A day or two before Denzil sailed for France he dined with Verisschenzko.
The intense preoccupation of the last war preparations had left him very
little time for grieving. He was unhappy when he thought of Amaryllis,
but he was a man, and another primitive instinct was in action in
him--the zest of going out to fight!
Verisschenzko was depressed, his country was not yet giving him the
opportunity to fulfil his hopes, and he fretted that he must direct
things from so far.
They sat in a quiet corner of the Berkeley and talked in a desultory
fashion all through the _hors d'ouvres_ and the soup.
"I am sick of things, Denzil," Verisschenzko said at last. "I feel
inclined to end it all sometimes."
"And belie the whole meaning of your whole beliefs. Don't be a fool,
Stépan. I always have told you that there is one grain of suicide in the
composition of every Russian. Now it has become active with you. Have
another glass of champagne, old boy, and then you'll talk sense again.
It is sickening to be killed, or maimed, or any beastly thing if it
comes along with duty, but to court it is madness pure and simple. It's
just rot."
"I'm with you," and he called the waiter and ordered a fine champagne,
while he smiled, showing his strong, square teeth.
"They don't have decent vodka--but the brandy will do the trick," and in
an instant his mood changed even before the cognac had come.
"It is the lingering trace of some other life of folly, when I talk like
that--I know it, Denzil. It is the harking back to long months of gloom
and darkness and snow and the howling of wolves and the fear of the
knout. This is not my first Russian life, you know!"
"Probably not; but you've had some more balanced intervening ones, or I
should have found you dead with veronal, or some other filthy thing
before this, with your highly strung nerves! I am not really alarmed
about you though, Stépan--you are fundamentally sane."
"I am glad you think that--very few English understand us--"
"Because you don't understand yourselves. You seem to have every quality
and fault crammed into your skins with no discrimination as to how to
sort them. You are not self-conscious like we are and afraid of looking
like fools--so whatever is uppermost bursts out. If one of us had half
your brains he would never have said an idiot thing completely contrary
to his whole natural bent like that, just because he felt down on his
luck for the moment."
Verisschenzko laughed outright.
"Go ahead, Denzil--let off steam! I'm done in!"
"Well, don't be such a damned fool again!"
"I won't--how is my Lady Amaryllis?"
Denzil looked at him keenly.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because she has written to me, and I am going down to see her--"
"Then you know how she is?"
"I guess. Look here, Denzil, do try and be frank with me. You are
acquainted with me and know whether I am to be trusted or not. You are
aware that I love her with the spirit. You and the worthy husband are off
to be killed, and yet just because you are so damned reserved English,
you can't bring yourself to do the sensible thing and tell me all about
it so that if you go to glory I could look after her rights and--the
child's--and take care of her. It is you who are a fool really, not I!
Because I get a little drunk with my moods and talk about suicide, that
is froth, but I should not bottle up a confidence because it's 'not the
thing' to talk about a woman--even though it's for her benefit and
protection to do so. I've more common sense. Some difficult questions
might crop up later with Ferdinand Ardayre, and I want to have the real
truth made plain to myself so that I can crush him. If you've some cards
up your sleeve that I don't know of, I can't defend Amaryllis so well."
Denzil put down his knife and fork for a moment; he realised the truth
of what his friend said, but it was very difficult for him to speak
all the same.
"Tell me what you know, Stépan, and I'll see what I can do. It is not
because I don't trust you, but it is against everything in me to talk."
"Convention again, and selfishness. You are thinking more about the
Englishman's point of view than the good of the woman you love--because I
feel partly from her letter that you do love her and that she loves
you--and I surmise that the child is yours, not John's, though how this
miracle has been accomplished, since it was clear that you had never seen
her until the night at the Carlton, I don't pretend to guess!"
Denzil drank down his champagne, and then he made Verisschenzko
understand in a few words--the Russian's imagination filled in the
details.
He lit a cigarette between the course and puffed rings of smoke.
"So poor John devised this plan, and yet he loves her--he must indeed be
obsessed by the family!"
"He is--he is a frightfully reserved person too, and I am sure has frozen
Amaryllis from the first day."
