I have been thinking a good deal about this; I do not believe, Corydon, that a man more haunted by the madness of desire ever lived upon earth than I. And when I get at the essence of myself, I do not believe that I am a kind man; I think that a person with less patience for human hearts never existed, perhaps with less feeling. There is only one thing in the world that I can be sure of, or that you can, my fidelity to my ideal!
I know that however often I may fail or weaken, however many mistakes I may make, my hunger for the things of the soul will _never_ leave me, and that night and day I shall work for them. I do not believe I have the right to promise you anything else, I have no right to dream of anything else; this is not my pleasure, as I feel it, it is a frenzy, it is that to which some blind and nameless and merciless impulse drives me. And I may try to persuade myself all my life that I love you, Corydon, and nothing else, and want nothing else; and all the time in the depths of my heart I hear these words from my conscience--"You are a fool." I love power, I love life, and seek them and strive for them, and care for nothing else and never have; and nothing else can satisfy me.
And I cannot give any other love than this, any other promise.
IX
My dear Corydon:
I have been taking a walk this morning, thinking about us, and that I had treated you fearfully. The whole truth of it all is this--that I am so raw and so young and so helpless (and you are as much, if not more so) that I cannot, to save my life, be sure if my love for you is what it ought to be, or even if I could love any one as I ought. And I am so wretchedly dissatisfied! Do you know that for two weeks I have been trying to write a pa.s.sage of my book--and before G.o.d, I _cannot!_ I have not the power, I have not the life!
Dear Corydon, it comes to me that you are _miserable_ to be in love with me--that I had no right to put this burden on your shoulders. I would say better things if I could, but I think that our marriage will be a setting out across a wild ocean in the dark! It is for you to be the heroine, to dare the voyage if you choose. These sound like wild words, but they are the truth of my life, and I dare not say any others. Can a girl who has been brought up in gentleness and sweetness, in innocence of life and of pain--can she say things, feel things like these?
X
Thyrsis:
G.o.d did not endow me with your tongue, or else it would not be the great effort it is to me to tell you some of the thoughts that have rushed through my mind in the last hour.
It is an hour since I began to read your letter of Horrible Truth. Now it seems to me it might have been in the last year, in the last century.
Actually I feel like a stranger to myself; and my movements are very slow. First, I will tell you that I believe in G.o.d, oh, so implicitly--this thought gives me infinite hope. I long to let you know as much of my heart as I can, if I am to be your life-companion, as I firmly believe I am to be. I have such a strange calmness now, and I imagine that I must feel very much the way Rip Van Winkle did when he awoke. I want to try to show you my heart--it is right that I should try, is it not?
Know that I have placed much faith and trust in you, in anything that you did. If you opened one door to me and told me it led to the great and permanent truth, I believed you absolutely. If you hauled me back and put me through an opposite one, telling me that there my road lay, I believed you with equal faith. Now, now, at the end of an hour, I am, through you, convinced of one door, the only and true entrance; and I am as sure as I am that the sun is shining at this moment, that nothing in G.o.d"s world can ever again make me lose sight of it. I have found that _you_ can lose sight of it, Thyrsis,--something shows me that I have in the last month been more right than you. Yes, I have, Thyrsis, though you may not know it. And the reason I couldn"t stay right was because I am not strong enough to grasp my good impulses, and keep hold of them: because I have not enough faith in the soul within me.
I will try to tell you what I have felt since reading your letter. All is so disgustingly calm in me now. But listen, I believe I have had a little glimpse this afternoon of what it is to _feel_; and because of that knowledge I now am not afraid to tell you that I claim something of G.o.d and life--that I can get it if you can. This has been very strong in me at moments, but, as I tell you, I have not yet learned to hold my glimpses of truth--they seem to come to me, and as quickly disappear.
I began to read your letter, and I cannot describe to you the convulsion that came over me. It seemed that I had the feeling of an empty skull on a desert; such a feeling--you can never have it! All the horror and despair! I tried to form my thoughts and tell myself it was not true.
I tried to pray, and I did pray--out loud--and asked G.o.d to give me strength to read the letter.
I tried to use all the penetration I was capable of, to find out one thing, whether you were purely and unreservedly sincere in it. I wondered whether you really wished to live your life alone, but could not find the courage to tell me so. I firmly believe that no failure in the future, no disgust or helplessness, could ever bring me the complete anguish of those moments.
Can you realize what such a thing meant to me, Thyrsis?
