It is not to be supposed that a man of Barker's character would neglect
the signal advantage he had gained in being injured, or at least badly
bruised, while attempting to save Margaret from destruction. That he had
really saved her was a less point in his favour than that he had barked
his shins in so doing. The proverbial relationship between pity and love
is so exceedingly well known that many professional love-makers
systematically begin their campaigns by endeavouring to move the
compassion of the woman they are attacking. Occasionally they find a
woman with whom pity is akin to scorn instead of to love--and then their
policy is a failure.
The dark Countess was no soft-hearted Saxon maiden, any more than she
was a cold-blooded, cut-throat American girl, calculating her romance by
the yard, booking her flirtations by double-entry and marrying at
compound interest, with the head of a railway president and the heart of
an Esquimaux. She was rather one of those women who are ever ready to
sympathise from a naturally generous and noble nature, but who rarely
give their friendship and still more seldom their love. They marry,
sometimes, where there is neither. They marry--ye gods! why do people
marry, and what reasons will they not find for marrying? But such
women, if they are wedded where their heart is not, are generally very
young; far too young to know what they are doing; and though there be
little inclination to the step, it always turns out that they had at
least a respect for the man. Margaret had been married to Count Alexis
because it was in every way such a plausible match, and she was only
eighteen then, poor thing. But Alexis was such an uncommonly good fellow
that she had honestly tried to love him, and had not altogether failed.
At least she had never had any domestic troubles, and when he was shot
at Plevna, in 1876, she shed some very genuine tears and shut herself
away from the world for a long time. But though her sorrow was sincere,
it was not profound, and she knew it from the first, never deceiving
herself with the idea that she could not marry again. She had sustained
many a siege, however, both before her husband's untimely death and
since; and though a stranger to love, she was no novice in love-making.
Indeed few women are; certainly no beautiful women.
Margaret, then, though a pure-hearted and brave lady, was of the world,
understanding the wiles thereof; and so, when Mr. Barker began to come
regularly to see her, and when she noticed how very long the slight
lameness he had incurred from the runaway accident seemed to last, and
when she observed how cunningly he endeavoured to excite her sympathy
towards him, she began to suspect that he meant something more than a
mere diversion for himself. He spoke so feelingly of his lonely position
in the world; to accentuate which, he spoke of his father without any
feeling whatever. He represented himself as so drearily lonely and
friendless in this hard-hearted, thorny world. Quite a little lamb was
Silas, leaving shreds of his pure white wool rent off and clinging to
the briars of his solitary life-journey. He was very patient in his
sufferings, he said, for he so keenly felt that coarser natures could
not suffer as he did; that troubles glided from their backs like water
from the feathers of the draggled but happy goose, whereas on his tender
heart they struck deep like a fiery rain. Was it not Danty who told of
those poor people who were exposed to the molten drizzle? Ah yes! Danty
knew, of course, for he had been a great sufferer. What a beautiful, yet
sad, word is that, "to suffer"! How gentle and lovely to suffer without
complaint! Had the Countess ever thought of it? To suffer silently--and
long--(here Silas cast a love-sick glance out of his small dark
eyes)--with the hope of gaining an object infinitely far removed,
but--(another glance)--infinitely beautiful and worth obtaining. Oh!
Silas would suffer for ever in such a hope! There was nothing Silas
would not do that was saintly that he might gain heaven.
After a time, Margaret, who disliked this kind of talk intensely, began
to look grave, an omen which Barker did not fail to interpret to his
advantage, for it is a step gained when a woman begins to be serious.
Only a man ignorant of Margaret's real character, and incapable of
appreciating it, could have been so deceived in this case. She had felt
strongly that Barker had saved her life, and that he had acted with a
boldness and determination on that occasion which would have merited her
admiration even had it not commanded her gratitude. But she was really
grateful, and, wishing to show it, could devise no better plan than to
receive his visits and to listen politely to his conversation.
One day, late in the afternoon, they were sitting together over a cup of
tea, and Barker was pouring out his experiences, or what he was pleased
to call by that name, for they were not genuine. Not that his own
existence would have been a dull or uninteresting chapter for a rainy
afternoon, for Barker had led a stirring life of its kind. But as it was
necessary to strike the pathetic key, seeing that Claudius had the
heroic symphony to himself, Barker embroidered skilfully a little
picture in which he appeared more sinned against than sinning, inasmuch
as he had been called upon to play the avenging angel. He had succeeded,
he admitted, in accomplishing his object, which in his opinion had been
a justifiable one, but it had left a sore place in his heart, and he had
never quite recovered from the pain it had given him to give so much
pain--wholesome pain indeed, but what of that?--to another.
