Shall the Christian maiden wearFlowers or jewels in her hair,When the blood-stained crown of thornOn her Saviour's brow was borne?
Shall the Christian maiden wearFlowers or jewels in her hair,When the blood-stained crown of thornOn her Saviour's brow was borne?
Here in this King's palace I revelled, my bosom swelling with vanity,—
Shall the Christian maiden's breastSwell beneath the broidered vest,When the scarlet robe of shameGirt her Saviour's tortured frame?
Shall the Christian maiden's breastSwell beneath the broidered vest,When the scarlet robe of shameGirt her Saviour's tortured frame?
And I was dancing. The first moments showed me that our Brethren-hatred was good hatred, and Elise's description of men a just description. They pressed insinuatingly, their contact sickened me. O Lord, Lord, to what fleshliness was I sinking?—
Shall the Christian maiden's feetEarth's unhallowed measures beat,While beneath the Cross's loadSank the suffering Son of God?
Shall the Christian maiden's feetEarth's unhallowed measures beat,While beneath the Cross's loadSank the suffering Son of God?
It was nightmare. Hatred of all this luxury and glare and godlessness flooded me in so physical and overwhelming a fashion that I was near to fainting. I turned from the fleshly men, the hard horrible women: Vanity, Vanity. There was more Resolution in that night's distaste than a thousand sealed envelopes. I pleaded headache, and refused to dance again. Elise was no comfort: she was indifferent tonight, not rebellious like me. "What did I tell you?" was the best she could do.
I could watch them no longer, and suddenly left the ballroom, to wander about the palace rooms, deliberately turning my thoughts to the old history of this place that I might forget the present loathing. Whether or no much reading be a weariness to the flesh, to me it was a resource unfailing: I could take refuge from the day's trouble in reviewing the glory of yesterday. As for the Tuileries Palace, I would wager that no other living English girl could have toldherself its tale much more fully: summoned more surely the long procession of its grey and glittering dead....
Catherine de Medici, first builder of the palace, warned by an astrologer that it would end in tragedy and flames. Louis XIV, the Sun King, lording it in Carrousel fêtes. Marie-Antoinette, Austrian woman, brought here with her poor husband from Versailles, brought back again a prisoner after Varennes. June '92, first invasion of the palace by the mob: threats, insults and obscene shouts. September '92, when the vile mob invaded, sent Louis and Marie to Conciergerie prison, came here to yell, steal, sack, blaspheme, and murder, hacking to pieces the old faithful servants of the crown, slashing with knives the dying and the doctors attending to the dying: prostitutes ransacked the Queen's wardrobes and wallowed, loathsomely, in her bed, kicking up their legs in democratic glee. Revolutionaries, Girondins, Mountainists, with Prince Robespierre—mean, savage and pure. The flat-haired Corsican youth. From here he went forth to be crowned, from here the Pope of Rome went forth to crown him. Here reigned the pomp and splendour of the Empire; hither entered Josephine in triumph and hence slunk out in disgrace; hither came Marie-Louise (Austrian woman too) in pomp processional, hence she fled a fugitive. These walls stared at the coming and going of the Hundred Days; at bellied Eighteenth Louis and Charles the Tenth his brother, last king of Ancient France; at Louis-Philippe of pear-shaped head and Brethering umbrella; at the wild mobs of '48 (my birth year), pillaging anew. Phrensy of peoples, folly of Kings: change and change about. Each new monarch had sagely wagged his head: "The others, ha ha!—I know the mistakes they made—I will profit by their example—my sojourn here is eternal—these barns are big, but I will build greater."
With my Emperor permanence had come at last. Him no fears could shake: not by divine right nor mere parliaments nor yet by plebiscite alone had he reached the palace, but by dreams, which alone come true. Here he had entered in a state which mocked his poor predecessors; here on the balcony he had stood, while the crowd in the gardens madly acclaimed him, and the Marshal St. Arnaud proclaimedthe Second Empire. Here in a pomp and luxury before unknown he had reigned and gloried. From these doors, at the Depart for Italy, he had sallied forth; to sally forth again to Notre-Dame, for the Te-Deum for Solferino, through roads strewn with flowers and adoration. He had made Paris the capital of capitals, himself the King of Kings, this Palace the centre of the universe....
One morning a letter reached the Countess from Lord Tawborough. He was at an hotel in Paris; might he take the liberty of calling?
My heart beat fast with joyful expectation.
He came, once and again. We went out together, sometimes with the others, oftenmost alone—on long walks in the Paris streets or excursions to Versailles and the environs. He was an oasis in this city-wilderness of evil faces: the sight of this Englishman, the clean-featured noble face, the fairy godfather to whom I owed all the rich experiences of the past year, Rachel's little boy, gave me a peaceful pleasure which after my hectic ambitions and intrigues was like dew after rain. The interest of his conversation, the sense of worth and superiority (to me) he imparted cleared my foolish brain and cooled my insane pride. "You'd call this gush if it were Suzanne who thought it!" whispered Satan. "Yes Sir," I replied, "but Tawborough is not Fouquier"—Everywoman's reply. Intellect, character, kindness, purity, race—it was a banquet of pure delight.
I tried to analyse for myself the reasons for the exhilaration which filled me in his presence, and in no other presence; not in Grandmother's, though I had loved her always: not in Elise's, though I loved her now. I could unravel no reasons, only ponder on the facts: (1) that his was the only face I knew which gave me a positive, physical joy, which filled me with tenderness and wonder. I would have fed on his face unceasingly if I had dared; (2) that in his presence alone the consciousness of self, of omnipresent Mary, left me, and I felt free, unconscious, unburdened, happy: if when he was at hand I stopped suddenly and asked myself "And Eternity?" I could laugh, and flout the bogey; (3) I apprehended that these emotions were reciprocal, and this was the chief delight of all.
Yet, I argued, this was not Love. Love was Robbie. Love was Christmas-Night, one day to be renewed. Still, what lesser word than love could describe the admiration, the gratitude, the fluttering tenderness, the pure exultant affection I felt? So in my diary I called it love (with a small l) and kept the capital for Robbie.
