Sure, He that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused.
Yet do I believe
The origin and commencement of his grief
Sprung from neglected love.
... he repulsed--a short tale to make--
Fell into a sadness, then into a fast,
Thence to a watch, thence into a weakness,
Thence to a lightness; and by this declension
Into the madness.--_Hamlet._
|THE very pleasantness of the lunch Harwood had at the Dutch cottage
made his visit seem more unsatisfactory to him. He had come up to the
girl with that sentence which should surely have sounded pathetic even
though spoken with indifference. He was beside her to say good-bye. He
had given her to understand that he was going amongst the dangers of a
disturbed part of the country, but the name of the barbarous nation had
not made her cheek pale. It was well enough for himself to make light
of his adventurous undertaking, but he did not think that her smiles in
telling him that she would miss him were altogether becoming.
Yes, as he rode towards Cape Town he felt that the time had not yet
come for him to reveal himself to Daireen Gerald. He would have to be
patient, as he had been for years.
Thus far he had found out negatively how Daireen felt towards himself:
she liked him, he knew, but only as most women liked him, because
he could tell them in an agreeable way things that they wanted to
know--because he had travelled everywhere and had become distinguished.
He was not a conceited man, but he knew exactly how he stood in the
estimation of people, and it was bitter for him to reflect that he
did not stand differently with regard to Miss Gerald. But he had not
attempted to discover what were Daireen's feelings respecting any one
else. He was well aware that Mrs. Crawford was anxious to throw Mr.
Glaston in the way of the girl as much as possible; but he felt that it
would take a long time for Mr. Glaston to make up his mind to sacrifice
himself at Daireen's feet, and Daireen was far too sensible to be
imposed upon by his artistic flourishes. As for this young Mr. Standish
Macnamara, Harwood saw at once that Daireen regarded him with a
friendliness that precluded the possibility of love, so he did not fear
the occupation of the girl's heart by Standish. But when Harwood began
to think of Oswin Markham--he heard the sound of a horse's hoofs behind
him, and Oswin Markham himself trotted up, looking dusty and fatigued.
“I thought I should know your animal,” said Markham, “and I made an
effort to overtake you, though I meant to go easily into the town.”
Harwood looked at him and then at his horse.
“You seem as if you owed yourself a little ease,” he said. “You
must have done a good deal in the way of riding, judging from your
appearance.”
“A great deal too much,” replied Markham. “I have been on the saddle
since breakfast.”
“You have been out every morning for the past three days before I have
left my room. I was quite surprised when I heard it, after the evidence
you gave at the garden party of your weakness.”
“Of my weakness, yes,” said Markham, with a little laugh. “It was
wretchedly weak to allow myself to be affected by the change from the
open air to that room, but it felt stifling to me.”
“I didn't feel the difference to be anything considerable,” said
Harwood; “so the fact of your being overcome by it proves that you are
not in a fit state to be playing with your constitution. Where did you
ride to-day?”
“Where? Upon my word I have not the remotest idea,” said Markham. “I
took the road out to Simon's Bay, but I pulled up at a beach on the
nearer side of it, and remained there for a good while.”
“Nothing could be worse than riding about in this aimless sort of way.
Here you are completely knocked up now, as you have been for the past
three evenings. Upon my word, you seem indifferent as to whether or not
you ever leave the colony alive. You are simply trifling with yourself.”
“You are right, I suppose,” said Markham wearily. “But what is a fellow
to do in Cape Town? One can't remain inactive beyond a certain time.”
“It is only within the past three days you have taken up this roving
notion,” said Harwood. “It is in fact only since that Government House
affair.” Markham turned and looked at him eagerly for a moment. “Yes,
since your weakness became apparent to yourself, you have seemed bound
to prove your strength to the furthest. But you are pushing it too far,
my boy. You'll find out your mistake.”
“Perhaps so,” laughed the other. “Perhaps so. By the way, is it true
that you are going up country, Harwood?”
“Quite true. The fact is that affairs are becoming critical with regard
to our relations with the Zulus, and unless I am greatly mistaken, this
colony will be the centre of interest before many months have passed.”
“There is nothing I should like better than to go up with you, Harwood.”
Harwood shook his head. “You are not strong enough, my boy,” he said.
There was a pause before Markham said slowly:
“No, I am not strong enough.”
Then they rode into Cape Town together, and dismounted at their hotel;
and, certainly, as he walked up the stairs to his room, Oswin Markham
looked anything but strong enough to undertake a journey into the Veldt.
Doctor Campion would probably have spoken unkindly to him had he seen
him now, haggard and weary, with his day spent on an exposed road
beneath a hot sun.
