_Which, in Somewhat Indelicate Eavesdropping Fashion, hovers about a
Trysting-Place, and Scandalously Repeats a Private Conversation_
In the wintry twilight that came hazing softly down upon the city, and
cast its dusky shadow over St. James’s Park, sat Noll on a bench, and
by his side was Betty Modeyne. He sat stooped forward, elbow on knee,
chin in hand, and gazed at the girl’s face lovingly.
“Thou dearest heart!” said he; and she reached out her dainty gloved
hand and took his within her slender fingers.
“Betty,” said he, “you have brought delight to me again--the day and
night are full of song and all the world is grown musical--you paint
the very greys of life with colour. I am glad to be alive--for you feed
my eyes with dreams of you and my senses with the fragrance of you. It
would be enough to be alive, but you have filled me with eagerness, my
bones with strength, my body with will.... I cannot sit idle longer,
nor be content with half-life.... You must marry me, dear heart; and we
will go to Paris and begin living splendidly and a-new.”
“Hush, Noll,” said she, smiling down upon him; and she stroked his
hand. “We are so young, and--I am so glad----”
He laughed for love of her:
“You would not have us grow old in pretty nothingness, thou dearest of
all born things,” he said impatiently--“like the Man of Pallid Ideals
and his little faded poetess, dreaming themselves away in a fragile
world of dreams! My Betty, it cannot be.”
She shook her head provokingly.
He pshawed:
“We do not live by denials alone, you sweet dreamer,” said he, feeding
his eyes upon her eyes--“we are here to live our life--not to shirk
the living.... Our feet are planted on the dear brown earth, and only
so may we raise our heads amongst the stars.... They prate of other
worlds who themselves after all only judge of other worlds by the
glorious life that their dullard eyes so scorn in this.... They hold
out heavens to us! but what trumpet blast of all the sepulchral souls
in heaven shall stir a man like the touch of your dear lips?”
“Sweetheart,” said she--“I did not say I did not love your lips.”
He laughed quietly, kissing her gloved fingers:
“Are not your very hands exquisitely fashioned but to steal away a
man’s heart, my Betty? Why does your white self hold me enthralled
unless it be that I may love you--not the vague image of you?”
Betty laughed happily:
“Well, Noll,” said she--“if you forget me as wholly as you have done
these two years, I can almost bear it!”
“You were becoming obliterated, sweetheart,” said he hoarsely--“yet
you were not leaving me free. Other women’s skirts were rustling in
my ears, but your fragrance came between. Now these others are all
silent--I hear only you. You must set me no dullard task of loving a
vague image of you. I love you, dear heart--and I must love you. I want
nothing more. I will have nothing less.”
He was silent for awhile; and she held his fingers lovingly.
He roused:
“They speak gravely of the vague loves of gods and angels; but what
is all their thin love to the love of a man for a woman? What do the
unbodied gods know that is half so sweet as the love of a woman for a
child?”
Betty smiled:
“Noll,” said she--“you are wasting argument upon me--I love you.”
He raised her gloved hand to his lips and kissed the warm fingers:
“I have only drifted--aimlessly,” he said. “But I am done with this
monk’s life. This day three weeks you come with me to Paris, mated to
me. And I will go through my apprenticeship to art and letters and win
a wage at the same time.”
“But--Noll! you must not throw away a certainty--you have an
allowance----”
The young fellow’s face darkened:
“I discovered from my father, only yesterday, what was the price of
Wyntwarde’s allowance to me--and I have written to my cousin that he
may keep his money--I go my own way.... He is a man that stands hotly
enough on the nobility of his blood; I asked him what was the benefit
to me of that blood if it bound me to menial practices. I told him I
would be no paid accomplice of his, or any other man’s--that I will pay
him back his services to me before I count myself a free man----”
“But, Noll----”
“I know what you are going to ask, Betty. No; my father and I did not
part on the best of terms. I did not think that my father would have
sold my freedom.”
Betty sighed.
Noll heard the sigh, and came out of his brooding fit.
He took her hand:
“Nay, Betty,” said he--“we must not fill this dear trysting-place with
glum ghosts. I love you, sweetheart--and I have no love for such as
would rob me of you.”
“But, Noll”--the tears came brimming to her eyes--“I do not want my
love to be a pain to all these others.”
“You have done nothing to give them pain, dear heart,” said he. “They
have brought their own pain.... Why did my father sell me? It is not
you that come between us, but the shabby husk of him.... The last
generation cannot wholly understand. Each new brood must live its own
experience. Why should he put the brutalities between you and me? He
is not your lover, nor can his choice of loves be mine.... There are
limits to obedience. They have nearly starved me, body and soul--they
have, by their folly, even turned my hungry eyes to the poor women
of the streets. And for so poor a reason.... But”--he looked at her
gladly--“you have won me back myself, dear heart--the world is very
sweet to me this day.”
She bent forward and put her dainty hand upon his cheek:
“I love you, Noll--but I wish we had not to steal our meetings.”
“It is not your fault, Betty--nor mine. They force us to these secret
ways.... I was glad to spend my boyhood openly by your side--I loved
you, not knowing it. And they must needs break into our pleasant garden
and put us apart--and set us brooding on the very glory they would keep
us from. And now what was a pleasant glamour, by their starving of
it, has burnt into flaming passion. I am no longer content to see you
beautiful by my side; I must kiss you. I love you, Betty--the rest is
nothing. We’ll leave the reasons and the excusings to the calculating
gods.”
He took her hand, and pressed the fingers between his own.
And she laughed happily:
“The disreputable part of it all is that I love you for it, Noll,” she
said.
He arose, and gave her his hand:
“Come, Betty, I fear you may get chilled,” he said; “you see”--he
smiled--“I can even set love’s egotism aside, when yours is the gain,
and deny myself the sweetest moments----”
She gave him her hand and arose; and they walked into the twilit city
together.
That night, by the candle-light in his narrow lodging, Noll wrote a
letter to Paris, whereby Horace was urged to bestir himself and find
rooms for a youth and his bride.