I HAVE been reading “Casa Braccio,” and I must talk to you about it. Of course I do not know whether you have read it or not, so if I bore you forgive me. I was much interested in Part I., rather disappointed with Part II., and it struck me that Mr. Crawford showed signs in Part III. of weariness with the characters of his own creation. There are nine people who play important parts in the story, and the author kills six of them. The first, an abbess, dies naturally but conveniently; the second, an innkeeper’s daughter, dies suddenly, by misadventure; the third, a nun, dies, one is not told how, when, or where—but she dies. This is disappointing, because she promised to be a very interesting character. Then the fourth, daughter of No. 3, commits suicide, because, having run away from her husband, and got tired of the other man, the husband declines to have her back. Thefifth, a most uninteresting and weak-kneed individual, is an artist, husband of No. 4, and he dies, apparently to make himself disagreeable; while the sixth, the original cause of all the trouble, is murdered by the innkeeper, who has been hunting him, like a good Christian, for twenty years, determined to kill him when found, under the mistaken impression that he eloped with, and disposed of, his daughter, No. 2.
No one can deny that the author has dealt out destruction with impartiality, and it is rather strange, for Mr. Crawford often likes to use his characters for two or even three books; that is why, I think, he got a little tired with these particular people, and determined to bury them. Out of this lot he has kept only three for future vivisection and ultimate extinction.
I trust that, if you have not read the book already, you will be induced, by what I have told you, to get “Casa Braccio,” for you will find many interesting human problems discussed in it, and many others suggested for the consideration of the reader. Here, for instance, is a text which may well give you pause, “The widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, compared with the bereavement of complete possession.”
Now what do you say to that? For I am sure the somewhat bald, if not positively repellent, look and sound of the words, will not deter you from considering the truth or falseness of the statement. I do not altogether like the theory; and one may even be permitted to differ from the conclusion contained in the text. But the reason why this sentence arrested my attention is because you quote, “L’absence ni le temps ne sont rien quand on aime,” and later, you appeal to the East as a place of broader views, of deeper feeling, of longer, wider experience than the West. You appeal to the East, and this is what a Persian poet says:—
“All that is by nature twain,Fears and suffers by the painOf separation—Love is only perfect,When itself transcends itself,And one with that it lovesIn Undivided Being blends.”
“All that is by nature twain,Fears and suffers by the painOf separation—Love is only perfect,When itself transcends itself,And one with that it lovesIn Undivided Being blends.”
“All that is by nature twain,
Fears and suffers by the pain
Of separation—Love is only perfect,
When itself transcends itself,
And one with that it loves
In Undivided Being blends.”
Now, how do you reconcile the Western with the Eastern statement, and will either support the “Casa Braccio” theory? You tell me that time and absence count for nothing as between lovers; the Persian says that separation, under these circumstances, is the one calamity most to be dreaded, and that love cannot be perfect without union.The French writer evidently believed that “Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” while the Eastern, without saying, “Out of sight, out of mind,” clearly thought that love in absence is a very poor substitute for the passion which sees, hears, and touches the object of its adoration. Undoubtedly the Eastern expressed the feeling, not only of his own countrymen, but of all other Orientals, and probably of Western lovers as well; but if the separation is a matter of necessity, then the Western character, the feeling of loyalty towards and faith in the object of our love, helps us to the belief that “Partings and tears and absence” none need fear, provided the regard is mutual. It is a good creed, and the only one to uphold, but we are not so blind that we cannot see how often it fails to secure even fidelity; while who would deny the Persian’s contention that the bond cannot be perfect in absence?
“The widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, compared with the bereavement of complete possession.”
No, certainly, it does not look well. It is hardly worth while to inquire into the bereavement of a complete possession that was not only satisfied but satiated; therefore the comparison must be between perfect love realised, and love that is only not perfected because unrealised. If that is so, thenthe text appears to be false in theory, for, inasmuch as nothing earthly can be more perfect than that realisation of mutual affection which the same Persian describes as—
“She and I no more,But in one Undivided Being blended,”—
“She and I no more,But in one Undivided Being blended,”—
“She and I no more,
But in one Undivided Being blended,”—
so the severance of that union by death must be the greatest of human ills.
“The widowhood of the unsatisfied” admits of so many special constructions, each of which would accentuate the despair of the unsatisfied, that it makes the consideration rather difficult, but, in any case, the magnitude of the loss must be imaginative. It is only, therefore, by supposing that no realisation could be so perfect as to equal the ideal of imagination, that the theory of the text could be established. If that be granted, and it were also admitted that the widowhood of this unsatisfied imagination were as hell, compared with “the bereavement of complete possession,” that would merely show that “complete possession” is worth very little, and no one need grieve because their longings after a purely imaginary heaven had been widowed before being wedded to the hell of such a disappointing possession.
In any case, I think one is forced to the conclusion that the man (and one must assume it to be a man, in spite of the word “widowhood”) who should thus express his feelings would never agree that “L’absence ni le temps ne sont rien quand on aime;” that is, of course, supposing he has not got beyond the protesting and unsatisfied stage. Once arrived, he would doubtless subscribe to the phrase with virtuous stolidity. Personally I think, as you probably do, that these words of De Musset give a most charming description of the best form of that true friendship which time cannot weaken nor absence change. For friends it is admirable, for lovers, no.
I have not sought out this riddle for the purpose of airing my own views, but to draw from you an expression of yours. You say my letters are the most tantalising in the world, as I never tell you anything you want to know; just leading up to what most interests you, and then breaking off to something else. If there is nothing in this letter to interest you, at least I have kept to one subject, and I have discussed it as though I were expressing a real opinion! One can hardly do more than that. You see, if I gave you no opportunity of scolding me, you might never write!
