Part 21 (1/2)
More slowly, with more composure, he went on. He was still turned toward her, his hand shading the upper part of his face:
”It was not until--not until--afterwards--that I got something more out of it than all that--got what I suppose you meant. . . . suppose you meant that the whole story was not far away from me but present here--its right and wrong--its temptation; that there was no vow a man could take then that a man must not take now; that every man still has his Camelot and his King, still has to prove his courage and his strength to all men . . . and that after he has proved these, he has--as his last, highest act of service in the world. . . to lay them all down, give them all up, for the sake of--of his spirit. You meant that I too, in my life, am to go in quest of the Grail: is it all that?”
The tears lay mute on her eyes. She rose quickly and walked away to the garden. He followed her. When they had entered it, he strolled beside her among the plants.
”You must see them once more,” she said. Her tone was perfectly quiet and careless. Then she continued with animation: ”Some day you will not know this garden. When we are richer, you will see what I shall do: with it, with the house, with everything! I do not live altogether on memories: I have hopes.”
They came to the bench where they were used to talk, She sat down, and waited until she could control the least tremor of her voice. Then she turned upon him her n.o.ble eyes, the exquisite pa.s.sionate tender light of which no effort of the will could curtain in. Nor could any self-restraint turn aside the electrical energy of her words:”I thought I should not let you go away without saying something more to you about what has happened lately with Amy. My interest in you, your future, your success, has caused me to feel everything more than you can possibly realize. But I am not thinking of this now: it is nothing, it will pa.s.s. What it has caused me to see and to regret more than anything else is the power that life will have to hurt you on account of the ideals that you have built up in secret. We have been talking about Sir Thomas Malory and chivalry and ideals: there is one thing you need to know--all of us need to know it--and to know it well.”Ideals are of two kinds. There are those that correspond to our highest sense of perfection. They express what we might be were life, the world, ourselves, all different, all better. Let these be high as they may!
They are not useless because unattainable. Life is not a failure because they are never attained. G.o.d Himself requires of us the unattainable: 'Be ye perfect, even as I am perfect! He could not do less. He commands perfection, He forgives us that we are not perfect! Nor does He count us failures because we have to be forgiven. Our ideals also demand of us perfection--the impossible; but because we come far short of this we have no right to count ourselves as failures. What are they like--ideals such as these? They are like light-houses. But light-houses are not made to live in; neither can we live in such ideals. I suppose they are meant to s.h.i.+ne on us from afar, when the sea of our life is dark and stormy, perhaps to remind us of a haven of hope, as we drift or sink in s.h.i.+pwreck. All of your ideals are lighthouses.
”But there are ideals of another sort; it is these that you lack. As we advance into life, out of larger experience of the world and of ourselves, are unfolded the ideals of what will be possible to us if we make the best use of the world and of ourselves, taken as we are. Let these be as high as they may, they will always be lower than those others which are perhaps the veiled intimations of our immortality. These will always be imperfect; but life is not a failure because they are so. It is these that are to burn for us, not like light-houses in the distance, but like candles in our hands.
For so many of us they are too much like candles!--the longer they burn, the lower they burn, until before death they go out altogether! But I know that it will not be thus with you. At first you will have disappoint-ments and sufferings--the world on one side, unattainable ideals of perfection on the other. But by degrees the comforting light of what you may actually do and be in an imperfect world will s.h.i.+ne close to you and all around you, more and more. It is this that will lead you never to perfection, but always toward it.”
He bowed his head: the only answer he could make.
It was getting late. The sun at this moment pa.s.sed behind the western tree-tops. It was the old customary signal for him to go. They suddenly looked at each other in that shadow.
”I shall always think of you for your last words to me,” he said in a thick voice, rising.
”Some day you will find the woman who will be a candle,” she replied sadly, rising also. Then with her lips trembling, she added piteously:
”Oh, if you ever marry, don't make the mistake of treating the woman as an ideal Treat her in every way as a human being exactly like yourself! With the same weakness, the same strug-les, the same temptations! And as you have some mercy on yourself despite your faults, have some mercy on her despite hers.”
”Must I ever think of you as having been weak and tempted as I have been?”
he cried, the guilty blood rus.h.i.+ng into his face in the old struggle to tell her everything.
”Oh, as for me--what do you know of me!” she cried, laughing. And then more quickly: ”I have read your face! What do you read in mine?”
He looked long into it: ”All that I have most wished to see in the face of any woman--except one thing!”
”What is that? But don't tell me!”
She turned away toward the garden gate. In silence they pa.s.sed out--walking toward the edge of the clearing. Half-way she paused. He lifted his hat and held out his hand. She laid hers in it and they gave each other the long clinging grasp of affection.”Always be a good man,” she said, tightening her grasp and turning her face away.
As he was hurrying off, she called to him in a voice full of emotion:
”Come back!”
He wheeled and walked towards her blindly.
She scanned his face, feature by feature.
”Take off your hat!” she said with a tremulous little laugh. He did so and she looked at his forehead and his hair.
”Go now, dear friend!” she said calmly but quickly.
XXI
It was the morning of the wedding.
According to the usage of the time the marriage ceremony was to take place early in the forenoon, in order that the guests, gathered in from distant settlements of the wilderness, might have a day for festivity and still reach home before night. Late in the afternoon the bridal couple, escorted by many friends, were to ride into town to Joseph's house, and in the evening there was to be a house-warming.
The custom of the backwoods country ran that a man must not be left to build his house alone; and one day some weeks before this wagons had begun to roll in from this direction and that direction out of the forest, hauling the logs for Joseph's cabin.