I did not go to Woadley as I had planned. My position was too uncertain at present for me to venture where further explanations would be required. My father had made me aware of that. I was unwilling to cover the same ground of argument with Grandmother Cardover, so I had my lawyers visit me in London.
Until something had been definitely settled, I did not care to return to Oxford or to seek out any of my friends; I should at once be called upon to account for my erratic departure and prolonged absence. So I made myself inconspicuous in the crowds of London, waiting for some final word from Sheba. It was quite likely that none would ever come—and that would be an answer in itself. Yet, now that I had done what had seemed to me right and had thrust her from me, I hoped against hope that, somehow, she might come back. I felt that though I might have to wait for years, I would resolutely wait for her. No other woman could ever take her place. And none of this could I tell her. She might think that I had counted the cost and considered it too expensive. She might put the worst construction on the words she had overheard on that last night; yet unless she approached me first, I was irrevocably pledged to silence.
Too late for my peace of mind I recognized my weakness: if I had wanted her, I should have taken her strongly in the early days and faced the consequences; now, through making truces with my conscience and conventions, I had lived so long in thoughts of her that I should always desire her.
I would like to have gone to Ruthita, but that was forbidden. Lord Halloway riding the high horse of morality was exceedingly comic, but I knew exactly how men of his stamp argued: to introduce a questionable relation into the family was anathema. I wondered continually what secret causes lay behind Ruthita’s marriage. I felt sure that she had consented on the impulse, and that love had had nothing to do with it. The suspicion that I was somehow responsible left me worried.
Spring had reached the point of perfection where it merges into summer. The tides of life flowed strongly through the dazzling streets of London; I was too young not to respond to their energy. Everywhere the persistent hope of spring planted banners of green and set them waving. Ragged shrubs in decrepit squares bubbled into blossom. Window-boxes lent a touch of braveness. Water-carts passed up and down parched streets, settling the dust. In the kind of suburb that walks always with a hole in its stocking, slatternly maids pressed their bosoms against area-railings chaffing with butcher-boy or policeman—their idea of love. Where a street-organ struck up, little children gathered, dancing in the gutter. Even the sullen Thames, the gray hair of London, was dyed to gold between the bridges by the splendid sun. The spirit of youth had invaded the city; flower-girls, shouting raucously above the traffic, shaking their posies in the face of every comer, seemed heralds of a new cheerfulness, shaming Despair of his defiance.
This severing of oneself from friendship was dull. Leisurely crowds laughing along sunlit pavements, made me ache for companionship. I was in this frame of mind when I chanced to think of Uncle Obad’s letter. It had met me at Plymouth on my arrival, and bore the characteristically flamboyant address of Dream Haven, Dorking.
He must have chosen Dorking as a place of residence because it had given its name to a famous breed of fowls. Perhaps he thought such a neighborhood would be propitious to his own experiments. His letter was brief and to the point: if I could spare the time, he and Aunt Lavinia would feel honored to entertain me.
Uncle Obad was stilted in his written use of language; he felt honored when he meant to say jolly well glad. There was always an obedient servant ring about the way in which he signed himself. The training he had undergone as secretary to charitable societies had spoilt him for familiar letter-writing.
Since the Rapson incident, things had never been quite the same. My good fortune made him uneasy; it placed a gap between us and, I suppose, served to emphasize his non-success. Of his new mode of life since the Christian Boarding House had been abandoned, I had only heard. The thought of him had lain a dusty memory at the back of my mind—which made it all the kinder that he should now remember me. Perhaps he had heard before writing of how Pope Lane had planned to receive me.
As I steamed into the station I hung my head out of the window to catch first sight of him. Yes, there he was. He had grown stouter; his purple whiskers which still bristled like shaving-brushes, had faded to a milky white. He was wearing a long fawn dust-coat which flapped about the calves of his legs. He carried the old exaggerated air of blustering importance, but was a trifle more careless in his dress. His carelessness, however, was now the prosperous untidiness of one who could afford it. In his lapel he wore a scarlet geranium.
As I stepped out, he came fussily towards me. “Very good of you to come, I’m sure—kind and very thoughtful.”
It was his pretense manner—the one he adopted with grown-ups. I wanted to remind him that with me he could take off his armor.
“Still go in for breeding hens?” I asked him.
His face brightened. “I should say so. Our little place is quite a menagerie. We’ve cats, and dogs, and rabbits, and a parrot. And hens! Well, I should say so.”
“And hens,” I laughed. “Remember the old white hen you gave me? It laid one egg and then ate it; after that it died.”
“Should have given it gravel or oyster-shells.” Poultryraising was a subject he never treated lightly. He fussed along beside me, explaining with his old enthusiasm the mysterious ways of fowls.
Outside the station a dog-cart was standing, with a fat little piebald pony between the shafts. We stuffed the baggage under the back-seat, and squeezed into the front together. The pony started off at a smart trot.
“D’you know what this reminds me of?—That first day we spent together. You remember—when you drove me away from Pope Lane behind Dollie?”
He pulled out his handkerchief and trumpeted. His eyes became dreamy beneath his bushy brows. “A long time ago! They were good days, but not as good as these, old chap.”
We fell to remembering. The pony slowed down to a walk. How everything came back as we talked! And how ripping the old Spuffler had always been, and how ripping it was to be near him now! He had put aside his armor of pretense and was talking naturally. We talked together of that first day when we had met the gipsies in the Surrey woodland, and we talked of the Red House, and of all the times that we had been happy. A warm wind fluttered about us. I caught Uncle Obad looking at me fixedly, dropping his eyes and then looking up again, as though he were trying to satisfy himself.
“That Sir don’t seem to have spoiled you.”
The red walls of Dorking were left behind. A white chalky road stretched before us, climbing upward to the skyey downs; over to the left rose a wooded ridge, somnolent with pines; to the right lay a village-common across which geese waddled in solemn procession.
Uncle Obad roused himself and shook the reins. “This won’t buy a pair of shoes for the baby. Aunt Lavinia’s waiting for us; she’s just as keen as I was to see whether: you’ve altered.” Then to the pony, “Gee-up, Toby.”
We turned off into the pine-wood by a narrow roadway. The fragrance of balsam made me long to close my eyes. At the edge of the road, on either side, ran a ditch through which water tinkled over gravel. On its banks grew fern and foxglove. The silent aisles of the wood were carpeted with the tan of fallen needles. Sunlight, drifting between branches, slashed golden rags in the olive-tinted shadows. My mind became a blank through pure enjoyment as I listened to the monologue of gay chatter that was going on beside me. He was doing for me now just what he had done for me so often as a child, throwing down the walls of conventional tyrannies and showing me the road of escape to nature.
Suddenly out of the basking stillness rose a farmyard clamor—cocks crowing, ducks quacking, and the boastful clucking of hens. We had reached the top of the ridge and were bowling along the level. Toby pricked up his ears and quickened his trotting. Round a bend we swung into sight of a low-thatched house, standing in a clearing. Its windows were leaded and opened outwards. In front grew a garden, sun-saturated, riotous with flowers, and partly hidden by a high hawthorn hedge. In the hedge was a white swing-gate, from which a red-brick path ran up to the threshold. Across the gate one had a glimpse of beehives standing a-row; the air was heavy with mingled scents of pine, wild thyme, and honey. The impression that fastened on my imagination was one of exquisite cleanliness: the sky, the gleaming chalk road, the white-painted woodwork of the cottage, everything was dazzlingly spotless.
Our wheels had hardly halted before the gate, when I saw Aunt Lavinia in the doorway unfastening her apron. Neat and methodical as ever, she folded it carefully, and laid it on a chair before coming out to us.
“Lavinia, Lavinia! We’re here,” shouted Uncle Obad.
She came down the path, prim and unhurried, determined not to let herself go. “Repose is refinement” she used to tell me. Nothing in her manner was ruffled. She still carried herself with a certain grave air of sweet authority. The rustle of her starched print-dress gave her an atmosphere of nurse-like austerity. She had not changed, save that the look of worry had gone from her face, and her eyes were untired.
“It’s glad I am to see you.” She spoke quietly and, when she kissed me, was careful not to crumple her dress.
“Dignified and graceful—that’s her,” said Uncle Obad.
We had plenty to talk about while we were getting over our first strangeness. I had to see the house and all its arrangements. My room was at the back, looking out from the ridge over smoking tree-tops far away across undulating downs.
Windows and doors were always open, so the passages were blowy with the dreamy, drowsy smell of green things growing. Creepers tumbled across sills; leaves tapped whenever the breeze stirred them; pigeons flew into the dining-room at meal-times and perched on Uncle Obad’s shoulder. Usually everything within a house is man-made. At Dream Haven Nature was encouraged to tiptoe across the threshold; so bees entered humming, and blackbirds came for grain to the windows, and all day long the wild things were sending their ambassadors. Beating wings of birds and cooing of doves filled one’s ears with the peace and adventure of contentment.
These were the recreations of Dream Haven, but its stern business, as one might suppose, was the raising of fowls. At the back of the cottage on a southern slope were arranged coops, and pens, and houses, gleaming white against the golden gravel like a miniature military encampment. Each pen had its trumpeter, who strode forth at intervals to raise his challenge; whereupon every male in camp tried to outdo him, from the youngest stripling, whose shrill falsetto broke like a boy’s voice in the middle, to the deep, rich tones of the oldest campaigner. Falsetto, tenor, bass, baritone shook the stillness like an army on the march, with rattle of accoutrements, and brass-bands playing, cock-a-doodle-doo, cock-a-doodle-doo.
In the hush that followed from far away, as from scattered detachments replying, came the counter-sign. Below the ridge in the village on the downs every rooster felt his reputation endangered. In farmhouses out of sight the challenge was caught up and the boast flung back. To one listening intently, the clamor could be heard spreading across the countryside till it spent itself at last in the hazy distance. Then the ladies of the camp commenced their flatteries, tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck-tuck, our men did best, our men did best.
Uncle Obad took childish delight in the comedy; he knew the voice of each male bird in his yard and the sequence of precedence in which they should aspire. If they got out of order, he would recognize at once which cockerel was trying to oust his senior. If the ambitious fellow was one of his experiments in crossing strains, he was vastly tickled. To him they all had their personalities; he used to say that a poultry-yard could teach you a whole lot about humans.
“Why don’t you men go out for a walk?” said Aunt Lavinia; “I’m sure Dante would like to look about.”
She knew that we had always had our secrets. It was seven o’clock; there were still some hours of daylight. We set off through the poultry-runs down the hillside till we came to the edge of the clearing; Uncle Obad looked round furtively to make sure that we were unobserved, then he beckoned and slipped behind a shed. There he sat down with his back against the warm wooden wall and we lit our pipes. “She makes me take exercise now,” he grunted between puffs; “thinks I’m getting fat.”
“Perhaps she’s right. Aunt Lavinia’s always been right ever since I can remember.”
“I should say so. She doesn’t look it, but she’s always worn the trousers, and small blame to her. But she was wrong once.”
“When was that?”
He narrowed his eyes and watched the smoke curl up into the velvet air. When it had drifted a few yards away, one could imagine that it was a galleon ‘cloud sailing slowly through infinity. I got to thinking how much more picturesque the world becomes when we lose our standards of perspective. Uncle Obad had won his happiness by making small things important to himself.
He did not answer my question. I was too lazy to trouble him again. The rich spicy fragrance of woodlands lulled my senses. I watched through a gap in the trees how the sun’s rays shortened across the downs. All the out-door world was bathed in tepid light. The fierceness had gone out of the day.
The Spuffler always made me philosophize; he was a failure, but he had found a secret. He had known how to discover nooks and crannies in the persistent present where he could be content. I had lost that fine faculty for carelessness since I had grown older.
He knocked out his pipe and commenced to refill it. “But she wasn’t always right,” he chuckled. “I may be only an old knacker, but once I was righter than her.—What d’you think of all this?” He jerked his thumb across his shoulder.
“It’s the last word... just what we always dreamt.”
“That’s why I called it Dream Haven. Not so bad for a man of my years after keeping a Christian Boarding House!”
“Make it pay?”
“Not yet. Don’t need to, by Golly.”
“Don’t need to! How’s that?”
“Business knowledge. Sound judgment. Backing my opinion when the odds were against me. I doubled up my fists and stood square against the world.”
“A kind of brave Horatius?”
“Who’s he?”
“Kept the bridge or something. Was a friend of Macaulay.”
“Never heard of him. Did he keep poultry?”
“May have done; he was the kind of man who’d keep anything he laid his hands on. But how the dickens d’you hang on to this place if it isn’t paying?”
“Got money. Got money to burn. Got enough to last me to my journey’s end without earning a penny.”
He was a small boy boasting. What a lot of fun he’d have extracted from being Squire of Woadley. I wished I might learn how to spuffle; it so multiplied one’s opportunities for pleasure. But I couldn’t get as excited as he expected; I had heard him talk this way before on a certain day at Richmond.
“Did you make it out of the boarding-house?” I inquired incredulously.
He laughed deep down in his throat. “Not exactly. I received an envelope one morning; inside was a slip of paper on which was written ‘Compensation for a damaged character’ There was no address.”
“But there must have been more than that.”
“You bet. There was a banker’s draft. How much for? Guess.”
“Can’t guess.”
“Five thousand pounds.”
“Whoof! One of your charitable bigwigs sent it?”
“Not half. Came from Rapson. That’s what comes of sticking to your friends. That’s why I say that your Aunt wasn’t always wiser than the poor old knacker.”
“Mines?”
“So he said. He’s been to see me since then. The way your Aunt Lavinia treated him was as funny as a cock without feathers.—I always believed in Rapson.—He had a bad streak though.”
“Which one?”
He passed over my slur. “Women.”
“Kitty?”
“That’s what I meant. He’s sorry now; wishes he’d married her.”
“Humph! If you don’t make your place pay, what are you doing?”
His face took on an expression of intense earnestness.
“Breeding the Spreckles. Remember them, don’t you? I had terrible work at first; couldn’t make the strain permanent; in the third and fourth generations it was always going back to the original crossings. Well, now I’ve done it. Come and look at ’em.”
The old bond was established. His enthusiasm and my response to it swept aside the misunderstandings of years. I seemed a little boy, following him into a retreat of impossible glamour. He showed me a pen of magnificent slate-blue fowls; they had the extra toe of the Dorking, the drooping comb of the Leghorn, yellow legs of the Game, and full plump body of the Plymouth Rock. He enumerated their merits, insisted that I should guess what mixings of blood had gone to their making, and was delighted when he found I had not forgotten the old knowledge he had taught me. He was going to enter them at the shows this year, but he was worried over one point—what name should he call them?
“But you’ve given them their name.”
“I know, I know, old chap; but my conscience troubles me. Yer see, I shouldn’t have been able to do it if it hadn’t been for Rapson. I think I ought to call ’em the Rapsons.”
“If you feel like that, why don’t you?”
“He won’t let me.”
“Share the glory then. Call ’em Spreckles in public, and Rapsons among ourselves.”
His simple old face lit up. “Believe you’ve solved it.” We returned to our place by the shed, from which we could watch the haze of evening drifting across the billowy uplands. In the village at our feet, cattle were being driven home lowing to the milking. On the common boys were playing cricket; their laughter came to us softened by distance.
“What made you ask me?” I said.
“Ask you? Ask you what?”
“To come and visit you.”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not popular at Pope Lane at present; I believe you know the reason. Grandmother Cardover must have told Aunt Lavinia that this was going to happen. That was why you sent that letter to the ship to meet me.”
He looked shy and awkward, and drew his hat down over his brows; I knew that he was making up his mind not to answer.
“When I was a boy,” I continued, “I always felt that I could come to you frankly. You, somehow, understood before anything had been said. I thought, perhaps, you might have understood this time, and that that was why you asked me.”
He threw his arm across my shoulder. “I did, old chap. But you’ve grown older and, since you’ve got all this book-learning and all these grand friends, I kind o’ felt I was a stranger—thought you didn’t need me like you used to.”
“My grand friends and book-learning won’t help me this turn,” I grumbled slowly. “I may need you pretty badly—perhaps, more than ever I did. You’ve heard?”
“Umph!”
“What d’you think about it?”
“It doesn’t much matter what an old knacker thinks about anything.”
“Why on earth d’you keep calling yourself an old knacker?”
“Dunno. It’s amusin’. It’s a kind o’ luxury after spuffling all my life to be able at last to depreciate one’s self. Everything’s amusin’. I know you are; I suppose I am; there’s no doubt about your father. Nothing’s overserious in this gay old world. Mustn’t take things to heart, old chap. Look at me, what I’ve come through. Here I am and not much the worse for wear—battered, but useful, yours truly Obadiah Spreckles, successful breeder of an entirely new strain of perpetually laying hens.” He gave himself a resounding whack upon the chest and cocked his eye at me.
“What do I think about you and the lady in America? Speaking as the ex-proprietor of a Christian Boarding House, I think it’s shocking. Speaking as a man of leisure, I think it’s confoundedly human. Speaking as a shipwrecked cabin-boy who’s suddenly been promoted to captain, I should say that it’s one of life’s ups and downs. There’s no accounting for how love takes a man; it’s as fluky as settings of eggs—all cocks one day, all hens tomorrow, and the day after that nothing. Dash my boots, I sometimes think that nobody’s to blame for anything. Love’s shocking or interesting, according to your fancy. Take Lavinia and myself. I haven’t made her a good husband. I’ve been a failure and a slacker. I’ve made her happy now only by an accident. People look at us and wonder what we find in one another. They don’t know—can’t see beneath the surface. We never had any children. It’s been hard fighting. But I swear she’s never regretted.—Aye, it’s wonderful the pains God takes to bring a man and a woman together. These things ain’t accidents. If you’re meant to have her, you may have to wait, but nothing can stop you—just like me and my fowls. Life’s a leading. ‘He leadeth me beside the still waters,’ eh, what! But it’s often rough treading till you get there.—That’s all I have to say about it, old chap.”