YOU ask me the meaning of the jingling coin. It was a tale I heard that impressed me, and sometimes comes back with a strange fascination. Did I never tell you? Well, here it is.
I was in India, staying at a hill station, no matter where. I met there a man who for years had spent his holidays in the place, and, walking with him one day up a narrow mountain-path to the top of a hill, whence there was a magnificent view of the Himalayan snows, we passed a small stone slab on which was cut a date. The stone was at a spot where, from the path, was a sheer fall of several hundreds of feet, and as we passed it my companion said—“Look at that. I will tell you what it means when we get to the top.”
As we lay on the grass and feasted our eyes upon the incomparable spectacle, before whichearthly lives and troubles seemed so insignificant, my companion told his tale. I now repeat it, as nearly as I can remember, in his own words.
“If I tell you this story,” he said, “you must not ask me how I know the details, or seek for any particulars beyond what I give you.
“During one of my many visits to this place, I met a man whom I had seen before and heard a good deal about, for he was one of those people who concern themselves with no one’s business but their own, and, therefore, their affairs seem to have a special attraction for the Philistine. He knew that rumour was busy with his name, but beyond the fact that he became more reserved than nature had already made him, the gossip, which was always founded on imagination, sometimes on jealousy, and even malice, seemed to make no impression whatever. That may have been the result of a strong character, but partly, no doubt, it was due to the fact that all his public life had been lived under the fierce light of a criticism that was, in a way, the measure of his success. His friends (and he was fortunate in the possession of particularly loyal friends of both sexes) realised that if, even to them, this man showed little of his real self, he sometimes writhed under calumnies ofwhich no one knew the authorship, and the existence of which only reached him rarely, through his most intimate friends. For his own reasons he kept his own counsel, and I doubt whether any one knew as much of the real man as I did. A few months before the time I speak of he had made the acquaintance of a girl, or, perhaps I ought to say, a woman, for she was married, who was, with her mother, visiting India. When first the man met this girl he was amazed, and, to some extent, carried away by her extraordinary beauty. But his work took him elsewhere, and, beyond that first impression, which had so powerfully affected him, there was neither time nor opportunity to ascertain whether the lovely exterior was the casket to a priceless jewel, or only the beautiful form harbouring a mindless, soulless, disappointment. She had heard of the man, and while unwilling to be prejudiced by gossip, she was on her guard, and rather afraid of a cynicism which her quick intelligence had noted at their first meeting. Otherwise she was,—womanlike and generous,—curious to see, and to judge for herself, what manner of man this was, against whom more than one indiscreet acquaintance had already warned her.
“Some time elapsed, and then these two foundthemselves staying in the same house. The man realised the attractions of the woman’s glorious beauty, and he honestly determined that he would neither think, nor look, nor utter any feeling beyond that of ordinary friendship. This resolve he as honestly kept, and, though accident threw in his way every kind of opportunity, and he was constantly alone with the girl, he made no attempt to read her character, to seek her confidence, or to obtain her friendship;—indeed, he charged himself with having been somewhat neglectful in those attentions which make the courtesy of man to woman,—and, when they parted, he questioned whether any man had ever been so much in this woman’s society without saying a word that might not have been shouted in the market-place. Somehow the man had an intuitive feeling that gossip had supplied the girl with a not too friendly sketch of him, and he, for once, abandoned the cynicism that, had he cared less, might have prompted him to convey any impression of himself, so long as it should not be the true one. To her this visit said nothing beyond the fact that the man, as she found him, was quite unlike his picture, as painted by professed friends, and that the reality interested her.
“The three Fateful Sisters, who weave the destinies of men and women into such strange tangles, threw these two across each other’s paths, until the man, at least, sought to aid Fortune, in providing opportunities for meeting one whose attractive personality appealed so greatly to his artistic sense. Chance helped him, and, again catching together the threads of these lives, Destiny twisted them into a single strand. One brief day, or less, is enough to make a bond that only death can sever, and for this man and woman there were days and days when, in spite of resistance, their lives were gradually drawn so close together that at last the rivets were as strong as they were invisible.
“The triumphant beauty of the woman, rare and disturbing though it was, would not alone have overcome him, but, as the days went by, and they were brought more and more into each other’s society, she gradually let him see the greater beauty of her soul; and small wonder if he found the combined attractions irresistible. She was so young that I have called her a girl, and yet she had seen as much of life as many women twice her age. Her beauty and charm of manner had brought her hosts of admirers, but still she was completelyunspoilt, and devoid of either coquetry or self-consciousness. A lovely face, lighted by the winning expression of an intelligent mind and a warm, loving nature; a graceful, willowy figure, whose lissom movements showed a quite uncommon strength and power of endurance; these outward attractions, united to quick discernment, absolute honesty of speech and intention, a bright energy, perfectly unaffected manners, and a courage of the highest order, moral as well as physical, fascinated a man, the business of whose life had been to study his fellow-creatures. He felt certain that he saw here—
“‘La main qui ne trahit, la bouche qui ne ment.’
“‘La main qui ne trahit, la bouche qui ne ment.’
“‘La main qui ne trahit, la bouche qui ne ment.’
“His experience had given him a horror of weakness in every form, and here, he realised, was a woman who was only capable of great thoughts and great deeds, obeying the dictates of her own heart and mind, not the suggestions of the weaker brethren. If she fell, it would be as an angel might fall, through love of one of the sons of men.
