The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] - Richard Le Gallienne
Theirs was that dream of a threefold union, in which, so to say,
jealousy shall be so taken into the confidence of, so held to the heart
of, love, that it shall transform itself into love too; and, from being
the lonely tragic third, become, as the other two, one of an indivisible
trinity. Such unions of natures of especial grace have been born under
like conditions of fated intercourse, and they have been unions of a
strange beauty, the more blest by the sense of a conquest over love's
one unworthiness, its egoism. As the _egoisme a deux_ is finer than an
egoism of one, so this _egoisme a trois_, if you will, is again finer by
its additional inclusiveness.
Perhaps it had proved wiser in the end to yield to this temptation too.
But the tragic risk was one to dismay experiment. The strength of such a
union is literally the strength of its weakest link. Jenny loved both
Isabel and Theophil, and both Isabel and Theophil loved Jenny; and in
the love of the two girls, there was an element of affection that was
more impassioned than friendship. Jenny indeed loved Isabel so much that
it might well have proved that her love, with nothing but gladness,
could have added its volume to Theophil's, and the three loves, meeting
in one river of love, flowed on together to the eternal sea.
But the tragic risk! The alternative was--heart-break, death. They had
vowed to save Jenny from the lightning. Perhaps it would not destroy,
but only transfigure, after all,--yet the test was lightning; and for
whom that we love dare we venture such an ordeal, though it were to win
them Paradise?
No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told...
Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of
chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded
moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise,--when we withdraw
into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed,--and Jenny,
by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of
them there.
It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone
down, to "Zion" a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for
some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience
was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided,
entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his
vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the
lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the
vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr.
Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but
that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each
other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak
anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed,--
"Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you!"
But Isabel was stronger: "No, dear, you have not lost, you have found
me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I
love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a
man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could
be for your sake,--and how strong!... but be strong for mine, be strong
for Jenny's sake. I love that best." Then for a moment they stood lost
once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so
calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes
for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark
half-opened staircase door, a little face look in happy and draw back
dead; for Jenny had followed them more quickly than she or they had
expected, and, not finding them in the lecture-hall, had sought them
here with a light heart. She had heard none of their words; she had only
seen that look of home upon their faces and written across their arms.
Very quietly she stole away. She felt very dazed and tired. The shock
had been so swift that already it seemed half unreal. She felt she must
sit down, and, passing into the silent chapel, lit only with dim
reflections from without, she sank on to a seat and thought of little
but that it was good to be sitting down, and that the darkness was good,
and that there looming out of the shadow was Theophil's pulpit, and
beneath was her little harmonium,--to-morrow night would be her
choir-practice, she mustn't forget that; no, she mustn't forget
that--and then the darkness began to frame flashing pictures of that
dreadful glimpse of brightness--were they still standing like that?--how
happy they looked!--and would they always go on standing together in
brightness like that, while she sat here in the darkness. Well, the
darkness was good; how she should dread brightness for the future. If
only she need not go to the recital!--might she not be spared that? No!
she must have courage, she must go, they must not know she had seen
them, not yet, not till she had thought what must be done, not till she
had made her plans. It would have to be talked of if she let them know.
That would be terrible. Isabel would be gone to-morrow, and then she
might speak to Theophil, might set him free. But now she must go,--she
must not be later than they; they would be passing down to the hall
presently, she must be there before them,--she must be quick,--she must
go now....
As Isabel and Theophil entered the hall together, and smiled a
recognising smile at Jenny already in her place, she was able to smile
back at them, though there were some who thought she looked very white,
and found her very quiet when they tried to talk to her.
She couldn't help remarking to herself how little of the common
resentment she felt towards the two on whose faces she now saw a
happiness which she wondered she had not seen before. But her anguish
was too great for resentment. She felt towards their love as she might
have felt towards death,--it was a terrible fact, and in her good heart
there was already the beginning of pity for them too. Perhaps she felt
that it was a little unkind of them not to have trusted her,--just as a
child might who had felt worthy of our trust, but had been deemed too
young to share it. If they had only told her, might she not have loved
their love? (Ah! if we would only trust the deeps in those we love!)
