FATE PLAYS ME IN THE SHALLOWS
To-day I dived into one of my boxes for some warmer underclothing and
stumbled upon a pair of rubber-soled shoes for deck wear. They brought
the great boat before me in a flash and then the wharves and then the
little group that had gathered at the long pier on that Saturday
morning so long ago--Wolcott Sears and his wife, Sue, white as a
ghost, Tip Elder and I, with Roger and Margarita leaning over the
rail. She had on a long, tight-fitting travelling coat of slate grey
and a quaint, soft little felt hat with a greyish-white gull that
sprawled over the top of it. She looked taller than I had ever seen
her, and her hair, drawn up high on her head, made her face more like
a cameo than ever, for she was pale from the excitement and fatigue of
shopping. On her hand, as she waved it with that lovely, free curve of
all her gestures, shone the great star sapphire Roger had bought her,
set heavily about with brilliants, a wonderful thing: all cloudy and
grey, like her eyes, and then all densely blue, like her eyes, and now
stormy and dark, like her eyes, and always, and most of all, like her
eyes, with that fiery blue point lurking in the heart of it.
It was her birth stone--an odd bit of sentimental superstition for
Roger to have cherished--and his own as well, for they were both born
in September. Her father had told her of this on one of the few
occasions when he seemed to have talked with her at any length, and
like all his remarks it had made a great impression upon her. Anything
more violently at odds with the theory of planetary influence it
would be hard to find, for two people more fundamentally unlike each
other than Roger and his wife, I never met.
And yet ... and yet (for I am not so sure as to what is "absurd" now
that my half-century milestone is well behind, and those months in
Egypt taught me that much of the inexplicable is terribly true) shall
I leave out of this rambling tale the moment of attention due the old
horoscopist of Paris? I think not.
He was withered and heavily spectacled and absent-minded to a degree I
have never seen equalled. Shall I ever forget the day he made a soapy
mixture in a great tin pan in his little garret in the Rue Serpente,
produced a long, clean clay pipe, delivered to me a neat if
extraordinary little lecture on the experiment he was about to make
and the inferences I must draw from it if it succeeded--and then, with
his prismatic bubbles all unblown, gravely sat down in the pan! He
gazed stupefied at me when I pointed out his error.
"_Il ne manquerait que ca!_" he snapped at length, and as he had no
other suit of clothes, he went resignedly to bed and discoursed there
most learnedly. He was seventy-five then and his great treatise was
but one-third done: the _concierge_ told me long after his death that
his last living act was to burn it, with the tears streaming down his
old face, poor old fellow! And yet he was one of the happiest people I
have ever known. The _concierge_ was terribly afraid of him, because
he had once in his dry, detached way presented that official with a
complete chart of his life, temperament and just deserts, neatly done
in coloured inks and mounted on cardboard. It was so devilishly
accurate that the _concierge_ trembled whenever he passed it, which
was frequently, as his wife had it framed and hung it in their
bedroom.
To old Papa Morel, then, I propounded the problem of accounting for
Margarita's birth-month having been Roger's, and even within the same
week. Pressed for the year of her birth, I made her twenty-two, at
which the old man scowled and muttered and traced with his cracked
yellow nail devious courses through his great map of the heavens. To
tease him I enumerated a few of her qualities and habits, all to be
thoroughly accounted for in my estimation, by her strange environment
and bringing up; but far from exasperating him further, as I had
supposed it would, this recital appeared to please him mightily.
Shaking his finger reprovingly, he advised me no longer to mock myself
of him, for unknown to myself I had exposed my own deceit: was I so
utterly unversed in the heavenly politics as not to know that this
person described herself fully as having been born four years previous
to the date I had given him, in the year of the eclipse, which was
moreover a comet-year and one in which Uranus usurped the throne of
reigning planets, and breaking all bounds, shadowed that fateful
season? That Aquarius, drawn by him, had imposed himself, too, and
affected the very Moon in her courses? Indeed she would be an
unbelievable person, that one! But assuredly she was born in the year
186--. And when we finally found the year of Margarita's birth, it was
precisely the year stated by Papa Morel! He told me, moreover, that
she would be a great artist, at which I laughed, for her future life
was fairly well mapped out for her, I fancied, knowing Roger as I did.