“He is anything but strong enough,” said Harwood to himself as he
watched the other man; and then he recollected the tone in which Markham
had repeated those words, “I am not strong enough.” Was it possible, he
asked himself, that Markham meant that his strength of purpose was not
sufficiently great? He thought over this question for some time, and the
result of his reflection was to make him wish that he had not thought
the conduct of that defiant chief of such importance as demanded the
personal observation of the representative of the _Dominant Trumpeter_.
He felt that he would like to search out the origin of the weakness of
Mr. Oswin Markham.
But all the time these people were thinking their thoughts and making
their resolutions upon various subjects, Mr. Algernon Glaston was
remaining in the settled calm of artistic rectitude. He was awaiting
with patience the arrival of his father from the Salamander Archipelago,
though he had given the prelate of that interesting group to understand
that circumstances would render it impossible for his son to remain
longer than a certain period at the Cape, so that if he desired the
communion of his society it would be necessary to allow the mission work
among the Salamanders to take care of itself. For Mr. Glaston was by no
means unaware of the sacrifice he was in the habit of making annually
for the sake of passing a few weeks with his father in a country far
removed from all artistic centres. The Bishop of the Calapash Islands
and Metropolitan of the Salamander Archipelago had it several times
urged upon him that his son was a marvel of filial duty for undertaking
this annual journey, so that he, no doubt, felt convinced of the fact;
and though this visit added materially to the expenses of his son's mode
of life, which, of course, were defrayed by the bishop, yet the bishop
felt that this addition was, after all, trifling compared with the value
of the sentiment of filial affection embodied in the annual visit to the
Cape.
Mr. Glaston had allowed his father a margin of three weeks for any
impediments that might arise to prevent his leaving the Salamanders, but
a longer space he could not, he assured his father, remain awaiting his
arrival from the sunny islands of his see. Meantime he was dining out
night after night with his friends at the Cape, and taking daily drives
and horse-exercise for the benefit of his health. Upon the evening when
Harwood and Markham entered the hotel together, Mr. Glaston was just
departing to join a dinner-party which was to assemble at the house of
a certain judge, and as Harwood was also to be a guest, he was compelled
to dress hastily.
Oswin Markham was not, however, aware of the existence of the hospitable
judge, so he remained in the hotel. He was tired almost to a point of
prostration after his long aimless ride, but a bath and a dinner revived
him, and after drinking his coffee he threw himself upon a sofa and
slept for some hours. When he awoke it was dark, and then lighting a
cigar he went out to the balcony that ran along the upper windows, and
seated himself in the cool air that came landwards from the sea.
He watched the soldiers in white uniform crossing the square; he saw
the Malay population who had been making a holiday, returning to their
quarter of the town, the men with their broad conical straw hats, the
women with marvellously coloured shawls; he saw the coolies carrying
their burdens, and the Hottentots and the Kafirs and all the races
blended in the motley population of Cape Town. He glanced listlessly at
all, thinking his own thoughts undisturbed by any incongruity of tongues
or of races beneath him, and he was only awakened from the reverie into
which he had fallen by the opening of one of the windows near him and
the appearance on the balcony of Algernon Glaston in his dinner dress
and smoking a choice cigar.
The generous wine of the generous judge had made Mr. Glaston
particularly courteous, for he drew his chair almost by the side of
Markham's and inquired after his health.
“Harwood was at that place to-night,” he said, “and he mentioned
that you were killing yourself. Just like these newspaper fellows to
exaggerate fearfully for the sake of making a sensation. You are all
right now, I think.”
“Quite right,” said Markham. “I don't feel exactly like an elephant
for vigour, but you know what it is to feel strong without having any
particular strength. I am that way.”
“Dreadfully brutal people I met to-night,” continued Mr. Glaston
reflectively. “Sort of people Harwood could get on with. Talking
actually about some wretched savage--some Zulu chief or other from whom
they expect great things; as if the action of a ruffianly barbarian
could affect any one. It was quite disgusting talk. I certainly would
have come away at once only I was lucky enough to get by the side of a
girl who seems to know something of Art--a Miss Vincent--she is quite
fresh and enthusiastic on the subject--quite a child indeed.”
Markham thought it prudent to light a fresh cigar from the end of the
one he had smoked, at the interval left by Mr. Glaston for his comment,
so that a vague “indeed” was all that came through his closed lips.
“Yes, she seems rather a tractable sort of little thing. By the way, she
mentioned something about your having become faint at Government House
the other day, before you had seen all my pictures.”
“Ah, yes,” said Markham. “The change from the open air to that room.”
