XIII
FIND SOUL—FIND SORROW
In the middle of the night that followed his whole holiday Paul woke and cursed himself, at length and with conviction. Years ago, in the good old days when punishment was punishment, with no nonsense talked about reformatory intent, among the toiling groups that tilled the earth, made the road or lightered the harbored vessel, here and there a man was noticed who dragged his left leg a little as he walked. He was not crippled, nor deformed; he was likely, indeed, to be strong and formidable beyond his fellows; he did his day's work and earned his day's wage with the best. But the leg dragged—always would drag. And the reason passed in whispers: this was an old galley slave—a man who had worked at thebagnio. His leg, from force of habit, still paused for the effort that once dragged ball and chain behind it.
I had not known Ingram long before I guessed that, at one period of his life or another, women had meant a great deal for him, but that they had never meant happiness. In what did the impression reside? I can't say. In a regard perhaps—an inflection of voice—an over quickness to catch sorrowful meanings—in what he did not say quite as much as in what he did. But I was as sure of it then when I knew nothing as now when I know everything. He could not always have loved in vain. Partings there had been, tearful, emotional, reluctant, but always partings. Letters reached him even now through changes and redirections, letters filled with bright, helpful gossip, of the new friends—the unimagined husband—the children that might so easily have been his; with only here and there between the lines, for his eye to see and no other, the tenderness that women keep for the man who could win their regard but not their persons. And if Ingram felt sure of anything, I knew he felt sure of this: that the chapter of his life from which they were a legacy was closed and dead—a great stone rolled to the door of its tomb, sealed and mortised, and guarded by a whole cohort of wise intentions. And now, in a week, he had fallen—fallen as precipitately as the greenest of "rash and inconsiderate youth." Relying on his experience and disillusionment, he had broken the covenant of the old, wise king, and, into some unsuspected vacuum of his heart, a pretty face, a plaintive regard, a few surface tricks of dress and manner had rushed and were not to be extricated without endless pain and trouble. Again and again, as he turned from side to side in the night watches, he went over the images of his fall, for so, in all seriousness, this strange man regarded it. He felt the thrill of the young throat stretched to meet him, caught the fragrance, so faint—so faint that he had not noticed it till then—of the orris root in which her clothes had lain folded; heard the little fluttering sigh as his fervor stopped her breath. It had been the first kiss of passion that had ever touched her lips; he knew because——oh! never mind how he knew. What, exactly, he wondered, and was not the first to wonder, did such a kiss signify to a good woman? Board and bed, he surmised dimly, at some future date; home and home circle, taxes and life insurance, doctor's bills, children clapping their hands round Christmas trees. And this from him! He laughed out in the darkness—so loud that the glass shade of the lamp by which he had read himself to sleep vibrated with the sound. From him, a mere embodied intelligence, driven by loneliness and mental suffering to self-expression, doomed now, while life should last, to breed and bear the calamitous offspring of the brain.
He had given her his address because that much seemed called for in decency, but he did not expect a letter for a while. Yet when, after a few more feverish and wakeful hours and the immense solace of a cold tub, he passed into the sitting-room in his bath robe, a letter lay on the breakfast tray that he knew could be from no one else; a square pale mauve envelope, with an ingenious flap, addressed in a straggling schoolgirl hand.
"Dear Mr. Ingram,"I hope you got home safe and had noharesbreathescapes from motors. I was nearly run over the other day, I only got on the pavement in theknickof time."I have put the bird in theconservateryand given him a lot of seed, he throws it about with hisbeek, but hasn't eaten any. I haven't given him a name because I don't know yet if he is going to live. Ma was crazy, but Ismouthedher down."No one ever kissed me before, but some one did hold my hand once quite a long time. I couldn'triggleit away."Rock is ill, he has eaten aplumbstone I think and will have (to) have somecasteroil. If it was one of mine that makes it this year not never. How exciting!"I shall be at 14, Hanover Place to-morrow till 4.15.P'rapsyou would be near there if you are not writing."I remain,"Your loving friend,"Fenella."
"Dear Mr. Ingram,
"I hope you got home safe and had noharesbreathescapes from motors. I was nearly run over the other day, I only got on the pavement in theknickof time.
"I have put the bird in theconservateryand given him a lot of seed, he throws it about with hisbeek, but hasn't eaten any. I haven't given him a name because I don't know yet if he is going to live. Ma was crazy, but Ismouthedher down.
"No one ever kissed me before, but some one did hold my hand once quite a long time. I couldn'triggleit away.
"Rock is ill, he has eaten aplumbstone I think and will have (to) have somecasteroil. If it was one of mine that makes it this year not never. How exciting!
"I shall be at 14, Hanover Place to-morrow till 4.15.P'rapsyou would be near there if you are not writing.
"I remain,
"Your loving friend,"Fenella."
Paul read the strange letter over and over again, from its prim apostrophe to the shy little breath of sentiment at its close. The ink just there was a lighter color than the rest. It was evident that she had let the letter go dry while wondering how to sign herself.
