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diff --git a/old/altdd10.txt b/old/altdd10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..11ad21b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/altdd10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1818 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Altar of the Dead, by Henry James +(#10 in our series by Henry James) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Altar of the Dead + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: September, 1996 [EBook #642] +[This file was first posted on September 10, 1996] +[Most recently updated: September 2, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD *** + + + + +Transcribed from the 1916 Martin Secker edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + +THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD + + + + +CHAPTER I. + + + +He had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and +loved them still less when they made a pretence of a figure. +Celebrations and suppressions were equally painful to him, and but +one of the former found a place in his life. He had kept each year +in his own fashion the date of Mary Antrim's death. It would be +more to the point perhaps to say that this occasion kept HIM: it +kept him at least effectually from doing anything else. It took +hold of him again and again with a hand of which time had softened +but never loosened the touch. He waked to his feast of memory as +consciously as he would have waked to his marriage-morn. Marriage +had had of old but too little to say to the matter: for the girl +who was to have been his bride there had been no bridal embrace. +She had died of a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been +fixed, and he had lost before fairly tasting it an affection that +promised to fill his life to the brim. + +Of that benediction, however, it would have been false to say this +life could really be emptied: it was still ruled by a pale ghost, +still ordered by a sovereign presence. He had not been a man of +numerous passions, and even in all these years no sense had grown +stronger with him than the sense of being bereft. He had needed no +priest and no altar to make him for ever widowed. He had done many +things in the world--he had done almost all but one: he had never, +never forgotten. He had tried to put into his existence whatever +else might take up room in it, but had failed to make it more than +a house of which the mistress was eternally absent. She was most +absent of all on the recurrent December day that his tenacity set +apart. He had no arranged observance of it, but his nerves made it +all their own. They drove him forth without mercy, and the goal of +his pilgrimage was far. She had been buried in a London suburb, a +part then of Nature's breast, but which he had seen lose one after +another every feature of freshness. It was in truth during the +moments he stood there that his eyes beheld the place least. They +looked at another image, they opened to another light. Was it a +credible future? Was it an incredible past? Whatever the answer +it was an immense escape from the actual. + +It's true that if there weren't other dates than this there were +other memories; and by the time George Stransom was fifty-five such +memories had greatly multiplied. There were other ghosts in his +life than the ghost of Mary Antrim. He had perhaps not had more +losses than most men, but he had counted his losses more; he hadn't +seen death more closely, but had in a manner felt it more deeply. +He had formed little by little the habit of numbering his Dead: it +had come to him early in life that there was something one had to +do for them. They were there in their simplified intensified +essence, their conscious absence and expressive patience, as +personally there as if they had only been stricken dumb. When all +sense of them failed, all sound of them ceased, it was as if their +purgatory were really still on earth: they asked so little that +they got, poor things, even less, and died again, died every day, +of the hard usage of life. They had no organised service, no +reserved place, no honour, no shelter, no safety. Even ungenerous +people provided for the living, but even those who were called most +generous did nothing for the others. So on George Stransom's part +had grown up with the years a resolve that he at least would do +something, do it, that is, for his own--would perform the great +charity without reproach. Every man HAD his own, and every man +had, to meet this charity, the ample resources of the soul. + +It was doubtless the voice of Mary Antrim that spoke for them best; +as the years at any rate went by he found himself in regular +communion with these postponed pensioners, those whom indeed he +always called in his thoughts the Others. He spared them the +moments, he organised the charity. Quite how it had risen he +probably never could have told you, but what came to pass was that +an altar, such as was after all within everybody's compass, lighted +with perpetual candles and dedicated to these secret rites, reared +itself in his spiritual spaces. He had wondered of old, in some +embarrassment, whether he had a religion; being very sure, and not +a little content, that he hadn't at all events the religion some of +the people he had known wanted him to have. Gradually this +question was straightened out for him: it became clear to him that +the religion instilled by his earliest consciousness had been +simply the religion of the Dead. It suited his inclination, it +satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his piety. It answered +his love of great offices, of a solemn and splendid ritual; for no +shrine could be more bedecked and no ceremonial more stately than +those to which his worship was attached. He had no imagination +about these things but that they were accessible to any one who +should feel the need of them. The poorest could build such temples +of the spirit--could make them blaze with candles and smoke with +incense, make them flush with pictures and flowers. The cost, in +the common phrase, of keeping them up fell wholly on the generous +heart. + + + +CHAPTER II. + + + +He had this year, on the eve of his anniversary, as happened, an +emotion not unconnected with that range of feeling. Walking home +at the close of a busy day he was arrested in the London street by +the particular effect of a shop-front that lighted the dull brown +air with its mercenary grin and before which several persons were +gathered. It was the window of a jeweller whose diamonds and +sapphires seemed to laugh, in flashes like high notes of sound, +with the mere joy of knowing how much more they were "worth" than +most of the dingy pedestrians staring at them from the other side +of the pane. Stransom lingered long enough to suspend, in a +vision, a string of pearls about the white neck of Mary Antrim, and +then was kept an instant longer by the sound of a voice he knew. +Next him was a mumbling old woman, and beyond the old woman a +gentleman with a lady on his arm. It was from him, from Paul +Creston, the voice had proceeded: he was talking with the lady of +some precious object in the window. Stransom had no sooner +recognised him than the old woman turned away; but just with this +growth of opportunity came a felt strangeness that stayed him in +the very act of laying his hand on his friend's arm. It lasted but +the instant, only that space sufficed for the flash of a wild +question. Was NOT Mrs. Creston dead?--the ambiguity met him there +in the short drop of her husband's voice, the drop conjugal, if it +ever was, and in the way the two figures leaned to each other. +Creston, making a step to look at something else, came nearer, +glanced at him, started and exclaimed--behaviour the effect of +which was at first only to leave Stransom staring, staring back +across the months at the different face, the wholly other face, the +poor man had shown him last, the blurred ravaged mask bent over the +open grave by which they had stood together. That son of +affliction wasn't in mourning now; he detached his arm from his +companion's to grasp the hand of the older friend. He coloured as +well as smiled in the strong light of the shop when Stransom raised +a tentative hat to the lady. Stransom had just time to see she was +pretty before he found himself gaping at a fact more portentous. +"My dear fellow, let me make you acquainted with my wife." + +Creston had blushed and stammered over it, but in half a minute, at +the rate we live in polite society, it had practically become, for +our friend, the mere memory of a shock. They stood there and +laughed and talked; Stransom had instantly whisked the shock out of +the way, to keep it for private consumption. He felt himself +grimace, he heard himself exaggerate the proper, but was conscious +of turning not a little faint. That new woman, that hired +performer, Mrs. Creston? Mrs. Creston had been more living for him +than any woman but one. This lady had a face that shone as +publicly as the jeweller's window, and in the happy candour with +which she wore her monstrous character was an effect of gross +immodesty. The character of Paul Creston's wife thus attributed to +her was monstrous for reasons Stransom could judge his friend to +know perfectly that he knew. The happy pair had just arrived from +America, and Stransom hadn't needed to be told this to guess the +nationality of the lady. Somehow it deepened the foolish air that +her husband's confused cordiality was unable to conceal. Stransom +recalled that he had heard of poor Creston's having, while his +bereavement was still fresh, crossed the sea for what people in +such predicaments call a little change. He had found the little +change indeed, he had brought the little change back; it was the +little change that stood there and that, do what he would, he +couldn't, while he showed those high front teeth of his, look other +than a conscious ass about. They were going into the shop, Mrs. +Creston said, and she begged Mr. Stransom to come with them and +help to decide. He thanked her, opening his watch and pleading an +engagement for which he was already late, and they parted while she +shrieked into the fog, "Mind now you come to see me right away!" +Creston had had the delicacy not to suggest that, and Stransom +hoped it hurt him somewhere to hear her scream it to all the +echoes. + +He felt quite determined, as he walked away, never in his life to +go near her. She was perhaps a human being, but Creston oughtn't +to have shown her without precautions, oughtn't indeed to have +shown her at all. His precautions should have been those of a +forger or a murderer, and the people at home would never have +mentioned extradition. This was a wife for foreign service or +purely external use; a decent consideration would have spared her +the injury of comparisons. Such was the first flush of George +Stransom's reaction; but as he sat alone that night--there were +particular hours he always passed alone--the harshness dropped from +it and left only the pity. HE could spend an evening with Kate +Creston, if the man to whom she had given everything couldn't. He +had known her twenty years, and she was the only woman for whom he +might perhaps have been unfaithful. She was all cleverness and +sympathy and charm; her house had been the very easiest in all the +world and her friendship the very firmest. Without accidents he +had loved her, without accidents every one had loved her: she had +made the passions about her as regular as the moon makes the tides. +She had been also of course far too good for her husband, but he +never suspected it, and in nothing had she been more admirable than +in the exquisite art with which she tried to keep every one else +(keeping Creston was no trouble) from finding it out. Here was a +man to whom she had devoted her life and for whom she had given it +up--dying to bring into the world a child of his bed; and she had +had only to submit to her fate to have, ere the grass was green on +her grave, no more existence for him than a domestic servant he had +replaced. The frivolity, the indecency of it made Stransom's eyes +fill; and he had that evening a sturdy sense that he alone, in a +world without delicacy, had a right to hold up his head. While he +smoked, after dinner, he had a book in his lap, but he had no eyes +for his page: his eyes, in the swarming void of things, seemed to +have caught Kate Creston's, and it was into their sad silences he +looked. It was to him her sentient spirit had turned, knowing it +to be of her he would think. He thought for a long time of how the +closed eyes of dead women could still live--how they could open +again, in a quiet lamplit room, long after they had looked their +last. They had looks that survived--had them as great poets had +quoted lines. + +The newspaper lay by his chair--the thing that came in the +afternoon and the servants thought one wanted; without sense for +what was in it he had mechanically unfolded and then dropped it. +Before he went to bed he took it up, and this time, at the top of a +paragraph, he was caught by five words that made him start. He +stood staring, before the fire, at the "Death of Sir Acton Hague, +K.C.B.," the man who ten years earlier had been the nearest of his +friends and whose deposition from this eminence had practically +left it without an occupant. He had seen him after their rupture, +but hadn't now seen him for years. Standing there before the fire +he turned cold as he read what had befallen him. Promoted a short +time previous to the governorship of the Westward Islands, Acton +Hague had died, in the bleak honour of this exile, of an illness +consequent on the bite of a poisonous snake. His career was +compressed by the newspaper into a dozen lines, the perusal of +which excited on George Stransom's part no warmer feeling than one +of relief at the absence of any mention of their quarrel, an +incident accidentally tainted at the time, thanks to their joint +immersion in large affairs, with a horrible publicity. Public +indeed was the wrong Stransom had, to his own sense, suffered, the +insult he had blankly taken from the only man with whom he had ever +been intimate; the friend, almost adored, of his University years, +the subject, later, of his passionate loyalty: so public that he +had never spoken of it to a human creature, so public that he had +completely overlooked it. It had made the difference for him that +friendship too was all over, but it had only made just that one. +The shock of interests had been private, intensely so; but the +action taken by Hague had been in the face of men. To-day it all +seemed to have occurred merely to the end that George Stransom +should think of him as "Hague" and measure exactly how much he +himself could resemble a stone. He went cold, suddenly and +horribly cold, to bed. + + + +CHAPTER III. + + + +The next day, in the afternoon, in the great grey suburb, he knew +his long walk had tired him. In the dreadful cemetery alone he had +been on his feet an hour. Instinctively, coming back, they had +taken him a devious course, and it was a desert in which no +circling cabman hovered over possible prey. He paused on a corner +and measured the dreariness; then he made out through the gathered +dusk that he was in one of those tracts of London which are less +gloomy by night than by day, because, in the former case of the +civil gift of light. By day there was nothing, but by night there +were lamps, and George Stransom was in a mood that made lamps good +in themselves. It wasn't that they could show him anything, it was +only that they could burn clear. To his surprise, however, after a +while, they did show him something: the arch of a high doorway +approached by a low terrace of steps, in the depth of which--it +formed a dim vestibule--the raising of a curtain at the moment he +passed gave him a glimpse of an avenue of gloom with a glow of +tapers at the end. He stopped and looked up, recognising the place +as a church. The thought quickly came to him that since he was +tired he might rest there; so that after a moment he had in turn +pushed up the leathern curtain and gone in. It was a temple of the +old persuasion, and there had evidently been a function--perhaps a +service for the dead; the high altar was still a blaze of candles. +This was an exhibition he always liked, and he dropped into a seat +with relief. More than it had ever yet come home to him it struck +him as good there should be churches. + +This one was almost empty and the other altars were dim; a verger +shuffled about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom +there was hospitality in the thick sweet air. Was it only the +savour of the incense or was it something of larger intention? He +had at any rate quitted the great grey suburb and come nearer to +the warm centre. He presently ceased to feel intrusive, gaining at +last even a sense of community with the only worshipper in his +neighbourhood, the sombre presence of a woman, in mourning +unrelieved, whose back was all he could see of her and who had sunk +deep into prayer at no great distance from him. He wished he could +sink, like her, to the very bottom, be as motionless, as rapt in +prostration. After a few moments he shifted his seat; it was +almost indelicate to be so aware of her. But Stransom subsequently +quite lost himself, floating away on the sea of light. If +occasions like this had been more frequent in his life he would +have had more present the great original type, set up in a myriad +temples, of the unapproachable shrine he had erected in his mind. +That shrine had begun in vague likeness to church pomps, but the +echo had ended by growing more distinct than the sound. The sound +now rang out, the type blazed at him with all its fires and with a +mystery of radiance in which endless meanings could glow. The +thing became as he sat there his appropriate altar and each starry +candle an appropriate vow. He numbered them, named them, grouped +them--it was the silent roll-call of his Dead. They made together +a brightness vast and intense, a brightness in which the mere +chapel of his thoughts grew so dim that as it faded away he asked +himself if he shouldn't find his real comfort in some material act, +some outward worship. + +This idea took possession of him while, at a distance, the black- +robed lady continued prostrate; he was quietly thrilled with his +conception, which at last brought him to his feet in the sudden +excitement of a plan. He wandered softly through the aisles, +pausing in the different chapels, all save one applied to a special +devotion. It was in this clear recess, lampless and unapplied, +that he stood longest--the length of time it took him fully to +grasp the conception of gilding it with his bounty. He should +snatch it from no other rites and associate it with nothing +profane; he would simply take it as it should be given up to him +and make it a masterpiece of splendour and a mountain of fire. +Tended sacredly all the year, with the sanctifying church round it, +it would always be ready for his offices. There would be +difficulties, but from the first they presented themselves only as +difficulties surmounted. Even for a person so little affiliated +the thing would be a matter of arrangement. He saw it all in +advance, and how bright in especial the place would become to him +in the intermissions of toil and the dusk of afternoons; how rich +in assurance at all times, but especially in the indifferent world. +Before withdrawing he drew nearer again to the spot where he had +first sat down, and in the movement he met the lady whom he had +seen praying and who was now on her way to the door. She passed +him quickly, and he had only a glimpse of her pale face and her +unconscious, almost sightless eyes. For that instant she looked +faded and handsome. + +This was the origin of the rites more public, yet certainly +esoteric, that he at last found himself able to establish. It took +a long time, it took a year, and both the process and the result +would have been--for any who knew--a vivid picture of his good +faith. No one did know, in fact--no one but the bland +ecclesiastics whose acquaintance he had promptly sought, whose +objections he had softly overridden, whose curiosity and sympathy +he had artfully charmed, whose assent to his eccentric munificence +he had eventually won, and who had asked for concessions in +exchange for indulgences. Stransom had of course at an early stage +of his enquiry been referred to the Bishop, and the Bishop had been +delightfully human, the Bishop had been almost