed from joy, because somehow it was the condition of joy. I
• 32:59
  could not explain it more than that. And her voice when she spoke,
• 33:02
  was firm, with a note of steel in it, intense yet devoid of
• 33:07
  the wasting anger that passion brings. She was determined beyond death itself, upon
• 33:12
  a foundation sure and lasting as the stars. The hard in her was calm
• 33:16
  because she knew she was magnificent. We are together always, she said,
• 33:23
  her voice rich with the knowledge of some unfathomable experience, for separation is temporary,
• 33:29
  merely forging new links in the ancient chains of lives that binds our hearts
• 33:35
  eternally together. She looked like one who had conquered the adversity time brings by
• 33:40
  accepting it. You speak of the present as though our souls were already fitted
• 33:45
  now to bid it stay, needing no further fashioning, Looking only to the
• 33:50
  future, you forget our ample past that has made us what we are.
• 33:53
  Yet our past is here and now beside us, at this very moment,
• 33:58
  and to the hollow cups of week and months, of years and centuries,
• 34:01
  time pours its flood beneath our eyes. Time is our school room. Are
• 34:07
  you so soon afraid? Does not separation achieve that which companionship never could accomplish?
• 34:13
  And how shall we dare eternity together if we cannot be strong in separation?
• 34:16
  First I listened while a flood of memories broke up through film upon film
• 34:22
  and layer upon layer that had long covered them. This present that we seem
• 34:28
  to hold between our hands, she went on, in that earnest, distant
• 34:31
  voice, is our moment of sweet remembrance that you speak of, of renewal,
• 34:37
  perhaps too, of reconciliation, a fleeting instant when we may kiss again
• 34:42
  and say good bye, but with strengthened hope and courage revived. But we
• 34:46
  may not stay together. Finally, we cannot until long discipline and pain shall
• 34:52
  have perfected sympathy and schooled our love by searching difficult tests that it may last
• 34:58
  forever. I stretched my arms out dumbly to take her in. Her face
• 35:02
  shone down upon me, bathed in an older, fiercer sunlight. The change
• 35:07
  in her seemed in an instant than complete. Some big soft wind blew both
• 35:13
  of us ten thousand miles away. The centuries gathered us back together. Look
• 35:19
  rather to the past, she whispered, grandly, Where first we knew the
• 35:22
  sweet opening of our love? Remember, if you can, how the pain
• 35:27
  and separation have made it so worth while to continue and be braver. Thence
• 35:34
  she turned her eyes more fully upon my own, so that their light persuaded
• 35:37
  me utterly. Away with her, an immense new happiness broke over me.
• 35:43
  I listened, and with the stirrings of an ampler courage, it seemed I
• 35:47
  followed her down an interminable vista of remembrance, till I was happy with her
• 35:52
  among the flowers and fields of our earliest pre existence. Her voice came to
• 35:58
  me, with the singing of birds and the hum of insects. Have you
• 36:01
  so soon forgotten? She sighed, when we first knew together the perfume of
• 36:07
  the hanging Babylonian gardens, Or when the hesperides were so soft to us in
• 36:13
  the dawn of the world. And do you not remember, with a little
• 36:15
  rise of passion in her voice, the sweet plantations of Caltea, And how
• 36:21
  we tasted the odor of many a drooping flower in the gardens of Alcinous,
• 36:23
  and a daunis when the bees of oldentime picked out the honey for our eating.
• 36:30
  It is the fragrance of those first hours we knew together that still lies
• 36:32
  in our hearts to day, sweetening our love to this apparent suddenness. Hence
• 36:38
  comes the full, deep happiness we gather so easily to day. The breast
• 36:44
  of every ancient forest is torn with storms and lightning. That's why it is
• 36:49
  so soft and full of little gardens. You've forgotten too easily, the glades
• 36:52
  of Lebanon, where we whispered our earliest secrets while the big winds drove their
• 36:57
  chariots down those earlier skies. There rose an indescribable tempest of remembrance in my
• 37:02
  heart as I strove to bring the pictures into focus, But words failed me.
• 37:08
  In the hand I eagerly stretched out to touch her own met only sunshine
• 37:13
  and the rain of apple blossoms, the myrrh and frankincense. She continued,
• 37:17
  in a sighing voice that seemed to come with the wind from invisible caverns in
• 37:22
  the sky. The grapes and pomegranates, have they all passed from you?
• 37:28
  With the train of apes and peacocks, the tigers and the ibis, and
• 37:31
  the hordes of dark faced slaves. And this little sun that play so lightly
• 37:36
  here upon our woods of beech and pine, does it bring back nothing of
• 37:39
  the old time scorching, when the olive slopes, the figs and ripening cornfields
• 37:45
  heard our vows and watched our love mature, our spread encampment in the desert.
• 37:52
  Do not these sands upon our little beech revive its lonely majesty for you?
