Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as she usually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but at last, when the quiet secure hour which had always been theirs between dinner and bedtime had come, she came into his room quietly and sat in her accustomed chair.
She had been fighting all day to gain strength for this hour, and her will was bravely set to speak what must be spoken. But she must firmly choke back all the sweetness of the memories which sprang to her with kind eyes, as the familiar little room that had not changed opened its arms to her, alas! an ironical symbol of unchangeableness. One touch of tenderness too vivid and she would break down.
And here was Theophil rising from his desk and coming to her with true love in his eyes, as he had done so many, many happy nights.
Was it, after all, a dream--that terrible picture of two lighted figures that was for ever in her eyes? No, there was a voice that went day and night with the dream, a voice of terrible tenderness that kept crying: "Meantime I bless thee ... "--"I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine ..." Ah, no, it was real, real. The trial was not to pass from her in a dream.
Theophil had knelt down at her side and taken her hand gently and would have kissed her, but that her eyes were so full of pain as she turned them to meet his. Besides, strange words to hear! she was asking him not to kiss her.
"Theophil dear, don't kiss me yet. I have something to say, and if you kiss me I shall have no strength to say it."
"Jenny!"
"Dear," she began with a voice that seemed to bleed at every word, "I want to be so kind. I don't want to hurt you with a single word. You'll believe that, won't you?"
Theophil pressed her hand for assent, but already in a flash the whole revelation was upon him. Jenny knew he loved Isabel. This awful pain that was all over her was the lightning from which they had willed to save her.
"Theophil," Jenny had gone on, and there seemed a death in every word, "I know that you love Isabel."
"O Jenny!"
"I saw you together, dear, in the vestry last night. It was an accident. You didn't hear me."
"O my Jenny! I would rather have died than this."
"Yes, I think you would, dear. But you must not be too sad. Life is terrible,--like this. I understand it now. I know it was not you, or Isabel, or me. It was just fate--and we must try and help each other. Don't think I have been only sorry for myself. Don't think that of me. But I think you should have trusted me, dear."
"We longed to tell you," said Theophil, with his head bowed in distress in Jenny's lap, while she softly stroked his hair with an absent tenderness, though her eyes looked straight in front of her, and her voice was as if she were talking to herself.
"We longed to tell you," he repeated.
"O I wish you had."
"We feared it, dear."
"Yes, yes, I know. I was only a little child the day before yesterday. I have never been worthy to be your wife, dear. I have known it all the time. I should never have taken your love. It has never been mine...."
"But ..." she continued, "I will give it all back now. It is not too late. I have kept it pure ... for Isabel. I can give it to her, darling, with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. We were not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the woman of that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. I am a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my face and see.'"
The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jenny in silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and of the insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves to ourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by the powerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must those tests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which we are composed!
One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs, another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow old we can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that have never been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, by an emotion.
A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the woman who needs him most,--and in a crisis of choice he will probably choose the latter.
Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble are some of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submerged in a total of vague impulses that they escape any individualisation.
In the very hour where all seemed lost to Jenny, Theophil's love for her was passing in the fire of this ordeal from a love whose elements had never, perhaps, quite combined, into that miraculous metal of true love, which can never again be separated into anything but itself,--the true gold of love which, in some magical second of projection, has suddenly sprung out of those troubled ingredients of earth and iron, silver, honey, and pearl.
This does not mean that Theophil's love for Isabel had grown any less real, but that his love for Jenny had grown more real. For the first time in its history it moved on the stage of the heroic. Up till now it had lived secure, domestic days; there had been no danger to test its truth, no lights of tragedy or romance thrown across it, it had seemed a simple little earthborn love; whereas Theophil's love for Isabel had, from its very conditions, walked from the first the high heaven of dreams.
Isabel, indeed, still remained the heavenly love, but those who understand will know the strength of Jenny when I say that she became confirmed in this hour of trial as the household love of Theophil's life. Isabel remained the Muse, but it was Jenny, after all, in spite of those solemn words in the Wood of Silence, that was the wife; and if, at first sound, there seems less of heaven in such a love, it is surely only because when heaven has become incarnated upon earth we forget to call it heaven.
