the contrast in gabriel’s life had grown the more vivid since the political assemblage at rilchester and his ascension into oratorical fame. materialism and idealism still fronted each other on the stage; the one heavy-browed and saturnine, the other with quivering hand unlifted to the heavens.
to the thinker who is no mere egotist the meaner excitations of life must inevitably seem as dust on the highway of progress. no man who realizes the dignity of manhood can be deeply discouraged by an ill-fitting coat, a lost seat on a municipal bench, or a spoiled dinner. materialism is merely a symptom of psychical sterility. those great with the instinct towards god touch the soil only with their sandals; their eyes are turned to the sky; their foreheads sweep the stars.
struggle and suffering beget thought and true thought begets the consciousness of god. so had it been with gabriel. trouble had chastened him, had touched his eyes and given diviner vision. the ragged inanities of a mundane existence were falling like the threads of a rotten cloak. a deep loathing of minute nothings increased forcefully within him as day followed day. the things that men hold of value grew of less and less account to his soul. the numberless petty interests of a narrow social scheme had become peculiarly ridiculous and diminutive in his eyes. he was but working out in his own being the evolution of all history, moving through primitive phases, epicurean egotism, to that universality of the spirit that looks only to the future and embraces the supreme good of humanity as the active word of god.
he saw joan often that month of may. the misgivings that had haunted him often had died to an infrequent whisper, and the fascination of the girl’s soul held him as in an elysian dream. the hills and woods beyond rilchester were solitary as eden, and humanity rarely vexed them by intruding on this arcady. gabriel in his visionary state had put all mundane prudence from his ken. when near to joan he felt that he had no foe in the wide world, that he hated no man, envied none. all was peace and a great calm as of beautiful purity and enduring love. for days he existed like a prophet in a desert, filled with a species of spiritual exaltation. it was an excellent mood enough, but one hardly suited to the cynicism of saltire society. such sentiments as inspired gabriel’s brain spelled madness, or worse, to the discriminating glance of the multitude. it is unwise to go star-gazing amid the gutters of an unclean town.
with a simplicity that was even pathetic, these two children formulated the creed that was to stand to them for the governance of the future. their favorite haunt that spring was the old roman amphitheatre on the hills, an emerald hollow clasped in the shadows of antique trees. hollies grew there, lustrous and luxuriant; pines and beeches and solemn yews. on one green slope a wild cherry showered snow upon the grass. wood violets stare azure-eyed from banks that shone with gold. where the eastern gate had once stood a great pine towered like an eastern minaret, prayerful on the hills.
one morning gabriel had received the letter he had long expected, a letter from ophelia warning him of her early return to the friary. it was a curt, cold document, much in contrast to the erotic vaporings he had received of yore. the same morning he had spread the letter before joan in the roman amphitheatre, and out of the largeness of her love she had found power to strengthen him for the months to come. it is no light task for a woman to advise a man against her own heart; yet it is a task in which heroic women have ever excelled.
“you believe in yourself once more,” she said to him, as he sat at her feet on the turf bank under the shadow of the trees.
“perhaps,” he answered her; “you have reinspired me. i am prepared to face fate with greater equanimity, be it hard and unlovely.”
“yet the gleam from afar, the divine aim, these are everywhere.”
“yes, even in a diseased home.”
joan had sat a long while in thought with that strange solemnity upon her face that made her womanliness so divine. her eyes were like the eyes of one who has looked long at a picture afar off. there were pathetic lines about her mouth. she had spoken with gabriel of his wife and home, spoken like the great-hearted woman that she was, strong words for others to the annihilation of self.
“when she comes back to you, dear—”
the man turned and looked at the face purposeful and pale in the deep shadows.
“yes.”
“you will be yourself to her.”
“i will try.”
“she must love you,” said the girl, and was silent a moment as though communing with the deep cry of her own heart; “you must live your lives together for the best. as for me, i only want to help you to be happy.”
the man bent his head as though half shamed. his heart was less sacrificial than the girl’s. he had little hope in life outside the green circle of those dusky trees.
“i cannot stand between you, dear.”
“you will stand above us,” he said, hastily.
she sighed and was silent.
“above us—ever. you have a great soul. god knows i shall need the thought of you to help me to play my part.”
“i may see you—sometimes?”
they looked in each other’s eyes with an involuntary tenderness that was pathetic in the extreme.
“sometimes.”
“oh yes; i could not bare to lose you always. you need not fear me, dear; i shall not weaken you. that which is in our hearts is not of earth but of heaven.”
“we have vowed our vow!”
“nor shall we break it. you must be true to her, gabriel, for she is your wife. i was half tempted once, but now my love is greater than to plot for self. we shall be together in spirit.”
“always.”
she bent forward very slightly and looked into the man’s eyes with a gracious self-consciousness that made her face more luminous under her splendid hair.
“i want to help you to realize your ideals,” she said. “can i do that?”
“who else?”
“for the good of those unhappy ones whom women pity. you will hold the red wine of joy to the lips of the feeble; you will point to the golden cleft in the heavens. i have learned so much from you that i am no longer a mere egotist. i am ambitious for you, dear. i believe you have great work in the years to come.”
gabriel did not look into her eyes. he was loath to confess, even to himself, that his strength was as nothing without hers, that even she thought too well of him. yet for her sake and her pride in him he could play the man to the strain of her ideals. had not beatrice made dante dante? to have quailed and doubted would have shamed the great love that this woman had set like a sun in the firmament of life.
“for the thought of you,” he said, “i will do my duty. god help me to be worthy of your pride in this life. and after death—”
her face grew radiant like the face of a saint to whom visions of splendor are unveiled in the infinite.
“after life—immortality!”
it was not long that year before gabriel saw the slimed track of the beast, grass flattened by the belly of a creeping thing, toad’s eyes glinting yellow in the dusk. the truth was gradual but none the less sure. the suspicion deepened as the days went by; nor was he left long in the shallow waters of doubt.
one morning he had fancied himself followed by a man in the dress of a game-keeper. for the moment he had thought nothing of the incident. more sinister convictions were only established as he wandered out with joan from the amphitheatre with its fringe of trees. he had seen a bearded face disappear behind a bush, like the face of a savage scout watching the march of a hostile host. yet another evening a laboring fellow had shouldered by them in a narrow path through the woods with a rude stare at the girl’s face. yet again gabriel had seen the figure of a man squirming like a lizard into the undergrowth fringing a thicket not far from zeus gildersedge’s house. these signs were sinister enough to arouse the cynic in the man and to set the world-wise part of him thinking. to be watched, and for what purpose! this was a moral that did not need the fabulous phraseology of ?sop to hide its nakedness.
the climax came one gray evening when gabriel was trudging home alone from the rilchester hills. in a muddy lane overhung by tangled hedges he passed two farm youths who had been out setting snares for rabbits. they had been at work in a ditch on the edge of a wood, a wood through which joan and gabriel had passed. hearing his footsteps in the lane, they had turned and stood aside to stare at him as he went by in the dusk. he had caught the coarse mirth on their faces as they elbowed each other and sniggered like a couple of city louts.
gabriel had not taken ten steps before their voices followed him in a bucolic satire that made him redden to the ears. he had hurried on, shuddering like a lonely girl at the sound of a drunken man’s voice. to have turned on them would but have meant the greater ignominy. moreover, he had strange fear in him for the moment, not mere physical terror, but that spiritual panic that freezes the soul. he had stumbled on with a loud laugh following him like the sound that bursts from an ale-house or a brothel.
that night gabriel was like a man in great pain or as one who is near taking his own life. the savor of fleshliness was in his nostrils. he hated the world and was numb at heart.
