'Hamlet in due season,' said he, as they sat together. 'I shall convince
you.'
She shook her head.
'Yes, yes, an opinion formed by a woman is inflexible; I know that: the
fact is not half so stubborn. But at present there are two more
important actors: we are not at Elsinore. You are aware that I hoped to
meet you?'
'Is there a periodical advertisement of your hopes?--or do they come to
us by intuition?'
'Kollin was right!--the ways of the serpent will be serpentine. I knew
we must meet. It is no true day so long as the goddess of the morning
and the sun-god are kept asunder. I speak of myself, by what I have felt
since I heard of you.'
'You are sure of your divinity?'
'Through my belief in yours!'
They bowed smiling at the courtly exchanges.
'And tell me,' said he, 'as to meeting me . . . ?'
She replied: 'When we are so like the rest of the world we may confess
our weakness.'
'Unlike! for the world and I meet and part: not we two.'
Clotilde attempted an answer: it would not come. She tried to be
revolted by his lording tone, and found it strangely inoffensive. His
lording presence and the smile that was like a waving feather on it
compelled her so strongly to submit to hear, as to put her in danger of
appearing to embrace this man's rapid advances.
She said: 'I first heed of you at Capri.'
'And I was at Capri seven days after you had left.'
'You knew my name then?'
'Be not too curious with necromancers. Here is the date--March 15th.
You departed on the 8th.'
'I think I did. That is a year from now.'
'Then we missed: now we meet. It is a year lost. A year is a great age!
Reflect on it and what you owe me. How I wished for a comrade at Capri!
Not a "young lady," and certainly no man. The understanding Feminine,
was my desire--a different thing from the feminine understanding,
usually. I wanted my comrade young and fair, necessarily of your sex,
but with heart and brain: an insane request, I fancied, until I heard
that you were the person I wanted. In default of you I paraded the
island with Tiberius, who is my favourite tyrant. We took the initiative
against the patricians, at my suggestion, and the Annals were written by
a plebeian demagogue, instead of by one of that party, whose account of
my extinction by command of the emperor was pathetic. He apologized in
turn for my imperial master and me, saying truly, that the
misunderstanding between us was past cement: for each of us loved the man
but hated his office; and as the man is always more in his office than he
is in himself, clearly it was the lesser portion of our friend that each
of us loved. So, I, as the weaker, had to perish, as he would have done
had I been the stronger; I admitted it, and sent my emperor my respectful
adieux, with directions for the avoiding of assassins. Mademoiselle, by
delaying your departure seven days you would have saved me from death.
You see, the official is the artificial man, and I ought to have known
there is no natural man left in us to weigh against the artificial. I
counted on the emperor's personal affection, forgetting that princes
cannot be our friends.'
'You died bravely?'
Clotilde entered into the extravagance with a happy simulation of zest.
'Simply, we will say. My time had come, and I took no sturdy pose, but
let the life-stream run its course for a less confined embankment.
Sapphire sea, sapphire sky: one believes in life there, thrills with it,
when life is ebbing: ay, as warmly as when life is at the flow in our
sick and shrivelled North--the climate for dried fish! Verily the second
death of hearing that a gold-haired Lucretia had been on the island seven
days earlier, was harder to bear. Tell me frankly--the music in Italy?'
'Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous.'
'Excellent!' his eyes flashed delightedly. 'O comrade of comrades!
that year lost to me will count heavily as I learn to value those I have
gained. Yes, brainless! There, in music, we beat them, as politically
France beats us. No life without brain! The brainless in Art and in
Statecraft are nothing but a little more obstructive than the dead. It
is less easy to cut a way through them. But it must be done, or the
Philistine will be as the locust in his increase, and devour the green
blades of the earth. You have been trained to shudder at the demagogue?'
'I do not shudder,' said Clotilde.