amused. Success was +within sight, at any rate from the moment the attitude of those +whom it concerned became liberal in response to liberality. The +altar and the sacred shell that half encircled it, consecrated to +an ostensible and customary worship, were to be splendidly +maintained; all that Stransom reserved to himself was the number of +his lights and the free enjoyment of his intention. When the +intention had taken complete effect the enjoyment became even +greater than he had ventured to hope. He liked to think of this +effect when far from it, liked to convince himself of it yet again +when near. He was not often indeed so near as that a visit to it +hadn't perforce something of the patience of a pilgrimage; but the +time he gave to his devotion came to seem to him more a +contribution to his other interests than a betrayal of them. Even +a loaded life might be easier when one had added a new necessity to +it. + +How much easier was probably never guessed by those who simply knew +there were hours when he disappeared and for many of whom there was +a vulgar reading of what they used to call his plunges. These +plunges were into depths quieter than the deep sea-caves, and the +habit had at the end of a year or two become the one it would have +cost him most to relinquish. Now they had really, his Dead, +something that was indefensibly theirs; and he liked to think that +they might in cases be the Dead of others, as well as that the Dead +of others might be invoked there under the protection of what he +had done. Whoever bent a knee on the carpet he had laid down +appeared to him to act in the spirit of his intention. Each of his +lights had a name for him, and from time to time a new light was +kindled. This was what he had fundamentally agreed for, that there +should always be room for them all. What those who passed or +lingered saw was simply the most resplendent of the altars called +suddenly into vivid usefulness, with a quiet elderly man, for whom +it evidently had a fascination, often seated there in a maze or a +doze; but half the satisfaction of the spot for this mysterious and +fitful worshipper was that he found the years of his life there, +and the ties, the affections, the struggles, the submissions, the +conquests, if there had been such, a record of that adventurous +journey in which the beginnings and the endings of human relations +are the lettered mile-stones. He had in general little taste for +the past as a part of his own history; at other times and in other +places it mostly seemed to him pitiful to consider and impossible +to repair; but on these occasions he accepted it with something of +that positive gladness with which one adjusts one's self to an ache +that begins to succumb to treatment. To the treatment of time the +malady of life begins at a given moment to succumb; and these were +doubtless the hours at which that truth most came home to him. The +day was written for him there on which he had first become +acquainted with death, and the successive phases of the +acquaintance were marked each with a flame. + +The flames were gathering thick at present, for Stransom had +entered that dark defile of our earthly descent in which some one +dies every day. It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had +flashed out her white fire; yet already there were younger stars +ablaze on the tips of the tapers. Various persons in whom his +interest had not been intense drew closer to him by entering this +company. He went over it, head by head, till he felt like the +shepherd of a huddled flock, with all a shepherd's vision of +differences imperceptible. He knew his candles apart, up to the +colour of the flame, and would still have known them had their +positions all been changed. To other imaginations they might stand +for other things--that they should stand for something to be hushed +before was all he desired; but he was intensely conscious of the +personal note of each and of the distinguishable way it contributed +to the concert. There were hours at which he almost caught himself +wishing that certain of his friends would now die, that he might +establish with them in this manner a connexion more charming than, +as it happened, it was possible to enjoy with them in life. In +regard to those from whom one was separated by the long curves of +the globe such a connexion could only be an improvement: it +brought them instantly within reach. Of course there were gaps in +the constellation, for Stransom knew he could only pretend to act +for his own, and it wasn't every figure passing before his eyes +into the great obscure that was entitled to a memorial. There was +a strange sanctification in death, but some characters were more +sanctified by being forgotten than by being remembered. The +greatest blank in the shining page was the memory of Acton Hague, +of which he inveterately tried to rid himself. For Acton Hague no +flame could ever rise on any altar of his. + + + +CHAPTER IV. + + + +Every year, the day he walked back from the great graveyard, he +went to church as he had done the day his idea was born. It was on +this occasion, as it happened, after a year had passed, that he +began to observe his altar to be haunted by a worshipper at least +as frequent as himself. Others of the faithful, and in the rest of +the church, came and went, appealing sometimes, when they +disappeared, to a vague or to a particular recognition; but this +unfailing presence was always to be observed when he arrived and +still in possession when he departed. He was surprised, the first +time, at the promptitude with which it assumed an identity for him- +-the identity of the lady whom two years before, on his +anniversary, he had seen so intensely bowed, and of whose tragic +face he had had so flitting a vision. Given the time that had +passed, his recollection of her was fresh enough to make him +wonder. Of himself she had of course no impression, or rather had +had none at first: the time came when her manner of transacting +her business suggested her having gradually guessed his call to be +of the same order. She used his altar for her own purpose--he +could only hope that sad and solitary as she always struck him, she +used it for her own Dead. There were interruptions, infidelities, +all on his part, calls to other associations and duties; but as the +months went on he found her whenever he returned, and he ended by +taking pleasure in the thought that he had given her almost the +contentment he had given himself. They worshipped side by side so +often that there were moments when he wished he might be sure, so +straight did their prospect stretch away of growing old together in +their rites. She was younger than he, but she looked as if her +Dead were at least as numerous as his candles. She had no colour, +no sound, no fault, and another of the things about which he had +made up his mind was that she had no fortune. Always black-robed, +she must have had a succession of sorrows. People weren't poor, +after all, whom so many losses could overtake; they were positively +rich when they had had so much to give up. But the air of this +devoted and indifferent woman, who always made, in any attitude, a +beautiful accidental line, conveyed somehow to Stransom that she +had known more kinds of trouble than one. + +He had a great love of music and little time for the joy of it; but +occasionally, when workaday noises were muffled by Saturday +afternoons, it used to come back to him that there were glories. +There were moreover friends who reminded him of this and side by +side with whom he found himself sitting out concerts. On one of +these winter afternoons, in St. James's Hall, he became aware after +he had seated himself that the lady he had so often seen at church +was in the place next him and was evidently alone, as he also this +time happened to be. She was at first too absorbed in the +consideration of the programme to heed him, but when she at last +glanced at him he took advantage of the movement to speak to her, +greeting her with the remark that he felt as if he already knew +her. She smiled as she said "Oh yes, I recognise you"; yet in +spite of this admission of long acquaintance it was the first he +had seen of her smile. The effect of it was suddenly to contribute +more to that acquaintance than all the previous meetings had done. +He hadn't "taken in," he said to himself, that she was so pretty. +Later, that evening--it was while he rolled along in a hansom on +his way to dine out--he added that he hadn't taken in that she was +so interesting. The next morning in the midst of his work he quite +suddenly and irrelevantly reflected that his impression of her, +beginning so far back, was like a winding river that had at last +reached the sea. + +His work in fact was blurred a little all that day by the sense of +what had now passed between them. It wasn't much, but it had just +made the difference. They had listened together to Beethoven and +Schumann; they had talked in the pauses, and at the end, when at +the door, to which they moved together, he had asked her if he +could help her in the matter of getting away. She had thanked him +and put up her umbrella, slipping into the crowd without an +allusion to their meeting yet again and leaving him to remember at +leisure that not a word had been exchanged about the usual scene of +that coincidence. This omission struck him now as natural and then +again as perverse. She mightn't in the least have allowed his +warrant for speaking to her, and yet if she hadn't he would have +judged her an underbred woman. It was odd that when nothing had +really ever brought them together he should have been able +successfully to assume they were in a manner old friends--that this +negative quantity was somehow more than they could express. His +success, it was true, had been qualified by her quick escape, so +that there grew up in him an absurd desire to put it to some better +test. Save in so far as some other poor chance might help him, +such a test could be only to meet her afresh at church. Left to +himself he would have gone to church the very next afternoon, just +for the curiosity of seeing if he should find her there. But he +wasn't left to himself, a fact he discovered quite at the last, +after he had virtually made up his mind to go. The influence that +kept him away really revealed to him how little to himself his Dead +EVER left him. He went only for THEM--for nothing else in the +world. + +The force of this revulsion kept him away ten days: he hated to +connect the place with anything but his offices or to give a +glimpse of the curiosity that had been on the point of moving him. +It was absurd to weave a tangle about a matter so simple as a +custom of devotion that might with ease have been daily or hourly; +yet the tangle got itself woven. He was sorry, he was +disappointed: it was as if a long happy spell had been broken and +he had lost a familiar security. At the last, however, he asked +himself if he was to stay away for ever from the fear of this +muddle about motives. After an interval neither longer nor shorter +than usual he re-entered the church with a clear conviction that he +should scarcely heed the presence or the absence of the lady of the +concert. This indifference didn't prevent his at once noting that +for the only time since he had first seen her she wasn't on the +spot. He had now no scruple about giving her time to arrive, but +she didn't arrive, and when he went away still missing her he was +profanely and consentingly sorry. If her absence made the tangle +more intricate, that was all her own doing. By the end of another +year it was very intricate indeed; but by that time he didn't in +the least care, and it was only his cultivated consciousness that +had given him scruples. Three times in three months he had gone to +church without finding her, and he felt he hadn't needed these +occasions to show him his suspense had dropped. Yet it was, +incongruously, not indifference, but a refinement of delicacy that +had kept him from asking the sacristan, who would of course +immediately have recognised his description of her, whether she had +been seen at other hours. His delicacy had kept him from asking +any question about her at any time, and it was exactly the same +virtue that had left him so free to be decently civil to her at the +concert. + +This happy advantage now served him anew, enabling him when she +finally met his eyes--it was after a fourth trial--to predetermine +quite fixedly his awaiting her retreat. He joined her in the +street as soon as she had moved, asking her if he might accompany +her a certain distance. With her placid permission he went as far +as a house in the neighbourhood at which she had business: she let +him know it was not where she lived. She lived, as she said, in a +mere slum, with an old aunt, a person in connexion with whom she +spoke of the engrossment of humdrum duties and regular occupations. +She wasn't, the mourning niece, in her first youth, and her +vanished freshness had left something behind that, for Stransom, +represented the proof it had been tragically sacrificed. Whatever +she gave him the assurance of she gave without references. She +might have been a divorced duchess--she might have been an old maid +who taught the harp. + + + +CHAPTER V. + + + +They fell at last into the way of walking together almost every +time they met, though for a long time still they never met but at +church. He couldn't ask her to come and see him, and as if she +hadn't a proper place to receive him she never invited her friend. +As much as himself she knew the world of London, but from an +undiscussed instinct of privacy they haunted the region not mapped +on the social chart. On the return she always made him leave her +at the same corner. She looked with him, as a pretext for a pause, +at the depressed things in suburban shop-fronts; and there was +never a word he had said to her that she hadn't beautifully +understood. For long ages he never knew her name, any more than +she had ever pronounced his own; but it was not their names that +mattered, it was only their perfect practice and their common need. + +These things made their whole relation so impersonal that they +hadn't the rules or reasons people found in ordinary friendships. +They didn't care for the things it was supposed necessary to care +for in the intercourse of the world. They ended one day--they +never knew which of them expressed it first--by throwing out the +idea that they didn't care for each other. Over this idea they +grew quite intimate; they rallied to it in a way that marked a +fresh start in their confidence. If to feel deeply together about +certain things wholly distinct from themselves didn't constitute a +safety, where was safety to be looked for? Not lightly nor often, +not without occasion nor without emotion, any more than in any +other reference by serious people to a mystery of their faith; but +when something had happened to warm, as it were, the air for it, +they came as near as they could come to calling their Dead by name. +They felt it was coming very near to utter their thought at all. +The word "they" expressed enough; it limited the mention, it had a +dignity of its own, and if, in their talk, you had heard our +friends use it, you might have taken them for a pair of pagans of +old alluding decently to the domesticated gods. They never knew-- +at least Stransom never knew--how they had learned to be sure about +each other. If it had been with each a question of what the other +was there for, the certitude had come in some fine way of its own. +Any faith, after all, has the instinct of propagation, and it was +as natural as it was beautiful that they should have taken pleasure +on the spot in the imagination of a following. If the following +was for each but a following of one it had proved in the event +sufficient. Her debt, however, of course was much greater than +his, because while she had only given him a worshipper he had given +her a splendid temple. Once she said she pitied him for the length +of his list--she had counted his candles almost as often as +himself--and this made him wonder what could have been the length +of hers. He had wondered before at the coincidence of their +losses, especially as from time to time a new candle was set up. +On some occasion some accident led him to express this curiosity, +and she answered as if in surprise that he hadn't already +understood. "Oh for me, you know, the more there are the better-- +there could never be too many. I should like hundreds and +hundreds--I should like thousands; I should like a great mountain +of light." + +Then of course in a flash he understood. "Your Dead are only One?" + +She hung back at this as never yet. "Only One," she answered, +colouring as if now he knew her guarded secret. It really made him +feel he knew less than before, so difficult was it for him to +reconstitute a life in which a single experience had so belittled +all others. His own life, round its central hollow, had been +packed close enough. After this she appeared to have regretted her +confession, though at the moment she spoke there had been pride in +her very embarrassment. She declared to him that his own was the +larger, the dearer possession--the portion one would have chosen if +one had been able to choose; she assured him she could perfectly +imagine some of the echoes with which his silences were peopled. +He knew she couldn't: one's relation to what one had loved and +hated had been a relation too distinct from the relations of +others. But this didn't affect the fact that they were growing old +together in their piety. She was a feature of that piety, but even +at the ripe stage of acquaintance in which they occasionally +arranged to meet at a concert or to go together to an exhibition +she was not a feature of anything else. The most that happened was +that his worship became paramount. Friend by friend dropped away +till at last there were more emblems on his altar than houses left +him to enter. She was more than any other the friend who remained, +but she was unknown to all the rest. Once when she had discovered, +as they called it, a new star, she used the expression that the +chapel at last was full. + +"Oh no," Stransom replied, "there is a great thing wanting for +that! The chapel will never be full till a candle is set up before +which all the others will pale. It will be the tallest candle of +all." + +Her mild wonder rested on him. "What candle do you mean?" + +"I mean, dear lady, my own." + +He had learned after a long time that she earned money by her pen, +writing under a pseudonym she never disclosed in magazines he never +saw. She knew too well what he couldn't read and what she couldn't +write, and she taught him to cultivate indifference with a success +that did much for their good relations. Her invisible industry was +a convenience to him; it helped his contented thought of her, the +thought that rested in the dignity of her proud obscure life, her +little remunerated art and her little impenetrable home. Lost, +with her decayed relative, in her dim suburban world, she came to +the surface for him in distant places. She was really the +priestess of his altar, and whenever he quitted England he +committed it to her keeping. She proved to him afresh that women +have more of the spirit of religion than men; he felt his fidelity +pale and faint in comparison with hers. He often said to her that +since he had so little time to live he rejoiced in her having so +much; so glad was he to think she would guard the temple when he +should have been called. He had a great plan for that, which of +course he told her too, a bequest of money to keep it up in +undiminished state. Of the administration of this fund he would +appoint her superintendent, and if the spirit should move her she +might kindle a taper even for him. + +"And who will kindle one even for me?" she then seriously asked. + + + +CHAPTER VI. + + + +She was always in mourning, yet the day he came back from the +longest absence he had yet made her appearance immediately told him +she had lately had a bereavement. They met on this occasion as she +was leaving the church, so that postponing his own entrance he +instantly offered to turn round and walk away with her. She +considered, then she said: "Go in now, but come and see me in an +hour." He knew the small vista of her street, closed at the end +and as dreary as an empty pocket, where the pairs of shabby little +houses, semi-detached but indissolubly united, were like married +couples on bad terms. Often, however, as he had gone to the +beginning he had never gone