The Altar Fire, Arthur Christopher Benson [book recommendations for young adults txt] 📗

and the life." It was a grey, gusty day; a silent crowd waited to see us pass. The great churchyard elms roared and swayed, and I found myself watching idly how the clergyman's hood was blown sideways by the wind. I looked into the deep, dark pit, and saw the little coffin lying there, all in a dumb dream. The holy words fell vacuously on my ears. "Man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain"--that was all I felt. I seem to believe nothing, to hope nothing. I do not believe I shall ever see or draw near to the child again, and yet the thought of him alone, apart, uncomforted, lies cold on my heart. Maud is wonderful to me; her love does not seem to suffer eclipse; she does everything, she smiles, she speaks; she feels, she says, the presence of the child near her and about her; that means nothing to me; the soul appears to me to have gone out utterly like a blown flame, mingling with the unseen life, as the little body we loved will be mingled with the dust.

I cannot say that I endure agony; it is rather as if I had received a blow so fierce that it drove sensation away; I seem to see the bruise, watch the blood flow, and wonder why I do not suffer. The suffering will come, I doubt not; but meanwhile I am only mutely grateful that I do not feel more, suffer more. It does not even seem to me to have drawn me nearer to Maud, to Maggie; my power of loving seems extinguished, like my power of suffering. I do not know why I write in this book, why I record my blank apathy. It is a habit, it passes the time; the only thing that gives me any comfort is the thought that I shall die, too, and close my eyes at last upon this terrible world, made so sweet and beautiful, and then slashed and scored across with such cruel stripes, where we pay so grievous a penalty for feeling and loving. Tennyson found consolation "when he sorrowed most." But I say deliberately that I would rather not have loved my child, than lose him thus.


August 28, 1889.


We are to go away. Maggie droops like a faded flower, and for the first time I realise, in trying to comfort and distract her, that I have not lost everything. We are much together, and seeing her thus pine and fade stirs a dread, in the heart that had been so cold, that I may lose her too. At last we are drawn together. She came to say good-night to me last night, and a gush of love passed through me, like the wind stirring the strings of a harp to music. "My precious darling, my comfort," I said; the words put, it seemed, on my lips, by some deeper power. She clung to me, crying softly. Yet, is it strange to say it, that simple utterance seems almost to have revived her, to have given her pride and courage? But Maud is still almost a mystery to me. Who can tell how she suffers--I cannot--it seems to have quickened and enriched her love and tenderness; she seems to have a secret that I cannot come near to sharing; she does not repine, rebel, resist; she lives in some region of unapproachable patience and love. She goes daily to the grave, but I cannot visit it or think of it. The sight of the church-tower on my walks gives me a throb of dismay. But now we are going away. We have been lent a little house in a quiet seaside place; I suppose I am ill--at least, I am aware of a deep and unutterable fatigue at times, when I can rouse myself to nothing, but sit unoccupied, musing, glad to be alone, and only dreading the slightest interruption, the smallest duty. I know by some subtle sense that I am seldom absent from Maud's thoughts; but, with her incredible courage and patience, she betrays nothing by word or glance. She is absolutely patient, entirely self-forgetful; she quietly relieves me of anything I have to do; she alters arrangements a dozen times a day, with a ready smile; and yet it almost seems to me as if I had lost her too.


August 30, 1889.


