10th July.
Judith and I have had our day in the country. We know a wayside station, on a certain line of railway, about an hour and a half from town, where we can alight, find eggs and bacon at the village inn and hayricks in a solitary meadow, and where we can chew the cud of these delights with the cattle in well-wooded pastures. Judith has a passion for eggs and bacon and hayricks. My own rapture in their presence is tempered by the philosophic calm of my disposition. She wore a cotton dress of a forget-me-not blue which suits her pale colouring. She looked quite pretty. When I told her so she blushed like a girl. I was glad to see her in gay humour again. Of late months she has been subject to moodiness, emotional variability, which has somewhat ruffled the smooth surface of our companionship. But to-day there has been no trace of “temperament.” She has shown herself the pleasant, witty Judith she knows I like her to be, with a touch of coquetry thrown in on her own account. She even spoke amiably of Carlotta. I have not had so thoroughly enjoyable a day with Judith for a long time.
I don’t think she set herself deliberately to please me. That I should resent. I know that women in order to please an unsuspecting male will walk weary miles by his side with blisters on their feet and a beatific smile on their faces. But Judith has far too much commonsense.
Another pleasing feature of the day’s jaunt has been the absence of the appeal to sentimentality which Judith of late, especially since her return from Paris, has been overfond of making. This idle habit of mind, for such it is in reality, has been arrested by an intellectual interest. One of her great friends is Willoughby, the economic statistician, who in his humorous moments, writes articles for popular magazines, illustrated by scale diagrams. He will draw, for instance, a series of men representing the nations of the world, and varying in bulk and stature according to the respective populations; and over against these he will set a series of pigs whose sizes are proportionate to the amount of pork per head eaten by the different nationalities. To these queer minds that live on facts (I myself could as easily thrive on a diet of egg-shells) this sort of pictorial information is peculiarly fascinating. But Judith, who like most women has a freakish mental as well as physical digestion, delights in knowing how many hogs a cabinet minister will eat during a lifetime, and how much of the earth’s surface could be scoured by the world’s yearly output of scrubbing-brushes. I don’t blame her for it any more than I blame her for a love of radishes, which make me ill; it is not as if she had no wholesome tastes. On the contrary, I commend her. Now, Willoughby, it seems, has found the public appetite so great for these thought-saving boluses of knowledge—unpleasant drugs, as it were, put up into gelatine capsules—that he needs assistance. He has asked Judith to devil for him, and I have to-day persuaded her to accept his offer. It will be an excellent thing for the dear woman. It will be an absorbing occupation. It will divert the current of her thoughts from the sentimentality that I deprecate, and provided she does not serve up hard-boiled facts to me at dinner, she will be the pleasanter companion.
The only return to it was when I kissed her at parting.
“That is the first, Marcus, for twelve hours,” she said; very sweetly, it is true—but still reproachfully.
But Sacred Name of a Little Good Man! (as the depraved French people say), what is the use of this continuous osculation between rational beings of opposite sexes who set out to enjoy themselves? If only St. Paul, in the famous passage when he says there is a time for this and a time for that, had mentioned kissing, he would have done a great deal of practical good.
July 13th.
To-night, for the first time since I came into the family estates (such as they are), I feel the paralysis of aspiration occasioned by poverty. If I were very rich, I would buy the two next houses, pull them down and erect on the site a tower forty foot high. At the very top would be one comfortable room to be reached by a lift, and in this room I could have my being, while it listed me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions and interruptions. Antoinette’s one-eyed cat could not scratch for admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of domestic economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I could defy Carlotta, who is growing to be as pervasive as the smell of pickles over Crosse & Blackwell’s factory. She comes in without knocking, looks at picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes, hums tunes which she has picked up from barrel-organs, bends over me to see what I am writing, munching her eternal sweetmeats in my ear, and laughs at me when I tell her she has irremediably broken the thread of my ideas. Of course I might be brutal and turn her out. But somehow I forget to do so, until I realise—too late—the havoc she has made with my work.
I did, however, think, when Miss Griggs mounted guard over Carlotta, and Antoinette and her cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its skirts about my drawing-room.
