a 
 
 ~ 
 z —— ” 
 ss 
 a 
 
Library of The Theological Seminary 
 PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 
 DAKE 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 REVEREND JESSE HALSEY, D.D. 
 
 PS 3500 .Al 154 1924 
 
 In the shadow 
 
4, 
 
 NM fe Sree ie tart ht id 
 PUN Bae | 
 May ated | i ko 
 ~ } sipeea ey 
 
 OE ad 
 ites 
 Aaa? 7 
 
 hy i 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 NY Sb re 
 wre y 
 
 , iy 
 7" 
 

 
 
 
 INC PHE | 
 SHADOW 
 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 1924 
 
CoPpyRIGHT, 1924, 
 BY 
 
 HENRY HOLT AND OOMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERIOA 
 
 VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC. 
 BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK 
 
TO ALL 
 IN SICKNESS OR IN HEALTH 
 
 UPON WHOM THE SHADOW OF SORROW FALLS 
 
’ AG (Pes ies \ 
 h ae Vag, 
 Ve wn My , F yy : 
 
 ‘ 
 
 PAT AD 
 Py bused a sf haut 
 7 Bie lf, eee a 
 
 
 
‘Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick.’’ 
 

 
IN THE SHADOW 
 

 
UNE 23.—Yesterday will always be a 
 J marked day in my memory. For yes- 
 
 terday I found out. Now there will 
 be no more uncertainty. Yesterday was like 
 the clanging of a dreadful gate, shutting me 
 out from all sweet, hopeful, changeful, misty 
 uncertainties. Yesterday brought me _ out 
 alone into a place so narrow, so small, so 
 terribly enclosed that there is no room left for 
 uncertainty. 
 
 Of course I knew I had been very ill. But I 
 was supposed to be getting well again. Every 
 one spoke as if I were getting well again. 
 ‘Now I wonder if they believe it, or if they 
 know and pretend. But whether they know or 
 not, they will not tell me. The biggest things 
 in life remain untold until they are experienced. 
 Perhaps this is humility. People trust the 
 merciful laws that govern experience more than 
 they trust their own wisdom. Or perhaps they 
 do not trust, but are afraid, and imagine a dull 
 indifference descends like a fog and blots the 
 darksome reality out of sight. 
 
 T 
 
2 IN FREES See Ea 
 
 There is no fog between me and the reality 
 Iifaces 
 
 The laws that govern experience do not seem 
 to me merciful, but dark and cruel. 
 
 I got up at eleven yesterday, because it 
 seemed an outrage to lie in bed on such a day 
 of glorious midsummer. It was unbelievable, 
 with such a golden sun, high in a sky so blue 
 and with such a garden wooing it and awaiting 
 me downstairs, that I could really want to stay 
 in bed. 
 
 I dressed and went down to the lawn, where 
 a long chair with a canopy had been placed for 
 me. 
 
 I took a writing-pad and a book and a work- 
 bag with me, and they stayed companionably 
 on the grass beside me, while I lay back on my 
 cushions, waiting to see what I should, pres- 
 ently, feel inclined to do. 
 
 I thought that June and sunshine and sun- 
 caught grass and climbing roses on the walls 
 of home and bird-calls and humming insects 
 would come very near to me, and gather me 
 into a sweet and kindly rest, on a living heart 
 of summer, and give me ease and lull away the 
 weary pressure upon my heart. 
 
 But they left me alone. They were all quite 
 
IN THE SHADOW 3 
 
 near me. I could lift my eyes and see them. 
 But they did not see me. They went about 
 their glorious tasks and left me outside all 
 their sweetness. 
 
 And instead, I felt as if another companion- 
 ship was pressing itself upon me, a sinister, in- 
 sistent neighbour, determined to break in upon 
 my loneliness and make me listen. It was like 
 some one trying to lure me out of open fields, 
 where a festival was being held, to draw me 
 into a dark room and tell me a dreadful secret. 
 
 I thought of getting up and going to the 
 rose-bed opposite me, and gathering some of 
 the shell-pink roses to tempt the summer to 
 come to me. But the rose-bed was the width 
 of the lawn away, and how far away that 
 seemed. I could hardly remember a time when 
 the width of the lawn was not a long way 
 for my tired feet to go. I tried to feel my- 
 self the person who had once come and gone 
 across the lawns and down the paths of this 
 garden and along the road beyond the garden 
 and far into the streets of the town, taking it 
 all as the commonplace of the day, singing no 
 rapt Te Deum for the splendour of it. But 
 I and that person had parted company, and 
 she would not tell me how she felt. 
 
4 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 At half-past one, when my heart had begun 
 the different thanksgiving it has lately learned 
 at the thought of the shelter and silence of my 
 afternoon rest, the blast of a motor-horn 
 sounded from the road, a motor-car turned in 
 at the gates. I knew it, of course. How of- 
 ten I have been so glad to see it. It brought 
 the dearest friends in the world, and they had 
 come across two counties to see me. 
 
 They were out of the car before I was off 
 my chair. 
 
 They were across the lawn before I had 
 time to make a step forward. 
 
 But not before I knew, with a pitiful, lonely, 
 anguished pang, that I was not glad to see 
 them and that I wished they had not come. 
 
 They folded me in kind arms and took my 
 hands in strong clasps. ‘They told me how 
 sorry they were that I had been ill and how 
 glad they were I was so much better. They 
 said the sunshine and the fresh air were the 
 very thing to set me up, and they hoped I was 
 always in the garden all day long. ‘They told 
 me they had books and magazines and straw- 
 berries and peaches in the car for me, and they 
 drew me over the lawn, with arms linked into 
 
IN THE SHADOW 5 
 
 mine, that they might bestow all these chosen 
 treasures upon me. 
 
 They were far more dear than they had 
 ever been before. They were dear in a way 
 that somehow wounded me. ‘There came an 
 ache into my heart and tears into my eyes, and 
 I felt myself pierced with a new, strange sor- 
 row, just because they were so utterly, terri- 
 bly precious and because I was so amazed and 
 grateful that they should be my friends. 
 
 So I could not tell them I was not glad to see 
 them. I could not even tell myself that 
 friends so beloved, coming so far and so kindly 
 to see me, were bringing me, like bitter gifts, 
 only pain, frustration, sorrow. My heart 
 yearned with a troubling, helpless yearning for 
 the white bed upstairs, for the enclosing walls, 
 the silence, the separation, the solitude. But 
 I could not say so, even to myself. 
 
 So there was nothing to do but to talk a 
 great deal and make a great many protesta- 
 tions and be overwhelmingly reassuring about 
 my recovery, and trust to the little fevers and 
 excitements that have waited upon me so 
 readily lately to make a perilous bridge over 
 the threatening afternoon. 
 
6 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 Every one else in the house was really glad 
 to see the beloved friends, and every one said 
 what a pleasure it must be to me. I, too, said 
 so, over and over again. After lunch we sat 
 out on the lawn and talked of all that had been 
 done by the two families and in the two coun- 
 ties since we met last, and all that was still to 
 be planned for the coming autumn and winter. 
 And I heard myself saying stupid or tactless 
 or untrue or meaningless things, and I heard 
 my tongue tripping over my words, and I did 
 not seem able to help doing either. 
 
 Yet I pressed them to stay. I could not 
 bear to have them go. I was far away from 
 them. I had nothing to do with the things of 
 which they talked. I had to go away—into a 
 dark room—to be told a dreadful secret. But 
 the fevers and excitement and tumult of heart 
 and brain made it easiest to go on talking, to 
 talk down the shadowy secret, to talk away the 
 hours that must come. 
 
 After we had had tea on the lawn their car 
 came again. ‘They said the kindest good-byes 
 and pressed many invitations upon me, and | 
 stood in the doorway and watched the car turn 
 out of the gates and disappear from the white 
 road. 
 
IN THE SHADOW 7 
 
 Then I went up to my room. 
 
 But there was no silence there now, no sep- 
 aration, no solitude. 
 
 The troubled, difficult, teasing day came 
 with me. The voices and the eyes and the 
 hands, the efforts and endurances and exhaus- 
 tions that had been the fabric of the day, were 
 still round me, entangling me, pressing me, 
 tiring me. Foolish things said hurt my brain. 
 Wise things left unsaid wounded my heart. 
 Phantom things became real. Real things 
 changed to phantoms. Rest was an impossi- 
 bility, peace was unimaginable. 
 
 A tray was placed by my bedside. I tried 
 to eat, but when I tried I broke down, instead, 
 into terrible weeping. 
 
 The weeping told me half the dreadful 
 secret. I wept because the dearest friends in 
 all the world had come to see me and their 
 kindness had brought me only pain. From 
 henceforward, when the joys of life ap- 
 proached me, I must raise my hands and fend 
 them off, because my weakness makes of them 
 an anguish. ‘Then it was I knew myself an 
 alien thing, sent out alone from the old, happy 
 circles, turning blindly, wretchedly, to silences, 
 separations, solitudes, removed from beloved, 
 
8 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 familiar, sweet and normal days, snapping my 
 ties one by one, entering upon a life unknown, 
 ominous, dark—afraid of it—hating it—won- 
 dering how long it will last—wondering how 
 life can renew again. 
 
 My weeping brought me sleep, but at mid- 
 night I woke, and the midnight told me the 
 rest of the dreadful secret. 
 
 It will last until the end! 
 
 The life upon which I enter now is the only 
 life, after this, for me. I shall know no other 
 again. 
 
 Upon my heart was a weight of suffering 
 that was not pain, but worse than pain. ‘There 
 was no light at all in the room, and the dark- 
 ness was so heavy and thick it pressed on me 
 like an unloving presence. I was alone with 
 the dim, threatening thing that had come 
 nearer day by day, that had awaited me in 
 every hour and changed everything I knew and 
 loved, and made me, so often, so much afraid. 
 I knew and named the illness that had laid its 
 clutch upon me. 
 
 Oh, anguish of separation, oh, agony of de- 
 sire! Dreadful and terrible, how dark it 
 looked. ‘There was no way out. A helpless 
 victim, I must await its onslaughts, endure its 
 
IN THE SHADOW 9 
 
 thefts. I must travel deeper into silence, fur- 
 ther into the unknown. I should have no 
 strength to play a part. I should have no gifts 
 to bring the days. I should have no power to 
 win response. One by one would go from me 
 all I had gained of work and friends and duties. 
 The tender mists that gather upon long-famil- 
 lar things and ways would all be gone. I was 
 in a region of different laws, of new initiations. 
 
 Was it a region of laws at all, or only of 
 loss, of chaos, of the destruction of all things? 
 Everything looked like an illusion, except the 
 awful thing I faced. ‘That rose up and struck 
 its blow upon my heart. All else was decep- 
 tion, a mirage of habit, a mistake of familiarity. 
 
 I looked round—round the room—round my 
 heart. ‘There was no support. Creeping 
 black fear crawled upon my heart. 
 
 Then exhaustion came and stunned me to 
 
 sleep. 
 
 The day dawned in slow heat. When I 
 opened my eyes the hot rays were shining on 
 the pretty silver and pretty glass upon my 
 dressing-table. Outside was what might once 
 have been a splendid summer day. 
 
 Perhaps I ought to say my prayers. It 
 
10 IN THE SHADOW. 
 
 would seem the right thing for a person like 
 me. But I cannot say my prayers. I can no 
 more say my prayers than I can do any other 
 thing that belongs to the life being taken away _ 
 from me. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, it is not true. I should 
 like to get up and find out if it is true. But I 
 cannot get up. 
 
 The little teapot beside my bed is more con- 
 soling than any prayer or any hope. When 
 people come in, they say, “You must just lie 
 quietly all day,” as if they were offering me 
 the supreme gift of life. It makes me want 
 to be rude, but it is all they can give me. I 
 should be glad they give it kindly. 
 
 The sweetness of morning, then the glory 
 of noon, fill the world outside as if with a mir- 
 aculous Presence. 
 
 From my window I can see the green, undu- 
 lating sward, upon which never a cloud shadow 
 lies to-day. There is wild thyme in its hollows 
 and the heavy, scented heads of white clover. 
 Beyond it is a cornfield with a fringe of scarlet 
 poppies, beside the corn, a wood. ° I think I 
 never knew how golden corn can be, how scar- 
 let are poppies, how many shades of green a 
 
IN THE SHADOW II 
 
 wood can hold. I never knew how they could 
 wear the sun like a garment. 
 
