But Reine to my astonishment had mercy on me.
“I’m so glad you liked it!” she said. And she said it with such an air of relief, and with a voice so rich in delight, that I felt a shock of returning confidence as vivid and intense as, a moment since, its departure had been. And I had an instant and heavenly conviction that I could now throw all caution to the winds. She looked at me with wide-open eyes—it was almost as if she looked at me with wide-open soul. We had, abruptly, “met” again; and we had met more intimately than before. It was strange, at that moment, how everything seemed to be conspiring to make this mutual recognition complete; the long room lined with bookcases; the high mantel of cream-colored wood and the pale Dutch tiles which surrounded the fireplace; the worn Khelim rug which stretched between us, and the open window, which it seemed not improbable that the thorn tree itself had opened, in order that its fragrance and the London spring might come in to us—all these details were vividly and conspiratorially present to me, as if they were indeed a part of the exquisite mingling of our personalities at that poised instant of time. Was not I myself this room, this rug, that mantel, the tea-table spread with tea-things, and the inquisitive thorn tree? Was not I myself Reine Wilson, entertaining a strange young man in whom I felt a subtle and bewildering and intoxicating attraction? Destiny was in this—æons of patient evolution and change, wars and disasters and ages of darkness, the sand-like siftings of laws and stars, had all worked for the fulfillment of this ultimate minute, this perfect flowering of two meeting minds. I could not be mistaken in my belief that it was the same for her as for me. With the deep tremor in my own soul, I could feel the tremor in hers. If it were not true, she could not possibly be holding her teacup as she did, or frowning slightly as she did, or withholding, as she deliciously did, the smile of delighted confession which I knew she was near to giving me.
“You know”—I then added—“I think that dream is marvelous—simply marvelous.”
“Do you!” she cried. “But how lovely! You really liked it? You didn’t think there was too much of it?…”
She leaned toward me with the eagerness of a schoolgirl, her eyes wide with intensity.
“Too much of it! Heavens, no. I was never so enthralled by anything in my life.”
“But do you mean it?… Why, you know, Wilson wanted me to ‘cut’ it. He said it was far, far too long. And everybody on The Banner has said so.… But you think it’s all right?…”
“It’s much more than all right. It couldn’t possibly be anything but what it is. It seems to me to be the very soul of the thing—the center and source of light. It had to be that, hadn’t it?… I mean, a glowing symbol for the whole thing. For Underhill’s Gethsemane.…”
She looked at me, after this, for a long moment, and then she drew in her breath very slowly and deeply, subtly relaxing.
“Heavens!” she said—“you are a miracle.”
“Am I?”
“You know you are. I hadn’t dared to suppose that anyone would see what I intended by that. Or would like it, even if they did.… Isn’t it extraordinary!”
She gave an odd light little laugh, not without a trace of bitterness, and then, with a smile still charmingly lighting her small face, gazed downward abstractedly at the Khelim rug. I knew what she meant by “extraordinary”—she meant that it was extraordinary that two minds should find each other as swiftly and easily as ours did. I knew also that she would not want the strangeness of this, and its beauty, too explicitly noted. For that would be to spoil it.
“Yes,” I sighed, “it is.… Can I steal another scone?”
“Do!… Have one of the underneath ones—they’re hotter!”
I took one, and returned to the couch. The room had suddenly darkened—it had clouded up—and a momentary patter of drops on the leaves of the thorn tree sounded in the silence, as if it were inside the room.
“Rain!” I said.… “I love it! Don’t you?”
“You mean the sound of it?…”
“No—everything. The sound, yes, but also the light—rain has always had for me, ever since I can remember, a special sort of magic. On rainy days I experience a special kind of delicious melancholy—a melancholy that is happy, if that means anything to you. I brood, my imagination is set free, I am restless and depressed, and yet at the same time it is as if something inside me wanted to sing.… Don’t I sound like a sentimental idiot?”
“Oh!” she said, “how nice of you!”
She rose, very gingerly, and coming to the end of the couch rested her two hands on the blue-canvas arm, one hand on top of the other. As she looked out through the window at the thorn tree, watching the small leaves curtsey and genuflect to the raindrops, and then spring up again released, I felt as if I were going to tremble. I found myself thinking about her heart again—she looked so astonishingly frail. How could so frail a body, a body so ethereally and transparently slight, contain a spirit so vivid? One felt that with the slightest flutter the bright bird might escape and be gone.
“Yes,” she said, in almost a whisper, as if to herself, “it is beautiful … beautiful. It does make one want to sing. And how the thrushes adore it!”
“I remember”—I said—“how once, when I was a small boy, I went bathing in the sea on a darkish day. While I was swimming, it began to rain. I was at first astonished—almost frightened. The water was smooth—there was no sound of waves—and all about me arose a delicate and delicious seething, the low sound of raindrops on the sea. It was a ghostly and whispering sound—there was something sinister in it, and also something divinely soothing. I lay on my back and floated, letting the drops fall on my face while I looked up at the clouds—and then I swam very softly, so as to be able to listen. I don’t believe I was ever happier in my life. It was as if I had gone into another world.… And then, when I went ashore, I remember how I ran to the bathing hut, for fear of getting wet!…”
“Of course!” she cried. “Of course you would!…”
She sank down on the couch, facing me. And then she went on:
“You’ve given me back something I had forgotten.… It must have been when I was eleven or twelve. It was raining very hard—it was pouring—and when I went down to the library to practice at the piano the room was dark, with that kind of morning darkness that engulfs one. The French windows were open on to the garden, but the curtains hung perfectly still, for there was no wind, no current of air. One of those heavy, straight rains, on a quiet day—a rain as solid and serried as rain in a Japanese print.… I went into the room and closed the door behind me—and it seemed to me, so massive and insistent was the sound of the rain from the garden, with all its multitudinous patter and spatter, that the room itself was full of rain. The sounds were the sound of water, the light was the light of water—it was as if I were a fish in a darkened aquarium. I stood still for a long while, just drinking it in and staring out at the drenched garden, where all the trees and shrubs were bowed down under the unrelenting downpour. Not long before, I had seen somewhere some photographs greatly enlarged, of raindrops falling into the water; and now, as I went to the open French windows, I watched the large bright eave-drops splashing into the puddles on the brick terrace, and I was enchanted to see that my drops were exactly like those. They made the most exquisite little silvery waterspouts and umbrellas and toadstools, and all with such a heavenly clucking and chuckling and chirruping. The bubbles winked and were gone—is there anything so evanescent as a rain-bubble?—and other bubbles came, sliding a fraction of an inch to right or left before they burst.… I had a strange feeling, then, as I turned to go to the piano—I felt as if I belonged to the rain, or as if I were the rain itself. I had a sensation in my throat that was like sadness, but was also ecstatic—something like your desire to sing. I looked at the glossy black grand piano—and that too had a watery look, like a dark pool gleaming under a heavy overhang of foliage. And when I sat down on the cool piano-stool, and touched timidly my fingers to the keys, the keys too were cold, and it was as if I were dipping my hands into the clearest of rain-water.… Is it any wonder that the music sounded to me like the drops pattering and spattering in the garden? I was delighted to the point of obsession with this idea. I played a little sonata through three times, luxuriating in its arpeggios and runs, which I took pianissimo, and feeling as if I were helping the rain to rain.… Good heavens! If I had only known the Handel Water-Music Suite! The illusion would have been perfect.…”