PART I

IN THE NIGHT

PART II

THREE HUMAN HEARTS

PART III

THE VICTORY

_'How I have wept, the long night through, over the poor women of the

past, so beautiful, so tender, so sweet, whose arms have opened for the

kiss, and who are dead! The kiss--it is immortal! It passes from lip to

lip, from century to century, from age to age. Men gather it, give it

back, and die.'_--GUY DE MAUPASSANT.

SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE

PART I

IN THE NIGHT

I

For years I had been preoccupied with thoughts of love--and by love I

mean a noble and sensuous passion, absorbing the energies of the

soul, fulfilling destiny, and reducing all that has gone before it to

the level of a mere prelude. And that afternoon in autumn, the eve of

my twenty-first birthday, I was more deeply than ever immersed in

amorous dreams.

I, in my modern costume, sat down between two pairs of candles to the

piano in the decaying drawing-room, which like a spinster strove to

conceal its age. A generous fire flamed in the wide grate behind me:

warmth has always been to me the first necessary of life. I turned round

on the revolving stool and faced the fire, and felt it on my cheeks, and

I asked myself: 'Why am I affected like this? Why am I what I am?' For

even before beginning to play the Fantasia of Chopin, I was moved, and

the tears had come into my eyes, and the shudder to my spine. I gazed at

the room inquiringly, and of course I found no answer. It was one of

those rooms whose spacious and consistent ugliness grows old into a sort

of beauty, formidable and repellent, but impressive; an early Victorian

room, large and stately and symmetrical, full--but not too full--of

twisted and tortured mahogany, green rep, lustres, valances, fringes,

gilt tassels. The green and gold drapery of the two high windows, and

here and there a fine curve in a piece of furniture, recalled the Empire

period and the deserted Napoleonic palaces of France. The expanse of

yellow and green carpet had been married to the floor by two generations

of decorous feet, and the meaning of its tints was long since explained

away. Never have I seen a carpet with less individuality of its own than

that carpet; it was so sweetly faded, amiable, and flat, that its sole

mission in the world seemed to be to make things smooth for the chairs.

The wall-paper looked like pale green silk, and the candles were

reflected in it as they were reflected in the crystals of the chandelier.

The grand piano, a Collard and Collard, made a vast mass of walnut in the

chamber, incongruous, perhaps, but still there was something in its mild

and indecisive tone that responded to the furniture. It, too, spoke of

Evangelicalism, the Christian Year, and a dignified reserved confidence

in Christ's blood. It, too, defied the assault of time and the invasion

of ideas. It, too, protested against Chopin and romance, and demanded

Thalberg's variations on 'Home, Sweet Home.'

My great-grandfather, the famous potter--second in renown only to

Wedgwood--had built that Georgian house, and my grandfather had furnished

it; and my parents, long since dead, had placidly accepted it and the

ideal that it stood for; and it had devolved upon my Aunt Constance, and

ultimately it would devolve on me, the scarlet woman in a dress of

virginal white, the inexplicable offspring of two changeless and

blameless families, the secret revolutionary, the living lie! How had I

come there?

I went to the window, and, pulling the curtain aside, looked vaguely out

into the damp, black garden, from which the last light was fading. The

red, rectangular house stood in the midst of the garden, and the garden

was surrounded by four brick walls, which preserved it from four streets

where dwelt artisans of the upper class. The occasional rattling of a

cart was all we caught of the peaceable rumour of the town; but on clear

nights the furnaces of Cauldon Bar Ironworks lit the valley for us, and

we were reminded that our refined and inviolate calm was hemmed in by

rude activities. On the east border of the garden was a row of poplars,

and from the window I could see the naked branches of the endmost. A

gas-lamp suddenly blazed behind it in Acre Lane, and I descried a bird in

the tree. And as the tree waved its plume in the night-wind, and the bird

swayed on the moving twig, and the gas-lamp burned meekly and patiently

beyond, I seemed to catch in these simple things a glimpse of the secret

meaning of human existence, such as one gets sometimes, startlingly, in a

mood of idle receptiveness. And it was so sad and so beautiful, so full

of an ecstatic melancholy, that I dropped the curtain. And my thought

ranged lovingly over our household--prim, regular, and perfect: my old

aunt embroidering in the breakfast-room, and Rebecca and Lucy ironing in

the impeachable kitchen, and not one of them with the least suspicion

that Adam had not really waked up one morning minus a rib. I wandered in

fancy all over the house--the attics, my aunt's bedroom so miraculously

neat, and mine so unkempt, and the dark places in the corridors where

clocks ticked.

I had the sense of the curious compact organism of which my aunt was the

head, and into which my soul had strayed by some caprice of fate. What I

felt was that the organism was suspended in a sort of enchantment,

lifelessly alive, unconsciously expectant of the magic touch which would

break the spell, and I wondered how long I must wait before I began to

live. I know now that I was happy in those serene preliminary years, but

nevertheless I had the illusion of spiritual woe. I sighed grievously as

I went back to the piano, and opened the volume of Mikuli's Chopin.

Just as I was beginning to play, Rebecca came into the room. She was a

maid of forty years, and stout; absolutely certain of a few things, and

quite satisfied in her ignorance of all else; an important person in our

house, and therefore an important person in the created universe, of

which our house was for her the centre. She wore the white cap with

distinction, and when an apron was suspended round her immense waist it

ceased to be an apron, and became a symbol, like the apron of a

Freemason.

'Well, Rebecca?' I said, without turning my head.

I guessed urgency, otherwise Rebecca would have delegated Lucy.

'If you please, Miss Carlotta, your aunt is not feeling well, and she

will not be able to go to the concert to-night.'

'Not be able to go to the concert!' I repeated mechanically.

'No, miss.'

'I will come downstairs.'

'If I were you, I shouldn't, miss. She's dozing a bit just now.'

'Very well.'

I went on playing. But Chopin, who was the chief factor in my emotional

life; who had taught me nearly all I knew of grace, wit, and tenderness;

who had discovered for me the beauty that lay in everything, in sensuous

exaltation as well as in asceticism, in grief as well as in joy; who had

shown me that each moment of life, no matter what its import, should be

lived intensely and fully; who had carried me with him to the dizziest

heights of which passion is capable; whose music I spiritually

comprehended to a degree which I felt to be extraordinary--Chopin had

almost no significance for me as I played then the most glorious of his

compositions. His message was only a blurred sound in my ears. And

gradually I perceived, as the soldier gradually perceives who has been

hit by a bullet, that I was wounded.

The shock was of such severity that at first I had scarcely noticed it.

What? My aunt not going to the concert? That meant that I could not go.

But it was impossible that I should not go. I could not conceive my

absence from the concert--the concert which I had been anticipating and

preparing for during many weeks. We went out but little, Aunt Constance

and I. An oratorio, an amateur operatic performance, a ballad concert in

the Bursley Town Hall--no more than that; never the Hanbridge Theatre.

And now Diaz was coming down to give a pianoforte recital in the Jubilee

Hall at Hanbridge; Diaz, the darling of European capitals; Diaz, whose

name in seven years had grown legendary; Diaz, the Liszt and the

Rubenstein of my generation, and the greatest interpreter of Chopin since

Chopin died--Diaz! Diaz! No such concert had ever been announced in the

Five Towns, and I was to miss it! Our tickets had been taken, and they

were not to be used! Unthinkable! A photograph of Diaz stood in a silver

frame on the piano; I gazed at it fervently. I said: 'I will hear you

play the Fantasia this night, if I am cut in pieces for it to-morrow!'

Diaz represented for me, then, all that I desired of men. All my dreams

of love and freedom crystallized suddenly into Diaz.

I ran downstairs to the breakfast-room.

'You aren't going to the concert, auntie?' I almost sobbed.

She sat in her rocking-chair, and the gray woollen shawl thrown round her

shoulders mingled with her gray hair. Her long, handsome face was a

little pale, and her dark eyes darker than usual.

'I don't feel well enough,' she replied calmly.

She had not observed the tremor in my voice.

'But what's the matter?' I insisted.

'Nothing in particular, my dear. I do not feel equal to the exertion.'

'But, auntie--then I can't go, either.'

'I'm very sorry, dear,' she said. 'We will go to the next concert.'

'Diaz will never come again!' I exclaimed passionately. 'And the tickets

will be wasted.'

'My dear,' my Aunt Constance repeated, 'I am not equal to it. And you

cannot go alone.'

I was utterly selfish in that moment. I cared nothing whatever for my

aunt's indisposition. Indeed, I secretly accused her of maliciously

choosing that night of all nights for her mysterious fatigue.

'But, auntie,' I said, controlling myself, 'I must go, really. I shall

send Lucy over with a note to Ethel Ryley to ask her to go with me.'

'Do,' said my aunt, after a considerable pause, 'if you are bent

on going.'

I have often thought since that during that pause, while we faced each

other, my aunt had for the first time fully realized how little she knew

of me; she must surely have detected in my glance a strangeness, a

contemptuous indifference, an implacable obstinacy, which she had never

seen in it before. And, indeed, these things were in my glance. Yet I

loved my aunt with a deep affection. I had only one grievance against

her. Although excessively proud, she would always, in conversation with

men, admit her mental and imaginative inferiority, and that of her sex.

She would admit, without being asked, that being a woman she could not

see far, that her feminine brain could not carry an argument to the end,

and that her feminine purpose was too infirm for any great enterprise.

She seemed to find a morbid pleasure in such confessions. As regards

herself, they were accurate enough; the dear creature was a singularly

good judge of her own character. What I objected to was her assumption,

so calm and gratuitous, that her individuality, with all its confessed

limitations, was, of course, superior--stronger, wiser, subtler than

mine. She never allowed me to argue with her; or if she did, she treated

my remarks with a high, amused tolerance. 'Wait till you grow older,' she

would observe, magnificently ignorant of the fact that my soul was

already far older than hers. This attitude naturally made me secretive in

all affairs of the mind, and most affairs of the heart.

We took in the county paper, the _Staffordshire Recorder,_ and the _Rock_

and the _Quiver_. With the help of these organs of thought, which I

detested and despised, I was supposed to be able to keep discreetly and

sufficiently abreast of the times. But I had other aids. I went to the

Girls' High School at Oldcastle till I was nearly eighteen. One of the

mistresses there used to read continually a red book covered with brown

paper. I knew it to be a red book because the paper was gone at the

corners. I admired the woman immensely, and her extraordinary interest in

the book--she would pick it up at every spare moment--excited in me an

ardent curiosity. One day I got a chance to open it, and I read on the

title-page, _Introduction to the Study of Sociology_, by Herbert Spencer.

