the first time we had been alone for many years, without the children,
with no one else. And she talked to me as if to her own soul. Never can
I forget the terrible, the utter frankness of it. I had longed so for
expression from her--longed all our life together, but when it came,
under those circumstances, it was painful indeed. It was so apparent
that she was shocked so deeply that she hardly was aware of her frank
revelations! She let herself go with an abandonment quite unlike
herself, an abandonment so unlike what had become through all those
years the strongest demand in me!
I suppose that it was the first time that she talked with no reserve;
and she said to me things which she has now forgotten and could never
say again. But to me they live and have taught me much about myself,
about her and about the relation which meant so much of life to me. In
the midst of my utter disappointment I was yet at school. I knew she
was very ill, that she was all unraveled and had for the time given
up what held her life together. I knew it was critical. I feared the
result. What she said gave me constant anguish, but yet it was not
all pain. I, the incorrigible, was still at school, still a Pilgrim
seeking spiritual progress, seeking knowledge! It was all so strange!
That impersonal love of life which has been mine in unusual measure
persisted, and insisted on making a spiritual acquisition from my
deepest woe.
As we drove through the long-lined, slowly passionate country, as
she lay in restless talk, ever growing more chaotic on her bed of
spiritual pain, some of the things that I must always remember, I have
set down. Extraordinary they are not, for I think they breathe deep in
every noble woman’s soul, which is a spiritual abode of deep rebellion
against man’s conventional moralities and laws.
In and out of her fragmentary and ejaculatory talk were vivid pictures
of why he had appealed to her so strongly, and why I had failed.
I was to her the law. Even in my criticism of existing laws I was
still law-abiding. I was ever seeking a human order. Deep in me the
traditional conventions of civilization lived. I was social; I was
socialized. I felt the slow, painful family structure through the ages.
At the thought of harm to these my soul was ever anxious; I was keen to
conscious man’s historic struggle with life and Nature; keen to his
protecting artificialities. Family life and children, household cares
and anxious economies, fear of the future and prudence, mixed though it
were with temperamental generosity, were to her as a prison house. To
her I was the symbol of the larger prison, the threatening finger of
harsh law, the negator of her primitive imagination and of the impulse
beyond good and evil.
But he was different. In him she felt a genuine unmorality, a fresh,
refreshing, salad-like unscrupulousness. He was capable of a relation
to her which had no law, which was connected with no principle, with
nothing beyond itself. The love I bore her she saw as impersonal in
large measure: I loved her because she revealed so much to me of
beauty; it was really the beauty I loved, not her, something of which
she was an instrument, as all other things in life were instruments
to me of the Divine Something. She felt I was religious and moral,
and he was neither. He took her as she was: he loved her, that
particular woman, and asked no metaphysical questions, did not live
in soul-torturing and impossible spiritual strainings. His intensity
was for her alone, and he was willing to break all else and give her
freedom--freedom from morality, from anxiety, from responsibility,
from law--from me! It was the eternal advantage of the lover over the
husband.
I was too good, she said to me, in constant moving criticism. She meant
I was not free to be an exciting self, a pure and life-giving form. I
did not make the last appeal to her imagination, for I was bound, she
thought, by all things not myself. I was too good! How I longed to be
otherwise, and yet how fully I knew I could not be but what I was--not
good, but deeply careful, carrying with me all the Past, holding all
together, insisting on the Soul! It was this, this Soul that oppressed
and hampered her. She needed to fly off into mere cool existences,
into the soulless places of the spirit.
And then again I had loved her too much, or at any rate too actively;
had not left to her enough to do in our relation, not enough
initiative; this was a thought on which she constantly dwelt. Her
deepest passion was to construct; she needed to build, to feel that of
her own will she was bringing to the relation. Her personal work, her
writing, had been the way in which she felt she was herself. There it
was all her own doing; if she could have felt that our relation was her
construction, not mine, she would have loved me more! She had a need
to go out actively to others as I had gone to her! She did not so much
want to be wooed as to woo! This was her mood, expressed with passion.
I make no attempt to tell how I suffered at this time. It seems to me
my agony went beyond the point of personal suffering and was a quality
of external things--that it was a universal pain, deep and full and
hopeless. I lost my habitual nervousness and was calm. To see the woman
who meant so much to me thus express her deep dissatisfaction and to
feel that she was, mainly because of me, almost at death’s door,--well,
I cannot say what this was to me. Each man kills the thing he loves
indeed! How this woman, like a fly, had been caught, her free flight
impeded, by my all-embracing, passionate egotism! I felt a pity for her
that was perhaps more unendurable than all else.
Then there came the hospital, for her life and reason were threatened.
For many weeks she lay in danger, feverishly, unconsciously contending
with herself, and I, admitted for a short hour each day, sat quietly
by her side, hoping, waiting, for returning strength and self-control.
