A great writer has remarked, that between the acting of a dreadful
thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a
hideous dream, and that the state of man under those circumstances, like
to a little kingdom, suffers the nature of an insurrection. Although the
step that Clytie was about to take was not of the character that Brutus
contemplated, it was sufficiently serious for the interval between
her engagement and her marriage to be a time of great mental and moral
upheaval. Her “genius and mortal instruments” had periods of fierce
council, in which the latter always obtained turbulent victory. Dreading
these inner conflicts, she shrank from introspection. When doubts began
to creep over her she shook them off, and sat down and wrote letters
to Thornton which she burned an hour or two afterwards. But it was only
when she was alone in the studio hastily finishing the orders she had
in hand, or during the few lonely evenings that she passed in her
sitting-room, that these torturing misgivings arose. When Thornton was
near she forgot that any had ever come to her. He overpowered her will
and her senses, dominated her with a caressing word, a touch of the
hand, a glance from the depths of his dark eyes. In the lucid intervals
between these periods of dizzying surrender she did not recognise
herself. It was almost as if some Morgan le Fay had cast around her a
spell of woven paces, and changed her into she knew not what, while she
saw the old Clytie fading like a dream-shape away. To women of finer
temperament marriage looms shadowy, formless, a great enchanter that
will change all things, deliver into their keeping the secrets of pain
and delight. But to Clytie it was something less and something more.
Its material responsibilities were less of a mystery to her than to most
girls of her age, owing to the peculiarities of her self-training; but
its spiritual and moral results were hidden from her in a cloud, denser,
more lurid, more extensive. She loved Hammerdyke, not indeed as she
would have loved Kent had he made one little effort to turn the wavering
friendship into love--for then passion would have been finely tempered
with tenderness, trust, and generous sympathy; but still certain chords
of her nature vibrated fully in response to the touch of the man she was
about to marry. The one might have, as it were, awakened the full organ,
but the single diapason that was pulled rang out none the less true.
During the short period of their engagement Hammerdyke was unceasing
in tokens of his love. It was the nature of the man to throw his whole
being into the delight or danger of the moment. Many a woman who cares
lukewarmly, perhaps reluctantly, is fired with a gratitude akin to love
by unending, passionate devotion. All the more responsive is the woman
of full blood and emotional temperament who already cares greatly.
Thornton gave Clytie no reason to doubt his affection; if anything,
he frightened her by its excess. She yielded to him in all things,
sometimes half dreamily, indifferently, without regret and without
sweetness; sometimes the surrender was infinite joy.
In one matter, however, she was called upon to exercise her will:
Thornton did not care how or where the marriage was performed. A man
loathes weddings, particularly his own. It is only the barbarian that
lingers, as people say, in the heart of woman that demands ceremonies
and pomps and vanities; a man, finer in some things, strangely enough,
sees a certain indelicacy in the brazen publicity of the wedding rites.
True, this view never presented itself to Thornton, who merely wanted to
call Clytie his own and looked upon the formality of the marriage bond
as a necessary nuisance, but it came vividly to Clytie, and caused her,
as she was called upon to decide in the matter, to choose as quiet a
wedding as possible. She shrank with repugnance from the meaningless
ordeal of bridesmaids, favours, and a wedding-breakfast. It was only in
deference to Durdleham susceptibilities that she did not entertain the
idea of a civil marriage before a registrar.
