Mr Murk, recalling, on the morning after the storm, certain
ultra-fervid expressions of remorse into which, during it, he had been
betrayed, and realising, possibly, how of a saint and a sinner the
latter had proved the blinder, turned the search-light of his
recovered vision inwards, and examined his conscience like the most
ruthlessly introspective Catholic. He worked out the sum of argument
very coolly and carefully; and the result, condensed from many
germinant postulates, showed itself arithmetically inevitable.
“If I intrigue, I sacrifice my independence, my free outlook, my peace
of mind, my position in relation to my art--comprehensively, my
principles.
“_Enfin_--on the other hand, I gain a very stomachy little white
powder in a spoonful of jam.
“Taking one from four, therefore, I find myself debited with three
charges that it is ridiculous to incur. Love, in short, is a creditor
I have no desire to be called upon to compound with. I will cut my
visit a little finer than I had intended, and go on to Paris at once.
Perhaps--for I have not finished my Madonna, and the model curiously
interests me--I will return to Méricourt by-and-by, when this shadow
of a romance has drifted away with the cloud that threw it.”
Thus far only he temporised with his inclinations. For the rest, it
appeared, he likened that which most men feel as a flame to an
amorphous blot of darkness travelling across his sunlight. The point
of view of the girl did not enter into his calculations.
Possibly--most probably, indeed--he could not conceive himself
inspiring a devouring passion. He knew innately, he thought, his
limits--the length of his tether, moral, intellectual, and
physical--and had never the least wish to affect, for the sake of
self-glorification, a condition of mind or body that he was unable to
recognise as his own. This led him to that serene appreciation of his
personal capabilities that passes, in the eye of the world, for
insufferable conceit. For to boast of knowing oneself is to assume a
social importance on the strength of an indifferent introduction.
Public opinion will never take one at one’s own valuation. It must be
educated up to the point of one’s highest achievement. To say out, “I
know I can do this thing,” is to deprive it (public opinion) of the
right to exercise and justify itself.
Ned, however, would not over-estimate, nor would he (even nominally)
cheapen himself as a bid to any man’s favour; and that, no doubt,
would be sound equity in the impossible absence of inherent prejudice.
But a judgment--in any world but a world of definite aurelian
transitions--that holds itself infallible may err in the face of fifty
precedents; and Ned’s, founded in this instance upon the
self-precedent of sobriety, took no account of emotions that were
completely foreign to his nature. In short, very honestly repudiating
for himself any power of attraction, he failed to see that this very
artlessness of repudiation was _per se_ an attractive quality.
Now he put his resolution into force without compromise, and informed
his host, during the second _déjeuner_, that he was on the prick of
departure.
St Denys expressed no surprise, no concern, very little interest.
“Most certainly,” said he, “I applaud your attitude towards life. It
exhibits what one may call an admirable cold cleanness. Probably, at
this point, you are putting to your visit that period that most
strictly conforms to the rules of moral punctuation. I have too
complete a belief in the rectitude of your judgment to question that
of your withdrawing yourself from Méricourt without superfluous
ceremony. I envy you, indeed, your power of applying, without offence,
to the oblique turns of circumstance that simple directness which is
your very engaging characteristic. We, less fortunately endowed by
nature, are for ever seeking those short cuts to a goal that delay us
unconscionably, in everything but theory. You, monsieur, recognise
instinctively that to fly straight for your mark is to reach your
destination by the nearest route.”
“I am conscious of no particular coldness in my manner of regard,”
said Ned good-humouredly. (He did not resent the implied sarcasm, nor
did he allow it to affect his point of view. If he had given offence,
it was simply by his literal construction of views he had been invited
to share, and he could not admit the right of the dispenser of such
views to put any arbitrary limit to another’s application of them.)
“Unless, indeed,” he went on, “it argues a constitutional _sang-froid_
to have decided, at the thinking outset of life, _against_ the
despotism of passion, and _for_ a republic of senses, material,
ethical, and intellectual.”
“Assuredly not. But even a republic must have a president.”
