Suspense is the hardest thing to bear--what a ridiculous truism! It has
been said a thousand times before and will be said a thousand times
again!--because it has come to everyone at some moment, and so its pain
is universally understood. To have attained serenity would mean that one
was strong enough not to allow suspense to cause one a moment's doubt or
distress. I am far from serenity, I fear--for I am filled with unrest--I
try to tell myself that Alathea Sharp does not matter in my life at
all--that this is the end--that I am not to be influenced by her
movements or her thoughts, or her comings and goings--I try not to think
of her even as "Alathea"--And then when I have succeeded in some measure
in all this, a hideous feeling of sinking comes over me--that physical
sensation of a lead weight below the heart. What on earth is the good of
living an ugly maimed life?
It was ten times easier to carry on under the most disgusting and
fearsome circumstances when I was fighting, than it is now when
everything is done for my comfort, and I have all that money can buy.
What money cannot buy is of the only real consequence though. I must
read Henley again, and try to feel the thrill of pride I used to feel
when I was a boy at the line "I am the master of my fate, I am the
captain of my soul."
----What if she does not come back, and I do not hear any more of her?
Stop! Nicholas Thormonde, this is contemptible weakness!
* * * * *
This evening it was wonderful on the terrace, the sun set in a blaze of
crimson and purple and gold, every window in the _Galerie des Glasses_
seemed to be on fire--strange ghosts of by-gone courtiers appeared to be
flitting past the mirrors.
What do they think of the turmoil they have left behind them, I wonder?
Each generation torn by the same anguish which the worries of love
bring?--And what is love for?--Just to surround the re-creative instinct
with glamour and render it æsthetic?
Did cave men love?--They were exempt from pain of the mind at all
events. Civilization has augmented the mental anguishes, and pleasures
of love, and when civilization is in excess it certainly distorts and
perverts the whole passion.
But what is love anyway? the thing itself I mean. It is a want, and an
ache and a craving--I know what I want. I want firstly Alathea for my
own, with everything which that term implies of possession. Then I want
to share her thoughts, and I want to feel all the great aspirations of
her soul--I want her companionship--I want her sympathy--I want her
understanding.
When I was in love with Nina--and five or six others--I never thought of
any of these things--I just wanted their bodies: Therefore it is only
when the spiritual enters into the damned thing, I suppose, that one
could call it love. By that reasoning I have loved only Alathea in all
my life. But I am stumped with this thought--If she had one eye and no
leg below the knee--should I be in love with her? and feel all these
exalted emotions about her? I cannot honestly be certain how I would
answer that question yet, so this shows that the physical plays the
chief rôle even in a love that seems spiritual.
Matho--in Flaubert's Salammbô was beaten to a jelly but his eyes still
flamed with love for his princess--But when she saw him as this
revolting mass, did her love flame for him? Or was she exalted only by
the incense to her vanity--and a pity for his sufferings? Heloise and
Abelard were pretty wonderful in their love, but his love became
transmuted much sooner than hers, because all physical emotions were
gone from him. Plato's idea that man gravitates towards beauty for some
subconscious soul desire to re-create himself through perfection, and so
attain immortality, is probably the truth. And that is why we shrink
from mutilated bodies--. Until I can be quite sure that I should love
Alathea just the same were she disfigured as I am--I cannot in justice
expect her to return my passion--.
Nina became re-attracted (if I can coin that word)--because I was out of
reach. The predatory instinct in woman had received a rebuff, and
demanded renewed advance.--She still keeps a picture in some part of
her mental vision of what I was too, therefore, I am not so revolting
to her--but Alathea has not this advantage, and has seen me only
wounded.
I have done nothing to earn her respect--She has apprehended my useless
life in these last months--She has heard the chattering of my
companions, whom I have been free to choose--the obvious deduction being
that these are what I desire--And finally, she knows that I have had a
mistress.--In heaven's name _why_ should she be anything but what she is
in her manner to me!--Of course she despises me. So that the only thing
I could possibly allure her by would be that intangible something which
Nina and Suzette and even Coralie--have inferred that I
possess--"It"!!--. And how would that translate itself to a mind like
Alathea's?--It might mean nothing to her--It probably would not. The
only times I have ever seen any feeling at all in her for me were when
she thought she had destroyed a wounded man's interest in a harmless
hobby--and felt remorse--And the freezing reserve which showed when she
handed me the cheque-book--and the perturbation and contempt when I was
rude about the child.--At other times she has shown a blank
indifference--or a momentary consciousness that there was admiration in
my eye for her.
