Howard spent some very unhappy days after that, mostly alone. They were
very active at the Vicarage making expeditions, fishing, playing
lawn-tennis, and once or twice pressed him to join them. But he excused
himself on the ground that he must work at his book; he could not bear
to carry his despondency and his dolorous air into so blithe a company;
and he was, moreover, consumed by a jealousy which humiliated him. If
Guthrie was destined to win Maud's love he should have a fair field;
and yet Howard's imagination played him many fevered tricks in those
days, and the thought of what might be happening used to sting him into
desperation. His own mood alternated between misery and languor. He
used to sit staring at his book, unable to write a word, and became
gradually aware that he had never been unhappy in his life before.
That, then, was what unhappiness meant, not a mood of refined and
romantic melancholy, but a raging fire of depression that seemed to
burn his life away, both physically and mentally, with intervals of
drowsy listlessness.
He would have liked to talk to his aunt, but could not bring himself to
do so. She, on the other hand, seemed to notice nothing, and it was a
great relief to him that she never commented upon his melancholy and
obvious fatigue, but went on in her accustomed serene way, which evoked
his courtesy and sense of decorum, and made him behave decently in
spite of himself. Miss Merry seemed much more inclined to sympathise,
and Howard used to intercept her gaze bent upon him in deep concern.
One afternoon, returning from a lonely walk, he met Maud going out of
the Manor gate. She looked happy, he thought. He stopped and made a few
commonplace remarks. She looked at him rather strangely, he felt, and
seemed to be searching his face for some sign of the old goodwill; but
he hardened his heart, though he would have given worlds to tell her
what was in his mind; but he felt that any reconstruction of friendship
must be left till a later date, when he might again be able to
conciliate her sisterly regard. She seemed to him to have passed
through an awakening of some kind, and to have bloomed both in mind and
body, with her feet on the threshold of vital experience, and the
thought that it was Guthrie who could evoke this upspringing of life
within her was very bitter to him.
He trod the valley of humiliation hour by hour, in these lonely days,
and found it a very dreary place. It was wretched to him to feel that
he had suddenly discovered his limitations. Not only could he not have
his will, could not taste the fruit of love which had seemed to hang
almost within his reach, but the old contented life seemed to have
faded and collapsed about him.
That night his aunt asked him about his book, and he said he was not
getting on well with it. She asked why, and he said that he had been
feeling that it was altogether too intellectual a conception; that he
had approached it from the side of REASON, as if people argued
themselves into faith, and had treated religion as a thesis which could
be successfully defended; whereas the vital part of it all, he now
thought, was an instinct, perhaps refined by inherited thought, but in
its practical manifestations a kind of choice, determined by a natural
liking for what was attractive, and a dislike of what was morally ugly.
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "that is true, I am sure. But it can be
analysed for all that, though I agree with you that no amount of
analysis will make one act rightly. But I believe," she went on, "that
clearness of view helps one, though not perhaps at the time. It is a
great thing to see what motives are merely conventional and convenient,
and to find out what one really regards as principles. To look a
conventional motive in the face deprives it of its power; and one can
gradually disencumber oneself of all sorts of complicated impulses,
which have their roots in no emotion. It is only the motives which are
rooted in emotion that are vital."
Then, after a pause, she said, "Of course I have seen of late that you
have been dissatisfied with something. I have not liked to ask you
about it; but if it would help you to talk about it, I hope you will.
It is wonderful how talking about things makes one's mind clear. It
isn't anything that others say or advise that helps one, yet one gains
in clearness. But you must do as you like about this, Howard. I don't
want to press you in any way."
"Thank you very much," said Howard. "I know that you would hear me with
patience, and might perhaps advise me if anyone could; but it isn't
that. I have got myself into a strange difficulty; and what I need is
not clearness, but simply courage to face what I know and perceive. My
great lack hitherto is that I have gone through things without feeling
them, like a swallow dipping in a lake; now I have got to sink and
drown. No," he added, smiling, "not to drown, I hope, but to find a new
life in the ruins of the old. I have been on the wrong tack; I have
always had what I liked, and done what I liked; and now when I am
confronted with things which I do not like at all, I have just got to
endure them, and be glad that I have still got the power of suffering
left."
Mrs. Graves looked at him very tenderly. "Yes," she said, "suffering
has a great power, and one doesn't want those whom one loves not to
suffer. It is the condition of loving; but it must be real suffering,
not morbid, self-invented torture. It's a great mistake to suffer more
than one need; one wastes life fast so. I would not intervene to save
you from real suffering, even if I could; but I don't want you to
suffer in an unreal way. I think you are diffident, too easily
discouraged, too courteous, if that is possible--because diffidence,
and discouragement, and even courtesy, are not always unselfish things.
If one renounces anything one has set one's heart upon one must do so
for its own sake, and not only because the disapproval and
disappointment of others makes life uncomfortable. I think that your
life has tended to make you value an atmosphere of diffused
tranquillity too much. If one is sensitive to the censure or the
displeasure of others, it may not be unselfish to give up things rather
than provoke it--it may only be another form of selfishness. Some of
the most unworldly people I know have not overcome the world at all;
they have merely made terms with it, and have found that abnegation is
only more comfortable than conquest. I do not know that you are doing
this, or have done it, but I think it likely. And in any case I think
you trust reason too much, and instinct too little. If one desires a
thing very much, it is often a proof that one needs it. One may not
indeed be able to get it, but to resign it is sometimes to fail in
courage. I can see that you are in some way discontented with your
life. Don't try to mend it by a polite withdrawal. I am going to pay
you a compliment. You have a wonderful charm, of which you are
unconscious. It has made life very easy for you--but it has
responsibilities too. You must not create a situation, and then abandon
it. You must not disappoint people. I know, of course, only too well,
that charm in itself largely depends on a tranquil mind; and it is
difficult to exercise it when one is sad and unhappy; but let me say
that unhappiness does not deprive YOU of this power. Does it seem
impossible to you to believe that I have loved you far better, and in a
way which I could not have thought possible, in these last weeks, when
I have seen you were unhappy? You do not abandon yourself to
depression; you make an effort; you recognise other people's rights to
be happy, not to be clouded by your own unhappiness; and you have done
more to attach us all to you in these days than before, when you were
perhaps more conscious of being liked. Liking is not loving, Howard.
There is no pain about liking; there is infinite pain about loving;
that is because it is life, and not mere existence."
"Ah," said Howard, "I am indeed grateful to you for speaking to me
thus--you have lifted my spirit a little out of the mire. But I can't
be rescued so easily. I shall have a burden to bear for some time
yet--I see no end to it at present: and it is indeed my own foolish
trifling with life that has brought it on me. But, dearest aunt, you
can't help me just now. Let me be silent a little longer. I shall soon,
I think, be able to speak, and then I will tell you all; and meanwhile
it will be a comfort to me to think that you feel for me and about me
as you do. I don't want to indulge in self-pity--I have not done that.
There is nothing unjust in what has happened to me, nothing
intolerable, no specific ill-will. I have just stumbled upon one of the
big troubles of life, suddenly and unexpectedly, and I am not prepared
for it by any practice or discipline. But I shall get through, don't be
afraid--and presently I will tell you everything." He took his aunt's
hand in his own, and kissed her on the cheek.
"God bless you, dear boy!" she said; "I won't press you to speak; and
you will know that I have you in mind now and always, with infinite
hope and love."