OUT OF THE STAGNANT HARBOUR
Three weeks after Everest had left, Regina, coming first, as usual,
into the breakfast-room, saw by her plate, on the table, a letter and a
small square registered packet, both directed in his handwriting. Her
heart beat rapidly; a tender mist of tears rose in her eyes. A present
from him! A gift from the man she loves, what a wonderful thing that is
to a woman! Gifts from all the world, from kings and emperors, might
move her not at all, but one little thing that _he_ has chosen, has
selected, sought out and bought for her, how infinitely dear it is!
Regina went up to the table, and taking the letter hastily concealed
it in the bosom of her dress. Not here, but in the sacred garden, she
would read it.... Here, it might be snatched from her and destroyed
before she could do so. The packet she turned over and commenced to
open. At last, from out of its silver paper and casing, the jewel lay
revealed, and she stood, gazing a little awestruck at its flashing
beauty.
It was a diamond star, to be worn as a brooch, and, every spike
radiating from the centre diamond of great size and brilliancy, was
composed of selected stones. Worked in across the star, in sapphires,
were the words "Regina Imperatrix," and the blue and white lights from
sapphire and diamond shone dazzlingly from their satin bed.
While she stood gazing at it, thinking of the care and thought he must
have bestowed on it, and the colour racing across her cheeks as she
felt the meaning of the word "Imperatrix" come home to her, the Rector
and the rest of the family entered the room.
"Why, Regina, what's that?" the Rector asked cheerily. On the loose
paper of the wrapper he recognised Everest's handwriting, and was not
at all ill-pleased to see what he had sent to his daughter.
Personally, as a business matter--and everything was a business matter
to the Rector--he did not care a bit which daughter it was that Everest
fancied. He could only marry one, and any one would be just as good for
the rest of the family. The Rector was an extremely acute individual
where worldly matters were concerned, and, while the others had been
really blind to what was passing so close to them, he had had a pretty
good idea of the meaning of Everest's love of afternoon exercise and
where his walks to the sea had taken him. In the back of his mind was
the fear that it all might lead to some irregular connection, but while
his code of morality for his girls was absolutely rigid where poor men
might be concerned, Everest's great wealth made it suddenly grow very
elastic. Regular connections sometimes grew out of irregular ones, and
no connection with a rich man could be wholly bad. Hence his amiable
glance on his youngest daughter as she held out to him her starry jewel.
Jane Marlow pressed up close to him. Her face was ashy-white and
seemed suddenly to line with age, so closely are age and evil allied.
"How disgraceful! Presents like that from a man! You'll make her return
it, won't you, father?"
She trembled in her virtuous indignation. She could have torn the star
from his hand and trampled on it.
The Rector turned to her blandly:
"Jane, don't be ridiculous. You would have been very pleased if Everest
had sent it to you. And if there would be no harm in your accepting it,
neither is there in Regina's case. She is quite entitled to have it and
enjoy it."
Jane turned away, the muscles of her face quivering, shaken with the
blackest envy and hatred from head to foot. She had so planned and
hoped to win this man for herself. In all her low-nerved, weakly,
doll-like body there was not a single pulse or fibre, which could
tremble to the music of love. But, like her father, she was dominated
by intensely worldly instincts, and to be married to a man of wealth
and position, no matter what the individual, was her dream and her
constant obsession by night and day, the only thing that filled her
little atrophied soul.
Everest's looks she had hardly seen, of his personality she never
thought, but night by night she dreamed of herself, sitting in motor or
carriage, driving to some great house, where, resplendent in jewels,
she would pass amongst the crowd admiring her beauty.
And she had so tried to please him.... She had taken him to her poor,
and let him see how charitable and devoted, and domestic she was. She
had taken him to church, and knelt so devoutly, and yet so prettily,
and in such becoming dresses, before him, at the communion-table; she
had never let any frivolous or unseemly word pass her lips to him; she
had never, while he was there, quarrelled with her sisters or abused
her mother. She had been the perfect, pure, sedate Rector's daughter,
and he had seemed lately to appreciate it.... Regina?... What had she
done?... She had been just as she always was. She had taken no trouble,
but it seemed now it was she who would have the motor and the jewels,
and live in town, while Jane would be left to grow mouldy in the horrid
old Rectory! It was too much!... She could not control herself!... She
burst into a flood of angry tears, and rushed out of the room as the
Rector was beginning to say grace.