Soon after our return to Normandy I found on my breakfast-plate an envelope in my Grandmother's handwriting. As a rule her letters came in small square envelopes of the ordinary English shape and size. This one was long, plastered with extra stamps, notable-looking, parchmenty. Perhaps a consignment of tracts.
I found inside a heavy parchment document, covered with impressive copper-plate, together with a letter from my Grandmother, written not on her usual cream-coloured note-paper, but on whiter sheets with a thick black edging.
Could it be Aunt Jael? The first line reassured (?) me. It was Great-Uncle John, so rarely heard of, though known to me for ever as my Mother's "dear Uncle" and good man. It did not need my special greed and cunning to surmise rightly why his Will was sent to me. Inordinate hope—changing, as I rushed through my Grandmother's letter, into radiant certainty—stifled regret. (Regret would have been affectation, whispered Satan.) Without reading through the letter I stuffed the papers into the envelope and devoured my breakfast; preventing myself thinking till it should be over.
Suzanne had been watching me. "You have had good news I think?"
"Yes," I replied, unawares.
"I'm glad, because I noticed a black-rimmed envelope, and thought perhaps it might be bad."
In my boudoir I settled down at my leisure, luxuriously to learn the best. Grandmother's letter was one of the longest I ever had from her. As I read she came near me, became suddenly a part of the present. For an instant I saw her face,in the flesh. But the self that saw her was another Mary—Mary of Bear Lawn, full of fear and floggings, surrounded by God and Aunt Jael; not that Villebecq puppet. I could feel the selves changing place within me—and changing back....
All the old prayers, the immemorial pleadings. Love the Lord only, and His service. Dedicate this wealth to Him. Lay it not up where moth and rust do corrupt. His love is the only true riches. There is only His love, my dearie....
Grandmother dear! Noblest of all the Saints, now high among the Saints in Heaven.How much?I wondered.
I found a little summary made by the lawyer on half a sheet of notepaper, which spared my wading through the uncommaed intricacies of the Will itself.
Briefly: there was £400 for Grandmother, £200 for Aunt Jael, £100 each for Aunt Martha, Albert, and certain charities. All the rest—some £10,000, or about £500 a year—was left to me: me, Mary.
At first I could only think in exultant exclamation marks. Ten thousand Pounds! Five-hun-dred-pounds-a-year! (Sonorously mouthed.) Wealth, freedom, power!
I was my own mistress now. I could do any defiance, yet have my bread. Aunt Jael, urged the feeble voice of some-far-away Self. "Who is Aunt Jael?" asked Villebecq Mary: "Ah yes, to be sure, I remember." "I pay for the Child's music"—cry that two years ago could have rallied me to any revenge—"I" now stifled with a blandPourquoi? How silly it seemed, how silly Revenge always is.
No, I would buy a house of my own—the ambition which life in the Château, and other dreamings, had made my chief one now—and I would live there with Robbie for ever. The hunger, the longing possessed me more mournfully, more passionately than for long months. I flung myself on the bed and covered the pillow with kisses....
I would help the Saints, play Lady Bountiful to the Lord, send much money for the heathen, succour more than one needy labourer in the Lord's vineyard abroad. "Sops," sneered Conscience. "Go and work in the Lord's vineyard yourself. All that thou hast—"
How furious Uncle Simeon would be, I reflected pleasurably. The Will provided that if I died all my share was to go (after use by Grandmother during the remainder of her lifetime) to Aunt Martha and Albert. So my life, which he loathed, was all that stood between Simeon Greeber and the money that heso much loved. Unkindest cut: I had plentiful cuts to repay. And for him alone, of Child Mary's enemies my present self nourished hatred: for I knew he was an enemy still.
Could hedoanything?
Next morning's post brought the only letter he ever wrote me:—
No. 1, The Quay,Torribridge, N. Devon.November 7th, 1867 A. D.Dear Young Niece,—Often though one asks for your news—seeks to learn of your material and spiritual state—it has never before been one's sad pleasure to address you a letter in person. Two reasons have guided me today, after much prayer, to take this step. One is to express our sympathy—Martha's and one's own—with you in the loss of your Great-Uncle, who, though you never saw him in the flesh, must yet have been very near to you because of your knowledge of his goodness to your poor suffering Mother, now a saint in Heaven! Martha would have written herself, but she is not too well just now: the Lord is visiting her with bodily affliction. The other reason is to give oneself the opportunity of saying how glad one is to learn of the worldly good fortune poor dear Mr. Vickary's death has brought you. May you use it toHisglory! If—one will be frank—one had any pangs of husbandly and fatherly jealousy at thelessergood fortune of one's dear wife and son, they were quickly o'ercome. Prayer has won one's heart from worship of the Golden Calf, and made one able to be with you in spirit in this new privilege anddutythe Lord has conferred upon you. May you live long to use it in His Service is one's humble prayer!One hears of you often thro' Martha and your dear Grandmother. One rejoices to know that, in that Papist land, you still find the reading of His Word the chief of all your joys. One hears that you appreciate most that "Bookof the heart, andheartof the book," viz, the Psalms. Yes, one can find there words of succour for any circumstances, any frame of mind. The Psalms are prophetic ofHissufferings and glory, notably the 22nd, opening with His cup of agony when abandoned foroursins; like Isaiah 53 they point only to Christ (how one loves verses 5 and 6 for the peace they have brought one)—Christ revealed by His Word and Spirit!Poor dear Mr. Vickary, how quickly gone! One knew him not at all, but one felt it keenly. One believes he was naturally a good and lovable character—but how one longed to know something much more than that! One's own little son is giving one great hope and comfort. Though cursed with many faults, alas, of both character and temper; and humble as intellectually he may be; yet he reads the Word continually, and speaks to one freely on the subject, so that one can form a fair opinion of his spiritual state.Dear Martha and Albert send their love, in which one is glad, with prayerful sincerity, to join. One has been dwelling much lately on Philippians iv, 8.Accept one's best Wishes,Simeon Greeber.P.S. LAY NOT UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURES UPON EARTH. (St. Matt. vi, 19.)
