His love meantime was the mission and the burden of Alvan, and he was
not ashamed to speak of it and plead for it; and the pleading was not
done troubadourishly, in soft flute-notes, as for easement of tuneful
emotions beseeching sympathy. He was liker to a sturdy beggar demanding
his crust, to support life, of corporations that can be talked into
admitting the rights of man; and he vollied close logical argumentation,
on the basis of the laws, in defence of his most natural hunger, thunder
in his breast and bright new heavenly morning alternating or clashing
while the electric wires and post smote him with evil tidings of
Clotilde, and the success of his efforts caught her back to him. Daily
many times he reached to her and lost her, had her in his arms and his
arms withered with emptiness. The ground he won quaked under him. All
the evidence opposed it, but he was in action, and his reason swore that
he had her fast. He had seen and felt his power over her; his reason
told him by what had been that it must be. Could he doubt? He battled
for his reason. Doubt was an extinguishing wave, and he clung to his
book of the Law, besieging Church and State with it, pointing to texts
of the law which proved her free to choose her lord and husband for
herself, expressing his passionate love by his precise interpretation of
the law: and still with the cold sentience gaining on him, against the
current of his tumultuous blood and his hurried intelligence, of
her being actually what he had named her in moments of playful
vision--slippery, a serpent, a winding hare; with the fear that she
might slip from him, betray, deny him, deliver him to ridicule, after
he had won his way to her over every barrier. During his proudest
exaltations in success, when his eyes were sparkling, there was a wry
twitch inward upon his heart of hearts.
But if she was a hare, he was a hunter, little inclining to the chase
now for mere physical recreation. She had roused the sportsman’s passion
as well as the man’s; he meant to hunt her down, and was not more
scrupulous than our ancient hunters, who hunted for a meal and hunted to
kill, with none of the later hesitations as to circumventing, trapping,
snaring by devices, and the preservation of the animal’s coat spotless.
Let her be lured from her home, or plucked from her home, and if
reluctant, disgraced, that she may be dependent utterly on the man
stooping to pick her up! He was equal to the projecting of a scheme
socially infamous, with such fanatical intensity did the thought of
his losing the woman harass him, and the torrent of his passion burst
restraint to get to her to enfold her--this in the same hour of the
original wild monster’s persistent and sober exposition of the texts of
the law with the voice of a cultivated modern gentleman; and, let it
be said, with a modern gentleman’s design to wed a wife in honour. All
means were to be tried. His eye burned on his prize, mindless of what
she was dragged through, if there was resistance, or whether by the hair
of her head or her skirts, or how she was obtained. His interpretation
of the law was for the powers of earth, and other plans were to
propitiate the powers under the earth, and certain distempered groanings
wrenched from him at intervals he addressed (after they were out of him,
reflectively) to the powers above, so that nothing of him should be lost
which might get aid of anything mundane, infernal, or celestial.
Thus it is when Venus bites a veritable ancient male. She puts her venom
in a magnificent beast, not a pathetic Phaedra. She does it rarely, for
though to be loved by a bitten giant is one of the dreams of woman,
the considerate Mother of Love knows how needful it is to protect the
sentiment of the passion and save them from an exhibition of the fires
of that dragon’s breath. Do they not fly shrieking when they behold it?
Barely are they able to read of it. Men, too, accustomed to minor
doses of the goddess, which moderate, soften, counteract, instead of
inflicting the malady, abhor and have no brotherhood with its turbulent
victim.
It was justly matter for triumph, due to an extraordinary fervour of
pleading upon a plain statement of the case, that Alvan should return
from his foray bringing with him an emissary deputed by General von
Rudiger’s official chief to see that the young lady, so passionately
pursued by the foremost of his time in political genius and oratory,
was not subjected to parental tyranny, but stood free to exercise
her choice. Of the few who would ever have thought of attempting, a
diminished number would have equalled that feat. Alvan was no vain
boaster; he could gain the ears of grave men as well as mobs and women.
The interview with Clotilde was therefore assured to him, and the
distracting telegrams and letters forwarded to him by Tresten during
his absence were consequently stabs already promising to heal. They were
brutal stabs--her packet of his letters and presents on his table made
them bleed afresh, and the odd scrawl of the couple of words on the
paper set him wondering at the imbecile irony of her calling herself
‘The child’ in accompaniment to such an act, for it reminded him of
his epithet for her, while it dealt him a tremendous blow; it seemed
senselessly malign, perhaps flippant, as she could be, he knew. She
could be anything weak and shallow when out of his hands; she had
recently proved it still, in view of the interview, and on the tide of
his labours to come to that wished end, he struck his breast to brave
himself with a good hopeful spirit. ‘Once mine!’ he said.
