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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/10949-0.txt b/10949-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2da6e89 --- /dev/null +++ b/10949-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5025 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10949 *** + +THE ROMANCE OF + +ZION CHAPEL + + +By + +RICHARD LE GALLIENNE + + +1898 + + + + +TO + +TWO IN HEAVEN + +AND + +TWO ON EARTH. + + + + +Contents + +I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES +II. INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL +III. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT +IV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY +V. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS +VI. OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN +VII. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER. +VIII. THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER +IX. "THE DAWN" +X. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER +XI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY +XII. HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION +XIII. IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE +XIV. THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE +XV. JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER +XVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME +XVII. "O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE..." +XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS +XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS +XX. IN WHICH JENNY CRIES +XXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED +XXII. THE TRYST LETHEAN +XXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATE +XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNY +XXV. JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE +XXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY +XXVII. ISABEL CALLING +XXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACE +XXIX. AND SUDDENLY THE LAST + + + + +The Romance of Zion Chapel + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES + +On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, +hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there +stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of +disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway +embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely +obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty +for a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly +present unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the +gasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street boasting +the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, is +proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied the +gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, +yet long since drearily old,--with the unattractive antiquity of old +iron and old clothes,--round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only +describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in +weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words +"New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion +Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too which +had been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very morning before +the house at the corner had contemplated doing the same. At Zion View +lived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge, good-natured, guffawing +pillar of New Zion,--on whom, at the moment, however, we will not call. + +A nice dull place, you may say, from which to issue invitations to a +romance. Well, of course, it must seem so if pretty places are the +reader's idea of romance. Curiously enough, the preference of the Lady +Romance herself is for just such dull places. These dreary, +soot-begrimed streets are the very streets she loves best to appear in, +on a sudden, some astonished day, with a sound of silk skirts and a +spring wind of attar of roses. Contrast, surprise,--these are her very +soul. Dull places and bright people,--these she loves to bring together, +and watch for laughter and tears. You are never safe from Romance, and +the place to seek her is never the place where she was last found. + +Well, at all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you are +respectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with a +shrug, I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes of +one of the greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won't +pretend that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did--the eyes of +that great, sad, scandalous, religious French poet--on a night of weary +rain that set someone quoting,--also in that street,-- + + "Il pleure dans mon coeur + Comme il pleut sur la ville." + +Yes, and that French poet passed the gasometer on his way to New Zion. +Actually. + +Romance! Why, I wouldn't exchange Gasometer Street for the Isles of +Greece! + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL + +That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest light +in the contrast which it was the happy business of Theophilus +Londonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make in +the vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchester +at large. + +Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's so +like the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for, +that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it for +purposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for its +reminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the more +suitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhaps +rather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions,--or say +one was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call." By day he +professed to be a clerk in a cotton-office,--and he was no fool at that +(there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but by +night, and occasionally of an afternoon,--when he got leave of absence +to solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral,--he was a spiritual +pastor, the young father of his flock. + +Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject of +Nonconformity, its influence on individualities and its direct +relationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of Rome,--though +he sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter,--Theophilus +Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would have +found no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could not +long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was the +non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity that +gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of a +personal force that claimed operation in some human employment, some +work not made with hands, but into which also entered the spirit of man, +and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth or +influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity. +To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the art +of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for this +Nonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his opportunity. + +This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by no +remoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was +not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher with +a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a +failure all in one. + +I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to be +a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of +blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting +quality,--a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand +of strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made +himself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he +was conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--were +qualifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for, +apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little +"cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, he +would occasionally "supply," they had passed into his son, and met in +him other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love +of laughter, and a mighty humanity. + +Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape and +partly something bigger and more effectively vital. + +At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said +to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a +big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor +at New Zion. + +This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not +attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of +Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he +could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the +point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in +terms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He +would, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but +that pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise, +he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and +humanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whatever +the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderry +that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However you may judge +him, you must never make that mistake about him. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT + +New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new. The +fiery zeal which had once made it a living schism had long since died +out of it. Carried years before, a little blazing ember of faith, from a +flourishing hearth of Nonconformity some streets away, it had puffed and +gleamed a little space in the eloquence of the offended zealots who +carried it hotfoot that Sunday morning, but its central fire had been +poor, and for a long time no evangelistic bellows had awakened in it +even a spark. + +Its original elders had long since lost heart and passed away. A +dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its +doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its +musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday +prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life +from the outside must come, and speedily, or it must die. + +But new life was already on the way. On the town side the sad streets +round New Zion led one into a more prosperous High Street, and indeed +Zion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a jovial +and ruddy shop--a provision merchant's, and kept by Eli Moggridge. The +name did its owner considerable wrong, for its suggestion of puritanical +sanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of the jovial and ruddy +personality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for whom it stood, and of +whom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese and its air of exuberant +prosperity, was a much more truthful expression. Well, the business was +growing with such gusto that Mr. Moggridge felt he might afford a home +away from his shop, and thus he came to take the biggish empty house +which presently put on new paint and once more seemed quite proud of +being "Zion View." + +Till this time, Mr. Moggridge. had "attended" elsewhere, but he was not +so young as he had been and somewhat stouter, and the stealthy approach +of comfortable habits had suggested to him that his old chapel was +rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house +being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation +towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly +above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it +in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his +being the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born within him. + +Now, quick was even the word with Mr. Moggridge, as became a successful +man of business, and for him to conceive an idea was to carry it out, as +goods were always delivered from Mr. Moggridge's shop, with despatch. +Also in some dim far-off way Mr. Moggridge's mind had, all +unconsciously, been stirred by vibrations of what we call the New +Spirit. The new spirit of any age works its way even into its +businesses, and though Mr. Moggridge wouldn't have so described it, it +was the "New Spirit" that had made the success of his provision shop. +Speaking of the need of New Zion, Mr. Moggridge called it "new blood." +He meant the "New Spirit;" and it was in reply to his advertisement for +a new pastor, that the "New Spirit" in the person of Theophilus +Londonderry came one Sunday to preach at New Zion. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY + +Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry at +a glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he liked +Eli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each other had met. + +You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon you +couldn't help respecting him,--Theophilus Londonderry was almost to know +what it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the man he +was was a matter of no small importance to the young minister. A chief +deacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be no +little of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a +different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance +as he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreative +rather than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort of +Sunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. He +wanted to see it a "going concern," and, hating stagnation in his +neighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust to +make it move and hum and whizz. + +Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with +further mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New Zion, he +explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an evening +service which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was not +Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man in +his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; and +it happened that something of this very sort was what Theophilus +Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply. + +The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridge +guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources, +and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad +general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be +placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of the +faith that was in him. "All we want you to do," he said in conclusion, +"is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to how you do +it, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere with you in +that than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject of York +hams. We must all be specialists nowadays,--specialists," repeated Mr. +Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered planets. + +So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor," +presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the faded +dusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at too +great a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some nice +old-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane. + +I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love her +little daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describe +them at too great a length. Old Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were the sole +survivors of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantly +pious, stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in no +sense dialectical, and in every sense harmless. + +Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when front +parlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be sitting in +the kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation, "like +white-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." It is not recorded that he ever +thought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He would +flee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by such from +the wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head pathetically, +and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled good-evening. It +disconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his tongue slumbered in +his mouth,--for he was an old weary man, and perhaps very wise. + +Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in an +immeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the little +thinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, pay +the rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny's +marriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious +teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully +wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a +heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered +old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny +and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good deal +deaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed you, as +she had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too, was very +old, and she, I know, was very wise. + +Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyond +that she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her, +was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by the +school-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress and +pocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet. No +lover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterful +superscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very pretty +or very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet only +beginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn't +pretty yet, but she wasn't plain. + +Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it, +there was no telling to what beauty it would awake. The fairy prince! +That was going to be our friend Theophil, of course. Well, of course, +though it's a little early on to admit it. However, I am unequal to the +task of concealing from the hawk-eyed reader through a succession of +chapters that Jenny and Theophil were to be each other's "fates." Of +course, he hadn't been there a month before Jenny's face was beginning +to wear that superscription of his passionate intelligence, to grow +merry from his laughter, and still sweeter by his kisses. + +Of course, Theophil and Jenny fell in love. Do you think it was merely +to save New Zion and to bring the Renaissance to Coalchester that +Theophilus Londonderry was sent to live in Zion Place--or for any other +purpose less important than to love Jenny? Yes, we may as well take that +for granted as we begin the next chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS + +There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the way +of the Hebrew prophet,--to give it one's own. Theophilus Londonderry +instinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightily +upon New Zion. + +The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but it +is gold he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo! +it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words. +The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in the +precious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to +mould,--an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not a +precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,--a +clay not without streaks of gold. + +What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his will +towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was +moving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself +by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set +it dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in gold +on Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile +too. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows to +what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would +circle on before they touched the shores of death? + +We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in +occasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to such +we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in any +given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your +calculation for the average of such divine,--how many faces would you +fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many +hearts would you dare to trust? + +Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin, +the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked +by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay. + +Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be +minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own +image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, +natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that +the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes +of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs +and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what +a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth! + +Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed again +and again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of your +image. Once a poet has impressed himself with mastery upon words, the +impression remains for ever, the words do not disperse in idle crowds +when he has done speaking to them, never again to reassemble in a like +combination; whereas the greatest oratorical mover of men is doomed, +even after his most electrical self-impression, to see his image, as +soon as taken, fade away, with a shuffle of escaping feet and a scramble +for hats and cloaks. It was a masterpiece; but with the last touch, see, +the colours are flying in a hundred directions, and the very canvas +itself is off in a thousand threads of hurried disintegration! + +But all this, of course, has to do entirely with the poetry of the +ministerial life; prosaic even as preaching and praying to the New +Zioners may sound, there was yet a drearier prose. For these artistic +materials had not only to be preached and prayed to,--they had to be in +a measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individually +considered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed to +be set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made help +in the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest you +needed and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken the +single gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the fool +wisely,--that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. To +encourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talent +she has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr. +Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayer +meetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures were +really and usefully alive, but at no other point of their +circumferences. + +However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the Reverend +Theophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a lover +of character for its own sake, and to the student of character there is +no such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisome +an old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord in +prayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imagines +that to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith. + +Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderry +breathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second, according +to his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times, he was +there, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and endlessly +beaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say, "Didn't I +say he was the man for New Zion?" + +The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the old +disused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time every +possible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance, +prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcas +society, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and the +ladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zion +had indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and social +activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost +beginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli +Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed of +the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till +not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Street +heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very High +Street itself should hum and whizz. + +The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of Theophilus +Londonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon be +humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the +ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. +Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, +then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, +faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and +the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will +whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of Theophilus +Londonderry. + +Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN + +Darwin expended many years of his life in the study of disagreeable +animals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism to +environment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if he +had begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history has +been one unbroken succession of inspired and noble adaptations! + +Woman's adaptability to man is one of the most mysterious, as it is +perhaps the most pathetic, of all the modes of her mysterious being. +Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of the +rock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of course, +she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her chameleon to a +like degree or indeed in a like manner. Such adaptability is not one of +the forms of his greatness, and even when he achieves it, it is not +becoming to him. + +For woman's adaptability is not the domination of a weaker nature by a +stronger, it is in itself a noble and world-necessary form of strength. + +Strength is needed as well for the taking as the making of an +impression,--something more than mere ductility. Weakness may never bear +the stamp of power,--it breaks in the moulding; and it is rather because +woman is so strong that she is able to take the Caesarean stamp of any +form of power. Nor cares she by whose hands she is moulded, whose image +she wears, be it warrior, poet, or priest, so long as she feels the +veritable grasp and impress of power. Some women are already made in the +image of the man they are to love before they meet him. Very wonderful, +very terrible, then, is the meeting, and it is a meeting that usually +comes too late. But oftener God gives a man a little measure of +porcelain and a handful of stars, and leaves him to make the woman he +needs for himself; and very wonderful too is that making,--though the +man will always have been the father before he was the lover. + +Why, one may ponder, should a man who is great enough to mould a woman +to help him be great, not be great enough to do without her at all? Let +lovers of the unfathomable ask at the same time: Why is man, man? and +woman, woman? and what are both? + +This gentle doll with the sweet breath, which he nips up in his arms and +kisses, and gives a tongue that she may talk back to him his own words, +endows with brains that she may think his thoughts,--a quaint little +helpless lovely parody of his wisdom and power; a toy, yes; a +refreshment, yes; a place of peace, yes,--but how much more! Yes, more +by all that we don't understand when we say "woman." + +Why a great man should need, not a great woman, but a little woman, a +very little woman,--how is it to be explained, unless it be that woman, +however little, is mysteriously great, just because she is a woman, a +little woman? Unknown properties were wrapped up somewhere in that +porcelain; to press it with the lips is to feel strange virtue coming +into one,--the devil was in those stars. + +Great men are only nourished on the elements. Woman is an element, all +the elements in one,--earth, air, fire, and water, met together in a +rose. She is a spring among the rocks, and she comes up dimpling from +the roots of the world. She is just as simple and just as strange. O! +little shining spring of woman that is called Jenny, a great man must +draw up through you the unfathomed, deep strengths of the old world. He +bends above you and drinks, and as he drinks, his face is mirrored +in yours. + +"Jenny, I don't think I'd read 'Miss ----,' if I were you," would say +the great man. + +"No, dear?" So Jenny was presently reading Ruskin instead, and wondering +how she could ever have read "Miss ----." And deep in her dear heart she +was saying, "Of course not; great men's wives never read 'Miss ----.'" + +And yet had the great man said, "Read Gaboriau instead,"--as a certain +very great man does,--Jenny's heart would have said, "Of course, great +men's wives always read Gaboriau." + +No! great men's wives read "Sesame and Lilies," and "Sartor Resartus," +and "Marius the Epicurean," and "Richard Feverel," and "Virginibus +Puerisque,"--they even try to read Newman's "Apologia." Such were the +books on the sunnier side of Theophilus Londonderry's little library in +No. 3 Zion Place. In dark corners behind easy-chairs were the deep-sea +pools of theology,--pools which had long since given up all the fish +they had in them for their owner,--slabs of antique divinity, such as +you would find likewise in the equally cherished library of +Londonderry Senior. + +Such were the fathers that slumbered on in a well-earned repose, and +which, far from desiring new readers, were so old that they were glad to +rest undisturbed,--being far too self-important to confuse a considerate +regard for their repose with neglect. And many of them were really quite +valuable as decoration, because of their fine old coats of gilded +leather; and such were ranged in the more penetrable shadows or even in +the lamp-light. Theophilus would point to them as to a portrait-gallery +of dead ancestors. One might admire the quaint and distinguished cut of +their clothes without dreaming of wearing the same,--and indeed old +divinity, he used to say, was poor food for young divines. + +His divinity indeed was fed on the technical side, it is to be feared, +by the more destructive biblical criticism, like most destructive +engines, coming all the way from Germany, and at its more vital centres +by importations of strong meat from Russia and Scandinavia. Tolstoi and +Ibsen were his archprophets. + +There was likewise a great Paris moralist called Zola, and a strange old +American father called Walt Whitman. And beauty, that can never be far +away from strength, found many new and wonderful prophets in that little +library,--poets and painters and musicians of whom hardly anyone else in +Coalchester had yet heard, and certainly no one above the age of +twenty-five. + +Surely youth is in nothing more marvellous than in its mysterious power +of attracting to itself into the most out-of-the-way places the +sustenance and companionship it needs. In the unlikeliest wilderness +inspired youth is never without the mysteriously-brought food and the +company of angels. Powers of the air will sweep across continents to +rescue it from prison, soft gales travel from south to north to sow +seeds of beauty in its narrow ways, and little songs will flutter like +butterflies for hundreds of miles to cheer its heart. + +The Time-Spirit had given its angels charge concerning these young +people, and, remote as they were from all the fiery centres of thought +and the dreaming schools of art, Zion Place, no less than the Rue de +Rivoli, took its thought of the newest and its beauty of the best. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER + +I have said that Coalchester was a very ignorant old town. I did not +mean to imply that there were no M.A.'s there. In fact, there were quite +a number. You may be sure that if spiritual and intellectual life had +its representatives, as we have seen, spiritual and intellectual death +had its representatives, too--by which I don't mean either to imply that +the M.A.'s were dead M.A.'s, dead and buried with Latin over them in the +old brassed and effigied church, which was so old and large that it was +hardly less conceited than a cathedral. Spiritual and intellectual death +in Coalchester, as elsewhere, was officially represented by the Literary +and Philosophical Society, which still unblushingly went on retaining +its adjectives, even in the face of its "Transactions," which seemed +mainly composed of treasurer's reports, with an occasional paper +on fossils. + +Indeed the one spark of life in the pathetic old society was its real +interest in the antediluvian and prehistoric. For the life that was dead +it had a perfect passion, and it sometimes held conversaziones to gaze +at it through microscopes. Occasionally it would waken up to literature +with a paper on Akenside. In everything that didn't in the least matter +some of these mild old gentlemen were genuinely learned. Not that they +hadn't read the great poets, even in the original Greek, Latin, and +Italian. Poets in dead and foreign languages were a form of fossils, and +English poets--with that divine bloom upon them!--they had a way of +fossilising by spectacles, so that they never read them alive. Thus they +had never read Shakespeare even in the original. + +Once, long ago in Coalchester, a hundred years ago, there had been a +little circle of elegant literati, connoisseurs of literature and +art,--men, so far as men of that age might be, genuinely, if timidly and +old-maidishly, affectionate towards belles-lettres; men who had got so +far as to appreciate the freshness of an Elizabethan song; minor Bishops +Percy; and such lavender is the true love of anything that their +memories still hung about the walls of the old Lyceum along with their +portraits; while so necessary are great names for little towns to boast +of, that the compiler of the local gazetteer implied that Coalchester +glowed at night with quite a lustre from their names. Besides, they +proved very useful in damping young men. And yet you wouldn't know their +names if I were to write them--as I would rather like to do. + +The learned Dr. Sibley, he wrote a pleasant little essay on "Taste," you +know, with a few additional notes on chiaroscuro; and then there was +the learned Dr. Ambrose, who wrote quite a pretty little treatise on +Song-writing. + +No! Of course you won't know any of them. Yet they were all once, and +are still, "The Learned." You'll never hear Theophilus Londonderry +spoken of as that, I'm afraid. + +As it is the property of fame to grow with time, and the way of a great +name to begin with brains and end with lords, a great man's descendants +are not unnaturally found persons of much greater consequence than the +original great one. In like manner the dignity and importance of the +members of the Literary and Philosophical Society had grown, in direct +ratio to their distance from the original founders of it; and the +learned Doctors Sibley and Ambrose, who really did know something about +art and poetry and certainly loved them, can never have been persons of +such consequence as one or two of their descendants who are nameless, +and who certainly knew nothing about either. + +One of the real objects of this sad little Society was passionately to +ignore what they contemptuously called local talent. It is true that +there was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded +to their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry +his chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he +suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitation +read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication +that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of +acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society of +Coalchester. + +Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman,"--a name +which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason that +it conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing for the young +man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that had +spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he rose to give +his paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full carrying voice, +and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes through +the old Lyceum: "W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n." + +Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled a +funeral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of dead +learning. The Canon in the chair smiled benignantly, with an expression +that I can only compare to buttered rolls. He was just three hundred +years old that very day, and the audience (a scanty fifty or so) ran +from a hundred and fifty upwards. The only young men present besides the +lecturer were two friends of his I have yet to introduce,--Rob +Clitheroe, a fiery young poet and pamphleteer of many ambitions, and +James Whalley (little James Whalley he was always called) a gentle lover +of letters, with perhaps the most delicate taste in the whole little +coterie; _and_ Mr. Moggridge,--not entirely comfortable, it having been +by some mysterious atmospheric effect conveyed to him that he was a +tradesman and a dissenter, in which latter capacity he felt a certain +traditional resentment towards his complacent fellow listeners. A quite +recent ancestor had refused to pay tithes. That ancestor was in his +blood to-night. + +Jenny was not there. Ladies were not admitted to the meetings of the +Society, there being a sort of implication that masonries of learning, +occult sciences of the brain, were practised at their meetings,--matters +which never came out in the "Transactions." + +The lecture was a straightforward and eloquent account of Whitman's +writings and doctrines, with extracts from "The Leaves of Grass;" and +from beginning to end you might have heard a pin drop, particularly +during one or two of the quotations. When it was ended the buttered-roll +expression had faded from the Canon's face, and his "our young friend" +expression was ready for the chairman's remarks. Londonderry's sitting +down awakened a few sad echoes that were no doubt hand-clappings, but +seemed like the napping of the wings of night-birds frightened by a +light. But the Lit-and-Phils were not frightened; they were entirely +bewildered and rather indignant, that was all. It was characteristic of +their incapacity to grasp the humanity of any subject, even when it was +dangerous, that the criticism which followed was directed almost +entirely against Whitman's metrical vagaries. This was not poetry! Had +not their revered founder, the learned Dr. Ambrose ... + +The Canon kindly said, showing his pastoral interest in the local +newspaper, that the verses which their young friend Mr. Rob Clitheroe, +who was present with them that evening, occasionally contributed to the +Coalchester "Argus" were in his opinion better poetry than anything Walt +Whitman had written, though he confessed that his acquaintance with +Walt Whitman was of the slightest. This disastrous compliment sent the +blood to young Clitheroe's cheeks, and he felt surer than ever that he +would never be a real poet,--though, as a matter of fact, he had written +some quite pretty lines. + +It was an occasion that of course only the Lit-and-Phils could take +seriously, and the way home to New Zion was a laughter of four beneath +the stars,--Mr. Moggridge's deep guffaws coming every now and again, +like the bay of some distant watch-dog, at the young minister's +brilliant mimicry of the ancient men they had left behind. + +Then the gentle voice of little James Whalley took advantage of a +silence: "Isn't it high time that we brought the Renaissance to +Coalchester?" + +"Capital!" cried Londonderry; "come in for a bit of supper, all of you, +and let us talk over the plan of campaign." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER + +Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had an +excellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of old +Mrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronological +method of remembering great occasions and startling events by the food +of the day. Thus, for example, when with eyes that would still fill with +tears, though it was ten years ago, she would tell the story of how her +only boy had been brought home dead one night from an accident at his +workshop, she would fix the date by saying, "It was about six o'clock at +night, and I'd just got a nice little bit of liver and bacon cooking for +your father's dinner, when there came a knock at the door ..." +Sometimes it was, "I'd just sent Liz out for a little bit of fish," or +it would be Spanish onions maybe, or a lovely little rabbit, that +marked the day. + +The night when the attack on Coalchester was planned was marked, as I +have said, by rabbit-pie. Mrs. Talbot would hardly have understood the +significance of that rabbit-pie, though in the course of her occasional +bobbings in and out of the room, to see that the young men were doing +justice to her food,--she had a curious notion that young men never ate +enough,--she would hear snatches of what she called "deep talk," or +shake her old head at her coming son-in-law, whom she already adored and +mothered, with a "Law! what a boy it is!" She wasn't quite sure +sometimes as to the soundness of his "doctrine," but wisely decided that +her business was rather with his stomach than his brains,--which no +doubt God Almighty would look after for himself. + +Wit at the expense of Coalchester can only be of interest to +Coalchester wits and their butts, so I shall not record the bright and +animated talk which helped to digest Mrs. Talbot's rabbit-pie, but +confine myself to a practical outcome of it. + +What interests me specially about these young men was their rare +practicality. They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, with +ideas they had no notion how to embody. Dreamers, of course, they +were,--otherwise there had been no point in their being practical,--but +they were dreamers who understood something of how dreams are best got +on to the market of realities. + +Characteristically, it was the poet of the party from whom the most +practical suggestion came. In itself, of course, there was no great +originality in the idea of a weekly paper to be called "The Dawn," +devoted to the dissemination of the new light on every possible +subject,--politics and municipal misgovernment; the new social ideals; +the newest and most delicate forms of art, music, and literature. It +was in the suggested method of publication and circulation that the +originality lay. The paper was to be given away and made to pay its +expenses by tradesmen's advertisements, a guarantee of a certain minimum +distribution being given. This method had, of course, been tried before +for purposes of mere publicity, but never, I think, for the +dissemination of truth and beauty. The truth about life was to be paid +for by lies about bacon and butter,--or, let us say, business +exaggerations rendered innocuous by custom, and therefore as harmless +as truth. + +Obviously Mr. Moggridge, who not unnaturally had felt a sense of moving +about in worlds not realised during much of the deep talk, was here an +authority of importance, and the idea at once appealed to him. He would +promise a permanent advertisement, and he even promised illustrations, +in the form of blocks already engraved and occasionally used by the +"Argus," of the flourishing shops at 33, 34, 35 High Street, and 58, 59 +Zion Street. He had also some blocks of gigantic hams most hammily +pictured, which might also be of use, and he would also be able to bring +in a number of his fellow tradesmen. Invaluable Mr. Moggridge! What were +truth without you! + +The poet, on his part, guaranteed to supply all the poetry that might be +required, and indeed agreed to do special rhyming advertisements, at, +say, half a guinea apiece. He would also assist Londonderry in the +political and municipal departments, not only in the higher flights, but +lend a hand even in castigations of local jobs, abuses, and absurdities. + +Gentle James Whalley would write round-about essays, for which he had a +charming gift, and generally take in charge the aesthetic interests of +the paper, though, as all were lovers of art and literature, those +subjects would be handled now by one and now by another. Even Jenny was +to have her place on the staff, and write dress articles, which would +not only tend to improve the aspect of Coalchester streets, but attract +millinery advertisements. She already announced the title of her first +article, which was very grand: "Dress as a form of self-expression." + +It was two in the morning before the proceedings terminated, and even +then good old Mrs. Talbot was still up to press steaming bumpers of very +hot whisky and water upon the wayfarers; "to keep the cold out," she +explained--though I need hardly say that the project had not waited till +that hour to be suitably recommended to the god of all enterprises. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +"THE DAWN." + +Next to the delight of holding new and unpopular opinions is the delight +of having a medium for their unedited expression, though this is a +delight given to few reformers. "The Dawn," however, was to be such a +medium; and when the first number appeared, as it did nearly a month +from the meeting recorded in the last chapter, four people, nay, +five--for we mustn't forget Mr. Moggridge--were supremely happy. With +the exception of the poet, who, as we have seen, occasionally irradiated +the poet's corner of the "Argus," and Mr. Moggridge, it was a first +appearance in print for three out of the five contributors; and though +each talked most of the articles by the others, they were secretly +longing to get away with the little paper to some corner where they +could gloat over their own special contribution. + +Not that they had any ridiculous ideas of the literary importance of the +articles in question, but because it seemed so strange to see the warm +words of their mouths thus condensed into cold print, so strange to +think that people all over Coalchester were reading them. Little Jenny +in particular felt quite a cold but pleasant shiver of notoriety as she +thought of it, while to her lover the delighted perusal and reperusal of +a large-type leading article, headed "In Darkest Coalchester!" brought a +new sense of power. + +The poet, as was only to be expected, had his little grievance with the +printer, who, in spite of all his remonstrances and corrections in +proof,--the printer was a little wrong-headed Scotchman,--had insisted +at the last moment in heading his Tyrtean "Proem," a fine aerial +trumpet-blast somewhat Shelleyan in style, with the word that was +evidently intended, namely, "Poem." However, he was somewhat consoled by +reading his caustic column of notes headed "The World outside +Coalchester," the very heading of which was a revelation. Then, too, he +very much enjoyed his article on "Bad Lighting in Coalchester," with its +evident allegoric insinuation that Coalchester needed lighting in more +ways than one, and that "The Dawn" was prepared to undertake, free of +charge, the top-lighting of which it was most in need. + +James Whalley contributed a review of "Mr. Swinburne's new Poems," +through which article Mr. Moggridge's illustrated hams plainly showed +from the other side. + +New truth is too often printed in very worn-out type, but the promoters +of "The Dawn" had wisely remembered how hard truth is to read, and had +given it good clear type, and generally made it a very comely and +attractive little paper. It bore a motto that sounded almost like a +threat, "We come to stay,"--a boast which it manfully kept for several +years. As I lift my eyes from this paper, they rest on no less than ten +great half-yearly volumes, which flash "The Dawn"--"The Dawn"--along a +darksome folio shelf, as they have flashed it week after week across +darkest Coalchester; and "The Dawn" ceased, at length, not from lack of +power and encouragement to continue, but because the world had grown +sadder by then, and it had lost the will to go on living. + +In spite of this hardy existence, I suppose "The Dawn" will win no +record of itself in the histories of the press, though merely as +spirited journalism it deserves to do so; while in the history of the +human spirit at Coalchester it demands a grateful celebration such as it +will, again, most surely not receive from the literary and philosophical +historian of the town. At all events, honoured or forgotten as it may +be, should you ever come across its strange young pages, I know you will +agree with me that it was a wonderful little paper. It was not, you may +suspect, conservative, being, as it was, very alive and very young. In +fact, its radiant radicalism brings tears to one's eyes to-day, when so +many of the noble ideals it championed, to the length and strength of +its little angry arm, are lying smashed beneath the iron blows of the +capitalism that has outlived even the noble eloquence of Theophilus +Londonderry. + +Like all young people, it was all for the young, the new; and I think +you will be astonished, if you do ever turn over its pages, at the +remarkable instinct for the crescent life possessed by these young men; +and, were it worth while, I could easily prove that several of the more +exquisite continental writers, now the fashion this many a year, first +found a humble welcome in that quaint little organ of New Zion. + +Yes! it was a triumph for New Zion too. This modest and hitherto obscure +corner of the town suddenly found itself, comparatively, in a blaze of +publicity, for a column headed "Work at New Zion," evidently meant to be +weekly, left no doubt from what quarter of the town the dawn was to be +looked for. This was perhaps the most delightful thing about the +paper,--its calm assumption that the real aristocracy of the town was to +be found in that little back street, and that, if Coalchester was to +have any spiritual or intellectual life, it must seek it there. In Zion +Street, and nowhere else in Coalchester, were the angels descending into +the waters. And the best part of the joke was that the assumption was +literally true. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER + +Coalchester was too much taken by surprise by "The Dawn" to pretend to +ignore it, and its first recognition was appropriately made in a +ludicrously abusive article in "The Argus,"--"the one-eyed Argus," as it +was mockingly nicknamed in the next week's issue of the new paper. The +joke was one that was lost on Coalchester, which had never dreamed of +expecting a hundred eyes in its "Argus," which to it was but the usual +name for a sleeping newspaper. It was, however, to do them justice, seen +and chuckled over by one or two members of the Literary and +Philosophical Society. "The young beggars know their--classical +dictionary, at all events," said one of them maliciously, which was +quite bright for a Lit-and-Phil. + +One tangible result of the little paper was the almost immediate +doubling of the attendance at New Zion. Curiosity had been aroused in +this militant young minister with the strange ideas, and Theophilus +Londonderry wished for nothing better than to gratify it. In the oxygen +of success even the dullest metals will scintillate, and it needed but +such small beginnings of his future to make Theophilus as nearly +irresistible as natural gifts and success together can make a man. + +Some people go to chapel to worship, a few to learn, but most, odd as it +may sound, to be entertained. A vivid and magnetic preacher is as near +as many will allow themselves to approach the theatre. Theophilus was a +born actor--of himself; a part so few can or dare play. He gave you good +stimulating truth; but it was not so much in the newness of the ideas +which he passed on from his books to his hearers, as in the newness of +himself, that of course the charm lay. A few people, not many or +important, disliked him; but all had to listen, and a good many came to +New Zion again. Above all, the women heard him gladly; and to this sure +sign of a future Theophilus was far from blind. "He has women at his +back, he cannot fail," was a phrase he sometimes recalled out of his +favourite _Brand_. Yes, and had he not one little angel-woman at +his side? + +It had been the spring of 1886 when he came to New Zion. It was now the +autumn, and early in September announcements had been made of a series +of autumnal lectures to be given by the Rev. Theophilus Londonderry; Rob +Clitheroe, Esquire; James Whalley, Esquire; and other distinguished +lecturers, at New Zion. + +In the list were papers on "The Duty of Novel Reading," "Henrik Ibsen," +"A Morris Wall-Paper," "The Nude in Art," and "The Darwinian Theory," +by Mr. Londonderry himself; "Coalchester, its Past and its Future," by +Mr. Rob Clitheroe; together with "Ireland's Sacred Right to Home Rule," +by the same lecturer; "Wagner and the New Music," by Mr. James Whalley, +with a paper on "Some Really New Books," by the same; and a paper-on +"Good Taste in Dress," by Miss Jenny Talbot--the virago! + +The batteries were to be turned on poor Coalchester with a vengeance. +For some time past there had been uneasy suspicions in the town that +strange and somewhat ungodly forms of new learning and beauty were being +stored as in an arsenal in that little house at 3 Zion Place. A large +cast of the Venus of Milo, it was known, had come from Covent Garden, +London, _via_ a poor little dealer in artistic materials in the town, +who on one occasion had shown a bewildering picture to one of his +customers with the remark, "What do you make of this, Mr. Littlejohn?" + +Mr. Littlejohn could make nothing of it, nor indeed could the artists' +colourman, who had been used to pictures all his life. + +No wonder, for it was the first Rossetti that had ever been seen in +Coalchester. + +And it was the same at the little paperhanger's shop where Theophilus +had ordered some pieces of Morris wall-paper for his room. + +"Law! what a taste, to be sure!" had exclaimed the paperhanger's wife as +they opened the parcel. "How any one dare live with such patterns is +beyond me." The paperhanger's wife verbed better than she knew. Few are +those indeed who dare live with beauty. + +When the paper was hung in Theophil's room, so great was the sensation +in the household that even old Mr. Talbot ventured to look in at it, +keeping very close to his wife. It was so the old man had stood +open-mouthed before the first steam-engine, and here again was the Devil +plainly at work. + +"Lord a-mercy, Jane," he said to his wife, "what is the world coming +to?" + +The world was indeed changing beneath the old man's feet, and the +heavens opening as never before in his time--with, he might be right, +some assistance from beneath; and--it was undoubtedly safer in +the kitchen. + +Mrs. Talbot in these matters lived and loved by faith in her boy, as she +called him. But even she had her doubts, which she expressed in a way +that showed, funny old woman as she was, that she was not without a sort +of blind insight. + +"I suppose it's all right, boy," she said, "and it sounds silly to say +about a lot of harmless lines and flowers, but it seems to your old +mother that there's something wrong about that paper,--something almost +wicked in it. It reminds me of that nasty music you and Jenny are so +fond of playing." + +Here Theophil enveloped her in a huge hug, and laughingly mocked her +with playful caresses, smiling to himself all the same. For the music +she had referred to was Dvorak. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY + +Meanwhile, as New Zion moved and hummed and whizzed, and as "The Dawn" +went on dawning week by week,--you couldn't expect the dawn oftener than +once a week in Coalchester,--the love of Jenny and Theophil grew more +and more perfect. + +There was a long while to wait yet before Jenny was to bear what seemed +to her the finest of all names, for old Mrs. Talbot, easily manageable +as a rule, had a way of quietly putting her foot down on occasion that +would have surprised you. Jenny was only just passed nineteen, and was +no fit wife for any man yet, least of all for a great sprawling fellow +like that. Let her get a little more flesh on her bones, something more +than all spirit and nerves, let her get well turned twenty, and it might +be thought of, but not now. + +No! it's no use coming with your nonsense, you silly big fellow! You +know when the soft old mother says a thing, she means it. + +So it proved. Old Mrs. Talbot on this point remained a homely form of +adamant. However, the lovers were not badly off. Living in the same +house, they saw almost as much of each other as if they had been +married, and from the evenings she spent there, Jenny had come to regard +Theophil's room and his books as hers too. + +She had developed wonderfully in these months, had Jenny. She was a real +little great man's wife now; and as Theophil looked at her, with her lit +eager face, her whole soul so alive to help him in however humble a way, +her whole life his, his, his,--such love seemed almost tragic in its +very beauty and joy. It was so irremediably--love. At times he almost +trembled before it. He would almost chide her with its divine +completeness. + +What if he were to be taken from her? Oughtn't she to keep just a little +of herself for foothold? We ought all to belong to ourselves as well as +to another. It was such a risk. Suppose he were to die, Jenny! + +No doubt it was very wise, but Jenny was wiser. She could never belong +to herself again. She was his, and his only, for ever; and if he +died--if he were to be taken away ... + +But he could never be taken from her any other way? No one else, nothing +but death, could take him ... + +"No, nothing but death--and perhaps not even death." + +"You are sure, darling? O, you are quite, quite sure?" + +"Sure from my soul, little child. Look in it and see." + +A lover's eyes are his soul. + +Yes, Theophil loved Jenny, loved her even more with her own dependence +on love than he knew of. He was, the reader need scarcely be told, an +almost wildly ambitious man, and a few months ago he would have said +that there was nothing which was more to him than the expression of the +power that was in him. But there was something that was even more to him +now, and if it could be imagined that he might some day be asked to +choose between his ambition and Jenny, he could honestly have answered +from his soul, "Give me Jenny." + +Whoever thinks this an easily natural answer to make, may know something +about love, but evidently knows little about ambition. Still, life +seldom sets us such silly examination questions as that, and need one +say that that question was never put to Jenny's lover? He was far too +proud of the woman he had made of that little measure of porcelain and +that handful of stars. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION + +The winter months had gone by; all but one of those incendiary lectures +had been given, not without storm and tempest; "The Dawn" still came up +each week with anger and singing, and the first year of Londonderry's +ministry at New Zion neared its close. The lecture season was presently +to end, on the last Friday in March, with a concert which was to include +a series of recitations by a lady-reciter from London. Londonderry had +written to a lecture agency for the name of a likely reciter, man or +woman, and they had sent him the name of Isabel Strange. + +On the occasion of the last lecture, Mr. Moggridge had not been +satisfied with the colour of the platform. It wanted repainting, and I +think it very likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which I +hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of +house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great +smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. +Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought +nothing honest beneath him. + +It was the Friday of the entertainment, about one o'clock, and though +Mr. Moggridge had practically finished the work the day before, he had +slipped in during his lunch-hour to give it a final touch or two. He had +brought his lunch in the form of a pork-pie, and while with one hand he +plunged the pie occasionally among his red whiskers, with the other he +would lean forward and touch up a knot or a nail-hole that needed a +little more paint. And he was proud as a boy of the simple bit of +slap-dashing, and entirely absorbed in it and the pork-pie. + +Presently he became aware that he was not alone. Someone had entered +the schoolroom at the far end. He turned round, with the paint-brush in +one hand and the pork-pie in the other, and became abashed, for a +beautiful lady had entered the room and was evidently about to make an +enquiry. The surreptitiousness that seems to inhere in pork-pies +prompted Mr. Moggridge to slip the pie into his trousers' pocket--for +his coat was off, and a white apron had taken its place. + +"Just doing a little bit of amateur painting," he explained rather +awkwardly, advancing to the lady. + +"So I see," said the lady, with a pleasant smile. "This, I believe, is +Zion Chapel--and I suppose this is the room where I am to recite. My +name is Isabel Strange, and I have come a little earlier, I daresay, +than you expected; but I always like to see the room I'm to recite +in--just to try my voice in and run over my pieces." + +"Certainly, of course," said Mr. Moggridge; "but you have come all the +way from London and so early. You will have some refreshment first, and +if you'll honour Mrs. Moggridge and me--I may as well explain that I am +the chief deacon," said Mr. Moggridge, dexterously slipping off his +painter's apron and getting into his coat. So, with a wistful glance at +his work of art, Mr. Moggridge carried off the beautiful London lady to +Zion View. + +But was Isabel Strange beautiful? It was a new sort of beauty if she +was--or perhaps a very old sort. Yet beautiful was the first word that +had sprung into Mr. Moggridge's mind as she had surprised him in the +schoolroom. Perhaps wonderful was the exacter word, wonderful in a way +that included beauty,--wonderful, and with a strange air about her that +suggested exceptional refinement, exquisite sensitiveness to +refined things. + +"Beautiful, O dear no!" said Mrs. Moggridge, to whom feminine beauty +did not appeal, as the young lady freshened herself up after her travel +in Mrs. Moggridge's best bedroom. "Why! she hasn't a regular feature in +her face!" + +Mrs. Moggridge herself had neat little pretty features set in fat. + +"Look at that long upper lip and her nose!" + +Mrs. Moggridge omitted mention of eyes singularly powerful and very true +and sweet, as also of a long lithe mouth that reminded you of a +beautiful serpent, a serpent which the true eyes plainly said would do +you no harm. + +Presently, however, Mrs. Moggridge had to admit that she was very +attractive. She knew she meant fascinating, but she wouldn't admit that +to Mr. Moggridge, who had dropped the subject; though a mind which again +had asserted its dim preference for new fashions was perhaps groping +after expression of some such perplexity as this: why, if a face has +the same effect upon you as beauty, may it not be described as +beautiful? If Mr. Moggridge really got so far even as cloudily to ponder +that, it is evident that he was not far from the kingdom of beauty. + +It is, of course, true enough that some faces are spoilt by flaws such +as every Mrs. Moggridge can point out,--faces that begin in one style +and end in another, half Greek perhaps and half Gothic; yet even such +faces, if their individuality is strong enough, have their own rococo +charm. For all but supremely great faces, of which perhaps the world has +not seen half-a-dozen, absolute regularity, so-called correctness, of +features is a calamity, and regular beauty on the ordinary human levels +is only another form of mediocrity. + +Wonderful English girls! face after face indistinguishable from each +other as rose after rose. How sweet you are! how fragrant! what a bloom! +It is a wonderful rose-girl-farm from which you come. How pretty you +look laced up one after another on your standards, and how skilfully +you are guarded against any form of variation! Perhaps no women +potteries in the world produce so exquisite a surface, delicate as a +lily and strong as marble. Indeed you are wonderful porcelain, you fair +English girls, wonderful porcelain; but where are the stars? + +Mrs. Moggridge had also remarked that Miss Strange was "very easy in her +manners." This was not always the case with ladies in Coalchester, and +Mrs. Moggridge did not mean the remark as an unreserved compliment. She +liked a certain stiffness in strangers. It was not, however, in Isabel +Strange's nature to oblige her in that particular. Her way of pouring +her grace into Mrs. Moggridge's great arm-chair suggested at once that +she had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly she +chatted as with an old acquaintance. You could not make a stranger of +her. She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely without +embarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies and +watched her. + +"That's an interesting face!" she said presently, pointing to a +conspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece. + +"That's Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge. + +"O! _that's_ Mr. Londonderry, is it?" she said. "H'm,... I hadn't +expected him to be so young." + +"Yes! He's a wonderful young man for his position," said Mr. Moggridge, +started on what was now his favourite topic. "He'll be a great man some +day, will Mr. Londonderry." + +Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest. Such a genuine +interest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him. + +Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told of +its former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its present +prosperity. + +"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here, +wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderry +came, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always something +going on at New Zion," he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr. +Moggridge did so love anything that was alive. + +Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn," and generally, as he +would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. At +the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this +young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of +surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of +the world,--perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic +wandering minstrel existence had brought her to. + +Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a very +young woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to +fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself +twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the +nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for +wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and +her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her +features for a long time to come. A face so full of the mystery of light +could only be eclipsed by one darkness, and even in that those magnetic +eyes would shine through the cold closed lids. + +Surprises were welcome to her, for she got few. Her life was rather a +dreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be. At one time +she had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough for +that, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a little +too fine for the stage. The positive and enduring joys of her life were +that she lived in London--for which she had the kind of passion that +some people have for the Earth-Mother--and loved beauty as some women +love religion. She had been loved many times, but never quite as she +needed, as she demanded, to be loved. Vivid, passionate, and exquisite, +she was what we call "modern" to the tips of her beautiful fingers; that +is, she united the newest opinions on all things with many ancient +charms. At the same time she was a good woman, though very wonderful and +highly dangerous. + +Presently Mr. Moggridge, who from where he sat commanded a view of the +street, exclaimed, "Why, here is Mr. Londonderry himself!" rising as he +spoke and passing into the hall, where he was met by a curiously rich +and mellow voice, which Isabel Strange thus heard for the first time; +and then the glorified original of the photograph entered the room. + +As her eyes and hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous +"Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to +flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given +Londonderry an "interesting face," as we have heard, but missed all the +rest--"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly +handsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of various +commands and appeals, thought on the brow and laughter in the eyes, +humour and eloquence all along the large and somewhat loose mouth, with +plenty of go in the powerful but not anxiously determined chin. These +were the moral qualities of the face, which Isabel Strange did not miss; +but it was the fascination of its general vitality that struck her most, +as an important introduction was made, to the usual fantastic +accompaniment of small talk. + +Let us not prolong the small-talk of the situation further, but +introduce Miss Strange as speedily as possible to Jenny also and to the +little study in 3 Zion Place. + +Here her eager examination of the shelves was one succession of cries +of sympathetic delight. "Why, you have got all the books I ever want to +read again!" she exclaimed. "What wonderful people you are! How have you +done it--in Zion Place?" + +"I suppose the books must have been blown here," answered Theophil, +gaily, "on the same fair wind that blew Miss Isabel Strange." + +"Yes," said little Jenny, affectionately pressing her shoulder as the +three leaned forward looking at the shelves, "for if we seem wonderful +people to you, what must you seem to us--here, as you may well say, in +Zion Place?" + +"What _does_ she remind you of?" said Jenny presently, with candid +admiration. "I know! Why, of course, she just _is_ the very woman. +Wait--I'll go and fetch it;" and Theophil and Isabel were thus left for +a moment or two alone,--a fact of no importance beyond this, that it was +the first moment in their lives that they had ever been together alone. + +Jenny returned presently with a small copy of Botticelli's "Primavera," +which hung in her bedroom; and it was undoubtedly true that the figure +of Flora might well have passed for a portrait of Isabel. The nose was a +little longer, that was all; but the rest of the face--particularly the +eyes and mouth--was all but exact, and the general correspondence +between the two faces in subtlety, strangeness, and, so to say, +determined refinement, was complete. + +"It is strange that I should have loved that face so," said Jenny. + +"It is very sweet of you,--Jenny, I had almost said,--but you are too +kind to me, and a little selfish too--you give me no time to admire you. +I wonder if Mr. Londonderry is modern enough to allow ladies to smoke in +his study." + +And thus it comes out that Jenny often smoked there! + +The smoking-sister is now almost as common as a taste for Botticelli, +and perhaps equally insincere; but in 1886 there still remained that +sense of contrast in both which we have declared the essence of romance. +At present those curious people who resent the popular acceptance of an +ideal of beauty which they have done their best to popularise are +beginning to affect that a taste for Botticelli is a mark of the +_bourgeoisie_. So does the whirligig of time bring in the paradoxer. + +A new kind of woman, while she is always the despairing hope of men, is +seldom acceptable to women; yet when the evening came and Isabel stood +up to recite in New Zion schoolroom, women as well as men were +instantaneously attracted. She stood very simply, with one hand lightly +touching the table at which Londonderry sat as chairman, and the other +at her side; and before she began her first recitation she glanced +quietly over the audience, as though her eyes were thus preparing the +proper magnetic atmosphere for her voice. + +She began with some simple Longfellow poem, that New Zion might feel at +home; then she recited a fairy poem called "The Forsaken Merman," which, +of course, was only a fairy tale, and yet somehow was so full of human +pathos that it was more real than if it had been really "real," that +is, prosaic. + +For impressing the imagination of her audience she relied mainly on her +own imagination and her voice; striking no attitudes, and allowing +herself nothing of that facial distortion which is the resort of the +unimaginative, and destroys not creates illusion. Of course, her face +changed, but the change was one of which she was probably unconscious, +and which she couldn't have reproduced to her mirror; it was not a play +of features, but a play of lights and shadows and nerves, a flow or an +ebb of radiance in the eyes, a subtle sensitiveness of the lips and +nerves; and her effect was mainly produced by her voice, over which she +wielded indescribable powers of modulation. It was a voice so +sympathetic, so intimate, that it almost seemed too intimate, too +appealingly sympathetic. It was so a woman might recite to a man she +loved, but you almost felt as though the voice were too personal a +revelation for an audience,--felt an impulse, so to say, to throw a veil +over it, though you were glad from your soul that no one threw it. And +the voice was a wonderful actor too. It could act the scenery as well. +You saw it all, you heard it all, you felt it all, in the voice:--the +great winds blowing shorewards, the wild white horses in the spray, + + "The white-walled town, + And the little gray church on the windy shore;" + +and when she said, "Down, down, down!" you were indeed in the very +depths of the sea--and were all sitting, Mr. Moggridge with the rest, +amid coral caves and seaweed, and in a curious green and +shimmering light. + +But what a world of heart-break there was in her "Come, dear children, +come away!" You felt you simply couldn't bear her to say it again. Next +time you'd have to cry, and cry you did, and you weren't ashamed, for +suddenly when you came out of the trance of the voice you found that +every one else was crying too, and Mr. Londonderry had quite forgotten +that he was a chairman, and had to be nudged to announce the next piece. + +This was a very strange poem, and made you feel like a stained-glass +window; it was full of incense, but it was full of something else +too. It began + + "The blessed damozel leaned out + From the gold bar of heaven" ... + +and there was something in the voice that suggested such a height up +above the world that you drew your breath lest she should fall over. And +there was a lover crying in the poem, you could hear him crying far +away down on the earth, and there were some lines which went: + + "We two will lie i' the shadow of + That mystic living tree + Within whose secret growth the Dove + Is sometimes felt to be" ... + +that made you feel what a strange holy thing love was, after all; and +then there was a curious verse with nothing but women's names in it, yet +somehow it seemed the loveliest of all; and when again you came out of +the voice, you were not crying but feeling wonderfully blest somehow and +rather frightened. Jenny sent a wonderful look to Theophil--it was so +they should bathe together in God's sight--and Theophil sent back as +wonderful a look as a chairman dare venture on. Otherwise, of course, it +would have been as wonderful as Jenny's. + +Thus did Isabel Strange recite at New Zion; and perhaps one can best +judge of the impression she made, from the fact that the little boys at +the back, who during the last lecture on "Henrik Ibsen" had discovered +a most exciting new way of making continued existence possible, quite +forgot it and would have to keep it for Sunday afternoon Sunday-school. + +Everyone went home in a dream, and little Jenny shone like a light with +the excitement and wonder of it all. + +"How wonderful you are! Doesn't it seem strange to be so wonderful?" +said Jenny afterwards, as the two girls took off their outdoor things in +Jenny's room. + +"Dear child!" said Isabel, kissing Jenny on her brow, "it is you that +are wonderful." + +There is no joy in the world better worth seeing, better worth living, +than the joy of young people with the same dreams, the same thoughts, +and--so important--the same words for them, blown together by some +unexpected conjunction of the four winds, met by some blissful +dispensation of the planets of youth. + +There have been periods in history especially favourable for the ecstasy +of such meetings, early mornings of the human spirit, when lovely new +truth and lovely new beauty were dawning wild and dewy in the strange +east, and while the deep breathing of the older generations still asleep +made a more wonderful loneliness of dawn, for the hushed and happy bands +of young people holding each other's hands and watching in the +magic twilight. + +To have been young in Italy in the time of Dante, in England in the time +of Shakespeare, and to have met in such a mighty morning--with danger +too to keep us grateful. Ah, we have missed those dawns; and yet I doubt +if the whole recovered beauty of Greece and Rome, or the thrilling new +fashions in romance and poetry wafted across the seas from Italy to help +make Shakespeare, ever gave young people a keener thrill of newness and +mystery than the books and pictures so eagerly discussed by the little +group that gathered over supper that night in 3 Zion Place. + +To have read "The House of Life!"--to have seen the "Venus +Verticordia"! Ah! that was life! And Isabel had actually been to Mr. +G.F. Watts's studio--walked about there a whole afternoon. The young New +Zioners looked at her. + +"O Theophil, we _must_ go to London," cried Jenny. She meant when they +were married. + +Theophil pressed her hand tenderly, as she impulsively sought his for +sympathy, and his eyes left Isabel's face a moment to smile a true "yes" +into Jenny's. + +Of course no one had eyes for anyone but Isabel that night. Was she not, +as the announcements had said, "of London," an ambassadress of beauty +from the capital of the great queen? There was really little she could +tell these clever young people, who amazed and attracted her by their +reality,--the unrealities of "intensity" and "modernity" and the rest +had, of course, already begun in London,--but she represented to them +the sparkle of the new beauty and truth they loved. She knew little +intimate anecdotes of the poets and painters they loved, piquant gossip +and brilliant _mots_; and then she was one of those women who are like +incense in a room, enriching by her very presence, exhaling mystery and +distinction, like a pomander of strange spices. + +You might love her for a long time or a little, but love her you were +obliged to while you were with her, whoever else you loved too. There +was no other word for it. Even little James Whalley had conscience-pangs +as he looked at Isabel, for he had been engaged for five years; but the +poet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was already +burnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. The +inflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state of +ignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature has +made them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, +indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not go +on maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of the +conditions of their precarious art that they must daily expose +themselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of the +emotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear their +death-song amid the flames. + +Theophil? + +Well, we can talk of Theophil again. Meanwhile Jenny was as much in love +with her herself, and he held Jenny's hand and loved her, O yes, so +dearly--and was quite safe. Fear not, little Jenny; it was only death, +you remember, that was to separate Jenny and Theophil. + +Mrs. Talbot--if she won't bore you--had made an interesting remark. She +had not escaped Isabel's charm, but there was "something," something a +little alarming about her,--a little like that wicked wall-paper. + +Jenny divulged this criticism over supper when her mother was out of +ear-shot. + +"How very clever of her!" exclaimed Isabel. + +"She said the same of Dvorak's music," said Jenny. + +"Good again," said Isabel. "How clever of her! Don't you feel how right +she is? We are all like that wall-paper, and everything we care about is +like it. The New Spirit--that is, the devil--is in that wall-paper. A +psychometrist could detect Wagner and Keats, and Schopenhauer, and +Rossetti and Swinburne, and all the rest of them in that wall-paper, +just as surely as he could have detected Tupper and Eliza Cook in the +wall-papers of 1851. Am I not right?" + +"If we could only paper New Zion like this!" exclaimed Theophil, a +curious new feeling of joy and pain shooting through him to hear a woman +thus expressing herself as an independent brain. + +"Yes! New Zion! I'd quite forgotten all about New Zion. It seems +impossible to think of you together." + +"And a little absurd, I suppose," said Theophil. + +"It is uncouth material, I admit," he continued, "and yet somehow it +amuses us to mould it all the more; and then you mustn't forget that we +had been given no other--but I don't suppose you can understand?" +(Theophil often used "we" in this imperatorial sense, meaning himself, +as of course he had every right to mean.) + +"O yes, but I can," Isabel hastened to correct. "I understand power." + +"Beauty always does," was the young minister's reply. + +"Besides," he presently resumed, "we are glad to have been +Nonconformists--once. A Puritan training is a good thing--to look back +upon. You are all the more thorough in your pleasures, the truer +humanist, for something of it still lurking in your blood." + +"Yes, of course you're right. I don't like the word 'pagan'; but for +want of a better, we might say that the best pagans have come of Puritan +stock. Besides, it is half the romance of life to have something to +escape from, isn't it?" + +"And someone to escape with the other half," responded Theophil, nimble +as a real town wit. + +O it was a wonderful night. Let us build five tabernacles! + +"Good-night, dear Jenny." + +"Good-night, dear wonderful Isabel." + +So at last the two girls bade each other good-night at the door of +Jenny's bedroom, where Isabel was to sleep. + +Masterful youth! So wild to take, so eager to surrender, the Christian +name. Strange, what passion sometimes can be put into a +_Christian_ name! + +When the door was shut on Isabel, she made no haste to undress. Indeed, +she sat down on the side of the bed as though she had been waiting to +sit down for ever so long, sat very still as in a dream, and an hour +went by and she was still sitting and gazing in front of her. + +And downstairs in the study, where the lamps were still burning, +Theophil was sitting by the fire in just the same curiously wrought and +withdrawn way, with just the same eyes. + +Isabel's room was over his. Presently she heard him moving about; then +she heard him coming upstairs. For a moment the air seemed to grow warm, +as she heard him softly pass her room; then she heard him close +his door. + +She shook her reverie from her, as though it had been a black veil full +of stars, and began to undress. Presently her eyes fell on a little pile +of handkerchiefs, with needle and cotton, and little letters printed on +dainty tapes, beside it. Jenny had forgotten to put away her sewing. + +Isabel took up one of the handkerchiefs, to which the needle and thread +were still attached, and read "Jenny Lond ..." (Don't you know that's +bad luck, Jenny?) + +"So soon as that! Is it so soon as that?" she sighed. + +Happy Jenny! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE + +Isabel was leaving very early next morning for London, so good-byes must +be brief. Jenny and Theophil saw her off at the station, but before +leaving Zion Place there had been a moment in which for the second time +in their lives she and Theophil had been alone. + +They had stood together in the little study and taken each other's +hands, without a word, and they had looked into each other's faces as +those look whom a look must last a long time. + +They didn't even say good-bye, for, if they were never to meet again, +the look was not good-bye. And meet again it was not unlikely they +would, for it had been already arranged that Isabel was to lead off the +autumn entertainments; but the look did not mean that, either. As life +had been planned for them, all subsequent meetings must be merely +trivialities. They had met once, and fate had decided that they must +never meet like that again. In that long look each knew that they met +and parted for ever, autumn arrangements notwithstanding. + +Each came out of that look as out of a great cathedral, and from that +moment till the train left Theophil, with an unwonted sense of +loneliness, by Jenny's side, they entered that cathedral no more. Their +devotions were done for that day, and they must resume their secular +duties, rippling idly over the great deeps of themselves. + +One always leaves a station from which a dear friend has just gone with +a certain subdued air, a certain bereaved hush in the voice, and even +Jenny felt a momentary loneliness too. But it was not long before the +doors of home opened again for her in the sound of Theophil's voice; +and in the sense of the old familiar nearness to him she was back again +safe in the only world she ever wished to dwell in. + +It was more of an effort with Theophil, and the voice that made home for +Jenny had a strange sound in his own ears, as though it were still +talking to Isabel; but the effort was soon made, and though Jenny teased +him a little and said she believed he had quite lost his, that was to +say _her_, heart to Isabel, of course she believed no such thing. Doubt +is too terrible a toy for true love to play with. You only dare to doubt +as you must sometimes face the fear of death. + +"I wish next October were here," said Jenny, artlessly; "it seems such a +long time to wait to see her again." + +Did Theophil wish the same? He hardly knew. + +"Distance is such a silly thing," went on Jenny. "It seems to have been +invented just to separate those who want to be together. It seems so +arbitrary, so unnecessary." + +"I suppose death is a form of distance," said Theophil, irrelevantly. + +"Life too, I'm afraid," said Jenny. + +"Yes, indeed, life too," assented Theophil, dreamily. + +"If I were to die," said Jenny, suddenly, "would you still do what we +said?" + +"Why do you ask that, dear? You're a very serious little woman this +morning. Of course I would. You know. But why do you ask me now?" + +"Oh, only, dear, because I wonder whether we really ought to. Somehow +Isabel's visit has made me feel that life is a bigger, fuller thing than +I had dreamed, and that men like you, at all events, have duties towards +it even greater than your love for a little thing like me." + +"Jenny dear, don't talk like that. Why should you? You don't surely +doubt my love!" + +"Of course not, Theophil. It was only my silly little brain thinking +for once in a while,--and I don't mean to be unkind, but really I rather +mean it. Are you still quite sure there is nothing in the world more +important than love?" + +"Quite sure," he answered; "surer than ever--if that were possible. You +are not beginning to doubt that? Certainly it is a silly little brain, +if that's what its thinking is coming to." + +"I don't mean it for myself. Little women have nothing but love to think +of; but great men, men with a mission in the world ..." + +"Please, Jenny!" + +"Well, dear, I mean it; and I sometimes think that perhaps, perhaps, I'm +hindering your life; that if you were to be bothered with love at all, +you should have married some clever, wonderful woman,--woman, say, +like Isabel." + +"Jenny!" + +"Of course, dear, I know you don't think so," she continued; and he +realised that it was all artless accident on her part--"Still I cannot +help thinking it for you sometimes, dear, and sometimes I feel very +selfish to have your love,--as though, so to say, I was wearing someone +else's crown." + +"Jenny dear, will you promise never to talk like that again? A clever +woman! To be a woman is to be a genius, but to be a clever woman is to +be another man of talent." + +"That wouldn't be fair to Isabel." + +"No," assented Theophil, "Isabel is different too." + +And that brought them to Theophil's office and good-bye till the +evening. + +For the evening there had been fixed an important church meeting, the +first annual business meeting of minister and deacons since Londonderry +had come to New Zion. It was an occasion of jubilation all round, +particularly for Mr. Moggridge, who gave voice to New Zion's general +satisfaction, you may be sure, in no uncertain terms of praise. + +New Zion was, indeed, _New_ Zion once more, he said, thanks to their +indefatigable young pastor,--a play on words which was received with the +applause due to so unmistakable a union of wit and truth. + +Nor did the proceedings result in mere compliments. The church found +itself rich enough to increase its minister's stipend; and when Theophil +took Mr. Moggridge back to supper, another surprise awaited him, in the +form of a suspicious-looking letter, which, being opened, revealed a +quite unexceptionable £50 note, enclosed in a sheet of note-paper, on +which was written--"From never mind who." + +The writing was unknown to Londonderry, but there could be only one +culprit. + +"Of course, Mr. Moggridge, this is from you. Really ..." + +"No, sir, indeed; you make a mistake there," protested Moggridge, lying +badly, and growing purple. + +"Who do _you_ suspect, Jenny?" + +"Why, of course, it's Mr. Moggridge!" + +"Mr. Moggridge!" exclaimed Jenny impulsively, throwing her arms round +Mr. Moggridge's surprised shoulders, and kissing him somewhere in his +whiskers,--"Mr. Moggridge! you are the dearest, kindest man in the +world!" + +And Jenny was not far wrong. + +"Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge, by way of changing the subject, +and warmly grasping the young man's hand, "New Zion's proud of you, +sir--and so is Eli Moggridge." + +And that moment would have been as good for all three, even without the +fifty-pound note. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE + +I realize that any attempt henceforth to enchain the reader's interest +with church meetings, or the like enthralments, will be more than +hopeless. That is the worst of allowing love to creep into one's story. +He insists on having the stage to himself, and in that determination the +audience is entirely with him. Previously you may have been interested +in all kinds of peaceable, unexciting things, far more good for you, but +enter love, and all the rest is suddenly fallen tame beyond endurance. + +It is of no use to urge that life's bill of the play includes many +hardly less brilliant and attractive performers. They are all well +enough in their way, till the eternal Paganini is there with his old +fiddle once more at his shoulder; then there is an end of all +seriousness, or a beginning, as you please. + +Well, I'll do my best to get over the six months between March and +October as quickly as possible; and, indeed, it will not be very +difficult, after all, for very little happened, to speak of, during that +time to any of the chief actors engaged in making this history. + +Perhaps it was this consideration that prompted old Mr. Talbot--O, +bother old Mr. Talbot!--that prompted old Mr. Talbot, I say, to take the +important step of dying, when, poor old man! his death would give the +least possible trouble. + +There seemed as little reason for his dying as there had seemed for his +living, for as far as anyone knew there was nothing the matter with him, +except an extreme sleepiness of an evening, which was but natural in an +old weary man who still kept at his stone-masonry though he was +full seventy. + +Night after night, for some weeks, he had been getting sleepier and +sleepier. + +"Why, dad, I never saw such an old sleepy-head"--his wife had rallied +him good-naturedly one night, looking at him with a sudden odd +expression in her face. + +"Eh, lass, but I was noddin' and no mistake," said the old man, +struggling drowsily with the heaviness, and presently succumbing +once more. + +"He's off again," said Mrs. Talbot to herself, as she lifted the lid of +a pent saucepan in which some boiled onions were mightily bubbling in a +wild little world of steam. + +Presently the old man sighed deeply,--so you would have thought; but +Mrs. Talbot, hurrying to him, knew that he had tried to say "Jane," and +had said it for the last time. + +Yes, he had been getting sleepier and sleepier; all his life he had been +trying to sleep, and at last he slept. + +To most people Mr. Talbot's death was the first intimation of his ever +having lived, and one rather resents for the old man the one day's +publicity which death enforced upon him. It was indeed well for him that +he was dead, for such unwonted excitement would surely have killed him. +This important coming and going of undertakers; this populous invasion +of friends talking like muffled drums in the front parlour, and passing +up and down and up and down the stairs, in and out and in and out of his +still room; this throng of neighbours awaiting him in the streets; these +plumed impatient horses, and these carriages of dark grandeur--"Jane, +why ever didn't you bury me by the back door?" would surely have been +the old man's pitiful complaint could he have known. + +However, the day passed and the old man was safe at last, where no +front-parlour visitors should affright him more, and where no one would +trouble his old brains for speech any more; and to all, save one, his +death was but as though he had moved a little farther into the kitchen. + +It seemed almost strange that even his wife should miss him. One had +thought so little of them as man and wife. One could hardly, even by +process of thinking, realise that between these rinded and wrinkled +beings love had once hung like a rosy cloud, from which one day had +sprung Jenny. + +On one or two occasions, indeed, they had been surprised in an uncanny +semblance of a caress, and once in a while an almost supernatural +retrospect had lit up and vanished again in an unaccustomed tender word; +and to have been present then was to feel somehow frightened. + +Ah! the gay young leaves no longer kiss across in the morning sun, but +the stern old trees have meetings you know not of far beneath the +ground. Their roots are twisted and twined in a wonderful embrace there; +there in the dark they are very close together, and shall not be +wrenched apart without groanings that cannot be uttered. + +Jenny can hardly be said to have missed her father, except through her +mother, who seemed suddenly to grow a little deafer, a little more +dim-sighted, just a trifle less brisk and busy than before, and with a +touch about her of that old-age awesomeness that mutters to itself in +corners and seems to know strange things. + +Yes, Jane missed her John. Her old heart knew that he was no longer +sitting in the kitchen. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER + +Jenny and her old mother began to grow closer to each other at this +time. Perhaps it was because the old woman felt lonelier, and perhaps, +too, because the loss of her old man had sent her thoughts wandering +among the enchanted fields of her young days, that she began to talk +sometimes to Jenny about her marriage, and to give her quaint advice on +the subject of "managing" husbands; "as if," Jenny smilingly said to +herself, "an old man like father was the same, belonged even to the same +race, as Theophil." + +Perhaps Mrs. Talbot scented some such reflection in Jenny's expression; +at all events, she answered it with an "Eh, but all men are alike, my +dear, under their skins,--all alike, and they need humouring and +managing just in the same way, prince or peasant." + +The idea of "managing" Theophil had something repulsive in it for Jenny; +there was an element of deceit, of cunning, implied which didn't go with +her ideas of true love and the life beautiful of which she was dreaming. +She didn't believe that men and women who loved were really different +from each other, and perhaps she was right. + +About this time, too, Mrs. Talbot began to produce from mysterious +treasure-caves, entered apparently from an old press in her bedroom, all +kinds of wonderful things which would be useful to Jenny some day in her +house: terrible little ornaments,--very sacred, though,--sad +quaintnesses of the spirit of beauty pathetically fumbling about in +country brains; wool mats worked in the primary colours; and such wool +wonders as a wool basket of flowers, in which real wool flowers grew out +of a wool basket which you held by an over-arching wool handle, the +whole worked with undeniable but how forlorn ingenuity,--a prehistoric +relic of Mrs. Talbot's legendary school-days: survivals from a period +which is best summed up in the one wonderful word "antimacassar," a +period when for some unrecorded reason men and women had to protect +their furniture against their oleaginous selves, and beautiful locks +were guarded from lover's fingers by coats of triple oil. + +But these were things worth having, too,--bits of old lace and prim +embroidery, that bore the stamp of a refinement that is never +old-fashioned; and when Mrs. Talbot descended from the beautiful she +could show you real treasures. + +I don't think there was any word in the language, not even Bible words, +which Mrs. Talbot pronounced with such an accent of solemnity as the +word "linen." The words "China" and "cut glass," and perhaps "silver," +ran it close, but "linen" was undoubtedly the word in which all Mrs. +Talbot's sense of the seriousness of living, her sense of household +distinction, her deep sense of the importance of prosperity, and her +stern love of cleanliness found most impressive utterance. + +Mrs. Talbot could never have smiled as she said "linen." + +And the linen she had been storing for Jenny might indeed have been the +very stuff of which lilies are made, lilies smelling of lavender. + +Such pairs of sheets! A queen might even fear to await her lord lying +amid such linen; for white indeed must be the body that dares rivalry +with Mrs. Talbot's sheets,--sheets which might indeed be said to settle +that old question of the snows of yester-year. + +_Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan_? + +Surely they have been settling, flake on flake, year after year, in Mrs. +Talbot's linen-press, till at last there is quite a snowdrift of fair +white linen for Jenny and Theophil to lie in. + +Yes! another six months and Christmas will be here; and, after +Christmas is turned, the weeks till February the 12th--the second +anniversary of Theophil's coming to New Zion--will fly by in no time. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Talbot and Jenny--with occasional contributions from +Theophil--began to busy themselves with Jenny's bottom drawer. + +Translated into the language of those more magnificent circles in which +this simple-hearted romance has no desire to move, a "bottom drawer" +might be described as a trousseau, though such translation would be only +partially correct. A bottom drawer is a good deal more than a trousseau. +It is the corner of a girl's wardrobe, usually its bottom drawer, where +the home that is to be begins to take shape in deposits of various +kissed objects, minor articles of apparel, of ornament or +use,--handkerchiefs such as we have already seen Jenny marking, in +defiance of the old prophecy that the bride who dares even to write her +married name before her marriage will never know a wedding day; quaint +candlesticks that had to be picked up in some old curiosity shop as come +upon or be missed altogether; pretty shoes of a pattern you weren't +likely to meet with again; occasionally, perhaps, even an anticipatory +wedding present, that some friend who would be far away in Australia +when the day came had already contributed; a pretty tea-service Theophil +had suddenly taken a fancy to buy for Jenny one day,--"any straw will +help a nest;" a sweet and rather naughty picture that must never be hung +anywhere but in their little sacred bedroom,--"O love, our little room!" + +How often did Jenny bend lovingly over that drawer, which by now had +spread itself over a whole chest of drawers,--for home was growing, +growing,--only a few more months and it would have grown so big and real +that nothing but a little house would hold it. And Theophil was brought +sometimes to peep in too,--"O love, think of it--our little home." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME + +Have I seemed to shirk the subject of Theophil's feelings all this time? + +Well, I confess I have rather shrunk from writing down in so many words +that he was in love with Isabel,--obvious as the fact has been,--just as +he himself shrank from admitting the same truth even to his own soul. + +When he had sat up in his study that night of the recital, he had looked +the whole sad splendid truth in its wonderful face, had loved it wildly +for an hour, and then shut his eyes to it for ever. + +He knew that Isabel was the woman God had made for him, sweet, dear +Jenny the woman he had made for himself, and he bowed before the work of +the greater artist. + +Never voice nor look nor touch of woman had affected Theophil before as +the least tone or glance or movement of Isabel stirred him to the centre +of his being. To meet her eyes was to release a music that went +shuddering through the whole world; her lightest word was filled with +echoes of infinite things. Not a lover only, but anyone with instincts +for such perceptions, looking at Isabel, would have said: There is a +woman who is needed to make some man a great poet, a great artist, some +kind of great man! She belongs to the history-making women. Hundreds of +women will attract men by the hundred where she will attract +comparatively few, but that few will be the pick of men; and some day, +when the other women have gone the way of all sweet roses, she will +still remain (if she has found an artist to understand her face) the +frontispiece of some distinguished biography, or hang in a gallery of +the period among the few faces that were indestructibly personal; not +the faces that have lived, but the faces that still go on living, the +faces that are influences still, the unique, daemonic faces. + +Isabel was indeed a muse that waited for her poet. The mere idea of such +a woman, cherished across dividing seas and separating years, will help +a man be great. To grow great near or far is the one way to be hers, and +to pile up great work for her sake is perhaps the best way to love her. +She could never be his wife, but she might still be his muse, resolved +Theophil, feigning in that reflection for the moment a more human +comfort than, alas! there really was. + +But was there to be no loss to Jenny in this? + + "True love in this differs from gold or clay, + That to divide is not to take away." + +It is the convenient old plea of the poets, and yet it is sometimes +true. It was true here. There is, I know, a sort of primitive man or +woman--I believe they will some day be exhibited in menageries--who +cannot be on with a new love without being ungratefully off with the +old. All depends of what the two loves are made. If it is bodily fire +and no more, of course the new love will put out the old as the great +sun puts out a little smouldering fire; and the majority of so-called +love-stories are merely disastrous conflagrations of that sort. In such +cases the new love is no sooner found than the old becomes grievous, a +burden; by a malignant witchcraft the old charms have grown veritably +repellent, and "all the heaven that was" irretrievably disenchanted. +Which is the illusion, one wonders,--the original enchantment or the +final disenchantment? + +When, however, love can give a better account of its preferences than +this, and point out, say in Jenny, many good reasons why she was at +first and must for ever remain love-worthy, whatever rival reasons for +love another woman may bring; when too there is added to those reasons +for loving Jenny the dear habit of loving her, the gratitude--love must +forgive the word--which has accumulated interest upon the original love, +the beauties that have been gained by becoming familiarities, and the +familiarities that have become beauties by very use,--well, really, is +it such a hardship, after all, for a man to be expected to keep true to +his Jenny? + +Oh! but passion doesn't reason like this. Indeed, O passionate reader! +Is passion, then, merely a wild beast, a savage, a blind fire? Must it +forfeit its fine name if it remembers mercy or owns duty? Is it any less +passion because it refuses sometimes to glut itself, and dares to go +hungry all its days instead; any less passion because it chooses to burn +up its own heart in an agony of its own consuming fire? + +Mere violence is not a strength but a weakness in passion, and sometimes +there is more passion in patience than in anything else in the world. A +passion that knows not pity is merely a daemonic possession, and should +be taken to the madhouse. + +I confess that there is nothing in the world more amazing to me than the +easy brutality with which one hears of some men doing what is called +"breaking off their engagements." Only a new face has to show itself, +and the old face at once disappears with a blow and a wail. + +Murder, of course, is one way out of many difficult situations, and the +worst kinds of murder are by no means capital offences. It is true that +all engagements are not made by the same vital bonds as that of Jenny's +and Theophil's, but many are. For a man wilfully to break an engagement +means sometimes that the whole love-life in a woman is atrophied, all +that made her woman stabbed to the quick of life. + +Yet no one who knows anything of women can have failed to remark that +women themselves are even more brutal in this matter. Nothing could +exceed the executioner-like promptitude with which a woman will despatch +a man for whom she has ceased to care. But in her case there is to be +urged that, though fundamentally love is of equal importance to man and +woman, it does not so often mean the absolute saving or wrecking of a +man's life as it does a woman's. It is not a disgrace to a man to be +jilted; it is to a woman. For a woman to be jilted is for her to have +failed,--as a woman; and for a woman to have failed as a woman is for +her to value no other success. + +All this to maintain, in spite of the reader, that Londonderry is no +milksop because he is not going to jilt--that is, murder--poor little +Jenny, throw up New Zion, and seek his new love on the wild winds. But +the agony of it none the less! O Jenny! Jenny! sweet and true and good +and dear as ever,--if only you would just take a sudden fancy for +someone else! + +Meanwhile the months were going by, and the day drawing nearer when, for +a brief moment of fire, the orbits of those two separated lives were to +touch once more. + +What of Isabel during these months? The woman whom God had created for +Theophilus Londonderry did not forget her promise to write to the woman +whom Theophilus Londonderry had created in his own image. Wonderful +letters, of course! Why don't women publish volumes of their letters, as +men collect their scattered essays? There is no writing in the world +more immediately, conqueringly personal than a really clever woman's +letters; and they are not always compromising. + +Isabel's letters were the perfection of self-expression. Her handwriting +swept across the page just as she would walk down a street, at once +eager and yet stately and subtle-rhythmed; the shape of some of the +words reminded you of her hats,--hats everyone thought she paid guineas +for, but which she made for herself at a cost perhaps of five shillings: +hats which were Paris with a touch of fairyland, somewhere an +unobtrusive feather of the fantastic, somewhere a personal magic in the +inimitable twist or lie of a bow--; her face looked out at you from a +_g_ or an _x_, a gesture flashed back to you in a sudden distinguished +stroke of the pen, and her voice was somewhere, everywhere, among the +words, like a violin. + +Without any apparent literary device she contrived to make you, while +you read her letters, do what she was doing, see what she was seeing, +and form, as though acted on by some magic property in the words, +pictures of all she told you. + +One piece of news you would not expect her to have told. I have said +that women are both executioners of the tiresome. In this Isabel, I +fear, was no exception to her sex. Like most independent girls in +London, she had a little theatre-guard of devoted men friends, who took +it in turn to companion her to plays or picture-galleries; and these, +with admirable tact, she contrived to keep in, to them, the +unsatisfactory relation of brothers. One of these, however, had of late +been growing dangerously unfraternal. His presents had been growing +expensive. Cigarettes and chocolates, and pretty editions, like gloves, +and boxes of flowers, are every pretty woman's lawful spoils; but +costlier gifts are to be looked on with suspicion. Besides, the doomed +man's letters had been growing warmer. Indeed, Isabel remembered with +something like a shudder, so soon as she was back in her little room, +with its curious pictures and its general sense of exotic refinement, +that she had allowed him to kiss her the last time they had been +together. The reminiscence decided her. Theophil could never be hers; +but at least no facile or mediocre attachments should fill his place. So +at once there is posted a letter, as kind as cruelty can make it, and +with it go a little ormolu clock, a pair of mother-of-pearl +opera-glasses, a lovely fan it was hard, Isabel, to part with,--and +there is an end of that. + +"Not after Theophil!" she sighed, as she took up her great Persian cat, +and, like it, sat gazing into the fire that flickered dreamily among her +fantastic possessions,--a mystery gazing idly into a mystery. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +"O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE ..." + +Well, the months have at last gone by,--dark solid bodies of absence, +not a day mercifully lost count of by the old calendar-maker, not an +hour of the long sentence remitted for a brave patience in the waiting. +They are reckoning by weeks at last, and now, excitedly, by days, +breathlessly now by little fast-dispersing hours. + +The blackness that filled the world was a month ago streaked with gray; +three weeks ago there was a line of faint colour in the east; a +fortnight, and there are scarlet plumes in the far heaven, and a faint +twitter of song; a week, and the whole sky is a commotion of glory +and birds. + +To meet again! O to meet again, just to look at each other again! We are +philosophers, we are brave, we shall remember Jenny, but O! the rapture +of just beholding each other again. + +"Thank God, you are alive! you are real! O Theophil, there is the little +scar on your forehead I've been longing to see." + +"Yes! it is Isabel! She walks just as she did a thousand years ago. I am +carrying her rugs. How well I remember her umbrella!" + +"How fantastic absence is!" said Isabel, as the three friends sat once +more that evening in the little study where nothing seemed to have +changed, and where they seemed to have been sitting all the hours of +those now quite disrespectfully forgotten months. + +"Yes, but how real!" said Jenny. It was Jenny who said "how real!" + +How fantastic, too, is the present! Sometimes, perhaps nearly always, it +tortures us with the unreality, the unrealisability of precious moments +that are flying, flying, and can never come again; and at other times +it equally eludes us with a sense of their indestructibility. To-night +the present had chosen to seem real. Theophil felt, as he looked at +Isabel, that this wonderful nearness could never pass away. Her dress, +her coiled _cendré_ hair, her soft smile, her very attitudes, seemed to +wear a curious expression of everlastingness. Yes, she would sit just +like that, and he and Jenny would sit near her for ever and ever. No +mere abstractions like Time and Space could fill with emptiness the +place where she now sat and smiled. In some mystical way eternity had +breathed upon this hour and given it immortality. It had been suddenly +touched with a wand into an enchanted permanence. Theosophists tell of +an astral light, where every moment of time endures in strange paintings +upon space. Isabel and Theophil and Jenny were sitting together in the +astral light. + +And yet the hours had already been flying, for, the recital was already +over,--New Zion more in love with Isabel than ever. The same little +supper as six months ago had been merry and come to an end, the guests +had gone, the house was quiet, and this hour that seemed so real was the +frail last of that day of dreams. + +Yes! but an arrangement had been made which perhaps accounts for the +security of that hour. Isabel's agents had planned for her a little +circular tour in northern towns comparatively adjacent to Coalchester, +and when a fortnight of such recitals was ended, she was to return and +give still another recital at New Zion. Then there must be parting, real +black parting again. Meanwhile, the fortnight that lay between the two +days of meeting gained a curious sense of being really spent together. +As two walking together on a long road may separate, and one walk till +almost out of sight of the other and then slowly return, but the two +endure no sense of parting, feeling together all the time, so Isabel +and Theophil felt about this fortnight. + +But did they speak no word, look no look all these hours, of all their +hearts cried out to say? Was Jenny there all the time? Nearly. Still +there was a moment granted them, which, added to the two moments +previously recorded, made a total perhaps of four minutes, which life so +far generously allowed them to be alone together in. Yet such is love's +miraculous velocity that it had said all it needed to say, given all, in +those four minutes. All it had to say to-night was just two Christian +names, said so solemnly, so tenderly, so honestly. Just "Isabel," just +"Theophil," and a long quiet clasp of hand and eyes. It was enough. It +is written. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS + +It was not enough! + +If you would safely renounce a joy, you had best enjoy something of it +first. Renunciation must have something to live on. You can "take up the +whole of love and utter it," and _then_ "say adieu for ever," but +not before. + +I have asked mercy for Jenny, though it was perhaps hardly necessary, +for the world always pities Jenny. Now I would ask it for Isabel and +Theophil, who are thus quietly to sacrifice the greatest thing in their +lives, the one reality for which they have come into existence, for +Jenny's sake. Great is their love for each other, but even greater and +stranger must be their involuntary love for an invisible goodness, an +ideal of ineffable pity. They are going to die that Jenny may live. + +Strange, this gentle heroism of human creatures one for the other. Would +it be unfair to ask that each should support the anguish of his own +destiny, and that when Jenny's turn has come she should take her +lightning? Hers, had she known it, was the cup of anguish here; for +Theophil and Isabel had been decreed the cup of joy. But will they drink +it? No, they will change the cups; perhaps the bitter cup will grow +sweet near the dregs, being drunk together. + +Yet this love of theirs, this perilous chance for Jenny, was none of +their making. Their joy had been given to them by unseen hands. It is +fairly theirs. Next time, perhaps, it will be their turn to suffer. It +is Jenny's now... + +But no! the good heart of humanity will defeat the cruel ruling of the +gods. Let the lightning come upon them--not little Jenny. + +Yet for this, Jenny, you will not grudge them their piteous reward. +Yours are all the years, Jenny. You will spare them one day out of all +the years. Think, Jenny, of the hours and hours and hours you and +Theophil have spent in careless happiness, and they--one almost laughs +to think of it--have just so far been granted four minutes. For four +minutes out of infinite time life has privileged them to be +alone together. + +It will be far safer too. Otherwise you know not with what fearful flame +love will fill the chasms under ground, circling and seething in the +fiery darkness. Theophil loves you, but some day your home will suddenly +be rent from cope to base, unless his poor heart may speak, yea, babble +itself, just once in Isabel's ears. + +A temptation had come to Theophil. At first he put it aside. Then +passion, wiser for once than reason, told him that it was a necessity, +and he knew that passion was right. A week of the fortnight had gone, +and Theophil remembered that Isabel would now be in the neighbourhood of +certain famous woods where in his boyhood he had often wandered, and he +remembered that she was to have the Monday quite free. That Monday they +should spend together in those enchanted woods. His secular business +often took him to towns thirty or forty miles away, and it was not +startling for him not to return till late at night. Thus Isabel and he +should steal their one day out of all the years. + +So there went a note without one word of love in it to tell Isabel that +love was coming by the morning train; and so on that morning Isabel +stood waiting for love at that little wayside station, and presently, +with a mighty rushing sound of iron and brass, love came and stood very +quietly by her side, and looked into her eyes. + +They took each other's hands quietly, and left the station without a +word; nor did they speak for a long while, walking blissfully side by +side through a village street which was to take them to the green and +lonely woods. Soon the houses were passed, and they still walked on +silent, listening to the song of their nearness. + +Now, as they drank each other's presence through every feasting nerve, +they knew how starved they had been. As the lane narrowed and gloomed +green, dipping through caverns of bright leaves, they drew closer, and +smiled gently on each other; but they were not going to speak for a long +while yet. Had they not come away into this loneliness that they might +be silent together, that they might sit, hour after hour, and just watch +each other, lost in an ecstasy of contemplation, a trance of +recognition, a fascination that was almost fearful, that was so kind and +yet so cruel in its very power? + +The woods are very still, but there is nothing in the world so still as +these two lovers, as they lie down on the green earth and gaze on each +other, hour after hour. When they find a word as great as their +silence, they will speak it--but they will find none except it be +"Isabel," except it be "Theophil." + +And great passion has as little use for caresses as for words, and +kisses, which gay sensual love gathers greedily like little golden +flowers, and pays for nimbly with little, pretty words, will be almost +as rare as words. + +Kisses! it is not to eat bonbons that these two have come out into the +woods. + +Kisses! what kiss of the blind lips could match the kiss of those rapt +tragic eyes! + +Kisses are but the diminutives of the great word "love;" they are but +the small change of passion, meteorites, star-dust of the great and +terrible planet. + +Their souls are swung high above time and space in one never-ending +kiss,--the kiss of that predestined irrefragable union, of which +meetings and partings and kisses and caresses and words, and every other +fragmentary mode of expression, are but trivial accidents, to which +distance is still nearness, and nearness is still distance. + +Their love is a property of eternal elements. It is fated as the union +of magnetic powers, it obeys chemic laws of irresistible combination. +They are Isabel and Theophil,--that is their love; they are in the world +together,--that is their marriage. + +But passion will not be all day a tragedian. He has many moods. He is a +great wit,--how bright, how bright, he makes the brain!--a merry +comrade, a little, tender, silly child; and these two sad ones laughed +together, too, in the still woods,--for was not the most exquisite +humourist in the world their companion, love, who is all things by +turns, and all things wise? + +And they feasted together, wine and great grapes, spread out on the +earth's green table; and they called each other silly, beautiful names, +and they feigned sad little glad stories--and called the wood their +home: this was their breakfast-oak, and that glade should be their great +hall, and high, high up in yonder beech, where the squirrel was sitting, +should be their secret little bed-chamber, hung in blue and green, with +a ceiling of stars. They should climb it each night on a ladder of +moonlight, and slide down from it each morning on the first strong rays +of the sun. And sometimes if it frightened them with being too near +heaven, they would seek out a dell of fine moss and creep close together +into the arms of the kind earth-mother, and then sleep while the stars +kept watch. + +O, yes, it would be a wonderful life together. + +Then suddenly the child's play would cease, as the birds stop singing +with the coming of the stars, and silence would sweep over them again, +and a great kiss would leap out of the silence, like a flame that lights +up heaven from north to south, and they would hang together, lost in an +anguish of desire. + +The setting sun was turning the wood into halls of strange light, and +spreading golden couches here and there in its deep recesses. + +"Theophil..." sighed Isabel. + +"Wife..." sighed Theophil--(ah! Jenny!) and then a voice that seemed to +be neither's, and yet seemed to be the voice of both,--a voice like a +dove smothered in sweetness between their breasts,--said, "Let us go +deeper into the wood." + +Later, when the stars had come, two white faces came glimmering from the +innermost chancel of the wood's green darkness. They passed close +together, still as phantoms among the trees, and when they came out on +to the lane they stood still. + +"Theophil," said one voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send for +you, will you promise me to come?" + +"Isabel," said another voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send +for you, will you promise _me_ to come?" + +And each voice vowed to the other, and said, "I would come, and I would +go with you." + +And all these words had once been Jenny's, but they had been Isabel's +first. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS + +As the sharing of a cruel or unworthy secret must be the most terrible +of all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is the +most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and +Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, +and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of +inner union which they felt no extension of space or endurance of time +could destroy. + +Such a marriage as theirs is, of course, the dream of all separated +lovers, "the love that waited and in waiting died" the theme of many +poets; and there have been great historic love-stories to prove such +love a possibility of human hearts; yet, alas! for the experiment that +must so often fail, for the weak wills of loving that will so truly and +yet must loose their holds,--the fire that promised itself food in +memory for a thousand years, but needs the sensual fuel of sight and +touch after all; the love that believed it could go on trusting through +centuries of silence, yet dies at last of little earthly doubts! + +For this tremendous fast which you are to make believe a feast, trust in +each other is the one condition that may avail. This trust must come of +no mere exchange of vow or deeply-sworn and eloquent promise; it must be +knowledge one heart of the other, clear and absolute; and such knowledge +in your short hour of revelation you must have learned so passionately +that, like poetry learnt in childhood, it is henceforth no longer a +forgettable, detachable part of your mind's furniture, but a well-spring +of instinct for ever. Is your lady true? You will ask that only when you +ask: Is she beautiful? + +Such confidence as this is comparatively common in friendship, but it +is very rare in love: whether it was to be justified in the case of +Isabel and Theophil, time alone could show. Meanwhile they felt calm and +happy, as only two can feel who have discovered in each other the one +unchanging reality in a world of flowing shadow. + +It was very wonderful, in quite a new way, to meet again. Their love was +no longer hunger and unrest, it had gained the impassioned peace of +great accepted realities. It was married love now. As the quiet firm +hands held each other again, there seemed to be long retrospects of +tried and tender intercourse in their very touch. Their eyes held a past +in them as well as a future. There was no hurry of the emotions now, no +reason for haste in the seeking and giving of tenderness, no need to +snatch and clutch the good gifts of love as though there was but a short +day for the giving. Their love had grown conscious of its eternity. + +It held but one lasting sadness,--that it might not be revealed to +Jenny. So little did they regard their love as one essentially for +concealment, that the temptation to include Jenny in their bond was at +moments a danger. It was so beautiful, and actually, though +unconsciously, she was so integral a part of its beauty. + +Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say, +jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart +of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being +the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible +trinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under +like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a +strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's +one unworthiness, its egoism. As the _égoisme à deux_ is finer than an +egoism of one, so this _égoisme à trois_, if you will, is again finer by +its additional inclusiveness. + +Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too. +But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such a +union is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved both +Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in +the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was +more impassioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that +it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness, +could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meeting +in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea. + +But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They had +vowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy, +but only transfigure, after all,--yet the test was lightning; and for +whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win +them Paradise? + +No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told... +Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of +chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded +moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,--when we withdraw +into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,--and Jenny, +by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of +them there. + +It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone +down, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for +some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience +was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, +entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his +vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the +lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the +vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr. +Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but +that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each +other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak +anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,-- + +"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!" + +But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found +me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I +love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a +man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could +be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong +for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost +once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so +calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes +for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark +half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back +dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had +expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them +here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only +seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms. + +Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock +had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must +sit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim +reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little +but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good, +and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and +beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her +choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget +that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that +dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how +happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in +brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the +darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If +only she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No! +she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seen +them, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till she +had made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know. +That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then she +might speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go,--she +must not be later than they; they would be passing down to the hall +presently, she must be there before them,--she must be quick,--she must +go now.... + +As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled a +recognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smile +back at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white, +and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her. + +She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the common +resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a +happiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguish +was too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she might +have felt towards death,--it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart +there was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she felt +that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,--just as a +child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too +young to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have loved +their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!) + +Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have +spared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs. +Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written, +and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful +joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It was +the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons; +but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to +understand it too. It was called a "Denial," and began:-- + + "We have met late--it is too late to meet, + O friend, not more than friend! + Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet, + And if I step or stir, I touch the end. + + In this last jeopardy + Can I approach thee,--I, who cannot move? + How shall I answer thy request for love? + Look in my face and see. + + "I might have loved thee in some former days. + Oh, then, my spirits had leapt + As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise! + Before these faded cheeks were overwept, + Had this been asked of me, + To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,-- + I should have said still...Yes, but _smiled_ and said, + 'Look in my face and see!' + + "But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart + And drowned it in life's surge. + In all your wide warm earth I have no part-- + light song overcomes me like a dirge. + Could love's great harmony + The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose, + Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose? + Look in my face and see-- + + "While I behold, as plain as one who dreams, + Some woman of full worth, + Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's, + Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth + + One younger, more thought-free + And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget, + With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet-- + Look in my face and see! + + "So farewell thou, whom I have known too late + To let thee come so near. + Be counted happy while men call thee great, + And one beloved woman feels thee dear!-- + Not I!--that cannot be, + I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where + The change shall take me worse, and no one dare + Look in my face and see." + +The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel +recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny +felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its +destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last +verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,-- + + "Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine + I bless thee from all such! + I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine, + Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch + + Of loyal troth. For me, + I love thee not, I love thee not!--away! + There's no more courage in my soul to say + 'Look in my face and see.'" + +When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss +Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance, +and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently +reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought +of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge. + +"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she +was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with +sudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment to +its close. + +Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny +along the few yards to home. + +"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that. +It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two +people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?" + +Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of +giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear." + +"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears." + +When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real +anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a +passing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness. +She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly, +but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible +to think of two people having to part like that," she said again. + +And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual. + +"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not +see each other for a long time again." + +"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought +there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace. + +When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange," +said Isabel. + +"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil. + +So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her +bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed. + +"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go +back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear, +like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing +but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night." + +And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jenny +had said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and if +presently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because he +did not know the reason of her tears? + +On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so that +Theophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny again +till the evening. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +IN WHICH JENNY CRIES + +Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as she +usually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but at +last, when the quiet secure hour which had always been theirs between +dinner and bedtime had come, she came into his room quietly and sat in +her accustomed chair. + +She had been fighting all day to gain strength for this hour, and her +will was bravely set to speak what must be spoken. But she must firmly +choke back all the sweetness of the memories which sprang to her with +kind eyes, as the familiar little room that had not changed opened its +arms to her, alas! an ironical symbol of unchangeableness. One touch of +tenderness too vivid and she would break down. + +And here was Theophil rising from his desk and coming to her with true +love in his eyes, as he had done so many, many happy nights. + +Was it, after all, a dream--that terrible picture of two lighted figures +that was for ever in her eyes? No, there was a voice that went day and +night with the dream, a voice of terrible tenderness that kept crying: +"Meantime I bless thee ... "--"I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to +wine ..." Ah, no, it was real, real. The trial was not to pass from her +in a dream. + +Theophil had knelt down at her side and taken her hand gently and would +have kissed her, but that her eyes were so full of pain as she turned +them to meet his. Besides, strange words to hear! she was asking him not +to kiss her. + +"Theophil dear, don't kiss me yet. I have something to say, and if you +kiss me I shall have no strength to say it." + +"Jenny!" + +"Dear," she began with a voice that seemed to bleed at every word, "I +want to be so kind. I don't want to hurt you with a single word. You'll +believe that, won't you?" + +Theophil pressed her hand for assent, but already in a flash the whole +revelation was upon him. Jenny knew he loved Isabel. This awful pain +that was all over her was the lightning from which they had willed +to save her. + +"Theophil," Jenny had gone on, and there seemed a death in every word, +"I know that you love Isabel." + +"O Jenny!" + +"I saw you together, dear, in the vestry last night. It was an accident. +You didn't hear me." + +"O my Jenny! I would rather have died than this." + +"Yes, I think you would, dear. But you must not be too sad. Life is +terrible,--like this. I understand it now. I know it was not you, or +Isabel, or me. It was just fate--and we must try and help each other. +Don't think I have been only sorry for myself. Don't think that of me. +But I think you should have trusted me, dear." + +"We longed to tell you," said Theophil, with his head bowed in distress +in Jenny's lap, while she softly stroked his hair with an absent +tenderness, though her eyes looked straight in front of her, and her +voice was as if she were talking to herself. + +"We longed to tell you," he repeated. + +"O I wish you had." + +"We feared it, dear." + +"Yes, yes, I know. I was only a little child the day before yesterday. I +have never been worthy to be your wife, dear. I have known it all the +time. I should never have taken your love. It has never been mine...." + +"But ..." she continued, "I will give it all back now. It is not too +late. I have kept it pure ... for Isabel. I can give it to her, darling, +with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. We +were not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the woman +of that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. I +am a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my face +and see.'" + +The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jenny +in silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and of +the insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves to +ourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by the +powerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must those +tests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which we +are composed! + +One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs, +another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow old +we can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that have +never been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, by +an emotion. + +A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the woman +who needs him most,--and in a crisis of choice he will probably choose +the latter. + +Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves +to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so +brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment +on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble are +some of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submerged +in a total of vague impulses that they escape any individualisation. + +In the very hour where all seemed lost to Jenny, Theophil's love for her +was passing in the fire of this ordeal from a love whose elements had +never, perhaps, quite combined, into that miraculous metal of true love, +which can never again be separated into anything but itself,--the true +gold of love which, in some magical second of projection, has suddenly +sprung out of those troubled ingredients of earth and iron, silver, +honey, and pearl. + +This does not mean that Theophil's love for Isabel had grown any less +real, but that his love for Jenny had grown more real. For the first +time in its history it moved on the stage of the heroic. Up till now it +had lived secure, domestic days; there had been no danger to test its +truth, no lights of tragedy or romance thrown across it, it had seemed a +simple little earthborn love; whereas Theophil's love for Isabel had, +from its very conditions, walked from the first the high heaven +of dreams. + +Isabel, indeed, still remained the heavenly love, but those who +understand will know the strength of Jenny when I say that she became +confirmed in this hour of trial as the household love of Theophil's +life. Isabel remained the Muse, but it was Jenny, after all, in spite of +those solemn words in the Wood of Silence, that was the wife; and if, +at first sound, there seems less of heaven in such a love, it is surely +only because when heaven has become incarnated upon earth we forget to +call it heaven. + +In the few moments of silence which followed Jenny's words, it was some +such turmoil of feelings and thoughts, questionings and conclusions, +which passed through Theophil's mind, at last resolving itself into +words that sounded unexpected even in his own ears. + +"Jenny," he said, "it is quite true that I love Isabel and that she +loves me. But it is true that I love you too, love you more truly in +this moment than I have ever loved you, and that no other woman can ever +take your place. If you give me up for Isabel's sake, it will be no gain +to her, for I would not go to her. I love you, indeed I love you, and I +want no other woman to be my wife." + +Jenny's face brightened for a moment; they were good words, and they +sounded real. But then that embrace, how real that was; nothing again +could ever be so real as that! + +"Ah, Theophil dear; but you stood as though you loved her so; your arms +were so tender, it was just as though they said 'wife.' You are +deceiving yourself, dear, believe me, you are. God knows how I love you; +I have nothing in the world but you, and if...if..." + +"Jenny, try and believe; let me show you how I can love you. I seem +never to have shown you before. Let us begin our love over again from +to-night. I know your heart is bleeding, but let me heal it, dear. I +know this sorrow must lie heavy upon us for a long while yet, but it +will pass, you shall see. O you shall see how I love you. Let us be +married soon, dear; let us wait no longer..." + +Theophil had raised his head, and as he spoke poured on Jenny all the +appeal of his strong eyes; with all the might of his soul he willed her +back to happiness, as Orpheus strove by his singing to bring back +Eurydice from the shades. She could not look into his set longing face +without feeling that he was speaking true words. Hope flickered for a +moment in her sad eyes; yes! he wanted to come back to her; he wanted to +be hers again. + +But was it not too late? Hadn't something gone forever, something been +killed? Could even Theophil himself ever make her happy any more? Then +the misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which all +kind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, and +with terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms. + +"O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking." + +Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of +his life. He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying--it was as +though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were +bleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, +convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking. +Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was the +death-crying of a broken heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED + +Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny dried +her tears. She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forget +it; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown even +bright again,--bright as silver. It could never again be bright as gold. + +And Theophil's love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day. +Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were times +when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing +falsity, as she thought of Isabel. + +But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in the +common way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soon +she was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed that +Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital. +For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Let +that be our secret, dear," she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel +wrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wrote +to each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters. +Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life it +must be more and more of a starlit background. + +So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now +finally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as their +love grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate that +date, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by +that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones. + +The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became +noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old +mother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she +was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing +thinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside +friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't looking +half the girl she used to be. + +She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she +would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought +nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious +expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark +it. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to +gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, +too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real +face was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemn +thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a +sad wish fulfilling itself. + +She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same look +that Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to him +reading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threw +down the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed, +"Good God, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look in +your face?" + +He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before he +had finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget. + +One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it was +growing. + +"It _is_ thin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a trifle +run down. You must see the doctor." + +Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soups +and port wine as a substitute. These, however, made those dear arms no +fatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why did +Theophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of that +expression?) + +And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as she +used to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not so +available for running up and down stairs as it had been. + +Then Theophil would have a doctor, who sounded Jenny, and looked a +little grave, but finally, reassured, asked her if she had had a +shock,--Jenny smiled rather knowingly, but denied it,--declared her a +little run down and in need of bracing and nourishment, prescribed +phosphites and steel. + +Then Jenny got very wet one day on her way from school, and she began to +cough. She had to stay at home, and bed was perhaps the best place for +her. So Jenny went to bed, and looked very pretty there, and was quite +merry of an evening when Theophil, bringing her flowers,--he was already +bringing her flowers,--would draw up the arm-chair by her side, and read +to her. Those were very sweet hours, perhaps the sweetest their love had +ever known, so cosy and homelike, and yet without fear. + +But one evening, when Jenny had been coughing, there was blood on the +bosom of her nightdress, and as Theophil saw it, his heart stood still +with terror. Jenny grew very white, too, as she saw it, though the awful +thought which was behind the still look they gave each other was not +quite new to her. Sometimes she might have been heard softly saying over +to herself,-- + + "I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther, where + The change shall take me worse, and no one dare + Look in my face and see." + +Yet although Death's voice calling us from afar may seem all sweetness, +his voice coming nearer has a note of dread in it that appals the most +death-desirous heart. And in that silence those poor lovers both heard +him singing, it seemed not many streets away. + +"I must be very ill, dear," said Jenny. "O my love, O my love...!" + +Theophil strove with himself to say words with a real ring of the future +in them, when this cloud should have passed away; and for his sake Jenny +pretended to believe them. Yes, this very week he would take her away to +bright skies and healing air,--though Jenny felt a little tired at the +thought of rising any more from the bed to which she was growing +curiously accustomed. + +Then there came a new doctor to see Jenny. He was a very clever +specialist from a distant town; but for him the business of death had +not yet obscured its tragedy,--though words like "tragedy" were not +often on his tongue. Consumption was a strong enough word for him. + +His heart went out to that little household; and when he saw Jenny, it +ached for that young man downstairs. It was more than a professional +contempt for the "general practitioner" that made him silently curse +what he called the "death-doctor," as he looked at Jenny, "Jack of all +diseases, and master of none." + +"Two months ago, a month," he thought, as he listened and listened for a +sound of hope that might come to his ear through Jenny's wasted +side,--"even a month, and I could have saved her." And yet as he talked +to her he was not so sure, after all. He missed something in her voice. +It was the will to live. + +"Have you had a shock at any time?" he said. + +Jenny was taken by surprise for a moment,--the other doctor had asked +her that, too,--and she did not deny it so convincingly as she tried to. + +"O, that's all right," said the doctor aloud to Jenny and her mother, +who stood by, though inwardly he said, "I see. That's the reason;" and +again he said, "I'm afraid you mustn't get up just yet. That chest of +yours has to be taken care of, but you needn't be anxious. In a month or +six weeks you'll be all right again." + +"Only a month or six weeks," said Jenny, with a sinking voice. She +meant--was that all that was left to her of life and love? + +Downstairs Theophil stood waiting with a beating heart. He sprang to the +door and drew the doctor into his room. The doctor laid a kind hand upon +his arm, and there was a look in his face that made Theophil's heart die +within him. + +"You mean she is going to die?" he said with fearful calmness. "_You +mean that?_" + +"My poor fellow, God knows what I would give to deny it." + +"She--is--going--to--die--_to die!_ It is impossible! Not Jenny!" and +between that exclamation and his first stunned cry it seemed as though +bells had been tolling a thousand years. It seemed as though he had been +sitting there as in a cave since the beginning of time, saying over and +over to himself, "Jenny is going to die." + +There was a decanter on the sideboard. The doctor poured some spirit +into a glass. "Drink this," he said. Theophil drank it raw, as though it +had been water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir like +an opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned to +that decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jenny +was not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve, +which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. It +helped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctor +has not told him that I am going to die." + +"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks," she said +aloud, and tried to look as though she were happy. + +"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, love +made blind instead of prophet-sighted. + +"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that bright +air," said Theophil. + +"Yes, dear," said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily. + +Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something to +me, Theophil?" + +"What shall I read, dear?" + +"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass,' eh? It's such a +long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we +could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?" + +So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the +fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on +living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while +longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your +very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying. +You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going +to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you +laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly +the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you +forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before +they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every +moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to +remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them +everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice, +that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die." + +Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some +days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at +last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her +and from each other. + +"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herself +from that time, but she did not cry or break down. + +It was a pathetic sign of what was coming, that she now allowed Theophil +sometimes to be Jenny's nurse through the night hours. There was to be +no bridal bed for these lovers, but thus the tender quiet hours of the +night were theirs even in so sad a fashion. + +One night, in the haunted hushed middle of it, the old mother had softly +pushed open the door to ask if all went well, and in a whisper Theophil +had assured her. A night-light gave an uncanny shadow-breeding light in +the room. Jenny was sleeping peacefully, her tired ivory face, with her +dark elf-locks falling about it, framed on the pillow. Theophil raised +himself softly in his chair and looked at her. She would sleep some +while yet. Then from sheer weariness--grief's best friend--he too fell +into a light sleep. From this he was awakened with a start. Jenny was +sitting up and bending over him. With her dark hair hanging about her +face, and in that light, there was something weird and unearthly about +her, as though she were already dead and had risen in her shroud. +Something of a shiver went through him, as she put her thin arms round +his neck and clutched him in a sudden agony of longing. All the strength +of her poor little body seemed to pass into that kiss, so eager, so +convulsive. "Jenny dear, it will make you so ill; lie down, little +girl"--and Jenny fell back on her pillow exhausted and coughing, and +with eyes unearthly bright. + +"Theophil," she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, +"you know that I am going to die!" + +He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned his +head close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself two +great tears fell upon Jenny's cheek. + +But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in her +voice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got to +be borne." + +She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth. +The first fears of her dark journey were passing, as she was more and +more sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be something +almost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, +one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. It +had come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less with +fear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In her +fancy she had seen her name: "_Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter of +John and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years_" and it had struck her +that the name was wrong. + +Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. The +world would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days. +No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amid +all the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again to +herself: "_Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of Theophilus +Londonderry, aged twenty-one years_." + +Only twenty-one years--she thought of those who would perhaps some day +stand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!"