Chapter XI The Road to Peace
A month after his conversation with Christopher, Myles Stapledon made definite and determined advance upon the road to peace. There came a night when he and his wife lay in bed and a bright moon fretted the wall opposite their eyes with the pattern of the latticed window. The man gazed upon this design as it elongated and stole from left to right; then, conscious that Honor was not asleep, he spoke gently to her.
“You are waking,” he said, “and I also. Hear me a little while, dear heart. There’s no shadow of anger in what I’m going to say to you. I’m cool in body and brain, and I want to look at your life as it must seem in other eyes—in the eyes of those who love you, though not as I love you. I want to be just—ay, and more than just.”
“You are always just, Myles—where you understand. The hard, impossible thing is to be just where we don’t understand. You’re going to talk to me about Christo; and I’m going to listen. You’ve a right to speak—which is more than anybody else in the world has, though certain folks don’t realise that. I thought all was well, but I am wrong. You hide behind yourself so much—even from me. You are an unhappy man, and you have not told me, but Uncle Mark has.”
“I may be considered so. And to know that I am makes you unhappy and Yeoland uncomfortable. I have spoken to him recently. I explained to him that the present position, apart from my personal feelings concerning it, was very undesirable and must be modified, to say the least. He seemed surprised, but quite unprepared to make any suggestion. A plan other than my own proposal he hinted at, but he did not put it before me.”
“He can feel deeply too; this must have been a shock and a grief to him.”
“At least he recognised that it was so to me. I think he was neither shocked nor grieved himself. If anything, he felt incensed by my attitude. The position is not endurable to me, though you and he see no difficulty. But I must be allowed the decision, and I say that this state has to cease—selfish though that may seem to you.”
“Then it shall cease. You could not be selfish if you tried, Myles. I, too, can feel a little. Uncle Mark began what you are going to finish. I’m probably faulty in my intellect, or I should have seen all this sooner. At any rate I know what I owe to you—what a husband you have been to me. I won’t talk of duty; I’ll talk of my love for you, Myles dearest. That is a live, deep thing at least.”
“I never thought to doubt it, or ask proof of it. I knew it was real enough, and believed it immortal until—not doubt—I won’t say doubt came—but sorrow, and a cloud, and a mist of the mind that was very chilling to me. I have lost my way in it of late, and have wandered wondering how far off you were in the darkness, asking myself if we were drifting further and further apart, fearing that it was so.”
“You have been too patient, and I too blind. And I have loved you more every day, not less.”
“It is a question for your decision. I don’t like to wound your ear with blunt words; but there must be no more vague misery for want of speech after to-night. Half the wretchedness of life happens because we’re frightened to speak out, and make a clean wound, and have done with it. You’re my wife, for better or worse—not necessarily for good and all. My heart and soul are wrapped up in your well-being; but I’ve got to live my own life, not yours; I’ve got to do the unknown will, and I’ve no right to let anything from outside come between me and what I believe is my duty. Nothing outside a man can hurt him, unless he suffers it to do so. I must not let these troubles stand between me and my road any longer. I must go on with the light I have—alone, if you say so; but I must go on.”
“Alone?”
“If you say so. Self-respect to a man with my outlook is all he has. And I’m losing it.”
“To live without me?”
“If you say so. I’m not as conventional as you think, Honor. You made certain promises to me under certain impressions. The fact that the man whom you believed to be dead, when you married me, was not dead in reality absolves you from your undertaking, if you wish to be absolved. So at least it stands in my judgment; and mine is the only judgment, after your own, that you need consider.”
“I swore an oath before God!”
“You swore in the dark. Now go back to the starting-point and make up your mind anew. Which of us is to have you henceforth—all of you?”
“To think that I should hear you say that! To know my actions justify the words!”
“I can very easily teach myself to go without; I can never tame myself to share. No man could.”
“You have all of me, for ever, and for ever, and for ever. I am your wife.”
“Don’t let that last accident influence you. Argue as if you were not; argue as if you were free. Second thoughts are often best. You’re linked to me by a chain that can quite easily be broken if you desire to break it.”
“Your words are blunt, as you said they should be; but you’re making the clean wounds you spoke of in my heart. They’ll heal if they don’t kill. I’d rather die—much rather die than leave you, Myles.”
“Consider. Yeoland will be just as ready to accept and applaud your decision as I shall. He, too, realises at any rate that this isn’t going on. We don’t stand at the end of our lives; rather at the beginning of them. We may have fifty years more of it yet—either together or apart; but not like this.”
“The alternatives?”
“We two are the alternatives. Go to him, if you like, and I shall know what to do; or stay with me and abide by my will. What comes afterwards you may leave to me. If you are to be my wife, Honor, you must shut this man clean out of your existence, for evermore, absolutely—never speak his name again, or think it. And for myself I shall be what I have always been—neither better nor worse. I can promise nothing—nothing of the beautiful side of life. No rainbows ever play in my cloudy atmosphere, as they do in his changeful, April weather. I am plain, dull, uninteresting, old-fashioned. I know nothing, and go joylessly in consequence—a cheerless soul with little laughter in me. Sometimes I think the east wind must blow colder for touching me. That’s all I have to offer, and you know it by this time. What the other can give you that is better, softer, sweeter for a beautiful woman, I needn’t tell you. It’s the difference all through the piece between a working farmer and an accomplished gentleman of no occupation—no occupation but to make you happy. And no need to study the world in your choice; no need to think the accident of a human contrivance that makes you my wife should weigh with you. It was under a wrong knowledge of facts that you accepted me, and, in any case, we’ve gone far beyond paltry conventions and customs. I shall respect you more if you fling away that ring and go to him, than I do at present.”
“Can you love me with all your heart and speak so?”
