Complete Works of Bram Stoker (323 page)

“Good-bye for a while, dear. God keep you in all dangers of the road  —  and  —  and in all the far greater dangers that may come to you at the end of it.

My love to Joy! Be good to her, and never forget that she can suffer most through any one dear to her. Bring her home to me, safe and  —  and happy! I...” Her voice broke and she wept on his shoulder. Colonel Ogilvie was a determined man, and in some ways a harsh and cruel one; but he was a man, and understood. He took his wife in his arms and kissed her fondly, stroking her dark hair wherein the silver threads were showing. Then he passed out in silence.

By the door of the car he found Judy who said:

“I have put in your supper  —  you will want it dear  —  and also supper for the men. And oh! Lucius, don’t forget, for poor Joy’s sake, that this day you hold her heart  —  which is her life  —  in your hand!”

This added responsibility filled the cup of Colonel Ogilvie’s indignation. Already his conscience was quickening and his troubles  —  the agitation to his feelings  —  were almost more than he could bear. He would have liked to make some cynical remark to Judy; but before he could think of anything sufficiently biting, the motor which had been throbbing violently started.

Before the angry man could attempt to get back his self-possession he was gazing past the two shrouded figures before him and across the luminous arc of the lamps out into the night. The darkness seemed to sweep by him as he rushed on his way to Scotland.

When he had gone Judy turned to her sister and said:

“I was going to give him Jo/s dressing bag and a change of dress to take with him. She will want them, poor dear, after a long day of travel and a night in a strange place. But I have thought of a better plan.”

“And that?” asked the anxious mother.

“To take them myself! Moreover it won’t be any harm my being present in case the Colonel gets on the rampage. It will restrain him some. Now you go and lie down, dear. Don’t say anything  —  except your prayers in case you feel you must say something. But sleep will be your best help in this pretty tough proposition. I’ll go and get a hustle on that Dutch landlord. He’s got to find an automobile and a chauffeur, and a pilot if necessary for me too!”

CHAPTER 19

DECLARATION OF WAR

Joy Ogilvie was so tired out that her body lay like a log all night How her mind was occupied she only knew afterwards. For the memory of dreams is an unconscious memory at the time; it is only when there is opportunity of comparison with actualities that dreams can be re-produced. Then, as at first, the dreams are real  —  as they are forever whilst memory lasts. Indeed regarding dreams and actualities, one might almost appeal to scientific analogy; and in comparing the world of imagination  —  which is the kingdom of dreams  —  with the material world, might adduce the utterance of Sir Oliver Lodge in comparing the density of aether with that of matter in the modern scientific view: “Matter is turning out to be a filmy thing in comparison with aether.”

This might well serve as a scientific comparison. Nay more, it might well be an induction. The analogies of nature are so marvellously constant, as exemplified by the higher discoveries in physics, that we might easily wander farther than in taking the inner world of Thought as compared with the outer world of Physical Being, as an analogy to the Seen and Unseen worlds.

In the meantime we may take it that Joy’s dreams that night were in some way reflective of the events of the day. No girl of healthy emotional power could fail to be influenced by such a sequence of experiences of passion and fear as she had gone through. The realised hoping of love, the quick-answering abandonment of expressed passion; long, long minutes of the bliss of communion with that other soul  —  minutes whose sweetness or whose length could not be computed until the leisure of thought gave opportunity. Unconscious cerebration goes on unceasingly; and be sure that with such data as she had in her mind, the workings of imagination were quick and by no means cold. Again she lived the moments of responsive passion; but so lived them that she had advanced further on the road to completed passion when the unconsciousness to physical surroundings began to disappear and on the senses the actualities began to consciously impress themselves. The dawn, stealing in between the chinks of the folded shutters, made strange lines on the floor without piercing through the walls of sleep. The myriad sounds of waking life from distant field and surrounding street brought no message to the closed eyes of weariness. The sun rose, and rose, and rose; and still she lay there unmoving.