Turning the pages, I encountered some remarks on Napoleon that astonished

and charmed me. I said: 'Why are not our school histories like this?' The

owner of the book caught me. I asked her to lend it to me, but she would

not, nor would she give me any reason for declining. Soon afterwards I

left school. I persuaded my aunt to let me join the Free Library at the

Wedgwood Institution. But the book was not in the catalogue. (How often,

in exchanging volumes, did I not gaze into the reading-room, where men

read the daily papers and the magazines, without daring to enter!) At

length I audaciously decided to buy the book. I ordered it, not at our

regular stationer's in Oldcastle Street, but at a little shop of the

same kind in Trafalgar Road. In three days it arrived. I called for it,

and took it home secretly in a cardboard envelope-box. I went to bed

early, and I began to read. I read all night, thirteen hours. O book with

the misleading title--for you have nothing to do with sociology, and you

ought to have been called _How to Think Honestly_--my face flushed again

and again as I perused your ugly yellowish pages! Again and again I

exclaimed: 'But this is marvellous!' I had not guessed that anything so

honest, and so courageous, and so simple, and so convincing had ever been

written. I am capable now of suspecting that Spencer was not a supreme

genius; but he taught me intellectual courage; he taught me that nothing

is sacred that will not bear inspection; and I adore his memory. The next

morning after breakfast I fell asleep in a chair. 'My dear!' protested

Aunt Constance. 'Ah,' I thought, 'if you knew, Aunt Constance, if you had

the least suspicion, of the ideas that are surging and shining in my

head, you would go mad--go simply mad!' I did not care much for

deception, but I positively hated clumsy concealment, and the red book

was in the house; at any moment it might be seized. On a shelf of books

in my bedroom was a novel called _The Old Helmet_, probably the silliest

novel in the world. I tore the pages from the binding and burnt them; I

tore the binding from Spencer and burnt it; and I put my treasure in the

covers of _The Old Helmet_. Once Rebecca, a person privileged, took the

thing away to read; but she soon brought it back. She told me she had

always understood that _The Old Helmet_ was more, interesting than that.

Later, I discovered _The Origin of Species_ in the Free Library. It

finished the work of corruption. Spencer had shown me how to think;

Darwin told me what to think. The whole of my upbringing went for naught

thenceforward. I lived a double life. I said nothing to my aunt of the

miracle wrought within me, and she suspected nothing. Strange and

uncanny, is it not, that such miracles can escape the observation of a

loving heart? I loved her as much as ever, perhaps more than ever. Thank

Heaven that love can laugh at reason!

So much for my intellectual inner life. My emotional inner life is less

easy to indicate. I became a woman at fifteen--years, interminable years,

before I left school. I guessed even then, vaguely, that my nature was

extremely emotional and passionate. And I had nothing literary on which

to feed my dreams, save a few novels which I despised, and the Bible and

the plays and poems of Shakespeare. It is wonderful, though, what good I

managed to find in those two use-worn volumes. I knew most of the Song of

Solomon by heart, and many of the sonnets; and I will not mince the fact

that my favourite play was _Measure for Measure_. I was an innocent

virgin, in the restricted sense in which most girls of my class and age

are innocent, but I obtained from these works many a lofty pang of

thrilling pleasure. They illustrated Chopin for me, giving precision and

particularity to his messages. And I was ashamed of myself. Yes; at the

bottom of my heart I was ashamed of myself because my sensuous being

responded to the call of these masterpieces. In my ignorance I thought I

was lapsing from a sane and proper ideal. And then--the second miracle in

my career, which has been full of miracles--I came across a casual

reference, in the _Staffordshire Recorder_, of all places, to the

_Mademoiselle de Maupin_ of Théophile Gautier. Something in the

reference, I no longer remember what, caused me to guess that the book

was a revelation of matters hidden from me. I bought it. With the

assistance of a dictionary, I read it, nightly, in about a week. Except

_Picciola_, it was the first French novel I had ever read. It held me

throughout; it revealed something on nearly every page. But the climax

dazzled and blinded me. It was exquisite, so high and pure, so

startling, so bold, that it made me ill. When I recovered I had fast in

my heart's keeping the new truth that in the body, and the instincts of

the body, there should be no shame, but rather a frank, joyous pride.

From that moment I ceased to be ashamed of anything that I honestly

liked. But I dared not keep the book. The knowledge of its contents would

have killed my aunt. I read it again; I read the last pages several

times, and then I burnt it and breathed freely.

Such was I, as I forced my will on my aunt in the affair of the concert.

And I say that she who had never suspected the existence of the real me,

suspected it then, when we glanced at each other across the

breakfast-room. Upon these apparent trifles life swings, as upon a pivot,

into new directions.

I sat with my aunt while Lucy went with the note. She returned soon with

the reply, and the reply was:

'So sorry I can't accept your kind invitation. I should have liked to go

awfully. But Fred has got the toothache, and I must not leave him.'

The toothache! And my very life, so it seemed to me, hung in the balance.

I did not hesitate one second.

'Hurrah!' I cried. 'She can go. I am to call for her in the cab.'

And I crushed the note cruelly, and threw it in the fire.

'Tell him to call at Ryleys',' I said to Rebecca as she was putting me

and my dress into the cab.

And she told the cabman with that sharp voice of hers, always arrogant

towards inferiors, to call at Ryleys.'

I put my head out of the cab window as soon as we were in

Oldcastle Street.

'Drive straight to Hanbridge,' I ordered.

The thing was done.

II

He was like his photograph, but the photograph had given me only the most

inadequate idea of him. The photograph could not render his extraordinary

fairness, nor the rich gold of his hair, nor the blue of his dazzling

eyes. The first impression was that he was too beautiful for a man, that

he had a woman's beauty, that he had the waxen beauty of a doll; but the

firm, decisive lines of the mouth and chin, the overhanging brows, and

the luxuriance of his amber moustache, spoke more sternly. Gradually one

perceived that beneath the girlish mask, beneath the contours and the

complexion incomparably delicate, there was an individuality intensely

and provocatively male. His body was rather less than tall, and it was

muscular and springy. He walked on to the platform as an unspoilt man

should walk, and he bowed to the applause as if bowing chivalrously to a

woman whom he respected but did not love. Diaz was twenty-six that year;

he had recently returned from a tour round the world; he was filled full

of triumph, renown, and adoration. As I have said, he was already

legendary. He had become so great and so marvellous that those who had

never seen him were in danger of forgetting that he was a living human

being, obliged to eat and drink, and practise scales, and visit his

tailor's. Thus it had happened to me. During the first moments I found

myself thinking, 'This cannot be Diaz. It is not true that at last I see

him. There must be some mistake.' Then he sat down leisurely to the

piano; his gaze ranged across the hall, and I fancied that, for a second,

it met mine. My two seats were in the first row of the stalls, and I

could see every slightest change of his face. So that at length I felt

that Diaz was real, and that he was really there close in front of me, a

seraph and yet very human. He was all alone on the great platform, and

the ebonized piano seemed enormous and formidable before him. And all

around was the careless public--ignorant, unsympathetic, exigent,

impatient, even inimical--two thousand persons who would get value for

their money or know the reason why. The electric light and the inclement

gaze of society rained down cruelly upon that defenceless head. I wanted

to protect it. The tears rose to my eyes, and I stretched out towards

Diaz the hands of my soul. My passionate sympathy must have reached him

like a beneficent influence, of which, despite the perfect

self-possession and self-confidence of his demeanour, it seemed to me

that he had need.

I had risked much that night. I had committed an enormity. No one but a

grown woman who still vividly remembers her girlhood can appreciate my

feelings as I drove from Bursley to Hanbridge in the cab, and as I got

out of the cab in the crowd, and gave up my ticket, and entered the

glittering auditorium of the Jubilee Hall. I was alone, at night, in the

public places, under the eye of the world. And I was guiltily alone.

Every fibre of my body throbbed with the daring and the danger and the

romance of the adventure. The horror of revealing the truth to Aunt

Constance, as I was bound to do--of telling her that I had lied, and that

I had left my maiden's modesty behind in my bedroom, gripped me at

intervals like some appalling and exquisite instrument of torture. And

yet, ere Diaz had touched the piano with his broad white hand, I was

content, I was rewarded, and I was justified.

The programme began with Chopin's first Ballade.

There was an imperative summons, briefly sustained, which developed into

an appeal and an invocation, ascending, falling, and still higher

ascending, till it faded and expired, and then, after a little pause, was

revived; then silence, and two chords, defining and clarifying the

vagueness of the appeal and the invocation. And then, almost before I was

aware of it, there stole forth from under the fingers of Diaz the song of

the soul of man, timid, questioning, plaintive, neither sad nor joyous,

but simply human, seeking what it might find on earth. The song changed

subtly from mood to mood, expressing that which nothing but itself could

express; and presently there was a low and gentle menace, thrice repeated

under the melody of the song, and the reply of the song was a proud cry,

a haughty contempt of these furtive warnings, and a sudden winged leap

into the empyrean towards the Eternal Spirit. And then the melody was

lost in a depth, and the song became turgid and wild and wilder,

hysteric, irresolute, frantically groping, until at last it found its

peace and its salvation. And the treasure was veiled in a mist of

arpeggios, but one by one these were torn away, and there was a hush, a

pause, and a preparation; and the soul of man broke into a new song of

what it had found on earth--the magic of the tenderness of love--an air

so caressing and so sweet, so calmly happy and so mournfully sane, so

bereft of illusions and so naïve, that it seemed to reveal in a few

miraculous phrases the secret intentions of God. It was too beautiful; it

told me too much about myself; it vibrated my nerves to such an

unbearable spasm of pleasure that I might have died had I not willed to

live.... It gave place momentarily to the song of the question and the

search, but only to return, and to return again, with a more thrilling

and glorious assurance. It was drowned in doubt, but it emerged

triumphantly, covered with noble and delicious ornaments, and swimming

strongly on mysterious waves. And finally, with speed and with fire, it

was transformed and caught up into the last ecstasy, the ultimate

passion. The soul swept madly between earth and heaven, fell, rose; and

there was a dreadful halt. Then a loud blast, a distortion of the magic,

an upward rush, another and a louder blast, and a thunderous fall,

followed by two massive and terrifying chords....

Diaz was standing up and bowing to his public. What did they understand?

Did they understand anything? I cannot tell. But I know that they felt.

A shudder of feeling had gone through the hall. It was in vain that

people tried to emancipate themselves from the spell by the violence of

their applause. They could not. We were all together under the

enchantment. Some may have seen clearly, some darkly, but we were equal

before the throne of that mighty enchanter. And the enchanter bowed and

bowed with a grave, sympathetic smile, and then disappeared. I had not

clapped my hands; I had not moved. Only my full eyes had followed him as

he left the platform; and when he returned--because the applause would

not cease--my eyes watched over him as he came back to the centre of the

platform. He stood directly in front of me, smiling more gaily now. And

suddenly our glances met! Yes; I could not be mistaken. They met, and

mine held his for several seconds.... Diaz had looked at me. Diaz had

singled me out from the crowd. I blushed hotly, and I was conscious of a

surpassing joy. My spirit was transfigured. I knew that such a man was

above kings. I knew that the world and everything of loveliness that it

contained was his. I knew that he moved like a beautiful god through the

groves of delight, and that what he did was right, and whom he beckoned

came, and whom he touched was blessed. And my eyes had held his eyes for

a little space.

The enchantment deepened. I had read that the secret of playing Chopin

had died with Chopin; but I felt sure that evening, as I have felt sure

since, that Chopin himself, aristocrat of the soul as he was, would have

received Diaz as an equal, might even have acknowledged in him a

superior. For Diaz had a physique, and he had a mastery, a tyranny, of

the keyboard that Chopin could not have possessed. Diaz had come to the

front in a generation of pianists who had lifted technique to a plane of

which neither Liszt nor Rubinstein dreamed. He had succeeded primarily by

his gigantic and incredible technique. And then, when his technique had

astounded the world, he had invited the world to forget it, as the glass

is forgotten through which is seen beauty. And Diaz's gift was now such

that there appeared to intervene nothing between his conception of the

music and the strings of the piano, so perfected was the mechanism.

Difficulties had ceased to exist.

The performance of some pianists is so wonderful that it seems as if

they were crossing Niagara on a tight-rope, and you tremble lest they

should fall off. It was not so with Diaz. When Diaz played you

experienced the pure emotions caused by the unblurred contemplation of

that beauty which the great masters had created, and which Diaz had

tinted with the rare dyes of his personality. You forgot all but beauty.