"It was in New York, some years ago," he said. "A friend of mine, such a
dear good fellow, was very much in love with a reigning beauty, a
Miss--; well, you will guess the name. She threw him over, after a three
months' engagement, in the most heartless manner, and he was so
broken-hearted that he drank himself to death in six months at the club.
He died there one winter's evening under very painful circumstances."
"A noble end," said Margaret, scornfully. "What a proud race we
Americans are!" Barker sighed skilfully and looked reproachfully at
Margaret.
"Poor chap!" he ejaculated, "I saw him die. And that night," continued
Mr. Barker, with a mournful impressiveness, "I determined that the woman
who had caused so much unhappiness should be made to know what
unhappiness is. I made up my mind that she should suffer what my friend
had suffered. I knew her very well,--in fact she was a distant
connection; so I went to her at a ball at the Van Sueindells'. I had
engaged her to dance the German[2], and had sent her some very handsome
roses. I had laid my plan already, and after a little chaff and a few
turns I challenged her to a set flirtation. 'Let us swear,' I said, 'to
be honest, and let us make a bet of a dozen pairs of gloves. If one of
us really falls in love, he or she must acknowledge it and pay the
gloves.' It was agreed, for she was in great spirits that night, and
laughed at the idea that she could ever fall in love with _me_--poor me!
who have so little that is attractive. At first she thought it was only
a joke, but as I began to visit her regularly and to go through all the
formalities of love-making, she became interested. We were soon the talk
of the town, and everybody said we were going to be married. Still the
engagement did not come out, and people waited, open-mouthed, wondering
what next. At last I thought I was safe, and so, the first chance I had
at a party in Newport, I made a dead set at a new beauty just arrived
from the South--I forget where. The other--the one with whom I was
betting--was there, and I watched her. She lost her temper completely,
and turned all sorts of colours. Then I knew I had won, and so I went
back to her and talked to her for the rest of the evening, explaining
that the other young lady was a sister of a very dear friend of mine.
[Footnote 2: American for the _cotillon_.]
"The next day I called on my beauty, and throwing myself at her feet, I
declared myself vanquished. The result was just as I expected. She burst
into tears and put her arms round my neck, and said it was she who
lost, for she really loved me though she had been too proud to
acknowledge it. Then I calmly rose and laughed. 'I do not care for you
in the least,' I said; 'I only said so to make you speak. I have won the
gloves.' She broke down completely, and went abroad a few days
afterwards. And so I avenged my friend."
There was a pause when Barker had finished his tale. He sipped his tea,
and Margaret rose slowly and went to the window.
"Don't you think that is a very good story, Countess?" he asked. "Don't
you think I was quite right?" Still no answer. Margaret rang the bell,
and old Vladimir appeared.
"Mr. Barker's carriage," said she; then, recollecting herself, she
repeated the order in Russian, and swept out of the room without
deigning to look at the astonished young man, standing on the hearthrug
with his tea-cup in his hand. How it is that Vladimir succeeds in
interpreting his mistress's orders to the domestics of the various
countries in which she travels is a mystery not fathomed, for in her
presence he understands only the Slav tongue. But however that may be, a
minute had not elapsed before Mr. Barker was informed by another servant
that his carriage was at the door. He turned pale as he descended the
steps.
You have carried it too far, Mr. Barker. That is not the kind of story
that a lady of Countess Margaret's temper will listen to; for when you
did the thing you have told her--if indeed you ever did it, which is
doubtful--you did a very base and unmanly thing. It may not be very nice
to act as that young lady did to your friend; but then, just think how
very much worse it would have been if she had married him from a sense
of duty, and made him feel it afterwards. Worse? Ay, worse than a
hundred deaths. You are an ass, Barker, with your complicated
calculations, as the Duke has often told you; and now it is a thousand
to one that you have ruined yourself with the Countess. She will never
take your view that it was a justifiable piece of revenge; she will only
see in it a cruel and dastardly deception, practised on a woman whose
only fault was that, not loving, she discovered her mistake in time. A
man should rejoice when a woman draws back from an engagement,
reflecting what his life might have been had she not done so.
