unalluring, even in his own youth. He had admired a number of them
extravagantly, but only as ornamental objects upon which very
ill-advisedly had been conferred the gift of speech. To-day he looked
back wistfully at times, as we must all do, to that girl who first had
asked him if he was sure that he respected her as much as ever: but it
was with the mental annotation that she had seven children now, and, as
Kathleen put it, not a ray of good looks left. And he would meditate
that he had certainly been fond of Margaret Hugonin, even though in the
beginning it was her money which attracted him; and that Marian Winwood,
despite her underhanded vengeance in publishing his letters, had been
the most delectable of company all that ancient summer when it had
rained so persistently. Then there had been tall Agnés Faroy, like a
statue of gold and ivory; Kitty Provis, with those wonderful huge green
eyes of hers; and Celia Reindan, she who wore that curious silver band
across her forehead; and Helen Strong; and Blanche Druro; and Muriel....
In memory they arose like colorful and gracious phantoms, far more
adorable than they had ever been on earth, when each of these had
loaned, for a season, the touch of irresolute soft hands and friendly
lips to a half-forgotten Felix Kennaston. All these, and others, had
been, a long while since, the loveliest creatures that wore tender human
flesh: and so, they had kissed, and they had talked time-hallowed
nonsense, and they had shed the orthodox tears; and—also a long while
since—they had died or they had married the conventional some one-else:
and it did not matter the beard of an onion to the pudgy pasty man that
Felix Kennaston had come to be. He had possessed, or else of his own
volition he had refrained from possessing, all these brightly-colored
moth-brained girls: but he had loved none of them as he had always known
he was capable of loving: and at best, these girls were dead now, or at
worst, they had been converted into unaccountable people....
* * * * *
Kathleen was returning from the South that day, and Kennaston had gone
into Lichfield to meet her train. The Florida Express was late by a full
hour; so he sat in their motor-car, waiting, turning over some verses in
his torpid mind, and just half-noticing persons who were gathering on
the station platform to take the noon train going west. He was
reflecting how ugly and trivial people’s faces appear when a crowd is
viewed collectively—and wondering if the Author, looking down into a hot
thronged street, was never tempted to obliterate the race as an
unsuccessful experiment—when Kennaston recognized Muriel Allardyce.
“I simply will not see her,” he decided. He turned his back that way,
picked up the morning paper on the seat beside him, and began to read an
editorial on immigration. What the deuce was she doing in Lichfield, any
way? She lived in St. Louis now. She was probably visiting Avis Blagden.
Evidently, she was going west on the noon train. If Kathleen’s train
arrived before midday he would have to get out of the car to meet her,
and all three would come together on the platform. If Muriel spied him
there, in the open car, it would be not uncharacteristic of her to join
him. And he could not go away, because Kathleen’s train was apt to
arrive any minute. It was perfectly damnable. Why could the woman not
stay in St. Louis, where she belonged, instead of gadding about the
country? Thus Kennaston, as he re-read the statistics as to Poles and
Magyars.
“I think there’s two ladies trying to speak to you, sir,” the chauffeur
hazarded.
“Eh?—oh, yes!” said Kennaston. He looked, perforce, and saw that across
the railway track both Muriel Allardyce and Avis Blagden were regarding
him with idiotic grins and wavings. He lifted his hat, smiled, waved his
own hand, and retired between the pages of the _Lichfield
Courier-Herald_. Muriel was wearing a light traveling veil, he
reflected; he could pretend not to know who she was. With recognition,
of course, he would be expected to come over and speak to her. He must
remember to ask Avis, the very next time he saw her, who had been that
familiar-looking person with her, and to express regret for his
short-sightedness....
He decided to step out of the car, by way of the farther door, and buy a
package of cigarettes on the other side of the street. He could loaf
there and pray that Muriel’s train left before Kathleen’s arrived....
“I don’t believed you recognized us,” said Avis Blagden, at his elbow.
“Or else you are trying to cut your old playmates.” The two women had
brazenly pursued him. They were within a yard of him. It was indelicate.
It was so perfectly unnecessary. He cordially wished some friendly
engine had run them both down when they were crossing the tracks....
“Why, bless my soul!” he was saying, “this is indeed a delightful
surprise. I had no idea you were in town, Mrs. Allardyce. I didn’t
recognize you, with that veil on—”
“There’s Peter, at last,” said Avis. “I really must speak to him a
moment.” And she promptly left them. Kennaston reflected that the whole
transaction was self-evidently pre-arranged. And Muriel was, as if
abstractedly, but deliberately, walking beyond earshot of the chauffeur.
