Robert Orange Part 14

It was altogether a terrible crisis. How she should struggle through all the parts of it, or what she should be when it was over, she could not trust herself to say. The world seemed too heavy a burden to be fought against. Yet with what thoughts and aspirations and earnest prayers she had stood by Brigit's side at the altar rails. She had been given a supernatural strength for the marriage ceremony. She was by nature and before all things, from first to last, unalterably a good friend, and at that moment of intensest difficulty the sight of Robert's happiness had made her oblivious to every other consideration. Glad tears had risen to her eyes. She had been swayed by one feeling--a deep, sincere thankfulness that his love-story, which had promised sorrow only from the very beginning, was ending, unexpectedly, so well. She might have feared that he was changing one form of unhappiness for another, but she knew his impatient spirit, and, knowing it, she could not imagine that any earthly pain could try him so sorely as a lifelong separation from the one woman he loved--loved to the pitch of madness.

And then--in one moment--the strange tidings came which drove her from the stupor of resignation to fevers of anxiety more consuming than any she had ever felt before. A great flame, successive flames, of terror swept over her, as she feigned placid sleep in the little cabin, at the thought of the news poor Reckage would have to break on the morrow. How would Robert bear it? That he would act a n.o.ble and true part she could not doubt. But at a certain degree of suffering, the strongest man can think of nothing except himself, and she felt already, in antic.i.p.ation, the dumb torture she would have to endure in looking on, helpless and unnoticed, at an agony which she could neither share nor relieve. The fear of losing him had been dreadful, but it was even more dreadful to know that although she might have, after all, a certain right now to offer him sympathy, she could never make him happy, that she could never hope to learn the secret regrets, griefs, and torments, the unspoken broodings which would surely enough prey upon his spirit. She pictured herself sitting at his side, or walking with him, for hours--he absorbed in his own sorrowful thoughts, she striving vainly to distract him by a tinkling prattle on every topic except the one nearest his heart. Oh, how fearfully wide asunder they were! A sensation of the enormous distance which can exist between two souls in daily companionship filled her with a sickening, shivering heaviness. She thought she would have to cry out because of the slow fire which seemed to scorch her dry and aching eyes. Robert would never really need her, never really care about her. This new trouble would take him farther away than ever. He would burn all his ships, and any poor little tenderness he might have had in the past for her, with them. Some great revulsion would take place in his character; he would perhaps grow silent, reserved, enigmatic, his face would show to the world the terrible, false, unknowable peace which is the veil of the dead. It was useless to smooth her difficulties which existed. It was foolish and wrong to encourage herself in unreal ideas about him. It was best always to be straightforward and admit the truth--no matter how bitter. And yet he had been kind and helpful to her in a way in which scarce any one else could have been. She clung to the belief that she would be able to do something to make his hour of trial less severe. The hope which insinuates itself into every unrequited love still lingered. He could at least always talk to her about Brigit: that common memory would be a constant link between them. She had earned his esteem, and perhaps with his esteem an affection deeper than he himself realised. Under the pressure of a sudden and tragical necessity, he would turn to her with the certainty that she would not fail him. She was modest enough about her own powers. A remark she had once heard Reckage pa.s.s, to the effect that religious women of devoted lives were unhappily conspicuous, as a rule, for feebleness of mind and strength of prejudice, haunted her as a kind of doom from which there was no appeal.

She knew, too, the verdict usually pa.s.sed on those of either s.e.x who have the courage to maintain an unselfish att.i.tude whether toward G.o.d or some fellow-creature. But here she comforted herself by deciding that her utter isolation in this universe rested on the fact that she did not much deserve to be loved by anybody. This granted--not without a pang--she felt the signs of weariness in her heart, but none of wavering. She resolved to be foolish in the eyes of the self-satisfied.

Lord Reckage meanwhile was pacing the deck. His conversation with Pensee had cast a darkness over his spirit. He had made up his mind, weeks before, that the marriage years of his life would be the best, the most distinguished, and most useful. With the utmost pains he had chosen a wife. He had acted with the greatest caution in no weak or superficial, or haphazard, or fitful way. Nevertheless, the outlook was dismal. This first step in decline from his ideal caused him much pain and restlessness, and led him to think cynically of many doctrines to which, in serene moments, he had unconditionally subscribed. He compared his own case with Robert's. Robert, in his headstrong pa.s.sion, had certainly rattled up sleeping lions, heedless of all consequences, and in defiance of every warning. He had now met, poor fellow, with an appalling chastis.e.m.e.nt, but could any one pretend that he had not brought it, to a great extent, upon himself? He (Reckage), however, had behaved, from first to last, in an unexceptionable manner. He had studiously avoided the one girl of whom he was inclined to be immoderately fond. It was true that he had practised this restraint less in her interest than his own. But this was because he feared--as every creature will fear by instinct its mortal enemy--the power of an ardent attachment. His mind had revolted in a panic at the thought of becoming dependent on a woman's humours. The n.o.blest of the s.e.x were capricious, and far and away the best course was to select a partner whose unavoidable nonsense would leave one, merely from indifference, undisturbed. Sara de Treverell, in the past, had been, by her vagaries, directly responsible for several sleepless nights, and a sleepless night was one of the few things he simply could not stand. Thoughts of her had seemed to unfit him for his work, to weaken his nerves, to act, in various ways, to his disadvantage. She had been exacting in her demands upon his nature. They were not uttered demands, or demands which he could formulate, but he had been conscious of them always. He had been obliged to pause and ask himself at every thought, at every step--"What would Sara say to this?"