“Ah, of course. Miss Vincent seems to understand something of the
meaning of the pictures. She was particularly interested in one of them,
which, curiously enough, is the most wonderful of the collection. Did
you study them all?”
“No, not all; the fact was, that unfortunate weakness of mine interfered
with my scrutiny,” said Markham. “But the single glance I had at one
of the pictures convinced me that it was a most unusual work. I felt
greatly interested in it.”
“That was the Aholibah, no doubt.”
“Yes, I heard your description of how if came to be painted.”
“Ah, but that referred only to the marvellous expression of the face--so
saturate--so devoured--with passion. You saw how Miss Gerald turned away
from it with a shudder?”
“Why did she do that?” said Markham.
“Heaven knows,” said Glaston, with a little sneer.
“Heaven knows,” said Markham, after a pause and without any sneer.
“She could not understand it,” continued Glaston. “All that that face
means cannot be apprehended in a glance. It has a significance of its
own--it is a symbol of a passion that withers like a fire--a passion
that can destroy utterly all the beauty of a life that might have been
intense with beauty. You are not going away, are you?”
Markham had risen from his seat and turned away his head, grasping the
rail of the balcony. It was some moments before he started and looked
round at the other man. “I beg your pardon,” he said; “I'm not going
away, I am greatly interested. Yes, I caught a glimpse of the expression
of the face.”
“It is a miracle of power,” continued Glaston. “Miss Gerald felt, but
she could not understand why she should feel, its power.”
There was a long pause, during which Markham stared blankly across the
square, and the other leant back in his chair and watched the curling of
his cigar clouds through the still air. From the garrison at the castle
there came to them the sound of a bugle-call.
“I am greatly interested in that picture,” said Markham at length. “I
should like to know all the details of its working out.”
“The expression of the face----”
“Ah, I know all of that. I mean the scene--that hill seen through the
arch--the pavement of the oriental apartment--the--the figure--how did
the painter bring them together?”
“That is of little consequence in the study of the elements of the
symbolism,” said Mr. Glaston.
“Yes, of course it is; but still I should like to know.”
“I really never thought of putting any question to the painter about
these matters,” replied Glaston. “He had travelled in the East, and the
kiosk was amongst his sketches; as for the model of the figure, if I do
not mistake, I saw the study for the face in an old portfolio of his he
brought from Sicily.”
“Ah, indeed.”
“But these are mere accidents in the production of the picture. The
symbolism is the picture.”
Again there was a pause, and the chatter of a couple of Malays in the
street became louder, and then fainter, as the speakers drew near and
passed away.
“Glaston,” said Markham at length, “did you remove the pictures from
Government House?”
“They are in one of my rooms,” said Glaston. “Would you think it a piece
of idle curiosity if I were to step upstairs and take a look at that
particular work?”
“You could not see it by lamplight. You can study them all in the
morning.”
“But I feel in the mood just now, and you know how much depends upon the
mood.”
“My room is open,” said Glaston. “But the idea that has possessed you is
absurd.”
“I dare say, I dare say, but I have become interested in all that you
have told me; I must try and--and understand the symbolism.”
He left the balcony before Mr. Glaston had made up his mind as to
whether there was a touch of sarcasm in his voice uttering the final
sentence.
“Not worse than the rest of the uneducated world,” murmured the Art
prophet condescendingly.
But in Mr. Glaston's private room upstairs Oswin Markham was standing
holding a lighted lamp up to that interesting picture and before that
wonderful symbolic expression upon the face of the figure; the rest of
the room was in darkness. He looked up to the face that the lamplight
gloated over. The remainder of the picture was full of reflections of
the light.
“A power that can destroy utterly all the beauty of a life,” he said,
repeating the analysis of Mr. Glaston. He continued looking at it before
he repeated another of that gentleman's sentences--“She felt, but could
not understand, its power.” He laid the lamp on the table and walked
over to the darkened window and gazed out. But once more he returned
to the picture. “A passion that can destroy utterly all the beauty of
life,” he said again. “Utterly! that is a lie!” He remained with his
eyes upon the picture for some moments, then he lifted the lamp and went
to the door. At the door he stopped, glanced at the picture and laughed.
In the Volsunga Saga there is an account of how a jealous woman listens
outside the chamber where a man whom she once loved is being murdered in
his wife's arms; hearing the cry of the wife in the chamber the woman at
the door laughs. A man beside her says, “Thou dost not laugh because thy
heart is made glad, or why moves that pallor upon thy face?”
Oswin Markham left the room and thanked Mr. Glaston for having gratified
his whim.