were enjoying yourself so much," said Doris, laughing.
"Well, I promise not to interrupt the next time--you were in the midst
of one of your stories."
It was not long before she was telling me another story, for Doris was
full of stories. She observed life as it went by, and could recall
what she had seen. Our talk had gone back to years before, to the
evening when I first saw her cross the drawing-room in a white dress,
her gold hair hanging over her shoulders; and in that moment, as she
crossed the room, I had noticed a look of recognition in her eyes; the
look was purely instinctive; she was not aware of it herself, but I
could not help understanding it as a look whereby she recognised me as
one of her kin. I had often spoken to her of that look, and we liked
speaking about it, and about the time when we became friends in Paris.
She had written asking me to go to see her and her mother. I had found
them in a strange little hotel, just starting for some distant suburb,
going there to buy presents from an old couple, dealers in china and
glass, from whom, Doris's mother explained, she would be able to buy
her presents fifty per cent, cheaper than elsewhere. She was one of
those women who would spend three shillings on a cab in order to save
twopence on a vase.
"It took us two hours to get to that old, forgotten quarter, to the
old quaint street where they lived. They were old-world Jews who read
the Talmud, and seemed to be quite isolated, out of touch with the
modern world. It was like going back to the Middle Ages; this queer
old couple moving like goblins among the china and glass. Do you ever
see them now? Are they dead?"
"Let me tell you," cried Doris, "what happened. The old man died two
years ago, and his wife, who had lived with him for forty years, could
not bear to live alone, so what do you think she did? She sent for her
brother-in-law----"
"To marry him?"
"No, not to marry him, but to talk to him about her husband. You see
this couple had lived together for so many years that she had become
ingrained, as it were, in the personality of her late husband, her
habits had become his habits, his thoughts had become hers. The story
really is very funny," and Doris burst out laughing, and for some time
she could not speak with laughing. "I am sorry for the poor man," she
said at last.
"For whom? For the brother-in-law?"
"Yes; you see he is dyspeptic, and he can't eat the dishes at all that
his brother used to like, but the wife can't and won't cook anything
else."
"In other words," I said, "the souvenir of brother Isaac is poisoning
brother Jacob."
"That is it."
"What a strange place this world is!" And then my mind drifted back
suddenly. "O Doris, I'm so unhappy--this place--I wish I had never
come."
"Now, now, have a little patience. Everything comes right in the end."
"We shall never be alone."
"Yes, we shall. Why do you think that?"
"Because I can't think of anything else."
"Well, you must think of something else. We're going to the factory
where they make perfume, and I'm going to buy a great many bottles of
scent for myself, and presents for friends. We shall be able to buy
the perfume twenty-five per cent. or fifty per cent. cheaper."
"Don't you think we might go to see the pictures? There are some in a
church here."
On inquiry we heard that they had been taken away, and I followed
Doris through the perfume factory. Very little work was doing; the
superintendent told us that they were waiting for the violets. A few
old women were stirring caldrons, and I listened wearily, for it did
not interest me in the least, particularly at that moment, to hear
that the flowers were laid upon layers of grease, that the grease
absorbed the perfume, and then the grease was got rid of by means of
alcohol. The workrooms were cold and draughty, and the choice of what
perfumes we were to buy took a long time. However, at last, Doris
decided that she would prefer three bottles of this, three bottles of
that, four of these, and two of those. Her perfume was heliotrope; she
always used it.
"And you like it, don't you dear?"
"Yes, but what does it matter what I like?"
"Now, don't be cross. Don't look so sad."
"I don't mind the purchase you made for your friends, but the purchase
of heliotrope is really too cynical."
"Cynical! Why is it cynical?"
"Because, dear, it is evocative of you, of that slender body moving
among fragrances of scented cambrics, and breathing its own dear odour
as I come forward to greet you. Why do you seek to torment me?"
"But, dear one----"
I was not to be appeased, and sat gloomily in the corner of the
carriage away from her. But she put out her hand, and the silken palm
calmed my nervous irritation, and we descended the steep roads, the
driver putting on and taking off the brake. The evening was growing
chilly, so I asked Doris if I might tell the coachman to stop his
horses and to put up the hood of the carriage. In a close carriage one
is nearly alone. But every moment I was reminded that people were
passing, and between her kisses the thought passed that I must go back
to Paris, however unkind it might be. It would be unkind to leave her,
for she was not very strong; she would require somebody to look after
her. As I was debating the question in my mind Doris said:
"You don't mind, dear, but before we go back to the hotel, I have a
visit to pay."
In the three weeks' time she had spent at Plessy before I came there,
Doris had made the acquaintance of all kinds of elderly spinsters, who
lived in the different hotels _en pension_, and who would go away
as soon as the visitors arrived, to seek another "resort" where the
season had not yet commenced, and where they could be boarded and
bedded for ten francs a day. I had made the acquaintance of Miss Tubbs
and Miss Whitworth, and we were dining with them that night. Doris had
explained that we could not refuse to dine with them at least once.
"But as we're going to spend the evening with them, I don't see the
necessity----"
"Of course not, dear, but don't you remember you promised to go to see
the Formans with me?"
Miss Forman had dined with us last night, but her mother had not been
able to come, and that was a relief to me whatever it may have been to
Doris; I had heard that Mrs. Forman was a very old woman, and as her
daughter struck me as an ineffectual person, I said as I sat down to
dinner, "One of the family is enough." What her mother's age could be
I could not guess, for Miss Forman herself might pass for seventy. But
after speaking to her for a little while one saw that she was not so
old as she looked at first sight. Nothing saddens me more than those
who have aged prematurely, for the cause of premature ageing is
generally a declension of the mind. As soon as the mind begins to
narrow and wither the body follows suit; prejudices and conventions
age us more than years do. Before speaking a word it was easy to see
from Miss Forman's appearance that no new idea had entered into her
life for a long while, and I imagined her at once to be one of those
daughters that one finds abroad in different provincial towns, living
with their mothers on small incomes. "The daughter's tragedy is
written all over her face," I said, and while speaking to her I
scrutinised her, reading in her everything that goes to make up that
tragedy. She had the face of those heroines, for they are
heroines--the broad low brow, the high nose, the sympathetic eyes,
grey and expressive of duty and sacrifice of self. Her dress and her
manners were as significant as her face, and seemed to hint at the
life she had lived. She wore a black silk gown which looked
old-fashioned--why I cannot say. Was it the gown or the piece of black
lace that she wore on her head, or the Victorian earrings that hung
from her ears down her dust-coloured neck, that gave her a sort of
bygone appearance, the look of an old photograph? Her manners took me
farther back in the century even than the photograph did; she seemed
to have come out of the pages of some trite and uninteresting novel, a
rather listless book written at the end of the eighteenth century,
before the art of novel-writing had been found out. She listened, and
her listening was in itself a politeness, and she never lost her
politeness, though she seldom understood what I said. When I finished
speaking she answered what I had said indirectly, like one whose mind
was not quite capable of following any conversation except the most
trite. She laughed if she thought I had said anything humourous, and
sometimes looked a little embarrassed; she only seemed to be at her
ease when speaking of her mother. If, for instance, we were speaking
of books, she would break in with her mother's opinions, thinking it
wonderful that her mother had read--shall we say, "The Three
Musketeers?" three times. She was interested in all her mother's
characteristics, and her habit was to speak of her mother as her
mamma. She seemed to delight in the word, and every time she
pronounced it a light came into her old face, and I began to
understand her and to feel that I could place her, to use a
colloquialism which is so expressive that perhaps its use may be
forgiven. "The daughter's tragedy," I muttered, and considering it,
philosophising according to my wont, I tried to reconcile myself to
this visit. "After all," I said, "I am on my own business, therefore I
have no right to grumble."
I wished to see what Miss Forman was like in her own house; above all,
I wished to see if her mother were as typical of the mother who
accepts her daughter's sacrifice, as Miss Forman was of the daughter
that has been sacrificed. From the daughter's appearance I had
imagined Mrs. Forman to be a tall, good-looking, distinguished woman,
lying upon a sofa, wearing a cap upon her white hair, her feet covered
with a shawl, and Miss Forman arranging it from time to time. Nature
is always surprising; she follows a rhythm of her own; we beat one,
two, three, four, but the invisible leader of the orchestra sets a
more subtle rhythm. But though Nature's rhythm is irregular, its
irregularity is more apparent than real, for when we listen we hear
that everything goes to a beat, and in looking at Mrs. Forman I
recognised that she was the inevitable mother of such a daughter, and
that Nature's combination was more harmonious than mine. The first
thing that struck me was that the personal energy I had missed in the
daughter survived in the mother, notwithstanding her seventy-five
years. The daughter reminded me now of a tree that had been
overshadowed; Miss Forman had remained a child, nor could she have
grown to womanhood unless somebody had taken her away; no doubt
somebody had wanted to marry her; there is nobody that has not had her
love affair, very few at least, and I imagined Miss Forman giving up
hers for the sake of her mamma, and I could hear her mamma--that
short, thick woman, looking more like a ball of lard than anything
else in the world, alert notwithstanding her sciatica, with two small
beady eyes in the glaring whiteness of her face--forgetful of her
daughter's sacrifice, saying to her some evening as they warmed their
shins over the fire:
"Well, Caroline, I never understood how it was that you didn't marry
Mr. So-and-so, I think he would have suited you very well."
