PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS
As the sharing of a cruel or unworthy secret must be the most terrible
of all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is the
most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and
Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts,
and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of
inner union which they felt no extension of space or endurance of time
could destroy.
Such a marriage as theirs is, of course, the dream of all separated
lovers, "the love that waited and in waiting died" the theme of many
poets; and there have been great historic love-stories to prove such
love a possibility of human hearts; yet, alas! for the experiment that
must so often fail, for the weak wills of loving that will so truly and
yet must loose their holds,--the fire that promised itself food in
memory for a thousand years, but needs the sensual fuel of sight and
touch after all; the love that believed it could go on trusting through
centuries of silence, yet dies at last of little earthly doubts!
For this tremendous fast which you are to make believe a feast, trust in
each other is the one condition that may avail. This trust must come of
no mere exchange of vow or deeply-sworn and eloquent promise; it must be
knowledge one heart of the other, clear and absolute; and such knowledge
in your short hour of revelation you must have learned so passionately
that, like poetry learnt in childhood, it is henceforth no longer a
forgettable, detachable part of your mind's furniture, but a well-spring
of instinct for ever. Is your lady true? You will ask that only when you
ask: Is she beautiful?
Such confidence as this is comparatively common in friendship, but it
is very rare in love: whether it was to be justified in the case of
Isabel and Theophil, time alone could show. Meanwhile they felt calm and
happy, as only two can feel who have discovered in each other the one
unchanging reality in a world of flowing shadow.
It was very wonderful, in quite a new way, to meet again. Their love was
no longer hunger and unrest, it had gained the impassioned peace of
great accepted realities. It was married love now. As the quiet firm
hands held each other again, there seemed to be long retrospects of
tried and tender intercourse in their very touch. Their eyes held a past
in them as well as a future. There was no hurry of the emotions now, no
reason for haste in the seeking and giving of tenderness, no need to
snatch and clutch the good gifts of love as though there was but a short
day for the giving. Their love had grown conscious of its eternity.
It held but one lasting sadness,--that it might not be revealed to
Jenny. So little did they regard their love as one essentially for
concealment, that the temptation to include Jenny in their bond was at
moments a danger. It was so beautiful, and actually, though
unconsciously, she was so integral a part of its beauty.
Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say,
jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart
of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being
the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible
trinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under
like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a
strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's
one unworthiness, its egoism. As the _égoisme à deux_ is finer than an
egoism of one, so this _égoisme à trois_, if you will, is again finer by
its additional inclusiveness.
Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too.
But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such a
union is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved both
Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in
the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was
more impassioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that
it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness,
could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meeting
in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea.
But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They had
vowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy,
but only transfigure, after all,--yet the test was lightning; and for
whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win
them Paradise?
No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told...
Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of
chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded
moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,--when we withdraw
into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,--and Jenny,
by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of
them there.
It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone
down, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for
some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience
was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided,
entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his
vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the
lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the
vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr.
Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but
that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each
other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak
anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,--
"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!"
But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found
me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I
love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a
man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could
be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong
for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost
once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so
calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes
for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark
half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back
dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had
expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them
here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only
seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms.
Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock
had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must
sit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim
reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little
but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good,
and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and
beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her
choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget
that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that
dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how
happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in
brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the
darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If
only she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No!
she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seen
them, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till she
had made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know.
That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then she
might speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go,--she
must not be later than they; they would be passing down to the hall
presently, she must be there before them,--she must be quick,--she must
go now....
As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled a
recognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smile
back at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white,
and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her.
She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the common
resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a
happiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguish
was too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she might
have felt towards death,--it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart
there was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she felt
that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,--just as a
child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too
young to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have loved
their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!)
Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have
spared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs.
Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written,
and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful
joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It was
the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons;
but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to
understand it too. It was called a "Denial," and began:--
"We have met late--it is too late to meet,
O friend, not more than friend!
Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet,
And if I step or stir, I touch the end.
In this last jeopardy
Can I approach thee,--I, who cannot move?
How shall I answer thy request for love?
Look in my face and see.
"I might have loved thee in some former days.
Oh, then, my spirits had leapt
As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise!
Before these faded cheeks were overwept,
Had this been asked of me,
To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,--
I should have said still...Yes, but _smiled_ and said,
'Look in my face and see!'
"But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart
And drowned it in life's surge.
In all your wide warm earth I have no part--
light song overcomes me like a dirge.
Could love's great harmony
The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose,
Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose?
Look in my face and see--
"While I behold, as plain as one who dreams,
Some woman of full worth,
Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's,
Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth
One younger, more thought-free
And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget,
With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet--
Look in my face and see!
"So farewell thou, whom I have known too late
To let thee come so near.
Be counted happy while men call thee great,
And one beloved woman feels thee dear!--
Not I!--that cannot be,
I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where
The change shall take me worse, and no one dare
Look in my face and see."
The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel
recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny
felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its
destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last
verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,--
"Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine
I bless thee from all such!
I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine,
Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch
Of loyal troth. For me,
I love thee not, I love thee not!--away!
There's no more courage in my soul to say
'Look in my face and see.'"
When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss
Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance,
and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently
reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought
of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge.
"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she
was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with
sudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment to
its close.
Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny
along the few yards to home.
"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that.
It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two
people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?"
Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of
giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear."
"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears."
When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real
anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a
passing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness.
She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly,
but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible
to think of two people having to part like that," she said again.
And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual.
"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not
see each other for a long time again."
"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought
there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace.
When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange,"
said Isabel.
"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil.
So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her
bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed.
"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go
back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear,
like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing
but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night."
And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jenny
had said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and if
presently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because he
did not know the reason of her tears?
On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so that
Theophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny again
till the evening.