July 19th.
_Campsie, N.B._ Hither have I fled from my buccaneering relations. I
am seeking shelter in a manse in the midst of a Scotch moor, and the
village, half a mile away, is itself five miles from a railway station.
Here I can defy Aunt Jessica.
After my conversation with Pasquale, I passed a restless night. My
slumbers were haunted by dreams of pirate yachts flying the jolly Roger,
on which the skull and crossbones melted grotesquely into a wedding-ring
and a true lovers’ knot. I awoke to the conviction that so long as the
vessel remained on English waters I could find no security in London. I
resolved on flight. But whither?
Verily the high gods must hold me in peculiar favour. The first letter I
opened was from old Simon McQuhatty, my present host, a godfather of my
mother, who alone of mortals befriended us in the dark days of long ago.
He was old and infirm, he wrote, and Gossip Death was waiting for him
on the moor; but before he went to join him he would like to see Susan’s
boy again. I could come whenever I liked. A telegram from Euston before
I started would be sufficient notice. I sent Stenson out with a telegram
to say I was starting that very day by the two o’clock train, and I
wrote a polite letter to my Aunt Jessica informing her of my regret
at not being able to accept her kind invitation as I was summoned to
Scotland for an indefinite period.
My old friend’s ministry in the Free Kirk of Scotland is drawing to a
close; he has lived in this manse, a stone’s throw from his grave,
for fifty years, and the approaching change of habitat will cost him
nothing. He will still lie at the foot of his beloved hills, and the
purple moorland will spread around him for all eternity, and the smell
of the gorse and heather will fill his nostrils as he sleeps. He is
a bit of a pagan, old McQuhatty, in spite of Calvin and the Shorter
Catechism. I should not wonder if he were the original of the story of
the minister who prayed for the “puir Deil.” He planted a rowan tree by
his porch when he was first inducted into the manse, and it has grown
up with him and he loves it as if it were a human being. He has had
many bonny arguments with it, he says, on points of doctrine, and it
has brought comfort to him in times of doubt by shivering its delicate
leaves and whispering, “Dinna fash yoursel, McQuhatty. The Lord God is a
sensible body.” He declares that the words are articulate, and I suspect
that in the depths of his heart he believes that there are tongues in
trees and books in the running brooks, just as he is convinced that
there is good in everything.
He is a ripe and whimsical scholar, and his talk, even in infirm old
age, is marked by a Doric virility which has rendered his companionship
for these five days as stimulating as the moorland air. How few men have
this gift of discharging intellectual invigoration. Indeed, I only
know old McQuhatty who has it, and a sportive Providence has carefully
excluded mankind from its benefits for half a century. Stay: it once
fostered a genius who arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic
to Edinburgh to become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky for two
years without cessation, so that he died, and McQuhatty’s inspiration
was wasted. What intellectual stimulus can he afford, for instance, to
Sandy McGrath, an elder of the kirk whom I saw coming up the brae on
Sunday? An old ram stood in the path and, as obstinate as he, refused
to budge. And as they looked dourly at each other, I wondered if the ram
were dressed in black broadcloth and McGrath in wool, whether either of
their mothers would notice the metamorphosis. Yet my host declares that
I see with the eyes of a Southron; that the Scotch peasant when he is
not drunk is intellectual, and that there is no occasion on which he is
not ready for theological disputation.
“But I dinna mind telling you,” he added, “that I’d as lief talk with my
rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable wee
bit of false doctrine.”
I should love to stay all the summer with my old friend, It seems that
only from such a remote solitude can one view things mundane in the
right perspective, and in their true proportion. One would see how
important or unimportant portent in the cosmos was the agricultural
ant’s dream of three millimetres and an aphis compared with the
aspirations of the English labourer. One would justly focus the South
African millionaire, Sandy McGrath and the ram, and bring them to their
real lowest common denominator. One would even be able to gauge the
value of a History of Renaissance Morals. The benefits I should derive
from a long sojourn are incalculable, but my new responsibilities call
me back to London and its refracting and distorting atmosphere. If I had
dwelt here for fifty years I should have perceived that Carlotta was
but a speck in the whirlwind of human dust whose ultimate destiny was
immaterial. As my five days’ visit, however, has not advanced me to that
pitch of wisdom, I am foolishly concerned in my mind as to her welfare,
and anxious to dissolve the triumvirate, Miss Griggs, Stenson, and
Antoinette, whom I have entrusted with the reins of government.