No. 1, The Quay,Torribridge, N. Devon.November 7th, 1867 A. D.
Dear Young Niece,—
Often though one asks for your news—seeks to learn of your material and spiritual state—it has never before been one's sad pleasure to address you a letter in person. Two reasons have guided me today, after much prayer, to take this step. One is to express our sympathy—Martha's and one's own—with you in the loss of your Great-Uncle, who, though you never saw him in the flesh, must yet have been very near to you because of your knowledge of his goodness to your poor suffering Mother, now a saint in Heaven! Martha would have written herself, but she is not too well just now: the Lord is visiting her with bodily affliction. The other reason is to give oneself the opportunity of saying how glad one is to learn of the worldly good fortune poor dear Mr. Vickary's death has brought you. May you use it toHisglory! If—one will be frank—one had any pangs of husbandly and fatherly jealousy at thelessergood fortune of one's dear wife and son, they were quickly o'ercome. Prayer has won one's heart from worship of the Golden Calf, and made one able to be with you in spirit in this new privilege anddutythe Lord has conferred upon you. May you live long to use it in His Service is one's humble prayer!
One hears of you often thro' Martha and your dear Grandmother. One rejoices to know that, in that Papist land, you still find the reading of His Word the chief of all your joys. One hears that you appreciate most that "Bookof the heart, andheartof the book," viz, the Psalms. Yes, one can find there words of succour for any circumstances, any frame of mind. The Psalms are prophetic ofHissufferings and glory, notably the 22nd, opening with His cup of agony when abandoned foroursins; like Isaiah 53 they point only to Christ (how one loves verses 5 and 6 for the peace they have brought one)—Christ revealed by His Word and Spirit!
Poor dear Mr. Vickary, how quickly gone! One knew him not at all, but one felt it keenly. One believes he was naturally a good and lovable character—but how one longed to know something much more than that! One's own little son is giving one great hope and comfort. Though cursed with many faults, alas, of both character and temper; and humble as intellectually he may be; yet he reads the Word continually, and speaks to one freely on the subject, so that one can form a fair opinion of his spiritual state.
Dear Martha and Albert send their love, in which one is glad, with prayerful sincerity, to join. One has been dwelling much lately on Philippians iv, 8.
Accept one's best Wishes,
Simeon Greeber.
P.S. LAY NOT UP FOR YOURSELVES TREASURES UPON EARTH. (St. Matt. vi, 19.)
I was uneasy, but what could hedo?
The family learned my good news, hoped only it did not mean my leaving them. To do so had indeed never crossed my mind; for my plans, house-dreamings and the rest were, as always, watertight: in the compartment of daydreams, and having no connection with my immediate doings. Even had I wanted to go away, I was as penniless as before until my twenty-first birthday should arrive.
The first two or three days after the Windfall I gave only these surface-thinkings a hearing. All the time—even from the very second the news entered my brain—Other Self was murmuring, though for a foolish day or two I fought her down. Then, one silent night, she broke loose, crashed through the silly web of pride, greed, and heathen-helping, and rained at Snob-Mary (whom "I" loathed this night till I could have spat in my loathing) the hard questions that only the fools who dare not face them say are not worth facing.
Are you not commoner, meaner, lower, since this money?
Is not the Safety you now possess utterly undeserved, selfish, fatal to your soul?
You have your wealth: how will God get even?
£500 is a goodly treasure: but what will it serve you 500 years from now?
Will gold protect you from Eternity?
Are you happier, any happier at all?
Life was a search for the happiness that is the secret of the world. The key was not of Gold.
We had arranged to spend a certain day in Rouen, but when the day came I did not feel well: I was tired and inclined to be feverish. The first sign of a coming illness, to which bad dreams and bad conscience (Money) were each contributing. I asked to be left at home. The Countess and the two girls went away by the early train; de Fouquier also was to be absent for a whole day, visiting some distant farms. I was alone.
I was restless, and could not settle down to read or even to think. A ride might cheer me up, I decided, so I went down to the stables and ordered the horse I always rode. Then I went upstairs and put on my riding-habit. By the time I was downstairs again, I felt tired and disinclined. I sent the horse away, and threw myself down in a chair in the great dining-room, without changing back into my ordinary clothes. I still had the whip in my hand.
I cannot have been more than half awake, for though I had a dim notion of Gabrielle retreating through the curtains and depositing a gentleman in the room, I remember nothing in the way of announcement or explanation. Some one was there: who or how or why I did not know. I took in that he was tall, dressed like a gentleman, and silver-haired; but at his face, for some vaguely-felt reason of half-awakeness or self-consciousness or fear, I could not look.
"Good day, Sir," I said, shunning his eyes, "pray won't you sit down." Naturally I spoke in French.
"Thank you, perhaps I will," he replied in languid and exquisite English, utterly ignoring the fact that I had spoken in French. "I am happy to meet a fellow-countrywoman in this Papist land."
The ancient familiar jargon flung at me so unexpectedly, and in a voice that matched it so ill, roused me to immediate hostility. And was my French so bad that he must needs assume I was English? Or did he know? But it was my ownannoyance at his Christian phrasing that annoyed me most. Though, to be sure, the voice was not a Christian's. Who could he be?
I looked more boldly, though still avoiding his eyes. It was impossible to guess his age. The fresh skin and beardless chin were a boy's, the carriage suggested a man in the prime of life, the headful of silvery-white denoted venerable age. The features were small, patrician, womanish; the mouth especially being too small for a man's, while full of pride and authority and race. A lordly and effeminategrand seigneur.
The eyes, I knew, were the key to the mysterious face, and at these I dared not look.
All these impressions must have been gathered in a second of time, for he seemed to be still in the same sentence.
