1886-06 — A Drama in Muslin — Book 3 Chapter 6

London: Vizetelly & Co., 1 June 1886, pages 297-306, 4,118 words

CHAPTER VI.

Henceforth Dr. Reed was constantly at Brookfield. He was there more frequently than the state of the patient demanded; and Alice felt that the attentions he was paying her would soon be noticed by the visitors. Cecilia she especially dreaded. More than once she had observed that the wistful brown eyes were fixed upon when she sat apart talking with him; and she knew how even a remote suspicion that he liked her would thrill the strange girl’s heart with pain. But Cecilia said nothing; the days passed, and, feeling more at ease, Alice was beginning to allow her liking for the doctor to grow into, to become part of the nature of her mind.

One afternoon the girls were sitting alone in the bedroom. Cecilia had just come in; Alice had asked her to wait until a paragraph was finished. In the silence the pen scratched along sharply, and Alice’s thoughts pursued the flying words to a close, when she was startled by an abrupt exclamation. Turning she saw the crooked girl, her hand clasped feverishly, staring wildly upwards.

“Oh! how beautiful the Prayer Book is! I pity you, Alice; how I pity you!”

"Goodness me, Cecilia, what is the matter?”

“Alas! you would not understand¡ But oh! if you knew the pain I suffer, the pain that is mine when I think of the sin that is yours, and the awful end that must overtake you! But you! you know nothing of the short starting sleeps, the dream-haunted vigils, the vicious demon-shapen terrors, intense, terrible, and profound, and the silences filled with the cries of the damned; and in this figuration of the judgment and the doom I see... but no, no, no, it is not true; it cannot be!

"Alice, listen to me; listen and let me tell you how terrible it is to know that you, my darling friend, would, were you to die this moment, be damned to all eternity. Oh! it is fearsome, it is cruel; and my heart is eaten away with grief. And the helplessness and hopelessness are so hard to bear. It is vain to reason with you... one can but pray for you, and I have prayed until my soul was sick with famine for the holy face of God. And ah! how often in my loneliness do I cry aloud the beautiful litany of Jesus and that of his Virgin Mother — Tower of Ivory, House of Gold, Ark of the Covenant... and I sing until in happy prayer I forget the wretchedness, the abominations of our lives, and remember only the days when we all sang together those pure, those sinless chants in that white, girl-like convent-church. And those dear, those black-robed nuns.... I can see them... . the serge habits trail in straight sculptured folds upon the pavement, they bow their peaceful faces before the Altar... Alice, I am right, you are wrong! There is no true happiness in this life unless indeed we recognise it as a means of attaining God. The way to Him is a long and bitter one, but He has given us prayer; pure sparkling fountains at which we may drink, and gain strength and courage to pursue our journey to the illimitable prospect of peace which awaits us beyond the sun. All other hopes and desires are vain as even I have found. They pass and perish like things of sand, and mad and bruised with grief we turn to God for confidence, for relief. And then, if we ask fervidly, all shall be given to us, and in our hearts shall awake a rapture of joy such as those who put their faith in mortal sense shall never know; and then the mild felicities of forgiveness shall cool our faces like the flowing of a breath, and our sin shall dissolve like a little cloud and be forgiven, as mine has dissolved and is now forgotten. But you! you know not of my sin, of my sin! Yes, Alice, I have sinned, and deeply, for I desired more than God had willed to give me, and I have suffered accordingly. Yes, Alice, I had desired more than God had willed to give me, for I desired you. I desired to possess you wholly and entirely. I was jealous of the flowers you wore in your bosom, of everything your eyes rested upon. I remember once, you were talking at the time to one of those officers from Gort, your hair got entangled in the carving of the chair; but before I could get up he had loosened it. I could have spat in his face; I could have killed him; I hated him for days and nights — I was very wicked. I offended God. But I have done penance for my sin, I have conquered my passion. Yes, I have left for ever the life of desire and have entered into that of prayer; and a mild and exquisite world is the world of prayer! There, there are no frozen morns nor fiery noons, but long pensive evenings, and all who live there are thrilled with happiness, and all who dream there dream of mansuetude and calm. And there we walk as in a garden of straight walks, seeing the happy end from afar; heedless we pass by the dark coverts of doubt and the red flowerage of too keen rejoicings. There sadness may not endure, nor is there delight nor grief nor terrifying morrows; and in the wan enchantment of our evenings we pass onwards in calm and holy procession; and our ranks are never broken save when one, with quiet emotion, steps aside to gather the tall roses of Resignation; with pale lips she kisses them, with pale hands weaves them into a wreath that she shall bear bloomful to the thither side of death. Yes, the flowers of Resignation are sweet to gather, and our reward shall be seventy times greater than our pain, when we, the pure, the undegraded by earthly vice and passion, on bended knees, with radiant robes flowing as water about us, shall offer the tear-starred chaplets of resignation to Him — Him who will one day come, with His Father and white attendance of Seraphim, to punish the wicked and to welcome the chosen to those high realms of Heaven where every song is a breathing perfume and every look a note of undying love. My soul is thrilled, is pierced with the long delight of contemplation; my heart is bruised, and the wine of ecstasy bubbles to my lips; the fumes of strange, keen, and unconquerable joy rise to my brain, and in uncontrollable and ever-ascending vision — vision keen and impalpable, my life reeks to thee — to thee and to God. Yes, in the mysticity of God’s love, and thine, my delight shall wax and wane; in the arms of God I faint — my soul sickens, I falter, I yield myself.... No, Alice, no; Alice, thou who art mine, mine in eternity, I am speaking wildly, madly; you do not understand me — no, you do not understand, for you have not prayed as I have prayed; you have not spent the whole night on your knees gazing on the pale tranquillity of the skies — the home of God — and there, soaring with white and vigorous wings, I shall go when the hour comes for my spirit to tear this impeding veil of flesh, past the holy stars of Heaven, and enter an eternity of happy prayer and unapparent love. But you have not prayed, and can know nothing of the joys of prayer! They are bright and durable, while the satisfaction on the attainment of which your mind is so irrevocably set is but an ash-grey blossom that grows pale as it blooms — a degrading moment that dulls the sense and implants its festering sting.”

