Warwick Deeping

“ That man is indeed to be pitied who has never felt the splendid awe that the pure loveliness of a woman can inspire.
Gabriel left the mound, color in his cheeks and on his lips a half-shy smile. If he had never believed in Schopenhauer, the faith of a pessimist failed him ignominiously at that moment. He was mediæval to the core. Nor did he believe Shakespeare to be a fool.
A warmer color had risen to Joan Gildersedge’s face. Her eyes had a lustre in the sunlight, such a light that makes a woman a thousand times more desirable than of yore. ”

“ When near to Joan he felt that he had no foe in the wide world, that he hated no man, envied none. All was peace and a great calm as of beautiful purity and enduring love. For days he existed like a prophet in a desert, filled with a species of spiritual exaltation. It was an excellent mood enough, but one hardly suited to the cynicism of Saltire society. Such sentiments as inspired Gabriel’s brain spelled madness, or worse, to the discriminating glance of the multitude. It is unwise to go star-gazing amid the gutters of an unclean town. ”

“ Gabriel’s memory hailed her with that hurrying of the heart that comes with the inspiration of the breath of life. His cheeks burned in the sun. Fear touched him as with the finger of prophecy. Scoff who will, there is a divine dread that seizes on strong men in the sanctuary of passion. Even as the harp trembles as it bears the burden of some solemn song, so the highly strung soul vibrates to melodies, perilous yet divine. Only clay is passive and unfearful. The mere animal loves with his loins, and is of the earth earthy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ John Strong’s wrath may be pictured when he beheld this excellent edifice crumbling before his eyes. Grim man that he was, he was overwhelmed for the instant, beaten to his knees, threatened as with social bankruptcy. His fibre, however, was not of the willow. With twisted branches he stood to the storm, and shook out anathemas at the cloud that had given it birth. He turned iconoclast against his own ambition, and prepared to tear down with his own hands the idol that had disgraced his pride. Lacking any elasticity of sentiment, he was the more incensed against Gabriel, his son. ”

“ Joan, radiant as faith, leaned within the hollow of Gabriel’s arm.
“Then even dreams come true,” she said to him.
There was an ardent light in the man’s eyes, such a light as kindles in the eyes of a seer.
“Was I not once tempted,” he answered her, “to embrace the thing that men call pessimism. For I was wounded of my fellows and knew not where to look for help. And there seemed so much horror in the world that even I half learned to jeer with those who mocked at my ideals.”
“No true man is a mocker, Gabriel.” ”

“ Yonder the red roofs of Saltire lay like rusty shields amid the green. Farther still the Mallan streaked the lowlands. Even in the distance he could mark the blue hills above Rilchester, with their mist of tufted trees.
Gabriel held on again with brow furrowed and eyes at gaze. The quest was no idle venture, the issue no gay joust of sentiments. He rode to recover his own conscience and the peace of the woman whom he loved. Even as he brooded the Georgian shadows of Gabingly rose up amid the pines, looming to his tragic idealism like the sullen walls of some perilous hold. ”

“ A strong soul girds the elf in tender subjection. Like wine, the imagination fires the senses; they are saffron spray bubbling in an iris bowl, red poppies smothered in an ecstasy of green, stars, diamonds, and the long glimmer of a moonlit sea. Odors beat upon the imaginative brain; colors burn its vision. Like a siren’s voice falls the chant of the wind through the rose-red halls of summer. To the poet the world leaps like a young lover into the bosom of the sunset. Seas clamor and the stars tune their strings.
Gabriel was an imaginative man. ”

“ She had cast down her divining-rod, broken her magic ring in twain, and returned mutely to her pristine solitude.
What depths of gloom the renunciation meant to her she never comprehended till the first night came. Darkness, heavy, and without dawn! Never to behold the man’s face again; nay, what was more, never to feel her spirit mount with his into the azure of that sympathy that had made earth heaven! There seemed a crass cruelty in the event, an illogical malice that stunned her reason. Yet never in her heart did she blame Gabriel for aught he had made her suffer. ”