'A diamond from the lapidary!--Your sentences have many facets. Well,
you are conversing with a demagogue, an avowed one: a demagogue and a
Jew. You take it as a matter of course: you should exhibit some
sparkling incredulity. The Christian is like the politician in supposing
the original obverse of him everlastingly the same, after the pattern of
the monster he was originally taught to hate. But the Jew has been a
little christianized, and we have a little bejewed the Christian. So
with demagogues: as we see the conservative crumbling, we grow
conservatived. Try to think individually upon what you have to learn
collectively--that is your task. You are of the few who will be equal to
it. We are not men of blood, believe me. I am not. For example, I
detest and I decline the duel. I have done it, and proved myself a man
of metal notwithstanding. To say nothing of the inhumanity, the
senselessness of duelling revolts me. 'Tis a folly, so your nobles
practise it, and your royal wiseacre sanctions. No blood for me: and yet
I tell you that whatever opposes me, I will sweep away. How? With the
brain. If we descend to poor brute strength or brutal craft, it is from
failing in the brain: we quit the leadership of our forces, and the
descent is the beast's confession. Do I say how? Perhaps by your aid.--
You do not start and cry: "Mine!" That is well. I have not much esteem
for non-professional actresses. They are numerous and not entertaining.
--You leave it to me to talk.'
'Could I do better?'
'You listen sweetly.'
'It is because I like to hear.'
'You have the pearly little ear of a shell on the sand.'
'With the great sea sounding near it!'
Alvan drew closer to her.
'I look into your eyes and perceive that one may listen to you and speak
to you. Heart to heart, then! Yes, a sea to lull you, a sea to win you
--temperately, let us hope; by storm, if need be. My prize is found!
The good friend who did the part of Iris for us came bounding to me: "I
have discovered the wife for you, Alvan." I had previously heard of her
from another as having touched the islet of Capri. "But," said Kollin,
"she is a gold-crested serpent--slippery!" Is she? That only tells me
of a little more to be mastered. I feel my future now. Hitherto it has
been a land without sunlight. Do you know how the look of sunlight on a
land calms one? It signifies to the eye possession and repose, the end
gained--not the end to labour, just heaven! but peace to the heart's
craving, which is the renewal of strength for work, the fresh dip in the
waters of life. Conjure up your vision of Italy. Remember the meaning
of Italian light and colour: the clearness, the luminous fulness, the
thoughtful shadows. Mountain and wooded headland are solid, deep to the
eye, spirit-speaking to the mind. They throb. You carve shapes of Gods
out of that sky, the sea, those peaks. They live with you. How they
satiate the vacant soul by influx, and draw forth the troubled from its
prickly nest!--Well, and you are my sunlighted land. And you will have
to be fought for. And I see not the less repose in the prospect! Part
of you may be shifty-sand. The sands are famous for their golden
shining--as you shine. Well, then, we must make the quicksands concrete.
I have a perfect faith in you, and in the winning of you. Clearly you
will have to be fought for. I should imagine it a tough battle to come.
But as I doubt neither you nor myself, I see beyond it.--We use phrases
in common, and aphorisms, it appears. Why? but that our minds act in
unison. What if I were to make a comparison of you with Paris?--the city
of Paris, Lutetia.'
'Could you make it good?' said Clotilde.
He laughed and postponed it for a series of skimming discussions, like
swallow-flights from the nest beneath the eaves to the surface of the
stream, perpetually reverting to her, and provoking spirited replies,
leading her to fly with him in expectation of a crowning compliment that
must be singular and was evidently gathering confirmation in his mind
from the touchings and probings of her character on these flights.
She was like a lady danced off her sense of fixity, to whom the
appearance of her whirling figure in the mirror is both wonderful and
reassuring; and she liked to be discussed, to be compared to anything,
for the sake of being the subject, so as to be sure it was she that
listened to a man who was a stranger, claiming her for his own; sure it
was she that by not breaking from him implied consent, she that went
speeding in this magical rapid round which slung her more and more out of
her actual into her imagined self, compelled her to proceed, denied her
the right to faint and call upon the world for aid, and catch at it,
though it was close by and at a signal would stop the terrible circling.
The world was close by and had begun to stare. She half apprehended that
fact, but she was in the presence of the irresistible. In the presence
of the irresistible the conventional is a crazy structure swept away with
very little creaking of its timbers on the flood. When we feel its power
we are immediately primitive creatures, flying anywhere in space,
indifferent to nakedness. And after trimming ourselves for it, the sage
asks your permission to add, it will be the thing we are most certain
some day to feel. Had not she trimmed herself?--so much that she had won
fame for an originality mistaken by her for the independent mind, and
perilously, for courage. She had trimmed herself and Alvan too--herself
to meet it, and Alvan to be it. Her famous originality was a trumpet
blown abroad proclaiming her the prize of the man who sounded as loudly
his esteem for the quality--in a fair young woman of good breeding. Each
had evoked the other. Their common anticipations differed in this, that
he had expected comeliness, she the reverse--an Esau of the cities; and
seeing superb manly beauty in the place of the thick-featured sodden
satyr of her miscreating fancy, the irresistible was revealed to her on
its divinest whirlwind.