My interest in these two women who had lived side by side all their
lives was slight; it was just animated by a slight curiosity to see if
Miss Forman would be as much interested in her mother in her own house
by her mother's side as she had been in the hotel among strangers. I
waited to hear her call her mother mamma; nor had I to wait long, for
as soon as the conversation turned on the house which the Formans had
lately purchased, and the land which Mrs. Forman was buying up and
planting with orange trees, Miss Forman broke in, and in her
high-pitched voice she told us enthusiastically that mamma was so
energetic; she never could be induced to sit down and be quiet; even
her sciatica could not keep her in her chair. A few moments after Miss
Forman told us that they did not leave Plessy even during the summer
heat. Mamma could not be induced to go away. The last time they had
gone to a hill village intending to spend some three or four weeks
there, but the food did not suit mamma at all, and Miss Forman
explained how the critical moment came and she had said to her mamma,
"Well, mamma, this place does not suit you; I think we had better go
home again"; and they had come home after six days in the hill
village, probably never to leave Plessy again; and turning to her
mother with a look of admiration on her face Miss Forman said: "I
always tell mamma that she will never be able to get away from here
until balloon travelling comes into fashion. If a balloon were to come
down to mamma's balcony, mamma might get into it and be induced to go
away for a little while for a change of air. She would not be afraid.
I don't think mamma was ever afraid of anything." Her voice seemed to
me to attain a certain ecstasy in the words, "I don't think mamma was
ever afraid of anything," and I said, "She is proud of her ideal, and
it is well that she should be, for there is no other in the world, not
for her at least," and noticing that the three women were talking
together, that I was no longer observed, I got up with a view to
studying the surroundings in which Mrs. Forman and her daughter lived.
On the wall facing the fireplace there were two portraits--two
engravings--and I did not need to look at the date to know that they
had been done in 1840; one was her Majesty Queen Victoria, the other
her Royal Consort, Prince Albert. Shall I be believed if I say that in
my little excursions round the room and the next room I discovered a
small rosewood table on which stood some wax fruit, a small sofa
covered with rep and antimacassars, just as in old days? More
characteristic still was the harmonium, with a hymn-book on the music
rest, and every Sunday, no doubt, Miss Forman played hymns with her
stiff, crooked fingers, and they said prayers together, the same
old-fashioned English prayers for which I always hanker a little.
Satisfied with the result of my quest, and fearing that it might be
regarded as an impertinence if I stayed away any longer, I returned to
the back drawing-room, only to accompany the Formans and Doris back
again to the front drawing-room. There was a piano there. The Formans
had persuaded Doris to sing, and she was going to do so to please
them. "They don't know anything about singing," she whispered to me;
"but what does that matter? You see, poor things, they have so little
to distract them in their lives; it will be quite a little event for
them to hear me sing," and she went to the piano and sang song after
song.
"It is kind indeed of you to sing to us, to an old woman and a
middle-aged woman," Mrs. Forman said, "and I hope you will come to see
us again, both of you."
"What should bring me to see them again?" I asked myself as I tried to
get Doris away, for she lingered about the doorway with them, making
impossible plans, asking them to come to see her when they came to
England, telling them that if her health required it and she came to
Plessy again she would rush to see them. "Why should she go on like
that, knowing well that we shall never see them again, never in this
world?" I thought. Mrs. Forman insisted that her daughter should
accompany us to the gate, and all the way there Doris begged of Miss
Forman to come to dine with us; we were dining with Miss Tubbs and
Miss Whitworth, friends of hers; it would be so nice if she would
come. The carriage would be sent back for her; it would be so easy to
send it back. I offered up a prayer that Miss Forman might refuse, and
she did refuse many times; but Doris was so pressing that she
consented; but when we got into the carriage a thought struck her.
"No," she said, "I cannot go, for the dressmaker is coming this
evening to try on mamma's dress, and mamma is very particular about
her gowns; she hates any fulness in the waist; the last time the gown
had to go back--you must excuse me."
"Good-bye, dear, good-bye," I heard Doris crying, and I said to
myself, "How kind she is!"
"Now, my dear, aren't you glad that you came to see them? Aren't they
nice? Isn't she good? And you like goodness."
"Dear Doris, I like goodness, and I like to discover your kind heart.
Don't you remember my saying that your pretty face was dependent upon
your intelligence; that without your music and without your wit your
face would lose half its charm? Well, now, do you know that it seems
to me that it would only lose a third of its charm; for a third of my
love for you is my admiration of your good heart. You remember how,
years ago, I used to catch you doing acts of kindness? What has become
of the two blind women you used to help?"
"So you haven't forgotten them. You used to say that it was wonderful
that a blind woman should be able to get her living."
"Of course it is. It has always seemed to me extraordinary that any
one should be able to earn his living."
"You see, dear, you have not been forced to get yours, and you do not
realise that ninety per cent of men and women have to get theirs."
"But a blind woman! To get up in the morning and go out to earn enough
money to pay for her dinner; think of it! Getting up in the dark,
knowing that she must earn four, five, ten shillings a day, whatever
it is. Every day the problem presents itself, and she always in the
dark."
"Do you remember her story?"
"I think so. She was once rich, wasn't she? In fairly easy
circumstances, and she lost her fortune. It all went away from her bit
by bit. It is all coming back to me, how Fate in the story as you told
it seemed like a black shadow stretching out a paw, grabbing some part
of her income again and again till the last farthing was taken. Even
then Fate was not satisfied, and your friend must catch the smallpox
and lose her eyes. But as soon as she was well she decided to come to
England and learn to be a masseuse. I suppose she did not want to stop
in Australia, where she was known. How attractive courage is! And
where shall we find an example of courage equal to that of this blind
woman coming to England to learn to be a masseuse? What I don't
understand is bearing with her life in the dark, going out to her work
every day to earn her dinner, and very often robbed by the girl who
led her about?
"How well you remember, dear."
"Of course I do. Now, how was it? Her next misfortune was a
sentimental one. There was some sort of a love story in this blind
woman's life, not the conventional, sentimental story which never
happens, but a hint, a suggestion, of that passion which takes a
hundred thousand shapes, finding its way even to a blind woman's life.
Now don't tell me; it's all coming back to me. Something about a
student who lived in the same house as she did; a very young man; and
they made acquaintance on the stairs; they took to visiting each
other; they became friends, but it was not with him she fell in love.
This student had a pal who came to share his rooms, an older man with
serious tastes, a great classical scholar, and he used to go down to
read to the blind woman in the evening. It really was a very pretty
story, and very true. He used to translate the Greek tragedies aloud
to her. I wonder if she expected him to marry her?"
"No, she knew he could not marry her, but that made no difference."
"You're quite right. It was just the one interest in her life, and it
was taken from her. He was a doctor, wasn't he?"
Doris nodded, and I remembered how he had gone out to Africa. "No
sooner did he get there than he caught a fever, one of the worst
kinds. The poor blind masseuse did not hear anything of her loss for a
long time. The friend upstairs didn't dare to come down to tell her.
But at last the truth could be hidden from her no longer. It's
extraordinary how tragedy follows some."
"Isn't it?"
"And now she sits alone in the dark. No one comes to read to her. But
she bears with her solitude rather than put up with the pious people
who would interest themselves in her. You said there were no
interesting books written for the blind, only pieties. The charitable
are often no better than Shylocks, they want their money's worth. I
only see her, of course, through your description, but if I see her
truly she was one of those who loved life, and life took everything
from her!"
"Do you remember the story of the other blind woman?"
"Yes and no, vaguely. She was a singer, wasn't she?" Doris nodded.
"And I think she was born blind, or lost her sight when she was three
or four years old. You described her to me as a tall, handsome woman
with dark, crinkly hair, and a mouth like red velvet."
"I don't think I said like red velvet, dear."