Indeed, it seems to me that it was I who nursed her back to life, for
I would not have her go!
It was I and her strong will, for that she finally wanted to live, in
part for me and for the children, there is no doubt. Life returned with
flickering, hesitating fear, and in tremulous lines she wrote me a
note in which it seemed to me a new love breathed! And then, a little
stronger, she wrote a poem, a ballad of intense and simple passion, in
which is told how a mermaid, loving her native salty substance and the
damp sea-weed and the unmoral, beautiful sea, meets one day upon the
shore a human man and loves and marries him and has fine children whom
she loves. But the sea beckons, and one day upon the shore she meets
a salty merman, her old deep-sea lover, and upon a gust of sensuous
desire goes with him into her native region, where alone she is at
home. But after unthinking satisfaction in the depths the thought of
her acquired civilization, of her husband and her lovely, needing
children, comes strong upon her, and she seeks the sorrowing human,
who, in despairing passion, tries to drive her hence!
Oh, how wonderful, how life-giving is the power of song, of any
swelling art! That she could sing, no matter how tragic-wise, showed
returning strength, and a strength that bred more strength! Yes, the
tide turned and began to flow, and as it swelled, a new hope was born
in her--in me!
_Chapter XII_
She had gone the limit of her impulse leading her away, as far as the
sweetness and beauty of her nature permitted her to go. She had gone
down almost to death, and when she emerged, it was like the phœnix from
the ashes. A new spirit, one of willful lovingness, breathed in all her
being. There was a subtle change in her attitude toward the children.
She had always loved them, but now her love was unimpeded. She accepted
them at last! The grace of her demeanor toward them, those deep,
lingering, questioning looks at them, these were instinct with a beauty
which really qualified of heaven!
And I had become one of her children! The unsentimental, inexpressive
depth of her sympathy had been touched. I knew she loved me, and I
regretted nothing of the past; the wonderful, glorious, painful past
which had led us both to greater feeling for things outside, for life
itself; gave us both a greater impersonal love, a love that lacked more
and more of the exasperation of temperament, possessed more and more of
the pure classic line of unegotistic passion!
Yes, I knew she loved me, and it gave me deep, but not untroubled
peace. I could not forget that I had not had to the full the other kind
of love--that she had never been “in love” with me! That need in me had
never been and never could be satisfied! I feel sure in my reflective
moments that had she had that temperamental dependent love for me, she
would not have constantly appeared to me so beautiful, so wonderful!
It was in part her inalienable independence of me that filled me with
so passionate a respect, even when I strove to break it down! The
inevitable quality of her resistance, her unconscious integrity, is the
most beautiful thing that I have ever known! What so often has filled
me with violent despair and fierce unspoken reproach was perhaps the
most necessary condition of my underlying feeling.
And now she had fully accepted me, but in the way in which she had
accepted the children, the household, and her lot in life. But she
remained herself! She could give us love, but could not give herself
away! Always mysteriously remote from us, no matter how tender! Not
needing, though infinitely loving. How often when I have seen her slow,
quiet, humorous smile have I thought of the Mona Lisa of Leonardo; of
that unnervous strength, of the “depth and not the tumult of the soul.”
A few months after her recovery the new strange life of another child
began to stir in her--a child about whose being she fitted herself
with peculiar perfectness. This fourth infant, another little girl, was
conceived, nourished and born with no resisting element in the mother’s
nature. It was as if time and struggle had now fully prepared her to
bring forth. Her Pilgrim’s Progress was beautifully shown in the new
life, which at birth filled her with an exuberance never hers before;
an exhilaration more strongly shown and a delighted appreciation
without a flaw. And this little girl, now four years old, has had a
life of unrelieved, gay joy, taking happiness and health as her native
element and spreading joy to others and especially to her mother as the
little rippling waves give gay music to the long receding shore.
And so perfect was her adjustment that even another blow from the hand
of Nature, coming a few months before the birth, did not affect the
unborn child. The little boy, always so sensitive, who had been born
following the sudden death of her father, was again taken ill, and
for months and years we feared not death but permanent invalidism. It
was an intense, sad experience for both of us, relieved by its happy
result, but taking from me a certain element of my native spring. I was
very close to the boy all through his illness, lasting several years,
and one effect it had was to give me a greater need of impersonal
activity than I had ever had before.
Her going down into the Valley of the Shadow and the terrible illness
of the child affected me more deeply than anything else in my life.
I had, in a way, been nurse to both of them; nearer far to each than
any one else had been to them, and to see these two beloved beings
struggling for life, to feel in each the last supreme effort of their
spiritual structure to exist, this was more than I could bear without
relief.
And so when he had pulled through his long travail in which, child
as he was, he had struggled like a hero for existence, and she had,
for the time at least, become adjusted to her lot, and happy with
her latest born, I turned to work and outside life with a greater
impersonal activity than I had ever shown before.