"My idea was always for this, directly I went to Ardayre. I felt that
mysterious pull of the family there in that glorious house. I thought she
would probably simplify things by just taking you for a lover, when you
met, as you are her counterpart--a perfect mate for her. I had even made
up my mind to suggest this to her, and influence her as much as I could
to this end--but lo! the husband takes the matter out of our hands and
devises a really unique accomplishment of our wishes. Gosh! Denzil! it's
John who's got the common sense and the genius, not we!"
"Yes, he has--so far, but he did not reckon with human emotion. He might
have known that directly I should see Amaryllis I should fall in love
with her, and he ought to have understood that that extraordinary thing,
nature, might make her draw to me afterwards. Now the situation is
tragic, however you look at it. John will have the hell of a life if he
comes back; he can't help feeling jealous every time he sees the child,
and the tension between him and Amaryllis, now that she knows, will be
great. Amaryllis is wretched--she is passionate and vivid as a humming
bird. Every hair of her darling head is living and quivering with human
power for joy and union, and she will lead the famished life of a nun! I
absolutely worship her. I am frantically in love, so my outlook, if I
come back is not gay either. I wonder if we did well, after all, John and
I, and if the family makes all this suffering worth while? Perhaps it
would have been better to leave it to fate!" Denzil sighed and forgot to
notice a dish the waiter was handing.
"It is perfectly certain," and Verisschenzko grew contemplative, "that
the result of deliberately turning the current of events like that must
have some momentous consequence. Mind you, I think you were right. I
should have advised it as I have told you, because of that swine of a
Turk, Ferdinand--but it may have deranged some plan of the Cosmos, and
if so some of you will have to pay for it. I hate that it should be my
lady Amaryllis. All her sorrow comes from your dramatically honourable
promise. You can't make love to her now--because a man who is a
gentleman does not break his word. Now if my plan had been followed, you
would not have had this limitation and you could have had some joy--but
who knows! A false position is a gall in any case, and it would have
soiled my star, which now shines purely. So perhaps all is for the best.
But have you analysed, now that we are on the subject, what it is 'being
in love,' old boy?"
"It is divine--and it is hell--"
"All that! Amaryllis is the exact opposite to Harietta Boleski--in this,
that she attracts as strongly as Harietta could ever do physically, and
will be no disappointment in soul in the _entre actes_. _Being in love_
is a physical state of exaltation; _loving_ is the merging of spirit
which in its white heat has glorified the physical instinct for
re-creation into a godlike beatitude not of earth. A man could be in love
with Harietta, he could never love her. A man could always love
Amaryllis, so much that he would not be aware that half his joy was
because he was _in love_ with her also."
"You know, Stépan, men, women and every one talk a lot of nonsense about
other interests in life mattering more, and there being other kinds of
really better happiness, but it is pure rot; if one is honest one owns
that there is no real happiness but in the satisfaction of love. Every
other kind is second best. It is jolly good often, but only a _pis aller_
in comparison to the real thing.
"And when people deny this, believing they are speaking honestly, it is
simply because the real thing has not come their way, or they are too
brutalised by transient indulgences to be able to feel exaltation.
"So here's to love!" and Denzil emptied his glass. "The supreme God--"
_"Ainsi soit il,"_ and Stépan drank in response. "Our toast before has
always been to the Ardayre son, and now we drink to what I hope has been
his creator!"
They were silent for some moments, and then Verisschenzko went on:
"When the state of being in love is waning, affection often remains, but
then one is at the mercy of a new emotion. I'd be nervous if a woman who
had loved me subsided into feeling affection!"
"Then define loving?"
"Loving throbs with delight in the flesh; it thrills the spirit with
reverence. It glorifies into beauty commonplace things. It draws nearer
in sickness and sorrow, and is not the sport of change. When a woman
loves truly she has the passion of the mistress, the selfless tenderness
of the mother, the dignity and devotion of the wife. She is all fire and
snow, all will and frankness, all passion and reserve, she is
authoritative and obedient--queen and child."
"And a man?"
"He ceases to be a brute and becomes a god."
"Can it last, I wonder?" and again Denzil sighed.