The piano was not a piano; it was an Arabian magic beyond physical laws,

and it, too, had a soul.

So Diaz laid upon us the enchantment of Chopin and of himself. Mazurkas,

nocturnes, waltzes, scherzos, polonaises, preludes, he exhibited to us in

groups those manifestations of that supreme spirit--that spirit at once

stern and tender, not more sad than joyous, and always sane, always

perfectly balanced, always preoccupied with beauty. The singular myth of

a Chopin decadent, weary, erratic, mournful, hysterical, at odds with

fate, was completely dissipated; and we perceived instead the grave

artist nourished on Bach and studious in form, and the strong soul that

had dared to look on life as it is, and had found beauty everywhere. Ah!

how the air trembled and glittered with visions! How melody and harmony

filled every corner of the hall with the silver and gold of sound! How

the world was changed out of recognition! How that which had seemed

unreal became real, and that which had seemed real receded to a horizon

remote and fantastic!...

He was playing the fifteenth Prelude in D flat now, and the water was

dropping, dropping ceaselessly on the dead body, and the beautiful calm

song rose serenely in the dream, and then lost itself amid the presaging

chords of some sinister fate, and came again, exquisite and fresh as

ever, and then was interrupted by a high note like a clarion; and while

Diaz held that imperious, compelling note, he turned his face slightly

from the piano and gazed at me. Several times since the first time our

eyes had met, by accident as I thought. But this was a deliberate seeking

on his part. Again I flushed hotly. Again I had the terrible shudder of

joy. I feared for a moment lest all the Five Towns was staring at me,

thus singled out by Diaz; but it was not so: I had the wit to perceive

that no one could remark me as the recipient of that hurried and burning

glance. He had half a dozen bars to play, yet his eyes did not leave

mine, and I would not let mine leave his. He remained moveless while the

last chord expired, and then it seemed to me that his gaze had gone

further, had passed through me into some unknown. The applause startled

him to his feet.

My thought was: 'What can he be thinking of me?... But hundreds of women

must have loved him!'

In the interval an attendant came on to the platform and altered the

position of the piano. Everybody asked: 'What's that for?' For the new

position was quite an unusual one; it brought the tail of the piano

nearer to the audience, and gave a better view of the keyboard to the

occupants of the seats in the orchestra behind the platform. 'It's a

question of the acoustics, that's what it is,' observed a man near me,

and a woman replied: 'Oh, I see!'

When Diaz returned and seated himself to play the Berceuse, I saw that he

could look at me without turning his head. And now, instead of flushing,

I went cold. My spine gave way suddenly. I began to be afraid; but of

what I was afraid I had not the least idea. I fixed my eyes on my

programme as he launched into the Berceuse. Twice I glanced up, without,

however, moving my head, and each time his burning blue eyes met mine.

(But why did I choose moments when the playing of the piece demanded less

than all his attention?) The Berceuse was a favourite. In sentiment it

was simpler than the great pieces that had preceded it. Its excessive

delicacy attracted; the finesse of its embroidery swayed and enraptured

the audience; and the applause at the close was mad, deafening, and

peremptory. But Diaz was notorious as a refuser of encores. It had been

said that he would see a hall wrecked by an angry mob before he would

enlarge his programme. Four times he came forward and acknowledged the

tribute, and four times he went back. At the fifth response he halted

directly in front of me, and in his bold, grave eyes I saw a question. I

saw it, and I would not answer. If he had spoken aloud to me I could not

have more clearly understood. But I would not answer. And then some power

within myself, hitherto unsuspected by me, some natural force, took

possession of me, and I nodded my head.... Diaz went to the piano.

He hesitated, brushing lightly the keys.

'The Prelude in F sharp,' my thought ran. 'If he would play that!'

And instantly he broke into that sweet air, with its fateful hushed

accompaniment--the trifle which Chopin threw off in a moment of his

highest inspiration.

'It is the thirteenth Prelude,' I reflected. I was disturbed,

profoundly troubled.

The next piece was the last, and it was the Fantasia, the masterpiece

of Chopin.

In the Fantasia there speaks the voice of a spirit which has attained all

that humanity may attain: of wisdom, of power, of pride and glory. And

now it is like the roll of an army marching slowly through terrific

defiles; and now it is like the quiet song of royal wanderers meditating

in vast garden landscapes, with mossy masonry and long pools and

cypresses, and a sapphire star shining in the purple sky on the shoulder

of a cypress; and now it is like the cry of a lost traveller, who,

plunging heavily through a virgin forest, comes suddenly upon a green

circular sward, smooth as a carpet, with an antique statue of a beautiful

nude girl in the midst; and now it is like the oratory of richly-gowned

philosophers awaiting death in gorgeous and gloomy palaces; and now it is

like the upward rush of winged things that are determined to achieve,

knowing well the while that the ecstasy of longing is better than the

assuaging of desire. And though the voice of this spirit speaking in the

music disguises itself so variously, it is always the same. For it

cannot, and it would not, hide the strange and rare timbre which

distinguishes it from all others--that quality which springs from a pure

and calm vision, of life. The voice of this spirit says that it has lost

every illusion about life, and that life seems only the more beautiful.

It says that activity is but another form of contemplation, pain but

another form of pleasure, power but another form of weakness, hate but

another form of love, and that it is well these things should be so. It

says there is no end, only a means; and that the highest joy is to

suffer, and the supreme wisdom is to exist. If you will but live, it

cries, that grave but yet passionate voice--if you will but live! Were

there a heaven, and you reached it, you could do no more than live. The

true heaven is here where you live, where you strive and lose, and weep

and laugh. And the true hell is here, where you forget to live, and blind

your eyes to the omnipresent and terrible beauty of existence....

No, no; I cannot--I cannot describe further the experiences of my soul

while Diaz played. When words cease, music has scarcely begun. I know

now--I did not know it then--that Diaz was playing as perhaps he had

never played before. The very air was charged with exquisite emotion,

which went in waves across the hall, changing and blanching faces,

troubling hearts, and moistening eyes.... And then he finished. It was

over. In every trembling breast was a pang of regret that this spell,

this miracle, this divine revolution, could not last into eternity....

He stood bowing, one hand touching the piano. And as the revolution he

had accomplished in us was divine, so was he divine. I felt, and many

another woman in the audience felt, that no reward could be too great for

the beautiful and gifted creature who had entranced us and forced us to

see what alone in life was worth seeing: that the whole world should be

his absolute dominion; that his happiness should be the first concern of

mankind; that if a thousand suffered in order to make him happy for a

moment, it mattered not; that laws were not for him; that if he sinned,

his sin must not be called a sin, and that he must be excused from

remorse and from any manner of woe.

The applauding multitude stood up, and moved slightly towards the exits,

and then stopped, as if ashamed of this readiness to desert the sacred

temple. Diaz came forward three times, and each time the applause

increased to a tempest; but he only smiled--smiled gravely. I could not

see distinctly whether his eyes had sought mine, for mine were full of

tears. No persuasions could induce him to show himself a fourth time, and

at length a middle-aged man appeared and stated that Diaz was extremely

gratified by his reception, but that he was also extremely exhausted and

had left the hall.

We departed, we mortals; and I was among the last to leave the

auditorium. As I left the lights were being extinguished over the

platform, and an attendant was closing the piano. The foyer was crowded

with people waiting to get out. The word passed that it was raining

heavily. I wondered how I should find my cab. I felt very lonely and

unknown; I was overcome with sadness--with a sense of the futility and

frustration of my life. Such is the logic of the soul, and such the force

of reaction. Gradually the foyer emptied.

III

'You think I am happy,' said Diaz, gazing at me with a smile

suddenly grave; 'but I am not. I seek something which I cannot find.

And my playing is only a relief from the fruitless search; only

that. I am forlorn.'

'You!' I exclaimed, and my eyes rested on his, long.

Yes, we had met. Perhaps it had been inevitable since the beginning of

time that we should meet; but it was none the less amazing. Perhaps I had

inwardly known that we should meet; but, none the less, I was astounded

when a coated and muffled figure came up swiftly to me in the emptying

foyer, and said: 'Ah! you are here! I cannot leave without thanking you

for your sympathy. I have never before felt such sympathy while playing.'

It was a golden voice, pitched low, and the words were uttered with a

very slight foreign accent, which gave them piquancy. I could not reply;

something rose in my throat, and the caressing voice continued: 'You are

pale. Do you feel ill? What can I do? Come with me to the artists' room;

my secretary is there.' I put out a hand gropingly, for I could not see

clearly, and I thought I should reel and fall. It touched his shoulder.

He took my arm, and we went; no one had noticed us, and I had not spoken

a word. In the room to which he guided me, through a long and sombre

corridor, there was no sign of a secretary. I drank some water. 'There,

you are better!' he cried. 'Thank you,' I said, but scarcely whispering.

'How fortunate I ventured to come to you just at that moment! You might

have fallen'; and he smiled again. I shook my head. I said: 'It was your

coming--that--that--made me dizzy!' 'I profoundly regret--' he began.

'No, no,' I interrupted him; and in that instant I knew I was about to

say something which society would, justifiably, deem unpardonable in a

girl situated as I was. 'I am so glad you came'; and I smiled, courageous

and encouraging. For once in my life--for the first time in my adult

life--I determined to be my honest self to another. 'Your voice is

exquisitely beautiful,' he murmured. I thrilled.

Of what use to chronicle the steps, now halting, now only too hasty, by

which our intimacy progressed in that gaunt and echoing room? He asked me

no questions as to my identity. He just said that he would like to play

to me in private if that would give me pleasure, and that possibly I

could spare an hour and would go with him.... Afterwards his brougham

would be at my disposal. His tone was the perfection of deferential

courtesy. Once the secretary came in--a young man rather like

himself--and they talked together in a foreign language that was not

French nor German; then the secretary bowed and retired.... We were

alone.... There can be no sort of doubt that unless I was prepared to

flout the wisdom of the ages, I ought to have refused his suggestion. But

is not the wisdom of the ages a medicine for majorities? And, indeed, I

was prepared to flout it, as in our highest and our lowest moments we

often are. Moreover, how many women in my place, confronted by that

divine creature, wooed by that wondrous personality, intoxicated by that

smile and that voice, allured by the appeal of those marvellous hands,

would have found the strength to resist? I did not resist, I yielded; I

accepted. I was already in disgrace with Aunt Constance--as well be

drowned in twelve feet of water as in six!

So we drove rapidly away in the brougham, through the miry,

light-reflecting streets of Hanbridge in the direction of Knype. And the

raindrops ran down the windows of the brougham, and in the cushioned

interior we could see each other darkly. He did his best to be at ease,

and he almost succeeded. My feeling towards him, as regards the external

management, the social guidance, of the affair, was as though we were at

sea in a dangerous storm, and he was on the bridge and I was a mere

passenger, and could take no responsibility. Who knew through what

difficult channels we might not have to steer, and from what lee-shores

we might not have to beat away? I saw that he perceived this. When I

offered him some awkward compliment about his good English, he seized the

chance of a narrative, and told me about his parentage: how his mother

was Scotch, and his father Danish, and how, after his father's death, his

mother had married Emilio Diaz, a Spanish teacher of music in Edinburgh,

and how he had taken, by force of early habit, the name of his

stepfather. The whole world was familiar with these facts, and I was

familiar with them; but their recital served our turn in the brougham,

and, of course, Diaz could add touches which had escaped the

_Staffordshire Recorder_, and perhaps all other papers. He was explaining

to me that his secretary was his stepfather's son by another wife, when

we arrived at the Five Towns Hotel, opposite Knype Railway Station. I

might have foreseen that that would be our destination. I hooded myself

as well as I could, and followed him quickly to the first-floor. I sank

down into a chair nearly breathless in his sitting-room, and he took my

cloak, and then poked the bright fire that was burning. On a small table

were some glasses and a decanter, and a few sandwiches. I surmised that

the secretary had been before us and arranged things, and discreetly

departed. My adventure appeared to me suddenly and over-poweringly in its

full enormity. 'Oh,' I sighed, 'if I were a man like you!' Then it was

that, gazing up at me from the fire, Diaz had said that he was not happy,

that he was forlorn.