But Barker's face was sickly with disappointment as he drove away, and
he could hardly collect himself enough to determine what was best to be
done. However, after a time he came to the conclusion that a letter must
be written of humble apology, accompanied by a few very expensive
flowers, and followed after a week's interval by a visit. She could not
mean to break off all acquaintance with him for so slight a cause. She
would relent and see him again, and then he would put over on the other
tack. He had made a mistake--very naturally, too--because she was always
so reluctant to give her own individual views about anything. A mistake
could be repaired, he thought, without any serious difficulty.
And so the next morning Margaret received some flowers and a note, a
very gentlemanly note, expressive of profound regret that anything he
could have said, and so forth, and so forth. And Margaret, whose strong
temper sometimes made her act hastily, even when acting rightly, said to
herself that she had maltreated the poor little beast, and would see him
if he called again. That was how she expressed it, showing that to some
extent Barker had succeeded in producing a feeling of pity in her
mind--though it was a very different sort of pity from what he would
have wished. Meanwhile Margaret returned to New York, where she saw her
brother-in-law occasionally, and comforted him with the assurance that
when his hundred napoleons were at an end, she would take care of him.
And Nicholas, who was a gentleman, like his dead brother, proud and
fierce, lived economically in a small hotel, and wrote magazine articles
describing the state of his unhappy country.
Then Barker called and was admitted, Miss Skeat being present, and his
face expressed a whole volume of apology, while he talked briskly of
current topics; and so he gradually regained the footing he had lost. At
all events he thought so, not knowing that though Margaret might forgive
she could never forget; and that she was now forewarned and forearmed in
perpetuity against any advance Barker might ever make.
One day the mail brought a large envelope with an English postage stamp,
addressed in a strong, masculine hand, even and regular, and utterly
without adornment, but yet of a strikingly peculiar expression, if a
handwriting may be said to have an expression.
"CUNARD S.S. _Servia, Sept. 15th_.
"My Beloved Lady--Were it not for the possibility of writing to
you, this voyage would be an impossible task to me; and even as it
is, the feeling that what I write must travel away from you for
many days before it travels towards you again makes me half suspect
it is a mockery after all. After these wonderful months of converse
it seems incredible that I should be thus taken out of your hearing
and out of the power of seeing you. That I long for a sight of
your dear face, that I hunger for your touch and for your sweet
voice, I need not tell you or further asseverate. I am constantly
looking curiously at the passengers, vainly thinking that you must
appear among them. The sea without you is not the sea, any more
than heaven would be heaven were you not there.
"I cannot describe to you, my dear lady, how detestable the life on
board is to me. I loathe the people with their inane chatter, and
the idiotic children, and the highly-correct and gentlemanly
captain, all equally. The philistine father, the sea-sick mother,
the highly-cultured daughter, and the pipe-smoking son, are equally
objects of disgust. When I go on deck the little children make a
circle round me, because I am so big, and the sailors will not let
me go on to forecastle under three shillings--which I paid
cheerfully, however, because I can be alone there and think of you,
without being contemplated as an object of wonder by about two
hundred idiots. I have managed to rig a sort of table in my cabin
at last, and here I sit, under the dubious light of the port-hole,
wishing it would blow, or that we might meet an iceberg, or
anything, to scare the people into their dens and leave me a little
open-air solitude.
"It seems so strange to be writing to you. I never wrote anything
but little notes in the old days at Baden, and now I am writing
what promises to be a long letter, for we cannot be in under six
days, and in all that time there is nothing else I can do--nothing
else I would do, if I could. And yet it is so different. Perhaps I
am incoherent, and you will say, different from what? It is
different from what it used to be, before that thrice-blessed
afternoon in the Newport fog.
"The gray mist came down like a curtain, shutting off the past and
marking where the present begins. It seems to me that I never lived
before that moment, and yet those months were happy while they
lasted, so that it sometimes seemed as though no greater happiness
could be possible. How did it all happen, most blessed lady?
