Graeme's sober intention had been to put Margaret Brandt, and the
agonising regrets that clung to every thought of her, strenuously out
of his mind. But that he found more possible in the intention than in
the accomplishment.
The first shock of loss numbs one's mental susceptibilities, of
course, much as a blow on the head affects the nervous system. The
bands are off the wheels, the machinery is out of order, and the
friction seems reduced. It is when the machine tries to work again
that the full effects of the jar are felt.
And so he found it now. As mind and body recovered tone in the whole
vitalising atmosphere of the wondrous little isle,--the air, the sea,
the sense of remoteness, the placid life of the place, the abounding
beauties of cliff and crag and cave,--his heart awoke also to the
aching sense of its loss.
All outward things--all save Johnny Vautrin, and Marielihou, and old
Tom Hamon, and several others--sang abundantly of the peace and
fulness and joy of life, but his heart was still so sore from its
bruising that at times these outward beauties seemed only to mock him
with their brightness.
In the first shock of his downcasting, wounded pride said, "I will
show no sign. I will forget her. I will salve the bruise with work.
Margaret Brandt is not the only woman in the world. In time some other
shall take her place;"--and he tried his hardest to believe it.
But body is one thing and mind another. The body you may compel to any
mortal thing, but the mind is of a different order, and strongest will
cannot whip it to heel at times. Forbid it thought of thing or person
and the forbidden is just that which will persist in obtruding itself
to the exclusion of all else.
And so, in spite of him, the dull ache in his heart at every thought
of Margaret murmured without ceasing, "There is none like her--none!"
And crush and compel it as he might, the truth would out, and out the
more the more he tried to crush it.
And so at times, in spite of his surroundings, his spirits dragged in
lowest deeps.
Work he could not as yet, for the work of the writer demands absolute
concentration and most complete surrender, and all his faculties were
centred, in spite of himself, on Margaret Brandt and his own great
loss in her.
He rambled all over the island with his dog friends, risked skin and
bones in precarious descents into apparently impossible depths,
scrambled laboriously among the ragged bastions of the Coupée and
Little Sark, explored endless caverns, loitered by day in bosky lanes,
and roamed restlessly by night under the brightest stars he had ever
seen.
But, wherever he went--down underground in the Boutiques or the
Gouliots; or lying on the Eperquerie among the flaming gorse and
cloudlike stretches of primroses; or standing on Longue Pointe while
the sun sank in unearthly splendours behind Herm and Guernsey; or
watching from the windmill the throbbing life-lights all round the
wide horizon;--wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, there with
him always was the poignant remembrance of Margaret Brandt and his
loss in her.
His heart ached so, at thought of the emptiness and desolation of the
years that lay before him, that at times his body ached also, and the
spirit within him groaned in sympathy.
Life without Margaret! What was it worth?
Though it brought him riches and honours overpassing his hopes--and he
doubted now at times if that were possible, lacking the inspiration of
Margaret--what was it worth?
Riches and honours, won at the true sword's point of earnest work,
were good and worth the winning. But yet, without Margaret, they were
as nothing to him. His whole heart cried aloud for Margaret. Without
her all the full rich hues of life faded into dull gray ashes.
With Margaret to strive for, he had felt himself capable of mighty
things. Without her--!
And that she should throw herself away on a Charles Pixley!--Charles
the smiling, the imperturbable, the fount of irrepressible chatter and
everlasting inanities! How could such a one as Charles Pixley possibly
satisfy her nobler nature? Out of the question! Impossible! But then
it is just possible that he was not exactly in the best state of mind
for forming an unbiassed opinion on so large a question as that.
Anyway he was out of it, and Margaret Brandt was henceforth nothing to
him. If he said it once he said it hundreds of times, as if the simple
reiteration of so obvious a truth would make it one whit the truer,
when his whole heart was clamouring that Margaret was all the worlds
to him and the only thing in the world that he wanted.
With an eye, perhaps, to his obvious lack of cheerfulness, his
namesake and host suggested various diversions,--fishing for congers
and rock-fish, a voyage round the island, a trip across to Herm, a day
among the rabbits on. Brecqhou. But he wanted none of them. His life
was flapping on a broken wing and all he wanted was to be left alone.