 On one of the green banks, where there 
 must be wild thyme growing, a girl and a man 
 are sitting together, the girl in a pretty white 
 dress and a wide hat and a scarlet sunshade, the 
 man in a pale summer suit. 
 
 It is morning and noon with them, life at 
 its height, life at its glory. ‘Theirs is the re- 
 sponse of heart to heart, of voice to voice. 
 Theirs is the sunshine, the magic of day, the 
 wild thyme, the poppies and the clover, Day 
 and sunshine and life are round them—keeping 
 them so safe. 
 
 Never again. Never again. 
 
 Youth, morning, sweet airs, happy un- 
 counted hours, the tender, unmeasured dower 
 of the day—mine once—but never again. 
 
 Wild thyme and white clover—the flare of 
 poppies in the corn, the belt of trees—the 
 maze—the splendour, the intoxication of the 
 sun—incense of summer scents—music of sum- 
 mer sounds—hands out to hands—eyes meet- 
 ing eyes 
 
 To give it up! To give it up! 
 
 To lie here and see and know—and feel no 
 
 
 
12 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 magic wake within to answer—alien—rejected 
 —beyond reach—with empty, unresponsive 
 hands and heart bereft of all but pain—can it 
 be borne? 
 
 Oh, hosts of those who suffered before me— 
 tell me this—can it be borne? 
 
 June 30.—My chair was placed near the 
 rose-bed to-day. My hands could touch the 
 roses, and kind hands had gathered the love- 
 liest and laid them on the rug that covered me. 
 The other, growing roses were very near. But 
 they were not real. Weakness will not re- 
 spond to sight, nor scent, nor touch. ‘The 
 roses that grow in the garden are no longer 
 in my world. They thrill to a lost rhythm. 
 The music within me that once could answer 
 them is still. My heartstrings now are all 
 tuned to a single note, they can sound only un- 
 der one touch. It is the touch of the secret I 
 learnt in the dark. It is denial. It is re- 
 nouncement. Scentless roses—distant beauty 
 —the bond that once made them mine is riven. 
 The yielded beauty, the foregone sweetness, 
 pierced with vision, poignant with pain, that I 
 know in the yearnings of deprivation, are more 
 real, are a more intimate possession. 
 
IN THE SHADOW 13 
 
 July 2.—How can one live these days of 
 futile suffering, fallen spirit, broken soul? To 
 live in the midst of a lost kingdom that yet is 
 not withdrawn, but rises around one like a 
 phantom city, offering no entrance, nor any 
 shelter, how can one meet the days? If I 
 might go back but for one hour and know the 
 days again as once I knew them, and give to 
 that miracle of experience the worship that is 
 its meed, then I think I could come back and 
 be where now I am and endure and not repine. 
 And yet, it could not be. Never is life lived as 
 vision sees it, across the gulf of final renuncia- 
 tion. Sacrifice has burned away all the rebel- 
 lion, all the doubt. ‘The joy of it runs through 
 the earth like the breath of God. 
 
 July 3.—Kindness laps my life like the lap- 
 ping of warm seas about a derelict ship. The 
 kindness would like to bear me back to my lost 
 kingdom. But I am derelict, and every power 
 is lost. I feel the warm seas lapping about 
 my desolation but I cannot sail upon them and 
 reach the kingdom that was once mine. 
 
 July 20.—Across two counties once again 
 came the dearest friends in the world. But 
 
14 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 this time warning of their intention had come 
 before them and my chair was not on the lawn. 
 An atmosphere of protection and of shelter had 
 grown up, intangible, invisible, but strong, be- 
 tween me and them. I heard the car come up 
 the drive from the gates. It seemed like a car 
 arriving a long, long way from where I was. 
 They were unconvincing sounds. Then I 
 heard the beloved, familiar voices. They 
 were strong and happy voices when they 
 reached me from the garden, but when I heard 
 them in the house, with footsteps going past 
 my door, they were hushed and careful, and 
 carried that faint furtiveness that is fear of 
 wounding me, but wounds me all the more by 
 the desolation that is my heart’s reply to it. 
 
 They came to me later, but no impetuosity 
 bore them towards me now. Rather they 
 made of their entrance a portentous thing, 
 weighted with gentleness, burdened with con- 
 cern. The voices that spoke to me were 
 measured, calculated, and yet uncertain, as if 
 they had no sure gauge to guide them nor knew 
 against what their measure was: pressed. 
 They spoke kindly and encouragingly, as if to 
 a child, yet they looked wistfully, searchingly, 
 as if at an initiate. Then, sitting at my bed- 
 
IN THE SHADOW 5 
 
 side, they told me of wonderful cures, and of 
 the amazement of great doctors at wonderful, 
 unlooked-for recoveries. Their dear wish 
 tried to lift my heart towards hope. That 
 the hope is not a true hope nor can ever have 
 fulfilment does not trammel their purpose, 
 which is that there shall be hope in my heart, 
 and so the burden of my hopelessness be some- 
 what eased from theirs. 
 
 They do not give me hope, and yet they fill 
 my mind with excited thoughts that carry me 
 over the hours and give me little mental props 
 at which to clutch and so keep at bay the en- 
 croaching, terrible, crowding thoughts that 
 wait for me at every awakening, and press so 
 heavily all day upon my heart. 
 
 August 20.—Life flamed in me to-day, a 
 fever that would not be stilled. It was an 
 intoxication to be poised on the brink of dan- 
 ger. It was a thrilling adventure to snatch an 
 hour’s excitement from that perilous denial 
 that has engulfed so much. So when after- 
 noon came, bringing great heat and kindly 
 pleas on loving voices, I got up and dressed 
 in one of the pretty pale dresses I chose with 
 such reckless hope in early summer, and I went 
 
16 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 down, into the sunshine, to the chair upon the 
 lawn. 
 
 There were others on the lawn to-day. At 
 a little distance, so that I should not be tried 
 and tired, white-clad forms were flitting, and I 
 could see the gorgeous stripes of University 
 blazers bright against the sun-softened green. 
 I could hear voices, murmurous and absorbed, 
 and the tap-tap of croquet balls. Across the 
 flower-beds I could see the grey curves of the 
 croquet hoops, clear and fine against the vivid 
 lawn. I could see the white-clad, moving 
 figures, the white-shod, moving feet. ‘There 
 was a tea-table in the shade of trees, and about 
 it, a group of beloved people. 
 
 How can I have said that life was far away? 
 It is so near that it is a wound. It pierces 
 through defences that are no longer potent 
 against it, and reaches a remoteness in me that 
 receives it in pain and cries out against it, and 
 yet cannot pluck it out and cast it away. 
 
 It is August, and all the thoughts that belong 
 to August are stabbing me. And August is 
 hurrying past me, leaving me none of its trea- 
 sures. Pictures of the heather rise up before 
 me—the pungent, mysterious banks of purple 
 heather—the little brilliant bells of the ling 
 
IN) PIES HA D OW. 17 
 
 that I see always wearing the raindrops.  Pic- 
 tures of the brown streams, breaking into 
 golden foam against wet boulders, come to me, 
 and the music of the running water sings and 
 moans in my ears, so that I feel if I could hear 
 it once again I should understand it for ever 
 and be consoled. Pictures of golf-links come, 
 of putting-greens where a little, white, magic 
 ball, breathlessly watched, finds an enchanted 
 way straight to an exquisite disappearance— 
 then again bringing a perfect response to de- 
 sire in a triumphant ascent into the blue air, 
 conquering distance, calling such thoughts of 
 freedom, such uplifted impulses, to follow its 
 wonderful way. And with the pictures, what 
 poignant memories of the gay comradeship of 
 holiday places and the shared, happy adven- 
 ture of skill. All the sharp angles, all the cold 
 definitions, are hidden by the happy mist that 
 is pleasure. ‘The holiday steps are such glad, 
 free steps. 
 
 The pictures and the memories and the re- 
 grets stabbed me, and all the time the voices 
 called in the garden around me and the tap-tap 
 of the croquet balls went on, with little inter- 
 rupting disharmonies of china against china 
 from the tea-table. Then the pictures fell 
 
18 IN DHE SHADOW 
 
 away, into forgetfulness, and only these things 
 were real, and they confused and tired me. 
 But I did not want to escape into solitude. I 
 felt as if I were running a race against a soli- 
 tude that was trying to overtake me, running 
 a race with delay for the only prize. 
 
 But when the hush of deepening afternoon, 
 that can be so wonderful, but to-day seemed so 
 cold and hard, came creeping in long shadows 
 over the lawn, I lost the race. Wherever I 
 was, there was only solitude. I left the lawn 
 and came up through the quiet house to my 
 room, alone. 
 
 It was very quiet there, far away from life. 
 There was no inviting comfort awaiting me. 
 Even the bed and the pillows and the deep 
 easy-chairs chilled me with refusal. 
 
 Then suddenly I knew again. 
 
 One may not know once for all. That 
 knowledge comes again and again, and every 
 time it is new. 
 
 Darkness—a malign touch—caught my 
 heart and my mind, caught me terribly, all of 
 me. I was alone with malignity—with de- 
 struction. I was alone with approaching de- 
 struction that approached to destroy me. 
 Slowly, hour by hour, to destroy me and all the 
 
IN THE SHADOW 19 
 
 dear things I know and love. To destroy the 
 fabric of my life—tearing it away. To des- 
 troy it utterly—and me. 
 
 Every resistance, every endurance, every 
 watchfulness, broke me. Over me swept the 
 dark tide of hopelessness, of misery. Under 
 it I tossed, a nameless, broken thing, under the 
 weight of it, the destroying weight of it—cast 
 out and alone—broken and alone—far, far 
 down—alone and unreachable. 
 
 Not unreachable! No words could reach 
 me, but a presence did. AQ little, warm and 
 fluffy life had leaped determinedly and with 
 impassioned eagerness upon me. A little, 
 warm and fluffy life, quivering with concern 
 and determination, had flung every power with 
 which God had endowed it upon me—to serve, 
 to bless and to console. A little dog. Com- 
 passion reaching me through that little eager 
 life, reaching me unspoiled by word, by curi- 
 osity, by busy brain with a tale to gather and 
 tell. Weak, protecting hands that hid weep- 
 ing eyes were pushed away by a strong, deter- 
 mined, little black muzzle—a little, warm, 
 roseleaf tongue caressed and caressed, deter- 
 mined, filled with a single aim, little tender 
 whines crooned, breaking the dark silence, a 
 
20 IN \THE SHADOW 
 
 fluffy, vigorous, squirrel-tail wagged, wagged 
 in unconquerable hope. 
 
 Healing came. How could one repulse that 
 message? Hope came. How could one dis- 
 believe such love? ‘The Angel of Compassion 
 chose his instrument well. The little sweet 
 Obedience, that had been created a little Pe- 
 kingese dog, had borne his word faithfully to 
 me. My desolation broke under that unmea- 
 sured, impassioned sympathy that I had not 
 asked, nor looked for. 
 
 August 21.—I wondered to-day what conso- 
 lation is. Were health suddenly mine again 
 that would not be consolation, but reparation. 
 Yet consolation is real and has its own strange 
 sweetness—so sweet and so strange that one 
 would not like to have passed through life and 
 never known it. For it depends upon no con- 
 dition nor circumstance. It lives only by its 
 own mystery. There is something indestruc- 
 tible and immutable about it, as if it welled 
 up from eternity, so that, blessed by it, one 
 comes to feel that at the heart of eternity is 
 an abiding reassurance. . 
 
 Summer is over now. ‘There is always one 
 
IN THE SHADOW 21 
 
 day when summer gathers up her gifts and 
 vanishes. One wakes up in the morning to 
 find autumn in possession. It has come early 
 this year, and the autumn transformation is ap- 
 parent in everything. ‘The trees, meeting the 
 wind, rustle with a sharper note. ‘The tex- 
 ture of the air has changed. All the colours 
 glow differently. The light falls differently. 
 The skies look different. ‘There are different 
 scents in the air. Yesterday it was summer. 
 To-day it is autumn. It is a curious sharp- 
 ening—like a warning, and yet it is an 
 enchantment. 
 
 And all this I knew again to-day, in a sudden 
 moment of freedom and response. ‘Then the 
 door closed once more upon all the exquisite, 
 inexplicable, piercing impressions the pageant 
 of this earth can so wonderfully make upon us. 
 