"The lazy, good-natured sea, that loves us well, washes up and
glances through my port-hole as I write, as if in answer to my
question. The sea knows how it happened, for he saw us, and bore
us, and heard all the tale; and even in Newport he was there,
hidden under the fog and listening, and he is rejoicing that those
who loved are now lovers. It is not hard to see how it happened.
They all worship you, every human being that comes near you falls
down and acknowledges you to be the queen. For they must. There is
no salvation from that, and it is meet and right that it should be
so. And I came, like the others, to do homage to the great queen,
and you deigned to raise me up and bid me stand beside you.
"You are my first allegiance and my first love. I thank Heaven that
I can say it honestly and truly, without fear of my conscience
pricking. You know too, for I have told you, how my boyhood and
manhood have been passed, and if there is anything you do not know
I will tell you hereafter, for I would always hate to feel that
there was anything about me you did not know--I could not feel it.
But then, say you, he should have told me what he was going to do
abroad. And so I have, dear lady; for though I have not explained
it all to you, I have placed all needful knowledge in safe hands,
where you can obtain it for the asking, if ever the least shadow of
doubt should cross your mind. Only I pray you, as suing a great
boon, not to doubt--that is all, for I would rather you did not
know yet.
"This letter is being written by degrees. I have not written all
this at once, for I find it as hard to express my thoughts to you
on paper as I find it easy by word of mouth. It seems a formal
thing to write, and yet there should be nothing less marred by
formality than such a letter as mine. It is only that the choice is
too great. I have too much to say, and so say nothing. I would ask,
if I were so honoured by Heaven, the tongues of men and of angels,
and all the mighty word-music of sage and prophet, that I might
tell you how I love you, my heart's own. I would ask that for one
hour I might hold in my hand the bâton of heaven's choir. Then
would I lead those celestial musicians through such a grand plain
chant as time has never dreamt of, nor has eternity yet heard it;
so that rank on rank of angels and saints should take up the song,
until the arches of the outer firmament rang again, and the stars
chimed together; and all the untold hierarchy of archangelic voice
and heavenly instrument should cry, as with one soul, the
confession of this heart of mine--'I love.'
"Another day has passed, and I think I have heard in my dreams the
bursts of music that I would fain have wafted to your waking ears.
Verily the lawyers in New York say well, that I am not Claudius.
Claudius was a thing of angles and books, mathematical and earthy,
believing indeed in the greatness of things supernal, but not
having tasted thereof. My beloved, God has given me a new soul to
love you with, so great that it seems as though it would break
through the walls of my heart and cry aloud to you. This new
Claudius is a man of infinite power to rise above earthly things,
above everything that is below you--and what things that are in
earth are not below you, lady mine?
"Again the time has passed, in a dull reluctant fashion, as if he
delighted to torment, like the common bore of society. He lingers
and dawdles through his round of hours as though it joyed him to be
sluggish. It has blown a little, and most of the people are
sea-sick. Thank goodness! I suppose that is a very inhuman
sentiment, but the masses of cheerful humanity, gluttonously
fattening on the ship's fare and the smooth sea, were becoming
intolerable. There is not one person on board who looks as though
he or she had left a human being behind who had any claim to be
regretted. Did any one of these people ever love? I suppose so. I
suppose at one time or another most of them have thought they loved
some one. I will not be uncharitable, for they are receiving their
just punishment. Lovers are never sea-sick, but now a hoarse
chorus, indescribable and hideous, rises from hidden recesses of
the ship. They are not in love, they are sea-sick. May it do them
all possible good!
"Here we are at last. I hasten to finish this rambling letter that
it may catch the steamer, which, I am told, leaves to-day. Nine
days we have been at sea, and the general impression seems to be
that the last part of the passage has been rough. And now I shall
be some weeks in Europe--I cannot tell how long, but I think the
least possible will be three weeks, and the longest six. I shall
know, however, in a fortnight. My beloved, it hurts me to stop
writing--unreasonable animal that I am, for a letter must be
finished in order to be posted. I pray you, sweetheart, write me a
word of comfort and strength in my journeying. Anything sent to
Baring's will reach me; you cannot know what a line from you would
be to me, how I would treasure it as the most sacred of things and
the most precious, until we meet. And so, à bientôt, for we must
never say 'goodbye,' even in jest. I feel as though I were
launching this letter at a venture, as sailors throw a bottle
overboard when they fear they are lost. I have not yet tested the
post-office, and I feel a kind of uncertainty as to whether this
will reach you.