"Ho! ho!" he said aloud. "So Providence has given you a loving friend, has it? Now what's a man like yourself, Paul Ingram, to do with a loving friend and a conscience at one and the same time?"
"Scrap the conscience!" said counsellor the first. "The girl's pretty and sweet."
"Pull out before any more harm's done!" said another. "She's quite innocent."
"Give time a chance," said the third—the one that outruns the hounds but never quite catches up with the hare. "You've got to hurt either her pride or her heart by making an end of it now, and there's always a chance her whim will wear out if you wait."
"That's what I'll do," said Ingram at last. "I'll tell her bit by bit what I am, and hint at what I'm likely to become. She'll see reason. There's often a lot of hard hog-sense at the bottom of these butterfly women."
And, by way of starting well, he took her out to tea that afternoon, and was so genial and natural that the last shadow of self-reproach vanished from the poor child's heart. And before he left her he had promised to call for her at her home. He knew by now that she did not belong to his natural enemies, and the knowledge made it harder to "pull out" than ever.
I have spent a good deal of time upon this idyll, without, I am afraid, leaving a very just or a very pleasant impression of Paul Ingram upon the reader's mind. But there are many excuses to be made for him. In the first place, he was very poor—poorer than any of us guessed. He had that profuse careless way with money which is quite as often a consequence of never having had it as of having had it always. The commonest, and perhaps the safest, investment of a little money is to make present life bearable with it while it lasts. But the future is quite another matter. A great golfer told me once that for days after he had won a momentous handicap he was obsessed and haunted by the stealthy patter of the feet that had followed him from hole to hole. And I have no doubt that many a night, while the child sat upon his knee and retailed her day's gossip, sweet and unsubstantial as the sugaryétrennesin a Paris confectioner's window, he was listening less to her than to the stealthy wolf-feet of poverty that he knew were creeping up behind him.
And then he was, both constitutionally and through circumstances, an unhappy man. There are souls so designated and set apart for sorrow that it may be said of them, almost without paradox, that they are only at ease when bearing it. They grow to recognize in mischance the environment that suits them best. In such a mind an isolated reason for happiness cannot exist. It pines away for lack of company. Nothing convinces the heart of its sorrow so surely as a sudden discrepancy in its ill-luck—a belated and unassisted piece of good fortune. Fate has these freaks with those upon whose unhappiness she has determined. It is not so much her concern that they should have nothing as that they should always have a little less than might make them happy.
I think he would have been a better lover for what, I if may be permitted a moment's plain speaking, I would call a little sane and healthy lust. But he was of the said race of literary lovers, the race of Swift, of Shelley, of Flaubert, who are as fatal to a woman's heart as they are harmless to her virtue.
Last of all, I expect the girl, in her ignorance, was exacting, and had no notion how the smoothest curb can gall. I know for a fact that she insisted on his writing to her any evening on which he was not able to see her, and I can imagine no torture more refined for such a man than to have been forced to sit down, at the end of a long day of disappointment and mental drudgery, and answer some foolish, fond letter in language she could understand, and into which no trace of theweltschmerzshould creep that was devouring his heart and killing hope and ambition by inches. Some of his letters which I have seen show that he took refuge in an irony and fantasy which make them something of literary curiosities. He addressed her by all sorts of strange names—"Crazy kid," "Dear Pierrette," "Maddest of March Hares." One letter is written in Quaker dialect.
"Sweet Friend,"As arranged betwixt thee and me I called for thee yestereve at the house of thy worldly acquaintance, but hearkening timely the laughter of fools from an upper chamber, which is like to thorns crackling under a pot, refrained, and did not venture. I pray thee walk soberly, and so farewell."
"Sweet Friend,
"As arranged betwixt thee and me I called for thee yestereve at the house of thy worldly acquaintance, but hearkening timely the laughter of fools from an upper chamber, which is like to thorns crackling under a pot, refrained, and did not venture. I pray thee walk soberly, and so farewell."
Some, written, I fancy, in the illiterate and misspelt jargon of the cowboy of the plains, are, to me at least, unintelligible. At last it became easier to call than to write at any time, and he appeared an ardent lover for the very reasons that made him a laggard one.
He put off the first call as long as he could, but a day came when it could be put off no longer. One foggy evening he found himself outside the railings at Number Eleven, and Fenella asked him if he was not coming in to show himself.
"I can't stay out late, you know, until you have," she said, with a little reproach in her voice. It was the first time she had spoken sadly to him.
Mrs. Barbour rose, a little flustered, as he came into the room, and thrust some family mending behind the cushion of her basket chair. Paul saw at once that she was of his own caste, and you never would have guessed how his heart went out to her. The heart was under disgrace just then, and a strict embargo laid upon its impulses.
"I am so pleased to meet you at last," said Mrs. Barbour, when the first civilities were over, "and so interested to hear you are a literary man. My husband wrote a good deal during his life."
Fenella was revolving, slowly, on the hearthrug before the mirror.
"Paul doesn't want to hear about books, mother," she said; "he's been reading stodge all day."
