Perhaps if they had remained in Bordighera the intoxication would have
lasted longer. But as our lives are hemmed in by infinite possibilities,
to each of which is strung its infinite ramification of consequences,
it is somewhat rash to predicate _ex hypothesi_. At any rate so long as
they were at Bordighera there seemed to be no reason that the continuity
of the charm should be broken; whereas it did suffer a change during the
railway journey from Bordighera to Paris. And this railway journey was a
kind of neutral ground in their married life, separating the dream from
the reality. On entering the train they were lovers. On leaving it they
were a married couple. Wherein lies somewhat of a difference. They were
not conscious of the change. Realisation of this mysterious operation
is fortunately denied to human beings, seeing that they turn their eyes
inwards rather too much as it is already. Nor do they recognise what has
happened until some time afterwards, as the old influences still remain
lingeringly; but then they can generally look back to the point of
transition, and set it up as a forlorn landmark in their lives.
Why they did not remain longer in the south they themselves could
scarcely explain. They had arranged to spend a month there, and then
to proceed to Paris to wait indefinitely until their new house in the
Cromwell Road should be ready to receive them. There is nothing so
irrefragable as an arbitrary programme. Even the most emancipated
enslave themselves to it sometimes, as in the present case did Thornton
and Clytie They possibly lost a good deal,--the flowers of life seldom
grow along the beaten track,--but they never thought of attributing it
to the fixity of their programme. They were in Paris, then, living under
totally fresh conditions. Thornton found there a succession of friends
and acquaintances, and was pleased rather than otherwise to meet them.
At Monte Carlo he fled from Carteret of the Hussars; on the Boulevard
des Capucines he greeted him heartily and carried him off into the
American Bar. Besides discovering acquaintances daily in the hotel list,
Thornton was not unknown in general Parisian society. His name could
procure him admission into most circles that he cared to enter. He was
put up at a couple of clubs and received invitation cards by the dozen.
To please him Clytie went with him a little into society. He was proud
of his beautiful wife, loved to watch the effect produced as she entered
a drawing-room upon his arm, and the eager admiration on the faces of
the men who crowded round her chair. In fact, Clytie had a small social
success--and a paragraph in the _Figaro_. It was a new sensation
for her; but in these early days of her married life she would have
preferred a quieter, less conspicuous existence. But Thornton, just as
he had sought in the south to keep her and her beauty to himself, now
seemed to wish to exhibit it abroad.
“I seem to wear you like a decoration, darling,” he said once.
At first Clytie flushed with pleasure at the little flattery. Then she
thought over it for a bit, and it did not please her so much. But she
did not confide this to her husband. She had already begun to discover
that for the safekeeping of many little matters her own heart was the
best place.
They had a set of rooms in a hotel in the Champs Elysées with a balcony
overlooking the Grande Avenue. Clytie loved to sit there with Thornton
in the quiet half hour before dinner watching the stream of vehicles,
fine and vague far away by the Arc de Triomphe, then gradually
broadening, till fashionable Paris returning from the Bois blazed
beneath her in its movement and gaiety. They seemed to her so alone up
there, above the whirl and the glitter and falseness. It was a return of
the hours of the month in the south, and happiness fluttered tremulously
around her--like a butterfly, ever so elusively. When she leaned over
the balcony by his side many people looked up admiringly at them. When
she saw one woman twitch the arm of her companion in a victoria, and
both shoot swift feminine glances up at the balcony, she could not help
feeling a little thrill of pride in her husband. And then she would
remember the morning's solitary ramble among the sculpture of the
Louvre (Thornton and herself were less dependent upon each other now for
entertainment), and reflect, with a sense of pleasure, that she had seen
no antique ideal that could compare with him in splendid manhood. He,
too, had done heroic deeds, she would think, and she would move nearer
to his side and be glad that he was there. Yet the butterfly happiness
was just beyond her grasp.
Some such thoughts were passing through her mind one afternoon as they
stood together on the balcony. He broke a short silence by saying:
“We are getting quite an old married couple, Clytie!”
“What made you say that?” she asked, smiling.
“Oh! I hardly know. I have got so used to having you by me. It seems as
if I had been married ever since I was born.”
“It does seem a long, long time ago that we first passed through Paris.
But I can't say I am quite used to matrimony yet. Do you know, I have
sometimes hoped that I never should be.”
