Other doubts assailed. Might it not all be a mad vision? Did Robbie still remember me as I him, live for me as I for him? Was it he himself—in his own bed, wherever it was—who came to me, to be with me, on the anniversaries of our embrace; or was it my own intense longing and imagination that created the appearance of his presence, which might exist in my mind only and not in his? No! the experience was too magical not to be real. He remembered me, visited me, and one day in plain reality would come to claim me. But again—when he came—would love be a complete and perfect thing? Was perfect love possible? Should I be able to mingle my tired and fearful soul for ever and utterly in his, confide in him the utmost secret of my being, lose myself—my Self—in him; and, one soul in two bodies, affront together the terrors of Eternity? "It is not possible," leered Doubt. "Your soul must stand alone; no love can break down the barrier of its eternal isolation. You are alone for ever."
Then Doubt gave place to Hope, and I fell to enjoying the security and peace of giving myself to him, all my love, my fears: one soul in two bodies, clasped in each other's arms. Pride would second Hope. Robbie would be great, famous, honoured: a warrior, poet, statesman—I favoured each in turn. I would shine in his reflected glory. I felt no discontent at this secondary rôle, and reverting to the true type of a woman's megalomania, built not for myself but for my boy a hundred splendid futures.
I had other ambitions: to see the world, live in new houses, meet wonderful people; to do well in life, become powerful, famous; somehow, anyhow—through fame as Robbie's wife, as ambassadress perhaps or, in madder moments, queen. Then there was the old desert-island business, in which as a female Robinson Crewjoe I was to burst with panache of ostrich feathers and panoply of fame on an astonished world. Or I would see myself Tzarina—Mary the Great, Empress and Autocrat of All the Russias, Queen of Poland, Grand Duchess of Finland, etc., etc., etc.; or Queen of Spain; or Anywhere. Never, mind you, the mere idle castle-in-the-air builder! Every detail of the steps by which I was to scale these megalomanic heights was worked out in my mind; every moment of agony, labour, deception, experienced in my heart. My first gesture in success—I sometimes tried to deceive myself it was my chief object—was to do good, succour the poor, spread the Gospel, lead poor darkened Russia or poor heathen Spain from the false gods of Byzantium or Rome to my own true God of Plymouth—and the Taw. A sop to God for letting me succeed.
If I could not change this natural bent of egotism in my imaginings, I was able by prayer and Resolutions to curb my selfishness in the things of daily life. My Grandmother's example helped. Whenever she did an unselfish deed I should have thought to do myself, I flushed quickly with shame, and was readier for the next occasion. In every written Resolution "Do unto others" came to figure first.
Nor did Ambition fill all my visualizings. As often as creating these mad fantastic events that might happen, I was creating the exact shape and setting of various events that had to happen. My arrival at the Château, how Madame la Comtesse and her daughter would greet me, my bedroom, the details of my daily work: all these were envisaged a hundred times with a hundred variations. Aunt Jael's death; when, how, why?—Should I be summoned from France for the funeral, if it happened while I was abroad?—My feelings, my anticipated sentimental looking-back as though she was dead already: "Poor Aunt Jael, she was hard and cruel at times, but still—" My softening towards her for a few days. (It is no bad plan, indeed, always to treat our fellow-beings with the same respect living as we should give them dead.) Or Grandmother's death: and my far-off return to England; or my own death, and the first few moments after death.
The three things I pictured and lived through more often than any others were three meetings that I knew lay somewhere before me in the path of real life. Two would be meetings-again, the other a first encounter.
Robbie. Uncle Simeon. My Father.
Dramatic scenes of these three encounters I worked out a hundred times with the fullest details of time, place and setting: the luxury of first moments, the splendour or scorn of the respective dénouements. I knew what I should say first. I framed every word of the conversation that followed, experienced every phase of joy, melodrama and hate. How far the realities resembled the anticipations; and how far Instinct was right in telling me—against all appearance—that I was approaching these three inevitable events by going to France, the sequel will show.
* * * * * * *
I have called myself worldly. It is true, except that the one reality to which through all agonies I held was not of this world at all. At moments when my mood could summon no happiness from the past nor hope from the future, I had always a last refuge-place in the ineffable Love of God, as I had felt it once and for all in one miraculous instant. I knew it was more real than the world around me or than the fears of my own mind; as the supernatural was more real than the natural, the thing intuitively felt than the fact ascertained, magic than reason. I could seek refuge from trouble in a state of magical divine consciousness, in which, at perfect moments, I lost all sense of time and space and self, all physical sensation, all power to think—everything but Love. I was a soul only, the soul of all the world. I ceased to be anything. I was everything. I was God and God was I.