“It would be a sin against society.”
“Perhaps you are right,” she said; “but I would rather be an outcast
than a hypocrite.”
Simple and reflective as her words were, they stung the man like the
thongs of a scourge.
“Joan!”
His voice startled her; she turned and looked in his face, read pain
there and a tumult of thought.
“What have I said?” she asked him.
“You despise me!”
“Gabriel!”
She understood him with a sudden flash of sympathy.
“Ah! forgive me.”
Her fingers touched his and closed upon them with a quick, appealing
pressure. Her face was turned to his with the rich innocence of truth.
“No,” he said, breathing fast; “do not touch me. Ah, God, do you not
understand?”
She withdrew her hand, and her face grew pale again, her eyes shadowy
even as with tears.
“Forgive me,” she said, slowly, as though speaking to her own soul. “I
had hurt your heart and—”
“It is nothing,” he said to her.
“It is everything—to me,” she answered, sadly.
“Before God—remember that I honor you.”
She looked up at him suddenly with a great light in her eyes.
“Gabriel, I will not hurt your heart again. You are a good man, and may
God bless you! I will remember our vow.”
Tragedy was moving upon the twain with ghastly step, her face muffled in
her sable robe. They had created in their dreams a radiant Eden for
their souls to wander in, yet the ancient dragon had squirmed in amid
the leaves. Nothing is sacred in this world to the sordid sarcasms of
the fool and the libertine. And the fatal chance that first parted the
boughs and suffered the world to peer in upon their paradise was mean
and prosaic enough in all truth.
That identical afternoon Mrs. Marjoy had driven a friend over, who was
staying with her, to visit Domremy. They had left their phaeton at a
cottage in the valley and had walked through the woods to the castle.
The causeway crossed the moat from the north, and Mrs. Marjoy and her
companion, an Australian lady, reached the place unseen by Gabriel and
Joan, who were on one of the southern turrets. Thus it befell that at
the very moment Mrs. Marjoy and her guest were standing in the ruins of
the chapel the man and the girl passed out from the black yawn of the
southern gate and crossed the central court towards the northern entry.
Mrs. Marjoy’s spectacled vision had doomed Gabriel to recognition.
Herself unseen, that magnanimous lady watched the pair cross the court
and disappear beneath the rotting portcullis of the northern gate. There
was an intense and malicious satisfaction on Mrs. Marjoy’s red face. She
displayed her teeth in a thin, cracked laugh, and gestured to her
companion with her black umbrella.
“Did you see those two?” she said.
The Australian lady stared.
“That worthy, my dear Mrs. Grace, is supposed to be our future member of
Parliament. A horribly profligate creature.”
“Indeed!” said the colonial lady, with some austerity.
“I knew we should catch him before long,” continued the doctor’s wife,
beaming with the thought of enjoying another woman’s shame. “His wife is
staying away. Poor Mrs. Strong, if she could only see her husband
gadding about with one of his women from London. I always knew he was a
dissolute person. Did you ever see such a depraved, loose, dowdy-looking
creature as that girl?”
Mrs. Grace, a kindly woman, displayed some measure of surprise. Saltire
society was fresh to her, and she was ignorant of the fact that Mrs.
Marjoy considered herself a recording angel, by whose dictates man
should stand or fall. Nor was Mrs. Grace in the habit of clutching at
such violent conclusions, being herself a mother and a magnanimous woman
of the world.
“As a matter of fact,” she remarked, “I thought that girl looked
particularly sweet and pretty.”
Mrs. Marjoy glared and rattled the ribs of her umbrella. She always
considered a difference of opinion as a personal affront. Only that
morning she had declared to Dr. Marjoy that Mrs. Grace was a woman
without strict convictions as to propriety, one of those flabby persons
who never saw the glaring moral inconsistencies of others.
“I have suspected that man for a long while,” she now observed, with her
usual sublime and eczematous hauteur. “Believe me, he is a most
dissolute person.”
“Do you always base your conclusions on such slender evidence?” asked
the lady from the antipodes.
“I never condemn others wantonly,” said the doctors wife. “I am a
Christian.”
“And yet you say that a man is a rogue because you happen to see him
walking alone with a woman whom you do not know.”
There was a scintillant and vindictive gleam in Mrs. Marjoy’s brown
eyes. She pressed her lips into a tight line and prodded the turf with
the point of her umbrella.
“I generally find that my inferences are correct,” she said.
“Indeed! I am glad to say we are more generous and healthy in the
colonies.”
XXI
A DEEP and wonderful tone of tenderness had sounded in Joan
Gildersedge’s heart since that brief passion-play amid the ruins of
Domremy. It was an easier hand that had trimmed the lamp and scattered
violet-dust over the snow-white altar. There was something more rich and
maternal in her mood towards the man, something more passionate also,
more red of heart. There was more mystery, more strangeness in her love
than before. It was no longer an individual sentiment, a single vision
of truth and beauty, a white statue scatheless in the sun. There was
something sacrificial about it, a promise of universality that uttered
the first exultant cry of martyrdom. She began to think more of the
man’s soul than her own, to imagine his moods, to forecast his
presentiments. Sympathy was the golden woof; the instinct of love, the
subtle shuttle.
Gabriel Strong felt the change in the girl when he kept the promise he
had made to her at Domremy, and came to see her at Burnt House, even in
her own home. The contrasts in his existence smote him forcibly on the
occasion. He had spent the previous day at Rilchester in political
inanities, had attended a philanthropic meeting, and listened to
platitudes falling like perpetual sand upon the brain. The sterility of
the part he played had dawned upon him with amazing forcefulness. He had
confessed to himself, as he had driven home at night, the unctuous
hypocrisy of it all, the infirm purpose rusty as an old man’s love. The
contrast touched him to the soul when he approached Burnt House the
following afternoon, alone and on foot. The place seemed like a green
and glorious refuge to him, where he could breathe in the essence of
heaven and renew life as at some holy well.
The girl’s transfiguration reacted vividly upon his sensitive thought.
She seemed to have grown taller, more stately, more serious. There was a
species of infinite forethought in her manner towards him, a tender
earnestness that made her gray eyes luminous and wonderful. It was a
child’s countenance no longer, for the divine element had entered into
her soul.
She took him with her onto the moors that noontide, where the hills
stood purple against the sky and valleys were steeped in a glamour of
mist. Walking close at his elbow, but looking seldom in his face, she
spoke little, seeming intent rather on making her sympathy a refuge for
the man’s tired thoughts. She was infinitely restful and tender, calm as
moonlight upon still water. To Gabriel that afternoon she appeared as a
twin sister to his own beloved Judith, save that she was crowned with a
divine mystery such as a sister could never claim.
“You are tired,” she had said, as they crossed the moors and met a soft
wind from the sea.
“Why do you think that?” he asked her, with a kind of quiet pain in his
voice.
“I can see it in your eyes. Are not all your moods intelligible to me?”
“You are right,” he answered, with his melancholy smile; “the
trivialities of life are beginning to weigh upon me. I would give much
gold to be young again, and free.”
“Are you so old?”
“As old as a youth who has been bred in a dungeon, whose best years have
been tombed in stone.”
“Perhaps you think too much,” she said.
“Perhaps! Who can help thinking when one has made mistakes. I hope to
think some day for the benefit of others.”
“You would warn them?”
“Yes,” he said, with a sad simplicity; “that is the best use to which we
can put our errors. But I am weary of psychology for the moment. Let us
forget problems and be children.”
She looked over the world with half-closed lids, the sun beating upon
her face.
