On the journey homeward, and for two or three days after, Piers held
argument with his passions, trying to persuade himself that he had in
truth lost nothing, inasmuch as his love had never been founded upon a
reasonable hope. Irene Derwent was neither more nor less to him now
than she had been ever since he first came to know her: a far ideal,
the woman he would fain call wife, but only in a dream could think of
winning. What audacity had speeded him on that wild expedition? It was
well that he had been saved from declaring his folly to Irene herself,
who would have shared the pain her answer inflicted. Nay, when the
moment came, reason surely would have checked his absurd impulse. In
seeing her once more, he saw how wide was the distance between them. No
more of that! He had lost nothing but a moment's illusion.
The ideal remained; the worship, the gratitude. How much she had been
to him! Rarely a day--very rarely a day--that the thought of Irene did
not warm his heart and exalt his ambition. He had yielded to the
fleshly impulse, and the measure of his lapse was the sincerity of that
nobler desire; he had not the excuse of the ordinary man, nor ever
tried to allay his conscience with facile views of life. What times
innumerable had he murmured her name, until it was become to him the
only woman's name that sounded in truth womanly--all others cold to his
imagination. What long evenings had he passed, yonder by the Black Sea,
content merely to dream of Irene Derwent; how many a summer night had
he wandered in the acacia-planted streets of Odessa, about and about
the great square, with its trees, where stands the cathedral; how many
a time had his heart throbbed all but to bursting when he listened to
the music on the Boulevard, and felt so terribly alone--alone! Irene
was England. He knew nothing of the patriotism which is but shouted
politics; from his earliest years of intelligence he had learnt,
listening to his father, a contempt for that loud narrowness; but the
tongue which was Irene's, the landscape where shone Irene's
figure--these were dear to him for Irene's sake. He believed in his
heart of hearts that only the Northern Island could boast the perfect
woman--because he had found her there.
Should he talk of loss--he who had gained so unspeakably by an ideal
love through the hot years of his youth, who to the end of his life
would be made better by it? That were the basest ingratitude. Irene
owed him nothing, yet had enriched him beyond calculation. He did not
love her less; she was the same power in his life. This sinking of the
heart, this menace of gloom and rebellion, was treachery to his better
self. He fought manfully against it.
Circumstances were unfavourable to such a struggle. Work, absorption in
the day's duty, well and good; but when work and duty led one into the
City of London! At first, he had found excitement in the starting of
his business; so much had to be done, so many points to be debated and
decided, so many people to be seen and conversed with, contended with;
it was all an exhilarating effort of mind and body. He felt the joy of
combat; sped to the City like any other man, intent on holding his own
amid the furious welter, seeing a delight in the computation of his
chances; at once a fighter and a gambler, like those with whom he
rubbed shoulders in the roaring ways. He overtaxed his energy, and in
any case there must have come reaction. It came with violence soon
after that day at Malvern.
The weather was hot; one should have been far away from these huge
rampart-streets, these stifling burrows of commerce. But here toil and
stress went on as usual, and Piers Otway saw it all in a lurid light.
These towering edifices with inscriptions numberless, announcing every
imaginable form of trade with every corner of the world; here a vast
building, consecrate in all its commercial magnificence, great windows
and haughty doorways, the gleam of gilding and of brass, the lustre of
polished woods, to a single company or firm; here a huge structure
which housed on its many floors a crowd of enterprises, names by the
score signalled at the foot of the gaping staircase; arrogant
suggestions of triumph side by side with desperate beginnings; titles
of world-wide significance meeting the eye at every turn, vulgar names
with more weight than those of princes, words in small lettering which
ruled the fate of millions of men;--no nightmare was ever so crushing
to one in Otway's mood. The brute force of money; the negation of the
individual--these, the evils of our time, found there supreme
expression in the City of London. Here was opulence at home and superb;
here must poverty lurk and shrink, feeling itself alive only on
sufferance; the din of highway and byway was a voice of blustering
conquest, bidding the weaker to stand aside or be crushed. Here no man
was a human being, but each merely a portion of an inconceivably
complicated mechanism. The shiny-hatted figure who rushed or sauntered,
gloomed by himself at corners or made one of a talking group, might
elsewhere be found a reasonable and kindly person, with traits,
peculiarities; here one could see in him nothing but a money-maker of
this or that class, ground to a certain pattern. The smooth working of
the huge machine made it only the more sinister; one had but to
remember what cold tyranny, what elaborate fraud, were served by its
manifold ingenuities, only to think of the cries of anguish stifled by
its monotonous roar.
