The Southampton steamer approached St. Malo about three o'clock on the following afternoon. Robert and Brigit had spent the night on deck--it was better than going below into the close, dreary cabin--and so they counted the stars, and kept their gaze, through the vast reaches of atmosphere, for the first sight of land. The moon, then at its full strength, lit up the whole blue dome above them, and cast its glancing, silver path upon the water--a path which the ship ever crossed but never followed. On and on they sped, and, as their ears grew accustomed to the monotonous churning of the paddle-wheels, the silence seemed intense. The splendour of the night made sleep, to minds as passionate as theirs toward all manifestations of the world's beauty, impossible. Unconscious of any particular thought, they shared a dreamless reverie which was so perfect in its rest and so complete in its still contentment that they did not know that they were resting, nor could they realise that such sweet hours, even as bitter ones, do not loiter in their passing or come again. Soon enough Robert saw himself very far gone from the undissembled sternness of his old resolutions. If he could but be rid of that altogether! He thought he had obtained a mystic recognition of the terrorless but uncommunicating Joy of life which while men live they pursue, desiring it with the one human craving which survives every misfortune, every thwarted hope, all enslavement of the heart's small freedom--the thirst for happiness. Was man, whom God had made in His own Image, but a shadow on the unstable wind? Could it be true that he came in with vanity and departed in darkness, his soul bereft of God, knowing not his time, finding not the work that is done under the sun, born to companion worms in the dust? Should he remain unresisting and without influence on the decision of his own destiny? Yet he remembered the precept of Christ: "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it"--words which put forth a great mystery, perhaps a warning.
Plainly, in all that a man could bring to the world, or take from it, there was vanity and death; but many things were vain merely because they were not eternal, and many things perished because where life is, change must be. Immutable, permanent possessions were the gifts of God to men. But the gifts of men to God would always be imperfect--whether they offered the sacrifice of their wills or their imagined earthly happiness. Yet if this imperfection were a mean one, something less grand than the immeasurable sanctity of Divine strength made human and therefore sorrowful, therefore not omnipotent, therefore liable to error--where then was the merit of renouncing a manhood already too squalid to be endured, friends that were phantoms, loves that were lies, joys that were void promises invented by the cruel for the disappointment of the foolish? He looked down at Brigit, who, wrapped in her furs, was stretched out by his side, her beautiful, child-like countenance turned toward him, smiling in faith and deep unspeakable tenderness. He could hear her tremulous breath and catch the fragrance of her face, which, in the moonlight, seemed as white and delicate as a cloud. The knowledge that she belonged to him at last entered into his heart, his blood, his brain, his thoughts, became the very life within his life--an element which was neither wholly love nor wholly passion, but a necessity from which he could not depart and without which he would cease to be. All men need to have near them, allied in close association with them, either a force to strengthen their weakness or else a weakness which insists upon some demonstration of their strength. In conceivable circumstances it might be a duty to dissever such a bond; it might be a duty to die of starvation rather than steal a loaf, and, as death would ultimately quench the craving stomach, so a broken soul, in time, would cease lamenting for its maimed energy. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter-point and the heart loses its life for ever.
Had Robert's marriage been impossible, had he decided, on that account, to go away from Brigit's influence, had he vowed, in some paroxysm of despair, to see her no more, to pluck out his eye--to forget her--what would have happened? Would he have been able to say to himself at the end of three years, seven years, nine years, "I did my duty. I have my reward"? Is it so easy even to acquiesce in the great bereavements caused naturally, against our will, by death? Does one ever, in the hidden depths of the mind, mistake the cinders of a consumed anguish for the stars of peace? A man need not be a prophet in order to foresee the effect of certain measures on his own character. Indeed, if self-knowledge be not regarded as a sentinel to the judgment, its laborious acquisition would be worth the travail of no honest will. Gained, it remains like an interdict upon all undertakings, projects, ambitions, setting forth clearly all that one may, or may not, attempt in common life, and, above all, in heroism--heroism understood truly, not the false ideals of idle, untaxed sentiment. Robert shrank from examining the sharpest nail of the several which had been piercing his heart for weeks--from the day when he had first received the news of Parflete's death. Had he not often suspected, until then, that, for some reason, he had been called to renounce the hope of marriage? True, he had never been certain of this, and, certainly, the chain of events, even considered without prejudice, seemed altogether favourable to an opposite view. His resolution had been to remain single so long as he could not marry the woman of his choice. Firmly enough he had taken his stand on that ground, realising to the utmost every difficulty to be encountered, every interest to be thrown aside, from the exigencies of such a position. The misunderstandings which would arise, the restraint, the loneliness, the possible morbidity of his own feeling, the sure absence of charity in all outside criticism of his conduct, were not overlooked or under-estimated by a man so versed as himself in the tariff of the market-place.