The announcement of her engagement caused a flutter of excitement in the
family. Mrs. Blather and Janet could not understand a girl's art life,
but they could understand a wedding. They settled it between themselves
that Clytie and her _fiancé_ should come down to Durdleham to be there
married in the orthodox fashion. They had already drawn up a list of
guests and a scheme of wedding arrangements when a letter arrived from
Clytie saying that she was to be married almost immediately, and that on
no account could the ceremony take place at Durdleham. The sisters were
disappointed. Mrs. Blather remonstrated, adding arguments and entreaties
that brought tears of desperation to Clytie's eyes. She hated the
thought of willingly giving pain to her father and sisters, but a
family ceremony was more than she could bear. By trying to explain
the inexplicable she made matters worse. If Mrs. Blather and Janet had
failed to understand her simple needs of a free, untrammelled girlish
life, how could they unravel the tangled complexities involving her
repugnance to their proposals? At last she wrote that the day was
definitely fixed, and that if her sisters would not come to town, no one
but her friends the Farquharsons and Winifred would be present at the
ceremony. To journey up to London for the purpose of standing in a
bleak, empty church on a dismal March morning just to see Clytie
married in a travelling dress was a prospect not pleasing enough to
be entertained. The sisters resigned themselves with a sigh to
circumstances and to a catalogue of Clytie's eccentricities from her
earliest years. Mrs. Blather sent Clytie a pair of silver candlesticks,
Janet sent her a tea-service, and old Mr. Davenant, who had been
courteously addressed by Hammerdyke on the subject of the marriage, sent
her a check for one hundred pounds. And that ended the matter.
Winifred spent the night before the marriage with Clytie.
“Do come, Winnie dear,” the latter had said. “I shall be so lonely and
miserable.”
So Winnie came like a spirit of peace, and the two girls cried a little
in each other's arms, and it was the weaker who comforted the stronger.
“I shall keep on the studio,” said Winifred,--“I am getting quite rich,
you know,--and then you can come sometimes and take off your things and
make believe to be back again. And I shall come and see you in your big
house--if you will tell your big husband not to frighten me away.”
“You will always be my own sweet Winnie,” said Clytie tenderly, “and
you will always get the very best out of me even if I change utterly to
everybody else.”
“But how can you change, dear?” asked Winifred in her simple faith. For
she had lost her first instinctive distrust of Hammerdyke in the glamour
of Clytie's love for him. “How can you ever be different from what you
are and what you have always been?”
“Oh, I may grow very, very wicked and selfish one of these days, and not
care for simple things any longer; and then you might be hurt, and you
would know how unworthy I was that you should care for me, and you would
shrink from me.”
“Oh, Clytie, darling!” cried Winifred, throwing her arms about her neck,
“how can you say such things?”
“It is silly, I know,” said Clytie; “but I sometimes feel that I might
do something very wicked without much compunction before I die.”
“But you are going to lead a splendid, beautiful life!” said Winnie.
“You will live in a great house, and have at your command the most
brilliant society in London, all the clever, artistic people--just what
you like. And you won't have to paint for orders, so you need never have
to cramp your genius, dear. Oh, Clytie, you will simply be overflowing
with happiness all your life long.” Clytie sighed. The independence of
her half-Bohemian life was very dear to her. This was the last night
on which, if it so pleased her, she could go forth into the streets,
uncontrolled, whither she would. Henceforward her actions would have to
be referred to an authority. To-morrow she would even change her
name; be transformed from the Clytie Davenant whom she knew into Mrs.
Hammerdyke, a vague, mysterious entity, with whose nature she was
unfamiliar. No matter how glorious the future, there is always some
regret in leaving forever a past phase of life:
At leaving even the most unpleasant people And places, one keeps
looking at the steeple.
But this was a pleasant place Clytie was about to quit, and she looked
back upon its associations with a sigh.
In the morning a commissionnaire sent by Thornton came and fetched away
her trunks, for the newly married pair were to start for the Continent
immediately after the ceremony. When these were despatched Clytie stood
for a moment before her glass, adjusted the clasp of her cape and the
set of her broad gray beaver hat, and turning to Winifred, said quietly:
“Let us go, dear.”