"Well, it doesn't sound like a woman's description of another woman,
but I think you told me that she had had love affairs, and it was that
that made me give her a mouth like red velvet. Why should she not have
love affairs? She was as much a woman as another; only one doesn't
realise until one hears a story of this kind what the life of the
blind must be, how differently they must think and feel about things
from those who see. Her lover must have been a wonder to her,
something strange, mysterious; the blind must be more capable of love
than anybody else. She wouldn't know if he were a man of forty or one
of twenty. And what difference could it make to her?"
"Ah, the blind are very sensitive, much more so than we are."
"Perhaps."
"I think Judith would have known the difference between a young man
and a middle-aged. There was little she didn't know."
"I daresay you're quite right. But still everything must have been
more intense and vague. When the blind woman's lover is not speaking
to her he is away; she is unable to follow him, and sitting at home
she imagines him in society surrounded by others who are not blind.
She doesn't know what eyes are, but she imagines them like--what?
anyhow she imagines them more beautiful than they are. No, Doris, no
eyes are more beautiful than yours; she imagines every one with eyes
like yours. I have not thought of her much lately, but I used to think
of her when you told me the story, as standing on a platform in front
of the public, calm as a caryatid. She must have had a beautiful voice
to have been able to get an engagement; and the great courage that
these blind women have! Fancy the struggle to get an engagement, a
difficult thing to do in any circumstances--but in hers! And when her
voice began to fail her she must have suffered, for her voice was her
one possession, the one thing that distinguished her from others, the
one thing she knew herself by, her personality as it were. She didn't
know her face as other women know theirs; she only knew herself when
she sang, then she became an entity, as it were. Nor could teaching
recompense her for what she had lost, however intelligent her pupils
might be, or however well they paid her. How did she lose her pupils?"
"I don't think there was any reason. She lost her pupils in the
ordinary way; she was unlucky. As you were just saying, it was more
difficult for her to earn her living than for those who could see, and
Judith is no longer as young as she was; she isn't old, she is still a
handsome woman, but in a few years.... If old-age pensions are to be
granted to people, they surely ought to be granted to blind women."
"Yes, I remember; the sentiment of the whole story is in my mind; only
I am a little confused about the facts. I remember you wrote a lot of
letters--how was it?"
"Well, I just felt that the thing to do was to get an annuity for
Judith; I could not afford to give her one myself; so after a great
deal of trouble I got into communication with a rich woman who was
interested in the blind and wanted to found one."
"You are quite right, that was it. You must have written dozens of
letters."
"Yes, indeed, and all to no purpose. Judith knew the trouble I was
taking, but she couldn't bear with her loneliness any longer; the
dread of the long evenings by herself began to prey upon her nerves,
and she went off to Peckham to marry a blind man--quite an elderly
man; he was over sixty. They had known each other for some time, and
he taught music like her; but though he only earned forty or fifty
pounds a year, still she preferred to have somebody to live with than
the annuity."
"But I don't see why she should lose her annuity."
"Don't you remember, dear? This to me is the point of the story. The
charitable woman drew back, not from any sordid motive, because she
regretted her money, but for a fixed idea; she had learned from
somebody that blind people shouldn't marry, and she did not feel
herself justified in giving her money to encouraging such marriages."
"Was there ever anything so extraordinary as human nature? Its
goodness, its stupidity, its cruelty! The woman meant well; one can't
even hate her for it; it was just a lack of perception, a desire to
live up to principles. That is what sets every one agog, trying to
live up to principles, abstract ideas. If they only think of what they
are and what others are! The folly of it! This puzzle-headed woman--I
mean the charitable woman pondering over the fate of the race, as if
she could do anything to advance or retard its destiny!"
"You always liked those stories, dear. You said that you would write
them."
"Yes, but I'm afraid the pathos is a little deeper than I could reach;
only Turgenieff could write them. But here we are at the Dog's Home."
"Don't talk like that--it's unkind."
"I don't mean to be unkind, but I have to try to realise things before
I can appreciate them."
It seemed not a little incongruous that these two little spinsters
should pay for our dinners, and I tried to induce Doris to agree to
some modification in the present arrangements, but she said it was
their wish to entertain us.
The evening I spent in that hotel hearing Doris sing, and myself
talking literature to a company of about a dozen spinsters, all plain
and elderly, all trying to live upon incomes varying from a hundred
and fifty to two hundred pounds a year, comes up before my mind, every
incident. Life is full of incidents, only our intelligence is not
always sufficiently trained to perceive them; and the incident I am
about to mention was important in the life I am describing. Miss Tubbs
had asked me what wine I would drink. And in a moment of inadvertence
I said "Vin Ordinaire," forgetting that the two shillings the wine
would cost would probably mean that Miss Tubbs would very likely have
to go without her cup of tea at five o'clock next day in order that
her expenditure should not exceed her limit, and I thought how
difficult life must be on these slippery rocks, incomes of one hundred
and fifty a year. Poor little gentlefolk, roving about from one
boarding-house to another, always in search of the cheapest, sometimes
getting into boarding-houses where the cheapness of the food
necessitates sending for the doctor, so the gain on one side is a loss
on the other. Poor little gentlefolk, the odds-and-ends of existence,
the pence and threepenny bits of human life!
That Doris's singing should have provoked remarks painfully
inadequate, mattered little. Inadequate remarks about singing and
about the other arts are as common in London drawing-rooms as in
hotels and boarding-houses (all hotels are boarding-houses; there is
really no difference), and the company I found in these winter resorts
would have interested me at any other time. I can be interested in the
woman who collects stamps, in the gentle soul who keeps a botany book
in which all kinds of quaint entries are found, in the lady who writes
for the papers, and the one who is supposed to have a past. Wherever
human beings collect there is always to be found somebody of interest,
but when one's interest is centred in a lady, everybody else becomes
an enemy; and I looked upon all these harmless spinsters as my
enemies, and their proposals for excursions, and luncheons, and
dinners caused me much misgiving, not only because they separated me
from Doris, but because I felt that any incident, the proposed picnic,
might prove a shipwrecking reef. One cannot predict what will happen.
Life is so full of incidents; a woman's jealous tongue or the arrival
of some acquaintance might bring about a catastrophe. A love affair
hangs upon a gossamer thread, you know, and that is why I tried to
persuade Doris away from her friends.
She was very kind and good and didn't inflict the society of these
people too much upon me. Perhaps she was conscious of the danger
herself, and we only visited the boarding-houses in the evening. But
these visits grew intolerable. The society of Miss Tubbs and Miss
Whitworth jarred the impressions of a long day spent in the open air,
in a landscape where once the temples of the gods had been, where men
had once lived who had seen, or at all events believed, in the fauns
and the dryads, in the grotto where the siren swims.
One afternoon I said to Doris: "I'm afraid I can't go to see Miss
Tubbs this evening. Can't we devise something else? Another dinner in
a boarding-house would lead me to suicide, I think."
"You would like to drown yourself in that bay and join the nymphs. Do
you think they would prove kinder than I?"
I did not answer Doris. I suddenly seemed to despair; the exquisite
tenderness of the sky, and the inveigling curves of the bay seemed to
become detestable to me, theatrical, absurd. "Good God!" I thought: "I
shall never win her love. All my journey is in vain, and all this
love-making." The scene before me was the most beautiful in shape and
colour I had ever seen; but I am in no mood to describe the
Leonardo-like mountains enframing the azure bay. The reader must
imagine us leaning over a low wall watching the sea water gurgling
among the rocks. We had come to see some gardens. The waiter at my
hotel had told me of some, the property of a gentleman kind enough to
throw them open to the public twice a week; and I had taken his
advice, though gardens find little favour with me--now and again an
old English garden, but the well-kept horticultural is my abhorrence.
But one cannot tell a coachman to drive along the road, one must tell
him to go somewhere, so we had come to see what was to be seen. And
all was as I had imagined it, only worse; the tall wrought-iron gate
was twenty feet high, there was a naked pavilion behind it, and a
woman seated at a table with a cash-box in front of her. This woman
took a franc apiece, and told us that the money was to be devoted to a
charitable purpose; we were then free to wander down a gravel walk
twenty feet wide branching to the right and the left, along a line of
closely clipped shrubs, with a bunch of tall grasses here and a
foreign fir there; gardens that a painter would turn from in horror. I
said to Doris:
"This is as tedious as a play at the _Comédie_, as tiresome as a
tragedy by Racine, and very like one. Let us seek out one of the
external walks overlooking the sea; even there I'm afraid the
knowledge that these shrubs are behind us will spoil our pleasure."
