G

Graham lay upon his back, his eyes wide open. All around him he could hear the silence—a silence broken every now and again by some faint sound from one or another of the boys who shared his dormitory. It was more than an hour since the lights had been put out, and all save himself were fast asleep; but he lay awake still, thinking of the afternoon that had just passed, and of the strange emotion it had swept into his life. He wondered how it could have come about, and he pondered old tales he had read—some of them long ago—tales of a pagan world, in which this wonderful passion of friendship, then so common, had played its part. Returning to him now, they wore a new and added beauty, a meaning he had only dreamed before, but which at present filled his mind with a kind of heavenly radiance. Might not his own friendship be just the same?... Might not it, too, be something more than a mere romantic reverie, than the shadow of a beautiful dream? He felt an exquisite happiness in giving way to his tenderness, in letting his imagination run on and on, like a swift, strong river, in an ever-changing dream of love. It was as if by merely stretching out his hand he had touched the poetry, the soul of existence; it was as if by stretching out his hand he had awakened another spirit to beat its wings within his own.

So he might have sung had he known the lines. For he felt himself raised up as on the strong, swift wings of the morning, lifted to the very gate of Heaven. It was on such a love as this that the Platonic philosophy had been built; and now—now in his own life—it had come true. Fair, and pure, and holy—down from the garden of God—it had fallen into his soul, had poured through the open gates of Heaven, to bathe him in its light. He turned upon his pillow and smiled. He stretched out his arms wide to the great, fragrant mother-night, and she bent down over him, cool and dark and silent, and kissed him softly on his forehead, and on his mouth and eyes.

He could not sleep. A strange restlessness, a ‘spirit in his feet,’ seemed to draw him from his bed, and leaving his cubicle, he stood in his night-dress on the cold floor. A flood of moonlight lay across the room, and he watched it falling through the air, a silent, rapid stream.

How still everything was! how light! Softly, softly, on tip-toe, he made his way to the window, and climbing on to a chair, looked out.

In the grounds it was light with that same cold light, clear, yet not quite clear, earth and sky seeming to be blended in one strange misty radiance, pale, bluish, almost white. And the moonlight lay, still and dreamy, everywhere, more tangible, yet more shadowy, than the light of day. If one stretched out one’s hands, one might almost feel it, he thought, might almost brush it away like a great white silky cobweb of woven flame. The stone gable of the house stood out sharply black against the sky, and the shadows on the grass were black as ink. Above the long row of still and leafless trees he saw the belt of Orion, and to the right of that, the white, broken moon faintly edged with blue. It was like the dawning of some wonderful, icy day upon an unexplored, a new and mysterious world; and through the cold misty light he half expected to see the moving forms of those who live in the unknown.

He did indeed see a figure—a figure coming toward him, stepping slowly down a wide silver stair that reached from Heaven—a figure clad in fair armour, and with dark hair floating out against the stars.... He was calling to him from without ... he beckoned with his hands ... he waited, waited....

A shudder ran through Graham’s body: he seemed no longer to be in the dormitory, but to stand somewhere beyond the gates of death. He clasped the bars of the window with his hands; he leaned against the iron bars; then he opened out his arms wide and smiled....

‘What are you doing?... Iddesleigh!... Graham!’ It was Brocklehurst’s voice. His cubicle was next the window, and he had been awakened.

‘Nothing; nothing,’ Graham answered, startled, turning quickly round. ‘I was looking out.... I forgot.... Why are you not asleep?’ He went over to his friend, and sat down by his side. Brocklehurst had already cuddled under the clothes again.

‘I was asleep until you wakened me. Why are you not in your bed?’ he whispered. ‘Why were you standing there? What a mad thing to do at this time of year! You might kill yourself!’

‘Oh, I don’t take cold easily. I suppose I wasn’t thinking of what I was doing.’

‘But you should have put on your dressing-gown. You are only in your night-dress. At first I thought you were walking in your sleep. You looked like a white ghost there at the window. You will catch your death of cold now if you stay there. Come in here beside me if you want to talk.’

Graham got into the bed. ‘I was thinking of you,’ he said softly.

‘You’re a very strange fellow—aren’t you?’ Brocklehurst murmured.

‘Yes; I suppose so.’

‘Hush! Speak lower. If you were caught here with me, you know, there’d be the most frightful row.... What were you looking at out of the window?’

‘I don’t know.... I seemed to see——’

‘What?’

‘I can’t tell you. I almost forget.’

‘You must tell me.’

‘It was a knight ... a young knight in armour.’

‘Out there on the grass?’

‘It was you.... Oh, I know there wasn’t really anything there,’ he added hastily—‘only the light of the moon on the ground.’

‘And all that you told me this afternoon—it, too, was nothing?’

‘Yes—yes, it was. Some day I will tell you all about it, from the very beginning, but not now. It would take too long.... You see I was so much by myself before I came here. I had no one. And—and—I could not help speaking to you this afternoon.... You don’t understand how—how much it is all a part of my life—how much it means to me——’ He broke off abruptly, and for a little Brocklehurst said nothing.

‘Tell me about what you used to do at home, if you don’t mind,’ he whispered presently. Then he lay still, listening to a rather broken and wandering story, which very soon he grew too sleepy to follow. ‘You had better go back to your own bed now,’ he murmured drowsily. ‘It wouldn’t do for you to drop off asleep here. Don’t make any noise: some other chap may be awake.’

Graham rose obediently, but he still lingered in the cubicle, held by a vague yet very strong desire—desire to unburden himself of that which filled his soul, and which a feeling of shyness kept locked up in his breast. Then suddenly he overcame his cowardice, and kneeling down on the floor beside the bed, he kissed his friend as he lay there half asleep. That was all: he could not have spoken if he had tried to: even as it was his eyes were wet with tears. But he felt a kind of ecstasy of happiness as he stole back to his own bed, for it seemed to him that just then, when his lips had touched Harold’s cheek, he had given himself to him for better or worse, had given him his life, his trust. In the morning, he knew, all would be a little different; in the morning he should have to come back to an everyday world. But he should be no longer alone there; oh, he should never be alone again. With his face buried in his pillow, and his cheek still a little damp, he prayed that all might be well, prayed that Harold might come to care for him; and day was breaking when at last he fell asleep.

---