"Dr. Page, I think?"
"Heh?" said the old gentleman, inclining the other ear.
"You don't know me," said Conrad wistfully, but in a louder tone. "We haven't met since I was a boy, Dr. Page—that's many years ago."
The old gentleman indicated Home Rest impatiently.
"Next door," he snapped, "Dr. Page lives next door!"
Conrad retreated with hasty apologies, feeling considerably foolish. He would have preferred to stroll awhile before repeating his exordium, and only the consciousness of being watched by the old gentleman who had misled him constrained him to unlatch the gate.
A neat servant answered that Dr. Page was not at home. He was relieved.
"I'll call again," he said. "When do you expect him to come in?"
"Oh, he's away, sir, he won't be back for two or three days. Would you like to see Mrs. Page, sir?"
He had no remembrance of a Mrs. Page, but there was the objection to travelling fruitlessly, and the thought that a woman would be susceptible to the prettiness of his visit. He hesitated—he answered that he would. The girl conducted him to a small, cheerless drawing-room, and returned to say that Mrs. Page would be down in a few minutes. There were antimacassars everywhere, and the cold white mantelpiece exhibited the perpetual porcelain courtship which has never advanced; the amorous male still smirked inanely, and the simpering maiden seemed still to hope. Conrad was much attracted by a large album that reposed on an occasional table. He sat tempted to unclasp it, and had just risen and made a tentative step in its direction when he heard the doorknob move.
The lady who came in seemed to deprecate her entrance; she was evidently timid, and she blinked. He thought at first that she suffered from some affection of the eyes, but when she spoke, he opined that the blinking was due entirely to nervousness.
"Mr. Warrener?" she said in a whisper.
"Mrs. Page," he began, "I must crave your pardon for intruding on you in this fashion. It's very audacious of me because, even when I tell you who I am, I daren't suppose that you will recollect me."
Her eyelids fluttered more, and she said:—
"Wo—won't you sit down?" She wore mittens, and plucked at them.
"Thank you." Instinctively he lowered his voice, as if he were speaking to an invalid. "My excuse is rather unusual—I hope it won't appear to you preposterous. When I was a boy, your children and I used to be bosom friends, and I found myself in Sweetbay the other day for the first time since. I needn't tell you that I went to look at the house, and the desire to—to find them all again was very strong.... I was fortunate enough to learn that you had moved to Redhill, so I decided to risk your ridicule, and throw myself on your forbearance."
"Oh, not at all," she faltered. "I—I'm sure I—" Her nervousness seemed increased, rather than diminished, by his address. There was an awkward pause.
"I trust Dr. Page and—and my former comrades are all well?"
"Oh, thank you, yes they are all quite well."
He wished that Mary's were not the only name among them he could recall; "All well!" he said, forcing a hearty note, "All well! It's strange to me to think of them as grown-up. Time—er—brings many changes, madam?"
"Indeed," she concurred timorously; "as you say!" But she volunteered no news, and he began to feel that they were getting on slowly; his harassed gaze wandered to the china courtship.
"May I ask if they are still with you?" he ventured.
"My eldest daughter is married," she replied. "The others are ... I hope very soon. I—er don't quite understand when it was you knew them? While we were in Sweetbay, I think you said?"
"Yes," he answered musingly, "when the daughter who is married was a little girl, Mrs. Page. To think that she's a woman and a wife! Why, Miss Mary and I were like brother and sister then—how wonderful it would be to meet her now!"
"My daughter's name is Ursula," she demurred. She blinked fast. There was another pause.
"'Ur—Ursula?'" stammered Conrad, with the precursory sinking of an awful fear. "Miss Marynotthe eldest? ... But surely at Rose Villa she was the eldest at home—during that summer, at least?"
"I think there must be some mistake," she quavered; "I have no daughter 'Mary.' I think there must be some mistake."
"Good heavens!" gasped Conrad. He was covered with confusion. "My dear madam, what can I say to you? I—I have been most shamefully deceived. I knew the family of a Dr. Page in Sweetbay in 'seventy-seven. I was assured—I was officially misinformed—that they had removed to Redhill. This house was mentioned to me as their residence. I am abased, I can't sufficiently express my regret. Possibly—I'll say 'probably'—my informant was led astray by the sameness of the surname and the profession, but nothing can excuse an error that has caused you so much annoyance. Nothing!" he repeated implacably. "I can only offer you my profoundest, my most contrite apologies."
The lady was now blinking so rapidly that it was dazzling to watch her.
"My husband never practised in Sweetbay," the said. "My husband's name is 'Napoleon Page.' We had never seen Sweetbay in 'seventy-seven. Our house was not called 'Rose Villa.' Oh dear no! I'm afraid there must be some mistake."
"Obviously," cried Conrad; "it overwhelms me. I shall severely reprimand the person who—who is responsible. Permit me to thank you for the patience, the infinite courtesy with which you have listened to my—my totally irrelevant reminiscences. I— Pray don't trouble to ring, madam!"
His cheeks were hot when he gained the step. He walked towards the station swiftly, eager to leave "Home Rest" and Redhill far behind. Long after the train, for which he was obliged to wait, had started, the incident continued to distress him. He smarted anew in the compartment. He was even denied the unction of feeling he had made a satisfactory exit, and the certainty that the lady would describe his later demeanour as "flurried" annoyed him more than he could say in the presence of his fellow-passengers. To fall into the mistake was natural, he argued, but he wished ardently that he had extricated himself from it with more grace, with more of the leisurely elegance he could display if the situation were to occur again.
Well, he had done with his search for Mary! He said he abandoned it in disgust, and was still firm on the point when he reached Mowbray Lodge. He began to reconsider packing his portmanteaux. For two days he made no further inquiry of anyone, and lingered, as it were, under protest. Yet in England at least he might spend December amid worse surroundings than Sweetbay presented now; he owned that. From the chief thoroughfares the last speck of mud had long since been removed; the pink sidewalks shone as spotless as when he trod them in October. The air was tender, there was an azure sky, a sunlit sea curled innocently upon the beach. Yes, of a truth, he might fare worse. If it were not for the dulness, he could scarcely fare better. On the third afternoon, as he sauntered through the High Street, it occurred to him that it could do no harm to announce his failure to the mirthful postmistress. He did not pledge himself to resume his efforts, but—— It certainly was very dull, and if he were more explicit she might be able to give him another hint.
She recognised him at once, and advanced, sparkling as before.
"Did you find your friends, sir?" she asked as he saluted her.
"I did not," said Conrad, "but I intruded on an inoffensive household who were perfect strangers to me. The Dr. Page whose address you very kindly furnished was not my Dr. Page at all."
"Oh dear! how very awkward," she said. "I am so sorry."
"It was awkward, wasn't it?" he concurred. "Of course I threw all the blame on you, so they forgave me, but I'm now quite helpless. My friends seem to have vanished as utterly as if Sweetbay had closed over their heads, and to complete the difficulty this family of spurious Pages arose since. I foresee that as often as I make another attempt I shall be directed to Redhill. I didn't like to tell you before, because it makes me sound so old, but the people I mean are the Pages who lived here in 'seventy-seven. I beg of you not to jump. Everybody jumps—that's why I have grown so nervous of mentioning the date."