They both desired beauty; they had each stipulated for beauty before
captivity could be acknowledged; and he beholding her very attractive
comeliness, walked into the net, deeming the same a light thing to wear,
and rather a finishing grace to his armoury; but she, a trained disciple
of the conventional in social behaviour (as to the serious points and the
extremer trifles), fluttered exceedingly; she knew not what she was
doing, where her hand was, how she looked at him, how she drank in his
looks on her. Her woman's eyes had no guard they had scarcely
speculation. She saw nothing in its passing, but everything backward,
under haphazard flashes. The sight of her hand disengaged told her it
had been detained; a glance at the company reminded her that those were
men and women who had been other than phantoms; recollections of the
words she listened to, assented to, replied to, displayed the gulfs she
had crossed. And nevertheless her brain was as quick as his to press
forward to pluck the themes which would demonstrate her mental vividness
and at least indicate her force of character. The splendour of the man
quite extinguished, or over-brightened, her sense of personal charm; she
set fire to her brain to shine intellectually, treating the tale of her
fair face as a childish tale that might have a grain of truth in it, some
truth, a very little, and that little nearly worthless, merely womanly,
a poor charm of her sex. The intellectual endowment was rarer: still
rarer the moral audacity. O, to match this man's embracing
discursiveness! his ardour, his complacent energy, the full strong sound
he brought out of all subjects! He struck, and they rang. There was a
bell in everything for him; Nature gave out her cry, and significance was
on all sides of the universe; no dead stuff, no longer any afflicting
lumpishness. His brain was vivifying light. And how humane he was! how
supremely tolerant! Where she had really thought instead of flippantly
tapping at the doors of thought, or crying vagrantly for an echo, his
firm footing in the region thrilled her; and where she had felt deeper
than fancifully, his wise tenderness overwhelmed. Strange to consider:
with all his precious gifts, which must make the gift of life thrice dear
to him, he was fearless. Less by what he said than by divination she
discerned that he knew not fear. If for only that, she would have hung
to him like his shadow. She could have detected a brazen pretender.
A meaner mortal vaunting his great stores she would have written down
coxcomb. Her social training and natural perception raised her to a
height to measure the bombastical and distinguish it from the eloquently
lofty. He spoke of himself, as the towering Alp speaks out at a first
view, bidding that which he was be known. Fearless, confident, able, he
could not but be, as he believed himself, indomitable. She who was this
man's mate would consequently wed his possessions, including courage.
Clotilde at once reached the conclusion of her having it in an equal
degree. Was she not displaying it? The worthy people of the company
stared, as she now perceived, and she was indifferent; her relatives were
present without disturbing her exaltation. She wheeled above their heads
in the fiery chariot beside her sun-god. It could not but be courage,
active courage, superior to her previous tentative steps--the verbal
temerities she had supposed so dauntless. For now she was in action, now
she was being tried to match the preacher and incarnation of the virtues
of action!
Alvan shaped a comparison of her with Paris, his beloved of cities--the
symbolized goddess of the lightning brain that is quick to conceive,
eager to realize ideas, impassioned for her hero, but ever putting him to
proof, graceful beyond all rhyme, colloquial as never the Muse; light in
light hands, yet valiant unto death for a principle; and therefore not
light, anything but light in strong hands, very stedfast rather: and oh!
constantly entertaining.
The comparison had to be strained to fit the living lady's shape. Did he
think it, or a dash of something like it?
His mood was luxurious. He had found the fair and youthful original
woman of refinement and station desired by him. He had good reason to
wish to find her. Having won a name, standing on firm ground, with
promise of a great career, chief of what was then taken for a growing
party and is not yet a collapsed, nor will be, though the foot on it is
iron, his youth had flown under the tutelage of an extraordinary Mentor,
whom to call Athene robs the goddess of her personal repute for wisdom in
conduct, but whose head was wise, wise as it was now grey. Verily she
was original; and a grey original should seem remarkable above a blooming
blonde. If originality in woman were our prime request, the grey should
bear the palm. She has gone through the battle, retaining the standard
she carried into it, which is a victory. Alas, that grey, so spirit-
touching in Art, should be so wintry in reality!
