Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of
men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know
that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes
dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and
that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly--sordidly, at
times,--and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a
scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow
journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists,
and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!"
"Dearest Robert!" remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, "you are sadly _passé_: that
pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago."
"The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is
already reflected--faintly, I grant you,--in the best-selling books. We
have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness
and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of
primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if
his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have
tossed over the contents of every closet in the _menage à trois_. And
I--_moi, qui vous parle_,--I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring
lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in _Afield_; and
henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence."
"Saul among the prophets," Uncle George suggested, helpfully.
"Quite so," I assented, "and my first prophecy will be _As the Coming
of Dawn_."
Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. "Mad, quite mad!" said
he, in parenthesis.
"I shall be idyllic," I continued, sweetly; "I shall write of the
ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the
keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met
after last night's kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs
blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is
love,--the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not
the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as
it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that
will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I
will!"
I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table.
"H'm!" said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; "going back to renew associations
with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her
grandchildren terribly in the way."
"It is imperative," said I,--"yes, imperative for the scope of my book,
that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I
discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban
product to serve my purpose. And I can't find any one who will."
Uncle George whistled softly. "'Honourable young gentleman,'" he
murmured, as to himself, "'desires to meet attractive and innocent
young lady. Object: to learn how to be idyllic in three-hundred
pages.'"
There was no commentary upon his text.
"I say," queried Mr. Bulmer, "do you think this sort of thing is fair
to the girl? Isn't it a little cold-blooded?"
"Respected nunky, you are at times very terribly the man in the street!
Anyhow, I leave the Green Chalybeate to-morrow in search of _As the
Coming of Dawn_."
"Look here," said Mr. Bulmer, rising, "if you start on a tour of the
country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my
abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a
liver-pill and go to bed! I don't promise anything, mind, but perhaps
about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath
on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there,"
he added unkindlily, "are not built for those full rich figures."
Next morning, I notified the desk-clerk, and, quite casually, both the
newspaper correspondents, that the Green Chalybeate was about to be
bereft of the presence of a distinguished novelist. Then, as my train
did not leave till night, I resolved to be bored on horseback, rather
than on the golf-links, and had Guendolen summoned, from the stable,
for a final investigation of the country roads thereabouts.
Guendolen this afternoon elected to follow a new route; and knowing by
experience that any questioning of this decision could but result in
undignified defeat, I assented. Thus it came about that we circled
parallel to the boardwalk, which leads uphill to the deserted Royal
Hotel, and passed its rows of broken windows; and went downhill again,
always at Guendolen's election; and thus came to the creek, which
babbled across the roadway and was overhung with thick foliage that
lisped and whispered cheerfully in the placid light of the declining
sun. It was there that the germ of _As the Coming of Dawn_ was found.
For I had fallen into a reverie over the deplorable obstinacy of my new
heroine, who declined, for all my labours, to be unsophisticated; and
taking advantage of this, Guendolen had twitched the reins from my hand
and proceeded to satisfy her thirst in a manner that was rather too
noisy to be quite good form. I sat in patience, idly observing the
sparkling reflection of the sunlight on the water. I was elaborating a
comparison between my obstinate heroine and Guendolen. Then Guendolen
snorted, as something rustled through the underbrush, and turning, I
perceived a Vision.
The Vision was in white, with a profusion of open-work. There were blue
ribbons connected with it. There were also black eyes, of the
almond-shaped, heavy-lidded variety that I had thought existed only in
Lely's pictures, and great coils of brown hair which was gold where the
chequered sunlight fell upon it, and two lips that were inexpressibly
red. I was filled with pity for my tired horse, and a resolve that for
this once her thirst should be quenched.
Thereupon, I lifted my cap hastily; and Guendolen scrambled to the
other bank, and spluttered, and had carried me well past the Iron
Spring, before I announced to the evening air that I was a fool, and
that Guendolen was describable by various quite picturesque and
derogatory epithets. And I smiled.
