“Would the gods might give
Another field for human strife;
Man must live one life
Ere he learns to live.
Ah, friend, in thy deep grave,
What now can change; what now can save?”
So there was a message after all, but it could never be carried; a task
for a friend, but it was impossible. What better thing could I do
with the poor little book than bury it in the garden in the shadow of
Larmone? The story of a silent fault, hidden in silence. How many of
life's deepest tragedies are only that: no great transgression, no shock
of conflict, no sudden catastrophe with its answering thrill of courage
and resistance: only a mistake made in the darkness, and under the
guidance of what seemed a true and noble motive; a failure to see the
right path at the right moment, and a long wandering beyond it; a word
left unspoken until the ears that should have heard it are sealed, and
the tongue that should have spoken it is dumb.
The soft sea-fog clothed the night with clinging darkness; the faded
leaves hung slack and motionless from the trees, waiting for their fall;
the tense notes of the surf beyond the sand-dunes vibrated through the
damp air like chords from some mighty VIOLONO; large, warm drops wept
from the arbour while I sat in the garden, holding the poor little book,
and thinking of the white blot in the record of a life that was too
proud to bend to the happiness that was meant for it.
There are men like that: not many perhaps, but a few; and they are the
ones who suffer most keenly in this world of half-understanding and
clouded knowledge. There is a pride, honourable and sensitive, that
imperils the realization of love, puts it under a spell of silence and
reserve, makes it sterile of blossoms and impotent of fruits. For what
is it, after all, but a subtle, spiritual worship of self? And what was
Falconer's resolve not to tell this girl that he loved her until he
had won fame and position, but a secret, unconscious setting of himself
above her? For surely, if love is supreme, it does not need to wait for
anything else to lend it worth and dignity. The very sweetness and power
of it lie in the confession of one life as dependent upon another for
its fulfilment. It is made strong in its very weakness. It is the only
thing, after all, that can break the prison bars and set the heart free
from itself. The pride that hinders it, enslaves it. Love's first duty
is to be true to itself, in word and deed. Then, having spoken truth and
acted verity, it may call on honour to keep it pure and steadfast.
If Falconer had trusted Claire, and showed her his heart without
reserve, would she not have understood him and helped him? It was the
pride of independence, the passion of self-reliance that drew him
away from her and divided his heart from hers in a dumb isolation. But
Claire,--was not she also in fault? Might she not have known, should not
she have taken for granted, the truth which must have been so easy to
read in Falconer's face, though he never put it into words? And yet
with her there was something very different from the pride that kept him
silent. The virgin reserve of a young girl's heart is more sacred than
any pride of self. It is the maiden instinct which makes the woman
always the shrine, and never the pilgrim. She is not the seeker, but the
one sought. She dares not take anything for granted. She has the right
to wait for the voice, the word, the avowal. Then, and not till then, if
the pilgrim be the chosen one, the shrine may open to receive him.
Not all women believe this; but those who do are the ones best worth
seeking and winning. And Claire was one of them. It seemed to me, as I
mused, half dreaming, on the unfinished story of these two lives that
had missed each other in the darkness, that I could see her figure
moving through the garden, beyond where the pallid bloom of the tall
cosmos-flower bent to the fitful breeze. Her robe was like the waving of
the mist. Her face was fair, and very fair, for all its sadness: a blue
flower, faint as a shadow on the snow, trembled at her waist, as she
paced to and fro along the path.
I murmured to myself, “Yet he loved her: and she loved him. Can pride be
stronger than love?”
Perhaps, after all, the lingering and belated confession which Falconer
had written in his diary might in some way come to her. Perhaps if it
were left here in the bower of honeysuckles where they had so often sat
together, it might be a sign and omen of the meeting of these two souls
that had lost each other in the dark of the world. Perhaps,--ah, who
can tell that it is not so?--for those who truly love, with all their
errors, with all their faults, there is no “irrevocable”--there is
“another field.”
As I turned from the garden, the tense note of the surf vibrated through
the night. The pattering drops of dew rustled as they fell from the
leaves of the honeysuckle. But underneath these sounds it seemed as if
I heard a deep voice saying “Claire!” and a woman's lips whispering
“Temple!”