“Her shy reserve slowly gave way to confidence, and, in the sympathy of closer friendship, she let him see beauties of soul of which he would havedeemed it sacrilege to speak to another. What drew her to him I cannot tell; perhaps his profound reverence for, and admiration of, her sex, his complete understanding of herself, or perhaps some quality of his own. I had not her confidence, so cannot say; but there were men who recognised his fascination, due in part, no doubt, to his compelling will. Perhaps she was simply carried away by the man’s overpowering love, which at last declared itself. They realised the hopelessness of the position, and yet they both took comfort from their mutual love and trust in each other’s unchanging faith. That was all they had to look forward to,—that and Fate.
“With that poor prospect before them he gave her, on a day, a gold coin, ‘for luck,’ he said—an ancient Indian coin of some forgotten dynasty, and she hung it on a bangle and said laughingly, that if ever she were likely to forget him the jingle of the coin would be a ceaseless reminder of the giver. And so the thing lived there day and night, and, when she moved, it made little musical sounds, singing its story to her willing ears, as it struck against the bangle from which it hung.
“Then they came here, he to his work, she to see the snows and some friends, before leavingIndia for Japan, or California, or some other stage of the voyage which brings no rest to the troubled soul. One day they had ridden up here, and were returning down the hill. It was afternoon, and she was riding in front, he behind, the syces following. The path is narrow, as you saw, and very steep. She dropped something, stopped, and called a syce to pick it up. Her horse was impatient, got his head round, and, as the syce approached, backed over the edge of the road. The thing was done in an instant, the horse was over the side, down on his belly, terror-struck and struggling in the loose earth. The man had only time to shout, ‘Get off! get off!’ but she could not get off, the horse had fallen on his off side, and, as the man threw himself on the road, her horse rolled slowly right over her, with a horrible crunching noise,—then faster, over her again, and then horse and rider disappeared, and, crashing through the undergrowth, banging against great granite boulders, fell with a horrible thud, far down the height.
“He had never seen her face; she had her back towards him, and she never uttered a sound.
“The road makes a long détour, and then comesback, several hundred feet lower down, to a spot almost directly underneath the point where the accident happened. A little way in from there the man saw the horse lying perfectly still, with its neck broken. Higher up the bank he found the woman, moaning a little, but quite unconscious, crushed and torn,—you have seen the place and you can guess. She only lived a few minutes.
“When at last the man awoke out of his stupor, to lift her up and carry her down to the path, he noticed that the bangle and the coin had both gone, wrenched off in that wild plunge through trees and stones into eternity—or oblivion.
“The man waited there, while one of the syces went for help and a litter, and it was only after they had carried her home that I saw him. I could hardly recognise him. There were times when I had thought him the saddest-looking man I had ever seen, but this was different. There was a grey, drawn setness on his face, and something in his eyes I did not care to look at. He and I were living in the same house, and in the evening he told me briefly what had happened, and several times, both while he spoke and afterwards, I saw him throw up his head and listen intently. I asked him what it was, and he said, ‘Nothing, Ithought I heard something.’ Later, he started suddenly, and said—
“‘Did you hear that?’
“‘Hear what?’ I asked.
“‘A faint jingling noise,’ he replied. ‘You must have heard it; did you do it?’
“But I had heard nothing, and I said so.
“He got up and looked about to see if any one was moving, and then came back and sat down again. I tried to make him go to bed, but he would not, and I left him there at last.
“They buried her the next evening, and all the English in the station were there. The man and I stood on the outskirts of the people, and we lingered till they had gone, and then watched the grave-diggers finish the filling of the grave, put on the sods, and finally leave the place. As they built up the earth, and shaped it into the form of a roof to cover that narrow dwelling, the man winced under every blow of the spades, as though he were receiving them on his own body. There was nothing to say, and we said nothing, but more than once I noticed the man in that listening attitude, and I began to be alarmed about him. I got him home, and except for that look, which had not left his face, and the intentness with which Isometimes caught him listening, there was nothing strange in his manner; only he hardly spoke at all. On subsequent evenings for the next fortnight he talked more than usual about himself, and as I knew that he often spent a good deal of time in, or looking on to, the cemetery, I was not surprised to hear him say that he thought it a particularly attractive graveyard, and one where it would be pleasant to lie, if one had to be put away somewhere. It is on the hill, you know, by the church, and one can see the eternal snows across that blue valley which divides us from the highlands of Sikkim. He was insistent, and made me remark that, as far as he was concerned, there could be no better place to lie than in this God’s Acre.
“Once or twice, again, he asked me if I did not hear a jingle, and constantly, especially in the quiet of evening, I saw him start and listen, till sometimes I really began to think I heard the noise he described.
“A few evenings later, but less than a month after the accident, I went to bed, leaving him cleaning a revolver which he thought a deal of, and certainly he could shoot very straight with it. I was sitting half-undressed, when I heard a loud report, and you may imagine the feelings withwhich I ran to the room where I had left him. He was sitting at the table, with his left hand raised, as though to reach his heart, and his right straight down by his side, the revolver on the floor beneath it. He was dead, shot through the heart; but his head was slightly thrown back, his eyes wide open, and in them that look of listening expectancy I had seen so often of late. At the corners of his mouth there seemed to be the shadow of the faintest smile.
“At the inquest I explained that I left him cleaning the pistol, and that, as it had a hair-trigger, no doubt it had gone off by misadventure. When each of the jurors had, in turn, raised the hammer, and found it was hardly necessary to touch the trigger in order to fire the weapon, they unanimously returned a verdict of ‘accidental death.’”