'Yes,' he proceeded, sitting down and crossing his legs; 'I am profoundly

dissatisfied. What is my life? Eight or nine months in the year it is a

homeless life of hotels and strange faces and strange pianos. You do not

know how I hate a strange piano. That one'--he pointed to a huge

instrument which had evidently been placed in the room specially for

him--'is not very bad; but I made its acquaintance only yesterday, and

after to-morrow I shall never see it again. I wander across the world,

and everybody I meet looks at me as if I ought to be in a museum, and

bids me make acquaintance with a strange piano.'

'But have you no friends?' I ventured.

'Who can tell?' he replied. 'If I have, I scarcely ever see them.'

'And no home?'

'I have a home on the edge of the forest of Fontainebleau, and I

loathe it.'

'Why do you loathe it?'

'Ah! For what it has witnessed--for what it has witnessed.' He sighed.

'Suppose we discuss something else.'

You must remember my youth, my inexperience, my lack of adroitness in

social intercourse. I talked quietly and slowly, like my aunt, and I know

that I had a tremendous air of sagacity and self-possession; but beneath

that my brain and heart were whirling, bewildered in a delicious,

dazzling haze of novel sensations. It was not I who spoke, but a new

being, excessively perturbed into a consciousness of new powers. I said:

'You say you are friendless, but I wonder how many women are dying for

love of you.'

He started. There was a pause. I felt myself blushing.

'Let me guess at your history,' he said. 'You have lived much alone with

your thoughts, and you have read a great deal of the finest romantic

poetry, and you have been silent, especially with men. You have seen

little of men.'

'But I understand them,' I answered boldly.

'I believe you do,' he admitted; and he laughed. 'So I needn't explain to

you that a thousand women dying of love for one man will not help that

man to happiness, unless he is dying of love for the thousand and first.'

'And have you never loved?'

The words came of themselves out of my mouth.

'I have deceived myself--in my quest of sympathy,' he said.

'Can you be sure that, in your quest of sympathy, you are not deceiving

yourself tonight?'

'Yes,' he cried quickly, 'I can.' And he sprang up and almost ran to the

piano. 'You remember the D flat Prelude?' he said, breaking into the

latter part of the air, and looking at me the while. 'When I came to that

note and caught your gaze'--he struck the B flat and held it--'I knew

that I had found sympathy. I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! Do you

remember?'

'Remember what?'

'The way we looked at each other.'

'Yes,' I breathed, 'I remember.'

'How can I thank you? How can I thank you?'

He seemed to be meditating. His simplicity, his humility, his kindliness

were more than I could bear.

'Please do not speak like that,' I entreated him, pained. 'You are the

greatest artist in the world, and I am nobody--nobody at all. I do not

know why I am here. I cannot imagine what you have seen in me. Everything

is a mystery. All I feel is that I am in your presence, and that I am not

worthy to be. No matter how long I live, I shall never experience again

the joy that I have now. But if you talk about thanking me, I must run

away, because I cannot stand it--and--and--you haven't played for me, and

you said you would.'

He approached me, and bent his head towards mine, and I glanced up

through a mist and saw his eyes and the short, curly auburn locks on

his forehead.

'The most beautiful things, and the most vital things, and the most

lasting things,' he said softly, 'are often mysterious and inexplicable

and sudden. And let me tell you that you do not know how lovely you are.

You do not know the magic of your voice, nor the grace of your gestures.

But time and man will teach you. What shall I play?'

He was very close to me.

'Bach,' I ejaculated, pointing impatiently to the piano.

I fancied that Bach would spread peace abroad in my soul.

He resumed his place at the piano, and touched the keys.

'Another thing that makes me more sure that I am not deceiving myself

to-night,' he said, taking his fingers off the keys, but staring at the

keyboard, 'is that you have not regretted coming here. You have not

called yourself a wicked woman. You have not even accused me of taking

advantage of your innocence.'

And ere I could say a word he had begun the Chromatic Fantasia,

smiling faintly.

And I had hoped for peace from Bach! I had often suspected that deep

passion was concealed almost everywhere within the restraint and the

apparent calm of Bach's music, but the full force of it had not been

shown to me till this glorious night. Diaz' playing was tenfold more

impressive, more effective, more revealing in the hotel parlour than in

the great hall. The Chromatic Fantasia seemed as full of the magnificence

of life as that other Fantasia which he had given an hour or so earlier.

Instead of peace I had the whirlwind; instead of tranquillity a riot;

instead of the poppy an alarming potion. The rendering was masterly to

the extreme of masterliness.

When he had finished I rose and passed to the fireplace in silence; he

did not stir.

'Do you always play like that?' I asked at length.

'No,' he said; 'only when you are there. I have never played the Chopin

Fantasia as I played it to-night. The Chopin was all right; but do not

be under any illusion: what you have just heard is Bach played by a

Chopin player.'

Then he left the piano and went to the small table where the

glasses were.

'You must be in need of refreshment,' he whispered gaily. 'Nothing is

more exhausting than listening to the finest music.'

'It is you who ought to be tired,' I replied; 'after that long concert,

to be playing now.'

'I have the physique of a camel,' he said. 'I am never tired so long as I

am sure of my listeners. I would play for you till breakfast to-morrow.'

The decanter contained a fluid of a pleasant green tint. He poured very

carefully this fluid to the depth of half an inch in one glass and

three-quarters of an inch in another glass. Then he filled both glasses

to the brim with water, accomplishing the feat with infinite pains and

enjoyment, as though it had been part of a ritual.

'There!' he said, offering me in his steady hand the glass which had

received the smaller quantity of the green fluid. 'Taste.'

'But what is it?' I demanded.

'Taste,' he repeated, and he himself tasted.

I obeyed. At the first mouthful I thought the liquid was somewhat

sinister and disagreeable, but immediately afterwards I changed my

opinion, and found it ingratiating, enticing, and stimulating, and yet

not strong.

'Do you like it?' he asked.

I nodded, and drank again.

'It is wonderful,' I answered. 'What do you call it?'

'Men call it absinthe,' he said.

'But--'

I put the glass on the mantelpiece and picked it up again.

'Don't be frightened,' he soothed me. 'I know what you were going to

say. You have always heard that absinthe is the deadliest of all poisons,

that it is the curse of Paris, and that it makes the most terrible of all

drunkards. So it is; so it does. But not as we are drinking it; not as I

invariably drink it.'

'Of course,' I said, proudly confident in him. 'You would not have

offered it to me otherwise.'

'Of course I should not,' he agreed. 'I give you my word that a few drops

of absinthe in a tumbler of water make the most effective and the least

harmful stimulant in the world.'

'I am sure of it,' I said.

'But drink slowly,' he advised me.

I refused the sandwiches. I had no need of them. I felt sufficient unto

myself. I no longer had any apprehension. My body, my brain, and my soul

seemed to be at the highest pitch of efficiency. The fear of being

maladroit departed from me. Ideas--delicate and subtle ideas--welled up

in me one after another; I was bound to give utterance to them. I began

to talk about my idol Chopin, and I explained to Diaz my esoteric

interpretation of the Fantasia. He was sitting down now, but I still

stood by the fire.

'Yes, he said, 'that is very interesting.'

'What does the Fantasia mean to you?' I asked him.

'Nothing,' he said.

'Nothing!'

'Nothing, in the sense you wish to convey. Everything, in another sense.

You can attach any ideas you please to music, but music, if you will

forgive me saying so, rejects them all equally. Art has to do with

emotions, not with ideas, and the great defect of literature is that it

can only express emotions by means of ideas. What makes music the

greatest of all the arts is that it can express emotions without ideas.

Literature can appeal to the soul only through the mind. Music goes

direct. Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but

which the soul can never translate. Therefore all I can say of the

Fantasia is that it moves me profoundly. I _know how_ it moves me, but I

cannot tell you; I cannot even tell myself.'

Vistas of comprehension opened out before me.

'Oh, do go on,' I entreated him. 'Tell me more about music. Do you not

think Chopin the greatest composer that ever lived? You must do, since

you always play him.'

He smiled.

'No,' he said, 'I do not. For me there is no supremacy in art. When

fifty artists have contrived to be supreme, supremacy becomes

impossible. Take a little song by Grieg. It is perfect, it is supreme.

No one could be greater than Grieg was great when he wrote that song.

The whole last act of _The Twilight of the Gods_ is not greater than a

little song of Grieg's.'

'I see,' I murmured humbly. '_The Twilight of the Gods_--that is Wagner,

isn't it?'

'Yes. Don't you know your Wagner?'

'No. I--'

'You don't know _Tristan_?'

He jumped up, excited.

'How could I know it?' I expostulated. 'I have never seen any opera. I

know the marches from _Tannhäuser_ and _Lohengrin_, and "O Star of Eve!"'

'But it is impossible that you don't know _Tristan_!' he exclaimed. 'The

second act of _Tristan_ is the greatest piece of love-music--No, it

isn't.' He laughed. 'I must not contradict myself. But it is

marvellous--marvellous! You know the story?'

'Yes,' I said. 'Play me some of it.'

'I will play the Prelude,' he answered.

I gulped down the remaining drops in my glass and crossed the room to a

chair where I could see his face. And he played the Prelude to the most

passionately voluptuous opera ever written. It was my first real

introduction to Wagner, my first glimpse of that enchanted field. I was

ravished, rapt away.

'Wagner was a great artist in spite of himself,' said Diaz, when he had

finished. 'He assigned definite and precise ideas to all those melodies.

Nothing could be more futile. I shall not label them for you. But perhaps

you can guess the love-motive for yourself.'

'Yes, I can,' I said positively. 'It is this.'

I tried to hum the theme, but my voice refused obedience. So I came to

the piano, and played the theme high up in the treble, while Diaz was

still sitting on the piano-stool. I trembled even to touch the piano in

his presence; but I did it.

'You have guessed right,' he said; and then he asked me in a casual tone:

'Do you ever play pianoforte duets?'

'Often,' I replied unsuspectingly, 'with my aunt. We play the symphonies

of Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert, Haydn, and overtures, and so on.'

'Awfully good fun, isn't it?' he smiled.

'Splendid!' I said.

'I've got _Tristan_ here arranged for pianoforte duet,' he said.

'Tony, my secretary, enjoys playing it. You shall play part of the

second act with me.'

'Me! With you!'

'Certainly.'

'Impossible! I should never dare! How do you know I can play at all?'

'You have just proved it to me,' said he. 'Come; you will not

refuse me this!'

I wanted to leave the vicinity of the piano. I felt that, once out of the

immediate circle of his tremendous physical influence, I might manage to

escape the ordeal which he had suggested. But I could not go away. The

silken nets of his personality had been cast, and I was enmeshed. And if

I was happy, it was with a dreadful happiness.

'But, really, I can't play with you,' I said weakly.

