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THE NIGHT OF TEMPTATION
_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
LIFE'S SHOP WINDOW
SIX WOMEN
SELF AND THE OTHER
THE ETERNAL FIRES
FIVE NIGHTS
THE LIFE SENTENCE
ANNA LOMBARD
(500,000 copies)
SIX CHAPTERS OF A MAN'S LIFE
TO-MORROW?
PAULA
THE WOMAN WHO DIDN'T
A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE
THE RELIGION OF EVELYN HASTINGS
LIFE OF MY HEART
THE NIGHT OF TEMPTATION
BY
VICTORIA CROSS
Author of "Life's Shop Window," "Six Women," etc., etc.
NEW YORK THE MACAULAY COMPANY
Copyright, 1912, by VIVIAN CORY GRIFFEN
Copyright, 1914, by VIVIAN CORY GRIFFEN
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. HOME 11
II. IN THE WAYS OF DELIGHT 43
III. THE GIFT 77
IV. OUT OF THE STAGNANT HARBOUR 124
V. CLEAR WATERS 145
VI. PARADISE OR ----? 172
VII. WITH THE GREAT RIVER 196
VIII. THE LIONS OF THE DESERT 223
IX. IN THE DARK WATCHES 249
X. THE REACTION 285
XI. VAE VICTIS 296
XII. DAWN 305
THE NIGHT OF TEMPTATION
CHAPTER I
HOME
She lay in a quiet corner of the Rectory Garden, looking up at the
majestic white clouds, that sailed across the blue of the summer
sky, like Viking ships under full sail, speeding along over the deep
blue of a limitless ocean. How glorious they were! How wonderful to
contemplate these summer nimbi, in their immaculate, fleecy whiteness,
in their shadowy recesses, in their glistening summits. They were
pure and radiant, even as the girl's soul was, and by their affinity
with it they seemed to call it up to them, to lift it up away from
the sordid Rectory, with its harsh, unloving father, its dejected,
stupid mother, its quarrelling daughters; away from the horrible
village, full of vice, squalor and disease; away from the narrow
stone church, in which a yet narrower creed was weekly preached. Away
from all these, to the contemplation of the pure and the beautiful,
these glorious clouds called her, and she loved them, the friends and
companions of her thoughts through many a lonely hour. Now, in the
hush of a hot afternoon, she lay very still under the gold rain of the
laburnum-trees, looking up at the towering snowy masses in a rapture of
delight.
Stossop Rectory lay, in its old-fashioned country grounds, inland
from the sea about two miles on the south coast of Devon, and a very
beautiful old place it was, long and low, containing many rooms, and
having a deep gabled roof of Titian-red, that showed above the wealth
of white and delicately pink roses that veiled its face; and if the
Rectory from without looked the typical, peaceful English home, so
within was it the really typical English home, full of disunion,
pettiness, quarrelling, hatred and discontent. The English are perhaps
of all humanity the greatest humbugs; they love, more than anything
in the world, pretence; and the farther away the reality is from the
sham they create out of their imagination the more dearly they love the
sham; hence those amazing pictures of the domestic hearth, the happy,
rosy-cheeked children, the smiling mother, the loving, protective
father; the gentle temper, the sunny cheerfulness, the air of rest and
peace and safety pervading all. Has anyone ever been the inmate of, or
the visitor to, such a home? Let all who read these lines recall their
recollections of home, their own and those they have seen. Whoever
it was who wrote "Home, Sweet Home," one feels the author must have
been an orphan and brought up at a school. The home in reality is the
place where everyone feels they can display their bad temper and their
bad manners, as they can wear their oldest, ugliest clothes and their
surliest expressions. The heroic manly brothers of the story-book spend
their time in pulling their sisters' hair and kicking them under the
table; the gentle sisters hate them secretly in return; the father
grumbles at his wife, the wife scolds the servants; and so the dreary
round of home life goes on. The boys escape from it as soon as they
can; the girls rebelliously long to follow; the unhappy wife and mother
hopes vaguely for some relief that never comes; the father cherishes
in his heart the memory of his last visit to town, _on business_, and
looks forward eagerly to the next, enlivening the dull and stupid time
that intervenes by bullying his wife.
Such is the average home, and such was it at Stossop Rectory, and,
but for the enchanted garden, Regina Marlow, the Rector's youngest
daughter, who was of totally different stamp and mould from the rest of
the family, could never have supported life in it at all.
Some really golden moments in Mrs. Marlow's life, in which the
Rector had no part--being away on one of his business visits to
town--accounted for Regina. She was the child of love and passion, as
the others were of distaste and dislike, for Mrs. Marlow entertained
for her husband that solid dislike which is the basis of most marital
relations. And the elder daughters, conceived and nurtured in it,
had hate engrained in every fibre of their bodies. It showed in the
spiteful gleams of their eyes, in the downward turn of their mouths,
in their incessant wrangling with each other. Beautiful they were,
for Mrs. Marlow was beautiful, but the nine months of inward revolt
from her husband that she had suffered in each case while they were
being fashioned within her, of her blood and her bone and her brain,
had given them both the terrible curse of the hating soul. But Regina,
born of love, of that sweet tenderness like the spring zephyr, of that
wild passion like a summer storm, that the gods have given to man to
illumine the darkness of the earth, Regina showed love and joy in every
line of her face and form. Her mouth was always smiling; its curves
were upwards, not downwards. Her voice was soft with all the notes of
love and sex in it; her eyelids were sweetly arched; her blue eyes
overflowed with tenderness and smiles; her soul was filled to the brim
with what the Rector would have termed the "grace of God," and not
untruly, since God is love. All through Regina's creation her mother
had dwelt on love and on its sacred memories, and naturally enough the
embryo conceived and reared in love and loving thoughts came into the
world fitted out and equipped for love. Ah, how little do women think
of the evil they commit when they give themselves to husbands they
do not love! The hideous crime it is, blacker than any, to give life
to beings burdened with evil souls, do they ever think of it? That
hate they feel for the father, do they not realise how it bears fruit
in the evil tempers and passions of the child? Mrs. Marlow, deep in
her inmost heart, always thought of Regina, the gay, loving, radiant
Regina, as the child of sin. No small voice ever whispered to her that
the elder children, fretful, vicious, unhealthy, malicious, reflections
of her own state of mind when bearing them, were children of a greater
sin--against themselves, against society, against the human race.
