Martin was seated alone with Stella in the drawing-room of her mother’s
house, eating muffins, thoughtfully but rather rapidly, while she poured
out tea.
“Fancy,” he said, “it is only a week ago since--since the party at Lady
Sunningdale’s, since I knew.”
“Knew what?” asked Stella, quite unnecessarily.
“Ah, I only know one thing now. I think I have forgotten everything
else.”
“Say it then,” said she.
“That I love you? Are you not tired of hearing me say that yet?”
She smiled, brought him his tea, and sat on the arm of his chair.
“I can’t believe that a woman can ever be tired of hearing that, if the
right man says it. Oh, Martin, how lucky it was you, and that it was I!”
Martin put his teacup down, having drunk with amazing speed.
“Why, who else could it have been?” he said; “how could it have been
otherwise?”
“No, I suppose not. Yet you didn’t know, as you call it, for a long
time. Supposing you had gone on not knowing?”
He leaned back in his chair looking at her, his black eyes shining in
the firelight.
“And when I did know, I frightened you,” he said.
“Yes, a little. But I loved it. You see, I had never seen you really in
earnest before, except when you were playing. You always put everything
you had or were into that.”
“I know. That is what Karl Rusoff told me. He told me to experience all
I could, because it would all go to make me play. He calls it spiritual
alchemy, like when you put a plant in the earth and water it, the earth
and the water are somehow turned into the blossom of that plant while
another plant would turn them into a different flower. In fact, darling,
you are going to come out of the ends of my fingers, whereas if I were a
great Greek scholar you would become iambics.”
He looked at her and his smile deepened into gravity.
“Oh, Stella, Stella,” he said, “did the world ever hold anything like
you?”
She leaned back till her face was close to his and put her arm round his
neck.
“Yes, yes; do that with me!” she said, “absorb me, let me become part of
you. Indeed, I want no other existence at all. Do you know the Persian
legend, how the lover knocked at the door of his beloved, and the
beloved said, ‘Who is that?’ and he replied, ‘It is I.’ And the one
inside said, ‘There is not room for two.’ Then he went away again, and
came back after a year, and knocked again. And again from inside the
voice said, ‘Who is that?’ But this time he said, ‘It is thou.’ So the
door was opened and he went in.”
“That is beautiful,” said Martin. “But, my word, fancy being able to
become music. And suppose one happened to become a song by Gounod. Only
that isn’t music,” he added.
Stella felt somehow suddenly chilled.
“Promise me I shan’t become a song by Gounod,” she said.
Martin looked at her in silence a moment. She had risen rather abruptly
from her position and was again sitting upright on the arm of his chair.
“And what do I become?” he asked. “What do you make of me? It is thou,
remember.”
Something that for the last three days had hung mist-like in Stella’s
mind suddenly congealed, crystallised, became definite.
“I don’t want you to become anything,” she said. “But I want you to Be.
I want you to be entirely yourself. I want you to get below your own
surface, to dive into yourself, to find pearls. And then to let me wear
them.”
“You mean I am shallow?”
“No, dear, I mean nothing of the kind. But, oh, Martin, don’t
misunderstand me. All you have got from life, all you have gained, all
you are you treat as fuel--you have said it--to burn in the furnace of
your one passion--music.”
Martin admitted this with a reservation.
“That was true,” he said, “till just a week ago.”
Stella rose from her place; sitting close to him, like that, she could
not say what she meant to say. Personal magnetism, her love for that
beautiful face, prevented her. So she went to the hearth-rug, under
pretence of poking the fire, and stood there with her back to it, facing
him. Then she spoke more quickly, with a certain vibration in her voice.
“And this last week,” she said, “a new and wonderful piece of music was
discovered by you. Yes, I put myself as high as that. But am I more
than that? Am I really?”
Martin’s forehead wrinkled slightly. Had it not been Stella who asked
him this he would have said the question was unreasonable. But before he
could reply she went on.
“Ah, dearest,” she said. “I asked you just now to absorb me, to make me
you. But I will not flow out of your finger-tips. Oh, I know you only
said that in jest, but in jest sometimes one strikes very near to truth.
Have you thought what you are to me, and what, if I am anything, I must
be to you. Something absolutely indispensable, your life, no less. Now,
supposing chords and harmonies were dumb to you forever, what would be
left of you? Tell me that.”
Martin’s expression grew puzzled. It was as if she asked him some
preposterous riddle without answer. How could he compare the two?
“How can I tell?” he said. “I suppose I should somehow and sometime
adjust myself to it, though I haven’t the slightest idea how. I can’t
imagine life, consciousness, without them.”
“And if I went out of your life?” she asked, unwisely, but longing for
some convincing answer.
In reply Martin got up and went close to her.
“You have often called me a fool,” he said, “and you have often called
me a child. I am both when you ask me things like that. But this foolish
child speaks to you, so listen. He does not know what it all means, but
he loves you. He knows no other word except that. Is that not enough? If
not, what is?”
Then once again the mastery of man overcame her. She wanted him so much,
more than any answer to her questions. The subtleties into which she
had tried to draw him he brushed aside; her woman’s brain, her woman’s
desire to hear him say that she was all, had spun them deftly enough,
but he blundered through them somehow, like a bumblebee through a
spider’s web, and came booming out on the other side. Theoretically,
anyhow, if he had been a woman, they must have caught him, he must have
struggled with them, felt their entanglement. As it was, she had failed.
Probably he labelled her fine spinnings “silly” in his own mind. But he
proceeded through them--still frowning a little.
“You ask me impossible riddles,” he said. “You might as well ask me
whether you would sooner tie your mother to the stake and burn her or
me. My darling, there is no sense in such things. Surely one can be
simple about love, just because it is so big. I know I love you, that is
enough for me. I told you that I know nothing else. That is sober truth.
But I cannot weigh things in balances. And, what is more, I won’t. Now
kiss me; no, properly.”
It must therefore be inferred that he got his way in this matter, for
when, two minutes later, Lady Sunningdale made her untimely appearance,
the two were again seated, Stella this time in the chair and Martin on
the arm.
“But famishing,” she said. “Yes, tea, please, dear Stella. Martin, you
monster, I haven’t seen you for days. Why I haven’t taken to drink I
don’t know, over all the dreadful things that have been happening. Would
you believe it,--Sahara had two puppies; but she couldn’t bear them, so
she ate one and starved the other. Well, it’s all over, but nobody in
the house has had a wink of sleep for the last week. And so you are
going to give a concert at last, Martin. I shan’t come. I hate my
private property being made public.”
“But charity,” said Martin.
“My dear, I know perfectly well what charity and St. James’s Hall means.
It means guinea tickets. Charity should begin at home, not at St.
James’s Hall. However, I daresay you will appropriate all the proceeds.
So near the Circus, too. Really, Piccadilly Circus is too fascinating. I
should like to have a house in the very centre of it, with a glass
gallery all round, and really see life. Yes, one more piece of
muffin,--not for myself, but for Suez Canal. Suez Canal is so lonely,
poor darling, without Sahara; but there is muffin _quand même_. Naughty!
I’m sure the servants feed him. And so everybody is to be married in
May. Fancy the Bear coming round like that--even Bears will turn--about
Helen and Frank. Apparently, they are quite inseparable,--the Bear and
Frank I mean, and tie each other’s bootlaces, and are converting each
other to Christianity and Atheism respectively. Bears and buns! Frank is
a bun, and the Bear has decided it is worth climbing up a pole to get
him. I think it is a mistake to have said that. Besides, it is
absolutely untrue. The Bear wouldn’t climb a yard to marry Helen to the
Czar. How terrible Russia must be, with everything ending in ‘owsky’! I
tried to flirt with the Bear myself, and had no success of any kind
whatever. Dear Suez! No Sahara. The world is a desert without Sahara.
But mayn’t I tempt you with a small piece of bun with sugar on the top?