“The door of Pope Lane’s shut against me,” I told him. “Ruthie’s married the fellow I detested. They’re none of them talking to me now.”
The old fellow turned on me snorting like a stallion. “That don’t matter, lad. You’re your own world. Do without ’em. Everything comes right in the end.”
Dream Haven! How cool the name sounds! What memories of sunshiny mornings it brings back. Day after day I watched and waited for the letter from America. There were times when I made sure that I could feel it approaching. “It will be here to-morrow,” I said.
I tortured myself by picturing how different life would have been had I taken Randall at his word. It was the kind of torture that became a luxury. I should have brought her to Dream Haven, perhaps. I played with my fancy, pretending that we were here together; so actual were my imaginings that I was incredulous when, on coming to myself, I found her absent. The dreams were more real than the reality.
Wakened in the morning by the twittering of birds, I would raise myself on my elbow and marvel at the sweet flushed face beside me on the pillow and the glorious, yellow streaming hair. Slowly it would fade and vanish. There were walks which we took through the lonely woodlands when all the delayed intimacies of love filled life with unashamed passion. There were wild days on the downs, when rain and wind, driving our bodies together, stung me to a new protecting ecstasy. There were quiet evenings in the gloaming—Sunday evenings were the best—when Vi sat at the piano playing and singing, while Dorrie knelt beside her, fingering her dress. All these ghost-scenes stand clear in my memory as though they had happened.
I must have cultivated this unreal life to the point of danger in my effort to escape the ache of the present. Had I lived by myself I might have crossed the border-line, but the comedy of Uncle Obad was always drawing me back. He kept watch over me like a kind old spaniel.
In the morning from where I sat in the garden, I could see him farther down the slope through the orchard, trotting in and out his pens with his disreputable dust-coat flapping. Just as once, when he had no money, the appearance of affluence had been his hobby, so now, when he could afford to dress respectably, he delighted in looking shabby. He left his clothes unfastened in the most unexpected places; Aunt Lavinia was continually making grabs at him and buttoning him up. In the afternoon she sent us off for long walks together to prevent his getting fat. On these occasions he would explain his loose philosophy, which consisted of a large-minded, stalwart carelessness.
“Keep your end up; it’s in each one of us to be happy. Don’t do too much remembering; live your day as it comes. Your Grandmother calls me the Spuffler—so I am. Where’d I be now, I ask you, if I hadn’t spuffled?”
So the summer fled by, and the woods grew browner, and the air had a sharper tang. The letter from Sheba had not come. I could mark time no longer; at last I left for Woadley.
I was twenty-six when I entered into possession of Woadley. By my grandfather’s will I inherited an annual income of seven thousand pounds. I was at an age when, for most men, everything of importance lies in the future and that which lies behind is of no consequence—in the nature of an experiment.
I did not regard my past in that light. It was vital. Until the woman I loved should share my fortunes I felt the future to be an indefinite postponement. How she could come into my life again I dared not surmise; that she would come, I never doubted. I knew now that the letter which I had both hoped for and dreaded, would never arrive. For Dorrie’s sake they had decided to remain together. In my wiser moments I was glad of it; I knew that, had she chosen otherwise, our love would have been degraded.
Strong influences were brought to bear to press me into public life. My situation and training entitled me to take up a position of some local importance. I might have stood for Parliament, but I shrank from publicity. All I asked was to be left alone to follow up my own interests in quiet. I had come so suddenly into a sphere of power which I had done nothing to merit, that ambitions which had still other ambitions for their goal, ceased to allure me. My temperament was natively bookish; by nature I was a Fellow of Lazarus and by compulsion a conscientious country squire. When I was not at Oxford, dreaming in libraries, I was at Woadley, superintending the practical management of my estate.
The joy of sex and its fulfilment in a home, which apply the spur to most men’s activities, to me were denied; it was unthinkable that I should marry any woman other than Vi. The energies which should have found a domestic expression with me became the mental stimulus of an absorbing scholarly pursuit.
Through my Oxford lectures and fugitive contributions to periodicals, I began to be known as an authority on the intellectual revolt of the Renaissance; by slow degrees I set about writing the life of that strange contradiction, half-libertine, half-saint, ?neas Sylvius Piccolomini.
Engaged in these employments, I grew to love the smooth gray days of Woadley which stole by ghost-like and unnumbered. And I came to love the Woadley country with a passion which was as much due to its associations as to its beauty. When I had grown tired of researches into things ancient, one of my greatest joys was to plod to Ransby through rutted lanes deep in hedges, and so out to the north beach where the sea strummed against the land, and the wind raged, and the blackened hull of the wreck crouched beneath the weight of sky.
Grandmother Cardover’s shop saw me often. There in the keeping-room, with its dull red walls and leisurely loud ticking clock, we would talk together of bygone times and of those which were, maybe, coming. At first she urged me to marry, and to take up the position in the county which should be mine. But soon, with the easy fatalism of old age, she accepted me for what I was, and ceased to worry. .
With my father I held no communication—the breach had become final; so of Ruthita I heard next to nothing. But as regards Lord Halloway, quite inadvertently I increased my knowledge.
One squally night I was returning from Ransby, driving up the sodden road to the Hall, when my attention was attracted by a camp-fire. I halted out of curiosity, and struck across the turf to the light. Between me and the fire was a wind-break of young firs, a diminutive plantation behind which, as behind bars, figures prowled. As the flames shot up, the figures yearned toward the clouds; as the flames died down, the figures seemed to creep into the ground. On reaching the wind-break a lurcher growled, and I heard a man’s voice telling the beast to lie quiet. I was about to declare myself, when a hand was laid on my shoulder. I leapt aside, peering into the darkness.
“All right, brother,” a voice said huskily. “I’m meaning you no hurt.”
A woman’s face pushed itself out of the blackness; by the light of the fire I saw that it was Lilith’s.
“Now you’re here, brother, we’ve come back to Woadley.”
She spoke as though our meeting had been pre-arranged.
Gazing through the trees I saw the old yellow caravan: and G’liath; the gaudy woman was there, and the hag who had tried to tell Vi’s fortune on the marshes.
The huddled gipsy tents became an accustomed sight and the center of a new interest in my landscape. The proud lawlessness of the gipsies appealed to my own suppressed wildness. They opened a door of escape from commonplace environment. Their unannounced comings and goings had an atmosphere of mystery and stealth which filled me with excitement. Of a night I would look out from my bedroom windows and see the red glow of their camp across the park-land; in the morning nothing would remain but blackened turf and silence.
I went on many tramping expeditions with Lilith. She had become curiously elflike and wilful since those early days. She seemed to live wholly in the moods and sensations of the present; of the past she would speak only in snatches. Sometimes, when she softened, she would mention Ruthita; but it was long before I discovered her secret and the reason why for so many years the gipsies had refused to camp at Woadley.
All one day in the height of summer we had wandered, across meadows and by unfrequented by-roads, too content to pay heed to where we were going; when evening overtook us we were miles from home. It was too late to turn back, unless we walked on to the nearest village and hired a trap and drove. Lilith scouted the proposal with scornful eyes as too utterly conventional. We would make a camp for the night and return to-morrow.
There, alone in the open, with great clouds thumbing the western sky, and birds sinking into tree-tops singing, “Home, home, home,” life liberated itself and rose in the throat as though it had never been bound and civilized. We spoke only in monosyllables; even words were a form of captivity. Collecting brushwood, we built our fire and ate our meal between the walls of bushes. Slowly the silver trumpet of the moon rose above leafy spires.
We made a strange pair, Lilith and I—she the untamed savage, gloriously responsive, and I, for all my attitudes of mind, outwardly the sluggish product of reserve and education. Through the gray smoke I watched her, with her red shawl falling from her splendid shoulders, her glittering ear-rings and her large soft eyes. I told myself stories about her quite in the old childish vein. I recalled how the Bantam and I had always been hoping to find her. What fun it would be to vanish for a time, leaving responsibilities behind, and to take to the road together! White mists, rising from the meadows, erected a tent about us which towered to the sky. Here in the open was privacy from the impertinent knocking of destiny.
But she was not thinking of me. Her eyes gazed far away. Her arm was hollowed and her head bowed, as though a little one pressed against her. With her right hand she fumbled at her breast, loosening her bodice. Her body swayed slowly to and fro in a soothing, rocking motion. I had seen her like this before when she thought no one was looking.
Leaning forward I plucked a twig from the fire to light my pipe. She threw herself back from me startled and sprang to Her feet “Don’t touch me.” Her voice was hoarse and choking.
Looking up from where I sat, I saw that her bosom panted and that her nostrils were quivering with animal fright. But it was her eyes that told me; they were wide and fixed like those of one who has been roused from sleep, and is not yet fully awake.
“I wasn’t trying to touch you, Lil. I’m your pal, girl, Dante Cardover.”
When I spoke she came to herself and recognized me. Her fear vanished and her arms fell limp to her side. “I’m goin’.”
“But what’s the trouble? I thought we were to camp here to-night.”
“Dun know.” She swept back the hair from her forehead and drew her shawl tighter. “I dun this before, just the two of us—and it didn’t end happy.”
“But not with me.”
“Afore ever I knew you, silly. When I was little more’n a child—long time ago.”
We stamped out the fire before we left, and stole silently across the moonlit meadows. She walked ahead at first in defiance; presently, ashamed of the distrust she had shown, she fell back and we traveled side by side.
“Lil, I watched you; you were dreaming that you had your little baby back.”
She placed her hand in mine, but she gave me no answer.
“Who was he—the man who did this to you long ago, when you camped alone together?”
She turned her face away; her voice shook with passion. “I don’t have to tell you; you know ’im.”
The people were few with whom we were both acquainted. I ran over the names in my mind; the truth flashed out on me.
“Was it because of that you wouldn’t camp at Woadley?”
She bent her head, but the cloud of hatred in her face would have told me.
After learning this new fact about Halloway, he was never long absent from my mind; for Lilith, though we never referred to him and she had at no time mentioned him by name, was a continual reminder. I became familiar with his doings through the papers. He was making a mark for himself in politics; there was even a talk that he might find a seat in the cabinet. I read of Lady Halloway’s seconding of her husband’s ambitions. From time to time her portrait was printed among those of society hostesses. But this Ruthita was unreal to me; she had nothing to do with the shy girl-friend whom I had known. Of the true Ruthita I learnt nothing.
I often wondered what was the condition of affairs between herself and Halloway. Was she happy? Was he kind? Was it possible that she should have outlived her first judgment of him? Perhaps all this outward display of success had its hidden emptiness. Behind Halloway lay a host of ruined lives, Lilith’s among them, the waste of which he could not justify.
I had been five years at Woadley, when my work made it necessary that I should spend some weeks in London in order to be near libraries. It was just after Christmas that I came to town. With my usual clinging to old associations, I took rooms at Chelsea, almost within sight of the mansion which had witnessed my uncle’s brief reign of splendor. From my windows I could see the turgid river sweeping down to Westminster, and the nurse-girls with perambulators and scarlet dots of soldiers loitering beneath bare trees of the Embankment.
On rising one morning, I found that the subdued grays and browns had vanished—that London was glistening with snow. My spirits rose to an unaccustomed pitch of buoyancy; I tossed aside my writing and went out into the streets. Coming to the Spuffer’s old house I halted; the memory of the Christmas I had spent there leapt into my mind with every detail sharpened. Things which I had not thought of for years came back luminously—scraps of conversation, gestures, childish excitements. This wintry morning was reminiscent of a snow-lit, sun-dazzled morning of long ago. I recalled how Ruthita had bounced into my room to let me see her presents; how she had balanced herself on the edge of my bed in her long white night-gown, with her legs curled under her and her small feet showing; how she had laughed at my care of her when I wrapped the counterpane about her shoulders to prevent her from catching cold. Every memory was somehow connected with Ruthita. And here I stood, a man of thirty, looking up at the windows from which we had once gazed out together—and I had not seen her to speak to for five years.
I could not get her out of mind. I did not want to. I kept tracing resemblances to her in the girls whom I passed in the streets. Some of them were carrying their skates, with flying hair and flushed faces. Others, whom I met after lunch in the theatre districts, were going to matinées with school-boy brothers. I wanted to be back again in the old intimacy, walking beside her. Since that was impossible, I set myself deliberately to remember.
In the afternoon I strolled into the Green Park. Constitution Hill was scattered with spectators all agape to see the quality drive by. Every now and then a soldier or statesman would be recognized; the word would pass from mouth to mouth with a flutter of excitement. The trees enameled in white, the grass in its sparkling blanket, the sky banked with soft clouds, the flushed faces—everything added its hint of animated and companionable kindness.
Of a sudden in the throng of flashing carriages, my attention was caught by an intense white face approaching, half-hidden in a mass of night-black hair—the face was smaller than ever, and even more pathetically patient. By her side sat the man whom I now almost hated, looking handsome and important; the years had dealt well with him, and had heightened his air of dignity and aristocratic assurance. He was speaking to her lazily while she paid him listless attention, never meeting his glance. It was plain to see that, whatever he had or had not been to other women, his passion for her was unabated. She looked a snow-drop set beside an exotic orchid; the demure simplicity of her beauty was accentuated by the contrast. Her wandering gaze fell in my direction; for an instant my gaze absorbed her. She started forward from the cushions; her features became nipped with eagerness. Those wonderful eyes of hers, which had always had power to move me, seemed to speak of years of longing. A smile parted her lips; her listlessness was gone. She leant out of the carriage, as though she would call to me.
Lord Halloway’s hand had gone to his hat, as he turned with a gracious expression, searching the crowd to discover the cause of his wife’s excitement. His eyes met mine. His face hardened. Seizing Ruthita’s arm, he dragged her down beside him. The carriage swept by and was lost in the stream of passing traffic. All was over in less time than it has taken to narrate.
That night at Chelsea I could not sleep for thinking. Across the ceiling I watched the lights of the police-boats flash in passing. I listened to the river grumbling between its granite walls. Late taxis purred by; I took to counting them. Big Ben lifted up his solemn voice, speaking to the stars of change and time. I thought, imagined, remembered. What had happened to us all that we were so gravely altered? What had happened to her? What had he done to quench her? Then came the old, forgotten question: had I had anything to do with it?
Next day I set myself to conquer my restlessness, but my accustomed interests had lost their fascination. Neither that day, nor in those that followed, could I recover my grip on my habitual methods of life. What were the temptations, disappointments of a dead past compared with those that were now in the acting? My scholarship, my love of books, my undertakings at Woadley had only been in the nature of narcotics; I had drugged myself into partial forgetfulness. Now the old affections, like old wounds, ached and irked me. One glimpse of Ruthita’s white intensity had stabbed me into keenest remembrance.
I had to see her again; the hunger to hear her speak was on me—to listen to the sound of her voice.
Several times I saw her driving in the Park, sometimes alone, sometimes with Halloway. She never looked at me, but I was certain she was aware of me by the way her cheek grew pale. Only a few years ago I had been half her life, free to hold her, to come and go with her, to disregard her; now she passed me unnoticed. I haunted all places where I might expect to find her; whether I met or missed her my pain was the same. At the back of my mind was the constant dread that her husband would hurry her away to where I could not follow.
It was a blustering afternoon in early March, on a day of laughing and crying—one of those raw spring days, before spring really commences, capricious as a young girl nearing womanhood, without reason gay and without reason serious. In the sunshine one could believe that it was almost summer, but winter lurked in the shadows. A flush of young green spread through the tree-tops; in open spaces crocuses shivered near together. The streets were boisterous with gusty puffs of wind which sent dust and papers circling. In stiff ranks, like soldiers, the houses stood, erect, straining their heads into the sky, as if trying to appear taller. Clouds hurried and fumed along overhead travel-routes, and rent gashes in their sides as if with knives, letting through the sudden turquoise. Presently slow drops began to patter. Umbrellas shot up. Bus-drivers unstrapped their capes. In the Circus flower-girls picked up their baskets and ran for shelter.
On arriving in the Mall I found people standing along the open pavement in a lean, straggling line, despite the threatened deluge, I learnt that royalty were expected. Soon I heard a faint and far-off cheering. A policeman raised his arm; traffic drew up beside the curb. Just as I had caught the flash of Life Guards and the clatter of their accoutrements, a closed brougham reined in across my line of vision. With an exclamation of annoyance I was moving farther down the pavement, when a small gloved hand stretched out from the carriage-window and touched me. I turned sharply, and found myself gazing into Ruthita’s eyes. She signed to me to open the door. Before the coachman could notice who had entered, I was beside her. Clutching my arm, she leant out and ordered, “Drive to Pope Lane.”
We lay back against the cushions. We acted like conspirators—it was difficult to tell why. The surprise of meeting her thus suddenly had deprived me of words. It must have been the same with her; we clasped hands in silence.
“I had to see you—had to speak to you.”
She was panting—almost crying.
“Of course. Why not? It was foolish to go on the way we were going.”
“Yes, foolish and heartbreaking. It wasn’t as though we were wanting to do anything wicked—only to meet one another, as we used to.”
Her voice trailed off into a little shivering sob; she flickered her eye-lids to prevent the tears from gathering.
“Ruthie, you mustn’t carry on so.” Then, “What has he done to you?” I asked fiercely. “You’re afraid.”