Then followed three years when to a greater extent than ever, I lived
among my fellow men and devoted myself more to the so-called larger
social activities of men and women, to the work of the world; and was
therefore automatically withdrawn more from the life of the family.
These activities meant more to me for what I had gone through in
personal relations; I think I saw their meaning better, and was better
able to act and think maturely. More clearly I saw, more deeply I
felt the necessary needs of men and women and their relation to the
invisible reality we call human society. For the purpose and ultimate
destiny of society is an organized condition in which the relations
between particular men and women and their children shall be fully and
beneficently developed, where the architecture of human relations may
tower to its fullest and most lovely height.
Not only did I turn to these impersonal activities for relief, but as a
natural and inevitable development. I am not, however, here concerned
in picturing my life except in so far as it concerns my central love
relation. This is the story of a lover. These activities of mine were
modified by the experience of my relation with her, and my relation
with her was affected by the nature of my activities, and therefore
from time to time in this narrative I have touched, merely touched upon
them.
In these goings out to the world, one set of experiences are peculiarly
connected with my relation to her; affected it and were affected by
it; my relations with other women. And here I come to a most delicate
situation to explain, where to be truthful is probably beyond my
ability, try as I may. Only those who have shared my experience, at
least in some measure, will understand, but as many men and women, as
all men and women who have the imagination and ambition for love, have
in some measure shared my experience, though perhaps only in vague
movements and tendencies, there will be some understanding of my words.
I grew constantly nearer to other women. I was filled with a passionate
sympathy for them. I felt their struggle and their social situation
as never before, and I understood far better what is called their
weaknesses; and I saw with greater intensity their unconventional
beauty. I saw that beauty in a woman’s nature has nothing to do with
what is called chastity. I saw how little sexual resistance women have,
and yet how much they are supposed to have! How their real virtues are
ignored and false ones substituted!
In these years I met several women with whom I desired the uttermost
intimacy. I had for them the utmost respect and my instinct told me
that they were ready for me, ready to give me what I had never had. How
I longed to be able to give myself over completely! I did give myself
as far as my conscious will permitted, but always, no matter how deep
my friendship, no matter how intimate I was with my appreciated and
appreciative friend, the unconscious instinct, that deep uncontrollable
imagination kept me bound to Her as a slave is bound to its master. It
was often to me humiliating and disgusting that I could not be free of
her, that I could not go as far with others as my social judgment and
my civilized will demanded.
I met women who were disappointed as I was disappointed; who needed
just what I needed--who needed to feel a deep reciprocity in passion,
a mutual giving-up to the Beyond in each other’s arms. And I could
not, try as I might, meet those longing spirits! I wanted to, both
for them and for myself. I succeeded in feeling deeply friendly with
them and they with me, but underlying our friendship was an irritated
disappointment....
I had an intense longing to satisfy longing. My deepest pleasure was
to give pleasure. This filled me with strange excitement. It was not
the desire to do good to anybody; it was far more real than that; it
responded to an egotistic need of my own temperament. And the pain that
almost drove me mad at times was that She had no need for me to satisfy!
Other women had and how at times I strove to satisfy them! How I almost
wept when I could not! How I hated and despised myself and yet wondered
at the strength of something in me that was not myself, a something
that held me bound to Her, in a way I did not want to be bound! How I
longed to give myself to those who needed me, but how I could not take
myself from Her who had no temperamental need of me! In this there was
a deep, impersonal cruelty, the irony of life, the laughing mystery of
the universe.
I imagine that experience increases one’s need to give oneself,--to
work, to others’ needs, to the impersonal demand of Life. At any
rate in me this has been an ever-growing passion, and as I felt more
strongly about the world, about art and literature and Labor and
society, I felt more strongly about women, and loved them always more,
and this love was in part a measure of their need of me! I deeply
wanted them to take of me all they could--more than they were able! If
they could have taken more I would have been more deeply satisfied!
It is a strange truth that as I grew older and more impersonal in my
passion, women drew nearer to me and wanted of me more, but were able
to take of me in minor measure only.
And She who had helped me to be capable of the intenser passion stood
between me and its satisfaction! With her I could not satisfy my
ultimate longing for she had no ultimate longing to meet mine! But
because of her I could not fully meet the need of others and thereby
satisfy my own!
I cannot dwell upon these few years of work and of social and emotional
attempts at foreign intimacy with my women friends. My affairs were
a part of my larger going out to the world and also due to what I at
last had clearly seen--that although She loved me, she did not need me
in the lovers’ relation, and so I could not fully exhaust myself in an
attempt to satisfy her, and I needed so much to exhaust myself!--to
give myself away without reserve! Important and detailed as these, my
human relations were, I can here only touch upon them to the degree
that they help to show my relation to her--the central relation of my
life--for this is the story of a lover, and it is true that I have
loved her only--this strange, cool, incomprehensible, wonderful woman,
so beautifully aloof from me, yet so loving, and so little in love!