How depressing marriages are!”
Lady Sunningdale sighed heavily.
“What is the matter?” asked Stella, sympathetically.
“I don’t know. Dearest, that Louis XVI. clock is too beautiful. I wish I
were a millionaire. Yes. I think I am depressed because everything is
going exactly as I planned it. There is nothing so tiresome as success.
You two children sitting there, Frank and Helen, all my own ideas, and
all going precisely as I wished. You are my idea, too, Martin, a figment
of my brain. I invented you. And you are going precisely as I wished.
Every one says nobody ever played the least like you. But the Bear is
still in a rage with you, is he not? That is so English. English people
are always in a rage about something, the state of the weather, or
France, or their children. I never get in a rage. I have no time for
that sort of thing. Stella dearest, I think it will have to be you to go
down to Chartries next, and induce the Bear to be propitiated. Heavens,
how dreadful it must be to have a very strong sense of duty! It must be
like toast-crumbs in your bed, after you have breakfasted there, when
one can’t lie comfortable for five minutes together.”
“No, I am the next,” said Martin. “I shall be staying with my uncle at
Easter, and shall try to see my father then. I daresay it will do no
good.”
“Do you really care?” asked Lady Sunningdale. “I really don’t see why
you should. He is unreasonable. I shouldn’t worry.”
Stella turned to Martin with a certain air of expectancy.
“Yes, I do care,” he said; “I care horribly. I care every day. I hate
being on bad terms with any one. I hate anger and resentment,” he added,
with a little quiet air of dignity, for he had not wholly liked Lady
Sunningdale’s remarks.
“That was one of Nature’s most extraordinary conjuring tricks,” she
said. “People talk of heredity; but put all the fathers of England in a
row, and ask any one to pick out Martin’s. The better they know either
of you, by so much the more will they pick out Mr. Challoner last of
all!”
Martin got up.
“Ah, don’t let’s talk about it,” he said; “it is not agreeable. I wish I
could laugh about it like you, but I can’t.”
Then, with a quick intuition, he turned to Stella.
“One can’t do any good by talking about it, can one?” he asked.
Something still jarred on the girl, due partly to their talk before Lady
Sunningdale came in.
“You have admirable common sense,” she said.
Lady Sunningdale caught on to this with her usual quickness. She knew
for certain from Stella’s tone that something had gone just a shade
wrong between them.
“And you find it rather trying, do you not, dearest Stella?” she said.
“Of course, Martin is the most trying person in the world; and if it
wasn’t for his ten fingers he would be absolutely intolerable. He is a
boy of about twelve, with dreadful streaks of common sense worthy of a
man of fifty who has left all his illusions behind him. Yes, monster,
that is you!”
Martin raised his eyebrows, his excellent temper slightly ruffled for
the moment.
“Indeed, I didn’t recognise it,” he said.
“Dear Martin, don’t be pompous. You didn’t recognise it because it
wasn’t flattering. They say we women are vain, but compared to
men---- Some women are vain of their appearance, it is true, and usually
without sufficient cause, but all men are vain of every attribute that
God has or has not endowed them with. Remember that, Stella, and if you
want to lead a quiet life, lay on flattery with a spade. They are
insatiable. Personally I don’t flatter Sunningdale, because I don’t in
the least want a quiet life. Tranquility is so frightfully aging and
makes one like an oyster.”
Martin had recovered his serenity.
“When I am dead,” he remarked, “you will be sorry for what you have
said. But why this sudden attack on me?”
“When you are dead you will see how right I was. But the attack--well,
chiefly because you haven’t provoked it. That is so tiresome of you. You
could see I wanted to quarrel, and you wouldn’t say anything I could lay
hold of. If I want to sit down, politeness ordains that you should give
me a chair. If you see I want to quarrel, politeness ordains that you
should give me a pretext. It is the worst possible manners not to. My
nerves are all on edge. When that is the case, the only thing to do is
to quiet them by being rude to other people. Dearest Stella, you look
too lovely this afternoon. Why you want to throw yourself away on Martin
I can’t think!”
