"He is, of course, an extraordinary man," went on Mr. Harland--"and he
is bound to offend many and to please few. He is not likely to escape
the usual fate of unusual characters. But I think--indeed I may say I
am sure--his integrity is beyond question. He has curious opinions
about love and marriage--almost as curious as the fixed ideas he holds
concerning life and death."
Something cold seemed to send a shiver through my blood--was it some
stray fragment of memory from the past that stirred me to a sense of
pain? I forced myself to speak.
"What are those opinions?" I asked, and looking up in the moonlight to
my companion's face I saw that it wore a puzzled expression--"Hardly
conventional, I suppose?"
"Conventional! Convention and Santoris are farther apart than the
poles! No--he doesn't fit into any accepted social code at all. He
looks upon marriage itself as a tacit acknowledgment of inconstancy in
love, and declares that if the passion existed in its truest form
between man and woman any sort of formal or legal tie would be
needless,--as love, if it be love, does not and cannot change. But it
is no use discussing such a matter with him. The love that he believes
in can only exist, if then, once in a thousand years! Men and women
marry for physical attraction, convenience, necessity or
respectability,--and the legal bond is necessary both for their sakes
and the worldly welfare of the children born to them; but love which is
physical and transcendental together,--love that is to last through an
imagined eternity of progress and fruition, this is a mere dream--a
chimera!--and he feasts his brain upon it as though it were a
nourishing fact. However, one must have patience with him--he is not
like the rest of us."
"No!" I murmured--and then stood silently beside him watching the
moonbeams ripple on the waters in wavy links of brightness.
"When you married," I said, at last--"did you not marry for love?"
He puffed at his cigar thoughtfully.
"Well, I hardly know," he replied, after a long pause,--"Looking back
upon everything, I rather doubt it! I married as most men marry--on
impulse. I saw a pretty face--and it seemed advisable that I should
marry--but I cannot say I was moved by any great or absorbing passion
for the woman I chose. She was charming and amiable in our courting
days--as a wife she became peevish and querulous,--apt to sulk,
too,--and she devoted herself almost entirely to the most commonplace
routine of life;--however, I had nothing to justly complain of. We
lived five years together before her child Catherine was born,--and
then she died. I cannot say that either her life or her death left any
deep mark upon me--not if I am honest. I don't think I understand
love--certainly not the love which Rafel Santoris looks upon as the
secret key of the Universe."
Instinctively my eyes turned towards the 'Dream' at anchor. She looked
like a phantom vessel in the moonlight. Again the faint shiver of cold
ran through my veins like a sense of spiritual terror. If I should lose
now what I had lost before! This was my chief thought,--my hidden
shuddering fear. Did the whole responsibility rest with me, I wondered?
Mr. Harland laid his hand kindly on my arm.
"You look like a wan spirit in the moonbeams," he said--"So pale and
wistful! You are tired, and I am selfish in keeping you up here to talk
to me. Go down to your cabin. I can see you are full of mystical
dreams, and I am afraid Santoris has rather helped you to indulge in
them. He is of the same nature as you are--inclined to believe that
this life as we live it is only one phase of many that are past and of
many yet to come. I wish I could accept that faith!"
"I wish you could!" I said--"You surely would be happier."
"Should I?" He gave a quick sigh. "I have my doubts! If I could be
young and strong and lie through many lives always possessed of that
same youth and strength, then there would be something in it--but to be
old and ailing, no! The Faust legend is an eternal truth--Life is only
worth living as long as we enjoy it."
"Your friend Santoris enjoys it!" I said.
"Ah! There you touch me! He does enjoy it, and why? Because he is
young! Though nearly as old in years as I am, he is actually young!
That's the mystery of him! Santoris is positively young--young in
heart, young in thought, ambition, feeling and sentiment, and yet--"
He broke off for a moment, then resumed.
"I don't know how he has managed it, but he told me long ago that it
was a man's own fault if he allowed himself to grow old. I laughed at
him then, but he has certainly carried his theories into fact. He used
to declare that it was either yourself or your friends that made you
old. 'You will find,' he said, 'as you go on in years, that your family
relations, or your professing dear friends, are those that will chiefly
insist on your inviting and accepting the burden of age. They will
remind you that twenty years ago you did so and so,--or that they have
known you over thirty years--or they will tell you that considering
your age you look well, or a thousand and one things of that kind, as
if it were a fault or even a crime to be alive for a certain span of
time,--whereas if you simply shook off such unnecessary attentions and
went your own way, taking freely of the constant output of life and
energy supplied to you by Nature, you would outwit all these croakers
of feebleness and decay and renew your vital forces to the end. But to
do this you must have a constant aim in life and a ruling passion.' As
I told you, I laughed at him and at what I called his 'folly,' but
now--well, now--it's a case of 'let those laugh who win.'"
"And you think he has won?" I asked.
"Most assuredly--I cannot deny it. But the secret of his victory is
beyond me."
"I should think it is beyond most people," I replied--"For if we could
all keep ourselves young and strong we would take every means in our
power to attain such happiness--"
"Would we, though?" And his brows knitted perplexedly--"If we knew,
would we take the necessary trouble? We will hardly obey a physician's
orders for our good even when we are really ill--would we in health
follow any code of life in order to keep well?"