"—Yes, I am happy to meet you, for I feel you are the Lord's." The languid voice fashioned such a mockery of our Brethren speech that for a moment I could have railed at him for Antichrist. Then I felt quickly that I was foolish, and let him go on. "Assure me that you are His, Mademoiselle, pray assure me."
"I may be," I said sharply, "but plain 'Miss' is good enough for me, s'il vous plait,monsieur."
"May-be, may-be!" he sneered, for I had roused his spite. "'May-be' is the cry of souls in torment, the watchword of the damned. Beware, young woman, of your woman's filthy pride. It is the snare of men, the source of all wickedness. Woman, subtle of heart and impudent of face, who hath cast down many wounded, whose house is the way to Hell—"
It was a madman. He had forgotten me, he had forgotten himself. He was hypnotizing himself with his own words; his eyes were wild and unseeing. I looked into them now. God, they were not his eyes, butmy own, just as I saw them when I stared in a mirror. I was bewitched, and could only go on staring, staring. The mystical excitement seized me, the sense of physical existence departed, more surely than ever before the imminent immanent moment was upon me, I had discovered the World, I was kissing the eyes, my soul moved forward to reach him—. I found myself stumbling up from my chair in his direction, and with my ordinaryeyes saw him still standing there, still intoning away, still almost unconscious of everything—but not completely, for he knew his power over me.
Suddenly, in the middle of a phrase, he stopped. I broke in quickly, in sanest worldliest fashion.
"I should be glad to know, Sir," I said coldly, "why in an ordinary sensible house, which is neither yours nor mine, you are favouring me with these extraordinary speeches. You have not the advantage of my acquaintance, nor I of yours. Is it Madame the Countess de Florian you called to see?"
"Ah true, true!"—there was no change of voice or manner, but a change (I felt) of person inside him—"Yes: I am an old friend of the family; I came over from Rouen, through which I was passing, and learn from the servant that by a piece of ill-fortune the family are in Rouen today. Here is my card."
I took it, without looking at it.
"I am an English friend who lives here," I said, "a kind of companion to the girls."
"Indeed, indeed! As I was saying"—and impatient of the length of this irrelevant interruption of his ravings, he half-closed his eyes again and resumed the tirade of piety and denunciation and woman-hating and hell-fire. He was mad. He was not mad. All the world was mad.It was not happening.
I was working myself up to face again the experience of his eyes, when my glance lighted accidentally on the visiting card in my hand.
The news entered my soul before my brain. It was not news; I had known it all the time. I stared at the printed letters one by one, not able to understand them, understanding them all too well. They stood up from the card, assumed hideous shapes. It was a nightmare. It was not true. I clutched at the side of the bed—no, it was the dining-room table against which I was leaning. There were the chair, the sideboards, the armour; there washe.
In my visions of this meeting I had always taken him unawares and now it was I who had been surprised. The second part of my dreams at any rate should not fail. I gripped the whip more tightly.
In crowding tumult every word of my Grandmother's old narration filled my heart and brain. I was ten years old again. She called me upstairs to her bedroom, pulled out the brown tin box from under the bed, drew forth the packet. Each phrase of each pitiful letter was marshalled by my inhuman memory before my eyes. Bitch, Bitch, he called her Bitch. As I looked at the white halo-crowned vile beautiful face before me, as he raved away, I did not listen: one by one I went over the ill-deeds and the cruel words I had to his account, feverishly I visualized my mother's suffering and sorrow till I was at the white heat for avenging them. The hardest part was to keep calm, sane: to keep my will in control of my emotions, which were bursting through all the ancient bonds of self-restraint, urging me tempestuously to await no perfectly planned moment, but to wound himnow.
Somehow I kept my voice steady. I interrupted; and, following my plan, veered him back into his maniacal misogyny.
"You have a poor opinion of our sex indeed. What, Sir, if you have a daughter of your own?"
"I busy myself not with my children of the flesh, but only with my children of the spirit."
He was impossibly real, impossibly like Grandmother's story. He meant what he said; there was no hypocrisy. I was proud of the handsome face, had a lunatic longing for the eyes.
I could kiss him, kill him.
"I had a child once, they tell me—at least her mother said it was mine—"
Now!cried Melodrama,Now!cried the Plan, and the Mary I had always visualized for this moment achieved herself as—suddenly, savagely—I cut him across the face with my whip.
He was an old man now, and fell to the ground helplessly. I lashed at him in a blind fury of revenge and righteousness, shouting horrible words of which I hardly knew the meaning. He tried to rise, but I struck him down again. "Bitch, Bitch, you called her Bitch. You swine, God is paying you back."
I knelt down suddenly beside him: "Father, will you kiss me?"
I have a distant notion of de Fouquier somewhere near me, of fading away into a world vaguer and colder than dreams....
There is a door that leads to happiness. Revenge cannot force the lock.
Everywhere there was a cold and mistlike darkness. Shapes emerged. Billows of whiter mist loomed nearer through the darkness, came from every corner of utmost space. The dark heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; the white billows poured in on every side, engulphed me, choked me with icy fumes. Was I dead, and awake in cold Eternity?
The mists turned into molten suns who scorched my body till only the soul was left, naked against the burning heat.
I died again, to wake once more in a new causeless Eternity of terror. Always there was a menace, everywhere a fear. I knew I was dreaming, in a dream within a dream; this gave me no ease, as I knew that dreams were true. Rather were the pain, the terror, the pursuit, more real, more awful, than waking ills. My agony of soul was unsearchable; there was no God even to cry to, for soon I was God, in His loneliness without help or escape, without beginning and without end.