In the few moments of silence which followed Jenny's words, it was some such turmoil of feelings and thoughts, questionings and conclusions, which passed through Theophil's mind, at last resolving itself into words that sounded unexpected even in his own ears.
"Jenny," he said, "it is quite true that I love Isabel and that she loves me. But it is true that I love you too, love you more truly in this moment than I have ever loved you, and that no other woman can ever take your place. If you give me up for Isabel's sake, it will be no gain to her, for I would not go to her. I love you, indeed I love you, and I want no other woman to be my wife."
Jenny's face brightened for a moment; they were good words, and they sounded real. But then that embrace, how real that was; nothing again could ever be so real as that!
"Ah, Theophil dear; but you stood as though you loved her so; your arms were so tender, it was just as though they said 'wife.' You are deceiving yourself, dear, believe me, you are. God knows how I love you; I have nothing in the world but you, and if...if..."
"Jenny, try and believe; let me show you how I can love you. I seem never to have shown you before. Let us begin our love over again from to-night. I know your heart is bleeding, but let me heal it, dear. I know this sorrow must lie heavy upon us for a long while yet, but it will pass, you shall see. O you shall see how I love you. Let us be married soon, dear; let us wait no longer..."
Theophil had raised his head, and as he spoke poured on Jenny all the appeal of his strong eyes; with all the might of his soul he willed her back to happiness, as Orpheus strove by his singing to bring back Eurydice from the shades. She could not look into his set longing face without feeling that he was speaking true words. Hope flickered for a moment in her sad eyes; yes! he wanted to come back to her; he wanted to be hers again.
But was it not too late? Hadn't something gone forever, something been killed? Could even Theophil himself ever make her happy any more? Then the misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which all kind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, and with terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms.
"O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking."
Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of his life. He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying--it was as though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were bleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking. Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was the death-crying of a broken heart.
Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny dried her tears. She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forget it; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown even bright again,--bright as silver. It could never again be bright as gold.
And Theophil's love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day. Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were times when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing falsity, as she thought of Isabel.
But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in the common way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soon she was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed that Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital. For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Let that be our secret, dear," she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel wrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wrote to each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters. Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life it must be more and more of a starlit background.
So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now finally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as their love grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate that date, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones.
The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old mother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing thinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't looking half the girl she used to be.
She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark it. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken, too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real face was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemn thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a sad wish fulfilling itself.
She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same look that Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to him reading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threw down the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed, "Good God, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look in your face?"
He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before he had finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget.
One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it was growing.
"Itisthin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a trifle run down. You must see the doctor."
Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soups and port wine as a substitute. These, however, made those dear arms no fatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why did Theophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of that expression?)
And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as she used to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not so available for running up and down stairs as it had been.
Then Theophil would have a doctor, who sounded Jenny, and looked a little grave, but finally, reassured, asked her if she had had a shock,--Jenny smiled rather knowingly, but denied it,--declared her a little run down and in need of bracing and nourishment, prescribed phosphites and steel.
Then Jenny got very wet one day on her way from school, and she began to cough. She had to stay at home, and bed was perhaps the best place for her. So Jenny went to bed, and looked very pretty there, and was quite merry of an evening when Theophil, bringing her flowers,--he was already bringing her flowers,--would draw up the arm-chair by her side, and read to her. Those were very sweet hours, perhaps the sweetest their love had ever known, so cosy and homelike, and yet without fear.
But one evening, when Jenny had been coughing, there was blood on the bosom of her nightdress, and as Theophil saw it, his heart stood still with terror. Jenny grew very white, too, as she saw it, though the awful thought which was behind the still look they gave each other was not quite new to her. Sometimes she might have been heard softly saying over to herself,--
"I am lost, I am changed, I must go farther, whereThe change shall take me worse, and no one dareLook in my face and see."
Yet although Death's voice calling us from afar may seem all sweetness, his voice coming nearer has a note of dread in it that appals the most death-desirous heart. And in that silence those poor lovers both heard him singing, it seemed not many streets away.
"I must be very ill, dear," said Jenny. "O my love, O my love...!"
Theophil strove with himself to say words with a real ring of the future in them, when this cloud should have passed away; and for his sake Jenny pretended to believe them. Yes, this very week he would take her away to bright skies and healing air,--though Jenny felt a little tired at the thought of rising any more from the bed to which she was growing curiously accustomed.
