None of the surface ways of life, no exchange of words, no companionship, could have created anything to resemble this inner union which had come about. The woman giving herself with full knowledge, the man possessing with full insight,--this experience had made a spirit common to both, in which both might live apart from each other, so long as they could see with the spirit,--an existence new, deep, inner.
So they talked of the life to be with perfect willingness, as two might who were to part soon for a long journey, which both would share intimately and real loneliness never seize them.
"And beyond this luminous moment," suggested the man,--his the speculative imagination,--"there must lie other levels of intimacy, of comradeship. If we could go on into the years like this, why, the world would ever be new,--we should go deeper into the mysteries every day, discovering ourselves, creating ourselves!"
The warm sunlight, the islands mirrored in the waveless sea, the aromatic breath of the spruce and fir, the salty scent of the tidal sh.o.r.e--this physical world in which they lay--and that other more remote physical world of men and cities--all, all was but the pictured drama of man"s inner life.
As he lived, each day dying and recreated, with an atmosphere of the soul as subtly shifting as the atmosphere of the earth, so this wonderful panorama of his faded, dissolved, was made anew. For out of the panorama of sense man builds his tabernacle, and calls it life, but within the veil there lies hidden beneath a power, that can unlock other worlds,--strange, beautiful worlds, like the mazes of the firmament through which the earth pursues its way. And the tide ebbing past this islet to the sea, flowing fast outward into the deep, carried them in its silent depths out into the new, the mysterious places of the spirit.
The sun sank, covering the islands and the sea with a rare amethystine glow deepening to a band of purple, like some old dyed cloth, then fading to pale green at the rim of the earth. There ensued a hush, a pause in life, that filled the air. "We are fading, we are withdrawing," whispered the elements. "Our hour is past, the riotous hour, the springtime flood, the pa.s.sionate will. And in our place the night will come and bring you peace."
The sadness of change, the sense of something pa.s.sing, of moments slipping away to eternity! ...
"Tell me," she said as they drifted back with the tide, "what is it?"
"Only," he answered, "the thought of waste,--that it should have come late, too late!"
Proudly denying the flaw in the perfect image, she protested:--
"Not late,--the exact hour. Don"t you see that it could never have been until now? Neither of us was ready to understand until we had lived all the mistakes, suffered all. That is the law of the soul,--its great moments can neither be hastened nor delayed. All is appointed."
Her gentle voice touched his heart like a soothing hand,--"Accept--rejoice--be strong--it must be so! And it is good!"
"Dearest, we should have pa.s.sed each other in the dark, without knowing, earlier. You could not have seen me, the thing you love in me, nor I you, until we were stricken with the hunger.... It takes time to know this babbling life, to know what is real and what is counterfeit. Before or after, who knows how it might have been? This was the time for us to meet!"
In these paths her eyes were bright to see the way, her feet accustomed. So it was true. By what they had suffered, apart, by what they had tested and rejected, they had fitted themselves to come together, for this point of time, this flame of fulfilment. Mystery of waste to be accepted. No wistfulness for loss! Brave smiles for that which had been given. And resolved hearts for that to come....
Slowly, with the mood of the day in her lingering feet, Margaret crossed the field towards the Vineys" cottage, while Falkner stayed to make the _Swallow_ ready for its homeward journey in the morning. Joe Viney rowed out to the boat with him. Nodding towards the slight figure on the path above, the fisherman observed simply:--
"She ain"t strong, your wife?"
With that illumined face! He had thought her this day pure force. Later as he followed her slow steps to the camp, he said over the old man"s words, "She ain"t strong." She lived behind her eyes in the land of will and spirit. And the man"s arms ached to take her frail body to him, and keep her safe in some island of rest.
CHAPTER XL
After supper Margaret sat and talked with Mrs. Viney. The fisherman"s wife was a woman of fifty, with a dragging voice, a faint curiosity in her manner. Her iron-gray hair smoothed flat was tied in a little knot behind.
Her husband, a good ten years older, had the vitality of a young man compared with his wife. He was grizzled and squat, with thick red face and powerful shoulders. His eyes twinkled sharply under their fleshy lids; but he exhibited no outward curiosity over the two strangers who had dropped down on his island.
"That woman!" Margaret exclaimed disgustedly to Falkner as they went back to the camp.
