THE STRUGGLE
Leslie walked back to the hotel that day with Jane. When he left her he
was vastly troubled in his mind. Troubled about Jane, troubled about
Campanula, troubled about himself, and troubled about a vast, vague,
tragic something: a shadow stealing up from his past and already
tingeing his future with the twilight that comes before eclipse.
What demon had called Jane up from the past?
Unconsciously during the last five years he had been altering for the
better. The friendliness and kindness of Japan, the frank friendliness
of M’Gourley, that most unconscionable Scot, the beauty of the flowers
and seasons, and Campanula—above all, Campanula—these things had
worked upon him with slow but sure effect.
Slowly, he had learnt the great, great secret that happiness is to be
found, not in grand palaces, not in wealth, not in success, but amongst
the lowly and little things of life, the things that no man can
appreciate who has not a free and untroubled conscience.
The new book, the pipe of tobacco smoked beneath the cherry trees of a
morning, the home-coming of Campanula from school of an evening laden
with books and perplexities, the rubber of whist with Mr. Initogo, the
quaint, funny things that are always happening in a Japanese
household—these and a thousand other trifles had made up the sum of his
life, and the addition of them made happiness.
And Campanula—he little knew how much she had entered into his
being—what a multitude of impalpable threads bound her to him, threads
that had been spinning from the very first day, when he found her lost
amidst the crimson azaleas!
He had eaten the lotus for nearly five years; he had been preparing a
future of happiness and peace, and who knows what boundless
possibilities of love?
Suddenly, Satan had appeared before him with the command, “Get up and
fight, fight me for this future you have been preparing for yourself;
fight me for the beauty of it, the happiness you will have in it, the
happiness you will make for others in it; get it if you can, for my
weapon is Lust.”
That night, when the moon, now waxing stronger, laid her patient square
of pure white light on the floor of his room, the battle began in
earnest.
He had determined on going to Arita on the morrow to get away for a
while from the woman against whom he felt fate was driving him with
ruinous intent.
Now, as he lay alone, with the powers of good and evil on either side of
him, he reviewed his position clearly for the first time.
The cold, calculating, sneaking, pickpocket form of adultery, which is
the canker at the heart of English society—to put it in plain English,
the bestial use of another man’s wife behind his back—was a form of
crime as unthinkable to Leslie as the crime of cheating at cards, or
forging a check.
To obtain the woman he wanted, there was only one way. The open way.
That meant the smashing up of everything around him. He must leave
Japan, leave Campanula, for, deep in his heart, something told him that
Campanula could have no place in that new life. It meant the social ruin
of Jane du Telle.
Here, alone, away from the object of his passion, all this was very
clear.
Then that same old Scotch ancestor, with the long upper lip, and the
crude common sense, and the rigid belief in God and the law, came out of
his cell and spoke to this effect. There is no excuse before God or man
for adultery. Love, the child of God, has no part therein, but Lust, the
child of the devil, and the end of Lust is Hell.
All this, with the thoughts that went before it, was edifying and made
for good, and the devil said nothing, for the devil, like the great
Boyg, has a method with some natures. He does not strike, but lets the
victim do the striking, hedging him gently, gently, letting him hit out
widely till he is exhausted, or beats himself to death as the Blind One
beat himself against the trees.
Early in the morning Leslie rose, white and haggard, and dressed, and
went off to the station without waiting for breakfast.
“Tell Campanula San I am going to Arita on business, but will be back
to-night. Tell her I am going alone,” he said to Pine-breeze.
“Kashko marimashta,” murmured Pine-breeze, in a voice of devotion, and
he departed.
He was going to Arita to get beyond the reach of Jane, and lo! when he
got into the railway carriage, she was there—not in the flesh, but in
the spirit. And when he alighted at Arita, she was on the platform, and
in the street she walked at his side.
The tones of her voice thrilled him, and he smelt the perfume of her
hair, he felt the curve of her waist, and his lips felt the satin of her
throat, but the physical desire was small compared with the terrible
sentiment that was born of it, the heart-breaking longing inspired by
her idealized image.
Passion, when it rises to this dimension in the mind of a man, has
beautiful attributes as well as vile, it holds in its hands pictures of
perfect innocence, besides the others.
The devil takes care of that!
He saw Jane not only as she was, but as she had been, fair, and fresh,
and innocent, against the background of the beeches round Glenbruach,
and the sea lochs, and the purple hills.