Then there came a new doctor to see Jenny. He was a very clever specialist from a distant town; but for him the business of death had not yet obscured its tragedy,--though words like "tragedy" were not often on his tongue. Consumption was a strong enough word for him.
His heart went out to that little household; and when he saw Jenny, it ached for that young man downstairs. It was more than a professional contempt for the "general practitioner" that made him silently curse what he called the "death-doctor," as he looked at Jenny, "Jack of all diseases, and master of none."
"Two months ago, a month," he thought, as he listened and listened for a sound of hope that might come to his ear through Jenny's wasted side,--"even a month, and I could have saved her." And yet as he talked to her he was not so sure, after all. He missed something in her voice. It was the will to live.
"Have you had a shock at any time?" he said.
Jenny was taken by surprise for a moment,--the other doctor had asked her that, too,--and she did not deny it so convincingly as she tried to.
"O, that's all right," said the doctor aloud to Jenny and her mother, who stood by, though inwardly he said, "I see. That's the reason;" and again he said, "I'm afraid you mustn't get up just yet. That chest of yours has to be taken care of, but you needn't be anxious. In a month or six weeks you'll be all right again."
"Only a month or six weeks," said Jenny, with a sinking voice. She meant--was that all that was left to her of life and love?
Downstairs Theophil stood waiting with a beating heart. He sprang to the door and drew the doctor into his room. The doctor laid a kind hand upon his arm, and there was a look in his face that made Theophil's heart die within him.
"You mean she is going to die?" he said with fearful calmness. "You mean that?"
"My poor fellow, God knows what I would give to deny it."
"She--is--going--to--die--to die!It is impossible! Not Jenny!" and between that exclamation and his first stunned cry it seemed as though bells had been tolling a thousand years. It seemed as though he had been sitting there as in a cave since the beginning of time, saying over and over to himself, "Jenny is going to die."
There was a decanter on the sideboard. The doctor poured some spirit into a glass. "Drink this," he said. Theophil drank it raw, as though it had been water; and presently a certain illusive hope began to stir like an opening rose in his brain, and when the doctor had gone he turned to that decanter again. Perhaps if he drank enough he would find that Jenny was not to die, after all. At all events, the spirit gave him nerve, which else he could not have found, to go and sit by Jenny once more. It helped him even to be gay, so that Jenny said to herself, "The doctor has not told him that I am going to die."
"The doctor said I shall be better in a month or six weeks," she said aloud, and tried to look as though she were happy.
"Didn't I say so, dearie?" said old Mrs. Talbot, whom, curiously, love made blind instead of prophet-sighted.
"Yes; and then we'll go together to those blue skies and that bright air," said Theophil.
"Yes, dear," said Jenny, closing her eyes wearily.
Presently she opened them again, and said, "Won't you read something to me, Theophil?"
"What shall I read, dear?"
"Something amusing, love. 'Alice in the Looking-Glass,' eh? It's such a long time since we read that. Don't you remember how once long ago we could never get the Walrus and the Carpenter out of our heads?"
So Theophil read the hallowed nonsense once again, struck with the fantastic incongruity of the moment. Even the dying have to go on living, and must be treated like living folks,--for a little while longer; and, though they are slipping away, slipping away, under your very eyes, there are merciful hours when you forget that they are dying. You read to them, talk to them, gossip about neighbours,--they are going to die, and yet they are quite interested in Mrs. Smith's new baby,--you laugh together over little jokes in the newspapers, and then suddenly the bell of your thoughts goes tolling: "They are going to die--have you forgotten they are going to die?--Think! there is so much to say before they go--O, think of it all--miss nothing, watch their faces every moment of the day--for soon you shall torture yourself in vain to remember just that curve of the mouth, that droop of the chin. Ask them everything now--tell them all--delay not--take farewell of that voice, that laugh, those living eyes--for they--are going to die."
Death was kind as long as he might be to Jenny's face, so that for some days old Mrs. Talbot still failed to see his shadowy mark there; but at last she knew what Jenny and Theophil had both striven to hide from her and from each other.
