Landscape with figures

THEY did not at once enter the paradise that was now theirs. They did not even speak of it to each other. They pondered the golden future in secret, and only sometimes, by a glance more subtly effective than kisses, acknowledged that their blood ran to the same rhythm. For those who feed their hearts on the substance of eternity there is no haste.

At last, on a spring morning, the Floating Leaf lay in Southampton Water. They stood at the rail, the two of them, looking at the bed of smokestacks, masts and cranes that flourished in the Hampshire foreshore. It was necessary that something should be said, now that this daily companionship was to end.

He regarded her steadfastly. The corners of her mouth were turned up, and she smiled faintly at the water.

“You are making a fox-face,” he observed.

“I was thinking of the Valley.”

“Pleasantly?”

“Oh, very pleasantly! But how far away it seems, and how strange the things we all talked about, even the words we used! They would sound comic in this atmosphere. Was it real, or did we dream it? Or is this unreal, England and these liners and railways?”

“All life is unreal, as you and I know,” he answered her. “We accept it, because we must; but sometimes reality is felt. It sticks through, and the world seems queer beside it. You and I have it for always in our hearts.”

“That is true,” she said, “even if we dreamt, even if we did really for a time live in a landscape on a vase or a silk. But how did it come to you, this experience of unbreakable, calm joy that has come to me?”

“I came by it years back, in war and disaster.”

“Why do you and I have it, and not the others?”

“I cannot answer that. It is predestination. There are some that cannot help but be saved.”

She touched his hand. “We are in love with one another, are we not, Ambrose?”

He answered, “Yes.”

“It took me so long to find out. One could not recognize a happiness that was so wonderful and so close. Why did you not tell me?”

“I did not want to plant love in you. I wanted it to come of necessity, from the centre of your being.”

“Did it hurt, when you saw me in love with Yuan?”

He smiled.

“Oh!” she cried, “I love you because you are cold and unmoved and unescapable, like Fate! I love you because you do not desire me and my beauty is nothing to you. I die and am forgotten in the night of your being. You are death and change itself, the beautiful, pitiless universe in which we are all swallowed and become nothing.”

“You also,” he answered. “We have eaten the peaches of immortality, you and I, and we are no longer you and I. We have tasted the fruit, the substance of the universe, that is eaten in the endless fields of Nirvana. We are dead, and we can descend into the world like gods, to command and enjoy desire.”

“You do desire me?”

“Yes, my flower, my insect.”

She was in his arms, face to face with his unswerving regard. What she found in his eyes must have contented her.

“You understand—everything?” He asked to hear her say “Yes.”

“Everything.”

“And this time there is nothing to get over?—no repugnance?”

Once more she drew up the corners of her mouth, and, “On the contrary,” he heard.

He kissed her, and there was that in his embrace to catch away her breath with surprise and joy.

When Lord Sombrewater came along the deck and saw them sitting together he was struck by something new in their attitude. An immense and unexpected possibility presented itself to his mind.

“What’s this?” he asked, with his swift, birdlike regard.

Lychnis told him, and he made no attempt to conceal his satisfaction. “Well, really, this is most gratifying! As you must marry—I suppose you must—some day——”

“To-day,” she interpolated.

He was somewhat taken aback. “We’ll see—we’ll see. Time enough. But if it must happen, I’d rather a thousand times it was Ambrose than anyone else in the world. Really, very gratifying—very gratifying—and surprising. You old pike! I shall feel that her husband has not taken her away from me—has not——” He coughed. “A half-share, perhaps—really, not more than a half-share. Why, with Ambrose you’ll hardly be married at all.” He beamed, and they exchanged a tingling glance. Then, formally, they received his blessing. “God bless you both—a thousand times. You old pike!” Lord Sombrewater blew his nose and, as a second thought, went off to announce the news to the Sages, and, in due course, to his wife.

They sat side by side, and looked at the smooth water and the spring sky, and wondered at the instant and almost intolerable reality of the happiness that was in them.

Ambrose did not forsake his notebooks upon his marriage, but he does not write much about himself or intimately about Lychnis. One sees them, though, with that infinite serenity in their souls, contemplating the world with instructed affection and containedly giving themselves to the surprises and exquisite pleasures of love.

Lord Sombrewater seems to have regarded the birth of a grandson with mixed feelings. Apparently it was not somehow what he had expected.

The End