Anne, during the ensuing month, had her first experience since
childhood of home life. Mrs. Ogilvy lay on a sofa in one of her great
cool rooms all day, but she made no complaint and diffused an
atmosphere of peace and gentleness throughout the house. The younger
children were pretty creatures, well trained by their English
governess, and Mr. Ogilvy, richly coloured by sun and port, spent much
of his time on horseback; amiable at home when his will was not
crossed. The large stone house, painted a dazzling white, and
surrounded by a grove of tropical trees, stood so high on the mountain
that the garden terraces behind it finished at the entrance to the
evergreen forest. It was fitted up with every Antillian luxury: fine
mahogany furniture--the only wood that defied the boring of the West
Indian worm--light cane chairs, polished floors of pitch pine,
innumerable cabinets filled with bibelôts collected during many
English visits, tables covered with newspapers and magazines, the
least possible drapery, and a good library. In the garden was a
pavilion enclosing a marble swimming tank. Plates of luscious fruits
and cooling drinks were constantly passed about by the coloured
servants, who looked as if they had even less to do than their
masters. Anne was given a large room at the top of the house from
which she could see the water, the white road where the negro women,
with great baskets on their heads and followed by their brood, passed
the fine carriages from Bath House; and, on all sides, save above, the
rich cane fields. Byam Warner came to breakfast and remained to
dinner.
Miss Ogilvy was in her element. To use her own expression, Nevis and
Bath House were in an uproar. The unforeseen engagement following on
the heels of the famous poet's transformation, the haughty departure
of Mrs. Nunn, and the manifest approval of Lady Hunsdon and Lady
Constance, who called assiduously at The Grange, the distinguished
ancestry and appearance of Miss Percy, and the fact that the wedding
was to take place on the island instead of in London, combined to make
a sensation such as Nevis had not known since the marriage of Nelson
and Mrs. Nisbet in 1787. Strange memories of Byam Warner were
dismissed. He was a great poet and Nevis's very own. Never had Nevis
so loved Medora. The Grange overflowed with visitors every afternoon,
the piano tinkled out dance music half the night.
It was quite a week before Lord Hunsdon called at the Grange, nor did
Anne and Medora meet him, even when lunching at Bath House. But one
morning he rode out, and after a few moments of constrained politeness
in the drawing-room, deliberately asked Anne to walk with him in the
garden. She followed him with some apprehension. He was pale, his lips
were more closely pressed, his eyes more round and burning, than ever.
When they were beyond the range of Miss Medora's attentive eye, he
began abruptly:
"I have not come here before, dear Miss Percy, because I had to
conquer my selfish disappointment. You cannot fail to know what my own
hopes were. But I have conquered and we will never allude to the
matter again. My friendship for Warner is now uppermost and it is of
him I wish to speak."
"Yes? Yes?"
"Last night I sat late with him. He is full of hope, of youth--renewed
youth must seem a wonderful possession to a man: we are so prone to
let it slip by unheeded! Well, he is changed. I never hoped for half
as much. He tells me that the demon has fled. He has never a sting of
its tail. That may be because he never really craved drink save when
writing--until these last years. It is this I wish to talk to you
about. You have the most solemn responsibility that ever descended
upon a woman: a beautiful soul, a beautiful mind in your keeping. If
you ever relax your vigilance--ever love him less----"
"I never shall."
"No," he said with a sigh, "I don't fancy you will. But you must never
leave him. He is not weak in one sense, but in loneliness he might
turn to composition again, and there could be but one result."
"But if he had done without stimulant for a long while--was quite
happy--well, do not you think I might be stimulant enough?" She
laughed and blushed, but she brought it out.
