"And how are you, old chap? I am delighted to see you."
"I'm equally glad to see you. You have made alterations in the place
... I came down from London with a lot of Johnnies and tarts--Kitty
Carew, Laura Stanley and her sister. I got Dicky the driver to turn
in here. You were playing the _Dies Iræ_. I never was more impressed
in my life. You should have seen the coach beneath the great window
... St. George overcoming the Johnnies ... the tumult of the organ ...
and I couldn't stand singing 'Two Lovely Black Eyes.' I sickened of
them--the whole thing--and I felt I must see you."
"And are they outside?"
"No; they have gone off."
Relieved of fear of intrusion, John laughed loudly, and commented
humorously on the spectacle of the Brighton coach filled with
revellers drawn up beneath his window. Then, to discuss the
window--the quality of the glass--he turned out the lamps; the hall
filled with the legend, and their hearts full of it, and delighting
in the sensation of each other, they walked up and down the echoing
hall. John remembered a certain fugue by Bach, and motioning to the
page to blow, he seated himself at the key-board. The celestial
shield and crest still remained in little colour. Mike saw John's
hands moving over the key-board, and his soul went out in worship of
that soul, divided from the world's pleasure, self-sufficing, alone;
seeking God only in his home of organ fugue and legended pane. He
understood the nobleness and purity which was now about him--it
seemed impossible to him to return to Kitty.
Swift and complete reaction had come upon him, and choked with the
moral sulphur of the last twenty-four hours, he craved the breath of
purity. He must talk of Plato's _Republic_, of Wagner's operas, of
Schopenhauer; even Lily was not now so imperative as these; and next
day, after lunch, when the question of his departure was alluded to,
Mike felt it was impossible to leave John; but persecuted with
scruples of disloyalty to Kitty, he resisted his friend's invitation
to stay. He urged he had no clothes. John offered to send the
coachman into Brighton for what he wanted.
"But perhaps you have no money," John said, inadvertently, and a look
of apprehension passed into his face.
"Oh, I have plenty of money--'tisn't that. I haven't told you that a
friend of mine, a lady, has left me nearly five thousand a year. I
don't think you ever saw her--Lady Seeley."
John burst into uncontrollable laughter. "That is the best thing I
ever heard in all my life. I don't think I ever heard anything that
amused me more. The grotesqueness of the whole thing." Seeing that
Mike was annoyed he hastened to explain his mirth. "The
inexplicableness of human action always amuses me; the inexplicable
is romance, at least that is the only way I can understand romance.
When you reduce life to a logical sequence you destroy all poetry,
and, I think, all reality. We do things constantly, and no one can
say why we do them. Frederick the Great coming in, after reviewing
his troops, to play the flute, that to me is intensely romantic. A
lady, whom you probably treated exceedingly badly, leaving you her
property, that too is, to me."
Admonished by his conscience, John's hilarity clouded into a sort of
semi-humorous gravity, and he advised Mike on the necessity of
reforming his life.
"I am very sorry, for there is no one whose society is as attractive
to me as yours; there is no one in whom I find so many of my ideas,
and yet there is no one from whom I am so widely separated; at times
you are sublime, and then you turn round and roll in the nastiest
dirt you can find."
Mike loved a lecture from John, and he exerted himself to talk.
Looking at each other in admiration, they regretted the other's
weaknesses. Mike deplored John's conscience, which had forced him to
burn his poems; John deplored Mike's unsteady mind, which veered and
yielded to every passion. And in the hall they talked of the great
musician and the great king, or John played the beautiful hymns of
the Russian Church, in whose pathetic charm he declared Chopin had
found his inspiration; they spoke of the _Grail_ and the _Romance of
the Swan_, or, wandering into the library, they read aloud the
ever-flowering eloquence of De Quincey, the marmoreal loveliness of
Landor, the nurselike tenderness of Tennyson.
Through all these æstheticisms Lily Young shone, her light waxing to
fulness day by day. Mike had written to Frank, beseeching him to
forward any letters that might arrive. He expected an answer from
Lily within the week, and not until its close did he begin to grow
fearful. Then rapidly his fear increased and unable to bear with so
much desire in the presence of John Norton, he rushed to London, and
thence to Marlow. He railed against his own weakness in going to
Marlow, for if a letter had arrived it would have been forwarded to
him.
"Why deceive myself with false hopes? If the letter had miscarried it
would have been returned through the post-office. I wrote my address
plain enough." Then he railed against Lily. "The little vixen! She
will show that letter; she will pass it round; perhaps at this moment
she is laughing at me! What a fool I was to write it! However, all's
well that ends well, and I am not going to be married--I have escaped
after all."
The train jogged like his thoughts, and the landscape fled in
fleeting visions like his dreams. He laid his face in his hands, and
could not disguise the truth that he desired her above all things,
for she was the sweetest he had seen.
"There are," he said, talking to Frank and Lizzie, "two kinds of
love--the first is a strictly personal appetite, which merely seeks
its own assuagement; the second draws you out of yourself, and is far
more terrible. I have found both these loves, but in different
women."
"Did no woman ever inspire both loves in you?" said Lizzie.
"I thought one woman had."
"Oh, tell us about her."
Mike changed the conversation, and he talked of the newspaper until
it was time to go to the station. He was now certain that Lily had
rejected him. His grief soaked through him like a wet, dreary day.
Sometimes, indeed, he seemed to brighten, but there is often a deeper
sadness in a smile than in a flood of tears, and he was more than
ever sad when he thought of the life he had desired, and had lost;
which he had seen almost within his reach, and which had now
disappeared for ever. He had thought of this life as a green isle,
where there were flowers and a shrine. Isle, flowers, and shrine had
for ever vanished, and nothing remained but the round monotony of the
desert ocean. Then throwing off his grief with a laugh, he eagerly
anticipated the impressions of the visit he meditated to Belthorpe
Park, and his soul went out to meet this new adventure. He thought of
the embarrassment of the servants receiving their new master; of the
attitude of the country people towards him; and deciding that he had
better arrive before dinner, just as if he were a visitor, he sent a
telegram saying that the groom was to meet him at the station, and
that dinner was to be prepared.
