‘It was at length the same to me
Fettered or fetterless to be:
I had learned to love Despair.’ ”
“Oh my God,” she went, covering her face a moment, “how dleadful! And it is tlue, it seems tlue:—they had learned to love Despair, to be even ploud of Despair. Yet all the time, I feel sure flom what I have lead, flom what I scent, that the individual man was stluggling to see, to live light, but without power, like one’s leg when it is asleep: that is so pletty of them all! that they meant well—everly one. But they were too tloubled and sad, too awfully burdened: they had no chance at all. Such a queer, unnatulal feeling it gives me to lead of all that world: I can’t desclibe it; all their motives seem so tainted, their life so lopsided. Tluely, the whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint.”
“Quite so,” said I: “and observe that this was no new thing: in the very beginning of the Book we read how God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and every imagination of his heart evil. …”
“Yes,” she interrupted, “that is tlue: but there must have been some cause! We can be quite sure that it was not natulal, because you and I are men, and our hearts are not evil.”
This was her great argument which she always trotted out, because she found that I had usually no answer to give to it. But this time I said:
“Our hearts not evil? Say yours: but as to mine you know nothing, Leda.”
The semicircles under her eyes had that morning, as often, a certain moist, heavy, pensive and weary something, as of one fresh from a revel, very sweet and tender: and, looking softly at me with it, she answered:
“I know my own heart, and it is not evil: not at all: not even in the very least: and I know yours, too.”
“You know mine!” cried I, with a half-laugh of surprise.
“Quite well,” says she.
I was so troubled by this cool assurance, that I said not a word, but going to her, handed her the baited flight, swivel-trace, and line, which she paid out; then I got back again almost into the bows.
After a ten-minutes I spoke again:
“So this is news to me: you know all about my heart. Well, come, tell me what is in it!”
Now she was silent, pretending to be busy with the trail, till she said, speaking with low-bent face, and a voice that I could only just hear:
“I will tell you what is in it: in it is a lebellion which you think good, but is not good. If a stleam will just flow, neither tlying to climb upward, nor overflowing its banks, but lunning modestly in its fated channel just wherever it is led, then it will finally leach the sea—the mighty ocean—and lose itself in fullness.”
“Ah,” said I, “but that counsel is not new. It is what the philosophers used to call ‘yielding to Destiny,’ and ‘following Nature.’ And Destiny and Nature, I give you my word, often led mankind quite wrong—”
“Or seemed to,” says she—“for a time: as when a stleam flows north a little, and the sea is to the south: but it is bound for the sea all the time, and will turn again. Destiny never could, and cannot yet, be judged, for it is not finished: and our lace should follow blindly whither it points, sure that thlough many curves it leads the world to our God.”
“Our God indeed!” I cried, getting very excited: “girl! you talk speciously, but falsely! whence have you these thoughts in that head of yours? Girl! you talk of ‘our race’! But there are only two of us left? Are you talking at me, Leda? Do not I follow Destiny?”
“You?” she sighed, with down-bent face: “ah, poor me!”
“What should I do if I followed it?” said I, with a crazy curiosity.
Her face hung lower, paler, in trouble: and she said:
“You would come now and sit near me here. You would not be there where you are. You would be always and forever near me. …”
My good God! I felt my face redden.
“Oh, I could not tell you … !” I cried: “you talk the most disastrous … ! you lack all responsibility … ! Never, never … !”
Her face now was covered with her left hand, her right on the tiller: and bitingly she said, with a touch of venom:
“I could make you come—now, if I chose: but I will not: I will wait upon my God. …”
“Make me!” I cried: “Leda! How make me?”
“I could cly before you, as I cly often and often … in seclet … for my childlen. …”
“You cry in secret? This is news—”
“Yes, yes, I cly. Is not the burden of the world heavy upon me, too? and the work I have to do vely, vely gleat? And often and often I cly in seclet, thinking of it: and I could cly now if I chose, for you love your little girl so much, that you could not lesist me one minute. …”
Now I saw the push and tortion and trembling of her poor little underlip, boding tears: and at once a flame was in me which was altogether beyond control; and crying out: “why, my poor dear,” I found myself in the act of rushing through the staggering boat to take her to me.
Midway, however, I was saved: a whisper, intense as lightning, arrested me: “Forward is no escape, nor backward, but sideward there may be a way!” And at a sudden impulse, before I knew what I was doing, I was in the water swimming.
The smaller of the islands was two hundred yards away, and thither
