as the child is nurtured in the world’s wisdom by the inconsistencies of its elders, so the dreamer is constrained by the baser instincts of humanity to recognize the ineffectualness of his own visions. the harp and the lyric strain suffice not for the strenuous life. rather is the strong man’s song the song of the norseman of old, the cry of the heart unto whom battle is glorious. the gilded harness and the flashing sword, these pertain to the spiritual vikings of history, giants renewing the world, causing evil to quake at the white gleam of their sails.
the man gabriel had been wakened once again from dreams. he was no longer the transcendental lover, blind to the physical philosophy of the sage in the street. yesterday earth had been to him a primitive eden where no sin lurked in the glory of the opening year. all this was changed as with the stroke of a wand. purgatory had displaced paradise. where quiet valleys had stood bright with sunlight the man saw a deep abyss steeped in gloom. there the satyr ran squealing after his prey. thence came the hot roar of the bacchanal, the canting of the hypocrite, the whine of the miser scrambling for blood-stained gold. the din that rose from the pit was as the hoarse discords of a great city. the breath of it ascended like heavy smoke from some smouldering sodom.
the revulsion was all the more forceful for its severe and savage suddenness. it was enough for gabriel to realize that he had sinned against that code of expediency that governs in large measure all social relationships. empyrean sentiments appeared nebulous and flimsy beside the granite orthodoxy of the bourgeois world. it was of little solid advantage to turn from men to a higher judge for comfort and to fling a declaration of innocence in the face of illimitable ether. what though his thoughts were as white as the wing feathers of seraphs, these same thoughts would be trampled in the mire before the world would deign to surrender a verdict. it was the inevitable and mundane conclusion to which the man was brought in the argument. the social laws were based largely on physical considerations. hence those who attempted to move in a higher sphere under the guidance of a more spiritual morality were doomed to misunderstanding and to speedy condemnation.
the result of this mental storm was that gabriel found himself hounded back from the open day into the more populous thickets of discretion. expediency compelled him to contradict in action his newly conceived creed, to abandon his progressive banner at the first brush with the past. like a revolutionary leader backed by a myriad fine notions and a hundred peasants armed with rusty carbines, he found himself impotent before the massed armaments of social orthodoxy. he was muzzled and disarmed by a single consideration, the consideration of a woman’s honor. the world’s verdict and his own idealism were scaled one against the other. had self only been in the balance the dial might have indicated the weightier worth of truth. as it was, he had too much heart to play a roman r?le. the times were jointed up too fast for him to break them by the sacrifice of a woman’s name.
the truth was bitter to the man, but the cup had to be emptied none the less. he experienced a species of revengeful fear when he realized how the girl’s name might be tossed upon the tongues of the numberless most christian ladies of the neighborhood. impotent, he had watched his dream-world rush into an abyss. he had come near exposing the one woman in the world to the cultured ribaldry of a provincial society and the gibes of her sister women. it was, therefore, a conviction with him, born half of despair, that joan’s life and his must diverge, never to meet again.
the man pitied himself most devoutly, for he was one of those sensitive beings who can make of misery a crown of thorns. like a woman who had lost her lover, he hoarded his sorrow in his heart, treasuring it with a species of desperate exultation. he was even proud when he could not sleep and when his whole being sickened at the sight of food. there was a promethean splendor in such torture, an immolation of the soul on the pyre of self-sacrifice.
to tell joan gildersedge the truth, that was the task forced upon the man by his own conscience, a task embittered by her innocence of heart. he began to despise himself vindictively for having brought so passionate and impotent a theme into the girl’s life. his very idealism had been ill-judged egotism, a selfish thirst quenchless and perilous to others. he knew in his heart that he was of more worth to joan gildersedge than any animate creature upon earth. yet it was fated that he should disclose to her eyes the baser chicaneries of life—to tell her, in truth, that he had come near compromising her honor!
the memory of that day of confessions never surrendered its vividness to the touch of time. gabriel had started early in the first flush of morning, bent on “nature studies,” as he would have had his neighbors believe. the earth was marvellously still, drowned in sunlight, an idyllic landscape such as would have glimmered from da vinci’s brain. the woods and hills seemed set in amber with a silver mist drawn like a gossamer veil over the green. not a wind stirred. the sea was an uncut emerald; the sky a hollow sapphire touched with snow.