Doris laughed; that was one of her charms, she could be amused; and it
was in this mood that we sat down on a seat placed in a low wall
overlooking the bay, looking at each other, basking in the rays of the
afternoon sun, and there we sat for some little while indolent as
lizards. Pointing to one at a little distance I said:
"It is delightful to be here with you, Doris, but the sunlight is not
sufficient for me. Doris, dear, I am very unhappy. I have lain awake
all night thinking of you, and now I must tell you that yesterday I
was sorely tempted to go down to that bay and join the nymphs there.
Don't ask me if I believe that I should find a nymph to love me; one
doesn't know what one believes, I only know that I am unhappy."
"But why, dear, do you allow yourself to be unhappy? Look at that
lizard. Isn't he nice? Isn't he satisfied? He desires nothing but what
he has got, light and warmth."
"And, Doris, would you like me to be as content as that lizard--to
desire nothing more than light and warmth?"
Doris looked at me, and thinking her eyes more beautiful even than the
sunlight, I said:
"'And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea,
But what are all those kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?'
"That is the eternal song of the spheres and of the flowers. If I don't
become part of the great harmony, I must die."
"But you do kiss me," Doris answered wilfully, "when the evening turns
cold and the coachman puts up the hood of the carriage."
"Wilful Doris! Pretty puss cat!"
"I'm not a puss cat; I'm not playing with you, dear. I do assure you I
feel the strain of these days; but what am I to do? You wouldn't have
me tell you to stay at my hotel and to compromise myself before all
these people?"
"These people! Those boarding-houses are driving me mad! That Miss
Forman!"
"I thought you liked her. You said she is good, 'a simple, kind
person, without pretensions.' And that is enough, according to
yesterday's creed. You were never nicer than you were yesterday
speaking of her (I remember your words): you said the flesh fades, the
intellect withers, only the heart remembers. Do you recant all this?"
"No, I recant nothing; only yesterday's truth is not to-day's. One day
we are attracted by goodness, another day by beauty; and beauty has
been calling me day after day: at first the call was heard far away
like a horn in the woods, but now the call has become more imperative,
and all the landscape is musical. Yesterday standing by those ancient
ruins, it seemed to me as if I had been transported out of my present
nature back to my original nature of two thousand years ago. The sight
of those ancient columns quickened a new soul within me; or should I
say a soul that had been overlaid began to emerge? The dead are never
wholly dead; their ideas live in us. I am sure that in England I never
appreciated you as intensely as I do here. Doris, I have learned to
appreciate you like a work of art. It is the spirit of antiquity that
has taken hold of me, that has risen out of the earth and claimed me.
That hat I would put away----"
"Don't you like my hat?"
"Yes, I like it, but I am thinking of the Doris that lived two
thousand years ago; she did not wear a hat. In imagination I see the
nymph that is in you, though I may never see her with mortal eyes."
"Why should you not see her, dear?"
"I have begun to despair. All these boarding-houses and their
inhabitants jar the spirit that this landscape has kindled within me.
I want to go away with you where I may love you. I am afraid what I am
saying may seem exaggerated, but it is quite true that you remind me
of antiquity, and in a way that I cannot explain though it is quite
clear to me."
"But you do possess me, dear?"
"No, Doris, not as I wish. This journey will be a bitter memory that
will endure for ever; we must think not only of the day that we live,
but of the days in front of us; we must store our memories as the
squirrel stores nuts, we must have a winter hoard. If some way is not
found out of this horrible dilemma, I shall remember you as a
collector remembers a vase which a workman handed to him and which
slipped and was broken, or like a vase that was stolen from him; I
cannot find a perfect simile, at least not at this moment; my speech
is imperfect, but you will understand."
"Yes, I understand, I think I understand."
"If I do not get you, it will seem to me that I have lived in vain."
"But, dear one, things are not so bad as that. We need not be in Paris
for some days yet, and though I cannot ask you to my hotel, there is
no reason why----"
"Doris, do not raise up false hopes."
"I was only going to say, dear, that it does not seem to be necessary
that we should go straight back to Paris."
"You mean that we might stop somewhere at some old Roman town, at
Arles in an eighteenth-century house. O Doris, how enchanting this
would be! I hardly dare to think lest----"
"Lest what, dear? Lest I should deceive you?"
There was a delicious coo in her voice, the very love coo; it cannot
be imitated any more than the death-rattle, and exalted and inspired
by her promise of herself, of all herself, I spoke in praise of the
eighteenth century, saying that it had loved antiquity better than the
nineteenth, and had reproduced its spirit.
"Is it not strange that, in the midst of reality, artistic conceptions
always hang about me; but shall I ever possess you, Doris? Is it my
delicious fate to spend three days with you in an old Roman town?"
"There is no reason why it shouldn't be. Where shall it be?"
"Any town would be sufficient with you, Doris; but let us think of
some beautiful place"; and looking across the bay into the sunset, I
recalled as many names as I could; many of those old Roman towns rose
up before my eyes, classic remains mingling with mediaeval towers,
cathedral spires rising over walls on which Roman sentries had once
paced. We could only spend our honeymoon in a town with a beautiful
name--a beautiful name was essential--a name that it would be a
delight to remember for ever after; the name would have to express by
some harmonious combination of syllables the loves that would be
expended there. Rocomadour imitated too obviously the sound of sucking
doves, and was rejected for that reason. Cahor tempted us, but it was
too stern a name; its Italian name, Devona, appealed to us; but, after
all, we could not think of Cahor as Devona. And for many reasons were
rejected Armance, Vezelay, Oloron, Correz, Valat, and Gedre. Among
these, only Armance gave us any serious pause. Armance! That evening
and the next we studied _L'Indicateur des Chemins de fer_.
"Armance," I said, interrupting Doris, who was telling me that we
should lose our tickets by the _Côte d'Azur_. For in Doris's
opinion it was necessary that we should leave Plessy by the _Côte
d'Azur_. Her friends would certainly come to the station to see her
off. "That is a matter of no moment," I said. "At Marseilles we can
catch an express train, which will be nearly as good. There are two
excellent trains; either will do, if you have decided to spend three
days at Armance."
She asked me if Armance were a village or a town, and I answered,
"What matter?"--for everywhere in France there are good beds and good
food and good wine--ay, and omelettes. We should do very well in any
village in the south of France for three days. But suddenly two names
caught my eye, Orelay and Verlancourt, and we agreed that we preferred
either of these names to Armance.
"Which name shall give shelter to two unfortunate lovers flying in
search of solitude?"
"Orelay is a beautiful name."
"Orelay it shall be," I said. "We shall be able to get there from
Marseilles in a few hours."
"You see, dear, it would be impossible for me to travel all the way to
Paris--a journey of at least twenty-four hours would kill me, and I'm
not strong; nothing tires me more than railway traveling. We must stop
somewhere. Why not at Orelay?"
As this history can have only one merit, that of absolute truth, I
must confess that the subterfuge whereby Doris sought to justify
herself to herself, delighted me. Perhaps no quality is more human
than that of subterfuge. She might unveil her body, but she could not
unveil her soul. We may only lift a corner of the veil; he who would
strip human nature naked and exhibit it displays a rattling skeleton,
no more: where there is no subterfuge there is no life.
This story will be read, no doubt, by the young and the old, the wise
and the foolish, by the temperate and the intemperate, but the subject
matter is so common to all men that it will interest every one, even
ecclesiastics, every one except certain gentlemen residing chiefly in
Constantinople, whose hostility to the lover on his errand is so well
known, and so easily understandable, that I must renounce all hope of
numbering them among the admirers of my own or Doris's frailty. But
happily these gentlemen are rare in England, though it is suspected
that one or two may be found among the reviewers on the staff of
certain newspapers; otherwise how shall we account for the solitary
falsetto voices in the choir of our daily and weekly press, shouting
abstinence from the housetops? But with the exception of these few
critics every one will find pleasure in this narrative; even in aged
men and women enough sex is left to allow them to take an interest in
a love story; in these modern days when the novel wanders even as far
as the nuns in their cells (I have good authority for making this
statement), perhaps I may be able to count upon an aged Mother Abbess
to be, outwardly perhaps a disapproving, but at heart a sympathetic
reader. Indeed, I count upon the ascetic more than upon any other
class for appreciation, for the imagination of those who have had no
experience in love adventures will enkindle, and they will appreciate
perhaps more intensely than any other the mental trouble that a
journey to Orelay with Doris would entail.
It would take nearly five hours according to the time table to get
from Marseilles to Orelay; and these five hours would wear themselves
wearily away in conversation with Doris, in talking to her of every
subject except the subject uppermost in my mind. I should have kept a
notebook, just as I had arranged to do when I thought I was going on
the yachting excursion among the Greek Islands with Gertrude; but,
having no notes, I can only appeal to the reader's imagination. I must
ask him to remember the week of cruel abstinence I had been through,
and to take it into his consideration. My dear, dear reader, I am sure
you can see me if you try (in your mind's eye, of course) walking
about the corridors, seeking the guard, asking every one I meet:
"How far away are we now from Orelay?"