It was a tyranny--if not a species of witchcraft. And so he had determined to see her no more. Following the usual, most correct method in such procedures, he went abroad. After a week of irritating meditations, furtive, all but unconquerable desires, after he had pa.s.sed the day on which it had been his custom for months to call upon her, after he had learned how to discipline the hours he had used to spend riding with her in the Row, he felt as a convalescent after some exhausting malady--quiescent, dulled, possessed by a drowsy stupidity, inaccessible to any serious emotion. He was cured of his fancy, although no effort of will could protect the soreness of the bruise. He had persevered in his course of treatment--congratulating himself, at the end, on his escape from a dangerous obsession. The picture of Sara grew paler and paler before his eyes--indeed, it seemed to fade all too quickly, and, with the perversity of consistent egoism, he felt many twinges of sadness to think that he had forgotten her so soon. His vanity would have preferred a longer combat--for even the most shallow admit the romantic admirableness of an obstinate love. Still, what could he ask better than this triumph over a cruel, an obstructive memory? He had regained, so he believed, his old independence as the man of action, energetic, self-controlled, moved by one pa.s.sion only, and that the finest of all--ambition. In surveying once more the great design of his career, he found it an effort to bring up--from the far recesses of his experience--the poor little sentimental episode, so insignificant and commonplace, which, in a kind of aberration, he had taken for an affair of the heart. He returned to England. He threw himself with vigour into the questions which were then disturbing Churchmen. He revived a touching acquaintance with Agnes Carillon, an acquaintance which was peculiarly soothing to his preoccupied mind. Here was a girl, he thought, who could be a fit helpmate. She asked for nothing, absorbed nothing, and gave a great deal of gentle, kind companionship when he wanted it. When he did not want it, she understood perfectly--possessing, in an eminent degree, the rare domestic art of being able to make herself scarce--alike in his thoughts and his engagements. The truths did not occur to him that a woman in love could never have been so unnaturally prudent, or that a woman whom he loved could not have interested him so slightly. He took great pride in her perfect skin and hair and eyes, in her beautiful, graceful, and gracious manners, but his soul never kindled at her approach, his pulse beat no slower at her departure. He requited her agreeableness with respect. And so they had become engaged--to the unbounded gratification of all his relatives, amidst the congratulations of his friends. There seemed a certain shadowiness in his conception of their future existence together as man and wife: something which he recognised as an interior voice chimed in, from time to time, with provoking interrogations, mostly unanswerable. A plaintive need of happiness, melancholy, obscure, but recurrent, mixed in his fluctuating thoughts. Finally, it pursued him, haunted him, and caught him with the strange tenacity of an incorporeal grasp. Sara, now dethroned from her place of power, loomed in all his dreams. Irresistibly, he was drawn toward the forbidden recollection of her delightfulness. There seemed no longer any danger in these musings.

He had entrusted his actual life to the safe-keeping of the nicest woman he had ever known. Where then was the harm in harking back, merely in reverie, to the frivolous, amusing phantom of a renounced sentiment?

Yet, after a reverie of the kind, why did he often wonder how he and Agnes could look in one another's faces and pretend to any sort of real intimacy? Sara knew him better than he knew himself. Her sympathy ran into a hundred sinuosities--she understood his silence as well as his conversation. He was never conscious of the smallest strain, the least dissimulation, in her society. Beneath their curious disparities an ident.i.ty seemed to unite them. There was an unrepenting quality in her conscience which braced and stimulated his moral courage. Agnes, on the contrary, with her instinct of behaviour, made him over-cautious and encouraged the tendency to indecision which interfered with the comfortable balance of his soul. And he wished his faculties to work with astronomic punctuality. It is certain, however, that he would have accepted his choice as a thing settled beyond any readjustment, but for the news of the Duke of Marshire's proposal, and the sight of Sara herself on the fatal afternoon when he was feeling especially forlorn.