They drove together in a hansom to St. Luke's Church, close by, where
Thornton and the Farquharsons were waiting for them, in the porch. It
was a bright morning, warm for the time of year, and the sparrows and a
stray thrush plucked up heart of grace and twittered cheerily from the
trees in the churchyard. Two little street children, with arms about
each other's necks, stood by a near gravestone and looked at the little
group with somewhat disappointed eyes. They had expected a bride in
a long white veil and orange-blossoms, a costume always mysteriously
fascinating to the unsophisticated. Perhaps it was only a christening
after all, one remarked to the other. But where was the baby? The
interior of the empty church was more cheerful than empty Protestant
churches are wont to be. The slanting sunlight streamed many-coloured
through the stained windows across the nave, and a broad shaft poured in
from the open south door upon the vacant pews in the aisle. From outside
came faintly the hum and rattle of the King's Road. The influences
were peaceful, encouraging, and Clytie, sensitive to impressions, felt
grateful. The two little children, with their eyes on the verger, peeped
in through the door and satisfied themselves that it was a wedding after
all.
They whispered together with many smiles and nods, guessing at the
_dramatis personæ_. Clytie noticed them, smiled back and nodded. It was
as if a bit of her past life had come to bid her be of good cheer. The
party stood for a while in the body of the church, talking gaily in low
tones. Mrs. Farquharson was radiant at the prospective accomplishment of
a dear wish.
“You must be proud of your bride,” she said to Thornton. “Is she not
looking beautiful?”
And she whispered to Clytie:
“You must be proud of your husband. Have you ever seen a man to compare
with him?”
Thornton held his head erect as he gave Clytie his arm and walked up to
the communion rail. He was proud of her. The quiet gray of her broad hat
and her cloak threw into relief the rich colouring of her hair and
eyes and lips. The past two years had completed her womanly beauty.
Irregularities of contour below the eyes had been toned down, the
delicacy of modelling of her face had been accentuated, and the new
emotions of the past three weeks had filled her great dark blue eyes
with a new, mysterious light. Thornton pressed her hand against his
side, and whispered, “My darling,” so close to her that she felt his
breath warm upon her ear. She looked at him for a moment, her full lips
quivering ever so slightly.
“I should like to kiss you,” he whispered again. “You are so beautiful.”
In a few moments it was over. The words compromising a lifetime had been
said. The wedding ring gleamed upon her finger. As she passed with the
others into the vestry she looked down at it in a daze. There it was and
there it must remain till death parted them, a token of submission and
obedience. In the vestry there were embraces, congratulations. Thornton
kissed her after the gallant fashion of a man who can afford to wait for
a warmer caress. Winifred threw her arms round her neck, weeping. Mrs.
Farquharson kissed her in her affectionate, motherly way. George kissed
her gravely on the forehead and dipped the pen in the ink for her to
sign “Clytie Davenant” for the last time. Then they found themselves in
the porch again, saying farewell. Caroline laughingly called her “Mrs.
Hammerdyke” as they finally parted. And then the little knot of three
waved their handkerchiefs as the cab drove off that took her husband and
herself towards Victoria.
“You are mine now, my darling,” he said, taking her hand. “All that is
most mine.”
“I am glad,” she murmured, returning his pressure. “Yours for always.”
The commissionnaire met them at the station. He had taken their tickets,
settled their luggage, engaged a carriage. A bouquet of violets lay upon
the seat. Clytie flashed a quick glance at her husband.
“Thank you for thinking. I love them so much.”
He arranged her hot-water can and her rugs and sat down by her side,
thrusting up the dividing arms impatiently. As soon as the train had
moved out of the station he put his arms around her and kissed her, and
spoke to her in tender, passionate words. The stop at Croydon broke the
continuity of this first wedded embrace. On the platform outside
the carriage window a loud altercation was in progress between the
ticket-collector and a young couple who objected to pay for the ticket
of a tiny terrier the woman was carrying. They were of the lower middle
class, both in their Sunday clothes. She was a fair, delicate woman of
some refinement; but the husband was coarse, vulgar, with the stamp
of sensuality on his sharp, somewhat handsome face. Moreover, he
was slightly intoxicated, and used a foul expression to qualify the
collector after the official had departed. A flush rose to the young
woman's forehead.