“It is curious,” concluded my companion, “but I sometimes thinkIhear the jingle of that coin, especially if I am alone on this hill, or sitting by myself at night in the house where that sad accident happened.” He put a slight stress on the word “accident,” that was not lost on me.
As we passed the stone, on our way down the hill, I seemed to see that horse blunder backwardsover the edge of the path, to hear the slow, crunching roll, and then the crash and ghastly thud, far down below; and, as an involuntary shudder crept slowly down my back, I thoughtIheard the faint jingle of that ill-omened piece of gold.
YOU will think I am eternally babbling of sunsets, but no one, with a spark of feeling, could be here and not be moved to the depths of his nature by the matchless, the ever-changing beauty of the wonderful pictures that are so constantly before his eyes. People who are utterly commonplace, whose instincts seem, in some respects, to approach those of the beasts, when they come here are amazed into new sensations, and, in unaccustomed words, voice the expression of their admiration. If I weary you, pardon me, and remember that you are the only victim of my exaltation.
One looks for a sunset in the west, does one not? and that is the direction in which to find it here as elsewhere; but to-night the marvellous effects of the setting sun were, for a time, confined almost entirely to the east, or, to be strictlyaccurate, rather to the south of east. Facing that direction one looks across a remarkable ridge, entirely covered by giant forest trees. The ridge dips in a sort of crescent from about 4500 feet in height at one extremity to 3000 feet at the other, and extends for a distance of perhaps two miles between the horns. Beyond and below the ridge lies a great, fertile valley, watered by a stately river, along the opposite bank of which runs a range of hills, varying in height from 2000 to 3000 feet. Behind these hills there is another valley, another range, and then a succession of ever-loftier mountains, forming the main chain.
The sun had disappeared behind a thick bank of grey clouds, and the only evidence of his presence was in the lambent edges of these clouds, which here and there glittered like molten metal. The western sky was, except for this bank, extraordinarily clear and cloudless, of a pale translucent blue, flecked here and there by tiny cloud-boats, airy and delicate, moving very slowly across the empyrean. I noticed this because what I saw in the east was so remarkable that I noted every detail.
Against a background the colour of a hedge-sparrow’s egg in the south, and blue without thegreen in the east, stood one white cloud, like a huge plume, with its base resting on the many ranges across the river, while it seemed to lean towards me, the top of the plume being almost over my head. At first the plume shone, from base to top, with a golden effulgence; but this gradually gave place to that lovely tint which I can only describe asrose dorée, the warm colour momentarily intensifying in tone until it suffused the entire cloud with such a roseate blush that all the hills beneath, and all the fast-darkening plain, blushed in response.
For twenty minutes that glowing plume of softly rounded, feathery cloud stood framed against its wondrous blue-green background, the rosy colour of the cloud deepening as the land beneath it gathered blackness. Then, almost imperceptibly, the glow flickered and died, leaving only an immense grey-white cloud hanging over the night-shrouded plain.
The sun, I knew, had long sunk beneath the horizon. Though I could see nothing behind that thick curtain of cloud, I waited, for the after-glow, seen from this height, is often more wonderful than the actual sunset. Five minutes of dull greyness, and then the whole western sky, fora space above the horizon, was overspread with pale gold, while countless shafts of brighter light radiated, as from the hub of the Sun-God’s chariot-wheel, across the gilded space, into the blue heights above. In the midst of this pale golden sheen there appeared, almost due west, and low down in the sky, a silver crescent, fine as a thread, curved upwards like the lip of a cup of which bowl and stem were invisible. It was the new-born moon.
Gradually all sunlight failed, and close above the long, narrow bank of dark clouds, clearly etched against their grey background, hung a now golden crescent, into which seemed to be falling a solitary star of surpassing brilliance.
To stand alone here in the presence of Nature, to witness the marvels of sunrise or sunset, the strange influence of nights of ravishing moonlight and days of quickening heat, impresses one with the conviction that if Oriental language is couched in terms that sound extravagant to Western ears, the reason is not far to seek. Nature revels here; one can really see things grow, where the sun shines every day as it never shines in lands of cold and fog. Natural phenomena are on a grander scale; the lightning is more vivid, thethunder more deafening, the rain a deluge against which the feeble artifices of man offer no protection. The moonlight is brighter, the shadows deeper, the darkness blacker than in northern climes. So the vegetation covers the earth, climbs on to the rocks, and disputes possession even with the waters of the sea. The blossoms are as brilliant in colour as they are profuse in quantity, and two men will stagger under the weight of a single fruit. As for thorns, they are long as nails, stiff as steel, and sharp as needles. The beasts of the forest are mighty, the birds of the air are of wonderful plumage, the denizens of the deep are many, and huge, and strange. In the lower forms of life it is just the same; the lizards, the beetles, the ants, the moths and butterflies, the frogs and the snakes,—they are great in size and legion in number. Even the insects, however small, are in myriads.
Only man stagnates, propagates feebly, loses his arts, falls a prey to pestilence, to new diseases, to imported vices, dies,—while every creature and every plant around him is struggling in the ceaseless renewal of life. Man dies, possibly because exultant nature leaves him so little to do to support his own existence; but it is not strange that,when he goes beyond the ordinary avocations of daily life, and takes himself at all seriously, his language should partake somewhat of the colour of his surroundings. Nor, perhaps, is it altogether surprising that, living with the tiger and the crocodile, the cobra and the stinging-ray, the scorpion and the centipede, he should have acquired some of their bloodthirstiness and venom, rather than have sought an example in the gentleness of the dove, a bird much fancied by Eastern peoples for the sweetness of its note and the excellence of its fighting qualities.