beyond. Her aunt was dead--that he +immediately guessed, as well as that it made a difference; but when +she had for the first time mentioned her number he found himself, +on her leaving him, not a little agitated by this sudden +liberality. She wasn't a person with whom, after all, one got on +so very fast: it had taken him months and months to learn her +name, years and years to learn her address. If she had looked, on +this reunion, so much older to him, how in the world did he look to +her? She had reached the period of life he had long since reached, +when, after separations, the marked clock-face of the friend we +meet announces the hour we have tried to forget. He couldn't have +said what he expected as, at the end of his waiting, he turned the +corner where for years he had always paused; simply not to pause +was a efficient cause for emotion. It was an event, somehow; and +in all their long acquaintance there had never been an event. This +one grew larger when, five minutes later, in the faint elegance of +her little drawing-room, she quavered out a greeting that showed +the measure she took of it. He had a strange sense of having come +for something in particular; strange because literally there was +nothing particular between them, nothing save that they were at one +on their great point, which had long ago become a magnificent +matter of course. It was true that after she had said "You can +always come now, you know," the thing he was there for seemed +already to have happened. He asked her if it was the death of her +aunt that made the difference; to which she replied: "She never +knew I knew you. I wished her not to." The beautiful clearness of +her candour--her faded beauty was like a summer twilight-- +disconnected the words from any image of deceit. They might have +struck him as the record of a deep dissimulation; but she had +always given him a sense of noble reasons. The vanished aunt was +present, as he looked about him, in the small complacencies of the +room, the beaded velvet and the fluted moreen; and though, as we +know, he had the worship of the Dead, he found himself not +definitely regretting this lady. If she wasn't in his long list, +however, she was in her niece's short one, and Stransom presently +observed to the latter that now at least, in the place they haunted +together, she would have another object of devotion. + +"Yes, I shall have another. She was very kind to me. It's that +that's the difference." + +He judged, wondering a good deal before he made any motion to leave +her, that the difference would somehow be very great and would +consist of still other things than her having let him come in. It +rather chilled him, for they had been happy together as they were. +He extracted from her at any rate an intimation that she should now +have means less limited, that her aunt's tiny fortune had come to +her, so that there was henceforth only one to consume what had +formerly been made to suffice for two. This was a joy to Stransom, +because it had hitherto been equally impossible for him either to +offer her presents or contentedly to stay his hand. It was too +ugly to be at her side that way, abounding himself and yet not able +to overflow--a demonstration that would have been signally a false +note. Even her better situation too seemed only to draw out in a +sense the loneliness of her future. It would merely help her to +live more and more for their small ceremonial, and this at a time +when he himself had begun wearily to feel that, having set it in +motion, he might depart. When they had sat a while in the pale +parlour she got up--"This isn't my room: let us go into mine." +They had only to cross the narrow hall, as he found, to pass quite +into another air. When she had closed the door of the second room, +as she called it, he felt at last in real possession of her. The +place had the flush of life--it was expressive; its dark red walls +were articulate with memories and relics. These were simple +things--photographs and water-colours, scraps of writing framed and +ghosts of flowers embalmed; but a moment sufficed to show him they +had a common meaning. It was here she had lived and worked, and +she had already told him she would make no change of scene. He +read the reference in the objects about her--the general one to +places and times; but after a minute he distinguished among them a +small portrait of a gentleman. At a distance and without their +glasses his eyes were only so caught by it as to feel a vague +curiosity. Presently this impulse carried him nearer, and in +another moment he was staring at the picture in stupefaction and +with the sense that some sound had broken from him. He was further +conscious that he showed his companion a white face when he turned +round on her gasping: "Acton Hague!" + +She matched his great wonder. "Did you know him?" + +"He was the friend of all my youth--of my early manhood. And YOU +knew him?" + +She coloured at this and for a moment her answer failed; her eyes +embraced everything in the place, and a strange irony reached her +lips as she echoed: "Knew him?" + +Then Stransom understood, while the room heaved like the cabin of a +ship, that its whole contents cried out with him, that it was a +museum in his honour, that all her later years had been addressed +to him and that the shrine he himself had reared had been +passionately converted to this use. It was all for Acton Hague +that she had kneeled every day at his altar. What need had there +been for a consecrated candle when he was present in the whole +array? The revelation so smote our friend in the face that he +dropped into a seat and sat silent. He had quickly felt her shaken +by the force of his shock, but as she sank on the sofa beside him +and laid her hand on his arm he knew almost as soon that she +mightn't resent it as much as she'd have liked. + + + +CHAPTER VII. + + + +He learned in that instant two things: one being that even in so +long a time she had gathered no knowledge of his great intimacy and +his great quarrel; the other that in spite of this ignorance, +strangely enough, she supplied on the spot a reason for his stupor. +"How extraordinary," he presently exclaimed, "that we should never +have known!" + +She gave a wan smile which seemed to Stransom stranger even than +the fact itself. "I never, never spoke of him." + +He looked again about the room. "Why then, if your life had been +so full of him?" + +"Mayn't I put you that question as well? Hadn't your life also +been full of him?" + +"Any one's, every one's life who had the wonderful experience of +knowing him. _I_ never spoke of him," Stransom added in a moment, +"because he did me--years ago--an unforgettable wrong." She was +silent, and with the full effect of his presence all about them it +almost startled her guest to hear no protest escape her. She +accepted his words, he turned his eyes to her again to see in what +manner she accepted them. It was with rising tears and a rare +sweetness in the movement of putting out her hand to take his own. +Nothing more wonderful had ever appeared to him than, in that +little chamber of remembrance and homage, to see her convey with +such exquisite mildness that as from Acton Hague any injury was +credible. The clock ticked in the stillness--Hague had probably +given it to her--and while he let her hold his hand with a +tenderness that was almost an assumption of responsibility for his +old pain as well as his new, Stransom after a minute broke out: +"Good God, how he must have used YOU!" + +She dropped his hand at this, got up and, moving across the room, +made straight a small picture to which, on examining it, he had +given a slight push. Then turning round on him with her pale +gaiety recovered, "I've forgiven him!" she declared. + +"I know what you've done," said Stransom "I know what you've done +for years." For a moment they looked at each other through it all +with their long community of service in their eyes. This short +passage made, to his sense, for the woman before him, an immense, +an absolutely naked confession; which was presently, suddenly +blushing red and changing her place again, what she appeared to +learn he perceived in it. He got up and "How you must have loved +him!" he cried. + +"Women aren't like men. They can love even where they've +suffered." + +"Women are wonderful," said Stransom. "But I assure you I've +forgiven him too." + +"If I had known of anything so strange I wouldn't have brought you +here." + +"So that we might have gone on in our ignorance to the last?" + +"What do you call the last?" she asked, smiling still. + +At this he could smile back at her. "You'll see--when it comes." + +She thought of that. "This is better perhaps; but as we were--it +was good." + +He put her the question. "Did it never happen that he spoke of +me?" + +Considering more intently she made no answer, and he then knew he +should have been adequately answered by her asking how often he +himself had spoken of their terrible friend. Suddenly a brighter +light broke in her face and an excited idea sprang to her lips in +the appeal: "You HAVE forgiven him?" + +"How, if I hadn't, could I linger here?" + +She visibly winced at the deep but unintended irony of this; but +even while she did so she panted quickly: "Then in the lights on +your altar--?" + +"There's never a light for Acton Hague!" + +She stared with a dreadful fall, "But if he's one of your Dead?" + +"He's one of the world's, if you like--he's one of yours. But he's +not one of mine. Mine are only the Dead who died possessed of me. +They're mine in death because they were mine in life." + +"HE was yours in life then, even if for a while he ceased to be. +If you forgave him you went back to him. Those whom we've once +loved--" + +"Are those who can hurt us most," Stransom broke in. + +"Ah it's not true--you've NOT forgiven him!" she wailed with a +passion that startled him. + +He looked at her as never yet. "What was it he did to you?" + +"Everything!" Then abruptly she put out her hand in farewell. +"Good-bye." + +He turned as cold as he had turned that night he read the man's +death. "You mean that we meet no more?" + +"Not as we've met--not THERE!" + +He stood aghast at this snap of their great bond, at the +renouncement that rang out in the word she so expressively sounded. +"But what's changed--for you?" + +She waited in all the sharpness of a trouble that for the first +time since he had known her made her splendidly stern. "How can +you understand now when you didn't understand before?" + +"I didn't understand before only because I didn't know. Now that I +know, I see what I've been living with for years," Stransom went on +very gently. + +She looked at him with a larger allowance, doing this gentleness +justice. "How can I then, on this new knowledge of my own, ask you +to continue to live with it?" + +"I set up my altar, with its multiplied meanings," Stransom began; +but she quietly interrupted him. + +"You set up your altar, and when I wanted one most I found it +magnificently ready. I used it with the gratitude I've always +shown you, for I knew it from of old to be dedicated to Death. I +told you long ago that my Dead weren't many. Yours were, but all +you had done for them was none too much for MY worship! You had +placed a great light for Each--I gathered them together for One!" + +"We had simply different intentions," he returned. "That, as you +say, I perfectly knew, and I don't see why your intention shouldn't +still sustain you." + +"That's because you're generous--you can imagine and think. But +the spell is broken." + +It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resistance, that it +really was, and the prospect stretched grey and void before him. +All he could say, however, was: "I hope you'll try before you give +up." + +"If I had known you had ever known him I should have taken for +granted he had his candle," she presently answered. "What's +changed, as you say, is that on making the discovery I find he +never has had it. That makes MY attitude"--she paused as thinking +how to express it, then said simply--"all wrong." + +"Come once again," he pleaded. + +"Will you give him his candle?" she asked. + +He waited, but only because it would sound ungracious; not because +of a doubt of his feeling. "I can't do that!" he declared at last. + +"Then good-bye." And she gave him her hand again. + +He had got his dismissal; besides which, in the agitation of +everything that had opened out to him, he felt the need to recover +himself as he could only do in solitude. Yet he lingered--lingered +to see if she had no compromise to express, no attenuation to +propose. But he only met her great lamenting eyes, in which indeed +he read that she was as sorry for him as for any one else. This +made him say: "At least, in any case, I may see you here." + +"Oh yes, come if you like. But I don't think it will do." + +He looked round the room once more, knowing how little he was sure +it would do. He felt also stricken and more and more cold, and his +chill was like an ague in which he had to make an effort not to +shake. Then he made doleful reply: "I must try on my side--if you +can't try on yours." She came out with him to the hall and into +the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could +least answer from his own wit. "Why have you never let me come +before?" + +"Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to tell +her how I came to know you." + +"And what would have been the objection to that?" + +"It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any rate +have been that danger." + +"Surely she knew you went every day to church," Stransom objected. + +"She didn't know what I went for." + +"Of me then she never even heard?" + +"You'll think I was deceitful. But I didn't need to be!" + +He was now on the lower door-step, and his hostess held the door +half-closed behind him. Through what remained of the opening he +saw her framed face. He made a supreme appeal. "What DID he do to +you?" + +"It would have come out--SHE would have told you. That fear at my +heart--that was my reason!" And she closed the door, shutting him +out. + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + + + +He had ruthlessly abandoned her--that of course was what he had +done. Stransom made it all out in solitude, at leisure, fitting +the unmatched pieces gradually together and dealing one by one with +a hundred obscure points. She had known Hague only after her +present friend's relations with him had wholly terminated; +obviously indeed a good while after; and it was natural enough that +of his previous life she should have ascertained only what he had +judged good to communicate. There were passages it was quite +conceivable that even in moments of the tenderest expansion he +should have withheld. Of many facts in the career of a man so in +the eye of the world there was of course a common knowledge; but +this lady lived apart from public affairs, and the only time +perfectly clear to her would have been the time following the dawn +of her own drama. A man in her place would have "looked up" the +past--would even have consulted old newspapers. It remained +remarkable indeed that in her long contact with the partner of her +retrospect no accident had lighted a train; but there was no +arguing about that; the accident had in fact come: it had simply +been that security had prevailed. She had taken what Hague had +given her, and her blankness in respect of his other connexions was +only a touch in the picture of that plasticity Stransom had supreme +reason to know so great a master could have been trusted to +produce. + +This picture was for a while all our friend saw: he caught his +breath again and again as it came over him that the woman with whom +he had had for years so fine a point of contact was a woman whom +Acton Hague, of all men in the world, had more or less fashioned. +Such as she sat there to-day she was ineffaceably stamped with him. +Beneficent, blameless as Stransom held her, he couldn't rid himself +of the sense that he had been, as who should say, swindled. She +had imposed upon him hugely, though she had known it as little as +he. All this later past came back to him as a time grotesquely +misspent. Such at least were his first reflexions; after a while +he found himself more divided and only, as the end of it, more +troubled. He imagined, recalled, reconstituted, figured out for +himself the truth she had refused to give him; the effect of which +was to make her seem to him only more saturated with her fate. He +felt her spirit, through the whole strangeness, finer than his own +to the very degree in which she might have been, in which she +certainly had been, more wronged. A women, when wronged, was +always more wronged than a man, and there were conditions when the +least she could have got off with was more than the most he could +have to bear. He was sure this rare creature wouldn't have got off +with the least. He was awestruck at the thought of such a +surrender--such a prostration. Moulded indeed she had been by +powerful hands, to have converted her injury into an exaltation so +sublime. The fellow had only had to die for everything that was +ugly in him to be washed out in a torrent. It was vain to try to +guess what had taken place, but nothing could be clearer than that +she had ended by accusing herself. She absolved him at every +point, she adored her very wounds. The passion by which he had +profited had rushed back after its ebb, and now the tide of +tenderness, arrested for ever at flood, was too deep even to +fathom. Stransom sincerely considered that he had forgiven him; +but how little he had achieved the miracle that she had achieved! +His forgiveness was silence, but hers was mere unuttered sound. +The light she had demanded for his altar would have broken his +silence with a blare; whereas all the lights in the church were for +her too great a hush. + +She had been right about the difference--she had spoken the truth +about the change: Stransom was soon to know himself as perversely +but sharply jealous. HIS tide had ebbed, not flowed; if he had +"forgiven" Acton Hague, that forgiveness was a motive with a broken +spring. The very fact of her appeal for a material sign, a sign +that should make her dead lover equal there with the others, +presented the concession to her friend as too handsome for the +case. He had never thought of himself as hard, but an exorbitant +article might easily render him so. He moved round and round this +one, but only in widening circles--the more he looked at it the +less acceptable it seemed. At the same time he had no illusion +about the effect of his refusal; he perfectly saw how it would make +for a rupture. He left her alone a week, but when at last he again +called this conviction was cruelly confirmed. In the interval he +had kept away from the church, and he needed no fresh assurance +from her to know she hadn't entered it. The change was complete +enough: it had broken up her life. Indeed it had broken up his, +for all the fires of his shrine seemed to him suddenly to have been +quenched. A great indifference fell upon him, the weight of which +was in itself a pain; and he never knew what his devotion had been +for him till in that shock it ceased like a dropped watch. Neither +did he know with how large a confidence he had counted on the final +service that had now failed: the mortal deception was that in this +abandonment the whole future gave way. + +These days of her absence proved to him of what she was capable; +all the more that he never dreamed she was vindictive or even +resentful. It was not in anger she had forsaken him; it was in +simple submission to hard reality, to the stern logic of life. +This came home to him when he sat with her again in the room in +which her late aunt's conversation lingered like the tone of a +cracked piano. She tried to make him forget how much they were +estranged, but in the very presence of what they had given up it +was impossible not to be sorry for her. He had taken from her so +much more than she had taken from him. He argued with her again, +told her she could now have the altar to herself; but she only +shook her head with pleading sadness, begging him not to waste his +breath on the impossible, the extinct. Couldn't he see that in +relation to her private need the rites he had established were +practically an elaborate exclusion? She regretted nothing that had +happened; it had all been right so long as she didn't know, and it +was only that now she knew too much and that from the moment their +eyes were open they would simply have to conform. It had doubtless +been happiness enough