"Orelay? Nearly two hours from Orelay."
Our heavy luggage had been sent on before, but we had a number of
dressing cases and bags with us, and there might not be time to remove
all these. The guard, who had promised to take them out of the
carriage for us, might not arrive in time. However this might be,
he was not to be found anywhere, and I sought him how many times
up and down the long length of the train. You can see me, reader,
can you not? walking about the train, imagining all kinds of
catastrophes--that the train might break down, or that it might not
stop at Orelay; or, a still more likely catastrophe, that the young
lady might change her mind. What if that were to happen at the last
moment! Ah, if that were to happen I should have perchance to throw
myself out of the train, unless peradventure I refrained for the sake
of writing the story of a lover's deception. The transitional stage is
an intolerable one, and I wondered if Doris felt it as keenly, and
every time I passed our carriage on my way up and down in search of
the guard, I stopped a moment to study her face; she sat with her eyes
closed, perhaps dozing. How prosaic of her to doze on the way to
Orelay! Why was she not as agitated as I?
And the question presented itself suddenly, Do women attach the same
interest to love adventures as we do? Do women ask themselves as often
as we do if God, the Devil, or Calamitous Fate will intervene between
us and our pleasure? Will it be snatched out of our arms and from our
lips? Perhaps never before, only once in any case, did I experience an
excitement so lancinating as I experienced that day. And as I write
the sad thought floats past that such expectations will never be my
lot again. The delights of the moment are perhaps behind me, but why
should I feel sad for that? Life is always beautiful, in age as well
as in youth; the old have a joy that the youths do not
know--recollection. It is through memory we know ourselves; without
memory it might be said we have hardly lived at all, or only like
animals.
This is a point on which I would speak seriously to every reader,
especially to my young readers; for it is of the utmost importance
that every one should select adventures that not only please them at
the moment, but can be looked back upon with admiration, and for which
one can offer up a mute thanksgiving. My life would not have been
complete, a corner-stone would have been lacking if Doris had not come
to Orelay with me. Without her I should not have known the joy that
perfect beauty gives; that beauty which haunted in antiquity would
never have been known to me. But without more, as the lawyers say, we
will return to Doris. I asked her if she had been asleep? No, she had
not slept, only it rested her to keep her eyes closed, the sunlight
fatigued her. I did not like to hear her talk of fatigue, and to hide
from her what was passing in my mind I tried to invent some
conversation. Orelay--what a lovely name it was! Did she think the
town would vindicate or belie its name? She smiled faintly and said
she would not feel fatigued as soon as she got out of the train, and
there was some consolation in the thought that her health would not
allow her to get farther that day than Orelay.
We decided to stay at the Hôtel des Valois. One of the passengers had
spoken to me of this hotel; he had never stayed there himself, but he
believed it to be an excellent hotel. But it was not his
recommendation that influenced me, it was the name--the Hôtel des
Valois. How splendid! And when we got out at Orelay I asked the
porters and the station-master if they could recommend a hotel. No,
but they agreed that the Hôtel des Valois was as good as any other. We
drove there wondering what it would be like. Everything had turned out
well up to the present, but everything would go for naught if the
Hôtel des Valois should prove unworthy of its name. And the first
sight of it was certainly disappointing. Its courtyard was
insignificant, only saved by a beautiful ilex tree growing in one
corner. The next moment I noticed that the porch of the hotel was
pretty and refined--a curious porch it was, giving the hotel for a
moment the look of an eighteenth-century English country house. There
were numerous windows with small panes, and one divined the hall
beyond the porch. The hall delighted us, and I said to Doris as we
passed through that the hotel must have been a nobleman's house some
long while ago, when Orelay had a society of its own, perhaps a
language, for in the seventeenth or the eighteenth century Provençal
or some other dialect must have been written or spoken at Orelay. We
admired the galleries overlooking the hall, and the staircase leading
to them. We seemed to have been transported into the eighteenth
century; the atmosphere was that of a Boucher, a provincial Boucher
perhaps, but an eighteenth-century artist for all that. The doves that
crowd round Aphrodite seemed to have led us right; and we foresaw a
large quiet bedroom with an Aubusson carpet in the middle of a parquet
floor, writing-tables in the corners of the room or in the
silken-curtained windows.
This was the kind of room I had imagined--one as large as a
drawing-room, and furnished like a drawing-room, with sofas and
arm-chairs that we could draw around the fire, and myself and Doris
sitting there talking. Love is composed in a large measure of desire
of intimacy, and if the affection that birds experience in making
their nest be not imitated, love descends to the base satisfaction of
animals which merely meet in obedience to an instinct, and separate as
soon as the instinct has been served. Birds understand love better
than all animals, except man. Who has not thought with admiration of
the weaver-birds, and of our own native wren? But the rooms that were
offered to us corresponded in no wise with those that we had imagined
the doors of the beautiful galleries would lead us into. The French
words _chambre meublée_ will convey an idea of the rooms we were
shown into; for do not the words evoke a high bed pushed into the
corner, an eider-down on top, a tall dusty window facing the bed, with
skimpy red curtains and a vacant fireplace? There were, no doubt, a
few chairs--but what chairs!
The scene was at once tragic and comic. It was of vital importance to
myself and Doris to find a room such as I have attempted to describe,
and it was of equal indifference to the waiter whether we did or
didn't. The appearance of each contributed to the character of the
scene. Doris's appearance I have tried to make clear to the reader;
mine must be imagined; it only remains for me to tell what the waiter
was like; an old man, short and thick, slow on the feet from long
service, enveloped in an enormous apron; one only saw the ends of his
trousers and his head; and the head was one of the strangest ever
seen, for there was not a hair upon it; he was bald as an egg, and his
head was the shape of an egg, and the colour of an Easter egg, a
pretty pink all over. The eyes were like a ferret's, small and
restless and watery, a long nose and a straight drooping chin, and a
thick provincial accent--that alone amused me.
"Have you no other rooms?"
"Nous n'avons que cela."
I quote his words in the language in which they were spoken, for I
remember how brutal they seemed, and how entirely in keeping with the
character of the room. No doubt the words will seem flat and tame to
the reader, but they never can seem that to me. "_Nous n'avons que
cela_" will always be to me as pregnant with meaning as the famous
_to be or not to be_. For it really amounted to that. I can see
Doris standing by me, charming, graceful as a little Tanagra
statuette, seemingly not aware of the degradation that the possession
of her love would mean in such a room as that which we stood in; and I
think I can honestly say that I wished we had never come to Orelay,
that we had gone straight on to Paris. It were better even to
sacrifice her love than that it should be degraded by vulgar
circumstances; and, instead of a holy rite, my honeymoon had come to
seem to me what the black mass must seem to the devout Christian.
"The rooms will look better," Doris said, "when fires have been
lighted, and when our bags are unpacked. A skirt thrown over the arm
of a chair furnishes a room."
Taking her hands in mine I kissed them, and was almost consoled; but
at that moment my eyes fell upon the beds, and I said:
"Those beds! O Doris, those beds! yours is no better than mine." Women
are always satisfied, or they are kind, or they are wise; and accept
the inevitable without a murmur.
"Dearest, ask the waiter to bring us some hot water."
I did so, and while he was away I paced the room, unable to think of
anything but the high bed; it was impossible to put out of my sight
the ridiculous spectacle of a couple in a nightgown and pyjama suit
climbing into it. The vision of myself and Doris lying under that
eider-down, facing that tall window, with nothing to shut out the
light but those vulgar lace curtains, pursued me, and I paced the room
till the pink waiter returned with two jugs; and then, feeling very
miserable, I began to unpack my bag without getting further than the
removal of the brushes and comb; Doris unpacked a few things, and she
washed her hands, and I thought I might wash mine; but before I had
finished washing them I left the dreadful basin, and going to Doris
with dripping hands I said:
"There is very little difference in the rooms. Perhaps you would like
to sleep in mine?"
"I can see no difference. I think I'll remain where I am."
