Chapter 14

APPARENTLY it did not once occur to Elias to seek a natural explanation for what had happened; and even if it had done so, I don’t believe it would have made much difference. But this, as has been said, in view of all the circumstances, was scarcely strange. The supernatural explanation had, so to speak, captured his mind by storm. With tremendous force and suddenness, it had thrust itself upon him at a moment when he was suffering the exhaustion and the debility consequent upon a violent shock; and, once in possession, it clung tenaciously, and left no foothold for a saner judgment to stand upon. Then, besides, had not the rabbi’s menaces predisposed him to accept it? And finally, there were heredity and education and mental habitude, which in such matters must surely count for much. Elias had been fancying that his inherited and sedulously cultivated superstition was dead and buried. Love, like a radiant St. George, had slain the monster. To us, wise after the fact, it is conceivable that it had but slumbered; and now again was wide awake, breathing fire and vengeance; and had given its quondam executioner such a blow as might not speedily be recovered from, if at all.

Elias, at any rate, did not doubt. He told himself that he had been on the point of committing a mortal sin, one that would have removed him forever beyond the pale of divine mercy, one that would have entailed upon him, and upon his seed after him, infinite retribution. He told himself that at the eleventh hour heaven had intervened, and saved him from his own suicidal clutch. He shuddered at the notion of the risk he had run. He was duly grateful for his deliverance. It had at first surprised him to find that his love of Christine had not survived. That which had absorbed his life, and shaped and directed his life, and been to his life what the sunlight is to the day, its vital, dominating, distinguishing principle, had vanished utterly out of his life, had melted phantom-like, and left not a shred, not a mark, not even a gap, behind, to show where, or of what substance, or of what form it had been. It was the extinguishment of a subtle, spiritual flame, which departs, so far as is determinable, nowhither—is simply swallowed up and assimilated by the inane. Three days ago, he had believed it possessed of everlasting vigor; and now, it was gone as completely as the snows of yesteryear. Death and dissolution had occurred simultaneously.—But his surprise was short-lived. On reflection, he agreed with the rabbi, that nothing else could have been expected. He adopted the rabbi’s metaphor, and said that the breath of the Lord had entered his heart, and cleansed it. He remembered how, once before, something similar had befallen, in answer to prayer. But the effects of that had been transitory. The effects of this, he thought, would be permanent. If there were the materials for melancholy here, Elias was callous to their influence.

It seemed, indeed, that not only had his love been abolished, but that his entire emotional system had sunken into a state of apathy, and become unresponsive and inactive. He knew, for example, perfectly well how Christine would suffer. The light of her youth would be quenched, and its sweetness turned to gall and wormwood. The world, that was so fair in her sight, would crumble suddenly to a wide waste of dust and ashes. An agony like fire would be kindled in her young heart, hopeless even of hope. It might perhaps, as old Redwood had said, it might perhaps kill her. But if it did not kill her, it would do worse. She would have to live, and bear it. He knew all this. He could not help knowing it. It was too big, palpable, conspicuous, to be ignored. He knew it; and he stated it clearly, completely, circumstantially, to himself. And then he wondered at his stolidity; for it woke not a throe either of compunction or of compassion. He said to himself, “Altogether aside from the personal element, from the fact that she is who she is, and that I have been her lover; altogether aside, also, from the fact that I, though helpless and irresponsible, am still the occasion of her unhappiness; and simply because she is a woman, a human being, the knowledge of her overwhelming sorrow and utter desolation, ought to move me to deepest, keenest pity.” But it did not. It did not move him to a single momentary qualm. His condition puzzled and mystified him. He could imagine no way to account for it, unless by again following the logic of the rabbi, and assuming it to be the act of God. That it was merely the torpor, the numbness, naturally resulting from the fright, and the immense physical and moral shock, he had sustained, does not appear to have suggested itself to him.