His response was merely to look up at me over his shoulder. His beautiful

face was so close to mine, and it expressed such a naïve and strong

yearning for my active and intimate sympathy, and such divine frankness,

and such perfect kindliness, that I had no more will to resist. I knew I

should suffer horribly in spoiling by my coarse amateurishness the

miraculous finesse of his performance, but I resigned myself to

suffering. I felt towards him as I had felt during the concert: that he

must have his way at no matter what cost, that he had already earned the

infinite gratitude of the entire world--in short, I raised him in my soul

to a god's throne; and I accepted humbly the great, the incredible honour

he did me. And I was right--a thousand times right.

And in the same moment he was like a charming child to me: such is always

in some wise the relation between the creature born to enjoy and the

creature born to suffer.

'I'll try,' I said; 'but it will be appalling.'

I laughed and shook my head.

'We shall see how appalling it will be,' he murmured, as he got the

volume of music.

He fetched a chair for me, and we sat down side by side, he on the stool

and I on the chair.

'I'm afraid my chair is too low,' I said.

'And I'm sure this stool is too high,' he said. 'Suppose we exchange.'

So we both rose to change the positions of the chair and the stool, and

our garments touched and almost our faces, and at that very moment there

was a loud rap at the door.

I darted away from him.

'What's that?' I cried, low in a fit of terror.

'Who's there?' he called quietly; but he did not stir.

We gazed at each other.

The knock was repeated, sharply and firmly.

'Who's there?' Diaz demanded again.

'Go to the door,' I whispered.

He hesitated, and then we heard footsteps receding down the corridor.

Diaz went slowly to the door, opened it wide, slipped out into the

corridor, and looked into the darkness.

'Curious!' he commented tranquilly. 'I see no one.'

He came back into the room and shut the door softly, and seemed thereby

to shut us in, to enclose us against the world in a sweet domesticity of

our own. The fire was burning brightly, the glasses and the decanter on

the small table spoke of cheer, the curtains were drawn, and through a

half-open door behind the piano one had a hint of a mysterious other

room; one could see nothing within it save a large brass knob or ball,

which caught the light of the candle on the piano.

'You were startled,' he said. 'You must have a little more of our

cordial--just a spoonful.'

He poured out for me an infinitesimal quantity, and the same for himself.

I sighed with relief as I drank. My terror left me. But the trifling

incident had given me the clearest perception of what I was doing, and

that did not leave me.

We sat down a second time to the piano.

'You understand,' he explained, staring absently at the double page of

music, 'this is the garden scene. When the curtain goes up it is dark in

the garden, and Isolda is there with her maid Brangaena. The king, her

husband, has just gone off hunting--you will hear the horns dying in the

distance--and Isolda is expecting her lover, Tristan. A torch is burning

in the wall of the castle, and as soon as she gives him the signal by

extinguishing it he comes to her. You will know the exact moment when

they meet. Then there is the love-scene. Oh! when we arrive at that you

will be astounded. You will hear the very heart-beats of the lovers. Are

you ready?'

'Yes.'

We began to play. But it was ridiculous. I knew it would be ridiculous.

I was too dazed, and artistically too intimidated, to read the notes.

The notes danced and pranced before me. All I could see on my page was

the big black letters at the top, 'Zweiter Aufzug.' And furthermore, on

that first page both the theme and the accompaniment were in the bass of

the piano. Diaz had scarcely anything to do. I threw up my hands and

closed my eyes.

'I can't,' I whispered, 'I can't. I would if I could.'

He gently took my hand.

'My dear companion,' he said, 'tell me your name.'

I was surprised. Memories of the Bible, for some inexplicable reason,

flashed through my mind.

'Magdalen,' I replied, and my voice was so deceptively quiet and sincere

that he believed it.

I could see that he was taken aback.

'It is a holy name and a good name,' he said, after a pause. 'Magda, you

are perfectly capable of reading this music with me, and you will read

it, won't you? Let us begin afresh. Leave the accompaniment with me, and

play the theme only. Further on it gets easier.'

And in another moment we were launched on that sea so strange to me. The

influence of Diaz over me was complete. Inspired by his will, I had

resolved intensely to read the music correctly and sympathetically, and

lo! I was succeeding! He turned the page with the incredible rapidity and

dexterity of which only great pianists seem to have the secret, and in

conjunction with my air in the bass he was suddenly, magically, drawing

out from the upper notes the sweetest and most intoxicating melody I had

ever heard. The exceeding beauty of the thing laid hold on me, and I

abandoned myself to it. I felt sure now that, at any rate, I should not

disgrace myself.'

'Unless it was Chopin,' whispered Diaz. 'No one could ever see two things

at once as well as Wagner.'

We surged on through the second page. Again the lightning turn of the

page, and then the hunters' horns were heard departing from the garden of

love, receding, receding, until they subsided into a scarce-heard drone,

out of which rose another air. And as the sound of the horns died away,

so died away all my past and all my solicitudes for the future. I

surrendered utterly and passionately to the spell of the beauty which we

were opening like a long scroll. I had ceased to suffer.

The absinthe and Diaz had conjured a spirit in me which was at once

feverish and calm. I was reading at sight difficult music full of

modulations and of colour, and I was reading it with calm assurance of

heart and brain. Deeper down the fever raged, but so separately that I

might have had two individualities. Enchanted as I was by the rich and

complex concourse of melodies which ascended from the piano and swam

about our heads, this fluctuating tempest of sound was after all only a

background for the emotions to which it gave birth in me. Naturally they

were the emotions of love--the sense of the splendour of love, the

headlong passion of love, the transcendent carelessness of love, the

finality of love. I saw in love the sole and sacred purpose of the

universe, and my heart whispered, with a new import: 'Where love is,

there is God also.'

The fever of the music increased, and with it my fever. We seemed to be

approaching some mighty climax. I thought I might faint with ecstasy,

but I held on, and the climax arrived--a climax which touched the

limits of expression in expressing all that two souls could feel in

coming together.

'Tristan has come into the garden,' I muttered.

And Diaz, turning his face towards me, nodded.

We plunged forward into the love-scene itself--the scene in which the

miracle of love is solemnized and celebrated. I thought that of all

miracles, the miracle which had occurred that night, and was even then

occurring, might be counted among the most wondrous. What occult forces,

what secret influences of soul on soul, what courage on his part, what

sublime immodesty and unworldliness on mine had brought it about! In

what dreadful disaster would it not end! ... I cared not in that

marvellous hectic hour how it would end. I knew I had been blessed beyond

the common lot of women. I knew that I was living more intensely and more

fully than I could have hoped to live. I knew that my experience was a

supreme experience, and that another such could not be contained in my

life.... And Diaz was so close, so at one with me.... A hush descended on

the music, and I found myself playing strange disturbing chords with the

left hand, irregularly repeated, opposing the normal accent of the bar,

and becoming stranger and more disturbing. And Diaz was playing an air

fragmentary and poignant. The lovers were waiting; the very atmosphere of

the garden was drenched with an agonizing and exquisite anticipation. The

whole world stood still, expectant, while the strange chords fought

gently and persistently against the rhythm.

'Hear the beating of their hearts,' Diaz' whisper floated over the

chords.

It was too much. The obsession of his presence, reinforced by the

vibrating of his wistful, sensuous voice, overcame me suddenly. My hands

fell from the keyboard. He looked at me--and with what a glance!

'I can bear no more,' I cried wildly. 'It is too beautiful, too

beautiful!'

And I rushed from the piano, and sat down in an easy-chair, and hid my

face in my hands.

He came to me, and bent over me.

'Magda,' he whispered, 'show me your face.' With his hands he delicately

persuaded my hands away from my face, and forced me to look on him. 'How

dark and splendid you are, Magda!' he said, still holding my hands. 'How

humid and flashing your eyes! And those eyelashes, and that hair--dark,

dark! And that bosom, with its rise and fall! And that low, rich voice,

that is like dark wine! And that dress--dark, and full of mysterious

shadows, like our souls! Magda, we must have known each other in a

previous life. There can be no other explanation. And this moment is the

fulfilment of that other life, which was not aroused. You were to be

mine. You are mine, Magda!'

There is a fatalism in love. I felt it then. I had been called by destiny

to give happiness, perhaps for a lifetime, but perhaps only for a brief

instant, to this noble and glorious creature, on whom the gods had

showered all gifts. Could I shrink back from my fate? And had he not

already given me far more than I could ever return? The conventions of

society seemed then like sand, foolishly raised to imprison the

resistless tide of ocean. Nature, after all, is eternal and unchangeable,

and everywhere the same. The great and solemn fact for me was that we

were together, and he held me while our burning pulses throbbed in

contact. He held me; he clasped me, and, despite my innocence, I knew at

once that those hands were as expert to caress as to make music. I was

proud and glad that he was not clumsy, that he was a master. And at that

point I ceased to have volition....

IV

When I woke up, perplexed at first, but gradually remembering where I

was, and what had occurred to me, the realistic and uncompromising light

of dawn had commenced its pitiless inquiry, and it fell on the brass

knob, which I had noticed a few hours before, from the other room, and

on another brass knob a few feet away. My eyes smarted; I had

disconcerting sensations at the back of my head; my hair was brittle,

and as though charged with a dull electricity; I was conscious of actual

pain, and an incubus, crushing but intangible, lay heavily, like a

physical weight, on my heart. After the crest of the wave the trough--it

must be so; but how profound the instinct which complains! I listened. I

could hear his faint, regular breathing. I raised myself carefully on

one elbow and looked at him. He was as beautiful in sleep as in

consciousness; his lips were slightly parted, his cheek exquisitely

flushed, and nothing could disarrange that short, curly hair. He slept

with the calmness of the natural innocent man, to whom the assuaging of

desires brings only content.

I felt that I must go, and hastily, frantically. I could not face him

when he woke; I should not have known what to say; I should have been

abashed, timid, clumsy, unequal to myself. And, moreover, I had the

egoist's deep need to be alone, to examine my soul, to understand it

intimately and utterly. And, lastly, I wanted to pay the bill of pleasure

at once. I could never tolerate credit; I was like my aunt in that.

Therefore, I must go home and settle the account in some way. I knew not

how; I knew only that the thing must be done. Diaz had nothing to do with

that; it was not his affair, and I should have resented his interference.

Ah! when I was in the bill-paying mood, how hard I could be, how stony,

how blind! And that morning I was like a Malay running amok.

Think not that when I was ready to depart I stopped and stooped to give

him a final tender kiss. I did not even scribble a word of adieu or of

explanation. I stole away on tiptoe, without looking at him. This sounds

brutal, but it is a truth of my life, and I am writing my life--at

least, I am writing those brief hours of my existence during which I

lived. I had always a sort of fierce courage; and as I had proved the

courage of my passion in the night, so I proved the courage of my--not

my remorse, not my compunction, not my regret--but of my intellectual

honesty in the morning. Proud and vain words, perhaps. Who can tell? No

matter what sympathies I alienate, I am bound to say plainly that,

though I am passionate, I am not sentimental. I came to him out of the

void, and I went from him into the void. He found me, and he lost me.

Between the autumn sunset and the autumn sunrise he had learnt to know

me well, but he did not know my name nor my history; he had no clue, no

cord to pull me back.

I passed into the sitting-room, dimly lighted through the drawn curtains,

and there was the score of _Tristan_ open on the piano. Yes; and if I

were the ordinary woman I would add that there also were the ashes in the

cold grate, and so symbolize the bitterness of memory and bring about a

pang. But I have never regretted what is past. The cinders of that fire

were to me cinders of a fire and nothing more.

