When Anne rose the next morning and tapped on Warner's door there was
no answer. She entered softly, but found that his bed had not been
occupied. For this she was not unprepared, and although she had no
intention of galling her poet with the routine of daily life, still
must he be fed, and she went at once to the library to invite him to
breakfast. He was not there. She glanced hastily over the loose
sheets of paper on his writing table. There were a few scratches,
unintelligible phrases, nothing more. In the gallery she met the
major-domo, who informed her that the master had gone out in his boat
about five o'clock. The day was clear and the waters calmer. There was
no reason for either surprise or uneasiness, and Anne, who expected
vagaries of every sort until the poem was finished, endeavoured to
while away the long day with a new novel sent her by Medora Ogilvy.
But she had instinctively taken a chair by a window facing the sea,
and as the day wore on and she saw no sign of boat of any sort, she
finally renounced the attempt to keep her mind in tune with fiction.
She snatched a brief luncheon and omitted siesta, returning to her
seat by the window. The fate of Shelley haunted her in spite of her
powerful will, and she sat rigid, her hands clasped about her knees,
her face white. When Warner's boat shot suddenly round the corner of
the island the relief was so great that without waiting to find a
sunshade she ran out of the house and down to the sands, reaching his
side before the boat was beached.
"You should not come out at this hour--and without a sunshade," he
said, but keeping his face from her.
"If you could stand it for hours out on those hot waters it will not
hurt me for a moment or two here. Have you had any luncheon?"
"I got a bite in Basseterre. Let us go in."
As he raised himself she saw that his face was haggard, his eyes
faded. He looked as if he had not slept for weeks. When they reached
the living-room he flung himself, with a word of muttered apology, on
a sofa and slept until late. The dressing-bell roused him and he went
to his room, reappearing at the dinner table. There he talked of his
morning excursion, declaring that it had done him good, as he had long
felt in need of a change of exercise, and had missed the water.
It was not until they were in the living-room again that he said
abruptly: "I can't do it. Let us not talk about it. The air is
delightfully cool. Shall we order the carriage and call on the
Ogilvys?"
The roads were deep in mud, but the moon was bright, the air fresh and
stirred by the trade wind that always found its way to Nevis even in
summer during one hour of the twenty-four. Warner played billiards
with Mr. Ogilvy and Anne listened to the hopes and fears of her
hostess respecting Lord Hunsdon, while Felicia, the second daughter,
poured out her envy of Medora's good fortune in enjoying a London
season, and its sequel of visits to country houses.
They returned late. Warner was almost gay and very much the lover. The
next few days were magnificent and Anne saw for the first time a West
Indian island in all its glory of young and infinite greens. Less like
a jewel than in her golden prime Nevis seemed to throb with awakening
life like some great Bird of Paradise that had slept until spring.
Warner and Anne remained out of doors in all but the hotter hours,
and the poet was once more the normal young husband, rich in the
possession of a beautiful and sympathetic wife. Anne was wise enough
to make no allusion to the unborn poem. When curiosity piqued or
impatience beset, she invoked the ugly shade of Lady Byron, and
resolved anew that while alert to play her part in Warner's life, she
would be guided wholly by events.
The rains began again, those terrible rains of a tropic summer, when
the heavens are in flood and open their gates, beating palm tops to
earth, tearing the long leaves of the banana tree to ribbons, turning
the roads into roaring torrents, and day into night. Boats were used
in the streets of Charlestown. The heat was stifling. The Caribbean
Sea roared as if boiling tides were forcing their way from Mount
Misery on St. Kitts to the crater of Nevis. Warner pretended to read
during the day, but it was not long before Anne discovered that he
stole from his room every night, and she knew his goal. He appeared
at the nine o'clock breakfast, however, and neither made allusion to
the vigils written in his face. At first it was merely haggard, but
before long misery grew and deepened, misery and utter hopelessness;
until Anne could not bear to look at him.
The storms continued. Ten days passed. Anne was not sure that he even
slept in the daytime. He ceased to speak at all, although he managed
to convey to Anne his gratitude that she was good enough to let him
alone. Once she suggested a trip to England as soon as they could get
a packet for Barbadoes, but he merely shook his head, and Anne knew
that he would not stir from Nevis.
There came a night when Anne too gave up all attempt to sleep. Even
after her illness she had found no difficulty in resuming the long
unbroken rest of youth, but youth had taken itself off in a fright.
[Illustration: "Then she left the room again"]
On this night she wandered about and faced the truth. It was a night
to assist the least imaginative to face an unhappy crisis. A small
hurricane raged, seeming to burst in wild roars from Nevis itself.
The streams on the mountain were cataracts. The sea threatened the
island. At another time, Anne, like other West Indians, would have
paid incessant visits to the barometer, but to-night she cared nothing
for the threat of the elements. A storm raged within her, and she had
a perfect comprehension of the madness and despair in the library.
She was out of her fool's paradise at last. She knew that he would
never write his drama without the aid that marvellous but rotten spot
in his brain demanded. And its delivery was in her hands. He was the
soul of honour, unselfish, high-minded. He had taken the woman he
loved better than himself into his life and he would keep the promise
he had voluntarily made her unless she released him. He would conquer
and kill the best part of him.
