Watersprings, Arthur Christopher Benson [free novels .txt] 📗

It's no good pretending to know. Cousin Anne once said to me that one had to choose between science and superstition. I don't know anything about science, but I'm not superstitious."

"Yes," said Howard, "I see--I won't be fussy any more; I will just speak as I think. You are wiser than the aged, child! You will have to help me out. I am a mass of crusted prejudices, I find; but you are melting them all away. What beats me is how you found it all out."

Thus the hours they spent together became to Howard not only a source of joy, but an extraordinary simplification of everything. Maud seemed to have lived an absolutely uncalculating life, without any idea of making any position for herself at all; and it sickened Howard to think how so much of his own existence had been devoted to getting on the right side of people, driving them on a light rein, keeping them deftly in his own control. Maud laughed at this description of himself, and said, "Yes, but of course that was your business. I should have been a very tiresome kind of Don; we don't either of us want to punish people, but I want to alter them. I can't bear stupid people, I think. I had rather people were clever and unsatisfactory than dull and good. If they are dull there's no reason for their being good. I like people to have reasons!"

They talked--how often they did that!--about the complications that had beset them.

"The one thing I can't make out," said Maud, "is how or why you ever thought I cared for that little boy. He was such a nice boy; but he had no reasons. Oh, dear, how wretched he made me!"

"Well," said Howard, "I must ask you this--what did really happen on that awful afternoon at the Folly?"

Maud covered her face with her hands. "It was too dreadful!" she said. "First of all, you were looking like Hamlet--you don't know how romantic you looked! I did really believe that you cared for me then--I couldn't help it--but there was some veil between us; and the number of times I telegraphed from my brain to you that day, 'Can't you understand?' was beyond counting. I suppose it was very unmaidenly, but I was past that. Then there was that horrible imitation; such a disgusting parody! and then I was prouder of you than ever, because you really took it so well. I was too angry after that for anything, and when you went off with father, and Monica sketched and Jack lay down and smoked, Freddy Guthrie walked off with me, and I said to him, 'I really cannot think how you dared to do that--I think it was simply shameful!' Well, he got quite white, and he did not attempt to excuse himself; and I believe I said that if he did not put it straight with you, I would never speak to him again: and then I rather repented; and then he began making love to me, and said the sort of things people say in books. Howard, I believe that people really do talk like books when they get excited--at all events it was like a bad novel! But I was very stern--I can be very stern when I am angry--and said I would not hear another word, and would go straight back if he said any more; and then he said something about wanting to be friends, and wanting to have some hope; and then I got suddenly sorry about it all--it seemed such a waste of time--and shook hands with him, feeling as if I was acting in an absurd play, and said that of course we were friends; and I think I insisted again on his apologising to you, and he said that I seemed to care more for your peace of mind than his; and I simply walked away and he followed, and I shouldn't be surprised if he was crying; it was all like a nightmare; but I did somehow contrive to make it up with him later, and told him that I thought him a very nice boy indeed."

"I daresay that was a great comfort to him," said Howard.

"I meant it to be," said Maud, "but I did not feel I could go on acting in a sort of melodrama."

"Now, I am very inquisitive," said Howard, "and you needn't answer me if you don't like--but that day that I met you going away from Aunt Anne--oh, what a pig I was! I was at the top of my highminded game--what had happened then?"

"Of course I will tell you," said Maud, "if you want to know. Well, I rather broke down, and said that things had gone wrong; that you had begun by being so nice to me, and we seemed to have made friends; and that then a cloud had come between us: and then Cousin Anne said it would be all right, she KNEW; and she said some things about you I won't repeat, to save your modesty; and then she said, 'Don't be AFRAID, Maud! don't be ashamed of caring for people! Howard is used to making friends with boys, and he is puzzled by you; he wants a friend like you, but he is afraid of caring for people. You are not afraid of him nor he of you, but he is afraid of his own fear.' She did not seem to know how I cared, but she put it all right somehow; she prayed with me, for courage and patience; and I felt I could afford to wait and see what happened."

"And then?" said Howard.

"Why, you know the rest!" said Maud. "I saw as we sate by the wall, in a flash, that you did indeed care for me, and I thought to myself, 'Here is the best thing in the world, and we can't be going to miss it out of politeness;' and then it was all over in a moment!"