She had thrown him a glance in which defiance, disdain, and an indistinct affection were blended in one provoking dart. He was a moralist who believed that there is always, between men and women, the dormant principles of mistrust and hatred. He had discussed this theory frequently with Robert, who found the notion as repulsive as it was false. But it seemed a truth beyond contradiction to Reckage, who possessed, in his own mind, constant irrefutable testimony in support of the view. Sara had never before defied him. She had never before seemed to feel her power as a creature incomparably superior in brilliancy to all the other girls in their circle. She had never before seemed to pity him as a man who had feared to do what Marshire--a being considered remarkable only for his family and his fortune--had boldly, gladly volunteered to carry out to the ultimate consequence. That glance pierced his self-love, his pride, his will. After his long hesitations, after the wearisome, interminable debates between his judgment and his inclination, he decided suddenly, all at once, without further reflection, that he no longer belonged to himself. He was the slave once more of doubts, fears, and temptations. His excited nerves and troubled senses a.s.serted their right to be regarded as threads, at least, in the web of destiny. From the hour of that chance encounter in the Park, till he and Sara met at Lord Garrow's that day, he had not been able to escape from the inexorable cruelty of an ill-used pa.s.sion, once more, in full command. Every individual has his rule--could one but find it out--and a rule to which there are no exceptions. With Reckage it was simple enough: he invariably followed the line of his own glory. The distress he suffered--really, and not colourably--took its rise from the intervention of Marshire. He felt as a racing man feels when he sees a friendless horse, which he might have purchased, beat the Derby favourite by some three lengths and a half. He winced at the suspicion that he had committed an error in judgment, and lost a great opportunity. The words of Sir Piers Harding on the subject of audacity in love had fallen on his ears with startling force. It was an ill.u.s.tration of that old saying--"The appet.i.te, the occasion, and the ripe fruit." Convinced now that his reputation, his career, and his comfort depended on his conduct toward Sara, all hesitation left him. He would have to drive Marshire, in confusion, from the field, and bear away the prize himself. Pensee's observations with regard to Agnes had cleared away most, if not all, of his difficulties in that particular quarter. No one had ever accused him of cowardice. Whenever he took refuge in procrastination or deceit, it was never because he was afraid, but in order that nothing might interfere with the purpose he had in hand. The growing miseries of the situation which he saw, already in part, served only to augment the violence of his resolve. His vanity forbade him to believe that Agnes would not suffer very much when he told her, as he intended, that they had both mistaken a profound esteem--based on reason--for love, which, as all the world admits, is something remote indeed from one's will and one's power. He was desirous to remain her friend, but he could not, without insincerity--and by G.o.d's grace, he would not--continue longer in a position which was false in itself and an injustice to each of them. He proposed to dwell very frankly, but in deep sadness, on the fact that although their engagement had been a seeming success--outwardly--the success had been by no means proved either to his satisfaction, or, he ventured to think, to hers.

He would pray that she would not consider herself under any restraint in speaking freely to him, from her heart, at all times. He hoped that the inevitable criticism of malicious or ignorant persons would never shake her faith in his unwavering loyalty, his singular desire for her happiness. On the other hand, he did not wish to involve her in justifying his action to the world. There was no call for that. She might be a.s.sured that he would do as little as possible to protract the agony--he used the word advisedly--of their separation. He believed it would be the best way--if G.o.d gave them the ability--not to meet until they had trained themselves to the peaceful, sweet relationship of their first acquaintance. All this and more he composed and turned over in his mind as he paced the deck. His eyes frequently filled with tears, and he thought how little, how fearfully little, he had ever suspected this severance from a n.o.ble life with which he had wished most earnestly to join his own. He was unhappy according to the measure of his capacity, and he was genuine in so far as he regretted the necessary suffering of the innocent with the guilty. But guilt is in the intention, and he could say, with truth, that he had never intended to give pain, or to make trouble, in his life.

CHAPTER XI

The Southampton steamer approached St. Malo about three o'clock on the following afternoon. Robert and Brigit had spent the night on deck--it was better than going below into the close, dreary cabin--and so they counted the stars, and kept their gaze, through the vast reaches of atmosphere, for the first sight of land. The moon, then at its full strength, lit up the whole blue dome above them, and cast its glancing, silver path upon the water--a path which the ship ever crossed but never followed. On and on they sped, and, as their ears grew accustomed to the monotonous churning of the paddle-wheels, the silence seemed intense.

