The Best Psychic Stories. Various
in the flat.
And then it was with a kind of sudden burst and rush—it seemed to him the only way to phrase it—memory gave up her dead.
At first he only caught her peeping round the corner at him, drawing aside a corner of an enormous curtain, as it were; striving for more complete entrance as though the mass of it were difficult to move. But he understood, he knew, he recognized. It was enough for that. As an entrance into his being—heart, mind, soul—was being attempted and the entrance because of his stolid temperament was difficult of accomplishment, there was effort, strain. Something in him had first to be opened up, widened, made soft and ready as by an operation, before full entrance could be effected. This much he grasped though for the life of him he could not have put it into words. Also he knew who it was that sought an entrance. Deliberately from himself he withheld the name. But he knew as surely as though Straughan stood in the room and faced him with a knife saying, "Let me in, let me in. I wish you to know I'm here. I'm clearing a way! You recall our promise?"
He rose from his chair and went to the open window again, the strange fear slowly passing. The cool air fanned his cheeks. Beauty till now had scarcely ever brushed the surface of his soul. He had never troubled his head about it. It passed him by indifferent; and he had ever loathed the mouthy prating of it on others' lips. He was practical; beauty was for dreamers, for women, for men who had means and leisure. He had not exactly scorned it; rather it had never touched his life, to sweeten, to cheer, to uplift. Artists for him were like monks—another sex almost—useless beings who never helped the world go round. He was for action always, work, activity, achievement as he saw them. He remembered Straughan vaguely—Straughan, the ever impecunious friend of his youth, always talking of color and sound—mysterious, ineffectual things. He even forgot what they had quarreled about, if they had quarreled at all even; or why they had gone apart all these years ago. And certainly he had forgotten any promise. Memory as yet only peeped at him round the corner of that huge curtain tentatively, suggestively, yet—he was obliged to admit it—somewhat winningly. He was conscious of this gentle, sweet seductiveness that now replaced his fear.
And as he stood now at the open window peering over huge London, beauty came close and smote him between the eyes. She came blindingly, with her train of stars and clouds and perfumes. Night, mysterious, myriad-eyed, and flaming across her sea of haunted shadows invaded his heart and shook him with her immemorial wonder and delight. He found no words of course to clothe the new unwonted sensations. He only knew that all his former dread, uneasiness, distress, and with them this idea of growth that had seemed so repugnant to him were merged, swept up, and gathered magnificently home into a wave of beauty that enveloped him. "See it, and understand," ran a secret inner whisper across his mind. He saw. He understood. …
He went back and turned the lights out. Then he took his place again at that open window, drinking in the night. He saw a new world; a species of intoxication held him. He sighed, as his thoughts blundered for expression among words and sentences that knew him not. But the delight was there, the wonder, the mystery. He watched with heart alternately tightening and expanding the transfiguring play of moon and shadow over the sea of buildings. He saw the dance of the hurrying clouds, the open patches into outer space, the veiling and unveiling of that ancient silvery face; and he caught strange whispers of the hierophantic, sacerdotal power that has echoed down the world since Time began and dropped strange magic phrases into every poet's heart, since first "God dawned on Chaos"—the Beauty of the Night.
A long time passed—it may have been one hour, it may have been three—when at length he turned away and went slowly to his bedroom. A deep peace lay over him. Something quite new and blessed had crept into his life and thought. He could not quite understand it all. He only knew that it uplifted. There was no longer the least sign of affliction or distress. Even the inevitable reaction that set in could not destroy that.
And then as he lay in bed nearing the borderland of sleep, suddenly and without any obvious suggestion to bring it, he remembered another thing. He remembered the promise. Memory got past the big curtain for an instant and showed her face. She looked into his eyes. It must have been a dozen years ago when Straughan and he had made that foolish solemn promise, that whoever died first should show himself if possible to the other.
He had utterly forgotten it—till now. But Straughan had not forgotten it. The letter came three weeks later from India. That very evening Straughan had died—at nine o'clock. And he had come back—in the Beauty that he loved.
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