XIV
SNOW covered the world, a dense dirge of white sounding deep into the
black web of the woods. Clouds moved low in the sky, heavy and morose,
unsilvered by the sifting sun. The hills were like the great billows of
a milky sea. A silence as of suspense seemed to press ponderous and
prophetic upon the land.
England again: sullen skies and the sullen atmosphere of Saltire
society! Autumn had passed in a wizard blaze of gold. Sympathies had
clashed at the outset like brazen cymbals. At Paris millinery had
appealed to the one, the Louvre had possessed the other. At Rome the
feminine mind had yawned under the shadow of St. Peter’s, while the male
had moved musingly amid ruins. Florence had proffered nothing to Ophelia
save opportunities for grumbling over the _table d’hôte_; Raphael and
the great Michael had called to Gabriel from the Accademia delle Bell’
Arti. At Ravenna the man had meditated over the tomb of Dante. At Venice
the brackish flavor of the canals had eliminated the least leaning
towards romance in the Honorable Ophelia’s skull. The affair had proved
to her one long progress of monotonies. She had yawned through Italy as
she would have yawned through the pages of _The Pilgrim’s Progress_. The
antique exasperated her beyond belief; its dim philosophy offended the
sensuous greed of the present. She had more than once suggested to
Gabriel that he had been formed by nature to be a frowsy curio dealer,
hoarding mediævalisms in a dusty shop. The temper of neither had
improved during the sojourn amid vineyards and olive thickets. The
woman’s mood had grown symbolical of Etna; the man’s had ascended
towards Alpine regions of perpetual snow.
An irreligious man may be a very passable creature; an irreligious woman
is a production more sinister than a double-headed leopard. Love and the
adoration of a deity should be woven up in a true woman’s heart like the
purple and gold threads of a sacramental garment. Atheism in a woman is
an offence against the spirit of maternity. The Gusset girls had been
bred upon an apathetic culture-ground and fostered on certain pert
ethical concoctions that based a complacent liberty on reason. They went
to church on occasions, and encouraged the bourgeois folk in a creed
that they had been taught to regard with benignant condescension. Lord
Gerald detested lengthy sermons and anything bordering on Calvinism. In
the one brief burst of mental energy of youth he had imbibed the tenets
of a certain philosophical school, and these rather flimsy convictions
had propped him in an amiable epicureanism for the remainder of his
earthly existence.
That she may escape the inherent perversity of her nature, a woman
without a creed must indeed be possessed by phenomenal instincts towards
saintliness. Nor was Ophelia Strong anything of a saint, even in the
most lax rendering of the epithet. She was a woman of the world; a very
modern production, an admixture of the extreme pleasurableness of
imperial Rome with the cool and impertinent independence of the moneyed
scion of contemporary life. The smart lady of fashion cannot be expected
to garb herself in dowdy and bourgeois morality. The domestic virtues
are becoming obsolete in many feminine brains. They are to be classed
with samplers, crochet-work, cookery books, tracts, and other relics of
vulgar superstition. Ophelia Strong was one of those ladies who live to
the minute, revel in sensations, and believe in the employment of
certain fashionable and shady members of the medical profession.
There was little cause for wonder that Gabriel and his wife should have
discovered traces of mutual incompatibility before many months had
elapsed. The one lived for the life within, the other for the life
without. Marry an Acrasia to a St. Christopher and you will provide
material enough to keep cynics employed for a century. There is no
inherent unreason in strife under particular circumstances. A man may as
well attempt to cultivate the Sahara as to perfect home life with a
woman pledged to the demon worship of all that is vain and artificial.
The modern fashionable person is an enlightened and independent spirit.
A splendid emancipation scoffs at the barbarous ethics of the parlor.
Æsthetic and piquant mischief is preferred to sincerity garbed in black
bonnet, mackintosh, and galoshes.
Thus it may be recorded without exaggeration that a four months’
honeymoon on the Continent had not bourgeoned into deep marital
blessedness. Gabriel and his wife had returned to Saltire in a certain
dubious temper that did not flatter the future with prospects of peace.
There were errors on both sides; inconsistencies in either character. A
look of heavy petulance reigned on the woman’s face, and she had become
addicted to hysterical outbursts of passion. Gabriel still wore his
melancholy, Werther-like smile. The evolutions of marriage had not
astonished his reason. The first squabble in a Parisian hotel had
prepared him for the mockery that was to be. He was a man who could
distil a species of melancholy intoxication from his own troubles. They
barred him in upon himself and intensified to his mind the face of the
girl who had stirred his blood in the summer that had gone. It is only
when night comes that man beholds the stars.
Saltire had welcomed the couple with quivering tongues. Mrs. Marjoy’s
spectacles had glimmered feverishly in the Saltire drawing-rooms, and
her charity had dipped its forked irony in vinegar as of yore. The
Misses Snodley were sentimental and expectant. Even John Strong’s
enthusiasm was still rosy as a peony and bathotic as stale beer. He and
Lord Gerald were much at dinner together, and political problems hung
heavy over these Titanic minds. It was decreed as a matter of course
that the young folk were supremely contented, bathed in a dotage of
sensuous bliss. The Misses Snodley declared that Ophelia looked twice
the woman since the hallowed influence of marriage had breathed upon her
soul. As for Gabriel, they could vow that he had the orthodox joy of
paternity gravely writ upon his face. And yet Mrs. Marjoy licked her
teeth and sneered.
It was winter, late in January, with snow on the ground and no wind
moving. The Saltire hills were white under the moon, checkered with the
black umbrage of the woods. Stars gemmed the bare trees, that rose
gaunt, tumultuous, and morose about the tiled roofs of The Friary. A
warm glow streamed betwixt damask curtains, tincturing the snow. A
ghostly quiet brooded calm and passionless in the night. The dark pines
on the hills stood like a silent host, watchful, multitudinous, mute.
Gabriel and his wife were at dinner, embalmed in the sanctity of
matrimonial solitude. A shaven-faced man-servant stood behind Gabriel’s
chair. Candles were burning on the table under red lace shades. A silver
epergne full of Christmas roses stood upon a richly embroidered centre
of green and gold. Glass and silver scintillated on the immaculate
cloth. The greater part of the room lay in shadow.
Ophelia, in a light blue tea-gown, sipped her claret and looked
unseraphically at the man half hidden from her by flowers. Tension had
arisen that day over certain very minor matters, domestic and otherwise.
The conversation during dinner had been unimaginative and monosyllabic.
The starched and glazed man-servant by the sideboard had stood, chin in
air, staring into space.
Ophelia dispelled at last a silence that had lasted for some minutes.
“Going skating to-morrow?”
“Possibly.”
The wife toyed with a savory and looked at her plate.
“Do you ever make up your mind on any subject under the sun?” she
remarked, with a crude curl of her long lip.
“I never trouble my brain, dear, over trifles.”
“What a limp animal you are. Pah, there’s too much pepper in this stuff!
Take it away, James. And you can go. Leave the crumbs; we’ll picnic over
dessert.”
The man whisked the plates away, set wines and liqueurs on the table,
and departed, closing the door gently. Ophelia pulled a dish of
preserved fruit towards her and nibbled irritably.
“Look here, Gabriel,” she said.
Her husband began handling a pair of silver nut-crackers.
“Well, dear?”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so curt before the servants. They might think
we’d been married ten years by your manners. You never seem to consider
me. If I wish a thing you immediately contradict me. I suppose my very
wishing it is enough to set your temper on edge. You never seem to think
I need amusing.”
“My dear girl, I suppose I am dull at times.”
“Dull! You put it mildly.”
“Indeed!”
“For Heaven’s sake, stop cracking those nuts. I have a beastly headache,
and you fidget me to death. You men are so abominably selfish. Do you
ever realize that we have been stuffed down in this place a month; I am
getting sick of being bored out of my skin every hour of the day. I tell
you, I can’t stand it; it’s getting on my nerves. We must rake up a
house-party or do something outrageous. I never imagined you could be
such a brutal dullard.”
