And no more turn aside and brood
Upon Love's bitter mystery.
--W. B. YEATS.
It seems is if in the early childhood of all of us some tiny cell in the
embryo brain remains dormant after the intelligence and other faculties
have begun to quicken and waken. While that cell sleeps the child is
callous to suffering, even ingenious in inflicting it. The little cell
in the brain wakes and the cruelty disappears. And the same cell that
was slow to quicken in the child is often the first to fall asleep in
the old. The ruthless cruelty of old age is not more of a crime than the
ruthless cruelty of young children. Childhood does not yet understand.
Old age ceases to understand.
But some there are among us who have passed beyond childhood, beyond
youth, into middle age, in whose brain that little cell still sleeps and
gives no sign of waking, though all the other faculties are at their
zenith; imagination, intellect, lofty sentiment, religious fervour.
Where they go pain follows. They leave a little trail of pain behind
them, to mark their path through life. They appear to have come into the
world to be ministered to, not to minister. If love could reach them,
call loudly to them from without, it seems as if the dormant cell might
wake. But if they meet love, even on an Easter morning, and when they
are looking for him, they mistake him for the gardener. They can only
be loved and served. They cannot love--as yet. They exact love and miss
it. They feel their urgent need of its warmth in their stiffening,
frigid lives. Sometimes they gain it, lay their cold hand on it, analyse
it, foresee that it may become an incubus, and decide that there is
nothing to be got out of it after all.
They seem inhuman because they are not human--as yet. They seem
variable, treacherous, because a child's moral sense guiding a man's
body and brain must so seem. They are not sane--as yet.
And all the while the little cell in the brain sleeps, and their truth
and beauty and tenderness may not come forth--as yet.
We who love them know that, and that our strained faithfulness to them
now may seem almost want of faith, our pained tenderness now shew like
half-heartedness on the day when that little cell in the brain wakes.
Michael knew this without knowing that he knew it. His mind arrived
unconsciously at mental conclusions by physical means. But in the days
that followed, while his mind remained weak and wandering, he was
supported by the illusion--was it an illusion--that it was Fay really
who was in prison, not himself, and that he was allowed to take her
place in her cell because she would suffer too much, poor little thing,
unless he helped her through.
He became tranquil, happy, serene. He felt no regret when he was well
enough to resume the convict-life, and the chains were put on him once
more. Did he half know that Fay's fetters were heavier than his, that
they were eating into her soul, as his had never eaten into his flesh?
When he sent her a message the following spring that he was happy, it
was because it was the truth. Desire had rent him and let him go--at
last. Vague, inconsequent and restful thoughts were Michael's.
His body remained feeble and emaciated. But he was not conscious of its
exhaustion. His mind was at peace with itself.