Had Isabel only seen that white face in the dark doorway, she would have
spared Jenny one of her recitations that night. It was a poem of Mrs.
Browning's, perhaps the most poignant poem of renunciation ever written,
and Isabel had chosen it, as love will choose a song, for the fearful
joy of singing it where all may hear but one only may understand. It was
the poem of a like renunciation to theirs, though for different reasons;
but there was sufficient literal application to them for Jenny now to
understand it too. It was called a "Denial," and began:--
"We have met late--it is too late to meet,
O friend, not more than friend!
Death's forecome shroud is tangled round my feet,
And if I step or stir, I touch the end.
In this last jeopardy
Can I approach thee,--I, who cannot move?
How shall I answer thy request for love?
Look in my face and see.
"I might have loved thee in some former days.
Oh, then, my spirits had leapt
As now they sink, at hearing thy love-praise!
Before these faded cheeks were overwept,
Had this been asked of me,
To love thee with my whole strong heart and head,--
I should have said still...Yes, but _smiled_ and said,
'Look in my face and see!'
"But now...God sees me, God, who took my heart
And drowned it in life's surge.
In all your wide warm earth I have no part--
light song overcomes me like a dirge.
Could love's great harmony
The saints keep step to when their bonds are loose,
Not weigh me down? am _I_ a wife to choose?
Look in my face and see--
"While I behold, as plain as one who dreams,
Some woman of full worth,
Whose voice, as cadenced as a silver stream's,
Shall prove the fountain-soul which sends it forth
One younger, more thought-free
And fair and gay, than I, thou must forget,
With brighter eyes than these ... which are not wet--
Look in my face and see!
"So farewell thou, whom I have known too late
To let thee come so near.
Be counted happy while men call thee great,
And one beloved woman feels thee dear!--
Not I!--that cannot be,
I am lost, I am changed,--I must go farther where
The change shall take me worse, and no one dare
Look in my face and see."
The agony of this verse as one reads it is heart-breaking, but as Isabel
recited it, it was unbearable, and others in that audience besides Jenny
felt the personal cry in the voice, though none but Jenny knew its
destination. But to Jenny's ears the exquisite wifeliness of the last
verse was fuller of pain than all the rest,--
"Meantime I bless thee. By these thoughts of mine
I bless thee from all such!
I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to wine,
Thy hearth to joy, thy hand to an equal touch
Of loyal troth. For me,
I love thee not, I love thee not!--away!
There's no more courage in my soul to say
'Look in my face and see.'"
When Isabel sat down, amid hushed clapping, it was observed that Miss
Jenny Talbot had fainted. Theophil sprang with others to her assistance,
and Jenny, being carried into an ante-room for air and water, presently
reviving, asked faintly for Mr. Moggridge to take her home, the thought
of the big kind man coming into her mind with a sense of homely refuge.
"There, there," he said, "you'll be better in a minute;" and when she
was strong enough to walk, he took her home, Theophil, filled with
sudden misgivings, having to see the evening's entertainment to
its close.
Mr. Moggridge blamed the bad ventilation, as he tenderly helped Jenny
along the few yards to home.
"No," said Jenny, with a big tearing sigh, "I don't think it was that.
It was that last poem, I think. It seemed so terrible to think of two
people having to part like that; don't you think so, Mr. Moggridge?"
Mr. Moggridge did. "And then," he said, "Miss Strange has such a way of
giving it out, it's almost more than human nature can bear."
"Yes; her voice," said Jenny, "seemed like a stream of tears."
When Theophil and Isabel returned from Zion, they seemed so full of real
anxiety, as indeed they were, that Jenny's poor heart felt just a
passing ray of warmth, a little less cast out into eternal loneliness.
She gave the same explanation as to Mr. Moggridge, not significantly,
but half intending a kind veiled message to them. "It seemed so terrible
to think of two people having to part like that," she said again.