“As you will,” she said, quietly; “and yet I think a time comes when it
is impossible to be a child again, when the mind ceases to ebb and flow,
but moves like a river perpetually towards the sea. The intense realism
of life burns upon the brain and reduces the flimsier interests to
ashes. Only the iron is left, and that is at white heat.”
“How do you know all this?” he asked.
“It is what life seems to be teaching me.”
“Yes,” he said, with a sudden, strange solemnity; “never more shall we
be children on earth, for the heart of the child is tombed in the ice of
knowledge. It is all plain to me now. Life is a grim thing to those who
are only half strong. I have often thought of late that there is nothing
left me worth living for.”
“Do you mean it?” she asked, almost hastily.
“No,” he said, looking in her eyes and reading his soul’s image in them;
“I spoke only of the life that is; you are part of the ideal.”
There was a sudden, strange intensity of feeling upon her face. Her eyes
were wide and appealing. She drew her breath in deeply like one who
sings.
“Gabriel,” she said.
He glanced at her, and the color on his bronzed face deepened. His
silence told her that he waited.
“I want to live; I want to be real to you, flesh and blood, a woman, not
a mere spirit.”
“Joan!”
“Can I not be real to you?”
“You are the most splendid and ideal reality Heaven has ever vouchsafed
to me.”
“Ah! not as I could wish,” she said. “We seem all intellect at times,
you and I. Yet—if I say more I shall hurt you. Ah! God knows, I want to
be a help to you.”
“Before God, you help me,” he said, drawing in a deep breath.
Beyond the moors the hills were streaks of blue in a golden atmosphere.
The air was sultry, preternaturally clear, eloquent of stormy weather.
Everywhere the gorse was tonguing into flame. The meadows were rimmed
with gold as the two passed back towards the dark knolls of the yews and
cypresses. There was a certain sadness over them both, a prophecy of
evil that seemed to hover over their hearts like clouds over silent
mountain tarns.
Joan stood in the gravel drive and swung her hat by the strings. She did
not look at the man as she spoke.
“My father is in the garden,” she said.
“Yes?”
“Will you see him?”
“If you wish it,” he said, quickly.
“Wait. I will go to him first; he may be asleep.”
She disappeared amid the dark whorls of the cypress boughs like a white
figure of truth. Gabriel leaned against the trellis and covered his face
with his hand. Sudden foreboding, a sense of imminent woe, gathered
about his soul like a heavy cloud massing overhead. A fatalistic spirit
seemed to seize on him out of the unknown. Had he then driven the
childhood out of this girl’s life and made her wise to her own distress.
He was conscious suddenly of the supreme egotism that had grown up flesh
of his flesh, spirit of his spirit. His face was white and strained when
Joan reappeared from amid the trees.
“He is not there,” she said.
She marked the look on the man’s face—the gray, tired stare of one in
pain.
“Gabriel, what ails you?”
Her eyes were very bright and eager, and there was a kind of half-fear
on her face.
“Nothing,” he said. “I am only a little faint.”
She opened the heavy oak door, beckoned him across the hall, and led him
into a large, shadowy room, lighted by three mullioned windows towards
the west. Wainscoting covered the walls. The floor was of parqueterie
carpeted with several old rugs. Antique china, interspersed with bowls
of anemones, red and blue, filled the carved mantel-shelf. The grate was
black and cumbersome, the hearth inlaid with tiles of a dark-green
color. In the centre of the room a round mahogany table bore a great
blue bowl ablaze with marsh marigolds. Heavy damask red curtains were
half drawn across the window recesses. Joan flung one back, opened a
casement frame, pointed Gabriel to the cushioned window-seat.
“Rest there, dear; I must go and find my father.”
The man leaned back against the panelling with a saddened sense of
peace. The antique yet fragrant flavor of the room floated upon him,
redolent of the past. There was infinite magic in the girl’s gentle
masterfulness, and her words had set his heart hurrying. If this old
house was only his own home, and Joan his wife, golden emblem of
womanhood moving like sunlight in dark places! He played with the
phantasm as a poet dallies with a splendid dream.
When Joan came back to him she came like the damsel of vision, gracious
and adorable. She had loosed her hair upon her shoulders; there were red
wind-flowers in the bosom of her creamy blouse; a belt of silver-work
topped the smooth sweep of her olive-green skirt. Yet there was a tired
look upon her face, as though she were keeping something hid within her
heart. She sat down on a little tapestry-covered sofa, with her face
towards the window.
“My father is asleep,” she said, with a pensive stare. “He is growing
very weak and feeble. I have another woman to help me. I think she was
hewn out of granite. Are you better now?”
“Yes,” he said, leaning back against the wainscoting and watching her
face with a melancholy pride. “It is very restful here; I breathe the
air that moves about you, and am at peace. You, too, look tired.”
Her face clouded suddenly, and there was a pathetic regret upon her lips
that would have been piteous had not her gray eyes shone so bravely.
“It is my father,” she said. “I do not mind your knowing; it is a kind
of nightmare to me. I do all that I can for him, and that seems little.”
“He is ill?”
“He is killing himself day by day.”
For the moment Gabriel found nothing to say to her, for fate shackled
him. He would have given much to have been able to throw his manhood at
the girl’s feet like an honest sword. But that same sword was rusted to
its hypocritic sheath. He could but protest with his lips, pay verbal
homage.
“This must be a heavy burden for you,” he said, presently.
“It is my duty.”
“You do not complain.”
“That were graceless,” she said, “and yet I do not know what I should do
if I had not the thought of you ever with me.”
Their solitude was broken by the woman, Mrs. Primmer. Her face was hard
and calculating. There was a certain critical vigilance in her eyes that
made Gabriel restless. He felt that the woman was watching him almost
like a spy, and that her verdict in no wise flattered the spirituality
of his mission. Mrs. Primmer’s morality had been baked in a mould of
clay. Charity had escaped in the process. Greed and self-satisfaction
were lined and graven about her mouth.
Mrs. Primmer’s fingers lingered long over the table. She had a
discordant habit of clattering and fidgeting with the china. She stole
side glances the while at the man seated in the window recess.
“Has that woman been long with you?” Gabriel asked, when the door had
closed again.
“A few months.”
“I suppose she is intensely respectable?”
“She is preferable to the other,” said Joan, with a sigh. “I wonder if
there are many such women in the world?”
“As Mrs. Primmer?”
“Yes.”
“Thousands, unfortunately.”
“I think a woman with a soul of ice is the most terrible thing earth can
show.”
“Malice incarnate, sharp of beak and red of claw.”
“Do most people always seem bent on thinking the worst they can of their
fellows?”
“It is partly the result of sectarianism.”
“What do you mean by sectarianism?”
“The exclusive and narrow religious spirit of fools—the spirit that
prompts a man to say, ‘You do not believe what I believe, therefore you
are damned.’”
“Are there, then, such absurd persons in the world?”
“Hundreds, mostly Christian.”
“Christian!”
“By profession.”
“But not in spirit.”
“Hardly.”
The sky had grown more overcast and a certain heavy torpor in the air
gave promise of thunder. Masses of purple clouds stood piled in the
west, cratered with burning pits of fire. A vast vault of ebony was
rising towards the sun. Now and again a sudden gusty wind came breathing
about the house, making the trees shudder as though they feared a storm.
“How black the sky grows,” said the girl, joining Gabriel in the
window-seat.
“A storm threatens.”
“And the wind prophesies.”
Into the room a transient stream of sunlight poured. It burned in the
girl’s hair and upon the flowers in her bosom, seeming to enhance the
grim promise of the sky.
“What will you do?” she asked.
“Foul weather is nothing to me.”
“You must stay here till the storm has passed.”
“Perhaps,” said the man, looking at the clouds.