“Why?”
“Can't you guess? At present, dear, it is all glamour and mystery,
and when you get too familiar with the glamour it turns into
the commonplace. That's why I am just a little bit sorry we left
Bordighera.”
“It was certainly very jolly,” he assented reflectively. “But we are
having as good a time here, aren't we?”
“Well, I like these little half hours best,” said Clytie, “when we are
alone together. When we are parted it seems as if I am suddenly called
upon to live as an individual and do not quite know how to begin. You
see, when I am alone with you I know how to behave as Clytie Hammerdyke,
but not yet when I am by myself or with other people.”
Thornton laughed, as a man in love laughs when he thinks he is replying
to an idle, pretty remark.
“You have always Clytie Davenant to fall back upon,” he said.
“Have I? That's just the question I have been putting to myself. But I
can't explain it to you. I don't think you would understand.”
“Of course I understand!” he cried quickly. “You have to mix with people
as a married woman, and you are a bit shy at first. But you'll pull
through all right, dear. Why, as it is, you are superb.”
“Oh, come,” she said, laughing. “I can talk to people without blushing
and morally biting the corner of my apron. I meant something a little
more subtle than that. You see, after all, you don't understand. I can
never, never be Clytie Davenant again. She was buried for good and all
at Bordighera.”
“And my sweet phoenix has arisen out of her ashes,” said Thornton.
“If you like--and the phoenix hasn't quite got the sense of her
environment yet.”
“All this is very pretty, my dear,” said Thornton, with a laugh. “But I
can't quite see what we are driving at.”
“Have I been talking such great nonsense, then? Perhaps it all tended to
express the fact that when I am with you I don't think of myself; when
we are apart I am confronted with myself, and feel embarrassed. You see,
Thornton dear,” she went on, “I have lived a queer kind of life, full
of such different hopes and dreams. I scarcely thought about marriage
in those days. I knew that love would come to me some time or the other,
but then it seemed as if it would all be mixed up with my art, whereas
now----Oh, you can't see how different it is!”
There was no tone of sadness or regret in her voice as she said this,
but a touch of tenderness, a tribute, as it were, to his influence.
“But there's nothing to hinder you from amusing yourself with painting
pictures, is there?” asked her husband lightly. “You have no call now to
earn a livelihood, but you can paint all day if you like, my dear.”
“Of course I shall paint--I could not live without it--except perhaps
such a month as last. But, don't you see, my art was once the guiding
principle of my life. Now I have my art and my love, and they seem to
have nothing to do with each other. They are on different planes, so to
speak. It is all that that makes me feel I don't quite realise myself
yet when I have to leave the love plane for a little.”
“Don't leave it,” said Thornton.
“Ah! we have done that by going away from Bordighera, and leading this
dissipated life here,” she replied, laughing. “But we can get on and off
whenever we like, you know. That is one comfort.”
“Well,” said Thornton, lighting a cigarette, and speaking between the
first few whiffs, “marriage must make some difference. You have lived
a free and easy, emancipated life among artistic people, and now you
belong to somebody else--a wild barbarian, who could no more tell you
how to paint a picture than how to cut out a dress. Of course it makes
a difference in your way of viewing things. It has made a difference in
mine too, by Jove! When a yearning for Africa comes over me I have to
say: No; I have a wife, with her arms,--the roundest in the world, my
dear,--about my neck. And so I have got to settle down to politics and
domesticity in the Cromwell Road.”
“But you don't regret it, do you, Thornton?” she asked, womanlike.
“Look at me and see if I do,” he said.
Clytie obeyed him, half shyly, feeling, as she always did since her
return to Paris, the fascination, half pleasant, half painful, of his
eyes. He loved her. There was no doubt of that. Yet the nature of his
love sometimes frightened her a little if she strayed for a moment
off the “love plane.” Her own responsiveness she never questioned,
preferring to shut her eyes and let the current of his love carry her
whither it would. But at times now, during her solitary walks through
the Louvre, the thought obtruded, What would the new life be like?
Not these early days, which were holidays from the seriousnesses of
existence, but the life in the years that lay before her, of whose
responsibilities she had as yet but vague premonitions. How would her
art be affected?