“Don't, John,” she pleaded. “He's in his rights.”
But the cad consigned his rights to perdition, and moved off vulgarly
proclaiming his own.
Clytie had heard this small scene in a life's drama and she vividly
constructed the miserable tragedy. When the train moved on again she
shivered, with a nameless, indefinable sense of fear. Three months ago
she would have noted the scene for vigorous transference to canvas. Now
the woman more than the artist was stirred.
“Please don't talk--just for a little, Thornton,” she said as he began
to speak.
He looked at her somewhat reproachfully. She drew off her glove and put
her hand into his.
“You can't understand--it all seems so strange. Let me gather myself
together for a moment--darling.”
She trembled on the last word. It was the first time she had used it to
him.
He pressed her hand and leaned back on the cushions. Clytie looked out
of the window at the telegraph poles and trees and broad fields swaying
past. Whither was this tearing train carrying her? Out of her life into
a new, strange world whose habits and customs and laws and speech were
all foreign to her? She was married. She no longer belonged to herself.
Her independence was gone. She had promised to love, honour, and obey
this man by her side until death should part them. That would be a long
time--many, many years. The thought frightened her. Until then she had
scarce realised what married life meant, in this respect. Why had she
married this man? As this question passed through her mind her husband
raised the hand he held to his lips. The blood rushed hot to her cheeks,
she did not finish the mental question, but turning quickly, looked at
him for a moment, and falling under the spell of his eyes, yielded to
his arm, forgetting all things. He had the power of drowning in a more
lurid blaze those glimmerings of self-revelation. She whispered so to
him laughingly, and he accepted it as a man generally does accept such
things--not seeing that it was of deeper significance than a woman's
ordinary tribute of tenderness.
“You are my beautiful Clytie,” he said, kissing her, and for a season
she was content with the response.
There was a lover's silence between them, which she broke at length by
saying:
“Don't you think it would have been much nicer if we could have had one
another on trial--say for six months?” >
“So that you could all the time be thinking whether you should repent of
your bargain? Oh, dear, no!”
“Ah! you say that; but would it not have been better, if we grew to
hate each other, to be able to shake hands and say good-bye? For we may
quarrel dreadfully, you know.”
He answered her with tender assurances, laughed at her fears.
“We shall never quarrel if you are a good little girl and do as you are
told,” he said.
Clytie laughed, seeing only jesting in the remark.
“And we shall never quarrel if you let me go where I like and do what I
like and say what I like.”
“But you will always want to go and do and say as I like, darling,” said
Thornton. “So we shall never quarrel.”
“Then you will never want me to be severely respectable?” asked Clytie,
with a touch of insistence.
“I shan't allow you to flirt with any and everybody, if you mean that,”
he replied, showing his white teeth as he smiled.
“I didn't mean that--for the simple reason that I have a certain amount
of brains.”
“There have been many coquettes with magnificent intellects.”
She made no reply. Then, seeing that he had ruffled her, he adroitly
turned their talk into less dangerous channels.
They stayed in Paris a couple of days and then continued their journey
to the Riviera. It was Clytie's own desire. In the first flush of his
passion all places were alike to Thornton, provided she were with him.
But she longed to get away from England, to cut herself adrift for
a while from all old associations, to surround herself with new
conditions, so that nothing should disturb the wonder of this new love.
And when, with a lover's hyperbole, he had bidden her choose any spot on
the whole terrestrial globe for the passing of their honeymoon, she had
selected the Mediterranean.