In the doorway I halted. To go into the corridor was like braving the

blast of the world, and I hesitated. Possibly I hesitated for a very

little thing. Only the women among you will guess it. My dress was dark

and severe. I had a simple, dark cloak. But I had no hat. I had no hat,

and the most important fact in the universe for me then was that I had no

hat. My whole life was changed; my heart and mind were in the throes of a

revolution. I dared not imagine what would happen between my aunt and me;

but this deficiency in my attire distressed me more than all else. At the

other end of the obscure corridor was a chambermaid kneeling down and

washing the linoleum. Ah, maid! Would I not have exchanged fates with

you, then! I walked boldly up to her. She seemed to be surprised, but she

continued to wring out a cloth in her pail as she looked at me.

'What time is it, please?' I asked her.

'Better than half-past six, ma'am,' said she.

She was young and emaciated.

'Have you got a hat you can lend me? Or I'll buy it from you.'

'A hat, ma'am?'

'Yes, a hat,' I repeated impatiently. And I flushed. 'I must go out at

once, and I've--I've no hat And I can't--'

It is extraordinary how in a crisis one's organism surprises one. I had

thought I was calm and full of self-control, but I had almost no command

over my voice.

'I've got a boat-shaped straw, ma'am, if that's any use to you,' said the

girl kindly.

What she surmised or what she knew I could not say. But I have found out

since in my travels, that hotel chambermaids lose their illusions early.

At any rate her tone was kindly.

'Get it me, there's a good girl,' I entreated her.

And when she brought it, I drew out the imitation pearl pins and put them

between my teeth, and jammed the hat on my head and skewered it savagely

with the pins.

'Is that right?'

'It suits you better than it does me, ma'am, I do declare,' she said.

'Oh, ma'am, this is too much--I really couldn't!'

I had given her five shillings.

'Nonsense! I am very much obliged to you,' I whispered hurriedly,

and ran off.

She was a good girl. I hope she has never suffered. And yet I would

not like to think she had died of consumption before she knew what

life meant.

I hastened from the hotel. A man in a blue waistcoat with shining black

sleeves was moving a large cocoa-nut mat in the hall, and the pattern of

the mat was shown in dust on the tiles where the mat had been. He glanced

at me absently as I flitted past; I encountered no other person. The

square between the hotel and the station was bathed in pure

sunshine--such sunshine as reaches the Five Towns only after a rain-storm

has washed the soot out of the air. I felt, for a moment, obscene in that

sunshine; but I had another and a stronger feeling. Although there was

not a soul in the square, I felt as if I was regarding the world and

mankind with different eyes from those of yesterday. Then I knew nothing;

to-day I knew everything--so it seemed to me. It seemed to me that I

understood all sorts of vague, subtle things that I had not understood

before; that I had been blind and now saw; that I had become kinder, more

sympathetic, more human. What these things were that I understood, or

thought I understood, I could not have explained. All I felt was that a

radical change of attitude had occurred in me. 'Poor world!

Poor humanity! My heart melts for you!' Thus spoke my soul, pouring

itself out. The very stone facings of the station and the hotel seemed

somehow to be humanized and to need my compassion.

I walked with eyes downcast into the station. I had determined to take

the train from Knype to Shawport, a distance of three miles, and then to

walk up the hill from Shawport through Oldcastle Street to Bursley. I

hoped that by such a route at such an hour, I should be unlikely to meet

acquaintances, of whom, in any case, I had few. My hopes appeared to be

well founded, for the large booking-hall at the station was thronged with

a multitude entirely strange to me--workmen and workwomen and workgirls

crowded the place. The first-class and second-class booking-windows were

shut, and a long tail of muscular men, pale men, stout women, and thin

women pushed to take tickets at the other window. I was obliged to join

them, and to wait my turn amid the odour of corduroy and shawl, and the

strong odour of humanity; my nostrils were peculiarly sensitive that

morning. Some of the men had herculean arms and necks, and it was these

who wore pieces of string tied round their trousers below the knee,

disclosing the lines of their formidable calves. The women were mostly

pallid and quiet. All carried cans, or satchels, or baskets; here and

there a man swung lightly on his shoulder a huge bag of tools, which I

could scarcely have raised from the ground. Everybody was natural,

direct, and eager; and no one attempted to be genteel or refined; no one

pretended that he did not toil with his hands for dear life. I

anticipated that I should excite curiosity, but I did not. The people had

a preoccupied, hurried air. Only at the window itself, when the

ticket-clerk, having made me repeat my demand, went to a distant part of

his lair to get my ticket, did I detect behind me a wave of impatient and

inimical interest in this drone who caused delay to busy people.

It was the same on the up-platform, the same in the subway, and the same

on the down-platform. I was plunged in a sea of real, raw life; but I

could not mingle with it; I was a bit of manufactured lace on that full

tide of nature. The porters cried in a different tone from what they

employed when the London and Manchester expresses, and the polite trains

generally, were alongside. They cried fraternally, rudely; they were at

one with the passengers. I alone was a stranger.

'These are the folk! These are the basis of society, and the fountain of

_our_ wealth and luxury!' I thought; for I was just beginning, at that

period, to be interested in the disquieting aspects of the social

organism, and my ideas were hot and crude. I was aware of these people on

paper, but now, for the first time, I realized the immense rush and sweep

of their existence, their nearness to Nature, their formidable

directness. They frightened me with their vivid humanity.

I could find no first-class carriage on the train, and I got into a

compartment where there were several girls and one young man. The girls

were evidently employed in the earthenware manufacture. Each had her

dinner-basket. Most of them were extremely neat; one or two wore gloves.

From the young man's soiled white jacket under his black coat, I

gathered that he was an engineer. The train moved out of the station and

left the platform nearly empty. I pictured the train, a long procession

of compartments like ours, full of rough, natural, ungenteel people.

None of my companions spoke; none gave me more than a passing glance. It

was uncanny.

Still, the fundamental, cardinal quality of my adventure remained

prominent in my being, and it gave me countenance among these taciturn,

musing workgirls, who were always at grips with the realities of life.

'Ah,' I thought, 'you little know what I know! I may appear a butterfly,

but I have learnt the secret meaning of existence. I am above you, beyond

you, by my experience, and by my terrible situation, and by the turmoil

in my heart!' And then, quite suddenly, I reflected that they probably

knew all that I knew, that some of them might have forgotten more than I

had ever learnt. I remembered an absorbing correspondence about the

manners of the Five Towns in the columns of the _Staffordshire

Recorder_--a correspondence which had driven Aunt Constance to conceal

the paper after the second week. I guessed that they might smile at the

simplicity of my heart could they see it. Meaning of existence! Why, they

were reared in it! The naturalness of natural people and of natural acts

struck me like a blow, and I withdrew, whipped, into myself. My adventure

grew smaller. But I recalled its ecstasies. I dwelt on the romantic

perfection of Diaz. It seemed to me amazing, incredible, that Diaz, the

glorious and incomparable Diaz, had loved me--_me_! out of all the

ardent, worshipping women that the world contained. I wondered if he had

wakened up, and I felt sorry for him. So far, I had not decided how soon,

if at all, I should communicate with him. My mind was incapable of

reaching past the next few hours--the next hour.

We stopped at a station surrounded by the evidences of that tireless,

unceasing, and tremendous manufacturing industry which distinguishes the

Five Towns, and I was left alone in the compartment. The train rumbled on

through a landscape of fiery furnaces, and burning slag-heaps, and foul

canals reflecting great smoking chimneys, all steeped in the mild

sunshine. Could the toil-worn agents of this never-ending and gigantic

productiveness find time for love? Perhaps they loved quickly and forgot,

like animals. Thoughts such as these lurked sinister and carnal, strange

beasts in the jungle of my poor brain. Then the train arrived at

Shawport, and I was obliged to get out. I say 'obliged,' because I

violently wished not to get out. I wished to travel on in that train to

some impossible place, where things were arranged differently.

The station clock showed only five minutes to seven. I was astounded. It

seemed to me that all the real world had been astir and busy for hours.

And this extraordinary activity went on every morning while Aunt

Constance and I lay in our beds and thought well of ourselves.

I shivered, and walked quickly up the street. I had positively not

noticed that I was cold. I had scarcely left the station before Fred

Ryley appeared in front of me. I saw that his face was swollen. My

heart stopped. Of course, he would tell Ethel.... He passed me

sheepishly without stopping, merely raising his hat, and murmuring the

singular words:

'We're both very, very sorry.'

What in the name of Heaven could they possibly know, he and Ethel? And

what right had he to ...? Did he smile furtively? Fred Ryley had

sometimes a strange smile. I reddened, angry and frightened.

The distance between the station and our house proved horribly short. And

when I arrived in front of the green gates, and put my hand on the latch,

I knew that I had formed no plan whatever. I opened the right-hand gate

and entered the garden. The blinds were still down, and the house looked

so decorous and innocent in its age. My poor aunt! What a night she must

have been through! It was inconceivable that I should tell her what had

happened to me. Indeed, under the windows of that house it seemed

inconceivable that the thing had happened which had happened.

Inconceivable! Grotesque! Monstrous!

But could I lie? Could I rise to the height of some sufficient and

kindly lie?

A hand drew slightly aside the blind of the window over the porch. I

sighed, and went wearily, in my boat-shaped straw, up the gravelled path

to the door.

Rebecca met me at the door. It was so early that she had not yet put on

an apron. She looked tired, as if she had not slept.

'Come in, miss,' she said weakly, holding open the door.

It seemed to me that I did not need this invitation from a servant.

'I suppose you've all been fearfully upset, wondering where I was,' I

began, entering the hall.

My adventure appeared fantastically unreal to me in the presence of this

buxom creature, whom I knew to be incapable of imagining anything one

hundredth part so dreadful.

'No, miss; I wasn't upset on account of you. You're always so sensible

like. You always know what to do. I knew as you must have stopped the

night with friends in Hanbridge on account of the heavy rain, and perhaps

that there silly cabman not turning up, and them tramcars all crowded;

and, of course, you couldn't telegraph.'

This view that I was specially sagacious and equal to emergencies rather

surprised me.

'But auntie?' I demanded, trembling.

'Oh, miss!' cried Rebecca, glancing timidly over her shoulder, 'I want

you to come with me into the dining-room before you go upstairs.'

She snuffled.

In the dining-room I went at once to the window to draw up the blinds.

'Not that, not that!' Rebecca appealed, weeping. 'For pity's sake!' And

she caught my hand.

I then noticed that Lucy was standing in the doorway, also weeping.

Rebecca noticed this too.

'Lucy, you go to your kitchen this minute,' she said sharply, and then

turned to me and began to cry again. 'Miss Peel--how can I tell you?'

'Why do you call me Miss Peel?' I asked her.

But I knew why. The thing flashed over me instantly. My dear aunt was

dead.

'You've got no aunt,' said Rebecca. 'My poor dear! And you at the

concert!'

I dropped my head and my bosom on the bare mahogany table and cried.

Never before, and never since, have I spilt such tears--hot, painful

drops, distilled plenteously from a heart too crushed and torn.

'There, there!' muttered Rebecca. 'I wish I could have told you

different--less cruel; but it wasn't in me to do it.'

'And she's lying upstairs this very moment all cold and stiff,' a wailing

voice broke in.

It was Lucy, who could not keep herself away from us.

'Will you go to your kitchen, my girl!'

Rebecca drove her off. 'And the poor thing's not stiff either. Her poor

body's as soft as if she was only asleep, and doctor says it will be for

a day or two. It's like that when they're took off like that, he says.

Oh, Miss Carlotta--'

'Tell me all about it before I go upstairs,' I said.

I had recovered.