In time the wound would heal, and he would take up his work again and
find his solace in it. But wounds such as this are not healed in a
day. It was raw and sore yet, the new skin had not had time to form.
He recalled Lady Elspeth's dissatisfaction with his love-scenes, and
thought, grimly, that now he could at all events enter fully into the
feelings of the man who had lost the prize, and would be able to
depict them to the life. If the choice had been left to him he would
gladly have dispensed with all such knowledge to its profoundest
depths, if only the prize had remained to him. But the choice had been
Margaret's, and the prize was Charles Pixley's.
If there was one thing he could have imagined without actual
experience, it was how a man may feel when he loses. What he could not
at present by any possibility conceive was--how it might feel to be
the accepted lover of such a girl as Margaret Brandt.
Confound her money! If it were not for that, Pixley would probably
never have wanted to marry her. Money was answerable for half the
ills of life, and the contrariness of woman for the other half.
Confound money! Confound--Well, truly, his state of mind was not a
happy one.
X
But there was something in the crisp Sark air that, by degrees and all
unconsciously, braced both mind and body;--something broadening and
uplifting in the wide free outlook from every headland; something
restorative of the grip of life in the rush and roar of the mighty
waves and the silent endurance of the rocks; something so large and
aloof and restful in the wide sweep of sea and sky; something so
hopeful and regenerative in the glorious exuberance of the spring--the
flaming gorse, the mystic stretches of bluebells, the sunny sweeps of
primroses, the soft uncurlings of the bracken, the bursting life of
the hedgerows, the joyous songs of the larks--that presently, and in
due season, earthly worries began to fall back into their proper
places below the horizon, and a new Graeme--a Graeme born of Sark and
Trouble--looked out of the old Graeme eyes and began to contemplate
life from new points of view.
It took time, however. Love is a plant of most capricious and
surprising growth. It may take years to root and blossom. It may
spring up in a day, yet strike its roots right through the heart and
hold it as firmly as the growth of the years. And, once the heart is
enmeshed in the golden filaments, it is a most dolorous work to
disentangle it.
For the first two weeks his mind ran constantly on his loss.
Momentarily it might be diverted by outward things, but always it came
back with a sharp shock, and a bitter sense of deprivation, to the
fact that Margaret Brandt had passed out of his life and left behind
her an aching void.
Did he sit precariously among the ragged scarps and pinnacles of
Little Sark, while the western seas raged furiously at his feet and
the Souffleur shot its rockets of snowy spray high into the gray
sky--through the passing film of the spray, and the marbled coils of
the tumbling waves, the face of Margaret Brandt looked out at him.
Did he stride among the dew-drenched, gold-spangled gorse bushes on
the Eperquerie, while the sun came up with ever fresh glories behind
the distant hills of France--Margaret's face was there in the sunrise.
Did he stand above Havre Gosselin in the gloaming, while the sun sank
behind Herm and Guernsey in splendours such as he had never dreamed
of--just so, he said to himself, Margaret had gone out of his life and
left it gray and cheerless as the night side of Brecqhou.
Wherever he was and whatever he did, it was always Margaret,
Margaret,--and Margaret lost to him.
By the end of the third week, however, the tonic effects of the strong
sea air and water began to work inwards. Healthy body would no longer
suffer sick heart. He had taken his morning plunge hitherto as a
matter of course, now he began to enjoy it and to look forward to
it--certain index of all-round recovery.
His appetite grew till he felt it needed an apology, at which Mrs.
Carré laughed enjoyably. He began to take more interest in his
surroundings for their own sakes. His thoughts of Margaret, with their
after-glow of tender memory, were like the soft sad haze which falls
on Guernsey when the sun has sunk and left behind it, in the upper
sky, its slowly dying fires of dull red amber and gold.
Towards the end of the fourth week he tentatively fished out his
manuscript and began to read it--with pauses. He grew interested in
it. He saw new possibilities in the story.--His life was getting back
on to the rails again.