May 25th.
Shall I be accused of harbouring a bevy of odalisques at No. 20
Lingfield Terrace? Calumny and Exaggeration walk abroad, arm in arm,
even on the north side of Regent’s Park. If they had spied Carlotta at
my window this morning, they would have looked in for afternoon tea
at my Aunt Jessica’s and have waylaid Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne outside the
Oratory. The question is: Shall Truth anticipate them? I think not.
Every family has its irrepressible, impossible, unpractical member, its
_enfant terrible_, who is forever doing the wrong thing with the best
intentions. Truth is the _enfant terrible_ of the Virtues. Some times
it puts them to the blush and throws them into confusion; at others it
blusters like a blatant liar; at others, again, it stutters and stammers
like a detected thief. There is no knowing how Truth may behave, so I
shall not let it visit my relations.
I must confess, however, that I feared the possible passing by of the
two decrepit cronies, when Carlotta stood at my open French window this
morning. She is really indecently beautiful. She was wearing a deep red
silk peignoir, open at the throat, unashamedly Parisian, which clung
to every salient curve of her figure. I wondered where, in the name of
morality, she had procured the garment. I learned later that it was the
joy and pride of Antoinette’s existence; for once, in the days long ago,
when she was _femme de chambre_ to a luminary of the cafes concerts, it
had met around her waist. She had treasured the cast-off finery of this
burned-out star--she beamed in the seventies--for all these years, and
now its immortal devilry transfigured Carlotta. She was also washed
specklessly clean. An aroma that no soap or artificial perfume could
give disengaged itself from her as she moved. Her gold-bronze hair
was superbly ordered. I noticed her arms which the sleeves of the gay
garment left bare to the elbows; the skin was like satin. “_Et sa peau!
On dirait du satin._” Confound Antoinette! She had the audacity, too,
to come down with bare feet. It was a revelation of pink, undreamed-of
loveliness in tus.
I repeat she is indecently beautiful. A chit of a girl of eighteen (for
that I learn is her age) has no right to flaunt the beauty that should
be the appanage of the woman of seven and twenty. She should be modestly
well-favoured, as becomes her childish stage of development. She
looked incongruous among my sober books, and I regarded her with some
resentment. I dislike the exotic. I prefer geraniums to orchids. I have
a row of pots of the former on my balcony, and the united efforts of
Stenson, Antoinette, and myself have not yet succeeded in making them
bloom; but I love the unassuming velvety leaves. Carlotta is a flaring
orchid and produces on my retina a sensation of disquiet.
I broke the tidings of the tragedy as gently as I could. I had news of
Harry, I said, gravely. She merely looked interested and asked me when
he was coming.
“I’m afraid he will never come,” said I.
“If he does not come, then I can stay here with you?”
Her eyes betrayed a quiver of anxiety. For the life of me I could not
avoid the ironical.
“If you will condescend to dwell as a member of my family beneath my
humble roof.”
The irony was lost on her. She uttered a joyous little cry and held out
both her hands to me. Her eyes danced.
“Oh, I am glad he is not coming. I don’t like him any more. I love to
stay here with you.”
I took both the hands in mine. Mortal man could not have done otherwise.
“Have you thought why it is that you will never see Harry again?”
She shook her beautiful head and held it to one side and puckered up her
brows, like a wistful terrier.
“Is he dead?”
“Would it grieve you, if he were?”
“No-o,” she replied, thoughtfully.
“Then,” said I, dropping her hands and turning away, “Harry is dead.”
She stood silent for a couple of minutes, regarding the row of pink
toes that protruded beneath the peignoir. At last her bosom shook with a
sigh. She glanced up at me sweetly.
“I am so glad,” she said.