“I elect my heart, monsieur, to the honour, and give it a casting
vote. There, at least, is a little core of fire in all this frost.”
“_Dieu du ciel_! thou shouldst command a future, if thou wouldst, in
this Paris to which thou journeyest. It is such as thou that have
their way and keep it; while we poor hot-headed impressionables take
wrong turnings, and fetch up, struggling and sweating and trampling
our friends under, in villainous blind alleys. To discipline your
senses and keep your heart! God of heaven! that is a state to be
envied of angels, who sometimes fall--even they.”
“I understand you to speak ironically.”
“I protest I do not, monsieur. I covet your power of unswerving
fidelity to truth. What would it not be worth to me in the hot days
that are coming! I shall go under--I shall go under, I feel it and
know it--because I must fight with the crooked creese of dissimulation
if a straighter weapon fails me.”
He spoke obviously with considerable emotion--with a sincerity,
moreover, that, rather than the other, appealed to the Englishman.
“It appears, monsieur,” said the latter, “that you predict a very
serious disruption of the social order.”
“It appears, indeed. There is a caldron always kept seething in that
unlovely kitchen of the Isle de France--a stock-pot that for long ages
has boiled down the blood and bones of the people into the thick soup
affected of the _beau monde_. But, at last, other things go to feed
it--this reeking kettle. Monseigneur in his fine palace will pull a
face over the flavour; yet he must sup of it or starve. There makes
itself recognised something metallic to the taste, perhaps; as if the
latest victims had been dropped in with their knives and pistols
unremoved from their pockets. Maybe, also, there precipitates itself a
thick sediment of coins, to which I may claim to have contributed--as
also, possibly, I have added my mite to the combustible material--the
inflammatory pages with which a waking generation of agitators fuels
this kitchen fire. Monsieur may live to see the pot boil.”
“May live to see it boil over, even, and scald the toes of the cooks.
But I do not believe in this pass, monsieur, and regret only that you
should, from whatever motives, seek to give a sinister turn to reforms
that could be more effectively compassed by a bloodless revolution.”
“Monsieur, were a senate of Edward Murks an electoral possibility, I
would hope to accomplish the Millennium while the world slept.”
Ned looked at his host with some instinct of repulsion. So here, in
the guise of a scatterling aristocrat, was one of those seedling
firebrands that were beginning to sprout all over the soil of Europe
like the little bickering flames that patch the high slopes of
Vesuvius: advocates holding briefs in the indictment of society;
licentious pamphleteers; unscrupulous journalistic hacks seizing their
opportunity in the fashion for heterodox--subordinate contributors,
some of them, to the contumacious Encyclopedia; irresponsible agents,
all, to a force they could not measure or justify to themselves by any
scheme of after-reconstruction.
But what, in heaven’s name, induced this man to a mutinous attitude
towards a social system of which, by reason of his position, he need
take nothing but profit? His opportunities of selfish gratification
would not be multiplied by the sacrifice of caste and fortune. He was
not, Ned felt convinced, a reformer by conviction. Unless the itch for
cheap notoriety was the tap-root of his character, what was to account
for this astonishing paradox?
What, indeed? Yet a motiveless losel is no uncommon sight. To be born
with a silver spoon in one’s mouth is to be endowed with what it is
obviously difficult to retain. It is to be awarded the prize before
the race is run, and that is no encouragement to sound morality or
healthy effort. Easily acquired is soon dissipated. What wonder, then,
if Fortunatus, shedding wealth as naturally as he sheds his
milk-teeth, looks to Nature for a renewal of all in kind.
“Well,” said St Denys, “you are going to Paris. It is the beacon-light
about which the storm birds circle. If you seek experience, you will
there gain it; if novelty--_mon Dieu_!--you will have the opportunity
to see some strange puppets dance by-and-by.”
“And doubtless those who would hold the strings are in the clouds.”
“Not so, monsieur. These marionettes--they will move on a different
principle, by trackers, like an organ. It may even be possible to make
one or two skip, touching a note here in this quiet corner of Liége.