“He’s guessed.”
“Guessed what?”
“What you never knew.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can’t tell you. If you’d guessed, it might have made all the difference.”
I did not dare to speak—her whisper was so ashamed. Her hand was hot in mine. She withdrew it. When I leant over her she shuddered, just as the trees had done when they knew the rain was coming, as though I were a thing to her both sweet and dreadful. She took my face between her hands, and yet shrank back from me. She delighted in and feared the thing she was doing.
The rain volleyed against the carriage, shutting us in as with a tightly drawn curtain; yet, did I look up, through the gray mist the tepid gold of the sun was shining.
“Ruthie, it seems almost too good to be true that we’re alone at last together—to have you all to myself.”
“Did you ever want me, Dannie?”
“Did I ever want you!”
“But as much as you wanted her?”
“Differently, yes.”
“You poor boy. And you didn’t get either of us.”
“Couldn’t be helped, Ruthie. That’s life—to be always wanting and never getting. But I have you now and, perhaps, one day——”
“But how can you? She’s married.”
“One can’t tell. Things come unexpectedly. I didn’t expect half-an-hour ago that I’d be with you.”
She fell to asking me little stabbing questions. When I only answered her vaguely, “Don’t let’s start with secrets,” she implored me.
“But it’s five years—there’s so much to explain.”
“Yes—on both sides.”
“You seemed—seemed to dislike him,” I said. “I never understood——”
She took me up quickly. “Nor did I. Don’t let’s talk about it—not yet, Dante.”
So I told her about my doings, the book I was writing and the little daily round at Woadley; and then I told her of why I had quarreled with my father.
“But he let me marry Halloway, and you’ve never——” I laughed. “Ah, but no matter what Halloway did as a bachelor, he was discreet when it came to marriage.”
She drew me forward to the light; doubt was in her eyes. “But you—you’re unhappy too.”
“I’ve gained everything I played for; I played to lose.”
“Everything?”
“I didn’t deserve Vi. And I didn’t deserve you; if I had, I shouldn’t have lost you.”
Not until I had replied did she realize how much she had told me. She was not happy! I wanted to ask her questions, so many questions—questions which I had no right to ask, nor she to answer.
“And you—you have no children?”
She hesitated. “No.”
I rubbed the damp from the panes. We were in Stoke Newington. The storm was over; streets and roof-tops shone as with liquid fire. Children going home from school, were laughing and playing. They might have been myself and Ruthie of years ago.
“They won’t see me,” I warned her.
“Who?”
“Folks at Pope Lane.”
“They’re not there. Only Hetty’s left to take care of the house. They’ve gone away for a few days.”
“Then I can see it all again. We can walk in the garden together and pretend that things are exactly as they were.”
“Oh, Dannie!” she cried. “I can call you Dannie, can’t I?”
Time slipped away. She was my little sister now—no longer Lady Halloway. At the posts before the passage we alighted—that was the first news the coachman had of whom he had been driving. We went slowly up the lane, where the shadows of the limes groped like tentacles fingering the sunshine. When I felt beneath the creepers and the bell jangled faintly, Ruthita clutched my arm, attempting to appear bold.
Hetty stared at us. “Well, I’ll be blowed!”
We pushed by her smiling, assuring her that we had no objection. Not until we had rounded the house, did I hear the rattle of the door closing.
Nothing ever changed in that walled-in garden. Flowers grew in the same places—crocuses, daffodils, and hyacinths. Peaches on the wall would soon ripen. Presently sunflowers, like sentinels in gold helmets, would stand in stately line. Pigeons strutted on the slates of houses opposite or wheeled against the sky. There was the window of Ruthita’s bedroom, up to which I had so often called.
The hole, which had been bricked up between the Favarts’ garden, was still discernible. Everything retained its record; only we had changed.
Truants again, stealing an hour together, I listened expectant to hear Hetty call, “Dant-ee. Dant-ee. Bedtime.” The old excitement clutched my heart. Her starched skirt would rustle down the path, and we would run into the gooseberry bushes to hide. I glanced at the study-window. Surely I should see my father seated there, leaning across the desk with his head propped by his arm. Surely that hand of Ruthita’s in my own was growing smaller. I should turn to find a child in a short print-frock, with clusters of ringlets on her shoulders. A shutter in my mind had opened; the past had become present. Ah, but I was no longer anxious to escape. The walled-in garden was all I wanted. I was tired of liberty. I was ready to be commanded. I was willing that others should order my life.
That the illusion might not slip from me, I half shut my eyes. Drip, drip, drip, from eaves and branches! The earth was stirring in the gentle quiet. Through drenched bushes and on the vivid stretch of lawn blackbirds were hopping, delving with their yellow bills. Perhaps I was dwindling into a small boy, just as I had once hoped in the forest that I might suddenly shoot up into manhood. How absurd to believe that I was thirty, and had seen so much of disillusionment! That was all a dream out of which I was waking—I had been here all the time in the narrow confines of the walled-in garden. The old enchantment of familiar sensations stole upon me—I was Dannie Cardover of the Red House; playing tricks with his imagination.
How did it happen? Was it I or was it Ruthie? Her lips were pressing mine. A step came down the path behind us. We sprang apart, laughing softly with reckless joy at our impropriety. Which of us would have thought ten years ago that there would be anything improper in being caught kissing?
Hetty pretended not to have seen us, but her flustered face told its story.
“D’you remember, Hetty, how I once found you doing that to John?”
She writhed her hands under her apron, trying to appear shocked and not to smile. “I remember, Sir Dante; ‘t’aint likely I’d forget.” Then, disregarding me for Ruthita, “I was about to h’arsk your ladyship, whether I should get tea ready.”
Ruthita took her by the hand. “You didn’t talk to me that way once, Hetty. I’m just Ruthie to you always, and Sir Dante is plain Dannie.”
She looked up and met the laughing reproach in our eyes. Her apron went to her face and her bodice commenced to quiver. “Little did I think when I washed and dressed yer little bodies that I should ever see this day,” she sobbed. “It’s breakin’ me ‘eart, that’s what it is, all this quarrelin’. Why shouldn’t I speak to ’im if I wants ter? Why shouldn’t ’e kiss ’is own sister if he likes? Wot’s it matter if all the neighbors was lookin’? There’s too little lovin’ and too little kissin’; that’s wot I say. ‘Tain’t right ter be ashamed o’ bein’ nateral. If it ‘adn’t ’a’ been for bein’ afraid and ashamed, I might ’a’ married John. The nus-girl next door got ’im. There’s allaws been someone a-lookin’ when I was courtin’—there’s been, too little kissin’ in my life, and it’s yer Pa’s fault, if I do say it, wi’ ’is everlastin’ look of ‘Don’t yer do it.’”
“If it’s as bad as all that, Hetty, I’m sure you won’t mind if I——” She made an emotional armful, but between struggling and giggling she allowed me.
We had tea together in the formal dining-room, with its heavy furniture and snug red walls. We made Hetty sit beside us; she protested and was scandalized, but we wouldn’t let her wait. As we talked, the old freedom of happiness came back to Ruthita’s laughter. The mask of enforced prejudices lifted from Hetty’s face. All our conversation was of the past—our adventures, childish mutinies, and punishments. We told Hetty what a tyrant she had been to us. We asked her whether her nightgowns were still of gray flannel. I accused her of being the start of all my naughtiness in the explanation she had given me of how marriages were concocted. It was like putting a wilted flower into water to see the way she picked up and freshened. When she had nothing else to reply, she wagged her head at us, exclaiming, “Oh, my h’eye—what goin’s on! It’s a good thing walls ain’t got ears. What would your poor Pa say?”
We left her and wandered through the rooms together. We only opened the study-door; we did not enter. It had always, even when we had been invited, seemed to have been closed against us. Books lay on the desk, dust-covered. It was allowed to be tidied only in my father’s presence. We both felt that he must know of our trespassing, even though we could not see him. I had the uncanny feeling that he was still there at the table writing; any moment he might glance up, having completed his sentence, and I should hear his voice. Not until we had climbed the stairs did we rid ourselves of the shadow of his disapproval. In the old days when we were romping, we had been accustomed to hear his dreaded door open and his stern voice calling, “Children! Children! What d’you think you’re doing? Not so much noise.” It was something of this kind we were now expecting and with the same sensations of trembling.
The house was memory-haunted. Following our footsteps, yet so discreetly that we never caught them, were a witch-faced girl and a sturdy boy. Where pools of sunlight lay upon the floor we lost them; when we turned into dark passages, again they followed. On entering rooms, we half expected to find them occupied with their playing; when the budding creeper stirred against the walls, it was as though they whispered. They were always somewhere where we were not—either in the room we had just left, or the room to which we were going.
We entered what had been my bedroom. The sun was westering, playing hide-and-seek behind crooked chimneypots. Below us the garden lay in shadow, cool and cloistered.
Kneeling beside the window, with our elbows on the sill, not watching one another’s eyes, we whispered by fits and starts, leaving our sentences unended. Most of what we said commenced with “Do you remember?” and drifted off into silence as the picture formed. It was like flinging pebbles into a pond and watching the circles spreading. One after another memories came and departed—all that we had done together and been to one another in that conspiracy of childhood. There was the pink muffler she had made me, the guinea-pig about which I had lied to her, the tragic departures and wild homecomings of schooldays, and the week when the Bantam had declared his love for her. And there were memories which preceded her knowledge—my quest for the magic carpet. How I wished I might yet find it; I would fly by night to her window and carry her off, re-visiting old happinesses while Lord Halloway lay snoring.
I don’t know how we came to it—I suppose we must have been speaking about Vi. Presently Ruthita said, “You could only love golden hair, could you, Dannie?”
I didn’t know what she was driving at; her voice shook and her face was flushing.
“Dark-haired girls never had any chance with you, did they? You told me that long ago, after Fiesole. I remembered because—because——”
“I was a boy then, and was clumsy.”
“But you spoke the truth, though you did say that for sisters black hair was the prettiest in the world. It hurt because at that time I fancied—you can guess what.”
“You never showed it.”
“You never looked for it—never asked for it.”
I knew to what she referred. It was on the night of my sudden return from the Red House because the Spuffler had lost our money. I was sitting at this window as I was now sitting. A tap at the door had startled me; then a timid voice had said, “It’s only Ruthita.” She had crept in noiselessly as a shadow. Her dear arms went about my neck, drawing down my face. “Oh, Dannie, I’m so sorry,” she had whispered; “I’ve never missed welcoming you home ever since you went to school.” She had nestled against me in the dark, her face looking frailer and purer than ever. She had slipped on a long blue dressing-gown, I remember, and her black hair hung about her shoulders like a cloud. Just below the edge of the gown her pale feet twinkled. I noticed that a physical change had come over her. Then I had realized for the first time that she was different as I was different—we were no longer children. I had fallen to wondering whether the same wistful imaginings, exquisite and alluring, had come to her. With an overwhelming reverence, I had become aware of the strange fascination of her appealing beauty. In the confessing that followed I had told her of my jilting by Fiesole, and had spoken those stupid words about loving only golden hair. How wounding I had been in my boyish egotism! And that was not the last time I had wounded her in my blindness.
Scene after scene came back to me—into each I read a new meaning in the light of what she had told me: the Snow Lady’s hints before I sailed for America; Ruthita’s appeal for my protection against Halloway, and her sudden acceptance of him directly she heard that I was with Vi at Sheba.
“Ruthie, all this was very long ago; so many things have happened since then, there can be no harm in talking about it. You wanted me right up to the last—and I was too selfish to know it.”
“Right up to the last,” she whispered, and I knew she meant right up to now.
“And this—and this is what your husband has guessed?”
She took my hands in both her own, speaking with quiet dignity. “I had to tell you. Perhaps I too have been selfish, but I couldn’t let you misunderstand me any longer. I’ve seen you watching for me, and I’ve had to go by you without looking. We never had any secrets, you and I; you must have wondered why I let my husband make me cut you—I’ve been wicked—I couldn’t trust myself. When I heard that you’d gone to Sheba, I didn’t care what happened. I’d always hoped and hoped that you might come to love me. But it seemed I wasn’t wanted, so I just took—— He’s been good to me, but it isn’t like living with the person you love best, is it? You mustn’t hate him any more; to love a woman who can’t love you back again makes even success empty—and he’s been used to take love without asking.”
We sat very still. We saw Hetty come out into the garden and walk down the path as though she were looking for us. We waited to hear her call, but she re-entered the house, leaving the silence unruffled.
“I’ve made a pretty fair mess of things, haven’t I? There was Vi first, and now there’s you. I’m a pretty fair blighter.”
She pressed herself against me to stop me. “Oh, you mustn’t say that. It hurts. You mustn’t say it.”
“But I am. Even your husband knows it.”
“Some day you’ll marry and everything’ll come right.”
“For Vi, if we have the luck to come together. But what about you? What about even Halloway?”
She avoided answering my self-accusations by attracting attention to herself. “From the first he didn’t want me to know you; he gave excuses, and I understood. Because I couldn’t give him love, I gave him everything else that he wanted. But now—now that I’m going to be a mother, I had to tell you. I want it to be a boy, Dannie. Waiting for him, I’ve thought so much of old days. I felt that if you didn’t know, somehow, things wouldn’t go right—because when he comes I want him to be like you.”
She had risen, letting go my hand.
“I had always thought of you as my sister,” I faltered. “I know—and you were a dear brother. It was just my foolishness to want you to be something else.”
For a moment she clung to me, hiding her face against my shoulder. Then we passed down the stairs, afraid to be alone any longer.
“Goin’?” Hetty inquired. “You won’t tell the master, will yer?” She glanced toward the study-door as though he were behind it and might have overheard.
At the end of the lane the carriage was standing. In the presence of the coachman Ruthita’s tones were conventional. “You’re going westwards? Where can I drop you?”
In the carriage I asked her whether her husband would know of what we had done.
“I shall tell him.”
“Don’t you think he might be willing to let us be friends?”
“I’ll ask him,” she said, “but——”
At Hyde Park Corner the carriage pulled up and I alighted. I watched her eager face looking back at me, growing smaller and smaller.
Wandering aimlessly through the parks, I sat for a time by the Serpentine. The nerves of all that had happened in the past five years were cut. If I had married Ruthita, would she have been happy? The thought of marrying her was just as impossible to me now as it had been when Grandmother Cardover had mentioned it at Ransby. And yet, at a time when I had been most sensitive of injustice, I had been unjust to her—— And now she was going to be a mother—little Ruthita, who seemed to me herself so much a child!
When I came into Whitehall, the pale twilight of spring still hovered above house-tops; from streets the flare of London steamed up. The opal of the sky reflected the marigold-yellow of illumined windows; arc-lights, like ox-eye daisies, stared above the grass of the dusk.
I made my way to my club and sank into a chair, aimlessly skimming the papers, reading scarcely a line. Few people were about; the room was empty save for one other loiterer. Spring in the streets was calling.
The man strolled up to me, holding an illustrated weekly in his hand. I knew him slightly and nodded.
“Writing a book on the Renaissance, ar’n’t you? Here’s something a bit in your line. Funny how Paris’ll go mad over a thing like that!” He smacked the page. “Girl comes from nowhere. Her lover writes a play—that’s the story. There’s a mystery. The play’s difficult to understand, so it must be brainy. Now I like a thing that don’t need no explanation: Marie Lloyd, the Empire, musical comedy—that’s my cut.”
He tossed me the weekly and turned on his heel to walk out. Annoyed at being disturbed, I glanced down irritably.
From a full-page illustration the face of Fiesole smiled up.
It was ridiculous this curiosity, but I knew how to explain it—it grew out of my life’s great emptiness since I had listened to Ruthita’s confession. She had made me realize as never before how I had muddled my chances of happiness. I had heard nothing from Vi in all these years and now I had learnt that, without knowing it, I might have had Ruthita. My interests had lost their charm; I wanted an excuse to leave my work. This matter of Fiesole had cropped up, so here I was on my way to Paris, more for the sake of something to do than anything else.
I had not the remotest intention of renewing her acquaintance. Unseen by her, I would watch her from some corner of the theatre, and then slip back to London. There would be piquancy in the thought that I had gone to see her for old time’s sake, and that she would never know about it. As for speaking to her, that would be an insult after what had happened at Venice. Probably she hated me. She ought to, if she did not.
Though I smiled at myself, truth to tell, I was rather pleased to find I could still be so impulsive; romance in me was not dead after all these years of uneventful waiting. This journey was the folly of a sentimental boy—not the cynical act of a man of the world.
La Fiesole! La Fiesole! Since she had stared out at me from the printed page I was continually coming across her. Everyone was discussing her; she had sprung out of nowhere into notoriety. Greater than Bernhardt, men said of her: a spontaneous emotional actress of the first rank—the sensation of the moment.
France took her seriously; England quoted French eulogies in italics. Fantastic legends were woven about her name, made plausible by an occasional touch of accuracy.
Antoine Georges had written the play—it was based on the amours of Lucrezia Borgia. It was said that he was La Fiesole’s lover, that she had given him the plot—that she had even helped him write it; some went so far as to say that it was founded on an incident in her own past life, transposed into a fifteenth century setting. Antoine Georges denied that he was her lover; but the world smiled skeptically—it liked to believe he was. One story asserted that she had been a fille de joie when he came across her; another, with that French instinct for the theatric, that he had reclaimed her from a low café in Cherbourg in which she danced. Nothing was too incredible in the face of her incredible success. One fact alone was undisputed—that she was the daughter of the famous Italian actor, many years dead, Signore Cortona.
