“I never saw a vessel of like Sorrow,
So filled and so becoming.”
...
“Give Sorrow words: the Grief that does not speak
Whispers the overfraught heart and bids it break.”
SHAKESPEARE.
No woman of true sensibility rejects a lover without feeling herself a
sympathy in the pang she inflicts. It often happens that in her artless
attempts to mitigate the disappointment, her motives are mistaken, and
she subjects herself again to a siege so much more pressing than the
former, that she yields against her conviction, a captive to a stronger
will, but not to love. It was not so with a woman of Beatriz’s mould. She
knew that in no way could she be so true to others as in being true to
herself. When Kiana turned from her, although she was sadder than before
he spoke, she felt that her sincerity had been her safety.
As she prolonged her walk farther from her house to where the trees
thickened into a forest, she thought she saw a pair of piercing eyes, not
unfamiliar, watching her at times, through the thick vines and ferns that
clustered about her path. She was, however, too abstracted by her own
reflections to be curious about them, and so she slowly wandered on.
“Holy Mother, has it come to this,” said she to herself, stopping
occasionally, and pressing her hands over her heart as if to still its
throbs, “do I love this man? Whence this fever here, if it be not love?
Why was it that when I found him lying, as I thought, dead on the sand,
my pulses ceased to beat, and for the instant I was dead myself? Could he
have seen my emotion when he came to? The Chaste Virgin forbid! Yet when
our eyes met on that holy evening in which we gazed so long upon the sea,
I read my soul in his. But can he know what I do not know myself? I would
say I do not love him, yet something within chokes me when I would utter
the words. What I, a Catholic maiden, love a priest? ’tis not so! it
would be sacrilege. May the Mother of God forgive the thought,” and she
paused with eyes uplifted and hands clasped in silent prayer.
For an instant she became quieter, but it was only the gathering of the
coming storm. Every instinct of her warm nature cried, “you love him.”
Each accepted doctrine of her faith as firmly forbade it. She felt
she was on the brink of a gulf. Destruction of soul and body or their
martyrdom, seemed the only choice.
“Yet,” thought she, “if it be a crime, why is it that his voice ever
soothes me,—that his words ever make me stronger and truer to my better
self,—that he upholds me in all that is good? When with him, nature has a
more loving aspect; the very stones look kindly on me. It has ever been
thus. Before I suspected myself,—yes, now I see it all,—years, years ago,
my heart flowed out the same to Olmedo,—his presence was my want. Away
from him I was contented, it is true, but I was sad. With him, my sadness
became a quiet joy. I was doubly myself. Has the good God given me all
this for a torment? To ruin my soul through the source of its virtue and
its highest happiness?”
She shuddered. Her whole frame was convulsed with agony. She did not
fear that Olmedo did not love her, because she thought that feelings so
deep and long tried as hers had been in relation to him, could not exist
without the answering sympathy of his.
It was not then the fear that she was not loved that troubled her. It
was rather the fear that Olmedo might be tempted even as she was. He,
a priest, vowed to chastity: his wife was the Holy Church; if it were
sacrilege in her to love, it were blasphemy in him. Again all the terrors
of a stricken conscience smote her, and she was overwhelmed at the
thought that he might be equally guilty with herself.
Thus it often is. God gives man his instincts and desires. Having made
him after his own image, that image must be vital with the eternal
principles of God-nature. If the author of all has inseparably connected
cause and effect in the physical world, He has carried the law no less
positively into the moral world. There can be, therefore, no instinct
without its proper function, and no aspiration that may not be realized
progressively towards Him. Duty is the password to heaven, which, in the
rightly balanced mind begins on earth. Finding all things good according
to their kind, it is not afraid to honor God by the right use of his
gifts. Man begins his hell here also, by the bars to his progress,
which his misunderstood organization, selfish passions, and the foolish
learning or spiritual tyranny of his merely human theology fabricate for
him. He fears, and seeks to compromise or deceive. If the spirit of God
be upon him, then he enjoys all things of God, each in its due degree,
with a peace that passeth understanding.
