Dreams and delights

Title: Dreams and delights

Author: L. Adams Beck

Release date: January 14, 2023 [eBook #69786] Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1922

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69786

Credits: Al Haines, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

THE NOVELS OF

L. ADAMS BECK

The Key of Dreams

The Perfume of the Rainbow

The Treasure of Ho

The Ninth Vibration

The Way of Stars

The Splendour of Asia

Dreams and Delights

DREAMS

AND DELIGHTS

BY

L. ADAMS BECK

NEW YORK

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

1926

Copyright, 1920, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926

BY DODD, MEAD, & COMPANY, INC.

Printed in U. S. A.

THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS

BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK

PREFACE

These stories of dreams and delights in breathless jungles of Ceylon, among Himalayan mountains, by Chinese seas, in ancientries beneath dead suns and withered moons, are in truth the soul’s longing to behold the White Swan of the World when in dim twilights of dawn and evening she spreads her wings for flight. And because to such wings time and distance are nothing I have gathered one feather dropped on Dartmoor as she soared to Gaurisankar where on the highest peak of earth, circled by great stars, the Mystic Mother of India dreams her divine dream as the ages unroll beneath her feet. The Snowy Goddess, She who is Very Woman of very woman, knows that whether by Thames or Ganges, Mississippi, Yang-tze, or rolling Nile, Her daughters are the same, yesterday, to-day and for ever, and holding in their hands the hearts of men, so fulfil Her purpose. And because no true story can be told without this knowledge, I set Her name at the beginning of these dreams and delights, invoking devoutly the protection and inspiration of Her who is at once Eve and Lilith, Athene and

Aphrodite, Parwati and Kali, Virgin, Mother, and Destroyer, but in all forms and incarnations, Enchantress and Conqueror of men.

L. Adams Beck.

Canada.

“V. LYDIAT”

“V. LYDIAT”

She sat and looked at the signature written under the name of the story in readiness for typing.

“THE NINEFOLD FLOWER.”

It was a fine story, she knew, and the signature satisfied her also as it always did. V. is the most beautiful letter in the alphabet to write and look at, the ends curving over from the slender base like the uprush of a fountain from its tense spring. When she “commenced author,” as the eighteenth century puts it, she devoted days and days to the consideration of that pen-name. For several reasons it must not reveal identity. Most women prefer the highwayman’s mask when they ride abroad to hold up the public. It gives a freedom impossible when one is tethered to the responsibilities of name and family. One becomes a foundling in the great city of Literature and the pebble-cold eye of human relationship passes unaware over what would have stung it into anger or jealousy if it had held the key of the mystery. That is, if the secret is guarded as carefully as V. Lydiat’s.

But, for all I know, her strange reason for secrecy may never in this world have swayed man or woman before.

In reality she was Beatrice Veronica Law Leslie.

A mouthful indeed! You can make as many combinations with that as with the trick lock of a safe, and it will be as difficult to pick the secret. She had a strong superstition about keeping to her own initials, anagrammed or reversed and twisted. It seemed to her that this was part of a bond of honour of which another held the pledge. With this pen-name a most astonishing thing had befallen Beatrice Veronica Law Leslie, for she won a literary success so sudden and singular that the very management of it required a statesmanship she never before knew she possessed.

A little must here be said of her life that this strange thing may be understood. She was the only child of a well-known Oxford don and a somewhat remarkable mystically-minded mother who died when the girl was fourteen. Her father, after that loss, “tried life a little, liked it not, and died” four years later, and Beatrice Veronica who was known in her family as B. V. then betook herself to the guardianship of an aunt in Montreal. Here, she also tried life a little, on the society side, and certainly liked it not. There was an urge within her that cried aloud for adventure, for the sight of the dissolving glories of the Orient and contact with strange lives that called to her dumbly in books. They peeped and mocked and vanished to their unknown countries taking her longing with them, and life lay about her vapid, flat, dominated by an Aunt of Fashion.

She floated on a duck pond and sighed for the ocean. What is a young woman of spirit, not too beautiful to be dangerous, of small but sufficient means, to do in such a case? Beatrice Veronica knew very well.

