A Crystal Age

by W. H. Hudson

"Oh, this is bitterness indeed—a bitterness you cannot know," she resumed after a while. "For you and for others there is always the refuge of death from continued sufferings: the brief pang of dissolution, bravely met, is nothing in comparison with a lingering agony like mine, with its long days and longer nights, extending to years, and that great blackness of the end ever before the mind. This only a mother can know, since the horror of utter darkness, and vain clinging to life, even when it has ceased to have any hope or joy in it, is the penalty she must pay for her higher state."

I could not understand all her words, and only murmured in reply: "You are young to speak of death."

"Yes, young; that is why it is so bitter to think of. In old age the feelings are not so keen." Then suddenly she put out her hands towards me, and, when I offered mine, caught my fingers with a nervous grasp and drew herself to a sitting position. "Ah, why must I be afflicted with a misery others have not known!" she exclaimed excitedly. "To be lifted above the others, when so young; to have one child only; then after so brief a period of happiness, to be smitten with barrenness, and this lingering malady ever gnawing like a canker at the roots of life! Who has suffered like me in the house? You only, Isarte, among the dead. I will go to you, for my grief is more than I can bear; and it may be that I shall find comfort even in speaking to the dead, and to a stone. Can you bear me in your arms?" she said, clasping me round the neck. "Take me up in your arms and carry me to Isarte."

I knew what she meant, having so recently heard the story of Isarte, and in obedience to her command I raised her from the couch. She was tall, and heavier than I had expected, though so greatly emaciated; but the thought that she was Yoletta's mother, and the mother of the house, nerved me to my task, and cautiously moving step by step through the gloom, I carried her safely to that white-haired, moonlit woman of stone in the long gallery. When I had ascended the steps and brought her sufficiently near, she put her arms about the statue, and pressed its stony lips with hers.

"Isarte, Isarte, how cold your lips are!" she murmured, in low, desponding tones. "Now, when I look into these eyes, which are yours, and yet not yours, and kiss these stony lips, how sorely does the hunger in my heart tempt me to sin! But suffering has not darkened my reason; I know it is an offense to ask anything of Him who gives us life and all good things freely, and has no pleasure in seeing us miserable. This thought restrains me; else I would cry to Him to turn this stone to flesh, and for one brief hour to bring back to it the vanished spirit of Isarte. For there is no one living that can understand my pain; but you would understand it, and put my tired head against your breast, and cover me with your grief-whitened hair as with a mantle. For your pain was like mine, and exceeded mine, and no soul could measure it, therefore in the hunger of your heart you looked far off into the future, where some one would perhaps have a like affliction, and suffer without hope, as you suffered, and measure your pain, and love your memory, and feel united with you, even over the gulf of long centuries of time. You would speak to me of it all, and tell me that the greatest grief was to go away into darkness, leaving no one with your blood and your spirit to inherit the house. This also is my grief, Isarte, for I am barren and eaten up by death, and must soon go away to be where you are. When I am gone, the father of the house will take no other one to his bosom, for he is old, and his life is nearly complete; and in a little while he will follow me, but with no pain and anguish like mine to cloud his serene spirit. And who will then inherit our place? Ah, my sister, how bitter to think of it! for then a stranger will be the mother of the house, and my one only child will sit at her feet, calling her mother, serving her with her hands, and loving and worshiping her with her heart!"

The excitement had now burned itself out: she had dropped her head wearily on my shoulder, and bade me take her back. When I had safely deposited her on the couch again, she remained for some minutes with her face covered, silently weeping.

The scene in the gallery had deeply affected me; now, however, while I sat by her, pondering over it, my mind reverted to that vanished world of sorrow and different social conditions in which I had lived, and where the lot of so many poor suffering souls seemed to me so much more desolate than that of this unhappy lady, who had, I imagined, much to console her. It even seemed to me that the grief I had witnessed was somewhat morbid and overstrained; and, thinking that it would perhaps divert her mind from brooding too much over her own troubles, I ventured, when she had grown calm again, to tell her some of my memories. I asked her to imagine a state of the world and the human family, in which all women were, in one sense, on an equality—all possessing the same capacity for suffering; and where all were, or would be, wives and mothers, and without any such mysterious remedy against lingering pain as she had spoken of. But I had not proceeded far with my picture before she interrupted me.

"Do not say more," she said, with an accent of displeasure. "This, I suppose, is another of those grotesque fancies you sometimes give expression to, about which I heard a great deal when you first came to us. That all people should be equal, and all women wives and mothers seems to me a very disordered and a very repulsive idea The one consolation in my pain, the one glory of my life could not exist in such a state as that, and my condition would be pitiable indeed. All others would be equally miserable. The human race would multiply, until the fruits of the soil would be insufficient for its support; and earth would be filled with degenerate beings, starved in body and debased in mind—all clinging to an existence utterly without joy. Life is dark to me, but not to others: these are matters beyond you, and it is presumptuous in one of your condition to attempt to comfort me with idle fancies."

After some moments of silence, she resumed: "The father has said to-day that you came to us from an island where even the customs of the people are different from ours; and perhaps one of their unhappy methods is to seek to medicine a real misery by imagining some impossible and immeasurably greater one. In no other way can I account for your strange words to me; for I cannot believe that any race exists so debased as actually to practice the things you speak of. Remember that I do not ask or desire to be informed. We have a different way; for although it is conceivable that present misery might be mitigated, or forgotten for a season, by giving up the soul to delusions, even by summoning before the mind repulsive and horrible images, that would be to put to an unlawful use, and to pervert, the brightest faculties our Father has given us: therefore we seek no other support in all sufferings and calamities but that of reason only. If you wish for my affection, you will not speak of such things again, but will endeavor to purify yourself from a mental vice, which may sometimes, in periods of suffering, give you a false comfort for a brief season, only to degrade you, and sink you later in a deeper misery. You must now leave me."

This unexpected and sharp rebuke did not anger me, but it made me very sad; for I now perceived plainly enough that no great advantage would come to me from Chastel's acquaintance, since it was necessary to be so very circumspect with her. Deeply troubled, and in a somewhat confused state of mind, I rose to depart. Then she placed her thin, feverish white hand on mine. "You need not go away again," she said, "to indulge in bitter feelings by yourself because I have said this to you. You may come with the others to see me and talk to me whenever I am able to sit here and bear it. I shall not remember your offense, but shall be glad to know that there is another soul in the house to love and honor me."