Rue and Roses

by Angela Langer

His letter arrived at last; it was put in a blue envelope and felt like a weight of lead in my hand. I could not make up my mind to open it, and wished somehow that I had not yet received it.

Tearing open the envelope at last, I read the letter, read it again and again. When I dropped the neatly written sheets, there was a dead stillness in the room. Involuntarily I looked around me. All the evil spirits had gone. All fear, all cowardice, all doubt had gone. Something like a cloud lifted from my soul, and then a feeling rose up to which I could as yet give no name, a feeling which tumbled about within me like someone aroused from a dream, and finally pressed itself hard against my throat.

I put my arms on the table, my face on my arms, and sat still for a long while. When it had grown dark and late I hid the letter underneath my pillow, and went to sleep without a light in the room. Once during the night I sat up in bed and lit a candle, and then I took the letter and holding it close to the light looked for one passage:

"If you had remained here, I do not know what might have happened; if you come back, I know what will happen. But the question is, may it come thus? You are not a girl of the ordinary type; you belong to the race of Asra, the people who die when they love. And because I have known that from the first, I have done for you what I have never done for another woman yet—namely, got hold of the head of the beast within, turned it round sharply and laughed at it."

I hid the letter again and lay very still in my bed.... That then was the end of it.... Tired and reluctantly my thoughts pilgrimaged back. I saw myself again as I was—poor, lonesome, waiting until the moment when the fairest miracle which life has ever held came to me, and every thought within me stretched forth arms, as it were, in order to receive it. I felt once more how every word, every look of his, pressed itself into my soul like a red-hot seal, and I suffered anew all the tortures and all the happiness. And all at once I thought again of the story of "Morgan" and of his young wife.... How truly different an ending, and yet how similar a victory! For which was more glorious for a girl—that a man should make her his wife, or make her his most beautiful dream, and his lasting desire? And all that I vainly tried to comprehend before I comprehended now. "Yes," I said to myself—and I said it aloud into the darkness of the room—"discontented, restless, aimless, freed from one passion to-day, and chained to another passion to-morrow, thus will he stagger through his life. Ever full of desire, never at peace with himself, he will taste of every pleasure and get to know every disgust. But above all pleasure and above all disgust there will be the one longing of his soul, which had denied itself the drink, because of the dregs it knew to be at the goblet's bottom. Not while in ecstasy, not in the hustle and bustle of the day will he be aware of it—nay, but when he lies awake at night, filled with a sense of utter loneliness, listening to the pouring rain outside, then it will come to life again, will throb and tremble through his soul, soft and pleading like an old forgotten strain." And after I had said that, I smiled that strange wonderful smile, which only a woman knows who is willing to take upon herself the heaviest burden for the sweet sake of love.

Next morning I left the house very early and wandered through the streets of London. To-day I knew that I would wander through those streets many, many times yet, and for a long, long while.

Once I stopped and entered a grey, small building. It was a Roman Catholic church. I walked about it aimlessly, and my eyes caught the picture of Christ in life-size. For the first time in my life, perhaps, the sight of it stirred nothing within me. What use could He be to me? Could He comprehend such a thing at all? It is true that He had become human in order to feel with us, but He was a good man. He only knew the sins and passions of others, never did He know a sin, or a passion of His own. Of godly descent. He was endowed with godly strength, with godly wisdom, with godliness. What did He really know of the nature of a thief, of a murderer, of a perjurer? And though He had died for the sake of love, what did He know of the sufferings of lovers?

I turned away from the picture and went out of the church. I went out on tip-toe by force of habit, but on my soul dawned the religion of life, which is older than the doctrine of Jesus ... and all round me walked its disciples. Men and women who had done with dreaming and were ready for the unknown hereafter—men with strong fists and hard looks, by which one could tell that they had battled with life; women whose faces looked wrinkled and worn, telling their story of hardship and silent surrender; men and women who in their days of severity and bitterness had surpassed the miracles wrought by Him, the Galilean; men and women among whose numbers I was also enlisted.

And out of that new consciousness arose to me a new wisdom and a new love—a wisdom which reigned over all former wisdom, and a love which reigned over all former love. And when I returned with it into my solitude, the stones began to speak.