E. F. Benson

“ Why should not loving souls, who had passed that tiny rivulet called Death into the fuller life beyond, be allowed to call from the other side to those they loved? Was there not something exquisite, something supremely tender in the thought that Martin, who had been but little more than a child when he died in that Swiss chalet, should tell Archie about the cache he had made under the pine-tree? It was a childish communication, it brought no message of consolation or encouragement; but it was just what Martin, had he been alive on this side of Death, might have told Archie. ”

“ Blue? Archie thought he had never known what blue was till now, not what sunshine was until he saw the dazzle of it on those sparkling slopes. And they, so his mother told him, were not mountains at all: they were only hills; but soon he should see what mountains meant. As they passed through the glittering towns that stood on the edge of the lake, he could see the sleighs sliding over the streets with jingle of bells crisply sounding in the alert air. Other smaller sleighs were drawn by pleased, smiling dogs. There was never such a morning of discoveries. ”

“ Best of all, perhaps, for there his passion had most been fed with the fuel of her touch, had been the dance at his aunt's that same night, when the rhythm of the waltz and the melodious command of the music had welded their two young bodies into one. It was not "he and she" who had danced: it was just one perfect and complete individual. Here, on this quiet Sunday morning, the thought of that made him tingle and throb. It was that sort of memory which Martin told him he must keep alive... It was his resentment, his anger, that must die, not that. ”

“ But all morning he had been possessed by the sunny lightness of heart with which Martin's communication of last night had inspired him. He must be patient, disperse and blow away by the great winds of love the hatred and intolerance that had been obscuring his soul. And surely it was not only for Helena that he must feel that nobler impulse: all that touched his daily life must be treated with the same manly tenderness. Nothing must shock him, nothing must irritate him, for such emotions were narrow and limited, incompatible with the oceanic quality of love. ”

“ Archie, for questions were permitted.
"Yes. There they all were: eight birthdays in all, so he had one every day for more than a week. My dears! What's that?"
It certainly was very startling. A noise like a mixture between the Chinese gong and the bell for the servants' dinner broke in upon the quiet, with the most appalling clamour. Archie swallowed a chocolate whole, and Harry, with great prudence, took two more in a damp hand to sustain him in these rather alarming occurrences.
"It sounds as if it was in the hall," said Lady Davidstow. "Harry, will you open the door and see what it is?" ”

“ Archie woke next morning and instantly remembered that he had attained the magnificent age of six. Six had long seemed to him one of the most delightful ages to be. Eighteen was another, mainly because William was eighteen, but six was the best of all, for at eighteen you must inevitably feel that you have lived your life, and that there is nothing much left to live for; for the rest would be but a slow descent into the vale of years. But to-day he was six, and it was his birthday, and... and there was no sign of the letter he had written to Abracadabra on his counterpane. ”

“ It was warm and soft and still; by now the bright eyes had grown quite dull, and the blood on the speckled breast was beginning to coagulate, and once again, even with the novel prospect of a bird-funeral in front of him, Archie's heart melted in pity.
"Why did Cyrus kill it, Jeannie?" he said. "The thrush hadn't done any harm."
"Cats do kill birds," said Jeannie. "Same as birds kill worms, or you and William kill worms when you go out fishing."
"Yes, but worms aren't birds," said Archie. "Worms aren't nice; they don't fly and sing. It's an awful shame." ”

“ Dying would be like that, dying was no more than being poured into this jubilant ocean, and becoming part of its clean, exuberant life...
But Archie had no intention of dying just yet, and indeed these metaphysical speculations only reached him like the sound of chimes blown across the water, while far clearer was Harry's voice, calling from the beach, "Archie, it's after twelve"; and thereupon Archie would turn on his chest and swim back to land, with a frill of foam encircling his sunburnt throat and a wake of bubbles following the strokes of his strong legs. ”

“ The floor got ever emptier: lines of expectant fox-trotters and bunny-huggers stood round the wall, but none of them objected to watching for a little longer the entrancing couple who now had the floor almost to themselves. Couple after couple dropped off and stood looking, and to Helena's gleaming eyes they passed in streaks of black and white and many-coloured hues as she and Archie moved ever more freely and largely over the untenanted space. She could just see the faces of friends as she passed, and knew that Lord Harlow had come in and was standing by the door. ”

