CHAPTER 5.

            NOEL’S reflections as he travelled homewards across the Continent were of a very mingled character. The thought that James would probably be compelled to abandon Mexico, when he would of course rejoin Margaret, was like the stab of a knife to him, and suggested the possibility of still greater pain being in store for Margaret and himself than any they had yet endured. All this, however, lay in the future. His course for the present was clear. It must be his endeavour to keep Margaret up to the mark of the high feeling which had prompted all her actions towards him, and make impossible any pang that might arise through a doubt of his feeling. ‘If she thought that I could for a moment look down upon her, and ascribe her condescension to any inferior motive, she would wither away and die.’ So, in writing to her on his arrival in England, he said: –

            ‘Supposing that, without James having expressed an earnest desire for you to experience an affection similar to that which he acknowledges, you had filled up the vacuum of your life by loving another; even then he would have had no right to reproach and worry you, for he would not have been robbed of your affection, since he has never succeeded in obtaining it. I sometimes try to conjecture what would be the result of a full explanation between you. For you and for me almost anything would be better than this life of suppression and repression. But for him? Is it not possible that he would be a greater,

(p. 421)

better, and happier man in his admission of the unalterable disagreement of your natures, than in the alternate resignation and despair of his present state? And thus you would have peace, and perhaps under its influence and that of past memories, come to love him as he wishes! Ah, if I could transfer your love from myself to him so as to secure your happiness! I think I could yield even this my most precious possession, provided only I might die at the same time, to avoid the envy of his transports. But this is out of the question. Natures do not change. You will only cease to love me – or rather, you will only permit your love for me to be obscured, by allowing the accumulation of sufferings which that love may have brought upon you to hold the most prominent place in your mind. And, with a tinge of that sweet feminine superstition of which even you are not quite devoid, you will probably come to regard the suffering as a sort of deserved but inadequate atonement. Would that you could find comfort in the thought that our love, being true, and pure, and natural, and a love upwards, and with our highest aspirations, the wrong that makes it unlawful has a prior existence. It is by human artificial laws only that any wrong whatever can be laid to our account, not by divine. And where the transgression is of feeling only, and not of action, where we do not “make love,” but simply are “in love,” surely in both human and divine estimation rather is the resistance honoured than the impulse condemned. The excessive deference people pay to human laws, often indicates a lack of the regard due to human feeling. Our mutual relations have lain outside of ordinary conventions, and our appeal is to a higher law than that of conventional society. It is more to be men and women than to be puppets of a fashion. For you, ascetic that you are by nature, the very fact of love being sweet is almost enough to make you think it wrong. Do not forget in all your estimates to make allowance for this individual peculiarity of yours. I think, too, that you are apt to over-estimate individual responsibility in regard to circumstances. It is the function of Providence to provide and arrange circumstances, and of character to determine our action under them. To go farther back, and seek to ascertain where the destiny that regulates character commences, is only to lese oneself in vain metaphysics. It is enough for us to think that the mere fact of our being placed in circumstances requiring capacity for our safe conduct and extrication, may only indicate the high opinion that Providence

(p. 422)

has of our capacity. It would be useless to set a high and difficult task to a feeble and incompetent nature. It is only for those who can understand, and sympathise, and love, and dare, to foot the hairbreadth boundary of true and false, good and bad, life and death. When no longer in position to scan the abyss of danger from closest proximity, it may be a legitimate triumph for the moral nature to exult in the steadiness wherewith it has trodden the edge of the fearful precipice. Were there no difficulties and dangers in the world, there would be no heroes and heroines. Did the course of true love always run smooth, there would be no proved true lovers!

            ‘What shall such utterances be styled? “Leaves from the Sibylla Persica,” “Chapters from a lost Gospel,” or “Verses from a new Apocalypse?”

            ‘Can you guess in which of our moments together lately you suggested the following lines? They make a curious contrast to some which you may remember.

SONG.

Unkind, unkind, to make me love thee so,

           When cruel fate forbids our paths to twine.

’Twas hard enough to bear my single woe,

           Without the burden of thy love on mine.

Ah! love is sweet to those who may forget

           All but the warmth and brightness of its ray:

But love to those who may not love, and yet

           Cannot but love, is death in life for aye.

Always to think of thee as fond and kind;

           Always to know a wide, wide world between;

Oh, heaven, oh, why grant sight to one born blind,

           If but to veil the blessed light once seen.

Like those who dwell in regions dark and cold,

           And never knew a smiling earth and sky, –

I bore my lot; but oh, what grief untold,

           To know, and long, and then return to die.

’Twas hard enough to feel life pass away,

           Unloved, unloving, silence all, and gloom:

’Tis harder now to quit the joyous day,

           And sink again into a living tomb.

Could’st thou, beloved one, less worthy prove,

           Could’st thou to me less kind, less noble seem;

Perchance I then might cure this maddening love,

           And rouse my soul from its sweet, bitter dream.

But no, but no, this cannot, must not be:

           Faith, love, and trust are far too sweet to lose:

E’en without hope shall mem’ry cling to thee,

           And ne’er one pang which love inflicts refuse.’