I drugged myself with Fiesole to avoid thinking of Vi. Fiesole was so
vivid in her personality that, while she was present, she absorbed my
whole attention and shut out memory.
She was a continual source of pleasure and surprise, for her mood was
forever changing. She could be as naughty as a French novel and as
solemn as the Church of England Prayer Book. When she tried to be
both together she was at her drollest; it was like Handel played on a
mouth-organ.
She would never let me take her seriously. There lay the safety of our
comradeship. At the first hint of sentiment, she flew like a hare before
a greyhound; the way she showed her alarm was by converting what should
have been pathos into absurdity.
Day after day of memorable beauty I spent with her in that blowy
Cotswold country. We would usually appoint our place of meeting
somewhere on the outskirts of Oxford. It was not necessary to let
everyone know just how much of our time was lived together. This care
for public opinion lent our actions the zest of indiscretion.
As I set out to meet her, I would pass crowds of undergrads, capped and
gowned, sauntering off to their morning lectures. I was playing truant,
and that gave an added spice to adventure. Each college doorway frowned
on my frivolity, calling me back to a sense of duty. But the young
foliage glittered and the spring wind romped down the street, and the
shadows quivered and jumped aside as the sunlight splashed them. The
lure of the feminine beckoned. Where the houses grew wider apart I would
find her, and we would commence our climb out of the valley. Now we
would come to a farm-house, standing gray and mediaeval in a sea of
tossing green. Now we would pass by flowery orchards, smoking with
scattered bloom. Brooks tinkled; birds sang; across the hedge a plowman
called to his horses and started them up a new furrow. And through all
this commotion of new-found life and clamorous hearts we two wandered,
glad in one another.
Only the atmosphere of what we talked about remains with me. There were
moments when we skirted the seashore of affection, and perhaps pushed
out from land a little way, speculating on love’s audacities and
dangers. But these moments were rare, for Fiesole delighted in
love’s pursuit and not in its certainty. We made no pretense that our
attraction for one another was more than friendly and temporary. If we
played occasionally at being lovers, it was understood that we were only
playing.
Fiesole never admitted that she had prolonged her stay in Oxford for my
sake. She kept me in constant attendance by the threat that this might
be my last chance of being with her. The supposition that her visit was
shortly to end gave us the excuse we needed for being always together.
We lived the hours which we shared intensely, as friends do who must
soon go their separate ways.
But beneath her veneer of wit and frivolity I began to discover a truer
and kinder Fiesole. These flashes of self-revelation came when she was
off her guard. They were betrayed by a tremor in her tone or a hesitancy
in her gaiety. After a day of exquisite sensations, her independence
would break down and the fear of loneliness would look out from her
eyes. She would prolong her departure, again postponing it beyond the
date appointed. I began to suspect that her dashing recklessness was
a barrier of habit, which she had erected to defend her shyness from
curious observers. Insincerity was a cloak for her sincerity. Hidden
behind her tantalizing lightness lay the deep and urgent feminine desire
for a man and little children. I had roused in her the mating instinct.
I was not the man; she had yet to find him. With myself the same thing
was true. I took delight in her partly for herself, but mainly as Vi’s
proxy. Fiesole and I had come together in a moment of crisis. We saw in
each other the shadow of what we desired.
When a month had gone by I began to debate with myself how far our
conduct was safe and justifiable. I went so far as to ask myself the
question, did I want to marry her. But that consideration was impossible
in my state of mind. Besides, as Fiesole herself had said, she was the
type of woman that a man may love and yet fear to marry. She had no
sense of moral responsibility. She would demand too much of herself and
her lover. Her passion, once aroused, would burn too ardently. It
would be self-consuming. She was a wild thing of the wood, swift and
beautiful, and un-moral.
May had slipped by. June was nearly ended. Still she delayed. A chance
remark of Brookins brought me to my senses and forced me to face the
impression we had created. Fiesole, when she visited me in college,
invariably brought her maid; we would shut her up in my bedroom while we
sat in my study. In this way, we supposed, appearances had been saved.
But Brookins’s remark proved the contrary--that he hoped I’d let him
know when I moved out of Lazarus as he’d like to have my rooms.
“I’m not moving out of Lazarus. What made you think that?”
“You’ll have to when you’re married.”
“But what makes you think that I’m going to be married?”
“We don’t have to think,” he tittered. “We only have to use our eyes.”