“ Who could doubt that a man of science three hundred years ago would have been burned as a dabbler in diabolism and witchcraft, if he had exhibited a manifestation of wireless telegraphy or an X-ray photograph? But nowadays there was not a living being who did not rank such as the discoveries of a natural law. The sorcery of one age was the science of the next.
Jessie propounded this to herself, and her reason could not find a flaw in it. But something that sat behind her reason—superstition it might be, or instinct, or spiritual perception—refused to accept the conclusion. ”

“ Soon it was complete, and Archie in the glass beheld Martin's face leaning lovingly over his shoulder, and Martin's arm bare like his own, and, warm and solid to the touch, was thrown round his neck.
"Archie, I've been with you all night," he said. "I love to see you and feel you realize yourself. Throw yourself into life: live to the uttermost, and have no thought for the morrow. There is nothing in the world but love and joy. ”

“ You papa never loved any one like he loved him, and nobody could help loving him. He was like a April morning, dear—sunshine one minute and squalls the next. And there was months, Master Archie, when we thought you would follow him."
Blessington grew a little tearful, with the sweet, easy tears of old-age over this, and Archie changed the subject.
"And Abracadabra, now?" he asked. "What evenings those birthdays evenings were, weren't they? I wish Abracadabra came still, bringing all we wanted. What would you choose, Blessington?" ”

“ Jessie lingered late by her window, overlooking the bay, trying to disentangle and lay bare the roots of her repugnance. It was late; below in the garden she could perceive the grey lines of Archie's hammock swung between the acacia and the pine, and Archie lying there like a chrysalis. He was just like that, she thought; most of the world were only caterpillars, eating their way through the allotted span of their years, but Archie was a stage more advanced than anybody she had ever known. ”

“ Helena made a little deprecating face, the face of the prettiest little martyr in the cause of truth ever beheld.
"No, I can't exactly say I am," she said. "I think—I think I was speaking on behalf of Archie and Jessie."
"But I'm not tired either," said he. "Let's go to somebody's dance. I can't dance an atom, but Helena shall teach me. There's nothing like practice in public. ”

“ She smelled her orchids, and pinned them into her gown. Simultaneously she heard feet on the stairs, and Archie's resonant laugh. She got up.
"I might almost think you were jealous of Archie's affection for me, darling," she said, in her most suave tones.
Before the door opened she saw Jessie's face flame with colour, and laughed to herself at the defencelessness of love. Next moment Archie launched himself into the room.
"Hullo! What fine orchids!" he said. "Who sent you them, Helena? I bet you the Bradshaw did. What a thing it is to have opulent admirers! I wish I had got some." ”

“ The week that had passed between the acceptance of her plan and this, the last night of her stay at Silorno, confirmed the soundness of her strategy. Archie's frank friendliness towards herself had undergone a subtle change, while his relations with her sister remained precisely on the same calm tableland of comradeship. But below his comradeship with herself, like the sun glowing faintly through a mist without heat at present, but with penetration of light, she knew that there was growing an emotional brightness. ”

“ The anchorage of the Amphitrite lay in a bay not far from the entrance to the harbour, screened by the steep-climbing olive groves belonging to this Castello of Silorno which Archie's mother had taken for the months of May and June: Silorno itself, that incredibly picturesque huddle of pink and yellow walls, of campaniles, and lacemakers, who, with bright coloured kerchiefs over their comely heads, plied their wooden bobbins all day in the shade of its narrow streets, rose, roof over roof, at the head of the harbour. ”

“ Why shouldn't be a fairy Abracadabra, and a fairy-post, just as there had been, and now was no longer, a glassy sea between the rugs in the hall, and snarling tigers to keep off his enemies? If you believed a thing enough, it became real, with a few trifling exceptions—as, for instance, when, on one of the days last summer, a day crammed full of the most delightful events, Archie had found himself firmly believing that that particular day was never coming to an end. ”

“ For a moment Jessie thought that he was speaking with the bitterest irony, but immediately afterwards she withdrew that, for it struck her that Archie was, in some inexplicable way, perfectly sincere: there was the unmistakable ring of truth in his voice; he meant what he said. And, as if to endorse that, he went on:
"We all do what Helena wants: you, I, the Bradshaw, all of us. She wants to be loved, isn't that it? and to want to be loved is a royal command; all proper people must obey. I have been a rebel you know, and,—oh Jessie, how awfully ashamed I am! I let myself hate Helena ”