I was arranging my notes, I had an illuminating inspiration concerning the life of Francois Villon and the contemporary court of Cosmo de’ Medici; I was preparing to fix it in writing when the door opened and Stenson announced:
“Mrs. Ordeyne and Miss Ordeyne.”
My Aunt Jessica and Dora came in and my inspiration went out. It hasn’t come back yet.
My aunt’s apologies and Dora’s draperies filled the room. I must forgive the invasion. They knew they were disturbing my work. They hoped I didn’t mind.
“I wanted mamma to write, but she would come,” said Dora, in her hearty voice. I murmured polite mendacities and offered chairs. Dora preferred to stand and gaze about her with feminine curiosity. Women always seem to sniff for Bluebeardism in a bachelor’s apartment.
“Why, what two beautiful rooms you have. And the books! There isn’t an inch of wall-space!”
She went on a voyage of discovery round the shelves while my aunt explained the object of their visit. Somebody, I forget who, had lent them a yacht. They were making up a party for a summer cruise in Norwegian fiords. The Thingummies and the So and So’s and Lord This and Miss That had promised to come, but they were sadly in need of a man to play host—I was to fancy three lone women at the mercy of the skipper. I did, and I didn’t envy the skipper. What more natural, gushed my aunt, than that they should turn to me, the head of the house, in their difficulty?
“I am afraid, my dear aunt,” said I, “that my acquaintance with skipper-terrorising hosts is nil. I can’t suggest any one.”
“But who asked you to suggest any one?” she laughed. “It is you yourself that we want to persuade to have pity on us.”
“I have—much pity,” said I, “for if it’s rough, you’ll all be horribly seasick.”
Dora ran across the room from the book-case she was inspecting.
“I would like to shake him! He is only pretending he doesn’t understand. I don’t know what we shall do if you won’t come with us.”
“You can’t refuse, Marcus. It will be an ideal trip—and such a comfortable yacht—and the deep blue fiords—and we’ve got a French chef. You will be doing us such a favour.”
“Come, say ‘Yes,’” said Dora.
I wish she were not such a bouncing Juno of a girl. Large, athletic women with hearty voices are difficult for one to deal with. I am a match for my aunt, whom I can obfuscate with words. But Dora doesn’t understand my satire; she gives a great, healthy laugh, and says, “Oh, rot!” which scatters my intellectual armoury.
“It is exceedingly kind of you to think of me,” I said to my aunt, “and the proposal is tempting—the prospect is indeed fascinating—but—”
“But what?”
“I have so many engagements,” I answered feebly.
My Aunt Jessica rose, smiling indulgently upon me, as if I were a spoilt little boy, and took me on to the balcony, while Dora demurely retired to the bookshelves in the farther room. “Can’t you manage to throw them aside? Poor Dora will be inconsolable.”
I stared at her for a moment and then at Dora’s broad back and sturdy hips. Inconsolable? I can’t make out what the good lady is driving at. If she were a vulgar woman trying to squeeze her way into society and needed the lubricant of the family baronetcy, I could understand her eagerness to parade me as her appanage. But titles in her drawing-room are as common as tea-cups. And the inconsolability of Dora—
“If I did come she would be bored to death,” said I.
“She is willing to risk it.”
“But why should she seek martyrdom?”
“There is another reason,” said my aunt, ignoring my pertinent question, but glancing at me reassuringly “there is another reason why it would be well for you to come on this cruise with us.” She sank her voice. “You met Miss Gascoigne in the park last week—”
“A very charming and kind young lady,” said I.
“I am afraid you have been a little indiscreet. People have been talking.”
“Then theirs, not mine, is the indiscretion.”
“But, my dear Marcus, when you spring a good-looking young person, whom you introduce as your Mohammedan ward, upon London society, and she makes a scene in public—why—what else have people got to talk about?”
“They might fall back upon the doctrine of predestination or the price of fish,” I replied urbanely.
“But I assure you, Marcus, that there is a hint of scandal abroad. It is actually said that she is living here.”
“People will say anything, true or untrue,” said I.
My aunt sighfully acquiesced, and for a while we discussed the depravity of human nature.
“I have been thinking,” she said at last, “that if you brought your ward to see us, and she could accompany us on this cruise to Norway, the scandal would be scotched outright.”