And presently she pleaded weariness to go to bed earlier than usual.
"But don't you hurry, Isabel," said Jenny. "You and Theophil will not
see each other for a long time again."
"Sleep well," said Isabel, kissing her; and as she did so, she thought
there was a curious convulsiveness in Jenny's embrace.
When she had gone, the two looked at each other. "She seemed strange,"
said Isabel.
"I think I will go and see her for a moment," said Theophil.
So it was that, tapping at Jenny's door, he found her lying across her
bed with the gas still down. "Crying, dear!" he exclaimed.
"O Theophil dear, don't come," she said; "it's only silly nerves. Go
back to Isabel; I shall be better when I've had a sleep. Do go, dear,
like a kind boy. I'm better by myself. No ... it is nothing,--nothing
but nerves. Do go, dear. Good-night."
And with a foreboding heart Theophil went back to Isabel. Yet, as Jenny
had said, they were not to see each other for a long time again; and if
presently Theophil forgot Jenny crying upstairs, was it not because he
did not know the reason of her tears?
On the morrow Jenny pleaded weariness and stayed in bed, so that
Theophil saw Isabel off to London alone, and he did not see Jenny again
till the evening.
CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH JENNY CRIES
Jenny was not at the door that evening to welcome Theophil home, as she
usually was, and she made some excuse not to join him at dinner; but at
last, when the quiet secure hour which had always been theirs between
dinner and bedtime had come, she came into his room quietly and sat in
her accustomed chair.
She had been fighting all day to gain strength for this hour, and her
will was bravely set to speak what must be spoken. But she must firmly
choke back all the sweetness of the memories which sprang to her with
kind eyes, as the familiar little room that had not changed opened its
arms to her, alas! an ironical symbol of unchangeableness. One touch of
tenderness too vivid and she would break down.
And here was Theophil rising from his desk and coming to her with true
love in his eyes, as he had done so many, many happy nights.
Was it, after all, a dream--that terrible picture of two lighted figures
that was for ever in her eyes? No, there was a voice that went day and
night with the dream, a voice of terrible tenderness that kept crying:
"Meantime I bless thee ... "--"I bless thy lamp to oil, thy cup to
wine ..." Ah, no, it was real, real. The trial was not to pass from her
in a dream.
Theophil had knelt down at her side and taken her hand gently and would
have kissed her, but that her eyes were so full of pain as she turned
them to meet his. Besides, strange words to hear! she was asking him not
to kiss her.
"Theophil dear, don't kiss me yet. I have something to say, and if you
kiss me I shall have no strength to say it."
"Jenny!"
"Dear," she began with a voice that seemed to bleed at every word, "I
want to be so kind. I don't want to hurt you with a single word. You'll
believe that, won't you?"
Theophil pressed her hand for assent, but already in a flash the whole
revelation was upon him. Jenny knew he loved Isabel. This awful pain
that was all over her was the lightning from which they had willed
to save her.
"Theophil," Jenny had gone on, and there seemed a death in every word,
"I know that you love Isabel."
"O Jenny!"
"I saw you together, dear, in the vestry last night. It was an accident.
You didn't hear me."
"O my Jenny! I would rather have died than this."
"Yes, I think you would, dear. But you must not be too sad. Life is
terrible,--like this. I understand it now. I know it was not you, or
Isabel, or me. It was just fate--and we must try and help each other.
Don't think I have been only sorry for myself. Don't think that of me.
But I think you should have trusted me, dear."
"We longed to tell you," said Theophil, with his head bowed in distress
in Jenny's lap, while she softly stroked his hair with an absent
tenderness, though her eyes looked straight in front of her, and her
voice was as if she were talking to herself.
"We longed to tell you," he repeated.
"O I wish you had."
"We feared it, dear."
"Yes, yes, I know. I was only a little child the day before yesterday. I
have never been worthy to be your wife, dear. I have known it all the
time. I should never have taken your love. It has never been mine...."