The discovery of a feminine original breathing Spring, softer, warmer
than the ancient one, gold instead of snowcrested, and fully as intrepid
as devoted, was an immense joy to Alvan. He took it luxuriously because
he believed in his fortune, a kind of natal star, the common heritage of
the adventurous, that brought him his good things in time, in return for
energetic strivings in a higher direction apart from his natural
longings.
Fortune had delayed, he had wintered long. All the sweeter was the
breath of the young Spring. That exquisite new sweetness robed Clotilde
in the attributes of the person dreamed of for his mate; and deductively
assuming her to possess them, he could not doubt his power of winning
her. Barriers are for those who cannot fly. The barriers were palpable
about a girl of noble Christian birth: so was the courage in her which
would give her wings, he thought, coming to that judgement through the
mixture of his knowledge of himself and his perusal of her exterior.
He saw that she could take an impression deeply enough to express it
sincerely, and he counted on it, sympathetically endowing her with his
courage to support the originality she was famed for.
They were interrupted between-whiles by weariful men running to Alvan for
counsel on various matters--how to play their game, or the exact phrasing
of some pregnant sentence current in politics or literature. He
satisfied them severally and shouldered them away, begging for peace
that night. Clotilde corroborated his accurate recital of the lines of
a contested verse of the incomparable Heinrich, and they fell to capping
verses of the poet-lucid metheglin, with here and there no dubious
flavour of acid, and a lively sting in the tail of the honey. Sentiment,
cynicism, and satin impropriety and scabrous, are among those verses,
where pure poetry has a recognized voice; but the lower elements
constitute the popularity in a cultivated society inclining to wantonness
out of bravado as well as by taste. Alvan, looking indolently royal and
royally roguish, quoted a verse that speaks of the superfluousness of a
faithless lady's vowing bite:
'The kisses were in the course of things,
The bite was a needless addition.'
Clotilde could not repress her reddening--Count Kollin had repeated too
much! She dropped her eyes, with a face of sculpture, then resumed their
chatter. He spared her the allusion to Pompeius. She convinced him of
her capacity for reserve besides intrepidity, and flattered him too with
her blush. She could dare to say to Kollin what her scarlet sensibility
forbade her touching on with him: not that she would not have had an airy
latitude with him to touch on what she pleased: he liked her for her
boldness and the cold peeping of the senses displayed in it: he liked
also the distinction she made.
The cry to supper conduced to a further insight of her adaptation to his
requirements in a wife. They marched to the table together, and sat
together, and drank a noble Rhine wine together--true Rauenthal. His
robustness of body and soul inspired the wish that his well-born wife
might be, in her dainty fashion, yet honestly and without mincing, his
possible boonfellow: he and she, glass in hand, thanking the bountiful
heavens, blessing mankind in chorus. It belonged to his hearty dream of
the wife he would choose, were she to be had. The position of
interpreter of heaven's benevolence to mankind through his own enjoyment
of the gifts, was one that he sagaciously demanded for himself, sharing
it with the Philistine unknowingly; and to have a wife no less wise than
he on this throne of existence was a rosy exaltation. Clotilde kindled
to the hint of his festival mood of Solomon at the banquet. She was not
devoid of a discernment of flavours; she had heard grave judges at her
father's board profoundly deliver their verdicts upon this and that
vineyard and vintage; and it is a note of patriotism in her country to be
enthusiastic for wine of the Rhine: she was, moreover, thirsty from much
talking and excitement. She drank her glass relishingly, declaring the
wine princely. Alvan smacked his hands in a rapture: 'You are not for
the extract of raisin our people have taken to copy from French
Sauternes, to suit a female predilection for sugar?'
'No, no, the grape for me!' said she: 'the Rhine grape with the elf in
it, and the silver harp and the stained legend!'
'Glorious!'
He toasted the grape. 'Wine of the grape is the young bride--the young
sun-bride! divine, and never too sweet, never cloying like the withered
sun-dried, with its one drop of concentrated sugar, that becomes ten of
gout. No raisin-juice for us! None of their too-long-on-the-stem
clusters! We are for the blood of the grape in her youth, her heaven-
kissing ardour. I have a cellar charged with the bravest of the Rhine.