She glanced at me very keenly, and beneath her indulgent smile I saw the hardness of the old campaigner. It was a clever trap she had prepared for me.
I took her hand and in my noblest manner, like the exiled vicomte in costume drama, bent over it and kissed her finger-tips.
“I thank you, my dear aunt, for your generous faith in my integrity,” I said, “and I assure you your confidence is well founded.”
A loud, gay laugh from the other room interrupted me.
“Are you two rehearsing private theatricals?” cried Dora. As I was attired in a remarkably old college blazer and a pair of yellow Moorish slippers bought a couple of years ago in Tangier, and as my hair was straight on end, owing to a habit of passing my fingers through it while I work, my attitude perhaps did not strike a spectator as being so noble as I had imagined. I took advantage of the anti-climax, however, to bring my aunt from the balcony to the centre of the room, where Dora joined us.
“Well, has mother prevailed?”
“My dear Dora,” said I, politely, “how can you imagine it could possibly be a question of persuasion?”
“That might be taken two ways,” said Dora. “Like Palmerston’s ‘Dear Sir, I’ll lose no time in reading your book.’” Dora is a minx.
“I fear,” said I, “that my pedantic historical sense must venture to correct you. It was Lord Beaconsfield.”
“Well, he got it from Palmerston,” insisted Dora.
“You children must not quarrel,” interposed my aunt, in the fond, maternal tone which I find peculiarly unpleasant. “Marcus will see how his engagements stand, and let us know in a day or two.”
“When do you propose to start?” I asked.
“Quite soon. On the 20th.
“I will let you know finally in good time,” said I.
As I accompanied them downstairs, I heard a door at the end of the passage open, and turning I saw Carlotta’s pretty head thrust past the jamb, and her eyes fixed on the visitors. I motioned her back, sharply, and my aunt and Dora made an unsuspecting exit. The noise of their departing chariot wheels was music to my ears.
Carlotta came rushing out of her sitting-room followed by Miss Griggs, protesting.
“Who those fine ladies?” she cried, with her hands on my sleeve.
“Whoarethose ladies?” I corrected.
“Whoarethose ladies?” Carlotta repeated, like a demure parrot.
“They are friends of mine.”
Then came the eternal question.
“Is she married, the young one?”
“Miss Griggs,” said I, “kindly instil into Carlotta’s mind the fact that no young English woman ever thinks about marriage until she is actually engaged, and then her thoughts do not go beyond the wedding.”
“But is she?” persisted Carlotta.
“I wish to heaven she was,” I laughed, imprudently, “for then she would not come and spoil my morning’s work.”
“Oh, she wants to marry you,” said Carlotta.
“Miss Griggs,” said I, “Carlotta will resume her studies,” and I went upstairs, sighing for the beautiful tower with a lift outside.
July 14th.
Pasquale came in about nine o’clock, and found us playing cards.
He is a bird of passage with no fixed abode. Some weeks ago he gave up his chambers in St. James’s, and went to live with an actor friend, a grass-widower, who has a house in the St. John’s Wood Road close by. Why Pasquale, who loves the palpitating centres of existence, should choose to rusticate in this semi-arcadian district, I cannot imagine. He says he can think better in St. John’s Wood.
Pasquale think! As well might a salmon declare it could sing better in a pond! The consequence of his propinquity, however, has been that he has dropped in several times lately on his way home, but generally at a later hour.
“Oh, please don’t move and spoil the picture,” he cried. “Oh, you idyllic pair! And what are you playing? Cribbage! If I had been challenged to guess the game you would have selected for your after-dinner entertainment, I should have sworn to cribbage!”
“An excellent game,” said I. Indeed, it is the only game that I remember. I dislike cards. They bore me to death. So dus chess. People love to call them intellectual pastimes; but, surely, if a man wants exercise for his intellect, there are enough problems in this complicated universe for him to worry his brains over, with more profit to himself and the world. And as for the pastime—I consider that when two or more intelligent people sit down to play cards they are insulting one another’s powers of conversation. These remarks do not apply to my game with Carlotta, who is a child, and has to be amused. She has picked up cribbage with remarkable quickness, and although this is only the third evening we have played, she was getting the better of me when Pasquale appeared.