Lady Seeley's solicitors had told him that according to her
ladyship's will, Belthorpe was to be kept up exactly as it had been
in her life-time, and the servants had received notice, that in
pursuance of her ladyship's expressed wish, Mr. Fletcher would make
no changes, and that they were free to remain on if they thought
proper. Mike approved of this arrangement--it saved him from a task
of finding new servants, a task which he would have bungled sadly,
and which he would have had to attempt, for he had decided to enjoy
all the pleasures of a country place, and to act the country
gentleman until he wearied of the part. Life is but a farce, and the
more different parts you play in that farce the more you enjoy. Here
was a new farce--he the Bohemian, going down to an old ancestral home
to play the part of the Squire of the parish. It could not but prove
rich in amusing situations, and he was determined to play it. What a
sell it would be for Lily, for perhaps she had refused him because
she thought he was poor. Contemptuous thoughts about women rose in
his mind, but they died in thronging sensations of vanity--he, at
least, had not found women mercenary. Lily was the first! Then
putting thoughts of her utterly aside, he surrendered himself to the
happy consideration of his own good fortune. "A new farce! Yes; that
was the way to look upon it. I wonder what the servants will think! I
wonder what they'll think of me! ... Harrison, the butler, was with
her in Green Street. Her maid, Fairfield, was with her when I saw her
last--nearly three years ago. Fairfield knew I was her lover, and she
has told the others. But what does it matter? I don't care a damn
what they think. Besides, servants are far more jealous of our honour
than we are ourselves; they'll trump up some story about cousinship,
or that I had saved her ladyship's life--not a bad notion that last;
I had better stick to it myself."
As he sought a plausible tale, his thoughts detached themselves, and
it struck him that the gentleman sitting opposite was his next-door
neighbour. He imagined his visit; the invitation to dine; the
inevitable daughters in the drawing-room. How would he be received by
the county folks?
"That depends," he thought, "entirely on the number of unmarried
girls there are in the neighbourhood. The morals and manners of an
English county are determined by its female population. If the number
of females is large, manners are familiar, and morals are lax; if the
number is small, manners are reserved, and morals severe."
He was in a carriage with two unmistakably county squires, and their
conversation--certain references to a meet of the hounds and a local
bazaar--left no doubt that they were his neighbours. Indeed, Lady
Seeley was once alluded to, and Mike was agitated with violent
desires to introduce himself as the owner of Belthorpe Park. Several
times he opened his lips, but their talk suddenly turned into matters
so foreign that he abandoned the notion of revealing his identity,
and five minutes after he congratulated himself he had not done so.
The next station was Wantage Street; and as he looked to see that the
guard had put out his portmanteau, a smart footman approached, and
touching his cockaded hat said, "Mr. Fletcher." Mike thrilled with
pride. His servant--his first servant.
"I've brought the dog-cart, sir; I thought it would be the quickest;
it will take us a good hour, the roads are very heavy, sir."
Mike noticed the coronet worked in red upon the yellow horse-cloth,
for the lamps cast a bright glow over the mare's quarters; and
wishing to exhibit himself in all his new fortune before his
fellow-passengers, who were getting into a humbler conveyance, he
took the reins from the groom; and when he turned into the wrong
street, he cursed under his breath, fancying all had noticed his
misadventure. When they were clear of the town, touching the mare
with the whip he said--
"Not a bad animal, this."
"Beautiful trotter, sir. Her ladyship bought her only last spring;
gave seventy guineas for her."
After a slight pause, Mike said, "Very sad, her ladyship's death, and
quite unexpected, I suppose. She wasn't ill above a couple of days."
"Not what you might call ill, sir; but her ladyship had been ailing
for a long time past. The doctors ordered her abroad last winter,
sir, but I don't think it did her much good. She came back looking
very poorly."
"Now tell me which is the way? do I turn to the right or left?"
"To the right, sir."
"How far are we from Belthorpe Park now?"
"About three miles, sir."
"You were saying that her ladyship looked very poorly for some time
before she died. Tell me how she looked. What do you think was the
matter?"
"Well, sir, her ladyship seemed very much depressed. I heard Miss
Fairfield, her ladyship's maid, say that she used to find her
ladyship constantly in tears; her nerves seemed to have given way."
"I suppose I broke her heart," thought Mike; "but I'm not to blame; I
couldn't go on loving any woman for ever, not if she were Venus
herself." And questioning the groom regarding the servants then at
Belthorpe, he learnt with certain satisfaction that Fairfield had
left immediately after her ladyship's death. The groom had never
heard of Harrison (he had only been a year and a half in her
ladyship's service).
"This is Belthorpe Park, sir--these are the lodge gates."
Mike was disappointed in the lodge. The park he could not
distinguish. Mist hung like a white fleece. There were patches of
ferns; hawthorns loomed suddenly into sight; high trees raised their
bare branches to the brilliancy of the moon.
"Not half bad," thought Mike, "quite a gentleman's place."
"Rather rough land in parts--plenty of rabbits," he remarked to the
groom; and he won the man's sympathies by various questions
concerning the best method of getting hunters into condition. The
rooks talked gently in the branches of some elms, around which the
drive turned through rough undulating ground. Plantations became
numerous; tall, spire-like firs appeared, their shadows floating
through the interspaces; and, amid straight walks and dwarf yews, in
the fulness of the moonlight, there shone a white house, with large
French windows and a tower at the further end. A white peacock asleep
on a window-sill startled Mike, and he thought of the ghost of his
dead mistress.