• 37:57
  And have you forgotten the gleam of towers of sea me ramis or in
• 38:00
  sardis, those strange lilies that first tempted our souls to their divine disclosure.
• 38:07
  Conscious of a violent struggle between pain and joy, both too deep for me
• 38:10
  to understand, I rose to seize her in my arms, But the effort
• 38:15
  dimmed. The flying pictures, the wind that bore her voice down the stupendous
• 38:20
  vista fled back into the caverns. Whence it came, and the pain caught
• 38:24
  me in a vice of agony, so searching that I could not move a
• 38:28
  muscle. My tongue lay dry against my lips. I could not frame a
• 38:31
  word of any sentence. Her voice presently came back to me, but fainter,
• 38:37
  like a whisper from the stars. The light dimmed everywhere. I saw
• 38:40
  no more of the vivid, shining scenery she had summoned. A mournful dusk
• 38:45
  instead crept down upon the world she had momentarily revived. We may not stay
• 38:51
  together, I heard her little whisper, until long discipline shall have perfected sympathy
• 38:58
  and schooled our love to last. For this love of ours is forever,
• 39:04
  and the pain that tries it is the furnace that fashions precious stones. Again,
• 39:09
  I stretched my arms out. Her face shone a moment longer in that
• 39:15
  forgotten, fiercer sunlight, then faded very swiftly, the change, like a
• 39:19
  veil, passed over it. From the place of prodigious distance where she had
• 39:22
  been. She swept down towards me with such dizzy speed as she was to
• 39:29
  day. I saw her again, more and more pain and separation than are
• 39:35
  welcome. I try to stammer, and we will desire them. But my
• 39:39
  thought got no further into expression than the first two words, aching blotted out
• 39:45
  coherent utterance. She bent down very close against my face. Her fragrance was
• 39:51
  about my lips. But her voice ran off like a faint thrill of music
• 39:54
  far far away. I caught the final words dying away as wind eyes and
• 40:00
  high branches of wood, And they reached me, this time through the droning
• 40:04
  of bees and of waves that murmured close at hand upon the shore. For
• 40:09
  our love is of the soul, and our souls are molded in eternity.
• 40:15
  It is not yet, It is not now our perfect consummation, nor shall
• 40:20
  our next time of meeting know it. We shall not even speak, for
• 40:23
  I shall not be free, was what I heard. She paused, you
• 40:30
  mean we shall not know each other, I cried, in an anguish of
• 40:34
  spirit that mastered the lesser physical pain. I barely caught her answer. My
• 40:39
  discipline, then will be in another's keeping, yet only that I may come
• 40:44
  back to you more perfect in the end. The bees and waves then cushioned
• 40:50
  her whisper with their humming the trail of a deeper silence led them far away.
• 40:54
  The rush of temporary darkness passed and lifted. I opened my eyes.
• 41:00
  My love sat close beside me in the shadow of the poplars. One hand
• 41:04
  held both my own, while with the other she arranged my pillows and stroked
• 41:07
  my aching head. The world dropped back into a tiny scale once more.
• 41:14
  You have had the pain again, Marian murmured anxiously. But it is better
• 41:17
  now, it is passing. She kissed my cheek. You must come in,
• 41:22
  but I would not let her go. I held her to me with
• 41:25
  all the strength that was in me. I had it, but it's gone
• 41:30
  again. An awful darkness came with it. I whispered in the little ear
• 41:34
  that was so close against my mouth. I've been dreaming, I told her,
• 41:38
  as memory dipped away, dreaming of view and me together somewhere in old
• 41:45
  gardens or forests where the sun was. But she would not let me finish.
• 41:51
  I think in any case, I could not have said more, for
• 41:53
  thought evaded me, and any language of coherent description was in the same instant
• 41:59
  beyond my power. Exhaustion came upon me, that vile, compelling nausea with
• 42:05
  it. The sun here is too strong. For you, dear love,
• 42:09
  I heard her saying, and you must rest more. We have been doing
• 42:13
  too much these last few days. You must have more repose. She rose
• 42:17
  to help me move indoors. I have been unconscious, then, I asked,
• 42:23
  in the feeble whisper. That was all I could manage for a little
• 42:27
  while you slept while I watched over you. But I was away from you.
• 42:32
  Oh how could you let me sleep when our time together is so short?
• 42:37
  She soothed me instantly, in the way she knew we both loved.
• 42:39
  So I clung to her until she released herself again, not away from me,
• 42:45
  she smiled, For I was with you in your dreaming. Of course,
• 42:50
  of course you were. But already I knew not exactly why I said
• 42:53
  it, nor caught the deep meaning that struggled up into my words from such
• 42:58
  unfathomable distance. Come, she added, with her sweet authority. Again,
• 43:02
  we must go in. Now, give me your arm and I will send
• 43:06
  out for the cushions. Lean on me. I am going to put you
• 43:08
  back to bed. But I shall sleep again, I said, petulantly.