This confirmed what I already knew about her. I remembered how she had told me in Oxford of her early stage career, which she had abandoned to go traveling. I recalled how she had said, “I’m an amateur at living—always chopping and changing. I’ll find what I want some day.”—— So she had found it!
In the English press she was made a peg on which to hang a whole wardrobe of side-issue and prejudice. The decency of the French stage was discussed. The question was introduced as to whether such a play would be allowed to be performed in London. The superiority of English morals was the topic of some articles; of others, the brutal prudery by which British art was stifled. A fine opportunity was afforded and welcomed for slinging mud at the censor. The discussion was given academic sanction when Andrew Lang patted it on the head in an ingeniously discursive monologue on the anachronisms of playwrights, in which he made clear that Monsieur Georges’s tragedy was riddled with historic falsity.
It was nearing five when we steamed into the Gare du Nord. My first journey to Paris had been prompted by Fiesole. Then I was escaping from her; now I was going to her. For old time’s sake I made my headquarters at the hotel at which I had then stayed in the Rue St. Honoré. After diner I set out through thronged streets to book a seat at the theatre. Upon making my request at the office, the man shrugged his shoulders and turned away with the inimitable insolence of French manners. It was as though he had said, “You must be mad, or extremely bourgeois.” I had affronted him personally, the theatre-management, La Fiesole and last, but not least, the infallible intelligence of Paris. Did Monsieur not know that La Fiesole was the rage, the fashion? Every seat was taken—taken weeks ahead.
My second request was apologetic and explanatory: I honored La Fiesole so much that I had journeyed from London on purpose to see her. What was the earliest date at which he could make it possible? He directed me to an agency which had bought up all the best seats in the house; here I secured a box at an extortionate price for five nights later.
In the intervening days I was frequently tempted to abandon my project and return. It seemed the height of foolishness to squander five days in order that I might court disappointment. She must have altered—might have deteriorated. It was just possible there was a grain of truth in the wild stories that circulated about her. And yet—— There were memories that came to me full of nobility and gentleness: windswept days at Oxford; a night at Ferrara; days and nights on the lapping lagoons of Venice. I wanted to see her again—and I did not. I blew hot and cold. And while I hesitated, spring raced through the streets of Paris with tossing arms and reckless laughter.
When I entered the theatre it was already packed. The audience seemed conscious that it had assembled for a great occasion; it had dressed for its share in the undertaking. Gowns of marvelous cut and audacity were in evidence. The atmosphere was heavy with the perfume of exotic femininity and flowers.
My box was on the right-hand side, just above and next to the stage. Below me was a nodding sea of plumed head-dresses, naked shoulders, and gleaming bosoms; rising tier on tier to the gold-domed roof, was a wall of eyes and fluttering white faces. Everything was provocative of expectancy. Gods and goddesses, carved on the columns and painted on the curtain, alone were immobile.
A quick succession of taps sounded, followed by three long raps. The theatre was plunged in shadow. As though a crowd drew away into the distance, the last murmur spent itself. The curtain quivered, then rose reluctantly on the illusion which had brought the unrelated lives of so vast an audience together.
We saw an Italian garden, basking in sunlight and languorous with summer. Beneath the black shade of cypress-trees stretched marble terraces, mounting up a hillside, up and up, till they hung gleaming like white birds halfhidden in the velvet foliage. In the foreground a fountain splashed. A little way distant the Pope Alexander lolled, toying with his mistress, Giulia. Up and down pathways lined with statues, groups of courtiers wandered: youths in parti-colored hose and slashed doublets; girls, vividly attired, exquisitely young, engaged in the game of love. Guitars tinkled and masses of bloom flared stridently in the sun. Sitting by the fountain was the Madonna Lu-crezia and the young Lord of Pesaro. Her face was turned from us; we could only see her vase-like figure and the way she shook her head in answer to all he offered.
The envoy from Naples enters and with him the Duke of Biseglia; he urges the Pope for a last time to make an alliance with his country by betrothing the Madonna Lucrezia to the Duke. But the Pope does not want the alliance; he is joining with Ludovico of Milan against Naples and war will result.’ While the Pope is refusing, for the first time Lucrezia looks up and her face is turned towards us—the face I had known in my boyhood, innocently girlish, fresh as a flower, so ardent and beautiful with longing that the theatre caught its breath at sight of it and a muffled “Ah!” swept through the audience.
As though attracted by a power which is outside herself, she rises, hesitating between shyness and daring, and steals to where the young Duke is sullenly standing. She takes his hand and presses it against her breast. He snatches it from her. She commences to speak, at first haltingly, but with gathering passion. Her voice is hoarse and sultry, like that of a Jewess; it is a voice shaken with emotion, which now caresses and now tears at the heart. The drone of merriment in the garden and the tinkling of the guitars is hushed. Listless lovers come out from the shadows and gather about her, amused by her earnestness. She pleads with the Pope, her father, to give her the Duke—not to send him away from her. Biseglia interrupts haughtily, asserting that he only desired her for State reasons and that since the Pope refuses Naples’ friendship, he would not marry the Madonna Lucrezia though her father were to allow it.
Alexander laughs boisterously at this quarrel of children and like a huge Silenus wanders off into the garden, leaning on his mistress, Giulia, followed by his train of minstrels and dilettantes. Their singing grows more faint as they mount the terraces towards the palace.
Lucrezia watches them depart with a face frozen with despair. As Biseglia turns to go, she darts after him and drags him back, fawning on him, abasing herself, offering herself to him, telling him that whatever comes of it she cannot live without him. He regards her in silence; then falls to smiling and flings her from him, reminding her that she is the Pope’s bastard. At that the boy Lord of Pesaro, who has watched everything from the fountain, runs with drawn sword to her defense. But she springs between them, saying that when the time comes to kill Biseglia, she will take revenge in her own way like a Borgia. The great Pope, looking back, has seen her awakened savagery and laughs uproariously. The scene ends with the garden empty and Lucrezia stretched out on the ground, kissing the spot which Biseglia’s feet have touched and weeping in a frenzy of abandon, while the Lord of Pesaro looks on impotent and broken-hearted.
Between the first act and the second the French have invaded Italy, so the Pope and the King of Naples have found a common enemy and a common need for alliance. The Duke of Biseglia has again been sent to Rome to sue for the hand of Lucrezia. But in the meanwhile she has been betrothed to the Lord of Pesaro, and, to prevent him from joining with the French when Lucrezia is taken from him, his removal has been planned.
The curtain goes up on a night of bacchanalian riot in the Papal gardens. Beneath trees a costly table has been spread, at which sit men and women attired in every kind of extravagance, as animals, pagan deities, and mythological monstrosities. In the branches overhead are set sconces and blazing torches. Distantly over white terraces and pathways the moon is rising. In the foreground are mummers and tumblers. The servitors who pass up and down the company are humpbacks, dwarfs, Ethiopians, and dancing-girls.
In the center of the table sits the Pope, and next to him Lucrezia, and next to her Biseglia. Opposite to Biseglia is seated the Lord of Pesaro, and next to him a woman in a mask. With the heat of the wine and the lateness of the hour the women lie back in their lovers’ arms—all except the masked woman and the Madonna Lucrezia. Lucrezia sits erect like a frightened child, the one pure thing in the freedom that surrounds her. Biseglia pays her no attention, and from across the table the Lord of Pesaro watches.
The Pope twits Biseglia on his coldness, saying, “Think you that my daughter hath a deformity?” And Biseglia gives the irritable answer, “Can a man love a woman while that young spit-fire glowers green envy at him opposite?”
Pesaro leaps to his feet, but the Pope, as though to pacify him, pledges him and hands the goblet to the masked woman to offer to him. Still standing uncertain, Pesaro receives it from her. Raising it slowly, his lips touch the brim; he clutches at his throat, upsetting the cup so that the red stain flows towards Lucrezia. He leans out, gazes in her eyes, and crashes across the table, twisting as he falls, still looking up at her.
The silence that follows is broken by a low rippling laugh. The company gaze in astonishment; it is Lucrezia who is laughing. The child in her face is dead; her expression is inscrutable, wicked and sirenish. She sways towards Biseglia, bending back her head and twining her arms about him. “Hath the Pope’s daughter a deformity that thou canst not love her? Behold, thou shalt judge. She will dance and dance, till she dances thee into rapture and thy soul is poured out upon her.”
From the hand of a servitor she snatches a torch and steps into the open. She commences to dance and, as she dances, unbuckles her girdle so that her gown slips from her. As the beat of the music grows more furious she unbinds her hair, so that it writhes like snakes about her firm white arms and bust. Dwarfs clamber into trees and slide out along their branches, raining rose-leaves on her as she passes. The strangely attired company forget their jaded decadence and sprawl across the table, digging their elbows into its scattered magnificence, following the gleam of her young, white body as it twists and turns beneath the whirling torch.
But her gaze is bent always on Biseglia; her eyes are aslant and beckoning. Her bosom rises and falls more fiercely with the wrenching in-take of the breath. Will he never go to her?
She flings back her hair from her shoulders; her body flashes like an unsheathed sword. Nearer and nearer to him she dances. His eyes rest on her moodily, half-closed. Does he make a movement, quickly she withdraws.
She has flung away her torch and is spinning madly with her hands clasped behind her head. The grass is hidden with rose-leaves; she floats—her feet scarcely stir them. Suddenly she stops; stands erect for an ecstatic moment; sways dizzily; her strength is gone. Her hands, small and pitiful, fly up to cover her eyes. She shakes her hair free to hide her. Her body crumples. She is broken with her shame and futility. Biseglia leaps the table and has her in his arms as she falls, pressing his hot lips against hers. With clenched fists she smites him from her, slips from his embrace, and runs shimmering like a white doe through the forest of blackness.
With a shout the revelers shatter the banquet and pour in pursuit of her. Biseglia leads them, darting ahead into the shadows. Dancing and singing, the disheveled bacchanalians stagger across the dark, trouping along dusky terraces with twining arms, following the fleeing dryad.
Torches are burnt out and smolder in their sockets. Night is tattered by the dawn. Amid the havoc of trampled chalices and glass sprawls the wine-stained figure of the dead Lord of Pesaro—the man who, could she have loved him, would have given her all.
La Fiesole! La Fiesole! We rose as one man as the curtain dropped. We did not care to think whether this was wrong—it was lovely. She had danced our souls out of their prejudices, out of their walls of restraint into chaos. The rapture of her beauty ran through our veins like wine. Our imaginations pursued her along pale terraces. The fragrance of crushed rose-leaves was in our nostrils and the coolness of night. Our breath came short, as though we had been running. Our senses were reeling and our eyes dazzled. We stood up in our places clutching at the air, calling and calling, hungry for the sight of her.
For myself, I was smitten with blindness. My eyes saw the striving throng through a mist and probed into the beyond, where she ran on and on palely, forever from me. I shouted to her, but she grew more distant; never once did she look back or stay her footsteps.
I was aware of a deep stillness—a hoarse peal of laughter: thousands of eyes glared up at me and down on me, and mouths gaped mockery. The mist cleared; Fiesole was standing before the curtain. The audience had grown hushed at sight of her while I had continued calling. From the stage, twenty feet away, she was smiling at me, insolent and charming, her body still shuddering with exertion beneath the velvet cloak which lay across her shoulders. What did I care, though to-morrow the whole of Paris should laugh? She had danced my soul into ecstasy. I placed my hands on the edge of the box and leant out drunkenly, shouting her name, “Fiesole! Fiesole!”
She kissed her hand at me derisively, bowed to the audience, and was gone.
I sank in my place, a sickening nostalgia for her upon me. I did not reason; I only knew I wanted her—wanted her as she had once wanted me, with her hands and eyes and body. In a dim way I felt angry with myself for having lost her. She had made me disgusted with my coldness at Venice as I had watched my counterpart, the Duke of Biseglia. From the theatric torture in her face I had learnt something of how brutal a man may be when he fancies that he is righteously moral. She, whom I saw now so remotely, might have been mine; through these chilly years La Fiesole might have been my companion, had I had the faith to take what was offered. I had sought the things that were impossible. I had made a god of my scruples. I had sinned weakly, following Vi who did not belong to me. I had sat down to wait for her, and all the while Life was tapping at the door. I tasted Life to-night—— And who knows? Perhaps I had broken this woman’s heart. I would no longer be niggardly. I would go to her; accuse myself to her; beat down her hatred of me; carry her off.
While these thoughts trooped across my mind, the crooked sphinx-like smile of Paris wandered over me, examined me, hinted at tragedy with laughter, and widened its painted lips at my absurdity.
The curtain rustled. The warning raps sounded. Lights sank, and heads bent forward.
In a dim-lit room, chilly to the point of austerity, sat Lucrezia. Tall candles shone upon her face—a face purged of emotion, nunlike and wooden with an expression of distant contemplation. Behind her head was an open window through which floated in the sound of music. She heeded it not at all. In the far corner stood a bed with the curtains drawn back. At an altar a lamp burnt before a shining crucifix. Her women were unrobing her for the bridal night. They spoke to her, but she did not answer. They blamed her for her indifference to Biseglia: she had never kissed him, never caressed him since the night when she had won him. Did she not know that he hungered for her kindness?
She gave them no answer. They lifted her this way and that as though she were a doll; she seemed to have forgotten her body. She might have been in a trance, leading a life separate, dreaming of things innocent and holy.
One by one the candles were extinguished; only the lamp burnt before the altar. When her women were gone; she slipped from the bed and knelt with her head bowed before the cross.
The music dies; silence falls. Along the passage comes a creeping footstep. The door opens; Biseglia enters, blinking his eyes at the room’s dimness. He whispers her name. At last she hears him and rises, standing before the altar. He crosses the room reverently. He halts, gazing at her. He rushes forward, masters her, crushes her to him, and cries that she torments him—starves him.
When she makes no response, but lies pulseless in his arms, he carries her to the bed, incoherently claiming as his right the fondness she does not give him. Then he grows gentle and kneels before her, kissing her feet and calling her his god.
She speaks. Her voice is small. “Biseglia, thou didst love me only when I had made myself worthless that I might win thy fondness.”
He yearns up to her with his arms, disowning his former coldness, protesting that he adores her. She leans over him sadly; he raises his lips to hers. As she kisses him, her expression kindles to triumph. She withdraws her hand from her breast; the Borgian dagger sinks into his heart.
She gazes stonily on the man who had once refused her. The lamp before the altar flickers and goes out. The room is plunged in darkness.
Long after the curtain had fallen I sat on. I had seen Antoine Georges step before the footlights leading Fiesole. I had seen him alternately bend above her hand and bow his acknowledgments to the applause. I did not like him, this fat little Frenchman, with his thin beard and spindly legs. The polite proprietorship of his bearing towards her had impressed me as offensive. I felt sure that he was smacking his lips and saying, “They shall believe that it’s all true, this that they say about us.”
From the wings had come lackeys carrying garlands. They had built up a garden about her. The people had gone mad, standing up in their places and thunderously shouting. From all parts of the theatre flowers had rained on her. They had stormed her with flowers. Women had torn bouquets from their dresses and wreaths from their hair. It might have been a carnival; the air was dense with falling blossoms. And she had faced them with the smile of a pleased child, while Monsieur Georges bent double before her.
It was all over. Men were busy with brooms, sweeping up the litter of her triumph. This happened every night: they got used to it. Already in the fauteuils d’orchestre perfunctory faded women were adjusting linen coverings. The last stragglers of the audience were reluctantly going through the doors.
A man entered my box and tapped me on the shoulder. I stared up at him; his expression made me laugh. He evidently mistook me for a crank who was likely to give trouble. I reached for my hat and coat wearily; I felt that I had been beaten all over. As I folded my scarf about my neck I made bold to ask him where I could find Fiesole. He shrugged his shoulders, darting out his hands, palms upwards, as one who said, “Ah, it is beyond me! Who can tell?”
But it was important that I should see her, I urged; I was an old friend.
An old friend! These days La Fiesole had many old friends. Were it permitted to her old friends to see her, all the messieurs would cross the footlights. He eyed me with impatience, anxious to see the last of me, his waxlike face wickedly ironic.
I produced a fifty-franc note. Would it not be possible for him to deliver her a message?
If Monsieur would write out his message he would make certain that La Fiesole got it.
So I scribbled my address on the back of a card, asking her to allow me to speak with her.
I folded the fifty-franc note about it and handed it to my tyrant. From the lack of surprise with which he accepted I gathered that he had pocketed greater amounts for a like service.
In the street I paused irresolute. From my feet, could I follow it, a path led through crowded boulevards directly to her. I could not be very distant from her; a lucky choice of direction, the chance turning of a corner might bring us face to face. That I was in her mind was probable. She was remembering, as I was remembering, that day at Lido and that night at Venice. Was she satisfied with her revenge? She had always been generous. Somewhere in this passionate white night of Paris her car sped on through illumined gulleys; she lay back on cushions, her eyes half-shut, her mouth faintly smiling, picturing the past at my expense. I liked to think that she hated me; it was in keeping with her character; I respected her for it. The women who had loved me had made things too easy; it had always been I who had done the refusing. My blood was eager for the danger of pursuing. I longed for resistance that I might overcome her. I loved her with my body, I told myself, as I had never loved a woman; my cold, calculating intellectuality was in abeyance. That she should make my path of return difficult added a novel zest.
The human tide was drifting towards Montmartre; I fell in and followed. On the pavement before cafés at little round tables boulevardiers were seated, sipping their absinthe, their eyes questing for the first hint of adventure. Taxis flashed by, soaring up “the mountain” like comets, giving me glimpses as they passed of faces drawn near together, ravishing in their transient tenderness. How was it? What had happened? For the first time in my remembrance I had ceased to analyze; I had ceased to sadden my present with foreknowledge.
