Thus half in perfect poetry, part in simplest prose, opened the first
canto of that long song which has made music in me; which has made
music of me, since that happy night. Of the countless words which we
have exchanged together in times succeeding, these, the few of our
first meeting are carved upon my brain as salutations are carved in
stone above the doorways of mansions. He that has loved as I did, may
say why this should be so, if he can. I cannot. Time and storm beat
against these inscriptions, and give them other colouring,--the tints
of years and weather; but while the house lasts and the rock holds the
salutation lives. In most other matters, the force of recurring
experience weakens association. He who loves cherishes the first words
of the beloved as he cherishes her last.
The situation was simple enough: an injured man and a lovely woman,
guests of the same summer hotel; a slow recovery; a leisurely sweet
acquaintance; the light that never was on hill or shore; and so the
charm was wrought. My accident held me a prisoner for six weeks. But
my love put me in chains in six minutes.
Her name was Helen; like hers of old
"Who fired the topmost towers of Ilium."
I liked the stately name of her, for she was of full
womanhood,--thirty-three years old; the age at which the French
connoisseur said that a charming woman charmed the most.
Upon the evening before we parted, I ventured--for we sat at the
sheltered end of the piazza, away from the patterers and chatterers, a
little by ourselves--to ask her a brave question. I had learned that
one might ask her anything; she had originality; she was not of the
feminine pattern; she had no paltriness nor pettiness in her thoughts;
she looked out, as men do, upon a subject; not _down_, as women are
wont. She was a woman with whom a man could converse. He need not
adapt himself and conceal himself, and play the part of a gallant at
real matters which were above gallantry. He could confide in her. Now
it was new to me to consider that I could confide in any person. In my
calling, one becomes such a receptacle of human confidence,--one soaks
up other people's lives till one becomes a great sponge, absorptive and
absorbing for ever, as sponges should. Who notices when the useful
thing gets too full? That is what it is there for. Pour on--scalding
hot, or freezing cold, or pure or foul--pour away. If one day it
refuses to absorb any more, and lies limp and valueless--why, the
Doctor has broken down; or the Doctor is dead. Who ever thought
anything could happen to the _Doctor_? One thing in the natural
history of the sponge is apt to be overlooked. When the process of
absorption reaches a certain point, let the true hand touch the wearied
thing, and grasp it in the right way, and lo! back rushes the instinct
of confidence, _out_, not in.
Something of this sort had happened to me. The novelty of real
acquaintance with a woman who did not need me had an effect upon me
which perhaps few outside of my profession can understand. This woman
truly needed nothing of me. She had not so much as a toothache or a
sore throat. If she had cares or troubles they were her own. She
leaned upon me no more than the sunrise did upon the mountain. She was
as radiant, as healthful, as vivid, and as calm; she surrounded me, she
overflowed me like the colour of the air. Nay, beyond this it was I
who had need; it was she who ministered. It was I who suffered the
whims and longings of weakness,--the thousand little cravings of the
sick for the well. It was I who learned to know that I had never known
the meaning of what is called "diversion." I learned to suspect that I
had yet to learn the true place of sympathy in therapeutics. I
learned, in short, some serious professional lessons which were the
simplest human ones.
But the question that I spoke of was on this wise. It did not indeed
wear the form, but she gave it the hospitality, of a question.
"I wish I knew," I said, "why you have not married. I wish you thought
me worthy to know."
"The whole world might know," she answered, with her sweet
straightforward look.
"And I, then, as the most unworthy part of it?" For my heart sank at
the terms upon which I was admitted to the answer.
"I have never seen any man whom I wished to marry. I have no other
reason."
"Nor I," I said, "a woman"-- And there I paused. Yes, precisely
there, where I had not meant to; for she gave me a large, grave look,
upon which I could no more have intruded than I could have touched her.
This was in September. The year had made the longest circuit of my
life before I gathered the courage to finish that sentence, broken by
the weight of a delicate look; before I dared to say to her:--
"Nor I a woman--until now."
I hope I was what we call "above" the petty masculine instinct which
values a woman who is hard to win chiefly for that circumstance.
Perhaps I was not as I thought myself. But it seemed to me that the
anguish of wooing in doubt overcame all paltry sense of pleasure in
pursuit of my delight. My thoughts of her moved like slow travellers
up the sides of a mountain of snow. That other feeling would have been
a descent to me. So wholly did she rule my soul--how could I stoop to
care the more for hers, because she was beyond my reach?
Be this as it may, beyond my reach for yet another year she did remain.
Gently as she inclined toward me, to love she made no haste. The force
of my feeling was so great at times, it seemed incredible that hers did
not rush to meet me like part of the game incoming wave broken by a
coast island and joining--seemingly two, but in reality one--upon the
shoreward side. For the first time in my life, in that rising tide of
my great love, I truly knew humility. My unworthiness of her was more
present with me even than my longing for her. If I could have scourged
my soul clear of all unfitness for her as our Saviour was said to have
scourged the tradesmen out of the Temple, I should have counted myself
blessed, even though I never won her; though I beat out my last hope of
her with the very blows which I inflicted upon myself.
