The Translation of a Savage, Complete - Gilbert Parker
"It is wonderful, wonderful," said the general slowly, and no man asked
him why he said it, or what was wonderful. But Richard, sitting apart,
watched Frank's face acutely, himself wondering when the hour would come
that the wife would forgive her husband, and this situation so fraught
with danger would be relieved.
CHAPTER XIV
ON THE EDGE OF A FUTURE
At last the day of the wedding came, a beautiful September day, which may
be more beautiful in uncertain England than anywhere else. Lali had been
strangely quiet all the day before, and she had also seemed strangely
delicate. Perhaps, or perhaps not, she felt the crisis was approaching.
It is probable that when the mind has been strained for a long time, and
the heart and body suffered much, one sees a calamity vaguely, and cannot
define it; appreciates it, and does not know it. She came to Marion's
room about a half-hour before they were to start for the church. Marion
was already dressed and ready, save for the few final touches, which,
though they have been given a dozen times, must still again be given just
before the bride starts for the church. Such is the anxious mind of women
on these occasions. The two stood and looked at each other a moment, each
wondering what were the thoughts of the other. Lali was struck by that
high, proud look over which lay a glamour of infinite satisfaction, of
sweetness, which comes to every good woman's face when she goes to the
altar in a marriage which is not contingent on the rise or fall in
stocks, or a satisfactory settlement. Marion, looking, saw, as if it had
been revealed to her all at once, the intense and miraculous change which
had come over the young wife, even within the past two months. Indeed,
she had changed as much within that time as within all the previous four
years--that is, she had been brought to a certain point in her education
and experience, where without a newer and deeper influence she could go
no further. That newer and deeper influence had come, and the result
thereof was a woman standing upon the verge of the real tragedy to her
life, which was not in having married the man, but in facing that
marriage with her new intelligence and a transformed soul. Men can face
that sort of thing with a kind of philosophy, not because men are better
or wiser, but because it really means less to them. They have resources
of life, they can bury themselves in their ambitions good or bad, but a
woman can only bury herself in her affections, unless her heart has been
closed; and in that case she herself has lost much of what made her
adorable. And while she may go on with the closed heart and become a
saint, even saintship is hardly sufficient to compensate any man or woman
for a half-lived life. The only thing worth doing in this world is to
live life according to one's convictions--and one's heart. He or she who
sells that fine independence for a mess of pottage, no matter if the mess
be spiced, sells, as the Master said, the immortal part of him.
And so Lali, just here on the edge of Marion's future, looking into that
mirror, was catching the reflection of her own life. When two women come
so near that, like the lovers in the Tempest, they have changed eyes, in
so far as to read each other's hearts, even indifferently, which is much
where two women are concerned, there is only one resource, and that is to
fall into each other's arms, and to weep if it be convenient, or to hold
their tears for a more fitting occasion; and most people will admit that
tears need not add to a bride's beauty.
Marion might, therefore, be pardoned if she had her tears in her throat
and not in her eyes, and Lali, if they arose for a moment no higher than
her heart. But they did fall into each other's arms despite veils and
orange blossoms, and somehow Marion had the feeling for Lali that she had
on that first day at Greyhope, four years ago, when standing on the
bridge, the girl looked down into the water, tears dropping on her hands,
and Marion said to her: "Poor girl! poor girl!" The situations were the
same, because Lali had come to a new phase of her life, and what that
phase would be who could tell-happiness or despair?
The usual person might think that Lali was placing herself and her wifely
affection at a rather high price, but then it is about the only thing
that a woman can place high, even though she be one-third a white woman
and two-thirds an Indian. Here was a beautiful woman, who had run the
gamut of a London season, who had played a pretty social part, admirably
trained therefor by one of the best and most cultured families of
England. Besides, why should any woman sell her affections even to her
husband, bargain away her love, the one thing that sanctifies "what God
hath joined let no man put asunder"? Lali was primitive, she was unlike
so many in a trivial world, but she was right. She might suffer, she
might die, but, after all, there are many things worse than that. Man is
born in a day, and he dies in a day, and the thing is easily over; but to
have a sick heart for three-fourths of one's lifetime is simply to have
death renewed every morning; and life at that price is not worth living.
