CHAPTER LI
Wherein it is hinted that it were Best to “Touch not the Catte botte a Glove”
Therewas in and around and about the lithe beauty of the dark slender young woman, Gabrielle Solignac, much of her own strange uncanny poetry, with its stealthy Eastern manner—catlike when she moved, glowing in colour as a ranging leopard, her clinging draperies loading the air with scent of sandal-wood and the fragrance of Japan—catlike when at rest, and warm-hued and alertly languid as the Indies, her skin now showing saffron as dyed wood, now gleaming white as cunningly wrought ivory. She was mystic always as some half-revealed god in the great shadow of the deep hollows of pagan temples—silent and calm as Egyptian Sphinx.
Her exquisite fame had passed beyond Paris, and was broadcast over Europe; yet she was little more than girl....
She had been married to Myre a month; and as she now lay on her side at full length along the great Eastern lounge, her dark head on her father’s knees where he sat at the end of the lounge, there was something of leopard grace in her attitude; and in the long half-closed green eyes, something of leopard’s latent fire.
Solignac, his great head bowed, chin sunk on chest, lay back on the lounge, his eyes staring out from the black shadows of their deep hollows under the heavy brows; and he passed his shapely nervous hand over the girl’s tawny hair.
“It only seems but yesterday,” said he hoarsely, “that he praised my sonnets—and I brought him here.” He laughed bitterly. “I brought him here. Think of it, my Gabrielle; had he not praised my verse I had never——”
“Hush, father!” said she.
“It seems but yesterday that you married him—and went out and left me alone——”
“Father,” said she, “I am so glad to be back. It was horrible—to be a woman. I am so glad to be a child again.”
The old man laughed:
“I have gained,” he said—“and, by God, I am almost glad he is a villain.”
She put up her arms, pulled down his great head, and kissed his cheek:
“I have done with him,” she said.
“To think that I am amongst the greatest European authorities upon the mysteries of the East! and all to be juggled out of my wits by the first vulgar sycophant who sings my praise!... Ye pagan gods! how little wisdom is in books!”
She reached up her slender hand and put her fingers upon his mouth:
“Hush!” said she—“let us back to our books and rejoice in our lack of wisdom. We were happier with our curios and the mysteries.... I am done with him.”
And all about them the little fat Eastern idols sadly smiled and smiled....
The poet never recovered from the blow. He felt that through his conceit alone his girl had been bought. He would harp upon it sadly. She laughed always her soft low laugh at all his self-blame, purring of her love for him. But Solignac was a disillusioned man—thought the world wagged chins at him—lost heart—stooped beneath the secret shame of the blow. The blunder about his girl’s marriage killed him....
As he lay still and cold upon his white bed, at midnight, the great candles flaming in their high brass candlesticks, idols of the East gazing sadly down upon him, the girl, who had flung herself beside the bed, her bowed head on his chill unanswering hand, of a sudden ceased her sobbing and stood up. She bit her finger tips upon the urging of some sudden mood, gazing stealthily about the room. She was alone.
She walked, with strange catlike tread, to an exquisite lacquer cabinet; opened the lock, and lifting the lid, took out a red Japanese fan.
She went to the dead man’s bookshelves and took down Solignac’s last volume of sonnets—the pages were uncut.
She sat down at the foot of the bed. How often she had so sat as a child! He had had such pride in her!
The high flames of the great altar candles flooding her with their light, cast shadows down upon her where she crouched over the book.
She gripped the handle of the fan in her long supple fingers and plucked a bright blade from out the cunningly wrought scabbard—the fan had only been in the outward seeming, most wondrously carved.
The blade was a cruel one, and keen as pitilessness.
She cut the pages of the book with it—and as the paper hissed its surrender to the sharp blade’s thrust she smiled. But in the smile was little mirth.
Across the river, in the students’ quarter, brooding before a wood fire in the rooms of his hotel, sat Mr. Quilliam O’Flaherty Macloughlin Myre.
He was worried.
He had written a play, choke-full of the most obvious symbolism. It had failed. It was not even considered original—indeed, it had been condemned as being very poor Ibsen indeed.
Nor had he won money out of the venture.
He was sadly puzzled.
Not to be original! it were not to be Quogg Myre.
He searched the history of genius to find a precedent on which to act—to be original.
He arose on to his splay feet, and with his awkward slovenly gait paced the room, shivered at the discomfort of his thoughts, walked to the fireplace and stood brooding at his image in the mirror above it; his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets. His untidy colourless hair fell over his paste-coloured forehead—it was more untidy than usual, more colourless. A hank of it stood out on the back of his poll like the crest of a cockatoo. He was sickly pale. His weak puffy red lip was limp and uneasy. His long quarrelsome chin alone held firm for bouts of decision. It was his chin that fought the slacknesses of his body.
How had Shakespeare and these clever fellows discovered their great art? Why should nothecreate a school? These fellows—Shakespeare, Dickens, Balzac, Carlyle, Meredith, Sterne, and the rest—they had been just real live men, needing their dinner, sleeping o’ nights, fighting their way to fame year after year, rebuffed, sneered at, ordinary human flesh—without half his chances. What was the trick that they had discovered?
Ay; what the key to their wizardry?
These fellows, the big ones, had never fretted their souls with all these frets of style, of art for art’s sake, of their rating by jabbering classifiers in the eternities. Whilst he—he had wasted the years on such tom-follies. Nay, in expressing themselves they had created style. They had had something deeper than style. What was it?
There was something deep down in the heart of things that made their work live. Some mystic sense——
By heavens, it was mysticism!
He would get up mysticism—read it up at the libraries. He would write mysticism into his work——
He shivered.
In the curio shop, a fool of a Jap had drawn a sharp dagger from its sheath that morning—he hated knives and edged tools.
God! how cold it was!
He suddenly remembered——
Solignac lay stretched on his death-bed. He had a mind to go and see him lying so.... This Solignac must have died enormously rich—his collections were world-famous.
He went and put on his hat and cloak; lurched to the door——
At the door he hesitated.
Have a care!
Look to thyself, master Myre! That leopard quietude, the catlike lithe walk, may be the watchful prowl of one that seesmore than thou with all thy blatancy and bold staring of fish-like grey eyes—perhaps, too, fears less. Bluster thou canst outbluster—but the silences thou canst not understand.... Wherefore thou shalt not dare that silent woman beyond the goading point of thy vulgarity—if thou be wise. Have a care.
He shut the door—came back—took off his cloak and hat—flung them on a chair.
He would like to have flouted this cold woman in that death-chamber; it had never been done, it would come well in his autobiography; but——
What had this woman heard—guessed—seen—in that first month?
Damnation! He had been so careful—so circumspect. He recalled the warm accents frozen to cold disdain almost before they had left her father’s house. She baffled him—made him uneasy. He had scolded, supplicated, whimpered, blustered.... What chiefly remained in the fearful hollows of his conceit was the passionless voice in its last statement that if he stepped across her door again she would kill him.
On his soul, he had been glad to be rid of her.
She alarmed him. He had jested about her to his fellows—but——
He shivered uncomfortably.
Yes. This woman alarmed him. He felt that his throat might be slit as he slept.... He rather liked a wordy brawl with women—he had his moments in drawing-room cynicism. He could brow-beat them with the best. He had pen-courage too. With a pen and ink-pot he was absolutely without fear. But——
With this silent woman he never could shake off the feeling of discomfort. She baffled him. He feared her.
By God! he had it. He would write a book upon all his gadding loves with women—she should figure thereas one of many. She would free him in the divorce courts.
And the scandal would float him into public notice again.