Would it lose or gain in that breadth and insight that it needed? Would
she continue to reckon herself an artist at all, or would she only
degenerate into the amateur--painting little meaningless pictures for
amusement? And at the end of a year would she not stand face to face
with a new Clytie, paler, more shadowy, and therefore less insistently
demanding self-expression? Even these few weeks had changed her: what
would she be at the end of one year, two years, twenty years? Happier,
with all her old cravings satisfied, with her individuality worked out
to its fullest, with the riddle of life joyously solved? Or else----She
scarcely dared think of it. She looked at what had been written in
her Book of New Formulas, and found that the marriage service had been
omitted. It merely said that marriage was unformularisable, an easy way
of curving a contumelious lip at the old formulas which she had rebelled
against, but scarcely satisfactory in her present position. Now, in the
Old Formulas, marriage was minutely, scrupulously regulated by the
most definite of rules. Although they broke up the poem of life into a
disjointed copy-book, or at best into a collection of elegant extracts,
still they presented a homogeneous scheme. Should she at last have
to accept this, confess to Mrs. Blather smiling complacently that the
Durdleham philosophy was the only one? But then she would look at her
husband and take a measure of comfort. Such a man could not come out of
Durdleham.
That was her consolation in the perplexities that the problem of her
married life caused her. She took refuge from herself, her thoughts,
her forebodings, in his grand strength and personal magnetism. It was
intermittent intoxication, this long Paris after-honeymoon, rather than
continuous charm, and the intervals of soberness had their wearinesses.
She had thrown her cap over the windmills. Sometimes she regretted it.
On the evening after the above conversation they went to the opera,
where they had taken a box with the Claverings, army people with whom
Thornton had been intimate in Cairo. Clytie had met them only for a
moment the day before, and had not been favourably impressed. However,
they were Thornton's friends, and it behoved her to appreciate them.
Mrs. Clavering passed for being a clever woman by virtue of a plain face
and a vivacious manner; also because she ruled her husband and had a
cultivated taste in sherry.
Thornton had admired her some years before. Mammas with marriageable
daughters put it in that way; those who could afford to be independent
put it in another. Whichever way they put it in no wise affected the
parties concerned. Mrs. Clavering was too superior a woman to allow idle
gossip to influence her or her husband. Now she was eight-and-thirty,
she had seen the world and had preserved few illusions, least of all
any respecting Thornton Hammerdyke. She met him with a cynical
encouragement, which to some men is flattering.
Clytie was quick to notice her manner towards Thornton, and resented
it. There was a touch of banal familiarity, too, in his talk with Mrs.
Clavering that jarred upon her. The tone was undignified, suggestive of
the falser strata of regimental society, in which frankness stands for
scarcely veiled mutual contempt.
He was sitting behind Mrs. Clavering, who smiled in a superior,
half-patronising way at his remarks. Clytie listened to the music
absently, wished they had come alone. The house was crowded, and the air
was stifling. She found the opera, “La Juive,” uninteresting.
“I am going to carry off your husband to the terrace, Mrs. Hammerdyke,”
said Mrs. Clavering at the end of the second act, “and I leave you mine
in pledge. I hope he will take good care of you.”
He was a heavy but honest Briton, who idolised his wife, his dinner, and
the British Constitution. As neither the opera nor Clytie came within
this area of adoration, he treated them with a polite though somewhat
embarrassed indifference. Still he acquitted himself of his charge
satisfactorily and entertained Clytie during the _entr'acte_. After a
tour round the house he found a seat for her in the Salle des Pas Perdus
and talked with solemn fitfulness. Then it occurred to him that it was
oppressive indoors and he took her out upon the terrace. Clytie did not
wish to stay there long--only for a moment to get a breath of fresh air.
She remained for a little leaning on the broad balustrade and looking at
the scene in front of her--the broad _place_ below with the continuous
passing to and fro of vehicles crossing each other in all directions,
the Café de la Paix on the right with its crowded tables far out on the
pavement and trayladen waiters hurrying between them, the glittering
vista of lights in the Avenue de l'Opera, the duller line of lamps in
the Rue de la Paix with the Vendôme column towering high in the
dim moonlight. It was so instinct with gaiety and movement and the
brightness of life that a little thrill of its gladness passed through
her, ending in a strange kind of sob that filled her throat. She took
her companion's arm, and went across through the stream of loungers back
into the heavy air of the Salle des Pas Perdus.
