Only
a few daffodils and crocuses were in bloom, but she led me to the
rose garden, and told me that in the summer she could pick a great
basket of roses every day. I pictured Monica to myself, gathering
her roses on a breathless summer afternoon, and returned to the
house feeling like a battened version of the Reverend Laurence
Sterne. I knew that I had gathered all my roses, and I thought
regretfully of the chill loneliness of the world that lay beyond the
limits of this paradise. This mood lingered with me during tea, and it was not till that
meal was over that the miracle happened. I do not know whether it
was the Englishman or his wife that wrought the magic: or perhaps
it was Monica, nibbling "speculations" with her sharp white teeth;
but at all events I was led with delicate diplomacy to talk about
myself, and I presently realised that I was performing the
grateful labour really well. My words were warmed into life by an
eloquence that is not ordinarily mine, my adjectives were neither
commonplace nor far-fetched, my adverbs fell into their sockets
with a sob of joy. I spoke of myself with a noble sympathy, a
compassion so intense that it seemed divinely altruistic. And
gradually, as the spirit of creation woke in my blood, I revealed,
trembling between a natural sensitiveness and a generous
abandonment of restraint, the inner life of a man of genius. I passed lightly by his misunderstood childhood to concentrate my
sympathies on the literary struggles of his youth. I spoke of the
ignoble environment, the material hardships, the masterpieces written
at night to be condemned in the morning, the songs of his heart that
were too great for his immature voice to sing; and all the while I
bade them watch the fire of his faith burning with a constant and
quenchless flame. I traced the development of his powers, and
instanced some of his poems, my poems, which I recited so well that
they sounded to me, and I swear to them also, like staves from an
angelic hymn-book. I asked their compassion for the man who, having
such things in his heart, was compelled to waste his hours in sordid
journalistic labours. So by degrees I brought them to the present time, when, fatigued by
a world that would not acknowledge the truth of his message,
the man of genius was preparing to retire from life, in order to
devote himself to the composition of five or six masterpieces. I
described these masterpieces to them in outline, with a suggestive
detail dashed in here and there to show how they would be finished. Nothing is easier than to describe unwritten literary masterpieces
in outline; but by that time I had thoroughly convinced my audience
and myself, and we looked upon these things as completed books. The
atmosphere was charged with the spirit of high endeavour, of
wonderful accomplishment. I heard the Englishman breathing deeply,
and through the dusk I was aware of the eyes of Monica, the wide,
vague eyes of a young girl in which youth can find exactly what it
pleases. It is a good thing to be great once or twice in our lives, and that
night I was wise enough to depart before the inevitable anti-climax. At the gate the Englishman pressed me warmly by the hand and begged
me to honour his house with my presence again. His wife echoed the
wish, and Monica looked at me with those vacant eyes, that but a few
years ago I would have charged with the wine of my song. As I stood
in the tram on my way back to Brussels I felt like a man recovering
from a terrible debauch, and I knew that the brief hour of my pride
was over, to return, perhaps, no more. Work was impossible to a man
who had expressed considerably more than he had to express, so I went
into a café where there was a string band to play sentimental music
over the corpse of my genius. Chance took me to a table presided over
by a waiter I singularly detested, and the last embers of my
greatness enabled me to order my drink in a voice so passionate that
he looked at me aghast and fled. By the time he returned with my hock
the tale was finished, and I tried to buy his toleration with an
enormous _pourboire_. No; I will return to that house on the hill above Woluwe no more, not
even to see Monica standing on tiptoe to pick her roses. For I have
left a giant's robe hanging on a peg in the hall, and I would not
have those amiable people see how utterly incapable I am of filling
it under normal conditions. I feel, besides, a kind of sentimental
tenderness for this illusion fated to have so short a life. I am no
Herod to slaughter babies, and it pleases me to think that it lingers
yet in that delightful house with the books and the old furniture and
Monica, even though I myself shall probably never see it again, even
though the Englishman watches the publishers' announcements for the
masterpieces that will never appear. A Wet Day

As we grow older it becomes more and more apparent that our moments
are the ghosts of old moments, our days but pale repetitions of days
that we have known in the past. It might almost be said that after a
certain age we never meet a stranger or win to a new place. The
palace of our soul, grown larger let us hope with the years, is
haunted by little memories that creep out of corners to peep at us
wistfully when we are most sure that we are alone. Sometimes we
cannot hear the voice of the present for the whisperings of the past;
sometimes the room is so full of ghosts that we can hardly breathe. And yet it is often difficult to find the significance of these dead
days, restored to us to disturb our sense of passing time. Why have
our minds kept secret these trivial records so many years to give
them to us at last when they have no apparent consequence? Perhaps it
is only that we are not clever enough to read the riddle; perhaps
these trifles that we have remembered unconsciously year after year
are in truth the tremendous forces that have made our lives what they
are. Standing at the window this morning and watching the rain, I suddenly
became conscious of a wet morning long ago when I stood as I stood
now and saw the drops sliding one after another down the steamy
panes. I was a boy of eight years old, dressed in a sailor suit, and
with my hair clipped quite short like a French boy's, and my right
knee was stiff with a half-healed cut where I had fallen on the
gravel path under the schoolroom window, it was a really wet, grey
day. I could hear the rain dripping from the fir-trees on to the
scullery roof, and every now and then a gust of wind drove the rain
down on the soaked lawn with a noise like breaking surf. I could hear
the water gurgling in the pipe that was hidden by the ivy, and I saw
with interest that one of the paths was flooded, so that a canal ran
between the standard rose bushes and recalled pictures of Venice.