That decided me. In common fairness we must separate. Since I could not
make the suggestion to her, I determined to leave Oxford myself. The
term was nearly ended. My work on the Renaissance furnished an excuse
for a visit to Italy. I had never been out of England as yet; at Pope
Lane we had had all we could do to keep up a plausible appearance of
stay-at-home respectability. But Fiesole with her talk of travel, had
led me to peep out of the back-door of the world. I made up my mind to
start immediately.
It was a golden summer’s evening. How well I remember it! I had not
seen her for two days. I was finishing my packing. A trunk stood in the
middle of the floor partly filled. Over the backs of chairs clothes hung
disorderly. Piles of books lay muddled about the carpet, among socks and
shirts and underwear. Through the open window from the garden drifted in
the rumor of voices and the perfume of roses.
The door opened without warning. I was kneeling beside the trunk.
Glancing over my shoulder I saw her. She slipped into the room like a
ray of sunlight, and stood behind me. She wore a golden dress, gathered
in at the waist with a girdle of silver. Her arms, bare from the elbow,
hung looped before her with the fingers knotted.
I glanced at her a moment. Her face was pale with reproach. Her
rebelliousness had departed. Her lips trembled. She looked like a
sensitive child, trying not to cry when her feelings had been wounded.
This was the true Fiesole I had long suspected, but had never before
discovered. We had no use for polite explanations; in the past two
months we had lived too near together. She knew what it all meant--the
half-filled trunk, the scattered clothing, the piles of books. Feeling
ashamed, with a hurried greeting I turned back to my packing.
“You’re going.”
She spoke in a low voice, with a tremble in it. It filled me with panic
desire to be kind to her; yet I dared not trust myself. I did not love
her. I kept telling myself that I did not love her. My whole mind and
being were pledged to another woman. And yet pity is so near to love
that I could not allow myself to touch her. I was mad from the restraint
I had suffered. To touch her might result in irreparable folly. Kneeling
lower over my trunk, I shifted articles hither and thither, pressed them
closer, moved them back to their original places, doing nothing useful,
simply trying to keep my hands busy.
She watched me. I could not see her, but I felt that behind my back the
slow, sweet, lazy smile was curling up the corners of her mouth. I knew
just how she was looking--how the eyebrows were twitching and nostrils
panting, the long white throat was working. I fixed my mind upon Vi. I
was doing this for her. Maybe, if Fiesole had come first, we might have
married. But we should not have been happy. I must be true to Vi, I told
myself. I was like a man parched with thirst in a burning desert, who
sees arise a mirage of green waters and blue palm-trees--and knows it to
be a mirage, and yet is tempted.
“You were going away without telling me.”
Her voice broke. I listened for the sob, but it did not follow. Outside
in the garden a thrush awoke; his notes fell like flashing silver,
gleaming dimmer and dimmer as they sank into the silence.
“You were going away because of me. I would have gone if you had
spoken.”
Still kneeling, I looked up at her. “Fiesole, I didn’t dare to tell you.
Something was said. We had to separate. I thought this way was best.”
“Said about me?”
“About us.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t like to tell you.”
“I can guess. They said you were in love with me. Was that it?”
I tried to rise, but she held me down with her hands upon my shoulders.
Each time I bent back my head to answer, she stooped lower above me. Her
breath was in my hair. The gold flashed up in the depths of her eyes.
Her voice broke into slow laughter. With her lips touching my forehead
she whispered, “And what if they did say it?”
For a moment we gazed at one another. I hoped and I dreaded. By one
slight action of assent, the quiver of an eye-lid or the raising of a
hand, I would thrust Vi from me forever. A marriage with Fiesole would
at least be correct--approved by society; but I should have to sin
against Vi to get it--to sin against a love which was half-sinful.
Fiesole straightened. The tension relaxed. She placed her hand on my
head, ruffling my hair. As though imitating the thrush, a peal of silver
laughter fell from her lips. “Oh, Dante, Dante! You are just as you
were. You’re still afraid of girls.”
I rose to my feet. She was again a coquette, rash, luring attack, but
always on the defensive. I gained control of myself as my pity ebbed.
I had been mistaken in thinking I had hurt her. I should have known she
was play-acting. And yet I doubted.
We walked over to the lounge by the window. I seated myself beside her,
confident now of my power to restrain myself. “I was afraid for you--not
of you.”