Far away the Place Pigalle beckoned. Up tortuous streets, between ancient houses, the traffic streamed like a fire-fly army on the march. As I neared the top I entered the pale-gold haze of its unreality. Electric signs of L’Abbaye, the Bal Tabarin, and the Rat Mort glittered on the night like paste jewels on the robe of a courtesan. Women trooped by me like blown petals, peering into my face and smiling invitation. I marked down their types in my mind by the names of flowers—jasmine, rose, poppy.
I was curiously transformed from that evening of long ago when I had watched these sights with horror, and had fled from Paris in the dawn to Florence. I felt no anger, no revulsion—only tolerance. I had finished with peeping beneath the surface. Fiesole had taught me to despise all that. Fiesole! Fiesole! I saw her always dancing on before me, mocking my sobriety. Yes, I told myself, she had made me kinder.
A couplet from Sir Galahad in Montmartre dinned in my brain and summed up my estimate of my former self
“He sees not the need in their faces;
‘Tis the sin and the lust that he traces.”
I had never looked for the need in any woman’s face. I had been absorbed in contemplation of my own chastity—had hurried through life with hands in pockets, fearful lest I might be robbed. Vi’s need, which I had recognized, I had made ten times more poignant. I had waited for her. What good had I done by it? I might go on waiting. Meanwhile there were Fiesole and Life knocking at my door. My constancy to Vi had become a luxury.
A girl slipped her arm in mine. “‘Allo! You zink I am pretty?”
She was a cocotte, little more than a child, so delicate and slight. Her hair was flaxen and blowy; her complexion a transparent china-white; her dress décolleté and cut in a deep V between the breasts. She pushed her small face up to mine with the red lips parted, clinging to me with the innocent familiarity of one who had asked no more than a roguish question.
“You’re pretty, but——”
“Zen we go togezer!”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Pourquoi non?”
“I’m hoping to meet someone.”
She released me at once with a good-natured smile. “La! La! I hopes you find ’er.”
She tripped away, turning before she was lost in the crowd to wave her hand. I told myself that her flower was the jonquil.
It was one o’clock when, after wandering about, I found myself back at the same place. I could not sleep; my brain was too active with excitement. Instead of being sad because of Fiesolè, I was unreasonably elated. I took a seat at a table on the pavement and ordered coffee and cognac. Every man and woman within sight was a lover, and I sat solitary. As the hour grew later men and women grew more frank in their embraces, and all with that na?ve assumption of privacy which makes the Frenchman, even in his vices, seem so much a child. The sex-instinct beat about “the mountain”—the air quivered and pulsated.
Girls rustled in the shadows. Lovers, chance-met, danced home together. Strange to say, I found nothing sinful in it—only romance. I had ceased to look beyond the immediate sensation.
“Poor boy! You not find ’er?”
I looked up; my lady of the jonquils was leaning over my shoulder.
“No.”
“Eh bien, peut-être, you find her to-morrow, hein! If not, zere are ozers.” She waved her small gloved hands in a circle, bringing them back to include herself. She looked a good little soul, standing there so bravely disguising her weariness.
“Tired?”
“It ees nozing.”
“Won’t you join me?”
Immediately we were in sympathy. She owned me with a playfulness which had no hint of indelicacy. Drawing off her gloves, she rested her chin on her knitted fingers and regarded me laughingly with her world-wise eyes. She was scarcely more than half my years, I suppose.
“Zere are ozers,” she repeated.
“Not for me,” I said; “not to-night.”
“Dieu! You are funny, my friend. You lofe like zat?” The waiter hovered nearer, flirting his napkin across the marble-tables.
I beckoned; he dashed up like a hen to which I had scattered grain.
“Cro?te au pot?”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
“Filet aux truffes.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
“Salade romaine.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
“Vouvray.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
I turned to her. She had corn-flower eyes like Kitty—I had been wondering of whom I was reminded. I passed her my cigarette-case. She chose one fastidiously and tilted it between her lips with the smile of a gamine.
While we ate neither of us said much—she was hungry; but, as we sipped our coffee and the pile of cigarette ends grew, I found myself telling her—asking her if a man had refused her once, whether she could ever again love him.
“If he haf a great heart, oui. If he haf not——” She threw her cigarette away. “C’est la vie! Quoi?” She snapped her fingers and leant over and took my hand, this gay little Montmartroise. “But you haf; zo courage, my friend.”
I did not want to be left alone; she knew it. A fiacre, with a battered race-horse propped between the shafts, had drawn up against the curb. On the box a red-faced cocher nodded. We climbed in and she nestled beside me. The cocher looked across his shoulder, asking where to drive. “Straight on,” I told him.
We crawled away down “the mountain”; as we went, she sang contentedly just above her breath. When we reached the Madeleine the cocher halted, inquiring gruffly whither he should drive. “Tout droit. Tout droit”; we both cried impatiently. So again we moved slowly forward. There was no doubt in the man’s mind that we were mad.
She drew closer to me and cuddled into my coat; the foolish prettiness of her dress was no protection against the chill night air. We lay back, her head resting on my shoulder, gazing up at the star-scattered sky. The asphalt surface of the boulevard, polished by petrol and rubber-tires to the dull brightness of steel, glimmered in a long line before us reflecting the arc-lamps like a smooth waterway—like a slow canal in ancient Venice.
Where we went I do not know; I did not care to notice. The creaking fiacre had become a gondola and it was Fiesole who leant against me. Sometimes the cocher drew up to light a cigarette and to glance suspiciously down upon us. Then I was brought back to reality. We circled the Bastille and prowled through the Quartier Latin, where the night was not so late. We crossed the river once more and crept along the Quai des Tuileries; then again we climbed “the mountain” and plunged into the grimy purlieus of Les Halles. Market-carts were already creaking, in from the country with swinging lamps. Wagons piled high with vegetables, loomed mountainous under eaves of houses. From the market came grumbling voices of men unloading, and the occasional squealing of a stallion.
The cocher wriggled on his box and confronted me fretfully. Before he could ask his question, “Sacré nom d’un chien!” I shouted fiercely, “Allez. Allez.” Meekly he jerked at the reins, sinking his head between his obedient shoulders.
I looked down at the tiny face beside me—the face of a white flower whose petals are folding. She had ceased her singing an hour ago. Feeling me stir, she struggled to open her eyes and slipped her small hand into mine. When I drew my arm tighter about her she sighed happily.
Above the tottering roofs of Paris the night grew haggard. One by one stars were snuffed out. Wisps of clouds drove across the moon like witches riding homeward. It was the hour when even Paris grows quiet. Ragpickers were slinking through the shadows, raking over barrels set out on the curb. Women, shuddering in bedraggled finery—queens of Montmartre once, perhaps, whose only weariness had been too many lovers—dragged themselves to some sheltered doorway, thankful for a bed in the gutter, if it were undisturbed. In boulevards for lengthy pauses ours was the only sound of traffic.
My head jerked nearer hers. Her breath was on my cheek; I could feel the twitching of her supple body. Poor little lady of the jonquils—of what was she dreaming? What had she expected from me? She would tell often of this eccentric night and no one would credit her story.
When I awoke she was still sleeping. A spring breeze ruffled the trees; sparrows were chirping; a golden morning sparkled across the waters of the Seine. The sun, still ruddy from his rising, stood magnificently young among the chimney-pots, trailing his gleaming mantle beneath the bridges.
The battered race-horse had stumbled with us just beyond the Louvre and stood with his head sagging between his knees, his body lurching forward. The reins had fallen from the cocher’s hands; his thick neck was deep in his collar; and his face looked strangled. From across the road a waiter scattered sand between his newly set out tables and watched us with amused curiosity.
My body was cramped. As I attempted to uncrook my legs, my companion opened her eyes and stared at me in amazed confusion. She yawned and sat up laughing, patting her mouth. “Oh, la, la—-. Bonjour, toi!”
We examined ourselves—I in my crumpled evening-dress, and she in her flimsy gown and decorative high-heeled shoes. I had a glimpse of my face in imagination—pale and donnish; the very last face for such a situation. How ill-assorted! Then I laughed too; the cocher lumbered round on his box and burst into a hoarse guffaw at sight of us. We all laughed together, and the waiter ceased sanding his floor to laugh with us.
We left the racer to his well-earned rest and all three went across to the café. As we soaked bread in our bowls of coffee and plied our spoons, we chatted merrily like good comrades. Then we parted with the cocher, leaving him agreeably surprised, and sauntered down the Quai where workmen in blue blouses, hurrying from across the bridges, found time to nudge one another knowingly and to smile into our eyes with a glad intimacy which was not at all offensive.
In a narrow street where “the mountain” commenced, she halted and placed both her hands on my shoulders, tiptoeing against me.
“One ’as to go ’ome sometime, mon ami.” She was determined to be a sportsman to the end. “But remember, mon petit, if you do not find ’er, zere are ozers.”
I put my hand into my pocket. She examined what I gave her. “Mais, non!” she exclaimed, flushing.
“But yes—for remembrance.”
She tilted up her face and her happy eyes clouded; the tired cheeks turned whiter and the painted lips quivered. “Little one, keess me.”
So I parted from this chance-met waif with her brave and generous heart—— And this was what my madness and Fiesole had taught me. For the time the memory of Vi was entirely banished from my thoughts.
At my hotel I found no message. But it was still early; she might not have received my card and, as yet, did not know my address. The intoxication of the previous night still flicked my spirit into optimism—perhaps she would answer me in person.
Then came the reaction—the truer judgment. If she had desired to see me, she could have sent round word to my box at the theatre. After all, why should she desire to see me? She was famous and had made her world without me. When we parted, I had left her with a memory so humiliating that it must scorch her even now. These were things which a woman finds it difficult to forgive—impossible to forget. Still, there was curiosity—a woman’s curiosity! She might resist it for a time, tantalizing both me and herself; but she would have to see me presently, if only to wound me.
I scarcely stirred from my hotel, afraid lest I should miss her. By the time evening fell, I had come to a new conclusion—that the ironical scoundrel, who had so coolly pocketed my money, had destroyed my card. To make sure of reaching her, I wrote a letter to the theatre, saying many true things foolishly. Then, in sheer restlessness, I hurried to the boulevard in which her theatre was situated, hoping to get a glimpse of her either coming or going.
I could not bring myself to enter—it was too horrible and beautiful—she was dancing away her womanhood in there. Shockingly fascinated as I had been by the spectacle, I felt a lover’s jealousy that strangers should watch it.
I hated the gay crowds seething in to find enjoyment in my shame and her tragedy. They were jesters at something sacred.
I paced the boulevard with clenched hands and snapping nerves; I could not go far away from her, and I could not go to her. Within my brain she was always dancing, dancing, and the jaded eyes of Paris grew young with greed of her sensational perfection. I longed to go to her, to protect her, to save her from herself. She needed me, though she would scorn the idea if I told her. If she would but allow it, I would carry her away from these hectic nights and this subtle, soul-destroying sensualism. Her shame was my doing; I would give all my life to make amends to her.
But she gave me no sign that she had either seen or heard from me. What else could I expect? How could I explain my infatuation even to myself, let alone to her, as more than physical attraction? And was it more?... Once she had offered me far more than I now begged; I had churlishly refused it. How could I account to her for my altered valuation of her worth? She would not answer—I knew that now. I should have to compel her attention.
Next morning in reading the papers I came across her name frequently. She was the madcap darling of Paris; every edition contained some anecdote of La Fiesole and her erratic doings. One item captured my interest especially: there was a certain café in the Champs Elysées to which she went often after theatre hours. For the time being she had made it the most fashionable midnight resort in Paris.
That night, having bribed heavily for the privilege, I was seated at a table near the entrance. If she came, she could scarcely pass without seeing me. The place was an al fresco restaurant, gorgeously theatric. It stood in a garden, brilliantly romantic and insincere as a stage-setting. Overlooking the garden were white verandahs, creeper-covered and garish with hothouse flowers; throughout it were scattered kiosks and bowers in which the more secret of the diners sat. The plumed trees were knit together with ropes of lights, like pearl-necklaces which had been tossed into their branches casually. In bushes and hidden among blossoms, glow-worm illuminations twinkled, like faeries kindling and extinguishing their lamps. Everything was subdued and sensuous. Fountains played and splashed. Statues glimmered. A gipsy orchestra, fierce-looking and red-coated, clashed frenzied music, which sobbed away into dreamy waltzes and elusive snatches of melody. The effect was bizarre—artistically unreal and emotionally tropic.
Here one might experience a great passion which consumed by its panting brevity; everyone seemed present for the express purpose of realizing such a passion.
At tables seated in couples were extraordinary people, dressed to play their part in a dare-devil romance. Here were men who looked like Russian Archdukes, bearded, bloodless, and insolently languid. Sitting opposite them were voluptuous women, tragically exotic, dangerously coaxing, with the melodramatic appearance of scheming nihilists. They were reckless, these costly, slant-eyed odalisques—exiles from commonplace kindliness, born gamblers for the happiness they had thrown away and would never re-capture. There was the atmosphere of intrigue, of indiscreet liaison about almost every couple. They acted as though for one ecstatic moment the world was theirs. Their behavior was everything that is exaggerated, fond, undomestic, and arrogantly well-bred.
There was something lacking. As each new arrival entered, the slanted eyes of the women and the heavy eyes of the men were raised droopingly with an expression of furtive expectancy. They were a chorus assembled, waiting for the leading actor till the play should commence.
Low rippling laughter, spontaneously joyous, sounded. From the trellised entrance she emerged and halted, looking mock-bashful, taking in the effect she had created, spurning the gravel with her golden slipper. Her gown was of dull green satin, cut audaciously low in the back and neck, and slashed from the hem to expose her slim ankle and golden stocking. She wore no jewels, but between her breasts was a yellow rose, which drifted nodding on the whiteness of her bosom’ as she drew her breath. Her reddish gold hair was wrapped en bandeaux about her small pale ears and broad pale forehead. It shone metallic; its brightness dulled and quickened as she swayed her splendid body.
At her first appearance a muttering had arisen, gathering in volume. As she lifted her head and her green eyes flashed through her long, bronze lashes, we grew silent. It was as though a tamer had entered a cage of panthers and stood cowing them with her consciousness of power. Yes, she knew what they thought of her, and guessed what they admired in her. She surveyed us with quiet contempt. I felt that behind whatever she did or said there lay hidden a timid girlishness. She was still the old Fiesole, the happy companion who could tramp through rainstorms like a man. Her brave pagan purity these half-way decadents had not tarnished; by them it was unsuspected. I watched her tall, lithe figure; the neck so small that one could span it with a hand; the firm, high bosom, proud and virginal; the straight, frank brows, and the mouth so red and sweetly drooping. Other women looked decorative and tinsel beside her natural perfection.
My throat was parched. My eyes felt scalded. I was unnerved and a-tremble. Her beauty daunted as much as it challenged. What bond still existed between us that would draw her to me? She looked so remote, so hemmed in by the new personality she had developed.
Her green eyes swept the garden, probing its secret shadows. For whom was she looking? They rested on mine, absorbed me—then fell away without recognition. I had risen in my place, with head bent forward, ready to go to her at the least sign of friendship. I remained standing and staring.
She turned to one of her companions and whispered something, at which they both laughed. He was a tall poetic-looking man, slight of hip, blue-eyed, and handsome. His hair was wavy and yellow, his face bearded, and his skin pale with excess. There were other men with her, Monsieur Georges among others; but on the poet alone she lavished her attention. She gave him her arm and came towards me with the undulating stride that I knew so well. For a second I believed she was going to acknowledge me; she went by so closely that her gown trailed across my feet and brushed my hands. It was cruelly intended. The play had opened.
The table that had been reserved for her was next to mine, partly hidden from the public gaze by bushes; as I watched, I caught glimpses of her profile, and could always hear the lazy murmur of her voice and occasionally fragments of what was said. I followed her foreign gestures, her tricks of personality—all of them adorably familiar: the way she shifted her eyebrows in listening, sunk her chin between her breasts when she was serious, and clapped her hands in excitement. She was as simple as a child—in her heart she had not altered. Even the way in which she made me suffer what she had suffered was childish. This pretending not to know me was so transparent. There were other and more subtle methods by which she could have taken her revenge.
I was not the only man who attempted to spy on her; there might have been no other woman present. Languid faces scattered throughout the garden took on a new sharpness. They turned and looked down from balconies on La Fiesole, eager to catch glimpses of her. To their women-companions men listened with a bored pretense of attention. Perhaps it was because of this, in an effort to focus interest on themselves, that the women, as by a concerted plan, became more animated.
Suddenly a girl in scarlet leapt upon a table and commenced to dance with flashing eyes and whirling skirts. I heard someone say that she was a gipsy and that her brother was first-violinist in the orchestra. The music mounted up, wild and unrestrained; the small feet beat faster; the actions became more frenzied. She turned away from her comrade and bent back double, peering into his eyes; she flung herself from him, chaffing him with grim endearments; she feigned to become furious; then she threw herself across his knees exhausted, writhing her arms about his neck. Men eyed her with studied carelessness. She had done it before and they had applauded. They could see her any night. They could not always feast their eyes on La Fiesole.
Saturnalia broke loose. Girl after girl rose upon chair or table, or went swaying through the magic garden like a frail leaf harried by a storm. They danced singly, they danced together, going through grotesque contortions, beckoning lovers with their eyes and gestures.
