But the weeks which followed Howard's marriage were a great deal more
than a refreshing discovery of companionable and even unexpected
qualities. There was something which came to him, of which the words,
the gestures, the signs of love seemed like faint symbols; the essence
of it was obscure to him; it reminded him of how, as a child, a
laughing group of which he was one had joined hands to receive a
galvanic shock; the circle had dislinked again in a moment, with cries
of surprise and pleasure; but to Howard it had meant much more than
that; the current gave him a sense of awful force and potency, the
potency of death. What was this strange and fearful essence which could
pass instantaneously through a group--swifter even than thought--and
leave the nerves for a moment paralysed and tingling? Even so it was
with him now. What was happening to him he did not know--some vast and
cloudy presence, at which he could not even dare to look, seemed
winging its way overhead, the passage of which he could only dimly
discern, as a man might discern the flight of an eagle in a
breeze-ruffled mountain pool.
He had come in contact with a force of incalculable energy and joy,
which was different, not in degree but in kind, from all previous
emotional experiences. He understood for the first time the meaning of
words like "mystical" and "spiritual," words which he had hitherto
almost derided as unintelligent descriptions of subjective impressions.
He had thought them to be terms expressive of vague and even muddled
emotions of which scientific psychology would probably dispose. It was
a new element and a new force, of which he felt overwhelmingly certain,
though he could offer no proof, tangible or audible, of its existence.
He had before always demanded that anyone who attempted to uphold the
existence of any psychic force should at the same time offer an
experimental test of its actuality. But he was here faced with an
experience transcendental and subjective, of which he could give no
account that would not sound like some imaginative exaggeration. He was
not even sure that Maud felt it, or rather he suspected that the
experience of wedded love was to her the heightening and emphasizing of
something which she had always known.
The essence of it was that it was like the inrush of some moving tide
through an open sluice-gate. Till then it seemed to him that his
emotions had been tranquilly discharging themselves, like the water
which drips from the edge of a fountain basin; that now something
stronger and larger seemed to flow back upon him, something external
and prodigious, which at the same time seemed, not only to invade and
permeate his thought but to become one with himself; that was the
wonder; it did not seem to him like something added to his spirit, but
as though his soul were enlarged and revived by a force which was his
own all the time, an unclaimed, unperceived part of himself.
He said something of this to Maud, speaking of the happiness that she
had brought him. She said, "Ah, you can't expect me to realise that! I
feel as though you were giving everything and receiving nothing, as if
I were one more of the duties you had adopted. Of course, I hope that I
may be of some use, some time; but I feel at present as if you had been
striding on your way somewhere, and had turned aside to comfort and
help a little child by the roadside who had lost his way!"
"Oh," said Howard, "it's not that; it isn't only that you are the joy
and light of my life; it is as if something very far away and powerful
had come nearer to both of us, and had lifted us on its wings--what if
it were God?"
"Yes," said Maud musingly, "I think it is that!"