howsoever, the man lagged upon the hills, moody and dejected. of old he would have sped like a greek youth through arcady, but his heart was heavy that morning and the gods of the wilderness were mute and sad. only the beauty of earth rose to him in mockery, the beauty of a gorgeous courtesan with a head of gold, scorning the visionary whose senses smelled of heaven. anon the burnt house trees stood before him in the streaming light, warm-bosomed and silent. under the tiled roof the roses were already red upon the walls; the lilac and laburnum had fallen in the garden and the fruit trees had shed their bridal robes. even the iron gate had a more dismal tone that morning as the man turned it back upon its rusty hinges. he walked up the drive slowly, half-hearted as a prodigal. he would have given much to have had other words under his tongue.
joan gildersedge was at the window of her room, a broad lattice under the tiles. she had been sitting in the shadow, with her hands idle in her lap, turning the pages of thought musingly. gabriel saw her start up and wave to him from an aureole of jasmine and of roses. he stood before the porch and waited for the heavy door to open, feeling as though he held a naked poniard traitorously behind his back.
the girl came out to him with a calm, quick joy that made him start for breath. her face was white, her hair coifed loosely, and there were shadows under her eyes. to gabriel she had never seemed more beautiful as she stood before him in the sun.
“i am glad, i am glad,” she said.
“you are ill?”
“no, not ill, only tired.”
there was an unconscious spasm of joy in her voice, an uprising of gladness in her manner, that made gabriel sick at heart. he divined what had been passing under that red-tiled roof, and that love was like the dawn to one weary of watching through the night. she hungered for such sympathy as she had often given to him in days of darkness and unrest. he knew himself suddenly for a broken reed, an empty chalice, a physician who could wound but could not heal.
“take me into the garden,” he said; “is it your father?”
“yes.”
“what can i say to you?”
“you understand; that is enough,” she answered. “he has had one of his evil times. how the hours have haunted me! i was longing for you, and like an echo you have answered me.”
they passed together towards the garden where the trimmed yews grew beside the tall acacia. the green cupolas were crowned with gold; the grass was a deep mist shot through with purple. like rubies were the roses set upon enamelled screens of green.
joan sat down on the rough seat under the yews. her face with all its luminous spirituality remembered to gabriel, rossetti’s “beata beatrix,” womanhood glorified by pure loveliness of soul.
“here is peace,” she said, with lids half closed, “sunlight and shadow mingled. sit you down in the grass, gabriel, and talk to me.”
the man hesitated, then obeyed her. his lips were mute for the moment, his courage cold.
possibly her sensitive woman’s instinct like a mirror caught the gloom of the man’s mood. as she sat under the yews she opened her eyes wide and looked at him searchingly with that tender vigilance that was like the love-watch of an angel. no sunlight shone on gabriel’s face, and his eyes were full of shadows.
he glanced up at her suddenly, the restless, wistful look of one in pain. nor would his eyes abide hers; they were furtive, even sullen.
“well, dear,” she said, again.
he plucked at the grass, but did not smile as was his wont.
“what is it, gabriel?”
there was no fear in her voice, only a deep, strong tone of tenderness that made the man more miserable still.
“i have something to say to you,” was his retort.
“your wife—”
“no, not of her.”
“then?”
“it is of ourselves, and therefore the sadder.”
he sprang up suddenly and began to move up and down before her, like one who would rouse his courage and deaden the consciousness of pain. joan watched him, half bemused, her fingers opening and closing upon the rough woodwork of the seat. the mood was not new to her; she remembered with what an intonation he had spoken to her nigh a year ago beside the ruined altar on the hills.
“joan!”
“yes, gabriel.”
“i have been an utter fool. oh, my god, how can i ask your pardon!”
she sat and gazed at him as in a kind of stupor, the sunlight pouring through upon her face and making it wondrous white in the shadows.
“what is it, gabriel?” she said.
“like a blind fool i have been leading you to the edge of a cliff.”
“i do not understand you, dear.”
he stopped before her with a great gesture of despair and the morose look of a man denouncing his own crime. he spoke hurriedly, as though eager to end the confession, and as though each word he spoke would wound.