Nor could he account for his trepidation as he waited for the front
door to open, and Hunt seemed to him aggressively large and pompous,
and he would have preferred an assumption on the part of the servant
that he knew the relative positions of the library and drawing-room.
But Hunt was resolved on explanation, and as they went up-stairs he
pointed out the room where Lady Seeley died, and spoke of the late
Earl. "You want the sack and you shall get it, my friend," thought
Mike, and he glanced hurriedly at the beautiful pieces of furniture
about the branching staircase and the gallery leading into the
various corridors. At dinner he ate without noticing the choiceness
of the cooking, and he drank several glasses of champagne before he
remarked the excellence of the wine.
"We have not many dozen left, sir; I heard that his lordship laid it
down in '75."
Hunt watched him with cat-like patience and hound-like sagacity, and
seeing he had forgotten his cigar-case, he instantly produced a box.
Mike helped himself without daring to ask where the cigars came from,
nor did he comment on their fragrance. He smoked in discomfort; the
presence of the servant irritated him, and he walked into the library
and shut the door. The carved panelling, in the style of the late
Italian renaissance, was dark and shadowy, and the eyes of the
portraits looked upon the intruder. Men in armour, holding scrolls;
men in rich doublets, their hands on their swords; women in elaborate
dresses of a hundred tucks, and hooped out prodigiously. He was
especially struck by one, a lady in green, who played with long white
hands on a spinet. But the massive and numerous oak bookcases,
strictly wired with strong brass wire, and the tall oak fireplace,
surmounted with a portrait of a man in a red coat holding a letter,
whetted the edge of his depression, and Mike looked round with a pain
of loneliness upon his face. Speaking aloud for relief, he said--
"No doubt it is all very fine, everything is up to the mark, but
there's no denying that it is--well, it is dull. Had I known it was
going to be like this I'd have brought somebody down with me--a nice
woman. Kitty would be delightful here. But no; I would not bring her
here for ten times the money the place is worth; to do so would be an
insult on Helen's memory.... Poor dear Helen! I wish I had seen her
before she died; and to think that she has left me all--a beautiful
house, plate, horses, carriages, wine; nothing is wanting; everything
I have is hers, even this cigar." He threw the end of his cigar into
the fireplace.
"How strange! what an extraordinary transformation! And all this is
mine, even her ancestors! How angry that old fellow looks at me--me,
the son of an Irish peasant! Yes, my father was that--well, not
exactly that, he was a grazier. But why fear the facts? he was a
peasant; and my mother was a French maid--well, a governess--well, a
nursery governess, _une bonne_; she was dismissed from her situation
for carrying on (it seems awful to speak of one's mother so; but it
is the fact).... Respect! I love my mother well enough, but I'm not
going to delude myself because I had a mother. Mother didn't like our
cabin by the roadside; father treated her badly; she ran away, taking
me with her. She was lucky enough to meet with a rich manufacturer,
who kept her fairly well--I believe he used to allow her a thousand
francs a month--and I used to call him uncle. When mother died he
sent me back to my father in Ireland. That's my history. There's not
much blue blood in me.... I believe if one went back.... Bah, if
one went back! Why deceive myself? I was born a peasant, and I know
it.... Yet no one looks more like a gentleman; reversion to some
original ancestor, I suppose. Not one of these earls looks more like
a gentleman than I. But I don't suppose my looks would in any measure
reconcile them to the fact of my possession of their property.
"Ah, you old fools--periwigs, armour, and scrolls--you old fools, you
laboured only to make a gentleman of an Irish peasant. Yes, you
laboured in vain, my noble lords--you, old gentleman yonder, you with
the telescope--an admiral, no doubt--you sailed the seas in vain; and
you over there, you mediæval-looking cuss, you carried your armour
through the battles of Cressy and Poictiers in vain; and you, noble
lady in the high bodice, you whose fingers play with the flaxen curls
of that boy--he was the heir of this place two hundred years ago--I
say, you bore him in vain, your labour was in vain; and you, old
fogey that you are, you in the red coat, you holding the letter in
your gouty fingers, a commercial-looking letter, you laboured in
trade to rehabilitate the falling fortunes of the family, and I say
you too laboured in vain. Without labour, without ache, I possess the
result of all your centuries of labour.
"There, that sordid, wizen old lady, a miser to judge by her
appearance, she is eyeing me maliciously now, but I say all her
eyeing is in vain; she pinched and scraped and starved herself for
me. Yes, I possess all your savings, and if you were fifty years
younger you would not begrudge them to me."
Laughing at his folly, Mike said, "How close together lie the sane
and the insane; any one who had overheard me would have pronounced me
mad as a March hare, and yet few are saner." He walked twice across
the room. "But I'm mad for the moment, and I like to be mad. Have I
not all things--talent, wealth, love? I asked for life, and I was
given life. I have drunk the cup--no, not to the dregs, there is
plenty more wine in the cup for me; the cup is full, I have not
tasted it yet. Lily! yes, I must get her; a fool I have been; my
letter miscarried, else she would have written. Refuse me! who would
refuse me? Yes, I was born to drink the cup of life as few have drunk
it; I shall drink it even like a Roman emperor ... But they drank it
to madness and crime! Yet even so; I shall drink of life even to
crime.
"The peasant and the card-sharper shall go high, this impetus shall
carry me very high; and Frank Escott, that mean cad, shall go to the
gutter; but he is already there, and I am here! I knew it would be
so; I felt my destiny, I felt it here--in my brain. I felt it even
when he scorned me in boyhood days. I believe that in those days he
expected me to touch my cap to him. But those days are over, new days
have begun. When to-morrow's sun rises it will shine on what is
mine--down-land, meadow-land, park-land, and wood-land. Strange is
the joy of possession; I did not know of its existence. The stately
house too is mine, and I would see it. But that infernal servant, I
suppose, is in bed. I would not have him find me. I shall get rid of
him. I can hear him saying in his pantry, 'He! I wouldn't give much
for him; I found him last night spying about, examining his fine
things, for all the world like a beggar to whom you had given an old
suit of clothes.'"
