"But that will be to leave you, mother. How can I do that, especially now, when I know what your life has been?"
"It is the fate of mothers, dearest, and it is a joyous fate. What matter where you go? I shall still live in you. Don"t you see, dear, that my life reaches its height to-night, and through you? I have paid twenty years of loneliness and tears for this hour, and I find the price light. Do you think I grudge a few more years of separation?
And they will not be lonely. I have wept my last tears for you. I have triumphed after all, and nothing can rob me of my triumph."
The supreme self-abnegation of that speech was too great to be understood all at once. It came upon him by degrees; perhaps it would be true to say that it was only after many years, when he stood beside his mother"s grave, that he understood its full significance. But enough of that significance was felt even now to fill his soul with wonder. He saw only the first page in the sacred gospel of motherhood, but he caught its meaning. To ask nothing, to give everything, to purchase momentary rapture with the grief of years, to toil without reward, to love and be forgotten, to yield flesh and heart for the nurture of the seeds of life in others, to create for them the unpartic.i.p.ated victory--that was the destiny of motherhood, a thing not less sacred than the love that once endured the Cross for man. To find himself so loved was an overwhelming thought. Beneath its weight he lay breathless, in an ecstasy of marvel.
"Yes, you must go away," she continued. "Shall I tell you why?"
"Yes, mother, tell me."
"Because if you stay in London you will never find your freedom. In London the net is drawn so close that individuality is strangled.
London insists upon conformity. It grinds men down by slow attrition to a common likeness. I have thought it all over. It is because there are cities like London, full of avarice and pleasure, that the best men grow into criminals without knowing it. Your father might have been a good man if he had never seen London.
"And there is another reason too. Your father, in spite of his anger, will not give you up. He will try to keep you near him, even though you are not his partner in the business. He will bribe you by his generosity, subdue you by his forgiveness. And he is a strong man, remember, who always gets his own way sooner or later. Don"t you know that, Arthur?"
"Do you mean that his very love for me is a peril, mother?"
"Yes, that is what I mean, my dear. You don"t know what it means to be subject to the constant pressure of a strong man who loves you. But I know. It is that which has reduced my own life to futility. If I had hated your father, my hatred would have given me strength to leave him.
But because I loved him, I learned to distinguish between him and his sin. Oh! there have been many times when I have been almost overcome; times when I have said, "What is the use of struggle?" It were wiser to submit at once, to accept a strong man"s love with grat.i.tude, to ask no questions, to become like the rest. I have never really submitted, but I have compromised, and that has meant futility! But you are different. You have your chance to escape, to build your own life. I don"t want your life to be futile, as mine has been. It is the torture of all tortures. Arthur, I think I would rather see you dead!"
"But you, mother, how can I leave you?"
"Have I not told you I wish you to go? Do you think I am so selfish, dear, that I would have you stay with me to your loss? That would be my loss too, and a worse loss than any I have yet endured. My heart says, Stay; but see, I pluck the weakness from my heart. Arthur, I command you to go."
She rose as she spoke. The moon had sunk. The first gray gleam of day was in the sky, and suddenly the earliest sunbeam clothed her. In that fuller light he saw her face irradiated.
"I will go," he said.
She drew him to her, and kissed his brow.
"There speaks my own true son," she said.
For some moments a deep silence filled the room. A bird twittered in the dawn-light; London turned like a weary sleeper on a couch of pain; a wind, fresh from the fountains of the day, blew hopefully, with a hint of free seas and far-off lands.
"Promise me one thing, my son."
"What is that, mother?"
"It is that whatever your life may be, it shall be honest. Rich or poor, defeated or successful, accept no gain by violence, win no pleasure by dishonour. O my son, you know why I say this, you know what I mean by it."
"Yes, I know, mother, and I promise."
"And go at once, my dear. I have foreseen this hour and have provided for it. You will not go without money. You need not be ashamed to take it; it is yours. I have saved it, and for you. And now G.o.d bless you, my dear, dear son!"
She withdrew herself from his arms and was gone. The full day shone now, and from its shining summits Arthur heard the bugle cry, calling him to distant lands and new life.
PART TWO
THE AMERICAN MADONNA
XI
NEW YORK
If he had been able to earn his living in any conventional and accepted way, he would not have been on his way to join the S.S. _Saurian_ as she lay off the landing-stage at Southampton on that bright September morning. The poor must needs learn a trade, because a trade is necessary to mere existence; but it is the tragedy of the rich and the semi-rich that, when once deprived of the artificial security of riches, they are helpless.
Arthur had plenty of time to do battle with this afflicting thought as he travelled down to Southampton. It accompanied him, like a voice of irony, in the rushing wheels; flashed upon him in the sentinel telegraph posts, each bearing aloft its spark of silent fire; saluted him from a hundred fields where men stood bare-armed beside the loaded wains; mocked him in casual glimpses of firm faces behind the gla.s.s of signal-boxes, in hurrying porters at the points of stoppage, in groups of labourers leaning lightly on spade or mattock, as the train thundered past. In all these faces, common as they were, there was a look of proud efficiency. In every sight and sound was the vindication of human toil. These men, each in his several way, had solved the problem of life. Each had learned to do something which the world wanted done. They did the work required of them, undistracted by problems and philosophies; asked no questions concerning the structure of society or the nature of life; were content to add their stone to the cairn, to pa.s.s on and be forgotten, and to earn the final simple elegy, "home have gone and ta"en their wages."