"My poor little girl, my poor boy!" she said over and over to herself from that time, but she did not cry or break down.
It was a pathetic sign of what was coming, that she now allowed Theophil sometimes to be Jenny's nurse through the night hours. There was to be no bridal bed for these lovers, but thus the tender quiet hours of the night were theirs even in so sad a fashion.
One night, in the haunted hushed middle of it, the old mother had softly pushed open the door to ask if all went well, and in a whisper Theophil had assured her. A night-light gave an uncanny shadow-breeding light in the room. Jenny was sleeping peacefully, her tired ivory face, with her dark elf-locks falling about it, framed on the pillow. Theophil raised himself softly in his chair and looked at her. She would sleep some while yet. Then from sheer weariness--grief's best friend--he too fell into a light sleep. From this he was awakened with a start. Jenny was sitting up and bending over him. With her dark hair hanging about her face, and in that light, there was something weird and unearthly about her, as though she were already dead and had risen in her shroud. Something of a shiver went through him, as she put her thin arms round his neck and clutched him in a sudden agony of longing. All the strength of her poor little body seemed to pass into that kiss, so eager, so convulsive. "Jenny dear, it will make you so ill; lie down, little girl"--and Jenny fell back on her pillow exhausted and coughing, and with eyes unearthly bright.
"Theophil," she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, "you know that I am going to die!"
He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned his head close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself two great tears fell upon Jenny's cheek.
But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in her voice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got to be borne."
She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth. The first fears of her dark journey were passing, as she was more and more sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be something almost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. It had come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less with fear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In her fancy she had seen her name: "Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter of John and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years" and it had struck her that the name was wrong.
Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. The world would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days. No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amid all the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again to herself: "Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of Theophilus Londonderry, aged twenty-one years."
Only twenty-one years--she thought of those who would perhaps some day stand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!"--and yet all that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, in two of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to those who read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earth of long-wed, late-dying lovers.
Perhaps it was a beautiful chance for love to end like theirs; their love had never grown old, so it would remain forever young, a spring sign, a star in the front of love's year for ever.
Jenny spoke her wish to Theophil in the quiet of that night. The wish had been in his heart too, and the wish was presently fulfilled. Brides have seldom been happier than Jenny as she looked on the wife's ring that hung loose on her thin finger, and brides have often been sadder.
Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget that she was going to die. She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little home that was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with his unbearable grief to some other room.
And Jenny's once rosy apple of a face made one's heart ache to look on now. It made one frightened, too: it was so dark and witchlike, so uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She would sit up in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowing laugh to herself,--a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, like the "unwilling sleep" of a strong narcotic. She would begin a sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done with all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soon be strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar humanity into a being of another element,--an element we dread as the fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon she would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longer Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. She was going to die.
It was a bitterly cold night toward the end of January when Jenny died. She had been curiously alert and restless all the afternoon. Once when Theophil and she had been alone, she beckoned him with a grave, significant gesture to her side. She was lying down, and she made as if she would sit up. Humouring her, Theophil raised her and packed up the pillows at her back. Then, with indescribable solemnity, she took his face in her hands and kissed him. "Do you love me, Theophil?" she said. "Will you ever forget me?"
"I will love you for ever. I will never forget you."
He took her gently in his arms, and with terrible tenderness she held him close to her for a moment, and then sank back with a sigh. For a moment he thought she was dead; but presently she revived, though that was the last flicker of Jenny's conscious life.
Towards evening she began to take strange fancies, which had to be humoured. She complained of intruding faces in the room, she called with dreadful peevishness to unseen people who would not leave her bedside, and even sat at its foot. Then she forgot them, and imagined she was picking daisies on the counterpane. Then she begged Theophil to go downstairs and see Isabel. It was a shame to keep her waiting all that time by herself in the study. And when Theophil tried to persuade her that Isabel was not there, she shook her head and said: "You must not mind me, Theophil, dear. I'm not unhappy about her now. I'm not a silly little girl any more. I'm a woman now. 'Look in my face and see.'"
Then towards midnight a sudden accession of strength came to her, and she said she would get up. They tried to dissuade her; she grew angry, and struggled so hard to rise, that it seemed best to humour her once more. So, wrapt round with blankets, Theophil lifted her from the bed into a great chair by the fire. Then she asked to be taken to look into her bottom drawer. So they lifted her across to it, and opened it. She dabbled with her hands aimlessly among its piteous treasures, laughing low to herself.