 I am glad it is autumn. ‘The message of 
 autumn seems nearer to me. I want to be 
 away from here, once again with the streets 
 and trafic of town around me—where the 
 world will have a sterner aspect—and there 
 will be no invitations to pleasure that now are 
 to me not lures, but denials. We misunder- 
 stood each other, this summer and I. I 
 
22 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 thought some of its gifts were for me, but they 
 were not. But I know what autumn promises, 
 and I know that autumn will keep its promise. 
 
 September 29.—Summer, with all its broken 
 hopes, is left behind. I am back again in the 
 house in a town. I think the journey that 
 brought me back had less unrest of thought 
 than the journey that carried me away. 
 
 My room is high above a highroad that is an 
 entrance into the city and all day long and far 
 into the night the traffic passes. The corn- 
 field, the poppies, the trees, seem far away. 
 They live in my mind like a picture that has 
 become a sorrowful language. But from this 
 window in the town I can look further than 
 I could from that country window. ‘The road 
 curves away after passing this house, and there 
 are belts of gardens in my vision, and where 
 the road curves again, houses stand high above 
 a valley. When I lie awake I can see the grey 
 dawn quiver behind the housetops and change 
 to the rose of sunrise. I can see the house- 
 lights gleam out like beacons when darkness 
 approaches. I can see the golden glow start 
 into the great windows of a church when it is 
 time for evening service. At night the lamps 
 
IN THE SHADOW 23 
 
 of the motors throw their light right across my 
 pillows, and for a long minute all my room is 
 bright. 
 
 What eagerness went with old returns! 
 What anticipations! What reunions! ‘There 
 is nothing to plan now. I think it is better to 
 be here than in the country. There are work- 
 ers in the city. Pain and work have some- 
 thing in common, but pain and holiday must be 
 for ever at variance. 
 
 I face the final changelessness now. Nothing 
 can happen to vary it. Yet every morning it is 
 new. Every morning when the door opens 
 and my tray is carried in and I am left alone 
 again, the tears flood up to throat and eyes, 
 and I cannot hold them back, nor face with any 
 courage the denying day that stretches before 
 me so interminably. 
 
 There are fewer people in this house. I 
 hear fewer footsteps passing through it. Few 
 voices break the silence. Once there were 
 more people. There are rooms left empty 
 now. It may be that it is well. People re- 
 proach me that I do not want them. I do not 
 want them. I do not want myself. I want 
 nothing but the blessed, black curtain of the 
 night upon the tragedy that is my life. In the 
 
24 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 night I am alone with my dark knowledge. It 
 may be terrible and terrifying, laying a weight 
 upon my heart that can never be lifted again, 
 save in sleep. But at least I am hidden away 
 and unreproached. No _ one _ peers into 
 the heart that holds its dark secret, save © 
 myself. 
 
 As far as may be I try to gather courage. 
 I remember lines of haunting poetry and I 
 wonder whence they took their rise. I remem- 
 ber stern, prophetic Bible phrases and I won- 
 der how they came to be framed. I cling 
 to the touches of sympathy that reach me, 
 to the little gifts that break the hours, the 
 kindly messages that break my thoughts. 
 They are sometimes so unexpected, and come 
 to me from sources that would have seemed to 
 me the last to which I might look for remem- 
 brance and for understanding. Yet I can 
 build but a frail defence with all they give me. 
 
 It is the everyday things—the blessed, nor- 
 mal, commonplace things that torture me most 
 with their desirability. I have only to picture 
 myself sitting at my mirror, tying a veil about 
 a hat, pulling open a drawer and taking out 
 gloves—making ready to go somewhere— 
 planning to go somewhere, towards some sweet 
 
IN THE SHADOW 25 
 
 unknown, starting out—and with that piercing 
 memory of lost, uncounted joys the dark wa- 
 ters rush over me. I am ina frenzy of home- 
 sickness, desolation, loneliness, lost and unsup- 
 ported in a chaos of nothingness, with that 
 strange awfulness of seeming to inhabit no 
 place in time or in eternity. 
 
 And there is no relief. With bruised heart 
 and ceaseless aching desire I must meet that 
 returning agony. I must fight the fight over 
 again. I must reconquer that great weakness 
 that fastens me with its strange piercings to my 
 helplessness. 
 
 By day I must endure. 
 
 By night I must wake and remember. By 
 day and night my thoughts must meet and face 
 it. here is nothing else to face. Yet I feel 
 like one who waits. Trembling, troubled, 
 wistful, I feel like one who waits. For what 
 can I wait? 
 
 October 2.—I woke in the night. It was 
 not long after midnight, long for patience if 
 sleep was not to return. ‘he pressure was 
 heavy on my heart. I raised myself on my 
 piled pillows to face the blow and the crushing 
 of my prison-place. 
 
26 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 But there was no blow and there was no 
 prison. 
 
 Light flickered in the room from the lamps 
 in the street. The flash of motors came and 
 went as they approached and passed and dis- 
 appeared. There were sounds of footsteps. 
 and voices from the pavement. But they were 
 far away, calling to no response from me. 
 They had fallen far away from me with those 
 enclosing prison bands that had held me, and 
 that now had broken about me and set me free. 
 
 All the prison, all the penning pressure had 
 gone. The place in which I was set was no 
 longer narrow, but wide—oh, wide—wider 
 than any place I have ever known. Doors had 
 been flung open. I never knew there were 
 such doors to open or to close. And every 
 door was open upon such exquisite, tremulous 
 joy that just to be still and to receive it was 
 more than life had ever taught me to desire. 
 Straight before me, it seemed, one wonderful 
 door had been flung wide and a wonderful path 
 stretched, purple with sweet shadows, dim and 
 beautiful and fragrant, with sheltering walls on 
 either side of it, and at the end—Light—Life 
 —a Presence—oh, Life and Presence such as 
 never reached my consciousness before—that 
 
IN THE SHADOW 27 
 
 called to me, that knew my name—that knew 
 my name and called to me as I have never 
 been known nor called before. 
 
 “The way to me is still the same.” 
 
 Did I hear the words? They rang in my 
 ears asif | had heardthem. ‘They lived in my 
 memory as if they had been spoken in my 
 room. My heart mounted as if on wings. 
 There was no loss at all in all the universe. 
 Life met me—life that was beauty, tenderness, 
 endowment, and I saw a path that no denial 
 could ever take from me. Suddenly there was 
 flung upon me so deep and near a kinship with 
 all the world that the kingdom of life I thought 
 I had lost ran back into my heart with near- 
 ness indescribable. ‘There was no longer any 
 difference, nor any separation, nor any solitude. 
 I knew, nor felt, nor endured nothing that all 
 the world did not share with me. I saw the 
 whole world knowing imprisonment, limitation, 
 mutability, facing conditions that frustrate and 
 deny. And I knew that no life is free till un- 
 known, unguessed-at freedom breaks upon it, 
 answering its inmost desire. And that Way 
 never changes—never closes—in all the world. 
 
 Then Joy passed through my room and 
 filled it. Joy after joy passed through my 
 
28 LN THE SHADOW 
 
 room and bore me upward, onward. ‘The 
 bonds that had crushed me had gone—or had 
 they changed? I knew unbreakable bonds with 
 every heart in the whole world, and with the 
 Heart of Creation—with that perfect Pres- 
 ence—that perfect Life. 
 
 I did not want to sleep. I wanted to lie 
 awake and remember. But blessed sleep that 
 was like sheltering wings descended upon me 
 and I did not wake till morning. 
 
 When my door opened and my tray was 
 put at my bedside, and I was left alone again, 
 I did not weep. Had I wept it would have 
 been with thanksgiving for the rapturous joy 
 that waited for me in my room. ‘To lie here 
 for a lifetime would not be too long if I might 
 wait upon such joy again. 
 
 It dwells in everything. Everything is 
 near, but as if I made my approach to it by a 
 different door, and new tendrils reached out to 
 entwine me and hold me in a precious close- 
 ness. Up the curving road the workers are 
 making their way towards the city. I feel as 
 if I knew why they are going and why they 
 work, but I cannot tell myself all my knowl- 
 edge. I feel as if I had my part in a wonder- 
 
IN THE SHADOW 29 
 
 ful destiny that holds me with them in the 
 circle of its promise. And they are all so dear 
 —the workers, the children, the traffic, the 
 houses on the cliff, the church with the great 
 windows. And I am rich because I may lie 
 here and see them and think of them. 
 
 October 5.—I do not need to seek for cour- 
 age for these days. There is no courage 
 needed. ‘The hours come towards me bringing 
 me thoughts, and with their help I seek new 
 knowledge, and I have joy for a companion. 
 I do not need to wonder where the haunting 
 poems take their rise, nor where the stern, pro- 
 phetic texts were framed. I know. I have 
 seen the region where they have their source. 
 
 And yet—what happened in that night? 
 
 Was it a dream, born of sickness and weak- 
 ness and solitude? I have dreamed often. 
 This was not a dream. 
 
 I think I must have heard all the morning 
 stars sing together and all the sons of God 
 shout for joy. 
 
 October 11.—I lost a kingdom that I loved 
 and the loss seemed terrible and irreparable. 
 Now another kingdom has grown up around 
 
30 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 me, or perhaps a hidden kingdom has become 
 visible, like fairy-tale palaces and castles. All 
 the lure of fairy tales lay in the emergence of 
 wonders that were usually invisible, and in 
 speech from things that were usually silent. 
 Of course there have always been hidden 
 kingdoms. ‘There is one in every heart. We 
 see and we touch and we move amongst all 
 the intricate and fascinating things that make 
 up the glory of life, but it is from the hidden 
 heart-kingdom rises the delight, the rapture, 
 the sorrow, the frustration that are no less 
 part of life. From that kingdom, too, come 
 the desires that nothing in life can satisfy. 
 And now, when the outer life has fallen from 
 me like a husk, I am discovering reaches in that 
 hidden kingdom of which I could not even 
 dream. It is as if yet another kingdom, in- 
 visible and great, invited us as deeply as ever 
 the outer world could invite us, and is able to 
 awaken raptures and delights, sorrows and 
 frustrations as absorbing and varied as those 
 I lose daily. All my treasures of joy and mem- 
 ory I take out of the darkness that has gath- 
 ered about them, and I repossess them in the 
 new kingdom. ‘There are some things—a few 
 things—oh, the most precious, the most be- 
 
IN THE SHADOW © 31 
 
 loved secret things—memories that are sweeter 
 than other memories, eyes that told me more 
 than other eyes, voices that carried treasures 
 to me that were more than any word or tone 
 —these come to me again, sweeter, nearer, 
 more unassailably mine, from the very heart of 
 the invisible kingdom. I have not lost them 
 with the life I regretted most because it seemed 
 to me they must go with it. ‘They never be- 
 longed to it. They came to me, always, from 
 the invisible kingdom, and that is why they 
 were so dear. It may be that love takes its 
 rise, like haunting poetry and prophetic Bible 
 words, from eternity, and that eternity is the 
 soul of life, and of all life’s most precious 
 things. 
 
 October 19.—Some one came to my room 
 to-day whom I have not seen before. I did not 
 want to see him. More than once I[ have 
 found a convincing excuse to refuse to see him. 
 I have found equally convincing excuses 
 against many entrances lately, for I have grown 
 very weary of futile advice and insincere op- 
 timism. There is such solitude in trying to 
 smile and to listen and to answer people who 
 try to relieve, not my oppression, but their 
 
32 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 own, with little invented phrases. The advice 
 and the optimism turn rapidly to chiding if 
 that relief fails them. So I had only dread 
 for some one untried and unknown, who wore 
 the collar and cloth that might give the advice 
 and the optimism and the chiding a wider 
 range in which to wound and weary. But 
 dread has lately gone out of fashion in my 
 little high room, and adventure has taken its 
 place, so a visitor came in who had never come 
 in before. 
 