Meanwhile Thornton and Mrs. Clavering had established themselves in a
corner at the end of the terrace.
“It seems like old times--on the veranda--at a regimental dance,” she
said. “At least that is what you were going to say, I suppose. I never
yet met an old admirer but what he made some remark of the kind. So I
have saved you from the commonplace.”
“I was meditating some politeness of the sort,” replied Thornton
carelessly. “I thought you would expect it.”
“I hope you will always have the same delicate consideration for others,
Mr. Hammerdyke. How long are you going to be good and domestic?”
“Always, I suppose. I am going to run politics and that sort of show.”
Mrs. Clavering laughed lightly.
“Ha! When I see you at it I'll believe it--unless you have changed
extraordinarily since I last knew you. And you don't look much changed.
Perhaps matrimony will work the miracle. Ha! ha! Pardon my laughing, but
it seems so ridiculous to see you, of all people, married.”
“I suppose I have human attributes somewhere about me,” he said.
“Too vastly human, my poor friend; that is where the danger lies. To
err is human, you know. I hope your wife will do the divine part of the
business, as women generally do, and forgive. By the way, I have not
made you my compliment, as they say in this country. I think your wife
simply perfect.”
“We agree there for once,” replied Thornton drily.
“Tell me all about it. Can't you see I am dying to know? That is why I
brought you out here. Who is she? Where did you meet her? Were you long
engaged? And I know you too are dying to talk to someone about her. You
may as well gratify the craving while you still have it.”
“I believe you are madly jealous, Clara. Pardon my frankness. But you
and I always went in for being frank with one another.”
“Call it amiable brutality--it would be better.”
“As you like. I never went in for splitting hairs. I suppose it's brutal
to say you are jealous.”
“It is simply idiotic. Therefore I bear you no ill will for your saying
so. I honestly admire your wife, and think you have got very much more
than you deserve, and I am femininely curious. Now perhaps you will tell
me.”
“Well, I met her at a cousin's house. She is, or rather was, an artist.”
“I appreciate the distinction. Proceed.”
Thornton threw himself back with a great laugh against the balustrade,
his elbows resting upon it, his hands in his pockets.
“I think you are just a little bit jealous,” he said. “Well--to finish
my story. She is of an old Buckinghamshire family, and we were engaged
about a month. And then we were married. But tell me, by way of changing
the conversation----”
“Which may be painful.”
“Precisely. How long are you going to stay in Paris?”
“I don't know. As long as Paris pleases me. Am I going to see you any
more, or are you too much engrossed? I don't want to take you away from
your duties.”
“I don't think you are likely to, Clara.”
“Possibly not. Your wife will keep a tight rein upon you. She looks that
sort. But I don't know why we should be talking in this strain the first
time we have had a word together for--how many years? Four? Five? We
have quickly dropped into old ways. But then you were a fire-eater, a
chartered libertine, independent, a bird of freedom. Whereas now--my
poor friend!”
“By George!” cried Thornton, starting forward, with some excitement in
his eyes that glowed in the dimness, “don't fall into any delusion. If
you think I am going the way of another poor friend of ours who can't
call his soul his own, you are devilishly mistaken. I married because it
happened to strike me that I wanted to do so. But I run the concern, and
my wife's a sensible woman and recognises the fact. And whatever I want
to do I am going to do. I have generally done it, and don't see why I
should break through my habit now.”
“And your wife?”
“How--my wife?”
“Is she going to enjoy a beautiful independence likewise?”
“No. It isn't good for women.”
“Thank you. You always were a delicate judge in things feminine. Did
you ever read 'As You Like It'? 'Lock the door on your wife's wit and it
will out at the casement.' Have a care, my friend. I am about the only
woman you have tried to make a fool of and haven't succeeded, and so
you perhaps have a kind of respect for my intelligence, and I give you
warning.”
“I burned some of your letters the other day,” said Thornton cynically.
“That was wise. Suppose we go in. The act must be about commencing.”
The curtain was already up. Major Clavering was scanning the house
drearily through a pair of opera glasses. Clytie was looking at the
stage and thinking of her husband, wishing he would come in. When the
door behind opened she turned round, and with an eye trained to
catch fleeting expression, noticed a look upon Thornton's face,--the
after-light, as it were, of a sneer, before the features had time to
reset,--that she had never observed there before. The change from
this to his usual gay smile was so rapid that she thought she had been
mistaken, and attributed it to an illusion produced by the shadow at
the back of the box. But the impression of it remained and it was
unpleasant.
