AND SUDDENLY THE LAST
Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be a
memory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of new
worlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly to
close down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled half
sadly, and half proudly. No such good fortune for his sad heart! no such
miscarriage of his young life!
Young life is so sure of its long lease. All about it lie the broken
dreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that _its_ life-work
should suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of!
It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life and
coquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as "Will
it please your honour to die to-morrow week?" is an indignity
inconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worship
of the dead.
Yet for quite simple reasons, as this mysterious world goes, it had been
decided that Theophil was for as brief a while as possible, allowing for
the leisure of natural causes, to support the life he thought he hated.
Even while Jenny lived, fate, mercifully foreseeing, had willed him a
brief pilgrimage; for on that night when Jenny had leaned over him with
that terrible hunger of damp breath, it had been written that of that
kiss Theophil should some day die.
And it was of that kiss that the following May Theophil, all his plans
laid aside, engagements cancelled on every hand, eager life suddenly
trapped in this choking cul-de-sac, was dying.
Death! It was an outrage! He was young, he was powerful! He would not
die!
There was May at the window. He too was full of May. He would get up
and go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. It
was the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, like
the muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss and
twitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he had
been a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, to
rise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak at a
neighbouring town, where he had been promised for a great agitation on
the Home Rule Question. Surely it was a strange enough contradiction of
a year ago, when such meetings had seemed such trivialities in the
thought of death. Now, when they said he was dying--had this world grown
suddenly so significant that he could rise from his death-bed to make
one last appearance in the paltry lists?
He spoke with an overcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a tumbler of
port wine at his side; and as the audience looked on his white hollow
face, and listened to his terrible eloquence, they realised with a
shudder that this was the last tragic effort of a dying man.
Alas! the great world was not to be stamped with his image and
superscription, after all; and only a little faithful company of friends
would know that Theophilus Londonderry was a great man.
This escapade, though it brought on death with double swiftness, brought
too a calm of satisfaction which made it easier to die; and in the
revulsion which it set up, life once more shrank into the background,
and its little triumphs grew paltry once more. Strange, he half smiled
to himself, that the man who was at last really going to Jenny should
even momentarily care about doing anything else!
Yes, he was going to Jenny! So soon! Soon he would be on the other side
of that wall, soon be travelling that strange highway, on the other side
of light and darkness. In a few more weeks he... _HE?_ Would there still
be _he_ anywhere in the universe?
Jenny! Perhaps there had been no Jenny all these months. Perhaps Jenny
stopped being Jenny forever in that last moment when she had tried to
wish him good-bye. And all his daily consciousness of her presence, all
the fancies of his faithful heart, had been idle as the words of a man
talking in his sleep. Those little offerings he had brought to her
altar,--she had never seen them; for perhaps Jenny had been an idol he
had made out of air, while he had been her lonely and unheeded
worshipper.
Was it really like that? and in a few more weeks would he too be as an
eye that had ceased seeing, an ear that had ceased hearing for evermore?
All the wonderful colour and sound of things! Were these waning days to
be his last poor opportunities to sit at the great show?
Yes! the world was slipping like water between his hands--and he might
not be going to Jenny, after all.
As these thoughts began to possess him, another thought which he had so
far resisted grew more importunately pleading--the thought of Isabel.
Perhaps he was going to Jenny, but surely he was leaving Isabel. Had he,
he could not but ask himself, immolated a warm living heart in a
fanatical devotion to a heart long since senseless and cold? Had it not,
after all, been a superstitious veneration towards an ideal of
faithfulness which had been Jenny's rather than his own? Had he in his
heart ever ceased to love Isabel, and had he really believed that to
love her too would have been unfaithfulness to Jenny?
Yes, life was nearly over, but it held the possibility still of one
supreme blessedness. He might look into Isabel's eyes again.
She had but to stand by his side and his poor remnant of life would grow
radiant and rounded as the most complete and blissful destiny. His heart
told him that if Isabel could but once enter the room again, and stay
with him to the end, however near, he would die singing the song of
magnificent life.
Life is tragic, do you say? Life is cruel. Life is a splendid
portico--to nothingness. Ah, no! not if in that portico you have stood
for a moment, loving and beloved, by the side of Isabel. Life is
splendid! life is kind! life is abounding, deep-cupped! and each minute
of it is a prodigal eternity.
Thus it was that one May morning Isabel sat very still in her little
room with a telegram just opened on her lap. The telegram ran: "Jenny is
dead and I am dying. Theophil." And this was the first message Isabel
had received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchester
station eighteen months ago.
She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaid
had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat
cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her,--that Jenny
had divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil had
determined that they must never see each other again.
Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent so
much in written words! Had he ceased loving her?... No, that she could
never believe. They had _met_ too really for that. And, after all, this
silence was no more than their sad marriage-bond. Sad, truly, and a
little tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no power
over her love. That belonged to the realities; that could never change.
"Jenny is dead, and I am dying," Isabel kept saying over to herself,
divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, and
something of Theophil's conflict during those silent months.