for them to go on together so long. She was +gentle, grateful, resigned; but this was only the form of a deep +immoveability. He saw he should never more cross the threshold of +the second room, and he felt how much this alone would make a +stranger of him and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He +would have hated to plunge again into that well of reminders, but +he enjoyed quite as little the vacant alternative. + +After he had been with her three or four times it struck him that +to have come at last into her house had had the horrid effect of +diminishing their intimacy. He had known her better, had liked her +in greater freedom, when they merely walked together or kneeled +together. Now they only pretended; before they had been nobly +sincere. They began to try their walks again, but it proved a lame +imitation, for these things, from the first, beginning or ending, +had been connected with their visits to the church. They had +either strolled away as they came out or gone in to rest on the +return. Stransom, besides, now faltered; he couldn't walk as of +old. The omission made everything false; it was a dire mutilation +of their lives. Our friend was frank and monotonous, making no +mystery of his remonstrance and no secret of his predicament. Her +response, whatever it was, always came to the same thing--an +implied invitation to him to judge, if he spoke of predicaments, of +how much comfort she had in hers. For him indeed was no comfort +even in complaint, since every allusion to what had befallen them +but made the author of their trouble more present. Acton Hague was +between them--that was the essence of the matter, and never so much +between them as when they were face to face. Then Stransom, while +still wanting to banish him, had the strangest sense of striving +for an ease that would involve having accepted him. Deeply +disconcerted by what he knew, he was still worse tormented by +really not knowing. Perfectly aware that it would have been +horribly vulgar to abuse his old friend or to tell his companion +the story of their quarrel, it yet vexed him that her depth of +reserve should give him no opening and should have the effect of a +magnanimity greater even than his own. + +He challenged himself, denounced himself, asked himself if he were +in love with her that he should care so much what adventures she +had had. He had never for a moment allowed he was in love with +her; therefore nothing could have surprised him more than to +discover he was jealous. What but jealousy could give a man that +sore contentious wish for the detail of what would make him suffer? +Well enough he knew indeed that he should never have it from the +only person who to-day could give it to him. She let him press her +with his sombre eyes, only smiling at him with an exquisite mercy +and breathing equally little the word that would expose her secret +and the word that would appear to deny his literal right to +bitterness. She told nothing, she judged nothing; she accepted +everything but the possibility of her return to the old symbols. +Stransom divined that for her too they had been vividly individual, +had stood for particular hours or particular attributes--particular +links in her chain. He made it clear to himself, as he believed, +that his difficulty lay in the fact that the very nature of the +plea for his faithless friend constituted a prohibition; that it +happened to have come from HER was precisely the vice that attached +to it. To the voice of impersonal generosity he felt sure he would +have listened; he would have deferred to an advocate who, speaking +from abstract justice, knowing of his denial without having known +Hague, should have had the imagination to say: "Ah, remember only +the best of him; pity him; provide for him." To provide for him on +the very ground of having discovered another of his turpitudes was +not to pity but to glorify him. The more Stransom thought the more +he made out that whatever this relation of Hague's it could only +have been a deception more or less finely practised. Where had it +come into the life that all men saw? Why had one never heard of it +if it had had the frankness of honourable things? Stransom knew +enough of his other ties, of his obligations and appearances, not +to say enough of his general character, to be sure there had been +some infamy. In one way or another this creature had been coldly +sacrificed. That was why at the last as well as the first he must +still leave him out and out. + + + +CHAPTER IX. + + + +And yet this was no solution, especially after he had talked again +to his friend of all it had been his plan she should finally do for +him. He had talked in the other days, and she had responded with a +frankness qualified only by a courteous reluctance, a reluctance +that touched him, to linger on the question of his death. She had +then practically accepted the charge, suffered him to feel he could +depend upon her to be the eventual guardian of his shrine; and it +was in the name of what had so passed between them that he appealed +to her not to forsake him in his age. She listened at present with +shining coldness and all her habitual forbearance to insist on her +terms; her deprecation was even still tenderer, for it expressed +the compassion of her own sense that he was abandoned. Her terms, +however, remained the same, and scarcely the less audible for not +being uttered; though he was sure that secretly even more than he +she felt bereft of the satisfaction his solemn trust was to have +provided her. They both missed the rich future, but she missed it +most, because after all it was to have been entirely hers; and it +was her acceptance of the loss that gave him the full measure of +her preference for the thought of Acton Hague over any other +thought whatever. He had humour enough to laugh rather grimly when +he said to himself: "Why the deuce does she like him so much more +than she likes me?"--the reasons being really so conceivable. But +even his faculty of analysis left the irritation standing, and this +irritation proved perhaps the greatest misfortune that had ever +overtaken him. There had been nothing yet that made him so much +want to give up. He had of course by this time well reached the +age of renouncement; but it had not hitherto been vivid to him that +it was time to give up everything. + +Practically, at the end of six months, he had renounced the +friendship once so charming and comforting. His privation had two +faces, and the face it had turned to him on the occasion of his +last attempt to cultivate that friendship was the one he could look +at least. This was the privation he inflicted; the other was the +privation he bore. The conditions she never phrased he used to +murmur to himself in solitude: "One more, one more--only just +one." Certainly he was going down; he often felt it when he caught +himself, over his work, staring at vacancy and giving voice to that +inanity. There was proof enough besides in his being so weak and +so ill. His irritation took the form of melancholy, and his +melancholy that of the conviction that his health had quite failed. +His altar moreover had ceased to exist; his chapel, in his dreams, +was a great dark cavern. All the lights had gone out--all his Dead +had died again. He couldn't exactly see at first how it had been +in the power of his late companion to extinguish them, since it was +neither for her nor by her that they had been called into being. +Then he understood that it was essentially in his own soul the +revival had taken place, and that in the air of this soul they were +now unable to breathe. The candles might mechanically burn, but +each of them had lost its lustre. The church had become a void; it +was his presence, her presence, their common presence, that had +made the indispensable medium. If anything was wrong everything +was--her silence spoiled the tune. + +Then when three months were gone he felt so lonely that he went +back; reflecting that as they had been his best society for years +his Dead perhaps wouldn't let him forsake them without doing +something more for him. They stood there, as he had left them, in +their tall radiance, the bright cluster that had already made him, +on occasions when he was willing to compare small things with +great, liken them to a group of sea-lights on the edge of the ocean +of life. It was a relief to him, after a while, as he sat there, +to feel they had still a virtue. He was more and more easily +tired, and he always drove now; the action of his heart was weak +and gave him none of the reassurance conferred by the action of his +fancy. None the less he returned yet again, returned several +times, and finally, during six months, haunted the place with a +renewal of frequency and a strain of impatience. In winter the +church was unwarmed and exposure to cold forbidden him, but the +glow of his shrine was an influence in which he could almost bask. +He sat and wondered to what he had reduced his absent associate and +what she now did with the hours of her absence. There were other +churches, there were other altars, there were other candles; in one +way or another her piety would still operate; he couldn't +absolutely have deprived her of her rites. So he argued, but +without contentment; for he well enough knew there was no other +such rare semblance of the mountain of light she had once mentioned +to him as the satisfaction of her need. As this semblance again +gradually grew great to him and his pious practice more regular, he +found a sharper and sharper pang in the imagination of her +darkness; for never so much as in these weeks had his rites been +real, never had his gathered company seemed so to respond and even +to invite. He lost himself in the large lustre, which was more and +more what he had from the first wished it to be--as dazzling as the +vision of heaven in the mind of a child. He wandered in the fields +of light; he passed, among the tall tapers, from tier to tier, from +fire to fire, from name to name, from the white intensity of one +clear emblem, of one saved soul, to another. It was in the quiet +sense of having saved his souls that his deep strange instinct +rejoiced. This was no dim theological rescue, no boon of a +contingent world; they were saved better than faith or works could +save them, saved for the warm world they had shrunk from dying to, +for actuality, for continuity, for the certainty of human +remembrance. + +By this time he had survived all his friends; the last straight +flame was three years old, there was no one to add to the list. +Over and over he called his roll, and it appeared to him compact +and complete. Where should he put in another, where, if there were +no other objection, would it stand in its place in the rank? He +reflected, with a want of sincerity of which he was quite +conscious, that it would be difficult to determine that place. +More and more, besides, face to face with his little legion, over +endless histories, handling the empty shells and playing with the +silence--more and more he could see that he had never introduced an +alien. He had had his great companions, his indulgences--there +were cases in which they had been immense; but what had his +devotion after all been if it hadn't been at bottom a respect? He +was, however, himself surprised at his stiffness; by the end of the +winter the responsibility of it was what was uppermost in his +thoughts. The refrain had grown old to them, that plea for just +one more. There came a day when, for simple exhaustion, if +symmetry should demand just one he was ready so far to meet +symmetry. Symmetry was harmony, and the idea of harmony began to +haunt him; he said to himself that harmony was of course +everything. He took, in fancy, his composition to pieces, +redistributing it into other lines, making other juxtapositions and +contrasts. He shifted this and that candle, he made the spaces +different, he effaced the disfigurement of a possible gap. There +were subtle and complex relations, a scheme of cross-reference, and +moments in which he seemed to catch a glimpse of the void so +sensible to the woman who wandered in exile or sat where he had +seen her with the portrait of Acton Hague. Finally, in this way, +he arrived at a conception of the total, the ideal, which left a +clear opportunity for just another figure. "Just one more--to +round it off; just one more, just one," continued to hum in his +head. There was a strange confusion in the thought, for he felt +the day to be near when he too should be one of the Others. What +in this event would the Others matter to him, since they only +mattered to the living? Even as one of the Dead what would his +altar matter to him, since his particular dream of keeping it up +had melted away? What had harmony to do with the case if his +lights were all to be quenched? What he had hoped for was an +instituted thing. He might perpetuate it on some other pretext, +but his special meaning would have dropped. This meaning was to +have lasted with the life of the one other person who understood +it. + +In March he had an illness during which he spent a fortnight in +bed, and when he revived a little he was told of two things that +had happened. One was that a lady whose name was not known to the +servants (she left none) had been three times to ask about him; the +other was that in his sleep and on an occasion when his mind +evidently wandered he was heard to murmur again and again: "Just +one more--just one." As soon as he found himself able to go out, +and before the doctor in attendance had pronounced him so, he drove +to see the lady who had come to ask about him. She was not at +home; but this gave him the opportunity, before his strength should +fall again, to take his way to the church. He entered it alone; he +had declined, in a happy manner he possessed of being able to +decline effectively, the company of his servant or of a nurse. He +knew now perfectly what these good people thought; they had +discovered his clandestine connexion, the magnet that had drawn him +for so many years, and doubtless attached a significance of their +own to the odd words they had repeated to him. The nameless lady +was the clandestine connexion--a fact nothing could have made +clearer than his indecent haste to rejoin her. He sank on his +knees before his altar while his head fell over on his hands. His +weakness, his life's weariness overtook him. It seemed to him he +had come for the great surrender. At first he asked himself how he +should get away; then, with the failing belief in the power, the +very desire to move gradually left him. He had come, as he always +came, to lose himself; the fields of light were still there to +stray in; only this time, in straying, he would never come back. +He had given himself to his Dead, and it was good: this time his +Dead would keep him. He couldn't rise from his knees; he believed +he should never rise again; all he could do was to lift his face +and fix his eyes on his lights. They looked unusually, strangely +splendid, but the one that always drew him most had an +unprecedented lustre. It was the central voice of the choir, the +glowing heart of the brightness, and on this occasion it seemed to +expand, to spread great wings of flame. The whole altar flared-- +dazzling and blinding; but the source of the vast radiance burned +clearer than the rest, gathering itself into form, and the form was +human beauty and human charity, was the far-off face of Mary +Antrim. She smiled at him from the glory of heaven--she brought +the glory down with her to take him. He bowed his head in +submission and at the same moment another wave rolled over him. +Was it the quickening of joy to pain? In the midst of his joy at +any rate he felt his buried face grow hot as with some communicated +knowledge that had the force of a reproach. It suddenly made him +contrast that very rapture with the bliss he had refused to +another. This breath of the passion immortal was all that other +had asked; the descent of Mary Antrim opened his spirit with a +great compunctious throb for the descent of Acton Hague. It was as +if Stransom had read what her eyes said to him. + +After a moment he looked round in a despair that made him feel as +if the source of life were ebbing. The church had been empty--he +was alone; but he wanted to have something done, to make a last +appeal. This idea gave him strength for an effort; he rose to his +feet with a movement that made him turn, supporting himself by the +back of a bench. Behind him was a prostrate figure, a figure he +had seen before; a woman in deep mourning, bowed in grief or in +prayer. He had seen her in other days--the first time of his +entrance there, and he now slightly wavered, looking at her again +till she seemed aware he had noticed her. She raised her head and +met his eyes: the partner of his long worship had come back. She +looked across at him an instant with a face wondering and scared; +he saw he had made her afraid. Then quickly rising she came +straight to him with both hands out. + +"Then you COULD come? God sent you!" he murmured with a happy +smile. + +"You're very ill--you shouldn't be here," she urged in anxious +reply. + +"God sent me too, I think. I was ill when I came, but the sight of +you does wonders." He held her hands, which steadied and quickened +him. "I've something to tell you." + +"Don't tell me!" she tenderly pleaded; "let me tell you. This +afternoon, by a miracle, the sweetest of miracles, the sense of our +difference left me. I was out--I was near, thinking, wandering +alone, when, on the spot, something changed in my heart. It's my +confession--there it is. To come back, to come back on the +instant--the idea gave me wings. It was as if I suddenly saw +something--as if it all became possible. I could come for what you +yourself came for: that was enough. So here I am. It's not for +my own--that's over. But I'm here for THEM." And breathless, +infinitely relieved by her low precipitate explanation, she looked +with eyes that reflected all its splendour at the magnificence of +their altar. + +"They're here for you," Stransom said, "they're present to-night as +they've never been. They speak for you--don't you see?--in a +passion of light; they sing out like a choir of angels. Don't you +hear what they say?--they offer the very thing you asked of me." + +"Don't talk of it--don't think of it; forget it!" She spoke in +hushed supplication, and while the alarm deepened in her eyes she +disengaged one of her hands and passed an arm round him to support +him better, to help him to sink into a seat. + +He let himself go, resting on her; he dropped upon the bench and +she fell on her knees beside him, his own arm round her shoulder. +So he remained an instant, staring up at his shrine. "They say +there's a gap in the array--they say it's not full, complete. Just +one more," he went on, softly--"isn't that what you wanted? Yes, +one more, one more." + +"Ah no more--no more!" she wailed, as with a quick new horror of +it, under her breath. + +"Yes, one more," he repeated, simply; "just one!" And with this +his head dropped on her shoulder; she felt that in his weakness he +had fainted. But alone with him in the dusky church a great dread +was on her of what might still happen, for his face had the +whiteness of death. + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD *** + +This file should be named altdd10.txt or altdd10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, altdd11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, altdd10a.txt + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/altdd10.zip b/old/altdd10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..b753750 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/altdd10.zip diff --git a/old/altdd10h.htm b/old/altdd10h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..782fa0e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/altdd10h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1791 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> +<title>The Altar of the Dead</title> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Altar of the Dead, by Henry James</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Altar of the Dead, by Henry James +(#10 in our series by Henry James) + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. 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You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: The Altar of the Dead + +Author: Henry James + +Release Date: September, 1996 [EBook #642] +[This file was first posted on September 10, 1996] +[Most recently updated: September 2, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII +</pre> +<p> +<a name="startoftext"></a> +Transcribed from the 1916 Martin Secker edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER I.