'Your poor aunt went to bed just as soon as you were gone, miss,' said

Rebecca. 'She would have it she was quite well, only tired. I took her up

a cup of cocoa at ten o'clock, and she seemed all right, and then I sends

Lucy to bed, and I sits up in the kitchen to wait for you. Not a sound

from your poor aunt. I must have dropped asleep, miss, in my chair, and I

woke up with a start like, and the kitchen clock was near on one. Thinks

I, perhaps Miss Carlotta's been knocking and ringing all this time and me

not heard, and I rushes to the front door. But of course you weren't

there. The porch was nothing but a pool o' water. I says to myself she's

stopping somewhere, I says. And I felt it was my duty to go and tell your

aunt, whether she was asleep or whether she wasn't asleep.... Well, and

there she was, miss, with her eyes closed, and as soft as a child. I

spoke to her, loud, more than once. "Miss Carlotta a'n't come," I says.

"Miss Carlotta a'n't come, ma'am," I says. She never stirred. Thinks I,

this is queer this is. And I goes up to her and touches her. Chilly! Then

I takes the liberty of pushing back your poor aunt's eyelids, and I could

but see the whites of her eyes; the eyeballs was gone up, and a bit

outwards. Yes; and her poor dear chin was dropped. Thinks I, here's

trouble, and Miss Carlotta at the concert. I runs to our bedroom, and I

tells Lucy to put a cloak on and fetch Dr. Roycroft. "Who for?" she says.

"Never you mind who for!" I says, says I. "You up and quick. But you can

tell the doctor it's missis as is took." And in ten minutes he was here,

miss. But it's only across the garden, like. "Yes," he said, "she's been

dead an hour or more. Failure of the heart's action," he said. "She died

in her sleep," he said. "Thank God she died in her sleep if she was to

die, the pure angel!" I says. I told the doctor as you were away for the

night, miss. And I laid her out, miss, and your poor auntie wasn't my

first, either. I've seen trouble--I've--'

And Rebecca's tears overcame her voice.

'I'll go upstairs with you, miss,' she struggled out.

One thought that flew across my mind was that Doctor Roycroft was very

intimate with the Ryleys, and had doubtless somehow informed them of my

aunt's death. This explained Fred Ryley's strange words and attitude to

me on the way from the station. The young man had been too timid to stop

me. The matter was a trifle, but another idea that struck me was not a

trifle, though I strove to make it so. My aunt had died about midnight,

and it was at midnight that Diaz and I had heard the mysterious knock on

his sitting-room door. At the time I had remarked how it resembled my

aunt's knock. Occasionally, when the servants overslept themselves, Aunt

Constance would go to their rooms in her pale-blue dressing-gown and

knock on their door exactly like that. Could it be that this was one of

those psychical manifestations of which I had read? Had my aunt, in

passing from this existence to the next, paused a moment to warn me of

my terrible danger? My intellect replied that a disembodied soul could

not knock, and that the phenomenon had been due simply to some guest or

servant of the hotel who had mistaken the room, and discovered his error

in time. Nevertheless, the instinctive part of me--that part of us which

refuses to fraternize with reason, and which we call the superstitious

because we cannot explain it--would not let go the spiritualistic

theory, and during all my life has never quite surrendered it to the

attacks of my brain.

There was a long pause.

'No,' I said; 'I will go upstairs alone;' and I went, leaving my cloak

and hat with Rebecca.

Already, to my hypersensitive nostrils, there was a slight odour in the

darkened bedroom. What lay on the bed, straight and long and thin,

resembled almost exactly my aunt as she lived. I forced myself to look on

it. Except that the face was paler than usual, and had a curious

transparent, waxy appearance, and that the cheeks were a little hollowed,

and the lines from the nose to the corners of the mouth somewhat

deepened, there had been no outward change.... And _this_ once was she! I

thought, Where is she, then? Where is the soul? Where is that which loved

me without understanding me? Where is that which I loved? The baffling,

sad enigma of death confronted me in all its terrifying crudity. The

shaft of love and the desolation of death had struck me almost in the

same hour, and before these twin mysteries, supremely equal, I recoiled

and quailed. I had neither faith nor friend. I was solitary, and my soul

also was solitary. The difficulties of Being seemed insoluble. I was not

a moral coward, I was not prone to facile repentances; but as I gazed at

that calm and unsullied mask I realized, whatever I had gained, how much

I had lost. At twenty-one I knew more of the fountains of life than Aunt

Constance at over sixty. Poor aged thing that had walked among men for

interminable years, and never _known_! It seemed impossible, shockingly

against Nature, that my aunt's existence should have been so! I pitied

her profoundly. I felt that essentially she was girlish compared to me.

And yet--and yet--that which she had kept and which I had given away was

precious, too--indefinably and wonderfully precious! The price of

knowledge and of ecstasy seemed heavy to me then. The girl that had gone

with Diaz into that hotel apartment had come out no more. She had expired

there, and her extinction was the price, Oh, innocence! Oh, divine

ignorance! Oh, refusal! None knows your value save her who has bartered

you! And herein is the woman's tragedy.

There in that mausoleum I decided that I must never see Diaz again. He

was fast in my heart, a flashing, glorious treasure, but I must never see

him again. I must devote myself to memory.

On the dressing-table lay a brown-paper parcel which seemed out of place

there. I opened it, and it contained a magnificently-bound copy of _The

Imitation of Christ_. Upon the flyleaf was written: 'To dearest Carlotta

on attaining her majority. With fondest love. C.P.'

It was too much; it was overwhelming. I wept again. Soul so kind and

pure! The sense of my loss, the sense of the simple, proud rectitude of

her life, laid me low.

V

Train journeys have too often been sorrowful for me, so much so that the

conception itself of a train, crawling over the country like a snake, or

flying across it like a winged monster, fills me with melancholy. Trains

loaded with human parcels of sadness and illusion and brief joy,

wandering about, crossing, and occasionally colliding in the murk of

existence; trains warmed and lighted in winter; trains open to catch the

air of your own passage in summer; night-trains that pierce the night

with your yellow, glaring eyes, and waken mysterious villages, and leave

the night behind and run into the dawn as into a station; trains that

carry bread and meats for the human parcels, and pillows and fountains of

fresh water; trains that sweep haughtily and wearily indifferent through

the landscapes and the towns, sufficient unto yourselves, hasty, panting,

formidable, and yet mournful entities: I have understood you in your

arrogance and your pathos.

That little journey from Knype to Shawport had implanted itself painfully

in my memory, as though during it I had peered too close into the face of

life. And now I had undertaken another, and a longer one. Three months

had elapsed--three months of growing misery and despair; three months of

tedious familiarity with lawyers and distant relatives, and all the

exasperating camp-followers of death; three months of secret and strange

fear, waxing daily. And at last, amid the expostulations and the shrugs

of wisdom and age, I had decided to go to London. I had little energy,

and no interest, but I saw that I must go to London; I was driven there

by my secret fear; I dared not delay. And not a soul in the wide waste of

the Five Towns comprehended me, or could have comprehended me had it been

so minded. I might have shut up the house for a time. But no; I would

not. Always I have been sudden, violent, and arbitrary; I have never been

able to tolerate half-measures, or to wait upon occasion. I sold the

house; I sold the furniture. Yes; and I dismissed my faithful Rebecca

and the clinging Lucy, and they departed, God knows where; it was as

though I had sold them into slavery. Again and again, in the final week,

I cut myself to the quick, recklessly, perhaps purposely; I moved in a

sort of terrible languor, deaf to every appeal, pretending to be stony,

and yet tortured by my secret fear, and by a hemorrhage of the heart that

no philosophy could stanch. And I swear that nothing desolated me more

than the strapping and the labelling of my trunks that morning after I

had slept, dreamfully, in the bed that I should never use again--the bed

that, indeed, was even then the property of a furniture dealer. Had I

wept at all, I should have wept as I wrote out the labels for my trunks:

'Miss Peel, passenger to Golden Cross Hotel, London. Euston via Rugby,'

with two thick lines drawn under the 'Euston.' That writing of labels was

the climax. With a desperate effort I tore myself up by the roots, and

all bleeding I left the Five Towns. I have never seen them since. Some

day, when I shall have attained serenity and peace, when the battle has

been fought and lost, I will revisit my youth. I have always loved

passionately the disfigured hills and valleys of the Five Towns. And as I

think of Oldcastle Street, dropping away sleepily and respectably from

the Town Hall of Bursley, with the gold angel holding a gold crown on its

spire, I vibrate with an inexplicable emotion. What is there in Oldcastle

Street to disturb the dust of the soul?

I must tell you here that Diaz had gone to South America on a triumphal

tour of concerts, lest I forget! I read it in the paper.

So I arrived in London on a February day, about one o'clock. And the

hall-porter at the Golden Cross Hotel, and the two pale girls in the

bureau of the hotel, were sympathetic and sweet to me, because I was

young and alone, and in mourning, and because I had great rings round my

eyes. It was a fine day, blue and mild. At half-past three I had nothing

in the world to do. I had come to London without a plan, without a

purpose, with scarcely an introduction; I wished simply to plunge myself

into its solitude, and to be alone with my secret fear. I walked out into

the street, slowly, like one whom ennui has taught to lose no chance of

dissipating time. I neither liked nor disliked London. I had no feelings

towards it save one of perplexity. I thought it noisy, dirty, and

hurried. Its great name roused no thrill in my bosom. On the morrow, I

said, I would seek a lodging, and perhaps write to Ethel Ryley.

Meanwhile I strolled up into Trafalgar Square, and so into Charing Cross

Road. And in Charing Cross Road--it was the curst accident of fate--I saw

the signboard of the celebrated old firm of publishers, Oakley and

Dalbiac. It is my intention to speak of my books as little as possible in

this history. I must, however, explain that six months before my aunt's

death I had already written my first novel, _The Jest_, and sent it to

precisely Oakley and Dalbiac. It was a wild welter of youthful

extravagances, and it aimed to depict London society, of which I knew

nothing whatever, with a flippant and cynical pen. Oakley and Dalbiac had

kept silence for several months, and had then stated, in an extremely

formal epistle, that they thought the book might have some chance of

success, and that they would be prepared to publish it on certain terms,

but that I must not expect, etc. By that time I had lost my original

sublime faith in the exceeding excellence of my story, and I replied that

I preferred to withdraw the book. To this letter I had received no

answer. When I saw the famous sign over a doorway the impulse seized me

to enter and get the manuscript, with the object of rewriting it. Soon, I

reflected, I might not be able to enter; the portals of mankind might be

barred to me for a space.... I saw in a flash of insight that my

salvation lay in work, and in nothing else. I entered, resolutely. A

brougham was waiting at the doors.

After passing along counters furnished with ledgers and clerks, through a

long, lofty room lined with great pigeon-holes containing thousands of

books each wrapped separately in white paper, I was shown into what the

clerk who acted as chamberlain called the office of the principal. This

room, too, was spacious, but so sombre that the electric light was

already burning. The first thing I noticed was that the window gave on a

wall of white tiles. In the middle of the somewhat dingy apartment was a

vast, square table, and at this table sat a pale, tall man, whose youth

astonished me--for the firm of Oakley and Dalbiac was historic.

He did not look up exactly at the instant of my entering, but when he did

look up, when he saw me, he stared for an instant, and then sprang from

his chair as though magically startled into activity. His age was about

thirty, and he had large, dark eyes, and a slight, dark moustache, and

his face generally was interesting; he wore a dark gray suit. I was

nervous, but he was even more nervous; yet in the moment of looking up he

had not seemed nervous. He could not do enough, apparently, to make me

feel at ease, and to show his appreciation of me and my work. He spoke

enthusiastically of _The Jest_, begging me neither to suppress it nor to

alter it. And, without the least suggestion from me, he offered me a

considerable sum of money in advance of royalties. At that time I

scarcely knew what royalties were. But although my ignorance of business

was complete, I guessed that this man was behaving in a manner highly

unusual among publishers. He was also patently contradicting the tenor of

his firm's letter to me. I thanked him, and said I should like, at any

rate, to glance through the manuscript.