The splendour of the night made sleep, to minds as pa.s.sionate as theirs toward all manifestations of the world's beauty, impossible. Unconscious of any particular thought, they shared a dreamless reverie which was so perfect in its rest and so complete in its still contentment that they did not know that they were resting, nor could they realise that such sweet hours, even as bitter ones, do not loiter in their pa.s.sing or come again. Soon enough Robert saw himself very far gone from the undissembled sternness of his old resolutions. If he could but be rid of that altogether! He thought he had obtained a mystic recognition of the terrorless but uncommunicating Joy of life which while men live they pursue, desiring it with the one human craving which survives every misfortune, every thwarted hope, all enslavement of the heart's small freedom--the thirst for happiness. Was man, whom G.o.d had made in His own Image, but a shadow on the unstable wind? Could it be true that he came in with vanity and departed in darkness, his soul bereft of G.o.d, knowing not his time, finding not the work that is done under the sun, born to companion worms in the dust? Should he remain unresisting and without influence on the decision of his own destiny? Yet he remembered the precept of Christ: "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it"--words which put forth a great mystery, perhaps a warning. Plainly, in all that a man could bring to the world, or take from it, there was vanity and death; but many things were vain merely because they were not eternal, and many things perished because where life is, change must be. Immutable, permanent possessions were the gifts of G.o.d to men. But the gifts of men to G.o.d would always be imperfect--whether they offered the sacrifice of their wills or their imagined earthly happiness. Yet if this imperfection were a mean one, something less grand than the immeasurable sanct.i.ty of Divine strength made human and therefore sorrowful, therefore not omnipotent, therefore liable to error--where then was the merit of renouncing a manhood already too squalid to be endured, friends that were phantoms, loves that were lies, joys that were void promises invented by the cruel for the disappointment of the foolish? He looked down at Brigit, who, wrapped in her furs, was stretched out by his side, her beautiful, child-like countenance turned toward him, smiling in faith and deep unspeakable tenderness. He could hear her tremulous breath and catch the fragrance of her face, which, in the moonlight, seemed as white and delicate as a cloud. The knowledge that she belonged to him at last entered into his heart, his blood, his brain, his thoughts, became the very life within his life--an element which was neither wholly love nor wholly pa.s.sion, but a necessity from which he could not depart and without which he would cease to be. All men need to have near them, allied in close a.s.sociation with them, either a force to strengthen their weakness or else a weakness which insists upon some demonstration of their strength. In conceivable circ.u.mstances it might be a duty to dissever such a bond; it might be a duty to die of starvation rather than steal a loaf, and, as death would ultimately quench the craving stomach, so a broken soul, in time, would cease lamenting for its maimed energy. Let heart-sickness pa.s.s beyond a certain bitter-point and the heart loses its life for ever. Had Robert's marriage been impossible, had he decided, on that account, to go away from Brigit's influence, had he vowed, in some paroxysm of despair, to see her no more, to pluck out his eye--to forget her--what would have happened? Would he have been able to say to himself at the end of three years, seven years, nine years, "I did my duty. I have my reward"? Is it so easy even to acquiesce in the great bereavements caused naturally, against our will, by death? Does one ever, in the hidden depths of the mind, mistake the cinders of a consumed anguish for the stars of peace?

A man need not be a prophet in order to foresee the effect of certain measures on his own character. Indeed, if self-knowledge be not regarded as a sentinel to the judgment, its laborious acquisition would be worth the travail of no honest will. Gained, it remains like an interdict upon all undertakings, projects, ambitions, setting forth clearly all that one may, or may not, attempt in common life, and, above all, in heroism--heroism understood truly, not the false ideals of idle, untaxed sentiment. Robert shrank from examining the sharpest nail of the several which had been piercing his heart for weeks--from the day when he had first received the news of Parflete's death. Had he not often suspected, until then, that, for some reason, he had been called to renounce the hope of marriage? True, he had never been certain of this, and, certainly, the chain of events, even considered without prejudice, seemed altogether favourable to an opposite view. His resolution had been to remain single so long as he could not marry the woman of his choice. Firmly enough he had taken his stand on that ground, realising to the utmost every difficulty to be encountered, every interest to be thrown aside, from the exigencies of such a position. The misunderstandings which would arise, the restraint, the loneliness, the possible morbidity of his own feeling, the sure absence of charity in all outside criticism of his conduct, were not overlooked or under-estimated by a man so versed as himself in the tariff of the market-place. He had known full well that his decision, robbed of its romantic and picturesque motives, would affect very seriously every step in his career, and influence, as only violence to one's human affections can influence, his character, his mode of thought, his whole view of life and his work in life. This he had known--known, that is to say, as much as anything may be known of a plan not yet executed and destined to a slow accomplishment which finds its final seal of success or failure neither in this existence nor in death, but beyond the grave. Now, however, that the exterior obstacles to a happier scheme were apparently removed, the more formidable opposition of his own secret ideals stirred ominously in his conscience. Men's designs are never so indefinite and confused as when they meet with no outward resistance. A close attack has proved the salvation of most human wills and roused the energy of many drooping convictions. It is seldom good that one should enter into any vocation very easily, sweetly, and without strife. The best apprenticeships, whether ecclesiastical or religious, or civil or military, or political or artistic, are never the most calm. Whether we study the lives of saints or the lives of those distinguished in any walk of human endeavour where perfection, in some degree or other, has been at least the goal, we always find that the first years of the pursuit have been one bitter history of temptations, doubts, despondencies, struggles, and agonising inconsistencies of volition. To natures cold originally, or extinguished by a false asceticism, many seeming acts of sacrifice are but the subtle indulgence of that curious selfishness which is not the more spiritual because it is independent of others, or the less repulsive because it is most contented in its isolation from every responsibility. A renunciation means the deliberate putting away of something keenly loved, anxiously desired, or actually possessed; it does not mean a well-weighed acceptance of the lesser, rather than the greater, trials of life. When Orange had faced the desolate road before him it was as though men ploughed into his heart and left it mangled. Submission to the severities of G.o.d whatever they might be, obedience to authority, a companionless existence--these were the conditions, he knew, of the meagre joy permitted to those who, full of intellect, feeling, and kindness, undertook the rigorous discipline of a solitary journey. The world seldom takes account of the unhappy sensitiveness in devout souls; it thinks them insensible not only because they know how to keep silent, but how to sacrifice their secret woes. And what, after all, are the gratified expectations of any career in comparison with its hidden despairs?

