being disturbed, I glanced down irritably.
From a full-page illustration the face of Fiesole smiled up.
CHAPTER V--LA FIESOLE
It was ridiculous this curiosity, but I knew how to explain it--it
grew out of my life’s great emptiness since I had listened to Ruthita’s
confession. She had made me realize as never before how I had muddled my
chances of happiness. I had heard nothing from Vi in all these years and
now I had learnt that, without knowing it, I might have had Ruthita.
My interests had lost their charm; I wanted an excuse to leave my work.
This matter of Fiesole had cropped up, so here I was on my way to Paris,
more for the sake of something to do than anything else.
I had not the remotest intention of renewing her acquaintance. Unseen
by her, I would watch her from some corner of the theatre, and then slip
back to London. There would be piquancy in the thought that I had gone
to see her for old time’s sake, and that she would never know about it.
As for speaking to her, that would be an insult after what had happened
at Venice. Probably she hated me. She ought to, if she did not.
Though I smiled at myself, truth to tell, I was rather pleased to find I
could still be so impulsive; romance in me was not dead after all these
years of uneventful waiting. This journey was the folly of a sentimental
boy--not the cynical act of a man of the world.
_La Fiesole! La Fiesole!_ Since she had stared out at me from the
printed page I was continually coming across her. Everyone was
discussing her; she had sprung out of nowhere into notoriety. Greater
than Bernhardt, men said of her: a spontaneous emotional actress of the
first rank--the sensation of the moment.
France took her seriously; England quoted French eulogies in italics.
Fantastic legends were woven about her name, made plausible by an
occasional touch of accuracy.
Antoine Georges had written the play--it was based on the _amours_ of
Lucrezia Borgia. It was said that he was La Fiesole’s lover, that she
had given him the plot--that she had even helped him write it; some
went so far as to say that it was founded on an incident in her own
past life, transposed into a fifteenth century setting. Antoine Georges
denied that he was her lover; but the world smiled skeptically--it liked
to believe he was. One story asserted that she had been a _fille de
joie_ when he came across her; another, with that French instinct for
the theatric, that he had reclaimed her from a low café in Cherbourg
in which she danced. Nothing was too incredible in the face of her
incredible success. One fact alone was undisputed--that she was the
daughter of the famous Italian actor, many years dead, Signore Cortona.
This confirmed what I already knew about her. I remembered how she had
told me in Oxford of her early stage career, which she had abandoned
to go traveling. I recalled how she had said, “I’m an amateur at
living--always chopping and changing. I’ll find what I want some
day.”---- So she had found it!
In the English press she was made a peg on which to hang a whole
wardrobe of side-issue and prejudice. The decency of the French stage
was discussed. The question was introduced as to whether such a play
would be allowed to be performed in London. The superiority of English
morals was the topic of some articles; of others, the brutal prudery
by which British art was stifled. A fine opportunity was afforded
and welcomed for slinging mud at the censor. The discussion was
given academic sanction when Andrew Lang patted it on the head in an
ingeniously discursive monologue on the anachronisms of playwrights,
in which he made clear that Monsieur Georges’s tragedy was riddled with
historic falsity.
It was nearing five when we steamed into the Gare du Nord. My first
journey to Paris had been prompted by Fiesole. Then I was escaping from
her; now I was going to her. For old time’s sake I made my headquarters
at the hotel at which I had then stayed in the Rue St. Honoré. After
_diner_ I set out through thronged streets to book a seat at the
theatre. Upon making my request at the office, the man shrugged his
shoulders and turned away with the inimitable insolence of French
manners. It was as though he had said, “You must be mad, or extremely
bourgeois.” I had affronted him personally, the theatre-management, La
Fiesole and last, but not least, the infallible intelligence of Paris.
Did Monsieur not know that La Fiesole was the rage, the fashion? Every
seat was taken--taken weeks ahead.
My second request was apologetic and explanatory: I honored La Fiesole
so much that I had journeyed from London on purpose to see her. What was
the earliest date at which he could make it possible? He directed me to
an agency which had bought up all the best seats in the house; here I
secured a box at an extortionate price for five nights later.
In the intervening days I was frequently tempted to abandon my project
and return. It seemed the height of foolishness to squander five days
in order that I might court disappointment. She must have altered--might
have deteriorated. It was just possible there was a grain of truth
in the wild stories that circulated about her. And yet---- There were
memories that came to me full of nobility and gentleness: windswept days
at Oxford; a night at Ferrara; days and nights on the lapping lagoons of
Venice. I wanted to see her again--and I did not. I blew hot and cold.
And while I hesitated, spring raced through the streets of Paris with
tossing arms and reckless laughter.
When I entered the theatre it was already packed. The audience seemed
conscious that it had assembled for a great occasion; it had dressed for
its share in the undertaking. Gowns of marvelous cut and audacity
were in evidence. The atmosphere was heavy with the perfume of exotic
femininity and flowers.
My box was on the right-hand side, just above and next to the stage.
Below me was a nodding sea of plumed head-dresses, naked shoulders, and
gleaming bosoms; rising tier on tier to the gold-domed roof, was a
wall of eyes and fluttering white faces. Everything was provocative of
expectancy. Gods and goddesses, carved on the columns and painted on the
curtain, alone were immobile.
A quick succession of taps sounded, followed by three long raps. The
theatre was plunged in shadow. As though a crowd drew away into the
distance, the last murmur spent itself. The curtain quivered, then rose
reluctantly on the illusion which had brought the unrelated lives of so
vast an audience together.
We saw an Italian garden, basking in sunlight and languorous with
summer. Beneath the black shade of cypress-trees stretched marble
terraces, mounting up a hillside, up and up, till they hung gleaming
like white birds halfhidden in the velvet foliage. In the foreground
a fountain splashed. A little way distant the Pope Alexander lolled,
toying with his mistress, Giulia. Up and down pathways lined with
statues, groups of courtiers wandered: youths in parti-colored hose and
slashed doublets; girls, vividly attired, exquisitely young, engaged in
the game of love. Guitars tinkled and masses of bloom flared stridently
in the sun. Sitting by the fountain was the Madonna Lucrezia and the
young Lord of Pesaro. Her face was turned from us; we could only see
her vase-like figure and the way she shook her head in answer to all he
offered.
The envoy from Naples enters and with him the Duke of Biseglia; he
urges the Pope for a last time to make an alliance with his country by
betrothing the Madonna Lucrezia to the Duke. But the Pope does not want
the alliance; he is joining with Ludovico of Milan against Naples
and war will result. While the Pope is refusing, for the first time
Lucrezia looks up and her face is turned towards us--the face I had
known in my boyhood, innocently girlish, fresh as a flower, so ardent
and beautiful with longing that the theatre caught its breath at sight
of it and a muffled “Ah!” swept through the audience.
As though attracted by a power which is outside herself, she rises,
hesitating between shyness and daring, and steals to where the young
Duke is sullenly standing. She takes his hand and presses it against
her breast. He snatches it from her. She commences to speak, at first
haltingly, but with gathering passion. Her voice is hoarse and sultry,
like that of a Jewess; it is a voice shaken with emotion, which now
caresses and now tears at the heart. The drone of merriment in the
garden and the tinkling of the guitars is hushed. Listless lovers come
out from the shadows and gather about her, amused by her earnestness.
She pleads with the Pope, her father, to give her the Duke--not to send
him away from her. Biseglia interrupts haughtily, asserting that he only
desired her for State reasons and that since the Pope refuses Naples’
friendship, he would not marry the Madonna Lucrezia though her father
were to allow it.
Alexander laughs boisterously at this quarrel of children and like
a huge Silenus wanders off into the garden, leaning on his mistress,
Giulia, followed by his train of minstrels and dilettantes. Their
singing grows more faint as they mount the terraces towards the palace.
Lucrezia watches them depart with a face frozen with despair. As
Biseglia turns to go, she darts after him and drags him back, fawning on
him, abasing herself, offering herself to him, telling him that whatever
comes of it she cannot live without him. He regards her in silence; then
falls to smiling and flings her from him, reminding her that she is
the Pope’s bastard. At that the boy Lord of Pesaro, who has watched
everything from the fountain, runs with drawn sword to her defense.
But she springs between them, saying that when the time comes to kill
Biseglia, she will take revenge in her own way like a Borgia. The
great Pope, looking back, has seen her awakened savagery and laughs
uproariously. The scene ends with the garden empty and Lucrezia
stretched out on the ground, kissing the spot which Biseglia’s feet have
touched and weeping in a frenzy of abandon, while the Lord of Pesaro
looks on impotent and broken-hearted.
Between the first act and the second the French have invaded Italy, so
the Pope and the King of Naples have found a common enemy and a common
need for alliance. The Duke of Biseglia has again been sent to Rome
to sue for the hand of Lucrezia. But in the meanwhile she has been
betrothed to the Lord of Pesaro, and, to prevent him from joining
with the French when Lucrezia is taken from him, his removal has been
planned.
The curtain goes up on a night of bacchanalian riot in the Papal
gardens. Beneath trees a costly table has been spread, at which sit
men and women attired in every kind of extravagance, as animals, pagan
deities, and mythological monstrosities. In the branches overhead are
set sconces and blazing torches. Distantly over white terraces and
pathways the moon is rising. In the foreground are mummers and tumblers.
The servitors who pass up and down the company are humpbacks, dwarfs,
Ethiopians, and dancing-girls.
In the center of the table sits the Pope, and next to him Lucrezia, and
next to her Biseglia. Opposite to Biseglia is seated the Lord of Pesaro,
and next to him a woman in a mask. With the heat of the wine and the
lateness of the hour the women lie back in their lovers’ arms--all
except the masked woman and the Madonna Lucrezia. Lucrezia sits
erect like a frightened child, the one pure thing in the freedom that
surrounds her. Biseglia pays her no attention, and from across the table
the Lord of Pesaro watches.
The Pope twits Biseglia on his coldness, saying, “Think you that my
daughter hath a deformity?” And Biseglia gives the irritable answer,
“Can a man love a woman while that young spit-fire glowers green envy at
him opposite?”
Pesaro leaps to his feet, but the Pope, as though to pacify him, pledges
him and hands the goblet to the masked woman to offer to him. Still
standing uncertain, Pesaro receives it from her. Raising it slowly, his
lips touch the brim; he clutches at his throat, upsetting the cup so
that the red stain flows towards Lucrezia. He leans out, gazes in her
eyes, and crashes across the table, twisting as he falls, still looking
up at her.
The silence that follows is broken by a low rippling laugh. The company
gaze in astonishment; it is Lucrezia who is laughing. The child in her
face is dead; her expression is inscrutable, wicked and sirenish. She
sways towards Biseglia, bending back her head and twining her arms about
him. “Hath the Pope’s daughter a deformity that thou canst not love her?
Behold, thou shalt judge. She will dance and dance, till she dances thee
into rapture and thy soul is poured out upon her.”
From the hand of a servitor she snatches a torch and steps into the
open. She commences to dance and, as she dances, unbuckles her girdle
so that her gown slips from her. As the beat of the music grows more
furious she unbinds her hair, so that it writhes like snakes about her
firm white arms and bust. Dwarfs clamber into trees and slide out along
their branches, raining rose-leaves on her as she passes. The strangely
attired company forget their jaded decadence and sprawl across the
table, digging their elbows into its scattered magnificence, following
the gleam of her young, white body as it twists and turns beneath the
whirling torch.
But her gaze is bent always on Biseglia; her eyes are aslant and
beckoning. Her bosom rises and falls more fiercely with the wrenching
in-take of the breath. Will he never go to her?
She flings back her hair from her shoulders; her body flashes like an
unsheathed sword. Nearer and nearer to him she dances. His eyes rest
on her moodily, half-closed. Does he make a movement, quickly she
withdraws.
