He began again, more remotely from the affair in hand than he had left
off, as if he wanted to give himself room for parley with my possible
incredulity. “You know how it was with Marion about my not believing that
I should live again. Her notion was a sort of joke between us, especially
when others were by, but it was a serious thing with her, in her heart.
Perhaps it had originally come to her as a mere fancy, and from
entertaining it playfully, she found herself with a mental inmate that
finally dispossessed her judgment. You remember how literally she brought
those Scripture texts to bear on it?”
“Yes. May I say that it was very affecting?”
“Affecting!” Alderling repeated in a tone of amaze at the inadequacy of
my epithet. “She was always finding things that bore upon the point.
After awhile she got to concealing them, as if she thought they annoyed
me. They never did; they amused me; and when I saw that she had something
of the sort on her mind, I would say, ‘Well, out with it, Marion!’ She
would always begin, ‘Well, you may laugh!’” and as he repeated her words
Alderling did laugh, forlornly, and as I must say, rather
bloodcurdlingly.
I could not prompt him to go on, but he presently did so himself,
desolately enough. “I suppose, if I was in her mind at all in that
supreme moment, when she seemed to be leaving this life behind with such
a solemn effect of rating it at nothing, it may have been a pang to her
that I was not following her into the dark, with any ray of hope for
either of us. She could not have returned from it with the expectation of
convincing me, for I used to tell her that if one came back from the
dead, I should merely know that he had been mistaken about being dead,
and was giving me a dream from his trance. She once asked me if I thought
Lazarus was not really dead, with a curious childlike interest in the
miracle, and she was disheartened when I reminded her that Lazarus had
not testified of any life hereafter, and it did not matter whether he had
been really dead or not when he was resuscitated, as far as that was
concerned. Last year, we read the Bible a good deal together here, and to
tease her I pretended to be convinced of the contrary by the very
passages that persuaded her. As she told you, she did not care for
herself. You remember that?”
“Distinctly,” I said.
“It was always so. She never cared. I was perfectly aware that if she
could have assured life hereafter to me, she would have given her life
here to do it. You know how some women, when they are married, absolutely
give themselves up, try to lose themselves in the behoof of their
husbands? I don’t say it rightly; there are no words that will express
the utterness of their abdication.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, “and it was one of the facts which most
interested me in Mrs. Alderling.”
“Because I wasn’t worthy of it? No man is!”
“It wasn’t a question of that in my mind; I don’t believe that occurred
to me. It was the _Ding an sich_ that interested me, or as it related
itself to her, and not the least as it related itself to you. Such a
woman’s being is a cycle of self-sacrifice, so perfect, so essential,
from birth to death, as to exclude the notion of volition. She is what
she does. Of course she has to put her sacrifice into words from time to
time, but its true language is acts, and the acts themselves only
clumsily express it. There is a kind of tyranny in it for the man, of
course. It requires self-sacrifice to be sacrificed to, and I don’t
suppose a woman has any particular merit in what is so purely natural. It
appears pathetic when it is met with ingratitude or rejection, but when
it has its way it is no more deserving our reverence than eating or
sleeping. It astonishes men because they are as naturally incapable of it
as women are capable of it.”
I was mounted and was riding on, forgetful of Alderling, and what he had
to tell me, if he had anything, but he recalled me to myself by having
apparently forgotten me, for when I paused, he took up his affair at a
quite different point, and as though that were the question in hand.
“That gift, or knack, or trick, or whatever it was, of one compelling the
presence of the other by thinking or willing it, was as much mine as
hers, and she tried sometimes to get me to say that I would use it with
her if she died before I did; and if she were where the conditions were
opposed to her coming to me, my will would help her to overcome the
hinderance; our united wills would form a current of volition that she
could travel back on against all obstacles. I don’t know whether I make
myself clear?” he appealed.