The man laughed half cynically. The philosophic part of him was amused
despite the occasion.
“You forget that we have become orthodox and respectable,” he said,
“that we are expected to rent a pew in church, subscribe to missionary
enterprises, exist on hash for lunch, and renounce the devil and all his
angels. I am sorry I have contrived to become so abominably orthodox. I
am only endeavoring to live up to middle-class ideals,
dumpling-and-treacle philosophy, the ethics of top-hats and mid-day
dinners on Sunday. Perhaps you might suggest some new and original piece
of wickedness.”
The sally had no emollient effect upon Ophelia’s petulance. Her claws
were out; and she was not a woman who could regain her amiability within
half a day. She could lose most things, even her purse, with facility,
but a grievance clung like a rubefacient plaster.
“One would think you had married me to be amused,” she said.
“Yours is the Eve’s part of the compact.”
“As a matter of fact, you seem to care more for a shilling volume of
essays than for my company.”
“Really!”
“No woman should allow a library to exist in her house.”
“My dear girl, you are surely not jealous of Schopenhauer?”
“I have never heard of the fellow.”
“Perhaps it is as well; he is somewhat caustic.”
The wife gathered her gown and prepared to depart to the drawing-room.
Gabriel opened the door for her. She gave him a look as she went out.
“I shall expect you in half an hour for billiards.”
“I will attempt to be punctual. Tell James to serve my coffee in the
library.”
“Drat the library.” came the retort.
Now whether it was pure perversity on Gabriel’s part, or the romantic
mesmerism of the work on which he was engaged, an honest eighty minutes
had passed before he appeared in the red-and-white salon. Clouds had
blackened still further the spiritual atmosphere. The fire had died to
embers; a cheap novel lay dishevelled on the hearth-rug as though
precipitated there in a moment of irritation. Ophelia was sitting with
her feet on the fender, her chin resting on her clinched fists.
Gabriel closed the door gently, picked up the book, appropriated a
chair, and sat down. He was even impolitic enough to yawn behind his
hand. The storm seethed two paces away, gathering satirical bitterness
over the listless fire.
“I hope you have amused yourself.”
The man glanced up, more surprise than apology upon his face. He was in
a conciliatory mood; his wife’s voice was more than ominous of injured
sentiment.
“I have been writing,” he said; “the hour after dinner is one of my most
enlightened periods. My imagination kindles.”
“Imagination!”
The twinge of irony was admirable.
“You surely don’t consider such stuff literature?”
“I have hopes for myself.”
The lady tittered amiably and exhaled transcendent pity.
“Your conceit is really very amusing,” she remarked. “It is really too
funny to think that you take yourself seriously. You—an author! My dear
Gabriel, you are really too absurd.”
Now a man perhaps is never so sensitive as in the matter of mental
acumen. Scoff at his ability as at a fond and fatuous delusion, a
ridiculous piece of egotism, and you bid fair to touch his vanity to the
quick. You may insult his figure with impunity, but it is dangerous to
blaspheme against his mind.
“My dear girl, I hardly expect you to sympathize with me on such
subjects.”
“Naturally you consider me beneath your notice.”
“You are not a competent critic.”
“No, I am a woman with common-sense.”
Gabriel stared hard at the fire.
“Can I expect you to understand the deeper side of my soul?” he said.
“Well, dear, the domestic side is shallow enough for me to form a fair
estimate of the literary.”
The man winced despite himself.
“You are very kind,” he said.
“I only want to protest against your abominable selfishness.”
“Selfishness!”
The wife flung herself back upon her cushions.
“Perhaps you think yourself insulted,” she said. “You marry a woman,
neglect her, treat her to inconceivable dulness on all possible
occasions. You give her the residuum of your intellect, the lees of your
leisure. Books, books, twaddle, twaddle, from morning to night. I did
not marry a library or a second-hand book-store. Do you ever consider my
position?”
The man still stared into the grate.
“I have given you a home and myself,” he said. “You cannot expect me to
dangle at your skirts all day long. I have lived much with books and my
own thoughts till now; you must understand that I cannot give up all
that was great in my mind before our marriage. Is all the selfishness on
my side?”
“At any rate, all the dulness seems on mine.”
“What more do you desire me to give you?”
“A little consideration might be courteous. Am I to be boxed up in a
country-house with a tea merchant’s son who thinks he is a genius and
leaves me to exist on novels and coffee. You forget that I am not a
frump of fifty. I want to live, although you have married me.”
“Live, by all means,” said the man.
“I want some pleasure in life.”
“Excitement and fashionable bonbons, I suppose.”
The woman lost the remnant of her temper and flashed up on the instant.
“Gabriel, I won’t be jeered at like this. You are an utter brute. Stay
here and grub in your books like a hermit. I am not going to be a martyr
to your vanity. I’m sick of your sour face. Thank Heaven, I can find
amiability outside my own home. I shall take a holiday.”
The man stood up and still stared apathetically at the fire. His
shoulders drooped and he looked sullenly dejected.
“Try a change, dear, by all means,” he said; “you seem to need it. I am
a bit of a bookworm, I know. You must make allowance for me. I suppose
you don’t want such a dull dog to travel with you.”
“Thanks. I can enjoy myself better alone.”
“Very good.”
“There is no need for me to come between you and your genius. No. I am
not so vain as to desire that.”
A quarter of an hour later Gabriel had drawn back the curtains and
thrown open the French window that looked out upon the lawns. Snow
sparkled at his feet. The trees rose dark and solemn from the immaculate
plain of winter; the stars were frost-brilliant in the heavens. Near
stood a tall cypress with its shelving ledges gleaming white with snow.
The keen breath of the night wrapped the man in a clear and spiritual
atmosphere.
Snow upon the trees and on the hills! Snow, pure, passionless, and
silent, flickered over by the faint wisdom of the stars! All the sweat
and turmoil of the world seemed congealed into soundless sleep. The
blood of the earth lay frozen in its great passionate heart. Love,
hardened into ice, stood a purple pool of lifeless wine. A million
centuries might have elapsed till the sun had waned into a half-molten
sphere; and the earth, cold and immaculate at last, rushed icy-bosomed
through perpetual night. A dead planet, a ghost world, a moon staring
spectre-like on the blood-red passions of living stars! A dead planet,
treading the universal cycle, cold, sunless, and without sin! The
million atomic struggles tombed; the ant-heap of humanity petrified in
the past! What, then, are the woes of man, when God’s eyes have watched
the death agony of a thousand worlds!
And yet this microcosm outvapors the universe. His passions aspire to
stir the faintest ripples of the most infinite ether. Framed in the
likeness of God, his sphere is limitless, his future unfathomed. The old
mythologies raised him amid the stars. Mayhap in ages to come he is
transmogrified into a radiant being moving amid the vapors of a more
stupendous sun.
And Gabriel! Gabriel thought on matters less sidereal at that moment.
The stars were given sedilia whence they might stare upon the portentous
tragedy working in the soul of a minor poet. The man had married clay,
clay hot from the kiln of fleshliness; it had warmed him, but now it was
as cold as the very snow. He had bartered away the spirit, and
materialism had him wrist and ankle. The small stars of idealism had
toppled out of the heavens. He was setting them back one by one like an
artist frescoing the dome of a temple. Still, a woman held him by the
loins; the Church had blessed the embrace, for the perpetuation of
demi-gods and the unctuous preservation of morality. The problem was
threadbare enough in all truth, and yet problems possess the power of
perpetual rejuvenescence. Sin, error, and pain, those elixirs of life,
keep the world quivering in the primal throes of existence. The
Christian and the Buddhist tug at humanity, head and tail, while Death
throws pebbles into an open grave.
XV
THE Honorable Ophelia Strong had summoned to her side a certain friend
of her youth, and departed from Saltire to an inland watering-place of
repute. The pair had settled at a fashionable hydropathic establishment
under the wing of an urbane and sympathetic medical gentleman. Neither
Lord Gerald nor John Strong knew anything of the storms that had swept
The Friary. They believed the atmosphere of the place to have been
peaceful as a summer dawn.