That is all she has vouchsafed to say with regard to the unhappy young
man. “She was so glad!” She has not even asked how he met his death. She
has simply accepted my statement. Harry is dead. He has gone out of her
life like yesterday’s sunshine or yesterday’s frippery. If I had told
her that yesterday’s cab-horse had broken his neck, she could not be
more unconcerned. Nay, she is glad. Harry had not treated her nicely. He
had boxed her up in a cabin where she had been sick, and had subjected
her to various other discomforts. I, on the contrary, had surrounded her
with luxuries and dressed her in red silk. She rather dreaded Harry’s
coming. When she learned that this was improbable she was relieved. His
death had turned the improbable into the impossible. It was the end of
the matter. She was so glad!
Yet there must have been some tender passage in their brief intercourse.
He must have kissed her during their flight from home to steamer. Her
young pulses must have throbbed a little faster at the sight of his
comely face.
What kind of a mythological being am I housing? Did she come at all out
of Hamdi Effendi’s harem? Is she not rather some strange sea-creature
that clambered on board the vessel and bewitched the miserable boy,
sucked the soul out of him, and drove him to destruction? Or is she a
Vampire? Or a Succubus? Or a Hamadryad? Or a Salamander?
One thing, I vow she is not human.
If only Judith were here to advise me! And yet I have an uneasy feeling
that Judith will suggest, with a certain violence that is characteristic
of her, the one course which I cannot follow: to send Carlotta back to
Hamdi Effendi. But I cannot break my word. I would rather, far rather,
break Carlotta’s beautiful neck. I have not written to Judith. Nor, by
the way, have I received a letter from her. Delphine has been whirling
her off her legs, and she is ashamed to confess the delusion of the
sequestered life. I wish I were enjoying myself half as much as Judith.
“I have adopted Mademoiselle,” said I to Antoinette this morning. “If
she returned to Asia Minor they would put a string round her neck, tie
her up in a sack, and throw her into the sea.”
“That would be a pity,” said Antoinette, warmly.
“_Cela depend_,” said I. “Anyhow she is here, and here she remains.”
“In that case,” said Antoinette, “has Monsieur considered that the poor
angel will need clothes and articles of toilette--and this and that and
the other?”
“And shoes to hide her shameless tus,” I said.
“They are the most beautiful toes I have ever seen!” cried Antoinette in
imbecile admiration. She has bewitched that old woman already.
I put on my hat and went to Wellington Road to consult Mrs. McMurray.
Heaven be thanked, thought I, for letting me take her little boy the day
before yesterday to see the other animals, and thus winning a mother’s
heart. She will help me out of my dilemma. Unfortunately she was not
alone. Her husband, who is on the staff of a morning newspaper, was
breakfasting when I arrived. He is a great ruddy bearded giant with
a rumbling thunder of a laugh like the bass notes of an organ. His
assertion of the masculine principle in brawn and beard and bass
somewhat overpowers a non-muscular, clean-shaven, and tenor person like
myself. Mrs. McMurray, on the contrary, is a small, bright bird of a
woman.
I told my amazing story from beginning to end, interrupted by many
Hoo-oo-oo-oo’s from McMurray.
“You may laugh,” said I, “but to have a mythical being out of
Olympiodorus quartered on you for life is no jesting matter.”
“Olymp--?” began McMurray.
“Yes,” I snapped.
“Bring her this afternoon, Sir Marcus, when this unsympathetic wretch
has gone to his club,” said his wife, “and I’ll take her out shopping.”
“But, dear lady,” I cried in despair, “she has but one garment--and that
a silk dressing-gown of horrible depravity that belonged to a dancer of
the second Empire! She is also barefoot.”
“Then I’ll come round myself and see what can be done.”
“And by Jove, so will I!” cried McMurray.
“You’ll do such thing,” said his wife
“If I gave you a cheque for 100,” said I, “do you think you could get
her what she wants, to go on with?”
“A hundred pounds!” The little lady uttered a delighted gasp and I
thought she would have kissed me. McMurray brought his sledgehammer of a
hand down on my shoulder.
“Man!” he roared. “Do you know what you are doing--casting a respectable
wife and mother of a family loose among London drapery shops with a
hundred pounds in her pocket? Do you think she will henceforward give a
thought to her home or husband? Do you want to ruin my domestic peace,
drive me to drink, and wreck my household?”