“Why should you be afraid for me when I’m not afraid for myself? No,
Dante, it wasn’t that. You’re afraid of yourself. Someone told you long,
long ago, when you were quite little, that it was naughty to flirt.
You’ve never forgotten it, and each time you begin to feel a bit happy
you believe you’re going to do something bad. So you’ve put your heart
to bed, and you’ve locked the door, and you’ve drawn the curtains. You
play nurse to it, and every time it stirs, you tiptoe to the door to see
that the key is turned, and to the windows to see that they’re properly
bolted. I’ll tell you what’s the matter with you, Dante. I stole along
the passage and hammered on the door of your heart’s bedroom, and your
heart half-roused and called, ‘Nurse.’ There!”
She threw herself back against the cushions, seizing both my hands in
hers. She gazed at me unflinchingly, daringly, mockingly. She drew me
to her and thrust me from her with quick sharp jerks. She treated the
situation so lightheartedly, so theatrically, that I could have kissed
her with impunity. But it would have been like kissing the statue of a
woman. She would have remained unmoved, unresponsive. There would have
been no adventure of conquest.
“No, Miss Impudence,” I said, “you’re wrong. I wish sometimes my heart
were safe in bed. You and I have been good friends. You came to me at a
time when I most needed you. You never guessed the good you were doing.
If this hadn’t happened, I would never have told you. But when I heard
something said about you, which no girl would like to have said unless
it were true, I thought it was time I should be going. You’ve been so
good to me that I couldn’t return your good with evil.”
“But, my dear, I daresay I’ve flirted with half-a-hundred men. It’s
very nice of you to think I haven’t, and to be so careful of me. But
really it doesn’t matter what anybody says. I don’t want you to run away
because of that, just when we were having such a good time together.”
“You won’t let me be serious,” I protested. “Now I want you to imagine
for a minute that I’m old, and inoffensive, and have white hair.”
“Oh, yes, and about seventy.”
“About seventy-five I should say--I’ve known some pretty lively men of
seventy.”
“All right. About seventy-five. I’m imagining.”
“My dear girl, you’re twenty-four or thereabouts, and you’re extremely
beautiful. No man can look at you without being fascinated. I’ve often
wanted to kiss you myself.”
“Then why didn’t you do it?”
“Fiesole, you’re not playing the game,” I said sternly. “Please go on
imagining.”
“I’m imagining.”
“As I was saying, you’re extremely fascinating. Everything’s in your
favor for making a happy and successful marriage, except one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You have no parents. Now parents are a kind of passport. Seeing that
you haven’t any, you’ve got to be more circumspect than other girls. It
has come to my ears that for the past two months you’ve been seen every
day with one young gentleman. People are beginning to talk about it.
Since you don’t intend to marry him, you ought to drop him until you are
married.”
“Who says I don’t intend to marry him?”
She took me by the shoulders and drew me to her. The afterglow had faded
from the garden. I could not see her face distinctly, but it seemed to
me that that old expression of hungry wistfulness was coming back.
I heard men enter the room overhead. A bar of light, like a golden
streamer, fluttered and fell across the lawn. A piano struck up, playing
_Mr. Dooley_. The dusk was humanized and robbed of its austerity.
Her hands trembled on my shoulders. For a second time I doubted the
genuineness of her playacting. I hurried on.
“But if you did want to marry him it would make no difference. He’s
pledged to another woman.”
Her hands fell away. When she spoke it was gravely and with effort. “You
didn’t tell me. You said you weren’t engaged when I asked you.”
“Neither am I, nor likely to be.”
“Why not?”
“She’s married.”
The silence was broken by her taking my hand. She took it with a sudden
gesture and, bowing her head, kissed it. “Poor Dante,” she whispered.
I rose from the sofa and lit the lamp. Kneeling by my trunk, I
blunderingly recommenced my packing. From the window came a muffled,
choking sound. Perhaps she was trying not to sob. I had never seen
her so gentle as just now. My mind ran back over the long road we
had traveled. The Fiesole I had seen was a wild, mad girl, provoking,
charming, inconsiderate as a child and frolicsome as the mad spring
weather--but rarely tender. I wondered what other secrets of kindness
lay hidden in her personality. She was the sort of woman a man might
live with for twenty years and still be discovering. She kept one
restless by the very richness of her character. It was true what she had
said: many men might love her; few would desire to marry her.