He had known full well that his decision, robbed of its romantic and picturesque motives, would affect very seriously every step in his career, and influence, as only violence to one's human affections can influence, his character, his mode of thought, his whole view of life and his work in life. This he had known--known, that is to say, as much as anything may be known of a plan not yet executed and destined to a slow accomplishment which finds its final seal of success or failure neither in this existence nor in death, but beyond the grave. Now, however, that the exterior obstacles to a happier scheme were apparently removed, the more formidable opposition of his own secret ideals stirred ominously in his conscience. Men's designs are never so indefinite and confused as when they meet with no outward resistance. A close attack has proved the salvation of most human wills and roused the energy of many drooping convictions. It is seldom good that one should enter into any vocation very easily, sweetly, and without strife. The best apprenticeships, whether ecclesiastical or religious, or civil or military, or political or artistic, are never the most calm. Whether we study the lives of saints or the lives of those distinguished in any walk of human endeavour where perfection, in some degree or other, has been at least the goal, we always find that the first years of the pursuit have been one bitter history of temptations, doubts, despondencies, struggles, and agonising inconsistencies of volition. To natures cold originally, or extinguished by a false asceticism, many seeming acts of sacrifice are but the subtle indulgence of that curious selfishness which is not the more spiritual because it is independent of others, or the less repulsive because it is most contented in its isolation from every responsibility. A renunciation means the deliberate putting away of something keenly loved, anxiously desired, or actually possessed; it does not mean a well-weighed acceptance of the lesser, rather than the greater, trials of life. When Orange had faced the desolate road before him it was as though men ploughed into his heart and left it mangled.
Submission to the severities of God whatever they might be, obedience to authority, a companionless existence--these were the conditions, he knew, of the meagre joy permitted to those who, full of intellect, feeling, and kindness, undertook the rigorous discipline of a solitary journey. The world seldom takes account of the unhappy sensitiveness in devout souls; it thinks them insensible not only because they know how to keep silent, but how to sacrifice their secret woes. And what, after all, are the gratified expectations of any career in comparison with its hidden despairs?
It may be a fact that love, in every imaginative mind, approaches madness; on the other hand, the least imaginative are often not merely attracted but carried away, without any sort of consent, by some over-mastering human magnetism. To love well is a quality in temperament, just as to preach well, or to conduct a siege well, or to tend the sick well, or, in fact, to do anything well, is a special distinction, a ruling motive in the great pursuit of absolute felicity--a pursuit which is the inalienable right of all human creatures, whether fixed mistakenly in this world, or wisely in the next. No calling can be obeyed without suffering, but as in the old legend each man's cross was found exquisitely fitted to his own back, so a vocation is found to be just when, on the whole, one has fewer misgivings that way than in any other. By the exercise of self-discipline one may do much that is not repulsive only but suicidal--a man may so treat his spirit that it becomes a sort of petrified vapour. When, however, he has dosed, reduced, tortured, and killed every vital instinct in his nature till he is an empty shape and nothing more, he must not flatter himself that he has accomplished a great work. Life is not for the dead, but for the living, and in crucifying our flesh we have to be quite certain that we are playing no ghost's farce, inflicting airy penalties on some handfuls of harsh dust. Robert could not feel that absorbing interest in himself which enables so many to cut themselves adrift, painfully, no doubt, from every creature and all impersonal anxieties. If he wished for fame, power, wealth, it was that he might use them to the advantage of his friends, or for the reparation, in some degree, of his father's sin. But all the joy and all the melancholy in love give a free rein to egoism, and now that he had gained, as he believed, the desire of his eyes, the confused, tyrannical, inexplicable, triumphant selfishness dormant in him, as in all of us, began to assert its terrible power. He forgot the agonies, storms, and fevers of the past. Work had not always been able to dominate his unrest.
There had been times when he had been compelled to follow the beckoning dreams; when, in tightening his clasp about the mockeries of his hope, he lost the pale happiness which he held already. Whole days had passed when some oppressive thought had spread its dark wings, as a bird of prey, over his whole being, crushing him gradually down to the earth. Now the occasion, the solitude, the glory of the night cast their spell over his soul. For the first time his emotion, so long dumb and imprisoned, found speech. Brigit listened, almost afraid, to his burning words, which, new and strange to her, were, in reality, but the echo of his interior life, his secret intimate thoughts, the pent-up eloquence of a latent habitual devotion long distrusted for its very strength and kept till that hour in strict silence, lest in the torrent of feeling it should say too much. The love to which he had long since surrendered himself now had complete possession of him. He spoke as he had never spoken before--as he never spoke again. The storm was restrained, subservient possibly still, but it was there, not to be forbidden, denied, or gainsayed. One has to be very strong in order to support the realisation of a long deferred, almost abandoned, hope. Affliction seems to intensify a personality, adding to it a distinctness, a power altogether commanding and irresistible, but even in our purest happiness we lose something of ourselves, and become, momentarily at least, less our own masters, and more pliant to the reproof of chance, the sport of destiny. As Robert uttered his passionate confession, he was conscious that much in him which had once seemed strong was conquerable enough, and, in the torture of the indescribable variety of vague, menacing feelings which this suspicion called forth, he revolted against the influence which held him, which left him neither liberty, nor security; which, for a few days of mad exultation, cost him a thousand bewildering, desolating fears. Did he guess that when one most eagerly desires happiness, one is most near to it?
Already, he remembered, with a sudden pallor, and a sharp contraction of the lips, that death, in time, would certainly claim both of them, and his soul was pierced at the thought, for nothing seemed imaginably so perfect as the wild gladness of that poor human hour then gliding, with pitiless beats, toward the past. Already the moon had ceased to weave her magic; the sun rose over the unrebukable sea, and the distant coast, obscured in a purple vapour, seemed but a line of darkness against the flushed horizon. The sky was grey, opalescent in the north, tenderest green and azure in the east, while large, motionless clouds, as blue as vine-clad hills, shadowed in great clusters the vast canopy. But if the dawn of day wrought a progressive disenchantment of the dreamer, Robert felt with the recurrence of the morning the usual prayer rise to his lips in a long weeping, inarticulate cry to God--"Thou knowest that I love Thee: Thou knowest that all my life is but a desire of Thee: Thy Will, not mine." And he heard again the promise: "Thou art My servant, I have chosen thee, and not cast thee away. Fear thou not, for I am with thee: be not dismayed, for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee: yea, I will help thee." As the silent disquietude of night gave place to the intense tranquillity of day, the impenetrable secret of life, though still profound, unviolated, and eluding, was hidden in a shining, though not a blinding, mist. Was night less night because it paled gloriously before the sun? Was day less day because it darkened into evening? Was joy a false thing because it passed? Did not sorrow pass also? If that sweet journey was the first and last in all his life, was it not still a miracle of blessing, nay, every blessing, to have known even once the power of mortal happiness?
"What are you thinking of?" asked Brigit suddenly, touching his arm with her hand.
"I am thinking that there is but one way of resisting the woe of life--the infinite must oppose the infinite. Infinite sorrow must be met by infinite love."
"I suppose we have the sorrow, and the infinite love is God's. We mustn't call even our love infinite, Robert."
He hesitated for a few moments before he replied--
"I call it no name."
"Still," she said, "the very book in which the vanity of all things is most insisted on has lived itself nearly three thousand years. Solomon has given the lie to his own despair of being remembered. This is why I never feel sad now when I think about the other fears which made him discontented."
"Were they fears? I believe he wanted to conquer the world, which is strong, and his own weakness, which was even stronger, as an adversary. We must know the measure of a man's desires before we can sound the depths of his regrets."
