Chapter XIV

A man wrote it, from his little room in the heart of London, whilst night faded into morning. He wrote it with leaden heart and unwilling mechanical effort--wrote it as a man might write his own doom. Every fresh sentence, which stared up at him from the closely written sheets seemed like another landmark in his sad descent from the pinnacles of his late wonderful happiness down into the black waters of despair. When he had finished, and the pen slipped from his stiff, nerveless fingers, there were lines and marks in his face which had never been there before, and which could never altogether pass away.

* * * * *

... A woman read it, seated on a shelving slant of moorland with the blue sky overhead, and the soft murmur of the sea in her ears, and the sunlight streaming around her. When she had finished, and the letter had fallen to her side, crushed into a shapeless mass, the light had died out of the sky and the air, and the song of the birds had changed into a wail. And this was what the man had said to the woman:--

"Berenice, I have had a dream! I dreamed that I was coming
to you, that you and I were together somewhere in a new
world, where the men were gods and the women were saints,
where the sun always shone, and nothing that was not pure
and beautiful had any place! And now I am awake, and I know
that there is no such world.

"You and I are standing on opposite sides of a deep, dark
precipice. I may not come to you! You must not come to me.

"I have thought over this matter with all the seriousness
which befits it. You will never know how great and how
fierce the struggle has been. I am feeling an older and a
tired man. But now that is all over! I have crossed the
Rubicon! The mists have rolled away, and the truth is very
clear indeed to me! I shudder when I think to what misery I
might have brought you, if I had yielded to that sweetest
and most fascinating impulse of my life, which bade me
accept your sacrifice and come to you. Berenice, you are
very young yet, and you have woven some new and very
beautiful fancies which you have put into a book, and which
the world has found amusing! To you alone they have become
the essence of your life: they have become by constant
contemplation a part of yourself. Out of the greatness of
your heart you do not fear to put them into practice! But,
dear, you must find a new world to fit your fancies, for the
one in which we are forced to dwell, the world which, in
theory, finds them delightful, would find another and an
uglier world if we should venture upon their embodiment!
After all we are creatures of this world, and by this
world's laws we shall be judged. The things which are right
are right, and the things which are pure are pure. Love is
the greatest power in the world, but it cannot alter things
which are unalterable.

"Once when I was climbing with a friend of mine in the
Engadine, we saw a white flower growing virtually out of a
cleft in the rocks, high above our heads. My friend was a
botanist, and he would have that flower! I lay on my back
and watched him struggle to reach it, watched him often
slipping backwards, but gradually crawling nearer and
nearer, until at last, breathless, with torn clothes and
bleeding hands, he grasped the tiny blossom, and held it out
to me in triumph! Together we admired it ceaselessly as we
retraced our steps. But as we left the high altitudes and
descended into the valley, a change took place in the
flower. Its petals drooped, its leaves shrank and faded.
White became grey, the freshness which had been its chief
beauty faded away with every step we took. My friend kept
it, but he kept it with sorrow! It was no longer a beautiful
flower.

"Berenice, you are that flower! You are beautiful, and pure,
and strong! You think that you are strong enough to live in
the lowlands, but you are not! No love of mine, changeless
and whole as it must ever be, could keep your soul from
withering in the nether land of sin! For it would be sin!
In these days when you are young, when the fires of your
enthusiasm are newly kindled, and the wings of your
imagination have not been shorn, you may say to yourself
that it is not sin! You may say that love is the only true
and sweet shrine before which we need keep our lives holy
and pure, and that the time for regrets would never come!

"Illusion! I, too, have tried to reason with myself in this
manner! I have tried passionately, earnestly, feverishly. I
have failed! I cannot! No one can! I know that to you I seem
to be writing like a Philistine, like a man of a generation
gone by! You have filled your little world with new ideals,
you have lit it with the lamp of love, and it all seems very
real and beautiful to you! But some day, though the lamp may
burn still as brightly as ever, a great white daylight will
break in through the walls. You will see things that you
have never seen before, and the light of that lamp will seem
cold and dim and ghostly. Nothing, nothing can ever alter
the fact that your husband lives, and that your little boy
is growing up with a great void in his heart. Some day he
will ask for his mother; even now he may be asking for her!
Berenice, would he ever look with large, indulgent eyes
upon that little world of yours! Alas!

* * * * *

"I have read my letter over to myself, Berenice, and I fear
that it must sound to you very commonplace, even perhaps
cold! Yet, believe me when I tell you that I have passed
through a very fire of suffering, and if I am calm now it is
with the calm of an ineffable despair! In my life at Oxford,
and later, here in London, women have never borne any share.
Part of my scheme of living has been to regard them as
something outside my little cycle, an influence great
indeed, but one which had passed me by.

"Yet I am now one of the world's great sufferers, one of
those who have found at once their greatest joy linked with
an unutterable despair. For I love you, Berenice! Never
doubt it! Though I should never look upon your face
again--which God in His mercy forbid--my love for you must
be for ever a part and the greatest part of my life! Always
remember that, I pray you!

"It seems strange to talk of one's plans with such a great,
black cloud of sorrow filling the air! But the outward form
of life does not change, even when the light has gone out
and one's heart is broken! I have some work before me which
I must finish; when it is over I shall go abroad! But that
can wait! When you are back in London, send for me! I am
schooling myself to meet a new Berenice--my friend! And I
have something still more to say to you!

"MATRAVERS."