When grace was over, Regina fastened the star at her neck, and her
sister Violet sat staring at it, in a dull solid way, through the meal.
In her heavy, apathetic mind she had recognised early that Everest was
not for her, and in some dim, instinctive way she was not dissatisfied
that it was so. He alarmed her. To her, with her fishlike circulation,
and her unused brain, the sense of virile strength and power about him,
which so delighted Regina, brought oppression. His experiences, his
brilliant intellect, his knowledge, put him outside the circle of her
stupid little thoughts.
She could not understand one-tenth of his conversation with Regina,
nor follow what he said, and his presence, his glance only, vaguely
frightened and confused her. Great things are for great people, and
little things for little people, and Violet, during Everest's visit,
had begun to realise dimly that, if a fine marriage meant belonging
to an incomprehensible and terrifying individual like this, the idle
novel-reading, the church-going, the humdrum little potter of home
life, were more suited to her mental and physical equipment. So she
stared at the brooch without any deep resentment, only the general
sisterly dislike that Regina should have any present at all.
After breakfast Regina slipped away, and in the heat of the morning
sun walked to the garden, as fast as her swift-moving feet would carry
her, and once beyond its magic gate took out the dear letter, and with
beating heart unfolded it.
"MY DARLING,--I miss you so much, and want to have you in
my arms again. I send you a little brooch I have had made for you,
my Empress. I went about our flat, yesterday, as soon as I got
back from Scotland. I have a good one in view, and will let you
know as soon as it is ready for you. Only these few lines now, as
I have so much to do.
"Till we meet again, my sweet.
"EVEREST."
When she had read it more than a hundred times, lingering over each
word, she kissed it and slipped it back in her bodice.
Everest had referred to the flat before. In all his letters there had
been the same eager, impatient note: he wanted her, and whether she
chose to marry him or not she was to join him in London. He would take
a flat, and as soon as it was ready he hoped she would come, as he
could not go on living without her. He left everything in her hands.
If she would like him to come down, with a special licence in his
pocket-book, and marry her from the Rectory, he would do that, if not,
she must come to him. He would prefer to write to her father about
their engagement.... Might he do that? Whatever she decided, she was
to remember he could not exist without her.... Several letters of this
sort had reached her from Scotland, and had carried to her heart the
extreme of happiness. She had not answered very definitely. She did not
wish to curtail his time in Scotland by fixing dates herself. When he
was back in town some wish of his would develop itself, and she would
follow that.
The same afternoon she spent in her room. She locked herself in and
then got out all her paintings, and went slowly over them in review.
She knew they were very good. Everest, the only person who had seen
them, had said so, but that would have made no difference to her. She
would not have believed it unless her own intuitive knowledge had
told her so. Sometimes she had done bad work, but she had known it
instantly, and destroyed it, as relentlessly as the all-wise animals
destroy their ill-made or imperfect offspring. All that had survived
was fit to live, and she sat in the centre of her pictures, looking
from one to the other in a glow of delight.
Genius comes into the world not to learn, but to teach, and that is
what the commonplace mind cannot grasp.
It will insist that everything must be taught, forgetting that at some
time there could not have been any teacher. The question: Which came
first, the hen or the egg? might well be asked of those people....
Which came first: the teacher or the taught?
As a matter of fact, genius knows no teacher but the divine force
within that guides, directs, accomplishes all.
And Regina, leaning rocking on her bedroom chair, in the middle of the
sheets of white paper that she had converted into living, joy-giving
things, her slender hands clasped round her knees, knew that, whatever
happened, she need never starve, never be dependent on anyone, never
ask anything from anyone, as long as her fingers kept their cunning and
her eyes their sight. As she sat there, the thought suddenly darted
into her mind that it was Saturday, and unless she wrote to Everest
before the London post left he could not have her acknowledgment of the
brooch until Monday.
She sprang up, found her writing materials, and wrote.
It was only a few paces down the road to a letter-box, and, knowing it
could not take her more than a second or two to reach it, she did not
stay to lock up her work, as usual.