"But ..." she continued, "I will give it all back now. It is not too
late. I have kept it pure ... for Isabel. I can give it to her, darling,
with a kind heart--for she is worthy. She was born for you, dear. We
were not born for each other, after all--were we, dear? I am the woman
of that poem, not Isabel. It is I who must say good-bye. I can do it. I
am a woman now, love--not a little child any more. 'Look in my face
and see.'"
The tangle of Theophil's emotions and thoughts, as he listened to Jenny
in silence, was a revelation to him of the strange heart of love, and of
the insufficiency of those formulas by which we image ourselves to
ourselves. How little we know of ourselves till we are tested by the
powerful reagents of love and danger, and in how many ways must those
tests be applied before we learn anything of the elements of which we
are composed!
One love will reveal to us one side of our natures and its needs,
another will reveal to us another with its needs; and till we grow old
we can never be certain that there are not other sides to us that have
never been illuminated, other needs that have never been awakened, by
an emotion.
A man may love two women equally: the woman he most needs and the woman
who needs him most,--and in a crisis of choice he will probably choose
the latter.
Again, the power of the woman we have loved first has wonderful reserves
to draw upon, humble pawns of feelings, memories, associations, not so
brilliant to the imagination as the royalties of romance and sentiment
on the other side, but incalculably useful in a battle. Too humble are
some of these to gain acknowledgment; indeed they are often so submerged
in a total of vague impulses that they escape any individualisation.
In the very hour where all seemed lost to Jenny, Theophil's love for her
was passing in the fire of this ordeal from a love whose elements had
never, perhaps, quite combined, into that miraculous metal of true love,
which can never again be separated into anything but itself,--the true
gold of love which, in some magical second of projection, has suddenly
sprung out of those troubled ingredients of earth and iron, silver,
honey, and pearl.
This does not mean that Theophil's love for Isabel had grown any less
real, but that his love for Jenny had grown more real. For the first
time in its history it moved on the stage of the heroic. Up till now it
had lived secure, domestic days; there had been no danger to test its
truth, no lights of tragedy or romance thrown across it, it had seemed a
simple little earthborn love; whereas Theophil's love for Isabel had,
from its very conditions, walked from the first the high heaven
of dreams.
Isabel, indeed, still remained the heavenly love, but those who
understand will know the strength of Jenny when I say that she became
confirmed in this hour of trial as the household love of Theophil's
life. Isabel remained the Muse, but it was Jenny, after all, in spite of
those solemn words in the Wood of Silence, that was the wife; and if,
at first sound, there seems less of heaven in such a love, it is surely
only because when heaven has become incarnated upon earth we forget to
call it heaven.
In the few moments of silence which followed Jenny's words, it was some
such turmoil of feelings and thoughts, questionings and conclusions,
which passed through Theophil's mind, at last resolving itself into
words that sounded unexpected even in his own ears.
"Jenny," he said, "it is quite true that I love Isabel and that she
loves me. But it is true that I love you too, love you more truly in
this moment than I have ever loved you, and that no other woman can ever
take your place. If you give me up for Isabel's sake, it will be no gain
to her, for I would not go to her. I love you, indeed I love you, and I
want no other woman to be my wife."
Jenny's face brightened for a moment; they were good words, and they
sounded real. But then that embrace, how real that was; nothing again
could ever be so real as that!
"Ah, Theophil dear; but you stood as though you loved her so; your arms
were so tender, it was just as though they said 'wife.' You are
deceiving yourself, dear, believe me, you are. God knows how I love you;
I have nothing in the world but you, and if...if..."
"Jenny, try and believe; let me show you how I can love you. I seem
never to have shown you before. Let us begin our love over again from
to-night. I know your heart is bleeding, but let me heal it, dear. I
know this sorrow must lie heavy upon us for a long while yet, but it
will pass, you shall see. O you shall see how I love you. Let us be
married soon, dear; let us wait no longer..."