She has flung away her torch and is spinning madly with her hands
clasped behind her head. The grass is hidden with rose-leaves; she
floats--her feet scarcely stir them. Suddenly she stops; stands erect
for an ecstatic moment; sways dizzily; her strength is gone. Her hands,
small and pitiful, fly up to cover her eyes. She shakes her hair free to
hide her. Her body crumples. She is broken with her shame and futility.
Biseglia leaps the table and has her in his arms as she falls, pressing
his hot lips against hers. With clenched fists she smites him from her,
slips from his embrace, and runs shimmering like a white doe through the
forest of blackness.
With a shout the revelers shatter the banquet and pour in pursuit of
her. Biseglia leads them, darting ahead into the shadows. Dancing and
singing, the disheveled bacchanalians stagger across the dark, trouping
along dusky terraces with twining arms, following the fleeing dryad.
Torches are burnt out and smolder in their sockets. Night is tattered
by the dawn. Amid the havoc of trampled chalices and glass sprawls the
wine-stained figure of the dead Lord of Pesaro--the man who, could she
have loved him, would have given her all.
_La Fiesole! La Fiesole!_ We rose as one man as the curtain dropped.
We did not care to think whether this was wrong--it was lovely. She
had danced our souls out of their prejudices, out of their walls of
restraint into chaos. The rapture of her beauty ran through our veins
like wine. Our imaginations pursued her along pale terraces. The
fragrance of crushed rose-leaves was in our nostrils and the coolness of
night. Our breath came short, as though we had been running. Our senses
were reeling and our eyes dazzled. We stood up in our places clutching
at the air, calling and calling, hungry for the sight of her.
For myself, I was smitten with blindness. My eyes saw the striving
throng through a mist and probed into the beyond, where she ran on and
on palely, forever from me. I shouted to her, but she grew more distant;
never once did she look back or stay her footsteps.
I was aware of a deep stillness--a hoarse peal of laughter: thousands of
eyes glared up at me and down on me, and mouths gaped mockery. The mist
cleared; Fiesole was standing before the curtain. The audience had grown
hushed at sight of her while I had continued calling. From the stage,
twenty feet away, she was smiling at me, insolent and charming, her body
still shuddering with exertion beneath the velvet cloak which lay across
her shoulders. What did I care, though to-morrow the whole of Paris
should laugh? She had danced my soul into ecstasy. I placed my hands
on the edge of the box and leant out drunkenly, shouting her name,
“_Fiesole! Fiesole!_”
She kissed her hand at me derisively, bowed to the audience, and was
gone.
I sank in my place, a sickening nostalgia for her upon me. I did not
reason; I only knew I wanted her--wanted her as she had once wanted me,
with her hands and eyes and body. In a dim way I felt angry with myself
for having lost her. She had made me disgusted with my coldness at
Venice as I had watched my counterpart, the Duke of Biseglia. From the
theatric torture in her face I had learnt something of how brutal a man
may be when he fancies that he is righteously moral. She, whom I saw now
so remotely, might have been mine; through these chilly years La Fiesole
might have been my companion, had I had the faith to take what was
offered. I had sought the things that were impossible. I had made a god
of my scruples. I had sinned weakly, following Vi who did not belong to
me. I had sat down to wait for her, and all the while Life was tapping
at the door. I tasted Life to-night---- And who knows? Perhaps I had
broken this woman’s heart. I would no longer be niggardly. I would go to
her; accuse myself to her; beat down her hatred of me; carry her off.
While these thoughts trooped across my mind, the crooked sphinx-like
smile of Paris wandered over me, examined me, hinted at tragedy with
laughter, and widened its painted lips at my absurdity.
The curtain rustled. The warning raps sounded. Lights sank, and heads
bent forward.
In a dim-lit room, chilly to the point of austerity, sat Lucrezia.
Tall candles shone upon her face--a face purged of emotion, nunlike and
wooden with an expression of distant contemplation. Behind her head was
an open window through which floated in the sound of music. She heeded
it not at all. In the far corner stood a bed with the curtains drawn
back. At an altar a lamp burnt before a shining crucifix. Her women were
unrobing her for the bridal night. They spoke to her, but she did not
answer. They blamed her for her indifference to Biseglia: she had never
kissed him, never caressed him since the night when she had won him. Did
she not know that he hungered for her kindness?
She gave them no answer. They lifted her this way and that as though she
were a doll; she seemed to have forgotten her body. She might have been
in a trance, leading a life separate, dreaming of things innocent and
holy.
One by one the candles were extinguished; only the lamp burnt before the
altar. When her women were gone; she slipped from the bed and knelt with
her head bowed before the cross.
The music dies; silence falls. Along the passage comes a creeping
footstep. The door opens; Biseglia enters, blinking his eyes at the
room’s dimness. He whispers her name. At last she hears him and rises,
standing before the altar. He crosses the room reverently. He halts,
gazing at her. He rushes forward, masters her, crushes her to him, and
cries that she torments him--starves him.
When she makes no response, but lies pulseless in his arms, he carries
her to the bed, incoherently claiming as his right the fondness she does
not give him. Then he grows gentle and kneels before her, kissing her
feet and calling her his god.
She speaks. Her voice is small. “Biseglia, thou didst love me only when
I had made myself worthless that I might win thy fondness.”
He yearns up to her with his arms, disowning his former coldness,
protesting that he adores her. She leans over him sadly; he raises his
lips to hers. As she kisses him, her expression kindles to triumph. She
withdraws her hand from her breast; the Borgian dagger sinks into his
heart.
She gazes stonily on the man who had once refused her. The lamp before
the altar flickers and goes out. The room is plunged in darkness.
CHAPTER VI--SIR GALAHAD IN MONTMARTRE
Long after the curtain had fallen I sat on. I had seen Antoine Georges
step before the footlights leading Fiesole. I had seen him alternately
bend above her hand and bow his acknowledgments to the applause. I did
not like him, this fat little Frenchman, with his thin beard and spindly
legs. The polite proprietorship of his bearing towards her had impressed
me as offensive. I felt sure that he was smacking his lips and saying,
“They shall believe that it’s all true, this that they say about us.”
From the wings had come lackeys carrying garlands. They had built up a
garden about her. The people had gone mad, standing up in their places
and thunderously shouting. From all parts of the theatre flowers
had rained on her. They had stormed her with flowers. Women had torn
bouquets from their dresses and wreaths from their hair. It might have
been a carnival; the air was dense with falling blossoms. And she had
faced them with the smile of a pleased child, while Monsieur Georges
bent double before her.
It was all over. Men were busy with brooms, sweeping up the litter of
her triumph. This happened every night: they got used to it. Already in
the _fauteuils d’orchestre_ perfunctory faded women were adjusting linen
coverings. The last stragglers of the audience were reluctantly going
through the doors.
A man entered my box and tapped me on the shoulder. I stared up at him;
his expression made me laugh. He evidently mistook me for a crank who
was likely to give trouble. I reached for my hat and coat wearily; I
felt that I had been beaten all over. As I folded my scarf about my neck
I made bold to ask him where I could find Fiesole. He shrugged his
shoulders, darting out his hands, palms upwards, as one who said, “Ah,
it is beyond me! Who can tell?”
But it was important that I should see her, I urged; I was an old
friend.
An old friend! These days La Fiesole had many old friends. Were it
permitted to her old friends to see her, all the messieurs would cross
the footlights. He eyed me with impatience, anxious to see the last of
me, his waxlike face wickedly ironic.
I produced a fifty-franc note. Would it not be possible for him to
deliver her a message?
If Monsieur would write out his message he would make certain that La
Fiesole got it.
So I scribbled my address on the back of a card, asking her to allow me
to speak with her.
I folded the fifty-franc note about it and handed it to my tyrant.
From the lack of surprise with which he accepted I gathered that he had
pocketed greater amounts for a like service.
In the street I paused irresolute. From my feet, could I follow it, a
path led through crowded boulevards directly to her. I could not be very
distant from her; a lucky choice of direction, the chance turning of a
corner might bring us face to face. That I was in her mind was probable.
She was remembering, as I was remembering, that day at Lido and that
night at Venice. Was she satisfied with her revenge? She had always been
generous. Somewhere in this passionate white night of Paris her car
sped on through illumined gulleys; she lay back on cushions, her eyes
half-shut, her mouth faintly smiling, picturing the past at my
expense. I liked to think that she hated me; it was in keeping with her
character; I respected her for it. The women who had loved me had made
things too easy; it had always been I who had done the refusing. My
blood was eager for the danger of pursuing. I longed for resistance that
I might overcome her. I loved her with my body, I told myself, as I
had never loved a woman; my cold, calculating intellectuality was in
abeyance. That she should make my path of return difficult added a novel
zest.
The human tide was drifting towards Montmartre; I fell in and followed.
On the pavement before cafés at little round tables _boulevardiers_ were
seated, sipping their absinthe, their eyes questing for the first hint
of adventure. Taxis flashed by, soaring up “the mountain” like comets,
giving me glimpses as they passed of faces drawn near together,
ravishing in their transient tenderness. How was it? What had happened?
For the first time in my remembrance I had ceased to analyze; I had
ceased to sadden my present with foreknowledge.
Far away the Place Pigalle beckoned. Up tortuous streets, between
ancient houses, the traffic streamed like a fire-fly army on the march.
As I neared the top I entered the pale-gold haze of its unreality.
Electric signs of L’Abbaye, the Bal Tabarin, and the Rat Mort glittered
on the night like paste jewels on the robe of a courtesan. Women trooped
by me like blown petals, peering into my face and smiling invitation.
I marked down their types in my mind by the names of flowers--jasmine,
rose, poppy.
I was curiously transformed from that evening of long ago when I had
watched these sights with horror, and had fled from Paris in the dawn to
Florence. I felt no anger, no revulsion--only tolerance. I had finished
with peeping beneath the surface. Fiesole had taught me to despise all
that. _Fiesole! Fiesole!_ I saw her always dancing on before me, mocking
my sobriety. Yes, I told myself, she had made me kinder.
A couplet from _Sir Galahad in Montmartre_ dinned in my brain and summed
up my estimate of my former self
“He sees not the need in their faces;
’Tis the sin and the lust that he traces.”
I had never looked for the need in any woman’s face. I had been absorbed
in contemplation of my own chastity--had hurried through life with
hands in pockets, fearful lest I might be robbed. Vi’s need, which I had
recognized, I had made ten times more poignant. I had waited for her.
What good had I done by it? I might go on waiting. Meanwhile there were
Fiesole and Life knocking at my door. My constancy to Vi had become a
luxury.
A girl slipped her arm in mine. “’Allo! You zink I am pretty?”
She was a _cocotte_, little more than a child, so delicate and slight.
Her hair was flaxen and blowy; her complexion a transparent china-white;
her dress décolleté and cut in a deep V between the breasts. She pushed
her small face up to mine with the red lips parted, clinging to me with
the innocent familiarity of one who had asked no more than a roguish
question.
“You’re pretty, but----”
“Zen we go togezer!”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Pourquoi non?”
“I’m hoping to meet someone.”
She released me at once with a good-natured smile. “La! La! I hopes you
find ’er.”
She tripped away, turning before she was lost in the crowd to wave her
hand. I told myself that her flower was the jonquil.
It was one o’clock when, after wandering about, I found myself back
at the same place. I could not sleep; my brain was too active with
excitement. Instead of being sad because of Fiesole, I was unreasonably
elated. I took a seat at a table on the pavement and ordered coffee
and cognac. Every man and woman within sight was a lover, and I sat
solitary. As the hour grew later men and women grew more frank in their
embraces, and all with that naïve assumption of privacy which makes the
Frenchman, even in his vices, seem so much a child. The sex-instinct
beat about “the mountain”--the air quivered and pulsated.
Girls rustled in the shadows. Lovers, chance-met, danced home together.
Strange to say, I found nothing sinful in it--only romance. I had ceased
to look beyond the immediate sensation.