 He did not ask me any questions. He gave 
 me no advice, nor had he many inventions in 
 optimism to which I must listen. He seemed 
 able to face, with perfect equanimity, a person 
 who will never again be well, and to retain an 
 atmosphere of most amazing joy he bore about 
 him, and which unmistakably entered my room 
 with him. He had not come to relieve op- 
 pression, but to share joy. He had not come 
 to advise but to serve. ‘I have been waiting 
 for weeks to know what I could do for you,” 
 he said. “If you had been in a hospital I 
 would have known how to find my way to you. 
 Being where you are, I could only stand on 
 your doorstep until you let me in.” He came 
 further into my solitude than I ever thought 
 
IN THE SHADOW _ 33 
 
 any one could when he said that. It touched 
 me, who have been so desolate, that some one, 
 unknown to me, waited to serve me. It made 
 me feel that out in the world, as in my lonely 
 room, are undivined, ungathered joys, and we 
 raise barriers to them, as we raise barriers to 
 the joys of God. “Would you have stood 
 very much longer?” I asked him. ‘‘At in- 
 tervals, I should have stood till the stones wore 
 through, or the police removed me, or old age 
 crippled me,” he answered. “Then you don’t 
 disapprove of people who can never be well?” 
 I asked him. ‘“They are part of my work 
 when they allow me to help,” he said. “I am 
 glad to be just an ordinary person again,” I 
 said. 
 
 ‘‘There is no such thing as an ordinary per- 
 son,’ was his answer. ‘‘Just as in all the 
 forests there are no two leaves alike. But as 
 far as everything essential is concerned, there 
 is little difference between the person who is 
 well and the person who may never again be 
 well. The really desirable things remain in 
 exactly the same place.” 
 
 It was strange he should have said that. 
 
 “There are privileges in being drawn out of 
 
 the crowded ways. It is delightful to find how 
 
34 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 convincing the desirable things become. Nor 
 do you have to spend so much time dealing 
 with a worldful of people apt to get incensed 
 against you, and to provide you with uninspir- 
 ing occupations. ‘My mother’s sons were in- 
 censed against me. ‘They made me keeper of 
 the vineyards. But mine own vineyard have 
 I not kept.’ No one can try here, to draw 
 you back into the world’s vineyards.” 
 
 I had not expected the wonderful, impas- 
 sioned, beautiful Song of Songs to come sing- 
 ing its way into my room like this. Until now 
 such very different texts have been thought 
 suitable. 
 
 He knelt at my bedside and said prayers be- 
 fore he went away. He did not say them be- 
 cause he thought them suitable, but because, 
 to him, they were part of the joy he had come 
 to share. After he had gone, I lay and 
 thought that he, too, had certainly discovered 
 an invisible kingdom with magnificent reaches 
 of rapture and joyousness, sorrow and tender- 
 ness, and that a great deal of his time was 
 spent in it. Perhaps, too, he knows some 
 measure of pressure and limitation. ‘There is 
 a certain prisoning in the collar and the cloth 
 he wears. 
 
IN THE SHADOW 35 
 
 The kingdom is infinitely worth while dis- 
 covering. 
 
 It is extraordinary rapturous to dwell in it. 
 
 If the way to the kingdom could break upon 
 me only by the piercing of pain, solitude, sor- 
 row—the cost is not too great. Pain has some 
 part in that mysterious region. But first pain 
 is a dark angel that stands sentinel with a 
 flaming sword, lest we enter and grow content 
 in an Eden we have spoiled. 
 
 November 10.—The days of mystic peace 
 and joy have fled from my room. Quiet and 
 solitude have fled it too. Instead, pain has 
 passed through it, difficult, troubling, changing 
 pain, a procession of distress. Life has had 
 to fight hard to keep its hold on me. At my 
 bedside there comes and goes an old Scottish 
 nurse, with white hair and blue, Highland eyes. 
 She brings with her something of the mystery 
 of her far Highlands, some trace of the spell 
 of the heather, the glens, the mountain tarns. 
 Her eyes have a deeper vision than most eyes 
 have. ‘They tell me deep, true things. Even 
 when she tries to tell me I am going to get 
 quite well, and I know I can never get quite 
 well, still her eyes tell me deep, true things. 
 
36 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 There are nurses (I have seen them) whose 
 eyes hold nothing true to tell. Iam glad none 
 of them are near me now. Where I am only 
 true things can bring ease. The looks and 
 words and ways that are unwinged with truth 
 miss their aim here. Suffering and weakness 
 are very sure of their own needs. Perhaps 
 from sick people one might discover what are 
 the real desires of the human spirit. There 
 would be the language of eternity in every one 
 of them. I love the return of dawn. The 
 promise of immutability comes with it. I love 
 the sound of a bell in the city. Its call in- 
 vokes for me the lost magic of distance. I 
 love the silence that creeps over the world with 
 the coming of night. My room falls into a 
 strange silence. My old nurse watches— 
 watches beside me, while all the house about us 
 sleeps. The mystery of watching is one of the 
 mysteries of the world. All activity has died 
 down. Human wills have drooped and bent 
 to submission. Some strange, great Spirit has 
 entered and possessed them. ‘Then watching 
 becomes like the brooding of a patient 
 Eternity, of an Eternal and patient Purpose. 
 It is in the watching hours we know how much 
 
IN THE SHADOW 37 
 
 there is to know and how little we do know. 
 In them we are content not to know, but to 
 wait. 
 
 November 12.—I have looked into a region 
 of horror. With inner eyes I have seen, and 
 with every fibre of my being I have felt, a 
 world where there is nothing but an unutter- 
 ably dreadful, mechanical pulsing, that beats 
 on for ever without mind, without purpose, 
 without response to our hearts and minds, with 
 no relationship whatever to those things we 
 perpetually crave. ‘Hope, beauty, wisdom, re- 
 newal, expression, love, effort, aspiration, the 
 intertwining of our spirit with them all—these 
 are life itself. But I had entered upon an 
 agonized existence where not one of them was, 
 where they were made to seem but some fool- 
 ish, unreal, mocking mist, that sometimes fell 
 in illusory consolation, and hid that relentless 
 throb of mindless law, whose naked ruling was 
 the only permanence. I longed to struggle 
 against it, but I could only suffer in terror. 
 No appeal could enter it. It was law, but it 
 had no knowledge. It ruled, but without in- 
 tent. It was cruelty, but without malice. I 
 
38 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 knew myself and every living thing to be en- 
 tangled in it. It convinced me utterly, and 
 under it, helpless, how I suffered. 
 
 “She is out of herself a little; the chloro- 
 form has done it,” I heard my old nurse say. 
 
 I may have been out of myself, but hidden 
 heart and hidden eyes declared that region 
 real. I had looked upon despair. 
 
 Some one stood beside my bed and spoke. 
 It was the Dweller in Joy, who lately came 
 with joy into my joy-filled room. 
 
 I think I caught his hand. I told him I was 
 afraid. 
 
 He knelt beside my bed and I think he 
 prayed. I felt the strong touch of his hands 
 On mine, and something ran into that region of 
 anguish that changed the dreadful beating, and 
 I remembered and believed. 
 
 For an hour I had rest. Then again the 
 dreadful places caught me. I suffered and I 
 was afraid, and the Dweller in Joy had gone. 
 
 November 18.—Deeply I slept and far away 
 from all dreams. I woke in tender peace. 
 Great is the relief to my tired frame, but it 
 is not real peace. ‘Ihe true peace is a living 
 sword that refts life’s unrest in two and frees 
 
IN THE SHADOW 39 
 
 the soul, setting it amongst those things which 
 are not held in the clasp of any law we know, 
 and which pass all understanding. But this 
 sweet lulling, this tender lapping of soft 
 thought and charmed memory, this wrapping 
 twilight about experience’s harshness—this is 
 drug. ‘The rest it yields, and the Rest of God 
 are not the same. Deeply—unmistakably— 
 splendidly—they are not the same. 
 
 December 8.—For a month I have dwelt in 
 a region of shadows and silence—dwelt, a re- 
 jected guest, between heaven and earth. I do 
 not lift my head much, nor do the days seem 
 very real. It is an inward world that is mine 
 now, where I lie alone and ponder this inefia- 
 ble, piteous mystery of suffering. 
 
 What did I see—that strange and terrible 
 night that filled my vision with undreamt-of 
 darkness? What strange and awful law sep- 
 arated me from every desire? Was it the 
 “earth cursed for our sake’? Did I fall 
 deeper into the forbidden laws, that clutch and 
 hold us against all that within us loves and 
 remembers and desires a different destiny? 
 Has human nature really fallen where God 
 never meant it to be? Did I see a vision of 
 
40 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 life as it would be, did it remain for ever un- 
 pierced by Spirit? To Spirit, then, belong all 
 the divine, sweet, lovely things that fill the days 
 with joy and nameless sweetness and wonderful 
 fears. ‘To Spirit belongs all that we call life. 
 Speech, hope, beauty, art that fashions, taste 
 that chooses, the marvel we name expression 
 —do they all travel to us by those magic doors 
 that opened once to my yearning eyes and 
 caught me into ecstasy? Did I look, that 
 night of torment, upon life as it would be, were 
 those doors closed for ever? 
 
 Now, in my weakness, there comes towards 
 me a winged thought, that draws me away 
 from every fear. It is the thought of that 
 trinity of life as we know it—of being and ex- 
 pressing and feeling. We are Life, Action 
 and the Mood that unites them—the Mood 
 or Spirit that quickens and unites and enlarges 
 them so mysteriously. That is our life—it is 
 ourselves—a trinity—as God is the Holy 
 Trinity. And all down the ages marvellously 
 it has been proclaimed and sung that we are 
 ‘“‘made in His image.” 
 
 How flamingly real looks that threefold life 
 —-seen in contrast to that denying region where 
 everything went to the heavy throb of cause 
 
IN THE SHADOW 41 
 
 and effect. Truth is not a heavy throb. 
 Truth is a flaming Trinity. 
 
 Now for a moment—for one blessed mo- 
 ment—it has seemed to me that I have ‘“‘seen 
 face to face.”’ 
 
 December 20.—‘‘The time draws near the 
 birth of Christ.’ I seem to feel Christmas, 
 like an approaching Presence, filling the streets 
 and houses, colouring the late dawns and early 
 sunsets. My thoughts do not need to seek 
 Christmas. It comes to me. I know with- 
 out trying that the churches are full of holly, 
 that the streets are busy, that children are 
 eager, that people’s thoughts are with their 
 friends. Christmas gathers upon the world 
 like a living thing. It is more than a custom. 
 Truth waits to quicken the custom of Christ- 
 mas and make it a mystic, living thing. 
 
 December 25.—My Christmas has brought 
 me gifts that break, each one, my prison bars. 
 On my table are deep red and rose carnations 
 glowing out of their own sharp grey-green foli- 
 age. Across the little dark hollows of the 
 room they shine like thoughts made visible— 
 symbol of the long friendship whose faith and 
 
42 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 tenderness have sent them here. Pale pink 
 carnations are in another glass, with the 
 feather of asparagus fern, a memory of a 
 friend whose favourite flower they were, whose 
 grave not long ago shone with them out of 
 the snow, brought by the sister who in her 
 sorrow has found time to cherish me. Violets 
 I have too. My old nurse said my Christmas 
 would not be complete without them. An 
 embroidered box carries a written message for 
 me—‘‘Where e’er you go, may flowers blow” 
 —a true, dear message for my lonely room, 
 where flowers are the sweetest entrance many 
 of my days can know. A friend, whose touch 
 is always near and wonderful, has sent me 
 that mysterious, sorrowful head of Our Lord 
 by Leonardo da Vinci. “The downcast eyelids 
 have a wistfulness—a wistfulness that pierces, 
 yet consoles. Rupert Brooke’s poems are be- 
 side me. ‘‘He was always in love with some- 
 thing greater than life or death,” I find written 
 of him. Are we all born to be in love with 
 something greater than life or death? ‘The 
 poets give themselves to that love. Rupert 
 Brooke gave himself twice over. Surely it was 
 worth while. For even I, for a magic hour 
 
IN THE SHADOW 43 
 
 in a wondrous night, have been in love with 
 something greater than life or death. 
 
 December 28.—My old Highland nurse 
 knows her Bible all through, and it sets a seal 
 upon her heart, a seal upon her arm. Her 
 thoughts and acts leave her carrying the stamp 
 of her long knowledge. I think all thoughts 
 and acts bear the stamp they have received in 
 those deep, hidden reaches out of which per- 
 sonality springs—so much deeper in some peo- 
 ple than in others, and so differently fed. 
 Last night she pondered long upon the where- 
 abouts of Sheba, deciding at last that it was 
 Persia. ‘‘Would she be young or old, the 
 Queen of Sheba, I wonder?’’ she asked me. 
 “Young, of course young, or how could she 
 have taken such a long journey on camels?” 
 I answered. “I was thinking if she was young 
 and pretty, King Solomon would never have let 
 her away. But, of course, if she’d been old 
 she could never have gone with all thae 
 camels,’’ she said wisely. 
 