We--will we not assail it, bleed it in the gallant days to come? we two!'
The picture of his bride and him drinking the sun down after a day of
savage toil was in the shout--a burst unnoticed in the incessantly
verbalizing buzz of a continental supper-table. Clotilde acquiesced:
she chimed to it like a fair boonfellow of the rollicking faun. She was
realizing fairyland.
They retired to the divan-corner where it was you-and-I between them as
with rivulets meeting and branching, running parallel, uniting and
branching again, divided by the theme, but unending in the flow of the
harmony. So ran their chirping arguments and diversions. The carrying
on of a prolonged and determined you-and-I in company intimates to those
undetermined floating atoms about us that a certain sacred something is
in process of formation, or has formed; and people looked; and looked
hard at the pair, and at one another afterward: none approached them.
The Signor conjuror who has a thousand arts for conjuring with nature was
generally considered to have done that night his most ancient and
reputedly fabulous trick--the dream of poets, rarely witnessed anywhere,
and almost too wonderful for credence in a haunt of our later
civilization. Yet there it was: the sudden revelation of the intense
divinity to a couple fused in oneness by his apparition, could be
perceived of all having man and woman in them; love at first sight, was
visible. 'Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?' And if nature,
character, circumstance, and a maid clever at dressing her mistress's
golden hair, did prepare them for Love's lightning-match, not the less
were they proclaimingly alight and in full blaze. Likewise, Time,
imperious old gentleman though we know him to be, with his fussy
reiterations concerning the hour for bed and sleep, bowed to the magical
fact of their condition, and forbore to warn them of his passing from
night to day. He had to go, he must, he has to be always going, but as
long as he could he left them on their bank by the margin of the stream,
where a shadow-cycle of the eternal wound a circle for them and allowed
them to imagine they had thrust that old driver of the dusty high-road
quietly out of the way. They were ungrateful, of course, when the
performance of his duties necessitated his pulling them up beside him
pretty smartly, but he uttered no prophecy of ever intending to rob them
of the celestial moments they had cut from him and meant to keep between
them 'for ever,' and fresh.
The hour was close on the dawn of a March morning. Alvan assisted at the
cloaking and hooding of Clotilde. Her relatives were at hand; they hung
by while he led her to the stairs and down into a spacious moonlight that
laid the traceries of the bare tree-twigs clear-black on grass and stone.
'A night to head the Spring!' said Alvan. 'Come.'
He lifted her off the steps and set her on the ground, as one who had an
established right to the privilege and she did not contest it, nor did
her people, so kingly was he, arrayed in the thunder of the bolt which
had struck the pair. These things, and many things that islands know not
of, are done upon continents, where perhaps traditions of the awfulness
of Love remain more potent in society; or it may be, that an island
atmosphere dispossesses the bolt of its promptitude to strike, or the
breastplates of the islanders are strengthened to resist the bolt, or no
tropical heat is there to create and launch it, or nothing is to be seen
of it for the haziness, or else giants do not walk there. But even where
he walked, amid a society intellectually fostering sentiment, in a land
bowing to see the simplicity of the mystery paraded, Alvan's behaviour
was passing heteroclite. He needed to be the kingly fellow he was,
crowned by another kingly fellow--the lord of hearts--to impose it
uninterruptedly. 'She is mine; I have won her this night!' his bearing
said; and Clotilde's acquiesced; and the worthy couple following them had
to exhibit a copy of the same, much wondering. Partly by habit, and of
his natural astuteness, Alvan peremptorily usurped a lead that once taken
could not easily be challenged, and would roll him on a good tideway
strong in his own passion and his lady's up against the last defences--
her parents. A difficulty with them was foreseen. What is a difficulty!
--a gate in the hunting-field: an opponent on a platform: a knot beneath
a sword: the dam to waters that draw from the heavens. Not desiring it
in this case--it would have been to love the difficulty better than the
woman--he still enjoyed the bracing prospect of a resistance, if only
because it was a portion of the dowry she brought him. Good soldiers
(who have won their grades) are often of a peaceful temper and would not
raise an invocation to war, but a view of the enemy sets their pugnacious
forces in motion, the bugle fills their veins with electrical fire, till
they are as racers on the race-course.--His inmost hearty devil was glad
of a combat that pertained to his possession of her, for battle gives the
savour of the passion to win, and victory dignifies a prize: he was,
however, resolved to have it, if possible, according to the regular
arrangement of such encounters, formal, without snatchings, without rash
violence; a victory won by personal ascendancy, reasoning eloquence.
He laughed to hear her say, in answer to a question as to her present
feelings: 'I feel that I am carried away by a centaur!' The comparison
had been used or implied to him before.
'No!' said he, responding to a host of memories, to shake them off, 'no
more of the quadruped man! You tempt him--may I tell you that? Why,
now, this moment, at the snap of my fingers, what is to hinder our taking
the short cut to happiness, centaur and nymph? One leap and a gallop,
and we should be into the morning, leaving night to grope for us, parents
and friends to run about for the wits they lose in running. But no! No
more scandals. That silver moon invites us by its very spell of bright
serenity, to be mad: just as, when you drink of a reverie, the more
prolonged it is the greater the readiness for wild delirium at the end of
the draught. But no!' his voice deepened--'the handsome face of the orb
that lights us would be well enough were it only a gallop between us two.
Dearest, the orb that lights us two for a lifetime must be taken all
round, and I have been on the wrong side of the moon
I have seen the other face of it--a visage scored with regrets, dead
dreams, burnt passions, bald illusions, and the like, the like!--sunless,
waterless, without a flower! It is the old volcano land: it grows one
bitter herb: if ever you see my mouth distorted you will know I am
revolving a taste of it; and as I need the antidote you give, I will not
be the centaur to win you, for that is the land where he stables himself;
yes, there he ends his course, and that is the herb he finishes by
pasturing on. You have no dislike of metaphors and parables? We Jews
are a parable people.'
'I am sure I do understand . . .' said Clotilde, catching her breath to
be conscientious, lest he should ask her for an elucidation.
'Provided always that the metaphor be not like the metaphysician's
treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise!--You were going to add?'
'I was going to say, I think I understand, but you run away with me
still.'
'May the sensation never quit you!'
'It will not.'
'What a night !' Alvan raised his head: 'A night cast for our first
meeting and betrothing! You are near home?'
'The third house yonder in the moonlight.'
'The moonlight lays a white hand on it!'
'That is my window sparkling.'
'That is the vestal's cresset. Shall I blow it out?'
'You are too far. And it is a celestial flame, sir!'
'Celestial in truth! My hope of heaven! Dian's crescent will be ever on
that house for me, Clotilde. I would it were leagues distant, or the
door not forbidden!'
'I could minister to a good knight humbly.'
Alvan bent to her, on a sudden prompting:
'When do father and mother arrive?'
'To-morrow.'
He took her hand. 'To-morrow, then! The worst of omens is delay.'
Clotilde faintly gasped. Could he mean it?--he of so evil a name in her
family and circle!
Her playfulness and pleasure in the game of courtliness forsook her.
'Tell me the hour when it will be most convenient to them to receive me,'
said Alvan.
She stopped walking in sheer fright.
'My father--my mother?' she said, imaging within her the varied horror of
each and the commotion.
'To-morrow or the day after--not later. No delays! You are mine, we are
one; and the sooner my cause is pleaded the better for us both. If I
could step in and see them this instant, it would be forestalling
mischances. Do you not see, that time is due to us, and the minutes are
our gold slipping away?'
She shrank her hand back: she did not wish to withdraw the hand, only to
shun the pledge it signified. He opened an abyss at her feet, and in
deadly alarm of him she exclaimed: 'Oh! not yet; not immediately.' She
trembled, she made her petition dismal by her anguish of speechlessness.
'There will be such . . . not yet! Perhaps later. They must not be
troubled yet--at present. I am . . . I cannot--pray, delay!'
'But you are mine!' said Alvan. 'You feel it as I do. There can be no
real impediment?'
She gave an empty sigh that sought to be a run of entreaties. In fear
of his tongue she caught at words to baffle it, senseless of their
imbecility: 'Do not insist: yes, in time: they will--they--they may.
My father is not very well . . . my mother: she is not very well.
They are neither of them very well: not at present!--Spare them at
present.'