He told me that she would be in grave danger of death within three
years, and then, turning to a horoscope of my own which he had
insisted upon drawing, he ran his yellow finger down to a point and
raising his mild, fanatic eyes to mine, remarked that at precisely
that time it was written that I should save life! At which I smiled
politely and said that I hoped I should save Margarita's and he
replied politely that as to that he did not know.
[Illustration: PERSONS BORN IN THAT MONTH OF THAT YEAR WILL NEVER BE
OTHERWISE THAN FAR OUT OF THE ORDINARY]
"You will remark," he added, "that persons born in that month of that
year will never be otherwise than far out of the ordinary. No. And
mostly artists: dramatic, musical--how should I know? You will remark,
also, that they will indubitably possess great influence over the
lives of others--and why not, with Uranus in that House as he is,
opposing the Moon? Ah, yes, her life is not yet lived, that one!"
But on the Saturday that found us waving from the pier I had not met
the good old Morel, and I was not thinking of the planets at all. It
had just come over me with dreadful distinctness that from now on my
life could never, never be the same. When I had first parted from
Roger and Margarita, the poetic strangeness of their surroundings, the
shock of all the discoveries I had just made, the relief of finding
our friendship secured on a new footing, nay, the very darkness of the
mild evening through which I was rowed away from them after that
exciting day, all combined to blunt my sense of loneliness, to invest
it with a gentle, dreamy pathos that made philosophy not too hard. It
was like leaving Ferdinand and Miranda on their Isle of Dreams, with
my blessing. But here were no Ferdinand and Miranda; only a handsome,
well-dressed bride and her handsome, well-dressed husband-lover,
sailing off for a brilliantly happy honeymoon and leaving me behind!
The excitement was gone, the past was over, the future seemed
dreadfully dull. My English blood, the blood of the small land-owner,
with occasional military generations, forbade my plunging into the
routine of business, in the traditional American fashion, even had the
need of it been more pressing. It may as well be admitted here and now
that I was not ambitious; I never (fortunately!) felt the need of
glory or high places and my simple fortune was to me wealth and to
spare--Margarita's pearl was the greatest extravagance of my life. Up
to this point I had never seriously realised that all the little,
comfortable details of that little, comfortable bachelor life of ours
were over and done, the rooms into which we had fitted so snugly,
rented, perhaps, at that moment, the table at the club no longer ours
by every precedent, the vacations no more to be planned together and
enjoyed together.
The ship drew out into the harbour and I leaned hard on my stick and
wondered drearily how long I was likely to live. Oh, I admit the
shamefulness of my unmanly state! I might have been drying the
orphan's tear or making Morris chairs or purifying local politics, but
I wasn't.
Tip Elder walked over to me and put his hand on my shoulder.
"Well, _that_ baby's face is washed!" he said cheerily, "as my mother
puts it. And I hope it's going to turn out all right. But I don't
believe you or I would be in Roger's shoes for a good deal, would we?"
I turned on him fiercely.
"Speak for yourself, Elder!" I cried. "I'd give most of this life that
I know about and all of the next that you don't, to be for a little
while in Roger's shoes! Understand that!"
And brushing by him and utterly neglecting Sue and the Wolcott
Searses, I jumped into a waiting cab and hurried away from that
departing vessel, with two-thirds of what I loved in the world on her
deck.
I took one last look at our old rooms, bare and clean, now, for my
things were sold and Roger's stored; I gave all my clothes to the
house valet, to his intense gratitude, and when, with a nervous blow
of my favourite cane--a gift from Roger--in an effort to beat the pile
of cloth on the floor into symmetrical shape, the stick broke in the
middle, I came as near to an hysterical laugh as I ever came in my
life.
"Take all the other sticks, Hodgson," I said huskily, "and the
racquets, if you want them. And give the rod to the night
porter--Richard fishes, I know. And take the underwear, too--yes, all
of it!"
"And the trunk, sir? Where would you wish----"
"O Lord, take the trunk!" I burst out, for the familiar labels, ay,
the very dints in the brass lock, carried only sour memories to me,
now.
"But, sir, you've only what you stand in!" the man cried, convinced, I
am certain, that I contemplated suicide. "I've got the day to get
through, Hodgson," I reassured him, "and the shops will be of great
assistance!"
I left him gloating over his windfall, and plunged into haberdashery.