Which room she slept in may seem insignificant to the reader, but this
is not so, for had we changed rooms this story would never have been
written. I can see myself even now walking to and fro like a caged
animal vainly seeking for a way of escape, till suddenly--my adventure
reminds me very much of the beginning of many romantic novels--the
tapestry that the wind had blown aside, the discovery of the secret
door--suddenly I discovered a door in the wall paper; it was
unlatched, and pushing through it I descended two steps, and lo! I was
in the room of my heart's desire; a large, richly-coloured saloon with
beautifully proportioned windows and red silk damask curtains hanging
from carved cornices, and all the old gilding still upon them. And the
silk fell into such graceful folds that the proportions of the windows
were enhanced. And the walls were stretched with silk of a fine
romantic design, the dominant note of which was red to match the
curtains. There were wall lights, and a curious old clock on the
marble chimney-piece amid branching candelabra. I stayed a moment to
examine the clock, deciding very soon that it was not of much value
... it was made in Marseilles a hundred years ago.
"A beautiful room in its proportions and in its colour," I said, and
seeing another door ajar I went through it and discovered a bedroom
likewise in red with two beds facing each other. The beds were high,
it is true, and a phrase from a letter I had written to Doris,
"aggressively virtuous," rose up in my mind as I looked upon them. But
the curtains hung well from _les ciels de lit_ (one cannot say
_cieux de lit_, I suppose)--the English word is, I think,
"tester." "This room is far from the bedroom of my dreams," I
muttered, "but _à la rigueur ça peut marcher_." But pursuing my
quest a little farther, I came upon a spacious bedroom with two
windows looking out on the courtyard--a room which would have
satisfied the most imaginative lover, a room worthy of the adorable
Doris, and I can say this as I look back fondly on her many various
perfections. A great bed wide and low, "like a battlefield as our bed
should be," I said, for the lines of the old poet were running in my
head:
"Madame, shall we undress you for the fight?
The wars are naked that you make to-night."
And, looking upon it, I stood there like one transfigured, filled with
a great joy; for the curtains hanging from a graceful tester like a
crown would have satisfied the painter Boucher.... He rarely painted
bedrooms. I do not remember any at this moment; but I remember many by
Fragonard, and Fragonard would have said: "I have no fault to find
with that bed." The carpet was not Aubusson, but it was nevertheless a
finely-designed carpet, and its colour was harmonious; the sofa was
shapely enough, and the Louis XVI. arm-chairs were filled with deep
cushions. I turned to the toilet-table fearing it might prove an
incongruity, but it was in perfect keeping with the room, and I began
at once to look forward to seeing it laid out with all the manifold
ivories and silver of Doris's dressing-case.
Imagine my flight, dear reader, if you can, back to Doris, whom I had
left trying to make the best of that miserable square room; more like
a prison cell than a bedroom.
"What is the matter, dearest?" she asked.
But without answering her I said, "Give me your hand," and led her as
a prince leads his betrothed, in a fairy tale, through the
richly-coloured salon, lingering a moment for her to admire it, and
then I took her through my room, the double-bedded room, saying: "All
this is nothing; wait till you see your room." And Doris paused
overcome by the beauty of the bed, of the curtains falling from the
tester gracefully as laburnum or acacia branches in June.
"The rooms are beautiful, but a little cheerless."
"Doris, Doris, you don't deserve to lie there! The windows of course
must be opened, fresh air must be let in, and fires must be lighted.
But think of you and me sitting here side by side talking before our
bedtime."
Fires were lighted quickly, servants came in bearing candelabra in
their hands, and among them, and with Doris by my side, I imagined
myself a prince, for who is a prince but he who possesses the most
desirable thing in the world, who finds himself in the most delectable
circumstances? And what circumstance is more delightful than sitting
in a great shadowy bedroom, watching the logs burning, shedding their
grateful heat through the room, for the logs that were brought to us,
as we soon discovered, were not the soft wood grown for consumption in
Parisian hotels; the logs that warmed our toes in Orelay were dense
and hard as iron, and burned like coal, only more fragrantly, and very
soon the bareness of the room disappeared; a petticoat, as Doris had
said, thrown over a chair gives an inhabited look to a room at once;
and the contents of her dressing-case, as I anticipated, took the room
back to one hundred years ago, when some great lady sat there in a
flowered silk gown before one of those inlaid dressing tables, filled
with pigments and powders and glasses.
There was one of those tables in the room, and I drew it from the
corner and raised its lid, the lid with the looking-glass in it. And I
liked the unpacking of her dressing-case, the discovery of a multitude
of things for bodily use, the various sponges; the flat sponge for the
face, the round sponge for the body, and the little sponges; all the
scissors and the powder for the nails, and the scents, the soft silks,
the lace scarfs, and the long silk nightgown soon to droop over her
shoulders. My description by no means exhausts the many things she
produced from her dressing-case and bags, nor would the most complete
catalogue convey an impression of Doris's cleanliness of her little
body! One would have to see her arranging her things, with her long
curved hands and almond nails carefully cut--they were her immediate
care, and many powders and ointments and polishers were called into
requisition. Some reader will cry that all this is most unimportant,
but he is either hypocritical or stupid, for it is only with scent and
silk and artifices that we raise love from an instinct to a passion.
"I am longing," said Doris, "to see that beautiful red drawing-room
with all the candelabra lighted and half a dozen logs blazing on the
hearth. It is extraordinary how cold it is."
To procure an impartial mind, bodily ease is necessary, and we sat on
either side of a splendid fire warming our toes. At the bottom of his
heart every Christian feels, though he may not care to admit it in
these modern days, that every attempt to make love a beautiful and
pleasurable thing is a return to paganism. In his eyes the only excuse
for man's love of woman is that without it the world would come to an
end. Why he should consider the end of the world a misfortune I have
never been able to find out, for if his creed be a true one the
principal use of this world is to supply Hell with fuel. He is never
weary of telling us that very few indeed may hope to get to Heaven.
"But France is not a Christian country, and yet you see the high bed
has not become extinct," said Doris.
Doris, who was doubtless feeling a little tired, sat looking into the
fire. Her attitude encouraged reverie; dream linked into dream till at
last the chain of dreams was broken by the entrance of the pink waiter
bringing in our dinner. In the afternoon I had called him an imbecile,
which made him very angry, and he had explained that he was not an
imbecile, but if I hurried him he lost his head altogether. Of course
one is sorry for speaking rudely to a waiter; it is a shocking thing
to do, and nothing but the appearance of the bedroom we were shown
into would excuse me. His garrulousness, which was an irritation in
the afternoon, was an amusement as he laid the cloth and told me the
bill of fare; moreover, I had to consult him about the wine, and I
liked to hear him telling me in his strong Southern accent of a
certain wine of the country, as good as Pomard and as strong, and
which would be known all over the world, only it did not bear
transportation. Remembering how tired we were, and the verse--
"Quand on boit du Pomard on devient bon on aime,
On devient aussi bon que le Pomard lui-même--"
we drank, hoping that the wine would awaken us. But the effect of that
strong Southern wine seemed to be more lethargic than exhilarating,
and when dinner was over and we had returned to our seats by the
fireside we were too weary to talk, and too nervous.
The next morning, the coffee and the rolls and butter were ready
before Doris, and the vexation of seeing the breakfast growing cold
was recompensed by the pleasure of teasing her, urging her to pass her
arms into her dressing-gown, to come as she was, it did not matter
what she had on underneath. The waiter did not count; he was not a
man, he was a waiter, a pink creature, pinker than anything in the
world, except a baby's bottom, and looking very like that.
"Hasten, dear, hasten!" and I went back to the salon and engaged in
chatter with the old provincial, my English accent contrasting
strangely with his. It was the first time I had heard the Southern
accent. At Plessy I had heard all accents, Swiss, German, Italian;
there was plenty of Parisian accent there, and I had told a Parisian
flower-woman, whose husband was a Savoyard, that I declined to believe
any more in the Southern accent _"C'est une blague qu'on m'a
faite"_; but at Orelay I had discovered the true accent, and I
listened to the old man for the sake of hearing it. He was asking me
for my appreciation of the wine we had drunk last night when Doris
entered in a foamy white dressing-gown.
"You liked the wine, dear, didn't you? He wants to know if we will
have the same wine for twelve-o'clock breakfast."
"Dear me, it's eleven o'clock now," Doris answered, and she looked at
the waiter.
"Monsieur and Madame will go for a little walk; perhaps you would like
to breakfast at one?"
We agreed that we could not breakfast before one, and our waiter
suggested a visit to the cathedral--it would fill up the time
pleasantly and profitably; but Doris, when she had had her coffee,
wanted to sit on my knee and to talk to me; and then there was a
piano, and she wanted to play me some things, or rather I wanted to
hear her. But the piano was a poor one; the notes did not come back,
she said, and we talked for some hours without perceiving that the
time was passing. After lunch the waiter again inquired if we intended
to go for a little walk; there were vespers about four in the
cathedral.
"It would do Monsieur and Madame good."