And there was nothing for it save to accompany her.
“It’s awfully jolly to see you again,” he observed, with fervor.
“Is it? Honestly, Felix, it looked almost as if you were trying to avoid
me.” Kennaston wondered how he could ever have loved a woman of so
little penetration.
“No, I didn’t recognize you, with that veil on,” he repeated. “And I had
no idea you were in Lichfield. I do hope you are going to pay us all a
nice long visit—”
“But, no, I am leaving on this train—”
“Oh, I say, but that’s too bad! And I never knew you were here!” he
lamented.
“I only stopped overnight with Avis. I am on my way home—”
“To Leonard?” And Kennaston smiled. “How do you get on with him
nowadays?”
“We are—contented, I suppose. He has his business—and politics. He is
doing perfectly splendidly now, you know. And I have my memories.” Her
voice changed. “I have my memories, Felix! Nothing—nothing can take that
from me!”
“Good God, Muriel, there are a dozen people watching us—”
“What does that matter!”
“Well, it matters a lot to me. I live here, you know.”
She was silent for a moment. “You look your latest rôle in life so well,
too, Felix. You are the respectable married gentleman to the last
detail. Why, you are an old man now, Felix,” she said wistfully. “Your
hair is gray about the ears, and you are fat, and there are wrinkles
under your eyes—But are you happy, dear?” she asked, with the grave
tender speech that he remembered. And momentarily the man forgot the
people about them, and the fact that his wife’s train was due any
minute.
“Happier than I deserve to be, Muriel.” His voice had quavered—not
ineffectively, it appeared to him.
“That’s true, at least,” the woman said, as in reflection. “You treated
me rather abominably, you know—like an old shoe.”
“I am not altogether sorry you take that view of it. For I wouldn’t want
you to regret—anything—not even that which, to me at least, is very
sacred. But there was really nothing else to do save just to let things
end. It was as hard,” he said, with a continuous flight of imagination,
“it was as hard on me as you.”
“Sometimes I think it was simply because you were afraid of Leonard. I
put that out of my mind, though, always. You see, I like to keep my
memories. I have nothing else now, Felix—” She opened the small leather
bag she carried, took out a handkerchief, and brushed her lips. “I am a
fool, of course. Oh, it is funny to see your ugly little snub nose
again! And I couldn’t help wanting to speak to you, once more—”
“It has been delightful. And some day I certainly do hope—But there’s
your train, I think. The gates are going down.”
“And here is Avis coming. So good-by, Felix. It is really forever this
time, I think—”
It seemed to him that she held in her left hand the sigil of Scoteia....
He stared at the gleaming thing, then raised his eyes to hers. She was
smiling. Her eyes were the eyes of Ettarre. All the beauty of the world
seemed gathered in this woman’s face....
“Don’t let it be forever! Come with me, Felix! There is only you—even
now, there is only you. It is not yet too late—” Astounding as were the
words, they came quite clearly, in a pleading frightened whisper.
The man was young for just that one wonderful moment of inexplicable
yearning and self-loathing. Then, “I—I am afraid my wife would hardly
like it,” he said, equably. “So good-by, Muriel. It has been very
delightful to see you again.”
* * * * *
“I was mistaken, though, of course. It was the top of a vanity-box, or
of a toilet water flask, or of something else, that she took out of the
bag, when she was looking for her handkerchief. It was just a silly
coincidence. I was mistaken, of course.... And here is Kathleen’s train.
Thank goodness, it was late enough....”
Thus Kennaston, as he went to receive his wife’s cool kiss. And—having
carefully mentioned as a matter of no earthly importance that he had
just seen Muriel Allardyce, and that she had gone off terribly in looks,
and that none of them seem to hold their own like you, dear—he disbarred
from mind that awkward moment’s delusion, and tried not to think of it
any more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
Cross-Purposes in Spacious Times
SO Kennaston seemed to have got only disappointment and vexation and
gainless vague regret from his love-affairs in the flesh; and all
fleshly passion seemed to flicker out inevitably, however splendid the
brief blaze. For you loved and lost; or else you loved and won: there
was quick ending either way. And afterward unaccountable women haunted
you, and worried you into unreasonable contrition, in defiance of
commonsense....
