Algernon Blackwood

“ The familiar, present sky grew dim, the sunshine faded, the lake and flowers and poplars dipped away. Conditions a thousand times more vivid took their place. She stood out, clear and shining in the glory of an undressed soul, brave and confident with an eternal love that separation strengthened but could never, never change. The deep sadness I abruptly realised, was very little removed from joy⁠—because, somehow, it was the condition of joy. ”

“ We are not children, to hide our faces among shadows and pretend we are invisible. At least we have the Present⁠—the Moment that is here and now. We stand side by side in the heart of this deep spring day. This sunshine and these flowers, this wind across the lake, this sky of blue and this singing of the birds⁠—all, all are ours now. ”

“ And this sadness was in her too. I mean it was part of her and she was part of it. Not that our love could change to pass or die, but that its sweet, so-long-desired accomplishment must hold away, and, like the spring, must melt and vanish before it had been fully known. I did not speak of it. I well understood that the depression of a broken body can influence the spirit with its poisonous melancholy, but it must have betrayed itself in my words and gestures, even in my manner too. ”

“ My former vigour stirred delightfully in my blood, and I knew no pain, beyond occasional dull twinges in the head that came with a rush of temporary darkness over my mind. The scar was healed, however, and the hair had grown over it again. This temporary darkness alarmed her more than it alarmed me. There were grave complications, apparently, that I did not know of.
But the deep-lying sadness in me seemed independent of the glorious weather, due to causes so intangible, so far off that I never could dispel them by arguing them away. ”

“ And her voice, when she spoke, was firm with a note of steel in it; intense, yet devoid of the wasting anger that passion brings. She was determined beyond Death itself, upon a foundation sure and lasting as the stars. The heart in her was calm, because she knew. She was magnificent.
“We are together⁠—always,” she said, her voice rich with the knowledge of some unfathomable experience, “for separation is temporary merely, forging new links in the ancient chain of lives that binds our hearts eternally together.” She looked like one who has conquered the adversity Time brings, by accepting it. ”

“ The orchards were in blossom, and the winds of spring showered their rain of petals upon the long, new grass. We lay, half in sunshine, half in shade, beneath the poplars that lined the avenue towards the lake, and behind us rose the ancient grey stone towers where the jackdaws nested in the ivy and the pigeons cooed and fluttered from the woods beyond. ”

“ With lips that smiled their yearning and eyes of brown that held tears of sympathy, she sat down beside me on the bed. The warmth and fragrance of her atmosphere enveloped me. I sank away into a garden where spring melts magically into summer. Her arms were round my neck. Her face dropped down, so that I felt her hair upon my cheek and eyes. And then, whispering my name twice over, she kissed me on the lips.
“Marion,” I murmured.
“Hush! Mother sends you this,” she answered softly. “You are to take it all; she made it with her own hands. But I bring it to you. ”

“ My tongue lay dry against my lips. I could not frame a word of any sentence.⁠ ⁠...
Her voice presently came back to me, but fainter, like a whisper from the stars. The light dimmed everywhere; I saw no more the vivid, shining scenery she had summoned. A mournful dusk instead crept down upon the world she had momentarily revived.
“... we may not stay together,” I heard her little whisper, “until long discipline shall have perfected sympathy, and schooled our love to last. For this love of ours is forever, and the pain that tries it is the furnace that fashions precious stones.⁠ ⁠...” ”

“ Does not separation achieve that which companionship never could accomplish? And how shall we dare eternity together if we cannot be strong in separation first?”
I listened while a flood of memories broke up through film upon film and layer upon layer that had long covered them.
“This Present that we seem to hold between our hands,” she went on in that earnest, distant voice, “is our moment of sweet remembrance that you speak of, of renewal, perhaps, too, of reconciliation⁠—a fleeting instant when we may kiss again and say goodbye, but with strengthened hope and courage revived. ”

“ The bees and waves then cushioned her whisper with their humming. The trail of a deeper silence led them far away. The rush of temporary darkness passed and lifted. I opened my eyes. My love sat close beside me in the shadow of the poplars. One hand held both my own, while with the other she arranged my pillows and stroked my aching head. The world dropped back into a tiny scale once more.
“You have had the pain again,” Marion murmured anxiously, “but it is better now. It is passing.” She kissed my cheek. “You must come in.⁠ ⁠...” ”

“ I see you clearly,” and would have told her more, as I carried her soft fingers to my lips, had I not divined from the expression in her eyes that she read my heart and knew all my strange, mysterious forebodings in herself.
“I know,” she whispered before I could find speech, “for I feel it too. It is the shadow of separation that oppresses you⁠—yet of no common, measurable separation you can understand. ”

“ That I could not supply the context was merely a trick of the mind, the kind of trick that dreams play. Darkness swamped vision again. I sank back into the warm, soft, comfortable bed of delicious oblivion. ”

“ For the spring came on with a rush, and the warmth increased deliciously. While the cuckoos called to one another in the great beech-woods behind the château, we sat and talked and sometimes had our simple meals or coffee there together, and I particularly recall the occasion when solid food was first permitted me and she gave me a delicate young bondelle, fresh caught that very morning in the lake. There were leaves of sweet, crisp lettuce with it, and she picked the bones out for me with her own white hands. ”

“ Nothing could be more real than the whisper of the doctor’s voice⁠—that solemn, grave-faced man who was so tall⁠—as he said, sternly yet brokenly, to someone: “You must say goodbye; and you had better say it now.” Nor could anything be more definite and sure, more charged with the actuality of living, than the figure of Marion, as she stooped over me to obey the terrible command. ”

“ Hence comes the full, deep happiness we gather so easily Today.⁠ ⁠... The breast of every ancient forest is torn with storms and lightning⁠ ⁠... that’s why it is so soft and full of little gardens. You have forgotten too easily the glades of Lebanon, where we whispered our earliest secrets while the big winds drove their chariots down those earlier skies.⁠ ⁠...”
There rose an indescribable tempest of remembrance in my heart as I strove to bring the pictures into focus; but words failed me, and the hand I eagerly stretched out to touch her own, met only sunshine and the rain of apple blossoms. ”

“ I missed the train at Evian, and, after infinite trouble, discovered a motor that would take me, ice-axe and all, to Geneva. By hurrying, the connection might be just possible. I telegraphed to Haddon to meet me at the station, and lay back comfortably, dreaming of the precipices of Haute Savoie. We made good time; the roads were excellent, traffic of the slightest, when⁠—crash! ”

“ Looking only to the Future, you forget our ample Past that has made us what we are. Yet our Past is here and now, beside us at this very moment. Into the hollow cups of weeks and months, of years and centuries, Time pours its flood beneath our eyes. Time is our schoolroom.⁠ ⁠... ”

“ And then she added the morsel of delicious comfort she knew quite well I waited for: “Marion is near you all day long, and most of the night besides. She rarely leaves you. She is in and out all day.” ”

“ A chain is about our hearts, a chain of fashioning lives without number, but do not seek to draw upon it with anxiety or fear. To do so can only cause the pain of wrong entanglement, and interrupt the natural running of the iron links. ”