 I wanted her to find a text for me. It had 
 come into my mind suddenly. I read it in 
 childhood, coming into a child’s story, “‘dnd 
 
44 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 the inhabitant shall not say I am sick.” A 
 calm and wonderful pity, that makes me feel 
 so strangely still and so wonderfully held, 
 draws me into itself with the marvel of those 
 words. 
 
 Yet it was I who found them first, coming 
 upon them as I searched the many pages and 
 many chapters of the Book of Isaiah. And 
 the lifelong Bible-student who nurses me says 
 she went to bed reluctantly, owning her fail- 
 ure. “Though I searched a fair hour,” she 
 says, and then adds, ‘“‘But if you’ve found them 
 then it’s all right.” 
 
 December 30.—The flowers that come into 
 my room now are not like the flowers that 
 grow in the gardens I remember. Scentless, 
 distant, lovely, lonely—lI see them as if across | 
 a chasm—as one’s thoughts of heaven used to 
 be. They are like stars from a different 
 sphere—mystic—inexplicable—speaking a lan- 
 guage from ineffable regions. 
 
 The rose carnations on my mantelpiece to- 
 night bend and drop over the mantelshelf, so 
 that the firelight catches them in its glow. 
 There is only the firelight in the room. It 
 moves like a living thing, and all the bright 
 
IN THE SHADOW — 45 
 
 points in the room answer it. ‘There is a hush 
 all around me. It creeps in every evening as 
 if brooding wings descended and stilled the 
 busy rhythm that is life—so that everything 
 beats more softly to a changed and gentler 
 tension that is very, very quiet, and yet always 
 alert—always expectant. 
 
 But now, when I watch and wait in the en- 
 folding wings of that brooding sweetness, I 
 know for what it is I watch and wait. 
 
 January 5.—New Year has brought me 
 fallen thoughts. In these days I have felt like 
 Jephthah’s daughter—I want to push away all 
 claims, all demands, and be alone to mourn the 
 unfinished sadness that my life has been. 
 
 In the street below a child is crying—crying. 
 
 The reproach is more than I can bear. 
 Who—what—is reproached by the crying of 
 children? And I lie here—alone—silent—in a 
 world of crying children. 
 
 January 8.—I think there are some people 
 who when there is success are called and drawn 
 to share it. And there are others who are 
 drawn magnetically and irresistibly to stand be- 
 side failure, helplessness and unrewarded pain. 
 
46 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 Of such is the old nurse who comes and goes 
 at my bedside now—and because of it I shall 
 love her more than any nurse I have known or 
 may know. For the end is failure. Robert 
 Louis Stevenson says man is not meant to suc- 
 ceed. Perhaps it is God who is meant to 
 succeed. So those who can stand beside fail- 
 ure and gather it up into faith, reach into 
 Eternity when they do it. Eternity may be 
 our true success. The little, fugitive successes 
 and triumphs that fly past us like summer days 
 are only little symbols or prophecies. They 
 are too fleeting to be anything else. 
 
 January 20.—The snow has drifted past my 
 window all day. It is white on the roofs. It 
 is black and soiled in the streets. But weather 
 no longer reaches me. Often I do not remem- 
 ber whether winter or summer reigns outside. 
 Memory itself has changed its relationship to 
 my days. Yesterday, last year, six years ago, 
 are equally biddable, equally remote, in my 
 long hours. 
 
 Once the darling rain beat on the windows 
 and soft thoughts sprang into my heart to an- 
 swer it. Once the summer mornings, blue with 
 the haze of coming heat, woke passionate de- 
 
IN THE SHADOW) 47 
 
 sires, and the poignant thrill of pleasure. 
 Once, the mild spring winds, carrying the scents 
 of the earth when it is broken by the upward 
 push of growing things, full of the nameless 
 lure of the earth’s renewing life, met me with 
 bewildering magic and called my pulses to a 
 splendid beat. The snow in sunlight had its 
 own ridiculous merriment, the snow at night 
 its cold, mystic enchantment. 
 
 But now the eyes carry no message to the 
 slumbering senses. ‘They gaze out of my high 
 window and they see the rain and the sun, 
 the snow, the blue sky and the wandering city 
 smoke, but they bring none of these things to 
 me. All would win a nearer place in my heart 
 if I read them in a printed book. ‘The frame 
 of quivering nerves and hidden senses that I 
 call myself, now is tuned to a different tension. 
 It is strung to a changed key. ‘The messages 
 it can receive and answer strike upon finer, 
 stranger wires. If I were brought to the edge 
 of the sea and saw its waves breaking on the 
 sand—close to my eyes, close to my touch, the 
 salt pungence in the air I breathed—it would 
 be no nearer to me than a painted ocean. If 
 the great hills rose around me, the purple 
 heather, the splash of mountain burns, the wide 
 
48 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 spaces of the moor—I should see—the next 
 moment I would forget that I had seen—and 
 turn away, knowing, feeling, holding nothing 
 —save the unchanging tension of those taut 
 nerves that clasp my spirit in unyielding grasp. 
 
 Only light still brings me its great pageant 
 of changing charm and glory. The cold, 
 crude gleam of winter noon, when sorrow and 
 pain are hardest to bear, changes to the un- 
 certain light of early gloaming. The rosy 
 glow from shaded electric lamps starts up 
 around me. ‘Then that is gone and there is 
 only the dancing firelight. ‘The firelight fades, 
 and the flickering light of street lamps, meet- 
 ing the wind, crosses the deepening darkness, 
 and the travelling light of the motors enters 
 for a long minute, crosses my pillows and 
 vanishes. ‘The lights in the windows of dis- 
 tant houses go out one by one. ‘Then there 
 are only the rows of street lamps edging the 
 roads, the starshine, sometimes the moonshine. 
 
 But the moonshine, when the roofs are dark 
 against a white sky, and silver patches lie upon 
 my floor, is part of the earth-pageant that has 
 shut me out. 
 
 When the moon’s nights come, and I re- 
 member in longing the miracle of the heart’s 
 
IN THE SHADOW 49 
 
 response to the moods of the lovely earth, I 
 am glad that I have learnt a faith that teaches 
 the Resurrection of the Body. 
 
 January 29.—My old Highland nurse no 
 longer watches beside me, and no longer is 
 every morning broken by doctor’s visits. The 
 days are quiet, the strange places of terror and 
 revelation have retreated and memory cannot 
 recall them. I am as near to normal life as 
 I can ever be again. Perhaps it is not very 
 near. Does any one guess the God-given 
 sweetness of the normal till the dreadful pres- 
 sure of the abnormal has been known? But 
 into normal days I can no longer bring my 
 heart. I have there no abiding city. I must 
 learn to love another kingdom. 
 
 February 2.—Friends come from time to 
 time. I would like to be glad every time, but 
 sometimes I am not glad at all. I think then 
 the friends have not been glad to come, but 
 vaguely feel a pressure as of something due. 
 And then their presence is but an added soll- 
 tude. They ask me questions that burden 
 memory and quicken grief to answer. They 
 advise me. Advice eases the giver a thousand 
 
50 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 times for once it brings wisdom to the sufferer. 
 And I must listen to a little patter of con- 
 gratulatory phrase, of which I have learnt to 
 anticipate every word. It is always delightful 
 to see me so much better. It is always so cer- 
 tain that I have “‘taken the turn.” Always I 
 am so much stronger than I was. They would 
 not take such vain repetitions to a dinner-party. 
 They think because to visit the sick is new to 
 them, that it must be equally new to the sick 
 to be visited.. So I must listen and answer and 
 try to feel grateful—grateful even for that 
 strange pressure they hate and which yet is 
 strong enough to bring them. And all the time 
 I yearn for some echo of a larger life to 
 lighten the weight of my unchanging days. At 
 last they go. “You look ever so much better 
 than I expected, so much better than you 
 looked last time. Hurry up and get quite 
 well.” ‘They all say it. 
 
 I think that I have met the same gaucherie 
 before. I think it entered nursery days, and 
 was not more welcome then than now. Chil- 
 dren, too, live in a world difficult for busy, un- 
 pliable brains to penetrate, and busy, unpliable 
 brains think no worlds so hard to enter can 
 
IN THE SHADOW 51 
 
 be worth entering. Children and sick people 
 share the same patronage. ‘The regions they 
 inhabit are dubbed delusion. And yet the 
 busiest brain takes its own rest and renewal 
 from those regions of delusion—when the 
 treasures of those regions are transmuted into 
 poetry or play, book, music, or picture. 
 
 But there are friends who are different. 
 
 No pressure brings them here, and all pres- 
 sures vanish with their presence. When they 
 leave, all the bright spots in my life are shin- 
 ing again. ‘They have set me free, once more, 
 amongst them, to gather faith and hope. 
 They are the true interpreters. Light is 
 struck from every contact with them. In that 
 light I look back, and I can see through all my 
 life, the piercing touches of a sweeter life, and 
 I can believe they were the touches of Heaven. 
 
 I think the word friend has taken a new 
 meaning since these friends came to this quiet 
 room. 
 
 They do not seem to remember I am ill. 
 Their thoughts are not enclosed in the walls 
 that enclose me. ‘Their thoughts are not the 
 thoughts desire impels. They have learnt the 
 thoughts that hope inspires. They wait upon 
 
52 INCGT RE SHADOW 
 
 no wishes of their own, but listen to a larger 
 command. It seems to me they read the 
 thought that God has hidden in me. 
 
 Now I begin to think the greatest powers 
 of all wait upon a great obedience. I think 
 there are wonderful laws and Presences very 
 near us, waiting always to make life sacra- 
 mental. 
 
 February 9.—Sorrow of heart caught me to- 
 day. Oh, for peace, for rest—deep, deep rest. 
 I think only the end of life—the break of the 
 eternal dawn—can bring the rest I long for. 
 It is one of those days when every minute tells 
 me how desolate I am, and I know, to the 
 depth of knowing, how sad, lonely, tortured, 
 is the thirst of my heart. All this day the 
 opening of magic doors, the piercing of sacra- 
 mental thoughts, the sweetness of unexpected 
 emotion, all the life of the spirit, looked poor 
 and thin beside the radiance of the life of the 
 heart—the life I have lost for ever. 
 
 Only to watch the heavy hours go by. 
 
 And my life—a half-tasted cup—goes past 
 me with them. And pain—the only cup of 
 which I have drunk deeply—stays. 
 
 How blessed death looks in such weariness. 
 
IN THE SHADOW 54 
 
 February 10.—With the falling of night, 
 once again joy entered my room. 
 
 Tired pulses, tense, taut, suffering nerves 
 felt its entrance. It came as the subtle sweet- 
 ness of a hidden garden, sending fragrance 
 from unseen flowers. 
 
 I looked out at it with answering heart and 
 questioning mind. How could it be real? It 
 could not be. ‘The past day called to no joy. 
 
 But I met eternal laughter in the shadows of 
 my little room. Freedom entered—on eternal 
 wings. It was not freedom in the little broken 
 bits that scatter life. It stood beside me a 
 living Presence. It caught me into itself. In 
 sudden, sweet shock of infinite surprise I knew 
 the caress of eternity. 
 
 The rapture of every dawn was mine—the 
 response of all young, glad, unthinking things. 
 The ecstasy of the sun’s new light, striking the 
 mountain-tops at sunrise—striking the crests of 
 waves—caught in the rise of spray—the break 
 of waves in morning silence—the scents of un- 
 touched morning—these were in my heart. 
 Eternal youth was in my heart, untrammelled 
 by heavy thought, undarkened by trail of 
 memory, but answering joy from clefts deeper 
 than any youth can know. 
 
s4 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 Sweetest of all was the calm, upholding 
 strength like the hand of love on my heart, the 
 great assurance that here was the ultimate 
 reality, the eternal destiny, the infinitude of 
 truth. 
 
 Yet I could smile at the lovely thing and 
 watch and question and tell myself of it, un- 
 stunned by any strangeness. Nothing in all 
 my life had ever been less strange. Strange- 
 ness had gone for ever out of all things. I 
 think I have never been myself till joy from 
 out eternity came and told me what I was. 
 
 Perfect happiness I knew—union with a 
 spirit that was divine—bringing me unimagin- 
 able rapture—telling me unutterable things. 
 
