He could not trust himself to reply. There are certain utterances, certain turns of thought, which are so restricted to one sex or the other, so exclusively feminine or masculine, as the case may be, that their entire comprehension by both sexes is not possible. Intuition, imagination, sympathy may help a great deal; men and women will accept much from each other which they cannot to their reasoning satisfaction account for, and, if the difference serves only to enhance, by its mystery, the melodiousness of the eternal human duet, it also proves that, while the singers may be in harmony, they are never in absolute unison.
“You know how much I love you,” said Brigit, “you know it. Yet there is an interior cloister of your mind which you keep wholly to yourself. You never ask me there. I watch your face—it tells me nothing. You have not yet made me your friend. If you were in trouble you would go to Pensée, because she is older and she is used to responsibilities. But you hide things from me because you are afraid of giving me pain.”
“There is reason enough why I should not tell you of every passing mood, nor draw you into some invincible personal sadness, and why I should not invite you into the ‘interior cloister’ of my mind. Nobody deliberates to do what he cannot help. There is always something questioning within me, and a truth is not to be set aside by any other truth whatever. We can only fix our jaws and grip our hands in useless wonder at the contradictions of the soul. I would tell you all my heart,” he added, with a laugh, “but it would take too long!”
He had been startled by the acuteness of her perception. Too probably he had carried his reserve to the selfish pitch, and in over-mastering, with silence, his own moods, afflicted her who had become now, by love, inseparable from his spiritual as well as his outward life. But there is something in beauty—just as there is something in youth—which one fears to disturb, lest a change should alter, or mar, in the faintest degree, the sufficient loveliness, the unconscious charm. Is it not for this cause that many dependent natures find classic perfection cold, superb scenery unsympathetic, and the spectacle of careless happiness embittering? Others, of imaginative temperament, prefer that their idols should remain impassive, and, granted the inspiration arising from a fair appearance, ask no more, but find their delight in bestowing, from the riches of their own gratitude, adorable attributes and endless worship. Orange, as many other men of idealising tendencies, took his human solace for the discouragements, fatigues, and ordeals of life in the mere existence of the woman he loved. He was at the moment of humility which is the first and last in all really great passions. He asked for nothing; it was all too glorious even to have the privilege of offering gifts, of feeling the readiness to die ten deaths for her sake, of finding all the recompenses of eternity in the soft depths of her bright eyes. But as he was too much in earnest to analyse these sentiments, he could neither gauge his own reticence nor justify it to Brigit herself. Nor could she, with all her tenderness and womanly instincts, help him in that matter—their one possibility of estrangement. She lacked the knowledge which renders verbal confidences unnecessary; she was too loving and too human to be happy as an inspiration and an inspiration only; she also had a great desire to give, to aid, to prove her devotion, to be the friend and the fellow-pilgrim.
CHAPTER XII
Brilliant sunlight lit up the grey spires and threatening pinnacles of St. Malo. The back of the ancient fortress was hidden in white mist, but the houses which rose above the battlements facing the harbour, and the shops and little taverns near the quay, shone out in brightness, their windows glittering under the sky where straying clouds, driven by the wind, were melting, as they fled, into the all-encompassing blue ether. Some pigeons and wild gulls circled above the earthworks, darting down, at times, between the massive oak piles which, forced deep into the sand, were covered with shining seaweed. The piercing note of the military bugle, the crack of the cabmen's long whips, the clatter of wooden shoes, and the Angelus bells then chiming, made up a volume of sound which fell on Robert's ears with all the poignant strangeness of an old song heard again after many years. A hundred memories flocked into his mind at the first distant view of that familiar scene: memories of his boyhood, its errors, its visions, its ambitions; his revolt against nature as he understood it, and his desire to keep his heart and soul and senses for the service of God, and the custody of his own ideals. The very centre of his thoughts was here: here he had found the first beginnings of his faith and love. How often he had walked alone upon those ramparts with his New Testament and the Morte d'Arthur, striving, in the fervour of romantic sentiment, to combine the standards of knightly chivalry with the austere counsels of the gospel. The divinity of Christ is the object of eternal contemplations, and at every age—not of the world only, but of the individual—His Humanity, under our fresh knowledge, demands a different study and a fuller understanding. What changes, therefore, experience and suffering had wrought in those early, untried speculations! The ideals remained, but they made for swords, not peace; the sweetness of the dream had become an inflexible law of conscience; the doctrine of a transcendent disdain of this world, accepted in solitude by the obscure youth brought up in a provincial town, had exacted its tax to the uttermost farthing from the man who struggled now with the rich and powerful in a great city of the great universe of affairs.... He thought of his dead godmother, Madame Bertin, with her still, pale face and beautiful hands—a cold, blameless woman who had treated him kindly and misunderstood him always. She had been his father's friend; she had loved him, in her own stern, silent fashion, for his father's sake. O, if she might only know now how much he treasured every impression he had formed of her strong character! She had given him all the tenderness she had, and all the motherly influence his childhood had received. What might his life have been without that early association with a noble if somewhat restricted nature? But these and similar thoughts, while they went deep, passed swiftly and did not return again till a very different moment, when they came with agony and remained for ever.
