Ecstasy

CHAPTER IV

“Oh, for that which cannot be told, because words are so few, always the same, varying combinations of a few letters and sounds; oh, for that which cannot be thought of in the narrow limits of comprehension; that which at best can only be groped for with the antennae of the soul; essence of the essences of the ultimate elements of our being …”

She wrote no more, she knew no more: why write that she had no words, and still seek them?

She was waiting for him, and she looked out of the open window to see if he came. She remained looking a long time; then she felt that he would come immediately, and so he did; she saw him approaching along the Scheveningen Road; he pushed open the iron gate of the villa, and smiled to her as he raised his hat in greeting.

“Wait!” she cried. “Stay where you are!”

She ran down the steps, into the garden, where he stood. She came towards him, beaming with happiness, and so lovely, so delicately frail: her blonde head so seemly in the fresh green of May; her figure – a young girl’s – in the palest grey gown, with black velvet ribbon, and silver lace here and there.

“I am glad you have come. You have not been to see me for so long!” she said, giving her hand.

He did not answer at once.

“Let us sit in the garden, the weather is so fine.”

They walked into the garden, by the mesh of the garden paths, the jasmine vines starring white as they passed. In an adjoining villa a piano was playing; the sounds came to them of Rubinstein’s Romance in E.

“Listen!” said Cecile, starting up. “What is that?”

“What?” he asked.

“What they are playing.”

“Something of Rubinstein’s, I believe,” he replied.

“Rubinstein … ?” she repeated, emptily. “Yes …”

And she relapsed into the wealth of memories of … what? Once before, in this way, she had walked along these same paths, past these jasmine vines, so long, so long ago; had walked with him, with him … Why? Was the past repeating itself after centuries … ?

“It is three weeks since you came to see me,” she said, simply, recovering herself.

“Forgive me,” he replied.

“What was the reason?”

He hesitated, seeking an excuse.

“I don’t know,” he answered, softly. “You forgive me, do you not? One day it was this, another day that. And then … I don’t know. Many reasons together. It is not good that I should see you often. Not good for you, nor for me.”

“Begin with the second. Why isn’t it good for you?”

“No, let us begin with the first: with what concerns you. People …”

“People?”

“People are talking about us. I am looked upon as an irretrievable rake. I will not have your name linked profanely with mine.”

“And is it?”

“Yes …”

She smiled.

“I do not mind.”

“But you must mind; if not for your own sake …”

He stopped. She knew he was thinking of her boys; she shrugged her shoulders.

“And now, why is it not good for you?”

“One should not be happy too often.”

“What a sophism! Why not?”

“I do not know; but I feel I am right. It spoils one; it blunts the appetite.”

“Are you happy here, then?”

He smiled, and nodded yes. They were silent a long time. They were sitting at the end of the garden, upon a seat that stood in a semi-circle of rhododendrons in flower; the great blossoms of purple satin shut them in with a high wall of closely clustered bouquets, rising from the paths and overtopping their heads; clambering roses flung their incense before them. They both sat still, happy together, happy in the sympathy of their atmospheres mingling together; yet in their happiness there was the invincible melancholy which is an integral part of all life, even in happiness.

“I do not know how I am to tell you,” he resumed; “but suppose I were to see you every day, every moment that I thought of you … That would not do. For then I should become so refined, so subtle, that from pure happiness I should not be able to live; my other being would receive nothing, and suffer hunger like a beast. I am bad, I am egotistical to be able to speak like this, but I must tell you the truth, that you may not think too well of me. So I only seek your society as something beautiful above all things, with which I indulge myself only on rare occasions.”

She was silent.

“Sometimes … sometimes, too, I think that in doing this I am not doing right so far as you are concerned; that in some way or other I offend or hurt you. Then I sit thinking about it, until I feel sure it would be best to take leave of you for ever.”

She was silent still; motionless she sat, with her hands listlessly in her lap, her head slightly bowed, a smile about her mouth.

“Speak to me …” he begged.

“You do not offend me, nor hurt me,” she said. “Come to me whenever you feel the need. Do always as you think best, and I shall think that best too; you must not doubt that.”

“I should so much like to know how you like me.”

“In what way? Surely, as a madonna a sinner who repents and gives her his soul,” she said, archly. “Am I not a madonna?”

“Are you content to be so?”

“Can you be so ignorant about women not to know how in each one of us there is a longing to solace and relief, to play, in fact, at being a madonna?”

“Do not speak so,” he said, with pain in his voice.

“I am speaking seriously …”

He looked at her; a doubt rose within him, but she smiled to him; a calm glory was about her; she sat amidst the bouquets of the rhododendrons as in the heart of one great mystic flower. The wound of his doubt was soothed with balsam. He gave himself up wholly to his happiness; an atmosphere wafted about them of the sweet calm of life, an atmosphere in which life becomes dispassionate and restful and smiling, like the air which is rare about the gods. It began to grow dark; a violet gloom fell from the sky like crêpe falling upon crêpe; quietly the stars lighted out. The shadows in the garden, between the shrubs among which they sat, flowed into one another; the piano in the adjacent villa had stopped. And Happiness drew a veil between his soul and the outside world: the garden with its design of plots and paths; the villa with curtains at its windows, and its iron gate; the road behind, with the rattle of carriages and trams. All this withdrew itself far back; all ordinary life retreated far from him; vanishing behind the veil, it died away. It was no dream nor conceit: reality to him was the Happiness that had come while the world died away; the Happiness that was rare, invisible, intangible, coming from the Love which alone is sympathy, calm and without passion, the Love which exists purely of itself, without further thought either of taking anything, or even of giving anything, the love of the gods, that is the soul of Love itself.

High he felt himself: the like of the illusion he had of her, which she wished to maintain for his sake, of which he was now absolutely certain, doubting nothing. For he could not understand that what had given him happiness – his illusion – so perfect, so crystalline, could cause her any grief; he could not at this moment penetrate without sin into the truth of the law which insists on equilibrium, which takes away from one what it offers another, which gives Happiness and Grief together; he could not understand that if Happiness was with him, with her there was anguish, anguish that she must make a pretence and deceive him for his own sake: anguish that she wanted above all what was earthly, that she craved for what was earthly, panted for earthly pleasures …! Still less could he know that, through all this, there was voluptuousness in her anguish: that to suffer through him, to suffer for him, made of her anguish all voluptuousness.

II

It was dark and late, and still they sat there.

“Shall we go for a walk?” she asked.

He hesitated, but she asked anew, “Why not, if you care to?”

And he could no longer refuse.

They rose up, and went along by the back of the house; Cecile said to the maid, whom she saw sitting sewing by the kitchen door:

“Greta, fetch me my small black hat, my black lace shawl, and a pair of gloves.”

The servant rose and went into the house. Cecile noticed how a little shyness marked itself more strongly in Quaerts’ hesitation now that they were waiting between the flower beds. She smiled, plucked a rose, and placed it in her waistband.

“Have the boys gone to bed?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, still smiling, “long ago.”

The servant returned; Cecile put on the small black hat and the lace about her neck; she refused the gloves Greta offered her.

“No, not these; get me a pair of grey ones …”

The servant entered the house again, and as Cecile looked at Quaerts, she gave a little laugh.

“What is the matter?” she asked, mischievously, knowing perfectly what it was.

“Nothing, nothing!” he said, vaguely, and waited patiently until Greta returned.

Then they went through the garden gate into the woods. They walked slowly, without speaking; Cecile played with her long gloves, not putting them on.

“Really …” he began, hesitating.

“Come, what is it?”

“You know; I told you the other day; it isn’t right …”

“What?”

“What we are doing now. You risk too much.”

“Too much, with you?”

“If anyone were to see us …”

“And what then?”

He shook his head.

“You are wilful; you know very well.”

She clenched her eyes; her mouth grew serious; she pretended to be a little angry.

“Listen, you must not be anxious if I am not. I am doing no harm. Our walks are not secret; Greta at least knows about them. And, besides, I am free to do as I please.”

“It is my fault; the first time we went for a walk in the evening it was at my request”

“Then do penance and be good; come now, without scruple, at my request …” she said, with mock emphasis.

He yielded, too happy to wish to make any sacrifice to a convention which at that moment did not exist for either of them.

They walked silently. Cecile’s sensations came to her always in shocks of surprise. So it had been when Jules had grown suddenly angry with her; so also, midway on the stair, after that conversation at dinner of circles of sympathy. And now, precisely in the same way, with the shock of sudden revelation, came this new sensation – that after all she did not suffer so seriously as she had at first thought; that her agony, being voluptuousness, could not be a martyrdom; that she was happy, that Happiness had come about her in the fine air of his atmosphere, because they were together, together …

Oh, why wish for anything more, above all for things less pure? Did he not love her, and was not his love already a fact, and was it not on a sufficiently low plane now that it was an absolute fact? Did he not love her with a tenderness which feared for anything which might trouble her in the world, through her ignoring it and wandering with him alone in the dark? Did he not love her with tenderness, but also with the lustre of the divinity of his soul, calling her madonna, by this title making her – unconsciously, perhaps, in his simplicity – the equal of all that was divine in him?

Did he not love her, did he not? Why did she want more? No, no, she wanted nothing more; she was happy, she shared Happiness with him; he gave it her just as she gave it him; it was a sphere that progressed with them, as they walked together, seeking their way along the dark paths of the woods, she leaning on his arm, he leading her, for she could see nothing in the dark; which yet was not dark, but pure light of their Happiness. And so it was as if it was not evening, but day, noon; noon in the night, hour of bright light in the dusk!

III

And the darkness was light; the night dawned into Light which beamed on every side. Calmly it beamed, the Light, like one solitary sunstar, beaming with the soft lustre of purity, bright in a heaven of still, white, silver air; a heaven where they walked along milky ways of light and music; it beamed and sounded beneath their feet; it welled in seas of ether high above their heads, and beamed and sounded there, high and clear. And they were alone in their heaven, in their infinite heaven, which was all space, endless beneath them and above and around them, endless spaces of light and music, of light that was music. Their heaven measured itself on every side with blessed perspectives of white radiance, fading away in lustre and swooning landscape; oases of flowers and plants by watersides of light, still and clear and hush with peace. For its peace was the ether in which all desire is dissolved and becomes of crystal, and their life in it was the limpid existence in unruffled peace; they walked on, in heavenly sympathy of fellowship, close together, hemmed in one narrow circle, one circle of radiance which embraced them. Barely was there a recollection in them of the world which had died out in the glitter of their heaven; there was nothing in them but the ecstasy of their love, which had become their soul, as if they no longer had any soul, were only love; and when they looked about them and upon the Light, they saw that their heaven, in which their Happiness was the Light, was nothing but their love; and that the landscapes – the flowers and plants by watersides of light – were nothing but their love, and that the endless space, the eternities of lustre and music, measuring themselves out on every hand, beneath them and above and around them, were nothing but their love, which had grown into heaven and happiness.

And now they came into the very midst, to the very sun-centre, the very goal which Cecile had once foreseen, concealed in the distance, in the outbeaming of innate divinity. Up to the very goal they stepped, and all around it shot its endless rays into space, as if their Love were becoming the centre of the universe …

IV

They sat on a bench, in the dark, not knowing that it was dark, for their eyes were full of the Light. They sat against one another, silently at first, till, remembering that he had a voice and could still speak words, he said:

“I have never lived through such a moment as this. I forget where we are, and who we are, and that we are human. We have been so, have we not; I remember that we were so?”

“Yes, but now we are no longer,” she said, smiling; and her eyes, grown big, looked into the darkness that was Light.

“Once we were human, suffering and desiring, in a world where certainly much was beautiful, but much also was ugly.”

“Why speak of that now?” she asked, and her voice sounded to herself as coming from very far and low beneath her.

“I remembered it …”

“I wish to forget it.”

“Then I will also. But may I thank you in human speech that you have lifted me above humanity?”

“Have I done so?”

“Yes; may I thank you for that … on my knees?”

He knelt down and reverently took her hands. He could just distinguish the silhouette of her figure, still, seated motionless upon the bench; above them was a pearl-grey twilight of stars, between the black boughs. She felt her hands in his, and his mouth, a kiss, upon her hand. Gently she released herself; and then, with a great soul of modesty, full of desireless happiness, she very gently bent her arms about his neck, took his head against her, and kissed his forehead.

“And I, I thank you too!” she whispered, rapturously.

He was still, and she held him fast in her embrace.

“I thank you,” she said, “that you have taught me this and how to be happy as we are, and not otherwise. You see, when I still lived, and was human, a woman, I thought I had already lived before I met you, for I had had a husband, and children of whom I was very fond. But from you I first learnt to live, to live without egoism and without desire; I learnt that from you this evening or … this day, which is it? You have given me life, and happiness, and everything. And I thank you, I thank you! You see, you are so great and so strong and so clear, and you have borne me towards your own Happiness, which should also be mine, but it was so far above me that without you I should never have attained it! For there was a barrier for me which did not exist for you. You see, when I was still human,” – and she laughed, clasping him more tightly – “I had a sister, and she too felt there was a barrier between her happiness and herself; and she felt she could not surmount this barrier, and was so unhappy because of it that she feared lest she should go mad. But I, I do not know: I dreamed, I thought, I hoped, I waited, oh! I waited, and then you came, and you made me understand at once that you could be no man, no husband for me, but that you could be more for me: my angel, O my deliverer, who should take me in his arms and bear me up over the barrier into his own heaven, where he himself was master, and make me his queen. Oh, I thank you, I thank you! I do not know how to thank you; I can only say that I love you, that I adore you, that I lay myself at your feet. Remain so, and let me adore you, while you kneel where you are. I may adore you, may I not, while you yourself kneel? You see, I too must confess, as you used to do,” she continued, for now she could not but confess. “I have not always been straightforward with you; I have sometimes pretended to be the madonna, knowing all the time I was but an ordinary woman, a woman who frankly loved you. But I deceived you for you own happiness, did I not? You wished me so, you were happy when I was so and not otherwise.

“And now, now too you must forgive me, because now I need no longer pretend, because that is past and gone away, because I myself have died away from myself, because now I am no longer a woman, no longer human for myself, but only what you wish me to be: a madonna and your creature, an atom of your own essence and divinity. Do you then forgive me the past? … May I thank you for my happiness, for my heaven, my light, O my master, for my joy, my great, my immeasurably great joy?”

He rose and sat by her, taking her gently in his arms.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, laying her head on his shoulder in a giddiness of light. “And you?”

“Yes,” he answered, and he asked again: “And do you desire … nothing more?”

“Nothing!” she stammered. “I want nothing but this, nothing but what is mine, oh, nothing, nothing more!”

“Swear it to me then … by something sacred!”

“I swear it to you … by yourself!”

He pressed her head to his shoulder again. He smiled, and she did not see that there was melancholy in his laugh, for she was blind with light.

V

They were long silent, sitting there. She knew she had said many things but she no longer knew what. About her she saw that it was dark, with only that pearl-grey twilight of stars above their heads, between the black boughs. She felt that she lay with her head on his shoulder; she heard his breath. A sort of chill ran down her shoulders, notwithstanding the warmth of his embrace; she drew the lace closer about her throat, and felt that the bench on which they sat was moist with dew.

“I thank you, I love you so, you make me so happy,” she repeated.

He was silent; he pressed her to him very gently, with simple tenderness. Her last words still sounded in her ears after she had spoken them. Then she was bound to acknowledge to herself that they had not been spontaneous, like all that she had told him before, as he lay kneeling before her with his head at her breast. She had spoken them to break the silence: formerly that silence had never troubled her, why should it now?

“Come!” he said gently, and even yet she did not hear the melancholy in his voice, in this single word.

They rose, and walked on. It came to him that it was late, that they must return by the same path; beyond that his thought was sad with things he could not have uttered; a poor twilight had come about him after the blinding Light of their heaven of just before. He had to be cautious: it was very dark, and he could barely see the path, hesitating, very pale at their feet; they brushed the trunks of the trees as they passed.

“I can see nothing,” said Cecile, laughing. “Can you see the way?”

“Rely upon me; I can see quite well in the dark,” he replied. “I am lynx-eyed …”

Step by step they went on; she felt a sweet joy in being guided by him; she clasped his arm more closely, saying laughingly that she was afraid, and that she would be terrified if he were suddenly to leave hold of her.

“And supposing I were suddenly to run away and leave you alone?” said Quaerts.

She laughed; she besought him not to do so. Then she was silent, angry with herself for laughing; a weight of melancholy bore her down because of her jesting and laughter. She felt as if she were unworthy of that to which, in radiant light, she had just been received.

And in him, too, there was melancholy: the melancholy that he had to lead her through the darkness, by invisible paths, by rows of invisible tree-trunks which might graze and wound her; that he had to lead her through a dark wood, through a black sea, through an ink-dark sphere, returning from a heaven where all had been light and all happiness, without melancholy, or any darkness.

And so they were silent in their melancholy until they reached the high road, the old Scheveningen Road.

They approached the villa. A tram went by; two or three people passed on foot; it was a fine evening. He brought her back and waited until the door opened to his ring. The door remained unopened; meantime he pressed her hand tightly, and involuntarily he hurt her a little. Greta had no doubt fallen asleep.

“Ring again, would you?”

He rang again, louder; after a moment the door opened. She gave him her hand for a second time, with a smile.

“Goodnight, Mevrouw,” he said, taking her fingers respectfully, and raising his hat.

Now, now she could hear the sound of his voice, the note in it of melancholy …