XXIX
The time that I spent in the valley home with Cynthia is the mostdifficult to describe of all my wanderings; because, indeed, there isnothing to describe. We were always together. Sometimes we wandered highup among the woods, and came out on the bleak mountain-heads. Sometimeswe sat within and talked; and by a curious provision there werephenomena there that were more like changes of weather, and interchangeof day and night, than at any other place in the heavenly country.Sometimes the whole valley would be shrouded with mists, sometimes itwould 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 donot know which was the more desirable--the hours when we walked in theforests, with the wind moving softly in the leaves overhead like afalling sea, or those calm and silent nights when we seemed to sleep anddream, or when, if I waked, I could hear Cynthia's breath coming andgoing evenly as the breath of a tired child. It seemed like the essenceof human passion, the end that lovers desire, and discern faintly behindand beyond the accidents of sense and contact, like the sounding of asweet chord, without satiety or fever of the sense.
I learnt many strange and beautiful secrets of the human heart in thosedays: what the dreams of womanhood are--how wholly different from thedreams of man, in which there is always a combative element. The soul ofCynthia was like a silent cleft among the hills, which waits, in its ownstill content, until the horn of the shepherd winds the notes of a chordin the valley below; and then the cleft makes answer and returns an airyecho, blending the notes into a harmony of dulcet utterance. And shetoo, I doubt not, learnt something from my soul, which was eager andinventive enough, but restless and fugitive of purpose. And then therecame a further joy to us. That which is fatherly and motherly in theworld below is not a thing that is lost in heaven; and just as the loveof 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 ayearning, which grows day by day in intensity, for some further outletof love and care.
It was one quiet misty morning that, as we sat together in tranquiltalk, we heard faltering steps within our garden. We had seen, let mesay, very little of the other inhabitants of our valley. We hadsometimes seen a pair of figures wandering at a distance, and we hadeven met neighbours and exchanged a greeting. But the valley had nosocial life of its own, and no one ever seemed, so far as we knew, toenter any other dwelling, though they met in quiet friendliness. Cynthiawent to the door and opened it; then she darted out, and, just when Iwas about to follow, she returned, leading by the hand a tiny child, wholooked at us with an air of perfect contentment and simplicity.
"Where on earth has this enchanting baby sprung from?" said Cynthia,seating the child upon her lap, and beginning to talk to it in astrangely unintelligible language, which the child appeared tounderstand perfectly.
I laughed. "Out of our two hearts, perhaps," I said. At which Cynthiablushed, and said that I did not understand or care for children. Sheadded that men's only idea about children was to think how much theycould teach them.
"Yes," I said, "we will begin lessons to-morrow, and go on to the LatinGrammar very shortly."
At which Cynthia folded the child in her arms, to defend it, andreassured it in a sentence which is far too silly to set down here.
I think that sometimes on earth the arrival of a first child is a verytrying time for a wedded pair. The husband is apt to find his wife'slove almost withdrawn from him, and to see her nourishing all kinds ofjealousies and vague ambitions for her child. Paternity is apt to be avery bewildered and often rather dramatic emotion. But it was not sowith us. The child seemed the very thing we had been needing withoutknowing it. It was a constant source of interest and delight; and inspite of Cynthia's attempts to keep it ignorant and even fatuous, it diddevelop a very charming intelligence, or rather, as I soon saw, began toperceive what it already knew. It soon overwhelmed us with questions,and used to patter about the garden with me, airing all sorts ofdelicious and absurd fancies. But, for all that, it did seem to make anend of the first utter closeness of our love. Cynthia after this seldomwent far afield, and I ranged the hills and woods alone; but it was allabsurdly and continuously happy, though I began to wonder how long itcould last, and whether my faculties and energies, such as they were,could continue thus unused. And I had, too, in my mind that other scenewhich I had beheld, of how the boy was withdrawn from the two old peoplein the other valley. Was it always thus, I wondered? Was it so, thatsouls were drawn upwards in ceaseless pilgrimage, loving and passing on,and leaving in the hearts of those who stayed behind a longingunassuaged, which was presently to draw them onwards from the peacewhich they loved perhaps too well?