She waited until she was twenty-one, meanwhile securing the allegiance of a girl, Sidney Verrier, in like case, an enthusiast like herself, and on a May morning of dreamy sweetness they got themselves into a C.P.R. train for Victoria, B. C., leaving two ill-auguring aunts on the platform, and away with them on a trip to the Orient via Japan. They were under bond to return in a year.

It was a wonderful, a heavenly experience—that wander-year of theirs. The things they saw, the men and women they met, the marvels which appealed to every sense! But I must not dwell on these for they are but the pedestal to the story of V. Lydiat.

A year! Impossible. Four, six, eight years went by and still unheeded aunts clamoured, and the pavements of Montreal lacked their footsteps.

And then, in Agra, Sidney Verrier married, and apologetically, doubtfully, dissolved the fair companionship, and Beatrice Veronica was left to solitude.

When the bridal car rolled off to the station and the honeymoon at Mussoori, she sat down and considered. She had not realized it until then. The ways of the world were open, for experience had made them plain. She had acquaintances, go where she would. There was no material reason why she should not continue this delightful nomad existence delightfully. But she was lonely, and suddenly it became clear to her that she wanted quiet, time, recollection. She had assisted at a great feast of the senses and had eaten to satiety.

Now—imperatively—something in her heart cried “Enough.”

Afterwards she wondered if that had been the voice of V. Lydiat crying in the wilderness. The note of preparation.

But where to go? Her aunt was still treading the daily round of bridge and luncheon parties in Montreal and the soul of Beatrice Veronica shuddered in the remembrance. No, no. The bird set free does not re-enter its gilded cage, however temptingly the little dish of seed is set forth. But she loved Canada for all that. She remembered, as she and Sidney Verrier had passed through the glorious giant-land of the Rockies, how broadly uplifted and vast had been the heights and spaces, how enormous the glee of the rivers tumbling from hidden sources, and they called her across far waters and beneath strange stars.

But could one live in such colossal companionship? Is it possible to dine and sleep and yawn in the presence of Gods and Emperors? There was the doubt. And then she remembered a shining city laving her feet in shining seas, with quiet gardens where the roses blush and bloom in a calm so deep that you may count the fall of every petal in the drowsy summer afternoons. A city of pines and oaks, of happy homes great and small,—a city above all, bearing the keys of the Orient at her golden girdle,—for it is but to step aboard a boat, swift almost as the Magic Carpet, and you wake one happy morning with all the dear remembered scents and sights before you once more. And her heart said “Victoria,”—where Westernmost West leans forward to kiss Easternmost East across the Pacific.

So she went there—now a woman of twenty-nine, self-possessed, and capable, and settled herself in a great hostelry to choose and build her home. Her home, mark you!—not her prison. It was not to be so large as to hamper flight when the inevitable call came—

Take down your golden wings now

From the hook behind the door,

The wind is calling from the East

And you must fly once more.

I wish I might write of the building of Beatrice Veronica’s home for it developed into one of the immense joys of her life. But more important things are ahead, so it must suffice to say that it was long, low and brown with sunny verandas and windows avid of sunshine, and that all the plunder of travel, and books, books, books found happy place in it and grew there as inevitably as leaves on a tree.

But it was while all this was in embryo that the thought of writing impressed itself on Beatrice Veronica. Partly because the house adventure was expensive and she wanted a larger margin, partly because she had seen with delighted interest and intelligence all the splendid spectacle of men and cities. Her sound knowledge of history and cultivated taste in literature should count for pebbles in the writer’s sling who goes forth to conquer the great Goliath of the public. She revolved this thought often as she walked by murmurous seas or nested in a niche of rock to watch the mountains opposite reflecting every change of sunlight as a soul in adoration reflects its deity. It really seemed a waste not to turn all this to some sort of account. And success would be sweet. But how to begin!

She bought an armful of the magazines which make gay the streets of Victoria. “I ought to be able to do this kind of thing,” she reflected. “I have a good vocabulary. Father always thought about eight thousand words, and that should go a long way. Besides I’ve seen nearly all there is to see. Let’s try.”