They went to the little Italian town of Bordighera, hidden away at the
foot of the mountains amidst its palms and olive trees. Besides being
one of the most beautiful spots on that beautiful coast, it has the
charm of quiet. There is no casino at Bordighera, no public garden,
no municipal band. It holds out to visitors no attractions but its own
loveliness--hence the absence of the banal, the rococo. A few villas
are dotted round it, away from the sea. One long, straggling street
of shops, narrowing gradually, leads up to the old, picturesque,
evil-smelling town on the hill. And this with its narrow sunless streets
flanked by high, dingy, gray houses, between which the sky above seems
a narrow strip of Prussian blue ribbon, its crooked byways and basement
loggie of cool malodour, its cobble pavements on which great entrance
gateways gape like dark, noisome caverns, offers few attractions other
than those of quaintness and curiosity to any but its own inhabitants.
It is a quiet place, devoid of the cosmopolitan _tohubohu_ of Mentone or
Cannes. An index of this is the fact that, save the commoner qualities
of the Italian _regie_, cigarettes are not to be bought for love
or money in Bordighera, and these in the greasiest ramshackle shop
imaginable. If you want civilised shops you must go to San Remo.
Thornton and Clytie spent the earlier portion of their honeymoon here
in unbroken happiness. Beyond casual gossip with their table d'hôte
neighbours they held intercourse with no one. All fears, doubts,
flutterings of regret, vanished from Clytie's heart, together with all
sense of subjective life. She was tasting the physical joy of existence
as it came to her in the passion, sunlight, colour, warmth, and scents
of the south. She had chosen with unconscious wisdom. The intensity of
the beauty of the Mediterranean, its positivism, its splendid denial
of the melancholic and mysterious, held her being in tone with the
love with which Thornton had inspired her. It intoxicated her with a
complementary passion.
They drove one day from Bordighera through Ventimiglia to Mentone.
Halfway they stopped at a wayside inn, and breakfasted under a trellis
of grape-vine. On the one side was the dazzling white road, flanked by
the terraced hill of olive-trees, the white underparts of their leaves
flashing like silver; on the other, below, the gold sand and the purple
sea. And the sun streamed through the vine, checkering the table and
their hands and faces. The fare was poor and the Asti none of the best,
but the wine sparkled and bubbled in the thick tumbler they used in
common, and brought a keener sparkle into Clytie's eyes, and a more
joyous abandonment into her laugh. When they had resumed their drive,
and a turn of the road brought them into sight of Mentone, her heart
leaped at the suddenness with which the blaze of colour was revealed.
Below, over a declining foreground of olive and orange gardens, lay the
white town in a setting of bright green foliage, stretching from horn to
horn of the bay. Behind the eastern horn projected dark and bold the
promontory of Monaco with the flashing white of its castle. Behind the
town rose the two bare peaks of the Berceau standing out in deep
blue-gray against the intense violet sky. Before it swept the broad belt of
yellow sand, on which lapped, in little idle waves whose ebb left a
delicate fringe of white, a still, unbroken sea of lapis lazuli, melting
through infinite gradations of blue streaked with arbitrary purples into
the deep ultramarine that met the paler sky far away on the horizon. The
burst of intense colour of sky and sea and land, glowing as far as the
eye could sweep, drowned Clytie's being in a sensuous flood. It was, as
it were, the projection of physical passion into something visible, thus
baring to the eyes its wonderful beauty. She uttered a little
inarticulate gasp, a catching of the breath. They were quite alone, the
coachman half asleep in the sun on his box. Thornton put his arm round
her and drew her to him. She turned, closed her eyes. All creation, from
the world of wonder before her to the tiniest quivering fibre within
her, vibrated with an intoxicating thrill of delight. She caught his
hand, drew his arm tighter, and lifted her lips to his in a long, long
kiss.
Thenceforward her stay on the Riviera was one uninterrupted delight.
It was a dream in which the mind lay subject to the sense. She was in
a blue mist, which hid impenetrably past and future, and informed the
visible area about her feet with unutterable sweetness. “Don't expect
me to write letters,” she said in a hastily scribbled note to Caroline.