Mike took his bed-room candle, and having regard for surprises on the
part of the servants, he roamed about the passages, looking at the
Chippendale furniture on the landings and the pictures and engravings
that lined the walls. Fearing bells, he did not attempt to enter any
of the rooms, and it was with some difficulty that he found his way
back to the library. Throwing himself into the arm-chair, he wondered
if he should grow accustomed to spend his evenings in this
loneliness. He thought of whom he should invite there--Harding,
Thompson, John Norton; certainly he would ask John. He couldn't ask
Frank without his wife, and Lizzie would prejudice him in the eyes of
the county people. Then, as his thoughts detached themselves, he
exclaimed against the sepulchral solemnity of the library. The house
was soundless. At the window he heard the soft moonlight-dreaming of
the rooks; and when he threw open the window the white peacock
roosting there flew away and paraded on the pale sward like a Watteau
lady.
Next morning, rousing in the indolence of a bed hung with curtains of
Indian pattern, Mike said to the footman who brought in his hot
water--
"Tell the coachman that I shall go out riding after breakfast."
"What horse will you ride, sir?"
"I don't know what horses you have in the stable."
"Well, sir, you can ride either her ladyship's hunter or the mare
that brought you from the station in the dog-cart."
"Very well. I'll ride her ladyship's hunter. (My hunter, damn the
fellow," he said, under his breath.) "And tell the bailiff I shall
want him; let him come round on his horse. I shall go over the farms
with him."
The morning was chilly. He stood before the fire while the butler
brought in eggs, kidneys, devilled legs of fowl, and coffee. The
beauty of the coffee-pot caught his eye, and he admired the plate
that made such rich effect on the old Chippendale sideboard. The
peacocks on the window-sills, knocking with their strong beaks for
bread, pleased him; they recalled evenings passed with Helen; she had
often spoken of her love for these birds. He went to the window with
bread for the peacocks, and the landscape came into his eyes: the
clump of leafless trees on the left, rugged and untidy with rooks'
nests; the hollow, dipping plain, melancholy of aspect now, misty,
gray and brown beneath a lowering sky, dipping and then rising in a
long, wide shape, and ringing the sky with a brown line. The terrace
with its straight walks, balustrades, urns, and closely-cropped yews
was a romantic note, severe, even harsh.
One day, wandering from room to room, he found himself in Helen's
bedroom. "There is the bed she died in, there is the wardrobe." Mike
opened the wardrobe. He turned the dresses over, seeking for those he
knew; but he had not seen her for three years, and there were new
dresses, and he had forgotten the old. Suddenly he came upon one of
soft, blue material, and he remembered she wore that dress the first
time she sat on his knees. Feeling the need of an expressive action,
he buried his face in the pale blue dress, seeking in its softness
and odour commemoration of her who lay beneath the pavement. How
desolate was the room! He would not linger. This room must be forever
closed, left to the silence, the mildew, the dust, and the moth. None
must enter here but he, it must be sacred from other feet. Once a
year, on her anniversary, he would come to mourn her, and not on the
anniversary of her death, but on that of their first kiss. He had
forgotten the exact day, and feared he had not preserved all her
letters. Perhaps she had preserved his.
Moved with such an idea he passed out of her bedroom, and calling for
_his_ keys, went into her boudoir and opened her escritoire, and very
soon he found his letters; almost the first he read, ran as follows--
"MY DEAR HELEN,
"I am much obliged to you for your kind invitation. I should like
very much to come and stay with you, if I may come as your friend.
You must not think from this that I have fallen in love with some one
else; I have not. I have never seen any one I shall love better than
you; I love you to-day as well as ever I did; my feelings regarding
you have changed in nothing, yet I cannot come as your lover. I am
ashamed of myself, I hate myself, but it is not my fault.
"I have been your lover for more than a year, and I could not be any
one's lover--no, not if she were Venus herself--for a longer time.
"My heart is full of regret. I am losing the best and sweetest
mistress ever man had. No one is able to appreciate your worth better
than I. Try to understand me; do not throw this letter aside in a
rage. You are a clever woman; you are, I know, capable of
understanding it. And if you will understand, you will not regret;
that I swear, for you will gain the best and most loyal friend. I am
as good a friend as I am a worthless lover. Try to understand, Helen,
I am not wholly to blame.
"I love you--I esteem you far more to-day than I did when I first
knew you. Do not let our love end upon a miserable quarrel--the
commonplace quarrel of those who do not know how to love."
He turned the letter over. He was the letter; that letter was his
shameful human nature; and worse, it was the human nature of the
whole wide world. On the same point, or on some other point, every
human being was as base as he. Such baseness is the inalienable
birth-stain of human life. His poem was no pretty imagining, but the
eternal, implacable truth. It were better that human life should
cease. Until this moment he had only half understood its awful, its
terrifying truth.... It were better that man ceased to pollute the
earth. His history is but the record of crime; his existence is but a
disgraceful episode in the life of one of the meanest of the planets.
We cannot desire what we possess, and so we progress from illusion to
illusion. But when we cease to distinguish between ourself and
others, when our thoughts are no longer set on the consideration of
our own embarrassed condition, when we see into the heart of things,
which is one, then disappointment and suffering cease to have any
meaning, and we attain that true serenity and peace which we
sometimes see reflected in a seraph's face by Raphael.