Fortunately for my nervous loathing of all my old possessions, I had
celebrated Uncle Win's legacy by a prompt visit to my tailor, and the
results of this visit went far to stock the new leather trunk that I
recklessly purchased for the shocking price such commodities command
in America. At the end of a successfully costly day I registered
myself, the trunk, with its brilliant identification label, a new
silver-topped blackthorn, and the best bull terrier I could get in New
York, at the new monster hotel I had never before entered, with a
strange feeling of an identity as new as my overcoat. This terrier, by
the way, marked my definite division from Roger more than anything
else could have done. I have always been fond of animals, dogs
especially, and as a little fellow was never without some
ignominiously bred cur at my heels; but Roger never cared for them,
and little by little I had dropped the attempt to keep one, since he
objected to exercising them in town, did not care to bother with them
in the country, and absolutely refused to endure the encumbrance of
one while travelling. Not that he was ever cruel or careless: when
thrown into necessary relations with animals he was far more just and
thoughtful of them than many a sentimental animal lover of my
acquaintance! Strangely enough, I have never seen a dog or cat that
would not go to him in preference to almost anyone else--one of
nature's ironies.
With Kitchener (not of Khartoum, then!) curled at the foot of my bed
in a brand new collar, I went to sleep, woke early, and took the first
train to Stratford to say good-bye to my mother and receive her
congratulations on my legacy.
Everything was unchanged in the neat little house: only old Jeanne in
her bed in a wonderful nightcap marked the visit as different from any
other. Years had ceased to leave any mark on my mother since her hair
had turned grey, and I might have been a collegian again as I kissed
her.
What extraordinary creatures women are! She knew inside of ten
minutes, I am sure, as well as Sarah Bradley had known, how matters
stood with me, and whenever I spoke of Margarita an inscrutable look
was in her eye and she stroked my arm in a delicate, mute sympathy.
Nor did she refer to my children any more or her hopes that I would
_ranger_ myself and settle down. If she sighed a little at the news of
my projected _wander jahr_, she did not beg me to set any term for it,
and cheerfully congratulated herself upon my known faithfulness in the
matter of correspondence. The tact of the woman!
She herself cooked our simple dinner to Jeanne's voluble accompaniment
of regret: the chicken from her own brood, the salad from her garden,
the delicious pastry that her own hands had put into the oven. After
dinner, during which we drank Jeanne's health and took her a glass of
the wine I always brought with me for the stocking of her
unpretentious cellar (the neighbours had never been able to regard
this addition to my mother's table without suspicion and regret) my
father's favourite brand of cigars was produced and I dutifully smoked
one. I had not inherited his taste in this instance, but for years I
had respectfully made this filial sacrifice and my mother would have
been seriously hurt had I foregone it.
We talked of anything but what was in our minds: the wonderful late
planting of peas; the beauties of Kitchener, who was formally
introduced to Jeanne and listened with perfect good breeding to a long
account (in French) of the departed family poodle; the kindness of the
old parish priest to Jeanne; the war-scare in the East (my mother
religiously took in the London Times and watched Russia with unceasing
vigilance) the shocking price of meat. Later she brought out my old
violin and I played all her favourites while she accompanied me on the
little cottage piano my father had bought for her when they began
life together. If a tear dropped now and then on the yellow keys,
neither of us took it too seriously, and it was a pleasant, soothing
evening on the whole. My nerves relaxed unconsciously, and Jeanne's
wild applause as one after another of her particular tunes rang out
(_Parlons-nous de lui, Grandmere, Sous les Tilleuls_ and _Je sais
bien, mon amour_) gave me an absurd thrill of musicianly vanity.
I slept in my own little room with the prim black walnut bedroom suit,
the prize-books in a row on the corner shelf, the worn rug made from
the minister's calf that I shot by mistake, and my father's sword,
with its faded tassel, over my bed. By some odd chance all my dreams
that night were of those boyish days, and it was with sincere surprise
that I stared on waking at my long moustache, in the toilet mirror--we
were not so universally clean shaven twenty years ago.
My steamer sailed at noon from Boston, and to my intense delight there
was no one on board that I knew. Unattended and unwept Kitchener and I
marched up the gang plank, and I pointed out to him the conveniences
and eccentricities of his surroundings with the contented confidence
known only to the intimate friend of a good dog. For Kitchener and I
were already intimate: the cynical philosophy, the sentimental
maundering, the firm resolutions I had poured out in his well-clipped
ear had brought us very close together, and had he chosen to betray my
confidences he could have made a great fool of me, I can tell you.