Now what do I get out of the iciness over Suzette's cheque?
Two possibilities--.
One--that she is more prudish than one of her literary cultivation, and
worldly knowledge is likely to be, so that she strongly disapproves of
a man having a "_petite amie_"--or--
Two--that she has sensed that I love her and was affronted at the
discovery that at the same time I had a--friend?--
The second possibility gives me hope, and so I fear to entertain a
belief in it--but taken coldly it seems the most likely.--Now if she had
_not_ been affronted at this stage, would she have gone on believing I
loved her, and so eventually have shown some reciprocity?
It is just possible--.
And as it is, will that same instinct which is in the subconscious mind
of all women--and men too for the matter of that--which makes them want
to fight to retain or retake what was theirs, influence her now
unconsciously to feel some, even contemptuous, interest in me? This also
is possible--.
If only fate brings her to me again--. That is where one is done--when
absence cuts threads.
To-morrow it will be Monday--a whole week since I received her telegram.
I shall go up to Paris in the morning if I hear nothing and go myself to
the Hotel de Courville to try and obtain a trace of her--if that is
impossible I will write to the Duchesse.--
* * * * *
_Reservoirs--Night:_
As I wrote the last words--a note was brought to me by Burton--someone
had left at the Hotel.
"Dear Sir Nicholas--(it ran)
I am very sorry I have been unable to come out to
do my work--but my brother died last Tuesday, and
I have been extremely occupied--I will be at Versailles
at eleven on Thursday as usual.
Yours truly,
A. Sharp."
* * * * *
Her firm writing, more like a man's than a woman's looked a little shaky
at the end--Was she crying perhaps when she wrote the letter--the poor
little girl--What will the death mean to her eventually? Will the
necessity to work be lessened?
But even the gravity of the news did not prevent a feeling of joy and
relief in me--I would see her again--Only four days to wait!
But what a strange note!--not any exhibition of feeling! she would not
share even that natural emotion of grief with me. Her work is business,
and a well bred person ought not to mix anything personal into it.--How
will she be--? Colder than ever? or will it have softened her--.
She will probably be more unbending to Burton than to me.
The weather has changed suddenly, the wind is sighing, and I know that
the summer is over--I shall have the sitting-room fire lighted and
everything as comfortable as I can when she does turn up, and I shall
have to stay here until then since I cannot communicate with her in any
way. This ridiculous obscurity as to her address must be cleared away.
I must try to ask her casually, so as not to offend her.
* * * * *
A week has passed--.
Alathea came on Thursday--I was sickeningly nervous on Thursday morning.
I resented it extremely. As yet the only advance I have made is that I
can control most of the outward demonstrations of my perturbations, but
not the sensations themselves. I was sitting in my chair quite still
when the door opened, and in she came--Just the scrap of a creature in
dead black. Although there was no crepe, one could see that the garments
were French trappings of woe, that is, she had a veil hanging from her
simple small hat. I felt that she had had to buy these things for the
funeral, and probably could not afford a second set of more dowdy ones
for her working clothes, so that there was that indescribable air of
elegance about her appearance which had shown in the _Bois_ that Sunday.
The black was supremely becoming to her transparent white skin, and
seemed to set off the bright bronze brown of her hair--the rebellious
little curls had slipped out beside her ears, but the yellow horn
spectacles were as uncompromising as ever--I could not see whether her
eyes were sad or no--her mouth was firm as usual.
"I want to tell you of my sympathy," I said immediately--"I was so sorry
not to know your address that I might have expressed it to you before--I
would have wished to send you some flowers."
"Thank you," was all she answered--but her voice trembled a little.
"It was so stupid of me not to have asked you for your address
before--you must have thought it was so careless and unsympathetic."
"Oh! no"--.
"Won't you give it to me now that I may know in the future?"
"We are going to move--It would be useless--it is not decided where we
go yet."