"Jenny is dead, and I am dying,"--a sad, a tragic message, surely! And
yet, as from the first shock and consequent turmoil of that message, its
real significance slowly evolved, even Isabel was perhaps surprised to
find it rather a happy than an unhappy significance. Jenny was dead, and
Theophil was dying; and yet, when at last she shook herself out of her
reverie, her face was curiously lit with peace.
She presently discovered that there was a train north in two hours; and
then she turned to her desk, and with that business-like carefulness
with which we often act in a dream, she went over its contents, and
methodically transferred its various accumulations to the tiny grate,
which was soon blazing with unwonted summer fire. A little handful of
letters she saved, and from the diminutive locked cupboard in the
centre she took out a small sealed packet, which was to be included
among her luggage.
All trains do not separate. There are also glad trains which bring
together; and soon Isabel was in one of these, and soon it had taken her
to Theophil,--to whose ears at last had come the sound of wonderful
wheels in the dead street, wheels that had stopped beneath his window, a
rustle of alighting, an opening and shutting of doors, an approaching
whisper on the staircase, and then, with reality unutterable--Isabel.
Isabel!
You could hardly have told that Theophil was dying, and the face that
Isabel thus found again was marked by none of the dreadful writing of
death. His eyes were brighter, his brow more hollow, his cheeks
thinner,--that was all; and he was to be of those of whom we have
spoken, whose flame of life burns brightly to the end. No heavy mists of
Lethe hung about his bed. Till his last heartbeat, he was to be
conscious of the nearness of Isabel. For a fortnight he was thus to lie
within sight and touch of her. How good life is! Think of it, a whole
fortnight! How extravagantly blessed!
Isabel was living in the same house with him day after day. She was no
visitor, but went in and out of the room with the step of one who is at
home. If he grew weary and dozed a moment, she would still be sitting
there when he awoke. She was wearing home things. One morning when she
had been busied in the kitchen preparing some little delicacy for him,
she had left her task for a moment to see if he needed anything; and as
she had bent over him, she had worn a household apron,--a wife's apron.
Yes, she was at home, she would never leave him again, never leave
him--till he died.
"Oh, Isabel--to die!" he moaned one night as she sat by his side.
"But think, dear," she answered, with her head turned away, "think of
Jenny."
"Perhaps there _is_ no Jenny."
No Jenny! Isabel's heart gave a little cry. No Jenny! Then there could
be no harm ...
"Theophil," she said, after a silence, "have you forgotten something we
said to each other that day,--something we promised?"
For answer he looked at her with awed and suddenly enlightened eyes.
"Do you mean that?" he asked. "You mustn't mean that."
"Do you think I could care any more for life?" she asked. "Would you?"
"No," he answered simply.
"May I, then?"
His eyes could alone answer. He knew her love too well to affect that
there would be any loss to her in the life she would thus be leaving.
"But Jenny?"
"If Jenny is there, she will understand now."
I can conceive no happier, completer moment than that which followed for
these two, no more unassailable peace. If their lives were to be quite
put out, they would be extinguished together; if they were to begin anew
elsewhere, they would begin anew together; and meanwhile nothing that
could happen could harm them, could rob them of the desire of their
hearts. At the worst, they would attain their best; at the very least,
they would win their most: they would die together.
To end together. It matters not how few or many years love and the
beloved live their days side by side, even though their love be but the
morning and the evening of one divine day, so that there be no bereaved
and lonely to-morrow. The hour that takes one and not the other takes
with it too all the accumulated happiness of all the years. That hour
these two were to escape. Yet was there no need of haste. So long as
they might, they would sit together in the sun of life. For a little
longer they would say, "How wonderful life is!"--for a little longer
make sure of each other.
Your eyes, Isabel! Your hair, Isabel! Your dear mouth, Isabel!
A little longer.
"Shall we go to-night?"
"Not yet...perhaps to-morrow, Isabel."
But Theophil was now very near death, and he might forget if he lingered
on much more. Not wearily, but with music and singing must they pass
through the strange gate of Death.
So at length, one June evening, Isabel made for them one last little
feast,--once more wine and great grapes set out upon a little table at
Theophil's bedside; and on the table, too, was the little sealed packet
Isabel had taken from the cupboard in her desk.
Drawing her chair close up to his pillow, she poured out their wine,
and they drank it and ate the grapes together,--no happier people in
God's strange world.
As the feast neared its end, Isabel rose, and stirring the little fire
into a blaze, turned out the lamps, so that the room was lit only with
the light from the fire. Then she refilled their glasses with wine, and
breaking the seal of the little white packet, took from it a small
bottle of green crystal, the contents of which she mingled with
the wine.
Then she and Theophil held up their glasses to each other.
"Let us go deeper into the wood," she said softly.
"How wonderful life has been!" said Theophil; and the two drank, with
their eyes firm and sweet upon each other.
Then Isabel sat down again by Theophil's side, and leaning her head
against his on the pillow, she took his hand. And the room became a
heaven of silence.
Whoso would say of these two lives, "How sad!" let him consider the
quality of his own happiness; and whoso would regard the life of
Theophilus Londonderry as a failure, let him, too, consider the value of
his own success.