Part 47 (2/2)
”You hated affection. You put human feelings aside with contempt. You had, you desired to have, no love for anyone. Nor did you desire to receive any love from anything. Perhaps this is a punishment.”
Guildea stared into his face.
”D'you believe that?” he cried.
”I don't know,” said the Father. ”But it may be so. Try to endure it, even to welcome it. Possibly then the persecution will cease.”
”I know it means me no harm,” Guildea exclaimed, ”it seeks me out of affection. It was led to me by some amazing attraction which I exercise over it ignorantly. I know that. But to a man of my nature that is the ghastly part of the matter. If it would hate me, I could bear it. If it would attack me, if it would try to do me some dreadful harm, I should become a man again. I should be braced to fight against it. But this gentleness, this abominable solicitude, this brainless wors.h.i.+p of an idiot, persistent, sickly, horribly physical, I cannot endure. What does it want of me? What would it demand of me? It nestles to me. It leans against me. I feel its touch, like the touch of a feather, trembling about my heart, as if it sought to number my pulsations, to find out the inmost secrets of my impulses and desires. No privacy is left to me.” He sprang up excitedly. ”I cannot withdraw,” he cried, ”I cannot be alone, untouched, unwors.h.i.+pped, unwatched for even one-half second. Murchison, I am dying of this, I am dying.”
He sank down again in his chair, staring apprehensively on all sides, with the pa.s.sion of some blind man, deluded in the belief that by his furious and continued effort he will attain sight. The Father knew well that he sought to pierce the veil of the invisible, and have knowledge of the thing that loved him.
”Guildea,” the Father said, with insistent earnestness, ”try to endure this--do more--try to give this thing what it seeks.”
”But it seeks my love.”
”Learn to give it your love and it may go, having received what it came for.”
”T's.h.!.+ You talk as a priest. Suffer your persecutors. Do good to them that despitefully use you. You talk as a priest.”
”As a friend I spoke naturally, indeed, right out of my heart. The idea suddenly came to me that all this,--truth or seeming, it doesn't matter which,--may be some strange form of lesson. I have had lessons--painful ones. I shall have many more. If you could welcome----”
”I can't! I can't!” Guildea cried fiercely. ”Hatred! I can give it that,--always that, nothing but that--hatred, hatred.”
He raised his voice, glared into the emptiness of the room, and repeated, ”Hatred!”
As he spoke the waxen pallor of his cheeks increased, until he looked like a corpse with living eyes. The Father feared that he was going to collapse and faint, but suddenly he raised himself upon his chair and said, in a high and keen voice, full of suppressed excitement:
”Murchison, Murchison!”
”Yes. What is it?”
An amazing ecstasy shone in Guildea's eyes.
”It wants to leave me,” he cried. ”It wants to go! Don't lose a moment!
Let it out! The window--the window!”
The Father, wondering, went to the near window, drew aside the curtains and pushed it open. The branches of the trees in the garden creaked drily in the light wind. Guildea leaned forward on the arms of his chair. There was silence for a moment. Then Guildea, speaking in a rapid whisper, said,
”No, no. Open this door--open the hall door. I feel--I feel that it will return the way it came. Make haste--ah, go!”
The Father obeyed--to soothe him, hurried to the door and opened it wide. Then he glanced back at Guildea. He was standing up, bent forward.
His eyes were glaring with eager expectation, and, as the Father turned, he made a furious gesture towards the pa.s.sage with his thin hands.
The Father hastened out and down the stairs. As he descended in the twilight he fancied he heard a slight cry from the room behind him, but he did not pause. He flung the hall door open, standing back against the wall. After waiting a moment--to satisfy Guildea, he was about to close the door again, and had his hand on it, when he was attracted irresistibly to look forth towards the park. The night was lit by a young moon, and, gazing through the railings, his eyes fell upon a bench beyond them.
Upon this bench something was sitting, huddled together very strangely.
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