She did, and ended with more respect for the average author. The eight thousand were as unmanageable as mutineers or idiots. They marched doggedly in heavy columns, they right-about-faced and deployed; but there was no life in them. The veriest man-handler of a grizzly or a cow-boy could do better. Being a young person of quick insight and decision she decided to waste no more time in that direction. She laid away the magazines and decided to be a spectator with memory and hope for companions. She burned her manuscripts and turned her attention to planning her garden.

And it was then that V. Lydiat dawned on the horizon.

Dawned. That is the only word, for it came and the sun came after. It happened in this way.

One night, in the usual way Beatrice Veronica fell asleep and dreamed, but not in the usual way. She was standing by a temple she remembered very well in Southern India, the Temple of Govindhar. It stood there, under its palms wonderful as a giant rock of majolica, coloured lavishly in the hard fierce sunshine, monstrously sculptured with gods and goddesses, and mythical creatures of land and water in all the acts of their supernal life, writhing and tapering upwards to the great architectural crown supported by tigers and monkeys which finished the building,—a crown gemmed with worshipping spirits for jewels, a nightmare conception of violence in form and colour; the last barbaric touch to the misbegotten splendour. Vaguely the whole thing reminded Beatrice Veronica of her literary efforts and she stood among the palms looking up to the blaze against the blue and smiling a little.

Suddenly she became aware that a man was standing near the great gate which no unbeliever’s foot may pass, looking up also, shading his eyes with his hand from the intolerable sunlight. His face was sensitive and strong, an unusual blending, his eyes grey and noticeable. She liked his figure in the light tropical clothing. He had the air of birth and breeding. But he seemed wearied, as if the climate had been too much for him, a look one knows very well where the Peninsula runs down to Cape Cormorin, and the sun beats on the head like a mighty man of valour.

Then, as dream-people will, he came towards her as if they had known each other all their lives, and said, slowly, meditatively:

“I have tried and tried. I can’t do it.”

With a sense that she knew what he meant though she could not drag it to the surface, she found herself saying earnestly:

“But have you tried hard enough? Really tried?”

He put his hands to his forehead with a tired gesture:

“I’m always trying. But you could do it.”

She said, “Could I?” in great astonishment.

They stood a moment side by side, looking at each other and then as if from a blurred distance she heard his voice again.

“It was said long ago that if any creatures united their psychic forces they could conquer the world, though singly they could do nothing.”

Temple and palms dissolved into coloured mist; they swam away on another wave of dream and vanished. She floated up to the surface of consciousness again, awake, with the pale morning gold streaming in through the east window.

She knew she had dreamed, for a sense of something lost haunted her all day, yet could not remember anything, and things went on in their usual course.

That evening sitting in a corner of the hotel lounge, with the babble of music and talk about her, she had the irresistible impulse to write,—to write something; she did not in the least know what. It was so urgent that she walked quickly to the elevator and so to her sitting room, and there she snatched pen and paper and wrote the beginning of a story of modern life in India, but strangely influenced by and centring about the Temple of Govindhar. As she wrote the name she remembered that she had seen it among the palm trees in its hideous beauty, and now, like a human personality, it forced itself upon her and compelled her to be its mouthpiece.

How it happened she could not in the least tell. Certainly she had travelled, kept her ears and eyes open and learned as much as any woman can do who keeps on the beaten track in the Orient and consorts with her own kind in preference to the natives. The two worlds are very far apart—so far that nothing from below the surface can pass over the well-defined limits. Moreover she was not a learned woman,—Indian thought of the mystic order had never come her way, and Indian history except at the point where it touches European was a closed book. Therefore this story astonished her very much. She read it over breathlessly when it was finished. If she had had that knowledge when she was there how all the mysteries of the temple would have leaped to light—what drama, what strange suspense would have lurked in its monstrous form and colour! The critic in her brain who, standing aside, watched the posturing and mouthing of the characters, told her austerely that the work was good—excellent. But something behind her brain had told her that already. She

read it over ardently, lingeringly, with an astonishing sense of ownership yet of doubt. How had it come? And the writing? No longer did the eight thousand of her vocabulary march in dull squadrons, heavy-footed, languid. They sped, ran, flew, with perfect grace, like the dancers of princes. They were beautiful exceedingly. They bore the tale like a garland. She read it again and again, with bewildered delight.

