CHAPTER XIX
MORRIS, THE MARRIED MAN
More than three years had gone by. Within twelve weeks of the date of
the conversation recorded in the last chapter Morris and Mary were
married in Monksland church. Although the wedding was what is called
"quiet" on account of the recent death of the bride's father, the
Colonel, who gave her away, was careful that it should be
distinguished by a certain stamp of modest dignity, which he
considered to be fitting to the station and fortune of the parties. To
him, indeed, this union was the cause of heartfelt and earnest
rejoicings, which is not strange, seeing that it meant nothing less
than a new lease of life to an ancient family that was on the verge of
disappearance. Had Morris not married the race would have become
extinct, at any rate in the direct line; and had he married where
there was no money, it might, as his father thought, become bankrupt,
which in his view was almost worse.
The one terror which had haunted the Colonel for years like a
persistent nightmare was that a day seemed to be at hand when the
Monks would be driven from Monksland, where, from sire to son, they
had sat for so many generations. That day had nearly come when he was
a young man; indeed, it was only averted by his marriage with the
somewhat humbly born Miss Porson, who brought with her sufficient
dowry to enable him to pay off the major portion of the mortgages
which then crippled the estate. But at that time agriculture
flourished, and the rents from the property were considerable;
moreover, the Colonel was never of a frugal turn of mind. So it came
about that every farthing was spent.
Afterwards followed a period of falling revenues and unlet farms. But
still the expenses went on, with the result, as the reader knows, that
at the opening of this history things were worse than they had ever
been, and indeed, without the help received from Mr. Porson, must ere
that have reached their natural end. Now the marriage of his son with
a wealthy heiress set a period to all such anxiety, and unless the
couple should be disappointed of issue, made it as certain as anything
can be in this mutable world, that for some generations to come, at
any rate, the name of Monk of Monksland would still appear in the
handbooks of county families.
In the event these fears proved to be groundless, since by an
unexpected turn of the wheel of chance Morris became a rich man in
reward of his own exertions, and was thus made quite independent of
his wife's large fortune. This, however, was a circumstance which the
Colonel could not be expected to foresee, for how could he believe
that an electrical invention which he looked upon as a mere scientific
toy would ultimately bring its author not only fame, but an income of
many thousands per annum? Yet this happened.
Other things happened also which, under the circumstances, were quite
as satisfactory, seeing that within two years of his marriage Morris
was the father of a son and daughter, so that the old Abbey, where, by
the especial request of the Colonel, they had established themselves,
once more echoed to the voices of little children.
In those days, if anyone among his acquaintances had been asked to
point out an individual as prosperous and happy as, under the most
favoured circumstances, it is given to a mortal to be, he would
unhesitatingly have named Morris Monk.
What was there lacking to this man? He had lineage that in his own
neighbourhood gave him standing better than that of many an upstart
baronet or knight, and with it health and wealth. He had a wife who
was acknowledged universally to be one of the most beautiful,
charming, and witty women in the county, whose devotion to himself was
so marked and open that it became a public jest; who had, moreover,
presented him with healthy and promising offspring. In addition to all
these good things he had suddenly become in his own line one of the
most famous persons in the world, so that, wherever civilized man was
to be found, there his name was known as "Monk, who invented that
marvellous machine, the aerophone." Lastly, there was no more need for
him, as for most of us, to stagger down his road beneath a never
lessening burden of daily labour. His work was done; a great
conception completed after half a score of years of toil and
experiment had crowned it with unquestionable success. Now he could
sit at ease and watch the struggles of others less fortunate.
There are, however, few men on the right side of sixty whose souls
grow healthier in idleness. Although nature often recoils from it, man
was made to work, and he who will not work calls down upon himself
some curse, visible or invisible, as he who works, although the toil
seem wasted, wakes up one day to find the arid wilderness where he
wanders strown with a manna of blessing. This should be the prayer of
all of understanding, that whatever else it may please Heaven to take
away, there may be left to them the power and the will to work,
through disappointment, through rebuffs, through utter failure even,
still to work. Many things for which they are or are not wholly
responsible are counted to men as sins. Surely, however, few will
press more heavily upon the beam of the balance, when at length we are
commanded to unfold the talents which we have been given and earned,
than those fateful words: "Lord, mine lies buried in its napkin," or
worse still: "Lord, I have spent mine on the idle pleasures which my
body loved."
Therefore it was not to the true welfare of Morris when through lack
of further ambition, or rather of the sting of that spur of necessity
which drives most men on, he rested upon his oars, and in practice
abandoned his labours, drifting down the tide. No man of high
intelligence and acquisitive brain can toil arduously for a period of
years and suddenly cease from troubling to find himself, as he
expects, at rest. For then into the swept and garnished chambers of
that empty mind enter seven or more blue devils. Depression marks him
for its own; melancholy forebodings haunt him; remorse for past
misdeeds long repented of is his daily companion. With these Erinnyes,
more felt perhaps than any of them, comes the devastating sense that
he is thwarting the best instinct of his own nature and the divine
command to labour while there is still light, because the night draws
on apace in which no man can labour.
Mary was fond of society, in which she liked to be accompanied by her
husband, so Morris, whose one great anxiety was to please his wife and
fall in with her every wish, went to a great many parties which he
hated. Mary liked change also, so it came about that three months in
the season were spent in London, where they had purchased a house in
Green Street that was much frequented by the Colonel, and another two,
or sometimes three, months at the villa on the Riviera, which Mary was
very fond of on account of its associations with her parents.
Also in the summer and shooting seasons, when they were at home, the
old Abbey was kept full of guests; for we may be sure that people so
rich and distinguished did not lack for friends, and Mary made the
very best of hostesses.
Thus it happened that except at the seasons when his wife retired
under the pressure of domestic occurrences, Morris found that he had
but little time left in which to be quiet; that his life in short was
no longer the life of a worker, but that of a commonplace country
gentleman of wealth and fashion.
Now it was Mary who had brought these things about, and by design; for
she was not a woman to act without reasons and an object. It is true
that she liked a gay and pleasant life, for gaiety and pleasure were
agreeable to her easy and somewhat indolent mind, also they gave her
opportunities of exercising her faculties of observation, which were
considerable.
But Mary was far fonder of her husband than of those and other
vanities; indeed, her affection for him shone the guiding star of her
existence. From her childhood she had been devoted to this cousin,
who, since her earliest days, had been her playmate, and at heart had
wished to marry him, and no one else. Then he began his experiments,
and drifted quite away from her. Afterwards things changed, and they
became engaged. Again the experiments were carried on, with the aid of
another woman, and again he drifted away from her; also the drifting
in this instance was attended by serious and painful complications.
Now the complications had ceased to exist; they threatened her
happiness no more. Indeed, had they been much worse than they were she
would have overlooked them, being altogether convinced of the truth of
the old adage which points out the folly of cutting off one's nose to
spite one's face. Whatever his failings or shortcomings, Morris was
her joy, the human being in whose company she delighted; without whom,
indeed, her life would be flat, stale, and unprofitable. The stronger
then was her determination that he should not slip back into his
former courses; those courses which in the end had always brought
about estrangement from herself.
Inventions, the details of which she could not understand, meant, as
she knew well, long days and weeks of solitary brooding; therefore
inventions, and, indeed, all unnecessary work, were in his case to be
discouraged. Such solitary brooding also drew from the mind of Morris
a vague mist of thought about matters esoteric which, to Mary's
belief, had the properties of a miasma that crept like poison through
his being. She wished for no more star-gazing, no more mysticism, and,
above all, no more memories of the interloping woman who, in his
company, had studied its doubtful and dangerous delights.
Although since the day of Morris's confession Mary had never even
mentioned the name of Stella to him, she by no means forgot that such
a person once existed. Indeed, carelessly and without seeming to be
anxious on the subject, she informed herself about her down to the
last possible detail; so that within a few months of the death of Miss
Fregelius she knew, as she thought, everything that could be known of
her life at Monksland. Moreover, she saw three different pictures of
her: one a somewhat prim photograph which Mr. Fregelius, her father,
possessed, taken when she was about twenty; another, a coloured
drawing made by Morris--who was rather clever at catching likenesses--
of her as she appeared singing in the chapel on the night when she had
drawn the page-boy, Thomas, from his slumbers; and the third, also a
photograph, taken by some local amateur, of her and Morris standing
together on the beach and engaged evidently in eager discussion.
From these three pictures, and especially from Morris's sketch, which
showed the spiritual light shining in her eyes, and her face rapt, as
it were, in a very ecstasy of music, Mary was able to fashion with
some certainty the likeness of the living woman. The more she studied
this the more she found it formidable, and the more she understood how
it came about that her husband had fallen into folly. Also, she
learned to understand that there might be greater weight and meaning
in his confession than she had been inclined to allow to it at the
time; that, at any rate, its extravagances ought not to be set down
entirely, as her father-in-law had suggested with such extreme
cleverness, to the vagaries of a mind suffering from sudden shock and
alarm.
All these conclusions made Mary anxious, by wrapping her husband round
with common domestic cares and a web of daily, social incident, to
bury the memory of this Stella beneath ever-thickening strata of
forgetfulness; not that in themselves these reminiscences, however
hallowed, could do her any further actual harm; but because the train
of thought evoked thereby was, as she conceived, morbid, and dangerous
to the balance of his mind.
The plan seemed wise and good, and, in the case of most men, probably
would have succeeded. Yet in Morris's instance from the commencement
it was a failure. She had begun by making his story and ideas, absurd
enough on the face of them, an object of somewhat acute sarcasm, if
not of ridicule. This was a mistake, since thereby she caused him to
suppress every outward evidence of them; to lock them away in the most
secret recesses of his heart. If the lid of a caldron full of fluid is
screwed down while a fire continues to burn beneath it, the steam
which otherwise would have passed away harmlessly, gathers and
struggles till the moment of inevitable catastrophe. The fact that for
a while the caldron remains inert and the steam invisible is no
indication of safety. To attain safety in such a case either the fire
must be raked out or the fluid tapped. Mary had screwed down the lid
of her domestic caldron, but the flame still burned beneath, and the
water still boiled within.
This was her first error, and the second proved almost as mischievous.
She thought to divert Morris from a central idea by a multitude of
petty counter-attractions; she believed that by stopping him from the
scientific labours and esoteric speculation connected with this idea,
that it would be deadened and in time obliterated.
As a matter of fact, by thus emptying his mind of its serious and
accustomed occupations, Mary made room for the very development she
dreaded to flourish like an upas tree. For although he breathed no
word of it, although he showed no sign of it, to Morris the memory of
the dead was a constant companion. Time heals all things, that is the
common saying; but would it be possible to formulate any fallacy more
complete? There are many wounds that time does not heal, and often
enough against the dead it has no power at all--for how can time
compete against the eternity of which they have become a part? The
love of them where they have been truly loved, remains quite
unaltered; in some instances, indeed, it is emdued with a power of
terrible and amazing growth.
On earth, very probably, that deep affection would have become subject
to the natural influences of weakening and decay; and, in the instance
of a man and woman, the soul-possessing passion might have passed, to
be replaced by a more moderate, custom-worn affection. But the dead
are beyond the reach of those mouldering fingers. There they stand,
perfect and unalterable, with arms which never cease from beckoning,
with a smile that never grows less sweet. Come storm, come shine,
nothing can tarnish the pure and gleaming robes in which our vision
clothes them. We know the worst of them; their faults and failings
cannot vex us afresh, their errors are all forgiven. It is their best
part only that remains unrealised and unread, their purest aspirations
which we follow with leaden wings, their deepest thoughts that we
still strive to plumb with the short line of our imagination or
experience, and to weigh in our imperfect balances.
Yes, there they stand, and smile, and beckon, while ever more radiant
grow their brows, and more to be desired the knowledge of their
perfect majesty. There is no human passion like this passion for the
dead; none so awful, none so holy, none so changeless. For they have
become eternal, and our desire for them is sealed with the stamp of
their eternity, and strengthens in the shadow of its wings till the
shadows flee away and we pass to greet them in the dawn of the
immortal morning.
Yes, within the secret breast of Morris the flame of memory still
burned, and still seethed those bitter waters of desire for the dead.
There was nothing carnal about this desire, since the passions of the
flesh perish with the flesh. Nor was there anything of what a man may
feel when he sees the woman whom he loves and who loves him, forced to
another fate, for to those he robs death has this advantage over the
case of other successful rivals: his embrace purifies, and of it we
are not jealous. The longing was spiritual, and for this reason it did
not weaken, but, indeed, became a part of him, to grow with the spirit
from which it took its birth. Still, had it not been for a chance
occurrence, there, in the spirit, it might have remained buried, in
due course to pass away with it and seek its expression in unknown
conditions and regions unexplored.
In a certain fashion Morris was happy enough. He was very fond of his
wife, and he adored his little children as men of tender nature do
adore those that are helpless, and for whose existence they are
responsible. He appreciated his public reputation, his wealth, and the
luxury that lapped him round, and above all he was glad to have been
the means of restoring, and, indeed, of advancing the fortunes of his
family.
Moreover, as has been said, above all things he desired to please
Mary, the lovely, amiable woman who had complimented him with her
unvarying affection; and--when he went astray--who, with scarcely a
reproach, had led him back into its gentle fold. Least of all,
therefore, was it his will to flaunt before her eyes the spectre from
a past which she wished to forget, or even to let her guess that such
a past still permeated his present. Therefore, on this subject settled
the silence of the dead, till at length Mary, observant as she was,
became well-nigh convinced that Stella Fregelius was forgotten, and
that her fantastic promises were disproved. Yet no mistake could have
been more profound.
It was Morris's habit, whenever he could secure an evening to himself,
which was not very often, to walk to the Rectory and smoke his pipe in
the company of Mr. Fregelius. Had Mary chanced to be invisibly
present, or to peruse a stenographic report of what passed at one of
these evening calls--whereof, for reasons which she suppressed, she
did not entirely approve--she might have found sufficient cause to
vary her opinion. On these occasions ostensibly Morris went to talk
about parish affairs, and, indeed, to a certain extent he did talk
about them. For instance, Stella who had been so fond of music, once
described to him the organ which she would like to have in the fine
old parish church of Monksland. Now that renovated instrument stood
there, and was the admiration of the country-side, as it well might be
in view of the fact that it had cost over four thousand pounds.
Again, Mr. Fregelius wished to erect a monument to his daughter,
which, as her body never had been found, could properly be placed in
the chancel of the church. Morris entered heartily into the idea and
undertook to spend the hundred pounds which the old gentleman had
saved for this purpose on his account and to the best advantage. In
affect he did spend it to excellent advantage, as Mr. Fregelius
admitted when the monument arrived.
It was a lovely thing, executed by one of the first sculptors of the
day, in white marble upon a black stone bed, and represented the
mortal shape of Stella. There she lay to the very life, wrapped in a
white robe, portrayed as a sleeper awakening from the last sleep of
death, her eyes wide and wondering, and on her face that rapt look
which Morris had caught in his sketch of her, singing in the chapel.
At the edge of the base of this remarkable effigy, set flush on the
black marble in letters of plain copper was her name--Stella Fregelius
--with the date of her death. On one side appeared the text that she
had quoted, "O death, where is thy sting?" and on the other its
continuation, "O grave, where is thy victory?" and at the foot part of
a verse from the forty-second psalm: "Deep calleth unto deep. . . .
All Thy waves and storms have gone over me."
Like the organ, this monument, which stood in the chancel, was much
admired by everybody, except Mary, who found it rather theatrical;
and, indeed, when nobody was looking, surveyed it with a gloomy and a
doubtful eye.
That Morris had something to do with the thing she was quite certain,
since she knew well that Mr. Fregelius would never have invented any
memorial so beautiful and full of symbolism; also she doubted his
ability to pay for a piece of statuary which must have cost many
hundreds of pounds. A third reason, which seemed to her conclusive,
was that the face on the statue was the very face of Morris's drawing,
although, of course, it was possible that Mr. Fregelius might have
borrowed the sketch for the use of the sculptor. But of all this,
although it disturbed her, occurring as it did just when she hoped
that Stella was beginning to be forgotten, she spoke not a word to
Morris. "Least said, soonest mended," is a good if a homely motto, or
so thought Mary.
The monument had been in place a year, but whenever he was at home
Morris's visits to Mr. Fregelius did not grow fewer. Indeed, his wife
noticed that, if anything, they increased in number, which, as the
organ was now finished down to the last allegorical carvings of its
case, seemed remarkable and unnecessary. Of course, the fact was that
on these occasions the conversation invariably centred on one subject,
and that subject, Stella. Considered in certain aspects, it must have
been a piteous thing to see and hear these two men, each of them
bereaved of one who to them above all others had been the nearest and
dearest, trying to assuage their grief by mutual consolations. Morris
had never told Mr. Fregelius all the depth of his attachment to his
daughter, at least, not in actual, unmistakable words, although, as
has been said, from the first her father took it for granted, and
Morris, tacitly at any rate, had accepted the conclusion. Indeed, very
soon he found that no other subject had such charms for his guest;
that of Stella he might talk for ever without the least fear that
Morris would be weary.
So the poor, childless, unfriended old man put aside the reserve and
timidity which clothed him like a garment, and talked on into those
sympathetic ears, knowing well, however--for the freemasonry of their
common love taught it to him--that in the presence of a third person
her name, no allusion to her, even, must pass his lips. In short,
these conversations grew at length into a kind of seance or solemn
rite; a joint offering to the dead of the best that they had to give,
their tenderest thoughts and memories, made in solemn secrecy and with
uplifted hearts and minds.
Mr. Fregelius was an historian, and possessed some interesting
records, upon which it was his habit to descant. Amongst other things
he instructed Morris in the annals of Stella's ancestry upon both
sides, which, as it happened, could be traced back for many
generations. In these discourses it grew plain to his listener whence
had sprung certain of her qualities, such as her fearless attitude
towards death, and her tendency towards mysticism. Here in these musty
chronicles, far back in the times when those of whom they kept record
were half, if not wholly, heathen, these same qualities could be
discovered among her forbears.
Indeed, there was one woman of whom the saga told, a certain
ancestress named Saevuna, whereof it is written "that she was of all
women the very fairest, and that she drew the hearts of men with her
wonderful eyes as the moon draws mists from a marsh," who, in some
ways, might have been Stella herself, Stella unchristianized and
savage.
This Saevuna's husband rebelled against the king of his country, and,
being captured, was doomed to a shameful death by hanging as a
traitor. Thereon, under pretence of bidding him farewell, she
administered poison to him, partaking of the same herself; "and,"
continues the saga, "they both of them, until their pains overcame
them, died singing a certain ancient song which had descended in the
family of one of them, and is called the Song of the Over-Lord, or the
Offering to Death. This song, while strength and voice remained to
them, it is the duty of this family to say or sing, or so they hold
it, in the hour of their death. But if they sing it, except by way of
learning its words and music from their mothers, and escape death, it
will not be for very long, seeing that when once the offering is laid
upon his altar, the Over-Lord considers it his own, and, after the
fashion of gods and men, takes it as soon as he can. So sweet and
strange was the singing of this Saevuna until she choked that the king
and his nobles came out to hear it, and all men thought it a great
marvel that a woman should sing thus in the very pains of death.
Moreover, they declared, many of them, that while the song went on
they could think of nothing else, and that strange and wonderful
visions passed before their eyes. But of this nobody can know the
truth for certain, as the woman and her husband died long ago."
"You see," said Mr. Fregelius, when he had finished translating the
passage aloud, "it is not wonderful that I thought it unlucky when I
heard that you had found Stella singing this same song upon the ship,
much as centuries ago her ancestress, Saevuna, sang it while she and
her husband died."
"At any rate, the omen fulfilled itself," answered Morris, with a
sigh, "and she, too, died with the song upon her lips, though I do not
think that it had anything to do with these things, which were fated
to befall."
"Well," said the clergyman, "the fate is fulfilled now, and the song
will never be sung again. She was the last of her race, and it was a
law among them that neither words nor music should ever be written
down."
When such old tales and legends were exhausted, and, outside the
immediate object of their search, some of them were of great interest
to a man who, like Morris, had knowledge of Norse literature, and was
delighted to discover in Mr. Fregelius a scholar acquainted with the
original tongues in which they were written, these companions fell
back upon other matters. But all of them had to do with Stella. One
night the clergyman read some letters written by her as a child from
Denmark. On another he produced certain dolls which she had dressed at
the same period of her life in the costume of the peasants of that
country. On a third he repeated a piece of rather indifferent poetry
composed by her when she was a girl of sixteen. Its strange title was,
"The Resurrection of Dead Roses." It told how in its author's fancy
the flowers which were cut and cast away on earth bloomed again in
heaven, never to wither more; a pretty allegory, but treated in a
childish fashion.
Thus, then, from time to time, as occasion offered, did this strange
pair celebrate the rites they thought so harmless, and upon the altar
of memory make offerings to their dead.
