Osmond went back to his little house, not to sleep, but to think. The
old habit of his life was changed. Henceforward, whether he took a
woman's love or left it, things would not be the same. Say she loved him
with the enduring passion of a woman at her best, could he let her
undertake the half of his strange lot? Could he cut her off from a
thousand sources of happiness to be found in the world she knew, even
though he forced her to go out into that world and sing, and lessened
his claim on her to a swallow flight now and then back to his waiting
heart? If her lot were to be a public one, she would have, in a measure,
to make it herself; for here was he, with his plants and trees, almost
one of them, and he could not give up his hardy life, lest he dwindle
and fail utterly. Besides, this was his business, as music was hers.
Whatever communion they had, it could never be a unison of pursuits, but
rather an interchange of rich devotion. It looked, he concluded, very
bad for her.
As he thought that, the night grew chill, and the stars waned in their
shining. These were the dull old ways of a world that had swung so long
in one orbit that it could never be otherwise. He was bringing the woman
to break bitter bread with him, and though she ate it cheerfully in the
morning of her hope, it would seem intolerable in the evening, and at
night she might refuse it utterly. What right had he to let her vow
herself to such things and swell the list of proven failure? But say she
loved him! And after all, what was love? Was it the ever-living germ of
desire to create new life, that life might live? Was it the gift shut in
the hand when life left the creating source, to be squandered or
hoarded, to be used for honor or dishonor, but always ignorantly, to
serve the power behind creation itself? Was this beautiful creature the
sport of her woman's blood, doing the will of the earth, and so most
innocently walking into the lure of his arms because they longed for
her? He wondered.
And his side of it, the man's side, what did it mean for him to know he
worshiped the divinity of her beauty, the sun of her good pleasure, the
might of her yieldingness? When he thought of her, the body of things
became mysteriously transmuted to what he had to call their soul,
because it wore no other name. There was the flame of passion and the
frost of awe. The mystical call of her spirit to his had become the most
natural of all created impulses. Yet, say that he, too, was in the grip
of that greatest force, and nature was tricking the woman out with all
the colors of the dawn, to blind him into stumbling along nature's ways.
Did nature want him to say, "This is Paradise," until she was ready to
let him know it was the unchanged earth? If it was all a gigantic
phenomenon of a teeming universe--well, it was good. It was to be
worshiped as the savage worships the sun: but not greatly. For clouds
hide the sun, and, in spite of it, men die. Better not spill too much
blood for a savage god that gives but savage recompense. And, thinking
so, he closed his eyes and lapsed into a dull recognition of the things
of earth.
How far his mind had rushed upon its track he did not know, but suddenly
it came to a stop and jolted him awake. It was as if he had come to a
great gulf, the darkness girdling the natural life, and across it were
the colors of the dawn. They breathed and wavered in sheer beauty. And
at that moment there began in him the fainting recognition of what love
might be if men would have it so. First, there was the lure, the voice
of the creature calling to its mate. Then there was the unveiling of the
soul, the recognition, the sight of the soul as God sees it, so that the
two creatures can only breathe, "How beautiful you are!" And that must
not continue, because the soul is a delicate though an indestructible
thing, and cannot walk naked through the assaults of time. It would
consume the beholder; it would even scorch under the flame of its own
being. It withdraws, only to appear again, like the god from the brake,
when it is greatly summoned. But always it is there, and the two that
hold high fealty remember what they have seen. When the flame sinks,
they say: "But it is the flame on the altar. It must not die." So they
renew it. When the outer habit of life fails in one of them, to grow
poor and mean, the other remembers that one glimpse of the soul, and
calls upon it tenderly.
"Revive," says his patient love, "I stay you with the flagons of my
hope, I comfort you with the apples of my great belief." And always it
is an interchange of life, the one feeding the other with eternal
succor.
And now, to come back to the old question: Say a woman loved a man like
this man. Osmond seemed not to be debating now, but hastening along the
thread of a perfect certainty. Something had put a clue in his hand.
Wherever it might lead him, he was running fast. It came upon him, like
the lighting of a great fire, that this was a call for high emprise. He
loved nothing so much as courage. Here was the summons to the world-old
battle where all but a few fail and none are said to succeed unless they
die for passion and so life drops a curtain on the after-fight. The
great lovers--chiefly they are those for whom the fight never was
finished, who chose death rather than endure. He had bitten his teeth
all his life on the despair of adventure, but now it came upon him that
life itself is the great adventure, and love the crown of it. Say he,
loving a woman, went out to fight the dragons of the way. He had no
armor such as youth delights in. He was not a Prince Charming, who wooes
the eye even before he speaks. He had only the one treasure--love. Say
he crowned the woman with it, and then challenged God to give their
hungers food, be the unseen combatant and fight out the fight beside
them? Say he vowed himself like a knight to her service, and their
mutual worship scorned the body save as the instrument of life, and
glorified the soul? "I am the soul," something cried out in him. "Do not
deny me, or you blaspheme the God that also lives. Give me food, the
large liberty to be faithful. Lay bonds upon me, patience and loyalty,
and I shall rejoice in them and grow strong enough to break them, and
delight in perfect liberty."
It all resolved itself, he found, into this question of the soul. Was
the marvel true? Did it really exist? For if it did, it must have food
and cherishing. Inevitably then he thought of grannie, and his
struggling mind seemed to appeal to her clarity, question and answer,
and to every question she smiled and told him the dream was true. It did
live, this mystery, this imperishable one that came from the bosom of
God and would return in safety there.
Osmond rose, in the dewy midnight, and stretched his arms to heaven. He
felt what he never had before, in his iron acquiescence, an ecstasy of
worship. This was what grannie felt, he knew; it was the daily draught
that kept her spirit young. He made no doubt she was praying for him at
that moment, and that their buoyant certainties were meeting in the air
of quickened life. Hitherto he had walked. Now he saw the use of wings.
He knew what Rose was doing. She would not be waking. She would be lying
in her bed asleep, too secure in her glad confidence to wonder over it.
Another thought swept in and awoke his quivering sentience to the marvel
of his life. Some recognition of the cherishing maternal seemed to grow
in him, and as grannie had saved his body for him, so now Rose seemed to
have given birth to his new soul. It was like a shining child. With his
bodily eyes he almost saw it through the dark, and he longed to take it
in his arms to where she slept and lay it on her breast. He could fancy
how the shining child would lie there and how, sleeping, her sweet soul
would cherish it. And whether he began the next day with the resolve to
give her up or to relinquish his own doubts, at least he had had the
vision. As the dawn broke he seemed to see her coming toward him, the
spirit of it, rosy-clad, bearing in her hands, outstretched, a beaker
for his lips. It was the water of life, and her face besought him to
know finally that they were to drink of it together. He was shaken with
the wonder of it. All his past had been preparing him for ignominy and
loss. He trembled when he saw what the girl in the vision meant: that
the greater quest is farther yet.