"But they are clamouring at my door, and I must go. Once more, my
own queen, I love you, ever and only and always. May all peace and
rest be with you, and may Heaven keep you from all harm!"
This letter was not signed, for what signature could it possibly need?
Margaret read it, and read it again, wondering--for she had never had
such a letter in her life. The men who had made love to her had never
been privileged to speak plainly, for she would have none of them, and
so they had been obliged to confine themselves to such cunning use of
permissible words and phrases as they could command, together with
copious quotations from more or less erotic poets. Moreover, Claudius
had never been in a position to speak his heart's fill to her until that
last day, when words had played so small a part.
It was a love-letter, at least in part, such as a man might have written
a hundred years ago--not such as men write nowadays, thought Margaret;
certainly not such as Mr. Barker would write--or could. But she was glad
he had written; and written so, for it was like him, who was utterly
unlike any one else. The letter had come in the morning while Clémentine
was dressing her, and she laid it on her writing-desk. But when the
maid was gone, she read it once again, sitting by her window, and when
she had done she unconsciously held it in her hand and rested her cheek
against it. A man kisses a letter received from the woman he loves, but
a woman rarely does. She thinks when he is away that she would hardly
kiss _him_, were he present, much less will she so honour his
handwriting. But when he himself comes the colour of things is changed.
Nevertheless, Margaret put the folded letter in her bosom and wore it
there unseen all through that day; and when Mr. Barker came to offer to
take her to drive she said she would not go, making some libellous
remark about the weather, which was exceeding glad and sunshiny in spite
of her refusal to face it. And Mr. Barker, seeing that he was less
welcome than usual, went away, for he was mortally afraid of annoying
her.
Margaret was debating within herself whether she should answer, and if
so, what she should say. In truth, it was not easy. She felt herself
unable to write in the way he did, had she wished to. Besides, there was
that feminine feeling still lurking in her heart, which said, "Do not
trust him till he comes back." It seemed to her it must be so easy to
write like that--and yet, she had not thought so at the first reading.
But she loved him, not yet as she would some day, but still she loved,
and it was her first love, as it was his.
She had settled herself in the hotel for the present, and to make it
more like home--like her pretty home at Baden--she had ordered a few
plants and growing flowers, very simple and inexpensive, for she felt
herself terribly pinched, although she had not yet begun actually to
feel the restrictions laid on her by her financial troubles. When
Barker was gone, she amused herself with picking off the dried leaves
and brushing away the little cobwebs and spiders that always accumulate
about growing things. In the midst of this occupation she made up her
mind, and rang the bell.
"Vladimir, I am not at home," she said solemnly, and the gray-haired,
gray-whiskered functionary bowed in acknowledgment of the fact, which
was far from evident. When he was gone she sat down to her desk and
wrote to Dr. Claudius. She wrote rapidly in her large hand, and before
long she had covered four pages of notepaper. Then she read it over, and
tore it up. The word "dear" occurred once too often for her taste. Again
the white fingers flew rapidly along the page, but soon she stopped.
"That is too utterly frigid," she said half aloud, with a smile. Then
she tried again.
"DEAR DR. CLAUDIUS--So many thanks for your charming letter, which
I received this morning. Tell me a great deal more, please, and
write _at once_. Tell me everything you do and say and see, for I
want to feel just as though you were here to talk everything over.
"Mr. Barker has been here a good deal lately, and the other day he
told me a story I did not like. But I forgave him, for he seemed so
penitent. Please burn my letters.
"It is very cold and disagreeable, and I really half wish I were in
Europe. Europe is much pleasanter. I have not read a word of
Spencer since you left, but I have thought a great deal about what
you said the last time we did any work together.
"Let me know _positively_ when you are coming back, and let it be
as soon as possible, for I must see you. I am going to see
Salvini, in _Othello_, to-night, with Miss Skeat. He sent me a box,
in memory of a little dinner years ago, and I expect him to call.
He _did_ call, but I could not see him.
"I cannot write any more, for it is dinner-time. Thanks, dear, for
your loving letter. It was sweet of you to post it the same day,
for it caught the steamer.
--In tearing haste, yours, M.
"_P.S._--Answer all my questions, please."