 February 12.—The beauty and the freedom 
 passed from out my room. Or did the little 
 laws that govern life and master the body 
 claim me again, and hide from me the Truth 
 that never passes, nor changes, nor knows any 
 shadow of variableness? It is not to be re- 
 called by will or wish. But peace stays in my 
 heart and deep content. Once again I can 
 bring all my thoughts into light greater than 
 any thought, and in that light see them grow 
 wonderful. 
 
IN THE SHADOW 55 
 
 I think I can never again desire anything so 
 much as to gaze upon knowledge in the reveal- 
 ing rapture of that greater knowledge. I 
 think I can never again know denial, save the 
 denial of that light. I think in all the universe 
 there is no denial, save that strange denial with 
 which each soul has wrapped itself about, 
 wearing it like a coil of foreign darkness, alien 
 both to itself and to eternity. 
 
 February 14.—Everything moves lightly in 
 my room. Day’s ritual touches me no more 
 heavily than the light settling of birds pausing 
 in their flight. Night comes on mystic steps 
 and holds in its shadows some remembered 
 fragrance of the Presence that filled the night, 
 and filled my room, and filled my heart and 
 spirit. I gather my thoughts into it. I 
 gather my memories. I gather the sweetest 
 words of poetry. For they rose out of that 
 unimaginable light. In a transcendent mo- 
 ment they were captured by a soul set free. 
 Thus they were brought to me. 
 
 February 25.—IThe Dweller in Joy came 
 into my room to-day. 
 
 There were hyacinths beside me, blue and 
 lovely, and starry, white narcissi. 
 
56 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 Their fragrance passed me by. Flowers 
 shine as the stars do, from a different sphere. 
 It is a cold and distant shining—serene, scent- 
 less, remote. 
 
 But the Dweller in Joy shed all his gladness 
 upon me. It, too, was like the laughter of 
 eternity. 
 
 For an hour he sat at my bedside and talked 
 to me. He speaks his own language, but his 
 joy and his knowledge and all his thoughts 
 come from the other side of the magical doors. 
 
 As he talks, my own thoughts, too vast for 
 my tired mind, fall back into the old channels. 
 Bible thoughts can clasp them, can keep them 
 safe. Church teaching can draw them, make 
 them strong. He bears with him enfolding 
 airs, like the enfolding of the Church—protect- 
 ing, guiding, quickening the sweetness and the 
 light and life of inner spirit. Something of 
 this I told him, and the telling broke an old 
 thought of a hard, unyielding convention that 
 once my mind harboured and named Church. 
 
 “But the Church is always the Bride of 
 Christ,’’ he answered, “‘never the Bridegroom 
 of the world.” 
 
 When he left me, the greatest of all love- 
 songs once more sangin my heart. “A garden 
 
IN THE SHADOW 57 
 
 enclosed is my sister, my spouse.””’ My room 
 was no longer a lonely cross. It was a garden 
 awaiting the dawn. Its shadows were no 
 longer of denial; they were the shadows of 
 approach. 
 
 March 19.—March takes its way through 
 heavy days. Fatigue has clung to me with 
 bands upon my heart, upon my lips, upon my 
 throat, with sagging weight upon my feet. In 
 how many hours has consciousness not been lost 
 in all but a dull awareness of discomfort. 
 
 Helplessly, reluctantly, sadly, spirit, mind 
 and heart have drooped and failed, knowing 
 no response save to the heavy tread of the 
 hours, the dull going of the day, the intolerable 
 airs of denial. 
 
 In my room people have come and gone, 
 leaving a trail of weariness. 
 
 As there are words that can wound—even 
 the strong know that—so there are thoughts 
 that cancrush. ‘The sharpening of pain brings 
 them to revelation, but their darkening must 
 always be a potent thing, though their power 
 remains unnamed. Little mean minds can 
 trouble, for us, the beauty of the world. The 
 stars and the mountains and the wide spaces 
 
58 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 remain, but hearts have got entangled in dif- 
 ferent reaches, and cannot answer. 
 
 Now as I lie here—pierced by suffering and 
 weakness—I am vividly aware of many affini- 
 ties with dark, deep, far-falling glooms which — 
 cling to my spirit as fatigue drags at my limbs. 
 That strange lowering that silences the finer 
 wires and denies their message to the mind— 
 what is it? Is it that imprisoning will a 
 vision-hour revealed to me? 
 
 Self is always the same. It is not humanity, 
 but a dark emanation from humanity. It is 
 neither personality nor individuality, but a 
 noisome fog, concealing both. 
 
 One selfish person brings one into exactly 
 the same atmosphere as another selfish person, 
 taking a deadly sameness. ‘They all bear the 
 same airs, they say the same things with a de- 
 stroying repetition that holds never a surprise, 
 never a renewal. And every self-sunk mood 
 brings the same heaviness, the same thoughts, 
 the same despondency. The wings of expres- 
 sion fail in its clogging presence. It holds 
 down every soaring thing. 
 
 And amongst those many affinities that make 
 our nature so intricate a fabric, a house of 
 
DNS er ESS HA DOW 59 
 
 many stories, there dwells the little flame of 
 choice that can say yes to any of them and must 
 say yes to one—can climb with those that soar, 
 can fall with those that sink. 
 
 Surely here lies that strange mystery of in- 
 terpretation, making of life so different a 
 picture to one from another. Every high and 
 low level of man’s great reach of affinity can 
 claim its part in every experience, every event. 
 He can choose what his eyes shall see. He 
 can choose his heart’s response. He can build 
 his life on his chosen level. 
 
 So no heaviness, no darkness can convince 
 me. I suffer under it, I do not believe in it. 
 Its unreality is its cruelty. ‘he finer wires are 
 silent, but they are there. The wings are 
 folded, but they are not broken. My destiny 
 is still a winged thing. The flame of choice 
 that is the God-given soul in me owns no 
 affinity with denial. Its element is endow- 
 ment. I have known and I cannot forget. 
 The true words quicken, only the false destroy. 
 The real thoughts set free, they do not crush. 
 If the seal of God’s promise is an ache of de- 
 sire in my heart, the promise is my freedom. 
 Hearts and hands go out—out—seeking re- 
 
60 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 sponse, finding it on many levels. But if ever 
 a heart has found a response in truth, it can 
 never again forget. 
 
 I think some great Spirit waits beside every 
 event and every experience—as a good Advo- 
 cate waits beside his client—to call and separ- 
 ate the true, the beautiful, the hopeful, the 
 eternal out of it—freeing the truth from error 
 —freeing us from ignorance. 
 
 April 2.—Thoughts lap my solitude like 
 kindly seas about an ocean islet. I am not 
 solitary while thoughts break upon my heart 
 like waves that catch the light upon their 
 spray. 
 
 If once more I wandered in life’s ways, with 
 thoughts and events together coming towards 
 me, and this strange new light that has shone 
 into my solitude bright upon both—surely in 
 that union would be perfect joy and perfect 
 love. 
 
 But if once more I wandered in life’s ways, 
 it would not be. “Thoughts and events would 
 travel by different paths. A yawning chasm 
 would separate them. ‘The Angel with the 
 flaming sword forbids the Eden of their union. 
 
 “When the thoughts of all men shall be 
 
IN THE SHADOW 61 
 
 made manifest.’ ‘The words speak from my 
 memory and answer my desire. Not, oh, 
 thank God not, a rousing again of long-dead, 
 fruitless warring of mind with mind, but a 
 promise of a different day when life and ex- 
 pression again are one—as the Word of God 
 is One with God in the mystery of the Holy 
 ‘Trinity—and no longer the dark veil of mis- 
 understanding hangs between soul and soul. 
 
 April 15.—Easter has come and gone. 
 
 Once Easter was a word that broke the 
 winter stillness. After Easter came the lure of 
 movement, wider spaces called, the year’s ad- 
 ventures began. Summer waited, holding 
 promises in a mist of possibility, like the mist 
 of green on the budding woods. 
 
 Now into my room Easter came—but with 
 a different freedom—breaking a different 
 winter. “Very early in the morning,” the 
 lighted candles glowed against my grey walls, 
 above the whiteness of lilies and hyacinths. 
 The Dweller in Joy, white-clad, with moving 
 hands, was there. I heard the piercing sweet- 
 ness of sacramental words. I knew the holi- 
 ness of Sacramental Presence enfolding my 
 spirit. A moment of rapturous peace—a 
 
62 IN° THE SHADOW 
 
 memory of eternity’s contact—this was my 
 Faster. 
 
 The whole Church spoke—just for one 
 feeble, broken soul. The whole Church gave 
 —to one for whom life has no more to give. 
 Her mighty mystery—her infinite inspiration 
 —were mine—as the sun’s whole glory shines 
 for a single field flower. 
 
 Once long ago—on the other side of the 
 wide-cleft gulf of a year—when drawing- 
 rooms were part of the common life and not 
 strangely-remembered dreams, I met some one 
 in a drawing-room, who spoke of things not 
 often heard within drawing-room walls. It 
 was a drawing-room in a boarding-house and 
 others were there, but she spoke only for me. 
 She seemed to know the answer to all the ques- 
 tions that hurl their way through troubled 
 minds when a hurt has sent all the blessed 
 familiar thoughts hurtling out into nothing- 
 ness. Disillusionment had filled my _ heart 
 with questions, where sweet and blessed cer- 
 tainties had dwelt before. 
 
 “Tn every soul is a small sinless centre,’’ she 
 said, ‘‘where sin and evil cannot come. It is 
 the Garden of Eden. It is the Immaculate 
 Conception. One soul can always reach an- 
 
IN THE SHADOW 63 
 
 other soul there, but the beginning is by ways 
 of the Spirit, for the life of the Spirit begins 
 there. From there man commences the mas- 
 tery of matter which is his privilege. From 
 there man commences his union with God 
 which is his destiny. Love impels us to noth- 
 ing beyond the powers which are our privilege. 
 When God gives us Himself He gives us 
 everything.” 
 
 Remembering those words that once con- 
 soled a slighter sorrow, I find in them wisdom 
 for a greater sorrow. 
 
 I think that sacraments, and some things so 
 deeply loved that love has made them sacra- 
 mental, are real, not in their sweet and fleeting 
 impression, but in a deeply hidden power, so 
 that they become a secret treasure, to be ever- 
 lastingly drawn upon for their slow, unending 
 potency. I think they pierce a way, not to 
 mind, nor senses, nor nerves, but to that ‘‘sin- 
 less centre” increasing the life and energy hid- 
 den there. So that the true life grows from 
 in outward—mastering an ever-widening-circle 
 of outward things. 
 
 April 19.—A veil of green has been thrown 
 over the tangle of brown branches I have 
 
64 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 looked out upon all winter. The belts of gar- 
 dens are at their loveliest. I can see a bridal 
 mist of wild cherry blossom, mingling with the 
 green. 
 
 I watched, this morning, a wet dawn silver- 
 ing the sky above the houses on the cliff. 
 There were strange gleams on wet roofs—a 
 diamond spark on wet skylights. The call of 
 a blackbird broke the stillness. 
 
 All day the buds have unfolded in mild, wet 
 airs. [he high branches of the trees below 
 my window brighten to emerald, so that an 
 emerald mist fills half the window-space that 
 has been colourless so long. When evening 
 came I watched the lights spangle the twilight 
 till all the green and grey was starred with 
 gold. 
 
 And all through the world spring’s magic 
 is at work. Its green fire is running through 
 many woods I know. It is quickening a hun- 
 dred gardens that I love. Through them the 
 birds are calling. The owls’ hoot crosses 
 them. 
 
 But not for me. Never again for me. 
 Spring comes, but between me and spring is no 
 meeting. Only an eternal parting, a rending 
 as of heart from heart. 
 
IN THE SHADOW 65 
 
 April 29.—When morning comes again, the 
 first hope I can summon is the hope that when 
 my tray is carried in, there will be a letter upon 
 it. 
 
 Letters are like people. There are some 
 that can enter experience and change its 
 rhythm with their entrance. And others leave 
 one conscious of nothing but a vague sense of 
 rebuff. 
 
 But I think the post cards break my prison 
 best. 
 
 They come to me from many distances, fly- 
 ing to me, like little winged things, from all 
 over the world, calling my thoughts to meet 
 them. And now New York is not further than 
 a street in an English town, Benares is not 
 more remote than a suburb of the city in which 
 I dwell. 
 