But Arthur--what did he know of this primeval life of man, which had gone on from the dawn of the world, unchanged by change of dynasties, by the readjustment of nations, by the birth and death of a hundred intricate philosophies, literatures, reforms, social experiments, social reconstructions? He knew less than the humblest child who followed the reapers in the field, or began the perilous process of existence by earning casual pence in the mine or factory. Like so many youths in an age when all forms of hand-labour have lost their dignity, he had learned a hundred things which lent a false glamour to existence, but not one which supplied its vital needs. He had acc.u.mulated accomplishments, but had not developed efficiencies, as though one should adorn and decorate a machine in which the works were lacking.
"Let me reckon up my capital," he thought as the train rushed on; "let me ascertain my authentic stock-in-trade. I have some knowledge of Greek literature and Roman history, but it is probable that in all this train-load of human creatures there are not half a dozen who would attach the least value to my knowledge. I can decipher old French chronicles with fair success; I know enough of music to understand the theory of counterpoint, and enough of poetry to construct a decent sonnet; and, so far as I can see, these are not commodities which possess any marketable value. I have thirty pounds given me by my mother; but if my life depended upon my earning thirty pence, I know no possible method by which I might wrest the most wretched pittance from the world"s closed fist. I am, in fact, an incompetent, but through no fault of my own. It seems that I have been elaborately trained to do a great number of things which no one wants done, but not one of the things for which the world makes eager compensation. What were mere pastime to the savage is to me an inaccessible display of effort; left alone with the whole open world for my kingdom, it is doubtful if I could build a house, grow a potato, bake a loaf, or secure the barest means of life. Such is my deplorable condition that it is possible--no, entirely certain, that the poorest emigrant in this rushing freight of men and women would scruple to change places with me. That"s a pretty situation for a gentleman of England and an Oxford graduate, isn"t it?"
He smiled mirthlessly at the thought. Yet while it humiliated him, youth a.s.serted its right sufficiently to extract from it a certain flavour of exhilaration. He was at all events coming to grips with the reality of living. He had been like a boy swimming upon bladders; the bladders were now removed, and a potent and tremendous sea throbbed beneath him. Since he could depend no more on artificial aids to life, it followed that life must needs develop its own latent forces. There surely must be such forces in himself, an elemental manhood which must justify itself. There recurred to him a saying of Hilary Vickars.
They had been discussing one night the infinite and elusive question of wherein lay the wisdom of life, when Vickars had abruptly said, "Practice is the only teacher. You learn to walk by walking, to swim by swimming, to live by living. The child has no theory about walking: he simply walks, at the price of a thousand tears and bruises. In the same way we must make the experiment of living in order to learn how to live. It is the same with religion. We make the experiment of G.o.d before we can find G.o.d. The particular folly of men to-day is that they think wisdom comes by talking about wisdom. One honest attempt to do something, however blunderingly, is worth a lifetime of discussion about how it should be done."
"Yet Browning held that the great thing planned was better than the little thing achieved," he had responded.
"Browning also was a talker rather than a doer," Vickars had replied.
"He misleads men by the very robustness of his talk into the notion that great dreams can take the place of great actions. Don"t let him mislead you. Remember what I say, that the great business of life is to live, not to criticise life."
He remembered the words now, and they acquired new significance as he studied the faces of his comrades. There were four men in the carriage with him, one of them middle-aged, the others mere youths. The middle-aged man had a good, plain, country face, with a fringe of gray whisker; two of the youths were clearly country-bred, the third had the alert look and pallor of the city. The middle-aged man sat in stolid silence, with his big knotted hands folded on his knees; the two country youths watched the flying fields with eagerness; the city youth had produced a zither, on which he was strumming hymn-tunes. "Safe in the arms of Jesus," was the tune he strummed.
"Thank you, sir," said the middle-aged man. "It kind of cheers one up a bit to hear that."
"It"s the only tune I really know," said the youth apologetically.
"You see, I"m only a beginner."
"My little girl used to sing it. Learned it in a Sunday school at Newcastle. She"s dead now."
The simple words had the effect of dissolving the reticence of these chance travellers. They began to talk, and very soon each was relating his history. The two country youths had the least to say. They had heard there was work in America with good pay; in that statement their entire history was comprehended. They had not the least idea of the country they were going to; its very geography was as much a mystery to them as the binomial theorem; they were, in fact, staking everything upon a rumour, and Arthur found their very ignorance at once deplorable and wonderful as an expression of the hopeful courage of the human heart. The London youth was more garrulous, and slightly better informed. It seemed he had a relative who had promised him a place in a small business which he managed near Philadelphia.
"I am a clerk, you know. A man who is a good clerk can always get on in any commercial centre. Except in London. There everything"s congested, too many people and not enough work to go round England," he p.r.o.nounced oracularly, "is done. Her day"s over."
It seemed the younger men endorsed this verdict with surprising unanimity. Each was a fugitive from an unequal battle. Men could not live on the land, because of high rents and exorbitant taxation; neither could they live in cities, because over-population and excessive compet.i.tion had reduced wages to starvation point; "England was all very well for the rich--let them live in it as they could--but a poor man couldn"t, and that was about the size of it."
"But surely you two could live well enough," said Arthur to the country youths.
"Oh, live--yes," said one; "but what is there at the end of it all?
Nothing but the workhouse."
"Yes, that"s it," said the middle-aged man slowly, "but there"s workhouses in the States, too. Don"t you be deceiving of yourselves.
England ain"t no worse than other places."
"And why are you leaving it then, I"d like to know?" said the London youth.