“But you said just now it was your idea,” said Stella.
“I know it was, and a very foolish one. I never imagined you would take
it seriously. Besides, you know perfectly well that whenever a thing
happens that pleases me, I always say it is my own idea. My darling, did
I tread on you. How foolish of you to lie there. And when you are all
happily settled for, what am I to do next?”
The clock struck and Martin looked up.
“Gracious, I am late,” he said. “Karl was to give me a lesson at six.
You must say good-bye to me next, Lady Sunningdale.”
Stella got up, too.
“I’ll see you safely out of the house,” she said, and left the room with
him. Then, having closed the door, she paused, taking hold of the lappel
of his coat.
“Martin, you’re not vexed with me?” she asked.
“No; why? I thought you were vexed with me.”
“No, dear. I was vexed with myself, I think, and so I was horrid to you.
But, my dearest, give me all you can of yourself. I want so much, just
because it is you!”
Martin’s eyes kindled and glowed.
“It is all yours,” he said. “You know that. I wish there was more of it.
And there is more since--since a week ago.”
“Then I am content,” she said, “and that means a great deal. I think I
was rather jealous of pianos generally. And you forgive me? Yes?”
Lady Sunningdale, though often irrelevant from sheer irrelevancy, was
also sometimes irrelevant on purpose, using preposterous conversation,
as Bismarck used truth, as a valuable instrument to secure definite
ends. Just now, for instance, her attack on Martin had purpose at its
back, for she had seen quite distinctly that something had gone wrong
between him and Stella, and had made the diversion in order to prevent
the topic of friction, whatever it was, being subjected to further
rubbing. Providence had lent aid to her benevolent scheme, sending
Martin off to his music-lesson and leaving Stella alone with her. In
fact, her request to be told what she should do next needed no answer at
all, for she knew quite well that what she would do next was to get
Stella to confide in her and tell her all that had happened. She was a
great believer in talking things out; the important point, however, was
not that the principals should talk things out, which was, indeed, worse
than useless, but that they should severally talk it out with somebody
else. She wondered, and indeed rather hoped, that Martin might
simultaneously talk it out with Karl, for, as she had had occasion to
observe before, Martin’s music-lesson consisted chiefly of discussion on
character.
Stella returned in a moment, and Lady Sunningdale was irrelevant no
longer. She only took a preliminary circuit or two in the manner of a
homing pigeon before it takes the straight, unswerving line.
“Martin is simply absorbed in the thought of his concert,” she said.
“And he is going to play just _all_ the things that make me laugh and
cry. Personally, I shall go with five handkerchiefs and a copy of some
English comic paper. The handkerchiefs are for the tears I shall shed,
and the comic paper is to check my laughter when he plays the Paganini
Variations. Dear Stella, how very wise of you to marry a genius. You
will never be dull. But it is rather bold, too. Oh, please take Suez
Canal out of the grate; he is trying to commit suicide, I think, because
Sahara is not here. Yes. Geniuses are so unexpected and violent. It must
be like marrying somebody who keeps several full-sized flashes of
lightning about him, and also a large lump of damp clay. You never know
which you will put your hand on, and they are both so dreadfully
disconcerting.”
Stella picked Suez Canal out of the grate. Apparently he was putting
ashes on his head as a sign of mourning, and she dusted him carefully
before replying.
“I am disconcerted,” she said.
Lady Sunningdale never pressed for a confidence. “To show that you want
a thing,” she once said, “usually means that you are grudgingly given
half of it. But if you firmly turn your back on it, it is hurled at
you.” She turned her back now, using irrelevance again.
“It is nearly three years since I was disconcerted,” she said, “and the
terrible thing is that I quite forget what disconcerted me. I think it
must have been Sunningdale. Do you know he spoke in the House of Lords
the other day on one side, and then voted on the other. His reason was
that he felt his own remarks to be so feeble that he was sure there was
more to be said on the other side. But I believe he merely forgot. Yes.
