Italy was no good to me. I had done it all before. There are not many
corners in Europe of which Dandy and I are ignorant. I have seen his
little footmarks in the snow and the dust in places where few of your
so-called travelled folk have ever been. For my sake he has cheerfully
suffered quarantine in half the ports of the south. I know Odessa as if
I had been born there, waiting for Dandy's release. And when at last he
did come out, a mere shadow of what he was, his ribs, a scale of them,
protruding from his sides, he executed so violent a war dance of joy
as exhausted all the strength left in him. In two minutes he was lying
breathless in my arms.
I swore to him it should never happen again. "A man wouldn't put up
with it, Dandy," said I. "Why should you?"
I think he saw the force of it all at the time; but when a few months
of good feeding had gone by and I was for setting off East once more,
he had forgotten all about Odessa.
"No, you're not coming this time," I said to him. He shook his tail
and laughed. He didn't believe me. "Oh--that's all very well," I went
on, "but remember that God-forsaken spot, Odessa." If you please, he
laughed again. "I don't care," said I. "You're not coming. Get off that
box, it's going to the station."
In time he began to realize it. There came a gradual dropping about his
ears. He found his coat-brush in the corner where it always was. His
leash was still hanging in the hall. I could see him thinking it out,
with a puzzled frown between his eyes as if he were saying--"There's
some mistake. He forgets I went with him last time--of course, there's
some mistake"--whereat, half-convincing himself that there was, his
ears pricked up and he began his get-ready-to-go-out dance, a wild
exhibition of terpsichorean art, on his hind legs.
"You're not coming, Dandy," said I, and I looked him steadily in the
eyes. At last he knew, and I had to turn away. It was too piteous, the
expression then that twisted his face.
With his tail a limp and a foolish-looking thing, he stood upon the
doorstep and saw me drive off. I waved a hand out of the window at him,
but I could not look back.
It was that wave of the hand that did it. He knew I had been playing
him a joke. There I was, beckoning to him just before it was too late
and, roaring with laughter--so I am told--to think how nearly I had
taken him in, he leapt after me.
When I got out of the taxi at Victoria, to my amazement, there he was,
splashed with mud behind our wheels from nose to tail.
"A jolly good joke!" he roared. "A jolly good joke! I knew there must
have been some mistake." And so there was, but the poor little devil
had to pay for it at Algiers.
What good then was Italy to us after such journeys as these? We walked
back home to lunch that morning, Dandy forlorn, I with the taste of
envy still lingering in my mind.
How can I explain? Life has never reached me. No woman has ever come to
me in trouble--and that is part of life; no man has ever told the story
of a love affair to me in the whole course of my existence. Whenever
a man sees me he slaps me on the back; whenever I meet a woman whom I
know, she pats Dandy on the back instead. And to suggest Italy for such
a disease as that!
A night or two later, I strolled into a restaurant where occasionally I
sup alone. The young man and the young woman go there. Corks fly out of
bottles and laughter flies after them. Sometimes there I can imagine I
have never seen forty, and when I assure myself that I am forty-three,
it seems nothing--nothing at all. The waters of Lethe are in the very
finger-bowls on their tables, though often indeed, as I have rubbed
it on my lips, it seems I have tasted the waters of Marah. That night
after supper, I sat in the lounge outside, taking my coffee. At the
other end of the settee I had chosen sat a woman of twenty-eight,
listening patiently to the egotism of a boy of twenty-six. Here and
there she placed a word with cunning knowledge of his kind. Now and
again she laughed, when immediately rose his empty bark above it. At
times he laughed all by himself.
"I suppose I shall have to marry her one of these days and settle
down," I heard him say, and from that moment my ears caught no sound
other than their two voices; his in limping, stilted narrative, hers in
encouraging assent.
It was a story no man has the right to tell. Told to a woman, it set
the blood racing in my veins till it tingled hot and furious in my
very fingers. It seemed he had been to the West Indies, trading in
what I don't know and care less. And there, no doubt, with what we
call the superiority of our European civilization, he had captured the
affections of a planter's daughter.
I caught her name, just her Christian name, as he disclosed it.
Clarissa--only Clarissa--I heard no more. He was one of those youths
who must give you names to make his story true. And how Clarissa loved
him! Behind all his boasting and that barking laugh of his, I could see
how well she loved him too. Could it have been anything but love that
had brought her from her sunny islands to that grey land of Ireland
where he had taken her?
I thought of Mary Queen of Scots, exiled from her golden France to
those dim mists of Scotland, the greatest tragedy the world has ever
seen. Only the need of history to make this as great a tragedy as well.
In the care of his two aunts he had placed her.
"And there she'll have to stay for some time. She wants educating,"
said he, and forthwith he proceeded to recount her little ignorances,
her little follies, her little mistakes, at each of which he threw back
his head and laughed.