She ran down the stairs without her hat, and across the garden, to the
highroad. The letter-box had been cleared when she reached it, but she
knew she could overtake the old postman and get to the post office
before he arrived, or give him the letter on the road. She went on with
flying feet, but she had to traverse the whole distance to the village
post before she came up with him. She saw him put the precious missive
in his bag, then she turned homeward, eager to get back to her pictures.
When she came back she went up to her own room. On opening the door she
look round, surprised. Her pictures, that she had left scattered about,
on chair and easel, were not visible anywhere.
Her first thought was that the maid, in clearing up the room, had laid
them all together, and put them away somewhere. She opened one drawer,
and then another, but without finding them.
Then, with a suddenly anxiously beating heart, she looked round the
room again. A side-table caught her eye, and on it--what was that
strange mass of ragged-edged paper piled there? She crossed to it. Her
pictures were there, or the torn fragments of them, destroyed beyond
hope of recovery, and on the top of the broken heap lay her Bible.
Bewildered, distracted, hardly realising what had happened, Regina laid
the book aside and took up first one mutilated sheet, and then another,
scanning them with staring eyes. Each one had been torn across and then
across again many times, and roughly, so that the edges were violently
jagged.... Nothing of beauty remained, except the wonderful colours;
the scraps of softly brilliant tints even in their hopeless destruction
had a confused loveliness.
Regina's fingers trembled more and more as she turned them over. All
the blood had left her face; it was ashy, convulsed. Who could have
done it? It seemed the act of a child or a maniac. Months of patient,
untiring work, buoyed up by hopes and anticipation of success and the
joy of creation, had been undone in a few moments. When it came home
to her that not one of these precious children that she had so loved
and rejoiced in, that had been her constant companions and comforters
through days and weeks, remained to her, a slow sort of agony took
possession of her, that was so intense it seemed it must kill her.
Gasping, she sat down on a chair, holding the rim of the table and
staring at its contents.
Jane and Violet Marlow were sitting together that afternoon in a small
boudoir they shared between them, when suddenly the door was opened,
Regina appeared on the threshold, deadly white, and with black and
kindling eyes.
"Have you, either of you, been to my room and destroyed my pictures?"
she asked. Her tones were like the scrape of steel against iron. Both
the girls looked up, one from the novel she was reading, the other
from the band of silk she was embroidering. Regina knew in that first
second, in that first upward glance of surprise and dismay, that they
were not the guilty ones.
"Oh, Regina!" was all they could either find to say, but the accent in
it of genuine horror was enough for her quick ears. Both girls knew how
Regina loved and valued her paintings, and some dim conception of her
suffering came home to them as they looked at her distorted face.
"Someone has," she returned. "Where's mother?"
"In the linen-room," Violet answered, and Regina turned away, closing
the door behind her. Her feet hardly touched the ground as she went
down to the linen-room. She opened the door and found Mrs. Marlow
sitting before the huge linen cupboard, her lap full of damask
tablecloths she was sorting.
"Mother, someone has destroyed all my pictures.... Is it you?"
Mrs. Marlow looked up in surprise.
Regina stood in the doorway, rigid, white as a statue, her face haggard
and drawn. In that moment it resembled so much another countenance that
Mrs. Marlow had seen bend over her in a last farewell that the woman
stared back at her daughter almost as pallid. Usually, when Regina
recalled to her those dear past hours of delight Mrs. Marlow resented
it and felt angered by this living witness to dead things, but to-day
had been the anniversary, not of Regina's birth, but of her conception,
and all day Mrs. Marlow had been struggling in the clinging arms of
memories that would not be denied. She had fled to the linen cupboard,
and counted the damask cloths again and again, aloud, in vain, to stop
them, and now, when like an apparition the very face of her lover came
before her vision, the woman's struggling soul fainted and called to it.
She almost stretched out her arms to her, letting the linen fall
heavily to the floor in her sudden movement. She would have liked
Regina to lay her head down on her breast and sob out her anguish
there, as _he_ once had done.
But Regina, never having been accustomed to affection or caresses in
her home, naturally did not understand the gesture: she only repeated
her question, standing by the door:
"Dear child, no," returned Mrs. Marlow. "Destroy your paintings! I
should not think of such a thing.... No one would. Surely it must be
some accident. I am so sorry!"
"I don't think it is an accident," Regina answered, retreating. "Thank
you, mother, very much."