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He had a mortal dislike, poor Stransom, to lean anniversaries, and loved +them still less when they made a pretence of a figure. Celebrations +and suppressions were equally painful to him, and but one of the former +found a place in his life. He had kept each year in his own fashion +the date of Mary Antrim’s death. It would be more to the +point perhaps to say that this occasion kept <i>him</i>: it kept him +at least effectually from doing anything else. It took hold of +him again and again with a hand of which time had softened but never +loosened the touch. He waked to his feast of memory as consciously +as he would have waked to his marriage-morn. Marriage had had +of old but too little to say to the matter: for the girl who was to +have been his bride there had been no bridal embrace. She had +died of a malignant fever after the wedding-day had been fixed, and +he had lost before fairly tasting it an affection that promised to fill +his life to the brim.<br> +<br> +Of that benediction, however, it would have been false to say this life +could really be emptied: it was still ruled by a pale ghost, still ordered +by a sovereign presence. He had not been a man of numerous passions, +and even in all these years no sense had grown stronger with him than +the sense of being bereft. He had needed no priest and no altar +to make him for ever widowed. He had done many things in the world +- he had done almost all but one: he had never, never forgotten. +He had tried to put into his existence whatever else might take up room +in it, but had failed to make it more than a house of which the mistress +was eternally absent. She was most absent of all on the recurrent +December day that his tenacity set apart. He had no arranged observance +of it, but his nerves made it all their own. They drove him forth +without mercy, and the goal of his pilgrimage was far. She had +been buried in a London suburb, a part then of Nature’s breast, +but which he had seen lose one after another every feature of freshness. +It was in truth during the moments he stood there that his eyes beheld +the place least. They looked at another image, they opened to +another light. Was it a credible future? Was it an incredible +past? Whatever the answer it was an immense escape from the actual.<br> +<br> +It’s true that if there weren’t other dates than this there +were other memories; and by the time George Stransom was fifty-five +such memories had greatly multiplied. There were other ghosts +in his life than the ghost of Mary Antrim. He had perhaps not +had more losses than most men, but he had counted his losses more; he +hadn’t seen death more closely, but had in a manner felt it more +deeply. He had formed little by little the habit of numbering +his Dead: it had come to him early in life that there was something +one had to do for them. They were there in their simplified intensified +essence, their conscious absence and expressive patience, as personally +there as if they had only been stricken dumb. When all sense of +them failed, all sound of them ceased, it was as if their purgatory +were really still on earth: they asked so little that they got, poor +things, even less, and died again, died every day, of the hard usage +of life. They had no organised service, no reserved place, no +honour, no shelter, no safety. Even ungenerous people provided +for the living, but even those who were called most generous did nothing +for the others. So on George Stransom’s part had grown up +with the years a resolve that he at least would do something, do it, +that is, for his own - would perform the great charity without reproach. +Every man <i>had</i> his own, and every man had, to meet this charity, +the ample resources of the soul.<br> +<br> +It was doubtless the voice of Mary Antrim that spoke for them best; +as the years at any rate went by he found himself in regular communion +with these postponed pensioners, those whom indeed he always called +in his thoughts the Others. He spared them the moments, he organised +the charity. Quite how it had risen he probably never could have +told you, but what came to pass was that an altar, such as was after +all within everybody’s compass, lighted with perpetual candles +and dedicated to these secret rites, reared itself in his spiritual +spaces. He had wondered of old, in some embarrassment, whether +he had a religion; being very sure, and not a little content, that he +hadn’t at all events the religion some of the people he had known +wanted him to have. Gradually this question was straightened out +for him: it became clear to him that the religion instilled by his earliest +consciousness had been simply the religion of the Dead. It suited +his inclination, it satisfied his spirit, it gave employment to his +piety. It answered his love of great offices, of a solemn and +splendid ritual; for no shrine could be more bedecked and no ceremonial +more stately than those to which his worship was attached. He +had no imagination about these things but that they were accessible +to any one who should feel the need of them. The poorest could +build such temples of the spirit - could make them blaze with candles +and smoke with incense, make them flush with pictures and flowers. +The cost, in the common phrase, of keeping them up fell wholly on the +generous heart.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER II.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He had this year, on the eve of his anniversary, as happened, an emotion +not unconnected with that range of feeling. Walking home at the +close of a busy day he was arrested in the London street by the particular +effect of a shop-front that lighted the dull brown air with its mercenary +grin and before which several persons were gathered. It was the +window of a jeweller whose diamonds and sapphires seemed to laugh, in +flashes like high notes of sound, with the mere joy of knowing how much +more they were “worth” than most of the dingy pedestrians +staring at them from the other side of the pane. Stransom lingered +long enough to suspend, in a vision, a string of pearls about the white +neck of Mary Antrim, and then was kept an instant longer by the sound +of a voice he knew. Next him was a mumbling old woman, and beyond +the old woman a gentleman with a lady on his arm. It was from +him, from Paul Creston, the voice had proceeded: he was talking with +the lady of some precious object in the window. Stransom had no +sooner recognised him than the old woman turned away; but just with +this growth of opportunity came a felt strangeness that stayed him in +the very act of laying his hand on his friend’s arm. It +lasted but the instant, only that space sufficed for the flash of a +wild question. Was <i>not</i> Mrs. Creston dead? - the ambiguity +met him there in the short drop of her husband’s voice, the drop +conjugal, if it ever was, and in the way the two figures leaned to each +other. Creston, making a step to look at something else, came +nearer, glanced at him, started and exclaimed - behaviour the effect +of which was at first only to leave Stransom staring, staring back across +the months at the different face, the wholly other face, the poor man +had shown him last, the blurred ravaged mask bent over the open grave +by which they had stood together. That son of affliction wasn’t +in mourning now; he detached his arm from his companion’s to grasp +the hand of the older friend. He coloured as well as smiled in +the strong light of the shop when Stransom raised a tentative hat to +the lady. Stransom had just time to see she was pretty before +he found himself gaping at a fact more portentous. “My dear +fellow, let me make you acquainted with my wife.”<br> +<br> +Creston had blushed and stammered over it, but in half a minute, at +the rate we live in polite society, it had practically become, for our +friend, the mere memory of a shock. They stood there and laughed +and talked; Stransom had instantly whisked the shock out of the way, +to keep it for private consumption. He felt himself grimace, he +heard himself exaggerate the proper, but was conscious of turning not +a little faint. That new woman, that hired performer, Mrs. Creston? +Mrs. Creston had been more living for him than any woman but one. +This lady had a face that shone as publicly as the jeweller’s +window, and in the happy candour with which she wore her monstrous character +was an effect of gross immodesty. The character of Paul Creston’s +wife thus attributed to her was monstrous for reasons Stransom could +judge his friend to know perfectly that he knew. The happy pair +had just arrived from America, and Stransom hadn’t needed to be +told this to guess the nationality of the lady. Somehow it deepened +the foolish air that her husband’s confused cordiality was unable +to conceal. Stransom recalled that he had heard of poor Creston’s +having, while his bereavement was still fresh, crossed the sea for what +people in such predicaments call a little change. He had found +the little change indeed, he had brought the little change back; it +was the little change that stood there and that, do what he would, he +couldn’t, while he showed those high front teeth of his, look +other than a conscious ass about. They were going into the shop, +Mrs. Creston said, and she begged Mr. Stransom to come with them and +help to decide. He thanked her, opening his watch and pleading +an engagement for which he was already late, and they parted while she +shrieked into the fog, “Mind now you come to see me right away!” +Creston had had the delicacy not to suggest that, and Stransom hoped +it hurt him somewhere to hear her scream it to all the echoes.<br> +<br> +He felt quite determined, as he walked away, never in his life to go +near her. She was perhaps a human being, but Creston oughtn’t +to have shown her without precautions, oughtn’t indeed to have +shown her at all. His precautions should have been those of a +forger or a murderer, and the people at home would never have mentioned +extradition. This was a wife for foreign service or purely external +use; a decent consideration would have spared her the injury of comparisons. +Such was the first flush of George Stransom’s reaction; but as +he sat alone that night - there were particular hours he always passed +alone - the harshness dropped from it and left only the pity. +<i>He</i> could spend an evening with Kate Creston, if the man to whom +she had given everything couldn’t. He had known her twenty +years, and she was the only woman for whom he might perhaps have been +unfaithful. She was all cleverness and sympathy and charm; her +house had been the very easiest in all the world and her friendship +the very firmest. Without accidents he had loved her, without +accidents every one had loved her: she had made the passions about her +as regular as the moon makes the tides. She had been also of course +far too good for her husband, but he never suspected it, and in nothing +had she been more admirable than in the exquisite art with which she +tried to keep every one else (keeping Creston was no trouble) from finding +it out. Here was a man to whom she had devoted her life and for +whom she had given it up - dying to bring into the world a child of +his bed; and she had had only to submit to her fate to have, ere the +grass was green on her grave, no more existence for him than a domestic +servant he had replaced. The frivolity, the indecency of it made +Stransom’s eyes fill; and he had that evening a sturdy sense that +he alone, in a world without delicacy, had a right to hold up his head. +While he smoked, after dinner, he had a book in his lap, but he had +no eyes for his page: his eyes, in the swarming void of things, seemed +to have caught Kate Creston’s, and it was into their sad silences +he looked. It was to him her sentient spirit had turned, knowing +it to be of her he would think. He thought for a long time of +how the closed eyes of dead women could still live - how they could +open again, in a quiet lamplit room, long after they had looked their +last. They had looks that survived - had them as great poets had +quoted lines.<br> +<br> +The newspaper lay by his chair - the thing that came in the afternoon +and the servants thought one wanted; without sense for what was in it +he had mechanically unfolded and then dropped it. Before he went +to bed he took it up, and this time, at the top of a paragraph, he was +caught by five words that made him start. He stood staring, before +the fire, at the “Death of Sir Acton Hague, K.C.B.,” the +man who ten years earlier had been the nearest of his friends and whose +deposition from this eminence had practically left it without an occupant. +He had seen him after their rupture, but hadn’t now seen him for +years. Standing there before the fire he turned cold as he read +what had befallen him. Promoted a short time previous to the governorship +of the Westward Islands, Acton Hague had died, in the bleak honour of +this exile, of an illness consequent on the bite of a poisonous snake. +His career was compressed by the newspaper into a dozen lines, the perusal +of which excited on George Stransom’s part no warmer feeling than +one of relief at the absence of any mention of their quarrel, an incident +accidentally tainted at the time, thanks to their joint immersion in +large affairs, with a horrible publicity. Public indeed was the +wrong Stransom had, to his own sense, suffered, the insult he had blankly +taken from the only man with whom he had ever been intimate; the friend, +almost adored, of his University years, the subject, later, of his passionate +loyalty: so public that he had never spoken of it to a human creature, +so public that he had completely overlooked it. It had made the +difference for him that friendship too was all over, but it had only +made just that one. The shock of interests had been private, intensely +so; but the action taken by Hague had been in the face of men. +To-day it all seemed to have occurred merely to the end that George +Stransom should think of him as “Hague” and measure exactly +how much he himself could resemble a stone. He went cold, suddenly +and horribly cold, to bed.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER III.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +The next day, in the afternoon, in the great grey suburb, he knew his +long walk had tired him. In the dreadful cemetery alone he had +been on his feet an hour. Instinctively, coming back, they had +taken him a devious course, and it was a desert in which no circling +cabman hovered over possible prey. He paused on a corner and measured +the dreariness; then he made out through the gathered dusk that he was +in one of those tracts of London which are less gloomy by night than +by day, because, in the former case of the civil gift of light. +By day there was nothing, but by night there were lamps, and George +Stransom was in a mood that made lamps good in themselves. It +wasn’t that they could show him anything, it was only that they +could burn clear. To his surprise, however, after a while, they +did show him something: the arch of a high doorway approached by a low +terrace of steps, in the depth of which - it formed a dim vestibule +- the raising of a curtain at the moment he passed gave him a glimpse +of an avenue of gloom with a glow of tapers at the end. He stopped +and looked up, recognising the place as a church. The thought +quickly came to him that since he was tired he might rest there; so +that after a moment he had in turn pushed up the leathern curtain and +gone in. It was a temple of the old persuasion, and there had +evidently been a function - perhaps a service for the dead; the high +altar was still a blaze of candles. This was an exhibition he +always liked, and he dropped into a seat with relief. More than +it had ever yet come home to him it struck him as good there should +be churches.<br> +<br> +This one was almost empty and the other altars were dim; a verger shuffled +about, an old woman coughed, but it seemed to Stransom there was hospitality +in the thick sweet air. Was it only the savour of the incense +or was it something of larger intention? He had at any rate quitted +the great grey suburb and come nearer to the warm centre. He presently +ceased to feel intrusive, gaining at last even a sense of community +with the only worshipper in his neighbourhood, the sombre presence of +a woman, in mourning unrelieved, whose back was all he could see of +her and who had sunk deep into prayer at no great distance from him. +He wished he could sink, like her, to the very bottom, be as motionless, +as rapt in prostration. After a few moments he shifted his seat; +it was almost indelicate to be so aware of her. But Stransom subsequently +quite lost himself, floating away on the sea of light. If occasions +like this had been more frequent in his life he would have had more +present the great original type, set up in a myriad temples, of the +unapproachable shrine he had erected in his mind. That shrine +had begun in vague likeness to church pomps, but the echo had ended +by growing more distinct than the sound. The sound now rang out, +the type blazed at him with all its fires and with a mystery of radiance +in which endless meanings could glow. The thing became as he sat +there his appropriate altar and each starry candle an appropriate vow. +He numbered them, named them, grouped them - it was the silent roll-call +of his Dead. They made together a brightness vast and intense, +a brightness in which the mere chapel of his thoughts grew so dim that +as it faded away he asked himself if he shouldn’t find his real +comfort in some material act, some outward worship.<br> +<br> +This idea took possession of him while, at a distance, the black-robed +lady continued prostrate; he was quietly thrilled with his conception, +which at last brought him to his feet in the sudden excitement of a +plan. He wandered softly through the aisles, pausing in the different +chapels, all save one applied to a special devotion. It was in +this clear recess, lampless and unapplied, that he stood longest - the +length of time it took him fully to grasp the conception of gilding +it with his bounty. He should snatch it from no other rites and +associate it with nothing profane; he would simply take it as it should +be given up to him and make it a masterpiece of splendour and a mountain +of fire. Tended sacredly all the year, with the sanctifying church +round it, it would always be ready for his offices. There would +be difficulties, but from the first they presented themselves only as +difficulties surmounted. Even for a person so little affiliated +the thing would be a matter of arrangement. He saw it all in advance, +and how bright in especial the place would become to him in the intermissions +of toil and the dusk of afternoons; how rich in assurance at all times, +but especially in the indifferent world. Before withdrawing he +drew nearer again to the spot where he had first sat down, and in the +movement he met the lady whom he had seen praying and who was now on +her way to the door. She passed him quickly, and he had only a +glimpse of her pale face and her unconscious, almost sightless eyes. +For that instant she looked faded and handsome.<br> +<br> +This was the origin of the rites more public, yet certainly esoteric, +that he at last found himself able to establish. It took a long +time, it took a year, and both the process and the result would have +been - for any who knew - a vivid picture of his good faith. No +one did know, in fact - no one but the bland ecclesiastics whose acquaintance +he had promptly sought, whose objections he had softly overridden, whose +curiosity and sympathy he had artfully charmed, whose assent to his +eccentric munificence he had eventually won, and who had asked for concessions +in exchange for indulgences. Stransom had of course at an early +stage of his enquiry been referred to the Bishop, and the Bishop had +been delightfully human, the Bishop had been almost amused. Success +was within sight, at any rate from the moment the attitude of those +whom it concerned became liberal in response to liberality. The +altar and the sacred shell that half encircled it, consecrated to an +ostensible and customary worship, were to be splendidly maintained; +all that Stransom reserved to himself was the number of his lights and +the free enjoyment of his intention. When the intention had taken +complete effect the enjoyment became even greater than he had ventured +to hope. He liked to think of this effect when far from it, liked +to convince himself of it yet again when near. He was not often +indeed so near as that a visit to it hadn’t perforce something +of the patience of a pilgrimage; but the time he gave to his devotion +came to seem to him more a contribution to his other interests than +a betrayal of them. Even a loaded life might be easier when one +had added a new necessity to it.