Beatriz, therefore, was right in feeling that the Being who had made the
human heart and given it the capacity of loving, intended that it should
love; that he had not given affections and the affinities of soul to
either sex, to be a torment from want of the very object which He had
made that man might not be _Alone_. And alone must be man or woman into
whose heart enter no sympathies, responding to their own. If Adam had his
mate, so has each son of his, by the same great law of Nature. God chose
for Adam, but he gave to his children a delicate heritage of instincts
and emotions of commingled matter and spirit, which were to be their
guides towards finding the other being who is to complete their unity.
That Olmedo was to her that being and she to him, Beatriz now knew full
well. Her past life, with all that she had gained in character through
him, and all she had enjoyed in feeling, the repose of perfect trust in
his truth, the delicacy of his deportment, which, whether as confessor
or friend, had always sought her highest good, all came back to her as a
new revelation. Not that a single word of love had ever passed between
them, or a single action, which angels might not have witnessed, escaped
him. Both had been in too full enjoyment of that calm but unconscious
love that springs from a mutual, mental and spiritual adaptation, without
the suggestion of a more intimate relation, until to her the pang of his
supposed death, and to him the reawakening of his physical life, amid the
allurements of a tropical climate, disclosed to both the full extent of
their attachment.
From that moment Beatriz was wretched, because however calm her exterior,
within love and conscience were in conflict. Her misery was the greater,
that she must hide her secret within her own bosom. Hitherto, every
doubt or struggle had been disclosed to her confessor, and in his advice
or consolation she had found repose. Now, the duties of her religion
required her to confess this great sin to her confessor, and seek
absolution for her soul’s sake; but that confessor was the man she loved,
and the confession itself, besides being forbidden by every principle of
womanly feeling, might, if made to him, precipitate both into the gulf
their faith told them to avoid.
“Sinning woman that I am, how can I pray to the Holy Virgin with such a
stain on my soul! Aid me, thou Chaste Mother, purest and best of women.
Must I ever carry this sorrow, known to him and seen to God, yet dare not
confess it, for fear of a greater sin? Would that I had drowned at the
wreck,” and the tears dropped fast upon her pale cheeks. For a moment her
body swayed to and fro with anguish, till faint and worn she sank upon
the ground.
Woman! thine hour of trial has come; as the good or evil principle
succeeds within thee, so wilt thou be saved or lost!
Every soul is born into the kingdom of Heaven only through spirit throes,
such as thou now feelest test thy power! Much has been given thee, and
much is required in _this_ hour. Conquer, and eye hath not seen nor ear
heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive the joy
reserved for thee!
“God knows I love Olmedo. Were I to force my tongue to perjure my soul to
man, He sees my heart and its secret sin. Father in heaven, can it be sin
to love this man! Thou art all-wise, all-good, all-merciful. Thou hast
told us that imperfect mortals cannot look on Thee and live, but through
him, thy likeness so shines, that I can dimly see Thee. Do I not then
in loving him, love Thee?” And she mused for an instant with a dubious
smile, as if hope had began to dawn on her mind.
It was but for a short moment. Again her features darkened, and the cold
shudder came back upon her. Life seemed struggling to escape from so
bitter a trial. But her vital organization was so exquisite, that as she
could enjoy, so must she also suffer.
“Oh! my God! my God!” broke passionately from her lips, “what blasphemy
is this! Save me, Holy Mother! intercede for me with thy Son! the Evil
One seeks to snare my soul,” and she knelt in prayer.
There in the forest, no leaf stirring, all nature hushed, that lone
woman, her soul racked with doubt, fearing equally to violate her own
pure impulses and the faith which bade her crucify them, plead piteously
to her Father in heaven for strength to calm her soul, and to know the
right. Never before, in that land, had a truthful, earnest woman’s heart
poured forth its passionate griefs in words of childlike simplicity,
seeking sympathy and aid direct from its Maker. Well might we call that
spot hallowed through all after time. Long and deeply she prayed, with
her sad, sorrow-convulsed face upturned to heaven, into the vault of
which her full mild eyes seemed to pierce with a bright light, as if
like Stephen, she saw the crucified one amid his angels. Gradually her
features softened, a tear stood in either eye, the spirit she sought
entered her soul, and she rose from her forest altar, if not a happier,
for the time a calmer woman.