She never thought about these things; she believed herself to be a
thoroughly good woman, who had sinned once in her life, but sincerely
repented.
She had dismissed her lover; she had turned a deaf ear to the
passionate entreaties of the man who really wanted her, and had
remained to do her duty to her husband, who would have been so thankful
to be free from her--duty, which consisted, according to her ideas, in
counting his shirts when they came home from the wash, presiding over
the flannel club he had started in the village, seeing that he had
three meals a day and that the Rectory was cleaned up twice a year, and
disliking him extremely the whole time.
Year by year her face hardened and her intellect diminished under
the cramping influence of the hating habit; now and then the lines
of her mouth would soften and her eyes glow tenderly as she thought
of Regina's father, but she immediately chased the warmth of love
out of her heart as most improper, and hastened off to fold her
husband's clothes or put his books in order, with the proper feeling of
repulsion, hatred and disgust to which she was accustomed.
Whether such a state of living and being would really be acceptable to
the one who said, Love one another, and Blessed are the pure in heart,
she never stopped to ask herself. That she would have been accounted by
him the "whitened sepulchre" never occurred to her.
Regina's presence she could not bear, the girl reminded her too vividly
of what she was always trying vainly to forget; and so, while her
mother busied herself more and more with old women's charities and
parochial meetings, Regina was left more and more to her own studies,
and for her pleasures to the enchanted garden. The enchanted garden
belonged to an unoccupied villa by the sea called "The Chalet." The
owner had left it in charge of a caretaker and a gardener, but had
begged the Rector to visit both house and garden occasionally and see
that things were kept in good order. The Rector being very busy had
gradually allowed this duty to devolve on Regina, who possessed herself
of the keys, made friends with the gardener, and undertook to report on
the property from time to time to the owner. In this way a great joy
had come into her life. She fell in love with the garden at first sight
of it, and her visits there soon became a passion of delight to her. In
both winter and summer the garden was almost equally beautiful. From
its extraordinarily sheltered position no winds could get into it to
riot there. Rain and snow to fall upon its velvet ground had to filter
through a maze of foliage which neither withered nor fell through all
the dizzy circle of the seasons. The garden was sunk slightly below
the level of the green, grassy, sheltered and little-frequented road
that lay on one side of it, and from which it was screened by masses of
tamarisks grown into splendid trees and banks of wild red roses, the
tree stems of which were as thick as a man's arm; on the other side of
the garden, enclosing all the magic space, was a low stone balustrade,
and through its interstices glittered the dancing blue of the sea; over
the balustrade, and far above it, towered great aloes, with their spiky
leaves, and auricarias, and more red climbing roses, and ever here and
there their gentle sprays parted and let through them a vision of the
wide sea and the blue and violet lines of distant hills on a far-off
coast. In the centre of the garden rose in its stately majesty a single
palm, and stretched its benign and glorious branches widely and evenly
on every side, catching the rosy light of the dawn, the red glow of
the afternoon and the crimson of the sunset through the procession of
the hours; for the garden lay to the south, and the sun made it his
resting-place through all the golden day; beneath the palm, cool in
its shade, lay green turf, emerald-coloured, velvety, wonderful; and
on this without order, except the gracious order of nature, stood at
wide intervals standard rose-trees bearing blossoms of every shape and
hue--white and amber and cream, red, crimson to blackness, blush-pink
like a maiden's cheek, yellow and deep orange--and all of them were
scented. Unlike the over-cultivated roses of some rich man's garden,
where excessive culture has induced extravagant size at the expense of
the flower's natural mystic charm, its perfume, these flowers were all
comparatively small, but rich both in colour and fragrance. So sweet
was the breath of the roses that for half-a-mile before one reached
the garden its divine scent drifted out to the wayfarer and, as in
Damascus, the whole air and every breeze whispered of the rose.
To Regina these rose-trees standing on the green grass, not in lines,
or rows or circles, not in beds nor borders, seemed less like plants
than living figures; they seemed to her fancy to stand like beautiful
girls in a ballroom waiting for their partners to dance with, and the
perfume diffused by them in the air seemed like the music of their
innocent conversation. She never tired of watching them and noting the
graceful attitudes in which they stood, and how sometimes two or three
would bend together as if to murmur their confidences.
