MAGIC CASEMENTS
LORD ALISTAIR stood on the deck of a Channel steamer and watched the
coast of England melt into the night.
His mood was burthened with that indignant melancholy which swelled
the heart of Byron and of Whistler, and many another exile whom the
builders of the Raj have rejected from their midst. In the Tate Gallery
hangs a painting which he had often gazed upon, a symbolic masterpiece
of Watts’. It represents hard-heartedness sitting crowned with gold
and robed in scarlet on the throne of the world. The painter has
called his figure “Mammon”; it came before Alistair just then as the
image of England--the England that stones her prophets and worships
her swindlers; the England that made Burns a gauger and one Perceval
Prime Minister; that chained the dying Napoleon on an ocean rock, and
rejected the last prayer of Nelson; England, with her shop-keeper’s
conscience, where art is a sin and generosity a crime.
A sense of exultation and relief accompanied his thoughts. He was
escaping from the Puritan prison against whose bars his spirit had
so often bruised its wings. In the obtuse self-satisfaction, in the
unctuous mercy, of its keepers he had felt something more merciless
than in all the recorded cruelties of furious saints and frantic
Emperors. Not the snow-peaks of Switzerland, he told himself, not
the Shakespearean cadences of Venice, nor Rome with her memories and
marbles, afforded that zest to wandering which greets us like a scent
on foreign soil. It was the sense of freedom from that chain of custom
and convention which we forge upon ourselves. The Mediterranean filled
her coasts with pleasure cities which were cities of refuge from the
middle class. The Niagara of gold that poured from England was the
price the English tradesman pays for his vindictive respectability. It
was the tax on spite.
A moist wind thick with delicious sea-smells, that mounted in the
brain like wine, lifted him out of his vexed meditation as the steamer
drew clear of the tangled lights of Spithead and came out on the wide
moonlit pavement of the sea. His mother joined him on the deck, and
they sat and watched the broad moon sail aloft like a luminous balloon
scattering glory.
“I should like it to be like this always,” Alistair sighed in ecstasy.
A sense of utter peace had fallen on his spirit, worn out with
striving. The molten orb, lifting beyond the shadow of the earth,
seemed to drag his soul upward as a spar is sucked in the wake of a
great ship. He looked up and longed after that visible Elysium, that
floating Island of the Blest on which the happy dead voyaged in light
for ever across a sea buoyed with stars. That ship of souls, on what
far coasts did it touch? within what magic roadsteads anchor? What
wondrous cities went forth to greet the mariners of that immortal
Odyssey?
The yearnings of a thousand generations who have spelled in the heavens
for some divine boding of the fates of men; the mystic soundings of
devout astronomers in temple labyrinths beside old Nile; the vision
conned upon the starlit terraces of Babylonian towers--all these
forgotten intimations from his pre-natal life surged in upon him in
waves of deep emotion, and floated his consciousness from its moorings
among the things of every day.
Caroline sat beside her son and did not break the silence. She, too,
was happy. Her prayers had been granted; the prodigal had found his way
home. Within the compass of her simple mind there was room for only one
ending to the story. Conversion would follow on repentance, and a happy
marriage would insure a regular and fortunate career.
Her agitated joy over his return to Colonsay House had moved Alistair,
if not to repentance, to a wish that he could change his nature in
accordance with the life his mother wanted him to lead. In the first
moments of united tenderness he even persuaded himself that this might
be so. He was wearied and disheartened by his warfare with society, and
he hoped that the truce might ripen into a peace.
The Duke of Trent’s reception of his brother had been courteous,
if not very cordial. He bade him welcome to the house, and on the
following evening informed him in their mother’s presence that the
family solicitor had taken charge of his affairs.
Alistair saw that he was expected to be grateful, and he succeeded
in appearing so, though in his heart he was half sorry to accept his
brother’s favours for the sake of his creditors.
“If it were not for you I would not let Trent give a penny to these
people,” he told his mother when they were by themselves.
“It is not only us you have to think of,” the Duchess seized the
opportunity to suggest. “We hope you may find a wife who will make your
life happy, and you would not like to go to her with any mark against
your name.”
The Home Secretary had never spoken of Sir Bernard Vanbrugh’s refusal.
His repulse had mortified him deeply, but he took it sedately as he
took most other things. He blamed himself for not having made sure of
Hero in the first place, and with a certain obstinacy he still clung to
the idea that she would sooner or later be his.
Sir Bernard had been equally silent on his side. He did not know which
way his daughter’s inclination went, and wanted to avoid a disagreement.
The Duchess, whose diplomacy was of the simplest order, went on to say
to Alistair:
“Don’t you think you would like to come abroad for a little time? The
Vanbrughs have a house at Dinard, and it would be very pleasant if you
would take me over there.”
Alistair gazed at his mother in doubt. He could hardly misunderstand
her drift, and the light in his eyes was a sufficient revelation to her
of his own wishes. But the gossip which had reached him concerning his
brother and Hero Vanbrugh held him back.
“What about Trent?” he said.
“He can’t leave town till Parliament rises, of course. He may join us
afterwards, perhaps.”
Alistair was puzzled by his mother’s indifferent tone.
“Will he like me to be there in his absence?” he asked.
The Duchess was equally puzzled.
“Why, what difference does it make to him?” she returned.
“Isn’t there something? I thought--I heard that he and Miss
Vanbrugh----”
The Duchess looked at him in surprise.
“Oh, no!” she declared with confidence. “There has never been any idea
of that kind. He likes her very much as a friend, but he would not
think of anything more. I know exactly what his views are; he has often
told me. He means to marry a great fortune. Hero will have money, no
doubt,” she was quick to add. “Her father is rich for a professional
man, I believe. But, of course, he could not give her enough for
Trent.”
Alistair received the assurance with a throb of delight, as his
mother’s project suddenly shone out to him in the bright light of
hope. But a misgiving of another kind assailed him, and one which he
found it more difficult to explain to her. He found himself ashamed
to pass straight from the side of Molly Finucane to such a girl as
Hero Vanbrugh. It would be almost an insult, he thought; it would be
acting as though he sought Hero, not for her own sake, but as a sort of
refuge, a substitute for the woman he had left.
The sense of shame which Hero alone had been able to rouse in him
returned in its full force at the idea of presenting himself before her
with all the stains of his past life still showing, with Molly’s kisses
fresh upon his lips. He felt a desire to go away first and purge his
life in other scenes, to renew himself in some atmosphere of sweet and
strong endeavour from which he could hope to emerge fitter for Hero’s
love.
Alistair wondered that his mother did not perceive the indelicacy of
such a course as she had proposed, and Caroline on her part wondered at
the strange embarrassment with which Alistair at last gave his consent
to her plans. It was not easy for these two to understand each other.
During the few days that elapsed before their departure the Duchess
did succeed in getting a glimpse at what was weighing on Alistair’s
mind. She saw with secret concern that he really did doubt if he
were worthy of such a girl as Hero, and that this doubt might even
prove an obstacle to the fulfilment of her desires. It was necessary
to encourage him, and give him confidence in himself, and the
conscientious mother was surprised to find herself in the strange
part of an apologist, extenuating instead of aggravating her son’s
misdoing. Her first faltering attempts in this direction brought about
a beautiful change in the whole intercourse between the pair. Caroline
was deeply touched to see how the prodigal son’s nature softened and
expanded under this rare indulgence. They began to be happy together;
the poor woman secretly feared that she must be doing wrong.
* * * * *
When Alistair rose on the first morning in their new home, and stepped
out of his bedroom window on to the little balcony that overlooked the
Emerald Coast, he repeated to himself the two lines of Keats in which
the essence of all poetry is distilled:
“Magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn,”
The house, which had been Hero’s choice for them, stood on the far
edge of a little headland dividing a sandy bay from the broad haven of
the Rance. The surrounding sea was ringed with a crescent of rocks and
islets in the midst of which green Cézembre glowed--
“The captain jewel in the carcanet.”
Something, that seemed the mast of a wrecked ship, rose up in
melancholy memorial from one seaweed-covered ledge on which the waves
were now foaming softly, like a child that tries to kiss away the
recollection of its passion. On his right hand, across the shallow
glistening tides of the estuary, the tall spire of St. Malo lifted
itself like a more stately mast above the white walls of the islet city
of the corsairs. Far to the west the grey cape of Freher watched the
Atlantic billows, like a grim warder of the Breton coast. And over all
the summer haze lay like a spell of strong imagination, and conjured up
a legendary world.
It was a leaf of poetry that lay outspread before him, and he read it
with a poet’s eye. The faculty of toil, the long labour of the midnight
lamp, the fortunate strategy of words, had been denied to Alistair
Stuart, and therefore he was not a poet. Remained the gift of wonder
and of worship, and by that talisman he still had power to people the
sweeping landscape with mysterious life; the Tritons rose and called
each other from the waves, old Proteus lifted a slumbering head and
listened from his cave, and on the rocks the Sirens sang.
He had risen in that happy mood when every little thing becomes a
spring of joy. The coffee foaming in its thick white cup, that woke
him with its fragrance, and the shell-like bread, were delightful
reminders that he had come to a lighter-hearted land. He dressed
himself in pearl-grey flannels, and wandered out into the garden with
a wide-rimmed panama over his brows, and drank the scent of roses and
carnations, intoxicated by all the beauty round him, like a man risen
from a sick-bed. His thoughts went back to the life he had just left,
and he wondered that he could have lived it for so long. All the dark
speculations, the impulses that had moved him to go down into sheol,
seemed to have suddenly become as unreal as the imaginary dangers of
the night forest are to the traveller coming out on the broad highway
at dawn.
When the Duchess joined him in the garden walk that overlooked the
sea, she gazed on her boy with secret pride. As he stood there in the
sunshine, the light breeze playing in his hair, and in his eyes the
dawn of joy and hope, he seemed to her mother’s heart a Prince Charming
who had only to stretch out his hand and pluck the fairest flower in
the garden of love.
Alistair found himself too much excited to remain at home waiting for
the advent of the Princess. With a lover’s superstition he believed
that the way to hasten her coming was to go out himself. He kissed
his mother, and went down a rock-hewn stairway at the foot of which a
wooden gate let him out on the sands.
The little Plage, enclosed between the two headlands which Dinard
thrusts out into the sea like a snail’s horns, was bustling like a
fair. The French had made a miniature village of the beach, with
streets of little huts in which they read, and sewed, and called upon
each other, and carried on their family life. Children were burrowing
in the sand like rabbits, and bathers clad in the bright hues of
butterflies fluttered on the sea’s edge.
“And I might live this life always!” Alistair murmured, with a sort
of wonder at his own past blundering, as he stepped among this glad
throng, as glad as they.
Hero came towards him, walking beside her father, dressed in white with
one blue flower at her throat and a red flower in her heart.
“We were just coming to see you!” she cried gaily.
“I could not wait for you, you see!” cried Alistair.
And they two looked at each other through the magic casement of love.