"They could have made it very disagreeable for you," he said, "if they had frightened you, and kept you frightened. As long as that lasted, you would have been extremely uncomfortable. But as you saw, the moment you defied them they were helpless. The part played by Lucius was really unpardonable. I am afraid he is a great rascal."

Cynthia faintly demurred to this. "Never mind," said the guide soothingly, "he has only shown you his good side, of course; and I don't deny that he is a very clever and attractive fellow. But he makes no progress, and I am really afraid that he will have to be transferred elsewhere; though there is indeed one hope for him."

"Tell me what that is," said Cynthia faintly.

"I don't think I need do that," said our friend, "you know better than I; and some day, I think, when you are stronger, you will find the way to release him."

"Ah, you don't know him as I do," said Cynthia, and relapsed into silence; but did not withdraw her hand from mine.

"Well," said our guide after a moment's pause, "I think I have done all I can for the time being, and I am wanted elsewhere."

"But will you not advise me what to do next?" I said. "I do not see my way clear."

"No," said the guide rather drily, "I am afraid I cannot do that. That lies outside my province. These delicate questions are not in my line. I will tell you plainly what I am. I am just a messenger, perhaps more like a policeman," he added, smiling, "than anything else. I just go and appear when I am wanted, if there is a row or a chance of one. Don't misunderstand me!" he said more kindly. "It is not from any lack of interest in you or our friend here. I should very much like to know what step you will take, but it is simply not my business: our duties here are very clearly defined, and I can just do my job, and nothing more."

He made a courteous salute, and walked off without looking back, leaving on me the impression of a young military officer, perfectly courteous and reliable, not inclined to cultivate his emotions or to waste words, but absolutely effective, courageous, and dutiful.

"Well," I said to Cynthia with a show of cheerfulness, "what shall we do next? Are you feeling strong enough to go on?"

"I am sure I don't know," said Cynthia wearily. "Don't ask me. I have had a great fright, and I begin to wish I had stayed behind. How uncomfortable everything is! Why can one never have a moment's peace?

There," she said to me, "don't be vexed, I am not blaming you; but I hated you for not showing more fight when those men set on you, and I hated Lucius for having done it; you must forgive me! I am sure you only did what was kind and right--but I have had a very trying time, and I don't like these bothers. Let me alone for a little, and I daresay I shall be more sensible."

I sat by her in much perplexity, feeling singularly helpless and ineffective; and in a moment of weakness, not knowing what to do, I wished that Amroth were near me, to advise me; and to my relief saw him approaching, but also realised in a flash that I had acted wrongly, and that he was angry, as I had never seen him before.

He came up to us, and bending down to Cynthia with great tenderness, took her hand, and said, "Will you stay here quietly a little, Cynthia, and rest? You are perfectly safe now, and no one will come near you. We two shall be close at hand; but we must have a talk together, and see what can be done."

Cynthia smiled and released me. Amroth beckoned me to withdraw with him.

When we had got out of earshot, he turned upon me very fiercely, and said, "You have made a great mess of this business."

"I know it," I said feebly, "but I cannot for the life of me see where I was wrong."

"You were wrong from beginning to end," he said. "Cannot you see that, whatever this place is, it is not a sentimental place? It is all this wretched sentiment that has done the mischief. Come," he added, "I have an unpleasant task before me, to unmask you to yourself. I don't like it, but I must do it. Don't make it harder for me."

"Very good," I said, rather angrily too. "But allow me to say this first. This is a place of muddle. One is worked too hard, and shown too many things, till one is hopelessly confused. But I had rather have your criticism first, and then I will make mine."

"Very well!" said Amroth facing me, looking at me fixedly with his blue eyes, and his nostrils a little distended. "The mischief lies in your temperament. You are precocious, and you are volatile. You have had special opportunities, and in a way you have used them well, but your head has been somewhat turned by your successes. You came to that place yonder, with Cynthia, with a sense of superiority. You thought yourself too good for it, and instead of just trying to see into the minds and hearts of the people you met, you despised them; instead of learning, you tried to teach. You took a feeble interest in Cynthia, made a pet of her; then, when I took you away, you forgot all about her. Even the great things I was allowed to show you did not make you humble. You took them as a compliment to your powers. And so when you had your chance to go back to help Cynthia, you thought out no plan, you asked no advice.

You went down in a very self-sufficient mood, expecting that everything would be easy."

"That is not true," I said. "I was very much perplexed."

