Mere Stories

A WOMAN WHO HAD GENIUS

THE house in which she lived was long and low and white, like a tomb; and like a tomb it stood apart. Behind it a moorland stretched and dipped into space. Over the moor as far as eye could see were narrow tracks that in the distance grew wide and clear. She used to dream of the city to which they led, silent and out of sight and yet quite surely there beyond the little pathways.

In front of the house a road wound outwards towards the sea, and over the cliff, and through the town a mile away. She followed it sometimes to look at the hurrying feet and eager faces and the hands that were made for work; and while, dumb and aloof, she watched them, her heart subscribe to many charities, and to some societies; to pay a guinea a hundred for cutting about herself from newspapers; to give opinions concerning things for which she cared nothing; in short, they neglected to pay her no compliment that meant taking her time from her without pleasure and without price. Not all. There were some who merely from liking of her work would have known her, feeling that they could love the woman who had done it, and so perhaps put a little happiness into her life, if she would give them the chance.

But this chance she gave to none. She wanted to be alone, absolutely and unconditionally alone. An indescribable sense of power was within her; the intoxication of success was in her brain; the determination to show the world that withal she had but done her least was at her heart. She wanted to think, to taste to the uttermost the secret joy, the wonder and fear that were hers. Moreover, she was afraid, and that without knowing it, of every word she uttered, lest it should sound as if it had come from one who was not greater than her work, and had not more than it contained to give. She wanted the world to feel that power in her was like a sea of which but a single wave as yet had swept across the beach.

But the loneliness of life wrapped her round like a cloak. She thought of companionship with dread, of knowing men and women with shrinking; for as time went on she realised that she had no strength to live up to the reputation she had made and no courage to fall below it. She had a pen to write, but no words to say; and even her pen she could not control. She felt like a human lodging-house, in which strange souls, wandering shapelessly through space seeking human means of expression, rested now and again, first one and then another. While they were with her they used her pen, and from its point flowed that which they desired to say while she looked on half curiously. After a time she read it and said:

‘ This is mine. It was I who set down this wisdom, I do not wonder that I am famous.’ Then a voice seemed to whisper: ‘ No, not you. Something in your dictated it, not you yourself. Go and see if you can set down any words that are worthy to be put beside these.’ And when she tried none came, or if they did they were weak and foolish, and her tears fell and blurred them; then she knew that she was half an impostor and half a victim. One day she dreaded lest she should be found out and scouted for a crime she had never committed; but perhaps the next her heart was full, and she poured it out like a torrent, and, not knowing how to sort wisdom from foolishness, sent all that she had done into the world.

Then people said, ‘ She is a genius; these things prove it.’ Even the crudities that in another world have been laughed at were counted but as evidence of the fire that burnt within her: just as the flare-marks on the ceiling prove that the light has touched it.

‘ Give us more. You can do better still, and we are waiting,’ the world cried.

She heard, but could not answer. She was like one bound with invisible chains being goaded to win a race, seeing others start, knowing that they would fail where her swift feet would have swept surely on had she been free and dared to run. Or she was as one possessed of secrets she would tell presently, but who did not know them herself yet; save in her soul that stirred strangely as one who is but half awake: they had not reached her heart and lips. And sometimes she felt as though she were endowed with indefinite divinity, of which she had not yet gained leave to speak; or as a woman carrying a child possessed of a separate soul that could not be known of the world till it had come forth in its little human body and learnt to make itself understood.

In between all these feelings crept those others that were like taunting voices, ‘ You are no genius,’ they cried, ‘ you have no lasting power; you had a little fire given you, it flickered and went out.’ Then she wanted to die, so that she might not take the world’s good gifts and give it nothing in return.

All the time, being only a mortal woman, she longed silently for the simple lot that others lived and found enough. ‘ The little pebbles on the beach,’ she thought, ‘ are one just like another, but each helps to make a part of the world, and feels the sunshine and the rain fall on it, and the great sea comes and sweeps now these and now those into itself. It must be good to be one of them, far better than a thing apart and alone.’

But when the chance of an ordinary woman’s life came to her she threw it away. ‘ We should stand and look at each other as if from separate turret windows,’ she said to her lover.

‘ Perhaps I should divine your thoughts, but you would never divine mine. We should be very lonely if we were together.’

‘ But I am never lonely now,’ he answered. ‘ I have my work and my love of you. These two always bear me company.’

‘ Can you control your work?’ she asked, curiously. ‘ Can you set your head to think and your hands to accomplish?’

‘ And why not?’ he asked. ‘ I have been taught in the schools and work comes naturally; as it came to those before me and will to those who follow. You would find it easy to do in your own home and for those you love.’