I suppose it is the appalling difficulties of making a passage through the jungle that have given the elephant and rhinoceros their strength and courage; but for the people, who are never really cold, and seldom hungry, there is little inducement to exertion. They can lie under the fruit trees, and idly watch the grey, gossamer-winged butterflies floating dreamily across a sunlit glade; they drowse and sleep to the music of the waters, as the whispering river slips gently towards a summer sea.
And it is all so comfortable. There is Death, but that is predestined, the one thing certain in so much that is too hard for the finite mind.There is also Hell, but of all those who speak so glibly of it, none ever believes that the same Power which created him, to live for a moment in trouble on the earth, will condemn him to an eternity of awful punishment. It is Paradise for which each man, in his own mind, is destined; a Paradise where he will be rewarded for all his earthly disappointments by some such pleasant material advantages as he can picture to himself, while he lies on the river bank and gradually sinks into a delightful slumber, lulled by the restful rippling of the passing stream. And he will dream—dream of that Celestial Being of whom it is related that “his face shone golden, like that of a god, so that many lizards fell, dazzled, from the walls, and the cockroaches in the thatch fought to bask in the light of his countenance.”
Oriental imagery,—but a quaintly pretty idea, the creatures struggling to sit in the light shed by that radiant face.
SO you prefer the unaddressed letters, such as you have seen, to those which you receive from me in a cover, whereon are duly inscribed your name, style, and titles, and you ask me whether some of the letters are not really written to you. They are written to “Mary, in heaven,” or to you, if you please, or to any one to whom they appeal. The reason why you prefer them to the epistles I address to you is because they are unconstrained (too much so, you might think, if you saw them all), while, in writing to you, I am under constraint, and, directly I feel it, I have to be careful what I say, and beat about for some safe subject; and, as I abhor gossip and cannot write about my neighbour’s cat, I become unnatural, stilted, stupid, boring. With Mary it is different, for she is in heaven, where there are no marriages, and, therefore, I imagine, no husbands. As forlovers, I do not mind them, for they have no special privileges; at any rate, they have no right to interfere with me. The idea that what I write for your eye may be read by some one for whom it was not intended, hampers the pen and takes away more than half the pleasure of writing.
If you answer, “You ought not to want to write anything to me that may not be read by the master over my shoulder, or by the maid in the kitchen,” I say that I do not wish to interfere with the circulation of theFamily Herald; and, for the rest, when you honour me with a letter, is it to be shown to any one who wishes to know what a really charming and interesting letter is like? I am blessed with some really delightful correspondents, of whom I would say you are the chief, did I not fear to offend some others; but I cannot help noticing, sometimes with amusement and sometimes with painful regret, that the character of their letters has a way of changing that, between first and last, may be compared to looking at the landscape through one end of a telescope and then through the other. When I see the field of vision narrowing to something like vanishing-point, until, in fact, the features of interest are no longer visible, I feel that I too must put on a minifying-glass,before I attempt to describe to you my surroundings, my thoughts, my hopes and fears. Worst of all, I can no longer ask you freely how life is treating you; for if I do, I get no answer, or you tell me that the winter has been one of unexampled severity, or the political party in power seems to be losing ground and missing its opportunities. Individuals and parties have been losing opportunities since the days when Joseph lost his coat; always regretting them and always doing it again, because every party and every individual scorns to profit by the experience of another. That, you will tell me, is a platitude beneath a child’s notice. I agree with you, and I only mention it in support of my contention that it is better to write what you see, or hear, or imagine, or believe, to no one at all, than to write “delicately,” with the knowledge that there is a possible Samuel waiting somewhere about, if not to hew you in pieces, to put inconvenient questions to your friends, and give them the trouble of making explanations which are none the less aggravating because they are needless. As a man, I may say that the effort to avoid writing to women everything that can, by a suspicious mind, be twisted into something mildly compromising, is more than I am capable of. Thethought that one may innocently get a friend into trouble is not amusing, so pray dismiss from your mind the idea that any of these letters are written to you. They are not; and if they ever recall scenes, or suggest situations that seem familiar, that is merely an accident. Pure, undiluted fable is, I fancy, very rare indeed; but travellers are supposed to be responsible for the most of it, and I am a traveller. On the other hand, almost all fiction is founded on fact, but you know how small a divergence from the latter is sufficient to make the former. If my fiction looks like fact, I am gratified; if, at the same time, it has awakened your interest (and you say it has), that is more than I ever hoped to achieve. A wanderer’s life in often beautiful, sometimes strange, surroundings; a near insight into the fortunes of men and women of widely differing race, colour, and creed; and the difficulty of writing freely and fearlessly to those who, like yourself, would give me their sympathy and kindly interest—these are mainly responsible for the Letters. As to the other contributing causes, it will amuse you more to exercise your imagination in lively speculations than to hear the dull truth from me. Besides, if I told you the truth it would only mislead, for you would not believe it.
DO you remember how Matthew Arnold, in his Essay on “Pagan and Mediæval Religious Sentiment,” translates a scene from the fifteenth Idyll of Theocritus, giving the experiences of two Syracusan visitors at the feast of Adonis at Alexandria, about three hundred years before the Christian era? The description is wonderfully fresh and realistic, and it came back to me with strange insistence last night when my host detailed to me his experiences at a Malay funeral. I fear the effect will all be lost when I try to repeat what I heard—but you are indulgent, and you will pardon my clumsy periods for the sake of my desire to interest you. My only chance of conveying any idea of the impression made on me is to assume the rôle of narrator at first hand, and to try, as far as I may, to speak in my host’s words.
