The Garden of Survival | Page 9

did not
beat for her. I could not love.
I have told you bluntly, frankly, of my physical feelings towards
Marion and her beauty. It is a confession that I give into my own safe
keeping. I think, perhaps, that you, though cast in a finer mould, may
not despise them utterly, nor too contemptuously misinterpret them.
The legend that twins may share a single soul has always seemed to me
grotesque and unpoetic nonsense, a cruel and unnecessary notion too: a
man is sufficiently imperfect without suffering this further subtraction
from his potentialities. And yet it is true, in our own case, that you have
exclusive monopoly of the ethereal qualities, while to me are given
chiefly the physical attributes of the vigorous and healthy male--the
animal: my six feet three, my muscular system, my inartistic and
pedestrian temperament. Fairly clean-minded, I hope I may be, but
beyond all question I am the male animal incarnate. It was, indeed, the
thousand slaveries of the senses, individually so negligible, collectively
so overwhelming, that forced me upon my knees before her physical
loveliness. I must tell you now that this potent spell, alternating
between fiery desire and the sincerest of repugnance, continued to
operate. I complete the confession by adding briefly, that after marriage
she resented and repelled all my advances. A deep sadness came upon
her; she wept; and I desisted. It was my soul that she desired with the
fire of her mighty love, and not my body. . . . And again, since it is to
myself and to you alone I tell it, I would add this vital fact: it was this
"new beauty which my finest dreams have left unmentioned" that made
it somehow possible for me to desist, both against my animal will, yet
willingly.
I have told you that, when dying, she revealed to me a portion of her
"secret." This portion of a sacred confidence lies so safe within my
everlasting pity that I may share it with you without the remorse of a
betrayal. Full understanding we need never ask; the solution, I am

convinced, is scarcely obtainable in this world. The message, however,
was incomplete because the breath that framed it into broken words
failed suddenly; the heart, so strangely given into my unworthy keeping,
stopped beating as you shall hear upon the very edge of full disclosure.
The ambushed meaning I have hinted at remained--a hint.

III
THERE was, then, you will remember, but an interval of minutes
between the accident and the temporary recovery of consciousness,
between that recovery again and the moment when the head fell
forward on my knee and she was gone. That "recovery" of
consciousness I feel bound to question, as you shall shortly hear.
Among such curious things I am at sea admittedly, yet I must doubt for
ever that the eyes which peered so strangely into mine were those of
Marion herself--as I had always known her. You will, at any rate, allow
the confession, and believe it true, that I--did not recognize her quite.
Consciousness there was, indubitably, but whether it was "recovery" of
consciousness is another matter, and a problem that I must for ever
question though I cannot ever set it confidently at rest. It almost
seemed as though a larger, grander, yet somehow a less personal, soul
looked forth through the fading eyes and used the troubled breath.
In those brief minutes, at any rate, the mind was clear as day, the
faculties not only unobscured, but marvellously enhanced. In the eyes
at first shone unveiled fire; she smiled, gazing into my own with love
and eager yearning too. There was a radiance in her face I must call
glory. Her head was in my lap upon the bed of rugs we had improvised
inside the field: the broken motor posed in a monstrous heap ten yards
away; and the doctor, summoned by a passing stranger, was in the act
of administrating the anaesthetic, so that we might bear her without
pain to the nearest hospital--when, suddenly, she held up a warning
finger, beckoning to me that I should listen closely.
I bent my head to catch the words. There was such authority in the
gesture, and in the eyes an expression so extraordinarily appealing, and

yet so touched with the awe of a final privacy beyond language, that the
doctor stepped backwards on the instant, the needle shaking in his
hand--while I bent down to catch the whispered words that at once
began to pass her lips.
The wind in the poplar overhead mingled with the little sentences, as
though the breath of the clear blue sky, calmly shining, was mingled
with her own.
But the words I heard both troubled and amazed me:
"Help me! For I am