Anne had no apprehension of his physical death. No doubt his mere
bodily well-being would go on increasing after the struggle was over;
but what of his maimed and thwarted intellect, the mind-emptiness of a
man who had known the greatest of mortal joys, mental creation? What
of the haunting knowledge throughout a possibly long life, of having
deliberately done a divine gift to death?
Anne felt like a murderer herself. She went suddenly out into the
gallery, and stood for a moment with her arms rigidly upraised to the
black rolling sky. There was no response in the fury of the rain that
drowned her face, and compelled her to bend her head.
The great banana tree was whipping about like an alive creature in
agony. She could hardly keep her breath, and the salt spray flew over
the roof and touched her lips. The elements roared and shrieked and
whistled in a colossal orchestra, and above them she could hear that
most uncanny of all sounds in a West Indian storm, the rattling of the
hard seeds of the giant tree in their brittle pods.
But the noise inflamed rather than benumbed the tumult in her soul.
Little as her husband suspected it, the gossip of Bath House and her
own imagination had enabled her to realise the being he was and the
life he led when transformed by drink. She had long since put those
images from her, but they peopled the gallery to-night. And they were
hideous, loathsome. She felt old and dry and wrecked and polluted in
the mere contemplation of them. Could even her love survive such
an ordeal? Or life? She had experienced mortal happiness to an
extraordinary degree. Were she firm now, she might know it again--not
to the same degree--doubtless not--but all that a mere mortal had any
right to expect after that one foretaste of immortality. She had her
rights. Her life could be made monstrous for a time; then she would
go back and live on through countless years by the North Sea. For
did Warner return to the habits of the years that had preceded their
marriage his extinction would be a mere question of time. He might
survive this work, and another; for he would never return to this
battle between his love for her and for a love older still and far
more deeply ingrained. A year or two and he would be under the island.
And in any case he must suffer. As far as he was concerned it was a
question which was the less of the evils. If he returned from a long
disgrace in Charlestown to face her again, not even the great work he
had accomplished would make him hate himself the less, atone for the
final ruin of his self-respect. If he conquered he would be a maimed
and blighted being for the rest of his days.
And then the grinning images disappeared and she had another vision.
She saw Warner ten years hence, a sleek and prosperous planter, taking
an occasional recreation in the great capital with his handsome wife,
and smirking at the reminders of its prostration before his glorious
youth; congratulating himself and her at his escape; that his soul,
not his body, was rotting under Nevis.
Anne turned her face to the wall and pressed her hands to her eyes.
The noise of the storm she no longer heard, but the picture filled
her with terror. What right had either he or she to consider so
insignificant and transient a thing as human happiness, the welfare
of the body that began its decay with its birth? Genius of mental
creation was the most mysterious, the most God-like of all gifts, as
well as the rarest; the herd of small composers counted no more than
the idle gossip that filled up awkward pauses. Great gifts were not
without purpose bestowed; and as they should be exercised for the good
of the inarticulate millions so should they be carefully tended until
Time alone extinguished them. In Warner this great gift of poetic
imagination combined with a lyric melody never excelled, was to his
nature what religion was to common mortals. It had kept the white
flame of his inner life burning undimned when men whose lives were
creditable had long since forgotten that souls, except as mere
religious furniture, were to be taken into account.
Warner had been singled out to enrich the world of letters. That was
his mission on earth; all, no doubt, that he had been born for.
Youthful training exercised hardly more influence upon the development
of the race than literature. If it had no mission it would never have
tracked through the infinite variety of interests in the mundane mind
to become one of the earthly viceroys of God. And the chosen were few.
Nor had Warner, consciously or not, been indifferent to the sacredness
of his wardship. Never for a moment had it felt the blight of his wild
and often gross and sordid life. He had been passionate but never
sensual, romantic and primal, but never immoral. He had consoled
thousands for the penance of living, and he had written much that
would perish only with the English language. All this might be as
nothing to what strove for delivery now. And this he was desperately
engaged in stifling to death; and not the beauty of his mind alone but
of his nature, for beyond all doubt his gentleness and sweetness and
refinement were as much a part of his genius as irritability and
violence were fellows to the genius of other men.
Anne was tempted to wish that he had died before she met him, taken
body and unmaimed gifts out of life before she was burdened with their
keep. But she was a strong woman and the wish passed. The wild
ebullition of self had gone before. She did not recall her promises
to Hunsdon but she remembered her solemn acknowledgment of her
responsibilities the night before her marriage and her silent vows
at the altar.
Suddenly she became aware that she was soaked to the skin. She went
hastily within and changed her clothes, wrung out her hair and twisted
it up. Then she went to the library and opened the door softly. Warner
was sitting at the table with his face pressed to the wood, his arms
flung outward among the scattered white blank sheets. Anne longed to
go forward and take his head into the shelter of her deep maternal
bosom. But it was not the time for sentiment, maternal or connubial.
To reach his plane and solve his problem she must leave her sex behind
her, and treat him as a man and a comrade. She left the room, and
returning a moment later placed the decanter of brandy and a tumbler
on the table beside him. Then she left the room again.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Minor changes have been made to correct obvious typesetter errors;
otherwise, every effort has been made to remain true to the author's
words and intent.