Moreover, to the better account, Clotilde’s English friend had sent him
the lines addressed to her, in which the writer dwelt on her love of him
with a whimper of the voice of love. That was previous to her perjury by
little, by a day-eighteen hours. How lurid a satire was flung on events
by the proximity of the dates! But the closeness of the time between
this love-crooning and the denying of him pointed to a tyrannous
intervention. One could detect it. Full surely the poor craven was being
tyrannized and tutored to deny him! though she was a puss of the fields
too, as the mounted sportsman was not unwilling to think.
Before visiting his Mentor, Alvan applied for an audience of General von
Rudiger, who granted it at once to a man coming so well armed to claim
the privilege. Tresten walked part of the way to the General’s house
with him, and then turned aside to visit the baroness.
Lucie, Baroness von Crefeldt, was one of those persons who, after a
probationary term in the character of woman, have become men, but of
whom offended man, amazed by the flowering up of that hard rough jaw
from the tender blooming promise of a petticoat, finds it impossible to
imagine they had once on a sweet Spring time the sex’s gentleness and
charm of aspect. Mistress Flanders, breeched and hatted like a man,
pulling at the man’s short pipe and heartily invoking frouzy deities,
committing a whole sackful of unfeminine etcaetera, is an impenetrable
wall to her maiden past; yet was there an opening day when nothing of us
moustached her. She was a clear-faced girl and mother of young
blushes before the years were at their work of transformation upon her
countenance and behind her bosom. The years were rough artists: perhaps
she was combative, and fought them for touching her ungallantly; and
that perhaps was her first manly step. Baroness Lucie was of high birth,
a wife openly maltreated, a woman of breeding, but with a man’s head,
capable of inspiring man-like friendships, and of entertaining them. She
was radically-minded, strongly of the Radical profession of faith, and
a correspondent of revolutionary chiefs; both the trusted adviser and
devoted slave of him whose future glorious career she measured by
his abilities. Rumour blew out a candle and left the wick to smoke
in relation to their former intercourse. The Philistines revenged
themselves on an old aristocratic Radical and a Jew demagogue with the
weapon that scandal hands to virtue. They are virtuous or nothing, and
they must show that they are so when they can; and best do they show it
by publicly dishonouring the friendship of a man and a woman; for to
be in error in malice does not hurt them, but they profoundly feel that
they are fools if they are duped.
She was aware of the recent course of events; she had as she protested,
nothing to accuse herself of, and she could hardly part her lips without
a self-exculpation.
‘It will fall on me!’ she said to Tresten, in her emphatic tone. ‘He
will have his interview with the girl. He will subdue the girl. He will
manacle himself in the chains he makes her wear. She will not miss her
chance! I am the object of her detestation. I am the price paid for
their reconcilement. She will seize her opportunity to vilipend me, and
I shall be condemned by the kind of court-martial which hurries over the
forms of a brial to sign the execution-warrant that makes it feel like
justice. You will see. She cannot forgive me for not pretending to enter
into her enthusiasm. She will make him believe I conspired against her.
Men in love are children with their mistresses--the greatest of them;
their heads are under the woman’s feet. What have I not done to aid him!
At his instance, I went to the archbishop, to implore one of the princes
of the Church for succour. I knelt to an ecclesiastic. I did a ludicrous
and a shameful thing, knowing it in advance to be a barren farce. I
obeyed his wish. The tale will be laughable. I obeyed him. I would
not have it on my conscience that the commission of any deed ennomic,
however unwonted, was refused by me to serve Alvan. You are my witness,
Tresten, that for a young woman of common honesty I was ready to pack
and march. Qualities of mind-mind! They were out of the question. He had
a taste for a wife. If he had hit on a girl commonly honest, she might
not have harmed him--the contrary; cut his talons. What is this girl?
Exactly what one might be sure his appreciation, in woman-flesh, would
lead him to fix on; a daughter of the Philistines, naturally, and
precisely the one of all on earth likely to confound him after marriage
as she has played fast and loose with him before it. He has never
understood women--cannot read them. Could a girl like that keep a
secret? She’s a Cressida--a creature of every camp! Not an idea of the
cause he is vowed to! not a sentiment in harmony with it! She is viler
than any of those Berlin light o’ loves on the eve of Jena. Stable as a
Viennese dancing slut home from Mariazell! This is the girl-transparent
to the whole world! But his heart is on her, and he must have her,
I suppose; and I shall have to bear her impertinences, or sign my
demission and cease to labour for the cause at least in conjunction
with Alvan. And how other wise? He is the life of it, and I am doomed to
uselessness.’
