Chapter VII

The White People

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

"The feeling you call The Fear has never come to me," I said to
her. "And if it had I think it would have melted away because of a
dream I once had. I don't really believe it was a dream, but I call
it one. I think I really went somewhere and came back. I often
wonder why I came back. It was only a short dream, so simple that
there is scarcely anything to tell, and perhaps it will not convey
anything to you. But it has been part of my life--that time when I
was Out on the Hillside. That is what I call The Dream to myself,
`Out on the Hillside,' as if it were a kind of unearthly poem. But
it wasn't. It was more real than anything I have ever felt. It was
real--real! I wish that I could tell it so that you would know how
real it was."

I felt almost piteous in my longing to make her know. I knew
she was afraid of something, and if I could make her know how real
that one brief dream had been she would not be afraid any more. And
I loved her, I loved her so much!

"I was asleep one night at Muircarrie," I went on, "and
suddenly, without any preparatory dreaming, I was standing out on a
hillside in moonlight softer and more exquisite than I had ever seen
or known before. Perhaps I was still in my nightgown--I don't know.
My feet were bare on the grass, and I wore something light and white
which did not seem to touch me. If it touched me I did not feel it.
My bare feet did not feel the grass; they only knew it was beneath
them.

"It was a low hill I stood on, and I was only on the side of it.
And in spite of the thrilling beauty of the moon, all but the part I
stood on melted into soft, beautiful shadow, all below me and above
me. But I did not turn to look at or ask myself about anything. You
see the difficulty is that there are no earthly words to tell it!
All my being was ecstasy--pure, light ecstasy! Oh, what poor words--
But I know no others. If I said that I was happy--happy! --it would
be nothing. I was happiness itself, I was pure rapture! I did not
look at the beauty of the night, the sky, the marvelous melting
shadow. I was part of it all, one with it. Nothing held me nothing!
The beauty of the night, the light, the air were what I was, and I
was only thrilling ecstasy and wonder at the rapture of it."

I stopped and covered my face with my hands, and tears wet my
fingers.

"Oh, I cannot make it real! I was only there such a short,
short time. Even if you had been with me I could not have found
words for it, even then. It was such a short time. I only stood and
lifted my face and felt the joy of it, the pure marvel of joy. I
only heard myself murmuring over and over again: `Oh, how beautiful!
how beautiful! Oh, how beautiful!'

"And then a marvel of new joy swept through me. I said, very
softly and very slowly, as if my voice were trailing away into
silence: `Oh--h! I--can--lie--down--here--on--the grass--and--sleep
. . . all--through--the night--under--this--moonlight. . . . I can
sleep --sleep--'

"I began to sink softly down, with the heavenliest feeling of
relaxation and repose, as if there existed only the soul of beautiful
rest. I sank so softly--and just as my cheek almost touched the
grass the dream was over!"

"Oh!" cried Mrs. MacNairn. "Did you awaken?"

"No. I came back. In my sleep I suddenly found myself creeping
into my bed again as if I had been away somewhere. I was wondering
why I was there, how I had left the hillside, when I had left it.
That part was a dream--but the other was not. I was allowed to go
somewhere--outside--and come back."

I caught at her hand in the dark.

"The words are all wrong," I said. "It is because we have no
words to describe that. But have I made you feel it at all? Oh!
Mrs. MacNairn, have I been able to make you know that it was not a
dream?"

She lifted my hand and pressed it passionately against her
cheek, and her cheek, too, was wet--wet.

"No, it was not a dream," she said. "You came back. Thank God
you came back, just to tell us that those who do not come back stand
awakened in that ecstasy--in that ecstasy. And The Fear is nothing.
It is only The Dream. The awakening is out on the hillside, out on
the hillside! Listen!" She started as she said it. "Listen! The
nightingale is beginning again."

He sent forth in the dark a fountain--a rising, aspiring
fountain--of golden notes which seemed to reach heaven itself. The
night was made radiant by them. He flung them upward like a shower
of stars into the sky. We sat and listened, almost holding our
breath. Oh! the nightingale! the nightingale!

"He knows," Hector MacNairn's low voice said, "that it was not a
dream."

When there was silence again I heard him leave his chair very
quietly.

"Good night! good night!" he said, and went away. I felt
somehow that he had left us together for a purpose, but, oh, I did
not even remotely dream what the purpose was! But soon she told me,
almost in a whisper.

"We love you very much, Ysobel," she said. "You know that?"

"I love you both, with all my heart," I answered. "Indeed I
love you."

"We two have been more to each other than mere mother and son.
We have been sufficient for each other. But he began to love you
that first day when he watched you in the railway carriage. He says
it was the far look in your eyes which drew him."

"I began to love him, too," I said. And I was not at all
ashamed or shy in saying it.

"We three might have spent our lives together," she went on.
"It would have been a perfect thing. But--but--" She stood up as if
she could not remain seated. Involuntarily I stood up with her. She
was trembling, and she caught and held me in her arms. "He cannot
stay, Ysobel," she ended.

I could scarcely hear my own voice when I echoed the words.

"He cannot--stay?"

"Oh! the time will come," she said, "when people who love each
other will not be separated, when on this very earth there will be no
pain, no grief, no age, no death--when all the world has learned the
Law at last. But we have not learned it yet. And here we stand!
The greatest specialists have told us. There is some fatal flaw in
his heart. At any moment, when he is talking to us, when he is at
his work, when he is asleep, he may--cease. It will just be ceasing.
At any moment. He cannot stay."

My own heart stood still for a second. Then there rose before
me slowly, but clearly, a vision--the vision which was not a
dream.

"Out on the hillside," I murmured. "Out on the hillside."

I clung to her with both arms and held her tight. I understood
now why they had talked about The Fear. These two who were almost
one soul were trying to believe that they were not really to be torn
apart--not really. They were trying to heap up for themselves proof
that they might still be near each other. And, above all, his effort
was to save her from the worst, worst woe. And I understood, too,
why something wiser and stronger than myself had led me to tell the
dream which was not a dream at all.

But it was as she said; the world had not learned the Secret
yet. And there we stood. We did not cry or talk, but we clung to
each other--we clung. That is all human creatures can do until the
Secret is known. And as we clung the nightingale broke out again.

"O nightingale! O nightingale!" she said in her low wonder of a
voice. "What are you trying to tell us!"