During the next _entr'acte_ the men went out, leaving Clytie and Mrs.
Clavering alone together. Either through the mere social desire to
please or through a feeling of compassion proceeding from conscious
superiority, the elder woman sought to make an agreeable impression upon
the young wife. But Clytie had wrapped herself up in a strange veil of
reserve and her attitude was unpropitiatory. Mrs. Clavering's falsetto
voice struck upon her nerves, the confident air of patronage irritated
her. She longed to be away from the heavy, acrid atmosphere, the
artificiality of the opera, the society of Mrs. Clavering. She felt
self-conscious, was angry with herself. She had the keen feminine sense
of a false position and longed for extrication. She was glad when her
husband and Major Clavering returned.
“I have been telling Mrs. Hammerdyke about old times in Cairo, and
singing your praises,” said Mrs. Clavering. “Are you not grateful to
me?”
“I am flattered,” said Thornton somewhat ironically.
“That is always the way to make a man grateful.”
“It is the same with us. I don't suppose there is much difference in
that respect between men and women,” said Clytie, for the sake of saying
something.
“I am not so sure of that,” replied Mrs. Clavering; “women can generally
sift the grain from the chaff--only, poor things, they too often take
the chaff by preference.”
“I hope you are not alluding to me, my dear,” said the major, who was
given to saying stupid things by way of showing that he followed the
thread of his wife's conversation.
Thornton chimed in with his deep laugh.
“That is one for you, Clavering. Perhaps one for me too. Anyhow, the
curtain is going up and that saves us. Make room for me by you, Clytie,
and tell me about what's going on.”
He edged in his chair between Clytie and Mrs. Clavering. The major
lounged behind, with his hands in his pockets, very much bored. He was
hoping to escape soon.
“Are you enjoying it?” whispered Thornton to Clytie.
“Moderately. It is a dull opera. And it is so unbearably hot.”
“It is not entrancingly interesting. Would you like to clear out after
this act? I should.”
“And the Claverings?”
“They are a bit tired of it. Shall we all go back together to the hotel
and have supper?”
“I'd sooner we were alone together, Thornton dear--this evening.”
He made a little gesture of impatience.
“Of course we won't ask them if you don't want to. But then we must stay
this thing out.”
He leaned back in his chair and looked at the mass of heads in the
opposite tiers, vague in the dimness, and drummed with his fingers on
the rails of his chair.
“Sh!” said Mrs. Clavering. “That's one of your old tricks. You never
seem to think that people have nerves.”
Clytie caught the words, although they were whispered. She turned her
head round quickly and stared at the stage for the rest of the act.
When it was over Mrs. Clavering solved the question of departure.
“I think we all want to go,” she said, rising. “My husband is suffering
acutely, and yours I know is not very musical. When shall we see you
again, Mrs. Hammerdyke? Will you come and dine with us some evening,
quietly--when we can talk better? I'll let you know what evenings we
are free. Will that do? That is your wife's cloak, not mine, Mr.
Hammerdyke.”
A few minutes later Thornton and Clytie were driving back to their
hotel in the pleasant Paris victoria. It seemed a superb night. A
slight breeze had risen, and the leaves in the Champs Elysées rustled
pleasantly. Clytie leaned back with a sense of relief, physical and
moral. They had both been rather silent since they left the opera house.
“Don't let us go in,” said Clytie suddenly. “Let us drive about a
little, along the quays--anywhere.”
“I was just going to suggest it,” said Thornton.
He gave the order to the coachman, who turned back through the Place de
la Concorde and took them past the Tuileries and the great mass of the
Louvre and along the quays in the direction of Auteuil.
“What do you think of the Clavering woman?” asked Thornton. “Not much,
eh?”
“I can't say that I like her. Perhaps I oughtn't to say it, as she is a
friend of yours, but--she doesn't please me.”
“Well, I can't say that she does me now. She never was a beauty, but she
has sadly fallen off the last few years. She thinks herself so deuced
superior. And she isn't, by Jove! Still she is amusing, you know, and
that is a quality that covers a multitude of sins. But other women can't
understand her. She was loathed by them all in Cairo, so you are not
alone in your antipathy.”
