“Most people would think it simply a happy and beautiful piece of music,” he said. “Most people think that of the springtime; but when a man has lived as I, he may find that the springtime too is a great labor and a great suffering,—he does not forget that for the thousands of creatures that win the great fight and come forth rejoicing, there are thousands and tens of thousands that go down, and have their mite of life crushed out, and find the law very stern indeed. Even those that win do it by a fearful effort, and cannot keep their beauty long; so that the springtime passion takes on a kind of desperate intensity when one thinks of it.”
The voice ceased again for a moment, and Helen stood gazing about her; the words were not without a dimly-felt meaning to her just then, and the tone of the man's voice seemed like the music she had heard him play. She would have liked to stay and listen, tho she knew that she had no right to. She was certain that she had not been seen, because the little house was thickly wrapped about with eglantine; and she stood, uncertain as to whether she ought to steal back or go out and join the two men. In the meantime the voice began again:
“It gives a man a new feeling of the preciousness of life to know keenly what it means to fail, to be like a tiny spark, struggling to maintain itself in the darkness, and finding that all it can do is not sufficient, and that it is sinking back into nothingness forever. I think that is the meaning of the wild and startled look that the creatures of the forest wear; and it is a very tragic thing indeed to realize, and makes one full of mercy. If he knows his own heart he can read the same thing in the faces of men, and he no longer even laughs at their pride and their greediness, but sees them quite infinitely wretched and pitiable. I do not speak merely of the poor and hopeless people, the hunted creatures of society; for this terror is not merely physical. It is the same imperative of life that makes conscience, and so every man knows it who has made himself a slave to his body, and sees the soul within him helpless and sinking; and every man who has sinned and sees his evil stamped upon the face of things outside him, in shapes of terror that must be forever. Strange as it may seem, I think the man who lives most rightly, the man of genius, knows the feeling most of all, because his conscience is the quickest. It is his task to live from his own heart, to take the power that is within him and wrestle with it, and build new universes from it,—to be a pioneer of the soul, so to speak, and to go where no man has ever been before; and yet all his victory is nothing to him, because he knows so well what he might have done. Every time that he shrinks, as he must shrink, from what is so hard and so high in his own vision, he knows that yet another glory is lost forever, and so it comes that he stands very near indeed to the'tears of things.'”
Mr. Howard stopped again, and Helen found herself leaning forward and wondering.
“I know more about those tears than most people,” the man went on slowly, after a long pause, “for I have had to build my own life in that way; I know best of all the failure, for that has been my lot. When you and I knew each other, I was very strong in my own heart, and I could always find what joy and power I needed for the living of my life; but there have come to me since, in the years that I have dwelt all alone with my great trial, times when I think that I have stood face to face with this thing that we speak of, this naked tragedy and terror of existence. There have been times when all the yearning and all the prayer that I had could not save me, when I have known that I had not an ounce of resource left, and have sat and watched the impulse of my soul die within me, and all my strength go from me, and seen myself with fearful plainness as a spark of yearning, a living thing in all its pitifulness and hunger, helpless and walled up in darkness. To feel that is to be very near indeed to the losing creatures and their sorrow, and the memory of one such time is enough to keep a man merciful forever. For it is really the deepest fact about life that a man can know;—how it is so hazardous and so precious, how it keeps its head above the great ocean of the infinite only by all the force it can exert; it happens sometimes that a man does not discover that truth until it is too late, and then he finds life very cruel and savage indeed, I can tell you.”
Mr. Howard stopped, and Helen drew a deep breath; she had been trembling slightly as she stood listening; then as he spoke again, her heart gave a violent throb. “Some day,” he said, “this girl that we were talking about will have to come to that part of her life's journey; it is a very sad thing to know.”
“She will understand her sonata better,” said the officer.
“No,” was the reply; “I wish I could think even that; I know how sorrow affects a person whose heart is true, how it draws him close to the great heart of life, and teaches him its sacredness, and sends him forth merciful and humble. But selfish misery and selfish fear are no less ugly than selfish happiness; a person who suffers ignobly becomes only disgusted and disagreeable, and more selfish than ever. * * * But let us not talk any more about Miss Davis, for it is not a pleasant subject; to a man who seeks as I do to keep his heart full of worship the very air of this place is stifling, with its idleness and pride. It gives the lie to all my faith about life, and I have only to go back into my solitude and forget it as soon as I can.”
“That ought not to be a difficult thing to do,” said the officer.
“It is for me,” the other answered; “it haunts my thoughts all the time.” He paused for a while, and then he added, “I happened to think of something I came across this morning, in a collection of French verse I was reading; William, did you ever read anything of Auguste Brizeux?”