"It is only too true," said Amroth; "you enjoyed your perplexity; I daresay you called it faith to yourself! It was that which made you weak. You lost your temper with Lucius, you made a miserable fight of it--and even in prison you could not recognise that you were in fault.

You did better at the trial--I fully admit that you behaved well there--but the fault is in this, that this girl gave you her heart and her confidence, and you despised them. Your mind was taken up with other things; a very little more, and you would be fit for the intellectual paradise. There," he said, "I have nearly done! You may be angry if you will, but that is the truth. You have a wrong idea of this place. It is not plain sailing here. Life here is a very serious, very intricate, very difficult business. The only complications which are removed are the complications of the body; but one has anxious and trying responsibilities all the same, and you have trifled with them. You must not delude yourself. You have many good qualities. You have some courage, much ingenuity, keen interests, and a good deal of conscientiousness; but you have the makings of a dilettante, the readiness to delude yourself that the particular little work you are engaged in is excessively and peculiarly important. You have got the proportion all wrong."

I had a feeling of intense anger and bitterness at all this; but as he spoke, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes, and I saw that Amroth was right. I wrestled with myself in silence.

Presently I said, "Amroth, I believe you are right, though I think at this moment that you have stated all this rather harshly. But I do see that it can be no pleasure to you to state it, though I fear I shall never regain my pleasure in your company."

"There," said Amroth, "that is sentiment again!"

This put me into a great pa.s.sion.

"Very well," I said, "I will say no more. Perhaps you will just be good enough to tell me what I am to do with Cynthia, and where I am to go, and then I will trouble you no longer."

"Oh," said Amroth with a sneer, "I have no doubt you can find some very nice semidetached villas hereabouts. Why not settle down, and make the poor girl a little mote worthy of yourself?"

At this I turned from him in great anger, and left him standing where he was. If ever I hated any one, I hated Amroth at that moment. I went back to Cynthia.

"I have come back to you, dear," I said. "Can you trust me and go with me? No one here seems inclined to help us, and we must just help each other."

At which Cynthia rose and flung herself into my arms.

"That was what I wanted all along," she said, "to feel that I could be of use too. You will see how brave I can be. I can go anywhere with you and do anything, because I think I have loved you all the time."

"And you must forgive me, Cynthia," I said, "as well. For I did not know till this moment that I loved you, but I know it now; and I shall love you to the end."

As I said these words I turned, and saw Amroth smiling from afar; then with a wave of the hand to us, he turned and pa.s.sed out of our sight.

XXVIII

Left to ourselves, Cynthia and I sat awhile in silence, hand in hand, like children, she looking anxiously at me. Our talk had broken down all possible reserve between us; but what was strange to me was that I felt, not like a lover with any need to woo, but as though we two had long since been wedded, and had just come to a knowledge of each other's hearts. At last we rose; and strange and bewildering as it all was, I think I was perhaps happier at this time than at any other time in the land of light, before or after.

And let me here say a word about these strange unions of soul that take place in that other land. There is there a whole range of affections, from courteous tolerance to intense pa.s.sion. But there is a peculiar bond which springs up between pairs of people, not always of different s.e.x, in that country. My relation with Amroth had nothing of that emotion about it. That was simply like a transcendental essence of perfect friendship; but there was a peculiar relation, between pairs of souls, which seems to imply some curious duality of nature, of which earthly pa.s.sion is but a symbol. It is accompanied by an absolute clearness of vision into the inmost soul and being of the other.

Cynthia's mind was as clear to me in those days as a crystal globe might be which one could hold in one's hand, and my mind was as clear to her.

There is a sense accompanying it almost of ident.i.ty, as if the other nature was the exact and perfect complement of one's own; I can explain this best by an image. Think of a sphere, let us say, of alabaster, broken into two pieces by a blow, and one piece put away or mislaid. The first piece, let us suppose, stands in its accustomed place, and the owner often thinks in a trivial way of having it restored. One day, turning over some lumber, he finds the other piece, and wonders if it is not the lost fragment. He takes it with him, and sees on applying it that the fractures correspond exactly, and that joined together the pieces complete the sphere.

Even so did Cynthia's soul fit into mine. But I grew to understand later the words of the Gospel--"they neither marry nor are given in marriage."

