“But if all love is identical with God, how do you account for what would
commonly be called a wrong love?”
“There’s no such thing as a wrong love. Men are wrong and women are
wrong, and they treat love wrongly; but love itself is always right.
There a distinction must be made between love and passion; but it’s easy
enough to make it. One of these days we’ll take the time to talk that
over. At present my point is simply this—that there’s only one love as
there’s only one God, and it’s only by understanding the unity of both
that we get the significance of either. Moreover, the same pen that
wrote, ‘Every one that loveth is born of God,’ wrote, ‘He that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God.’ You see then how magical a thing love is, and
why any kind of love—remember I’m speaking of love, not of physical
passion, which is another thing—but you can see how any kind of love
should work wonders.” He asked, suddenly, “Have you written to your
mother since your father died?”
I said I had not, that I hadn’t supposed a letter from me would be
welcome.
“Don’t ask whether it would be welcome or not. Do your duty—and let other
people take care of theirs. Let your mother see that, so far from feeling
sore over the provision in your father’s will, you take it in the way
I’ve tried to indicate. It will be an amazing comfort to her; and if you
want to give your brothers and sisters the surprise of their young lives
you’ll be doing it.” He took my hand and pressed it. “Good-by now, old
chap. I’ve got to go and see Momma about the meals for to-morrow.”
He passed on to the kitchen, where a Greek named Pappa—nicknamed Momma by
the boys—had taken the place of Mouse; but he left me with a new outlook.
Following his instructions, I began almost immediately to get some of
the reward he promised me. My mother wrote to me within a week, timidly
but tenderly, and with joy at being in touch with me again. A few weeks
later my sister wrote, affectionately, if with reserve. When my birthday
came in March, and I was thirty-two, I had small presents from them both,
and from my two sisters-in-law as well. I noticed that all letters, even
from my mother, were hesitatingly expressed, and in something like an
undertone of awe. My family, too, felt apparently that I had put an abyss
between myself and them, and that in the effort to recross it there was
a suggestion of the supernatural. It was as if my father were saying to
them, “This, thy brother, was dead, and is alive again”—and they were
experiencing some of the strangeness that Mary and Martha must have known
when Lazarus came back to the house at Bethany.
But that was not my only reward, though of what I received in addition I
find it difficult to tell you. Indeed, I should make no attempt to tell
you at all were it not so essential to this small record of a human life.
All I want to say is that that thing came to me as a new revelation which
is probably an every-day fact to you—that by the simple process of loving
I could dwell in God, I could be aware that God was all round me.
I mean that once I understood that love was God the great mystery that
had tantalized me all my life was solved. All my life I had been tortured
by the questions: Who is God? What is God? What is my relation to Him—or
have I any? And now I seemed to have found the answer. When I got back to
love—the common, natural love for my father and mother and sisters—when
I got back to feeling more gently toward my brothers—I began to see—you
must forgive me if I seem blatant, but that is not my intention—I began
to see faintly and very inadequately that I was actually in touch with
God.
I am far from saying that all my difficulties were overcome. Of course
they were not. I mean only that that divine force of which I had been
told the universe was full, but which had always seemed apart from me,
remote from my needs, actually came, in some measure at least, within
my possession. Just as Beady Lamont found the furniture-moving business
shiny with it, once he knew where to look for it, so I began to see my
work as an architect. It was as if a golden key had been put into my hand
which unlocked the richest of life’s secrets.
All at once people whom I had known to be well disposed toward me,
and whom I had dismissed at that, began to translate God to me. Ralph
Coningsby, Cantyre, Lovey, Christian, Pyn, not to speak of others, were
like reflectors that threw the rays of the great Central Sun straight
into my soul. I am not declaring that there was no tarnish on the
surfaces that caught those beams and transmitted them to me—probably
there was—but light and warmth were poured into me for all that. Not that
there was a change in their attitude toward me; the change was in my
point of view, in my capacity for seeing. What I had thought of only as
human aid I now perceived to be the celestial bread and wine; and where I
had supposed I was living only with men, I knew I was walking with God.