Her eyes were full of amusement; she leant her elbows on the counter.
"I wasn't in the office then," she said reflectively.
"Naturally," he returned. "You must have been in your cradle.Iwas only a little boy. They were companions of my cherub stage; believe me, I was rosily young."
"There's a gentleman in the town who might be able to tell you something," she suggested: "Mr. Irquetson, the vicar of All Saints. He has been here thirty years, or more."
"Really?" exclaimed Conrad, and added, "It's a shame to be beaten, isn't it?"
"Oh, it is," she agreed; "and he's a very nice gentleman; he'll be glad to help you if he can."
"Well, I think I'll go to see him; if he has been here thirty years, he can hardly fail to remember the Dr. Page I'm talking about." He glanced at the clock. "Do you think he's likely to be in now?"
"I should think the morning would be the best time, sir," she answered; "but you might try—it isn't far. If you'll wait a second, I'll write the address down for you."
"You are too good," said Conrad impressively. His pulses quickened at the chance. Instantly the thought of quitting Sweetbay was forgotten. Again he thanked her, and again she bowed graciously over her pink blouse as he withdrew. When he turned at the doors, she was bowing still.
They swung to behind him, and he wished he had reported himself to her three days ago. What amiability! He had never seen anything to compare with it in a post-office. As he strode towards the vicar's, he was possessed by amazement. The experience had an air of the ideal, as everybody will admit. Probably the mirthful postmistress was the only member of her calling ever known to exhibit a pleasant countenance to the public, excepting— But the Exception merits a paragraph to herself, and as she has nothing to do with the story, you are recommended to skip to the next chapter.
Excepting a little lady who once brightened the ancient post-office of Southampton Row. The "post-office," have I said? Rather should I say she brightened the district with that sunny smile of hers, and the daily flower freshening her neat little frock. To watch her, it seemed she found long hours "in the cage" the very poetry of bread-winning. Dull matrons from Russell Square, and tired clerks from Guilford Street alike felt the encouragement of her cheerfulness, and went on their way refreshed. One may well believe she was the unwitting cause of many kindly actions in West Central London, for a crowd was ever at the counter, and the sourest soul of all on whom she smiled must for a space have viewed the world with friendlier eyes. Often I used to wonder, as I bought a postcard, and waited for the farthing change, whether it was interest in her duties, or the message of the daily flower that kept that light of happiness in the girlish face. When she vanished, Southampton Row was grey. They repainted and replanned it; and built spruce hotels, and pink "mansions," but nothing could make good the loss. It was whispered she had left to be married. All Bloomsbury must hope that he is kind to her!
And after that little tribute, which has been owing for more years than it exhilarates me to count—and which has been paid with no expense to anyone who followed my advice—let us overtake Conrad on the doorstep, where he had just learnt that the vicar was at home.
The Rev. Athol Irquetson was a sombre-eyed priest with a beautiful voice. In his zeal, he had studied how to use it—under an eminent actor; in his discretion, he suppressed the fact—for he knew his Sweetbay. He had also a fine faculty for gesture, which his parishioners found "impressive"—and which they would have found "theatrical" had they guessed that for years it had been cultivated daily before a looking-glass. Why invalidate an instrument? To admiring friends he said his gestures "came to him." They did, by this time. He waved Conrad's apologies aside, and motioning towards a seat, sank slowly into a study-chair himself. Conrad ardently appreciated the pose of his hand there, as—a pensive profile supported by his finger-tips—the vicar asked, in a voice to make converts: "And what can I do for you?"
Yes, he remembered Dr. Page. Dr. Page was dead. But soon it was the vicar's turn to be appreciative, for the intruder's glance kept straying to the Canaletto prints that graced the walls, and it was a rare thing for Mr. Irquetson to have a visitor to whom they spoke. Those glances warmed his heart, and a digression melted his reserve.
"There are not many," he said; "but I think my small room is the richer on that account."
"Surely," said Conrad. "If a picture is worth owning, it is worth a spacious setting. A mere millionaire may buy a gallery, but it takes a man of taste to hang a sketch. I have always thought that a picture calls for two artists—one to create it, and the other to prepare his wall for its reception."
"But how little the second art is understood. Of course the eye should be enabled to rest on a picture reposefully. The custom of massing pictures in conflicting multitudes is barbarous. It's like the compression of flowers into bundles that hide half their loveliness. The Western mind is slowly learning from the Japanese that a flower ought to be displayed so that we may appreciate its form. I have hope that when they have taught us how a flower should be put in water, they may proceed to teach us how a picture should be hung."
Quite ten minutes passed in such amenities.
"Yes, Dr. Page died long ago," said the deep voice again; but the subject was resumed in a manner almost intimate; "his wife was living in—Malvern, I think. There was—it was common knowledge at the time—some domestic unhappiness late in life; or perhaps it would be more correct to say that it culminated late in life, for, like so many mighty issues, I believe it originated in a seeming trifle. He was a man acutely sensitive to noise, and his wife was decidedly a noisy woman. I remember his remarking once that if she but touched a cup it had a collision with all the china on the table, and that a newspaper in her hands became an instrument of torture. No doubt he could have controlled his irritability, but by all accounts his temper grew unbearable. However, the news of his death must have been a blow to the lady, for he died suddenly soon after they had separated. Death is a wondrous peacemaker. The gravest offence looks smaller in our eyes when it is too late to condone it."
"Yes," assented Conrad;
"'And I think, in the lives of most women and men,There's a moment when all would go smooth and even,If only the dead could find out whenTo come back, and be forgiven.'"
"That is a beautiful thought," said the vicar, "or, speaking more strictly, I should say it is an ordinary thought beautified. From one of Owen Meredith's early poems, isn't it? But do you remember those lines of Coventry Patmore's to the dead?
"'It is not true that Love will do no wrong.Poor Child!And did you think, when you so cried and smiled,How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake,And of those words your full avengers make?Poor Child, poor Child!And now, unless it beThat sweet amends thrice told are come to thee,O God, have Thou no mercy upon me!Poor Child!'"
"Oh," exclaimed Conrad, "exquisite! I used to read Coventry Patmore all day. Do you know 'Departure'?—'Withhuddled, unintelligible phrase!' ... Ah! surely his hope was not vain—the Posterity he respected will respect him. But—but," he bubbled, "I am so glad I came! My dear sir, you enchant me; your recognition of Owen Meredith alone would make the interview memorable."
"Ah!" returned Mr. Irquetson, with a whimsical smile, "there was once a time when I read much poetry—and wrote much verse; and I have a good memory. I remember"—his trained gaze took in the name, which he had forgotten, on the card—"I remember, Mr. Warrener, when I used to pray to be a poet."
"Do you think prayers are ever answered?" inquired Conrad. "In my life I have sent up many prayers, and always with the attempt to persuade myself that some former prayer had been fulfilled. But I knew—I knew in my heart none ever had been. Things that I have wanted have come to me, but—I say it with all reverence—at the wrong time, as the means to buy unlimited toffee comes to a man when he has outgrown his taste for sweets."