He and Brigit were the last to leave the boat. They had been so happy there that, by an instinct, they lingered behind the others, unwilling to break the enchantment of their isolation from the land, and half-dreading the unknown trials, or joys, which awaited, surely enough, their first steps upon the soil. As they crossed the plank they looked back, obeying a common impulse, at the deserted deck. Their chairs had already been moved away, and the leeward corner, which had seemed so much their own, was filled up by a small group of sailors who were quarrelling about the division of pourboires. The drive to Miraflores is long and winding, past several small villages, and approached finally through a large tract of fields and orchards. But for the changing crimson of the vines, it might have been August weather. Robins, however, were singing, and the golden, brown, and russet butterflies of autumn were floating languidly above the wayside hedges. The cawing of rooks, the cooing of wood-pigeons, and the hum of insects invaded the stillness of the lonely farms which, at long distances, gave picturesque evidence of the human toil expended on the careful, rather melancholy charm of that northern landscape. The Villa Miraflores—an elaborate reproduction of the celebrated Villa Madama near Rome—stood on a wooded hill rising out of a river, facing the rocky sea-coast. Built by the Archduke Charles of Alberia for his morganatic wife, Henriette Duboc, and pulled down since for the erection of a convent, it is never mentioned in history, and it has been long forgotten by the few inhabitants of the neighbourhood. But as the young couple entered the lodge gates that day, and drove along the stately avenue, the beautiful ill-fated structure rose before them as some castle in the air brought down to earth by a magician's wand. Was this their home? They dared not speak lest the vision should fade too soon. But Orange remembered it all—this was no dream. There were the winding alleys leading to peeps of water, land and sky; there was the path which he had followed, years before, in search of his destiny. He drew a long breath, drinking in the intoxicating strength of the fresh sea air wafted through pine-trees. The atmosphere was charged with the very madness of youth and joy. Who could have hoped for such a miracle as this? Had the whole course of fate a like to show? Did it not seem a triumph over life and its threatened deceptions? His own servant and Brigit's maid—whom they had sent there some days before—were watching for them at the open door, and the sight of those well-known faces gave him a still further assurance of the scene's actuality. They crossed the hall without noticing a small blue telegram on one of the malachite tables. They walked together through every room, wondering at their treasures, looking out of the windows, amazed, bewitched, gradually becoming used to the fact of each other's company in such a solitude. What were the woes and cryings of the outer world to them, lost in the impenetrable silence of that retreat? A strange, double sensation of delight and forgetfulness surged in them both. All knowledge of disturbing human influences, of the fret, and discord, and inquietude of common existence seemed trivial and even false. They looked with confidence into each other's eyes, as though they were the sole inhabitants of some brilliant, inaccessible star set far above the earth and its evil. They were to remain there a month—one month at least—and after that would trials, or labour, or sorrow deluge in bitterness the sweet, eternal recollection of such days? A table had been set for them in one of the small pavilions leading on to a balcony. The scent of flowers, mingling with the sunlight, came in through the open windows, bringing the garden's freshness to the faded lilacs on the carpet and tapestry. Brigit went to the looking-glass, took off her hat, and apologised for her “frightful appearance.” She had thrown her veil and gloves on the sofa, and the mere sight of them there gave a homeliness to that forsaken room which, with its rococo decorations, painted ceilings, and gilded doors, had something of the dead gaiety of an empty theatre. Brigit made the tea, following the English custom taught her by Pensée. Was the water boiling? Did he like sugar? How absurd not to know whether one's husband took cream! The two had seen so little of each other in domestic surroundings that this little commonplace intimacy had an intoxicating charm.
“Are you happy?” she asked suddenly. “Do you know that you are all I love in the world, and I am yours for ever and ever?”