"Our excellent hostess? What is the matter with her?"
"She"s a whiner!" Margaret replied hotly. "The woman is always the whiner,--it makes me despise my s.e.x. What do you suppose she wants? She has a sister in Lawrence, Ma.s.s., and Lawrence, Ma.s.s., is her Paris! She wants her husband to give up this, all the life he"s known since he was a boy, and go to live in Lawrence, Ma.s.s., so that she can walk on brick sidewalks and look into shop windows. There"s an ideal for you, my dear!"
Falkner laughed at her outburst. After all an ambition for Lawrence, Ma.s.s., was not criminal.
"Oh, women! ... She wanted me to know that she had seen life,--knew a lady who had rings like mine,--the social instinct in women,--phew! And he smoked his pipe like an honest man and said not a word. He"ll never die in Lawrence, Ma.s.s."
"But it must be lonely for the poor thing here winters; their children have all gone to the city."
"There are ten families at the other end of the island, if she must have some one to clack with."
"Perhaps she doesn"t find the island society congenial," Falkner suggested slyly. He had heard Margaret inveigh against certain less restricted societies.
"But the old man said, "Winters are best of all--when it"s fierce outside, and there"s nothing but yourself to amuse yourself with!" That"s the man.
And he said: "I like the blows, too. I"ve been on the sea all my life, and I don"t know nothing about it to speak on." He has a sense of what it means,--all this greatness about him."
"But her element, you forget, is Lawrence, Ma.s.s."
"The man has the imagination, if he is a man! If he is a man! Woman just tails on,--as I cling to you, dearest!"
"And sometimes I think you would want to take the lead,--to have your own little way."
"Yes, I like my way, too! But the women who think they can strike out alone--live their own lives, as they say--are foolish. The wise women work through men,--accomplish themselves in those they love. Isn"t that bigger than doing all the work yourself?"
"Women create the necessity for man"s work."
"You know I don"t mean that! ... What is bliss is to make the way clear for the one you loved.... I could do that! I"d set my little brain working to smooth away the immediate difficulties, those that hinder, the little things that stick in the way. I"d clean the armor for my lord and bring him nourishing food."
"And point out the particular castle you would like him to capture for your dwelling?"
"Never! If the man were worth serving, he would mark his own game."...
They had walked to the eastern point of the island, where nothing was to be seen but the wide sea. The wind had utterly fallen, leaving the surface of the water mottled with currents from beneath. Far away on the horizon some ships seemed to be sailing--they had wind out there--and their sails still shone in the twilight. About the cliff at their feet the tide ran in black circles. It was still, and the earth was warm and fragrant from the hot day. Margaret rested her head upon his arm and closed her eyes.
"It has been too much for you," he said, concerned.
"No," she murmured, "I am not tired. This is content, at the day"s end. It is marvellous,"--she opened her eyes again upon him with a smile of wonder.
"I haven"t had a moment of fatigue, and I have done so much since yesterday,--more than I have done for years. I wonder what it is gives us women strength or weakness."
"Joy gives strength!"
"Peace gives strength. Sometimes I think that all the weakness in life--women"s weakness--is merely wrong adjustment. It is never work that kills--it isn"t just living, no matter how hard it is. But it is trying to live when you are dead.... Dearest, if we stayed here, I should be always strong! I know it. All the weariness and the pain and the languor would go; I should be what I was meant to be, what every human being is meant to be,--strong to bear."
"It is a bitter thought."
"I suppose that is why men and women struggle so blindly to set themselves right, why they run away and commit all sorts of follies. They feel within them the capacity for health, for happiness, if they can only get right somehow. And when they find the way--"
She made a little gesture with her hand that swept the troubles from the road.
"If they can be sure, it is almost a duty--to put themselves right, isn"t it?"
Here they had come to the temptation which in all their intimate moments they had avoided.... "Others have remade the pattern of their lives,--why not we?" The woman answered the thought in the man"s mind.
"I should never take it, even knowing that it is my one chance for health and all that I desire, not while my father lives, not while my mother-in-law lives; it would add another sorrow to their graves. Nor while my husband has a right to his children. We are all bound in criss-cross in life. Nor would you, dearest, have me; you would hate me,--it would turn our glory to gall!"