Since we had hurt one another at times so much there had grown up
between us a greater reserve. We did not tend to talk so much about
others. I was far less of a retriever who brought back rich human
stories--when they involved me--to my mistress! But in an impulsive
moment I told her of my attempt to meet other women, to satisfy in them
a demand that she did not feel, to respond to a feeling in them for me
that she did not feel.
And then again, more intensely than ever, she was hurt. What had
happened to her abroad was as nothing compared to this. She was filled
for months with a deep passionate resentment--something I had never
seen in her before. She felt she had given up much when she broke with
her lover; she had, she thought, laid aside, once for all, the great
illusion, and had done so because of her great love for me and the
children. And when she saw I could not give up that illusion, that I
was still longing for the intangible reality she could not give me,
again there came to her a destructive blow. She had renounced for this!
Once more there were a long series of frank talks from her--those rare
and wonderful though terrible revelations of an inexpressive soul! I
found that during all these years of our married life she had felt my
infidelities, not exactly with pain, but that they had caused her to
retire more and more within herself. The slight but lovely bud of her
affection had never been able to flower. Her love for me was more and
more maternal, the illusion of sex more and more absent; the moment
came when it seemed to be quite gone. Of course I said it had never
been, and I believe I am right, that she had had only the possibility
of it, for me or for another, never realized. And I told her over
and over again that now she loved me, maternally or otherwise, more
than ever--that her conventional disapproval of my acts and her deeper
infidelity of thought and feeling had not withdrawn her from me, but
had brought her nearer.
She suffered, I really know not why, because of my relations with other
women--they were not the relations she wanted for herself, and yet
she suffered. And when I saw more clearly than ever before that there
was something in her which by necessity was hurt by this my conduct,
there came a strange change in me. I hated to lose any shade of her
feeling for me, and I closed up instinctively my social sympathy, and
my natural intimate outgoing to other women ceased!
But my sacrifice, like hers, like all sacrifices, was useless--nay,
more, was harmful. My attitude of receptive openness, not only to
women, but to men and work, to life, was in large measure gone. My
friends noticed that I had lost the keen zest for experience which had
been so characteristic of me. She herself began to see that I was older
in spirit, that I was sinking into the reserve and timidity of old age,
and that my creative initiative in work and life was less. And I felt
it, too. I made no effort to be different. I simply was different, and
I saw that my work and my life were more anæmic, but I could not help
it. Somehow her clearly revealed pain and æsthetic disapproval had
for the time at least strangely crippled me. And this, of course, was
no good to her. I was less amusing, and still to her the word amusing
was of all but the greatest moment. She began to regret my virtue
and my old age. She saw that one was part of the other, indissolubly
connected. She saw that I had done brutal things to others, under her
influence, and I think her conscience hurt her, as did mine. But beyond
all else she felt that she had invaded my personality and thereby
weakened it, and in about a year she withdrew from her position and
tacitly gave me to understand that she would be well content to have me
go my ways.
During that year she had been consciously willing to have another
lover; she had seen beautiful men whom she admired and who admired her,
but deeper than her mind was her fundamental disillusionment. She knew
that this for her was not to be. I saw that she was on the look-out,
and yet I knew that there was nothing deep in her demand, that she was
satisfied with life, disillusioned with what is called being in love,
but loving more what she had--children, friends, work and me. Yes, me!
She loved me more after all this strange and twisted travail! Even when
she calmly told me, as she did, that she no longer wanted me in any
temperamental way--that the little she had felt was gone--even then I
felt a strange certainty of her love for me! For her love for me was
of Platonic purity and strength, unmixed with sex or sentimentality,
that seemed to me to be of the essence of tenderness.
She seems now to have given up her futile desire to desire others and
to have accepted for herself a deep aloof affection and tenderness
for me and for all who touch her. This same she wants from me and
only accepts but does not desire my metaphysical needs, my sexual
straining towards the universe’s oblivion. This she neither understands
nor likes. This she feels should be put on other things, on work, on
thought and impersonal activity, and she is right, but I, although
going in that direction, am not ready--yet.
As yet my soul is not satisfied. It is with a deep unwillingness that
I feel her temperamental withdrawal--which in a less degree has always
been true of her but never so clearly seen by me. That she loves
me more, perhaps, in another way, can never meet that fundamental
madness that every lover has. I can never be satisfied until I find the
Other--and I know I can never find the Other, and never really want
to. I know that what I passionately want is a deep illusion, which can
never come. It is of Life’s essence, which is to us illusory, as it can
never be known and does not respond to our Ideal. It is a passion that
leads to death, but when real as mine is, never leads to satisfaction.