<br> +<br> +How much easier was probably never guessed by those who simply knew +there were hours when he disappeared and for many of whom there was +a vulgar reading of what they used to call his plunges. These +plunges were into depths quieter than the deep sea-caves, and the habit +had at the end of a year or two become the one it would have cost him +most to relinquish. Now they had really, his Dead, something that +was indefensibly theirs; and he liked to think that they might in cases +be the Dead of others, as well as that the Dead of others might be invoked +there under the protection of what he had done. Whoever bent a +knee on the carpet he had laid down appeared to him to act in the spirit +of his intention. Each of his lights had a name for him, and from +time to time a new light was kindled. This was what he had fundamentally +agreed for, that there should always be room for them all. What +those who passed or lingered saw was simply the most resplendent of +the altars called suddenly into vivid usefulness, with a quiet elderly +man, for whom it evidently had a fascination, often seated there in +a maze or a doze; but half the satisfaction of the spot for this mysterious +and fitful worshipper was that he found the years of his life there, +and the ties, the affections, the struggles, the submissions, the conquests, +if there had been such, a record of that adventurous journey in which +the beginnings and the endings of human relations are the lettered mile-stones. +He had in general little taste for the past as a part of his own history; +at other times and in other places it mostly seemed to him pitiful to +consider and impossible to repair; but on these occasions he accepted +it with something of that positive gladness with which one adjusts one’s +self to an ache that begins to succumb to treatment. To the treatment +of time the malady of life begins at a given moment to succumb; and +these were doubtless the hours at which that truth most came home to +him. The day was written for him there on which he had first become +acquainted with death, and the successive phases of the acquaintance +were marked each with a flame.<br> +<br> +The flames were gathering thick at present, for Stransom had entered +that dark defile of our earthly descent in which some one dies every +day. It was only yesterday that Kate Creston had flashed out her +white fire; yet already there were younger stars ablaze on the tips +of the tapers. Various persons in whom his interest had not been +intense drew closer to him by entering this company. He went over +it, head by head, till he felt like the shepherd of a huddled flock, +with all a shepherd’s vision of differences imperceptible. +He knew his candles apart, up to the colour of the flame, and would +still have known them had their positions all been changed. To +other imaginations they might stand for other things - that they should +stand for something to be hushed before was all he desired; but he was +intensely conscious of the personal note of each and of the distinguishable +way it contributed to the concert. There were hours at which he +almost caught himself wishing that certain of his friends would now +die, that he might establish with them in this manner a connexion more +charming than, as it happened, it was possible to enjoy with them in +life. In regard to those from whom one was separated by the long +curves of the globe such a connexion could only be an improvement: it +brought them instantly within reach. Of course there were gaps +in the constellation, for Stransom knew he could only pretend to act +for his own, and it wasn’t every figure passing before his eyes +into the great obscure that was entitled to a memorial. There +was a strange sanctification in death, but some characters were more +sanctified by being forgotten than by being remembered. The greatest +blank in the shining page was the memory of Acton Hague, of which he +inveterately tried to rid himself. For Acton Hague no flame could +ever rise on any altar of his.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IV.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +Every year, the day he walked back from the great graveyard, he went +to church as he had done the day his idea was born. It was on +this occasion, as it happened, after a year had passed, that he began +to observe his altar to be haunted by a worshipper at least as frequent +as himself. Others of the faithful, and in the rest of the church, +came and went, appealing sometimes, when they disappeared, to a vague +or to a particular recognition; but this unfailing presence was always +to be observed when he arrived and still in possession when he departed. +He was surprised, the first time, at the promptitude with which it assumed +an identity for him - the identity of the lady whom two years before, +on his anniversary, he had seen so intensely bowed, and of whose tragic +face he had had so flitting a vision. Given the time that had +passed, his recollection of her was fresh enough to make him wonder. +Of himself she had of course no impression, or rather had had none at +first: the time came when her manner of transacting her business suggested +her having gradually guessed his call to be of the same order. +She used his altar for her own purpose - he could only hope that sad +and solitary as she always struck him, she used it for her own Dead. +There were interruptions, infidelities, all on his part, calls to other +associations and duties; but as the months went on he found her whenever +he returned, and he ended by taking pleasure in the thought that he +had given her almost the contentment he had given himself. They +worshipped side by side so often that there were moments when he wished +he might be sure, so straight did their prospect stretch away of growing +old together in their rites. She was younger than he, but she +looked as if her Dead were at least as numerous as his candles. +She had no colour, no sound, no fault, and another of the things about +which he had made up his mind was that she had no fortune. Always +black-robed, she must have had a succession of sorrows. People +weren’t poor, after all, whom so many losses could overtake; they +were positively rich when they had had so much to give up. But +the air of this devoted and indifferent woman, who always made, in any +attitude, a beautiful accidental line, conveyed somehow to Stransom +that she had known more kinds of trouble than one.<br> +<br> +He had a great love of music and little time for the joy of it; but +occasionally, when workaday noises were muffled by Saturday afternoons, +it used to come back to him that there were glories. There were +moreover friends who reminded him of this and side by side with whom +he found himself sitting out concerts. On one of these winter +afternoons, in St. James’s Hall, he became aware after he had +seated himself that the lady he had so often seen at church was in the +place next him and was evidently alone, as he also this time happened +to be. She was at first too absorbed in the consideration of the +programme to heed him, but when she at last glanced at him he took advantage +of the movement to speak to her, greeting her with the remark that he +felt as if he already knew her. She smiled as she said “Oh +yes, I recognise you”; yet in spite of this admission of long +acquaintance it was the first he had seen of her smile. The effect +of it was suddenly to contribute more to that acquaintance than all +the previous meetings had done. He hadn’t “taken in,” +he said to himself, that she was so pretty. Later, that evening +- it was while he rolled along in a hansom on his way to dine out - +he added that he hadn’t taken in that she was so interesting. +The next morning in the midst of his work he quite suddenly and irrelevantly +reflected that his impression of her, beginning so far back, was like +a winding river that had at last reached the sea.<br> +<br> +His work in fact was blurred a little all that day by the sense of what +had now passed between them. It wasn’t much, but it had +just made the difference. They had listened together to Beethoven +and Schumann; they had talked in the pauses, and at the end, when at +the door, to which they moved together, he had asked her if he could +help her in the matter of getting away. She had thanked him and +put up her umbrella, slipping into the crowd without an allusion to +their meeting yet again and leaving him to remember at leisure that +not a word had been exchanged about the usual scene of that coincidence. +This omission struck him now as natural and then again as perverse. +She mightn’t in the least have allowed his warrant for speaking +to her, and yet if she hadn’t he would have judged her an underbred +woman. It was odd that when nothing had really ever brought them +together he should have been able successfully to assume they were in +a manner old friends - that this negative quantity was somehow more +than they could express. His success, it was true, had been qualified +by her quick escape, so that there grew up in him an absurd desire to +put it to some better test. Save in so far as some other poor +chance might help him, such a test could be only to meet her afresh +at church. Left to himself he would have gone to church the very +next afternoon, just for the curiosity of seeing if he should find her +there. But he wasn’t left to himself, a fact he discovered +quite at the last, after he had virtually made up his mind to go. +The influence that kept him away really revealed to him how little to +himself his Dead <i>ever</i> left him. He went only for <i>them</i> +- for nothing else in the world.<br> +<br> +The force of this revulsion kept him away ten days: he hated to connect +the place with anything but his offices or to give a glimpse of the +curiosity that had been on the point of moving him. It was absurd +to weave a tangle about a matter so simple as a custom of devotion that +might with ease have been daily or hourly; yet the tangle got itself +woven. He was sorry, he was disappointed: it was as if a long +happy spell had been broken and he had lost a familiar security. +At the last, however, he asked himself if he was to stay away for ever +from the fear of this muddle about motives. After an interval +neither longer nor shorter than usual he re-entered the church with +a clear conviction that he should scarcely heed the presence or the +absence of the lady of the concert. This indifference didn’t +prevent his at once noting that for the only time since he had first +seen her she wasn’t on the spot. He had now no scruple about +giving her time to arrive, but she didn’t arrive, and when he +went away still missing her he was profanely and consentingly sorry. +If her absence made the tangle more intricate, that was all her own +doing. By the end of another year it was very intricate indeed; +but by that time he didn’t in the least care, and it was only +his cultivated consciousness that had given him scruples. Three +times in three months he had gone to church without finding her, and +he felt he hadn’t needed these occasions to show him his suspense +had dropped. Yet it was, incongruously, not indifference, but +a refinement of delicacy that had kept him from asking the sacristan, +who would of course immediately have recognised his description of her, +whether she had been seen at other hours. His delicacy had kept +him from asking any question about her at any time, and it was exactly +the same virtue that had left him so free to be decently civil to her +at the concert.<br> +<br> +This happy advantage now served him anew, enabling him when she finally +met his eyes - it was after a fourth trial - to predetermine quite fixedly +his awaiting her retreat. He joined her in the street as soon +as she had moved, asking her if he might accompany her a certain distance. +With her placid permission he went as far as a house in the neighbourhood +at which she had business: she let him know it was not where she lived. +She lived, as she said, in a mere slum, with an old aunt, a person in +connexion with whom she spoke of the engrossment of humdrum duties and +regular occupations. She wasn’t, the mourning niece, in +her first youth, and her vanished freshness had left something behind +that, for Stransom, represented the proof it had been tragically sacrificed. +Whatever she gave him the assurance of she gave without references. +She might have been a divorced duchess - she might have been an old +maid who taught the harp.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER V.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +They fell at last into the way of walking together almost every time +they met, though for a long time still they never met but at church. +He couldn’t ask her to come and see him, and as if she hadn’t +a proper place to receive him she never invited her friend. As +much as himself she knew the world of London, but from an undiscussed +instinct of privacy they haunted the region not mapped on the social +chart. On the return she always made him leave her at the same +corner. She looked with him, as a pretext for a pause, at the +depressed things in suburban shop-fronts; and there was never a word +he had said to her that she hadn’t beautifully understood. +For long ages he never knew her name, any more than she had ever pronounced +his own; but it was not their names that mattered, it was only their +perfect practice and their common need.<br> +<br> +These things made their whole relation so impersonal that they hadn’t +the rules or reasons people found in ordinary friendships. They +didn’t care for the things it was supposed necessary to care for +in the intercourse of the world. They ended one day - they never +knew which of them expressed it first - by throwing out the idea that +they didn’t care for each other. Over this idea they grew +quite intimate; they rallied to it in a way that marked a fresh start +in their confidence. If to feel deeply together about certain +things wholly distinct from themselves didn’t constitute a safety, +where was safety to be looked for? Not lightly nor often, not +without occasion nor without emotion, any more than in any other reference +by serious people to a mystery of their faith; but when something had +happened to warm, as it were, the air for it, they came as near as they +could come to calling their Dead by name. They felt it was coming +very near to utter their thought at all. The word “they” +expressed enough; it limited the mention, it had a dignity of its own, +and if, in their talk, you had heard our friends use it, you might have +taken them for a pair of pagans of old alluding decently to the domesticated +gods. They never knew - at least Stransom never knew - how they +had learned to be sure about each other. If it had been with each +a question of what the other was there for, the certitude had come in +some fine way of its own. Any faith, after all, has the instinct +of propagation, and it was as natural as it was beautiful that they +should have taken pleasure on the spot in the imagination of a following. +If the following was for each but a following of one it had proved in +the event sufficient. Her debt, however, of course was much greater +than his, because while she had only given him a worshipper he had given +her a splendid temple. Once she said she pitied him for the length +of his list - she had counted his candles almost as often as himself +- and this made him wonder what could have been the length of hers. +He had wondered before at the coincidence of their losses, especially +as from time to time a new candle was set up. On some occasion +some accident led him to express this curiosity, and she answered as +if in surprise that he hadn’t already understood. “Oh +for me, you know, the more there are the better - there could never +be too many. I should like hundreds and hundreds - I should like +thousands; I should like a great mountain of light.”<br> +<br> +Then of course in a flash he understood. “Your Dead are +only One?”<br> +<br> +She hung back at this as never yet. “Only One,” she +answered, colouring as if now he knew her guarded secret. It really +made him feel he knew less than before, so difficult was it for him +to reconstitute a life in which a single experience had so belittled +all others. His own life, round its central hollow, had been packed +close enough. After this she appeared to have regretted her confession, +though at the moment she spoke there had been pride in her very embarrassment. +She declared to him that his own was the larger, the dearer possession +- the portion one would have chosen if one had been able to choose; +she assured him she could perfectly imagine some of the echoes with +which his silences were peopled. He knew she couldn’t: one’s +relation to what one had loved and hated had been a relation too distinct +from the relations of others. But this didn’t affect the +fact that they were growing old together in their piety. She was +a feature of that piety, but even at the ripe stage of acquaintance +in which they occasionally arranged to meet at a concert or to go together +to an exhibition she was not a feature of anything else. The most +that happened was that his worship became paramount. Friend by +friend dropped away till at last there were more emblems on his altar +than houses left him to enter. She was more than any other the +friend who remained, but she was unknown to all the rest. Once +when she had discovered, as they called it, a new star, she used the +expression that the chapel at last was full.<br> +<br> +“Oh no,” Stransom replied, “there is a great thing +wanting for that! The chapel will never be full till a candle +is set up before which all the others will pale. It will be the +tallest candle of all.”<br> +<br> +Her mild wonder rested on him. “What candle do you mean?”<br> +<br> +“I mean, dear lady, my own.”<br> +<br> +He had learned after a long time that she earned money by her pen, writing +under a pseudonym she never disclosed in magazines he never saw. +She knew too well what he couldn’t read and what she couldn’t +write, and she taught him to cultivate indifference with a success that +did much for their good relations. Her invisible industry was +a convenience to him; it helped his contented thought of her, the thought +that rested in the dignity of her proud obscure life, her little remunerated +art and her little impenetrable home. Lost, with her decayed relative, +in her dim suburban world, she came to the surface for him in distant +places. She was really the priestess of his altar, and whenever +he quitted England he committed it to her keeping. She proved +to him afresh that women have more of the spirit of religion than men; +he felt his fidelity pale and faint in comparison with hers. He +often said to her that since he had so little time to live he rejoiced +in her having so much; so glad was he to think she would guard the temple +when he should have been called. He had a great plan for that, +which of course he told her too, a bequest of money to keep it up in +undiminished state. Of the administration of this fund he would +appoint her superintendent, and if the spirit should move her she might +kindle a taper even for him.<br> +<br> +“And who will kindle one even for me?” she then seriously +asked.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VI.