Of course I do not know whether you have read it or not, so if I bore
you forgive me. I was much interested in Part I., rather disappointed
with Part II., and it struck me that Mr. Crawford showed signs in Part
III. of weariness with the characters of his own creation. There are
nine people who play important parts in the story, and the author kills
six of them. The first, an abbess, dies naturally but conveniently;
the second, an innkeeper’s daughter, dies suddenly, by misadventure;
the third, a nun, dies, one is not told how, when, or where--but
she dies. This is disappointing, because she promised to be a very
interesting character. Then the fourth, daughter of No. 3, commits
suicide, because, having run away from her husband, and got tired of
the other man, the husband declines to have her back. The fifth, a
most uninteresting and weak-kneed individual, is an artist, husband
of No. 4, and he dies, apparently to make himself disagreeable; while
the sixth, the original cause of all the trouble, is murdered by the
innkeeper, who has been hunting him, like a good Christian, for twenty
years, determined to kill him when found, under the mistaken impression
that he eloped with, and disposed of, his daughter, No. 2.
No one can deny that the author has dealt out destruction with
impartiality, and it is rather strange, for Mr. Crawford often likes to
use his characters for two or even three books; that is why, I think,
he got a little tired with these particular people, and determined
to bury them. Out of this lot he has kept only three for future
vivisection and ultimate extinction.
I trust that, if you have not read the book already, you will be
induced, by what I have told you, to get “Casa Braccio,” for you will
find many interesting human problems discussed in it, and many others
suggested for the consideration of the reader. Here, for instance, is a
text which may well give you pause, “The widowhood of the unsatisfied
is hell, compared with the bereavement of complete possession.”
Now what do you say to that? For I am sure the somewhat bald, if not
positively repellent, look and sound of the words, will not deter you
from considering the truth or falseness of the statement. I do not
altogether like the theory; and one may even be permitted to differ
from the conclusion contained in the text. But the reason why this
sentence arrested my attention is because you quote, “_L’absence ni
le temps ne sont rien quand on aime_,” and later, you appeal to the
East as a place of broader views, of deeper feeling, of longer, wider
experience than the West. You appeal to the East, and this is what a
Persian poet says:--
“All that is by nature twain,
Fears and suffers by the pain
Of separation--Love is only perfect,
When itself transcends itself,
And one with that it loves
In Undivided Being blends.”
Now, how do you reconcile the Western with the Eastern statement, and
will either support the “Casa Braccio” theory? You tell me that time
and absence count for nothing as between lovers; the Persian says that
separation, under these circumstances, is the one calamity most to be
dreaded, and that love cannot be perfect without union. The French
writer evidently believed that “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,”
while the Eastern, without saying, “Out of sight, out of mind,” clearly
thought that love in absence is a very poor substitute for the passion
which sees, hears, and touches the object of its adoration. Undoubtedly
the Eastern expressed the feeling, not only of his own countrymen, but
of all other Orientals, and probably of Western lovers as well; but if
the separation is a matter of necessity, then the Western character,
the feeling of loyalty towards and faith in the object of our love,
helps us to the belief that “Partings and tears and absence” none need
fear, provided the regard is mutual. It is a good creed, and the only
one to uphold, but we are not so blind that we cannot see how often it
fails to secure even fidelity; while who would deny the Persian’s
contention that the bond cannot be perfect in absence?
“The widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, compared with the
bereavement of complete possession.”
No, certainly, it does not look well. It is hardly worth while to
inquire into the bereavement of a complete possession that was not
only satisfied but satiated; therefore the comparison must be between
perfect love realised, and love that is only not perfected because
unrealised. If that is so, then the text appears to be false in
theory, for, inasmuch as nothing earthly can be more perfect than that
realisation of mutual affection which the same Persian describes as--
“She and I no more,
But in one Undivided Being blended,”--
so the severance of that union by death must be the greatest of human
ills.