Round the great oval of the green turf, with its standing roses, ran a
narrow path, and this towards the western end of the garden met other
little paths, and these all ran, together or separately, now side by
side, now widely diverse through thickets of tamarisk, aloe and rose,
under other thick branching palms, where it was so dark at noon under
tangled creeper and vine that it seemed like evening; and yet, dark
though they were, all these winding, hidden paths led at last out to
the porphyry balustrade and the glittering purple sea.
The effect of this garden on Regina's artistic, poetic, beauty-loving
nature was like magic. However sad or irritated, nervous, ill or
angry she might be when she came there, once the gate of the garden
was passed a deep peace fell upon her. All here was silence, rest and
fragrance; the perfect harmony of light and shade, the mystic presence
of beauty; and all her cares and troubles, and the annoyances of the
petty world in which she lived, fell from her; her soul seemed to
unfurl its wings and soar through radiant spaces, and everything was
forgotten but the beauty of the earth and the glory of light and colour
and the laugh of the joyous sea.
To the girl lying gazing up at the white clouds this Sunday afternoon
the thought of the garden came sweetly, and she got up and shook out
the folds of her cambric gown and took the winding path through the
Rectory garden which led to the old road to the coast. She had no
hat, and through the lace of her white parasol the sun streamed down
warmly on her thick and waving hair, hair itself sun-coloured and
light-filled, and on the pale rose of her cheeks and the blue of her
eyes softly shaded by their curling lashes. Tall, erect and graceful,
in the first glory of her youth, Regina Marlow walked that afternoon
with the step and carriage that her name implied. As she walked, she
was thinking; she had a small black scholarly-looking book clasped in
her hand, but to-day she was not thinking of her studies: her thoughts
clustered round an approaching event which was coming to disturb the
even discomfort of the Rectory, and which had been the sole topic of
conversation at luncheon that day. A friend of the Rector, a junior
chum of his in Oxford days, had been invited and was coming to stay at
Stossop with them, and Regina wondered very much within herself whether
he would be interesting or not. She had heard that he was immensely
rich, but that did not interest her at all, though the whole family
had nearly fallen into a violent quarrel amongst themselves as to the
exact amount of his income and the number of his country houses, much
to Regina's amusement, who could not see what it mattered to them
whether he were once or three times a millionaire. She had heard that
he had travelled a great deal, which attracted her, but chiefly, she
understood, for sport, which repelled her. That he was a very brilliant
individual, much sought after, courted and fêted in society, impressed
her, but only vaguely, since the world of men and their judgments and
opinions were very far away from Stossop.
Her query to the Rector as to his appearance had been answered by: "Oh
yes; Everest was the best-looking fellow at Oxford," a phrase that left
her equally uninformed, since she had no idea what the men at Oxford
were like. If they resembled the average individual she saw at Stossop,
the Rector's words would not necessarily mean much. And out of this
chaotic non-knowledge of him in her mind, and from the incessant
chatter of her sisters about him, a very splendid and glowing vision
of the stranger had gradually grown up, and she looked forward to this
evening, when he was going to arrive, with a joyous sense of elation
and interest which was impersonal in its nature and very different from
the anxious, calculating hopes that inspired the rest of the family.
To Regina's intense and secret amusement she saw that her sisters had
quite made up their minds that Everest Lanark, his unusual rent-roll
and indeterminable number of country houses, should be captured by
one or other of them; and the Rector, while professing to be entirely
disinterested, really fell in with this idea, while her mother openly
exerted herself about the girls' wardrobes, and fussed over their new
evening dresses, warning them against burning their complexions, and
urging them to practise their drawing-room songs before his arrival.
To Regina's keen intelligence the idea that a man of large resources,
of wide travel, of immense experience, who had reached the age of
forty-six or seven, untouched by all the beauty that, according to
all accounts, had always been at his feet, should immediately succumb
to the attractions of an ordinary, country girl, without rank, title,
wealth or any of those things to which he was accustomed--without
talent or charm of any sort except youth and a pretty face--seemed
improbable in the extreme.
For her sisters Regina felt that sort of marvelling wonder that the
naturally clever and gifted individual feels for the ordinary person,
and which is far greater than any admiring wonder that the limited
brain of the ordinary person can conceive for the clever one.
Why did they not do something--and something well--she often asked
herself. They did nothing, and wanted to do nothing; they knew nothing,
and wanted to know nothing.
To Regina, always learning, always acquiring, always thinking, always
doing something, it seemed truly marvellous.
In the Rectory there was a splendid library, full of books in all kinds
of languages, treating of all countries, religions and philosophies;
yet neither of the elder girls had opened one of them. They hardly
realised that any other religion than the Christian existed, barely
knew whether the world was round or square, knew no language but their
own, had no conception of what was conveyed by the words Roman Empire,
and had never heard of Troy. They played a very little on the piano
and sung a little less, badly and out of time. They went to church
regularly and visited the poor, because their parents insisted on their
doing it, in their quality of the Rector's daughters, and Regina often
wondered what the "poor" thought of them. The rest of the time they
spent reading some novel that dealt exclusively with English life, for
they could not understand any other; fashioning and refashioning their
costumes, and hoping vaguely for the wealthy individuals they thought
they deserved to come to the Rectory and insist on marrying them!
To Regina, who was up with the light of the dawn to read and study
and work, who had absorbed already the learning of a quarter of the
library, who had mastered Greek and Latin and read in five modern
languages besides, though she had no opportunity of speaking them, who
played really well and was endued with a natural gift for painting, the
ignorance and apathy of her sisters were beyond understanding.