But for Ettarre, who embodied all Kennaston was ever able to conceive of
beauty and fearlessness and strange purity, all perfections, all the
attributes of divinity, in a word, such as his slender human faculties
were competent to understand, he must hunger always in vain. Whatever
happened, Ettarre stayed inaccessible, even in dreams: her beauty was
his to look on only; and always when he came too near that radiant
loveliness which was Ettarre’s—that perfect beauty which was so full of
troubling reticences, and so, was touched with something sinister—the
dream would end, and the universe would seem to fold about him, just as
a hand closes. Such was the law, the kindly law, as Kennaston now
believed, through which love might thrive even in the arid heart of a
poet.
Sometimes, however, this law would lead to odd results, and left the
dream an enigma. For instance, he had a quaint experience upon the night
of that day during which he had talked with Muriel Allardyce....
* * * * *
“You are in all things a fortunate man, Master—ah—whatever your true
name may be,” said the boy, pettishly flinging down the cards.
“Ods life, and have we done?” says Kennaston....
The two sat in a comfortable paneled room. There was a big open fire
behind Kennaston; he could see its reflections flicker about the
wood-work. The boy facing him was glowingly attired in green and gold,
an ardent comely urchin, who (as Kennaston estimated) might perhaps be a
page to Queen Elizabeth, or possibly was one of King James’s spoilt
striplings. Between them was a rough deal table, littered with
playing-cards; and upon it sat a tallish blue pitcher half-full of wine,
four lighted candles stuck like corks in as many emptied bottles, and
two coarse yellow mugs....
“Yes, we have done,” the boy answered; and, rising, smiled cherubically.
“May I ask what the object may be that you conceal with such care in
your left hand?” says he.
“To be candid,” Kennaston returned, “it is the King of Diamonds, that
swarthy bearded Spaniard. I had intended it should serve as a corrective
and encourager of Lady Fortune, when I turned it, my next deal, as the
trump card. I’ faith, I thank God I have found the jade is to be
influenced by such feats of manual activity. Oh, ay, sir, I may say it
without conceit that my fingers have in these matters tolerable compass
and variety.”
“A card-sharp!” sneers the boy. “La, half of us suspected it already;
but it will be rare news to the town that Master Lionel Branch—as I must
continue to call you—stands detected in such Greek knaveries.”
“Nay, but you will hardly live to moralize of it, sir. Oh, no, sir,
indeed my poor arts must not be made public: for I would not seem to
boast of my accomplishments. Harkee, sir, I abhor vain-glory. I name no
man, sir; but I know very well there are snotty-nosed people who regard
expedients toward amending the quirks of fate with puritan disfavor.
Hah, but, signior, what is that to us knights of the moon, to us
gallants of generous spirit?—Oh, Lord, sir, I protest I look upon such
talents much as I do upon my breeches. I do consider them as
possessions, not certainly to be vaunted, but indispensable to any
gentleman who hopes to make a pleasing figure in the world.”
“All this bluster is wordy foolery, Master Branch. What I have seen, I
have seen; and you will readily guess how I mean to use my knowledge.”
“I would give a great deal to find out what he is talking about,” was
Kennaston’s reflection. “I have discovered, at least, that my present
alias is Branch, but that I am in reality somebody else.” Aloud he said:
“’Fore God, your eyesight is of the best, Master Skirlaw—(_How the deuce
did I know his name, now?_)—Hah, I trust forthwith to prove if your
sword be equally keen.”
“I will fight with no cheats—”
“I’ faith, sir, but I have heard that wine is a famed provoker of
courage. Let us try the byword.” So saying, Kennaston picked up one mug,
and flung its contents full in the boy’s face. It was white wine,
Kennaston noted, for it did not stain Master Skirlaw’s handsome
countenance at all.
“The insult is sufficient. Draw, and have done!” the lad said quietly.
His sword gleamed in the restive reflections of that unseen fire behind
Kennaston.
“Na, na! but, my most expeditious cockerel, surely this place is a
thought too public? Now yonder is a noble courtyard. Oh, ay, favored by
to-night’s moon, we may settle our matter without any hindrance or
intolerable scandal. So, I will call my host, that we may have the key.
Yet, upon my gentility, Master Skirlaw, I greatly fear I shall be forced
to kill you. Therefore I cry you mercy, sir, but is there no business on
your mind which you would not willingly leave undischarged? Save you,
friend, but we are all mortal. Hah, to a lady whom I need not name, it
is an affair of considerable import what disposition a bold man might
make of this ring—”
Leering, Kennaston touched the great signet-ring on the lad’s thumb; and
forthwith the universe seemed to fold about him, just as a hand closes.