“Poor boy! You not find ’er?”
I looked up; my lady of the jonquils was leaning over my shoulder.
“No.”
“Eh bien, peut-être, you find her to-morrow, _hein!_ If not, zere are
ozers.” She waved her small gloved hands in a circle, bringing them back
to include herself. She looked a good little soul, standing there so
bravely disguising her weariness.
“Tired?”
“It ees nozing.”
“Won’t you join me?”
Immediately we were in sympathy. She owned me with a playfulness which
had no hint of indelicacy. Drawing off her gloves, she rested her chin
on her knitted fingers and regarded me laughingly with her world-wise
eyes. She was scarcely more than half my years, I suppose.
“Zere are ozers,” she repeated.
“Not for me,” I said; “not to-night.”
“Dieu! You are funny, my friend. You lofe like zat?” The waiter hovered
nearer, flirting his napkin across the marble-tables.
I beckoned; he dashed up like a hen to which I had scattered grain.
“Croûte au pot?”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
“Filet aux truffes.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
“Salade romaine.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
“Vouvray.”
“Bien, Monsieur.”
I turned to her. She had corn-flower eyes like Kitty--I had been
wondering of whom I was reminded. I passed her my cigarette-case. She
chose one fastidiously and tilted it between her lips with the smile of
a _gamine_.
While we ate neither of us said much--she was hungry; but, as we sipped
our coffee and the pile of cigarette ends grew, I found myself telling
her--asking her if a man had refused her once, whether she could ever
again love him.
“If he haf a great heart, oui. If he haf not----” She threw her
cigarette away. “C’est la vie! Quoi?” She snapped her fingers and leant
over and took my hand, this gay little Montmartroise. “But you haf; zo
courage, my friend.”
I did not want to be left alone; she knew it. A _fiacre_, with a
battered race-horse propped between the shafts, had drawn up against
the curb. On the box a red-faced _cocher_ nodded. We climbed in and she
nestled beside me. The _cocher_ looked across his shoulder, asking where
to drive. “Straight on,” I told him.
We crawled away down “the mountain”; as we went, she sang contentedly
just above her breath. When we reached the Madeleine the _cocher_
halted, inquiring gruffly whither he should drive. “Tout droit. Tout
droit”; we both cried impatiently. So again we moved slowly forward.
There was no doubt in the man’s mind that we were mad.
She drew closer to me and cuddled into my coat; the foolish prettiness
of her dress was no protection against the chill night air. We lay back,
her head resting on my shoulder, gazing up at the star-scattered
sky. The asphalt surface of the boulevard, polished by petrol and
rubber-tires to the dull brightness of steel, glimmered in a long line
before us reflecting the arc-lamps like a smooth waterway--like a slow
canal in ancient Venice.
Where we went I do not know; I did not care to notice. The creaking
_fiacre_ had become a gondola and it was Fiesole who leant against
me. Sometimes the _cocher_ drew up to light a cigarette and to glance
suspiciously down upon us. Then I was brought back to reality. We
circled the Bastille and prowled through the _Quartier Latin_, where the
night was not so late. We crossed the river once more and crept along
the _Quai des Tuileries_; then again we climbed “the mountain” and
plunged into the grimy purlieus of _Les Halles_. Market-carts were
already creaking, in from the country with swinging lamps. Wagons piled
high with vegetables, loomed mountainous under eaves of houses. From
the market came grumbling voices of men unloading, and the occasional
squealing of a stallion.
The _cocher_ wriggled on his box and confronted me fretfully. Before
he could ask his question, “Sacré nom d’un chien!” I shouted fiercely,
“Allez. Allez.” Meekly he jerked at the reins, sinking his head between
his obedient shoulders.
I looked down at the tiny face beside me--the face of a white flower
whose petals are folding. She had ceased her singing an hour ago.
Feeling me stir, she struggled to open her eyes and slipped her small
hand into mine. When I drew my arm tighter about her she sighed happily.
Above the tottering roofs of Paris the night grew haggard. One by one
stars were snuffed out. Wisps of clouds drove across the moon like
witches riding homeward. It was the hour when even Paris grows quiet.
Ragpickers were slinking through the shadows, raking over barrels set
out on the curb. Women, shuddering in bedraggled finery--queens of
Montmartre once, perhaps, whose only weariness had been too many
lovers--dragged themselves to some sheltered doorway, thankful for a bed
in the gutter, if it were undisturbed. In boulevards for lengthy pauses
ours was the only sound of traffic.
My head jerked nearer hers. Her breath was on my cheek; I could feel the
twitching of her supple body. Poor little lady of the jonquils--of what
was she dreaming? What had she expected from me? She would tell often of
this eccentric night and no one would credit her story.
When I awoke she was still sleeping. A spring breeze ruffled the trees;
sparrows were chirping; a golden morning sparkled across the waters of
the Seine. The sun, still ruddy from his rising, stood magnificently
young among the chimney-pots, trailing his gleaming mantle beneath the
bridges.
The battered race-horse had stumbled with us just beyond the Louvre
and stood with his head sagging between his knees, his body lurching
forward. The reins had fallen from the _cocher’s_ hands; his thick neck
was deep in his collar; and his face looked strangled. From across
the road a waiter scattered sand between his newly set out tables and
watched us with amused curiosity.
My body was cramped. As I attempted to uncrook my legs, my companion
opened her eyes and stared at me in amazed confusion. She yawned and sat
up laughing, patting her mouth. “Oh, _la, la_----. Bonjour, toi!”
We examined ourselves--I in my crumpled evening-dress, and she in her
flimsy gown and decorative high-heeled shoes. I had a glimpse of my
face in imagination--pale and donnish; the very last face for such a
situation. How ill-assorted! Then I laughed too; the _cocher_ lumbered
round on his box and burst into a hoarse guffaw at sight of us. We all
laughed together, and the waiter ceased sanding his floor to laugh with
us.
We left the racer to his well-earned rest and all three went across
to the café. As we soaked bread in our bowls of coffee and plied our
spoons, we chatted merrily like good comrades. Then we parted with the
_cocher_, leaving him agreeably surprised, and sauntered down the Quai
where workmen in blue blouses, hurrying from across the bridges, found
time to nudge one another knowingly and to smile into our eyes with a
glad intimacy which was not at all offensive.
In a narrow street where “the mountain” commenced, she halted and placed
both her hands on my shoulders, tiptoeing against me.
“One ’as to go ’ome sometime, mon ami.” She was determined to be a
sportsman to the end. “But remember, mon petit, if you do not find
’er, zere are ozers.”
I put my hand into my pocket. She examined what I gave her. “Mais, non!”
she exclaimed, flushing.
“But yes--for remembrance.”
She tilted up her face and her happy eyes clouded; the tired cheeks
turned whiter and the painted lips quivered. “Little one, keess me.”
So I parted from this chance-met waif with her brave and generous
heart---- And this was what my madness and Fiesole had taught me. For
the time the memory of Vi was entirely banished from my thoughts.
CHAPTER VII--SATURNALIA
At my hotel I found no message. But it was still early; she might
not have received my card and, as yet, did not know my address.
The intoxication of the previous night still flicked my spirit into
optimism--perhaps she would answer me in person.
Then came the reaction--the truer judgment. If she had desired to see
me, she could have sent round word to my box at the theatre. After all,
why should she desire to see me? She was famous and had made her world
without me. When we parted, I had left her with a memory so humiliating
that it must scorch her even now. These were things which a woman
finds it difficult to forgive--impossible to forget. Still, there
was curiosity--a woman’s curiosity! She might resist it for a time,
tantalizing both me and herself; but she would have to see me presently,
if only to wound me.
I scarcely stirred from my hotel, afraid lest I should miss her. By the
time evening fell, I had come to a new conclusion--that the ironical
scoundrel, who had so coolly pocketed my money, had destroyed my card.
To make sure of reaching her, I wrote a letter to the theatre, saying
many true things foolishly. Then, in sheer restlessness, I hurried to
the boulevard in which her theatre was situated, hoping to get a glimpse
of her either coming or going.
I could not bring myself to enter--it was too horrible and
beautiful--she was dancing away her womanhood in there. Shockingly
fascinated as I had been by the spectacle, I felt a lover’s jealousy
that strangers should watch it.
I hated the gay crowds seething in to find enjoyment in my shame and her
tragedy. They were jesters at something sacred.
I paced the boulevard with clenched hands and snapping nerves; I could
not go far away from her, and I could not go to her. Within my brain she
was always dancing, dancing, and the jaded eyes of Paris grew young with
greed of her sensational perfection. I longed to go to her, to protect
her, to save her from herself. She needed me, though she would scorn the
idea if I told her. If she would but allow it, I would carry her away
from these hectic nights and this subtle, soul-destroying sensualism.
Her shame was my doing; I would give all my life to make amends to her.
But she gave me no sign that she had either seen or heard from me. What
else could I expect? How could I explain my infatuation even to myself,
let alone to her, as more than physical attraction? And was it more?...
Once she had offered me far more than I now begged; I had churlishly
refused it. How could I account to her for my altered valuation of her
worth? She would not answer--I knew that now. I should have to compel
her attention.
Next morning in reading the papers I came across her name frequently.
She was the madcap darling of Paris; every edition contained some
anecdote of _La Fiesole_ and her erratic doings. One item captured my
interest especially: there was a certain café in the Champs Elysées to
which she went often after theatre hours. For the time being she had
made it the most fashionable midnight resort in Paris.
That night, having bribed heavily for the privilege, I was seated at a
table near the entrance. If she came, she could scarcely pass without
seeing me. The place was an _al fresco_ restaurant, gorgeously
theatric. It stood in a garden, brilliantly romantic and insincere as
a stage-setting. Overlooking the garden were white verandahs,
creeper-covered and garish with hothouse flowers; throughout it were
scattered kiosks and bowers in which the more secret of the diners
sat. The plumed trees were knit together with ropes of lights, like
pearl-necklaces which had been tossed into their branches casually. In
bushes and hidden among blossoms, glow-worm illuminations twinkled, like
faeries kindling and extinguishing their lamps. Everything was subdued
and sensuous. Fountains played and splashed. Statues glimmered. A gipsy
orchestra, fierce-looking and red-coated, clashed frenzied music, which
sobbed away into dreamy waltzes and elusive snatches of melody. The
effect was bizarre--artistically unreal and emotionally tropic.
Here one might experience a great passion which consumed by its panting
brevity; everyone seemed present for the express purpose of realizing
such a passion.
At tables seated in couples were extraordinary people, dressed to
play their part in a dare-devil romance. Here were men who looked like
Russian Archdukes, bearded, bloodless, and insolently languid. Sitting
opposite them were voluptuous women, tragically exotic, dangerously
coaxing, with the melodramatic appearance of scheming nihilists.
They were reckless, these costly, slant-eyed odalisques--exiles from
commonplace kindliness, born gamblers for the happiness they had thrown
away and would never re-capture. There was the atmosphere of intrigue,
of indiscreet liaison about almost every couple. They acted as though
for one ecstatic moment the world was theirs. Their behavior was
everything that is exaggerated, fond, undomestic, and arrogantly
well-bred.
There was something lacking. As each new arrival entered, the slanted
eyes of the women and the heavy eyes of the men were raised droopingly
with an expression of furtive expectancy. They were a chorus assembled,
waiting for the leading actor till the play should commence.
Low rippling laughter, spontaneously joyous, sounded. From the trellised
entrance she emerged and halted, looking mock-bashful, taking in the
effect she had created, spurning the gravel with her golden slipper. Her
gown was of dull green satin, cut audaciously low in the back and neck,
and slashed from the hem to expose her slim ankle and golden stocking.
She wore no jewels, but between her breasts was a yellow rose, which
drifted nodding on the whiteness of her bosom as she drew her breath.
