Prisoners Part 21

How heavy the book was on his knee.

He had not the energy to turn another page. Yes, he must. The doctor would be disappointed if he found the book open at the same place when he came back. One leaf. Come! He owed it to his friend. Just one leaf.

Were there English b.u.t.terflies here as well?

Yes. Here was a sheet of them.

He knew that little yellow one with red tips to its wings. It was common enough in the south of England.

He looked idly at it.

And somewhere out of the past, far, far back from behind the crystal screen of childhood, came a memory clear as a raindrop.

He remembered as a tiny child lying in the sun watching a b.u.t.terfly like that; watching it walk up and down on a twig of whortleberry, opening and shutting its new-born wings. It was the first time he had noticed how beautiful a b.u.t.terfly's wings were. His baby hand went out towards it. The baby creature did not fly, was not ready to fly. He grasped it, and laughed as he felt it flutter, tickling his hot little palms, closed over it. It gave him a new sense of power. Then he slowly pulled off its wings, one by one, because they were so pretty.

He remembered it as if it were yesterday, and the sudden disgust and almost fear with which he suddenly tossed away the little mutilated ugly thing with struggling legs.

The cruelty of it filled him even now with shamed pain.

"It was not I who did it," he said to himself "I did not understand."

And a bandage was removed from his eyes, and he looked down, as we look into still water, and he saw that Fay did not understand either. She had put out her hand to take him. She had pulled his wings off him. She had cast him aside. Perhaps she even felt horror of him now. But nevertheless she had not done it on purpose, any more than he had done it on purpose to that other poor creature of G.o.d. _She did not understand._

Her fair, sweet face, which he had shuddered at as at a leper's, came back to him, smiling at him with a soft reproach. Ah! It was a child's face. That was the secret of it all. That was one of the reasons why he had so worshipped it, that dear face. She had not meant to hurt him with her pretty hand.

Later on, some day, not in this world perhaps, but some far-off day she would come to herself, and, looking back, she would feel as he felt now at the recollection of his infant cruelty, only a thousand times more deeply. He hoped to G.o.d he might be near her when that time of grief came, to comfort her, to a.s.sure her that the pain she had inflicted had been nothing, nothing, that it did not hurt.

An overwhelming, healing compa.s.sion, such as he had never known in all the years of his great tenderness for Fay, welled up within his arid heart.

Michael's racked soul was steeped in a great peace and light!

Time and time again his love for Fay had been wounded nearly to the death, and had been flung back bleeding upon himself. He had always enfolded it, and withdrawn it, and cherished it anew in a safer place.

A love that has been thus withdrawn and protected does not die. It shrinks home into the heart, that is all. Like a frightened child against its mother, it presses close and closer against the Divine Love that dwells within us, which gave it birth. At last the mother smiles, and takes her foolish weeping child, born from her body, which has had strength from her to wander away from her--back into her arms.

CHAPTER XVII

And no more turn aside and brood Upon Love's bitter mystery.

--W. B. YEATS.

It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell that was slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep in the old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than the ruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand.

Old age ceases to understand.

But some there are among us who have pa.s.sed beyond childhood, beyond youth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps and gives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at their zenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour.

Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behind them, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into the world to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them, call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell might wake. But if they meet love, even on an Easter morning, and when they are looking for him, they mistake him for the gardener. They can only be loved and served. They cannot love--as yet. They exact love and miss it. They feel their urgent need of its warmth in their stiffening, frigid lives. Sometimes they gain it, lay their cold hand on it, a.n.a.lyse it, foresee that it may become an incubus, and decide that there is nothing to be got out of it after all.

They seem inhuman because they are not human--as yet. They seem variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's body and brain must so seem. They are not sane--as yet.

And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truth and beauty and tenderness may not come forth--as yet.

We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to them now may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew like half-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes.

Michael knew this without knowing that he knew it. His mind arrived unconsciously at mental conclusions by physical means. But in the days that followed, while his mind remained weak and wandering, he was supported by the illusion--was it an illusion--that it was Fay really who was in prison, not himself, and that he was allowed to take her place in her cell because she would suffer too much, poor little thing, unless he helped her through.

He became tranquil, happy, serene. He felt no regret when he was well enough to resume the convict-life, and the chains were put on him once more. Did he half know that Fay's fetters were heavier than his, that they were eating into her soul, as his had never eaten into his flesh?

When he sent her a message the following spring that he was happy, it was because it was the truth. Desire had rent him and let him go--at last. Vague, inconsequent and restful thoughts were Michael's.

His body remained feeble and emaciated. But he was not conscious of its exhaustion. His mind was at peace with itself.

CHAPTER XVIII

What she craved, and really felt herself ent.i.tled to, was a situation in which the n.o.blest att.i.tude should also be the easiest.--EDITH WHARTON.

On a stormy night, towards the end of March, Magdalen was lying awake listening to the wind. Her tranquil mind travelled to a great distance away from that active, monotonous, daily life which seemed to absorb her, which had monopolised her energies but never her thoughts for so many years past.

Suddenly she started slightly and sat up. A storm was coming. A tearing wind drowned all other sounds, but nevertheless she seemed to listen intently.

Then she slowly got out of bed, lit her candle, stole down the pa.s.sage to Fay's door, and listened again. No sound within. At least none that could be distinguished through the trampling of the wind over the groaning old house.

She opened the door and went in. A little figure was crouching over the dim fire, swaying itself to and fro. It was Fay.

Magdalen put down her candle, and went softly to her, holding out her arms.

Fay raised a wild, wan face out of her hands and said harshly:

"Aren't you afraid I shall push you away again like I did last time?"

Then with a cry she threw herself into the outstretched arms.

Magdalen held the little creature closely to her, trembling almost as much as Fay.

Outside the storm broke, and beat in wild tears against the pane.

Within, another storm had broken in a pa.s.sion of tears.

Fay gasped a few words between the paroxysms of sobbing.

"I was coming to you, Magdalen,--I was trying to come--and I couldn't--I had pushed you away when you came before--and I thought perhaps you would push _me_ away--no--no--I didn't, but I said to myself you would.

I hardened myself against you. But I was just coming, all the same because--because,"--Fay's voice went thinner and thinner into a strangled whimper, "because I can't bear it alone any more."