I repeated my statement. Cribbage certainly was an excellent game. Pasquale laughed.
“Of course it is. A venerable pastime. Darby and Joan have played it of evenings for the last thousand years. Please go on.”
But Carlotta threw her cards on the table and herself on the sofa and said she would prefer to hear Pasquale talk.
“He says such funny things.”
Then she jumped from the sofa and handed him the box of chocolates that is never far from her side. How lithe her movements are!
“Pasquale says you were his schoolmaster, and used to beat him with a big stick,” she remarked, turning her head toward me, while Pasquale helped himself to a sweet.
He was clumsy in his selection, and the box slipped from Carlotta’s hand and the contents rolled upon the floor. They both went on hands and knees to pick them up, and there was much laughing and whispering.
It is curious that I cannot recall Pasquale having alluded, in Carlotta’s presence, to our early days. It was on my tongue to ask when he committed the mendacity—for in that school not only did the assistant masters not have the power of the cane, but Pasquale, being in the sixth form at the time I joined, was exempt from corporal punishment—when they both rose flushed from their grovelling beneath the table, and some merry remark from Pasquale put the question out of my head.
All this is unimportant. The main result of Pasquale’s visit this evening is a discovery.
Now, is it, after all, a discovery, or only the non-moral intellect’s sinister attribution of motives?
“A baby in long clothes would have seen through it,” said Pasquale. “Lord bless you, if I were in your position I would go on board that yacht, I’d make violent love to every female there, like the gentleman in Mr. Wycherley’s comedy, I’d fill a salmon fly-book with samples of their hair, I’d make them hate one another like poison, and at the end of the voyage I’d announce my engagement to Carlotta, and when they all came to the wedding I’d make the fly-book the most conspicuous of wedding presents on the table, from the bridegroom to the bride. By George! I’d cure them of the taste for man-hunting!”
I wonder what impelled me to tell Pasquale of the proposed yachting cruise? We sat smoking by the open window, long after Carlotta had been sent to bed, and looking at a full moon sailing over the tops of the trees in the park; enveloped in that sensuous atmosphere of a warm summer night which induces a languor in the body and in the will. On such a night as this young Lorenzo, if he happens to have Jessica by his side, makes a confounded idiot of himself, to his life’s undoing; and on such a night as this a reserved philosopher commits the folly of discussing his private affairs with a Sebastian Pasquale.
But if he is correct in his surmise, I am much beholden to the relaxing influences of the night. I have been warned of perils that encompass me: perils that would infest the base and insidiously scale the sides of the most inaccessible tower that man could build on the edge of the Regent’s Park. A woman with a Matrimonial Purpose would be quite capable of gaining access by balloon to my turret window. Is it not my Aunt Jessica’s design melodramatically to abduct me in a yacht?
“Once aboard the pirate lugger, and the man is ours!” she cries.
But the man is not coming aboard the pirate lugger. He is going to keep as far as he possibly can from the shore. Neither is he to be lured into bringing his lovely Mohammedan ward with him, as an evidence of good faith and unimpeachable morals. They can regard her as a Mohammedan ward or a houri or a Princess of Babylon, just as they choose.
Pasquale must be right. A hundred remembered incidents go to prove it. I recollect now that Judith has rallied me on my obtuseness.
The sole end of all my Aunt Jessica’s manoeuvring is to marry me to Dora, and Dora, like Barkis, is willing. Marry Dora! The thought is a febrifuge, a sudorific! She would be thumping discords on my wornout strings all day long. In a month I should be a writhing madman. I would sooner, infinitely sooner, marry Carlotta. Carlotta is nature; Dora isn’t even art. Why, in the name of men and angels, should I marry Dora? And why (save to call herself Lady Ordeyne) should she want to marry me? I have not trifled with her virgin affections; and that she is nourishing a romantic passion for me of spontaneous growth I decline to believe. For aught I care she can be as inconsolable as Calypso. It will do her good. She can write a little story about it inThe Sirens’ Magazine.
I am shocked. For all her bouncing ways and animal health and incorrect information, I thought Dora was a nice-minded girl.
Do nice-minded girls hunt husbands?