 Once pictures could tell me more than these 
 pictures can ever tell. But the words written 
 there bring more to me than words have ever 
 brought before. ‘They can pierce a way where 
 eyes have forgotten how to bear their mes- 
 sage. 
 
 Yet these little card pictures are all I can 
 ever look to now to open for me those far, 
 wide, wonder places of the world—each one a 
 
66 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 tiny flame in my ignorance, like the spurt of a 
 match in a dark room. 
 
 Amongst the many, gathered fortuitously 
 beside me, like an unbound book of memory 
 and adventure, is one that has a place apart. 
 
 It is a picture of Rome from the Pincian 
 Hill. On a wide terrace in the foreground, 
 where palms are growing, a solitary watcher 
 stands, gazing over the panorama of Rome, so 
 that my dimmed eyes can think they gaze upon 
 it too, and dream of its magnificence, of that 
 ascendant dome of great St. Peter’s, of the ten- 
 der beauty of surrounding hills. 
 
 Below the picture are written words by one 
 whose grace has always been a vast self-forget- 
 fulness and reverence before every gift of life. 
 ‘The figure is not mine, but I was just as 
 contemplative.” 
 
 In all the world there is no place can bring, 
 as Rome brings, the conviction of garnered 
 spiritual treasure, that humbling, mysterious 
 sense of the penetration, through man, of se- 
 crets beyond man—treasure too vast to seek 
 out, too intricate to follow, too mighty to 
 break up into knowledge. 
 
 So the ultimate possession is the same for 
 one from whom all life’s endowment is reced- 
 
IN THE SHADOW 67 
 
 ing, as for one who finds himself facing wealth 
 beyond grasp or knowledge. Contemplation 
 has become the only union. So a single 
 heightened hour in Rome’s eternal splendour 
 answers the dim, uncounted days, in a narrow 
 room where deprivation dwells, and confirms 
 that faint, subtle-sweet delight that can still 
 fill blinded eyes, crushed heart and empty 
 hands, with the fulness of spirit’s joy. 
 
 May 4.—Last night it seemed to me that my 
 room and all the house about me dissolved in 
 mist and I lay upon the night itself with all the 
 immensity of the stars above me. Life had 
 receded to an indescribable remoteness. So 
 frail and failing seemed the threads that bound 
 me to it, I could not conceive the possibility 
 that they would ever draw me back to it again. 
 My heart and mind and all my faculties seemed 
 to pass from me into the immensity around me. 
 From a deep, far distance I seemed to look 
 back on the little incident of life that had clung 
 to me so strangely for a moment. A faint 
 wave of memory and regret brought but a 
 vague, light touch upon my senses. Dimly I 
 was conscious of a mist of flowers, a drift of 
 dreams, a fragrance of friendship, a music of 
 
68 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 poetry, a haunting of exquisite, garnered 
 thought. These, out of life as it has yielded 
 itself to me, my heart has held most gladly— 
 these I have had to love—these have been all 
 life’s sweetness to me. Out of that harvest 
 ungathered, that union foregone, that deeper 
 contact never to be mine—these have been the 
 gifts of life to me. 
 
 But morning came—to draw my soul back 
 from its wanderings—back to accept the things 
 it cannot love. Day waits—a blank canvas, 
 upon which only my thoughts can write. 
 
 May 6.—Still the days swing between light 
 and darkness—the quiver of high things—the 
 weight of affinities not yet silent. 
 
 And there are still people who can come in 
 and silence all the finer wires. ‘There are still 
 the friends who can awaken them. I long, 
 each day, to welcome those friends. ‘They be- 
 long to that waiting, unseen, mysterious joy. 
 I dread the entrance of the unknowing minds 
 and destroying voices. 
 
 Strange, bewildering, amazing experience 
 creeps up and possesses my frame and masters 
 the day—and they seek to control it, to negate 
 
IN THE SHADOW 69 
 
 it, by a tinkling phrase, a weariness of petty 
 words. 
 
 They tell themselves it is the word it is well 
 for me to hear. It is the last word it could be 
 well for me to hear. It is the word that pro- 
 tects them from knowing all that I know. It 
 is a fence of phrase, a barrier of irritation, a 
 determined denial—lest truth sweep in and 
 banish all their ease. 
 
 Does only pain, then, reveal the affinities 
 that lie beyond ease? Is it only the crushing 
 of the nearer affinities that calls them into life? 
 Is this the true resurrection of the body? 
 
 Then sorrow is from God. It is divine 
 knowledge. It is the gate of vision. It is 
 God’s promise of union with Himself. It is 
 the unquenchable thirst of heart and soul and 
 mind that tells us we wait for our true destiny. 
 By sorrow we know the depths of life’s inade- 
 quacy. We know our own incompleteness. 
 
 I see each life on earth a footprint of God— 
 the print of a foot strangely, poignantly 
 pierced. 
 
 May 12.—I am no longer in the little grey- 
 walled room whose windows look out upon the 
 
70 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 curving road to the city’s entrance, and into 
 which, at noon, the sun’s rays beat directly. I 
 have been brought to a different room, with 
 wide windows looking northward—for so long 
 called a guest-room that in it I feel myself 
 something of a wayfarer, free from the bonds 
 with which familiar things bind us to earth. 
 
 The motors do not throw their light into 
 this room, nor does the traffic pass below it. 
 But in those nights when no clouds are in the 
 sky, nor mists in the air, a gleam that is like 
 the gleam of an elfin candle falls for a fleeting 
 moment in a little bright patch on the wall— 
 then vanishes—to come again and vanish. 
 Across miles of city roofs that light travels to 
 my room, shining from the revolving lamp of 
 an island lighthouse. 
 
 Summer is here—the long, warm days, the 
 short, mysterious nights. I sleep and wake to 
 lingering twilight, and sleep again and wake to 
 daylight, and hours are yet to wait till morning 
 though birds are twittering in ai ivy on the 
 house-walls. 
 
 Because this city rises and falls with the hills 
 and valleys upon which it is set, I can look 
 from my pillows over a wide stretch of sloping 
 country, far enough to see, above the roofs and 
 
IN THE SHADOW a1 
 
 gardens, the trees of distant woods and 
 glimpses of an island sea and dim, blue hills 
 beyond it. In a wide expanse of sky I can see 
 the swifts and martins swoop. I can watch 
 like a mighty pageant, the changing lights of 
 dawn and noon and sunset, and the darkening 
 of the night. 
 
 Far away my high room sets me—far from 
 those wide spaces of land and earth and sky— 
 but not so far as that impelling weakness that 
 fastens me, with its sharp piercings, to my 
 loneliness. 
 
 May 15.—In this big room my flowers are 
 left beside me, when evening comes, to com- 
 panion me through the night. I have shell-pink 
 sweet peas, the first of the year, close at my 
 side, and wonderful dark mauve tulips are 
 bending from the mantel-shelf. Both were 
 brought by one dear friend whose footsteps, 
 through my weeks, are flowers, and I may fol- 
 low that sweet trail, that is like the trail of her 
 own love’s sweetness, between visit and visit. 
 The scentless, lovely, distant things, with their 
 strange, starry charm, that have no message 
 for my senses now, have become the compan- 
 ions of my spirit. ‘They are the work of the 
 
72 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 perfect artist, veiling their message in beauty, 
 holding, in time, some of the laughter of eter- 
 nity. My room would be desolate without 
 
 them. | 
 
 May 24.—Outside the whole world lies in 
 languorous heat. Not far away—oh, not far 
 away—gardens are heavy with the scent of 
 may-blossom, of lilac, of limes. Primroses 
 star the woods. ‘There is lily of the valley in 
 the hollows. Little streams are splashing un- 
 der bending, new-leafed boughs. 
 
 Once again, in fields I cannot see, the pop- 
 pies flame. Once again the incense of white 
 clover fills the air. 
 
 Desire burns in my breast—a pain that kills 
 —a fire that quickens. ‘The faintly flickering 
 life in me kindles to passion. 
 
 Oh, to go out—out into life once more—out 
 into life’s ways—into the summer. Oh, to 
 seek and gather life’s joys denied me—to 
 find and hold the boons snatched from me 
 before my hands could reach out and take 
 them. 
 
 Not far away—oh, not far away—under the 
 languorous sun, wrapped in the summer scents 
 and the humming summer air, all I desire is 
 
IN THE SHADOW 73 
 
 and lives. All I can never have is yet there— 
 with prodigal riches for other hands. The 
 young corn and the poppies flame. Wild 
 thyme is crushed under moving feet. Noon is 
 strong and splendid. Remembered eyes, that 
 never again can look into mine—under summer 
 sunrays, in the scent of flowers—look into 
 other eyes. But never again into mine, save 
 in those dreams that break my heart in waking. 
 Voices speak. Strong with invoking magic re- 
 membered voices speak—but never again with 
 magic for my heart, never again with music for 
 my mind. 
 
 In this tormenting sorrow of love and mem- 
 ory—this anguish of desire for all I have been 
 given heart and hands to hold, yet may not 
 have, nor ever know again—lI long for bodily 
 pain to blot the other anguish out, and possess, 
 even with its fierce cruelty, this empty, frus- 
 trate frame that now may know no other 
 fulfilment. 
 
 May 24.—Night comes and long hours lie 
 between me and the fevered noon. 
 
 In the sky is a still and wonderful beauty— 
 black and purple clouds curtaining a gold and 
 silver infinity. 
 
74 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 The kindly gloom fills my room, my flowers 
 shine in it—little ghostly presences. 
 
 But not the night, nor the flowers, not the. 
 silencing of voices, nor relief of solitude have 
 called this deep stillness into my spirit. 
 
 It is a deeper stillness than any night can 
 bring. Thoughts shine in its shadows as pale 
 flowers shine in dusky woods. 
 
 Gone is the agony of separation—the fire of 
 desire—the frustration of love and memory. 
 The gathering darkness, the brooding stillness 
 bring me life and union again. 
 
 To all for whom the summer day has held 
 the fulness of its joy, as for me—night comes 
 —with separating touch—with imperious still- 
 ness. 
 
 For all, whom life endows and claims and 
 gladdens, the greater night, that closes life 
 itself with purpling shadows, waits—the great 
 detachment—the transcending silence. 
 
 I am not alone in sorrow and desire, in love 
 and frustration—in longing that, each hour, 
 beats up against denial. 
 
 To all, in every hour of every day, life gives 
 and takes away—life quickens and denies. 
 There is no heart whose wishes do not fly out 
 
IN THE SHADOW 75 
 
 beyond fulfilment—to return, and fall, and 
 fail. 
 
 Their unfulfilment is the witness of their 
 destiny. 
 
 In this hush of night and spirit—that en- 
 folds me like a cherishing Life, with brooding 
 gentle wings of love upon my soul—faith runs 
 into my heart again. 
 
 Once the primrose was mine. 
 
 If I must be far away from it—and still far 
 away even though my languid fingers touched 
 it, still I can hold its memory in my heart and 
 ponder that sweet message its beauty writes 
 upon the earth for all to read. 
 
 Once beloved eyes looked into mine. 
 
 For God’s eternal purpose they looked into 
 mine. I shall have that purpose through 
 eternity. 
 
 With the passing of the languorous day, 
 from my heart has passed the fierceness of de- 
 sire, and all the untrue, the foolish, and the 
 wrong. 
 
 I know the things that belong to my true 
 destiny. I know they will be mine eternally. 
 
 The world’s beauty pierces me and holds me 
 to this cross of love and pain—that would not 
 
76 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 be such pain but for the love that breaks my 
 heart with memory and regret. Yet it is the 
 piercing of union, not of separation. | 
 
 The night is whispering her secrets to me in 
 the deepening purple of her shadows. 
 
 The primroses, the woods, the running 
 waters, the heavy scents of flower-filled gardens 
 all are far away. But near me is a touch 
 closer than theirs—a fragrance sweeter wraps 
 my spirit. 
 
 Pain and longing have become as some great 
 pressure that does not crush but raises—raises 
 me into strange fragrances, strange possession, 
 strange sorrow, stranger ecstasy. 
 
 May 29.—The long summer days go past— 
 a bitter-sweet possession. There are heavy- 
 headed rose-peonies in my room and the cool 
 green and white of Solomon’s Seal. 
 
 From my far place on high-raised pillows I 
 look over the wide land with the sunlight upon 
 it—over to the far line of the hills beyond the 
 inland sea, that wear the distance like a gar- 
 ment of blue mist. 
 