That marble fireplace is so good. Surely it must be Adams’s.”
This was completely efficacious.
“Shall I bore you, if I talk to you?” asked Stella.
“No, dearest Stella. I love being talked to. What is it?”
“It is Martin,” said she.
The back view had done its part. Lady Sunningdale turned completely
round again.
“Dearest Stella,” she said, “pray put out the electric light. It is
rather strong in my eyes. Yes, Martin now!”
Stella felt as she turned out the light that this was exactly what she
wished. In the dim flickering firelight her thoughts, drawn to the
surface, became articulate more easily.
“He is just what you say,” she said. “You touch him, and never know
whether it is going to be lightning or clay. The lightning does not
disconcert me. But, dear Lady Sunningdale, the clay does!”
Lady Sunningdale was really immensely interested. She had her own
methods of getting the girl to rummage in the dark corners of her mind
and bring out all that was there, and she pursued them now.
“Clay is not really disconcerting,” she said; “it is only the
possibility of clay when you expect lightning. My own darling
Sunningdale is entirely clay. Of course there is clay in Martin; there
is in everybody. How have you managed to come across it? Because he has
singularly little.”
“Music is his lightning,” said Stella.
“Do you mean that the rest is clay?” asked Lady Sunningdale.
There was a pause, and Stella turned out an extremely dark corner in her
mind, something really quite below the stairs.
“What if I am?” she asked.
“Then, dearest Stella, you have only yourself to thank. He did not think
you clay anyhow a week ago. Else, why should he have asked you to marry
him? Or do you mean that Martin has changed since then?”
Again Stella paused.
“I must say it more simply,” she said. “Look at it in this way. What if
Martin _is_ music? if everything else to him is secondary to that?”
“Then he would have asked the complete works of Chopin to marry him,”
remarked Lady Sunningdale. “But, as far as I know, he didn’t. It occurs
to me that he asked you. And I know, I can feel it, that he is devoted
to you, really in love with you. Only don’t, for Heaven’s sake, let your
mind dwell for a moment on the relative positions that you and music
hold to him.”
“I have done worse than that,” said Stella. “I have asked him what
relative positions we hold. I did so to-day.”
“My dear, how insane! What did he say?”
“He told me not to talk nonsense. But is it nonsense?”
Lady Sunningdale drew a little nearer to the fire. All her kindliness,
all her good nature, and what was perhaps even more important, all her
tact and finesse, was enlisted on behalf of these two. She recognised to
herself that there was here in all probability only one of those tiny
misunderstandings which must occur between a man and a woman who are now
for the first time really learning each other. At the same time it
seemed to her quite important, if possible, to thoroughly dust, clean
out, and disinfect this dark little mental corner in Stella, for it
might easily contain the germ of a misunderstanding that would be by no
means trivial.
“Yes, it is nonsense,” she said, decidedly. “It is poisonous, suicidal
nonsense. You are exactly like the Bear. You don’t seem to grasp any
more than the Bear does what music means to Martin. It means, in one
word, ‘God.’ It is his religion,--and, good gracious, supposing he was a
bishop and you were going to marry him, you would not, I hope, be
jealous of his religion. And in music Martin is a very big bishop,
indeed! But in other respects--you forget this too--he is simply a
child. I can’t imagine what Martin will be like when he is middle-aged.
It is impossible to think of him as middle-aged. Martin and middle age
are not compatible terms. True, Karl says he has been having a good many
birthdays lately. I, too, think he has, but he has, so to speak, made
saints’ days of them all, and dedicated them to his religion. All but
one, that is to say.”
“And that one?” asked Stella.
“He had a birthday when he fell in love with you. That is yours; he has
given you that. My dear, he adores you. When you come into the room his
face is lit. Only, for Heaven’s sake, don’t worry him and question him
about his soul and his depth and the exact way in which he loves you. If
you insist, he will try to answer you, and his answers will be
dreadfully disappointing to you, because he doesn’t know anything about
it. To question him is like--it is like looking at light through a prism
or a spectroscope, splitting it up into rays, when instead you might be
sitting in the sun. Dear me, how very precise and definite I am
becoming. I mean exactly that--I hope I am not going to be ill.”
