You couldn’t stand anything else.
You’d get so tired of me.
You’ll forget this ever happened.
You’ll forget me.
You’ll forget — forget.”
“Forget!
I’ll never forget!
I won’t live long enough.”
“And I’ll never love any one else!
I’ll never leave you!
I’ll wait for you forever!
Oh, my child, my child!”
They clung together in that bright moment of wonder, there on the magic island, where the world was quiet, believing all they said.
And who shall say — whatever disenchantment follows — that we ever forget magic, or that we can ever betray, on this leaden earth, the apple-tree, the singing, and the gold?
Far out beyond that timeless valley, a train, on the rails for the East, wailed back its ghostly cry: life, like a fume of painted smoke, a broken wrack of cloud, drifted away.
Their world was a singing voice again: they were young and they could never die.
This would endure.
He kissed her on her splendid eyes; he grew into her young M?nad’s body, his heart numbed deliciously against the pressure of her narrow breasts.
She was as lithe and yielding to his sustaining hand as a willow rod — she was bird-swift, more elusive in repose than the dancing water-motes upon her face.
He held her tightly lest she grow into the tree again, or be gone amid the wood like smoke.
Come up into the hills, O my young love.
Return!
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again, as first I knew you in the timeless valley, where we shall feel ourselves anew, bedded on magic in the month of June.
There was a place where all the sun went glistening in your hair, and from the hill we could have put a finger on a star.
Where is the day that melted into one rich noise?
Where the music of your flesh, the rhyme of your teeth, the dainty languor of your legs, your small firm arms, your slender fingers, to be bitten like an apple, and the little cherry-teats of your white breasts?
And where are all the tiny wires of finespun maidenhair?
Quick are the mouths of earth, and quick the teeth that fed upon this loveliness.
You who were made for music, will hear music no more: in your dark house the winds are silent.
Ghost, ghost, come back from that marriage that we did not foresee, return not into life, but into magic, where we have never died, into the enchanted wood, where we still lie, strewn on the grass.
Come up into the hills, O my young love: return.
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
31
One day, when June was coming to its end, Laura James said to him:
“I shall have to go home next week.”
Then, seeing his stricken face, she added, “but only for a few days — not more than a week.”
“But why?
The summer’s only started.
You will burn up down there.”
“Yes.
It’s silly, I know.
But my people expect me for the Fourth of July.
You know, we have an enormous family — hundred of aunts, cousins, and inlaws.
We have a family reunion every year — a great barbecue and picnic.
I hate it.
But they’d never forgive me if I didn’t come.”
Frightened, he looked at her for a moment.
“Laura!
You’re coming back, aren’t you?” he said quietly.
“Yes, of course,” she said.