And here it was that Vincent came back. Not the Vincent of the hawk-like imperious face, or burning eyes of desire, which had seemed to him his realest self. But the Vincent who had come in from the porch that day in March when she had first played to him, who had smiled at her, the good, grateful, peaceful smile, and had said to her music, “Go on, go on.” It was the same Vincent of the afternoon in Cousin Hetty’s garden when the vulture of the desire to possess had left him for a moment in peace. Often and often he came thus as she played and leaned his head back and said, “Go on.” And thus Marise knew he would always come. And thus she welcomed him.
This was what was left of him in the house he had so filled with his smoky, flaming brilliance.
V
December.
They had been talking around the fire of the stars and their names and stories, she and Neale and the children. Presently interest overcoming inertia they decided to go out and see if the clouds had blown away so that the stars could be seen. They huddled on hastily found wraps, thrust their feet into flapping, unbuckled overshoes, and leaving the still, warm, lamp-lit room, they shuffled out, laughing and talking, into the snow which lay thick and still before the house.
At first they carried out between them so much of the house atmosphere that it hung about them like warm fog, shielding them from the fiercely pure, still cold of the air, and from the brilliant glitter of the myriad-eyed black sky. They went on talking and laughing, pointing out the constellations they knew, and trying to find others in the spangled vault over their heads.
“A bear!” cried Mark. “I could draw a better bear than that any day!” And from Paul, “They can call it Orion’s belt all they want to, but there’s no belt to it!” And from Elly, “Aldebaran! Aldebaran! Red-eyed Aldebaran!”
But little by little the house-air began to be thinned about them, to blow away from between them in wisps and wreathes, off into the blackness. The warmed, lighted house dwindled to nothing. There were only the great cold black sky and the small cold white earth. Their voices were lowered; they stood very still, close together, their heads tipped back, their faces and hearts upraised silently to receive the immensity above and about them.
Elly murmured under her breath, “Doesn’t it seem funny, our world being just one of all those, and such a little one, and here we are, just these few of us, standing on the world and looking at it all.”
Marise thought, “We seem to be the only living things in all creation.” In that huge, black, cold glittering universe how tiny was the little glow of life they made!
Tiny but unquenchable! Those myriads of hard staring eyes could not look down the immortal handful of human life and love which she and Neale had created between them.
There was a silence, filled with still, breathless cold; with enormous space, with infinity.
Marise felt a rigorous shudder run over her, as though something vital were coming to her, like the rending pang of pain which heralds child-birth. After this, did she close her eyes for a moment, or did it come to her while she continued to gaze wide-eyed at the stern greatness of the universe? What was this old, familiar, unknown sensation?
... as though, on a long journey in the dark it had grown light, so that she had suddenly recognized which way she was going.
Then she knew what it was. Conscious and awake, she was feeling herself one with the great current, advancing with an irresistible might, majesty and power, in which she shared, to which she gave her part.
VI
January.
She was putting away the clean sheets from the washing on the shelves at the end of the hall, upstairs, her mind entirely on the prosaic task, wondering when she would have to replace some of the older ones, and wishing she could put off buying till the outrageous post-war prices went down. Someone stirred behind her and she turned her head quickly to see who was there. It was Neale, come in early. He was standing, looking at her back; and in the instant before he saw that she had turned, she caught the expression on his face, the tender fathomless affection that was there.
A warm gush of happiness surged up all over her. She felt a sudden intense physical well-being, as though her breath came more smoothly, her blood ran more sweetly in her veins.
“Oh, Neale!” she said, under her breath, flushing and turning to him. He looked at her, his strong, resolute face and clear eyes smiled, and opening his arms he drew her into them.
The ineffable memory of all the priceless past, the ineffable certainty of the priceless future was in their kiss.
That evening, after a long golden hour at the piano, she chanced to take down the Largo in the Chopin sonata. As she began it, something stirred in her mind, some memory that instantly lived with the first notes of the music. How thick-clustered with associations music became, waking a hundred echoes and overtones!
This was the memory of the time when she had played it, almost a year ago, and had thought how intimacy and familiarity with music but deepened and enriched and strengthened its hold on you. It was only the lower pleasures of which one grew tired,–had enough. The others grew with your growing capacity to hold them. She remembered how that day she had recalled the Wordsworth sonnet, “A beauteous evening, calm and free,” and had thought that music took you in to worship quite simply and naturally at the Temple’s inner shrine, that you adored none the less although you were at home there and not breathless with adoration like the nun: because it was a whole world given to you, not a mere pang of joy, because you could live and move and be blessedly and securely at home there.