On a spur of the Sussex Downs, inland from Nettle-Cold, there stands a
beech-grove. The traveller who enters it out of the heat and brightness,
takes off the shoes of his spirit before its, sanctity; and, reaching
the centre, across the clean beech-mat, he sits refreshing his brow with
air, and silence. For the flowers of sunlight on the ground under those
branches are pale and rare, no insects hum, the birds are almost mute.
And close to the border trees are the quiet, milk-white sheep, in
congregation, escaping from noon heat. Here, above fields and dwellings,
above the ceaseless network of men's doings, and the vapour of their
talk, the traveller feels solemnity. All seems conveying divinity—the
great white clouds moving their wings above him, the faint longing
murmur of the boughs, and in far distance, the sea.... And for a space
his restlessness and fear know the peace of God.
So it was with Miltoun when he reached this temple, three days after
that passionate night, having walked for hours, alone and full of
conflict. During those three days he had been borne forward on the
flood tide; and now, tearing himself out of London, where to think was
impossible, he had come to the solitude of the Downs to walk, and face
his new position.
For that position he saw to be very serious. In the flush of full
realization, there was for him no question of renunciation. She was his,
he hers; that was determined. But what, then, was he to do? There was no
chance of her getting free. In her husband's view, it seemed, under no
circumstances was marriage dissoluble. Nor, indeed, to Miltoun would
divorce have made things easier, believing as he did that he and she
were guilty, and that for the guilty there could be no marriage. She, it
was true, asked nothing but just to be his in secret; and that was the
course he knew most men would take, without further thought. There was
no material reason in the world why he should not so act, and maintain
unchanged every other current of his life. It would be easy, usual. And,
with her faculty for self-effacement, he knew she would not be unhappy.
But conscience, in Miltoun, was a terrible and fierce thing. In the
delirium of his illness it had become that Great Face which had marched
over him. And, though during the weeks of his recuperation, struggle of
all kind had ceased, now that he had yielded to his passion, conscience,
in a new and dismal shape, had crept up again to sit above his heart: He
must and would let this man, her husband, know; but even if that caused
no open scandal, could he go on deceiving those who, if they knew of an
illicit love, would no longer allow him to be their representative? If
it were known that she was his mistress, he could no longer maintain his
position in public life—was he not therefore in honour bound; of his own
accord, to resign it? Night and day he was haunted by the thought: How
can I, living in defiance of authority, pretend to authority over my
fellows? How can I remain in public life? But if he did not remain in
public life, what was he to do? That way of life was in his blood; he
had been bred and born into it; had thought of nothing else since he was
a boy. There was no other occupation or interest that could hold him for
a moment—he saw very plainly that he would be cast away on the waters of
existence.
So the battle raged in his proud and twisted spirit, which took
everything so hard—his nature imperatively commanding him to keep
his work and his power for usefulness; his conscience telling him as
urgently that if he sought to wield authority, he must obey it.
He entered the beech-grove at the height of this misery, flaming with
rebellion against the dilemma which Fate had placed before him; visited
by gusts of resentment against a passion, which forced him to pay the
price, either of his career, or of his self-respect; gusts, followed by
remorse that he could so for one moment regret his love for that tender
creature. The face of Lucifer was not more dark, more tortured, than
Miltoun's face in the twilight of the grove, above those kingdoms of
the world, for which his ambition and his conscience fought. He threw
himself down among the trees; and stretching out his arms, by chance
touched a beetle trying to crawl over the grassless soil. Some bird had
maimed it. He took the little creature up. The beetle truly could no
longer work, but it was spared the fate lying before himself. The beetle
was not, as he would be, when his power of movement was destroyed,
conscious of his own wasted life. The world would not roll away down
there. He would still see himself cumbering the ground, when his powers
were taken, from him. This thought was torture. Why had he been suffered
to meet her, to love her, and to be loved by her? What had made him
so certain from the first moment, if she were not meant for him? If he
lived to be a hundred, he would never meet another. Why, because of his
love, must he bury the will and force of a man? If there were no more
coherence in God's scheme than this, let him too be incoherent! Let him
hold authority, and live outside authority! Why stifle his powers
for the sake of a coherence which did not exist! That would indeed be
madness greater than that of a mad world!
There was no answer to his thoughts in the stillness of the grove,
unless it were the cooing of a dove, or the faint thudding of the
sheep issuing again into sunlight. But slowly that stillness stole into
Miltoun's spirit. “Is it like this in the grave?” he thought. “Are the
boughs of those trees the dark earth over me? And the sound in them
the sound the dead hear when flowers are growing, and the wind passing
through them? And is the feel of this earth how it feels to lie looking
up for ever at nothing? Is life anything but a nightmare, a dream;
and is not this the reality? And why my fury, my insignificant flame,
blowing here and there, when there is really no wind, only a shroud of
still air, and these flowers of sunlight that have been dropped on me!
Why not let my spirit sleep, instead of eating itself away with rage;
why not resign myself at once to wait for the substance, of which this
is but the shadow!”
And he lay scarcely breathing, looking up at the unmoving branches
setting with their darkness the pearls of the sky.
“Is not peace enough?” he thought. “Is not love enough? Can I not be
reconciled, like a woman? Is not that salvation, and happiness? What is
all the rest, but 'sound and fury, signifying nothing?”
And as though afraid to lose his hold of that thought, he got up and
hurried from the grove.
The whole wide landscape of field and wood, cut by the pale roads, was
glimmering under the afternoon sun, Here was no wild, wind-swept land,
gleaming red and purple, and guarded by the grey rocks; no home of the
winds, and the wild gods. It was all serene and silver-golden. In place
of the shrill wailing pipe of the hunting buzzard-hawks half lost up in
the wind, invisible larks were letting fall hymns to tranquillity;
and even the sea—no adventuring spirit sweeping the shore with its
wing—seemed to lie resting by the side of the land.