Human shapes, with a horror and a power to do me evil far beyond their real stature in my past, pursued, reached, assailed, slew me. Always I died, and always I woke to a new universe of more sickening fear. Aunt Jael, Benamuckee—every evil face and evil fact from the old days of the life I had once dreamt on the earth, invested now with infinite power and unimaginable horror—menaced me, dogged my piteous flight along the unending pathway of Eternity. Uncle Simeon was there. The most horrible fear of my childhood, he was the most horrible now: an Evil more ghastly than human memory or imagination. "Twelve years ago, twelve years ago!" I whispered. He saw, rushed to the door, while I rushed madlier across the roof-room to my attic. This time he would outrun me. No, I was in time. I tore through the aperture and just had time, shivering in fright, to huddle down upon the floor before the key turned and he was in upon me, over me, peering at me with unpitying cruelty and hate, I laynumbly staring at the yellow-pale face, the savage blue eyes, the wet thin lips, the honey-coloured beard—now tinged with grey—just as it would be now in "real" life, I had enough reason in my dream to be able (in a frightening lapse from feeling to thought) to reflect. The face came nearer, gleamed physically its hate, seemed to breathe at me.
"Oh, God!" I prayed wildly, "Where am I? Tell me, oh tell me! If a dream, of thy pity awaken me: if life after death, slay me for ever!"
Now he was Simeon Greeber the poisoner; he was pouring something into a phial, he took a tiny white tablet—fear made my dream-eyes keen—and dissolved it in the liquid. Some one was propping me up, his eyes were gleaming with hope, he lifted the glass to my lips—
"Poisoner!" I shrieked and dashed the glass away. I put my hands swiftly to my eyes, and they wereopen. My bed, the Château Villebecq bedroom, half-drawn blinds, a hundred impressions instantaneously reached me. I was awake again, and in this world; my chin and neck were wet with the spilled liquid, and he was there, the this-world Uncle Simeon, hastily picking up bits of glass. He was real, and I knew it; he looked up and knew that I knew.
Could I sham him into doubting it? My senses had not properly returned, and flog my brain as I would, in a frantic second of endeavour, she could not tell me how or why I was here in bed, how or why Uncle Simeon was here beside me.
I smiled, assumed my frankest stare, and shammed that I was dreaming again. (Unless it was, after all, a dream unnameably real, a dream within a dream.) Staring at him fixedly as though I did not see him—and for a half-moment I saw doubt in his eyes—"Madam," I cried, "some one has tried to poison me. Find him, find him!"
Deceived or no, he was not losing his chance. "One will find him soon, one will find him," he whispered soothingly, the while preparing another potion below the level of the bed: "Meanwhile, dearie, drink something to make you better." Swiftly he seized me, grasped my neck as in a vice, and forced the glass against my lips.
Somehow I got my mouth away, somehow I managed to shriek, to shriek till I seemed to be losing my senses again. Indream-fashion shapes crowded round me once more: Elise and Suzanne—and the Stranger. Whether real shapes or not, they were Friends. I was saved. All would be well. And I fell into a dreamless sleep.
To this day I do not know with absolute sureness whether these moments were dream or waking life. Little is the difference, for is not the one as real, or as unreal, as the other?
I awoke to find Lord Tawborough by my bedside, with Elise for chaperone.
The latter soon pieced things together for me. Gabrielle had found me in a feverish half-unconscious state on the dining-room floor. She had got me upstairs, and hastily sent to Caudebec for the doctor, who pronounced me to be in a dangerous fever. Nobody seemed to connect my illness in any way with Monsieur Traies' visit. In the anxiety and fuss upon the family's return, Gabrielle had indeed forgotten even to mention it—till next morning, when his crumpled visiting card was found on the dining-room floor. Nor had any one seen him leave the house or grounds. (Mauled and aching, his hands before his scarred and kissed and bleeding face; crawling, slinking away.) My illness had soon become dangerous; it was doubted whether I could live, and Elise had sent urgent word to England. My Grandmother had written that she was, alas, too frail and old to come, but that she was sending her son-in-law, my Uncle, instead; she prayed the Lord in His mercy to spare me. Monsieur Greeber had arrived—an odd little man, very grateful for his reception—and had sat with me devotedly, all day and half the night, through the worst days, days when I was racked by the wildest fever, torn by ravings and prayers, nightmare cries and supplications, and had indeed been with me alone, in a brief period when the doctor and nurse were absent, at the moment in which I reached the turning-point and for the first time recovered consciousness. I had railed at Monsieur Greeber like a madwoman, suddenly become conscious, and then as suddenly fallen into a calm unfevered sleep. He had hoped to have stayed to see me well on the road to recovery, but word reaching him the very same day that his own son in England was taken ill, he had left hurriedly. The same critical day Lord Tawborough had reached the house, summoned by the news Elise had urgently sent him.
Meanwhile, in Cardboard-World, big events had ripened. Elise talked feverishly. I listened with mild interest. Who was Fouquier, anyway, and what did it all matter?
I learnt how the Countess had had a mighty quarrel with him, and how at last, after so many years, she had screwed up her courage to the point of deciding to dispense with him, though not yet to the point of telling him of her decision.
"And Suzanne?" I asked. "If she loves him as she did before, she may take it ill."
"I don't know. For months I have seen nothing to make me think so. Anyway, so far we have told her nothing. She knows nothing."
"And when the thunderbolt descends?"
"I am hopeful. The honour of the family...."
The days of my convalescence held a pleasure that banished the nightmare past. Almost the whole day the Stranger was at my bedside. Hour after hour I lay gazing at the dear distinguished face. I soon found that they all thought me less wide-awake and nimble-minded than I was, so I stared with impunity, imparting a touch of vacancy to my stare: a shield-and-buckler vacancy. I lay bathed in a new delicious sentimentality, worshipping him, drinking him in, idealizing him. He was my Mother's little boy; he had loved her; he had given me the first novel I had ever read, had shaped my first apprehension of nature's beauty. To him I owed my education, my social raising, my life of splendour here. For England he had kissed me Good-bye in the moment I had left her. It was a tender exultant joy to watch his face. He was hardly older than the Stranger of the Torribridge hillside morning ten years ago; though his hair was turning grey, a proud and princely grey. There was the same beloved countenance, manly yet gentle, clean, clear-cut, slightly sharp-featured; the same eyes, quizzical-whimsical, yet holding the kindness of all the world; the same intelligence, culture, race; the same maddening purity and nobleness; the same Call to Worship. With something added, not in him, but in me who regarded him: a knowledge that he was a man, that he was dear and desirable beyond other men, that nearness would be very beautiful. Sometimes, swiftly, sentimentality would flood andtransfigure my normal consciousness. My heart would pass through the last Gate of Tenderness, approach the portals of Love. Then in a crowding mystical moment the Vision changed, and it was Robbie: Robbie and I, we were kissing each other, radiantly; Christmas Night of long ago had become the present once again. The Vision would fade, and leave me staring at the Stranger, liking him, needing him, yet with my heart too full of the Vision to be able to wonder whatlovinghim might mean.