--and yet +all that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, in +two of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to those +who read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earth +of long-wed, late-dying lovers. + +Perhaps it was a beautiful chance for love to end like theirs; their +love had never grown old, so it would remain forever young, a spring +sign, a star in the front of love's year for ever. + +Jenny spoke her wish to Theophil in the quiet of that night. The wish +had been in his heart too, and the wish was presently fulfilled. Brides +have seldom been happier than Jenny as she looked on the wife's ring +that hung loose on her thin finger, and brides have often been sadder. + +Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget that +she was going to die. She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, +and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little home +that was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with his +unbearable grief to some other room. + +And Jenny's once rosy apple of a face made one's heart ache to look on +now. It made one frightened, too: it was so dark and witchlike, so +uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She would sit +up in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowing +laugh to herself,--a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary +place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, +like the "unwilling sleep" of a strong narcotic. She would begin a +sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost +humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead +bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did +not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being +well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done +with all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, +half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soon +be strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be +different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and +putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar +humanity into a being of another element,--an element we dread as the +fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon she +would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longer +Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. She +was going to die. + +It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died. +She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon. Once when +Theophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave, +significant gesture to her side. She was lying down, and she made as if +she would sit up. Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up the +pillows at her back. Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took his +face in her hands and kissed him. "Do you love me, Theophil?" she said. +"Will you ever forget me?" + +"I will love you for ever. I will never forget you." + +He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she held +him close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh. For a +moment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though that +was the last flicker of Jenny's conscious life. + +Towards evening she began to take strange fancies, which had to be +humoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called with +dreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside, +and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she was +picking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to go +downstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all that +time by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade her +that Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must not +mind me, Theophil, dear. I'm not unhappy about her now. I'm not a silly +little girl any more. I'm a woman now. 'Look in my face and see.'" + +Then towards midnight a sudden accession of strength came to her, and +she said she would get up. They tried to dissuade her; she grew angry, +and struggled so hard to rise, that it seemed best to humour her once +more. So, wrapt round with blankets, Theophil lifted her from the bed +into a great chair by the fire. Then she asked to be taken to look into +her bottom drawer. So they lifted her across to it, and opened it. She +dabbled with her hands aimlessly among its piteous treasures, laughing +low to herself. + +Suddenly a fit of coughing took her, and a great choking was in her +throat. She was seen to be battling for her breath. For an instant she +drew herself up, and lifted her hand as though she would wave farewell, +smiled a faint little smile at Theophil, making, too, as if she would +speak. Then she fell back, her whole body relaxed, she had ceased +coughing, and a wonderful sweetness was stealing over her face. She had +gone all alone into the darkness, and Theophil was alone in the world. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +THE TRYST LETHEAN + +Jenny had gone into the darkness, and she had gone alone. Theophil had +not gone with her. + +That he had remained behind meant certainly no selfish clinging to life, +and indeed there was a sense, as was presently to appear, in which very +really he had kept young love's old promise and died with Jenny. That he +had not literally fulfilled it was due to those physical conditions of +dying of which in the hour of that promise young love is happily +ignorant; for the promise is usually made in moments of keenly conscious +physical life. Dying together is then figured, perhaps, as climbing hand +in hand the radiant topmost peak of life, with a last splendid leap +together into some immortal morning; and such a marriage in death, a +last union of two lives in some fiery consummation of dying, has been +the lot of some lovers supremely blest. + +Some indeed there are whose last earthly moment is a vivid reassertion +of the glory and loveliness of life. They drink the great cup to its +last golden drain, and by their death-beds we seem to be standing at the +laughing founts of being. They are radiant, victorious, even witty, to +the last, when at one swoop of blackness they are extinguished like a +light plunged into a stream. + +But for others the cold mists that hang low by Lethe's banks have +already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first +step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but +with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with +sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,--that was not +love's meaning. + +And not only are the dying thus drugged out of knowledge before they +die, but those who stand near them grow drowsed, too, by the fumes of +the poppies of death. The dying have forgotten; the living are numb and +foolish and in a dream. All they love on earth is passing away beneath +their very eyes, and they cannot understand,--cannot realise that this, +_this_ is death. + +Except in moments of piercing agony, days and weeks afterwards, moments +that were similarly soothed away again by that mysterious narcotic +property which pain at its highest brings with it (pain at its highest +being its own anaesthetic), Theophil never realised that Jenny had died, +and least of all at the moment when she was dying. Long after he +remembered how he had said to himself: "There is Jenny dying, dying. A +few more seconds and she will be beyond the sound of your voice for +ever. Call to her; she can still, perhaps, hear you. O my Jenny, my +Jenny! Louder, louder,--hold her tighter, tighter,--she is slipping +away. O God, she is slipping away. No love can hold her back. My Jenny, +my Jenny!" + +And all the time he had been curiously calm, almost unfeeling,--as one +standing stupefied in the presence of fate. The air seemed full of +boding sounds, echoes of low thunder, as from a distant world in the +throes of portentous change; and he told himself mechanically that he +should know the meaning of those sounds some day. He should wake up soon +from this unnatural torpor of pain to an empty house of life, through +the cold halls of which he would seek in vain for Jenny for evermore. + +Meanwhile, he suddenly found himself standing with his back to the fire +in the lighted study, talking to Mr. Moggridge, who, late as was the +hour, had called for news, and had stayed on from a perception that the +young minister had best have some one to talk to as far into the +morning as he would go on talking. They were talking in a business-like +way of Zion; and Theophil was smoking cigarette after cigarette. He was +terribly clear-headed and bright-witted, and Mr. Moggridge looked at him +sometimes with a sort of fear. + +It was about three in the morning when the door was softly opened by +Mrs. Talbot. + +"Will you come now, and see our little girl?" she said, with a voice +that could say no more. + +Theophil followed her, and, still in a dream, he stood in Jenny's room, +grown strangely solemn and sweet since he was last there,--was it a +thousand years ago? And there was Jenny lying asleep with a wonderful +smile on her face. She had a little gold chain round her neck and a +white crysanthemum in the bosom of her night-gown, and you thought of +some princess lying in enchanted sleep in an Arabian night. It seemed so +light a sleep and yet somehow so eternal. You stept softly, you spoke +low, lest you should awaken her--not carelessly shall one disturb that +imperious slumber. + +Yes, the distinction of death sat like an invisible crown upon Jenny's +brow. She was no longer little Jenny, but a mysterious princess upon +whose sleep it was permitted thus to gaze. The pain which had filled +these weeks with bitter human anguish had been the process of some +mysterious ennoblement. She had been found "worthy to die." In the +peerage of God's creatures, she had now outsoared those whom she loved. +The nature of it was a mystery, but no one could look on her face and +doubt that a great honour had come to little Jenny. + +But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greater +than we can bear--greater than we can bear. Not Theophil only--not young +love, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away the +potencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, though +sorrow itself should become that dream--but this poor old mother, all +the force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up. Hers is the +terrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death. + +Pity her, Jenny--speak one word to her. Hearken to her sobs as she +kneels by your side, and can you not hear the hard crying of his heart +that knows no tears? + +Are you become as the gods, Jenny, that you still smile on at the sound +of mortal tears? Will you not stretch out one of those folded hands to +each and lead them away with you? They are praying to follow you, only +to be with you, wherever you are. + +And it did seem as though in some strange way the soul of the mother had +still some sure communication with the soul of her dead child. +Motherhood had given her a nearness in the hour which no love of a lover +could gain. She alone spoke to the dead girl as though she were still +really alive, as one speaking to the deaf whom only one voice can reach. + +But Theophil was conscious in his wildest, most heartbroken, words that +Jenny could not hear them. He talked to her as though she were a picture +of herself, and as one would implore a picture to answer us, he +symbolised the cry of his soul in cries that he knew were vain. + +Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that this +icy marble had once been the flesh he had loved. O God! that little +tender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the words +of a song, it was marble now. + +"Ah! Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I, +and no one else in the world? Jenny, we shall never forget, never +forget, shall we? And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven. +Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say? Are you glad +somewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment looking +into my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours? Is it I who seem dead, +Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back to +me, as I am beating at the gates of death? But, Jenny, we shall find +each other, _must_ find each other some day. I shall be so true, +Jenny,--will you be true to me in heaven?" + +Then would sweep across his soul a pitiless vista of the long cold years +that lay between him and Jenny. He was not twenty-five; through what a +weary pilgrimage of useless years must he journey on, before there was +Jenny's face shining at the end. How he envied the old woman whose +sorrow was in this alone less cruel than his, that she was already fifty +years farther on the road to Jenny. Perhaps another year or two and she +would meet her. To meet so soon--was hardly to have parted at all. + +But, why live those years? Have you forgotten that old promise? Is it +too late to follow? Surely little Jenny will not speed so swiftly from +the earth she loved but that you shall overtake her. Who knows but she +is fluttering still at the gate of death, putting off the heavenward +journey hour after hour, in hope that the face she waits for will at +last light up the dark portal-- + + "I'll take his hand and go with him + To the deep wells of light; + As unto a stream we will step down, + And bathe there in God's sight." + +But was this the way to find Jenny? The universe was so full of dark +traps for lovers' feet. To lie down cold as Jenny by Jenny's side, was +that the way to find her? When death's gate opened for Jenny, had +Theophil at that very instant, hand in her hand, eyes fixed upon her +eyes, slipped through too, then surely they had been together. But the +door had closed, and whither on the other side Jenny had already +wandered, who could tell? Perhaps that was the very way to miss her. + +When two have lost each other in a crowd, it is best that one should +stand still and await the other. Perhaps it were best for him to stand +still here in life. Jenny would know where to seek him then--and maybe +the dead had mysterious ways of bringing news to the living. He could +wait a little while and see. For a little he could live--and listen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +JENNY'S LYING IN STATE + +But there were others besides those who stood so near who mourned Jenny, +passers-by on the road of friendship, who would miss her sunshine in the +streets, and carry with them one bright thought the less for that bright +face that death had thus blown out. There were especially some little +people to whom death was as yet hardly even mysterious, but was merely +perplexing, like many other grown-up things in which their parents were +interested. These were the little scholars of Jenny's Sunday-school +class, to whom simple Jenny had been a personage, quite a great lady, +full of gentleness. To these Jenny was "Teacher," a name of gentle awe; +and to these Teacher was as deeply dear as anyone can be to very +young hearts. + +Jenny had felt like a little mother to these little ones, and when she +lay ill her thoughts would often go to them, while from them would come +tiny presents to show how sorry they were that Teacher was ill. + +Several times before she grew too ill, Jenny had had her favourites up +in her room on Sunday evenings, to read Bible stories with her, and had +sent them away happy with magnificent text-cards, that had hitherto been +the arduously won rewards of "attention" and the practice of such +school-time virtues over many weeks. + +Now, when they heard that Teacher was dead, they felt a vague sorrow. +They knew that people who died were never seen at school any more, and +that people always burst out crying when anyone died; so they cried +bitterly, these little girls, and the hearts of one or two of them +perhaps really ached for a little while. One of them asked the new +teacher, if they would meet their old teacher in heaven, and was told +"Yes, if they were good girls,"--which was something to be good for. + +Among the wreaths that already filled Jenny's room with that piercing +smell of lilies which still clung there--unless it were Theophil's +fancy--for many months afterwards, was one sent in loving memory "by her +Sunday-school class"; and it was a part of that informal lying-in-state, +which is an involuntary recognition of the divine honours due to death, +that these little awestruck scholars should be taken in threes and fours +to look at Teacher for the last time. + +This was the third day, and Jenny was already in her coffin. The first +bloom of death, that light that lingers awhile in the face like a sunset +tranquil and blessed, a smile of immortal promise in the very moment of +mortality, had faded. Jenny's face by this was really dead, a mask of +drawn and sunken wax. She seemed now some fantastic doll, some ghastly +waxwork image of death such as we see carried on the stage in tragic +plays. The reality of death had gone with the coming of its funereal +trappings. But the little girls, who had to be lifted up one by one to +gaze with curious, scared faces into that harsh box, deeper and deeper +into which, as through beds of flowers and veils of gauze, Teacher was +sinking, knew nothing of these thoughts. They looked and wondered in +hushed bewilderment, and went their ways. It was evidently an occasion +when children were to keep more than usually quiet--and was it really +Teacher in that strange deep box? It was rather meaningless, but it was +certainly very strange and solemn, and you were allowed to cry. + +Of the others who came to see Jenny, I shall not speak,--the vulgar +sight-seers, the creepy old women, connoisseurs in beautiful death, for +whom a neighbour's funeral was like an invitation to the grand opera, +but on whom perhaps one should not be too severe, for even such coarse +sensitiveness to a mystery is the crude beginning of the poetic. + +The night before Jenny was given back to the elements Theophil dreamed a +dream, and afterwards he liked to think that he had dreamed it while +Jenny's body was still in the house with him, for then it might be +interpreted that her spirit was still there too, waiting for its final +release from the clay which God had sent her to animate for a while, as +an artist imprisons a lovely thought in a vase of alabaster. + +Theophil dreamed that he and some friends were gay together in a room, +just before setting out for a theatre; and as they laughed and talked +there came a little tapping on the wall, so that they grew silent and +listened. Then through the wall was heard a faint but glad little voice +speaking. It was Jenny's voice. + +"I can hear you all," she said; "you are off to the theatre. I wish I +were going with you. Never mind, we are not so far away from each other +as you think. I am only on the other side of a wall." + +And Theophil awoke on a bright wintry morning, with those words still, +it seemed, in the room. + +"I am only on the other side of a wall!" Was it but the metaphor-making +of dreams, which will so often take our forgotten speculations and +dramatise them for us into reality, or was it indeed a message? An +instinct which was unamenable to reason, and which was perhaps only a +desire, told him it was a message; and it was no less a message though +it were merely a pictorial symbol of a sense, which was already his in +the daytime, of a new and very real nearness to Jenny. + +He had slept right through that night out of sheer bodily weariness. +Weeks of watching and anguish had worn him out, and he never knew that +the poor old mother had laid a benediction on his sleep, looking in upon +him as he slept, the only waking being in that house of sleep. + +"He will wake soon enough, poor boy!" she had said, as she went once +more to watch till daylight by the side of the other sleeper. + +"O Jenny, Jenny, why did you leave me? You were the apple of my eye, my +Jenny. What will your old mother do now that you are gone?" + +So she sat and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise the +dead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though even +Jenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fear +for Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creed +told her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied her +faith, and her love made her a Sadducee. + +And yet it was her belief in a literal resurrection of the body that was +sorely troubling her old soul during these last hours of watching. For +while Jenny was still conscious of the coming of death, she had been +much tortured by hideous churchyard fancies, imaginations of the +darkness and noisomeness of the grave, and she had wrung from her mother +the promise that she should first be cremated and her ashes be afterward +buried in the family tomb. This was the promise which was lying heavy on +the old woman's heart to-night; and, though her reason told her that the +way of the flames and the way of the flowers alike led to dust, yet the +disintegration by fire seemed to give her a sense of entire destruction +such as the more desultory operations of the earth did not give. + +If Jenny must indeed pass right away, the dainty architecture of her +body, so lovingly builded, be laid in ruin; not by the fierce fingers of +fire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun, +and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and on +the wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragrance +about the world. + +And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of a +mysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quite +returned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptible +Jenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour when +the soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day. +Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance of +imagination. + +And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of the +flames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of the +great consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny +was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once +more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it +brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and +lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered +with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the +cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and +was already about the business of the dreaming spring. + +And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. It +saved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which had +haunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. However +morbid his fancies might become, _desiderium_ could never take any but +beautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images of +corruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacomb +or charnel. + +She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned again +whence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms, +and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; she +had touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books, +she had made little everlasting memories with her hands,--that was her +history; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, and +she had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked a +flower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No one +as long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and, +giving the lie to love's divine answer to the dust, say "This +was Jenny!" + +No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon +rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's +path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the +window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown +happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when a +lovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all high +moments, then can one say, "There, listen! _that_ was Jenny." + +Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophil +remained behind only to write her name across the high stars. Then he, +too, would pass through the gates of fire to her side. + +As he lay down to rest that night, his eyes fell with a sudden sense of +freshness upon the familiar Botticelli's "Mother and Child," which hung +over his fireplace; and a need that could never be fulfilled awoke in +his soul. If only Jenny could have left him a little child,--a little +girl! He had not seemed so lonely then. + +It was so he thought; yet perhaps Jenny's child would but have deepened +his loneliness, like a bird singing in a garden where our love walked +long ago. Yet the cry was from his heart, and the longing brought with +it his first tears. "O Jenny," he sobbed, "if only you had left me a +little child!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--MESSAGE FROM JENNY + +If every inclination of his heart had not desired it too, Theophil would +have gone on living at 3 Zion Place, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; for now +he was literally all she had left in the world, and what greater joy +remained for either than just to sit close by the fire and talk +of Jenny? + +3 Zion Place was now a little chapel of memory, where a bowed ancient +woman and a sad-faced young man kept up perpetual services to the holy +dead. A woman of her own years, also acquainted with grief, came to +companion the old woman, a sort of lay sister in this little monastery +of grief. It was so piety began, and thus piety is purest and tenderest +in the worship of the dead. Everything in that house which had taken the +impress of Jenny's fingers, been Jenny's to use or handle, remained +exactly as and where Jenny had placed it. They were as yet as fragrant +of Jenny as a fresh-gathered flower of its own perfume. In a very real +sense indeed Jenny had not died, or she was coming to life again as she +had never lived before; and it was no merely idealised Jenny who was +henceforward to fill up all her lover's thoughts and speak to him in +every sight and sound, but just the human Jenny, with her faults +and all. + +On these--such little faults!--Theophil ever loved to dwell. They saved +Jenny from becoming an abstraction, a saint. Even those bitter little +quarrels which all lovers must suffer,--how sweet they seemed now! + +The old mother's method was no doubt again different from her +son-in-law's. She would never have admitted that Jenny had a fault. +Such is the difference in reality between the new idealism and the old. + +In such small matters as the minutiae of mourning that difference was +again illustrated. Theophil could permit himself no outward insignia of +sorrow which he could not wear for ever. Already his profession had +clothed him in black, and it was only for him that his black seemed now +to gain a deeper distinction; but such ugly symbols of beautiful memory +as that note-paper whose diminishing edge of blackness is rather a +cynical witness of a graduated forgetfulness, were not for a real grief +like his. As if sorrow, while it may and will change, can ever end! Why, +in the world of faithful hearts, men and women have not yet dried their +tears for Romeo and Juliet! + +Theophil conceived this grief that had come to him as one more activity +added to his life till life should end. He knew that it would not +outcast joy, but that it would live side by side with it, that it must +alternate with joy for it to go on living. Jenny's death was not going +to be less sad, less a factor of the eternal tragedy, at the end of a +year,--that he might go to a theatre once more, as some widows joyously +don colours, when the clock strikes the end of a year of lost dances. + +For it was not Jenny alone that had died, but it was a consolation to +Theophil in those hours of self-torture which are among the earliest and +most cruel developments of grief, to realise how much of himself had +died with her, after all. It was not merely the apathy of the first +weeks that told him this, the sense of vacuity, of uselessness in all +things, but the sense that never left him, even when he had awakened to +an activity he had never known before, that nothing really mattered, +however vigorously he might seem to act to the contrary, since Jenny +had gone. + +It was with difficulty sometimes that he could take important issues +with necessary seriousness, for, whatever the odds of life henceforward +might be, what was there worth gaining now that Jenny was lost? Could +any energy or haste save Jenny from dying? That had happened. The worst +had happened. All the terror life had to appal the human spirit had been +faced, in that moment when the doctor's hand upon his shoulder had told +him Jenny was to die. His eyes had looked on the Medusa-face of life +that turns the bravest to stone, and he was no longer vulnerable +humanity. + +On the battle-field of existence he bore a charmed life, and sometimes +as he moved among his fellows he felt a certain sense of the unfairness +of his advantage in this respect, and paused to pity those who could +still be so eager, so tragically set upon, this little issue. The +virulence of those enemies whom he was already making and who were to +multiply as his activities awakened again, seemed particularly pathetic, +and he would smile in sad amusement at their quaint little efforts to +hurt him. (No man is so strong for this world's fight as he who has laid +up his treasure in heaven; and when the mystic condescends to the common +trades of life he is an easy master.) It meant so much to them, so +little to him. He was a humbug, he was a hypocrite, he wasn't even a +good speaker, he was an ignoramus! Was he? All right. They might think +so if they chose. It hardly interested him. He had been sitting drawing +angels, and somehow their irrelevant voices had broken in upon him. +"Another was with me." + +Really, even for Jenny's sake, it seemed hardly worth while to fight so +poor a world! Was the fame that such a world could give a distinction +one would seek for Jenny? Would not Jenny smile in heaven at the toy +honours of such a world? + +On the other hand, there was something repellent to his once ambitious +soul, in the thought that such a world might seem to have the victory; +and, therefore, when the first numbness had left him and the colours and +sounds of things were once more coming back, he threw himself with +galvanic vitality into the work that lay to his hand, and particularly +into those political activities for which his gift of speech and his +power of organisation fitted him. + +Two months after Jenny's death, having spoken at a great meeting on some +momentous question of the hour, he found himself the acknowledged leader +of the Radical, rather forlorn, hope in Coalchester, and before long +invitations were coming to him to help on the same hope in other towns. +Never in his life--and he used often to meditate on the fact with +wonder--had he been so vital, so efficient, so brilliant. His powers had +acquired a firmness, an alertness, a force of influence and attraction, +they had never possessed before. Of a sudden he found himself mature, a +calm master of his gifts. + +Yet those who sat near him at those meetings might have noticed that as +he sat down, pale amid plaudits, and crossed his hands upon his knees, +and while his political colleagues were complimenting him to the +audience on the mellow thunder of his political oratory, he was smiling +furtively to himself. "It's all very funny, isn't it, Jenny?" he was +saying in his heart. + +Indeed it was hardly recognisable to himself as a fancy that whenever he +spoke Jenny was somewhere in the audience. Sometimes a remote face might +bear a chance resemblance to her, and he would humour himself with the +thought that that was Jenny. For, with that self-consciousness which no +modern mind can escape, he found a certain sad pleasure sometimes in +noting the tricks grief played with him, loving and encouraging all its +fancies--if fancies indeed they were. + +When at other times he tried to think clearly, to strip himself of the +illusions, as others would no doubt call them, in which he now lived, +his thinking rather confirmed than dispersed them; and the more he +pondered, the more he failed to realise that Jenny was dead, the surer +became his consciousness that she was nearer to him (a very part of him +as it were) than she had ever been in the days when others could still +hear her voice and note her presence in a room. Her very death had given +him a paradoxical certitude of her immortality. + +Yet this recognition of her presence, on some plane of spiritual +apprehension, was none the less consistent with a piercing sense of her +loss on the plane where love once moved in visible beauty. That heavenly +lover in him was able to give none of the comfort of its assurance to +the earthly lover. That the eyes of the spirit could touch her, brought +no healing to the eyes that at midnight would look up from the desk in +Theophil's study to Jenny's empty chair, no touch of her to the hands +that were so idle and empty now. + +Yet there were little services these hands might still do for her. +There in her own little room her own books still stood in their places. +These could be taken care of, her little desk could still be kept as she +had left it, with her pen laid down as she had last laid it. There were +note-paper and envelopes, and ink and blotting-paper, all ready, if some +day, by a miracle--who could tell?--she might steal into that room and +want to leave a message. There should be fresh flowers for her to find +there too if she did come. + +And that new edition of Scott which was not finished issuing when she +went away, she would find that complete when she came back. Her little +collection of fairy books too--she was sure to glance at that! and then +she would find two or three new ones there finer than any of the old +ones; alas! so many beautiful books kept coming out now that she +had gone. + +Yet somehow she might see them, after all, if they were taken softly to +that little room and laid on that table altar. When it was quite sure +that no one was looking or listening, the shy soul might steal out of +the air and turn the pages with a sigh. + +Just so some savage lover might bring gifts of fruit and coloured beads, +and bright plumed birds, to the grave of his dead love, for the future +anthropologist to draw his moral of the childishness of all human +idealisms. + +One day, as Theophil had stolen quietly into that room on some such +votive errand, an impulse had come to him to open the drawer of the +desk. There might be some message for him there. Any writing of the dead +we have never read before is a message. + +Among various odds and ends, he came first upon one of those little +tradesmen's account-books interleaved with bad blotting-paper in which +the housewife writes her orders week by week. + +It was full of Jenny's writing, and though the entries were merely +weekly repetitions of the same string of groceries:--"2 lbs. of the +best tea," "6 lbs. loaf sugar," "6 nutmegs," and so on,--yet, "the hand +being hers," they made a record that could only be read through blinding +tears; and one page which bore a severe little note, to the effect that +the tea had been far from good of late, read almost like a personal +revelation. + +Theophil kissed the page, and, replacing the book, took up another, and +his heart leapt to find it was a little diary. + +He hesitated for a moment. It seemed wrong to read it, and yet he knew +that Jenny's soul held nothing she would not have shared with him, and +he was so hungry for a word from her though it were only a word out +of the past. + +The entries were not many nor long, but it smote his heart to find how +large a space his name, his interests, his successes, filled there. The +entries of honour were little heart-notes of evenings together +especially happy; there were two birthdays still singing for joy, and +sometimes there was a saying of his she had put down because it was so +helpful, or a poem she had copied out; and also there were clever little +criticisms of books she had read, and sometimes a wise little reflection +of her own,--which brought home to him, with a certain pang, that the +little child who had seemed so dependent on him had been an independent +personality, after all. + +As he came to the last entry, he put the book down with a gesture of +pain. The last entry had been made the day after Jenny had discovered +Theophil's love for Isabel. It was very brief, just a sob: "Have +realised that I am no fit wife for Theophil. And yet how I love him!" + +As Theophil read this, all that sad night came back to him with +unbearable vividness, and he felt once more a little sobbing body crying +its heart out against his. At that moment he would have endured +centuries of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; and +an awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of his +mind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul: the +thought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it was +who had--killed Jenny. "She seems to have had a shock," a voice was +saying over and over again, "she seems to have had a shock." + +A shock! Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in the +outer darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, now +sprang into vivid light again in company with that thought. In that +moment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath he +hurled her back again into the dark. It was she, _she_ who had made +him--kill Jenny! + +But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurable +by some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish to +deceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himself +that this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed no +wilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, who +had planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny. + +Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardise +the happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold? +Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts? + +But a voice said--was it Jenny's?--this poor Theophil and Isabel love by +reason of no theory. It is yours, O ruling Fates of men, whatever you +be, who must support that accusation. Theophil and Isabel loved by the +compelling dispensation of the stars. They fought their destiny, and had +conquered it. It was you, ye stars, not they, that killed Jenny. + +And this was true: but still the little figure sobbed at Theophil's +side, as again and again it would come and sob there, till Theophil's +own heart broke,--that old death-crying of Jenny's broken heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE + +After Jenny's death two letters had come for her from Isabel, who had no +knowledge of what had been happening to her friends of New Zion. + +There is something peculiarly sad about the letters that for a little +time go on coming for the dead. Perhaps nothing more simply brings home +the fact that they are no longer with us. Even little bills, circulars +offering new spring goods at sale prices, come charged with pathos, and +Theophil smiled at his own folly as he kept them all. Sad little _poste +restante_! Will the letters ever be called for? + +Theophil did not open the letters, but as days went by and no more came, +he sometimes found himself taking them from their drawer and looking at +them. Isabel's handwriting, though his soul would not confess it to +himself, still held the power of a rune over his heart. + +Had no traitor thought ever whispered deep down in the darkness of his +consciousness that the way was now open to Isabel? Such thoughts indeed +had come to him, but unwelcomed, involuntarily, as those foul thoughts +which will sometimes torture the pure, or those base thoughts which may +appal the noble. + +The mind, like the body, has its foul humours, which can only be +accepted with patience as a part of the inscrutable mechanism of human +organisms. In moments of anger this filth and poison of the mind +sometimes comes to the surface to wrong us--for it is not us, it is in +truth just all that we are not. + +Thus at times in Theophil's mind, that was one prayer of faithful love +for Jenny, the thought of Isabel would steal, like--so his stern +faithfulness pictured it--a fair devil in a church. Yet, if he opened +one of those letters he knew there would ascend from it a cloud of +subtle incense, which would ... well, which he must never again breathe. + +So he would replace them in their drawer, and again, some other day, +take them out once more. + +Perhaps, after all, it might be his duty, the mere duty of a friend, to +open them. What if Isabel should be ill, should be needing him ... +should be dying! + +But still the fanaticism of his sorrow conquered, and still week after +week they remained unread. + +Meanwhile, Isabel was living her life as she had lived it before she had +heard of New Zion, with the difference of an internal sense of +completion which her love had brought. Need one say that she had her +hours of loneliness and longing, when she would have exchanged a +thousand years of love in heaven for a touch of Theophil's hand upon +earth; but these she knew how to conquer, and for most days that union +of two separated hearts remained to her as real as when it had been +vowed in those silent woods. + +At the very moment when Jenny was dying, and Theophil had thrust Isabel +away into the furthest, highest, starlight of memory, she was thinking +how real their union was, how near he seemed! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY + + Knowing the quick but little love + Much mention of the dead. + +I hesitate further to continue that history of a grief of which, +nevertheless, this book has now little heart or purpose to be other than +the record, and, as what I shall write in this chapter must seem +meaningless and wearisome to all but those who belong to the great +Secret Society of Sorrow, it were no doubt just as well that those who +have known nothing but joy should follow their natural impulse and leave +it unread. I confess, too, that I should feel the more comfortable +without the regard of their happy, ignorant eyes. + +Sorrow is a mysticism, and to talk of it to those who have never known +the initiation of tears is like talking alchemy to a child. Sorrow, +too, is an aristocracy, and when Theophil came to realise that, as Jenny +had been found worthy to die, he had been found worthy to suffer, it +seemed to him almost vulgar only to have been happy. Happiness is such a +materialist, a creature of coarse tastes and literal pleasures, a +_bourgeois_ who has not yet attained the rank of a soul. The influence +of sorrow on the individual is much what the influence of Christianity +has been upon the world. Christianity, no doubt, has robbed us of +much--but then it has given us sorrow; it has taken away the sun, but it +has brought us the stars. It is only in the starlight of sorrow that we +become conscious of other worlds. The sun flatters our own little world +with the illusion of a transitory importance; the stars show it its +place in the universe, and teach it a nobler meaning for itself. + +No consciousness of his gifts had ever given Theophil any such sense of +his belonging to the chosen and dedicated minority of mankind as this +initiation into the Secret Society of Sorrow. He had been chosen to +represent a sacred order. He stood for no lesser interests than those of +Love and Death. Though he were to represent Coalchester in the House of +Commons, what honour were there in that to one already so +mysteriously honoured? + +Tears bring a strange new sight to the eyes, and "a new perception both +of grieving love" made Theophil see, and love to see, many things in the +world he had never noticed before. His eyes were opened to behold the +many mourners who go about the streets, the widows who walk in darkness, +and all the shapes of blackness moving phantom-like through the coloured +traffic; not all true children of sorrow, indeed, though wearing its +habit, but, true or not, symbols of the power and majesty of death in +the world. For the involuntary honour paid to death even by the +ignorantly busy, and happy, he kept ever a grateful and a jealous eye; +and as some funeral _cortège_ passed like a dream, Charon's barge amid +all the motley craft of merchandise and pleasure, he would watch sternly +to see if the fat and prosperous moment would do honour to the carriages +of the king. For a bowed head or a doffed hat he felt a personal +gratitude. And, since Jenny died, he seemed to be always meeting that +phantom procession in the streets. + +Once, as he passed along the High Street, he had noticed a crowd round a +dying horse. He stood with the crowd a moment, and then went on his way. +In an hour's time he repassed the place, and there was the dead horse +lying solitary on the side of the street; but he noted with a curious +gladness that some hand had covered it reverently with a horse-cloth. +"So honoured is death," he mused to himself, "that even the humblest +animal on which he shall have set his seal is held sacred from the +common day, and shall not be gazed upon heedlessly by the passer-by." +This seemed the greatest honour he had known paid to the king! + +The fascination with which from this time death and all that related to +or remotely suggested it absorbed him, was, he reflected one day with a +surprised recognition of the paradox, no longer the fascination of hate +or dread, but almost love. Death, the arch-enemy of joy, the assassin of +youth, the murderer of Jenny,--Death had robbed him of his life's one +treasure, and here was he loving him, watching for his face, listening +for his step, like a lover. + +Surely this was the strangest of conclusions; but perhaps the +explanation was very simple. Theophil loved death because Jenny had +died, as he would have loved anything Jenny had chosen to do, as he +would have loved life had Jenny gone on living. By dying Jenny had made +death beautiful, and its gloomiest associations were but so many +allusions to Jenny. + +Death was to Theophil as a foreign land of which before he had only +heard the name, and heard it almost without interest, as one hears +listlessly of Peru. But now that Jenny had gone to Peru, the books of +the world could not tell him enough about the new land where Jenny had +gone, and everyone who had friends there was at once his friend, and +every little dark-robed company gathered sadly to godspeed some new +emigrant to its distant shore was dear to him for Jenny's sake. Besides, +some of these might have heard from their friends there, might have news +to tell him of the dark land. One would walk far, would listen late for +such precious tidings. + +Did such tidings ever come? Yes, some had even seen their loved ones +again, shining strangely on the air. Why did Jenny never come like that? +How he had prayed and called to her for just one sign out of the +silence, one swift uplifting of the veil; but none, except that dream, +had ever come. Yet one could never be sure by what common unnoticed +sights and sounds the dead might fumblingly be striving to reach us in +the deaf and dumb language of the dead. Perhaps it was they who led us +to passages in books we had never noticed before, pointed their fingers +to bright pages of faith, and left us here and there many a message of +hope we never dreamed had come from them. Or might it not happen that +the dead, like the living, could be unfaithful:-- + + "Is death's long kiss a richer kiss + Than mine was wont to be, + Or have you gone to some far bliss + And straight forgotten me?" + +Perhaps Jenny already loved another in heaven, and his gift of +faithfulness might some day be a burden to her... + +This love of death was no mere morbid absorption. It was but one of the +activities of a faithfulness to which the trees about the temple had +become "dear as the temple's self," and his jealousy for those honours +paid to death was only one expression of his eager watchfulness for the +signs of human faithfulness. + +Not all unrewarded was that watch. The world held some faithful +hearts,--let us not ask how many,--lovers of invisible faces and voices +heard no more, men and women who still shared their joys and sorrows +with unseen comrades, and drank the cup of life as a sacrament of +remembrance. + +This sharing with the dead seemed to Theophil the essential of +faithfulness,--faithfulness taking many forms, sometimes maybe +misrepresentative of itself, and seldom perhaps informing its +conventional externals. + +A time will come in the profoundest griefs when those rituals to which +young grief is so eager to vow itself will grow lifeless and +conventional, the daily tasks of remembrance become as the told beads of +pattered prayers. Let the worshipper of relics beware lest his +treasures some day turn on his hands to so much irksome lumber, and true +sorrow be thus humiliated. + +No! the service for the dead which is most likely to remain a vital +offering of the heart is not the ceremonial sorrow of specially +consecrated times and seasons, but rather the simple longing in hours of +joy that _they_ could have been with us. To think of our dead friends as +always in their shrouds is a way of remembrance which we shall not long +have heart or even interest to follow. It is only by taking them to our +feasts, keeping up with them the same old human companionship, that we +may hope to keep the dead as friends. A modern poet has written eight +lines which were of great comfort to Theophil,-- + + "You go not to the headstone + As aforetime every day, + And I who died, I do not chide, + Because, dear friend, you play; + + "But in your playing think of him + Who once was kind and dear, + And if you see a beauteous thing, + Just say: 'He is not here.'" + +Here it seemed to Theophil was the whole duty of faithfulness. The dead +know that if we remember them in our hours of joy, they are indeed +remembered; and if they know anything at all, they will understand the +waywardness of sad hearts better than sad hearts understand themselves. + +Yet, indeed, save in the exercise of his faculties, Theophil had no joy +to reproach himself with. Surely returning spring, with its terrible +exuberance of warm life, was no joy. Perhaps he had looked on Jenny +lying dead with less anguish than he one day beheld an apple-tree thick +with blossom in the hot sun. Yes! the world had the heart to go on, to +bud and build, and sing,--though Jenny was gone. And in that bright +spring, see horrible and useless age still hobbling out into the beam! +What was life but one huge Mephistopheles laugh beneath the windows of +our dreams! + +That spring James Whalley persuaded Theophil to walk with him for a week +of country lanes far beyond Coalchester, letting him talk of Jenny all +the time. Jenny had never been here! If only Jenny could have seen that +view! Jenny had never known that flower! Did he remember those verses +from James Thomson:-- + + "The chambers of the mansions of my heart, + In every one whereof thine image dwells, + Are black with grief eternal for thy sake. + + "The inmost oratory of my soul, + Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead, + Is black with grief eternal for thy sake. + + "I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross, + With eyes for ever fixed upon that face, + So beautiful and dreadful in its calm. + + "I kneel here patient as thou liest there; + As patient as a statue carved in stone, + Of adoration and eternal grief. + + "While thou dost not awake I cannot move; + And something tells me thou wilt never wake, + And I alive feel turning into stone." + +Strange joy of sad poetry for sad hearts! + +Experience indeed was now divided for Theophil into what Jenny had not +seen or known and into what she had seen and known; and it was one of +the tricks of his grief, as time went on, to confuse the two. Sometimes +he would think that Jenny had been with him at a certain place, or +perhaps had read a certain book which, on taking thought, he knew she +could never have seen. + +Allied perhaps to this confusion was the fancy that possessed him on +certain days that he caught glimpses of Jenny in little flitting figures +of women about the streets. A sudden poise of the head, the way of doing +the hair, a trick of walk,--just a flash and gone again; though +sometimes he was haunted with more persistent resemblances, which +brought him a curious mixture of joy and pain. And this perhaps is the +place to record what only those acquainted with grief will understand, +and not all of those,--for grief has many contradictory fashions. + +Till he had loved Jenny, women had played little or no part in +Theophil's life; but with Jenny's death he found, to his surprise, that +the idea of woman was strangely sweet to him. His eyes were drawn after +women in the street, and he found himself longing sometimes for some +woman on whose shoulder he might lean his head and weep out his grief +for Jenny! He loved death because Jenny had died; was he to love women +because Jenny had been a woman? Perhaps his feet had wandered in +dangerous paths at this time, had it not been for the restrictions which +his calling laid upon him. + +These, however, did not deny him the theatre, which it had been part of +his programme at New Zion to advocate, though there was seldom anything +worth seeing at Coalchester Theatre Royal. Yet sometimes a good London +company would call there on its provincial progress, and it chanced one +day, looking into a shop window, that Theophil caught sight of a +photograph of a woman that startled him with its remarkable resemblance +to Jenny. It was the prima donna of a Gaiety burlesque. Such was the +strange shape Jenny had for the moment taken! + +For the first time after her death Theophil was at the theatre that +evening. The bright lights and the music pierced him as with swords. +Once more he saw that apple-tree thick with blossom in the hot sun. Yet +his fancy found grim spells to lay the insolent ghost of life, and death +ever at his side whispered that all this light and music and dancing was +for but a little while; that those gay rouged faces, so confident in +laughing beauty, and all those nimble shapes, were to the eye that had +looked beyond life already stark in their coffins, with chin-cloths +about their nerveless jaws. Surely the lover would trip in the shroud +that was plainly to be seen from his feet to his lips! + +Like sudden snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from his +imagination across that fiddling, jigging, gleaming atmosphere, and +everywhere the dead sat around him, watching in a trance strange antics +of the grimacing dead. Curiously, in these moods, he never thought of +himself as dead. Alas! life was too cruel to release him so soon to +death and Jenny. + +Suddenly the theatre sprang back to life again with the entrance of the +prima donna. Yes, the resemblance was even greater than in the +photograph. She was a little taller and more heavily built than Jenny, +and it was not Jenny's voice; but for the rest, she _was_ Jenny. The +fascination of watching her was terrible. It seemed impossible that one +form could so mockingly resemble another, and yet be so hopelessly +someone else. Theophil could hardly bring himself to believe that the +woman yonder with Jenny's eyes and mouth and hair had never even heard +of Jenny's name. Surely, if he were to come and look into her face, she +would recognise him at once, and the old common interests would rise to +her lips as of old. + +Theophil went again to the theatre the next night, and again the next, +which was the last of the company's stay in the town; and the spell of +the false Florimel grew so strong upon him that at the close of the +final performance he sent up his card to the actress, and presently, as +in a dream, found himself stumbling among scenery and dipping under +beams on his way to the actress's room. If she were only as like Jenny +close to, he felt he must follow her to the end of the world; and indeed +the illusion still held as he entered the little mirrored room, smelling +of powder and littered with laces and silks,--fancy little Jenny here +among the grease-paints and the bouquets! It was only with the lack of +recognition in the polite welcome the actress gave him that the illusion +began to waver, or was it only that Jenny had forgotten him? + +So possessed had he been with the hallucination, that he had not +thought what excuse he would have to make to the actress for his visit, +and it was with an embarrassing shock that the necessity of speech came +to him, when he had stumbled through some mechanical words of +salutation. She looked at him with a little air of bewilderment, and +motioned to her attendant to leave them alone. As the door closed, +Theophil had determined to tell her the simple truth. + +"I have to ask your pardon," he began, "for a very strange intrusion. +The reason of it is simply this. You are so like someone I love who is +dead that I felt I could not rest till I had spoken to you. I trust you +will excuse me, and try to understand. Yes! you are terribly like her!" + +The story appealed to the actress's instinct for romance, and she +entered into its spirit. Besides, the young clergyman was very +interesting to look at, and the charm of sorrow was on his face. + +"An actress can hardly complain," she answered, "of being taken for +someone else, and though I don't know you, I feel that you have done me +an honour. Am I indeed so like her? How strange it must seem to you!" + +"It is very strange," said Theophil, still fascinated. Then he told this +image of Jenny the story of how Jenny had died. The tears came into the +actress's eyes as he talked, and it was as though Jenny shed tears for +Jenny's death. + +"Poor little girl!" she said; "I am so sorry for you both." + +"But," she continued presently, "you should both be very happy too--for +it would be worth while to suffer for so beautiful a love.... I feel +happy," she added half gaily, "even to resemble a woman who is so +wonderfully loved." + +Theophil lingered on, still fascinated, till the actress suggested that +he should walk with her to her hotel. Arrived there, Theophil, to the +possible scandalising of Coalchester, accepted her invitation to a +further chat over supper; and when at last he was back at Zion Place, +his heart was aware of a new comfort and a new pain. He had leaned his +head on a woman's kind shoulder, and she had let him talk and talk about +Jenny; but her shoulder had been warm, and it had been sweet to be +near her ... + + "A creature might forget to weep who bore; + Thy comfort long" ... + +and Theophil went to sleep that night with the taste of honey upon his +lips. + +But with the morning there came to him remorseful misgivings, and he +told himself that it had been one of the sophistries of the flesh, a +call of the senses taking in vain the sacred name of Jenny; and then for +his comfort he remembered how the greatest of all lovers, Dante, had +craved in like manner for the solace of "a very pitiful lady, very +young," and had been similarly remorseful on account of his momentary +preoccupation with her. + +Taking down his "Vita Nuova," he read: "_At length, by the constant +sight of this lady, mine eyes began to be gladdened overmuch with her +company; through which thing many times I had much unrest, and rebuked +myself as a base person: also, many times I cursed the unsteadfastness +of mine eyes, and said to them inwardly: 'Was not your grievous +condition of weeping wont one while to make others weep? And will ye now +forget this thing because a lady looketh upon you? who so looketh merely +in compassion of the grief ye then showed for your own blessed lady. But +what so ye can, that do ye, accursed eyes! many a time will I make you +remember it! for never, till death dry you up, should ye make an end of +your weeping_.'" + +Moreover, Dante had married Gemma within a year of the death of +Beatrice, and had even lived so scandalously meanwhile as to bring down +upon him the stern reproof of his friend Guido Calvancanti; yet the +world still regards him as the type of all faithful lovers. +Faithfulness is an attitude of the mind, and all it touches turns to +Beatrice. Yet-- + + "Except by death, we must not any way + Forget our lady who is gone from us." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +ISABEL CALLING + +If women were thus henceforth to influence Theophil, why might not +Isabel, the woman whom Jenny had loved, be counted amongst them? + +Isabel was the one woman in the whole world whom Theophil's faithfulness +could not transform into Jenny. That it had been his fatal love for her +that had brought Jenny to her death, his reason, except in moments of +self-injustice, was robust enough to put aside. + +There are excuses that we owe to ourselves, and we have a right to +expect justice even from our own consciences. A sentimental conscience +is the most tiresome of all altruists, and wilfully to indulge in +remorse that we have not justly incurred is to blunt our consciences +for real offences. The best repentance for our sins is a clear-eyed +recognition of their nature, and the temptation in some flurry of +feeling to take on our shoulders the mistakes of destiny with which we +chance to have been involuntarily associated, is one to be resisted in +the interests of that self-knowledge which is the beginning of +self-development. Before we take the scourge in hand for our own +shoulders let us be quite sure that we have sinned. + +There were hours, particularly those hours of sudden wakefulness in the +middle of the night when our minds lose their sense of proportion, in +which Theophil agonised beyond endurance, and, as on that afternoon when +he had found Jenny's diary, said to himself with merciless reiteration, +"She seems to have had a shock"--"It was you who killed Jenny." + +These hours had to be supported as we support hours of purely physical +pain. The morning brought a saner, larger view. The tragedy of Jenny's +death was not to be so easily explained. In it were implicated more +august responsible causes, it was part of a more general tragedy; as the +original instinct to blame himself and Isabel was part of man's ancient +theological habit of making man the scapegoat of the universe. + +But as the thought of Isabel thus became bearable once more, it became +for that very reason a thought the more faithfully to be resisted. + +It might become sweet. + +It was sweet! + +One day the casuistry of grief brought Theophil the reflection that, as +Isabel was the only woman he knew whom Jenny had known too, and that as +Jenny had loved her also, she was thus destined for him even by Jenny +herself. Besides, as he had realised no unfaithfulness to Jenny in his +love for Isabel during Jenny's life, there could equally be no +unfaithfulness now that she was dead. Moreover, if Jenny still in some +mysterious way kept watch over his life, she would understand his heart +as she could never have understood it when she was alive... + +These thoughts brought deep sorrow to him for many days, during which +once more he rebuked himself as "a base person," but, curiously enough, +in one who so despised the world and its opinion, it was an apparently +superficial consideration that was the mainstay of his faithfulness, +against these disloyal suggestions of a life that was thus reawakening +in spite of himself. + +There were moments when he could conceive his going to Isabel, and +asking her to share his life with him; but never could he endure the +thought of her bearing that name which seemed so inviolably Jenny's. +Even though Jenny had come to him in a dream and asked him to give her +name to Isabel, there was still the world. Though Jenny might +understand, the world would think he had forgotten Jenny. The minority +of faithful hearts would grow sadder by his seeming apostasy, and the +cynic would strengthen his pessimism by one more illustration of human +inconstancy. The world might hear that he was loving Isabel in some +Aegean isle, and still deem him faithful; for grief is allowed +mistresses, but with a wife it is understood to die. + +No! so long as the world lasted no other woman should steal her name +from Jenny's grave. + +And this was an unassailable symbol. Here the vital principle of his +faithfulness was entrenched as in an impregnable fortress. He would see +Isabel's heart break ere she should bear Jenny's name. + +Yet while he made the vow, his love for Isabel was musical as spring +within his soul, and he dared to tell himself that in God's sight he was +still Isabel's as well as Jenny's. + +Thus it came about that one autumn day, when Isabel's letters had lain +unopened through spring and summer, in one sudden impulse of mere +desire he had opened and read them,--not as Jenny's letters, but as +messages for which he himself was hungering. He had released the +incense, and as he kissed the dear writing, he momentarily forgot that +it was written to Jenny, and only remembered that it had come from +Isabel. In the snare of the incense he even accused himself for having +left them unread so long, and then to think that nearly six months had +gone by since the second letter had brought its half-playful reproach +for forgetfulness.... "Ah! Jenny, I'm afraid you're a fickle little +person, after all." + +How strange it seemed to hear Jenny talked to like that--now.... Yes, of +course, Jenny was dead. Jenny was dead ... and Isabel was calling. + +Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's +words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some +subtle air of hellish sweetness? + +O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in +her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath +this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover. + +Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the +strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that +prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest +whisper of the real. + +Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go. Come back he might, but +go he must, he would. Yes! he was going. + +There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in the +train; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, his +heart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness, +that Theophil spent it. Purposes he had none, only a desire,--just to +see Isabel again. That immediate future was too effulgent for him to +think of anything beyond it. + +He would see Isabel again! + +From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, she +would turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness. + +The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped him +in a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were passing through +hidden orchards. + +Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you across +the night? Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep in +the rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across the +silent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like a +camp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speeding +through the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travelling +rooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"? + +Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel? + +No, not Jenny's name. Never Jenny's name! + +He was going to look on Isabel again--that was all. Perhaps he would die +with the mere joy of seeing her again--and then he would not need to +think of the future. Yes! the deeps of his soul had wanted her as +much as that. + +It was about half-past six as he reached London; and though it was +impossible to call on her for some hours yet, Theophil drove straight to +Isabel's little square, shuttered and still in the early-risen London +morning. His eyes chose the second storey for hers, and picked out two +dainty windows as her rooms. He half expected to see the blind suddenly +drawn aside and her face, a sleepy flower, bloom through the curtains. + +He lingered awhile, loving each individual brick of the house with his +eyes, and then, kissing his hands to the sleeping windows, he rejoined +his cab, which he had left at the street corner, shy of awaking the +hushed square with its clatter. + +He gave Isabel till ten o'clock, which was perhaps hardly enough for a +young London lady's toilette and breakfast, and then called. A pleasant +housemaid answered the bell, and told him that Miss Strange was away, +and was not expected till to-morrow. + +Here was a surprise. He had never even thought of that possibility. + +Begging leave to write Miss Strange a note, he presently found himself +in Isabel's room. It was the same his eyes had blessed from the street. + +So this was Isabel's room! So evidently hers, her very self! + +Isabel pictures, Isabel wall-paper, Isabel chairs, Isabel cushions, +Isabel desk, Isabel books, Isabel bibelots, Isabel litter,--all Isabel. + +And there hung an arras portière over a doorway to the right of the +fireplace. That was her bedroom! Dare he peep in? That was her little +bed. Would the housemaid catch him if he slipped in and left a kiss on +her pillow? By the mirror was a grotesque little china monster with his +mouth full of hat-pins. He stole one for a memory. Over a chair lay a +little dressing-jacket. He took it up and kissed it. + +Then he sat down to write to her. What a tidy, methodical little desk! +Everything in its place. Dear, business-like, sea-witch Isabel! Here was +her engagement book. He mustn't begin reading her letters! + +After his first disappointment, he was half-glad he would have to wait +till to-morrow to see her,--for, of course, he would wait. To have thus +sat in her room was almost enough for a first meeting. It was like +stealing upon her while she slept. + +Then he began a letter; but as he wrote, who was this suddenly standing +at his side? Was it Isabel? No...it was a little sobbing body quite near +to his, crying as if its heart would break... + +Oh, Jenny, Jenny--God forgive me! + +The spell was broken, the fit was over. Theophil left no letter for +Isabel, and no message, and the same evening he was once more back in +his little study in Zion Place, wild with remorse. O for the scourge and +the fire! But what penance shall avail to ease that poor little +creature's broken-hearted crying? + +"She seems to have had a shock!--She seems to have had a shock!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +BACK IN ZION PLACE + +The shame of that wild unfaithfulness burned in Theophil's soul for many +days. It humiliated him like a physical degradation. To have been so +drunkenly untrue! It was one of those shocks to the moral nature from +which it never quite recovers, and Theophil's face lost some of its +steadfastness, his walk some of its firmness, for this perfidy +towards Jenny. + +There was only one way to make the sense of it endurable, and he threw +himself into his work with a wasting vehemence. Where was his ambition? +There was so much yet to do. New Zion had long since moved and hummed, +and whizzed, the neighbouring towns had in a measure begun to dance to +his piping, but it must be a long while yet ere his name was to London +and to the world what it was already to Coalchester,--that mere +microcosm of his fame. + +And till London knew him as well as Coalchester, there was no real +monument to Jenny. London--no longer the city of Isabel--must learn to +say "Theophilus Londonderry" so naturally, that it would some day serve +as an unforgettable remembrance of Jenny. He must become a great man, +because a great name is the one shrine in which love's memory may escape +oblivion. In the arms of his name Jenny would then be carried down the +years, one woman-star saved from the night of death. Again, the world, +for which in one way he had so little care, was to help him indirectly +to keep his troth to Jenny. + +In a sense, the mountain was already coming to this young prophet; for +with the winter some of London's finest spirits were now and again to be +met in that incongruous Zion Place, as visiting lecturers to New Zion. +And each one, as he came, was impressed as Isabel had been on that old +evening when she had discovered her colony of surprise-people. Each +realised in that gravely masterful young minister a power and a force of +attraction which could not long remain hidden in that little country +town. Meanwhile, their visits enabled him to test his own calibre by +comparison with theirs, and to realise that his instincts had not +befooled him, but that he too had been called to the stage of the +great world. + +It was in the operation of this method of inviting the mountain that the +French poet, with a reference to whom we began this history, made his +fantastic appearance in Zion Place. It is to be feared that it was a +conscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeed +New Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the most +imaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown the +Renaissance in Coalchester by this _reductio ad absurdum._ The +subtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, and +after days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a young +country minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in the +musty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow of +the world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of his name among +the stars. + +With the reawakening of his ambition, Theophil began to realise that his +work at New Zion was nearing its end, and that before long he must seek +that larger stage. Yet all his heart remained in that dull little Zion +Place, and while Jenny's old mother lived he could not conceive tearing +himself away. Could he indeed even bring himself to say good-bye to +these mean little romantic streets along which Jenny had tripped? Could +he bear to think of the commonplace little house which Jenny had +transfigured to a shrine being desecrated with vulgar occupation? If he +could only raze it to the ground, as a cup from which a queen has drunk +is shattered lest it should be soiled with usage of common lips! Some +day he might have grown rich enough to buy it, and set it apart for +ever, as a little house sacred to love and youth; but, meanwhile, with +what ugly and noisome presences would it have been defiled! + +He would stand in Jenny's room with its quiet books and flowers, and his +heart would ache to think that some day harsh hands must noisily break +in upon that sacred silence, and strip it of all its delicate memories. +Jenny's room the lair of wild beasts, a nest of foulness and serpents! +Sometimes he was thus haunted with the ghosts of those who were to riot +up and down these stairs when Jenny's memory had quite died out of these +walls like a fragrance of musk overborne with coarse odours. + +Yes! in this perhaps are the rich most enviable of the poor, that they +can afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved from +external taint from generation to generation, become temples of which +the very walls breathe nobleness, whereas the very birthplace of genius +itself becomes a butcher's shop; and though that genius be Shakespeare, +and the old house be some day purified seventy times seven, and +garnished as you please, the smell of slaughtered beasts will still +cling about its rooms, and the butcher insist upon immortality too. + +Jenny's old mother was soon to turn into a memory also. She had from +time to time declared that she would not see another May, and had indeed +on one occasion named the day on which she would die, with a curious +precision, as though she had seen it written somewhere in a book, or +learnt it from private or unimpeachable information. Latterly she had +met Jenny twice in full daylight on the stairs, and it was evident that +the old woman would soon complete that little family circle in Paradise. + +But she still kept about, and whereas her old husband had grown sleepier +as his end neared, she seemed to be growing more active again, fidgety +and restless. She slept badly, and returned to her old habit of being +first down in the morning and lighting the kitchen fire, in spite of +remonstrances. Indeed, she might sometimes be heard up in the middle of +the night, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen had +been her world, and she was already beginning to haunt it. + +There it was one wintry morning they found her sitting in the old +arm-chair in which her husband had died, and then they recalled her +words, for she had died on the very day she had predicted. + +She knew nothing of books, this quaint old woman, and had a very +antiquated taste in wall-papers; yet there would seem to be other ways +of being wise, and it may indeed be held that books act too much as +insulators between us and the earth, to the mysterious currents of which +gnarled shapes of unlettered old men and women may be the more sensitive +as lying closer to the Mother. + +At all events, old Mrs. Talbot did seem to have won certain confidences +from life and death refused to more consciously alert ears. Hers had +been that hearing beyond listening to which secrets are +sometimes revealed. + +Her death was more of a loss to her son-in-law than he might have +conceived, for not only was she the last of Jenny's flesh and blood, but +she was the only one else in the world who missed Jenny as he missed +her. Others might, through sympathy, share his sorrow, but she and he +were partners in an actual loss. Something had definitely gone from +each. Jenny seemed to be twice dead with the death of her mother, and +Theophil's loneliness suddenly became more absolute and cut off than +ever before. + +There was now no one left who could involuntarily recall remembered +words and traits of Jenny, and who would for their own sakes want to sit +down and talk of her. All that was left that really knew Jenny was the +old house itself. That remembered and talked of her still in its dumb +way; and as he realised this, his mood once more changed. He forgot his +aspirations toward a broader world, and felt that, not only would it be +a sort of unfaithfulness to leave Zion Place, but that to do so, and to +break up this familiar harmony of home, this little cosmos of friendly +furniture in accustomed relations,--pictures hung so from time +immemorial, rooms dedicated to this use and no other,--would be to +destroy the one mirror from which could come to him still glimpses of +Jenny's living face. In just that look of the rooms was the best +portrait he possessed of Jenny. + +Though he had always been fond of Mr. Moggridge, it had not before +occurred to Theophil to make of him a companion; but about this time, as +Mr. Moggridge would drop in of an evening to discuss church matters, the +young minister would be surprised to note how lonely he felt when he had +gone. Indeed Mr. Moggridge possessed that great undefinable gift of +companionability. + +What is needed in a companion is not brilliance of conversation, but the +power to make you feel that you are not quite alone in the universe. +Dogs and even children possess this quality for some happily constituted +individuals, but for others it is a necessity that the companion be a +human being. + +A human being, the quieter the better, if possible a rather large man, +diffusing a sense of warmth and safety, with perhaps no other gifts than +kindliness and a pipe; and sometimes you have the best of company. And +Mr. Moggridge, as we know, had brains too, and interesting instincts +for new things. But his best gift was his humanity. Thus Theophil +encouraged his evening calls and contrived to prolong them, though the +two would often sit almost silent by the hour, their pipes alone making +a sort of conversation. + +Sometimes the young lions of "The Dawn" would come to supper, as in the +old days, as Theophil called a year ago; but supper was a poor thing +without Mrs. Talbot popping in and out of the room, though she had +seemed comparatively unimportant then,--not to speak of eager little +Jenny,--not to think of Isabel. + +Yes! the sparkle had gone out of their meetings, which began to have an +air of make-believe youth about them. Theophil's interest was indeed +centred in the purlieus of New Zion, but it was entirely retrospective; +and though outwardly New Zion was more alive than ever, it seemed to him +that activity which once started goes on of itself, and he realised that +in his heart he cared nothing for the work itself, but only for the +music to which it had once been set in motion. Incomplete as in one +sense it was, in another and more personal sense his life seemed already +complete; and while in some moods he would dream of its resounding +continuance, in others he would sigh that it might end. + +However, for a while he would still go on living with the shadows he +loved; and as he sat alone of an evening in that silent house, he would +sometimes half fancy that he heard the other occupants moving about or +walking overhead. That was Mrs. Talbot with a creaking basket of clean +linen on the stairs, and surely that was the opening and closing of a +drawer in Jenny's room. Perhaps it was only Mr. Talbot moving his chair +in the kitchen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +AND SUDDENLY THE LAST + +Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be a +memory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of new +worlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly to +close down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled half +sadly, and half proudly. No such good fortune for his sad heart! no such +miscarriage of his young life! + +Young life is so sure of its long lease. All about it lie the broken +dreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that _its_ life-work +should suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of! +It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life and +coquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as "Will +it please your honour to die to-morrow week?" is an indignity +inconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worship +of the dead. + +Yet for quite simple reasons, as this mysterious world goes, it had been +decided that Theophil was for as brief a while as possible, allowing for +the leisure of natural causes, to support the life he thought he hated. +Even while Jenny lived, fate, mercifully foreseeing, had willed him a +brief pilgrimage; for on that night when Jenny had leaned over him with +that terrible hunger of damp breath, it had been written that of that +kiss Theophil should some day die. + +And it was of that kiss that the following May Theophil, all his plans +laid aside, engagements cancelled on every hand, eager life suddenly +trapped in this choking cul-de-sac, was dying. + +Death! It was an outrage! He was young, he was powerful! He would not +die! + +There was May at the window. He too was full of May. He would get up +and go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. It +was the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, like +the muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss and +twitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he had +been a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, to +rise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak at a +neighbouring town, where he had been promised for a great agitation on +the Home Rule Question. Surely it was a strange enough contradiction of +a year ago, when such meetings had seemed such trivialities in the +thought of death. Now, when they said he was dying--had this world grown +suddenly so significant that he could rise from his death-bed to make +one last appearance in the paltry lists? + +He spoke with an overcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a tumbler of +port wine at his side; and as the audience looked on his white hollow +face, and listened to his terrible eloquence, they realised with a +shudder that this was the last tragic effort of a dying man. + +Alas! the great world was not to be stamped with his image and +superscription, after all; and only a little faithful company of friends +would know that Theophilus Londonderry was a great man. + +This escapade, though it brought on death with double swiftness, brought +too a calm of satisfaction which made it easier to die; and in the +revulsion which it set up, life once more shrank into the background, +and its little triumphs grew paltry once more. Strange, he half smiled +to himself, that the man who was at last really going to Jenny should +even momentarily care about doing anything else! + +Yes, he was going to Jenny! So soon! Soon he would be on the other side +of that wall, soon be travelling that strange highway, on the other side +of light and darkness. In a few more weeks he... _HE?_ Would there still +be _he_ anywhere in the universe? + +Jenny! Perhaps there had been no Jenny all these months. Perhaps Jenny +stopped being Jenny forever in that last moment when she had tried to +wish him good-bye. And all his daily consciousness of her presence, all +the fancies of his faithful heart, had been idle as the words of a man +talking in his sleep. Those little offerings he had brought to her +altar,--she had never seen them; for perhaps Jenny had been an idol he +had made out of air, while he had been her lonely and unheeded +worshipper. + +Was it really like that? and in a few more weeks would he too be as an +eye that had ceased seeing, an ear that had ceased hearing for evermore? + +All the wonderful colour and sound of things! Were these waning days to +be his last poor opportunities to sit at the great show? + +Yes! the world was slipping like water between his hands--and he might +not be going to Jenny, after all. + +As these thoughts began to possess him, another thought which he had so +far resisted grew more importunately pleading--the thought of Isabel. +Perhaps he was going to Jenny, but surely he was leaving Isabel. Had he, +he could not but ask himself, immolated a warm living heart in a +fanatical devotion to a heart long since senseless and cold? Had it not, +after all, been a superstitious veneration towards an ideal of +faithfulness which had been Jenny's rather than his own? Had he in his +heart ever ceased to love Isabel, and had he really believed that to +love her too would have been unfaithfulness to Jenny? + +Yes, life was nearly over, but it held the possibility still of one +supreme blessedness. He might look into Isabel's eyes again. + +She had but to stand by his side and his poor remnant of life would grow +radiant and rounded as the most complete and blissful destiny. His heart +told him that if Isabel could but once enter the room again, and stay +with him to the end, however near, he would die singing the song of +magnificent life. + +Life is tragic, do you say? Life is cruel. Life is a splendid +portico--to nothingness. Ah, no! not if in that portico you have stood +for a moment, loving and beloved, by the side of Isabel. Life is +splendid! life is kind! life is abounding, deep-cupped! and each minute +of it is a prodigal eternity. + +Thus it was that one May morning Isabel sat very still in her little +room with a telegram just opened on her lap. The telegram ran: "Jenny is +dead and I am dying. Theophil." And this was the first message Isabel +had received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchester +station eighteen months ago. + +She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaid +had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat +cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her,--that Jenny +had divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil had +determined that they must never see each other again. + +Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent so +much in written words! Had he ceased loving her?... No, that she could +never believe. They had _met_ too really for that. And, after all, this +silence was no more than their sad marriage-bond. Sad, truly, and a +little tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no power +over her love. That belonged to the realities; that could never change. + +"Jenny is dead, and I am dying," Isabel kept saying over to herself, +divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, and +something of Theophil's conflict during those silent months. + +"Jenny is dead, and I am dying,"--a sad, a tragic message, surely! And +yet, as from the first shock and consequent turmoil of that message, its +real significance slowly evolved, even Isabel was perhaps surprised to +find it rather a happy than an unhappy significance. Jenny was dead, and +Theophil was dying; and yet, when at last she shook herself out of her +reverie, her face was curiously lit with peace. + +She presently discovered that there was a train north in two hours; and +then she turned to her desk, and with that business-like carefulness +with which we often act in a dream, she went over its contents, and +methodically transferred its various accumulations to the tiny grate, +which was soon blazing with unwonted summer fire. A little handful of +letters she saved, and from the diminutive locked cupboard in the +centre she took out a small sealed packet, which was to be included +among her luggage. + +All trains do not separate. There are also glad trains which bring +together; and soon Isabel was in one of these, and soon it had taken her +to Theophil,--to whose ears at last had come the sound of wonderful +wheels in the dead street, wheels that had stopped beneath his window, a +rustle of alighting, an opening and shutting of doors, an approaching +whisper on the staircase, and then, with reality unutterable--Isabel. + +Isabel! + +You could hardly have told that Theophil was dying, and the face that +Isabel thus found again was marked by none of the dreadful writing of +death. His eyes were brighter, his brow more hollow, his cheeks +thinner,--that was all; and he was to be of those of whom we have +spoken, whose flame of life burns brightly to the end. No heavy mists of +Lethe hung about his bed. Till his last heartbeat, he was to be +conscious of the nearness of Isabel. For a fortnight he was thus to lie +within sight and touch of her. How good life is! Think of it, a whole +fortnight! How extravagantly blessed! + +Isabel was living in the same house with him day after day. She was no +visitor, but went in and out of the room with the step of one who is at +home. If he grew weary and dozed a moment, she would still be sitting +there when he awoke. She was wearing home things. One morning when she +had been busied in the kitchen preparing some little delicacy for him, +she had left her task for a moment to see if he needed anything; and as +she had bent over him, she had worn a household apron,--a wife's apron. +Yes, she was at home, she would never leave him again, never leave +him--till he died. + +"Oh, Isabel--to die!" he moaned one night as she sat by his side. + +"But think, dear," she answered, with her head turned away, "think of +Jenny." + +"Perhaps there _is_ no Jenny." + +No Jenny! Isabel's heart gave a little cry. No Jenny! Then there could +be no harm ... + +"Theophil," she said, after a silence, "have you forgotten something we +said to each other that day,--something we promised?" + +For answer he looked at her with awed and suddenly enlightened eyes. + +"Do you mean that?" he asked. "You mustn't mean that." + +"Do you think I could care any more for life?" she asked. "Would you?" + +"No," he answered simply. + +"May I, then?" + +His eyes could alone answer. He knew her love too well to affect that +there would be any loss to her in the life she would thus be leaving. + +"But Jenny?" + +"If Jenny is there, she will understand now." + +I can conceive no happier, completer moment than that which followed for +these two, no more unassailable peace. If their lives were to be quite +put out, they would be extinguished together; if they were to begin anew +elsewhere, they would begin anew together; and meanwhile nothing that +could happen could harm them, could rob them of the desire of their +hearts. At the worst, they would attain their best; at the very least, +they would win their most: they would die together. + +To end together. It matters not how few or many years love and the +beloved live their days side by side, even though their love be but the +morning and the evening of one divine day, so that there be no bereaved +and lonely to-morrow. The hour that takes one and not the other takes +with it too all the accumulated happiness of all the years. That hour +these two were to escape. Yet was there no need of haste. So long as +they might, they would sit together in the sun of life. For a little +longer they would say, "How wonderful life is!"--for a little longer +make sure of each other. + +Your eyes, Isabel! Your hair, Isabel! Your dear mouth, Isabel! + +A little longer. + +"Shall we go to-night?" + +"Not yet...perhaps to-morrow, Isabel." + +But Theophil was now very near death, and he might forget if he lingered +on much more. Not wearily, but with music and singing must they pass +through the strange gate of Death. + +So at length, one June evening, Isabel made for them one last little +feast,--once more wine and great grapes set out upon a little table at +Theophil's bedside; and on the table, too, was the little sealed packet +Isabel had taken from the cupboard in her desk. + +Drawing her chair close up to his pillow, she poured out their wine, +and they drank it and ate the grapes together,--no happier people in +God's strange world. + +As the feast neared its end, Isabel rose, and stirring the little fire +into a blaze, turned out the lamps, so that the room was lit only with +the light from the fire. Then she refilled their glasses with wine, and +breaking the seal of the little white packet, took from it a small +bottle of green crystal, the contents of which she mingled with +the wine. + +Then she and Theophil held up their glasses to each other. + +"Let us go deeper into the wood," she said softly. + +"How wonderful life has been!" said Theophil; and the two drank, with +their eyes firm and sweet upon each other. + +Then Isabel sat down again by Theophil's side, and leaning her head +against his on the pillow, she took his hand. And the room became a +heaven of silence. + +Whoso would say of these two lives, "How sad!" let him consider the +quality of his own happiness; and whoso would regard the life of +Theophilus Londonderry as a failure, let him, too, consider the value of +his own success. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] +by Richard Le Gallienne + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10949 *** diff --git a/10949-h/10949-h.htm b/10949-h/10949-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cd49756 --- /dev/null +++ b/10949-h/10949-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5083 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= + "text/html; charset=UTF-8"> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Romance of Zion Chapel, by Richard Le Gallienne. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + <!-- + * { font-family: Times;} + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: 14pt; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + blockquote {text-align: justify; + margin-left: 15%; + margin-right: 15%;} + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; } + HR { width: 33%; } + // --> + </style> + </head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10949 ***</div> + +<h1>THE ROMANCE OF</h1> + +<h1>ZION CHAPEL</h1> +<br> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2>RICHARD LE GALLIENNE</h2> +<br> + +<h4>1898</h4> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h3>TO</h3> + +<h2>TWO IN HEAVEN</h2> + +<h3>AND</h3> + +<h2>TWO ON EARTH.</h2> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2>Contents</h2> + + +<ul> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II. INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI. OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER.</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII. THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX. "THE DAWN"</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII. HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII. IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV. THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV. JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII. "O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE..."</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX. IN WHICH JENNY CRIES</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII. THE TRYST LETHEAN</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNY</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV. JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII. ISABEL CALLING</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX. AND SUDDENLY THE LAST</a></li> +</ul> + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h1>The Romance of Zion Chapel</h1> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> +<br> + +<h3>OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES</h3> + +<p>On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, +hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there +stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of +disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway +embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely +obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty +for a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly +present unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the +gasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street boasting +the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, is +proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied the +gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, +yet long since drearily old,--with the unattractive antiquity of old +iron and old clothes,--round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only +describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in +weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words +"New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion +Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too which +had been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very morning before +the house at the corner had contemplated doing the same. At Zion View +lived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge, good-natured, guffawing +pillar of New Zion,--on whom, at the moment, however, we will not call.</p> + +<p>A nice dull place, you may say, from which to issue invitations to a +romance. Well, of course, it must seem so if pretty places are the +reader's idea of romance. Curiously enough, the preference of the Lady +Romance herself is for just such dull places. These dreary, +soot-begrimed streets are the very streets she loves best to appear in, +on a sudden, some astonished day, with a sound of silk skirts and a +spring wind of attar of roses. Contrast, surprise,--these are her very +soul. Dull places and bright people,--these she loves to bring together, +and watch for laughter and tears. You are never safe from Romance, and +the place to seek her is never the place where she was last found.</p> + +<p>Well, at all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you are +respectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with a +shrug, I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes of +one of the greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won't +pretend that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did--the eyes of +that great, sad, scandalous, religious French poet--on a night of weary +rain that set someone quoting,--also in that street,--</p> + +<blockquote> +"Il pleure dans mon coeur<br> +Comme il pleut sur la ville."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Yes, and that French poet passed the gasometer on his way to New Zion. +Actually.</p> + +<p>Romance! Why, I wouldn't exchange Gasometer Street for the Isles of +Greece!</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<br> + +<h3>INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL</h3> + +<p>That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest light +in the contrast which it was the happy business of Theophilus +Londonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make in +the vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchester +at large.</p> + +<p>Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's so +like the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for, +that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it for +purposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for its +reminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the more +suitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhaps +rather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions,--or say +one was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call." By day he +professed to be a clerk in a cotton-office,--and he was no fool at that +(there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but by +night, and occasionally of an afternoon,--when he got leave of absence +to solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral,--he was a spiritual +pastor, the young father of his flock.</p> + +<p>Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject of +Nonconformity, its influence on individualities and its direct +relationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of Rome,--though +he sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter,--Theophilus +Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would have +found no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could not +long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was the +non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity that +gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of a +personal force that claimed operation in some human employment, some +work not made with hands, but into which also entered the spirit of man, +and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth or +influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity. +To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the art +of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for this +Nonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his opportunity.</p> + +<p>This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by no +remoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was +not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher with +a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a +failure all in one.</p> + +<p>I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to be +a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of +blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting +quality,--a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand +of strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made +himself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he +was conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--were +qualifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for, +apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little +"cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, he +would occasionally "supply," they had passed into his son, and met in +him other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love +of laughter, and a mighty humanity.</p> + +<p>Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape and +partly something bigger and more effectively vital.</p> + +<p>At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said +to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a +big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor +at New Zion.</p> + +<p>This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not +attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of +Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he +could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the +point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in +terms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He +would, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but +that pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise, +he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and +humanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whatever +the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderry +that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However you may judge +him, you must never make that mistake about him.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<br> + +<h3>OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT</h3> + +<p>New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new. The +fiery zeal which had once made it a living schism had long since died +out of it. Carried years before, a little blazing ember of faith, from a +flourishing hearth of Nonconformity some streets away, it had puffed and +gleamed a little space in the eloquence of the offended zealots who +carried it hotfoot that Sunday morning, but its central fire had been +poor, and for a long time no evangelistic bellows had awakened in it +even a spark.</p> + +<p>Its original elders had long since lost heart and passed away. A +dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its +doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its +musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday +prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life +from the outside must come, and speedily, or it must die.</p> + +<p>But new life was already on the way. On the town side the sad streets +round New Zion led one into a more prosperous High Street, and indeed +Zion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a jovial +and ruddy shop--a provision merchant's, and kept by Eli Moggridge. The +name did its owner considerable wrong, for its suggestion of puritanical +sanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of the jovial and ruddy +personality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for whom it stood, and of +whom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese and its air of exuberant +prosperity, was a much more truthful expression. Well, the business was +growing with such gusto that Mr. Moggridge felt he might afford a home +away from his shop, and thus he came to take the biggish empty house +which presently put on new paint and once more seemed quite proud of +being "Zion View."</p> + +<p>Till this time, Mr. Moggridge. had "attended" elsewhere, but he was not +so young as he had been and somewhat stouter, and the stealthy approach +of comfortable habits had suggested to him that his old chapel was +rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house +being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation +towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly +above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it +in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his +being the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born within him.</p> + +<p>Now, quick was even the word with Mr. Moggridge, as became a successful +man of business, and for him to conceive an idea was to carry it out, as +goods were always delivered from Mr. Moggridge's shop, with despatch. +Also in some dim far-off way Mr. Moggridge's mind had, all +unconsciously, been stirred by vibrations of what we call the New +Spirit. The new spirit of any age works its way even into its +businesses, and though Mr. Moggridge wouldn't have so described it, it +was the "New Spirit" that had made the success of his provision shop. +Speaking of the need of New Zion, Mr. Moggridge called it "new blood." +He meant the "New Spirit;" and it was in reply to his advertisement for +a new pastor, that the "New Spirit" in the person of Theophilus +Londonderry came one Sunday to preach at New Zion.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY</h3> + +<p>Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry at +a glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he liked +Eli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each other had met.</p> + +<p>You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon you +couldn't help respecting him,--Theophilus Londonderry was almost to know +what it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the man he +was was a matter of no small importance to the young minister. A chief +deacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be no +little of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a +different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance +as he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreative +rather than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort of +Sunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. He +wanted to see it a "going concern," and, hating stagnation in his +neighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust to +make it move and hum and whizz.</p> + +<p>Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with +further mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New Zion, he +explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an evening +service which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was not +Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man in +his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; and +it happened that something of this very sort was what Theophilus +Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply.</p> + +<p>The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridge +guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources, +and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad +general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be +placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of the +faith that was in him. "All we want you to do," he said in conclusion, +"is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to how you do +it, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere with you in +that than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject of York +hams. We must all be specialists nowadays,--specialists," repeated Mr. +Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered planets.</p> + +<p>So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor," +presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the faded +dusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at too +great a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some nice +old-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane.</p> + +<p>I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love her +little daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describe +them at too great a length. Old Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were the sole +survivors of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantly +pious, stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in no +sense dialectical, and in every sense harmless.</p> + +<p>Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when front +parlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be sitting in +the kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation, "like +white-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." It is not recorded that he ever +thought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He would +flee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by such from +the wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head pathetically, +and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled good-evening. It +disconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his tongue slumbered in +his mouth,--for he was an old weary man, and perhaps very wise.</p> + +<p>Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in an +immeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the little +thinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, pay +the rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny's +marriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious +teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully +wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a +heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered +old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny +and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good deal +deaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed you, as +she had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too, was very +old, and she, I know, was very wise.</p> + +<p>Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyond +that she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her, +was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by the +school-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress and +pocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet. No +lover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterful +superscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very pretty +or very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet only +beginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn't +pretty yet, but she wasn't plain.</p> + +<p>Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it, +there was no telling to what beauty it would awake. The fairy prince! +That was going to be our friend Theophil, of course. Well, of course, +though it's a little early on to admit it. However, I am unequal to the +task of concealing from the hawk-eyed reader through a succession of +chapters that Jenny and Theophil were to be each other's "fates." Of +course, he hadn't been there a month before Jenny's face was beginning +to wear that superscription of his passionate intelligence, to grow +merry from his laughter, and still sweeter by his kisses.</p> + +<p>Of course, Theophil and Jenny fell in love. Do you think it was merely +to save New Zion and to bring the Renaissance to Coalchester that +Theophilus Londonderry was sent to live in Zion Place--or for any other +purpose less important than to love Jenny? Yes, we may as well take that +for granted as we begin the next chapter.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> +<br> + +<h3>OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS</h3> + +<p>There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the way +of the Hebrew prophet,--to give it one's own. Theophilus Londonderry +instinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightily +upon New Zion.</p> + +<p>The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but it +is gold he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo! +it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words. +The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in the +precious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to +mould,--an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not a +precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,--a +clay not without streaks of gold.</p> + +<p>What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his will +towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was +moving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself +by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set +it dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in gold +on Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile +too. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows to +what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would +circle on before they touched the shores of death?</p> + +<p>We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in +occasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to such +we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in any +given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your +calculation for the average of such divine,--how many faces would you +fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many +hearts would you dare to trust?</p> + +<p>Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin, +the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked +by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay.</p> + +<p>Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be +minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own +image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, +natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that +the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes +of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs +and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what +a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth!</p> + +<p>Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed again +and again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of your +image. Once a poet has impressed himself with mastery upon words, the +impression remains for ever, the words do not disperse in idle crowds +when he has done speaking to them, never again to reassemble in a like +combination; whereas the greatest oratorical mover of men is doomed, +even after his most electrical self-impression, to see his image, as +soon as taken, fade away, with a shuffle of escaping feet and a scramble +for hats and cloaks. It was a masterpiece; but with the last touch, see, +the colours are flying in a hundred directions, and the very canvas +itself is off in a thousand threads of hurried disintegration!</p> + +<p>But all this, of course, has to do entirely with the poetry of the +ministerial life; prosaic even as preaching and praying to the New +Zioners may sound, there was yet a drearier prose. For these artistic +materials had not only to be preached and prayed to,--they had to be in +a measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individually +considered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed to +be set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made help +in the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest you +needed and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken the +single gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the fool +wisely,--that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. To +encourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talent +she has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr. +Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayer +meetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures were +really and usefully alive, but at no other point of their +circumferences.</p> + +<p>However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the Reverend +Theophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a lover +of character for its own sake, and to the student of character there is +no such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisome +an old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord in +prayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imagines +that to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith.</p> + +<p>Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderry +breathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second, according +to his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times, he was +there, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and endlessly +beaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say, "Didn't I +say he was the man for New Zion?"</p> + +<p>The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the old +disused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time every +possible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance, +prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcas +society, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and the +ladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zion +had indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and social +activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost +beginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli +Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed of +the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till +not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Street +heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very High +Street itself should hum and whizz.</p> + +<p>The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of Theophilus +Londonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon be +humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the +ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. +Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, +then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, +faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and +the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will +whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of Theophilus +Londonderry.</p> + +<p>Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN</h3> + +<p>Darwin expended many years of his life in the study of disagreeable +animals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism to +environment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if he +had begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history has +been one unbroken succession of inspired and noble adaptations!</p> + +<p>Woman's adaptability to man is one of the most mysterious, as it is +perhaps the most pathetic, of all the modes of her mysterious being. +Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of the +rock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of course, +she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her chameleon to a +like degree or indeed in a like manner. Such adaptability is not one of +the forms of his greatness, and even when he achieves it, it is not +becoming to him.</p> + +<p>For woman's adaptability is not the domination of a weaker nature by a +stronger, it is in itself a noble and world-necessary form of strength.</p> + +<p>Strength is needed as well for the taking as the making of an +impression,--something more than mere ductility. Weakness may never bear +the stamp of power,--it breaks in the moulding; and it is rather because +woman is so strong that she is able to take the Caesarean stamp of any +form of power. Nor cares she by whose hands she is moulded, whose image +she wears, be it warrior, poet, or priest, so long as she feels the +veritable grasp and impress of power. Some women are already made in the +image of the man they are to love before they meet him. Very wonderful, +very terrible, then, is the meeting, and it is a meeting that usually +comes too late. But oftener God gives a man a little measure of +porcelain and a handful of stars, and leaves him to make the woman he +needs for himself; and very wonderful too is that making,--though the +man will always have been the father before he was the lover.</p> + +<p>Why, one may ponder, should a man who is great enough to mould a woman +to help him be great, not be great enough to do without her at all? Let +lovers of the unfathomable ask at the same time: Why is man, man? and +woman, woman? and what are both?</p> + +<p>This gentle doll with the sweet breath, which he nips up in his arms and +kisses, and gives a tongue that she may talk back to him his own words, +endows with brains that she may think his thoughts,--a quaint little +helpless lovely parody of his wisdom and power; a toy, yes; a +refreshment, yes; a place of peace, yes,--but how much more! Yes, more +by all that we don't understand when we say "woman."</p> + +<p>Why a great man should need, not a great woman, but a little woman, a +very little woman,--how is it to be explained, unless it be that woman, +however little, is mysteriously great, just because she is a woman, a +little woman? Unknown properties were wrapped up somewhere in that +porcelain; to press it with the lips is to feel strange virtue coming +into one,--the devil was in those stars.</p> + +<p>Great men are only nourished on the elements. Woman is an element, all +the elements in one,--earth, air, fire, and water, met together in a +rose. She is a spring among the rocks, and she comes up dimpling from +the roots of the world. She is just as simple and just as strange. O! +little shining spring of woman that is called Jenny, a great man must +draw up through you the unfathomed, deep strengths of the old world. He +bends above you and drinks, and as he drinks, his face is mirrored +in yours.</p> + +<p>"Jenny, I don't think I'd read 'Miss ----,' if I were you," would say +the great man.</p> + +<p>"No, dear?" So Jenny was presently reading Ruskin instead, and wondering +how she could ever have read "Miss ----." And deep in her dear heart she +was saying, "Of course not; great men's wives never read 'Miss ----.'"</p> + +<p>And yet had the great man said, "Read Gaboriau instead,"--as a certain +very great man does,--Jenny's heart would have said, "Of course, great +men's wives always read Gaboriau."</p> + +<p>No! great men's wives read "Sesame and Lilies," and "Sartor Resartus," +and "Marius the Epicurean," and "Richard Feverel," and "Virginibus +Puerisque,"--they even try to read Newman's "Apologia." Such were the +books on the sunnier side of Theophilus Londonderry's little library in +No. 3 Zion Place. In dark corners behind easy-chairs were the deep-sea +pools of theology,--pools which had long since given up all the fish +they had in them for their owner,--slabs of antique divinity, such as +you would find likewise in the equally cherished library of +Londonderry Senior.</p> + +<p>Such were the fathers that slumbered on in a well-earned repose, and +which, far from desiring new readers, were so old that they were glad to +rest undisturbed,--being far too self-important to confuse a considerate +regard for their repose with neglect. And many of them were really quite +valuable as decoration, because of their fine old coats of gilded +leather; and such were ranged in the more penetrable shadows or even in +the lamp-light. Theophilus would point to them as to a portrait-gallery +of dead ancestors. One might admire the quaint and distinguished cut of +their clothes without dreaming of wearing the same,--and indeed old +divinity, he used to say, was poor food for young divines.</p> + +<p>His divinity indeed was fed on the technical side, it is to be feared, +by the more destructive biblical criticism, like most destructive +engines, coming all the way from Germany, and at its more vital centres +by importations of strong meat from Russia and Scandinavia. Tolstoi and +Ibsen were his archprophets.</p> + +<p>There was likewise a great Paris moralist called Zola, and a strange old +American father called Walt Whitman. And beauty, that can never be far +away from strength, found many new and wonderful prophets in that little +library,--poets and painters and musicians of whom hardly anyone else in +Coalchester had yet heard, and certainly no one above the age of +twenty-five.</p> + +<p>Surely youth is in nothing more marvellous than in its mysterious power +of attracting to itself into the most out-of-the-way places the +sustenance and companionship it needs. In the unlikeliest wilderness +inspired youth is never without the mysteriously-brought food and the +company of angels. Powers of the air will sweep across continents to +rescue it from prison, soft gales travel from south to north to sow +seeds of beauty in its narrow ways, and little songs will flutter like +butterflies for hundreds of miles to cheer its heart.</p> + +<p>The Time-Spirit had given its angels charge concerning these young +people, and, remote as they were from all the fiery centres of thought +and the dreaming schools of art, Zion Place, no less than the Rue de +Rivoli, took its thought of the newest and its beauty of the best.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER</h3> + +<p>I have said that Coalchester was a very ignorant old town. I did not +mean to imply that there were no M.A.'s there. In fact, there were quite +a number. You may be sure that if spiritual and intellectual life had +its representatives, as we have seen, spiritual and intellectual death +had its representatives, too--by which I don't mean either to imply that +the M.A.'s were dead M.A.'s, dead and buried with Latin over them in the +old brassed and effigied church, which was so old and large that it was +hardly less conceited than a cathedral. Spiritual and intellectual death +in Coalchester, as elsewhere, was officially represented by the Literary +and Philosophical Society, which still unblushingly went on retaining +its adjectives, even in the face of its "Transactions," which seemed +mainly composed of treasurer's reports, with an occasional paper +on fossils.</p> + +<p>Indeed the one spark of life in the pathetic old society was its real +interest in the antediluvian and prehistoric. For the life that was dead +it had a perfect passion, and it sometimes held conversaziones to gaze +at it through microscopes. Occasionally it would waken up to literature +with a paper on Akenside. In everything that didn't in the least matter +some of these mild old gentlemen were genuinely learned. Not that they +hadn't read the great poets, even in the original Greek, Latin, and +Italian. Poets in dead and foreign languages were a form of fossils, and +English poets--with that divine bloom upon them!--they had a way of +fossilising by spectacles, so that they never read them alive. Thus they +had never read Shakespeare even in the original.</p> + +<p>Once, long ago in Coalchester, a hundred years ago, there had been a +little circle of elegant literati, connoisseurs of literature and +art,--men, so far as men of that age might be, genuinely, if timidly and +old-maidishly, affectionate towards belles-lettres; men who had got so +far as to appreciate the freshness of an Elizabethan song; minor Bishops +Percy; and such lavender is the true love of anything that their +memories still hung about the walls of the old Lyceum along with their +portraits; while so necessary are great names for little towns to boast +of, that the compiler of the local gazetteer implied that Coalchester +glowed at night with quite a lustre from their names. Besides, they +proved very useful in damping young men. And yet you wouldn't know their +names if I were to write them--as I would rather like to do.</p> + +<p>The learned Dr. Sibley, he wrote a pleasant little essay on "Taste," you +know, with a few additional notes on chiaroscuro; and then there was +the learned Dr. Ambrose, who wrote quite a pretty little treatise on +Song-writing.</p> + +<p>No! Of course you won't know any of them. Yet they were all once, and +are still, "The Learned." You'll never hear Theophilus Londonderry +spoken of as that, I'm afraid.</p> + +<p>As it is the property of fame to grow with time, and the way of a great +name to begin with brains and end with lords, a great man's descendants +are not unnaturally found persons of much greater consequence than the +original great one. In like manner the dignity and importance of the +members of the Literary and Philosophical Society had grown, in direct +ratio to their distance from the original founders of it; and the +learned Doctors Sibley and Ambrose, who really did know something about +art and poetry and certainly loved them, can never have been persons of +such consequence as one or two of their descendants who are nameless, +and who certainly knew nothing about either.</p> + +<p>One of the real objects of this sad little Society was passionately to +ignore what they contemptuously called local talent. It is true that +there was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded +to their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry +his chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he +suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitation +read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication +that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of +acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society of +Coalchester.</p> + +<p>Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman,"--a name +which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason that +it conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing for the young +man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that had +spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he rose to give +his paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full carrying voice, +and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes through +the old Lyceum: "W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n."</p> + +<p>Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled a +funeral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of dead +learning. The Canon in the chair smiled benignantly, with an expression +that I can only compare to buttered rolls. He was just three hundred +years old that very day, and the audience (a scanty fifty or so) ran +from a hundred and fifty upwards. The only young men present besides the +lecturer were two friends of his I have yet to introduce,--Rob +Clitheroe, a fiery young poet and pamphleteer of many ambitions, and +James Whalley (little James Whalley he was always called) a gentle lover +of letters, with perhaps the most delicate taste in the whole little +coterie; <i>and</i> Mr. Moggridge,--not entirely comfortable, it having been +by some mysterious atmospheric effect conveyed to him that he was a +tradesman and a dissenter, in which latter capacity he felt a certain +traditional resentment towards his complacent fellow listeners. A quite +recent ancestor had refused to pay tithes. That ancestor was in his +blood to-night.</p> + +<p>Jenny was not there. Ladies were not admitted to the meetings of the +Society, there being a sort of implication that masonries of learning, +occult sciences of the brain, were practised at their meetings,--matters +which never came out in the "Transactions."</p> + +<p>The lecture was a straightforward and eloquent account of Whitman's +writings and doctrines, with extracts from "The Leaves of Grass;" and +from beginning to end you might have heard a pin drop, particularly +during one or two of the quotations. When it was ended the buttered-roll +expression had faded from the Canon's face, and his "our young friend" +expression was ready for the chairman's remarks. Londonderry's sitting +down awakened a few sad echoes that were no doubt hand-clappings, but +seemed like the napping of the wings of night-birds frightened by a +light. But the Lit-and-Phils were not frightened; they were entirely +bewildered and rather indignant, that was all. It was characteristic of +their incapacity to grasp the humanity of any subject, even when it was +dangerous, that the criticism which followed was directed almost +entirely against Whitman's metrical vagaries. This was not poetry! Had +not their revered founder, the learned Dr. Ambrose ...</p> + +<p>The Canon kindly said, showing his pastoral interest in the local +newspaper, that the verses which their young friend Mr. Rob Clitheroe, +who was present with them that evening, occasionally contributed to the +Coalchester "Argus" were in his opinion better poetry than anything Walt +Whitman had written, though he confessed that his acquaintance with +Walt Whitman was of the slightest. This disastrous compliment sent the +blood to young Clitheroe's cheeks, and he felt surer than ever that he +would never be a real poet,--though, as a matter of fact, he had written +some quite pretty lines.</p> + +<p>It was an occasion that of course only the Lit-and-Phils could take +seriously, and the way home to New Zion was a laughter of four beneath +the stars,--Mr. Moggridge's deep guffaws coming every now and again, +like the bay of some distant watch-dog, at the young minister's +brilliant mimicry of the ancient men they had left behind.</p> + +<p>Then the gentle voice of little James Whalley took advantage of a +silence: "Isn't it high time that we brought the Renaissance to +Coalchester?"</p> + +<p>"Capital!" cried Londonderry; "come in for a bit of supper, all of you, +and let us talk over the plan of campaign."</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER</h3> + +<p>Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had an +excellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of old +Mrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronological +method of remembering great occasions and startling events by the food +of the day. Thus, for example, when with eyes that would still fill with +tears, though it was ten years ago, she would tell the story of how her +only boy had been brought home dead one night from an accident at his +workshop, she would fix the date by saying, "It was about six o'clock at +night, and I'd just got a nice little bit of liver and bacon cooking for +your father's dinner, when there came a knock at the door ..." +Sometimes it was, "I'd just sent Liz out for a little bit of fish," or +it would be Spanish onions maybe, or a lovely little rabbit, that +marked the day.</p> + +<p>The night when the attack on Coalchester was planned was marked, as I +have said, by rabbit-pie. Mrs. Talbot would hardly have understood the +significance of that rabbit-pie, though in the course of her occasional +bobbings in and out of the room, to see that the young men were doing +justice to her food,--she had a curious notion that young men never ate +enough,--she would hear snatches of what she called "deep talk," or +shake her old head at her coming son-in-law, whom she already adored and +mothered, with a "Law! what a boy it is!" She wasn't quite sure +sometimes as to the soundness of his "doctrine," but wisely decided that +her business was rather with his stomach than his brains,--which no +doubt God Almighty would look after for himself.</p> + +<p>Wit at the expense of Coalchester can only be of interest to +Coalchester wits and their butts, so I shall not record the bright and +animated talk which helped to digest Mrs. Talbot's rabbit-pie, but +confine myself to a practical outcome of it.</p> + +<p>What interests me specially about these young men was their rare +practicality. They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, with +ideas they had no notion how to embody. Dreamers, of course, they +were,--otherwise there had been no point in their being practical,--but +they were dreamers who understood something of how dreams are best got +on to the market of realities.</p> + +<p>Characteristically, it was the poet of the party from whom the most +practical suggestion came. In itself, of course, there was no great +originality in the idea of a weekly paper to be called "The Dawn," +devoted to the dissemination of the new light on every possible +subject,--politics and municipal misgovernment; the new social ideals; +the newest and most delicate forms of art, music, and literature. It +was in the suggested method of publication and circulation that the +originality lay. The paper was to be given away and made to pay its +expenses by tradesmen's advertisements, a guarantee of a certain minimum +distribution being given. This method had, of course, been tried before +for purposes of mere publicity, but never, I think, for the +dissemination of truth and beauty. The truth about life was to be paid +for by lies about bacon and butter,--or, let us say, business +exaggerations rendered innocuous by custom, and therefore as harmless +as truth.</p> + +<p>Obviously Mr. Moggridge, who not unnaturally had felt a sense of moving +about in worlds not realised during much of the deep talk, was here an +authority of importance, and the idea at once appealed to him. He would +promise a permanent advertisement, and he even promised illustrations, +in the form of blocks already engraved and occasionally used by the +"Argus," of the flourishing shops at 33, 34, 35 High Street, and 58, 59 +Zion Street. He had also some blocks of gigantic hams most hammily +pictured, which might also be of use, and he would also be able to bring +in a number of his fellow tradesmen. Invaluable Mr. Moggridge! What were +truth without you!</p> + +<p>The poet, on his part, guaranteed to supply all the poetry that might be +required, and indeed agreed to do special rhyming advertisements, at, +say, half a guinea apiece. He would also assist Londonderry in the +political and municipal departments, not only in the higher flights, but +lend a hand even in castigations of local jobs, abuses, and absurdities.</p> + +<p>Gentle James Whalley would write round-about essays, for which he had a +charming gift, and generally take in charge the aesthetic interests of +the paper, though, as all were lovers of art and literature, those +subjects would be handled now by one and now by another. Even Jenny was +to have her place on the staff, and write dress articles, which would +not only tend to improve the aspect of Coalchester streets, but attract +millinery advertisements. She already announced the title of her first +article, which was very grand: "Dress as a form of self-expression."</p> + +<p>It was two in the morning before the proceedings terminated, and even +then good old Mrs. Talbot was still up to press steaming bumpers of very +hot whisky and water upon the wayfarers; "to keep the cold out," she +explained--though I need hardly say that the project had not waited till +that hour to be suitably recommended to the god of all enterprises.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<br> + +<h3>"THE DAWN."</h3> + +<p>Next to the delight of holding new and unpopular opinions is the delight +of having a medium for their unedited expression, though this is a +delight given to few reformers. "The Dawn," however, was to be such a +medium; and when the first number appeared, as it did nearly a month +from the meeting recorded in the last chapter, four people, nay, +five--for we mustn't forget Mr. Moggridge--were supremely happy. With +the exception of the poet, who, as we have seen, occasionally irradiated +the poet's corner of the "Argus," and Mr. Moggridge, it was a first +appearance in print for three out of the five contributors; and though +each talked most of the articles by the others, they were secretly +longing to get away with the little paper to some corner where they +could gloat over their own special contribution.</p> + +<p>Not that they had any ridiculous ideas of the literary importance of the +articles in question, but because it seemed so strange to see the warm +words of their mouths thus condensed into cold print, so strange to +think that people all over Coalchester were reading them. Little Jenny +in particular felt quite a cold but pleasant shiver of notoriety as she +thought of it, while to her lover the delighted perusal and reperusal of +a large-type leading article, headed "In Darkest Coalchester!" brought a +new sense of power.</p> + +<p>The poet, as was only to be expected, had his little grievance with the +printer, who, in spite of all his remonstrances and corrections in +proof,--the printer was a little wrong-headed Scotchman,--had insisted +at the last moment in heading his Tyrtean "Proem," a fine aerial +trumpet-blast somewhat Shelleyan in style, with the word that was +evidently intended, namely, "Poem." However, he was somewhat consoled by +reading his caustic column of notes headed "The World outside +Coalchester," the very heading of which was a revelation. Then, too, he +very much enjoyed his article on "Bad Lighting in Coalchester," with its +evident allegoric insinuation that Coalchester needed lighting in more +ways than one, and that "The Dawn" was prepared to undertake, free of +charge, the top-lighting of which it was most in need.</p> + +<p>James Whalley contributed a review of "Mr. Swinburne's new Poems," +through which article Mr. Moggridge's illustrated hams plainly showed +from the other side.</p> + +<p>New truth is too often printed in very worn-out type, but the promoters +of "The Dawn" had wisely remembered how hard truth is to read, and had +given it good clear type, and generally made it a very comely and +attractive little paper. It bore a motto that sounded almost like a +threat, "We come to stay,"--a boast which it manfully kept for several +years. As I lift my eyes from this paper, they rest on no less than ten +great half-yearly volumes, which flash "The Dawn"--"The Dawn"--along a +darksome folio shelf, as they have flashed it week after week across +darkest Coalchester; and "The Dawn" ceased, at length, not from lack of +power and encouragement to continue, but because the world had grown +sadder by then, and it had lost the will to go on living.</p> + +<p>In spite of this hardy existence, I suppose "The Dawn" will win no +record of itself in the histories of the press, though merely as +spirited journalism it deserves to do so; while in the history of the +human spirit at Coalchester it demands a grateful celebration such as it +will, again, most surely not receive from the literary and philosophical +historian of the town. At all events, honoured or forgotten as it may +be, should you ever come across its strange young pages, I know you will +agree with me that it was a wonderful little paper. It was not, you may +suspect, conservative, being, as it was, very alive and very young. In +fact, its radiant radicalism brings tears to one's eyes to-day, when so +many of the noble ideals it championed, to the length and strength of +its little angry arm, are lying smashed beneath the iron blows of the +capitalism that has outlived even the noble eloquence of Theophilus +Londonderry.</p> + +<p>Like all young people, it was all for the young, the new; and I think +you will be astonished, if you do ever turn over its pages, at the +remarkable instinct for the crescent life possessed by these young men; +and, were it worth while, I could easily prove that several of the more +exquisite continental writers, now the fashion this many a year, first +found a humble welcome in that quaint little organ of New Zion.</p> + +<p>Yes! it was a triumph for New Zion too. This modest and hitherto obscure +corner of the town suddenly found itself, comparatively, in a blaze of +publicity, for a column headed "Work at New Zion," evidently meant to be +weekly, left no doubt from what quarter of the town the dawn was to be +looked for. This was perhaps the most delightful thing about the +paper,--its calm assumption that the real aristocracy of the town was to +be found in that little back street, and that, if Coalchester was to +have any spiritual or intellectual life, it must seek it there. In Zion +Street, and nowhere else in Coalchester, were the angels descending into +the waters. And the best part of the joke was that the assumption was +literally true.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> +<br> + +<h3>HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER</h3> + +<p>Coalchester was too much taken by surprise by "The Dawn" to pretend to +ignore it, and its first recognition was appropriately made in a +ludicrously abusive article in "The Argus,"--"the one-eyed Argus," as it +was mockingly nicknamed in the next week's issue of the new paper. The +joke was one that was lost on Coalchester, which had never dreamed of +expecting a hundred eyes in its "Argus," which to it was but the usual +name for a sleeping newspaper. It was, however, to do them justice, seen +and chuckled over by one or two members of the Literary and +Philosophical Society. "The young beggars know their--classical +dictionary, at all events," said one of them maliciously, which was +quite bright for a Lit-and-Phil.</p> + +<p>One tangible result of the little paper was the almost immediate +doubling of the attendance at New Zion. Curiosity had been aroused in +this militant young minister with the strange ideas, and Theophilus +Londonderry wished for nothing better than to gratify it. In the oxygen +of success even the dullest metals will scintillate, and it needed but +such small beginnings of his future to make Theophilus as nearly +irresistible as natural gifts and success together can make a man.</p> + +<p>Some people go to chapel to worship, a few to learn, but most, odd as it +may sound, to be entertained. A vivid and magnetic preacher is as near +as many will allow themselves to approach the theatre. Theophilus was a +born actor--of himself; a part so few can or dare play. He gave you good +stimulating truth; but it was not so much in the newness of the ideas +which he passed on from his books to his hearers, as in the newness of +himself, that of course the charm lay. A few people, not many or +important, disliked him; but all had to listen, and a good many came to +New Zion again. Above all, the women heard him gladly; and to this sure +sign of a future Theophilus was far from blind. "He has women at his +back, he cannot fail," was a phrase he sometimes recalled out of his +favourite <i>Brand</i>. Yes, and had he not one little angel-woman at +his side?</p> + +<p>It had been the spring of 1886 when he came to New Zion. It was now the +autumn, and early in September announcements had been made of a series +of autumnal lectures to be given by the Rev. Theophilus Londonderry; Rob +Clitheroe, Esquire; James Whalley, Esquire; and other distinguished +lecturers, at New Zion.</p> + +<p>In the list were papers on "The Duty of Novel Reading," "Henrik Ibsen," +"A Morris Wall-Paper," "The Nude in Art," and "The Darwinian Theory," +by Mr. Londonderry himself; "Coalchester, its Past and its Future," by +Mr. Rob Clitheroe; together with "Ireland's Sacred Right to Home Rule," +by the same lecturer; "Wagner and the New Music," by Mr. James Whalley, +with a paper on "Some Really New Books," by the same; and a paper-on +"Good Taste in Dress," by Miss Jenny Talbot--the virago!</p> + +<p>The batteries were to be turned on poor Coalchester with a vengeance. +For some time past there had been uneasy suspicions in the town that +strange and somewhat ungodly forms of new learning and beauty were being +stored as in an arsenal in that little house at 3 Zion Place. A large +cast of the Venus of Milo, it was known, had come from Covent Garden, +London, <i>via</i> a poor little dealer in artistic materials in the town, +who on one occasion had shown a bewildering picture to one of his +customers with the remark, "What do you make of this, Mr. Littlejohn?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Littlejohn could make nothing of it, nor indeed could the artists' +colourman, who had been used to pictures all his life.</p> + +<p>No wonder, for it was the first Rossetti that had ever been seen in +Coalchester.</p> + +<p>And it was the same at the little paperhanger's shop where Theophilus +had ordered some pieces of Morris wall-paper for his room.</p> + +<p>"Law! what a taste, to be sure!" had exclaimed the paperhanger's wife as +they opened the parcel. "How any one dare live with such patterns is +beyond me." The paperhanger's wife verbed better than she knew. Few are +those indeed who dare live with beauty.</p> + +<p>When the paper was hung in Theophil's room, so great was the sensation +in the household that even old Mr. Talbot ventured to look in at it, +keeping very close to his wife. It was so the old man had stood +open-mouthed before the first steam-engine, and here again was the Devil +plainly at work.</p> + +<p>"Lord a-mercy, Jane," he said to his wife, "what is the world coming +to?"</p> + +<p>The world was indeed changing beneath the old man's feet, and the +heavens opening as never before in his time--with, he might be right, +some assistance from beneath; and--it was undoubtedly safer in +the kitchen.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Talbot in these matters lived and loved by faith in her boy, as she +called him. But even she had her doubts, which she expressed in a way +that showed, funny old woman as she was, that she was not without a sort +of blind insight.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's all right, boy," she said, "and it sounds silly to say +about a lot of harmless lines and flowers, but it seems to your old +mother that there's something wrong about that paper,--something almost +wicked in it. It reminds me of that nasty music you and Jenny are so +fond of playing."</p> + +<p>Here Theophil enveloped her in a huge hug, and laughingly mocked her +with playful caresses, smiling to himself all the same. For the music +she had referred to was Dvorak.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY</h3> + +<p>Meanwhile, as New Zion moved and hummed and whizzed, and as "The Dawn" +went on dawning week by week,--you couldn't expect the dawn oftener than +once a week in Coalchester,--the love of Jenny and Theophil grew more +and more perfect.</p> + +<p>There was a long while to wait yet before Jenny was to bear what seemed +to her the finest of all names, for old Mrs. Talbot, easily manageable +as a rule, had a way of quietly putting her foot down on occasion that +would have surprised you. Jenny was only just passed nineteen, and was +no fit wife for any man yet, least of all for a great sprawling fellow +like that. Let her get a little more flesh on her bones, something more +than all spirit and nerves, let her get well turned twenty, and it might +be thought of, but not now.</p> + +<p>No! it's no use coming with your nonsense, you silly big fellow! You +know when the soft old mother says a thing, she means it.</p> + +<p>So it proved. Old Mrs. Talbot on this point remained a homely form of +adamant. However, the lovers were not badly off. Living in the same +house, they saw almost as much of each other as if they had been +married, and from the evenings she spent there, Jenny had come to regard +Theophil's room and his books as hers too.</p> + +<p>She had developed wonderfully in these months, had Jenny. She was a real +little great man's wife now; and as Theophil looked at her, with her lit +eager face, her whole soul so alive to help him in however humble a way, +her whole life his, his, his,--such love seemed almost tragic in its +very beauty and joy. It was so irremediably--love. At times he almost +trembled before it. He would almost chide her with its divine +completeness.</p> + +<p>What if he were to be taken from her? Oughtn't she to keep just a little +of herself for foothold? We ought all to belong to ourselves as well as +to another. It was such a risk. Suppose he were to die, Jenny!</p> + +<p>No doubt it was very wise, but Jenny was wiser. She could never belong +to herself again. She was his, and his only, for ever; and if he +died--if he were to be taken away ...</p> + +<p>But he could never be taken from her any other way? No one else, nothing +but death, could take him ...</p> + +<p>"No, nothing but death--and perhaps not even death."</p> + +<p>"You are sure, darling? O, you are quite, quite sure?"</p> + +<p>"Sure from my soul, little child. Look in it and see."</p> + +<p>A lover's eyes are his soul.</p> + +<p>Yes, Theophil loved Jenny, loved her even more with her own dependence +on love than he knew of. He was, the reader need scarcely be told, an +almost wildly ambitious man, and a few months ago he would have said +that there was nothing which was more to him than the expression of the +power that was in him. But there was something that was even more to him +now, and if it could be imagined that he might some day be asked to +choose between his ambition and Jenny, he could honestly have answered +from his soul, "Give me Jenny."</p> + +<p>Whoever thinks this an easily natural answer to make, may know something +about love, but evidently knows little about ambition. Still, life +seldom sets us such silly examination questions as that, and need one +say that that question was never put to Jenny's lover? He was far too +proud of the woman he had made of that little measure of porcelain and +that handful of stars.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION</h3> + +<p>The winter months had gone by; all but one of those incendiary lectures +had been given, not without storm and tempest; "The Dawn" still came up +each week with anger and singing, and the first year of Londonderry's +ministry at New Zion neared its close. The lecture season was presently +to end, on the last Friday in March, with a concert which was to include +a series of recitations by a lady-reciter from London. Londonderry had +written to a lecture agency for the name of a likely reciter, man or +woman, and they had sent him the name of Isabel Strange.</p> + +<p>On the occasion of the last lecture, Mr. Moggridge had not been +satisfied with the colour of the platform. It wanted repainting, and I +think it very likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which I +hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of +house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great +smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. +Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought +nothing honest beneath him.</p> + +<p>It was the Friday of the entertainment, about one o'clock, and though +Mr. Moggridge had practically finished the work the day before, he had +slipped in during his lunch-hour to give it a final touch or two. He had +brought his lunch in the form of a pork-pie, and while with one hand he +plunged the pie occasionally among his red whiskers, with the other he +would lean forward and touch up a knot or a nail-hole that needed a +little more paint. And he was proud as a boy of the simple bit of +slap-dashing, and entirely absorbed in it and the pork-pie.</p> + +<p>Presently he became aware that he was not alone. Someone had entered +the schoolroom at the far end. He turned round, with the paint-brush in +one hand and the pork-pie in the other, and became abashed, for a +beautiful lady had entered the room and was evidently about to make an +enquiry. The surreptitiousness that seems to inhere in pork-pies +prompted Mr. Moggridge to slip the pie into his trousers' pocket--for +his coat was off, and a white apron had taken its place.</p> + +<p>"Just doing a little bit of amateur painting," he explained rather +awkwardly, advancing to the lady.</p> + +<p>"So I see," said the lady, with a pleasant smile. "This, I believe, is +Zion Chapel--and I suppose this is the room where I am to recite. My +name is Isabel Strange, and I have come a little earlier, I daresay, +than you expected; but I always like to see the room I'm to recite +in--just to try my voice in and run over my pieces."</p> + +<p>"Certainly, of course," said Mr. Moggridge; "but you have come all the +way from London and so early. You will have some refreshment first, and +if you'll honour Mrs. Moggridge and me--I may as well explain that I am +the chief deacon," said Mr. Moggridge, dexterously slipping off his +painter's apron and getting into his coat. So, with a wistful glance at +his work of art, Mr. Moggridge carried off the beautiful London lady to +Zion View.</p> + +<p>But was Isabel Strange beautiful? It was a new sort of beauty if she +was--or perhaps a very old sort. Yet beautiful was the first word that +had sprung into Mr. Moggridge's mind as she had surprised him in the +schoolroom. Perhaps wonderful was the exacter word, wonderful in a way +that included beauty,--wonderful, and with a strange air about her that +suggested exceptional refinement, exquisite sensitiveness to +refined things.</p> + +<p>"Beautiful, O dear no!" said Mrs. Moggridge, to whom feminine beauty +did not appeal, as the young lady freshened herself up after her travel +in Mrs. Moggridge's best bedroom. "Why! she hasn't a regular feature in +her face!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Moggridge herself had neat little pretty features set in fat.</p> + +<p>"Look at that long upper lip and her nose!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Moggridge omitted mention of eyes singularly powerful and very true +and sweet, as also of a long lithe mouth that reminded you of a +beautiful serpent, a serpent which the true eyes plainly said would do +you no harm.</p> + +<p>Presently, however, Mrs. Moggridge had to admit that she was very +attractive. She knew she meant fascinating, but she wouldn't admit that +to Mr. Moggridge, who had dropped the subject; though a mind which again +had asserted its dim preference for new fashions was perhaps groping +after expression of some such perplexity as this: why, if a face has +the same effect upon you as beauty, may it not be described as +beautiful? If Mr. Moggridge really got so far even as cloudily to ponder +that, it is evident that he was not far from the kingdom of beauty.</p> + +<p>It is, of course, true enough that some faces are spoilt by flaws such +as every Mrs. Moggridge can point out,--faces that begin in one style +and end in another, half Greek perhaps and half Gothic; yet even such +faces, if their individuality is strong enough, have their own rococo +charm. For all but supremely great faces, of which perhaps the world has +not seen half-a-dozen, absolute regularity, so-called correctness, of +features is a calamity, and regular beauty on the ordinary human levels +is only another form of mediocrity.</p> + +<p>Wonderful English girls! face after face indistinguishable from each +other as rose after rose. How sweet you are! how fragrant! what a bloom! +It is a wonderful rose-girl-farm from which you come. How pretty you +look laced up one after another on your standards, and how skilfully +you are guarded against any form of variation! Perhaps no women +potteries in the world produce so exquisite a surface, delicate as a +lily and strong as marble. Indeed you are wonderful porcelain, you fair +English girls, wonderful porcelain; but where are the stars?</p> + +<p>Mrs. Moggridge had also remarked that Miss Strange was "very easy in her +manners." This was not always the case with ladies in Coalchester, and +Mrs. Moggridge did not mean the remark as an unreserved compliment. She +liked a certain stiffness in strangers. It was not, however, in Isabel +Strange's nature to oblige her in that particular. Her way of pouring +her grace into Mrs. Moggridge's great arm-chair suggested at once that +she had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly she +chatted as with an old acquaintance. You could not make a stranger of +her. She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely without +embarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies and +watched her.</p> + +<p>"That's an interesting face!" she said presently, pointing to a +conspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece.</p> + +<p>"That's Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge.</p> + +<p>"O! <i>that's</i> Mr. Londonderry, is it?" she said. "H'm,... I hadn't +expected him to be so young."</p> + +<p>"Yes! He's a wonderful young man for his position," said Mr. Moggridge, +started on what was now his favourite topic. "He'll be a great man some +day, will Mr. Londonderry."</p> + +<p>Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest. Such a genuine +interest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him.</p> + +<p>Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told of +its former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its present +prosperity.