H. Rider Haggard

“ Afterwards, as she lay in his arms, words came to him readily enough:
“I am not worth your having,” he said. “I know I am an odd fellow, not like other men; my very failings have not been the same as other men’s. For instance—before heaven it is true—you are the first woman whom I ever kissed, as I swear to you that you shall be the last. Then, what else am I? A failure in the very work that I have chosen, and the heir to a bankrupt property! Oh! it is not fair; I have no right to ask you!”
“I think it quite fair, and here I am the judge, Morris.” ”

“ And hearken to the whisper of this great universe, one tiny note in that song of praise you heard but now. Yes, the life dies, the ball grows black again; it is the carcase of a world. How long have you watched it? For an hour, a breath; but, as you judge time, some ten thousand million years. Sleep now, you are weary; later you shall understand.
Thus the wraith of Stella spoke to his soul in visions. Presently, with drumming ears and eyes before which strange lights seemed to play, Morris staggered from the place, so weak, indeed, that he could scarcely thrust one foot before the other. ”

“ At least few will deny that some things are best abandoned to the imagination. To attempt to drag the last veil from the face of Truth in any of her thousand shapes is surely a folly predoomed to failure. From the beginning she has been a veiled divinity, and veiled, however thinly, she must and will remain. Also, even were it possible thus to rob her, would not her bared eyes frighten us?
It was late, very late, and there, pale and haggard in the low light of the fire, once again Morris stood pleading with the radiant image which his heart revealed. ”

“ Could anything be more commonplace, more in the natural order of events? Why, then, was he moved? Oh! it was that woman’s face and eyes. Old as he might be, he felt jealous of his son; jealous to think that for him such a woman could wear this countenance of wonderful and thrilling woe. What was there in Morris that it should have called forth this depth of passion undefiled? Now, if there were no Mary—but there was a Mary, it was folly to pursue such a line of thought.
From sympathy for Stella, which was deep and genuine, to anger with his son proved to the Colonel an easy step. ”

“ Listen!” her voice ceased, and in place of it there swelled the shriek of the storm which beat about the Dead Church, the rush, too, of the water in the hollow vaults and the crashing of old coffins as they were washed from their niches. Another instant, and Stella had cut off these sounds and was speaking again.
“It is useless to think of help, no boat, nothing could live upon that fearful sea; moreover, within five minutes this church must fall and vanish.”
“My God! My God!” wailed Morris.
“Do not grieve; it is a waste of precious time, and do not stir till the end. ”

“ He could not understand the words, but their burden was clear enough; they were a lament, the lament of some sorrowing woman, the sweet embodiment of an ancient and forgotten grief thus embalmed in heavenly music.
It was done; the echoes of the following notes of the violin fainted and died among the carven angels of the roof. It was done, and Morris sighed aloud.
“How can I thank you?” he said. “I knew that you were a musician, but not that you had such genius. To listen to you makes a man feel very humble.” ”

“ Every morning when I wake I will remember that I am one night nearer to the great dawn, every night when I lie down to sleep I will thank God that another day of waiting has ended with the sunset. Yes, and I will try to live so that after my last sunset I may meet the end as did Gudrun; without a single doubt or fear, for if I have nothing to reproach myself with, why should I be reproached? If I have longed for light and lived towards the light, however imperfect I may be, why should I be allotted to the darkness? ”

“ On sped the boat while more and more did tide and gale turn her prow into the reef. At the end of it a large, humpbacked rock showed now and again through the surf, like the fin of a black whale. That was the rock which they must clear if they would live. Morris took the boat-hook and laid it by his side. They were very near now. They would clear it; no, the wash sucked them in like a magnet.
“Good-bye,” said Morris instinctively, but Stella answered nothing.
The wave that lifted them broke upon the rock in a cloud of spray wherein for some few instants their boat seemed to vanish. ”

“ Its revelations and rewards marked the extremest limits of her fantasy; immortality of the personal soul, its foundation stone, was the rock on which she built. A heaven where there is no earthly marriage, but where each may consort with the souls most loved and most desired; where all sorrows are forgotten, all tears are wiped away, all purposes made clear, reserved for those who deny themselves, do their duty, and seek forgiveness of their sins—this heaven conceived by Stella, is it not vowed to us in the pages of the Gospel? ”