There was an indistinctness about the last word; it might have been
"your," or "yours." The "tearing haste" resolved itself into ringing the
bell to know what time it was, for Margaret had banished the hideous
hotel clock from the room. On finding it was yet early, she sat down in
a deep chair, and warmed her toes at the small wood fire, which was just
enough to be enjoyable and not enough to be hot. It was now the
beginning of October, for Claudius's letter, begun on the 15th of
September, had not been posted until the 21st, and had been a long time
on the way. She wondered when he would get the letter she had just
written. It was not much of a letter, but she remembered the last
paragraph, and thought it was quite affectionate enough. As for
Claudius, when he received it he was as much delighted as though it had
been six times as long and a hundred times more expansive. "Thanks,
dear, for your loving letter,"--that phrase alone acknowledged
everything, accepted everything, and sanctioned everything.
In the evening, as she had said in writing to the Doctor, she went with
Miss Skeat and sat in the front box of the theatre, which the great
actor had placed at her disposal. The play was _Othello_. Mr. Barker had
ascertained that she was going, and had accordingly procured himself a
seat in the front of the orchestra. He endeavoured to catch a look from
Margaret all through the first part of the performance, but she was too
entirely absorbed in the tragedy to notice him. At length, in the
interval before the last act, Mr. Barker took courage, and, leaving his
chair, threaded his way out of the lines of seats to the entrance. Then
he presented himself at the door of the Countess's box.
"May I come in for a little while?" he inquired with an affectation of
doubt and delicacy that was unnatural to him.
"Certainly," said Margaret indifferently, but smiling a little withal.
"I have ventured to bring you some _marrons glacés_," said Barker, when
he was seated, producing at the same time a neat _bonbonnière_ in the
shape of a turban. "I thought they would remind you of Baden. You used
to be very fond of them."
"Thanks," said she, "I am still." And she took one. The curtain rose,
and Barker was obliged to be silent, much against his will. Margaret
immediately became absorbed in the doings on the stage. She had
witnessed that terrible last act twenty times before, but she never
wearied of it. Neither would she have consented to see it acted by any
other than the great Italian. Whatever be the merits of the play, there
can be no question as to its supremacy of horror in the hands of
Salvini. To us of the latter half of this century it appears to stand
alone; it seems as if there could never have been such a scene or such
an actor in the history of the drama. Horrible--yes! beyond all
description, but, being horrible, of a depth of horror unrealised
before. Perhaps no one who has not lived in the East can understand
that such a character as Salvini's _Othello_ is a possible, living
reality. It is certain that American audiences, even while giving their
admiration, withhold their belief. They go to see _Othello_, that they
may shudder luxuriously at the sight of so much suffering; for it is the
moral suffering of the Moor that most impresses an intelligent beholder,
but it is doubtful whether Americans or English, who have not lived in
Southern or Eastern lands, are capable of appreciating that the
character is drawn from the life.
The great criticism to which all modern tragedy, and a great deal of
modern drama, are open is the undue and illegitimate use of horror.
Horror is not terror. They are two entirely distinct affections. A man
hurled from a desperate precipice, in the living act to fall, is
properly an object of terror, sudden and quaking. But the same man,
reduced to a mangled mass of lifeless humanity, broken to pieces, and
ghastly with the gaping of dead wounds--the same man, when his last leap
is over and hope is fled, is an object of horror, and as such would not
in early times have been regarded as a legitimate subject for artistic
representation, either on the stage or in the plastic or pictorial arts.
It may be that in earlier ages, when men were personally familiar with
the horrors of a barbarous ethical system, while at the same time they
had the culture and refinement belonging to a high development of
æsthetic civilisation, the presentation of a great terror immediately
suggested the concomitant horror; and suggested it so vividly that the
visible definition of the result--the bloodshed, the agony, and the
death-rattle--would have produced an impression too dreadful to be
associated with any pleasure to the beholder. There was no curiosity to
behold violent death among a people accustomed to see it often enough in
the course of their lives, and not yet brutalised into a love of blood
for its own sake. The Romans presented an example of the latter state;
they loved horror so well that they demanded real horror and real
victims. And that is the state of the populations of England and America
at the present day. Were it not for the tremendous power of modern law,
there is not the slightest doubt that the mass of Londoners or New
Yorkers would flock to-day to see a gladiatorial show, or to watch a
pack of lions tearing, limb from limb, a dozen unarmed convicts. Not the
"cultured" classes--some of them would be ashamed, and some would really
feel a moral incapacity for witnessing so much pain--but the masses
would go, and would pay handsomely for the sport; and, moreover, if they
once tasted blood they would be strong enough to legislate in favour of
tasting more. It is not to the discredit of the Anglo-Saxon race that it
loves savage sports. The blood is naturally fierce, and has not been
cowed by the tyranny endured by European races. There have been more
free men under England's worst tyrants than under France's most liberal
kings.