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here, +wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderry +came, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always something +going on at New Zion," he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr. +Moggridge did so love anything that was alive.</p> + +<p>Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn," and generally, as he +would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. At +the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this +young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of +surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of +the world,--perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic +wandering minstrel existence had brought her to.</p> + +<p>Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a very +young woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to +fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself +twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the +nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for +wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and +her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her +features for a long time to come. A face so full of the mystery of light +could only be eclipsed by one darkness, and even in that those magnetic +eyes would shine through the cold closed lids.</p> + +<p>Surprises were welcome to her, for she got few. Her life was rather a +dreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be. At one time +she had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough for +that, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a little +too fine for the stage. The positive and enduring joys of her life were +that she lived in London--for which she had the kind of passion that +some people have for the Earth-Mother--and loved beauty as some women +love religion. She had been loved many times, but never quite as she +needed, as she demanded, to be loved. Vivid, passionate, and exquisite, +she was what we call "modern" to the tips of her beautiful fingers; that +is, she united the newest opinions on all things with many ancient +charms. At the same time she was a good woman, though very wonderful and +highly dangerous.</p> + +<p>Presently Mr. Moggridge, who from where he sat commanded a view of the +street, exclaimed, "Why, here is Mr. Londonderry himself!" rising as he +spoke and passing into the hall, where he was met by a curiously rich +and mellow voice, which Isabel Strange thus heard for the first time; +and then the glorified original of the photograph entered the room.</p> + +<p>As her eyes and hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous +"Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to +flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given +Londonderry an "interesting face," as we have heard, but missed all the +rest--"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly +handsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of various +commands and appeals, thought on the brow and laughter in the eyes, +humour and eloquence all along the large and somewhat loose mouth, with +plenty of go in the powerful but not anxiously determined chin. These +were the moral qualities of the face, which Isabel Strange did not miss; +but it was the fascination of its general vitality that struck her most, +as an important introduction was made, to the usual fantastic +accompaniment of small talk.</p> + +<p>Let us not prolong the small-talk of the situation further, but +introduce Miss Strange as speedily as possible to Jenny also and to the +little study in 3 Zion Place.</p> + +<p>Here her eager examination of the shelves was one succession of cries +of sympathetic delight. "Why, you have got all the books I ever want to +read again!" she exclaimed. "What wonderful people you are! How have you +done it--in Zion Place?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose the books must have been blown here," answered Theophil, +gaily, "on the same fair wind that blew Miss Isabel Strange."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said little Jenny, affectionately pressing her shoulder as the +three leaned forward looking at the shelves, "for if we seem wonderful +people to you, what must you seem to us--here, as you may well say, in +Zion Place?"</p> + +<p>"What <i>does</i> she remind you of?" said Jenny presently, with candid +admiration. "I know! Why, of course, she just <i>is</i> the very woman. +Wait--I'll go and fetch it;" and Theophil and Isabel were thus left for +a moment or two alone,--a fact of no importance beyond this, that it was +the first moment in their lives that they had ever been together alone.</p> + +<p>Jenny returned presently with a small copy of Botticelli's "Primavera," +which hung in her bedroom; and it was undoubtedly true that the figure +of Flora might well have passed for a portrait of Isabel. The nose was a +little longer, that was all; but the rest of the face--particularly the +eyes and mouth--was all but exact, and the general correspondence +between the two faces in subtlety, strangeness, and, so to say, +determined refinement, was complete.</p> + +<p>"It is strange that I should have loved that face so," said Jenny.</p> + +<p>"It is very sweet of you,--Jenny, I had almost said,--but you are too +kind to me, and a little selfish too--you give me no time to admire you. +I wonder if Mr. Londonderry is modern enough to allow ladies to smoke in +his study."</p> + +<p>And thus it comes out that Jenny often smoked there!</p> + +<p>The smoking-sister is now almost as common as a taste for Botticelli, +and perhaps equally insincere; but in 1886 there still remained that +sense of contrast in both which we have declared the essence of romance. +At present those curious people who resent the popular acceptance of an +ideal of beauty which they have done their best to popularise are +beginning to affect that a taste for Botticelli is a mark of the +<i>bourgeoisie</i>. So does the whirligig of time bring in the paradoxer.</p> + +<p>A new kind of woman, while she is always the despairing hope of men, is +seldom acceptable to women; yet when the evening came and Isabel stood +up to recite in New Zion schoolroom, women as well as men were +instantaneously attracted. She stood very simply, with one hand lightly +touching the table at which Londonderry sat as chairman, and the other +at her side; and before she began her first recitation she glanced +quietly over the audience, as though her eyes were thus preparing the +proper magnetic atmosphere for her voice.</p> + +<p>She began with some simple Longfellow poem, that New Zion might feel at +home; then she recited a fairy poem called "The Forsaken Merman," which, +of course, was only a fairy tale, and yet somehow was so full of human +pathos that it was more real than if it had been really "real," that +is, prosaic.</p> + +<p>For impressing the imagination of her audience she relied mainly on her +own imagination and her voice; striking no attitudes, and allowing +herself nothing of that facial distortion which is the resort of the +unimaginative, and destroys not creates illusion. Of course, her face +changed, but the change was one of which she was probably unconscious, +and which she couldn't have reproduced to her mirror; it was not a play +of features, but a play of lights and shadows and nerves, a flow or an +ebb of radiance in the eyes, a subtle sensitiveness of the lips and +nerves; and her effect was mainly produced by her voice, over which she +wielded indescribable powers of modulation. It was a voice so +sympathetic, so intimate, that it almost seemed too intimate, too +appealingly sympathetic. It was so a woman might recite to a man she +loved, but you almost felt as though the voice were too personal a +revelation for an audience,--felt an impulse, so to say, to throw a veil +over it, though you were glad from your soul that no one threw it. And +the voice was a wonderful actor too. It could act the scenery as well. +You saw it all, you heard it all, you felt it all, in the voice:--the +great winds blowing shorewards, the wild white horses in the spray,</p> + +<blockquote> +"The white-walled town,<br> +And the little gray church on the windy shore;"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>and when she said, "Down, down, down!" you were indeed in the very +depths of the sea--and were all sitting, Mr. Moggridge with the rest, +amid coral caves and seaweed, and in a curious green and +shimmering light.</p> + +<p>But what a world of heart-break there was in her "Come, dear children, +come away!" You felt you simply couldn't bear her to say it again. Next +time you'd have to cry, and cry you did, and you weren't ashamed, for +suddenly when you came out of the trance of the voice you found that +every one else was crying too, and Mr. Londonderry had quite forgotten +that he was a chairman, and had to be nudged to announce the next piece.</p> + +<p>This was a very strange poem, and made you feel like a stained-glass +window; it was full of incense, but it was full of something else +too. It began</p> + +<blockquote> +"The blessed damozel leaned out<br> + From the gold bar of heaven" ...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>and there was something in the voice that suggested such a height up +above the world that you drew your breath lest she should fall over. And +there was a lover crying in the poem, you could hear him crying far +away down on the earth, and there were some lines which went:</p> + +<blockquote> +"We two will lie i' the shadow of<br> + That mystic living tree<br> + Within whose secret growth the Dove<br> + Is sometimes felt to be" ...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>that made you feel what a strange holy thing love was, after all; and +then there was a curious verse with nothing but women's names in it, yet +somehow it seemed the loveliest of all; and when again you came out of +the voice, you were not crying but feeling wonderfully blest somehow and +rather frightened. Jenny sent a wonderful look to Theophil--it was so +they should bathe together in God's sight--and Theophil sent back as +wonderful a look as a chairman dare venture on. Otherwise, of course, it +would have been as wonderful as Jenny's.</p> + +<p>Thus did Isabel Strange recite at New Zion; and perhaps one can best +judge of the impression she made, from the fact that the little boys at +the back, who during the last lecture on "Henrik Ibsen" had discovered +a most exciting new way of making continued existence possible, quite +forgot it and would have to keep it for Sunday afternoon Sunday-school.</p> + +<p>Everyone went home in a dream, and little Jenny shone like a light with +the excitement and wonder of it all.</p> + +<p>"How wonderful you are! Doesn't it seem strange to be so wonderful?" +said Jenny afterwards, as the two girls took off their outdoor things in +Jenny's room.</p> + +<p>"Dear child!" said Isabel, kissing Jenny on her brow, "it is you that +are wonderful."</p> + +<p>There is no joy in the world better worth seeing, better worth living, +than the joy of young people with the same dreams, the same thoughts, +and--so important--the same words for them, blown together by some +unexpected conjunction of the four winds, met by some blissful +dispensation of the planets of youth.</p> + +<p>There have been periods in history especially favourable for the ecstasy +of such meetings, early mornings of the human spirit, when lovely new +truth and lovely new beauty were dawning wild and dewy in the strange +east, and while the deep breathing of the older generations still asleep +made a more wonderful loneliness of dawn, for the hushed and happy bands +of young people holding each other's hands and watching in the +magic twilight.</p> + +<p>To have been young in Italy in the time of Dante, in England in the time +of Shakespeare, and to have met in such a mighty morning--with danger +too to keep us grateful. Ah, we have missed those dawns; and yet I doubt +if the whole recovered beauty of Greece and Rome, or the thrilling new +fashions in romance and poetry wafted across the seas from Italy to help +make Shakespeare, ever gave young people a keener thrill of newness and +mystery than the books and pictures so eagerly discussed by the little +group that gathered over supper that night in 3 Zion Place.</p> + +<p>To have read "The House of Life!"--to have seen the "Venus +Verticordia"! Ah! that was life! And Isabel had actually been to Mr. +G.F. Watts's studio--walked about there a whole afternoon. The young New +Zioners looked at her.</p> + +<p>"O Theophil, we <i>must</i> go to London," cried Jenny. She meant when they +were married.</p> + +<p>Theophil pressed her hand tenderly, as she impulsively sought his for +sympathy, and his eyes left Isabel's face a moment to smile a true "yes" +into Jenny's.</p> + +<p>Of course no one had eyes for anyone but Isabel that night. Was she not, +as the announcements had said, "of London," an ambassadress of beauty +from the capital of the great queen? There was really little she could +tell these clever young people, who amazed and attracted her by their +reality,--the unrealities of "intensity" and "modernity" and the rest +had, of course, already begun in London,--but she represented to them +the sparkle of the new beauty and truth they loved. She knew little +intimate anecdotes of the poets and painters they loved, piquant gossip +and brilliant <i>mots</i>; and then she was one of those women who are like +incense in a room, enriching by her very presence, exhaling mystery and +distinction, like a pomander of strange spices.</p> + +<p>You might love her for a long time or a little, but love her you were +obliged to while you were with her, whoever else you loved too. There +was no other word for it. Even little James Whalley had conscience-pangs +as he looked at Isabel, for he had been engaged for five years; but the +poet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was already +burnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. The +inflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state of +ignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature has +made them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, +indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not go +on maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of the +conditions of their precarious art that they must daily expose +themselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of the +emotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear their +death-song amid the flames.</p> + +<p>Theophil?</p> + +<p>Well, we can talk of Theophil again. Meanwhile Jenny was as much in love +with her herself, and he held Jenny's hand and loved her, O yes, so +dearly--and was quite safe. Fear not, little Jenny; it was only death, +you remember, that was to separate Jenny and Theophil.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Talbot--if she won't bore you--had made an interesting remark. She +had not escaped Isabel's charm, but there was "something," something a +little alarming about her,--a little like that wicked wall-paper.</p> + +<p>Jenny divulged this criticism over supper when her mother was out of +ear-shot.</p> + +<p>"How very clever of her!" exclaimed Isabel.</p> + +<p>"She said the same of Dvorak's music," said Jenny.</p> + +<p>"Good again," said Isabel. "How clever of her! Don't you feel how right +she is? We are all like that wall-paper, and everything we care about is +like it. The New Spirit--that is, the devil--is in that wall-paper. A +psychometrist could detect Wagner and Keats, and Schopenhauer, and +Rossetti and Swinburne, and all the rest of them in that wall-paper, +just as surely as he could have detected Tupper and Eliza Cook in the +wall-papers of 1851. Am I not right?"</p> + +<p>"If we could only paper New Zion like this!" exclaimed Theophil, a +curious new feeling of joy and pain shooting through him to hear a woman +thus expressing herself as an independent brain.</p> + +<p>"Yes! New Zion! I'd quite forgotten all about New Zion. It seems +impossible to think of you together."</p> + +<p>"And a little absurd, I suppose," said Theophil.</p> + +<p>"It is uncouth material, I admit," he continued, "and yet somehow it +amuses us to mould it all the more; and then you mustn't forget that we +had been given no other--but I don't suppose you can understand?" +(Theophil often used "we" in this imperatorial sense, meaning himself, +as of course he had every right to mean.)</p> + +<p>"O yes, but I can," Isabel hastened to correct. "I understand power."</p> + +<p>"Beauty always does," was the young minister's reply.</p> + +<p>"Besides," he presently resumed, "we are glad to have been +Nonconformists--once. A Puritan training is a good thing--to look back +upon. You are all the more thorough in your pleasures, the truer +humanist, for something of it still lurking in your blood."</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course you're right. I don't like the word 'pagan'; but for +want of a better, we might say that the best pagans have come of Puritan +stock. Besides, it is half the romance of life to have something to +escape from, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"And someone to escape with the other half," responded Theophil, nimble +as a real town wit.</p> + +<p>O it was a wonderful night. Let us build five tabernacles!</p> + +<p>"Good-night, dear Jenny."</p> + +<p>"Good-night, dear wonderful Isabel."</p> + +<p>So at last the two girls bade each other good-night at the door of +Jenny's bedroom, where Isabel was to sleep.</p> + +<p>Masterful youth! So wild to take, so eager to surrender, the Christian +name. Strange, what passion sometimes can be put into a +<i>Christian</i> name!</p> + +<p>When the door was shut on Isabel, she made no haste to undress. Indeed, +she sat down on the side of the bed as though she had been waiting to +sit down for ever so long, sat very still as in a dream, and an hour +went by and she was still sitting and gazing in front of her.</p> + +<p>And downstairs in the study, where the lamps were still burning, +Theophil was sitting by the fire in just the same curiously wrought and +withdrawn way, with just the same eyes.</p> + +<p>Isabel's room was over his. Presently she heard him moving about; then +she heard him coming upstairs. For a moment the air seemed to grow warm, +as she heard him softly pass her room; then she heard him close +his door.</p> + +<p>She shook her reverie from her, as though it had been a black veil full +of stars, and began to undress. Presently her eyes fell on a little pile +of handkerchiefs, with needle and cotton, and little letters printed on +dainty tapes, beside it. Jenny had forgotten to put away her sewing.</p> + +<p>Isabel took up one of the handkerchiefs, to which the needle and thread +were still attached, and read "Jenny Lond ..." (Don't you know that's +bad luck, Jenny?)</p> + +<p>"So soon as that! Is it so soon as that?" she sighed.</p> + +<p>Happy Jenny!</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE</h3> + +<p>Isabel was leaving very early next morning for London, so good-byes must +be brief. Jenny and Theophil saw her off at the station, but before +leaving Zion Place there had been a moment in which for the second time +in their lives she and Theophil had been alone.</p> + +<p>They had stood together in the little study and taken each other's +hands, without a word, and they had looked into each other's faces as +those look whom a look must last a long time.</p> + +<p>They didn't even say good-bye, for, if they were never to meet again, +the look was not good-bye. And meet again it was not unlikely they +would, for it had been already arranged that Isabel was to lead off the +autumn entertainments; but the look did not mean that, either. As life +had been planned for them, all subsequent meetings must be merely +trivialities. They had met once, and fate had decided that they must +never meet like that again. In that long look each knew that they met +and parted for ever, autumn arrangements notwithstanding.</p> + +<p>Each came out of that look as out of a great cathedral, and from that +moment till the train left Theophil, with an unwonted sense of +loneliness, by Jenny's side, they entered that cathedral no more. Their +devotions were done for that day, and they must resume their secular +duties, rippling idly over the great deeps of themselves.</p> + +<p>One always leaves a station from which a dear friend has just gone with +a certain subdued air, a certain bereaved hush in the voice, and even +Jenny felt a momentary loneliness too. But it was not long before the +doors of home opened again for her in the sound of Theophil's voice; +and in the sense of the old familiar nearness to him she was back again +safe in the only world she ever wished to dwell in.</p> + +<p>It was more of an effort with Theophil, and the voice that made home for +Jenny had a strange sound in his own ears, as though it were still +talking to Isabel; but the effort was soon made, and though Jenny teased +him a little and said she believed he had quite lost his, that was to +say <i>her</i>, heart to Isabel, of course she believed no such thing. Doubt +is too terrible a toy for true love to play with. You only dare to doubt +as you must sometimes face the fear of death.</p> + +<p>"I wish next October were here," said Jenny, artlessly; "it seems such a +long time to wait to see her again."</p> + +<p>Did Theophil wish the same? He hardly knew.</p> + +<p>"Distance is such a silly thing," went on Jenny. "It seems to have been +invented just to separate those who want to be together. It seems so +arbitrary, so unnecessary."</p> + +<p>"I suppose death is a form of distance," said Theophil, irrelevantly.</p> + +<p>"Life too, I'm afraid," said Jenny.</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed, life too," assented Theophil, dreamily.</p> + +<p>"If I were to die," said Jenny, suddenly, "would you still do what we +said?"</p> + +<p>"Why do you ask that, dear? You're a very serious little woman this +morning. Of course I would. You know. But why do you ask me now?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, only, dear, because I wonder whether we really ought to. Somehow +Isabel's visit has made me feel that life is a bigger, fuller thing than +I had dreamed, and that men like you, at all events, have duties towards +it even greater than your love for a little thing like me."</p> + +<p>"Jenny dear, don't talk like that. Why should you? You don't surely +doubt my love!"</p> + +<p>"Of course not, Theophil. It was only my silly little brain thinking +for once in a while,--and I don't mean to be unkind, but really I rather +mean it. Are you still quite sure there is nothing in the world more +important than love?"</p> + +<p>"Quite sure," he answered; "surer than ever--if that were possible. You +are not beginning to doubt that? Certainly it is a silly little brain, +if that's what its thinking is coming to."</p> + +<p>"I don't mean it for myself. Little women have nothing but love to think +of; but great men, men with a mission in the world ..."</p> + +<p>"Please, Jenny!"</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, I mean it; and I sometimes think that perhaps, perhaps, I'm +hindering your life; that if you were to be bothered with love at all, +you should have married some clever, wonderful woman,--woman, say, +like Isabel."</p> + +<p>"Jenny!"</p> + +<p>"Of course, dear, I know you don't think so," she continued; and he +realised that it was all artless accident on her part--"Still I cannot +help thinking it for you sometimes, dear, and sometimes I feel very +selfish to have your love,--as though, so to say, I was wearing someone +else's crown."</p> + +<p>"Jenny dear, will you promise never to talk like that again? A clever +woman! To be a woman is to be a genius, but to be a clever woman is to +be another man of talent."</p> + +<p>"That wouldn't be fair to Isabel."</p> + +<p>"No," assented Theophil, "Isabel is different too."</p> + +<p>And that brought them to Theophil's office and good-bye till the +evening.</p> + +<p>For the evening there had been fixed an important church meeting, the +first annual business meeting of minister and deacons since Londonderry +had come to New Zion. It was an occasion of jubilation all round, +particularly for Mr. Moggridge, who gave voice to New Zion's general +satisfaction, you may be sure, in no uncertain terms of praise.</p> + +<p>New Zion was, indeed, <i>New</i> Zion once more, he said, thanks to their +indefatigable young pastor,--a play on words which was received with the +applause due to so unmistakable a union of wit and truth.</p> + +<p>Nor did the proceedings result in mere compliments. The church found +itself rich enough to increase its minister's stipend; and when Theophil +took Mr. Moggridge back to supper, another surprise awaited him, in the +form of a suspicious-looking letter, which, being opened, revealed a +quite unexceptionable £50 note, enclosed in a sheet of note-paper, on +which was written--"From never mind who."</p> + +<p>The writing was unknown to Londonderry, but there could be only one +culprit.</p> + +<p>"Of course, Mr. Moggridge, this is from you. Really ..."</p> + +<p>"No, sir, indeed; you make a mistake there," protested Moggridge, lying +badly, and growing purple.</p> + +<p>"Who do <i>you</i> suspect, Jenny?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course, it's Mr. Moggridge!"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Moggridge!" exclaimed Jenny impulsively, throwing her arms round +Mr. Moggridge's surprised shoulders, and kissing him somewhere in his +whiskers,--"Mr. Moggridge! you are the dearest, kindest man in the +world!"</p> + +<p>And Jenny was not far wrong.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge, by way of changing the subject, +and warmly grasping the young man's hand, "New Zion's proud of you, +sir--and so is Eli Moggridge."</p> + +<p>And that moment would have been as good for all three, even without the +fifty-pound note.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE</h3> + +<p>I realize that any attempt henceforth to enchain the reader's interest +with church meetings, or the like enthralments, will be more than +hopeless. That is the worst of allowing love to creep into one's story. +He insists on having the stage to himself, and in that determination the +audience is entirely with him. Previously you may have been interested +in all kinds of peaceable, unexciting things, far more good for you, but +enter love, and all the rest is suddenly fallen tame beyond endurance.</p> + +<p>It is of no use to urge that life's bill of the play includes many +hardly less brilliant and attractive performers. They are all well +enough in their way, till the eternal Paganini is there with his old +fiddle once more at his shoulder; then there is an end of all +seriousness, or a beginning, as you please.</p> + +<p>Well, I'll do my best to get over the six months between March and +October as quickly as possible; and, indeed, it will not be very +difficult, after all, for very little happened, to speak of, during that +time to any of the chief actors engaged in making this history.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was this consideration that prompted old Mr. Talbot--O, +bother old Mr. Talbot!--that prompted old Mr. Talbot, I say, to take the +important step of dying, when, poor old man! his death would give the +least possible trouble.</p> + +<p>There seemed as little reason for his dying as there had seemed for his +living, for as far as anyone knew there was nothing the matter with him, +except an extreme sleepiness of an evening, which was but natural in an +old weary man who still kept at his stone-masonry though he was +full seventy.</p> + +<p>Night after night, for some weeks, he had been getting sleepier and +sleepier.</p> + +<p>"Why, dad, I never saw such an old sleepy-head"--his wife had rallied +him good-naturedly one night, looking at him with a sudden odd +expression in her face.</p> + +<p>"Eh, lass, but I was noddin' and no mistake," said the old man, +struggling drowsily with the heaviness, and presently succumbing +once more.</p> + +<p>"He's off again," said Mrs. Talbot to herself, as she lifted the lid of +a pent saucepan in which some boiled onions were mightily bubbling in a +wild little world of steam.</p> + +<p>Presently the old man sighed deeply,--so you would have thought; but +Mrs. Talbot, hurrying to him, knew that he had tried to say "Jane," and +had said it for the last time.</p> + +<p>Yes, he had been getting sleepier and sleepier; all his life he had been +trying to sleep, and at last he slept.</p> + +<p>To most people Mr. Talbot's death was the first intimation of his ever +having lived, and one rather resents for the old man the one day's +publicity which death enforced upon him. It was indeed well for him that +he was dead, for such unwonted excitement would surely have killed him. +This important coming and going of undertakers; this populous invasion +of friends talking like muffled drums in the front parlour, and passing +up and down and up and down the stairs, in and out and in and out of his +still room; this throng of neighbours awaiting him in the streets; these +plumed impatient horses, and these carriages of dark grandeur--"Jane, +why ever didn't you bury me by the back door?" would surely have been +the old man's pitiful complaint could he have known.</p> + +<p>However, the day passed and the old man was safe at last, where no +front-parlour visitors should affright him more, and where no one would +trouble his old brains for speech any more; and to all, save one, his +death was but as though he had moved a little farther into the kitchen.</p> + +<p>It seemed almost strange that even his wife should miss him. One had +thought so little of them as man and wife. One could hardly, even by +process of thinking, realise that between these rinded and wrinkled +beings love had once hung like a rosy cloud, from which one day had +sprung Jenny.</p> + +<p>On one or two occasions, indeed, they had been surprised in an uncanny +semblance of a caress, and once in a while an almost supernatural +retrospect had lit up and vanished again in an unaccustomed tender word; +and to have been present then was to feel somehow frightened.</p> + +<p>Ah! the gay young leaves no longer kiss across in the morning sun, but +the stern old trees have meetings you know not of far beneath the +ground. Their roots are twisted and twined in a wonderful embrace there; +there in the dark they are very close together, and shall not be +wrenched apart without groanings that cannot be uttered.</p> + +<p>Jenny can hardly be said to have missed her father, except through her +mother, who seemed suddenly to grow a little deafer, a little more +dim-sighted, just a trifle less brisk and busy than before, and with a +touch about her of that old-age awesomeness that mutters to itself in +corners and seems to know strange things.</p> + +<p>Yes, Jane missed her John. Her old heart knew that he was no longer +sitting in the kitchen.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER</h3> + +<p>Jenny and her old mother began to grow closer to each other at this +time. Perhaps it was because the old woman felt lonelier, and perhaps, +too, because the loss of her old man had sent her thoughts wandering +among the enchanted fields of her young days, that she began to talk +sometimes to Jenny about her marriage, and to give her quaint advice on +the subject of "managing" husbands; "as if," Jenny smilingly said to +herself, "an old man like father was the same, belonged even to the same +race, as Theophil."</p> + +<p>Perhaps Mrs. Talbot scented some such reflection in Jenny's expression; +at all events, she answered it with an "Eh, but all men are alike, my +dear, under their skins,--all alike, and they need humouring and +managing just in the same way, prince or peasant."</p> + +<p>The idea of "managing" Theophil had something repulsive in it for Jenny; +there was an element of deceit, of cunning, implied which didn't go with +her ideas of true love and the life beautiful of which she was dreaming. +She didn't believe that men and women who loved were really different +from each other, and perhaps she was right.</p> + +<p>About this time, too, Mrs. Talbot began to produce from mysterious +treasure-caves, entered apparently from an old press in her bedroom, all +kinds of wonderful things which would be useful to Jenny some day in her +house: terrible little ornaments,--very sacred, though,--sad +quaintnesses of the spirit of beauty pathetically fumbling about in +country brains; wool mats worked in the primary colours; and such wool +wonders as a wool basket of flowers, in which real wool flowers grew out +of a wool basket which you held by an over-arching wool handle, the +whole worked with undeniable but how forlorn ingenuity,--a prehistoric +relic of Mrs. Talbot's legendary school-days: survivals from a period +which is best summed up in the one wonderful word "antimacassar," a +period when for some unrecorded reason men and women had to protect +their furniture against their oleaginous selves, and beautiful locks +were guarded from lover's fingers by coats of triple oil.</p> + +<p>But these were things worth having, too,--bits of old lace and prim +embroidery, that bore the stamp of a refinement that is never +old-fashioned; and when Mrs. Talbot descended from the beautiful she +could show you real treasures.</p> + +<p>I don't think there was any word in the language, not even Bible words, +which Mrs. Talbot pronounced with such an accent of solemnity as the +word "linen." The words "China" and "cut glass," and perhaps "silver," +ran it close, but "linen" was undoubtedly the word in which all Mrs. +Talbot's sense of the seriousness of living, her sense of household +distinction, her deep sense of the importance of prosperity, and her +stern love of cleanliness found most impressive utterance.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Talbot could never have smiled as she said "linen."</p> + +<p>And the linen she had been storing for Jenny might indeed have been the +very stuff of which lilies are made, lilies smelling of lavender.</p> + +<p>Such pairs of sheets! A queen might even fear to await her lord lying +amid such linen; for white indeed must be the body that dares rivalry +with Mrs. Talbot's sheets,--sheets which might indeed be said to settle +that old question of the snows of yester-year.</p> + +<p><i>Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan</i>?</p> + +<p>Surely they have been settling, flake on flake, year after year, in Mrs. +Talbot's linen-press, till at last there is quite a snowdrift of fair +white linen for Jenny and Theophil to lie in.</p> + +<p>Yes! another six months and Christmas will be here; and, after +Christmas is turned, the weeks till February the 12th--the second +anniversary of Theophil's coming to New Zion--will fly by in no time.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Talbot and Jenny--with occasional contributions from +Theophil--began to busy themselves with Jenny's bottom drawer.</p> + +<p>Translated into the language of those more magnificent circles in which +this simple-hearted romance has no desire to move, a "bottom drawer" +might be described as a trousseau, though such translation would be only +partially correct. A bottom drawer is a good deal more than a trousseau. +It is the corner of a girl's wardrobe, usually its bottom drawer, where +the home that is to be begins to take shape in deposits of various +kissed objects, minor articles of apparel, of ornament or +use,--handkerchiefs such as we have already seen Jenny marking, in +defiance of the old prophecy that the bride who dares even to write her +married name before her marriage will never know a wedding day; quaint +candlesticks that had to be picked up in some old curiosity shop as come +upon or be missed altogether; pretty shoes of a pattern you weren't +likely to meet with again; occasionally, perhaps, even an anticipatory +wedding present, that some friend who would be far away in Australia +when the day came had already contributed; a pretty tea-service Theophil +had suddenly taken a fancy to buy for Jenny one day,--"any straw will +help a nest;" a sweet and rather naughty picture that must never be hung +anywhere but in their little sacred bedroom,--"O love, our little room!"</p> + +<p>How often did Jenny bend lovingly over that drawer, which by now had +spread itself over a whole chest of drawers,--for home was growing, +growing,--only a few more months and it would have grown so big and real +that nothing but a little house would hold it. And Theophil was brought +sometimes to peep in too,--"O love, think of it--our little home."</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME</h3> + +<p>Have I seemed to shirk the subject of Theophil's feelings all this time?</p> + +<p>Well, I confess I have rather shrunk from writing down in so many words +that he was in love with Isabel,--obvious as the fact has been,--just as +he himself shrank from admitting the same truth even to his own soul.</p> + +<p>When he had sat up in his study that night of the recital, he had looked +the whole sad splendid truth in its wonderful face, had loved it wildly +for an hour, and then shut his eyes to it for ever.</p> + +<p>He knew that Isabel was the woman God had made for him, sweet, dear +Jenny the woman he had made for himself, and he bowed before the work of +the greater artist.</p> + +<p>Never voice nor look nor touch of woman had affected Theophil before as +the least tone or glance or movement of Isabel stirred him to the centre +of his being. To meet her eyes was to release a music that went +shuddering through the whole world; her lightest word was filled with +echoes of infinite things. Not a lover only, but anyone with instincts +for such perceptions, looking at Isabel, would have said: There is a +woman who is needed to make some man a great poet, a great artist, some +kind of great man! She belongs to the history-making women. Hundreds of +women will attract men by the hundred where she will attract +comparatively few, but that few will be the pick of men; and some day, +when the other women have gone the way of all sweet roses, she will +still remain (if she has found an artist to understand her face) the +frontispiece of some distinguished biography, or hang in a gallery of +the period among the few faces that were indestructibly personal; not +the faces that have lived, but the faces that still go on living, the +faces that are influences still, the unique, daemonic faces.</p> + +<p>Isabel was indeed a muse that waited for her poet. The mere idea of such +a woman, cherished across dividing seas and separating years, will help +a man be great. To grow great near or far is the one way to be hers, and +to pile up great work for her sake is perhaps the best way to love her. +She could never be his wife, but she might still be his muse, resolved +Theophil, feigning in that reflection for the moment a more human +comfort than, alas! there really was.</p> + +<p>But was there to be no loss to Jenny in this?</p> + +<blockquote> +"True love in this differs from gold or clay,<br> +That to divide is not to take away."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>It is the convenient old plea of the poets, and yet it is sometimes +true. It was true here. There is, I know, a sort of primitive man or +woman--I believe they will some day be exhibited in menageries--who +cannot be on with a new love without being ungratefully off with the +old. All depends of what the two loves are made. If it is bodily fire +and no more, of course the new love will put out the old as the great +sun puts out a little smouldering fire; and the majority of so-called +love-stories are merely disastrous conflagrations of that sort. In such +cases the new love is no sooner found than the old becomes grievous, a +burden; by a malignant witchcraft the old charms have grown veritably +repellent, and "all the heaven that was" irretrievably disenchanted. +Which is the illusion, one wonders,--the original enchantment or the +final disenchantment?</p> + +<p>When, however, love can give a better account of its preferences than +this, and point out, say in Jenny, many good reasons why she was at +first and must for ever remain love-worthy, whatever rival reasons for +love another woman may bring; when too there is added to those reasons +for loving Jenny the dear habit of loving her, the gratitude--love must +forgive the word--which has accumulated interest upon the original love, +the beauties that have been gained by becoming familiarities, and the +familiarities that have become beauties by very use,--well, really, is +it such a hardship, after all, for a man to be expected to keep true to +his Jenny?</p> + +<p>Oh! but passion doesn't reason like this. Indeed, O passionate reader! +Is passion, then, merely a wild beast, a savage, a blind fire? Must it +forfeit its fine name if it remembers mercy or owns duty? Is it any less +passion because it refuses sometimes to glut itself, and dares to go +hungry all its days instead; any less passion because it chooses to burn +up its own heart in an agony of its own consuming fire?</p> + +<p>Mere violence is not a strength but a weakness in passion, and sometimes +there is more passion in patience than in anything else in the world. A +passion that knows not pity is merely a daemonic possession, and should +be taken to the madhouse.</p> + +<p>I confess that there is nothing in the world more amazing to me than the +easy brutality with which one hears of some men doing what is called +"breaking off their engagements." Only a new face has to show itself, +and the old face at once disappears with a blow and a wail.</p> + +<p>Murder, of course, is one way out of many difficult situations, and the +worst kinds of murder are by no means capital offences. It is true that +all engagements are not made by the same vital bonds as that of Jenny's +and Theophil's, but many are. For a man wilfully to break an engagement +means sometimes that the whole love-life in a woman is atrophied, all +that made her woman stabbed to the quick of life.</p> + +<p>Yet no one who knows anything of women can have failed to remark that +women themselves are even more brutal in this matter. Nothing could +exceed the executioner-like promptitude with which a woman will despatch +a man for whom she has ceased to care. But in her case there is to be +urged that, though fundamentally love is of equal importance to man and +woman, it does not so often mean the absolute saving or wrecking of a +man's life as it does a woman's. It is not a disgrace to a man to be +jilted; it is to a woman. For a woman to be jilted is for her to have +failed,--as a woman; and for a woman to have failed as a woman is for +her to value no other success.</p> + +<p>All this to maintain, in spite of the reader, that Londonderry is no +milksop because he is not going to jilt--that is, murder--poor little +Jenny, throw up New Zion, and seek his new love on the wild winds. But +the agony of it none the less! O Jenny! Jenny! sweet and true and good +and dear as ever,--if only you would just take a sudden fancy for +someone else!</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the months were going by, and the day drawing nearer when, for +a brief moment of fire, the orbits of those two separated lives were to +touch once more.</p> + +<p>What of Isabel during these months? The woman whom God had created for +Theophilus Londonderry did not forget her promise to write to the woman +whom Theophilus Londonderry had created in his own image. Wonderful +letters, of course! Why don't women publish volumes of their letters, as +men collect their scattered essays? There is no writing in the world +more immediately, conqueringly personal than a really clever woman's +letters; and they are not always compromising.</p> + +<p>Isabel's letters were the perfection of self-expression. Her handwriting +swept across the page just as she would walk down a street, at once +eager and yet stately and subtle-rhythmed; the shape of some of the +words reminded you of her hats,--hats everyone thought she paid guineas +for, but which she made for herself at a cost perhaps of five shillings: +hats which were Paris with a touch of fairyland, somewhere an +unobtrusive feather of the fantastic, somewhere a personal magic in the +inimitable twist or lie of a bow--; her face looked out at you from a +<i>g</i> or an <i>x</i>, a gesture flashed back to you in a sudden distinguished +stroke of the pen, and her voice was somewhere, everywhere, among the +words, like a violin.</p> + +<p>Without any apparent literary device she contrived to make you, while +you read her letters, do what she was doing, see what she was seeing, +and form, as though acted on by some magic property in the words, +pictures of all she told you.</p> + +<p>One piece of news you would not expect her to have told. I have said +that women are both executioners of the tiresome. In this Isabel, I +fear, was no exception to her sex. Like most independent girls in +London, she had a little theatre-guard of devoted men friends, who took +it in turn to companion her to plays or picture-galleries; and these, +with admirable tact, she contrived to keep in, to them, the +unsatisfactory relation of brothers. One of these, however, had of late +been growing dangerously unfraternal. His presents had been growing +expensive. Cigarettes and chocolates, and pretty editions, like gloves, +and boxes of flowers, are every pretty woman's lawful spoils; but +costlier gifts are to be looked on with suspicion. Besides, the doomed +man's letters had been growing warmer. Indeed, Isabel remembered with +something like a shudder, so soon as she was back in her little room, +with its curious pictures and its general sense of exotic refinement, +that she had allowed him to kiss her the last time they had been +together. The reminiscence decided her. Theophil could never be hers; +but at least no facile or mediocre attachments should fill his place. So +at once there is posted a letter, as kind as cruelty can make it, and +with it go a little ormolu clock, a pair of mother-of-pearl +opera-glasses, a lovely fan it was hard, Isabel, to part with,--and +there is an end of that.</p> + +<p>"Not after Theophil!" she sighed, as she took up her great Persian cat, +and, like it, sat gazing into the fire that flickered dreamily among her +fantastic possessions,--a mystery gazing idly into a mystery.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>"O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE ..."</h3> + +<p>Well, the months have at last gone by,--dark solid bodies of absence, +not a day mercifully lost count of by the old calendar-maker, not an +hour of the long sentence remitted for a brave patience in the waiting. +They are reckoning by weeks at last, and now, excitedly, by days, +breathlessly now by little fast-dispersing hours.</p> + +<p>The blackness that filled the world was a month ago streaked with gray; +three weeks ago there was a line of faint colour in the east; a +fortnight, and there are scarlet plumes in the far heaven, and a faint +twitter of song; a week, and the whole sky is a commotion of glory +and birds.</p> + +<p>To meet again! O to meet again, just to look at each other again! We are +philosophers, we are brave, we shall remember Jenny, but O! the rapture +of just beholding each other again.</p> + +<p>"Thank God, you are alive! you are real! O Theophil, there is the little +scar on your forehead I've been longing to see."</p> + +<p>"Yes! it is Isabel! She walks just as she did a thousand years ago. I am +carrying her rugs. How well I remember her umbrella!"</p> + +<p>"How fantastic absence is!" said Isabel, as the three friends sat once +more that evening in the little study where nothing seemed to have +changed, and where they seemed to have been sitting all the hours of +those now quite disrespectfully forgotten months.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but how real!" said Jenny. It was Jenny who said "how real!"</p> + +<p>How fantastic, too, is the present! Sometimes, perhaps nearly always, it +tortures us with the unreality, the unrealisability of precious moments +that are flying, flying, and can never come again; and at other times +it equally eludes us with a sense of their indestructibility. To-night +the present had chosen to seem real. Theophil felt, as he looked at +Isabel, that this wonderful nearness could never pass away. Her dress, +her coiled <i>cendré</i> hair, her soft smile, her very attitudes, seemed to +wear a curious expression of everlastingness. Yes, she would sit just +like that, and he and Jenny would sit near her for ever and ever. No +mere abstractions like Time and Space could fill with emptiness the +place where she now sat and smiled. In some mystical way eternity had +breathed upon this hour and given it immortality. It had been suddenly +touched with a wand into an enchanted permanence. Theosophists tell of +an astral light, where every moment of time endures in strange paintings +upon space. Isabel and Theophil and Jenny were sitting together in the +astral light.</p> + +<p>And yet the hours had already been flying, for, the recital was already +over,--New Zion more in love with Isabel than ever. The same little +supper as six months ago had been merry and come to an end, the guests +had gone, the house was quiet, and this hour that seemed so real was the +frail last of that day of dreams.</p> + +<p>Yes! but an arrangement had been made which perhaps accounts for the +security of that hour. Isabel's agents had planned for her a little +circular tour in northern towns comparatively adjacent to Coalchester, +and when a fortnight of such recitals was ended, she was to return and +give still another recital at New Zion. Then there must be parting, real +black parting again. Meanwhile, the fortnight that lay between the two +days of meeting gained a curious sense of being really spent together. +As two walking together on a long road may separate, and one walk till +almost out of sight of the other and then slowly return, but the two +endure no sense of parting, feeling together all the time, so Isabel +and Theophil felt about this fortnight.</p> + +<p>But did they speak no word, look no look all these hours, of all their +hearts cried out to say? Was Jenny there all the time? Nearly. Still +there was a moment granted them, which, added to the two moments +previously recorded, made a total perhaps of four minutes, which life so +far generously allowed them to be alone together in. Yet such is love's +miraculous velocity that it had said all it needed to say, given all, in +those four minutes. All it had to say to-night was just two Christian +names, said so solemnly, so tenderly, so honestly. Just "Isabel," just +"Theophil," and a long quiet clasp of hand and eyes. It was enough. It +is written.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS</h3> + +<p>It was not enough!</p> + +<p>If you would safely renounce a joy, you had best enjoy something of it +first. Renunciation must have something to live on. You can "take up the +whole of love and utter it," and <i>then</i> "say adieu for ever," but +not before.</p> + +<p>I have asked mercy for Jenny, though it was perhaps hardly necessary, +for the world always pities Jenny. Now I would ask it for Isabel and +Theophil, who are thus quietly to sacrifice the greatest thing in their +lives, the one reality for which they have come into existence, for +Jenny's sake. Great is their love for each other, but even greater and +stranger must be their involuntary love for an invisible goodness, an +ideal of ineffable pity. They are going to die that Jenny may live.</p> + +<p>Strange, this gentle heroism of human creatures one for the other. Would +it be unfair to ask that each should support the anguish of his own +destiny, and that when Jenny's turn has come she should take her +lightning? Hers, had she known it, was the cup of anguish here; for +Theophil and Isabel had been decreed the cup of joy. But will they drink +it? No, they will change the cups; perhaps the bitter cup will grow +sweet near the dregs, being drunk together.</p> + +<p>Yet this love of theirs, this perilous chance for Jenny, was none of +their making. Their joy had been given to them by unseen hands. It is +fairly theirs. Next time, perhaps, it will be their turn to suffer. It +is Jenny's now...</p> + +<p>But no! the good heart of humanity will defeat the cruel ruling of the +gods. Let the lightning come upon them--not little Jenny.</p> + +<p>Yet for this, Jenny, you will not grudge them their piteous reward. +Yours are all the years, Jenny. You will spare them one day out of all +the years. Think, Jenny, of the hours and hours and hours you and +Theophil have spent in careless happiness, and they--one almost laughs +to think of it--have just so far been granted four minutes. For four +minutes out of infinite time life has privileged them to be +alone together.</p> + +<p>It will be far safer too. Otherwise you know not with what fearful flame +love will fill the chasms under ground, circling and seething in the +fiery darkness. Theophil loves you, but some day your home will suddenly +be rent from cope to base, unless his poor heart may speak, yea, babble +itself, just once in Isabel's ears.</p> + +<p>A temptation had come to Theophil. At first he put it aside. Then +passion, wiser for once than reason, told him that it was a necessity, +and he knew that passion was right. A week of the fortnight had gone, +and Theophil remembered that Isabel would now be in the neighbourhood of +certain famous woods where in his boyhood he had often wandered, and he +remembered that she was to have the Monday quite free. That Monday they +should spend together in those enchanted woods. His secular business +often took him to towns thirty or forty miles away, and it was not +startling for him not to return till late at night. Thus Isabel and he +should steal their one day out of all the years.</p> + +<p>So there went a note without one word of love in it to tell Isabel that +love was coming by the morning train; and so on that morning Isabel +stood waiting for love at that little wayside station, and presently, +with a mighty rushing sound of iron and brass, love came and stood very +quietly by her side, and looked into her eyes.</p> + +<p>They took each other's hands quietly, and left the station without a +word; nor did they speak for a long while, walking blissfully side by +side through a village street which was to take them to the green and +lonely woods. Soon the houses were passed, and they still walked on +silent, listening to the song of their nearness.</p> + +<p>Now, as they drank each other's presence through every feasting nerve, +they knew how starved they had been. As the lane narrowed and gloomed +green, dipping through caverns of bright leaves, they drew closer, and +smiled gently on each other; but they were not going to speak for a long +while yet. Had they not come away into this loneliness that they might +be silent together, that they might sit, hour after hour, and just watch +each other, lost in an ecstasy of contemplation, a trance of +recognition, a fascination that was almost fearful, that was so kind and +yet so cruel in its very power?</p> + +<p>The woods are very still, but there is nothing in the world so still as +these two lovers, as they lie down on the green earth and gaze on each +other, hour after hour. When they find a word as great as their +silence, they will speak it--but they will find none except it be +"Isabel," except it be "Theophil."</p> + +<p>And great passion has as little use for caresses as for words, and +kisses, which gay sensual love gathers greedily like little golden +flowers, and pays for nimbly with little, pretty words, will be almost +as rare as words.</p> + +<p>Kisses! it is not to eat bonbons that these two have come out into the +woods.</p> + +<p>Kisses! what kiss of the blind lips could match the kiss of those rapt +tragic eyes!</p> + +<p>Kisses are but the diminutives of the great word "love;" they are but +the small change of passion, meteorites, star-dust of the great and +terrible planet.</p> + +<p>Their souls are swung high above time and space in one never-ending +kiss,--the kiss of that predestined irrefragable union, of which +meetings and partings and kisses and caresses and words, and every other +fragmentary mode of expression, are but trivial accidents, to which +distance is still nearness, and nearness is still distance.</p> + +<p>Their love is a property of eternal elements. It is fated as the union +of magnetic powers, it obeys chemic laws of irresistible combination. +They are Isabel and Theophil,--that is their love; they are in the world +together,--that is their marriage.</p> + +<p>But passion will not be all day a tragedian. He has many moods. He is a +great wit,--how bright, how bright, he makes the brain!--a merry +comrade, a little, tender, silly child; and these two sad ones laughed +together, too, in the still woods,--for was not the most exquisite +humourist in the world their companion, love, who is all things by +turns, and all things wise?</p> + +<p>And they feasted together, wine and great grapes, spread out on the +earth's green table; and they called each other silly, beautiful names, +and they feigned sad little glad stories--and called the wood their +home: this was their breakfast-oak, and that glade should be their great +hall, and high, high up in yonder beech, where the squirrel was sitting, +should be their secret little bed-chamber, hung in blue and green, with +a ceiling of stars. They should climb it each night on a ladder of +moonlight, and slide down from it each morning on the first strong rays +of the sun. And sometimes if it frightened them with being too near +heaven, they would seek out a dell of fine moss and creep close together +into the arms of the kind earth-mother, and then sleep while the stars +kept watch.</p> + +<p>O, yes, it would be a wonderful life together.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly the child's play would cease, as the birds stop singing +with the coming of the stars, and silence would sweep over them again, +and a great kiss would leap out of the silence, like a flame that lights +up heaven from north to south, and they would hang together, lost in an +anguish of desire.</p> + +<p>The setting sun was turning the wood into halls of strange light, and +spreading golden couches here and there in its deep recesses.</p> + +<p>"Theophil..." sighed Isabel.</p> + +<p>"Wife..." sighed Theophil--(ah! Jenny!) and then a voice that seemed to +be neither's, and yet seemed to be the voice of both,--a voice like a +dove smothered in sweetness between their breasts,--said, "Let us go +deeper into the wood."</p> + +<p>Later, when the stars had come, two white faces came glimmering from the +innermost chancel of the wood's green darkness. They passed close +together, still as phantoms among the trees, and when they came out on +to the lane they stood still.</p> + +<p>"Theophil," said one voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send for +you, will you promise me to come?"</p> + +<p>"Isabel," said another voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send +for you, will you promise <i>me</i> to come?"</p> + +<p>And each voice vowed to the other, and said, "I would come, and I would +go with you."</p> + +<p>And all these words had once been Jenny's, but they had been Isabel's +first.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> +<br> + +<h3>PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS</h3> + +<p>As the sharing of a cruel or unworthy secret must be the most terrible +of all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is the +most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and +Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, +and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of +inner union which they felt no extension of space or endurance of time +could destroy.</p> + +<p>Such a marriage as theirs is, of course, the dream of all separated +lovers, "the love that waited and in waiting died" the theme of many +poets; and there have been great historic love-stories to prove such +love a possibility of human hearts; yet, alas! for the experiment that +must so often fail, for the weak wills of loving that will so truly and +yet must loose their holds,--the fire that promised itself food in +memory for a thousand years, but needs the sensual fuel of sight and +touch after all; the love that believed it could go on trusting through +centuries of silence, yet dies at last of little earthly doubts!</p> + +<p>For this tremendous fast which you are to make believe a feast, trust in +each other is the one condition that may avail. This trust must come of +no mere exchange of vow or deeply-sworn and eloquent promise; it must be +knowledge one heart of the other, clear and absolute; and such knowledge +in your short hour of revelation you must have learned so passionately +that, like poetry learnt in childhood, it is henceforth no longer a +forgettable, detachable part of your mind's furniture, but a well-spring +of instinct for ever. Is your lady true? You will ask that only when you +ask: Is she beautiful?</p> + +<p>Such confidence as this is comparatively common in friendship, but it +is very rare in love: whether it was to be justified in the case of +Isabel and Theophil, time alone could show. Meanwhile they felt calm and +happy, as only two can feel who have discovered in each other the one +unchanging reality in a world of flowing shadow.</p> + +<p>It was very wonderful, in quite a new way, to meet again. Their love was +no longer hunger and unrest, it had gained the impassioned peace of +great accepted realities. It was married love now. As the quiet firm +hands held each other again, there seemed to be long retrospects of +tried and tender intercourse in their very touch. Their eyes held a past +in them as well as a future. There was no hurry of the emotions now, no +reason for haste in the seeking and giving of tenderness, no need to +snatch and clutch the good gifts of love as though there was but a short +day for the giving. Their love had grown conscious of its eternity.</p> + +<p>It held but one lasting sadness,--that it might not be revealed to +Jenny. So little did they regard their love as one essentially for +concealment, that the temptation to include Jenny in their bond was at +moments a danger. It was so beautiful, and actually, though +unconsciously, she was so integral a part of its beauty.</p> + +<p>Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say, +jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart +of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being +the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible +trinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under +like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a +strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's +one unworthiness, its egoism. As the <i>égoisme à deux</i> is finer than an +egoism of one, so this <i>égoisme à trois</i>, if you will, is again finer by +its additional inclusiveness.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too. +But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such a +union is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved both +Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in +the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was +more impassioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that +it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness, +could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meeting +in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea.</p> + +<p>But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They had +vowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy, +but only transfigure, after all,--yet the test was lightning; and for +whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win +them Paradise?</p> + +<p>No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told... +Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of +chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded +moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,--when we withdraw +into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,--and Jenny, +by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of +them there.</p> + +<p>It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone +down, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for +some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience +was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, +entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his +vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the +lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the +vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr. +Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but +that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each +other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak +anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,--</p> + +<p>"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!"</p> + +<p>But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found +me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I +love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a +man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could +be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong +for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost +once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so +calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes +for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark +half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back +dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had +expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them +here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only +seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms.</p> + +<p>Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock +had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must +sit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim +reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little +but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good, +and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and +beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her +choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget +that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that +dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how +happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in +brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the +darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If +only she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No! +she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seen +them, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till she +had made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know. +That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then she +might speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go,--she +must not be later than they; they would be passing down to the hall +presently, she must be there before them,--she must be quick,--she must +go now....</p> + +<p>As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled a +recognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smile +back at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white, +and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her.</p> + +<p>She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the common +resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a +happiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguish +was too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she might +have felt towards death,--it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart +there was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she felt +that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,--just as a +child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too +young to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have loved +their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!)</p> + +<p>Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have +spared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs. +Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written, +and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful +joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It was +the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons; +but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to +understand it too. It was called a "Denial," and began:--</p> + +<blockquote> +"We have met late--it is too late to meet,<br> + O friend, not more than friend!<br> +Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet,<br> +And if I step or stir, I touch the end.<br> +<br> +In this last jeopardy<br> +Can I approach thee,--I, who cannot move?<br> +How shall I answer thy request for love?<br> + Look in my face and see.<br> +<br> +"I might have loved thee in some former days.<br> + Oh, then, my spirits had leapt<br> +As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise!<br> +Before these faded cheeks were overwept,<br> + Had this been asked of me,<br> +To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,--<br> +I should have said still...Yes, but <i>smiled</i> and said,<br> + 'Look in my face and see!'<br> +<br> +"But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart<br> + And drowned it in life's surge.<br> +In all your wide warm earth I have no part--<br> +Light song overcomes me like a dirge.<br> + Could love's great harmony<br> +The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose,<br> +Not weigh me down? am <i>I</i> a wife to choose?<br> + Look in my face and see--<br> +<br> +"While I behold, as plain as one who dreams,<br> + Some woman of full worth,<br> +Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's,<br> +Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth<br> +<br> +One younger, more thought-free<br> +And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget,<br> +With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet--<br> + Look in my face and see!<br> +<br> +"So farewell thou, whom I have known too late<br> + To let thee come so near.<br> +Be counted happy while men call thee great,<br> +And one beloved woman feels thee dear!--<br> + Not I!--that cannot be,<br> +I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where<br> +The change shall take me worse, and no one dare<br> + Look in my face and see."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel +recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny +felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its +destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last +verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,--</p> + +<blockquote> +"Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine<br> + I bless thee from all such!<br> +I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine,<br> +Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch<br> +<br> +Of loyal troth. For me,<br> +I love thee not, I love thee not!--away!<br> +There's no more courage in my soul to say<br> + 'Look in my face and see.'"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss +Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance, +and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently +reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought +of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge.</p> + +<p>"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she +was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with +sudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment to +its close.</p> + +<p>Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny +along the few yards to home.</p> + +<p>"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that. +It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two +people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of +giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear."</p> + +<p>"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears."</p> + +<p>When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real +anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a +passing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness. +She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly, +but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible +to think of two people having to part like that," she said again.</p> + +<p>And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual.</p> + +<p>"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not +see each other for a long time again."</p> + +<p>"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought +there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace.</p> + +<p>When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange," +said Isabel.</p> + +<p>"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil.</p> + +<p>So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her +bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go +back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear, +like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing +but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night."</p> + +<p>And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jenny +had said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and if +presently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because he +did not know the reason of her tears?</p> + +<p>On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so that +Theophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny again +till the evening.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> +<br> + +<h3>IN WHICH JENNY CRIES</h3> + +<p>Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as she +usually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but at +last, when the quiet secure hour which had always been theirs between +dinner and bedtime had come, she came into his room quietly and sat in +her accustomed chair.</p> + +<p>She had been fighting all day to gain strength for this hour, and her +will was bravely set to speak what must be spoken. But she must firmly +choke back all the sweetness of the memories which sprang to her with +kind eyes, as the familiar little room that had not changed opened its +arms to her, alas! an ironical symbol of unchangeableness. One touch of +tenderness too vivid and she would break down.</p> + +<p>And here was Theophil rising from his desk and coming to her with true +love in his eyes, as he had done so many, many happy nights.</p> + +<p>Was it, after all, a dream--that terrible picture of two lighted figures +that was for ever in her eyes? No, there was a voice that went day and +night with the dream, a voice of terrible tenderness that kept crying: +"Meantime I bless thee ... "--"I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to +wine ..." Ah, no, it was real, real. The trial was not to pass from her +in a dream.</p> + +<p>Theophil had knelt down at her side and taken her hand gently and would +have kissed her, but that her eyes were so full of pain as she turned +them to meet his. Besides, strange words to hear! she was asking him not +to kiss her.</p> + +<p>"Theophil dear, don't kiss me yet. I have something to say, and if you +kiss me I shall have no strength to say it."</p> + +<p>"Jenny!"</p> + +<p>"Dear," she began with a voice that seemed to bleed at every word, "I +want to be so kind. I don't want to hurt you with a single word. You'll +believe that, won't you?"</p> + +<p>Theophil pressed her hand for assent, but already in a flash the whole +revelation was upon him. Jenny knew he loved Isabel. This awful pain +that was all over her was the lightning from which they had willed +to save her.</p> + +<p>"Theophil," Jenny had gone on, and there seemed a death in every word, +"I know that you love Isabel."</p> + +<p>"O Jenny!"</p> + +<p>"I saw you together, dear, in the vestry last night. It was an accident. +You didn't hear me."</p> + +<p>"O my Jenny! I would rather have died than this."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think you would, dear. But you must not be too sad. Life is +terrible,--like this. I understand it now. I know it was not you, or +Isabel, or me. It was just fate--and we must try and help each other. +Don't think I have been only sorry for myself. Don't think that of me. +But I think you should have trusted me, dear."</p> + +<p>"We longed to tell you," said Theophil, with his head bowed in distress +in Jenny's lap, while she softly stroked his hair with an absent +tenderness, though her eyes looked straight in front of her, and her +voice was as if she were talking to herself.</p> + +<p>"We longed to tell you," he repeated.</p> + +<p>"O I wish you had."</p> + +<p>"We feared it, dear."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, I know. I was only a little child the day before yesterday. I +have never been worthy to be your wife, dear. I have known it all the +time. I should never have taken your love. It has never been mine...."</p> + +<p>"But ..." she continued, "I will give it all back now. It is not too +late. I have kept it pure ... for Isabel. I can give it to her, darling, +with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. We +were not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the woman +of that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. I +am a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my face +and see.'"</p> + +<p>The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jenny +in silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and of +the insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves to +ourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by the +powerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must those +tests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which we +are composed!</p> + +<p>One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs, +another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow old +we can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that have +never been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, by +an emotion.</p> + +<p>A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the woman +who needs him most,--and in a crisis of choice he will probably choose +the latter.</p> + +<p>Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves +to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so +brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment +on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble are +some of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submerged +in a total of vague impulses that they escape any individualisation.</p> + +<p>In the very hour where all seemed lost to Jenny, Theophil's love for her +was passing in the fire of this ordeal from a love whose elements had +never, perhaps, quite combined, into that miraculous metal of true love, +which can never again be separated into anything but itself,--the true +gold of love which, in some magical second of projection, has suddenly +sprung out of those troubled ingredients of earth and iron, silver, +honey, and pearl.</p> + +<p>This does not mean that Theophil's love for Isabel had grown any less +real, but that his love for Jenny had grown more real. For the first +time in its history it moved on the stage of the heroic. Up till now it +had lived secure, domestic days; there had been no danger to test its +truth, no lights of tragedy or romance thrown across it, it had seemed a +simple little earthborn love; whereas Theophil's love for Isabel had, +from its very conditions, walked from the first the high heaven +of dreams.</p> + +<p>Isabel, indeed, still remained the heavenly love, but those who +understand will know the strength of Jenny when I say that she became +confirmed in this hour of trial as the household love of Theophil's +life. Isabel remained the Muse, but it was Jenny, after all, in spite of +those solemn words in the Wood of Silence, that was the wife; and if, +at first sound, there seems less of heaven in such a love, it is surely +only because when heaven has become incarnated upon earth we forget to +call it heaven.</p> + +<p>In the few moments of silence which followed Jenny's words, it was some +such turmoil of feelings and thoughts, questionings and conclusions, +which passed through Theophil's mind, at last resolving itself into +words that sounded unexpected even in his own ears.</p> + +<p>"Jenny," he said, "it is quite true that I love Isabel and that she +loves me. But it is true that I love you too, love you more truly in +this moment than I have ever loved you, and that no other woman can ever +take your place. If you give me up for Isabel's sake, it will be no gain +to her, for I would not go to her. I love you, indeed I love you, and I +want no other woman to be my wife."</p> + +<p>Jenny's face brightened for a moment; they were good words, and they +sounded real. But then that embrace, how real that was; nothing again +could ever be so real as that!</p> + +<p>"Ah, Theophil dear; but you stood as though you loved her so; your arms +were so tender, it was just as though they said 'wife.' You are +deceiving yourself, dear, believe me, you are. God knows how I love you; +I have nothing in the world but you, and if...if..."</p> + +<p>"Jenny, try and believe; let me show you how I can love you. I seem +never to have shown you before. Let us begin our love over again from +to-night. I know your heart is bleeding, but let me heal it, dear. I +know this sorrow must lie heavy upon us for a long while yet, but it +will pass, you shall see. O you shall see how I love you. Let us be +married soon, dear; let us wait no longer..."</p> + +<p>Theophil had raised his head, and as he spoke poured on Jenny all the +appeal of his strong eyes; with all the might of his soul he willed her +back to happiness, as Orpheus strove by his singing to bring back +Eurydice from the shades. She could not look into his set longing face +without feeling that he was speaking true words. Hope flickered for a +moment in her sad eyes; yes! he wanted to come back to her; he wanted to +be hers again.</p> + +<p>But was it not too late? Hadn't something gone forever, something been +killed? Could even Theophil himself ever make her happy any more? Then +the misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which all +kind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, and +with terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms.</p> + +<p>"O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking."</p> + +<p>Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of +his life. He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying--it was as +though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were +bleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, +convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking. +Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was the +death-crying of a broken heart.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED</h3> + +<p>Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny dried +her tears. She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forget +it; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown even +bright again,--bright as silver. It could never again be bright as gold.</p> + +<p>And Theophil's love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day. +Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were times +when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing +falsity, as she thought of Isabel.</p> + +<p>But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in the +common way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soon +she was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed that +Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital. +For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Let +that be our secret, dear," she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel +wrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wrote +to each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters. +Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life it +must be more and more of a starlit background.</p> + +<p>So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now +finally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as their +love grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate that +date, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by +that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones.</p> + +<p>The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became +noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old +mother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she +was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing +thinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside +friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't looking +half the girl she used to be.</p> + +<p>She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she +would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought +nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious +expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark +it. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to +gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, +too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real +face was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemn +thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a +sad wish fulfilling itself.</p> + +<p>She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same look +that Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to him +reading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threw +down the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed, +"Good God, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look in +your face?"</p> + +<p>He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before he +had finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget.</p> + +<p>One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it was +growing.</p> + +<p>"It <i>is</i> thin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a trifle +run down. You must see the doctor."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soups +and port wine as a substitute. These, however, made those dear arms no +fatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why did +Theophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of that +expression?)</p> + +<p>And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as she +used to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not so +available for running up and down stairs as it had been.</p> + +<p>Then Theophil would have a doctor, who sounded Jenny, and looked a +little grave, but finally, reassured, asked her if she had had a +shock,--Jenny smiled rather knowingly, but denied it,--declared her a +little run down and in need of bracing and nourishment, prescribed +phosphites and steel.</p> + +<p>Then Jenny got very wet one day on her way from school, and she began to +cough. She had to stay at home, and bed was perhaps the best place for +her. So Jenny went to bed, and looked very pretty there, and was quite +merry of an evening when Theophil, bringing her flowers,--he was already +bringing her flowers,--would draw up the arm-chair by her side, and read +to her. Those were very sweet hours, perhaps the sweetest their love had +ever known, so cosy and homelike, and yet without fear.</p> + +<p>But one evening, when Jenny had been coughing, there was blood on the +bosom of her nightdress, and as Theophil saw it, his heart stood still +with terror. Jenny grew very white, too, as she saw it, though the awful +thought which was behind the still look they gave each other was not +quite new to her. Sometimes she might have been heard softly saying over +to herself,--</p> + +<blockquote> +"I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther, where<br> +The change shall take me worse, and no one dare<br> + Look in my face and see."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Yet although Death's voice calling us from afar may seem all sweetness, +his voice coming nearer has a note of dread in it that appals the most +death-desirous heart. And in that silence those poor lovers both heard +him singing, it seemed not many streets away.</p> + +<p>"I must be very ill, dear," said Jenny. "O my love, O my love...!"</p> + +<p>Theophil strove with himself to say words with a real ring of the future +in them, when this cloud should have passed away; and for his sake Jenny +pretended to believe them. Yes, this very week he would take her away to +bright skies and healing air,--though Jenny felt a little tired at the +thought of rising any more from the bed to which she was growing +curiously accustomed.</p> + +<p>Then there came a new doctor to see Jenny. He was a very clever +specialist from a distant town; but for him the business of death had +not yet obscured its tragedy,--though words like "tragedy" were not +often on his tongue. Consumption was a strong enough word for him.</p> + +<p>His heart went out to that little household; and when he saw Jenny, it +ached for that young man downstairs. It was more than a professional +contempt for the "general practitioner" that made him silently curse +what he called the "death-doctor," as he looked at Jenny, "Jack of all +diseases, and master of none."</p> + +<p>"Two months ago, a month," he thought, as he listened and listened for a +sound of hope that might come to his ear through Jenny's wasted +side,--"even a month, and I could have saved her." And yet as he talked +to her he was not so sure, after all. He missed something in her voice. +It was the will to live.</p> + +<p>"Have you had a shock at any time?" he said.</p> + +<p>Jenny was taken by surprise for a moment,--the other doctor had asked +her that, too,--and she did not deny it so convincingly as she tried to.</p> + +<p>"O, that's all right," said the doctor aloud to Jenny and her mother, +who stood by, though inwardly he said, "I see. That's the reason;" and +again he said, "I'm afraid you mustn't get up just yet. That chest of +yours has to be taken care of, but you needn't be anxious. In a month or +six weeks you'll be all right again."</p> + +<p>"Only a month or six weeks," said Jenny, with a sinking voice. She +meant--was that all that was left to her of life and love?</p> + +<p>Downstairs Theophil stood waiting with a beating heart. He sprang to the +door and drew the doctor into his room. The doctor laid a kind hand upon +his arm, and there was a look in his face that made Theophil's heart die +within him.</p> + +<p>"You mean she is going to die?" he said with fearful calmness. "<i>You +mean that?</i>"</p> + +<p>"My poor fellow, God knows what I would give to deny it."</p> + +<p>"She--is--going--to--die--<i>to die!</i> It is impossible! Not Jenny!" and +between that exclamation and his first stunned cry it seemed as though +bells had been tolling a thousand years. It seemed as though he had been +sitting there as in a cave since the beginning of time, saying over and +over to himself, "Jenny is going to die."</p> + +<p>There was a decanter on the sideboard. The doctor poured some spirit +into a glass. "Drink this," he said. Theophil drank it raw, as though it +had been water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir like +an opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned to +that decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jenny +was not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve, +which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. It +helped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctor +has not told him that I am going to die."</p> + +<p>"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks," she said +aloud, and tried to look as though she were happy.</p> + +<p>"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, love +made blind instead of prophet-sighted.</p> + +<p>"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that bright +air," said Theophil.</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear," said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily.</p> + +<p>Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something to +me, Theophil?"</p> + +<p>"What shall I read, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass,' eh? It's such a +long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we +could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?"</p> + +<p>So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the +fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on +living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while +longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your +very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying. +You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going +to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you +laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly +the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you +forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before +they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every +moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to +remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them +everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice, +that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die."</p> + +<p>Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some +days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at +last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her +and from each other.</p> + +<p>"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herself +from that time, but she did not cry or break down.</p> + +<p>It was a pathetic sign of what was coming, that she now allowed Theophil +sometimes to be Jenny's nurse through the night hours. There was to be +no bridal bed for these lovers, but thus the tender quiet hours of the +night were theirs even in so sad a fashion.</p> + +<p>One night, in the haunted hushed middle of it, the old mother had softly +pushed open the door to ask if all went well, and in a whisper Theophil +had assured her. A night-light gave an uncanny shadow-breeding light in +the room. Jenny was sleeping peacefully, her tired ivory face, with her +dark elf-locks falling about it, framed on the pillow. Theophil raised +himself softly in his chair and looked at her. She would sleep some +while yet. Then from sheer weariness--grief's best friend--he too fell +into a light sleep. From this he was awakened with a start. Jenny was +sitting up and bending over him. With her dark hair hanging about her +face, and in that light, there was something weird and unearthly about +her, as though she were already dead and had risen in her shroud. +Something of a shiver went through him, as she put her thin arms round +his neck and clutched him in a sudden agony of longing. All the strength +of her poor little body seemed to pass into that kiss, so eager, so +convulsive. "Jenny dear, it will make you so ill; lie down, little +girl"--and Jenny fell back on her pillow exhausted and coughing, and +with eyes unearthly bright.</p> + +<p>"Theophil," she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, +"you know that I am going to die!"</p> + +<p>He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned his +head close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself two +great tears fell upon Jenny's cheek.</p> + +<p>But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in her +voice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got to +be borne."</p> + +<p>She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth. +The first fears of her dark journey were passing, as she was more and +more sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be something +almost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, +one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. It +had come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less with +fear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In her +fancy she had seen her name: "<i>Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter of +John and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years</i>" and it had struck her +that the name was wrong.</p> + +<p>Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. The +world would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days. +No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amid +all the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again to +herself: "<i>Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of Theophilus +Londonderry, aged twenty-one years</i>."</p> + +<p>Only twenty-one years--she thought of those who would perhaps some day +stand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!"--and yet +all that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, in +two of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to those +who read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earth +of long-wed, late-dying lovers.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was a beautiful chance for love to end like theirs; their +love had never grown old, so it would remain forever young, a spring +sign, a star in the front of love's year for ever.</p> + +<p>Jenny spoke her wish to Theophil in the quiet of that night. The wish +had been in his heart too, and the wish was presently fulfilled. Brides +have seldom been happier than Jenny as she looked on the wife's ring +that hung loose on her thin finger, and brides have often been sadder.</p> + +<p>Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget that +she was going to die. She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, +and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little home +that was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with his +unbearable grief to some other room.</p> + +<p>And Jenny's once rosy apple of a face made one's heart ache to look on +now. It made one frightened, too: it was so dark and witchlike, so +uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She would sit +up in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowing +laugh to herself,--a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary +place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, +like the "unwilling sleep" of a strong narcotic. She would begin a +sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost +humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead +bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did +not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being +well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done +with all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, +half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soon +be strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be +different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and +putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar +humanity into a being of another element,--an element we dread as the +fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon she +would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longer +Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. She +was going to die.</p> + +<p>It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died. +She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon. Once when +Theophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave, +significant gesture to her side. She was lying down, and she made as if +she would sit up. Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up the +pillows at her back. Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took his +face in her hands and kissed him. "Do you love me, Theophil?" she said. +"Will you ever forget me?"</p> + +<p>"I will love you for ever. I will never forget you."</p> + +<p>He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she held +him close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh. For a +moment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though that +was the last flicker of Jenny's conscious life.</p> + +<p>Towards evening she began to take strange fancies, which had to be +humoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called with +dreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside, +and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she was +picking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to go +downstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all that +time by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade her +that Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must not +mind me, Theophil, dear. I'm not unhappy about her now. I'm not a silly +little girl any more. I'm a woman now. 'Look in my face and see.'"</p> + +<p>Then towards midnight a sudden accession of strength came to her, and +she said she would get up. They tried to dissuade her; she grew angry, +and struggled so hard to rise, that it seemed best to humour her once +more. So, wrapt round with blankets, Theophil lifted her from the bed +into a great chair by the fire. Then she asked to be taken to look into +her bottom drawer. So they lifted her across to it, and opened it. She +dabbled with her hands aimlessly among its piteous treasures, laughing +low to herself.</p> + +<p>Suddenly a fit of coughing took her, and a great choking was in her +throat. She was seen to be battling for her breath. For an instant she +drew herself up, and lifted her hand as though she would wave farewell, +smiled a faint little smile at Theophil, making, too, as if she would +speak. Then she fell back, her whole body relaxed, she had ceased +coughing, and a wonderful sweetness was stealing over her face. She had +gone all alone into the darkness, and Theophil was alone in the world.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE TRYST LETHEAN</h3> + +<p>Jenny had gone into the darkness, and she had gone alone. Theophil had +not gone with her.</p> + +<p>That he had remained behind meant certainly no selfish clinging to life, +and indeed there was a sense, as was presently to appear, in which very +really he had kept young love's old promise and died with Jenny. That he +had not literally fulfilled it was due to those physical conditions of +dying of which in the hour of that promise young love is happily +ignorant; for the promise is usually made in moments of keenly conscious +physical life. Dying together is then figured, perhaps, as climbing hand +in hand the radiant topmost peak of life, with a last splendid leap +together into some immortal morning; and such a marriage in death, a +last union of two lives in some fiery consummation of dying, has been +the lot of some lovers supremely blest.</p> + +<p>Some indeed there are whose last earthly moment is a vivid reassertion +of the glory and loveliness of life. They drink the great cup to its +last golden drain, and by their death-beds we seem to be standing at the +laughing founts of being. They are radiant, victorious, even witty, to +the last, when at one swoop of blackness they are extinguished like a +light plunged into a stream.</p> + +<p>But for others the cold mists that hang low by Lethe's banks have +already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first +step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but +with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with +sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,--that was not +love's meaning.</p> + +<p>And not only are the dying thus drugged out of knowledge before they +die, but those who stand near them grow drowsed, too, by the fumes of +the poppies of death. The dying have forgotten; the living are numb and +foolish and in a dream. All they love on earth is passing away beneath +their very eyes, and they cannot understand,--cannot realise that this, +<i>this</i> is death.</p> + +<p>Except in moments of piercing agony, days and weeks afterwards, moments +that were similarly soothed away again by that mysterious narcotic +property which pain at its highest brings with it (pain at its highest +being its own anaesthetic), Theophil never realised that Jenny had died, +and least of all at the moment when she was dying. Long after he +remembered how he had said to himself: "There is Jenny dying, dying. A +few more seconds and she will be beyond the sound of your voice for +ever. Call to her; she can still, perhaps, hear you. O my Jenny, my +Jenny! Louder, louder,--hold her tighter, tighter,--she is slipping +away. O God, she is slipping away. No love can hold her back. My Jenny, +my Jenny!"</p> + +<p>And all the time he had been curiously calm, almost unfeeling,--as one +standing stupefied in the presence of fate. The air seemed full of +boding sounds, echoes of low thunder, as from a distant world in the +throes of portentous change; and he told himself mechanically that he +should know the meaning of those sounds some day. He should wake up soon +from this unnatural torpor of pain to an empty house of life, through +the cold halls of which he would seek in vain for Jenny for evermore.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, he suddenly found himself standing with his back to the fire +in the lighted study, talking to Mr. Moggridge, who, late as was the +hour, had called for news, and had stayed on from a perception that the +young minister had best have some one to talk to as far into the +morning as he would go on talking. They were talking in a business-like +way of Zion; and Theophil was smoking cigarette after cigarette. He was +terribly clear-headed and bright-witted, and Mr. Moggridge looked at him +sometimes with a sort of fear.</p> + +<p>It was about three in the morning when the door was softly opened by +Mrs. Talbot.</p> + +<p>"Will you come now, and see our little girl?" she said, with a voice +that could say no more.</p> + +<p>Theophil followed her, and, still in a dream, he stood in Jenny's room, +grown strangely solemn and sweet since he was last there,--was it a +thousand years ago? And there was Jenny lying asleep with a wonderful +smile on her face. She had a little gold chain round her neck and a +white crysanthemum in the bosom of her night-gown, and you thought of +some princess lying in enchanted sleep in an Arabian night. It seemed so +light a sleep and yet somehow so eternal. You stept softly, you spoke +low, lest you should awaken her--not carelessly shall one disturb that +imperious slumber.</p> + +<p>Yes, the distinction of death sat like an invisible crown upon Jenny's +brow. She was no longer little Jenny, but a mysterious princess upon +whose sleep it was permitted thus to gaze. The pain which had filled +these weeks with bitter human anguish had been the process of some +mysterious ennoblement. She had been found "worthy to die." In the +peerage of God's creatures, she had now outsoared those whom she loved. +The nature of it was a mystery, but no one could look on her face and +doubt that a great honour had come to little Jenny.</p> + +<p>But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greater +than we can bear--greater than we can bear. Not Theophil only--not young +love, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away the +potencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, though +sorrow itself should become that dream--but this poor old mother, all +the force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up. Hers is the +terrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death.</p> + +<p>Pity her, Jenny--speak one word to her. Hearken to her sobs as she +kneels by your side, and can you not hear the hard crying of his heart +that knows no tears?</p> + +<p>Are you become as the gods, Jenny, that you still smile on at the sound +of mortal tears? Will you not stretch out one of those folded hands to +each and lead them away with you? They are praying to follow you, only +to be with you, wherever you are.</p> + +<p>And it did seem as though in some strange way the soul of the mother had +still some sure communication with the soul of her dead child. +Motherhood had given her a nearness in the hour which no love of a lover +could gain. She alone spoke to the dead girl as though she were still +really alive, as one speaking to the deaf whom only one voice can reach.</p> + +<p>But Theophil was conscious in his wildest, most heartbroken, words that +Jenny could not hear them. He talked to her as though she were a picture +of herself, and as one would implore a picture to answer us, he +symbolised the cry of his soul in cries that he knew were vain.</p> + +<p>Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that this +icy marble had once been the flesh he had loved. O God! that little +tender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the words +of a song, it was marble now.</p> + +<p>"Ah! Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I, +and no one else in the world? Jenny, we shall never forget, never +forget, shall we? And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven. +Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say? Are you glad +somewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment looking +into my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours? Is it I who seem dead, +Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back to +me, as I am beating at the gates of death? But, Jenny, we shall find +each other, <i>must</i> find each other some day. I shall be so true, +Jenny,--will you be true to me in heaven?"</p> + +<p>Then would sweep across his soul a pitiless vista of the long cold years +that lay between him and Jenny. He was not twenty-five; through what a +weary pilgrimage of useless years must he journey on, before there was +Jenny's face shining at the end. How he envied the old woman whose +sorrow was in this alone less cruel than his, that she was already fifty +years farther on the road to Jenny. Perhaps another year or two and she +would meet her. To meet so soon--was hardly to have parted at all.</p> + +<p>But, why live those years? Have you forgotten that old promise? Is it +too late to follow? Surely little Jenny will not speed so swiftly from +the earth she loved but that you shall overtake her. Who knows but she +is fluttering still at the gate of death, putting off the heavenward +journey hour after hour, in hope that the face she waits for will at +last light up the dark portal--</p> + +<blockquote> +"I'll take his hand and go with him<br> + To the deep wells of light;<br> +As unto a stream we will step down,<br> + And bathe there in God's sight."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>But was this the way to find Jenny? The universe was so full of dark +traps for lovers' feet. To lie down cold as Jenny by Jenny's side, was +that the way to find her? When death's gate opened for Jenny, had +Theophil at that very instant, hand in her hand, eyes fixed upon her +eyes, slipped through too, then surely they had been together. But the +door had closed, and whither on the other side Jenny had already +wandered, who could tell? Perhaps that was the very way to miss her.</p> + +<p>When two have lost each other in a crowd, it is best that one should +stand still and await the other. Perhaps it were best for him to stand +still here in life. Jenny would know where to seek him then--and maybe +the dead had mysterious ways of bringing news to the living. He could +wait a little while and see. For a little he could live--and listen.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>JENNY'S LYING IN STATE</h3> + +<p>But there were others besides those who stood so near who mourned Jenny, +passers-by on the road of friendship, who would miss her sunshine in the +streets, and carry with them one bright thought the less for that bright +face that death had thus blown out. There were especially some little +people to whom death was as yet hardly even mysterious, but was merely +perplexing, like many other grown-up things in which their parents were +interested. These were the little scholars of Jenny's Sunday-school +class, to whom simple Jenny had been a personage, quite a great lady, +full of gentleness. To these Jenny was "Teacher," a name of gentle awe; +and to these Teacher was as deeply dear as anyone can be to very +young hearts.</p> + +<p>Jenny had felt like a little mother to these little ones, and when she +lay ill her thoughts would often go to them, while from them would come +tiny presents to show how sorry they were that Teacher was ill.</p> + +<p>Several times before she grew too ill, Jenny had had her favourites up +in her room on Sunday evenings, to read Bible stories with her, and had +sent them away happy with magnificent text-cards, that had hitherto been +the arduously won rewards of "attention" and the practice of such +school-time virtues over many weeks.</p> + +<p>Now, when they heard that Teacher was dead, they felt a vague sorrow. +They knew that people who died were never seen at school any more, and +that people always burst out crying when anyone died; so they cried +bitterly, these little girls, and the hearts of one or two of them +perhaps really ached for a little while. One of them asked the new +teacher, if they would meet their old teacher in heaven, and was told +"Yes, if they were good girls,"--which was something to be good for.</p> + +<p>Among the wreaths that already filled Jenny's room with that piercing +smell of lilies which still clung there--unless it were Theophil's +fancy--for many months afterwards, was one sent in loving memory "by her +Sunday-school class"; and it was a part of that informal lying-in-state, +which is an involuntary recognition of the divine honours due to death, +that these little awestruck scholars should be taken in threes and fours +to look at Teacher for the last time.</p> + +<p>This was the third day, and Jenny was already in her coffin. The first +bloom of death, that light that lingers awhile in the face like a sunset +tranquil and blessed, a smile of immortal promise in the very moment of +mortality, had faded. Jenny's face by this was really dead, a mask of +drawn and sunken wax. She seemed now some fantastic doll, some ghastly +waxwork image of death such as we see carried on the stage in tragic +plays. The reality of death had gone with the coming of its funereal +trappings. But the little girls, who had to be lifted up one by one to +gaze with curious, scared faces into that harsh box, deeper and deeper +into which, as through beds of flowers and veils of gauze, Teacher was +sinking, knew nothing of these thoughts. They looked and wondered in +hushed bewilderment, and went their ways. It was evidently an occasion +when children were to keep more than usually quiet--and was it really +Teacher in that strange deep box? It was rather meaningless, but it was +certainly very strange and solemn, and you were allowed to cry.</p> + +<p>Of the others who came to see Jenny, I shall not speak,--the vulgar +sight-seers, the creepy old women, connoisseurs in beautiful death, for +whom a neighbour's funeral was like an invitation to the grand opera, +but on whom perhaps one should not be too severe, for even such coarse +sensitiveness to a mystery is the crude beginning of the poetic.</p> + +<p>The night before Jenny was given back to the elements Theophil dreamed a +dream, and afterwards he liked to think that he had dreamed it while +Jenny's body was still in the house with him, for then it might be +interpreted that her spirit was still there too, waiting for its final +release from the clay which God had sent her to animate for a while, as +an artist imprisons a lovely thought in a vase of alabaster.</p> + +<p>Theophil dreamed that he and some friends were gay together in a room, +just before setting out for a theatre; and as they laughed and talked +there came a little tapping on the wall, so that they grew silent and +listened. Then through the wall was heard a faint but glad little voice +speaking. It was Jenny's voice.</p> + +<p>"I can hear you all," she said; "you are off to the theatre. I wish I +were going with you. Never mind, we are not so far away from each other +as you think. I am only on the other side of a wall."</p> + +<p>And Theophil awoke on a bright wintry morning, with those words still, +it seemed, in the room.</p> + +<p>"I am only on the other side of a wall!" Was it but the metaphor-making +of dreams, which will so often take our forgotten speculations and +dramatise them for us into reality, or was it indeed a message? An +instinct which was unamenable to reason, and which was perhaps only a +desire, told him it was a message; and it was no less a message though +it were merely a pictorial symbol of a sense, which was already his in +the daytime, of a new and very real nearness to Jenny.</p> + +<p>He had slept right through that night out of sheer bodily weariness. +Weeks of watching and anguish had worn him out, and he never knew that +the poor old mother had laid a benediction on his sleep, looking in upon +him as he slept, the only waking being in that house of sleep.</p> + +<p>"He will wake soon enough, poor boy!" she had said, as she went once +more to watch till daylight by the side of the other sleeper.</p> + +<p>"O Jenny, Jenny, why did you leave me? You were the apple of my eye, my +Jenny. What will your old mother do now that you are gone?"</p> + +<p>So she sat and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise the +dead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though even +Jenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fear +for Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creed +told her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied her +faith, and her love made her a Sadducee.</p> + +<p>And yet it was her belief in a literal resurrection of the body that was +sorely troubling her old soul during these last hours of watching. For +while Jenny was still conscious of the coming of death, she had been +much tortured by hideous churchyard fancies, imaginations of the +darkness and noisomeness of the grave, and she had wrung from her mother +the promise that she should first be cremated and her ashes be afterward +buried in the family tomb. This was the promise which was lying heavy on +the old woman's heart to-night; and, though her reason told her that the +way of the flames and the way of the flowers alike led to dust, yet the +disintegration by fire seemed to give her a sense of entire destruction +such as the more desultory operations of the earth did not give.</p> + +<p>If Jenny must indeed pass right away, the dainty architecture of her +body, so lovingly builded, be laid in ruin; not by the fierce fingers of +fire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun, +and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and on +the wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragrance +about the world.</p> + +<p>And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of a +mysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quite +returned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptible +Jenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour when +the soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day. +Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance of +imagination.</p> + +<p>And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of the +flames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of the +great consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny +was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once +more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it +brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and +lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered +with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the +cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and +was already about the business of the dreaming spring.</p> + +<p>And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. It +saved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which had +haunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. However +morbid his fancies might become, <i>desiderium</i> could never take any but +beautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images of +corruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacomb +or charnel.</p> + +<p>She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned again +whence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms, +and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; she +had touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books, +she had made little everlasting memories with her hands,--that was her +history; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, and +she had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked a +flower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No one +as long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and, +giving the lie to love's divine answer to the dust, say "This +was Jenny!"</p> + +<p>No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon +rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's +path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the +window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown +happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when a +lovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all high +moments, then can one say, "There, listen! <i>that</i> was Jenny."</p> + +<p>Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophil +remained behind only to write her name across the high stars. Then he, +too, would pass through the gates of fire to her side.</p> + +<p>As he lay down to rest that night, his eyes fell with a sudden sense of +freshness upon the familiar Botticelli's "Mother and Child," which hung +over his fireplace; and a need that could never be fulfilled awoke in +his soul. If only Jenny could have left him a little child,--a little +girl! He had not seemed so lonely then.</p> + +<p>It was so he thought; yet perhaps Jenny's child would but have deepened +his loneliness, like a bird singing in a garden where our love walked +long ago. Yet the cry was from his heart, and the longing brought with +it his first tears. "O Jenny," he sobbed, "if only you had left me a +little child!"</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--MESSAGE FROM JENNY</h3> + +<p>If every inclination of his heart had not desired it too, Theophil would +have gone on living at 3 Zion Place, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; for now +he was literally all she had left in the world, and what greater joy +remained for either than just to sit close by the fire and talk +of Jenny?</p> + +<p>3 Zion Place was now a little chapel of memory, where a bowed ancient +woman and a sad-faced young man kept up perpetual services to the holy +dead. A woman of her own years, also acquainted with grief, came to +companion the old woman, a sort of lay sister in this little monastery +of grief. It was so piety began, and thus piety is purest and tenderest +in the worship of the dead. Everything in that house which had taken the +impress of Jenny's fingers, been Jenny's to use or handle, remained +exactly as and where Jenny had placed it. They were as yet as fragrant +of Jenny as a fresh-gathered flower of its own perfume. In a very real +sense indeed Jenny had not died, or she was coming to life again as she +had never lived before; and it was no merely idealised Jenny who was +henceforward to fill up all her lover's thoughts and speak to him in +every sight and sound, but just the human Jenny, with her faults +and all.</p> + +<p>On these--such little faults!--Theophil ever loved to dwell. They saved +Jenny from becoming an abstraction, a saint. Even those bitter little +quarrels which all lovers must suffer,--how sweet they seemed now!</p> + +<p>The old mother's method was no doubt again different from her +son-in-law's. She would never have admitted that Jenny had a fault. +Such is the difference in reality between the new idealism and the old.</p> + +<p>In such small matters as the minutiae of mourning that difference was +again illustrated. Theophil could permit himself no outward insignia of +sorrow which he could not wear for ever. Already his profession had +clothed him in black, and it was only for him that his black seemed now +to gain a deeper distinction; but such ugly symbols of beautiful memory +as that note-paper whose diminishing edge of blackness is rather a +cynical witness of a graduated forgetfulness, were not for a real grief +like his. As if sorrow, while it may and will change, can ever end! Why, +in the world of faithful hearts, men and women have not yet dried their +tears for Romeo and Juliet!</p> + +<p>Theophil conceived this grief that had come to him as one more activity +added to his life till life should end. He knew that it would not +outcast joy, but that it would live side by side with it, that it must +alternate with joy for it to go on living. Jenny's death was not going +to be less sad, less a factor of the eternal tragedy, at the end of a +year,--that he might go to a theatre once more, as some widows joyously +don colours, when the clock strikes the end of a year of lost dances.</p> + +<p>For it was not Jenny alone that had died, but it was a consolation to +Theophil in those hours of self-torture which are among the earliest and +most cruel developments of grief, to realise how much of himself had +died with her, after all. It was not merely the apathy of the first +weeks that told him this, the sense of vacuity, of uselessness in all +things, but the sense that never left him, even when he had awakened to +an activity he had never known before, that nothing really mattered, +however vigorously he might seem to act to the contrary, since Jenny +had gone.</p> + +<p>It was with difficulty sometimes that he could take important issues +with necessary seriousness, for, whatever the odds of life henceforward +might be, what was there worth gaining now that Jenny was lost? Could +any energy or haste save Jenny from dying? That had happened. The worst +had happened. All the terror life had to appal the human spirit had been +faced, in that moment when the doctor's hand upon his shoulder had told +him Jenny was to die. His eyes had looked on the Medusa-face of life +that turns the bravest to stone, and he was no longer vulnerable +humanity.</p> + +<p>On the battle-field of existence he bore a charmed life, and sometimes +as he moved among his fellows he felt a certain sense of the unfairness +of his advantage in this respect, and paused to pity those who could +still be so eager, so tragically set upon, this little issue. The +virulence of those enemies whom he was already making and who were to +multiply as his activities awakened again, seemed particularly pathetic, +and he would smile in sad amusement at their quaint little efforts to +hurt him. (No man is so strong for this world's fight as he who has laid +up his treasure in heaven; and when the mystic condescends to the common +trades of life he is an easy master.) It meant so much to them, so +little to him. He was a humbug, he was a hypocrite, he wasn't even a +good speaker, he was an ignoramus! Was he? All right. They might think +so if they chose. It hardly interested him. He had been sitting drawing +angels, and somehow their irrelevant voices had broken in upon him. +"Another was with me."</p> + +<p>Really, even for Jenny's sake, it seemed hardly worth while to fight so +poor a world! Was the fame that such a world could give a distinction +one would seek for Jenny? Would not Jenny smile in heaven at the toy +honours of such a world?</p> + +<p>On the other hand, there was something repellent to his once ambitious +soul, in the thought that such a world might seem to have the victory; +and, therefore, when the first numbness had left him and the colours and +sounds of things were once more coming back, he threw himself with +galvanic vitality into the work that lay to his hand, and particularly +into those political activities for which his gift of speech and his +power of organisation fitted him.</p> + +<p>Two months after Jenny's death, having spoken at a great meeting on some +momentous question of the hour, he found himself the acknowledged leader +of the Radical, rather forlorn, hope in Coalchester, and before long +invitations were coming to him to help on the same hope in other towns. +Never in his life--and he used often to meditate on the fact with +wonder--had he been so vital, so efficient, so brilliant. His powers had +acquired a firmness, an alertness, a force of influence and attraction, +they had never possessed before. Of a sudden he found himself mature, a +calm master of his gifts.</p> + +<p>Yet those who sat near him at those meetings might have noticed that as +he sat down, pale amid plaudits, and crossed his hands upon his knees, +and while his political colleagues were complimenting him to the +audience on the mellow thunder of his political oratory, he was smiling +furtively to himself. "It's all very funny, isn't it, Jenny?" he was +saying in his heart.</p> + +<p>Indeed it was hardly recognisable to himself as a fancy that whenever he +spoke Jenny was somewhere in the audience. Sometimes a remote face might +bear a chance resemblance to her, and he would humour himself with the +thought that that was Jenny. For, with that self-consciousness which no +modern mind can escape, he found a certain sad pleasure sometimes in +noting the tricks grief played with him, loving and encouraging all its +fancies--if fancies indeed they were.</p> + +<p>When at other times he tried to think clearly, to strip himself of the +illusions, as others would no doubt call them, in which he now lived, +his thinking rather confirmed than dispersed them; and the more he +pondered, the more he failed to realise that Jenny was dead, the surer +became his consciousness that she was nearer to him (a very part of him +as it were) than she had ever been in the days when others could still +hear her voice and note her presence in a room. Her very death had given +him a paradoxical certitude of her immortality.</p> + +<p>Yet this recognition of her presence, on some plane of spiritual +apprehension, was none the less consistent with a piercing sense of her +loss on the plane where love once moved in visible beauty. That heavenly +lover in him was able to give none of the comfort of its assurance to +the earthly lover. That the eyes of the spirit could touch her, brought +no healing to the eyes that at midnight would look up from the desk in +Theophil's study to Jenny's empty chair, no touch of her to the hands +that were so idle and empty now.</p> + +<p>Yet there were little services these hands might still do for her. +There in her own little room her own books still stood in their places. +These could be taken care of, her little desk could still be kept as she +had left it, with her pen laid down as she had last laid it. There were +note-paper and envelopes, and ink and blotting-paper, all ready, if some +day, by a miracle--who could tell?--she might steal into that room and +want to leave a message. There should be fresh flowers for her to find +there too if she did come.</p> + +<p>And that new edition of Scott which was not finished issuing when she +went away, she would find that complete when she came back. Her little +collection of fairy books too--she was sure to glance at that! and then +she would find two or three new ones there finer than any of the old +ones; alas! so many beautiful books kept coming out now that she +had gone.</p> + +<p>Yet somehow she might see them, after all, if they were taken softly to +that little room and laid on that table altar. When it was quite sure +that no one was looking or listening, the shy soul might steal out of +the air and turn the pages with a sigh.</p> + +<p>Just so some savage lover might bring gifts of fruit and coloured beads, +and bright plumed birds, to the grave of his dead love, for the future +anthropologist to draw his moral of the childishness of all human +idealisms.</p> + +<p>One day, as Theophil had stolen quietly into that room on some such +votive errand, an impulse had come to him to open the drawer of the +desk. There might be some message for him there. Any writing of the dead +we have never read before is a message.</p> + +<p>Among various odds and ends, he came first upon one of those little +tradesmen's account-books interleaved with bad blotting-paper in which +the housewife writes her orders week by week.</p> + +<p>It was full of Jenny's writing, and though the entries were merely +weekly repetitions of the same string of groceries:--"2 lbs. of the +best tea," "6 lbs. loaf sugar," "6 nutmegs," and so on,--yet, "the hand +being hers," they made a record that could only be read through blinding +tears; and one page which bore a severe little note, to the effect that +the tea had been far from good of late, read almost like a personal +revelation.</p> + +<p>Theophil kissed the page, and, replacing the book, took up another, and +his heart leapt to find it was a little diary.</p> + +<p>He hesitated for a moment. It seemed wrong to read it, and yet he knew +that Jenny's soul held nothing she would not have shared with him, and +he was so hungry for a word from her though it were only a word out +of the past.</p> + +<p>The entries were not many nor long, but it smote his heart to find how +large a space his name, his interests, his successes, filled there. The +entries of honour were little heart-notes of evenings together +especially happy; there were two birthdays still singing for joy, and +sometimes there was a saying of his she had put down because it was so +helpful, or a poem she had copied out; and also there were clever little +criticisms of books she had read, and sometimes a wise little reflection +of her own,--which brought home to him, with a certain pang, that the +little child who had seemed so dependent on him had been an independent +personality, after all.</p> + +<p>As he came to the last entry, he put the book down with a gesture of +pain. The last entry had been made the day after Jenny had discovered +Theophil's love for Isabel. It was very brief, just a sob: "Have +realised that I am no fit wife for Theophil. And yet how I love him!"</p> + +<p>As Theophil read this, all that sad night came back to him with +unbearable vividness, and he felt once more a little sobbing body crying +its heart out against his. At that moment he would have endured +centuries of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; and +an awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of his +mind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul: the +thought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it was +who had--killed Jenny. "She seems to have had a shock," a voice was +saying over and over again, "she seems to have had a shock."</p> + +<p>A shock! Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in the +outer darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, now +sprang into vivid light again in company with that thought. In that +moment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath he +hurled her back again into the dark. It was she, <i>she</i> who had made +him--kill Jenny!</p> + +<p>But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurable +by some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish to +deceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himself +that this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed no +wilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, who +had planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny.</p> + +<p>Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardise +the happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold? +Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts?</p> + +<p>But a voice said--was it Jenny's?--this poor Theophil and Isabel love by +reason of no theory. It is yours, O ruling Fates of men, whatever you +be, who must support that accusation. Theophil and Isabel loved by the +compelling dispensation of the stars. They fought their destiny, and had +conquered it. It was you, ye stars, not they, that killed Jenny.</p> + +<p>And this was true: but still the little figure sobbed at Theophil's +side, as again and again it would come and sob there, till Theophil's +own heart broke,--that old death-crying of Jenny's broken heart.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE</h3> + +<p>After Jenny's death two letters had come for her from Isabel, who had no +knowledge of what had been happening to her friends of New Zion.</p> + +<p>There is something peculiarly sad about the letters that for a little +time go on coming for the dead. Perhaps nothing more simply brings home +the fact that they are no longer with us. Even little bills, circulars +offering new spring goods at sale prices, come charged with pathos, and +Theophil smiled at his own folly as he kept them all. Sad little <i>poste +restante</i>! Will the letters ever be called for?</p> + +<p>Theophil did not open the letters, but as days went by and no more came, +he sometimes found himself taking them from their drawer and looking at +them. Isabel's handwriting, though his soul would not confess it to +himself, still held the power of a rune over his heart.</p> + +<p>Had no traitor thought ever whispered deep down in the darkness of his +consciousness that the way was now open to Isabel? Such thoughts indeed +had come to him, but unwelcomed, involuntarily, as those foul thoughts +which will sometimes torture the pure, or those base thoughts which may +appal the noble.</p> + +<p>The mind, like the body, has its foul humours, which can only be +accepted with patience as a part of the inscrutable mechanism of human +organisms. In moments of anger this filth and poison of the mind +sometimes comes to the surface to wrong us--for it is not us, it is in +truth just all that we are not.</p> + +<p>Thus at times in Theophil's mind, that was one prayer of faithful love +for Jenny, the thought of Isabel would steal, like--so his stern +faithfulness pictured it--a fair devil in a church. Yet, if he opened +one of those letters he knew there would ascend from it a cloud of +subtle incense, which would ... well, which he must never again breathe.</p> + +<p>So he would replace them in their drawer, and again, some other day, +take them out once more.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, after all, it might be his duty, the mere duty of a friend, to +open them. What if Isabel should be ill, should be needing him ... +should be dying!</p> + +<p>But still the fanaticism of his sorrow conquered, and still week after +week they remained unread.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Isabel was living her life as she had lived it before she had +heard of New Zion, with the difference of an internal sense of +completion which her love had brought. Need one say that she had her +hours of loneliness and longing, when she would have exchanged a +thousand years of love in heaven for a touch of Theophil's hand upon +earth; but these she knew how to conquer, and for most days that union +of two separated hearts remained to her as real as when it had been +vowed in those silent woods.</p> + +<p>At the very moment when Jenny was dying, and Theophil had thrust Isabel +away into the furthest, highest, starlight of memory, she was thinking +how real their union was, how near he seemed!</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY</h3> + +<blockquote> +Knowing the quick but little love<br> +Much mention of the dead.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>I hesitate further to continue that history of a grief of which, +nevertheless, this book has now little heart or purpose to be other than +the record, and, as what I shall write in this chapter must seem +meaningless and wearisome to all but those who belong to the great +Secret Society of Sorrow, it were no doubt just as well that those who +have known nothing but joy should follow their natural impulse and leave +it unread. I confess, too, that I should feel the more comfortable +without the regard of their happy, ignorant eyes.</p> + +<p>Sorrow is a mysticism, and to talk of it to those who have never known +the initiation of tears is like talking alchemy to a child. Sorrow, +too, is an aristocracy, and when Theophil came to realise that, as Jenny +had been found worthy to die, he had been found worthy to suffer, it +seemed to him almost vulgar only to have been happy. Happiness is such a +materialist, a creature of coarse tastes and literal pleasures, a +<i>bourgeois</i> who has not yet attained the rank of a soul. The influence +of sorrow on the individual is much what the influence of Christianity +has been upon the world. Christianity, no doubt, has robbed us of +much--but then it has given us sorrow; it has taken away the sun, but it +has brought us the stars. It is only in the starlight of sorrow that we +become conscious of other worlds. The sun flatters our own little world +with the illusion of a transitory importance; the stars show it its +place in the universe, and teach it a nobler meaning for itself.</p> + +<p>No consciousness of his gifts had ever given Theophil any such sense of +his belonging to the chosen and dedicated minority of mankind as this +initiation into the Secret Society of Sorrow. He had been chosen to +represent a sacred order. He stood for no lesser interests than those of +Love and Death. Though he were to represent Coalchester in the House of +Commons, what honour were there in that to one already so +mysteriously honoured?</p> + +<p>Tears bring a strange new sight to the eyes, and "a new perception both +of grieving love" made Theophil see, and love to see, many things in the +world he had never noticed before. His eyes were opened to behold the +many mourners who go about the streets, the widows who walk in darkness, +and all the shapes of blackness moving phantom-like through the coloured +traffic; not all true children of sorrow, indeed, though wearing its +habit, but, true or not, symbols of the power and majesty of death in +the world. For the involuntary honour paid to death even by the +ignorantly busy, and happy, he kept ever a grateful and a jealous eye; +and as some funeral <i>cortège</i> passed like a dream, Charon's barge amid +all the motley craft of merchandise and pleasure, he would watch sternly +to see if the fat and prosperous moment would do honour to the carriages +of the king. For a bowed head or a doffed hat he felt a personal +gratitude. And, since Jenny died, he seemed to be always meeting that +phantom procession in the streets.</p> + +<p>Once, as he passed along the High Street, he had noticed a crowd round a +dying horse. He stood with the crowd a moment, and then went on his way. +In an hour's time he repassed the place, and there was the dead horse +lying solitary on the side of the street; but he noted with a curious +gladness that some hand had covered it reverently with a horse-cloth. +"So honoured is death," he mused to himself, "that even the humblest +animal on which he shall have set his seal is held sacred from the +common day, and shall not be gazed upon heedlessly by the passer-by." +This seemed the greatest honour he had known paid to the king!</p> + +<p>The fascination with which from this time death and all that related to +or remotely suggested it absorbed him, was, he reflected one day with a +surprised recognition of the paradox, no longer the fascination of hate +or dread, but almost love. Death, the arch-enemy of joy, the assassin of +youth, the murderer of Jenny,--Death had robbed him of his life's one +treasure, and here was he loving him, watching for his face, listening +for his step, like a lover.</p> + +<p>Surely this was the strangest of conclusions; but perhaps the +explanation was very simple. Theophil loved death because Jenny had +died, as he would have loved anything Jenny had chosen to do, as he +would have loved life had Jenny gone on living. By dying Jenny had made +death beautiful, and its gloomiest associations were but so many +allusions to Jenny.</p> + +<p>Death was to Theophil as a foreign land of which before he had only +heard the name, and heard it almost without interest, as one hears +listlessly of Peru. But now that Jenny had gone to Peru, the books of +the world could not tell him enough about the new land where Jenny had +gone, and everyone who had friends there was at once his friend, and +every little dark-robed company gathered sadly to godspeed some new +emigrant to its distant shore was dear to him for Jenny's sake. Besides, +some of these might have heard from their friends there, might have news +to tell him of the dark land. One would walk far, would listen late for +such precious tidings.</p> + +<p>Did such tidings ever come? Yes, some had even seen their loved ones +again, shining strangely on the air. Why did Jenny never come like that? +How he had prayed and called to her for just one sign out of the +silence, one swift uplifting of the veil; but none, except that dream, +had ever come. Yet one could never be sure by what common unnoticed +sights and sounds the dead might fumblingly be striving to reach us in +the deaf and dumb language of the dead. Perhaps it was they who led us +to passages in books we had never noticed before, pointed their fingers +to bright pages of faith, and left us here and there many a message of +hope we never dreamed had come from them. Or might it not happen that +the dead, like the living, could be unfaithful:--</p> + +<blockquote> +"Is death's long kiss a richer kiss<br> + Than mine was wont to be,<br> +Or have you gone to some far bliss<br> + And straight forgotten me?"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Perhaps Jenny already loved another in heaven, and his gift of +faithfulness might some day be a burden to her...</p> + +<p>This love of death was no mere morbid absorption. It was but one of the +activities of a faithfulness to which the trees about the temple had +become "dear as the temple's self," and his jealousy for those honours +paid to death was only one expression of his eager watchfulness for the +signs of human faithfulness.</p> + +<p>Not all unrewarded was that watch. The world held some faithful +hearts,--let us not ask how many,--lovers of invisible faces and voices +heard no more, men and women who still shared their joys and sorrows +with unseen comrades, and drank the cup of life as a sacrament of +remembrance.</p> + +<p>This sharing with the dead seemed to Theophil the essential of +faithfulness,--faithfulness taking many forms, sometimes maybe +misrepresentative of itself, and seldom perhaps informing its +conventional externals.</p> + +<p>A time will come in the profoundest griefs when those rituals to which +young grief is so eager to vow itself will grow lifeless and +conventional, the daily tasks of remembrance become as the told beads of +pattered prayers. Let the worshipper of relics beware lest his +treasures some day turn on his hands to so much irksome lumber, and true +sorrow be thus humiliated.</p> + +<p>No! the service for the dead which is most likely to remain a vital +offering of the heart is not the ceremonial sorrow of specially +consecrated times and seasons, but rather the simple longing in hours of +joy that <i>they</i> could have been with us. To think of our dead friends as +always in their shrouds is a way of remembrance which we shall not long +have heart or even interest to follow. It is only by taking them to our +feasts, keeping up with them the same old human companionship, that we +may hope to keep the dead as friends. A modern poet has written eight +lines which were of great comfort to Theophil,--</p> + +<blockquote> +"You go not to the headstone<br> + As aforetime every day,<br> +And I who died, I do not chide,<br> + Because, dear friend, you play;<br> +<br> +"But in your playing think of him<br> + Who once was kind and dear,<br> +And if you see a beauteous thing,<br> + Just say: 'He is not here.'"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Here it seemed to Theophil was the whole duty of faithfulness. The dead +know that if we remember them in our hours of joy, they are indeed +remembered; and if they know anything at all, they will understand the +waywardness of sad hearts better than sad hearts understand themselves.</p> + +<p>Yet, indeed, save in the exercise of his faculties, Theophil had no joy +to reproach himself with. Surely returning spring, with its terrible +exuberance of warm life, was no joy. Perhaps he had looked on Jenny +lying dead with less anguish than he one day beheld an apple-tree thick +with blossom in the hot sun. Yes! the world had the heart to go on, to +bud and build, and sing,--though Jenny was gone. And in that bright +spring, see horrible and useless age still hobbling out into the beam! +What was life but one huge Mephistopheles laugh beneath the windows of +our dreams!</p> + +<p>That spring James Whalley persuaded Theophil to walk with him for a week +of country lanes far beyond Coalchester, letting him talk of Jenny all +the time. Jenny had never been here! If only Jenny could have seen that +view! Jenny had never known that flower! Did he remember those verses +from James Thomson:--</p> + +<blockquote> +"The chambers of the mansions of my heart,<br> +In every one whereof thine image dwells,<br> +Are black with grief eternal for thy sake.<br> +<br> +"The inmost oratory of my soul,<br> +Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead,<br> +Is black with grief eternal for thy sake.<br> +<br> +"I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross,<br> +With eyes for ever fixed upon that face,<br> +So beautiful and dreadful in its calm.<br> +<br> +"I kneel here patient as thou liest there;<br> +As patient as a statue carved in stone,<br> +Of adoration and eternal grief.<br> +<br> +"While thou dost not awake I cannot move;<br> +And something tells me thou wilt never wake,<br> +And I alive feel turning into stone."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Strange joy of sad poetry for sad hearts!</p> + +<p>Experience indeed was now divided for Theophil into what Jenny had not +seen or known and into what she had seen and known; and it was one of +the tricks of his grief, as time went on, to confuse the two. Sometimes +he would think that Jenny had been with him at a certain place, or +perhaps had read a certain book which, on taking thought, he knew she +could never have seen.</p> + +<p>Allied perhaps to this confusion was the fancy that possessed him on +certain days that he caught glimpses of Jenny in little flitting figures +of women about the streets. A sudden poise of the head, the way of doing +the hair, a trick of walk,--just a flash and gone again; though +sometimes he was haunted with more persistent resemblances, which +brought him a curious mixture of joy and pain. And this perhaps is the +place to record what only those acquainted with grief will understand, +and not all of those,--for grief has many contradictory fashions.</p> + +<p>Till he had loved Jenny, women had played little or no part in +Theophil's life; but with Jenny's death he found, to his surprise, that +the idea of woman was strangely sweet to him. His eyes were drawn after +women in the street, and he found himself longing sometimes for some +woman on whose shoulder he might lean his head and weep out his grief +for Jenny! He loved death because Jenny had died; was he to love women +because Jenny had been a woman? Perhaps his feet had wandered in +dangerous paths at this time, had it not been for the restrictions which +his calling laid upon him.</p> + +<p>These, however, did not deny him the theatre, which it had been part of +his programme at New Zion to advocate, though there was seldom anything +worth seeing at Coalchester Theatre Royal. Yet sometimes a good London +company would call there on its provincial progress, and it chanced one +day, looking into a shop window, that Theophil caught sight of a +photograph of a woman that startled him with its remarkable resemblance +to Jenny. It was the prima donna of a Gaiety burlesque. Such was the +strange shape Jenny had for the moment taken!</p> + +<p>For the first time after her death Theophil was at the theatre that +evening. The bright lights and the music pierced him as with swords. +Once more he saw that apple-tree thick with blossom in the hot sun. Yet +his fancy found grim spells to lay the insolent ghost of life, and death +ever at his side whispered that all this light and music and dancing was +for but a little while; that those gay rouged faces, so confident in +laughing beauty, and all those nimble shapes, were to the eye that had +looked beyond life already stark in their coffins, with chin-cloths +about their nerveless jaws. Surely the lover would trip in the shroud +that was plainly to be seen from his feet to his lips!</p> + +<p>Like sudden snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from his +imagination across that fiddling, jigging, gleaming atmosphere, and +everywhere the dead sat around him, watching in a trance strange antics +of the grimacing dead. Curiously, in these moods, he never thought of +himself as dead. Alas! life was too cruel to release him so soon to +death and Jenny.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the theatre sprang back to life again with the entrance of the +prima donna. Yes, the resemblance was even greater than in the +photograph. She was a little taller and more heavily built than Jenny, +and it was not Jenny's voice; but for the rest, she <i>was</i> Jenny. The +fascination of watching her was terrible. It seemed impossible that one +form could so mockingly resemble another, and yet be so hopelessly +someone else. Theophil could hardly bring himself to believe that the +woman yonder with Jenny's eyes and mouth and hair had never even heard +of Jenny's name. Surely, if he were to come and look into her face, she +would recognise him at once, and the old common interests would rise to +her lips as of old.</p> + +<p>Theophil went again to the theatre the next night, and again the next, +which was the last of the company's stay in the town; and the spell of +the false Florimel grew so strong upon him that at the close of the +final performance he sent up his card to the actress, and presently, as +in a dream, found himself stumbling among scenery and dipping under +beams on his way to the actress's room. If she were only as like Jenny +close to, he felt he must follow her to the end of the world; and indeed +the illusion still held as he entered the little mirrored room, smelling +of powder and littered with laces and silks,--fancy little Jenny here +among the grease-paints and the bouquets! It was only with the lack of +recognition in the polite welcome the actress gave him that the illusion +began to waver, or was it only that Jenny had forgotten him?</p> + +<p>So possessed had he been with the hallucination, that he had not +thought what excuse he would have to make to the actress for his visit, +and it was with an embarrassing shock that the necessity of speech came +to him, when he had stumbled through some mechanical words of +salutation. She looked at him with a little air of bewilderment, and +motioned to her attendant to leave them alone. As the door closed, +Theophil had determined to tell her the simple truth.</p> + +<p>"I have to ask your pardon," he began, "for a very strange intrusion. +The reason of it is simply this. You are so like someone I love who is +dead that I felt I could not rest till I had spoken to you. I trust you +will excuse me, and try to understand. Yes! you are terribly like her!"</p> + +<p>The story appealed to the actress's instinct for romance, and she +entered into its spirit. Besides, the young clergyman was very +interesting to look at, and the charm of sorrow was on his face.</p> + +<p>"An actress can hardly complain," she answered, "of being taken for +someone else, and though I don't know you, I feel that you have done me +an honour. Am I indeed so like her? How strange it must seem to you!"</p> + +<p>"It is very strange," said Theophil, still fascinated. Then he told this +image of Jenny the story of how Jenny had died. The tears came into the +actress's eyes as he talked, and it was as though Jenny shed tears for +Jenny's death.</p> + +<p>"Poor little girl!" she said; "I am so sorry for you both."</p> + +<p>"But," she continued presently, "you should both be very happy too--for +it would be worth while to suffer for so beautiful a love.... I feel +happy," she added half gaily, "even to resemble a woman who is so +wonderfully loved."</p> + +<p>Theophil lingered on, still fascinated, till the actress suggested that +he should walk with her to her hotel. Arrived there, Theophil, to the +possible scandalising of Coalchester, accepted her invitation to a +further chat over supper; and when at last he was back at Zion Place, +his heart was aware of a new comfort and a new pain. He had leaned his +head on a woman's kind shoulder, and she had let him talk and talk about +Jenny; but her shoulder had been warm, and it had been sweet to be +near her ...</p> + +<blockquote> +"A creature might forget to weep who bore;<br> +Thy comfort long" ...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>and Theophil went to sleep that night with the taste of honey upon his +lips.</p> + +<p>But with the morning there came to him remorseful misgivings, and he +told himself that it had been one of the sophistries of the flesh, a +call of the senses taking in vain the sacred name of Jenny; and then for +his comfort he remembered how the greatest of all lovers, Dante, had +craved in like manner for the solace of "a very pitiful lady, very +young," and had been similarly remorseful on account of his momentary +preoccupation with her.</p> + +<p>Taking down his "Vita Nuova," he read: "<i>At length, by the constant +sight of this lady, mine eyes began to be gladdened overmuch with her +company; through which thing many times I had much unrest, and rebuked +myself as a base person: also, many times I cursed the unsteadfastness +of mine eyes, and said to them inwardly: 'Was not your grievous +condition of weeping wont one while to make others weep? And will ye now +forget this thing because a lady looketh upon you? who so looketh merely +in compassion of the grief ye then showed for your own blessed lady. But +what so ye can, that do ye, accursed eyes! many a time will I make you +remember it! for never, till death dry you up, should ye make an end of +your weeping</i>.'"</p> + +<p>Moreover, Dante had married Gemma within a year of the death of +Beatrice, and had even lived so scandalously meanwhile as to bring down +upon him the stern reproof of his friend Guido Calvancanti; yet the +world still regards him as the type of all faithful lovers. +Faithfulness is an attitude of the mind, and all it touches turns to +Beatrice. Yet--</p> + +<blockquote> +"Except by death, we must not any way<br> +Forget our lady who is gone from us."<br> +</blockquote> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>ISABEL CALLING</h3> + +<p>If women were thus henceforth to influence Theophil, why might not +Isabel, the woman whom Jenny had loved, be counted amongst them?</p> + +<p>Isabel was the one woman in the whole world whom Theophil's faithfulness +could not transform into Jenny. That it had been his fatal love for her +that had brought Jenny to her death, his reason, except in moments of +self-injustice, was robust enough to put aside.</p> + +<p>There are excuses that we owe to ourselves, and we have a right to +expect justice even from our own consciences. A sentimental conscience +is the most tiresome of all altruists, and wilfully to indulge in +remorse that we have not justly incurred is to blunt our consciences +for real offences. The best repentance for our sins is a clear-eyed +recognition of their nature, and the temptation in some flurry of +feeling to take on our shoulders the mistakes of destiny with which we +chance to have been involuntarily associated, is one to be resisted in +the interests of that self-knowledge which is the beginning of +self-development. Before we take the scourge in hand for our own +shoulders let us be quite sure that we have sinned.</p> + +<p>There were hours, particularly those hours of sudden wakefulness in the +middle of the night when our minds lose their sense of proportion, in +which Theophil agonised beyond endurance, and, as on that afternoon when +he had found Jenny's diary, said to himself with merciless reiteration, +"She seems to have had a shock"--"It was you who killed Jenny."</p> + +<p>These hours had to be supported as we support hours of purely physical +pain. The morning brought a saner, larger view. The tragedy of Jenny's +death was not to be so easily explained. In it were implicated more +august responsible causes, it was part of a more general tragedy; as the +original instinct to blame himself and Isabel was part of man's ancient +theological habit of making man the scapegoat of the universe.</p> + +<p>But as the thought of Isabel thus became bearable once more, it became +for that very reason a thought the more faithfully to be resisted.</p> + +<p>It might become sweet.</p> + +<p>It was sweet!