Good heavens! This looks like the subject of a silly-season correspondence inThe Daily Telegraph.
July 19th.
Campsie, N.B.Hither have I fled from my buccaneering relations. I am seeking shelter in a manse in the midst of a Scotch moor, and the village, half a mile away, is itself five miles from a railway station. Here I can defy Aunt Jessica.
After my conversation with Pasquale, I passed a restless night. My slumbers were haunted by dreams of pirate yachts flying the jolly Roger, on which the skull and crossbones melted grotesquely into a wedding-ring and a true lovers’ knot. I awoke to the conviction that so long as the vessel remained on English waters I could find no security in London. I resolved on flight. But whither?
Verily the high gods must hold me in peculiar favour. The first letter I opened was from old Simon McQuhatty, my present host, a godfather of my mother, who alone of mortals befriended us in the dark days of long ago. He was old and infirm, he wrote, and Gossip Death was waiting for him on the moor; but before he went to join him he would like to see Susan’s boy again. I could come whenever I liked. A telegram from Euston before I started would be sufficient notice. I sent Stenson out with a telegram to say I was starting that very day by the two o’clock train, and I wrote a polite letter to my Aunt Jessica informing her of my regret at not being able to accept her kind invitation as I was summoned to Scotland for an indefinite period.
My old friend’s ministry in the Free Kirk of Scotland is drawing to a close; he has lived in this manse, a stone’s throw from his grave, for fifty years, and the approaching change of habitat will cost him nothing. He will still lie at the foot of his beloved hills, and the purple moorland will spread around him for all eternity, and the smell of the gorse and heather will fill his nostrils as he sleeps. He is a bit of a pagan, old McQuhatty, in spite of Calvin and the Shorter Catechism. I should not wonder if he were the original of the story of the minister who prayed for the “puir Deil.” He planted a rowan tree by his porch when he was first inducted into the manse, and it has grown up with him and he loves it as if it were a human being. He has had many bonny arguments with it, he says, on points of doctrine, and it has brought comfort to him in times of doubt by shivering its delicate leaves and whispering, “Dinna fash yoursel, McQuhatty. The Lord God is a sensible body.” He declares that the words are articulate, and I suspect that in the depths of his heart he believes that there are tongues in trees and books in the running brooks, just as he is convinced that there is good in everything.
He is a ripe and whimsical scholar, and his talk, even in infirm old age, is marked by a Doric virility which has rendered his companionship for these five days as stimulating as the moorland air. How few men have this gift of discharging intellectual invigoration. Indeed, I only know old McQuhatty who has it, and a sportive Providence has carefully excluded mankind from its benefits for half a century. Stay: it once fostered a genius who arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic to Edinburgh to become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky for two years without cessation, so that he died, and McQuhatty’s inspiration was wasted. What intellectual stimulus can he afford, for instance, to Sandy McGrath, an elder of the kirk whom I saw coming up the brae on Sunday? An old ram stood in the path and, as obstinate as he, refused to budge. And as they looked dourly at each other, I wondered if the ram were dressed in black broadcloth and McGrath in wool, whether either of their mothers would notice the metamorphosis. Yet my host declares that I see with the eyes of a Southron; that the Scotch peasant when he is not drunk is intellectual, and that there is no occasion on which he is not ready for theological disputation.
“But I dinna mind telling you,” he added, “that I’d as lief talk with my rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable wee bit of false doctrine.”
I should love to stay all the summer with my old friend, It seems that only from such a remote solitude can one view things mundane in the right perspective, and in their true proportion. One would see how important or unimportant portent in the cosmos was the agricultural ant’s dream of three millimetres and an aphis compared with the aspirations of the English labourer. One would justly focus the South African millionaire, Sandy McGrath and the ram, and bring them to their real lowest common denominator. One would even be able to gauge the value of a History of Renaissance Morals. The benefits I should derive from a long sojourn are incalculable, but my new responsibilities call me back to London and its refracting and distorting atmosphere. If I had dwelt here for fifty years I should have perceived that Carlotta was but a speck in the whirlwind of human dust whose ultimate destiny was immaterial. As my five days’ visit, however, has not advanced me to that pitch of wisdom, I am foolishly concerned in my mind as to her welfare, and anxious to dissolve the triumvirate, Miss Griggs, Stenson, and Antoinette, whom I have entrusted with the reins of government.