“ Silently, while the wind whistled over the hedgerows, these two good women looked long into each other’s eyes. The tears were dry upon Joan’s cheeks, but on Judith’s lashes there were fresh tears. Bending herself, she kissed Joan Gildersedge upon the mouth, held both her hands clasped fast between her own.
“That men have lied,” she said, “I believe full well, since I have seen you, I who am Gabriel’s sister. Yet is there not joy in such a grief as this, since love has triumphed over wrong and pain?” ”

“ She looked up at him suddenly with a great light in her eyes.
“Gabriel, I will not hurt your heart again. You are a good man, and may God bless you! I will remember our vow.”
Tragedy was moving upon the twain with ghastly step, her face muffled in her sable robe. They had created in their dreams a radiant Eden for their souls to wander in, yet the ancient dragon had squirmed in amid the leaves. Nothing is sacred in this world to the sordid sarcasms of the fool and the libertine. ”

“ Even Judith had foreseen no such prodigal energy as this. There had been no one to meet him at the station, but Gabriel’s ardor was not to be damped that June.
With new color in his cheeks and a tremulous eagerness in his eyes, he came that morning towards the cottage in the fields where Joan, his wife, was lodged. He entered in at the little gate, smiling to himself even as a man might smile who climbed to meet love at the gate of heaven. Humble enough was the rose-grown porch, and humble the janitor who stood within. Yet all was heaven to Gabriel that June morning.
“Lor’, Mr. Strong!” ”

“ Men might deceive her; women never.
Now Ophelia Gusset was a physical being, a mere houri; a rampant, worldly, yet lovely egotist. She believed in a life of sensations. While fanatics struggled on cloud-solemn Sinai to take the tablets from the Eternal Hands, this fair and complacent pagan garlanded the golden calf, and stared into the mirror of pleasure to satiate her soul. Nor was it a matter for amazement that Judith Strong thought of her future sister with forebodings and repugnance.
There are men whose destinies are balanced upon a woman’s influence; Gabriel Strong was such a man. ”

“ It was no longer an individual sentiment, a single vision of truth and beauty, a white statue scatheless in the sun. There was something sacrificial about it, a promise of universality that uttered the first exultant cry of martyrdom. She began to think more of the man’s soul than her own, to imagine his moods, to forecast his presentiments. Sympathy was the golden woof; the instinct of love, the subtle shuttle.
Gabriel Strong felt the change in the girl when he kept the promise he had made to her at Domremy, and came to see her at Burnt House, even in her own home. ”

“ James Maltravers had succumbed seriously to interests that he had been almost brought to regard as the mere foibles of frivolity. And since his honor was a somewhat opalescent thing, blue and sincere one moment, red the next when caught in certain rays of the sun, it may be imagined that his conscience was nimble in the justification of his cause. The dramaticisms of life are in the higher sense wholly a matter of character. There is nothing so impressive as the grand temptation of a fine spirit; nothing more mean and contemptible than the facile sinning of a corrupt one. ”

“ Those who live for the present deserve nothing of the future. As for Gabriel, the stars would have fallen in his lap if his dreams had gotten a proportionate reward.
Thought-waves or no, there is some strong influence flowing from importunate thought. Spiritual waves of desire move betwixt soul and soul, drawing them imperceptibly towards each other. Love beacons unto love, even over hill and sea. As water to the moon, so Joan Gildersedge had been drawn from her home that day. Some vibrating lustre-light of the soul had set her wandering on the hills above the sea. ”

“ From the rotting roofs of sectarianism his conception of love had risen to the spiritual azure of heaven. Animalism had ceased from his soul. It vexed him no longer; the tiger and the dog in him were inert and caged. It is only when man has purged himself of his baser instincts that he comprehends the wonderful significance of life.
Through the wilderness of speculation and desire Gabriel had come by a conviction that illumined his whole being. The inevitable laws of life were as plain to him as though written upon tablets of stone. ”

“ To the thinker who is no mere egotist the meaner excitations of life must inevitably seem as dust on the highway of progress. No man who realizes the dignity of manhood can be deeply discouraged by an ill-fitting coat, a lost seat on a municipal bench, or a spoiled dinner. Materialism is merely a symptom of psychical sterility. Those great with the instinct towards God touch the soil only with their sandals; their eyes are turned to the sky; their foreheads sweep the stars.
Struggle and suffering beget thought and true thought begets the consciousness of God. So had it been with Gabriel. ”

