The garden of resurrection

by E. Temple Thurston

What I had feared then, came suddenly. She buried her face in her hands, and her shoulders shook to the sobs that were trembling in little broken gasps between her fingers.

I confess it, I looked helplessly about me. The bright light of the sea had grown suddenly somehow grey. Brilliance had gone out of everything. I wished a thousand times to Heaven I had never told her, yet knowing, every time I wished it, that nothing, not even the certain knowledge of her tears, could have stopped me.

At the sound of her crying, Dandy had looked up.

"What is it?" he asked me with his ears.

"For God's sake don't cry like that," said I and, scarce thinking what I did or said, I laid my hand gently on her shoulder and whispered again, "Don't cry like that. It makes me feel so contemptible. I know I have no right to come over all this way just to tell you things that will make you miserable. But I couldn't let it go. Everything seemed driving me to do it, because you were rushing blindly towards such a ghastly reckoning. You don't know the world that he is offering to show you. You think it's all a garden where things grow beautiful; but London, where he's going to take you, is not like that. It's very difficult to find the things that grow beautiful there. Every effort they make in London is not to find the beautiful things, but to forget the ugly ones. The man who sees beauty in a great city like that is called a sentimentalist. They all laugh at him. If you wore your canary-colored satin in the streets, you'd have a crowd of little boys jeering after you. Men and women would laugh into your face. Oh no; do go back to your island of sun and love your love, even if your heart should break. A broken heart need never be a broken spirit. A broken heart can be a brave and a noble thing. And sometimes—remember—it mends. But in London they'd break the spirit in you, as they're trying to break it here—break it so that nothing will ever mend it again. And then you'll begin that awful struggle towards forgetfulness—a struggle to forget that your spirit is gone, that the world is ugly with sin and shame and misery. And oh, they'll make it so difficult for you to forget. They'll wave placards in front of your eyes telling you that there have been murders in the East End, that women have died of starvation, that children have been killed at their birth. They'll scream to you from the house-tops that the world is an ugly place. You will go to the theatres you speak of and there they'll tell you that men and women are unfaithful. They'll keep driving into your ears that truth and beauty are at opposite poles of the earth. Never, never for one moment, if they can help it, will they let you forget. You will find those who have even passed the desire of forgetfulness, and that is the last and the worst stage of all. For there are people in London now who only want to remember that the world is ugly. They go to the divorce trials and the murder trials; they rush in crowds to see a horror in the streets. Yet once upon a time, when they were children, they remembered that everything was beautiful. Then they played in their garden with hoops and with skipping ropes—you'll see them in Kensington Gardens now—and every day they woke to was a joy to live in. After a time came the phase when they tried not to see the placards of the newspapers in the streets, when they began to hear that the world was ugly, and then, they tried to forget. They went out to the theatres and to music-halls, to dinners and to suppers, working like slaves, making the bricks of forgetfulness without the last straws of hope. Then, last of all, with spirit utterly broken, they accepted the ugliness of the world, took their pleasure in remembering it; bought their newspapers and devoured them with their breakfast, mingling horror and crime and misery with the very food they put into their mouths. Those are the people in London to-day who will point out to you the ugliness of life and call it beautiful because it is real. Oh—my dear child—go back—go back to your little island and don't look for the ugliness of the world he wants to show you. Go back, and one day you'll come to learn that I was a friend—the best friend you ever had."

How it was, I don't know, but all this time my hand had been upon her shoulder. Suddenly then she shook it off and, brushing the tears from her eyes, rose quickly to her feet.

"I don't believe you!" she cried, and there was that note in her voice as when you try to drown the things you feel with the things you say. "I don't believe you!" she cried again. "You have some reason for saying all this—some reason that I can't see. You want to do him harm—you hate him—I can see you do."

That struck strangely on my ears, for it was strangely true. She was quite right. I did hate him. I knew then that I did. But I had not come to Ireland because of that. When first I had heard that story, I had been indifferent to him—wholly, almost elaborately, indifferent. It was the injustice, the impending tragedy, that had moved me. But now—I hated him. And how had she found that out? Not from anything I had said. I had not shown it there. Then how—?

"You don't say no to that," she went on, impetuously. "Why do you hate him? Oh—I suppose you would not tell me—"; and now all that warm blood of hers was lighted in her veins. If, like those girls along the coast of Lombardy, she had carried a dagger in her garter, I should have found the warm steel of it in my flesh by then. As it was, only her eyes stabbed me, one blow swift after another as you stab the thing you hate.

"So do you think I'm going to listen to a single word you've said? I can hate, and hate more than you. And I hate you for coming to pour those lies into my ears. If I had seen your face that night on the cliffs when you gave me your letter, I should never have come. I hate to look at you. You're ugly—you couldn't tell the truth."