She did not know that her own splendid health and energy, her capacity
for hard work and concentration, her quick and eager mind, all came
from that golden source: the passionate love that had formed her being.
Had she known the heavy handicap laid upon her sisters at their birth
she would have pitied them even more than she did now, and wondered at
them less.
By the time she reached the garden the sun was low in the sky and
great bars of yellow light fell all across the vivid green amongst the
standing roses. She opened and closed the gate very softly, for the
birds were singing, and the white doves that belonged to the Chalet
were cooing, and she did not want to jar upon the concert. She entered
silently, and slowly walked round the winding paths, her whole being
lifted up and expanding in the peace and fragrance and beauty of this
radiant solitude.
How many afternoons and evenings had she not walked there alone! And
now, to-morrow perhaps, she would bring the stranger there to see it.
Would he feel the enchantment of it as she did, she wondered, or would
he say, as her father had done: "Those roses, you know, Regina, ought
to be in beds; it's absurd having them all over the place like this."
That should be the test, she thought: if he said anything like that,
or if he suggested that the wild tamarisks should be cut down or
thinned out, she would not care about him.
It was a curious fact that, in all her reverie concerning him, it never
once occurred to her to picture what his feelings might be for her: she
was wholly absorbed in wondering what her feelings might be towards
him. So far in her experience with men, and it had not been very wide
or deep, she had found them uniformly fall in love with her, and she
had grown to accept this, without paying much attention to it, as a
common habit of theirs, like smoking.
The doctor had wanted her to marry him and preside over the village
dispensary; the curate had wanted her to marry him and manage coal
clubs and write his sermons for him all the rest of her life; the Latin
master had wanted her to marry him and take his boys' class in Greek
verse, and the same master's assistant had wanted her to marry him and
run away to London with him; but to all of these Regina had said a very
gentle No, though her heart had beat at their words and her colour
had come and gone uncertainly, for she unconsciously responded to all
love as the bell responds to the vibration of the note to which it is
attuned.
Regina, naturally, never spoke to anyone of these offers and refusals,
but they gradually became known in the village, as everything is always
known in an English village. When the grumpy doctor became more surly
and grumpy than ever; when the Latin master took to caning his boys
every day instead of every week; when the curate came to church whiter
than his surplice, with dark rings under his eyes, and the assistant
master went away to town and shot himself in his lodgings there, it was
all put down to Regina, and her conduct in having had four proposals
was called "disgraceful" by the ladies in the village who had not had
one, and were twice and three times her age.
The curate asked her if it was not very miserable for a woman to feel
she was making a man unhappy, and Regina had answered very truly: "Yes;
but she gets accustomed to it." She could not marry them all, and had
she married one the other three would still have been unconsoled. So,
when she was being abused and reproached for her heartlessness, she
simply went away to the enchanted garden and tried to forget about all
of them. Her sisters' strange conceit in themselves prevented them from
owing her any ill-will for these events.
They fancied that Regina's lovers did not aspire to them; that, while
good enough for her, they would not dare to lift their eyes to the
beautiful elder daughters of the Rector, the real fact being that none
of the four men would have burdened his life with either of the silly,
weakly, useless creatures.
Regina, lying with her cheek pressed to the bright green turf, listened
in silence to the wild beating of her heart, as she thought of love.
"Surely it must mean more than they think and make of it," she told
herself when the memory of these men recurred to her. And she leaned
most towards the young master, because he had given up his life for
love, but, greatly though his enthusiastic mind had pleased her, his
face and figure had not, and she did not regret him.
She would look up to the roses leaning over her and repeat to them
some Greek lines that fascinated her: "Oh, children, what is this
that men call love?" And the roses seemed to quiver and bend lower
over her to hear the answer: "Love is not love alone, but indeed
is known by many names; it is unbridled violence; it is unslaked
thirst; it is intolerable anguish; it is unbounded joy; it is endless
lamentation," and as a breath stirred in the garden the trees seemed
to throw high their blossoms on the scented breeze in a wild and gay
response: "Whatever it is, good or ill, we wait for it, worship it,
live for it, die for it." This seemed their song to the girl, and the
white doves took it up and echoed it, and the thrushes warbled it in
their passionate throats, and the nightingales in the dark parts of
the garden trilled out in warm melody the same notes: "Wait for it,
worship it, live for it, die for it," and the girl heard it, with a
wonderful elation and triumph filling her, for she knew that whatever
gift the gods might have denied her in this life they had bestowed the
supreme one of all--the power to love, and to inspire love. It was
this intuitive knowledge of the great power within her, the limitless
capacity for devotion, the aptitude for love, that, paradoxical as it
may seem, had kept her from love so far.
She knew that somewhere in the world there must be men who possessed
beauty and strength and grace and intellect, all that she loved; and
one of these would call up in her that same wild elation, that keen
rush of adoration, the vivid joy, that she felt under the sky at
sunset, when it arrayed itself in its most glorious colours, or in the
garden, when the roses poured over her their fragrance, or in Exeter
Cathedral, when the roll of melody from the organ seemed to catch up
her breathless soul and carry it away to unknown spheres. She felt
in fact that need of her being to worship which, in the young and
innocent, is the first knowledge of love. And as her reason revolted
from worshipping the doctor or the curate or the Latin master or the
assistant master, she knew that she did not love, and she would not
marry them. For before a clever and well-awakened mind can give itself
over to the worship of any object, either that object must be worthy of
the worship, or it must so dazzle the senses of the worshipper, throw
such a magic glamour around itself, that it appears to be worthy of
it; Regina had never seen anyone yet who could capture her reason or
dazzle her senses, and now the query came before her, floating hazily,
cloud-like on the horizon of her thoughts, would this new-comer to the
Rectory bring with him the power of the sunset skies and the cathedral
music?