These unions are not permanent, any more than they are really permanent on earth. On earth, owing to material considerations such as children and property, a marriage is looked upon as indissoluble. But this takes no account of the development of souls; and indeed many of the unions of earth, the pa.s.sion once over, do grow into a very n.o.ble and beautiful friendship. But sometimes, even on earth, it is the other way; and pa.s.sion once extinct, two natures often realise their dissimilarities rather than their similarities; and this is the cause of much unhappiness. But in the other land, two souls may develop in quite different ways and at a different pace. And then this relation may also come quietly and simply to an end, without the least resentment or regret, and is succeeded invariably by a very tender and true friendship, each being sweetly and serenely content with all that has been given or received; and this friendship is not shaken or fretted, even if both of the lovers form new ties of close intimacy. Some natures form many of these ties, some few, some none at all. I believe that, as a matter of fact, each nature has its counterpart at all times, but does not always succeed in finding it. But the union, when it comes, seems to take precedence of all other emotions and all other work. I did not know this at the time; but I had a sense that my work was for a time over, because it seemed quite plain to me that as yet Cynthia was not in the least degree suited to the sort of work which I had been doing.

We walked on together for some time, in a happy silence, though quiet communications of a blessed sort pa.s.sed perpetually between us without any interchange of word. Our feet moved along the hillside, away from the crags, because I felt that Cynthia had no strength to climb them; and I wondered what our life would be.

Presently a valley opened before us, folding quietly in among the hills, full of a golden haze; and it seemed to me that our further way lay down it. It fell softly and securely into a further plain, the country being quite unlike anything I had as yet seen--a land of high and craggy mountains, the lower parts of them much overgrown with woods; the valley itself widened out, and pa.s.sed gently among the hills, with here and there a lake. Dotted all about the mountain-bases, at the edges of the woods, were little white houses, stone-walled and stone-tiled, with small gardens; and then the place seemed to become strangely familiar and homelike; and I became aware that I was coming home: the same thought occurred to Cynthia; and at last, when we turned a corner of the road, and saw lying a little back from the road a small house, with a garden in front of it, shaded by a group of sycamores, we darted forwards with a cry of delight to the home that was indeed our own. The door stood open as though we were certainly expected. It was the simplest little place, just a pair of rooms very roughly and plainly furnished. And there we embraced with tears of joy.

XXIX

The time that I spent in the valley home with Cynthia is the most difficult to describe of all my wanderings; because, indeed, there is nothing to describe. We were always together. Sometimes we wandered high up among the woods, and came out on the bleak mountain-heads. Sometimes we sat within and talked; and by a curious provision there were phenomena there that were more like changes of weather, and interchange of day and night, than at any other place in the heavenly country.

Sometimes the whole valley would be shrouded with mists, sometimes it would be grey and overcast, sometimes the light was clear and radiant, but through it all there beat a pulse of light and darkness; and I do not know which was the more desirable--the hours when we walked in the forests, with the wind moving softly in the leaves overhead like a falling sea, or those calm and silent nights when we seemed to sleep and dream, or when, if I waked, I could hear Cynthia's breath coming and going evenly as the breath of a tired child. It seemed like the essence of human pa.s.sion, the end that lovers desire, and discern faintly behind and beyond the accidents of sense and contact, like the sounding of a sweet chord, without satiety or fever of the sense.

I learnt many strange and beautiful secrets of the human heart in those days: what the dreams of womanhood are--how wholly different from the dreams of man, in which there is always a combative element. The soul of Cynthia was like a silent cleft among the hills, which waits, in its own still content, until the horn of the shepherd winds the notes of a chord in the valley below; and then the cleft makes answer and returns an airy echo, blending the notes into a harmony of dulcet utterance. And she too, I doubt not, learnt something from my soul, which was eager and inventive enough, but restless and fugitive of purpose. And then there came a further joy to us. That which is fatherly and motherly in the world below is not a thing that is lost in heaven; and just as the love of man and woman can draw down and imprison a soul in a body of flesh, so in heaven the dear intention of one soul to another brings about a yearning, which grows day by day in intensity, for some further outlet of love and care.

It was one quiet misty morning that, as we sat together in tranquil talk, we heard faltering steps within our garden. We had seen, let me say, very little of the other inhabitants of our valley. We had sometimes seen a pair of figures wandering at a distance, and we had even met neighbours and exchanged a greeting. But the valley had no social life of its own, and no one ever seemed, so far as we knew, to enter any other dwelling, though they met in quiet friendliness. Cynthia went to the door and opened it; then she darted out, and, just when I was about to follow, she returned, leading by the hand a tiny child, who looked at us with an air of perfect contentment and simplicity.