The Romance of Zion Chapel Part 9

Such a marriage as theirs is, of course, the dream of all separated lovers, "the love that waited and in waiting died" the theme of many poets; and there have been great historic love-stories to prove such love a possibility of human hearts; yet, alas! for the experiment that must so often fail, for the weak wills of loving that will so truly and yet must loose their holds,--the fire that promised itself food in memory for a thousand years, but needs the sensual fuel of sight and touch after all; the love that believed it could go on trusting through centuries of silence, yet dies at last of little earthly doubts!

For this tremendous fast which you are to make believe a feast, trust in each other is the one condition that may avail. This trust must come of no mere exchange of vow or deeply-sworn and eloquent promise; it must be knowledge one heart of the other, clear and absolute; and such knowledge in your short hour of revelation you must have learned so pa.s.sionately that, like poetry learnt in childhood, it is henceforth no longer a forgettable, detachable part of your mind's furniture, but a well-spring of instinct for ever. Is your lady true? You will ask that only when you ask: Is she beautiful?

Such confidence as this is comparatively common in friendship, but it is very rare in love: whether it was to be justified in the case of Isabel and Theophil, time alone could show. Meanwhile they felt calm and happy, as only two can feel who have discovered in each other the one unchanging reality in a world of flowing shadow.

It was very wonderful, in quite a new way, to meet again. Their love was no longer hunger and unrest, it had gained the impa.s.sioned peace of great accepted realities. It was married love now. As the quiet firm hands held each other again, there seemed to be long retrospects of tried and tender intercourse in their very touch. Their eyes held a past in them as well as a future. There was no hurry of the emotions now, no reason for haste in the seeking and giving of tenderness, no need to s.n.a.t.c.h and clutch the good gifts of love as though there was but a short day for the giving. Their love had grown conscious of its eternity.

It held but one lasting sadness,--that it might not be revealed to Jenny. So little did they regard their love as one essentially for concealment, that the temptation to include Jenny in their bond was at moments a danger. It was so beautiful, and actually, though unconsciously, she was so integral a part of its beauty.

Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say, jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible trinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's one unworthiness, its egoism. As the _egoisme a deux_ is finer than an egoism of one, so this _egoisme a trois_, if you will, is again finer by its additional inclusiveness.

Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too.

But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such a union is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved both Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was more impa.s.sioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness, could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meeting in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea.

But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They had vowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy, but only transfigure, after all,--yet the test was lightning; and for whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win them Paradise?

No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told...

Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,--when we withdraw into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,--and Jenny, by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of them there.

It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone down, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr.

Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,--

"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!"

But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so calm, that their very att.i.tude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms.

Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must sit down, and, pa.s.sing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good, and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If only she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No!

she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seen them, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till she had made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know.

That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then she might speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go,--she must not be later than they; they would be pa.s.sing down to the hall presently, she must be there before them,--she must be quick,--she must go now....

As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled a recognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smile back at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white, and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her.

She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the common resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a happiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguish was too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she might have felt towards death,--it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart there was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she felt that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,--just as a child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too young to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have loved their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!)

Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have spared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs.

Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written, and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It was the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons; but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to understand it too. It was called a "Denial," and began:--

"We have met late--it is too late to meet, O friend, not more than friend!

Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet, And if I step or stir, I touch the end.

In this last jeopardy Can I approach thee,--I, who cannot move?

How shall I answer thy request for love?

Look in my face and see.

"I might have loved thee in some former days.

Oh, then, my spirits had leapt As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise!

Before these faded cheeks were overwept, Had this been asked of me, To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,-- I should have said still...Yes, but _smiled_ and said, 'Look in my face and see!'

"But now...G.o.d sees me, G.o.d, who took my heart And drowned it in life's surge.

In all your wide warm earth I have no part-- light song overcomes me like a dirge.

Could love's great harmony The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose, Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose?

Look in my face and see--

"While I behold, as plain as one who dreams, Some woman of full worth, Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's, Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth

One younger, more thought-free And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget, With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet-- Look in my face and see!

"So farewell thou, whom I have known too late To let thee come so near.

Be counted happy while men call thee great, And one beloved woman feels thee dear!-- Not I!--that cannot be, I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where The change shall take me worse, and no one dare Look in my face and see."

The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,--

"Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine I bless thee from all such!

I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine, Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch

Of loyal troth. For me, I love thee not, I love thee not!--away!

There's no more courage in my soul to say 'Look in my face and see.'"

When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her a.s.sistance, and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge.

"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with sudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment to its close.

Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny along the few yards to home.

"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that.

It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?"

Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear."

"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears."

When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a pa.s.sing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness.

She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly, but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible to think of two people having to part like that," she said again.

And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual.

"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not see each other for a long time again."

"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace.

When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange,"

said Isabel.

"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil.

So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed.

"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear, like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night."