'Don't alter it, Miss Peel, I beg,' he said. 'It is "young," I know;

but it ought to be. I remember my wife said--my wife reads many of our

manuscripts--by the way--' He went to a door, opened it, and called

out, 'Mary!'

A tall and slim woman, extremely elegant, appeared in reply to this

appeal. Her hair was gray above the ears, and I judged that she was four

or five years older than the man. She had a kind, thin face, with shining

gray eyes, and she was wearing a hat.

'Mary, this is Miss Peel, the author of _The Jest_--you remember. Miss

Peel, my wife.'

The woman welcomed me with quick, sincere gestures. Her smile was very

pleasant, and yet a sad smile. The husband also had an air of quiet,

restrained, cheerful sadness.

'My wife is frequently here in the afternoon like this,' said the

principal.

'Yes,' she laughed; 'it's quite a family affair, and I'm almost on the

staff. I distinctly remember your manuscript, Miss Peel, and how very

clever and amusing it was.'

Her praise was spontaneous and cordial, but it was a different thing from

the praise of her husband. He obviously noticed the difference.

'I was just saying to Miss Peel--' he began, with increased nervousness.

'Pardon me,' I interrupted. 'But am I speaking to Mr. Oakley or

Mr. Dalbiac?'

'To neither,' said he. 'My name is Ispenlove, and I am the nephew of the

late Mr. Dalbiac. Mr. Oakley died thirty years ago. I have no partner.'

'You expected to see a very old gentleman, no doubt,' Mrs.

Ispenlove remarked.

'Yes,' I smiled.

'People often do. And Frank is so very young. You live in London?'

'No,' I said; 'I have just come up.'

'To stay?'

'To stay.'

'Alone?'

'Yes. My aunt died a few months ago. I am all that is left of my

family.'

Mrs. Ispenlove's eyes filled with tears, and she fingered a gold chain

that hung from her neck.

'But have you got rooms--a house?'

'I am at a hotel for the moment.'

'But you have friends?'

I shook my head. Mr. Ispenlove was glancing rapidly from one to the

other of us.

'My dear young lady!' exclaimed his wife. Then she hesitated, and said:

'Excuse my abruptness, but do let me beg you to come and have tea with us

this afternoon. We live quite near--in Bloomsbury Square. The carriage is

waiting. Frank, you can come?'

'I can come for an hour,' said Mr. Ispenlove.

I wanted very much to decline, but I could not. I could not disappoint

that honest and generous kindliness, with its touch of melancholy. I

could not refuse those shining gray eyes. I saw that my situation and my

youth had lacerated Mrs. Ispenlove's sensitive heart, and that she wished

to give it balm by being humane to me.

We seemed, so rapid was our passage, to be whisked on an Arabian carpet

to a spacious drawing-room, richly furnished, with thick rugs and ample

cushions and countless knicknacks and photographs and delicately-tinted

lampshades. There was a grand piano by Steinway, and on it Mendelssohn's

'Songs without Words.' The fire slumbered in a curious grate that

projected several feet into the room--such a contrivance I had never seen

before. Near it sat Mrs. Ispenlove, entrenched behind a vast copper disc

on a low wicker stand, pouring out tea. Mr. Ispenlove hovered about. He

and his wife called each other 'dearest.' 'Ring the bell for me,

dearest.' 'Yes, dearest.' I felt sure that they had no children. They

were very intimate, very kind, and always gently sad. The atmosphere was

charmingly domestic, even cosy, despite the size of the room--a most

pleasing contrast to the offices which we had just left. Mrs. Ispenlove

told her husband to look after me well, and he devoted himself to me.

'Do you know,' said Mrs. Ispenlove, 'I am gradually recalling the details

of your book, and you are not at all the sort of person that I should

have expected to see.'

'But that poor little book isn't _me_,' I answered. 'I shall never write

another like it. I only--'

'Shall you not?' Mr. Ispenlove interjected. 'I hope you will, though.'

I smiled.

'I only did it to see what I could do. I am going to begin something

quite different.'

'It appears to me,' said Mrs. Ispenlove--'and I must again ask you to

excuse my freedom, but I feel as if I had known you a long time--it

appears to me that what you want immediately is a complete rest.'

'Why do you say that?' I demanded.

'You do not look well. You look exhausted and worn out.'

I blushed as she gazed at me. Could she--? No. Those simple gray eyes

could not imagine evil. Nevertheless, I saw too plainly how foolish I had

been. I, with my secret fear, that was becoming less a fear than a

dreadful certainty, to permit myself to venture into that house! I might

have to fly ignominiously before long, to practise elaborate falsehood,

to disappear.

'Perhaps you are right,' I agreed.

The conversation grew fragmentary, and less and less formal. Mrs.

Ispenlove was the chief talker. I remember she said that she was always

being thrown among clever people, people who could do things, and that

her own inability to do anything at all was getting to be an obsession

with her; and that people like me could have no idea of the tortures of

self-depreciation which she suffered. Her voice was strangely wistful

during this confession. She also spoke--once only, and quite shortly,

but with what naïve enthusiasm!--of the high mission and influence of the

novelist who wrote purely and conscientiously. After this, though my

liking for her was undiminished, I had summed her up. Mr. Ispenlove

offered no commentary on his wife's sentiments. He struck me as being a

reserved man, whose inner life was intense and sufficient to him.

'Ah!' I reflected, as Mrs. Ispenlove, with an almost motherly accent,

urged me to have another cup of tea, 'if you knew me, if you knew me,

what would you say to me? Would your charity be strong enough to overcome

your instincts?' And as I had felt older than my aunt, so I felt older

than Mrs. Ispenlove.

I left, but I had to promise to come again on the morrow, after I had

seen Mr. Ispenlove on business. The publisher took me down to my hotel in

the brougham (and I thought of the drive with Diaz, but the water was not

streaming down the windows), and then he returned to his office.

Without troubling to turn on the light in my bedroom, I sank sighing on

to the bed. The events of the afternoon had roused me from my terrible

lethargy, but now it overcame me again. I tried to think clearly about

the Ispenloves and what the new acquaintance meant for me; but I could

not think clearly. I had not been able to think clearly for two months. I

wished only to die. For a moment I meditated vaguely on suicide, but

suicide seemed to involve an amount of complicated enterprise far beyond

my capacity. It amazed me how I had managed to reach London. I must have

come mechanically, in a heavy dream; for I had no hope, no energy, no

vivacity, no interest. For many weeks my mind had revolved round an awful

possibility, as if hypnotized by it, and that monotonous revolution

seemed alone to constitute my real life. Moreover, I was subject to

recurring nausea, and to disconcerting bodily pains and another symptom.

'This must end!' I said, struggling to my feet.

I summoned the courage of an absolute disgust. I felt that the power

which had triumphed over my dejection and my irresolution and brought me

to London might carry me a little further.

Leaving the hotel, I crossed the Strand. Innumerable omnibuses were

crawling past. I jumped into one at hazard, and the conductor put his arm

behind my back to support me. He was shouting, 'Putney, Putney, Putney!'

in an absent-minded manner: he had assisted me to mount without even

looking at me. I climbed to the top of the omnibus and sat down, and the

omnibus moved off. I knew not where I was going; Putney was nothing but a

name to me.

'Where to, lady?' snapped the conductor, coming upstairs.

'Oh, Putney,' I answered.

A little bell rang and he gave me a ticket. The omnibus was soon full. A

woman with a young child shared my seat. But the population of the roof

was always changing. I alone remained--so it appeared to me. And we moved

interminably forward through the gas-lit and crowded streets, under the

mild night. Occasionally, when we came within the circle of an arc-lamp,

I could see all my fellow-passengers very clearly; then they were nothing

but dark, featureless masses. The horses of the omnibus were changed. A

score of times the conductor came briskly upstairs, but he never looked

at me again. 'I've done with you,' his back seemed to say.

The houses stood up straight and sinister, thousands of houses unendingly

succeeding each other. Some were brilliantly illuminated; some were dark;

and some had one or two windows lighted. The phenomenon of a solitary

window lighted, high up in a house, filled me with the sense of the

tragic romance of London. Why, I cannot tell. But it did. London grew to

be almost unbearably mournful. There were too many people in London.

Suffering was packed too close. One can contemplate a single affliction

with some equanimity, but a million griefs, calamities, frustrations,

elbowing each other--No, no! And in all that multitude of sadnesses I

felt that mine was the worst. My loneliness, my fear, my foolish youth,

my inability to cope with circumstance, my appalling ignorance of the

very things which I ought to know! It was awful. And yet even then, in

that despairing certainty of disaster, I was conscious of the beauty of

life, the beauty of life's exceeding sorrow, and I hugged it to me, like

a red-hot iron.

We crossed a great river by a great bridge--a mysterious and mighty

stream; and then the streets closed in on us again. And at last, after

hours and hours, the omnibus swerved into a dark road and

stopped--stopped finally.

'Putney!' cried the conductor, like fate.

I descended. Far off, at the end of the vista of the dark road, I saw a

red lamp. I knew that in large cities a red lamp indicated a doctor: it

was the one useful thing that I did know.

I approached the red lamp, cautiously, on the other side of the street.

Then some power forced me to cross the street and open a wicket. And in

the red glow of the lamp I saw an ivory button which I pushed. I could

plainly hear the result; it made me tremble. I had a narrow escape of

running away. The door was flung wide, and a middle-aged woman appeared

in the bright light of the interior of the house. She had a kind face. It

is astounding, the number of kind faces one meets.

'Is the doctor in?' I asked.

I would have given a year of my life to hear her say 'No.'

'Yes, miss,' she said. 'Will you step in?'

Events seemed to be moving all too rapidly.

I passed into a narrow hall, with an empty hat-rack, and so into the

surgery. From the back of the house came the sound of a piano--scales,

played very slowly. The surgery was empty. I noticed a card with letters

of the alphabet printed on it in different sizes; and then the piano

ceased, and there was the humming of an air in the passage, and a tall

man in a frock-coat, slippered and spectacled, came into the surgery.

'Good-evening, madam,' he said gruffly. 'Won't you sit down?'

'I--I--I want to ask you--'

He put a chair for me, and I dropped into it.

'There!' he said, after a moment. 'You felt as if you might faint,

didn't you?'

I nodded. The tears came into my eyes.

'I thought so,' he said. 'I'll just give you a draught, if you

don't mind.'

He busied himself behind me, and presently I was drinking something out

of a conical-shaped glass.

My heart beat furiously, but I felt strong.

'I want you to tell me, doctor,' I spoke firmly, 'whether I am about to

become a mother.'

'Ah?' he answered interrogatively, and then he hummed a fragment

of an air.

'I have lost my husband,' I was about to add; but suddenly I scorned such

a weakness and shut my lips.

'Since when--' the doctor began.

* * * * *

'No,' I heard him saying. 'You have been quite mistaken. But I am not

surprised. Such mistakes are frequently made--a kind of auto-suggestion.'

'Mistaken!' I murmured.

I could not prevent the room running round me as I reclined on the sofa;

and I fainted.

But in the night, safely in my room again at the hotel, I wondered

whether that secret fear, now exorcised, had not also been a hope. I

wondered....