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Captivity by M. Leonora Eyles

M >> M. Leonora Eyles >> Captivity




* * * * *

The candle began to flicker and, turning, she saw that it was spending
its last dying flame. It was impossible to write. She lay still,
watching the glimmering dark square of the window. She could not see
another candle there. All she could see was the little phial of
tabloids. But she lay back and let the pain fasten on her. The blazing
needles that were piercing her, the blazing hammers that were battering
her, gathered in fury and for a few merciful hours she lost
consciousness.

When she wakened again the pain had completely gone and the first faint
cool light was struggling through the mists on Ben Grief. She groped
about the counterpane and found her pencil, and went on writing. This
time the letters were not so proudly neat. Many of them were shaky and
spindlelegged and she knew it.

* * * * *

The candle went out, then. Some hours have passed, and with them the
pain. A very beautiful thing has come to me;--the peace that passeth
all understanding until you've lost your body. I understand now, very
well. Our lives are just God's pathway, and we get in His way and have
to be hurt before He can get along us. I was, unconsciously, His pathway
to Louis until you came along--and you were a smoother pathway than I.
His feet have blazed along my life now, burning out all the
roughnesses--crushing me down. It's been a heavy weight to carry--the
burden of salvation. It is such a heavy weight that one can't carry
anything else. I tried to carry myself, and prides and hungers and love
for you. All of them had to be blazed out.--No--not the love. That could
not go. That and the courage will go on; pity perhaps will go, for only
our bodies are pitiful. But the love is deathless. God's banner over me
was love. I think I've read that somewhere His footmarks over my life
were love. I've not read that. I had to find it out--slowly, hungrily,
painfully, strivingly, because I've always been such a fool. But just
this minute I've seen that I've been God's Fool--and God is Love.

* * * * *

The sun came up behind the pines on Ben Grief, golden and silver in the
April morning. Very faintly came the voices of the fishermen; in the
next room she heard small, busy sounds; two faint falls made her smile.
Andrew had mechanically put on his shoes, thought better of it and
kicked them off again. She heard him creep along the landing to her door
and listen. When she tried to call him to come and kiss her she found
that her voice had died. She heard him say, quietly:

"Mummy's fast asleep," and smiled again as she felt that he was running
through the unbarred door shrieking and laughing in the delight of the
soft air, the dancing sea, the kindly sun. She knew that he had not
washed his face, and worried a little about it, and then smiled again.

His voice grew fainter. She tried to lift her hand to fold her letter.
It felt as though it were miles away from her, and too heavy to move.

"Why, I'm dying now," she thought, and was surprised to find it such an
ordinary, unvolitional thing to do. It was very good to do something
unvolitional, very restful.--Little snappings sounded in her ears, and
distant crashings and thunders as of a storm perceived by a deaf man who
can see and understand without hearing.

She thought very clearly of Death for a moment, and then of God. She had
often thought of Death and of God, and was surprised to find that she
had been wrong about both.

"I thought--He never gave you--anesthetics--" she told herself. "Why,
that's what death is--"

Then came the clear vision of God--not the Great Being with devastating
feet at all: He seemed to be like the surgeon in Sydney, for a moment,
very sure of His work, very strong, very much stronger and wiser than
she was. It was no use at all to fight a thing so wise and strong and
tender--

At that moment, as this most beautiful, most kindly thing came to her,
she wanted to tell Kraill about it, so that he should be filled with the
beauty of it without having to come to death to find it out. The pencil
was in her hand, resting on the page. Her brain willed her fingers to
conquer their heaviness, their farawayness, and write:

"God seems like you when you told me I needn't be frightened about Louis
any more--"

The crashings in her ears grew fainter. More light came.

"No. He is more than that. He is the sun that is shining and the soft
noise that is coming up from the sea--and Andrew's laughing--No--those
were only His robes that I was looking at!--God is the courage you
loved--God is the courage; His clothes are loving-kindness--"

In that moment that the structure of her life fell inwards she saw still
more.

"I know now that I need not regret all these greeds and hungers and
prides of mine that have been unfulfilled. They have been burned out by
the courage and the loving-kindness--"

The pencil rolled on to the floor; what her spirit had willed to tell
him her fingers had made a weak scrawl of straggling, futile marks.

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