I can see him now--good old Kitch! With a great black patch over one
roving blue eye and an inky paw, a trim, taut body and a masterful
tail, he travelled more miles than fall to the lot of most bull dogs
and got quite as much good out of them as most of his fellow
travellers. He would have chased an elephant if I had told him to and
carried bones to a cat if I had ordered it done. He is buried next to
Mr. Boffin the poodle, in quiet Stratford, and for many years his
grave was tended--for Harriet never forgot.
Though I had made no formal decision as to where I would go, somewhere
in the back of my brain it had been made for me. That astonishing
young Anglo-Indian had not at that time reminded us that "when you
'ear the East a callin', why, you don't 'eed nothing else" (I quote
from memory and far from libraries) but it was true, for all that, and
I knew the skies that waited for me--the low, kindling stars, the
warm, intimate wind, the very feel of the earth under my feet.
And yet I did not go there, after all. We were bound for England, and
as I travelled up the Devon country and drank in the pure, homelike
landscape and strolled by those incomparable (if occasionally
malarial) cottages, my father's and grandfather's blood stirred in me,
and half consciously, to tell the truth, I found myself on the way to
Oxford. By some miracle of chance my old lodgings were free, and
before I quite realised what I was doing, I was making myself
comfortable in them.
I should have hated to be obliged to explain to my incredulous
American friends what I "did" in those long months, when every week I
planned to be off for the South and every week found me still
lingering by the emerald close, the grey tower, the quiet, formal
place of this backwater of the world. In their sense, of course, I
"did" nothing at all. I watched the youth around me (any one of them I
might have been, had my father lived) I renewed the quiet, cordial
friendships, which, if they never rooted very deep, never, on the
other hand, desiccated and blew away; I wrote many letters, and more
than this, I formulated once for all, though I did not know it then,
such theory of life as I have found necessary ever since. What it may
have been does not so much matter: if I have failed to illustrate it
in my life, if I have, even, failed to make it reasonably clear in
this rough sketch of the most vital interests of my life, it cannot
have been very valuable.
Among my correspondents at this time neither Roger nor his wife was
numbered. This was not strange, for he was a poor letter-writer,
except for business purposes or in a real necessity, and she had never
been taught so much as to write her own name! But I heard from them
indirectly, and as Roger, it turned out, supposed me to have gone on a
long hunting trip through the Rockies, neither of us was alarmed by
the three months' silence.
A strange, dozing peace had settled over me; though I thought of them
often, it was as one thinks of persons and scenes infinitely removed,
with which he has no logical connection, only a veiled, softened
interest. Margarita seemed, against the background of the moist,
pearly English autumn, like some gorgeous and unbelievable tropical
bird, shooting, all orange and indigo, across a grey cloud. It was
impossible that I, a quiet chess-player sitting opposite his friend,
the impractical student of Eastern Religions, could have to do with
such a vivid anomaly as she must always be. It was unlikely that the
silent, moody man strolling for hours through mist-filled English
lanes, pipe in mouth, dog at heels should ever run athwart that lovely
troubler of man's mind, that babyish woman, that all-too-well-ripened
child.
My Christmas holidays were quietly passed with the Oriental Professor
in his tiny Surrey cottage, where he and his dear old sister, a quaint
little vignette of a woman, forgot the world among her pansy beds. She
was not visible at that time, however, owing to a teasing influenza
which kept her in bed, and our hostess was her trained nurse, a quiet,
capable little American, with a firm hand-grip and kind brown eyes,
already set in fine, watchful wrinkles. She rarely spoke, except in
the obvious commonplaces of courtesy, and our days were wonderfully
still. The Professor taught me Persian, in a desultory way, and chess
most rigorously, for he was hard put to it for an opponent even partly
worthy of his prodigious skill. He was a member of all the most select
societies of learning in the world, an Egyptologist of such standing
that his pronouncements in that field were practically final, a man
called before kings to determine the worth of their national treasures
and curiosities--and his greatest pride was that he had beaten the
hitherto unmatched mechanical chess-player in public contest and had
been invited to settle absolutely the nicest problems in a chess
magazine!
I dwell with a curious fondness upon this placid interval in my life.
I supposed myself honestly settled, grown old, grateful for the rest
and oblivion my father's old university gave me so generously. When I
thought of the feverish, break-neck journey I had planned, of the hot
and doubtful reliefs and distractions I had promised myself that day
when the lawyers' letter had dropped half read on my knees and I had
sniffed my freedom first, I wondered. But, truly, it is all written,
and the hour had not yet struck, that was all!