It was promulgated in Saltire circles that Gabriel Strong’s wife had
journeyed northward to Callydon for the sake of her health. The reason
was sane enough, but, since Dr. Marjoy had not been consulted in the
matter, his indefatigable mate had spread certain sinister suggestions
through the neighborhood. And since the Saltire ladies were ready to
accept any hint that was detrimental to the character of an absent
sister, Mrs. Marjoy’s insinuations had bristled like Scotch thistles and
flourished with exceeding rankness.
One evening late in February Mrs. Mince and the doctor’s wife had
attended the Wednesday celebration of even-song at Saltire church. Mr.
Mince had preached to seven ladies, the sexton, and the village idiot a
very moving sermon upon spirituality, a sermon largely plagiarized from
the works of a popular divine. After the service the ladies had taken
leave of the vicar at the village cross. Mr. Mince had parted from them
to call on Mr. Smith, the pork butcher, to arrange for the transference
of the vicarage sow’s last litter into cash. Mrs. Mince and Mrs. Marjoy
continued on their way, inspired by the imagined savor of toasted
muffins that rose spiritually prophetic from Mrs. Marjoy’s tea-table.
“It is reported, my dear,” said Mrs. Mince, as she turned up her veil
and tucked her black gloves into a ball—“it is reported that young
Strong is to contest the constituency at the next election. Sir Hercules
Dimsdale is retiring, dear old fellow! What changes we see as the years
pass by!”
“Changes for the worse,” said Mrs. Marjoy. “Sir Hercules is such a
gentleman; he always asks James to shoot with him twice a year. Young
Strong a politician! Why, the cub has no more backbone than a jellyfish.
His character would not stand an election.”
Mrs. Mince agreed with her usual flabby facility.
“There are such peculiar rumors abroad,” she said. “I cannot imagine
where they come from. Most strange, Ophelia Strong going away like this.
Don’t you think so, my dear?”
Mrs. Marjoy leered behind her spectacles.
“Very peculiar,” she said, suggestively.
“Most odd, particularly when they have been married such a short time. I
wonder what the reason can be.”
“Health,” said the doctor’s wife.
“The woman looks well enough.”
“Quite robust.”
“Most odd,” observed the vicaress.
“My dear, there is no need to look far for an explanation. You see, Mrs.
Strong did not consult James; a matter of diplomacy. The inference is
inevitable.”
Both ladies tittered. Mrs. Mince helped herself to another muffin, and
wiped her fingers on a very crumpled handkerchief.
“Dear! dear!” she observed; “I often wonder what we are coming to in
these fast and atheistical days. Life will become a terrible problem for
Christian women like ourselves in the future. If there were only more
men like Jacob in the country. That sermon was really a masterpiece.”
“A most moving appeal.”
“I knew you would think so, my dear. I am always imploring Jacob to
publish his sermons, but he is so beautifully modest. I am sure they
would exert a great influence on the young men of England.”
“If they sold, my dear,” said Mrs. Marjoy.
“There could be no doubt on that point.”
Mrs. Marjoy shrugged her shoulders; her black hat sat awry on her frowzy
brown hair.
“Cheap fiction floods the market,” she observed—“such stuff as young
Strong would write. Imagine that young fool setting himself up to be an
author.”
“Ridiculous!” said Mrs. Mince.
“And poetry, too! Of course, immoral verses are always fashionable. And
as for the novels, I have to read such few as we get before I can let
them pass into James’s hands. He is such an innocent man, and I could
not let him imbibe such abomination. There is Cracow’s _Renovation_, for
instance. I have just finished the book, and I shall burn it.”
“Please lend it to me first?” said the vicaress. “As a clergyman’s wife
I like to dip into these things. One must be wise as to one’s times, my
dear, or one can never confront evil properly.”
“Exactly,” said Mrs. Marjoy. “I have turned down the most scandalous
pages.”
“That will save me time. I can read the worst, my dear, and so speak
with authority. I will take the book home with me to-night.”
The conversation again reverted to Ophelia Strong’s pilgrimage to
Callydon. Mrs. Marjoy’s explanatory suggestions were neither very
magnanimous nor very refined. Both ladies grew exceedingly animated over
so lofty a topic. They discovered much complacent self-flattery in the
comparison of their opinions. Mrs. Mince made frequent references to the
text of her husband’s sermon.
Previous to the vicaress’s departure Mrs. Marjoy stated certain
postulates that deserve record, evidencing as they did the salubrious
and Christian atmosphere of that unique and excellent woman’s mind.
All servants are emissaries of Satan.
All fashionable women imbibe brandy secretly.
All men are libertines with the exception of one’s own husband.
Only those people are respectable who happen to move in the same groove
as one’s self.
That charity, as a virtue, is peculiar to women.
That Gabriel Strong was an unprincipled person.
That his wife wore figure-pads and dyed her hair.
That Mrs. Jumble was a preposterous pedant.
That she, Mrs. Marjoy, hungered after the philosophy of Christ with her
whole soul.
That a really fascinating woman need not consider her complexion.
That one should never buy sausage-meat in June.
XVI
JUDITH STRONG had joined Gabriel at The Friary, and Judith was as far
removed in soul from the Saltire dames as Aldebaran is from the moon.
Saltire needed the magic of Ruskin; it was in its Ice Age, crusted by
custom. There were discrepancies in Saltire that would not have shone
with splendor upon the pages of _Sesame and Lilies_. For the Cordelias,
the Virgilias, the Imogens, Saltire could have proffered Mrs. Marjoy or
Mrs. Mince, or even that beglassed Diana, Miss Zinia Snodley of the
irreproachable boots.
Of the malignities that sucked leechlike at his honor Gabriel Strong was
most honestly ignorant. Many seasons elapse before man reads the
unpropitious faces of his fellows, not dowering himself spontaneously
with the power of arousing hatred in others. The child’s optimism dies
slowly, as the white swans change to geese, the foaming chargers to
long-eared asses. Envy is the unwilling flattery of the fool. The true
man puts forward the shield of power and regains once more the golden
age of youth by triumphing godlike over the malice of mediocrity.
Judith had found her brother full of a restless morbidity, his mind like
a darkened mirror full of vague shadows and indefinite glimmerings of
light. He was alternately silent and impulsively verbose; burdened
either with a monotonous melancholy or a scintillant and flippant mirth.
He would spend much of the day breasting the winter winds and the mists
that hastened over the hills. Of his married life he said no word to
her, nor dared she tempt him for all her love to a confession.
One evening, after playing Chopin’s Second Waltz, she had turned in the
dusk to find him staring at the flames as they flung tragic shadows
through the twilight. He looked like a Dante, gazing morose and mute
upon the pessimisms of some under world. The music had moved him; she
had read its echoes in his eyes. Going on her knees, she had taken his
hands in hers and pleaded with him after the gracious manner of her
heart.
“Gabriel, what ails you?” she had asked.
The man had put her hands gently from him and turned his face into the
shadows.
“Nothing,” he had answered her.
“Can you not trust me?”
“Dear, I cannot trust myself.”
She had crept close to him and leaned her head against his shoulder.
“Gabriel, is it your marriage?”
“Do not ask me,” he had said.
“May I not help you?”
“No one can help me,” he had retorted, rising and leaving her alone by
the fire.
One winter afternoon they wandered together on the hills above the sea.
The day was cheerless and full of the piping of the wind. The sea ran
gray and lustreless under a sullen sky, whose clouds trailed dim and
rain-laden over the hills. The woods were gaunt and wild as with
remorse. Dead leaves lay rotting in the lanes; in some of the more
sheltered ditches snow still lingered.
The conversation had fallen upon elemental things—the thirst for love
and man’s eternal yearning for a spiritual creed. Judith, divine woman
that she was, possessed that clarity of thought that abhorred dogmas and
embraced untainted truth. Religion to her was as spiritual sunlight
diffusing itself throughout the world. To her sanctity did not emanate
from the pulpit. She was no automaton stirred to moral activity by
black-letter phrases and studied incantations. To her life was religion,
each heart-beat a natural prayer. Her Christianity was not of the book
and the pew, but a bright atmosphere surrounding all things.
