The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance Part 24

"He is, of course, an extraordinary man," went on Mr. Harland--"and he is bound to offend many and to please few. He is not likely to escape the usual fate of unusual characters. But I think--indeed I may say I am sure--his integrity is beyond question. He has curious opinions about love and marriage--almost as curious as the fixed ideas he holds concerning life and death."

Something cold seemed to send a s.h.i.+ver through my blood--was it some stray fragment of memory from the past that stirred me to a sense of pain? I forced myself to speak.

"What are those opinions?" I asked, and looking up in the moonlight to my companion's face I saw that it wore a puzzled expression--"Hardly conventional, I suppose?"

"Conventional! Convention and Santoris are farther apart than the poles! No--he doesn't fit into any accepted social code at all. He looks upon marriage itself as a tacit acknowledgment of inconstancy in love, and declares that if the pa.s.sion existed in its truest form between man and woman any sort of formal or legal tie would be needless,--as love, if it be love, does not and cannot change. But it is no use discussing such a matter with him. The love that he believes in can only exist, if then, once in a thousand years! Men and women marry for physical attraction, convenience, necessity or respectability,--and the legal bond is necessary both for their sakes and the worldly welfare of the children born to them; but love which is physical and transcendental together,--love that is to last through an imagined eternity of progress and fruition, this is a mere dream--a chimera!--and he feasts his brain upon it as though it were a nouris.h.i.+ng fact. However, one must have patience with him--he is not like the rest of us."

"No!" I murmured--and then stood silently beside him watching the moonbeams ripple on the waters in wavy links of brightness.

"When you married," I said, at last--"did you not marry for love?"

He puffed at his cigar thoughtfully.

"Well, I hardly know," he replied, after a long pause,--"Looking back upon everything, I rather doubt it! I married as most men marry--on impulse. I saw a pretty face--and it seemed advisable that I should marry--but I cannot say I was moved by any great or absorbing pa.s.sion for the woman I chose. She was charming and amiable in our courting days--as a wife she became peevish and querulous,--apt to sulk, too,--and she devoted herself almost entirely to the most commonplace routine of life;--however, I had nothing to justly complain of. We lived five years together before her child Catherine was born,--and then she died. I cannot say that either her life or her death left any deep mark upon me--not if I am honest. I don't think I understand love--certainly not the love which Rafel Santoris looks upon as the secret key of the Universe."

Instinctively my eyes turned towards the 'Dream' at anchor. She looked like a phantom vessel in the moonlight. Again the faint s.h.i.+ver of cold ran through my veins like a sense of spiritual terror. If I should lose now what I had lost before! This was my chief thought,--my hidden shuddering fear. Did the whole responsibility rest with me, I wondered?

Mr. Harland laid his hand kindly on my arm.

"You look like a wan spirit in the moonbeams," he said--"So pale and wistful! You are tired, and I am selfish in keeping you up here to talk to me. Go down to your cabin. I can see you are full of mystical dreams, and I am afraid Santoris has rather helped you to indulge in them. He is of the same nature as you are--inclined to believe that this life as we live it is only one phase of many that are past and of many yet to come. I wish I could accept that faith!"

"I wish you could!" I said--"You surely would be happier."

"Should I?" He gave a quick sigh. "I have my doubts! If I could be young and strong and lie through many lives always possessed of that same youth and strength, then there would be something in it--but to be old and ailing, no! The Faust legend is an eternal truth--Life is only worth living as long as we enjoy it."

"Your friend Santoris enjoys it!" I said.

"Ah! There you touch me! He does enjoy it, and why? Because he is young! Though nearly as old in years as I am, he is actually young!

That's the mystery of him! Santoris is positively young--young in heart, young in thought, ambition, feeling and sentiment, and yet--"

He broke off for a moment, then resumed.

"I don't know how he has managed it, but he told me long ago that it was a man's own fault if he allowed himself to grow old. I laughed at him then, but he has certainly carried his theories into fact. He used to declare that it was either yourself or your friends that made you old. 'You will find,' he said, 'as you go on in years, that your family relations, or your professing dear friends, are those that will chiefly insist on your inviting and accepting the burden of age. They will remind you that twenty years ago you did so and so,--or that they have known you over thirty years--or they will tell you that considering your age you look well, or a thousand and one things of that kind, as if it were a fault or even a crime to be alive for a certain span of time,--whereas if you simply shook off such unnecessary attentions and went your own way, taking freely of the constant output of life and energy supplied to you by Nature, you would outwit all these croakers of feebleness and decay and renew your vital forces to the end. But to do this you must have a constant aim in life and a ruling pa.s.sion.' As I told you, I laughed at him and at what I called his 'folly,' but now--well, now--it's a case of 'let those laugh who win.'"

"And you think he has won?" I asked.

"Most a.s.suredly--I cannot deny it. But the secret of his victory is beyond me."

"I should think it is beyond most people," I replied--"For if we could all keep ourselves young and strong we would take every means in our power to attain such happiness--"

"Would we, though?" And his brows knitted perplexedly--"If we knew, would we take the necessary trouble? We will hardly obey a physician's orders for our good even when we are really ill--would we in health follow any code of life in order to keep well?"

I laughed.

"Perhaps not!" I said--"I expect it will always be the same thing--'Many are called, but few are chosen.' Goodnight!"

I held out my hand. He took it in his own and kept it a moment.

"It's curious we should have met Santoris so soon after my telling you about him," he said--"It's one of those coincidences which one cannot explain. You are very like him in some of your ideas--you two ought to be very great friends."

"Ought we?"--and I smiled--"Perhaps we shall be! Again, Good-night!"

"Good-night!" And I left him to his meditations and went down to my cabin, only stopping for a moment to say good-night to Catherine and Dr. Brayle, who were playing bridge with Mr. Swinton and Captain Derrick in the saloon. Once in my room, I was thankful to be alone.

Every extraneous thing seemed an intrusion or an impertinence,--the thoughts that filled my brain were all absorbing, and went so far beyond the immediate radius of time and s.p.a.ce that I could hardly follow their flight. I smiled as I imagined what ordinary people would think of the experience through which I had pa.s.sed and was pa.s.sing.

'Foolish fancies!' 'Neurotic folly!' and other epithets of the kind would be heaped upon me if they knew--they, the excellent folk whose sole objects in life are so ephemeral as to be the things of the hour, the day, or the month merely, and who if they ever pause to consider eternal possibilities at all, do so reluctantly perhaps in church on Sundays, comfortably dismissing them for the more solid prospect of dinner. And of Love? What view of the divine pa.s.sion do they take as a rule? Let the millions of mistaken marriages answer! Let the savage l.u.s.ts and treacheries and cruelties of merely brutish and unspiritualised humanity bear witness? And how few shall be found who have even the beginnings of the nature of true love--'the love of soul for soul, angel for angel, G.o.d for G.o.d!'--the love that accepts this world and its events as one phase only of divine and immortal existence--a phase of trial and proving in which the greater number fail to pa.s.s even a first examination! As for myself, I felt and knew that _I_ had failed hopelessly and utterly in the past--and I stood now as it were on the edge of new circ.u.mstances--in fear, yet not without hope, and praying that whatsoever should chance to me I might not fail again!

X

STRANGE a.s.sOCIATIONS

The next day the race agreed upon was run in the calmest of calm weather. There was not the faintest breath of wind,--the sea was still as a pond and almost oily in its smooth, motionless s.h.i.+ning--and it was evident at first that our captain entertained no doubt whatever as to the 'Diana,' with her powerful engines, being easily able to beat the aerial-looking 'Dream' schooner, which at noon-day, with all sails spread, came gliding up beside us till she lay point to point at equal distance and at nearly equal measurement with our more c.u.mbersome vessel. Mr. Harland was keenly excited; Dr. Brayle was ready to lay any amount of wagers as to the impossibility of a sailing vessel, even granted she was moved by electricity, out-racing one of steam in such a dead calm. As the two vessels lay on the still waters, the 'Diana'

fussily getting up steam, and the 'Dream' with sails full out as if in a stiff breeze, despite the fact that there was no wind, we discussed the situation eagerly--or rather I should say my host and his people discussed it, for I had nothing to say, knowing that the victory was sure to be with Santoris. We were in very lonely waters,--there was room and to spare for plenty of racing, and when all was ready and Santoris saluted us from the deck, lifting his cap and waving it in response to a similar greeting from Mr. Harland and our skipper, the signal to start was given. We moved off together, and for at least half an hour or more the 'Dream' floated along in a kind of lazy indolence, keeping up with us easily, her canvas filled, and her keel cutting the water as if swept by a favouring gale. The result of the race was soon a foregone conclusion,--for presently, when well out on the mirror-like calm of the sea, the 'Dream' showed her secret powers in earnest, and flew like a bird with a silent swiftness that was almost incredible.

Our yacht put on all steam in the effort to keep up with her,--in vain!

On, on, with light grace and celerity her white sails carried her like the wings of a sea-gull, and almost before we could realise it she vanished altogether from our sight! I saw a waste of water spread around us emptily like a wide circle of crystal reflecting the sky, and a sense of desolation fell upon me in the mere fact that we were temporarily left alone. We steamed on and on in the direction of the vanished 'Dream,'--our movements suggesting those of some clumsy four-footed animal panting its way after a bird, but unable to come up with her.

"Wonderful!" said Mr. Harland, at last, drawing a long breath,--"I would never have believed it possible!"

"Nor I!" agreed Captain Derrick--"I certainly thought she would never have managed it in such a dead calm. For though I have seen some of her mechanism I cannot entirely understand it."

Dr. Brayle was silent. It was evident that he was annoyed--though why he should be so was not apparent. I myself was full of secret anxiety--for the 'Dream' yacht's sudden and swift disappearance had filled me with a wretched sense of loneliness beyond all expression.

Suppose she should not return! I had no clue to her whereabouts--and with the loss of Santoris I knew I should lose all that was worth having in my life. While these miserable thoughts were yet chasing each other through my brain I suddenly caught a far glimpse of white sails on the horizon.

"She's coming back!" I cried, enraptured, and heedless of what I said--"Oh, thank G.o.d! She's coming back!"

They all looked at me in amazement.

"Why, what's the matter with you?" asked Mr. Harland, smiling. "You surely didn't think she was in any danger?"

My cheeks grew warm.

"I didn't know--I could not imagine--" I faltered, and turning away I met Dr. Brayle's eyes fixed upon me with a gleam of malice in them.

"I'm sure," he said, suavely, "you are greatly interested in Mr.

Santoris! Perhaps you have met each other before?"

"Never!" I answered, hurriedly,--and then checked myself, startled and confused. He kept his narrow brown eyes heedfully upon me and smiled slightly.

"Really! I should have thought otherwise!"

I did not trouble myself to reply. The white sails of the 'Dream' were coming nearer and nearer over the smooth width of the sunlit water, and as she approached my heart grew warm with grat.i.tude. Life was again a thing of joy!--the world was no longer empty! That s.h.i.+p looked to me like a beautiful winged spirit coming towards me with radiant a.s.surances of hope and consolation, and I lost all fear, all sadness, all foreboding, as she gradually swept up alongside in the easy triumph she had won. Our crew a.s.sembled to welcome her, and cheered l.u.s.tily.

Santoris, standing on her deck, lightly acknowledged the salutes which gave him the victory, and presently both our vessels were once more at their former places of anchorage. When all the excitement was over, I went down to my cabin to rest for a while before dressing for the dinner on board the 'Dream' to which we were all invited,--and while I lay on my sofa reading, Catherine Harland knocked at my door and asked to come in, I admitted her at once, and she flung herself into an arm-chair with a gesture of impatience.

"I'm so tired of all this yachting!" she said, peevishly. "It isn't amusing to me!"

"I'm very sorry!" I answered;--"If you feel like that, why not give it up at once?"