There was a long silence. Thornton drew her closer to his side and took
her hand in his. Clytie felt somewhat hurt. It was not flattering to be
grouped with the other women in Cairo, however estimable they may have
been in their non-appreciation of Mrs. Clavering. They drove on, and
began to talk of different subjects, disconnectedly, without much
interest. Finally Thornton came back to the Claverings.
“By the way, I suppose you'll dine with them, as they were civil enough
to ask us.”
“Certainly, if you wish it and it gives you any pleasure. Perhaps I may
like her better when I know more of her.”
“You see, you can't drop people because you don't happen to take a
violent fancy to them,” he said rather lamely. And then he added:
“I wish you had let me ask them to supper.”
“Why?”
“It would have livened us up a little.”
“Perhaps it would,” answered Clytie almost wearily. “I half wish you
had.”
The evanescent charm had gone from the drive. The weather, too, had
changed. Clouds, that had imperceptibly gathered, covered the moon. The
quay looked desolate, the water black and lifeless, on the other
side the great buildings loomed forbidding in the darkness. An air of
disenchantment was over all things.
“Will monsieur turn back? It is going to rain,” said the cabman,
lounging sideways and looking down at them.
They turned off through the narrow streets, on the nearest way back to
the hotel. The cab horse was tired and jogged on painfully, indifferent
to the loud-cracking whip and the “_hue's_” addressed to him in the
driver's raucous voice. Clytie shivered a little at the sudden fall in
the temperature. She was chilled too--ever so little--at her heart. She
drew away slightly from her husband, who held her hand mechanically.
When she withdrew it he did not seem to notice. He had discovered that
he was annoyed about the supper.
Suddenly the horse, overdriven, stumbled, tried to recover himself, and
then crashed down helpless, snapping the shaft. The victoria lurched
violently on the side where Clytie was sitting. To save herself she
jumped out quickly, but her foot slipped on the kerb and she nearly
fell. Thornton sprang out and raised her, and then turned to the
coachman in a sudden frenzy of passion. He stood there moving his arms
about and cursed him in English. Clytie was shocked to the heart. She
was thankful that she could see his face but dimly in the bad gaslight.
The cabman shrugged his shoulders as he bent down to loosen the traces.
Some people came up, chiefly from a small _brasserie_ whose few tables
were just visible some yards further along the street. Another cab
arrived and paused, interested and expectant, watching the scene: the
little group round the fallen horse; the stately figure of the girl in
white dress and rich opera-cloak standing by the upset cab; the great
figure of the man, stamping with rage, pouring forth a torrent of oaths.
It all happened very quickly.
Clytie touched her husband's arm quietly.
“Stop, Thornton,” she said. “He does not even understand you.”
Thornton looked at her for a moment, then at the group. Then he burst
into a loud laugh, pulled a ten-franc piece from his pocket and threw it
to the cabman, who picked it up with an ironical, “_Merci, bourgeois_.”
They entered the other cab and drove quickly homewards. Thornton seemed
to have forgotten his rage, for he laughed in high spirits over the
incident. He apologised gaily for his loss of temper and language. He
was still infected with his years of savagery, he pleaded. He had been
so accustomed to rule men by terror that he forgot himself sometimes.
Often he had been the only white man among hundreds of fierce, lawless
savages, over whom he had despotic authority of life and death. If they
had not feared his rage and violence, his life would not have been worth
a moment's purchase.
He had regained his old manner, the daring personal charm that had swept
her along in spite of herself into marrying him. The glamour of his
fame, his power, his heroism came over her and hid the sordid scenes of
the evening. When they reached the hotel they were lovers once more.
As Clytie alighted from the cab her foot gave way beneath her. It
had been hurting her since her slip on the kerb, but she had scarcely
noticed the pain. Now she found that she could not walk. She had
sprained her ankle. She limped into the hotel with Thornton's aid. Then
she stood at the foot of the stairs and looked at them helplessly. It
was an old-fashioned hotel, without a lift, and their rooms were on the
third story.
“I'll carry you up,” said Thornton.
He took her up in his arms, and mounted the stairs with a step as light
and springy as if he had no burden to carry. Until then Clytie had not
realised his marvellous strength.
“I feel like the fairy princess being carried off by the giant,” she
whispered.