Suddenly a fit of coughing took her, and a great choking was in her throat. She was seen to be battling for her breath. For an instant she drew herself up, and lifted her hand as though she would wave farewell, smiled a faint little smile at Theophil, making, too, as if she would speak. Then she fell back, her whole body relaxed, she had ceased coughing, and a wonderful sweetness was stealing over her face. She had gone all alone into the darkness, and Theophil was alone in the world.
Jenny had gone into the darkness, and she had gone alone. Theophil had not gone with her.
That he had remained behind meant certainly no selfish clinging to life, and indeed there was a sense, as was presently to appear, in which very really he had kept young love's old promise and died with Jenny. That he had not literally fulfilled it was due to those physical conditions of dying of which in the hour of that promise young love is happily ignorant; for the promise is usually made in moments of keenly conscious physical life. Dying together is then figured, perhaps, as climbing hand in hand the radiant topmost peak of life, with a last splendid leap together into some immortal morning; and such a marriage in death, a last union of two lives in some fiery consummation of dying, has been the lot of some lovers supremely blest.
Some indeed there are whose last earthly moment is a vivid reassertion of the glory and loveliness of life. They drink the great cup to its last golden drain, and by their death-beds we seem to be standing at the laughing founts of being. They are radiant, victorious, even witty, to the last, when at one swoop of blackness they are extinguished like a light plunged into a stream.
But for others the cold mists that hang low by Lethe's banks have already brought forgetfulness before their feet grow icy with the first step into the dark water. To meet on Lethe-side is to meet, maybe; but with a sad unrecognising meeting. To lie together in oblivion, with sightless eyes, and dulled hearts and listless hands,--that was not love's meaning.
And not only are the dying thus drugged out of knowledge before they die, but those who stand near them grow drowsed, too, by the fumes of the poppies of death. The dying have forgotten; the living are numb and foolish and in a dream. All they love on earth is passing away beneath their very eyes, and they cannot understand,--cannot realise that this,thisis death.
Except in moments of piercing agony, days and weeks afterwards, moments that were similarly soothed away again by that mysterious narcotic property which pain at its highest brings with it (pain at its highest being its own anaesthetic), Theophil never realised that Jenny had died, and least of all at the moment when she was dying. Long after he remembered how he had said to himself: "There is Jenny dying, dying. A few more seconds and she will be beyond the sound of your voice for ever. Call to her; she can still, perhaps, hear you. O my Jenny, my Jenny! Louder, louder,--hold her tighter, tighter,--she is slipping away. O God, she is slipping away. No love can hold her back. My Jenny, my Jenny!"
And all the time he had been curiously calm, almost unfeeling,--as one standing stupefied in the presence of fate. The air seemed full of boding sounds, echoes of low thunder, as from a distant world in the throes of portentous change; and he told himself mechanically that he should know the meaning of those sounds some day. He should wake up soon from this unnatural torpor of pain to an empty house of life, through the cold halls of which he would seek in vain for Jenny for evermore.
Meanwhile, he suddenly found himself standing with his back to the fire in the lighted study, talking to Mr. Moggridge, who, late as was the hour, had called for news, and had stayed on from a perception that the young minister had best have some one to talk to as far into the morning as he would go on talking. They were talking in a business-like way of Zion; and Theophil was smoking cigarette after cigarette. He was terribly clear-headed and bright-witted, and Mr. Moggridge looked at him sometimes with a sort of fear.
It was about three in the morning when the door was softly opened by Mrs. Talbot.
"Will you come now, and see our little girl?" she said, with a voice that could say no more.
Theophil followed her, and, still in a dream, he stood in Jenny's room, grown strangely solemn and sweet since he was last there,--was it a thousand years ago? And there was Jenny lying asleep with a wonderful smile on her face. She had a little gold chain round her neck and a white crysanthemum in the bosom of her night-gown, and you thought of some princess lying in enchanted sleep in an Arabian night. It seemed so light a sleep and yet somehow so eternal. You stept softly, you spoke low, lest you should awaken her--not carelessly shall one disturb that imperious slumber.
