A Rose of Yesterday Part 20

And all her lost youth was in her as she lightly turned and went from him up the steps. Again he stood still, following her with his eyes, but an age had pa.s.sed, with Harmon's life, between that time and this.

He understood better, when he himself was alone, walking far on, through the damp wind, by the sh.o.r.e of the lake, past the big railway station, just then in one of its fits of silence, past the wooden piers built out into the lake for the steamers, and out beyond, not counting his steps, nor seeing things, with bent head, and one hand catching nervously at the breast of his coat.

He understood Helen, for he also had need of being alone to face the tremendous contrast of the hour and to digest in secret the huge joy he was ashamed to show to himself, because it was for the death of a man whose existence had darkened his own. Because Harmon was suddenly dead, the sleeping hope of twenty years had waked with deep life and strength.

Time and age were rolled away like a mist before the morning breeze, the world was young again, and the rose of yesterday was once more the lovely flower of to-day.

Yet he was too brave a man, and too good, to let himself rejoice cruelly in Harmon's death, any more than he would have gloried, in his younger days, over an enemy fallen in fight. But it was hard to struggle against this instinct, deep rooted and strong in humanity ages before Achilles dragged Hector round the walls of Troy. Christianity has made it mean to insult the dead and their memory. For what we call honour comes to us from chivalry and knighthood, which grew out of Christian doings when men believed; and though non-Christian people have their standards of right and wrong, they have not our sort of honour, nor anything like it, and cannot in the least understand it.

But Wimpole was made happy by Harmon's death, and he himself could not deny it. That was another matter, and one over which he had no control.

His satisfaction was in the main disinterested, being on Helen's behalf; for though he hoped, he was very far from believing that she would marry him, now that she was a widow. He had not even guessed that she had loved him long. It was chiefly because his whole nature had been suffering so sincerely for her sake during the long hours since he had read the paragraph in the paper, that he was now so immensely happy. He tried to call up again the last conversation in the dark, by the river; but though the words both he and she had spoken came back in broken echoes, they seemed to have no meaning, and he could not explain to himself how he could possibly have stood there, wrenching at the cold iron rail to steady his nerves, less than half an hour ago. It was incredible. He felt like a man who has been in the delirium of a fever, in which he has talked foolishly and struck out wildly at his friends, and who cannot believe such things of himself when he is recovering, though he dimly remembers them, with a sort of half-amused shame for his weakness.

Wimpole did not know how long he wandered by the lake in the windy darkness, before he felt that he had control of speech and action again and found himself near the bridge, going towards his hotel. It was less than half an hour, perhaps, but ever afterwards, when he thought of it, he seemed to have walked up and down all night, a hundred times past the railway station, a hundred times along the row of steamboat piers, struggling with the impression that he had no right to be perfectly happy, and fighting off the instinct to rejoice in Harmon's death.

But Helen had fled to her own room and had locked the door upon the world. To her, as to Wimpole, it would have seemed horrible to be frankly glad that her husband was dead. But she had no such instinct.

She had been dazed beyond common sense and speech by the sudden relief from the strain she had borne so strongly and bravely. She had been dazzled by the light of freedom as a man let out of a dark prison after half a lifetime of captivity. She had been half stunned by the instant release of all the springs of her nature, long forced back upon themselves by the sheer strength of her conscience. And yet she was sorry for the dead man.

Far away in her past youth she remembered his handsome face, his bright eyes, his strong vitality, his pleasant voice, and the low ringing tone of it that had touched her and brought her to the ruin of her marriage, and she remembered that for a time she had half loved him and believed love whole. She is a hard and cruel woman who has not a little pitiful tenderness left for a dead past,--though it be buried under a hideous present,--and some kind memory of the man she has called dear.

Helen thought of his face as he was lying dead now, white and stony, but somehow, in her kindness, it became the face of long ago, and was not like him as when she had seen him last. The touch of death is strangely healing. She had no tears, but there was a dim softness in her eyes, for the man who was gone; not for the man who had insulted her, tortured her, struck her, but for the husband she had married long ago.