For a whole fortnight nothing had been talked of except the approaching
visit. It had engrossed the entire household. The finest bedroom
in the Rectory, with a little sitting-room opening out of it, had
been assigned to the guest, and to these rooms the occupants of
the house had carried their various treasures, sometimes openly,
sometimes surreptitiously. Mrs. Marlow had contributed her favourite
lounging-chair from her boudoir, Miss Marlow had lent her silver
clock, and Miss Violet Marlow her set of silken cushions from her own
sofa, and many more pretty and graceful objects had travelled that way
for many days, till the family really felt that their guest would be
pleased with the little suite, even accustomed as he was, in their
imagination, to be surrounded by tokens of fabulous wealth. Regina that
morning had herself placed on the dressing-table as her contribution
two lovely roses of perfect shape and hue, in a slender vase of
gilded crystal, but Miss Marlow having come in and noticed the divine
fragrance filling all the air, and recognising her sister's vase, had
seized the golden roses by their heads, torn them out of the water and
flung them into the garden, just as Regina was passing underneath. She
looked up with a glance of amused irony rather than anger. Such little
amenities were not uncommon in the Rectory home.
"You have no business to interfere with his rooms," Miss Marlow called
from the window. "We don't want flowers in here, dropping their leaves
and making the place untidy."
Regina raised her shoulders a little and passed on in silence, having
stooped and gathered up the glorious blossoms, so fresh that they were
little hurt by the fall, and they were now blooming in her room. A
smile was on her face as she pursued her way. She would wear them that
night at dinner and he should admire them on her instead of on his
table, that was all.
She walked now from end to end of the garden, thinking of the morrow or
the next day, when she would bring him there. All was in perfect order;
she had never seen it look more lovely, and she leant at last with a
sigh of contentment on the balustrade, gazing across the purple expanse
of the sea, to the hazy golden outlines of the distant coast.
How the thrushes sang, till the whole air quivered about her with
melody. And but for love they would never sing at all, and but for
love the roses would have no scent, the doves would not coo, the trees
would have no blossom and no fruit. What a wonderful gift it is to the
world, she thought, this love!--the author of everything pleasing and
beautiful, the source of eternal life. No wonder that through all the
ages men have worshipped it and sung of it, and poured out all the
powers of their brain to magnify it. And yet the never-ending pæan
chanted throughout the centuries is but a feeble and inadequate whisper
of its greatness. Man's voice being human is not attuned to sing
fittingly of what is divine. Men realise that life comes from love, but
how many realise that also all the decoration of life comes from it!
Even if we could exist without love, with it we must give up the beauty
of women, the fragrance of flowers, the melody of birds, the charm of
the human voice, the power of the brain.
These are not separate entities, they are simply the effects of the
power of love.
A silver clash of bells, softened by distance, came from the church
tower across the bay, and slowly, regretfully, Regina took her arm
from the balustrade. She could not stay longer in the garden now, but
to-morrow!
Through the wonderful golden light of a June afternoon she took her
way slowly homeward, across the hay meadows and fields of standing
corn, by many little cross cuts that she knew, and arrived at the
Rectory about an hour before the time for their guest to arrive. She
went straight to her own room to dress; she was saved any embarrassing
choice of toilettes, for she had only two, one her best, the other
a plain black net, and she would not wear black to receive him. Her
sisters had a maid between them, but she never cared for anyone to
help her, or to be dependent on anyone for such essential things as
dressing and hair-doing. She took out a white dress and laid by it
her only jewels--some pearls left her by her grandmother--and the two
tea roses. That was all she had to aid her, but Regina knew it was
enough. She washed her face in the hottest water, so that it came out
clear and white, with a warm glow in the cheeks, and then piled up
loosely, so that all its natural waves had their full play, the shining
masses of her hair. Then the dress over her head by one quick movement
and fastened down her bosom, and at the waist, under veils of tulle;
the roses slipped in her hair and belt; the pearls clasped round her
throat, and she had finished dressing. She was ready, and free to sit
down and look at her vision in the glass, which she did.
How bright her eyes were!--they looked like great sapphires; and how
red her lips! People might easily think they were painted. The skin,
how transparent and soft, like the untouched petal of a white anemone.
And her arms, they gleamed, milk-colour, amongst the tulle.
Beyond her window the light was fading in the deep rose of the west;
pale violet shadows were stealing up from the copse and enveloping
all the garden with the peace of evening. As her glance wandered from
her own bright face to the serene outside, a feeling came to her
that that day closed a definite period of her life. Eighteen years
were now accomplished--years of thought, of work, of learning, of
contemplation, and they were over. The thought brought no sadness with
it, only joy. Whatever the next period of time brought with it, she
was ready, eager to go forward, to meet the embrace of life. That it
might mean merely the staying on and on at home in Stossop, as it had
done for nearly thirty unhappy girls in the village, never occurred to
her. Intuitively she knew she would escape from the narrow, cramping
existence of her home. It was only the way and the manner of escape
that, she felt, was unknown to her.