 Life out in the world, the life acknowledged 
 to be life, seems as far away, as unreachable. 
 
 I think, sometimes, that that life of doing, 
 
IN THE SHADOW 7 
 
 seeing, planning, with uncounted things ready 
 to run towards impulses and desires and an- 
 swer them—and this life of hush and nothing- 
 ness, where hours drift by to break like empty 
 bubbles, and no answer can come to the little 
 throb of wishes that beat all day—cannot both 
 be real. A single world cannot hold both. A 
 single frame cannot know both. One must be 
 illusion. 
 
 So wonderful it looks—that great majestic 
 life that I may ponder, but may never have 
 again—that if I died of a broken heart, re- 
 gretting it—the tribute to its loveliness, its 
 splendour and its poignancy would make the 
 death worth while. My life would be yielded 
 up to give assent to its desirability. 
 
 But the life that I have is true. It is a life 
 that the world has held since it held man. 
 
 I cannot think of the long hospital wards, 
 nor of remote, unknown sick-rooms—nor of 
 crushed, sorrowing hearts that bear no out- 
 ward sign of sorrow—and believe them to be 
 but the failure of experience—the separation 
 from reality—the falling from truth. 
 
 All down the ages pain has had its own 
 servants. 
 
 Whatever that deep secret is, so strangely 
 
78 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 held in the strange life of this planet, certain 
 it is that some of its great mystery can only be 
 told by pain. 
 
 May 30.—I think that joy and sadness are 
 like sun and rain. But the reality is in the sun 
 and the joy; sadness and rain are but the serv- 
 ants of its perfection. The garden is a real 
 garden only in the sunshine (oh, the sodden 
 sadness of a garden in the rain). The soul 
 enters its true kingdom in joy; but in sorrow it 
 has gathered its power to answer joy and its 
 sensibility to recognise it. It has found its 
 own beauty to match it. 
 
 Last night—again—I woke in the hour that 
 holds the short summer darkness—and that 
 darkness was filled with joy. It met my in- 
 most heart, as the darkness met my eyes. It 
 drew me deeper and deeper into itself, and I 
 knew that the joy of God holds all things 
 within itself—and illness and desolation, si- 
 lence and helplessness, are all included in it. 
 Some day we shall find them in their true place 
 —discords rearranged to harmonies. And 
 they will be our heritage—they will be part of 
 the Joy of God. 
 
 Some time, mysteriously, Man’s will and 
 
IN THE SHADOW _ 79 
 
 pleasure took God’s treasures to use them for 
 himself—and finding them lifeless without 
 God, drew upon Evil to give them life. And 
 then, those treasures became—in Time—ter- 
 rible.e We know them terrible upon our 
 broken nerves. But some day God will take 
 them back. Then again, they will be joy. As 
 my dark hours are joy, when, mysteriously, 
 that unimagined joy releases me, and all my 
 fears are lost, and only love is real. 
 
 Now, as I lie helpless, I think of all the 
 beautiful, helpless things, hidden in every hu- 
 man heart, bound under some hard fear that 
 will not let them be free—and I am glad that 
 love and pain are strong enough to break that 
 fear. 
 
 June 3.—Now again enters the month— 
 once a month of pleasure—whose gifts and 
 gladness last year failed me, for ever. It is 
 the month that called me away from the open 
 fields and the pleasure—into a dark room— 
 to be told a dreadful secret. 
 
 Very far away are now the fields and the 
 festival. But I have not been in a dark room. 
 The secret I have learnt is not a dreadful one. 
 My footsteps cannot lead me towards life’s 
 
80 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 open fields and pleasure places. But my 
 thoughts can wing a wider way and reach re- 
 moter distances than life’s great ways ever — 
 opened tothem. There is a secret in my heart 
 whose unfolding makes everything in all the 
 universe my own. If the walls of a single 
 room enclose me, those walls are set 
 
 “In deep mid-silence, opendoor’d to God.” 
 
 When my steps were free, and my seeking 
 heart and hands directed them, I never sought 
 such deep desires, such sweet fulfilment, such 
 profound possession, as those that have en- 
 tered, unsought, into my concealment to bless 
 my helplessness. 
 
 I believed there could be no deeper, better 
 joy than the joy in nature, no profounder, nor 
 nearer knowledge of God. I believed there 
 could be no sweeter joy in love than the dear 
 human love of touch and voice, and the magic 
 of personality. Joy of nature left my tired 
 heart. Nerves could no longer receive and 
 answer it. And joy came to me, piercing and 
 real, making the old joy dull and clumsy in 
 comparison. I have known a far greater hu- 
 man love—a remembered look—a _ sudden 
 knowledge—an ineffable presence—come and 
 
IN THE SHADOW 81 
 
 gone—reaching me across renouncement’s gulf, 
 but, beyond look and touch an endowment— 
 the piercing of eternity in love’s companion- 
 ship. 
 
 Could I go back and forget it? 
 
 To lose it would be a greater loss than the 
 loss I have already known. 
 
 Dear as the earth life was, with dear re- 
 sponse of heart to heart, of mood to mood— 
 the response of spirit to spirit is dearer. 
 
 The light behind the mystery grows so real 
 I cannot believe I am the same person, who, a 
 year ago, rebelled. 
 
 A mysterious life flows in upon me. © 
 Strangely, subtly, differently, it reaches me. 
 Under it all I love and know changes, but with 
 a change that is like the change of light, creep- 
 ing upon the earth as night passes, changing 
 the grey dawn to the ecstasy of sunrise. 
 
 Not death, not denial dwell in my far room, 
 but life and sweet assurance and knowledge 
 quick with eternal wisdom. 
 
 June 13.—This month knows no night. 
 Day passes through an hour of silver twilight 
 into day again. ‘The sundown lingers till the 
 dawn appears. 
 
82 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 There are roses in my room—crimson, yel- 
 low and pink. Amongst the roses are the little 
 green spears of rosemary. ‘They come from a 
 suburban garden where flowers are often gath- 
 ered for me, and whenever they are gathered 
 the rosemary is cut and added to them, because 
 I once revealed my love for it. Sometimes I 
 fancy its pungence reaches even my remote- 
 ness, though the roses stay far away. 
 
 But the roses dream through the noons 
 when pain crushes me—they wake and speak 
 when pain leaves me and freedom comes again. 
 Their beauty tells me what the breath of the 
 rosemary bears to me. The early dawns 
 speak the same language; the late sunsets write 
 it on the sky. Sometimes a strange wisdom 
 prints it straight upon my tired frame. From 
 them all the same secret reaches me. It is the 
 secret I left the festival to hear. It is the 
 secret of joy. 
 
 There are other witnesses. I meet the se- 
 cret in printed words—in remembered poems 
 —in Bible sayings—in beauty left on earth by 
 work of man. I meet it sometimes in eyes 
 that seek mine, and I wonder how those eyes 
 caught its wisdom into their tenderness. I 
 hear it in the hush and stillness of prayer—in 
 
IN THE SHADOW 83 
 
 the music of sacramental words—in the mir- 
 acle of sacramental Presence. I know it in 
 the pure, wordless joy of rapturous certainties 
 —of ecstatic adoration. I recognise it in the 
 slow unclasping of dark and different, alien 
 affinities—in the release from crushing bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 If once again I were well—there would be 
 much to miss. If I left behind me all a single 
 room has held, it would be more than I left to 
 come to it. There are fires in this life for 
 want of which the world might seem cold. 
 ‘‘Ah me, renunciation is not cold. It hath a 
 flame. God knows it is not cold.” 
 
 June 23.—Once—and in time, not very long 
 ago—the mystery before me was the mystery 
 of life. I did not knowit. I had not wisdom 
 with which to anticipate it, save a garnering of 
 dreams that wilted and failed when life’s airs 
 touched them. I looked out at it, waiting for 
 it in the unfolding of the days, my asking mind 
 seeking every morning, every spring-tide, to 
 know what it held for me. It clasped me 
 close, reaching me in those apportioned ways, 
 that often seemed to stay its fulness rather 
 than invite it. Beyond those ways that were 
 
84 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 my ways—what surged that I might not have, 
 nor ever know? Dreadful things it held, but 
 wonders too—and great and vast things that 
 could sweep a small self away from all its 
 anchors—into experience unimaginable—yield- 
 ing the great dignity—the mysterious potency 
 —of Life. 
 
 Now I have been swept away from all my 
 anchors. ‘The morning and the spring-time 
 have revealed their gifts for me. A vast ex- 
 perience has taken me into itself. ‘The little 
 barriers, fencing the dreadful things, and, with 
 those things fencing, often, life itself away, are 
 shattered. ‘The great tides of Destiny have 
 rushed upon them—and borne me away from 
 careful hands—from the apportioned ways— 
 from all the measures, the returns, the en- 
 closures. 
 
 And still I gaze out and wonder what day 
 will bring me—what mystery, yet, is hidden 
 from me behind the dark, concealing curtain 
 that life itself has become. What vastness of 
 destiny—what renewed experience waits to 
 gather me into itself, and claim and win un- 
 known response from me, when that last, 
 wavering curtain fails and life—this life—fails 
 with it? 
 
IN THE SHADOW 85 
 
 There presses in upon me a sure confidence, 
 a strange, near sweetness, unknown to life’s 
 past spring-tides. 
 
 Heart and will find their way across the 
 misty barriers between life and life. Hope 
 changes its aim and sends its shafts to pierce 
 those mists. Beauty—charm—love itself go 
 before me. I watch them go, and from the 
 greater mystery beyond my vision I hear them 
 call. I feel my own heart’s answer. 
 
 Out of that vastness, in which my life is 
 held, as the world around me is held, a shaft 
 of love and knowledge, like a shaft of light, 
 has pierced a way to me. 
 
 It fastens the life I know to the life I have 
 yet to know. It binds me to the life I 
 have loved so well, while it is the path upon 
 which I travel away from it. It shines before 
 me but it shines behind me too. All I have 
 loved is mine. Past love and knowledge 
 were the gleams of this light’s leadings in 
 my life. It is Life, as I have known and de- 
 sired it—as I know and desire and pursue it 
 still. 
 
 June 29.—Morning comes. It is four 
 o’clock. 
 
86 IN THE SHADOW 
 
 A. matchless ecstasy of creeping dawn is 
 stealing over sky and roofs. 
 
 There is peace beyond peace, fulfilment be- 
 yond fulfilment, content incomparable in its 
 grey presence. 
 
 Now I have a hunger in my heart towards 
 that hidden, approaching, potent Mystery, 
 greater than any desire I ever knew towards 
 life. | 
 
 Oh, heart of joy—oh, gladness beyond 
 thought—might I capture it for ever and know 
 it mine—pain then would be nothingness, 
 would be but a passing jar of receding igno- 
 rance, in face of this. What have my days 
 become but God-given joy, when, at any sud- 
 den, unlooked-for moment, I may wake and 
 find myself in heaven? 
 
 If I were free, what could I do with free- 
 dom—but seek in all things the Joy that came 
 to me in captivity? 
 
 If it reached me in spoken words, or looked 
 out upon me from beloved eyes, or if it sprang 
 into my heart straight out of that vast mystery 
 enfolding life, with never a channel of expe- 
 rience to bear it to me, but only its sweetness 
 in my spirit to convince me of it—it would yet 
 be the same joy. It would be the supreme, 
 
IN THE SHADOW $7 
 
 inevitable, transcending aim of the life that 
 beats, beats in ceaseless desire within me. 
 
 There would be nothing else in all the world 
 to seek. 
 
 All things that ever lured could only fall 
 away or impede and trouble, confusing that one 
 aim by clamant call upon affinities I only long 
 to silence, now, for ever. 
 
 I look no more to life for freedom. 
 
 It would be captivity, not freedom, when, 
 with every dawn I know, the bonds that hold 
 me are snapping one by one. 
 
 Heart — hands — thoughts — desires — 
 aresiree: 
 
 Oh, Freedom of Eternity—endowment of 
 All. What piercing pain matters so that free- 
 dom comes? 
 
 Not I, but the bonds that hold me, are 
 pierced. 
 

 

 

 

 
| 
 
 il 
 
 | 
 | 
 
 <= 
 oO) 
 ep) 
 N 
 
 
 
 - ‘4 < Bh 
 : a5 
 . i fi + 4 ey o5 
 
 - | + | |