“I was travelling,” he said, “and on the pointof starting for a place where lived a Malay raja who was a great friend of mine, when I heard accidentally that his son had just died. That evening I reached the station where my friend lived. I saw him, and learned that his son, a mere lad, would be buried the next day. It is needless to say why he died, it is not a pretty tale. He had visited, perhaps eighteen months earlier, a British possession where the screams of Exeter Hall had drowned the curses of the people of the land, and this wretched boy returned to his country to suffer eighteen months of torture,—agonising, loathsome corruption,—in comparison with which death on the cross would be a joyous festival. That is nothing, he was dead; and, while his and many another life cry to deaf ears, the momentary concern of his family and his friends was to bury him decently. My arrival was regarded as a fortuitous circumstance, and I was bidden to take part in the function.
“It was early afternoon when I found myself, with the father, standing at the window of a long room, full of women, watching till the body should be carried to a great catafalque that stood at the door to receive it. As we waited there, the man beside me,—a man of unusually tender feeling,—showedno emotion. He simply said, ‘I am not sorry; it is better to die than to live like that; he has peace at last.’
“There was a sound of heavy feet staggering over the grass under the weight of a great load, and the coffin was borne past our window towards the door. As we walked down the room a multitude of women and children pressed after us, and while a crowd of men lifted the body into its place on the catafalque, a girl close by us burst into a perfect passion of weeping, intermingled with despairing cries, and expressions of affection for the dead, whom she would never see again. The raja pulled me by the sleeve, saying, ‘Come outside, I cannot bear this,’ and I saw the tears were slowly coursing down his face as we passed the heart-broken child, who, in the abandonment of her grief, had thrown herself into the arms of another girl, and was weeping hysterically on her breast. The mourner was the dead boy’s only sister.
“Meanwhile, the coffin had been placed on the huge wooden bier, and this was now being raised on the shoulders of a hundred men, with at least another hundred crowded round to take turns in carrying it to the place of burial. At this momentthe procession moved off, and anything more unlike a funeral, as you and I know it, would be hard to imagine. A band of musicians, Spanishmestizos, in military uniforms, headed thecortège, playing a wild Spanish lament, that seemed to sob and wail and proclaim, by every trick of sound, the passing of the dead. Immediately behind them followed a company of stalwart Indian soldiers with arms reversed. Then a posse of priests and holy men chanting prayers. Next we came, and behind us a row of boys carrying their dead master’s clothes, a very pathetic spectacle. After them the great bier, vast in size, curious in form, and gay with colour, but so unwieldy that it seemed to take its own direction and make straight for the place of burial, regardless of roads and ditches, shrubs and flowers, or the shouts and cries of its bearers and those who were attempting to direct their steps. Last of all, a crowd of men and boys,—friends, retainers, chiefs, sightseers, idlers, gossips and beggars, a very heterogeneous throng.
“The road to the burial-ground wound down one hill and up another, and the band, the escort, the priests, and the mourners followed it. But the catafalque pursued its own devious course in itsown blundering fashion, and, by-and-by, was set down on a high bluff, o’erlooking a great shining river, with palm-clad banks, backed by a space of level ground shut in by lofty blue hills. The coffin was then lifted from out the bier and placed upon the ground.
“I stood by the ready-dug grave and waited; while the father of the dead boy moved away a few yards, and an aged chief called out, ‘Now, all you praying people, come and pray.’
“The raja, the priests, and the holy men gathered round the body, and after several had been invited to take up the word and modestly declined in favour of some better qualified speaker, a voice began to intone, while, from time to time, the rest of the company said ‘Amîn.’
“Just then it began to rain a little, and those who had no umbrellas ran for protection to the catafalque and sheltered themselves under its overhanging eaves, while a lively interchange of badinage passed between those who, for the moment, had nothing to do. This was the sort of conversation that reached my ears.
“‘Now, then, all you people, come and pray.’
“‘Why don’t you pray yourself?’
“‘We did all our praying yesterday; I don’t believe you have done any. Now is the time, with all these holy men here.’
“‘I dare say; but you don’t suppose I’m going out into the rain to pray: I’m not a priest.’
“‘No one thought you were; but that is no reason why you should not pray.’
“‘Never mind about me, tell these other people; but you need not bother now, for they’ve got it over.’
“And all the time the monotonous voice of the priest muttered the guttural Arabic words, as though these frivolous talkers were a mile off, instead of within a few feet of him and those who stood round the coffin.
“No one could have helped being struck by the curious incongruity of the scene at that moment. I stood in a place of graves, with an open sepulchre at my feet. The stage was one of extraordinary beauty, the players singularly picturesque. That high bluff, above the glistening river, circled by forest-clad hills of varying height, one needle-like point rising to at least 6000 feet. Many old graves lay beneath the shadow of graceful, wide-spreading trees, which carried a perfect blaze of crimson blossoms, lying in huge masses over dark green leaves, as though spread there for effect.Groups of brown men, clad in garments of bright but harmoniously toned colours, stood all about the hill. On the very edge of the bluff, towards the river, was the gaily caparisoned, quaintly constructed catafalque, a number of men and boys sitting in it and round its edge, smoking, laughing, and talking. Within a dozen feet of them, the closely packed crowd of priests and holy men praying round the coffin. The band and the guard had been told to march off, and they were wending their way round a hillside in middle distance; while the strains of a quick step, the monotone of rapidly uttered prayer, the conversation and laughter of the idlers, crossed and re-crossed each other in a manner that to me was distinctlybizarre. Seen against that background and lighted by the fiery rays of a dying Eastern sun, the scarlet uniforms of the bandsmen, the dark blue of the escort, the long white coats of the priests, and the many-coloured garments of the two or three hundred spectators scattered about the graves, completed a picture not easily forgotten.
