Toute passion a son chemin de croix.
And Michael?
What of him during these two endless years?
What did he think about during his first year in prison: what was the
first waking in his cell like, the second, the third, the gradual
discovery of what it means to be in prison? Was there a bird outside his
window to wound him? The oncome of summer, the first thrill of autumn,
how did he bear them?
His was not a mind that had ever dwelt for long upon itself. The
egoist's torturing gift of introspection and self-analysis was not his.
He had never pricked himself with that poisoned arrow. So far he had not
thought it of great importance what befell him. Did he think so now? Did
he brood over his adverse fate? Did he rebel against it, or did he
accept it? Did angels of despair and anguish wrestle with him through
the hot nights until the dawn? Did his famishing youth rise up against
him? Or did that most blessed of all temperaments, the impersonal one,
minister to him in his great need?
Perhaps at first he was supported by the thought that he was suffering
voluntarily for Fay's sake. Perhaps during the first year he kept hold
of the remembrance of her love for him. Perhaps in time he forgot what
he had read in the depths of her terror-stricken eyes as he had emerged
from behind the screen. There had been no thought of him at that moment
in those violet eyes, no anxiety for him, no love.
Or perhaps he had _not_ forgotten, and had realised that her love for
him was very slenderly built. Perhaps it was the foreshadow of that
realisation that had made him know in his first weeks in prison, before
the trial, that she would not speak.
Michael had unconsciously readjusted several times already in pain his
love for Fay. He did it again during that first year in prison. He saw
that she was not capable of love as he understood it. He saw that she
was not capable of a great sacrifice for his sake. The sacrifice which
would have exonerated him had been altogether too great. Yes, he saw
that. It had been cruel of him to think even for a moment that she might
make it. What woman would! His opinions respecting the whole sex had to
be gently lowered to meet the occasion. Nevertheless she _did_ love him
in her own flower-like way. She would certainly have made a _small_
sacrifice for his sake. His love was tenderly moved and re-niched into a
smaller demand on hers, one that she could have met without too much
distress. His bruised mind comforted itself with the conviction that if
a slight sacrifice on her part could have saved him she would
indubitably have made it.
After a year in prison the news tardily reached Michael through his
friend, the doctor, that the duke was dead.
The news, so long expected, gave him a pang when it did at last arrive.
He had liked the duke. For a moment they had been very near to each
other.
But now, _now_, Fay would release him. It would still be painful to her
to do so, but in a much lesser degree than heretofore. She would have to
endure certain obvious, though groundless, inferences from which her
delicacy would shrink. But she was free to marry him now, and that made
all the difference as to the explanation she would have to give. A
little courage was all that was needed, just enough to make a small
sacrifice for him. She would certainly have that amount. The other had
been too much to expect. _But this_----
Michael leaned his forehead against the stone wall of his cell, and
sobbed for joy.
Oh! God was good. God was merciful. He knew how much he could bear. He
knew that he was but dust. He had not tried him beyond his strength.
Michael was suffused with momentary shame at the joy that the death of
his friend had brought him.
Nevertheless, like a mountain spring that will not be denied, joy ever
rose and rose afresh within him.
Fay and he could marry now. The thought of her, the hungered craving for
her was no longer a sin.
It was Sunday evening. The myriad bells of Venice were borne in a
floating gossamer tangle of sound across the water.
Joy, overwhelming, suffocating joy inundated him.
He stumbled to his feet, and clung convulsively to the bars of his
narrow window.
How often he had heard the bells, but never with this voice!
He looked out across the wide water with its floating islands, each with
its little campanile. His eyes followed the sails of the fishing boats
from Chioggia, floating like scarlet and orange butterflies in the
pearl haze of the lagoon.
How often he had watched them in pain. How often he had turned his eyes
from them lest that mad rage for freedom which entered at times into the
man in the next cell, when the boats passed, should enter also into him,
and break him upon its wheel.
He looked at the boats now with tears in his eyes. They gleamed at him
like a promise straight from God. How freely they moved. Free as air;
free as the sea-mew with its harsh cry wheeling close at hand under a
luminous sky.
He also should be free soon, should float away past the gleaming
islands, over a sea of pearl in a boat with an orange sail.
For Fay would come to him. The one woman in the world of counterfeits
would come to him, and set him free. She would take him in her arms at
last, and lay her cool healing touch upon his aching life. And he would
lean his forehead against her breast, and his long apprenticeship to
love would be over. It seemed to Michael that she was here already, her
soft cheek against his.
He pressed his face to the stone wall, and whispered as to her:
"Fay, have I served you?"
He almost heard her tremulous whisper, "Yes."
"Do you still love me?"
"Yes."
"We may love each other now."
Again Fay's voice very low. "Yes."
It had to be like that. This moment was only a faint foreshadowing of
that unendurable joy, which inevitably had to come.
A great trembling laid hold on Michael. He could not stand. He fell on
his knees, but he could not kneel. He stretched himself face downwards
on his pallet. But it was not low enough. He flung himself on the floor
of his cell, but it was not low enough. A grave would hardly have been
low enough. The resisting stone floor had to do instead.