Yes, the distinction of death sat like an invisible crown upon Jenny's brow. She was no longer little Jenny, but a mysterious princess upon whose sleep it was permitted thus to gaze. The pain which had filled these weeks with bitter human anguish had been the process of some mysterious ennoblement. She had been found "worthy to die." In the peerage of God's creatures, she had now outsoared those whom she loved. The nature of it was a mystery, but no one could look on her face and doubt that a great honour had come to little Jenny.
But, O Jenny, may it be your gain indeed, for the loss to us is greater than we can bear--greater than we can bear. Not Theophil only--not young love, that, for all his smitten heart, has somewhere hidden away the potencies of his unspent life, and will still have his dream, though sorrow itself should become that dream--but this poor old mother, all the force of her days spent, the sap of her spirit dried up. Hers is the terrible sorrow of age, with not a hope left betwixt her and death.
Pity her, Jenny--speak one word to her. Hearken to her sobs as she kneels by your side, and can you not hear the hard crying of his heart that knows no tears?
Are you become as the gods, Jenny, that you still smile on at the sound of mortal tears? Will you not stretch out one of those folded hands to each and lead them away with you? They are praying to follow you, only to be with you, wherever you are.
And it did seem as though in some strange way the soul of the mother had still some sure communication with the soul of her dead child. Motherhood had given her a nearness in the hour which no love of a lover could gain. She alone spoke to the dead girl as though she were still really alive, as one speaking to the deaf whom only one voice can reach.
But Theophil was conscious in his wildest, most heartbroken, words that Jenny could not hear them. He talked to her as though she were a picture of herself, and as one would implore a picture to answer us, he symbolised the cry of his soul in cries that he knew were vain.
Yet though Jenny were sculpture now, Theophil could not forget that this icy marble had once been the flesh he had loved. O God! that little tender body, whose every part was sweetly joined together like the words of a song, it was marble now.
"Ah! Jenny, are you smiling to think of what you and I know, you and I, and no one else in the world? Jenny, we shall never forget, never forget, shall we? And you will not breathe our secrets even in heaven. Do you really hear me, after all, but are forbidden to say? Are you glad somewhere to see how I love you, and are you at this moment looking into my face wildly for a sign, as I into yours? Is it I who seem dead, Jenny? and are you beating wildly at the gates of life to win back to me, as I am beating at the gates of death? But, Jenny, we shall find each other,mustfind each other some day. I shall be so true, Jenny,--will you be true to me in heaven?"
Then would sweep across his soul a pitiless vista of the long cold years that lay between him and Jenny. He was not twenty-five; through what a weary pilgrimage of useless years must he journey on, before there was Jenny's face shining at the end. How he envied the old woman whose sorrow was in this alone less cruel than his, that she was already fifty years farther on the road to Jenny. Perhaps another year or two and she would meet her. To meet so soon--was hardly to have parted at all.
But, why live those years? Have you forgotten that old promise? Is it too late to follow? Surely little Jenny will not speed so swiftly from the earth she loved but that you shall overtake her. Who knows but she is fluttering still at the gate of death, putting off the heavenward journey hour after hour, in hope that the face she waits for will at last light up the dark portal--
"I'll take his hand and go with himTo the deep wells of light;As unto a stream we will step down,And bathe there in God's sight."
But was this the way to find Jenny? The universe was so full of dark traps for lovers' feet. To lie down cold as Jenny by Jenny's side, was that the way to find her? When death's gate opened for Jenny, had Theophil at that very instant, hand in her hand, eyes fixed upon her eyes, slipped through too, then surely they had been together. But the door had closed, and whither on the other side Jenny had already wandered, who could tell? Perhaps that was the very way to miss her.
When two have lost each other in a crowd, it is best that one should stand still and await the other. Perhaps it were best for him to stand still here in life. Jenny would know where to seek him then--and maybe the dead had mysterious ways of bringing news to the living. He could wait a little while and see. For a little he could live--and listen.