“ Well, if such spirits were, hers—Stella’s—must be also. And if they could be made apparent, why should not hers share their qualities?
Morris paused in his swift walk and trembled: “I will be near you always.” For aught he knew she was near him now—present, perhaps, in this very room. While she was still in life, what were her aspirations? This was one of them, he remembered, as it fell from her lips: “Still to be with those whom I have loved on earth, although they cannot see me; to soothe their sorrows, to support their weakness, to lull their fears.” ”

“ Morris stared still harder. Was this beautiful girl mad? He knew something of the old Norse literature and myths. A fantastic vision rose up in his mind of her forebears, scores and hundreds of them gathered at some ghostly Walhalla feast, listening to the familiar paean as it poured from her fearless heart, and waiting to rise and greet her, the last newcomer of their blood, with “Skoll, daughter, skoll!”
She watched him as though she read his thought.
“You see, they would have been pleased; it is only natural,” she said; “and I have a great respect for the opinion of my ancestors.” ”

“ He could not sleep, so rising, he dressed himself and went to the window. High in the heavens swept clean of clouds by the furious blasts floated a wandering moon, throwing her ghastly light upon the swirling, furious sea. Shorewards rushed the great rollers in unending lines, there to break in thunder and seethe across the shingle till the sea-wall stopped them and sent the spray flying upwards in thin, white clouds.
“God help those in the power of the sea to-night,” thought Morris, “for many of them will not keep Christmas here.” ”

“ It was from this sad day of her only sister’s death that the first real developments of the mystical side of Stella’s character must be dated. The sudden vanishing in Gudrun in the bloom of youth and beauty brought home to her the lesson which all must learn, in such a fashion that henceforth her whole soul was tinged to its sad hue.
“Now I understand it all,” she wrote after returning from the funeral. “We do not live to die, we die to live. As a grain of sand to the whole shore, as a drop of water to the whole sea, so is what we call our life to the real life. ”

“ Then suddenly loud, clear, and triumphant, broke upon his ears the sound of that song which he had heard her sing upon the sinking ship when her death seemed near; the ancient song of the Over-Lord. Once more at the last mortal ebb, while the water rose about her breast, Stella’s instincts and blood had asserted themselves, and forgetting aught else, she was dying as her pagan forefathers had died, with the secret ancient chant upon her lips. Yes, she sang as Skarphedinn the hero sang while the flame ate out his life. ”

“ The general effect of her sheeny dress, snow-like skin, and golden, waving hair, as she glided into the shaded room, suggested to Morris’s mind a great white lily floating down the quiet water of some dark stream, and, when presently the light fell on her, a vision of a silver, mist-laden star lying low upon the ocean at the break of dawn. Later, after she became acquainted with these poetical imaginings, Mary congratulated herself and her maid very warmly on the fact that she had actually summoned sufficient energy to telegraph to town for this particular dress. ”

“ It is here that the soul must grow, not there. As the child comes into the world with a nature already formed, and its blood filled with gifts of strength or weakness, so shall the spirit come into its world wearing the garment that it has woven and which it cannot change.”
“The garment which it has woven,” said Morris. “That means free will, and how does free will chime in with your fatalism, Miss Fregelius?” ”

“ Then he added, “I beg your pardon, but I think that the cold and wet have affected your nerves; for my part, I have none left.”
“Perhaps; at least forgive me, I did so want to look,” she answered humbly as, arm-in-arm, for she needed support, they passed from the altar to the door.
A grotesque imagination entered the numbed mind of Morris. Their slow and miserable march turned itself to a vision of a bridal procession from the altar. Wet, dishevelled, half-frozen, they two were the bride-groom and the bride, and the bride was a seer of visions, and the bridegroom was a dreamer of dreams. ”

“ The diary showed it to be a little more than a year after this that spiritual doubts began to possess the soul of Stella. After all, was she not mistaken? Was there any world beyond the physical? Were we not mere accidents, born of the will or the chance of the flesh, and shaped by the pressure of centuries of circumstance? Were not all religions different forms of a gigantic fraud played by his own imagination upon blind, believing man? ”