It may be a fact that love, in every imaginative mind, approaches madness; on the other hand, the least imaginative are often not merely attracted but carried away, without any sort of consent, by some over-mastering human magnetism. To love well is a quality in temperament, just as to preach well, or to conduct a siege well, or to tend the sick well, or, in fact, to do anything well, is a special distinction, a ruling motive in the great pursuit of absolute felicity--a pursuit which is the inalienable right of all human creatures, whether fixed mistakenly in this world, or wisely in the next. No calling can be obeyed without suffering, but as in the old legend each man's cross was found exquisitely fitted to his own back, so a vocation is found to be just when, on the whole, one has fewer misgivings that way than in any other. By the exercise of self-discipline one may do much that is not repulsive only but suicidal--a man may so treat his spirit that it becomes a sort of petrified vapour. When, however, he has dosed, reduced, tortured, and killed every vital instinct in his nature till he is an empty shape and nothing more, he must not flatter himself that he has accomplished a great work. Life is not for the dead, but for the living, and in crucifying our flesh we have to be quite certain that we are playing no ghost's farce, inflicting airy penalties on some handfuls of harsh dust. Robert could not feel that absorbing interest in himself which enables so many to cut themselves adrift, painfully, no doubt, from every creature and all impersonal anxieties. If he wished for fame, power, wealth, it was that he might use them to the advantage of his friends, or for the reparation, in some degree, of his father's sin. But all the joy and all the melancholy in love give a free rein to egoism, and now that he had gained, as he believed, the desire of his eyes, the confused, tyrannical, inexplicable, triumphant selfishness dormant in him, as in all of us, began to a.s.sert its terrible power. He forgot the agonies, storms, and fevers of the past. Work had not always been able to dominate his unrest. There had been times when he had been compelled to follow the beckoning dreams; when, in tightening his clasp about the mockeries of his hope, he lost the pale happiness which he held already.

Whole days had pa.s.sed when some oppressive thought had spread its dark wings, as a bird of prey, over his whole being, crushing him gradually down to the earth. Now the occasion, the solitude, the glory of the night cast their spell over his soul. For the first time his emotion, so long dumb and imprisoned, found speech. Brigit listened, almost afraid, to his burning words, which, new and strange to her, were, in reality, but the echo of his interior life, his secret intimate thoughts, the pent-up eloquence of a latent habitual devotion long distrusted for its very strength and kept till that hour in strict silence, lest in the torrent of feeling it should say too much. The love to which he had long since surrendered himself now had complete possession of him. He spoke as he had never spoken before--as he never spoke again. The storm was restrained, subservient possibly still, but it was there, not to be forbidden, denied, or gainsayed. One has to be very strong in order to support the realisation of a long deferred, almost abandoned, hope.