But there were others besides those who stood so near who mourned Jenny, passers-by on the road of friendship, who would miss her sunshine in the streets, and carry with them one bright thought the less for that bright face that death had thus blown out. There were especially some little people to whom death was as yet hardly even mysterious, but was merely perplexing, like many other grown-up things in which their parents were interested. These were the little scholars of Jenny's Sunday-school class, to whom simple Jenny had been a personage, quite a great lady, full of gentleness. To these Jenny was "Teacher," a name of gentle awe; and to these Teacher was as deeply dear as anyone can be to very young hearts.
Jenny had felt like a little mother to these little ones, and when she lay ill her thoughts would often go to them, while from them would come tiny presents to show how sorry they were that Teacher was ill.
Several times before she grew too ill, Jenny had had her favourites up in her room on Sunday evenings, to read Bible stories with her, and had sent them away happy with magnificent text-cards, that had hitherto been the arduously won rewards of "attention" and the practice of such school-time virtues over many weeks.
Now, when they heard that Teacher was dead, they felt a vague sorrow. They knew that people who died were never seen at school any more, and that people always burst out crying when anyone died; so they cried bitterly, these little girls, and the hearts of one or two of them perhaps really ached for a little while. One of them asked the new teacher, if they would meet their old teacher in heaven, and was told "Yes, if they were good girls,"--which was something to be good for.
Among the wreaths that already filled Jenny's room with that piercing smell of lilies which still clung there--unless it were Theophil's fancy--for many months afterwards, was one sent in loving memory "by her Sunday-school class"; and it was a part of that informal lying-in-state, which is an involuntary recognition of the divine honours due to death, that these little awestruck scholars should be taken in threes and fours to look at Teacher for the last time.
This was the third day, and Jenny was already in her coffin. The first bloom of death, that light that lingers awhile in the face like a sunset tranquil and blessed, a smile of immortal promise in the very moment of mortality, had faded. Jenny's face by this was really dead, a mask of drawn and sunken wax. She seemed now some fantastic doll, some ghastly waxwork image of death such as we see carried on the stage in tragic plays. The reality of death had gone with the coming of its funereal trappings. But the little girls, who had to be lifted up one by one to gaze with curious, scared faces into that harsh box, deeper and deeper into which, as through beds of flowers and veils of gauze, Teacher was sinking, knew nothing of these thoughts. They looked and wondered in hushed bewilderment, and went their ways. It was evidently an occasion when children were to keep more than usually quiet--and was it really Teacher in that strange deep box? It was rather meaningless, but it was certainly very strange and solemn, and you were allowed to cry.
Of the others who came to see Jenny, I shall not speak,--the vulgar sight-seers, the creepy old women, connoisseurs in beautiful death, for whom a neighbour's funeral was like an invitation to the grand opera, but on whom perhaps one should not be too severe, for even such coarse sensitiveness to a mystery is the crude beginning of the poetic.
The night before Jenny was given back to the elements Theophil dreamed a dream, and afterwards he liked to think that he had dreamed it while Jenny's body was still in the house with him, for then it might be interpreted that her spirit was still there too, waiting for its final release from the clay which God had sent her to animate for a while, as an artist imprisons a lovely thought in a vase of alabaster.
Theophil dreamed that he and some friends were gay together in a room, just before setting out for a theatre; and as they laughed and talked there came a little tapping on the wall, so that they grew silent and listened. Then through the wall was heard a faint but glad little voice speaking. It was Jenny's voice.
"I can hear you all," she said; "you are off to the theatre. I wish I were going with you. Never mind, we are not so far away from each other as you think. I am only on the other side of a wall."
And Theophil awoke on a bright wintry morning, with those words still, it seemed, in the room.
"I am only on the other side of a wall!" Was it but the metaphor-making of dreams, which will so often take our forgotten speculations and dramatise them for us into reality, or was it indeed a message? An instinct which was unamenable to reason, and which was perhaps only a desire, told him it was a message; and it was no less a message though it were merely a pictorial symbol of a sense, which was already his in the daytime, of a new and very real nearness to Jenny.
He had slept right through that night out of sheer bodily weariness. Weeks of watching and anguish had worn him out, and he never knew that the poor old mother had laid a benediction on his sleep, looking in upon him as he slept, the only waking being in that house of sleep.
"He will wake soon enough, poor boy!" she had said, as she went once more to watch till daylight by the side of the other sleeper.