“The widowhood of the unsatisfied” admits of so many special
constructions, each of which would accentuate the despair of the
unsatisfied, that it makes the consideration rather difficult, but, in
any case, the magnitude of the loss must be imaginative. It is only,
therefore, by supposing that no realisation could be so perfect as to
equal the ideal of imagination, that the theory of the text could be
established. If that be granted, and it were also admitted that the
widowhood of this unsatisfied imagination were as hell, compared with
“the bereavement of complete possession,” that would merely show that
“complete possession” is worth very little, and no one need grieve
because their longings after a purely imaginary heaven had been widowed
before being wedded to the hell of such a disappointing possession.
In any case, I think one is forced to the conclusion that the man (and
one must assume it to be a man, in spite of the word “widowhood”) who
should thus express his feelings would never agree that “_L’absence
ni le temps ne sont rien quand on aime_;” that is, of course, supposing
he has not got beyond the protesting and unsatisfied stage. Once
arrived, he would doubtless subscribe to the phrase with virtuous
stolidity. Personally I think, as you probably do, that these words
of De Musset give a most charming description of the best form of
that true friendship which time cannot weaken nor absence change. For
friends it is admirable, for lovers, no.
I have not sought out this riddle for the purpose of airing my own
views, but to draw from you an expression of yours. You say my letters
are the most tantalising in the world, as I never tell you anything
you want to know; just leading up to what most interests you, and then
breaking off to something else. If there is nothing in this letter to
interest you, at least I have kept to one subject, and I have discussed
it as though I were expressing a real opinion! One can hardly do more
than that. You see, if I gave you no opportunity of scolding me, you
might never write!
VII
THE JINGLING COIN
You ask me the meaning of the jingling coin. It was a tale I heard that
impressed me, and sometimes comes back with a strange fascination. Did
I never tell you? Well, here it is.
I was in India, staying at a hill station, no matter where. I met there
a man who for years had spent his holidays in the place, and, walking
with him one day up a narrow mountain-path to the top of a hill, whence
there was a magnificent view of the Himalayan snows, we passed a small
stone slab on which was cut a date. The stone was at a spot where,
from the path, was a sheer fall of several hundreds of feet, and as we
passed it my companion said--“Look at that. I will tell you what it
means when we get to the top.”
As we lay on the grass and feasted our eyes upon the incomparable
spectacle, before which earthly lives and troubles seemed so
insignificant, my companion told his tale. I now repeat it, as nearly
as I can remember, in his own words.
“If I tell you this story,” he said, “you must not ask me how I know
the details, or seek for any particulars beyond what I give you.
“During one of my many visits to this place, I met a man whom I had
seen before and heard a good deal about, for he was one of those people
who concern themselves with no one’s business but their own, and,
therefore, their affairs seem to have a special attraction for the
Philistine. He knew that rumour was busy with his name, but beyond
the fact that he became more reserved than nature had already made
him, the gossip, which was always founded on imagination, sometimes
on jealousy, and even malice, seemed to make no impression whatever.
That may have been the result of a strong character, but partly, no
doubt, it was due to the fact that all his public life had been lived
under the fierce light of a criticism that was, in a way, the measure
of his success. His friends (and he was fortunate in the possession of
particularly loyal friends of both sexes) realised that if, even to
them, this man showed little of his real self, he sometimes writhed
under calumnies of which no one knew the authorship, and the existence
of which only reached him rarely, through his most intimate friends.
For his own reasons he kept his own counsel, and I doubt whether any
one knew as much of the real man as I did. A few months before the
time I speak of he had made the acquaintance of a girl, or, perhaps I
ought to say, a woman, for she was married, who was, with her mother,
visiting India. When first the man met this girl he was amazed, and,
to some extent, carried away by her extraordinary beauty. But his work
took him elsewhere, and, beyond that first impression, which had so
powerfully affected him, there was neither time nor opportunity to
ascertain whether the lovely exterior was the casket to a priceless
jewel, or only the beautiful form harbouring a mindless, soulless,
disappointment. She had heard of the man, and while unwilling to be
prejudiced by gossip, she was on her guard, and rather afraid of a
cynicism which her quick intelligence had noted at their first meeting.
Otherwise she was,--womanlike and generous,--curious to see, and to
judge for herself, what manner of man this was, against whom more than
one indiscreet acquaintance had already warned her.
