Nabin began to argue with me. "Permanent widowhood," said he, "has in it a sense of immense purity and peace; a calm beauty like that of the silent places of the dead shimmering in the wan light of the eleventh moon.[47] Would not the mere possibility of remarriage destroy its divine beauty?"
[47] The eleventh day of the moon is a day of fasting and penance.
Now this sort of sentimentality always makes me furious. In time of famine, if a well-fed man speaks scornfully of food, and advises a starving man at point of death to glut his hunger on the fragrance of flowers and the song of birds, what are we to think of him? I said with some heat: "Look here, Nabin, to the artist a ruin may be a beautiful object; but houses are built not only for the contemplation of artists, but that people may live therein; so they have to be kept in repair in spite of artistic susceptibilities. It is all very well for you to idealise widowhood from your safe distance, but you should remember that within widowhood there is a sensitive human heart, throbbing with pain and desire."
I had an impression that the conversion of Nabin would be a difficult matter, so perhaps I was more impa.s.sioned than I need have been. I was somewhat surprised to find at the conclusion of my little speech that Nabin after a single thoughtful sigh completely agreed with me. The even more convincing peroration which I felt I might have delivered was not needed!
After about a week Nabin came to me, and said that if I would help him he was prepared to lead the way by marrying a widow himself.
I was overjoyed. I embraced him effusively, and promised him any money that might be required for the purpose. Then Nabin told me his story.
I learned that Nabin"s loved one was not an imaginary being. It appeared that Nabin, too, had for some time adored a widow from a distance, but had not spoken of his feelings to any living soul.
Then the magazines in which Nabin"s poems, or rather _my_ poems, used to appear had reached the fair one"s hands; and the poems had not been ineffective.
Not that Nabin had deliberately intended, as he was careful to explain, to conduct love-making in that way. In fact, said he, he had no idea that the widow knew how to read. He used to post the magazine, without disclosing the sender"s name, addressed to the widow"s brother. It was only a sort of fancy of his, a concession to his hopeless pa.s.sion. It was flinging garlands before a deity; it is not the worshipper"s affair whether the G.o.d knows or not, whether he accepts or ignores the offering.
And Nabin particularly wanted me to understand that he had no definite end in view when on diverse pretexts he sought and made the acquaintance of the widow"s brother. Any near relation of the loved one needs must have a special interest for the lover.
Then followed a long story about how an illness of the brother at last brought them together. The presence of the poet himself naturally led to much discussion of the poems; nor was the discussion necessarily restricted to the subject out of which it arose.
After his recent defeat in argument at my hands, Nabin had mustered up courage to propose marriage to the widow. At first he could not gain her consent. But when he had made full use of my eloquent words, supplemented by a tear or two of his own, the fair one capitulated unconditionally. Some money was now wanted by her guardian to make arrangements.
"Take it at once," said I.
"But," Nabin went on, "you know it will be some months before I can appease my father sufficiently for him to continue my allowance. How are we to live in the meantime?" I wrote out the necessary cheque without a word, and then I said: "Now tell me who she is. You need not look on me as a possible rival, for I swear I will not write poems to her; and even if I do I will not send them to her brother, but to you!"
"Don"t be absurd," said Nabin; "I have not kept back her name because I feared your rivalry! The fact is, she was very much perturbed at taking this unusual step, and had asked me not to talk about the matter to my friends. But it no longer matters, now that everything has been satisfactorily settled. She lives at No. 19, the house next to yours."
If my heart had been an iron boiler it would have burst. "So she has no objection to remarriage?" I simply asked.
"Not at the present moment," replied Nabin with a smile.
"And was it the poems alone which wrought the magic change?"
"Well, my poems were not so bad, you know," said Nabin, "were they?"
I swore mentally.
But at whom was I to swear? At him? At myself? At Providence? All the same, I swore.
THE END