"O Jenny, Jenny, why did you leave me? You were the apple of my eye, my Jenny. What will your old mother do now that you are gone?"
So she sat and wailed hour after hour, and sometimes she would raise the dead girl from her coffin and press her to her bosom; for, though even Jenny's lover feared her now, that cold unresponsive clay had no fear for Jenny's mother. It was Jenny still, and though the old woman's creed told her that Jenny was already an angel in heaven, her heart belied her faith, and her love made her a Sadducee.
And yet it was her belief in a literal resurrection of the body that was sorely troubling her old soul during these last hours of watching. For while Jenny was still conscious of the coming of death, she had been much tortured by hideous churchyard fancies, imaginations of the darkness and noisomeness of the grave, and she had wrung from her mother the promise that she should first be cremated and her ashes be afterward buried in the family tomb. This was the promise which was lying heavy on the old woman's heart to-night; and, though her reason told her that the way of the flames and the way of the flowers alike led to dust, yet the disintegration by fire seemed to give her a sense of entire destruction such as the more desultory operations of the earth did not give.
If Jenny must indeed pass right away, the dainty architecture of her body, so lovingly builded, be laid in ruin; not by the fierce fingers of fire should she be torn asunder, but beneath the kind breath of the sun, and the gentle tears of the rain, might she change and change, and on the wings of soft winds might she be carried to and fro in fragrance about the world.
And perhaps in the old Christian's mind there was an imagination of a mysterious recreation in the earth, which when the dust has quite returned to dust, should begin anew the building of an incorruptible Jenny, lying prepared there like a new garment, against the hour when the soul should seek anew its earthly vesture for the last great day. Thus strangely will imagination build its dreams in defiance of imagination.
And in what different ways will love argue with itself! This way of the flames, that brought such a terror to the poor mother, was one of the great consolations of the lover; and when at length on the morrow Jenny was no longer to be sought in her room, and the darkened house was once more filled with an empty light that was crueller than darkness, it brought a sense of warmth to think that Jenny was not lying stark and lonely out in that bitter churchyard, where the graves were covered with sheets of snow and hung with hoods of ice, but that through the cleansing gates of flame she had passed into the eternal elements, and was already about the business of the dreaming spring.
And in other ways this proved a consolation that never failed him. It saved his love from those cruel foulnesses of the grave which had haunted Jenny. That cleansing fire cleansed his fancies too. However morbid his fancies might become,desideriumcould never take any but beautiful forms. Jenny could never come to him in any fearful images of corruption, nor could he picture her in any mouldering shape of catacomb or charnel.
She had come like a sylph out of the air, and she had returned again whence she came. She had moved awhile about certain ever sacred rooms, and as she moved she had hummed a little song, which was her life; she had touched certain objects, she had written her name in some books, she had made little everlasting memories with her hands,--that was her history; and now suddenly she had gone. She had come like a dream, and she had gone like a dream. The invisible winds had for a while rocked a flower, and now the flower was gone. Only its perfume remained. No one as long as the world lasted could take up some crumbling relic, and, giving the lie to love's divine answer to the dust, say "This was Jenny!"
No! but sometimes when a bird sings in the stillness, when the moon rises above the trees, when a breath of secret violets crosses one's path one knows not whence; sometimes when the rain is sobbing at the window, or the wind plaining about the doors; sometimes when an unknown happiness fills the heart, when a great deed has been done, when a lovely word has been spoken, in seasons of music and in all high moments, then can one say, "There, listen!thatwas Jenny."
Jenny was already a legend. She was with the great lovers. Theophil remained behind only to write her name across the high stars. Then he, too, would pass through the gates of fire to her side.
As he lay down to rest that night, his eyes fell with a sudden sense of freshness upon the familiar Botticelli's "Mother and Child," which hung over his fireplace; and a need that could never be fulfilled awoke in his soul. If only Jenny could have left him a little child,--a little girl! He had not seemed so lonely then.
It was so he thought; yet perhaps Jenny's child would but have deepened his loneliness, like a bird singing in a garden where our love walked long ago. Yet the cry was from his heart, and the longing brought with it his first tears. "O Jenny," he sobbed, "if only you had left me a little child!"