"The walk or the cathedral?" we inquired, and, a little embarrassed,
the old fellow began to tell us that he had not been to the cathedral
for some years, but the last time he was there he had been much
impressed by the darkness. It was all he could do to find his way from
pillar to pillar; he had nearly fallen over the few kneeling women who
crouched there listening to the clergy intoning Latin verses.
According to his account there were no windows anywhere except high up
in the dome. And leaning his hands on the table, looking like all the
waiters that ever existed or that will ever exist, his _tablier_,
reaching nearly to his chin, upheld by strings passed over the
shoulders, he told us that it was impossible to see what was happening
in the chancel; but there had seemed to be a great number of clergy
seated in the darkness at the back, for one heard voices behind the
tall pieces of furniture singing Latin verses; one only heard the
terminations of the words, an "us" and a "noster," and words ending in
"e," and the organ always coming in a little late.
"My good man," I said, "your description leaves nothing to be desired.
Why should I go to the cathedral unless to verify your impressions? I
am sure the service is exactly as you describe it, and I would not for
the world destroy the picture you have evoked of those forgotten
priests intoning their vespers in the middle of the granite church
behind a three-branched candlestick."
The poor man left the room very much disconcerted, feeling, Doris
said, as if he had lost one of the forks.
"Thank Heaven that matter is done with--a great weight is off my
mind."
"But there is the museum. You would like to see that?" said Doris, and
a change came into my face.
"Well, Doris, the waiter has told us that there is a celebrated study
by David in the museum, 'The Nymph of Orelay.'"
"But, dear one, am I not your nymph of Orelay?" and Doris slipped on
her knees and put her arms about me. "Will I not do as well as the
painted creature in the museum?"
"Far better," I said, "far better. Now we are free, Doris, freed from
the cathedral and from the museum. All the day belongs to us, and
to-morrow we may pass as we like."
"And so we will," Doris said meditatively; and so we did, dear reader,
and I consider the time was well spent, for by so doing we avoided
catching cold, a thing easy to do when a mistral is blowing. It was
not until the following evening we remembered that time was always on
the wing, that our little bags would have to be packed. Next morning
we were going.
"Going away by the train," Doris said regretfully. "Would we were
going away in a carriage! We shall leave Orelay knowing nothing of it
but this suite of apartments."
"There is no reason why we should not drive," and I stopped packing my
bag, and stood looking at her.
"I wonder if we should have stayed three days if we had not discovered
these rooms? Dear one, I think I should not have meant so much to you
in those humbler rooms: you attach much importance to these cornices
and hangings."
"I should have loved you always, Doris, but I think I can love you
better here," and with our bags in our hands we wandered from the
bedroom into the drawing-room and stood admiring its bygone splendour.
"Doris, dear, you must play me 'The Nut Bush.' I want to hear it on
that old piano. Tinkle it, dear, tinkle it, and don't play 'The Nut
Bush' too sentimentally, nor yet too gaily."
"Which way will you have it?" she asked; "'a true love's truth or a
light love's art'?"
"I would have it dainty and fantastic as Schumann wrote it, 'only the
song of a secret bird.'"
"With a pathos of loneliness in it?"
"That is it," I cried, "that is the right time to play it in, without
stress on either side.... No, you mustn't leave the piano, Doris.
Sing me some songs. Go on singing Schumann or Schubert; there are no
other songs. Let me hear you sing 'The Moonlight' or 'The
Lotus-flower.' Schumann and Schubert were the singing birds of the
fifties; I love their romantic sentimentalities, orange gardens, south
winds, a lake with a pinnace upon it, and a nightingale singing in a
dark wood by a lonely shore; that is how they felt, how they dreamed."
And resigning herself to my humour, she sang song after song till at
last, awaking from a long reverie of music and old association of
memories, I said, "Play me a waltz, Doris; I would hear an old-time
waltz played in this room; its romantic flourishes will evoke the
departed spirits." And very soon, sitting in my chair with half-closed
eyes, it seemed to me that I saw crinolines faintly gliding over the
floor, and white-stockinged feet, sloping shoulders and glistening
necks with chignons--swan-like women, and long-whiskered cavaliers
wearing peg-top trousers and braided coats dancing or talking with
them.... The music suddenly stopped and Doris said:
"If we are to catch our train we must go on with our packing."
"You mustn't talk to me of trains," and overcome with a Schumann-like
longing and melancholy I took her in my arms, overcome by her beauty.
She was perfection. No Chelsea or Dresden figure was ever more dainty,
gayer, or brighter. She was Schumann and Dresden, but a Dresden of an
earlier period than Schumann; but why compare her to anything? She was
Doris, the very embodiment of her name.
"Ah, Doris, why are we leaving here? Why can't we remain here for
ever?"
"It is strange," she said; "I feel the charm of those old stately
rooms as much as you do. But, dearest, we have missed the train."
The pink waiter came up, I promised to hasten, but my love of Doris
delayed us unduly, and we arrived at the station only to hear that the
train had gone away some ten minutes before. The train that had left
was the only good train in the day, and missing it had given us
another twenty-four hours in Orelay; but Doris was superstitious. "Our
three days are done," she said; "if we don't go today we shall go
to-morrow, and to go on the fourth day would be unlucky. What shall we
do all day? The spell has been broken. We have left our hotel. Let us
take a carriage," she pleaded, "and drive to the next station. The sun
is shining, and the country is beautiful; we saw it from the railway,
a strange red country grey with olives, olive orchards extending to
the very foot of the mountains, and mingling with the pine trees
descending the slopes."
"The slopes!" I said, "the precipitous sides of that high rock! Shall
I ever forget it, beginning like the tail of a lion and rising up to
the sky, towering above the level landscape like a sphinx."
"The drive would be delightful!"
"And it would be a continuation of the romance of the old Empire
drawing-room. A post-chaise would be the thing if we could discover
one."
Sometimes Nature seems to conspire to carry out an idea, and though no
veritable post-chaise of old time was discovered in the coach-house
behind the courtyard in which the ilex trees flourished, we happened
to catch sight of a carriage some twenty-five or thirty years old, a
cumbersome old thing hung upon C springs, of the security of which the
coachman seemed doubtful. He spoke disparagingly, telling us that the
proprietor had been trying to sell it, but no one would buy it, so
heavy was it on the horses' backs, so out of fashion one was ashamed
to go out in it. The coachman's notions of beauty did not concern us,
but Doris dreaded lest one of the wheels should come off; however, on
examination it was found to be roadworthy, and I said to Doris as I
helped her into it:
"If it be no post-chaise, at all events ladies wearing crinolines have
sat inside it, that is certain, and gentlemen wearing peg-top trousers
with braid upon them. Good God, Doris, if you were to wear a crinoline
I should love you beyond hope of repentance. Don't I remember when I
was a boy every one wore white stockings; I had only heard of black
ones, and I always hoped to meet a lady wearing black stockings... now
my hope is to meet one wearing white."
"We might have searched the town for a crinoline and a pair of white
stockings."
"Yes, and I might have discovered a black silk stock. I wonder how I
should have looked in it. Doris," I said, "we have missed the best
part of our adventure. We forgot to dress for the part we are playing,
the lovers of Orelay."
Who will disagree with me when I say that no adventure is complete
unless it necessitates an amount of ceremonial, the wearing of wigs,
high bodices, stockings, and breeches? Every one likes to dress
himself up, whether for a masquerade ball or to be enrolled in some
strange order. Have you, reader, ever seen any one enrolled in any of
these orders? If you have, you will excuse the little comedy and
believe it to be natural--the comedy that Doris and I played in the
old carriage driving from Orelay to Verlancourt, where we hoped to
breakfast.
We could hardly speak for excitement. Doris thought of how she would
look in a crinoline, and I remembered the illustrations in an early
edition of Balzac of which I am the happy possessor. How nice the men
looked in the light trousers and the black stockings of the period;
and crossing my legs I followed with interest the line of my calf.
Somebody did that in "Les Illusions Perdues." She and I lay back
thinking which story in "The Human Comedy" was the most applicable to
our case; and the only one we could think of was when Madame Bargeton,
a provincial blue-stocking, left Angoulême for Paris with Lucien de
Rubempré. There were no railways in the forties; they must have
travelled in a post-chaise. Yes, I remember their journey, faintly it
is true, but I remember it. Madame Bargeton was a woman of
five-and-thirty at least, and Doris was much younger. Lucien was only
one-and-twenty, and even at that time I was more than that. The names
of these people and of the people they met at the theatre and in the
Tuileries Gardens--Rastignac, Madame d'Espard, the Duchess of
Chaulieu, Madame de Rochefide, and Canalis--carried my mind back from
crinolines and white stockings, from peg-top trousers and braided
coats, to the slim trousers that were almost breeches and to the
high-breasted gowns of the Restoration. Our mothers and fathers wore
the crinolines and the peg-top trousers, and our grandfathers the
tight trousers and the black silk stocks. The remembrance of these
costumes filled me with a tenderness and a melancholy I could not
subdue, and I could see that Doris was thinking of the same subject as
myself.
