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The Quest of the Golden Girl

R >> Richard le Gallienne >> The Quest of the Golden Girl




The more I came to know Elizabeth and realise the rare delicacy
of her nature, the simplicity of her mind, and the purity of her
soul, the less was I able to comprehend the psychology of that
false step which her great misery had forced her to take. For
hers was not a sensual, pleasure-loving nature. In fact, there
was a certain curious Puritanism about her, a Puritanism which
found a startlingly incongruous and almost laughable expression
in the Scripture almanac which hung on the wall at the end of her
bed, and the Bible, and two or three Sunday-school stories which,
with a copy of "Jane Eyre," were the only books that lay upon
the circular mahogany table.

Once I ventured gently to chaff her about this religiosity of
hers.

"But surely you believe in God, dear," she had answered,
"you're not an atheist!"

I think an atheist, with all her experience of human monsters,
was for her the depth of human depravity.

"No, dear," I had answered; "if you can believe in God, surely
I can!"

I repeat that this gap in Elizabeth's psychology puzzled me, and
it puzzles me still, but it puzzled me only as the method of
working out some problem which after all had "come out right"
might puzzle one. It was only the process that was obscure. The
result was gold, whatever the dark process might be. Was it
simply that Elizabeth was one of that rare few who can touch
pitch and not be defiled?--or was it, I have sometimes wondered,
an unconscious and after all a sound casuistry that had saved
Elizabeth's soul, an instinctive philosophy that taught her, so
to say, to lay a Sigurd's sword between her soul and body, and to
argue that nothing can defile the body without the consent of the
soul.

In deep natures there is always what one might call a lover's
leap to be taken by those that would love them--something one
cannot understand to be taken on trust, something even that one
fears to be gladly adventured . . . all this, and more, I knew
that I could safely venture for Elizabeth's sake, ere I kissed
her white brow and stole away in the early hours of that winter's
morning.

As I did so I had taken one of the sumptuous strands of her hair
into my hand and kissed it too.

"Promise me to let this come back to its own beautiful colour,"
I had said, as I nodded to a little phial labelled "Peroxide of
Hydrogen" on her mantelshelf.

"Would you like to?" she had said.

"Yes, do it for me."

One day some months after I cut from her dear head one long thick
lock, one half of which was gold and the other half chestnut. I
take it out and look at it as I write, and, as when I first cut
it, it seems still a symbol of Elizabeth's life, the sun and the
shadow, only that the gold was the shadow, and the chestnut was
the sun.

The time came when the locks, from crown to tip, were all
chestnut--but when it came I would have given the world for them
to be gold again; for Elizabeth had said a curious thing when she
had given me her promise.

"All right, dear," she had said, "but something tells me that
when they are all brown again our happiness will be at an end."

"How long will that take?" I had said, trying to be gay, though
an involuntary shudder had gone through me, less at her words
than because of the strange conviction of her manner.

"About two years,--perhaps a little more," she said, answering
me quite seriously, as she gravely measured the shining tresses,
half her body's length, with her eye.



CHAPTER III


THE GOLDEN GIRL

One fresh and sunny morning, some months after this night,
Elizabeth and I stood before the simple altar of a little country
church, for the news had come to us that her husband was dead,
and thus we were free to belong to each other before all the
world. The exquisite stillness in the cool old church was as the
peace in our hearts, and the rippling sound of the sunlit leaves
outside seemed like the very murmur of the stream of life down
which we dreamed of gliding together from that hour.

It was one of those moments which sometimes come and go without
any apparent cause, when life suddenly takes a mystical aspect of
completeness, all its discords are harmonised by some unseen hand
of the spirit, and all its imperfections fall away. The lover of
beauty and the lover of God alike know these strange moments, but
none know them with such a mighty satisfaction as a man and a
woman who love as loved Elizabeth and I.

Love for ever completes the world, for it is no future of higher
achievement, no expectation of greater joy. It lives for ever in
a present made perfect by itself. Love can dream of no greater
blessedness than itself, of no heaven but its own. God himself
could have added no touch of happiness to our happy hearts that
grave and sunny morning. You philosophers who go searching for
the meaning of life, thinkers reading so sadly, and let us hope
so wrongly, the riddle of the world--life has but one meaning,
the riddle but one answer--which is Love. To love is to put
yourself in harmony with the spheral music of creation, to stand
in the centre of the universe, and see it good and whole as it
appears in the eye of God.

Even Death himself, the great and terrible King of kings, though
he may break the heart of love with agonies and anguish and slow
tortures of separation, may break not his faith. No one that has
loved will dream even death too terrible a price to pay for the
revelation of love. For that revelation once made can never be
recalled. As a little sprig of lavender will perfume a queen's
wardrobe, so will a short year of love keep sweet a long life.
And love's best gifts death can never take away. Nay, indeed,
death does not so much rob as enrich the gifts of love. The dead
face that was fair grows fairer each spring, sweet memories grow
more sweet, what was silver is now gold, and as years go by, the
very death of love becomes its immortality.

I think I shall never hear Elizabeth's voice again, never look
into her eyes, never kiss her dear lips--but Elizabeth is still
mine, and I am hers, as in that morning when we kissed in that
little chancel amid the flickering light, and passed out into the
sun and down the lanes, to our little home among the
meadow-sweet.

She is still as real to me as the stars,--and, alas, as far
away! I think no thought that does not fly to her, I have no
joys I do not share with her, I tell her when the spring is here,
and we sit beneath the moon and listen to the nightjar together.
Sometimes we are merry together as in the old time, and our
laughter makes nightfaring folk to cross themselves; my work, my
dreams, my loves, are all hers, and my very sins are sinned for
her sake.

Two years did Elizabeth and I know the love that passeth all
understanding, and day by day the chestnut upon her head was more
and the gold less, till the day came that she had prophesied, and
with the day a little child, whose hair had stolen all her
mother's gold, as her heart had drained away her mother's life.

Ah! reader, may it be long before you kneel at the bedside of her
you love best in the world, and know that of all your love is
left but a hundred heart-beats, while opposite sits Death, watch
in hand, and fingers upon her wrist.

"Husband," whispered Elizabeth, as we looked at each other for
the last time, "let her be your little golden girl . . ."

And then a strange sweetness stole over her face, and the dream
of Elizabeth's life was ended.

As I write I hear in the still house the running of little feet,
a fairy patter sweet and terrible to the heart.

Little feet, little feet--perhaps if I follow you I shall find
again our mother that is lost. Perhaps Elizabeth left you with me
that I should not miss the way.

Tout par soullas.

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