THE ROAD TO NOTHINGNESS.
"Whatever trouble you're a-sufferin' from," said Martha, as he was
going, "I can tell you one sure thing about it. Time changes it so's you
wouldn't think it was the same trouble a year afterwards. Now, if you
wait, and have patience, and don't do anything one way or another for a
month, you'll be real glad you waited. Once I would have been glad to
die the minute after sorrow came. Now I'm glad I didn't die, for I've
learned to see things different somehow."
His heart was being gnawed at that moment by horrible pain, but he
caught the force of her words and took his resolve against the seduction
of the pool, that lay now in his vision, as beautiful as a window of
heaven.
"I've come to the same thought," he answered. "I'll not do anything for
a month anyway, unless it's something very wise and good. But I'm going
now to think the matter over by myself, and I know that you have done me
great service in helping me to look at my sorrows rightly."
She smiled her thanks and watched him as he struck out for the hills two
miles away. Often had her dear sons left the door for the same walk, and
she had watched them with such love and pride. Oh, life, life!
By the pool which tempted him so strongly Horace sat down to study the
problem of his future.
"You are one solution of it," he thought, as he smiled on its beautiful
waters. "All others failing to please, you are here, sure, definite,
soft as a bed, tender as Martha, lovely as a dream. There will be no
vulgar outcry when you untie the knot of woe. And because I am sure of
you, and have such confidence in you, I can sit here and defy your
present charm."
He felt indeed that he was strong again in spite of pain. As one in
darkness, longing for the light, might see afar the faint glint of the
dawn, he had caught a glimpse of hope in the peace which came to him in
Martha's cottage. It could come again. In its light he knew that he
could look upon the past with calmness, and feel no terror even at the
name of Sonia. He would encourage its return. It was necessary for him
to fix the present status of the woman whom he had once called his wife.
He could reason from that point logically. She had never been his wife
except by the forms of law. Her treason had begun with his love, and her
uncleanness was part of her nature; so much had he learned on that
fearful night which revealed her to him. His wealth and his name were
the prizes which made her traitor to lover and husband. What folly is
there in man, or what enchantment in beauty, or what madness in love,
that he could have taken to his arms the thing that hated him and hated
goodness? Should not love, the best of God's gifts, be wisdom too? Or do
men ever really love the object of passion?
Oh, he had loved her! Not a doubt but that he loved her still! Sonia,
Sonia! The pool wrinkled at the sound of her name, as he shrieked it in
anguish across the water. There was nothing in the world so beautiful as
she. Her figure rose before him more entrancing than this fairy lake
with its ever-changing loveliness. Its shadows under the trees were in
her eyes, its luster under the sun was the luster of her body! Oh, there
was nothing of beauty in it, perfume, grace, color, its singing and
murmuring on the shore, that this perfect sinner had not in her body!
He steadied himself with the thought of old Martha. A dread caught him
that the image of this foul beauty would haunt him thus forever, and be
able at any time to drive joy out of him and madness into him. Some part
of him clung to her, and wove a thousand fancies about her beauty. When
the pain of his desolation gripped him the result was invariable: she
rose out of the mist of pain, not like a fury, or the harpy she was, but
beautiful as the morning, far above him, with glorious eyes fixed on the
heavens. He thought it rather the vision of his lost happiness than of
her. If she were present then, he would have held her under the water
with his hands squeezing her throat, and so doubly killed her. But what
a terror if this vision were to become permanent, and he should never
know ease or the joy of living again! And for a thing so worthless and
so foul!
He steadied himself again with the thought of old Martha, and fixed his
mind on the first fact, the starting-point of his reasoning. She had
never been his wife. Her own lips had uttered that sentence. The law had
bound them, and the law protected her now. But she enjoyed a stronger
guard even: his name. It menaced him in each solution of the problem of
his future life. He could do little without smirching that honored name.
He might take his own life. But that would be to punish the innocent and
to reward the guilty. His wealth would become the gilding of adultery,
and her joy would become perfect in his death. Imagine him asleep in the
grave, while she laughed over his ashes, crying to herself: always a
fool. He might kill her, or him, or both; a short punishment for a long
treason, and then the trail of viperous blood over the name of Endicott
forever; not blood but slime; not a tragedy, but the killing of rats in
a cellar; and perhaps a place for himself in a padded cell, legally mad.
He might desert her, go away without explanation, and never see her
again. That would be putting the burden of shame on his own shoulders,
in exile and a branded man for her sake. She would still have his name,
his income, her lover, her place in society, her right to explain his
absence at her pleasure. He could ruin her ruined life by exposing her.
Then would come the divorce court, the publicity, the leer of the mob,
the pointed fingers of scorn. Impossible! Why could he not leave the
matter untouched and keep up appearances before the world? Least
endurable of any scheme. He knew that he could never meet her again
without killing her, unless this problem was settled. When he had
determined on what he should do, he might get courage to look on her
face once more.
He wore the day out in vain thought, varying the dulness by stamping
about the pond, by swimming across it, by studying its pleasant
features. There was magic in it. When he stripped off his clothes and
flung them on the bank part of his grief went with them. When he plunged
into the lovable water, not only did grief leave him, but Horace
Endicott returned; that Horace who once swam a boy in such lakes, and
went hilarious with the wild joy of living. He dashed about the pool in
a gay frenzy, revelling in the sensation that tragedy had no part in his
life, that sorrow and shame had not yet once come nigh him. The shore
and the donning of his garments were like clouds pouring themselves out
on the sunlit earth. He could hardly bear it, and hung about listlessly
before he could persuade himself to dress.
"Surely you are my one friend," he said to the quiet water. "Is it that
you feel certain of giving me my last sleep, my last kiss as you steal
the breath from me? None would do it gentlier. You give me release from
pain, you alone. And you promise everlasting release. I will remember
you if it comes to that."
The pool looked up to him out of deep evening shadows cast upon it by
the woods. There was something human in the variety of its expression.
As if a chained soul, silenced forever as to speech, condemned to a
garment of water, struggled to reach a human heart by infinite shades of
beauty, and endless variations of sound. The thought woke his pity, and
he looked down at the water as one looks into the face of a suffering
friend. Here were two castaways, cut off from the highway of life,
imprisoned in circumstances as firmly as if behind prison grills. For
him there was hope, for the pool nothing. At this moment its calm face
pictured profound sadness. The black shadow of the woods lay deep on the
west bank, but its remotest edge showed a brilliant green, where the sun
lingered on the top fringes of the foliage. Along the east bank, among
the reeds, the sun showed crimson, and all the tender colors of the
water plants faded in a glare of blood. This savage brilliance would
soon give way to the gray mist of twilight, and then to the darkness of
night. Even this poor dumb beauty reflected in its helplessly beautiful
way the tragedies of mankind.
As before with the evening came peace and release from pain. Again he
sat on Martha's porch after supper, and thought nothing so beautiful as
life; and as he listened to further details of her life-story, imparted
with the wise intention of binding him to life more securely, he felt
that all was not yet lost for him. In his little room while the night
was still young, he opened an old volume at the play of Hamlet and
read the story through. Surely he had never read this play before? He
recalled vaguely that it had been studied in college, that some great
actor had played it for him, that he had believed it a wonderful thing;
memories now less real than dreams. For in reading it this night he
entered into the very soul of Hamlet, lived his tortures over again,
wept and raved in dumb show with the wretched prince, and flung himself
and his book to the floor in grief at the pitiful ending. He was the
Hamlet; youth with a problem of the horrible; called to solve that which
shook the brains of statesmen; dying in utter failure with that most
pathetic dread of a wounded name.
Oh, good Horatio, what a wounded name.
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me.
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.
For a little he had thought there could not be in the world such
suffering as his; how clear now that his peculiar sorrow was strange to
no hour of unfortunate time; an old story, innocence and virtue--God
knew he had no pride in his own virtue--preyed upon by cunning vice. He
read Hamlet again. Oh, what depth of anguish! What a portrayal of grief
and madness! Horace shook with the sobs that nearly choked him. Like the
sleek murderer and his plump queen, the two creatures hatefulest to him
lived their meanly prosperous lives on his bounty. What conscience
flamed so dimly in the Danish prince that he could hesitate before his
opportunity? Long ago, had Horace been in his place, the guilty pair
would have paid in blood for their lust and ambition. Hamlet would not
kill himself because the Almighty had "fixed his canon 'gainst
self-slaughter;" or because in the sleep of death might rise strange
dreams; he would not kill his uncle because he caught him praying; and
he was content with preaching to his mother. Conscience! God! The two
words had not reached his heart or mind once since that awful night. No
scruples of the Lord Hamlet obscured his view or delayed his action.