</p> + +<p>One day the casuistry of grief brought Theophil the reflection that, as +Isabel was the only woman he knew whom Jenny had known too, and that as +Jenny had loved her also, she was thus destined for him even by Jenny +herself. Besides, as he had realised no unfaithfulness to Jenny in his +love for Isabel during Jenny's life, there could equally be no +unfaithfulness now that she was dead. Moreover, if Jenny still in some +mysterious way kept watch over his life, she would understand his heart +as she could never have understood it when she was alive...</p> + +<p>These thoughts brought deep sorrow to him for many days, during which +once more he rebuked himself as "a base person," but, curiously enough, +in one who so despised the world and its opinion, it was an apparently +superficial consideration that was the mainstay of his faithfulness, +against these disloyal suggestions of a life that was thus reawakening +in spite of himself.</p> + +<p>There were moments when he could conceive his going to Isabel, and +asking her to share his life with him; but never could he endure the +thought of her bearing that name which seemed so inviolably Jenny's. +Even though Jenny had come to him in a dream and asked him to give her +name to Isabel, there was still the world. Though Jenny might +understand, the world would think he had forgotten Jenny. The minority +of faithful hearts would grow sadder by his seeming apostasy, and the +cynic would strengthen his pessimism by one more illustration of human +inconstancy. The world might hear that he was loving Isabel in some +Aegean isle, and still deem him faithful; for grief is allowed +mistresses, but with a wife it is understood to die.</p> + +<p>No! so long as the world lasted no other woman should steal her name +from Jenny's grave.</p> + +<p>And this was an unassailable symbol. Here the vital principle of his +faithfulness was entrenched as in an impregnable fortress. He would see +Isabel's heart break ere she should bear Jenny's name.</p> + +<p>Yet while he made the vow, his love for Isabel was musical as spring +within his soul, and he dared to tell himself that in God's sight he was +still Isabel's as well as Jenny's.</p> + +<p>Thus it came about that one autumn day, when Isabel's letters had lain +unopened through spring and summer, in one sudden impulse of mere +desire he had opened and read them,--not as Jenny's letters, but as +messages for which he himself was hungering. He had released the +incense, and as he kissed the dear writing, he momentarily forgot that +it was written to Jenny, and only remembered that it had come from +Isabel. In the snare of the incense he even accused himself for having +left them unread so long, and then to think that nearly six months had +gone by since the second letter had brought its half-playful reproach +for forgetfulness.... "Ah! Jenny, I'm afraid you're a fickle little +person, after all."</p> + +<p>How strange it seemed to hear Jenny talked to like that--now.... Yes, of +course, Jenny was dead. Jenny was dead ... and Isabel was calling.</p> + +<p>Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's +words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some +subtle air of hellish sweetness?</p> + +<p>O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in +her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath +this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover.</p> + +<p>Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the +strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that +prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest +whisper of the real.</p> + +<p>Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go. Come back he might, but +go he must, he would. Yes! he was going.</p> + +<p>There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in the +train; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, his +heart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness, +that Theophil spent it. Purposes he had none, only a desire,--just to +see Isabel again. That immediate future was too effulgent for him to +think of anything beyond it.</p> + +<p>He would see Isabel again!</p> + +<p>From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, she +would turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness.</p> + +<p>The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped him +in a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were passing through +hidden orchards.</p> + +<p>Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you across +the night? Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep in +the rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across the +silent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like a +camp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speeding +through the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travelling +rooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"?</p> + +<p>Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel?</p> + +<p>No, not Jenny's name. Never Jenny's name!</p> + +<p>He was going to look on Isabel again--that was all. Perhaps he would die +with the mere joy of seeing her again--and then he would not need to +think of the future. Yes! the deeps of his soul had wanted her as +much as that.</p> + +<p>It was about half-past six as he reached London; and though it was +impossible to call on her for some hours yet, Theophil drove straight to +Isabel's little square, shuttered and still in the early-risen London +morning. His eyes chose the second storey for hers, and picked out two +dainty windows as her rooms. He half expected to see the blind suddenly +drawn aside and her face, a sleepy flower, bloom through the curtains.</p> + +<p>He lingered awhile, loving each individual brick of the house with his +eyes, and then, kissing his hands to the sleeping windows, he rejoined +his cab, which he had left at the street corner, shy of awaking the +hushed square with its clatter.</p> + +<p>He gave Isabel till ten o'clock, which was perhaps hardly enough for a +young London lady's toilette and breakfast, and then called. A pleasant +housemaid answered the bell, and told him that Miss Strange was away, +and was not expected till to-morrow.</p> + +<p>Here was a surprise. He had never even thought of that possibility.</p> + +<p>Begging leave to write Miss Strange a note, he presently found himself +in Isabel's room. It was the same his eyes had blessed from the street.</p> + +<p>So this was Isabel's room! So evidently hers, her very self!</p> + +<p>Isabel pictures, Isabel wall-paper, Isabel chairs, Isabel cushions, +Isabel desk, Isabel books, Isabel bibelots, Isabel litter,--all Isabel.</p> + +<p>And there hung an arras portière over a doorway to the right of the +fireplace. That was her bedroom! Dare he peep in? That was her little +bed. Would the housemaid catch him if he slipped in and left a kiss on +her pillow? By the mirror was a grotesque little china monster with his +mouth full of hat-pins. He stole one for a memory. Over a chair lay a +little dressing-jacket. He took it up and kissed it.</p> + +<p>Then he sat down to write to her. What a tidy, methodical little desk! +Everything in its place. Dear, business-like, sea-witch Isabel! Here was +her engagement book. He mustn't begin reading her letters!</p> + +<p>After his first disappointment, he was half-glad he would have to wait +till to-morrow to see her,--for, of course, he would wait. To have thus +sat in her room was almost enough for a first meeting. It was like +stealing upon her while she slept.</p> + +<p>Then he began a letter; but as he wrote, who was this suddenly standing +at his side? Was it Isabel? No...it was a little sobbing body quite near +to his, crying as if its heart would break...</p> + +<p>Oh, Jenny, Jenny--God forgive me!</p> + +<p>The spell was broken, the fit was over. Theophil left no letter for +Isabel, and no message, and the same evening he was once more back in +his little study in Zion Place, wild with remorse. O for the scourge and +the fire! But what penance shall avail to ease that poor little +creature's broken-hearted crying?</p> + +<p>"She seems to have had a shock!--She seems to have had a shock!"</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>BACK IN ZION PLACE</h3> + +<p>The shame of that wild unfaithfulness burned in Theophil's soul for many +days. It humiliated him like a physical degradation. To have been so +drunkenly untrue! It was one of those shocks to the moral nature from +which it never quite recovers, and Theophil's face lost some of its +steadfastness, his walk some of its firmness, for this perfidy +towards Jenny.</p> + +<p>There was only one way to make the sense of it endurable, and he threw +himself into his work with a wasting vehemence. Where was his ambition? +There was so much yet to do. New Zion had long since moved and hummed, +and whizzed, the neighbouring towns had in a measure begun to dance to +his piping, but it must be a long while yet ere his name was to London +and to the world what it was already to Coalchester,--that mere +microcosm of his fame.</p> + +<p>And till London knew him as well as Coalchester, there was no real +monument to Jenny. London--no longer the city of Isabel--must learn to +say "Theophilus Londonderry" so naturally, that it would some day serve +as an unforgettable remembrance of Jenny. He must become a great man, +because a great name is the one shrine in which love's memory may escape +oblivion. In the arms of his name Jenny would then be carried down the +years, one woman-star saved from the night of death. Again, the world, +for which in one way he had so little care, was to help him indirectly +to keep his troth to Jenny.</p> + +<p>In a sense, the mountain was already coming to this young prophet; for +with the winter some of London's finest spirits were now and again to be +met in that incongruous Zion Place, as visiting lecturers to New Zion. +And each one, as he came, was impressed as Isabel had been on that old +evening when she had discovered her colony of surprise-people. Each +realised in that gravely masterful young minister a power and a force of +attraction which could not long remain hidden in that little country +town. Meanwhile, their visits enabled him to test his own calibre by +comparison with theirs, and to realise that his instincts had not +befooled him, but that he too had been called to the stage of the +great world.</p> + +<p>It was in the operation of this method of inviting the mountain that the +French poet, with a reference to whom we began this history, made his +fantastic appearance in Zion Place. It is to be feared that it was a +conscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeed +New Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the most +imaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown the +Renaissance in Coalchester by this <i>reductio ad absurdum.</i> The +subtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, and +after days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a young +country minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in the +musty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow of +the world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of his name among +the stars.</p> + +<p>With the reawakening of his ambition, Theophil began to realise that his +work at New Zion was nearing its end, and that before long he must seek +that larger stage. Yet all his heart remained in that dull little Zion +Place, and while Jenny's old mother lived he could not conceive tearing +himself away. Could he indeed even bring himself to say good-bye to +these mean little romantic streets along which Jenny had tripped? Could +he bear to think of the commonplace little house which Jenny had +transfigured to a shrine being desecrated with vulgar occupation? If he +could only raze it to the ground, as a cup from which a queen has drunk +is shattered lest it should be soiled with usage of common lips! Some +day he might have grown rich enough to buy it, and set it apart for +ever, as a little house sacred to love and youth; but, meanwhile, with +what ugly and noisome presences would it have been defiled!</p> + +<p>He would stand in Jenny's room with its quiet books and flowers, and his +heart would ache to think that some day harsh hands must noisily break +in upon that sacred silence, and strip it of all its delicate memories. +Jenny's room the lair of wild beasts, a nest of foulness and serpents! +Sometimes he was thus haunted with the ghosts of those who were to riot +up and down these stairs when Jenny's memory had quite died out of these +walls like a fragrance of musk overborne with coarse odours.</p> + +<p>Yes! in this perhaps are the rich most enviable of the poor, that they +can afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved from +external taint from generation to generation, become temples of which +the very walls breathe nobleness, whereas the very birthplace of genius +itself becomes a butcher's shop; and though that genius be Shakespeare, +and the old house be some day purified seventy times seven, and +garnished as you please, the smell of slaughtered beasts will still +cling about its rooms, and the butcher insist upon immortality too.</p> + +<p>Jenny's old mother was soon to turn into a memory also. She had from +time to time declared that she would not see another May, and had indeed +on one occasion named the day on which she would die, with a curious +precision, as though she had seen it written somewhere in a book, or +learnt it from private or unimpeachable information. Latterly she had +met Jenny twice in full daylight on the stairs, and it was evident that +the old woman would soon complete that little family circle in Paradise.</p> + +<p>But she still kept about, and whereas her old husband had grown sleepier +as his end neared, she seemed to be growing more active again, fidgety +and restless. She slept badly, and returned to her old habit of being +first down in the morning and lighting the kitchen fire, in spite of +remonstrances. Indeed, she might sometimes be heard up in the middle of +the night, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen had +been her world, and she was already beginning to haunt it.</p> + +<p>There it was one wintry morning they found her sitting in the old +arm-chair in which her husband had died, and then they recalled her +words, for she had died on the very day she had predicted.</p> + +<p>She knew nothing of books, this quaint old woman, and had a very +antiquated taste in wall-papers; yet there would seem to be other ways +of being wise, and it may indeed be held that books act too much as +insulators between us and the earth, to the mysterious currents of which +gnarled shapes of unlettered old men and women may be the more sensitive +as lying closer to the Mother.</p> + +<p>At all events, old Mrs. Talbot did seem to have won certain confidences +from life and death refused to more consciously alert ears. Hers had +been that hearing beyond listening to which secrets are +sometimes revealed.</p> + +<p>Her death was more of a loss to her son-in-law than he might have +conceived, for not only was she the last of Jenny's flesh and blood, but +she was the only one else in the world who missed Jenny as he missed +her. Others might, through sympathy, share his sorrow, but she and he +were partners in an actual loss. Something had definitely gone from +each. Jenny seemed to be twice dead with the death of her mother, and +Theophil's loneliness suddenly became more absolute and cut off than +ever before.</p> + +<p>There was now no one left who could involuntarily recall remembered +words and traits of Jenny, and who would for their own sakes want to sit +down and talk of her. All that was left that really knew Jenny was the +old house itself. That remembered and talked of her still in its dumb +way; and as he realised this, his mood once more changed. He forgot his +aspirations toward a broader world, and felt that, not only would it be +a sort of unfaithfulness to leave Zion Place, but that to do so, and to +break up this familiar harmony of home, this little cosmos of friendly +furniture in accustomed relations,--pictures hung so from time +immemorial, rooms dedicated to this use and no other,--would be to +destroy the one mirror from which could come to him still glimpses of +Jenny's living face. In just that look of the rooms was the best +portrait he possessed of Jenny.</p> + +<p>Though he had always been fond of Mr. Moggridge, it had not before +occurred to Theophil to make of him a companion; but about this time, as +Mr. Moggridge would drop in of an evening to discuss church matters, the +young minister would be surprised to note how lonely he felt when he had +gone. Indeed Mr. Moggridge possessed that great undefinable gift of +companionability.</p> + +<p>What is needed in a companion is not brilliance of conversation, but the +power to make you feel that you are not quite alone in the universe. +Dogs and even children possess this quality for some happily constituted +individuals, but for others it is a necessity that the companion be a +human being.</p> + +<p>A human being, the quieter the better, if possible a rather large man, +diffusing a sense of warmth and safety, with perhaps no other gifts than +kindliness and a pipe; and sometimes you have the best of company. And +Mr. Moggridge, as we know, had brains too, and interesting instincts +for new things. But his best gift was his humanity. Thus Theophil +encouraged his evening calls and contrived to prolong them, though the +two would often sit almost silent by the hour, their pipes alone making +a sort of conversation.</p> + +<p>Sometimes the young lions of "The Dawn" would come to supper, as in the +old days, as Theophil called a year ago; but supper was a poor thing +without Mrs. Talbot popping in and out of the room, though she had +seemed comparatively unimportant then,--not to speak of eager little +Jenny,--not to think of Isabel.</p> + +<p>Yes! the sparkle had gone out of their meetings, which began to have an +air of make-believe youth about them. Theophil's interest was indeed +centred in the purlieus of New Zion, but it was entirely retrospective; +and though outwardly New Zion was more alive than ever, it seemed to him +that activity which once started goes on of itself, and he realised that +in his heart he cared nothing for the work itself, but only for the +music to which it had once been set in motion. Incomplete as in one +sense it was, in another and more personal sense his life seemed already +complete; and while in some moods he would dream of its resounding +continuance, in others he would sigh that it might end.</p> + +<p>However, for a while he would still go on living with the shadows he +loved; and as he sat alone of an evening in that silent house, he would +sometimes half fancy that he heard the other occupants moving about or +walking overhead. That was Mrs. Talbot with a creaking basket of clean +linen on the stairs, and surely that was the opening and closing of a +drawer in Jenny's room. Perhaps it was only Mr. Talbot moving his chair +in the kitchen.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> +<br> + +<h3>AND SUDDENLY THE LAST</h3> + +<p>Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be a +memory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of new +worlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly to +close down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled half +sadly, and half proudly. No such good fortune for his sad heart! no such +miscarriage of his young life!</p> + +<p>Young life is so sure of its long lease. All about it lie the broken +dreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that <i>its</i> life-work +should suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of! +It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life and +coquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as "Will +it please your honour to die to-morrow week?" is an indignity +inconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worship +of the dead.</p> + +<p>Yet for quite simple reasons, as this mysterious world goes, it had been +decided that Theophil was for as brief a while as possible, allowing for +the leisure of natural causes, to support the life he thought he hated. +Even while Jenny lived, fate, mercifully foreseeing, had willed him a +brief pilgrimage; for on that night when Jenny had leaned over him with +that terrible hunger of damp breath, it had been written that of that +kiss Theophil should some day die.</p> + +<p>And it was of that kiss that the following May Theophil, all his plans +laid aside, engagements cancelled on every hand, eager life suddenly +trapped in this choking cul-de-sac, was dying.</p> + +<p>Death! It was an outrage! He was young, he was powerful! He would not +die!</p> + +<p>There was May at the window. He too was full of May. He would get up +and go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. It +was the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, like +the muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss and +twitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he had +been a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, to +rise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak at a +neighbouring town, where he had been promised for a great agitation on +the Home Rule Question. Surely it was a strange enough contradiction of +a year ago, when such meetings had seemed such trivialities in the +thought of death. Now, when they said he was dying--had this world grown +suddenly so significant that he could rise from his death-bed to make +one last appearance in the paltry lists?</p> + +<p>He spoke with an overcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a tumbler of +port wine at his side; and as the audience looked on his white hollow +face, and listened to his terrible eloquence, they realised with a +shudder that this was the last tragic effort of a dying man.</p> + +<p>Alas! the great world was not to be stamped with his image and +superscription, after all; and only a little faithful company of friends +would know that Theophilus Londonderry was a great man.</p> + +<p>This escapade, though it brought on death with double swiftness, brought +too a calm of satisfaction which made it easier to die; and in the +revulsion which it set up, life once more shrank into the background, +and its little triumphs grew paltry once more. Strange, he half smiled +to himself, that the man who was at last really going to Jenny should +even momentarily care about doing anything else!</p> + +<p>Yes, he was going to Jenny! So soon! Soon he would be on the other side +of that wall, soon be travelling that strange highway, on the other side +of light and darkness. In a few more weeks he... <i>HE?</i> Would there still +be <i>he</i> anywhere in the universe?</p> + +<p>Jenny! Perhaps there had been no Jenny all these months. Perhaps Jenny +stopped being Jenny forever in that last moment when she had tried to +wish him good-bye. And all his daily consciousness of her presence, all +the fancies of his faithful heart, had been idle as the words of a man +talking in his sleep. Those little offerings he had brought to her +altar,--she had never seen them; for perhaps Jenny had been an idol he +had made out of air, while he had been her lonely and unheeded +worshipper.</p> + +<p>Was it really like that? and in a few more weeks would he too be as an +eye that had ceased seeing, an ear that had ceased hearing for evermore?</p> + +<p>All the wonderful colour and sound of things! Were these waning days to +be his last poor opportunities to sit at the great show?</p> + +<p>Yes! the world was slipping like water between his hands--and he might +not be going to Jenny, after all.</p> + +<p>As these thoughts began to possess him, another thought which he had so +far resisted grew more importunately pleading--the thought of Isabel. +Perhaps he was going to Jenny, but surely he was leaving Isabel. Had he, +he could not but ask himself, immolated a warm living heart in a +fanatical devotion to a heart long since senseless and cold? Had it not, +after all, been a superstitious veneration towards an ideal of +faithfulness which had been Jenny's rather than his own? Had he in his +heart ever ceased to love Isabel, and had he really believed that to +love her too would have been unfaithfulness to Jenny?</p> + +<p>Yes, life was nearly over, but it held the possibility still of one +supreme blessedness. He might look into Isabel's eyes again.</p> + +<p>She had but to stand by his side and his poor remnant of life would grow +radiant and rounded as the most complete and blissful destiny. His heart +told him that if Isabel could but once enter the room again, and stay +with him to the end, however near, he would die singing the song of +magnificent life.</p> + +<p>Life is tragic, do you say? Life is cruel. Life is a splendid +portico--to nothingness. Ah, no! not if in that portico you have stood +for a moment, loving and beloved, by the side of Isabel. Life is +splendid! life is kind! life is abounding, deep-cupped! and each minute +of it is a prodigal eternity.</p> + +<p>Thus it was that one May morning Isabel sat very still in her little +room with a telegram just opened on her lap. The telegram ran: "Jenny is +dead and I am dying. Theophil." And this was the first message Isabel +had received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchester +station eighteen months ago.</p> + +<p>She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaid +had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat +cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her,--that Jenny +had divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil had +determined that they must never see each other again.</p> + +<p>Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent so +much in written words! Had he ceased loving her?... No, that she could +never believe. They had <i>met</i> too really for that. And, after all, this +silence was no more than their sad marriage-bond. Sad, truly, and a +little tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no power +over her love. That belonged to the realities; that could never change.</p> + +<p>"Jenny is dead, and I am dying," Isabel kept saying over to herself, +divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, and +something of Theophil's conflict during those silent months.</p> + +<p>"Jenny is dead, and I am dying,"--a sad, a tragic message, surely! And +yet, as from the first shock and consequent turmoil of that message, its +real significance slowly evolved, even Isabel was perhaps surprised to +find it rather a happy than an unhappy significance. Jenny was dead, and +Theophil was dying; and yet, when at last she shook herself out of her +reverie, her face was curiously lit with peace.</p> + +<p>She presently discovered that there was a train north in two hours; and +then she turned to her desk, and with that business-like carefulness +with which we often act in a dream, she went over its contents, and +methodically transferred its various accumulations to the tiny grate, +which was soon blazing with unwonted summer fire. A little handful of +letters she saved, and from the diminutive locked cupboard in the +centre she took out a small sealed packet, which was to be included +among her luggage.</p> + +<p>All trains do not separate. There are also glad trains which bring +together; and soon Isabel was in one of these, and soon it had taken her +to Theophil,--to whose ears at last had come the sound of wonderful +wheels in the dead street, wheels that had stopped beneath his window, a +rustle of alighting, an opening and shutting of doors, an approaching +whisper on the staircase, and then, with reality unutterable--Isabel.</p> + +<p>Isabel!</p> + +<p>You could hardly have told that Theophil was dying, and the face that +Isabel thus found again was marked by none of the dreadful writing of +death. His eyes were brighter, his brow more hollow, his cheeks +thinner,--that was all; and he was to be of those of whom we have +spoken, whose flame of life burns brightly to the end. No heavy mists of +Lethe hung about his bed. Till his last heartbeat, he was to be +conscious of the nearness of Isabel. For a fortnight he was thus to lie +within sight and touch of her. How good life is! Think of it, a whole +fortnight! How extravagantly blessed!</p> + +<p>Isabel was living in the same house with him day after day. She was no +visitor, but went in and out of the room with the step of one who is at +home. If he grew weary and dozed a moment, she would still be sitting +there when he awoke. She was wearing home things. One morning when she +had been busied in the kitchen preparing some little delicacy for him, +she had left her task for a moment to see if he needed anything; and as +she had bent over him, she had worn a household apron,--a wife's apron. +Yes, she was at home, she would never leave him again, never leave +him--till he died.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Isabel--to die!" he moaned one night as she sat by his side.</p> + +<p>"But think, dear," she answered, with her head turned away, "think of +Jenny."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps there <i>is</i> no Jenny."</p> + +<p>No Jenny! Isabel's heart gave a little cry. No Jenny! Then there could +be no harm ...</p> + +<p>"Theophil," she said, after a silence, "have you forgotten something we +said to each other that day,--something we promised?"</p> + +<p>For answer he looked at her with awed and suddenly enlightened eyes.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that?" he asked. "You mustn't mean that."</p> + +<p>"Do you think I could care any more for life?" she asked. "Would you?"</p> + +<p>"No," he answered simply.</p> + +<p>"May I, then?"</p> + +<p>His eyes could alone answer. He knew her love too well to affect that +there would be any loss to her in the life she would thus be leaving.</p> + +<p>"But Jenny?"</p> + +<p>"If Jenny is there, she will understand now."</p> + +<p>I can conceive no happier, completer moment than that which followed for +these two, no more unassailable peace. If their lives were to be quite +put out, they would be extinguished together; if they were to begin anew +elsewhere, they would begin anew together; and meanwhile nothing that +could happen could harm them, could rob them of the desire of their +hearts. At the worst, they would attain their best; at the very least, +they would win their most: they would die together.</p> + +<p>To end together. It matters not how few or many years love and the +beloved live their days side by side, even though their love be but the +morning and the evening of one divine day, so that there be no bereaved +and lonely to-morrow. The hour that takes one and not the other takes +with it too all the accumulated happiness of all the years. That hour +these two were to escape. Yet was there no need of haste. So long as +they might, they would sit together in the sun of life. For a little +longer they would say, "How wonderful life is!"--for a little longer +make sure of each other.</p> + +<p>Your eyes, Isabel! Your hair, Isabel! Your dear mouth, Isabel!</p> + +<p>A little longer.</p> + +<p>"Shall we go to-night?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet...perhaps to-morrow, Isabel."</p> + +<p>But Theophil was now very near death, and he might forget if he lingered +on much more. Not wearily, but with music and singing must they pass +through the strange gate of Death.</p> + +<p>So at length, one June evening, Isabel made for them one last little +feast,--once more wine and great grapes set out upon a little table at +Theophil's bedside; and on the table, too, was the little sealed packet +Isabel had taken from the cupboard in her desk.</p> + +<p>Drawing her chair close up to his pillow, she poured out their wine, +and they drank it and ate the grapes together,--no happier people in +God's strange world.</p> + +<p>As the feast neared its end, Isabel rose, and stirring the little fire +into a blaze, turned out the lamps, so that the room was lit only with +the light from the fire. Then she refilled their glasses with wine, and +breaking the seal of the little white packet, took from it a small +bottle of green crystal, the contents of which she mingled with +the wine.</p> + +<p>Then she and Theophil held up their glasses to each other.</p> + +<p>"Let us go deeper into the wood," she said softly.</p> + +<p>"How wonderful life has been!" said Theophil; and the two drank, with +their eyes firm and sweet upon each other.</p> + +<p>Then Isabel sat down again by Theophil's side, and leaning her head +against his on the pillow, she took his hand. And the room became a +heaven of silence.</p> + +<p>Whoso would say of these two lives, "How sad!" let him consider the +quality of his own happiness; and whoso would regard the life of +Theophilus Londonderry as a failure, let him, too, consider the value of +his own success.</p> + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10949 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + + diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..583af0a --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #10949 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10949) diff --git a/old/10949-8.txt b/old/10949-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9bf4006 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10949-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5448 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] +by Richard Le Gallienne + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] + +Author: Richard Le Gallienne + +Release Date: February 5, 2004 [EBook #10949] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF ZION *** + + + + +Produced by Brendan Lane, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +THE ROMANCE OF + +ZION CHAPEL + + +By + +RICHARD LE GALLIENNE + + +1898 + + + + +TO + +TWO IN HEAVEN + +AND + +TWO ON EARTH. + + + + +Contents + +I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES +II. INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL +III. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT +IV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY +V. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS +VI. OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN +VII. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER. +VIII. THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER +IX. "THE DAWN" +X. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER +XI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY +XII. HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION +XIII. IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE +XIV. THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE +XV. JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER +XVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME +XVII. "O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE..." +XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS +XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS +XX. IN WHICH JENNY CRIES +XXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED +XXII. THE TRYST LETHEAN +XXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATE +XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNY +XXV. JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE +XXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY +XXVII. ISABEL CALLING +XXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACE +XXIX. AND SUDDENLY THE LAST + + + + +The Romance of Zion Chapel + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES + +On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, +hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there +stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of +disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway +embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely +obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty +for a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly +present unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the +gasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street boasting +the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, is +proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied the +gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, +yet long since drearily old,--with the unattractive antiquity of old +iron and old clothes,--round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only +describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in +weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words +"New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion +Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too which +had been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very morning before +the house at the corner had contemplated doing the same. At Zion View +lived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge, good-natured, guffawing +pillar of New Zion,--on whom, at the moment, however, we will not call. + +A nice dull place, you may say, from which to issue invitations to a +romance. Well, of course, it must seem so if pretty places are the +reader's idea of romance. Curiously enough, the preference of the Lady +Romance herself is for just such dull places. These dreary, +soot-begrimed streets are the very streets she loves best to appear in, +on a sudden, some astonished day, with a sound of silk skirts and a +spring wind of attar of roses. Contrast, surprise,--these are her very +soul. Dull places and bright people,--these she loves to bring together, +and watch for laughter and tears. You are never safe from Romance, and +the place to seek her is never the place where she was last found. + +Well, at all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you are +respectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with a +shrug, I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes of +one of the greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won't +pretend that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did--the eyes of +that great, sad, scandalous, religious French poet--on a night of weary +rain that set someone quoting,--also in that street,-- + + "Il pleure dans mon coeur + Comme il pleut sur la ville." + +Yes, and that French poet passed the gasometer on his way to New Zion. +Actually. + +Romance! Why, I wouldn't exchange Gasometer Street for the Isles of +Greece! + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL + +That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest light +in the contrast which it was the happy business of Theophilus +Londonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make in +the vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchester +at large. + +Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's so +like the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for, +that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it for +purposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for its +reminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the more +suitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhaps +rather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions,--or say +one was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call." By day he +professed to be a clerk in a cotton-office,--and he was no fool at that +(there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but by +night, and occasionally of an afternoon,--when he got leave of absence +to solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral,--he was a spiritual +pastor, the young father of his flock. + +Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject of +Nonconformity, its influence on individualities and its direct +relationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of Rome,--though +he sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter,--Theophilus +Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would have +found no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could not +long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was the +non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity that +gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of a +personal force that claimed operation in some human employment, some +work not made with hands, but into which also entered the spirit of man, +and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth or +influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity. +To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the art +of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for this +Nonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his opportunity. + +This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by no +remoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was +not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher with +a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a +failure all in one. + +I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to be +a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of +blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting +quality,--a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand +of strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made +himself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he +was conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--were +qualifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for, +apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little +"cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, he +would occasionally "supply," they had passed into his son, and met in +him other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love +of laughter, and a mighty humanity. + +Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape and +partly something bigger and more effectively vital. + +At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said +to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a +big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor +at New Zion. + +This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not +attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of +Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he +could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the +point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in +terms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He +would, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but +that pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise, +he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and +humanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whatever +the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderry +that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However you may judge +him, you must never make that mistake about him. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT + +New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new. The +fiery zeal which had once made it a living schism had long since died +out of it. Carried years before, a little blazing ember of faith, from a +flourishing hearth of Nonconformity some streets away, it had puffed and +gleamed a little space in the eloquence of the offended zealots who +carried it hotfoot that Sunday morning, but its central fire had been +poor, and for a long time no evangelistic bellows had awakened in it +even a spark. + +Its original elders had long since lost heart and passed away. A +dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its +doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its +musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday +prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life +from the outside must come, and speedily, or it must die. + +But new life was already on the way. On the town side the sad streets +round New Zion led one into a more prosperous High Street, and indeed +Zion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a jovial +and ruddy shop--a provision merchant's, and kept by Eli Moggridge. The +name did its owner considerable wrong, for its suggestion of puritanical +sanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of the jovial and ruddy +personality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for whom it stood, and of +whom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese and its air of exuberant +prosperity, was a much more truthful expression. Well, the business was +growing with such gusto that Mr. Moggridge felt he might afford a home +away from his shop, and thus he came to take the biggish empty house +which presently put on new paint and once more seemed quite proud of +being "Zion View." + +Till this time, Mr. Moggridge. had "attended" elsewhere, but he was not +so young as he had been and somewhat stouter, and the stealthy approach +of comfortable habits had suggested to him that his old chapel was +rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house +being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation +towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly +above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it +in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his +being the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born within him. + +Now, quick was even the word with Mr. Moggridge, as became a successful +man of business, and for him to conceive an idea was to carry it out, as +goods were always delivered from Mr. Moggridge's shop, with despatch. +Also in some dim far-off way Mr. Moggridge's mind had, all +unconsciously, been stirred by vibrations of what we call the New +Spirit. The new spirit of any age works its way even into its +businesses, and though Mr. Moggridge wouldn't have so described it, it +was the "New Spirit" that had made the success of his provision shop. +Speaking of the need of New Zion, Mr. Moggridge called it "new blood." +He meant the "New Spirit;" and it was in reply to his advertisement for +a new pastor, that the "New Spirit" in the person of Theophilus +Londonderry came one Sunday to preach at New Zion. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY + +Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry at +a glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he liked +Eli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each other had met. + +You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon you +couldn't help respecting him,--Theophilus Londonderry was almost to know +what it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the man he +was was a matter of no small importance to the young minister. A chief +deacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be no +little of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a +different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance +as he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreative +rather than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort of +Sunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. He +wanted to see it a "going concern," and, hating stagnation in his +neighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust to +make it move and hum and whizz. + +Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with +further mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New Zion, he +explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an evening +service which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was not +Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man in +his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; and +it happened that something of this very sort was what Theophilus +Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply. + +The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridge +guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources, +and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad +general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be +placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of the +faith that was in him. "All we want you to do," he said in conclusion, +"is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to how you do +it, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere with you in +that than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject of York +hams. We must all be specialists nowadays,--specialists," repeated Mr. +Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered planets. + +So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor," +presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the faded +dusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at too +great a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some nice +old-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane. + +I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love her +little daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describe +them at too great a length. Old Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were the sole +survivors of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantly +pious, stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in no +sense dialectical, and in every sense harmless. + +Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when front +parlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be sitting in +the kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation, "like +white-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." It is not recorded that he ever +thought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He would +flee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by such from +the wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head pathetically, +and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled good-evening. It +disconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his tongue slumbered in +his mouth,--for he was an old weary man, and perhaps very wise. + +Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in an +immeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the little +thinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, pay +the rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny's +marriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious +teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully +wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a +heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered +old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny +and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good deal +deaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed you, as +she had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too, was very +old, and she, I know, was very wise. + +Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyond +that she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her, +was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by the +school-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress and +pocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet. No +lover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterful +superscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very pretty +or very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet only +beginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn't +pretty yet, but she wasn't plain. + +Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it, +there was no telling to what beauty it would awake. The fairy prince! +That was going to be our friend Theophil, of course. Well, of course, +though it's a little early on to admit it. However, I am unequal to the +task of concealing from the hawk-eyed reader through a succession of +chapters that Jenny and Theophil were to be each other's "fates." Of +course, he hadn't been there a month before Jenny's face was beginning +to wear that superscription of his passionate intelligence, to grow +merry from his laughter, and still sweeter by his kisses. + +Of course, Theophil and Jenny fell in love. Do you think it was merely +to save New Zion and to bring the Renaissance to Coalchester that +Theophilus Londonderry was sent to live in Zion Place--or for any other +purpose less important than to love Jenny? Yes, we may as well take that +for granted as we begin the next chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS + +There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the way +of the Hebrew prophet,--to give it one's own. Theophilus Londonderry +instinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightily +upon New Zion. + +The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but it +is gold he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo! +it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words. +The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in the +precious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to +mould,--an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not a +precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,--a +clay not without streaks of gold. + +What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his will +towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was +moving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself +by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set +it dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in gold +on Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile +too. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows to +what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would +circle on before they touched the shores of death? + +We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in +occasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to such +we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in any +given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your +calculation for the average of such divine,--how many faces would you +fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many +hearts would you dare to trust? + +Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin, +the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked +by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay. + +Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be +minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own +image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, +natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that +the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes +of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs +and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what +a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth! + +Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed again +and again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of your +image. Once a poet has impressed himself with mastery upon words, the +impression remains for ever, the words do not disperse in idle crowds +when he has done speaking to them, never again to reassemble in a like +combination; whereas the greatest oratorical mover of men is doomed, +even after his most electrical self-impression, to see his image, as +soon as taken, fade away, with a shuffle of escaping feet and a scramble +for hats and cloaks. It was a masterpiece; but with the last touch, see, +the colours are flying in a hundred directions, and the very canvas +itself is off in a thousand threads of hurried disintegration! + +But all this, of course, has to do entirely with the poetry of the +ministerial life; prosaic even as preaching and praying to the New +Zioners may sound, there was yet a drearier prose. For these artistic +materials had not only to be preached and prayed to,--they had to be in +a measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individually +considered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed to +be set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made help +in the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest you +needed and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken the +single gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the fool +wisely,--that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. To +encourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talent +she has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr. +Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayer +meetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures were +really and usefully alive, but at no other point of their +circumferences. + +However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the Reverend +Theophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a lover +of character for its own sake, and to the student of character there is +no such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisome +an old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord in +prayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imagines +that to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith. + +Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderry +breathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second, according +to his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times, he was +there, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and endlessly +beaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say, "Didn't I +say he was the man for New Zion?" + +The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the old +disused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time every +possible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance, +prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcas +society, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and the +ladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zion +had indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and social +activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost +beginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli +Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed of +the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till +not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Street +heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very High +Street itself should hum and whizz. + +The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of Theophilus +Londonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon be +humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the +ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. +Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, +then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, +faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and +the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will +whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of Theophilus +Londonderry. + +Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN + +Darwin expended many years of his life in the study of disagreeable +animals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism to +environment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if he +had begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history has +been one unbroken succession of inspired and noble adaptations! + +Woman's adaptability to man is one of the most mysterious, as it is +perhaps the most pathetic, of all the modes of her mysterious being. +Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of the +rock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of course, +she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her chameleon to a +like degree or indeed in a like manner. Such adaptability is not one of +the forms of his greatness, and even when he achieves it, it is not +becoming to him. + +For woman's adaptability is not the domination of a weaker nature by a +stronger, it is in itself a noble and world-necessary form of strength. + +Strength is needed as well for the taking as the making of an +impression,--something more than mere ductility. Weakness may never bear +the stamp of power,--it breaks in the moulding; and it is rather because +woman is so strong that she is able to take the Caesarean stamp of any +form of power. Nor cares she by whose hands she is moulded, whose image +she wears, be it warrior, poet, or priest, so long as she feels the +veritable grasp and impress of power. Some women are already made in the +image of the man they are to love before they meet him. Very wonderful, +very terrible, then, is the meeting, and it is a meeting that usually +comes too late. But oftener God gives a man a little measure of +porcelain and a handful of stars, and leaves him to make the woman he +needs for himself; and very wonderful too is that making,--though the +man will always have been the father before he was the lover. + +Why, one may ponder, should a man who is great enough to mould a woman +to help him be great, not be great enough to do without her at all? Let +lovers of the unfathomable ask at the same time: Why is man, man? and +woman, woman? and what are both? + +This gentle doll with the sweet breath, which he nips up in his arms and +kisses, and gives a tongue that she may talk back to him his own words, +endows with brains that she may think his thoughts,--a quaint little +helpless lovely parody of his wisdom and power; a toy, yes; a +refreshment, yes; a place of peace, yes,--but how much more! Yes, more +by all that we don't understand when we say "woman." + +Why a great man should need, not a great woman, but a little woman, a +very little woman,--how is it to be explained, unless it be that woman, +however little, is mysteriously great, just because she is a woman, a +little woman? Unknown properties were wrapped up somewhere in that +porcelain; to press it with the lips is to feel strange virtue coming +into one,--the devil was in those stars. + +Great men are only nourished on the elements. Woman is an element, all +the elements in one,--earth, air, fire, and water, met together in a +rose. She is a spring among the rocks, and she comes up dimpling from +the roots of the world. She is just as simple and just as strange. O! +little shining spring of woman that is called Jenny, a great man must +draw up through you the unfathomed, deep strengths of the old world. He +bends above you and drinks, and as he drinks, his face is mirrored +in yours. + +"Jenny, I don't think I'd read 'Miss ----,' if I were you," would say +the great man. + +"No, dear?" So Jenny was presently reading Ruskin instead, and wondering +how she could ever have read "Miss ----." And deep in her dear heart she +was saying, "Of course not; great men's wives never read 'Miss ----.'" + +And yet had the great man said, "Read Gaboriau instead,"--as a certain +very great man does,--Jenny's heart would have said, "Of course, great +men's wives always read Gaboriau." + +No! great men's wives read "Sesame and Lilies," and "Sartor Resartus," +and "Marius the Epicurean," and "Richard Feverel," and "Virginibus +Puerisque,"--they even try to read Newman's "Apologia." Such were the +books on the sunnier side of Theophilus Londonderry's little library in +No. 3 Zion Place. In dark corners behind easy-chairs were the deep-sea +pools of theology,--pools which had long since given up all the fish +they had in them for their owner,--slabs of antique divinity, such as +you would find likewise in the equally cherished library of +Londonderry Senior. + +Such were the fathers that slumbered on in a well-earned repose, and +which, far from desiring new readers, were so old that they were glad to +rest undisturbed,--being far too self-important to confuse a considerate +regard for their repose with neglect. And many of them were really quite +valuable as decoration, because of their fine old coats of gilded +leather; and such were ranged in the more penetrable shadows or even in +the lamp-light. Theophilus would point to them as to a portrait-gallery +of dead ancestors. One might admire the quaint and distinguished cut of +their clothes without dreaming of wearing the same,--and indeed old +divinity, he used to say, was poor food for young divines. + +His divinity indeed was fed on the technical side, it is to be feared, +by the more destructive biblical criticism, like most destructive +engines, coming all the way from Germany, and at its more vital centres +by importations of strong meat from Russia and Scandinavia. Tolstoi and +Ibsen were his archprophets. + +There was likewise a great Paris moralist called Zola, and a strange old +American father called Walt Whitman. And beauty, that can never be far +away from strength, found many new and wonderful prophets in that little +library,--poets and painters and musicians of whom hardly anyone else in +Coalchester had yet heard, and certainly no one above the age of +twenty-five. + +Surely youth is in nothing more marvellous than in its mysterious power +of attracting to itself into the most out-of-the-way places the +sustenance and companionship it needs. In the unlikeliest wilderness +inspired youth is never without the mysteriously-brought food and the +company of angels. Powers of the air will sweep across continents to +rescue it from prison, soft gales travel from south to north to sow +seeds of beauty in its narrow ways, and little songs will flutter like +butterflies for hundreds of miles to cheer its heart. + +The Time-Spirit had given its angels charge concerning these young +people, and, remote as they were from all the fiery centres of thought +and the dreaming schools of art, Zion Place, no less than the Rue de +Rivoli, took its thought of the newest and its beauty of the best. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER + +I have said that Coalchester was a very ignorant old town. I did not +mean to imply that there were no M.A.'s there. In fact, there were quite +a number. You may be sure that if spiritual and intellectual life had +its representatives, as we have seen, spiritual and intellectual death +had its representatives, too--by which I don't mean either to imply that +the M.A.'s were dead M.A.'s, dead and buried with Latin over them in the +old brassed and effigied church, which was so old and large that it was +hardly less conceited than a cathedral. Spiritual and intellectual death +in Coalchester, as elsewhere, was officially represented by the Literary +and Philosophical Society, which still unblushingly went on retaining +its adjectives, even in the face of its "Transactions," which seemed +mainly composed of treasurer's reports, with an occasional paper +on fossils. + +Indeed the one spark of life in the pathetic old society was its real +interest in the antediluvian and prehistoric. For the life that was dead +it had a perfect passion, and it sometimes held conversaziones to gaze +at it through microscopes. Occasionally it would waken up to literature +with a paper on Akenside. In everything that didn't in the least matter +some of these mild old gentlemen were genuinely learned. Not that they +hadn't read the great poets, even in the original Greek, Latin, and +Italian. Poets in dead and foreign languages were a form of fossils, and +English poets--with that divine bloom upon them!--they had a way of +fossilising by spectacles, so that they never read them alive. Thus they +had never read Shakespeare even in the original. + +Once, long ago in Coalchester, a hundred years ago, there had been a +little circle of elegant literati, connoisseurs of literature and +art,--men, so far as men of that age might be, genuinely, if timidly and +old-maidishly, affectionate towards belles-lettres; men who had got so +far as to appreciate the freshness of an Elizabethan song; minor Bishops +Percy; and such lavender is the true love of anything that their +memories still hung about the walls of the old Lyceum along with their +portraits; while so necessary are great names for little towns to boast +of, that the compiler of the local gazetteer implied that Coalchester +glowed at night with quite a lustre from their names. Besides, they +proved very useful in damping young men. And yet you wouldn't know their +names if I were to write them--as I would rather like to do. + +The learned Dr. Sibley, he wrote a pleasant little essay on "Taste," you +know, with a few additional notes on chiaroscuro; and then there was +the learned Dr. Ambrose, who wrote quite a pretty little treatise on +Song-writing. + +No! Of course you won't know any of them. Yet they were all once, and +are still, "The Learned." You'll never hear Theophilus Londonderry +spoken of as that, I'm afraid. + +As it is the property of fame to grow with time, and the way of a great +name to begin with brains and end with lords, a great man's descendants +are not unnaturally found persons of much greater consequence than the +original great one. In like manner the dignity and importance of the +members of the Literary and Philosophical Society had grown, in direct +ratio to their distance from the original founders of it; and the +learned Doctors Sibley and Ambrose, who really did know something about +art and poetry and certainly loved them, can never have been persons of +such consequence as one or two of their descendants who are nameless, +and who certainly knew nothing about either. + +One of the real objects of this sad little Society was passionately to +ignore what they contemptuously called local talent. It is true that +there was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded +to their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry +his chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he +suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitation +read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication +that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of +acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society of +Coalchester. + +Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman,"--a name +which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason that +it conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing for the young +man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that had +spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he rose to give +his paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full carrying voice, +and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes through +the old Lyceum: "W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n." + +Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled a +funeral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of dead +learning. The Canon in the chair smiled benignantly, with an expression +that I can only compare to buttered rolls. He was just three hundred +years old that very day, and the audience (a scanty fifty or so) ran +from a hundred and fifty upwards. The only young men present besides the +lecturer were two friends of his I have yet to introduce,--Rob +Clitheroe, a fiery young poet and pamphleteer of many ambitions, and +James Whalley (little James Whalley he was always called) a gentle lover +of letters, with perhaps the most delicate taste in the whole little +coterie; _and_ Mr. Moggridge,--not entirely comfortable, it having been +by some mysterious atmospheric effect conveyed to him that he was a +tradesman and a dissenter, in which latter capacity he felt a certain +traditional resentment towards his complacent fellow listeners. A quite +recent ancestor had refused to pay tithes. That ancestor was in his +blood to-night. + +Jenny was not there. Ladies were not admitted to the meetings of the +Society, there being a sort of implication that masonries of learning, +occult sciences of the brain, were practised at their meetings,--matters +which never came out in the "Transactions." + +The lecture was a straightforward and eloquent account of Whitman's +writings and doctrines, with extracts from "The Leaves of Grass;" and +from beginning to end you might have heard a pin drop, particularly +during one or two of the quotations. When it was ended the buttered-roll +expression had faded from the Canon's face, and his "our young friend" +expression was ready for the chairman's remarks. Londonderry's sitting +down awakened a few sad echoes that were no doubt hand-clappings, but +seemed like the napping of the wings of night-birds frightened by a +light. But the Lit-and-Phils were not frightened; they were entirely +bewildered and rather indignant, that was all. It was characteristic of +their incapacity to grasp the humanity of any subject, even when it was +dangerous, that the criticism which followed was directed almost +entirely against Whitman's metrical vagaries. This was not poetry! Had +not their revered founder, the learned Dr. Ambrose ... + +The Canon kindly said, showing his pastoral interest in the local +newspaper, that the verses which their young friend Mr. Rob Clitheroe, +who was present with them that evening, occasionally contributed to the +Coalchester "Argus" were in his opinion better poetry than anything Walt +Whitman had written, though he confessed that his acquaintance with +Walt Whitman was of the slightest. This disastrous compliment sent the +blood to young Clitheroe's cheeks, and he felt surer than ever that he +would never be a real poet,--though, as a matter of fact, he had written +some quite pretty lines. + +It was an occasion that of course only the Lit-and-Phils could take +seriously, and the way home to New Zion was a laughter of four beneath +the stars,--Mr. Moggridge's deep guffaws coming every now and again, +like the bay of some distant watch-dog, at the young minister's +brilliant mimicry of the ancient men they had left behind. + +Then the gentle voice of little James Whalley took advantage of a +silence: "Isn't it high time that we brought the Renaissance to +Coalchester?" + +"Capital!" cried Londonderry; "come in for a bit of supper, all of you, +and let us talk over the plan of campaign." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER + +Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had an +excellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of old +Mrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronological +method of remembering great occasions and startling events by the food +of the day. Thus, for example, when with eyes that would still fill with +tears, though it was ten years ago, she would tell the story of how her +only boy had been brought home dead one night from an accident at his +workshop, she would fix the date by saying, "It was about six o'clock at +night, and I'd just got a nice little bit of liver and bacon cooking for +your father's dinner, when there came a knock at the door ..." +Sometimes it was, "I'd just sent Liz out for a little bit of fish," or +it would be Spanish onions maybe, or a lovely little rabbit, that +marked the day. + +The night when the attack on Coalchester was planned was marked, as I +have said, by rabbit-pie. Mrs. Talbot would hardly have understood the +significance of that rabbit-pie, though in the course of her occasional +bobbings in and out of the room, to see that the young men were doing +justice to her food,--she had a curious notion that young men never ate +enough,--she would hear snatches of what she called "deep talk," or +shake her old head at her coming son-in-law, whom she already adored and +mothered, with a "Law! what a boy it is!" She wasn't quite sure +sometimes as to the soundness of his "doctrine," but wisely decided that +her business was rather with his stomach than his brains,--which no +doubt God Almighty would look after for himself. + +Wit at the expense of Coalchester can only be of interest to +Coalchester wits and their butts, so I shall not record the bright and +animated talk which helped to digest Mrs. Talbot's rabbit-pie, but +confine myself to a practical outcome of it. + +What interests me specially about these young men was their rare +practicality. They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, with +ideas they had no notion how to embody. Dreamers, of course, they +were,--otherwise there had been no point in their being practical,--but +they were dreamers who understood something of how dreams are best got +on to the market of realities. + +Characteristically, it was the poet of the party from whom the most +practical suggestion came. In itself, of course, there was no great +originality in the idea of a weekly paper to be called "The Dawn," +devoted to the dissemination of the new light on every possible +subject,--politics and municipal misgovernment; the new social ideals; +the newest and most delicate forms of art, music, and literature. It +was in the suggested method of publication and circulation that the +originality lay. The paper was to be given away and made to pay its +expenses by tradesmen's advertisements, a guarantee of a certain minimum +distribution being given. This method had, of course, been tried before +for purposes of mere publicity, but never, I think, for the +dissemination of truth and beauty. The truth about life was to be paid +for by lies about bacon and butter,--or, let us say, business +exaggerations rendered innocuous by custom, and therefore as harmless +as truth. + +Obviously Mr. Moggridge, who not unnaturally had felt a sense of moving +about in worlds not realised during much of the deep talk, was here an +authority of importance, and the idea at once appealed to him. He would +promise a permanent advertisement, and he even promised illustrations, +in the form of blocks already engraved and occasionally used by the +"Argus," of the flourishing shops at 33, 34, 35 High Street, and 58, 59 +Zion Street. He had also some blocks of gigantic hams most hammily +pictured, which might also be of use, and he would also be able to bring +in a number of his fellow tradesmen. Invaluable Mr. Moggridge! What were +truth without you! + +The poet, on his part, guaranteed to supply all the poetry that might be +required, and indeed agreed to do special rhyming advertisements, at, +say, half a guinea apiece. He would also assist Londonderry in the +political and municipal departments, not only in the higher flights, but +lend a hand even in castigations of local jobs, abuses, and absurdities. + +Gentle James Whalley would write round-about essays, for which he had a +charming gift, and generally take in charge the aesthetic interests of +the paper, though, as all were lovers of art and literature, those +subjects would be handled now by one and now by another. Even Jenny was +to have her place on the staff, and write dress articles, which would +not only tend to improve the aspect of Coalchester streets, but attract +millinery advertisements. She already announced the title of her first +article, which was very grand: "Dress as a form of self-expression." + +It was two in the morning before the proceedings terminated, and even +then good old Mrs. Talbot was still up to press steaming bumpers of very +hot whisky and water upon the wayfarers; "to keep the cold out," she +explained--though I need hardly say that the project had not waited till +that hour to be suitably recommended to the god of all enterprises. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +"THE DAWN." + +Next to the delight of holding new and unpopular opinions is the delight +of having a medium for their unedited expression, though this is a +delight given to few reformers. "The Dawn," however, was to be such a +medium; and when the first number appeared, as it did nearly a month +from the meeting recorded in the last chapter, four people, nay, +five--for we mustn't forget Mr. Moggridge--were supremely happy. With +the exception of the poet, who, as we have seen, occasionally irradiated +the poet's corner of the "Argus," and Mr. Moggridge, it was a first +appearance in print for three out of the five contributors; and though +each talked most of the articles by the others, they were secretly +longing to get away with the little paper to some corner where they +could gloat over their own special contribution. + +Not that they had any ridiculous ideas of the literary importance of the +articles in question, but because it seemed so strange to see the warm +words of their mouths thus condensed into cold print, so strange to +think that people all over Coalchester were reading them. Little Jenny +in particular felt quite a cold but pleasant shiver of notoriety as she +thought of it, while to her lover the delighted perusal and reperusal of +a large-type leading article, headed "In Darkest Coalchester!" brought a +new sense of power. + +The poet, as was only to be expected, had his little grievance with the +printer, who, in spite of all his remonstrances and corrections in +proof,--the printer was a little wrong-headed Scotchman,--had insisted +at the last moment in heading his Tyrtean "Proem," a fine aerial +trumpet-blast somewhat Shelleyan in style, with the word that was +evidently intended, namely, "Poem." However, he was somewhat consoled by +reading his caustic column of notes headed "The World outside +Coalchester," the very heading of which was a revelation. Then, too, he +very much enjoyed his article on "Bad Lighting in Coalchester," with its +evident allegoric insinuation that Coalchester needed lighting in more +ways than one, and that "The Dawn" was prepared to undertake, free of +charge, the top-lighting of which it was most in need. + +James Whalley contributed a review of "Mr. Swinburne's new Poems," +through which article Mr. Moggridge's illustrated hams plainly showed +from the other side. + +New truth is too often printed in very worn-out type, but the promoters +of "The Dawn" had wisely remembered how hard truth is to read, and had +given it good clear type, and generally made it a very comely and +attractive little paper. It bore a motto that sounded almost like a +threat, "We come to stay,"--a boast which it manfully kept for several +years. As I lift my eyes from this paper, they rest on no less than ten +great half-yearly volumes, which flash "The Dawn"--"The Dawn"--along a +darksome folio shelf, as they have flashed it week after week across +darkest Coalchester; and "The Dawn" ceased, at length, not from lack of +power and encouragement to continue, but because the world had grown +sadder by then, and it had lost the will to go on living. + +In spite of this hardy existence, I suppose "The Dawn" will win no +record of itself in the histories of the press, though merely as +spirited journalism it deserves to do so; while in the history of the +human spirit at Coalchester it demands a grateful celebration such as it +will, again, most surely not receive from the literary and philosophical +historian of the town. At all events, honoured or forgotten as it may +be, should you ever come across its strange young pages, I know you will +agree with me that it was a wonderful little paper. It was not, you may +suspect, conservative, being, as it was, very alive and very young. In +fact, its radiant radicalism brings tears to one's eyes to-day, when so +many of the noble ideals it championed, to the length and strength of +its little angry arm, are lying smashed beneath the iron blows of the +capitalism that has outlived even the noble eloquence of Theophilus +Londonderry. + +Like all young people, it was all for the young, the new; and I think +you will be astonished, if you do ever turn over its pages, at the +remarkable instinct for the crescent life possessed by these young men; +and, were it worth while, I could easily prove that several of the more +exquisite continental writers, now the fashion this many a year, first +found a humble welcome in that quaint little organ of New Zion. + +Yes! it was a triumph for New Zion too. This modest and hitherto obscure +corner of the town suddenly found itself, comparatively, in a blaze of +publicity, for a column headed "Work at New Zion," evidently meant to be +weekly, left no doubt from what quarter of the town the dawn was to be +looked for. This was perhaps the most delightful thing about the +paper,--its calm assumption that the real aristocracy of the town was to +be found in that little back street, and that, if Coalchester was to +have any spiritual or intellectual life, it must seek it there. In Zion +Street, and nowhere else in Coalchester, were the angels descending into +the waters. And the best part of the joke was that the assumption was +literally true. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER + +Coalchester was too much taken by surprise by "The Dawn" to pretend to +ignore it, and its first recognition was appropriately made in a +ludicrously abusive article in "The Argus,"--"the one-eyed Argus," as it +was mockingly nicknamed in the next week's issue of the new paper. The +joke was one that was lost on Coalchester, which had never dreamed of +expecting a hundred eyes in its "Argus," which to it was but the usual +name for a sleeping newspaper. It was, however, to do them justice, seen +and chuckled over by one or two members of the Literary and +Philosophical Society. "The young beggars know their--classical +dictionary, at all events," said one of them maliciously, which was +quite bright for a Lit-and-Phil. + +One tangible result of the little paper was the almost immediate +doubling of the attendance at New Zion. Curiosity had been aroused in +this militant young minister with the strange ideas, and Theophilus +Londonderry wished for nothing better than to gratify it. In the oxygen +of success even the dullest metals will scintillate, and it needed but +such small beginnings of his future to make Theophilus as nearly +irresistible as natural gifts and success together can make a man. + +Some people go to chapel to worship, a few to learn, but most, odd as it +may sound, to be entertained. A vivid and magnetic preacher is as near +as many will allow themselves to approach the theatre. Theophilus was a +born actor--of himself; a part so few can or dare play. He gave you good +stimulating truth; but it was not so much in the newness of the ideas +which he passed on from his books to his hearers, as in the newness of +himself, that of course the charm lay. A few people, not many or +important, disliked him; but all had to listen, and a good many came to +New Zion again. Above all, the women heard him gladly; and to this sure +sign of a future Theophilus was far from blind. "He has women at his +back, he cannot fail," was a phrase he sometimes recalled out of his +favourite _Brand_. Yes, and had he not one little angel-woman at +his side? + +It had been the spring of 1886 when he came to New Zion. It was now the +autumn, and early in September announcements had been made of a series +of autumnal lectures to be given by the Rev. Theophilus Londonderry; Rob +Clitheroe, Esquire; James Whalley, Esquire; and other distinguished +lecturers, at New Zion. + +In the list were papers on "The Duty of Novel Reading," "Henrik Ibsen," +"A Morris Wall-Paper," "The Nude in Art," and "The Darwinian Theory," +by Mr. Londonderry himself; "Coalchester, its Past and its Future," by +Mr. Rob Clitheroe; together with "Ireland's Sacred Right to Home Rule," +by the same lecturer; "Wagner and the New Music," by Mr. James Whalley, +with a paper on "Some Really New Books," by the same; and a paper-on +"Good Taste in Dress," by Miss Jenny Talbot--the virago! + +The batteries were to be turned on poor Coalchester with a vengeance. +For some time past there had been uneasy suspicions in the town that +strange and somewhat ungodly forms of new learning and beauty were being +stored as in an arsenal in that little house at 3 Zion Place. A large +cast of the Venus of Milo, it was known, had come from Covent Garden, +London, _via_ a poor little dealer in artistic materials in the town, +who on one occasion had shown a bewildering picture to one of his +customers with the remark, "What do you make of this, Mr. Littlejohn?" + +Mr. Littlejohn could make nothing of it, nor indeed could the artists' +colourman, who had been used to pictures all his life. + +No wonder, for it was the first Rossetti that had ever been seen in +Coalchester. + +And it was the same at the little paperhanger's shop where Theophilus +had ordered some pieces of Morris wall-paper for his room. + +"Law! what a taste, to be sure!" had exclaimed the paperhanger's wife as +they opened the parcel. "How any one dare live with such patterns is +beyond me." The paperhanger's wife verbed better than she knew. Few are +those indeed who dare live with beauty. + +When the paper was hung in Theophil's room, so great was the sensation +in the household that even old Mr. Talbot ventured to look in at it, +keeping very close to his wife. It was so the old man had stood +open-mouthed before the first steam-engine, and here again was the Devil +plainly at work. + +"Lord a-mercy, Jane," he said to his wife, "what is the world coming +to?" + +The world was indeed changing beneath the old man's feet, and the +heavens opening as never before in his time--with, he might be right, +some assistance from beneath; and--it was undoubtedly safer in +the kitchen. + +Mrs. Talbot in these matters lived and loved by faith in her boy, as she +called him. But even she had her doubts, which she expressed in a way +that showed, funny old woman as she was, that she was not without a sort +of blind insight. + +"I suppose it's all right, boy," she said, "and it sounds silly to say +about a lot of harmless lines and flowers, but it seems to your old +mother that there's something wrong about that paper,--something almost +wicked in it. It reminds me of that nasty music you and Jenny are so +fond of playing." + +Here Theophil enveloped her in a huge hug, and laughingly mocked her +with playful caresses, smiling to himself all the same. For the music +she had referred to was Dvorak. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY + +Meanwhile, as New Zion moved and hummed and whizzed, and as "The Dawn" +went on dawning week by week,--you couldn't expect the dawn oftener than +once a week in Coalchester,--the love of Jenny and Theophil grew more +and more perfect. + +There was a long while to wait yet before Jenny was to bear what seemed +to her the finest of all names, for old Mrs. Talbot, easily manageable +as a rule, had a way of quietly putting her foot down on occasion that +would have surprised you. Jenny was only just passed nineteen, and was +no fit wife for any man yet, least of all for a great sprawling fellow +like that. Let her get a little more flesh on her bones, something more +than all spirit and nerves, let her get well turned twenty, and it might +be thought of, but not now. + +No! it's no use coming with your nonsense, you silly big fellow! You +know when the soft old mother says a thing, she means it. + +So it proved. Old Mrs. Talbot on this point remained a homely form of +adamant. However, the lovers were not badly off. Living in the same +house, they saw almost as much of each other as if they had been +married, and from the evenings she spent there, Jenny had come to regard +Theophil's room and his books as hers too. + +She had developed wonderfully in these months, had Jenny. She was a real +little great man's wife now; and as Theophil looked at her, with her lit +eager face, her whole soul so alive to help him in however humble a way, +her whole life his, his, his,--such love seemed almost tragic in its +very beauty and joy. It was so irremediably--love. At times he almost +trembled before it. He would almost chide her with its divine +completeness. + +What if he were to be taken from her? Oughtn't she to keep just a little +of herself for foothold? We ought all to belong to ourselves as well as +to another. It was such a risk. Suppose he were to die, Jenny! + +No doubt it was very wise, but Jenny was wiser. She could never belong +to herself again. She was his, and his only, for ever; and if he +died--if he were to be taken away ... + +But he could never be taken from her any other way? No one else, nothing +but death, could take him ... + +"No, nothing but death--and perhaps not even death." + +"You are sure, darling? O, you are quite, quite sure?" + +"Sure from my soul, little child. Look in it and see." + +A lover's eyes are his soul. + +Yes, Theophil loved Jenny, loved her even more with her own dependence +on love than he knew of. He was, the reader need scarcely be told, an +almost wildly ambitious man, and a few months ago he would have said +that there was nothing which was more to him than the expression of the +power that was in him. But there was something that was even more to him +now, and if it could be imagined that he might some day be asked to +choose between his ambition and Jenny, he could honestly have answered +from his soul, "Give me Jenny." + +Whoever thinks this an easily natural answer to make, may know something +about love, but evidently knows little about ambition. Still, life +seldom sets us such silly examination questions as that, and need one +say that that question was never put to Jenny's lover? He was far too +proud of the woman he had made of that little measure of porcelain and +that handful of stars. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION + +The winter months had gone by; all but one of those incendiary lectures +had been given, not without storm and tempest; "The Dawn" still came up +each week with anger and singing, and the first year of Londonderry's +ministry at New Zion neared its close. The lecture season was presently +to end, on the last Friday in March, with a concert which was to include +a series of recitations by a lady-reciter from London. Londonderry had +written to a lecture agency for the name of a likely reciter, man or +woman, and they had sent him the name of Isabel Strange. + +On the occasion of the last lecture, Mr. Moggridge had not been +satisfied with the colour of the platform. It wanted repainting, and I +think it very likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which I +hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of +house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great +smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. +Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought +nothing honest beneath him. + +It was the Friday of the entertainment, about one o'clock, and though +Mr. Moggridge had practically finished the work the day before, he had +slipped in during his lunch-hour to give it a final touch or two. He had +brought his lunch in the form of a pork-pie, and while with one hand he +plunged the pie occasionally among his red whiskers, with the other he +would lean forward and touch up a knot or a nail-hole that needed a +little more paint. And he was proud as a boy of the simple bit of +slap-dashing, and entirely absorbed in it and the pork-pie. + +Presently he became aware that he was not alone. Someone had entered +the schoolroom at the far end. He turned round, with the paint-brush in +one hand and the pork-pie in the other, and became abashed, for a +beautiful lady had entered the room and was evidently about to make an +enquiry. The surreptitiousness that seems to inhere in pork-pies +prompted Mr. Moggridge to slip the pie into his trousers' pocket--for +his coat was off, and a white apron had taken its place. + +"Just doing a little bit of amateur painting," he explained rather +awkwardly, advancing to the lady. + +"So I see," said the lady, with a pleasant smile. "This, I believe, is +Zion Chapel--and I suppose this is the room where I am to recite. My +name is Isabel Strange, and I have come a little earlier, I daresay, +than you expected; but I always like to see the room I'm to recite +in--just to try my voice in and run over my pieces." + +"Certainly, of course," said Mr. Moggridge; "but you have come all the +way from London and so early. You will have some refreshment first, and +if you'll honour Mrs. Moggridge and me--I may as well explain that I am +the chief deacon," said Mr. Moggridge, dexterously slipping off his +painter's apron and getting into his coat. So, with a wistful glance at +his work of art, Mr. Moggridge carried off the beautiful London lady to +Zion View. + +But was Isabel Strange beautiful? It was a new sort of beauty if she +was--or perhaps a very old sort. Yet beautiful was the first word that +had sprung into Mr. Moggridge's mind as she had surprised him in the +schoolroom. Perhaps wonderful was the exacter word, wonderful in a way +that included beauty,--wonderful, and with a strange air about her that +suggested exceptional refinement, exquisite sensitiveness to +refined things. + +"Beautiful, O dear no!" said Mrs. Moggridge, to whom feminine beauty +did not appeal, as the young lady freshened herself up after her travel +in Mrs. Moggridge's best bedroom. "Why! she hasn't a regular feature in +her face!" + +Mrs. Moggridge herself had neat little pretty features set in fat. + +"Look at that long upper lip and her nose!" + +Mrs. Moggridge omitted mention of eyes singularly powerful and very true +and sweet, as also of a long lithe mouth that reminded you of a +beautiful serpent, a serpent which the true eyes plainly said would do +you no harm. + +Presently, however, Mrs. Moggridge had to admit that she was very +attractive. She knew she meant fascinating, but she wouldn't admit that +to Mr. Moggridge, who had dropped the subject; though a mind which again +had asserted its dim preference for new fashions was perhaps groping +after expression of some such perplexity as this: why, if a face has +the same effect upon you as beauty, may it not be described as +beautiful? If Mr. Moggridge really got so far even as cloudily to ponder +that, it is evident that he was not far from the kingdom of beauty. + +It is, of course, true enough that some faces are spoilt by flaws such +as every Mrs. Moggridge can point out,--faces that begin in one style +and end in another, half Greek perhaps and half Gothic; yet even such +faces, if their individuality is strong enough, have their own rococo +charm. For all but supremely great faces, of which perhaps the world has +not seen half-a-dozen, absolute regularity, so-called correctness, of +features is a calamity, and regular beauty on the ordinary human levels +is only another form of mediocrity. + +Wonderful English girls! face after face indistinguishable from each +other as rose after rose. How sweet you are! how fragrant! what a bloom! +It is a wonderful rose-girl-farm from which you come. How pretty you +look laced up one after another on your standards, and how skilfully +you are guarded against any form of variation! Perhaps no women +potteries in the world produce so exquisite a surface, delicate as a +lily and strong as marble. Indeed you are wonderful porcelain, you fair +English girls, wonderful porcelain; but where are the stars? + +Mrs. Moggridge had also remarked that Miss Strange was "very easy in her +manners." This was not always the case with ladies in Coalchester, and +Mrs. Moggridge did not mean the remark as an unreserved compliment. She +liked a certain stiffness in strangers. It was not, however, in Isabel +Strange's nature to oblige her in that particular. Her way of pouring +her grace into Mrs. Moggridge's great arm-chair suggested at once that +she had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly she +chatted as with an old acquaintance. You could not make a stranger of +her. She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely without +embarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies and +watched her. + +"That's an interesting face!" she said presently, pointing to a +conspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece. + +"That's Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge. + +"O! _that's_ Mr. Londonderry, is it?" she said. "H'm,... I hadn't +expected him to be so young." + +"Yes! He's a wonderful young man for his position," said Mr. Moggridge, +started on what was now his favourite topic. "He'll be a great man some +day, will Mr. Londonderry." + +Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest. Such a genuine +interest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him. + +Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told of +its former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its present +prosperity. + +"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here, +wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderry +came, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always something +going on at New Zion," he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr. +Moggridge did so love anything that was alive. + +Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn," and generally, as he +would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. At +the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this +young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of +surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of +the world,--perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic +wandering minstrel existence had brought her to. + +Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a very +young woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to +fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself +twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the +nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for +wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and +her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her +features for a long time to come. A face so full of the mystery of light +could only be eclipsed by one darkness, and even in that those magnetic +eyes would shine through the cold closed lids. + +Surprises were welcome to her, for she got few. Her life was rather a +dreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be. At one time +she had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough for +that, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a little +too fine for the stage. The positive and enduring joys of her life were +that she lived in London--for which she had the kind of passion that +some people have for the Earth-Mother--and loved beauty as some women +love religion. She had been loved many times, but never quite as she +needed, as she demanded, to be loved. Vivid, passionate, and exquisite, +she was what we call "modern" to the tips of her beautiful fingers; that +is, she united the newest opinions on all things with many ancient +charms. At the same time she was a good woman, though very wonderful and +highly dangerous. + +Presently Mr. Moggridge, who from where he sat commanded a view of the +street, exclaimed, "Why, here is Mr. Londonderry himself!" rising as he +spoke and passing into the hall, where he was met by a curiously rich +and mellow voice, which Isabel Strange thus heard for the first time; +and then the glorified original of the photograph entered the room. + +As her eyes and hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous +"Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to +flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given +Londonderry an "interesting face," as we have heard, but missed all the +rest--"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly +handsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of various +commands and appeals, thought on the brow and laughter in the eyes, +humour and eloquence all along the large and somewhat loose mouth, with +plenty of go in the powerful but not anxiously determined chin. These +were the moral qualities of the face, which Isabel Strange did not miss; +but it was the fascination of its general vitality that struck her most, +as an important introduction was made, to the usual fantastic +accompaniment of small talk. + +Let us not prolong the small-talk of the situation further, but +introduce Miss Strange as speedily as possible to Jenny also and to the +little study in 3 Zion Place. + +Here her eager examination of the shelves was one succession of cries +of sympathetic delight. "Why, you have got all the books I ever want to +read again!" she exclaimed. "What wonderful people you are! How have you +done it--in Zion Place?" + +"I suppose the books must have been blown here," answered Theophil, +gaily, "on the same fair wind that blew Miss Isabel Strange." + +"Yes," said little Jenny, affectionately pressing her shoulder as the +three leaned forward looking at the shelves, "for if we seem wonderful +people to you, what must you seem to us--here, as you may well say, in +Zion Place?" + +"What _does_ she remind you of?" said Jenny presently, with candid +admiration. "I know! Why, of course, she just _is_ the very woman. +Wait--I'll go and fetch it;" and Theophil and Isabel were thus left for +a moment or two alone,--a fact of no importance beyond this, that it was +the first moment in their lives that they had ever been together alone. + +Jenny returned presently with a small copy of Botticelli's "Primavera," +which hung in her bedroom; and it was undoubtedly true that the figure +of Flora might well have passed for a portrait of Isabel. The nose was a +little longer, that was all; but the rest of the face--particularly the +eyes and mouth--was all but exact, and the general correspondence +between the two faces in subtlety, strangeness, and, so to say, +determined refinement, was complete. + +"It is strange that I should have loved that face so," said Jenny. + +"It is very sweet of you,--Jenny, I had almost said,--but you are too +kind to me, and a little selfish too--you give me no time to admire you. +I wonder if Mr. Londonderry is modern enough to allow ladies to smoke in +his study." + +And thus it comes out that Jenny often smoked there! + +The smoking-sister is now almost as common as a taste for Botticelli, +and perhaps equally insincere; but in 1886 there still remained that +sense of contrast in both which we have declared the essence of romance. +At present those curious people who resent the popular acceptance of an +ideal of beauty which they have done their best to popularise are +beginning to affect that a taste for Botticelli is a mark of the +_bourgeoisie_. So does the whirligig of time bring in the paradoxer. + +A new kind of woman, while she is always the despairing hope of men, is +seldom acceptable to women; yet when the evening came and Isabel stood +up to recite in New Zion schoolroom, women as well as men were +instantaneously attracted. She stood very simply, with one hand lightly +touching the table at which Londonderry sat as chairman, and the other +at her side; and before she began her first recitation she glanced +quietly over the audience, as though her eyes were thus preparing the +proper magnetic atmosphere for her voice. + +She began with some simple Longfellow poem, that New Zion might feel at +home; then she recited a fairy poem called "The Forsaken Merman," which, +of course, was only a fairy tale, and yet somehow was so full of human +pathos that it was more real than if it had been really "real," that +is, prosaic. + +For impressing the imagination of her audience she relied mainly on her +own imagination and her voice; striking no attitudes, and allowing +herself nothing of that facial distortion which is the resort of the +unimaginative, and destroys not creates illusion. Of course, her face +changed, but the change was one of which she was probably unconscious, +and which she couldn't have reproduced to her mirror; it was not a play +of features, but a play of lights and shadows and nerves, a flow or an +ebb of radiance in the eyes, a subtle sensitiveness of the lips and +nerves; and her effect was mainly produced by her voice, over which she +wielded indescribable powers of modulation. It was a voice so +sympathetic, so intimate, that it almost seemed too intimate, too +appealingly sympathetic. It was so a woman might recite to a man she +loved, but you almost felt as though the voice were too personal a +revelation for an audience,--felt an impulse, so to say, to throw a veil +over it, though you were glad from your soul that no one threw it. And +the voice was a wonderful actor too. It could act the scenery as well. +You saw it all, you heard it all, you felt it all, in the voice:--the +great winds blowing shorewards, the wild white horses in the spray, + + "The white-walled town, + And the little gray church on the windy shore;" + +and when she said, "Down, down, down!" you were indeed in the very +depths of the sea--and were all sitting, Mr. Moggridge with the rest, +amid coral caves and seaweed, and in a curious green and +shimmering light. + +But what a world of heart-break there was in her "Come, dear children, +come away!" You felt you simply couldn't bear her to say it again. Next +time you'd have to cry, and cry you did, and you weren't ashamed, for +suddenly when you came out of the trance of the voice you found that +every one else was crying too, and Mr. Londonderry had quite forgotten +that he was a chairman, and had to be nudged to announce the next piece. + +This was a very strange poem, and made you feel like a stained-glass +window; it was full of incense, but it was full of something else +too. It began + + "The blessed damozel leaned out + From the gold bar of heaven" ... + +and there was something in the voice that suggested such a height up +above the world that you drew your breath lest she should fall over. And +there was a lover crying in the poem, you could hear him crying far +away down on the earth, and there were some lines which went: + + "We two will lie i' the shadow of + That mystic living tree + Within whose secret growth the Dove + Is sometimes felt to be" ... + +that made you feel what a strange holy thing love was, after all; and +then there was a curious verse with nothing but women's names in it, yet +somehow it seemed the loveliest of all; and when again you came out of +the voice, you were not crying but feeling wonderfully blest somehow and +rather frightened. Jenny sent a wonderful look to Theophil--it was so +they should bathe together in God's sight--and Theophil sent back as +wonderful a look as a chairman dare venture on. Otherwise, of course, it +would have been as wonderful as Jenny's. + +Thus did Isabel Strange recite at New Zion; and perhaps one can best +judge of the impression she made, from the fact that the little boys at +the back, who during the last lecture on "Henrik Ibsen" had discovered +a most exciting new way of making continued existence possible, quite +forgot it and would have to keep it for Sunday afternoon Sunday-school. + +Everyone went home in a dream, and little Jenny shone like a light with +the excitement and wonder of it all. + +"How wonderful you are! Doesn't it seem strange to be so wonderful?" +said Jenny afterwards, as the two girls took off their outdoor things in +Jenny's room. + +"Dear child!" said Isabel, kissing Jenny on her brow, "it is you that +are wonderful." + +There is no joy in the world better worth seeing, better worth living, +than the joy of young people with the same dreams, the same thoughts, +and--so important--the same words for them, blown together by some +unexpected conjunction of the four winds, met by some blissful +dispensation of the planets of youth. + +There have been periods in history especially favourable for the ecstasy +of such meetings, early mornings of the human spirit, when lovely new +truth and lovely new beauty were dawning wild and dewy in the strange +east, and while the deep breathing of the older generations still asleep +made a more wonderful loneliness of dawn, for the hushed and happy bands +of young people holding each other's hands and watching in the +magic twilight. + +To have been young in Italy in the time of Dante, in England in the time +of Shakespeare, and to have met in such a mighty morning--with danger +too to keep us grateful. Ah, we have missed those dawns; and yet I doubt +if the whole recovered beauty of Greece and Rome, or the thrilling new +fashions in romance and poetry wafted across the seas from Italy to help +make Shakespeare, ever gave young people a keener thrill of newness and +mystery than the books and pictures so eagerly discussed by the little +group that gathered over supper that night in 3 Zion Place. + +To have read "The House of Life!"--to have seen the "Venus +Verticordia"! Ah! that was life! And Isabel had actually been to Mr. +G.F. Watts's studio--walked about there a whole afternoon. The young New +Zioners looked at her. + +"O Theophil, we _must_ go to London," cried Jenny. She meant when they +were married. + +Theophil pressed her hand tenderly, as she impulsively sought his for +sympathy, and his eyes left Isabel's face a moment to smile a true "yes" +into Jenny's. + +Of course no one had eyes for anyone but Isabel that night. Was she not, +as the announcements had said, "of London," an ambassadress of beauty +from the capital of the great queen? There was really little she could +tell these clever young people, who amazed and attracted her by their +reality,--the unrealities of "intensity" and "modernity" and the rest +had, of course, already begun in London,--but she represented to them +the sparkle of the new beauty and truth they loved. She knew little +intimate anecdotes of the poets and painters they loved, piquant gossip +and brilliant _mots_; and then she was one of those women who are like +incense in a room, enriching by her very presence, exhaling mystery and +distinction, like a pomander of strange spices. + +You might love her for a long time or a little, but love her you were +obliged to while you were with her, whoever else you loved too. There +was no other word for it. Even little James Whalley had conscience-pangs +as he looked at Isabel, for he had been engaged for five years; but the +poet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was already +burnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. The +inflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state of +ignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature has +made them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, +indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not go +on maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of the +conditions of their precarious art that they must daily expose +themselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of the +emotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear their +death-song amid the flames. + +Theophil? + +Well, we can talk of Theophil again. Meanwhile Jenny was as much in love +with her herself, and he held Jenny's hand and loved her, O yes, so +dearly--and was quite safe. Fear not, little Jenny; it was only death, +you remember, that was to separate Jenny and Theophil. + +Mrs. Talbot--if she won't bore you--had made an interesting remark. She +had not escaped Isabel's charm, but there was "something," something a +little alarming about her,--a little like that wicked wall-paper. + +Jenny divulged this criticism over supper when her mother was out of +ear-shot. + +"How very clever of her!" exclaimed Isabel. + +"She said the same of Dvorak's music," said Jenny. + +"Good again," said Isabel. "How clever of her! Don't you feel how right +she is? We are all like that wall-paper, and everything we care about is +like it. The New Spirit--that is, the devil--is in that wall-paper. A +psychometrist could detect Wagner and Keats, and Schopenhauer, and +Rossetti and Swinburne, and all the rest of them in that wall-paper, +just as surely as he could have detected Tupper and Eliza Cook in the +wall-papers of 1851. Am I not right?" + +"If we could only paper New Zion like this!" exclaimed Theophil, a +curious new feeling of joy and pain shooting through him to hear a woman +thus expressing herself as an independent brain. + +"Yes! New Zion! I'd quite forgotten all about New Zion. It seems +impossible to think of you together." + +"And a little absurd, I suppose," said Theophil. + +"It is uncouth material, I admit," he continued, "and yet somehow it +amuses us to mould it all the more; and then you mustn't forget that we +had been given no other--but I don't suppose you can understand?" +(Theophil often used "we" in this imperatorial sense, meaning himself, +as of course he had every right to mean.) + +"O yes, but I can," Isabel hastened to correct. "I understand power." + +"Beauty always does," was the young minister's reply. + +"Besides," he presently resumed, "we are glad to have been +Nonconformists--once. A Puritan training is a good thing--to look back +upon. You are all the more thorough in your pleasures, the truer +humanist, for something of it still lurking in your blood." + +"Yes, of course you're right. I don't like the word 'pagan'; but for +want of a better, we might say that the best pagans have come of Puritan +stock. Besides, it is half the romance of life to have something to +escape from, isn't it?" + +"And someone to escape with the other half," responded Theophil, nimble +as a real town wit. + +O it was a wonderful night. Let us build five tabernacles! + +"Good-night, dear Jenny." + +"Good-night, dear wonderful Isabel." + +So at last the two girls bade each other good-night at the door of +Jenny's bedroom, where Isabel was to sleep. + +Masterful youth! So wild to take, so eager to surrender, the Christian +name. Strange, what passion sometimes can be put into a +_Christian_ name! + +When the door was shut on Isabel, she made no haste to undress. Indeed, +she sat down on the side of the bed as though she had been waiting to +sit down for ever so long, sat very still as in a dream, and an hour +went by and she was still sitting and gazing in front of her. + +And downstairs in the study, where the lamps were still burning, +Theophil was sitting by the fire in just the same curiously wrought and +withdrawn way, with just the same eyes. + +Isabel's room was over his. Presently she heard him moving about; then +she heard him coming upstairs. For a moment the air seemed to grow warm, +as she heard him softly pass her room; then she heard him close +his door. + +She shook her reverie from her, as though it had been a black veil full +of stars, and began to undress. Presently her eyes fell on a little pile +of handkerchiefs, with needle and cotton, and little letters printed on +dainty tapes, beside it. Jenny had forgotten to put away her sewing. + +Isabel took up one of the handkerchiefs, to which the needle and thread +were still attached, and read "Jenny Lond ..." (Don't you know that's +bad luck, Jenny?) + +"So soon as that! Is it so soon as that?" she sighed. + +Happy Jenny! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE + +Isabel was leaving very early next morning for London, so good-byes must +be brief. Jenny and Theophil saw her off at the station, but before +leaving Zion Place there had been a moment in which for the second time +in their lives she and Theophil had been alone. + +They had stood together in the little study and taken each other's +hands, without a word, and they had looked into each other's faces as +those look whom a look must last a long time. + +They didn't even say good-bye, for, if they were never to meet again, +the look was not good-bye. And meet again it was not unlikely they +would, for it had been already arranged that Isabel was to lead off the +autumn entertainments; but the look did not mean that, either. As life +had been planned for them, all subsequent meetings must be merely +trivialities. They had met once, and fate had decided that they must +never meet like that again. In that long look each knew that they met +and parted for ever, autumn arrangements notwithstanding. + +Each came out of that look as out of a great cathedral, and from that +moment till the train left Theophil, with an unwonted sense of +loneliness, by Jenny's side, they entered that cathedral no more. Their +devotions were done for that day, and they must resume their secular +duties, rippling idly over the great deeps of themselves. + +One always leaves a station from which a dear friend has just gone with +a certain subdued air, a certain bereaved hush in the voice, and even +Jenny felt a momentary loneliness too. But it was not long before the +doors of home opened again for her in the sound of Theophil's voice; +and in the sense of the old familiar nearness to him she was back again +safe in the only world she ever wished to dwell in. + +It was more of an effort with Theophil, and the voice that made home for +Jenny had a strange sound in his own ears, as though it were still +talking to Isabel; but the effort was soon made, and though Jenny teased +him a little and said she believed he had quite lost his, that was to +say _her_, heart to Isabel, of course she believed no such thing. Doubt +is too terrible a toy for true love to play with. You only dare to doubt +as you must sometimes face the fear of death. + +"I wish next October were here," said Jenny, artlessly; "it seems such a +long time to wait to see her again." + +Did Theophil wish the same? He hardly knew. + +"Distance is such a silly thing," went on Jenny. "It seems to have been +invented just to separate those who want to be together. It seems so +arbitrary, so unnecessary." + +"I suppose death is a form of distance," said Theophil, irrelevantly. + +"Life too, I'm afraid," said Jenny. + +"Yes, indeed, life too," assented Theophil, dreamily. + +"If I were to die," said Jenny, suddenly, "would you still do what we +said?" + +"Why do you ask that, dear? You're a very serious little woman this +morning. Of course I would. You know. But why do you ask me now?" + +"Oh, only, dear, because I wonder whether we really ought to. Somehow +Isabel's visit has made me feel that life is a bigger, fuller thing than +I had dreamed, and that men like you, at all events, have duties towards +it even greater than your love for a little thing like me." + +"Jenny dear, don't talk like that. Why should you? You don't surely +doubt my love!" + +"Of course not, Theophil. It was only my silly little brain thinking +for once in a while,--and I don't mean to be unkind, but really I rather +mean it. Are you still quite sure there is nothing in the world more +important than love?" + +"Quite sure," he answered; "surer than ever--if that were possible. You +are not beginning to doubt that? Certainly it is a silly little brain, +if that's what its thinking is coming to." + +"I don't mean it for myself. Little women have nothing but love to think +of; but great men, men with a mission in the world ..." + +"Please, Jenny!" + +"Well, dear, I mean it; and I sometimes think that perhaps, perhaps, I'm +hindering your life; that if you were to be bothered with love at all, +you should have married some clever, wonderful woman,--woman, say, +like Isabel." + +"Jenny!" + +"Of course, dear, I know you don't think so," she continued; and he +realised that it was all artless accident on her part--"Still I cannot +help thinking it for you sometimes, dear, and sometimes I feel very +selfish to have your love,--as though, so to say, I was wearing someone +else's crown." + +"Jenny dear, will you promise never to talk like that again? A clever +woman! To be a woman is to be a genius, but to be a clever woman is to +be another man of talent." + +"That wouldn't be fair to Isabel." + +"No," assented Theophil, "Isabel is different too." + +And that brought them to Theophil's office and good-bye till the +evening. + +For the evening there had been fixed an important church meeting, the +first annual business meeting of minister and deacons since Londonderry +had come to New Zion. It was an occasion of jubilation all round, +particularly for Mr. Moggridge, who gave voice to New Zion's general +satisfaction, you may be sure, in no uncertain terms of praise. + +New Zion was, indeed, _New_ Zion once more, he said, thanks to their +indefatigable young pastor,--a play on words which was received with the +applause due to so unmistakable a union of wit and truth. + +Nor did the proceedings result in mere compliments. The church found +itself rich enough to increase its minister's stipend; and when Theophil +took Mr. Moggridge back to supper, another surprise awaited him, in the +form of a suspicious-looking letter, which, being opened, revealed a +quite unexceptionable £50 note, enclosed in a sheet of note-paper, on +which was written--"From never mind who." + +The writing was unknown to Londonderry, but there could be only one +culprit. + +"Of course, Mr. Moggridge, this is from you. Really ..." + +"No, sir, indeed; you make a mistake there," protested Moggridge, lying +badly, and growing purple. + +"Who do _you_ suspect, Jenny?" + +"Why, of course, it's Mr. Moggridge!" + +"Mr. Moggridge!" exclaimed Jenny impulsively, throwing her arms round +Mr. Moggridge's surprised shoulders, and kissing him somewhere in his +whiskers,--"Mr. Moggridge! you are the dearest, kindest man in the +world!" + +And Jenny was not far wrong. + +"Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge, by way of changing the subject, +and warmly grasping the young man's hand, "New Zion's proud of you, +sir--and so is Eli Moggridge." + +And that moment would have been as good for all three, even without the +fifty-pound note. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE + +I realize that any attempt henceforth to enchain the reader's interest +with church meetings, or the like enthralments, will be more than +hopeless. That is the worst of allowing love to creep into one's story. +He insists on having the stage to himself, and in that determination the +audience is entirely with him. Previously you may have been interested +in all kinds of peaceable, unexciting things, far more good for you, but +enter love, and all the rest is suddenly fallen tame beyond endurance. + +It is of no use to urge that life's bill of the play includes many +hardly less brilliant and attractive performers. They are all well +enough in their way, till the eternal Paganini is there with his old +fiddle once more at his shoulder; then there is an end of all +seriousness, or a beginning, as you please. + +Well, I'll do my best to get over the six months between March and +October as quickly as possible; and, indeed, it will not be very +difficult, after all, for very little happened, to speak of, during that +time to any of the chief actors engaged in making this history. + +Perhaps it was this consideration that prompted old Mr. Talbot--O, +bother old Mr. Talbot!--that prompted old Mr. Talbot, I say, to take the +important step of dying, when, poor old man! his death would give the +least possible trouble. + +There seemed as little reason for his dying as there had seemed for his +living, for as far as anyone knew there was nothing the matter with him, +except an extreme sleepiness of an evening, which was but natural in an +old weary man who still kept at his stone-masonry though he was +full seventy. + +Night after night, for some weeks, he had been getting sleepier and +sleepier. + +"Why, dad, I never saw such an old sleepy-head"--his wife had rallied +him good-naturedly one night, looking at him with a sudden odd +expression in her face. + +"Eh, lass, but I was noddin' and no mistake," said the old man, +struggling drowsily with the heaviness, and presently succumbing +once more. + +"He's off again," said Mrs. Talbot to herself, as she lifted the lid of +a pent saucepan in which some boiled onions were mightily bubbling in a +wild little world of steam. + +Presently the old man sighed deeply,--so you would have thought; but +Mrs. Talbot, hurrying to him, knew that he had tried to say "Jane," and +had said it for the last time. + +Yes, he had been getting sleepier and sleepier; all his life he had been +trying to sleep, and at last he slept. + +To most people Mr. Talbot's death was the first intimation of his ever +having lived, and one rather resents for the old man the one day's +publicity which death enforced upon him. It was indeed well for him that +he was dead, for such unwonted excitement would surely have killed him. +This important coming and going of undertakers; this populous invasion +of friends talking like muffled drums in the front parlour, and passing +up and down and up and down the stairs, in and out and in and out of his +still room; this throng of neighbours awaiting him in the streets; these +plumed impatient horses, and these carriages of dark grandeur--"Jane, +why ever didn't you bury me by the back door?" would surely have been +the old man's pitiful complaint could he have known. + +However, the day passed and the old man was safe at last, where no +front-parlour visitors should affright him more, and where no one would +trouble his old brains for speech any more; and to all, save one, his +death was but as though he had moved a little farther into the kitchen. + +It seemed almost strange that even his wife should miss him. One had +thought so little of them as man and wife. One could hardly, even by +process of thinking, realise that between these rinded and wrinkled +beings love had once hung like a rosy cloud, from which one day had +sprung Jenny. + +On one or two occasions, indeed, they had been surprised in an uncanny +semblance of a caress, and once in a while an almost supernatural +retrospect had lit up and vanished again in an unaccustomed tender word; +and to have been present then was to feel somehow frightened. + +Ah! the gay young leaves no longer kiss across in the morning sun, but +the stern old trees have meetings you know not of far beneath the +ground. Their roots are twisted and twined in a wonderful embrace there; +there in the dark they are very close together, and shall not be +wrenched apart without groanings that cannot be uttered. + +Jenny can hardly be said to have missed her father, except through her +mother, who seemed suddenly to grow a little deafer, a little more +dim-sighted, just a trifle less brisk and busy than before, and with a +touch about her of that old-age awesomeness that mutters to itself in +corners and seems to know strange things. + +Yes, Jane missed her John. Her old heart knew that he was no longer +sitting in the kitchen. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER + +Jenny and her old mother began to grow closer to each other at this +time. Perhaps it was because the old woman felt lonelier, and perhaps, +too, because the loss of her old man had sent her thoughts wandering +among the enchanted fields of her young days, that she began to talk +sometimes to Jenny about her marriage, and to give her quaint advice on +the subject of "managing" husbands; "as if," Jenny smilingly said to +herself, "an old man like father was the same, belonged even to the same +race, as Theophil." + +Perhaps Mrs. Talbot scented some such reflection in Jenny's expression; +at all events, she answered it with an "Eh, but all men are alike, my +dear, under their skins,--all alike, and they need humouring and +managing just in the same way, prince or peasant." + +The idea of "managing" Theophil had something repulsive in it for Jenny; +there was an element of deceit, of cunning, implied which didn't go with +her ideas of true love and the life beautiful of which she was dreaming. +She didn't believe that men and women who loved were really different +from each other, and perhaps she was right. + +About this time, too, Mrs. Talbot began to produce from mysterious +treasure-caves, entered apparently from an old press in her bedroom, all +kinds of wonderful things which would be useful to Jenny some day in her +house: terrible little ornaments,--very sacred, though,--sad +quaintnesses of the spirit of beauty pathetically fumbling about in +country brains; wool mats worked in the primary colours; and such wool +wonders as a wool basket of flowers, in which real wool flowers grew out +of a wool basket which you held by an over-arching wool handle, the +whole worked with undeniable but how forlorn ingenuity,--a prehistoric +relic of Mrs. Talbot's legendary school-days: survivals from a period +which is best summed up in the one wonderful word "antimacassar," a +period when for some unrecorded reason men and women had to protect +their furniture against their oleaginous selves, and beautiful locks +were guarded from lover's fingers by coats of triple oil. + +But these were things worth having, too,--bits of old lace and prim +embroidery, that bore the stamp of a refinement that is never +old-fashioned; and when Mrs. Talbot descended from the beautiful she +could show you real treasures. + +I don't think there was any word in the language, not even Bible words, +which Mrs. Talbot pronounced with such an accent of solemnity as the +word "linen." The words "China" and "cut glass," and perhaps "silver," +ran it close, but "linen" was undoubtedly the word in which all Mrs. +Talbot's sense of the seriousness of living, her sense of household +distinction, her deep sense of the importance of prosperity, and her +stern love of cleanliness found most impressive utterance. + +Mrs. Talbot could never have smiled as she said "linen." + +And the linen she had been storing for Jenny might indeed have been the +very stuff of which lilies are made, lilies smelling of lavender. + +Such pairs of sheets! A queen might even fear to await her lord lying +amid such linen; for white indeed must be the body that dares rivalry +with Mrs. Talbot's sheets,--sheets which might indeed be said to settle +that old question of the snows of yester-year. + +_Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan_? + +Surely they have been settling, flake on flake, year after year, in Mrs. +Talbot's linen-press, till at last there is quite a snowdrift of fair +white linen for Jenny and Theophil to lie in. + +Yes! another six months and Christmas will be here; and, after +Christmas is turned, the weeks till February the 12th--the second +anniversary of Theophil's coming to New Zion--will fly by in no time. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Talbot and Jenny--with occasional contributions from +Theophil--began to busy themselves with Jenny's bottom drawer. + +Translated into the language of those more magnificent circles in which +this simple-hearted romance has no desire to move, a "bottom drawer" +might be described as a trousseau, though such translation would be only +partially correct. A bottom drawer is a good deal more than a trousseau. +It is the corner of a girl's wardrobe, usually its bottom drawer, where +the home that is to be begins to take shape in deposits of various +kissed objects, minor articles of apparel, of ornament or +use,--handkerchiefs such as we have already seen Jenny marking, in +defiance of the old prophecy that the bride who dares even to write her +married name before her marriage will never know a wedding day; quaint +candlesticks that had to be picked up in some old curiosity shop as come +upon or be missed altogether; pretty shoes of a pattern you weren't +likely to meet with again; occasionally, perhaps, even an anticipatory +wedding present, that some friend who would be far away in Australia +when the day came had already contributed; a pretty tea-service Theophil +had suddenly taken a fancy to buy for Jenny one day,--"any straw will +help a nest;" a sweet and rather naughty picture that must never be hung +anywhere but in their little sacred bedroom,--"O love, our little room!" + +How often did Jenny bend lovingly over that drawer, which by now had +spread itself over a whole chest of drawers,--for home was growing, +growing,--only a few more months and it would have grown so big and real +that nothing but a little house would hold it. And Theophil was brought +sometimes to peep in too,--"O love, think of it--our little home." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME + +Have I seemed to shirk the subject of Theophil's feelings all this time? + +Well, I confess I have rather shrunk from writing down in so many words +that he was in love with Isabel,--obvious as the fact has been,--just as +he himself shrank from admitting the same truth even to his own soul. + +When he had sat up in his study that night of the recital, he had looked +the whole sad splendid truth in its wonderful face, had loved it wildly +for an hour, and then shut his eyes to it for ever. + +He knew that Isabel was the woman God had made for him, sweet, dear +Jenny the woman he had made for himself, and he bowed before the work of +the greater artist. + +Never voice nor look nor touch of woman had affected Theophil before as +the least tone or glance or movement of Isabel stirred him to the centre +of his being. To meet her eyes was to release a music that went +shuddering through the whole world; her lightest word was filled with +echoes of infinite things. Not a lover only, but anyone with instincts +for such perceptions, looking at Isabel, would have said: There is a +woman who is needed to make some man a great poet, a great artist, some +kind of great man! She belongs to the history-making women. Hundreds of +women will attract men by the hundred where she will attract +comparatively few, but that few will be the pick of men; and some day, +when the other women have gone the way of all sweet roses, she will +still remain (if she has found an artist to understand her face) the +frontispiece of some distinguished biography, or hang in a gallery of +the period among the few faces that were indestructibly personal; not +the faces that have lived, but the faces that still go on living, the +faces that are influences still, the unique, daemonic faces. + +Isabel was indeed a muse that waited for her poet. The mere idea of such +a woman, cherished across dividing seas and separating years, will help +a man be great. To grow great near or far is the one way to be hers, and +to pile up great work for her sake is perhaps the best way to love her. +She could never be his wife, but she might still be his muse, resolved +Theophil, feigning in that reflection for the moment a more human +comfort than, alas! there really was. + +But was there to be no loss to Jenny in this? + + "True love in this differs from gold or clay, + That to divide is not to take away." + +It is the convenient old plea of the poets, and yet it is sometimes +true. It was true here. There is, I know, a sort of primitive man or +woman--I believe they will some day be exhibited in menageries--who +cannot be on with a new love without being ungratefully off with the +old. All depends of what the two loves are made. If it is bodily fire +and no more, of course the new love will put out the old as the great +sun puts out a little smouldering fire; and the majority of so-called +love-stories are merely disastrous conflagrations of that sort. In such +cases the new love is no sooner found than the old becomes grievous, a +burden; by a malignant witchcraft the old charms have grown veritably +repellent, and "all the heaven that was" irretrievably disenchanted. +Which is the illusion, one wonders,--the original enchantment or the +final disenchantment? + +When, however, love can give a better account of its preferences than +this, and point out, say in Jenny, many good reasons why she was at +first and must for ever remain love-worthy, whatever rival reasons for +love another woman may bring; when too there is added to those reasons +for loving Jenny the dear habit of loving her, the gratitude--love must +forgive the word--which has accumulated interest upon the original love, +the beauties that have been gained by becoming familiarities, and the +familiarities that have become beauties by very use,--well, really, is +it such a hardship, after all, for a man to be expected to keep true to +his Jenny? + +Oh! but passion doesn't reason like this. Indeed, O passionate reader! +Is passion, then, merely a wild beast, a savage, a blind fire? Must it +forfeit its fine name if it remembers mercy or owns duty? Is it any less +passion because it refuses sometimes to glut itself, and dares to go +hungry all its days instead; any less passion because it chooses to burn +up its own heart in an agony of its own consuming fire? + +Mere violence is not a strength but a weakness in passion, and sometimes +there is more passion in patience than in anything else in the world. A +passion that knows not pity is merely a daemonic possession, and should +be taken to the madhouse. + +I confess that there is nothing in the world more amazing to me than the +easy brutality with which one hears of some men doing what is called +"breaking off their engagements." Only a new face has to show itself, +and the old face at once disappears with a blow and a wail. + +Murder, of course, is one way out of many difficult situations, and the +worst kinds of murder are by no means capital offences. It is true that +all engagements are not made by the same vital bonds as that of Jenny's +and Theophil's, but many are. For a man wilfully to break an engagement +means sometimes that the whole love-life in a woman is atrophied, all +that made her woman stabbed to the quick of life. + +Yet no one who knows anything of women can have failed to remark that +women themselves are even more brutal in this matter. Nothing could +exceed the executioner-like promptitude with which a woman will despatch +a man for whom she has ceased to care. But in her case there is to be +urged that, though fundamentally love is of equal importance to man and +woman, it does not so often mean the absolute saving or wrecking of a +man's life as it does a woman's. It is not a disgrace to a man to be +jilted; it is to a woman. For a woman to be jilted is for her to have +failed,--as a woman; and for a woman to have failed as a woman is for +her to value no other success. + +All this to maintain, in spite of the reader, that Londonderry is no +milksop because he is not going to jilt--that is, murder--poor little +Jenny, throw up New Zion, and seek his new love on the wild winds. But +the agony of it none the less! O Jenny! Jenny! sweet and true and good +and dear as ever,--if only you would just take a sudden fancy for +someone else! + +Meanwhile the months were going by, and the day drawing nearer when, for +a brief moment of fire, the orbits of those two separated lives were to +touch once more. + +What of Isabel during these months? The woman whom God had created for +Theophilus Londonderry did not forget her promise to write to the woman +whom Theophilus Londonderry had created in his own image. Wonderful +letters, of course! Why don't women publish volumes of their letters, as +men collect their scattered essays? There is no writing in the world +more immediately, conqueringly personal than a really clever woman's +letters; and they are not always compromising. + +Isabel's letters were the perfection of self-expression. Her handwriting +swept across the page just as she would walk down a street, at once +eager and yet stately and subtle-rhythmed; the shape of some of the +words reminded you of her hats,--hats everyone thought she paid guineas +for, but which she made for herself at a cost perhaps of five shillings: +hats which were Paris with a touch of fairyland, somewhere an +unobtrusive feather of the fantastic, somewhere a personal magic in the +inimitable twist or lie of a bow--; her face looked out at you from a +_g_ or an _x_, a gesture flashed back to you in a sudden distinguished +stroke of the pen, and her voice was somewhere, everywhere, among the +words, like a violin. + +Without any apparent literary device she contrived to make you, while +you read her letters, do what she was doing, see what she was seeing, +and form, as though acted on by some magic property in the words, +pictures of all she told you. + +One piece of news you would not expect her to have told. I have said +that women are both executioners of the tiresome. In this Isabel, I +fear, was no exception to her sex. Like most independent girls in +London, she had a little theatre-guard of devoted men friends, who took +it in turn to companion her to plays or picture-galleries; and these, +with admirable tact, she contrived to keep in, to them, the +unsatisfactory relation of brothers. One of these, however, had of late +been growing dangerously unfraternal. His presents had been growing +expensive. Cigarettes and chocolates, and pretty editions, like gloves, +and boxes of flowers, are every pretty woman's lawful spoils; but +costlier gifts are to be looked on with suspicion. Besides, the doomed +man's letters had been growing warmer. Indeed, Isabel remembered with +something like a shudder, so soon as she was back in her little room, +with its curious pictures and its general sense of exotic refinement, +that she had allowed him to kiss her the last time they had been +together. The reminiscence decided her. Theophil could never be hers; +but at least no facile or mediocre attachments should fill his place. So +at once there is posted a letter, as kind as cruelty can make it, and +with it go a little ormolu clock, a pair of mother-of-pearl +opera-glasses, a lovely fan it was hard, Isabel, to part with,--and +there is an end of that. + +"Not after Theophil!" she sighed, as she took up her great Persian cat, +and, like it, sat gazing into the fire that flickered dreamily among her +fantastic possessions,--a mystery gazing idly into a mystery. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +"O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE ..." + +Well, the months have at last gone by,--dark solid bodies of absence, +not a day mercifully lost count of by the old calendar-maker, not an +hour of the long sentence remitted for a brave patience in the waiting. +They are reckoning by weeks at last, and now, excitedly, by days, +breathlessly now by little fast-dispersing hours. + +The blackness that filled the world was a month ago streaked with gray; +three weeks ago there was a line of faint colour in the east; a +fortnight, and there are scarlet plumes in the far heaven, and a faint +twitter of song; a week, and the whole sky is a commotion of glory +and birds. + +To meet again! O to meet again, just to look at each other again! We are +philosophers, we are brave, we shall remember Jenny, but O! the rapture +of just beholding each other again. + +"Thank God, you are alive! you are real! O Theophil, there is the little +scar on your forehead I've been longing to see." + +"Yes! it is Isabel! She walks just as she did a thousand years ago. I am +carrying her rugs. How well I remember her umbrella!" + +"How fantastic absence is!" said Isabel, as the three friends sat once +more that evening in the little study where nothing seemed to have +changed, and where they seemed to have been sitting all the hours of +those now quite disrespectfully forgotten months. + +"Yes, but how real!" said Jenny. It was Jenny who said "how real!" + +How fantastic, too, is the present! Sometimes, perhaps nearly always, it +tortures us with the unreality, the unrealisability of precious moments +that are flying, flying, and can never come again; and at other times +it equally eludes us with a sense of their indestructibility. To-night +the present had chosen to seem real. Theophil felt, as he looked at +Isabel, that this wonderful nearness could never pass away. Her dress, +her coiled _cendré_ hair, her soft smile, her very attitudes, seemed to +wear a curious expression of everlastingness. Yes, she would sit just +like that, and he and Jenny would sit near her for ever and ever. No +mere abstractions like Time and Space could fill with emptiness the +place where she now sat and smiled. In some mystical way eternity had +breathed upon this hour and given it immortality. It had been suddenly +touched with a wand into an enchanted permanence. Theosophists tell of +an astral light, where every moment of time endures in strange paintings +upon space. Isabel and Theophil and Jenny were sitting together in the +astral light. + +And yet the hours had already been flying, for, the recital was already +over,--New Zion more in love with Isabel than ever. The same little +supper as six months ago had been merry and come to an end, the guests +had gone, the house was quiet, and this hour that seemed so real was the +frail last of that day of dreams. + +Yes! but an arrangement had been made which perhaps accounts for the +security of that hour. Isabel's agents had planned for her a little +circular tour in northern towns comparatively adjacent to Coalchester, +and when a fortnight of such recitals was ended, she was to return and +give still another recital at New Zion. Then there must be parting, real +black parting again. Meanwhile, the fortnight that lay between the two +days of meeting gained a curious sense of being really spent together. +As two walking together on a long road may separate, and one walk till +almost out of sight of the other and then slowly return, but the two +endure no sense of parting, feeling together all the time, so Isabel +and Theophil felt about this fortnight. + +But did they speak no word, look no look all these hours, of all their +hearts cried out to say? Was Jenny there all the time? Nearly. Still +there was a moment granted them, which, added to the two moments +previously recorded, made a total perhaps of four minutes, which life so +far generously allowed them to be alone together in. Yet such is love's +miraculous velocity that it had said all it needed to say, given all, in +those four minutes. All it had to say to-night was just two Christian +names, said so solemnly, so tenderly, so honestly. Just "Isabel," just +"Theophil," and a long quiet clasp of hand and eyes. It was enough. It +is written. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS + +It was not enough! + +If you would safely renounce a joy, you had best enjoy something of it +first. Renunciation must have something to live on. You can "take up the +whole of love and utter it," and _then_ "say adieu for ever," but +not before. + +I have asked mercy for Jenny, though it was perhaps hardly necessary, +for the world always pities Jenny. Now I would ask it for Isabel and +Theophil, who are thus quietly to sacrifice the greatest thing in their +lives, the one reality for which they have come into existence, for +Jenny's sake. Great is their love for each other, but even greater and +stranger must be their involuntary love for an invisible goodness, an +ideal of ineffable pity. They are going to die that Jenny may live. + +Strange, this gentle heroism of human creatures one for the other. Would +it be unfair to ask that each should support the anguish of his own +destiny, and that when Jenny's turn has come she should take her +lightning? Hers, had she known it, was the cup of anguish here; for +Theophil and Isabel had been decreed the cup of joy. But will they drink +it? No, they will change the cups; perhaps the bitter cup will grow +sweet near the dregs, being drunk together. + +Yet this love of theirs, this perilous chance for Jenny, was none of +their making. Their joy had been given to them by unseen hands. It is +fairly theirs. Next time, perhaps, it will be their turn to suffer. It +is Jenny's now... + +But no! the good heart of humanity will defeat the cruel ruling of the +gods. Let the lightning come upon them--not little Jenny. + +Yet for this, Jenny, you will not grudge them their piteous reward. +Yours are all the years, Jenny. You will spare them one day out of all +the years. Think, Jenny, of the hours and hours and hours you and +Theophil have spent in careless happiness, and they--one almost laughs +to think of it--have just so far been granted four minutes. For four +minutes out of infinite time life has privileged them to be +alone together. + +It will be far safer too. Otherwise you know not with what fearful flame +love will fill the chasms under ground, circling and seething in the +fiery darkness. Theophil loves you, but some day your home will suddenly +be rent from cope to base, unless his poor heart may speak, yea, babble +itself, just once in Isabel's ears. + +A temptation had come to Theophil. At first he put it aside. Then +passion, wiser for once than reason, told him that it was a necessity, +and he knew that passion was right. A week of the fortnight had gone, +and Theophil remembered that Isabel would now be in the neighbourhood of +certain famous woods where in his boyhood he had often wandered, and he +remembered that she was to have the Monday quite free. That Monday they +should spend together in those enchanted woods. His secular business +often took him to towns thirty or forty miles away, and it was not +startling for him not to return till late at night. Thus Isabel and he +should steal their one day out of all the years. + +So there went a note without one word of love in it to tell Isabel that +love was coming by the morning train; and so on that morning Isabel +stood waiting for love at that little wayside station, and presently, +with a mighty rushing sound of iron and brass, love came and stood very +quietly by her side, and looked into her eyes. + +They took each other's hands quietly, and left the station without a +word; nor did they speak for a long while, walking blissfully side by +side through a village street which was to take them to the green and +lonely woods. Soon the houses were passed, and they still walked on +silent, listening to the song of their nearness. + +Now, as they drank each other's presence through every feasting nerve, +they knew how starved they had been. As the lane narrowed and gloomed +green, dipping through caverns of bright leaves, they drew closer, and +smiled gently on each other; but they were not going to speak for a long +while yet. Had they not come away into this loneliness that they might +be silent together, that they might sit, hour after hour, and just watch +each other, lost in an ecstasy of contemplation, a trance of +recognition, a fascination that was almost fearful, that was so kind and +yet so cruel in its very power? + +The woods are very still, but there is nothing in the world so still as +these two lovers, as they lie down on the green earth and gaze on each +other, hour after hour. When they find a word as great as their +silence, they will speak it--but they will find none except it be +"Isabel," except it be "Theophil." + +And great passion has as little use for caresses as for words, and +kisses, which gay sensual love gathers greedily like little golden +flowers, and pays for nimbly with little, pretty words, will be almost +as rare as words. + +Kisses! it is not to eat bonbons that these two have come out into the +woods. + +Kisses! what kiss of the blind lips could match the kiss of those rapt +tragic eyes! + +Kisses are but the diminutives of the great word "love;" they are but +the small change of passion, meteorites, star-dust of the great and +terrible planet. + +Their souls are swung high above time and space in one never-ending +kiss,--the kiss of that predestined irrefragable union, of which +meetings and partings and kisses and caresses and words, and every other +fragmentary mode of expression, are but trivial accidents, to which +distance is still nearness, and nearness is still distance. + +Their love is a property of eternal elements. It is fated as the union +of magnetic powers, it obeys chemic laws of irresistible combination. +They are Isabel and Theophil,--that is their love; they are in the world +together,--that is their marriage. + +But passion will not be all day a tragedian. He has many moods. He is a +great wit,--how bright, how bright, he makes the brain!--a merry +comrade, a little, tender, silly child; and these two sad ones laughed +together, too, in the still woods,--for was not the most exquisite +humourist in the world their companion, love, who is all things by +turns, and all things wise? + +And they feasted together, wine and great grapes, spread out on the +earth's green table; and they called each other silly, beautiful names, +and they feigned sad little glad stories--and called the wood their +home: this was their breakfast-oak, and that glade should be their great +hall, and high, high up in yonder beech, where the squirrel was sitting, +should be their secret little bed-chamber, hung in blue and green, with +a ceiling of stars. They should climb it each night on a ladder of +moonlight, and slide down from it each morning on the first strong rays +of the sun. And sometimes if it frightened them with being too near +heaven, they would seek out a dell of fine moss and creep close together +into the arms of the kind earth-mother, and then sleep while the stars +kept watch. + +O, yes, it would be a wonderful life together. + +Then suddenly the child's play would cease, as the birds stop singing +with the coming of the stars, and silence would sweep over them again, +and a great kiss would leap out of the silence, like a flame that lights +up heaven from north to south, and they would hang together, lost in an +anguish of desire. + +The setting sun was turning the wood into halls of strange light, and +spreading golden couches here and there in its deep recesses. + +"Theophil..." sighed Isabel. + +"Wife..." sighed Theophil--(ah! Jenny!) and then a voice that seemed to +be neither's, and yet seemed to be the voice of both,--a voice like a +dove smothered in sweetness between their breasts,--said, "Let us go +deeper into the wood." + +Later, when the stars had come, two white faces came glimmering from the +innermost chancel of the wood's green darkness. They passed close +together, still as phantoms among the trees, and when they came out on +to the lane they stood still. + +"Theophil," said one voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send for +you, will you promise me to come?" + +"Isabel," said another voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send +for you, will you promise _me_ to come?" + +And each voice vowed to the other, and said, "I would come, and I would +go with you." + +And all these words had once been Jenny's, but they had been Isabel's +first. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS + +As the sharing of a cruel or unworthy secret must be the most terrible +of all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is the +most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and +Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, +and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of +inner union which they felt no extension of space or endurance of time +could destroy. + +Such a marriage as theirs is, of course, the dream of all separated +lovers, "the love that waited and in waiting died" the theme of many +poets; and there have been great historic love-stories to prove such +love a possibility of human hearts; yet, alas! for the experiment that +must so often fail, for the weak wills of loving that will so truly and +yet must loose their holds,--the fire that promised itself food in +memory for a thousand years, but needs the sensual fuel of sight and +touch after all; the love that believed it could go on trusting through +centuries of silence, yet dies at last of little earthly doubts! + +For this tremendous fast which you are to make believe a feast, trust in +each other is the one condition that may avail. This trust must come of +no mere exchange of vow or deeply-sworn and eloquent promise; it must be +knowledge one heart of the other, clear and absolute; and such knowledge +in your short hour of revelation you must have learned so passionately +that, like poetry learnt in childhood, it is henceforth no longer a +forgettable, detachable part of your mind's furniture, but a well-spring +of instinct for ever. Is your lady true? You will ask that only when you +ask: Is she beautiful? + +Such confidence as this is comparatively common in friendship, but it +is very rare in love: whether it was to be justified in the case of +Isabel and Theophil, time alone could show. Meanwhile they felt calm and +happy, as only two can feel who have discovered in each other the one +unchanging reality in a world of flowing shadow. + +It was very wonderful, in quite a new way, to meet again. Their love was +no longer hunger and unrest, it had gained the impassioned peace of +great accepted realities. It was married love now. As the quiet firm +hands held each other again, there seemed to be long retrospects of +tried and tender intercourse in their very touch. Their eyes held a past +in them as well as a future. There was no hurry of the emotions now, no +reason for haste in the seeking and giving of tenderness, no need to +snatch and clutch the good gifts of love as though there was but a short +day for the giving. Their love had grown conscious of its eternity. + +It held but one lasting sadness,--that it might not be revealed to +Jenny. So little did they regard their love as one essentially for +concealment, that the temptation to include Jenny in their bond was at +moments a danger. It was so beautiful, and actually, though +unconsciously, she was so integral a part of its beauty. + +Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say, +jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart +of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being +the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible +trinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under +like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a +strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's +one unworthiness, its egoism. As the _égoisme à deux_ is finer than an +egoism of one, so this _égoisme à trois_, if you will, is again finer by +its additional inclusiveness. + +Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too. +But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such a +union is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved both +Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in +the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was +more impassioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that +it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness, +could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meeting +in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea. + +But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They had +vowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy, +but only transfigure, after all,--yet the test was lightning; and for +whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win +them Paradise? + +No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told... +Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of +chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded +moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,--when we withdraw +into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,--and Jenny, +by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of +them there. + +It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone +down, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for +some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience +was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, +entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his +vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the +lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the +vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr. +Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but +that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each +other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak +anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,-- + +"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!" + +But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found +me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I +love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a +man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could +be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong +for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost +once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so +calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes +for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark +half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back +dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had +expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them +here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only +seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms. + +Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock +had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must +sit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim +reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little +but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good, +and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and +beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her +choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget +that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that +dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how +happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in +brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the +darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If +only she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No! +she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seen +them, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till she +had made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know. +That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then she +might speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go,--she +must not be later than they; they would be passing down to the hall +presently, she must be there before them,--she must be quick,--she must +go now.... + +As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled a +recognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smile +back at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white, +and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her. + +She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the common +resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a +happiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguish +was too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she might +have felt towards death,--it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart +there was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she felt +that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,--just as a +child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too +young to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have loved +their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!) + +Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have +spared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs. +Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written, +and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful +joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It was +the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons; +but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to +understand it too. It was called a "Denial," and began:-- + + "We have met late--it is too late to meet, + O friend, not more than friend! + Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet, + And if I step or stir, I touch the end. + + In this last jeopardy + Can I approach thee,--I, who cannot move? + How shall I answer thy request for love? + Look in my face and see. + + "I might have loved thee in some former days. + Oh, then, my spirits had leapt + As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise! + Before these faded cheeks were overwept, + Had this been asked of me, + To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,-- + I should have said still...Yes, but _smiled_ and said, + 'Look in my face and see!' + + "But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart + And drowned it in life's surge. + In all your wide warm earth I have no part-- + light song overcomes me like a dirge. + Could love's great harmony + The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose, + Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose? + Look in my face and see-- + + "While I behold, as plain as one who dreams, + Some woman of full worth, + Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's, + Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth + + One younger, more thought-free + And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget, + With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet-- + Look in my face and see! + + "So farewell thou, whom I have known too late + To let thee come so near. + Be counted happy while men call thee great, + And one beloved woman feels thee dear!-- + Not I!--that cannot be, + I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where + The change shall take me worse, and no one dare + Look in my face and see." + +The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel +recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny +felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its +destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last +verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,-- + + "Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine + I bless thee from all such! + I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine, + Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch + + Of loyal troth. For me, + I love thee not, I love thee not!--away! + There's no more courage in my soul to say + 'Look in my face and see.'" + +When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss +Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance, +and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently +reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought +of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge. + +"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she +was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with +sudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment to +its close. + +Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny +along the few yards to home. + +"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that. +It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two +people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?" + +Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of +giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear." + +"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears." + +When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real +anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a +passing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness. +She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly, +but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible +to think of two people having to part like that," she said again. + +And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual. + +"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not +see each other for a long time again." + +"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought +there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace. + +When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange," +said Isabel. + +"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil. + +So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her +bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed. + +"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go +back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear, +like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing +but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night." + +And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jenny +had said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and if +presently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because he +did not know the reason of her tears? + +On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so that +Theophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny again +till the evening. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +IN WHICH JENNY CRIES + +Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as she +usually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but at +last, when the quiet secure hour which had always been theirs between +dinner and bedtime had come, she came into his room quietly and sat in +her accustomed chair. + +She had been fighting all day to gain strength for this hour, and her +will was bravely set to speak what must be spoken. But she must firmly +choke back all the sweetness of the memories which sprang to her with +kind eyes, as the familiar little room that had not changed opened its +arms to her, alas! an ironical symbol of unchangeableness. One touch of +tenderness too vivid and she would break down. + +And here was Theophil rising from his desk and coming to her with true +love in his eyes, as he had done so many, many happy nights. + +Was it, after all, a dream--that terrible picture of two lighted figures +that was for ever in her eyes? No, there was a voice that went day and +night with the dream, a voice of terrible tenderness that kept crying: +"Meantime I bless thee ... "--"I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to +wine ..." Ah, no, it was real, real. The trial was not to pass from her +in a dream. + +Theophil had knelt down at her side and taken her hand gently and would +have kissed her, but that her eyes were so full of pain as she turned +them to meet his. Besides, strange words to hear! she was asking him not +to kiss her. + +"Theophil dear, don't kiss me yet. I have something to say, and if you +kiss me I shall have no strength to say it." + +"Jenny!" + +"Dear," she began with a voice that seemed to bleed at every word, "I +want to be so kind. I don't want to hurt you with a single word. You'll +believe that, won't you?" + +Theophil pressed her hand for assent, but already in a flash the whole +revelation was upon him. Jenny knew he loved Isabel. This awful pain +that was all over her was the lightning from which they had willed +to save her. + +"Theophil," Jenny had gone on, and there seemed a death in every word, +"I know that you love Isabel." + +"O Jenny!" + +"I saw you together, dear, in the vestry last night. It was an accident. +You didn't hear me." + +"O my Jenny! I would rather have died than this." + +"Yes, I think you would, dear. But you must not be too sad. Life is +terrible,--like this. I understand it now. I know it was not you, or +Isabel, or me. It was just fate--and we must try and help each other. +Don't think I have been only sorry for myself. Don't think that of me. +But I think you should have trusted me, dear." + +"We longed to tell you," said Theophil, with his head bowed in distress +in Jenny's lap, while she softly stroked his hair with an absent +tenderness, though her eyes looked straight in front of her, and her +voice was as if she were talking to herself. + +"We longed to tell you," he repeated. + +"O I wish you had." + +"We feared it, dear." + +"Yes, yes, I know. I was only a little child the day before yesterday. I +have never been worthy to be your wife, dear. I have known it all the +time. I should never have taken your love. It has never been mine...." + +"But ..." she continued, "I will give it all back now. It is not too +late. I have kept it pure ... for Isabel. I can give it to her, darling, +with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. We +were not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the woman +of that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. I +am a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my face +and see.'" + +The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jenny +in silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and of +the insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves to +ourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by the +powerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must those +tests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which we +are composed! + +One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs, +another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow old +we can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that have +never been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, by +an emotion. + +A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the woman +who needs him most,--and in a crisis of choice he will probably choose +the latter. + +Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves +to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so +brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment +on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble are +some of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submerged +in a total of vague impulses that they escape any individualisation. + +In the very hour where all seemed lost to Jenny, Theophil's love for her +was passing in the fire of this ordeal from a love whose elements had +never, perhaps, quite combined, into that miraculous metal of true love, +which can never again be separated into anything but itself,--the true +gold of love which, in some magical second of projection, has suddenly +sprung out of those troubled ingredients of earth and iron, silver, +honey, and pearl. + +This does not mean that Theophil's love for Isabel had grown any less +real, but that his love for Jenny had grown more real. For the first +time in its history it moved on the stage of the heroic. Up till now it +had lived secure, domestic days; there had been no danger to test its +truth, no lights of tragedy or romance thrown across it, it had seemed a +simple little earthborn love; whereas Theophil's love for Isabel had, +from its very conditions, walked from the first the high heaven +of dreams. + +Isabel, indeed, still remained the heavenly love, but those who +understand will know the strength of Jenny when I say that she became +confirmed in this hour of trial as the household love of Theophil's +life. Isabel remained the Muse, but it was Jenny, after all, in spite of +those solemn words in the Wood of Silence, that was the wife; and if, +at first sound, there seems less of heaven in such a love, it is surely +only because when heaven has become incarnated upon earth we forget to +call it heaven. + +In the few moments of silence which followed Jenny's words, it was some +such turmoil of feelings and thoughts, questionings and conclusions, +which passed through Theophil's mind, at last resolving itself into +words that sounded unexpected even in his own ears. + +"Jenny," he said, "it is quite true that I love Isabel and that she +loves me. But it is true that I love you too, love you more truly in +this moment than I have ever loved you, and that no other woman can ever +take your place. If you give me up for Isabel's sake, it will be no gain +to her, for I would not go to her. I love you, indeed I love you, and I +want no other woman to be my wife." + +Jenny's face brightened for a moment; they were good words, and they +sounded real. But then that embrace, how real that was; nothing again +could ever be so real as that! + +"Ah, Theophil dear; but you stood as though you loved her so; your arms +were so tender, it was just as though they said 'wife.' You are +deceiving yourself, dear, believe me, you are. God knows how I love you; +I have nothing in the world but you, and if...if..." + +"Jenny, try and believe; let me show you how I can love you. I seem +never to have shown you before. Let us begin our love over again from +to-night. I know your heart is bleeding, but let me heal it, dear. I +know this sorrow must lie heavy upon us for a long while yet, but it +will pass, you shall see. O you shall see how I love you. Let us be +married soon, dear; let us wait no longer..." + +Theophil had raised his head, and as he spoke poured on Jenny all the +appeal of his strong eyes; with all the might of his soul he willed her +back to happiness, as Orpheus strove by his singing to bring back +Eurydice from the shades. She could not look into his set longing face +without feeling that he was speaking true words. Hope flickered for a +moment in her sad eyes; yes! he wanted to come back to her; he wanted to +be hers again. + +But was it not too late? Hadn't something gone forever, something been +killed? Could even Theophil himself ever make her happy any more? Then +the misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which all +kind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, and +with terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms. + +"O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking." + +Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of +his life. He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying--it was as +though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were +bleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, +convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking. +Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was the +death-crying of a broken heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED + +Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny dried +her tears. She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forget +it; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown even +bright again,--bright as silver. It could never again be bright as gold. + +And Theophil's love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day. +Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were times +when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing +falsity, as she thought of Isabel. + +But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in the +common way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soon +she was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed that +Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital. +For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Let +that be our secret, dear," she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel +wrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wrote +to each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters. +Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life it +must be more and more of a starlit background. + +So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now +finally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as their +love grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate that +date, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by +that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones. + +The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became +noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old +mother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she +was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing +thinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside +friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't looking +half the girl she used to be. + +She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she +would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought +nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious +expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark +it. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to +gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, +too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real +face was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemn +thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a +sad wish fulfilling itself. + +She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same look +that Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to him +reading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threw +down the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed, +"Good God, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look in +your face?" + +He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before he +had finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget. + +One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it was +growing. + +"It _is_ thin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a trifle +run down. You must see the doctor." + +Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soups +and port wine as a substitute. These, however, made those dear arms no +fatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why did +Theophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of that +expression?) + +And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as she +used to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not so +available for running up and down stairs as it had been. + +Then Theophil would have a doctor, who sounded Jenny, and looked a +little grave, but finally, reassured, asked her if she had had a +shock,--Jenny smiled rather knowingly, but denied it,--declared her a +little run down and in need of bracing and nourishment, prescribed +phosphites and steel. + +Then Jenny got very wet one day on her way from school, and she began to +cough. She had to stay at home, and bed was perhaps the best place for +her. So Jenny went to bed, and looked very pretty there, and was quite +merry of an evening when Theophil, bringing her flowers,--he was already +bringing her flowers,--would draw up the arm-chair by her side, and read +to her. Those were very sweet hours, perhaps the sweetest their love had +ever known, so cosy and homelike, and yet without fear. + +But one evening, when Jenny had been coughing, there was blood on the +bosom of her nightdress, and as Theophil saw it, his heart stood still +with terror. Jenny grew very white, too, as she saw it, though the awful +thought which was behind the still look they gave each other was not +quite new to her. Sometimes she might have been heard softly saying over +to herself,-- + + "I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther, where + The change shall take me worse, and no one dare + Look in my face and see." + +Yet although Death's voice calling us from afar may seem all sweetness, +his voice coming nearer has a note of dread in it that appals the most +death-desirous heart. And in that silence those poor lovers both heard +him singing, it seemed not many streets away. + +"I must be very ill, dear," said Jenny. "O my love, O my love...!" + +Theophil strove with himself to say words with a real ring of the future +in them, when this cloud should have passed away; and for his sake Jenny +pretended to believe them. Yes, this very week he would take her away to +bright skies and healing air,--though Jenny felt a little tired at the +thought of rising any more from the bed to which she was growing +curiously accustomed. + +Then there came a new doctor to see Jenny. He was a very clever +specialist from a distant town; but for him the business of death had +not yet obscured its tragedy,--though words like "tragedy" were not +often on his tongue. Consumption was a strong enough word for him. + +His heart went out to that little household; and when he saw Jenny, it +ached for that young man downstairs. It was more than a professional +contempt for the "general practitioner" that made him silently curse +what he called the "death-doctor," as he looked at Jenny, "Jack of all +diseases, and master of none." + +"Two months ago, a month," he thought, as he listened and listened for a +sound of hope that might come to his ear through Jenny's wasted +side,--"even a month, and I could have saved her." And yet as he talked +to her he was not so sure, after all. He missed something in her voice. +It was the will to live. + +"Have you had a shock at any time?" he said. + +Jenny was taken by surprise for a moment,--the other doctor had asked +her that, too,--and she did not deny it so convincingly as she tried to. + +"O, that's all right," said the doctor aloud to Jenny and her mother, +who stood by, though inwardly he said, "I see. That's the reason;" and +again he said, "I'm afraid you mustn't get up just yet. That chest of +yours has to be taken care of, but you needn't be anxious. In a month or +six weeks you'll be all right again." + +"Only a month or six weeks," said Jenny, with a sinking voice. She +meant--was that all that was left to her of life and love? + +Downstairs Theophil stood waiting with a beating heart. He sprang to the +door and drew the doctor into his room. The doctor laid a kind hand upon +his arm, and there was a look in his face that made Theophil's heart die +within him. + +"You mean she is going to die?" he said with fearful calmness. "_You +mean that?_" + +"My poor fellow, God knows what I would give to deny it." + +"She--is--going--to--die--_to die!_ It is impossible! Not Jenny!" and +between that exclamation and his first stunned cry it seemed as though +bells had been tolling a thousand years. It seemed as though he had been +sitting there as in a cave since the beginning of time, saying over and +over to himself, "Jenny is going to die." + +There was a decanter on the sideboard. The doctor poured some spirit +into a glass. "Drink this," he said. Theophil drank it raw, as though it +had been water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir like +an opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned to +that decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jenny +was not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve, +which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. It +helped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctor +has not told him that I am going to die." + +"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks," she said +aloud, and tried to look as though she were happy. + +"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, love +made blind instead of prophet-sighted. + +"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that bright +air," said Theophil. + +"Yes, dear," said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily. + +Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something to +me, Theophil?" + +"What shall I read, dear?" + +"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass,' eh? It's such a +long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we +could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?" + +So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the +fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on +living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while +longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your +very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying. +You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going +to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you +laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly +the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you +forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before +they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every +moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to +remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them +everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice, +that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die." + +Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some +days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at +last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her +and from each other. + +"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herself +from that time, but she did not cry or break down. + +It was a pathetic sign of what was coming, that she now allowed Theophil +sometimes to be Jenny's nurse through the night hours. There was to be +no bridal bed for these lovers, but thus the tender quiet hours of the +night were theirs even in so sad a fashion. + +One night, in the haunted hushed middle of it, the old mother had softly +pushed open the door to ask if all went well, and in a whisper Theophil +had assured her. A night-light gave an uncanny shadow-breeding light in +the room. Jenny was sleeping peacefully, her tired ivory face, with her +dark elf-locks falling about it, framed on the pillow. Theophil raised +himself softly in his chair and looked at her. She would sleep some +while yet. Then from sheer weariness--grief's best friend--he too fell +into a light sleep. From this he was awakened with a start. Jenny was +sitting up and bending over him. With her dark hair hanging about her +face, and in that light, there was something weird and unearthly about +her, as though she were already dead and had risen in her shroud. +Something of a shiver went through him, as she put her thin arms round +his neck and clutched him in a sudden agony of longing. All the strength +of her poor little body seemed to pass into that kiss, so eager, so +convulsive. "Jenny dear, it will make you so ill; lie down, little +girl"--and Jenny fell back on her pillow exhausted and coughing, and +with eyes unearthly bright. + +"Theophil," she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, +"you know that I am going to die!" + +He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned his +head close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself two +great tears fell upon Jenny's cheek. + +But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in her +voice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got to +be borne." + +She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth. +The first fears of her dark journey were passing, as she was more and +more sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be something +almost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, +one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. It +had come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less with +fear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In her +fancy she had seen her name: "_Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter of +John and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years_" and it had struck her +that the name was wrong. + +Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. The +world would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days. +No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amid +all the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again to +herself: "_Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of Theophilus +Londonderry, aged twenty-one years_." + +Only twenty-one years--she thought of those who would perhaps some day +stand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!"--and yet +all that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, in +two of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to those +who read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earth +of long-wed, late-dying lovers. + +Perhaps it was a beautiful chance for love to end like theirs; their +love had never grown old, so it would remain forever young, a spring +sign, a star in the front of love's year for ever. + +Jenny spoke her wish to Theophil in the quiet of that night. The wish +had been in his heart too, and the wish was presently fulfilled. Brides +have seldom been happier than Jenny as she looked on the wife's ring +that hung loose on her thin finger, and brides have often been sadder. + +Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget that +she was going to die. She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, +and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little home +that was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with his +unbearable grief to some other room. + +And Jenny's once rosy apple of a face made one's heart ache to look on +now. It made one frightened, too: it was so dark and witchlike, so +uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She would sit +up in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowing +laugh to herself,--a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary +place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, +like the "unwilling sleep" of a strong narcotic. She would begin a +sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost +humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead +bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did +not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being +well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done +with all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, +half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soon +be strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be +different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and +putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar +humanity into a being of another element,--an element we dread as the +fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon she +would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longer +Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. She +was going to die. + +It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died. +She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon. Once when +Theophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave, +significant gesture to her side. She was lying down, and she made as if +she would sit up. Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up the +pillows at her back. Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took his +face in her hands and kissed him. "Do you love me, Theophil?" she said. +"Will you ever forget me?" + +"I will love you for ever. I will never forget you." + +He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she held +him close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh. For a +moment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though that +was the last flicker of Jenny's conscious life. + +Towards evening she began to take strange fancies, which had to be +humoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called with +dreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside, +and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she was +picking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to go +downstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all that +time by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade her +that Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must not +mind me, Theophil, dear. I'm not unhappy about her now. I'm not a silly +little girl any more. I'm a woman now. 'Look in my face and see.'" + +Then towards midnight a sudden accession of strength came to her, and +she said she would get up. They tried to dissuade her; she grew angry, +and struggled so hard to rise, that it seemed best to humour her once +more. So, wrapt round with blankets, Theophil lifted her from the bed +into a great chair by the fire. Then she asked to be taken to look into +her bottom drawer. So they lifted her across to it, and opened it. She +dabbled with her hands aimlessly among its piteous treasures, laughing +low to herself. + +Suddenly a fit of coughing took her, and a great choking was in her +throat. She was seen to be battling for her breath. For an instant she +drew herself up, and lifted her hand as though she would wave farewell, +smiled a faint little smile at Theophil, making, too, as if she would +speak. Then she fell back, her whole body relaxed, she had ceased +coughing, and a wonderful sweetness was stealing over her face. She had +gone all alone into the darkness, and Theophil was alone in the world. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +THE TRYST LETHEAN + +Jenny had gone into the darkness, and she had gone alone. Theophil had +not gone with her. + +That he had remained behind meant certainly no selfish clinging to life, +and indeed there was a sense, as was presently to appear, in which very +really he had kept young love's old promise and died with Jenny. That he +had not literally fulfilled it was due to those physical conditions of +dying of which in the hour of that promise young love is happily +ignorant; for the promise is usually made in moments of keenly conscious +physical life. Dying together is then figured, perhaps, as climbing hand +in hand the radiant topmost peak of life, with a last splendid leap +together into some immortal morning; and such a marriage in death, a +last union of two lives in some fiery consummation of dying, has been +the lot of some lovers supremely blest. + +Some indeed there are whose last earthly moment is a vivid reassertion +of the glory and loveliness of life. They drink the great cup to its +last golden drain, and by their death-beds we seem to be standing at the +laughing founts of being. They are radiant, victorious, even witty, to +the last, when at one swoop of blackness they are extinguished like a +light plunged into a stream. + +But for others the cold mists that hang low by Lethe's banks have +already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first +step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but +with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with +sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,--that was not +love's meaning. + +And not only are the dying thus drugged out of knowledge before they +die, but those who stand near them grow drowsed, too, by the fumes of +the poppies of death. The dying have forgotten; the living are numb and +foolish and in a dream. All they love on earth is passing away beneath +their very eyes, and they cannot understand,--cannot realise that this, +_this_ is death. + +Except in moments of piercing agony, days and weeks afterwards, moments +that were similarly soothed away again by that mysterious narcotic +property which pain at its highest brings with it (pain at its highest +being its own anaesthetic), Theophil never realised that Jenny had died, +and least of all at the moment when she was dying. Long after he +remembered how he had said to himself: "There is Jenny dying, dying. A +few more seconds and she will be beyond the sound of your voice for +ever. Call to her; she can still, perhaps, hear you. O my Jenny, my +Jenny! Louder, louder,--hold her tighter, tighter,--she is slipping +away. O God, she is slipping away. No love can hold her back. My Jenny, +my Jenny!" + +And all the time he had been curiously calm, almost unfeeling,--as one +standing stupefied in the presence of fate. The air seemed full of +boding sounds, echoes of low thunder, as from a distant world in the +throes of portentous change; and he told himself mechanically that he +should know the meaning of those sounds some day. He should wake up soon +from this unnatural torpor of pain to an empty house of life, through +the cold halls of which he would seek in vain for Jenny for evermore. + +Meanwhile, he suddenly found himself standing with his back to the fire +in the lighted study, talking to Mr. Moggridge, who, late as was the +hour, had called for news, and had stayed on from a perception that the +young minister had best have some one to talk to as far into the +morning as he would go on talking. They were talking in a business-like +way of Zion; and Theophil was smoking cigarette after cigarette. He was +terribly clear-headed and bright-witted, and Mr. Moggridge looked at him +sometimes with a sort of fear. + +It was about three in the morning when the door was softly opened by +Mrs. Talbot. + +"Will you come now, and see our little girl?" she said, with a voice +that could say no more. + +Theophil followed her, and, still in a dream, he stood in Jenny's room, +grown strangely solemn and sweet since he was last there,--was it a +thousand years ago? And there was Jenny lying asleep with a wonderful +smile on her face. She had a little gold chain round her neck and a +white crysanthemum in the bosom of her night-gown, and you thought of +some princess lying in enchanted sleep in an Arabian night. It seemed so +light a sleep and yet somehow so eternal. You stept softly, you spoke +low, lest you should awaken her--not carelessly shall one disturb that +imperious slumber. + +Yes, the distinction of death sat like an invisible crown upon Jenny's +brow. She was no longer little Jenny, but a mysterious princess upon +whose sleep it was permitted thus to gaze. The pain which had filled +these weeks with bitter human anguish had been the process of some +mysterious ennoblement. She had been found "worthy to die." In the +peerage of God's creatures, she had now outsoared those whom she loved. +The nature of it was a mystery, but no one could look on her face and +doubt that a great honour had come to little Jenny. + +But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greater +than we can bear--greater than we can bear. Not Theophil only--not young +love, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away the +potencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, though +sorrow itself should become that dream--but this poor old mother, all +the force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up. Hers is the +terrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death. + +Pity her, Jenny--speak one word to her. Hearken to her sobs as she +kneels by your side, and can you not hear the hard crying of his heart +that knows no tears? + +Are you become as the gods, Jenny, that you still smile on at the sound +of mortal tears? Will you not stretch out one of those folded hands to +each and lead them away with you? They are praying to follow you, only +to be with you, wherever you are. + +And it did seem as though in some strange way the soul of the mother had +still some sure communication with the soul of her dead child. +Motherhood had given her a nearness in the hour which no love of a lover +could gain. She alone spoke to the dead girl as though she were still +really alive, as one speaking to the deaf whom only one voice can reach. + +But Theophil was conscious in his wildest, most heartbroken, words that +Jenny could not hear them. He talked to her as though she were a picture +of herself, and as one would implore a picture to answer us, he +symbolised the cry of his soul in cries that he knew were vain. + +Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that this +icy marble had once been the flesh he had loved. O God! that little +tender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the words +of a song, it was marble now. + +"Ah! Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I, +and no one else in the world? Jenny, we shall never forget, never +forget, shall we? And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven. +Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say? Are you glad +somewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment looking +into my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours? Is it I who seem dead, +Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back to +me, as I am beating at the gates of death? But, Jenny, we shall find +each other, _must_ find each other some day. I shall be so true, +Jenny,--will you be true to me in heaven?" + +Then would sweep across his soul a pitiless vista of the long cold years +that lay between him and Jenny. He was not twenty-five; through what a +weary pilgrimage of useless years must he journey on, before there was +Jenny's face shining at the end. How he envied the old woman whose +sorrow was in this alone less cruel than his, that she was already fifty +years farther on the road to Jenny. Perhaps another year or two and she +would meet her. To meet so soon--was hardly to have parted at all. + +But, why live those years? Have you forgotten that old promise? Is it +too late to follow? Surely little Jenny will not speed so swiftly from +the earth she loved but that you shall overtake her. Who knows but she +is fluttering still at the gate of death, putting off the heavenward +journey hour after hour, in hope that the face she waits for will at +last light up the dark portal-- + + "I'll take his hand and go with him + To the deep wells of light; + As unto a stream we will step down, + And bathe there in God's sight." + +But was this the way to find Jenny? The universe was so full of dark +traps for lovers' feet. To lie down cold as Jenny by Jenny's side, was +that the way to find her? When death's gate opened for Jenny, had +Theophil at that very instant, hand in her hand, eyes fixed upon her +eyes, slipped through too, then surely they had been together. But the +door had closed, and whither on the other side Jenny had already +wandered, who could tell? Perhaps that was the very way to miss her. + +When two have lost each other in a crowd, it is best that one should +stand still and await the other. Perhaps it were best for him to stand +still here in life. Jenny would know where to seek him then--and maybe +the dead had mysterious ways of bringing news to the living. He could +wait a little while and see. For a little he could live--and listen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +JENNY'S LYING IN STATE + +But there were others besides those who stood so near who mourned Jenny, +passers-by on the road of friendship, who would miss her sunshine in the +streets, and carry with them one bright thought the less for that bright +face that death had thus blown out. There were especially some little +people to whom death was as yet hardly even mysterious, but was merely +perplexing, like many other grown-up things in which their parents were +interested. These were the little scholars of Jenny's Sunday-school +class, to whom simple Jenny had been a personage, quite a great lady, +full of gentleness. To these Jenny was "Teacher," a name of gentle awe; +and to these Teacher was as deeply dear as anyone can be to very +young hearts. + +Jenny had felt like a little mother to these little ones, and when she +lay ill her thoughts would often go to them, while from them would come +tiny presents to show how sorry they were that Teacher was ill. + +Several times before she grew too ill, Jenny had had her favourites up +in her room on Sunday evenings, to read Bible stories with her, and had +sent them away happy with magnificent text-cards, that had hitherto been +the arduously won rewards of "attention" and the practice of such +school-time virtues over many weeks. + +Now, when they heard that Teacher was dead, they felt a vague sorrow. +They knew that people who died were never seen at school any more, and +that people always burst out crying when anyone died; so they cried +bitterly, these little girls, and the hearts of one or two of them +perhaps really ached for a little while. One of them asked the new +teacher, if they would meet their old teacher in heaven, and was told +"Yes, if they were good girls,"--which was something to be good for. + +Among the wreaths that already filled Jenny's room with that piercing +smell of lilies which still clung there--unless it were Theophil's +fancy--for many months afterwards, was one sent in loving memory "by her +Sunday-school class"; and it was a part of that informal lying-in-state, +which is an involuntary recognition of the divine honours due to death, +that these little awestruck scholars should be taken in threes and fours +to look at Teacher for the last time. + +This was the third day, and Jenny was already in her coffin. The first +bloom of death, that light that lingers awhile in the face like a sunset +tranquil and blessed, a smile of immortal promise in the very moment of +mortality, had faded. Jenny's face by this was really dead, a mask of +drawn and sunken wax. She seemed now some fantastic doll, some ghastly +waxwork image of death such as we see carried on the stage in tragic +plays. The reality of death had gone with the coming of its funereal +trappings. But the little girls, who had to be lifted up one by one to +gaze with curious, scared faces into that harsh box, deeper and deeper +into which, as through beds of flowers and veils of gauze, Teacher was +sinking, knew nothing of these thoughts. They looked and wondered in +hushed bewilderment, and went their ways. It was evidently an occasion +when children were to keep more than usually quiet--and was it really +Teacher in that strange deep box? It was rather meaningless, but it was +certainly very strange and solemn, and you were allowed to cry. + +Of the others who came to see Jenny, I shall not speak,--the vulgar +sight-seers, the creepy old women, connoisseurs in beautiful death, for +whom a neighbour's funeral was like an invitation to the grand opera, +but on whom perhaps one should not be too severe, for even such coarse +sensitiveness to a mystery is the crude beginning of the poetic. + +The night before Jenny was given back to the elements Theophil dreamed a +dream, and afterwards he liked to think that he had dreamed it while +Jenny's body was still in the house with him, for then it might be +interpreted that her spirit was still there too, waiting for its final +release from the clay which God had sent her to animate for a while, as +an artist imprisons a lovely thought in a vase of alabaster. + +Theophil dreamed that he and some friends were gay together in a room, +just before setting out for a theatre; and as they laughed and talked +there came a little tapping on the wall, so that they grew silent and +listened. Then through the wall was heard a faint but glad little voice +speaking. It was Jenny's voice. + +"I can hear you all," she said; "you are off to the theatre. I wish I +were going with you. Never mind, we are not so far away from each other +as you think. I am only on the other side of a wall." + +And Theophil awoke on a bright wintry morning, with those words still, +it seemed, in the room. + +"I am only on the other side of a wall!" Was it but the metaphor-making +of dreams, which will so often take our forgotten speculations and +dramatise them for us into reality, or was it indeed a message? An +instinct which was unamenable to reason, and which was perhaps only a +desire, told him it was a message; and it was no less a message though +it were merely a pictorial symbol of a sense, which was already his in +the daytime, of a new and very real nearness to Jenny. + +He had slept right through that night out of sheer bodily weariness. +Weeks of watching and anguish had worn him out, and he never knew that +the poor old mother had laid a benediction on his sleep, looking in upon +him as he slept, the only waking being in that house of sleep. + +"He will wake soon enough, poor boy!" she had said, as she went once +more to watch till daylight by the side of the other sleeper. + +"O Jenny, Jenny, why did you leave me? You were the apple of my eye, my +Jenny. What will your old mother do now that you are gone?" + +So she sat and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise the +dead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though even +Jenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fear +for Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creed +told her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied her +faith, and her love made her a Sadducee. + +And yet it was her belief in a literal resurrection of the body that was +sorely troubling her old soul during these last hours of watching. For +while Jenny was still conscious of the coming of death, she had been +much tortured by hideous churchyard fancies, imaginations of the +darkness and noisomeness of the grave, and she had wrung from her mother +the promise that she should first be cremated and her ashes be afterward +buried in the family tomb. This was the promise which was lying heavy on +the old woman's heart to-night; and, though her reason told her that the +way of the flames and the way of the flowers alike led to dust, yet the +disintegration by fire seemed to give her a sense of entire destruction +such as the more desultory operations of the earth did not give. + +If Jenny must indeed pass right away, the dainty architecture of her +body, so lovingly builded, be laid in ruin; not by the fierce fingers of +fire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun, +and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and on +the wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragrance +about the world. + +And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of a +mysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quite +returned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptible +Jenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour when +the soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day. +Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance of +imagination. + +And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of the +flames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of the +great consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny +was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once +more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it +brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and +lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered +with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the +cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and +was already about the business of the dreaming spring. + +And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. It +saved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which had +haunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. However +morbid his fancies might become, _desiderium_ could never take any but +beautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images of +corruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacomb +or charnel. + +She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned again +whence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms, +and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; she +had touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books, +she had made little everlasting memories with her hands,--that was her +history; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, and +she had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked a +flower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No one +as long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and, +giving the lie to love's divine answer to the dust, say "This +was Jenny!" + +No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon +rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's +path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the +window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown +happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when a +lovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all high +moments, then can one say, "There, listen! _that_ was Jenny." + +Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophil +remained behind only to write her name across the high stars. Then he, +too, would pass through the gates of fire to her side. + +As he lay down to rest that night, his eyes fell with a sudden sense of +freshness upon the familiar Botticelli's "Mother and Child," which hung +over his fireplace; and a need that could never be fulfilled awoke in +his soul. If only Jenny could have left him a little child,--a little +girl! He had not seemed so lonely then. + +It was so he thought; yet perhaps Jenny's child would but have deepened +his loneliness, like a bird singing in a garden where our love walked +long ago. Yet the cry was from his heart, and the longing brought with +it his first tears. "O Jenny," he sobbed, "if only you had left me a +little child!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--MESSAGE FROM JENNY + +If every inclination of his heart had not desired it too, Theophil would +have gone on living at 3 Zion Place, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; for now +he was literally all she had left in the world, and what greater joy +remained for either than just to sit close by the fire and talk +of Jenny? + +3 Zion Place was now a little chapel of memory, where a bowed ancient +woman and a sad-faced young man kept up perpetual services to the holy +dead. A woman of her own years, also acquainted with grief, came to +companion the old woman, a sort of lay sister in this little monastery +of grief. It was so piety began, and thus piety is purest and tenderest +in the worship of the dead. Everything in that house which had taken the +impress of Jenny's fingers, been Jenny's to use or handle, remained +exactly as and where Jenny had placed it. They were as yet as fragrant +of Jenny as a fresh-gathered flower of its own perfume. In a very real +sense indeed Jenny had not died, or she was coming to life again as she +had never lived before; and it was no merely idealised Jenny who was +henceforward to fill up all her lover's thoughts and speak to him in +every sight and sound, but just the human Jenny, with her faults +and all. + +On these--such little faults!--Theophil ever loved to dwell. They saved +Jenny from becoming an abstraction, a saint. Even those bitter little +quarrels which all lovers must suffer,--how sweet they seemed now! + +The old mother's method was no doubt again different from her +son-in-law's. She would never have admitted that Jenny had a fault. +Such is the difference in reality between the new idealism and the old. + +In such small matters as the minutiae of mourning that difference was +again illustrated. Theophil could permit himself no outward insignia of +sorrow which he could not wear for ever. Already his profession had +clothed him in black, and it was only for him that his black seemed now +to gain a deeper distinction; but such ugly symbols of beautiful memory +as that note-paper whose diminishing edge of blackness is rather a +cynical witness of a graduated forgetfulness, were not for a real grief +like his. As if sorrow, while it may and will change, can ever end! Why, +in the world of faithful hearts, men and women have not yet dried their +tears for Romeo and Juliet! + +Theophil conceived this grief that had come to him as one more activity +added to his life till life should end. He knew that it would not +outcast joy, but that it would live side by side with it, that it must +alternate with joy for it to go on living. Jenny's death was not going +to be less sad, less a factor of the eternal tragedy, at the end of a +year,--that he might go to a theatre once more, as some widows joyously +don colours, when the clock strikes the end of a year of lost dances. + +For it was not Jenny alone that had died, but it was a consolation to +Theophil in those hours of self-torture which are among the earliest and +most cruel developments of grief, to realise how much of himself had +died with her, after all. It was not merely the apathy of the first +weeks that told him this, the sense of vacuity, of uselessness in all +things, but the sense that never left him, even when he had awakened to +an activity he had never known before, that nothing really mattered, +however vigorously he might seem to act to the contrary, since Jenny +had gone. + +It was with difficulty sometimes that he could take important issues +with necessary seriousness, for, whatever the odds of life henceforward +might be, what was there worth gaining now that Jenny was lost? Could +any energy or haste save Jenny from dying? That had happened. The worst +had happened. All the terror life had to appal the human spirit had been +faced, in that moment when the doctor's hand upon his shoulder had told +him Jenny was to die. His eyes had looked on the Medusa-face of life +that turns the bravest to stone, and he was no longer vulnerable +humanity. + +On the battle-field of existence he bore a charmed life, and sometimes +as he moved among his fellows he felt a certain sense of the unfairness +of his advantage in this respect, and paused to pity those who could +still be so eager, so tragically set upon, this little issue. The +virulence of those enemies whom he was already making and who were to +multiply as his activities awakened again, seemed particularly pathetic, +and he would smile in sad amusement at their quaint little efforts to +hurt him. (No man is so strong for this world's fight as he who has laid +up his treasure in heaven; and when the mystic condescends to the common +trades of life he is an easy master.) It meant so much to them, so +little to him. He was a humbug, he was a hypocrite, he wasn't even a +good speaker, he was an ignoramus! Was he? All right. They might think +so if they chose. It hardly interested him. He had been sitting drawing +angels, and somehow their irrelevant voices had broken in upon him. +"Another was with me." + +Really, even for Jenny's sake, it seemed hardly worth while to fight so +poor a world! Was the fame that such a world could give a distinction +one would seek for Jenny? Would not Jenny smile in heaven at the toy +honours of such a world? + +On the other hand, there was something repellent to his once ambitious +soul, in the thought that such a world might seem to have the victory; +and, therefore, when the first numbness had left him and the colours and +sounds of things were once more coming back, he threw himself with +galvanic vitality into the work that lay to his hand, and particularly +into those political activities for which his gift of speech and his +power of organisation fitted him. + +Two months after Jenny's death, having spoken at a great meeting on some +momentous question of the hour, he found himself the acknowledged leader +of the Radical, rather forlorn, hope in Coalchester, and before long +invitations were coming to him to help on the same hope in other towns. +Never in his life--and he used often to meditate on the fact with +wonder--had he been so vital, so efficient, so brilliant. His powers had +acquired a firmness, an alertness, a force of influence and attraction, +they had never possessed before. Of a sudden he found himself mature, a +calm master of his gifts. + +Yet those who sat near him at those meetings might have noticed that as +he sat down, pale amid plaudits, and crossed his hands upon his knees, +and while his political colleagues were complimenting him to the +audience on the mellow thunder of his political oratory, he was smiling +furtively to himself. "It's all very funny, isn't it, Jenny?" he was +saying in his heart. + +Indeed it was hardly recognisable to himself as a fancy that whenever he +spoke Jenny was somewhere in the audience. Sometimes a remote face might +bear a chance resemblance to her, and he would humour himself with the +thought that that was Jenny. For, with that self-consciousness which no +modern mind can escape, he found a certain sad pleasure sometimes in +noting the tricks grief played with him, loving and encouraging all its +fancies--if fancies indeed they were. + +When at other times he tried to think clearly, to strip himself of the +illusions, as others would no doubt call them, in which he now lived, +his thinking rather confirmed than dispersed them; and the more he +pondered, the more he failed to realise that Jenny was dead, the surer +became his consciousness that she was nearer to him (a very part of him +as it were) than she had ever been in the days when others could still +hear her voice and note her presence in a room. Her very death had given +him a paradoxical certitude of her immortality. + +Yet this recognition of her presence, on some plane of spiritual +apprehension, was none the less consistent with a piercing sense of her +loss on the plane where love once moved in visible beauty. That heavenly +lover in him was able to give none of the comfort of its assurance to +the earthly lover. That the eyes of the spirit could touch her, brought +no healing to the eyes that at midnight would look up from the desk in +Theophil's study to Jenny's empty chair, no touch of her to the hands +that were so idle and empty now. + +Yet there were little services these hands might still do for her. +There in her own little room her own books still stood in their places. +These could be taken care of, her little desk could still be kept as she +had left it, with her pen laid down as she had last laid it. There were +note-paper and envelopes, and ink and blotting-paper, all ready, if some +day, by a miracle--who could tell?--she might steal into that room and +want to leave a message. There should be fresh flowers for her to find +there too if she did come. + +And that new edition of Scott which was not finished issuing when she +went away, she would find that complete when she came back. Her little +collection of fairy books too--she was sure to glance at that! and then +she would find two or three new ones there finer than any of the old +ones; alas! so many beautiful books kept coming out now that she +had gone. + +Yet somehow she might see them, after all, if they were taken softly to +that little room and laid on that table altar. When it was quite sure +that no one was looking or listening, the shy soul might steal out of +the air and turn the pages with a sigh. + +Just so some savage lover might bring gifts of fruit and coloured beads, +and bright plumed birds, to the grave of his dead love, for the future +anthropologist to draw his moral of the childishness of all human +idealisms. + +One day, as Theophil had stolen quietly into that room on some such +votive errand, an impulse had come to him to open the drawer of the +desk. There might be some message for him there. Any writing of the dead +we have never read before is a message. + +Among various odds and ends, he came first upon one of those little +tradesmen's account-books interleaved with bad blotting-paper in which +the housewife writes her orders week by week. + +It was full of Jenny's writing, and though the entries were merely +weekly repetitions of the same string of groceries:--"2 lbs. of the +best tea," "6 lbs. loaf sugar," "6 nutmegs," and so on,--yet, "the hand +being hers," they made a record that could only be read through blinding +tears; and one page which bore a severe little note, to the effect that +the tea had been far from good of late, read almost like a personal +revelation. + +Theophil kissed the page, and, replacing the book, took up another, and +his heart leapt to find it was a little diary. + +He hesitated for a moment. It seemed wrong to read it, and yet he knew +that Jenny's soul held nothing she would not have shared with him, and +he was so hungry for a word from her though it were only a word out +of the past. + +The entries were not many nor long, but it smote his heart to find how +large a space his name, his interests, his successes, filled there. The +entries of honour were little heart-notes of evenings together +especially happy; there were two birthdays still singing for joy, and +sometimes there was a saying of his she had put down because it was so +helpful, or a poem she had copied out; and also there were clever little +criticisms of books she had read, and sometimes a wise little reflection +of her own,--which brought home to him, with a certain pang, that the +little child who had seemed so dependent on him had been an independent +personality, after all. + +As he came to the last entry, he put the book down with a gesture of +pain. The last entry had been made the day after Jenny had discovered +Theophil's love for Isabel. It was very brief, just a sob: "Have +realised that I am no fit wife for Theophil. And yet how I love him!" + +As Theophil read this, all that sad night came back to him with +unbearable vividness, and he felt once more a little sobbing body crying +its heart out against his. At that moment he would have endured +centuries of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; and +an awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of his +mind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul: the +thought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it was +who had--killed Jenny. "She seems to have had a shock," a voice was +saying over and over again, "she seems to have had a shock." + +A shock! Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in the +outer darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, now +sprang into vivid light again in company with that thought. In that +moment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath he +hurled her back again into the dark. It was she, _she_ who had made +him--kill Jenny! + +But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurable +by some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish to +deceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himself +that this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed no +wilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, who +had planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny. + +Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardise +the happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold? +Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts? + +But a voice said--was it Jenny's?--this poor Theophil and Isabel love by +reason of no theory. It is yours, O ruling Fates of men, whatever you +be, who must support that accusation. Theophil and Isabel loved by the +compelling dispensation of the stars. They fought their destiny, and had +conquered it. It was you, ye stars, not they, that killed Jenny. + +And this was true: but still the little figure sobbed at Theophil's +side, as again and again it would come and sob there, till Theophil's +own heart broke,--that old death-crying of Jenny's broken heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE + +After Jenny's death two letters had come for her from Isabel, who had no +knowledge of what had been happening to her friends of New Zion. + +There is something peculiarly sad about the letters that for a little +time go on coming for the dead. Perhaps nothing more simply brings home +the fact that they are no longer with us. Even little bills, circulars +offering new spring goods at sale prices, come charged with pathos, and +Theophil smiled at his own folly as he kept them all. Sad little _poste +restante_! Will the letters ever be called for? + +Theophil did not open the letters, but as days went by and no more came, +he sometimes found himself taking them from their drawer and looking at +them. Isabel's handwriting, though his soul would not confess it to +himself, still held the power of a rune over his heart. + +Had no traitor thought ever whispered deep down in the darkness of his +consciousness that the way was now open to Isabel? Such thoughts indeed +had come to him, but unwelcomed, involuntarily, as those foul thoughts +which will sometimes torture the pure, or those base thoughts which may +appal the noble. + +The mind, like the body, has its foul humours, which can only be +accepted with patience as a part of the inscrutable mechanism of human +organisms. In moments of anger this filth and poison of the mind +sometimes comes to the surface to wrong us--for it is not us, it is in +truth just all that we are not. + +Thus at times in Theophil's mind, that was one prayer of faithful love +for Jenny, the thought of Isabel would steal, like--so his stern +faithfulness pictured it--a fair devil in a church. Yet, if he opened +one of those letters he knew there would ascend from it a cloud of +subtle incense, which would ... well, which he must never again breathe. + +So he would replace them in their drawer, and again, some other day, +take them out once more. + +Perhaps, after all, it might be his duty, the mere duty of a friend, to +open them. What if Isabel should be ill, should be needing him ... +should be dying! + +But still the fanaticism of his sorrow conquered, and still week after +week they remained unread. + +Meanwhile, Isabel was living her life as she had lived it before she had +heard of New Zion, with the difference of an internal sense of +completion which her love had brought. Need one say that she had her +hours of loneliness and longing, when she would have exchanged a +thousand years of love in heaven for a touch of Theophil's hand upon +earth; but these she knew how to conquer, and for most days that union +of two separated hearts remained to her as real as when it had been +vowed in those silent woods. + +At the very moment when Jenny was dying, and Theophil had thrust Isabel +away into the furthest, highest, starlight of memory, she was thinking +how real their union was, how near he seemed! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY + + Knowing the quick but little love + Much mention of the dead. + +I hesitate further to continue that history of a grief of which, +nevertheless, this book has now little heart or purpose to be other than +the record, and, as what I shall write in this chapter must seem +meaningless and wearisome to all but those who belong to the great +Secret Society of Sorrow, it were no doubt just as well that those who +have known nothing but joy should follow their natural impulse and leave +it unread. I confess, too, that I should feel the more comfortable +without the regard of their happy, ignorant eyes. + +Sorrow is a mysticism, and to talk of it to those who have never known +the initiation of tears is like talking alchemy to a child. Sorrow, +too, is an aristocracy, and when Theophil came to realise that, as Jenny +had been found worthy to die, he had been found worthy to suffer, it +seemed to him almost vulgar only to have been happy. Happiness is such a +materialist, a creature of coarse tastes and literal pleasures, a +_bourgeois_ who has not yet attained the rank of a soul. The influence +of sorrow on the individual is much what the influence of Christianity +has been upon the world. Christianity, no doubt, has robbed us of +much--but then it has given us sorrow; it has taken away the sun, but it +has brought us the stars. It is only in the starlight of sorrow that we +become conscious of other worlds. The sun flatters our own little world +with the illusion of a transitory importance; the stars show it its +place in the universe, and teach it a nobler meaning for itself. + +No consciousness of his gifts had ever given Theophil any such sense of +his belonging to the chosen and dedicated minority of mankind as this +initiation into the Secret Society of Sorrow. He had been chosen to +represent a sacred order. He stood for no lesser interests than those of +Love and Death. Though he were to represent Coalchester in the House of +Commons, what honour were there in that to one already so +mysteriously honoured? + +Tears bring a strange new sight to the eyes, and "a new perception both +of grieving love" made Theophil see, and love to see, many things in the +world he had never noticed before. His eyes were opened to behold the +many mourners who go about the streets, the widows who walk in darkness, +and all the shapes of blackness moving phantom-like through the coloured +traffic; not all true children of sorrow, indeed, though wearing its +habit, but, true or not, symbols of the power and majesty of death in +the world. For the involuntary honour paid to death even by the +ignorantly busy, and happy, he kept ever a grateful and a jealous eye; +and as some funeral _cortège_ passed like a dream, Charon's barge amid +all the motley craft of merchandise and pleasure, he would watch sternly +to see if the fat and prosperous moment would do honour to the carriages +of the king. For a bowed head or a doffed hat he felt a personal +gratitude. And, since Jenny died, he seemed to be always meeting that +phantom procession in the streets. + +Once, as he passed along the High Street, he had noticed a crowd round a +dying horse. He stood with the crowd a moment, and then went on his way. +In an hour's time he repassed the place, and there was the dead horse +lying solitary on the side of the street; but he noted with a curious +gladness that some hand had covered it reverently with a horse-cloth. +"So honoured is death," he mused to himself, "that even the humblest +animal on which he shall have set his seal is held sacred from the +common day, and shall not be gazed upon heedlessly by the passer-by." +This seemed the greatest honour he had known paid to the king! + +The fascination with which from this time death and all that related to +or remotely suggested it absorbed him, was, he reflected one day with a +surprised recognition of the paradox, no longer the fascination of hate +or dread, but almost love. Death, the arch-enemy of joy, the assassin of +youth, the murderer of Jenny,--Death had robbed him of his life's one +treasure, and here was he loving him, watching for his face, listening +for his step, like a lover. + +Surely this was the strangest of conclusions; but perhaps the +explanation was very simple. Theophil loved death because Jenny had +died, as he would have loved anything Jenny had chosen to do, as he +would have loved life had Jenny gone on living. By dying Jenny had made +death beautiful, and its gloomiest associations were but so many +allusions to Jenny. + +Death was to Theophil as a foreign land of which before he had only +heard the name, and heard it almost without interest, as one hears +listlessly of Peru. But now that Jenny had gone to Peru, the books of +the world could not tell him enough about the new land where Jenny had +gone, and everyone who had friends there was at once his friend, and +every little dark-robed company gathered sadly to godspeed some new +emigrant to its distant shore was dear to him for Jenny's sake. Besides, +some of these might have heard from their friends there, might have news +to tell him of the dark land. One would walk far, would listen late for +such precious tidings. + +Did such tidings ever come? Yes, some had even seen their loved ones +again, shining strangely on the air. Why did Jenny never come like that? +How he had prayed and called to her for just one sign out of the +silence, one swift uplifting of the veil; but none, except that dream, +had ever come. Yet one could never be sure by what common unnoticed +sights and sounds the dead might fumblingly be striving to reach us in +the deaf and dumb language of the dead. Perhaps it was they who led us +to passages in books we had never noticed before, pointed their fingers +to bright pages of faith, and left us here and there many a message of +hope we never dreamed had come from them. Or might it not happen that +the dead, like the living, could be unfaithful:-- + + "Is death's long kiss a richer kiss + Than mine was wont to be, + Or have you gone to some far bliss + And straight forgotten me?" + +Perhaps Jenny already loved another in heaven, and his gift of +faithfulness might some day be a burden to her... + +This love of death was no mere morbid absorption. It was but one of the +activities of a faithfulness to which the trees about the temple had +become "dear as the temple's self," and his jealousy for those honours +paid to death was only one expression of his eager watchfulness for the +signs of human faithfulness. + +Not all unrewarded was that watch. The world held some faithful +hearts,--let us not ask how many,--lovers of invisible faces and voices +heard no more, men and women who still shared their joys and sorrows +with unseen comrades, and drank the cup of life as a sacrament of +remembrance. + +This sharing with the dead seemed to Theophil the essential of +faithfulness,--faithfulness taking many forms, sometimes maybe +misrepresentative of itself, and seldom perhaps informing its +conventional externals. + +A time will come in the profoundest griefs when those rituals to which +young grief is so eager to vow itself will grow lifeless and +conventional, the daily tasks of remembrance become as the told beads of +pattered prayers. Let the worshipper of relics beware lest his +treasures some day turn on his hands to so much irksome lumber, and true +sorrow be thus humiliated. + +No! the service for the dead which is most likely to remain a vital +offering of the heart is not the ceremonial sorrow of specially +consecrated times and seasons, but rather the simple longing in hours of +joy that _they_ could have been with us. To think of our dead friends as +always in their shrouds is a way of remembrance which we shall not long +have heart or even interest to follow. It is only by taking them to our +feasts, keeping up with them the same old human companionship, that we +may hope to keep the dead as friends. A modern poet has written eight +lines which were of great comfort to Theophil,-- + + "You go not to the headstone + As aforetime every day, + And I who died, I do not chide, + Because, dear friend, you play; + + "But in your playing think of him + Who once was kind and dear, + And if you see a beauteous thing, + Just say: 'He is not here.'" + +Here it seemed to Theophil was the whole duty of faithfulness. The dead +know that if we remember them in our hours of joy, they are indeed +remembered; and if they know anything at all, they will understand the +waywardness of sad hearts better than sad hearts understand themselves. + +Yet, indeed, save in the exercise of his faculties, Theophil had no joy +to reproach himself with. Surely returning spring, with its terrible +exuberance of warm life, was no joy. Perhaps he had looked on Jenny +lying dead with less anguish than he one day beheld an apple-tree thick +with blossom in the hot sun. Yes! the world had the heart to go on, to +bud and build, and sing,--though Jenny was gone. And in that bright +spring, see horrible and useless age still hobbling out into the beam! +What was life but one huge Mephistopheles laugh beneath the windows of +our dreams! + +That spring James Whalley persuaded Theophil to walk with him for a week +of country lanes far beyond Coalchester, letting him talk of Jenny all +the time. Jenny had never been here! If only Jenny could have seen that +view! Jenny had never known that flower! Did he remember those verses +from James Thomson:-- + + "The chambers of the mansions of my heart, + In every one whereof thine image dwells, + Are black with grief eternal for thy sake. + + "The inmost oratory of my soul, + Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead, + Is black with grief eternal for thy sake. + + "I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross, + With eyes for ever fixed upon that face, + So beautiful and dreadful in its calm. + + "I kneel here patient as thou liest there; + As patient as a statue carved in stone, + Of adoration and eternal grief. + + "While thou dost not awake I cannot move; + And something tells me thou wilt never wake, + And I alive feel turning into stone." + +Strange joy of sad poetry for sad hearts! + +Experience indeed was now divided for Theophil into what Jenny had not +seen or known and into what she had seen and known; and it was one of +the tricks of his grief, as time went on, to confuse the two. Sometimes +he would think that Jenny had been with him at a certain place, or +perhaps had read a certain book which, on taking thought, he knew she +could never have seen. + +Allied perhaps to this confusion was the fancy that possessed him on +certain days that he caught glimpses of Jenny in little flitting figures +of women about the streets. A sudden poise of the head, the way of doing +the hair, a trick of walk,--just a flash and gone again; though +sometimes he was haunted with more persistent resemblances, which +brought him a curious mixture of joy and pain. And this perhaps is the +place to record what only those acquainted with grief will understand, +and not all of those,--for grief has many contradictory fashions. + +Till he had loved Jenny, women had played little or no part in +Theophil's life; but with Jenny's death he found, to his surprise, that +the idea of woman was strangely sweet to him. His eyes were drawn after +women in the street, and he found himself longing sometimes for some +woman on whose shoulder he might lean his head and weep out his grief +for Jenny! He loved death because Jenny had died; was he to love women +because Jenny had been a woman? Perhaps his feet had wandered in +dangerous paths at this time, had it not been for the restrictions which +his calling laid upon him. + +These, however, did not deny him the theatre, which it had been part of +his programme at New Zion to advocate, though there was seldom anything +worth seeing at Coalchester Theatre Royal. Yet sometimes a good London +company would call there on its provincial progress, and it chanced one +day, looking into a shop window, that Theophil caught sight of a +photograph of a woman that startled him with its remarkable resemblance +to Jenny. It was the prima donna of a Gaiety burlesque. Such was the +strange shape Jenny had for the moment taken! + +For the first time after her death Theophil was at the theatre that +evening. The bright lights and the music pierced him as with swords. +Once more he saw that apple-tree thick with blossom in the hot sun. Yet +his fancy found grim spells to lay the insolent ghost of life, and death +ever at his side whispered that all this light and music and dancing was +for but a little while; that those gay rouged faces, so confident in +laughing beauty, and all those nimble shapes, were to the eye that had +looked beyond life already stark in their coffins, with chin-cloths +about their nerveless jaws. Surely the lover would trip in the shroud +that was plainly to be seen from his feet to his lips! + +Like sudden snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from his +imagination across that fiddling, jigging, gleaming atmosphere, and +everywhere the dead sat around him, watching in a trance strange antics +of the grimacing dead. Curiously, in these moods, he never thought of +himself as dead. Alas! life was too cruel to release him so soon to +death and Jenny. + +Suddenly the theatre sprang back to life again with the entrance of the +prima donna. Yes, the resemblance was even greater than in the +photograph. She was a little taller and more heavily built than Jenny, +and it was not Jenny's voice; but for the rest, she _was_ Jenny. The +fascination of watching her was terrible. It seemed impossible that one +form could so mockingly resemble another, and yet be so hopelessly +someone else. Theophil could hardly bring himself to believe that the +woman yonder with Jenny's eyes and mouth and hair had never even heard +of Jenny's name. Surely, if he were to come and look into her face, she +would recognise him at once, and the old common interests would rise to +her lips as of old. + +Theophil went again to the theatre the next night, and again the next, +which was the last of the company's stay in the town; and the spell of +the false Florimel grew so strong upon him that at the close of the +final performance he sent up his card to the actress, and presently, as +in a dream, found himself stumbling among scenery and dipping under +beams on his way to the actress's room. If she were only as like Jenny +close to, he felt he must follow her to the end of the world; and indeed +the illusion still held as he entered the little mirrored room, smelling +of powder and littered with laces and silks,--fancy little Jenny here +among the grease-paints and the bouquets! It was only with the lack of +recognition in the polite welcome the actress gave him that the illusion +began to waver, or was it only that Jenny had forgotten him? + +So possessed had he been with the hallucination, that he had not +thought what excuse he would have to make to the actress for his visit, +and it was with an embarrassing shock that the necessity of speech came +to him, when he had stumbled through some mechanical words of +salutation. She looked at him with a little air of bewilderment, and +motioned to her attendant to leave them alone. As the door closed, +Theophil had determined to tell her the simple truth. + +"I have to ask your pardon," he began, "for a very strange intrusion. +The reason of it is simply this. You are so like someone I love who is +dead that I felt I could not rest till I had spoken to you. I trust you +will excuse me, and try to understand. Yes! you are terribly like her!" + +The story appealed to the actress's instinct for romance, and she +entered into its spirit. Besides, the young clergyman was very +interesting to look at, and the charm of sorrow was on his face. + +"An actress can hardly complain," she answered, "of being taken for +someone else, and though I don't know you, I feel that you have done me +an honour. Am I indeed so like her? How strange it must seem to you!" + +"It is very strange," said Theophil, still fascinated. Then he told this +image of Jenny the story of how Jenny had died. The tears came into the +actress's eyes as he talked, and it was as though Jenny shed tears for +Jenny's death. + +"Poor little girl!" she said; "I am so sorry for you both." + +"But," she continued presently, "you should both be very happy too--for +it would be worth while to suffer for so beautiful a love.... I feel +happy," she added half gaily, "even to resemble a woman who is so +wonderfully loved." + +Theophil lingered on, still fascinated, till the actress suggested that +he should walk with her to her hotel. Arrived there, Theophil, to the +possible scandalising of Coalchester, accepted her invitation to a +further chat over supper; and when at last he was back at Zion Place, +his heart was aware of a new comfort and a new pain. He had leaned his +head on a woman's kind shoulder, and she had let him talk and talk about +Jenny; but her shoulder had been warm, and it had been sweet to be +near her ... + + "A creature might forget to weep who bore; + Thy comfort long" ... + +and Theophil went to sleep that night with the taste of honey upon his +lips. + +But with the morning there came to him remorseful misgivings, and he +told himself that it had been one of the sophistries of the flesh, a +call of the senses taking in vain the sacred name of Jenny; and then for +his comfort he remembered how the greatest of all lovers, Dante, had +craved in like manner for the solace of "a very pitiful lady, very +young," and had been similarly remorseful on account of his momentary +preoccupation with her. + +Taking down his "Vita Nuova," he read: "_At length, by the constant +sight of this lady, mine eyes began to be gladdened overmuch with her +company; through which thing many times I had much unrest, and rebuked +myself as a base person: also, many times I cursed the unsteadfastness +of mine eyes, and said to them inwardly: 'Was not your grievous +condition of weeping wont one while to make others weep? And will ye now +forget this thing because a lady looketh upon you? who so looketh merely +in compassion of the grief ye then showed for your own blessed lady. But +what so ye can, that do ye, accursed eyes! many a time will I make you +remember it! for never, till death dry you up, should ye make an end of +your weeping_.'" + +Moreover, Dante had married Gemma within a year of the death of +Beatrice, and had even lived so scandalously meanwhile as to bring down +upon him the stern reproof of his friend Guido Calvancanti; yet the +world still regards him as the type of all faithful lovers. +Faithfulness is an attitude of the mind, and all it touches turns to +Beatrice. Yet-- + + "Except by death, we must not any way + Forget our lady who is gone from us." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +ISABEL CALLING + +If women were thus henceforth to influence Theophil, why might not +Isabel, the woman whom Jenny had loved, be counted amongst them? + +Isabel was the one woman in the whole world whom Theophil's faithfulness +could not transform into Jenny. That it had been his fatal love for her +that had brought Jenny to her death, his reason, except in moments of +self-injustice, was robust enough to put aside. + +There are excuses that we owe to ourselves, and we have a right to +expect justice even from our own consciences. A sentimental conscience +is the most tiresome of all altruists, and wilfully to indulge in +remorse that we have not justly incurred is to blunt our consciences +for real offences. The best repentance for our sins is a clear-eyed +recognition of their nature, and the temptation in some flurry of +feeling to take on our shoulders the mistakes of destiny with which we +chance to have been involuntarily associated, is one to be resisted in +the interests of that self-knowledge which is the beginning of +self-development. Before we take the scourge in hand for our own +shoulders let us be quite sure that we have sinned. + +There were hours, particularly those hours of sudden wakefulness in the +middle of the night when our minds lose their sense of proportion, in +which Theophil agonised beyond endurance, and, as on that afternoon when +he had found Jenny's diary, said to himself with merciless reiteration, +"She seems to have had a shock"--"It was you who killed Jenny." + +These hours had to be supported as we support hours of purely physical +pain. The morning brought a saner, larger view. The tragedy of Jenny's +death was not to be so easily explained. In it were implicated more +august responsible causes, it was part of a more general tragedy; as the +original instinct to blame himself and Isabel was part of man's ancient +theological habit of making man the scapegoat of the universe. + +But as the thought of Isabel thus became bearable once more, it became +for that very reason a thought the more faithfully to be resisted. + +It might become sweet. + +It was sweet! + +One day the casuistry of grief brought Theophil the reflection that, as +Isabel was the only woman he knew whom Jenny had known too, and that as +Jenny had loved her also, she was thus destined for him even by Jenny +herself. Besides, as he had realised no unfaithfulness to Jenny in his +love for Isabel during Jenny's life, there could equally be no +unfaithfulness now that she was dead. Moreover, if Jenny still in some +mysterious way kept watch over his life, she would understand his heart +as she could never have understood it when she was alive... + +These thoughts brought deep sorrow to him for many days, during which +once more he rebuked himself as "a base person," but, curiously enough, +in one who so despised the world and its opinion, it was an apparently +superficial consideration that was the mainstay of his faithfulness, +against these disloyal suggestions of a life that was thus reawakening +in spite of himself. + +There were moments when he could conceive his going to Isabel, and +asking her to share his life with him; but never could he endure the +thought of her bearing that name which seemed so inviolably Jenny's. +Even though Jenny had come to him in a dream and asked him to give her +name to Isabel, there was still the world. Though Jenny might +understand, the world would think he had forgotten Jenny. The minority +of faithful hearts would grow sadder by his seeming apostasy, and the +cynic would strengthen his pessimism by one more illustration of human +inconstancy. The world might hear that he was loving Isabel in some +Aegean isle, and still deem him faithful; for grief is allowed +mistresses, but with a wife it is understood to die. + +No! so long as the world lasted no other woman should steal her name +from Jenny's grave. + +And this was an unassailable symbol. Here the vital principle of his +faithfulness was entrenched as in an impregnable fortress. He would see +Isabel's heart break ere she should bear Jenny's name. + +Yet while he made the vow, his love for Isabel was musical as spring +within his soul, and he dared to tell himself that in God's sight he was +still Isabel's as well as Jenny's. + +Thus it came about that one autumn day, when Isabel's letters had lain +unopened through spring and summer, in one sudden impulse of mere +desire he had opened and read them,--not as Jenny's letters, but as +messages for which he himself was hungering. He had released the +incense, and as he kissed the dear writing, he momentarily forgot that +it was written to Jenny, and only remembered that it had come from +Isabel. In the snare of the incense he even accused himself for having +left them unread so long, and then to think that nearly six months had +gone by since the second letter had brought its half-playful reproach +for forgetfulness.... "Ah! Jenny, I'm afraid you're a fickle little +person, after all." + +How strange it seemed to hear Jenny talked to like that--now.... Yes, of +course, Jenny was dead. Jenny was dead ... and Isabel was calling. + +Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's +words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some +subtle air of hellish sweetness? + +O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in +her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath +this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover. + +Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the +strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that +prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest +whisper of the real. + +Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go. Come back he might, but +go he must, he would. Yes! he was going. + +There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in the +train; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, his +heart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness, +that Theophil spent it. Purposes he had none, only a desire,--just to +see Isabel again. That immediate future was too effulgent for him to +think of anything beyond it. + +He would see Isabel again! + +From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, she +would turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness. + +The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped him +in a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were passing through +hidden orchards. + +Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you across +the night? Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep in +the rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across the +silent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like a +camp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speeding +through the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travelling +rooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"? + +Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel? + +No, not Jenny's name. Never Jenny's name! + +He was going to look on Isabel again--that was all. Perhaps he would die +with the mere joy of seeing her again--and then he would not need to +think of the future. Yes! the deeps of his soul had wanted her as +much as that. + +It was about half-past six as he reached London; and though it was +impossible to call on her for some hours yet, Theophil drove straight to +Isabel's little square, shuttered and still in the early-risen London +morning. His eyes chose the second storey for hers, and picked out two +dainty windows as her rooms. He half expected to see the blind suddenly +drawn aside and her face, a sleepy flower, bloom through the curtains. + +He lingered awhile, loving each individual brick of the house with his +eyes, and then, kissing his hands to the sleeping windows, he rejoined +his cab, which he had left at the street corner, shy of awaking the +hushed square with its clatter. + +He gave Isabel till ten o'clock, which was perhaps hardly enough for a +young London lady's toilette and breakfast, and then called. A pleasant +housemaid answered the bell, and told him that Miss Strange was away, +and was not expected till to-morrow. + +Here was a surprise. He had never even thought of that possibility. + +Begging leave to write Miss Strange a note, he presently found himself +in Isabel's room. It was the same his eyes had blessed from the street. + +So this was Isabel's room! So evidently hers, her very self! + +Isabel pictures, Isabel wall-paper, Isabel chairs, Isabel cushions, +Isabel desk, Isabel books, Isabel bibelots, Isabel litter,--all Isabel. + +And there hung an arras portière over a doorway to the right of the +fireplace. That was her bedroom! Dare he peep in? That was her little +bed. Would the housemaid catch him if he slipped in and left a kiss on +her pillow? By the mirror was a grotesque little china monster with his +mouth full of hat-pins. He stole one for a memory. Over a chair lay a +little dressing-jacket. He took it up and kissed it. + +Then he sat down to write to her. What a tidy, methodical little desk! +Everything in its place. Dear, business-like, sea-witch Isabel! Here was +her engagement book. He mustn't begin reading her letters! + +After his first disappointment, he was half-glad he would have to wait +till to-morrow to see her,--for, of course, he would wait. To have thus +sat in her room was almost enough for a first meeting. It was like +stealing upon her while she slept. + +Then he began a letter; but as he wrote, who was this suddenly standing +at his side? Was it Isabel? No...it was a little sobbing body quite near +to his, crying as if its heart would break... + +Oh, Jenny, Jenny--God forgive me! + +The spell was broken, the fit was over. Theophil left no letter for +Isabel, and no message, and the same evening he was once more back in +his little study in Zion Place, wild with remorse. O for the scourge and +the fire! But what penance shall avail to ease that poor little +creature's broken-hearted crying? + +"She seems to have had a shock!--She seems to have had a shock!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +BACK IN ZION PLACE + +The shame of that wild unfaithfulness burned in Theophil's soul for many +days. It humiliated him like a physical degradation. To have been so +drunkenly untrue! It was one of those shocks to the moral nature from +which it never quite recovers, and Theophil's face lost some of its +steadfastness, his walk some of its firmness, for this perfidy +towards Jenny. + +There was only one way to make the sense of it endurable, and he threw +himself into his work with a wasting vehemence. Where was his ambition? +There was so much yet to do. New Zion had long since moved and hummed, +and whizzed, the neighbouring towns had in a measure begun to dance to +his piping, but it must be a long while yet ere his name was to London +and to the world what it was already to Coalchester,--that mere +microcosm of his fame. + +And till London knew him as well as Coalchester, there was no real +monument to Jenny. London--no longer the city of Isabel--must learn to +say "Theophilus Londonderry" so naturally, that it would some day serve +as an unforgettable remembrance of Jenny. He must become a great man, +because a great name is the one shrine in which love's memory may escape +oblivion. In the arms of his name Jenny would then be carried down the +years, one woman-star saved from the night of death. Again, the world, +for which in one way he had so little care, was to help him indirectly +to keep his troth to Jenny. + +In a sense, the mountain was already coming to this young prophet; for +with the winter some of London's finest spirits were now and again to be +met in that incongruous Zion Place, as visiting lecturers to New Zion. +And each one, as he came, was impressed as Isabel had been on that old +evening when she had discovered her colony of surprise-people. Each +realised in that gravely masterful young minister a power and a force of +attraction which could not long remain hidden in that little country +town. Meanwhile, their visits enabled him to test his own calibre by +comparison with theirs, and to realise that his instincts had not +befooled him, but that he too had been called to the stage of the +great world. + +It was in the operation of this method of inviting the mountain that the +French poet, with a reference to whom we began this history, made his +fantastic appearance in Zion Place. It is to be feared that it was a +conscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeed +New Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the most +imaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown the +Renaissance in Coalchester by this _reductio ad absurdum._ The +subtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, and +after days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a young +country minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in the +musty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow of +the world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of his name among +the stars. + +With the reawakening of his ambition, Theophil began to realise that his +work at New Zion was nearing its end, and that before long he must seek +that larger stage. Yet all his heart remained in that dull little Zion +Place, and while Jenny's old mother lived he could not conceive tearing +himself away. Could he indeed even bring himself to say good-bye to +these mean little romantic streets along which Jenny had tripped? Could +he bear to think of the commonplace little house which Jenny had +transfigured to a shrine being desecrated with vulgar occupation? If he +could only raze it to the ground, as a cup from which a queen has drunk +is shattered lest it should be soiled with usage of common lips! Some +day he might have grown rich enough to buy it, and set it apart for +ever, as a little house sacred to love and youth; but, meanwhile, with +what ugly and noisome presences would it have been defiled! + +He would stand in Jenny's room with its quiet books and flowers, and his +heart would ache to think that some day harsh hands must noisily break +in upon that sacred silence, and strip it of all its delicate memories. +Jenny's room the lair of wild beasts, a nest of foulness and serpents! +Sometimes he was thus haunted with the ghosts of those who were to riot +up and down these stairs when Jenny's memory had quite died out of these +walls like a fragrance of musk overborne with coarse odours. + +Yes! in this perhaps are the rich most enviable of the poor, that they +can afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved from +external taint from generation to generation, become temples of which +the very walls breathe nobleness, whereas the very birthplace of genius +itself becomes a butcher's shop; and though that genius be Shakespeare, +and the old house be some day purified seventy times seven, and +garnished as you please, the smell of slaughtered beasts will still +cling about its rooms, and the butcher insist upon immortality too. + +Jenny's old mother was soon to turn into a memory also. She had from +time to time declared that she would not see another May, and had indeed +on one occasion named the day on which she would die, with a curious +precision, as though she had seen it written somewhere in a book, or +learnt it from private or unimpeachable information. Latterly she had +met Jenny twice in full daylight on the stairs, and it was evident that +the old woman would soon complete that little family circle in Paradise. + +But she still kept about, and whereas her old husband had grown sleepier +as his end neared, she seemed to be growing more active again, fidgety +and restless. She slept badly, and returned to her old habit of being +first down in the morning and lighting the kitchen fire, in spite of +remonstrances. Indeed, she might sometimes be heard up in the middle of +the night, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen had +been her world, and she was already beginning to haunt it. + +There it was one wintry morning they found her sitting in the old +arm-chair in which her husband had died, and then they recalled her +words, for she had died on the very day she had predicted. + +She knew nothing of books, this quaint old woman, and had a very +antiquated taste in wall-papers; yet there would seem to be other ways +of being wise, and it may indeed be held that books act too much as +insulators between us and the earth, to the mysterious currents of which +gnarled shapes of unlettered old men and women may be the more sensitive +as lying closer to the Mother. + +At all events, old Mrs. Talbot did seem to have won certain confidences +from life and death refused to more consciously alert ears. Hers had +been that hearing beyond listening to which secrets are +sometimes revealed. + +Her death was more of a loss to her son-in-law than he might have +conceived, for not only was she the last of Jenny's flesh and blood, but +she was the only one else in the world who missed Jenny as he missed +her. Others might, through sympathy, share his sorrow, but she and he +were partners in an actual loss. Something had definitely gone from +each. Jenny seemed to be twice dead with the death of her mother, and +Theophil's loneliness suddenly became more absolute and cut off than +ever before. + +There was now no one left who could involuntarily recall remembered +words and traits of Jenny, and who would for their own sakes want to sit +down and talk of her. All that was left that really knew Jenny was the +old house itself. That remembered and talked of her still in its dumb +way; and as he realised this, his mood once more changed. He forgot his +aspirations toward a broader world, and felt that, not only would it be +a sort of unfaithfulness to leave Zion Place, but that to do so, and to +break up this familiar harmony of home, this little cosmos of friendly +furniture in accustomed relations,--pictures hung so from time +immemorial, rooms dedicated to this use and no other,--would be to +destroy the one mirror from which could come to him still glimpses of +Jenny's living face. In just that look of the rooms was the best +portrait he possessed of Jenny. + +Though he had always been fond of Mr. Moggridge, it had not before +occurred to Theophil to make of him a companion; but about this time, as +Mr. Moggridge would drop in of an evening to discuss church matters, the +young minister would be surprised to note how lonely he felt when he had +gone. Indeed Mr. Moggridge possessed that great undefinable gift of +companionability. + +What is needed in a companion is not brilliance of conversation, but the +power to make you feel that you are not quite alone in the universe. +Dogs and even children possess this quality for some happily constituted +individuals, but for others it is a necessity that the companion be a +human being. + +A human being, the quieter the better, if possible a rather large man, +diffusing a sense of warmth and safety, with perhaps no other gifts than +kindliness and a pipe; and sometimes you have the best of company. And +Mr. Moggridge, as we know, had brains too, and interesting instincts +for new things. But his best gift was his humanity. Thus Theophil +encouraged his evening calls and contrived to prolong them, though the +two would often sit almost silent by the hour, their pipes alone making +a sort of conversation. + +Sometimes the young lions of "The Dawn" would come to supper, as in the +old days, as Theophil called a year ago; but supper was a poor thing +without Mrs. Talbot popping in and out of the room, though she had +seemed comparatively unimportant then,--not to speak of eager little +Jenny,--not to think of Isabel. + +Yes! the sparkle had gone out of their meetings, which began to have an +air of make-believe youth about them. Theophil's interest was indeed +centred in the purlieus of New Zion, but it was entirely retrospective; +and though outwardly New Zion was more alive than ever, it seemed to him +that activity which once started goes on of itself, and he realised that +in his heart he cared nothing for the work itself, but only for the +music to which it had once been set in motion. Incomplete as in one +sense it was, in another and more personal sense his life seemed already +complete; and while in some moods he would dream of its resounding +continuance, in others he would sigh that it might end. + +However, for a while he would still go on living with the shadows he +loved; and as he sat alone of an evening in that silent house, he would +sometimes half fancy that he heard the other occupants moving about or +walking overhead. That was Mrs. Talbot with a creaking basket of clean +linen on the stairs, and surely that was the opening and closing of a +drawer in Jenny's room. Perhaps it was only Mr. Talbot moving his chair +in the kitchen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +AND SUDDENLY THE LAST + +Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be a +memory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of new +worlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly to +close down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled half +sadly, and half proudly. No such good fortune for his sad heart! no such +miscarriage of his young life! + +Young life is so sure of its long lease. All about it lie the broken +dreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that _its_ life-work +should suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of! +It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life and +coquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as "Will +it please your honour to die to-morrow week?" is an indignity +inconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worship +of the dead. + +Yet for quite simple reasons, as this mysterious world goes, it had been +decided that Theophil was for as brief a while as possible, allowing for +the leisure of natural causes, to support the life he thought he hated. +Even while Jenny lived, fate, mercifully foreseeing, had willed him a +brief pilgrimage; for on that night when Jenny had leaned over him with +that terrible hunger of damp breath, it had been written that of that +kiss Theophil should some day die. + +And it was of that kiss that the following May Theophil, all his plans +laid aside, engagements cancelled on every hand, eager life suddenly +trapped in this choking cul-de-sac, was dying. + +Death! It was an outrage! He was young, he was powerful! He would not +die! + +There was May at the window. He too was full of May. He would get up +and go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. It +was the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, like +the muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss and +twitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he had +been a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, to +rise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak at a +neighbouring town, where he had been promised for a great agitation on +the Home Rule Question. Surely it was a strange enough contradiction of +a year ago, when such meetings had seemed such trivialities in the +thought of death. Now, when they said he was dying--had this world grown +suddenly so significant that he could rise from his death-bed to make +one last appearance in the paltry lists? + +He spoke with an overcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a tumbler of +port wine at his side; and as the audience looked on his white hollow +face, and listened to his terrible eloquence, they realised with a +shudder that this was the last tragic effort of a dying man. + +Alas! the great world was not to be stamped with his image and +superscription, after all; and only a little faithful company of friends +would know that Theophilus Londonderry was a great man. + +This escapade, though it brought on death with double swiftness, brought +too a calm of satisfaction which made it easier to die; and in the +revulsion which it set up, life once more shrank into the background, +and its little triumphs grew paltry once more. Strange, he half smiled +to himself, that the man who was at last really going to Jenny should +even momentarily care about doing anything else! + +Yes, he was going to Jenny! So soon! Soon he would be on the other side +of that wall, soon be travelling that strange highway, on the other side +of light and darkness. In a few more weeks he... _HE?_ Would there still +be _he_ anywhere in the universe? + +Jenny! Perhaps there had been no Jenny all these months. Perhaps Jenny +stopped being Jenny forever in that last moment when she had tried to +wish him good-bye. And all his daily consciousness of her presence, all +the fancies of his faithful heart, had been idle as the words of a man +talking in his sleep. Those little offerings he had brought to her +altar,--she had never seen them; for perhaps Jenny had been an idol he +had made out of air, while he had been her lonely and unheeded +worshipper. + +Was it really like that? and in a few more weeks would he too be as an +eye that had ceased seeing, an ear that had ceased hearing for evermore? + +All the wonderful colour and sound of things! Were these waning days to +be his last poor opportunities to sit at the great show? + +Yes! the world was slipping like water between his hands--and he might +not be going to Jenny, after all. + +As these thoughts began to possess him, another thought which he had so +far resisted grew more importunately pleading--the thought of Isabel. +Perhaps he was going to Jenny, but surely he was leaving Isabel. Had he, +he could not but ask himself, immolated a warm living heart in a +fanatical devotion to a heart long since senseless and cold? Had it not, +after all, been a superstitious veneration towards an ideal of +faithfulness which had been Jenny's rather than his own? Had he in his +heart ever ceased to love Isabel, and had he really believed that to +love her too would have been unfaithfulness to Jenny? + +Yes, life was nearly over, but it held the possibility still of one +supreme blessedness. He might look into Isabel's eyes again. + +She had but to stand by his side and his poor remnant of life would grow +radiant and rounded as the most complete and blissful destiny. His heart +told him that if Isabel could but once enter the room again, and stay +with him to the end, however near, he would die singing the song of +magnificent life. + +Life is tragic, do you say? Life is cruel. Life is a splendid +portico--to nothingness. Ah, no! not if in that portico you have stood +for a moment, loving and beloved, by the side of Isabel. Life is +splendid! life is kind! life is abounding, deep-cupped! and each minute +of it is a prodigal eternity. + +Thus it was that one May morning Isabel sat very still in her little +room with a telegram just opened on her lap. The telegram ran: "Jenny is +dead and I am dying. Theophil." And this was the first message Isabel +had received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchester +station eighteen months ago. + +She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaid +had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat +cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her,--that Jenny +had divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil had +determined that they must never see each other again. + +Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent so +much in written words! Had he ceased loving her?... No, that she could +never believe. They had _met_ too really for that. And, after all, this +silence was no more than their sad marriage-bond. Sad, truly, and a +little tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no power +over her love. That belonged to the realities; that could never change. + +"Jenny is dead, and I am dying," Isabel kept saying over to herself, +divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, and +something of Theophil's conflict during those silent months. + +"Jenny is dead, and I am dying,"--a sad, a tragic message, surely! And +yet, as from the first shock and consequent turmoil of that message, its +real significance slowly evolved, even Isabel was perhaps surprised to +find it rather a happy than an unhappy significance. Jenny was dead, and +Theophil was dying; and yet, when at last she shook herself out of her +reverie, her face was curiously lit with peace. + +She presently discovered that there was a train north in two hours; and +then she turned to her desk, and with that business-like carefulness +with which we often act in a dream, she went over its contents, and +methodically transferred its various accumulations to the tiny grate, +which was soon blazing with unwonted summer fire. A little handful of +letters she saved, and from the diminutive locked cupboard in the +centre she took out a small sealed packet, which was to be included +among her luggage. + +All trains do not separate. There are also glad trains which bring +together; and soon Isabel was in one of these, and soon it had taken her +to Theophil,--to whose ears at last had come the sound of wonderful +wheels in the dead street, wheels that had stopped beneath his window, a +rustle of alighting, an opening and shutting of doors, an approaching +whisper on the staircase, and then, with reality unutterable--Isabel. + +Isabel! + +You could hardly have told that Theophil was dying, and the face that +Isabel thus found again was marked by none of the dreadful writing of +death. His eyes were brighter, his brow more hollow, his cheeks +thinner,--that was all; and he was to be of those of whom we have +spoken, whose flame of life burns brightly to the end. No heavy mists of +Lethe hung about his bed. Till his last heartbeat, he was to be +conscious of the nearness of Isabel. For a fortnight he was thus to lie +within sight and touch of her. How good life is! Think of it, a whole +fortnight! How extravagantly blessed! + +Isabel was living in the same house with him day after day. She was no +visitor, but went in and out of the room with the step of one who is at +home. If he grew weary and dozed a moment, she would still be sitting +there when he awoke. She was wearing home things. One morning when she +had been busied in the kitchen preparing some little delicacy for him, +she had left her task for a moment to see if he needed anything; and as +she had bent over him, she had worn a household apron,--a wife's apron. +Yes, she was at home, she would never leave him again, never leave +him--till he died. + +"Oh, Isabel--to die!" he moaned one night as she sat by his side. + +"But think, dear," she answered, with her head turned away, "think of +Jenny." + +"Perhaps there _is_ no Jenny." + +No Jenny! Isabel's heart gave a little cry. No Jenny! Then there could +be no harm ... + +"Theophil," she said, after a silence, "have you forgotten something we +said to each other that day,--something we promised?" + +For answer he looked at her with awed and suddenly enlightened eyes. + +"Do you mean that?" he asked. "You mustn't mean that." + +"Do you think I could care any more for life?" she asked. "Would you?" + +"No," he answered simply. + +"May I, then?" + +His eyes could alone answer. He knew her love too well to affect that +there would be any loss to her in the life she would thus be leaving. + +"But Jenny?" + +"If Jenny is there, she will understand now." + +I can conceive no happier, completer moment than that which followed for +these two, no more unassailable peace. If their lives were to be quite +put out, they would be extinguished together; if they were to begin anew +elsewhere, they would begin anew together; and meanwhile nothing that +could happen could harm them, could rob them of the desire of their +hearts. At the worst, they would attain their best; at the very least, +they would win their most: they would die together. + +To end together. It matters not how few or many years love and the +beloved live their days side by side, even though their love be but the +morning and the evening of one divine day, so that there be no bereaved +and lonely to-morrow. The hour that takes one and not the other takes +with it too all the accumulated happiness of all the years. That hour +these two were to escape. Yet was there no need of haste. So long as +they might, they would sit together in the sun of life. For a little +longer they would say, "How wonderful life is!"--for a little longer +make sure of each other. + +Your eyes, Isabel! Your hair, Isabel! Your dear mouth, Isabel! + +A little longer. + +"Shall we go to-night?" + +"Not yet...perhaps to-morrow, Isabel." + +But Theophil was now very near death, and he might forget if he lingered +on much more. Not wearily, but with music and singing must they pass +through the strange gate of Death. + +So at length, one June evening, Isabel made for them one last little +feast,--once more wine and great grapes set out upon a little table at +Theophil's bedside; and on the table, too, was the little sealed packet +Isabel had taken from the cupboard in her desk. + +Drawing her chair close up to his pillow, she poured out their wine, +and they drank it and ate the grapes together,--no happier people in +God's strange world. + +As the feast neared its end, Isabel rose, and stirring the little fire +into a blaze, turned out the lamps, so that the room was lit only with +the light from the fire. Then she refilled their glasses with wine, and +breaking the seal of the little white packet, took from it a small +bottle of green crystal, the contents of which she mingled with +the wine. + +Then she and Theophil held up their glasses to each other. + +"Let us go deeper into the wood," she said softly. + +"How wonderful life has been!" said Theophil; and the two drank, with +their eyes firm and sweet upon each other. + +Then Isabel sat down again by Theophil's side, and leaning her head +against his on the pillow, she took his hand. And the room became a +heaven of silence. + +Whoso would say of these two lives, "How sad!" let him consider the +quality of his own happiness; and whoso would regard the life of +Theophilus Londonderry as a failure, let him, too, consider the value of +his own success. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] +by Richard Le Gallienne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF ZION *** + +***** This file should be named 10949-8.txt or 10949-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/4/10949/ + +Produced by Brendan Lane, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] + +Author: Richard Le Gallienne + +Release Date: February 5, 2004 [EBook #10949] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF ZION *** + + + + +Produced by Brendan Lane, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>THE ROMANCE OF</h1> + +<h1>ZION CHAPEL</h1> +<br> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2>RICHARD LE GALLIENNE</h2> +<br> + +<h4>1898</h4> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h3>TO</h3> + +<h2>TWO IN HEAVEN</h2> + +<h3>AND</h3> + +<h2>TWO ON EARTH.</h2> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2>Contents</h2> + + +<ul> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II. INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI. OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER.</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII. THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX. "THE DAWN"</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII. HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII. IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV. THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV. JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII. "O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE..."</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX. IN WHICH JENNY CRIES</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII. THE TRYST LETHEAN</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNY</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV. JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII. ISABEL CALLING</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACE</a></li> +<li><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX. AND SUDDENLY THE LAST</a></li> +</ul> + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h1>The Romance of Zion Chapel</h1> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> +<br> + +<h3>OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES</h3> + +<p>On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, +hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there +stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of +disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway +embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely +obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty +for a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly +present unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the +gasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street boasting +the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, is +proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied the +gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, +yet long since drearily old,--with the unattractive antiquity of old +iron and old clothes,--round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only +describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in +weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words +"New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion +Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too which +had been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very morning before +the house at the corner had contemplated doing the same. At Zion View +lived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge, good-natured, guffawing +pillar of New Zion,--on whom, at the moment, however, we will not call.</p> + +<p>A nice dull place, you may say, from which to issue invitations to a +romance. Well, of course, it must seem so if pretty places are the +reader's idea of romance. Curiously enough, the preference of the Lady +Romance herself is for just such dull places. These dreary, +soot-begrimed streets are the very streets she loves best to appear in, +on a sudden, some astonished day, with a sound of silk skirts and a +spring wind of attar of roses. Contrast, surprise,--these are her very +soul. Dull places and bright people,--these she loves to bring together, +and watch for laughter and tears. You are never safe from Romance, and +the place to seek her is never the place where she was last found.</p> + +<p>Well, at all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you are +respectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with a +shrug, I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes of +one of the greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won't +pretend that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did--the eyes of +that great, sad, scandalous, religious French poet--on a night of weary +rain that set someone quoting,--also in that street,--</p> + +<blockquote> +"Il pleure dans mon coeur<br> +Comme il pleut sur la ville."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Yes, and that French poet passed the gasometer on his way to New Zion. +Actually.</p> + +<p>Romance! Why, I wouldn't exchange Gasometer Street for the Isles of +Greece!</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> +<br> + +<h3>INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL</h3> + +<p>That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest light +in the contrast which it was the happy business of Theophilus +Londonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make in +the vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchester +at large.</p> + +<p>Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's so +like the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for, +that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it for +purposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for its +reminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the more +suitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhaps +rather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions,--or say +one was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call." By day he +professed to be a clerk in a cotton-office,--and he was no fool at that +(there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but by +night, and occasionally of an afternoon,--when he got leave of absence +to solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral,--he was a spiritual +pastor, the young father of his flock.</p> + +<p>Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject of +Nonconformity, its influence on individualities and its direct +relationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of Rome,--though +he sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter,--Theophilus +Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would have +found no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could not +long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was the +non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity that +gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of a +personal force that claimed operation in some human employment, some +work not made with hands, but into which also entered the spirit of man, +and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth or +influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity. +To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the art +of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for this +Nonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his opportunity.</p> + +<p>This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by no +remoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was +not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher with +a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a +failure all in one.</p> + +<p>I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to be +a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of +blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting +quality,--a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand +of strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made +himself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he +was conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--were +qualifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for, +apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little +"cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, he +would occasionally "supply," they had passed into his son, and met in +him other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love +of laughter, and a mighty humanity.</p> + +<p>Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape and +partly something bigger and more effectively vital.</p> + +<p>At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said +to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a +big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor +at New Zion.</p> + +<p>This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not +attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of +Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he +could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the +point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in +terms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He +would, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but +that pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise, +he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and +humanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whatever +the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderry +that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However you may judge +him, you must never make that mistake about him.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> +<br> + +<h3>OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT</h3> + +<p>New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new. The +fiery zeal which had once made it a living schism had long since died +out of it. Carried years before, a little blazing ember of faith, from a +flourishing hearth of Nonconformity some streets away, it had puffed and +gleamed a little space in the eloquence of the offended zealots who +carried it hotfoot that Sunday morning, but its central fire had been +poor, and for a long time no evangelistic bellows had awakened in it +even a spark.</p> + +<p>Its original elders had long since lost heart and passed away. A +dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its +doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its +musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday +prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life +from the outside must come, and speedily, or it must die.</p> + +<p>But new life was already on the way. On the town side the sad streets +round New Zion led one into a more prosperous High Street, and indeed +Zion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a jovial +and ruddy shop--a provision merchant's, and kept by Eli Moggridge. The +name did its owner considerable wrong, for its suggestion of puritanical +sanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of the jovial and ruddy +personality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for whom it stood, and of +whom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese and its air of exuberant +prosperity, was a much more truthful expression. Well, the business was +growing with such gusto that Mr. Moggridge felt he might afford a home +away from his shop, and thus he came to take the biggish empty house +which presently put on new paint and once more seemed quite proud of +being "Zion View."</p> + +<p>Till this time, Mr. Moggridge. had "attended" elsewhere, but he was not +so young as he had been and somewhat stouter, and the stealthy approach +of comfortable habits had suggested to him that his old chapel was +rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house +being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation +towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly +above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it +in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his +being the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born within him.</p> + +<p>Now, quick was even the word with Mr. Moggridge, as became a successful +man of business, and for him to conceive an idea was to carry it out, as +goods were always delivered from Mr. Moggridge's shop, with despatch. +Also in some dim far-off way Mr. Moggridge's mind had, all +unconsciously, been stirred by vibrations of what we call the New +Spirit. The new spirit of any age works its way even into its +businesses, and though Mr. Moggridge wouldn't have so described it, it +was the "New Spirit" that had made the success of his provision shop. +Speaking of the need of New Zion, Mr. Moggridge called it "new blood." +He meant the "New Spirit;" and it was in reply to his advertisement for +a new pastor, that the "New Spirit" in the person of Theophilus +Londonderry came one Sunday to preach at New Zion.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY</h3> + +<p>Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry at +a glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he liked +Eli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each other had met.</p> + +<p>You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon you +couldn't help respecting him,--Theophilus Londonderry was almost to know +what it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the man he +was was a matter of no small importance to the young minister. A chief +deacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be no +little of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a +different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance +as he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreative +rather than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort of +Sunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. He +wanted to see it a "going concern," and, hating stagnation in his +neighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust to +make it move and hum and whizz.</p> + +<p>Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with +further mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New Zion, he +explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an evening +service which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was not +Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man in +his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; and +it happened that something of this very sort was what Theophilus +Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply.</p> + +<p>The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridge +guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources, +and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad +general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be +placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of the +faith that was in him. "All we want you to do," he said in conclusion, +"is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to how you do +it, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere with you in +that than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject of York +hams. We must all be specialists nowadays,--specialists," repeated Mr. +Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered planets.</p> + +<p>So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor," +presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the faded +dusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at too +great a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some nice +old-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane.</p> + +<p>I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love her +little daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describe +them at too great a length. Old Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were the sole +survivors of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantly +pious, stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in no +sense dialectical, and in every sense harmless.</p> + +<p>Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when front +parlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be sitting in +the kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation, "like +white-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." It is not recorded that he ever +thought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He would +flee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by such from +the wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head pathetically, +and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled good-evening. It +disconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his tongue slumbered in +his mouth,--for he was an old weary man, and perhaps very wise.</p> + +<p>Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in an +immeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the little +thinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, pay +the rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny's +marriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious +teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully +wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a +heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered +old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny +and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good deal +deaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed you, as +she had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too, was very +old, and she, I know, was very wise.</p> + +<p>Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyond +that she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her, +was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by the +school-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress and +pocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet. No +lover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterful +superscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very pretty +or very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet only +beginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn't +pretty yet, but she wasn't plain.</p> + +<p>Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it, +there was no telling to what beauty it would awake. The fairy prince! +That was going to be our friend Theophil, of course. Well, of course, +though it's a little early on to admit it. However, I am unequal to the +task of concealing from the hawk-eyed reader through a succession of +chapters that Jenny and Theophil were to be each other's "fates." Of +course, he hadn't been there a month before Jenny's face was beginning +to wear that superscription of his passionate intelligence, to grow +merry from his laughter, and still sweeter by his kisses.</p> + +<p>Of course, Theophil and Jenny fell in love. Do you think it was merely +to save New Zion and to bring the Renaissance to Coalchester that +Theophilus Londonderry was sent to live in Zion Place--or for any other +purpose less important than to love Jenny? Yes, we may as well take that +for granted as we begin the next chapter.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> +<br> + +<h3>OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS</h3> + +<p>There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the way +of the Hebrew prophet,--to give it one's own. Theophilus Londonderry +instinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightily +upon New Zion.</p> + +<p>The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but it +is gold he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo! +it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words. +The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in the +precious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to +mould,--an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not a +precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,--a +clay not without streaks of gold.</p> + +<p>What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his will +towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was +moving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself +by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set +it dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in gold +on Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile +too. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows to +what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would +circle on before they touched the shores of death?</p> + +<p>We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in +occasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to such +we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in any +given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your +calculation for the average of such divine,--how many faces would you +fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many +hearts would you dare to trust?</p> + +<p>Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin, +the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked +by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay.</p> + +<p>Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be +minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own +image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, +natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that +the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes +of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs +and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what +a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth!</p> + +<p>Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed again +and again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of your +image. Once a poet has impressed himself with mastery upon words, the +impression remains for ever, the words do not disperse in idle crowds +when he has done speaking to them, never again to reassemble in a like +combination; whereas the greatest oratorical mover of men is doomed, +even after his most electrical self-impression, to see his image, as +soon as taken, fade away, with a shuffle of escaping feet and a scramble +for hats and cloaks. It was a masterpiece; but with the last touch, see, +the colours are flying in a hundred directions, and the very canvas +itself is off in a thousand threads of hurried disintegration!</p> + +<p>But all this, of course, has to do entirely with the poetry of the +ministerial life; prosaic even as preaching and praying to the New +Zioners may sound, there was yet a drearier prose. For these artistic +materials had not only to be preached and prayed to,--they had to be in +a measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individually +considered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed to +be set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made help +in the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest you +needed and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken the +single gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the fool +wisely,--that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. To +encourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talent +she has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr. +Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayer +meetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures were +really and usefully alive, but at no other point of their +circumferences.</p> + +<p>However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the Reverend +Theophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a lover +of character for its own sake, and to the student of character there is +no such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisome +an old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord in +prayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imagines +that to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith.</p> + +<p>Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderry +breathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second, according +to his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times, he was +there, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and endlessly +beaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say, "Didn't I +say he was the man for New Zion?"</p> + +<p>The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the old +disused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time every +possible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance, +prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcas +society, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and the +ladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zion +had indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and social +activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost +beginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli +Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed of +the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till +not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Street +heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very High +Street itself should hum and whizz.</p> + +<p>The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of Theophilus +Londonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon be +humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the +ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. +Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, +then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, +faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and +the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will +whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of Theophilus +Londonderry.</p> + +<p>Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN</h3> + +<p>Darwin expended many years of his life in the study of disagreeable +animals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism to +environment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if he +had begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history has +been one unbroken succession of inspired and noble adaptations!</p> + +<p>Woman's adaptability to man is one of the most mysterious, as it is +perhaps the most pathetic, of all the modes of her mysterious being. +Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of the +rock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of course, +she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her chameleon to a +like degree or indeed in a like manner. Such adaptability is not one of +the forms of his greatness, and even when he achieves it, it is not +becoming to him.</p> + +<p>For woman's adaptability is not the domination of a weaker nature by a +stronger, it is in itself a noble and world-necessary form of strength.</p> + +<p>Strength is needed as well for the taking as the making of an +impression,--something more than mere ductility. Weakness may never bear +the stamp of power,--it breaks in the moulding; and it is rather because +woman is so strong that she is able to take the Caesarean stamp of any +form of power. Nor cares she by whose hands she is moulded, whose image +she wears, be it warrior, poet, or priest, so long as she feels the +veritable grasp and impress of power. Some women are already made in the +image of the man they are to love before they meet him. Very wonderful, +very terrible, then, is the meeting, and it is a meeting that usually +comes too late. But oftener God gives a man a little measure of +porcelain and a handful of stars, and leaves him to make the woman he +needs for himself; and very wonderful too is that making,--though the +man will always have been the father before he was the lover.</p> + +<p>Why, one may ponder, should a man who is great enough to mould a woman +to help him be great, not be great enough to do without her at all? Let +lovers of the unfathomable ask at the same time: Why is man, man? and +woman, woman? and what are both?</p> + +<p>This gentle doll with the sweet breath, which he nips up in his arms and +kisses, and gives a tongue that she may talk back to him his own words, +endows with brains that she may think his thoughts,--a quaint little +helpless lovely parody of his wisdom and power; a toy, yes; a +refreshment, yes; a place of peace, yes,--but how much more! Yes, more +by all that we don't understand when we say "woman."</p> + +<p>Why a great man should need, not a great woman, but a little woman, a +very little woman,--how is it to be explained, unless it be that woman, +however little, is mysteriously great, just because she is a woman, a +little woman? Unknown properties were wrapped up somewhere in that +porcelain; to press it with the lips is to feel strange virtue coming +into one,--the devil was in those stars.</p> + +<p>Great men are only nourished on the elements. Woman is an element, all +the elements in one,--earth, air, fire, and water, met together in a +rose. She is a spring among the rocks, and she comes up dimpling from +the roots of the world. She is just as simple and just as strange. O! +little shining spring of woman that is called Jenny, a great man must +draw up through you the unfathomed, deep strengths of the old world. He +bends above you and drinks, and as he drinks, his face is mirrored +in yours.</p> + +<p>"Jenny, I don't think I'd read 'Miss ----,' if I were you," would say +the great man.</p> + +<p>"No, dear?" So Jenny was presently reading Ruskin instead, and wondering +how she could ever have read "Miss ----." And deep in her dear heart she +was saying, "Of course not; great men's wives never read 'Miss ----.'"</p> + +<p>And yet had the great man said, "Read Gaboriau instead,"--as a certain +very great man does,--Jenny's heart would have said, "Of course, great +men's wives always read Gaboriau."</p> + +<p>No! great men's wives read "Sesame and Lilies," and "Sartor Resartus," +and "Marius the Epicurean," and "Richard Feverel," and "Virginibus +Puerisque,"--they even try to read Newman's "Apologia." Such were the +books on the sunnier side of Theophilus Londonderry's little library in +No. 3 Zion Place. In dark corners behind easy-chairs were the deep-sea +pools of theology,--pools which had long since given up all the fish +they had in them for their owner,--slabs of antique divinity, such as +you would find likewise in the equally cherished library of +Londonderry Senior.</p> + +<p>Such were the fathers that slumbered on in a well-earned repose, and +which, far from desiring new readers, were so old that they were glad to +rest undisturbed,--being far too self-important to confuse a considerate +regard for their repose with neglect. And many of them were really quite +valuable as decoration, because of their fine old coats of gilded +leather; and such were ranged in the more penetrable shadows or even in +the lamp-light. Theophilus would point to them as to a portrait-gallery +of dead ancestors. One might admire the quaint and distinguished cut of +their clothes without dreaming of wearing the same,--and indeed old +divinity, he used to say, was poor food for young divines.</p> + +<p>His divinity indeed was fed on the technical side, it is to be feared, +by the more destructive biblical criticism, like most destructive +engines, coming all the way from Germany, and at its more vital centres +by importations of strong meat from Russia and Scandinavia. Tolstoi and +Ibsen were his archprophets.</p> + +<p>There was likewise a great Paris moralist called Zola, and a strange old +American father called Walt Whitman. And beauty, that can never be far +away from strength, found many new and wonderful prophets in that little +library,--poets and painters and musicians of whom hardly anyone else in +Coalchester had yet heard, and certainly no one above the age of +twenty-five.</p> + +<p>Surely youth is in nothing more marvellous than in its mysterious power +of attracting to itself into the most out-of-the-way places the +sustenance and companionship it needs. In the unlikeliest wilderness +inspired youth is never without the mysteriously-brought food and the +company of angels. Powers of the air will sweep across continents to +rescue it from prison, soft gales travel from south to north to sow +seeds of beauty in its narrow ways, and little songs will flutter like +butterflies for hundreds of miles to cheer its heart.</p> + +<p>The Time-Spirit had given its angels charge concerning these young +people, and, remote as they were from all the fiery centres of thought +and the dreaming schools of art, Zion Place, no less than the Rue de +Rivoli, took its thought of the newest and its beauty of the best.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER</h3> + +<p>I have said that Coalchester was a very ignorant old town. I did not +mean to imply that there were no M.A.'s there. In fact, there were quite +a number. You may be sure that if spiritual and intellectual life had +its representatives, as we have seen, spiritual and intellectual death +had its representatives, too--by which I don't mean either to imply that +the M.A.'s were dead M.A.'s, dead and buried with Latin over them in the +old brassed and effigied church, which was so old and large that it was +hardly less conceited than a cathedral. Spiritual and intellectual death +in Coalchester, as elsewhere, was officially represented by the Literary +and Philosophical Society, which still unblushingly went on retaining +its adjectives, even in the face of its "Transactions," which seemed +mainly composed of treasurer's reports, with an occasional paper +on fossils.</p> + +<p>Indeed the one spark of life in the pathetic old society was its real +interest in the antediluvian and prehistoric. For the life that was dead +it had a perfect passion, and it sometimes held conversaziones to gaze +at it through microscopes. Occasionally it would waken up to literature +with a paper on Akenside. In everything that didn't in the least matter +some of these mild old gentlemen were genuinely learned. Not that they +hadn't read the great poets, even in the original Greek, Latin, and +Italian. Poets in dead and foreign languages were a form of fossils, and +English poets--with that divine bloom upon them!--they had a way of +fossilising by spectacles, so that they never read them alive. Thus they +had never read Shakespeare even in the original.</p> + +<p>Once, long ago in Coalchester, a hundred years ago, there had been a +little circle of elegant literati, connoisseurs of literature and +art,--men, so far as men of that age might be, genuinely, if timidly and +old-maidishly, affectionate towards belles-lettres; men who had got so +far as to appreciate the freshness of an Elizabethan song; minor Bishops +Percy; and such lavender is the true love of anything that their +memories still hung about the walls of the old Lyceum along with their +portraits; while so necessary are great names for little towns to boast +of, that the compiler of the local gazetteer implied that Coalchester +glowed at night with quite a lustre from their names. Besides, they +proved very useful in damping young men. And yet you wouldn't know their +names if I were to write them--as I would rather like to do.