THE decision had been finally concluded by the members of the South Marchshire Executive Committee that Gabriel Strong, Esq., of The Friary, Saltire, should contest the constituency under Unionist colors at the next election. The government had long been in a ruinous condition, and an appeal to the electorate was imminent, according to the political prophets. Now Rilchester, the premier town in South Marchshire, was one of those intensely patriotic boroughs where political popularity depends largely on the number of guineas squandered by any prospective candidate in the patronage of local charities and local trade. The Rilchester electors were men of sense; they could not stomach a member from whose pockets there came no prophetic clink of gold. John Strong, hard-headed gamester, had contrived to create for himself a certain reputation in the place as a philanthropist and a benevolent patron of sport and pleasure. He had endowed beds at the hospital; he feasted the fisherfolk regularly each summer; he had subscribed with American prodigality to the founding of the working-men’s club. He had even provided the Rilchester rowing club with a racing eight for Moberly regatta. His money had been invested with lavish and consummate care to popularize the name of Strong. The ex-tea merchant already beheld his son a prophetic Pitt, stirring the noble enthusiasm of an empire, carving for himself a sacred niche in the golden fane of history.

Gabriel had been instructed in the subtle art of political fascination. He had attended at flower-shows and all social crushes, smiled and chatted to individuals of every shade and temper, shaken hands with mediocrities on every possible occasion, posed perpetually as an amiable, genial, and cultured young aristocrat. He was quite the Galahad of the Primrose Dames. Artistically attired, with an orchid in his button-hole, he presented himself at all functions of importance, culling possible votes by the magic of a pleasant personality.

The public gayeties that his father had forced upon him had in some measure distracted Gabriel from the melancholy realities of his marriage. With his usual amiable apathy, he acted as ever as the paid vassal of his father; his very household existed as a proof of his dependence on the parental favor. Moreover, there was a certain artificial stimulus in political life that pleased him for a season. He met pretty women who flattered him, mediocre folk who were “proud to make his acquaintance,” big-wigs who were willing to listen to his opinions and to nod approval when some apt phrase promised well for the spirit of debate. He had been something of an orator at Oxford, where his humanism had partaken of a Mazzinian flavor. Expediency, however, had warped his none too tough convictions into the deformed orthodoxy he was supposed to champion. His father’s ambition, also, generous as it was, promised to shed a glamour of ease over the common actualities of life.

Ophelia was still at Callydon suffering her self-love to recuperate after the first frank criticisms of married life. Gabriel had written to Dr. Glibly with regard to his wife’s health, and had received a very sentimental reply indited on scented paper and concluded with a fine flourish of degrees and qualifications. “Mrs. Strong,” wrote the doctor, “was still in that somewhat unstable state so common in women at certain eventful periods of life. She needed perfect rest—perfect rest and complete immunity from all domestic worries for the time being.” Gabriel could have confessed in his heart of hearts that the doctor’s letter was no black and dismal document. John Strong himself had questioned Gabriel as to his wife’s somewhat lengthy absence from home. “It would be well,” he said, “for Ophelia to partner her husband during the coming summer season, and to back him in his social duties, like the handsome and fashionable woman that she was.” Gabriel had spread Dr. Glibly’s letter for his father’s edification, but had offered no explanation as to the causes that had led to Ophelia’s “state of nervous prostration.” Nature could take the blame, and the sentiments woven through the affair were not such as Gabriel cared to trust to the parental conscience.

Despite the light of publicity that was gathering about his person, Gabriel appeared blind to the vast inconsistencies of his life. He drifted as he had ever done in a dream-ship on a sea of dreams. A face shone ever before his eyes, a face wistful as the sky at dawn. Two lives seemed to go forth from him like divergent highways: the one into smoke and turmoil, dust and all weariness; the other into green and brilliant deeps, unutterable shadow-lands of delight, vales of golden rest, hills where the red winds made music. Romance ran beneath his mundane being like a caverned river gorgeous with subterranean fire. There were two worlds within him, two creeds, two gods. He served both, strove to harmonize each, and heard not the peril prophetic upon the lips of fate.

