"ROMANCE—THREE GLEAMS."

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1431, 4 May 1912, Page 9

"ROMANCE—THREE GLEAMS."

I. On that New Year's morning, when I drew up the blind, it was slill nearly dark, but for the faintest pink flush glancing out. there on I he horizon of black water. The tar shore of the river's mouth was just soft dusk; and on this near shore the dim trees helow mo were in perfect stillness. There was no lap of water. 'And then—.l saw her, drifting in on tho tide—the little ship, passaging below me, a happy ghost. Like no thing of this world she came, ending her flight, with sail-winjs closing, and her glowing lantern eves. There was, 1 know not what of 'stealthy joy about her" thus creeping in to tho unexnecting land. And 1 wished 'she would never pass; but go on gliding down I here for ever with her dark ropes, and her bright lanterns, and her mysterious felicity; so thot I might have for ever in my heart the blessed feeling she brought me, coming like this out of that great mystery, the sea. If only she need not change to solidity, but ever bo this visitor from the unknown, this sacred bird, telling wii.li her halfseen, trailing-down plume-sails the story of uncharted wonder. If ojily I might go on tremblirg, as I was, with the rapture of all I did not know mid could not see, vet felt pressing against me and touching

my face with its lips. To think of her at anchor in cold light was like flinging-to ii door in tho face of happiness. And just then she struck her bell; the faint, silvery far-down sound fled away before her, and to every side, out into the utter hush, to discover echo. But nothing answered, as if fearing to break the spell of her coming, to brush with reality tho dark sea-dew from her sail wings. But within me, in response, there began the song of all unknown things; the song so tenuous, so ecstatic that seems to sweep ami quiver across such thin' golden strings, and like an eager dream dies too soon. The song of the secret-knowing wind that has peered through so great forests, and over such wild sea; blown on so many faces, and in the jungles of the grass—tho song of all the wind has seen and felt. Tho song of lives that I should never live; of tho loves that I should never love—singing to me as though I should. And suddenly I felt that I could not tear my little ship of dreams to grow hard and .gray, her bright lanterns drowned in the cold light, her dark ropes spidery and taut, her sea-wan sails all furled, and she no more enchanted; and turning away I let fall tho blind.

Then what happens to the moon? She, who, shy and veiled, slips out before dusk to take the air of sky, wandering timidly among the columned clouds, and fugitive from the staring of the sun; she, who, when dusk has come, rules, the sentient night with such chaste and icy spell —whither and how does she retreat?-

I came on her one morning— surprised her. She was stealing into a dark wintry wood, and five little stars were'chasing her. She was orange-hooded, a light o' love dismissed—unashamed and unfatigucd, having taken all. And she was looking back; with her almond eyes across her dark ivory shoulder at Night where he still law drowned in the sleep she had brought him. What a strange, slow, mocking look! So might Aphrodite herself have looked back at some weary lover, remembering the fire of his first embrace. Insatiate, smiling creature, slipping down to the rim of the world, (o her bath in the sweet waters of dawn, whence emerging, pure as a water lily, she would float in the cool sky till evening camo again. And just then she saw me looking, and hid behind a holm-oak tree; but I could still see the gleam of oiio shoulde* and her long narrow eyes pursuing mo. I went up to the tree, and missed iti dark boughs to take her; but she had slipped behind another. I called to her to stand, if only for one moment. But she smiled, and wont slipping on, and I rnn, thrusting through the wet bushes, leaping tho fallen trunks. The scent of rotting leaves, disturbed by my feet, leaped out into the darkness, and birds, surprised, flustered away. And still I ran—she slipping ever further into the grove, and ever vet looking back at me. And I thought: "But I will catch you yet, you nymph of perdition! The wood will soon be passed, you will have no cover then!" And from her eyes and the scanty gleam of her flying limbs I never looked nway, not even when I stumbled or ran against tree stems iu my blind haste. And at every clearing I flew more furiously, thinking to seize all of her with my gaze before she could cross the glade; but ever sho found soino little low tree, some' bush or birch ungrown.or the far top branches,of tho next grove to screen her Hying body and preserve allurement. And all tho time she was dipping, dipping to tho rim of the world. And then I tripped; and, as 1 rose, I saw that she had lingered for me; her, long, sliding eyes were full, it seemed to me, of pity, as if she would have liked for me to have enjoyed tho sight of her. I stood still, breathless, thinking that at last she would consent; but, flinging back, up into the air, one dark-ivory, arm, she sighed and vanished. And the breath of hc-r sigh stirred all tho birch tree twigs just coloured with the dawn.: Long I stood in that thicket, gazing at the spat where she-had' leapt from me over the edge of the world, my heart quivering.

I embarked on tho estuary steamer that winter morning iust as daylight came full. Tho sun was on tho wing, scattering little white clouds as an eaglo might scatter doves. They scurried up before him with their broken feathers tipped and tinged with gold. In the air'was a touch of frost, and a smoky mist-drift clung here and there above the reed?, blurring the shores of tho lagoon so that we seemed to bo steaming across boundless water,' till some clump of trees would King its top out of tho fog, then fall back into whiteness. I And then, in that thick vapour, rounding, I suppose, some curve, wo enmc suddenly into wo knew nob what—all white and moviug it was, as if tlio mist ware crazed; murmuring, too, with a sort_ of restless beating. We seemed to bo passing through a ghost—tho ghost of all the life that had sprung from this water and its shores; we seemed to bo drawn out of reality, to be travelling through-live air. •■'•"-.' : And tho fantastic thought sprang into my mind: "I have died. This is the voyago of my soul in tho wild. I am in the final wilderness of spirits—lost in the ghost robo that wraps the earth." There seemed in all this white murmuration to bo millions of tiny hands stretching out to me, millions of whispering voices, of wistful eyes. I had no fear, but a curious creepy wonder, the strangest feeling of having lost myself, and become part of this around me; exactly as if my own hands and voice and eyes had left me and were groping, and whispering, and gazing out there in the eeriness. I was no longer a man on an estuary steamer, but part of sentient ghostliness. Nor did. I feel unhappy; it seemed as though I had never been anything but this Bedouin spirit hovering. We passed through again into tho stillness of plain mist, and that feeling went— leaving behind it nothing but curiosity to know what this was that we' had traversed. Then suddenly the sun came flaring out, and we saw behind us thousands and thousands of white gulls dipping, wheeling, brushing tho water with their wings, bewitched with sun and mist. That was all.' And yet—that white-winged legion through whom wo had ploughed our way were not, could never be, to mo Just gulls —there was ruoro than mere sun-glamour gilding their misty plumos; there was the wizardry of my past wonder, the enchantment of romance. —John Galsworthy, in London "Nation".