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +She was always in mourning, yet the day he came back from the longest +absence he had yet made her appearance immediately told him she had +lately had a bereavement. They met on this occasion as she was +leaving the church, so that postponing his own entrance he instantly +offered to turn round and walk away with her. She considered, +then she said: “Go in now, but come and see me in an hour.” +He knew the small vista of her street, closed at the end and as dreary +as an empty pocket, where the pairs of shabby little houses, semi-detached +but indissolubly united, were like married couples on bad terms. +Often, however, as he had gone to the beginning he had never gone beyond. +Her aunt was dead - that he immediately guessed, as well as that it +made a difference; but when she had for the first time mentioned her +number he found himself, on her leaving him, not a little agitated by +this sudden liberality. She wasn’t a person with whom, after +all, one got on so very fast: it had taken him months and months to +learn her name, years and years to learn her address. If she had +looked, on this reunion, so much older to him, how in the world did +he look to her? She had reached the period of life he had long +since reached, when, after separations, the marked clock-face of the +friend we meet announces the hour we have tried to forget. He +couldn’t have said what he expected as, at the end of his waiting, +he turned the corner where for years he had always paused; simply not +to pause was a efficient cause for emotion. It was an event, somehow; +and in all their long acquaintance there had never been an event. +This one grew larger when, five minutes later, in the faint elegance +of her little drawing-room, she quavered out a greeting that showed +the measure she took of it. He had a strange sense of having come +for something in particular; strange because literally there was nothing +particular between them, nothing save that they were at one on their +great point, which had long ago become a magnificent matter of course. +It was true that after she had said “You can always come now, +you know,” the thing he was there for seemed already to have happened. +He asked her if it was the death of her aunt that made the difference; +to which she replied: “She never knew I knew you. I wished +her not to.” The beautiful clearness of her candour - her +faded beauty was like a summer twilight - disconnected the words from +any image of deceit. They might have struck him as the record +of a deep dissimulation; but she had always given him a sense of noble +reasons. The vanished aunt was present, as he looked about him, +in the small complacencies of the room, the beaded velvet and the fluted +moreen; and though, as we know, he had the worship of the Dead, he found +himself not definitely regretting this lady. If she wasn’t +in his long list, however, she was in her niece’s short one, and +Stransom presently observed to the latter that now at least, in the +place they haunted together, she would have another object of devotion.<br> +<br> +“Yes, I shall have another. She was very kind to me. +It’s that that’s the difference.”<br> +<br> +He judged, wondering a good deal before he made any motion to leave +her, that the difference would somehow be very great and would consist +of still other things than her having let him come in. It rather +chilled him, for they had been happy together as they were. He +extracted from her at any rate an intimation that she should now have +means less limited, that her aunt’s tiny fortune had come to her, +so that there was henceforth only one to consume what had formerly been +made to suffice for two. This was a joy to Stransom, because it +had hitherto been equally impossible for him either to offer her presents +or contentedly to stay his hand. It was too ugly to be at her +side that way, abounding himself and yet not able to overflow - a demonstration +that would have been signally a false note. Even her better situation +too seemed only to draw out in a sense the loneliness of her future. +It would merely help her to live more and more for their small ceremonial, +and this at a time when he himself had begun wearily to feel that, having +set it in motion, he might depart. When they had sat a while in +the pale parlour she got up - “This isn’t my room: let us +go into mine.” They had only to cross the narrow hall, as +he found, to pass quite into another air. When she had closed +the door of the second room, as she called it, he felt at last in real +possession of her. The place had the flush of life - it was expressive; +its dark red walls were articulate with memories and relics. These +were simple things - photographs and water-colours, scraps of writing +framed and ghosts of flowers embalmed; but a moment sufficed to show +him they had a common meaning. It was here she had lived and worked, +and she had already told him she would make no change of scene. +He read the reference in the objects about her - the general one to +places and times; but after a minute he distinguished among them a small +portrait of a gentleman. At a distance and without their glasses +his eyes were only so caught by it as to feel a vague curiosity. +Presently this impulse carried him nearer, and in another moment he +was staring at the picture in stupefaction and with the sense that some +sound had broken from him. He was further conscious that he showed +his companion a white face when he turned round on her gasping: “Acton +Hague!”<br> +<br> +She matched his great wonder. “Did you know him?”<br> +<br> +“He was the friend of all my youth - of my early manhood. +And <i>you</i> knew him?”<br> +<br> +She coloured at this and for a moment her answer failed; her eyes embraced +everything in the place, and a strange irony reached her lips as she +echoed: “Knew him?”<br> +<br> +Then Stransom understood, while the room heaved like the cabin of a +ship, that its whole contents cried out with him, that it was a museum +in his honour, that all her later years had been addressed to him and +that the shrine he himself had reared had been passionately converted +to this use. It was all for Acton Hague that she had kneeled every +day at his altar. What need had there been for a consecrated candle +when he was present in the whole array? The revelation so smote our +friend in the face that he dropped into a seat and sat silent. +He had quickly felt her shaken by the force of his shock, but as she +sank on the sofa beside him and laid her hand on his arm he knew almost +as soon that she mightn’t resent it as much as she’d have +liked.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VII.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He learned in that instant two things: one being that even in so long +a time she had gathered no knowledge of his great intimacy and his great +quarrel; the other that in spite of this ignorance, strangely enough, +she supplied on the spot a reason for his stupor. “How extraordinary,” +he presently exclaimed, “that we should never have known!”<br> +<br> +She gave a wan smile which seemed to Stransom stranger even than the +fact itself. “I never, never spoke of him.”<br> +<br> +He looked again about the room. “Why then, if your life +had been so full of him?”<br> +<br> +“Mayn’t I put you that question as well? Hadn’t +your life also been full of him?”<br> +<br> +“Any one’s, every one’s life who had the wonderful +experience of knowing him. <i>I</i> never spoke of him,” +Stransom added in a moment, “because he did me - years ago - an +unforgettable wrong.” She was silent, and with the full +effect of his presence all about them it almost startled her guest to +hear no protest escape her. She accepted his words, he turned +his eyes to her again to see in what manner she accepted them. +It was with rising tears and a rare sweetness in the movement of putting +out her hand to take his own. Nothing more wonderful had ever +appeared to him than, in that little chamber of remembrance and homage, +to see her convey with such exquisite mildness that as from Acton Hague +any injury was credible. The clock ticked in the stillness - Hague +had probably given it to her - and while he let her hold his hand with +a tenderness that was almost an assumption of responsibility for his +old pain as well as his new, Stransom after a minute broke out: “Good +God, how he must have used <i>you</i>!”<br> +<br> +She dropped his hand at this, got up and, moving across the room, made +straight a small picture to which, on examining it, he had given a slight +push. Then turning round on him with her pale gaiety recovered, +“I’ve forgiven him!” she declared.<br> +<br> +“I know what you’ve done,” said Stransom “I +know what you’ve done for years.” For a moment they +looked at each other through it all with their long community of service +in their eyes. This short passage made, to his sense, for the +woman before him, an immense, an absolutely naked confession; which +was presently, suddenly blushing red and changing her place again, what +she appeared to learn he perceived in it. He got up and “How +you must have loved him!” he cried.<br> +<br> +“Women aren’t like men. They can love even where they’ve +suffered.”<br> +<br> +“Women are wonderful,” said Stransom. “But I +assure you I’ve forgiven him too.”<br> +<br> +“If I had known of anything so strange I wouldn’t have brought +you here.”<br> +<br> +“So that we might have gone on in our ignorance to the last?”<br> +<br> +“What do you call the last?” she asked, smiling still.<br> +<br> +At this he could smile back at her. “You’ll see - +when it comes.”<br> +<br> +She thought of that. “This is better perhaps; but as we +were - it was good.”<br> +<br> +He put her the question. “Did it never happen that he spoke +of me?”<br> +<br> +Considering more intently she made no answer, and he then knew he should +have been adequately answered by her asking how often he himself had +spoken of their terrible friend. Suddenly a brighter light broke +in her face and an excited idea sprang to her lips in the appeal: “You +<i>have</i> forgiven him?”<br> +<br> +“How, if I hadn’t, could I linger here?”<br> +<br> +She visibly winced at the deep but unintended irony of this; but even +while she did so she panted quickly: “Then in the lights on your +altar - ?”<br> +<br> +“There’s never a light for Acton Hague!”<br> +<br> +She stared with a dreadful fall, “But if he’s one of your +Dead?”<br> +<br> +“He’s one of the world’s, if you like - he’s +one of yours. But he’s not one of mine. Mine are only +the Dead who died possessed of me. They’re mine in death +because they were mine in life.”<br> +<br> +“<i>He</i> was yours in life then, even if for a while he ceased +to be. If you forgave him you went back to him. Those whom +we’ve once loved - ”<br> +<br> +“Are those who can hurt us most,” Stransom broke in.<br> +<br> +“Ah it’s not true - you’ve <i>not</i> forgiven him!” +she wailed with a passion that startled him.<br> +<br> +He looked at her as never yet. “What was it he did to you?”<br> +<br> +“Everything!” Then abruptly she put out her hand in +farewell. “Good-bye.”<br> +<br> +He turned as cold as he had turned that night he read the man’s +death. “You mean that we meet no more?”<br> +<br> +“Not as we’ve met - not <i>there</i>!”<br> +<br> +He stood aghast at this snap of their great bond, at the renouncement +that rang out in the word she so expressively sounded. “But +what’s changed - for you?”<br> +<br> +She waited in all the sharpness of a trouble that for the first time +since he had known her made her splendidly stern. “How can +you understand now when you didn’t understand before?”<br> +<br> +“I didn’t understand before only because I didn’t +know. Now that I know, I see what I’ve been living with +for years,” Stransom went on very gently.<br> +<br> +She looked at him with a larger allowance, doing this gentleness justice. +“How can I then, on this new knowledge of my own, ask you to continue +to live with it?”<br> +<br> +“I set up my altar, with its multiplied meanings,” Stransom +began; but she quietly interrupted him.<br> +<br> +“You set up your altar, and when I wanted one most I found it +magnificently ready. I used it with the gratitude I’ve always +shown you, for I knew it from of old to be dedicated to Death. +I told you long ago that my Dead weren’t many. Yours were, +but all you had done for them was none too much for <i>my</i> worship! +You had placed a great light for Each - I gathered them together for +One!”<br> +<br> +“We had simply different intentions,” he returned. +“That, as you say, I perfectly knew, and I don’t see why +your intention shouldn’t still sustain you.”<br> +<br> +“That’s because you’re generous - you can imagine +and think. But the spell is broken.”<br> +<br> +It seemed to poor Stransom, in spite of his resistance, that it really +was, and the prospect stretched grey and void before him. All +he could say, however, was: “I hope you’ll try before you +give up.”<br> +<br> +“If I had known you had ever known him I should have taken for +granted he had his candle,” she presently answered. “What’s +changed, as you say, is that on making the discovery I find he never +has had it. That makes <i>my</i> attitude” - she paused +as thinking how to express it, then said simply - “all wrong.”<br> +<br> +“Come once again,” he pleaded.<br> +<br> +“Will you give him his candle?” she asked.<br> +<br> +He waited, but only because it would sound ungracious; not because of +a doubt of his feeling. “I can’t do that!” he +declared at last.<br> +<br> +“Then good-bye.” And she gave him her hand again.<br> +<br> +He had got his dismissal; besides which, in the agitation of everything +that had opened out to him, he felt the need to recover himself as he +could only do in solitude. Yet he lingered - lingered to see if +she had no compromise to express, no attenuation to propose. But +he only met her great lamenting eyes, in which indeed he read that she +was as sorry for him as for any one else. This made him say: “At +least, in any case, I may see you here.”<br> +<br> +“Oh yes, come if you like. But I don’t think it will +do.”<br> +<br> +He looked round the room once more, knowing how little he was sure it +would do. He felt also stricken and more and more cold, and his +chill was like an ague in which he had to make an effort not to shake. +Then he made doleful reply: “I must try on my side - if you can’t +try on yours.” She came out with him to the hall and into +the doorway, and here he put her the question he held he could least +answer from his own wit. “Why have you never let me come +before?”<br> +<br> +“Because my aunt would have seen you, and I should have had to +tell her how I came to know you.”<br> +<br> +“And what would have been the objection to that?”<br> +<br> +“It would have entailed other explanations; there would at any +rate have been that danger.”<br> +<br> +“Surely she knew you went every day to church,” Stransom +objected.<br> +<br> +“She didn’t know what I went for.”<br> +<br> +“Of me then she never even heard?”<br> +<br> +“You’ll think I was deceitful. But I didn’t +need to be!”<br> +<br> +He was now on the lower door-step, and his hostess held the door half-closed +behind him. Through what remained of the opening he saw her framed +face. He made a supreme appeal. “What <i>did</i> he +do to you?”<br> +<br> +“It would have come out - <i>she</i> would have told you. +That fear at my heart - that was my reason!” And she closed +the door, shutting him out.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER VIII.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +He had ruthlessly abandoned her - that of course was what he had done. +Stransom made it all out in solitude, at leisure, fitting the unmatched +pieces gradually together and dealing one by one with a hundred obscure +points. She had known Hague only after her present friend’s +relations with him had wholly terminated; obviously indeed a good while +after; and it was natural enough that of his previous life she should +have ascertained only what he had judged good to communicate. +There were passages it was quite conceivable that even in moments of +the tenderest expansion he should have withheld. Of many facts +in the career of a man so in the eye of the world there was of course +a common knowledge; but this lady lived apart from public affairs, and +the only time perfectly clear to her would have been the time following +the dawn of her own drama. A man in her place would have “looked +up” the past - would even have consulted old newspapers. +It remained remarkable indeed that in her long contact with the partner +of her retrospect no accident had lighted a train; but there was no +arguing about that; the accident had in fact come: it had simply been +that security had prevailed. She had taken what Hague had given +her, and her blankness in respect of his other connexions was only a +touch in the picture of that plasticity Stransom had supreme reason +to know so great a master could have been trusted to produce.<br> +<br> +This picture was for a while all our friend saw: he caught his breath +again and again as it came over him that the woman with whom he had +had for years so fine a point of contact was a woman whom Acton Hague, +of all men in the world, had more or less fashioned. Such as she +sat there to-day she was ineffaceably stamped with him. Beneficent, +blameless as Stransom held her, he couldn’t rid himself of the +sense that he had been, as who should say, swindled. She had imposed +upon him hugely, though she had known it as little as he. All +this later past came back to him as a time grotesquely misspent. +Such at least were his first reflexions; after a while he found himself +more divided and only, as the end of it, more troubled. He imagined, +recalled, reconstituted, figured out for himself the truth she had refused +to give him; the effect of which was to make her seem to him only more +saturated with her fate. He felt her spirit, through the whole +strangeness, finer than his own to the very degree in which she might +have been, in which she certainly had been, more wronged. A women, +when wronged, was always more wronged than a man, and there were conditions +when the least she could have got off with was more than the most he +could have to bear. He was sure this rare creature wouldn’t +have got off with the least. He was awestruck at the thought of +such a surrender - such a prostration. Moulded indeed she had +been by powerful hands, to have converted her injury into an exaltation +so sublime. The fellow had only had to die for everything that +was ugly in him to be washed out in a torrent. It was vain to +try to guess what had taken place, but nothing could be clearer than +that she had ended by accusing herself. She absolved him at every +point, she adored her very wounds. The passion by which he had +profited had rushed back after its ebb, and now the tide of tenderness, +arrested for ever at flood, was too deep even to fathom. Stransom +sincerely considered that he had forgiven him; but how little he had +achieved the miracle that she had achieved! His forgiveness was +silence, but hers was mere unuttered sound. The light she had +demanded for his altar would have broken his silence with a blare; whereas +all the lights in the church were for her too great a hush.<br> +<br> +She had been right about the difference - she had spoken the truth about +the change: Stransom was soon to know himself as perversely but sharply +jealous. <i>His</i> tide had ebbed, not flowed; if he had “forgiven” +Acton Hague, that forgiveness was a motive with a broken spring. +The very fact of her appeal for a material sign, a sign that should +make her dead lover equal there with the others, presented the concession +to her friend as too handsome for the case. He had never thought +of himself as hard, but an exorbitant article might easily render him +so. He moved round and round this one, but only in widening circles +- the more he looked at it the less acceptable it seemed. At the +same time he had no illusion about the effect of his refusal; he perfectly +saw how it would make for a rupture. He left her alone a week, +but when at last he again called this conviction was cruelly confirmed. +In the interval he had kept away from the church, and he needed no fresh +assurance from her to know she hadn’t entered it. The change +was complete enough: it had broken up her life. Indeed it had +broken up his, for all the fires of his shrine seemed to him suddenly +to have been quenched. A great indifference fell upon him, the +weight of which was in itself a pain; and he never knew what his devotion +had been for him till in that shock it ceased like a dropped watch. +Neither did he know with how large a confidence he had counted on the +final service that had now failed: the mortal deception was that in +this abandonment the whole future gave way.