“Some time elapsed, and then these two found themselves staying in the
same house. The man realised the attractions of the woman’s glorious
beauty, and he honestly determined that he would neither think, nor
look, nor utter any feeling beyond that of ordinary friendship. This
resolve he as honestly kept, and, though accident threw in his way
every kind of opportunity, and he was constantly alone with the girl,
he made no attempt to read her character, to seek her confidence, or
to obtain her friendship;--indeed, he charged himself with having been
somewhat neglectful in those attentions which make the courtesy of man
to woman,--and, when they parted, he questioned whether any man had
ever been so much in this woman’s society without saying a word that
might not have been shouted in the market-place. Somehow the man had
an intuitive feeling that gossip had supplied the girl with a not too
friendly sketch of him, and he, for once, abandoned the cynicism that,
had he cared less, might have prompted him to convey any impression of
himself, so long as it should not be the true one. To her this visit
said nothing beyond the fact that the man, as she found him, was quite
unlike his picture, as painted by professed friends, and that the
reality interested her.
“The three Fateful Sisters, who weave the destinies of men and women
into such strange tangles, threw these two across each other’s
paths, until the man, at least, sought to aid Fortune, in providing
opportunities for meeting one whose attractive personality appealed so
greatly to his artistic sense. Chance helped him, and, again catching
together the threads of these lives, Destiny twisted them into a single
strand. One brief day, or less, is enough to make a bond that only
death can sever, and for this man and woman there were days and days
when, in spite of resistance, their lives were gradually drawn so close
together that at last the rivets were as strong as they were invisible.
“The triumphant beauty of the woman, rare and disturbing though it was,
would not alone have overcome him, but, as the days went by, and they
were brought more and more into each other’s society, she gradually
let him see the greater beauty of her soul; and small wonder if he
found the combined attractions irresistible. She was so young that I
have called her a girl, and yet she had seen as much of life as many
women twice her age. Her beauty and charm of manner had brought her
hosts of admirers, but still she was completely unspoilt, and devoid
of either coquetry or self-consciousness. A lovely face, lighted by the
winning expression of an intelligent mind and a warm, loving nature;
a graceful, willowy figure, whose lissom movements showed a quite
uncommon strength and power of endurance; these outward attractions,
united to quick discernment, absolute honesty of speech and intention,
a bright energy, perfectly unaffected manners, and a courage of the
highest order, moral as well as physical, fascinated a man, the
business of whose life had been to study his fellow-creatures. He felt
certain that he saw here--
“‘_La main qui ne trahit, la bouche qui ne ment._’
“His experience had given him a horror of weakness in every form, and
here, he realised, was a woman who was only capable of great thoughts
and great deeds, obeying the dictates of her own heart and mind, not
the suggestions of the weaker brethren. If she fell, it would be as an
angel might fall, through love of one of the sons of men.
“Her shy reserve slowly gave way to confidence, and, in the sympathy
of closer friendship, she let him see beauties of soul of which he
would have deemed it sacrilege to speak to another. What drew her to
him I cannot tell; perhaps his profound reverence for, and admiration
of, her sex, his complete understanding of herself, or perhaps some
quality of his own. I had not her confidence, so cannot say; but there
were men who recognised his fascination, due in part, no doubt, to his
compelling will. Perhaps she was simply carried away by the man’s
overpowering love, which at last declared itself. They realised the
hopelessness of the position, and yet they both took comfort from their
mutual love and trust in each other’s unchanging faith. That was all
they had to look forward to,--that and Fate.
“With that poor prospect before them he gave her, on a day, a gold
coin, ‘for luck,’ he said--an ancient Indian coin of some forgotten
dynasty, and she hung it on a bangle and said laughingly, that if
ever she were likely to forget him the jingle of the coin would be a
ceaseless reminder of the giver. And so the thing lived there day and
night, and, when she moved, it made little musical sounds, singing its
story to her willing ears, as it struck against the bangle from which
it hung.
“Then they came here, he to his work, she to see the snows and some
friends, before leaving India for Japan, or California, or some other
stage of the voyage which brings no rest to the troubled soul. One
day they had ridden up here, and were returning down the hill. It was
afternoon, and she was riding in front, he behind, the syces following.
