CHAPTER XIX
MARRIAGE
In that atmosphere of perfect bliss Godfrey's cure was quick. For blissit was, save only that there was another bliss beyond to be attained.Remember that this man, now approaching middle life, had never drunk ofthe cup of what is known as love upon the earth.
Some might answer that such is the universal experience; that true,complete love has no existence, except it be that love of God to whicha few at last attain, since in what we know as God completeness andabsolute unity can be found alone. Other loves all have their flaws,with one exception perhaps, that of the love of the dead which fondlywe imagine to be unchangeable. For the rest passion, however exalted,passes or at least becomes dull with years; the most cherished childrengrow up, and in so doing, by the law of Nature, grow away; friends areestranged and lost in their own lives.
Upon the earth there is no perfect love; it must be sought elsewhere,since having the changeful shadows, we know there is a sky whereinshines the sun that casts them.
Godfrey, as it chanced, omitting Isobel, had walked little even inthese sweet shadows. There were but three others for whom he had feltdevotion in all his days, Mrs. Parsons, his tutor, Monsieur Boiset, andhis friend, Arthur Thorburn, who was gone. Therefore to him Isobel waseverything. As a child he had adored her; as a woman she was hisdesire, his faith and his worship.
If this were so with him, still more was it the case with Isobel, whoin truth cared for no other human being. Something in her natureprevented her from contracting violent female friendships, and to allmen, except a few of ability, each of them old enough to be her father,she was totally indifferent; indeed most of them repelled her. OnGodfrey, and Godfrey alone, from the first moment she saw him as achild she had poured all the deep treasure of her heart. He was at onceher divinity and her other self, the segment that completed her life'scircle, without which it was nothing but a useless, broken ring.
So much did this seem to her to be so, that notwithstanding her lack offaith in matters beyond proof and knowledge, she never conceived ofthis passion of hers as having had a beginning, or of being capable ofan end. This contradictory woman would argue against the possibility ofany future existence, yet she was quite certain that her love forGodfrey _had_ a future existence, and indeed one that was endless. Whenat length he put it to her that her attitude was most illogical, sincethat which was dead and dissolved could not exist in any place orshape, she thought for a while and replied quietly:
"Then I must be wrong."
"Wrong in what?" asked Godfrey.
"In supposing that we do not live after death. The continuance of ourlove I _know_ to be beyond any doubt, and if it involves ourcontinuance as individual entities--well, then we continue, that isall."
"We might continue as a single entity," he suggested.
"Perhaps," she answered, "and if so this would be better still, for itmust be impossible to lose one another while that remained alive,comprising both."
Thus, and in these few words, although she never became altogetherorthodox, or took quite the same view of such mysteries as did Godfrey,Isobel made her great recantation, for which probably there would neverhave been any need had she been born in different surroundings andfound some other spiritual guide in youth than Mr. Knight. As thecruelties and the narrow bitterness of the world had bred unfaith inher, so did supreme love breed faith, if of an unusual sort, since shelearned that without the faith her love must die, and the love she knewto be immortal. Therefore the existence of that living love presupposedall the rest, and convinced her, which in one of her obstinate naturenothing else could possibly have done, no, not if she had seen amiracle. Also this love of hers was so profound and beautiful that shefelt its true origin and ultimate home must be elsewhere than on theearth.
That was why she consented to be married in church, somewhat toGodfrey's surprise.