The west grew lurid. A tense silence weighed upon the world, a silence
so solemn that the very trees might have stood watching for some
miraculous portent in the sky. The laurels and the grass shone with a
vivid green in the mysterious light. The purple clouds in the west had
taken fire and were fringed with flame.
The wind rose. They heard it crying far away upon the hills, deep,
hoarse, and distant. It gathered clamorous in the air, a great, solemn
moan that seemed to surge from the east like the cavern cry of the dead.
The trees stooped, swayed, tossed as in torture. Rain followed with the
rattle of a cataract, a heavy mist shot through with the fiery spears of
the setting sun. Lightning gleamed on the hills. The sky grew great with
thunder. In the onrush of twilight the trees struggled in a tornado of
wind and rain, while the house seemed to quake with the uproar of the
storm.
The two in the window-seat had drawn closer as they watched the sky.
There was a long silence between them. Once Joan’s hand touched
Gabriel’s. They drew apart suddenly with a quick glance into each
other’s eyes.
“I love such a storm,” said the girl.
“It is grand. I have often thought that I should like to end my life at
such an hour as this.”
“More so than in a golden twilight?”
“It is mere superstition on my part,” he added. “Yet I have had a kind
of presentiment that life will end for me in tragedy.”
“Why do you think that?” she asked, with a sudden glance into his eyes.
“Because the death is often an echo of the life, a storm-cry or a
peaceful noise of flutes.”
The dusk had deepened rapidly; the rain still rushed upon the earth. The
lightning had grown fitful in the west with a sullen roar of distant
thunder. The wind had passed and was gone, as though some grim company
of the damned had swept gibbering athwart the sky. There was no sound
now save the rattle of the rain upon the laurels.
The dusk thickened to an eerie gloom. In the window-seat the man and the
girl crouched like two silent children. Joan’s face was white as death
in the dark; her eyes shone with a peculiar brilliancy; now and again
there was a faint glimmer of light upon her hair.
“You cannot go yet,” she said.
“The sky may clear soon.”
There was the sound of a door opening stealthily. Gabriel, glancing over
his shoulder, saw a white cap and a gray face peering through the dusk.
Then there came a mumbled excuse and the door closed again. Mrs. Primmer
had seen the two outlined together against the window. They were too
perilously near, and in the dark also, to satisfy the lady’s conscience.
She had drawn back with a hard smile and sundry feminine cogitations in
her heart.
“The woman moves like a cat,” said Joan, leaning her head against the
panelling.
“Mrs. Primmer?”
“Yes.”
He was silent a moment with a dark race of thought through his mind. The
girl seemed absolutely unconscious of all evil, trustful as a child.
“I must go now,” he said.
“In this rain?”
“Yes. The sky is clearing. I will go to the door and look out.”
He spoke in a monotonous tone that hurt the girl’s heart for the moment;
she did not realize the moral force of those few words. They passed
through the darkened hall together and stood in the porch. The steady
rattle of the shower was ceasing; it lessened minute by minute; soon
there was nothing but the fall of the rain from the trees. A delicious
fragrance breathed in the night air.
“I will take my chance,” said the man.
Joan stepped out with him into the drive.
“As far as the gate,” she said, half appealingly.
They passed down the drive into the dense umbrage of the yews and
cypresses. Overhead a silvery film of clouds covered the sky; here and
there a star flickered through. The west was still black as the mouth of
a mighty cavern.
At the gate they stood a moment as though loath to part. The girl’s eyes
looked very big and luminous in the dusk; her hair was a dark wreath
about her face.
She gave him one of the red wind-flowers from her bosom.
“Good-night,” she said.
Her voice was very wistful, and she stood close to the man as he held
the iron gate open with one hand.
“I shall see you again soon?” she asked.
A sudden hunger for her lips seized him, but he withheld the desire and
drew back slowly from under the overhanging trees.
“Good-night,” he said to her.
“Good-night.”
She watched him turn and disappear into the darkness. Loneliness seemed
to flood like black water into her heart. Her face was white and
sorrowful as she passed back under the cloud-strewn sky.
XXII
AT Callydon the colors of life were being contrasted in bolder fashion
and with more riotous effect. Vermilion was the prevailing dye. The
sentimentalities had verged somewhat on heavy melodrama, and a
suggestive voluptuousness in the staging had prolonged the play.
Two people mutually enamoured of an identical future are not long in
coming to some understanding of each other’s hearts, particularly if the
hearts in question possess more of the human element than the divine.
James Maltravers had succumbed seriously to interests that he had been
almost brought to regard as the mere foibles of frivolity. And since his
honor was a somewhat opalescent thing, blue and sincere one moment, red
the next when caught in certain rays of the sun, it may be imagined that
his conscience was nimble in the justification of his cause. The
dramaticisms of life are in the higher sense wholly a matter of
character. There is nothing so impressive as the grand temptation of a
fine spirit; nothing more mean and contemptible than the facile sinning
of a corrupt one. Incidents are what our souls make them, the song of
the swan or the death-slime of the snail.
It had pleased Ophelia Strong to represent herself as a woman oppressed
beneath a grievous and unkindly past. It had pleased her to pose
picturesquely at her husband’s expense, to reverse the primitive fable,
and accuse the marital Adam of leading evil into Eden. The assumption
was easily upheld by ingenuity, much fanciful detail, and an intelligent
disregard of truth. Having assumed an air of martyrdom, it was easy for
her to procure artistic matter to color the romance.
As for the soldier, he was a man, and a sentimentalist in a somewhat
florid school of realism. It was easy to discover chivalry in the
affair—even to suffer chivalry to flame up into a more serious emotion.
The woman stood in need of sympathy, made abundant pretence of
desolation, posed very charmingly in the part like the interesting woman
that she was. Maltravers soon discovered that sympathy was a very
pleasant commodity for barter. It cost nothing, supplied infinite
recreation, enhanced the charms of billiards and the like. He was quite
prepared to echo Ophelia’s humor. Let her but pipe to him and he would
dance.
It is sufficient for the needs of the narrative to record certain
remarks that passed on one occasion between Ophelia Strong and her most
Platonic confidant. Golf was the excuse, a foursome on the Callydon
links, in which Miss Mable Saker and a male friend formed the
opposition. Sundry disjointed sentences were possible as the game
proceeded. The physical distractions present were useful in deducting
from the gravity of the dialogue and shedding an air of flippant
satiricism over the incidents.
“How is your bibliomaniac?” said the soldier, as the two were following
on after a drive.
“Fairly frigid,” came the response.
“Has his magnificence favored you with a letter of late?”
“Not for ten days. You see, he is so much in demand as a genius.”
“Geniuses are dangerous folk—tar-barrels, dynamite. They need damping.”
They passed about the hem of a larch-wood where a thousand emerald
points were shimmering in the sun. The gorse was ablaze on either side
of the track. Down in the valley beneath them a lake flickered under the
heavens, and they could catch the faint roar of the water as it foamed
over the weir.
“I suppose your friends know all about it?” said the major, pulling the
peak of his cap down to shade his eyes in the sun.
Ophelia glanced at his clean-shaven, jockey-like profile with critical
approval.
“Not much.”
“Oh, but they ought to.”
Two small boys trespassed on the line of fire.
“Fore! you brats.”
The soldier’s voice rang clear and clarion-like. It seemed to come from
his chest with a brisk and healthful forcefulness, a strenuous virility
that was unproblematic and easeful.
“My dear girl, you are much too amiable,” he said, as they waded through
a lagoon of heather.
“Am I?”
“You women are so patient; you will stand hell and damnation for the man
you are fond of.”
Ophelia smiled.