"It could if people were not such fools--they nearly always deliberately
destroy the loved one's emotion by senseless stupidity--in not grasping
the fact that no fire burns without fuel. They disillusionise each other.
The joy once secured, they take no pains to keep it. A woman will do
things when the lover is an acknowledged possession, which she would not
have dreamed of doing while desiring to attract the man--and a man
likewise--neither realising that the whole state of being in love is an
intoxication of the senses, and that the senses are very easily wearied
or affronted."
"Stépan--what am I going to do about Amaryllis? If I come back, it will
be hell--a continual longing and aching, and I want to accomplish
something in life; it was never my plan to have the whole thing held and
bounded by passion for a woman. A hopeless passion I can understand
facing and crushing, but one which you know that the woman returns, and
that it is only the law and promises you have made which separate you, is
the most awful torment." He covered his eyes with his hand for a moment.
His face was stern. "And her life too--how sickening. You say you are
going down to Ardayre to see Amaryllis--you will tell me how you find
her. I have not written--I am trying not to feel."
"Are you interested about the coming child? I am never quite certain how
much it matters to a man, whether we deceive ourselves and feel sentiment
simply because we love the woman, whether the emotion is half vanity, or
whether there is something in the actual state called parenthood? How do
you feel?"
Denzil thought of his musings upon this subject after he had seen
Amaryllis at the Carlton.
"It is hard to describe," he answered now, "it is all so interwoven with
love for Amaryllis that I cannot distinguish which is which, or how I
feel about the state in the abstract. Women have these mysterious
emotions, I believe, but I do not think that they come to the average
man, but if he loves it seems a fulfilment."
"I have two children scattered in Russia, begotten before I had begun to
think of things and their meanings. I have them finely educated--I loathe
them. I sicken at the memory of the mothers; I am ashamed when I see in
them some chance physical likeness to myself. But how will you feel
presently when you see the child, adoring the mother as you do? What will
it say to you, looking at you with your own eyes, perhaps? You'll long to
have some hand in the training of it. You'll desire to watch the budding
brain and the expanding soul. You'll be drawn closer and closer to
Amaryllis--it will all pull you with an invisible nature chain--"
"I know it,--that is the tragedy of the whole thing. Those delights will
be John's--and I hate to think that Amaryllis will be alone for all these
months--and yet I believe I would prefer that to her being with John. I
am jealous when I remember that he has rights denied to me--so what must
he feel, poor devil, when he remembers about me?"
"It is quite a peculiar situation. I wonder what the years will
develop it into."
"If the child is a girl, the whole thing is in vain."
"It won't be a girl--you will see I am right. When will you and John get
leave, do you suppose?"
"I don't know, but about Christmas, perhaps, if we are alive--"
"Do you want to see her again, then?"
"I long always to see her--but by Christmas--it would be nearly five
months. I don't think I could keep my word and not make love to her--if I
saw her--then."
"You will wish to hear about her--?"
"Always."
After this they were both silent while the cheese was being removed.
Verisschenzko was thinking profoundly. Here was a study worthy of his
highest intuitive faculties. What possible solution could the future
hold? Only one--that of death for either of the men concerned. Well,
death was busy with England's best--it was no unlikely possibility--and
as he looked at Denzil he felt a stab of pain. Nothing more splendid and
living and strong could be imagined than his six foot one of manhood,
crowned with the health of his twenty-nine years.
"I hope to God he comes through," he prayed. And then he became cynical,
as was his habit, when he found himself moved.
"I am on the track of Harietta, Denzil. She has a new
lover--Ferdinand Ardayre."
"What a combination!"
"Yes, but who the officer was at the Ardayre ball I cannot yet trace.
Stanislass is quite a _gaga_--he spends his time packed off to play
piquet at the St. James'--he has no _bosse des cartes_,--it is his
burdensome duty."
"He does not feel the war?"
"He is numb."
"What will you do if you catch her red-handed?"
"I shall have her shot without a moment's compunction. It would be a
fitting end."
"I don't know that I should have the nerve to shoot a woman--even a spy."
Verisschenzko laughed, and a savage light grew in his Calmuck eyes.
"My want of civilisation will serve me--if ever that moment comes."
Then their talk turned to fighting, and women were forgotten for the
time.