A month ago, in similar circumstances, I should have railed at Fate and
anathematised Carlotta from the tip of her pink toes to the gold and
bronze glory of her hair. But I am growing more kindly disposed towards
Carlotta, and taking a keen interest in her spiritual development.
An inner voice, an ironical, sardonic inner voice with which there is no
arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta’s
spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which
has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth for many generations.
“What does it matter to you whether she has a soul or not,” says the
voice, “provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage
with you afterwards?”
Well, what on earth does it matter?
July 21st.
She was at Euston to meet me. As soon as she saw my face at the carriage
window she left Stenson and flew up the platform like a pretty tame
animal, and when I alighted hung on my arms and frisked and gamboled
around me in excess of joy.
“So you are glad to have me back, Carlotta?” I asked, as we were driving
home.
She sidled up against me in her terrier fashion.
“Oh, ye-es,” she cooed. “The day was night without you.”
“That is the oriental language of exaggeration,” I said. But all the
same it was pleasant to hear, and the soft notes of her voice coiled
themselves, as music sometimes dus, around my heart.
“I love dear Seer Marcous,” she said.
I put my arm round her waist for a moment, as one would do to a child.
“You are a good little girl, Carlotta. That is to say,” I added,
remembering my responsibilities, “if you _have_ been good. Have you?”
“Oh, so good. Antoinette has been teaching me how to cook, and I can
make a rice pudding. It is so nice to cook things. I like the smell. But
I burned myself. See.”
She pulled off her glove and showed me a red mark on her hand. I kissed
it to make it well, and she laughed and was very happy. And I, too, was
happy. Something new and fresh and bright has come into my life. Stenson
is an admirable servant; but his impassive face and correct salute which
have hitherto greeted me at London railway termini, although suggestive
of material comfort, cannot be said to invest my arrival with a special
atmosphere of charm. Carlotta’s welcome has been a new sensation. I look
upon the house with different eyes. It was a pleasure, as I dressed for
dinner, to reflect that I should not go down to a solemn, solitary meal,
but would have my beautiful little witch to keep me company.
July 22d.
It appears that her conduct has not been by any means irreproachable.
Miss Griggs reported that she took advantage of my absence to saturate
herself with scent, one of the most heinous crimes in our domestic
calendar. _Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet_ is the maxim written above
this article of our code. Once when she disobeyed my orders and came
into the drawing-room reeking of ylang-ylang, I sent her upstairs
to change all her things and have a bath, and not come near me till
Antoinette vouched for her scentlessness. And “Ah, monsieur,” I remember
Antoinette replied, “that would be impossible, for the sweet lamb smells
of spring flowers, _de son naturel_.” Which is true. Her use of violent
perfumes is thus a double offence. “There is something more serious,”
said Miss Griggs.
“I can hardly believe there can be anything more serious than making
one’s self detestable to one’s fellow-creatures,” said I.
“Unless it is making one’s self too agreeable,” said Miss Griggs,
pointedly.
I asked her what she meant.
“I have discovered,” she replied, “that Carlotta has been carrying on a
clandestine flirtation with the young man who calls for orders from the
grocer’s.”
“I am glad it wasn’t the butcher’s boy,” I murmured.
Miss Griggs giggled in a silly way, as if I were jesting. At my stern
request she recovered and unfolded the horrible tale. She had caught
Carlotta kissing her hand to him. She had also seen him smuggle a
three-cornered note between Carlotta’s fingers, and Carlotta had
definitely refused to surrender the billet-dour.