Her reddish gold hair was wrapped _en bandeaux_ about her small pale
ears and broad pale forehead. It shone metallic; its brightness dulled
and quickened as she swayed her splendid body.
At her first appearance a muttering had arisen, gathering in volume. As
she lifted her head and her green eyes flashed through her long, bronze
lashes, we grew silent. It was as though a tamer had entered a cage of
panthers and stood cowing them with her consciousness of power. Yes, she
knew what they thought of her, and guessed what they admired in her. She
surveyed us with quiet contempt. I felt that behind whatever she did
or said there lay hidden a timid girlishness. She was still the old
Fiesole, the happy companion who could tramp through rainstorms like a
man. Her brave pagan purity these half-way decadents had not tarnished;
by them it was unsuspected. I watched her tall, lithe figure; the neck
so small that one could span it with a hand; the firm, high bosom,
proud and virginal; the straight, frank brows, and the mouth so red and
sweetly drooping. Other women looked decorative and tinsel beside her
natural perfection.
My throat was parched. My eyes felt scalded. I was unnerved and
a-tremble. Her beauty daunted as much as it challenged. What bond still
existed between us that would draw her to me? She looked so remote, so
hemmed in by the new personality she had developed.
Her green eyes swept the garden, probing its secret shadows. For whom
was she looking? They rested on mine, absorbed me--then fell away
without recognition. I had risen in my place, with head bent forward,
ready to go to her at the least sign of friendship. I remained standing
and staring.
She turned to one of her companions and whispered something, at which
they both laughed. He was a tall poetic-looking man, slight of hip,
blue-eyed, and handsome. His hair was wavy and yellow, his face bearded,
and his skin pale with excess. There were other men with her, Monsieur
Georges among others; but on the poet alone she lavished her attention.
She gave him her arm and came towards me with the undulating stride that
I knew so well. For a second I believed she was going to acknowledge me;
she went by so closely that her gown trailed across my feet and brushed
my hands. It was cruelly intended. The play had opened.
The table that had been reserved for her was next to mine, partly hidden
from the public gaze by bushes; as I watched, I caught glimpses of
her profile, and could always hear the lazy murmur of her voice
and occasionally fragments of what was said. I followed her foreign
gestures, her tricks of personality--all of them adorably familiar: the
way she shifted her eyebrows in listening, sunk her chin between her
breasts when she was serious, and clapped her hands in excitement. She
was as simple as a child--in her heart she had not altered. Even the
way in which she made me suffer what she had suffered was childish. This
pretending not to know me was so transparent. There were other and more
subtle methods by which she could have taken her revenge.
I was not the only man who attempted to spy on her; there might have
been no other woman present. Languid faces scattered throughout the
garden took on a new sharpness. They turned and looked down from
balconies on La Fiesole, eager to catch glimpses of her. To their
women-companions men listened with a bored pretense of attention.
Perhaps it was because of this, in an effort to focus interest on
themselves, that the women, as by a concerted plan, became more
animated.
Suddenly a girl in scarlet leapt upon a table and commenced to dance
with flashing eyes and whirling skirts. I heard someone say that she was
a gipsy and that her brother was first-violinist in the orchestra. The
music mounted up, wild and unrestrained; the small feet beat faster; the
actions became more frenzied. She turned away from her comrade and bent
back double, peering into his eyes; she flung herself from him, chaffing
him with grim endearments; she feigned to become furious; then she threw
herself across his knees exhausted, writhing her arms about his neck.
Men eyed her with studied carelessness. She had done it before and they
had applauded. They could see her any night. They could not always feast
their eyes on La Fiesole.
Saturnalia broke loose. Girl after girl rose upon chair or table, or
went swaying through the magic garden like a frail leaf harried by a
storm. They danced singly, they danced together, going through grotesque
contortions, beckoning lovers with their eyes and gestures.
And I watched Fiesole through the bushes. She was not so indifferent to
me as she pretended. She was playacting to rouse my jealousy; she
was purposely scourging me into madness. I alone of the public was
sufficiently near to see clearly what she was doing. She was luring her
poet to recklessness, taking no notice of what was in process about her.
Did I catch her eye, she looked past me without recognition. But him she
enticed by her gentleness. The man was drunk with her favor and beauty.
He trembled to put the thoughts of a lover into action; she challenged
him with her eyes, warning him from her and beckoning him to her.
Stooping over her, so low that his lips were in her hair, he whispered;
but she shook her head. She rested her hand lightly on his shoulder,
as though to steady him and to soften the unkindness of her refusal.
Quickly he caught it in his own and bent over it, running his lips
along her fingers and up her arm’s smooth curves. She looked down on
him unmoved, disdainful at his breach of manners, yet superbly amorous.
Clutching her hotly to him, he kissed her on the throat.
Blind anger shook me--lust for violence such as I had never felt.
Breaking into the toy arbor where they sat, I remember standing over
him, dragging him backward by the collar, so that his face glared up at
mine empurpled. His friends rushed forward, beating me about the head
and shoulders, tearing at my hands, trying to make me release my hold.
Fiesole had risen like a fury. The table went down with a crash. Her
face was deadly pale and her green eyes blazed with indignation. Her
hands were clenched as if she also were about to strike me. And I was
pouring out a torrent of words, telling her swiftly how I loved her and
all that she had made me suffer.
Her rage died away as she listened and her expression became
inscrutable. Quickly she darted back her head, laughing without
happiness, mockingly. “You are very English, my friend. If you make so
much noise, these messieurs will think we are married.”
I caught her by the wrists, so that she backed away from me. “I wish to
God we were.”
“Oh, la, la, la!”
She went off into a peal of merriment, pointing her finger at me. The
crowd gathered round us uncertain, asking in half-a-dozen languages what
had been the provocation and what we were saying.
Her look changed. It was as though a mask had fallen. The temptress and
witch were gone. I seemed to see in her melancholy eyes all the longing
for tenderness and loyalty that I thought had been killed years ago in
Venice.
She advanced her face to mine and stared at me timidly, as though
fearful she had been mistaken.
“Take me out of this,” she whispered hoarsely.
Her companions tried to intercept us, gesticulating and protesting. She
brushed them aside, explaining that I was not myself and did not
know what I was doing. For her sake they let me go without further
molestation.
We passed out, leaving them gaping after us. I helped her into her
furs and took my place beside her in the coupé. Before we were out of
earshot, the gipsy orchestra had swung into a new frenzy.
Once Vi had kept me from Fiesole; now Fiesole was taking me from Vi. And
these two women who, through me, had influenced one another’s destinies,
had never met. They were hostile types.
CHAPTER VIII--LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI
I was at a loss what to say to her. Words could not bridge the gulf of
more than five years that separated us. Now that anger had subsided, my
genius for self-ridicule was at work. What a fool I had made of myself;
how supremely silly I must appear in her eyes! It would be in all the
papers to-morrow. How would she like that? Where was she taking me and
why? Had she come with me simply to get me out of a public place before
I committed worse violence?
I pieced together phrases of apology and explanation, but remained
tongue-tied. To express the emotions that stormed in my mind all words
seemed insincere and inadequate. I was not sufficiently certain of her
to venture either speech or action. I was fearful lest her mood might
change to one of amusement. My nerves were on edge--I dared not risk
that.
Noiseless as a ghost in a dream-world, the electric coupé drifted up the
dully gleaming boulevard. I leant against the padded back and watched
her. She sat erect, splendidly self-possessed, her profile framed in
the carriage-window with the stealthy lights of Paris slipping by
for background. Now she was no more than a blurred outline; now
the acetylene-lamps of a swiftly moving car flashed on her like a
search-light; now the twinkling incandescence of an illumined café flung
jewels in her hair; now her face rested like sculptured ivory on the
velvet blackness of the night. She was immobile; even the slender
fingers clasped together in her lap never stirred. Our silence had
lasted so long that it had ceased to be fragile; it rose between us, a
wall of ice.
We drew up against the curb. I had but a vague idea of where we
were--near the Bois, I conjectured. Tall houses stood in shuttered
dumbness along one side; on the other, trees shrank beneath the primrose
dusk of arc-lights. She stepped out, ignoring my proffered assistance.
She crossed the pavement and tapped; as the door swung back I followed
her under an archway into a dim courtyard. Having mounted several
flights of stairs, she tapped again. To the sleepy maid who opened she
whispered hurriedly. The maid discreetly fell behind.
We passed into a room delicately furnished. The floor was heavily
carpeted in red. The walls, hung with etchings and landscapes, were
paneled in white. Flowers stood about in bowls and slender vases; shaded
lamps gave to the room a secret aspect. In the grate a fire of coals was
burning and two deep chairs stood one on either side. The atmosphere
was intensely and perishably feminine; it gave me the feeling of
preparedness--as though I had been expected. Through tall windows the
curious night stared in upon us.
Fiesole crossed, making no sound save the silken rustle of her dress,
and drew the curtains close together. She turned, looking back at me
side-long, at once amused and languid. Her coldness and aloofness had
vanished. The sparkle of mischief fetched the gold from the depths of
her green eyes. Her body became expressive and vibrant. Then I heard her
sweet hoarse voice, with its quaintly foreign intonation. It reached me
tauntingly, lazy with indifference, holding me at arm’s length. “Dear
man, take a chair by the fire and behave yourself. Mon Dieu, but you
were amusing to-night!”
She laughed softly at remembering and shook her cloak from her white
shoulders. A strand of hair broke loose and fell coiling across her
breast. She stepped to a mirror, turning her back on me; having twisted
it into place, she remained smiling at her reflection, whistling beneath
her breath.
Her gaiety cut like a lash across my mouth. I was painfully in earnest.
She was treating the situation as an incident--a jest. To me it was a
supreme moment--a turning-point: on what we should say to one another
would depend the entire direction of both our lives. I was sorry for her
beyond the power of words to express. The success and luxury of her way
of living did not blind me to its hollowness and danger. Her frivolity
left me affronted and fascinated. She roused in me all the unrestraint
of the flesh; and yet I desired to worship her with my mind. I longed to
carry her away from the fever and glare of streets to a place of quiet,
where the world was blowy--where she might become what she had once been
when I might have had her, genuine and fine. While these thoughts raced
through my mind, the insistent question kept repeating itself, why had
she brought me here to be alone with her at this late hour of the night?
Her eyes flashed out at me maddeningly from the mirror. They prompted to
irretrievable folly. They called me to go to her, and to be unworthy
of both her and myself. And I knew why: she wished me to say and do the
things that were unforgivable that she might have excuse to scorn me,
to fling me from her. Once it had been my Puritanism that had thrust us
apart; it should not now be my sensualism. I would not let her make a
hypocrite of me in my own eyes.
The seconds ticked out the silence. Her dress whispered. Her voluptuous
white arms, uplifted and curved above her neck as she patted her hair,
enhanced the perfect vase-like effect of her body. I would not go
to her, I told myself; I would not go to her. I held myself rigid,
distraught, and tense. The blood swelled out my throat and beat in my
temples. She withdrew her hands. Wickedly, like a shower of largesse,
the clustered glory of her hair rained from her head, catching her in a
net of smoldering brightness.
She glanced with half-closed eyes across her shoulder and feigned
astonishment at observing that I had remained standing.
“Still the same old idjut! Wanting something you’re afraid to have, and
looking tragic.”
“Fiesole, girl, don’t you understand? It’s not that.”
My voice sounded odd and strangled. I had spoken scarcely above a
whisper.
She swung about and surveyed me leisurely. There was a pout on her mouth
like that of a naughty child. “You’re no longer amusing,” she faltered;
“you grow tiresome. Why can’t you be sensible, and sit down? I want to
hear all this that you’ve got to tell me.”
“You don’t make it easy.”
She shrugged her gleaming shoulders. “Why should I? You made a horrid
row about something that was none of your concern. You nearly choked a
friend of mine to death. You don’t expect me to say thank you, surely? I
ought to punish you; instead, I bring you here. I wanted to have a look
at you. Ah! but you were funny--so righteous and English! You made me
laugh.... I can forgive anyone who does that.”