She tapped it out herself on the keys of her Corona and sent it to the editor of a very famous magazine, with the signature of “V. Lydiat.” As I have said, that matter took long thought, prompted from behind by instincts.

It was done and V. Lydiat, a climbing star, shed a faint beam over the world. For the editor wrote back eagerly. He knew he had found a new flavour. “Your work impresses me as extremely original. I am anxious to see more of it. I need hardly say I accept it for the magazine and I shall hope to hear from you again before long.” A cheque followed.

No need to dwell on Beatrice Veronica’s feelings, mixed beyond disentanglement. She was not astonished that the work should be recognized as good, but—V. Lydiat! What had happened to her and how? Strange tales are told to-day of sudden brain-stimulations and complexes. Was she the happy victim of such an adventure, and if so, would it be recurrent? How should she know? What should she do? She felt herself moving in worlds not realized, and could not in the least decide the simple question of whether it was honest to accept commendation for a thing she felt in her very soul she had not done and could not do.

But then, who? What was V. Lydiat?

He, she, or it, came from starrier spheres than hers. Wings plumed its shoulders, while hers were merely becomingly draped in seasonable materials. She knew that the visitor was a subtler spirit, dwelling beyond the mysteries, saturated with the colour and desire of dead ages which can never die—an authentic voice, hailed at once by the few, to be blown at last on the winds of the soul which, wandering the world, let fall here and there the seeds of amaranth and asphodel.

Yes—V. Lydiat was entirely beyond her.

But you will understand that, though Beatrice Veronica could not enter into the secret places, it was a most wonderful thing to be amanuensis and business manager. To her fell the letters from editors and publishers, the correspondence which rained in from the ends of the earth, protesting gratitude, praise, entreaties for counsel in all things from routes to religions. These latter were the most difficult, for it would have taken V. Lydiat to answer them adequately. But Beatrice Veronica did the best she could, and her life moved onward aureoled and haloed.

She learned at last the rules of the game. V. Lydiat’s ethereal approach could only be secured by the wand of a fountain pen. She must sit thus armed with a fair sheet before her and wait, fixing her mind on some idle point of light or persistent trembling of leaves, and suddenly the world would pass miraculously from her and she would awake in another—an amazing world, most beautiful, brimming with romance, lit by suns of gallant men and moons of loveliest women. The great jewels of the Orient shed starry splendours, and ghostly creeping figures pursued them through jungles and mountain passes. Strange magics lurked in the dark and drew the soul along the Way of Wonder.

The strangest experience. It began always in the same way. The blue Canadian sky, the hyacinth gleam of the sea through oak and pine dissolved in unrealities of mist, and sultry Oriental skies, yellow as a lion’s eyes or the brazen boom of a gong, beat their fierce sunlight downward as from an inverted bowl. And then—then, she knew V. Lydiat was at hand. But never with companionship. It was a despot and entered in, with flags flying, to the annihilation of Beatrice Veronica. She wrote like a thing driven on a wind, and woke to find it done. The possession obliterated her, and when she could collect her routed forces it was gone.

So time went on and V. Lydiat’s fame was established and Beatrice Veronica wore it as a woman too poor to appear at Court with fitting magnificence shines in borrowed jewels and trembles to wear them.

One night in the moonlit warmth, with the vast Princesses of the Dark hidden in the ambush of breathless trees, she sat in the high veranda of her little house with the broad vista through pines to the sea.

It was a heavenly night; if the baby waves broke in the little bay they must break in diamonds,—the wet stones must shine like crystals.

That day V. Lydiat had transported her to a great and silent jungle in Cambodia and they went up together through the crowding whispering trees to the ruined palaces where once great kings dwelt, and passed together through sounding halls sculptured with dead myths to the chambers, once secret, whence queens looked forth languidly from wildly-carved casements into the wilderness of sweets in the gardens.