She withdrew and went on down the flight of stairs. Her whole body
was quivering in physical agony, transmitted from the mind; her brain
seemed bursting. As she reached the hall she saw the footman come
out of her father's study and close the door gently. He saw Regina
approaching it, hesitated, and then said respectfully:
"Master said he wished not to be disturbed, that he was going to write
his sermon."
Regina pursued her way, and laid her hand on the door.
"Thank you, Williams, but I am afraid I must disturb him for a few
moments."
Williams went on his way, wondering what was the matter with his young
mistress.
"She looked like a person as has been taking some of them deadly
poisons," he remarked at the servants' tea, and Williams was very near
the truth, for the action of all fierce anger is to distil a corroding
poison within ourselves, which infects the whole current of the blood.
When the girl entered the study the Rector was sitting at his desk, by
the far window, sheets of manuscript paper lying before him. He looked
up, as the door opened, and when he saw who it was that had entered his
eyebrows contracted, and he made an authoritative gesture for her to
withdraw.
But Regina advanced steadily, with the grim, remorseless step of the
hunting beast of prey. When she was close to the desk she stopped. Her
eyes glittered in the deadly white of her face.
"Was it you who tore up my paintings?"
Unconsciously, the Rector looked round for help or assistance. Some
primitive, physical instinct warned him he was near death at that
moment, though such a thought never came near his mind. His eyes came
back from their search round the empty room and from the far-off bell.
He fidgeted with his pen, and then said nervously:
"You see, Regina, I have to think of your moral good ... I ... er,
can't let things go on in my house of which I ... ah ... of which my
conscience does not approve."
"Then that means you did destroy them?"
She was very near the desk now, the waning light of the afternoon fell
upon her face. The Rector thought he had never seen such a terrible
look of rage on any countenance before. It was truly shocking.... These
human passions were really dreadful, when you came face to face with
them.
"I considered it my duty," he returned. "I laid your Bible on them to
show you what actuated me."
Then he had done it! This was the man who had torn to pieces that
fabric of beauty she had built up with such tender, adoring care, into
which she had woven so many hopes.
A gust of fury enveloped her, so that she shook from head to foot.
The lust to kill, to murder him, rushed upon her like a great beast
and gripped her, shook her in its teeth, till all grew black and red
before her. She gripped the mahogany chair back, by which she stood,
till the knuckles started out on the back of her hands, white and
shining.
But the instinct of her strong mentality was to elucidate the mystery,
to search out the clue to this bewildering act, that she could not in
the least understand.
"Why did you do it?" she asked.
The Rector unconsciously bent under the penetrating will of the query.
"Because they were improper--most improper pictures to have in a
clergyman's house."
"Improper?" Regina stared at him in a blank amaze that for the moment
eclipsed the welling tide of passion. Had her father suddenly become
mad? Was that the solution of the mystery? She had yet to realise that
there is no madness so blinding, so deadly, so destructive, as the
craze of the impure mind against all artistic creations.
"They were landscapes, sunsets ... the most beautiful things I could
find ... the skies, the effects of light.... What do you mean?"
she continued, and again the Rector felt compelled to stand her
cross-examination and reply.
That same primitive impulse of self-preservation that had stirred
within him at his daughter's approach warned him now, without his
thinking about it, that his sole safety lay in the defence and
explanation, such as it was, that he had to make.
"Yes, of course, they were landscapes.... But there is a way of
treating even a landscape, so that it becomes objectionable. I have
never seen such things before, myself. Those staring, red skies,
those flushed appearances, those twisted black trees, those dark,
slimy pools.... I really cannot tell you the unpleasant things they
suggest....
"Those stormy heaths and wind-tossed foliage seem to me to typify
the riot of the passions, and those mossy banks in the sun suggest
sensuality.... Improper? Yes; highly improper I consider them!"
Regina stood listening wide-eyed, in sheer, paralysed amazement.
That a person's mind could be so deformed and twisted that by its
own blackness it could defile the innocent beauty and sweetness of a
landscape was a fact so new to her, and so astounding, that she felt
stunned by it.
That the man before her was speaking honestly she saw.
"But these things are just portraits of what we see about us," she
went on, after a silence, her clear, logical mind battling with the
psychological problem before her. "If the landscapes were improper,
then so must the things be. What do you do when you go out and see a
sunset sky?"
"If it suggests to me unsatisfactory thoughts, I don't look at it."