“understand that it was wrong of me to have come into your life again. i have been a dreamer, and have forgotten that the world is a mass of malice and of falsehood. like a fool i have brought peril into your life. now i am learning, for your sake, to fear the world.”
she started up suddenly, and came towards him very white and piteous. he had never seen fear on her face before.
“gabriel!”
“god help me, dear; if i had only realized—”
“what is this horror?”
“men begin to speak evil of us.”
“evil of us?”
“yes.”
“impossible!”
“too possible, thanks to my madness.”
“but we have done nothing!”
“nothing. it is the world’s charity, the business of brutes to conceive evil.”
she stood motionless a moment and then started towards him with a sudden outburst of despair.
“tell me the worst, gabriel.”
“thank god, the worst is not the worst in that sense.”
“ah!”
“it is not too late; i am wise in time. it is we who must suffer, in our hearts, not in our names. would to god i had not been such a fool as to make you love me.”
“ah! say not that.”
“can i forgive my manhood this?”
she grew calm quite suddenly, and went back to the seat under the yews, like a woman who recovers gradually her sanity of soul. she was silent awhile, looking into the long grass with wide, luminous eyes that seemed to search and compass the future. it was her ordeal of fire; like the true woman she was, she emerged scathless.
“gabriel,” she said, presently.
he came two steps nearer, looking in her face as one who seeks inspiration.
“i understand you now. it was all so sudden and terrible; forgive me for seeming desperate.”
“joan!”
she spoke very quietly, still looking at the grass.
“promise me one thing,” she said.
“tell it to me.”
“you will not grieve for my sake.”
he took a deep breath and hung his head.
“promise me this,” she said, speaking more quickly—“ah! promise it me, for i would not change the past—no, not for my hope of heaven. it has taught me much—ah! how much you can never know. it has taught me the glory of being a woman. i can only bless you for it, my dearest, my dear—”
he stood before her, awed by a wonder that solemnized his whole being. he would have worshipped her save that his own shame forbade him. only those who have beheld it can declare, the incomprehensible heroism of the love of a good woman.
“you shame me greatly,” was all he said.
joan rose up suddenly and came very near to him.
“gabriel, i honor you.”
“honor me!”
“have you not put your own heart under your feet?”
“and yours!”
joy had kindled on her face. she was happy—nay, exultant in her rapture of self-negation.
“have i not sworn to you,” she said, “that i would not have had it otherwise? this has been my great awakening. can you not understand, dear, that it is even something to live for a memory? i am content to be brave, not only for our sake, but for hers.”
“the woman i married?”
“your wife; she must never know of this; i have always remembered her honor. and i have held your heart, gabriel; have i not?”
“who else?”
“we can triumph over the world, even by our renunciation.”
a gradual melancholy descended upon the hearts of both. over the trees the sky was a golden canopy; the grass stood a deep mist about the foxgloves’ purple towers. there were no tears in the eyes of heaven. only the sun came streaming through the trees.
“it is better thus,” said the miser’s daughter, “for there will be no shadow between us—no reproach.”
“if i am ever a man,” he answered her, “you will have re-created me.”
“i will trust in your future.”
“trust me, that i may trust myself.”
she came even nearer and stood very close to him, looking in his face. her lips were parted, and there was such light in her eyes that she looked like one transfigured.
“kiss me, gabriel, but once.”
“joan!”
“but once, the only time, and forever.”
“i should but wound you deeper.”
“no, no, on my lips—that i may remember it. is it so great a thing to ask?”
her hands went to his shoulders and he kissed her, holding her very close to him so that he felt the deep inrush of her breath. she lay in his arms a moment, looking in his face like one to whom death might seem sweet.
“forgive me all this,” he said.
“gabriel, what should i forgive?”
“my folly and my many weaknesses.”
“you are strong now; let me go; i cannot bear it further.”
she freed herself gently and stood aside from him, looking like a saint who had suffered and yet triumphed. when he had gone from her she sat down under the yews with the sunlight playing on her hair and her face white as ivory under the boughs. she remained motionless as some fair poem wrought in stone; only her eyes were alive with an infinite anguish that seemed to challenge heaven.
it was gabriel, the man, not joan gildersedge, who wept that day as he went stumbling through the woods towards his home. was this, then, the fate of his idealism, the rough breaking of a woman’s heart?