In this sensitive age we are desperately anxious to save life, as if it
was the really great thing in the world; but in the good, strong times of
the earth--and in these times, indeed, when necessity knows its hour--men
held their lives as lightly as a bird upon the housetop which any chance
stone might drop.
It is possible that at this moment the two women understood each other
better than they had ever done, and respected each other more. Lali,
recovering herself, spoke a few soft words of congratulation, and then
appeared to busy herself in putting little touches to Marion's dress,
that soft persuasion of fingers which does so much to coax mere cloth
into a sort of living harmony with the body.
They had no more words of confidence, but in the porch of the church,
Marion, as she passed Lali, caught the slender fingers in her own and
pressed them tenderly. Marion was giving comfort, and yet if she had been
asked why she could not have told. She did not try to define it further
than to say to herself that she herself was having almost too much
happiness. The village was en fete, and peasants lined the street leading
to the church, ready with their hearty God-bless-you's. Lali sat between
her husband and Mrs. Armour, apparently impassive until there came the
question: "Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" and General
Armour's voice came clear and strong: "I do." Then a soft little cry
broke from her, and she shivered slightly. Mrs. Armour did not notice,
but Frank and Mrs. Lambert heard and saw, and both were afterwards
watchful and solicitous. Frank caught Mrs. Lambert's eye, and it said, to
a little motion of the head: "Do not appear to notice."
Lali was as if in a dream. She never took her eyes from the group at the
altar until the end, and the two, now man and wife, turned to go into the
vestry. Then she appeared to sink away into herself for a moment, before
she fell into conversation with the others, as they moved towards the
vestry.
"It was beautiful, wasn't it?" ventured Edward Lambert.
"The most beautiful wedding I ever saw," she answered, with a little
shadow of meaning; and Lambert guessed that it was the only one she had
seen since she came to England.
"How well Vidall looked," said Frank, "and as proud as a sultan. Did you
hear what he said, as Marion came up the aisle?"
"No," responded Lambert.
"He said, 'By Jove, isn't she fine!' He didn't seem conscious that other
people were present."
"Well, if a man hasn't some inspirations on his wedding-day when is he to
have them?" said Mrs. Lambert. "For my part, I think that the woman
always does that sort of thing better than a man. It is her really great
occasion, and she masters it--the comedy is all hers." They were just
then entering the vestry.
"Or the tragedy, as the case may be," said Lali quietly, smiling at
Marion. She had, as it were, recovered herself, and her words had come
with that airy, impersonal tone which permits nothing of what is said in
it to be taken seriously. Something said by the others had recalled her
to herself, and she was now returned very suddenly to the old position of
alertness and social finesse. Something icy seemed to pass over her, and
she immediately lost all self-consciousness, and began to speak to her
husband with less reserve than she had shown since he had come. But he
was not deceived. He saw that at that very instant she was further away
from him than she had ever been. He sighed, in spite of himself, as Lali,
with well-turned words, said some loving greetings to Marion, and then
talked a moment with Captain Vidall.
"Who can understand a woman?" said Lambert to his wife meaningly.
"Whoever will," she answered. "How do you mean?"
"Whoever will wait like the saint upon the pillar, will suffer like the
traveller in the desert; serve like a slave, and demand like a king; have
patience greater than Job; love ceaseless as a fountain in the hills; who
sees in the darkness and is not afraid of light; who distrusts not,
neither believes, but stands ready to be taught; who is prepared for a
kiss this hour and a reproach the next; who turneth neither to right nor
left at her words, but hath an unswerving eye--these shall understand a
woman."
"I never knew you so philosophical. Where did you get this deliverance on
the subject?"
"May not even a woman have a moment of inspiration?"
"I should expect that of my wife."
"And I should expect that of my husband. It is trite to say that men are
vain; I shall remark that they sit so much in their own light that they
are surprised if another being crosses their disc."
"You always were clever, my dear, and you always were twice too good for
me."
"Well, every woman--worth the knowing--is a missionary."
"Where does Lali come in?"
"Can you ask? To justify the claims of womanhood in spite of race--and
all."
"To bring one man to a sense of the duty of sex to sex, eh?"