Love, in its only and ultimate meaning, in the sense of the mystery of this world, of Jordan morning, of the Holy Ghost, could only reach me, I saw once again, through one human being on earth, Robbie of Christmas Night. Who, where, how, what was he now?
My spirit would flag a little, and sink from the uttermost heights. Once below the level of that very highest heaven of all, Love the Madness passed, and the saner, warmer adoration for the Stranger returned.
What were his feelings? I was not sure. The kindness of his eyes, what was it? A kindness like that must be for every one, must hold a universal message. No, must be for one person alone, could be lighted only by the human soul he loved. Who? Hadhehis Robbie-girl? There were moments when I knew he loved me. More often and more surely, I felt there was a sentiment and a sympathy akin to my own, but quieter, nearer earth, less likely to stray up the steep Robbie-closed path to LOVE.
Yet I would play with fire, and, on the level where Robbie was not remembered, visualize myself loved by, wooed by, married by the Stranger. Swiftly I was on a lower level still, where Snob-Mary could wallow. To become a Peeress! "Not so very absurd," others might think. "After all, they were cousins, his mother and her father were first cousins, you know—though she was, of course, brought up rather differently, with some Nonconformist (sic) relations on her mother's side. However, blood will tell!" I knew better, knew that common Bear Lawn Mary was the real Me. Or was it? Except for the kinship of memory, how was she me at all? She was but a poor remembered Mary: what the I of today would be to the person inhabiting this body ten yearsahead. There was no such thing as permanence of personality, there was no such thing as anybody. Ever-different souls inhabit the same body; memory alone connects them with their predecessors, instinct alone makes them work for their successors. I must work for mine. I must try to deserve well of the coming Marys, seek to marry them well. Lady Tawborough!
His talk, far beyond Elise's even, was a high delight. He spoke of life, books, travels; of the South, which he knew the best, of the seven cities of Italy, the seven hills of Rome. Of his plans and hopes: how he would soon end his wandering and go back to Devonshire for good. Of his schemes for his estates, the work he hoped to do in the country, the book he might write, the position he might win for himself in the House of Lords. Always there was something he did not say, seemed to shrink from saying. Was it that he thought I was fond of him and did not like to wound me by telling me there was some one else: his girl-Robbie? Or was it—?
Those convalescent weeks rank among the gentlest memories of my life. My French friends were kind to me beyond deserts or hopes. I was restored to health in the daily companionship of a Vision of goodness and delight. My chief Revenge had been achieved. The nightmare life was away beyond the nightmare illness. Hate was now for ever behind me. I was a tenderer Mary.
Villebecq Mademoiselle, who would play melodrama, was achieving much less in her chosen way of business than still slumbering Bear Lawn Mary, who had played at life. And now, in these last days (as they were to prove) of the Villebecq existence as I had known it, she was to shew herself quite unequal to a rôle of garish prominence she was suddenly called upon to play. She quitted the stage, unaccompanied by plaudits or pity, and died of an empty heart.
The circumstances were these.
The first day or so after I left my bedroom I spent in writing up my Diary: making the notes on which the last three chapters are based.
The Countess' arrangements as to de Fouquier's successor were completed; the gentleman in question, a Monsieur de Beaurepaire, was ready to take up his duties in three days' time. De Fouquier knew nothing.
The day before the morning fixed upon for his dismissal I was sitting alone in the library, writing in my Diary. The door opened, I drew the blotting-paper protectively over the page. It was Monsieur de Fouquier, and he knew: knew everything. There was a look in his eyes—a look I have only seen once besides, many years later, on the face of a Russian nobleman, the night before he shot himself in the bedroom of a St. Petersburgh hotel—of wolfish desperation; desperate and wolfish as only the eyes of a selfish luxurious well-fed man can become. His voice, however, was still suave, unpleasantly suave.
"Ah, good day, Mademoiselle. I have come to say Good-bye. I am glad to have had the pleasure of knowing you so well."
"I am sorry," I replied (I think sincerely), "though, despite the long time I have been here, I could hardly agree with you that we have known each other well. We have so little to do with each other."
"Directly, perhaps," he said meaningly. "De vive voix, it is true, you have given me but sparingly of your thoughts and views. I have been able to learn to appreciate them, nevertheless, thanks to an occasional perusal of that charming book before you now. Oh, I read your language if I do not speak it.Vot vud Jesus do? Vot vud Jesus do?"—in mocking horrible English.
Shame flooded me, and hate. This monster, who for months had been peering into the secret places of my soul!
"Vat vud Jesus do?" he was repeating, with a sneer again and again.
"Stop!" I cried. "I will not listen to blasphemy."
"You will listen awhile to me," and he stood against the door, barring possible egress. "You have had a large share in the filthy campaign of lies and intrigues which has at last succeeded in turning me out of this house. I shall at least make sure that you are bundled out yourself. Before I go, this very day, I am going to supply this amiable and grateful family with a brief account of yourself and who you really are,—your dirty little shopkeeper relations in England, your common sailor of a grandfather, your vulgar canting old grandmother, your boozing aunt. Then a few words about your dear father, and your frankness with Madame la Comtesse on the subject of his recent visit: how odd that he did not live with your mother, how odd the little hints Monsieur Greeber was so good as to give me as to whether he was your dear father at all, how odd the charm of bastardy—"
"Monsieur," I broke in, "if ever I have a husband, he shall exact full payment for this. Go on insulting me, however. It will achieve nothing, it leaves me cold."