In this brief moment of inexplicable yearning and self-loathing he
comprehended that the boy’s face was the face of Ettarre.
And Kennaston, awake, was pleading, with meaningless words: “Valentia!
forgive me, Valentia!...”
* * * * *
And that was all. This dream remained an enigma. Kennaston could never
know what events had preceded this equivocal instant, or how Ettarre
came to be disguised as a man, or what were their relations in this
dream, nor, above all, why he should have awakened crying upon the name
of Valentia. It was simply a law that always when he was about to touch
Ettarre—even unconsciously—everything must vanish; and through the
workings of that law this dream, with many others, came to be just a
treasured moment of unexplainable but poignant emotion.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
Horvendile to Ettarre: At Whitehall
TO Kennaston the Lord Protector was saying, with grave unction: “You
will, I doubt not, fittingly express to our friends in Virginia, Master
Major, those hearty sentiments which I have in the way of gratefulness,
in that I have received the honor and safeguard of their approbation;
for all which I humbly thank them. To our unfriends in that colony we
will let action speak when I shall have completed God’s work in
Ireland.”
“Yet the Burgesses, sir, are mostly ill-affected; and Berkeley, to grant
him justice, does not lack bravery—”
“With Heaven’s help, Master Major, I have of late dealt with a king who
did not lack bravery. Nay, depend upon it, I shall some day grant
William Berkeley utter justice—such justice as I gave his master, that
proud curled man, Charles Stuart.” Then the Lord Protector’s face was
changed, and his harsh countenance became a little troubled. “Yes, I
shall do all this, with Heaven’s help, I think. But in good faith, I
grow old, Master Major. I move in a mist, and my deeds are strange to
me....”
Cromwell closed and unclosed his hands, regarding them; and he sighed.
Then it was to Ettarre he spoke:
“I leave you in Master Major’s charge. It may be I shall not return
alive into England; indeed, I grow an old man and feel infirmities of
age stealing upon me. And so, farewell, my lass. Truly if I love you not
too well, I err not on the other hand much. Thou hast been dearer to me
than any other creature: let that suffice.” And with this leave-taking
he was gone.
As the door closed upon Cromwell’s burly figure, “No, be very careful
not to touch me,” Kennaston implored. “The dream must last till I have
found out how through your aid, Ettarre, this bull-necked country squire
has come to rule England. It is precisely as I expected. You explain
Cromwell, you explain Mohammed—Richelieu and Tamburlaine and Julius
Cæsar, I suspect, and, as I know, Napoleon—all these men who have
inexplicably risen from nothing to earthly supremacy. How is it done,
Ettarre?”
“It is not I who contrive it, Horvendile. I am but an incident in such
men’s lives. They have known me—yes: and knowing me, they were bent
enough on their own ends to forget that I seemed not unlovely. It is not
the sigil and the power the sigil gives which they love and serve—”
“And that small square mirror, such as Cromwell also carried—?”
Kennaston began. “Or is this forbidden talk?”
“Yes, that mirror aids them. In that mirror they can see only
themselves. So the mirror aids toward the ends they chose, with open
eyes.... But you cannot ever penetrate these mysteries now, Horvendile.
The secret of the mirror was offered you once, and you would not
bargain. The secret of the mirror is offered to no man twice.”
And he laughed merrily. “What does it matter? I am perfectly content.
That is more than can be said for yonder sanctimonious fat old rascal,
who has just told me he is going into Ireland ‘for the propagating of
the gospel of Christ, the establishing of truth and peace, and the
restoring of that bleeding nation to its former happiness and
tranquillity.’ Why is it that people of executive ability seem always to
be more or less mentally deficient? Now, you and I know that, in point
of fact, he is going into Ireland to burn villages, massacre women, hang
bishops, and generally qualify his name for all time as a Hibernian
synonym for infamy. Oh, no, the purchase-price of grandeur is too great;
and men that crown themselves in this world inevitably perform the
action with soiled hands. Still, I wish I had known I was going visiting
to-night in seventeenth-century England,” said Kennaston, reflectively;
“then I could have read up a bit. I don’t even know whether Virginia
ever submitted to him. It simply shows what idleness may lead to! If I
had studied history more faithfully I would have been able to-night to
prophesy to Oliver Cromwell about the results of his Irish campaigns and
so on, and could have impressed him vastly with my abilities. As it is,
I have missed an opportunity which will probably never occur again to
any man of my generation....”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
Horvendile to Ettarre: At Vaux-le-Vicomte
“WHAT fun!” says Kennaston; “we are at Vaux-le-Vicomte, where Fouquet is
entertaining young Louis Quatorze. Yonder is La Vallière—the thin
tow-headed girl, with the big mouth. People are just beginning to
whisper scandal about her. And that tall jade is Athenaïs de
Tonnay-Charente—the woman who is going to be Madame de Montespan and
control everything in the kingdom later on, you remember. The King is
not yet aware of her existence, nor has Monsieur de Montespan been
introduced....