Stella laughed.
“Dear Lady Sunningdale, I hope not,” she said. “In any case, tell me
some more first.”
“My dear, I can’t talk sense to order. You must collect the extremely
valuable grains of gold in my conversation for yourself out of the
extraordinary mass of quite valueless material.”
“But he is disconcerting,” began Stella again.
“Ah, yes, but so quite certainly are you to him. Heaven, how dull it
would be if other people never disconcerted one. But I don’t think
Martin, though I am sure he must often find you disconcerting, would
ever say so.”
Stella flushed slightly.
“Is that a reproof?” she asked, gently.
“It certainly is, if it occurs to you that it may be, so pray, pray,
don’t deserve it again. Where is Suez? Oh, there. And don’t allow
yourself, ever allow yourself to think ‘What a pity there is an
occasional lump of clay.’ For, indeed, there is so much lightning. If
there wasn’t a little clay, I really think Martin would explode, go off
in spontaneous combustion. My dear, hours and hours of every day pass
for Martin at a pressure of which stupid people like you and I have no
conception. He recuperates by restful intervals, by being a mere boy
with huge animal spirits. You may thank your stars he does not
recuperate by being vicious or sulky. Most geniuses are morose and very
few are quite sane. Martin is quite sane, and even the Bear, who takes
the gloomiest possible view of him, couldn’t call him morose. Go down on
your knees, my dear, and be thankful.”
Stella was silent a moment. Then another corner was turned out.
“And there is no doubt about his genius?” she asked, at length.
“But what is the matter with you?” asked Lady Sunningdale. “You will ask
me next if I am quite sure he hasn’t got false teeth. Dearest Stella, do
drop this exacting, questioning attitude once and for all. I know
almost everybody has an occasional attack of it, but I am sure you will
pardon me, it is just that which makes people odious. It turns them
sour. For Heaven’s sake, don’t turn sour. Suez Canal is in the grate
again. Oh, naughty! Thank you, dearest. Yes, sour. Take things on broad,
indulgent lines. He loves you. That, on the whole, you believe to be a
true statement of the case. Well, then, surely that is good enough.
Don’t say, ‘Does his love measure six feet in height, or is it only five
foot eleven and three quarters.’ In fact, open the windows.”
Stella took this very attentively and very gravely.
“Dear Lady Sunningdale,” she said, “I am very grateful. I think you have
done me good. I had a little attack of indigestion in my mind. Do you
know, I never thought that you----“
“You never thought that I could think,” said she, “and I’m sure I don’t
wonder. But I can think when I choose. Just now the object of my thought
is to stop you thinking. Leave psychological questions alone when you
are dealing with Martin. Just open your mouth, shut your eyes, and see
what Martin will give you, as we used to say when children. You are a
most fortunate girl. Heavens, fancy having Martin in love with one!”
There was the ring of absolute sincerity about this, so true and
distinct that Stella wondered. She wondered still more when, on looking
at the other’s face, she saw that Lady Sunningdale’s eyes were full of
tears, which she openly mopped up with a square two inches of lace.
“Yes, real tears,” she said; “tears of extreme middle age, my dear. What
are they made of? Water, I suppose, with just a little jealousy and a
little youth still left in them, and adoration for genius and love of
beauty. In fact, they are the most complicated tears I ever heard of;
one or two like that from each eye and then it is over. Dearest Stella,
you are such a fool. One is always a fool till one is middle-aged, and
then one is young no longer. That is the tragedy of growing old. It is
almost impossible to be mature and young simultaneously. You are a fool
because you don’t know what a priceless, perfect gift has been given
you,--Martin’s love. I envy you intolerably; I gnash my teeth with rage.
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t want him in the least to fall in love
with me; and, to reassure you, I may say that even to my amorous eye
there does not appear to be the very slightest chance of it. But I gnash
my teeth because I am not young like you, so that he might fall in love
with me, and at the same time wise like myself, so that I should know
what to do with him.”