We were thinking of that subject which interested men before history
began, the mutability of human things, the vanishing of generations.
Young as she was, Doris was thinking of death; nor is it the least
extraordinary she should, for as soon as any one has reached the age
of reflection the thought of death may come upon him at any moment,
though he be in the middle of a ballroom or lying in the arms of his
mistress. If the scene be a ballroom he has only to look outside, and
the night will remind him that in a few years he will enter the
eternal night; or if the scene be a bedroom the beautiful face of his
mistress may perchance remind him of another whose face was equally
beautiful and who is now under the earth; lesser things will suffice
to recall his thoughts from life to death, a rose petal falling on a
marble table, a dead bird in the path as he walks in his garden. And
after the thought of death the most familiar thought is the decay of
the bodily vesture. The first grey hair may seem to us an amusing
accident, but very few years will pass before another and yet another
appear, and if these do not succeed in reminding us that decay has
begun, a black speck on a tooth cannot fail to do so; and when we go
to the dentist to have it stopped we have begun to repair artificially
the falling structure. The activity of youth soon passes, and its
slenderness. I remember still the shock I felt on hearing an athlete
say that he could no longer run races of a hundred yards; he was half
a second or a quarter of a second slower than he was last year. I
looked at him saying, "But you are only one-and-twenty," and he
answered, "Yes, that is it." A football player I believe is out of
date at eight-and-twenty. Out of date! What a pathos there is in the
words--out of date! _Suranné_, as the French say. How are we to
render it in English? By the beautiful but artificial word
"yester-year"? Yester-year perhaps, for a sorrow clings about it; it
conveys a sense of autumn, of "the long decline of roses." There is
something ghostlike in the out-of-date. The landscape about Plessy had
transported us back into antiquity, making us dream of nymphs and
dryads, but the gilt cornices and damask hangings and the salon at
Orelay had made us dream of a generation ago, of the youth of our
parents. Ancient conveys no personal meaning, but the out-of-date
transports us, as it were, to the stern of the vessel, throws us into
a mournful attitude; we lean our heads upon our hands and, looking
back, we see the white wake of the vessel with shores sinking in the
horizon and the crests of the mountains passing away into the clouds.
While musing on these abstract questions raised by my remark that we
had not managed our adventure properly, since we had forgotten to
provide ourselves with proper costumes, the present suddenly thrust
itself upon me.
"Good God!" I said to Doris, "let us look back, for we shall never see
Orelay again!" and she from one window, and I from the other, saw the
spires of Orelay for the last time. We could not tear ourselves away,
but fortunately the road turned; Orelay was blotted out from our sight
for ever, and we sank back to remember that a certain portion of our
lives was over and done, a beautiful part of our lives had been thrown
into the void, into the great rubble-heap of emotions that had been
lived through, that are no more.
"Of what are you thinking, dear? You have been far away. This is the
first time we have been separated, and we are not yet five miles from
Orelay."
"Five miles! Ah, if it were only five!"
We did not speak for a long time, and watching the midday sun, I
thought that peradventure it was not farther from us than yesterday.
Were I to say so to Doris she would answer, "It will be the same in
Paris," but if she did it would be the first falsehood she had told
me, for we both knew that things are never the same; things
change--for better or worse, but they change.
This last sentence seems to me somewhat trite, and if I were to
continue this story any further my pen would run into many other
superficial and facile observations, for my mind is no longer
engrossed with the story. I no longer remember it; I do not mean that
I do not remember whether we got to Verlancourt, whether we had
breakfast, or whether we drove all the way to Paris with relays of
horses. I am of course quite certain about the facts: we breakfasted
at Verlancourt, and after breakfast we asked the coachman whether he
would care to go on to Paris with us; he raised his eyes--"The
carriage is a very old one, surely, Monsieur----" Doris and I laughed,
for, truth to tell, we had been so abominably shaken that we were glad
to exchange the picturesque old coach of our fathers' generation for
the train.
These stories are memories, not inventions, and an account of the days
I spent in Paris would interest nobody; all the details are forgotten,
and invention and remembrance do not agree any better than the goat
and the cabbage. So, omitting all that does not interest me--and if it
does not interest me how can it interest the reader?--I will tell
merely that my adventure with Doris was barren of scandal or
unpleasant consequences. Her mother, a dear unsuspicious
woman--whether her credulity was the depth of folly or the depth of
wisdom I know not; there are many such mothers, my blessing be upon
them!--took charge of her daughter, and Doris and her mother returned
to England. I am afraid that when I confess that I did not speak to
Doris of marriage I shall forfeit the good opinion of my reader, who
will, of course, think that a love story with such an agreeable
creature as Doris merited a lifetime of devotion; but I pray the
reader to discover an excuse for me in the fact that Doris had told me
when we were at Plessy that there was no question of her marrying any
one but Albert. Had she not sacrificed the great love of her life in
order that she might remain constant to Albert? Is it to be expected,
then, that having done that, she would put Albert aside and throw her
lot in with mine? She might have done this; men and women act
inconsequently. Having on one occasion refused to drop the mutton chop
for the shadow, on the next occasion they would drop it for the shadow
of the shadow; but Doris was made of sterner stuff, and some months
afterwards she wrote me a steady, sensible little letter telling me
that she was going to be married, and that it seemed to her quite
natural that she should marry Albert. Years have passed away, and
nothing has happened to lead me to believe that she has not proved a
true and loving wife. Albert has always told me that he found all the
qualities in her which he had foreseen from the first time he looked
upon her pretty, sparkling face. Frown not, reader; accuse me not of
superficial cynicism! Albert is part of the world's inheritance. You
may be Albert yourself--every one has been or will be Albert; Albert
is in us all, just as I am in you all. Doris, too, is in you, dear
lady who sit reading my book--Doris my three-days mistress at Orelay,
and Doris the faithful spouse of Albert for twenty years in a lonely
London suburb.
Study and boudoir would like to know if Doris had any children. About
two years afterwards I heard that she was "expecting." The word came
up spontaneously in my mind, perhaps because I had written it in the
beginning of the story. Reader, do you remember in "Massimilla Doni"
how Balzac, when he came to the last pages, declares that he dare not
tell you the end of the adventure. One word, he says, will suffice for
the worshippers of the ideal--_Massimilla Doni_ was "expecting."
I have not read the story for many years, but the memory of it shines
in my mind bright--well, as the morning star; and I looked up this
last paragraph when I began to write this story, but had to excuse
myself for not translating it, my pretext being that I was baffled by
certain grammatical obscurities, or what seemed to me such. I seemed
to understand and to admire it all till I came to the line that
"_les peuplades de cent cathédrales gothiques_" (which might be
rendered as the figured company of a hundred Gothic cathedrals),
"_tout le peuple des figures qui brisent leur forme pour venir à
vous, artistes compréhensifs, toutes ces angéliques filles
incorporelles accoururent autour du lit de Massimilla, et y
pleurèrent!_" What puzzles me is why statues should break their
forms (_form_ I suppose should be translated by _mould_)--break
their moulds--the expression seems very inadequate--break their
moulds "in order to go to you, great imaginative artists." How
could they break their moulds or their forms to go to the
imaginative artists, the mould or the form being the gift of
the imaginative artists? I should have understood Balzac better if
he had said that the statues escape from their niches and the madonnas
and the angels from their frames to gather round the bed of
_Massimilla_ to weep. Balzac's idea seems to have got a little
tangled, or maybe I am stupid to-day. However, here is the passage:
"Les péris, les ondines, les fées, les sylphides du vieux temps, les
muses de la Grèce, les vierges de marbre de la Certosa di Pavia, le
Jour et la Nuit de Michel Ange, les petits anges que Bellini le
premier mit au bas des tableaux d'église, et que Raphaël a faits si
divinement au bas de la vierge au donataire, et de la madone qui gèle
a Dresde, les délicieuses filles d'Orcagna, dans l'église de
San-Michele à Florence, les churs célestes du tombeau de Saint Sébald
à Nuremberg, quelques vierges du Duomo de Milan, les peuplades de cent
cathédrales gothiques, tout le peuple des figures qui brisent leur
forme pour venir à vous, artistes compréhensifs, toutes ces angéliques
filles incorporelles accoururent autour du lit de Massimilla, et y
pleurèrent."