Piers had undertaken a task and would not shirk it; but in spite of all
reasonings and idealisms he found life a hard thing during those weeks
of August. He lost his sleep, turned from food, and for a moment feared
collapse such as he had suffered soon after his first going to Odessa.
By the good offices of John Jacks he had already been elected to a
convenient club, and occasionally he passed an evening there; but his
habit was to go home to Guildford Street, and sit hour after hour in
languid brooding. He feared the streets at night-time; in his
loneliness and misery, a gleam upon some wanton face would perchance
have lured him, as had happened ere now. Not so much at the bidding of
his youthful blood, as out of mere longing for companionship, the
common cause of disorder in men condemned to solitude in great cities.
A woman's voice, the touch of a soft hand--this is what men so often
hunger for, when they are censured for lawless appetite. But Piers
Otway knew himself, and chose to sit alone in the dreary lodging-house.
Then he thought of Irene, trying to forget what had happened. Now and
then successfully; in a waking dream he saw and heard her, and knew
again the exalting passion that had been the best of his life, and was
saved from ignoble impulse.
When he was at the lowest, there came a letter from Olga Hannaford, the
first he had ever received in her writing. Olga had joined her mother
at Malvern, and Mrs. Hannaford was so unwell that it seemed likely they
would remain there for a few weeks. "When we can move, the best thing
will be to take a house in or near London. Mother has decided not to
return to Bryanston Square, and I, for my part, shall give up the life
you made fun of. You were quite right; of course it was foolish to go
on in that way." She asked him to write to her mother, whom a line from
him would cheer. Piers did so; also replying to his correspondent, and
trying to make a humorous picture of the life he led between the City
and Guilford Street. It was a sorry jest, but it helped him against his
troubles. When, in a week's time, Olga again wrote, he was glad. The
letter seemed to him interesting; it revived their common memories of
life at Geneva, whither Olga said she would like to return. "What to
do--how to pass the years before me--is the question with me now, as I
suppose it is with so many girls of my age. I must find a _mission_.
Can you suggest one? Only don't let it have anything humanitarian about
it. That would make me a humbug, which I have never been yet. It must
be something entirely for my own pleasure and profit. Do think about it
in an idle moment."
With recovery from his physical ill-being came a new mental
restlessness; the return, rather, of a mood which had always assailed
him when he lost for a time his ideal hope. He demanded of life the joy
natural to his years; revolted against the barrenness of his lot. A
terror fell upon him lest he should be fated never to know the supreme
delight of which he was capable, and for which alone he lived. Even now
was he not passing his prime, losing the keener faculties of youth? He
trembled at the risks of every day; what was his assurance against the
common ill-hap which might afflict him with disease, blight his life
with accident, so that no woman's eye could ever be tempted to rest
upon him? He cursed the restrictions which held him on a straight path
of routine, of narrow custom, when a world of possibilities spread
about him on either hand, the mirage of his imprisoned spirit.
Adventurous projects succeeded each other in his thoughts. He turned to
the lands where life was freer, where perchance his happiness awaited
him, had he but the courage to set forth. What brought him to London,
this squalid blot on the map of the round world? Why did he consume the
irrecoverable hours amid its hostile tumult, its menacing gloom?
On the first Sunday in September he aroused himself to travel by an
early train, which bore him far into the country. He had taken a ticket
at hazard for a place with a pleasant-sounding name, and before village
bells had begun to ring he was wandering in deep lanes amid the weald
of Sussex. All about him lay the perfect loveliness of that rural
landscape which is the old England, the true England, the England dear
to the best of her children. Meadow and copse, the yellow rank of
new-reaped sheaves, brown roofs of farm and cottage amid shadowing
elms, the grassy borders of the road, hedges with their flowered
creepers and promise of wild fruit--these things brought him comfort.
Mile after mile he wandered, losing himself in simplest enjoyment,
forgetting to ask why he was alone. When he felt hungry, an inn
supplied him with a meal. Again he rambled on, and in a leafy corner
found a spot where he could idle for an hour or two, until it was time
to think of the railway station.
He had tired himself; his mind slipped from the beautiful things around
him, and fell into the old reverie. He murmured the haunting
name--Irene. As well as for her who bore it, he loved the name for its
meaning. Peace! As a child he had been taught that no word was more
beautiful, more solemn; at this moment, he could hear it in his
father's voice, sounding as a note of music, with a tremor of deep
feeling. Peace! Every year that passed gave him a fuller understanding
of his father's devotion to that word in all its significance; he
himself knew something of the same fervour, and was glad to foster it
in his heart. Peace! What better could a man pursue? From of old the
desire of wisdom, the prayer of the aspiring soul.
