"I have never had time to think of being sick myself, or to think of
myself in any way. I used to worry over every thing, and strove to
gather sufficient force in one day to last a week, but the effort was
useless. I now realise that I am not doing this living. I am being
lived. There is much rest to me in that thought."
"You speak in riddles," said the doctor, "how can an unimaginative
fellow like me solve the mystery of `I am being lived?'"
"It is not a riddle, and it is not for the imaginative," said Kate. "It
is reality of which I speak. We talk of the burden of life. But life
is not a burden. If you look about at the over-burdened world you will
find that its people are weighed down with loads of their own
accumulation. Apprehension, fretfulness, discontent--a thousand
things--dissipate the strength and happiness of mortals. I have come to
believe that individual life, as it was given from the hand of God, is a
fulness--not a strife. The familiar old figure of speech, `Life is a
river,' expresses it to me, and the river just flows along and takes all
the goodly, streams that flow into it all the length of its course. So
it grows and is filled, not filling itself."
"But don't you see, Miss Darcy, that the river must also take all the
bad that flows into it."
"But don't _you_ see," asked Kate, "that pursuing its course to the
great ocean it purifies and brings to sparkling clearness _all_ that
comes to it. That is always the result of patient and cheerful
acceptance."
It is in unexpected places and at unexpected times that we most often
find ourselves speaking of heart-experiences, and spiritual beliefs and
attainments. To Dr Fox this was a rare occasion. In the life he had
known since he had left his native shores, the questions of the hour
arising for the earnest thinker had not been presented to him. Like
other men away from the influence of home and intelligent high-toned
womanhood, he had drifted into careless modes of thought.
The ease that comes from a happy-go-lucky philosophy is not the peace
that comes of trust. Dr Fox felt this with a startling clearness.
Through the woman by his side came the white, searching light of a pure
soul within, shining upon his own and revealing the barrenness of life
without earnestness. How had she reached her spiritual altitude amid
the ambitions and crushing disappointments of her past?
"Miss Darcy," said the doctor, "you are one of the rare beings who see
only the good in every thing. You seem to know no other force. This
may do for women, but how can men, with grosser natures, come into such
a wide place?"
Kate looked at her companion with brave, open eyes, and she longed to
impart her own earnestness to him. Every good woman is a natural moral
reformer.
"Why," said Kate, "do men leave women lonely on spiritual heights? The
men, too, are gods if they did but know it. Shall women have all the
riches and delights of inward content? To live in harmony with our
source means perfect health, and the attainment of our heart's desire,
for then there can be no friction, no uncontrollable conditions. Why
should not men without scepticism or half-heartedness accept and know
the truth?"
"But you see, Miss Darcy, men would become dreamers, not workers. I
fear we must leave the angel-side of existence to you, only stipulating
that you do not fly away from us entirely."
"That is the trouble with a man," said Kate, "he calls the strongest
force in the world a dream. As for the women flying away--don't think
it. They love to stay where they can keep the men in sight."
She laughed. Laughter and tears were always close by with Kate.
"I believe," she continued, "most men think that thoughts of this sort
are to be saved for the occupying of eternal years. Whereas Eternity
always was, and now is. We are living in the Eternal Now."
"You think that men and women could be companions in this thought?"
queried the doctor.
"I do. To be companions in the married or unmarried state, is just the
rarest happiness in the world, but we are demanding it. It is the
desire of the heart, and we will have it. Man stands for Love. Woman
for Intelligence, Intuition. The Woman, no matter how intellectual, is
ever craving for Love, ever seeking it. When Love on the one hand, and
Intelligence and Intuition on the other, meet in this belief in the one
Force, and recognise in each other the desire of their hearts and cry
out, `I have found you,' the two become one--Spirit."
"Why do you say `Man is Love?' I have always thought he represented
Intelligence."
"Is not Cupid a boy?" replied Kate saucily.
The doctor touched the horses with the whip, and they sped along the
road. There was silence for a few moments, when Kate broke it by
saying:
"I shall remember this ride with pleasure, Doctor, as it will probably
be the last one I shall take with you before my departure for other
scenes."
The reins fell idly on the doctor's lap, and the horses dropped into a
walk. Horses have a trick of accommodating themselves to the moods of
their drivers.
The doctor's face lost its look of enthusiasm.
"When do you go, and where do you go?" he asked.
"I want to leave the Fields during the hot Christmas holidays, and have
arranged to go to that pretty little spot not far away--Bloemfontein."
"I am sorry you are going away," said the doctor, "but I should be
sorrier if it were further from Kimberley. It seems a short time since
you came here."
"Short stays make long friends," said Kate.
"Then I shall come and make short stays," exclaimed the doctor, with a
return to something like gaiety.
"Do--" said Kate. "I mean do come. I don't mean make short stays!"
"Of course you will return to Kimberley?"
"I hardly think I shall," replied Kate.
"Is there nothing that I can say that could induce you to return?" The
doctor said this with an accent on the personal pronoun "I."
Kate did not think for a moment that it meant anything more than
gallantry, but something: in the tone of his voice made her look into
his face. The doctor was looking at her in that manly way of his, and
she answered his look, with one as sweetly womanly, but hesitated to
frame any words, for the right ones would not come. Where now was
Kate's fluency of speech? He laid his hand over hers, resting passively
in her lap, and said:
"Pardon me for revealing my feelings toward you. Don't speak now. I
cannot expect you to come to my quick conclusions in a matter like this.
Kate, you are my ideal woman. Only that man who has daily before him
his ideal for inspiration can hope to attain his highest manhood. When
I make a farewell call upon you before my trip to England, tell me if I
have gone farther than you can go with me."
Kate sat in a twilight happiness and her lips were dumb. She could
neither encourage nor deny. Her past was before her. She remembered
the time when she had laid her young heart on the altar of an early
love. Could it be possible she could find happiness in the love of
another? Should she take into the joyousness of her existence, won by
submission and an exalted spiritual life, a new relationship?
The doctor's manner showed neither embarrassment nor anxiety. He had
the assurance of a nature that knows what it wants--as the satisfaction
of love, and that can say, "I want you for my wife. Come!" intending to
take no denial. Then the woman, contented in his love, is willing to
say, "I will love, honour, and obey," for her yoke is the yoke of love,
and her burden light, because she is evenly yoked. He was sure that he
could make Kate Darcy happy. It should be her own fault if he did not.
A vision of such a home as could be counted by thousands in his own
happy land was before him. If this woman had drank of the elixir of
life, she should by her companionship share her cup with him. By her
own story she had grown younger with years. She should share her
perfected youth with him.
This was a strange couple. Not a wand more of the mysteries of life and
love escaped them. They talked as though they were henceforth sane on
all subjects. The horses once more became swift. It is well that
horses, if they can hear and comprehend, cannot talk.