Part 5

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.

XIII

When he opened his eyes he was lying in bed, in his own room. The light was darkened: there was a faint smell of drugs in the air: and a figure was moving noiselessly about, preparing something at a small table. He had been ill, then!... but for how long?

He heard a slight noise as of the door being very carefully opened, and he saw his father come into the room, walking on tiptoe. Graham kept his eyes closed that they might not know he had awakened. Things were beginning to come back to him, and for just a few minutes longer he wanted to keep that cool darkness about him.

He felt a strange languor through all his body; he felt too weak to do anything but lie there in the softened light, and in the twilight of his soul. It would be soon enough to awaken in a little――not just yet――in a little....

* * * * *

And all that was thirty years ago. His father was long dead. Every one was dead.

Dawn had crept into the room, grey and ghostly. He shivered and looked round. His letter, unfinished, lay there on the table. Everything seemed cold, desolate, lifeless. He got up and stretched himself, for he felt stiff and cramped. Scarce worth while, now, to go to bed! He walked over to the window and looked out into the breaking day. The world seemed very old and cheerless. Was it the chill of approaching age in his own blood, he wondered, that made him find it so? He smiled a strange, dim little smile. Best, then, to sit by the fire and doze!

He came back to the table, and leaning over it, buried his face in his hands.

THE END

Transcriber’s Notes:

――Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

――Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected.

――Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved.

――Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved.