Presently there came a pause in the conversation and Miss Medwin sat down, Gildea following suit. The pause became a silence. At last he broke it.
“You have noticed,” he said, “how different is the effect on you of the sea, in a steamer and in a boat?”
“Yes,” she said, “I have noticed it. The steamer goes its own determined way, breaking its sympathy with winds and waters, and you—you are so high up that you cannot mingle in the being of the spirits, the breathings of their lips, the wavings of their hands, the tossings of their hair.”
“Where,” he said smiling,
“where the wild white horses play,
champ and chafe and toss in the spray.”
She smiled in turn. She was looking before her across the sunny rolling billows to where, against some high brown jagged rocks, the foam-mantle of the breakers rose ever silently and fell. She was breathing in gently and serenely the delight of the sea, the bright breeze, the movement of the yacht, the divine blue free expansion of the clouds and skies. There was a silence.
“You are not fond of steamers, then?” he asked with a side-look.
“No,” she said, “except in rough weather, and then I too feel the elation of my kind,—the frail race of men which can yet dominate the winds and waters and make their paths along the neck of the untameable sea.—You do not know,” she added, leaving her extraneous delight for a moment and looking at him with a touch of self-amusement, “you do not know how I swell with pride when I watch a great man-of-war sailing on and on with such serene confidence, dominating the expanse of water like a thing of self-evident strength and beauty. I remember once making sand-forts with some children in England in a little rock-girt cove, and suddenly I looked up and there, almost filling our narrow horizon, was a great white troop-ship passing close to the shore. It struck me quite dumb for a moment; and then I began to applaud and shout like a Bacchant, the children following suit.” She turned her face away again, laughing, looking here and there, delighting again in what she felt and saw.
“You are a true daughter of kindly men,” he said, laughing too, all suspicion of mockery passed away from look and tone. There was another silence. Gildea was beginning to perceive in himself a feeling he had never felt before, the feeling that he was in the presence and even in the influence of a girl-woman, (such was the idea presented to him), of a spiritual force as consummate as, but wholly differing from, his own. In a few moments he had recognized this, and by a wonderful stroke of intuition divined the meaning of it. It partook of the nature of a revelation. He seemed to see all his past life in a new light. He felt that she—she, this woman, this girl, this child here—had, by some unknown wonderful means, won the true talisman of life, that talisman whose omnipotence is perpetuity. It was, then, possible, after all, to combine perfect knowledge of life with the radiant joy and peace of perfect trust in it!—It partook of the nature of a revelation and, to second thoughts, of a delusion. His lip curled: he almost despised himself for the swift speed with which a suddenly begotten hope had leaped to a birth whose form and pressure was but the mask of credulity. “There has been no man,” he said to himself, “save Goethe, who knew what life was and yet could have a weariless joy in it. Carlyle well said that this man was to have no imitators or successors.—Nostra vita a che val? solo a spregiarla.” And yet the idea of a new life, a life wherein might be found something more than sweet resignation, hedonistic merely or even optimistic, but supplying thought, action, and speech with a motive-power whose strength should be in its truth—the idea would not be shaken off by mere self-contempt at credulity in it.