“And you think I am still fond of him?” she said.
“Don’t ask me to be a prophet.”
“I am not a Mary or a Prudence.”
“Not so puritanically fatuous.”
“Hardly.”
“Matters often sift themselves,” he said; “gentlemen of that class
usually unbuckle the strap with their own fingers sooner or later. All
the better for society, you know. Indiscretions brought to light,
judicial interference, a decree nisi, etc. Oh yes, these things can be
managed.”
XXIII
MRS. MINCE was in possession of her husband’s study, a melancholy room
whose single window looked forth upon a red-brick wall and a corner of
Mr. Mince’s vegetable garden. The room was carpeted with red drugget and
curtained with dingy green plush. A forcible aroma of stale
tobacco-smoke pervaded the air. Ranged along one wall were a number of
dilapidated leather chairs like needy pensioners, the seats of the
uninitiated who came on certain occasions to receive wisdom from Mr.
Mince’s lips. A deal bookcase stood with warped shelves beneath a
ponderous infliction of theological literature. The very books appeared
dreary monuments of a dogmatism that had outlived its age. As for the
room, it seemed to smell of Calvin and to echo the barbaric
incongruities of the Athanasian Creed. It suggested a geological museum
in its atmosphere, save that geology stands in peril of being dubbed
heretical, and Mr. Mince’s sacerdotal fossils were orthodox to the last
letter.
Mrs. Mince was in possession of her husband’s desk-chair, that solemn
pedestal whence the sage gave to Saltire those luminous moments of
spiritual exaltation begot of brandy and tobacco. Opposite the vicaress,
on one of the sedilia bankrupt of horse-hair, sat that estimable person
Mrs. Primmer, who had dwelt as cook for seven years under the parsonic
roof and had earned a reputation for sober saintliness and extreme
economy. Mrs. Primmer was garbed in her best for the occasion, a lavish
outlay of crape and jet beads testifying to the woe that had once made
of her a widow. She was one of Mrs. Mince’s “props of honesty,” an
estimable errant angel in cloth boots and crape.
The reason of Mrs. Primmer’s expedition that day was a certain matter
that lay heavy on what she was pleased to call her conscience. Hers was
a pilgrimage undertaken from honest motives, a most disinterested
excursion. The vicaress and the ex-cook were keenly in sympathy on such
a subject. With admirable ingenuity they veiled their too feminine
propensities under the cassocks of duty and moral obligation.
“I think you were quite right, Eliza,” Mrs. Mince was saying, “to come
to me in this matter. It most certainly needs careful consideration, and
you have acted like a conscientious Christian woman. You are quite
sure—now—as to the gentleman’s identity?”
“Certain,” replied the conscientious person, with a tense closure of the
lips; “I have one of his handkerchiefs here, ma’am, marked with his
name.”
“Dear, dear,” said the vicaress, “how very scandalous! They are always
out together, you say? Dear, dear. I suppose all the offence is on his
side, Mrs. Primmer?”
The ex-cook folded her bony hands over her black skirt and spoke with
regretful candor.
“I’m afraid not, ma’am. The girl’s every bit as bad as the man.”
“Dear, dear,” said Mrs. Mince again, “how very scandalous, to be sure!
only married eight months, and his wife away on a holiday. And you
caught them in the dark, you say?”
“In the dark, ma’am, during that terrible storm on Wednesday night.”
“In the dark, yes.”
Mrs. Mince’s face was suffused with a shiny avidity; even her colorless
eyes were eager.
“Well, ma’am, I shouldn’t like to say all I thought I saw.”
“Of course not, Eliza; it is too shocking a subject for clean-minded
women to discuss. Dear, dear, how badly people turn out in this world;
human nature has nothing but disappointments for us. Only to think of
it,” and Mrs. Mince sighed.
“I thought I ought to come and ask your advice, ma’am,” said Mrs.
Primmer, with great deference.
“It shows a most excellent spirit in you, Eliza.”
“The responsibility, ma’am, rather troubled me; I thought I would come
to a good, godly lady for counsel. Old Mr. Gildersedge is weak and
helpless, what with the drink and the like, poor old gentleman. He ain’t
to be considered ‘compot mentis,’ as they call it, ma’am. I couldn’t see
all this going on and say nothing to nobody.”
Mrs. Mince wiped her face with her handkerchief and seemed agreeably
conscious of her own importance.
“You were quite right, Eliza,” she said; “this is a most painful
discovery. I must talk it over with Mr. Mince and see what his Christian
conscience suggests. For the present, I should keep the whole affair a
profound secret. Silence is golden, Eliza, on occasions.”
“Certainly, ma’am.”
Mrs. Mince seemed to gather her soul for a final flight of charitable
circumspection.
“You must go back,” she said, unctuously, “watch, and say nothing. Try
to be the poor, deluded girl’s guardian angel in secret. It is sad—most
sad. I only hope something may be done before it is too late; as the
wife of one of the Father’s ministers I will think it over, and pray to
the dear God for guidance. Now you must really go into the kitchen,
Eliza, and get some tea.”
Mrs. Primmer’s stony face seemed to lighten seraphically at the
suggestion.
“I’ve only done, ma’am,” she said, “what the dear Lord put into my heart
to do. I thank Him every day of my life that he gave me seven years of
sojourn under this good, saintly roof. Mr. Mince’s sermons, ma’am,
always taught me to love the Holy Book and to look to Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith. ‘God is love.’ I have that text you gave me
over my bed, ma’am.”
“Ah, Eliza, we always try to do our best,” said Mrs. Mince, with an
inimitable smirk in the direction of the vegetable garden.
When Mrs. Primmer had betaken herself to the scene of her past culinary
prowess, Mrs. Mince panted up-stairs to her bedroom and proceeded to
array herself in Sabbath attire. She donned her new bonnet with the red
roses in it and her black silk dress. She buttoned on a new pair of
glacé kid boots and hung her little gold cross on her bosom. Mrs.
Mince’s toilet would have suggested a smart tea-party, a church service,
or some important parochial function. Being in some vague way impressed
by the onerous responsibility of her British matronship, she had donned
full pontificals for the occasion. A state gossip, a most solemn scandal
festival, was in the air, and with quaint feminine naïveté the vicaress
had flown to her finery as though her attire should be in harmony with
the splendor of her tidings.
Mrs. Mince threaded the archaic and picturesque Saltire High Street with
a species of complacent waddle that characterized her mind. The glimpses
of forestland and azure sky caught betwixt red roofs and bourgeoning
orchards were foreign to her ken. She was a person who delighted in oil
and vinegar. If you had shown her some masterpiece of art in the nude,
she would have sniffed and remarked, “How very disgusting!” She
possessed the mock modesty of coarse-minded persons—a mock modesty that
waxes loud and aggressive to hide the nastiness beneath.
Mrs. Marjoy was at home, or in her lair, as certain uncharitable folk
had expressed it. The doctor’s wife was in a particularly angelic mood.
Mrs. Mince found Mrs. Marjoy closeted with the eldest Miss Snodley in
her drawing-room. The mercurial lady was creaking to and fro in a
patent-spring rocking-chair that needed oiling. She dribbled some
lukewarm water into the exhausted teapot and greeted the vicaress with
dubious delight.
Mrs. Mince had seated herself with a species of portentous calm. She
looked supremely cheerful, big and beaming with the fat confessions
stowed in her motherly bosom. Tidings of honey, vineyards, and much
corn! The lady gloated like an Israelite over the promised spoiling of
Canaan.
“Dear, dear, such news,” she said, fingering her fat wedding-ring, as
though meditating upon the supreme respectability of her own lot.