The path is narrow, as you saw, and very steep. She dropped something,
stopped, and called a syce to pick it up. Her horse was impatient,
got his head round, and, as the syce approached, backed over the edge
of the road. The thing was done in an instant, the horse was over the
side, down on his belly, terror-struck and struggling in the loose
earth. The man had only time to shout, ‘Get off! get off!’ but she
could not get off, the horse had fallen on his off side, and, as the
man threw himself on the road, her horse rolled slowly right over her,
with a horrible crunching noise,--then faster, over her again, and then
horse and rider disappeared, and, crashing through the undergrowth,
banging against great granite boulders, fell with a horrible thud, far
down the height.
“He had never seen her face; she had her back towards him, and she
never uttered a sound.
“The road makes a long détour, and then comes back, several hundred
feet lower down, to a spot almost directly underneath the point where
the accident happened. A little way in from there the man saw the horse
lying perfectly still, with its neck broken. Higher up the bank he
found the woman, moaning a little, but quite unconscious, crushed and
torn,--you have seen the place and you can guess. She only lived a few
minutes.
“When at last the man awoke out of his stupor, to lift her up and carry
her down to the path, he noticed that the bangle and the coin had both
gone, wrenched off in that wild plunge through trees and stones into
eternity--or oblivion.
“The man waited there, while one of the syces went for help and a
litter, and it was only after they had carried her home that I saw him.
I could hardly recognise him. There were times when I had thought him
the saddest-looking man I had ever seen, but this was different. There
was a grey, drawn setness on his face, and something in his eyes I did
not care to look at. He and I were living in the same house, and in the
evening he told me briefly what had happened, and several times, both
while he spoke and afterwards, I saw him throw up his head and listen
intently. I asked him what it was, and he said, ‘Nothing, I thought I
heard something.’ Later, he started suddenly, and said--
“‘Did you hear that?’
“‘Hear what?’ I asked.
“‘A faint jingling noise,’ he replied. ‘You must have heard it; did you
do it?’
“But I had heard nothing, and I said so.
“He got up and looked about to see if any one was moving, and then came
back and sat down again. I tried to make him go to bed, but he would
not, and I left him there at last.
“They buried her the next evening, and all the English in the station
were there. The man and I stood on the outskirts of the people, and
we lingered till they had gone, and then watched the grave-diggers
finish the filling of the grave, put on the sods, and finally leave
the place. As they built up the earth, and shaped it into the form of
a roof to cover that narrow dwelling, the man winced under every blow
of the spades, as though he were receiving them on his own body. There
was nothing to say, and we said nothing, but more than once I noticed
the man in that listening attitude, and I began to be alarmed about
him. I got him home, and except for that look, which had not left his
face, and the intentness with which I sometimes caught him listening,
there was nothing strange in his manner; only he hardly spoke at all.
On subsequent evenings for the next fortnight he talked more than usual
about himself, and as I knew that he often spent a good deal of time
in, or looking on to, the cemetery, I was not surprised to hear him say
that he thought it a particularly attractive graveyard, and one where
it would be pleasant to lie, if one had to be put away somewhere. It is
on the hill, you know, by the church, and one can see the eternal snows
across that blue valley which divides us from the highlands of Sikkim.
He was insistent, and made me remark that, as far as he was concerned,
there could be no better place to lie than in this God’s Acre.
“Once or twice, again, he asked me if I did not hear a jingle, and
constantly, especially in the quiet of evening, I saw him start and
listen, till sometimes I really began to think I heard the noise he
described.
“A few evenings later, but less than a month after the accident, I
went to bed, leaving him cleaning a revolver which he thought a deal
of, and certainly he could shoot very straight with it. I was sitting
half-undressed, when I heard a loud report, and you may imagine the
feelings with which I ran to the room where I had left him. He was
sitting at the table, with his left hand raised, as though to reach his
heart, and his right straight down by his side, the revolver on the
floor beneath it. He was dead, shot through the heart; but his head
was slightly thrown back, his eyes wide open, and in them that look of
listening expectancy I had seen so often of late. At the corners of his
mouth there seemed to be the shadow of the faintest smile.