Gabriel was in a bitter mood. He had long escaped from the sensuous
stupor into which his marriage had plunged him, and the awakening was
the more humiliating to his pride. The natural fires of the mind were
stirring from the ashes of a dead and sensual desire. His thoughts
spread towards the unknown and into the wilderness of beauty and
romance. He had bartered his liberty for red pottage and the bondage
irked his soul.
Brother and sister came nearer to each other’s heart that day as they
wandered over the misty hills. Judith had caught the man’s humor, and
her sympathies were awake like birds on a May morning. It was pure joy
to her to feel that she had some share in the man’s musings.
“I am weary of orthodoxy,” he said to her, as they threaded a wood where
the trees stood in a silver vapor.
“What is orthodoxy?” she asked, as she followed at his heels.
“The blind cult of custom.”
“Why trouble over such a grievance; the world is wide. Need one think
with the mob?”
“In Saltire, yes.”
“Perhaps you are right,” she said to him, as she drew to his side and
looked wistfully into his face.
Gabriel unbosomed to her.
“The place is like a stagnant pool to me,” he said, “covered with the
scum of custom. To doubt, according to our neighbors, is a sin. He who
weighs the problems of life is held to be an infidel. We are expected to
receive Mr. Mince’s dogmas as the only exposition of all truth and
knowledge. To experiment is infamous. We are hedged in with endless
axioms as with thorns.”
Judith sighed and looked out over the sea.
“I fear you will find no rest in Saltire,” she said to him.
“Rest! No. Could it be possible? The place cramps and crushes my soul.
There is no generosity, no hope, no idealism here. It is as a
burial-ground for souls.”
“Escape from it.”
“Impossible.”
“And why?”
“What of Ophelia?”
They were both silent awhile, as though searching each other’s hearts.
The wind tumbled the dead leaves at their feet; the clouds were gray and
morose in the winter sky.
“Ah, Gabriel, it might have been otherwise.”
The man frowned and did not answer her.
“What of politics?” she asked him anon.
“I have pondered the question.”
“You would escape into a wider world—a world of endeavor and strong
purpose.”
“Better than Saltire.”
“Better than mouldering here amid a decaying generation.”
“It is the fog of the place that chokes me.”
They had passed to the dull green of the meadows and skirted a ragged
hedge where dead branches shook in the wind. A path curled from the wood
above them, crossed the road that ran by the hedge, and threaded on
through ploughed fields towards a thicket of pines. Gabriel and Judith
had halted to gaze over the sea.
As they turned again towards the west a girl in a green cloak and russet
skirt came out from the wood and followed the path that descended
towards the lane. She carried her hat in her hand and walked bareheaded
in the wind. Passing close to the pair, she glanced at Judith, then at
Gabriel, halted a moment, and then hastened on with kindling cheeks over
the meadows. It was thus that Gabriel and Joan Gildersedge met once more
on the hills above the sea.
Judith had glanced unconsciously at her brother’s face. Its expression
startled her. His eyes were full of a peculiar brightness, his cheeks
afire, his lips parted. The face reminded her of some painting of
Dante—Dante gazing upon Beatrice gliding athwart the path of life.
“Gabriel.”
The man darted a look at her and grew pale suddenly.
“What ails you?” she asked, with her hand on his arm.
“Nothing.”
“Are you ill?”
“No.”
“The wind is cold; let us go home.”
“Yes, let us go home.”
XVII
WINTER had intensified the loneliness that had fallen upon Joan
Gildersedge’s heart. Of old, life had satisfied the girl; it no longer
satisfied the woman. The lid of the casket had been lifted and the
sunlight fell on the gems within, purple, vermilion, and green. The
world had grown oracular. There was an ecstatic “Ah!” in the voice of
the wind. The vellum had been torn from the mouth of the painted jar and
odors roseate and rare were wafted up to the stars. She was ignorant in
measure, yet quick with a strange, sweet intuition that made her eyes
rich as purple clematis and bright as sunlit glass. She was even a most
fascinating drama to herself; it was a pure and beautiful thing, this
magic that had grown so silently within her heart. Like a white lily,
green-stemmed and tall, it had put forth sudden bloom, and the fragrance
hallowed the whole world.
Child that she was, her life had been lonely enough, and she had
treasured the soul-picture of the strong face that had come to her
through the summer silence. The man had spoken words to her, both of
pain and delight—pain that they should be parted, delight that it was
difficult to part. She thought of him always, yet knew no shame in the
thought. As she would have recalled a golden meadow, or a glistening
dawn, or an evening deep with amethystine silence, so she would remember
the man’s voice and the eyes that had looked at her with a mute despair.
She treasured the memory as a betrothed girl treasures the amulet that
dangles over her heart. Pure, spontaneous, golden of soul, she had an
earthly heaven in this love of hers. It was clean and spiritual, the
virgin ecstasy of a woman, rich and fragrant as the meads of paradise.
She had taken Judith for Gabriel’s wife on the day she had passed them
on the winter hill-side. The meeting had been a shock to Joan, and she
had turned home with her whole soul shuddering. She felt miserable,
humiliated, yet full of an exultant loneliness. Her love was inevitable
to her, a book of dreams, sad yet splendid. Seeing that it filled her
with transcendent instincts towards beauty, it had no sinister meaning
for her heart. The problem surprised her in measure. Reality appeared to
contradict truth. She had a species of conviction that by natural law
Gabriel was hers and she Gabriel’s.
The last meeting had been oracular also in its effect upon the man. The
look, half timid and pained, in the girl’s eyes remained with him
vividly to the troubling of his spirit. The memory of it had been
stamped upon his brain as with iron at white heat. This was but the
fourth time that he had seen Joan Gildersedge, and each scene was a
brilliant fresco, azure and green and gold. The winter landscape and the
lonely eyes of the woman had touched all the slumbering idealism in his
mind. His soul was like a deserted palace entered by its lord again. The
jewelled casements glimmered in the sun; music and song moved mysterious
through its gorgeous chambers; colors burned upon the walls; the odor of
flowers breathed through its regenerate life.
Through manifold gradations Gabriel had come to a keen conception of a
higher morality. He had flung away the yard-measure of superstition, and
his possibilities were more magnificent and universal. From the rotting
roofs of sectarianism his conception of love had risen to the spiritual
azure of heaven. Animalism had ceased from his soul. It vexed him no
longer; the tiger and the dog in him were inert and caged. It is only
when man has purged himself of his baser instincts that he comprehends
the wonderful significance of life.
Through the wilderness of speculation and desire Gabriel had come by a
conviction that illumined his whole being. The inevitable laws of life
were as plain to him as though written upon tablets of stone. He had
erred and failed. Yet revelation had descended to him as he struggled
towards the light. So long as animalism existed in his being, so long as
fleshly things warred within his body, he was a bond-slave shackled from
the supreme region of the ideal. Joan Gildersedge had ever been a white
cloud to him, a golden vapor, beautifully pure. As the satyr squirming
in the mire of an unlovely marriage he had dared not approach unto her
soul. As the spirit man, the Christian, this high love was lawful and
good unto his being. He was justified by the spirit. Though he were the
bond-slave of an earthly houri nothing could prevent him aspiring to a
divine love. Such a marriage was but a serf’s collar with the medallion
of the beast thereon. A spiritual love could in no way make him false to
a compact that had nothing of the divine in its consummation. He was the
husband of one wife in the flesh. He could be the husband of one wife in
the spirit.
It was such a conclusion as this that sent him errant like a young Sir
Percival, the man of a new age, eager to live life under the benediction
of a new philosophy. That day the wind was warm and vigorous. Rain had
fallen early, but the sun had rent the clouds and flung torrents of gold
dust down upon the world. All the earth glittered, the sea, the woods,
the streams. The sky was like a garland of orange blooms about the brows
of the day.