When I did not answer, she regarded me puzzled. Slowly her brilliant
deviltry and merriment faded. The laughter sank to a whisper and
ceased abruptly, frightened at itself. The red lips drooped and
parted. Something of my own pinched earnestness was reflected in her
expression--it was as though her soul unveiled itself. She stole across
to me wonderingly, her beautiful arms stretched out. She rested the tips
of her fingers tremulously on my shoulders.
“No, that’s not true. You were splendid--so different from the rest. I’m
a beast. You made me ashamed of myself. That’s why I was angry; because
you, who made me what I am, should accuse me.”
“Accuse you! God forbid!”
I made a movement to gather her to me, but she slipped past me and sank
into a chair.
“Between us not that.” She caught her breath. “I hate you. I want to
hate you. What else did you expect? But I can’t. I cannot. You won’t let
me.”
“You ought to hate me. Call me what you like; it won’t be worse than I
deserve. I was cruel and selfish. I see it now.”
She shook back her hair from her forehead and bent forward gazing into
the fire, her elbows on her knees, her face cushioned in her hands.
A sudden gravity and wistfulness had fallen on her. She was thinking,
remembering, weighing me in the balance. I must not touch her--must not
speak to her. If I showed any sign of passion, she would mistake it for
pity either of her or of myself.
“I wanted to forget--to live you out of my life; but you’ve brought it
all back--the old bitterness and heartache. You didn’t know what you did
to me, Dante. You spared my body; you killed everything--everything else
that was best. Look at me now.” She glanced down at the exotic daring
of her appearance:--the golden stocking that was revealed from ankle to
knee by the narrow slash in the skirt; the splendid extravagant display
of arms, throat, and breast that swelled up riotously, uninterrupted,
snowy and amorous from the sheathlike dress--a flashing blade
half-withdrawn from its scabbard.
“I’m a devil. You made me that, you virgin man. No, don’t speak----
I thought I should have died of shame after I left you. I could have
killed you. You don’t know how a woman feels when she’s wanted a man
with her whole soul and body, and she knows that she’s beautiful; and
he’s flung her from him when she’s offered herself, as though she were
worthless. ‘He didn’t care,’ I said, ‘so nobody’ll ever care.’---- And
then I met Antoine Georges, who had known my father. And I did what
you’ve seen and I’ve won success. When I saw you the other night I
wanted to make you suffer. I’ve often pictured how I would torture you
if ever you should come back--how I’d destroy you--how I’d make you go
through the same hell. And now you’ve come, and I can’t do it.---- I may
change my mind presently. You’d better go while I let you.”
“I’m never going.”
She turned her head, scrutinizing my face stealthily from between her
hands.
“Don’t be a fool. What about her?”
“There’s no one else. There never will be.”
She gasped. “You didn’t marry her?”
The strained look in her face relaxed. She laughed softly to herself;
why she laughed I could not guess. It was not the laughter which follows
suspense, but the laughter of one who courts danger. It was as though
she parted her hair into sheaves and glanced out crying, “I am Eve, the
long desired.”
Reaching over to the table she picked out a cigarette. When it was
alight, she snuggled down into the chair, kicking off her little gold
shoes and resting her feet on the fender. She eyed me dreamily.
“Then you made me suffer all that for nothing? You good men can be
cruel.---- Tell me.”
Briefly I told her of my useless visit to Sheba; and why I left; and why
I was still unmarried. I kept nothing back in my self-scorn and desire
to be honest.
She slipped her feet up and down the gleaming rail as she listened,
lying deep in cushions, her cigarette tilted in her mouth, her hands
clasped behind her head. When I ended, she frowned at me whimsically
from beneath her drawn brows.
“But, you impracticable person, you might have foreseen all that. You
didn’t need to cross the Atlantic to discover that a husband doesn’t let
his wife be taken from him without making trouble.---- So you wouldn’t
pay the price to get her! You’re a rotten reckoner, old boy, for a man
who counts the cost of everything ahead.”
Her eye-lids flickered as her deep voice droned the words out.
“You should put all that in the past tense, Fiesole. I’m not counting
anything to-night, penalties or pleasures. I’m just a man who’s wakened.
I want something madly. Whatever it costs me or anybody else, I intend
to get it.”
“You always wanted what you couldn’t have.”
She spoke lazily, blowing smoke-rings into the air, following them with
her eyes and watching how they broke before they reached the ceiling.
She appeared untouched by my emotion, as though nothing had been said
that intimately concerned herself. She let her gaze wander, extending
her lithe sweet length luxuriously, as though she had nothing to fear
from my passion. I was crazed with desire, for all that I kept my tones
quiet and steady. She maddened me with her indifference. It was all
pretense--I knew it. She was playing a part with me, courting the
inevitable, tempting me to reveal my hidden self. I watched her with
clenched hands--suffering, yet finding fierce joy in the wonderful
pride of her body. I would not have had her otherwise; the colder she
appeared, the more I coveted her. I could have had her once for my
wife, I reflected, had I chosen. I had tormented her; it was just that I
should suffer.
The reticence of years fell away from me. I was kneeling at her side,
kissing her unshod feet, her hands, her hair. Words tumbled from my
lips, broken and unconsidered. I called her by foolish names such as are
only used between lovers. I poured my heart out, speaking of the past
and the future. I cursed myself, all the time repeating how I worshiped
her--how I had loved her from a boy, but had come to know it only now.
And she gave no sign of response: neither forbidding, nor assenting;
letting me have my way with her without acknowledging my presence; a
quiet smile playing round her lips; as completely mistress of herself as
is a statue.
I trembled into silence. She drooped forward, bending over me, just as
she had done years ago in her uncle’s summer-house.
“My dear, there are things that are offered only once. Five years ago I
asked you for all that you are now asking. You were afraid of the price,
as you were with the other woman. You refused me.”
“But it’s marriage I’m asking.”
“Ah! Then I asked for less.---- I’m sorry. You ought to have gone when I
told you. I felt that I should have to wound you.”
Her gentle dignity stung me into strength. My turbulence died down. As I
knelt, I flung my arms around her body and drew her to me. She struggled
to draw back, but I held her so closely that my lips were almost on her
mouth.
“Listen, Fiesole, I’m unfair and I mean to be unfair. I was a brute to
you once when I meant only to be honorable. To-night I’m not caring what
I am. You despise me--you can go on despising me, but I’ll wear you
out. I’ll make you come to love me even against your will. You’ll need
me some day; I shall wait for that. I want to spend all my life for you;
it’s the only thing I ask of life now. Wherever you go I shall follow
you.”
I stopped, panting for breath. She had ceased to struggle. Her eyes were
wide; her face hovered pale above me; she stared down at me powerless,
yet with reckless challenge, breathing upon my mouth.
“You’re a rotter to come back like this,” she said hotly, “just when I
was beginning to be happy. When you speak of marriage, you don’t know
what you’re saying. You spoilt all that for me years ago at Venice.
D’you think I’ll ever believe again in the honor and goodness of a man?
You’ve come too late. Five years changes people. I’m a different woman
now--not at all what you imagine.”
“You can be any kind of woman you choose, but you’re the woman I’m going
to marry.”
“Then you haven’t heard what people say about me?”
“And I don’t care.”
“They say I’ve had lovers.”
“I don’t believe them.”
“What if I should tell you that I have?”
“I shouldn’t believe you.”
“You’d prefer to think that I’d lied to you rather than that I’d told
you the truth?”
“It would make no difference. You’ve always loved me. You love me now. I
know that you are pure.”
“And you would never doubt it? Never doubt it of a woman who dances
every night, as I do, before the eyes of Paris?”
“Never.”
She gazed at me curiously, with tenderness and intentness. Her bosom
shuddered; I saw the sob rising in her throat. When she spoke, the words
came slowly; her eyes were misted over; she trembled as I clasped her.
“D’you know, I believe you’re the only living man who’d be fool enough
to say that?”
“I was always a fool, Fiesole.”
I thought she would have kissed me, her lips came so near to mine. “But
a dear fool, sometimes,” she whispered hoarsely; “a fool who always
comes too late or too early--but a fool to the end.”
She stood up and my arms slipped down to her knees as I held her.
She laughed brokenly. “You nearly made me serious. It won’t do to be
serious at three o’clock in the morning.”
“I won’t go till you’ve promised. Promise,” I urged.
She yawned. “I’m sleepy. You’ve worn me out.”
“But answer me before I go.”
She smiled down at me mockingly, ruffling my hair. “What a hurry he’s in
after all these years. Don’t you ever go to bed?”
“Tell me to-night. I must know. I can’t bear the suspense.”
“I put up with it for five years.---- Well, if you won’t go home like a
good boy, you won’t. There’s a couch over there.”
She broke from me, leaving me kneeling with my arms empty. As the door
opened into the room beyond I had a glimpse of the curtained bed.
I drew my chair closer to the dying fire. Behind the wall I could hear
her steps moving up and down as she undressed. Now and then they paused;
she was listening for the sound of my departure, uncertain, perhaps,
whether I was still there. Some time had elapsed when the door opened
gently. I twisted round. Her room was in darkness. She was standing on
the threshold. Her feet were bare; she was clad in a white night-robe;
across each shoulder, almost to her knees, hung down the red-gold ropes
of her braided hair.
“I meant what I said. I’m not going till you tell me.”
Her green eyes met mine roguishly. “A persistent fool to-night,” she
said.
As the door was closing I threw after her, “That morning in Venice.... I
was going to have asked you to marry me; you were gone....”
Left alone with the last flame flickering in the grate, I watched the
little gold shoes.
CHAPTER IX--THE GARDEN WITHOUT WALLS
The sun was streaming in across my shoulder. Someone had pulled back
the curtains. I was stiff and stupid from my cramped position. Despite
the morning, the electric-lights were still burning in the room;
I blinked down at myself and was astonished to find that I was in
evening-dress. As I eased myself up, something dropped to the floor--the
gold shoes of Fiesole.
From behind two warm arms fastened themselves about my neck, making me
prisoner.
“You’re up early, Dante C. You’re a great, stupid juggins to sit up
all night and spoil your temper, just when I want you to be more than
ordinarily pleasant.”
“My temper’s not spoilt. Don’t worry.”
“I take your word for it. I’ve got a secret to tell you. I’m going on
the spree to-day--going to be immensely happy. I want you to help. If
you’ve any of your tiresome scruples left over, you’d best chuck ’em;
or I’ll find someone else.”
“Bit early, isn’t it, to tackle a chap? I’m too stupid to know what you
mean. But I’m game. How long’s this spree to last?”
“Till it ends.”
“Then it’ll last forever, so long as it’s just you and me.”
She dug the point of her chin into my shoulder. Glancing sideways,
I caught the impish sparkle of her eyes and the glow of her cheeks,
flushed with health and excitement.
“Perhaps you’d like to kiss me,” she whispered, bringing her demure red
lips on a level with my mouth.
“And now, perhaps you’d like to kiss me,” I suggested.
When I attempted to rise, she restrained me. “Not till I’ve made my
bargain and you’ve agreed to my terms. I haven’t made up my mind about
you, so you needn’t start talking marriage. Don’t know what I’m going
to do with you, Dannie. So you’re to come with me wherever I choose till
I’m tired--and you’re to ask no questions. Understand?”
“You never will be tired. I’m coming with you always.”
“And you’ll ask no questions?”
“No more than I can help.”
She released me. I stood up and surveyed my crumpled shirt-front; I was
so obviously a reveler who had outstayed discretion. She went off into
peals of laughter, laughing all over, showing her small white teeth,
and clapping her hands. “What have I done to you? You’re a bottle of
champagne; I’ve pulled the cork out. I’ll never get you all back.”
