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“Oh, for that which cannot be told, because words are so few, always the same combinations of a few letters and sounds; oh, for that which cannot be thought of in the narrow limits of comprehension; that which at best can only be groped for with the antennæ of the soul; essence of the essences of the ultimate elements of our being!...”
She wrote no more, she knew no more: why write that she had no words and yet seek them?
She was waiting for him and she now looked out of the open window to see if he was coming. She remained there for a long time; then she felt that he would come immediately and so he did: she saw him approaching along the Scheveningen Road; he pushed open the iron gate of the villa and smiled to her as he raised his hat.
“Wait!” she cried. “Stay where you are!”
She ran down the steps, into the garden, where he stood. She came towards him, beaming with happiness and so lovely, so delicately frail; her blonde head so seemly in the fresh green of May; her figure like a young girl’s in the palest grey gown, with black velvet ribbon and here and there a touch of silver lace.
“I am so glad that you have come! You have not been to see me for so long!” she said, giving him her hand.
He did not answer at once; he merely smiled.
“Let us sit in the garden, behind: the weather is so lovely.”
“Let us,” he said.
They walked into the garden, by the mesh of the garden-paths, the jasmine-vines starring white as they passed. In an adjoining villa a piano was playing; the sounds came to them of Rubinstein’s Romance.
“Listen!” said Cecile, starting. “What is that?”
“What?” he asked.
“What they are playing.”
“Something of Rubinstein’s, I believe,” he said.
“Rubinstein?...” she repeated, vaguely. “Yes....”
And she relapsed into the wealth of memories of ... what? Once before, in this way, she had walked along these same paths, past jasmine-vines like these, long, ever so long ago; she had walked with him, with him.... Why? Could the past repeat itself, after centuries?...
“It is three weeks since you have been to see me,” she said, simply, recovering herself.
“Forgive me,” he replied.
“What was the reason?”
He hesitated throughout his being, seeking an excuse:
“I don’t know,” he answered, softly. “You will forgive me, will you not? One day it was this, another day that. And then ... I don’t know. Many reasons together. It is not good that I should see you often. Not good for you, nor for me.”
“Let us begin with the second. Why is it not good for you?”
“No, let us begin with the first, with what concerns you. People ...”
“People are talking about us. I am looked upon as an irretrievable rake. I will not have your name linked profanely with mine.”
“And is it?”
“Yes....”
She smiled:
“I don’t mind.”
“But you must mind; if not for your own sake ...”
He stopped. She knew he was thinking of her boys; she shrugged her shoulders.
“And now, why is it not good for you?”
“A man must not be happy too often.”
“What a sophism! Why not?”
“I don’t know; but I feel I am right. It spoils him; it is too much for him.”
“Are you happy here, then?”
He smiled and gently nodded yes.
They were silent for very long. They were now sitting at the end of the garden, on a seat which stood in a semicircle of flowering rhododendrons: the great purple-satin blossoms shut them in with a tall hedge of closely-clustered bouquets, rising from the paths and overtopping their heads; standard roses flung their incense before them. They sat still, happy in each other, happy in the sympathy of their atmospheres mingling together; yet in their happiness there was the invincible melancholy which is an integral part of all life, even in happiness.
“I don’t know how I am to tell you,” he said. “But suppose that I were to see you every day, every moment that I thought of you.... That would not do. For then I should become so refined, so subtle, that for pure happiness I should not be able to live; my other being would receive nothing and would suffer like a beast that is left to starve. I am bad, I am selfish, to be able to speak like this, but I must tell you the truth, that you may not think too well of me. And so I only seek your company as something very beautiful which I allow myself to enjoy just once in a way.”
She was silent.
“Sometimes ... sometimes, too, I imagine that in doing this I am not behaving well to you, that in some way or other I offend or hurt you. Then I sit brooding about it, until I begin to think that it would be best to take leave of you for ever.”
She was still silent; motionless she sat, with her hands lying slackly in her lap, her head slightly bowed, a smile about her mouth.
“Speak to me,” he begged.
“You do not offend me, nor hurt me,” she said. “Come to me whenever you feel the need. Do always as you think best; and I shall think that best too: you must not doubt that.”
“I should so much like to know in what way you like me?”
“In what way? Surely, as a Madonna does a sinner who repents and gives her his soul,” she said, archly. “Am I not a Madonna?”
“Are you content to be so?”
“Can you be so ignorant about women as not to know how every one of us has a longing to solace and relieve, in fact, to play at being a Madonna?”
“Do not speak like that,” he said, with pain in his voice.
“I am speaking seriously....”
He looked at her; a doubt rose within him, but she smiled to him; a calm glory was about her; she sat amidst the bouquets of the rhododendrons as in the blossoming tenderness of one great mystic flower. The wound of his doubt was soothed with balsam. He surrendered himself wholly to his happiness; an atmosphere wafted about him of the sweet calm of life, an atmosphere in which life becomes dispassionate and restful and smiling, like the air which is rare about the gods. It began to grow dark; a violet dusk fell from the sky like crape falling upon crape; quietly the stars lighted up. The shadows in the garden, between the shrubs among which they sat, flowed into one another; the piano in the next villa had stopped. And happiness drew a veil between his soul and the outside world: the garden with its design of plots and paths; the villa with curtains at its windows and its iron gate; the road behind, with the rattle of carriages and trams. All this withdrew itself far back; all ordinary life retreated far from him; vanishing behind the veil, it died away. It was no dream nor conceit: reality to him was the happiness that had come while the world died away; the happiness that was rare, invisible, intangible, coming from the love which alone is sympathy, calm and without passion, the love which exists purely of itself, without further thought either of taking anything or even of giving anything, the love of the gods, which is the soul of love itself. High he felt himself: the equal of the illusion which he had of her, which she wished to be for his sake, of which he also was now absolutely certain. For he could not know that what had given him happiness—his illusion—so perfect, so crystal-clear, might cause her some sort of grief; he could not at this moment penetrate without sin into the truth of the law which insists on equilibrium, which takes away from one what it offers to another, which gives happiness and grief together; he could not know that, if happiness was with him, with her there was anguish, anguish in that she had to make a pretence and deceive him for his own sake, anguish in that she wanted what was earthly, that she craved for what was earthly, that she yearned for earthly pleasures!... And still less could he know that, notwithstanding all this, there was nevertheless voluptuousness in her anguish: that to suffer through him, to suffer for him made of her anguish all voluptuousness.