Tresten nodded a protesting assent.
‘Not quite so bad,’ he said, with the encouraging smile which could
persuade a friend to put away bilious visions. ‘Of the two, if you two
are divisible, we could better dispense with him. She’ll slip him, she’s
an eel. I have seen eels twine on a prong of the fork that prods them;
but she’s an actress, a slippery one through and through, with no real
embrace in her, not even a common muscular contraction. Of every camp!
as you say. She was not worth carrying off. I consented to try it to
quiet him. He sets no bounds to his own devotion to friendship, and we
must take pattern by him. It’s a mad love.’
‘A Titan’s love!’ the baroness exclaimed, groaning. ‘The woman!--no
matter how or at what cost! I can admire that primal barbarism of a
great man’s passion, which counts for nothing the stains and accidents
fraught with extinction for it to meaner men. It reads ill, it sounds
badly, but there is grand stuff in it. See the royalty of the man, for
whom no degradation of the woman can be, so long as it brings her to
him! He--that great he--covers all. He burns her to ashes, and takes
the flame--the pure spirit of her--to himself. Were men like him!--they
would have less to pardon. We must, as I have ever said, be morally
on alpine elevations to comprehend Alvan; he is Mont Blanc above his
fellows. Do not ask him to be considerate of her. She has planted him
in a storm, and the bigger the mountain, the more savage, monstrous,
cruel--yes, but she blew up the tourmente! That girl is the author of
his madness. It is the snake’s nature of the girl which distracts him;
she is in his blood. Had she come to me, I would have helped her to cure
him; or had you succeeded in carrying her off, I would have stood by
their union; or were she a different creature, and not the shifty thing
she is, I could desire him to win her. A peasant girl, a workman’s
daughter, a tradesman’s, a professional singer, actress, artist--I would
have given my hand to one of these in good faith, thankful to her! As
it is, I have acted in obedience to his wishes, without idle
remonstrances--I know him too well; and with as much cordiality as I
could put into an evil service. She will drag him down, down, Tresten!’
‘They are not joined yet,’ said the colonel.
‘She has him by the worst half of him. Her correspondence with me--her
letter to excuse her insolence, which she does like a prim chit--throws
a light on the girl she is. She will set him aiming at power to trick
her out in the decorations. She will not keep him to his labours to
consolidate the power. She will pervert the aesthetic in him, through
her hold on his material nature, his vanity, his luxuriousness. She is
one of the young women who begin timidly, and when they see that they
enjoy comparative impunity, grow intrepid in dissipation, and that
palling, they are ravenously ambitious. She will drive him at his mark
before the time is ripe--ruin-him. He is a Titan, not a god, though
god-like he seems in comparison with men. He would be fleshly enough in
any hands. This girl will drain him of all his nobler fire.’
‘She shows mighty little of the inclination,’ said the colonel.
‘To you. But when they come together? I know his voice!’
The colonel protested his doubts of their coming together.
‘Ultimately?’ the baroness asked, and brooded. ‘But she will have to see
him; and then will she resist him? I shall change one view of her if she
does.’
‘She will shirk the interview,’ Tresten remarked. ‘Supposing they meet:
I don’t think much will come of it, unless they meet on a field, and he
has an hour’s grace to catch her up and be off with her. She’s as
calm as the face of a clock, and wags her Yes and No about him just
as unconcernedly as a clock’s pendulum. I’ve spoken to many a sentinel
outpost who wasn’t deader on the subject in monosyllables than
mademoiselle. She has a military erectness, and answers you and looks
you straight at the eyes, perfectly unabashed by your seeing “the girl
she is,” as you say. She looked at me downright defying me to despise
her. Alvan has been tricked by her colour: she’s icy. She has no
passion. She acts up to him when they’re together, and that deceives
him. I doubt her having blood--there’s no heat in it, if she has.’
‘And he cajoled Count Hollinger to send an envoy to see him righted!’
the baroness ejaculated. ‘Hollinger is not a sentimental person, I
assure you, and not likely to have taken a step apparently hostile to
the Rudigers, if he had not been extraordinarily shaken by Alvan. What
character of man is this Dr. Storchel?’
Tresten described Count Hollinger’s envoy, so quaintly deputed to act
the part of legal umpire in a family business, as a mild man of law with
no ideas or interests outside the law; spectacled, nervous, formal,
a stranger to the passions; and the baroness was amused to hear of
Storchel and Alvan’s placid talk together upon themes of law, succeeded
by the little advocate’s bewildered fright at one of Alvan’s gentler
explosions. Tresten sketched it. The baroness realized it, and shut her
lips tight for a laugh of essential humour.