The two listeners were “muzzles up” on the instant, like hounds that
give tongue over a struck scent.
“What is it?”
“That Ginge girl’s engaged at last!”
“Nonsense.”
“That hussy!”
“Guess again, my dear.”
“Your cook’s gone wrong?” said Mrs. Marjoy, who had a particular
grievance against domestics.
“No.”
“Some one has eloped?” ventured Miss Snodley.
“No, dear, much more exciting.”
“Tell us, then.”
Mrs. Mince took a deep breath and delivered herself of her tidings with
fitting éclat.
“Young Strong has compromised himself?” she said.
There was a moment’s silence, then a kind of cackling outburst, like the
pother in a farm-yard over the laying of an egg.
“Never,” said Miss Snodley.
“He has.”
“When—how?”
“I knew it,” quoth Mrs. Marjoy, with intense pride. “I always knew that
fellow was a scoundrel.”
“And Ophelia?” said Miss Snodley.
The three ladies looked at one another and tittered.
“It will take the airs out of her,” said Mrs. Mince.
“Serve her right,” quoth the doctor’s wife.
“Those Gussets were always so stuck up,” said Miss Snodley.
Then they all stared at one another again, embraced rapturously in the
spirit, and indulged in more tittering.
“Tell us all about it,” said Mrs. Marjoy, reserving her own Domremy
episode as a finale.
They drew their chairs closer together, like Macbeth’s witches over
their reeking caldron. Mrs. Mince related Mrs. Primmer’s experiences,
with certain embellishments of her own, doing abundant justice, as was
to be expected, to the sinister aspects of the romance. When she had
talked her fill, Mrs. Marjoy capped the tale with her own conclusions
drawn from the Domremy incident. Indeed, the three ladies enjoyed
themselves with much thoroughness that afternoon. No such sport had
fallen to their barbs since a local farmer had been accused of starving
his pigs, a very minor excitement. Christians they were in name, yet the
spirit of imperial Rome still lingered in their bosoms. To have
witnessed a combat between wild beasts and slaves was a display beyond
the possibilities of the civilized arena. Indeed, the very mention of it
would doubtless have inspired them with unctuous horror and strident
indignation. Yet there was little difference in the main betwixt the
tiger-hearted dames of Rome and these modern ladies, save that the
latter were hypocrites, the former honest even in their depravity. The
pagans gloated over agonies in the flesh, the Christians over agonies in
the spirit.
“What a scandal,” said the vicaress, with ill-concealed satisfaction,
“if the affair comes to light!”
“As it must,” said Mrs. Marjoy, viciously; “and young Strong coming
forward as our member, too! Nice sort of legislator to frame laws for
the country’s good. Is it generally known yet?”
“My goodness! no,” quoth Mrs. Mince; “only Mrs. Primmer and ourselves
are in the secret, so far as I can tell. The question is, what is to be
done.”
The mind of this most moral trinity waxed meditative over the problem.
“I think Ophelia ought to be communicated with,” said the vicaress,
after reasonable cogitation.
“Certainly,” observed the doctor’s wife, creaking to and fro in her
chair.
“A matter of duty,” added Mrs. Mince.
“And charity,” said Miss Snodley, looking over the rims of her gold
pince-nez.
They were all vastly serious over the business, exceedingly solemn,
infinitely in earnest. The undercurrent of hypocrisy in their ethics did
not seem to suggest itself to their minds. They were about to enjoy a
triumph over a feminine autocrat, a woman disliked by reason of the
superior comeliness of her person.
“Ophelia Strong must be warned,” said the vicaress, speaking as the most
religious woman in Saltire.
“But by whom?” queried Miss Snodley.
Mrs. Marjoy’s aggressive voice claimed the responsibility.
“By us, of course,” she said.
For a moment they stared at one another in silence.
“How?” asked Miss Snodley, tentatively.
“By letter,” said the doctor’s wife.
“Anonymous, of course,” interposed Mrs. Mince, with hurried
circumspection.
They debated the question briefly, and continued to satisfy the triple
conscience as to the morality of the proceeding. Mrs. Marjoy possessed
herself of her writing-case, and, after much tentative suggestion and
voluminous wastage of paper, produced the following edifying document:
“As sincere and disinterested friends, we think Mrs. Strong
ought to be warned of the danger that is threatening her
domestic happiness. We do not desire to swear to facts or to
make mere poisonous insinuations. As Christian women we only
wish to put a sister on her guard. We hear that her husband has
been acting unwisely. There is a serpent in the grass near
Rilchester, at a place known as Burnt House. This letter is
despatched by its writers through a deep sense of Christian duty
and moral obligation. It had better be burned when it has been
read.”
“There,” said Mrs. Marjoy, straightening herself in her chair, with an
expression of pride, “that ought to fire the furnace. I have disguised
my writing by scrawling it backhand. I am going into Rilchester
to-morrow, and I can post it there. The postmark will help to keep its
origin secret.”
“I wonder what will come of it,” said Mrs. Mince, with reflection.
“Poor Ophelia Strong!” sighed Miss Snodley, with a breath of penitence.
“What if it proves a great blow to her. Perhaps—”
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Marjoy, sharply; “don’t be sentimental, Zinia. We
are only doing our duty.”
XXIV
BY Dr. Glibly’s advice Ophelia Strong had removed to a fashionable
seaside town on the southern coast, so that after the keen, brisk air of
Callydon she might become more acclimatized for the warmer temper of the
Saltire woods. The change, moreover, had been rendered expedient by
other considerations. Major Maltravers had himself advised it, and, as
he could generally furbish up sufficient facile logic to uphold his
opinions, Ophelia had come to have great faith in him. The soldier had
been playing a most romantic and problematic part, a part well
calculated to render unstable the equilibrium of any ordinary woman’s
brain. As for Miss Mabel Saker, she accompanied the invalid with
creditable devotion, perhaps to found new kingdoms of sentiment on the
southern shores. Flirtation with the brunette was an amiable habit, a
habit that she had the sense to preserve from dissipation.
St. Aylmers claimed the usual features of seaside health resorts. It
possessed a pier, a handsome promenade, winter-gardens, a concert-hall,
a string-band, hotels, hydros, and expensive lodging-houses. The parade
crescented the sea with a scroll-work of many colors. Aloes set in
large, green tubs punctuated the pavement. Here and there rose an oasis
of flowers ringed round by vivid circles of grass and æsthetically
trimmed hedges. Bathing-machines were trundled down the beach by
superlatively obese horses, the very obesity of the animals enlisting
the sympathies of the old ladies with the virtuous and kind-hearted
proprietor. Bath-chairs idled from east to west, their inmates snuffing
the sea breeze and watching the false green gleam in the eyes of the
feminine sea. St. Aylmers boasted a phenomenal share of sunshine, and
was beloved of self-satisfied carriage-folk, whose aristocratic noses
were never incensed by the perfumes of cockle booths and perspiring
East-End trippers. St. Aylmers was eminently refined. The pine-woods
that rose like a coronet on the hills to the north appeared like a
throng of obsequious officials keeping the doorway of culture.
Everything was clean and brilliant about the town, smart, precise, and
opulent.
Ophelia had taken up her abode at the Queen’s Hotel, on the sea front.
The building was elaborately stuccoed, its façade radiant with
gold-lettering, flowers in window-boxes, and sun-blinds white and red.
The garden fronting the hotel was as sprucely kept as the meagre thatch
on a military dandy’s poll. The pavements were tiled, purple and green
and white. There was a flattering medallion of the reigning monarch over
the handsome porch.