As Mike's thoughts floated in the boundless atmosphere of
Schopenhauer's poem, of the denial of the will to live, he felt
creeping upon him, like sleep upon tired eyelids, all the sweet and
suasive fascination of death. "How little," he thought, "does any man
know of any other man's soul. Who among my friends would believe that
I, in all my intense joys and desire of life, am perhaps, at heart,
the saddest man, and perhaps sigh for death more ardently, and am
tempted to cull the dark fruit which hangs so temptingly over the
wall of the garden of life more ardently than any one?"
A few days after, his neighbour, Lord Spennymoor, called, and his
visit was followed by an invitation to dinner. The invitation was
accepted. Mike was on his best behaviour. During dinner he displayed
as much reserve as his nature allowed him to, but afterwards,
yielding to the solicitations of the women, he abandoned himself, and
when twelve o'clock struck they were still gathered round him,
listening to him with rapt expression, as if in hearing of delightful
music. Awaking suddenly to a sense of the hour and his indiscretion,
he bade Lord Spennymoor, who had sat talking all night with his
brother in a far corner, good-night.
When the sound of the wheels of his trap died away, when the ladies
had retired, Lord Spennymoor returned to the smoking-room, and at the
end of a long silence asked his brother, who sat smoking opposite
him, what he thought of Fletcher.
"He is one of those men who attract women, who attract nine people
out of ten.... Call it magnetism, electro-biology, give it what name
you will. The natural sciences----"
"Never mind the natural sciences. Do you think that either of my
girls were--Victoria, for instance, was attracted by him? I don't
believe for a moment his story of having saved Lady Seeley from
drowning in Italy, but I'm bound to say he told it very well. I can
see the girls sitting round him listening. Poor Mrs. Dickens, her
eyes were----"
"I shan't ask her here again.... But tell me, do you think he'll
marry?"
"It would be very hard to say what will become of him. He may
suddenly weary of women and become a woman-hater, or perhaps he may
develop into a sort of Baron Hulot. He spoke about his writings--he
may become ambitious, and spend his life writing epics.... He may go
mad! He seemed interested in politics, he may go into Parliament; I
fancy he would do very well in Parliament. A sudden loathing of
civilization may come upon him and send him to Africa or the Arctic
Regions. A man's end is always infinitely more in accordance with his
true character than any conclusion we could invent. No writer, even
if he have genius, is so extravagantly logical as nature."
During the winter months Mike was extensively occupied with the
construction of the mausoleum in red granite, which he was raising in
memory of Helen; and this interest remained paramount. He took many
journeys to London on its account, and studied all the architecture
on the subject, and with great books on his knees, he sat in the
library making drawings or composing epitaphs and memorial poems.
Belthorpe Park was often full of visitors, and when walking with them
on the terraces, his thoughts ran on Mount Rorke Castle, his own
success, and Frank's failure; and when he awoke in the sweet,
luxurious rooms, in the houses where he was staying, his brain filled
with febrile sensations of triumph, and fitful belief that he was
above any caprice of destiny.
It pleased him to write letters with Belthorpe Park printed on the
top of the first page, and he wrote many for this reason. Quick with
affectionate remembrances, he thought of friends he had not thought
of for years, and the sadnesses of these separations touched him
deeply; and the mutability of things moved him in his very entrails,
and he thought that perhaps no one had felt these things as he felt
them. He remembered the women who had passed out of his life, and
looking out on his English park, soaking with rain and dim with mist,
he remembered those whom he had loved, and the peak whence he viewed
the desert district of his amours--Lily Young. She haunted in his
life.
He saw himself a knight in the tourney, and her eyes fixed on him,
while he calmed his fiery dexter and tilted for her; he saw her in
the silk comfort of the brougham, by his side, their bodies rocked
gently together; he saw her in the South when reading Mrs. Byril's
descriptions of rocky coast and olive fields.
The English park lay deep in snow, and the familiar word roses then
took magical significance, and the imagined Southern air was full of
Lily.
"There's a sweet girl here, and I'm sure you would like her; she is
so slender, so blithe and winsome, and so wayward. She has been sent
abroad for her health, and is forbidden to go out after sunset, but
will not obey. I am afraid she is dying of consumption.... She has
taken a great fancy to me. There is no one in our hotel but a few old
maids, who discuss the peerage, and she runs after me to talk about
men. I fancy she must have carried on pretty well with some one, for
she loves talking about _him_, and is full of mysterious allusions."
The romance of the sudden introduction of this girl into the
landscape took him by the throat. He saw himself walking with this
dying girl in the beauty of blue mountains toppling into blue skies,
and reflected in bluer seas; he sat with her beneath the palm-trees;
palms spread their fan-like leaves upon sky and sea, and in the rich
green of their leaves oranges grew to deep, and lemons to paler,
gold; and he dreamed that the knowledge that the object of his love
was transitory, would make his love perfect and pure. Now in his
solitude, with no object to break it, this desire for love in death
haunted in his mind. It rose unbidden, like a melody, stealing forth
and surprising him in unexpected moments. Often he asked himself why
he did not pack up his portmanteau and rush away; and he was only
deterred by the apparent senselessness of the thought. "What slaves
we are of habit! Why more stupid to go than to remain?"
Soon after, he received another letter from Mrs. Byril. He glanced
through it eagerly for some mention of the girl. Whatever there was
of sweetness and goodness in Mike's nature was reflected in his eyes
(soft violet eyes, in which tenderness dwelt), whatever there was of
evil was written in the lips and chin (puckered lips and goat-like
chin), the long neck and tiny head accentuating the resemblance.
Now his being was concentrated in the eyes as a landscape is
sometimes in a piece of sky. He read: "She told me that she had been
once to see her lover in the Temple." It was then Lily. He turned to
Mrs. Byril's first letter, and saw Lily in every line of the
description. Should he go to her? Of course ... When? At once! Should
it not prove to be Lily? ... He did not care ... He must go, and in
half an hour he touched the swiftly trotting mare with the whip and
glanced at his watch. "I shall just do it." The hedges passed behind,
and the wintry prospects were unfolded and folded away. But as he
approached the station, a rumble and then a rattle came out of the
valley, and though he lashed the mare into a gallop, he arrived only
in time to see a vanishing cloud of steam.
