Howard spent some very unhappy days after that, mostly alone. They were very active at the Vicarage making expeditions, fishing, playing lawn-tennis, and once or twice pressed him to join them. But he excused himself on the ground that he must work at his book; he could not bear to carry his despondency and his dolorous air into so blithe a company; and he was, moreover, consumed by a jealousy which humiliated him. If Guthrie was destined to win Maud's love he should have a fair field; and yet Howard's imagination played him many fevered tricks in those days, and the thought of what might be happening used to sting him into desperation. His own mood alternated between misery and languor. He used to sit staring at his book, unable to write a word, and became gradually aware that he had never been unhappy in his life before. That, then, was what unhappiness meant, not a mood of refined and romantic melancholy, but a raging fire of depression that seemed to burn his life away, both physically and mentally, with intervals of drowsy listlessness.
He would have liked to talk to his aunt, but could not bring himself to do so. She, on the other hand, seemed to notice nothing, and it was a great relief to him that she never commented upon his melancholy and obvious fatigue, but went on in her accustomed serene way, which evoked his courtesy and sense of decorum, and made him behave decently in spite of himself. Miss Merry seemed much more inclined to sympathise, and Howard used to intercept her gaze bent upon him in deep concern.
One afternoon, returning from a lonely walk, he met Maud going out of the Manor gate. She looked happy, he thought. He stopped and made a few commonplace remarks. She looked at him rather strangely, he felt, and seemed to be searching his face for some sign of the old goodwill; but he hardened his heart, though he would have given worlds to tell her what was in his mind; but he felt that any reconstruction of friendship must be left till a later date, when he might again be able to conciliate her sisterly regard. She seemed to him to have passed through an awakening of some kind, and to have bloomed both in mind and body, with her feet on the threshold of vital experience, and the thought that it was Guthrie who could evoke this upspringing of life within her was very bitter to him.
He trod the valley of humiliation hour by hour, in these lonely days, and found it a very dreary place. It was wretched to him to feel that he had suddenly discovered his limitations. Not only could he not have his will, could not taste the fruit of love which had seemed to hang almost within his reach, but the old contented life seemed to have faded and collapsed about him.
That night his aunt asked him about his book, and he said he was not getting on well with it. She asked why, and he said that he had been feeling that it was altogether too intellectual a conception; that he had approached it from the side of REASON, as if people argued themselves into faith, and had treated religion as a thesis which could be successfully defended; whereas the vital part of it all, he now thought, was an instinct, perhaps refined by inherited thought, but in its practical manifestations a kind of choice, determined by a natural liking for what was attractive, and a dislike of what was morally ugly.
"Yes," said Mrs. Graves, "that is true, I am sure. But it can be analysed for all that, though I agree with you that no amount of analysis will make one act rightly. But I believe," she went on, "that clearness of view helps one, though not perhaps at the time. It is a great thing to see what motives are merely conventional and convenient, and to find out what one really regards as principles. To look a conventional motive in the face deprives it of its power; and one can gradually disencumber oneself of all sorts of complicated impulses, which have their roots in no emotion. It is only the motives which are rooted in emotion that are vital."
Then, after a pause, she said, "Of course I have seen of late that you have been dissatisfied with something. I have not liked to ask you about it; but if it would help you to talk about it, I hope you will. It is wonderful how talking about things makes one's mind clear. It isn't anything that others say or advise that helps one, yet one gains in clearness. But you must do as you like about this, Howard. I don't want to press you in any way."
"Thank you very much," said Howard. "I know that you would hear me with patience, and might perhaps advise me if anyone could; but it isn't that. I have got myself into a strange difficulty; and what I need is not clearness, but simply courage to face what I know and perceive. My great lack hitherto is that I have gone through things without feeling them, like a swallow dipping in a lake; now I have got to sink and drown. No," he added, smiling, "not to drown, I hope, but to find a new life in the ruins of the old. I have been on the wrong tack; I have always had what I liked, and done what I liked; and now when I am confronted with things which I do not like at all, I have just got to endure them, and be glad that I have still got the power of suffering left."
Mrs. Graves looked at him very tenderly. "Yes," she said, "suffering has a great power, and one doesn't want those whom one loves not to suffer. It is the condition of loving; but it must be real suffering, not morbid, self-invented torture. It's a great mistake to suffer more than one need; one wastes life fast so. I would not intervene to save you from real suffering, even if I could; but I don't want you to suffer in an unreal way. I think you are diffident, too easily discouraged, too courteous, if that is possible—because diffidence, and discouragement, and even courtesy, are not always unselfish things. If one renounces anything one has set one's heart upon one must do so for its own sake, and not only because the disapproval and disappointment of others makes life uncomfortable. I think that your life has tended to make you value an atmosphere of diffused tranquillity too much. If one is sensitive to the censure or the displeasure of others, it may not be unselfish to give up things rather than provoke it—it may only be another form of selfishness. Some of the most unworldly people I know have not overcome the world at all; they have merely made terms with it, and have found that abnegation is only more comfortable than conquest. I do not know that you are doing this, or have done it, but I think it likely. And in any case I think you trust reason too much, and instinct too little. If one desires a thing very much, it is often a proof that one needs it. One may not indeed be able to get it, but to resign it is sometimes to fail in courage. I can see that you are in some way discontented with your life. Don't try to mend it by a polite withdrawal. I am going to pay you a compliment. You have a wonderful charm, of which you are unconscious. It has made life very easy for you—but it has responsibilities too. You must not create a situation, and then abandon it. You must not disappoint people. I know, of course, only too well, that charm in itself largely depends on a tranquil mind; and it is difficult to exercise it when one is sad and unhappy; but let me say that unhappiness does not deprive YOU of this power. Does it seem impossible to you to believe that I have loved you far better, and in a way which I could not have thought possible, in these last weeks, when I have seen you were unhappy? You do not abandon yourself to depression; you make an effort; you recognise other people's rights to be happy, not to be clouded by your own unhappiness; and you have done more to attach us all to you in these days than before, when you were perhaps more conscious of being liked. Liking is not loving, Howard. There is no pain about liking; there is infinite pain about loving; that is because it is life, and not mere existence."
"Ah," said Howard, "I am indeed grateful to you for speaking to me thus—you have lifted my spirit a little out of the mire. But I can't be rescued so easily. I shall have a burden to bear for some time yet—I see no end to it at present: and it is indeed my own foolish trifling with life that has brought it on me. But, dearest aunt, you can't help me just now. Let me be silent a little longer. I shall soon, I think, be able to speak, and then I will tell you all; and meanwhile it will be a comfort to me to think that you feel for me and about me as you do. I don't want to indulge in self-pity—I have not done that. There is nothing unjust in what has happened to me, nothing intolerable, no specific ill-will. I have just stumbled upon one of the big troubles of life, suddenly and unexpectedly, and I am not prepared for it by any practice or discipline. But I shall get through, don't be afraid—and presently I will tell you everything." He took his aunt's hand in his own, and kissed her on the cheek.
"God bless you, dear boy!" she said; "I won't press you to speak; and you will know that I have you in mind now and always, with infinite hope and love."
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg