Alvan was at his writing-table doing stout gladiator's work on paper in
a chamber of one of the gaunt hotels of the heights, which are Death's
Heads there in Winter and have the tongues in Summer, when a Swiss lad
entered with a round grin to tell him that a lady on horseback below had
asked for him--Dr. Alvan. Who could the lady be? He thought of too
many. The thought of Clotilde was dismissed in its dimness. Issuing and
beholding her, his face became illuminated as by a stroke of sunlight.
'Clotilde! by all the holiest!'
She smiled demurely, and they greeted.
She admired the look of rich pleasure shining through surprise in him.
Her heart thanked him for appearing so handsome before her friends.
'I was writing,' said he. 'Guess to whom?--I had just finished my
political stuff, and fell on a letter to the professor and another for
an immediate introduction to your father.'
'True?'
'The truth, as you shall see. So, you have come, you have found me!
This time if I let you slip, may I be stamped slack-fingered!'
'"Two wishes make a will," you say.'
He answered her with one of his bursts of brightness.
Her having sought him he read for the frank surrender which he was ready
to match with a loyal devotion to his captive. Her coming cleared
everything.
Clotilde introduced him to her friends, and he was enrolled a member of
the party. His appearance was that of a man to whom the sphinx has
whispered. They ascended to the topmost of the mountain stages, to
another caravanserai of tourists, whence the singular people emerge in
morning darkness night-capped and blanketed, and behold the great orb of
day at his birth--he them.
Walking slowly beside Clotilde on the mountain way, Alvan said: 'Two
wishes! Mine was in your breast. You wedded yours to it. At last!--and
we are one. Not a word more of time lost. My wish is almost a will in
itself--was it not?--and has been wooing yours all this while!--till the
sleeper awakened, the well-spring leapt up from the earth; and our two
wishes united dare the world to divide them. What can? My wish was your
destiny, yours is mine. We are one.' He poetized on his passion, and
dramatized it: 'Stood you at the altar, I would pluck you from the man
holding your hand! There is no escape for you. Nay, into the vaults,
were you to grow pale and need my vital warmth--down to the vaults!
Speak--or no: look! That will do. You hold a Titan in your eyes, like
metal in the furnace, to turn him to any shape you please, liquid or
solid. You make him a god: he is the river Alvan or the rock Alvan: but
fixed or flowing, he is lord of you. That is the universal penalty: you
must, if you have this creative soul, be the slave of your creature: if
you raise him to heaven, you must be his! Ay, look! I know the eyes!
They can melt granite, they can freeze fire. Pierce me, sweet eyes! And
now flutter, for there is that in me to make them.'
'Consider!' Clotilde flutteringly entreated him.
'The world? you dear heaven of me! Looking down on me does not
compromise you, and I am not ashamed of my devotions. I sat in gloom:
you came: I saw my goddess and worshipped. The world, Lutece, the world
is a variable monster; it rends the weak whether sincere or false; but
those who weld strength with sincerity may practise their rites of
religion publicly, and it fawns to them, and bellows to imitate. Nay, I
say that strength in love is the sole sincerity, and the world knows it,
muffs it in the air about us, and so we two are privileged. Politically
also we know that strength is the one reality: the rest is shadow.
Behind the veil of our human conventions power is constant as ever, and
to perceive the fact is to have the divining rod-to walk clear of shams.
He is the teacher who shows where power exists: he is the leader who
wakens and forms it. Why have I unfailingly succeeded?--I never doubted!
The world voluntarily opens a path to those who step determinedly. You--
to your honour?--I won't decide--but you have the longest in my
experience resisted. I have a Durandal to hew the mountain walls; I have
a voice for ears, a net for butterflies, a hook for fish, and desperation
to plunge into marshes: but the feu follet will not be caught. One must
wait--wait till her desire to have a soul bids her come to us. She has
come! A soul is hers: and see how, instantly, the old monster, the
world, which has no soul--not yet: we are helping it to get one--becomes
a shadow, powerless to stop or overawe. For I do give you a soul, think
as you will of it. I give you strength to realize, courage to act. It
is the soul that does things in this life--the rest is vapour. How do we
distinguish love?--as we do music by the pure note won from resolute
strings. The tense chord is music, and it is love. This higher and
higher mountain air, with you beside me, sweeps me like a harp.'
'Oh! talk on, talk on! talk ever! do not cease talking to me!'
exclaimed Clotilde.
'You feel the mountain spirit?'
'I feel that you reveal it.'
'Tell me the books you have been reading.'
' Oh, light literature-poor stuff.'
'When we two read together you will not say that. Light literature is
the garden and the orchard, the fountain, the rainbow, the far view; the
view within us as well as without. Our blood runs through it, our
history in the quick. The Philistine detests it, because he has no view,
out or in. The dry confess they are cut off from the living tree, peeled
and sapless, when they condemn it. The vulgar demand to have their
pleasures in their own likeness--and let them swamp their troughs! they
shall not degrade the fame of noble fiction. We are the choice public,
which will have good writing for light reading. Poet, novelist,
essayist, dramatist, shall be ranked honourable in my Republic. I am
neither, but a man of law, a student of the sciences, a politician, on
the road to government and statecraft: and yet I say I have learnt as
much from light literature as from heavy-as much, that is, from the
pictures of our human blood in motion as from the clever assortment of
our forefatherly heaps of bones. Shun those who cry out against fiction
and have no taste for elegant writing. For to have no sympathy with the
playful mind is not to have a mind: it is a test. But name the books.'
She named one or two.
'And when does Dr. Alvan date the first year of his Republic?'
'Clotilde!' he turned on her.
'My good sir?'
'These worthy good people who are with you: tell me-to-morrow we leave
them!'
'Leave them?'
'You with me. No more partings. The first year, the first day shall be
dated from to-morrow. You and I proclaim our Republic on these heights.
All the ceremonies to follow. We will have a reaping of them, and make a
sheaf to present to the world with compliments. To-morrow!'
'You do not speak seriously?'
'I jest as little as the Talmud. Decide at once, in the happy flush of
this moment.'
'I cannot listen to you, dear sir!'
'But your heart beats!'
'I am not mistress of it.'
'Call me master of it. I make ready for to-morrow.'
' No! no! no! A thousand times no! You have been reading too much
fiction and verse. Properly I should spurn you.'
'Will you fail me, play feu follet, ward me off again?'
'I must be won by rules, brave knight!'
'Will you be won?'
'And are you he--the Alvan who would not be centaur?'
'I am he who chased a marsh-fire, and encountered a retiarius, and the
meshes are on my head and arms. I fancied I dealt with a woman; a woman
needing protection! She has me fast--I am netted, centaur or man. That
is between us two. But think of us facing the world, and trust me; take
my hand, take the leap; I am the best fighter in that fight. Trust it to
me, and all your difficulties are at an end. To fly solves the problem.'
'Indeed, indeed, I have more courage than I had,' said Clotilde.
His eyes dilated, steadied, speculated, weighed her.
'Put it to proof while you can believe in it!'
'How is it every one but you thinks me bold?' she complained.
'Because I carry a touchstone that brings out the truth. I am your
reality: all others are phantoms. You can impose on them, not on me.
Courage for one inspired plunge you may have, and it will be your
salvation:--southward, over to Italy, that is the line of flight, and the
subsequent struggle will be mine: you will not have to face it. But the
courage for daily contention at home, standing alone, while I am distant
and maligned--can you fancy your having that? No! be wise of what you
really are; cast the die for love, and mount away tomorrow.'
'Then,' said Clotilde, with elvish cunning, 'do you doubt your ability to
win me without a scandal?'
'Back me, and I win you!' he replied in a tone of unwonted humility: a
sudden droop.
She let her hand fall. He grasped it.
'Gradations appear to be unknown to you,' she said.
He cried out: 'Count the years of life, span them, think of the work to
be done, and ask yourself whether time and strength should run to waste
in retarding the inevitable? Pottering up steps that can be taken at one
bound is very well for peasant pilgrims whose shrine is their bourne, and
their kneecaps the footing stumps. But for us two life begins up there.
Onward, and everywhere around, when we two are together, is our shrine.
I have worked, and wasted life; I have not lived, and I thirst to live.'
She murmured, in a fervour, 'You shall!' and slipped behind her defences.
'To-morrow morning we shall wander about; I must have a little time; all
to-morrow morning we can discuss plans.'
'You know you command me,' said he, and gazed at her.
She was really a child compared with him in years, and if it was an
excuse for taking her destiny into his hands, she consenting,--it was
also a reason why he dared not press his whole weight to win her to the
step.
She had the pride of the secret knowledge of her command of this giant at
the long table of the guests at dinner, where, after some play of knife
and fork among notable professors, Prussian officers, lively Frenchmen
and Italians, and the usual over-supply of touring English of both sexes,
not encouraging to conversation in their look of pallid disgust of the
art, Alvan started general topics and led them. The lead came to him
naturally, because he was a natural speaker, of a mind both stored and
effervescent; and he was genial, interested in every growth of life. She
did not wonder at his popularity among men of all classes and sets, or
that he should be famed for charming women. Her friend was enraptured
with him. Friendly questions pressed in an evening chatter between the
ladies, and Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession.
'But you are not engaged?' said the blunt Englishwoman.
According to the explanation, Clotilde was hardly engaged. It was not an
easy thing to say how she stood definitely. She had obeyed her dying
relative and dearest on earth by joining her hand to Prince Marko's, and
had pleased her parents by following it up with the kindest attentions to
the prince. It had been done, however, for the sake of peace; and
chiefly for his well-being. She had reserved her full consent: the
plighting was incomplete. Prince Marko knew that there was another, a
magical person, a genius of the ring, irresistible. He had been warned,
that should the other come forth to claim her . . . . And she was
about to write to him this very night to tell him . . . tell him fully
. . . . In truth, she loved both, but each so differently! And both
loved her! And she had to make her choice of one, and tell the prince
she did love him, but . . . Dots are the best of symbols for rendering
cardisophistical subtleties intelligible, and as they are much used in
dialogue, one should have now and then permission to print them.
Especially feminine dialogue referring to matters of the uncertain heart
takes assistance from troops of dots; and not to understand them at least
as well as words, when words have as it were conducted us to the brink of
expression, and shown us the precipice, is to be dull, bucolic of the
marketplace.
Sunless rose the morning. The blanketed figures went out to salute a
blanketed sky. Drizzling they returned, images of woefulness in various
forms, including laughter's. Alvan frankly declared himself the
disappointed showman; he had hoped for his beloved to see the sight long
loved by him of golden chariot and sun-steeds crossing the peaks and the
lakes; and his disappointment became consternation on hearing Clotilde's
English friend (after objection to his pagan clothing of the solemn
reality of sunrise, which destroyed or minimized by too materially
defining a grandeur that derived its essence from mystery, she thought)
announce the hour for her departure. He promised her a positive sunrise
if she would delay. Her child lay recovering from an illness in the town
below, and she could not stay. But Clotilde had coughed in the damp
morning air, and it would, he urged, be dangerous for her to be exposed
to it. Had not the lady heard her cough? She had, but personally she
was obliged to go; with her child lying ill she could not remain. 'But,
madam, do you hear that cough again? Will you drag her out with such a
cough as that?' The lady repeated 'My child!' Clotilde said it had been
agreed they should descend this day; her friend must be beside her child.
Alvan thundered an 'Impossible!' The child was recovering; Clotilde was
running into danger: he argued with the senseless woman, opposing reason
to the feminine sentiment of the maternal, and of course he was beaten.
He was compelled to sit and gnaw his eloquence. Clotilde likened his
appearance to a strangled roar. 'Mothers and their children are too much
for me!' he said, penitent for his betrayal of over-urgency, as he helped
to wrap her warmly, and counselled her very mode of breathing in the raw
mountain atmosphere.