And I watched Fiesole through the bushes. She was not so indifferent to me as she pretended. She was playacting to rouse my jealousy; she was purposely scourging me into madness. I alone of the public was sufficiently near to see clearly what she was doing. She was luring her poet to recklessness, taking no notice of what was in process about her. Did I catch her eye, she looked past me without recognition. But him she enticed by her gentleness. The man was drunk with her favor and beauty. He trembled to put the thoughts of a lover into action; she challenged him with her eyes, warning him from her and beckoning him to her.
Stooping over her, so low that his lips were in her hair, he whispered; but she shook her head. She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder, as though to steady him and to soften the unkindness of her refusal. Quickly he caught it in his own and bent over it, running his lips along her fingers and up her arm’s smooth curves. She looked down on him unmoved, disdainful at his breach of manners, yet superbly amorous. Clutching her hotly to him, he kissed her on the throat.
Blind anger shook me—lust for violence such as I had never felt. Breaking into the toy arbor where they sat, I remember standing over him, dragging him backward by the collar, so that his face glared up at mine empurpled. His friends rushed forward, beating me about the head and shoulders, tearing at my hands, trying to make me release my hold.
Fiesole had risen like a fury. The table went down with a crash. Her face was deadly pale and her green eyes blazed with indignation. Her hands were clenched as if she also were about to strike me. And I was pouring out a torrent of words, telling her swiftly how I loved her and all that she had made me suffer.
Her rage died away as she listened and her expression became inscrutable. Quickly she darted back her head, laughing without happiness, mockingly. “You are very English, my friend. If you make so much noise, these messieurs will think we are married.”
I caught her by the wrists, so that she backed away from me. “I wish to God we were.”
“Oh, la, la, la!”
She went off into a peal of merriment, pointing her finger at me. The crowd gathered round us uncertain, asking in half-a-dozen languages what had been the provocation and what we were saying.
Her look changed. It was as though a mask had fallen. The temptress and witch were gone. I seemed to see in her melancholy eyes all the longing for tenderness and loyalty that I thought had been killed years ago in Venice.
She advanced her face to mine and stared at me timidly, as though fearful she had been mistaken.
“Take me out of this,” she whispered hoarsely.
Her companions tried to intercept us, gesticulating and protesting. She brushed them aside, explaining that I was not myself and did not know what I was doing. For her sake they let me go without further molestation.
We passed out, leaving them gaping after us. I helped her into her furs and took my place beside her in the coupé. Before we were out of earshot, the gipsy orchestra had swung into a new frenzy.
Once Vi had kept me from Fiesole; now Fiesole was taking me from Vi. And these two women who, through me, had influenced one another’s destinies, had never met. They were hostile types.
I was at a loss what to say to her. Words could not bridge the gulf of more than five years that separated us. Now that anger had subsided, my genius for self-ridicule was at work. What a fool I had made of myself; how supremely silly I must appear in her eyes! It would be in all the papers to-morrow. How would she like that? Where was she taking me and why? Had she come with me simply to get me out of a public place before I committed worse violence?
I pieced together phrases of apology and explanation, but remained tongue-tied. To express the emotions that stormed in my mind all words seemed insincere and inadequate. I was not sufficiently certain of her to venture either speech or action. I was fearful lest her mood might change to one of amusement. My nerves were on edge—I dared not risk that.
Noiseless as a ghost in a dream-world, the electric coupé drifted up the dully gleaming boulevard. I leant against the padded back and watched her. She sat erect, splendidly self-possessed, her profile framed in the carriage-window with the stealthy lights of Paris slipping by for background. Now she was no more than a blurred outline; now the acetylene-lamps of a swiftly moving car flashed on her like a search-light; now the twinkling incandescence of an illumined café flung jewels in her hair; now her face rested like sculptured ivory on the velvet blackness of the night. She was immobile; even the slender fingers clasped together in her lap never stirred. Our silence had lasted so long that it had ceased to be fragile; it rose between us, a wall of ice.
We drew up against the curb. I had but a vague idea of where we were—near the Bois, I conjectured. Tall houses stood in shuttered dumbness along one side; on the other, trees shrank beneath the primrose dusk of arc-lights. She stepped out, ignoring my proffered assistance. She crossed the pavement and tapped; as the door swung back I followed her under an archway into a dim courtyard. Having mounted several flights of stairs, she tapped again. To the sleepy maid who opened she whispered hurriedly. The maid discreetly fell behind.
We passed into a room delicately furnished. The floor was heavily carpeted in red. The walls, hung with etchings and landscapes, were paneled in white. Flowers stood about in bowls and slender vases; shaded lamps gave to the room a secret aspect. In the grate a fire of coals was burning and two deep chairs stood one on either side. The atmosphere was intensely and perishably feminine; it gave me the feeling of preparedness—as though I had been expected. Through tall windows the curious night stared in upon us.
Fiesole crossed, making no sound save the silken rustle of her dress, and drew the curtains close together. She turned, looking back at me side-long, at once amused and languid. Her coldness and aloofness had vanished. The sparkle of mischief fetched the gold from the depths of her green eyes. Her body became expressive and vibrant. Then I heard her sweet hoarse voice, with its quaintly foreign intonation. It reached me tauntingly, lazy with indifference, holding me at arm’s length. “Dear man, take a chair by the fire and behave yourself. Mon Dieu, but you were amusing to-night!”
She laughed softly at remembering and shook her cloak from her white shoulders. A strand of hair broke loose and fell coiling across her breast. She stepped to a mirror, turning her back on me; having twisted it into place, she remained smiling at her reflection, whistling beneath her breath.
Her gaiety cut like a lash across my mouth. I was painfully in earnest. She was treating the situation as an incident—a jest. To me it was a supreme moment—a turning-point: on what we should say to one another would depend the entire direction of both our lives. I was sorry for her beyond the power of words to express. The success and luxury of her way of living did not blind me to its hollowness and danger. Her frivolity left me affronted and fascinated. She roused in me all the unrestraint of the flesh; and yet I desired to worship her with my mind. I longed to carry her away from the fever and glare of streets to a place of quiet, where the world was blowy—where she might become what she had once been when I might have had her, genuine and fine. While these thoughts raced through my mind, the insistent question kept repeating itself, why had she brought me here to be alone with her at this late hour of the night?
Her eyes flashed out at me maddeningly from the mirror. They prompted to irretrievable folly. They called me to go to her, and to be unworthy of both her and myself. And I knew why: she wished me to say and do the things that were unforgivable that she might have excuse to scorn me, to fling me from her. Once it had been my Puritanism that had thrust us apart; it should not now be my sensualism. I would not let her make a hypocrite of me in my own eyes.
The seconds ticked out the silence. Her dress whispered. Her voluptuous white arms, uplifted and curved above her neck as she patted her hair, enhanced the perfect vase-like effect of her body. I would not go to her, I told myself; I would not go to her. I held myself rigid, distraught, and tense. The blood swelled out my throat and beat in my temples. She withdrew her hands. Wickedly, like a shower of largesse, the clustered glory of her hair rained from her head, catching her in a net of smoldering brightness.
She glanced with half-closed eyes across her shoulder and feigned astonishment at observing that I had remained standing.
“Still the same old idjut! Wanting something you’re afraid to have, and looking tragic.”
“Fiesole, girl, don’t you understand? It’s not that.”
My voice sounded odd and strangled. I had spoken scarcely above a whisper.
She swung about and surveyed me leisurely. There was a pout on her mouth like that of a naughty child. “You’re no longer amusing,” she faltered; “you grow tiresome. Why can’t you be sensible, and sit down? I want to hear all this that you’ve got to tell me.”
“You don’t make it easy.”
She shrugged her gleaming shoulders. “Why should I? You made a horrid row about something that was none of your concern. You nearly choked a friend of mine to death. You don’t expect me to say thank you, surely? I ought to punish you; instead, I bring you here. I wanted to have a look at you. Ah! but you were funny—so righteous and English! You made me laugh..... I can forgive anyone who does that.”
When I did not answer, she regarded me puzzled. Slowly her brilliant deviltry and merriment faded. The laughter sank to a whisper and ceased abruptly, frightened at itself. The red lips drooped and parted. Something of my own pinched earnestness was reflected in her expression—it was as though her soul unveiled itself. She stole across to me wonderingly, her beautiful arms stretched out. She rested the tips of her fingers tremulously on my shoulders.
“No, that’s not true. You were splendid—so different from the rest. I’m a beast. You made me ashamed of myself. That’s why I was angry; because you, who made me what I am, should accuse me.”
“Accuse you! God forbid!”
I made a movement to gather her to me, but she slipped past me and sank into a chair.
“Between us not that.” She caught her breath. “I hate you. I want to hate you. What else did you expect? But I can’t. I cannot. You won’t let me.”
“You ought to hate me. Call me what you like; it won’t be worse than I deserve. I was cruel and selfish. I see it now.”
She shook back her hair from her forehead and bent forward gazing into the fire, her elbows on her knees, her face cushioned in her hands. A sudden gravity and wistfulness had fallen on her. She was thinking, remembering, weighing me in the balance. I must not touch her—must not speak to her. If I showed any sign of passion, she would mistake it for pity either of her or of myself.
“I wanted to forget—to live you out of my life; but you’ve brought it all back—the old bitterness and heartache. You didn’t know what you did to me, Dante. You spared my body; you killed everything—everything else that was best. Look at me now.” She glanced down at the exotic daring of her appearance:—the golden stocking that was revealed from ankle to knee by the narrow slash in the skirt; the splendid extravagant display of arms, throat, and breast that swelled up riotously, uninterrupted, snowy and amorous from the sheathlike dress—a flashing blade half-withdrawn from its scabbard.
“I’m a devil. You made me that, you virgin man. No, don’t speak—— I thought I should have died of shame after I left you. I could have killed you. You don’t know how a woman feels when she’s wanted a man with her whole soul and body, and she knows that she’s beautiful; and he’s flung her from him when she’s offered herself, as though she were worthless. ‘He didn’t care,’ I said, ‘so nobody’ll ever care.’—— And then I met Antoine Georges, who had known my father. And I did what you’ve seen and I’ve won success. When I saw you the other night I wanted to make you suffer. I’ve often pictured how I would torture you if ever you should come back—how I’d destroy you—how I’d make you go through the same hell. And now you’ve come, and I can’t do it.—— I may change my mind presently. You’d better go while I let you.”
“I’m never going.”
She turned her head, scrutinizing my face stealthily from between her hands.
“Don’t be a fool. What about her?”
“There’s no one else. There never will be.”
She gasped. “You didn’t marry her?”
The strained look in her face relaxed. She laughed softly to herself; why she laughed I could not guess. It was not the laughter which follows suspense, but the laughter of one who courts danger. It was as though she parted her hair into sheaves and glanced out crying, “I am Eve, the long desired.”
Reaching over to the table she picked out a cigarette. When it was alight, she snuggled down into the chair, kicking off her little gold shoes and resting her feet on the fender. She eyed me dreamily.
“Then you made me suffer all that for nothing? You good men can be cruel.—— Tell me.”
Briefly I told her of my useless visit to Sheba; and why I left; and why I was still unmarried. I kept nothing back in my self-scorn and desire to be honest.
She slipped her feet up and down the gleaming rail as she listened, lying deep in cushions, her cigarette tilted in her mouth, her hands clasped behind her head. When I ended, she frowned at me whimsically from beneath her drawn brows.
“But, you impracticable person, you might have foreseen all that. You didn’t need to cross the Atlantic to discover that a husband doesn’t let his wife be taken from him without making trouble.—— So you wouldn’t pay the price to get her! You’re a rotten reckoner, old boy, for a man who counts the cost of everything ahead.”
Her eye-lids flickered as her deep voice droned the words out.
“You should put all that in the past tense, Fiesole. I’m not counting anything to-night, penalties or pleasures. I’m just a man who’s wakened. I want something madly. Whatever it costs me or anybody else, I intend to get it.”
“You always wanted what you couldn’t have.”
She spoke lazily, blowing smoke-rings into the air, following them with her eyes and watching how they broke before they reached the ceiling. She appeared untouched by my emotion, as though nothing had been said that intimately concerned herself. She let her gaze wander, extending her lithe sweet length luxuriously, as though she had nothing to fear from my passion. I was crazed with desire, for all that I kept my tones quiet and steady. She maddened me with her indifference. It was all pretense—I knew it. She was playing a part with me, courting the inevitable, tempting me to reveal my hidden self. I watched her with clenched hands—suffering, yet finding fierce joy in the wonderful pride of her body. I would not have had her otherwise; the colder she appeared, the more I coveted her. I could have had her once for my wife, I reflected, had I chosen. I had tormented her; it was just that I should suffer.
The reticence of years fell away from me. I was kneeling at her side, kissing her unshod feet, her hands, her hair. Words tumbled from my lips, broken and unconsidered. I called her by foolish names such as are only used between lovers. I poured my heart out, speaking of the past and the future. I cursed myself, all the time repeating how I worshiped her—how I had loved her from a boy, but had come to know it only now.
And she gave no sign of response: neither forbidding, nor assenting; letting me have my way with her without acknowledging my presence; a quiet smile playing round her lips; as completely mistress of herself as is a statue.
I trembled into silence. She drooped forward, bending over me, just as she had done years ago in her uncle’s summer-house.
“My dear, there are things that are offered only once. Five years ago I asked you for all that you are now asking. You were afraid of the price, as you were with the other woman. You refused me.”
“But it’s marriage I’m asking.”
“Ah! Then I asked for less.—— I’m sorry. You ought to have gone when I told you. I felt that I should have to wound you.”
Her gentle dignity stung me into strength. My turbulence died down. As I knelt, I flung my arms around her body and drew her to me. She struggled to draw back, but I held her so closely that my lips were almost on her mouth.
“Listen, Fiesole, I’m unfair and I mean to be unfair. I was a brute to you once when I meant only to be honorable. To-night I’m not caring what I am. You despise me—you can go on despising me, but I’ll wear you out. I’ll make you come to love me even against your will. You’ll need me some day; I shall wait for that. I want to spend all my life for you; it’s the only thing I ask of life now. Wherever you go I shall follow you.”
I stopped, panting for breath. She had ceased to struggle. Her eyes were wide; her face hovered pale above me; she stared down at me powerless, yet with reckless challenge, breathing upon my mouth.
“You’re a rotter to come back like this,” she said hotly, “just when I was beginning to be happy. When you speak of marriage, you don’t know what you’re saying. You spoilt all that for me years ago at Venice. D’you think I’ll ever believe again in the honor and goodness of a man? You’ve come too late. Five years changes people. I’m a different woman now—not at all what you imagine.”
“You can be any kind of woman you choose, but you’re the woman I’m going to marry.”
“Then you haven’t heard what people say about me?”
“And I don’t care.”
“They say I’ve had lovers.”
“I don’t believe them.”
“What if I should tell you that I have?”
“I shouldn’t believe you.”
“You’d prefer to think that I’d lied to you rather than that I’d told you the truth?”
“It would make no difference. You’ve always loved me. You love me now. I know that you are pure.”
“And you would never doubt it? Never doubt it of a woman who dances every night, as I do, before the eyes of Paris?”
“Never.”
She gazed at me curiously, with tenderness and intentness. Her bosom shuddered; I saw the sob rising in her throat. When she spoke, the words came slowly; her eyes were misted over; she trembled as I clasped her.
“D’you know, I believe you’re the only living man who’d be fool enough to say that?”
“I was always a fool, Fiesole.”
I thought she would have kissed me, her lips came so near to mine. “But a dear fool, sometimes,” she whispered hoarsely; “a fool who always comes too late or too early—but a fool to the end.”
She stood up and my arms slipped down to her knees as I held her.
She laughed brokenly. “You nearly made me serious. It won’t do to be serious at three o’clock in the morning.”
“I won’t go till you’ve promised. Promise,” I urged.
She yawned. “I’m sleepy. You’ve worn me out.”
“But answer me before I go.”
She smiled down at me mockingly, ruffling my hair. “What a hurry he’s in after all these years. Don’t you ever go to bed?”
“Tell me to-night. I must know. I can’t bear the suspense.”
“I put up with it for five years.—— Well, if you won’t go home like a good boy, you won’t. There’s a couch over there.”
She broke from me, leaving me kneeling with my arms empty. As the door opened into the room beyond I had a glimpse of the curtained bed.
I drew my chair closer to the dying fire. Behind the wall I could hear her steps moving up and down as she undressed. Now and then they paused; she was listening for the sound of my departure, uncertain, perhaps, whether I was still there. Some time had elapsed when the door opened gently. I twisted round. Her room was in darkness. She was standing on the threshold. Her feet were bare; she was clad in a white night-robe; across each shoulder, almost to her knees, hung down the red-gold ropes of her braided hair.
“I meant what I said. I’m not going till you tell me.”
Her green eyes met mine roguishly. “A persistent fool to-night,” she said.
As the door was closing I threw after her, “That morning in Venice.... I was going to have asked you to marry me; you were gone....”
Left alone with the last flame flickering in the grate, I watched the little gold shoes.
The sun was streaming in across my shoulder. Someone had pulled back the curtains. I was stiff and stupid from my cramped position. Despite the morning, the electric-lights were still burning in the room; I blinked down at myself and was astonished to find that I was in evening-dress. As I eased myself up, something dropped to the floor—the gold shoes of Fiesole.
From behind two warm arms fastened themselves about my neck, making me prisoner.
“You’re up early, Dante C. You’re a great, stupid juggins to sit up all night and spoil your temper, just when I want you to be more than ordinarily pleasant.”
“My temper’s not spoilt. Don’t worry.”
“I take your word for it. I’ve got a secret to tell you. I’m going on the spree to-day—going to be immensely happy. I want you to help. If you’ve any of your tiresome scruples left over, you’d best chuck ’em; or I’ll find someone else.”