"She knows nothing," he continued; "not that I think a woman ought to
know much. But she knows absolutely nothing. I had thoughts of her
coming over here to school. But she's too old for that; besides, she's
nicely tucked away there in Ballysheen."
The name struck quickly on my ears. Ballysheen? Why was it familiar?
One of those tricks of sense, perhaps. You know an Irish name anywhere.
But I had no inclination then to follow it out. I beckoned my waiter
for another Kümmel. My empty glass betokened idleness. I could see
the woman's eyes wandering in my direction. The man would never have
suspected me of listening, for when a man tells a story, the sound of
it absorbs him. Women, I find, are different to that. They are ever
aware of the thousand things about them.
"How is she going to be taught?" she asked when her suspicions were
allayed by the filling of my glass.
He inhaled deeply of his cigarette and slowly blew out the smoke
between pursed lips. "Oh--they'll teach her," said he.
And they--were his two maiden aunts. From his ill-phrased description
of them, I could see it all. He had caught a bird of brilliant plumage
in the wild heart of a tropic forest, and to a cage one foot by three
he had brought her; a cage hung in some dull drab room, where never the
light of the sun could enter. Behind the bars of their little bigotries
and their little prejudices, this poor untamed creature was beating her
tired wings, or she was sitting there waiting with watching eyes for
him to return and marry her.
It was not the manner of his telling that made the story real. It was
the place. That glare of lights, those sinuous sounds of music that
crept upon one's ears, all the blatant artificiality of it, and this
casual narrative told with a laugh and a glass to the lips! You hear
strange conversations in public places; but I had never heard anything
more strange than this.
Her father was wealthy, so it seemed. It was this that had attracted
him to the match.
"She'll have ten thousand, when we marry," he continued; "worth
thinking about, you know. And more when her father dies. But there's
one ghastly drawback. I got used to it over there; but since I've been
back in England--talking, for instance, to women like yourself--I
sometimes wonder how the devil I'm going to do it."
I held my breath and strained my ears to listen. It is when you know
what is coming that you are keenest of all to hear.
"You don't mean to say she's black?" said his companion, in horror.
Back went his head and he laughed right down my spine.
"Good Lord! No! You don't think any amount of money would tempt me to
marry a black, do you? I hate that sort of thing as much as anybody.
No, she's beautiful enough, but she's colored. There's the strain in
her. Three generations back there was a black in the family. In most of
them it's worn itself all out completely, but she's a set back. You can
see it. Her hair's as black as pitch. Not a mat, thank God; it's fine
enough. Her skin's quite olive, too. The whites of her eyes are that
blue-white of old china. She's got the taste, too, for gaudy colored
things. Wanted to dress herself in canary-colored satin when she first
came to Ballysheen. My aunts soon put a stop to that. Oh, I've no doubt
they'll teach her in time."
I think just that touch made me see it most of all. The little creature
putting on her bright plumage, the very colors which Nature gives
to those whose home is in the sun, and then to have them stripped
from her, and in their place the dull religious black of these grey
countries given her to wear. Oh, no doubt, they would teach her quickly
enough, those two old maiden aunts of his. Her school-room roof
would be the lightless skies of grey--one quickly learns a lesson of
obedience, the obedience of despair, in such a room as that. Ready to
their hands would be all the forms of chastisement that can so soon
break down a spirit from the sun. Just that canary-colored satin made
me see it most of all.
And what did his aunts think of it all, I wondered. It was as if I had
wondered aloud, for his companion echoed the question to my thought.
He shrugged his shoulders and beckoned lazily for his bill. "Can't help
what they think," said he. "Matter of fact, I don't believe they like
it at all. We're an old family, you see. The Fennells have been in
Ireland since Cromwell. He gave us our estates, every inch of which has
gone. The only property left is the old house my aunts live in. They'll
be glad enough if I get a rich wife. For that reason I suppose they
put up with her; but it goes against the grain. In Ireland, you know,
a drop of black blood is the greatest curse you can have. They won't
let any one get a glimpse of her. I can tell you, it's a mystery over
there. Everybody knows there's some one staying in the house--but they
won't let her be seen. Rather rough on her, you know. They take her
out for walks when it's dark--make her put a veil over her face. You
wouldn't believe it in a cosmopolitan place like London; but it makes
all the difference over there."
I heard no more than that. I could wait to hear no more.
"My things," said I to the attendant. He wanted to pull down the collar
beneath my coat. I could not have borne that. It was a matter of
walking home to Mount Street. There are times when the more civilized
methods of progression have no meaning at all. There are times when one
must return to Nature and use one's legs. I walked home, and all the
time there sang in my head that phrase--no woman has ever come to me in
trouble.
"My God," thought I. "If ever there was a woman in trouble!"
And then the name Clarissa--Clarissa--called itself back into my mind.
Clarissa, with her little gown of canary-colored satin.