• 43:14
  And we shall be separated. We shall dream together, she replied, And
• 43:20
  she helped me slowly and painfully towards the old gray walls of the chateau.
• 43:24
  Two half an hour later I slept deeply, peacefully upon my bed in the
• 43:30
  big stately chamber, where the roses watched beside the latticed windows. And to
• 43:36
  say I dreamed again is not correct, for it can only be expressed by
• 43:38
  saying that I saw and knew the figures round the bed were actual, and
• 43:44
  in life. Nothing could be more real than the whisper of the doctor's voice,
• 43:49
  that solemn, grave faced man who was so tall, as he said
• 43:52
  sternly yet brokenly to some one, you must say good bye, and you
• 43:55
  had better say it now. Nor could any thing be more definite and sure
• 44:01
  more charged with the actuality of living than the figure of Marian as she stooped
• 44:07
  over me to obey the terrible command. For I saw her face float down
• 44:10
  towards me like a star, and a shower of pale spring blossoms rained upon
• 44:15
  me with her hair. The perfume of old old gardens rose about me.
• 44:22
  As she slipped to her knees beside the bed, kissed my lips so softly
• 44:27
  it was like the breath of wind from lake and orchard, and so lingeringly.
• 44:30
  It was as though the blossoms lay upon my mouth and grew into flowers
• 44:35
  that she planted there. Good Bye, my love, be brave. It
• 44:40
  is only separation, It is death, I tried to say, but could
• 44:47
  only feebly stir my lips against her own. I drew her breath of flowers
• 44:52
  into my mouth, and there came then the darkness which is final. The
• 44:59
  voices grew. I heard a man struggling with an unfamiliar language, turning restlessly.
• 45:04
  I opened my eyes upon a little stuffy room with white walls, whereon
• 45:07
  no pictures hung. It was very hot. A woman was standing beside the
• 45:12
  bed, and the bed was very short. I stretched and my feet kicked
• 45:15
  against the boarding at the end. Yes, he is awake, the woman
• 45:20
  said in French, will you come in? The doctor said you might see
• 45:23
  him when he woke. I think you'll know you. She spoke in French.
• 45:27
  I just knew enough to understand, and of course I knew him.
• 45:30
  It was Hadden. I heard him, thinking her for all her kindness,
• 45:34
  as he blundered in his French. If anything was worse than my own,
• 45:37
  I felt inclined to laugh. I did laugh. By jove, old man,
• 45:43
  This is bad luck, isn't it. You've had a narrow shave.
• 45:45
  This good lady telegraphed. Have you got my ice axe? Is it all
• 45:50
  right? I asked. I remembered clearly the motor accident everything, the ice
• 45:55
  axe is right enough, he laughed, looking cheerfully at the woman. But
• 45:59
  what about yourself? Feel bad still? Any pain? I mean, oh,
• 46:04
  I feel all right, I answered, searching for the pain of broken
• 46:07
  bones, but finding none. What happened? I was stunned, I suppose
• 46:12
  bit stunned, Yes, said Hadden. You got a nasty knock on the
• 46:15
  head. It seems the point of the axe ran into you or something.
• 46:20
  Was that all? He nodded, But I'm afraid it's knocked our climbing on
• 46:24
  the head. Shocking bad luck, isn't it? I telegraphed last night,
• 46:30
  the kind woman was explaining. But I couldn't get here till this morning,
• 46:34
  Hadden said. The telegram didn't find me till midnight. You see, and
• 46:37
  he turned to think the woman in his voluble, dreadful fringe. She kept
• 46:42
  a little pension on the shores of the lake. It was the nearest house,
• 46:45
  and they had carried me in there and got the doctor to me.
• 46:47
  All within the hour, it proved slight enough. Apart from the shock,
• 46:51
  it was not even concussion. I'd merely been stunned. Sleep had cured me.
• 46:54
  As it seemed jolly little place, said Haddon, as he moved me
• 46:59
  that afternoon to Geneva. Whence, after a few days rest, we went
• 47:01
  on into the Alps of Hautsavoir, and lucky the old body was so kind
• 47:06
  and quick. Odd, wasn't it? He glanced at me. Something in
• 47:10
  his voice betrayed he hid another thought. I saw nothing odd in it at
• 47:15
  all, only very tiresome. What's its name? I asked, taking a
• 47:21
  shot at a venture. He hesitated a second, hadn't the climber was not
• 47:25
  skilled in the delicacies of tact. Don't know it's present name, he answered,
• 47:30
  looking away from me across the lake. But it stands on the side
• 47:34
  of an old chateau destroyed a hundred years ago, the Chateau de Belle Reeve.
• 47:39
  And then I understood my old friend's absurd confusion, for Belle Reeve chanced
• 47:45
  also to be the name of a married woman I knew in Scotland. At
• 47:47
  least it was her maiden name, and she was of French extraction. End
• 47:54
  of Section eleven. End of Incredible Adventures by alturnon Blackwood