“Bit early, isn’t it, to tackle a chap? I’m too stupid to know what you mean. But I’m game. How long’s this spree to last?”
“Till it ends.”
“Then it’ll last forever, so long as it’s just you and me.”
She dug the point of her chin into my shoulder. Glancing sideways, I caught the impish sparkle of her eyes and the glow of her cheeks, flushed with health and excitement.
“Perhaps you’d like to kiss me,” she whispered, bringing her demure red lips on a level with my mouth.
“And now, perhaps you’d like to kiss me,” I suggested.
When I attempted to rise, she restrained me. “Not till I’ve made my bargain and you’ve agreed to my terms. I haven’t made up my mind about you, so you needn’t start talking marriage. Don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Dannie. So you’re to come with me wherever I choose till I’m tired—and you’re to ask no questions. Understand?”
“You never will be tired. I’m coming with you always.”
“And you’ll ask no questions?”
“No more than I can help.”
She released me. I stood up and surveyed my crumpled shirt-front; I was so obviously a reveler who had outstayed discretion. She went off into peals of laughter, laughing all over, showing her small white teeth, and clapping her hands. “What have I done to you? You’re a bottle of champagne; I’ve pulled the cork out. I’ll never get you all back.”
I took her hands in mine, folding them together, and drew her to me. “You’ll never get any of me back. You’ve made me love you. That’s what you’ve done, you adorable witch-woman.”
“Oh, la, la! Don’t talk like that.”
“Can’t help it. Don’t want to help it. You’ve made me mad.”
“Poor old Dannie! Horrid of me, wasn’t it?”
A tap at the door; the maid entered, bringing in rolls and coffee. I started away from Fiesole, but she held me. “You can’t shock Marie; she’s hardened; she’s heard all about you, and some pretty bad things she’s heard.”
Over her coffee she grew thoughtful.
“What’s the matter?”
“You are.”
“Already?”
“How can I walk through Paris with a man in evening dress at ten in the morning?”
“How d’you want me dressed?”
“In something gay. Light tweeds, brown shoes, and a gray felt hat.”
“Got ’em all at my hotel. I’ll slip back.”
She slanted her eyes at me. “Slip back to London, perhaps! No, Dannie, I don’t trust you yet. I don’t intend to lose you.”
She rose from the table and vanished into her bedroom. Marie followed. Through the partly closed door the excited titter of their whispered conversation reached me, scraps of nervously spoken French, and the opening and shutting of drawers and cupboards.
When she re-appeared she was clad in a mole-colored suit of corduroy velvet, gathered in at the waist and close-fitting to her modish figure. The tube-skirt hung short to her ankles and was trimmed about with fur. The suède shoes, open-work stockings, and large muff were to match. Nestling close to her auburn hair was a huzzar cap of ermine. She halted in the sunlight, eyeing me with the naughty modesty of a coquette. She looked oddly young and distinguished on this rare spring morning. There never was such a woman for arranging her temperament to suit her dress. Her hectic manner of high spirits was abandoned; she seemed almost shy as she raised her muff to her lips and watched me, while I took in the effect.
“So I meet with your approval?”
Passing down the stairs, she hugged my arm impulsively—a trick which brought memories of Ruthita. “It’s awfully jolly to be loved—don’t you think so?”
Before the door a powerful two-seated car was standing. The chauffeur stepped out; Fiesole took his place at the wheel. As we drove down the boulevards she was recognized; people on the pavements paused to gaze back; men raised their hats and threw glances of inquiry at one another as to the identity of her strangely attired companion. We drew up at my hotel in the Rue St. Honoré.
“I give you fifteen minutes. Is that sufficient? Make yourself gay. Don’t forget, a tweed suit, brown shoes, a gray felt hat—oh, and a red tie if you’ve got one. I couldn’t endure anything black.”
I found her with her eager face turned towards the doorway, watching impatiently for me.
“A good beginning—ready to the second. Jump in. We’re off to somewhere where no one’ll know anything about us. Let’s see if we can’t lose ourselves.”
She swung the car round and away we snorted, through the Place de la Concorde blanched in sunlight, up the Champs Elysées where sunlight spattered against blossoming trees and lay in pools on the turf. The streets were animated with little children, women in bright dresses, dashing cars and carriages. Paris gleamed white and green and golden. Overhead the sky foamed and bubbled, yawning into blue and primrose gulleys, trampled by stampeding clouds.
At the Place de l’Etoile the car drew up sharply and skidded; circled like a hound picking up the scent; then darted swiftly away to the Bois, where fashionables already loitered and acacias trembled murmurously.
Fiesole was radiant with impatience. A goddess of speed, she bent above the wheel, casting her eyes along the road ahead. Did a gap occur in the traffic, she flung the car forward, driving recklessly, yet always with calculated precision. I marveled at her nerve and the silent power that lay hidden in her thin, fine hands.
As we shot the bridge at St. Cloud the pace quickened. It was as though she shook Paris from her skirts and ran panting to meet wider stretches of wind-bleached country. I had one vivid glimpse of the ribbon of blue river, boat-dotted, winding through young green of woodlands; then cities and sophistication, and all things save Fiesole, myself, and the future were at an end.
Soon the white road curved uninterrupted before us, a streak between pollarded trees and blown meadows. Over the horizon came bounding hills and church-spires, villages and rivers; as they came near to us they halted, like shy deer, for a second; when we drew level, they fled. It was as though we were stationary and the world was rushing past us.
The wind of our going brought color to her cheeks and fluttered out her hair. Her eyes were starry, fixed on the distance as she skirted the rim of eternity in her daring. Should an axle break or a tire burst, all this fire of youth would be extinguished forever. I glanced at the speedometer; it quivered from seventy to eighty, to eighty-five kilometers, and there it hovered.
The throb of the engine seemed the throb of my passion. We were traveling too fast for talking. She did not want to talk; she was escaping from something, memories, perhaps—hers and mine. In her modern way she was expressing what I had always felt: the tedium of captivity, sameness, and disappointment—the need for the unwalled garden, where barriers of obedience and duty are broken down.
At Evreux we halted for petrol. I proposed déjeuner, she shook her head naughtily.
“Where are we going?”
“Over there, to the West.”
“Any particular spot in the West?”
“You’ll see presently.”
“How about the theatre?”
“Time enough,” she said.
She spoke breathlessly, remaining at the wheel while the man was filling the tank. Somehow it seemed to me that the town had come between us; we understood one another better when the garden of the world was flying past us.
Before the man was paid, she had turned on the power. As we lunged forward, he jumped aside and I flung the money out. Our wild ride towards the Eden of the forbidden future recommenced.
Presently, without turning her head, she broke the silence. “Slip your arm round me, old boy; my back grows tired.”
I placed my arm about the slender, upright figure and slid my shoulder behind her, so she leant against me.
“What’s the idea, Fiesole? Paolo and Francesca?”
“And Adam and Eve, if you like; and Dan Leno and Herbert Campbell; and Joseph Parker and Jane Cake-bread. Anything, so long as we keep going.”
When I attempted to speak again, she turned on more power and threw me a smile which was a threat.
I clasped her closer. “Little devil! I’ll keep quiet. You needn’t do that.”
But though I kept quiet my heart beat madly. The panorama of change sweeping by, with her face the one thing constant, quickened and emphasized my need of her more than any spoken tenderness. Our thoughts merged and interchanged with a subtlety that speech could never have accomplished. The pressure of her body, the tantalizing joy of her nearness and forbiddenness, the imminence of death, the law of silence—these summed up in a moment’s experience the entire philosophy of love, and of life itself.
I began to understand her meaning, her language; she was temporizing as I had temporized at Venice; but instead of going away from me, she was fleeing with me from circumstance. She was telling me of her woman’s pride—her difficulty to make herself attainable after what had happened. She loved me and she hated me. She drew me to her and she thrust me from her. She could not forget and she dreaded to remember. And she said all this when, in escaping, she took me with her.
Now I saw nothing of the hurrying landscape; I watched her. I wrote all her beauty on the tablets of my mind—nothing should be unremembered: the way her curls crept from under her cap and fluttered about her temples; the clear pallor of her forehead; the firm, broad brows; the quiet challenge of her deep-lashed eyes; how her red mouth pouted and her head leant forward from her frail white neck, like a flower from its stalk, in a kind of listening expectancy. And I observed the tender swelling of her breasts, high and proud, yet humble for maternity; and the pliant strength of her supple body; and her long clean limbs; and the delicately modeled feet and ankles, which shot out from beneath her fur-trimmed skirt—the feet of a dancer, graceful and fragile as violins.
I was mad. I wanted her. No matter how she came to me, I wanted her. I could not bear the thought that we should ever be separated. She was so intensely mine at this present; and yet, though she was mine, I was insanely jealous to preserve her.
With the long fascination of watching her I bent slowly forward. The action was instinctive, uncalculated. How long I took in approaching her, I cannot tell. I was anxious to last out the joy of anticipation; I was not conscious of motion. My lips touched hers. Her hold on the wheel relaxed. Her eyes met mine. The car swerved, hung upon the edge of the road, ran along it balancing; then bounded back into the straight white line.
I was so frenzied that I did not care. She had thought to hold me prisoner by her speed; I would overcome her with defiance. I kissed her again, holding her to me. She kept her eyes on the distance now, but her mouth smiled tenderly.
“That was foolish,” she said.
I raised my voice to reach her above the moaning of the engine. “The whole thing’s foolish.”
She broke into wild laughter. “That’s why I like it, like you, like myself.”
We hovered on the brim of a valley; then commenced to sink as though the earth had given way beneath us. Far below, as far as eye could reach, were orchards smoking with white blossom. Through the heart of the valley a river ran; standing on its puny banks was a gray old town, blinking in the wind and sun like a spectacled grandmother who had nodded to sleep, and wakened bewildered to find spring rioting round her.
“Where is it?”
“Lisieux, unless I’m mistaken.”
“Then you know where we’re going?”
“More or less.”
We pulled up in a drowsy, sun-drenched market-place outside a sleepy café. At tables on the pavement, with hands in their blouses and legs sprawled out, sat a few artisans, eyeing their absinthe. Houses tottered and sagged from extreme old age. Across the way a cathedral, scarred by time and chapped by weather, raised its crumbling sculptured towers against the clouds.
She took my hand as she stepped out. “You nearly did for us just now.”
“Who cares?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “All Paris cares. I’m not anxious to be dead; when I am, I’d like to look pretty.”
When we had seated ourselves, she took out her mirror and commenced tidying her hair and brushing the dust from her brows. There was nothing to be had, the waiter informed us, but pot au feu; déjeuner was over. So I ordered pot au feu, red wine and an omelet.
As she replaced her mirror in her muff, she looked up brilliantly. “You know, I am pretty.”
She was being watched. The dull eyes of the absinthe-drinkers had become alert. Tradesmen had come out of their shops and stared at her across the square. Some of the bolder strolled into the café and seated themselves close to her. They were paying the unabashed homage that a Frenchman always pays to feminine beauty.
I lowered my voice to a whisper; my throat was parched with dust. “This can’t go on.”
She laughed with her eyes. “It can go on as long as there’s any petrol left, and as long as you don’t try to kiss me when I’m speeding.”
“That’s not what I meant; you know it.”
“What then? The same old thing—marriage?”
I ignored her flippancy. “You’ll be turning back directly, and when you get to Paris, you won’t be like you are now. You’ll be La Fiesole and to-night you’ll be dancing with them all watching. I can’t bear it.”
“I shan’t.”
I leant eagerly forward, but she drew away from me.
“You’re not going back? You’ve given up the theatre?”
She held me in suspense, letting her eyes wander as though she had not heard. Slowly she turned, with that lazy, taunting smile of hers. “Damn the theatre,” she said quietly; “I’m going on with you to the end.”
“And the end’s marriage?”
“Who can tell? Now don’t be a rotter. You’re spoiling everything. Let’s talk of something else.”
When we climbed into the car, “You drive,” she said.
“But to where?”
“That’s my secret. Straight on. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
We were hardly out of the valley before her eyes had closed and her head was nodding against my shoulder. I drove gently, fearing to disturb her. From time to time I looked down at the white slant of her throat, the shadows beneath her lashes, and the almost childish droop of her mouth. How the self she kept hidden revealed itself! Her face was that of a Madonna, for whom the cross was yet remote and the happiness near at hand—and both were certain. What different versions she gave me of herself! Once a sickening fear shook me like a leaf. I slowed the car to a halt, and listened for her breath. In that moment I suffered all the agony of loss that must some time accompany the actuality. One day, sooner or later, I told myself, this thing I had dreaded would occur. How much time was left to us to find life beautiful between then and now?
On the bare Normandy uplands, between tilled fields and driving clouds, I waited for her to waken. The air was growing chill; I drew my coat round her. I felt again, in a new and better way, that sense of nearness and forbiddenness which had exhilarated me to the point of delirium on the madcap journey down from Paris. I looked ahead into the pale distance, where the notched horizon bound the earth with a silver band ... and I wondered where she was taking me, and what lay at the end. She might fight against it—she would fight against it; but the end should be marriage. I would watch over her always as I was watching now.
She stirred; her eye-lids fluttered. She stared up at me for a moment with undisguised affection; then the fear of tenderness returned. She pulled herself together, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes and yawning.
“Gee up, old hoss. This ain’t a bloomin’ cab-stand. You’re not home yet.”
“You fell asleep, my dear, so I waited for you.”
“Well, I shan’t pay you,” she laughed; “it’s not fair. Pray what did you think you were doing?”
“Enjoying myself.”
“There’s the difference; you like to crawl, I like to hurtle. You’re a tortoise; I’m a razzle-dazzle. We’re an ill-matched pair. Living in Pope Lane has made you pontifical. Oh, Dannie, in ten years your tummy’ll be bulgy and your head’ll be bald. Pope Lane’ll have done it. I know what I’ve always missed about you now.”
“Something horrid? Let’s have it.”
“A cowl. You ought to have been a monk in Florence, painting naked angels in impossible meadows.”
“So kind of you. Religion mixed with impropriety! If there was someone to relieve me of my conscience, it wouldn’t be half bad. But I don’t live at Pope Lane any longer. You have the honor of sitting beside Sir Dante Cardover of Woadley Hall, Ransby, of which, you little wretch, you are soon to be mistress.”
“That so? Sorry I spoke. Jump out and crank up the engine. It’s coming on again—you’re going to have the sentimentals, and you’re going to have ’em bad.”
“I’ve known you sentimental, Fiesole.”
Her lips trembled, and her body stiffened. “And you punished me for it.”
“You have a woman’s memory.”
“Odd, seeing I’m a woman. Who’s going to crank that engine? Am I, or are you?”
We swung on through the bare bleak country with masked faces. She sat a little apart from me, her knees crossed and her hands clasped about them. Did I glance at her, she turned petulantly in the opposite direction. I cursed myself. I was almost angry with her. What was her plan? Had she given me the privileges of dearness to her simply that she might thwart and taunt me? How could I teach her to forget? How could I teach myself to forget? At the back of my mind I loved her the more because of her perversity.
We came to a cross-road. She touched me on the arm; we swerved into it. Far down the white stretch I saw a speck, which resolved itself into a man and woman, traveling away from us with their backs towards us. The man wore the blue blouse and wide, baggy trousers of a peasant; his feet were shod in sabots. The woman was clad in a coarse, loose dress, like a sack drawn over her and tied about the middle; it was neutral in tone, being aged Ly weather. Her figure was shapeless—almost animal in its ponderous patience and breadth. Her hair was flaxen from exposure. They plodded through the bleak expanse with heads bowed, bodies huddled, and arms encircling. Every few paces they halted; we saw the gleam of their faces as they clung lip to lip in hasty ecstasy.
The wind was blowing from them towards us; they were unaware of us. I had my hand on the horn, when Fiesole clutched me.
“Don’t. They’ve nothing in the world but this moment. God knows what lies before them!”
We followed them at a distance. The symbolism of their silent figures awed us: overhead, the soundless battle of high-flying clouds; beneath, the gray vacancy with springtime stirring; around, the dun, unheeding earth; through the bareness the white road sweeping on unhurrying toward the land of sunsets; traveling along it a man and woman, for the time forgetful of their poverty, the focus-point of responsive passion. They had nothing but this moment.
“And what have we?” I questioned.
She crouched beside me; her soft arm stole about my neck. “Dearest, forgive me,” she murmured.
Her eyes were blinded; my lips against her cheek were salt. She clung to me desperately, as though a hand pressed on her shoulder to jerk her from me—Vi’s hand.
Where a rutted lane sloped down to a wooded hollow, the lovers turned. Among pollarded trees we lost them. They would never know that we had watched them. So they vanished out of our lives, walking hand-in-hand toward child-bearing and the inevitable separation of death that lurked for them at some hidden cross-road. We, equally unknowing, to what place of parting were we faring?
I tilted up her face. “I’ve been a selfish fool. I’ll never speak another word about marriage or anything that will pain you. Oh, Fiesole, if you could only love me—love me as I love you—as though there was nothing else left!” She took my hands in her small ones, pressing them to her breast, quoting in a low sing-song, “Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span. Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man.”
“I like that—‘the old proud pageant of man.’ I wonder where you got it. But is there to be nothing deeper between us than laughter?”
“If we do the laughing,” she said, “life’s ready to do the rest. But you’re a puritan at heart: you suspect that gladness is somehow unholy. Don’t you know, Mr. Bun-yan, that laughter is the language they speak in heaven?”
“I don’t; neither do you. But when you say so laughing, I can almost believe it.”