“ What will he find beyond them? The secret he longed to learn, the seal and confirmation of his hard-won faith, or empty, baulking nothingness? Would the goddess herself, the unveiled Isis, wait to bless her votary within those doors? Or would that hall be tenanted but by a painted and bedizened idol, a thing fine with ivory and gold, but dead and soulless?
Might it not be better indeed to turn back while there was yet time, to be content to dwell on in the wide outer courts of the imagination, where faith is always possible, rather than to hazard all? ”

“ Or rather he had thought of her in that nebulous, undefined fashion in which we consider the dead; the slumberous people who forget everything, who see nothing; who, if they exist at all, are like stones upon the beach rolled to and fro blind and senseless, not of their own desire, but by the waves of a fearful fate that itself is driven on with the strength of a secret storm of Will. ”

“ Morris had those dark eyes also—they redeemed his face from plainness, for otherwise it showed no beauty, the features being too irregular, the brow too prominent, and the mouth too large. Yet it could boast what, in the case of a man at any rate, is better than beauty—spirituality, and a certain sympathetic charm. It was not the face which was so attractive, but rather the intelligence, the personality that shone through it, as the light shines through the horn panes of some homely, massive lantern. ”

“ His conduct was that of a man engaged in an intrigue. In his case, however, the possible end of his ill-doing was not the divorce-court, but an asylum, or so some observers would have anticipated. Yet did man ever adore a mistress so fatal and destroying as this poor shadow of the dead which he desired?
It was not until New Year’s Eve that Stella came again. Once more enervated and exhausted by the waves, Morris sank into a doze whence, as before, he was awakened by the sound of heavenly music to which, on this night, was added the scent of perfume. Then he opened his eyes—to behold Stella. ”

“ They forget that in some few days—perhaps more, perhaps less—other unknown creatures will be standing above their forgotten bones, as blind, as self-seeking, as puffed up with the pride of the brief moment, and filled with the despair of their failure, the glory of their success, as they are to-night.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Morris, “they say that while they are in the world it is well to be of the world; that when they belong to the next it will be time to consider it. ”

“ Then of a sudden Morris understood, and, like a foolish man, at once jumped to a conclusion far other than the truth. Doubtless Layard had gone to the church to propose to Stella, and she had accepted him, or half accepted him; the confusion of her manner told its own tale. A new and strange sensation took possession of Morris. He felt unwell; he felt angry; if the aerophone refused to work at all to-morrow, he would care nothing. ”

“ The fact that one man is the father of another man doesn’t give him the right to abuse him like a pickpocket. Also, if you are so good that you put up with it, I have myself to consider—that is, if we are all to live as a happy family. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly,” said Morris. “I daresay you are right, but I hate rows.”
“So do I, and that is why I have accepted one or two challenges to single combat quite at the beginning of things. You mark my words, he will be like a lamb at breakfast to-morrow.” ”

“ Such solitary brooding also drew from the mind of Morris a vague mist of thought about matters esoteric which, to Mary’s belief, had the properties of a miasma that crept like poison through his being. She wished for no more star-gazing, no more mysticism, and, above all, no more memories of the interloping woman who, in his company, had studied its doubtful and dangerous delights. ”

“ So little is an unsympathetic world concerned in our greatest and most particular adventures! A birth, a marriage, an inquest, a scandal—these move it superficially, for the rest it has no enthusiasm to spare. This cold neglect of events which had seemed to him so important reacted upon Morris, who, now that he had got over his chill and fatigue, saw them in their proper proportions. ”

“ DAWN AND THE LAND
A day, a whole day, spent upon that sullen, sunless waste of water, with the great waves bearing them onwards in one eternal, monotonous procession, till at length they grew dizzy with looking at them, and the ceaseless gale piping in their ears. Long ago they had lost sight of land; even the tall church towers built by our ancestors as beacons on this stormy coast had vanished utterly. Twice they sighted ships scudding along under their few rags of canvas, and once a steamer passed, the smoke from her funnels blowing out like long black pennons. ”

“ They are too vast; they crush me. I grow weak. I have no strength left to fight against the power of this fearful life that is discovered. I cannot bear this calm everlasting life. It sucks out my mortality as mists are sucked up by the sun. Become human. Speak. Let me touch your hand. Or be angry. Only cease smiling that awful smile, and take those solemn eyes out of my heart. Oh, my darling, my darling! remember that I am still a man. In pity answer me before I die.”
Then a low and awful cry, and Morris turned to behold Mary his wife. ”