The serene life came all to an end very suddenly, and with no warning.
One day I had been sitting with Cynthia, and the child was playing on
the floor with some little things--stones, bits of sticks, nuts--which
it had collected. It was a mysterious game too, accompanied with much
impressive talk and gesticulations, much emphatic lecturing of
recalcitrant pebbles, with interludes of unaccountable laughter. We had
been watching the child, when Cynthia leaned across to me and said:
"There is something in your mind, dear, which I cannot quite see into.
It has been there for a long time, and I have not liked to ask you about
it. Won't you tell me what it is?"
"Yes, of course," I said; "I will tell you anything I can."
"It has nothing to do with me," said Cynthia, "nor with the child; it
is about yourself, I think; and it is not altogether a happy thought."
"It is not unhappy," I said, "because I am very happy and very
well-content. It is just this, I think. You know, don't you, how I was
being employed, before I came back, God be praised, to find you? I was
being trained, very carefully and elaborately trained, I won't say to
help people, but to be of use in a way. Well, I have been wondering why
all that was suspended and cut short, just when I seemed to be finishing
my training. I have been much happier here than I ever was before, of
course. Indeed I have been so happy that I have sometimes thought it
almost wrong that any one should have so much to enjoy. But I am
puzzled, because the other work seems thrown away. If you wonder whether
I want to leave our life here and go back to the other, of course I do
not; but I have felt idle, and like a boy turned down from a high class
at school to a low one."
"That is not very complimentary to me!" said Cynthia, laughing. "Suppose
we say a boy who has been working too hard for his health, and has been
given a long holiday?"
"Yes," I said, "that is better. It is as if a clerk was told that he
need not attend his office, but stay at home; and though it is pleasant
enough, he feels as if he ought to be at his work, that he appreciates
his home all the more when he can't sit reading the paper all the
morning, and that he does not love his home less, but rather more,
because he is away all the day."
"Yes," said Cynthia, "that is sensible enough; and I am amazed sometimes
that you can be so good and patient about it all--so content to be so
much with me and baby here; but I don't think it is quite--what shall I
say?--quite healthy either!"
"Well," I said, "I have no wish to change; and here, I am glad to think,
there is never any doubt about what one is meant to do."
And so the subject dropped.
How little I thought then that this was to be the end of the old scene,
and that the curtain was to draw up so suddenly upon a new one.
But the following morning I had been wandering contentedly enough in the
wood, watching the shafts of light strike in among the trees, upon the
glittering fronds of the ferns, and thinking idly of all my strange
experiences. I came home, and to my surprise, as I came to the door,
I heard talk going on inside. I went hastily in, and saw that Cynthia
was not alone. She was sitting, looking very grave and serious, and
wonderfully beautiful--her beauty had grown and increased in a
marvellous way of late. And there were two men, one sitting in a chair
near her and regarding her with a look of love; it was Lucius; and I saw
at a glance that he was strangely changed. He had the same spirited and
mirthful look as of old, but there was something there which I had
never seen before--the look of a man who had work of his own, and had
learned something of the perplexity and suffering of responsibility. The
other was Amroth, who was looking at the two with an air of
irrepressible amusement. When I entered, Lucius rose, and Amroth said to
me:
"Here I am again, you see, and wondering whether you can regain the
pleasure you once were kind enough to take in my company?"
"What nonsense!" I said rather shamefacedly. "How often have I blushed
in secret to think of that awful remark. But I was rather harried, you
must admit."
Amroth came across to me and put his arm through mine.
"I forgive you," he said, "and I will admit that I was very provoking;
but things were in a mess, and, besides, it was very inconvenient for me
to be called away at that moment from my job!"
But Lucius came up to me and said:
"I have come to apologise to you. My behaviour was hideous and horrible.
I won't make any excuses, and I don't suppose you can ever forget what I
did. I was utterly and entirely in the wrong."
"Thank you, Lucius," I said. "But please say no more about it. My own
behaviour on that occasion was infamous too. And really we need not go
back on all that. The whole affair has become quite an agreeable
reminiscence. It is a pleasure, when it is all over, to have been
thoroughly and wholesomely shown up, and to discover that one has been a
pompous and priggish ass. And you and Amroth between you did me that
blessed turn. I am not quite sure which of you I hated most. But I may
say one thing, and that is that I am heartily glad to see you have left
the land of delight."
"It was a tedious place really," said Lucius, "but one felt bound in
honour to make the best of it. But indeed after that day it was
horrible. And I wearied for a sight of Cynthia! But you seem to have
done very well for yourselves here. May I venture to say frankly how
well she is looking, and you too? But I am not going to interrupt you.