Gabriel Strong was in one of those transcendental moods when the mind is
convinced of the existence of God. The law in his own heart led him
instinctively to feel the presence of the Unseen, to realize the superb
dignity of the divine will. He trod the hills as Christ trod the
waves—serene, calmly exultant, conscious of heaven and his own soul. He
beheld all things through the glittering idealism of love. Nothing was
prosaic, nothing unintelligible.
Burnt House, with its red wall, its rusty gates, its sepulchral trees,
rose before him like a romance. He passed up the tangled, grass-grown
drive as one who fulfils the prophetic visions of the past. The
cypresses bent to him in salutation. The laurels glistened, smiled in
the sun. Even the iron bell rang joyous, pealing loudly through the
solitary house.
A tall, angular woman in a white cap opened the oak door to Gabriel.
There were hard lines about her mouth, her jaw was square, her colorless
eyes critical. Her black dress fitted close about her austere figure,
and she wore a heavy silver brooch at her throat. She had the air of a
woman bred in whitewashed chapels amid the bleating of harmoniums and
the singing of hymns. Her face was like a stone wall painted with a
lying epitaph; her mouth like an oak money-trap inscribed with an
insinuating text.
Gabriel asked for Joan Gildersedge.
The woman looked him over, pursed her lips, and frowned. Her eyes
travelled from his forehead to his boots and remained fixed upon his
collar.
“Miss Joan’s out.”
“Will she be back soon?”
“Can’t say.”
“Is it any use my waiting?”
The tart person was considering the situation and the nature of her
visitor. She knew his face and yet could not fix a name to it for the
moment.
“Better leave a card,” she said. “You might possibly find Miss Joan in
the meadow. She’s vagarious, and I ain’t a prophet.”
“Which way?”
“Down the drive, sir, and by the path on the left.”
“Thanks.”
“What name, sir?”
“You need not trouble.”
Betwixt the laurels and the yews Gabriel met Joan Gildersedge as he was
returning towards the gate. They came upon each other quite suddenly,
the girl emerging from the narrow path that plunged into the wall of
green. There was neither the time nor the desire perhaps for
prevarication on either part. The color had deepened on Joan
Gildersedge’s face. All psychological reflections were swallowed up in
the action of the moment.
“You—here!”
She stood looking in his face, still blushing slightly and holding
herself a little aloof. Her eyes had grown suddenly dark yet luminous,
like a deep pool half lit by moonlight. Their expression was ineffably
mysterious and alluring.
“I have come to you again,” said the man.
“Why?”
The sunlight quivered in Gabriel’s eyes. His head was uncovered, his
hair touched with light. He answered her slowly like a man who ponders
his thoughts and pays out his words like gold pieces out of a treasury.
“I will tell you presently.”
“The truth?”
“To you—the truth—always.”
She gave a short sigh and turned back into the wilderness of the drive.
Infinite happiness shone on her face, a warm, spiritual radiance glowing
through her delicate skin. Her lips were parted in a smile, a smile that
seemed to flood down from her eyes, even to ripple from her glimmering
hair.
“Come, let us go out together, watch the sea and talk. There are
snowdrops in the meadow—my March children.”
The perfume of the rain-drenched cypresses breathed about them as they
wound through the shrubbery. The wind shook spray from the thousand
glittering fringes. Its voice was as the half-heard moan of violins.
Together they came out into the meadow beyond the wavering, sun-streaked
shadows of the trees. To the south the sea lifted up a band of silver
towards the sky.
They stood under the shadow of the wall, where the wind tossed the
cypress boughs upward into sudden gestures of despair. New life seemed
to breathe in the breeze. Sun and shadow played over the world. The man
and the girl looked in each other’s eyes a moment and were happy.
“You will tell me why you have come to me again,” Joan said.
Gabriel stood as though to take the salt sea-wind into his bosom. He
smiled as he spoke to her.
“Because I have come by deeper truth.”
“You are married?”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
He frowned slightly and a shadow as of pain passed over his face. The
girl was watching him with the calm content of one who trusts.
“You shall judge,” he said, “whether I desire to do you wrong or no. I
thought once that I had no right to be near you, to hear you speak to
me. It is the common verdict of the world that a man may not hold
another woman to be nearer to his soul than is his wife. You understand
me?”
“Yes,” she said, slowly, still looking in his face.
“Do you remember how the stars make one feel at night?”
“Well enough.”
“A yearning towards all that is noble, pure, and divine. Is there any
evil in such a feeling?”
“How can there be?”
“And there are people in the world who seem to hang like stars over
one’s soul. Is there sin in desiring to be near them, to be inspired
towards truth by their beauty?”
“I cannot think it.”
“Nor I.”
“And so—?”
“I desire to be near you often. You speak to me of all my heart desires
to be. That is all.”
“I understand,” she said, very slowly, with a strange light in her
eyes—“I understand. Let it be so. Say no more.”
As when the moon rises, revealing splendors dusky and magnificent in
some silent plain, so this sympathy, this dual comprehension, called
into sudden radiance all that was fairest in the hearts of the man and
the girl. A great calm seemed to steal upon both, gradual and infinite.
For them the Eternal Spirit lifted up its blessed flame. For them the
roses rushed into ruddy joy. For them the sea echoed the parables of the
stars.
The girl had drawn closer to Gabriel; her hand brushed against his.
“I have been very lonely,” she said, “and it is not good to be alone.”
“No,” he said, in a voice that was half a whisper.
“There would be no loneliness—”
“If men were not fools and if women had not received the poison of the
serpent.”
They were both silent for a season. Joan stooped down and gathered
snowdrops as they grew against the wall. The man watched her. The
flowers seemed emblems of what their love might be.
“I may see you again, then,” she said, presently, with a deep tone of
content.
He stood back from her and looked towards the horizon. There was a
radiance upon his face as though light fell on him out of heaven.
“Yes, if—”
“Well?”
“We vow here together.”
She waited.
“That I never touch you, never so much as touch your hand. That our
flesh is severed absolutely; that only our spirits meet.”
“I will swear that,” she said, slowly.
So, under the sunlit sky and in the breath of the breeze, they swore
both of them together a solemn oath, an oath to heaven.
XVIII
OPHELIA STRONG had discovered her escape from domesticities a relief
after the irritations and petulances of the last few months. Married
life had proved nothing to her save the inconsiderate bigotry of her
husband and the selfishness of men who refuse to reconsider habits
formed in bachelor days. Ophelia believed herself to be a most
misunderstood and ill-used person, a woman sacrificed to the over-fervid
rashness of her own heart. Her love, a very shallow stream dependent
largely on the rainfall of flattery, could easily be turned into other
channels. A devotee of sensations, vain and convictionless, it was the
most natural problem for her to consider how best she could frame life
afresh in order to produce the most palatable and abundant satisfactions
to press into the cup of pleasure.
Had Ophelia Strong been possessed of the literary knack, the world would
probably have received from her sundry erotic and hysterical effusions
upon the supreme brutality of man. Ophelia was a feminine realist in the
flesh, but she was unable to record her experiences on paper. Possessed
of a grievance, the modern Sappho scrolls out her often sordid wisdom
and barters her emotions for the dubious edification of the members of
circulating libraries. It is necessary in these days for the feminine
realist to display a vivid familiarity with physiological data. The
morbid anatomy of her own physical being is placed on record with a
sincerity worthy of an encyclopædist. Elaborately stained sections are
often remarkably beautiful under the microscope. Even diseased tissues
tinctured azure and red resemble fine arabesque on rich mosaics. Reflect
on the suggestiveness of morbid changes, however, and you will perhaps
feel that there is something unpleasant in watching a woman preparing
specimens to prove how the bacteria of sin affected her moral tissues.
Ophelia Strong possessed a grievance—a grievance capable of being
developed to picturesque effect. She had read much hysterical fiction,
and was inclined to believe that there was a distinct melodramatic charm
in posing as a woman with a past. It was interesting to be able to hint
that her heart had been bruised and trampled by a brutal and insensate
fate. Like many women, she began to develop a depraved thirst for
sympathy and a spurious conviction of a hundred and one imaginary woes.