“The Troupe of Monsieur is about to present an open-air comedy. It is
called _Les Facheux_—The Bores. It is rumored to take off very cleverly
the trivial tedious fashion in which perfectly well-meaning people
chatter their way through life. But that more fittingly would be the
theme of a tragedy, Ettarre. Men are condemned eternally to bore one
another. Two hundred years and more from to-day—perhaps forever—man will
lack means, or courage, to voice his actual thoughts adequately. He must
still talk of weather probabilities and of having seen So-and-so and of
such trifles, that mean absolutely nothing to him—and must babble of
these things even to the persons who are most dear and familiar to him.
Yes, every reputable man must desperately make small-talk, and echo and
re-echo senseless phrases, until the crack of doom. He will always be
afraid to bare his actual thoughts and interests to his fellows’
possible disapproval: or perhaps it is just a pitiable mania with the
race. At all events, one should not laugh at this ageless aspersion and
burlesque of man’s intelligence as performed by man himself....
“The comedy is quite new. A marquis, with wonderful canions and a
scented wig like an edifice, told me it is by an upholsterer named
Coquelin, a barnstormer who ran away from home and has been knocking
about the provinces unsuccessfully for nearly twenty years: and my
little marquis wondered what in the world we are coming to, when
Monsieur le Surintendent takes up with that class of people. Is not my
little marquis droll?—for he meant Poquelin, soon to be Poquelin de
Molière, of course. Molière, also, is a name which is not famous as yet.
But in a month or so it will be famous for all time; and Monsieur le
Surintendent will be in jail and forgotten....
“You smile, Ettarre? Ah, yes, I understand. Molière too adores you. All
poets have had fitful glimpses of you, Ettarre, and of that perfect
beauty which is full of troubling reticences, and so, is touched with
something sinister. I have written as to the price they pay, these
hapless poets, in a little book I am inditing through that fat pudgy
body I wear in the flesh.... Do not frown: I know it is forbidden to
talk with you concerning my life in the flesh....
“Ah, the King comes—evidently in no very amiable frame of mind—and all
rise, like a flurry of great butterflies. It is the beginning of the
play. See, a woman is coming out of the big shell in the fountain....
“I wish my old friend Jonas d’Artagnan were here. It is a real pity he
is only a character in fiction—just as I once thought you were, Ettarre.
Eh, what a fool I was to imagine I had created you! and that I
controlled your speech and doings! I know much better now....
“Ettarre, your unattainable beauty tears my heart. Is that black-browed
Molière your lover too? What favors have you granted him? You perceive I
am jealous. How can I be otherwise, when there is nothing, nothing in me
that does not cry out for love of you? And I am forbidden ever to win
quite to you, ever to touch you, ever to see you even save in my
dreams!”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
Horvendile to Ettarre: In the Conciergerie
THEY waited in a big dark room of the Conciergerie, with many other
condemned émigrants, until the tumbrils should come to fetch them to the
Place de la Révolution. They stood beneath a narrow barred window, set
high in the wall, so that thin winter sunlight made the girl’s face
visible. Misery was about them, death waited without: and it did not
matter a pennyworth.
“Ettarre, I know to-day that all my life I have been seeking you. Very
long ago when I was a child it was made clear that you awaited me
somewhere; and, I recollect now, I used to hunger for your coming with a
longing which has not any name. And when I went about the dusty world I
still believed you waited somewhere—till I should find you, as I
inevitably must, or soon or late. Did I go upon a journey to some
unfamiliar place?—it might be that unwittingly I traveled toward your
home. I could never pass a walled garden where green tree-tops showed
without suspecting, even while I shrugged to think how wild was the
imagining, that there was only the wall between us. I did not know the
color of your eyes, but I knew what I would read there. And for a
fevered season I appeared to encounter many women of earth who resembled
you—”