Watersprings - Arthur Christopher Benson (short novels to read TXT) 📗

think of that; but it's hardly human--and now at last I see you are flesh and blood again."

"Well, I am not sure that it isn't what I thought about you," said Howard.

"Ah," said Mrs. Graves, "I am an old woman; and I don't think death is so terrible to me. Life is interesting enough, but I should often be glad to get away; there is something beyond that is a good deal easier and more beautiful. But I don't expect you to feel that."

"You think she will get well?" said Howard faintly.

"Yes, she will get well, and soon," said Mrs. Graves. "She has been resting in her own natural way. The poor dearest baby--you don't know, you can't know, what that means to Maud and even to me; you will have to be very good to her for a long time yet; you won't understand her sorrow--she won't expect you to; but you mustn't fail her; and you must do as you are bid. This afternoon you must just go out for a walk, and you must SLEEP, dear; that's what you want; you don't know what a spectre you are; and you must just get well as quick as you can, for Maud's sake and mine."

That afternoon there fell on Howard after his walk--though the world was sweet to him and dear again, he was amazed to find how weak he was--an unutterable drowsiness against which he could hardly fight. The delicious weariness came on him like a summer air; he stumbled to bed that night, and oh, the wonder of waking in a new world, the incredible happiness that greeted him, happiness that merged again in a strange and serene torpor of the senses, every sight and sound striking sharp and beautiful on his eye and ear.

For some days he was only allowed to see Maud for little lengthening periods; they said little, but just sate in silence with a few whispered words. Maud recovered fast, and was each day a little stronger.

One evening, as he sate with her, she said, "I want to tell you now what has been happening to me, dearest. You must hear it all. You must not grieve yourself about the little child, because you cannot have known it as I did--but you must let me grieve a little . . . you will see when I tell you. I won't go back too far. There was all the pain first--I hope I did not behave very badly, but I was beside myself with pain, and then I went off . . . you know . . . I don't remember anything of that . . . and then I came back again, feeling that something very strange had happened to me, and I was full of joy; and then I saw that something was wrong, and it came over me what had happened. The strange thing is that though I was so weak--I could hardly think and I could not speak--yet I never felt more clear or strong in mind--no, not in mind either, but in myself. It seems so strange that I have never even SEEN our child, not with my eyes, though that matters little. But then when I understood, I did indeed fail utterly; you seemed to me so far away; I felt somehow that you were thinking only about me, and I could simply think of nothing but the child--my own child, gone from me in a moment. I simply prayed with all my soul to die and have done with everything, and then there was a strange whirl in the air like a great wind, and loud confused noises, and I fell away out of life, and thought it was death. And then I awoke again, but it was not here--it was in a strange wide place--a sort of twilight, and there were hills and trees. I stood up, and suddenly felt a hand in my own, and there was a little child beside me, looking up at me. I can't tell you what happened next--it is rather dim to me, but I sate, or walked, or wandered, carrying the child--and it TALKED to me; yes, it talked in a little clear voice, though I can't remember anything it said; but I felt somehow as if it was telling me what might have been, and that I was getting to KNOW it somehow--does that seem strange? It seems like months and years that I was with it; and I feel now that I not only love it, but know it, all its thoughts, all its desires, all its faults--it had FAULTS, dearest; think of that--faults such as I have, and other faults as well. It was not quite content, but it was not unhappy; but it wasn't a dream-child at all, not like a little angel, but a perfectly real child. It laughed sometimes, and I can hear its little laughter now; it found fault with me, it wanted to go on--it cried sometimes, and nothing would please it; but it loved me and wanted to be with me; and I told it about you, and it not only listened, but asked me many times over to tell it more, about you, about me, about this place--I think it had other things in its mind, recollections, I thought, which it tried to tell me; so it went on. Once or twice I found myself here in bed--but I thought I was dying, and only wanted to lose myself and get back to the child--and then it all came to an end. There was a great staircase up which we went together; there was cloud at the top, but it seemed to me that there was life and movement behind it; there was no shadow behind the cloud, but light . . . and there was sound, musical sound. I went up with the child's hand clasped close in my own, but at the top he disengaged himself, and went in without a word to me or a sign, not as if he were leaving me, but as if his real life, and mine too, were within--just as a child would run into its home, if you came back with it from a walk, and as if it knew you were following, and there was no need of good-byes. I did not feel any sorrow at all then, either for the child or myself--I simply turned round and came down . . . and then I was back in my room again . . . and then it was you that I wanted."