</p> + +<p>The learned Dr. Sibley, he wrote a pleasant little essay on "Taste," you +know, with a few additional notes on chiaroscuro; and then there was +the learned Dr. Ambrose, who wrote quite a pretty little treatise on +Song-writing.</p> + +<p>No! Of course you won't know any of them. Yet they were all once, and +are still, "The Learned." You'll never hear Theophilus Londonderry +spoken of as that, I'm afraid.</p> + +<p>As it is the property of fame to grow with time, and the way of a great +name to begin with brains and end with lords, a great man's descendants +are not unnaturally found persons of much greater consequence than the +original great one. In like manner the dignity and importance of the +members of the Literary and Philosophical Society had grown, in direct +ratio to their distance from the original founders of it; and the +learned Doctors Sibley and Ambrose, who really did know something about +art and poetry and certainly loved them, can never have been persons of +such consequence as one or two of their descendants who are nameless, +and who certainly knew nothing about either.</p> + +<p>One of the real objects of this sad little Society was passionately to +ignore what they contemptuously called local talent. It is true that +there was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded +to their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry +his chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he +suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitation +read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication +that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of +acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society of +Coalchester.</p> + +<p>Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman,"--a name +which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason that +it conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing for the young +man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that had +spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he rose to give +his paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full carrying voice, +and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes through +the old Lyceum: "W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n."</p> + +<p>Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled a +funeral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of dead +learning. The Canon in the chair smiled benignantly, with an expression +that I can only compare to buttered rolls. He was just three hundred +years old that very day, and the audience (a scanty fifty or so) ran +from a hundred and fifty upwards. The only young men present besides the +lecturer were two friends of his I have yet to introduce,--Rob +Clitheroe, a fiery young poet and pamphleteer of many ambitions, and +James Whalley (little James Whalley he was always called) a gentle lover +of letters, with perhaps the most delicate taste in the whole little +coterie; <i>and</i> Mr. Moggridge,--not entirely comfortable, it having been +by some mysterious atmospheric effect conveyed to him that he was a +tradesman and a dissenter, in which latter capacity he felt a certain +traditional resentment towards his complacent fellow listeners. A quite +recent ancestor had refused to pay tithes. That ancestor was in his +blood to-night.</p> + +<p>Jenny was not there. Ladies were not admitted to the meetings of the +Society, there being a sort of implication that masonries of learning, +occult sciences of the brain, were practised at their meetings,--matters +which never came out in the "Transactions."</p> + +<p>The lecture was a straightforward and eloquent account of Whitman's +writings and doctrines, with extracts from "The Leaves of Grass;" and +from beginning to end you might have heard a pin drop, particularly +during one or two of the quotations. When it was ended the buttered-roll +expression had faded from the Canon's face, and his "our young friend" +expression was ready for the chairman's remarks. Londonderry's sitting +down awakened a few sad echoes that were no doubt hand-clappings, but +seemed like the napping of the wings of night-birds frightened by a +light. But the Lit-and-Phils were not frightened; they were entirely +bewildered and rather indignant, that was all. It was characteristic of +their incapacity to grasp the humanity of any subject, even when it was +dangerous, that the criticism which followed was directed almost +entirely against Whitman's metrical vagaries. This was not poetry! Had +not their revered founder, the learned Dr. Ambrose ...</p> + +<p>The Canon kindly said, showing his pastoral interest in the local +newspaper, that the verses which their young friend Mr. Rob Clitheroe, +who was present with them that evening, occasionally contributed to the +Coalchester "Argus" were in his opinion better poetry than anything Walt +Whitman had written, though he confessed that his acquaintance with +Walt Whitman was of the slightest. This disastrous compliment sent the +blood to young Clitheroe's cheeks, and he felt surer than ever that he +would never be a real poet,--though, as a matter of fact, he had written +some quite pretty lines.</p> + +<p>It was an occasion that of course only the Lit-and-Phils could take +seriously, and the way home to New Zion was a laughter of four beneath +the stars,--Mr. Moggridge's deep guffaws coming every now and again, +like the bay of some distant watch-dog, at the young minister's +brilliant mimicry of the ancient men they had left behind.</p> + +<p>Then the gentle voice of little James Whalley took advantage of a +silence: "Isn't it high time that we brought the Renaissance to +Coalchester?"</p> + +<p>"Capital!" cried Londonderry; "come in for a bit of supper, all of you, +and let us talk over the plan of campaign."</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER</h3> + +<p>Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had an +excellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of old +Mrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronological +method of remembering great occasions and startling events by the food +of the day. Thus, for example, when with eyes that would still fill with +tears, though it was ten years ago, she would tell the story of how her +only boy had been brought home dead one night from an accident at his +workshop, she would fix the date by saying, "It was about six o'clock at +night, and I'd just got a nice little bit of liver and bacon cooking for +your father's dinner, when there came a knock at the door ..." +Sometimes it was, "I'd just sent Liz out for a little bit of fish," or +it would be Spanish onions maybe, or a lovely little rabbit, that +marked the day.</p> + +<p>The night when the attack on Coalchester was planned was marked, as I +have said, by rabbit-pie. Mrs. Talbot would hardly have understood the +significance of that rabbit-pie, though in the course of her occasional +bobbings in and out of the room, to see that the young men were doing +justice to her food,--she had a curious notion that young men never ate +enough,--she would hear snatches of what she called "deep talk," or +shake her old head at her coming son-in-law, whom she already adored and +mothered, with a "Law! what a boy it is!" She wasn't quite sure +sometimes as to the soundness of his "doctrine," but wisely decided that +her business was rather with his stomach than his brains,--which no +doubt God Almighty would look after for himself.</p> + +<p>Wit at the expense of Coalchester can only be of interest to +Coalchester wits and their butts, so I shall not record the bright and +animated talk which helped to digest Mrs. Talbot's rabbit-pie, but +confine myself to a practical outcome of it.</p> + +<p>What interests me specially about these young men was their rare +practicality. They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, with +ideas they had no notion how to embody. Dreamers, of course, they +were,--otherwise there had been no point in their being practical,--but +they were dreamers who understood something of how dreams are best got +on to the market of realities.</p> + +<p>Characteristically, it was the poet of the party from whom the most +practical suggestion came. In itself, of course, there was no great +originality in the idea of a weekly paper to be called "The Dawn," +devoted to the dissemination of the new light on every possible +subject,--politics and municipal misgovernment; the new social ideals; +the newest and most delicate forms of art, music, and literature. It +was in the suggested method of publication and circulation that the +originality lay. The paper was to be given away and made to pay its +expenses by tradesmen's advertisements, a guarantee of a certain minimum +distribution being given. This method had, of course, been tried before +for purposes of mere publicity, but never, I think, for the +dissemination of truth and beauty. The truth about life was to be paid +for by lies about bacon and butter,--or, let us say, business +exaggerations rendered innocuous by custom, and therefore as harmless +as truth.</p> + +<p>Obviously Mr. Moggridge, who not unnaturally had felt a sense of moving +about in worlds not realised during much of the deep talk, was here an +authority of importance, and the idea at once appealed to him. He would +promise a permanent advertisement, and he even promised illustrations, +in the form of blocks already engraved and occasionally used by the +"Argus," of the flourishing shops at 33, 34, 35 High Street, and 58, 59 +Zion Street. He had also some blocks of gigantic hams most hammily +pictured, which might also be of use, and he would also be able to bring +in a number of his fellow tradesmen. Invaluable Mr. Moggridge! What were +truth without you!</p> + +<p>The poet, on his part, guaranteed to supply all the poetry that might be +required, and indeed agreed to do special rhyming advertisements, at, +say, half a guinea apiece. He would also assist Londonderry in the +political and municipal departments, not only in the higher flights, but +lend a hand even in castigations of local jobs, abuses, and absurdities.</p> + +<p>Gentle James Whalley would write round-about essays, for which he had a +charming gift, and generally take in charge the aesthetic interests of +the paper, though, as all were lovers of art and literature, those +subjects would be handled now by one and now by another. Even Jenny was +to have her place on the staff, and write dress articles, which would +not only tend to improve the aspect of Coalchester streets, but attract +millinery advertisements. She already announced the title of her first +article, which was very grand: "Dress as a form of self-expression."</p> + +<p>It was two in the morning before the proceedings terminated, and even +then good old Mrs. Talbot was still up to press steaming bumpers of very +hot whisky and water upon the wayfarers; "to keep the cold out," she +explained--though I need hardly say that the project had not waited till +that hour to be suitably recommended to the god of all enterprises.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<br> + +<h3>"THE DAWN."</h3> + +<p>Next to the delight of holding new and unpopular opinions is the delight +of having a medium for their unedited expression, though this is a +delight given to few reformers. "The Dawn," however, was to be such a +medium; and when the first number appeared, as it did nearly a month +from the meeting recorded in the last chapter, four people, nay, +five--for we mustn't forget Mr. Moggridge--were supremely happy. With +the exception of the poet, who, as we have seen, occasionally irradiated +the poet's corner of the "Argus," and Mr. Moggridge, it was a first +appearance in print for three out of the five contributors; and though +each talked most of the articles by the others, they were secretly +longing to get away with the little paper to some corner where they +could gloat over their own special contribution.</p> + +<p>Not that they had any ridiculous ideas of the literary importance of the +articles in question, but because it seemed so strange to see the warm +words of their mouths thus condensed into cold print, so strange to +think that people all over Coalchester were reading them. Little Jenny +in particular felt quite a cold but pleasant shiver of notoriety as she +thought of it, while to her lover the delighted perusal and reperusal of +a large-type leading article, headed "In Darkest Coalchester!" brought a +new sense of power.</p> + +<p>The poet, as was only to be expected, had his little grievance with the +printer, who, in spite of all his remonstrances and corrections in +proof,--the printer was a little wrong-headed Scotchman,--had insisted +at the last moment in heading his Tyrtean "Proem," a fine aerial +trumpet-blast somewhat Shelleyan in style, with the word that was +evidently intended, namely, "Poem." However, he was somewhat consoled by +reading his caustic column of notes headed "The World outside +Coalchester," the very heading of which was a revelation. Then, too, he +very much enjoyed his article on "Bad Lighting in Coalchester," with its +evident allegoric insinuation that Coalchester needed lighting in more +ways than one, and that "The Dawn" was prepared to undertake, free of +charge, the top-lighting of which it was most in need.</p> + +<p>James Whalley contributed a review of "Mr. Swinburne's new Poems," +through which article Mr. Moggridge's illustrated hams plainly showed +from the other side.</p> + +<p>New truth is too often printed in very worn-out type, but the promoters +of "The Dawn" had wisely remembered how hard truth is to read, and had +given it good clear type, and generally made it a very comely and +attractive little paper. It bore a motto that sounded almost like a +threat, "We come to stay,"--a boast which it manfully kept for several +years. As I lift my eyes from this paper, they rest on no less than ten +great half-yearly volumes, which flash "The Dawn"--"The Dawn"--along a +darksome folio shelf, as they have flashed it week after week across +darkest Coalchester; and "The Dawn" ceased, at length, not from lack of +power and encouragement to continue, but because the world had grown +sadder by then, and it had lost the will to go on living.</p> + +<p>In spite of this hardy existence, I suppose "The Dawn" will win no +record of itself in the histories of the press, though merely as +spirited journalism it deserves to do so; while in the history of the +human spirit at Coalchester it demands a grateful celebration such as it +will, again, most surely not receive from the literary and philosophical +historian of the town. At all events, honoured or forgotten as it may +be, should you ever come across its strange young pages, I know you will +agree with me that it was a wonderful little paper. It was not, you may +suspect, conservative, being, as it was, very alive and very young. In +fact, its radiant radicalism brings tears to one's eyes to-day, when so +many of the noble ideals it championed, to the length and strength of +its little angry arm, are lying smashed beneath the iron blows of the +capitalism that has outlived even the noble eloquence of Theophilus +Londonderry.</p> + +<p>Like all young people, it was all for the young, the new; and I think +you will be astonished, if you do ever turn over its pages, at the +remarkable instinct for the crescent life possessed by these young men; +and, were it worth while, I could easily prove that several of the more +exquisite continental writers, now the fashion this many a year, first +found a humble welcome in that quaint little organ of New Zion.</p> + +<p>Yes! it was a triumph for New Zion too. This modest and hitherto obscure +corner of the town suddenly found itself, comparatively, in a blaze of +publicity, for a column headed "Work at New Zion," evidently meant to be +weekly, left no doubt from what quarter of the town the dawn was to be +looked for. This was perhaps the most delightful thing about the +paper,--its calm assumption that the real aristocracy of the town was to +be found in that little back street, and that, if Coalchester was to +have any spiritual or intellectual life, it must seek it there. In Zion +Street, and nowhere else in Coalchester, were the angels descending into +the waters. And the best part of the joke was that the assumption was +literally true.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> +<br> + +<h3>HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER</h3> + +<p>Coalchester was too much taken by surprise by "The Dawn" to pretend to +ignore it, and its first recognition was appropriately made in a +ludicrously abusive article in "The Argus,"--"the one-eyed Argus," as it +was mockingly nicknamed in the next week's issue of the new paper. The +joke was one that was lost on Coalchester, which had never dreamed of +expecting a hundred eyes in its "Argus," which to it was but the usual +name for a sleeping newspaper. It was, however, to do them justice, seen +and chuckled over by one or two members of the Literary and +Philosophical Society. "The young beggars know their--classical +dictionary, at all events," said one of them maliciously, which was +quite bright for a Lit-and-Phil.</p> + +<p>One tangible result of the little paper was the almost immediate +doubling of the attendance at New Zion. Curiosity had been aroused in +this militant young minister with the strange ideas, and Theophilus +Londonderry wished for nothing better than to gratify it. In the oxygen +of success even the dullest metals will scintillate, and it needed but +such small beginnings of his future to make Theophilus as nearly +irresistible as natural gifts and success together can make a man.</p> + +<p>Some people go to chapel to worship, a few to learn, but most, odd as it +may sound, to be entertained. A vivid and magnetic preacher is as near +as many will allow themselves to approach the theatre. Theophilus was a +born actor--of himself; a part so few can or dare play. He gave you good +stimulating truth; but it was not so much in the newness of the ideas +which he passed on from his books to his hearers, as in the newness of +himself, that of course the charm lay. A few people, not many or +important, disliked him; but all had to listen, and a good many came to +New Zion again. Above all, the women heard him gladly; and to this sure +sign of a future Theophilus was far from blind. "He has women at his +back, he cannot fail," was a phrase he sometimes recalled out of his +favourite <i>Brand</i>. Yes, and had he not one little angel-woman at +his side?</p> + +<p>It had been the spring of 1886 when he came to New Zion. It was now the +autumn, and early in September announcements had been made of a series +of autumnal lectures to be given by the Rev. Theophilus Londonderry; Rob +Clitheroe, Esquire; James Whalley, Esquire; and other distinguished +lecturers, at New Zion.</p> + +<p>In the list were papers on "The Duty of Novel Reading," "Henrik Ibsen," +"A Morris Wall-Paper," "The Nude in Art," and "The Darwinian Theory," +by Mr. Londonderry himself; "Coalchester, its Past and its Future," by +Mr. Rob Clitheroe; together with "Ireland's Sacred Right to Home Rule," +by the same lecturer; "Wagner and the New Music," by Mr. James Whalley, +with a paper on "Some Really New Books," by the same; and a paper-on +"Good Taste in Dress," by Miss Jenny Talbot--the virago!</p> + +<p>The batteries were to be turned on poor Coalchester with a vengeance. +For some time past there had been uneasy suspicions in the town that +strange and somewhat ungodly forms of new learning and beauty were being +stored as in an arsenal in that little house at 3 Zion Place. A large +cast of the Venus of Milo, it was known, had come from Covent Garden, +London, <i>via</i> a poor little dealer in artistic materials in the town, +who on one occasion had shown a bewildering picture to one of his +customers with the remark, "What do you make of this, Mr. Littlejohn?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Littlejohn could make nothing of it, nor indeed could the artists' +colourman, who had been used to pictures all his life.</p> + +<p>No wonder, for it was the first Rossetti that had ever been seen in +Coalchester.</p> + +<p>And it was the same at the little paperhanger's shop where Theophilus +had ordered some pieces of Morris wall-paper for his room.</p> + +<p>"Law! what a taste, to be sure!" had exclaimed the paperhanger's wife as +they opened the parcel. "How any one dare live with such patterns is +beyond me." The paperhanger's wife verbed better than she knew. Few are +those indeed who dare live with beauty.</p> + +<p>When the paper was hung in Theophil's room, so great was the sensation +in the household that even old Mr. Talbot ventured to look in at it, +keeping very close to his wife. It was so the old man had stood +open-mouthed before the first steam-engine, and here again was the Devil +plainly at work.</p> + +<p>"Lord a-mercy, Jane," he said to his wife, "what is the world coming +to?"</p> + +<p>The world was indeed changing beneath the old man's feet, and the +heavens opening as never before in his time--with, he might be right, +some assistance from beneath; and--it was undoubtedly safer in +the kitchen.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Talbot in these matters lived and loved by faith in her boy, as she +called him. But even she had her doubts, which she expressed in a way +that showed, funny old woman as she was, that she was not without a sort +of blind insight.</p> + +<p>"I suppose it's all right, boy," she said, "and it sounds silly to say +about a lot of harmless lines and flowers, but it seems to your old +mother that there's something wrong about that paper,--something almost +wicked in it. It reminds me of that nasty music you and Jenny are so +fond of playing."</p> + +<p>Here Theophil enveloped her in a huge hug, and laughingly mocked her +with playful caresses, smiling to himself all the same. For the music +she had referred to was Dvorak.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY</h3> + +<p>Meanwhile, as New Zion moved and hummed and whizzed, and as "The Dawn" +went on dawning week by week,--you couldn't expect the dawn oftener than +once a week in Coalchester,--the love of Jenny and Theophil grew more +and more perfect.</p> + +<p>There was a long while to wait yet before Jenny was to bear what seemed +to her the finest of all names, for old Mrs. Talbot, easily manageable +as a rule, had a way of quietly putting her foot down on occasion that +would have surprised you. Jenny was only just passed nineteen, and was +no fit wife for any man yet, least of all for a great sprawling fellow +like that. Let her get a little more flesh on her bones, something more +than all spirit and nerves, let her get well turned twenty, and it might +be thought of, but not now.</p> + +<p>No! it's no use coming with your nonsense, you silly big fellow! You +know when the soft old mother says a thing, she means it.</p> + +<p>So it proved. Old Mrs. Talbot on this point remained a homely form of +adamant. However, the lovers were not badly off. Living in the same +house, they saw almost as much of each other as if they had been +married, and from the evenings she spent there, Jenny had come to regard +Theophil's room and his books as hers too.</p> + +<p>She had developed wonderfully in these months, had Jenny. She was a real +little great man's wife now; and as Theophil looked at her, with her lit +eager face, her whole soul so alive to help him in however humble a way, +her whole life his, his, his,--such love seemed almost tragic in its +very beauty and joy. It was so irremediably--love. At times he almost +trembled before it. He would almost chide her with its divine +completeness.</p> + +<p>What if he were to be taken from her? Oughtn't she to keep just a little +of herself for foothold? We ought all to belong to ourselves as well as +to another. It was such a risk. Suppose he were to die, Jenny!</p> + +<p>No doubt it was very wise, but Jenny was wiser. She could never belong +to herself again. She was his, and his only, for ever; and if he +died--if he were to be taken away ...</p> + +<p>But he could never be taken from her any other way? No one else, nothing +but death, could take him ...</p> + +<p>"No, nothing but death--and perhaps not even death."</p> + +<p>"You are sure, darling? O, you are quite, quite sure?"</p> + +<p>"Sure from my soul, little child. Look in it and see."</p> + +<p>A lover's eyes are his soul.</p> + +<p>Yes, Theophil loved Jenny, loved her even more with her own dependence +on love than he knew of. He was, the reader need scarcely be told, an +almost wildly ambitious man, and a few months ago he would have said +that there was nothing which was more to him than the expression of the +power that was in him. But there was something that was even more to him +now, and if it could be imagined that he might some day be asked to +choose between his ambition and Jenny, he could honestly have answered +from his soul, "Give me Jenny."</p> + +<p>Whoever thinks this an easily natural answer to make, may know something +about love, but evidently knows little about ambition. Still, life +seldom sets us such silly examination questions as that, and need one +say that that question was never put to Jenny's lover? He was far too +proud of the woman he had made of that little measure of porcelain and +that handful of stars.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION</h3> + +<p>The winter months had gone by; all but one of those incendiary lectures +had been given, not without storm and tempest; "The Dawn" still came up +each week with anger and singing, and the first year of Londonderry's +ministry at New Zion neared its close. The lecture season was presently +to end, on the last Friday in March, with a concert which was to include +a series of recitations by a lady-reciter from London. Londonderry had +written to a lecture agency for the name of a likely reciter, man or +woman, and they had sent him the name of Isabel Strange.</p> + +<p>On the occasion of the last lecture, Mr. Moggridge had not been +satisfied with the colour of the platform. It wanted repainting, and I +think it very likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which I +hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of +house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great +smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. +Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought +nothing honest beneath him.</p> + +<p>It was the Friday of the entertainment, about one o'clock, and though +Mr. Moggridge had practically finished the work the day before, he had +slipped in during his lunch-hour to give it a final touch or two. He had +brought his lunch in the form of a pork-pie, and while with one hand he +plunged the pie occasionally among his red whiskers, with the other he +would lean forward and touch up a knot or a nail-hole that needed a +little more paint. And he was proud as a boy of the simple bit of +slap-dashing, and entirely absorbed in it and the pork-pie.</p> + +<p>Presently he became aware that he was not alone. Someone had entered +the schoolroom at the far end. He turned round, with the paint-brush in +one hand and the pork-pie in the other, and became abashed, for a +beautiful lady had entered the room and was evidently about to make an +enquiry. The surreptitiousness that seems to inhere in pork-pies +prompted Mr. Moggridge to slip the pie into his trousers' pocket--for +his coat was off, and a white apron had taken its place.</p> + +<p>"Just doing a little bit of amateur painting," he explained rather +awkwardly, advancing to the lady.</p> + +<p>"So I see," said the lady, with a pleasant smile. "This, I believe, is +Zion Chapel--and I suppose this is the room where I am to recite. My +name is Isabel Strange, and I have come a little earlier, I daresay, +than you expected; but I always like to see the room I'm to recite +in--just to try my voice in and run over my pieces."</p> + +<p>"Certainly, of course," said Mr. Moggridge; "but you have come all the +way from London and so early. You will have some refreshment first, and +if you'll honour Mrs. Moggridge and me--I may as well explain that I am +the chief deacon," said Mr. Moggridge, dexterously slipping off his +painter's apron and getting into his coat. So, with a wistful glance at +his work of art, Mr. Moggridge carried off the beautiful London lady to +Zion View.</p> + +<p>But was Isabel Strange beautiful? It was a new sort of beauty if she +was--or perhaps a very old sort. Yet beautiful was the first word that +had sprung into Mr. Moggridge's mind as she had surprised him in the +schoolroom. Perhaps wonderful was the exacter word, wonderful in a way +that included beauty,--wonderful, and with a strange air about her that +suggested exceptional refinement, exquisite sensitiveness to +refined things.</p> + +<p>"Beautiful, O dear no!" said Mrs. Moggridge, to whom feminine beauty +did not appeal, as the young lady freshened herself up after her travel +in Mrs. Moggridge's best bedroom. "Why! she hasn't a regular feature in +her face!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Moggridge herself had neat little pretty features set in fat.</p> + +<p>"Look at that long upper lip and her nose!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Moggridge omitted mention of eyes singularly powerful and very true +and sweet, as also of a long lithe mouth that reminded you of a +beautiful serpent, a serpent which the true eyes plainly said would do +you no harm.</p> + +<p>Presently, however, Mrs. Moggridge had to admit that she was very +attractive. She knew she meant fascinating, but she wouldn't admit that +to Mr. Moggridge, who had dropped the subject; though a mind which again +had asserted its dim preference for new fashions was perhaps groping +after expression of some such perplexity as this: why, if a face has +the same effect upon you as beauty, may it not be described as +beautiful? If Mr. Moggridge really got so far even as cloudily to ponder +that, it is evident that he was not far from the kingdom of beauty.</p> + +<p>It is, of course, true enough that some faces are spoilt by flaws such +as every Mrs. Moggridge can point out,--faces that begin in one style +and end in another, half Greek perhaps and half Gothic; yet even such +faces, if their individuality is strong enough, have their own rococo +charm. For all but supremely great faces, of which perhaps the world has +not seen half-a-dozen, absolute regularity, so-called correctness, of +features is a calamity, and regular beauty on the ordinary human levels +is only another form of mediocrity.</p> + +<p>Wonderful English girls! face after face indistinguishable from each +other as rose after rose. How sweet you are! how fragrant! what a bloom! +It is a wonderful rose-girl-farm from which you come. How pretty you +look laced up one after another on your standards, and how skilfully +you are guarded against any form of variation! Perhaps no women +potteries in the world produce so exquisite a surface, delicate as a +lily and strong as marble. Indeed you are wonderful porcelain, you fair +English girls, wonderful porcelain; but where are the stars?</p> + +<p>Mrs. Moggridge had also remarked that Miss Strange was "very easy in her +manners." This was not always the case with ladies in Coalchester, and +Mrs. Moggridge did not mean the remark as an unreserved compliment. She +liked a certain stiffness in strangers. It was not, however, in Isabel +Strange's nature to oblige her in that particular. Her way of pouring +her grace into Mrs. Moggridge's great arm-chair suggested at once that +she had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly she +chatted as with an old acquaintance. You could not make a stranger of +her. She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely without +embarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies and +watched her.</p> + +<p>"That's an interesting face!" she said presently, pointing to a +conspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece.</p> + +<p>"That's Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge.</p> + +<p>"O! <i>that's</i> Mr. Londonderry, is it?" she said. "H'm,... I hadn't +expected him to be so young."</p> + +<p>"Yes! He's a wonderful young man for his position," said Mr. Moggridge, +started on what was now his favourite topic. "He'll be a great man some +day, will Mr. Londonderry."</p> + +<p>Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest. Such a genuine +interest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him.</p> + +<p>Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told of +its former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its present +prosperity.</p> + +<p>"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here, +wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderry +came, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always something +going on at New Zion," he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr. +Moggridge did so love anything that was alive.</p> + +<p>Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn," and generally, as he +would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. At +the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this +young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of +surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of +the world,--perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic +wandering minstrel existence had brought her to.</p> + +<p>Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a very +young woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to +fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself +twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the +nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for +wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and +her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her +features for a long time to come. A face so full of the mystery of light +could only be eclipsed by one darkness, and even in that those magnetic +eyes would shine through the cold closed lids.</p> + +<p>Surprises were welcome to her, for she got few. Her life was rather a +dreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be. At one time +she had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough for +that, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a little +too fine for the stage. The positive and enduring joys of her life were +that she lived in London--for which she had the kind of passion that +some people have for the Earth-Mother--and loved beauty as some women +love religion. She had been loved many times, but never quite as she +needed, as she demanded, to be loved. Vivid, passionate, and exquisite, +she was what we call "modern" to the tips of her beautiful fingers; that +is, she united the newest opinions on all things with many ancient +charms. At the same time she was a good woman, though very wonderful and +highly dangerous.</p> + +<p>Presently Mr. Moggridge, who from where he sat commanded a view of the +street, exclaimed, "Why, here is Mr. Londonderry himself!" rising as he +spoke and passing into the hall, where he was met by a curiously rich +and mellow voice, which Isabel Strange thus heard for the first time; +and then the glorified original of the photograph entered the room.</p> + +<p>As her eyes and hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous +"Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to +flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given +Londonderry an "interesting face," as we have heard, but missed all the +rest--"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly +handsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of various +commands and appeals, thought on the brow and laughter in the eyes, +humour and eloquence all along the large and somewhat loose mouth, with +plenty of go in the powerful but not anxiously determined chin. These +were the moral qualities of the face, which Isabel Strange did not miss; +but it was the fascination of its general vitality that struck her most, +as an important introduction was made, to the usual fantastic +accompaniment of small talk.</p> + +<p>Let us not prolong the small-talk of the situation further, but +introduce Miss Strange as speedily as possible to Jenny also and to the +little study in 3 Zion Place.</p> + +<p>Here her eager examination of the shelves was one succession of cries +of sympathetic delight. "Why, you have got all the books I ever want to +read again!" she exclaimed. "What wonderful people you are! How have you +done it--in Zion Place?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose the books must have been blown here," answered Theophil, +gaily, "on the same fair wind that blew Miss Isabel Strange."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said little Jenny, affectionately pressing her shoulder as the +three leaned forward looking at the shelves, "for if we seem wonderful +people to you, what must you seem to us--here, as you may well say, in +Zion Place?"</p> + +<p>"What <i>does</i> she remind you of?" said Jenny presently, with candid +admiration. "I know! Why, of course, she just <i>is</i> the very woman. +Wait--I'll go and fetch it;" and Theophil and Isabel were thus left for +a moment or two alone,--a fact of no importance beyond this, that it was +the first moment in their lives that they had ever been together alone.</p> + +<p>Jenny returned presently with a small copy of Botticelli's "Primavera," +which hung in her bedroom; and it was undoubtedly true that the figure +of Flora might well have passed for a portrait of Isabel. The nose was a +little longer, that was all; but the rest of the face--particularly the +eyes and mouth--was all but exact, and the general correspondence +between the two faces in subtlety, strangeness, and, so to say, +determined refinement, was complete.</p> + +<p>"It is strange that I should have loved that face so," said Jenny.</p> + +<p>"It is very sweet of you,--Jenny, I had almost said,--but you are too +kind to me, and a little selfish too--you give me no time to admire you. +I wonder if Mr. Londonderry is modern enough to allow ladies to smoke in +his study."</p> + +<p>And thus it comes out that Jenny often smoked there!</p> + +<p>The smoking-sister is now almost as common as a taste for Botticelli, +and perhaps equally insincere; but in 1886 there still remained that +sense of contrast in both which we have declared the essence of romance. +At present those curious people who resent the popular acceptance of an +ideal of beauty which they have done their best to popularise are +beginning to affect that a taste for Botticelli is a mark of the +<i>bourgeoisie</i>. So does the whirligig of time bring in the paradoxer.</p> + +<p>A new kind of woman, while she is always the despairing hope of men, is +seldom acceptable to women; yet when the evening came and Isabel stood +up to recite in New Zion schoolroom, women as well as men were +instantaneously attracted. She stood very simply, with one hand lightly +touching the table at which Londonderry sat as chairman, and the other +at her side; and before she began her first recitation she glanced +quietly over the audience, as though her eyes were thus preparing the +proper magnetic atmosphere for her voice.</p> + +<p>She began with some simple Longfellow poem, that New Zion might feel at +home; then she recited a fairy poem called "The Forsaken Merman," which, +of course, was only a fairy tale, and yet somehow was so full of human +pathos that it was more real than if it had been really "real," that +is, prosaic.</p> + +<p>For impressing the imagination of her audience she relied mainly on her +own imagination and her voice; striking no attitudes, and allowing +herself nothing of that facial distortion which is the resort of the +unimaginative, and destroys not creates illusion. Of course, her face +changed, but the change was one of which she was probably unconscious, +and which she couldn't have reproduced to her mirror; it was not a play +of features, but a play of lights and shadows and nerves, a flow or an +ebb of radiance in the eyes, a subtle sensitiveness of the lips and +nerves; and her effect was mainly produced by her voice, over which she +wielded indescribable powers of modulation. It was a voice so +sympathetic, so intimate, that it almost seemed too intimate, too +appealingly sympathetic. It was so a woman might recite to a man she +loved, but you almost felt as though the voice were too personal a +revelation for an audience,--felt an impulse, so to say, to throw a veil +over it, though you were glad from your soul that no one threw it. And +the voice was a wonderful actor too. It could act the scenery as well. +You saw it all, you heard it all, you felt it all, in the voice:--the +great winds blowing shorewards, the wild white horses in the spray,</p> + +<blockquote> +"The white-walled town,<br> +And the little gray church on the windy shore;"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>and when she said, "Down, down, down!" you were indeed in the very +depths of the sea--and were all sitting, Mr. Moggridge with the rest, +amid coral caves and seaweed, and in a curious green and +shimmering light.</p> + +<p>But what a world of heart-break there was in her "Come, dear children, +come away!" You felt you simply couldn't bear her to say it again. Next +time you'd have to cry, and cry you did, and you weren't ashamed, for +suddenly when you came out of the trance of the voice you found that +every one else was crying too, and Mr. Londonderry had quite forgotten +that he was a chairman, and had to be nudged to announce the next piece.</p> + +<p>This was a very strange poem, and made you feel like a stained-glass +window; it was full of incense, but it was full of something else +too. It began</p> + +<blockquote> +"The blessed damozel leaned out<br> + From the gold bar of heaven" ...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>and there was something in the voice that suggested such a height up +above the world that you drew your breath lest she should fall over. And +there was a lover crying in the poem, you could hear him crying far +away down on the earth, and there were some lines which went:</p> + +<blockquote> +"We two will lie i' the shadow of<br> + That mystic living tree<br> + Within whose secret growth the Dove<br> + Is sometimes felt to be" ...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>that made you feel what a strange holy thing love was, after all; and +then there was a curious verse with nothing but women's names in it, yet +somehow it seemed the loveliest of all; and when again you came out of +the voice, you were not crying but feeling wonderfully blest somehow and +rather frightened. Jenny sent a wonderful look to Theophil--it was so +they should bathe together in God's sight--and Theophil sent back as +wonderful a look as a chairman dare venture on. Otherwise, of course, it +would have been as wonderful as Jenny's.</p> + +<p>Thus did Isabel Strange recite at New Zion; and perhaps one can best +judge of the impression she made, from the fact that the little boys at +the back, who during the last lecture on "Henrik Ibsen" had discovered +a most exciting new way of making continued existence possible, quite +forgot it and would have to keep it for Sunday afternoon Sunday-school.</p> + +<p>Everyone went home in a dream, and little Jenny shone like a light with +the excitement and wonder of it all.</p> + +<p>"How wonderful you are! Doesn't it seem strange to be so wonderful?" +said Jenny afterwards, as the two girls took off their outdoor things in +Jenny's room.</p> + +<p>"Dear child!" said Isabel, kissing Jenny on her brow, "it is you that +are wonderful."</p> + +<p>There is no joy in the world better worth seeing, better worth living, +than the joy of young people with the same dreams, the same thoughts, +and--so important--the same words for them, blown together by some +unexpected conjunction of the four winds, met by some blissful +dispensation of the planets of youth.</p> + +<p>There have been periods in history especially favourable for the ecstasy +of such meetings, early mornings of the human spirit, when lovely new +truth and lovely new beauty were dawning wild and dewy in the strange +east, and while the deep breathing of the older generations still asleep +made a more wonderful loneliness of dawn, for the hushed and happy bands +of young people holding each other's hands and watching in the +magic twilight.</p> + +<p>To have been young in Italy in the time of Dante, in England in the time +of Shakespeare, and to have met in such a mighty morning--with danger +too to keep us grateful. Ah, we have missed those dawns; and yet I doubt +if the whole recovered beauty of Greece and Rome, or the thrilling new +fashions in romance and poetry wafted across the seas from Italy to help +make Shakespeare, ever gave young people a keener thrill of newness and +mystery than the books and pictures so eagerly discussed by the little +group that gathered over supper that night in 3 Zion Place.</p> + +<p>To have read "The House of Life!"--to have seen the "Venus +Verticordia"! Ah! that was life! And Isabel had actually been to Mr. +G.F. Watts's studio--walked about there a whole afternoon. The young New +Zioners looked at her.</p> + +<p>"O Theophil, we <i>must</i> go to London," cried Jenny. She meant when they +were married.</p> + +<p>Theophil pressed her hand tenderly, as she impulsively sought his for +sympathy, and his eyes left Isabel's face a moment to smile a true "yes" +into Jenny's.</p> + +<p>Of course no one had eyes for anyone but Isabel that night. Was she not, +as the announcements had said, "of London," an ambassadress of beauty +from the capital of the great queen? There was really little she could +tell these clever young people, who amazed and attracted her by their +reality,--the unrealities of "intensity" and "modernity" and the rest +had, of course, already begun in London,--but she represented to them +the sparkle of the new beauty and truth they loved. She knew little +intimate anecdotes of the poets and painters they loved, piquant gossip +and brilliant <i>mots</i>; and then she was one of those women who are like +incense in a room, enriching by her very presence, exhaling mystery and +distinction, like a pomander of strange spices.</p> + +<p>You might love her for a long time or a little, but love her you were +obliged to while you were with her, whoever else you loved too. There +was no other word for it. Even little James Whalley had conscience-pangs +as he looked at Isabel, for he had been engaged for five years; but the +poet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was already +burnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. The +inflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state of +ignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature has +made them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, +indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not go +on maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of the +conditions of their precarious art that they must daily expose +themselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of the +emotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear their +death-song amid the flames.</p> + +<p>Theophil?</p> + +<p>Well, we can talk of Theophil again. Meanwhile Jenny was as much in love +with her herself, and he held Jenny's hand and loved her, O yes, so +dearly--and was quite safe. Fear not, little Jenny; it was only death, +you remember, that was to separate Jenny and Theophil.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Talbot--if she won't bore you--had made an interesting remark. She +had not escaped Isabel's charm, but there was "something," something a +little alarming about her,--a little like that wicked wall-paper.</p> + +<p>Jenny divulged this criticism over supper when her mother was out of +ear-shot.</p> + +<p>"How very clever of her!" exclaimed Isabel.</p> + +<p>"She said the same of Dvorak's music," said Jenny.</p> + +<p>"Good again," said Isabel. "How clever of her! Don't you feel how right +she is? We are all like that wall-paper, and everything we care about is +like it. The New Spirit--that is, the devil--is in that wall-paper. A +psychometrist could detect Wagner and Keats, and Schopenhauer, and +Rossetti and Swinburne, and all the rest of them in that wall-paper, +just as surely as he could have detected Tupper and Eliza Cook in the +wall-papers of 1851. Am I not right?"</p> + +<p>"If we could only paper New Zion like this!" exclaimed Theophil, a +curious new feeling of joy and pain shooting through him to hear a woman +thus expressing herself as an independent brain.</p> + +<p>"Yes! New Zion! I'd quite forgotten all about New Zion. It seems +impossible to think of you together."</p> + +<p>"And a little absurd, I suppose," said Theophil.</p> + +<p>"It is uncouth material, I admit," he continued, "and yet somehow it +amuses us to mould it all the more; and then you mustn't forget that we +had been given no other--but I don't suppose you can understand?" +(Theophil often used "we" in this imperatorial sense, meaning himself, +as of course he had every right to mean.)</p> + +<p>"O yes, but I can," Isabel hastened to correct. "I understand power."</p> + +<p>"Beauty always does," was the young minister's reply.</p> + +<p>"Besides," he presently resumed, "we are glad to have been +Nonconformists--once. A Puritan training is a good thing--to look back +upon. You are all the more thorough in your pleasures, the truer +humanist, for something of it still lurking in your blood."</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course you're right. I don't like the word 'pagan'; but for +want of a better, we might say that the best pagans have come of Puritan +stock. Besides, it is half the romance of life to have something to +escape from, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"And someone to escape with the other half," responded Theophil, nimble +as a real town wit.</p> + +<p>O it was a wonderful night. Let us build five tabernacles!</p> + +<p>"Good-night, dear Jenny."</p> + +<p>"Good-night, dear wonderful Isabel."</p> + +<p>So at last the two girls bade each other good-night at the door of +Jenny's bedroom, where Isabel was to sleep.</p> + +<p>Masterful youth! So wild to take, so eager to surrender, the Christian +name. Strange, what passion sometimes can be put into a +<i>Christian</i> name!</p> + +<p>When the door was shut on Isabel, she made no haste to undress. Indeed, +she sat down on the side of the bed as though she had been waiting to +sit down for ever so long, sat very still as in a dream, and an hour +went by and she was still sitting and gazing in front of her.</p> + +<p>And downstairs in the study, where the lamps were still burning, +Theophil was sitting by the fire in just the same curiously wrought and +withdrawn way, with just the same eyes.</p> + +<p>Isabel's room was over his. Presently she heard him moving about; then +she heard him coming upstairs. For a moment the air seemed to grow warm, +as she heard him softly pass her room; then she heard him close +his door.</p> + +<p>She shook her reverie from her, as though it had been a black veil full +of stars, and began to undress. Presently her eyes fell on a little pile +of handkerchiefs, with needle and cotton, and little letters printed on +dainty tapes, beside it. Jenny had forgotten to put away her sewing.</p> + +<p>Isabel took up one of the handkerchiefs, to which the needle and thread +were still attached, and read "Jenny Lond ..." (Don't you know that's +bad luck, Jenny?)</p> + +<p>"So soon as that! Is it so soon as that?" she sighed.</p> + +<p>Happy Jenny!</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE</h3> + +<p>Isabel was leaving very early next morning for London, so good-byes must +be brief. Jenny and Theophil saw her off at the station, but before +leaving Zion Place there had been a moment in which for the second time +in their lives she and Theophil had been alone.</p> + +<p>They had stood together in the little study and taken each other's +hands, without a word, and they had looked into each other's faces as +those look whom a look must last a long time.</p> + +<p>They didn't even say good-bye, for, if they were never to meet again, +the look was not good-bye. And meet again it was not unlikely they +would, for it had been already arranged that Isabel was to lead off the +autumn entertainments; but the look did not mean that, either. As life +had been planned for them, all subsequent meetings must be merely +trivialities. They had met once, and fate had decided that they must +never meet like that again. In that long look each knew that they met +and parted for ever, autumn arrangements notwithstanding.</p> + +<p>Each came out of that look as out of a great cathedral, and from that +moment till the train left Theophil, with an unwonted sense of +loneliness, by Jenny's side, they entered that cathedral no more. Their +devotions were done for that day, and they must resume their secular +duties, rippling idly over the great deeps of themselves.</p> + +<p>One always leaves a station from which a dear friend has just gone with +a certain subdued air, a certain bereaved hush in the voice, and even +Jenny felt a momentary loneliness too. But it was not long before the +doors of home opened again for her in the sound of Theophil's voice; +and in the sense of the old familiar nearness to him she was back again +safe in the only world she ever wished to dwell in.</p> + +<p>It was more of an effort with Theophil, and the voice that made home for +Jenny had a strange sound in his own ears, as though it were still +talking to Isabel; but the effort was soon made, and though Jenny teased +him a little and said she believed he had quite lost his, that was to +say <i>her</i>, heart to Isabel, of course she believed no such thing. Doubt +is too terrible a toy for true love to play with. You only dare to doubt +as you must sometimes face the fear of death.</p> + +<p>"I wish next October were here," said Jenny, artlessly; "it seems such a +long time to wait to see her again."</p> + +<p>Did Theophil wish the same? He hardly knew.</p> + +<p>"Distance is such a silly thing," went on Jenny. "It seems to have been +invented just to separate those who want to be together. It seems so +arbitrary, so unnecessary."</p> + +<p>"I suppose death is a form of distance," said Theophil, irrelevantly.</p> + +<p>"Life too, I'm afraid," said Jenny.</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed, life too," assented Theophil, dreamily.</p> + +<p>"If I were to die," said Jenny, suddenly, "would you still do what we +said?"</p> + +<p>"Why do you ask that, dear? You're a very serious little woman this +morning. Of course I would. You know. But why do you ask me now?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, only, dear, because I wonder whether we really ought to. Somehow +Isabel's visit has made me feel that life is a bigger, fuller thing than +I had dreamed, and that men like you, at all events, have duties towards +it even greater than your love for a little thing like me."</p> + +<p>"Jenny dear, don't talk like that. Why should you? You don't surely +doubt my love!"</p> + +<p>"Of course not, Theophil. It was only my silly little brain thinking +for once in a while,--and I don't mean to be unkind, but really I rather +mean it. Are you still quite sure there is nothing in the world more +important than love?"</p> + +<p>"Quite sure," he answered; "surer than ever--if that were possible. You +are not beginning to doubt that? Certainly it is a silly little brain, +if that's what its thinking is coming to."</p> + +<p>"I don't mean it for myself. Little women have nothing but love to think +of; but great men, men with a mission in the world ..."</p> + +<p>"Please, Jenny!"</p> + +<p>"Well, dear, I mean it; and I sometimes think that perhaps, perhaps, I'm +hindering your life; that if you were to be bothered with love at all, +you should have married some clever, wonderful woman,--woman, say, +like Isabel."</p> + +<p>"Jenny!"</p> + +<p>"Of course, dear, I know you don't think so," she continued; and he +realised that it was all artless accident on her part--"Still I cannot +help thinking it for you sometimes, dear, and sometimes I feel very +selfish to have your love,--as though, so to say, I was wearing someone +else's crown."</p> + +<p>"Jenny dear, will you promise never to talk like that again? A clever +woman! To be a woman is to be a genius, but to be a clever woman is to +be another man of talent."</p> + +<p>"That wouldn't be fair to Isabel."</p> + +<p>"No," assented Theophil, "Isabel is different too."</p> + +<p>And that brought them to Theophil's office and good-bye till the +evening.</p> + +<p>For the evening there had been fixed an important church meeting, the +first annual business meeting of minister and deacons since Londonderry +had come to New Zion. It was an occasion of jubilation all round, +particularly for Mr. Moggridge, who gave voice to New Zion's general +satisfaction, you may be sure, in no uncertain terms of praise.</p> + +<p>New Zion was, indeed, <i>New</i> Zion once more, he said, thanks to their +indefatigable young pastor,--a play on words which was received with the +applause due to so unmistakable a union of wit and truth.</p> + +<p>Nor did the proceedings result in mere compliments. The church found +itself rich enough to increase its minister's stipend; and when Theophil +took Mr. Moggridge back to supper, another surprise awaited him, in the +form of a suspicious-looking letter, which, being opened, revealed a +quite unexceptionable £50 note, enclosed in a sheet of note-paper, on +which was written--"From never mind who."</p> + +<p>The writing was unknown to Londonderry, but there could be only one +culprit.</p> + +<p>"Of course, Mr. Moggridge, this is from you. Really ..."</p> + +<p>"No, sir, indeed; you make a mistake there," protested Moggridge, lying +badly, and growing purple.</p> + +<p>"Who do <i>you</i> suspect, Jenny?"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course, it's Mr. Moggridge!"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Moggridge!" exclaimed Jenny impulsively, throwing her arms round +Mr. Moggridge's surprised shoulders, and kissing him somewhere in his +whiskers,--"Mr. Moggridge! you are the dearest, kindest man in the +world!"</p> + +<p>And Jenny was not far wrong.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge, by way of changing the subject, +and warmly grasping the young man's hand, "New Zion's proud of you, +sir--and so is Eli Moggridge."</p> + +<p>And that moment would have been as good for all three, even without the +fifty-pound note.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE</h3> + +<p>I realize that any attempt henceforth to enchain the reader's interest +with church meetings, or the like enthralments, will be more than +hopeless. That is the worst of allowing love to creep into one's story. +He insists on having the stage to himself, and in that determination the +audience is entirely with him. Previously you may have been interested +in all kinds of peaceable, unexciting things, far more good for you, but +enter love, and all the rest is suddenly fallen tame beyond endurance.</p> + +<p>It is of no use to urge that life's bill of the play includes many +hardly less brilliant and attractive performers. They are all well +enough in their way, till the eternal Paganini is there with his old +fiddle once more at his shoulder; then there is an end of all +seriousness, or a beginning, as you please.</p> + +<p>Well, I'll do my best to get over the six months between March and +October as quickly as possible; and, indeed, it will not be very +difficult, after all, for very little happened, to speak of, during that +time to any of the chief actors engaged in making this history.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was this consideration that prompted old Mr. Talbot--O, +bother old Mr. Talbot!--that prompted old Mr. Talbot, I say, to take the +important step of dying, when, poor old man! his death would give the +least possible trouble.</p> + +<p>There seemed as little reason for his dying as there had seemed for his +living, for as far as anyone knew there was nothing the matter with him, +except an extreme sleepiness of an evening, which was but natural in an +old weary man who still kept at his stone-masonry though he was +full seventy.</p> + +<p>Night after night, for some weeks, he had been getting sleepier and +sleepier.</p> + +<p>"Why, dad, I never saw such an old sleepy-head"--his wife had rallied +him good-naturedly one night, looking at him with a sudden odd +expression in her face.</p> + +<p>"Eh, lass, but I was noddin' and no mistake," said the old man, +struggling drowsily with the heaviness, and presently succumbing +once more.</p> + +<p>"He's off again," said Mrs. Talbot to herself, as she lifted the lid of +a pent saucepan in which some boiled onions were mightily bubbling in a +wild little world of steam.</p> + +<p>Presently the old man sighed deeply,--so you would have thought; but +Mrs. Talbot, hurrying to him, knew that he had tried to say "Jane," and +had said it for the last time.</p> + +<p>Yes, he had been getting sleepier and sleepier; all his life he had been +trying to sleep, and at last he slept.</p> + +<p>To most people Mr. Talbot's death was the first intimation of his ever +having lived, and one rather resents for the old man the one day's +publicity which death enforced upon him. It was indeed well for him that +he was dead, for such unwonted excitement would surely have killed him. +This important coming and going of undertakers; this populous invasion +of friends talking like muffled drums in the front parlour, and passing +up and down and up and down the stairs, in and out and in and out of his +still room; this throng of neighbours awaiting him in the streets; these +plumed impatient horses, and these carriages of dark grandeur--"Jane, +why ever didn't you bury me by the back door?" would surely have been +the old man's pitiful complaint could he have known.</p> + +<p>However, the day passed and the old man was safe at last, where no +front-parlour visitors should affright him more, and where no one would +trouble his old brains for speech any more; and to all, save one, his +death was but as though he had moved a little farther into the kitchen.</p> + +<p>It seemed almost strange that even his wife should miss him. One had +thought so little of them as man and wife. One could hardly, even by +process of thinking, realise that between these rinded and wrinkled +beings love had once hung like a rosy cloud, from which one day had +sprung Jenny.</p> + +<p>On one or two occasions, indeed, they had been surprised in an uncanny +semblance of a caress, and once in a while an almost supernatural +retrospect had lit up and vanished again in an unaccustomed tender word; +and to have been present then was to feel somehow frightened.</p> + +<p>Ah! the gay young leaves no longer kiss across in the morning sun, but +the stern old trees have meetings you know not of far beneath the +ground. Their roots are twisted and twined in a wonderful embrace there; +there in the dark they are very close together, and shall not be +wrenched apart without groanings that cannot be uttered.</p> + +<p>Jenny can hardly be said to have missed her father, except through her +mother, who seemed suddenly to grow a little deafer, a little more +dim-sighted, just a trifle less brisk and busy than before, and with a +touch about her of that old-age awesomeness that mutters to itself in +corners and seems to know strange things.</p> + +<p>Yes, Jane missed her John. Her old heart knew that he was no longer +sitting in the kitchen.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER</h3> + +<p>Jenny and her old mother began to grow closer to each other at this +time. Perhaps it was because the old woman felt lonelier, and perhaps, +too, because the loss of her old man had sent her thoughts wandering +among the enchanted fields of her young days, that she began to talk +sometimes to Jenny about her marriage, and to give her quaint advice on +the subject of "managing" husbands; "as if," Jenny smilingly said to +herself, "an old man like father was the same, belonged even to the same +race, as Theophil."</p> + +<p>Perhaps Mrs. Talbot scented some such reflection in Jenny's expression; +at all events, she answered it with an "Eh, but all men are alike, my +dear, under their skins,--all alike, and they need humouring and +managing just in the same way, prince or peasant."</p> + +<p>The idea of "managing" Theophil had something repulsive in it for Jenny; +there was an element of deceit, of cunning, implied which didn't go with +her ideas of true love and the life beautiful of which she was dreaming. +She didn't believe that men and women who loved were really different +from each other, and perhaps she was right.</p> + +<p>About this time, too, Mrs. Talbot began to produce from mysterious +treasure-caves, entered apparently from an old press in her bedroom, all +kinds of wonderful things which would be useful to Jenny some day in her +house: terrible little ornaments,--very sacred, though,--sad +quaintnesses of the spirit of beauty pathetically fumbling about in +country brains; wool mats worked in the primary colours; and such wool +wonders as a wool basket of flowers, in which real wool flowers grew out +of a wool basket which you held by an over-arching wool handle, the +whole worked with undeniable but how forlorn ingenuity,--a prehistoric +relic of Mrs. Talbot's legendary school-days: survivals from a period +which is best summed up in the one wonderful word "antimacassar," a +period when for some unrecorded reason men and women had to protect +their furniture against their oleaginous selves, and beautiful locks +were guarded from lover's fingers by coats of triple oil.</p> + +<p>But these were things worth having, too,--bits of old lace and prim +embroidery, that bore the stamp of a refinement that is never +old-fashioned; and when Mrs. Talbot descended from the beautiful she +could show you real treasures.</p> + +<p>I don't think there was any word in the language, not even Bible words, +which Mrs. Talbot pronounced with such an accent of solemnity as the +word "linen." The words "China" and "cut glass," and perhaps "silver," +ran it close, but "linen" was undoubtedly the word in which all Mrs. +Talbot's sense of the seriousness of living, her sense of household +distinction, her deep sense of the importance of prosperity, and her +stern love of cleanliness found most impressive utterance.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Talbot could never have smiled as she said "linen."</p> + +<p>And the linen she had been storing for Jenny might indeed have been the +very stuff of which lilies are made, lilies smelling of lavender.</p> + +<p>Such pairs of sheets! A queen might even fear to await her lord lying +amid such linen; for white indeed must be the body that dares rivalry +with Mrs. Talbot's sheets,--sheets which might indeed be said to settle +that old question of the snows of yester-year.</p> + +<p><i>Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan</i>?</p> + +<p>Surely they have been settling, flake on flake, year after year, in Mrs. +Talbot's linen-press, till at last there is quite a snowdrift of fair +white linen for Jenny and Theophil to lie in.</p> + +<p>Yes! another six months and Christmas will be here; and, after +Christmas is turned, the weeks till February the 12th--the second +anniversary of Theophil's coming to New Zion--will fly by in no time.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile Mrs. Talbot and Jenny--with occasional contributions from +Theophil--began to busy themselves with Jenny's bottom drawer.</p> + +<p>Translated into the language of those more magnificent circles in which +this simple-hearted romance has no desire to move, a "bottom drawer" +might be described as a trousseau, though such translation would be only +partially correct. A bottom drawer is a good deal more than a trousseau. +It is the corner of a girl's wardrobe, usually its bottom drawer, where +the home that is to be begins to take shape in deposits of various +kissed objects, minor articles of apparel, of ornament or +use,--handkerchiefs such as we have already seen Jenny marking, in +defiance of the old prophecy that the bride who dares even to write her +married name before her marriage will never know a wedding day; quaint +candlesticks that had to be picked up in some old curiosity shop as come +upon or be missed altogether; pretty shoes of a pattern you weren't +likely to meet with again; occasionally, perhaps, even an anticipatory +wedding present, that some friend who would be far away in Australia +when the day came had already contributed; a pretty tea-service Theophil +had suddenly taken a fancy to buy for Jenny one day,--"any straw will +help a nest;" a sweet and rather naughty picture that must never be hung +anywhere but in their little sacred bedroom,--"O love, our little room!"</p> + +<p>How often did Jenny bend lovingly over that drawer, which by now had +spread itself over a whole chest of drawers,--for home was growing, +growing,--only a few more months and it would have grown so big and real +that nothing but a little house would hold it. And Theophil was brought +sometimes to peep in too,--"O love, think of it--our little home."</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME</h3> + +<p>Have I seemed to shirk the subject of Theophil's feelings all this time?</p> + +<p>Well, I confess I have rather shrunk from writing down in so many words +that he was in love with Isabel,--obvious as the fact has been,--just as +he himself shrank from admitting the same truth even to his own soul.</p> + +<p>When he had sat up in his study that night of the recital, he had looked +the whole sad splendid truth in its wonderful face, had loved it wildly +for an hour, and then shut his eyes to it for ever.</p> + +<p>He knew that Isabel was the woman God had made for him, sweet, dear +Jenny the woman he had made for himself, and he bowed before the work of +the greater artist.</p> + +<p>Never voice nor look nor touch of woman had affected Theophil before as +the least tone or glance or movement of Isabel stirred him to the centre +of his being. To meet her eyes was to release a music that went +shuddering through the whole world; her lightest word was filled with +echoes of infinite things. Not a lover only, but anyone with instincts +for such perceptions, looking at Isabel, would have said: There is a +woman who is needed to make some man a great poet, a great artist, some +kind of great man! She belongs to the history-making women. Hundreds of +women will attract men by the hundred where she will attract +comparatively few, but that few will be the pick of men; and some day, +when the other women have gone the way of all sweet roses, she will +still remain (if she has found an artist to understand her face) the +frontispiece of some distinguished biography, or hang in a gallery of +the period among the few faces that were indestructibly personal; not +the faces that have lived, but the faces that still go on living, the +faces that are influences still, the unique, daemonic faces.</p> + +<p>Isabel was indeed a muse that waited for her poet. The mere idea of such +a woman, cherished across dividing seas and separating years, will help +a man be great. To grow great near or far is the one way to be hers, and +to pile up great work for her sake is perhaps the best way to love her. +She could never be his wife, but she might still be his muse, resolved +Theophil, feigning in that reflection for the moment a more human +comfort than, alas! there really was.</p> + +<p>But was there to be no loss to Jenny in this?</p> + +<blockquote> +"True love in this differs from gold or clay,<br> +That to divide is not to take away."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>It is the convenient old plea of the poets, and yet it is sometimes +true. It was true here. There is, I know, a sort of primitive man or +woman--I believe they will some day be exhibited in menageries--who +cannot be on with a new love without being ungratefully off with the +old. All depends of what the two loves are made. If it is bodily fire +and no more, of course the new love will put out the old as the great +sun puts out a little smouldering fire; and the majority of so-called +love-stories are merely disastrous conflagrations of that sort. In such +cases the new love is no sooner found than the old becomes grievous, a +burden; by a malignant witchcraft the old charms have grown veritably +repellent, and "all the heaven that was" irretrievably disenchanted. +Which is the illusion, one wonders,--the original enchantment or the +final disenchantment?</p> + +<p>When, however, love can give a better account of its preferences than +this, and point out, say in Jenny, many good reasons why she was at +first and must for ever remain love-worthy, whatever rival reasons for +love another woman may bring; when too there is added to those reasons +for loving Jenny the dear habit of loving her, the gratitude--love must +forgive the word--which has accumulated interest upon the original love, +the beauties that have been gained by becoming familiarities, and the +familiarities that have become beauties by very use,--well, really, is +it such a hardship, after all, for a man to be expected to keep true to +his Jenny?</p> + +<p>Oh! but passion doesn't reason like this. Indeed, O passionate reader! +Is passion, then, merely a wild beast, a savage, a blind fire? Must it +forfeit its fine name if it remembers mercy or owns duty? Is it any less +passion because it refuses sometimes to glut itself, and dares to go +hungry all its days instead; any less passion because it chooses to burn +up its own heart in an agony of its own consuming fire?</p> + +<p>Mere violence is not a strength but a weakness in passion, and sometimes +there is more passion in patience than in anything else in the world. A +passion that knows not pity is merely a daemonic possession, and should +be taken to the madhouse.</p> + +<p>I confess that there is nothing in the world more amazing to me than the +easy brutality with which one hears of some men doing what is called +"breaking off their engagements." Only a new face has to show itself, +and the old face at once disappears with a blow and a wail.</p> + +<p>Murder, of course, is one way out of many difficult situations, and the +worst kinds of murder are by no means capital offences. It is true that +all engagements are not made by the same vital bonds as that of Jenny's +and Theophil's, but many are. For a man wilfully to break an engagement +means sometimes that the whole love-life in a woman is atrophied, all +that made her woman stabbed to the quick of life.</p> + +<p>Yet no one who knows anything of women can have failed to remark that +women themselves are even more brutal in this matter. Nothing could +exceed the executioner-like promptitude with which a woman will despatch +a man for whom she has ceased to care. But in her case there is to be +urged that, though fundamentally love is of equal importance to man and +woman, it does not so often mean the absolute saving or wrecking of a +man's life as it does a woman's. It is not a disgrace to a man to be +jilted; it is to a woman. For a woman to be jilted is for her to have +failed,--as a woman; and for a woman to have failed as a woman is for +her to value no other success.</p> + +<p>All this to maintain, in spite of the reader, that Londonderry is no +milksop because he is not going to jilt--that is, murder--poor little +Jenny, throw up New Zion, and seek his new love on the wild winds. But +the agony of it none the less! O Jenny! Jenny! sweet and true and good +and dear as ever,--if only you would just take a sudden fancy for +someone else!</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the months were going by, and the day drawing nearer when, for +a brief moment of fire, the orbits of those two separated lives were to +touch once more.</p> + +<p>What of Isabel during these months? The woman whom God had created for +Theophilus Londonderry did not forget her promise to write to the woman +whom Theophilus Londonderry had created in his own image. Wonderful +letters, of course! Why don't women publish volumes of their letters, as +men collect their scattered essays? There is no writing in the world +more immediately, conqueringly personal than a really clever woman's +letters; and they are not always compromising.</p> + +<p>Isabel's letters were the perfection of self-expression. Her handwriting +swept across the page just as she would walk down a street, at once +eager and yet stately and subtle-rhythmed; the shape of some of the +words reminded you of her hats,--hats everyone thought she paid guineas +for, but which she made for herself at a cost perhaps of five shillings: +hats which were Paris with a touch of fairyland, somewhere an +unobtrusive feather of the fantastic, somewhere a personal magic in the +inimitable twist or lie of a bow--; her face looked out at you from a +<i>g</i> or an <i>x</i>, a gesture flashed back to you in a sudden distinguished +stroke of the pen, and her voice was somewhere, everywhere, among the +words, like a violin.</p> + +<p>Without any apparent literary device she contrived to make you, while +you read her letters, do what she was doing, see what she was seeing, +and form, as though acted on by some magic property in the words, +pictures of all she told you.</p> + +<p>One piece of news you would not expect her to have told. I have said +that women are both executioners of the tiresome. In this Isabel, I +fear, was no exception to her sex. Like most independent girls in +London, she had a little theatre-guard of devoted men friends, who took +it in turn to companion her to plays or picture-galleries; and these, +with admirable tact, she contrived to keep in, to them, the +unsatisfactory relation of brothers. One of these, however, had of late +been growing dangerously unfraternal. His presents had been growing +expensive. Cigarettes and chocolates, and pretty editions, like gloves, +and boxes of flowers, are every pretty woman's lawful spoils; but +costlier gifts are to be looked on with suspicion. Besides, the doomed +man's letters had been growing warmer. Indeed, Isabel remembered with +something like a shudder, so soon as she was back in her little room, +with its curious pictures and its general sense of exotic refinement, +that she had allowed him to kiss her the last time they had been +together. The reminiscence decided her. Theophil could never be hers; +but at least no facile or mediocre attachments should fill his place. So +at once there is posted a letter, as kind as cruelty can make it, and +with it go a little ormolu clock, a pair of mother-of-pearl +opera-glasses, a lovely fan it was hard, Isabel, to part with,--and +there is an end of that.</p> + +<p>"Not after Theophil!" she sighed, as she took up her great Persian cat, +and, like it, sat gazing into the fire that flickered dreamily among her +fantastic possessions,--a mystery gazing idly into a mystery.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>"O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE ..."</h3> + +<p>Well, the months have at last gone by,--dark solid bodies of absence, +not a day mercifully lost count of by the old calendar-maker, not an +hour of the long sentence remitted for a brave patience in the waiting. +They are reckoning by weeks at last, and now, excitedly, by days, +breathlessly now by little fast-dispersing hours.</p> + +<p>The blackness that filled the world was a month ago streaked with gray; +three weeks ago there was a line of faint colour in the east; a +fortnight, and there are scarlet plumes in the far heaven, and a faint +twitter of song; a week, and the whole sky is a commotion of glory +and birds.</p> + +<p>To meet again! O to meet again, just to look at each other again! We are +philosophers, we are brave, we shall remember Jenny, but O! the rapture +of just beholding each other again.</p> + +<p>"Thank God, you are alive! you are real! O Theophil, there is the little +scar on your forehead I've been longing to see."</p> + +<p>"Yes! it is Isabel! She walks just as she did a thousand years ago. I am +carrying her rugs. How well I remember her umbrella!"</p> + +<p>"How fantastic absence is!" said Isabel, as the three friends sat once +more that evening in the little study where nothing seemed to have +changed, and where they seemed to have been sitting all the hours of +those now quite disrespectfully forgotten months.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but how real!" said Jenny. It was Jenny who said "how real!"</p> + +<p>How fantastic, too, is the present! Sometimes, perhaps nearly always, it +tortures us with the unreality, the unrealisability of precious moments +that are flying, flying, and can never come again; and at other times +it equally eludes us with a sense of their indestructibility. To-night +the present had chosen to seem real. Theophil felt, as he looked at +Isabel, that this wonderful nearness could never pass away. Her dress, +her coiled <i>cendré</i> hair, her soft smile, her very attitudes, seemed to +wear a curious expression of everlastingness. Yes, she would sit just +like that, and he and Jenny would sit near her for ever and ever. No +mere abstractions like Time and Space could fill with emptiness the +place where she now sat and smiled. In some mystical way eternity had +breathed upon this hour and given it immortality. It had been suddenly +touched with a wand into an enchanted permanence. Theosophists tell of +an astral light, where every moment of time endures in strange paintings +upon space. Isabel and Theophil and Jenny were sitting together in the +astral light.</p> + +<p>And yet the hours had already been flying, for, the recital was already +over,--New Zion more in love with Isabel than ever. The same little +supper as six months ago had been merry and come to an end, the guests +had gone, the house was quiet, and this hour that seemed so real was the +frail last of that day of dreams.</p> + +<p>Yes! but an arrangement had been made which perhaps accounts for the +security of that hour. Isabel's agents had planned for her a little +circular tour in northern towns comparatively adjacent to Coalchester, +and when a fortnight of such recitals was ended, she was to return and +give still another recital at New Zion. Then there must be parting, real +black parting again. Meanwhile, the fortnight that lay between the two +days of meeting gained a curious sense of being really spent together. +As two walking together on a long road may separate, and one walk till +almost out of sight of the other and then slowly return, but the two +endure no sense of parting, feeling together all the time, so Isabel +and Theophil felt about this fortnight.</p> + +<p>But did they speak no word, look no look all these hours, of all their +hearts cried out to say? Was Jenny there all the time? Nearly. Still +there was a moment granted them, which, added to the two moments +previously recorded, made a total perhaps of four minutes, which life so +far generously allowed them to be alone together in. Yet such is love's +miraculous velocity that it had said all it needed to say, given all, in +those four minutes. All it had to say to-night was just two Christian +names, said so solemnly, so tenderly, so honestly. Just "Isabel," just +"Theophil," and a long quiet clasp of hand and eyes. It was enough. It +is written.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS</h3> + +<p>It was not enough!</p> + +<p>If you would safely renounce a joy, you had best enjoy something of it +first. Renunciation must have something to live on. You can "take up the +whole of love and utter it," and <i>then</i> "say adieu for ever," but +not before.</p> + +<p>I have asked mercy for Jenny, though it was perhaps hardly necessary, +for the world always pities Jenny. Now I would ask it for Isabel and +Theophil, who are thus quietly to sacrifice the greatest thing in their +lives, the one reality for which they have come into existence, for +Jenny's sake. Great is their love for each other, but even greater and +stranger must be their involuntary love for an invisible goodness, an +ideal of ineffable pity. They are going to die that Jenny may live.</p> + +<p>Strange, this gentle heroism of human creatures one for the other. Would +it be unfair to ask that each should support the anguish of his own +destiny, and that when Jenny's turn has come she should take her +lightning? Hers, had she known it, was the cup of anguish here; for +Theophil and Isabel had been decreed the cup of joy. But will they drink +it? No, they will change the cups; perhaps the bitter cup will grow +sweet near the dregs, being drunk together.</p> + +<p>Yet this love of theirs, this perilous chance for Jenny, was none of +their making. Their joy had been given to them by unseen hands. It is +fairly theirs. Next time, perhaps, it will be their turn to suffer. It +is Jenny's now...</p> + +<p>But no! the good heart of humanity will defeat the cruel ruling of the +gods. Let the lightning come upon them--not little Jenny.</p> + +<p>Yet for this, Jenny, you will not grudge them their piteous reward. +Yours are all the years, Jenny. You will spare them one day out of all +the years. Think, Jenny, of the hours and hours and hours you and +Theophil have spent in careless happiness, and they--one almost laughs +to think of it--have just so far been granted four minutes. For four +minutes out of infinite time life has privileged them to be +alone together.</p> + +<p>It will be far safer too. Otherwise you know not with what fearful flame +love will fill the chasms under ground, circling and seething in the +fiery darkness. Theophil loves you, but some day your home will suddenly +be rent from cope to base, unless his poor heart may speak, yea, babble +itself, just once in Isabel's ears.</p> + +<p>A temptation had come to Theophil. At first he put it aside. Then +passion, wiser for once than reason, told him that it was a necessity, +and he knew that passion was right. A week of the fortnight had gone, +and Theophil remembered that Isabel would now be in the neighbourhood of +certain famous woods where in his boyhood he had often wandered, and he +remembered that she was to have the Monday quite free. That Monday they +should spend together in those enchanted woods. His secular business +often took him to towns thirty or forty miles away, and it was not +startling for him not to return till late at night. Thus Isabel and he +should steal their one day out of all the years.</p> + +<p>So there went a note without one word of love in it to tell Isabel that +love was coming by the morning train; and so on that morning Isabel +stood waiting for love at that little wayside station, and presently, +with a mighty rushing sound of iron and brass, love came and stood very +quietly by her side, and looked into her eyes.</p> + +<p>They took each other's hands quietly, and left the station without a +word; nor did they speak for a long while, walking blissfully side by +side through a village street which was to take them to the green and +lonely woods. Soon the houses were passed, and they still walked on +silent, listening to the song of their nearness.</p> + +<p>Now, as they drank each other's presence through every feasting nerve, +they knew how starved they had been. As the lane narrowed and gloomed +green, dipping through caverns of bright leaves, they drew closer, and +smiled gently on each other; but they were not going to speak for a long +while yet. Had they not come away into this loneliness that they might +be silent together, that they might sit, hour after hour, and just watch +each other, lost in an ecstasy of contemplation, a trance of +recognition, a fascination that was almost fearful, that was so kind and +yet so cruel in its very power?</p> + +<p>The woods are very still, but there is nothing in the world so still as +these two lovers, as they lie down on the green earth and gaze on each +other, hour after hour. When they find a word as great as their +silence, they will speak it--but they will find none except it be +"Isabel," except it be "Theophil."</p> + +<p>And great passion has as little use for caresses as for words, and +kisses, which gay sensual love gathers greedily like little golden +flowers, and pays for nimbly with little, pretty words, will be almost +as rare as words.</p> + +<p>Kisses! it is not to eat bonbons that these two have come out into the +woods.</p> + +<p>Kisses! what kiss of the blind lips could match the kiss of those rapt +tragic eyes!</p> + +<p>Kisses are but the diminutives of the great word "love;" they are but +the small change of passion, meteorites, star-dust of the great and +terrible planet.</p> + +<p>Their souls are swung high above time and space in one never-ending +kiss,--the kiss of that predestined irrefragable union, of which +meetings and partings and kisses and caresses and words, and every other +fragmentary mode of expression, are but trivial accidents, to which +distance is still nearness, and nearness is still distance.</p> + +<p>Their love is a property of eternal elements. It is fated as the union +of magnetic powers, it obeys chemic laws of irresistible combination. +They are Isabel and Theophil,--that is their love; they are in the world +together,--that is their marriage.</p> + +<p>But passion will not be all day a tragedian. He has many moods. He is a +great wit,--how bright, how bright, he makes the brain!--a merry +comrade, a little, tender, silly child; and these two sad ones laughed +together, too, in the still woods,--for was not the most exquisite +humourist in the world their companion, love, who is all things by +turns, and all things wise?</p> + +<p>And they feasted together, wine and great grapes, spread out on the +earth's green table; and they called each other silly, beautiful names, +and they feigned sad little glad stories--and called the wood their +home: this was their breakfast-oak, and that glade should be their great +hall, and high, high up in yonder beech, where the squirrel was sitting, +should be their secret little bed-chamber, hung in blue and green, with +a ceiling of stars. They should climb it each night on a ladder of +moonlight, and slide down from it each morning on the first strong rays +of the sun. And sometimes if it frightened them with being too near +heaven, they would seek out a dell of fine moss and creep close together +into the arms of the kind earth-mother, and then sleep while the stars +kept watch.</p> + +<p>O, yes, it would be a wonderful life together.</p> + +<p>Then suddenly the child's play would cease, as the birds stop singing +with the coming of the stars, and silence would sweep over them again, +and a great kiss would leap out of the silence, like a flame that lights +up heaven from north to south, and they would hang together, lost in an +anguish of desire.</p> + +<p>The setting sun was turning the wood into halls of strange light, and +spreading golden couches here and there in its deep recesses.</p> + +<p>"Theophil..." sighed Isabel.</p> + +<p>"Wife..." sighed Theophil--(ah! Jenny!) and then a voice that seemed to +be neither's, and yet seemed to be the voice of both,--a voice like a +dove smothered in sweetness between their breasts,--said, "Let us go +deeper into the wood."</p> + +<p>Later, when the stars had come, two white faces came glimmering from the +innermost chancel of the wood's green darkness. They passed close +together, still as phantoms among the trees, and when they came out on +to the lane they stood still.</p> + +<p>"Theophil," said one voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send for +you, will you promise me to come?"</p> + +<p>"Isabel," said another voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send +for you, will you promise <i>me</i> to come?"</p> + +<p>And each voice vowed to the other, and said, "I would come, and I would +go with you."</p> + +<p>And all these words had once been Jenny's, but they had been Isabel's +first.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> +<br> + +<h3>PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS</h3> + +<p>As the sharing of a cruel or unworthy secret must be the most terrible +of all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is the +most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and +Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, +and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of +inner union which they felt no extension of space or endurance of time +could destroy.</p> + +<p>Such a marriage as theirs is, of course, the dream of all separated +lovers, "the love that waited and in waiting died" the theme of many +poets; and there have been great historic love-stories to prove such +love a possibility of human hearts; yet, alas! for the experiment that +must so often fail, for the weak wills of loving that will so truly and +yet must loose their holds,--the fire that promised itself food in +memory for a thousand years, but needs the sensual fuel of sight and +touch after all; the love that believed it could go on trusting through +centuries of silence, yet dies at last of little earthly doubts!</p> + +<p>For this tremendous fast which you are to make believe a feast, trust in +each other is the one condition that may avail. This trust must come of +no mere exchange of vow or deeply-sworn and eloquent promise; it must be +knowledge one heart of the other, clear and absolute; and such knowledge +in your short hour of revelation you must have learned so passionately +that, like poetry learnt in childhood, it is henceforth no longer a +forgettable, detachable part of your mind's furniture, but a well-spring +of instinct for ever. Is your lady true? You will ask that only when you +ask: Is she beautiful?</p> + +<p>Such confidence as this is comparatively common in friendship, but it +is very rare in love: whether it was to be justified in the case of +Isabel and Theophil, time alone could show. Meanwhile they felt calm and +happy, as only two can feel who have discovered in each other the one +unchanging reality in a world of flowing shadow.</p> + +<p>It was very wonderful, in quite a new way, to meet again. Their love was +no longer hunger and unrest, it had gained the impassioned peace of +great accepted realities. It was married love now. As the quiet firm +hands held each other again, there seemed to be long retrospects of +tried and tender intercourse in their very touch. Their eyes held a past +in them as well as a future. There was no hurry of the emotions now, no +reason for haste in the seeking and giving of tenderness, no need to +snatch and clutch the good gifts of love as though there was but a short +day for the giving. Their love had grown conscious of its eternity.</p> + +<p>It held but one lasting sadness,--that it might not be revealed to +Jenny. So little did they regard their love as one essentially for +concealment, that the temptation to include Jenny in their bond was at +moments a danger. It was so beautiful, and actually, though +unconsciously, she was so integral a part of its beauty.</p> + +<p>Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say, +jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart +of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being +the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible +trinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under +like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a +strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's +one unworthiness, its egoism. As the <i>égoisme à deux</i> is finer than an +egoism of one, so this <i>égoisme à trois</i>, if you will, is again finer by +its additional inclusiveness.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too. +But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such a +union is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved both +Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in +the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was +more impassioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that +it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness, +could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meeting +in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea.</p> + +<p>But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They had +vowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy, +but only transfigure, after all,--yet the test was lightning; and for +whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win +them Paradise?</p> + +<p>No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told... +Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of +chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded +moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,--when we withdraw +into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,--and Jenny, +by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of +them there.</p> + +<p>It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone +down, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for +some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience +was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, +entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his +vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the +lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the +vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr. +Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but +that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each +other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak +anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,--</p> + +<p>"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!"</p> + +<p>But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found +me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I +love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a +man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could +be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong +for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost +once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so +calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes +for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark +half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back +dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had +expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them +here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only +seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms.</p> + +<p>Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock +had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must +sit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim +reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little +but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good, +and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and +beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her +choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget +that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that +dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how +happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in +brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the +darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If +only she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No! +she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seen +them, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till she +had made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know. +That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then she +might speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go,--she +must not be later than they; they would be passing down to the hall +presently, she must be there before them,--she must be quick,--she must +go now....</p> + +<p>As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled a +recognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smile +back at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white, +and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her.</p> + +<p>She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the common +resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a +happiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguish +was too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she might +have felt towards death,--it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart +there was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she felt +that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,--just as a +child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too +young to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have loved +their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!)</p> + +<p>Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have +spared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs. +Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written, +and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful +joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It was +the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons; +but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to +understand it too. It was called a "Denial," and began:--</p> + +<blockquote> +"We have met late--it is too late to meet,<br> + O friend, not more than friend!<br> +Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet,<br> +And if I step or stir, I touch the end.<br> +<br> +In this last jeopardy<br> +Can I approach thee,--I, who cannot move?<br> +How shall I answer thy request for love?<br> + Look in my face and see.<br> +<br> +"I might have loved thee in some former days.<br> + Oh, then, my spirits had leapt<br> +As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise!<br> +Before these faded cheeks were overwept,<br> + Had this been asked of me,<br> +To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,--<br> +I should have said still...Yes, but <i>smiled</i> and said,<br> + 'Look in my face and see!'<br> +<br> +"But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart<br> + And drowned it in life's surge.<br> +In all your wide warm earth I have no part--<br> +Light song overcomes me like a dirge.<br> + Could love's great harmony<br> +The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose,<br> +Not weigh me down? am <i>I</i> a wife to choose?<br> + Look in my face and see--<br> +<br> +"While I behold, as plain as one who dreams,<br> + Some woman of full worth,<br> +Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's,<br> +Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth<br> +<br> +One younger, more thought-free<br> +And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget,<br> +With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet--<br> + Look in my face and see!<br> +<br> +"So farewell thou, whom I have known too late<br> + To let thee come so near.<br> +Be counted happy while men call thee great,<br> +And one beloved woman feels thee dear!--<br> + Not I!--that cannot be,<br> +I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where<br> +The change shall take me worse, and no one dare<br> + Look in my face and see."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel +recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny +felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its +destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last +verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,--</p> + +<blockquote> +"Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine<br> + I bless thee from all such!<br> +I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine,<br> +Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch<br> +<br> +Of loyal troth. For me,<br> +I love thee not, I love thee not!--away!<br> +There's no more courage in my soul to say<br> + 'Look in my face and see.'"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss +Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance, +and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently +reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought +of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge.</p> + +<p>"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she +was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with +sudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment to +its close.</p> + +<p>Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny +along the few yards to home.</p> + +<p>"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that. +It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two +people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?"</p> + +<p>Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of +giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear."</p> + +<p>"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears."</p> + +<p>When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real +anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a +passing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness. +She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly, +but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible +to think of two people having to part like that," she said again.</p> + +<p>And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual.</p> + +<p>"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not +see each other for a long time again."</p> + +<p>"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought +there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace.</p> + +<p>When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange," +said Isabel.</p> + +<p>"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil.</p> + +<p>So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her +bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed.</p> + +<p>"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go +back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear, +like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing +but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night."</p> + +<p>And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jenny +had said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and if +presently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because he +did not know the reason of her tears?</p> + +<p>On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so that +Theophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny again +till the evening.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> +<br> + +<h3>IN WHICH JENNY CRIES</h3> + +<p>Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as she +usually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but at +last, when the quiet secure hour which had always been theirs between +dinner and bedtime had come, she came into his room quietly and sat in +her accustomed chair.</p> + +<p>She had been fighting all day to gain strength for this hour, and her +will was bravely set to speak what must be spoken. But she must firmly +choke back all the sweetness of the memories which sprang to her with +kind eyes, as the familiar little room that had not changed opened its +arms to her, alas! an ironical symbol of unchangeableness. One touch of +tenderness too vivid and she would break down.</p> + +<p>And here was Theophil rising from his desk and coming to her with true +love in his eyes, as he had done so many, many happy nights.</p> + +<p>Was it, after all, a dream--that terrible picture of two lighted figures +that was for ever in her eyes? No, there was a voice that went day and +night with the dream, a voice of terrible tenderness that kept crying: +"Meantime I bless thee ... "--"I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to +wine ..." Ah, no, it was real, real. The trial was not to pass from her +in a dream.</p> + +<p>Theophil had knelt down at her side and taken her hand gently and would +have kissed her, but that her eyes were so full of pain as she turned +them to meet his. Besides, strange words to hear! she was asking him not +to kiss her.</p> + +<p>"Theophil dear, don't kiss me yet. I have something to say, and if you +kiss me I shall have no strength to say it."</p> + +<p>"Jenny!"</p> + +<p>"Dear," she began with a voice that seemed to bleed at every word, "I +want to be so kind. I don't want to hurt you with a single word. You'll +believe that, won't you?"</p> + +<p>Theophil pressed her hand for assent, but already in a flash the whole +revelation was upon him. Jenny knew he loved Isabel. This awful pain +that was all over her was the lightning from which they had willed +to save her.</p> + +<p>"Theophil," Jenny had gone on, and there seemed a death in every word, +"I know that you love Isabel."</p> + +<p>"O Jenny!"</p> + +<p>"I saw you together, dear, in the vestry last night. It was an accident. +You didn't hear me."</p> + +<p>"O my Jenny! I would rather have died than this."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think you would, dear. But you must not be too sad. Life is +terrible,--like this. I understand it now. I know it was not you, or +Isabel, or me. It was just fate--and we must try and help each other. +Don't think I have been only sorry for myself. Don't think that of me. +But I think you should have trusted me, dear."</p> + +<p>"We longed to tell you," said Theophil, with his head bowed in distress +in Jenny's lap, while she softly stroked his hair with an absent +tenderness, though her eyes looked straight in front of her, and her +voice was as if she were talking to herself.</p> + +<p>"We longed to tell you," he repeated.</p> + +<p>"O I wish you had."</p> + +<p>"We feared it, dear."</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes, I know. I was only a little child the day before yesterday. I +have never been worthy to be your wife, dear. I have known it all the +time. I should never have taken your love. It has never been mine...."</p> + +<p>"But ..." she continued, "I will give it all back now. It is not too +late. I have kept it pure ... for Isabel. I can give it to her, darling, +with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. We +were not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the woman +of that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. I +am a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my face +and see.'"</p> + +<p>The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jenny +in silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and of +the insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves to +ourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by the +powerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must those +tests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which we +are composed!</p> + +<p>One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs, +another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow old +we can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that have +never been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, by +an emotion.</p> + +<p>A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the woman +who needs him most,--and in a crisis of choice he will probably choose +the latter.</p> + +<p>Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves +to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so +brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment +on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble are +some of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submerged +in a total of vague impulses that they escape any individualisation.</p> + +<p>In the very hour where all seemed lost to Jenny, Theophil's love for her +was passing in the fire of this ordeal from a love whose elements had +never, perhaps, quite combined, into that miraculous metal of true love, +which can never again be separated into anything but itself,--the true +gold of love which, in some magical second of projection, has suddenly +sprung out of those troubled ingredients of earth and iron, silver, +honey, and pearl.</p> + +<p>This does not mean that Theophil's love for Isabel had grown any less +real, but that his love for Jenny had grown more real. For the first +time in its history it moved on the stage of the heroic. Up till now it +had lived secure, domestic days; there had been no danger to test its +truth, no lights of tragedy or romance thrown across it, it had seemed a +simple little earthborn love; whereas Theophil's love for Isabel had, +from its very conditions, walked from the first the high heaven +of dreams.</p> + +<p>Isabel, indeed, still remained the heavenly love, but those who +understand will know the strength of Jenny when I say that she became +confirmed in this hour of trial as the household love of Theophil's +life. Isabel remained the Muse, but it was Jenny, after all, in spite of +those solemn words in the Wood of Silence, that was the wife; and if, +at first sound, there seems less of heaven in such a love, it is surely +only because when heaven has become incarnated upon earth we forget to +call it heaven.</p> + +<p>In the few moments of silence which followed Jenny's words, it was some +such turmoil of feelings and thoughts, questionings and conclusions, +which passed through Theophil's mind, at last resolving itself into +words that sounded unexpected even in his own ears.</p> + +<p>"Jenny," he said, "it is quite true that I love Isabel and that she +loves me. But it is true that I love you too, love you more truly in +this moment than I have ever loved you, and that no other woman can ever +take your place. If you give me up for Isabel's sake, it will be no gain +to her, for I would not go to her. I love you, indeed I love you, and I +want no other woman to be my wife."</p> + +<p>Jenny's face brightened for a moment; they were good words, and they +sounded real. But then that embrace, how real that was; nothing again +could ever be so real as that!</p> + +<p>"Ah, Theophil dear; but you stood as though you loved her so; your arms +were so tender, it was just as though they said 'wife.' You are +deceiving yourself, dear, believe me, you are. God knows how I love you; +I have nothing in the world but you, and if...if..."</p> + +<p>"Jenny, try and believe; let me show you how I can love you. I seem +never to have shown you before. Let us begin our love over again from +to-night. I know your heart is bleeding, but let me heal it, dear. I +know this sorrow must lie heavy upon us for a long while yet, but it +will pass, you shall see. O you shall see how I love you. Let us be +married soon, dear; let us wait no longer..."</p> + +<p>Theophil had raised his head, and as he spoke poured on Jenny all the +appeal of his strong eyes; with all the might of his soul he willed her +back to happiness, as Orpheus strove by his singing to bring back +Eurydice from the shades. She could not look into his set longing face +without feeling that he was speaking true words. Hope flickered for a +moment in her sad eyes; yes! he wanted to come back to her; he wanted to +be hers again.</p> + +<p>But was it not too late? Hadn't something gone forever, something been +killed? Could even Theophil himself ever make her happy any more? Then +the misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which all +kind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, and +with terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms.</p> + +<p>"O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking."</p> + +<p>Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of +his life. He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying--it was as +though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were +bleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, +convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking. +Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was the +death-crying of a broken heart.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED</h3> + +<p>Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny dried +her tears. She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forget +it; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown even +bright again,--bright as silver. It could never again be bright as gold.</p> + +<p>And Theophil's love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day. +Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were times +when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing +falsity, as she thought of Isabel.</p> + +<p>But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in the +common way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soon +she was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed that +Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital. +For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Let +that be our secret, dear," she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel +wrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wrote +to each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters. +Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life it +must be more and more of a starlit background.</p> + +<p>So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now +finally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as their +love grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate that +date, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by +that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones.</p> + +<p>The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became +noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old +mother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she +was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing +thinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside +friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't looking +half the girl she used to be.</p> + +<p>She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she +would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought +nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious +expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark +it. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to +gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, +too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real +face was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemn +thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a +sad wish fulfilling itself.</p> + +<p>She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same look +that Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to him +reading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threw +down the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed, +"Good God, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look in +your face?"</p> + +<p>He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before he +had finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget.</p> + +<p>One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it was +growing.</p> + +<p>"It <i>is</i> thin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a trifle +run down. You must see the doctor."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soups +and port wine as a substitute. These, however, made those dear arms no +fatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why did +Theophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of that +expression?)</p> + +<p>And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as she +used to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not so +available for running up and down stairs as it had been.</p> + +<p>Then Theophil would have a doctor, who sounded Jenny, and looked a +little grave, but finally, reassured, asked her if she had had a +shock,--Jenny smiled rather knowingly, but denied it,--declared her a +little run down and in need of bracing and nourishment, prescribed +phosphites and steel.</p> + +<p>Then Jenny got very wet one day on her way from school, and she began to +cough. She had to stay at home, and bed was perhaps the best place for +her. So Jenny went to bed, and looked very pretty there, and was quite +merry of an evening when Theophil, bringing her flowers,--he was already +bringing her flowers,--would draw up the arm-chair by her side, and read +to her. Those were very sweet hours, perhaps the sweetest their love had +ever known, so cosy and homelike, and yet without fear.</p> + +<p>But one evening, when Jenny had been coughing, there was blood on the +bosom of her nightdress, and as Theophil saw it, his heart stood still +with terror. Jenny grew very white, too, as she saw it, though the awful +thought which was behind the still look they gave each other was not +quite new to her. Sometimes she might have been heard softly saying over +to herself,--</p> + +<blockquote> +"I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther, where<br> +The change shall take me worse, and no one dare<br> + Look in my face and see."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Yet although Death's voice calling us from afar may seem all sweetness, +his voice coming nearer has a note of dread in it that appals the most +death-desirous heart. And in that silence those poor lovers both heard +him singing, it seemed not many streets away.</p> + +<p>"I must be very ill, dear," said Jenny. "O my love, O my love...!"</p> + +<p>Theophil strove with himself to say words with a real ring of the future +in them, when this cloud should have passed away; and for his sake Jenny +pretended to believe them. Yes, this very week he would take her away to +bright skies and healing air,--though Jenny felt a little tired at the +thought of rising any more from the bed to which she was growing +curiously accustomed.</p> + +<p>Then there came a new doctor to see Jenny. He was a very clever +specialist from a distant town; but for him the business of death had +not yet obscured its tragedy,--though words like "tragedy" were not +often on his tongue. Consumption was a strong enough word for him.</p> + +<p>His heart went out to that little household; and when he saw Jenny, it +ached for that young man downstairs. It was more than a professional +contempt for the "general practitioner" that made him silently curse +what he called the "death-doctor," as he looked at Jenny, "Jack of all +diseases, and master of none."</p> + +<p>"Two months ago, a month," he thought, as he listened and listened for a +sound of hope that might come to his ear through Jenny's wasted +side,--"even a month, and I could have saved her." And yet as he talked +to her he was not so sure, after all. He missed something in her voice. +It was the will to live.</p> + +<p>"Have you had a shock at any time?" he said.</p> + +<p>Jenny was taken by surprise for a moment,--the other doctor had asked +her that, too,--and she did not deny it so convincingly as she tried to.</p> + +<p>"O, that's all right," said the doctor aloud to Jenny and her mother, +who stood by, though inwardly he said, "I see. That's the reason;" and +again he said, "I'm afraid you mustn't get up just yet. That chest of +yours has to be taken care of, but you needn't be anxious. In a month or +six weeks you'll be all right again."</p> + +<p>"Only a month or six weeks," said Jenny, with a sinking voice. She +meant--was that all that was left to her of life and love?</p> + +<p>Downstairs Theophil stood waiting with a beating heart. He sprang to the +door and drew the doctor into his room. The doctor laid a kind hand upon +his arm, and there was a look in his face that made Theophil's heart die +within him.</p> + +<p>"You mean she is going to die?" he said with fearful calmness. "<i>You +mean that?</i>"</p> + +<p>"My poor fellow, God knows what I would give to deny it."</p> + +<p>"She--is--going--to--die--<i>to die!</i> It is impossible! Not Jenny!" and +between that exclamation and his first stunned cry it seemed as though +bells had been tolling a thousand years. It seemed as though he had been +sitting there as in a cave since the beginning of time, saying over and +over to himself, "Jenny is going to die."</p> + +<p>There was a decanter on the sideboard. The doctor poured some spirit +into a glass. "Drink this," he said. Theophil drank it raw, as though it +had been water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir like +an opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned to +that decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jenny +was not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve, +which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. It +helped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctor +has not told him that I am going to die."</p> + +<p>"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks," she said +aloud, and tried to look as though she were happy.</p> + +<p>"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, love +made blind instead of prophet-sighted.</p> + +<p>"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that bright +air," said Theophil.</p> + +<p>"Yes, dear," said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily.</p> + +<p>Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something to +me, Theophil?"</p> + +<p>"What shall I read, dear?"</p> + +<p>"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass,' eh? It's such a +long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we +could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?"</p> + +<p>So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the +fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on +living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while +longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your +very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying. +You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going +to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you +laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly +the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you +forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before +they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every +moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to +remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them +everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice, +that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die."</p> + +<p>Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some +days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at +last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her +and from each other.</p> + +<p>"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herself +from that time, but she did not cry or break down.</p> + +<p>It was a pathetic sign of what was coming, that she now allowed Theophil +sometimes to be Jenny's nurse through the night hours. There was to be +no bridal bed for these lovers, but thus the tender quiet hours of the +night were theirs even in so sad a fashion.</p> + +<p>One night, in the haunted hushed middle of it, the old mother had softly +pushed open the door to ask if all went well, and in a whisper Theophil +had assured her. A night-light gave an uncanny shadow-breeding light in +the room. Jenny was sleeping peacefully, her tired ivory face, with her +dark elf-locks falling about it, framed on the pillow. Theophil raised +himself softly in his chair and looked at her. She would sleep some +while yet. Then from sheer weariness--grief's best friend--he too fell +into a light sleep. From this he was awakened with a start. Jenny was +sitting up and bending over him. With her dark hair hanging about her +face, and in that light, there was something weird and unearthly about +her, as though she were already dead and had risen in her shroud. +Something of a shiver went through him, as she put her thin arms round +his neck and clutched him in a sudden agony of longing. All the strength +of her poor little body seemed to pass into that kiss, so eager, so +convulsive. "Jenny dear, it will make you so ill; lie down, little +girl"--and Jenny fell back on her pillow exhausted and coughing, and +with eyes unearthly bright.</p> + +<p>"Theophil," she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, +"you know that I am going to die!"</p> + +<p>He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned his +head close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself two +great tears fell upon Jenny's cheek.</p> + +<p>But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in her +voice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got to +be borne."</p> + +<p>She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth. +The first fears of her dark journey were passing, as she was more and +more sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be something +almost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, +one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. It +had come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less with +fear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In her +fancy she had seen her name: "<i>Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter of +John and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years</i>" and it had struck her +that the name was wrong.</p> + +<p>Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. The +world would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days. +No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amid +all the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again to +herself: "<i>Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of Theophilus +Londonderry, aged twenty-one years</i>."</p> + +<p>Only twenty-one years--she thought of those who would perhaps some day +stand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!"--and yet +all that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, in +two of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to those +who read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earth +of long-wed, late-dying lovers.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was a beautiful chance for love to end like theirs; their +love had never grown old, so it would remain forever young, a spring +sign, a star in the front of love's year for ever.</p> + +<p>Jenny spoke her wish to Theophil in the quiet of that night. The wish +had been in his heart too, and the wish was presently fulfilled. Brides +have seldom been happier than Jenny as she looked on the wife's ring +that hung loose on her thin finger, and brides have often been sadder.</p> + +<p>Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget that +she was going to die. She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, +and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little home +that was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with his +unbearable grief to some other room.</p> + +<p>And Jenny's once rosy apple of a face made one's heart ache to look on +now. It made one frightened, too: it was so dark and witchlike, so +uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She would sit +up in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowing +laugh to herself,--a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary +place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, +like the "unwilling sleep" of a strong narcotic. She would begin a +sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost +humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead +bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did +not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being +well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done +with all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, +half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soon +be strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be +different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and +putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar +humanity into a being of another element,--an element we dread as the +fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon she +would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longer +Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. She +was going to die.</p> + +<p>It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died. +She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon. Once when +Theophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave, +significant gesture to her side. She was lying down, and she made as if +she would sit up. Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up the +pillows at her back. Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took his +face in her hands and kissed him. "Do you love me, Theophil?" she said. +"Will you ever forget me?"</p> + +<p>"I will love you for ever. I will never forget you."</p> + +<p>He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she held +him close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh. For a +moment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though that +was the last flicker of Jenny's conscious life.</p> + +<p>Towards evening she began to take strange fancies, which had to be +humoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called with +dreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside, +and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she was +picking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to go +downstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all that +time by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade her +that Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must not +mind me, Theophil, dear. I'm not unhappy about her now. I'm not a silly +little girl any more. I'm a woman now. 'Look in my face and see.'"</p> + +<p>Then towards midnight a sudden accession of strength came to her, and +she said she would get up. They tried to dissuade her; she grew angry, +and struggled so hard to rise, that it seemed best to humour her once +more. So, wrapt round with blankets, Theophil lifted her from the bed +into a great chair by the fire. Then she asked to be taken to look into +her bottom drawer. So they lifted her across to it, and opened it. She +dabbled with her hands aimlessly among its piteous treasures, laughing +low to herself.</p> + +<p>Suddenly a fit of coughing took her, and a great choking was in her +throat. She was seen to be battling for her breath. For an instant she +drew herself up, and lifted her hand as though she would wave farewell, +smiled a faint little smile at Theophil, making, too, as if she would +speak. Then she fell back, her whole body relaxed, she had ceased +coughing, and a wonderful sweetness was stealing over her face. She had +gone all alone into the darkness, and Theophil was alone in the world.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE TRYST LETHEAN</h3> + +<p>Jenny had gone into the darkness, and she had gone alone. Theophil had +not gone with her.</p> + +<p>That he had remained behind meant certainly no selfish clinging to life, +and indeed there was a sense, as was presently to appear, in which very +really he had kept young love's old promise and died with Jenny. That he +had not literally fulfilled it was due to those physical conditions of +dying of which in the hour of that promise young love is happily +ignorant; for the promise is usually made in moments of keenly conscious +physical life. Dying together is then figured, perhaps, as climbing hand +in hand the radiant topmost peak of life, with a last splendid leap +together into some immortal morning; and such a marriage in death, a +last union of two lives in some fiery consummation of dying, has been +the lot of some lovers supremely blest.</p> + +<p>Some indeed there are whose last earthly moment is a vivid reassertion +of the glory and loveliness of life. They drink the great cup to its +last golden drain, and by their death-beds we seem to be standing at the +laughing founts of being. They are radiant, victorious, even witty, to +the last, when at one swoop of blackness they are extinguished like a +light plunged into a stream.</p> + +<p>But for others the cold mists that hang low by Lethe's banks have +already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first +step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but +with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with +sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,--that was not +love's meaning.</p> + +<p>And not only are the dying thus drugged out of knowledge before they +die, but those who stand near them grow drowsed, too, by the fumes of +the poppies of death. The dying have forgotten; the living are numb and +foolish and in a dream. All they love on earth is passing away beneath +their very eyes, and they cannot understand,--cannot realise that this, +<i>this</i> is death.</p> + +<p>Except in moments of piercing agony, days and weeks afterwards, moments +that were similarly soothed away again by that mysterious narcotic +property which pain at its highest brings with it (pain at its highest +being its own anaesthetic), Theophil never realised that Jenny had died, +and least of all at the moment when she was dying. Long after he +remembered how he had said to himself: "There is Jenny dying, dying. A +few more seconds and she will be beyond the sound of your voice for +ever. Call to her; she can still, perhaps, hear you. O my Jenny, my +Jenny! Louder, louder,--hold her tighter, tighter,--she is slipping +away. O God, she is slipping away. No love can hold her back. My Jenny, +my Jenny!"</p> + +<p>And all the time he had been curiously calm, almost unfeeling,--as one +standing stupefied in the presence of fate. The air seemed full of +boding sounds, echoes of low thunder, as from a distant world in the +throes of portentous change; and he told himself mechanically that he +should know the meaning of those sounds some day. He should wake up soon +from this unnatural torpor of pain to an empty house of life, through +the cold halls of which he would seek in vain for Jenny for evermore.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, he suddenly found himself standing with his back to the fire +in the lighted study, talking to Mr. Moggridge, who, late as was the +hour, had called for news, and had stayed on from a perception that the +young minister had best have some one to talk to as far into the +morning as he would go on talking. They were talking in a business-like +way of Zion; and Theophil was smoking cigarette after cigarette. He was +terribly clear-headed and bright-witted, and Mr. Moggridge looked at him +sometimes with a sort of fear.</p> + +<p>It was about three in the morning when the door was softly opened by +Mrs. Talbot.</p> + +<p>"Will you come now, and see our little girl?" she said, with a voice +that could say no more.</p> + +<p>Theophil followed her, and, still in a dream, he stood in Jenny's room, +grown strangely solemn and sweet since he was last there,--was it a +thousand years ago? And there was Jenny lying asleep with a wonderful +smile on her face. She had a little gold chain round her neck and a +white crysanthemum in the bosom of her night-gown, and you thought of +some princess lying in enchanted sleep in an Arabian night. It seemed so +light a sleep and yet somehow so eternal. You stept softly, you spoke +low, lest you should awaken her--not carelessly shall one disturb that +imperious slumber.</p> + +<p>Yes, the distinction of death sat like an invisible crown upon Jenny's +brow. She was no longer little Jenny, but a mysterious princess upon +whose sleep it was permitted thus to gaze. The pain which had filled +these weeks with bitter human anguish had been the process of some +mysterious ennoblement. She had been found "worthy to die." In the +peerage of God's creatures, she had now outsoared those whom she loved. +The nature of it was a mystery, but no one could look on her face and +doubt that a great honour had come to little Jenny.</p> + +<p>But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greater +than we can bear--greater than we can bear. Not Theophil only--not young +love, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away the +potencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, though +sorrow itself should become that dream--but this poor old mother, all +the force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up. Hers is the +terrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death.</p> + +<p>Pity her, Jenny--speak one word to her. Hearken to her sobs as she +kneels by your side, and can you not hear the hard crying of his heart +that knows no tears?</p> + +<p>Are you become as the gods, Jenny, that you still smile on at the sound +of mortal tears? Will you not stretch out one of those folded hands to +each and lead them away with you? They are praying to follow you, only +to be with you, wherever you are.</p> + +<p>And it did seem as though in some strange way the soul of the mother had +still some sure communication with the soul of her dead child. +Motherhood had given her a nearness in the hour which no love of a lover +could gain. She alone spoke to the dead girl as though she were still +really alive, as one speaking to the deaf whom only one voice can reach.</p> + +<p>But Theophil was conscious in his wildest, most heartbroken, words that +Jenny could not hear them. He talked to her as though she were a picture +of herself, and as one would implore a picture to answer us, he +symbolised the cry of his soul in cries that he knew were vain.</p> + +<p>Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that this +icy marble had once been the flesh he had loved. O God! that little +tender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the words +of a song, it was marble now.</p> + +<p>"Ah! Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I, +and no one else in the world? Jenny, we shall never forget, never +forget, shall we? And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven. +Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say? Are you glad +somewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment looking +into my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours? Is it I who seem dead, +Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back to +me, as I am beating at the gates of death? But, Jenny, we shall find +each other, <i>must</i> find each other some day. I shall be so true, +Jenny,--will you be true to me in heaven?"</p> + +<p>Then would sweep across his soul a pitiless vista of the long cold years +that lay between him and Jenny. He was not twenty-five; through what a +weary pilgrimage of useless years must he journey on, before there was +Jenny's face shining at the end. How he envied the old woman whose +sorrow was in this alone less cruel than his, that she was already fifty +years farther on the road to Jenny. Perhaps another year or two and she +would meet her. To meet so soon--was hardly to have parted at all.</p> + +<p>But, why live those years? Have you forgotten that old promise? Is it +too late to follow? Surely little Jenny will not speed so swiftly from +the earth she loved but that you shall overtake her. Who knows but she +is fluttering still at the gate of death, putting off the heavenward +journey hour after hour, in hope that the face she waits for will at +last light up the dark portal--</p> + +<blockquote> +"I'll take his hand and go with him<br> + To the deep wells of light;<br> +As unto a stream we will step down,<br> + And bathe there in God's sight."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>But was this the way to find Jenny? The universe was so full of dark +traps for lovers' feet. To lie down cold as Jenny by Jenny's side, was +that the way to find her? When death's gate opened for Jenny, had +Theophil at that very instant, hand in her hand, eyes fixed upon her +eyes, slipped through too, then surely they had been together. But the +door had closed, and whither on the other side Jenny had already +wandered, who could tell? Perhaps that was the very way to miss her.</p> + +<p>When two have lost each other in a crowd, it is best that one should +stand still and await the other. Perhaps it were best for him to stand +still here in life. Jenny would know where to seek him then--and maybe +the dead had mysterious ways of bringing news to the living. He could +wait a little while and see. For a little he could live--and listen.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>JENNY'S LYING IN STATE</h3> + +<p>But there were others besides those who stood so near who mourned Jenny, +passers-by on the road of friendship, who would miss her sunshine in the +streets, and carry with them one bright thought the less for that bright +face that death had thus blown out. There were especially some little +people to whom death was as yet hardly even mysterious, but was merely +perplexing, like many other grown-up things in which their parents were +interested. These were the little scholars of Jenny's Sunday-school +class, to whom simple Jenny had been a personage, quite a great lady, +full of gentleness. To these Jenny was "Teacher," a name of gentle awe; +and to these Teacher was as deeply dear as anyone can be to very +young hearts.</p> + +<p>Jenny had felt like a little mother to these little ones, and when she +lay ill her thoughts would often go to them, while from them would come +tiny presents to show how sorry they were that Teacher was ill.</p> + +<p>Several times before she grew too ill, Jenny had had her favourites up +in her room on Sunday evenings, to read Bible stories with her, and had +sent them away happy with magnificent text-cards, that had hitherto been +the arduously won rewards of "attention" and the practice of such +school-time virtues over many weeks.</p> + +<p>Now, when they heard that Teacher was dead, they felt a vague sorrow. +They knew that people who died were never seen at school any more, and +that people always burst out crying when anyone died; so they cried +bitterly, these little girls, and the hearts of one or two of them +perhaps really ached for a little while. One of them asked the new +teacher, if they would meet their old teacher in heaven, and was told +"Yes, if they were good girls,"--which was something to be good for.</p> + +<p>Among the wreaths that already filled Jenny's room with that piercing +smell of lilies which still clung there--unless it were Theophil's +fancy--for many months afterwards, was one sent in loving memory "by her +Sunday-school class"; and it was a part of that informal lying-in-state, +which is an involuntary recognition of the divine honours due to death, +that these little awestruck scholars should be taken in threes and fours +to look at Teacher for the last time.</p> + +<p>This was the third day, and Jenny was already in her coffin. The first +bloom of death, that light that lingers awhile in the face like a sunset +tranquil and blessed, a smile of immortal promise in the very moment of +mortality, had faded. Jenny's face by this was really dead, a mask of +drawn and sunken wax. She seemed now some fantastic doll, some ghastly +waxwork image of death such as we see carried on the stage in tragic +plays. The reality of death had gone with the coming of its funereal +trappings. But the little girls, who had to be lifted up one by one to +gaze with curious, scared faces into that harsh box, deeper and deeper +into which, as through beds of flowers and veils of gauze, Teacher was +sinking, knew nothing of these thoughts. They looked and wondered in +hushed bewilderment, and went their ways. It was evidently an occasion +when children were to keep more than usually quiet--and was it really +Teacher in that strange deep box? It was rather meaningless, but it was +certainly very strange and solemn, and you were allowed to cry.</p> + +<p>Of the others who came to see Jenny, I shall not speak,--the vulgar +sight-seers, the creepy old women, connoisseurs in beautiful death, for +whom a neighbour's funeral was like an invitation to the grand opera, +but on whom perhaps one should not be too severe, for even such coarse +sensitiveness to a mystery is the crude beginning of the poetic.</p> + +<p>The night before Jenny was given back to the elements Theophil dreamed a +dream, and afterwards he liked to think that he had dreamed it while +Jenny's body was still in the house with him, for then it might be +interpreted that her spirit was still there too, waiting for its final +release from the clay which God had sent her to animate for a while, as +an artist imprisons a lovely thought in a vase of alabaster.</p> + +<p>Theophil dreamed that he and some friends were gay together in a room, +just before setting out for a theatre; and as they laughed and talked +there came a little tapping on the wall, so that they grew silent and +listened. Then through the wall was heard a faint but glad little voice +speaking. It was Jenny's voice.</p> + +<p>"I can hear you all," she said; "you are off to the theatre. I wish I +were going with you. Never mind, we are not so far away from each other +as you think. I am only on the other side of a wall."</p> + +<p>And Theophil awoke on a bright wintry morning, with those words still, +it seemed, in the room.</p> + +<p>"I am only on the other side of a wall!" Was it but the metaphor-making +of dreams, which will so often take our forgotten speculations and +dramatise them for us into reality, or was it indeed a message? An +instinct which was unamenable to reason, and which was perhaps only a +desire, told him it was a message; and it was no less a message though +it were merely a pictorial symbol of a sense, which was already his in +the daytime, of a new and very real nearness to Jenny.</p> + +<p>He had slept right through that night out of sheer bodily weariness. +Weeks of watching and anguish had worn him out, and he never knew that +the poor old mother had laid a benediction on his sleep, looking in upon +him as he slept, the only waking being in that house of sleep.</p> + +<p>"He will wake soon enough, poor boy!" she had said, as she went once +more to watch till daylight by the side of the other sleeper.</p> + +<p>"O Jenny, Jenny, why did you leave me? You were the apple of my eye, my +Jenny. What will your old mother do now that you are gone?"</p> + +<p>So she sat and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise the +dead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though even +Jenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fear +for Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creed +told her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied her +faith, and her love made her a Sadducee.</p> + +<p>And yet it was her belief in a literal resurrection of the body that was +sorely troubling her old soul during these last hours of watching. For +while Jenny was still conscious of the coming of death, she had been +much tortured by hideous churchyard fancies, imaginations of the +darkness and noisomeness of the grave, and she had wrung from her mother +the promise that she should first be cremated and her ashes be afterward +buried in the family tomb. This was the promise which was lying heavy on +the old woman's heart to-night; and, though her reason told her that the +way of the flames and the way of the flowers alike led to dust, yet the +disintegration by fire seemed to give her a sense of entire destruction +such as the more desultory operations of the earth did not give.</p> + +<p>If Jenny must indeed pass right away, the dainty architecture of her +body, so lovingly builded, be laid in ruin; not by the fierce fingers of +fire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun, +and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and on +the wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragrance +about the world.</p> + +<p>And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of a +mysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quite +returned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptible +Jenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour when +the soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day. +Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance of +imagination.</p> + +<p>And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of the +flames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of the +great consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny +was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once +more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it +brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and +lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered +with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the +cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and +was already about the business of the dreaming spring.</p> + +<p>And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. It +saved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which had +haunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. However +morbid his fancies might become, <i>desiderium</i> could never take any but +beautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images of +corruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacomb +or charnel.</p> + +<p>She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned again +whence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms, +and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; she +had touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books, +she had made little everlasting memories with her hands,--that was her +history; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, and +she had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked a +flower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No one +as long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and, +giving the lie to love's divine answer to the dust, say "This +was Jenny!"</p> + +<p>No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon +rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's +path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the +window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown +happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when a +lovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all high +moments, then can one say, "There, listen! <i>that</i> was Jenny."</p> + +<p>Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophil +remained behind only to write her name across the high stars. Then he, +too, would pass through the gates of fire to her side.</p> + +<p>As he lay down to rest that night, his eyes fell with a sudden sense of +freshness upon the familiar Botticelli's "Mother and Child," which hung +over his fireplace; and a need that could never be fulfilled awoke in +his soul. If only Jenny could have left him a little child,--a little +girl! He had not seemed so lonely then.</p> + +<p>It was so he thought; yet perhaps Jenny's child would but have deepened +his loneliness, like a bird singing in a garden where our love walked +long ago. Yet the cry was from his heart, and the longing brought with +it his first tears. "O Jenny," he sobbed, "if only you had left me a +little child!"</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--MESSAGE FROM JENNY</h3> + +<p>If every inclination of his heart had not desired it too, Theophil would +have gone on living at 3 Zion Place, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; for now +he was literally all she had left in the world, and what greater joy +remained for either than just to sit close by the fire and talk +of Jenny?</p> + +<p>3 Zion Place was now a little chapel of memory, where a bowed ancient +woman and a sad-faced young man kept up perpetual services to the holy +dead. A woman of her own years, also acquainted with grief, came to +companion the old woman, a sort of lay sister in this little monastery +of grief. It was so piety began, and thus piety is purest and tenderest +in the worship of the dead. Everything in that house which had taken the +impress of Jenny's fingers, been Jenny's to use or handle, remained +exactly as and where Jenny had placed it. They were as yet as fragrant +of Jenny as a fresh-gathered flower of its own perfume. In a very real +sense indeed Jenny had not died, or she was coming to life again as she +had never lived before; and it was no merely idealised Jenny who was +henceforward to fill up all her lover's thoughts and speak to him in +every sight and sound, but just the human Jenny, with her faults +and all.</p> + +<p>On these--such little faults!--Theophil ever loved to dwell. They saved +Jenny from becoming an abstraction, a saint. Even those bitter little +quarrels which all lovers must suffer,--how sweet they seemed now!</p> + +<p>The old mother's method was no doubt again different from her +son-in-law's. She would never have admitted that Jenny had a fault. +Such is the difference in reality between the new idealism and the old.</p> + +<p>In such small matters as the minutiae of mourning that difference was +again illustrated. Theophil could permit himself no outward insignia of +sorrow which he could not wear for ever. Already his profession had +clothed him in black, and it was only for him that his black seemed now +to gain a deeper distinction; but such ugly symbols of beautiful memory +as that note-paper whose diminishing edge of blackness is rather a +cynical witness of a graduated forgetfulness, were not for a real grief +like his. As if sorrow, while it may and will change, can ever end! Why, +in the world of faithful hearts, men and women have not yet dried their +tears for Romeo and Juliet!</p> + +<p>Theophil conceived this grief that had come to him as one more activity +added to his life till life should end. He knew that it would not +outcast joy, but that it would live side by side with it, that it must +alternate with joy for it to go on living. Jenny's death was not going +to be less sad, less a factor of the eternal tragedy, at the end of a +year,--that he might go to a theatre once more, as some widows joyously +don colours, when the clock strikes the end of a year of lost dances.</p> + +<p>For it was not Jenny alone that had died, but it was a consolation to +Theophil in those hours of self-torture which are among the earliest and +most cruel developments of grief, to realise how much of himself had +died with her, after all. It was not merely the apathy of the first +weeks that told him this, the sense of vacuity, of uselessness in all +things, but the sense that never left him, even when he had awakened to +an activity he had never known before, that nothing really mattered, +however vigorously he might seem to act to the contrary, since Jenny +had gone.</p> + +<p>It was with difficulty sometimes that he could take important issues +with necessary seriousness, for, whatever the odds of life henceforward +might be, what was there worth gaining now that Jenny was lost? Could +any energy or haste save Jenny from dying? That had happened. The worst +had happened. All the terror life had to appal the human spirit had been +faced, in that moment when the doctor's hand upon his shoulder had told +him Jenny was to die. His eyes had looked on the Medusa-face of life +that turns the bravest to stone, and he was no longer vulnerable +humanity.</p> + +<p>On the battle-field of existence he bore a charmed life, and sometimes +as he moved among his fellows he felt a certain sense of the unfairness +of his advantage in this respect, and paused to pity those who could +still be so eager, so tragically set upon, this little issue. The +virulence of those enemies whom he was already making and who were to +multiply as his activities awakened again, seemed particularly pathetic, +and he would smile in sad amusement at their quaint little efforts to +hurt him. (No man is so strong for this world's fight as he who has laid +up his treasure in heaven; and when the mystic condescends to the common +trades of life he is an easy master.) It meant so much to them, so +little to him. He was a humbug, he was a hypocrite, he wasn't even a +good speaker, he was an ignoramus! Was he? All right. They might think +so if they chose. It hardly interested him. He had been sitting drawing +angels, and somehow their irrelevant voices had broken in upon him. +"Another was with me."</p> + +<p>Really, even for Jenny's sake, it seemed hardly worth while to fight so +poor a world! Was the fame that such a world could give a distinction +one would seek for Jenny? Would not Jenny smile in heaven at the toy +honours of such a world?</p> + +<p>On the other hand, there was something repellent to his once ambitious +soul, in the thought that such a world might seem to have the victory; +and, therefore, when the first numbness had left him and the colours and +sounds of things were once more coming back, he threw himself with +galvanic vitality into the work that lay to his hand, and particularly +into those political activities for which his gift of speech and his +power of organisation fitted him.</p> + +<p>Two months after Jenny's death, having spoken at a great meeting on some +momentous question of the hour, he found himself the acknowledged leader +of the Radical, rather forlorn, hope in Coalchester, and before long +invitations were coming to him to help on the same hope in other towns. +Never in his life--and he used often to meditate on the fact with +wonder--had he been so vital, so efficient, so brilliant. His powers had +acquired a firmness, an alertness, a force of influence and attraction, +they had never possessed before. Of a sudden he found himself mature, a +calm master of his gifts.