The Choir Invisible [62]
being visibly woven around him under the golden goads of the sun. " ...for like as herbs bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise, every heart that is in any manner a lover spingeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds." . . . But all this must come, must spend itself, must pass him by, as a flaming pageant dies away from a beholder who is forbidden to kindle his own torch and claim his share of its innocent revels. He too had laid his plans to celebrate his marriage at the full tide of the Earth's joy, and these plans had failed him.
But while the school-master thus was gloomily contemplating the end of his relationship with Amy and her final removal from the future of his life, in reality another and larger trouble was looming close ahead. A second landscape had begun to beckon not like his poor little frost-killed field, not of the earth at all, but lifted unattainable into the air, faint, clear, elusive--the marriage of another woman. And how different she! He felt sure that no winter's rasure would ever reach that land; no instability, no feebleness of nature awaited him there; the loveliness of its summer, now brooding at flood, would brood unharmed upon it to the natural end.
He buried his face guiltily in his hands as he tried to shut out the remembrance of how persistently of late, whithersoever he had turned, this second image had reappeared before him, growing always clearer, drawing always nearer, summoning him more luringly. Already he had begun to know the sensations of a traveller who is crossing sands with a parched tongue and a weary foot, crossing toward a country that he will never reach, but that he will stagger toward as long as he has strength to stand. During the past several days--following his last interview with Amy--he had realized for the first time how long and how plainly the figure of Mrs. Falconer had been standing before him and upon how much loftier a level. Many a time of old, while visiting the house, he had grown tired of Amy; but he had never felt wearied by her. For Amy he was always making apologies to his own conscience; she needed none. He had secretly hoped that in time Amy would become more what he wished his wife to be; it would have pained him to think of her as altered. Often he had left Amy's company with a grateful sense of regaining the larger liberty of his own mind; by her he always felt guided to his better self, he carried away her ideas with the hope of making them his ideas, he was set on fire with a spiritual passion to do his utmost in the higher strife of the world.
For this he had long paid her the guiltless tribute of his reverence and affection. And between his reverence and affection and all the forbidden that lay beyond rose a barrier which not even his imagination had ever consciously overleaped. Now the forbidding barrier had disappeared, and in its place had appeared the forbidden bond--he knew not how or when. How could he? Love, the Scarlet Spider, will in a night hang between two that have been apart a web too fine for either to see; but the strength of both will never avail to break it.
Very curiously it had befallen him furthermore that just at the time when all these changes were taking place around him and within him, she had brought him the book that she had pressed with emphasis upon his attention. In the backwoods settlements of Pennsylvania where his maternal Scotch-Irish ancestors had settled and his own life been spent, very few volumes had fallen into his hands. After coming to Kentucky not many more until of late: so that of the world's history he was still a stinted and hungry student. When,therefore, she had given him Malory's "LeMorte D'Arthur," it was the first time that the ideals of chivalry had ever flashed their glorious light upon him; for the first time the models of Christian manhood, on which western Europe nourished itself for centuries, displayed themselves to his imagination with the charm of story; he heard of Camelot, of the king, of that company of men who strove with each other in arms, but strove also with
But while the school-master thus was gloomily contemplating the end of his relationship with Amy and her final removal from the future of his life, in reality another and larger trouble was looming close ahead. A second landscape had begun to beckon not like his poor little frost-killed field, not of the earth at all, but lifted unattainable into the air, faint, clear, elusive--the marriage of another woman. And how different she! He felt sure that no winter's rasure would ever reach that land; no instability, no feebleness of nature awaited him there; the loveliness of its summer, now brooding at flood, would brood unharmed upon it to the natural end.
He buried his face guiltily in his hands as he tried to shut out the remembrance of how persistently of late, whithersoever he had turned, this second image had reappeared before him, growing always clearer, drawing always nearer, summoning him more luringly. Already he had begun to know the sensations of a traveller who is crossing sands with a parched tongue and a weary foot, crossing toward a country that he will never reach, but that he will stagger toward as long as he has strength to stand. During the past several days--following his last interview with Amy--he had realized for the first time how long and how plainly the figure of Mrs. Falconer had been standing before him and upon how much loftier a level. Many a time of old, while visiting the house, he had grown tired of Amy; but he had never felt wearied by her. For Amy he was always making apologies to his own conscience; she needed none. He had secretly hoped that in time Amy would become more what he wished his wife to be; it would have pained him to think of her as altered. Often he had left Amy's company with a grateful sense of regaining the larger liberty of his own mind; by her he always felt guided to his better self, he carried away her ideas with the hope of making them his ideas, he was set on fire with a spiritual passion to do his utmost in the higher strife of the world.
For this he had long paid her the guiltless tribute of his reverence and affection. And between his reverence and affection and all the forbidden that lay beyond rose a barrier which not even his imagination had ever consciously overleaped. Now the forbidding barrier had disappeared, and in its place had appeared the forbidden bond--he knew not how or when. How could he? Love, the Scarlet Spider, will in a night hang between two that have been apart a web too fine for either to see; but the strength of both will never avail to break it.
Very curiously it had befallen him furthermore that just at the time when all these changes were taking place around him and within him, she had brought him the book that she had pressed with emphasis upon his attention. In the backwoods settlements of Pennsylvania where his maternal Scotch-Irish ancestors had settled and his own life been spent, very few volumes had fallen into his hands. After coming to Kentucky not many more until of late: so that of the world's history he was still a stinted and hungry student. When,therefore, she had given him Malory's "LeMorte D'Arthur," it was the first time that the ideals of chivalry had ever flashed their glorious light upon him; for the first time the models of Christian manhood, on which western Europe nourished itself for centuries, displayed themselves to his imagination with the charm of story; he heard of Camelot, of the king, of that company of men who strove with each other in arms, but strove also with