“Just then a move was made to the sepulchre, and two ropes were stretched across it, while some men began to lift the coffin.
“‘What are you doing?’ said the uncle of thedead boy. ‘If you put him in like that how will his head lie?’
“The bearers immediately let the coffin down, and another man in authority said, ‘Well, after all, how should his head lie?’
“‘Towards the west,’ said the uncle.
“‘No, it should not,’ replied the other; ‘it should be to the north, and then he looks towards the west.’
“Several people here joined in the argument, and it was eventually decided that the head must be towards the north; and then, as the body was lying on its right side, the face would look towards Mecca.
“‘Well, who knows at which end of the box his head is?’
“Various guesses were hazarded, but the uncle said that would never do, and he would see for himself. So the wreaths and garlands of ‘blue chempaka,’ the flower of death, the gorgeous silks and cloths of gold, were all thrown off, the heavy cover was lifted up, and the uncle began to feel about in the white grave-clothes for the head of the corpse.
“‘Ha! here it is,’ he said; ‘if we had put him in without looking, it would have been all wrong,and we should have had a nice job to get him out again.’
“‘Well, you know all about it now,’ said a bystander, ‘so we may as well get on.’
“The cover was accordingly replaced, the box turned with the head to the north, and then, with a deal of talk and superabundance of advice, from near and from far, the poor body was at last lowered into the grave. Once there the corpse lies on the earth, for the coffin has no bottom. The reason is obvious.
“You have probably never been to a funeral, and if so, you do not know the horrible sound of the first spadesful of earth as they fall, with dull blows, on that which is past feeling and resistance. The friends who stand round the grave shudder as each clod strikes the wood under which lies their beloved dead. Here it was different, for two men got into the grave and held up a grass mat, against which the earth was shovelled while the coffin was protected. There was hardly any sound, and, as the earth accumulated, the men spread it with their hands to right and left, and finally over the top of the coffin, and then the rest of the work was done rapidly and quietly. When filled in, two wooden pegs, each coveredwith a piece of new white cloth, were placed at the head and foot of the grave. These are eventually replaced by stones.
“Then, as the officers of the raja’s household began to distribute funeral gifts amongst the priests, the holy men, and the poor, my friend and I slowly retraced our steps, and, with much quiet dignity, the father thanked me for joining him in performing the last offices to his dead son.
“‘His sufferings were unbearable,’ he said; ‘they are over now, and why should I regret?’
“Truly death was best, I could not gainsay it; but that young life, so horribly and prematurely ended, seemed to have fallen into the snare of a civilisation that cannot be wholly appreciated by primitive people. They do not understand why the burning moral principles of a section of an alien race should be applied to communities that have no sympathy with the principles, or their application to different conditions of society.”
THERE is a subject which has an abiding interest for all men and women who are not too old to love; it is Constancy. I suppose there are few questions on which any half-dozen intelligent people will express such different opinions, and it is doubtful whether any of the six (unless there be amongst them one who is very young and inexperienced) will divulge his, or her, true thoughts thereanent. Almost all women, and most men, seem to think they are morally bound to declare themselves to be very mirrors of constancy, and each is prepared to shower scorn and indignation on the erring mortal convicted of change of feeling. The only feeling I here refer to is the declared love of man for woman, of woman for man.
The other day a friend, writing to me, said, with admirable candour, “Do not think my heartis so small that it can only contain love for one man,” and I know that she means one man at a time. The maze surrounding this suggestion is attractive; let us wander in it for awhile, and if we become bewildered in its devious turns, if we lose ourselves in the intricacies of vague phrases, we may yet win our way back to reason by the road of hard, practical fact.
In the spring of life, when the fancies of the young man and the girl “lightly turn to thoughts of love,” I suppose the average lover honestly believes in the doctrine of eternal constancy, for himself and the object of his affections, and words will almost fail him and her to describe their contempt for the frail creature who has admitted a change of mind; worse still, if the change includes a confession of love for a new object. Coquette, jilt, faithless deceiver, breaker of hearts, ruthless destroyer of peace of mind,—words of opprobrium are not sufficient in quantity, or poisonous enough in quality, to satisfy those from whose lips they flow with the violence and destructive force of a river in flood.
Now, suppose this heaven-mated couple proceeds to extremities—that is, to marriage. And suppose that, after quite a short time, so shortthat no false note has ever been heard to mar the perfect harmony of their duet of mutual praise and rapture, one of them dies, or goes mad, or gets lost, or is put into prison for a long term of years;—will not the other find a new affinity? It happens so often that I think it must be admitted as a very likely possibility. When convention permits of an outward and visible application, and plaster is put over the wound, most of the very virtuous say, “and an excellent thing, too.”
There, then, we arrive at once at the possibility of change; the possibility of A, who once swore deathless love and fealty to B, swearing the same deathless love and fealty to X. It happens, and it has high approval.