On a particular May morning Miss Saker and the invalid had hired one of
the green-and-white bathing-machines and were revelling in the sea. A
cloudless sky burned azure overhead and every wavelet was scalloped
green and gold. The sands glistened like burnished brass. The moist
swish of the ripples along the strand rose like a slumber-song, soothing
the senses of numberless decrepit old gentlemen who had had their chairs
set in the sun above the ladies’ bathing enclosure. The weather was
benign enough even to soothe the irascible propensities of patriarchs
afflicted with gout.
Ophelia Strong was a fine swimmer. Attired in a blue French
bathing-dress, with a blue-and-white cap coffing her amber hair, she
seemed a veritable Venus, sapphire, pearl, and ruby, gemming the sea.
Taking the more fragile Mabel under her escort, she swam to a large boat
anchored off the shore as a haven for those who preferred an ambitious
swim. They climbed up the brass-tipped ladder into the boat, and sat in
the sunshine as in a bath of gold, watching St. Aylmers stretching east
and west beneath its coronet of pines.
Miss Saker tucked a brown curl under her red bathing-cap and glanced
mischievously at her companion.
“I bet he will,” she remarked.
“Will what?”
“Come to-day.”
“Who?”
“Don’t pretend such innocence.”
The boat swayed with them lazily over the almost imperceptible swell.
Miss Saker, as she scanned the parade with its garden of many-colored
parasols, broke suddenly into exclamatory delight.
“I said so,” she laughed.
“Where?”
“Oh, my prophetic soul, I believe I can see the rogues over there by the
big electric standard perched on the railings.”
Ophelia reconnoitred the parade in turn.
“I believe you are right,” she said.
Ophelia slipped over the gunwale and dropped gently into the tide. The
water bubbled over her white shoulders, the sun shone in her hair. Mabel
Saker followed down the steps. They swam shoreward together, laughing
and chatting as the water rippled at their lips. Nor did the lessening
distance dissolve the enchantment conjured up by the two exquisites upon
the parade. The lifting of a hat, the wave of a hand, suggested a quick
and mutual vigilance in the recognition.
While the two women ascended from the foam to the transfiguration of the
toilet, Maltravers and his companion sat in the shadow of a groin,
beguiling the time with cigarettes and confidential small-talk. The
confessions of the average man would hardly edify the ear of the woman
who honors him as lord. There is but little chivalry in smoking-rooms
and before theatrical bars. Ribaldry generally passes for humor and
nastiness for knowledge of the world. The philosophy of commercial
travellers and army subalterns smacks forcibly of the flesh.
“I wonder how long the darlings will be lacing up their stays?” said the
florid youth, who recognized in Maltravers a superior spirit, a sage
erudite in the epicurism of life.
“Can’t tell,” said the elder.
The greetings were flippant, glib, leavened with smart innuendos and
facile flattery. Two old gentlemen in bath-chairs by the promenade rail
exchanged epigrams and recalled the romantic passages of their own
youth. It was not long before the four separated, Miss Saker and the
florid youth drifting towards the band-stand, while Maltravers and
Ophelia wandered away along the beach.
Free of the promenade, Ophelia loosened her hair upon her shoulders, to
dry in the sun. Like a gilded fleece it swept over her neck, bosom, and
shoulders, fragrant with the salt breath of the sea. Her eyes were
peculiarly brilliant and the sun had set a sunburned splendor on her
cheeks. Her neck, bare above the low-cut collar of her blouse, had been
touched with bronze since her short sojourn by the sea. Her sky-blue
dress, fitting loosely about her fine figure, rippled with voluptuous
folds. She seemed to walk the sands like some proud Cardiflamma,
flashing her scarlet torch in the eyes of desire.
As they drew apart from the populous town the flippant temper of their
meeting vanished more and more. There was silence about them save for
the sound of the sea. A passionate gravity, a more potent power, seemed
to weigh upon their hearts. There was a new significance in life for
them. They were alone together with the future and their own thoughts.
“I have missed you,” said the woman, as they drew from the town and saw
the blue crescent of a bay glimmer before them beneath white cliffs.
“And I, too,” said the man, with a species of melancholy
self-suppression; “only fourteen days since you left Callydon. I never
knew life could be so confoundedly dull.”
Their eyes met, flashed in a smile, and fell away again as though
desirous of husbanding the impression.
“You are looking thin,” suggested the woman.
“Nonsense!”
“Don’t contradict me.”
“I have been sleeping badly,” said the soldier; “and, upon my soul, I
have half-starved myself.”
“We must take care of you here.”
He laughed a deep quaver of sentiment.
“That hair of yours would flash heaven into any man’s heart,” he said.
They walked on a burnished stretch of sand, for the tide was low and the
waves mere ripples. The sea was like a garment of many colors, ribbed
with iridescent hues from cloud and sky. The cliffs rose like walls of
ivory fringed with emerald silk, and the pines on the hills were webbed
with a purple mist.
“Italian weather,” said the soldier, turning down the brim of his hat;
“it is not often we get such a day in this damned climate. You know
Italy?”
Ophelia’s mouth hardened.
“Italy!”
“A land to live in.”
“That depends on one’s companion.”
“Ah! I remember.”
“I spent my honeymoon there—a never-to-be-forgotten affair.”
“Was the bibliomaniac dull?”
“A sort of ‘Wandering Jew’ in trousers.”
“Let him evaporate,” said the soldier, with a laugh; “upon my soul, you
are looking in splendid health.”
“To-day—perhaps,” she answered, with a reawakened smile.
They had left the town far behind by now, and the beach stretched
solitary before them and utterly silent save for the moist sound of the
sea. The ripples spent themselves in a glittering film of silver at
their feet. The firm, smooth sand showed hardly any impress as they
passed. It seemed difficult to believe that the sea was not ever thus,
but that roaring waters trampled the shore and made the shingles shriek
under lowering skies.
“I shall not forget my months at Callydon,” said the man, with deepening
significance.
“Is there any need?” she answered.
“God knows! I have your picture here,” and he laid his big, brown hand
over his heart.
Gabriel’s wife smiled with a suggestive intelligence.
“Callydon is not a lost Paradise,” she said, “nor are we Adam and Eve.
Do you remember the various things you said to me that day when we were
playing golf? They seem prophetic as I recall them now. Well, it will
save us trouble.”
He glanced suddenly in her face with a keen, desirous look.
“What is it?”
“I have news for you.”
“No—not that.”
“Come, sit down, and you shall see.”
There were bowlders scattered under the cliffs. The two climbed the
beach and chose a species of stone circle where they were sheltered from
the sun. Ophelia leaned back against one of the stones, with Maltravers
lying at her feet.
“Read that,” she said, taking a crumpled letter from her pocket and
giving it into his hand; “it was forwarded from Callydon.”
The soldier sat up, squatted with his knees under his chin, and ran his
eyes rapidly over the crumpled sheet. There was a certain rapacious and
wolfish look upon his face. His mustaches twitched above his big,
clean-shaven jaw; his brown hands trembled. At the end thereof he
whistled softly through his teeth and stared out over the sea.
“By Jove,” he said, “what a coincidence!”
“Strange, only three weeks ago.”
“Yes, I prophesied this.”
“Are you glad?”
He turned suddenly and looked at her, and his eyes glistened. Gabriel’s
wife reached for the letter. Their fingers met, and the man’s closed on
hers; her hand was moist and warm, with the letter crumpled betwixt
their palms.
“Well!” she said.
They stared at each other a long while in silence, like those whose
thoughts kindle and beacon from their eyes. The woman’s color deepened.
Her bosom moved markedly; her white teeth showed between her lips.
“Jim!”