But, failing gladiators and wild beasts, the people must have horrors on
the stage, in literature, in art, and, above all, in the daily press.
Shakspere knew that, and Michelangelo, who is the Shakspere of brush and
chisel, knew it also, as those two unrivalled men seem to have known
everything else. And so when Michelangelo painted the _Last Judgment_,
and Shakspere wrote _Othello_ (for instance), they both made use of
horror in a way the Greeks would not have tolerated. Since we no longer
see daily enacted before us scenes of murder, torture, and public
execution, our curiosity makes us desire to see those scenes represented
as accurately as possible. The Greeks, in their tragedies, did their
slaughter behind the scenes, and occasionally the cries of the supposed
victims were heard. But theatre-goers of to-day would feel cheated if
the last act of Othello were left to their imagination. When Salvini
thrusts the crooked knife into his throat, with that ghastly sound of
death that one never forgets, the modern spectator would not understand
what the death-rattle meant, did he not see the action that accompanies
it.
"It is too realistic," said Mr. Barker in his high thin voice when it
was over, and he was helping Margaret with her silken wrappings.
"It is not realistic," said she, "it is real. It may be an unhealthy
excitement, but if we are to have it, it is the most perfect of its
kind."
"It is very horrible," said Miss Skeat; and they drove away.
Margaret would not stay to see the great man after the curtain fell. The
disillusion of such a meeting is too great to be pleasurable. Othello is
dead, and the idea of meeting Othello in the flesh ten minutes later,
smiling and triumphant, is a death-blow to that very reality which
Margaret so much enjoyed. Besides, she wanted to be alone with her own
thoughts, which were not entirely confined to the stage, that night.
Writing to Claudius had brought him vividly into her life again, and she
had caught herself more than once during the evening wondering how her
fair Northern lover would have acted in Othello's place. Whether, when
the furious general takes Iago by the throat in his wrath, the Swede's
grip would have relaxed so easily on one who should dare to whisper a
breath against the Countess Margaret. She so lived in the thought for a
moment that her whole face glowed in the shade of the box, and her dark
eyes shot out fire. Ah me! Margaret, will he come back to stand by your
side and face the world for you? Who knows. Men are deceivers ever, says
the old song.
Home through the long streets, lighted with the pale electric flame that
gives so deathly a tinge to everything that comes within the circling of
its discolour; home to her rooms with the pleasant little fire
smouldering on the hearth, and flowers--Barker's flowers--scenting the
room; home to the cares of Clémentine, to lean back with half-closed
eyes, thinking, while the deft French fingers uncoil and smooth and coil
again the jet-black tresses; home to the luxury of sleep unbroken by ill
ease of body, though visited by the dreams of a far-away lover--dreams
not always hopeful, but ever sweet; home to a hotel! Can a hostelry be
dignified with that great name? Yes. Wherever we are at rest and at
peace, wherever the thought of love or dream of lover visits us,
wherever we look forward to meeting that lover again--that is home. For
since the cold steel-tipped fingers of science have crushed space into a
nut-shell, and since the deep-mouthed capacious present has swallowed
time out of sight, there is no landmark left but love, no hour but the
hour of loving, no home but where our lover is.
The little god who has survived ages of sword-play and centuries of
peace-time, survives also science the leveller, and death the destroyer.
And in the night, when all are asleep, and the chimes are muffled with
the thick darkness, and the wings of the dream-spirits caress the air,
then the little Red Mouse comes out and meditates on all these things,
and wonders how it is that men can think there is any originality in
their lives or persons or doings. The body may have changed a little,
men may have grown stronger and fairer, as some say, or weaker and more
puny, as others would have it, but the soul of man is even as it was
from the beginning.