Last spring, I had succeeded in bringing myself into an almost complete state of coma--I saw that I could do nothing, and because I would not endure such profitless pain I drugged myself to sleep. And you, you fiend, waked me up; and may your soul be thrice cursed if you have only pulled the doll to pieces _to see what it was made of!_ Know, you that have a soul which says it lives and suffers--that I can"t go to sleep again! There is no joy for me in mother or father, in friends or admiration--I can tolerate nothing that I tolerated before you came with your cursed or blessed fire!
Also, if you do not marry me, or if I do not find some man who has your strength and desire for life, and who will take me and help me to learn, I shall die without having lived.--And I cried out in misery--only forty-two years, only forty-two little years, and I shall be an old woman of sixty! Only forty-two years in which to learn to live!
I believe if I had you here now I could almost strangle you. We may kill each other some day. I sometimes feel that there is nothing that will give me any relief, that I cannot breathe, I cannot support my body. But these are foolish and unprofitable feelings--and I believe I will yet be saved, if not by you, perhaps by myself. I think some heavenly aid came to me to-day. I asked for it, I simply said it _must_ come--and now I am able to bear myself and look around me, and say that the secret of my liberation is not death but life.
Please realize, Thyrsis, that I know you do not need me, that I cannot either entertain you or help you. My dear, do you not know that I have been conscious of this from the very beginning--and it has been this thought that has often made me worry, and doubt, and question. And then I have told myself that you had found _something_ in me to love; and that I also was very hungry to know about life and G.o.d; and that if you loved me enough to believe I was not dross, we might, with our untiring devotion--well, we might be right in going with each other. And now--would you rather I should tell you I will not marry you, be my desire, or effort, what it may? I do not know--even though I want to live so terribly. I have no word, no proof to give!
And now, Thyrsis, I have no more strength to write. I only wish I had some power to make you know what I have felt this afternoon--I think if I could, you would have no more doubt of me. And I believe it is my G.o.d-given right not to doubt myself.
I will write no more--I have written enough to make you answer one of two things. "Come with me," or, "I would rather go alone." I know which one it will be, even now in my wretchedness. The sky is so blue this evening, and everything is so beautiful--and I am trying so hard to be right, to feel strong and confident!
XI
Dear Thyrsis:
I have just arisen. I woke in the middle of the night, and there was a spectre sitting by my bedside to frighten me; he succeeded at first, but I managed finally to get rid of him, and to find some peace. Many of your sentences came to me, and I was able to get behind the words, and I saw plainly that the letters were just what you should have written, and that they could not but benefit me. They have accomplished their purpose, I believe--they are burned into my soul, and have placed me rightly in our relation. I shall simply never trust the permission you may give me, in the future, to rest or be satisfied. I shall only hate you, for the pain of some of your words I shall _never_ forget.
The memory of the first two pages of your letter will always put me in mortal terror of you. For the rest, I am very grateful, and I will try to show you how I love your ideal. I can never repay you as long as I live for letting me come with you. Oh Thyrsis, I am sure that I will never think or care whether you love me or not, if only I may go with you and learn how to strive!
I tore up all your love-letters this morning. I kept the last letter--though I do not think I could bear to read it over. I should be afraid of again going through with that despair. Oh, I beg for the time when I shall be obliged to waste none of my minutes--and when I shall have no opportunity of writing you! What _time_ I have spent over your letters and mine!
XII
Dear Thyrsis:
I am restlessly waiting for the supper-bell to ring, and my head is aching intensely, and I am generally topsy-turvy. Alas! alas! the distance that separates us and our understanding!
I received a letter to-day while I was studying--but said I would not open it for a week, that I wanted strength to study. Well, I studied all the afternoon and found it none too easy. When I came home, I thought perhaps it was better to read your letter, which I grimly did.
Do you know, you are keeping me on the rack, literally on the rack, and my flesh and blood do not seem to be able to stand it--my body seems to be the organ that first fails me, my brain is never so tired as my body.
I love to think that you are not less merciful to me than you would be to yourself, I feel that you could not have used more cruel whips to yourself. Do you suppose that any disgust, scolding, or malediction to me could, as your wife, hurt me, as your doubt of me hurts me now?