"That's all very wonderful," said Howard, musing, "wonderful and beautiful. . . . I wish I had seen that!"

"Yes, but you didn't need it," said Maud; "one sees what one needs, I think. And I want to add something, dearest, which you must believe. I don't want to revert to this, or to speak of it again--I don't mean to dwell upon it; it is just enough for me. One mustn't press these things too closely, nor want other people to share them or believe them. That is the mistake one makes, that one thinks that other people ought to find one's own feelings and fancies and experiences as real as one finds them oneself. I don't even want to know what you think about it--I don't want you to say you believe in it, or to think about it at all. I couldn't help telling you about it, because it seems as real to me as anything that ever happened in my life; but I don't want you to have to pretend, or to accept it in order to please me. It is just my own experience; I was ill, unconscious, delirious, anything you please; but it is just a blessed fact for me, for all that, a gift from God. Do you really trust me when I say this, dearest? I don't claim a word from you about it, but it will make all the difference to me. I can go on now. I don't want to die, I don't want to follow--I only want you to feel, or to learn to feel, that the child is a real child, our very own, as much a part of our family as Jack or Cousin Anne; and I don't even want you to SAY that. I want all to be as before; the only difference is that I now don't feel as if I was CHOOSING. It isn't a case of leaving him or leaving you. I have you both--and I think you wanted me most; and I haven't a wish or a desire in my heart but to be with you."

"Yes, dearest," said Howard, "I understand. It is perfect to be trusted so. I won't say anything now about it. I could not say anything. But you have put something into my heart which will spring up and blossom. Just now there isn't room for anything in my mind but the fact that you are given back to me; that's all I can hold; but it won't be all. I am glad you told me this, and utterly thankful that it is so. That you should be here, given back to me, that must be enough now. I can't count up my gains; but if you had come back, leaving your heart elsewhere, how could I have borne that?"


XXXV


THE POWER OF LOVE

It was a few days later that Howard found himself sitting alone one evening after dinner, with his aunt.

"There is something that I want to talk to you about," he said. "No doubt Maud has told you all about her strange experience? She has described it to me, and I don't know what to say or think. She was wonderfully fine about it. She said she would not mention it again, and she did not desire me to talk about it--or even believe it! And I don't know what to do. It isn't the sort of thing that I believe in, though I think it beautiful, just because it was Maud who felt it. But I can't say what I really believe about it, without seeming unsympathetic and even rough; and yet I don't like there being anything which means so much to her, which doesn't mean much to me."

"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "I foresaw that difficulty, but I think Maud did right to tell you."

"Of course, of course," said Howard, "but I mean much more than that. Is there something really THERE, open to all, possible to all, from which I am shut out by what the Bible calls my hardness of heart? Do you really think yourself that a living spirit drew near and made itself known to Maud thus? or is it a beautiful dream, a sort of subjective attempt at finding comfort, an instinctive effort of the mind towards saving itself from sorrow?"

"Ah," said Mrs. Graves, "who shall say? Of course I do not see any real objection to the former, when I think of all the love and the emotion that went to the calling of the little spirit from the deeps of life; but then I am a woman, and an old woman. If I were a man of your age who had lived an intellectual life, I should feel very much as you do."

"But if you believe it," said Howard, "can you give me reasons why you believe it? I am not unreasonable at all. I hate the attitude of mind of denying the truth of the experience of others, just because one has not felt it oneself. Here, it seems to me, there are two explanations, and my scepticism inclines to what is, I suppose, the