What he did with his body that day in Arita, or where he wandered, he
could never tell, for his mind was fighting a battle so fierce that all
intelligent perception of outward things was blurred.
At the end of it he found himself in a tea house sitting before some
food which he had apparently ordered, and the battle was won. So he told
himself.
As a matter of fact, he was worn out. Passion was exhausted, fighting
against fate, attempting to escape from the pursuing devils, beating
himself against the trees, he had fallen beneath them, telling himself
that the battle was won, wondering at himself that he ever could have
even dreamed of the ruinous course of action which lust had urged him
to.
But the trees remained steadfast and unharmed, waiting only for the
renewal of the madman’s strength and the inevitable end.
It was dark when he reached the Nagasaki station. He picked a riksha
from a row of them standing outside with hoods up, for it had been
raining slightly, and looking absurdly like a row of tiny, unhorsed
hansom cabs, and told the man to take him to the House of the Clouds.
He came up the hill-path, and as he came the wind, blowing against him,
brought a perfume with it, the perfume of rain-wet azaleas. During the
day and the previous night dozens of blossoms had broken forth, filling
the garden with their fragrance and beauty; dozens more would be born
ere the morrow under the light of the silvery moon now gliding up over
the hill-tops behind a tracery of flying, fleecy clouds.
As he approached the house, he saw through the open panel space the
silhouettes of Pine-breeze and Cherry-blossom.
They were sitting opposite to each other on their heels upon the lamplit
matting, and seemed at first to be engaged in the game of kitsune-ken,
but almost instantly he perceived that they were playing at no game, but
were engaged in conversation. Alarmed conversation, to judge by the
movements of their hands, now up-flung, now flung out sideways.
Sweetbriar San was promenading the matting with tail fluffed out, now
rubbing against Pine-breeze, now against Cherry-blossom, attempting
apparently to join in the conversation, and seeming to share in the
excitement.
Something had happened of a tragic nature—but what? Two steps brought
him on to the veranda two more into the house with his boots on, despite
the clause in the lease.
The Mousmés gave two little shrieks, wheeled round, and kow-towed before
the August One.
“What is the matter?” he asked. “Has anything happened? Is Campanula San
safe?”
Campanula San was quite safe.
Then why all this? What had they been conversing about with so many
exclamations?
Confused replies.
“Go,” he said, “and bring me some tea, and ask Lotus-bud to come
hither.”
In a few moments Lotus-bud, wearing a very white face, appeared, and
kow-towed.
He questioned her. At first her answers were vague, and then it all came
out.
Things had happened. Campanula San had gone into the town that day, and
had met he whose head was like the rising sun (George du Telle in plain
prose); and he with the sun-bright head had walked with her, and had
spoken dishonorable words. Oh, shame!—he had offered her gold.
“God!” said Leslie, staring at the bent figure on the matting before
him.
He remained speechless for a moment, then he took out his watch and
looked at it: it was eleven o’clock.
He turned furiously and strode out of the room: on the veranda he
stopped like a horse suddenly reined in.
Jane’s image had appeared before him, turning him back.
Suppose he were to go to the hotel now and drag George du Telle out and
beat him within an inch of his life, as was his intention a moment ago?
The idea of Jane in the midst of that scene brought his fury down from
boiling point.
He returned to the room, where Lotus-bud was still on her knees, with
her hands clasped.
Where was Campanula San now?
In bed and asleep. She had returned, it seems, greatly troubled at noon,
and had confided her trouble to Lotus-bud, making her promise to tell no
one—Leslie San especially—and Lotus-bud had promised—with the result
we have already seen.
For a moment he thought of waking Campanula, but he dismissed the
thought. The thing had occurred and was irremediable, the question now
remained, what was he to do about George du Telle.
He went up to bed. In times past he could have obtained his remedy.
Where lay his remedy now? The law could do nothing; there remained only
physical force.
A wheezy pug dog protected by a woman’s skirts, that is what George du
Telle was. Leslie knew that if once he could catch the brute by the
scruff of the neck, the only struggle would be with himself as to the
limits of chastisement to be inflicted.
If he could only get him away from Jane up a back street anywhere, just
for five minutes! The thing was to be done. With the help of the astute
M’Gourley he felt it was to be done, and would be done on the morrow.
He got up and went to a rack on the wall where he kept his sticks, and
took down a whangee cane half an inch thick, a most efficient instrument
for the chastisement of a brute. He made it sing through the air, then
he put it on the rack again and returned to bed, and slept soundly, far
more soundly than he had slept the night before.