<br> +<br> +These days of her absence proved to him of what she was capable; all +the more that he never dreamed she was vindictive or even resentful. +It was not in anger she had forsaken him; it was in simple submission +to hard reality, to the stern logic of life. This came home to +him when he sat with her again in the room in which her late aunt’s +conversation lingered like the tone of a cracked piano. She tried +to make him forget how much they were estranged, but in the very presence +of what they had given up it was impossible not to be sorry for her. +He had taken from her so much more than she had taken from him. +He argued with her again, told her she could now have the altar to herself; +but she only shook her head with pleading sadness, begging him not to +waste his breath on the impossible, the extinct. Couldn’t +he see that in relation to her private need the rites he had established +were practically an elaborate exclusion? She regretted nothing +that had happened; it had all been right so long as she didn’t +know, and it was only that now she knew too much and that from the moment +their eyes were open they would simply have to conform. It had +doubtless been happiness enough for them to go on together so long. +She was gentle, grateful, resigned; but this was only the form of a +deep immoveability. He saw he should never more cross the threshold +of the second room, and he felt how much this alone would make a stranger +of him and give a conscious stiffness to his visits. He would +have hated to plunge again into that well of reminders, but he enjoyed +quite as little the vacant alternative.<br> +<br> +After he had been with her three or four times it struck him that to +have come at last into her house had had the horrid effect of diminishing +their intimacy. He had known her better, had liked her in greater +freedom, when they merely walked together or kneeled together. +Now they only pretended; before they had been nobly sincere. They +began to try their walks again, but it proved a lame imitation, for +these things, from the first, beginning or ending, had been connected +with their visits to the church. They had either strolled away +as they came out or gone in to rest on the return. Stransom, besides, +now faltered; he couldn’t walk as of old. The omission made +everything false; it was a dire mutilation of their lives. Our +friend was frank and monotonous, making no mystery of his remonstrance +and no secret of his predicament. Her response, whatever it was, +always came to the same thing - an implied invitation to him to judge, +if he spoke of predicaments, of how much comfort she had in hers. +For him indeed was no comfort even in complaint, since every allusion +to what had befallen them but made the author of their trouble more +present. Acton Hague was between them - that was the essence of +the matter, and never so much between them as when they were face to +face. Then Stransom, while still wanting to banish him, had the +strangest sense of striving for an ease that would involve having accepted +him. Deeply disconcerted by what he knew, he was still worse tormented +by really not knowing. Perfectly aware that it would have been +horribly vulgar to abuse his old friend or to tell his companion the +story of their quarrel, it yet vexed him that her depth of reserve should +give him no opening and should have the effect of a magnanimity greater +even than his own.<br> +<br> +He challenged himself, denounced himself, asked himself if he were in +love with her that he should care so much what adventures she had had. +He had never for a moment allowed he was in love with her; therefore +nothing could have surprised him more than to discover he was jealous. +What but jealousy could give a man that sore contentious wish for the +detail of what would make him suffer? Well enough he knew indeed +that he should never have it from the only person who to-day could give +it to him. She let him press her with his sombre eyes, only smiling +at him with an exquisite mercy and breathing equally little the word +that would expose her secret and the word that would appear to deny +his literal right to bitterness. She told nothing, she judged +nothing; she accepted everything but the possibility of her return to +the old symbols. Stransom divined that for her too they had been +vividly individual, had stood for particular hours or particular attributes +- particular links in her chain. He made it clear to himself, +as he believed, that his difficulty lay in the fact that the very nature +of the plea for his faithless friend constituted a prohibition; that +it happened to have come from <i>her</i> was precisely the vice that +attached to it. To the voice of impersonal generosity he felt +sure he would have listened; he would have deferred to an advocate who, +speaking from abstract justice, knowing of his denial without having +known Hague, should have had the imagination to say: “Ah, remember +only the best of him; pity him; provide for him.” To provide +for him on the very ground of having discovered another of his turpitudes +was not to pity but to glorify him. The more Stransom thought +the more he made out that whatever this relation of Hague’s it +could only have been a deception more or less finely practised. +Where had it come into the life that all men saw? Why had one +never heard of it if it had had the frankness of honourable things? +Stransom knew enough of his other ties, of his obligations and appearances, +not to say enough of his general character, to be sure there had been +some infamy. In one way or another this creature had been coldly +sacrificed. That was why at the last as well as the first he must +still leave him out and out.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +CHAPTER IX.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +And yet this was no solution, especially after he had talked again to +his friend of all it had been his plan she should finally do for him. +He had talked in the other days, and she had responded with a frankness +qualified only by a courteous reluctance, a reluctance that touched +him, to linger on the question of his death. She had then practically +accepted the charge, suffered him to feel he could depend upon her to +be the eventual guardian of his shrine; and it was in the name of what +had so passed between them that he appealed to her not to forsake him +in his age. She listened at present with shining coldness and +all her habitual forbearance to insist on her terms; her deprecation +was even still tenderer, for it expressed the compassion of her own +sense that he was abandoned. Her terms, however, remained the +same, and scarcely the less audible for not being uttered; though he +was sure that secretly even more than he she felt bereft of the satisfaction +his solemn trust was to have provided her. They both missed the +rich future, but she missed it most, because after all it was to have +been entirely hers; and it was her acceptance of the loss that gave +him the full measure of her preference for the thought of Acton Hague +over any other thought whatever. He had humour enough to laugh +rather grimly when he said to himself: “Why the deuce does she +like him so much more than she likes me?” - the reasons being +really so conceivable. But even his faculty of analysis left the +irritation standing, and this irritation proved perhaps the greatest +misfortune that had ever overtaken him. There had been nothing +yet that made him so much want to give up. He had of course by +this time well reached the age of renouncement; but it had not hitherto +been vivid to him that it was time to give up everything.<br> +<br> +Practically, at the end of six months, he had renounced the friendship +once so charming and comforting. His privation had two faces, +and the face it had turned to him on the occasion of his last attempt +to cultivate that friendship was the one he could look at least. +This was the privation he inflicted; the other was the privation he +bore. The conditions she never phrased he used to murmur to himself +in solitude: “One more, one more - only just one.” +Certainly he was going down; he often felt it when he caught himself, +over his work, staring at vacancy and giving voice to that inanity. +There was proof enough besides in his being so weak and so ill. +His irritation took the form of melancholy, and his melancholy that +of the conviction that his health had quite failed. His altar +moreover had ceased to exist; his chapel, in his dreams, was a great +dark cavern. All the lights had gone out - all his Dead had died +again. He couldn’t exactly see at first how it had been +in the power of his late companion to extinguish them, since it was +neither for her nor by her that they had been called into being. +Then he understood that it was essentially in his own soul the revival +had taken place, and that in the air of this soul they were now unable +to breathe. The candles might mechanically burn, but each of them +had lost its lustre. The church had become a void; it was his +presence, her presence, their common presence, that had made the indispensable +medium. If anything was wrong everything was - her silence spoiled +the tune.<br> +<br> +Then when three months were gone he felt so lonely that he went back; +reflecting that as they had been his best society for years his Dead +perhaps wouldn’t let him forsake them without doing something +more for him. They stood there, as he had left them, in their +tall radiance, the bright cluster that had already made him, on occasions +when he was willing to compare small things with great, liken them to +a group of sea-lights on the edge of the ocean of life. It was +a relief to him, after a while, as he sat there, to feel they had still +a virtue. He was more and more easily tired, and he always drove +now; the action of his heart was weak and gave him none of the reassurance +conferred by the action of his fancy. None the less he returned +yet again, returned several times, and finally, during six months, haunted +the place with a renewal of frequency and a strain of impatience. +In winter the church was unwarmed and exposure to cold forbidden him, +but the glow of his shrine was an influence in which he could almost +bask. He sat and wondered to what he had reduced his absent associate +and what she now did with the hours of her absence. There were +other churches, there were other altars, there were other candles; in +one way or another her piety would still operate; he couldn’t +absolutely have deprived her of her rites. So he argued, but without +contentment; for he well enough knew there was no other such rare semblance +of the mountain of light she had once mentioned to him as the satisfaction +of her need. As this semblance again gradually grew great to him +and his pious practice more regular, he found a sharper and sharper +pang in the imagination of her darkness; for never so much as in these +weeks had his rites been real, never had his gathered company seemed +so to respond and even to invite. He lost himself in the large +lustre, which was more and more what he had from the first wished it +to be - as dazzling as the vision of heaven in the mind of a child. +He wandered in the fields of light; he passed, among the tall tapers, +from tier to tier, from fire to fire, from name to name, from the white +intensity of one clear emblem, of one saved soul, to another. +It was in the quiet sense of having saved his souls that his deep strange +instinct rejoiced. This was no dim theological rescue, no boon +of a contingent world; they were saved better than faith or works could +save them, saved for the warm world they had shrunk from dying to, for +actuality, for continuity, for the certainty of human remembrance.<br> +<br> +By this time he had survived all his friends; the last straight flame +was three years old, there was no one to add to the list. Over +and over he called his roll, and it appeared to him compact and complete. +Where should he put in another, where, if there were no other objection, +would it stand in its place in the rank? He reflected, with a +want of sincerity of which he was quite conscious, that it would be +difficult to determine that place. More and more, besides, face +to face with his little legion, over endless histories, handling the +empty shells and playing with the silence - more and more he could see +that he had never introduced an alien. He had had his great companions, +his indulgences - there were cases in which they had been immense; but +what had his devotion after all been if it hadn’t been at bottom +a respect? He was, however, himself surprised at his stiffness; +by the end of the winter the responsibility of it was what was uppermost +in his thoughts. The refrain had grown old to them, that plea +for just one more. There came a day when, for simple exhaustion, +if symmetry should demand just one he was ready so far to meet symmetry. +Symmetry was harmony, and the idea of harmony began to haunt him; he +said to himself that harmony was of course everything. He took, +in fancy, his composition to pieces, redistributing it into other lines, +making other juxtapositions and contrasts. He shifted this and +that candle, he made the spaces different, he effaced the disfigurement +of a possible gap. There were subtle and complex relations, a +scheme of cross-reference, and moments in which he seemed to catch a +glimpse of the void so sensible to the woman who wandered in exile or +sat where he had seen her with the portrait of Acton Hague. Finally, +in this way, he arrived at a conception of the total, the ideal, which +left a clear opportunity for just another figure. “Just +one more - to round it off; just one more, just one,” continued +to hum in his head. There was a strange confusion in the thought, +for he felt the day to be near when he too should be one of the Others. +What in this event would the Others matter to him, since they only mattered +to the living? Even as one of the Dead what would his altar matter +to him, since his particular dream of keeping it up had melted away? +What had harmony to do with the case if his lights were all to be quenched? +What he had hoped for was an instituted thing. He might perpetuate +it on some other pretext, but his special meaning would have dropped. +This meaning was to have lasted with the life of the one other person +who understood it.<br> +<br> +In March he had an illness during which he spent a fortnight in bed, +and when he revived a little he was told of two things that had happened. +One was that a lady whose name was not known to the servants (she left +none) had been three times to ask about him; the other was that in his +sleep and on an occasion when his mind evidently wandered he was heard +to murmur again and again: “Just one more - just one.” +As soon as he found himself able to go out, and before the doctor in +attendance had pronounced him so, he drove to see the lady who had come +to ask about him. She was not at home; but this gave him the opportunity, +before his strength should fall again, to take his way to the church. +He entered it alone; he had declined, in a happy manner he possessed +of being able to decline effectively, the company of his servant or +of a nurse. He knew now perfectly what these good people thought; +they had discovered his clandestine connexion, the magnet that had drawn +him for so many years, and doubtless attached a significance of their +own to the odd words they had repeated to him. The nameless lady +was the clandestine connexion - a fact nothing could have made clearer +than his indecent haste to rejoin her. He sank on his knees before +his altar while his head fell over on his hands. His weakness, +his life’s weariness overtook him. It seemed to him he had +come for the great surrender. At first he asked himself how he +should get away; then, with the failing belief in the power, the very +desire to move gradually left him. He had come, as he always came, +to lose himself; the fields of light were still there to stray in; only +this time, in straying, he would never come back. He had given +himself to his Dead, and it was good: this time his Dead would keep +him. He couldn’t rise from his knees; he believed he should +never rise again; all he could do was to lift his face and fix his eyes +on his lights. They looked unusually, strangely splendid, but +the one that always drew him most had an unprecedented lustre. +It was the central voice of the choir, the glowing heart of the brightness, +and on this occasion it seemed to expand, to spread great wings of flame. +The whole altar flared - dazzling and blinding; but the source of the +vast radiance burned clearer than the rest, gathering itself into form, +and the form was human beauty and human charity, was the far-off face +of Mary Antrim. She smiled at him from the glory of heaven - she +brought the glory down with her to take him. He bowed his head +in submission and at the same moment another wave rolled over him. +Was it the quickening of joy to pain? In the midst of his joy +at any rate he felt his buried face grow hot as with some communicated +knowledge that had the force of a reproach. It suddenly made him +contrast that very rapture with the bliss he had refused to another. +This breath of the passion immortal was all that other had asked; the +descent of Mary Antrim opened his spirit with a great compunctious throb +for the descent of Acton Hague. It was as if Stransom had read +what her eyes said to him.<br> +<br> +After a moment he looked round in a despair that made him feel as if +the source of life were ebbing. The church had been empty - he +was alone; but he wanted to have something done, to make a last appeal. +This idea gave him strength for an effort; he rose to his feet with +a movement that made him turn, supporting himself by the back of a bench. +Behind him was a prostrate figure, a figure he had seen before; a woman +in deep mourning, bowed in grief or in prayer. He had seen her +in other days - the first time of his entrance there, and he now slightly +wavered, looking at her again till she seemed aware he had noticed her. +She raised her head and met his eyes: the partner of his long worship +had come back. She looked across at him an instant with a face +wondering and scared; he saw he had made her afraid. Then quickly +rising she came straight to him with both hands out.<br> +<br> +“Then you <i>could</i> come? God sent you!” he murmured +with a happy smile.<br> +<br> +“You’re very ill - you shouldn’t be here,” she +urged in anxious reply.<br> +<br> +“God sent me too, I think. I was ill when I came, but the +sight of you does wonders.” He held her hands, which steadied +and quickened him. “I’ve something to tell you.”<br> +<br> +“Don’t tell me!” she tenderly pleaded; “let +me tell you. This afternoon, by a miracle, the sweetest of miracles, +the sense of our difference left me. I was out - I was near, thinking, +wandering alone, when, on the spot, something changed in my heart. +It’s my confession - there it is. To come back, to come +back on the instant - the idea gave me wings. It was as if I suddenly +saw something - as if it all became possible. I could come for +what you yourself came for: that was enough. So here I am. +It’s not for my own - that’s over. But I’m here +for <i>them</i>.” And breathless, infinitely relieved by +her low precipitate explanation, she looked with eyes that reflected +all its splendour at the magnificence of their altar.<br> +<br> +“They’re here for you,” Stransom said, “they’re +present to-night as they’ve never been. They speak for you +- don’t you see? - in a passion of light; they sing out like a +choir of angels. Don’t you hear what they say? - they offer +the very thing you asked of me.”<br> +<br> +“Don’t talk of it - don’t think of it; forget it!” +She spoke in hushed supplication, and while the alarm deepened in her +eyes she disengaged one of her hands and passed an arm round him to +support him better, to help him to sink into a seat.<br> +<br> +He let himself go, resting on her; he dropped upon the bench and she +fell on her knees beside him, his own arm round her shoulder. +So he remained an instant, staring up at his shrine. “They +say there’s a gap in the array - they say it’s not full, +complete. Just one more,” he went on, softly - “isn’t +that what you wanted? Yes, one more, one more.”<br> +<br> +“Ah no more - no more!” she wailed, as with a quick new +horror of it, under her breath.<br> +<br> +“Yes, one more,” he repeated, simply; “just one!” +And with this his head dropped on her shoulder; she felt that in his +weakness he had fainted. But alone with him in the dusky church +a great dread was on her of what might still happen, for his face had +the whiteness of death.<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE ALTAR OF THE DEAD ***<br> +<pre> + +******This file should be named altdd10h.htm or altdd10h.zip****** +Corrected EDITIONS of our EBooks get a new NUMBER, altdd11h.htm +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, altdd10ah.htm + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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