Part 25 (1/2)
I tried to comfort her by speaking of the many ways in which she might still find happiness. She listened patiently until I was obliged to stop for want of words, then she said:
”This is all very well, but you know you are talking nonsense. What is the use of offering people everything but the one thing needful? What I say to myself is:
Well, I have had my turn, have been Raised from the darkness of the clod, And for a glorious moment seen The brightness of the skirts of G.o.d.
And I try to think I have no right to complain, but still I am not better satisfied than the child that has eaten its cake and wants to have it too. And I suppose there are many who would call me wretched, and say that my life, with my sorrowful marriage--which was no marriage, but a desecration of that holy state, and a sin--and my hopeless love, is a broken life. Certainly _I_ feel it so. And yet I don't know. With his nature it seems to me that some wrong-doing was inevitable. Do you think my suffering might be taken as expiation for his sins? Do you think we are allowed the happiness of bearing each other's burdens in that way if we will? If I were sure of that I should not fancy, as I used to, that I had a work to do in the world; I should know that my work is done, and that now I may rest. Ah, the blessing of rest!”
Not long after this a cruel rumour reached us, on good authority, that Lorrimer was engaged to be married. I confess that my feeling about it was one of unmitigated contempt for the man, and I trembled for the effect of the news upon Ideala. She made no sign, however, when first she heard it. I was surprised, and fear I showed that I was, in spite of myself, for she spoke about it.
”You do not understand,” she said. ”One event in his career is not of more consequence to me than another, because all are of the greatest consequence. But I have none of the dog-in-the-manger spirit. I think there must be something almost maternal in my feeling for him, which is why it does not change. Were I less constant it would prove that my affection is of a lower kind, less enduring because less pure. I do not care to talk about him, but I think of him always. I think of him as I saw him last with the sun on him. Do you know his hair is like light gold with the sun on it. Sometimes the memory of him fades a little, and I cannot recall his features, and then I am tormented; but of course he comes back to me--so vividly that I have started often when I looked up and found myself alone, The desire to be with him never lessens; it burns in me always, and is both a pain and a pleasure. But my love is too great to be selfish. His wishes for himself are my wishes, and what is best for him is happiest for me. Am I never jealous? Jealous! No! Do you not know that he is mine, mine through every change? Neither time nor distance separates us really. No common tie can keep him from me. Let him be bound as and to whomsoever he pleases, his soul is mine, and must return to me sooner or later. I like him to be happy in any way that is right, for I know that what he gives to others is not himself. I was not fit for the dear earthly love, but perhaps, if I keep myself pure, body and soul, for him, I shall be made worthy at last, and of something better. And my love is so great it would draw him in spite of himself; but it will not be in spite of himself, for he will find by-and-by that he cannot live with a smaller soul, and then he will come to me. Do you not understand what I want? His soul--purified, strengthened, enn.o.bled--nothing less will satisfy me; and his mother might ask as much. If I might be made the means of saving it--” Then after a little pause, she added: ”Ah, how beautiful death is! He will be glad, as I should be now, to meet it-- and yet more glad! for then the end will have come for him, but I should have still to wait.”
The rumour of Lorrimer's engagement, however, proved to be false. It was another Lorrimer, a cousin of his.
”Lorrimer is restored to your good graces now, I suppose,” Claudia said, in her half sarcastic way, when the mistake was explained. I had not told her what was in my mind; she had read my thoughts. ”You think that a man whom Ideala has loved should consider himself sacred,” she added.
I did not answer. But I hold that all men who have felt or inspired great love will be sanctified by it if there be any true n.o.bility in their nature; and I knew that one man, whom Ideala did not love, had been so sanctified by love for her, and held himself sacred always.
But it was a relief to my mind to know that Lorrimer was not unworthy.
He was a distinguished man then, and I felt sure that he would become still more distinguished eventually. He was not one of the many who come and go, and are forgotten; but one of those destined to live for ever
In minds made better by their presence.
The good in his nature was certainly as far above the average as were his splendid abilities, and Ideala was right when she declared that she could answer for his principles. It is impulse that is beyond calculation, and for his own or another's impulses no wise man will answer.
Ideala continued to droop.
”She will never get over it;” I said to Claudia one day, when we were alone together.
”Indeed she will,” Claudia answered, confidently. ”Out of the depth of your profound ignorance of natural history do you speak, my brother. I dread the reaction, though. When it comes she will be overwhelmed with shame; but it will come. All this is only a phase. She is in a state of transition now. It is her pride that makes her nurse her grief, and will not let her give him up. She cannot bear to think that she, of all women in the world, should have been the victim of anything so trivial as a pa.s.sing fancy. Not that it would have been a pa.s.sing fancy if they had not been separated; but as it is--why, no fire can burn without fuel.”
Claudia had evidently changed her mind, and she might be right; but my own fear was that her first impression would be justified, and that Ideala would never be able to take a healthy interest in anything again.
”I cannot care,” was her constant complaint. ”Nothing ever touches me either painfully or pleasurably. Nothing will ever make me glad again.”
She said this one evening when she was sitting alone with Claudia and myself, and there was a long silence after she had finished speaking, during which she sat in a dejected att.i.tude, her face buried in her hands.
All at once she looked up.
”It is very strange,” she said, ”but half that feeling seems to have gone with the expression of it.”
”I think,” Claudia decided, in her common-sense tone, ”that you are nursing this unholy pa.s.sion, Ideala. You are afraid to give it up lest there should be nothing left to you. Can you not free your mind from the trammels of it, and grasp something higher, better, and n.o.bler? Can you not become mistress of yourself again, and enter on a larger life which shall be full of love--not the narrow, selfish pa.s.sion you are cheris.h.i.+ng for one, but that pure and holy love which only the best-- and such women as you may always be of the best--can feel for all? If you could but get the fumes of this evil feeling out of yourself, you would see, as we see, what a common thing it is, and you would recognise, as we recognise, that your very expression of it is just such as is given to it by every hysterical man or woman that has ever experienced it. It is a physical condition caused by contact, and kept up by your own perverse pleasure in it--nothing more. Every one grows out of it in time, and any one with proper self-control could conquer it. You are wavering yourself. You see, now that you have crystallised the feeling into words, that it is a pitiful thing after all, that the object is not worth such an expenditure of strength--certainly not worth the sacrifice of your power to enjoy anything else. Such devotion to the memory of a dead husband has been thought grand by some, although for my part I can see nothing grand in any form of self- indulgence, whether it be the indulgence of sorrow or joy, which narrows our sphere of usefulness, and causes us to neglect the claims of those who love us upon our affection, and the claims of our fellow- creatures generally upon our consideration; but in your case it is simply----” Claudia paused for want of a word.
”You would say it is simply degrading,” Ideala interposed. ”I do not feel it so. I glory in it.”
”I know,” said Claudia, pitilessly. ”You all do.” And then she got up, and laid her hand on Ideala's shoulder. ”It is time,” she said, earnestly,
”It is time, O pa.s.sionate heart and morbid eye, That old hysterical mock-disease should die.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.