And yet there was a love with regard to which I could not have this
peace of mind. Christian would perhaps have ascribed that defect to the
fact that there was passion in it. My own fear was that, having had its
inception in a moment of crime, it could never free itself from the
conditions that gave it birth.
After the Christmas dinner there was a change toward me in the bearing
of Regina Barry and her mother. Without growing colder, they became
slightly more formal; and that I understood. As they had come so far in
my direction, it was for me to go some of the distance in theirs, and I
didn’t.
I didn’t because I couldn’t. I was like a man who would have been glad
to walk if paralysis hadn’t nailed him to his seat. As, however, it was
emotional paralysis and not physical, there was no means by which they
could become aware of it; nor could I make up my mind to tell them.
For quite apart from my damnable secret was the common, every-day fact
that I had no income sufficient to maintain a wife in anything like the
comfort to which Regina Barry had been accustomed. Though she might have
accepted what I had to offer, I felt the usual masculine scruples as to
offering it. This, too, was something that couldn’t be explained unless
there was some urgent need of the explanation; and so when I was mad to
go forward I had, to my shame and confusion, to hang back.
Their retreat was managed with tact and dignity. During the week after
Christmas I saw them on a number of occasions, always by invitation,
though I had no further talk with Regina Barry alone. Two or three times
I guessed she would have been willing to go out to walk with me, but I
didn’t suggest it. As she had proposed it once, she could hardly do so
a second time, and so we sat tamely in a sitting-room. Like that minute
on Christmas Eve when she would have flown into my arms had I opened
them, other minutes came and went; and I saw my coldness reacting on her
visibly.
At the end of ten days a note told me that they had returned to New York,
apologizing for the fact that they had not had time to bid me good-by.
Though seeing plainly enough the folly of a correspondence, I wrote in
response to that note, hoping that a correspondence might ensue. But I
got no answer. I got nothing. Not so much as a message was sent to me on
the days when Ralph Coningsby came down.
I did not resent this; I only suffered. I suffered the more because of
supposing that she suffered too. And yet when I next saw her I found
nothing to support that theory.
When I went to New York for a few days in February I called, but they
were not at home. Having left my card, I waited for a message that would
name an hour when I should find them; but I waited in vain. During the
four days my visit lasted I heard nothing kindlier than what Cantyre
repeated, that they were sorry to have been out when I came.
As I sent them flowers before leaving the city, a note from Mrs. Barry
thanked me for them cordially; but there was not a syllable in it that
gave me an excuse for writing in response. Reason told me that it was
better that it should be so, but reason had ceased to be sufficient as a
guide.
In March I made an errand that took me to town for a week-end, and on
the Sunday afternoon I called again at the house which had so curiously
become the focusing-point of my destiny. Miss Barry was at home and
receiving. I found her with two or three other people, and she welcomed
me as doubtless she had welcomed them. Even when I had outstayed them she
betrayed none of that matter-of-course intimacy which had marked her
attitude toward me in December. She seemed to have retired behind all
sorts of mental fortifications over which I couldn’t at first make my way.
When we were seated in the style of Darby and Joan at the opposite
corners of a slumbering fire she told me her father had made one hurried
visit from California, and that, now that he had returned to the Pacific
coast, she and her mother were thinking of joining him there. Should they
do so, they would probably remain till it was time to go to Long Island
in June. Two or three protestations against this absence came to my lips,
but of course I couldn’t utter them.
I could have sworn that she was saying to herself, “You don’t seem to
care!” though aloud it became, “We’ve never been in California, and we
want to see what it’s like.”
I seized the opportunity to rejoin, “You’ve a fancy for seeing what
things are like, haven’t you?”
She took up the challenge instantly. “Why do you say that?”
“Only because of what you’ve said at different times yourself.”
“Such as?”
“I don’t want to quote. I was thinking of the taste you’ve frequently
acknowledged for making experiments.”
“Experiments in things—or people?”
“I was thinking of people.”
She marched right into my camp by saying, boldly, “Oh, you mean the
number of times I’ve—I’ve broken engagements?”
“Perhaps I mean rather the number of times you’ve formed them.”
“Did you ever buy a house?”