At last that unaccountable impulse which moves all living things to sentience at the ending of sleep, stirred her. The waking grew on her. At first, when her eyes partially opened, she saw, but without comprehending, the dim room with its low ceiling; the wide window, masked in with shutters whose edges were brilliant with the early light; the odd furniture and all the unfamiliar surroundings. Then came the inevitable self-question: “where am I?”

The realization of waking from such dreaming as hers is a rude and jarring process, and when it does come, comes with something of a shock. For what seemed a long time Joy lay in a sort of languorous ecstasy whilst memory brought back to her those moments of the previous day which were sweeter even than her dreams. Again she heard the footsteps of the man she loved coming up rapidly behind her. Again she saw as she turned, in obedience to some new impulse which swayed her to surrender, the face of the man looking radiant with love and happiness. Again she felt the sweet satisfaction of living and loving when his arms closed round her and her arms closed round him and they strained each other strictly. Again there came to her the thrill which seemed to lift her from her earthly being as his mouth touched hers and they kissed each other in the absolute self-abandonment of reciprocated passion  —  the very passing memory of which set her blood tingling afresh; the thrill which set her soul floating in the expanse of air and made all conventions of the artificial world seen far below seem small and miserable and of neither power nor import. Again she was swept by that tide of wild desires, vague and nebulous as yet, inchoate, elusive, expansive, all-absorbing, which proclaimed her womanhood to herself. That desire of wife to husband, of sex to sex, of woman to man, which is the final expression of humanity  —  the love song of the children of Adam. It was as though memory and dreaming had become one. As if the day had merged in the night, and the night again in the coming day, each getting as it came all the thoughts and wishes and fancies and desires which follow in the train of the all-conquering Love-God.

In such receptive mood Joy awoke to life. When she realised where she was; and when the import of her new surroundings had broken in upon her, all the forces of her youth and strength began at once to manifest themselves. She slid softly from her bed  —  the instinct of self protection forbade noise or else she would have jumped to the floor. Doing must follow dreaming! The attitude of standing, once again helped to recall the previous evening, and she remembered that she had thought then that she must not open the windows in the morning because they faced directly other windows across a narrow street.

She remembered also that the next room, through which she had entered, had windows on two sides. Those on one side opened as did her own; but those on the other side looked out on an open space. And so, without further thought, she opened the door between and passed into the outer room. It too, like her own, was dark from the closed shutters. Instinctively she went softly, her bare feet making no sound on the carpet. With the same instinctive caution she had opened the door noiselessly; when the self-protective instinct has once been awakened, it does not easily relapse to sleep. She went over to one of the windows and tried to look out through the chinks. The day was bright outside and the sun was shining; the fog had entirely disappeared. In the sudden desire to breathe the fresh morning air, and to free in the sunlight her soul cramped by the long darkness of fog and night, she threw open the heavy shutters.

Athlyne slept so soundly that he never stirred. He lay on the sofa on his left side with his face out to the room. He too had been dreaming; and to his dreams the happiness of the day had brought a vivifying light. Through all his weariness of mind and body came to his spirit the glow of those moments when he knew that his love was reciprocated; when his call to his mate had been answered  —  answered in no uncertain voice. And so he, too, had lain with bodily nature all quiescent, whilst the emotional side of his mind ranged freely between memory and expectation. And in due process the imaginative power of the mind had worked on the nerves  —  and through them on the body  —  till he too lay in a languorous semi-trance  —  the mind ranging free whilst the abnormally receptive body quivered in unison. It was a dangerous condition of being in which to face the situation which awaited him.

The sound of the opening shutter wakened him, fully and all at once. The moment his eyes opened he saw a figure between him and the window; and at the knowledge that some stranger was in his room the habit of quick action which had prevailed in his years of campaigning re-asserted itself. On the instant he flung aside his blanket and sprang from his bed.