</p> + +<p>Yet those who sat near him at those meetings might have noticed that as +he sat down, pale amid plaudits, and crossed his hands upon his knees, +and while his political colleagues were complimenting him to the +audience on the mellow thunder of his political oratory, he was smiling +furtively to himself. "It's all very funny, isn't it, Jenny?" he was +saying in his heart.</p> + +<p>Indeed it was hardly recognisable to himself as a fancy that whenever he +spoke Jenny was somewhere in the audience. Sometimes a remote face might +bear a chance resemblance to her, and he would humour himself with the +thought that that was Jenny. For, with that self-consciousness which no +modern mind can escape, he found a certain sad pleasure sometimes in +noting the tricks grief played with him, loving and encouraging all its +fancies--if fancies indeed they were.</p> + +<p>When at other times he tried to think clearly, to strip himself of the +illusions, as others would no doubt call them, in which he now lived, +his thinking rather confirmed than dispersed them; and the more he +pondered, the more he failed to realise that Jenny was dead, the surer +became his consciousness that she was nearer to him (a very part of him +as it were) than she had ever been in the days when others could still +hear her voice and note her presence in a room. Her very death had given +him a paradoxical certitude of her immortality.</p> + +<p>Yet this recognition of her presence, on some plane of spiritual +apprehension, was none the less consistent with a piercing sense of her +loss on the plane where love once moved in visible beauty. That heavenly +lover in him was able to give none of the comfort of its assurance to +the earthly lover. That the eyes of the spirit could touch her, brought +no healing to the eyes that at midnight would look up from the desk in +Theophil's study to Jenny's empty chair, no touch of her to the hands +that were so idle and empty now.</p> + +<p>Yet there were little services these hands might still do for her. +There in her own little room her own books still stood in their places. +These could be taken care of, her little desk could still be kept as she +had left it, with her pen laid down as she had last laid it. There were +note-paper and envelopes, and ink and blotting-paper, all ready, if some +day, by a miracle--who could tell?--she might steal into that room and +want to leave a message. There should be fresh flowers for her to find +there too if she did come.</p> + +<p>And that new edition of Scott which was not finished issuing when she +went away, she would find that complete when she came back. Her little +collection of fairy books too--she was sure to glance at that! and then +she would find two or three new ones there finer than any of the old +ones; alas! so many beautiful books kept coming out now that she +had gone.</p> + +<p>Yet somehow she might see them, after all, if they were taken softly to +that little room and laid on that table altar. When it was quite sure +that no one was looking or listening, the shy soul might steal out of +the air and turn the pages with a sigh.</p> + +<p>Just so some savage lover might bring gifts of fruit and coloured beads, +and bright plumed birds, to the grave of his dead love, for the future +anthropologist to draw his moral of the childishness of all human +idealisms.</p> + +<p>One day, as Theophil had stolen quietly into that room on some such +votive errand, an impulse had come to him to open the drawer of the +desk. There might be some message for him there. Any writing of the dead +we have never read before is a message.</p> + +<p>Among various odds and ends, he came first upon one of those little +tradesmen's account-books interleaved with bad blotting-paper in which +the housewife writes her orders week by week.</p> + +<p>It was full of Jenny's writing, and though the entries were merely +weekly repetitions of the same string of groceries:--"2 lbs. of the +best tea," "6 lbs. loaf sugar," "6 nutmegs," and so on,--yet, "the hand +being hers," they made a record that could only be read through blinding +tears; and one page which bore a severe little note, to the effect that +the tea had been far from good of late, read almost like a personal +revelation.</p> + +<p>Theophil kissed the page, and, replacing the book, took up another, and +his heart leapt to find it was a little diary.</p> + +<p>He hesitated for a moment. It seemed wrong to read it, and yet he knew +that Jenny's soul held nothing she would not have shared with him, and +he was so hungry for a word from her though it were only a word out +of the past.</p> + +<p>The entries were not many nor long, but it smote his heart to find how +large a space his name, his interests, his successes, filled there. The +entries of honour were little heart-notes of evenings together +especially happy; there were two birthdays still singing for joy, and +sometimes there was a saying of his she had put down because it was so +helpful, or a poem she had copied out; and also there were clever little +criticisms of books she had read, and sometimes a wise little reflection +of her own,--which brought home to him, with a certain pang, that the +little child who had seemed so dependent on him had been an independent +personality, after all.</p> + +<p>As he came to the last entry, he put the book down with a gesture of +pain. The last entry had been made the day after Jenny had discovered +Theophil's love for Isabel. It was very brief, just a sob: "Have +realised that I am no fit wife for Theophil. And yet how I love him!"</p> + +<p>As Theophil read this, all that sad night came back to him with +unbearable vividness, and he felt once more a little sobbing body crying +its heart out against his. At that moment he would have endured +centuries of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; and +an awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of his +mind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul: the +thought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it was +who had--killed Jenny. "She seems to have had a shock," a voice was +saying over and over again, "she seems to have had a shock."</p> + +<p>A shock! Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in the +outer darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, now +sprang into vivid light again in company with that thought. In that +moment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath he +hurled her back again into the dark. It was she, <i>she</i> who had made +him--kill Jenny!</p> + +<p>But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurable +by some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish to +deceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himself +that this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed no +wilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, who +had planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny.</p> + +<p>Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardise +the happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold? +Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts?</p> + +<p>But a voice said--was it Jenny's?--this poor Theophil and Isabel love by +reason of no theory. It is yours, O ruling Fates of men, whatever you +be, who must support that accusation. Theophil and Isabel loved by the +compelling dispensation of the stars. They fought their destiny, and had +conquered it. It was you, ye stars, not they, that killed Jenny.</p> + +<p>And this was true: but still the little figure sobbed at Theophil's +side, as again and again it would come and sob there, till Theophil's +own heart broke,--that old death-crying of Jenny's broken heart.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2> +<br> + +<h3>JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE</h3> + +<p>After Jenny's death two letters had come for her from Isabel, who had no +knowledge of what had been happening to her friends of New Zion.</p> + +<p>There is something peculiarly sad about the letters that for a little +time go on coming for the dead. Perhaps nothing more simply brings home +the fact that they are no longer with us. Even little bills, circulars +offering new spring goods at sale prices, come charged with pathos, and +Theophil smiled at his own folly as he kept them all. Sad little <i>poste +restante</i>! Will the letters ever be called for?</p> + +<p>Theophil did not open the letters, but as days went by and no more came, +he sometimes found himself taking them from their drawer and looking at +them. Isabel's handwriting, though his soul would not confess it to +himself, still held the power of a rune over his heart.</p> + +<p>Had no traitor thought ever whispered deep down in the darkness of his +consciousness that the way was now open to Isabel? Such thoughts indeed +had come to him, but unwelcomed, involuntarily, as those foul thoughts +which will sometimes torture the pure, or those base thoughts which may +appal the noble.</p> + +<p>The mind, like the body, has its foul humours, which can only be +accepted with patience as a part of the inscrutable mechanism of human +organisms. In moments of anger this filth and poison of the mind +sometimes comes to the surface to wrong us--for it is not us, it is in +truth just all that we are not.</p> + +<p>Thus at times in Theophil's mind, that was one prayer of faithful love +for Jenny, the thought of Isabel would steal, like--so his stern +faithfulness pictured it--a fair devil in a church. Yet, if he opened +one of those letters he knew there would ascend from it a cloud of +subtle incense, which would ... well, which he must never again breathe.</p> + +<p>So he would replace them in their drawer, and again, some other day, +take them out once more.</p> + +<p>Perhaps, after all, it might be his duty, the mere duty of a friend, to +open them. What if Isabel should be ill, should be needing him ... +should be dying!</p> + +<p>But still the fanaticism of his sorrow conquered, and still week after +week they remained unread.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile, Isabel was living her life as she had lived it before she had +heard of New Zion, with the difference of an internal sense of +completion which her love had brought. Need one say that she had her +hours of loneliness and longing, when she would have exchanged a +thousand years of love in heaven for a touch of Theophil's hand upon +earth; but these she knew how to conquer, and for most days that union +of two separated hearts remained to her as real as when it had been +vowed in those silent woods.</p> + +<p>At the very moment when Jenny was dying, and Theophil had thrust Isabel +away into the furthest, highest, starlight of memory, she was thinking +how real their union was, how near he seemed!</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> +<br> + +<h3>FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY</h3> + +<blockquote> +Knowing the quick but little love<br> +Much mention of the dead.<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>I hesitate further to continue that history of a grief of which, +nevertheless, this book has now little heart or purpose to be other than +the record, and, as what I shall write in this chapter must seem +meaningless and wearisome to all but those who belong to the great +Secret Society of Sorrow, it were no doubt just as well that those who +have known nothing but joy should follow their natural impulse and leave +it unread. I confess, too, that I should feel the more comfortable +without the regard of their happy, ignorant eyes.</p> + +<p>Sorrow is a mysticism, and to talk of it to those who have never known +the initiation of tears is like talking alchemy to a child. Sorrow, +too, is an aristocracy, and when Theophil came to realise that, as Jenny +had been found worthy to die, he had been found worthy to suffer, it +seemed to him almost vulgar only to have been happy. Happiness is such a +materialist, a creature of coarse tastes and literal pleasures, a +<i>bourgeois</i> who has not yet attained the rank of a soul. The influence +of sorrow on the individual is much what the influence of Christianity +has been upon the world. Christianity, no doubt, has robbed us of +much--but then it has given us sorrow; it has taken away the sun, but it +has brought us the stars. It is only in the starlight of sorrow that we +become conscious of other worlds. The sun flatters our own little world +with the illusion of a transitory importance; the stars show it its +place in the universe, and teach it a nobler meaning for itself.</p> + +<p>No consciousness of his gifts had ever given Theophil any such sense of +his belonging to the chosen and dedicated minority of mankind as this +initiation into the Secret Society of Sorrow. He had been chosen to +represent a sacred order. He stood for no lesser interests than those of +Love and Death. Though he were to represent Coalchester in the House of +Commons, what honour were there in that to one already so +mysteriously honoured?</p> + +<p>Tears bring a strange new sight to the eyes, and "a new perception both +of grieving love" made Theophil see, and love to see, many things in the +world he had never noticed before. His eyes were opened to behold the +many mourners who go about the streets, the widows who walk in darkness, +and all the shapes of blackness moving phantom-like through the coloured +traffic; not all true children of sorrow, indeed, though wearing its +habit, but, true or not, symbols of the power and majesty of death in +the world. For the involuntary honour paid to death even by the +ignorantly busy, and happy, he kept ever a grateful and a jealous eye; +and as some funeral <i>cortège</i> passed like a dream, Charon's barge amid +all the motley craft of merchandise and pleasure, he would watch sternly +to see if the fat and prosperous moment would do honour to the carriages +of the king. For a bowed head or a doffed hat he felt a personal +gratitude. And, since Jenny died, he seemed to be always meeting that +phantom procession in the streets.</p> + +<p>Once, as he passed along the High Street, he had noticed a crowd round a +dying horse. He stood with the crowd a moment, and then went on his way. +In an hour's time he repassed the place, and there was the dead horse +lying solitary on the side of the street; but he noted with a curious +gladness that some hand had covered it reverently with a horse-cloth. +"So honoured is death," he mused to himself, "that even the humblest +animal on which he shall have set his seal is held sacred from the +common day, and shall not be gazed upon heedlessly by the passer-by." +This seemed the greatest honour he had known paid to the king!</p> + +<p>The fascination with which from this time death and all that related to +or remotely suggested it absorbed him, was, he reflected one day with a +surprised recognition of the paradox, no longer the fascination of hate +or dread, but almost love. Death, the arch-enemy of joy, the assassin of +youth, the murderer of Jenny,--Death had robbed him of his life's one +treasure, and here was he loving him, watching for his face, listening +for his step, like a lover.</p> + +<p>Surely this was the strangest of conclusions; but perhaps the +explanation was very simple. Theophil loved death because Jenny had +died, as he would have loved anything Jenny had chosen to do, as he +would have loved life had Jenny gone on living. By dying Jenny had made +death beautiful, and its gloomiest associations were but so many +allusions to Jenny.</p> + +<p>Death was to Theophil as a foreign land of which before he had only +heard the name, and heard it almost without interest, as one hears +listlessly of Peru. But now that Jenny had gone to Peru, the books of +the world could not tell him enough about the new land where Jenny had +gone, and everyone who had friends there was at once his friend, and +every little dark-robed company gathered sadly to godspeed some new +emigrant to its distant shore was dear to him for Jenny's sake. Besides, +some of these might have heard from their friends there, might have news +to tell him of the dark land. One would walk far, would listen late for +such precious tidings.</p> + +<p>Did such tidings ever come? Yes, some had even seen their loved ones +again, shining strangely on the air. Why did Jenny never come like that? +How he had prayed and called to her for just one sign out of the +silence, one swift uplifting of the veil; but none, except that dream, +had ever come. Yet one could never be sure by what common unnoticed +sights and sounds the dead might fumblingly be striving to reach us in +the deaf and dumb language of the dead. Perhaps it was they who led us +to passages in books we had never noticed before, pointed their fingers +to bright pages of faith, and left us here and there many a message of +hope we never dreamed had come from them. Or might it not happen that +the dead, like the living, could be unfaithful:--</p> + +<blockquote> +"Is death's long kiss a richer kiss<br> + Than mine was wont to be,<br> +Or have you gone to some far bliss<br> + And straight forgotten me?"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Perhaps Jenny already loved another in heaven, and his gift of +faithfulness might some day be a burden to her...</p> + +<p>This love of death was no mere morbid absorption. It was but one of the +activities of a faithfulness to which the trees about the temple had +become "dear as the temple's self," and his jealousy for those honours +paid to death was only one expression of his eager watchfulness for the +signs of human faithfulness.</p> + +<p>Not all unrewarded was that watch. The world held some faithful +hearts,--let us not ask how many,--lovers of invisible faces and voices +heard no more, men and women who still shared their joys and sorrows +with unseen comrades, and drank the cup of life as a sacrament of +remembrance.</p> + +<p>This sharing with the dead seemed to Theophil the essential of +faithfulness,--faithfulness taking many forms, sometimes maybe +misrepresentative of itself, and seldom perhaps informing its +conventional externals.</p> + +<p>A time will come in the profoundest griefs when those rituals to which +young grief is so eager to vow itself will grow lifeless and +conventional, the daily tasks of remembrance become as the told beads of +pattered prayers. Let the worshipper of relics beware lest his +treasures some day turn on his hands to so much irksome lumber, and true +sorrow be thus humiliated.</p> + +<p>No! the service for the dead which is most likely to remain a vital +offering of the heart is not the ceremonial sorrow of specially +consecrated times and seasons, but rather the simple longing in hours of +joy that <i>they</i> could have been with us. To think of our dead friends as +always in their shrouds is a way of remembrance which we shall not long +have heart or even interest to follow. It is only by taking them to our +feasts, keeping up with them the same old human companionship, that we +may hope to keep the dead as friends. A modern poet has written eight +lines which were of great comfort to Theophil,--</p> + +<blockquote> +"You go not to the headstone<br> + As aforetime every day,<br> +And I who died, I do not chide,<br> + Because, dear friend, you play;<br> +<br> +"But in your playing think of him<br> + Who once was kind and dear,<br> +And if you see a beauteous thing,<br> + Just say: 'He is not here.'"<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Here it seemed to Theophil was the whole duty of faithfulness. The dead +know that if we remember them in our hours of joy, they are indeed +remembered; and if they know anything at all, they will understand the +waywardness of sad hearts better than sad hearts understand themselves.</p> + +<p>Yet, indeed, save in the exercise of his faculties, Theophil had no joy +to reproach himself with. Surely returning spring, with its terrible +exuberance of warm life, was no joy. Perhaps he had looked on Jenny +lying dead with less anguish than he one day beheld an apple-tree thick +with blossom in the hot sun. Yes! the world had the heart to go on, to +bud and build, and sing,--though Jenny was gone. And in that bright +spring, see horrible and useless age still hobbling out into the beam! +What was life but one huge Mephistopheles laugh beneath the windows of +our dreams!</p> + +<p>That spring James Whalley persuaded Theophil to walk with him for a week +of country lanes far beyond Coalchester, letting him talk of Jenny all +the time. Jenny had never been here! If only Jenny could have seen that +view! Jenny had never known that flower! Did he remember those verses +from James Thomson:--</p> + +<blockquote> +"The chambers of the mansions of my heart,<br> +In every one whereof thine image dwells,<br> +Are black with grief eternal for thy sake.<br> +<br> +"The inmost oratory of my soul,<br> +Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead,<br> +Is black with grief eternal for thy sake.<br> +<br> +"I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross,<br> +With eyes for ever fixed upon that face,<br> +So beautiful and dreadful in its calm.<br> +<br> +"I kneel here patient as thou liest there;<br> +As patient as a statue carved in stone,<br> +Of adoration and eternal grief.<br> +<br> +"While thou dost not awake I cannot move;<br> +And something tells me thou wilt never wake,<br> +And I alive feel turning into stone."<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>Strange joy of sad poetry for sad hearts!</p> + +<p>Experience indeed was now divided for Theophil into what Jenny had not +seen or known and into what she had seen and known; and it was one of +the tricks of his grief, as time went on, to confuse the two. Sometimes +he would think that Jenny had been with him at a certain place, or +perhaps had read a certain book which, on taking thought, he knew she +could never have seen.</p> + +<p>Allied perhaps to this confusion was the fancy that possessed him on +certain days that he caught glimpses of Jenny in little flitting figures +of women about the streets. A sudden poise of the head, the way of doing +the hair, a trick of walk,--just a flash and gone again; though +sometimes he was haunted with more persistent resemblances, which +brought him a curious mixture of joy and pain. And this perhaps is the +place to record what only those acquainted with grief will understand, +and not all of those,--for grief has many contradictory fashions.</p> + +<p>Till he had loved Jenny, women had played little or no part in +Theophil's life; but with Jenny's death he found, to his surprise, that +the idea of woman was strangely sweet to him. His eyes were drawn after +women in the street, and he found himself longing sometimes for some +woman on whose shoulder he might lean his head and weep out his grief +for Jenny! He loved death because Jenny had died; was he to love women +because Jenny had been a woman? Perhaps his feet had wandered in +dangerous paths at this time, had it not been for the restrictions which +his calling laid upon him.</p> + +<p>These, however, did not deny him the theatre, which it had been part of +his programme at New Zion to advocate, though there was seldom anything +worth seeing at Coalchester Theatre Royal. Yet sometimes a good London +company would call there on its provincial progress, and it chanced one +day, looking into a shop window, that Theophil caught sight of a +photograph of a woman that startled him with its remarkable resemblance +to Jenny. It was the prima donna of a Gaiety burlesque. Such was the +strange shape Jenny had for the moment taken!</p> + +<p>For the first time after her death Theophil was at the theatre that +evening. The bright lights and the music pierced him as with swords. +Once more he saw that apple-tree thick with blossom in the hot sun. Yet +his fancy found grim spells to lay the insolent ghost of life, and death +ever at his side whispered that all this light and music and dancing was +for but a little while; that those gay rouged faces, so confident in +laughing beauty, and all those nimble shapes, were to the eye that had +looked beyond life already stark in their coffins, with chin-cloths +about their nerveless jaws. Surely the lover would trip in the shroud +that was plainly to be seen from his feet to his lips!</p> + +<p>Like sudden snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from his +imagination across that fiddling, jigging, gleaming atmosphere, and +everywhere the dead sat around him, watching in a trance strange antics +of the grimacing dead. Curiously, in these moods, he never thought of +himself as dead. Alas! life was too cruel to release him so soon to +death and Jenny.</p> + +<p>Suddenly the theatre sprang back to life again with the entrance of the +prima donna. Yes, the resemblance was even greater than in the +photograph. She was a little taller and more heavily built than Jenny, +and it was not Jenny's voice; but for the rest, she <i>was</i> Jenny. The +fascination of watching her was terrible. It seemed impossible that one +form could so mockingly resemble another, and yet be so hopelessly +someone else. Theophil could hardly bring himself to believe that the +woman yonder with Jenny's eyes and mouth and hair had never even heard +of Jenny's name. Surely, if he were to come and look into her face, she +would recognise him at once, and the old common interests would rise to +her lips as of old.</p> + +<p>Theophil went again to the theatre the next night, and again the next, +which was the last of the company's stay in the town; and the spell of +the false Florimel grew so strong upon him that at the close of the +final performance he sent up his card to the actress, and presently, as +in a dream, found himself stumbling among scenery and dipping under +beams on his way to the actress's room. If she were only as like Jenny +close to, he felt he must follow her to the end of the world; and indeed +the illusion still held as he entered the little mirrored room, smelling +of powder and littered with laces and silks,--fancy little Jenny here +among the grease-paints and the bouquets! It was only with the lack of +recognition in the polite welcome the actress gave him that the illusion +began to waver, or was it only that Jenny had forgotten him?</p> + +<p>So possessed had he been with the hallucination, that he had not +thought what excuse he would have to make to the actress for his visit, +and it was with an embarrassing shock that the necessity of speech came +to him, when he had stumbled through some mechanical words of +salutation. She looked at him with a little air of bewilderment, and +motioned to her attendant to leave them alone. As the door closed, +Theophil had determined to tell her the simple truth.</p> + +<p>"I have to ask your pardon," he began, "for a very strange intrusion. +The reason of it is simply this. You are so like someone I love who is +dead that I felt I could not rest till I had spoken to you. I trust you +will excuse me, and try to understand. Yes! you are terribly like her!"</p> + +<p>The story appealed to the actress's instinct for romance, and she +entered into its spirit. Besides, the young clergyman was very +interesting to look at, and the charm of sorrow was on his face.</p> + +<p>"An actress can hardly complain," she answered, "of being taken for +someone else, and though I don't know you, I feel that you have done me +an honour. Am I indeed so like her? How strange it must seem to you!"</p> + +<p>"It is very strange," said Theophil, still fascinated. Then he told this +image of Jenny the story of how Jenny had died. The tears came into the +actress's eyes as he talked, and it was as though Jenny shed tears for +Jenny's death.</p> + +<p>"Poor little girl!" she said; "I am so sorry for you both."</p> + +<p>"But," she continued presently, "you should both be very happy too--for +it would be worth while to suffer for so beautiful a love.... I feel +happy," she added half gaily, "even to resemble a woman who is so +wonderfully loved."</p> + +<p>Theophil lingered on, still fascinated, till the actress suggested that +he should walk with her to her hotel. Arrived there, Theophil, to the +possible scandalising of Coalchester, accepted her invitation to a +further chat over supper; and when at last he was back at Zion Place, +his heart was aware of a new comfort and a new pain. He had leaned his +head on a woman's kind shoulder, and she had let him talk and talk about +Jenny; but her shoulder had been warm, and it had been sweet to be +near her ...</p> + +<blockquote> +"A creature might forget to weep who bore;<br> +Thy comfort long" ...<br> +</blockquote> + +<p>and Theophil went to sleep that night with the taste of honey upon his +lips.</p> + +<p>But with the morning there came to him remorseful misgivings, and he +told himself that it had been one of the sophistries of the flesh, a +call of the senses taking in vain the sacred name of Jenny; and then for +his comfort he remembered how the greatest of all lovers, Dante, had +craved in like manner for the solace of "a very pitiful lady, very +young," and had been similarly remorseful on account of his momentary +preoccupation with her.</p> + +<p>Taking down his "Vita Nuova," he read: "<i>At length, by the constant +sight of this lady, mine eyes began to be gladdened overmuch with her +company; through which thing many times I had much unrest, and rebuked +myself as a base person: also, many times I cursed the unsteadfastness +of mine eyes, and said to them inwardly: 'Was not your grievous +condition of weeping wont one while to make others weep? And will ye now +forget this thing because a lady looketh upon you? who so looketh merely +in compassion of the grief ye then showed for your own blessed lady. But +what so ye can, that do ye, accursed eyes! many a time will I make you +remember it! for never, till death dry you up, should ye make an end of +your weeping</i>.'"</p> + +<p>Moreover, Dante had married Gemma within a year of the death of +Beatrice, and had even lived so scandalously meanwhile as to bring down +upon him the stern reproof of his friend Guido Calvancanti; yet the +world still regards him as the type of all faithful lovers. +Faithfulness is an attitude of the mind, and all it touches turns to +Beatrice. Yet--</p> + +<blockquote> +"Except by death, we must not any way<br> +Forget our lady who is gone from us."<br> +</blockquote> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>ISABEL CALLING</h3> + +<p>If women were thus henceforth to influence Theophil, why might not +Isabel, the woman whom Jenny had loved, be counted amongst them?</p> + +<p>Isabel was the one woman in the whole world whom Theophil's faithfulness +could not transform into Jenny. That it had been his fatal love for her +that had brought Jenny to her death, his reason, except in moments of +self-injustice, was robust enough to put aside.</p> + +<p>There are excuses that we owe to ourselves, and we have a right to +expect justice even from our own consciences. A sentimental conscience +is the most tiresome of all altruists, and wilfully to indulge in +remorse that we have not justly incurred is to blunt our consciences +for real offences. The best repentance for our sins is a clear-eyed +recognition of their nature, and the temptation in some flurry of +feeling to take on our shoulders the mistakes of destiny with which we +chance to have been involuntarily associated, is one to be resisted in +the interests of that self-knowledge which is the beginning of +self-development. Before we take the scourge in hand for our own +shoulders let us be quite sure that we have sinned.</p> + +<p>There were hours, particularly those hours of sudden wakefulness in the +middle of the night when our minds lose their sense of proportion, in +which Theophil agonised beyond endurance, and, as on that afternoon when +he had found Jenny's diary, said to himself with merciless reiteration, +"She seems to have had a shock"--"It was you who killed Jenny."</p> + +<p>These hours had to be supported as we support hours of purely physical +pain. The morning brought a saner, larger view. The tragedy of Jenny's +death was not to be so easily explained. In it were implicated more +august responsible causes, it was part of a more general tragedy; as the +original instinct to blame himself and Isabel was part of man's ancient +theological habit of making man the scapegoat of the universe.</p> + +<p>But as the thought of Isabel thus became bearable once more, it became +for that very reason a thought the more faithfully to be resisted.</p> + +<p>It might become sweet.</p> + +<p>It was sweet!</p> + +<p>One day the casuistry of grief brought Theophil the reflection that, as +Isabel was the only woman he knew whom Jenny had known too, and that as +Jenny had loved her also, she was thus destined for him even by Jenny +herself. Besides, as he had realised no unfaithfulness to Jenny in his +love for Isabel during Jenny's life, there could equally be no +unfaithfulness now that she was dead. Moreover, if Jenny still in some +mysterious way kept watch over his life, she would understand his heart +as she could never have understood it when she was alive...</p> + +<p>These thoughts brought deep sorrow to him for many days, during which +once more he rebuked himself as "a base person," but, curiously enough, +in one who so despised the world and its opinion, it was an apparently +superficial consideration that was the mainstay of his faithfulness, +against these disloyal suggestions of a life that was thus reawakening +in spite of himself.</p> + +<p>There were moments when he could conceive his going to Isabel, and +asking her to share his life with him; but never could he endure the +thought of her bearing that name which seemed so inviolably Jenny's. +Even though Jenny had come to him in a dream and asked him to give her +name to Isabel, there was still the world. Though Jenny might +understand, the world would think he had forgotten Jenny. The minority +of faithful hearts would grow sadder by his seeming apostasy, and the +cynic would strengthen his pessimism by one more illustration of human +inconstancy. The world might hear that he was loving Isabel in some +Aegean isle, and still deem him faithful; for grief is allowed +mistresses, but with a wife it is understood to die.</p> + +<p>No! so long as the world lasted no other woman should steal her name +from Jenny's grave.</p> + +<p>And this was an unassailable symbol. Here the vital principle of his +faithfulness was entrenched as in an impregnable fortress. He would see +Isabel's heart break ere she should bear Jenny's name.</p> + +<p>Yet while he made the vow, his love for Isabel was musical as spring +within his soul, and he dared to tell himself that in God's sight he was +still Isabel's as well as Jenny's.</p> + +<p>Thus it came about that one autumn day, when Isabel's letters had lain +unopened through spring and summer, in one sudden impulse of mere +desire he had opened and read them,--not as Jenny's letters, but as +messages for which he himself was hungering. He had released the +incense, and as he kissed the dear writing, he momentarily forgot that +it was written to Jenny, and only remembered that it had come from +Isabel. In the snare of the incense he even accused himself for having +left them unread so long, and then to think that nearly six months had +gone by since the second letter had brought its half-playful reproach +for forgetfulness.... "Ah! Jenny, I'm afraid you're a fickle little +person, after all."</p> + +<p>How strange it seemed to hear Jenny talked to like that--now.... Yes, of +course, Jenny was dead. Jenny was dead ... and Isabel was calling.</p> + +<p>Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's +words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some +subtle air of hellish sweetness?</p> + +<p>O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in +her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath +this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover.</p> + +<p>Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the +strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that +prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest +whisper of the real.</p> + +<p>Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go. Come back he might, but +go he must, he would. Yes! he was going.</p> + +<p>There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in the +train; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, his +heart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness, +that Theophil spent it. Purposes he had none, only a desire,--just to +see Isabel again. That immediate future was too effulgent for him to +think of anything beyond it.</p> + +<p>He would see Isabel again!</p> + +<p>From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, she +would turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness.</p> + +<p>The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped him +in a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were passing through +hidden orchards.</p> + +<p>Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you across +the night? Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep in +the rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across the +silent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like a +camp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speeding +through the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travelling +rooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"?</p> + +<p>Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel?</p> + +<p>No, not Jenny's name. Never Jenny's name!</p> + +<p>He was going to look on Isabel again--that was all. Perhaps he would die +with the mere joy of seeing her again--and then he would not need to +think of the future. Yes! the deeps of his soul had wanted her as +much as that.</p> + +<p>It was about half-past six as he reached London; and though it was +impossible to call on her for some hours yet, Theophil drove straight to +Isabel's little square, shuttered and still in the early-risen London +morning. His eyes chose the second storey for hers, and picked out two +dainty windows as her rooms. He half expected to see the blind suddenly +drawn aside and her face, a sleepy flower, bloom through the curtains.</p> + +<p>He lingered awhile, loving each individual brick of the house with his +eyes, and then, kissing his hands to the sleeping windows, he rejoined +his cab, which he had left at the street corner, shy of awaking the +hushed square with its clatter.</p> + +<p>He gave Isabel till ten o'clock, which was perhaps hardly enough for a +young London lady's toilette and breakfast, and then called. A pleasant +housemaid answered the bell, and told him that Miss Strange was away, +and was not expected till to-morrow.</p> + +<p>Here was a surprise. He had never even thought of that possibility.</p> + +<p>Begging leave to write Miss Strange a note, he presently found himself +in Isabel's room. It was the same his eyes had blessed from the street.</p> + +<p>So this was Isabel's room! So evidently hers, her very self!</p> + +<p>Isabel pictures, Isabel wall-paper, Isabel chairs, Isabel cushions, +Isabel desk, Isabel books, Isabel bibelots, Isabel litter,--all Isabel.</p> + +<p>And there hung an arras portière over a doorway to the right of the +fireplace. That was her bedroom! Dare he peep in? That was her little +bed. Would the housemaid catch him if he slipped in and left a kiss on +her pillow? By the mirror was a grotesque little china monster with his +mouth full of hat-pins. He stole one for a memory. Over a chair lay a +little dressing-jacket. He took it up and kissed it.</p> + +<p>Then he sat down to write to her. What a tidy, methodical little desk! +Everything in its place. Dear, business-like, sea-witch Isabel! Here was +her engagement book. He mustn't begin reading her letters!</p> + +<p>After his first disappointment, he was half-glad he would have to wait +till to-morrow to see her,--for, of course, he would wait. To have thus +sat in her room was almost enough for a first meeting. It was like +stealing upon her while she slept.</p> + +<p>Then he began a letter; but as he wrote, who was this suddenly standing +at his side? Was it Isabel? No...it was a little sobbing body quite near +to his, crying as if its heart would break...</p> + +<p>Oh, Jenny, Jenny--God forgive me!</p> + +<p>The spell was broken, the fit was over. Theophil left no letter for +Isabel, and no message, and the same evening he was once more back in +his little study in Zion Place, wild with remorse. O for the scourge and +the fire! But what penance shall avail to ease that poor little +creature's broken-hearted crying?</p> + +<p>"She seems to have had a shock!--She seems to have had a shock!"</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> +<br> + +<h3>BACK IN ZION PLACE</h3> + +<p>The shame of that wild unfaithfulness burned in Theophil's soul for many +days. It humiliated him like a physical degradation. To have been so +drunkenly untrue! It was one of those shocks to the moral nature from +which it never quite recovers, and Theophil's face lost some of its +steadfastness, his walk some of its firmness, for this perfidy +towards Jenny.</p> + +<p>There was only one way to make the sense of it endurable, and he threw +himself into his work with a wasting vehemence. Where was his ambition? +There was so much yet to do. New Zion had long since moved and hummed, +and whizzed, the neighbouring towns had in a measure begun to dance to +his piping, but it must be a long while yet ere his name was to London +and to the world what it was already to Coalchester,--that mere +microcosm of his fame.</p> + +<p>And till London knew him as well as Coalchester, there was no real +monument to Jenny. London--no longer the city of Isabel--must learn to +say "Theophilus Londonderry" so naturally, that it would some day serve +as an unforgettable remembrance of Jenny. He must become a great man, +because a great name is the one shrine in which love's memory may escape +oblivion. In the arms of his name Jenny would then be carried down the +years, one woman-star saved from the night of death. Again, the world, +for which in one way he had so little care, was to help him indirectly +to keep his troth to Jenny.</p> + +<p>In a sense, the mountain was already coming to this young prophet; for +with the winter some of London's finest spirits were now and again to be +met in that incongruous Zion Place, as visiting lecturers to New Zion. +And each one, as he came, was impressed as Isabel had been on that old +evening when she had discovered her colony of surprise-people. Each +realised in that gravely masterful young minister a power and a force of +attraction which could not long remain hidden in that little country +town. Meanwhile, their visits enabled him to test his own calibre by +comparison with theirs, and to realise that his instincts had not +befooled him, but that he too had been called to the stage of the +great world.</p> + +<p>It was in the operation of this method of inviting the mountain that the +French poet, with a reference to whom we began this history, made his +fantastic appearance in Zion Place. It is to be feared that it was a +conscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeed +New Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the most +imaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown the +Renaissance in Coalchester by this <i>reductio ad absurdum.</i> The +subtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, and +after days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a young +country minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in the +musty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow of +the world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of his name among +the stars.</p> + +<p>With the reawakening of his ambition, Theophil began to realise that his +work at New Zion was nearing its end, and that before long he must seek +that larger stage. Yet all his heart remained in that dull little Zion +Place, and while Jenny's old mother lived he could not conceive tearing +himself away. Could he indeed even bring himself to say good-bye to +these mean little romantic streets along which Jenny had tripped? Could +he bear to think of the commonplace little house which Jenny had +transfigured to a shrine being desecrated with vulgar occupation? If he +could only raze it to the ground, as a cup from which a queen has drunk +is shattered lest it should be soiled with usage of common lips! Some +day he might have grown rich enough to buy it, and set it apart for +ever, as a little house sacred to love and youth; but, meanwhile, with +what ugly and noisome presences would it have been defiled!</p> + +<p>He would stand in Jenny's room with its quiet books and flowers, and his +heart would ache to think that some day harsh hands must noisily break +in upon that sacred silence, and strip it of all its delicate memories. +Jenny's room the lair of wild beasts, a nest of foulness and serpents! +Sometimes he was thus haunted with the ghosts of those who were to riot +up and down these stairs when Jenny's memory had quite died out of these +walls like a fragrance of musk overborne with coarse odours.</p> + +<p>Yes! in this perhaps are the rich most enviable of the poor, that they +can afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved from +external taint from generation to generation, become temples of which +the very walls breathe nobleness, whereas the very birthplace of genius +itself becomes a butcher's shop; and though that genius be Shakespeare, +and the old house be some day purified seventy times seven, and +garnished as you please, the smell of slaughtered beasts will still +cling about its rooms, and the butcher insist upon immortality too.</p> + +<p>Jenny's old mother was soon to turn into a memory also. She had from +time to time declared that she would not see another May, and had indeed +on one occasion named the day on which she would die, with a curious +precision, as though she had seen it written somewhere in a book, or +learnt it from private or unimpeachable information. Latterly she had +met Jenny twice in full daylight on the stairs, and it was evident that +the old woman would soon complete that little family circle in Paradise.</p> + +<p>But she still kept about, and whereas her old husband had grown sleepier +as his end neared, she seemed to be growing more active again, fidgety +and restless. She slept badly, and returned to her old habit of being +first down in the morning and lighting the kitchen fire, in spite of +remonstrances. Indeed, she might sometimes be heard up in the middle of +the night, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen had +been her world, and she was already beginning to haunt it.</p> + +<p>There it was one wintry morning they found her sitting in the old +arm-chair in which her husband had died, and then they recalled her +words, for she had died on the very day she had predicted.</p> + +<p>She knew nothing of books, this quaint old woman, and had a very +antiquated taste in wall-papers; yet there would seem to be other ways +of being wise, and it may indeed be held that books act too much as +insulators between us and the earth, to the mysterious currents of which +gnarled shapes of unlettered old men and women may be the more sensitive +as lying closer to the Mother.</p> + +<p>At all events, old Mrs. Talbot did seem to have won certain confidences +from life and death refused to more consciously alert ears. Hers had +been that hearing beyond listening to which secrets are +sometimes revealed.</p> + +<p>Her death was more of a loss to her son-in-law than he might have +conceived, for not only was she the last of Jenny's flesh and blood, but +she was the only one else in the world who missed Jenny as he missed +her. Others might, through sympathy, share his sorrow, but she and he +were partners in an actual loss. Something had definitely gone from +each. Jenny seemed to be twice dead with the death of her mother, and +Theophil's loneliness suddenly became more absolute and cut off than +ever before.</p> + +<p>There was now no one left who could involuntarily recall remembered +words and traits of Jenny, and who would for their own sakes want to sit +down and talk of her. All that was left that really knew Jenny was the +old house itself. That remembered and talked of her still in its dumb +way; and as he realised this, his mood once more changed. He forgot his +aspirations toward a broader world, and felt that, not only would it be +a sort of unfaithfulness to leave Zion Place, but that to do so, and to +break up this familiar harmony of home, this little cosmos of friendly +furniture in accustomed relations,--pictures hung so from time +immemorial, rooms dedicated to this use and no other,--would be to +destroy the one mirror from which could come to him still glimpses of +Jenny's living face. In just that look of the rooms was the best +portrait he possessed of Jenny.</p> + +<p>Though he had always been fond of Mr. Moggridge, it had not before +occurred to Theophil to make of him a companion; but about this time, as +Mr. Moggridge would drop in of an evening to discuss church matters, the +young minister would be surprised to note how lonely he felt when he had +gone. Indeed Mr. Moggridge possessed that great undefinable gift of +companionability.</p> + +<p>What is needed in a companion is not brilliance of conversation, but the +power to make you feel that you are not quite alone in the universe. +Dogs and even children possess this quality for some happily constituted +individuals, but for others it is a necessity that the companion be a +human being.</p> + +<p>A human being, the quieter the better, if possible a rather large man, +diffusing a sense of warmth and safety, with perhaps no other gifts than +kindliness and a pipe; and sometimes you have the best of company. And +Mr. Moggridge, as we know, had brains too, and interesting instincts +for new things. But his best gift was his humanity. Thus Theophil +encouraged his evening calls and contrived to prolong them, though the +two would often sit almost silent by the hour, their pipes alone making +a sort of conversation.</p> + +<p>Sometimes the young lions of "The Dawn" would come to supper, as in the +old days, as Theophil called a year ago; but supper was a poor thing +without Mrs. Talbot popping in and out of the room, though she had +seemed comparatively unimportant then,--not to speak of eager little +Jenny,--not to think of Isabel.</p> + +<p>Yes! the sparkle had gone out of their meetings, which began to have an +air of make-believe youth about them. Theophil's interest was indeed +centred in the purlieus of New Zion, but it was entirely retrospective; +and though outwardly New Zion was more alive than ever, it seemed to him +that activity which once started goes on of itself, and he realised that +in his heart he cared nothing for the work itself, but only for the +music to which it had once been set in motion. Incomplete as in one +sense it was, in another and more personal sense his life seemed already +complete; and while in some moods he would dream of its resounding +continuance, in others he would sigh that it might end.</p> + +<p>However, for a while he would still go on living with the shadows he +loved; and as he sat alone of an evening in that silent house, he would +sometimes half fancy that he heard the other occupants moving about or +walking overhead. That was Mrs. Talbot with a creaking basket of clean +linen on the stairs, and surely that was the opening and closing of a +drawer in Jenny's room. Perhaps it was only Mr. Talbot moving his chair +in the kitchen.</p> + + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> +<br> + +<h3>AND SUDDENLY THE LAST</h3> + +<p>Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be a +memory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of new +worlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly to +close down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled half +sadly, and half proudly. No such good fortune for his sad heart! no such +miscarriage of his young life!</p> + +<p>Young life is so sure of its long lease. All about it lie the broken +dreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that <i>its</i> life-work +should suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of! +It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life and +coquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as "Will +it please your honour to die to-morrow week?" is an indignity +inconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worship +of the dead.</p> + +<p>Yet for quite simple reasons, as this mysterious world goes, it had been +decided that Theophil was for as brief a while as possible, allowing for +the leisure of natural causes, to support the life he thought he hated. +Even while Jenny lived, fate, mercifully foreseeing, had willed him a +brief pilgrimage; for on that night when Jenny had leaned over him with +that terrible hunger of damp breath, it had been written that of that +kiss Theophil should some day die.</p> + +<p>And it was of that kiss that the following May Theophil, all his plans +laid aside, engagements cancelled on every hand, eager life suddenly +trapped in this choking cul-de-sac, was dying.</p> + +<p>Death! It was an outrage! He was young, he was powerful! He would not +die!</p> + +<p>There was May at the window. He too was full of May. He would get up +and go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. It +was the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, like +the muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss and +twitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he had +been a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, to +rise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak at a +neighbouring town, where he had been promised for a great agitation on +the Home Rule Question. Surely it was a strange enough contradiction of +a year ago, when such meetings had seemed such trivialities in the +thought of death. Now, when they said he was dying--had this world grown +suddenly so significant that he could rise from his death-bed to make +one last appearance in the paltry lists?</p> + +<p>He spoke with an overcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a tumbler of +port wine at his side; and as the audience looked on his white hollow +face, and listened to his terrible eloquence, they realised with a +shudder that this was the last tragic effort of a dying man.</p> + +<p>Alas! the great world was not to be stamped with his image and +superscription, after all; and only a little faithful company of friends +would know that Theophilus Londonderry was a great man.</p> + +<p>This escapade, though it brought on death with double swiftness, brought +too a calm of satisfaction which made it easier to die; and in the +revulsion which it set up, life once more shrank into the background, +and its little triumphs grew paltry once more. Strange, he half smiled +to himself, that the man who was at last really going to Jenny should +even momentarily care about doing anything else!</p> + +<p>Yes, he was going to Jenny! So soon! Soon he would be on the other side +of that wall, soon be travelling that strange highway, on the other side +of light and darkness. In a few more weeks he... <i>HE?</i> Would there still +be <i>he</i> anywhere in the universe?</p> + +<p>Jenny! Perhaps there had been no Jenny all these months. Perhaps Jenny +stopped being Jenny forever in that last moment when she had tried to +wish him good-bye. And all his daily consciousness of her presence, all +the fancies of his faithful heart, had been idle as the words of a man +talking in his sleep. Those little offerings he had brought to her +altar,--she had never seen them; for perhaps Jenny had been an idol he +had made out of air, while he had been her lonely and unheeded +worshipper.</p> + +<p>Was it really like that? and in a few more weeks would he too be as an +eye that had ceased seeing, an ear that had ceased hearing for evermore?</p> + +<p>All the wonderful colour and sound of things! Were these waning days to +be his last poor opportunities to sit at the great show?</p> + +<p>Yes! the world was slipping like water between his hands--and he might +not be going to Jenny, after all.</p> + +<p>As these thoughts began to possess him, another thought which he had so +far resisted grew more importunately pleading--the thought of Isabel. +Perhaps he was going to Jenny, but surely he was leaving Isabel. Had he, +he could not but ask himself, immolated a warm living heart in a +fanatical devotion to a heart long since senseless and cold? Had it not, +after all, been a superstitious veneration towards an ideal of +faithfulness which had been Jenny's rather than his own? Had he in his +heart ever ceased to love Isabel, and had he really believed that to +love her too would have been unfaithfulness to Jenny?</p> + +<p>Yes, life was nearly over, but it held the possibility still of one +supreme blessedness. He might look into Isabel's eyes again.</p> + +<p>She had but to stand by his side and his poor remnant of life would grow +radiant and rounded as the most complete and blissful destiny. His heart +told him that if Isabel could but once enter the room again, and stay +with him to the end, however near, he would die singing the song of +magnificent life.</p> + +<p>Life is tragic, do you say? Life is cruel. Life is a splendid +portico--to nothingness. Ah, no! not if in that portico you have stood +for a moment, loving and beloved, by the side of Isabel. Life is +splendid! life is kind! life is abounding, deep-cupped! and each minute +of it is a prodigal eternity.</p> + +<p>Thus it was that one May morning Isabel sat very still in her little +room with a telegram just opened on her lap. The telegram ran: "Jenny is +dead and I am dying. Theophil." And this was the first message Isabel +had received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchester +station eighteen months ago.</p> + +<p>She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaid +had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat +cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her,--that Jenny +had divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil had +determined that they must never see each other again.</p> + +<p>Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent so +much in written words! Had he ceased loving her?... No, that she could +never believe. They had <i>met</i> too really for that. And, after all, this +silence was no more than their sad marriage-bond. Sad, truly, and a +little tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no power +over her love. That belonged to the realities; that could never change.</p> + +<p>"Jenny is dead, and I am dying," Isabel kept saying over to herself, +divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, and +something of Theophil's conflict during those silent months.</p> + +<p>"Jenny is dead, and I am dying,"--a sad, a tragic message, surely! And +yet, as from the first shock and consequent turmoil of that message, its +real significance slowly evolved, even Isabel was perhaps surprised to +find it rather a happy than an unhappy significance. Jenny was dead, and +Theophil was dying; and yet, when at last she shook herself out of her +reverie, her face was curiously lit with peace.</p> + +<p>She presently discovered that there was a train north in two hours; and +then she turned to her desk, and with that business-like carefulness +with which we often act in a dream, she went over its contents, and +methodically transferred its various accumulations to the tiny grate, +which was soon blazing with unwonted summer fire. A little handful of +letters she saved, and from the diminutive locked cupboard in the +centre she took out a small sealed packet, which was to be included +among her luggage.</p> + +<p>All trains do not separate. There are also glad trains which bring +together; and soon Isabel was in one of these, and soon it had taken her +to Theophil,--to whose ears at last had come the sound of wonderful +wheels in the dead street, wheels that had stopped beneath his window, a +rustle of alighting, an opening and shutting of doors, an approaching +whisper on the staircase, and then, with reality unutterable--Isabel.</p> + +<p>Isabel!</p> + +<p>You could hardly have told that Theophil was dying, and the face that +Isabel thus found again was marked by none of the dreadful writing of +death. His eyes were brighter, his brow more hollow, his cheeks +thinner,--that was all; and he was to be of those of whom we have +spoken, whose flame of life burns brightly to the end. No heavy mists of +Lethe hung about his bed. Till his last heartbeat, he was to be +conscious of the nearness of Isabel. For a fortnight he was thus to lie +within sight and touch of her. How good life is! Think of it, a whole +fortnight! How extravagantly blessed!</p> + +<p>Isabel was living in the same house with him day after day. She was no +visitor, but went in and out of the room with the step of one who is at +home. If he grew weary and dozed a moment, she would still be sitting +there when he awoke. She was wearing home things. One morning when she +had been busied in the kitchen preparing some little delicacy for him, +she had left her task for a moment to see if he needed anything; and as +she had bent over him, she had worn a household apron,--a wife's apron. +Yes, she was at home, she would never leave him again, never leave +him--till he died.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Isabel--to die!" he moaned one night as she sat by his side.</p> + +<p>"But think, dear," she answered, with her head turned away, "think of +Jenny."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps there <i>is</i> no Jenny."</p> + +<p>No Jenny! Isabel's heart gave a little cry. No Jenny! Then there could +be no harm ...</p> + +<p>"Theophil," she said, after a silence, "have you forgotten something we +said to each other that day,--something we promised?"</p> + +<p>For answer he looked at her with awed and suddenly enlightened eyes.</p> + +<p>"Do you mean that?" he asked. "You mustn't mean that."</p> + +<p>"Do you think I could care any more for life?" she asked. "Would you?"</p> + +<p>"No," he answered simply.</p> + +<p>"May I, then?"</p> + +<p>His eyes could alone answer. He knew her love too well to affect that +there would be any loss to her in the life she would thus be leaving.</p> + +<p>"But Jenny?"</p> + +<p>"If Jenny is there, she will understand now."</p> + +<p>I can conceive no happier, completer moment than that which followed for +these two, no more unassailable peace. If their lives were to be quite +put out, they would be extinguished together; if they were to begin anew +elsewhere, they would begin anew together; and meanwhile nothing that +could happen could harm them, could rob them of the desire of their +hearts. At the worst, they would attain their best; at the very least, +they would win their most: they would die together.</p> + +<p>To end together. It matters not how few or many years love and the +beloved live their days side by side, even though their love be but the +morning and the evening of one divine day, so that there be no bereaved +and lonely to-morrow. The hour that takes one and not the other takes +with it too all the accumulated happiness of all the years. That hour +these two were to escape. Yet was there no need of haste. So long as +they might, they would sit together in the sun of life. For a little +longer they would say, "How wonderful life is!"--for a little longer +make sure of each other.</p> + +<p>Your eyes, Isabel! Your hair, Isabel! Your dear mouth, Isabel!</p> + +<p>A little longer.</p> + +<p>"Shall we go to-night?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet...perhaps to-morrow, Isabel."</p> + +<p>But Theophil was now very near death, and he might forget if he lingered +on much more. Not wearily, but with music and singing must they pass +through the strange gate of Death.</p> + +<p>So at length, one June evening, Isabel made for them one last little +feast,--once more wine and great grapes set out upon a little table at +Theophil's bedside; and on the table, too, was the little sealed packet +Isabel had taken from the cupboard in her desk.</p> + +<p>Drawing her chair close up to his pillow, she poured out their wine, +and they drank it and ate the grapes together,--no happier people in +God's strange world.</p> + +<p>As the feast neared its end, Isabel rose, and stirring the little fire +into a blaze, turned out the lamps, so that the room was lit only with +the light from the fire. Then she refilled their glasses with wine, and +breaking the seal of the little white packet, took from it a small +bottle of green crystal, the contents of which she mingled with +the wine.</p> + +<p>Then she and Theophil held up their glasses to each other.</p> + +<p>"Let us go deeper into the wood," she said softly.</p> + +<p>"How wonderful life has been!" said Theophil; and the two drank, with +their eyes firm and sweet upon each other.</p> + +<p>Then Isabel sat down again by Theophil's side, and leaning her head +against his on the pillow, she took his hand. And the room became a +heaven of silence.</p> + +<p>Whoso would say of these two lives, "How sad!" let him consider the +quality of his own happiness; and whoso would regard the life of +Theophilus Londonderry as a failure, let him, too, consider the value of +his own success.</p> + + +<br><br><hr style="width: 35%;"><br><br> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] +by Richard Le Gallienne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF ZION *** + +***** This file should be named 10949-h.htm or 10949-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/4/10949/ + +Produced by Brendan Lane, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] + +Author: Richard Le Gallienne + +Release Date: February 5, 2004 [EBook #10949] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF ZION *** + + + + +Produced by Brendan Lane, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +THE ROMANCE OF + +ZION CHAPEL + + +By + +RICHARD LE GALLIENNE + + +1898 + + + + +TO + +TWO IN HEAVEN + +AND + +TWO ON EARTH. + + + + +Contents + +I. OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES +II. INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL +III. OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT +IV. ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY +V. OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS +VI. OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN +VII. THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER. +VIII. THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER +IX. "THE DAWN" +X. HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER +XI. A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY +XII. HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION +XIII. IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE +XIV. THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE +XV. JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER +XVI. THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME +XVII. "O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE..." +XVIII. ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS +XIX. PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS +XX. IN WHICH JENNY CRIES +XXI. IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED +XXII. THE TRYST LETHEAN +XXIII. JENNY'S LYING IN STATE +XXIV. THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--A MESSAGE FROM JENNY +XXV. JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE +XXVI. FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY +XXVII. ISABEL CALLING +XXVIII. BACK IN ZION PLACE +XXIX. AND SUDDENLY THE LAST + + + + +The Romance of Zion Chapel + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +OF A CURIOUS MEETING OF EXTREMES + +On the dreary suburban edge of a very old, very ignorant, very sooty, +hardhearted, stony-streeted, meanly grim, little provincial town there +stands a gasometer. On one side of this gasometer begins a region of +disappointed fields, which, however, has hardly begun before a railway +embankment cuts across, at an angle convenient for its entirely +obscuring the few meadows and trees that in this desolate land do duty +for a countryside. The dull workmen's streets that here abruptly +present unfinished ends to the universe must console themselves with the +gasometer. And indeed they seem more than content. For a street boasting +the best view, as it runs out its sordid line longer than the rest, is +proudly called Gasometer Street. Some of the streets that are denied the +gasometer cluster narrow and dark, hardly built twenty years perhaps, +yet long since drearily old,--with the unattractive antiquity of old +iron and old clothes,--round a mouldy little chapel, in what we can only +describe as the Wesleyan Methodist style of architecture. Cased in +weather-stained and decaying stucco, it bears upon its front the words +"New Zion," and the streets about it are named accordingly: Zion +Passage, Zion Alley, Zion Walk, Zion Street. There is a house too which +had been lucky enough to call itself Zion View, the very morning before +the house at the corner had contemplated doing the same. At Zion View +lived and still lives Mr. Moggridge, the huge, good-natured, guffawing +pillar of New Zion,--on whom, at the moment, however, we will not call. + +A nice dull place, you may say, from which to issue invitations to a +romance. Well, of course, it must seem so if pretty places are the +reader's idea of romance. Curiously enough, the preference of the Lady +Romance herself is for just such dull places. These dreary, +soot-begrimed streets are the very streets she loves best to appear in, +on a sudden, some astonished day, with a sound of silk skirts and a +spring wind of attar of roses. Contrast, surprise,--these are her very +soul. Dull places and bright people,--these she loves to bring together, +and watch for laughter and tears. You are never safe from Romance, and +the place to seek her is never the place where she was last found. + +Well, at all events, it is to Gasometer Street and New Zion that you are +respectfully invited, and before you decline the invitation with a +shrug, I will tell you this about the gasometer. The romantic eyes of +one of the greatest French poets once looked on that gasometer! I won't +pretend that they dwelt there, but look on it they once did--the eyes of +that great, sad, scandalous, religious French poet--on a night of weary +rain that set someone quoting,--also in that street,-- + + "Il pleure dans mon coeur + Comme il pleut sur la ville." + +Yes, and that French poet passed the gasometer on his way to New Zion. +Actually. + +Romance! Why, I wouldn't exchange Gasometer Street for the Isles of +Greece! + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +INTRODUCES MORE UNROMANTIC MATERIAL + +That French poet only concerns us here as, so to say, the highest light +in the contrast which it was the happy business of Theophilus +Londonderry, Jenny Talbot, and two or three devoted friends to make in +the vicinity of Gasometer Street and indeed in little Coalchester +at large. + +Theophilus Londonderry! It is rather a mouthful of a name. Yet it's so +like the long, expansive, good-natured, eloquent fellow it stands for, +that I must not shorten it, though we shall presently abbreviate it for +purposes of affectionate reference. He himself liked "Theophil" for its +reminiscence of another French poet, though "Theo" was perhaps the more +suitable abbreviation for one of his profession. Really, or perhaps +rather seemingly, Theophilus Londonderry had two professions,--or say +one was a profession and the other was a vocation, a "call." By day he +professed to be a clerk in a cotton-office,--and he was no fool at that +(there is no need for a clever man to be a fool at anything), but by +night, and occasionally of an afternoon,--when he got leave of absence +to solemnise a marriage, or run through a funeral,--he was a spiritual +pastor, the young father of his flock. + +Here I must permit myself some necessary remarks on the subject of +Nonconformity, its influence on individualities and its direct +relationship to Romance. In the churches of England or of Rome,--though +he sometimes looked wistfully towards the latter,--Theophilus +Londonderry, with his disabilities of worldly condition, would have +found no place to be himself in. His was an organism that could not +long have breathed in any rigid organisation. It was the +non-establishment, the comparative free-field, of Nonconformity that +gave him his chance. Conscious, soon after his first few breaths, of a +personal force that claimed operation in some human employment, some +work not made with hands, but into which also entered the spirit of man, +and being quite poor, and entirely hopeless of family wealth or +influence, there were only two fields open to him, Art or Nonconformity. +To art in the usual sense of the word he was not called, but to the art +of Demosthenes he was unmistakably called; and for this +Nonconformity--with a side entrance into politics--was his opportunity. + +This bourne of his faculties had indeed been predestined for him by no +remoter influence than his father, himself a lay-preacher, when he was +not the business manager of a large hardware store,--a lay-preacher with +a very gentle face, the face of a father, a woman, a saint, and a +failure all in one. + +I say failure by no means unkindly. Londonderry's father was made to be +a good bishop, to radiate from a hallowed security sweet lights of +blessing. His talent was gentleness, not in itself a fighting +quality,--a quality that needs a place prepared for it, needs the hand +of strength or opportunity to set it upon the hill. That he had made +himself learned, that his sympathy knew much of the soul of man, that he +was conscious of a very near communion with the Divine--were +qualifications that alone might not avail. Yet were they not lost, for, +apart from their own restricted exercise in the circle of his own little +"cause" and the other causes for which, in the technical phrase, he +would occasionally "supply," they had passed into his son, and met in +him other more energetic qualities, such as a magnetic eloquence, a love +of laughter, and a mighty humanity. + +Thus Theophilus Londonderry was partly his father licked into shape and +partly something bigger and more effectively vital. + +At sixteen he was learned in all the theologies; at nineteen he was said +to have preached a great sermon; at twenty-two he was the success of a +big political meeting; and at twenty-four he was the new lay-pastor +at New Zion. + +This is not to be the theological history of a soul, so I shall not +attempt to decide upon the exact proportion of literal acceptance of +Christian dogma underlying the young pastor's sermons. I doubt if he +could have told you himself, and I am sure he would have considered the +point as unimportant as I do. His was a message of humanity delivered in +terms of Christianity. The message was good, the meaning honest. He +would, no doubt, have preferred another pulpit with other formulas, but +that pulpit was not forthcoming; so, like all the strong and the wise, +he chose the formulas offered to him, using as few as possible, and +humanising all he used; and never for a single second of time, whatever +the apparent contradictions on the surface, was Theophilus Londonderry +that poorest of all God's creatures,--a hypocrite. However you may judge +him, you must never make that mistake about him. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +OF ELI MOGGRIDGE AND THE NEW SPIRIT + +New Zion, despite its name, was, as I have hinted, no longer new. The +fiery zeal which had once made it a living schism had long since died +out of it. Carried years before, a little blazing ember of faith, from a +flourishing hearth of Nonconformity some streets away, it had puffed and +gleamed a little space in the eloquence of the offended zealots who +carried it hotfoot that Sunday morning, but its central fire had been +poor, and for a long time no evangelistic bellows had awakened in it +even a spark. + +Its original elders had long since lost heart and passed away. A +dwindling remnant of their children, from old association, just kept its +doors from actually closing, and made a mournful interruption in its +musty silence on Sundays. Life was too low to support a Wednesday +prayer-meeting, and Sunday by Sunday that life ebbed lower. New life +from the outside must come, and speedily, or it must die. + +But new life was already on the way. On the town side the sad streets +round New Zion led one into a more prosperous High Street, and indeed +Zion Street itself, as it turned the corner, flamed into quite a jovial +and ruddy shop--a provision merchant's, and kept by Eli Moggridge. The +name did its owner considerable wrong, for its suggestion of puritanical +sanctimoniousness was a flat contradiction of the jovial and ruddy +personality, the huge red-whiskered laugher, for whom it stood, and of +whom the shop, with its healthy smell of cheese and its air of exuberant +prosperity, was a much more truthful expression. Well, the business was +growing with such gusto that Mr. Moggridge felt he might afford a home +away from his shop, and thus he came to take the biggish empty house +which presently put on new paint and once more seemed quite proud of +being "Zion View." + +Till this time, Mr. Moggridge. had "attended" elsewhere, but he was not +so young as he had been and somewhat stouter, and the stealthy approach +of comfortable habits had suggested to him that his old chapel was +rather at an unnecessary distance. Then, too, the fact of his house +being called after New Zion seemed to impose a sort of obligation +towards the sad old chapel. Besides, Mr. Moggridge was not inhumanly +above the pleasures of self-importance, and though he did not express it +in just those words, or indeed in any words at all, the idea of his +being the Maecenas of New Zion was suddenly born within him. + +Now, quick was even the word with Mr. Moggridge, as became a successful +man of business, and for him to conceive an idea was to carry it out, as +goods were always delivered from Mr. Moggridge's shop, with despatch. +Also in some dim far-off way Mr. Moggridge's mind had, all +unconsciously, been stirred by vibrations of what we call the New +Spirit. The new spirit of any age works its way even into its +businesses, and though Mr. Moggridge wouldn't have so described it, it +was the "New Spirit" that had made the success of his provision shop. +Speaking of the need of New Zion, Mr. Moggridge called it "new blood." +He meant the "New Spirit;" and it was in reply to his advertisement for +a new pastor, that the "New Spirit" in the person of Theophilus +Londonderry came one Sunday to preach at New Zion. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +ENDS QUITE ROMANTICALLY + +Eli Moggridge was a judge of men, and he liked Theophilus Londonderry at +a glance. Theophilus Londonderry was also a judge of men, and he liked +Eli Moggridge. In fact, two men that needed each other had met. + +You couldn't help laughing a little at Mr. Moggridge at first, soon you +couldn't help respecting him,--Theophilus Londonderry was almost to know +what it was to love him. Indeed, that Mr. Moggridge was just the man he +was was a matter of no small importance to the young minister. A chief +deacon is nothing less than a fate, and it is in his power to be no +little of a tyrant. Had Mr. Moggridge's interest in New Zion been of a +different character, he would inevitably have been as great a hindrance +as he was to prove a help. Fortunately that interest was recreative +rather than severely religious. It was to be for him a sort of +Sunday-business to which he was to devote his vast spare energies. He +wanted to see it a "going concern," and, hating stagnation in his +neighbourhood, he looked about for a specialist whom he could trust to +make it move and hum and whizz. + +Luckily, in so far as he was an amateur theologian, he was broad, with +further mental allowances for expansion. What was wanted at New Zion, he +explained to the young minister at supper after the close of an evening +service which had more than kept the promise of the morning, was not +Dogma, but common-sense every-day religion, a religion to help a man in +his business, not a Sunday-coat religion, a cheerful human religion; and +it happened that something of this very sort was what Theophilus +Londonderry was eagerly prepared to supply. + +The stipend was small, a poor sixty pounds a year, but Mr. Moggridge +guaranteed to swell it to a hundred if necessary from his own resources, +and he wanted it clearly understood that, short, of course, of the broad +general principles of Christian teaching, no restrictions were to be +placed either by him or anyone else on the young man's expression of the +faith that was in him. "All we want you to do," he said in conclusion, +"is to make the place go, give it new blood, new fire; as to how you do +it, that is your own business--and I shall no more interfere with you in +that than I should expect you to instruct me on the subject of York +hams. We must all be specialists nowadays,--specialists," repeated Mr. +Moggridge, with a feeling that he too had discovered planets. + +So it came to pass that "The Rev. Theophilus Londonderry, Pastor," +presently lit up with a sudden vehemence of new gold-leaf the faded +dusty name board of the chapel, and that, his own home being at too +great a distance for his ministrations, he came to lodge with some nice +old-fashioned people called Talbot at No. 3, Zion Lane. + +I want you to like funny old Mrs. Talbot, and I want you to love her +little daughter Jenny; so, to make it the easier, I shall not describe +them at too great a length. Old Mr. and Mrs. Talbot were the sole +survivors of the less active founders of New Zion, meekly not militantly +pious, stubborn as sheep in a dumb obstinacy of ancient faith, but in no +sense dialectical, and in every sense harmless. + +Mr. Talbot was a working stone-mason, and on rare occasions when front +parlour people caught glimpses of him, he was observed to be sitting in +the kitchen in some uncomfortable attitude of unoccupation, "like +white-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone." It is not recorded that he ever +thought on any subject, and it is certain that he seldom spoke. He would +flee from a stranger as from a lion, and, when confronted by such from +the wilds of the front parlour, he would bob his old head pathetically, +and make no attempt at speech beyond a muffled good-evening. It +disconcerted him to be expected to speak, and his tongue slumbered in +his mouth,--for he was an old weary man, and perhaps very wise. + +Old Mrs. Talbot, whose wifehood had long since been submerged in an +immeasurable motherhood and the best of cooks, would do the little +thinking the house required, take charge of the old man's earnings, pay +the rent and the burial club, and scheme little savings against Jenny's +marriage--which she kept, not in an old stocking, but in a precious +teapot of some old-fashioned ware reputed valuable, and itself carefully +wrapped up in a yellow handkerchief of Cashmere. The old lady had a +heart of fun in her, and even her notion of romance, and her withered +old apple of a face, with its quaint ringleted hair, had once been bonny +and red, you might be sure. But she was half blind now, and a good deal +deaf, and her sweet old mouth was hard to get at when she kissed you, as +she had a motherly way of insisting if she liked you. She, too, was very +old, and she, I know, was very wise. + +Jenny--well, there is really not much to describe about Jenny, beyond +that she was sweetly little, had a winning old-fashioned air about her, +was very good, that is, very kind, and was adored by the +school-children, whom she taught first for love and then for dress and +pocket-money. She was but nineteen, and all unminted woman as yet. No +lover had yet come to stamp her features with his masterful +superscription. Was she pretty? Heroines ought to be either very pretty +or very plain. Well, the beauty that was going to be was as yet only +beginning at the eyes. They were already beautiful. No, she wasn't +pretty yet, but she wasn't plain. + +Jenny's face slept as yet. When the fairy prince came and kissed it, +there was no telling to what beauty it would awake. The fairy prince! +That was going to be our friend Theophil, of course. Well, of course, +though it's a little early on to admit it. However, I am unequal to the +task of concealing from the hawk-eyed reader through a succession of +chapters that Jenny and Theophil were to be each other's "fates." Of +course, he hadn't been there a month before Jenny's face was beginning +to wear that superscription of his passionate intelligence, to grow +merry from his laughter, and still sweeter by his kisses. + +Of course, Theophil and Jenny fell in love. Do you think it was merely +to save New Zion and to bring the Renaissance to Coalchester that +Theophilus Londonderry was sent to live in Zion Place--or for any other +purpose less important than to love Jenny? Yes, we may as well take that +for granted as we begin the next chapter. + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +OF THE ARTIST IN MAN AND HIS MATERIALS + +There is only one way to give life to the dead or the moribund, the way +of the Hebrew prophet,--to give it one's own. Theophilus Londonderry +instinctively knew this, and he began at once to breathe mightily +upon New Zion. + +The goldsmith blows merrily all day through his little blowpipe, but it +is gold he is working on. The poet breathes upon the dictionary, and lo! +it flushes and breaks into flower. But then he is breathing on words. +The material of such artists is a joy in itself. They are workers in the +precious metals. Theophilus Londonderry had very different material to +mould,--an old chapel and some very dull humanity. Humanity is not a +precious metal, but if you know how to use it, it is excellent clay,--a +clay not without streaks of gold. + +What was Theophilus Londonderry's purpose with his material, his will +towards the uncreated world over which his young vitalising spirit was +moving? To save it? Yes, incidentally; but primarily to express himself +by means of it, to set it vibrating to the rhythm of his nature, to set +it dancing to a tune of his piping. Already he was being stamped in gold +on Jenny's face. The coarser face of the world was to wear his smile +too. For the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. Who knows to +what coasts of fame the imperious ripples of his personality would +circle on before they touched the shores of death? + +We may be polite as we please to humanity in the mass, and humanity in +occasional rarely encountered individuals is--well, divine; and to such +we gladly and humbly and rapturously pay divine honours. But in any +given thousand human beings, poor or rich, what would be your +calculation for the average of such divine,--how many faces would you +fall down and worship, how many hands would you care to take, how many +hearts would you dare to trust? + +Alas, the rather good eyes must go so often with the disastrous chin, +the mouth succeed where the nose fails, the expansive impulse be checked +by the narrow habit, the little gleam of gold be lost in the clay. + +Preponderant charm does not crowd into chapels or anywhere else to be +minted, it is busy on some vantage height of its own, impressing its own +image; and it is with minds maimed by the cruel machinery of life, +natures stunted and starved by adverse and innutritive condition, that +the artist in man must be satisfied. With what pathetic little flashes +of faculty, what fleeting and illusory glimpses of insight, what waifs +and strays of attractiveness, must he work and be happy, and with what +a thankfulness that the tenth rate is not twentieth or thirtieth! + +Then, too, how often must the intractible material be impressed again +and again and again before it begins to wear the first trace of your +image. Once a poet has impressed himself with mastery upon words, the +impression remains for ever, the words do not disperse in idle crowds +when he has done speaking to them, never again to reassemble in a like +combination; whereas the greatest oratorical mover of men is doomed, +even after his most electrical self-impression, to see his image, as +soon as taken, fade away, with a shuffle of escaping feet and a scramble +for hats and cloaks. It was a masterpiece; but with the last touch, see, +the colours are flying in a hundred directions, and the very canvas +itself is off in a thousand threads of hurried disintegration! + +But all this, of course, has to do entirely with the poetry of the +ministerial life; prosaic even as preaching and praying to the New +Zioners may sound, there was yet a drearier prose. For these artistic +materials had not only to be preached and prayed to,--they had to be in +a measure lived with, listened to, personally studied, and individually +considered. Each was an atom to be set in vibration, and each needed to +be set or kept going in his own way. All this prose had to be made help +in the poetry. How skilful you had to be to rouse the interest you +needed and escape the many interests you did not need, to awaken the +single gift without bringing upon you all the rest, to suffer the fool +wisely,--that is, to the extent of his tiny wisdom, and no more. To +encourage say Miss Annie Smith in her district-visiting--what a talent +she has for that!--but firmly to forget her at concerts; to welcome Mr. +Jones's services at collections, but gently to discourage him at prayer +meetings; in short, to meet all at the point where their natures were +really and usefully alive, but at no other point of their +circumferences. + +However, nature had made this as easy as breathing to the Reverend +Theophilus, for, apart from his humour and good nature, he was a lover +of character for its own sake, and to the student of character there is +no such person as a bore. Brother Saunderson was no doubt as wearisome +an old man as the world holds, but his manner of neighing to the Lord in +prayer was worth it all. And it is rather a pity if the reader imagines +that to laugh at his neigh is to forget respect for his venerable faith. + +Thus mightily, gently, cunningly, coaxingly, Theophilus Londonderry +breathed upon New Zion, and Eli Moggridge was a noble second, according +to his word. At every service of every kind, and at all times, he was +there, swelling out from a pewful of ruddy daughters, and endlessly +beaming round at his fellow-worshippers, as much as to say, "Didn't I +say he was the man for New Zion?" + +The old channels were beginning to fill with the new spirit, the old +disused machinery was once more in motion. In two months' time every +possible form of meeting was in a healthy condition of attendance, +prayer-meeting, church-meeting, mothers' meeting, Bible class, Dorcas +society, Band of Hope, Sunday-school, all briskly in motion; and the +ladies, led by Jenny, were all as busy as bees over a bazaar. New Zion +had indeed become a veritable merry-go-round of religious and social +activities. Yes, it was beginning to move, indeed, it was almost +beginning to hum--another few months and it would fairly whizz, as Eli +Moggridge had foreseen; and the sound of the humming and the speed of +the whizzing would grow louder and louder and faster and faster, till +not merely Zion Place and Zion Alley and Zion Passage and Zion Street +heard it and were caught up in the infectious dance, but the very High +Street itself should hum and whizz. + +The High Street! what are High Streets to the soul of Theophilus +Londonderry? What is Coalchester itself?--though that shall soon be +humming and whizzing too. This is but the whirling centre of the +ever-spreading wheel of force that has begun to turn at New Zion. +Coalchester will spin soon, and then the disappointed fields around it, +then the neighbouring towns would join the reel, and so on and on, +faster and faster, madder and madder, till even London itself moves, and +the world that changes its axis at the will of any strong spirit will +whirl its immeasurable velocities around the vortex pulpit of Theophilus +Londonderry. + +Yes, the pebble had only been thrown in at New Zion. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +OF A WONDERFUL QUALITY IN WOMEN + +Darwin expended many years of his life in the study of disagreeable +animals, that he might prove the adaptability of organism to +environment. How much pleasanter and briefer had been his task, if he +had begun his studies at once with the creature whose long history has +been one unbroken succession of inspired and noble adaptations! + +Woman's adaptability to man is one of the most mysterious, as it is +perhaps the most pathetic, of all the modes of her mysterious being. +Like certain protection-seeking animals, she is always the colour of the +rock, the husband-rock, in whose shadow she lives. Sometimes, of course, +she is her own rock; but in such cases man is never her chameleon to a +like degree or indeed in a like manner. Such adaptability is not one of +the forms of his greatness, and even when he achieves it, it is not +becoming to him. + +For woman's adaptability is not the domination of a weaker nature by a +stronger, it is in itself a noble and world-necessary form of strength. + +Strength is needed as well for the taking as the making of an +impression,--something more than mere ductility. Weakness may never bear +the stamp of power,--it breaks in the moulding; and it is rather because +woman is so strong that she is able to take the Caesarean stamp of any +form of power. Nor cares she by whose hands she is moulded, whose image +she wears, be it warrior, poet, or priest, so long as she feels the +veritable grasp and impress of power. Some women are already made in the +image of the man they are to love before they meet him. Very wonderful, +very terrible, then, is the meeting, and it is a meeting that usually +comes too late. But oftener God gives a man a little measure of +porcelain and a handful of stars, and leaves him to make the woman he +needs for himself; and very wonderful too is that making,--though the +man will always have been the father before he was the lover. + +Why, one may ponder, should a man who is great enough to mould a woman +to help him be great, not be great enough to do without her at all? Let +lovers of the unfathomable ask at the same time: Why is man, man? and +woman, woman? and what are both? + +This gentle doll with the sweet breath, which he nips up in his arms and +kisses, and gives a tongue that she may talk back to him his own words, +endows with brains that she may think his thoughts,--a quaint little +helpless lovely parody of his wisdom and power; a toy, yes; a +refreshment, yes; a place of peace, yes,--but how much more! Yes, more +by all that we don't understand when we say "woman." + +Why a great man should need, not a great woman, but a little woman, a +very little woman,--how is it to be explained, unless it be that woman, +however little, is mysteriously great, just because she is a woman, a +little woman? Unknown properties were wrapped up somewhere in that +porcelain; to press it with the lips is to feel strange virtue coming +into one,--the devil was in those stars. + +Great men are only nourished on the elements. Woman is an element, all +the elements in one,--earth, air, fire, and water, met together in a +rose. She is a spring among the rocks, and she comes up dimpling from +the roots of the world. She is just as simple and just as strange. O! +little shining spring of woman that is called Jenny, a great man must +draw up through you the unfathomed, deep strengths of the old world. He +bends above you and drinks, and as he drinks, his face is mirrored +in yours. + +"Jenny, I don't think I'd read 'Miss ----,' if I were you," would say +the great man. + +"No, dear?" So Jenny was presently reading Ruskin instead, and wondering +how she could ever have read "Miss ----." And deep in her dear heart she +was saying, "Of course not; great men's wives never read 'Miss ----.'" + +And yet had the great man said, "Read Gaboriau instead,"--as a certain +very great man does,--Jenny's heart would have said, "Of course, great +men's wives always read Gaboriau." + +No! great men's wives read "Sesame and Lilies," and "Sartor Resartus," +and "Marius the Epicurean," and "Richard Feverel," and "Virginibus +Puerisque,"--they even try to read Newman's "Apologia." Such were the +books on the sunnier side of Theophilus Londonderry's little library in +No. 3 Zion Place. In dark corners behind easy-chairs were the deep-sea +pools of theology,--pools which had long since given up all the fish +they had in them for their owner,--slabs of antique divinity, such as +you would find likewise in the equally cherished library of +Londonderry Senior. + +Such were the fathers that slumbered on in a well-earned repose, and +which, far from desiring new readers, were so old that they were glad to +rest undisturbed,--being far too self-important to confuse a considerate +regard for their repose with neglect. And many of them were really quite +valuable as decoration, because of their fine old coats of gilded +leather; and such were ranged in the more penetrable shadows or even in +the lamp-light. Theophilus would point to them as to a portrait-gallery +of dead ancestors. One might admire the quaint and distinguished cut of +their clothes without dreaming of wearing the same,--and indeed old +divinity, he used to say, was poor food for young divines. + +His divinity indeed was fed on the technical side, it is to be feared, +by the more destructive biblical criticism, like most destructive +engines, coming all the way from Germany, and at its more vital centres +by importations of strong meat from Russia and Scandinavia. Tolstoi and +Ibsen were his archprophets. + +There was likewise a great Paris moralist called Zola, and a strange old +American father called Walt Whitman. And beauty, that can never be far +away from strength, found many new and wonderful prophets in that little +library,--poets and painters and musicians of whom hardly anyone else in +Coalchester had yet heard, and certainly no one above the age of +twenty-five. + +Surely youth is in nothing more marvellous than in its mysterious power +of attracting to itself into the most out-of-the-way places the +sustenance and companionship it needs. In the unlikeliest wilderness +inspired youth is never without the mysteriously-brought food and the +company of angels. Powers of the air will sweep across continents to +rescue it from prison, soft gales travel from south to north to sow +seeds of beauty in its narrow ways, and little songs will flutter like +butterflies for hundreds of miles to cheer its heart. + +The Time-Spirit had given its angels charge concerning these young +people, and, remote as they were from all the fiery centres of thought +and the dreaming schools of art, Zion Place, no less than the Rue de +Rivoli, took its thought of the newest and its beauty of the best. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +THE LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF COALCHESTER + +I have said that Coalchester was a very ignorant old town. I did not +mean to imply that there were no M.A.'s there. In fact, there were quite +a number. You may be sure that if spiritual and intellectual life had +its representatives, as we have seen, spiritual and intellectual death +had its representatives, too--by which I don't mean either to imply that +the M.A.'s were dead M.A.'s, dead and buried with Latin over them in the +old brassed and effigied church, which was so old and large that it was +hardly less conceited than a cathedral. Spiritual and intellectual death +in Coalchester, as elsewhere, was officially represented by the Literary +and Philosophical Society, which still unblushingly went on retaining +its adjectives, even in the face of its "Transactions," which seemed +mainly composed of treasurer's reports, with an occasional paper +on fossils. + +Indeed the one spark of life in the pathetic old society was its real +interest in the antediluvian and prehistoric. For the life that was dead +it had a perfect passion, and it sometimes held conversaziones to gaze +at it through microscopes. Occasionally it would waken up to literature +with a paper on Akenside. In everything that didn't in the least matter +some of these mild old gentlemen were genuinely learned. Not that they +hadn't read the great poets, even in the original Greek, Latin, and +Italian. Poets in dead and foreign languages were a form of fossils, and +English poets--with that divine bloom upon them!--they had a way of +fossilising by spectacles, so that they never read them alive. Thus they +had never read Shakespeare even in the original. + +Once, long ago in Coalchester, a hundred years ago, there had been a +little circle of elegant literati, connoisseurs of literature and +art,--men, so far as men of that age might be, genuinely, if timidly and +old-maidishly, affectionate towards belles-lettres; men who had got so +far as to appreciate the freshness of an Elizabethan song; minor Bishops +Percy; and such lavender is the true love of anything that their +memories still hung about the walls of the old Lyceum along with their +portraits; while so necessary are great names for little towns to boast +of, that the compiler of the local gazetteer implied that Coalchester +glowed at night with quite a lustre from their names. Besides, they +proved very useful in damping young men. And yet you wouldn't know their +names if I were to write them--as I would rather like to do. + +The learned Dr. Sibley, he wrote a pleasant little essay on "Taste," you +know, with a few additional notes on chiaroscuro; and then there was +the learned Dr. Ambrose, who wrote quite a pretty little treatise on +Song-writing. + +No! Of course you won't know any of them. Yet they were all once, and +are still, "The Learned." You'll never hear Theophilus Londonderry +spoken of as that, I'm afraid. + +As it is the property of fame to grow with time, and the way of a great +name to begin with brains and end with lords, a great man's descendants +are not unnaturally found persons of much greater consequence than the +original great one. In like manner the dignity and importance of the +members of the Literary and Philosophical Society had grown, in direct +ratio to their distance from the original founders of it; and the +learned Doctors Sibley and Ambrose, who really did know something about +art and poetry and certainly loved them, can never have been persons of +such consequence as one or two of their descendants who are nameless, +and who certainly knew nothing about either. + +One of the real objects of this sad little Society was passionately to +ignore what they contemptuously called local talent. It is true that +there was not much to ignore, and, after all, it has now to be recorded +to their credit that they did unreservedly give Theophilus Londonderry +his chance. By what quaintness of accident he could not imagine, he +suddenly found himself invited to lecture before them. The invitation +read something like a command, and there seemed to be an implication +that if all were satisfactory, he might thus earn the right of +acknowledging the patronage of the Literary and Philosophical Society of +Coalchester. + +Theophilus Londonderry's subject, therefore, was "Walt Whitman,"--a name +which conveyed no offence to the Committee, for the simple reason that +it conveyed nothing. It was a strange and humorous thing for the young +man to think of, that his was to be the first human voice that had +spoken that name of the future aloud in Coalchester. As he rose to give +his paper, he pronounced its title slowly, with his full carrying voice, +and allowed the strange new name to roll away in menacing echoes through +the old Lyceum: "W-a-l-t W-h-i-t-m-a-n." + +Even yet no one saw the coming doom, heard not the voice that tolled a +funeral bell through all Lyceums and other haunted houses of dead +learning. The Canon in the chair smiled benignantly, with an expression +that I can only compare to buttered rolls. He was just three hundred +years old that very day, and the audience (a scanty fifty or so) ran +from a hundred and fifty upwards. The only young men present besides the +lecturer were two friends of his I have yet to introduce,--Rob +Clitheroe, a fiery young poet and pamphleteer of many ambitions, and +James Whalley (little James Whalley he was always called) a gentle lover +of letters, with perhaps the most delicate taste in the whole little +coterie; _and_ Mr. Moggridge,--not entirely comfortable, it having been +by some mysterious atmospheric effect conveyed to him that he was a +tradesman and a dissenter, in which latter capacity he felt a certain +traditional resentment towards his complacent fellow listeners. A quite +recent ancestor had refused to pay tithes. That ancestor was in his +blood to-night. + +Jenny was not there. Ladies were not admitted to the meetings of the +Society, there being a sort of implication that masonries of learning, +occult sciences of the brain, were practised at their meetings,--matters +which never came out in the "Transactions." + +The lecture was a straightforward and eloquent account of Whitman's +writings and doctrines, with extracts from "The Leaves of Grass;" and +from beginning to end you might have heard a pin drop, particularly +during one or two of the quotations. When it was ended the buttered-roll +expression had faded from the Canon's face, and his "our young friend" +expression was ready for the chairman's remarks. Londonderry's sitting +down awakened a few sad echoes that were no doubt hand-clappings, but +seemed like the napping of the wings of night-birds frightened by a +light. But the Lit-and-Phils were not frightened; they were entirely +bewildered and rather indignant, that was all. It was characteristic of +their incapacity to grasp the humanity of any subject, even when it was +dangerous, that the criticism which followed was directed almost +entirely against Whitman's metrical vagaries. This was not poetry! Had +not their revered founder, the learned Dr. Ambrose ... + +The Canon kindly said, showing his pastoral interest in the local +newspaper, that the verses which their young friend Mr. Rob Clitheroe, +who was present with them that evening, occasionally contributed to the +Coalchester "Argus" were in his opinion better poetry than anything Walt +Whitman had written, though he confessed that his acquaintance with +Walt Whitman was of the slightest. This disastrous compliment sent the +blood to young Clitheroe's cheeks, and he felt surer than ever that he +would never be a real poet,--though, as a matter of fact, he had written +some quite pretty lines. + +It was an occasion that of course only the Lit-and-Phils could take +seriously, and the way home to New Zion was a laughter of four beneath +the stars,--Mr. Moggridge's deep guffaws coming every now and again, +like the bay of some distant watch-dog, at the young minister's +brilliant mimicry of the ancient men they had left behind. + +Then the gentle voice of little James Whalley took advantage of a +silence: "Isn't it high time that we brought the Renaissance to +Coalchester?" + +"Capital!" cried Londonderry; "come in for a bit of supper, all of you, +and let us talk over the plan of campaign." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +THE PLOT AGAINST COALCHESTER + +Old Mrs. Talbot had been prepared for some such invasion, and had an +excellent rabbit-pie awaiting them. There was a delightful trait of old +Mrs. Talbot's which I would like to record, a curious chronological +method of remembering great occasions and startling events by the food +of the day. Thus, for example, when with eyes that would still fill with +tears, though it was ten years ago, she would tell the story of how her +only boy had been brought home dead one night from an accident at his +workshop, she would fix the date by saying, "It was about six o'clock at +night, and I'd just got a nice little bit of liver and bacon cooking for +your father's dinner, when there came a knock at the door ..." +Sometimes it was, "I'd just sent Liz out for a little bit of fish," or +it would be Spanish onions maybe, or a lovely little rabbit, that +marked the day. + +The night when the attack on Coalchester was planned was marked, as I +have said, by rabbit-pie. Mrs. Talbot would hardly have understood the +significance of that rabbit-pie, though in the course of her occasional +bobbings in and out of the room, to see that the young men were doing +justice to her food,--she had a curious notion that young men never ate +enough,--she would hear snatches of what she called "deep talk," or +shake her old head at her coming son-in-law, whom she already adored and +mothered, with a "Law! what a boy it is!" She wasn't quite sure +sometimes as to the soundness of his "doctrine," but wisely decided that +her business was rather with his stomach than his brains,--which no +doubt God Almighty would look after for himself. + +Wit at the expense of Coalchester can only be of interest to +Coalchester wits and their butts, so I shall not record the bright and +animated talk which helped to digest Mrs. Talbot's rabbit-pie, but +confine myself to a practical outcome of it. + +What interests me specially about these young men was their rare +practicality. They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, with +ideas they had no notion how to embody. Dreamers, of course, they +were,--otherwise there had been no point in their being practical,--but +they were dreamers who understood something of how dreams are best got +on to the market of realities. + +Characteristically, it was the poet of the party from whom the most +practical suggestion came. In itself, of course, there was no great +originality in the idea of a weekly paper to be called "The Dawn," +devoted to the dissemination of the new light on every possible +subject,--politics and municipal misgovernment; the new social ideals; +the newest and most delicate forms of art, music, and literature. It +was in the suggested method of publication and circulation that the +originality lay. The paper was to be given away and made to pay its +expenses by tradesmen's advertisements, a guarantee of a certain minimum +distribution being given. This method had, of course, been tried before +for purposes of mere publicity, but never, I think, for the +dissemination of truth and beauty. The truth about life was to be paid +for by lies about bacon and butter,--or, let us say, business +exaggerations rendered innocuous by custom, and therefore as harmless +as truth. + +Obviously Mr. Moggridge, who not unnaturally had felt a sense of moving +about in worlds not realised during much of the deep talk, was here an +authority of importance, and the idea at once appealed to him. He would +promise a permanent advertisement, and he even promised illustrations, +in the form of blocks already engraved and occasionally used by the +"Argus," of the flourishing shops at 33, 34, 35 High Street, and 58, 59 +Zion Street. He had also some blocks of gigantic hams most hammily +pictured, which might also be of use, and he would also be able to bring +in a number of his fellow tradesmen. Invaluable Mr. Moggridge! What were +truth without you! + +The poet, on his part, guaranteed to supply all the poetry that might be +required, and indeed agreed to do special rhyming advertisements, at, +say, half a guinea apiece. He would also assist Londonderry in the +political and municipal departments, not only in the higher flights, but +lend a hand even in castigations of local jobs, abuses, and absurdities. + +Gentle James Whalley would write round-about essays, for which he had a +charming gift, and generally take in charge the aesthetic interests of +the paper, though, as all were lovers of art and literature, those +subjects would be handled now by one and now by another. Even Jenny was +to have her place on the staff, and write dress articles, which would +not only tend to improve the aspect of Coalchester streets, but attract +millinery advertisements. She already announced the title of her first +article, which was very grand: "Dress as a form of self-expression." + +It was two in the morning before the proceedings terminated, and even +then good old Mrs. Talbot was still up to press steaming bumpers of very +hot whisky and water upon the wayfarers; "to keep the cold out," she +explained--though I need hardly say that the project had not waited till +that hour to be suitably recommended to the god of all enterprises. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +"THE DAWN." + +Next to the delight of holding new and unpopular opinions is the delight +of having a medium for their unedited expression, though this is a +delight given to few reformers. "The Dawn," however, was to be such a +medium; and when the first number appeared, as it did nearly a month +from the meeting recorded in the last chapter, four people, nay, +five--for we mustn't forget Mr. Moggridge--were supremely happy. With +the exception of the poet, who, as we have seen, occasionally irradiated +the poet's corner of the "Argus," and Mr. Moggridge, it was a first +appearance in print for three out of the five contributors; and though +each talked most of the articles by the others, they were secretly +longing to get away with the little paper to some corner where they +could gloat over their own special contribution. + +Not that they had any ridiculous ideas of the literary importance of the +articles in question, but because it seemed so strange to see the warm +words of their mouths thus condensed into cold print, so strange to +think that people all over Coalchester were reading them. Little Jenny +in particular felt quite a cold but pleasant shiver of notoriety as she +thought of it, while to her lover the delighted perusal and reperusal of +a large-type leading article, headed "In Darkest Coalchester!" brought a +new sense of power. + +The poet, as was only to be expected, had his little grievance with the +printer, who, in spite of all his remonstrances and corrections in +proof,--the printer was a little wrong-headed Scotchman,--had insisted +at the last moment in heading his Tyrtean "Proem," a fine aerial +trumpet-blast somewhat Shelleyan in style, with the word that was +evidently intended, namely, "Poem." However, he was somewhat consoled by +reading his caustic column of notes headed "The World outside +Coalchester," the very heading of which was a revelation. Then, too, he +very much enjoyed his article on "Bad Lighting in Coalchester," with its +evident allegoric insinuation that Coalchester needed lighting in more +ways than one, and that "The Dawn" was prepared to undertake, free of +charge, the top-lighting of which it was most in need. + +James Whalley contributed a review of "Mr. Swinburne's new Poems," +through which article Mr. Moggridge's illustrated hams plainly showed +from the other side. + +New truth is too often printed in very worn-out type, but the promoters +of "The Dawn" had wisely remembered how hard truth is to read, and had +given it good clear type, and generally made it a very comely and +attractive little paper. It bore a motto that sounded almost like a +threat, "We come to stay,"--a boast which it manfully kept for several +years. As I lift my eyes from this paper, they rest on no less than ten +great half-yearly volumes, which flash "The Dawn"--"The Dawn"--along a +darksome folio shelf, as they have flashed it week after week across +darkest Coalchester; and "The Dawn" ceased, at length, not from lack of +power and encouragement to continue, but because the world had grown +sadder by then, and it had lost the will to go on living. + +In spite of this hardy existence, I suppose "The Dawn" will win no +record of itself in the histories of the press, though merely as +spirited journalism it deserves to do so; while in the history of the +human spirit at Coalchester it demands a grateful celebration such as it +will, again, most surely not receive from the literary and philosophical +historian of the town. At all events, honoured or forgotten as it may +be, should you ever come across its strange young pages, I know you will +agree with me that it was a wonderful little paper. It was not, you may +suspect, conservative, being, as it was, very alive and very young. In +fact, its radiant radicalism brings tears to one's eyes to-day, when so +many of the noble ideals it championed, to the length and strength of +its little angry arm, are lying smashed beneath the iron blows of the +capitalism that has outlived even the noble eloquence of Theophilus +Londonderry. + +Like all young people, it was all for the young, the new; and I think +you will be astonished, if you do ever turn over its pages, at the +remarkable instinct for the crescent life possessed by these young men; +and, were it worth while, I could easily prove that several of the more +exquisite continental writers, now the fashion this many a year, first +found a humble welcome in that quaint little organ of New Zion. + +Yes! it was a triumph for New Zion too. This modest and hitherto obscure +corner of the town suddenly found itself, comparatively, in a blaze of +publicity, for a column headed "Work at New Zion," evidently meant to be +weekly, left no doubt from what quarter of the town the dawn was to be +looked for. This was perhaps the most delightful thing about the +paper,--its calm assumption that the real aristocracy of the town was to +be found in that little back street, and that, if Coalchester was to +have any spiritual or intellectual life, it must seek it there. In Zion +Street, and nowhere else in Coalchester, were the angels descending into +the waters. And the best part of the joke was that the assumption was +literally true. + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +HOW THEY BROUGHT THE GOOD NEWS OF A MORRIS WALL-PAPER TO COALCHESTER + +Coalchester was too much taken by surprise by "The Dawn" to pretend to +ignore it, and its first recognition was appropriately made in a +ludicrously abusive article in "The Argus,"--"the one-eyed Argus," as it +was mockingly nicknamed in the next week's issue of the new paper. The +joke was one that was lost on Coalchester, which had never dreamed of +expecting a hundred eyes in its "Argus," which to it was but the usual +name for a sleeping newspaper. It was, however, to do them justice, seen +and chuckled over by one or two members of the Literary and +Philosophical Society. "The young beggars know their--classical +dictionary, at all events," said one of them maliciously, which was +quite bright for a Lit-and-Phil. + +One tangible result of the little paper was the almost immediate +doubling of the attendance at New Zion. Curiosity had been aroused in +this militant young minister with the strange ideas, and Theophilus +Londonderry wished for nothing better than to gratify it. In the oxygen +of success even the dullest metals will scintillate, and it needed but +such small beginnings of his future to make Theophilus as nearly +irresistible as natural gifts and success together can make a man. + +Some people go to chapel to worship, a few to learn, but most, odd as it +may sound, to be entertained. A vivid and magnetic preacher is as near +as many will allow themselves to approach the theatre. Theophilus was a +born actor--of himself; a part so few can or dare play. He gave you good +stimulating truth; but it was not so much in the newness of the ideas +which he passed on from his books to his hearers, as in the newness of +himself, that of course the charm lay. A few people, not many or +important, disliked him; but all had to listen, and a good many came to +New Zion again. Above all, the women heard him gladly; and to this sure +sign of a future Theophilus was far from blind. "He has women at his +back, he cannot fail," was a phrase he sometimes recalled out of his +favourite _Brand_. Yes, and had he not one little angel-woman at +his side? + +It had been the spring of 1886 when he came to New Zion. It was now the +autumn, and early in September announcements had been made of a series +of autumnal lectures to be given by the Rev. Theophilus Londonderry; Rob +Clitheroe, Esquire; James Whalley, Esquire; and other distinguished +lecturers, at New Zion. + +In the list were papers on "The Duty of Novel Reading," "Henrik Ibsen," +"A Morris Wall-Paper," "The Nude in Art," and "The Darwinian Theory," +by Mr. Londonderry himself; "Coalchester, its Past and its Future," by +Mr. Rob Clitheroe; together with "Ireland's Sacred Right to Home Rule," +by the same lecturer; "Wagner and the New Music," by Mr. James Whalley, +with a paper on "Some Really New Books," by the same; and a paper-on +"Good Taste in Dress," by Miss Jenny Talbot--the virago! + +The batteries were to be turned on poor Coalchester with a vengeance. +For some time past there had been uneasy suspicions in the town that +strange and somewhat ungodly forms of new learning and beauty were being +stored as in an arsenal in that little house at 3 Zion Place. A large +cast of the Venus of Milo, it was known, had come from Covent Garden, +London, _via_ a poor little dealer in artistic materials in the town, +who on one occasion had shown a bewildering picture to one of his +customers with the remark, "What do you make of this, Mr. Littlejohn?" + +Mr. Littlejohn could make nothing of it, nor indeed could the artists' +colourman, who had been used to pictures all his life. + +No wonder, for it was the first Rossetti that had ever been seen in +Coalchester. + +And it was the same at the little paperhanger's shop where Theophilus +had ordered some pieces of Morris wall-paper for his room. + +"Law! what a taste, to be sure!" had exclaimed the paperhanger's wife as +they opened the parcel. "How any one dare live with such patterns is +beyond me." The paperhanger's wife verbed better than she knew. Few are +those indeed who dare live with beauty. + +When the paper was hung in Theophil's room, so great was the sensation +in the household that even old Mr. Talbot ventured to look in at it, +keeping very close to his wife. It was so the old man had stood +open-mouthed before the first steam-engine, and here again was the Devil +plainly at work. + +"Lord a-mercy, Jane," he said to his wife, "what is the world coming +to?" + +The world was indeed changing beneath the old man's feet, and the +heavens opening as never before in his time--with, he might be right, +some assistance from beneath; and--it was undoubtedly safer in +the kitchen. + +Mrs. Talbot in these matters lived and loved by faith in her boy, as she +called him. But even she had her doubts, which she expressed in a way +that showed, funny old woman as she was, that she was not without a sort +of blind insight. + +"I suppose it's all right, boy," she said, "and it sounds silly to say +about a lot of harmless lines and flowers, but it seems to your old +mother that there's something wrong about that paper,--something almost +wicked in it. It reminds me of that nasty music you and Jenny are so +fond of playing." + +Here Theophil enveloped her in a huge hug, and laughingly mocked her +with playful caresses, smiling to himself all the same. For the music +she had referred to was Dvorak. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +A LITTLE ABOUT JENNY + +Meanwhile, as New Zion moved and hummed and whizzed, and as "The Dawn" +went on dawning week by week,--you couldn't expect the dawn oftener than +once a week in Coalchester,--the love of Jenny and Theophil grew more +and more perfect. + +There was a long while to wait yet before Jenny was to bear what seemed +to her the finest of all names, for old Mrs. Talbot, easily manageable +as a rule, had a way of quietly putting her foot down on occasion that +would have surprised you. Jenny was only just passed nineteen, and was +no fit wife for any man yet, least of all for a great sprawling fellow +like that. Let her get a little more flesh on her bones, something more +than all spirit and nerves, let her get well turned twenty, and it might +be thought of, but not now. + +No! it's no use coming with your nonsense, you silly big fellow! You +know when the soft old mother says a thing, she means it. + +So it proved. Old Mrs. Talbot on this point remained a homely form of +adamant. However, the lovers were not badly off. Living in the same +house, they saw almost as much of each other as if they had been +married, and from the evenings she spent there, Jenny had come to regard +Theophil's room and his books as hers too. + +She had developed wonderfully in these months, had Jenny. She was a real +little great man's wife now; and as Theophil looked at her, with her lit +eager face, her whole soul so alive to help him in however humble a way, +her whole life his, his, his,--such love seemed almost tragic in its +very beauty and joy. It was so irremediably--love. At times he almost +trembled before it. He would almost chide her with its divine +completeness. + +What if he were to be taken from her? Oughtn't she to keep just a little +of herself for foothold? We ought all to belong to ourselves as well as +to another. It was such a risk. Suppose he were to die, Jenny! + +No doubt it was very wise, but Jenny was wiser. She could never belong +to herself again. She was his, and his only, for ever; and if he +died--if he were to be taken away ... + +But he could never be taken from her any other way? No one else, nothing +but death, could take him ... + +"No, nothing but death--and perhaps not even death." + +"You are sure, darling? O, you are quite, quite sure?" + +"Sure from my soul, little child. Look in it and see." + +A lover's eyes are his soul. + +Yes, Theophil loved Jenny, loved her even more with her own dependence +on love than he knew of. He was, the reader need scarcely be told, an +almost wildly ambitious man, and a few months ago he would have said +that there was nothing which was more to him than the expression of the +power that was in him. But there was something that was even more to him +now, and if it could be imagined that he might some day be asked to +choose between his ambition and Jenny, he could honestly have answered +from his soul, "Give me Jenny." + +Whoever thinks this an easily natural answer to make, may know something +about love, but evidently knows little about ambition. Still, life +seldom sets us such silly examination questions as that, and need one +say that that question was never put to Jenny's lover? He was far too +proud of the woman he had made of that little measure of porcelain and +that handful of stars. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +HOW THE RENAISSANCE CAME IN PERSON TO NEW ZION + +The winter months had gone by; all but one of those incendiary lectures +had been given, not without storm and tempest; "The Dawn" still came up +each week with anger and singing, and the first year of Londonderry's +ministry at New Zion neared its close. The lecture season was presently +to end, on the last Friday in March, with a concert which was to include +a series of recitations by a lady-reciter from London. Londonderry had +written to a lecture agency for the name of a likely reciter, man or +woman, and they had sent him the name of Isabel Strange. + +On the occasion of the last lecture, Mr. Moggridge had not been +satisfied with the colour of the platform. It wanted repainting, and I +think it very likely that it was a strain of that boyishness which I +hope survives in us all, and one of whose quaint fancies is an envy of +house-painters, so happy all day with paint-pot and brush and great +smooth boards to dab and smooth, that decided him to do the job himself. +Mr. Moggridge had this great element of refinement, that he thought +nothing honest beneath him. + +It was the Friday of the entertainment, about one o'clock, and though +Mr. Moggridge had practically finished the work the day before, he had +slipped in during his lunch-hour to give it a final touch or two. He had +brought his lunch in the form of a pork-pie, and while with one hand he +plunged the pie occasionally among his red whiskers, with the other he +would lean forward and touch up a knot or a nail-hole that needed a +little more paint. And he was proud as a boy of the simple bit of +slap-dashing, and entirely absorbed in it and the pork-pie. + +Presently he became aware that he was not alone. Someone had entered +the schoolroom at the far end. He turned round, with the paint-brush in +one hand and the pork-pie in the other, and became abashed, for a +beautiful lady had entered the room and was evidently about to make an +enquiry. The surreptitiousness that seems to inhere in pork-pies +prompted Mr. Moggridge to slip the pie into his trousers' pocket--for +his coat was off, and a white apron had taken its place. + +"Just doing a little bit of amateur painting," he explained rather +awkwardly, advancing to the lady. + +"So I see," said the lady, with a pleasant smile. "This, I believe, is +Zion Chapel--and I suppose this is the room where I am to recite. My +name is Isabel Strange, and I have come a little earlier, I daresay, +than you expected; but I always like to see the room I'm to recite +in--just to try my voice in and run over my pieces." + +"Certainly, of course," said Mr. Moggridge; "but you have come all the +way from London and so early. You will have some refreshment first, and +if you'll honour Mrs. Moggridge and me--I may as well explain that I am +the chief deacon," said Mr. Moggridge, dexterously slipping off his +painter's apron and getting into his coat. So, with a wistful glance at +his work of art, Mr. Moggridge carried off the beautiful London lady to +Zion View. + +But was Isabel Strange beautiful? It was a new sort of beauty if she +was--or perhaps a very old sort. Yet beautiful was the first word that +had sprung into Mr. Moggridge's mind as she had surprised him in the +schoolroom. Perhaps wonderful was the exacter word, wonderful in a way +that included beauty,--wonderful, and with a strange air about her that +suggested exceptional refinement, exquisite sensitiveness to +refined things. + +"Beautiful, O dear no!" said Mrs. Moggridge, to whom feminine beauty +did not appeal, as the young lady freshened herself up after her travel +in Mrs. Moggridge's best bedroom. "Why! she hasn't a regular feature in +her face!" + +Mrs. Moggridge herself had neat little pretty features set in fat. + +"Look at that long upper lip and her nose!" + +Mrs. Moggridge omitted mention of eyes singularly powerful and very true +and sweet, as also of a long lithe mouth that reminded you of a +beautiful serpent, a serpent which the true eyes plainly said would do +you no harm. + +Presently, however, Mrs. Moggridge had to admit that she was very +attractive. She knew she meant fascinating, but she wouldn't admit that +to Mr. Moggridge, who had dropped the subject; though a mind which again +had asserted its dim preference for new fashions was perhaps groping +after expression of some such perplexity as this: why, if a face has +the same effect upon you as beauty, may it not be described as +beautiful? If Mr. Moggridge really got so far even as cloudily to ponder +that, it is evident that he was not far from the kingdom of beauty. + +It is, of course, true enough that some faces are spoilt by flaws such +as every Mrs. Moggridge can point out,--faces that begin in one style +and end in another, half Greek perhaps and half Gothic; yet even such +faces, if their individuality is strong enough, have their own rococo +charm. For all but supremely great faces, of which perhaps the world has +not seen half-a-dozen, absolute regularity, so-called correctness, of +features is a calamity, and regular beauty on the ordinary human levels +is only another form of mediocrity. + +Wonderful English girls! face after face indistinguishable from each +other as rose after rose. How sweet you are! how fragrant! what a bloom! +It is a wonderful rose-girl-farm from which you come. How pretty you +look laced up one after another on your standards, and how skilfully +you are guarded against any form of variation! Perhaps no women +potteries in the world produce so exquisite a surface, delicate as a +lily and strong as marble. Indeed you are wonderful porcelain, you fair +English girls, wonderful porcelain; but where are the stars? + +Mrs. Moggridge had also remarked that Miss Strange was "very easy in her +manners." This was not always the case with ladies in Coalchester, and +Mrs. Moggridge did not mean the remark as an unreserved compliment. She +liked a certain stiffness in strangers. It was not, however, in Isabel +Strange's nature to oblige her in that particular. Her way of pouring +her grace into Mrs. Moggridge's great arm-chair suggested at once that +she had lived there for ever so long, and to him particularly she +chatted as with an old acquaintance. You could not make a stranger of +her. She ate some cold fowl which presently appeared, entirely without +embarrassment, though two Miss Moggridges sat like dummies and +watched her. + +"That's an interesting face!" she said presently, pointing to a +conspicuous portrait of a young man on the mantelpiece. + +"That's Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge. + +"O! _that's_ Mr. Londonderry, is it?" she said. "H'm,... I hadn't +expected him to be so young." + +"Yes! He's a wonderful young man for his position," said Mr. Moggridge, +started on what was now his favourite topic. "He'll be a great man some +day, will Mr. Londonderry." + +Isabel looked up at Mr. Moggridge with added interest. Such a genuine +interest in great men as his voice betokened was a surprise in him. + +Then Mr. Moggridge proceeded to narrate the history of New Zion, told of +its former desolation, his lucky advertisement, and its present +prosperity. + +"Yes, it was a dead-and-alive place was New Zion when we moved in here, +wasn't it, missus?" turning to his wife; "but now, since Mr. Londonderry +came, there is always something moving. Yes, there's always something +going on at New Zion," he repeated, rubbing his hands gleefully. Mr. +Moggridge did so love anything that was alive. + +Mr. Moggridge also told the story of "The Dawn," and generally, as he +would have said, posted her up in the position of things at New Zion. At +the end she found herself generally looking forward to meeting this +young minister and his friends, who were evidently a little nest of +surprise-people in what had indeed seemed a most unpromising corner of +the world,--perhaps the most unpromising corner that her nomadic +wandering minstrel existence had brought her to. + +Isabel Strange, according to old-fashioned reckoning, was not a very +young woman. That is, she was already twenty-eight, though, having to +fight a silly world with its own silly weapons, she called herself +twenty-five, which it was still quite safe for her to do; and though the +nerve-intensity of her face was the worst thing in the world for +wrinkles, they would when they came be very interesting wrinkles, and +her eyes and mouth would keep the world from looking at the rest of her +features for a long time to come. A face so full of the mystery of light +could only be eclipsed by one darkness, and even in that those magnetic +eyes would shine through the cold closed lids. + +Surprises were welcome to her, for she got few. Her life was rather a +dreary one, as the life of an elocution teacher may well be. At one time +she had dreamed of the stage, but her voice was not quite big enough for +that, some managers had said, and indeed her mettle was perhaps a little +too fine for the stage. The positive and enduring joys of her life were +that she lived in London--for which she had the kind of passion that +some people have for the Earth-Mother--and loved beauty as some women +love religion. She had been loved many times, but never quite as she +needed, as she demanded, to be loved. Vivid, passionate, and exquisite, +she was what we call "modern" to the tips of her beautiful fingers; that +is, she united the newest opinions on all things with many ancient +charms. At the same time she was a good woman, though very wonderful and +highly dangerous. + +Presently Mr. Moggridge, who from where he sat commanded a view of the +street, exclaimed, "Why, here is Mr. Londonderry himself!" rising as he +spoke and passing into the hall, where he was met by a curiously rich +and mellow voice, which Isabel Strange thus heard for the first time; +and then the glorified original of the photograph entered the room. + +As her eyes and hands met his, her soul gave a little half-humorous +"Oh!" of surprise; for photography, which seems to have been invented to +flatter the mediocre and belittle the exceptional, had indeed given +Londonderry an "interesting face," as we have heard, but missed all the +rest--"all the rest" of a large, mobile, talking face, not exactly +handsome perhaps, but decidedly good-looking and full of various +commands and appeals, thought on the brow and laughter in the eyes, +humour and eloquence all along the large and somewhat loose mouth, with +plenty of go in the powerful but not anxiously determined chin. These +were the moral qualities of the face, which Isabel Strange did not miss; +but it was the fascination of its general vitality that struck her most, +as an important introduction was made, to the usual fantastic +accompaniment of small talk. + +Let us not prolong the small-talk of the situation further, but +introduce Miss Strange as speedily as possible to Jenny also and to the +little study in 3 Zion Place. + +Here her eager examination of the shelves was one succession of cries +of sympathetic delight. "Why, you have got all the books I ever want to +read again!" she exclaimed. "What wonderful people you are! How have you +done it--in Zion Place?" + +"I suppose the books must have been blown here," answered Theophil, +gaily, "on the same fair wind that blew Miss Isabel Strange." + +"Yes," said little Jenny, affectionately pressing her shoulder as the +three leaned forward looking at the shelves, "for if we seem wonderful +people to you, what must you seem to us--here, as you may well say, in +Zion Place?" + +"What _does_ she remind you of?" said Jenny presently, with candid +admiration. "I know! Why, of course, she just _is_ the very woman. +Wait--I'll go and fetch it;" and Theophil and Isabel were thus left for +a moment or two alone,--a fact of no importance beyond this, that it was +the first moment in their lives that they had ever been together alone. + +Jenny returned presently with a small copy of Botticelli's "Primavera," +which hung in her bedroom; and it was undoubtedly true that the figure +of Flora might well have passed for a portrait of Isabel. The nose was a +little longer, that was all; but the rest of the face--particularly the +eyes and mouth--was all but exact, and the general correspondence +between the two faces in subtlety, strangeness, and, so to say, +determined refinement, was complete. + +"It is strange that I should have loved that face so," said Jenny. + +"It is very sweet of you,--Jenny, I had almost said,--but you are too +kind to me, and a little selfish too--you give me no time to admire you. +I wonder if Mr. Londonderry is modern enough to allow ladies to smoke in +his study." + +And thus it comes out that Jenny often smoked there! + +The smoking-sister is now almost as common as a taste for Botticelli, +and perhaps equally insincere; but in 1886 there still remained that +sense of contrast in both which we have declared the essence of romance. +At present those curious people who resent the popular acceptance of an +ideal of beauty which they have done their best to popularise are +beginning to affect that a taste for Botticelli is a mark of the +_bourgeoisie_. So does the whirligig of time bring in the paradoxer. + +A new kind of woman, while she is always the despairing hope of men, is +seldom acceptable to women; yet when the evening came and Isabel stood +up to recite in New Zion schoolroom, women as well as men were +instantaneously attracted. She stood very simply, with one hand lightly +touching the table at which Londonderry sat as chairman, and the other +at her side; and before she began her first recitation she glanced +quietly over the audience, as though her eyes were thus preparing the +proper magnetic atmosphere for her voice. + +She began with some simple Longfellow poem, that New Zion might feel at +home; then she recited a fairy poem called "The Forsaken Merman," which, +of course, was only a fairy tale, and yet somehow was so full of human +pathos that it was more real than if it had been really "real," that +is, prosaic. + +For impressing the imagination of her audience she relied mainly on her +own imagination and her voice; striking no attitudes, and allowing +herself nothing of that facial distortion which is the resort of the +unimaginative, and destroys not creates illusion. Of course, her face +changed, but the change was one of which she was probably unconscious, +and which she couldn't have reproduced to her mirror; it was not a play +of features, but a play of lights and shadows and nerves, a flow or an +ebb of radiance in the eyes, a subtle sensitiveness of the lips and +nerves; and her effect was mainly produced by her voice, over which she +wielded indescribable powers of modulation. It was a voice so +sympathetic, so intimate, that it almost seemed too intimate, too +appealingly sympathetic. It was so a woman might recite to a man she +loved, but you almost felt as though the voice were too personal a +revelation for an audience,--felt an impulse, so to say, to throw a veil +over it, though you were glad from your soul that no one threw it. And +the voice was a wonderful actor too. It could act the scenery as well. +You saw it all, you heard it all, you felt it all, in the voice:--the +great winds blowing shorewards, the wild white horses in the spray, + + "The white-walled town, + And the little gray church on the windy shore;" + +and when she said, "Down, down, down!" you were indeed in the very +depths of the sea--and were all sitting, Mr. Moggridge with the rest, +amid coral caves and seaweed, and in a curious green and +shimmering light. + +But what a world of heart-break there was in her "Come, dear children, +come away!" You felt you simply couldn't bear her to say it again. Next +time you'd have to cry, and cry you did, and you weren't ashamed, for +suddenly when you came out of the trance of the voice you found that +every one else was crying too, and Mr. Londonderry had quite forgotten +that he was a chairman, and had to be nudged to announce the next piece. + +This was a very strange poem, and made you feel like a stained-glass +window; it was full of incense, but it was full of something else +too. It began + + "The blessed damozel leaned out + From the gold bar of heaven" ... + +and there was something in the voice that suggested such a height up +above the world that you drew your breath lest she should fall over. And +there was a lover crying in the poem, you could hear him crying far +away down on the earth, and there were some lines which went: + + "We two will lie i' the shadow of + That mystic living tree + Within whose secret growth the Dove + Is sometimes felt to be" ... + +that made you feel what a strange holy thing love was, after all; and +then there was a curious verse with nothing but women's names in it, yet +somehow it seemed the loveliest of all; and when again you came out of +the voice, you were not crying but feeling wonderfully blest somehow and +rather frightened. Jenny sent a wonderful look to Theophil--it was so +they should bathe together in God's sight--and Theophil sent back as +wonderful a look as a chairman dare venture on. Otherwise, of course, it +would have been as wonderful as Jenny's. + +Thus did Isabel Strange recite at New Zion; and perhaps one can best +judge of the impression she made, from the fact that the little boys at +the back, who during the last lecture on "Henrik Ibsen" had discovered +a most exciting new way of making continued existence possible, quite +forgot it and would have to keep it for Sunday afternoon Sunday-school. + +Everyone went home in a dream, and little Jenny shone like a light with +the excitement and wonder of it all. + +"How wonderful you are! Doesn't it seem strange to be so wonderful?" +said Jenny afterwards, as the two girls took off their outdoor things in +Jenny's room. + +"Dear child!" said Isabel, kissing Jenny on her brow, "it is you that +are wonderful." + +There is no joy in the world better worth seeing, better worth living, +than the joy of young people with the same dreams, the same thoughts, +and--so important--the same words for them, blown together by some +unexpected conjunction of the four winds, met by some blissful +dispensation of the planets of youth. + +There have been periods in history especially favourable for the ecstasy +of such meetings, early mornings of the human spirit, when lovely new +truth and lovely new beauty were dawning wild and dewy in the strange +east, and while the deep breathing of the older generations still asleep +made a more wonderful loneliness of dawn, for the hushed and happy bands +of young people holding each other's hands and watching in the +magic twilight. + +To have been young in Italy in the time of Dante, in England in the time +of Shakespeare, and to have met in such a mighty morning--with danger +too to keep us grateful. Ah, we have missed those dawns; and yet I doubt +if the whole recovered beauty of Greece and Rome, or the thrilling new +fashions in romance and poetry wafted across the seas from Italy to help +make Shakespeare, ever gave young people a keener thrill of newness and +mystery than the books and pictures so eagerly discussed by the little +group that gathered over supper that night in 3 Zion Place. + +To have read "The House of Life!"--to have seen the "Venus +Verticordia"! Ah! that was life! And Isabel had actually been to Mr. +G.F. Watts's studio--walked about there a whole afternoon. The young New +Zioners looked at her. + +"O Theophil, we _must_ go to London," cried Jenny. She meant when they +were married. + +Theophil pressed her hand tenderly, as she impulsively sought his for +sympathy, and his eyes left Isabel's face a moment to smile a true "yes" +into Jenny's. + +Of course no one had eyes for anyone but Isabel that night. Was she not, +as the announcements had said, "of London," an ambassadress of beauty +from the capital of the great queen? There was really little she could +tell these clever young people, who amazed and attracted her by their +reality,--the unrealities of "intensity" and "modernity" and the rest +had, of course, already begun in London,--but she represented to them +the sparkle of the new beauty and truth they loved. She knew little +intimate anecdotes of the poets and painters they loved, piquant gossip +and brilliant _mots_; and then she was one of those women who are like +incense in a room, enriching by her very presence, exhaling mystery and +distinction, like a pomander of strange spices. + +You might love her for a long time or a little, but love her you were +obliged to while you were with her, whoever else you loved too. There +was no other word for it. Even little James Whalley had conscience-pangs +as he looked at Isabel, for he had been engaged for five years; but the +poet's heart, that is, all the combustible portion of it, was already +burnt to a cinder. Poets' hearts, however, are used to burning. The +inflammable air of sighs about them is ever in a perpetual state of +ignition; so it has come, no doubt, from long custom, that nature has +made them at their centre as fireproof as the phoenix. Otherwise, +indeed, the poetic life would be impossible to live; poets could not go +on maintaining the deadly fire of love, to which it is one of the +conditions of their precarious art that they must daily expose +themselves. Sometimes, indeed, as we know, even these firemen of the +emotions dare the burning house once too often, and we hear their +death-song amid the flames. + +Theophil? + +Well, we can talk of Theophil again. Meanwhile Jenny was as much in love +with her herself, and he held Jenny's hand and loved her, O yes, so +dearly--and was quite safe. Fear not, little Jenny; it was only death, +you remember, that was to separate Jenny and Theophil. + +Mrs. Talbot--if she won't bore you--had made an interesting remark. She +had not escaped Isabel's charm, but there was "something," something a +little alarming about her,--a little like that wicked wall-paper. + +Jenny divulged this criticism over supper when her mother was out of +ear-shot. + +"How very clever of her!" exclaimed Isabel. + +"She said the same of Dvorak's music," said Jenny. + +"Good again," said Isabel. "How clever of her! Don't you feel how right +she is? We are all like that wall-paper, and everything we care about is +like it. The New Spirit--that is, the devil--is in that wall-paper. A +psychometrist could detect Wagner and Keats, and Schopenhauer, and +Rossetti and Swinburne, and all the rest of them in that wall-paper, +just as surely as he could have detected Tupper and Eliza Cook in the +wall-papers of 1851. Am I not right?" + +"If we could only paper New Zion like this!" exclaimed Theophil, a +curious new feeling of joy and pain shooting through him to hear a woman +thus expressing herself as an independent brain. + +"Yes! New Zion! I'd quite forgotten all about New Zion. It seems +impossible to think of you together." + +"And a little absurd, I suppose," said Theophil. + +"It is uncouth material, I admit," he continued, "and yet somehow it +amuses us to mould it all the more; and then you mustn't forget that we +had been given no other--but I don't suppose you can understand?" +(Theophil often used "we" in this imperatorial sense, meaning himself, +as of course he had every right to mean.) + +"O yes, but I can," Isabel hastened to correct. "I understand power." + +"Beauty always does," was the young minister's reply. + +"Besides," he presently resumed, "we are glad to have been +Nonconformists--once. A Puritan training is a good thing--to look back +upon. You are all the more thorough in your pleasures, the truer +humanist, for something of it still lurking in your blood." + +"Yes, of course you're right. I don't like the word 'pagan'; but for +want of a better, we might say that the best pagans have come of Puritan +stock. Besides, it is half the romance of life to have something to +escape from, isn't it?" + +"And someone to escape with the other half," responded Theophil, nimble +as a real town wit. + +O it was a wonderful night. Let us build five tabernacles! + +"Good-night, dear Jenny." + +"Good-night, dear wonderful Isabel." + +So at last the two girls bade each other good-night at the door of +Jenny's bedroom, where Isabel was to sleep. + +Masterful youth! So wild to take, so eager to surrender, the Christian +name. Strange, what passion sometimes can be put into a +_Christian_ name! + +When the door was shut on Isabel, she made no haste to undress. Indeed, +she sat down on the side of the bed as though she had been waiting to +sit down for ever so long, sat very still as in a dream, and an hour +went by and she was still sitting and gazing in front of her. + +And downstairs in the study, where the lamps were still burning, +Theophil was sitting by the fire in just the same curiously wrought and +withdrawn way, with just the same eyes. + +Isabel's room was over his. Presently she heard him moving about; then +she heard him coming upstairs. For a moment the air seemed to grow warm, +as she heard him softly pass her room; then she heard him close +his door. + +She shook her reverie from her, as though it had been a black veil full +of stars, and began to undress. Presently her eyes fell on a little pile +of handkerchiefs, with needle and cotton, and little letters printed on +dainty tapes, beside it. Jenny had forgotten to put away her sewing. + +Isabel took up one of the handkerchiefs, to which the needle and thread +were still attached, and read "Jenny Lond ..." (Don't you know that's +bad luck, Jenny?) + +"So soon as that! Is it so soon as that?" she sighed. + +Happy Jenny! + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +IN WHICH JENNY KISSES MR. MOGGRIDGE + +Isabel was leaving very early next morning for London, so good-byes must +be brief. Jenny and Theophil saw her off at the station, but before +leaving Zion Place there had been a moment in which for the second time +in their lives she and Theophil had been alone. + +They had stood together in the little study and taken each other's +hands, without a word, and they had looked into each other's faces as +those look whom a look must last a long time. + +They didn't even say good-bye, for, if they were never to meet again, +the look was not good-bye. And meet again it was not unlikely they +would, for it had been already arranged that Isabel was to lead off the +autumn entertainments; but the look did not mean that, either. As life +had been planned for them, all subsequent meetings must be merely +trivialities. They had met once, and fate had decided that they must +never meet like that again. In that long look each knew that they met +and parted for ever, autumn arrangements notwithstanding. + +Each came out of that look as out of a great cathedral, and from that +moment till the train left Theophil, with an unwonted sense of +loneliness, by Jenny's side, they entered that cathedral no more. Their +devotions were done for that day, and they must resume their secular +duties, rippling idly over the great deeps of themselves. + +One always leaves a station from which a dear friend has just gone with +a certain subdued air, a certain bereaved hush in the voice, and even +Jenny felt a momentary loneliness too. But it was not long before the +doors of home opened again for her in the sound of Theophil's voice; +and in the sense of the old familiar nearness to him she was back again +safe in the only world she ever wished to dwell in. + +It was more of an effort with Theophil, and the voice that made home for +Jenny had a strange sound in his own ears, as though it were still +talking to Isabel; but the effort was soon made, and though Jenny teased +him a little and said she believed he had quite lost his, that was to +say _her_, heart to Isabel, of course she believed no such thing. Doubt +is too terrible a toy for true love to play with. You only dare to doubt +as you must sometimes face the fear of death. + +"I wish next October were here," said Jenny, artlessly; "it seems such a +long time to wait to see her again." + +Did Theophil wish the same? He hardly knew. + +"Distance is such a silly thing," went on Jenny. "It seems to have been +invented just to separate those who want to be together. It seems so +arbitrary, so unnecessary." + +"I suppose death is a form of distance," said Theophil, irrelevantly. + +"Life too, I'm afraid," said Jenny. + +"Yes, indeed, life too," assented Theophil, dreamily. + +"If I were to die," said Jenny, suddenly, "would you still do what we +said?" + +"Why do you ask that, dear? You're a very serious little woman this +morning. Of course I would. You know. But why do you ask me now?" + +"Oh, only, dear, because I wonder whether we really ought to. Somehow +Isabel's visit has made me feel that life is a bigger, fuller thing than +I had dreamed, and that men like you, at all events, have duties towards +it even greater than your love for a little thing like me." + +"Jenny dear, don't talk like that. Why should you? You don't surely +doubt my love!" + +"Of course not, Theophil. It was only my silly little brain thinking +for once in a while,--and I don't mean to be unkind, but really I rather +mean it. Are you still quite sure there is nothing in the world more +important than love?" + +"Quite sure," he answered; "surer than ever--if that were possible. You +are not beginning to doubt that? Certainly it is a silly little brain, +if that's what its thinking is coming to." + +"I don't mean it for myself. Little women have nothing but love to think +of; but great men, men with a mission in the world ..." + +"Please, Jenny!" + +"Well, dear, I mean it; and I sometimes think that perhaps, perhaps, I'm +hindering your life; that if you were to be bothered with love at all, +you should have married some clever, wonderful woman,--woman, say, +like Isabel." + +"Jenny!" + +"Of course, dear, I know you don't think so," she continued; and he +realised that it was all artless accident on her part--"Still I cannot +help thinking it for you sometimes, dear, and sometimes I feel very +selfish to have your love,--as though, so to say, I was wearing someone +else's crown." + +"Jenny dear, will you promise never to talk like that again? A clever +woman! To be a woman is to be a genius, but to be a clever woman is to +be another man of talent." + +"That wouldn't be fair to Isabel." + +"No," assented Theophil, "Isabel is different too." + +And that brought them to Theophil's office and good-bye till the +evening. + +For the evening there had been fixed an important church meeting, the +first annual business meeting of minister and deacons since Londonderry +had come to New Zion. It was an occasion of jubilation all round, +particularly for Mr. Moggridge, who gave voice to New Zion's general +satisfaction, you may be sure, in no uncertain terms of praise. + +New Zion was, indeed, _New_ Zion once more, he said, thanks to their +indefatigable young pastor,--a play on words which was received with the +applause due to so unmistakable a union of wit and truth. + +Nor did the proceedings result in mere compliments. The church found +itself rich enough to increase its minister's stipend; and when Theophil +took Mr. Moggridge back to supper, another surprise awaited him, in the +form of a suspicious-looking letter, which, being opened, revealed a +quite unexceptionable L50 note, enclosed in a sheet of note-paper, on +which was written--"From never mind who." + +The writing was unknown to Londonderry, but there could be only one +culprit. + +"Of course, Mr. Moggridge, this is from you. Really ..." + +"No, sir, indeed; you make a mistake there," protested Moggridge, lying +badly, and growing purple. + +"Who do _you_ suspect, Jenny?" + +"Why, of course, it's Mr. Moggridge!" + +"Mr. Moggridge!" exclaimed Jenny impulsively, throwing her arms round +Mr. Moggridge's surprised shoulders, and kissing him somewhere in his +whiskers,--"Mr. Moggridge! you are the dearest, kindest man in the +world!" + +And Jenny was not far wrong. + +"Mr. Londonderry," said Mr. Moggridge, by way of changing the subject, +and warmly grasping the young man's hand, "New Zion's proud of you, +sir--and so is Eli Moggridge." + +And that moment would have been as good for all three, even without the +fifty-pound note. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +THE GREAT EVENT OF MR. TALBOT'S LIFE + +I realize that any attempt henceforth to enchain the reader's interest +with church meetings, or the like enthralments, will be more than +hopeless. That is the worst of allowing love to creep into one's story. +He insists on having the stage to himself, and in that determination the +audience is entirely with him. Previously you may have been interested +in all kinds of peaceable, unexciting things, far more good for you, but +enter love, and all the rest is suddenly fallen tame beyond endurance. + +It is of no use to urge that life's bill of the play includes many +hardly less brilliant and attractive performers. They are all well +enough in their way, till the eternal Paganini is there with his old +fiddle once more at his shoulder; then there is an end of all +seriousness, or a beginning, as you please. + +Well, I'll do my best to get over the six months between March and +October as quickly as possible; and, indeed, it will not be very +difficult, after all, for very little happened, to speak of, during that +time to any of the chief actors engaged in making this history. + +Perhaps it was this consideration that prompted old Mr. Talbot--O, +bother old Mr. Talbot!