I took her hands in mine, folding them together, and drew her to me.
“You’ll never get any of me back. You’ve made me love you. That’s what
you’ve done, you adorable witch-woman.”
“Oh, la, la! Don’t talk like that.”
“Can’t help it. Don’t want to help it. You’ve made me mad.”
“Poor old Dannie! Horrid of me, wasn’t it?”
A tap at the door; the maid entered, bringing in rolls and coffee. I
started away from Fiesole, but she held me. “You can’t shock Marie;
she’s hardened; she’s heard all about you, and some pretty bad things
she’s heard.”
Over her coffee she grew thoughtful.
“What’s the matter?”
“You are.”
“Already?”
“How can I walk through Paris with a man in evening dress at ten in the
morning?”
“How d’you want me dressed?”
“In something gay. Light tweeds, brown shoes, and a gray felt hat.”
“Got ’em all at my hotel. I’ll slip back.”
She slanted her eyes at me. “Slip back to London, perhaps! No, Dannie, I
don’t trust you yet. I don’t intend to lose you.”
She rose from the table and vanished into her bedroom. Marie followed.
Through the partly closed door the excited titter of their whispered
conversation reached me, scraps of nervously spoken French, and the
opening and shutting of drawers and cupboards.
When she re-appeared she was clad in a mole-colored suit of corduroy
velvet, gathered in at the waist and close-fitting to her modish figure.
The tube-skirt hung short to her ankles and was trimmed about with fur.
The suède shoes, open-work stockings, and large muff were to match.
Nestling close to her auburn hair was a huzzar cap of ermine. She halted
in the sunlight, eyeing me with the naughty modesty of a coquette. She
looked oddly young and distinguished on this rare spring morning. There
never was such a woman for arranging her temperament to suit her dress.
Her hectic manner of high spirits was abandoned; she seemed almost shy
as she raised her muff to her lips and watched me, while I took in the
effect.
“So I meet with your approval?”
Passing down the stairs, she hugged my arm impulsively--a trick which
brought memories of Ruthita. “It’s awfully jolly to be loved--don’t you
think so?”
Before the door a powerful two-seated car was standing. The chauffeur
stepped out; Fiesole took his place at the wheel. As we drove down the
boulevards she was recognized; people on the pavements paused to gaze
back; men raised their hats and threw glances of inquiry at one another
as to the identity of her strangely attired companion. We drew up at my
hotel in the Rue St. Honoré.
“I give you fifteen minutes. Is that sufficient? Make yourself gay.
Don’t forget, a tweed suit, brown shoes, a gray felt hat--oh, and a red
tie if you’ve got one. I couldn’t endure anything black.”
I found her with her eager face turned towards the doorway, watching
impatiently for me.
“A good beginning--ready to the second. Jump in. We’re off to somewhere
where no one’ll know anything about us. Let’s see if we can’t lose
ourselves.”
She swung the car round and away we snorted, through the Place de la
Concorde blanched in sunlight, up the Champs Elysées where sunlight
spattered against blossoming trees and lay in pools on the turf. The
streets were animated with little children, women in bright dresses,
dashing cars and carriages. Paris gleamed white and green and golden.
Overhead the sky foamed and bubbled, yawning into blue and primrose
gulleys, trampled by stampeding clouds.
At the Place de l’Etoile the car drew up sharply and skidded; circled
like a hound picking up the scent; then darted swiftly away to the Bois,
where fashionables already loitered and acacias trembled murmurously.
Fiesole was radiant with impatience. A goddess of speed, she bent above
the wheel, casting her eyes along the road ahead. Did a gap occur in the
traffic, she flung the car forward, driving recklessly, yet always with
calculated precision. I marveled at her nerve and the silent power that
lay hidden in her thin, fine hands.
As we shot the bridge at St. Cloud the pace quickened. It was as though
she shook Paris from her skirts and ran panting to meet wider stretches
of wind-bleached country. I had one vivid glimpse of the ribbon of
blue river, boat-dotted, winding through young green of woodlands; then
cities and sophistication, and all things save Fiesole, myself, and the
future were at an end.
Soon the white road curved uninterrupted before us, a streak between
pollarded trees and blown meadows. Over the horizon came bounding hills
and church-spires, villages and rivers; as they came near to us they
halted, like shy deer, for a second; when we drew level, they fled. It
was as though we were stationary and the world was rushing past us.
The wind of our going brought color to her cheeks and fluttered out her
hair. Her eyes were starry, fixed on the distance as she skirted the
rim of eternity in her daring. Should an axle break or a tire burst,
all this fire of youth would be extinguished forever. I glanced at
the speedometer; it quivered from seventy to eighty, to eighty-five
kilometers, and there it hovered.
The throb of the engine seemed the throb of my passion. We were
traveling too fast for talking. She did not want to talk; she was
escaping from something, memories, perhaps--hers and mine. In her modern
way she was expressing what I had always felt: the tedium of captivity,
sameness, and disappointment--the need for the unwalled garden, where
barriers of obedience and duty are broken down.
At Evreux we halted for petrol. I proposed déjeuner, she shook her head
naughtily.
“Where are we going?”
“Over there, to the West.”
“Any particular spot in the West?”
“You’ll see presently.”
“How about the theatre?”
“Time enough,” she said.
She spoke breathlessly, remaining at the wheel while the man was filling
the tank. Somehow it seemed to me that the town had come between us; we
understood one another better when the garden of the world was flying
past us.
Before the man was paid, she had turned on the power. As we lunged
forward, he jumped aside and I flung the money out. Our wild ride
towards the Eden of the forbidden future recommenced.
Presently, without turning her head, she broke the silence. “Slip your
arm round me, old boy; my back grows tired.”
I placed my arm about the slender, upright figure and slid my shoulder
behind her, so she leant against me.
“What’s the idea, Fiesole? Paolo and Francesca?”
“And Adam and Eve, if you like; and Dan Leno and Herbert Campbell; and
Joseph Parker and Jane Cake-bread. Anything, so long as we keep going.”
When I attempted to speak again, she turned on more power and threw me a
smile which was a threat.
I clasped her closer. “Little devil! I’ll keep quiet. You needn’t do
that.”
But though I kept quiet my heart beat madly. The panorama of change
sweeping by, with her face the one thing constant, quickened and
emphasized my need of her more than any spoken tenderness. Our thoughts
merged and interchanged with a subtlety that speech could never have
accomplished. The pressure of her body, the tantalizing joy of
her nearness and forbiddenness, the imminence of death, the law of
silence--these summed up in a moment’s experience the entire philosophy
of love, and of life itself.
I began to understand her meaning, her language; she was temporizing as
I had temporized at Venice; but instead of going away from me, she was
fleeing with me from circumstance. She was telling me of her woman’s
pride--her difficulty to make herself attainable after what had
happened. She loved me and she hated me. She drew me to her and she
thrust me from her. She could not forget and she dreaded to remember.
And she said all this when, in escaping, she took me with her.
Now I saw nothing of the hurrying landscape; I watched her. I wrote all
her beauty on the tablets of my mind--nothing should be unremembered:
the way her curls crept from under her cap and fluttered about her
temples; the clear pallor of her forehead; the firm, broad brows; the
quiet challenge of her deep-lashed eyes; how her red mouth pouted and
her head leant forward from her frail white neck, like a flower from
its stalk, in a kind of listening expectancy. And I observed the tender
swelling of her breasts, high and proud, yet humble for maternity; and
the pliant strength of her supple body; and her long clean limbs; and
the delicately modeled feet and ankles, which shot out from beneath
her fur-trimmed skirt--the feet of a dancer, graceful and fragile as
violins.
I was mad. I wanted her. No matter how she came to me, I wanted her. I
could not bear the thought that we should ever be separated. She was
so intensely mine at this present; and yet, though she was mine, I was
insanely jealous to preserve her.
With the long fascination of watching her I bent slowly forward. The
action was instinctive, uncalculated. How long I took in approaching
her, I cannot tell. I was anxious to last out the joy of anticipation; I
was not conscious of motion. My lips touched hers. Her hold on the wheel
relaxed. Her eyes met mine. The car swerved, hung upon the edge of the
road, ran along it balancing; then bounded back into the straight white
line.
I was so frenzied that I did not care. She had thought to hold me
prisoner by her speed; I would overcome her with defiance. I kissed her
again, holding her to me. She kept her eyes on the distance now, but her
mouth smiled tenderly.
“That was foolish,” she said.
I raised my voice to reach her above the moaning of the engine. “The
whole thing’s foolish.”
She broke into wild laughter. “That’s why I like it, like you, like
myself.”
We hovered on the brim of a valley; then commenced to sink as though the
earth had given way beneath us. Far below, as far as eye could reach,
were orchards smoking with white blossom. Through the heart of the
valley a river ran; standing on its puny banks was a gray old town,
blinking in the wind and sun like a spectacled grandmother who had
nodded to sleep, and wakened bewildered to find spring rioting round
her.
“Where is it?”
“Lisieux, unless I’m mistaken.”
“Then you know where we’re going?”
“More or less.”
We pulled up in a drowsy, sun-drenched market-place outside a sleepy
café. At tables on the pavement, with hands in their blouses and legs
sprawled out, sat a few artisans, eyeing their absinthe. Houses tottered
and sagged from extreme old age. Across the way a cathedral, scarred
by time and chapped by weather, raised its crumbling sculptured towers
against the clouds.
She took my hand as she stepped out. “You nearly did for us just now.”
“Who cares?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “All Paris cares. I’m not anxious to be
dead; when I am, I’d like to look pretty.”
When we had seated ourselves, she took out her mirror and commenced
tidying her hair and brushing the dust from her brows. There was nothing
to be had, the waiter informed us, but pot au feu; déjeuner was over. So
I ordered pot au feu, red wine and an omelet.
As she replaced her mirror in her muff, she looked up brilliantly. “You
know, I _am_ pretty.”
She was being watched. The dull eyes of the absinthe-drinkers had become
alert. Tradesmen had come out of their shops and stared at her across
the square. Some of the bolder strolled into the café and seated
themselves close to her. They were paying the unabashed homage that a
Frenchman always pays to feminine beauty.
I lowered my voice to a whisper; my throat was parched with dust. “This
can’t go on.”
She laughed with her eyes. “It can go on as long as there’s any petrol
left, and as long as you don’t try to kiss me when I’m speeding.”
“That’s not what I meant; you know it.”
“What then? The same old thing--marriage?”
I ignored her flippancy. “You’ll be turning back directly, and when you
get to Paris, you won’t be like you are now. You’ll be _La Fiesole_ and
to-night you’ll be dancing with them all watching. I can’t bear it.”
“I shan’t.”
I leant eagerly forward, but she drew away from me.
“You’re not going back? You’ve given up the theatre?”
She held me in suspense, letting her eyes wander as though she had not
heard. Slowly she turned, with that lazy, taunting smile of hers. “Damn
the theatre,” she said quietly; “I’m going on with you to the end.”
“And the end’s marriage?”
“Who can tell? Now don’t be a rotter. You’re spoiling everything. Let’s
talk of something else.”
When we climbed into the car, “You drive,” she said.
“But to where?”
“That’s my secret. Straight on. I’ll tell you when to turn.”
We were hardly out of the valley before her eyes had closed and her head
was nodding against my shoulder. I drove gently, fearing to disturb her.
From time to time I looked down at the white slant of her throat, the
shadows beneath her lashes, and the almost childish droop of her mouth.
How the self she kept hidden revealed itself! Her face was that of a
Madonna, for whom the cross was yet remote and the happiness near at
hand--and both were certain. What different versions she gave me of
herself! Once a sickening fear shook me like a leaf. I slowed the car to
a halt, and listened for her breath. In that moment I suffered all the
agony of loss that must some time accompany the actuality. One day,
sooner or later, I told myself, this thing I had dreaded would occur.
How much time was left to us to find life beautiful between then and
now?