"Now, Robert Etheridge Townsend, you writer of books, here is a subject
made to your hand!" And then:
"Only 'twixt the light and shade
Floating memories of my maid
Make me pray for Guendolen."
After this we retraced our steps. I was peering anxiously about the
roadway.
"Pardon me," said I, subsequently; "but _have_ you seen anything of a
watch--a small gold one, set with pearls?"
"Heavens!" said the Vision, sympathetically, "what a pity! Are you sure
it fell here?"
"I don't seem to have it about me," I answered, with cryptic, but
entire veracity. I searched about my pockets, with a puckered brow.
"And as we stopped here--"
I looked inquiringly into the water.
"From this side," observed the Vision, impersonally, "there is less
glare from the brook."
Having tied Guendolen to a swinging limb, I sat down contentedly in
these woods. The Vision moved a little, lest I be crowded.
"It might be further up the road," she suggested.
"Oh, I must have left it at the hotel," I observed.
"You might look--" said she, peering into the water.
"Forever!" I assented.
The Vision flushed, "I didn't mean--" she began.
"But I did," quoth I,--"and every word of it."
"Why, in that case," said she, and rose to her feet, "I'd better--" A
frown wrinkled her brow; then a deep, curved dimple performed a similar
office for her cheek. "I wonder--" said she.
"Why, you would be a bold-faced jig," said I, composedly; "but, after
all there is nobody about. And, besides,--for I suspect you of being
one of the three dilapidated persons in veils who came last night,--we
are going to be introduced right after supper, anyway."
The Vision sat down. "You mentioned your sanatorium?" quoth she.
"The Asylum of Love," said I; "discharged--under a false impression,
--as cured, and sent to paradise.
"Oh!" said I, defiant, "but it _is_!"
She looked about her. "The woods _are_ rather beautiful," she conceded,
softly.
"They form a quite appropriate background," said I. "It is a veritable
Eden, before the coming of the snake."
"Before?" she queried, dubiously.
"Undoubtedly," said I, and felt my ribs, in meditative wise. "Ah, but I
thought I missed something! We participate in a historic moment. This
is in Eden immediately after the creation of--Well, but of course you
are acquainted with that famous bull about Eve's being the fairest of
her daughters?"
"It is _quite_ time," said she, judicially, "for me to go back to the
hotel, before--since we are speaking of animals,--your presence here is
noticed by one of the squirrels."
"It is not good," I pleaded, "for man to be alone."
"I have heard," said she, "that--almost any one can cite scripture to
his purpose."
I thrust out a foot for inspection. "No suggestion of a hoof," said I;
"and not the slightest odour of brimstone, as you will kindly note; and
my inoffensive name is Robert Townsend."
"Of course," she submitted, "I could never think of making your
acquaintance in this irregular fashion; and, therefore, of course, I
could not think of telling you that my name is Marian Winwood."
"Of course not," I agreed; "it would be highly improper."
"--And it is more than time for me to go to supper," she concluded
again, with a lacuna, as it seemed to me, in the deduction.
"Look here!" I remonstrated; "it isn't anywhere near six yet." I
exhibited my watch to support this statement.
"Oh!" she observed, with wide, indignant eyes.
"I--I mean--" I stammered.
She rose to her feet.
"--I will explain how I happened to be carrying two watches--"
"I do not care to listen to any explanations. Why should I?"
"--upon," I firmly said, "the third piazza of the hotel. And this very
evening."
"You will not." And this was said even more firmly. "And I hope you
will have the kindness to keep away from these woods; for I shall
probably always walk here in the afternoon." Then, with an indignant
toss of the head, the Vision disappeared.
3
I whistled. Subsequently I galloped back to the hotel.
"See here!" said I, to the desk-clerk; "how long does this place keep
open?"
"Season closes latter part of September, sir."
I told him I would need my rooms till then.
17.
_He Provides Copy_
So it was Uncle George Bulmer who presently left the Green Chalybeate,
to pursue Mrs. Chaytor with his lawless arts. I stayed out the season.