The next train did not reach London till long after the mail had left
Charing Cross.
It froze hard during the night, and next morning his feet chilled in
his thin shoes, as he walked to and fro, seeking a carriage holding a
conversational-looking person. At Dover the wind was hard as the
ice-bound steps which he descended, and the sea rolled in dolefully
about the tall cliffs, melting far away into the bleak grayness of
the sky. But more doleful than the bleak sea was sullen Picardy. Mike
could not sleep, and his eyes fed upon the bleak black of swampy
plains, utterly mournful, strangely different from green and gladsome
England. And two margins of this doleful land remained impressed upon
his mind; the first, a low grange, discoloured, crouching on the
plain, and curtained by seven lamentable poplars, and Mike thought of
the human beings that came from it, to see only a void landscape, and
to labour in bleak fields. He remembered also a marsh with osier-beds
and pools of water; and in the largest of these there was a black and
broken boat. Thin sterile hills stretched their starved forms in the
distance, and in the raw wintry light this landscape seemed like a
page of the primitive world, and the strange creature striving with
an oar recalled our ancestors.
Paris was steeped in great darkness and starlight, and the cab made
slow and painful way through the frost-bound streets. The amble and
the sliding of the horse was exasperating, the drive unendurable with
uncertainty and cold, and Mike hammered his frozen feet on the
curving floor of the vehicle. Street succeeded street, all growing
meaner as they neared the Gare de Lyons. Fearing he should miss the
express he called to the impassive driver to hasten the vehicle.
Three minutes remained to take his ticket and choose a carriage, and
hoping for sleep and dreams of Lily, he rolled himself up in a rug
for which he had paid sixty guineas, and fell asleep.
Ten hours after, he was roused by the guard, and stretching his
stiffened limbs, he looked out, and in the vague morning saw towzled
and dilapidated travellers, slipping upon the thin ice that covered
the platform, striving to reach long, rough tables, spread with
coffee, fruit, and wine. Mike drank some coffee, and thinking of Mrs.
Byril's roses, wondered when they should get into the sunshine.
As the train moved out of the platform the twilight vanished into
daylight, the sky flushed, and he saw a scant land, ragged and torn
with twisted plants, cacti and others, gashed and red, and savage as
a negress's lips. So he saw the South through the breath-misted
windows. He lay back; he dozed a little, and awoke an hour after to
feel soft air upon the face, and to see a bush laden with blossom
literally singing the spring. Thenceforth at every mile the land grew
into more frequent bloom. The gray-green olive-tree appeared, a
crooked, twisted tree--habitual phase of the red land--and between
its foliage gray-green brick façades, burnt and re-burnt by the sun.
The roofs of the houses grew flatter and campanile, and the domes
rose, silvery or blue, in the dazzling day. A mountain shepherd,
furnished with water-gourd, a seven-foot staff, and a gigantic pipe,
lingered in the country railway-station. This shepherd's skin was
like coffee, and he wore hair hanging far over his shoulders, and his
beard reached to his waist.
Nice! A town of cheap fashion, a town of glass and stucco. The
pungent odour of the eucalyptus trees, the light breeze stirred not
the foliage, sheared into mathematical lines. It was like yards of
baize dwindling in perspective; and between the tall trunks great
plate-glass windows gleamed, filled with _l'article de Londres_.
He drove to the hotel from which Mrs. Byril had written, and learnt
that she had left yesterday, and that Mrs. and Miss Young were not
staying there. They had no such name on the books. Looking on the sea
and mountains he wondered himself what it all meant.
Having bathed and changed his clothes, he sallied forth in a cab to
call at every hotel in the town, and after three hours' fruitless
search, returned in despair. Never before had life seemed so sad;
never had fate seemed so cruel--he had come a thousand miles to
regenerate his life, and an accident, the accident of a departure,
hastened perhaps only by a day, had thrown him back on the past; he
had imagined a beautiful future made of love, goodness, and truth,
and he found himself thrown back upon the sterile shore of a past of
which he was weary, and of whose fruits he had eaten even to satiety.
After much effort he had made sure that nothing mattered but Lily,
neither wealth nor liberty, nor even his genius. In surrendering all
he would have gained all--peace of mind, unending love and goodness.
Goodness! that which he had never known, that which he now knew was
worth more than gratification of flesh and pride of spirit.
The night was full of tumult and dreams--dreams of palms, and seas,
and endless love, and in the morning he walked into the realities of
his imaginings.
Passing through an archway, he found himself in the gaud of the
flower-market. There a hundred umbrellas, yellow, red, mauve and
magenta, lemon yellow, cadmium yellow, gold, a multi-coloured mass
spread their extended bellies to a sky blue as the blouses.
The brown fingers of the peasant women are tying and pressing all the
miraculous bloom of the earth into the fair fingers of Saxon
girls--great packages of roses, pink lilies, clematis, stephanotis,
and honeysuckle. A gentle breeze is blowing, rocking the umbrellas,
wafting the odour of the roses and honeysuckle, bringing hither an
odour of the lapping tide, rocking the immense umbrellas. One huge
and ungainly sunshade creaks, swaying its preposterous rotundity.
Beneath it the brown woman slices her pumpkin. Mike scanned every
thin face for Lily, and as he stood wedged against a flower-stand, a
girl passed him. She turned. It was Lily.
"Lily, is it possible? I was looking for you everywhere."
"Looking for me! When did you arrive in Nice? How did you know I was
here?"
"Mrs. Byril wrote. She described a girl, and I knew from her
description it must be you. And I came on at once."