"But how _can_ it?" queried the girl passionately. "When I see the
sunset sky I feel I am being borne away on invisible wings to paradise;
and these mossy banks, with the gold light lying on them, they are
exquisite, and they are all around here.... You can't go out without
seeing them."
"Don't continue talking like that, Regina. I have told you, when I go
for my walks, if I see anything likely to disturb my moral sense I turn
my eyes away; and because there are many dangerous and attractive
things in nature about us, that is no reason why we should portray them
and bring them into the home for constant contemplation."
Regina's haggard eyes looked blankly back at him. He was talking to
her in an unknown language she could not understand; telling her
incredible things she could not believe, for her own mind was bright
and clear, crystal-like as a mirror, reflecting everything it faced
with added beauty; diamond-like in its sharp, unstainable purity. And
the obfuscated, turbid, sensual mass of incoherent ideas and thoughts
that represented this man's mind appalled her, as she looked into it.
"If you destroyed the landscapes only because you thought them immoral,
why did you tear up the interior of Exeter Cathedral? There could be no
harm in that...."
"That was the worst of all," answered the Rector stormily, moving
his papers angrily before him; "the very worst! Of course it was the
cathedral, and a very beautiful picture it might have made, treated
properly, in the daylight, and full of worshippers; but there again,
you had got it nearly in darkness--the evening effect you would call
it, I suppose; the interior was quite dusky, and a red light was coming
through the chancel window. A very unpleasant suggestion was there,
very.... And still further enhanced by the solitude.... The place was
practically empty."
"What was the suggestion, please?" asked Regina, completely bewildered
now by the attack on this picture of all others, and dazed by her
wandering in the mazes of another and wholly alien mind. She still
clung to the idea that she must grip hold of the keynote of these
mysteries somehow.
The Rector fiddled with his paper and coughed, then he said, in his
pulpit manner:
"You must not forget, Regina, that all people are not like you. It may
be quite possible that you have painted that picture innocently, but
you must think about others, in all these things, and consider their
weaknesses. I have no hesitation in saying that that painting, if put
before young people, might do great, very great, harm."
"But how? I am only asking you how?"
"Well ... er ... don't you see for yourself how the darkness, and the
quiet, and the solitude might ... er ... suggest to the young people of
both sexes how a cathedral might ... ah ... serve them for ... er ...
er ... immoral conduct with each other?"
Regina's hands dropped from the chair back to her sides, with a gesture
of collapse; her face grew even more white than it had been, as the
surprise of this amazing interpretation of her sacred work forced the
blood to her heart.
"No, I don't see," she said, with a steel-like hardness in her voice,
"nor do I believe for one instant that any young people would or could
think such things. But if they were so utterly depraved and vicious as
that, nothing could hurt them, certainly not my water-colour of the
cathedral. In any case, whatever you thought or felt about them, you
had no right to destroy them in my absence. It was an abominable thing
to do!"
"Nonsense! As a father, I have every right to act for your good. As a
matter of fact, the pictures so annoyed me I lost my self-control, and
tore them up as soon as I saw them."
Regina made a sudden forward step and seized his arm. The grip of those
slim, white fingers seemed to go down to the bone, and the Rector gave
an exclamation of pain.
"Do you know that it's fortunate for you," her white lips said at his
ear, "that I have more control than you have, or I should _kill_ you
now."
She let go his arm, turned from him and crossed the room. She knew
she must go or she would spring upon him and destroy him, as he had
destroyed her work; anger in that moment filled her with the strength
to do it.
Once in her room she locked the door and sat down over by the window,
locking her hands together and forcing them down on the window-sill,
like one in mortal agony. Never had she felt before the in-rush of
evil upon the soul, but she knew it now. She longed to avenge herself;
longed to murder. Her nature was sweet and gentle and pure; her mind
always occupied with elevated things; the emotions of malice, of hate,
of envy, of cruelty were unknown to her. They never rose in her. But
now she was lost, submerged in this awful tide of black hate, that
rolled over her, and she struggled in it, powerless to help herself.
"Kill him!... kill him!... kill him!... If I go out of this room, if I
see him again, I shall do it."
She struggled vainly to get calmer, to take her eyes from the torn and
mutilated beauty on the table near her, vainly....