The other, the incarnate horror of her mature life, had dropped from existence, leaving his place full of the light in which she was thereafter to live, and in the bright peace she saw Wimpole's face, as he waited for her.

In the midst of her thoughts was the enigmatic spectre of the world, the familiar tormentor of those with whom the world has anything to do--a vast, disquieting question-mark to their actions. What would the world say, when she married Wimpole?

What could it say? It knew, if it knew anything of her, that her husband had been little better than a beast--no better; worse, perhaps.

It knew that Wimpole was a man in thousands, and perhaps it knew that he had been faithful to her mere name in his heart during the best of his years. She had no enemies to cast a shadow upon her future by slurring her past.

Yet she had heard the world talk, and the names of women who had married old friends within the first year of widowhood were rarely untouched by scandal. She did not fear that, but in her heart there was a sort of unacknowledged dread lest Wimpole, who was growing old in patience, should be patient to the end out of some over-fine scruple for her fair name.

Then came the thought of her new widowhood and rebuked her, and with the old habit of fighting battles against her heart for her conscience, she turned fiercely against her long-silent love that was crying freedom so loudly in her ears. Harmon just dead, not buried yet, perhaps, and she already thinking of marriage! Said in those words, it seemed contemptible, though all her loyalty to her husband had been for a word's sake, almost since the beginning.

But then, again, as she closed her eyes to think sensibly, she set her lips to stay the smile at her scruples. Her loyalty had been all for the vow, for the meaning of the bond, for the holiness of marriage itself. It had not been the loyalty of love for Harmon, and Harmon being dead, its only object was gone. The rest, the mourning for the unloved dead, was a canon of the world, not a law of G.o.d. For decency, she would wear black for a short time, but in her heart she was free, and free in her conscience.

To the last, she had borne all, and had been ready to bear more. Her last word had gone at once, with the message of forgiveness he had asked, and though he had been dead before it reached him he could not have doubted her answer, for he knew her. If she had been near him, she would have been with him to the end, to help him, and to comfort him if she could. She had been ready to go back to him, and the letter that was to have told him so was already gone upon its fruitless journey, to return to her after a long time as a reminder of what she had been willing to bear. She could not reproach herself with any weakness or omission, and her reason told her plainly that although she must mourn outwardly to please the world, it would be folly to refuse her heart the thought of a happiness for which she had paid beforehand with half a lifetime of pain.

When that was all at once and unmistakably clear to her, she let her head sink gently back upon the cushion of the chair, her set lips parted, and she softly sighed, as though the day were done at last and her rest had come. As she sat there, the lines of sorrow and suffering were smoothed away and the faint colour crept slowly and naturally to her cheeks, as her eyes closed by slow degrees under the shaded light of the lamp. One more restful sigh, her sweet breath came slower and more evenly, one hand fell upon her knee with upward palm and loosened fingers that did not move again; she was asleep.

CHAPTER XIII

So ends the history of a day unforgotten in the memories of the men and women, young and old, for whom it chanced to be life's turning-point.

Looking back into the full, past years through which the fight has been fought, most of us still know one day and hour in which the tide of battle turned; we see the faces that rose up against us, and those that stood beside us in the struggle; we hear the words spoken which cheered us to the great charge, or turned our hearts cold and our daring to fear; even our bodily hearts, handfuls of wandering atoms of which not one is left in us from those times, answer the deep memory and beat loud, or fail, as those other atoms did in the decisive instant when one blow more meant victory, and one blow less, defeat.

Helen's last letter to her husband came back to her like a ghost, after many weeks, when she was going over Harmon's papers. There it lay, unopened, as she had sealed it, full of the words that had seemed to cost her life--the promise to pay a debt not justly owed, which no man could claim now. She burned it unread, for she knew every line of it by heart. To read it, even to glance at the writing, she thought, would rouse some pride in her for what she had done and stir a sort of gladness in her soul, because the man was dead and she was safe from him forever. She would not let herself feel such things. Unconsciously she had fought with herself for a principle, not, as most of us do, for the intimate satisfaction of having done right, which is in itself a reward, an object, and an aim for ambition, and therefore not wholly unselfish, not wholly n.o.ble, though often both high and worthy.