Mr. Irquetson's fine hand wandered across his brow.
"Once," he began conversationally, "I was passing with a friend through Grosvenor Street. It was when in the spring the tenant's fancy lightly turns to coats of paint, and we came to a ladder leaning against a house that was being redecorated. In stepping to the outer side of the ladder, my friend lifted his hat to it; you may know the superstition? He was a 'Varsity man, a man of considerable attainments. I said, 'Is it possible that you believe in that nonsense?' He said, 'N—no, I don't exactly believe in it, but I never throw away a chance.'" On a sudden his inflexion changed, his utterance was solemn, stirring, devout: "'I think, sir, that most peopleprayon my friend's principle—they don't believe in it, but they never throw away a chance.'"
He had said it before; the whole thing was too assured, too finished, for an impromptu, but the effect of that modulation was superb. All the artist in Conrad responded to it.
"And when they are sincere?" he questioned, after a pause; "for they are sometimes. Your walls remind me how passionately I prayed to be a painter. And your own prayers, I take it, came from the soul when you craved to be a poet."
"But should I have been more useful as a poet? It wouldn't have contented me to write—let us say—'The Better Land,' and more minds are to be influenced by simple sermons than by great poetry. You think, perhaps, that as a painter you would have been happier. But perhaps you wouldn't. We are often like little children petitioning their parents for the dangerous. I will not suggest that a merciful God chastises us to demonstrate our error, but many an observant man must have noticed the truth that what we have desired most strenuously often proves an affliction to us, while the only sunshine in our lives is shed by the thing which we prayed might never come to pass."
"Yes," said Conrad, thoughtfully, "I have seen more than one example of that. But if we are mere blunderers beseeching in the dark—if we are like children importuning their parents without discernment, as you say—isn't the act of prayer futile? Isn't it even presumptuous?"
Mr. Irquetson raised his head, his eyes looked upward; "No—pray!" he said, and the melody of his tone gave glory to a commonplace. "Pray," he repeated, and Conrad wanted to kneel to him then, there, on the study floor. "One day perhaps you will afford me an opportunity to make my thoughts on prayer quite clear to you. Pray—but with fervour, and with sense. With humility! Sir, I cannot reconcile my faith in an omniscient Creator with the idea that it is necessary to advise Him we need rain in Rutland ... But I'm withholding the little information that I am able to give you. I was about to say that Mrs. Page, so far as I know, lives still in Malvern—or perhaps it was Matlock; and the eldest girl——"
"Mary?" interposed Conrad.
"Quite so, 'Mary.' Mary married some time before her father's death, and is settled in London, I think. My wife would know her whereabouts better than I, she is friendly with a resident who has some fitful correspondence with Mrs. Bailey."
"'Mrs. Bailey' is the eldest girl's married name?"
"Well, it used to be," replied the clergyman, with another of his smiles. "But I was wrong—I should have said 'Mrs. Barchester-Bailey.' She acquired the 'Barchester' after the ceremony; I cannot supply its exegesis. The result of six months in the capital, I suppose, though it is not everybody who can make such a great name in London in six months."
"Much may be done in six months; his parents gave Keats to the world in seven," said Conrad. "I am infinitely grateful to you for your kindness." He rose. "If Mrs. Irquetson should mention Mrs. Barchester-Bailey's address to you, and you would have the additional goodness to let me know it——"
"I will drop you a line to-night—or to-morrow at the latest," declared the vicar; and he pencilled the direction on the card.
"Good-bye," said Conrad. "I shall always be your debtor for more than the address, sir."
"Good-bye," said the vicar, extending his hand; and 'good-bye' as he pronounced it was a benediction.
Conrad had been so much impressed—so uplifted by the cleric's manner—that, instead of swinging homeward in high feather at the end of his difficulties, he proceeded slowly, in serious meditation. It was not until the following afternoon when he learnt that Mrs. Barchester-Bailey's residence was Beau Séjour, Hyperion Terrace, Upper Tooting, that interest in his project was again keen. Then there was a little throb in his pulses; a little tremor stole from the note; he had annihilated the obstacles of five-and twenty years—it excited him to realise that he stood so close to her who had been Mary Page.
The "Barchester," however, disturbed him somewhat. A woman who reverenced apocryphal hyphens promised less companionship than he had pictured ... Perhaps the snobbishness was her husband's. Tooting? He had a dim recollection of driving through it once, on his way somewhere. Was it to the Derby?
Well, he supposed the correct course would be to write to her and hint at his return to town. He wondered whether the signature would waken memories in her if she perpended it. Unless it did, the letter was likely to prove a failure—he could not indite a very stimulating epistle to a married woman of whom he knew nothing. Yet to call on her without writing—? No, he must stand, or fall, by the signature. That would say everything, if it said anything at all ... How stupid, in the circumstances, "Dear Madam" sounded!
And what a stumbling-block it looked!
"Dear Madam"—he wrote—"Though I cannot hope you will be able to recall my name, I think you may remember Mowbray Lodge. I have regretted very much, during my visit, that Mrs. Page is not my neighbour. It would have given me so much pleasure to call on her, and to meet the family who were such very good comrades of mine in the year when this house was a school, kept by Mr. Boultbee, and a posse of children came down for the summer holidays. Perhaps the names of my cousins, Nina and 'Gina, may be more familiar to you than my own. At least those old-time friends of yours have shared my disappointment. It is only since they left that I have had the good fortune to hear your address mentioned. Will you pardon a stranger writing to express this vehement interest on the part of people whom you have probably forgotten? If I debated the matter for long, my courage would desert me, and I should leave my cousins to make their own inquiries next week, when I go back to town. On the other hand, if you and your sisters remember us, pray believe that none sends kinder regards to you all than—
"Yours truly,"CONRAD WARRENER."
"Come, I don't think anybody can take exception to that," mused Conrad. And he sent it to the post, with a line of thanks to Mr. Irquetson.
On the next evening but one he began to doubt if she meant to reply. It seemed to him the sort of thing a woman would acknowledge immediately if she didn't mean to ignore it altogether. Yet why should she ignore it? Silence would be rather uncivil, wouldn't it—a humiliation needlessly inflicted? If she had reasons for wishing to decline his acquaintance, it was quite possible to prevent his advancing, and to frame an urbane answer at the same time. Had he said too much about Nina and 'Gina, appeared too much in the light of an amanuensis? Surely she had the wit to understand?
Four or five days passed before he tore open an envelope stamped with the initials "M.B.B." The enclosure began "Dear Sir," and his brows contracted.
"Dear Sir"—he read—"I was very surprised to receive your letter. What a long time ago, is it not? It is very nice of you all to remember us after so long. I left Sweetbay at the time of my marriage, and have been living in Tooting some years now. My mother has removed to Matlock. If you or your cousins are ever in the neighbourhood I shall hope to have a chat over old times. Please give them my remembrances, With kind regards—Yours truly,
"MARY BARCHESTER-BAILEY."