In the vibrations of my strong emotion it used to surprise me that my
will was such a cripple against the sensibilities of that delicate
creature. I was a man of as much will as was naturally good for me;
and my training had made it abnormal like a prize-fighter's bicepital
muscle. People of my profession need some counter-irritant, which they
seldom get, to the habit of command. To be the ultimate control for a
_clientele_ of a thousand people, to enforce the personal opinion in
every matter from a broken constitution to a broken heart, deprives a
man of the usual human challenges to an athletic will. In his case, if
ever, motion follows least resistance. His will-power grows by a
species of pommelling; not by the higher tactics of wrestling.
But I, who gave the fiat on which life or death hung poised as
unhesitatingly as I controlled the fluctuations of an influenza; and I,
to whom the pliability of the feminine will had long since become an
accepted and somewhat elemental fact, like the nature of milk-toast; I,
Dr. Thorne, who had the habit of success, who expected to make his
point, who was accustomed to receive obedience, who fought death or
hysteria, an opposing school or a tricky patient, with equal fidelity,
as one who pursues the avocation of life,--I stood, conquered before
this slender woman whose eyes, like the sword of flame, turned this way
and that, guarding the barred gates of the only Eden I had ever chosen
to enter.
In short, for the first time in my life I found myself a suppliant; and
I found myself thus and there for the sake of a feeling.
It was not for science' sake, it was not for the sake of personal fame,
or for the glory of an idea, or for the promulgation of a discovery. I
had not been overcome upon the intellectual side of my nature. I had
been conquered by an emotion. I had been beaten by a thing for which,
all my life, I had been prescribing as confidently as I would for a
sprain. Medical men will understand me, and some others may, when I
say that I experienced surprise to come face to face at last, and in
this unanswerable personal way, with an invisible, intangible power of
the soul and of the body, which could not be treated as "a symptom."
I loved her. That was enough, and beyond. I loved her. That was the
beginning and end. I loved her. I found nothing in the Materia Medica
that could cure the fact. I loved her. Science gave me no explanation
of the phenomenon. I did not love her scientifically. I loved her
terribly.
I was a man of middle age, and had called myself a scientist and
philosopher. I had thought, if ever, to love soberly and
philosophically. Instead of that I loved as poets sing, as artists
paint, as the statues look, as the great romances read, as ideals
teach,--as the young love.
As the young do? Nay. What young creature ever loved like that?
They know not love who sip it at the spring.
Youth is a fragile child that plays at love,
Tosses a shell, and trims a little sail,
Mimics the passion of the gathered years,
And is a loiterer on the shallow bank
Of the great flood that we have waited for.
I do not think of any other thing which a man cannot do better at
forty, than at twenty. Why, then, should he not the better love?
My lady had a stately soul; but she gave it sweet graciousness and
little womanly appeals and curves, that were to my heart as the touch
of her hand was to my pulse. I was so happy in her presence that I
could not believe I had ever been sad; and I longed so for her in
absence that I could scarcely believe I had become happy. She was to
my thoughts as the light is to the crystal. She came into my life as
the miracles came to the unbelieving. She moved through my days and
through my dreams, as the rose-cloud moved upon the mountain sky. She
floated between me and my sick. She hovered above me and my dying.
She was a mist between me and my books. Once when I took the knife for
a dangerous operation, the steel blade caught a sunbeam and flashed;
and I looked at the flash--it seemed to contain a new world--and I
thought: "She is my own. I am a happy man!" But I was sorry for my
patient. I was not rough with him. And the operation succeeded.
What is to be said? I loved her. Love is like faith. He who has it
understands before you speak. But to him who has it not, it cannot be
explained.
A year from the time of my most blessed accident beside the
trout-brook,--in one year and two months from that day, upon a warm and
wonderful September afternoon, my lady and I were married, and I
brought her from her mother's house to the mountain village where first
we saw each other. There we spent the first week of our happiness. It
was as near to Eden as we could find. The village was left almost to
its own rare resources; the summer tourists were well-nigh gone; the
peaceful roads gave no stare of intrusion to our joy. The hills looked
down upon us and made us feel how high love was. The forest inclosed
us, and made us understand that love was large. The holiness of beauty
was the hostess of our delight. Oh, I had won her! She was my wife.
She was my own. She loved me.
If I cherished her as my own soul, what could I give her back, who had
given herself to me?
I said, "I will make you the happiest woman who was ever beloved by man
upon this earth."
"But you _have_," she whispered, lifting her dear face. "It is worth
being alive for, if it came to an end to-morrow."
"Love has no end," I cried. "Happiness is life. It cannot die. It
has an immortal soul. If ever I make you sad, if I am untender to
you,--may God strike me"--
"Hush," she cried, clinging to me, and closing my lips with a kiss for
which I would have died; "Hush, love! hush!"