“This is a land in which words have no part. You might as well expect
me to talk the 'Moonlight Sonata' to you.” And Caroline, being a wise
woman, smiled. Yet, after all, her wisdom had nothing to do with it--for
anything feminine would have divined. The days flew on wings of fire.
She never read, never worked; her sketch-book remained empty. Often they
sat at their sitting-room window, looking out on to the Strada Romana,
hand in hand, without speaking, save for a murmured caress, for an hour
together. Or they walked up between the olives, past the famous high
wall with its gorgeous coat of mesembryanthemum, through the narrow,
crooked town, down the rugged descent to the surf-beaten shore, where
the great white solitary _casa_ stands, and there sat down in the shade
of the big rocks and watched the glowing “countless laughter” of the
sea. Often they rambled through the cool, sunless olive gardens, rising
terrace after terrace apparently into the deep violet sky. The scent
of the rosemary and wild thyme beneath their feet rose penetrating and
filled the blood, and Thornton would pick a handful, and laughingly hold
it between them above their lips as he kissed her. And when they reached
the top of the hill they sat under a tree, and Clytie rested her head
on his shoulder, and let her eye wander over the low-lying ridges of
the Maritime Alps rising in endless soft-rounded undulations, like the
many-breasted mother of men, in each bosom nestling a compact white
townlet gathered around the slated cupola of its church; and the soft
sunlight lay over all, transfused through the blue atmosphere. Then
she would say: “Don't let us talk, Thornton,” but there was a different
meaning to the words from that which they had when she uttered them in
the train as it left Croydon.
Sometimes they went away from Bordighera for two or three days; visited
Nice, Cannes, Monte Carlo. At Monte Carlo Clytie won three or four
hundred francs at the roulette tables. Gambling had never come before
within her experience of things. She plunged into it with childish
recklessness, looking round with glowing face and laughter in her eyes
at her husband when she won, and drawing a short little breath of dismay
when the croupier raked in her stake. The game, the intensity of
the strange faces, seen nowhere else,--faces which bore the stamp of
combinations of the seven deadly sins taken from two to half a dozen
together,--the subtle working in that great, glittering room of all
the passions under heaven, attracted her, fascinated her. The artistic
temperament caught the impressions, instinctively, unconsciously
registered them, thus widening and deepening her conception of life. It
was a luxury of sense to leave the babel passion of the Casino and to
walk arm in arm on the terrace or in the grounds. There the music came
faintly and mingled with the far-off splash of the sea away below them
and the rustle of the palms and drachinas. On the right stretched out
Monaco, clustering like a group of fireflies below the white bastioned
castle. Behind them rose the black mass of the Maritime Alps with the
Mont Agel towering distinct above. The air was soft and warm, recovering
from the sudden shock of sundown. What they said to one another matters
little. He saw that she was beautiful and filled with the sense of
his love, and he was happy. To Clytie life meant unutterable things.
On the third morning of their stay at Monte Carlo Thornton returned from
a short stroll and came into their room.
“A man I know has just come by the train and I fled from him,” he said;
“let us go somewhere else.”
Clytie was pleased.
“I am glad you still want us to be quite, quite alone,” she replied.
“But you are sure you are not a little bit weary of me?”
He answered as many millions of men more or less sincere have answered.
And Clytie thought neither of believing nor of disbelieving him, as many
millions of women have done. The subjective is apt to crop up afterwards
and it generally causes trouble. But in the passion of a kiss woman,
being, like man, of flesh and blood, and not an abstraction, does not
calculate remote psychological contingencies; if she does, the kissing
is all a mistake. Once, towards the end of their honeymoon, Clytie did
touch upon the subjective. They were sitting by the ruined tower on the
hill above the Strada Romana. Clytie was heated and had taken off her
hat, and the breeze ruffled her hair as she leaned against the trunk of
a tree. Thornton sprawled by her side, resting his chin on his hand and
looking at her.
“I always grudge your wearing a hat,” he said. “Your beautiful hair
ought not to be hidden. You look much lovelier now that it is free for
the wind to kiss.”
She laughed a contented little laugh, throwing her chin up, according to
her way.
“Do you know, Thornton,” she said with a little hesitation, in which
there was much charm, “being called beautiful every day is one of the
great novelties of the situation. I always knew I was good to look upon,
and sometimes I really was very pleased to behold myself. But before I
knew you, dear, it never made anything of a factor in my daily life. And
now I almost begin to think it's the only quality I have.”
“Given that, you can let all the others go----” He waved his hand
vaguely, consigning them to the _Ewigkeit_. “But that's not all that you
love me for, is it, dear?” An idle question, with an unsuspected fear
lurking in its heart.
“I don't know why I love you. It has never occurred to me to investigate
the matter.”
“Well, try. It will be like playing the game, 'I love my love with an
A'!”
Thornton shook his head boyishly, and laughed.
“It would spoil it all!” he said--“to go worrying about what lies under
that sweet face of yours. Can't you understand, darling? What do your
qualities matter to me? Provided I can take you in my arms and kiss you
as much as I like, what concern is it of mine whether you are acquainted
with the cookery book or spell art with a capital A? Don't you think
it's more satisfactory to lie here and look into your great blue eyes,
and your hair with the sun and wind playing hide and seek in it,
and your bosom rising and falling, than to speculate whether you are
even-tempered or vindictive or ambitious or fond of Adelaide Proctor's
poetry?”
“What a boy you are!” she cried light-heartedly, stretching out her hand
so as to run her fingers over his crisp brown hair. “So my face has been
my fortune!”
“And your figure,” he remarked critically. “The whole of you!”
“Tell me,” she continued, “what would you have done if I hadn't married
you?”
He started up to a sitting posture, and his eyes flashed. “I should have
gone straight back to Africa and played the very devil there! But you
were bound to marry me, you know; and if you had been already a married
woman, I should have got to you somehow. I have been hit before in my
time, over and over, but never till I met you did I think a woman worth
the marriage service. But you're a witch, Clytie,” he added, resuming
his former attitude, “the Belle Dame sans Merci.”
“Poor fellow,” said Clytie, “poor knight-at-arms! And you do look 'so
haggard and so woe-begone,' don't you?”
She laughed as she looked at his great frame lying at her feet, and his
strong, handsome dark face, with its health and masterfulness. Then she
continued in the lightness of her heart:
“But seriously, now, Thornton, very seriously. You do want me to be
a little help to you in your life--in other ways--don't you? In your
ambitions, your work in the world generally. We must begin to talk about
such things soon, you know.”
Thornton laughed lazily as he lit a cigarette.
“My work in the world is to love you, my dear, and I'll promise to let
you help me in that as much as you like.”
But Clytie insisted. Sometimes the subjective gets too much for a woman.
“Ah, Thornton dear,” she said. “I want to feel that we are much more
than lovers. That will wear off after a time. Oh, yes! don't tell me
it won't; a woman learns things all with a rush, you see. And I want to
feel that we are one in everything, in all our sympathies and views of
life, our ambitions, in all the high and great things that lie before
you. I want to be in touch with everything you do and think--to be a
real helpmeet for you.”
He took her hand and kissed it, laughing.
“I have got a lot to learn in the way of connubial responsibilities,” he
said. “You'll have to train me, my dear. But allow me to remark that the
sun is just going to dip over there by the Nervia, and if we want to get
in by sunset we shall have to run like the deuce!”
As this was a serious matter,--on the Riviera it is one of the grave
responsibilities of life,--Clytie let herself be lifted to her feet, put
on her hat quickly, and holding her husband's hand, ran merrily with him
down the hill. The exercise and the laughter drove things subjective out
of her head for a season. But in the after-time the ghost of this little
conversation came and sat at the head of her bed, making mock at a
few others who sat on the foot-rail. A thing does not require to be as
objective as a murdered monk to have a little ghost all to itself.