And through the waves of awe and rapture that swept over him came
faintly down to him, as from some dim world left behind, the bells of
Venice, and the thin cry of the sea-mew rejoicing with him.
Can we call a life sad which has had in it one such blessed hour?
Luminous day followed luminous day, and the nights also were full of
light. His work was nothing to him. The increasing heat was nothing to
him. His chains were nothing to him.
But at last when the weeks drew into a month, two months, a chill doubt
took up its abode with him. It was resolutely cast out. But it returned.
It was fought against with desperation. It was scorned as want of faith.
Michael's strength waned with each conflict. But it always returned. At
last it became to him like a mysterious figure, always present with him.
"Fay," he whispered over and over again through the endless burning
nights of summer. "Dear one, come soon."
There was neither speech nor language, only the lying bells in the dawn.
The shadow deepened.
A frightful suspense laid its cold, creeping hold on Michael.
What could have happened?
Was she ill?
Was she dead?
He waited, and waited, and waited. Time stood still.
Let no one say that he has found life difficult till he has known what
it is to wait; till he has waited through the endless days that turn
into weeks more slowly than an acorn turns into a sapling; through the
unmoving weeks that turn into months more slowly than a sapling turns
into a forest tree,--for a word which does not come.
* * * * *
Late in the autumn, six months and five days after the death of the
duke--Michael marked each day with a scratch on the wall--he received a
letter from Wentworth. He was allowed to receive two letters a year.
He dreaded to open it. He should hear she was dead. He had known all the
time that she was dead. That flowerlike face was dust.
With half blind eyes, that made the words flicker and run into each
other, he sought through Wentworth's long letter for her name. Bess, the
retriever, had had puppies. The Bishop of Lostford's daughter had
married his chaplain--a dull marriage, and the Bishop had not been able
to resist appointing his son-in-law to a large living. The partridges
had done well. He had got more the second time over than last year. But
he did not care to shoot without Michael.
He found her name at last on the third sheet, just a casual sentence.
"Your cousin, the Duchess of Colle Alto, has come to live at Priesthope
for good. She has been there nearly six months. I see her occasionally.
At first she appeared quite stunned by grief, but she is becoming rather
more cheerful as time passes on."
The letter fell out of Michael's hand.
"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on._"
Someone close at hand laughed, a loud, fierce laugh.
Michael looked up startled. He was alone. He never knew that it was he
who had laughed.
"_Rather more cheerful as time passes on._"
He looked back and saw the months of waiting that lay behind
him,--during which the time had passed on. He saw them pieced together
into a kind of map; an endless desert of stones and thorns, and in the
midst a little figure in the far distance, coming toiling towards him,
under a blinding sun.
That figure was himself. And this was what he had reached at last. He
had touched the goal.
She had left Italy for good. She had gone back to her own people; not
lately, but long ago, months ago. When he had first heard of the duke's
death, even while he was counting daily, hourly, on her coming as the
sick man counts on the dawn; even then she was arranging to leave Italy
for good. Even then, when he was expecting her day by day, she must have
made up her mind not to speak. She would not face anything for his sake.
She had decided to leave him to his fate.
She who looked so gentle, was hard; she who wept at a bird's grief over
its rifled nest, was callous of suffering. She, who had seemed to love
him--he felt still her hands holding his hands against her breast--had
never loved him. She did not know what love was.
She was inhuman, a monster. He saw it at last.
There is in love a spiritual repulsion to which physical repulsion at
its worst is but a pale shadow. Those who give love to one who cannot
love may not escape the stroke of that poisoned fang. Sooner or later
that shudder has to come.
Only while we are young do we believe that the reverse of love is hate.
We learn later, and that lesson we never forget, for love alone can
teach it, that the reverse of love is egotism. The egoist cannot love.
Can we endure that knowledge and go on loving? Can we be faithful,
tender, selfless to one who exacts all and gives nothing, who forgets us
and grieves us, even as day by day we forget and grieve our unforsaking
and faithful God?
Can we endure for love of man what God endures for love of us?
The duke's words came back to Michael.
"Why do you deceive yourself, my friend? There is only one person for
whom she has a permanent and deep affection--for her very charming
self."
He had thought of her as his wife for six months and four days.
Michael beat his manacled hands against the wall till they bled. He
broke his teeth against his chains.
If Fay had come in then he would have killed her, done her to death with
the chains he had worn so patiently for her sake.
[Illustration: "IF FAY HAD COME IN THEN HE WOULD HAVE KILLED HER, DONE
HER TO DEATH WITH THE CHAINS HE HAD WORN SO PATIENTLY FOR HER SAKE"]
And that night the convict in the next cell, who had at times such wild
outbursts of impotent rage when the boats went by, heard as he lay awake
a low sound of strangled anguish, that ever stifled itself into silence,
and ever broke forth anew, from dark to dawn.