Full of dominant energy, fear of that way or manner never touched her.
Of such are the elect of the world. The poor, ignorant, helpless,
wilting mass of Stossop's spinsters is but extravagant Nature's waste
material thrown out on the dust-heaps of time.
The light crush of the gravel under carriage wheels came to her ears,
footsteps outside her door and on the stairs, voices ascending from
the garden. She heard the commotion, and very softly stole out of her
room to the oak rail round the well, that went down straight to the
hall below, and looked over. The guest was arriving. The footman was
bringing in some light luggage. She could see her father and mother
both standing there by the door, waiting, and catch a glimpse of her
sisters close by the drawing-room door. No one thought of, or noticed,
her, and she leant over the balustrade facing the entrance. Then he
came in and she saw him. Much as she had expected, much as report had
led her to expect, the reality was more than she had ever pictured.
Straight and tall, with a wonderful elegance of figure that not even
travelling clothes could conceal, he entered the hall and took off his
hat, standing without it as he greeted her parents. Entranced, the girl
looked down upon the perfectly shaped head, with its mass of thick
black hair, waving a little as it rose from the smooth, wide forehead,
on which, to her downward view, the eyebrows seemed extraordinarily
dark and striking, the eyes she could not see, but the fine, straight,
beautifully carved nose and chin, the turn of the head on the
long neck, the line of the cheek, the colour of the skin, a warm,
transparent tan, all seemed to the dazzled eyes of the girl to make up
a vision of remarkable beauty; she heard him speaking, and the quiet,
well-bred tones came up to her as something totally different from any
voice she had ever heard, from the curate's sanctimonious twang, from
the doctor's brusque, curt utterances, from the Latin master's guttural
pedantry. Musical, even, perfect, like sounds from another world, the
waves of air carrying his voice came up to her.
He stood talking, while his valet brought in what seemed to the girl a
great deal of yellow hand-luggage and put it down in the hall. Then she
saw her mother motion to her sisters, and they came up, looking very
beautiful, as Regina thought, without a touch of envy. She did not fear
their beauty, and merely rejoiced that he should see what presentable
sisters she had. Miss Marlow was in pale pink satin, against which her
brown head, twined round with pearls, contrasted well. Violet Marlow
wore a dark blue muslin, like the ultramarine of the sea, and her
blond hair and snowy skin seemed fair as its foam. Regina saw the
look of interest flash across the man's face as he turned to them; she
noted her parents' pride as the presentation was made. Then there was
more light talking and laughter, and Regina simply marvelled at the
sweetness of her sisters' voices. Was that the same organ as the one
with which Jane Marlow had called to her from the window? Was Violet's
voice now really the same as the one with which she wrangled and argued
over the Rectory dinner-table every night? Then she ceased to notice
them, and her ears went back to listening to the man's quiet replies,
while her eyes drank and drank of all the grace and wonder of his
presence. Then suddenly there was a movement towards the stairs, her
parents stood aside, the girls drew back, and Everest, followed by his
valet, came upstairs.
Regina, soundless as a white shadow, turned away and went back into her
room, softly closing the door. Her eyes were suffused, yet shining like
stars on a rainy night; her face was full of colour; her breast rose
and fell so rapidly that all her white muslin drapery quivered.
"How wonderful, how delightful he is," she murmured to herself. "It is
nice to know there are human beings like that, that they are not all
hideous and harsh-voiced, and humpy-backed, and badly dressed as they
are in Stossop. He is perfect, and he has come here, and I can love
him."
To meet one that you can love; what a privilege that is. She stood for
some time thinking over that, lost in the contemplation of that great
truth. It is so easy for a woman to find those that will love her,
so difficult to find one she can love. For woman being the superior
animal in every way, in beauty, in vitality, in intellect and charm,
almost any woman is good enough for a man, whereas there is only one
man here and there that is good enough for a woman.
After a pause, she moved over to her long glass and looked at herself.
She was quite satisfied. There was nothing more to do, and she threw
herself into an easy-chair, and called up that vision of him behind her
closed lids as he entered her cordially hated home.
When the gong sounded she went down, and as they were all assembled in
the dining-room, and she was the last to enter, all eyes turned upon
her as she did so. She hesitated for a moment by the door, and Everest
thought, with a sudden startled interest, what an attractive picture
she made. Her soft, snow-white draperies fell about a figure tall and
slender and supple, harmonious in all its lines as a beautiful melody
is in its sounds. Three rows of glistening pearls encircled a round
throat, whiter than themselves; above was her pink-tinted face, crowned
by its fair clustering hair. But the arresting power was in her eyes;
excited, pleased, animated, they were wide open, full of light and
fire, and as he rose and approached her they gazed upon him with a sort
of rapture.
Her two sisters glanced at her in angry surprise, and then at each
other.
Her father got up and presented Everest blandly: "Regina, this is Mr.
Everest Lanark. My youngest daughter, Regina."
Everest took a very soft, warm hand in his for a moment, and while he
did so, the fragrance of the glorious tea-rose blossoms, one in her
hair, another at her breast, came to him; his eyes fell on them, and
always afterwards her image, in his mind, was associated with those
golden roses.
A moment later they were all seated at the table: Everest on the right
of Mrs. Marlow and next to Miss Marlow, and opposite Miss Violet Marlow
and the Rector, Regina at the end of the table, on his side, where he
could not well see her, except by bending forward.