She rose from the lounge. Standing between me and the lamp, her long
shadow fell across me. I looked up and saw that her lashes glistened.
Against the background of the white-paneled room she looked supremely
lovely--a tall, gold daffodil. She held her head high on her splendid
shoulders with a gesture of proud despair. And yet an appearance of
meekness clothed her. Her face had an expression which a young girl’s
often has, but which hers had seldom--an expression which was maternal.
She watched my clumsy attempts to squeeze my clothes into smaller
compass. Then she came and knelt beside me, saying, “Let me do it.”
Her swift white hands plied back and forth, re-arranging, smoothing
out with deft touches, reaching out for socks to fill the hollows,
rectifying my awkwardness. The thought flashed on me that this sensation
I had was one of the sacred things of marriage--a man’s dependence on a
woman. As I watched, I imagined the future, if this woman should become
a wife to me. But the passion for her was not in me. She was only an
emotion. The sight of her made me hungrier, but not for her. I reasoned
with myself, saying how many men would desire her. I forced myself to
notice the curve of her neck, the way the red-gold curls clustered about
her shell-like ears and broad white forehead. I told myself that the
best solution for Vi would be that I leave her unembarrassed by marrying
Fiesole. But the more I urged matters, the colder grew my emotions. Then
my emotions ceased and my observations became entirely mental.
Overhead, strident and uproarious, as if striving to burlesque what
should have been chivalrous, the piano thumped and banged; men’s voices
smote the night like hammer-strokes on steel, singing,
“Mr. Dooley! Oh, Mr. Dooley!
Mr. Dooley----ooley----ooley----oo.”
“It’s done,” she said. Then, “Where are you going?”
“To Italy.”
“My country. When?”
“To-morrow.”
“You’ll write me sometimes? I shall be lonely, you know, at first.”
“Why, certainly.”
“Then, if you’re going to write to me, I must write to you. You’ll have
to let me have your addresses so that I can send my letters on ahead.”
I wrote her out the list of towns and dates, telling her to address me
_poste restante_.
I accompanied her across the quad to the lodge. I had had no idea it was
so late. Big Tom had ceased ringing for an hour. It was past ten.
The porter, when I called him out to unlock the gate, eyed us
disapprovingly.
“I’ll see you home,” I told her.
She hesitated, urged that she could get home quite safely by herself, it
was such a short way to go--but at last she surrendered.
Through the mysterious, moon-washed streets we walked; but not near
together as formerly. We had nothing to say to one another. Or was
it that we had too much, and they were things that we were ashamed to
utter? The echo of our footfall followed behind us like a presence. At
the turnings we lost it. Then it seemed to hurry till it had made up the
distance; again it followed. The cobble-stones beneath us made our steps
uneven. Sometimes we just brushed shoulders, and started apart with a
guilty sense of contact. Sometimes we passed a window that was lighted
by a student’s lamp. We could see him through the curtains poring over
outspread books, holding his head between his hands. As we turned to
look in on him, our faces were illumined. Her face was troubled; coming
out of the night suddenly it looked blanched and distressful.
The air became heavy with the perfume of laburnums. It occurred to me
that the laburnum was the flower with which she was best compared. It
burned, and blazed, and fell unwithered. In crossing Magdalene Bridge
we caught the sighing of willows along the banks of the Cherwell. I had
often thought how restful was the sound. To-night I marveled at myself;
it seemed poignant with anguish, like a fretful heart stirring. Under
the bridge as we crossed, a punt slipped ghostlike down stream; the
subdued laughter of a girl and the muffled pleading of a man’s voice
reached us. Then memory assailed me. “They are even as you and I,
Fiesole,” my heart whispered, “even as you and I once were.”
I fell to wondering, as I caught the moon shining through the lace-work
parapet of Magdalene tower, how many such love-affairs of lightness it
had seen commenced.
At the door of the house in which she lodged we halted abruptly.
“So this is the end,” she said. Then, feigning cheerfulness, she ran up
the steps, crying, “Good luck to you on your journey.”
From the pavement I called to her, “I’m afraid, I’ve kept you out late,
I----”
The door banged.
I had had much to say to her. Now that she was gone the thoughts and
words bayed in my brain like bloodhounds. There were apologies, excuses,
explanations--kind, meaningless phrases, which would have held a meaning
of comfort for her. It was too late now. For a moment her shadow fell
across the blind; then her arm was raised and the light went out.