On the bare Normandy uplands, between tilled fields and driving clouds,
I waited for her to waken. The air was growing chill; I drew my coat
round her. I felt again, in a new and better way, that sense of nearness
and forbiddenness which had exhilarated me to the point of delirium
on the madcap journey down from Paris. I looked ahead into the pale
distance, where the notched horizon bound the earth with a silver band...
and I wondered where she was taking me, and what lay at the end. She
might fight against it--she would fight against it; but the end should
be marriage. I would watch over her always as I was watching now.
She stirred; her eye-lids fluttered. She stared up at me for a moment
with undisguised affection; then the fear of tenderness returned. She
pulled herself together, rubbing her knuckles in her eyes and yawning.
“Gee up, old hoss. This ain’t a bloomin’ cab-stand. You’re not home
yet.”
“You fell asleep, my dear, so I waited for you.”
“Well, I shan’t pay you,” she laughed; “it’s not fair. Pray what did you
think you were doing?”
“Enjoying myself.”
“There’s the difference; you like to crawl, I like to hurtle. You’re a
tortoise; I’m a razzle-dazzle. We’re an ill-matched pair. Living in Pope
Lane has made you pontifical. Oh, Dannie, in ten years your tummy’ll be
bulgy and your head’ll be bald. Pope Lane’ll have done it. I know what
I’ve always missed about you now.”
“Something horrid? Let’s have it.”
“A cowl. You ought to have been a monk in Florence, painting naked
angels in impossible meadows.”
“So kind of you. Religion mixed with impropriety! If there was someone
to relieve me of my conscience, it wouldn’t be half bad. But I don’t
live at Pope Lane any longer. You have the honor of sitting beside Sir
Dante Cardover of Woadley Hall, Ransby, of which, you little wretch, you
are soon to be mistress.”
“That so? Sorry I spoke. Jump out and crank up the engine. It’s coming
on again--you’re going to have the sentimentals, and you’re going to
have ’em bad.”
“I’ve known you sentimental, Fiesole.”
Her lips trembled, and her body stiffened. “And you punished me for it.”
“You have a woman’s memory.”
“Odd, seeing I’m a woman. Who’s going to crank that engine? Am I, or are
you?”
We swung on through the bare bleak country with masked faces. She sat
a little apart from me, her knees crossed and her hands clasped about
them. Did I glance at her, she turned petulantly in the opposite
direction. I cursed myself. I was almost angry with her. What was her
plan? Had she given me the privileges of dearness to her simply that she
might thwart and taunt me? How could I teach her to forget? How could
I teach myself to forget? At the back of my mind I loved her the more
because of her perversity.
We came to a cross-road. She touched me on the arm; we swerved into it.
Far down the white stretch I saw a speck, which resolved itself into a
man and woman, traveling away from us with their backs towards us. The
man wore the blue blouse and wide, baggy trousers of a peasant; his feet
were shod in sabots. The woman was clad in a coarse, loose dress, like
a sack drawn over her and tied about the middle; it was neutral in tone,
being aged by weather. Her figure was shapeless--almost animal in its
ponderous patience and breadth. Her hair was flaxen from exposure. They
plodded through the bleak expanse with heads bowed, bodies huddled, and
arms encircling. Every few paces they halted; we saw the gleam of their
faces as they clung lip to lip in hasty ecstasy.
The wind was blowing from them towards us; they were unaware of us. I
had my hand on the horn, when Fiesole clutched me.
“Don’t. They’ve nothing in the world but this moment. God knows what
lies before them!”
We followed them at a distance. The symbolism of their silent figures
awed us: overhead, the soundless battle of high-flying clouds; beneath,
the gray vacancy with springtime stirring; around, the dun, unheeding
earth; through the bareness the white road sweeping on unhurrying toward
the land of sunsets; traveling along it a man and woman, for the time
forgetful of their poverty, the focus-point of responsive passion. They
had nothing but this moment.
“And what have we?” I questioned.
She crouched beside me; her soft arm stole about my neck. “Dearest,
forgive me,” she murmured.
Her eyes were blinded; my lips against her cheek were salt. She clung
to me desperately, as though a hand pressed on her shoulder to jerk her
from me--Vi’s hand.
Where a rutted lane sloped down to a wooded hollow, the lovers turned.
Among pollarded trees we lost them. They would never know that we had
watched them. So they vanished out of our lives, walking hand-in-hand
toward child-bearing and the inevitable separation of death that lurked
for them at some hidden cross-road. We, equally unknowing, to what place
of parting were we faring?
I tilted up her face. “I’ve been a selfish fool. I’ll never speak
another word about marriage or anything that will pain you. Oh, Fiesole,
if you could only love me--love me as I love you--as though there was
nothing else left!” She took my hands in her small ones, pressing them
to her breast, quoting in a low sing-song, “Laugh, for the time is
brief, a thread the length of a span. Laugh and be proud to belong to
the old proud pageant of man.”
“I like that--‘the old proud pageant of man.’ I wonder where you got it.
But is there to be nothing deeper between us than laughter?”
“If we do the laughing,” she said, “life’s ready to do the rest. But
you’re a puritan at heart: you suspect that gladness is somehow unholy.
Don’t you know, Mr. Bunyan, that laughter is the language they speak in
heaven?”
“I don’t; neither do you. But when you say so laughing, I can almost
believe it.”
When we had once again started, she became more frank. It was because
my hands were occupied, perhaps. Laying her cheek against my shoulder,
“Dante, I’m not a flirt,” she said. “I just can’t make up my mind about
you.”
“Maybe, I’ll make it up for you.”
“Maybe. But I want you to understand why I did what I did this
morning--speeding like that and behaving as though I was cracked. I was
afraid you were going to make love to me every moment--and I didn’t want
it.”
“D’you want it now?”
“I don’t know.” She dragged the words out wide-apart. “And yet I do
know; but I’ve no right to allow it.”
“You silly child, why on earth not?”
“I’m inconstant; I’m like that now. I should make you happy first and
sorry afterwards.”
“I’ll risk it. I made you sorry first and now I’m going to make you
happy.”
“Do you think you are?”
“Sure of it.”
The road began to descend, at first gradually. The bare, tilled uplands
where winter lingered, were left behind and we ran through a sheltered
land of orchards. The air pulsated with the baaing of lambs and the
sweet yearning of fecundity. Under blown spray of fruit-trees the
little creatures gamboled, halting by fits and starts, calling to their
mothers, or kneeling beneath them, their thirsty throats stretched up
and their long tails flapping. Surrounded by lean trees, lopped of their
lower branches, gray farmhouses rose up, watching like aged shepherds.
Slowfooted cattle, heavy-uddered, wandered between the hedges with their
great bags swinging. Women with brass jars on their shoulders, which
narrowed at the neck like funeral urns, walked through the meadows to
the milking.
“Do we turn or go on?”
“Go on.”
“How much farther?”
“A little farther.”
“It’s getting older and older isn’t it, Fiesole?”
“No, younger and younger, stupid. Look at all the lambs.”
Before us the land piled up into a hillock, breaking the level sweep of
sky-line and hiding what lay beyond. The road curved about it in a slow
descent.
Fiesole leant past me, shutting off the power. “Let her coast,” she
said.
At the bend in the road I jammed on the brakes, halting the car. She
slipped her hand into mine; we filled our eyes with the sight, saying
nothing.
Sheer against the sky rose a jagged rock and perched on its summit, so
much a part of it that it seemed to have been carved, stood a ruined
castle. Its windows were vacant; its roof had long since fallen; its
walls had been bruised and broken by cannon. It tottered above the
valley like a Samson blinded, groping on the edge of the precipice, its
power shorn. Round the embattled rock, like children who trusted the old
protector, gathered mediaeval houses. Some of them, centuries ago,
had wandered off into the snowy orchards and stood tiptoe, as though
listening, ready to run back should they hear the tramp of an invading
army. Through the valley and into the town a narrow stream darted,
flashing like an arrow. Behind town and castle, across the horizon,
towered a saffron wall of cloud, tipped along the edge with fire and
notched in the center where the molten ball of the setting sun rested.
From quaint gray streets came up a multitude of small sounds, like the
lazy humming of women spinning. And over all, across orchards and roofs
of houses, the grim warden on the rock threw his shadow. It was a valley
forgotten by the centuries--a garden without barriers.
“Where are we?” I whispered.
“Falaise, my darling. I always promised myself that if ever I should
love a man, I would bring him to Falaise to love him. Can’t you feel
it--the slow quiet, the sense of the ages watching?”
She was aflame in the light of the sunset. Her face was ivory, intense
and ardent with glory. Her waywardness and fondness for disguise were
gone; her true self, steady and unafraid, gazed out on me. The havoc of
passion was replaced by the contentment of a desire all but satisfied.
“Let’s go to the castle first,” she said. “You remember its story?”
I remembered: how Robert the Devil, Duke of the Normans, had found
Arlotta, the tanner’s daughter, washing linen in that same little beck;
and had loved her at sight and had carried her off to his castle on
the rock, where was born William the Bastard, conqueror of England and
greatest of all the Normans.
Leaving the car in the village street, we climbed the rock and gained
admittance. As we gazed down from the splintered battlements into the
winding streets, Fiesole drew me to her, throwing her arm carelessly
about my neck as though we were boy and girl.
“Look,” she whispered, pointing sheer down to the foot of the precipice,
“there’s the tannery still standing and the beck running past it. And
see, there are girls washing linen; one of them might be Arlotta. In
nine hundred years nothing has altered.”
We stole across the threshold of the stone-paved room in which the
Conqueror was born. “I’m going to shock you,” she said. “I always think
of Falaise as another Bethlehem--the Bethlehem of war. The Bethlehem of
peace has crumbled, shattered by war; but here’s Falaise unchanged since
the day when Robert the Devil seized Arlotta and galloped up the rock,
and bolted his castle door. It sets one thinking----”
“Thinking something dangerous, I’ll warrant.”
She brushed the rebellious curls from her forehead and leant back
against the wall laughing. “Thinking all kinds of thoughts: that it pays
best in this world to steal what you want.”
“Perhaps--if you steal strongly.”
“But I have stolen strongly; see how I’ve carried you off.”
We discovered a little hotel, the courtyard of which was invaded by
a garden and opened out beyond into a misty orchard. At sound of our
entrance a white-haired old country-woman came out from the office,
holding her knitting in her hands. I made to go towards her, but Fiesole
detained me. “You’re my prisoner,” she said; “I’m responsible. You stay
here and I’ll tell her what we want.”
The air had grown sharper, but the moments were too precious to be spent
indoors. We had our dinner served beneath a fig-tree in the courtyard,
where we could see the shadows creeping through the garden and hear the
sabots clap along the causeways.
We were almost shy with one another. We had little to say, and that
little was spoken with our eyes for the most part. We did not dare to
think: for me there was the ghost of Vi; and she also had I knew not
what memories. We were restless till the meal was ended; the contact of
live hands was the best speech possible. The tremulous dusk had fallen
when we wandered out into the narrow climbing streets, traveling
directionless under broken archways, past ancient churches--bribes to
God for forgiveness for wrongs still more ancient.
We peeped into crouching cottages as we passed. We were glad of their
company; they kept us from giving way to the tumult of feeling that ran
riot in our hearts. Their small leaded windows were like lanterns set
out to guide and not to watch us. We had glimpses through the glowing
panes of kindly peasant interiors, with low ceilings and home-made
furnishings. Sometimes at a rough table round which wine and bread were
passed, the family was gathered, their faces illumined by a solitary
candle in the center; looming out of the shadows on the wall was the
cross. Sometimes the man was still at work, carving sabots or weaving,
while the woman held a child to her breast, or rocked it in a cradle on
the stone-paved floor.
One by one the lights were quenched and the doors fastened.