Again she put out her hand, but this time she took his, following the instinct of a child who finds itself with a trusted companion in a gloomy road.
"Nothing unknown can be wished for," she said gently, "and so, if some few things did not last, we should not have this dissatisfaction at the thought of their perishing. But what is troubling you? The greatest cross is to be without a cross. You, dearest, are never at ease unless you are at least suffering tortures for some friend."
"I am thinking of myself now--myself only. I can't forget that every supreme blessing must be bought with long sadness, both before and after, and now we are together, I am wondering what I should do--if--if we were separated. I must have the courage to face that thought. I can't put it away because it has defied me, and when a thought defies me, I have to meet it fairly. I do not believe in denying its force, or running away in an opposite direction. I hear its argument and I try to answer it."
She moved towards him and said in a low voice--
"I have one prayer, and this is that I may outlive you. When you die, I shall soon follow you. It won't seem so very long. But if I should die first I should have to wait, because you would never yield, and your grief would cut sharply and slowly, a little more and a little more each day. And although I might be with you, you could not see me. I should know all your thoughts and yet I could say nothing. Almighty God is too kind to let me be so unhappy after I am dead. This is 'the confidence wherein I trust.' This is why I have no fears now. We may have great trials--how can we expect to be exempt from them? But we must help each other to bear them and then they will seem more precious than joys. You see, don't you? You understand, don't you?"
He could not trust himself to reply. There are certain utterances, certain turns of thought, which are so restricted to one sex or the other, so exclusively feminine or masculine, as the case may be, that their entire comprehension by both sexes is not possible. Intuition, imagination, sympathy may help a great deal; men and women will accept much from each other which they cannot to their reasoning satisfaction account for, and, if the difference serves only to enhance, by its mystery, the melodiousness of the eternal human duet, it also proves that, while the singers may be in harmony, they are never in absolute unison.
"You know how much I love you," said Brigit, "you know it. Yet there is an interior cloister of your mind which you keep wholly to yourself. You never ask me there. I watch your face--it tells me nothing. You have not yet made me your friend. If you were in trouble you would go to Pensee, because she is older and she is used to responsibilities. But you hide things from me because you are afraid of giving me pain."
"There is reason enough why I should not tell you of every passing mood, nor draw you into some invincible personal sadness, and why I should not invite you into the 'interior cloister' of my mind. Nobody deliberates to do what he cannot help. There is always something questioning within me, and a truth is not to be set aside by any other truth whatever. We can only fix our jaws and grip our hands in useless wonder at the contradictions of the soul. I would tell you all my heart," he added, with a laugh, "but it would take too long!"
He had been startled by the acuteness of her perception. Too probably he had carried his reserve to the selfish pitch, and in over-mastering, with silence, his own moods, afflicted her who had become now, by love, inseparable from his spiritual as well as his outward life. But there is something in beauty--just as there is something in youth--which one fears to disturb, lest a change should alter, or mar, in the faintest degree, the sufficient loveliness, the unconscious charm. Is it not for this cause that many dependent natures find classic perfection cold, superb scenery unsympathetic, and the spectacle of careless happiness embittering? Others, of imaginative temperament, prefer that their idols should remain impassive, and, granted the inspiration arising from a fair appearance, ask no more, but find their delight in bestowing, from the riches of their own gratitude, adorable attributes and endless worship. Orange, as many other men of idealising tendencies, took his human solace for the discouragements, fatigues, and ordeals of life in the mere existence of the woman he loved. He was at the moment of humility which is the first and last in all really great passions. He asked for nothing; it was all too glorious even to have the privilege of offering gifts, of feeling the readiness to die ten deaths for her sake, of finding all the recompenses of eternity in the soft depths of her bright eyes. But as he was too much in earnest to analyse these sentiments, he could neither gauge his own reticence nor justify it to Brigit herself. Nor could she, with all her tenderness and womanly instincts, help him in that matter--their one possibility of estrangement. She lacked the knowledge which renders verbal confidences unnecessary; she was too loving and too human to be happy as an inspiration and an inspiration only; she also had a great desire to give, to aid, to prove her devotion, to be the friend and the fellow-pilgrim.
