HEART HUNGER
"Only; I discern
Infinite passion, and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn."
--Browning.
For a moment after she had read the note which David thrust beneath her
door, Pepeeta held her breath; then sinking to her knees, she prostrated
herself before that august Being to whom all men bow in last
extremities; her head resting upon arms pathetically crossed on the low
window sill--bruised but not broken, cast down, but not destroyed--she
drank the cup of sorrow to its dregs.
Men hang birds in dark rooms, sometimes, until they learn to sing, and
it was to a kindred discipline of her Heavenly Father's that Pepeeta was
being subjected. In that supreme hour of trial she performed the
greatest feat of which the soul is capable. She defied her own nature;
she committed an act of sacred violence against the most clamorous
propensities of her heart.
What that struggle cost her no mortal mind can know. That in her
decision she chose the better part some will doubt. The most common
justification of our conduct is that we have followed the "dictates of
our natures." But because those natures are double, and the good and
evil perpetually struggle for the mastery, we are sometimes compelled
to reverse their most strenuous demands.
Those lofty souls who are enabled to perceive their duty clearly and to
commit bravely this act of sacred violence must always remain a mystery
to those who meanly live upon a lower plane of existence.
It was as certain when this pure soul entered upon her renewed struggle
to find the path of duty that she would succeed, as that the carrier
pigeon, launched into an unknown region, will find the homeward way; but
for a little time she fluttered her wings in ignorance and despair; she
found no rest for the soles of her feet, and the ark of refuge was
nowhere to be seen.
The nearness of her lover, she could see him in the street; his sorrow,
she could behold his white face even by the pale light of the moon; his
tender love, whose real depth she had never for a moment doubted; his
bitter agony, which she knew she could terminate in a single instant,
all appealed to her with an indescribable power. Her own sorrow and
loneliness were eclipsed by the consciousness of the sorrow and
loneliness of the man whom she loved more than life. She felt the pain
in his bosom far more than in her own; but this feeling which added so
much to her suffering became a clear interpreter of her duty.
She acted from a single, undivided impulse; it was to do him good and
bring to him the final beatitude of life. She saw as clearly as when the
facts about this tragedy were flashed upon her that her presence in
David's life would be a perpetual source of irritation, and that so long
as he possessed her he would never be able to face the truly spiritual
problems which remained to be solved.
How she acquired those powers of divination is a mystery. Such women
possess a certain prescience that cannot wholly be accounted for. What
Pepeeta did was right because she was Pepeeta. It does not follow that
because such natures see so clearly that they act with less pain than
others. Indeed, the more clear those spiritual perceptions, the more
poignant are the sufferings which they involve; life can scarcely afford
a situation more pathetic than hers.
Alone in a great city, young and beautiful, capable of enjoying
happiness with a singular appreciation, the victim of a complicated set
of circumstances for the comprehension and management of which her early
life had afforded no training; guilty of a great sin, but if one could
say so, innocently guilty, and penitent; consecrated to duty, but torn
asunder by conflicting emotions as if upon a wheel--of what deeper
sorrow is the soul capable?
When she extinguished that candle she extinguished the sun of her human
happiness; but it happened to her as it has happened to countless
others, that in the darkness which ensued she saw a myriad beautiful
stars.
The next morning Pepeeta resolutely took up the heavy burden of her life
and bore it uncomplainingly, adjusting herself as the brave and patient
have ever done, to the necessities of her daily existence. Her little
attic room became a sort of sanctuary, and began to take upon itself a
reflection of her nature. She built it to fit her own character and
needs, as a bird builds its nest to fit its bosom.
It may be said of most of us that we secrete our homes as the snails do
their shells. They become a sort of material embodiment of our spirits,
a physical expression of our whole thought about life. Before long
flowers were blooming in Pepeeta's window; a mocking bird was singing in
a cage above it; on the wall hung the old tambourine and one after
another many little inexpensive but brightening bits and scraps of
things such as women pick up by instinct found their places in this
simple attic.
She seldom left it for the outside world, except when she went to
deliver the work she had finished, and on Sundays when she spent the
morning wandering from one church to another. As a consequence of these
brief but regular pilgrimages her beautiful face became familiar to the
residents of some of the side streets where the women and children made
her low courtesies and the men doffed their hats by that divine instinct
of reverence which we all feel in the presence of the beautiful and the
good.
A double craving devours our human hearts--for solitude and for
companionship. As there are hours when we thirst to be alone, there are
others when we hunger for the touch of a human hand, the glance of a
human eye, a smile from human lips. Even gross, material things like
food and drink lose half their flavor when taken in solitude. Pepeeta
needed friends and found them.
We never know how small a part of ourselves that fraction may be which
we have taken for the whole! We come to know ourselves by struggle and
endeavor, more than by thought and meditation. We have only to do our
work each day in hope and trust. We can only find rest in effort. It is
not in repose, but in activity--not in joy, but in sorrow, that the soul
comes to its second birth. Pepeeta needed labor and suffering, and they
were sent her.
She accepted all that followed her supreme decision without a question
and without a murmur for many months, and then--a reaction came! The
draughts upon her physical and emotional nature had been too great.