Mr. Hare stood looking at his dead daughter; John Norton sat by the
window. His brain was empty, everything was far away. He saw things
moving, moving, but they were all far away. He could not re-knit
himself with the weft of life; the thread that had made him part of it
had been snapped. He knew that Kitty had thrown herself out of the
window and was dead. The word shocked him, but there was no sense of
realisation to meet it. She had walked with him on the hills, she had
accompanied him as far as the burgh; she had waved her hand to him
before they walked quite out of each other's sight. Now she was dead.
Had he loved her? Why was there neither burning grief nor tears? He
envied the hard-sobbing father's grief, the father who held his dead
daughter's hand, and showed a face on which was printed so deeply the
terror of the soul's emotion, that John felt a supernatural awe creep
upon him; felt that his presence was a sort of sacrilege. He crept
downstairs. He went into the drawing-room, and looked about for the
place he had last seen her in.
She usually sat on that sofa; how often had he seen her sitting there!
And now he should not see her any more. Only three days ago she had
been sitting in that basket-chair. How well he remembered her words,
her laughter! Shadow-like is human life! one moment it is here, the
next it is gone. Her work-basket; the very ball of wool which he had
held for her to wind; the novel which she had lent to him, and which
he had forgotten to take away. He would never read it now; or perhaps
he should read it in memory of her, of her whom yesterday he had
parted with on the hills--her little Puritan look, her external
girlishness, her golden brown hair, and the sudden laugh so
characteristic of her.... She had lent him this book--she who was now
but clay.
He took up his hat and set forth to walk home across the downs, all
the while thinking, thinking over what had happened. He had asked her
to be his wife. She had consented, and, alarmed at the prospect of the
new duties he had contracted, he had returned home. These newly-
contracted duties had stirred his being to its very depth; the chance
appearance of a gipsy girl (without the aid of that circumstance he
felt he would never have spoken) had set his life about with endless
eventuality; he could not see to the end; the future he had
indefinitely plighted, and his own intimate and personal life had been
abandoned for ever. He had exchanged it for the life of the hearth, of
the family; that private life--private, and yet so entirely
impersonal-which he had hitherto loathed. He had often said he had no
pity for those who accepted burdens and then complained that they had
not sufficient strength to carry them. Such had been his theory; he
must now make his theory and practice coincide.
He had walked up and down his study, his mind aflame; he had sat in
his arm-chair, facing the moonlight, considering a question, to him so
important, so far-reaching, that his mind at moments seemed as if like
to snap, to break, but which was accepted by nine-tenths of humanity
without a second thought, as lightly as the most superficial detail of
daily life. But how others acted was not his concern; he must consider
his own competence to bear the burden--the perilous burden he had
asked, and which had been promised to him.
He must not adventure into a life he was not fitted for; he must not
wreck another's life; in considering himself he was considering her;
their interests were mutual, they were identical; there was no
question of egotism. But this marriage question had been debated a
thousand times in the last six months; it had haunted his thought, it
had become his daily companion, his familiar spirit. Under what new
aspect could he consider this question? It faced him always with the
same unmovable, mysterious eyes in which he read nothing, which told
him nothing of what he longed to know. He only knew that he had
desired this girl as a wife. A desire had come he knew not whence; and
he asked himself if it were a passing weakness of the flesh, or if
this passion abided in him, if it had come at last to claim
satisfaction? On this point he was uncertain, this was nature's
secret.
In the midst of his stress of mind his eyes had wandered over his
books; they had been caught by the colour of a small thin volume, and,
obeying an instinct, he had taken the volume down. He knew it well; a
few hundred small pages containing the wisdom of a great Greek
philosopher, Epictetus, and John had often before turned to this sage
discourse for relief in his mental depressions and despair of life.
'The subject for the good and wise man is his master faculty, as the
body is for the physician and the trainer, and the soil is the subject
for the husbandman. And the work of the good and wise man is to use
appearances according to Nature. For it is the nature of every soul to
consent to what is good and reject what is evil, and to hold back
about what is uncertain; and thus to be moved to pursue the good and
avoid the evil, and neither way for what is neither good nor evil.'
In the light of these words John's mind grew serene as a landscape on
which the moon is shining; and he asked himself why he had hesitated
if marriage were the state which he was destined to fulfil?
'If a habit affects us, against that must we endeavour to find some
remedy? And what remedy is to be found against a habit? The contrary
habit.'
A temptation of the flesh had come upon him; he had yielded to it
instead of opposing it with the contrary habit of chastity. For
chastity had never afflicted him; it had ever been to him a source of
strength and courage. Chastity had brought him peace of mind, but the
passion to which he had in a measure yielded had robbed him of his
peace of mind, and had given him instead weakness, and agitation of
spirit and flesh. The last six months had been the unhappiest of his
life. Nothing in this world, he thought, is worth our peace of mind,
and love robs us of that, therefore it must be maleficent. 'And this
passion which has caused me so much trouble, what is it? A passing
emotion of which I am ashamed, of which I would speak to no one. An
emotion which man shares with the lowest animals, but which his higher
nature teaches him to check and subject.' Then he remembered that this
emotion might come upon him again. But each time he thought, 'I shall
be able to control it better than the last, and it will grow weaker
and weaker until at last it will pass and to return no more.'
But he had proposed to Kitty and had been accepted, and for some
solution of this material difficulty he had to fall back upon the
argument that he had no right to wreck another's life, that in
considering his interests he was considering hers. And he had stood in
the dawn light pondering a means of escape from a position into which
a chance circumstance had led him.
He had gone to bed hoping to find counsel in the night, and in the
morning he had waked firm in his resolve, and had gone to Shoreham in
the intention of breaking his engagement. But instead he had witnessed
a cruel and terrible suicide, the reason of which was hidden from him.
Possibly none would ever know the reason. Perhaps it were better so;
the reasons that prompted suicide were better unrevealed....
And now, as he returned home after the tragedy, about midway in his
walk across the downs, the thought came upon him that the breaking off
of his engagement might have been sufficient reason in an affected
mind for suicide. But this was not so. He knew it was not so. He had
been spared that!
'She was here with me yesterday,' he said. And he looked down the
landscape now wrapped in a white mist. The hills were like giants
sleeping, the long distance vanished in mysterious moonlight. He could
see Brighton, nearer was Southwick; and further away, past the shadowy
shore, was Worthing.
He sat down by the blown hawthorn bush that stands by the burgh. A
ship sailed across the rays of the moon, and he said--
'Illusion, illusion! so is it always with him who places his trust in
life. Ah, life, life, what hast thou for giving save deceptions? Why
did I leave my life of contemplation and prayer to enter into that of
desire? Did I not know that there was no happiness save in calm and
contemplation, and foolish is he who places his happiness in the
things of this world?'
But what had befallen her? She was mad when she threw herself out of
the window to escape from him. But how had she become mad? Yesterday
he had looked back and had seen her walking away and waving her
parasol, a slight happy figure on the gold-tinted sky. What had
happened? By what strange alienation of the brain, by what sudden
snapping of the sense had madness come? Something must have happened.
Did madness fall like that? like a bolt from the blue. If so she must
have always been mad, and walking home the slight thread of sense half
worn through had suddenly snapped. He knew that she liked him. Had she
guessed that when it came to the point that he would not, that he
might not have been able to marry her? If so, he was in a measure
responsible. Ah, why had he ventured upon a path which he must have
known he was not fitted to walk in?