"Cecilia! Cecilia!"

"I mean, Alice, that you must pray for faith to believe; oh, think, think of your soul; think of what you risk by your persistent denial of God, of Him who died to save your soul! Think, oh think, of that imperishable gift born to live through an eternity of happiness or of torment! Think, oh think, of what agony would be mine, if by God’s most infinite grace I should be permitted to pass through the heavenly gate and from my place among the blessed should look down and see you! No, no; God in His great mercy would spare me that. But if I should hear, or feel, or somehow get to know that the long tale of Eternity’s delights would to lute and lyre be ceaselessly sung without ever syllabling the sweet name of Alice!.. Think, oh think!... Have you no pity?"

"Darling Cecilia, what would you wish me to do? Surely God will not punish me for not doing what He has not given me strength to do?"

"Alice, you must not speak like that; you are blaspheming your Creator. Tell me, can nothing be done to help you, to save you? Ah, if you knew the lofty hopes that were once mine, of the high ideal life I once dreamed to live with you; a pure ecstatic life untouched by any degrading passion, unassailed by any base desires! But alas! all my hopes are .withered, all my love is in the dust, for no more than the rest can you hold aloof: like the rest you demand the joys and satisfactions of the flesh; but, unlike May and Violet, you shall not live and be satisfied with them. They shall become loathsome in your eyes, they shall sicken in your sight and mind, and when the first fever of curiosity and desire has passed, you shall drink the draught in horror; you shall long to dash down the brutal cup, your lips and mouth shall burn as with poison, and your heart shall wither within you, and your yearning soul shall call to be delivered of its uncleanness. You shall wring your hands and weep in secret, but in vain; for you will be then as a slave chained to daily and nightly degradation, and none shall be able to break your fetters but death. Now you see man’s love in the fair moonlight of your imagination, but draw nearer, and its animal exhalations shall poison your nostrils, and all its foul abominations shall be revealed to you. No more than the others do you know the torture you are preparing for yourself, no more than the others do you realise the misery and the shame of the life you are choosing. My heart bleeds for you. I am sick of grief.”

"Cecilia, darling Cecilia, you must not sob like that. Tell me why you are grieving, tell me what I can do; you know I love you.”

"No, between you and me there is an abyss that cannot be bridged over. No, no; leave me; I do not want your sympathy. Your heart is no longer mine; it is full of base passion and vile desire; your love for that man hangs about you like an odour; to me it is a visible presence and it revolts me.”

"Cecilia dear, you are excited, you do not know what you are saying... Were it anyone else!"

"If it were anyone else! I am no more to you than anyone else!"

"Indeed you are, Cecilia; I love you better than anyone in the world!"

"Ah! Better than anyone except him.”

"What do you mean?"

“Why seek to deceive me? I know the truth, but I have prayed for grace and am prepared to bear my pain. And my pain! Oh, God! Thou, who knowest all things, Thou canst judge of its sharpness and its bitterness. Thou in thine infinite mercy hast estimated the burden and deemed it befitting to be laid upon me; and for Thy sweet sake, O Lord, I will, as bravely as may be, bear my cross to the end until I lay it one day at Thy feet, and at Thy white feet beg mercy of Thee. For Thou in Thine infinite wisdom hast taken heed of its weight and my power. Alas! not that of man nor woman, but that of a poor little cripple — a girl cripple — weak and deformed in body, but endowed with a soul capable of feeling every passing pain, and a heart in which every wandering grief may make its nest. My lot has been set about with grief and sufferings that none will ever know of; sharp keen agony, and mad sorrows that have made life to mo a black, a sullen martyrdom.

"Here, none may take account of other than physical pain, but I know that the mind is capable of keener torturing than the mere flesh is ever conscious of. Ah, those terrible moments when life is revealed to me in all its natural ignominy and horror! Purblind we walk, only dimly aware of the abominations about us, and thus we are enabled to bear the agony that we call life. But there are moments, terrible moments in the middle watches of the night, when we wake to the truth, and seeing things in their fearsome, in their leprous deformity, cry aloud in our pain, cry aloud for oblivion. And then in the tumult of our despair we turn our faces to the wall and moan, and like children weep ourselves to sleep. Such a martyrdom is and shall be mine until Jesus the Redeemer comes and welcomes me into that place where there are neither tears nor laughter, and where the weary are at rest. And may that time come soon, I most humbly pray; for of peace and love there is none here for me. I have known but solitude and suffering; I have spoken and not been heard; I have loved and it has availed me nothing. Others are contented with externals, but I see the truth — the awful, the hideous, the monstrous truth. In a solitude as deep as the airless silence of the moon I live — I and the Truth. Long, too long, have we counted out together the abominable record of human life; and, as in sullen joy we traced the footmarks of man through the eternal slime, we have alternately given way to bitter exultation and blind despair; and now we are tired of both. Yes, it would seem that my heart has grown dumb. I do not long for life’s joys, its pains I despise; but to live with a thousand beings, all apparently made to your own image and likeness, and to know that not one either feels or understands as you feel and understand, is unnecessary suffering; and it is lawful to confess you are not of the world’s company, and to fly from it. No, Alice, no; you, no more than the rest, have understood me. I have loved you... well; but that is over now, and I must go hence and learn to bear the burden that Christ has given me to bear.”

"But Cecilia, I am not going to leave you: I do not understand.”

"Yes, you do; you know well enough that you will marry him, and you will moreover go away with him and I shall be left alone.”

"Cecilia, I assure you that he has never spoken a word of love to me; I have no reason to think that he ever thought of asking me to marry him.”

"It is very clear indeed that he holds for you that sentiment which men dignify with the name of love. His blood is on fire with it; when he looks at you... oh, it is horrible! I will not think of it.”

"Cecilia, for shame! Surely it is wicked to speak like that. Surely you are sinning against your religion, which of all the religions the world has known is most human; indeed, I may say, the most domestic. Think, do not your theories involve a condemnation of the life of Christ, and all that concerns it?"

"Hush, Alice, hush, — that was no more than an infinitely mysterious, and an infinitely beautiful dream." As she spoke she raised her face, the light fell on the retreating temples, and the prominent eyes of the mystic were rolled upward wildly, almost convulsively.

Then Alice looked straight out of her plain, earnest eyes. She was stirred to the depths of her being with wonder, with a strange wonder in which there were mingled sensations of horror and curiosity. And, at the same time, as there are often in a violet sky vanishing touches of delicate blue so pleasantly suggestive of sunshine that they are, as it were, thoughts of happiness and pleasure, a sweet humming joy fluttered down upon her heart like wings upon a nest that was soon to grow alive with fledglings. In that moment Alice knew she was to be a wife. A soft voice cooed deliciously about her heart, but she strove not to listen. Afterwards she was ashamed of having experienced so much gladness in the presence of one whom life had crowned with much grief. At last she said:

"But, Cecilia, you must remember that marriage is a sacrament that is permitted by God.”

"Marriage is a concession to the weak in spirit.”

"Then do you really think it is impossible to love a man purely. And, admitting for a moment that Dr. Reed does want to marry me, do you think" (here Alice spoke with a slight hesitation in her voice) "it would be incompatible with the married state for a pure and holy affection to exist between us, a belief in each other's truth, and much firm dependence on the strength of our double life?”

"Marriage is lawful, but for all that its passions are no whit less gross and no less detestable than those of any other form of concubinage, and he or she who would love as the angels love in heaven, who would taste the love that fills the eternal spaces of heaven, must fly from all that is too conclusive of the earth; must not seek to make a spiritual banquet serve for worldly meat and drink. The real and the ideal are not one but twain, and the twain will never turn to one. Before you, myriad brides — bright and radiant maidens — have gone to the marriage-bed, but only to return, as you will, abashed, defiled, and mad with the ignominy and the shame; you, too, like them will know the truth when it is too late. Darling, my heart is your heart, and your affections are mine as mine are yours. I see it all. Oh God! how clear the vision is! Listen, in horrible nightmare I have endured.... yes, I have known the abominable martyrdom which you will suffer. And now I can see it — a fearsome monster waiting you from afar. All is dread darkness about him, but his eyes gleam; his breath stirs the shuddering silence.... Ah! it is too horrible! I will see no more. And, darling, I can only pity you, can but hold these arms to you for a last time. Then you will be alone, and the love I shall send out to you will but barely reach you, and will not help you to live. You will be alone, you will have no one by to comfort you, to wipe away your tears, to bid you bear your lot for Christ’s most holy sake. But I shall pray, I shall pray by day and night, for I shall know all, and you too will know all, and in your agony your thoughts will lean to Cecilia, to her who now seems to you no more than a strange-minded cripple girl, to her who now seems to you but a dark-minded cynic to whom all earthly joy is unholy and vile.’’

"But surely, Cecilia, you do not think all men are gross and degraded — you do not hate your own father?"

Cecilia did not answer, but her lips curled disdainfully, and it was easy to guess the dark and terrible thoughts that agitated her.

"I cannot go into that question," she said abruptly; "all I have in my heart to tell concerns the futility of material pleasures, and the terrible future you are preparing for yourself. I have thought long and profoundly of the meaning of life; my deformity, forcing me to stand out of the swelling of the crowd, has given me occasion to see as from a tower, and from my silent and lonely place I have watched and have seen the terrible end that awaits all earthly delight — shame, loathing, weariness. But I am not the cynic that you declare me. I believe there are many pleasures in life, but they are found in resignation, in calm, and never in stormful joy and violent ends. The real, the abiding gladness of this life is approached in prayer, in yearning for an ideal that cannot be ours in this life, but which we may attain in the next."

“An unattainable ideal! Of what service can it then be to us?"

"The value of an ideal lies in the fact of its unattainableness, otherwise it would be worthless and valueless to guide us, to lead us through our mortal night. And to gain power to conquer our baser passions we set our eyes upon a fair, unalterable star: in rare moments its beauty will shine upon our tired faces, and our hearts shall wax joyful, and burdens grow light upon our bending shoulders. Then we must pray. Prayer is a Divine cordial poured out of heaven that our souls may drink of and be refreshed; prayer is a flower fallen from heaven that man may cull and place it in his bosom and walk on assured of his Divine importance; and I have drunk of this cordial; I have gathered this rose and have been made strong and whole with sweet drink and immortal perfume, and may now pursue my journey to the end without fear of falling by the wayside. Life has been defeated, its thorns have been trampled under foot, and its temptations disdained. For I, even a poor girl cripple like me, have been given not only sorrows and pains to bear, but even temptations to overcome. That you do not believe, and you cannot perhaps realise, what I suffered when I saw you, my only friend, being stolen from me. Then what was loathing grew to hate, and I called upon God to curse, to kill, to relieve me of my enemy; to crush him who will degrade with his vile usage her to whom my thoughts turn as the sunflower must to the sun, her who has been to me, poor, lonely and sorrowful me, an ideal of love, of light, and of grace.”

“Cecilia, darling, you shall not be alone. You shall come and live with us... that is to say, if what you have spoken of is to be.”

"Live with you, with him! For ever in sight of your domestic affection; to become a part of it? No, I shall seek peace from you, from all too disturbing passion, in God and the hope of heaven. I shall return to that place where alone there may exist for me some small portion of earthly happiness — the Convent of the Holy Child."

"But you are not a Roman Catholic?"

"I have always been one in sentiment, I shall now become one in God, and I shall take the veil; and in those beautiful black robes, in that beautiful woman’s church, in the silent sacramental hours, my soul shall lose consciousness of all things save of the white presence of God; and there, when my heart has grown quieter, I shall pray for you, Alice; and my prayers shall be heard; and if ever you come to me, if you should ever whisper in my ear that you had learnt to believe in our Divine Lord, if you should ever kneel by me in that beautiful convent church and in our old places, and our spirits be mingled, in the sweet mutuality of prayer, I should forget all past griefs, or rather I should say that for the ultimate happiness they bore, they were worth enduring.”

Tears stood in Alice’s eyes; her heart was too full for words, but she took her friend in her arms and kissed her — the caress was passionately, and even violently returned.