“Ah, tell me that; do tell me how to manage, how to behave,” said
Stella.
“I can’t. That is just it. There is another tragedy in this mismanaged
world, that nobody can teach any one else anything that is worth
knowing. You can’t teach me how to look young; I can’t teach you how to
be wise, how to appreciate, how not to worry. But Martin’s mind is like
a cut diamond: it absorbs whatever light--blue, green, red--is thrown
into it, and turns it by its own magic into inapproachable colour. That
colour is seen in his music. Oh, I have watched you often this last
week. You worry him and puzzle him, and I’m sure I don’t wonder, if you
ask him the relative places of music and you in his mind. Do you not
see how stupid that is? Answer me.”
Stella smiled.
“Oh, don’t rub it in,” she said. “Yes, it is idiotic.”
“My dear, you are so gentle that I feel a brute!”
“Please be a brute, then, just five minutes more,” said Stella.
“Very good. Do not take up this absurd position and say, ‘I am your
goddess, what incense have you got to burn before me this morning? Ah,
that is the second-quality incense! I thought so. How _could_ you?’ Be
much bigger than that. Suez! Recollect who it is who has paid you this
incomparable compliment of saying he wishes to see your face opposite
him at breakfast for the rest of his life, every day, every day. Go to
Karl Rusoff and ask him where he places Martin, if you do not believe me
about his genius. And when he has told you, hire the Albert Hall, fill
it with people, and tell them what Karl says. Then wait a couple of
years, hire the Albert Hall again, and repeat again what Karl told you.
And every single person in the hall will say, ‘Why, of course. We knew
that.’”
Stella was silent a moment.
“Then, must I burn incense before him?” she asked. “The very best
incense. I should love to do that!”
Lady Sunningdale restrained a movement of impatience.
“My dear, you are the one person in the world who must not burn
incense,” she said. “An incense-burning wife is like dram-drinking to a
man. You are to be his wife. That means a good deal. But you are to be
his comrade. That means much more. He and Helen! Why he did not get
Helen to come and live with him, and--well, not marry at all, I don’t
know. Perhaps Frank would object. Men are all so selfish.”
“Do you mean he has chosen badly?” asked Stella.
“No, dear; and it is silly to say that. What I meant was that I wonder
why he wanted to marry at all, why a nature like that has need of
anybody else. If I was like Martin, I should never see a soul, but
contemplate my own wonderfulness. However, he did want somebody else.
And he chose you, you fortunate girl.”
“I ought to be very happy, then?” she asked.
“Ah, I don’t say that. Perhaps you will be divinely, ecstatically
discontented. Happiness is rather a bovine quality, I always think. It
implies not wanting. Any one with imagination must always want. Yes.
Dear me, I came here to say something, and I forget what--I have said a
good deal, but not it. Dearest Stella, do you forgive me? At least, for
my own creature comfort, I want you to forgive me; but essentially I
don’t care, as I know I am right.”
“No, I don’t forgive you,” said the girl, “but I thank you.”
Lady Sunningdale struggled to her feet out of her very low chair.
“That is sweet of you. Yes, Suez, my darling, we are going home to
din-din and Sahara. Ah, I remember. I want you and your mother to join
us at Cannes for a fortnight at Easter. Sunningdale’s villa is really
quite comfortable, and you can look at the Mediterranean and meditate.
Ask her to send me a line about it, but come yourself in any case. The
Southern sun always melts my brains, and liquid wisdom flows from my
lips in practically unlimited quantities. Why don’t we all live at
Cannes, among the palms and that sort of thing. If you can’t come, I
shall ask Martin; but I don’t mean to have you together. You will be
quite enough together afterwards. Dear me, how screaming Martin will be
as the master of a house! Good-bye, darling Stella. Yes, pray, turn up
the lights, otherwise I shall crash my way through priceless furniture
and tread on Suez Canal.”