—“They wrought a deeper treason,
Led seas who served my needs;
They sold Diego Valdez
To bondage of great deeds....”
What a fool, what a fool he had been to imagine he could elude his bondage by merely choosing an inglorious profession! This then was how they had at last contrived to outwit him: giving him, in addition to all worldly advantages, clarity of vision and power of brain; letting him build up from these a working ideal,—and then trapping him in a situation where he must in the very use of it forfeit all happiness. Because he saw ahead, because he gloried in the seeing,—oh, they had wrought their treason cunningly, “led seas who served my needs”; the two in the shadow-side of the hulk were kept in no such bondage. Stuart was a genius of life—he might not go back to Peter. He had lashed Peter to be a genius of life—she might not call to him. They could both see their vision of love dimmed by time—so they might not pursue it to the dimming. And meanwhile the two in the shadow-side of the hulk lay lip to lip, bodies crushed together, believing their little moment immortal. “They sold Diego Valdez....”
And here the stuntorian, up till now silent, gave a sudden leap, and flung out a hand to pull Stuart from the mire: “Just go back to her. Get above your own theory, and kick it out of the way. What a stunt—if you are big enough!”
“If you are big enough,” insinuated the stuntorian.
Metaphysician silenced him with a laconic “Cheat.”
No escape for Fortunatus. He knew, if for one moment he ceased battling, how contentment would lap him round, and smooth him, and oil him, and blur his vision of mist to a thickness of mutton-fat. He knew. And must practise knowledge on a flesh-and-blood love, not cherish it as a dry-as-dust theory. No escape for Stuart. The lovers, still locked into one shape, still murmuring brokenly to each other, passed in the dark so close that they brushed against him where he lay; where he lay and in biting scorn challenged God for once to take the initiative, not make him do it all himself, always.
No rest for Fortunatus. Leprechaun was now active enough; squibbing and somersaulting to impress the metaphysician, who with brilliant argument upheld the ascetic, who alternately cursed and wrestled with the man. The man had but a poor chance; though he still continued to argue, as thus:
If he and Peter had indeed thrust forwards and on, in the mortal blindness unmercifully denied to them, could the gradual transformation of magic to disappointment, thence to habit, slacking into uninspired content,—all that he and she had visioned, sitting on a luggage-truck at Euston; could these things be indeed worse than his present turmoil of longing?
Yes! all three shouting now in chorus, leprechaun and metaphysician and ascetic. Yes! For this was sharp and keen—and quick. Even though each second weighed an eternity, he was yet conscious that, viewed from the distance of years, the time would seem a short black tunnel cutting through into the day. While to lose the pulsing sense of her walk, her voice, her touch; to drop instinctive knowledge of her pleasure or her sorrow; to cease from battling with her, for the joy of the after-rest; to exchange passionate uncertainty for placid possession; to happen no more on moments of chance magic, and not to miss them; for strain to depart, and youth, and memory of youth and strain, and then envy of youth, so that ashore on the putty they should not even begrudge fiercely the exhilaration of a run before the wind—
A thousand times rather lie as now, with body writhing into the dry white sand, and every nerve craving for love lost. A thousand times rather fling “Peter!” into the unresponsive silence, and blaspheme at her steady defiance in not calling him back; defiance he, not God, but he again had put into her. A thousand times rather be stabbed through and through by single recollections. Yes, a thousand times rather Hell than Heaven, since from Hell one still could rise, but from Heaven there was no more ascent to the heavens.