"Truly. And is she not doing it well? See her now." They were now just
leaving the church, and Lali had taken General Armour's arm, while
Richard led his mother to the carriage.
Lali was moving with a little touch of grandeur in her manner and a more
than ordinary deliberation. She had had a moment of great weakness, and
then there had come the reaction--carried almost too far by the force of
the will. She was indeed straining herself too far. Four years of tension
were culminating.
"See her now, Edward," repeated Mrs. Lambert. "Yes, but if I'm not
mistaken, my dear, she is doing so well that she's going to pieces. She's
overstrung to-day. If it were you, you'd be in hysterics."
"I believe you are right," was the grave reply. "There will be an end to
this comedy one way or another very soon."
A moment afterwards they were in a carriage rolling away to Greyhope.
CHAPTER XV
THE END OF THE TRAIL
When Marion was about leaving with her husband for the railway station,
she sought out Lali, and found her standing half hidden by the curtains
of a window, looking out at little Richard, who was parading his pony up
and down before the house. An unutterable sweetness looked out of
Marion's eyes. She had found, as it seemed to her, and as so many have
believed until their lives' end, the secret of existence. Lali saw the
glistening joy, and responded to it, just as it was in her being to
respond to every change of nature--that sensitiveness was in her as deep
as being.
"You are very happy, dear?" she said to Marion. "You cannot think how
happy, Lali. And I want to say that I feel sure that you will yet be as
happy, even happier than I. Oh, it will come--it will come. And you have
the boy now-so fine, so good."
Lali looked out to where little Richard disported himself; her eyes
shone, and she turned with a responsive but still sad smile to Marion.
"Marion," she said gently, "the other should have come before he came."
"Frank loves you, Lali."
"Who knows? And then, oh, I cannot tell! How can one force one's heart?
No, no! One has to wait, and wait, even if the heart grows harder, and
one gets hopeless."
Marion kissed her on the cheek and smiled. "Some day soon the heart will
open up, and then such a flood will pour out! See, Lali. I am going now,
and our lives won't run together so much again ever, perhaps. But I want
to tell you now that your coming to us has done me a world of
good--helped me to be a wiser girl; and I ought to be a better woman for
it. Good-bye."
They were calling to her, and with a hurried embrace the two parted, and
in a few moments the bride and bridegroom were on their way to the new
life. As the carriage disappeared in a turn of the limes, Lali vanished
also to her room. She was not seen at dinner. Mackenzie came to say that
she was not very well, and that she would keep to her room. Frank sent
several times during the evening to inquire after her, and was told that
she was resting comfortably. He did not try to see her, and in this was
wise. He had now fallen into a habit of delicate consideration, which
brought its own reward. He had given up hope of winning her heart or
confidence by storm, and had followed his finer and better instincts--had
come to the point where he made no claims, and even in his own mind stood
upon no rights. His mother brought him word from Lali before he retired,
to say that she was sorry she could not see him, but giving him a message
and a commission into town the following morning for their son. Her tact
had grown is her strength had declined. There is something in failing
health--ill-health without disease--which sharpens and refines the
faculties, and makes the temper exquisitely sensitive--that is, with
people of a certain good sort. The aplomb and spirited manner in which
Lali had borne herself at the wedding and after, was the last flicker of
her old strength, and of the second phase in her married life. The end of
the first phase came with the ride at the quick-set hedge, this with a
less intent but as active a temper.
The next morning she did not appear at breakfast, but sent a message to
Frank to say that she was better, and adding another commission for town.
All day, save for an hour on the balcony, she kept to her room, and lay
down for the greater part of the afternoon. In the evening, when Frank
returned, his mother sent for him, and frankly told him that she thought
it would be better for him to go away for a few weeks or so; that Lali
was in a languid, nervous state, and she thought that by the time he got
back--if he would go--she would be better, and that better things would
come for him.
Frank was no longer the vain, selfish fellow who had married
Lali--something of the best in him was at work. He understood, and
suggested a couple of weeks with Richard at their little place in
Scotland. Also, he saw his wife for a little while that evening. She had
been lying down, but she disposed herself in a deep chair before he
entered. He was a little shocked to see, as it were all at once, how
delicate she looked. He came and sat down near her, and after a few
moments of friendly talk, in which he spoke solicitously of her health,
he told her that he thought of going up to Scotland with Richard for a
few weeks, if she saw no objection.