She did not care. She was quite content. The dinner went admirably.
Everest, pleased at the proximity of so much youthful beauty, and with
a really clever if extremely narrow man, in the Rector opposite, to
talk to, appeared quite to enjoy it. At its conclusion the four women
rose; the men were left together.
Everest did not drink much, but he tried the Rector's old claret; he
did not smoke either, but his host did, so Everest took a cigarette
with him.
Regina slipped away up to her own room. She was afraid to risk being
alone in the drawing-room with her sisters, lest her roses should be
torn off, her hair pulled down or her toilette suffer in some way
at their hands. Before the Rector they usually kept up some outward
seemliness of conduct. So she waited until she heard Everest and
her father come out of the dining-room and enter the drawing-room
before she descended. She found Everest already seated between her
two sisters, and she passed over to a far corner of the room to a low
chair by the piano, and sat down there. She thought Everest would not
be the man she felt sure he was if he could stand long the united
conversational powers of Jane and Violet Marlow.
Little scraps of their talk came over to her and amused her: "strips of
flannel," "had to keep her bed for a week, and mother took her guava
jelly every day." Regina guessed that Everest was being entertained
with an account of some of Stossop's sick poor.
He glanced her way many times, and she fancied a weary look grew upon
his face, as the poor continued very sick, and Miss Marlow's methods of
treating their various ailments became more and more detailed. Neither
sister allowed the conversation to pause for a moment, and when one
showed signs of failing the other took it up with commendable energy.
But few things in this world prevented Everest from doing what he
wanted to do, and certainly two country girls talking to him was not
one of them. He wanted to approach Regina and speak to her, and as he
found the sisters would not stop their chatter he rose in the middle of
it.
"I want to speak to your sister for a moment," he said merely, and left
them, crossing the room to where Regina sat, and drawing an easy-chair
close to hers. She looked up, and the same enthusiastic welcome shone
in her eyes as on his presentation.
"What were you doing all day?" he asked, letting his eyes rest on
the youthful fairness of the throat, where the pearls gleamed in the
lamplight. He felt quite confident he would not be bored with the
Stossop poor in this quarter.
"I went to church in the morning, which I hate, and which always makes
me realise what wretched things all these religions are. Then after
lunch I lay for quite a long time in the garden, gazing at the white
nimbi in the sky. That helps a little to counteract the effect of the
church service. Then I walked to the sea, and visited a rose garden
there. It is perfectly beautiful--it has a magic I cannot explain; you
must come and see it yourself. I looked over all the roses, and then I
sat down and read till the sunset came and disturbed me. I had to look
at that, and then I walked home to dress for dinner."
She spoke lightly, easily, her warm, ardent gaze on his face, her soft
lips smiling. Her tones were like music. Her way of talking quite
different from the heavy, assiduous speechifying of her sisters.
"What were you reading?" he asked, his eyes fixed on the brilliant,
changing, responsive countenance.
"I was finishing the _Cyclops_: it is not a good play, but I have read
all Euripides except that, and I wanted to complete him."
She spoke quite simply, and without any affectation or desire
to impress him. Things one does oneself rarely seem very great
accomplishments to oneself, and Regina had read Greek for so long that
a new play seemed no more than a new novel to her.
"Do you read it in the original?" Everest asked, raising the dark
arches of his brows, and to the girl, as she met his admiring gaze from
under them, it seemed as if he were lifting her heart out of her bosom
with them.
She laughed. "Yes, I don't like translations at all. Ever since I
saw that Byron had translated Catullus' Ode to Juventus as an Ode to
'Eleanor' I have fled from all of them."
"You seem to be tremendously clever!"
"Am I?" she asked, smiling up at him. "I am so glad you think so. I
am very fond of learning and all the arts. Are you? Painting, music,
poetry, sculpture. They are the soul of life, I think. What should we
do without them? Think if we had only in life the Church, dusters and
the poor!"
Everest laughed, and so did she. "It does sound an awful combination!
Yes, I think with you art is the one thing that brings a little heaven
on earth. It is the only true religion, the only true elevator of that
poor wretch--man. I am never so happy, and I never feel so good and so
charitable, as when I am painting."
"Do you paint?" asked Regina, with a fiery interest in her glowing
eyes. "So do I. What are your subjects, and what do you paint
in?--water colours or oil?"
"Oils. I do anything that catches my fancy--a head, a figure, a
landscape, anything that is a little unusual. I hate the commonplace."
"In Africa I suppose you found so many subjects that were unusual:
tropical trees and wonderful plants and beautiful black women."
Everest looked back at the delicately coloured face, of which her
interest and excitement made the skin glow more transparently every
minute.
"You have great intuition to feel that the women are beautiful," he
answered; "most people just group them all together under the name of
blacks, and are so blind mentally and physically as not to be able to
see their beauty. There is a race in the Soudan, of which the beauty
could not be surpassed. The colour is coal-black, but form and line
are perfect, both in face and body. Then another race has absolutely
perfect forms, though the face is of the negro type. Never anywhere
else could one see more gloriously modelled shoulders and arms than
those women have."
At that moment the footman brought in coffee, and while they were
taking it the Rector came up, and the talk became general.
Soon after Everest rose, with the excuse that he must not disturb their
early country hours, and said "Good-night." Regina, watching him as he
got up and stood, felt an electric wave of pleasure pass through her
from head to foot. The well-cut and fitting evening clothes displayed
all the admirable lines of his figure. The slimness and the grace of
it were a revelation to her. The light from the centre swinging lamp,
falling on the pale well-bred face, showed its perfection of carving,
its look of power and intellect. As he said good-night to her, she
gazed upon him, wide-eyed and in silence, and Everest, reading her
thoughts, felt amused and pleased.
When he reached his rooms he turned the key in the lock and then threw
himself into the arm-chair by the open window. The soft air of the June
night came in, full of fragrance, from the Rectory garden. In the copse
beyond, the nightingales here and there burst into little trills and
long calls, and then were silent again, preparing for their unbroken,
tireless melody of the later hours. Everest sat very still in his
chair, one hand hanging idly over its arm, his even brows contracted,
thinking. Before coming down to the Rectory he had made up his mind
very decidedly that he would not allow this visit to draw him into
any complicated ties with the daughters of the house. Marriage was
far from his wishes or plans at that moment, and any relations with
anybody almost equally distasteful, since they would rob him of that
peace of mind and rest which his doctor had told him were essential,
and which he had come to the country rectory to find. He had heard that
the Misses Marlow were handsome girls of the ordinary type, and the
ordinary type, he knew, had no attraction for him. Certainly after the
conversation of the evening, he was convinced of his perfect safety
with either Jane or Violet. But Regina; at the first meeting of the
eyes, at the sight of that sweet enthusiasm of admiring welcome in
hers, at the touch of her hand, full of electric fire, he had realised
instantly that there was every danger here. And so strongly did this
feeling envelop him again when they said good-night that he felt
inclined, now, to summon his valet, and tell him to repack everything
for a return journey on the morrow. But the thought of the surprise,
the disappointment, the hurt feeling he would occasion checked him.
His gaze wandered round his apartment. His quick eyes told him at once
how much personal care and pains had been bestowed on the room, to give
it the particular air of welcoming comfort it possessed.
It was not the hands of servants that had looped up so gracefully with
bows of lilac ribbon the curtains of his bed, nor arranged all those
books of reference and the latest weekly papers on his writing-table.
He took up idly the silver pen, put ready in the inkstand tray,
and saw it had "Violet" engraved upon it, and a handsome leather
blotting-book, filled with every writing necessity, even to stamps of
many denominations, bore its owner's monogram, "J. M."
These things spoke to him, though many men might not have even noticed
them, and many others only noticed them to jeer. How kindly old John
Marlow had received him; and his wife--what pains she had taken
probably in thinking out that excellent dinner they had given him, and
the girls were all so pretty and fresh and eager to please.
It would go against the grain of Everest's nature to wound them all by
suddenly leaving. Whatever excuses he made, they would still believe
his departure was due to some error of their own. But an intuitive
voice within him warned him that if the Devon coast was just the place
to eradicate the traces of African fever, from which he was suffering,
Stossop Rectory and Regina were not the best adjuncts to it.
As he sat there, undecided, in the silence, the soft sound of a
casement above his own being set open came to him, and without any
particular intent or reason in his mind he rose and went to his own
window and looked out. The moon had just climbed above the copse, and
sent a warm, pale light across the sleeping garden. Everest looked
up, and there above him was the girl who was in his thoughts. She had
opened her window, apparently to look at the night, for her face was
turned towards the rising moon, and, quite unconscious, seemingly,
of any spectator, she leaned a little forward. Of her face Everest
could see nothing except the under part of her chin, but the light
fell full on the round column of her neck, upon the white expanse of
her bosom, upon the perfect arms supporting her, as her hands clasped
the sill. Its pale radiance invested the dazzling whiteness of the
skin with a peculiar and mystic brilliance, and, accustomed though
he was to women's beauty in any and every form, Everest drew in his
breath sharply with surprised admiration. She had taken off her evening
dress, and the low bodice she now wore possessed only two narrow straps
holding it to the shoulders, and passed below the snowy swell of the
breast, leaving it and the soft modelling of the arms and shoulders
all revealed. Yet the silver light, falling down and over and round
her, seemed to clothe her in shining armour. To any man, even to the
most material, it must have seemed a vision more of heaven than of
earth, and to Everest, with his artist's eye and mind, the sight had
a magic and a charm he could hardly define to himself. Silent, almost
breathless, he stood watching her, as silent and absorbed she herself
stood watching the moon slowly mount in the purple sky.
Then suddenly she turned her head and looked down, why, Everest could
not tell, since he had made no sound. For one instant their eyes met.
He saw the beautiful arms bend at the elbows, with the change of
position; the face, a dark oval now, as it turned downwards, hung over
his; he saw the silver light illuminate all the masses of the fair
hair round it, for one second, that leapt by him into eternity all too
quickly; then she vanished noiselessly. The casement remained open,
but the light fell now only on its glittering panes. For a long time
the man waited by the window, his heart beating hard, but she did not
come back, and at last he turned away to his room and commenced his
undressing. The nightingales, perfectly attuned, now began to pour out
in the stillness the raptures of their song. Everest's face was dark
as he moved about the room.
All resolve, all desire to go on the morrow had left him. A new and a
stronger one was waking in his veins.
He turned down the lamp burning beneath its pretty, rose-coloured shade
and got into the bed, so carefully prepared for him, with lace-edged
sheet and silken coverings.
As he laid his head down, on the pillow trimmed by Miss Marlow's own
hands a murmur passed his lips:
"Well, I'll stay, and risk it."