Right, as we understand it, is the law for each individual, the principle is for all mankind; and as the whole is greater than any of its parts, so is the principle greater than the law. The law says, "Whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." But the Blood which was shed for all men required of man no lawful avenging.

Moreover, law and all forms of law are only deductions made by the intelligence from the right instincts of the people's heart. Laws which are evolved out of existing circ.u.mstances, backwards, as it were, to correct bad results, are rarely anything more than measures of expediency and have not much lasting power. They are medicines, not nourishment for humanity--a cure for the sick, not a rule of life for the sound and whole.

When such enactments of law-givers tend against those impulses which spring from the roots of human feeling, taking into consideration the happiness of the few and not the good of the many, they are bad medicines for the world. The instant, quick release by divorce from all troubles, great and small, between man and wife, is no better than that other instant, quick relief from bodily pain, which is morphia, a material danger no longer at all dim or shadowy.

We are a cowardly generation, and men shrink from suffering now, as their fathers shrank from dishonour in rougher times. The Lotus hangs within the reach of all, and in the lives of many "it is always afternoon," as for the Lotus Eaters. The fruit takes many shapes and names; it is called Divorce, it is called Morphia, it is called Compromise, it is designated in a thousand ways and justified by ten thousand specious arguments, but it means only one thing: Escape from Pain.

Soft-hearted and weak-nerved people ask why humanity should suffer at all, and they hail every invention, moral or material, which can make life easier for the moment, as a heaven-sent blessing. Why should we be uncomfortable, even an hour, when a little dose of poison can create a lazy oblivion? That is the drunkard's reasoning, the opium-eater's defence, the invalid's excuse. It is no argument for men who call themselves the world's masters.

Civilization and Progress are not the same thing. We have too much progress and too little civilization nowadays. Progress is omnivorous, eager after new things, seeking above all to save trouble and get money.

Civilization is eclectic, slow, painstaking, wise, willing to buy good at the price it is worth. Civilization gave us marriage, in respecting which we are above animals. Progress is giving us divorce, wholesale, cheap, immoral, a degradation beneath that of those primitive peoples, who make no promises and break none, who do not set up right as a fashion and wrong as a practice, the truth for the ensign and the lie for the course.

Helen Harmon's existence turned out happily in the end. She was fortunate at last, before the love of life was gone. But for the accident of her husband's sudden death, she would have had to face her cruel difficulties to death's solution; and with her character she would not have been defeated, for she had on her side the acc.u.mulated force of all womanliness against the individual evil that was her familiar enemy.

Far should it be from the story-teller to draw a moral; furthest of all, that false moral that makes faith and truth and courage get worldly pay for their services--servants to be hired as guides and porters to happiness. In Helen's case it chanced that she got what she wanted.

Fate had spent its force against her, and peace was with her thereafter.

Even "poor Archie" found his vocation at last. The day that had meant so much to many had brought him a sort of awakening of mind, an increase of reason and a growth of character. His one strong instinct became a dominating force. He would save life, many lives, so long as he had strength. Sylvia would never care for him, of course; he said to himself that she should at least see what he could do. He remembered with constant longing the wild delight he had felt when he had brought the little child safely to the deck of the ferryboat on the North River, and when, bruised and bleeding, he had stopped the bolting horses in the New York street.

He unfolded his plan to the colonel first, because he was a man, and must understand; then he told his mother. There was nothing to be said against it, except that it was dangerous. He had made up his mind to join a Life-Saving Station on the coast. It was the one thing he could do, and he knew it.

"Of course," he said, with his elementary philosophy, "if I get drowned the first time, there won't be anything gained. But if I can help to save a few people before that, it won't matter so much, you know. It'll be like money, when you get something for it."

The rude bravery of the argument brought a look into Wimpole's eyes which had not been there for a long time. Helen had a lump in her throat.

