A Motley by John Galsworthy

Author:John Galsworthy [Galsworthy, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411440517
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

1903.

A PARTING

WHEN one is walking languidly under those trees where a few gold leaves are still hanging, and the scent of brown drying leaves underfoot, and the sweet, pungent scent of leaf bonfires is in the air, and the pursuing rustle of one's dog padding amongst leaf-mortality steals along close behind; then the beauty, and the pale, lingering sunshine, and the sadness are almost more than one can bear. It is all a wistful incarnation of the ghost that will sometimes visit even the sanest soul, with the words: Death! And then?

On such a day there is no refuge. It does not seem worth while to take interest in a world touched with mortality, it is even impossible to differentiate between the prosperous and the unfortunate; for the pleasures and pains of the body, riches and destitution, seem like twin sisters in the presence of that rustling of dead leaves. The pale candles of life are flickering, waiting to resign, and join darkness.

On such a day the sky is the greatest comfort a man can have; for though he feels terribly that it will never part, and let his eyes peer on and on till they see the top of eternity, still it is high, free, has a semblance of immortality, and perhaps is made up of all the spirit breath that has abandoned dead leaves and the corpses of men.

On such a day, when love, like a discouraged bird, moves her wings faintly, it is well to stand still, and look long at the sky. The haunting scents, the pursuing rustle, may then for a brief while become deserters; for up there it seems as though the wings of Harmony were still moving.

It was on such a day that in Kensington Gardens I saw the parting of two poor souls. They had been sitting side by side in the dim alley of chestnut trees which leads down past the Speke monument to the Serpentine—a tall, burly, bearded man, and a white wisp of a girl. There was nothing in any way remarkable about them; the man just an ordinary business type, the girl, probably, a governess. And they sat so motionless, talking in such low voices, that I had quite forgotten them; for on that day, the tide of interest in one's fellow creatures was at low ebb. But suddenly I became conscious that they had risen. Half-hidden by the trunk of the chestnut tree, whose few broad leaves were so like hands stretched out to the pale sunlight, they stood close together, indifferent to my presence; and there was that in the way they were looking at each other which made one's heart ache. Deep down in the eyes of both, life was surely dying—dying quietly as ever were leaves just about to fall. And I knew, as certainly as though all their little history had been made plain, that this was a last meeting. Some fatal force was severing them, and though neither confessed, both knew that it was forever.

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