“What is the modern course of treatment,” I asked, “prescribed for young
ladies who flirt with grocers’ assistants? In Renaissance times
she could be whipped. The wise Margaret of Navarre used to beat her
daughter, Jeanne d’Albrecht, soundly for far less culpable lapses from
duty. Or she could be sent to a convent and put into a cell with rats,
or she could be bidden to attend at a merry-making where the chief
attraction was roast grocer’s assistant. But nowadays--what do you
suggest?”
The unimaginative creature could suggest nothing. She thought that I
would know how to deal with the offence. Perhaps preventive measures
would be more efficacious than punishment. But what do I know of the
repressory methods employed in seminaries for young ladies? Burton in
his “Anatomy” speaks cheerfully of blood-letting behind the ears. He
also quotes, I remember, Hippocrates or somebody, who narrates that a
noble maiden was cured of a flirtatious temperament by wearing down her
back for three weeks a leaden plate pierced with holes. This I told Miss
Griggs, who spoke contemptuously of the Father of Medicine.
“He also recommends--whether for this complaint, or for something
similar I forget for the moment--” said I, “anointing the soles of the
feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog;
and speaks highly of a ram’s lungs applied hot to the fore part of the
head. I am sorry these admirable remedies are out of date. There is a
rich Rabelaisianism about them. Instead of the satisfying jorums of our
forefathers we take tasteless pellets, which procure us no sensation at
the time, and even the good old hot mustard poultice is a thing of the
past.”
“But what about Carlotta?” inquired Miss Griggs, anxiously.
That is just like a woman, to interrupt a man when he is beginning to
talk comfortably on a subject that interests him. I sighed.
“Send Carlotta up to me,” I said, resignedly.
Another morning’s work spoiled. I turned to my writing-table. I had just
transcribed on my MS. the anecdote told with such glee by Machiavelli
about Zanobi del Pino, a sort of Admiral Byng of the early fifteenth
century, who was locked up and given nothing to eat but paper painted
with snakes, so that he died, fasting, in a few days. I had an apt
epigram on the subject of Renaissance humour trembling on my pen-point,
when Miss Griggs came in with her foolish gossip. I am sure the
platitude I wrote afterwards is not that original flash of wit.
Carlotta entered and crossed the room to the side of my writing-chair,
her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully behind her
back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I believed less than
ever in the enormity of the offence.
“Do you know what you’re here for?” I asked, magisterially.
She nodded.
“Then you _have_ been making love to the young man from the grocer’s?”
She nodded again. I began to conceive a violent dislike to the grocer’s
young man. It was one of the most humiliating sensations I have
experienced. I think I have seen the individual--a thick-set,
red-headed, freckled nondescript.
“What did you do it for?” I asked.
“He wanted to make love to me,” replied Carlotta.
“He is a young scamp,” said I.
“What is a scamp?” she asked sweetly.
“I am not giving you a lesson in philology,” I remarked. “Do you know
that you have been behaving in a shocking manner?”
“Now you are cross with me.”
“Yes,” I said, “infernally angry.”
And I was. I expected to see her burst into tears. She did nothing of
the kind; only looked at me with irritating demureness. She wore a red
blouse and a grey skirt, and the audacious high-heeled red slippers. I
began to feel the return of my early prejudice against her. Nobody so
alluring could possess a spark of virtue.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said I. “I make many allowances
for your lack of knowledge of our Western customs, but for a young
lady to flirt with an ugly red-headed varlet of the lower orders is
reprehensible all the world over.”
“He gave me dates and dried fruits with sugar all over them,” said
Carlotta.
“Stolen from his employer,” I said. “I will have that young man locked
up in prison, and if you go on receiving his feloniously obtained
presents they will put you in prison too, and I shall be delighted.”
Carlotta maintained her demure expression and extracted from her skirt
pocket a very dirty piece of paper.
“He writes poetry--about me,” she remarked, handing me what I recognised
as the three-cornered note.