The particular hydropathic establishment patronized by Ophelia at
Callydon was conducted in a style both plutocratic and pliant. The
upholstery was sumptuous, the cooking excellent, the staff discreet and
exceedingly servile. A very passable string band played in the
winter-garden during the evening. The resident physician was a charming
person with a pale face, a little black mustache, and beautifully
manicured hands. He was the joy and salvation of all the dames who came
to take the “waters.” In the height of his fame, the medical gentleman
was permitted to prescribe for the Dowager Lady Punter’s poodle.
The etiquette of the establishment was remarkable for its pliability.
There were charades, dances, concerts, billiard matches every evening;
coaching parties, tennis tournaments, picnic expeditions during the day
in summer. Golf appealed to the more strenuous. Flirtation bulked
largely in the régime. Every one was expected to be jovial and
mischievous. The society was mixed, but quite picturesque and genial.
There was the usual array of stylish men, beautiful creatures who
gravitated into Callydon at certain seasons of the year. There were
maiden ladies of every age and complexion, powder-primed and natural.
There were widows, charming souls! who delighted in the atmosphere of
youth. There were earnest mothers who yearly brought bevies of daughters
with a sly, matrimonial programme. There were elderly men who flirted
extravagantly under the pretence of being grandfatherly and sympathetic.
There were even a few solemn individuals who crept about morosely and
seemed born out of season, individuals who frowned in the reading-room
when any one chattered, refrained from festivities, and were generally
objectionable. Last of all, there was Major Maltravers, the Admirable
Crichton of the place, who played the violin and had learned morality at
Simla.
Ophelia Strong’s first meeting with James Maltravers occurred on the
Collydon golf-links, where she and Miss Mabel Saker had gravitated to
play a nine-hole “single” before lunch. Major Maltravers happened to
meet her in the doorway of the pavilion as she returned ruddy and
victorious from her morning on the “downs.” The soldier was one of those
persons who boasted a cosmopolitan excellence in sport. He could prate
of his tiger-skins, his polo matches, his conquests _de cœur_ with the
cheerful optimism of the army. A woman’s points were to him much on a
par with those of a horse. He liked breed, spirit, a fine carriage, and
the elastic grace of healthy animalism. Anæmia and spirituality were not
noted in his programme.
The same evening he was introduced to Ophelia in the winter-garden by
Mrs. Hayman, one of the elders of the community, and it was soon evident
that he desired to make himself as interesting as his extensive
experience and worldly fascination permitted. He was a tall,
well-proportioned person with very regular teeth, deep-set eyes, and an
emphatic chin. He possessed to perfection what would have been called
the aristocratic air, and, despite his sporting proclivities, he dressed
quietly and in perfect taste. His conversation partook of that
hyperbolical and ironical method that passes for wit in certain circles.
He was positively cultured in many ways; even attempted epigrams on
occasions, and could quote German philosophy to impress the unlearned.
For the rest, his complexion was pallid, his mustache shiny as jet, his
person groomed with the most particular care. People considered him a
very charming person, world-wise, cultured, a man who excelled in
society, and could even express most graceful opinions concerning
religion.
It was not long before he bestowed the larger share of his leisure upon
Ophelia Strong and Miss Mabel Saker, her friend, as sparkling a brunette
as ever sparkled in yellow-back fiction. They had played golf together,
and the major had advanced so far in favor as to be able to discuss his
own fancies and foibles with Ophelia. He admired her and the Trojan
splendor of her beauty. Moreover, he was an interesting person, polished
and rounded by long pilgrimages in the stream of life.
The winter-garden at Callydon was hung with electric lights screened
under shades of olive-green silk. Its glass glittered above the dusky
and profuse shadows of many palms; its floor was mosaiced green, blue,
and white. Ophelia’s lounge-chair was lodged under a tall palm about
whose brazen urn a rich company of arum lilies stood in bloom. A mass of
azaleas colored a background about her white arms and neck, her lustrous
hair and pale-blue dress. A fountain played close by, its spray
glittering down with a musical cadence on the drenched green foliage of
ferns.
The major had drawn a stool inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl beside
Ophelia’s chair. Miss Mabel Saker had left them early to their own
devices. The green palm with its group of white lilies seemed a species
of oasis admirably placed for those who desired to be alone.
“Playing golf to-day?” the soldier was saying. “Not bad links, these.
Bunkers jolly stiff; regular infernos. I went round in eighty. Play
much, eh?”
“For health’s sake.”
“Nonsense.”
“Dr. Glibly’s advice. I am his patient.”
“Pardon the remark, but you don’t look delicate.”
“Appearances are often fallacious.”
“As a matter of fact,” said the major, with confident frankness, “my
friend Graham was only saying to me this afternoon that you were the
most healthy-looking June rose he had ever seen blooming outside the
Callydon pavilion. Now, I come to consider it, you do appear a trifle
tired. Shut me up, you know, if you think I’m too personal.”
“I prefer frankness,” said Ophelia.
Maltravers displayed his white teeth.
“It makes life more rational,” he observed.
“One always knows how one stands.”
The soldier produced a cigarette-case from the pocket of his elaborately
braided dinner-coat. The string band in an alcove had struck up the
overture to a popular comic opera. A party of girls came in from the
vestibule, laughing and chattering, their dresses forming a brilliant
mingling of colors under the palms.
“Do you mind smoke?” said the man, humming the chorus the band was
playing.
“Not a bit. My husband smokes everywhere.”
“Lucky man. You spoil him, of course. Is he here with you?”
“No. He spends his time at home grubbing about in books.”
“Nonsense!”
“All husbands are spoiled,” said Ophelia.
The major elevated his eyebrows and appeared interested.
“What cynicism—at your age!”
“Oh, I am not so very young.”
“Four-and-twenty?”
“I did not refer to years, but to experience.”
The soldier leaned his elbows on his knees and adopted an attitude that
was both respectful and sympathetic.
“I am sorry to hear you speak like that,” he said, with a chivalrous and
fatherly air. “I hate to hear a woman hint at disappointments.”
Ophelia regarded the man interestedly from under her heavy aureole of
hair. He seemed a blunt and brotherly person, and his ingenuous sympathy
was quite fascinating, rendered to the languid accompaniment of a waltz.
“Some men are impossible creatures,” she said, fingering her rings. “For
one thing, I was unfortunate in never possessing a brother.”
“Healthy friends, brothers,” observed the soldier. “I remember handling
a whip once to good purpose. It instilled excellent moral tone into the
young cub I chastened. All girls ought to have brothers.”
“Excellent in theory.”
“I never theorize. A man who has seen much of the world keeps to facts;
theory is a perishable commodity. If a woman does not possess a brother
by blood she ought to retain one by adoption.”
“The thing is to discover him.”
“There are plenty of decent, manly fellows knocking about the world,”
said the soldier.
Maltravers lit a second cigarette, and nodded to two youths in evening
dress who were passing, with the complacent patronage of a minister in
power. He was one of these men who are never so happy as when they are
monopolizing the individual attention of a pretty woman. Maltravers
preferred to pose as a very superior and sagacious person.
“The folly of matrimony,” he said, “is that women will go and marry
young idiots of five-and-twenty, and submit themselves to the conceited
and priggish patronage of mere boys. Young men are unstable creatures,
with the nonsense not knocked out of them by hard experience. Love runs
with mumps and measles; we are all prone to it in youth.”
The man with the white teeth and the waxed mustache delivered himself of
his convictions with concentrated adroitness. His attitude was extremely
politic. At all events, it pleased the woman to whom his words were
addressed.
“You approve, then,” she said, “of the man of forty as a matrimonial
investment?”
“Certainly I do.”
“Rather an unromantic conclusion.”
“Not a bit of it,” retorted the soldier. “Do you think all the romance
of life belongs to the treacly twenties? Your youth of the lily period
will swear away his immortal soul ten times in two years. Your tough man
of forty has lived through his inconsistencies, and falls in love at
last with the grim seriousness of one who knows what it means to be in
earnest. He does not prattle and sentimentalize for six months and then
revert to a barmaid. He loves like the man he is. You will find I am
right, perhaps, some day.”
