It was not her habit to put her hands before her eyes. She was clear with herself, and without the sentimental fog. For the Bishop"s creed she cared nothing. For her mother-in-law"s prejudices she cared as little. The punishment of Society she would have met with gleeful contempt. People could not take from her what she valued, for she had stripped so much that there was little left in her heart to be deprived of. As for her husband, he did not exist for her; towards him she was spiritually blind. Her children were so much a part of her that she never thought of them as away from her. Where she went, they would be, as a matter of course.
They had never laid all this on the table before them, so to speak, but both had realized it from the beginning. They had walked beside the social precipice serene, but aware of the depths--and the heights.
"I hate to be limited by the opinions, the prejudices, of other people, of any one," the man protested. "There seems a cowardice in silently acquiescing in social laws that I don"t respect, because the majority so wills it."
"Not because it is the will of the majority--not that; but because others near you will be made wretched. That is the only morality I have!"
The law of pity in the place of the law of G.o.d! A fragile leash for pa.s.sion and egotism. They both shuddered.
The dusk gathered all about them. Her head still rested on his breast, and her hand stole to his face. She whispered, "So we pay the forfeit--for our blindness!"
"And if I stay--"
"Don"t say it! Don"t say that! Do you think that I could be here this moment in your arms if _that_ were possible?"
Her voice trembled with scorn, disgust of the adulterous world.
"Hiding and corner lies for us? No, no, my lover,--not for _you!_ Not even for _me_. That is the one price too great to pay for happiness. It would kill it all. Kill it! Surely. I should become in your eyes--like one of--_them_. It would be--oh, you understand!" She buried her head in his coat.
Again she had saved them, kept the balance of their ideal. She would have love, not hidden l.u.s.t. What she had done this once could never be done again without defilement. She had come to him as to a man condemned to die, to leave the earth forever, and the one most precious thing he wanted and the one most precious thing that she had to give,--that she had given freely--to the man condemned to death.
"We have come all the hard way up the heights to infinite joy, to Peace!
Shall we throw ourselves down into the gulf?"...
In the night Falkner woke with a start, putting out his hand to fend off a catastrophe. She was not there by his side! For one moment fear filled his mind, and then as he sprang up he saw her in the faint moonlight, leaning against the post of the veranda, looking out into the night. At his movement she turned.
"The night was too beautiful to sleep through, dearest! I have so much to think about."
She came back to his side and knelt above him, drawing her cloak around her. "See! we are all alone here under the stars." The fog had stolen in from the sea, risen as high as the trees, and lay close over land and ocean. The heavens were cloudless, and the little moon was low. "Those tranquil stars up there! They give us our benediction for the time to come.... We have had our supreme joy--our desire of desires--and now Peace shall enter our hearts and remain there. That is what the night says.... It can never be as it was before for you or me. We shall carry away something from our feast to feed on all our lives. We shall have enough to give others. Love makes you rich--so rich! We must give it away, all our lives.
We shall, dearest, never fear."
For the soul has its own sensualities,--its self-delight in pain, in humiliation,--its mood of generosity, too. The penetrating warmth of a great pa.s.sion irradiates life about it.
"My children, my children," she murmured, "I love them more--I can do for them more. And for dear Mother Pole--and even for him. I shall be gentler--I shall understand.... Love was set before me. I have taken it, and it has made me strong. I will be glad and love the world, all of it, for your sake, because you have blessed me.... Ours is not the fire that turns inward and feeds upon itself!"
"Oh, Margaret, Margaret!--"
"Listen," she murmured, clasping his neck, "you are the Man! You must spread the flame where I cannot. I kiss you. I have eaten of life with you.
Together we have understood. Forget me, cease to love me; but always you must be stronger, greater, n.o.bler because you have held me in your arms and loved me. If you cannot carry us upwards, it has been base,--the mere hunger of animals,--my lover! You have made of my weakness strength, and I have given you peace! Pour it out for me in deeds that I may know I have loved a Man, that my hero lives!"
Like a cry of the spirit it rang out into the night between the mist-hidden earth and the silent stars. In the stillness there had come a revelation of life,--the eternal battle of man between the spirit and the flesh, between the seen and the unseen, the struggle infinite and always. Where life is, that must be. And the vision of man"s little, misshapen existence,--the incomplete and infinitesimal unit he is,--and also the significance of him,--this material atom, the symbol, the weapon of the spirit, shone forth before them. This the woman had felt in giving herself to him, that the spirit within was freed by the touch of flesh....
Already in the calm night desire and pa.s.sion seemed to fade from them. Here had ended their pa.s.sion, and now must begin the accomplishment. When the revelation comes, and the spirit thus speaks through the flesh, it is peace with human beings....
They lay there awake but silent into the gray hours of dawn, and when the mist had spread upwards to the sky, shutting out the stars, they slept.
CHAPTER XLI
At breakfast Joe Viney said:--
"I was lobsterin" this morning."
"It must have been the thud of your oars that we heard when we woke."
"Mos" likely,--I was down there at the end of the island, hauling in the pots. It"s goin" to be a greasy day. But there"s wind comin"."
They could hear the long call of a steamer"s whistle and the wail of the fog-horn beyond the next island. The little white house was swathed in the sea mist.
"Better take the steamer at the Neck, if you"re going to the city," Mrs.
Viney suggested. "It"ll be cold and damp sailing this morning."
"Never!" Margaret protested.
Mrs. Viney looked at Margaret pityingly. That a woman from the city should care to come to this forlorn, lonesome spot, "when the summer folks had gone," and sleep out of doors on fir boughs, and go off in a messy sail-boat in a fog, when there was a clean, fast steamer that would take her in an hour to the city--it was a mystery. As she packed some pieces of soggy bread, a little meat, and still soggier cake into a box for their luncheon she shook her head, protesting:--
"You"ll spoil that hat o" yourn. It wasn"t meant for sailin"."
"No, it wasn"t; that"s true!" She took off the flower-bedecked hat with its filmy veiling. "Would you like it? I shall find a cap in the boat."
"Clearly," thought Mrs. Viney, "the woman is crazy;" but she accepted the hat. Afterwards she said to her husband:--
"I can"t make them two out. She ain"t young, and she ain"t exactly old, and she ain"t pretty,--well, she"s got the best of the bargain, a little wisp like her." For, womanlike, she admired Falkner in his sweater and flannels, strong and male, with a dark coat of tan on his face.
Viney accompanied them to the boat, waddling across the field, his hands in the armholes of his vest. He said little, but as he shoved them off in their tender, he observed:--
"It"s the sort of day you could get lost in mighty easy."
"Oh," Falkner called back cheerily, "I guess I know my way."
"Well, I guess you _do_!"
As Viney had said, the wind came through the fog, driving the boat in unseen fashion, while the sail hung almost limp. There was a little eddy of oily water at the stern; they were slipping, sliding through the fog-bank, back to the earth.
"Back to life," Falkner hummed, "back; back, to the land, to the world!"
The fog clung in Margaret"s hair, and dimmed her eyes. She bared her arms to feel the cool touch of it on her skin. Clean things, like the sun yesterday, the resinous firs, the salty fog,--clean elemental things,--how she loved them!
"And suppose," Falkner suggested, "I should lose my way in this nest of reefs and islands and we got shipwrecked or carried out to sea?"
"I should hear Ned calling through the fog." A simple answer, but withal enough. Their hour, which they had set themselves, was past. And lying here in the impalpable mist, slipping towards the hidden port, she was filled with ineffable content....