I took the thing between finger and thumb, and glanced over the poem. I
have read much indifferent modern verse in my time--I sometimes take
a slush-bath after tea at the club--but I could not have imagined the
English language capable of such emulsion. It was execrable. The first
couplet alone contained an idea.
“Thou art a lovely girl and so very nice
I dream till death upon your face.”
To the wretch’s ear it was a rhyme! I destroyed the noisome thing and
cast it into the waste-paper basket.
“Prison,” said I, “would be a luxurious reward for him. In a properly
civilised country he would be bastinadoed and hanged.”
“Yes, he is dam bad,” said Carlotta, serenely.
“Good heavens!” I cried, “the ruffian has even taught you to swear. If
you dare to say that wicked word again, I’ll punish you severely. What
is his horrid name?”
“Pasquale,” said Carlotta.
“Pasquale?”
“Yes, he likes to hear me say ‘dam.’ Oh, the other? Oh, no, he is too
stupid. He does not say anything. His name is Timkins. I only play with
him. He is so funny. He can go and kill himself; I won’t care.”
“Never mind about Timkins,” said I, “I want to hear about Pasquale. When
did he teach you that wicked, wicked word?”
I think Carlotta flushed as she regarded the point of her red slipper.
“I went for a walk and he met me at the corner and walked here by my
side. Was that wicked?”
“What would the excellent Hamdi Effendi have said to it?”
Woman-like she evaded my question.
“I hope Hamdi is dead. Do you think so?”
“I hope not. For if you behave in this naughty manner, I shall have to
send you back to him.”
She had imperceptibly moved nearer my chair until she stood quite close
to my side, so that as I spoke the last words I looked up into her face.
She put her arm about my shoulders. It is one of her pretty, caressing
ways.
“I will be good--very good,” she said.
“You will have to,” said I, leaning back my head.
She must have caught a relenting note in my voice; for what happened I
feel even now a curious shame in noting down. Her other arm flew under
my chin to join its fellow, and holding me a prisoner in my chair, she
bent down and kissed me. She also laid her cheek against mine.
I am still aware of the indescribable, soft, warm pressure, although she
has gone to bed hours ago.
I vow that a man must be less a man than a petrified egg to have
repulsed her. The touch of her lips was like the falling of dewy
rose-petals. Her breath was as fragrant as new-mown hay. Her hair
brushing my forehead had the odour of violets.
I sent her back to Miss Griggs. She ran out of the room laughing
merrily. She has received plenary absolution for her shameless coquetry
and her profane language. Worse than that she has discovered how to
obtain it in future. The witch has found her witchcraft, and having once
triumphantly exerted her powers, will take the earliest opportunity of
doing so again. I am fallen, both in my own eyes and hers, from my
high estate. Henceforward she will regard me only with good-humoured
tolerance; I shall be to her but a non-felonious Timkins.
I was an idiot to have kissed her in return.
I have not seen her since. I lunched at the club, and paid a formal call
on Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne and my cousin Rosalie, in their sunless house in
Kensington.
I met a singular lack of welcome. Rosalie gave me a limper hand than
usual, and took an early opportunity of leaving me tete-a-tete with her
mother, who conversed frigidly about the warm weather. The very tea, if
possible, was colder.
I met Judith by appointment in Kensington Gardens, and walked with her
homewards. I mentioned my chilly reception.
“My dear man,” she observed--I dislike this apostrophe, which Judith
always uses by way of introduction to an unpleasant remark--“My dear
man, I have no doubt that you have as unsavoury a reputation as any one
in London. You are credited with an establishment like Solomon’s--minus
the respectable counter-balance of the wives, and your devout relatives
are very properly shocked.”
I said that it was monstrous. Judith retorted that I had brought the
calumny upon myself.
“But what can I do?” I asked.
“Board her out with a suburban family, as you should have done from the
first. Even I, who am not strait-laced, consider it highly improper for
you to have her alone with you in the house.”
“My dear,” said I, “there is Antoinette.”
“Tush”--or something like it--said Judith.
“And Stenson. No one seeing Stenson could doubt the irreproachable
propriety of his master.”