"You came on at once to find me?"
"Yes; I love you more than ever. I can think only of you.... But when
I arrived I found Mrs. Byril had left, and I had no means of finding
your address."
"You foolish boy; you mean to say you rushed away on the chance that
I was the girl described in Mrs. Byril's letter! ... A thousand miles!
and never even waited to ask the name or the address! Well, I suppose
I must believe that you are in love. But you have not heard.... They
say I'm dying. I have only one lung left. Do you think I'm looking
very ill?"
"You are looking more lovely than ever. My love shall give you
health; we shall go--where shall we go? To Italy? You are my Italy.
But I'm forgetting--why did you not answer my letter? It was cruel of
you. Deceive me no more, play with me no longer; if you will not have
me, say so, and I will end myself, for I cannot live without you."
"But I do not understand, I haven't had any letter; what letter?"
"I wrote asking you to marry me."
They walked out of the flower market on to the _Promenade des
Anglais_, and Mike told her about his letters, concealing nothing of
his struggle. The sea lay quite blue and still, lapping gently on the
spare beach; the horizon floated on the sea, almost submerged, and
the mountains, every edge razor-like, hard, and metallic, were veiled
in a deep, transparent blue; and the villas, painted white, pink and
green, with open loggias and balconies, completed the operatic
aspect.
"My mother will not hear of it; she would sooner see me dead than
married to you."
"Why?"
"She knows you are an atheist for one thing."
"But she does not know that I have six thousand a year."
"Six thousand a year! and who was the fairy that threw such fortune
into your lap? I thought you had nothing."
Vanity took him by the throat, but he wrenched himself free, and
answered evasively that a distant cousin had left him a large sum of
money, including an estate in Berkshire.
"Well, I'm very glad for your sake, but it will not influence
mother's opinion of you."
"Then you will run away with me? Say you will."
"That is the best--for I'm not strong enough to dispute with mother.
I dare say it is very cowardly of me, but I would avoid scenes; I've
had enough of them.... We'll go away together. Where shall we go? To
Italy?"
"Yes, to Italy--my Italy. And do you love me? Have you forgiven me my
conduct the day when you came to see me?"
"Yes, I love you; I have forgiven you."
"And when shall we go?"
"When you like. I should like to go over that sea; I should like to
go, Mike, with you, far away! Where, Mike?--Heaven?"
"We should find heaven dull; but when shall we go across that sea, or
when shall we go from here--now?"
"Now!"
"Why not?"
"Because here are my people coming to meet me. Now say nothing to my
mother about marriage, or she will never leave my side. I'm more ill
than you think I am--I should have no strength to struggle with her."
Not again that day did Mike succeed in speaking alone with Lily, and
the next day she and her mother and Major Downside, her uncle, went
to spend the day with some friends who had a villa in the environs of
the town. The day after he met mother and daughter out walking in the
morning. In the afternoon Lily was obliged to keep her room. Should
she die! should the irreparable happen! Mike crushed the instinct,
that made him see a poem in the death of his beloved; and he
determined to believe that he should possess her, love her and only
her; he saw himself a new Mike, a perfect and true husband-lover.
Never was man more weary of vice, more desirous of reformation.
He had studied the train service until he could not pretend to
himself there remained any crumb of excuse for further consideration
of it. He wandered about the corridors, a miserable man. On Sunday
she came down-stairs and drove to church with her mother. Mike
followed, and full of schemes for flight, holding a note ready to
slip into her hand, he wondered if such pallor as hers were for this
side of life. In the note it was written that he would wait all day
for her in the sitting-room, and about five, as he sat holding the
tattered newspaper, his thoughts far away in Naples, Algiers, and
Egypt, he heard a voice calling--
"Mike! Mike! Mother is lying down; I think we can get away now, if
there's a train before half-past five."
Mike did not need to consult the time-table. He said, "At last,
at last, darling, come! ... Yes, there is a train for the Italian
frontier at a few minutes past five. We shall have just time to
catch it. Come!"
But in the gardens they met the Major, who would not hear of his
niece being out after sunset, and sent her back. Mike overtook Lily
on the staircase.
"I can endure this no longer," he said; "you must come with me
to-night when every one is in bed. There is a train at two."
"I cannot; I have to pass through my mother's room. She would be sure
to awake."
"Great Scott! what shall we do? My head is whirling. You must give
your mother a sleeping potion, will you? She drinks something before
she goes to bed?"
"Yes, but----"
"There must be no buts. It is a case of life and death. You do not
want to die, as many girls die. To many a girl marriage is life. I
will get something quite harmless, and quite tasteless."
She waited for him in the sitting-room. He returned in a few minutes
with a small bottle, which he pressed into her hand. "And now, _au
revoir_; in a few hours you will be mine for ever."
After leaving her he dined; after dinner went to a gambling hell,
where he lost a good deal of money, and would have lost more, had the
necessity of keeping at least £200 for his wedding-tour not been so
imperative. He wandered about the streets talking to and sometimes
strolling about with the light women, listening to their lamentable
stories--"anything," he thought, "to distract my mind." He was to
meet Lily on the staircase at one o'clock, and now it was half-past
twelve, and giving the poor creature whose chatter had beguiled the
last half-hour a louis, he returned hurriedly to his hotel.
The lift had ceased working, and he ascended the great staircase,
three steps at a time. On the second floor he stopped to reconnoitre.
The _gardien_ lay fast asleep on a bench; he could not do better than
sit on the stairs and wait; if the man awoke he would have to be
bribed. Lily's number was 45, a dozen doors down the passage. At one
o'clock the _gardien_ awoke. Mike entered into conversation with him,
gave him a couple of francs, bade him good-night, and went partly up
the next flight of stairs. Listening for every sound, expecting every
moment to hear a door open, he waited till the clocks struck the
half-hour. Then he became as if insane, and he deemed it would not be
enough if she were to disappoint him to set the hotel on fire and
throw himself from the roof. Something must happen, if he were to
remain sane, and, determined to dare all, he decided he would seek
her in her room and bear her away. He knew he would have to pass
through Mrs. Young's room. What should he do if she awoke, and,
taking him for a robber, raised the alarm?