Fiesole leant more heavily against me, her arm encircling me, her head
upon my shoulder. Now that the town slept, I could feel the wild clamor
of her body and hear the fluttering intake of her breath. The wind,
whispering through flowering trees, blew cool and fragrant in our
nostrils. For intervals there was no sound save the rustle of falling
blossoms and our own stealthy footsteps; from somewhere out in the pale
dusk, a lamb would call and its mother would answer. Above us, between
steep roofs, as down a beaten pathway, the silver chariot of the moon
plunged onward, scattering the clouds before it.
We came again to the hostel; when we entered, we walked apart. Quickly,
as though seized with sudden misgiving, Fiesole left me. I heard her
footstep mounting the stairs and saw the light spring up in her window.
Every other window was in darkness. From where I sat in the courtyard I
could see the shadow of her figure groping, and her arms uplifted as she
unbound her hair. The light went out. I wondered if she watched me. I
listened to hear her stirring; I could hear nothing.
In the dim quiet, shut out from the excitement of her presence, I had
leisure to reflect on whither I was going. I drew apart from myself and
eyed my doings impartially. It was a whim of curiosity that had brought
me to Paris--one of those instinctive decisions which construct a
destiny. The sight of her as Lucrezia had stabbed me to remorse, and
then to folly. That she had hated me up to last night and that the
desire of her wild heart had been to torture me, I did not doubt; but I
thought that there were moments in this day when she had loved me with
the old uncalculating kindness. What was her intention now?
Unaccountably out of the past, Fiesole had returned--Fiesole, the
girl-woman I had loved as a boy before Vi. I felt like a broken gamester
who has discovered an overlooked coin in his pocket after having
believed himself penniless. So strange was this happening that it could
not be fortuitous--we had met because we had been piloted.
All seeming failure of the past would take on an aspect of design
and would appear a straight road leading to this moment, were our
journeyings to end in marriage. And, though she would not own it, she
needed the protection of a man who loved her to guard her against her
success and self-reliance.
My thoughts ran on, picturing the home and little children we would
have. Children would be walls about our love, making it secure. For
these I was hungry--desperately afraid lest the hope of them should be
withdrawn. In imagination they seemed already mine, I would speak my
heart out: she should understand before it was too late that my need was
also hers.
I entered the hostel. In the office the old woman nodded above her
knitting. I roused her and asked for my candle.
“Ah, Monsieur,” she said in apology, “I had not thought. For a room so
small I supposed that one would be sufficient. I have given Madame the
candle. If Monsieur will wait, I will fetch another.”
In my surprise I told her that it did not matter.
I felt my way up the unlit stairs. At the bedroom-door I knocked.
Fiesole’s voice just reached me, whispering to me to enter. On the
threshold I paused, peering into the darkness. The floor was bare;
there was little furniture. In the shadows against the wall, a canopied,
high-mattressed bed loomed mountainous. Through the window, reaching
almost to my feet, a ray of moonlight slanted; in it, gleaming white,
stood Fiesole.
My heart was in my throat. I could not speak. We watched one another; as
the silence lengthened, the space between us seemed impassable.
She held out her arms; her hoarse voice spoke, yearning towards me with
its lazy sweetness. “Even now, if you want to, you may go, Dannie.”
CHAPTER X--THE FRUIT OF THE GARDEN
I had been for a saunter through the town. Several times I had returned
before I found Fiesole beneath the fig-tree in the courtyard, seated at
the table with a paper spread out in front of her. She looked up swiftly
at sound of my footstep and threw me a smile, gathering herself in to
make room for me beside her. When I stood over her, she lifted up her
face with childish eagerness as though we had not kissed already more
than once that morning. “Shall I order déjeuner out here?”
She nodded. “Where else, but in the sunshine?” When I came back from
giving the order, her red-gold head was bent again above the paper.
“Something interesting?”
“Rather.” She raised her green eyes mischievously. “It’s all up. We’ll
be collared within the hour.”
“What’s all up? Who’s got the right to collar us?”
“Paris thinks it has, the whole of France thinks it has, but
most particularly Monsieur Georges thinks he has, and so does the
theatre-management.”
“Let ’em try. We don’t care.”
“But, old boy, I do care a little. You see, I shouldn’t have been here
now if it hadn’t been for Monsieur Georges, Paris, and the rest of them.
They gave me my chance; going off like this has left them in the lurch.
It isn’t playing the game, as I understand it.”
“If it’s damages for a broken contract they’re after, I’ll settle that
for you.”
She smiled mysteriously and, bowing her head above the paper, read me
extracts, throwing in, now and then, her own vivacious comments.
It appeared that up to the last moment the theatre-management had
expected her and had allowed the audience to assemble. They had delayed
matters for half an hour while they sent out messengers to search for
her. When the crowd grew restless, they had commenced the performance
with an under-study. But the people would have none of her; they rose up
in their places stamping and threatening, shouting for _La Fiesole_.
The curtain had been rung down and Monsieur Georges had come forward,
weeping and wringing his hands, saying that _La Fiesole_ had been
kidnaped by an admirer that morning. Pandemonium broke loose. The
theatre for a time was in danger of being wrecked; but the police were
summoned and got the audience out, and the money refunded.
The journalist’s story followed of the unknown Englishman who, a few
nights before, had stood up in his box applauding when everyone else
had grown silent; and how the same Englishman, one night previously, had
created a scene between himself and _La Fiesole_ at a café in the Champs
Elysées--a scene which had terminated by them going away together.
“Make you out quite a desperate character, don’t they, old darling?” she
drawled, looking up into my eyes, laughing.
I did my best to share her levity, but I was secretly annoyed at so
much publicity. Taking the paper from her, I patted her on the shoulder.
“Come, drink up your coffee, little woman; it’s getting cold. Why waste
time over all this nonsense? You’re out of it. It’s all ended.”
“But it isn’t. Paris won’t let it be ended. They’re making more row
about me than they did about La Gioconda. They’ve offered a reward of
five thousand francs for my recovery.”
“And if they did find us, they couldn’t do anything. Discovery won’t be
easy.”
“Won’t it? We were seen yesterday going together towards St. Cloud;
they’ve got the number of my car and particulars of my dress from
Marie.”
“But didn’t you warn Marie?”
“Silly fellow, how should I? Didn’t know myself what I was going to do
when we started--at least I didn’t know positively.”
“Humph!”
“Ripping, isn’t it, for a chap like you as ’as allaws lived decent and
’oped to die respected? Dannie, Dannie, you’re a regular Robert the
Devil--only I stole you, and nobody’ll ever believe it.”
“It doesn’t matter what they say about me; it’s your good name that
matters.--I promised yesterday never to speak another word about
marriage. May I break my promise?”
“You’ve done it. Go on, John Bunyan.”
“Well, here’s my plan: that we motor through to Cherbourg and skip over
to Southampton.”
“And then?”
“Get a special license in the shortest time possible. When we’re
discovered, you’ll be Lady Cardover.”
“But it isn’t necessary that I should be Lady Cardover. I’m not ashamed
of anything. Are you?”
“Perhaps not; but there’s nothing to be gained by dodging the
conventions. I ought to know; I’ve been dodging ’em ever since I
can remember. I’ve come to see that there’s something grand about
conventions; they’re a sort of wall to protect someone you love dearly
from attack. We’re man and wife already by everything that’s sacred; but
we shall never be securely happy unless we’re married.”
Our meal was finished. We wandered off into the orchard at the back.
When we were safe from watching eyes, Fiesole gave me her hand. We came
to a place where trees grew closer together; here we rested. She leant
against me, her face wistful and troubled; the sun through the branches
scattered gold and the blossoms snowflakes in her hair.
Presently she disentangled herself from my arms, and jumped to her feet,
smiling gently. “I’ve a surprise for you, my virgin man. I want you to
stop here for half an hour and promise not to follow.”
“A long time to be without you.”
“But promise.”
“All right. Very well.”
She stooped over me quietly before she went. I watched her pass swaying
across the dappled turf, under the dancing shadows and rain of petals.
Just before she entered the courtyard, she turned and waved her hand.
Something in Fiesole’s distant aspect, something of seeming maidenly
daintiness, brought to mind another woman--gold and ivory, with poppies
for her lips, were the words which had described her. While I had walked
Falaise that morning I had striven to banish her from my thoughts.
And now Fiesole, from whom I had hoped to obtain forgetfulness, Fiesole
herself had unconsciously reminded me.
In the stillness I confronted myself: I was being faithless to the
loyalty of years--I had done and was about to do a thing which was
traitorous to all my past. Vi’s memory, though in itself sinful, had
demanded chastity from me.
Yet my present conduct was not incompatible with my past: it was
the result of it. Puppy passions of thought had grown into hounds of
action--that was all.
From the first my pagan imagination, at war with my puritan conscience,
had lured me on. All my life I had been breaking bounds imaginatively:
innocently for Ruthita in my childhood; in appearance for Fiesole at
Venice; dangerously for Vi; and at last in fact for Fiesole. Narrower
affections I had passed by, not perceiving that their narrowness made
for safety and kindness. The unwalled garden of masterless desire had
proved a wilderness; its fruit was loneliness.
Last night, sitting in the courtyard, I had told myself that in
remaining constant to Vi, I had gambled for the impossible. Was it true?
In any case, to have followed up the risk strongly was my only excuse
for having gambled at all. By turning back I abandoned the prize, and
made the sin of loving a forbidden woman paltry.--Might she not have
been waiting for me all these years, as I had been waiting! What an
irony if now, when I was destroying both the hope and reward of our
sacrifice, she were free and preparing to come to me!
And Fiesole! I had used her to drug my unsatisfied longing. Should I
not do her more grievous wrong in marrying her while I loved another
woman?--I had been mad. I was appalled.
Could I ever be at peace with her--ever make her happy? Fiesole was so
flippant, so casual of all that makes for wifehood. And she was almost
right in saying that I had made her what she was--first by my virtue,
now by my lack of it. All we could give one another would be passion,
swift and self-consuming. Soon would come satiety, the fruit of my
doings; after that regret, the fruit of my thoughts. And if we did not
marry, I should eat the same fruit, made more bitter by self-scorn.
Marry Fiesole! In marriage lay escape from the penalty of my lifelong
lawless curiosity. Walls of children might grow up, responsibilities of
domestic affection, giving shelter and security.
This was treachery. Fiesole should never guess I had faltered. The door
should be closed on the past----
I had been waiting for, perhaps, half-an-hour, when I heard the chugging
of a motor newly started. There were no other travelers staying at the
inn; I thought that I recognized the beat of the engine. As I listened,
I felt sure that the car was being backed into the road. I expected to
hear it stop, and to see Fiesole come from under the archway and signal
for me. It did not stop. It began to gather speed. The sound droned
fainter and fainter.
Promise or no promise, I could not resist my excited curiosity. I ran
across the orchard, through the courtyard, into the sunlit street. Far
up the road, I saw a cloud of dust growing smaller, disappearing in the
direction of Paris. I watched, confused and dumbfounded, as it dwindled.
The old proprietress approached me shyly and touched me on the arm. “For
Monsieur from Madame.”
Snatching the note from her hand, I tore it open with trembling fingers.
The writing was hasty and agitated. I read and re-read it, trying to
twist its words into another meaning.
The note ran:
_My poor Dante, as you said to me, I have a woman’s memory; you’ll
remember Potiphar’s wife and Joseph. I have tried to hate you intensely.
You see, I’m what you made me: Lucrezia--your handiwork. For years I
have promised myself that, if ever I had the chance, I would punish you.
It was with this intention that I left Paris yesterday--you know the
rest. So now, without me in the years that are to come, you will suffer
all that you once made me suffer. And I’m almost sorry; for here, at
Falaise, you nearly made me.... It can’t be done._
Raising my eyes, I stood alone, gazing along the gleaming road to Paris.
The cloud of dust had vanished.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Garden Without Walls, by Coningsby Dawson