'I admire you for knowing when to yield,' said she.
He groaned, with frown and laugh: 'You know what I would beg!'
She implored him to have some faith in her.
The missiles of the impassioned were discharged at the poor English: a
customary volley in most places where they intrude after quitting their
shores, if they diverge from the avenue of hotel-keepers and waiters:
but Clotilde pointed out to him that her English friend was not showing
coldness in devoting herself to her child.
'No, they attend to their duties,' he assented generally, desperately
just.
'And you owe it to her that you have seen me.'
'I do,' he said, and forthwith courted the lady to be forgiven.
Clotilde was taken from him in a heavy downpour and trailing of mists.
At the foot of the mountain a boy handed her a letter from Alvan--a
burning flood, rolled out of him like lava after they had separated on
the second plateau, and confided to one who knew how to outstrip
pathfarers. She entered her hotel across the lake, and met a telegram.
At night the wires flashed 'Sleep well' to her; on her awakening, 'Good
morning.' A lengthened history of the day was telegraphed for her
amusement. Again at night there was a 'God guard you!'
'Who can resist him?' sighed Clotilde, excited, nervous, flattered,
happy, but yearning to repose and be curtained from the buzz of the
excess of life that he put about her. This time there was no prospect of
his courtship relapsing.
'He is a wonderful, an ideal lover!' replied her friend.
'If he were only that!' said Clotilde, musing expressively. 'If, dear
Englishwoman, he were only that, he might be withstood. But Alvan mounts
high over such lovers: he is a wonderful and ideal man: so great, so
generous, heroical, giant-like, that what he wills must be.'
The Englishwoman was quick enough to seize an indication difficult to
miss--more was expected to be said of him.
'You see the perfect gentleman in Dr. Alvan,' she remarked, for she had
heard him ordering his morning bath at the hotel, and he had also been
polite to her under vexation.
Clotilde nodded hurriedly; she saw something infinitely greater, and
disliked the bringing of that island microscope to bear upon a giant.
She found it repugnant to hear a word of Alvan as a perfect gentleman.
Justly, however, she took him for a splendid nature, and assuming upon
good authority that the greater contains the lesser, she supposed the
lesser to be a chiselled figure serviceably alive in the embrace.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Barriers are for those who cannot fly
Be good and dull, and please everybody
Centres of polished barbarism known as aristocratic societies
Clotilde fenced, which is half a confession
Comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered
Compromise is virtual death
Conservative, whose astounded state paralyzes his wrath
Creatures that wait for circumstances to bring the change
Dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur
Do you judge of heroes as of lesser men?
Empanelled to deliver verdicts upon the ways of women
Fantastical
Finishing touches to the negligence
Gone to pieces with an injured lover's babble
Gradations appear to be unknown to you
He had to go, he must, he has to be always going
He stormed her and consented to be beaten
His violent earnestness, his imperial self-confidence
I have learnt as much from light literature as from heavy
I would wait till he flung you off, and kneel to you
If you have this creative soul, be the slave of your creature
Imagination she has, for a source of strength in the future days
Looking on him was listening
Love the difficulty better than the woman
Metaphysician's treatise on Nature: a torch to see the sunrise
Music in Italy? Amorous and martial, brainless and monotonous
Not much esteem for non-professional actresses
Pact between cowardice and comfort under the title of expediency
Philosophy skimmed, and realistic romances deep-sounded
Polished barbarism
Scorned him for listening to the hesitations (hers)
She felt in him a maker of facts
Strength in love is the sole sincerity
The brainless in Art and in Statecraft
The way is clear: we have only to take the step
The worst of omens is delay
Time and strength run to waste in retarding the inevitable
Time is due to us, and the minutes are our gold slipping away
To have no sympathy with the playful mind is not to have a mind
Two wishes make a will
Venerated by his followers, well hated by his enemies
Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?
Win you--temperately, let us hope; by storm, if need be
World voluntarily opens a path to those who step determinedly
[The End]