"Politeness!" said Howard, "yes, it was all politeness; that's my greatest sin. Yes," he added, "I do thank God with all my heart for your sweet courage that day!" He drew Maud's hand into his own, as they sate together on the grass just above the shingle of the little bay, where the sea broke on the sands with crisp wavelets, and ran like a fine sheet of glass over the beach. "Look at this little hand," he said, "and let me try to believe that it is given me of its own will and desire!"

"Yes," said Maud, smiling, "and you may cut it off at the wrist if you like--I won't even wince. I have no further use for it, I believe!" Howard folded it to his heart, and felt the little pulse beat in the slender wrist; and presently the sun went down, a ball of fire into the opalescent sea-line.


XXV


THE NEW KNOWLEDGE

But the weeks which followed Howard's marriage were a great deal more than a refreshing discovery of companionable and even unexpected qualities. There was something which came to him, of which the words, the gestures, the signs of love seemed like faint symbols; the essence of it was obscure to him; it reminded him of how, as a child, a laughing group of which he was one had joined hands to receive a galvanic shock; the circle had dislinked again in a moment, with cries of surprise and pleasure; but to Howard it had meant much more than that; the current gave him a sense of awful force and potency, the potency of death. What was this strange and fearful essence which could pass instantaneously through a group--swifter even than thought--and leave the nerves for a moment paralysed and tingling? Even so it was with him now. What was happening to him he did not know--some vast and cloudy presence, at which he could not even dare to look, seemed winging its way overhead, the passage of which he could only dimly discern, as a man might discern the flight of an eagle in a breeze-ruffled mountain pool.

He had come in contact with a force of incalculable energy and joy, which was different, not in degree but in kind, from all previous emotional experiences. He understood for the first time the meaning of words like "mystical" and "spiritual," words which he had hitherto almost derided as unintelligent descriptions of subjective impressions. He had thought them to be terms expressive of vague and even muddled emotions of which scientific psychology would probably dispose. It was a new element and a new force, of which he felt overwhelmingly certain, though he could offer no proof, tangible or audible, of its existence. He had before always demanded that anyone who attempted to uphold the existence of any psychic force should at the same time offer an experimental test of its actuality. But he was here faced with an experience transcendental and subjective, of which he could give no account that would not sound like some imaginative exaggeration. He was not even sure that Maud felt it, or rather he suspected that the experience of wedded love was to her the heightening and emphasizing of something which she had always known.

The essence of it was that it was like the inrush of some moving tide through an open sluice-gate. Till then it seemed to him that his emotions had been tranquilly discharging themselves, like the water which drips from the edge of a fountain basin; that now something stronger and larger seemed to flow back upon him, something external and prodigious, which at the same time seemed, not only to invade and permeate his thought but to become one with himself; that was the wonder; it did not seem to him like something added to his spirit, but as though his soul were enlarged and revived by a force which was his own all the time, an unclaimed, unperceived part of himself.

He said something of this to Maud, speaking of the happiness that she had brought him. She said, "Ah, you can't expect me to realise that! I feel as though you were giving everything and receiving nothing, as if I were one more of the duties you had adopted. Of course, I hope that I may be of some use, some time; but I feel at present as if you had been striding on your way somewhere, and had turned aside to comfort and help a little child by the roadside who had lost his way!"

"Oh," said Howard, "it's not that; it isn't only that you are the joy and light of my life; it is as if something very far away and powerful had come nearer to both of us, and had lifted us on its wings--what if it were God?"

"Yes," said Maud musingly, "I think it is that!"


XXVI


LOVE IS ENOUGH

The days slipped past, one by one, with an incredible swiftness. For the first time in his life Howard experienced the extraordinary sensation of having nothing to do, no plans ahead, nothing but the delight of the hour to taste. One day he said to Maud, "It seems almost wicked to be so deliciously idle--some day I suppose we must make some plans. But I do not seem ever to have lived before; and all that I ever did and thought of seems as small and trivial as a little town seen from the top of a tower--one can't conceive what the little creatures are about in their tiny slits of streets and stuffy houses, crawling about like beetles on some ridiculous business. The first thing I shall