“I really have no patience with you,” said Judith.
It is hopeless to discuss Carlotta with her. I shall do it no more.
We sat for a while under the trees, and conversed on rational topics.
She likes her employment with Willoughby. The morning she spends among
blue books and other waste matter at the British Museum, and she devotes
the evening to sorting her information. Willoughby commends her highly.
“And there is something I know you’ll be very pleased to hear,” she
continued. “Who do you think called on me yesterday? Mrs. Willoughby.
Her husband wants me to spend August and September at a place they
have taken in North Wales, and help him with his new book--as a private
secretary, you know. I said that I never went into society. I must tell
you this was the first time I had seen her. She put her hand on my arm
in the sweetest way in the world and said: ‘I know all about it, my
dear, and that is why I thought I’d come myself as Harold’s ambassador.’
Wasn’t it beautiful of her?”
She looked at me and her eyes were filled with tears.
“Marcus dear, I am not a bad woman, am I?”
“My dearest,” I answered, very deeply touched, “you are the best woman
in the world. So far from conferring a favour on you, Mrs. Willoughby
has gained for herself the inestimable privilege of your friendship.”
“Ah!” said Judith, “a man cannot tell what it means.”
Really men are not such dullard dunderheads as women are pleased
to imagine. I have the most crystalline perception of what Mrs.
Willoughby’s invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a morbid
satisfaction in the fiction that their sex is actuated by a mysterious
nexus of emotions and motives which the grosser sense of man is
powerless to appreciate. In her heart of hearts it is a prodigious
comfort to a woman to feel herself misunderstood. Even she who is most
perfectly mated, and is intellectually convinced that the difference
of sex is no barrier to his complete knowledge of her, loves to cherish
some little secret bit of her nature, to which _he_, on account of his
masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are dull men who
could not understand a tabbycat or a professional cricketer, let alone
an expert autothaumaturgist--a self-mystery-maker--like a woman. But
an intelligent and painstaking man should find no difficulty in
appreciating what, after all, is merely a point of view; for what women
see from that point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a
two-year-old babe. I have confessed before that I do not understand
Judith--that is to say the whole welter of contradictions in which her
ego consists--but that is solely because I have not taken the trouble
to subject her to special microscopic study. Such a scientific analysis
would, I think, be an immodest discourtesy towards any lady of my
acquaintance, especially towards one for whom I bear considerable
affection. It would be as unwarrantable for a decent-minded man to
speculate upon her exact spiritual dimensions as upon those portions
of her physical frame that are hidden beneath her attire. The charm
of human intercourse rests, to a great extent, on the vague, the
deliberately unperceived, the stimulating sense that an individual
possesses more attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But
this, I say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well that beneath her
skirts any young woman you please does not melt away into the scaly tail
of a mermaid, but has a pair of ordinary commonplace legs. One knows
that when she has passed through certain well defined experiences in
life, a certain definite range of sentiments must exist behind whatever
mask of facial expression she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense,
therefore, for Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with
regard to Mrs. Willoughby’s invitation.
I developed this theme very fully to Judith as we sat in Kensington
Gardens and during our subsequent, stroll diagonally through Hyde Park
to the Marble Arch. She listened with great attention, and when I had
finished regarded me in a pitying manner, a smile flickering over her
lips.
“My dear Marcus,” she said, “there is no man, however humble-minded, who
has not one colossal vanity, his knowledge of women. He, at any rate,
has established the veritable Theory of Women. And we laugh at you,
my good friend, for the more you expound, the more do you reveal your
beautiful and artistic ignorance. Oh, Marcus, the idea of you setting up
as a feminine psychologist.”
“And pray, why not?” I asked, somewhat nettled.
“Because you are that dear, impossible, lovable thing known as Marcus
Ordeyne.”
This was exceedingly pretty of Judith. But really woman is the Eternal
Philistine, as Matthew Arnold has defined the term. Her supreme
characteristic is inconvincibility. I had simply wasted my breath.