It is difficult for a man whose thoughts are of the purest to comprehend the distorted image his deeds may create in the minds of others. The world is ever ready to suspect evil. Let a man act the Christ and he will assuredly be in danger of being dubbed “devil.” Fleshliness covers the eyes of the multitude with scales of crimson glass, and snow is tinted red by the gaze of the unclean.

Some such innocence of thought rendered Gabriel ingenuously blind to the sinister developments that might arise from his attitude towards the child of the hills. His love for her was as spiritual as moonlight—clear, calm, and infinitely pure. Even the splendid mediÆval imagery that gemmed the very thought of her was hallowed to him as with a radiant glow of gold. The wings of angels, brilliant as sun-smitten snow, seemed to breathe and beat above her head. He was honest as the light in his love for her. He would as soon have shamed his homage by any baser feeling as have taken sacramental wine with the lips of a bacchanal.

Letters had passed between the two, and they had met more than once in secret since the March day when they had taken the oath together. A great love is always a pure love. With the multitude, contact engenders disenchantment, possession breeds indifference. Schopenhauer has said that Petrarch’s sonnets would have ceased abruptly if Laura had surrendered herself to his song. Apply the cynicism to the mere sexual instinct and there is truth in the gibe. The greatest love is that which is fated to brave tempests. To such a mind as Gabriel’s the starlike unapproachableness of the girl rendered her the more mysterious and divine. To him love imprisoned behind bars of gold was a rhapsody of exultation and despair.

Joan’s letters were quaint and ingenuous to a degree. She wrote in a bold, round hand, her words being the frank type of her thoughts—thoughts that shimmered with an intense perception of the splendor of nature. She approached life in her free and elemental fashion. Facts had no pedantic and foreordained significance for her. She had the air of an angel treading an unknown earth and marvelling at the inconsistencies thereof. Nor had she any knowledge of the doctrine of original sin.

“I am a mere child,” she wrote, “but it seems to me as though a man and a woman might make the earth a great garden, radiant with goodness as with flowers. This Bible that you gave me has been much with me of late. I had never read the book before. I cannot see why sin should enter into life. To me it seems inexplicable, an anomalous creation. What can sin give to men that it has such hold over them? To be true to truth seems to me as natural as to breathe or to sleep.”

And again:

“If we could all remain mere children! Youth is the key of joy. Age often seems to cover it with rust so that it can no longer unlock the treasures of life. You say that it is impossible to retain the innocence of childhood because of the utter hideousness of one’s elders. The ‘little ones’ are doomed to be ‘offended’ by experience. Why, then, should we not be bold enough to disregard those whom we despise?”

And again:

“I think I could die for an ideal. Whether we are immortal or no, I cannot see why a good man should fear death. If immortality proves real, then he is assured of heaven. If death be the end, then he but falls into an eternal sleep and is none the wiser. I could say to my soul, ‘I have lived my best, now let me sleep.’ The notion of doing one’s duty in order to bribe God does not please me.”

Gabriel was perhaps more personal in his statements. He found the girl’s heart a pure spring into which he might pour his thoughts, where they glistened like gems in a crystal setting.

“You are my great proof of immortality,” he wrote. “I cannot believe that such a soul as yours can end in dust. It would be blasphemy against the divine instinct. Your spirit can never die.”

Also:

“You have become a religion to me. In your eyes I see God and the heavens opened. Tell me, is there sin in such a creed?”

And again:

“You are like a great light in my heart; may your glory never cease from my soul. Through you I am transfigured; in your voice Eternity speaks to me.”

Joan carried Gabriel’s letters in her bosom in a case of green silk. They lay warm and still against her heart. She read them often, for they were like the words of a new world to her, eloquent and lovely.