Affliction seems to intensify a personality, adding to it a distinctness, a power altogether commanding and irresistible, but even in our purest happiness we lose something of ourselves, and become, momentarily at least, less our own masters, and more pliant to the reproof of chance, the sport of destiny. As Robert uttered his pa.s.sionate confession, he was conscious that much in him which had once seemed strong was conquerable enough, and, in the torture of the indescribable variety of vague, menacing feelings which this suspicion called forth, he revolted against the influence which held him, which left him neither liberty, nor security; which, for a few days of mad exultation, cost him a thousand bewildering, desolating fears. Did he guess that when one most eagerly desires happiness, one is most near to it? Already, he remembered, with a sudden pallor, and a sharp contraction of the lips, that death, in time, would certainly claim both of them, and his soul was pierced at the thought, for nothing seemed imaginably so perfect as the wild gladness of that poor human hour then gliding, with pitiless beats, toward the past. Already the moon had ceased to weave her magic; the sun rose over the unrebukable sea, and the distant coast, obscured in a purple vapour, seemed but a line of darkness against the flushed horizon. The sky was grey, opalescent in the north, tenderest green and azure in the east, while large, motionless clouds, as blue as vine-clad hills, shadowed in great cl.u.s.ters the vast canopy. But if the dawn of day wrought a progressive disenchantment of the dreamer, Robert felt with the recurrence of the morning the usual prayer rise to his lips in a long weeping, inarticulate cry to G.o.d--"Thou knowest that I love Thee: Thou knowest that all my life is but a desire of Thee: Thy Will, not mine." And he heard again the promise: "_Thou art My servant, I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed, for I am thy G.o.d: I will strengthen thee: yea, I will help thee._" As the silent disquietude of night gave place to the intense tranquillity of day, the impenetrable secret of life, though still profound, unviolated, and eluding, was hidden in a shining, though not a blinding, mist. Was night less night because it paled gloriously before the sun?

Was day less day because it darkened into evening? Was joy a false thing because it pa.s.sed? Did not sorrow pa.s.s also? If that sweet journey was the first and last in all his life, was it not still a miracle of blessing, nay, every blessing, to have known even once the power of mortal happiness?

"What are you thinking of?" asked Brigit suddenly, touching his arm with her hand.

"I am thinking that there is but one way of resisting the woe of life--the infinite must oppose the infinite. Infinite sorrow must be met by infinite love."

"I suppose we have the sorrow, and the infinite love is G.o.d's. We mustn't call even our love infinite, Robert."

He hesitated for a few moments before he replied--

"I call it no name."

"Still," she said, "the very book in which the vanity of all things is most insisted on has lived itself nearly three thousand years. Solomon has given the lie to his own despair of being remembered. This is why I never feel sad now when I think about the other fears which made him discontented."

"Were they fears? I believe he wanted to conquer the world, which is strong, and his own weakness, which was even stronger, as an adversary.

We must know the measure of a man's desires before we can sound the depths of his regrets."

Again she put out her hand, but this time she took his, following the instinct of a child who finds itself with a trusted companion in a gloomy road.

"Nothing unknown can be wished for," she said gently, "and so, if some few things did not last, we should not have this dissatisfaction at the thought of their perishing. But what is troubling you? The greatest cross is to be without a cross. You, dearest, are never at ease unless you are at least suffering tortures for some friend."

"I am thinking of myself now--myself only. I can't forget that every supreme blessing must be bought with long sadness, both before and after, and now we are together, I am wondering what I should do--if--if we were separated. I must have the courage to face that thought. I can't put it away because it has defied me, and when a thought defies me, I have to meet it fairly. I do not believe in denying its force, or running away in an opposite direction. I hear its argument and I try to answer it."

She moved towards him and said in a low voice--

"I have one prayer, and this is that I may outlive you. When you die, I shall soon follow you. It won't seem so very long. But if I should die first I should have to wait, because you would never yield, and your grief would cut sharply and slowly, a little more and a little more each day. And although I might be with you, you could not see me. I should know all your thoughts and yet I could say nothing. Almighty G.o.d is too kind to let me be so unhappy after I am dead. This is 'the confidence wherein I trust.' This is why I have no fears now. We may have great trials--how can we expect to be exempt from them? But we must help each other to bear them and then they will seem more precious than joys. You see, don't you? You understand, don't you?"

He could not trust himself to reply. There are certain utterances, certain turns of thought, which are so restricted to one s.e.x or the other, so exclusively feminine or masculine, as the case may be, that their entire comprehension by both s.e.xes is not possible. Intuition, imagination, sympathy may help a great deal; men and women will accept much from each other which they cannot to their reasoning satisfaction account for, and, if the difference serves only to enhance, by its mystery, the melodiousness of the eternal human duet, it also proves that, while the singers may be in harmony, they are never in absolute unison.

"You know how much I love you," said Brigit, "you know it. Yet there is an interior cloister of your mind which you keep wholly to yourself. You never ask me there. I watch your face--it tells me nothing. You have not yet made me your friend. If you were in trouble you would go to Pensee, because she is older and she is used to responsibilities. But you hide things from me because you are afraid of giving me pain."

"There is reason enough why I should not tell you of every pa.s.sing mood, nor draw you into some invincible personal sadness, and why I should not invite you into the 'interior cloister' of my mind. n.o.body deliberates to do what he cannot help. There is always something questioning within me, and a truth is not to be set aside by any other truth whatever. We can only fix our jaws and grip our hands in useless wonder at the contradictions of the soul. I would tell you all my heart," he added, with a laugh, "but it would take too long!"

He had been startled by the acuteness of her perception. Too probably he had carried his reserve to the selfish pitch, and in over-mastering, with silence, his own moods, afflicted her who had become now, by love, inseparable from his spiritual as well as his outward life. But there is something in beauty--just as there is something in youth--which one fears to disturb, lest a change should alter, or mar, in the faintest degree, the sufficient loveliness, the unconscious charm. Is it not for this cause that many dependent natures find cla.s.sic perfection cold, superb scenery unsympathetic, and the spectacle of careless happiness embittering? Others, of imaginative temperament, prefer that their idols should remain impa.s.sive, and, granted the inspiration arising from a fair appearance, ask no more, but find their delight in bestowing, from the riches of their own grat.i.tude, adorable attributes and endless worship. Orange, as many other men of idealising tendencies, took his human solace for the discouragements, fatigues, and ordeals of life in the mere existence of the woman he loved. He was at the moment of humility which is the first and last in all really great pa.s.sions. He asked for nothing; it was all too glorious even to have the privilege of offering gifts, of feeling the readiness to die ten deaths for her sake, of finding all the recompenses of eternity in the soft depths of her bright eyes. But as he was too much in earnest to a.n.a.lyse these sentiments, he could neither gauge his own reticence nor justify it to Brigit herself. Nor could she, with all her tenderness and womanly instincts, help him in that matter--their one possibility of estrangement. She lacked the knowledge which renders verbal confidences unnecessary; she was too loving and too human to be happy as an inspiration and an inspiration only; she also had a great desire to give, to aid, to prove her devotion, to be the friend and the fellow-pilgrim.

CHAPTER XII

Brilliant sunlight lit up the grey spires and threatening pinnacles of St. Malo. The back of the ancient fortress was hidden in white mist, but the houses which rose above the battlements facing the harbour, and the shops and little taverns near the quay, shone out in brightness, their windows glittering under the sky where straying clouds, driven by the wind, were melting, as they fled, into the all-encompa.s.sing blue ether.

Some pigeons and wild gulls circled above the earthworks, darting down, at times, between the ma.s.sive oak piles which, forced deep into the sand, were covered with shining seaweed. The piercing note of the military bugle, the crack of the cabmen's long whips, the clatter of wooden shoes, and the Angelus bells then chiming, made up a volume of sound which fell on Robert's ears with all the poignant strangeness of an old song heard again after many years. A hundred memories flocked into his mind at the first distant view of that familiar scene: memories of his boyhood, its errors, its visions, its ambitions; his revolt against nature as he understood it, and his desire to keep his heart and soul and senses for the service of G.o.d, and the custody of his own ideals. The very centre of his thoughts was here: here he had found the first beginnings of his faith and love. How often he had walked alone upon those ramparts with his New Testament and the _Morte d'Arthur_, striving, in the fervour of romantic sentiment, to combine the standards of knightly chivalry with the austere counsels of the gospel. The divinity of Christ is the object of eternal contemplations, and at every age--not of the world only, but of the individual--His Humanity, under our fresh knowledge, demands a different study and a fuller understanding. What changes, therefore, experience and suffering had wrought in those early, untried speculations! The ideals remained, but they made for swords, not peace; the sweetness of the dream had become an inflexible law of conscience; the doctrine of a transcendent disdain of this world, accepted in solitude by the obscure youth brought up in a provincial town, had exacted its tax to the uttermost farthing from the man who struggled now with the rich and powerful in a great city of the great universe of affairs.... He thought of his dead G.o.dmother, Madame Bertin, with her still, pale face and beautiful hands--a cold, blameless woman who had treated him kindly and misunderstood him always. She had been his father's friend; she had loved him, in her own stern, silent fashion, for his father's sake. O, if she might only know now how much he treasured every impression he had formed of her strong character!

She had given him all the tenderness she had, and all the motherly influence his childhood had received. What might his life have been without that early a.s.sociation with a n.o.ble if somewhat restricted nature? But these and similar thoughts, while they went deep, pa.s.sed swiftly and did not return again till a very different moment, when they came with agony and remained for ever.