I have got my billet, I am thankful to say. It is not a very exalted one,
but it is better than I deserve; and I shall try to make up for wasted
time."
"Hear, hear!" said Amroth; "a very creditable sentiment, to be sure!"
Lucius smiled and blushed. Then he said:
"I never was much of a hand at expressing myself correctly; but you know
what I mean. Don't take the wind out of my sails!"
And then Amroth turned to me, and said suddenly:
"And now I have something else to tell you, and not wholly good news; so
I will just say it at once, without beating about the bush. You are to
come with us too."
Cynthia looked up suddenly with a glance of pale inquiry. Amroth took
her hand.
"No, dear child," he said, "you are not to accompany him. You must stay
here awhile, until the child is grown. But don't look like that! There
is no such thing as separation here, or anywhere. Don't make it harder
for us all. It is unpleasant of course; but, good heavens, what would
become of us all if it were not for that! How dull we should be without
suffering!"
"Yes, yes," said Cynthia, "I know--and I will say nothing against it.
But--" and she burst into tears.
"Come, come," said Amroth cheerfully, "we must not go back to the old
days, and behave as if there were partings and funerals. I will give you
five minutes alone to say good-bye. Lucius, we must start," and, turning
to me, he said, "Meet us in five minutes by the oak-tree in the road."
They went out, Lucius kissing Cynthia's hand in silence.
Cynthia came up to me and put her arms round my neck and her cheek to
mine. We sobbed, I fear, like two children.
"Don't forget me, dearest," she said.
"My darling, what a word!" I said.
"Oh, how happy we have been together!" she said.
"Yes, and shall be happier still," I said.
And then with more words and signs of love, too sacred even to be
written down, we parted. It was over. I looked back once, and saw my
darling gather the child to her heart, and look up once more at me. Then
I closed the door; something seemed to surge up in my heart and
overwhelm me; and then the ring on my finger sent a sharp pang through
my whole frame, which recalled me to myself. And I say it with all the
strength of my spirit, I saw how joyful a thing it was to suffer and
grieve. I came down to the oak. The two were waiting in silence, and
Lucius seemed to be in tears. Amroth put his arm through mine.
"Come, brother," he said, "that was a bad business; I won't pretend
otherwise; but these things had better come swiftly."
"Yes," said Lucius, "but it is a cruel affair, and I can't say
otherwise. Why cannot God leave us alone?"
"Lucius," said Amroth very gravely, "here you may say and think as you
will--and the thoughts of the heart are best uttered. But one must not
blaspheme."
"No, no," said Lucius, "I was wrong. I ought not to have spoken so. And
indeed I know in my heart that somehow, far off, it is well. But I was
thinking," he said, turning to me, and grasping my hand in both of his
own, "not of you, but of Cynthia. I am glad with all my heart that you
took her from me, and have made her happy. But what miserable creatures
we all are; and how much more miserable we should be if we were not
miserable!"
And then we started. It was a dreary hour that, full of deep and gnawing
pain. I pictured to myself Cynthia at every moment, what she was doing
and thinking; how swiftly the good days had flown; how perfectly happy
I had been; and so my wretched silent reverie went on.
"I must say," said Amroth at length, breaking a dismal silence, "that
this is very tedious. Can't you take some interest? I have very
disagreeable things to do, but that is no reason why I should be bored
as well!" And he then set himself to talk with much zest of all my old
friends and companions, telling me how each was faring. Charmides, it
seemed, had become a very accomplished architect and designer; Philip
was a teacher at the College. And he went on until, in spite of my
heaviness, I felt the whole of life beginning to widen and vibrate all
about me, and a sense almost of shame creeping into my mind that I had
become so oblivious of all the other friendships and relations I had
formed. I forced myself to talk and to ask questions, and found myself
walking more briskly. It was not very long before we parted with Lucius.
He was left at the doors of a great barrack-like like building, and
Amroth told me he was to be employed as an officer, very much in the
same way as the young man who was sent to conduct me away from the
trial; and I felt what a good officer Lucius would make--smart, prompt,
polite, and not in the least sentimental.
So we went on together rather gloomily; and then Amroth let me look for
a little deep into his heart; and I saw that it was filled with a kind
of noble pity for me in my suffering; but behind the pity lay that
blissful certainty which made Amroth so light-hearted, that it was just
so, through suffering, that one became wise; and he could no more think
of it as irksome or sad than a jolly undergraduate thinks of the
training for a race or the rowing in the race as painful, but takes it
all with a kind of high-hearted zest, and finds even the nervousness an
exciting thing, life lived at high pressure in a crowded hour.