At the sound of a step on the floor Joy turned. The light streaming in through the unshuttered window showed them in completeness each to the other. The light struck Athlyne full in front. There was instant recognition, even in the unaccustomed garb, of that tall lithe form; of those fine aquiline features, of those dark flashing eyes. As to Joy, who standing against the light made her own shadow, Athlyne could have no doubt. He would have realised her presence in darkness and silence. As she stood in her fine linen, the morning light making, a sort of nimbus round the opacity of the upper part of her body, she looked to him like some fresh realization  —  some continuation in semi-ethereal form  —  of the being of his dreams. There was no pause for thought in either of the lovers. The instant of recognition was the realization of presence  —  unquestioning and the most natural thing in the world that the other should be there. Delight had sealed from within the ears of Doubt Unhesitatingly they ran to each other, and before a second had passed were locked tightly in each other’s arms.

In the secret belief of the Conventional world  —  that belief which is the official teaching of the churches of an artificial society, and not merely the world of Adam and Eve (and some others)  —  the ceremony of Marriage in itself changes the entire nature of the contracting parties. Whatever may have been the idiosyncrasies of these individuals such are forthwith changed, foregone, or otherwise altered to suit that common denominator of Human Nature which alone is officially catalogued in the records of the just It were as though the recorded promise of two love-stricken sufferers, followed by the formal blessings of the Church in any of its differentiations  —  or of the Registrar  —  should change baser mortals to more angelic counterpart; just as the “Philosopher’s Stone” which the mediaeval alchemist dreamed of and sought for, was expected to change baser metals to gold.

Perhaps it is because this transmutation is so complete that so many of those marriages which the Church does sanctify turn out so differently from the anticipations of the contractors and blessors!

But Dame Nature has her own church and her own ritual. In her case the Blessing comes before the Service; and the Benediction is but the official recognition that two souls  —  with their attendant bodies  —  have found a perfect communion for themselves. Those who believe in Human Nature  —  and many of them are seriously minded people too  —  realise and are thankful for the goodness of God who showers the possibilities of happiness with no stinting and no uncertain hand. “After all” they say “what about Eden?” There was no church’s blessing there  —  not even a Registrar; and yet we hold that Adam and Eve were united in Matrimony. Nor were their children or their children’s children made one with organised formality. What was it then that on these occasions stood between fornication and marriage? What could it be but the Blessing of God! And if God could make marriage by His Blessing in Eden, when did He forego that power. Or if indeed there be only a “Civil Contract”  —  as so many hold to-day  —  what proofs or writings must there be beyond that mere “parole” contract which is recognised in other matters by the Law of the Land.

So, the believers in natural religion and natural law  —  those who do not hold that personal licence, unchecked and boundless, is an appanage or logical result of freedom. To these, freedom is in itself a state bounded on all sides by restrictive laws  —  as must ever be, unless Anarchy is held to be the ultimate and controlling force. And in the end Anarchy is the denial of all Cosmic law  —  that systematised congeries of natural forces working in harmony to a common end.

But law, Cosmic or Anarchic, (if there be such a thing, and it may be that Hell  —  if there is one  —  has its own laws  —  ) or any grade between these opposites, is a matter for coolness and reflection. Inter arma silent leges is a maxim of co-ordinate rulings in the Court of Cosmic law. And the principle holds whether the arms be opposed or locked together in any form of passion. When Love lifts the souls, whose bodies are already in earthly communion, I.aw ceases to be. From the altitude of accomplished serenity the mightiest law is puny; just as from a balloon the earth looks flat, and even steeples and towers have no perspective.

So it was with the two young people clasped in each other’s arms. The world they lived in at the moment was their world, bounded only by the compass of their arms. After all what more did they want  —  what could they want. They were together and alone. Shame was not for them, or to them, who loved with all their hearts  —  whose souls already felt as one. For shame, which is a conven- rional ordering of the blood, has no place  —  not even a servitor’s in the House of Love: that palace where reigns the love of husbandhood and wifehood, of fatherhood and motherhood  —  that true, realised Cosmos  —  the aim, the objective, the heaven of human life.