He unbuttoned her sleeve, bared her shapely forearm, and pressed his
lips to it like one who sucks poison from a wound. She laughed softly, a
sound that seemed to mimic the noise of the waves. Perhaps for one
moment she remembered Gabriel, her husband, and that golden June evening
in the Mallan meadows. The vision was transitory and powerless, a mere
breath from the frozen past. Near her was the soldier’s bronzed,
handsome face, with its hawk-like pride and the strong passion in its
eyes.
“Well!” she said, at length.
“By God, Phyl, I can’t help it; don’t be hard on me; you make me mad.”
“Bide so,” she said, with a little pleasurable sucking in of her breath.
“Is it to be?”
“Need you ask that?”
He pressed her bare arm against his cheek, stretched himself at full
length, and laid his head in her lap as she leaned against the stone.
Gabriel’s wife bent over him and watched her own reflection in his eyes.
She closed his lids with her finger-tips and let her hand rest on his
forehead.
“You look tired, Jim.”
“Thinking hard, that is all.”
“What will you do?” she asked him, presently.
“Carry this through to the death,” he said, with a tightening of the
jaw.
She looked over the face in her lap and away towards the sea, where
gulls were sweeping like pure spirits over the blue. The transcendent
egotism of the moment had made them both blind to the world that was
beyond the mere ken of their senses. They were both happy in a
desperate, headlong fashion. Ophelia still had Mrs. Marjoy’s letter
crumpled in one hand.
“Jim, you are a man,” she said, “and no weakling. I am glad of that, for
I will trust all to you. Yes, it must be so; we cannot hesitate.”
He opened his eyes and looked up at her with an expression of strenuous
eagerness.
“I shall go to town to-night,” he said.
“So soon!”
“Well—”
“To-morrow.”
“Let it be to-morrow.”
“And then?”
“I shall employ agents, have them watched, collect evidence—it is very
simple.”
“You have money?”
“I never lacked for that,” he said.
She brought her face near to his, her hair shrouding him in gold. The
sun shimmered through upon them both. Her eyes commanded him, and he
kissed her.
“I will go to-morrow,” he said.
“For life or death, Jim.”
“Phyl, you believe in me?”
“What a question, now!”
He held her hands, and spoke slowly, like a man taking a vow.
“The sin is not all ours,” he said, “and we cannot help it; as for the
man, he is mere dust. If he had loved you, it would have been different.
As it is, I will surrender to none, man or devil.”
XXV
IT was the day of the mass-meeting at Rilchester, when Gabriel Strong,
gentleman, of The Friary, Saltire, was to be formally presented to
electors of the place as the accepted candidate in the Unionist cause.
The Rilchester town-hall had been retained for the occasion and prepared
for the ceremony with bunting, palms, and flowers. Many of the local
dignitaries, swollen big within Sabbath apparel, were purposing to
represent the ancient and noble corporation of Rilchester on the
platform that afternoon. The Golden Lion, the county hotel, was draped
in red, white, and blue, for the members of the Conservative Association
were giving a lunch there at five shillings a head. There was also a
select Primrose League déjeuner at Lady Popham’s, where the knights and
dames of the Rilchester habitation were to assemble before ascending in
force to uphold the empire.
At Saltire Hall many tables were spread. John Strong, confident in purse
and wine-cellar, revelled in his son’s publicity with a British pride.
The coming oracle was himself modestly solemn and inclined towards
silence. He kept Judith at his side, feeling in her nearness a peculiar
yet powerful sense of comfort. The air was oleaginous with flattery and
unction. Gabriel responded after lunch to the toast of his own success
with a certain shy deference and timidity. He was one of those men apt
to efface their convictions in the presence of strangers. His
personality only unveiled itself to the intelligent sympathy of elect
souls.
Many of the Saltire worthies were in attendance, attracted more as
blue-bottles to fish-bones than being drawn thither by any
superabundance of political fervor. Here were Mr. Mince, sublimely
didactic and full of egregious hauteur; Dr. Marjoy, debonair and
practice-pushing; Mr. Lang, the local notary, a shrivelled shred of
sardonic whimsicality, a veritable wasp, forever marring the mellifluous
productions of the vicar’s tongue. Mrs. Mince, who had favored champagne
and salmon mayonnaise, had retired to the hall with an overladen look,
and Mrs. Marjoy was seated beside her on one of the lounges. The two
ladies were as critical as ever, even after the benign influence of
lunch. They were very eager to detect any evidence that might reveal to
them the productiveness of their most Christian epistle.
“The poet fellow looks a bit worried,” said Mrs. Marjoy, fanning herself
with her handkerchief.
“Any man ought to look worried,” declared the vicaress, “who is leading
a shockingly evil and double-faced life. We cannot escape from the prick
of conscience, my dear. God’s laws move slowly, but oh—they are sure. I
wonder why on earth they don’t bring us some coffee.”
The florid lady entered upon a further disquisition concerning the
iniquities of mankind at large. Champagne had quickened her tongue,
whereas the vicaress began to wax somnolent with a pleasant sense of
satiety. She responded in monosyllables to Mrs. Marjoy’s dithyrambics on
morals.
Sir Hercules Dimsdale, a hook-nosed veteran with a fine head of snowy
hair, had drawn Gabriel aside into the conservatory for the purpose of
political counsel. The baronet was a very pithy old gentleman, having
imbibed a certain genial cynicism during his many years of political
campaigning. Like a free lance, he had fought perhaps more for the love
of fighting than from any intense enthusiasm of purpose.
“Ha, my boy, are you one of those rare young beings capable of listening
to an old man’s patter?”
“I can take advice,” said Gabriel, with a smile.
“Then you are a paragon for your age. Don’t be too diffident to-day;
arrogance counts for strength with the average Britisher. Stand up and
talk like a Beaconsfield. Self-confidence is an Excalibur when the
wielder is worthy. Above all things you must pretend to convictions,
even if you don’t believe half you say. Talk as though you thought every
man on the other side the most infernal jackass that ever chewed
carrots.”
“I will strive not to hide my light under a bushel,” said the neophyte.
“Have you your crackers ready?”
“The customary gibes, Sir Hercules.”
“Your comic condiments. Always raise a laugh; it is nearly as effective
as offering free drinks all round. And don’t forget to blarney the
beggars. Stroke the local big-wigs the right way and they’ll purr like
tom-cats; flatter their opinions; make ’em think they’re all statesmen.”
“I will do my best.”
“And then the catch sentiments, the gallery rhetoric—”
“Such as these: The grand and glorious future of our British empire! The
splendid tenacity of the Anglo-Saxon race! Our stupendous commercial
energy! The magnificent heroism of our army!”
“That’s it, that’s it. Always superlatives.”
“Claim all the fine statesmanship ever witnessed in the island as the
special heirloom of our own party.”
“Exactly. And promise ’em everything, in reason and out of
reason—old-age pensions, acres and cows, the moon, the immortal
cherubim, anything, only be generous.”
“I will,” said the novice; “it is very easy to promise. And
afterwards—”
“Oh, hang the afterwards! Win the seat. That’s what you’re talking for.”
At three o’clock Gabriel and his patrons were caught up into glory and
carried towards Rilchester by a coach and four. There was a lavish
following of friendly chariots along the old Roman highway. It was down
hill to Rilchester, and the procession rattled through Saltire with
horns blowing and a great jingling of harness. Sir Hercules was still
playing the Nestor in the body of the coach; the reminiscences of forty
years had bubbled up under the airy touch of John Strong’s champagne.