“ John Strong, rising with something betwixt a grunt and a sigh, clambered out of the trap and followed Judith over the stile. He did not trouble himself to understand her humor, and, moreover, he was busied with reflections of his own that drove Dame Milton and her small affairs into oblivion. He was thinking of Gabriel, and of what Judith had said to him as they drove from Saltire. Like a man who had lost his way in a fog, he peered round him into space, ignorant that the very path he sought curled close to his feet. ”

“ A haze of heat shimmered above the mist-dimmed hills. Infinite freshness breathed from the dew-brilliant meadows. May seemed to have lifted once again her fair young face to the sun. A deep splendor shone upon wood and meadow, a green radiance dappled over with gold. Earth smiled through her tears; the shadowy trees shook pearls from their stately towers.
“Young man, my ribbon.”
The hail came like elfin music from under the green canopy of a willow. There was a suggestive beauty in the voice that had spoken. Gabriel, dreamer of dreams, had imagined himself supreme in most egotistic solitude. ”

“ Gabriel passed half an hour alone with Ophelia in the conservatory that evening. Her humor had changed, and the man’s brain was full of the fumes of her beauty ere she had ended. Gabriel’s window at Gabingly looked southward over the woods towards the sea. A full moon swam in a crystal sky that night, bathing the earth in mysterious splendor. A transcendent calm seemed to have compassed the sun-wearied trees. The world breathed anew under the benisons of the stars, and there was no sound to shake the silver web of sleep. ”

“ There was a fine self-scorn in his voice that was almost dramatic.
“No,” he said; “I cannot flatter myself with any degree of heroism; it is only great souls who die for an ideal. The noblest life that was ever lived on earth had to end in a martyrdom that it might strike home to the hearts of men. I have been nothing but a martyr to my own egotism. Having once struck my colors to that black pirate Expediency on the high seas of life, I suppose I must be content to feel my soul in shackles.”
Joan was pulling at the moss upon the stones with her long, white fingers. ”

“ It had been a great day for John Strong of Saltire when the Honorable Misses Gusset had partaken of tea in the “red drawing-room” of the hall. Mincing Lane and the City had faded into an irreferable past.
At Saltire that night the panelled dining-room was lit by lamps hung with crimson lace. The table was scintillant with silver, decorated with luxurious flowers and broad-leafed palms.
Dinner-tables often resemble a suburban street where every person prays to be preserved from his neighbor. And Gabriel Strong was in no mood for word-fencing that evening. ”

“ The panelled hall was a green gloom of shrubs and palms. The stairways shone with color. Luxury smiled in silver and gold, from the gleaming, snowy tables, from tapestries purple and green, from parquetry burnished like brass. Music moved in the air. Amethyst, diamond, and ruby breathed on the bosoms of women. Laughter, like a carillon of bells, ran through the well-thronged rooms.
The noise of an ephemeral triumph rang loud in Gabriel’s ears that night. The gilt card of social excellence was proffered to his fingers; the perfume of a facile and flattering life ascended into his nostrils. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Joan Gildersedge had ever been a white cloud to him, a golden vapor, beautifully pure. As the satyr squirming in the mire of an unlovely marriage he had dared not approach unto her soul. As the spirit man, the Christian, this high love was lawful and good unto his being. He was justified by the spirit. Though he were the bond-slave of an earthly houri nothing could prevent him aspiring to a divine love. Such a marriage was but a serf’s collar with the medallion of the beast thereon. A spiritual love could in no way make him false to a compact that had nothing of the divine in its consummation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gabriel, after a stroll in the garden, followed his wife slowly up the oak staircase with its broad, shining steps and rich-wrought balustrade. His reason was too maimed for the moment to serve him with any warmth or virtue. He moved as one half-dazed, taking in the minutiæ of the scenes around him with that peculiar vividness that often accompanies pain. He marked how the lozenged panes in the blazoned windows gleamed with a singular and sensuous brilliance. How the dust danced golden in the slanting beams of the sun. ”