"But if anything should happen to you--" she began, and stopped.

"Well, then," answered Archie, "I suppose I'd go to heaven, shouldn't I?

And that would be all right, just the same."

And thereupon he began to whistle thoughtfully. It was very simple in his eyes, and very desirable. Life seemed to him to be man's first and greatest possession, as it is. For him, its possibilities were small, but he had a dim perception of its value to others, whom he called "clever" in wholesale distinction from himself. It was worth having, worth keeping, and worth saving, for them, at the risk of his own.

As for Miss Rachel Wimpole, as soon as she heard of Harmon's death, she knew that her brother would marry Helen. She had systematically disapproved of his life-long devotion to a woman beyond his reach, while she had involuntarily respected in him the same unchanging faithfulness which had guarded her own heart against everything else for so many years, a little stronghold of no great importance to the rest of the world, but which held all that was most dear and precious to her. So here and there, in the chaos of the middle ages, some strong, poor gentleman, a mere atom in the wide Holy Empire, may have kept his small castle and his narrow acres of meagre land against all comers.

When Harmon was dead and gone, Miss Wimpole's disapprobation instantly disappeared, and she never at any time afterwards seemed to remember how she had felt about the matter during so many years. Wimpole approached her with some diffidence, and she met him with genuine enthusiasm. She was one of those rare people who can make others vicars of their happiness, so to say, whose place has been long darkened by sad clouds, but who see the sunshine far away on another's land and are glad for that other one's sake.

It is a sign of our times that a man whose fancy leads him now and then to make a story of characters almost ideal, should feel as if he owed his reader a sort of apology for so far disregarding the common fashion.

There must always be a conflict between the real and the ideal, between what we are told is knowledge and what our hearts tell us is truth, between the evil men do and the good which is beyond their strength, but not above their aspiration. And therefore the old question stands unanswered: Do most people wish to be shown what they are, or what they might be? In order to avoid the difficulty of replying, fashion comes forward and says to-day that art is truth, and infers that art must be accurate and photographic and closely imitative.

What has art to do with truth? Is not truth the imagination's deadly enemy? If the two meet, they must fight to the death. It is therefore better, in principle, to keep them apart, and let each survive separately with their uses. Two and two make four, says Truth. Never mind facts, says Art, let us imagine a world in which two and two make five, and see whether we can get anything pleasant, or amusing, out of the supposition. Let us sometimes talk about men and women who are unimaginably perfect, and let us find out what they would do with the troubles that make sinners of most of us, and puzzle us, and turn our hair grey.

Matter, says the mystic, is the inexhaustible source and active cause of all harm. Imagination can be altogether free from matter. That is what we mean by the ideal, and men may say what they will, it is worth having. A man must know the enemy against whom he is matched, if he hopes to win; he must know his adversary's fence, his thrusts and feints and parries. Truth will give him that knowledge. But beyond the enemy, and beyond victory over him, there is the aspiration, the hope, the aim of all life--and that is the ideal, if it is anything at all worth hoping; it is transcendent, outside of all facts and perhaps of any attainment, and only the imagination can ever tell us what it may be.

Yet those who guess at it, dwell on it and love it, and it comes to be the better part of their lives. The world holds two great cla.s.ses of mankind, artists and truth-seekers. There are millions of artists, there always have been, and there always will be. One in each million, perhaps, is born with the gift of creation and knows the tools of his trade by instinct, and works with them, as soon as he is old enough to think. The rest are not less artists, because they are not producers.

They have the same aspirations, the same longings, the same tastes, though they are not makers, as he is; and when he has finished his work, they look at it with eyes like his, and enjoy even more perfectly than he, for they see the expression of a thought like their own, while all that he could not express is hidden from them and does not disturb their satisfaction. Art for art's sake, if such a thing could be, would mean that the one man would work just as hard to give his imagination a shape, even if the rest of the million were not there to understand him.

But he knows that they are all living and that the ideal for which he labours is divine to them all, whether he fail or whether he succeed.