He and Brigit were the last to leave the boat. They had been so happy there that, by an instinct, they lingered behind the others, unwilling to break the enchantment of their isolation from the land, and half-dreading the unknown trials, or joys, which awaited, surely enough, their first steps upon the soil. As they crossed the plank they looked back, obeying a common impulse, at the deserted deck. Their chairs had already been moved away, and the leeward corner, which had seemed so much their own, was filled up by a small group of sailors who were quarrelling about the division of _pourboires_. The drive to Miraflores is long and winding, past several small villages, and approached finally through a large tract of fields and orchards. But for the changing crimson of the vines, it might have been August weather. Robins, however, were singing, and the golden, brown, and russet b.u.t.terflies of autumn were floating languidly above the wayside hedges. The cawing of rooks, the cooing of wood-pigeons, and the hum of insects invaded the stillness of the lonely farms which, at long distances, gave picturesque evidence of the human toil expended on the careful, rather melancholy charm of that northern landscape. The Villa Miraflores--an elaborate reproduction of the celebrated Villa Madama near Rome--stood on a wooded hill rising out of a river, facing the rocky sea-coast. Built by the Archduke Charles of Alberia for his morganatic wife, Henriette Duboc, and pulled down since for the erection of a convent, it is never mentioned in history, and it has been long forgotten by the few inhabitants of the neighbourhood. But as the young couple entered the lodge gates that day, and drove along the stately avenue, the beautiful ill-fated structure rose before them as some castle in the air brought down to earth by a magician's wand. Was this their home? They dared not speak lest the vision should fade too soon. But Orange remembered it all--this was no dream. There were the winding alleys leading to peeps of water, land and sky; there was the path which he had followed, years before, in search of his destiny. He drew a long breath, drinking in the intoxicating strength of the fresh sea air wafted through pine-trees.

The atmosphere was charged with the very madness of youth and joy. Who could have hoped for such a miracle as this? Had the whole course of fate a like to show? Did it not seem a triumph over life and its threatened deceptions? His own servant and Brigit's maid--whom they had sent there some days before--were watching for them at the open door, and the sight of those well-known faces gave him a still further a.s.surance of the scene's actuality. They crossed the hall without noticing a small blue telegram on one of the malachite tables. They walked together through every room, wondering at their treasures, looking out of the windows, amazed, bewitched, gradually becoming used to the fact of each other's company in such a solitude. What were the woes and cryings of the outer world to them, lost in the impenetrable silence of that retreat? A strange, double sensation of delight and forgetfulness surged in them both. All knowledge of disturbing human influences, of the fret, and discord, and inquietude of common existence seemed trivial and even false. They looked with confidence into each other's eyes, as though they were the sole inhabitants of some brilliant, inaccessible star set far above the earth and its evil. They were to remain there a month--one month at least--and after that would trials, or labour, or sorrow deluge in bitterness the sweet, eternal recollection of such days? A table had been set for them in one of the small pavilions leading on to a balcony. The scent of flowers, mingling with the sunlight, came in through the open windows, bringing the garden's freshness to the faded lilacs on the carpet and tapestry.

Brigit went to the looking-gla.s.s, took off her hat, and apologised for her "frightful appearance." She had thrown her veil and gloves on the sofa, and the mere sight of them there gave a homeliness to that forsaken room which, with its rococo decorations, painted ceilings, and gilded doors, had something of the dead gaiety of an empty theatre.

Brigit made the tea, following the English custom taught her by Pensee.

Was the water boiling? Did he like sugar? How absurd not to know whether one's husband took cream! The two had seen so little of each other in domestic surroundings that this little commonplace intimacy had an intoxicating charm.

"Are you happy?" she asked suddenly. "Do you know that you are all I love in the world, and I am yours for ever and ever?"

"Yes, I know."

"And how much do you love me?"

"I shall never be able to say how much."

She took his hand, kissed it, pressed it to her heart, then asked him, with some confusion, if he liked grapes better than pears.

"You are so beautiful," he replied.

"Not to-day," she answered; "to-day I am quite dull. But you are handsome. I saw them looking at you on the boat. And I was proud--oh, so proud to think that you were mine."

When they had finished their meal, she opened the piano and struck out some chords, which echoed with a kind of wail through the long corridors outside. The instrument was out of tune, and the strings seemed m.u.f.fled.

"Something is inside," she said.

They looked and discovered a few sheets of music which had slipped down upon the wires. The sheets were dusty, stained with age, blurred by damp, but one bore the name "Henriette" written in the corner in a large, defiant hand. Joining the fragments, they found it was an arrangement in ma.n.u.script of Poe's ballad, "Annabel Lee."

_"It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea, That a maiden there lived whom you may know By the name of Annabel Lee; And this maiden she lived with no other thought Than to love and be loved by me._

_But our love it was stronger by far than the love Of those that were older than we-- Of many far wiser than we-- And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."_