She did not quite understand why he was going. She thought that perhaps
he felt the strain of the situation, and that a little absence would be
good for both. This pleased her. She did not shrink, as she had so often
done since his return, when he laid his hand on hers for an instant, as
he asked her if she were willing that he should go. Sometimes in the past
few weeks she had almost hated him. Now she was a little sorry for him,
but she said that of course he must go; that no doubt it was good that he
should go, and so on, in gentle, allusive phrases. The next evening she
came down to dinner, and was more like herself as she was before Frank
came back, but she ate little, and before the men came into the
drawing-room she had excused herself, and retired; at which Mrs. Lambert
shook her head apprehensively at herself, and made up her mind to stay at
Greyhope longer than she intended.
Which was good for all concerned; for, two nights after Frank and Richard
had gone, Mackenzie hurried down to the drawing-room with the news that
Lali had been found in a faint on her chamber floor. That was the
beginning of weeks of anxiety, in which Mrs. Lambert was to Mrs. Armour
what Marion would have been, and more; and both to Lali all that mother
and sister could be.
Their patient was unlike any other that they had known. Feverish, she had
no fever; with a gentle, hacking cough, she had no lung trouble; nervous,
she still was oblivious to very much that went on around her; hungering
often for her child, she would not let him remain long with her when he
came. Her sleep was broken, and she sometimes talked to herself, whether
consciously or unconsciously they did not know. The doctor had no
remedies but tonics--he did not understand the case; but he gently
ventured the opinion that it was mostly a matter of race, that she was
pining because civilisation had been infused into her veins--the old
insufficient theory.
"Stuff and nonsense!" said General Armour, when his wife told him. "The
girl bloomed till Frank came back. God bless my soul! she's falling in
love, and doesn't know what it is."
He was only partly right, perhaps, but he was nearer the truth than the
dealer in quinine and a cheap philosophy of life. "She'll come around all
right, you'll see. Decline--decline be hanged! The girl shall live,--damn
it, she shall!" he blurted out, as his wife's eyes filled with tears.
Mrs. Lambert was much of the same mind as the general, but went further.
She said to Mrs. Armour that in all her life she had never seen so sweet
a character, so sensitive a mind--a mind whose sorrow was imagination.
And therein the little lady showed herself a person of wisdom. For none
of them had yet reckoned with that one great element in Lali's
character--that thing which is the birthright of all who own the North
for a mother, the awe of imagination, the awe and the pain, which in its
finest expression comes near, very near, to the supernatural. Lali's mind
was all pictures; she never thought of things in words, she saw them; and
everything in her life arrayed itself in a scene before her, made vivid
by her sensitive soul, so much more sensitive now with health failing,
the spirit wearing out the body. There was her malady--the sick heart and
mind.
A new sickness wore upon her. It had not touched her from the day she
left the North until she sang "The Chase of the Yellow Swan" that first
evening after Frank's return. Ever since then her father was much in her
mind--the memory of her childhood, and its sweet, inspiring friendship
with Nature. All the roughness and coarseness of the life was refined in
her memory by the exquisite atmosphere of the North, the good sweet
earth, the strong bracing wind, the camaraderie of trees and streams and
grass and animals. And in it all stood her father, whom she had left
alone, in that interminable interval between the old life and the new.
Had she done right? She had cut him off, as if he had never been--her
people, her country also; and for what? For this--for this sinking sense,
this failing body, this wear and tear of mind and heart, this constant
study to be possible where she had once been declared by the world to be
impossible.
One night she lay sleeping after a rather feverish day, when it was
thought best to keep the child from her. Suddenly she waked, and sat up.
Looking straight before her, she said:
"I will arise, and will go to my Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I
have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be
called Thy son."
She said nothing more than this, and presently lay back, with eyes wide
open, gazing before her. Like this she lay all night long, a strange,
aching look in her face. There had come upon her the sudden impulse to
leave it all, and go back to her father. But the child--that gave her
pause. Towards morning she fell asleep, and slept far on into the day, a
thing that had not occurred for a long time.