The passion of fury seethed in all her veins, it seemed a bodily as
well as a mental thing. She knotted her hands and unknotted them in an
agony, trying to throw from her this evil, hateful thing, this anger
that was parching her lips and closing her throat and corroding her
brain.
In that supreme suffering the thought came to her suddenly of Everest,
and his face, that serene, beautiful, perfect face she so passionately
adored, floated before her darkened eyes, as if he were in the room
with her. The remembrance of their love, its exquisite tenderness,
stole upon her softly. How could she let its shrine--her mind and
body--be so invaded by these other revolting emotions?
She strove still harder not to think of her father, not to think of his
act, not to remember her ruined work.... And then came the query: "Why
not go to him? To Everest? He wanted her.... No one here did...."
He was back in London now; if she went to him he would be only too
happy. Had he not said so a hundred times? Her hand went to her neck,
and touched the jewel star. On her breast was his note, showing he was
planning, wishing for her coming.
If, in any way, he was not ready, not prepared, not desirous to receive
her, she could stay alone for a little while. She had her own capital
in her pictures. But no--now, she had no pictures, and the black tide
of rage rolled up again to its full height and seemed to tower over
her, but she grappled and fought, and wrenched back her calm again.
Her capital was in her brain, and no one could take that from her. If
she herself did not let that poisonous anger sap it....
Suddenly a tap came at the door. Regina drew herself up, her whole body
quivered.
"Yes," she answered, from her place by the window.
"Are you not coming down to dinner?" sounded in her elder sister's
voice through the door.
"No, thank you; not this evening."
"Why? Aren't you well?"
"I have rather a headache. Do not wait for me, nor send me anything up.
I shall be better without it."
"Oh ... well, father sent me up to say you were not to feel distressed
about your pictures, that he had no objection to your learning to
paint, if you wanted to and showed talent. It was your _style_ he
disliked, and if you would give up your red skies and things, and take
simple, proper subjects--country cottages and village greens, you know,
that sort of thing--he would arrange for you to have lessons from Mr.
Andrews, the drawing-master at the Kindergarten."
Silence.
"Did you hear, Regina? What shall I say to father?"
"Thank him for his kind offer."
"How strange your voice sounds! Won't you open the door?"
"No; it might be dangerous for you."
"Dangerous? What do you mean?"
"Well ... er ... you see, there's a draught."
"Very good. I'm going down. Good-night."
"Good-night."
Footsteps moved away from the door, and down the stairs.
Then there was silence.
Regina sprang to her feet, every muscle within her shaking, every pulse
throbbing with exasperation.
Only one instinct moved her now: to escape, to get away from this
hateful place, that called itself her home, to get away from this
atmosphere of tyranny, that called itself religion, to get away from
this licentiousness of cruelty and ignorance, that called itself purity.
She turned to her handbag and packed it rapidly, with cold, trembling
fingers. Then put on a hat and veil, and threw her cloak over her
arm; for an instant she stood before her mirror, and looked in; the
beautiful rose and white skin, the masses of soft hair, framed in her
large black summer hat, pleased her; the luminous eyes, large now with
excitement and pain, shadowed with apprehension of the unknown, to
which she was going, looked back at her; but, dark as the waters of
Life might be before her, vague and uncertain and mysterious, she felt
all the danger and evil that might lie in that treacherous sea could
not equal the horror of the stagnant harbour from which she was setting
out.
She turned from the glass and paused, listening: the dinner-gong
sounded harshly through the house; when its echoes died away the sound
of plates being carried and doors opened and shut came to her faintly.
The family had gone in to dine on the stalled ox, with hatred.
She opened her door and passed noiselessly, unnoticed, down the stairs.
How glad she felt that never again would she have to sit down to that
depressing, grumbling, bickering, recriminatory meal! Softly she opened
the hall door, and went out into the sweet, warm evening.
It seemed to welcome her, enfold her, soothe her. She glanced up at the
deep rose of the light-filled sky and thought how sweetly it must be
arching over the enchanted garden.
Never again might she see it perhaps, but its influence would be with
her all her life. Its peace and beauty, its mystery, the holy love
she had felt there, the hours of rapture she had known there, had all
moulded her soul and stamped on it an impress that could never be
effaced.
Quickly, without a backward glance at the Rectory, she walked through
the still, dewy air towards Stossop station.