“Yes, perfectly,” I said. “It is very curious.” He said in a kind of
muse, “I don’t know just where I was.” Then he began again, “Oh, yes! It
was at the ceremony--down there in the library. Some of the country
people came in; I suppose they thought they ought, and I suppose they
wanted to; it didn’t matter to me. I had sent for Doctor Norrey, as soon
as the relapse came, and he was there with me. Of course there was the
minister, conducting the services. He made a prayer full of helpless
repetitions, which I helplessly noticed, and some scrambling remarks,
mostly misdirected at me, affirming and reaffirming that the sister they
had lost was only gone before, and that she was now in a happier world.
“The singing and the praying and the preaching came to an end, and then
there was that soul-sickening hush, that exanimate silence, of which the
noise of rustling clothes and scraping feet formed a part, as the people
rose in the hall, where chairs had been put for them, leaving me and
Norrey alone with Marion. Every fibre of my frame recognized the moment
of parting, and protested. A tremendous wave of will swept through me and
from me, a resistless demand for her presence, and it had power upon her.
I heard her speak, and say, as distinctly as I repeat the words, ‘I will
come for you!’ and the youth and the beauty that had been growing more
and more wonderful in her face, ever since she died, shone like a kind of
light from it. I answered her, ‘I am ready now!’ and then Norrey scuffled
to his feet, with a conventional face of sympathy, and said, ‘No hurry,
my dear Alderling,’ and I knew he had not heard or seen anything, as well
as I did afterwards when I questioned him. He thought I was giving them
notice that they could take her away. What do you think?”
“How what do I think?” I asked.
“Do you think that it happened?”
There was something in Alderling’s tone and manner that made me, instead
of answering directly that I did not, temporize and ask, “Why?”
“Because--because,” and Alderling caught his breath, like a child that is
trying to keep itself from crying, “because _I_ don’t.” He broke into a
sobbing that seemed to wrench and tear his poor little body, and if I had
thought of anything to say, I could not have said it to his headlong
grief with any hope of assuaging it. “I am satisfied now,” he said, at
last, wiping his wet face, and striving for some composure of its
trembling features, “that it was all a delusion, the effect of my
exaltation, of my momentary aberration, perhaps. Don’t be afraid of
saying what you really think,” he added scornfully, “with the notion of
sparing me. You couldn’t doubt it, or deny it, more completely than I
do.”
[Illustration: “HE BROKE INTO A SOBBING THAT SEEMED TO WRENCH AND TEAR”]
I confess this unexpected turn struck me dumb. I did not try to say
anything, and Alderling went on.
“I don’t deny that she is living, but I can’t believe that I shall ever
live to see her again, or if you prefer, die to see her. There is the
play of the poor animal instinct, or the mechanical persistence of
expectation in me, so that I can’t shut the doors without the sense of
shutting her out, can’t put out the lights without feeling that I am
leaving her in the dark. But I know it is all foolishness, as well as you
do, all craziness. If she is alive it is because she believed she should
live, and I shall perish because I didn’t believe. I should like to
believe, now, if only to see her again, but it is too late. If you disuse
any member of your body, or any faculty of your mind, it withers away and
if you deny your soul your soul ceases to be.”
I found myself saying, “That is very interesting,” from a certain force
of habit, which you have noted in me, when confronted with a novel
instance of any kind. “But,” I suggested, “why not act upon the reverse
of that principle, and create the fact by affirmation which you think
your denial destroys?”
“Because,” he repeated wearily, “it is too late. You might as well ask
the fakir who has held his arm upright for twenty years, till it has
stiffened there, to restore the dry stock by exercise. It is too late,
I tell you.”
“But, look here, Alderling,” I pursued, beginning to taste the joy of
argument. “You say that your will had such power upon her after you knew
her to be dead that you made her speak to you?”
“No, I don’t say that now,” he returned. “I know now that it was a
delusion.”
“But if you once had that power of summoning her to you, by strongly
wishing for her presence, when you were both living here, why doesn’t it
stand to reason that you could do it still, if she is living there and
you are living here?”
“I never had any such power,” he replied, with the calm of absolute
tragedy. “That was a delusion too. I leave the doors open for her, night
and day, because I must, but if she came I should know it was not she.”