When we had once again started, she became more frank. It was because my hands were occupied, perhaps. Laying her cheek against my shoulder, “Dante, I’m not a flirt,” she said. “I just can’t make up my mind about you.”
“Maybe, I’ll make it up for you.”
“Maybe. But I want you to understand why I did what I did this morning—speeding like that and behaving as though I was cracked. I was afraid you were going to make love to me every moment—and I didn’t want it.”
“D’you want it now?”
“I don’t know.” She dragged the words out wide-apart. “And yet I do know; but I’ve no right to allow it.”
“You silly child, why on earth not?”
“I’m inconstant; I’m like that now. I should make you happy first and sorry afterwards.”
“I’ll risk it. I made you sorry first and now I’m going to make you happy.”
“Do you think you are?”
“Sure of it.”
The road began to descend, at first gradually. The bare, tilled uplands where winter lingered, were left behind and we ran through a sheltered land of orchards. The air pulsated with the baaing of lambs and the sweet yearning of fecundity. Under blown spray of fruit-trees the little creatures gamboled, halting by fits and starts, calling to their mothers, or kneeling beneath them, their thirsty throats stretched up and their long tails flapping. Surrounded by lean trees, lopped of their lower branches, gray farmhouses rose up, watching like aged shepherds. Slowfooted cattle, heavy-uddered, wandered between the hedges with their great bags swinging. Women with brass jars on their shoulders, which narrowed at the neck like funeral urns, walked through the meadows to the milking.
“Do we turn or go on?”
“Go on.”
“How much farther?”
“A little farther.”
“It’s getting older and older isn’t it, Fiesole?”
“No, younger and younger, stupid. Look at all the lambs.”
Before us the land piled up into a hillock, breaking the level sweep of sky-line and hiding what lay beyond. The road curved about it in a slow descent.
Fiesole leant past me, shutting off the power. “Let her coast,” she said.
At the bend in the road I jammed on the brakes, halting the car. She slipped her hand into mine; we filled our eyes with the sight, saying nothing.
Sheer against the sky rose a jagged rock and perched on its summit, so much a part of it that it seemed to have been carved, stood a ruined castle. Its windows were vacant; its roof had long since fallen; its walls had been bruised and broken by cannon. It tottered above the valley like a Samson blinded, groping on the edge of the precipice, its power shorn. Round the embattled rock, like children who trusted the old protector, gathered mediaeval houses. Some of them, centuries ago, had wandered off into the snowy orchards and stood tiptoe, as though listening, ready to run back should they hear the tramp of an invading army. Through the valley and into the town a narrow stream darted, flashing like an arrow. Behind town and castle, across the horizon, towered a saffron wall of cloud, tipped along the edge with fire and notched in the center where the molten ball of the setting sun rested. From quaint gray streets came up a multitude of small sounds, like the lazy humming of women spinning. And over all, across orchards and roofs of houses, the grim warden on the rock threw his shadow. It was a valley forgotten by the centuries—a garden without barriers.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
“Falaise, my darling. I always promised myself that if ever I should love a man, I would bring him to Falaise to love him. Can’t you feel it—the slow quiet, the sense of the ages watching?”
She was aflame in the light of the sunset. Her face was ivory, intense and ardent with glory. Her waywardness and fondness for disguise were gone; her true self, steady and unafraid, gazed out on me. The havoc of passion was replaced by the contentment of a desire all but satisfied.
“Let’s go to the castle first,” she said. “You remember its story?”
I remembered: how Robert the Devil, Duke of the Normans, had found Arlotta, the tanner’s daughter, washing linen in that same little beck; and had loved her at sight and had carried her off to his castle on the rock, where was born William the Bastard, conqueror of England and greatest of all the Normans.
Leaving the car in the village street, we climbed the rock and gained admittance. As we gazed down from the splintered battlements into the winding streets, Fiesole drew me to her, throwing her arm carelessly about my neck as though we were boy and girl.
“Look,” she whispered, pointing sheer down to the foot of the precipice, “there’s the tannery still standing and the beck running past it. And see, there are girls washing linen; one of them might be Arlotta. In nine hundred years nothing has altered.”
We stole across the threshold of the stone-paved room in which the Conqueror was born. “I’m going to shock you,” she said. “I always think of Falaise as another Bethlehem—the Bethlehem of war. The Bethlehem of peace has crumbled, shattered by war; but here’s Falaise unchanged since the day when Robert the Devil seized Arlotta and galloped up the rock, and bolted his castle door. It sets one thinking——”
“Thinking something dangerous, I’ll warrant.”
She brushed the rebellious curls from her forehead and leant back against the wall laughing. “Thinking all kinds of thoughts: that it pays best in this world to steal what you want.”
“Perhaps—if you steal strongly.”
“But I have stolen strongly; see how I’ve carried you off.”
We discovered a little hotel, the courtyard of which was invaded by a garden and opened out beyond into a misty orchard. At sound of our entrance a white-haired old country-woman came out from the office, holding her knitting in her hands. I made to go towards her, but Fiesole detained me. “You’re my prisoner,” she said; “I’m responsible. You stay here and I’ll tell her what we want.”
The air had grown sharper, but the moments were too precious to be spent indoors. We had our dinner served beneath a fig-tree in the courtyard, where we could see the shadows creeping through the garden and hear the sabots clap along the causeways.
We were almost shy with one another. We had little to say, and that little was spoken with our eyes for the most part. We did not dare to think: for me there was the ghost of Vi; and she also had I knew not what memories. We were restless till the meal was ended; the contact of live hands was the best speech possible. The tremulous dusk had fallen when we wandered out into the narrow climbing streets, traveling directionless under broken archways, past ancient churches—bribes to God for forgiveness for wrongs still more ancient.
We peeped into crouching cottages as we passed. We were glad of their company; they kept us from giving way to the tumult of feeling that ran riot in our hearts. Their small leaded windows were like lanterns set out to guide and not to watch us. We had glimpses through the glowing panes of kindly peasant interiors, with low ceilings and home-made furnishings. Sometimes at a rough table round which wine and bread were passed, the family was gathered, their faces illumined by a solitary candle in the center; looming out of the shadows on the wall was the cross. Sometimes the man was still at work, carving sabots or weaving, while the woman held a child to her breast, or rocked it in a cradle on the stone-paved floor.
One by one the lights were quenched and the doors fastened.
Fiesole leant more heavily against me, her arm encircling me, her head upon my shoulder. Now that the town slept, I could feel the wild clamor of her body and hear the fluttering intake of her breath. The wind, whispering through flowering trees, blew cool and fragrant in our nostrils. For intervals there was no sound save the rustle of falling blossoms and our own stealthy footsteps; from somewhere out in the pale dusk, a lamb would call and its mother would answer. Above us, between steep roofs, as down a beaten pathway, the silver chariot of the moon plunged onward, scattering the clouds before it.
We came again to the hostel; when we entered, we walked apart. Quickly, as though seized with sudden misgiving, Fiesole left me. I heard her footstep mounting the stairs and saw the light spring up in her window. Every other window was in darkness. From where I sat in the courtyard I could see the shadow of her figure groping, and her arms uplifted as she unbound her hair. The light went out. I wondered if she watched me. I listened to hear her stirring; I could hear nothing.
In the dim quiet, shut out from the excitement of her presence, I had leisure to reflect on whither I was going. I drew apart from myself and eyed my doings impartially. It was a whim of curiosity that had brought me to Paris—one of those instinctive decisions which construct a destiny. The sight of her as Lucrezia had stabbed me to remorse, and then to folly. That she had hated me up to last night and that the desire of her wild heart had been to torture me, I did not doubt; but I thought that there were moments in this day when she had loved me with the old uncalculating kindness. What was her intention now?
Unaccountably out of the past, Fiesole had returned—Fiesole, the girl-woman I had loved as a boy before Vi. I felt like a broken gamester who has discovered an overlooked coin in his pocket after having believed himself penniless. So strange was this happening that it could not be fortuitous—we had met because we had been piloted.
All seeming failure of the past would take on an aspect of design and would appear a straight road leading to this moment, were our journeyings to end in marriage. And, though she would not own it, she needed the protection of a man who loved her to guard her against her success and self-reliance.
My thoughts ran on, picturing the home and little, children we would have. Children would be walls about our love, making it secure. For these I was hungry—desperately afraid lest the hope of them should be withdrawn. In imagination they seemed already mine, I would speak my heart out: she should understand before it was too late that my need was also hers.
I entered the hostel. In the office the old woman nodded above her knitting. I roused her and asked for my candle.
“Ah, Monsieur,” she said in apology, “I had not thought. For a room so small I supposed that one would be sufficient. I have given Madame the candle. If Monsieur will wait, I will fetch another.”
In my surprise I told her that it did not matter.
I felt my way up the unlit stairs. At the bedroom-door I knocked. Fiesole’s voice just reached me, whispering to me to enter. On the threshold I paused, peering into the darkness. The floor was bare; there was little furniture. In the shadows against the wall, a canopied, high-mattressed bed loomed mountainous. Through the window, reaching almost to my feet, a ray of moonlight slanted; in it, gleaming white, stood Fiesole.
My heart was in my throat. I could not speak. We watched one another; as the silence lengthened, the space between us seemed impassable.
She held out her arms; her hoarse voice spoke, yearning towards me with its lazy sweetness. “Even now, if you want to, you may go, Dannie.”
I had been for a saunter through the town. Several times I had returned before I found Fiesole beneath the fig-tree in the courtyard, seated at the table with a paper spread out in front of her. She looked up swiftly at sound of my footstep and threw me a smile, gathering herself in to make room for me beside her. When I stood over her, she lifted up her face with childish eagerness as though we had not kissed already more than once that morning. “Shall I order déjeuner out here?”
She nodded. “Where else, but in the sunshine?” When I came back from giving the order, her red-gold head was bent again above the paper.
“Something interesting?”
“Rather.” She raised her green eyes mischievously. “It’s all up. We’ll be collared within the hour.”
“What’s all up? Who’s got the right to collar us?”
“Paris thinks it has, the whole of France thinks it has, but most particularly Monsieur Georges thinks he has, and so does the theatre-management.”
“Let ’em try. We don’t care.”
“But, old boy, I do care a little. You see, I shouldn’t have been here now if it hadn’t been for Monsieur Georges, Paris, and the rest of them. They gave me my chance; going off like this has left them in the lurch. It isn’t playing the game, as I understand it.”
“If it’s damages for a broken contract they’re after, I’ll settle that for you.”
She smiled mysteriously and, bowing her head above the paper, read me extracts, throwing in, now and then, her own vivacious comments.
It appeared that up to the last moment the theatre-management had expected her and had allowed the audience to assemble. They had delayed matters for half an hour while they sent out messengers to search for her. When the crowd grew restless, they had commenced the performance with an under-study. But the people would have none of her; they rose up in their places stamping and threatening, shouting for La Fiesole. The curtain had been rung down and Monsieur Georges had come forward, weeping and wringing his hands, saying that La Fiesole had been kidnaped by an admirer that morning. Pandemonium broke loose. The theatre for a time was in danger of being wrecked; but the police were summoned and got the audience out, and the money refunded.
The journalist’s story followed of the unknown Englishman who, a few nights before, had stood up in his box applauding when everyone else had grown silent; and how the same Englishman, one night previously, had created a scene between himself and La Fiesole at a café in the Champs Elysées—a scene which had terminated by them going away together.
“Make you out quite a desperate character, don’t they, old darling?” she drawled, looking up into my eyes, laughing.
I did my best to share her levity, but I was secretly annoyed at so much publicity. Taking the paper from her, I patted her on the shoulder. “Come, drink up your coffee, little woman; it’s getting cold. Why waste time over all this nonsense? You’re out of it. It’s all ended.”
“But it isn’t. Paris won’t let it be ended. They’re making more row about me than they did about La Gioconda. They’ve offered a reward of five thousand francs for my recovery.”
“And if they did find us, they couldn’t do anything. Discovery won’t be easy.”
“Won’t it? We were seen yesterday going together towards St. Cloud; they’ve got the number of my car and particulars of my dress from Marie.”
“But didn’t you warn Marie?”
“Silly fellow, how should I? Didn’t know myself what I was going to do when we started—at least I didn’t know positively.”
“Humph!”
“Ripping, isn’t it, for a chap like you as ‘as allaws lived decent and ‘oped to die respected? Dannie, Dannie, you’re a regular Robert the Devil—only I stole you, and nobody’ll ever believe it.”
“It doesn’t matter what they say about me; it’s your good name that matters.—I promised yesterday never to speak another word about marriage. May I break my promise?”
“You’ve done it. Go on, John Bunyan.”
“Well, here’s my plan: that we motor through to Cherbourg and skip over to Southampton.”
“And then?”
“Get a special license in the shortest time possible. When we’re discovered, you’ll be Lady Cardover.”
“But it isn’t necessary that I should be Lady Cardover. I’m not ashamed of anything. Are you?”
“Perhaps not; but there’s nothing to be gained by dodging the conventions. I ought to know; I’ve been dodging ’em ever since I can remember. I’ve come to see that there’s something grand about conventions; they’re a sort of wall to protect someone you love dearly from attack. We’re man and wife already by everything that’s sacred; but we shall never be securely happy unless we’re married.”
Our meal was finished. We wandered off into the orchard at the back. When we were safe from watching eyes, Fiesole gave me her hand. We came to a place where trees grew closer together; here we rested. She leant against me, her face wistful and troubled; the sun through the branches scattered gold and the blossoms snowflakes in her hair.
Presently she disentangled herself from my arms, and jumped to her feet, smiling gently. “I’ve a surprise for you, my virgin man. I want you to stop here for half an hour and promise not to follow.”
“A long time to be without you.”
“But promise.”
“All right. Very well.”
She stooped over me quietly before she went. I watched her pass swaying across the dappled turf, under the dancing shadows and rain of petals. Just before she entered the courtyard, she turned and waved her hand.
Something in Fiesole’s distant aspect, something of seeming maidenly daintiness, brought to mind another woman—gold and ivory, with poppies for her lips, were the words which had described her. While I had walked ‘Falaise that morning I had striven to banish her from my thoughts. And now Fiesole, from whom I had hoped to obtain forgetfulness, Fiesole herself had unconsciously reminded me.
In the stillness I confronted myself: I was being faithless to the loyalty of years—I had done and was about to do a thing which was traitorous to all my past. Vi’s memory, though in itself sinful, had demanded chastity from me.
Yet my present conduct was not incompatible with my past: it was the result of it. Puppy passions of thought had grown into hounds of action—that was all.
From the first my pagan imagination, at war with my puritan conscience, had lured me on. All my life I had been breaking bounds imaginatively: innocently for Ruthita in my childhood; in appearance for Fiesole at Venice; dangerously for Vi; and at last in fact for Fiesole. Narrower affections I had passed by, not perceiving that their narrowness made for safety and kindness. The unwalled garden of masterless desire had proved a wilderness; its fruit was loneliness.
Last night, sitting in the courtyard, I had told myself that in remaining constant to Vi, I had gambled for the impossible. Was it true? In any case, to have followed up the risk strongly was my only excuse for having gambled at all. By turning back I abandoned the prize, and made the sin of loving a forbidden woman paltry.—Might she not have been waiting for me all these years, as I had been waiting! What an irony if now, when I was destroying both the hope and reward of our sacrifice, she were free and preparing to come to me!
And Fiesole! I had used her to drug my unsatisfied longing. Should I not do her more grievous wrong in marrying her while I loved another woman?—I had been mad. I was appalled.
Could I ever be at peace with her—ever make her happy? Fiesole was so flippant, so casual of all that makes for wifehood. And she was almost right in saying that I had made her what she was—first by my virtue, now by my lack of it. All we could give one another would be passion, swift and self-consuming. Soon would come satiety, the fruit of my doings; after that regret, the fruit of my thoughts. And if we did not marry, I should eat the same fruit, made more bitter by self-scorn.
Marry Fiesole! In marriage lay escape from the penalty of my lifelong lawless curiosity. Walls of children might grow up, responsibilities of domestic affection, giving shelter and security.
This was treachery. Fiesole should never guess I had faltered. The door should be closed on the past——
I had been waiting for, perhaps, half-an-hour, when I heard the chugging of a motor newly started. There were no other travelers staying at the inn; I thought that I recognized the beat of the engine. As I listened, I felt sure that the car was being backed into the road. I expected to hear it stop, and to see Fiesole come from under the archway and signal for me. It did not stop. It began to gather speed. The sound droned fainter and fainter.
Promise or no promise, I could not resist my excited curiosity. I ran across the orchard, through the courtyard, into the sunlit street. Far up the road, I saw a cloud of dust growing smaller, disappearing in the direction of Paris. I watched, confused and dumbfounded, as it dwindled.
The old proprietress approached me shyly and touched me on the arm. “For Monsieur from Madame.”
Snatching the note from her hand, I tore it open with trembling fingers. The writing was hasty and agitated. I read and re-read it, trying to twist its words into another meaning.
The note ran:
My poor Dante, as you said to me, I have a woman’s memory; you’ll remember Potiphar’s wife and Joseph. I have tried to hate you intensely. You see, I’m what you made me: Lucrezia—your handiwork. For years I have promised myself that, if ever I had the chance, I would punish you. It was with this intention that I left Paris yesterday—you know the rest. So now, without me in the years that are to come, you will suffer all that you once made me suffer. And I’m almost sorry; for here, at Falaise, you nearly made me.... It can’t be done.
Raising my eyes, I stood alone, gazing along the gleaming road to Paris. The cloud of dust had vanished.
The End