On the morning after his interview with old Redwood (on the morning, namely, of the fourth of May, 1883; date worth remembering), Elias was established at his studio-window, watching the play of sunlight and shadow upon the foliage opposite in the park, and introspecting somewhat listlessly in the direction above set forth, when there came a light tap upon his door; and, without turning around, he called out, “Come in.” He heard the door creak open. He heard the visitor take two or three steps forward into the room. Then, before he had looked to see who it was, he heard his own name pronounced shyly, by a voice that was but too well-known:

“Elias!”

Unspeakably astounded and discomfited, he sprang to his feet, faced her, and stood dumb.

At the moment he was not conscious of noticing especially her appearance; but long afterward he recalled it vividly. Long afterward, the pale face, the disordered golden hair, the large, dark, tearful eyes, the appealing attitude—hands stretched out toward him, face upturned—became of all his memories the strongest, the clearest, the most constant, the one on which his remorse chiefly fed.

But now, he faced her and stood dumb, aware only of hubbub in his brain, and dismay in his breast.

She, manifestly unprepared for this style of greeting, started back. Her eyes filled with fear.

“Oh Elias,” she faltered, “you—you make me think that it is true.”

He, finding his voice, cried piteously: “Oh, why—why did you come here?”

And then they were both silent.

At last she began: “I came—because I could not believe—because my father told me something which I knew was a lie. I came to have you tell me that it was a lie. Oh, why did he tell me such a cruel thing? Why—why do you act like this?”

She paused, expecting him to speak. But he did not speak.

All at once she went on passionately: “Oh, you don’t know what he told me. He must have wanted to kill me. But I knew it was a lie. I told him it was a lie—oh, such a shameful, cruel lie. Oh, God! Here, this was it: he told me—he told me that you—Elias—oh, no, no, no! I can not say it. But yes, yes—I will say it—I must say it. He said that you—you did not love me any more. Oh, my God, my God!”

She had moved up toward him. Now she fell upon his breast, and sobbed her heart out.

He passively allowed her to remain there. What to do? what to say? he asked himself, distracted.

“Oh, Elias—my darling—I—I knew it could not be true,” she was murmuring between her sobs.

Thus, until her grief had spent itself—until she had had her cry out. By and by she raised her eyes to his, and smiling a forlorn little smile, asked timidly, “You think I am very silly?”

But her smile did not last long. Suddenly, it changed to an expression of utmost woe and terror. She fell back a step or two.

“Elias!” she cried, in a sharp, startled voice. “Why do you look at me like that? Is—do—you can’t—mean—that it is true!”

He felt that he must speak. He must gather his forces, and make her understand. He was trying to. He was trying to find the words he needed. But before they had come to him, the door opened, and the rabbi glided upon the scene.

The rabbi took in the situation at a glance.

“Elias,” he said, “this is unfortunate. You ought to have called me.”

Turning to Christine: “You have forgotten yourself, madam. By what right are you here? Did your father send you? I shall be happy to show you the way down stairs.”

He bowed in the direction of the door.

She looked helplessly from the rabbi to his nephew; but she found little to reassure her in Elias’s face.

“Was there any thing you had to say to this young lady, before she goes, Elias?” the rabbi queried, in a brisk, business-like tone.

“No, nothing,” Elias began faintly, “nothing, except—yes, except—” He broke off, and drew a sharp, loud breath; suddenly he began anew: “Christine, I am powerless. The Lord—it is the Lord’s will. I—it—what your father told you—it was the truth.”

The words found their own way out, mechanically. He could scarcely realize that he had spoken.

For an instant she stood motionless. Then she reeled and tottered, as if about to fall. Then she recovered herself. Slowly, with a dazed, stunned air, groping blindly, she turned, and reached the door, and crossed the threshold.

The rabbi followed, shutting the door behind him.

Elias dropped into a chair. Bewildered, agitated, fagged-out, undone—he felt all this. But he felt not a pang for her.

“If I had thrown you down and trampled upon you,” he wrote, a little less than two years afterward, “it would not have been so brutal, so cruel; but if I had done it in my sleep, I could not have been more insensible to your pain.”