There were only three wrong ways of beginning a response—three blatant solecisms—and she had chosen one of them when she wrote "Dear Sir." Conrad was disappointed. The "fair and slightly pathetic" figure of his dreams grew fainter; his ideal confidante didn't make these mistakes. He put the missive in his pocket, and drew dejectedly at his pipe.
"Of course I shall go," ran his thoughts, "but I've made rather an ass of myself, taking such trouble to find her!"
The man to whom he gave his ticket at the station of Balham and Upper Tooting told him that he could walk to Hyperion Terrace in about ten minutes. He perceived that he would reach the house too early if he proceeded there at once, so he strolled awhile in the opposite direction. The pavements were dry, and he was thankful, for he had seen no cab when he came down the station stairs, and he would have been chagrined to present himself in muddy boots.
When he estimated that he would arrive at Beau Séjour none too soon to be welcome, he retraced his steps, and now anticipation warmed his blood once more. After all, she was the woman who had been Mary Page—it was a piece of his boyhood that awaited him. Indeed he was repentant that he had cavilled at minor defects. By dint of inquiries he found the way to Hyperion Terrace. It was new, and red, and all that a man who could call a street "Hyperion Terrace" would naturally create.
A very small servant, wearing a very pretentious cap, showed him at once to the drawing-room, where "The Soul's Awakening" met his distressed view, on a pink and gold wall-paper. He heard flying footsteps overhead, sounds of discomposure; there are houses at which a visitor always arrives too early. His nerves were tremulous while he sat alone. But Mary's home would have pleased him better if it had been no more than a single room, with a decent etching over a bed masquerading as a sideboard, and half-a-dozen shilling classics on a shelf.
"Mr. Warrener? How d' ye do?"
She advanced towards him with a wide smile, a large and masculine woman wearing a vivid silk blouse, and an air of having dressed herself in a hurry. She wore also—with a droll effort at deception—a string of "pearls" which, if it had been real, would have been worth more than the street. For an instant his heart seemed to drop into his stomach; and in the next an overwhelming compassion for her swept him. He could have shed tears for her, as he took her hand, and remembered that she had once been a dainty child.
"Mrs. Barchester-Bailey—so good of you to let me call."
"Oh, I'm sure it was very kind of you to come!" she said. "Won't you sit down? ... How very odd that you should have been living in Mowbray Lodge, isn't it? Quite a coincidence."
"Yes," he said, "yes. I wanted a place there, and Mowbray Lodge happened to be to let for a few months. It was the first time I had been to Sweetbay since that summer.... Your old house looks just the same—the outside at least; I've not been in it."
"Really?" she said. "Yes—does it?"
"Yes.... And the lane looks just the same too, until you get to the field; and then—then there isn't one. But perhaps that had vanished before you left?"
"No, there was no change when I was down there last, but that's a long while ago! Horrid old place! I'm very glad there's nothing to take me there any more."
"Didn't you like it?" he asked, pained.
"Oh, it was so slow! I wonder how I put up with it as long as I did. Didn't you find it slow? I must have gaiety. People tell me I'm a regular gadabout, but—" She laughed—"one's only young once, Mr. Warrener; I believe in having a good time while I can. I say I shall have plenty of time to be on the shelf by-and-by."
She was very, very plain. It was while he was thinking how plain she was, how ruthless the years had been to her, that the sudden pity for himself engulfed him—the pathetic consciousness that she must be reflecting how hard the years had been onhim.
"It can't be difficult for you to have a good time," he returned, labouredly light.
"Well, I don't think it is," she declared; she tossed her large head, and rolled colourless eyes at him archly. "People tell me I've quite woke Tooting up since I've been here, and I must say I've done my best. I mustlead. I mean to say if I'd been a man I should have liked to be a great politician, or a great general, you know."
"You could be nothing more potent than Mrs. Barchester-Bailey."
"Oh now that's very sweet of you!" she said. "But I mean to say I mustlead. I started the Tooting 'Thursdays.' You mustn't think I'm just a frivolous little woman who cares for nothing but pleasure—I'm—I'm very interested in literature too. At the 'Thursdays' we have literary discussions. Next week the subject is Miss Verbena's novels. Now which do you think is Miss Verbena's greatest novel?"
He could only assume that she never saw a comic paper. "I—I'm afraid I haven't read any of them," he owned.
"Oh! Oh, you surprise me. Oh, but you must: they're enormously clever. Ettie Verbena is quite my favourite novelist, excepting perhaps thatdearman who writes those immensely clever books that never offend in any way. So pure they are, such a true religious spirit in them! You know, Mr. Warrener, I'm a curious mixture. People tell me that I seem to enjoy myself just as much talking to a very clever man as when I'm romping through a barn-dance. And it's true you know; that is me. But I suppose you're more interested in stocks and shares, and things like that, than in books?"
"Well, I—I shouldn't describe myself as widely-read," answered Conrad; "still books do interest me."
"Oh well, then, you must come on one of my At-Home days next time," she said graciously; "one of the ladies you'll meet writes for 'Winsome Words,' and you'll meet several people you'll like."
"I should be charmed," he said.
The servant bustled in, and carried a bamboo table to the hearth. As she threw the teacloth over it, a cold wind blew through his hair.
"Do your cousins live in London?" inquired Mrs. Barchester-Bailey, with the tail of a worried eye on the maid's blunders.
"Yes," he said, "yes, they do. But I haven't seen them since I came back. I'm not sure whether they're in town."
"Are they married?"
"Yes," he said again. "Oh yes, they're married—both of them."
"Where are they?" she asked; "anywhere this way?"
"No; unfortunately they're a long way off. That's the drawback to town, isn't it? Everybody lives at such a distance from everybody else."
"Oh, I don't know," she said; "one can get about so quickly nowadays. What part are they in?"
"Nina lives in Regent's Park," he replied, "where the mists are."
"Oh, really? Regent's Park?" She seemed impressed. "I was wondering whether she would care to join our Thursday debates—we want to get as many members as we can. Two of the ladies come over from Wandsworth, but from Regent's Park it would be a drag certainly. Shall I put in sugar and milk?"
"Please." He took the cup, and sat down again—and knew that he had entered on that grade of society where there are no more men and women, and they all become "ladies" and "gentlemen."
"And the other one—'Gina?" she continued.
He felt very uncomfortable; he wouldn't say "Mayfair."
"'Gina lives further west," he murmured. "No, I won't have any cake, thank you."
"Then your cousins are quite high up?" she exclaimed.
"'High up?'"
"They're quite swells?"
"Oh!" he shrugged his shoulders. "No, I don't think I should call them that. Too swell for me, rather, but then I'm half a Colonial, and the other half a bohemian. I haven't been Home long—it's all strange to me; until I came out here to-day I had no idea London could be so picturesque. How glorious your Common must be in the summer!"
"So healthy!" she said promptly; "the air is so fine. We moved here from the West-end for the children's sake."
"You have children?"
"Oh!" she rolled her eyes again. "Four, Mr. Warrener. My eldest boy is getting quite big—people tell me they wouldn't believe he was mine at all, but it makes me feel quite old sometimes, to look at him. I think it's cruel of children to grow up, don't you?"
He stifled a sad assent. "Sometimes they grow up still more charming," he said.
"Oh, now, that's very sweet of you! Now really that's very pretty. But I mean to say I think it's cruel to us when they shoot up so fast. You're not married yourself yet, eh?"
"No, I hate asking favours."
"What a modest way of putting it! But you should. A good wife would be the making of you, and give you something to think about. Don't you know that?"
"I'm sure of it. A man can have no greater blessing than a good wife—excepting none," he concluded mentally. "Shall I be allowed to see them before I go?"
"The children? Would you like to? Dudley is out, but the others are just going to have tea in the next room. My husband isn't back from the city yet, of course. Oh, the city! What a hold it does get on you men. As if it really mattered whether you made an extra thousand pounds one month or not!" A trayful of crockery rattled, and the footsteps of the little servant thudded through the passage.
"You're quite right," said Conrad. "What does it matter, when one comes to think of it?"
"Not but what Herbert's the best of boys," she added. "If it weren't that——" She hesitated, she endeavoured to look confused. "The fact is, he's—he's jealous, he's a very jealous man. Not that he has any reason to be—not exactly. Of course I'm awfully fond of him; he's a dear old silly! But I mean to say I can't help it when men want to talk to me—now can I? If I get half-a-dozen men round me, even though we're only talking about the simplest thing, he doesn't like it. Of course it makes it awfully awkward for me socially."
"It must," responded Conrad; "yes, I can understand that."
"I tell him he should have married a different woman." She giggled.
"Ah, but how unreasonable of you!" he said. "Then—if they won't mind being disturbed—I am really to see your children?"
"Oh, they won't mind at all, but I'm afraid you'll find them very untidy—they've just been having high jinks."
She led him to them presently, and slammed the door behind her. It shook his thoughts to the clergyman's description of Mrs. Page. Heredity again, perhaps. Two girls of about twelve or fourteen years of age and a boy in a pinafore were sitting at a table. At their mother and the visitor's entrance, they all took their hands off the cloth and stared.
"And so this is the family?" cried Conrad, trying to sound enthusiastic. "How do you do? And will you say 'how do you do' to me, my little man?"
Three limp hands flopped to him in turn, and he stood contemplating the group, while the lady cooed silly questions to them, and elicited dull, constrained replies. They were not attractive children; they were indeed singularly uninteresting children—even for other people's, whose virtues seldom strike us vividly. To Conrad, who failed to allow sufficiently for their shyness, they appeared stupidity personified. "Yes," and "No," they answered; and their eyes were round, and their mouths ajar. Like all children, from the lower to the middle classes inclusive, they proclaimed instantaneously the social stratum of their parents. With a monosyllable a child will do this. It is by no means impossible for a man to exchange remarks with a girl from a show-room, and at the end of five minutes to be still uncertain to what class she belongs. But when the intrusive little cub in the sailor suit romps up to her, he betrays the listless beauty's entourage with the first slovenly words he drops.
"Have your cousins any children, Mr. Warrener?"
"Yes," he said, "oh yes, they have three or four each." He was speculating what individuality lay concealed behind the vacant fronts. Their mother had been no older than the eldest when he was sick with romance for her—oh, positively "romance," although its expression had been ludicrous in that period. Was it possible that these meaningless little girls also had precocity and sweethearts? Appalling thought—had Mary been so unpleasant? Had he idealised a dirty mouth?
"I should like to see them. I wish Nina and—er—'Gina would come over one morning to lunch." Her tone was painfully eager. "Or I might look them up. Do you know their 'days'?"
"No," he murmured, "I can't say I do. I——"
"Perhaps they'll come with you next time?"
"I hope you'll see them sooner; it's more than likely I go back to Paris in a day or two—I only left a few weeks ago. I may remain there through the year."
"Oh, really?" she exclaimed. "Then you have no business in London? Mary," she broke off impatiently, "what is it? What is Ferdie fidgeting about for—what does he want?"
"Jam, ma," said the plainer of the girls in a whisper.
"What do you say? Do speak up, dear."
"Jam, ma," repeated her daughter; "he wants jam on the first piece."
"Well, give him it then. Only this once, now, darling. You shouldn't tease him so, Mary—remember he's a very little boy."
Maryminorleant towards him, and Conrad thought she muttered "Little pig!"
"Then you have nothing to do in London?" resumed the lady, as he followed her from the room.
"Quite all that I hoped to do in London I have done this afternoon," he smiled. "As a matter of fact, I don't suppose I shall call on anybody else before I leave." But he saw clearly that she wanted to know the women who were "high up," and he was self-reproachful. Distressed, he wished that he had made no reference to them in his letter.
"Sha'n't you even go to see your cousins?" she persisted. "But you say you're not sure if they're in town? If they are, any day would suit me. If they would drop me a line——"
"No," he said, "I'm not sure; I haven't heard from either of them since they left Sweetbay." He was at the point of mentioning Nina's address; he reminded himself that he had a duty to Nina too.
Yet a moment later he succumbed. The remembrance of what he had written, even civility itself, prevented his parrying so keen an aim as Mrs. Barchester-Bailey's. He mentioned the address, and he said how pretty the plain children were, and regretted that her husband was not in. He sat smiling at boredom for five minutes longer, and when he escaped at last he had the reward of knowing that she thought he admired her very much. He had owed her that.
As he felt the air in his lungs he thanked heaven. Well, he would explain the occurrence to Nina, who would consider him an idiot, and tell her to expect a speedy visit. The rest lay with the visitor herself—with her powers to please. For his own part, never, never did he want to see her again. He walked fast, her image still pursuing him. What an exhausting woman!
He dined at his club and wondered if it would be bad taste for so new a member to make a complaint to the committee. Afterwards he drifted into a music-hall, where quailing brutes who had been created to scamper on four legs were distorted to maintain a smirking brute who was unworthy to walk on two. The animals' sufferings diverted the audience vastly, and the applause sickened Conrad more than the club dinner.
And though his disappointment at Tooting may sound a very trivial matter, it continued to depress him. He was sad, not because one woman was different from what he had hoped to find her, but because the difference in the one woman typified so much that seemed pathetic to him in life. And to sneer at him as a sentimentalist absorbed by opal-tinted sorrows blown of indolence, would not be conclusive. It is, of course, natural that those of us who have to struggle should set up the Man of Leisure as a figure to be pelted with precepts—indeed, we pelt so hard at the silver spoon in his mouth that between the shies we might well reflect that Ethics is often analiasof Envy—but with Conrad the leisure was quite recent and the sentiment had ached for years. In his case wealth had not formed a temperament, wealth had simply freed it.
Let us accept him as he was. My business is to present, not to defend. Were tales tellable only when the "hero" fulfilled both definitions of the word, reviewers would have less to do. If I could draw, a frontispiece should enlist your sympathies for him: "Conrad and the Coquette;" for that is Youth—a laughing jilt showing us her heels, and tempting over her dimpled shoulder as she flies.