Politics have bulked largely on occasions in the literary stock-pot;
much of the material has been sucked to the marrow. Nor was the pageant
at Rilchester that day less commonplace or more unusual than any tramp
can see for the shoving, perhaps ten times in his mortal career. There
was a scattered gathering in the streets, bunting overhead, a moderate
mob outside the public hall, a portrait of the Queen loyally pilloried
over the stone balcony. Within there was the inevitable gathering of
local somebodies on the platform, the usual assemblage of local nobodies
in the hall. There was the eternal green baize table, the array of
bent-cane chairs behind a bulwark of palms and flowers with the
florist’s card carefully inserted amid the decorations. There were the
usual smiling dames, the usual earnest patricians.
The proceedings may be summarized on account of the dismal prosaicisms
of such a scene. Sir Hercules Dimsdale, as chairman, taking his applause
with dignity, prepared to warm the hearts of those assembled towards the
person of the projected candidate. With his usual genial wit and solid
complacency he professed himself confident of the enthusiastic support
of the meeting. There was never a more promising politician than the
gentleman now presenting himself to the constituency. In Sir Hercules’
belief this young man was marked out by fortune for a brilliant and
valuable career. Rilchester would be proud in the future of having given
parliamentary birth to one of the ablest men of the younger generation.
It was after some such florid preamble that Gabriel stood up to face the
most patriotic electors of Rilchester. He was palpably nervous, in a
modest fashion that appealed perhaps to the parental instincts of his
auditors. And yet a certain circumstance had come near marring his first
serious public attempt at oratory. Looking down, he had seen suddenly
under the fringe of palms a girl’s face staring up to his, a face
aureoled with gold, the face of Joan Gildersedge, that Beatrice from the
Rilchester hills.
Joan had heard incidentally from Gabriel of the affair, and had plotted
in her heart how to behold the man’s triumph. She had come into
Rilchester on foot and waited for an hour outside closed doors to gain
good vantage. As she sat in the dingy hall she seemed to hallow it into
a cedarn temple. There was a species of celestial pride upon her face
and an eagerness that was almost pained in its intense thirst for the
man’s triumph. To her the whole affair was vividly impressive, a most
solemn conclave gathered for great ends. The chicanery, the
stultiloquent bathos of much of it was hid from her ken. She took the
applause as demonstrating enthusiasm and soulfulness, and hyperbolical
oratory as expressing grandeur of conviction.
The recognition staggered Gabriel’s brain. Like a glare of light the
girl’s face blinded thought for the moment. He was conscious only of her
presence, the solemn stare of her gray eyes, the straining eagerness
upon her lips. She was leaning forward like one who waits to catch the
first notes of some noble song. Gabriel stood stiffly with head thrown
back and shoulders squared, the fingers of his right hand fidgeting his
notes. Strain as he would the thread of speech had broken on his tongue.
Those on the platform, taking his silence for a lapse of memory,
applauded zealously, an acclaim that was echoed through the hall.
Gabriel looked again at Joan and found his manhood on her face.
Intuition spoke to him of the jealous pride that burned within her
woman’s heart; she had come to see him triumph; it was enough. The
wistful face aureoled with gold lifted him inspiredly above the present,
transfigured the prosaic building into a shrine of grandeur, elevated
the occasion above the common concourse to which it pandered. A breath
as from Olympus touched his lips. He spoke, kindled, and held his theme.
Even the local socialists present were not averse to acknowledging the
virtues of an honest optimism. As for the Primrose Dames, they were
clapping their gloved hands with the furor of enthusiastic amateurs at a
public rehearsal. The electors of Rilchester thundered approbation; Sir
Hercules beamed on the assembly like a Moses. Thirty eloquent minutes
had not caught Gabriel’s tongue wavering; he had flown from flight to
finish. The reporter of the _Rilchester Guardian_, sucking inspiration
from his pencil, jotted down certain euphemistical phrases—“the new
Demosthenes,” “Burke redivivus,” and the like.
Questions were launched and answered; amiable passes of humor glittered,
rapier-like, in the air. The assemblage with hoof and hand expressed
itself enraptured, chanted “Rule Britannia” with great fervor, listened
with docility to the meanderings of various local comets, applauded, and
dispersed with glee. For Gabriel, keen of brain and flushed of face,
there was a single trophy, the triumph fire in a woman’s eyes. For him a
golden head moved through the press, sunning the prosaic shadows with
Olympian gold.
“Excellent,” said Sir Hercules to John Strong, who was paternally
elated; “a most inspiring oration, though a trifle bold. Thought the boy
had stage fright at the first push. Excellent.”
“A slap-up jaw,” quoth the Conservative agent to a gentleman who wore a
red carnation and yellow gaiters. “Fine young stallion. Well run him in
with a ‘thou’ to the good, you bet.”
“Who would have thought it!” said Mrs. Mince. “Why, he spoke quite
intelligently, though, of course, after Jacob’s eloquence it sounded
flat and dull to me. I wonder who gave him all his ideas?”
“Dissolute young men have oily tongues,” said Mrs. Marjoy. “There will
be a big crash in the Strong ‘market’ some day,” and she leered
suggestively.
At Saltire Hall there was much decking of tables and shimmering of glass
that night. Success spoke in the breath of the flowers and the bubbling
mirth of champagne. Wines, white and red, flooded many dainty lips.
Silks shivered and elaborate coiffures glimmered under the lamps. The
panelled hall was a green gloom of shrubs and palms. The stairways shone
with color. Luxury smiled in silver and gold, from the gleaming, snowy
tables, from tapestries purple and green, from parquetry burnished like
brass. Music moved in the air. Amethyst, diamond, and ruby breathed on
the bosoms of women. Laughter, like a carillon of bells, ran through the
well-thronged rooms.
The noise of an ephemeral triumph rang loud in Gabriel’s ears that
night. The gilt card of social excellence was proffered to his fingers;
the perfume of a facile and flattering life ascended into his nostrils.
And yet through the gilded meshes of the net the one face gazed, fair as
Truth, with eyes looking straight to the heart. Eyes, crystal bright,
yet dim with immortal dreams!
Thus it came about that before the rout grew silent John Strong missed
his son from the glare of the many lamps. Judith, his sister, went in
search of him, clad in a rust-red gown that made more vivid the beauty
of her hair and the white brilliance of her skin. In the library she
found him, with a solitary candle burning on the mantel-shelf and the
room in gloom. He was standing by an open window with the wind sweeping
in as he looked out into the night.
“Gabriel,” she said, as she touched his sleeve.
He started, for he had not heard her enter and thought himself alone.
“Why have you left us?”
He did not look at her, but still stared out into the dark.
“I am tired,” he said.
“Of course, dear.”
“Is the nonsense over?”
Judith took his hand between hers and he did not resist her. Her voice
was restful as a quiet wind through trees.
“What is the matter?” she asked him.
“Nothing.”
“Can you not tell me, your sister?”
He stood with slouched shoulders and face darkened in the shadows. The
candle smoked and flickered on the mantel-shelf; the books glimmered
gilt-lettered in the gloom like parables half cloaked in mystery.
“I am very weary of all this,” he said.
“When you have done so splendidly!”
“Splendidly, indeed!”
“Yes.”
“It was not I, but the soul of another in me.”
“Still these dark sayings.”
“All is dark, dear, save for the stars in the vault, and I have one
star.”
“Gabriel!”
“All this is glare and mockery and discord. I hate, I loathe it. Only to
be in the dark alone—that is all I desire. Leave me alone, dear,
to-night.”
“But your father and the others?”
“They are content after their lights, so am I—here.”
“Come for my sake.”
“No, dear.”
“Not even for me?”
He bent and kissed her forehead.
“I obey my thoughts,” he said, “and they are too sacred for anything
save solitude. Darkness is good in its season. We see less of earth,
more of the universe. Good-night.”