To avoid being carried away, she flung herself from the centaur's back
to the disenchanting earth; she separated herself from him in spirit,
and beheld him as her father and mother and her circle would look on this
pretender to her hand, with his lordly air, his Jew blood, and his
hissing reputation--for it was a reputation that stirred the snakes and
the geese of the world. She saw him in their eyes, quite coldly: which
imaginative capacity was one of the remarkable feats of cowardice, active
and cold of brain even while the heart is active and would be warm.
He read something of her weakness. 'And supposing I decide that it must
be?'
'How can I supplicate you!' she replied with a shiver, feeling that she
had lost her chance of slipping from his grasp, as trained women of the
world, or very sprightly young wits know how to do at the critical
moment: and she had lost it by being too sincere. Her cowardice appeared
to her under that aspect.
'Now I perceive that the task is harder,' said Alvan, seeing her huddled
in a real dismay. 'Why will you not rise to my level and fear nothing!
The way is clear: we have only to take the step. Have you not seen
tonight that we are fated for one another? It is your destiny, and
trifling with destiny is a dark business. Look at me. Do you doubt my
having absolute control of myself to bear whatever they put on me to
bear, and hold firmly to my will to overcome them! Oh! no delays.'
'Yes!' she cried; 'yes, there must be.'
'You say it?'
The courage to repeat her cry was wanting.
She trembled visibly: she could more readily have bidden him bear her
hence than have named a day for the interview with her parents; but
desperately she feared that he would be the one to bid; and he had this
of the character of destiny about him, that she felt in him a maker of
facts. He was her dream in human shape, her eagle of men, and she felt
like a lamb in the air; she had no resistance, only terror of his power,
and a crushing new view of the nature of reality.
'I see!' said he, and his breast fell. Her timid inability to join with
him for instant action reminded him that he carried many weights: a bad
name among her people and class, and chains in private. He was old
enough to strangle his impulses, if necessary, or any of the brood less
fiery than the junction of his passions. 'Well, well!--but we might so
soon have broken through the hedge into the broad highroad! It is but to
determine to do it--to take the bold short path instead of the wearisome
circuit. Just a little lightning in the brain and tightening of the
heart. Battles are won in that way: not by tender girls! and she is a
girl, and the task is too much for her. So, then, we are in your hands,
child! Adieu, and let the gold-crested serpent glide to her bed, and
sleep, dream, and wake, and ask herself in the morning whether she is not
a wedded soul. Is she not a serpent? gold-crested, all the world may
see; and with a mortal bite, I know. I have had the bite before the
kisses. That is rather an unjust reversal of the order of things.
Apropos, Hamlet was poisoned--ghost-poisoned.'
'Mad, he was mad!' said Clotilde, recovering and smiling.
'He was born bilious; he partook of the father's constitution, not the
mother's. High-thoughted, quick-nerved to follow the thought,
reflective, if an interval yawned between his hand and the act, he was by
nature two-minded: as full of conscience as a nursing mother that sleeps
beside her infant:--she hears the silent beginning of a cry. Before the
ghost walked he was an elementary hero; one puff of action would have
whiffed away his melancholy. After it, he was a dizzy moralizer, waiting
for the winds to blow him to his deed-ox out. The apparition of his
father to him poisoned a sluggish run of blood, and that venom in the
blood distracted a head steeped in Wittenberg philosophy. With
metaphysics in one and poison in the other, with the outer world opened
on him and this world stirred to confusion, he wore the semblance of
madness; he was throughout sane; sick, but never with his reason
dethroned.'
'Nothing but madness excuses his conduct to Ophelia!'
'Poison in the blood is a pretty good apology for infidelity to a lady.'
' No!'
'Well, to an Ophelia of fifty?' said Alvan.
Clotilde laughed, not perfectly assured of the wherefore, but pleased to
be able to laugh. Her friends were standing at the house door, farewells
were spoken, Alvan had gone. And then she thought of the person that
Ophelia of fifty might be, who would have to find a good apology for him
in his dose of snake-bite, or love of a younger woman whom he termed
gold-crested serpent.
He was a lover, surely a lover: he slid off to some chance bit of
likeness to himself in every subject he discussed with her.
And she? She speeded recklessly on the back of the centaur when he had
returned to the state of phantom and the realities he threatened her with
were no longer imminent.