This is where you begin to think me insufferably dull. I see your fair brow clouding, I can see your beautiful lips shaping to say, "Oh, bother!" Be patient with me; we have arrived at a brief interval in which nothing particular happened. It is true that soon afterwards Conrad went to Monte Carlo, but details would not interest you in the least. Be gracious to me; yield to the book another finger-tip—I feel it slipping. Say, "Poor drivel as it is, a man has written it in the hope of pleasing me." For he has indeed. On many a fine morning I have plodded when I would rather have sunned myself where the band played; on many an evening I have wound my feet round the legs of the table and budged not, when the next room and a new novel—paid for and unopened—wooed me as with a siren song. And all to win a smile from You.
I have thought of you so often, and wanted to know you; you don't realise how I have longed to meet you—to listen to you, to have you lift the veil that hides your mind from me. Sometimes in a crowd I have fancied I caught a glimpse of you; I can't explain—the poise of the head, a look in the eyes, there was something that hinted it was You. And in a whirlwind of an instant it almost seemed that you would recognise me; but you said no word—you passed, a secret from me still. To yourself where you are sitting you are just a charming woman, with "a local habitation and a name;" but to me you are not Miss or Madam, not M. or N., you are a Power, and I have sought you by a name you have not heard—you are my Public.
And O my Lady, I am speaking to you! I feel your presence in my senses, though you are far away, and I can't hear your answer. I do wrong to speak like this; I may be arraigned for speaking; I have broken laws for the honour of addressing you—among all the men who have worshipped you, has one done more?—and I will never offend again. But in this breathless minute while I dare, I would say: "Remember that overleaf, and in every line unto the end I shall be picturingyou, working for you, trembling lestyoufrown." Unto the End. Forgive me. I have sinned, but I exult—it is as if I had touched your hand across the page.
Conrad drifted from the Riviera with the rest, and lingered through June in Paris; not on the left bank this time—in the Paris of the Boulevards and the Bois, where he was a world away from the quarter where he had run to clasp the illusions of his youth, and stayed to mourn them. Although he was finding life pleasant, there were moments when he looked at the bridges, and felt wistful; but he never crossed one—he knew now that he could not walk over the Pont Neuf into the Past.
Nor was it with any definite purpose that he returned to London. Amusement, agreeable society had lulled that desire to revisit old scenes. And his experiments had been such failures: the endeavour to recapture his fervour as an art-student; the ludicrous attempt to revive in cynical adults the buoyant comradery of childhood; the interest in the little girl whom time had turned into the least interesting of women—it was with a mental blush that he recalled these follies. If he thought no less tenderly of his youth, he thought of it less often; if he was still liable to a sense of bereavement, he was now idling as conventionally as any other man of his class.
He arrived in London while the sun shone, and told the cabman to drive to the Carlton, where some Americans whom he liked in Monte Carlo had talked of staying. After he had made himself presentable, he descended to the palm court, and ordered tea, since tea was in evidence, and glanced round the groups that sipped and chatted. His Americans were not there—perhaps they had been faithful to the American hotel. By-and-by he inquired about them, and learnt that they were unknown. He was hipped, for they had been companionable, and one of the women was very pretty. He felt rather "out of it" among the dawdling groups.
During dinner he asked himself to what theatre he should go. He remembered reading recently that a farcical comedy had scored a great success, and decided to go to see that. One of his oddities was a reluctance to inconvenience people by passing in front of them in a theatre after the curtain had risen, so he didn't dally at the table. The piece began at a quarter past eight. He had a cup of coffee, and a red Grand Marnier, and slid into a hansom. There would be just time to smoke a cigarette comfortably during the drive.
Hansoms darted everywhere in the pale evening—a man and a friend, a man and a girl, a man going to meet a girl. From Pall Mall the line of liveries rolled up endlessly, the broughams and landaus flashing glimpses of coiffures, and jewelled ears, and flowers. Where a block occurred in the traffic, a young man, who had paused on the curb, in a dress-suit that looked rather tight for him, bowed delightedly to the occupants of a victoria, and they beamed in response. The encounter was gratifying on both sides, for the young man had not often occasion to put on a dress-suit, and his acquaintances had not long acquired a carriage. Conrad, who missed the humour of the incident, was again sensible of loneliness in an atmosphere where everybody seemed to know someone but himself. But as he passed a barrow at the corner of a side street he appreciated the humour of a costermonger shouting, "Liedy, I can sell you some o' the finest cherries that was ever brought into this country!"
When he entered the house the overture was being played, and as he squeezed towards his chair a faint hope rose of discerning his Monte Carlo companions among the audience. He sat down, between a lady with a moustache and a youth who was trying to cultivate one, and scanned the profiles that were visible, but there was none he recognised.
The attendants were still busy; in his velvet fauteuil he watched the arrivals almost as eagerly as the Poor had watched them on the pavement. What white backs the women had when they slipped them out of their cloaks! he wondered if it was safe for them to lean against the seats. With what geometrical perfection the hair margined the napes of their slender necks! how did they do it?
The rising excitement of the overture warned him that it was about to bang to an end. His programme had fallen to the floor. He stooped for it with the idea of looking at the cast before the lights were lowered.
At this moment the lady in the stall next to him took out her handkerchief.
As she did so the curtain went up, and showed a divided scene. On the right, the stage represented the office of a matrimonial agent; on the left, the office of an agent who obtained "reliable evidence for divorce." But Conrad was not attending. The two careers were followed by the same person under different names—his introductions in the first capacity led to business in the second. He explained this soon after he bustled on, and the audience laughed. But Conrad did not hear. The lady still held her handkerchief, a scrap of lawn and lace that was scented with chypre—and he had been heaved to Rouen and was seventeen years old there, by the side of The Woman We Never Forget.
For in the life of every man, whether he will own it or not, there is at least one unmentioned woman whom he never permanently forgets while he keeps his faculties. She may not be the best, or the prettiest, or even the nicest woman he has loved—not her virtues, but his madness, graved so deep—and he will take the impression out sometimes when he has lost his figure and his hair, and when a boy who is storing experiences on his own account calls him "the governor." No, her qualities have as little to do with the matter as the date on her birth certificate. A woman isn't her age, or herself; she is what she makes us feel—like art, and nature, like a musical phrase, or a line of words, like everything of suggestion and mystery. The woman her husband hates and her lover adores, is an equally vivid personality to both men. That to herself she is vividly a third character makes no difference to the view of either of them.
To say that on the few occasions Conrad had smelt chypre during the last twenty years it had never failed to "remind" him of Mrs. Adaile—to say this would be to imply that he yielded himself leisurely to reverie, and it would sound truer than the truth. But the fact is that there was nothing voluntary at all in what occurred. It was a physical swirl that the smell always caused him, and it left him vibrant for a few seconds with the very craving, the very sickness of the time when he had worshipped her. He often thought of her, even strummed a song she used to sing, but in such moments as these he was less conscious of thinking than of feeling. Normally he looked back at her, with the reflections of a man; when he smelt chypre he was near her again, with the tremors of a boy.