--that prompted old Mr. Talbot, I say, to take the +important step of dying, when, poor old man! his death would give the +least possible trouble. + +There seemed as little reason for his dying as there had seemed for his +living, for as far as anyone knew there was nothing the matter with him, +except an extreme sleepiness of an evening, which was but natural in an +old weary man who still kept at his stone-masonry though he was +full seventy. + +Night after night, for some weeks, he had been getting sleepier and +sleepier. + +"Why, dad, I never saw such an old sleepy-head"--his wife had rallied +him good-naturedly one night, looking at him with a sudden odd +expression in her face. + +"Eh, lass, but I was noddin' and no mistake," said the old man, +struggling drowsily with the heaviness, and presently succumbing +once more. + +"He's off again," said Mrs. Talbot to herself, as she lifted the lid of +a pent saucepan in which some boiled onions were mightily bubbling in a +wild little world of steam. + +Presently the old man sighed deeply,--so you would have thought; but +Mrs. Talbot, hurrying to him, knew that he had tried to say "Jane," and +had said it for the last time. + +Yes, he had been getting sleepier and sleepier; all his life he had been +trying to sleep, and at last he slept. + +To most people Mr. Talbot's death was the first intimation of his ever +having lived, and one rather resents for the old man the one day's +publicity which death enforced upon him. It was indeed well for him that +he was dead, for such unwonted excitement would surely have killed him. +This important coming and going of undertakers; this populous invasion +of friends talking like muffled drums in the front parlour, and passing +up and down and up and down the stairs, in and out and in and out of his +still room; this throng of neighbours awaiting him in the streets; these +plumed impatient horses, and these carriages of dark grandeur--"Jane, +why ever didn't you bury me by the back door?" would surely have been +the old man's pitiful complaint could he have known. + +However, the day passed and the old man was safe at last, where no +front-parlour visitors should affright him more, and where no one would +trouble his old brains for speech any more; and to all, save one, his +death was but as though he had moved a little farther into the kitchen. + +It seemed almost strange that even his wife should miss him. One had +thought so little of them as man and wife. One could hardly, even by +process of thinking, realise that between these rinded and wrinkled +beings love had once hung like a rosy cloud, from which one day had +sprung Jenny. + +On one or two occasions, indeed, they had been surprised in an uncanny +semblance of a caress, and once in a while an almost supernatural +retrospect had lit up and vanished again in an unaccustomed tender word; +and to have been present then was to feel somehow frightened. + +Ah! the gay young leaves no longer kiss across in the morning sun, but +the stern old trees have meetings you know not of far beneath the +ground. Their roots are twisted and twined in a wonderful embrace there; +there in the dark they are very close together, and shall not be +wrenched apart without groanings that cannot be uttered. + +Jenny can hardly be said to have missed her father, except through her +mother, who seemed suddenly to grow a little deafer, a little more +dim-sighted, just a trifle less brisk and busy than before, and with a +touch about her of that old-age awesomeness that mutters to itself in +corners and seems to know strange things. + +Yes, Jane missed her John. Her old heart knew that he was no longer +sitting in the kitchen. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +JENNY'S BOTTOM DRAWER + +Jenny and her old mother began to grow closer to each other at this +time. Perhaps it was because the old woman felt lonelier, and perhaps, +too, because the loss of her old man had sent her thoughts wandering +among the enchanted fields of her young days, that she began to talk +sometimes to Jenny about her marriage, and to give her quaint advice on +the subject of "managing" husbands; "as if," Jenny smilingly said to +herself, "an old man like father was the same, belonged even to the same +race, as Theophil." + +Perhaps Mrs. Talbot scented some such reflection in Jenny's expression; +at all events, she answered it with an "Eh, but all men are alike, my +dear, under their skins,--all alike, and they need humouring and +managing just in the same way, prince or peasant." + +The idea of "managing" Theophil had something repulsive in it for Jenny; +there was an element of deceit, of cunning, implied which didn't go with +her ideas of true love and the life beautiful of which she was dreaming. +She didn't believe that men and women who loved were really different +from each other, and perhaps she was right. + +About this time, too, Mrs. Talbot began to produce from mysterious +treasure-caves, entered apparently from an old press in her bedroom, all +kinds of wonderful things which would be useful to Jenny some day in her +house: terrible little ornaments,--very sacred, though,--sad +quaintnesses of the spirit of beauty pathetically fumbling about in +country brains; wool mats worked in the primary colours; and such wool +wonders as a wool basket of flowers, in which real wool flowers grew out +of a wool basket which you held by an over-arching wool handle, the +whole worked with undeniable but how forlorn ingenuity,--a prehistoric +relic of Mrs. Talbot's legendary school-days: survivals from a period +which is best summed up in the one wonderful word "antimacassar," a +period when for some unrecorded reason men and women had to protect +their furniture against their oleaginous selves, and beautiful locks +were guarded from lover's fingers by coats of triple oil. + +But these were things worth having, too,--bits of old lace and prim +embroidery, that bore the stamp of a refinement that is never +old-fashioned; and when Mrs. Talbot descended from the beautiful she +could show you real treasures. + +I don't think there was any word in the language, not even Bible words, +which Mrs. Talbot pronounced with such an accent of solemnity as the +word "linen." The words "China" and "cut glass," and perhaps "silver," +ran it close, but "linen" was undoubtedly the word in which all Mrs. +Talbot's sense of the seriousness of living, her sense of household +distinction, her deep sense of the importance of prosperity, and her +stern love of cleanliness found most impressive utterance. + +Mrs. Talbot could never have smiled as she said "linen." + +And the linen she had been storing for Jenny might indeed have been the +very stuff of which lilies are made, lilies smelling of lavender. + +Such pairs of sheets! A queen might even fear to await her lord lying +amid such linen; for white indeed must be the body that dares rivalry +with Mrs. Talbot's sheets,--sheets which might indeed be said to settle +that old question of the snows of yester-year. + +_Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan_? + +Surely they have been settling, flake on flake, year after year, in Mrs. +Talbot's linen-press, till at last there is quite a snowdrift of fair +white linen for Jenny and Theophil to lie in. + +Yes! another six months and Christmas will be here; and, after +Christmas is turned, the weeks till February the 12th--the second +anniversary of Theophil's coming to New Zion--will fly by in no time. + +Meanwhile Mrs. Talbot and Jenny--with occasional contributions from +Theophil--began to busy themselves with Jenny's bottom drawer. + +Translated into the language of those more magnificent circles in which +this simple-hearted romance has no desire to move, a "bottom drawer" +might be described as a trousseau, though such translation would be only +partially correct. A bottom drawer is a good deal more than a trousseau. +It is the corner of a girl's wardrobe, usually its bottom drawer, where +the home that is to be begins to take shape in deposits of various +kissed objects, minor articles of apparel, of ornament or +use,--handkerchiefs such as we have already seen Jenny marking, in +defiance of the old prophecy that the bride who dares even to write her +married name before her marriage will never know a wedding day; quaint +candlesticks that had to be picked up in some old curiosity shop as come +upon or be missed altogether; pretty shoes of a pattern you weren't +likely to meet with again; occasionally, perhaps, even an anticipatory +wedding present, that some friend who would be far away in Australia +when the day came had already contributed; a pretty tea-service Theophil +had suddenly taken a fancy to buy for Jenny one day,--"any straw will +help a nest;" a sweet and rather naughty picture that must never be hung +anywhere but in their little sacred bedroom,--"O love, our little room!" + +How often did Jenny bend lovingly over that drawer, which by now had +spread itself over a whole chest of drawers,--for home was growing, +growing,--only a few more months and it would have grown so big and real +that nothing but a little house would hold it. And Theophil was brought +sometimes to peep in too,--"O love, think of it--our little home." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +THEOPHIL ALL THIS TIME + +Have I seemed to shirk the subject of Theophil's feelings all this time? + +Well, I confess I have rather shrunk from writing down in so many words +that he was in love with Isabel,--obvious as the fact has been,--just as +he himself shrank from admitting the same truth even to his own soul. + +When he had sat up in his study that night of the recital, he had looked +the whole sad splendid truth in its wonderful face, had loved it wildly +for an hour, and then shut his eyes to it for ever. + +He knew that Isabel was the woman God had made for him, sweet, dear +Jenny the woman he had made for himself, and he bowed before the work of +the greater artist. + +Never voice nor look nor touch of woman had affected Theophil before as +the least tone or glance or movement of Isabel stirred him to the centre +of his being. To meet her eyes was to release a music that went +shuddering through the whole world; her lightest word was filled with +echoes of infinite things. Not a lover only, but anyone with instincts +for such perceptions, looking at Isabel, would have said: There is a +woman who is needed to make some man a great poet, a great artist, some +kind of great man! She belongs to the history-making women. Hundreds of +women will attract men by the hundred where she will attract +comparatively few, but that few will be the pick of men; and some day, +when the other women have gone the way of all sweet roses, she will +still remain (if she has found an artist to understand her face) the +frontispiece of some distinguished biography, or hang in a gallery of +the period among the few faces that were indestructibly personal; not +the faces that have lived, but the faces that still go on living, the +faces that are influences still, the unique, daemonic faces. + +Isabel was indeed a muse that waited for her poet. The mere idea of such +a woman, cherished across dividing seas and separating years, will help +a man be great. To grow great near or far is the one way to be hers, and +to pile up great work for her sake is perhaps the best way to love her. +She could never be his wife, but she might still be his muse, resolved +Theophil, feigning in that reflection for the moment a more human +comfort than, alas! there really was. + +But was there to be no loss to Jenny in this? + + "True love in this differs from gold or clay, + That to divide is not to take away." + +It is the convenient old plea of the poets, and yet it is sometimes +true. It was true here. There is, I know, a sort of primitive man or +woman--I believe they will some day be exhibited in menageries--who +cannot be on with a new love without being ungratefully off with the +old. All depends of what the two loves are made. If it is bodily fire +and no more, of course the new love will put out the old as the great +sun puts out a little smouldering fire; and the majority of so-called +love-stories are merely disastrous conflagrations of that sort. In such +cases the new love is no sooner found than the old becomes grievous, a +burden; by a malignant witchcraft the old charms have grown veritably +repellent, and "all the heaven that was" irretrievably disenchanted. +Which is the illusion, one wonders,--the original enchantment or the +final disenchantment? + +When, however, love can give a better account of its preferences than +this, and point out, say in Jenny, many good reasons why she was at +first and must for ever remain love-worthy, whatever rival reasons for +love another woman may bring; when too there is added to those reasons +for loving Jenny the dear habit of loving her, the gratitude--love must +forgive the word--which has accumulated interest upon the original love, +the beauties that have been gained by becoming familiarities, and the +familiarities that have become beauties by very use,--well, really, is +it such a hardship, after all, for a man to be expected to keep true to +his Jenny? + +Oh! but passion doesn't reason like this. Indeed, O passionate reader! +Is passion, then, merely a wild beast, a savage, a blind fire? Must it +forfeit its fine name if it remembers mercy or owns duty? Is it any less +passion because it refuses sometimes to glut itself, and dares to go +hungry all its days instead; any less passion because it chooses to burn +up its own heart in an agony of its own consuming fire? + +Mere violence is not a strength but a weakness in passion, and sometimes +there is more passion in patience than in anything else in the world. A +passion that knows not pity is merely a daemonic possession, and should +be taken to the madhouse. + +I confess that there is nothing in the world more amazing to me than the +easy brutality with which one hears of some men doing what is called +"breaking off their engagements." Only a new face has to show itself, +and the old face at once disappears with a blow and a wail. + +Murder, of course, is one way out of many difficult situations, and the +worst kinds of murder are by no means capital offences. It is true that +all engagements are not made by the same vital bonds as that of Jenny's +and Theophil's, but many are. For a man wilfully to break an engagement +means sometimes that the whole love-life in a woman is atrophied, all +that made her woman stabbed to the quick of life. + +Yet no one who knows anything of women can have failed to remark that +women themselves are even more brutal in this matter. Nothing could +exceed the executioner-like promptitude with which a woman will despatch +a man for whom she has ceased to care. But in her case there is to be +urged that, though fundamentally love is of equal importance to man and +woman, it does not so often mean the absolute saving or wrecking of a +man's life as it does a woman's. It is not a disgrace to a man to be +jilted; it is to a woman. For a woman to be jilted is for her to have +failed,--as a woman; and for a woman to have failed as a woman is for +her to value no other success. + +All this to maintain, in spite of the reader, that Londonderry is no +milksop because he is not going to jilt--that is, murder--poor little +Jenny, throw up New Zion, and seek his new love on the wild winds. But +the agony of it none the less! O Jenny! Jenny! sweet and true and good +and dear as ever,--if only you would just take a sudden fancy for +someone else! + +Meanwhile the months were going by, and the day drawing nearer when, for +a brief moment of fire, the orbits of those two separated lives were to +touch once more. + +What of Isabel during these months? The woman whom God had created for +Theophilus Londonderry did not forget her promise to write to the woman +whom Theophilus Londonderry had created in his own image. Wonderful +letters, of course! Why don't women publish volumes of their letters, as +men collect their scattered essays? There is no writing in the world +more immediately, conqueringly personal than a really clever woman's +letters; and they are not always compromising. + +Isabel's letters were the perfection of self-expression. Her handwriting +swept across the page just as she would walk down a street, at once +eager and yet stately and subtle-rhythmed; the shape of some of the +words reminded you of her hats,--hats everyone thought she paid guineas +for, but which she made for herself at a cost perhaps of five shillings: +hats which were Paris with a touch of fairyland, somewhere an +unobtrusive feather of the fantastic, somewhere a personal magic in the +inimitable twist or lie of a bow--; her face looked out at you from a +_g_ or an _x_, a gesture flashed back to you in a sudden distinguished +stroke of the pen, and her voice was somewhere, everywhere, among the +words, like a violin. + +Without any apparent literary device she contrived to make you, while +you read her letters, do what she was doing, see what she was seeing, +and form, as though acted on by some magic property in the words, +pictures of all she told you. + +One piece of news you would not expect her to have told. I have said +that women are both executioners of the tiresome. In this Isabel, I +fear, was no exception to her sex. Like most independent girls in +London, she had a little theatre-guard of devoted men friends, who took +it in turn to companion her to plays or picture-galleries; and these, +with admirable tact, she contrived to keep in, to them, the +unsatisfactory relation of brothers. One of these, however, had of late +been growing dangerously unfraternal. His presents had been growing +expensive. Cigarettes and chocolates, and pretty editions, like gloves, +and boxes of flowers, are every pretty woman's lawful spoils; but +costlier gifts are to be looked on with suspicion. Besides, the doomed +man's letters had been growing warmer. Indeed, Isabel remembered with +something like a shudder, so soon as she was back in her little room, +with its curious pictures and its general sense of exotic refinement, +that she had allowed him to kiss her the last time they had been +together. The reminiscence decided her. Theophil could never be hers; +but at least no facile or mediocre attachments should fill his place. So +at once there is posted a letter, as kind as cruelty can make it, and +with it go a little ormolu clock, a pair of mother-of-pearl +opera-glasses, a lovely fan it was hard, Isabel, to part with,--and +there is an end of that. + +"Not after Theophil!" she sighed, as she took up her great Persian cat, +and, like it, sat gazing into the fire that flickered dreamily among her +fantastic possessions,--a mystery gazing idly into a mystery. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +"O THAT 'T WERE POSSIBLE ..." + +Well, the months have at last gone by,--dark solid bodies of absence, +not a day mercifully lost count of by the old calendar-maker, not an +hour of the long sentence remitted for a brave patience in the waiting. +They are reckoning by weeks at last, and now, excitedly, by days, +breathlessly now by little fast-dispersing hours. + +The blackness that filled the world was a month ago streaked with gray; +three weeks ago there was a line of faint colour in the east; a +fortnight, and there are scarlet plumes in the far heaven, and a faint +twitter of song; a week, and the whole sky is a commotion of glory +and birds. + +To meet again! O to meet again, just to look at each other again! We are +philosophers, we are brave, we shall remember Jenny, but O! the rapture +of just beholding each other again. + +"Thank God, you are alive! you are real! O Theophil, there is the little +scar on your forehead I've been longing to see." + +"Yes! it is Isabel! She walks just as she did a thousand years ago. I am +carrying her rugs. How well I remember her umbrella!" + +"How fantastic absence is!" said Isabel, as the three friends sat once +more that evening in the little study where nothing seemed to have +changed, and where they seemed to have been sitting all the hours of +those now quite disrespectfully forgotten months. + +"Yes, but how real!" said Jenny. It was Jenny who said "how real!" + +How fantastic, too, is the present! Sometimes, perhaps nearly always, it +tortures us with the unreality, the unrealisability of precious moments +that are flying, flying, and can never come again; and at other times +it equally eludes us with a sense of their indestructibility. To-night +the present had chosen to seem real. Theophil felt, as he looked at +Isabel, that this wonderful nearness could never pass away. Her dress, +her coiled _cendre_ hair, her soft smile, her very attitudes, seemed to +wear a curious expression of everlastingness. Yes, she would sit just +like that, and he and Jenny would sit near her for ever and ever. No +mere abstractions like Time and Space could fill with emptiness the +place where she now sat and smiled. In some mystical way eternity had +breathed upon this hour and given it immortality. It had been suddenly +touched with a wand into an enchanted permanence. Theosophists tell of +an astral light, where every moment of time endures in strange paintings +upon space. Isabel and Theophil and Jenny were sitting together in the +astral light. + +And yet the hours had already been flying, for, the recital was already +over,--New Zion more in love with Isabel than ever. The same little +supper as six months ago had been merry and come to an end, the guests +had gone, the house was quiet, and this hour that seemed so real was the +frail last of that day of dreams. + +Yes! but an arrangement had been made which perhaps accounts for the +security of that hour. Isabel's agents had planned for her a little +circular tour in northern towns comparatively adjacent to Coalchester, +and when a fortnight of such recitals was ended, she was to return and +give still another recital at New Zion. Then there must be parting, real +black parting again. Meanwhile, the fortnight that lay between the two +days of meeting gained a curious sense of being really spent together. +As two walking together on a long road may separate, and one walk till +almost out of sight of the other and then slowly return, but the two +endure no sense of parting, feeling together all the time, so Isabel +and Theophil felt about this fortnight. + +But did they speak no word, look no look all these hours, of all their +hearts cried out to say? Was Jenny there all the time? Nearly. Still +there was a moment granted them, which, added to the two moments +previously recorded, made a total perhaps of four minutes, which life so +far generously allowed them to be alone together in. Yet such is love's +miraculous velocity that it had said all it needed to say, given all, in +those four minutes. All it had to say to-night was just two Christian +names, said so solemnly, so tenderly, so honestly. Just "Isabel," just +"Theophil," and a long quiet clasp of hand and eyes. It was enough. It +is written. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +ONE DAY OUT OF ALL THE YEARS + +It was not enough! + +If you would safely renounce a joy, you had best enjoy something of it +first. Renunciation must have something to live on. You can "take up the +whole of love and utter it," and _then_ "say adieu for ever," but +not before. + +I have asked mercy for Jenny, though it was perhaps hardly necessary, +for the world always pities Jenny. Now I would ask it for Isabel and +Theophil, who are thus quietly to sacrifice the greatest thing in their +lives, the one reality for which they have come into existence, for +Jenny's sake. Great is their love for each other, but even greater and +stranger must be their involuntary love for an invisible goodness, an +ideal of ineffable pity. They are going to die that Jenny may live. + +Strange, this gentle heroism of human creatures one for the other. Would +it be unfair to ask that each should support the anguish of his own +destiny, and that when Jenny's turn has come she should take her +lightning? Hers, had she known it, was the cup of anguish here; for +Theophil and Isabel had been decreed the cup of joy. But will they drink +it? No, they will change the cups; perhaps the bitter cup will grow +sweet near the dregs, being drunk together. + +Yet this love of theirs, this perilous chance for Jenny, was none of +their making. Their joy had been given to them by unseen hands. It is +fairly theirs. Next time, perhaps, it will be their turn to suffer. It +is Jenny's now... + +But no! the good heart of humanity will defeat the cruel ruling of the +gods. Let the lightning come upon them--not little Jenny. + +Yet for this, Jenny, you will not grudge them their piteous reward. +Yours are all the years, Jenny. You will spare them one day out of all +the years. Think, Jenny, of the hours and hours and hours you and +Theophil have spent in careless happiness, and they--one almost laughs +to think of it--have just so far been granted four minutes. For four +minutes out of infinite time life has privileged them to be +alone together. + +It will be far safer too. Otherwise you know not with what fearful flame +love will fill the chasms under ground, circling and seething in the +fiery darkness. Theophil loves you, but some day your home will suddenly +be rent from cope to base, unless his poor heart may speak, yea, babble +itself, just once in Isabel's ears. + +A temptation had come to Theophil. At first he put it aside. Then +passion, wiser for once than reason, told him that it was a necessity, +and he knew that passion was right. A week of the fortnight had gone, +and Theophil remembered that Isabel would now be in the neighbourhood of +certain famous woods where in his boyhood he had often wandered, and he +remembered that she was to have the Monday quite free. That Monday they +should spend together in those enchanted woods. His secular business +often took him to towns thirty or forty miles away, and it was not +startling for him not to return till late at night. Thus Isabel and he +should steal their one day out of all the years. + +So there went a note without one word of love in it to tell Isabel that +love was coming by the morning train; and so on that morning Isabel +stood waiting for love at that little wayside station, and presently, +with a mighty rushing sound of iron and brass, love came and stood very +quietly by her side, and looked into her eyes. + +They took each other's hands quietly, and left the station without a +word; nor did they speak for a long while, walking blissfully side by +side through a village street which was to take them to the green and +lonely woods. Soon the houses were passed, and they still walked on +silent, listening to the song of their nearness. + +Now, as they drank each other's presence through every feasting nerve, +they knew how starved they had been. As the lane narrowed and gloomed +green, dipping through caverns of bright leaves, they drew closer, and +smiled gently on each other; but they were not going to speak for a long +while yet. Had they not come away into this loneliness that they might +be silent together, that they might sit, hour after hour, and just watch +each other, lost in an ecstasy of contemplation, a trance of +recognition, a fascination that was almost fearful, that was so kind and +yet so cruel in its very power? + +The woods are very still, but there is nothing in the world so still as +these two lovers, as they lie down on the green earth and gaze on each +other, hour after hour. When they find a word as great as their +silence, they will speak it--but they will find none except it be +"Isabel," except it be "Theophil." + +And great passion has as little use for caresses as for words, and +kisses, which gay sensual love gathers greedily like little golden +flowers, and pays for nimbly with little, pretty words, will be almost +as rare as words. + +Kisses! it is not to eat bonbons that these two have come out into the +woods. + +Kisses! what kiss of the blind lips could match the kiss of those rapt +tragic eyes! + +Kisses are but the diminutives of the great word "love;" they are but +the small change of passion, meteorites, star-dust of the great and +terrible planet. + +Their souls are swung high above time and space in one never-ending +kiss,--the kiss of that predestined irrefragable union, of which +meetings and partings and kisses and caresses and words, and every other +fragmentary mode of expression, are but trivial accidents, to which +distance is still nearness, and nearness is still distance. + +Their love is a property of eternal elements. It is fated as the union +of magnetic powers, it obeys chemic laws of irresistible combination. +They are Isabel and Theophil,--that is their love; they are in the world +together,--that is their marriage. + +But passion will not be all day a tragedian. He has many moods. He is a +great wit,--how bright, how bright, he makes the brain!--a merry +comrade, a little, tender, silly child; and these two sad ones laughed +together, too, in the still woods,--for was not the most exquisite +humourist in the world their companion, love, who is all things by +turns, and all things wise? + +And they feasted together, wine and great grapes, spread out on the +earth's green table; and they called each other silly, beautiful names, +and they feigned sad little glad stories--and called the wood their +home: this was their breakfast-oak, and that glade should be their great +hall, and high, high up in yonder beech, where the squirrel was sitting, +should be their secret little bed-chamber, hung in blue and green, with +a ceiling of stars. They should climb it each night on a ladder of +moonlight, and slide down from it each morning on the first strong rays +of the sun. And sometimes if it frightened them with being too near +heaven, they would seek out a dell of fine moss and creep close together +into the arms of the kind earth-mother, and then sleep while the stars +kept watch. + +O, yes, it would be a wonderful life together. + +Then suddenly the child's play would cease, as the birds stop singing +with the coming of the stars, and silence would sweep over them again, +and a great kiss would leap out of the silence, like a flame that lights +up heaven from north to south, and they would hang together, lost in an +anguish of desire. + +The setting sun was turning the wood into halls of strange light, and +spreading golden couches here and there in its deep recesses. + +"Theophil..." sighed Isabel. + +"Wife..." sighed Theophil--(ah! Jenny!) and then a voice that seemed to +be neither's, and yet seemed to be the voice of both,--a voice like a +dove smothered in sweetness between their breasts,--said, "Let us go +deeper into the wood." + +Later, when the stars had come, two white faces came glimmering from the +innermost chancel of the wood's green darkness. They passed close +together, still as phantoms among the trees, and when they came out on +to the lane they stood still. + +"Theophil," said one voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send for +you, will you promise me to come?" + +"Isabel," said another voice, "if I should be dying, and I should send +for you, will you promise _me_ to come?" + +And each voice vowed to the other, and said, "I would come, and I would +go with you." + +And all these words had once been Jenny's, but they had been Isabel's +first. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +PREPARATIONS FOR A FAST AND OTHER SADNESS + +As the sharing of a cruel or unworthy secret must be the most terrible +of all human relationships, the sharing of a beautiful secret is the +most blest. Thus, for the week following this day of days, Theophil and +Isabel went about their daily lives with all heaven in their hearts, +and, divided though they were, possessed by a mystical certitude of +inner union which they felt no extension of space or endurance of time +could destroy. + +Such a marriage as theirs is, of course, the dream of all separated +lovers, "the love that waited and in waiting died" the theme of many +poets; and there have been great historic love-stories to prove such +love a possibility of human hearts; yet, alas! for the experiment that +must so often fail, for the weak wills of loving that will so truly and +yet must loose their holds,--the fire that promised itself food in +memory for a thousand years, but needs the sensual fuel of sight and +touch after all; the love that believed it could go on trusting through +centuries of silence, yet dies at last of little earthly doubts! + +For this tremendous fast which you are to make believe a feast, trust in +each other is the one condition that may avail. This trust must come of +no mere exchange of vow or deeply-sworn and eloquent promise; it must be +knowledge one heart of the other, clear and absolute; and such knowledge +in your short hour of revelation you must have learned so passionately +that, like poetry learnt in childhood, it is henceforth no longer a +forgettable, detachable part of your mind's furniture, but a well-spring +of instinct for ever. Is your lady true? You will ask that only when you +ask: Is she beautiful? + +Such confidence as this is comparatively common in friendship, but it +is very rare in love: whether it was to be justified in the case of +Isabel and Theophil, time alone could show. Meanwhile they felt calm and +happy, as only two can feel who have discovered in each other the one +unchanging reality in a world of flowing shadow. + +It was very wonderful, in quite a new way, to meet again. Their love was +no longer hunger and unrest, it had gained the impassioned peace of +great accepted realities. It was married love now. As the quiet firm +hands held each other again, there seemed to be long retrospects of +tried and tender intercourse in their very touch. Their eyes held a past +in them as well as a future. There was no hurry of the emotions now, no +reason for haste in the seeking and giving of tenderness, no need to +snatch and clutch the good gifts of love as though there was but a short +day for the giving. Their love had grown conscious of its eternity. + +It held but one lasting sadness,--that it might not be revealed to +Jenny. So little did they regard their love as one essentially for +concealment, that the temptation to include Jenny in their bond was at +moments a danger. It was so beautiful, and actually, though +unconsciously, she was so integral a part of its beauty. + +Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say, +jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart +of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being +the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible +trinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under +like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a +strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's +one unworthiness, its egoism. As the _egoisme a deux_ is finer than an +egoism of one, so this _egoisme a trois_, if you will, is again finer by +its additional inclusiveness. + +Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too. +But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such a +union is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved both +Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in +the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was +more impassioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that +it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness, +could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meeting +in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea. + +But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They had +vowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy, +but only transfigure, after all,--yet the test was lightning; and for +whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win +them Paradise? + +No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told... +Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of +chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded +moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,--when we withdraw +into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,--and Jenny, +by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of +them there. + +It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone +down, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for +some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience +was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, +entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his +vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the +lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the +vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr. +Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but +that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each +other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak +anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,-- + +"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!" + +But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found +me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I +love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a +man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could +be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong +for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost +once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so +calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes +for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark +half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back +dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had +expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them +here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only +seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms. + +Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock +had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must +sit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim +reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little +but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good, +and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and +beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her +choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget +that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that +dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how +happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in +brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the +darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If +only she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No! +she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seen +them, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till she +had made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know. +That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then she +might speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go,--she +must not be later than they; they would be passing down to the hall +presently, she must be there before them,--she must be quick,--she must +go now.... + +As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled a +recognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smile +back at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white, +and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her. + +She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the common +resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a +happiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguish +was too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she might +have felt towards death,--it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart +there was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she felt +that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,--just as a +child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too +young to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have loved +their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!) + +Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have +spared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs. +Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written, +and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful +joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It was +the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons; +but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to +understand it too. It was called a "Denial," and began:-- + + "We have met late--it is too late to meet, + O friend, not more than friend! + Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet, + And if I step or stir, I touch the end. + + In this last jeopardy + Can I approach thee,--I, who cannot move? + How shall I answer thy request for love? + Look in my face and see. + + "I might have loved thee in some former days. + Oh, then, my spirits had leapt + As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise! + Before these faded cheeks were overwept, + Had this been asked of me, + To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,-- + I should have said still...Yes, but _smiled_ and said, + 'Look in my face and see!' + + "But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart + And drowned it in life's surge. + In all your wide warm earth I have no part-- + light song overcomes me like a dirge. + Could love's great harmony + The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose, + Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose? + Look in my face and see-- + + "While I behold, as plain as one who dreams, + Some woman of full worth, + Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's, + Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth + + One younger, more thought-free + And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget, + With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet-- + Look in my face and see! + + "So farewell thou, whom I have known too late + To let thee come so near. + Be counted happy while men call thee great, + And one beloved woman feels thee dear!-- + Not I!--that cannot be, + I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where + The change shall take me worse, and no one dare + Look in my face and see." + +The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel +recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny +felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its +destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last +verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,-- + + "Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine + I bless thee from all such! + I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine, + Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch + + Of loyal troth. For me, + I love thee not, I love thee not!--away! + There's no more courage in my soul to say + 'Look in my face and see.'" + +When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss +Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance, +and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently +reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought +of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge. + +"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she +was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with +sudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment to +its close. + +Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny +along the few yards to home. + +"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that. +It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two +people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?" + +Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of +giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear." + +"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears." + +When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real +anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a +passing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness. +She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly, +but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible +to think of two people having to part like that," she said again. + +And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual. + +"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not +see each other for a long time again." + +"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought +there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace. + +When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange," +said Isabel. + +"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil. + +So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her +bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed. + +"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go +back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear, +like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing +but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night." + +And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jenny +had said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and if +presently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because he +did not know the reason of her tears? + +On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so that +Theophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny again +till the evening. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +IN WHICH JENNY CRIES + +Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as she +usually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but at +last, when the quiet secure hour which had always been theirs between +dinner and bedtime had come, she came into his room quietly and sat in +her accustomed chair. + +She had been fighting all day to gain strength for this hour, and her +will was bravely set to speak what must be spoken. But she must firmly +choke back all the sweetness of the memories which sprang to her with +kind eyes, as the familiar little room that had not changed opened its +arms to her, alas! an ironical symbol of unchangeableness. One touch of +tenderness too vivid and she would break down. + +And here was Theophil rising from his desk and coming to her with true +love in his eyes, as he had done so many, many happy nights. + +Was it, after all, a dream--that terrible picture of two lighted figures +that was for ever in her eyes? No, there was a voice that went day and +night with the dream, a voice of terrible tenderness that kept crying: +"Meantime I bless thee ... "--"I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to +wine ..." Ah, no, it was real, real. The trial was not to pass from her +in a dream. + +Theophil had knelt down at her side and taken her hand gently and would +have kissed her, but that her eyes were so full of pain as she turned +them to meet his. Besides, strange words to hear! she was asking him not +to kiss her. + +"Theophil dear, don't kiss me yet. I have something to say, and if you +kiss me I shall have no strength to say it." + +"Jenny!" + +"Dear," she began with a voice that seemed to bleed at every word, "I +want to be so kind. I don't want to hurt you with a single word. You'll +believe that, won't you?" + +Theophil pressed her hand for assent, but already in a flash the whole +revelation was upon him. Jenny knew he loved Isabel. This awful pain +that was all over her was the lightning from which they had willed +to save her. + +"Theophil," Jenny had gone on, and there seemed a death in every word, +"I know that you love Isabel." + +"O Jenny!" + +"I saw you together, dear, in the vestry last night. It was an accident. +You didn't hear me." + +"O my Jenny! I would rather have died than this." + +"Yes, I think you would, dear. But you must not be too sad. Life is +terrible,--like this. I understand it now. I know it was not you, or +Isabel, or me. It was just fate--and we must try and help each other. +Don't think I have been only sorry for myself. Don't think that of me. +But I think you should have trusted me, dear." + +"We longed to tell you," said Theophil, with his head bowed in distress +in Jenny's lap, while she softly stroked his hair with an absent +tenderness, though her eyes looked straight in front of her, and her +voice was as if she were talking to herself. + +"We longed to tell you," he repeated. + +"O I wish you had." + +"We feared it, dear." + +"Yes, yes, I know. I was only a little child the day before yesterday. I +have never been worthy to be your wife, dear. I have known it all the +time. I should never have taken your love. It has never been mine...." + +"But ..." she continued, "I will give it all back now. It is not too +late. I have kept it pure ... for Isabel. I can give it to her, darling, +with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. We +were not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the woman +of that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. I +am a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my face +and see.'" + +The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jenny +in silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and of +the insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves to +ourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by the +powerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must those +tests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which we +are composed! + +One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs, +another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow old +we can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that have +never been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, by +an emotion. + +A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the woman +who needs him most,--and in a crisis of choice he will probably choose +the latter. + +Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves +to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so +brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment +on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble are +some of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submerged +in a total of vague impulses that they escape any individualisation. + +In the very hour where all seemed lost to Jenny, Theophil's love for her +was passing in the fire of this ordeal from a love whose elements had +never, perhaps, quite combined, into that miraculous metal of true love, +which can never again be separated into anything but itself,--the true +gold of love which, in some magical second of projection, has suddenly +sprung out of those troubled ingredients of earth and iron, silver, +honey, and pearl. + +This does not mean that Theophil's love for Isabel had grown any less +real, but that his love for Jenny had grown more real. For the first +time in its history it moved on the stage of the heroic. Up till now it +had lived secure, domestic days; there had been no danger to test its +truth, no lights of tragedy or romance thrown across it, it had seemed a +simple little earthborn love; whereas Theophil's love for Isabel had, +from its very conditions, walked from the first the high heaven +of dreams. + +Isabel, indeed, still remained the heavenly love, but those who +understand will know the strength of Jenny when I say that she became +confirmed in this hour of trial as the household love of Theophil's +life. Isabel remained the Muse, but it was Jenny, after all, in spite of +those solemn words in the Wood of Silence, that was the wife; and if, +at first sound, there seems less of heaven in such a love, it is surely +only because when heaven has become incarnated upon earth we forget to +call it heaven. + +In the few moments of silence which followed Jenny's words, it was some +such turmoil of feelings and thoughts, questionings and conclusions, +which passed through Theophil's mind, at last resolving itself into +words that sounded unexpected even in his own ears. + +"Jenny," he said, "it is quite true that I love Isabel and that she +loves me. But it is true that I love you too, love you more truly in +this moment than I have ever loved you, and that no other woman can ever +take your place. If you give me up for Isabel's sake, it will be no gain +to her, for I would not go to her. I love you, indeed I love you, and I +want no other woman to be my wife." + +Jenny's face brightened for a moment; they were good words, and they +sounded real. But then that embrace, how real that was; nothing again +could ever be so real as that! + +"Ah, Theophil dear; but you stood as though you loved her so; your arms +were so tender, it was just as though they said 'wife.' You are +deceiving yourself, dear, believe me, you are. God knows how I love you; +I have nothing in the world but you, and if...if..." + +"Jenny, try and believe; let me show you how I can love you. I seem +never to have shown you before. Let us begin our love over again from +to-night. I know your heart is bleeding, but let me heal it, dear. I +know this sorrow must lie heavy upon us for a long while yet, but it +will pass, you shall see. O you shall see how I love you. Let us be +married soon, dear; let us wait no longer..." + +Theophil had raised his head, and as he spoke poured on Jenny all the +appeal of his strong eyes; with all the might of his soul he willed her +back to happiness, as Orpheus strove by his singing to bring back +Eurydice from the shades. She could not look into his set longing face +without feeling that he was speaking true words. Hope flickered for a +moment in her sad eyes; yes! he wanted to come back to her; he wanted to +be hers again. + +But was it not too late? Hadn't something gone forever, something been +killed? Could even Theophil himself ever make her happy any more? Then +the misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which all +kind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, and +with terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms. + +"O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking." + +Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of +his life. He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying--it was as +though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were +bleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, +convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking. +Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was the +death-crying of a broken heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED + +Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny dried +her tears. She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forget +it; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown even +bright again,--bright as silver. It could never again be bright as gold. + +And Theophil's love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day. +Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were times +when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing +falsity, as she thought of Isabel. + +But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in the +common way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soon +she was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed that +Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital. +For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Let +that be our secret, dear," she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel +wrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wrote +to each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters. +Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life it +must be more and more of a starlit background. + +So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now +finally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as their +love grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate that +date, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by +that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones. + +The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became +noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old +mother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she +was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing +thinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside +friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't looking +half the girl she used to be. + +She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she +would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought +nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious +expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark +it. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to +gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, +too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real +face was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemn +thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a +sad wish fulfilling itself. + +She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same look +that Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to him +reading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threw +down the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed, +"Good God, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look in +your face?" + +He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before he +had finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget. + +One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it was +growing. + +"It _is_ thin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a trifle +run down. You must see the doctor." + +Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soups +and port wine as a substitute. These, however, made those dear arms no +fatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why did +Theophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of that +expression?) + +And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as she +used to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not so +available for running up and down stairs as it had been. + +Then Theophil would have a doctor, who sounded Jenny, and looked a +little grave, but finally, reassured, asked her if she had had a +shock,--Jenny smiled rather knowingly, but denied it,--declared her a +little run down and in need of bracing and nourishment, prescribed +phosphites and steel. + +Then Jenny got very wet one day on her way from school, and she began to +cough. She had to stay at home, and bed was perhaps the best place for +her. So Jenny went to bed, and looked very pretty there, and was quite +merry of an evening when Theophil, bringing her flowers,--he was already +bringing her flowers,--would draw up the arm-chair by her side, and read +to her. Those were very sweet hours, perhaps the sweetest their love had +ever known, so cosy and homelike, and yet without fear. + +But one evening, when Jenny had been coughing, there was blood on the +bosom of her nightdress, and as Theophil saw it, his heart stood still +with terror. Jenny grew very white, too, as she saw it, though the awful +thought which was behind the still look they gave each other was not +quite new to her. Sometimes she might have been heard softly saying over +to herself,-- + + "I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther, where + The change shall take me worse, and no one dare + Look in my face and see." + +Yet although Death's voice calling us from afar may seem all sweetness, +his voice coming nearer has a note of dread in it that appals the most +death-desirous heart. And in that silence those poor lovers both heard +him singing, it seemed not many streets away. + +"I must be very ill, dear," said Jenny. "O my love, O my love...!" + +Theophil strove with himself to say words with a real ring of the future +in them, when this cloud should have passed away; and for his sake Jenny +pretended to believe them. Yes, this very week he would take her away to +bright skies and healing air,--though Jenny felt a little tired at the +thought of rising any more from the bed to which she was growing +curiously accustomed. + +Then there came a new doctor to see Jenny. He was a very clever +specialist from a distant town; but for him the business of death had +not yet obscured its tragedy,--though words like "tragedy" were not +often on his tongue. Consumption was a strong enough word for him. + +His heart went out to that little household; and when he saw Jenny, it +ached for that young man downstairs. It was more than a professional +contempt for the "general practitioner" that made him silently curse +what he called the "death-doctor," as he looked at Jenny, "Jack of all +diseases, and master of none." + +"Two months ago, a month," he thought, as he listened and listened for a +sound of hope that might come to his ear through Jenny's wasted +side,--"even a month, and I could have saved her." And yet as he talked +to her he was not so sure, after all. He missed something in her voice. +It was the will to live. + +"Have you had a shock at any time?" he said. + +Jenny was taken by surprise for a moment,--the other doctor had asked +her that, too,--and she did not deny it so convincingly as she tried to. + +"O, that's all right," said the doctor aloud to Jenny and her mother, +who stood by, though inwardly he said, "I see. That's the reason;" and +again he said, "I'm afraid you mustn't get up just yet. That chest of +yours has to be taken care of, but you needn't be anxious. In a month or +six weeks you'll be all right again." + +"Only a month or six weeks," said Jenny, with a sinking voice. She +meant--was that all that was left to her of life and love? + +Downstairs Theophil stood waiting with a beating heart. He sprang to the +door and drew the doctor into his room. The doctor laid a kind hand upon +his arm, and there was a look in his face that made Theophil's heart die +within him. + +"You mean she is going to die?" he said with fearful calmness. "_You +mean that?_" + +"My poor fellow, God knows what I would give to deny it." + +"She--is--going--to--die--_to die!_ It is impossible! Not Jenny!" and +between that exclamation and his first stunned cry it seemed as though +bells had been tolling a thousand years. It seemed as though he had been +sitting there as in a cave since the beginning of time, saying over and +over to himself, "Jenny is going to die." + +There was a decanter on the sideboard. The doctor poured some spirit +into a glass. "Drink this," he said. Theophil drank it raw, as though it +had been water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir like +an opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned to +that decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jenny +was not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve, +which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. It +helped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctor +has not told him that I am going to die." + +"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks," she said +aloud, and tried to look as though she were happy. + +"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, love +made blind instead of prophet-sighted. + +"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that bright +air," said Theophil. + +"Yes, dear," said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily. + +Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something to +me, Theophil?" + +"What shall I read, dear?" + +"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass,' eh? It's such a +long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we +could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?" + +So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the +fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on +living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while +longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your +very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying. +You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going +to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you +laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly +the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you +forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before +they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every +moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to +remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them +everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice, +that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die." + +Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some +days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at +last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her +and from each other. + +"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herself +from that time, but she did not cry or break down. + +It was a pathetic sign of what was coming, that she now allowed Theophil +sometimes to be Jenny's nurse through the night hours. There was to be +no bridal bed for these lovers, but thus the tender quiet hours of the +night were theirs even in so sad a fashion. + +One night, in the haunted hushed middle of it, the old mother had softly +pushed open the door to ask if all went well, and in a whisper Theophil +had assured her. A night-light gave an uncanny shadow-breeding light in +the room. Jenny was sleeping peacefully, her tired ivory face, with her +dark elf-locks falling about it, framed on the pillow. Theophil raised +himself softly in his chair and looked at her. She would sleep some +while yet. Then from sheer weariness--grief's best friend--he too fell +into a light sleep. From this he was awakened with a start. Jenny was +sitting up and bending over him. With her dark hair hanging about her +face, and in that light, there was something weird and unearthly about +her, as though she were already dead and had risen in her shroud. +Something of a shiver went through him, as she put her thin arms round +his neck and clutched him in a sudden agony of longing. All the strength +of her poor little body seemed to pass into that kiss, so eager, so +convulsive. "Jenny dear, it will make you so ill; lie down, little +girl"--and Jenny fell back on her pillow exhausted and coughing, and +with eyes unearthly bright. + +"Theophil," she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, +"you know that I am going to die!" + +He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned his +head close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself two +great tears fell upon Jenny's cheek. + +But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in her +voice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got to +be borne." + +She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth. +The first fears of her dark journey were passing, as she was more and +more sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be something +almost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, +one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. It +had come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less with +fear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In her +fancy she had seen her name: "_Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter of +John and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years_" and it had struck her +that the name was wrong. + +Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. The +world would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days. +No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amid +all the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again to +herself: "_Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of Theophilus +Londonderry, aged twenty-one years_." + +Only twenty-one years--she thought of those who would perhaps some day +stand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!"--and yet +all that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, in +two of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to those +who read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earth +of long-wed, late-dying lovers. + +Perhaps it was a beautiful chance for love to end like theirs; their +love had never grown old, so it would remain forever young, a spring +sign, a star in the front of love's year for ever. + +Jenny spoke her wish to Theophil in the quiet of that night. The wish +had been in his heart too, and the wish was presently fulfilled. Brides +have seldom been happier than Jenny as she looked on the wife's ring +that hung loose on her thin finger, and brides have often been sadder. + +Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget that +she was going to die. She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, +and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little home +that was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with his +unbearable grief to some other room. + +And Jenny's once rosy apple of a face made one's heart ache to look on +now. It made one frightened, too: it was so dark and witchlike, so +uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She would sit +up in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowing +laugh to herself,--a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary +place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, +like the "unwilling sleep" of a strong narcotic. She would begin a +sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost +humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead +bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did +not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being +well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done +with all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, +half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soon +be strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be +different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and +putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar +humanity into a being of another element,--an element we dread as the +fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon she +would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longer +Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. She +was going to die. + +It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died. +She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon. Once when +Theophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave, +significant gesture to her side. She was lying down, and she made as if +she would sit up. Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up the +pillows at her back. Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took his +face in her hands and kissed him. "Do you love me, Theophil?" she said. +"Will you ever forget me?" + +"I will love you for ever. I will never forget you." + +He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she held +him close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh. For a +moment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though that +was the last flicker of Jenny's conscious life. + +Towards evening she began to take strange fancies, which had to be +humoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called with +dreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside, +and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she was +picking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to go +downstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all that +time by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade her +that Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must not +mind me, Theophil, dear. I'm not unhappy about her now. I'm not a silly +little girl any more. I'm a woman now. 'Look in my face and see.'" + +Then towards midnight a sudden accession of strength came to her, and +she said she would get up. They tried to dissuade her; she grew angry, +and struggled so hard to rise, that it seemed best to humour her once +more. So, wrapt round with blankets, Theophil lifted her from the bed +into a great chair by the fire. Then she asked to be taken to look into +her bottom drawer. So they lifted her across to it, and opened it. She +dabbled with her hands aimlessly among its piteous treasures, laughing +low to herself. + +Suddenly a fit of coughing took her, and a great choking was in her +throat. She was seen to be battling for her breath. For an instant she +drew herself up, and lifted her hand as though she would wave farewell, +smiled a faint little smile at Theophil, making, too, as if she would +speak. Then she fell back, her whole body relaxed, she had ceased +coughing, and a wonderful sweetness was stealing over her face. She had +gone all alone into the darkness, and Theophil was alone in the world. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +THE TRYST LETHEAN + +Jenny had gone into the darkness, and she had gone alone. Theophil had +not gone with her. + +That he had remained behind meant certainly no selfish clinging to life, +and indeed there was a sense, as was presently to appear, in which very +really he had kept young love's old promise and died with Jenny. That he +had not literally fulfilled it was due to those physical conditions of +dying of which in the hour of that promise young love is happily +ignorant; for the promise is usually made in moments of keenly conscious +physical life. Dying together is then figured, perhaps, as climbing hand +in hand the radiant topmost peak of life, with a last splendid leap +together into some immortal morning; and such a marriage in death, a +last union of two lives in some fiery consummation of dying, has been +the lot of some lovers supremely blest. + +Some indeed there are whose last earthly moment is a vivid reassertion +of the glory and loveliness of life. They drink the great cup to its +last golden drain, and by their death-beds we seem to be standing at the +laughing founts of being. They are radiant, victorious, even witty, to +the last, when at one swoop of blackness they are extinguished like a +light plunged into a stream. + +But for others the cold mists that hang low by Lethe's banks have +already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first +step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but +with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with +sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,--that was not +love's meaning. + +And not only are the dying thus drugged out of knowledge before they +die, but those who stand near them grow drowsed, too, by the fumes of +the poppies of death. The dying have forgotten; the living are numb and +foolish and in a dream. All they love on earth is passing away beneath +their very eyes, and they cannot understand,--cannot realise that this, +_this_ is death. + +Except in moments of piercing agony, days and weeks afterwards, moments +that were similarly soothed away again by that mysterious narcotic +property which pain at its highest brings with it (pain at its highest +being its own anaesthetic), Theophil never realised that Jenny had died, +and least of all at the moment when she was dying. Long after he +remembered how he had said to himself: "There is Jenny dying, dying. A +few more seconds and she will be beyond the sound of your voice for +ever. Call to her; she can still, perhaps, hear you. O my Jenny, my +Jenny! Louder, louder,--hold her tighter, tighter,--she is slipping +away. O God, she is slipping away. No love can hold her back. My Jenny, +my Jenny!" + +And all the time he had been curiously calm, almost unfeeling,--as one +standing stupefied in the presence of fate. The air seemed full of +boding sounds, echoes of low thunder, as from a distant world in the +throes of portentous change; and he told himself mechanically that he +should know the meaning of those sounds some day. He should wake up soon +from this unnatural torpor of pain to an empty house of life, through +the cold halls of which he would seek in vain for Jenny for evermore. + +Meanwhile, he suddenly found himself standing with his back to the fire +in the lighted study, talking to Mr. Moggridge, who, late as was the +hour, had called for news, and had stayed on from a perception that the +young minister had best have some one to talk to as far into the +morning as he would go on talking. They were talking in a business-like +way of Zion; and Theophil was smoking cigarette after cigarette. He was +terribly clear-headed and bright-witted, and Mr. Moggridge looked at him +sometimes with a sort of fear. + +It was about three in the morning when the door was softly opened by +Mrs. Talbot. + +"Will you come now, and see our little girl?" she said, with a voice +that could say no more. + +Theophil followed her, and, still in a dream, he stood in Jenny's room, +grown strangely solemn and sweet since he was last there,--was it a +thousand years ago? And there was Jenny lying asleep with a wonderful +smile on her face. She had a little gold chain round her neck and a +white crysanthemum in the bosom of her night-gown, and you thought of +some princess lying in enchanted sleep in an Arabian night. It seemed so +light a sleep and yet somehow so eternal. You stept softly, you spoke +low, lest you should awaken her--not carelessly shall one disturb that +imperious slumber. + +Yes, the distinction of death sat like an invisible crown upon Jenny's +brow. She was no longer little Jenny, but a mysterious princess upon +whose sleep it was permitted thus to gaze. The pain which had filled +these weeks with bitter human anguish had been the process of some +mysterious ennoblement. She had been found "worthy to die." In the +peerage of God's creatures, she had now outsoared those whom she loved. +The nature of it was a mystery, but no one could look on her face and +doubt that a great honour had come to little Jenny. + +But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greater +than we can bear--greater than we can bear. Not Theophil only--not young +love, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away the +potencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, though +sorrow itself should become that dream--but this poor old mother, all +the force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up. Hers is the +terrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death. + +Pity her, Jenny--speak one word to her. Hearken to her sobs as she +kneels by your side, and can you not hear the hard crying of his heart +that knows no tears? + +Are you become as the gods, Jenny, that you still smile on at the sound +of mortal tears? Will you not stretch out one of those folded hands to +each and lead them away with you? They are praying to follow you, only +to be with you, wherever you are. + +And it did seem as though in some strange way the soul of the mother had +still some sure communication with the soul of her dead child. +Motherhood had given her a nearness in the hour which no love of a lover +could gain. She alone spoke to the dead girl as though she were still +really alive, as one speaking to the deaf whom only one voice can reach. + +But Theophil was conscious in his wildest, most heartbroken, words that +Jenny could not hear them. He talked to her as though she were a picture +of herself, and as one would implore a picture to answer us, he +symbolised the cry of his soul in cries that he knew were vain. + +Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that this +icy marble had once been the flesh he had loved. O God! that little +tender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the words +of a song, it was marble now. + +"Ah! Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I, +and no one else in the world? Jenny, we shall never forget, never +forget, shall we? And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven. +Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say? Are you glad +somewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment looking +into my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours? Is it I who seem dead, +Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back to +me, as I am beating at the gates of death? But, Jenny, we shall find +each other, _must_ find each other some day. I shall be so true, +Jenny,--will you be true to me in heaven?" + +Then would sweep across his soul a pitiless vista of the long cold years +that lay between him and Jenny. He was not twenty-five; through what a +weary pilgrimage of useless years must he journey on, before there was +Jenny's face shining at the end. How he envied the old woman whose +sorrow was in this alone less cruel than his, that she was already fifty +years farther on the road to Jenny. Perhaps another year or two and she +would meet her. To meet so soon--was hardly to have parted at all. + +But, why live those years? Have you forgotten that old promise? Is it +too late to follow? Surely little Jenny will not speed so swiftly from +the earth she loved but that you shall overtake her. Who knows but she +is fluttering still at the gate of death, putting off the heavenward +journey hour after hour, in hope that the face she waits for will at +last light up the dark portal-- + + "I'll take his hand and go with him + To the deep wells of light; + As unto a stream we will step down, + And bathe there in God's sight." + +But was this the way to find Jenny? The universe was so full of dark +traps for lovers' feet. To lie down cold as Jenny by Jenny's side, was +that the way to find her? When death's gate opened for Jenny, had +Theophil at that very instant, hand in her hand, eyes fixed upon her +eyes, slipped through too, then surely they had been together. But the +door had closed, and whither on the other side Jenny had already +wandered, who could tell? Perhaps that was the very way to miss her. + +When two have lost each other in a crowd, it is best that one should +stand still and await the other. Perhaps it were best for him to stand +still here in life. Jenny would know where to seek him then--and maybe +the dead had mysterious ways of bringing news to the living. He could +wait a little while and see. For a little he could live--and listen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +JENNY'S LYING IN STATE + +But there were others besides those who stood so near who mourned Jenny, +passers-by on the road of friendship, who would miss her sunshine in the +streets, and carry with them one bright thought the less for that bright +face that death had thus blown out. There were especially some little +people to whom death was as yet hardly even mysterious, but was merely +perplexing, like many other grown-up things in which their parents were +interested. These were the little scholars of Jenny's Sunday-school +class, to whom simple Jenny had been a personage, quite a great lady, +full of gentleness. To these Jenny was "Teacher," a name of gentle awe; +and to these Teacher was as deeply dear as anyone can be to very +young hearts. + +Jenny had felt like a little mother to these little ones, and when she +lay ill her thoughts would often go to them, while from them would come +tiny presents to show how sorry they were that Teacher was ill. + +Several times before she grew too ill, Jenny had had her favourites up +in her room on Sunday evenings, to read Bible stories with her, and had +sent them away happy with magnificent text-cards, that had hitherto been +the arduously won rewards of "attention" and the practice of such +school-time virtues over many weeks. + +Now, when they heard that Teacher was dead, they felt a vague sorrow. +They knew that people who died were never seen at school any more, and +that people always burst out crying when anyone died; so they cried +bitterly, these little girls, and the hearts of one or two of them +perhaps really ached for a little while. One of them asked the new +teacher, if they would meet their old teacher in heaven, and was told +"Yes, if they were good girls,"--which was something to be good for. + +Among the wreaths that already filled Jenny's room with that piercing +smell of lilies which still clung there--unless it were Theophil's +fancy--for many months afterwards, was one sent in loving memory "by her +Sunday-school class"; and it was a part of that informal lying-in-state, +which is an involuntary recognition of the divine honours due to death, +that these little awestruck scholars should be taken in threes and fours +to look at Teacher for the last time. + +This was the third day, and Jenny was already in her coffin. The first +bloom of death, that light that lingers awhile in the face like a sunset +tranquil and blessed, a smile of immortal promise in the very moment of +mortality, had faded. Jenny's face by this was really dead, a mask of +drawn and sunken wax. She seemed now some fantastic doll, some ghastly +waxwork image of death such as we see carried on the stage in tragic +plays. The reality of death had gone with the coming of its funereal +trappings. But the little girls, who had to be lifted up one by one to +gaze with curious, scared faces into that harsh box, deeper and deeper +into which, as through beds of flowers and veils of gauze, Teacher was +sinking, knew nothing of these thoughts. They looked and wondered in +hushed bewilderment, and went their ways. It was evidently an occasion +when children were to keep more than usually quiet--and was it really +Teacher in that strange deep box? It was rather meaningless, but it was +certainly very strange and solemn, and you were allowed to cry. + +Of the others who came to see Jenny, I shall not speak,--the vulgar +sight-seers, the creepy old women, connoisseurs in beautiful death, for +whom a neighbour's funeral was like an invitation to the grand opera, +but on whom perhaps one should not be too severe, for even such coarse +sensitiveness to a mystery is the crude beginning of the poetic. + +The night before Jenny was given back to the elements Theophil dreamed a +dream, and afterwards he liked to think that he had dreamed it while +Jenny's body was still in the house with him, for then it might be +interpreted that her spirit was still there too, waiting for its final +release from the clay which God had sent her to animate for a while, as +an artist imprisons a lovely thought in a vase of alabaster. + +Theophil dreamed that he and some friends were gay together in a room, +just before setting out for a theatre; and as they laughed and talked +there came a little tapping on the wall, so that they grew silent and +listened. Then through the wall was heard a faint but glad little voice +speaking. It was Jenny's voice. + +"I can hear you all," she said; "you are off to the theatre. I wish I +were going with you. Never mind, we are not so far away from each other +as you think. I am only on the other side of a wall." + +And Theophil awoke on a bright wintry morning, with those words still, +it seemed, in the room. + +"I am only on the other side of a wall!" Was it but the metaphor-making +of dreams, which will so often take our forgotten speculations and +dramatise them for us into reality, or was it indeed a message? An +instinct which was unamenable to reason, and which was perhaps only a +desire, told him it was a message; and it was no less a message though +it were merely a pictorial symbol of a sense, which was already his in +the daytime, of a new and very real nearness to Jenny. + +He had slept right through that night out of sheer bodily weariness. +Weeks of watching and anguish had worn him out, and he never knew that +the poor old mother had laid a benediction on his sleep, looking in upon +him as he slept, the only waking being in that house of sleep. + +"He will wake soon enough, poor boy!" she had said, as she went once +more to watch till daylight by the side of the other sleeper. + +"O Jenny, Jenny, why did you leave me? You were the apple of my eye, my +Jenny. What will your old mother do now that you are gone?" + +So she sat and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise the +dead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though even +Jenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fear +for Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creed +told her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied her +faith, and her love made her a Sadducee. + +And yet it was her belief in a literal resurrection of the body that was +sorely troubling her old soul during these last hours of watching. For +while Jenny was still conscious of the coming of death, she had been +much tortured by hideous churchyard fancies, imaginations of the +darkness and noisomeness of the grave, and she had wrung from her mother +the promise that she should first be cremated and her ashes be afterward +buried in the family tomb. This was the promise which was lying heavy on +the old woman's heart to-night; and, though her reason told her that the +way of the flames and the way of the flowers alike led to dust, yet the +disintegration by fire seemed to give her a sense of entire destruction +such as the more desultory operations of the earth did not give. + +If Jenny must indeed pass right away, the dainty architecture of her +body, so lovingly builded, be laid in ruin; not by the fierce fingers of +fire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun, +and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and on +the wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragrance +about the world. + +And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of a +mysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quite +returned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptible +Jenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour when +the soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day. +Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance of +imagination. + +And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of the +flames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of the +great consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny +was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once +more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it +brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and +lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered +with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the +cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and +was already about the business of the dreaming spring. + +And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. It +saved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which had +haunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. However +morbid his fancies might become, _desiderium_ could never take any but +beautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images of +corruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacomb +or charnel. + +She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned again +whence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms, +and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; she +had touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books, +she had made little everlasting memories with her hands,--that was her +history; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, and +she had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked a +flower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No one +as long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and, +giving the lie to love's divine answer to the dust, say "This +was Jenny!" + +No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon +rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's +path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the +window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown +happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when a +lovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all high +moments, then can one say, "There, listen! _that_ was Jenny." + +Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophil +remained behind only to write her name across the high stars. Then he, +too, would pass through the gates of fire to her side. + +As he lay down to rest that night, his eyes fell with a sudden sense of +freshness upon the familiar Botticelli's "Mother and Child," which hung +over his fireplace; and a need that could never be fulfilled awoke in +his soul. If only Jenny could have left him a little child,--a little +girl! He had not seemed so lonely then. + +It was so he thought; yet perhaps Jenny's child would but have deepened +his loneliness, like a bird singing in a garden where our love walked +long ago. Yet the cry was from his heart, and the longing brought with +it his first tears. "O Jenny," he sobbed, "if only you had left me a +little child!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +THE BEGINNING OF THE PILGRIMAGE--MESSAGE FROM JENNY + +If every inclination of his heart had not desired it too, Theophil would +have gone on living at 3 Zion Place, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; for now +he was literally all she had left in the world, and what greater joy +remained for either than just to sit close by the fire and talk +of Jenny? + +3 Zion Place was now a little chapel of memory, where a bowed ancient +woman and a sad-faced young man kept up perpetual services to the holy +dead. A woman of her own years, also acquainted with grief, came to +companion the old woman, a sort of lay sister in this little monastery +of grief. It was so piety began, and thus piety is purest and tenderest +in the worship of the dead. Everything in that house which had taken the +impress of Jenny's fingers, been Jenny's to use or handle, remained +exactly as and where Jenny had placed it. They were as yet as fragrant +of Jenny as a fresh-gathered flower of its own perfume. In a very real +sense indeed Jenny had not died, or she was coming to life again as she +had never lived before; and it was no merely idealised Jenny who was +henceforward to fill up all her lover's thoughts and speak to him in +every sight and sound, but just the human Jenny, with her faults +and all. + +On these--such little faults!--Theophil ever loved to dwell. They saved +Jenny from becoming an abstraction, a saint. Even those bitter little +quarrels which all lovers must suffer,--how sweet they seemed now! + +The old mother's method was no doubt again different from her +son-in-law's. She would never have admitted that Jenny had a fault. +Such is the difference in reality between the new idealism and the old. + +In such small matters as the minutiae of mourning that difference was +again illustrated. Theophil could permit himself no outward insignia of +sorrow which he could not wear for ever. Already his profession had +clothed him in black, and it was only for him that his black seemed now +to gain a deeper distinction; but such ugly symbols of beautiful memory +as that note-paper whose diminishing edge of blackness is rather a +cynical witness of a graduated forgetfulness, were not for a real grief +like his. As if sorrow, while it may and will change, can ever end! Why, +in the world of faithful hearts, men and women have not yet dried their +tears for Romeo and Juliet! + +Theophil conceived this grief that had come to him as one more activity +added to his life till life should end. He knew that it would not +outcast joy, but that it would live side by side with it, that it must +alternate with joy for it to go on living. Jenny's death was not going +to be less sad, less a factor of the eternal tragedy, at the end of a +year,--that he might go to a theatre once more, as some widows joyously +don colours, when the clock strikes the end of a year of lost dances. + +For it was not Jenny alone that had died, but it was a consolation to +Theophil in those hours of self-torture which are among the earliest and +most cruel developments of grief, to realise how much of himself had +died with her, after all. It was not merely the apathy of the first +weeks that told him this, the sense of vacuity, of uselessness in all +things, but the sense that never left him, even when he had awakened to +an activity he had never known before, that nothing really mattered, +however vigorously he might seem to act to the contrary, since Jenny +had gone. + +It was with difficulty sometimes that he could take important issues +with necessary seriousness, for, whatever the odds of life henceforward +might be, what was there worth gaining now that Jenny was lost? Could +any energy or haste save Jenny from dying? That had happened. The worst +had happened. All the terror life had to appal the human spirit had been +faced, in that moment when the doctor's hand upon his shoulder had told +him Jenny was to die. His eyes had looked on the Medusa-face of life +that turns the bravest to stone, and he was no longer vulnerable +humanity. + +On the battle-field of existence he bore a charmed life, and sometimes +as he moved among his fellows he felt a certain sense of the unfairness +of his advantage in this respect, and paused to pity those who could +still be so eager, so tragically set upon, this little issue. The +virulence of those enemies whom he was already making and who were to +multiply as his activities awakened again, seemed particularly pathetic, +and he would smile in sad amusement at their quaint little efforts to +hurt him. (No man is so strong for this world's fight as he who has laid +up his treasure in heaven; and when the mystic condescends to the common +trades of life he is an easy master.) It meant so much to them, so +little to him. He was a humbug, he was a hypocrite, he wasn't even a +good speaker, he was an ignoramus! Was he? All right. They might think +so if they chose. It hardly interested him. He had been sitting drawing +angels, and somehow their irrelevant voices had broken in upon him. +"Another was with me." + +Really, even for Jenny's sake, it seemed hardly worth while to fight so +poor a world! Was the fame that such a world could give a distinction +one would seek for Jenny? Would not Jenny smile in heaven at the toy +honours of such a world? + +On the other hand, there was something repellent to his once ambitious +soul, in the thought that such a world might seem to have the victory; +and, therefore, when the first numbness had left him and the colours and +sounds of things were once more coming back, he threw himself with +galvanic vitality into the work that lay to his hand, and particularly +into those political activities for which his gift of speech and his +power of organisation fitted him. + +Two months after Jenny's death, having spoken at a great meeting on some +momentous question of the hour, he found himself the acknowledged leader +of the Radical, rather forlorn, hope in Coalchester, and before long +invitations were coming to him to help on the same hope in other towns. +Never in his life--and he used often to meditate on the fact with +wonder--had he been so vital, so efficient, so brilliant. His powers had +acquired a firmness, an alertness, a force of influence and attraction, +they had never possessed before. Of a sudden he found himself mature, a +calm master of his gifts. + +Yet those who sat near him at those meetings might have noticed that as +he sat down, pale amid plaudits, and crossed his hands upon his knees, +and while his political colleagues were complimenting him to the +audience on the mellow thunder of his political oratory, he was smiling +furtively to himself. "It's all very funny, isn't it, Jenny?" he was +saying in his heart. + +Indeed it was hardly recognisable to himself as a fancy that whenever he +spoke Jenny was somewhere in the audience. Sometimes a remote face might +bear a chance resemblance to her, and he would humour himself with the +thought that that was Jenny. For, with that self-consciousness which no +modern mind can escape, he found a certain sad pleasure sometimes in +noting the tricks grief played with him, loving and encouraging all its +fancies--if fancies indeed they were. + +When at other times he tried to think clearly, to strip himself of the +illusions, as others would no doubt call them, in which he now lived, +his thinking rather confirmed than dispersed them; and the more he +pondered, the more he failed to realise that Jenny was dead, the surer +became his consciousness that she was nearer to him (a very part of him +as it were) than she had ever been in the days when others could still +hear her voice and note her presence in a room. Her very death had given +him a paradoxical certitude of her immortality. + +Yet this recognition of her presence, on some plane of spiritual +apprehension, was none the less consistent with a piercing sense of her +loss on the plane where love once moved in visible beauty. That heavenly +lover in him was able to give none of the comfort of its assurance to +the earthly lover. That the eyes of the spirit could touch her, brought +no healing to the eyes that at midnight would look up from the desk in +Theophil's study to Jenny's empty chair, no touch of her to the hands +that were so idle and empty now. + +Yet there were little services these hands might still do for her. +There in her own little room her own books still stood in their places. +These could be taken care of, her little desk could still be kept as she +had left it, with her pen laid down as she had last laid it. There were +note-paper and envelopes, and ink and blotting-paper, all ready, if some +day, by a miracle--who could tell?--she might steal into that room and +want to leave a message. There should be fresh flowers for her to find +there too if she did come. + +And that new edition of Scott which was not finished issuing when she +went away, she would find that complete when she came back. Her little +collection of fairy books too--she was sure to glance at that! and then +she would find two or three new ones there finer than any of the old +ones; alas! so many beautiful books kept coming out now that she +had gone. + +Yet somehow she might see them, after all, if they were taken softly to +that little room and laid on that table altar. When it was quite sure +that no one was looking or listening, the shy soul might steal out of +the air and turn the pages with a sigh. + +Just so some savage lover might bring gifts of fruit and coloured beads, +and bright plumed birds, to the grave of his dead love, for the future +anthropologist to draw his moral of the childishness of all human +idealisms. + +One day, as Theophil had stolen quietly into that room on some such +votive errand, an impulse had come to him to open the drawer of the +desk. There might be some message for him there. Any writing of the dead +we have never read before is a message. + +Among various odds and ends, he came first upon one of those little +tradesmen's account-books interleaved with bad blotting-paper in which +the housewife writes her orders week by week. + +It was full of Jenny's writing, and though the entries were merely +weekly repetitions of the same string of groceries:--"2 lbs. of the +best tea," "6 lbs. loaf sugar," "6 nutmegs," and so on,--yet, "the hand +being hers," they made a record that could only be read through blinding +tears; and one page which bore a severe little note, to the effect that +the tea had been far from good of late, read almost like a personal +revelation. + +Theophil kissed the page, and, replacing the book, took up another, and +his heart leapt to find it was a little diary. + +He hesitated for a moment. It seemed wrong to read it, and yet he knew +that Jenny's soul held nothing she would not have shared with him, and +he was so hungry for a word from her though it were only a word out +of the past. + +The entries were not many nor long, but it smote his heart to find how +large a space his name, his interests, his successes, filled there. The +entries of honour were little heart-notes of evenings together +especially happy; there were two birthdays still singing for joy, and +sometimes there was a saying of his she had put down because it was so +helpful, or a poem she had copied out; and also there were clever little +criticisms of books she had read, and sometimes a wise little reflection +of her own,--which brought home to him, with a certain pang, that the +little child who had seemed so dependent on him had been an independent +personality, after all. + +As he came to the last entry, he put the book down with a gesture of +pain. The last entry had been made the day after Jenny had discovered +Theophil's love for Isabel. It was very brief, just a sob: "Have +realised that I am no fit wife for Theophil. And yet how I love him!" + +As Theophil read this, all that sad night came back to him with +unbearable vividness, and he felt once more a little sobbing body crying +its heart out against his. At that moment he would have endured +centuries of torment just to have undone what could never be undone; and +an awful thought that he had not dared allow into the daylight of his +mind, suddenly sprang hideous in full view of his stricken soul: the +thought that, however he might soothe its intolerable pain, he it was +who had--killed Jenny. "She seems to have had a shock," a voice was +saying over and over again, "she seems to have had a shock." + +A shock! Yes! and Isabel, whom all this time, he had kept thrust in the +outer darkness of thought, forbidding his soul to breathe her name, now +sprang into vivid light again in company with that thought. In that +moment he felt to hate her, and it was with a cruel mental oath he +hurled her back again into the dark. It was she, _she_ who had made +him--kill Jenny! + +But this was a thought that either must kill him, or be made endurable +by some advocate of the stricken conscience; and it was with no wish to +deceive himself, or to escape from his sin, that Theophil told himself +that this murder of a soul, to which he pleaded guilty, was indeed no +wilful act, but the accident of two tragically conditioned souls, who +had planned, at their own agony, a fate of happiest life for Jenny. + +Yet, the accuser urged, are not theories of life which thus jeopardise +the happiness of human souls theories which it is criminal to hold? +Shall you try your new ways to heaven at the risk of broken hearts? + +But a voice said--was it Jenny's?--this poor Theophil and Isabel love by +reason of no theory. It is yours, O ruling Fates of men, whatever you +be, who must support that accusation. Theophil and Isabel loved by the +compelling dispensation of the stars. They fought their destiny, and had +conquered it. It was you, ye stars, not they, that killed Jenny. + +And this was true: but still the little figure sobbed at Theophil's +side, as again and again it would come and sob there, till Theophil's +own heart broke,--that old death-crying of Jenny's broken heart. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +JENNY'S POSTE RESTANTE + +After Jenny's death two letters had come for her from Isabel, who had no +knowledge of what had been happening to her friends of New Zion. + +There is something peculiarly sad about the letters that for a little +time go on coming for the dead. Perhaps nothing more simply brings home +the fact that they are no longer with us. Even little bills, circulars +offering new spring goods at sale prices, come charged with pathos, and +Theophil smiled at his own folly as he kept them all. Sad little _poste +restante_! Will the letters ever be called for? + +Theophil did not open the letters, but as days went by and no more came, +he sometimes found himself taking them from their drawer and looking at +them. Isabel's handwriting, though his soul would not confess it to +himself, still held the power of a rune over his heart. + +Had no traitor thought ever whispered deep down in the darkness of his +consciousness that the way was now open to Isabel? Such thoughts indeed +had come to him, but unwelcomed, involuntarily, as those foul thoughts +which will sometimes torture the pure, or those base thoughts which may +appal the noble. + +The mind, like the body, has its foul humours, which can only be +accepted with patience as a part of the inscrutable mechanism of human +organisms. In moments of anger this filth and poison of the mind +sometimes comes to the surface to wrong us--for it is not us, it is in +truth just all that we are not. + +Thus at times in Theophil's mind, that was one prayer of faithful love +for Jenny, the thought of Isabel would steal, like--so his stern +faithfulness pictured it--a fair devil in a church. Yet, if he opened +one of those letters he knew there would ascend from it a cloud of +subtle incense, which would ... well, which he must never again breathe. + +So he would replace them in their drawer, and again, some other day, +take them out once more. + +Perhaps, after all, it might be his duty, the mere duty of a friend, to +open them. What if Isabel should be ill, should be needing him ... +should be dying! + +But still the fanaticism of his sorrow conquered, and still week after +week they remained unread. + +Meanwhile, Isabel was living her life as she had lived it before she had +heard of New Zion, with the difference of an internal sense of +completion which her love had brought. Need one say that she had her +hours of loneliness and longing, when she would have exchanged a +thousand years of love in heaven for a touch of Theophil's hand upon +earth; but these she knew how to conquer, and for most days that union +of two separated hearts remained to her as real as when it had been +vowed in those silent woods. + +At the very moment when Jenny was dying, and Theophil had thrust Isabel +away into the furthest, highest, starlight of memory, she was thinking +how real their union was, how near he seemed! + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +FURTHER CONCERNING THEOPHIL'S LIFE AFTER THE DEATH OF JENNY + + Knowing the quick but little love + Much mention of the dead. + +I hesitate further to continue that history of a grief of which, +nevertheless, this book has now little heart or purpose to be other than +the record, and, as what I shall write in this chapter must seem +meaningless and wearisome to all but those who belong to the great +Secret Society of Sorrow, it were no doubt just as well that those who +have known nothing but joy should follow their natural impulse and leave +it unread. I confess, too, that I should feel the more comfortable +without the regard of their happy, ignorant eyes. + +Sorrow is a mysticism, and to talk of it to those who have never known +the initiation of tears is like talking alchemy to a child. Sorrow, +too, is an aristocracy, and when Theophil came to realise that, as Jenny +had been found worthy to die, he had been found worthy to suffer, it +seemed to him almost vulgar only to have been happy. Happiness is such a +materialist, a creature of coarse tastes and literal pleasures, a +_bourgeois_ who has not yet attained the rank of a soul. The influence +of sorrow on the individual is much what the influence of Christianity +has been upon the world. Christianity, no doubt, has robbed us of +much--but then it has given us sorrow; it has taken away the sun, but it +has brought us the stars. It is only in the starlight of sorrow that we +become conscious of other worlds. The sun flatters our own little world +with the illusion of a transitory importance; the stars show it its +place in the universe, and teach it a nobler meaning for itself. + +No consciousness of his gifts had ever given Theophil any such sense of +his belonging to the chosen and dedicated minority of mankind as this +initiation into the Secret Society of Sorrow. He had been chosen to +represent a sacred order. He stood for no lesser interests than those of +Love and Death. Though he were to represent Coalchester in the House of +Commons, what honour were there in that to one already so +mysteriously honoured? + +Tears bring a strange new sight to the eyes, and "a new perception both +of grieving love" made Theophil see, and love to see, many things in the +world he had never noticed before. His eyes were opened to behold the +many mourners who go about the streets, the widows who walk in darkness, +and all the shapes of blackness moving phantom-like through the coloured +traffic; not all true children of sorrow, indeed, though wearing its +habit, but, true or not, symbols of the power and majesty of death in +the world. For the involuntary honour paid to death even by the +ignorantly busy, and happy, he kept ever a grateful and a jealous eye; +and as some funeral _cortege_ passed like a dream, Charon's barge amid +all the motley craft of merchandise and pleasure, he would watch sternly +to see if the fat and prosperous moment would do honour to the carriages +of the king. For a bowed head or a doffed hat he felt a personal +gratitude. And, since Jenny died, he seemed to be always meeting that +phantom procession in the streets. + +Once, as he passed along the High Street, he had noticed a crowd round a +dying horse. He stood with the crowd a moment, and then went on his way. +In an hour's time he repassed the place, and there was the dead horse +lying solitary on the side of the street; but he noted with a curious +gladness that some hand had covered it reverently with a horse-cloth. +"So honoured is death," he mused to himself, "that even the humblest +animal on which he shall have set his seal is held sacred from the +common day, and shall not be gazed upon heedlessly by the passer-by." +This seemed the greatest honour he had known paid to the king! + +The fascination with which from this time death and all that related to +or remotely suggested it absorbed him, was, he reflected one day with a +surprised recognition of the paradox, no longer the fascination of hate +or dread, but almost love. Death, the arch-enemy of joy, the assassin of +youth, the murderer of Jenny,--Death had robbed him of his life's one +treasure, and here was he loving him, watching for his face, listening +for his step, like a lover. + +Surely this was the strangest of conclusions; but perhaps the +explanation was very simple. Theophil loved death because Jenny had +died, as he would have loved anything Jenny had chosen to do, as he +would have loved life had Jenny gone on living. By dying Jenny had made +death beautiful, and its gloomiest associations were but so many +allusions to Jenny. + +Death was to Theophil as a foreign land of which before he had only +heard the name, and heard it almost without interest, as one hears +listlessly of Peru. But now that Jenny had gone to Peru, the books of +the world could not tell him enough about the new land where Jenny had +gone, and everyone who had friends there was at once his friend, and +every little dark-robed company gathered sadly to godspeed some new +emigrant to its distant shore was dear to him for Jenny's sake. Besides, +some of these might have heard from their friends there, might have news +to tell him of the dark land. One would walk far, would listen late for +such precious tidings. + +Did such tidings ever come? Yes, some had even seen their loved ones +again, shining strangely on the air. Why did Jenny never come like that? +How he had prayed and called to her for just one sign out of the +silence, one swift uplifting of the veil; but none, except that dream, +had ever come. Yet one could never be sure by what common unnoticed +sights and sounds the dead might fumblingly be striving to reach us in +the deaf and dumb language of the dead. Perhaps it was they who led us +to passages in books we had never noticed before, pointed their fingers +to bright pages of faith, and left us here and there many a message of +hope we never dreamed had come from them. Or might it not happen that +the dead, like the living, could be unfaithful:-- + + "Is death's long kiss a richer kiss + Than mine was wont to be, + Or have you gone to some far bliss + And straight forgotten me?" + +Perhaps Jenny already loved another in heaven, and his gift of +faithfulness might some day be a burden to her... + +This love of death was no mere morbid absorption. It was but one of the +activities of a faithfulness to which the trees about the temple had +become "dear as the temple's self," and his jealousy for those honours +paid to death was only one expression of his eager watchfulness for the +signs of human faithfulness. + +Not all unrewarded was that watch. The world held some faithful +hearts,--let us not ask how many,--lovers of invisible faces and voices +heard no more, men and women who still shared their joys and sorrows +with unseen comrades, and drank the cup of life as a sacrament of +remembrance. + +This sharing with the dead seemed to Theophil the essential of +faithfulness,--faithfulness taking many forms, sometimes maybe +misrepresentative of itself, and seldom perhaps informing its +conventional externals. + +A time will come in the profoundest griefs when those rituals to which +young grief is so eager to vow itself will grow lifeless and +conventional, the daily tasks of remembrance become as the told beads of +pattered prayers. Let the worshipper of relics beware lest his +treasures some day turn on his hands to so much irksome lumber, and true +sorrow be thus humiliated. + +No! the service for the dead which is most likely to remain a vital +offering of the heart is not the ceremonial sorrow of specially +consecrated times and seasons, but rather the simple longing in hours of +joy that _they_ could have been with us. To think of our dead friends as +always in their shrouds is a way of remembrance which we shall not long +have heart or even interest to follow. It is only by taking them to our +feasts, keeping up with them the same old human companionship, that we +may hope to keep the dead as friends. A modern poet has written eight +lines which were of great comfort to Theophil,-- + + "You go not to the headstone + As aforetime every day, + And I who died, I do not chide, + Because, dear friend, you play; + + "But in your playing think of him + Who once was kind and dear, + And if you see a beauteous thing, + Just say: 'He is not here.'" + +Here it seemed to Theophil was the whole duty of faithfulness. The dead +know that if we remember them in our hours of joy, they are indeed +remembered; and if they know anything at all, they will understand the +waywardness of sad hearts better than sad hearts understand themselves. + +Yet, indeed, save in the exercise of his faculties, Theophil had no joy +to reproach himself with. Surely returning spring, with its terrible +exuberance of warm life, was no joy. Perhaps he had looked on Jenny +lying dead with less anguish than he one day beheld an apple-tree thick +with blossom in the hot sun. Yes! the world had the heart to go on, to +bud and build, and sing,--though Jenny was gone. And in that bright +spring, see horrible and useless age still hobbling out into the beam! +What was life but one huge Mephistopheles laugh beneath the windows of +our dreams! + +That spring James Whalley persuaded Theophil to walk with him for a week +of country lanes far beyond Coalchester, letting him talk of Jenny all +the time. Jenny had never been here! If only Jenny could have seen that +view! Jenny had never known that flower! Did he remember those verses +from James Thomson:-- + + "The chambers of the mansions of my heart, + In every one whereof thine image dwells, + Are black with grief eternal for thy sake. + + "The inmost oratory of my soul, + Wherein thou ever dwellest quick or dead, + Is black with grief eternal for thy sake. + + "I kneel beside thee and I clasp the cross, + With eyes for ever fixed upon that face, + So beautiful and dreadful in its calm. + + "I kneel here patient as thou liest there; + As patient as a statue carved in stone, + Of adoration and eternal grief. + + "While thou dost not awake I cannot move; + And something tells me thou wilt never wake, + And I alive feel turning into stone." + +Strange joy of sad poetry for sad hearts! + +Experience indeed was now divided for Theophil into what Jenny had not +seen or known and into what she had seen and known; and it was one of +the tricks of his grief, as time went on, to confuse the two. Sometimes +he would think that Jenny had been with him at a certain place, or +perhaps had read a certain book which, on taking thought, he knew she +could never have seen. + +Allied perhaps to this confusion was the fancy that possessed him on +certain days that he caught glimpses of Jenny in little flitting figures +of women about the streets. A sudden poise of the head, the way of doing +the hair, a trick of walk,--just a flash and gone again; though +sometimes he was haunted with more persistent resemblances, which +brought him a curious mixture of joy and pain. And this perhaps is the +place to record what only those acquainted with grief will understand, +and not all of those,--for grief has many contradictory fashions. + +Till he had loved Jenny, women had played little or no part in +Theophil's life; but with Jenny's death he found, to his surprise, that +the idea of woman was strangely sweet to him. His eyes were drawn after +women in the street, and he found himself longing sometimes for some +woman on whose shoulder he might lean his head and weep out his grief +for Jenny! He loved death because Jenny had died; was he to love women +because Jenny had been a woman? Perhaps his feet had wandered in +dangerous paths at this time, had it not been for the restrictions which +his calling laid upon him. + +These, however, did not deny him the theatre, which it had been part of +his programme at New Zion to advocate, though there was seldom anything +worth seeing at Coalchester Theatre Royal. Yet sometimes a good London +company would call there on its provincial progress, and it chanced one +day, looking into a shop window, that Theophil caught sight of a +photograph of a woman that startled him with its remarkable resemblance +to Jenny. It was the prima donna of a Gaiety burlesque. Such was the +strange shape Jenny had for the moment taken! + +For the first time after her death Theophil was at the theatre that +evening. The bright lights and the music pierced him as with swords. +Once more he saw that apple-tree thick with blossom in the hot sun. Yet +his fancy found grim spells to lay the insolent ghost of life, and death +ever at his side whispered that all this light and music and dancing was +for but a little while; that those gay rouged faces, so confident in +laughing beauty, and all those nimble shapes, were to the eye that had +looked beyond life already stark in their coffins, with chin-cloths +about their nerveless jaws. Surely the lover would trip in the shroud +that was plainly to be seen from his feet to his lips! + +Like sudden snow on a summer meadow, a white silence fell from his +imagination across that fiddling, jigging, gleaming atmosphere, and +everywhere the dead sat around him, watching in a trance strange antics +of the grimacing dead. Curiously, in these moods, he never thought of +himself as dead. Alas! life was too cruel to release him so soon to +death and Jenny. + +Suddenly the theatre sprang back to life again with the entrance of the +prima donna. Yes, the resemblance was even greater than in the +photograph. She was a little taller and more heavily built than Jenny, +and it was not Jenny's voice; but for the rest, she _was_ Jenny. The +fascination of watching her was terrible. It seemed impossible that one +form could so mockingly resemble another, and yet be so hopelessly +someone else. Theophil could hardly bring himself to believe that the +woman yonder with Jenny's eyes and mouth and hair had never even heard +of Jenny's name. Surely, if he were to come and look into her face, she +would recognise him at once, and the old common interests would rise to +her lips as of old. + +Theophil went again to the theatre the next night, and again the next, +which was the last of the company's stay in the town; and the spell of +the false Florimel grew so strong upon him that at the close of the +final performance he sent up his card to the actress, and presently, as +in a dream, found himself stumbling among scenery and dipping under +beams on his way to the actress's room. If she were only as like Jenny +close to, he felt he must follow her to the end of the world; and indeed +the illusion still held as he entered the little mirrored room, smelling +of powder and littered with laces and silks,--fancy little Jenny here +among the grease-paints and the bouquets! It was only with the lack of +recognition in the polite welcome the actress gave him that the illusion +began to waver, or was it only that Jenny had forgotten him? + +So possessed had he been with the hallucination, that he had not +thought what excuse he would have to make to the actress for his visit, +and it was with an embarrassing shock that the necessity of speech came +to him, when he had stumbled through some mechanical words of +salutation. She looked at him with a little air of bewilderment, and +motioned to her attendant to leave them alone. As the door closed, +Theophil had determined to tell her the simple truth. + +"I have to ask your pardon," he began, "for a very strange intrusion. +The reason of it is simply this. You are so like someone I love who is +dead that I felt I could not rest till I had spoken to you. I trust you +will excuse me, and try to understand. Yes! you are terribly like her!" + +The story appealed to the actress's instinct for romance, and she +entered into its spirit. Besides, the young clergyman was very +interesting to look at, and the charm of sorrow was on his face. + +"An actress can hardly complain," she answered, "of being taken for +someone else, and though I don't know you, I feel that you have done me +an honour. Am I indeed so like her? How strange it must seem to you!" + +"It is very strange," said Theophil, still fascinated. Then he told this +image of Jenny the story of how Jenny had died. The tears came into the +actress's eyes as he talked, and it was as though Jenny shed tears for +Jenny's death. + +"Poor little girl!" she said; "I am so sorry for you both." + +"But," she continued presently, "you should both be very happy too--for +it would be worth while to suffer for so beautiful a love.... I feel +happy," she added half gaily, "even to resemble a woman who is so +wonderfully loved." + +Theophil lingered on, still fascinated, till the actress suggested that +he should walk with her to her hotel. Arrived there, Theophil, to the +possible scandalising of Coalchester, accepted her invitation to a +further chat over supper; and when at last he was back at Zion Place, +his heart was aware of a new comfort and a new pain. He had leaned his +head on a woman's kind shoulder, and she had let him talk and talk about +Jenny; but her shoulder had been warm, and it had been sweet to be +near her ... + + "A creature might forget to weep who bore; + Thy comfort long" ... + +and Theophil went to sleep that night with the taste of honey upon his +lips. + +But with the morning there came to him remorseful misgivings, and he +told himself that it had been one of the sophistries of the flesh, a +call of the senses taking in vain the sacred name of Jenny; and then for +his comfort he remembered how the greatest of all lovers, Dante, had +craved in like manner for the solace of "a very pitiful lady, very +young," and had been similarly remorseful on account of his momentary +preoccupation with her. + +Taking down his "Vita Nuova," he read: "_At length, by the constant +sight of this lady, mine eyes began to be gladdened overmuch with her +company; through which thing many times I had much unrest, and rebuked +myself as a base person: also, many times I cursed the unsteadfastness +of mine eyes, and said to them inwardly: 'Was not your grievous +condition of weeping wont one while to make others weep? And will ye now +forget this thing because a lady looketh upon you? who so looketh merely +in compassion of the grief ye then showed for your own blessed lady. But +what so ye can, that do ye, accursed eyes! many a time will I make you +remember it! for never, till death dry you up, should ye make an end of +your weeping_.'" + +Moreover, Dante had married Gemma within a year of the death of +Beatrice, and had even lived so scandalously meanwhile as to bring down +upon him the stern reproof of his friend Guido Calvancanti; yet the +world still regards him as the type of all faithful lovers. +Faithfulness is an attitude of the mind, and all it touches turns to +Beatrice. Yet-- + + "Except by death, we must not any way + Forget our lady who is gone from us." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +ISABEL CALLING + +If women were thus henceforth to influence Theophil, why might not +Isabel, the woman whom Jenny had loved, be counted amongst them? + +Isabel was the one woman in the whole world whom Theophil's faithfulness +could not transform into Jenny. That it had been his fatal love for her +that had brought Jenny to her death, his reason, except in moments of +self-injustice, was robust enough to put aside. + +There are excuses that we owe to ourselves, and we have a right to +expect justice even from our own consciences. A sentimental conscience +is the most tiresome of all altruists, and wilfully to indulge in +remorse that we have not justly incurred is to blunt our consciences +for real offences. The best repentance for our sins is a clear-eyed +recognition of their nature, and the temptation in some flurry of +feeling to take on our shoulders the mistakes of destiny with which we +chance to have been involuntarily associated, is one to be resisted in +the interests of that self-knowledge which is the beginning of +self-development. Before we take the scourge in hand for our own +shoulders let us be quite sure that we have sinned. + +There were hours, particularly those hours of sudden wakefulness in the +middle of the night when our minds lose their sense of proportion, in +which Theophil agonised beyond endurance, and, as on that afternoon when +he had found Jenny's diary, said to himself with merciless reiteration, +"She seems to have had a shock"--"It was you who killed Jenny." + +These hours had to be supported as we support hours of purely physical +pain. The morning brought a saner, larger view. The tragedy of Jenny's +death was not to be so easily explained. In it were implicated more +august responsible causes, it was part of a more general tragedy; as the +original instinct to blame himself and Isabel was part of man's ancient +theological habit of making man the scapegoat of the universe. + +But as the thought of Isabel thus became bearable once more, it became +for that very reason a thought the more faithfully to be resisted. + +It might become sweet. + +It was sweet! + +One day the casuistry of grief brought Theophil the reflection that, as +Isabel was the only woman he knew whom Jenny had known too, and that as +Jenny had loved her also, she was thus destined for him even by Jenny +herself. Besides, as he had realised no unfaithfulness to Jenny in his +love for Isabel during Jenny's life, there could equally be no +unfaithfulness now that she was dead. Moreover, if Jenny still in some +mysterious way kept watch over his life, she would understand his heart +as she could never have understood it when she was alive... + +These thoughts brought deep sorrow to him for many days, during which +once more he rebuked himself as "a base person," but, curiously enough, +in one who so despised the world and its opinion, it was an apparently +superficial consideration that was the mainstay of his faithfulness, +against these disloyal suggestions of a life that was thus reawakening +in spite of himself. + +There were moments when he could conceive his going to Isabel, and +asking her to share his life with him; but never could he endure the +thought of her bearing that name which seemed so inviolably Jenny's. +Even though Jenny had come to him in a dream and asked him to give her +name to Isabel, there was still the world. Though Jenny might +understand, the world would think he had forgotten Jenny. The minority +of faithful hearts would grow sadder by his seeming apostasy, and the +cynic would strengthen his pessimism by one more illustration of human +inconstancy. The world might hear that he was loving Isabel in some +Aegean isle, and still deem him faithful; for grief is allowed +mistresses, but with a wife it is understood to die. + +No! so long as the world lasted no other woman should steal her name +from Jenny's grave. + +And this was an unassailable symbol. Here the vital principle of his +faithfulness was entrenched as in an impregnable fortress. He would see +Isabel's heart break ere she should bear Jenny's name. + +Yet while he made the vow, his love for Isabel was musical as spring +within his soul, and he dared to tell himself that in God's sight he was +still Isabel's as well as Jenny's. + +Thus it came about that one autumn day, when Isabel's letters had lain +unopened through spring and summer, in one sudden impulse of mere +desire he had opened and read them,--not as Jenny's letters, but as +messages for which he himself was hungering. He had released the +incense, and as he kissed the dear writing, he momentarily forgot that +it was written to Jenny, and only remembered that it had come from +Isabel. In the snare of the incense he even accused himself for having +left them unread so long, and then to think that nearly six months had +gone by since the second letter had brought its half-playful reproach +for forgetfulness.... "Ah! Jenny, I'm afraid you're a fickle little +person, after all." + +How strange it seemed to hear Jenny talked to like that--now.... Yes, of +course, Jenny was dead. Jenny was dead ... and Isabel was calling. + +Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's +words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some +subtle air of hellish sweetness? + +O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in +her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath +this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover. + +Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the +strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that +prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest +whisper of the real. + +Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go. Come back he might, but +go he must, he would. Yes! he was going. + +There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in the +train; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, his +heart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness, +that Theophil spent it. Purposes he had none, only a desire,--just to +see Isabel again. That immediate future was too effulgent for him to +think of anything beyond it. + +He would see Isabel again! + +From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, she +would turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness. + +The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped him +in a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were passing through +hidden orchards. + +Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you across +the night? Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep in +the rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across the +silent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like a +camp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speeding +through the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travelling +rooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"? + +Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel? + +No, not Jenny's name. Never Jenny's name! + +He was going to look on Isabel again--that was all. Perhaps he would die +with the mere joy of seeing her again--and then he would not need to +think of the future. Yes! the deeps of his soul had wanted her as +much as that. + +It was about half-past six as he reached London; and though it was +impossible to call on her for some hours yet, Theophil drove straight to +Isabel's little square, shuttered and still in the early-risen London +morning. His eyes chose the second storey for hers, and picked out two +dainty windows as her rooms. He half expected to see the blind suddenly +drawn aside and her face, a sleepy flower, bloom through the curtains. + +He lingered awhile, loving each individual brick of the house with his +eyes, and then, kissing his hands to the sleeping windows, he rejoined +his cab, which he had left at the street corner, shy of awaking the +hushed square with its clatter. + +He gave Isabel till ten o'clock, which was perhaps hardly enough for a +young London lady's toilette and breakfast, and then called. A pleasant +housemaid answered the bell, and told him that Miss Strange was away, +and was not expected till to-morrow. + +Here was a surprise. He had never even thought of that possibility. + +Begging leave to write Miss Strange a note, he presently found himself +in Isabel's room. It was the same his eyes had blessed from the street. + +So this was Isabel's room! So evidently hers, her very self! + +Isabel pictures, Isabel wall-paper, Isabel chairs, Isabel cushions, +Isabel desk, Isabel books, Isabel bibelots, Isabel litter,--all Isabel. + +And there hung an arras portiere over a doorway to the right of the +fireplace. That was her bedroom! Dare he peep in? That was her little +bed. Would the housemaid catch him if he slipped in and left a kiss on +her pillow? By the mirror was a grotesque little china monster with his +mouth full of hat-pins. He stole one for a memory. Over a chair lay a +little dressing-jacket. He took it up and kissed it. + +Then he sat down to write to her. What a tidy, methodical little desk! +Everything in its place. Dear, business-like, sea-witch Isabel! Here was +her engagement book. He mustn't begin reading her letters! + +After his first disappointment, he was half-glad he would have to wait +till to-morrow to see her,--for, of course, he would wait. To have thus +sat in her room was almost enough for a first meeting. It was like +stealing upon her while she slept. + +Then he began a letter; but as he wrote, who was this suddenly standing +at his side? Was it Isabel? No...it was a little sobbing body quite near +to his, crying as if its heart would break... + +Oh, Jenny, Jenny--God forgive me! + +The spell was broken, the fit was over. Theophil left no letter for +Isabel, and no message, and the same evening he was once more back in +his little study in Zion Place, wild with remorse. O for the scourge and +the fire! But what penance shall avail to ease that poor little +creature's broken-hearted crying? + +"She seems to have had a shock!--She seems to have had a shock!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +BACK IN ZION PLACE + +The shame of that wild unfaithfulness burned in Theophil's soul for many +days. It humiliated him like a physical degradation. To have been so +drunkenly untrue! It was one of those shocks to the moral nature from +which it never quite recovers, and Theophil's face lost some of its +steadfastness, his walk some of its firmness, for this perfidy +towards Jenny. + +There was only one way to make the sense of it endurable, and he threw +himself into his work with a wasting vehemence. Where was his ambition? +There was so much yet to do. New Zion had long since moved and hummed, +and whizzed, the neighbouring towns had in a measure begun to dance to +his piping, but it must be a long while yet ere his name was to London +and to the world what it was already to Coalchester,--that mere +microcosm of his fame. + +And till London knew him as well as Coalchester, there was no real +monument to Jenny. London--no longer the city of Isabel--must learn to +say "Theophilus Londonderry" so naturally, that it would some day serve +as an unforgettable remembrance of Jenny. He must become a great man, +because a great name is the one shrine in which love's memory may escape +oblivion. In the arms of his name Jenny would then be carried down the +years, one woman-star saved from the night of death. Again, the world, +for which in one way he had so little care, was to help him indirectly +to keep his troth to Jenny. + +In a sense, the mountain was already coming to this young prophet; for +with the winter some of London's finest spirits were now and again to be +met in that incongruous Zion Place, as visiting lecturers to New Zion. +And each one, as he came, was impressed as Isabel had been on that old +evening when she had discovered her colony of surprise-people. Each +realised in that gravely masterful young minister a power and a force of +attraction which could not long remain hidden in that little country +town. Meanwhile, their visits enabled him to test his own calibre by +comparison with theirs, and to realise that his instincts had not +befooled him, but that he too had been called to the stage of the +great world. + +It was in the operation of this method of inviting the mountain that the +French poet, with a reference to whom we began this history, made his +fantastic appearance in Zion Place. It is to be feared that it was a +conscious love of paradox that prompted an invitation from which indeed +New Zion must derive the most mystical of benefits and the most +imaginary of delights; but it was Theophil's whim to crown the +Renaissance in Coalchester by this _reductio ad absurdum._ The +subtlest poetic art of France should come in person to Coalchester, and +after days should tell that Theophilus Londonderry, while still a young +country minister, had bidden Paris sing her loveliest siren-song in the +musty little lecture-hall of New Zion. It is thus power bends the bow of +the world till the ends meet, and shoots the arrow of his name among +the stars. + +With the reawakening of his ambition, Theophil began to realise that his +work at New Zion was nearing its end, and that before long he must seek +that larger stage. Yet all his heart remained in that dull little Zion +Place, and while Jenny's old mother lived he could not conceive tearing +himself away. Could he indeed even bring himself to say good-bye to +these mean little romantic streets along which Jenny had tripped? Could +he bear to think of the commonplace little house which Jenny had +transfigured to a shrine being desecrated with vulgar occupation? If he +could only raze it to the ground, as a cup from which a queen has drunk +is shattered lest it should be soiled with usage of common lips! Some +day he might have grown rich enough to buy it, and set it apart for +ever, as a little house sacred to love and youth; but, meanwhile, with +what ugly and noisome presences would it have been defiled! + +He would stand in Jenny's room with its quiet books and flowers, and his +heart would ache to think that some day harsh hands must noisily break +in upon that sacred silence, and strip it of all its delicate memories. +Jenny's room the lair of wild beasts, a nest of foulness and serpents! +Sometimes he was thus haunted with the ghosts of those who were to riot +up and down these stairs when Jenny's memory had quite died out of these +walls like a fragrance of musk overborne with coarse odours. + +Yes! in this perhaps are the rich most enviable of the poor, that they +can afford chapels for their memories, and their houses, thus saved from +external taint from generation to generation, become temples of which +the very walls breathe nobleness, whereas the very birthplace of genius +itself becomes a butcher's shop; and though that genius be Shakespeare, +and the old house be some day purified seventy times seven, and +garnished as you please, the smell of slaughtered beasts will still +cling about its rooms, and the butcher insist upon immortality too. + +Jenny's old mother was soon to turn into a memory also. She had from +time to time declared that she would not see another May, and had indeed +on one occasion named the day on which she would die, with a curious +precision, as though she had seen it written somewhere in a book, or +learnt it from private or unimpeachable information. Latterly she had +met Jenny twice in full daylight on the stairs, and it was evident that +the old woman would soon complete that little family circle in Paradise. + +But she still kept about, and whereas her old husband had grown sleepier +as his end neared, she seemed to be growing more active again, fidgety +and restless. She slept badly, and returned to her old habit of being +first down in the morning and lighting the kitchen fire, in spite of +remonstrances. Indeed, she might sometimes be heard up in the middle of +the night, making herself a cup of tea in the kitchen. The kitchen had +been her world, and she was already beginning to haunt it. + +There it was one wintry morning they found her sitting in the old +arm-chair in which her husband had died, and then they recalled her +words, for she had died on the very day she had predicted. + +She knew nothing of books, this quaint old woman, and had a very +antiquated taste in wall-papers; yet there would seem to be other ways +of being wise, and it may indeed be held that books act too much as +insulators between us and the earth, to the mysterious currents of which +gnarled shapes of unlettered old men and women may be the more sensitive +as lying closer to the Mother. + +At all events, old Mrs. Talbot did seem to have won certain confidences +from life and death refused to more consciously alert ears. Hers had +been that hearing beyond listening to which secrets are +sometimes revealed. + +Her death was more of a loss to her son-in-law than he might have +conceived, for not only was she the last of Jenny's flesh and blood, but +she was the only one else in the world who missed Jenny as he missed +her. Others might, through sympathy, share his sorrow, but she and he +were partners in an actual loss. Something had definitely gone from +each. Jenny seemed to be twice dead with the death of her mother, and +Theophil's loneliness suddenly became more absolute and cut off than +ever before. + +There was now no one left who could involuntarily recall remembered +words and traits of Jenny, and who would for their own sakes want to sit +down and talk of her. All that was left that really knew Jenny was the +old house itself. That remembered and talked of her still in its dumb +way; and as he realised this, his mood once more changed. He forgot his +aspirations toward a broader world, and felt that, not only would it be +a sort of unfaithfulness to leave Zion Place, but that to do so, and to +break up this familiar harmony of home, this little cosmos of friendly +furniture in accustomed relations,--pictures hung so from time +immemorial, rooms dedicated to this use and no other,--would be to +destroy the one mirror from which could come to him still glimpses of +Jenny's living face. In just that look of the rooms was the best +portrait he possessed of Jenny. + +Though he had always been fond of Mr. Moggridge, it had not before +occurred to Theophil to make of him a companion; but about this time, as +Mr. Moggridge would drop in of an evening to discuss church matters, the +young minister would be surprised to note how lonely he felt when he had +gone. Indeed Mr. Moggridge possessed that great undefinable gift of +companionability. + +What is needed in a companion is not brilliance of conversation, but the +power to make you feel that you are not quite alone in the universe. +Dogs and even children possess this quality for some happily constituted +individuals, but for others it is a necessity that the companion be a +human being. + +A human being, the quieter the better, if possible a rather large man, +diffusing a sense of warmth and safety, with perhaps no other gifts than +kindliness and a pipe; and sometimes you have the best of company. And +Mr. Moggridge, as we know, had brains too, and interesting instincts +for new things. But his best gift was his humanity. Thus Theophil +encouraged his evening calls and contrived to prolong them, though the +two would often sit almost silent by the hour, their pipes alone making +a sort of conversation. + +Sometimes the young lions of "The Dawn" would come to supper, as in the +old days, as Theophil called a year ago; but supper was a poor thing +without Mrs. Talbot popping in and out of the room, though she had +seemed comparatively unimportant then,--not to speak of eager little +Jenny,--not to think of Isabel. + +Yes! the sparkle had gone out of their meetings, which began to have an +air of make-believe youth about them. Theophil's interest was indeed +centred in the purlieus of New Zion, but it was entirely retrospective; +and though outwardly New Zion was more alive than ever, it seemed to him +that activity which once started goes on of itself, and he realised that +in his heart he cared nothing for the work itself, but only for the +music to which it had once been set in motion. Incomplete as in one +sense it was, in another and more personal sense his life seemed already +complete; and while in some moods he would dream of its resounding +continuance, in others he would sigh that it might end. + +However, for a while he would still go on living with the shadows he +loved; and as he sat alone of an evening in that silent house, he would +sometimes half fancy that he heard the other occupants moving about or +walking overhead. That was Mrs. Talbot with a creaking basket of clean +linen on the stairs, and surely that was the opening and closing of a +drawer in Jenny's room. Perhaps it was only Mr. Talbot moving his chair +in the kitchen. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +AND SUDDENLY THE LAST + +Had anyone told Theophil that in another six months he too would be a +memory, and that the future to which he looked, now with a sense of new +worlds to be conquered, now with a sense of weariness, was suddenly to +close down on him like a dropped curtain, he would have smiled half +sadly, and half proudly. No such good fortune for his sad heart! no such +miscarriage of his young life! + +Young life is so sure of its long lease. All about it lie the broken +dreams, the unfinished projects of others; but that _its_ life-work +should suddenly suffer the final interruption is not to be thought of! +It will die if it please of its own choosing; it will despise life and +coquette with death; but to die unconsulted, with not so much as "Will +it please your honour to die to-morrow week?" is an indignity +inconceivable to youth, however visionary and devoted to the worship +of the dead. + +Yet for quite simple reasons, as this mysterious world goes, it had been +decided that Theophil was for as brief a while as possible, allowing for +the leisure of natural causes, to support the life he thought he hated. +Even while Jenny lived, fate, mercifully foreseeing, had willed him a +brief pilgrimage; for on that night when Jenny had leaned over him with +that terrible hunger of damp breath, it had been written that of that +kiss Theophil should some day die. + +And it was of that kiss that the following May Theophil, all his plans +laid aside, engagements cancelled on every hand, eager life suddenly +trapped in this choking cul-de-sac, was dying. + +Death! It was an outrage! He was young, he was powerful! He would not +die! + +There was May at the window. He too was full of May. He would get up +and go about his work. He knew he could if they would only let him. It +was the mere rebellion of unspent energies that craved to be used, like +the muscular vivacity of suddenly severed limbs that still toss and +twitch with hot life; yet it inspired Theophil one afternoon when he had +been a fortnight or so in bed, during a brief absence of his nurse, to +rise and dress, and as by a miracle keep an appointment to speak at a +neighbouring town, where he had been promised for a great agitation on +the Home Rule Question. Surely it was a strange enough contradiction of +a year ago, when such meetings had seemed such trivialities in the +thought of death. Now, when they said he was dying--had this world grown +suddenly so significant that he could rise from his death-bed to make +one last appearance in the paltry lists? + +He spoke with an overcoat buttoned up to his throat, and a tumbler of +port wine at his side; and as the audience looked on his white hollow +face, and listened to his terrible eloquence, they realised with a +shudder that this was the last tragic effort of a dying man. + +Alas! the great world was not to be stamped with his image and +superscription, after all; and only a little faithful company of friends +would know that Theophilus Londonderry was a great man. + +This escapade, though it brought on death with double swiftness, brought +too a calm of satisfaction which made it easier to die; and in the +revulsion which it set up, life once more shrank into the background, +and its little triumphs grew paltry once more. Strange, he half smiled +to himself, that the man who was at last really going to Jenny should +even momentarily care about doing anything else! + +Yes, he was going to Jenny! So soon! Soon he would be on the other side +of that wall, soon be travelling that strange highway, on the other side +of light and darkness. In a few more weeks he... _HE?_ Would there still +be _he_ anywhere in the universe? + +Jenny! Perhaps there had been no Jenny all these months. Perhaps Jenny +stopped being Jenny forever in that last moment when she had tried to +wish him good-bye. And all his daily consciousness of her presence, all +the fancies of his faithful heart, had been idle as the words of a man +talking in his sleep. Those little offerings he had brought to her +altar,--she had never seen them; for perhaps Jenny had been an idol he +had made out of air, while he had been her lonely and unheeded +worshipper. + +Was it really like that? and in a few more weeks would he too be as an +eye that had ceased seeing, an ear that had ceased hearing for evermore? + +All the wonderful colour and sound of things! Were these waning days to +be his last poor opportunities to sit at the great show? + +Yes! the world was slipping like water between his hands--and he might +not be going to Jenny, after all. + +As these thoughts began to possess him, another thought which he had so +far resisted grew more importunately pleading--the thought of Isabel. +Perhaps he was going to Jenny, but surely he was leaving Isabel. Had he, +he could not but ask himself, immolated a warm living heart in a +fanatical devotion to a heart long since senseless and cold? Had it not, +after all, been a superstitious veneration towards an ideal of +faithfulness which had been Jenny's rather than his own? Had he in his +heart ever ceased to love Isabel, and had he really believed that to +love her too would have been unfaithfulness to Jenny? + +Yes, life was nearly over, but it held the possibility still of one +supreme blessedness. He might look into Isabel's eyes again. + +She had but to stand by his side and his poor remnant of life would grow +radiant and rounded as the most complete and blissful destiny. His heart +told him that if Isabel could but once enter the room again, and stay +with him to the end, however near, he would die singing the song of +magnificent life. + +Life is tragic, do you say? Life is cruel. Life is a splendid +portico--to nothingness. Ah, no! not if in that portico you have stood +for a moment, loving and beloved, by the side of Isabel. Life is +splendid! life is kind! life is abounding, deep-cupped! and each minute +of it is a prodigal eternity. + +Thus it was that one May morning Isabel sat very still in her little +room with a telegram just opened on her lap. The telegram ran: "Jenny is +dead and I am dying. Theophil." And this was the first message Isabel +had received from her lover since they had parted at Coalchester +station eighteen months ago. + +She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaid +had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat +cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her,--that Jenny +had divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil had +determined that they must never see each other again. + +Yet, even so, it could not have wronged Jenny for him to have sent so +much in written words! Had he ceased loving her?... No, that she could +never believe. They had _met_ too really for that. And, after all, this +silence was no more than their sad marriage-bond. Sad, truly, and a +little tired these months had made Isabel, but they had had no power +over her love. That belonged to the realities; that could never change. + +"Jenny is dead, and I am dying," Isabel kept saying over to herself, +divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, and +something of Theophil's conflict during those silent months. + +"Jenny is dead, and I am dying,"--a sad, a tragic message, surely! And +yet, as from the first shock and consequent turmoil of that message, its +real significance slowly evolved, even Isabel was perhaps surprised to +find it rather a happy than an unhappy significance. Jenny was dead, and +Theophil was dying; and yet, when at last she shook herself out of her +reverie, her face was curiously lit with peace. + +She presently discovered that there was a train north in two hours; and +then she turned to her desk, and with that business-like carefulness +with which we often act in a dream, she went over its contents, and +methodically transferred its various accumulations to the tiny grate, +which was soon blazing with unwonted summer fire. A little handful of +letters she saved, and from the diminutive locked cupboard in the +centre she took out a small sealed packet, which was to be included +among her luggage. + +All trains do not separate. There are also glad trains which bring +together; and soon Isabel was in one of these, and soon it had taken her +to Theophil,--to whose ears at last had come the sound of wonderful +wheels in the dead street, wheels that had stopped beneath his window, a +rustle of alighting, an opening and shutting of doors, an approaching +whisper on the staircase, and then, with reality unutterable--Isabel. + +Isabel! + +You could hardly have told that Theophil was dying, and the face that +Isabel thus found again was marked by none of the dreadful writing of +death. His eyes were brighter, his brow more hollow, his cheeks +thinner,--that was all; and he was to be of those of whom we have +spoken, whose flame of life burns brightly to the end. No heavy mists of +Lethe hung about his bed. Till his last heartbeat, he was to be +conscious of the nearness of Isabel. For a fortnight he was thus to lie +within sight and touch of her. How good life is! Think of it, a whole +fortnight! How extravagantly blessed! + +Isabel was living in the same house with him day after day. She was no +visitor, but went in and out of the room with the step of one who is at +home. If he grew weary and dozed a moment, she would still be sitting +there when he awoke. She was wearing home things. One morning when she +had been busied in the kitchen preparing some little delicacy for him, +she had left her task for a moment to see if he needed anything; and as +she had bent over him, she had worn a household apron,--a wife's apron. +Yes, she was at home, she would never leave him again, never leave +him--till he died. + +"Oh, Isabel--to die!" he moaned one night as she sat by his side. + +"But think, dear," she answered, with her head turned away, "think of +Jenny." + +"Perhaps there _is_ no Jenny." + +No Jenny! Isabel's heart gave a little cry. No Jenny! Then there could +be no harm ... + +"Theophil," she said, after a silence, "have you forgotten something we +said to each other that day,--something we promised?" + +For answer he looked at her with awed and suddenly enlightened eyes. + +"Do you mean that?" he asked. "You mustn't mean that." + +"Do you think I could care any more for life?" she asked. "Would you?" + +"No," he answered simply. + +"May I, then?" + +His eyes could alone answer. He knew her love too well to affect that +there would be any loss to her in the life she would thus be leaving. + +"But Jenny?" + +"If Jenny is there, she will understand now." + +I can conceive no happier, completer moment than that which followed for +these two, no more unassailable peace. If their lives were to be quite +put out, they would be extinguished together; if they were to begin anew +elsewhere, they would begin anew together; and meanwhile nothing that +could happen could harm them, could rob them of the desire of their +hearts. At the worst, they would attain their best; at the very least, +they would win their most: they would die together. + +To end together. It matters not how few or many years love and the +beloved live their days side by side, even though their love be but the +morning and the evening of one divine day, so that there be no bereaved +and lonely to-morrow. The hour that takes one and not the other takes +with it too all the accumulated happiness of all the years. That hour +these two were to escape. Yet was there no need of haste. So long as +they might, they would sit together in the sun of life. For a little +longer they would say, "How wonderful life is!"--for a little longer +make sure of each other. + +Your eyes, Isabel! Your hair, Isabel! Your dear mouth, Isabel! + +A little longer. + +"Shall we go to-night?" + +"Not yet...perhaps to-morrow, Isabel." + +But Theophil was now very near death, and he might forget if he lingered +on much more. Not wearily, but with music and singing must they pass +through the strange gate of Death. + +So at length, one June evening, Isabel made for them one last little +feast,--once more wine and great grapes set out upon a little table at +Theophil's bedside; and on the table, too, was the little sealed packet +Isabel had taken from the cupboard in her desk. + +Drawing her chair close up to his pillow, she poured out their wine, +and they drank it and ate the grapes together,--no happier people in +God's strange world. + +As the feast neared its end, Isabel rose, and stirring the little fire +into a blaze, turned out the lamps, so that the room was lit only with +the light from the fire. Then she refilled their glasses with wine, and +breaking the seal of the little white packet, took from it a small +bottle of green crystal, the contents of which she mingled with +the wine. + +Then she and Theophil held up their glasses to each other. + +"Let us go deeper into the wood," she said softly. + +"How wonderful life has been!" said Theophil; and the two drank, with +their eyes firm and sweet upon each other. + +Then Isabel sat down again by Theophil's side, and leaning her head +against his on the pillow, she took his hand. And the room became a +heaven of silence. + +Whoso would say of these two lives, "How sad!" let him consider the +quality of his own happiness; and whoso would regard the life of +Theophilus Londonderry as a failure, let him, too, consider the value of +his own success. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] +by Richard Le Gallienne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANCE OF ZION *** + +***** This file should be named 10949.txt or 10949.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/9/4/10949/ + +Produced by Brendan Lane, Charlie Kirschner and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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