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Page 14
"No," I said, "you need not be disturbed; nothing will be done to you
against your wish. One has but to wish here, or to be willing, and the
right thing happens."
She came close to me as I said this, and said, "Well, I think I shall
like you, if only you can promise not to be serious." Then she turned,
and stood for a moment disconsolate, looking away from me.
All this while the atmosphere around me had been becoming lighter and
clearer, as though a mist were rising. Suddenly Amroth said, "You will
have to go with her for a time, and do what you can. I must leave you
for a little, but I shall not be far off; and if you need me, I shall be
at hand. But do not call for me unless you are quite sure you need me."
He gave me a hand-clasp and a smile, and was gone.
Then, looking about me, I saw at last that I was in a place. Lonely and
bare though it was, it seemed to me very beautiful. It was like a grassy
upland, with rocky heights to left and right. They were most delicate in
outline, those crags, like the crags in an old picture, with sharp,
smooth curves, like a fractured crystal. They seemed to be of a creamy
stone, and the shadows fell blue and distinct. Down below was a great
plain full of trees and waters, all very dim. A path, worn lightly in
the grass, lay at my feet, and I knew that we must descend it. The girl
with me--I will call her Cynthia--was gazing at it with delight. "Ah,"
she said, "I can see clearly now. This is something like a real place,
instead of mist and light. We can find people down here, no doubt; it
looks inhabited out there." She pointed with her hand, and it seemed to
me that I could see spires and towers and roofs, of a fine and airy
architecture, at the end of a long horn of water which lay very blue
among the woods of the plain. It puzzled me, because I had the sense
that it was all unreal, and, indeed, I soon perceived that it was the
girl's own thought that in some way affected mine. "Quick, let us go,"
she said; "what are we waiting for?"
The descent was easy and gradual. We came down, following the path, over
the hill-shoulders. A stream of clear water dripped among stones; it
all brought back to me with an intense delight the recollection of long
days spent among such hills in holiday times on earth, but all without
regret; I only wished that an old and dear friend of mine, with whom I
had often gone, might be with me. He had quitted life before me, and I
knew somehow or hoped that I should before long see him; but I did not
wish things to be otherwise; and, indeed, I had a strange interest in
the fretful, silly, lovely girl with me, and in what lay before us. She
prattled on, and seemed to be recovering her spirits and her confidence
at the sights around us. If I could but find anything that would draw
her out of her restless mood into the peace of the morning! She had a
charm for me, though her impatience and desire for amusement seemed
uninteresting enough; and I found myself talking to her as an elder
brother might, with terms of familiar endearment, which she seemed to be
grateful for. It was strange in a way, and yet it all appeared natural.
The more we drew away from the hills, the happier she became. "Ah," she
said once, "we have got out of that hateful place, and now perhaps we
may be more comfortable,"--and when we came down beside the stream to a
grove of trees, and saw something which seemed like a road beneath us,
she was delighted. "That's more like it," she said, "and now we may find
some real people perhaps,"--she turned to me with a smile--"though you
are real enough too, and very kind to me; but I still have an idea that
you are a clergyman, and are only waiting your time to draw a moral."
IX
Now before I go on to tell the tale of what happened to us in the valley
there were two very curious things that I observed or began to observe.
The first was that I could not really see into the girl's thought. I
became aware that though I could see into the thought of Amroth as
easily and directly as one can look into a clear sea-pool, with all its
rounded pebbles and its swaying fringes of seaweed, there was in the
girl's mind a centre of thought to which I was not admitted, a fortress
of personality into which I could not force my way. More than that. When
she mistrusted or suspected me, there came a kind of cloud out from the
central thought, as if a turbid stream were poured into the sea-pool,
which obscured her thoughts from me, though when she came to know me
and to trust me, as she did later, the cloud was gradually withdrawn;
and I perceived that there must be a perfect sacrifice of will, an
intention that the mind should lie open and unashamed before the thought
of one's friend and companion, before the vision can be complete. With
Amroth I desired to conceal nothing, and he had no concealment from me.
But with the girl it was different. There was something in her heart
that she hid from me, and by no effort could I penetrate it; and I saw
then that there is something at the centre of the soul which is our very
own, and into which God Himself cannot even look, unless we desire that
He should look; and even if we desire that He should look into our
souls, if there is any timidity or shame or shrinking about us, we
cannot open our souls to Him. I must speak about this later, when the
great and wonderful day came to me, when I beheld God and was beheld by
Him. But now, though when the girl trusted me I could see much of her
thought, the inmost cell of it was still hidden from me.
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