Life is less consistent than fiction, even than tolerably bad fiction. "What perfume do you use?" wrote Maupassant to a correspondent whom he had not seen, but who had made him curious. Her answer—if it hadn't been "none"—would have meant a thousand times more to him than it would mean to the man in the crowd, but it might very easily have misled him too. In fiction, Conrad was dimly aware, Mrs. Adaile and chypre would never have been associated; it wasn't faint enough, fresh enough, it wasn't matutinal enough for Mrs. Adaile; to one who had not seen her it could never be evocative. Yet—perhaps it had been a passing fancy, even an experiment—in some days that were immortal to him chypre had been her scent.
The piece became funny by-and-by, and he began to listen to it, but though the sensations wakened by the lady's handkerchief subsided, the memories did no more than doze. Between the acts, and when he left the theatre, they beset him with full force. As he strolled to the club, he surrendered to them. He had recalled Mrs. Adaile so often, so often re-enacted scenes with her, and mocked himself that he had not played them differently, that the episode seemed to him by no means so remote as it was; it seemed much closer than many episodes that had happened since. It was with a shock in the reading-room that he counted the years. Was it possible? Good heavens! how time flew. It indicates the fervour of his mood to say that when he made this reflection it had to him a sense of novelty.
Then she must be—Again "Good heavens!" That girl!—for she had been but a girl, although she was married and he had felt himself a child beside her. He remembered the afternoon when she came to the hotel and he told his people that "the most beautiful woman he had ever seen" had just arrived. Well, she figured still as one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. But was that twenty years ago?
What a babe he had been! And he used to believe himself sapient for his age.... Well, perhaps in some things! How stupid he must have seemed to her for a boy of seventeen! Yet she used to confide in him on the terrace. He could not have seemed so stupid to her after all? ... Innocent.
That night on the terrace—always the terrace, it appeared!—when she let him hold her hand, and bent her face to him, saying, "A mosquito has bitten me on the cheek—look." As if it were yesterday he could remember how his heart pounded, and the fatuous words he muttered in his tight throat. He wished forcefully now that he had had the courage! What atom of difference would it make to-day? Yet he did wish that he had had the courage. O imbecile! ... But how exquisite it all was; if it could only come over again!
There were no more than two men besides himself in the room; one of them was reading, and the other slept. The silence was absolute until a page sped in to bawl the name of a member who wasn't there, and sped forth to bawl for him somewhere else. The man who had slept said "damn" very softly, and turned to sleep on the other side.
Conrad lay back in the deep chair, and let fancy reign. There were many gaps, but there were moments that made the calendar unreal. He remembered intimately things that she had said to him—oddly enough, more of the things that he had said to her. He stared at his whisky-and-potash, and mentally relived the story. And this is the story he relived:—
The boy came to the French windows paint-smeared and tired. He had been to Bonsecours, where the monument of Jeanne D'Arc is now, and tried to make a study of the landscape from the Cemetery. On the boat—they had no dream of electric trams then—the immensity of his failure had filled him with alarm. A tall, slight woman was standing in the salon, with her back to him. She wore a pale coloured travelling coat, and a hat with a wing in it. As his step sounded on the terrace she turned, and he forgot the landscape. He passed awkwardly, and was troubled afterwards by the thought that he should have bowed.
He said to his mother: "The most beautiful woman you've ever seen is downstairs; I wonder if she means to stay."
"Sheisstaying," answered his mother. "She's Grice Adaile's wife—the man who made that speech in the House the other day. Well, is Bonsecours worth going to?"
"Rather!" he said. He was still thinking of the woman's delicate, wistful face.
He thought of it while he dressed for dinner. He had thought of nothing latterly but that he would be studying art in Paris soon, had wished for nothing but to escape before his parents could withdraw their consent. All at once he would have regretted to learn that he was leaving suddenly.
At table she was opposite him; she sat next to Miss McGuire. He perceived that they were friends and was dismayed, for Miss McGuire considered he had been impertinent to her and no longer spoke to him. He recognised blankly that the beautiful woman would be told he was a cub.
If he had done wrong his punishment had overtaken him: Mrs. Adaile vouchsafed no word to him for days. Her disapproval humbled him so much that he used to leave the salon when she was laughing with his mother and the rest. He hoped she would observe he was humiliated, and be stirred with pity; it seemed to him he must awaken her respect by the course he was adopting. Incongruously there was an element of unacknowledged joy in his distress; it was not without its exultation, to think that Mrs. Adaile was being heartless to him—to feel that she was making him suffer.
But it was with thanksgiving he heard that Miss McGuire had said she wished he would apologise; she had forbidden him to address her. He followed her from the dining-room, and begged her pardon in the hall. She replied: "You're a nice boy really; I'm so glad you've said you're sorry." He wanted to tell her that he appreciated her kindness, but he could only falter, and grip her hand. It discomfited him to know that he was blushing.
In the afternoon he was sitting on the terrace, with a sketching-block on his knees, and Mrs. Adaile came out through the windows. She sauntered to and fro. He couldn't lift his eyelids when she approached, but each time he listened, tense with the frou-frou of her skirt. All his consciousness was strung to the question whether she would stop.
"May I look?" she said.
The sensation was in his chest—he felt as if his chest had gone. She stood there, amused by his symptoms, for two or three minutes, and moved away. He was incredibly excited, boundlessly happy until he began to think of the better answers he might have made. Visions of the evening and the morrow dazzled him; when he went inside it was not the same hotel to him, they were not the same rooms. It does not take a woman six days to create a world for any man.
By the end of the week he talked to her often and freely. At the end of a fortnight:
"I used to be afraid you'd never say anything at all to me," he owned.
"I thought you weren't very nice," she said.
"Miss McGuire told you things about me?"
"She told me as soon as you apologised to her, too. I was pleased you did that, even if you weren't in the wrong."
"Wouldn't you ever have taken any notice of me if I hadn't?"
"I did notice you," she smiled.
"Did you? But 'ever spoken to me,' I mean?"
"I don't know. We shouldn't have been such good friends as we are. I've never liked any boy as I like you, Con."
He ached to tell her how infinitely grateful he felt, but he could not find a word. They walked up and down together. Perhaps she understood. On a sudden he thought how cruel it was that the end would come when he went to Paris, or when she went to England. In that moment instinct taught the lad as remorselessly as experience teaches man. Heknewtheir friendship was the merest incident to her, and the hurtfulness of the knowledge squeezed his throat.
"If we meet again one day, you'll give me a stiff little bow and pass by," he blurted.
"Con!" she murmured. "Why, I've become chummier here with you in a little while than I am with people I've known at home for years."
Still instinct was heavy in the boy.
He always spent the morning out of doors with his brushes; soon he found himself restless during the morning, impatient to return to the hotel. And he did not know he was in love with her. It did not occur to him as possible he could be in love with her. He had absolutely no suspicion.
It was still more extraordinary because he had so often thought he was in love, and gloried in being so; when we are very young, half the pleasure of being miserable about a girl consists of exciting comment, and pretending to be offended by it. Yet no idea of falling in love with Mrs. Adaile had crossed his mind. Perhaps it was because she was married. Perhaps it was because he was for the first time really in love.