Now I cannot conscientiously recommend the Green Chalybeate against
your next vacation. Once very long ago, it was frequented equally for
the sake of gaiety and of health. In the summer that was Marian's the
resort was a beautiful and tumble-down place where invalids congregated
for the sake of the nauseous waters,--which infallibly demolish a solid
column of strange maladies I never read quite through, although it
bordered every page of the writing-paper you got there from the
desk-clerk,--and a scanty leaven of persons who came thither,
apparently, in order to spend a week or two in lamenting "how very dull
the season is this year, and how abominable the fare is."
But for one I praise the place, and I believe that Marian Winwood also
bears it no ill-will. For we two were very happy there. We took part in
the "subscription euchres" whenever we could not in time devise an
excuse which would pass muster with the haggard "entertainer." We
danced conscientiously beneath the pink and green icing of the
ball-room's ceiling, with all three of the band playing _Hearts and
Flowers_; and with a dozen "chaperones"--whom I always suspected of
taking in washing during the winter months,--lined up as closely as was
possible to the door, as if in preparation for the hotel's catching
fire any moment, to give us pessimistic observal. And having thus
discharged our duty to society at large, we enjoyed ourselves
tremendously.
For instance, we would talk over the book I was going to write in the
autumn. That was the main thing. Then one could golf, or drive, or--I
blush to write it even now--croquet. Croquet, though, is a much
maligned game, as you will immediately discover if you ever play it on
the rambling lawn of the Chalybeate, about six in the afternoon, say,
when the grass is greener than it is by ordinary, and the shadows are
long, and the sun is well beneath the tree-tops of the Iron Bank, and
your opponent makes a face at you occasionally, and on each side the
old, one-storied cottages are builded of unusually red bricks and are
quite ineffably asleep.
Or again there is always the creek to divert yourself in. Once I caught
five crawfishes there, while Marian waited on the bank; and afterward
we found an old tomato-can and boiled them in it, and they came out a
really gorgeous crimson. This was the afternoon that we were Spanish
Inquisitors.... Oh, believe me, you can have quite a good time at the
Chalybeate, if you set about it in the proper way.
2
Only it is true that sometimes, when it rained, say, with that hopeless
insistency which, I protest, is unknown anywhere else in the world; and
when Marian was not immediately accessible, and cigarettes were not
quite satisfactory, because the entire universe was so sodden that
matches had to be judiciously coaxed before they would strike; and when
if you happened to be writing a fervid letter to Rosalind Jemmett, let
us say, the ink would not dry for ever so long:--why, it is true that
in these circumstances you would feel a shade too like the wicked Lord
So-and-So of a melodrama to be comfortable.
Yet even in these circumstances, reason told me that the Book was the
main thing, that the girl would be thoroughly over the affair by
November at latest, and that at the cost of a few inconsequent tears,
she would have meanwhile immeasurably obliged posterity. And I knew
that no man may ever write in perdurable fashion save by ruthlessly
converting his own life into "copy," since of other persons' lives he
can, at most, reproduce but the blurred and misinterpreted by-ends, by
reason of almost any author's deplorable lack of omniscience. Yes, the
Book was the main thing; and yet the girl--knowingly to dip my pen into
her heart as into an inkstand was not, at best, chivalric....
"But the Book!" said I. "Why, I must be quite idiotically in love to
think of letting that Book perish!" And I viciously added: "Confound
the pretty simpleton!"...
3
So the book was builded, after all, a little by a little. Hardly an
evening came when after leaving Marian I had not at least one excellent
and pregnant jotting to record in my note-book. Now it would be just an
odd turn of language, or a description of some gesture she had made, or
of a gown she had worn that day; and now a simile or some other rather
good figure of speech which had popped into my mind when I was making
love to her.
Nor had I any difficulty in preserving nearly all she said to me, for
Marian was never a chatterbox; yet her responses had, somehow, that
long-sought tang it wasn't in me to invent for any imaginary young
woman who must be, for the sake of my new novel, quite heels over head
in love.