Lord Hunsdon shook his head. "No, I do not believe that even you
could work that miracle. I have known him since we were at Cambridge
together, and I am convinced that there is some strange lack in that
marvellous brain which renders his creative faculty helpless until
fired by alcohol. If the human brain is a mystery how much more so is
genius? Much is said and written, but we are none the wiser. But this
peculiar fact I do know. The island records and traditions tell us
that all his forefathers save one were abstemious, dignified, normal
men, mentally active and important. But his grandfather, who spent the
greater part of his time in London, was one of the most dissolute men
of the Regency. He was a wit at court, a personal friend of the Prince
Regent. There was no form of dissipation he did not cultivate, and he
died of excess at a comparatively early age. By what would seem to be
a special tinkering of the devil with the work of Almighty God those
lusts have taken possession of one section of Byam Warner's brain
only, diseased it, redistributed its particles in a manner that has
resulted in the abnormal faculty we call genius, but deprived it of
that final energy which would permit those great powers to find their
outlet without artificial stimulant. These may be fanciful ideas, but
they have become fixed in my mind, and I have come here to-day to ask
you to make me a solemn promise."
"Yes?"
"That you will never permit him to write again. You are not the woman
to loosen your hold on a man's strongest feelings when the novelty has
passed. You can hold, influence him, forever. When you see signs of
recurring life in that faculty, divert him and it will subside. He has
fame enough. Nor do I think that he was ever untowardly ambitious.
You--_you_ can always persuade him to let the pen alone."
"But you make no allowance for those creative energies. They may still
be very strong, demand their rights. That cry may in time be as
irresistible as any of his more normal instincts."
"He has written enough," said Lord Hunsdon firmly. "He must rest on
his laurels. You must persuade him that he cannot add to his fame.
With feminine arts you will induce him to believe that it is best to
let well alone."
"I have given little thought to all this----"
"But you will now! Give me your promise, dear Miss Percy, or I cannot
leave this island in peace."
"But do you believe that Byam Warner will be content to settle down
for the rest of his mortal life to an existence of mere domestic
happiness?"
"By no means. He delights in literature, and although he is well read,
there are tomes which not even a Bacon could master in one lifetime.
Moreover, he should buy back his cane fields. That would keep him much
out of doors, as overseers are of little more worth than negroes."
Then Lord Hunsdon had an inspiration. "Encourage him to write prose.
There need be no fury of creation in that. The greater part of his
mind is capable of accomplishing anything unassisted. Interest him in
politics. He is a Tory and he loves me. Remind him constantly of the
Whig inferno from which we have just emerged. I am sure he would write
political pamphlets of incomparable influence. I have never heard
Warner talk politics, but I don't doubt that his mind would illuminate
that subject as it does everything else it touches. Fill the house
with quarterlies and newspapers."
"He might write a political romance, after the pattern of Disraeli,"
said Anne, who wondered why Lord Hunsdon did not take to romantic
composition himself.
"Oh, not fiction, not by any means. Work that requires the exercise of
the merely intellectual powers, not that fatal creative-spot. But will
you promise, Miss Percy? Will you permit me to make sure that you
understand your solemn responsibility?"
He faced her, his eyes flashing with that fanatical fire that would
have sent him to the stake three centuries since. They seemed to
retreat, become minute, bore through her. Anne, whose mind was in
confusion, and not a little angered, stirred uneasily, but she
replied in a calm decided tone.
"I fully realise my responsibility. Make no doubt of that. I know what
I have done, what I am undertaking, I shall live for him, never for
myself. I promise you that, if you think the promise necessary."
"And you will never let him write another line of poetry?"
"Not if I believed it would do him more hurt than good."
"That is not enough," cried Hunsdon passionately. "You must be
unconditional. One surrender and he is lost. If it were a mere case of
brandy while he was writing--but you have not the least idea what it
leads to. He is transformed, another man--not a man at all. And when
he emerged, did he enter that horror again, he would loathe himself as
he never did before. He would be without one shred of self-respect. I
shudder to think what would be the final result."
"You will admit that as his wife I may find better opportunities to
understand that complicated nature than you have had."
"Will you not make me that promise?"
"I will only promise to be guided by my judgment, not by my feelings.
I hear Byam's voice. After all, it is hardly fair to talk him over
like this."