Putting aside such surmises he turned the handle of her door as
quietly as he could. The lock gave forth hardly any sound, the door
passed noiselessly over the carpet. He hesitated, but only for a
moment, and drawing off his shoes he prepared to cross the room. A
night-light was burning, and it revealed the fat outline of a huge
body huddled in the bed-clothes. He would have to pass close to Mrs.
Young. He glided by, passing swiftly towards the further room,
praying that the door would open without a sound. It was ajar, and
opened without a sound. "What luck!" he thought, and a moment after
he stood in Lily's room. She lay upon the bed, as if she had fallen
there, dressed in a long travelling-cloak, her hat crushed on one
side.
"Lily, Lily!" he whispered, "'tis I; awake! speak, tell me you are
not dead." She moved a little beneath his touch, then wetting a towel
in the water-jug he applied it to her forehead and lips, and slowly
she revived.
"Where are we?" she asked. "Mike, darling, are we in Italy? ... I have
been ill, have I not? They say I'm going to die, but I'm not; I'm
going to live for you, my darling."
Then she recovered recollection of what had happened, and whispered
that she had failed to give her mother the opiate, but had
nevertheless determined to keep her promise to him. She had dressed
herself and was just ready to go, but a sudden weakness had come over
her. She remembered staggering a few steps and nothing more.
"But if you have not given your mother the opiate, she may awake at
any moment. Are you strong enough, my darling, to come with me?
Come!"
"Yes, yes, I'm strong enough. Give me some more water, and kiss me,
dear."
The lovers wrapped themselves in each other's arms. But hearing some
one moving in the adjoining room, the girl looked in horror and
supplication in Mike's eyes. Stooping, he disappeared beneath a small
table; and drew his legs beneath the cloth. The sounds in the next
room continued, and he recognized them as proceeding from some one
searching for clothes. Then Lily's door was opened and Mrs. Young
said--
"Lily, there is some one in your room; I'm sure Mr. Fletcher is
here."
"Oh, mother, how can you say such a thing! indeed he is not."
"He is; I am not mistaken. This is disgraceful; he must be under that
bed."
"Mother, you can look."
"I shall do nothing of the kind. I shall fetch your uncle."
When he heard Mrs. Young retreating with fast steps, Mike emerged
from his hiding.
"What shall I do?"
"You can't leave without being seen. Uncle sleeps opposite."
"I'll hide in your mother's room; and while they are looking for me
here, I will slip out."
"How clever you are, darling! Go there. Do you hear? uncle is
answering her. To-morrow we shall find an opportunity to get away;
but now I would not be found out.... I told mother you weren't here.
Go!"
The morrow brought no opportunity for flight. Lily could not leave
her room, and it was whispered that the doctors despaired of her
life. Then Mike opened his heart to the Major, and the old soldier
promised him his cordial support when Lily was well. Three days
passed, and then, unable to bear the strain any longer, Mike fled to
Monte Carlo. There he lost and won a fortune. Hence Italy enticed
him, and he went, knowing that he should never go there with Lily.
But not in art nor in dissipation did he find escape from her
deciduous beauty, now divided from the grave only by a breath,
beautiful and divinely sorrowful in its transit.
Some days passed, and then a letter from the Major brought him back
over-worn with anxiety, wild with grief. He found her better. She had
been carried down from her room, and was lying on a sofa by the open
window. There were a few flowers in her hands, and when she offered
them to Mike she said with a kind of Heine-like humour--
"Take them, they will live almost as long as I shall."
"Lily, you will get well, and we shall see Italy together. I had to
leave you--I should have gone mad had I remained. The moment I heard
I could see you I returned. You will get well."
"No, no; I'm here only for a few days--a few weeks at most. I shall
never go to Italy. I shall never be your sweetheart. I'm one of God's
virgins. I belong to my saint, my first and real sweetheart. You
remember when I came to see you in the Temple Gardens, I told you
about Him then, didn't I! Ah! happy, happy aspirations, better even
than you, my darling. And He is waiting for me; I see Him now. He
smiles, and opens His arms."
"You'll get well. The sun of Italy shall be our heaven, thy lips
shall give me immortality, thy love shall give me God."
"Fine words, my sweetheart, fine words, but death waits not for
love.... Well, it's a pity to die without having loved."
"It is worse to live without having loved, dearest--dearest, you
will live."
He never saw her again. Next day she was too ill to come down, and
henceforth she grew daily weaker. Every day brought death visibly
nearer, and one day the Major came to Mike in the garden and said--
"It is all over, my poor friend!"
Then came days of white flowers and wreaths, and bouquets and baskets
of bloom, stephanotis, roses, lilies, and every white blossom that
blows; and so friends sought to cover and hide the darkness of the
grave. Mike remembered the disordered faces of the girls in church;
weeping, they threw themselves on each other's shoulders; and the
mournful chant was sung; and the procession toiled up the long hill
to the cemetery above the town, and Lily was laid there, to rest
there for ever. There she lies, facing Italy, which she never knew
but in dream. The wide country leading to Italy lies below her, the
peaks of the rocky coast, the blue sea, the gray-green olives
billowing like tides from hill to hill; the white loggias gleaming in
the sunlight. His thoughts followed the flight of the blue mountain
passes that lead so enticingly to Italy, and as he looked into the
distance, dim and faint as the dream that had gone, there rose in his
mind an even fairer land than Italy, the land of dream, where for
every one, even for Mike Fletcher, there grows some rose or lily
unattainable.