They went a last time to the city.... There was a place for a chair, and they had seen an old urn in a by-street which belonged near the Spring. They felt that these products of [Pg 214]men had to be just so, and that they had earned a great boon in being given a part at stone cottage. The things that were brought there must endure; must reason together in long leisure concord, putting on the same inner hue at the last and mellowing together as old friends, or old mates. This time, Bellair’s eyes did not meet the city quite as before; it was not as a stranger exactly, who rambles through a port while his ship lies in the offing. His real berth was an hour’s ride back from the city and made of stone. Perhaps later he would find work to do here.... A child passed them in the store, and brought the change after their purchase—a boy of twelve or fourteen, his face old with care. It made Bellair think of Davy Acton at Lot & Company’s. They bought a bit of glass, a bit of silver, some linen and a rug, and rode home with their arms full.
Another letter had come from one of the Island headquarters of Stackhouse, in answer to Bellair’s inquiry concerning affairs. The papers in the wallet had given him clues to the various insular interests; and the replies, without exception, represented the attitudes of agents ready and open to authority from without. Stackhouse had left no centre of force that appeared to have vitality enough to rise in its own responsibility. Bellair saw that sooner or later he must make a visit to these different interests, and that the place of the wallet for the time being, at least, amounted to headquarters. He wrote as explicitly as possible in reply to the letters, promised to call in due course, established a freedom where his judgment permitted, but felt the whole vast business very loosely in hand. New York was first, and it became very clear to him, especially on this night, that New York must be entered upon without further delay. There was a thrill of dismay in the thought of the weeks that had passed, and the dreaming. Dreams were good. He had needed these days; great adjustments and healings had taken place. It had been the pleasant lull between the old and new, the only rest his life had known, in fact. All its beauty was massed into the period—but the dreams must be turned into action now.
A man may stay just so long in joy. There are moments in every life when the hour strikes for parting. The lover does well to leave his lady then quickly. There is an understanding in the world that the woman invariably whispers, Stay, but very often an organisation of force that makes austerity possible, does not come from the man alone. If the moment of parting passes, the two still lingering together, a shadow enters between them, blurring their faces for each other’s eyes, dimming the dream.
It does not come from without. The train missed, the passage paid for and not connected, the column that marches away, one set broken, the sentry post to which a strange figure is called—these are but matters to laugh at afterward. The shadow comes between them from their own failure. It is slow to lift. In the final elevation of romance, there shows one sunken length.... There is the moment of meeting and the moment of parting; that which lies between, whether an hour or generation, forms but the equal third, for the great love intervals of human kind are not measured by time, but by the opening of the doors of the heart. By the very laws of our being, the doors draw together against rapture prolonged. The man who crosses the world to live one day with his sweetheart, sees her at last in the doorway or the trysting-place as he cannot see her again; and in the tear of parting, something different of her, something that has been occulted, clears magically for his eyes. It must not blind him to remain, for it is her gift to abide with him over the divide. It passes, not to come again if he remains; rapture falls into indulgence; the fibre of integrity weakens and lets them down into mere mortals. Man is not ready for the real revelation of romance in whom a master does not arise at the stroke.
That night there was a mew at the door. They had finished tea and were sitting by the fire. The woman opened the door and a young tabby-puss walked leisurely in, moved in a circle about the room, tail held high. Chair and table and lounge, she brushed against, standing upon her toes, eyes blinking at the fire. The woman brought a saucer of milk. The visitor drank, as if that were all very well, but that she could have done well enough until breakfast. Apparently it was not her way to land upon friends in a starving condition. Before the fire, she now sat, adding a point to her toilet from time to time, inspecting it carefully and long. Finally she turned to the woman, hopped upon her knee and settled to doze. She had accepted them, and they called her Elsie.
“Little-Else-to-do,” said the woman.
They stood beside the child’s bed later that night.
It rained, and the home closed in upon them with its cheer and humble beauty. He saw her hand now in everything—even the rungs of the chairs shone in the firelight. The hearth was swept. Her face—it was a place of power, and such a fusion of tenderness was there, the eyes pure and merciful. All that he had known before her coming was unfinished, explanatory. She had shown him what a human adult woman should be in this year of our Lord. His soul yearned to her; his whole life nestling to this place of hers—as her stone cot nestled to the cliff.... She was always very quiet about her love for the child when he was near. That was because he loved the Gleam so well.... Yet he had seen the Firelight Madonna.
“You have made it all I can do—to go away,” he said.