“They come, they come,” she cried gaily. “The Dawn is here. Are you ready?”
“I’ve been ready for five thousand years,” he answered, leaping to his feet beside her.
“Altogether!” came upon a sparkling laugh that was like wind among the olive leaves.
Shaking her last gauzy covering from her, she snatched his hand, and they ran forward together to join the dancing throng now crowding up the slope beneath the trees. Their happy singing filled the sky. Decked with vine and ivy, and trailing silvery green branches, they poured in a flood of radiant life along the mountain side. Slowly they melted away into the blue distance of the breaking dawn, and, as the last figure disappeared, the sun came up slowly out of a purple sea.
They came to the place he knew—the deserted earthquake village—and a faint memory stirred in him. He did not actually recall that he had visited it already, had eaten his sandwiches with “hotel friends” beneath its crumbling walls; but there was a dim troubling sense of familiarity—nothing more. the houses still stood, but pigeons lived in them, and weasels, stoats and snakes had their uncertain homes in ancient bedrooms. Not twenty years ago the peasants thronged its narrow streets, through which the dawn now peered and cool wind breathed among dew-laden brambles.
“I know the house,” she cried, “the house where we would live!” and raced, a flying form of air and sunlight, into a tumbled cottage that had no roof, no floor or windows. Wild bees had hung a nest against the broken wall.
He followed her. There was sunlight in the room, and there were flowers. Upon a rude, simple table lay a bowl of cream, with eggs and honey and butter close against a home-made loaf. They sank into each other’s arms upon a couch of fragrant grass and boughs against the window where wild roses bloomed…and the bees flew in and out.
It was Bussana, the so-called earthquake village, because a sudden earthquake had fallen on it one summer morning when all the inhabitants were at church. the crashing roof killed sixty, the tumbling walls another hundred, and the rest had left it where it stood.
“The Church,” he said, vaguely remembering the story. “They were at prayer—”
The girl laughed carelessly in his ear, setting his blood in a rush and quiver of delicious joy. He felt himself untamed, wild as the wind and animals. “The true God claimed His own,” she whispered. “He came back. Ah, they were not ready—the old priests had seen to that. But he came. They heard his music. Then his tread shook the olive groves, the old ground danced, the hills leapt for joy—”
“And the houses crumbled,” he laughed as he pressed her closer to his heart—
“And now we’ve come back!” she cried merrily. “We’ve come back to worship and be glad!” She nestled into him, while the sun rose higher.
“I hear them—hark!” she cried, and again leapt, dancing from his side. Again he followed her like wind. Through the broken window they saw the naked fauns and nymphs and satyrs rolling, dancing, shaking their soft hoofs amid the ferns and brambles. Towards the appalling, ruptured church they sped with feet of light and air. A roar of happy song and laughter rose.
“Come!” he cried. “We must go too.”
Hand in hand they raced to join the tumbling, dancing throng. She was in his arms and on his back and flung across his shoulders, as he ran. They reached the broken building, its whole roof gone sliding years ago, its walls a-tremble still, its shattered shrines alive with nesting birds.
“Hush!” she whispered in a tone of awe, yet pleasure. “He is there!” She pointed, her bare arm outstretched above the bending heads.
There, in the empty space, where once stood sacred Host and Cup, he sat, filling the niche sublimely and with awful power. His shaggy form, benign yet terrible, rose through the broken stone. the great eyes shone and smiled. the feet were lost in brambles.
“God!” cried a wild, frightened voice yet with deep worship in it—and the old familiar panic came with portentous swiftness. the great Figure rose.
The birds flew screaming, the animals sought holes, the worshippers, laughing and glad a moment ago, rushed tumbling over one another for the doors.
“He goes again! Who called? Who called like that? His feet shake the ground!”
“It is the earthquake!” screamed a woman’s shrill accents in ghastly terror.
“Kiss me—one kiss before we forget again…!” sighed a laughing, passionate voice against his ear. “Once more your arms, your heart beating on my lips…! You recognised his power. You are now altogether! We shall remember!”
But he woke, with the heavy bed-clothes stuffed against his mouth and the wind of early morning sighing mournfully about the hotel walls.
* * * *
“Have they left again—those ladies?” he inquired casually of the head waiter, pointing to the table. “They were here last night at dinner.”
“Who do you mean?” replied the man, stupidly, gazing at the spot indicated with a face quite blank. “Last night—at dinner?” He tried to think.
“An English lady, elderly, with—her daughter—” at which moment precisely the girl came in alone. Lunch was over, the room empty. There was a second’s difficult pause. It seemed ridiculous not to speak. Their eyes met. the girl blushed furiously.
He was very quick for an Englishman. “I was allowing myself to ask after your mother,” he began. “I was afraid”—he glanced at the table laid for one—“she was not well, perhaps?”
“Oh, but that’s very kind of you, I’m sure.” She smiled. He saw the small white even teeth….
And before three days had passed, he was so deeply in love that he simply couldn’t help himself.
“I believe,” he said lamely, “this is yours. You dropped it, you know. Er—may I keep it? It’s only an olive.”
They were, of course, in an olive grove when he asked it, and the sun was setting.
She looked at him, looked him up and down, looked at his ears, his eyes. He felt that in another second her little fingers would slip up and tweak the first, or close the second with a soft pressure—
“Tell me,” he begged: “did you dream anything—that first night I saw you?”
She took a quick step backwards. “No,” she said, as he followed her more quickly still, “I don’t think I did. But,” she went on breathlessly as he caught her up, “I knew—from the way you picked it up—”
“Knew what?” he demanded, holding her tightly so that she could not get away again.
“That you were already half and half, but would soon be altogether.”
And, as he kissed her, he felt her soft little fingers tweak his ears.
ANCIENT LIGHTS
From Southwater, where he left the train, the road led due west. That he knew; for the rest he trusted to luck, being one of those born walkers who dislike asking the way. He had that instinct, and as a rule it served him well. “A mile or so due west along the sandy road till you come to a stile on the right; then across the fields. You’ll see the red house straight before you.” He glanced at the postcard’s instructions once again, and once again he tried to decipher the scratched-out sentence—without success. It had been so elaborately inked over that no word was legible. Inked-out sentences in a letter were always enticing. He wondered what it was that had to be so very carefully obliterated.
The afternoon was boisterous, with a tearing, shouting wind that blew from the sea, across the Sussex weald. Massive clouds with rounded, piled-up edges, cannoned across gaping spaces of