Now go a little step further, and suppose that the excellent couple of whom I first spoke perpetrate matrimony, and neither of them dies, or goes mad, or gets into prison. Only, after a longer or shorter time, they become utterly bored with each other; or one finds the other out; or, what is most common, one, and that one usually the woman, for divers reasons, comes to loathe the married state, all it implies and all it exacts. Just then Satan supplies another and a quite different man, who falls naturally into his placein the situation, and the play runs merrily along. B’s deathless love and fealty for A are thrown out of the window, and what remains is pledged, up to the very hilt, to that spawn of the Evil One, the wrecker of happy homes, Z. It can hardly be denied that this also happens.
I come, then, to the case of the affianced but unmarried lovers, where one, or both, perceives in time that the other is not quite all that fancy painted; realises that there is a lover, “for showy,” and a disagreeable companion and master “for blowy”: a helpful daughter, a charming sweetheart one day, and a very selfish, not to say grasping, spit-fire on another. Or, across the distant horizon, there sails into the quiet waters of this love-locked sea a privateer, with attractions not possessed by the ordinary merchant vessel, and, when the privateer spreads its sails again, it carries with it a willing prize, leaving behind a possibly better-found and more seaworthy craft to indulge its wooden frame with a burst of impotent fury and despair. B’s deathless love has been transplanted to a more congenial soil, and, after a space, A will find another and a better helpmate, and both will be satisfied,—for a time.
If one may love, and marry, and lose, and love again; if one may love, and promise to marry, but, seeing the promise means disaster, withdraw it, to love elsewhere; if one may love and the love be choked to death, or frozen to entire absence of feeling, and then revive under the warmth of new sympathy to live and feel again—if all these things may be, and those to whom the experience comes are held to be no more criminal than their fellows, surely there may be love, real love, honestly given with both hands, as honestly clasped and held, and yet—and yet—a time may come when, for one of a thousand reasons, or for two or three, that love will wane and wane until, from illumining the whole firmament of those within its radiance, it disappears and leaves nothing but black, moonless night. But, by-and-by, a new moon of love may rise, may wax to equal splendour, making as glorious as before everything on which it shines; and the heart, forgetting none of the past, rejoices again in the present, and says, “Life is good; let me live it as it comes.” If that be possible, the alternate day and night of love and loss may succeed each other more than twice or thrice, and yet no charge, even of fickleness, may fairly lieat the door of him or her to whom this fate may come unsought.
To love, as some can love, and be loved as well in return; to trust in the unswerving faith, the unassailable loyalty, the unbounded devotion of another, as one trusts in God, in the simple laws of nature, in anything that is absolutely certain; and then to find that our deity has feet of clay, that our perfect gem has, after all, a flaw, is a very bad experience. Worse than all, to lose, absolutely and for ever, and yet without death, a love that seemed more firmly rooted and grounded in us than any sacred principle, more surely ours than any possession secured by bolt and bar—that is a pain that passeth the understanding of those who have not felt it. Add to this the knowledge that this curse has come upon us as the result of our own work—folly, blind, senseless, reckless confidence, or worse—that is the very acme of human suffering. It is not a thing to dwell upon. On the grave of a love that has surpassed, in the perfection of its reality, all the dreams of imagination, and every ideal conjured out of depths of passionate romance, grow weeds which poison the air and madden the brain with grisly spectres. It is well to “let the dead bury their dead”—if we only can.
There, I am at the end; or is it only the close of a chapter? I suppose it must be the latter, for I have but now come to my friend’s proposition, namely, that of love distributed amongst a number of objects; all perhaps different, yet all in their way, let us hope, equally worthy. I know how she explains it. She says she loves one man because he appeals to her in one way, another in another; and as there are many means of approach to her heart, so there are many who, by one road or another, find their way to it. After all, she is probably more candid than singular in the distribution of her affection. How many worldlings who have reached the age of thirty can say that they have not had a varied experience in the elasticity of their affections, in the variety of shrines at which they have worshipped? Aphrodite and Athene and Artemis for the men; Phœbus and Ares and Hermes for the women; and a host of minor deities for either. Minor chords, delicate harmonies, charming pages of melody between the tragic scenes, the carefully scored numbers, the studied effects, which introduce the distinguishingmotifsof the leading characters, in that strange conception wherein is written all the music of their lives.
We are told that the sons of God took unto themselves wives from the daughters of men. Do you believe they left no wives, no broken faith, in heaven, before they came to earth to seek what they could not find above the spheres? What form of marriage ceremony do you suppose they went through with those daughters of men? Was it binding until death, and did that last trifling incident only open the door to an eternity of wedded bliss in the heaven from which earthly love had been able to seduce these sons of God? I fear there is proof of inconstancy somewhere. There is clear evidence of a desire for change, and that is usually taken to be a synonym for inconstancy, as between the sexes. The daughters of men have something to answer for, much to be proud of; but I hardly see why either they, or their menkind, who never drew any loving souls down from the safe heights of heaven to be wives to them, should be expected to make a choice of a partner early in life and never waver in devotion to that one, until death has put them beyond the possibility of temptation. It does happen sometimes; it is beautiful, enviable, and worthy of all praise. But when the heart of man or woman, following that most universal law of nature, change,goes through the whole gamut of feeling, from indifference to passionate love, and later retraces its steps, going back over only a few of them, or to a place, beyond indifference, where dislike is reached, there seems no good reason why that disappointed, disillusioned soul should be made the object of reproach, or the mark for stones, cast by others who have already gone through the same experience or have yet to learn it.
If we claim immortality, I think we must admit our mutability. Perhaps the fault is not all ours. It is written:—