The resolution I had made over night was stronger by the morning. When
I met Martelli I told him there would be no use in sitting down to work.
"I foresaw this," he replied. "Perhaps it will be better to defer your
studies until you are out of this mysterious complication," smiling.
"It will hardly be optional," I said. "My mind is too active in a very
different direction from books to make me profit from reading. The
labour would only be mechanical."
"I wish, Sir, you would direct me to employ the interval in some way
useful to yourself. I shall be eating the bread of idleness--a food I
have little relish for."
"You will be doing nothing of the sort," I answered; "your society
gives me pleasure, and besides, we may take a holiday now and then, may
we not? We have done very well. In the time you have been here, you
have advanced me further than I could have done alone in twelve months."
He bowed, thanking me for my assurance, and expressed his gratitude for
the unfailing politeness and liberal hospitality he had enjoyed during
his residence.
He had recovered from his surprise or shock of the preceding night.
Yet there was upon his manners and in his expression a shadow whose
presence I could mark, though whose meaning I could not read. The
subtle alteration would have been inappreciable to one who had
watched him less closely than I, and who had been less often in his
company. There was a light now in his eye which had not been there
before. His energy, the swift gesture, the sharp vanishing smile, the
quick contraction of the brow, were moderated, sobered, by a stealthy
composure. I attributed the change, vague and slight as it was, to the
fright he had received. "This hint of unfamiliar repose," I said to
myself, "may be the effect of repressed irritability, excited by his
last night's involuntary confession of weakness or cowardice."
I had a part to play, however, which gave my thoughts full employment.
I left Martelli and strolled about the grounds until lunch-time. I then
returned, despatched a light meal, took my hat, and left the house.
Elmore Cottage was not above five minutes' walk from my house by the
road. I could have wished it ten times the distance. I approached it
timorously, and gazed bashfully under the concealment of the hedge. It
was an exquisitely clean little place: the walls white, the windows
burnished and draped with snowy muslin. The lower windows were veiled
with flowers. I hoped its mistress would not see me enter. I rather
prayed that she might be in the garden. I pushed open the gate with a
quick hand and gained the door. My thin and doubtful appeal with the
knocker was promptly answered by a young woman, tidy, grave, and comely.
I asked for Mrs. Fraser. I was answered that she was out.
"She will not be out to me," said I, "if you will say that I am come to
speak with her on a matter of great consequence to herself."
The servant eyed me shrewdly, though not disrespectfully. "But Mrs.
Fraser is out, Sir," said she.
"Mrs. Fraser is not out," I exclaimed in a steady voice. "Come, allow
me to walk in. Must I repeat that I have come to see Mrs. Fraser on
very important business?"
She was too well-trained to keep me on the doorstep or even in the
passage, though I daresay she would have preferred that I remained
in the road whilst she went to hold a council with her mistress. She
slightly smiled as she said, "What name, Sir?"
"Never mind my name," I replied. "Simply say a gentleman has called to
see her."
She left the room. The apartment into which she had conducted me
was close, though the windows were open. The furniture was old, but
tasteful enough. A piano stood in a corner, and on a chair was a pile
of music. I thought of my bouquet as my eye rested on some flowers in a
vase on the table. On either side the mirror, over the chimney-piece,
was a pencil drawing, skilfully done, representing, the one on the
left, a calm at sea, an iceberg on the horizon, an albatross suspended
over the wreck of a vessel, whose broken masts, trailing ropes and
vacant decks were full of the poetry of desolation: the one on the
right, a woman seated at a table, with her face buried in her hands,
a crucifix before her. I drew near, and read at the corner of each
drawing the word "Geraldine."
A longer interval than what I had anticipated elapsed before Mrs.
Fraser presented herself. I was eyeing a little gilt dial with some
degree of impatience, when I heard a sound behind me. I turned rapidly.
Mrs. Fraser stood at the table, her black eyes fixed on me with a
look half of alarm, half of embarrassment. Their startled beauty was
smiting. Her yellow hair was combed high, but silken threads strayed
over her brow and behind her ears. Her lips were compressed.
I rose and made her a bow.
"Pray be seated," she said in a low voice. "My servant tells me you
have called on a matter of business."
"Not exactly _business_," I answered. "But first, you must allow me to
introduce myself to you as Mr. Thorburn, your neighbour."
She regarded me earnestly. I paused: another moment's silence would
have embarrassed me, so I said hardily:
"I shall wholly depend on your kindness not to make me feel more
painfully the trying position in which I have placed myself. The
intrusion," continued I, nervousness making my apology elaborate, "will
only seem all the more unwarrantable when I tell you that I am fully
aware of your love of solitude and your aversion to intruders. But"----
She interrupted me, turning her back to the window, the better to see
me, and not to be seen:
"You sent me a bouquet the other day?"