And I just begin to read your letter again, and I tell you, you are a fool. You say you do not know whether you could love any one as you ought--well, I, with all my weakness, know whether _I_ can love, and I love you a thousand times more than you have given me cause to. And you are so _hungry!_ Will you always starve because you are blind? As to being _satisfied,_ how could you be? But you say you will love me as much as I deserve. How much do I deserve--do you know? I sometimes cry out against you and long to get hold of you. If you have genius, why doesn"t it give you some inkling whether you are a man with a heart, not only a stupid boy? And then I see it all plainly, or think I do, and know that you are trying so hard to be right towards us, because you think you love me the way other people love; and you know if I am weak, it would degrade your genius; and you cannot be sure of my character or strength. You cannot know whether I realize the life I am selecting--you have found it hard, and you have every reason to think that I will find it ten times harder; and you love me in a way that is not the highest,--but yet you love me enough, thank G.o.d, to tell me the whole truth!
I have come to a pa.s.s where I can say to myself with truth, that I do not care how much or how little you love me. That depends upon _you_, as well as myself. I believe the time will come, when you will love me as you ought, and I say this in perfect calm conviction, in all my weakness, and with all my maudlin habits clinging to me. Strangely enough your doubt of me has made me rise up in arms to champion my cause, or else I should lie down forever in the dust, and deny my G.o.d.
I wonder whether it is my love for you that makes me believe? I cling to you, as a mother might cling to her child; I cling to you as the embodiment, the promise, of all I will ever find true in life. I look to live in you, to fulfil all my possibilities in you, and if you die or forsake me, all my hope is gone, and I am dead. This is a letter in which I have no scorn or doubt, or ridicule of myself, as formerly.
And then you ask me, "Can a girl brought up in gentleness and sweetness, and innocence of life and of pain, can she say things, feel things like these?" It is the gentleness and sweetness and innocence that are galling to me. I can tolerate no more of them. They have warped me, they have given me no chance. But I have had some pain in my life, and since I have known you I have known more about pain and what it brings, and leaves.--And now I am feeling ill, and I cannot control that. Oh, G.o.d!
XIII
Dearest Corydon:
I have a chance to finish the first part of my book to-day, and save myself from Hades; and here I am writing to you--just a line. (Of course it turned out to be six pages!)
Your last letter was very n.o.ble; I can only say to you, that the treatment which makes you upbraid me is not done for _my_ sake; that the life which I live is not lived for _my_ sake. You say perhaps you are better than I; it is very possible--I often think so myself; but that is nothing to the point. I should be very wretched if I sat down to think what I am. Oblige me by being better than my ideal--if you can! You must understand, dearest, that behind all that I am doing, there is truth to the soul; and that truth to the soul is love, and the only love. I am seeking for nothing but the privilege of treating you as myself; and rest a.s.sured, that if I treat you any differently it will be better than I treat myself! There is no peril in our life except that!
Some day you will understand that I can sometimes feel about myself that I am utterly hateful, utterly false, utterly shallow and _bad_; and that to get away from myself would be all that I desire in life. I cannot imagine my having such opinion of you; but some dissatisfaction--just a little--I may have. Only let us love perfection, you and I, with all our souls, and I think our love for each other may safely be allowed to take care of itself. Remember the two ships in Clough"s poem, which parted, but sailed by the compa.s.s, and reached the same port.
I shall spend no more time comforting you about this.
And dear Corydon, when you are angry at my doubting your power, and say that I do not know you, I can only reply--Why of course I don"t, and neither do you. You find your own self out little by little--why get angry with me because I don"t know it until you tell me? You are a grown woman compared to what you were three months ago; and this character that you ask me to know--well, it takes years of hard labor to prove a character.
XIV
Dearest Corydon:
Do you ever realize how much _faith_ in you I have? As utterly different is your whole life, as if you had been in another world; and through all the wilderness that I have travelled, I hope to drag you. But I cannot carry you, or take you; I must trust in the frenzy of your grip upon me.
There is nothing else you could have that I would trust. You might be wonderfully clever and wonderfully wise--and I could do nothing with you. Do you remember Beethoven"s saying, that he would like to take a certain woman, if he had time, and marry her and break her heart, so that she might be able to sing?
Ah dear heart, I wish you could read in my words what I feel! I wonder if I am dreaming when I live in this ideal of what a woman"s love can be--so complete and so utter a surrender, so complete a forgetting, a losing of the self, so complete a living in another heart! I am not afraid to ask just this from a woman--from you! For I have enough heart"s pa.s.sion to satisfy every thirst that you may feel. Ah, Corydon, I want you! I am drunk with the thought of _making_ a woman to love.
I wonder if any man ever thought of that before! Artists go about the world with the great hunger of their hearts, and expecting to find by chance another soul like the one they have spent years in making beautiful and swift and strong; but has anyone ever thought that instead of writing books that no one understands, he might be making another kind of an artwork--one that would be alive, and with sacred possibilities of its own?
XV