And what else was this Love for which he anguished? Irene herself, the
beloved, sought with passion and with worship, what more could she give
him, when all was given, than content, repose, peace?
He had been too ambitious. It was the fault of his character, and, thus
far on his life's journey, in recognising the error might he not
correct it? Unbalanced ambition explained his ineffectiveness. At
six-and-twenty he had done nothing, and saw no hope of activity
correspondent with his pride. In Russia he had at least felt that he
was treading an uncrowded path: he had made his own a language familiar
to very few western Europeans, and constantly added to his knowledge of
a people moving to some unknown greatness; the position was not
ignoble. But here in London he was lost amid the uproar of striving
tradesmen. The one thing which would still have justified him, hope of
wealth, had all but vanished. He must get rid of his absurd
self-estimate, see himself in the light of common day.
Peace! He could only hope for it in marriage; but what was marriage
without ideal love? Impossible that he should ever love another woman
as he had loved, as he still loved, Irene. The ordinary man seeks a
wife just as he takes any other practical step necessary to his
welfare; he marries because he must, not because he has met with the
true companion of his life; he mates to be quiet, to be comfortable, to
get on with his work, whatever it be. Love in the high sense between
man and woman is of all things the most rare. Few are capable of it; to
fewer still is it granted. "The crown of life!" said Jerome Otway. A
truth, even from the strictly scientific point of view; for is not a
great mutual passion the culminating height of that blind reproductive
impulse from which life begins? Supreme desire; perfection of union.
The purpose of Nature translated into human consciousness, become the
glory of the highest soul, uttered in the lyric rapture of noblest
speech.
That, he must renounce. But not thereby was he condemned to a foolish
or base alliance. Women innumerable might be met, charming, sensible,
good, no unfit objects of his wooing; in all modesty he might hope for
what the world calls happiness. But, put it at the best, he would be
doing as other men do, taking a wife for his solace, for the defeat of
his assailing blood. It was the bitterness of his mere humanity that he
could not hope to live alone and faithful. Five years ago he might have
said to himself, "Irene or no one!" and have said it with the honesty
of youth, of inexperience. No such enthusiasm was possible to him now.
For the thing which is common in fable is all but unknown in life: a
man, capable of loving ardently, who for the sake of one woman, beyond
his hope, sacrifices love altogether. Piers Otway, who read much verse,
had not neglected his Browning. He knew the transcendent mood of
Browning's ideal lover--the beatific dream of love eternal, world after
world, hoping for ever, and finding such hope preferable to every less
noble satisfaction. For him, a mood only, passing with a smile and a
sigh. To that he was not equal; these heights heroic were not for his
treading. Too insistent were the flesh and blood that composed his
earthly being.
He must renounce the best of himself, step consciously to a lower
level. Only let it not prove sheer degradation.
In all his struggling against the misery of loss, one thought never
tempted him. Never for a fleeting instant did he doubt that his highest
love was at the same time highest reason. Men woefully deceive
themselves, yearning for women whose image in their minds is a mere
illusion, women who scarce for a day could bring them happiness, and
whose companionship through life would become a curse. Be it so; Piers
knew it, dwelt upon it as a perilous fact; it had no application to his
love for Irene Derwent. Indeed, Piers was rich in that least common
form of intelligence--the intelligence of the heart. Emotional
perspicacity, the power of recognising through all forms of desire
one's true affinity in the other sex, is bestowed upon one mortal in a
vast multitude. Not lack of opportunity alone accounts for the failure
of men and women to mate becomingly; only the elect have eyes to see,
even where the field of choice is freely opened to them. But Piers
Otway saw and knew, once and for ever. He had the genius of love: where
he could not observe, divination came to his help. His knowledge of
Irene Derwent surpassed that of the persons most intimate with her, and
he could as soon have doubted his own existence as the certainty that
Irene was what he thought her, neither more nor less. But he had erred
in dreaming it possible that he might win her love. That he was not all
unworthy of it, his pride continued to assure him; what he had failed
to perceive was the impossibility, circumstances being as they were, of
urging a direct suit, of making himself known to Irene. His birth, his
position, the accidents of his career--all forbade it. This had been
forced upon his consciousness from the very first, in hours of
despondency or of torment; but he was too young and too ardent for the
fact to have its full weight with him. Hope resisted; passion refused
acquiescence. Nothing short of what had happened could reveal to him
the vanity of his imaginings. He looked back on the years of patient
confidence with wonder and compassion. Had he really hoped? Yes, for he
had lived so long alone.