At noon a letter arrived for her. It came into General Armour's hands,
and he, seeing that it bore the stamp of the Hudson's Bay Company, with
the legend, From Fort St. Charles, concluded that it was news of Lali's
father. Then came the question whether the letter should be given to her.
The general was for doing so, and he prevailed. If it were bad news, he
said, it might raise her out of her present apathy and by changing the
play of her emotions do her good in the end.
The letter was given to her in the afternoon. She took it apathetically,
but presently, seeing where it was from, she opened it hurriedly with a
little cry which was very like a moan too. There were two letters inside
one from the factor at Fort Charles in English, and one from her father
in the Indian language. She read her father's letter first, the other
fluttered to her feet from her lap. General Armour, looking down, saw a
sentence in it which, he felt, warranted him in picking it up, reading
it, and retaining it, his face settling into painful lines as he did so.
Days afterwards, Lali read her father's letter to Mrs. Armour. It ran:
My daughter,
Lali, the sweet noise of the Spring:
Thy father speaks.
I have seen more than half a hundred moons come like the sickle and
go like the eye of a running buck, swelling with fire, but I hear
not thy voice at my tent door since the first one came and went.
Thou art gone.
Thy face was like the sun on running water; thy hand hung on thy
wrists like the ear of a young deer; thy foot was as soft on the
grass as the rain on a child's cheek; thy words were like snow in
summer, which melts in richness on the hot earth. Thy bow and arrow
hang lonely upon the wall, and thy empty cup is beside the pot.
Thou art gone.
Thou hast become great with a great race, and that is well. Our
race is not great, and shall not be, until the hour when the Mighty
Men of the Kimash Hills arise from their sleep and possess the land
again.
Thou art gone.
But thou hast seen many worlds, and thou hast learned great things,
and thou and I shall meet no more; for how shall the wise kneel at
the feet of the foolish, as thou didst kneel once at thy father's
feet?
Thou art gone.
High on the Clip Claw Hills the trees are green, in the Plain of the
Rolling Stars the wings of the wild fowl are many, and fine is the
mist upon Goldfly Lake; and the heart of Eye-of-the-Moon is strong.
Thou art here.
The trail is open to the White Valley, and the Scarlet Hunter hath
saved me, when my feet strayed in the plains and my eyes were
blinded.
Thou art here.
I have friends on the Far Off River who show me the yards where the
musk-ox gather; I have found the gardens of the young sable, and my
tents are full of store.
Thou art here.
In the morning my spirit is light, and I have harvest where I would
gather, and the stubble is for my foes. In the evening my limbs are
heavy, and I am at rest in my blanket. The hunt is mine and sleep
is mine, and my soul is cheerful when I remember thee.
Thou art here.
I have built for thee a place where thy spirit comes. I hear thee
when thou callest to me, and I kneel outside the door, for thou art
wise, and thou speakest to me; but thee as thou art in a far land I
shall see no more. This is my word to thee, that thou mayst know
that I am not alone. Thou shalt not come again, as thou once went;
it is not meet. But by these other ways I will speak to thee.
Thou art here.
Farewell. I have spoken.
Lali finished reading, and then slowly folded up the letter. The writing
was that of the wife of the factor at Fort Charles--she knew it. She sat
for a minute looking straight before her. She read her father's allegory.
Barbarian in so much as her father was, he had beaten this thing out with
the hammer of wisdom. He missed her, but she must not come back; she had
outgrown the old life--he knew it and she was with him in spirit, in his
memory; she understood his picturesque phrases, borrowed from the large,
affluent world about him. Something of the righteousness and magnanimity
of this letter passed into her, giving her for an instant a sort of
peace. She had needed it--needed it to justify herself, and she had been
justified. To return was impossible--she had known that all along, though
she had not admitted it; the struggle had been but a kind of remorse,
after all. That her father should come to her was also impossible--it was
neither for her happiness nor his. She had been two different persons in
her life, and the first was only a memory to the second. The father had
solved the problem for her. He too was now a memory that she could think
on with pleasure, as associated with the girl she once was. He had been
well provided for by her husband, and General Armour put his hand on hers
gently and said: