Eternity seems only to offer space for it.One knows--but one does not believe.It does something to one's brain.""No scientist, howsoever profound, has ever discovered what," the vicar mused aloud.
"The Book of Revelations has shown to me how--how MAGNIFICENT life might be!" Mount Dunstan clenched and unclenched his hands, his eyes flashing."Magnificent--that is the word.To go to her on equal ground to take her hands and speak one's passion as one would--as her eyes answered.
Oh, one would know! To bring her home to this place--having made it as it once was--to live with her here--to be WITHher as the sun rose and set and the seasons changed--with the joy of life filling each of them.SHE is the joy of Life--the very heart of it.You see where I am--you see!""Yes," Penzance answered.He saw, and bowed his head, and Mount Dunstan knew he wished him to continue.
"Sometimes--of late--it has been too much for me and Ihave given free rein to my fancy--knowing that there could never be more than fancy.I was doing it this afternoon as Iwatched her move about among the people.And Mary Lithcom began to talk about her." He smiled a grim smile.
"Perhaps it was an intervention of the gods to drag me down from my impious heights.She was quite unconscious that she was driving home facts like nails--the facts that every man who wanted money wanted Reuben S.Vanderpoel's daughter--and that the young lady, not being dull, was not unaware of the obvious truth! And that men with prizes to offer were ready to offer them in a proper manner.Also that she was only a brilliant bird of passage, who, in a few months, would be caught in the dazzling net of the great world.And that even Lord Westholt and Dunholm Castle were not quite what she might expect.Lady Mary was sincerely interested.She drove it home in her ardour.She told me to LOOK at her--to LOOKat her mouth and chin and eyelashes--and to make note of what she stood for in a crowd of ordinary people.I could have laughed aloud with rage and self-mockery."Mr.Penzance was resting his forehead on his hand, his elbow on his chair's arm.
"This is profound unhappiness," he said."It is profound unhappiness."Mount Dunstan answered by a brusque gesture.
"But it will pass away," went on Penzance, "and not as you fear it must," in answer to another gesture, fiercely impatient."Not that way.Some day--or night--you will stand heretogether, and you will tell her all you have told me.I KNOW it will be so.""What!" Mount Dunstan cried out.But the words had been spoken with such absolute conviction that he felt himself become pale.
It was with the same conviction that Penzance went on.
"I have spent my quiet life in thinking of the forces for which we find no explanation--of the causes of which we only see the effects.Long ago in looking at you in one of my pondering moments I said to myself that YOU were of the Primeval Force which cannot lose its way--which sweeps a clear pathway for itself as it moves--and which cannot be held back.I said to you just now that because you are a strong man you cannot be sure that a woman you are--even in spite of yourself--making mad love to, is unconscious that you are doing it.You do not know what your strength lies in.I do not, the woman does not, but we must all feel it, whether we comprehend it or no.You said of this fine creature, some time since, that she was Life, and you have just said again something of the same kind.It is quite true.She is Life, and the joy of it.You are two strong forces, and you are drawing together."He rose from his chair, and going to Mount Dunstan put hishand on his shoulder, his fine old face singularly rapt and glowing.
"She is drawing you and you are drawing her, and each is too strong to release the other.I believe that to be true.
Both bodies and souls do it.They are not separate things.They move on their way as the stars do--they move on their way."As he spoke, Mount Dunstan's eyes looked into his fixedly.
Then they turned aside and looked down upon the mantel against which he was leaning.He aimlessly picked up his pipe and laid it down again.He was paler than before, but he said no single word.
"You think your reasons for holding aloof from her are the reasons of a man." Mr.Penzance's voice sounded to him remote."They are the reasons of a man's pride--but that is not the strongest thing in the world.It only imagines it is.You think that you cannot go to her as a luckier man could.You think nothing shall force you to speak.Ask yourself why.It is because you believe that to show your heart would be to place yourself in the humiliating position of a man who might seem to her and to the world to be a base fellow.""An impudent, pushing, base fellow," thrust in Mount Dunstan fiercely."One of a vulgar lot.A thing fancying even its beggary worth buying.What has a man--whose very name is hung with tattered ugliness--to offer?"Penzance's hand was still on his shoulder and his look at him was long.
"His very pride," he said at last, "his very obstinacy and haughty, stubborn determination.Those broken because the other feeling is the stronger and overcomes him utterly."A flush leaped to Mount Dunstan's forehead.He set both elbows on the mantel and let his forehead fall on his clenched fists.And the savage Briton rose in him.
"No!" he said passionately."By God, no!""You say that," said the older man, "because you have not yet reached the end of your tether.Unhappy as you are, you are not unhappy enough.Of the two, you love yourself the more--your pride and your stubbornness.""Yes," between his teeth."I suppose I retain yet a sort of respect--and affection--for my pride.May God leave it to me!"Penzance felt himself curiously exalted; he knew himself unreasoningly passing through an oddly unpractical, uplifted moment, in whose impelling he singularly believed.
"You are drawing her and she is drawing you," he said.