And I began to see that Bettie was right, as usual. I had portrayed
Gillian Hardress pretty well in _Afield_; but by and large, I had
always written about women as though they were "pterodactyls or some
other extinct animal, which you had never seen, but had read a lot
about."
And now, in looking over my notes, I knew, and my heart glowed to know,
that I was not about to repeat the error.
So the Book was builded, after all, a little by a little. And a little
by a little the summer wore on; and in the lobby of the Main Hotel was
hung the beautiful Spirit of the Falls poster of the Buffalo
Exposition; and we talked of Oom Paul Krüger, and Shamrock II, and the
Nicaragua Canal, and lanky Bob Fitzsimmons, and the Boxer outrages; and
we read _To Have and To Hold_ and _The Cardinal's Snuff Box_, and
thought it droll that the King of England was not going to call himself
King Albert, after all.
And then came the news of how the President had been shot, "with a
poisoned bullet," and a week of contradictory bulletins from the
Milburn House in Buffalo. And there were panicky surmises raised
everywhere as to "what these anarchists may do next," so that Maggio
was mobbed in Columbus, and Emma Goldman in Chicago; and Colonel
Roosevelt was found, after days of search, on Mt. Marcy in the
Adirondacks, and was told in the heart of a forest that to-morrow he
would be at the head of a nation. And the country's guidance was
entrusted to a mere lad of forty-three, with general uneasiness as to
what might come of it; and the dramatic tale of Colonel Roosevelt's
taking of the oath of office was in that morning's paper; and Marian
and I were about to part.
4
"It will be dreadful," sighed she; "for we have to stay a whole week
longer, and I shall come here every afternoon. And there will be only
ghosts in the woods, and I shall be very lonely."
"Dear," said I, "is it not something to have been happy? It has been
such a wonderful summer; and come what may, nothing can rob us now of
its least golden moment. And it is only for a little."
"You will come back?" said she, half-doubtingly.
"Yes," I said. "You wonderful, elfin creature, I shall undoubtedly come
back--to your real home, and claim you there. Only I don't believe you
do live in Aberlin,--you probably live in some great, gnarled oak
hereabouts; and at night its bark uncloses to set you free, and you and
your sisters dance out the satyrs' hearts in the moonlight. Oh, I know,
Marian! I simply _know_ you are a dryad,--a wonderful, laughing,
clear-eyed dryad strayed out of the golden age."
"What a boy it is!" she said. "No, I am only a really and truly girl,
dear,--a rather frightened girl, with very little disposition to
laughter, just now. For you are going away--Oh, my dear, you have meant
so much to me! The world is so different since you have come, and I am
so happy and so miserable that--that I am afraid." An infinitesimal
handkerchief went upward to two great, sparkling eyes, and dabbed at
them.
"Dear!" said I. And this remark appeared to meet the requirements of
the situation.
There was a silence now. We sat in the same spot where I had first
encountered Marian Winwood. Only this was an autumnal forest that
glowed with many gem-like hues about us; and already the damp odour of
decaying leaves was heavy in the air. It was like the Tosti thing
translated out of marine terms into a woodland analogue. The summer was
ended; but _As the Coming of Dawn_ was practically complete.
It was not the book that I had planned, but a far greater one which was
scarcely mine. There was no word written as yet. But for two months I
had viewed life through Marian Winwood's eyes; day by day, my
half-formed, tentative ideas had been laid before her with elaborate
fortuitousness, to be approved, or altered, or rejected, just as she
decreed; until at last they had been welded into a perfect whole that
was a Book, bit by bit, we had planned it, I and she; and, as I dreamed
of it as it would be in print, my brain was fired with exultation, and
I defied my doubt and I swore that the Book, for which I had pawned a
certain portion of my self-respect, was worth--and triply worth--the
price which had been paid.... This was in Marian's absence.
"Dear!" said she....
Her eyes were filled with a tender and unutterable confidence that
thrilled me like physical cold. "Marian," said I, simply, "I shall
never come back."
