F

For a while he lingered near the house, restlessly, forlornly, but by and by he went down to the rocks, where he stood looking out over the sea.

Piled up on the horizon, like a vast range of purple-black hills, heavy masses of cloud drifted, scarce perceptibly, from east to west of the pale slate-blue sky; and where these rugged heaps were broken the heavens sank away in limitless wells of pure pale light, each edged with a border of bright grass-green. All the light of the day seemed gathered there—like a reflection from a world beyond—and Graham, as he stood at gaze before it, began to wonder if he should ever come any nearer to it than he was just there and then. In the Phaedo he had found many arguments for the immortality of the soul, but more lately he had realised, in his own life, the only one perhaps that actually counted—and this no argument at all; but merely a very simple human desire, a desire to look again upon the face of his friend, the face of him who was buried in the grave.

He stooped down and leaned over the slowly-heaving water, watching it rise and sink back, and rise again and sink—over the dark, cold water that seemed nearly black against the rocks—lower still, and lower, till his hair almost brushed the surface.

Presently he went on a little farther, clambering back over the rocks, and taking a rough path which brought him eventually to the church. The place was quite deserted, as it almost always was, and he pushed open the gate. He walked over the soft grass till he came to Brocklehurst’s grave, where he knelt down. The murmur of the sea rose from below—monotonous, very peaceful. Ah, were they not happiest who slept here with that dim music drawing them farther and farther from the world? An infinite melancholy drew its sombre wings about the boy’s forehead—a melancholy not wholly sprung from his recent sorrow, but a kind of broader pity for all the suffering bound up with life:—pity, above all, for the young boy who lay now under the heavy earth, yet who had once been so bright and active upon it. He found it curiously hard to think of him as dead, out of existence. Was he not still, even in that dim shadowy world whither he had passed, conscious, sentient? Could he not still feel some faint emotion, some faint stirring of hushed joy or sorrow? Was not his heart still beating softly under the grass? He stretched himself upon the grave, lying full length, motionless. Face to face they lay, only a little earth between them; and far below he seemed to hear a breath drawn almost silently, to hear the slow, sad stream of a boy’s tears falling, falling evermore. In the stillness he could hear his own heart beat—beat with the life that was flowing away from him in a wide, clear flame, the flame of a lamp burning swiftly up into the night.

The sun had set when he turned to go home. But as he passed the church door he noticed that it stood ajar, and went in. A bucket of water and a broom were in the porch, left there evidently for some purpose; but the church itself was empty.

He sat down for a while in one of the pews; then he knelt, leaning his face between his hands. A strong desire to pray had come over him. But pray to whom? Was this then, at last, to be the hour of the unknown God?... And a few words floated into his mind, came to him again and again, like a memory of some old tune, or line of poetry: ‘Little children, love one another....’ It seemed as if some one were stooping down over him, it seemed as if some one had kissed him, kissed him softly, had laid a gentle hand upon his head.

And a feeling of ineffable peace began to creep into his heart. Could it possibly be, then, that he was really nearer to the unseen world than others were? Now, surely, in some inexplicable way he had been drawn very very close—closer than ever before. He had a sense that something was about to happen, and that it would be something great, momentous, supreme. It was as if he were upon the eve of some stupendous discovery; and he waited—waited till the signal should be given him—some sign which, unlike any others he had hitherto received, would come, this time, he knew, from without.

A profound stillness had fallen upon the church, like the closing in of heavy waters. The murmur of the sea had stopped.

Then across the hush there came a low sigh—a whisper as of the brushing together of innumerable leaves—a whisper which grew deeper and deeper, till at last it seemed the music of some wonderful summer, and Graham raised his head. Surely the light had grown marvellously clear and soft. A scent of many flowers was in the air; a murmur of a fountain.

And as he knelt, motionless, the walls of the church sank away from before him, and there—standing there in that radiance of perfect light—ah, there, at last, was Harold!

He stood in his garden, and he was more beautiful than Graham had ever yet beheld him ... he stretched out his hands ... he smiled.... His feet were pale on the dark rich grass with its powder of crocuses. Above his head the branches of the trees almost met, forming a delicate roof, a roof of green leaves, a green trellis very finely woven, through which the light, mingled with a falling music of little feathered throats, floated down soft and cool. All around him was that wonderful liquid light, and the music of water, listless, plashing, as it dropped into some dim, cool, green-lipped basin of stone. And over everything there hung a calm so deep, and pure, and holy, that all Graham’s sorrow seemed to melt away before it into one impassioned sense of gratitude, and love, and peace.

‘Oh, I am coming—I am coming,’ he sobbed, rising to his feet, and taking a step forward, quickly, blindly. For a moment he stood there, swaying with a curious movement from side to side; then he gave a little moan and fell forward heavily on his face.

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