"I ventured to take the liberty."
"You must have thought my rejection rude. It was meant to be rude. How,
Sir, knowing my aversion to intruders, _could_ you have taken that
liberty? Did you think it would lead to an introduction?"
Her language gave me confidence. Had she sweetly thanked me for my
attention or apologised for her rudeness, she would, I think, have
confounded me too much for my wits. But this tone of hers brought her
down to my level. I could meet her on equal ground.
"I sent you that bouquet," I answered, "because I judged by your
love of gardening that you were fond of flowers. The action was not
designed as a rudeness. It was a mere neighbourly act"----
She seemed too impatient to hear me out.
"How can I believe you? People never act without design."
"I have explained my design," I said, repressing a smile with
difficulty.
Her eyes were incensed. Their beauty made them almost unreal.
"You are still standing!" she exclaimed. "I beg that you will be
seated. Pray do not mind me. I am of an excitable temperament, and when
I converse it is difficult for me to keep still."
She left the window, went to the end of the room, and gazed at me
thence, like some beautiful savage, untamed, startled, exquisitely
unconventional.
I borrowed her tone; she was free-spoken; she would like free-speaking.
"My apology--if apology it were--does not contain the whole truth. But
your goodness will not allow you to think me so great a culprit as I
appear. I had met you once; your appearance piqued me; I desired to
make your acquaintance and have tried an experiment which I beseech you
not to render ignominious."
"Piqued, Sir! How were you piqued?"
"Piqued is not the word. But I dare not substitute the right
expression. I will not be so rude as to utilise the privilege your own
candour confers."
She came over and stood opposite me.
"You say, Mr. Thorburn, you have met me. That is impossible."
"If I prevaricated before, I am truthful now."
"I have not been out of this house for a month. Oh! I suppose you saw
me from your grounds."
"The thick hedge and the trees that divide us would prevent that."
"You may have found the means of looking over?"
I smiled.
"No, indeed. Great as my curiosity may have been, my politeness, I am
sure, is vigorous enough to keep it well disciplined."
"Curiosity! what should there be in me to excite curiosity?"
"Curiosity is the daughter of admiration."
"I am a widow," she continued vehemently. "I lead a sequestered life. I
visit nowhere. I receive no visits. Is it because I am a Roman Catholic
that you are curious?"
"Do you take me for a missionary, Mrs. Fraser? I assure you I was
ignorant of your faith. Of your habits I know only from the information
of my housekeeper. A fellow-feeling makes us kind. I, too, am a
recluse, loving solitude as well as yourself."
"Impossible!" she exclaimed impetuously, "or you would not have called
here."
I could have told her that I loved beauty more than solitude. But I
held my tongue.
"Where did you meet me?" she asked.
"I met you in the fields outside our respective grounds."
"Never!" she cried. "Never have I passed the gate that leads into those
fields."
There was something singular in her vehemence. But it made her beauty
more remarkable by the life it imparted to it.
"But this has been told me before," she continued rapidly. "Yes, I
remember. Your housekeeper asked my servant if I were not in the habit
of taking midnight rambles. Oh, how can you justify the rudeness of
such questions?"
"They were asked unknown to myself. Be sure, I should never have
sanctioned them, if I had questions to ask, I should be bold, and
interrogate you, not your domestic."
"Questions to ask! What are you to me that you should question me?"
"Nothing. I am to you no more than your servant is to me. But you are
something to me. Is it possible, do you think, that I could look upon
your face without interest?"
"How should I know--why should I care?" she replied, her nostrils
dilated, her lips curved, her eyes radiant with the light of anger
qualified by surprise--of resentment tempered by curiosity. "You say
you met me--you are long in telling your story."
"It was one moonlight night. I walked to the fields, and had seated
myself, when I saw you pacing the walk by the hedge. Twice you went the
length of it--then disappeared."
She seated herself in a chair facing mine, leaned her chin upon her
small white hand, and gazed at me with a look of earnestness that was
embarrassing in its intensity. The pressure upon her chin made her
speak through her teeth as she said,
"You must have dreamed this?"
"Indeed I did not. But I own I dreamt of you before. I dreamt that
you looked upon me in a vision. I saw your eyes. They were not more
wonderful in that vision than they are in life. Your face was paler
than it is now."
She did not alter her position.