The eyes widened a trifle, but she did not seem to comprehend.
"Have you not wondered," said I, "that I have never kissed you, except
as if you were a very holy relic or a cousin or something of that
sort?"
"Yes," she answered. Her voice was quite emotionless.
"And yet--yet--" I sprang to my feet. "Dear God, how I have longed!
Yesterday, only yesterday, as I read to you from the verses I had made
to other women, those women that are colourless shadows by the side of
your vivid beauty,--and you listened wonderingly and said the proper
things and then lapsed into dainty boredom,--_how_ I longed to take you
in my arms, and to quicken your calm blood a little with another sort
of kissing. You knew--you must have known! Last night, for instance--"
"Last night," she said, very simply, "I thought--And I hoped you
would."
"What a confession for a nicely brought up girl! Well! I didn't. And
afterward, all night, I tossed in sick, fevered dreams of you. I am mad
for love of you. And so, once in a while I kiss your hand. Dear God,
your hand!" My voice quavered, effectively.
"Yes," said she; "still, I remember--"
"I have struggled; and I have conquered this madness,--for a madness it
is. We can laugh together and be excellent friends; and we can never,
never be anything more. Well! we have laughed, have we not, dear, a
whole summer through? Now comes the ending. Ah, I have seen you
puzzling over my meaning before this. You never understood me
thoroughly; but it is always safe to laugh."
She smiled; and I remember now it was rather as Mona Lisa smiles.
"For we can laugh together,--that is all. We are not mates. You were
born to be the wife of a strong man and the mother of his sturdy
children; and you and your sort will inherit the earth and make the
laws for us weaklings who dream and scribble and paint. We are not
mates. But you have been very kind to me, Marian dear. So I thank you
and say good-bye; and I pray that I may never see you after to-day."
There was a sub-tang of veracity in my deprecation of an unasked-for
artistic temperament; the thing is very often a nuisance, and was just
then a barrier which I perceived plainly; and with equal plainness I
perceived the pettier motives that now caused me to point it out as a
barrier to Marian. My lips curled half in mockery of myself, as I
framed the bitter smile I felt the situation demanded; but I was fired
with the part I was playing; and half-belief had crept into my mind
that Marian Winwood was created, chiefly, for the purpose which she had
already served.
I regarded her, in fine, as through the eyes of future readers of my
biography. She would represent an episode in my life, as others do in
that of Byron or of Goethe. I pitied her sincerely; and, under all,
what moralists would call my lower nature, held in leash for two months
past, chuckled, and grinned, and leaped, at the thought of a holiday.
She rose to her feet. "Good-bye," said she.
"You--you understand, dear?" I queried, tenderly.
"Yes," she answered; "I understand--not what you have just told me, for
in that, of course, you have lied. That Jemmett girl and her money is
at the bottom of it all, of course. You didn't want to lose her, and
still you wanted to play with me. So you were pulled two ways, poor
dear."
"Oh, well, if that is what you think of me--!"
"You see, you are not an uncommon type,--a type not strong enough to
live life healthily, just strong enough to dabble in life, to trifle
with emotions, to experiment with other people's lives. Indeed, I am
not angry, dear; I am only--sorry; for you have played with me very
nicely indeed, and very boyishly, and the summer has been very happy."
5
I returned to Lichfield and wrote _As the Coming of Dawn_.
I spent six months in this. My work at first was mere copying of the
book that already existed in my brain; but when it was transcribed
therefrom, I wrote and rewrote, shifted and polished and adorned until
it seemed I would never have done; and indeed I was not anxious to have
done with any labour so delightful.
Particularly did I rejoice in the character for which Marian Winwood
had posed. Last summer's note-book here came into play; and now, for
once, my heroine was in no need of either shoving or prompting. She did
things of her own accord, and I was merely her scribe...
I would vain-gloriously protest, just to myself, that the love scenes
in this story were the most exquisite and, with all that, the most
genuine love scenes I knew of anywhere. "By God!" I would occasionally
say with Thackeray; "I _am_ a genius!"