"A husband, ah yes—dear 'R'! How tender your many references to him. Strange though it should seem, this world is small, and suppose so seemingly irrelevant an event as my forced departure from this house in France should have some effect on dear 'R' in England? There is my dear friend Monsieur Greeber. Don't alarm yourself, there's a brave girl—"
"Get out!" I cried.
"When I have done. There are still other results of yourhandiwork to consider. The family's name, for instance? It will benefit, you think, from my departure? Monsieur le Comte—his honourable doings. Mademoiselle Elise—her passion for her sister—so pure, so natural, so sisterly—"
"Ten seconds, and if you're not gone, I shall shriek for help." I rose, pale with anger.
He came forward, seized me, glued his mouth to mine.
It was no stage-play now. In a strange flooding moment Mary the lover of Robbie reconquered the fortress of my soul. Thirty years later I can summon the odd physical-spiritual sensation as the selves did battle within me. Mine eyes beheld love, and this nightmare moment was its negation.
I only record the moment, shutting the spirit's memory as I write; think of it I will not, cannot. I struggled, for a second or two, without avail, wild with a nameless sickening fear; prayed in shame and desperation "Lord, deliver me: Robbie, forgive!" Then with a desperate movement I freed my face from the foul impact, and gave as heartrending a shriek as was ever achieved by virgin in distress.
He made swiftly to free himself, but now I held him tight, clipped him to me with such a new savagery and strength that although he knee'd and wriggled brutally he could not struggle free. Footsteps were approaching—I knew whose—and I managed, during one more second of supreme endeavour and complex anticipatory delight, to hold on.
Lord Tawborough entered, took him by the scruff of the neck, wrenched him away from me, and flung him out of the room.
I liked Lord Tawborough.
"Les hommes!" commented Elise. "So that's the end of friend Fouquier."
It was. That same day he disappeared from the Château for ever.
It seemed as though the house had been cleansed of a foul atmosphere. The Countess, though already worrying about troubles and dangers ahead, seemed for the first time mistress in her own house.
"Let him do his worst," said Elise, "it isn't very much."
Only Suzanne was nowhere about, seen by none of us. At dinner that night she was not present. Her bedroom doorwas locked, and she would reply to no one, admit no one. Next day we burst open the door, found the room empty.
Suzanne had fled.
* * * * * * *
It was the end.
It was the end of the Château Villebecq I had known, the end of the easeful days of bright comfort shot through with gay melodrama, the end of the Interlude. For two other women, mother and sister, it was the end for ever of this world's happiness; for the other herself too, as I learned long afterwards.
Madame de Florian crumpled up under the blow. All she had lived for—the honour of her name, the worldly success of her daughters—was lost. All her employment—the day-to-day strivings towards these two ends—was gone. In one night she seemed to shrivel up; to become at a stroke five times more wizened, more futile, more plaintive than before. Life, perhaps, had never had much to give her; now it held nothing. Her days were divided between regrets and self-reproachings, complaints, servant-scoldings and tears.
To me alone she confided her woe. I was the one kind soul she had ever known; Heaven had meant me to be her daughter! I gave her nothing from my soul—except pity, poor pity, and even this soon lost its first spontaneity; became conscious, conscientious—yet always I could see she was getting what I did not give: a sense of boundless sympathy and affection. In every mood and every mope she came to me for comfort, and—though I knew full well in my actress-heart that I was giving her nothing at all, no real love, no healing sympathy, only the shams and simulacra of these, served up with pity, luxurious self-comforting pity—always I saw that my shadow was her substance. She returned me a boundless gratitude; pathetic, delicious to my palate, cruelly undeserved.
"Ah Mademoiselle, there are not many like you! My life is over. I am a poor old woman alone. Only you understand. Stay with me, dear Mademoiselle."
And I did.
Elise took to her room, asked no comfort, refused whatI proffered, railed at me for being the real cause of her losing her dear one, spent long days alone in her bedroom weeping, and would not be comforted. After a few weeks, when no news came of Suzanne, she took really ill. When sufficiently recovered to travel, she went for a long stay in the South of France, Gabrielle accompanying her. At leaving she refused to see me, even to say Good-bye.
The new steward did not live in the house, now a deserted place, damp and cold in the long winter that followed, inhabited by memories, haunted by fugitive joys. Through the long days and nights, echoes of happiness would ring aloud through the emptiness, and sometimes I heard Suzanne's laugh on the staircase or the quick feet of friendly approaches in the corridor. Now that joy had taken flight, the great house became, like Bear Lawn of old, an atmosphere I understood and responded to. It is thus that I have chiefly remembered it ever since, it is thus that I remember it now.
I had no plans except—vaguely "soon"—to go back to Devonshire for good. When I mooted this to the Countess, her pleadings were so pitiful, so flattering, that I registered then and there the vow that I would stay as long as she wanted me. It was the one return I could give for the kindness I had received, the one way I could display loyalty to the good past of yesterday: quite a good way also, maybe, of laying up for myself treasure in Heaven.
So for many long and lonely months I stayed. Except the Countess I saw no one. I was as lonely as in the far-away days of my childhood, and soon it was to my childhood that I returned. Imperceptibly, just as a year or two back the Bear Lawn life had vanished, the present glory of Villebecq taking its place, so now it was Villebecq (though my body remained there) that vanished, and Bear Lawn again that took its place. In bed at night, if my soul was thinking of Mary, the old dining-room or the cold blue attic formed the physical setting in which, as a person detached, I always saw her. In the darkness my bed would always revert to the Bear Lawn position, with the wall facing me as I lay on my right side, although in reality in the Villebecq room it was behind me. Even awake and in the day-time, the articles of furniture in my boudoir often changed as I watched them to the furniture of the olddining-room, the sense came over me that Villebecq was but a dream I had dreamt one night at Tawborough, a dream from which I was at this moment waking up, a dream that already I could not properly remember.... But—Bear Lawn too was a dream—I had only dreamt that I was Mary. Who was I? Was I any one? Oh, terror, was I God Himself? With a cry I fell on to my knees.... The fear passed, it was the Villebecq boudoir, I was rising awkwardly to my feet. (Had anybody seen?)