She understood and shook her head.

‘ There are so many women who love and marry and die and are forgotten. I want to do more,’ she answered. ‘ Something whispers to me, “You are meant for greater joys and sorrows, and above all, for greater work.” The first only concerns myself, but the last concerns the whole world. I must think and brood and put down my thoughts so that others may turn them into deeds. For thoughts and the deeds that come of them are the gold and silver of the centuries—the currency by which the world is carried on.’

‘ What is the world to you that you need care about it? We none of us stay in it long.’

She was silent for a moment, and then she answered slowly: ‘ The other day I walked through a graveyard. Above each one buried there was a white stone, and on it was written a name. It was like a book in which the names of travellers were set down, showing that they had passed through the world on their way to eternity; but for the sign on the stone there would have been none that they had lived. I do not want my name to be written up anywhere; but I want to leave more than a stone behind. I want to live for more than just one human being: it would not satisfy me to do that.’

‘ What can one little lonely woman do?’

‘ One lonely Man suffered to save the whole world. With just one human being have all things great or small begun; it has been the individual, always and for ever the one man or one woman who has moved the world. I cannot do that,’ she added, ‘ but perhaps I can do a little.’

‘ Who knows?’ the man said wonderingly.

‘ One day,’ she answered slowly, ‘ a man who has never seen my face—only read what I had written—said that I had genius.’

‘ And what is genius,’ he asked, ‘ that you should lay your human happiness at its feet?’

‘ Ah, what is genius?’ she echoed. ‘ Is it a voice that God lends now and again for a little space, or is it the great who are dead sending messages? Or is it a strange restless waif, to which the nations and the ages have whispered, that wanders into a human being, and when it cannot find utterance beats against the heart and soul, like a prisoner against iron bars, till it kills the life in which it stays, and so is free to seek another shelter? If I could be sure that I had genius I would bear thankfully all the loneliness and pain it brings, for it is a divine gift, do with us what it will.’

‘ Are you so lonely?’ Then he went on quickly: ‘ There is another gift that is divine, too; and seeks the heart of men and women. Shall we not hold it fast together? If you have genius, dear life, you shall see it in the eyes of your children, and wish it God-speed through the ages. Would not this content you?’

‘ It is just the common destiny,’ she said, ‘ and I should not be satisfied.’

But the greater destiny never came. The years went by and the first work was forgotten, and the later work was never counted worth remembering; and if people spoke of her at all it was only as of an unfulfilled promise. Yet she tried and toiled and waited, hoping for light that never flashed, and for thoughts that never came. She felt as though she belonged to the greater powers that are unknown to ordinary being, but that they would have none of her; as if she had been sent into the world with a message she had forgotten; as if in everything there were a meaning that had been made clear once, but now eluded her; as if she stretched out her hands and for ever touched nothingness.

All about her the people lived busy lives, working chiefly for those they loved or to a definite end. But she could not make herself share that from which she had always stood apart. A little scorn, a little pity grew up in her heart while she looked at them. She felt as though she were made of better clay, and hugged her loneliness as a sign that it was so. Yet these lives were weighted with sorrow; just a few had more than their share of joy, or seemed powerless to wrestle against sin, or were bowed down with pain; and some helped and others went by not caring.

‘ Surely all this should speak to me,’ she thought. But nothing spoke.

‘ It is over and finished,’ she cried in despair. ‘ Now I understand. The world said I was a genius; but that which was in me for a little while was only a passerby. I have given it out; there is no fire left. My power is gone. My intoxication is over: I am a living husk.’

Then dreams gathered round her, but she could not lay hold of them; and strange fancies gave her life a background, that did not exist for any save herself, and she had no power to give them being. Day by day the dreams drew a little closer and a little close, lulling and stupefying her. She had no desire to work, no power to achieve, or to disentangle her thoughts and put them into words. Gradually the wind and the rain, the sunshine and the shadow, seemed to be seeking her, to know her, to draw her into themselves, and she could not hold apart a separate individuality.

When she lay dead people remembered her work again, just for a moment. They wrote about it, praising and blaming to their own satisfaction. None of them could have done one single line of it, but nevertheless they criticised it freely, admiring themselves for their own discrimination, and thinking more of that than of truth and justice.

A grave was made for her, and the earth above her trodden down hard and close. No stone was set up, and no one even remembers her name; but the power that had been a prisoner in her human body was set free; and the work she had done, though it was but a little, stayed on in the world waiting—till as if by chance those found it who understood. For these it blossomed into thought that ripened into deeds. Whether the deeds were good or ill, and led the doers upwards towards the light, or downwards to the depths, depended on what had been in heart of the woman who lay mouldering in a grave that was forgotten.