"A few hours after this dream I saw you. The spirit I had seen in my
sleep stood before me in the flesh. This singular realisation of my
vision made a deep impression. Its natural consequence was a great
eagerness to know you. But how could I intrude? under what pretext
could I force myself upon you? Last night I found an excuse--I met you
again."
"How strange!" she muttered. She had dropped her forehead upon her
hand and her deep eyes shone upon me through their long lashes.
"When I met you last night," I continued, "I was not alone. A companion
was with me. You appeared to us as you had appeared to me. He saw you,
and if you doubt the truth of what I say, will bear testimony. You
stood at the gate; your eyes were fixed and your countenance turned
towards us."
A look of distress entered her face.
"I did not know that I still walked in my sleep," she said.
"It is a dangerous habit, Mrs. Fraser."
"I will give directions to my servant. I am grateful to you _now_ for
your visit. I see you did not design to do me a rudeness. I should have
received you more courteously; but I am not always my own mistress."
"Indeed?" I answered; "your candour is too charming to require
excuses. You must believe that such ingenuousness is very refreshing
to one who, like myself, has wasted the best part of his days amid
sophisticated and conventional society, where truth is never possible
because it must always be offensive."
"Don't you find it dull at Elmore Court?"
"No; I spend the greater portion of my time in reading. Besides, I have
a companion--a gentleman accomplished enough to be of great use to me
in my studies."
"You are a young man," she said, eyeing me intently, "and it is unusual
for young men to banish themselves from life and its pleasures,
especially if they have money."
"I admire your incredulity," I answered, laughing, "for it gives me an
excuse to tell you more of myself than I could otherwise have done. I
mean, that a voluntary confession would have smacked rather egotistic."
She left her chair and began to pace up and down the room. I was
fascinated by her form, the beautiful curve of her breast, the
proportioned waist, her erect stature, and the unconscious grace of her
movements. When her face was towards me her eyes were invariably on
mine; there was in them an unsmiling sparkle, a grave glow, that gave
unreality to their gaze, a spectral beauty to their depths.
"I took Elmore Court," I continued, "not because I was tired of, but
because I wanted to enjoy, life."
"You thought that abstinence would create appetite?"
"I wished to learn the art of living; and this, I saw, was only to be
accomplished by study, by thought, and by awakening aspirations which
should be lofty enough to make their achievement laborious."
"What do you hope to do?"
"Much."
"You will do little. Ah! you think I mean that you have no talent? I
have not said so. How should I know your gifts and deficiencies? But
life itself is one huge disappointment. The more laborious the effort
the more dreadful the failure. Pray don't fancy I think only of books,
or art, or science. I know nothing of these things; and they make but a
very small portion of life. I have the passions in my mind--love, hope,
patience and the like--all these things end in regret."
"Your logic is very dispiriting," said I, watching her with increasing
admiration. "It would leave life nerveless, and make death its only
aspiration."
"Do you think life ends in death?"
"The life of the flesh, certainly."
"The flesh has nothing to do with life. It is the spirit that lives. My
flesh might have been dead last night when you saw me: for I heard and
felt nothing. No! it was all as blank to me as my sight when I shut my
eyes so;" she closed her eyes like a child would have done. "I might
have been dead, and to myself was as dead as ever I shall be when I am
in the grave."
I was about to speak, when she suddenly said, "Mr. Thorburn, you are
making a long call."
"I must plead you as my excuse," I answered, rising, hardly knowing
whether to look grave or smile, so bewildered was I by her manners
and conversation: her brusquerie, of which her beauty qualified the
rudeness; her severity, tempered by a childishness which made all her
moods but new points of view of her charms.
I took my hat: she opened the door.
"I hope, Mrs. Fraser," said I, "that you will not deny me the pleasure
of meeting you again?"
"I have not come to Cliffegate for society, Mr. Thorburn."
"Nor I. But a single individual does not make society. Besides, would
not my having met you twice under circumstances so uncommon justify my
claiming a privilege to which no one else in this place could pretend?"
"What privilege?"
"The privilege of knowing you and meeting you. It was, at least,
promised me in a dream. You will not set aside a promise so mysterious?"
"Are you a fatalist? I am. If you are not, you will ridicule my
_weakness_, as you will call it. But much may be forgiven to persons
who lead such self-contained lives as I. So, if we are to become
friends, our friendship is preordained, and my rebelling against it
would be foolish."
"If we are to be friends, I shall become a fatalist. A creed made
tempting by such a reward is irresistible. I have your permission to
call again?"
"You are your own master."
The reply was sufficient. I extended my hand; she gave me hers. I held
it for a moment, and we separated.