But I do not know. When the time comes for the performance, this
puppet-man himself may be in Paris.”
“You allude to M. de St Denys?”
“Do I? But, after all, he is very small beer.”
Nicette sang like a bee in a flower. Her cot was the veritable
summer-house to a garden-village--luxuriously cool as an
evening-primrose blossom with a ladybird and a crystal of dew in the
heart of it. She was always self-contained, always tranquil, always
fragrant. Her reputation, like that of some other saints, was founded,
perhaps, upon her constitutional insensibility to small irritations.
Cause and effect in her were temperament and digestion--read either
way--influencing one another serenely. That sensitiveness of the moral
cuticle that, with the most of us, finds intentional aggravations in
habits and opinions that are not ours, she would appear to be innocent
of. She never complained of nail-points in her shoes or crumbs in her
bed; and that was to be bird of rare enough feather to merit
distinction. Indifference to pain is considered none the less
worshipful because it proceeds from insusceptibility to it: the name
of sanctity may attach itself to the most self-enjoying impassibility.
The moral is objective; for how many dyspeptics--sufferers--are there,
turning an habitual brave face to their colourless world, who would be
other than damned incontinent by a whole posse of devil’s-advocates
were a claim advanced to dub them so much as Blessed?
This refreshing maid, however, was not of cloisteral aloofness all
compact. She had a wit for merry days; and, no doubt, a calid spot in
her heart that needed only to be blown upon by sympathetic lips to
raise a heat in her that should make an intolerable burden of the very
veil of modesty. For such Heloïses an Abelard is generally on the
road.
Now she was busy in her sequestered cot, touching, rather than
putting, things into order. She had a gift for cleanliness. Her hands
winnowed the dust like the fluttering wings of butterflies. Baptiste,
ostensibly occupied with his catechism-book, watched her from his
corner, unwinking like a squatting toad.
He saw her pause once, with her fingers stroking the back of the chair
on which the stranger artist had sat yesterday. A smile was on her
lips. Then she moved into the little closet that was her
sleeping-place and made her bed, patting the sheets caressingly, as if
some child of her fancy lay underneath.
“She will punish me if she sees me looking at her now,” thought the
sad, sharp child; and he bent over his task.
“_Tiens_! little monkey! Here is a biscotin for thee,” said
Mademoiselle Lambertine at the door.
The child caught and began to devour the cake ravenously.
“That will give thee a better relish for the food of the soul,” said
Théroigne.
She came in languorous and flushed, fanning herself with a spray of
large-flowered syringa. The heavy scent of it floated over the room,
penetrating to Nicette in her retreat.
“Oh, the sweet orange-blossom!” cried the _portière_. “Is it a bride
to visit me?”
Théroigne stopped the action of her hand. Her teeth bit upon her
under lip.
“Orange-blossom!” she exclaimed.
She passed into the closet; dropped listlessly upon a joint stool.
“That is not for me--not yet,” she said. “It is only syringa. See,
little minette.”
“I see, Théroigne.”
“Why do thine eyes appear to rebuke me, thou little cold woman? Yet, I
think, I come to visit thee for coolness’ sake: I am so hot and dull.
This lodge, it is like a woodland chapel; and here where we sit is the
confessional.”
“And art thou come into it to confess?”
“To thee? to _la sainte_ Nicette! I should expect her to shrink and
close, like a sensitive leaf, to my mere approach. Tell me--What is
the utmost wickedness thou hast confided to thy pillow here? I wager
my littlest peccadillo would overcrow it.”
“It is for me to confess, then, it seems?”
“Only thine own sweetness, child. This bed of thine--it is planted in
a ‘Garden of the Soul.’ And what grows in it, little saint?--white
lilies, gentle pansies, stainless ladysmocks? Not Love-lies-bleeding,
I’ll warrant.”
“Fie, Théroigne! what nonsense thou talkest.”
“Do I? My head is light and my heart heavy. Mortality weighs upon me
this morning--oh, Nicette, it weighs--it weighs!”