Theophil had raised his head, and as he spoke poured on Jenny all the
appeal of his strong eyes; with all the might of his soul he willed her
back to happiness, as Orpheus strove by his singing to bring back
Eurydice from the shades. She could not look into his set longing face
without feeling that he was speaking true words. Hope flickered for a
moment in her sad eyes; yes! he wanted to come back to her; he wanted to
be hers again.
But was it not too late? Hadn't something gone forever, something been
killed? Could even Theophil himself ever make her happy any more? Then
the misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which all
kind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, and
with terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms.
"O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking."
Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of
his life. He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying--it was as
though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were
bleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild,
convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking.
Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was the
death-crying of a broken heart.
CHAPTER XXI
IN WHICH JENNY IS MYSTERIOUSLY HONOURED
Still a moment did at last come when the sobs subsided, and Jenny dried
her tears. She was going to try, try to be happy again, try to forget
it; and she tried so well that in a few days her face had grown even
bright again,--bright as silver. It could never again be bright as gold.
And Theophil's love was like a sun pouring down upon her day by day.
Yes, he loved her. She could not doubt that, though there were times
when his true words and caresses suddenly seemed to wear a torturing
falsity, as she thought of Isabel.
But such feelings she put from her bravely. Jealous of Isabel in the
common way she had not been. She herself loved her too well, and soon
she was able to talk of her again to Theophil. They had agreed that
Isabel should not know what Jenny had seen that night of the recital.
For Jenny could not bear to think of the letters it would mean. "Let
that be our secret, dear," she said to Theophil; and thus, when Isabel
wrote, she wrote back in her usual way. Theophil and Isabel never wrote
to each other. It was no part of their love to deceive Jenny in letters.
Their love was vowed to silence and absence, and in Theophil's life it
must be more and more of a starlit background.
So the weeks went by, and the marriage of Theophil and Jenny was now
finally fixed for the 12th of February. On second thoughts, as their
love grew serene once more, they had decided not to anticipate that
date, for old Mrs. Talbot's sake; and meanwhile Jenny was admonished by
that old mother to make haste and get that flesh on her bones.
The admonition was not without cause, for it presently became
noticeable that Jenny was not merely negatively disobeying her old
mother in this. Not only was she not growing fatter, but, indeed, she
was, for one reason or another, slowly and almost imperceptibly growing
thinner. It was not those at home who noticed this first, but outside
friends, who, suddenly meeting her, would remark that she wasn't looking
half the girl she used to be.
She had already begun to remark it herself, as with her bare arms she
would coil up her hair, standing before her mirror; and she thought
nothing of it till one day, as she stood there, she noticed a curious
expression flash into her face and go again almost before she could mark
it. Her face, which had always been round and plump, seemed suddenly to
gaze back at her, very narrow and pinched and white, strangely sunken,
too, and rigid. It was all a mere flash and gone again, and her real
face was presently back once more. But the look filled her with solemn
thoughts, in which she was surprised to find a certain comfort, as of a
sad wish fulfilling itself.
She spoke to no one of that look, but it must have been the same look
that Theophil saw, a few nights after, as she sat listening to him
reading in her usual chair. Suddenly, as he looked up at her, he threw
down the book, and with concern, almost terror, in his voice, exclaimed,
"Good God, Jenny! are you ill, dear? What is that terrible white look in
your face?"
He sprang across and took her hands. The look had gone again before he
had finished speaking, but it was a look he was never to forget.
One day Jenny put out her arm, and asked him to feel how thin it was
growing.
"It _is_ thin, dear; but you mustn't be anxious. Perhaps you're a trifle
run down. You must see the doctor."
Mrs. Talbot did not believe in doctors, and suggested nourishing soups
and port wine as a substitute. These, however, made those dear arms no
fatter, they put none of that promised flesh on Jenny's bones. (Why did
Theophil rather creep one day as Mrs. Talbot made use of that
expression?)
And Jenny was growing tired too. She was not so ready on her feet as she
used to be. Small exertions exhausted her. Her breath was not so
available for running up and down stairs as it had been.