CHAPTER XI

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.