Our route lay through Cambridge; we had to change there and wait; so we drove down to the town to look at my old college. There it lay, the charming, pretty, quiet place, blinking lazily out of its deep-set barred windows in the bright sun, just the same, it seemed, as ever, though perhaps a touch more mellow and more settled; every corner and staircase haunted with old ghosts for me. I could put a name to every set of rooms, flash an incident to every door and window. In my heavy, apathetic mood the memory of my life there seemed like a memory of some one else, moving in golden light, talking and laughing in firelit rooms, lingering in moonlit nights by the bridge, wondering what life was going to bring. It seemed like turning the pages of some old illuminated book with bright pictures, where the very sunlight is the purest and stiffest gold. The men I knew, the friends I lived with, admired, loved--where are they? scattered to all parts of the earth, parted utterly from me, some of them dead, alas! and silent. It came over me with a thrill of sharpest pain to think how I had pictured Alec here, living the same free and beautiful life, tasting the same innocent pleasures, with the bright, sweet world opening upon him. In that calm, sunny afternoon, life seemed a strange phantasmal business, and I myself a revenant from some thin, unsubstantial world. A door opened, and an old Don, well known to me in those days, hardly altered, it seemed, came out and trotted across the court, looking suspiciously to left and right as he used to do. Had he been doing the same thing ever since, reading the same books, talking the same innocent gossip? I had not the heart to greet him, and he passed me by unrecognising. We peeped into the hall through the screen. I could see where I used to sit, the same dark pictures looking down. We went to the chapel, with its noble classical woodwork, the great carved panels, the angels' heads, the huge, stately reredos. Some one, thank God, was playing softly on the organ, and we sate to listen. The sweet music flowed over my sad heart in a healing tide. Yes, it was not meaningless, after all, this strange life, with the good years shining in their rainbow halo, even though the path led into darkness and formless shadow. I seemed to look back on it all, as the traveller on the hill looks out from the skirts of the cloud upon the sunny valley beneath him. It all worked together, said the delicate rising strain, outlining itself above the soft thunder of the pedals, into something high and grave and beautiful; it all ended in the peace of God. I sate there, with wife and child, a pilgrim faring onwards, tasting of love and life and sorrow, weary of the way, but still--yes, I could say that--still hopeful. In that moment even my bitter loss had something beautiful about it. It was THERE, the bright episode of my dear Alec's life, the memory of the beloved years together. Maggie, seeing something in my face that she was glad to see, put her hand in mine, and the tears rose to my eyes, while I smiled at Maud; the burden fell off my shoulder for a moment, and something seemed as it were to touch me and point onwards. The music with a dying fall came to a soft close; the rich light fell on desk and canopy; the old tombs glimmered in the dusty air. We went out in silence; and then there came back to me, in the old dark court, with its ivied corners, its trim grass plots, the sense that I was still a part of it all, that the old life was not dead, but stored up like a garnered treasure in the rich and guarded past. Not by detachment or aloofness from happiness and warmth and life are our victories won. That had been the dark temptation, the shadow of my loss, to believe that in so sad and strange an existence the only hope was to stand apart from it all, not to care too much, not to love too closely. That was false, utterly false; a bare and grim philosophy, a timid sauntering. Rather it was better to clasp all things close, to love passionately, to desire infinitely, to yield oneself gladly and joyfully to every deep and true emotion; not greedily and luxuriously, flinging aside the crumpled husk that had given up its sweetness; but tenderly and gently, holding out one's arms to everything pure and noble, trusting that behind all there did indeed beat a great and fatherly heart, that loved one better than one dreamed.

That was a strange experience, that sunlit afternoon, a mingling of deepest pain and softest hope, a touch of fire from the very altar of faith, linking the beautiful past with the dark present, and showing me that the future held a promise of perfect graciousness and radiant strength. Did other lives hold the same rich secrets? I felt that they did; for that day, at least, all mankind, young and old alike, seemed indeed my brothers and sisters. In the young men that went lightly in and out, finding life so full of zest, thinking each other so interesting and wonderful; in the tired face of the old Professor, limping along the street; in the prosperous, comfortable contentment of robust men, full of little affairs and schemes--I saw in all of them the same hope, the same unity of purpose, the same significance; and we three in the midst, united by love and loss alike, we were at the centre, as it were, of a great drama of life and love, in which even death could only shift the scene and enrich the intensity of the secret hope.


September 5, 1889.


The rapt and exalted mood that I carried away from Cambridge could not last; I did not hope that it could. We have had a dark and sad time, yet with gleams of sweetness in it, because we have realised how closely we are drawn together, how much we depend on each other. Maud's brave spirit has seemed for a time broken utterly; and this has done more than anything to bring us nearer, because I have felt the stronger, realising how much she leant upon me. She has been filled with self-reproach, I know not for what shadowy causes. She blames herself for a thousand things, for not having been more to Alec, for having followed her own interests and activities, for not having understood him better. It is all unreal, morbid, overstrained, of course, but none the less terribly there. I have tried to persuade her that it is but weariness and grief trying to attach itself to definite causes, but she cannot be comforted. Meanwhile we walk, stroll, drive, read, and talk together--mostly of him, for I can do that now; we can even smile together over little memories, though it is perilous walking, and a step brings us to the verge of tears. But, thank God, there is not a single painful memory, not a thing we would have had otherwise in the whole of that little beautiful life; and I wonder now wretchedly, whether its very beauty and brightness ought