“At the inquest I explained that I left him cleaning the pistol,
and that, as it had a hair-trigger, no doubt it had gone off by
misadventure. When each of the jurors had, in turn, raised the hammer,
and found it was hardly necessary to touch the trigger in order to fire
the weapon, they unanimously returned a verdict of ‘accidental death.’”
“It is curious,” concluded my companion, “but I sometimes think _I_
hear the jingle of that coin, especially if I am alone on this hill,
or sitting by myself at night in the house where that sad accident
happened.” He put a slight stress on the word “accident,” that was not
lost on me.
As we passed the stone, on our way down the hill, I seemed to see that
horse blunder backwards over the edge of the path, to hear the slow,
crunching roll, and then the crash and ghastly thud, far down below;
and, as an involuntary shudder crept slowly down my back, I thought _I_
heard the faint jingle of that ill-omened piece of gold.
VIII
A STRANGE SUNSET
You will think I am eternally babbling of sunsets, but no one, with a
spark of feeling, could be here and not be moved to the depths of his
nature by the matchless, the ever-changing beauty of the wonderful
pictures that are so constantly before his eyes. People who are utterly
commonplace, whose instincts seem, in some respects, to approach those
of the beasts, when they come here are amazed into new sensations, and,
in unaccustomed words, voice the expression of their admiration. If I
weary you, pardon me, and remember that you are the only victim of my
exaltation.
One looks for a sunset in the west, does one not? and that is the
direction in which to find it here as elsewhere; but to-night the
marvellous effects of the setting sun were, for a time, confined almost
entirely to the east, or, to be strictly accurate, rather to the south
of east. Facing that direction one looks across a remarkable ridge,
entirely covered by giant forest trees. The ridge dips in a sort of
crescent from about 4500 feet in height at one extremity to 3000 feet
at the other, and extends for a distance of perhaps two miles between
the horns. Beyond and below the ridge lies a great, fertile valley,
watered by a stately river, along the opposite bank of which runs a
range of hills, varying in height from 2000 to 3000 feet. Behind these
hills there is another valley, another range, and then a succession of
ever-loftier mountains, forming the main chain.
The sun had disappeared behind a thick bank of grey clouds, and the
only evidence of his presence was in the lambent edges of these clouds,
which here and there glittered like molten metal. The western sky was,
except for this bank, extraordinarily clear and cloudless, of a pale
translucent blue, flecked here and there by tiny cloud-boats, airy
and delicate, moving very slowly across the empyrean. I noticed this
because what I saw in the east was so remarkable that I noted every
detail.
Against a background the colour of a hedge-sparrow’s egg in the
south, and blue without the green in the east, stood one white cloud,
like a huge plume, with its base resting on the many ranges across the
river, while it seemed to lean towards me, the top of the plume being
almost over my head. At first the plume shone, from base to top, with
a golden effulgence; but this gradually gave place to that lovely tint
which I can only describe as _rose dorée_, the warm colour momentarily
intensifying in tone until it suffused the entire cloud with such a
roseate blush that all the hills beneath, and all the fast-darkening
plain, blushed in response.
For twenty minutes that glowing plume of softly rounded, feathery
cloud stood framed against its wondrous blue-green background, the
rosy colour of the cloud deepening as the land beneath it gathered
blackness. Then, almost imperceptibly, the glow flickered and
died, leaving only an immense grey-white cloud hanging over the
night-shrouded plain.
The sun, I knew, had long sunk beneath the horizon. Though I could
see nothing behind that thick curtain of cloud, I waited, for the
after-glow, seen from this height, is often more wonderful than the
actual sunset. Five minutes of dull greyness, and then the whole
western sky, for a space above the horizon, was overspread with pale
gold, while countless shafts of brighter light radiated, as from the
hub of the Sun-God’s chariot-wheel, across the gilded space, into
the blue heights above. In the midst of this pale golden sheen there
appeared, almost due west, and low down in the sky, a silver crescent,
fine as a thread, curved upwards like the lip of a cup of which bowl
and stem were invisible. It was the new-born moon.