“If you do that again,” said I, rubbing my shoulder, “I’ll give her two
hundred.”
When I returned Carlotta was sitting, Turkish fashion, on a sofa,
smoking a cigarette (to which she had helped herself out of my box) and
turning over the pages of a book. This sign of literary taste surprised
me. But I soon found it was the second volume of my _edition de luxe_ of
Louandre’s _Les Arts Somptuaires_, to whose place on the shelves sheer
feminine instinct must have guided her. I announced Mrs. McMurray’s
proposed visit. She jumped to her feet, ravished at the prospect, and
sent my beautiful book (it is bound in tree-calf and contains a couple
of hundred exquisitely coloured plates) flying onto the floor. I picked
it up tenderly, and laid it on my writing-table.
“Carlotta,” said I, “the first thing you have to learn here is that
books in England are more precious than babies in Alexandretta. If you
pitch them about in this fashion you will murder them and I shall have
you hanged.”
This checked her sumptuary excitement. It gave her food for reflection,
and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further into the subject of
clothes.
“In fact,” I concluded, “you will be dressed like a lady.” She opened
the book at a gaudy picture, “_France, XVI(ieme) Siecle--Saltimbanque et
Bohemmienne_,” and pointed to the female mountebank. This young person
wore a bright green tunic, bordered with gold and finished off at
the elbows and waist with red, over an undergown of flaring pink, the
sleeves of which reached her wrist; she was crowned with red and white
carnations stuck in ivy.
“I will get a dress like that,” said Carlotta.
I wondered how far Mrs. McMurray possessed the colour-sense, and I
trembled. I tried to explain gently to Carlotta the undesirability of
such a costume for outdoor wear in London; but with tastes there is no
disputing, and I saw that she was but half-convinced. She will require
training in aesthetics.
She is very submissive. I said, “Run away now to Antoinette,” and she
went with the cheerfulness of a child. I must rig up a sitting-room for
her, as I cannot have her in here. Also for the present she must take
her meals in her own apartments. I cannot shock the admirable Stenson
by sitting down at table with her in that improper peignoir. Besides, as
Antoinette informs me, the poor lamb eats meat with her fingers, after
the fashion of the East. I know what that is, having once been present
at an Egyptian dinner-party in Cairo, and pulled reeking lumps of flesh
out of the leg of mutton. Ugh! But as she has probably not sat down to a
meal with a man in her life, her banishment from my table will not hurt
her feelings. She must, however, be trained in Christian table-manners,
as well as in aesthetics; also in a great many other things.
Mrs. McMurray arrived with a tape-measure, a pencil, and a notebook.
“First,” she announced, “I will measure her all over. Then I will go out
and procure her a set of out-door garments, and tomorrow we will spend
the whole livelong day in the shops. Do you mind if I use part of the
100 for the hire of a private brougham?”
“Have a coach and six, my dear Mrs. McMurray,” I said. “It will
doubtless please Carlotta better.”
I summoned Carlotta and performed the ceremony of introduction. To my
surprise she was perfectly at her ease and with the greatest courtesy of
manner invited the visitor to accompany her to her own apartments.
When Mrs. McMurray returned to the drawing-room she wore an expression
that can only be described as indescribable.
“What, my dear Sir Marcus, do you think is to be the ultimate destiny of
that young person?”
“She shall learn type-writing,” said I, suddenly inspired, “and make a
fair copy of my Renaissance Morals.”
“She would make a very fair copy indeed of Renaissance Morals,” returned
the lady, dryly.
“Is she so very dreadful?” I asked in alarm. “The peignoir, I know--”
“Perhaps that has something to do with it.”
“Then, for heaven’s sake,” said I, “dress her in drabs and greys and
subfusc browns. Cut off her hair and give her a row of buttons down the
back.”
My friend’s eyes sparkled.
“I am going,” said she, “to have the day of my life tomorrow.”