“You know whether I love you.”
“And yet you talk so coldly of going on with your life alone.”
“The necessity of facing that has been forced upon me, Honor.”
“Do you think I am even without a sense of duty?”
“Don’t let any trumpery consideration of duty weigh with you. You have to decide what is to become of your life. Consider only your duty to your soul. Your religion—of love and fear and belief in an eternity—should be of service to you here, if ever, for your trust is in a just Being who metes out reward or punishment according to the record in the book. That’s a wholesome assumption if you can accept it; but don’t let minor dogmas and man’s additions interfere with your decision. By your record you will be judged—so you believe. Then create that record; set about it wisely and decide which line of action leads to making of the higher history. If you can justify your existence better with me, then stay with me; if life lived with Christopher Yeoland will offer more opportunities of doing something big and useful and beautiful—as very likely it might, when we consider his money and position and sympathetic nature—then it is your duty to yourself to go to him. Nobody can decide for you; but use your best thought upon it and make no mistake in this critical pass. Look at it every way impartially and distrust even your conscience, for that has been educated by rote, like every other woman’s conscience.”
“Your speech is very cynical, Myles; but your voice is earnest enough.”
“There is nothing ironical in what I say; only the facts are ironical.”
“Do you want me to go to him?”
“Yes—if your heartfelt conclusion is that you can live a finer, worthier life so.”
“Don’t you know I love you dearly?”
“I know you love us both.”
“I’ve never stopped to contrast or compare. I was your wife.”
“But I ask you again not to remember that. Decide between us, or decide against us. There’s that alternative. I’ve thought of that for you. Once you said that, as you couldn’t have both, you’d have neither. That was in jest; but the course is still open in earnest if the road to your peace points there.”
“To leave you. Oh, Myles, how you must have suffered and suffered and thought before you could say these things to me.”
She put her arms about him and pressed close to him. The light had stolen round and, one by one, the diamonds of wan silver were disappearing. He showed no responsive emotion, but stroked the small hand on his breast wearily.
“Yes, I have thought a good deal. Will you decide what you are going to do in a week? Is that long enough?”
“How wicked—how wicked I have been in this. To think we can be wicked day after day and never know it! And your patience! And how extraordinary that you had it in you to speak in this cold, calculating way!”
“A stronger man might have borne it longer—into old age, perhaps, as Yeoland said. I could not. I’ve got nothing much beyond my self-respect. That’s the sole thing that has kept me from destroying you, and him.”
She thought upon this, but did not answer it.
“Sleep now,” he said, after a pause. “’Tis the day-spring nearly. I’ve wearied you, but it had to be. Speak to me again about the matter in a week. And don’t fear me any more. Passion against him is clean passed and gone. Just a gust of nature, I suppose, that makes the males fight in season. I wouldn’t hurt a hair of your head—or his.”
She nestled closer.
“Why wait a week when there is no need to wait a day, or an hour? I love you—better than anybody in the world; and I’ll tell Christopher that; also that I have done great wrong in this matter; and I ask you, Myles, to take me where I shall never see him again—for his good and because I love you with my whole heart—all, all of it. And judge me by what I do henceforth and not what I say now. See how I shall order my life—let that convince you.”
He did not speak, but his silence was cardinal—a hinge on which his whole spirit turned.
“You believe me, Myles? You know that I have never spoken an untruth to you.”
A sigh rose, and seemed to pass away like an embodied trouble under the first dawn light—to depart like a presence from the man and leave him changed.
“I believe you—I believe you. I wish I could feel a personal God—to kneel to Him and thank Him, and to let my life thank Him henceforth.”
“I’m a very wicked woman, and I ought to have lived in the Stone days, for I deserve nothing better than a hut circle and a cruel master to beat me. I should have been kicked about by some old, Neolithic hero with his dogs. I’m not big enough to deserve the love of a man like you, not wise enough even to rate the depth and height of it. But you shall see I can learn still and be single-hearted too. I’ll live differently—higher; I’ll aim anew—at the sun—I’ll—I’ll——”
Here she broke down, and he comforted her in his slow, stolid fashion.
“Honor, you are all the best part of me—the best thing that my life has known, or can know. Pray that the time to come may shine brighter seen against gloom gone. I’ve never doubted your motives—never. I’ve only lived in torment, because—there, don’t be unhappy any more. I could do great things—great things for sheer thanksgiving. I must try to pay the world back in coin for this sunrise. The rest will be easy now you have spoken. Thought can cut the knot that remains, and I will take deep thought for all of us. Nothing is left to hurt us; think of that! Here’s a solid foundation to work upon, now that you have decided to be my wife.”
“What shall you do, Myles?”
“Think of him, and study how best to take you out of his life with least wound to him. I can be sorry for him now.”
“His life is to live as well as ours.”
“He must learn how to live it; but not from me. Sleep now, my own woman, again. Leave me to think out the rest. You don’t know what this return means to me; I can’t find the words to thunder out such a heart-deep thing. I feel as I felt when first you promised to marry me. I am waking out of a long chaos into peace.”
Honor answered him, and their conversation presently grew disjointed as slumber stole over her weary brain. She sighed once or twice—the shaken sigh that follows upon tears—then her hand, that held his, relaxed and fell away. But Stapledon did not sleep. A thousand blind alleys of future action he followed, and countless possible operations pursued to barriers of difficulty.
At dawn he arose, and, leaving unconscious rest to repair the fret and turmoil of his wife’s mind, pressed on to new problems. For the storm-cloud of his sorrows was touched with light; the ragged soul-garden within him spread smoothed and purged of deep-rooted weeds. He found space for wholesome seed therein, and passing into the air breathed wordless prayers upon the pure morning and opened his heart to the warmth of the sunrise fires.