But Mrs. Barbour was already searching the shabby book-shelves, packed tight with tattered exercise-books, coverless magazines, broken cardboard boxes, and a host of other things for which book-shelves were never intended.
"My husband had a very fine library at one time," the widow went on, as she rummaged, "but most of the best books are upstairs."
"With our lodgers," Fenella further explained. "We're very proud of our 'paying jests'; aren't we, mummy. We've had them for years—and years—and years." She let her voice die away, and stretched out her arms slowly, indicating, indeed, a considerable time vista. "What an actress!" thought Paul, watching her.
"Here's one," said her mother at last, dusting a slim volume in a brown cloth binding. "Wherecanall your father's books have got to, Nelly?"
Ingram took the book from her hand. Its pages had never been cut, and it exhaled the forlorn odor of the presentation copy. Its strange title attracted him—
"Climatic Influences Upon the Reformation. A lecture delivered at Wells before the United Diocesan Congress, 18—. By the Honble. and Revd. Nigel Kedo Barbour, M. A."
There was a boastful engraved book-plate inside the cover—all plumes and scrolls and quarterings.
"Has my new hat come, mummy?" asked Fenella, suddenly, in the changed voice she kept for the serious affairs of life.
"I bade Druce take it up to your room," answered mother. "Have you had tea yet, dear?"
"No," said Fenella, incisively. "Ring for some while I go upstairs," and disappeared forthwith.
Paul kept his eyes upon the mottled page, but knew he was undergoing a scrutiny at once legitimate and disquieting. Mrs. Barbour spoke at last:
"I hope you don't think my little girl forward, Mr. Ingram."
Paul raised his eyes, closing the book upon his forefinger.
"I think her entirely charming."
"I know she's impulsive," the mother went on. "Yes—she is. It makes me anxious."
"You don't expect me to quarrel with her latest impulse," Ingram said, with one of his rare smiles.
Mrs. Barbour shook her head, secure in her own worldly wisdom and code of conduct.
"But men make mistakes. Don't they? You know they do."
"Of course they do. I've made hundreds, but never the sort I think you mean."
"You see," explained the clergyman's relict, "Fenella leads a strange life. Yes"—she repeated the phrase, as though she found it vaguely comforting—"a strange life. She's very bright and talented, and receives a great deal of attention; but for reasons that—well, forreasons, she can't see much of her friends here. I assure you, you are the first gentleman acquaintance she has ever asked in. You ought to feel very much flattered, Mr. Ingram."
"To an extent that verges on embarrassment, Mrs. Barbour."
"And then," the mother went on, in the heedless fashion that recalled her daughter, "she has a great number of fine relations who would be glad to show her attention if she'd make the first move. But Nelly won't be 'taken up'—that's what she calls it—taken up, by any one."
"Bravo!" said Paul. "Let us be fellow-conspirators, Mrs. Barbour, and confine her bounty to the laborious and deserving class."
"Oh my!" exclaimed Mrs. Barbour, with sudden helplessness. "You do talk like my husband! It's quite uncanny."
Fenella interrupted them, entering with noisy suddenness. The new hat, very large, very smart, was on her head. She looked quickly from one to the other.
"What've you two been yapping about?" she asked. "Mother"—in an aggrieved voice—"this beastly hat is an inch too big all round. I told Clarice so, but you and she would talk me down. You never take my part with dressmakers and people. It'll have to be altered. Hats are getting smaller. Have you rung for tea?"
"The maids are upstairs, dear. I'll go and get it myself."
As soon as she had left the room the girl seated herself on Ingram's knee and kissed him.
"What were you and mummy talking about?" she said, rubbing her lips after the kiss. "The hat's a bit in the way isn't it? I hate things in the way, don't you?"
"Not when I perceive them in time."
"Oh, but we aren't going to have any, are we, Paul? No difficulties—no quarrels—nothing horrid."
Ingram didn't answer her. Perhaps he was listening to those feet creeping, creeping up behind his shoulder.
So the months passed. When it was too late, Ingram tried to tell her what he should have told her at first. But Nelly would admit nothing—listen to nothing. She turned all the clouds inside out and bade him confine his attention to the silver lining. Upon the subject of her dancing ambitions she entered an unaccountable and fatal reserve, but there was nothing else in her life she did not share with him. Through whatever fringe of whatever society she happened to be adorning at the moment she dragged her lover gallantly. Fenella led captive was Fenella less dangerous, and the old popularity revived at the news of her attachment. Men liked Ingram, and he was thought "distinguished," "unusual," even in circles that called him "Crabbed Age" and "The Satyr" behind his back. (Besides, when were satyrs ever unpopular?) A few mothers held up shuddering hands, but the daughters, being of the new generation, only seized the occasion to preach the new evangel, and, generally, to cleanse and sterilize the imagination of eld. Speculation, in fact, having spent itself, accepted the situation; and by the time the long-planned foreign holiday arrived, her mother thought her "improved," "more thoughtful, and more womanly."