“Hast thou done wrong?”
“Much; and every day of my life.”
“Confess to me, and I will give thee absolution.”
“Absolution! to a woman from a woman! Never, I think; or at least
saddled with such a penance as would take all savour from the grace.
Well, as thou hast made thy bed----”
“So must I lie on it.”
“What! thou know’st the stranger’s motto? Little holy mother, but it
is true; and I have made my bed, Nicette; and it is not a bed of
flowers at all. _Aïe_! how the world swarms with pitfalls! Yet, at
least, there is to-day an evil the less in Méricourt.”
“What evil?”
“The Englishman.”
“He is gone?”
“He is gone. I met him yesternoon on the Liége road. He had a staff
in his hand and a knapsack on his shoulders.”
Nicette was at the tiny casement, delicately coaxing its curtains into
folds that pleased her. She was too fastidious with her task to speak
for a moment.
“Well,” she said at length, “it is an evil, I suppose, that only
withdraws itself for a day or two?”
“Better than that, little saint. He goes all the way to Paris. ‘But
Mademoiselle Théroigne,’ says he, ‘I leave my heart behind me. I will
come back to reclaim it in the spring. In the meantime, do me the
favour to keep it on ice; for I think Méricourt is very near the
tropics.’ Bah! is he not an imbecile? We are well quit of him.”
“In the spring!”
Nicette came round with a face like hard ivory.
“Théroigne--why did he speak to you like that? It is not wise or good
of you to court so insolent a familiarity.”
“I did not court it, and I am not wise or good.”
Mademoiselle Lambertine looked startled and displeased.
“What has come to thee, Nicette? It is not like thee to rebuke poor
sinners save by thy better example.”
“And that is a negative virtue, is it not? Now were time, perhaps,
that you give me the pretext, to end a struggle that my heart has long
maintained with my conscience.”
Théroigne rose, breathing a little quickly, her bent forefinger to
her lips.
“Nicette!” she cried faintly.
“I must say it, Théroigne. This club--this thin dust thrown into the
eyes of Méricourt----”
The other went hurriedly to the door.
“I had better go,” she said; “I cannot listen and not cry. Not now,
Nicette, not now! I have no strength--I think the Englishman has left
a blight upon the place!”
Her footsteps retreated down the garden path--died away. Nicette,
listening, with a line sprung between her eyes, came swiftly from her
bedroom. Close by the door of it--crept from his stool--Baptiste, his
mouth agape, had been eavesdropping, it seemed. She seized him with a
raging clinch of her fingers.
“Little detestable coward!” she cried, in a suppressed voice--“little
sneak _mouchard_, to spy like a woman! How have I deserved to be for
ever burdened with this millstone?”
“You hurt me!” whimpered the child, struggling to escape.
“Not so much as the black dogs will, when they come out of the well in
the yard to carry you to the fire. Little beast, I have a mind to call
them now.”
“They might take you instead. I will assure them you are wicked
too--that I heard you say so to monsieur the Englishman.”
She shook him so that his heels knocked on the floor. For the moment
she was beside herself.
“The Englishman!” she hissed--and choked. “_Est-ce bien possible_!
_Sang Dieu_!--_O, sang Dieu_! and if it were not for thee--he hates
children--he might be now----!”
She checked herself with a desperate effort. She tightened her grip.
The boy screamed with pain.
“Be quiet!” she cried furiously. “If some one should hear thee!”
“I want them to. I want them all to come in, that I may tell how you
pretended to be blind that monsieur might kiss you.”
She recognised in a moment that he was goaded at last to terrible
revolt. She cried “Hush!” in a panic, and without avail. The child
continued to shriek and to revile her--repeating himself hysterically
in the lack of a sufficient vocabulary. Changing front, it was only
after long and frantic effort that she could coax and bribe him into
silence. And, when at length she had induced him to a reasonable mood,
and could trust herself away from him, she went and threw herself upon
her bed and, perhaps for the first time in her adult life, cried empty
the fountains of her wrath and her terror.