Even in normal and placid moods, the first two years of my life in France soon appeared as a faded memory, the remembrance of something I had been told rather than something I had lived myself. The whole mosaic of new glittering impressions, storm and stage-play, ease and luxury and chatter and intrigue, seemed something insubstantial and unlived: something very distant, too, for—by a puzzling experience not usual in the young—I could only see clearly the days that lay farther away. The Villebecq life had been a thin shadow of life, the Villebecq drama a puppet drama, the Villebecq Me a pale and partial Me. There was a slow battle spread over weeks in which Bear-Lawn Mary fought her way back to chief place within me. I remember the odd physical moment—sitting on my bed at three o'clock one morning, still undressed—in which she won the victory and in which Mary the gossiper, Mary the worldling, Mary the Fouquier-fighter faded like a wraith into the tomb of my sub-conscious self.
The older habits of mind returned. Now that there was no one to talk to, I talked, as of old, to myself. There was no present to occupy me, so I returned to my pasts and my futures. There were differences, of course, and developments: I was older, a little farther away from madness (which is sanity), a little nearer the world, a little farther from the Lord. My past was seen in worldlier, if not truer, perspective; my ambitions were more concrete. The old habits were fainter, and the old fears. Hope had gained appreciably on Despair. At ten I had dwelt morbidly on my few happinesses, knowing that they would be paid for: God gets even. Now, at twenty, happier days had tilted the balance; I dwelt cheerfully on the manifold unhappinesses ofmy life, feeling sure they would all be recompensed me: Christ gets even.
Not but what Gloom made a good fight for his old supremacy. After all,Eternity was on his side.
And the Rapture never returned. I would pray sometimes for hours, beg for one instant's flowing through my heart of Taw-water and the Holy Ghost. HE did not come.
There was a reason. I knew the reason, though for a long time I dared not formulate it, even in prayer, even alone with myself, or more utterly alone—with God.
Coming from the innermost place of my being, gaining at last my conscious brain and soul, and soon possessing them utterly, was the knowledge that my only way to ultimate happiness lay not through religion, but through ROBBIE.
For many days and nights the agonized struggle fought itself out within me: God's love revealing Itself directly, God Immanent, versus God's Love revealing itself in human shape, God-in-Robbie: memories of Jordan Morning, my honeymoon with God, versus hopes of earthly ecstacy, my honeymoon withhim.
I have never wished, even if I were able, to fit in this story of my life with wise men's theories of human conduct and development. But the psychologist or the modern novelist would I think label this struggle in my soul as the turning-battle between Environment and Heredity, in which the massed beliefs of my holy upbringing contended against the call of my woman's blood and the needs of my woman's heart.
At last—when I had given God His last chance, telling Him in an agony of passionate prayer that if He would send me but once again the perfect miracle-moment of Jordan it would quench for ever within me all need of human love—and when no answer came—I knew that the battle was over. Robbie had won.
Had won in my heart. But what were the chances that I should taste the fruits of his victory, that the love I had declared for would, in this actual physical world, one day be mine?
I faced the whole question, "dispassionately."
What were the facts? Years ago, a sentimental andunhappy child had, in a moment of crude (though not contemptible) romantic fervour, grown morbidly fond of another child, and he of her. They had vowed together to seek to perpetuate their experience when away from each other by mutual self-suggestion, especially on that particular night of every year when the childish emotion had culminated. It was all very pretty, quite pathetic too in its way, but what else?
What else? Everything. These were the cowardly picturings of Common-Sense: Heart put them swiftly to flight. The only realities are the realities of the spirit, and Robbie in the visions I now had, not only every Christmas, but every day—near every hour—was a warm divine reality in my soul. He was with me, kissing my face. Where the human body of the living twenty-one-year-old Robbie might be I did not know—though I constructed for myself a hundred different stories as to his whereabouts and doings—but that his spirit was with me whenever mine was with him I knew in the authentic uttermost way, beyond all knowledge and reason, in which I had once known God. Sometimes the whole night through his Presence enveloped me, his face was mirrored in my soul. Yet always the ultimate Rapture evaded me; I would reach the mystical moment when the lips of the vision-Robbie upon mine were changing into the dear desired lips of the real-life Robbie, when vision-reality and this-world-reality were merging magically into one—then always, on the threshold of realization, the Vision faded, and I was left empty and desolate and cold.
The mere physical longing, though less intense than the spiritual, was newer and more baffling: for I understood my body much less well than my soul. Oh for him to put his arms around me, crush me tenderly to him, while I should clasp him to my breast and pour out my heart upon him! I would kiss the miserable pillow (and say it was his throat) and clasp it and cover it with tears. When bearing-point was passed, I would burst into half-hysterical prayer: Send him now, oh Lord Jesus, or banish the tormenting vision from my eyes!—the while I would savagely stop the eyes and ears of my spirit, until God's answer came, and for a space the hunger passed away.
Doubt trod hard upon Desire. Fool-Mary as always! You loved the little boy then, and he you. It was a child's moment, gracious for the child's sorrow that it eased, but over at once and for ever. Love comes not back again. All the rest, all these fantastic years of mystical repeatal are but the wraiths of your own disordered imagination. The Presence is a phantom presence of your own creating.
"It is no phantom," I replied. "If anything in God's universe is real, that is real."
"Real to him? For if not, the presence is not real at all."
"It is real to him."
"Are you so sure? You are quite, quite certain: that at the same moment in which you possess his Presence, he is possessing yours?"
"Yes, I know it. God tells me so."
"But where is real Robbie? Why does he not come to you?"
"He is coming soon."
And with valiant words I chased Doubt away, knowing him for the destroyer of everything that he encompasses, who can make things that are true untrue, just as Faith, his enemy, can make of things that are not things that are. Faith makes facts, not facts faith. If you believe that Robbie is with you, he is with you. If you doubt his presence, you destroy it.