Paragraphs, morning, evening, and weekly, had long since published Miss
Derwent's engagement. Those making simple announcement of the fact were
trial enough to him when his eye fell upon them; intolerable were those
which commented, as in the case of a society journal which he had idly
glanced over at his club. This taught him that Irene had more social
importance than he guessed; her marriage would be something of an
event. Heaven grant that he might read no journalistic description of
the ceremony! Few things more disgusted him than the thought of a
fashionable wedding; he could see nothing in it but profanation and
indecency. That mattered little, to be sure, in the case of ordinary
people, who were born, and lived, and died, in fashionable routine,
anxious only to exhibit themselves at any given moment in the way held
to be good form; but it was hard to think that custom's tyranny should
lay its foul hand on Irene Derwent. Perhaps her future husband meant no
such thing, and would arrange it all with quiet becomingness. Certainly
her father would not favour the tawdry and the vulgar.
No date was announced. Paragraphs said merely that it would be "before
the end of the year."
After all, his day amid the fields was spoilt. He had allowed his mind
to stray in the forbidden direction, and the seeming quiet to which he
had attained was overthrown once more. Heavily he moved towards the
wayside station, and drearily he waited for the train that was to take
him back to his meaningless toil and strife.
In the compartment he entered, an empty one, some passenger had left a
weekly periodical; Piers seized upon it gladly, and read to distract
his thoughts. One article interested him; it was on the subject of
national characteristics: cleverly written, what is called "smart"
journalism, with grip and epigram, with hint of universal knowledge and
the true air of British superiority. Having scanned the writer's
comment on the Slavonic peoples, Piers laughed aloud; so evidently it
was a report at second or third hand, utterly valueless to one who had
any real acquaintance with the Slavs. This moment of spontaneous mirth
did him good, helped to restore his self-respect. And as he pondered
old ambitions stirred again in him. Could he not make some use of the
knowledge he had gained so laboriously--some use other than that
whereby he earned his living? Not so long ago, he had harboured great
designs, vague but not irrational. And to-day, even in bidding himself
be humble, his intellect was little tuned to humility. He had never, at
his point of darkest depression, really believed that life had no
shining promise for him. The least boastful of men, he was at heart one
of the most aspiring. His moods varied wonderfully. When he alighted at
the London terminus, he looked and felt like a man refreshed by some
new hope.
Half by accident, he kept the paper he had been reading. It lay on his
table in Guildford Street for weeks, for months. Years after, he came
upon it one day in turning out the contents of a trunk, and remembered
his ramble in the Sussex woodland, and smiled at the chances of life.
On Monday morning he had a characteristic letter from Moncharmont, part
English, part French, part Russian. Nothing, or only a passing word,
about business; communications of that sort were all addressed to the
office, and were as concise, as practical, as any trader could have
desired. In his friendly letter, Moncharmont chatted of a certain
Polish girl with whom he had newly made acquaintance, whose beauty,
according to the good Andre, was a thing to dream of, not to tell. It
meant nothing, as Piers knew. The cosmopolitan Swiss fell in love some
dozen times a year, with maidens or women of every nationality and
every social station. Be the issue what it might, he was never unhappy.
He had a gallery of photographs, and delighted to pore over it,
indulging reminiscences or fostering hopes. Once in a twelvemonth or
so, he made up his mind to marry, but never went further than the
intention. It was doubtful whether he would ever commit himself
irrevocably. "It seems such a pity," he often said, with his pensively
humorous smile, "to limit the scope of one's emotions--_borner la
carriere a ses emotions_!" Then he sighed, and was in the best of
spirits.
Not even to Moncharmont--with whom he talked more freely than with any
other man--had Piers ever spoken of Irene. Andre of course suspected
some romantic attachment, and was in constant amaze at Piers' fidelity.
"Ah, you English! you English!" he would exclaim. "You are the stoics
of the modern world. I admire; yes, I admire; but, my friend, I do not
wish to imitate."
The letter cheered Otway's breakfast; he read it instead of the
newspaper, and with vastly more benefit.
Another letter had come to his private address, a note from Mrs.
Hannaford. She was regaining strength, and hoped soon to come South
again. Her brother had already taken a nice little house for her at
Campden Hill, where Olga would have a sort of studio, and, she trusted,
would make herself happy. Both looked forward to seeing Piers; they
sent him their very kindest remembrances.