Part 23 (1/2)
I drew her down beside me. But the childish face was still stern.
”I want the truth,” she said; so that I answered very gravely:
”When the pa.s.sion is pa.s.sed; when the glory and the wonder of Desire-Nature's eternal ritual of marriage, solemnising, sanctifying it to her commands-is ended; when, sooner or later, some grey dawn finds you wandering bewildered in once familiar places, seeking vainly the lost palace of youth's dreams; when Love's frenzy is faded, like the fragrance of the blossom, like the splendour of the dawn; there will remain to you, just what was there before-no more, no less. If pa.s.sion was all you had to give to one another, G.o.d help you. You have had your hour of madness.
It is finished. If greed of praise and wors.h.i.+p was your price-well, you have had your payment. The bargain is complete. If mere hope to be made happy was your lure, one pities you. We do not make each other happy.
Happiness is the gift of the G.o.ds, not of man. The secret lies within you, not without. What remains to you will depend not upon what you _thought_, but upon what you _are_. If behind the lover there was the man-behind the impossible G.o.ddess of his love-sick brain some honest, human woman, then life lies not behind you, but before you.
”Life is giving, not getting. That is the mistake we most of us set out with. It is the work that is the joy, not the wages; the game, not the score. The lover's delight is to yield, not to claim. The crown of motherhood is pain. To serve the State at cost of ease and leisure; to spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is the man's ambition. Life is doing, not having. It is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it. Fools marry thinking what they are going to get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses-the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility-manhood, womanhood.
Love's baby talk you will have outgrown. You will no longer be his 'G.o.ddess,' 'Angel,' 'Popsy Wopsy,' 'Queen of his heart.' There are finer names than these: wife, mother, priestess in the temple of humanity.
Marriage is renunciation, the sacrifice of Self upon the altar of the race. 'A trick of Nature' you call it. Perhaps. But a trick of Nature compelling you to surrender yourself to the purposes of G.o.d.”
I fancy we must have sat in silence for quite a long while; for the moon, creeping upward past the wood, had flooded the fields again with light before Robina spoke.
”Then all love is needless,” she said, ”we could do better without it, choose with more discretion. If it is only something that worries us for a little while and then pa.s.ses, what is the sense of it?”
”You could ask the same question of Life itself,” I said; ”'something that worries us for a little while, then pa.s.ses.' Perhaps the 'worry,'
as you call it, has its uses. Volcanic upheavals are necessary to the making of a world. Without them the ground would remain rock-bound, unfitted for its purposes. That explosion of Youth's pent-up forces that we term Love serves to the making of man and woman. It does not die, it takes new shape. The blossom fades as the fruit forms. The pa.s.sion pa.s.ses to give place to peace. The trembling lover has become the helper, the comforter, the husband.”
”But the failures,” Robina persisted; ”I do not mean the silly or the wicked people; but the people who begin by really loving one another, only to end in disliking-almost hating one another. How do _they_ get there?”
”Sit down,” I said, ”and I will tell you a story.
”Once upon a time there was a girl, and a boy who loved her. She was a clever, brilliant girl, and she had the face of an angel. They lived near to one another, seeing each other almost daily. But the boy, awed by the difference of their social position, kept his secret, as he thought, to himself; dreaming, as youth will, of the day when fame and wealth would bridge the gulf between them. The kind look in her eyes, the occasional seeming pressure of her hand, he allowed to feed his hopes; and on the morning of his departure for London an incident occurred that changed his vague imaginings to set resolve. He had sent on his scanty baggage by the carrier, intending to walk the three miles to the station. It was early in the morning, and he had not expected to meet a soul. But a mile from the village he overtook her. She was reading a book, but she made no pretence that the meeting was accidental, leaving him to form what conclusions he would. She walked with him some distance, and he told her of his plans and hopes; and she answered him quite simply that she should always remember him, always be more glad than she could tell to hear of his success. Near the end of the lane they parted, she wis.h.i.+ng him in that low sweet woman's voice of hers all things good. He turned, a little farther on, and found that she had also turned. She waved her hand to him, smiling. And through the long day's journey and through many days to come there remained with him that picture of her, bringing with it the scent of the pine-woods: her white hand waving to him, her sweet eyes smiling wistfully.
”But fame and fortune are not won so quickly as boys dream, nor is life as easy to live bravely as it looks in visions. It was nearly twenty years before they met again. Neither had married. Her people were dead and she was living alone; and to him the world at last had opened her doors. She was still beautiful. A gracious, gentle lady, she had grown; clothed with that soft sweet dignity that Time bestows upon rare women, rendering them fairer with the years.
”To the man it seemed a miracle. The dream of those early days came back to him. Surely there was nothing now to separate them. Nothing had changed but the years, bringing to them both wider sympathies, calmer, more enduring emotions. She welcomed him again with the old kind smile, a warmer pressure of the hand; and, allowing a little time to pa.s.s for courtesy's sake, he told her what was the truth: that he had never ceased to love her, never ceased to keep the vision of her fair pure face before him, his ideal of all that man could find of help in womanhood. And her answer, until years later he read the explanation, remained a mystery to him. She told him that she loved him, that she had never loved any other man and never should; that his love, for so long as he chose to give it to her, she should always prize as the greatest gift of her life. But with that she prayed him to remain content.
”He thought perhaps it was a touch of woman's pride, of hurt dignity that he had kept silent so long, not trusting her; that perhaps as time went by she would change her mind. But she never did; and after awhile, finding that his persistence only pained her, he accepted the situation.
She was not the type of woman about whom people talk scandal, nor would it have troubled her much had they done so. Able now to work where he would, he took a house in a neighbouring village, where for the best part of the year he lived, near to her. And to the end they remained lovers.”
”I think I understand,” said Robina. ”I will tell you afterwards if I am wrong.”
”I told the story to a woman many years ago,” I said, ”and she also thought she understood. But she was only half right.”
”We will see,” said Robina. ”Go on.”
”She left a letter, to be given to him after her death, in case he survived her; if not, to be burned unopened. In it she told him her reason, or rather her reasons, for having refused him. It was an odd letter. The 'reasons' sounded so pitiably insufficient. Until one took the pains to examine them in the cold light of experience. And then her letter struck one, not as foolish, but as one of the grimmest commentaries upon marriage that perhaps had ever been penned.
”It was because she had wished always to remain his ideal; to keep their love for one another to the end, untarnished; to be his true helpmeet in all things, that she had refused to marry him.
”Had he spoken that morning she had waited for him in the lane-she had half hoped, half feared it-she might have given her promise: 'For Youth,'
so she wrote, 'always dreams it can find a new way.' She thanked G.o.d that he had not.
”'Sooner or later,' so ran the letter, 'you would have learned, Dear, that I was neither saint nor angel; but just a woman-such a tiresome, inconsistent creature; she would have exasperated you-full of a thousand follies and irritabilities that would have marred for you all that was good in her. I wanted you to have of me only what was worthy, and this seemed the only way. Counting the hours to your coming, hating the pain of your going, I could always give to you my best. The ugly words, the whims and frets that poison speech-they could wait; it was my lover's hour.