He had been brought up to a vague respect of religious things. He had
even wondered where his father and mother might now inhabit, as one
might wonder of the sea-drowned where their bodies might be floating;
but no nearer than this had heaven come to him. He had never felt any
special influence of religion in his life. In what circumstances had
Hamlet been brought up, that religious feeling should have so serious an
effect upon him? Doubtless the prince had been a Catholic like his
recent acquaintance the Monsignor. Ah, he had forgotten that interesting
man, who had told him much worth remembrance. In particular his last
words ... what were those last words? The effort to remember gave him
mixed dreams of Hamlet and the Monsignor that night.
In the morning he went off to the pool with the book of Hamlet and the
echo of those important but forgotten words. The lonely water seemed to
welcome him when he emerged from the path through the woods; the
underbrush rustled, living things scurried away into bush and wave, the
weeds on the far bank set up a rustling, and little waves leaped on the
shore. He smiled as if getting a friend's morning salute, and began to
talk aloud.
"I have brought you another unfortunate," he said, "and I am going to
read his thoughts to you."
He opened the book and very tenderly, as if reciting a funeral service,
murmured the words of the soliloquy on suicide. How solemnly sounded in
that solitude the fateful phrase "but that the dread of something after
death!" That was indeed the rub! After death there can be anything; and
were it little and slender as a spider's web, it might be too much for
the sleep that is supposed to know no waking and no dreams. After all,
he thought, how much are men alike; for the quandary of Hamlet is mine;
I know not what to do. He laid aside the book and gave himself to idle
watching of the pool. A bird dipped his wing into it midway, and set a
circle of wavelets tripping to the shore. One by one they died among the
sedges, and there was no trace of them more.
"That is the thing for which I am looking," he said; "disappearance
without consequences ... just to fade away as if into water or air ...
to separate on the spot into original elements ... to be no more what I
am, either to myself or others ... then no inquest, no search, no
funeral, no tears ... nothing. And after such a death, perhaps,
something might renew the personality in conditions so far from these,
so different, that _now_ and _then_ would never come into contact."
He sighed. What a disappearance that would be. And at that moment the
words of the Monsignor came back to him:
"_If at any time you wish to disappear, command me._"
A thrill leaped through his dead veins, as of one rising from the dead,
but he lay motionless observing the pool. Before him passed the details
of that night at the tavern; the portraits, the chirping cricket, the
vines at the window, the strange theory of the priest about
disappearing. He reviewed that theory as a judge might review a case, so
he thought; but in fact his mind was swinging at headlong speed over the
possibilities, and his pulses were bounding. It was possible, even in
this world, to disappear more thoroughly behind the veil of life than
under the veil of death. If one only had the will!
He rose brimming with exultant joy. An intoxication seized him that
lifted him at once over all his sorrow, and placed him almost in that
very spot wherein he stood ten days ago; gay, debonair, light of heart
as a boy, untouched by grief or the dread of grief. It was a divine
madness. He threw off his clothes, admired his shapely body for a moment
as he poised on the bank, and flung himself in headlong with a shout. He
felt as he slipped through the water but he did not utter the thought,
that if this intoxication did not last he would never leave the pool. It
endured and increased. He swam about like a demented fish. On that far
shore where the reeds grew he paddled through the mud and thrust his
head among the sedges kissing them with laughter. In another place he
reached up to the high bank and pulled out a bunch of ferns which he
carried about with him. He roamed about the sandy bottom in one corner,
and thrust his nose and his hands into it, laying his cheek on the
smooth surface. He swallowed mouthfuls of the cool water, and felt that
he tasted joy for the first time. He tired his body with divings,
racings, leapings, and shouting.
When he leaped ashore and flung himself in the shade of the wood, the
intoxication had increased. So, not for nothing had he met the priest.
That encounter, the delay in the journey, the stay in the village, the
peculiar character of the man, his odd theory, were like elements of an
antidote, compounded to meet that venom which the vicious had injected
into his life. Wonderful! He looked at the open book beside him, and
then rose to his knees, with the water dripping from his limbs. In a
loud voice he made a profession of faith.
"I believe in God forever."