Devil's Tor (77 page)

But now too quickly the glow left them; and they were again in night.

The sky was full of natural stars. They felt that they had dropped suddenly to vulgarity. … Obeying Saltfleet's swift movement of turning, Ingrid beheld with him, high in the sprinkled blackness, a star that was brighter and more fairly gleaming than the others, of a strange blue... plainly falling, but very slowly. It grew in beauty, and she saw its path to be a curve. She never doubted but that the star was the same with the moving glow she had seen across that other universe: only, now that it could no longer make gifts, it became itself. Perhaps in this simpler world its power should be different, and more, or less: and it descended, because the plane had changed. … Or it lighted no shapes in passing, because in this dead material world all shapes had sunk to the bottom, and were piled, one upon another.

The star vanished suddenly. A body tore past their ears in the darkness. … Saltfleet thought to have recalled a previous happening that had once astonished him: but his passion on another account was deep, his objective mind confused and careless. Then there had been more sights and sounds, but now it was finished; silent. The girl with him, who had become a woman, comprehended that she had witnessed the entering into body of that ancient Mother. She would have knelt had not all her soul been stunned by its own transfiguration.

But when she could think again, she supposed that she had been shown the manner of occurrence of this event in order that never afterwards might she be at the mercy of those more intellectual than herself, who might try to persuade her of her imagined folly. And yet it could not matter, and she cared nothing... she wished not to understand things, but only to keep alive the pure pain and grief of her surrender, whether in ignorance or otherwise. Indeed, she wished to have done with all those hideous reminiscent prides and curiosities of the old Ingrid Fleming, that could but drag her back into personal life. To her terrible election she hoped to be permitted to join, as a condition, that the rest of her days should pass inconspicuous and humble; that she should be without the cleverness and genius and distinction of other women. …

The blackness gave place to a dusky grey, through which the familiar features of the top of Devil's Tor began to show vaguely.

They saw the dark upright shape of Arsinal, swaying, between themselves and that part of the hill nearest to the valley. And while they went on impotently looking, in distress for this first intrusion upon them of the coarsenesses that must now be awaited from the world, he still did not fall, but appeared rather to sink to the ground as from some progressive failure of his supporting frame. … He continued lying there, a shadowy shape of repose, his down-turned face hidden upon a bended arm.

Thereupon Saltfleet's old human instincts began to move again within him, and, scarcely realising what he did, he took those steps—not many—to the senseless man. It grew lighter still. …

The phantom personality, then, of that infinitesimal part of the Ancient which men had termed "Stephen Arsinal" was truly dispersed. The mystic red stream of his channels, upon which his false life had floated, was suddenly arrested as at the magnetic command of a word across the times and spaces; and that ghost was stripped of its unreal substance. …

He fancied that Ingrid had called out to him by his two names, but at a future time she averred she had not done so. However, believing that he was so summoned, he turned... and perceived that the Spirit of that other dead One stood, at enormous height, directly between himself and Ingrid, whom he imagined to have called to him for the purpose of his seeing. … Never had Her flesh been so bright... but Her eyes, somehow, he looked not for. …

She retreated, still facing him—back—back, to Ingrid behind Her... with whom, incomprehensibly, She became incorporated—so departing. … But Ingrid at the same moment beheld that moonlike Shape—so diminished—so human—recede from her direction towards Saltfleet... to become a cloud of silver glory before She reached him... and so envelop him, and vanish. …

Again the desolate hill-top was in departing day. Again those weird tremendous clouds filled the four skies, while in the west the elf-window lingered. The wind came up in great abrupt gusts, that were like threats of the evils preparing for them in the world below.

They drew slowly together, regarding each other. And each saw how the other's countenance gleamed... with such a gleaming that for long they dared not speak, yet might not let fall their eyes.

Saltfleet stirred at last, breaking the spell of stupor.

"We must go. We cannot stay here."

But she responded only by a movement that spoke nothing.

"You know he is dead?"

"Yes."

"The stones are gone."

Then Ingrid, after another moment, said:

"I will not see him. I wish my last remembrance of this place to be of life."

"That I understand."

"For unless this hill has been of life, I would pray to be mercifully dead myself."

"Let us not talk of this now," he answered.

There was a longer pause.

"The joined stone," said Ingrid, "—you mean it has been withdrawn altogether?"

"Doubtless it has repassed into its elements."

"Then that is the last sign."

Saltfleet glanced towards Arsinal's lifeless form.

"There will be another inquest, which will be thought queer. But stranger things must be for us two."

She replied:

"I will go to live in the far North. I cannot breathe here."

"I have no wife, and I am clean of women."

"That had to be. … Yet give thanks that you are to break no living heart. For me are two I dare not think of. …"

And she added:

"I beg you always to forget such small beauty as I may have. … And I beg you to propose no vows—no ceremonies. I could not enter the church of a foreign God on a false pretence. I could not ask the sanction of society."

"Your word shall rule in everything."

"You are to gain no honour of me."

"A man born out of wedlock may well scorn opinion."

"Who, then, was your mother?" asked Ingrid, viewing him steadfastly.

"Rightly you assume her dead. She was the best of mortal women: and not of this land."

"You will tell me of her afterwards."

Saltfleet went across to cover the face of the dead. Then they departed from the Tor together, gleaming still as to their faces, leaving Arsinal there to be the quiet witness of those happenings.

But when they had descended to the stream, and had passed it, there sounded from the top of the hill they had quitted a long and low, yet mighty, roll of thunder, which they knew to be the first of a storm that was to make their homeward journey terrible.

THE END