Ophelia Strong smiled, it being her prerogative as a woman to seem
amused. The veteran was refreshing and vigorous.
“Your views amuse me,” she said. “I am not so sure that there is not
truth in what you say. Young men do not realize how much some things
mean to a woman. We are very human.”
“Exactly; that is my chief point.”
“Then you believe that we need much humoring and a great measure of
consideration?”
“You repeat my meaning.”
“Well?”
“A woman should find out whether a man knows how to love before she
marries him.”
“How should she arrive at the conclusion?”
“If the man has any vanity, avoid him as you would avoid Satan. A man’s
vices and foibles are more than half vanity. If you can tell the
particular man that he is ugly or stupid, and he continues to adore you,
then take him; he won’t make a bad husband.”
As may be inferred from the characters of the parties concerned and the
circumstances in which they were situated, this first debate proved but
the prologue to a gradual and more intimate acquaintanceship. Callydon
was an amiable place, and the proclivities of its visitors were so
familiar that no ill-natured criticisms were passed on ultra-Platonic
friendships. Ophelia Strong was glad of the man’s countenance. When a
woman’s vanity has conceived itself injured by fate, she is in a mood
ripe for sympathies that can salve her smarting spirit. Nothing pleases
her better than being able to hint at her woes to a friend of the
opposite sex whose discretion had been matured by intimate contact with
the world. It is the old fable of the child playing with fire, the
inherent mischief of human nature experimenting with the morbid
excitements of the more passionate affairs of the heart. However
innocent be the delusion, the forbidden fruit glows amid the green
leaves and the antique dragon lies grinning in the grass.
James Maltravers was a diplomat of a high psychological order. As a
lover, he believed in dramaticisms of an elevated type, tragedy of a
picturesque nature, moralities staged to a full orchestral
accompaniment. He had studied the methods of certain up-to-date
play-wrights, and had come to the conclusion that nothing impresses a
woman more than the idea that a man is suffering untold ethical torments
by reason of the inevitable fascination of her beauty. The picture of a
moral hero struggling in the coils of love impressed him vividly with a
sense of dramatic power. Such a conviction bade fair to shine with
glorious persuasiveness before the fine vanity of the feminine soul.
Paolo burning upon the grid of fate.
In due course he adopted an air of dejected melancholy in Ophelia’s
presence, looked at her with sad, saturnine eyes, and seemed like a
wounded stag too conscious of the barb. His conversation was often
philosophical and pitched to a most elevating refrain. He looked blank
verse even to the last tragic cadence of a monologue under the stars. He
made much of chivalry; the subject served him well. It was a glittering
cloak, a fine robe of tinsel and glass to ape majesty. It suited the
man’s part with distinction. Maltravers went about on moral buskins, and
was altogether a very impressive and romantic figure.
XIX
THE decision had been finally concluded by the members of the South
Marchshire Executive Committee that Gabriel Strong, Esq., of The Friary,
Saltire, should contest the constituency under Unionist colors at the
next election. The government had long been in a ruinous condition, and
an appeal to the electorate was imminent, according to the political
prophets. Now Rilchester, the premier town in South Marchshire, was one
of those intensely patriotic boroughs where political popularity depends
largely on the number of guineas squandered by any prospective candidate
in the patronage of local charities and local trade. The Rilchester
electors were men of sense; they could not stomach a member from whose
pockets there came no prophetic clink of gold. John Strong, hard-headed
gamester, had contrived to create for himself a certain reputation in
the place as a philanthropist and a benevolent patron of sport and
pleasure. He had endowed beds at the hospital; he feasted the fisherfolk
regularly each summer; he had subscribed with American prodigality to
the founding of the working-men’s club. He had even provided the
Rilchester rowing club with a racing eight for Moberly regatta. His
money had been invested with lavish and consummate care to popularize
the name of Strong. The ex-tea merchant already beheld his son a
prophetic Pitt, stirring the noble enthusiasm of an empire, carving for
himself a sacred niche in the golden fane of history.
Gabriel had been instructed in the subtle art of political fascination.
He had attended at flower-shows and all social crushes, smiled and
chatted to individuals of every shade and temper, shaken hands with
mediocrities on every possible occasion, posed perpetually as an
amiable, genial, and cultured young aristocrat. He was quite the Galahad
of the Primrose Dames. Artistically attired, with an orchid in his
button-hole, he presented himself at all functions of importance,
culling possible votes by the magic of a pleasant personality.
The public gayeties that his father had forced upon him had in some
measure distracted Gabriel from the melancholy realities of his
marriage. With his usual amiable apathy, he acted as ever as the paid
vassal of his father; his very household existed as a proof of his
dependence on the parental favor. Moreover, there was a certain
artificial stimulus in political life that pleased him for a season. He
met pretty women who flattered him, mediocre folk who were “proud to
make his acquaintance,” big-wigs who were willing to listen to his
opinions and to nod approval when some apt phrase promised well for the
spirit of debate. He had been something of an orator at Oxford, where
his humanism had partaken of a Mazzinian flavor. Expediency, however,
had warped his none too tough convictions into the deformed orthodoxy he
was supposed to champion. His father’s ambition, also, generous as it
was, promised to shed a glamour of ease over the common actualities of
life.
Ophelia was still at Callydon suffering her self-love to recuperate
after the first frank criticisms of married life. Gabriel had written to
Dr. Glibly with regard to his wife’s health, and had received a very
sentimental reply indited on scented paper and concluded with a fine
flourish of degrees and qualifications. “Mrs. Strong,” wrote the doctor,
“was still in that somewhat unstable state so common in women at certain
eventful periods of life. She needed perfect rest—perfect rest and
complete immunity from all domestic worries for the time being.” Gabriel
could have confessed in his heart of hearts that the doctor’s letter was
no black and dismal document. John Strong himself had questioned Gabriel
as to his wife’s somewhat lengthy absence from home. “It would be well,”
he said, “for Ophelia to partner her husband during the coming summer
season, and to back him in his social duties, like the handsome and
fashionable woman that she was.” Gabriel had spread Dr. Glibly’s letter
for his father’s edification, but had offered no explanation as to the
causes that had led to Ophelia’s “state of nervous prostration.” Nature
could take the blame, and the sentiments woven through the affair were
not such as Gabriel cared to trust to the parental conscience.
Despite the light of publicity that was gathering about his person,
Gabriel appeared blind to the vast inconsistencies of his life. He
drifted as he had ever done in a dream-ship on a sea of dreams. A face
shone ever before his eyes, a face wistful as the sky at dawn. Two lives
seemed to go forth from him like divergent highways: the one into smoke
and turmoil, dust and all weariness; the other into green and brilliant
deeps, unutterable shadow-lands of delight, vales of golden rest, hills
where the red winds made music. Romance ran beneath his mundane being
like a caverned river gorgeous with subterranean fire. There were two
worlds within him, two creeds, two gods. He served both, strove to
harmonize each, and heard not the peril prophetic upon the lips of fate.
It is difficult for a man whose thoughts are of the purest to comprehend
the distorted image his deeds may create in the minds of others. The
world is ever ready to suspect evil. Let a man act the Christ and he
will assuredly be in danger of being dubbed “devil.” Fleshliness covers
the eyes of the multitude with scales of crimson glass, and snow is
tinted red by the gaze of the unclean.
Some such innocence of thought rendered Gabriel ingenuously blind to the
sinister developments that might arise from his attitude towards the
child of the hills. His love for her was as spiritual as
moonlight—clear, calm, and infinitely pure. Even the splendid mediæval
imagery that gemmed the very thought of her was hallowed to him as with
a radiant glow of gold. The wings of angels, brilliant as sun-smitten
snow, seemed to breathe and beat above her head. He was honest as the
light in his love for her. He would as soon have shamed his homage by
any baser feeling as have taken sacramental wine with the lips of a
bacchanal.
