第51章

IT was early summer now.

In the depths of the greening woods the school-master lay reading:

"And thus it passed on from Candlemass until after Easter that the month of May was come, when every lusty heart beginneth to blossom and to bring forth fruit; for like as herbs and trees bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise, every lusty heart that is any manner a lover springeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds.For it giveth unto all lovers courage--that lusty month of May--in something to constrain him to some manner of thing more in that month than in any other month.For diverse causes: For then all herbs and trees renew a man and woman; and, in likewise, lovers call again to their mind old gentleness and old service and many kind deeds that were forgotten by negligence.For like as winter rasure doth always erase and deface green summer, so fareth it by unstable love in man and woman.For in many persons there is no stability;...for a little blast of winter's rasure, anon we shall deface and lay apart true love (for little or naught), that cost so much.This is no wisdom nor stability, but it is feebleness of nature and great disworship whomever useth this.Therefore like as May month flowereth and flourisheth in many gardens, so in likewise let every man of worship flourish his heart in this world: first unto God, and next unto the joy of them that he promised his faith unto; for there was never worshipful man nor worshipful woman but they loved one better than the other.And worship in arms may never be foiled; but first reserve the honour to God, and secondly the quarrel must come of thy lady; and such love I call virtuous love.But nowsdays men cannot love seven nights but they must have all their desires...Right so fareth love nowadays, soon hot, soon cold:

this is no stability.But the old love was not so.Men and women could love together seven years...and then was love truth and faithfulness.And lo! In likewise was used love in King Arthur's days.Wherefore I liken love nowadays unto summer and winter; for like the one is hot and the other cold, so fareth love nowadays.".......

He laid the book aside upon the grass, sat up, and mournfully looked about him.Effort was usually needed to withdraw his mind from those low-down shadowy centuries over into which of late by means of the book, as by means of a bridge spanning a known and an unknown land, he had crossed, and wonder-stricken had wandered; but these words brought him swiftly home to the country of his own sorrow.

Unstable love! feebleness of nature! one blast of a cutting winter wind and lo! green summer defaced: the very phrases seemed shaped by living lips close to the ear of his experience.It was in this spot a few weeks ago that he had planned his future with Amy: these were the acres he would buy;on this hill-top he would build; here, home-sheltered, wife-anchored, the warfare of his flesh and spirit ended, he could begin to put forth all his strength upon the living of his life.

Had any frost ever killed the bud of nature's hope more unexpectedly than this landscape now lay blackened before him? And had any summer ever cost so much? What could strike a man as a more mortal wound than to lose the woman he had loved and in losing her see her lose her loveliness?

As the end of it all, he now found himself sitting on the blasted rock of his dreams in the depths of the greening woods.He was well again by this time and conscious of that retightened grasp upon health and redder stir of life with which the great Mother-nurse, if she but dearly love a man, will tend him and mend him and set him on his feet again from a bed of wounds or sickness.It had happened to him also that with this reflushing of his blood there had reached him the voice of Summer advancing northward to all things and making all things common in their awakening and their aim.

He knew of old the pipe of this imperious Shepherd; sounding along the inner vales of his being; herding him toward universal fellowship with seeding grass and breeding herb and every heart-holding creature of the woods.He perfectly recognized the sway of the thrilling pipe; he perfectly realized the joy of the jubilant fellowship.And it was with eyes the more mournful therefore that he gazed in purity about him at the universal miracle of old life passing into new life, at the divinely appointed and divinely fulfilled succession of forms, at the unrent mantle of the generations being visibly woven around him under the golden goads of the sun."...for like as herbs bring forth fruit and flourish in May, in likewise, every heart that is in any manner a lover spingeth and flourisheth in lusty deeds."...But all this must come, must spend itself, must pass him by, as a flaming pageant dies away from a beholder who is forbidden to kindle his own torch and claim his share of its innocent revels.He too had laid his plans to celebrate his marriage at the full tide of the Earth's joy, and these plans had failed him.

But while the school-master thus was gloomily contemplating the end of his relationship with Amy and her final removal from the future of his life, in reality another and larger trouble was looming close ahead.

A second landscape had begun to beckon not like his poor little frost-killed field, not of the earth at all, but lifted unattainable into the air, faint, clear, elusive--the marriage of another woman.And how different she! He felt sure that no winter's rasure would ever reach that land; no instability, no feebleness of nature awaited him there; the loveliness of its summer, now brooding at flood, would brood unharmed upon it to the natural end.