“ In a manner that she could not explain, Jessie knew that she knew the tokens by which love betrays its existence. She, barely yet twenty-two, had somewhere stored in her soul the language of love, which it speaks even when it thinks it is dumb—talking in its sleep, it may be. She had seen in the last week of Helena's sojourn here that Archie talked to her like that. ”

“ There is no soul so strong that evil can cease to be a menace for it, and here, facing her, was the power that had already perverted all that Archie held of goodness and humanity. There it stood, one victim already its helpless prisoner, and it lusted for more. And the wordless struggle, as old as evil itself, began.
She would not give ground. Her soul laid itself open, and let the light invisible shine on it. In this struggle there were no strivings or wrestlings ”

“ Archie kept his lucid eyes fixed on his father's, and not a tremor of his beautiful mouth betrayed his inward laughter, his derisive merriment at this solemn adjuration delivered by a man who spoke very carefully for fear of his words all running into each other like the impress of ink on blotting-paper. It really was ludicrously funny, and the immortal Mr. Stiggins came into his mind.
"I hope you don't think a whisky and soda after dinner is dangerous, father," he said. "You usually have one yourself, you know." ”

“ And he turned on her a face from which all impatience and anger had vanished, and from it looked out Archie's soul in agonized struggle.
"I couldn't, I couldn't!" he said. "I didn't touch it, Jessie: it's all right."
"I thought you must run over it," said she. "Why didn't you slow down,
Archie?"
That glimpse of the agonized soul utterly vanished again.
"People have got no business to keep a decrepit old beast like that," he said. "I expect the kindest thing I could do would be to turn round and put it out of its misery. Never mind. I'll do it some other day." ”

“ For she was as admirable in play-time as she was over their lessons: she told them enchanting stories on their walks, and painted for them in real smelly oil-paints the most lovely snow-scenes, pine-woods laden with whiteness, and cottages with red blinds lit from within. Never had any one such a repertory of games to be played in the long dark hours between tea and bed-time, and it was during one of these that Archie made a curious discovery. ”

“ This carting of the snow was splendid fun, for, when a hand-sleigh of it was piled high, Archie would squat on the front of it (thereby adding considerably to the weight) and in a shrill voice direct the men who pushed it to right or left, in order to reach the steep bank down which they discharged their burden. When they were come to the edge of it, some large, strong man lifted Archie off his perch, and waited with him, while the sleigh was pushed to the very brink, and its burden overturned in a jolly lumpy avalanche that poured down the built-up bank of the rink. ”

“ They were strolling together by the edge of the lake in the hour of sunset, and Jessie, though sick at heart and tortured by the weight of her forebodings, and the tempest of fire and blood which had burst on Europe, yet tried to open her heart to the sweet spell of the tranquil evening. Somewhere behind the cloud of evil which had so suddenly taken shape in that host of barbarians who already had overrun Belgium, and which, no less, was invading the spirit of the boy she loved with the uttermost fibre of her being, there shone the eternal serenity of Omnipotent Mercy. ”

“ There was a particular choir-boy there with blue eyes, pink cheeks, and a crop of yellow curls who sang solos, and thrilled Archie with a secret and perfectly sexless emotion. Only last Sunday he had sung "Oh, for the wings of a dove," and religion and childish adoration together had brought Archie to the verge of tears. He longed to be good, to live, until a few more years should roll (for he felt that he was going to die young) , a noble and beautiful life; he longed also to fly away and be at rest with the choir-boy. ”

“ But because love is immortal, and cannot perish though all the blasts of hell rage against it, it still stood firm, though scorched and beaten upon. If she let it die, she felt that she would be no better than that visible incarnation of evil that smiled and bent over Archie.
Presently that devilish whispering ceased, and she saw that the apparition was beginning to lose its clearness of outline. Slowly it began to disintegrate into the weavings of mist out of which it came, and Archie said, "Good-bye, Martin, but not for long." ”

“ But Lady Tintagel still clung to a baseless hope, less substantial than a mirage in the desert, that diplomacy would still avert disaster, Archie went about the customary diversions of life with more than usual enjoyment and absorption, while for Jessie there loomed in the immediate foreground a dread and a horror, which, though it concerned not warring millions, but just one individual, engrossed her entire soul. ”

“ Martin's smile was compassionate no longer: it was a sunbeam of radiant happiness, and that happiness, so it seemed to Archie, had its source in sympathy with and love for him.
"Don't ever think you are yielding to base impulses," he went on, "provided only you are happy. Happiness is the seal and witness of what is right for you: it is the mark of God's approval. ”

“ He was always ready for it. As Jeannie went in with her completed French lesson, he laid down his pen, and looked for a moment at the streaming icicles on the eaves of his shelter, and listened with a sense of depression to the drip of the melted water that formed grey pits in the whiteness of the snow below. Because there was a thaw, the air felt colder than when there were twenty degrees of frost, and the blanket on his couch was studded with condensed moisture. "It is warmer," thought Archie to himself, "so it ought to be warmer. But it's colder." ”

“ He was silent a moment.
"How we old folk get out of touch with young people!" he said. "If I had been told to guess who it was who would ask Helena to be his wife, I should have said it was Archie. Didn't you think that Archie was very fond of her?"
Mixed with Jessie's misery for Archie's sake, and with her bitter contempt for her sister, was a pity for Helena, as deep as the sea, that she could be what she was. She could wear the roses Archie had sent her, and not be burned alive by them... ”

“ Jessie felt that this was a truer Archie than he who had stopped so long in the dining-room and come in afterwards with a shout of laughter over something that he would not recount. But by now their stroll had taken them close to the long grey front of the house, and for the present Archie had no more to say, and was evidently meaning to go indoors again. Upstairs all was dark, but below, the five windows of the drawing-room, uncurtained and open, cast oblongs of light on to the gravel, and next to them the two windows of Lord Tintagel's study were lit. ”

“ Every day the world widened, and, lying looking at the green light on the ceiling in the cool still mornings of that summer which seemed to last for years and years, Archie found himself not only speculating on what fresh joys the day would bring, but joining together in his mind the happenings that at the time seemed disconnected, but which proved to be part of a continuous thread of existence. ”

“ Jessie did not reply at once: she felt sure that she, with the insight of that love which is more comprehending than any mother's love, was somehow right about that point. It was not the mere lapse of a week that had restored Archie. Besides, Blessington did not know about his troubles. She could easily conjecture what a relief he might find in that. She knew that she would feel the same in his place; she could understand how much easier it was to behave normally with those who did not know than with those who did. ”

“ And all this, even when physically he most realized this sea-sense, was but a symbol, and the more vivid the physical consciousness of the sea became, the dimmer it also became in the light of what it stood for. For even as the sea, eternally incorruptible, received into itself, without stain, all that the putrefying land with its ordure and sewers poured into it, so round human life, with its sores and its decay, there lay an immense and eternal incorruption, which purified all life as it passed into it, and turned it into something pellucid and immortal. ”

“ To Lady Tintagel he had never mentioned Helena's name since the day she had accepted Lord Harlow, while to Jessie, only last night, he had loaded her with the bitterest reproaches, and had spoken of the abject despair and emptiness which had come upon him in consequence of what she had done. And he looked at each of them in turn with that vivid, brilliant glance which had been so characteristic of him.
"Yes, I make a public recantation," he said. "It suddenly dawned on me last night that I have been behaving just about as stupidly as a man can behave. ”

“ I'm being rude on purpose. I want you to be offended and go away. I want Harry to go away too. I want you both to lie on your beds and snore like hogs."
"I was thinking of getting a book and reading out here," said Jessie. "I feel it's unsociable to leave you alone."
"When you've finished being funny," remarked Archie, "you may go to bed.
You may get down at once. Say your grace and get down. You, too, Master
Harry. Oh, Harry, do you remember how you used to come to tea in the
nursery and Blessington made us behave properly till tea was over?" ”

“ If in some miraculous way you have been given access which is denied to almost all mankind, do use it only in truth and love and reverence."
"You're frightened about it," said Archie.
"I know I am. If Martin can come to you, why should not other spirits? Other spirits, intelligences terrible and devilish, might deceive you into thinking that they were he. You remember at Silorno he said he couldn't come again."
"I know; but I wasn't in sore need then," said he.
They had again come opposite Lord Tintagel's study, and, even as they passed, Archie saw him with his finger on the bell. ”

“ There was no clearer duty in the day than to be bathed in the bliss of life, to suck out the last drop of sweetness from the world which had been created for the joy of men and the glory of God. There was no such thing as evil; evil was but the label attached by the sour-minded to the impulses and acts for which they had not sufficient vitality... And it was Martin who had taught him all this.
Archie had come back home this morning after a day and a couple of nights in town. ”