Through most of the stages the boy went without an inkling of his complaint. One day his father said to him, "You've caught it very badly, Con," and laughed a warning. The boy was startled. He went away bewildered, and asked himself if it was true. When Mrs. Adaile sat with him on the terrace that night he was self-conscious and husky. For once her presence was scarcely welcome. It rather frightened him, though he would have died sooner than admit the shameful word to himself.
Afterwards he did not know how it came to pass, but she used to confide to him that her husband wasn't very kind to her. He was in London, and she sighed when she referred to going home. Her sighs were very plaintive, and her self-pity was sincere, but it was nothing to the pity that overwhelmed the boy.
"People don't guess how unhappy I am," she said to him one evening.
"I wish I were a woman," he muttered; "I can never tell you how sorry I am for you, and if I were a woman I could put my arms round you, and you'd know."
It was a beautiful thing to say, but he said it badly, because he felt it too much to make it effective. No woman should deride a boy's love. It is ludicrous, but it is ludicrous only because it is so genuine. He has not learnt yet to trick the truth out. He does not know yet that before one could make converts to the very truths of God they had to be presented with art.
"Have you any idea when you'll go?" she inquired. He was to travel with a friend, who was visiting in England.
"I may get a letter any day," he answered.
"Are you in a hurry?"
"No."
"I thought you were?"
He was dumb.
"I've been quite loyal to you—I haven't said a word of what I think to your people when they've talked of you."
"I knew you wouldn't. It only needs a word to make them back out."
"I wouldn't let you go ifIwere your mother. Supposing I did spoil it all for you? How you'd hate me!"
"No, I shouldn't," he said.
"Why? Have you changed your mind, then—don't you want to go after all?"
"I shouldn't hate you, because I couldn't hate you whatever you did," he explained, haltingly. "Yes, of course I want to go, but—but I don't want to go yet."
They sat down, and there was a pause. In the pause, his consciousness of her presence grew queerly acute, almost painful.
"What's the scent you've got on?" he asked, unsteadily.
"Chypre," she said; "do you like it?"
She played with a ring she wore, and showed it to him. He touched the ring—and in a tumult of the spirit was holding her hand. They sat silent again. He knew that he ought to say something, that she was waiting for him to say something, that his long silence was ridiculous—and he could think of nothing to say. He was at once tremulous with joy and faint with fear—the fear that she would withdraw her hand before his effort had wrenched out words.
She withdrew it. He gazed before him blankly. When he was a man, and recalled that evening, he wondered whether the atmosphere had seemed so much a part of his emotions at the time as it did in looking back. He wondered whether, in his heartthrobs and his sickness, he had been acutely conscious of the black shrubs in the moonlight, of all the soft sounds and odours that stole up on the air. He thought not. Yet long after her features, which he tried to vitalise, were hazy to him, he could still see clearly the position that the two chairs had occupied, could have sketched the terrace almost with the accuracy of a plan, and felt the night air of Rouen in his throat.
Presently she said:
"The head-waiter thinks some people who came from Italy must have brought the mosquitoes in their luggage."
"Oh?" said the boy.
"I believe this is a mosquito bite on my cheek," she added. "Look!"
She turned her cheek, and leant forward. He leant forward too. Her face had never been so close to him, his fingers craved its softness—he only realised that, with courage, he might touch it with a finger. And the courage was not there.
"My hand is cold," he said, hoarsely. And afterwards, too, he used to wonder whether he had been excusing his cowardice to himself, or to her.
And yet it was with no abashment that he tramped his bedroom later. It was with an exaltation that panted for vast solitudes. The whirl of the unexpected was in his being. The marvel of her hand, the marvel that she had let him hold her hand, uplifted him beyond belief. And through all the turbulence of his pulses and his mind there was not a carnal thought, not an instant's base imagining. He adored her without desire, without reflection, without asking what he adored.
When he was alone with her once more during some minutes he tried, trembling, to examine the ring again.
"No," she said gently; "it's wrong."
And in the next few days nothing happened, one day was like another.
Then the date of his departure was settled. He looked for her as soon as he read the news, sought her dismayed because he was to go, and twice unhappy because on his last evening she would be out. She was shopping, and he met her at the corner of la Rue Thiers, where the horlogerie is.
"I'm going," he said; "and my chum can't stay here!"
"Is it fixed?" Her eyes were startled. He had never known her eyes were quite so blue.
"Yes, he's travelling at night, and won't break the journey. I'm to be at the station."
At six in the morning he was to be at the station—the next morning but one. The train reaches Rouen at an earlier hour now, but the service was a tidal one twenty years ago. When she had scanned the letter neither of them spoke for—it seemed a long time to him. They had crossed the road into the Solférino Garden, and he stood beside her with his hands thrust in his jacket pockets, staring at the little lake.
"So we shall soon be saying 'good-bye,'" she said at last.
He nodded miserably. "To-morrow evening about nine o'clock," he said.
"Why so early?"
"Have you forgotten you're going to a dance with Miss McGuire to-morrow night?Ididn't forget; I thought of it directly I saw the date. What time shall you begin to dress?"
"You don't know me very well, Con, after all," she murmured.
His heart leapt; he pretended not to understand what she meant.
"Don't I?" he asked; "why not?"
"How could you think I'd go out on your last night here?" she answered.
"You won't go? ... Oh, Mrs. Adaile!"
And as they moved away under the horse-chestnut blossom, it was less dreadful to him that he was going to leave her.
Why did she do it? It could not have been to test her power over him; it could not have been to wound him wantonly. Who shall say why she did it! A woman is often unable to define her motive to herself. Two men came into the hotel after dinner—acquaintances both—and she became engrossed by them, and sent up little peals of laughter, and seemed to like their admiration, which was presumptuously barefaced. He sat tongue-tied in a corner, unwittingly providing equal entertainment for other women in the room. Though she knew he was suffering, she threw no glance to him. And that evening the boy entered on another stage—the stage of jealousy.
The fires of jealousy are always horrible, and there is none they ravage more fiercely than the lad whose torture the world finds comic. There is none, because no man, nor woman, nor young girl in such a pass, is so totally defenceless as a lad; to none other than a lad, when his love is outraged, does nature forbid even the resource of simulated dignity. His torments are intensified by the knowledge of his ineptitude. Always present is the thought that he ought to adopt an attitude which he is too raw to discover, and he is prostrated in perceiving that beside his glib rival he looks ridiculous and a lout.
After a clock had struck many times, "She makes herself too cheap," Mrs. Van Buren saidsotto voce, and Madame de Lavardens assented by a grimace. The boy overheard, and got up, and wandered away. A new misery tightened his throat, and burned behind his eyeballs. She had been disdained! his world rocked. He was degraded, vicariously—for her sake, degraded that his Ideal should afford these people the opportunity to disparage her. Resentment beat in him; he longed to vindicate, to lay down his life for her—and knew himself a cipher, and that the tempest in his soul would be thought absurd. Disdained! It was paramount, bitterest. The humiliation of neglect dwindled; all his pain, all his consciousness was the hurricane of humiliation that he felt forher.