Letters had passed between the two, and they had met more than once in
secret since the March day when they had taken the oath together. A
great love is always a pure love. With the multitude, contact engenders
disenchantment, possession breeds indifference. Schopenhauer has said
that Petrarch’s sonnets would have ceased abruptly if Laura had
surrendered herself to his song. Apply the cynicism to the mere sexual
instinct and there is truth in the gibe. The greatest love is that which
is fated to brave tempests. To such a mind as Gabriel’s the starlike
unapproachableness of the girl rendered her the more mysterious and
divine. To him love imprisoned behind bars of gold was a rhapsody of
exultation and despair.
Joan’s letters were quaint and ingenuous to a degree. She wrote in a
bold, round hand, her words being the frank type of her
thoughts—thoughts that shimmered with an intense perception of the
splendor of nature. She approached life in her free and elemental
fashion. Facts had no pedantic and foreordained significance for her.
She had the air of an angel treading an unknown earth and marvelling at
the inconsistencies thereof. Nor had she any knowledge of the doctrine
of original sin.
“I am a mere child,” she wrote, “but it seems to me as though a man and
a woman might make the earth a great garden, radiant with goodness as
with flowers. This Bible that you gave me has been much with me of late.
I had never read the book before. I cannot see why sin should enter into
life. To me it seems inexplicable, an anomalous creation. What can sin
give to men that it has such hold over them? To be true to truth seems
to me as natural as to breathe or to sleep.”
And again:
“If we could all remain mere children! Youth is the key of joy. Age
often seems to cover it with rust so that it can no longer unlock the
treasures of life. You say that it is impossible to retain the innocence
of childhood because of the utter hideousness of one’s elders. The
‘little ones’ are doomed to be ‘offended’ by experience. Why, then,
should we not be bold enough to disregard those whom we despise?”
And again:
“I think I could die for an ideal. Whether we are immortal or no, I
cannot see why a good man should fear death. If immortality proves real,
then he is assured of heaven. If death be the end, then he but falls
into an eternal sleep and is none the wiser. I could say to my soul, ‘I
have lived my best, now let me sleep.’ The notion of doing one’s duty in
order to bribe God does not please me.”
Gabriel was perhaps more personal in his statements. He found the girl’s
heart a pure spring into which he might pour his thoughts, where they
glistened like gems in a crystal setting.
“You are my great proof of immortality,” he wrote. “I cannot believe
that such a soul as yours can end in dust. It would be blasphemy against
the divine instinct. Your spirit can never die.”
Also:
“You have become a religion to me. In your eyes I see God and the
heavens opened. Tell me, is there sin in such a creed?”
And again:
“You are like a great light in my heart; may your glory never cease from
my soul. Through you I am transfigured; in your voice Eternity speaks to
me.”
Joan carried Gabriel’s letters in her bosom in a case of green silk.
They lay warm and still against her heart. She read them often, for they
were like the words of a new world to her, eloquent and lovely.
XX
THE old castle of Domremy stood in a green valley running northward from
the Mallan, a gray and solemn ruin bosomed in the tranquil shadows of
the woods. Set in a broad moat as in a shield of silver, its black
battlements rose black with their machiolated shadows against the blue
background of sky. The clouds cast their shadows over the ruin like
ghost memories of the past. There was a wild melancholy about the place,
an infinite wistfulness that touched the heart. Romance seemed to tread
the ruined walls, her sable hair sweeping in the wind, her wild voice
weaving enchantments through the listening woods.
Gabriel had loved Domremy since the first June evening when its gray
towers had dreamed to him from their green repose. In later years it had
often solaced him with its plaintive loveliness, its eyrie whisperings
of the past. Its grandeur had served as a bulwark against the prosaic
sterility of modern minds. Like the dark and mysterious prophecy of some
ancient alchemist, it put forth reality from the heart and throned the
infinite in its stead.
Gabriel had spoken to Joan of the place in his letters. She knew Domremy
well, had dreamed there even as he had done, and looked down upon the
white lilies mimicking the face of the moon. The pair had plotted a
tryst there, had met one April day on a path that ran from the hills,
and wandered through the woods to the gray towers brooding over the
water. They had climbed one of the turrets together, leaned upon the
battlements, and turned back like children into the past.
The sky was dappled with innumerable isles of snow. The meadows were
wondrous green under the blue heavens; the gnarled and naked trees
glistened in the sun. Joan, her hat laid upon the parapet, stood like a
damsel of old, her hair flashing gold in the eyes of romance. Gabriel
leaned against the battlements two paces away, watching the woods and
water and the face of the girl at his side.
“You are content?” he asked her.
She turned her eyes to his and smiled.
“Ask your own heart,” was her response.
Gabriel covered his eyes with his hand.
“How the past rises up to inspire me,” he said. “I could dream here day
by day like a mystic, and know no sin. If we could stride back five
centuries and take life like a crystal globe untarnished in our hands!
Armor should flash in yonder woods; trumpets cry upon these towers. Ever
should your face look out upon these meadows, like the face of evening
out of a cloudless sky. As for me, I should be young again, and a man.”
She looked at him out of her trustful eyes of gray, while her face
seemed full of a calm glory of honor. There was no shadow as yet over
her soul.
“Would you begin life anew?”
The man’s hands gripped the stone.
“Would to God it could be so!” he said. “I have sold my soul’s
birthright for red pottage, for unlovely ease, and cowardly sloth. Life
is a battle-field, not a garden; I have been awakened to the truth too
late.”
Joan pondered his words for a moment.
“Is it not possible to begin life anew?” she asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We are so hedged by the ethics of the world that no escape is open.
Fashion, vanity, prejudice, and greed—these are our task-masters. Life
is like a path spiked on either side with thorns. We toil on in the dust
while beyond us gleam the gardens of the blessed, unapproachable and
lovely.”
“Who, then, are the blessed?”
“The blessed are those who have fought their fight like giants and have
conquered. There are they who have scorned the laws of expediency and
error. There are they who have lived true to their own souls. There are
they who have not fallen to the flesh. Liberty is the guerdon, joy, and
the light of truth.”
“And yet you are not among them.”
“I—indeed!”
There was a fine self-scorn in his voice that was almost dramatic.
“No,” he said; “I cannot flatter myself with any degree of heroism; it
is only great souls who die for an ideal. The noblest life that was ever
lived on earth had to end in a martyrdom that it might strike home to
the hearts of men. I have been nothing but a martyr to my own egotism.
Having once struck my colors to that black pirate Expediency on the high
seas of life, I suppose I must be content to feel my soul in shackles.”
Joan was pulling at the moss upon the stones with her long, white
fingers. Her eyes were on the distant woods; they were dark as with
thought, and wondrously pathetic.
“A new sun seemed to swim into the sky,” she said, “when I read of the
martyrdom on Calvary. That was a great life.”
“A life that changed history,” he answered her. “There have been many
theorists, but none save Christ who proved his philosophy perfect in his
own person.”
Joan was silent again for a while. The shadows of thought had deepened
in her eyes till they looked like two pools of gloom.
“I have been thinking of that parable,” she said.
“Which parable?” he asked her.
“That which tells of the pearl of great price—where the man sold all
that he had in order to possess it.”
“Yes.”
“There is profound truth to me in the words. Cannot a man take his
inspiration from such a parable—sell all, dare all, to gain that single
pearl. Is the present so pleasant to him that he is afraid to fling
himself giant-like against custom.”
Gabriel looked at her as a man might look at one who prophesies. There
was a sudden kindling of courage upon his face, but again a cloud soon
covered it.
“No,” he said, slowly, “such a thing cannot be.”
“Tell me why.”
“Because the world is too strong for us; because it is impious to risk a
woman’s honor; because the bonds of society are too rigid.”
“And who forged these bonds of society?”
“Man.”
“Then cannot man break them also?”
“It demands too great a sacrifice of others; it outrages too grossly the
hereditary instincts of the race.”
“Cannot a man free himself then from false ties?”
“Not always.”
“Because—”
“They are often of his own forging.”
“Yet he can break them.”
“And his word also?”