Carlotta had already gone to sleep, so Antoinette informed me, when the
results of Mrs. McMurray’s shopping came home. I am glad she has early
habits. It appears she has spent a happy and fully occupied afternoon
over a pile of French illustrated comic papers in the possession of my
excellent housekeeper.
I wonder whether it is quite judicious to make French comic papers her
initiation into the ideas of Western civilisation. Into this I must
inquire. I must also talk seriously to her with a view to her ultimate
destiny. But as my view would be distorted by the red dressing-gown, I
shall wait until she is decently clad. I think I shall have to set apart
certain hours of the day for instructive conversation with Carlotta.
I shall have to develop her mind, of which she distinctly has the
rudiments. For the rest of the day she must provide entertainment out of
her own resources. This her oriental habits of seclusion will render an
easy task, for I will wager that Hamdi Effendi did not concern himself
greatly as to the way in which the ladies of his harem filled up their
time. And now I come to think of it, he certainly did not allow Carlotta
to sprawl about his own private and particular drawing-room. I will
not westernise her too rapidly. The Turkish educational system has its
merits.
This, in its way is comforting. If only I could accept her as a human
creature. But when I think of her callous reception of the tidings of
the unhappy boy’s death, my spirit fails me. Such a being would run a
carving-knife into you, as you slept, without any compunction, and when
you squeaked, she would laugh. Look at her base ingratitude to the good
Hamdi Effendi, who took her in before she was born and has treated her
as a daughter all her life. No: her spiritual attitude all through has
been that of the ladies who used to visit St. Anthony--in the leisure
moments when they were not actively engaged in temptation. I don’t
believe her father was an English vice-consul. He was Satan.
I wonder what she told Mrs. McMurray.
I have been thinking over the matter to-night. The good lady was
wrong. Whatever were the morals of the Renaissance, personalities were
essentially positive. They were devilishly wicked or angelically good.
There was nothing _rosse_, non-moral about the Renaissance Italian.
The women were strongly tempered. I love to believe the story told by
Machiavelli and Muratori of Catherine Sforza in the citadel of Forli.
“Surrender or we slay your children which we hold as hostages,” cried
the besiegers. “Kill them if you like. I can breed more to avenge them.”
It is the speech of a giant nature. It awakens something enthusiastic
within me; although such a lady would be an undesirable helpmeet for a
mild mannered man like myself.
And then again there is Bonna, the woman for whose career I desired to
consult the prime authority Cristoforo da Costa. I have been sketching
her into my chapter tonight. Here is a peasant girl caught up to his
saddle-bow by a condottiere, Brunoro, during some village raid. She
fights like a soldier by his side. He is imprisoned in Valencia by
Alfonso of Naples, languishes in a dungeon for ten years. And for
ten years Bonna goes from court to court in Europe and from prince to
prince, across seas and mountains, unwearying, unyielding, with the
passion of heaven in her heart and the courage of hell in her soul,
urging and soliciting her man’s release. After ten long years she
succeeds. And then they are married. What were her tumultuous feelings
as she stood by that altar? The old historian does not say; but the very
glory of God must have flooded her being when, in the silence of the
bare church, the little bell tinkled to tell her that the Host was
raised, and her love was made blessed for all eternity. And then she
goes away with him and fights in the old way by his side for fifteen
years. When he is killed, she languishes and dies within the year.
Porcelli sees them in 1455. Brunoro, an old, squinting, paralysed man.
Bonna, a little shrivelled, yellow old woman, with a quiver on her
shoulder, a bow in her hand; her grey hair is covered by a helmet
and she wears great military boots. The picture is magical. There is
infinite pathos in the sight of the two withered, crippled, grotesque
forms from which all the glamour of manhood and beauty have departed,
and infinite awe in the thought of the holy communion of the
unconquerable and passionate souls. I wonder it has not come down to us
as one of the great love-stories of the world.
Elements such as these sway the Morals of the Renaissance.
But I am taking Mrs. McMurray too seriously; and it is really not a bad
idea to have Carlotta taught type-writing.