A month ago, in similar circumstances, I should have railed at Fate and anathematised Carlotta from the tip of her pink toes to the gold and bronze glory of her hair. But I am growing more kindly disposed towards Carlotta, and taking a keen interest in her spiritual development.
An inner voice, an ironical, sardonic inner voice with which there is no arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta’s spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth for many generations.
“What does it matter to you whether she has a soul or not,” says the voice, “provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage with you afterwards?”
Well, what on earth does it matter?
July 21st.
She was at Euston to meet me. As soon as she saw my face at the carriage window she left Stenson and flew up the platform like a pretty tame animal, and when I alighted hung on my arms and frisked and gamboled around me in excess of joy.
“So you are glad to have me back, Carlotta?” I asked, as we were driving home.
She sidled up against me in her terrier fashion.
“Oh, ye-es,” she cooed. “The day was night without you.”
“That is the oriental language of exaggeration,” I said. But all the same it was pleasant to hear, and the soft notes of her voice coiled themselves, as music sometimes dus, around my heart.
“I love dear Seer Marcous,” she said.
I put my arm round her waist for a moment, as one would do to a child.
“You are a good little girl, Carlotta. That is to say,” I added, remembering my responsibilities, “if youhavebeen good. Have you?”
“Oh, so good. Antoinette has been teaching me how to cook, and I can make a rice pudding. It is so nice to cook things. I like the smell. But I burned myself. See.”
She pulled off her glove and showed me a red mark on her hand. I kissed it to make it well, and she laughed and was very happy. And I, too, was happy. Something new and fresh and bright has come into my life. Stenson is an admirable servant; but his impassive face and correct salute which have hitherto greeted me at London railway termini, although suggestive of material comfort, cannot be said to invest my arrival with a special atmosphere of charm. Carlotta’s welcome has been a new sensation. I look upon the house with different eyes. It was a pleasure, as I dressed for dinner, to reflect that I should not go down to a solemn, solitary meal, but would have my beautiful little witch to keep me company.
July 22d.
It appears that her conduct has not been by any means irreproachable. Miss Griggs reported that she took advantage of my absence to saturate herself with scent, one of the most heinous crimes in our domestic calendar.Mulier bene olet dum nihil oletis the maxim written above this article of our code. Once when she disobeyed my orders and came into the drawing-room reeking of ylang-ylang, I sent her upstairs to change all her things and have a bath, and not come near me till Antoinette vouched for her scentlessness. And “Ah, monsieur,” I remember Antoinette replied, “that would be impossible, for the sweet lamb smells of spring flowers,de son naturel.” Which is true. Her use of violent perfumes is thus a double offence. “There is something more serious,” said Miss Griggs.
“I can hardly believe there can be anything more serious than making one’s self detestable to one’s fellow-creatures,” said I.
“Unless it is making one’s self too agreeable,” said Miss Griggs, pointedly.
I asked her what she meant.
“I have discovered,” she replied, “that Carlotta has been carrying on a clandestine flirtation with the young man who calls for orders from the grocer’s.”
“I am glad it wasn’t the butcher’s boy,” I murmured.
Miss Griggs giggled in a silly way, as if I were jesting. At my stern request she recovered and unfolded the horrible tale. She had caught Carlotta kissing her hand to him. She had also seen him smuggle a three-cornered note between Carlotta’s fingers, and Carlotta had definitely refused to surrender the billet-dour.
“What is the modern course of treatment,” I asked, “prescribed for young ladies who flirt with grocers’ assistants? In Renaissance times she could be whipped. The wise Margaret of Navarre used to beat her daughter, Jeanne d’Albrecht, soundly for far less culpable lapses from duty. Or she could be sent to a convent and put into a cell with rats, or she could be bidden to attend at a merry-making where the chief attraction was roast grocer’s assistant. But nowadays—what do you suggest?”
The unimaginative creature could suggest nothing. She thought that I would know how to deal with the offence. Perhaps preventive measures would be more efficacious than punishment. But what do I know of the repressory methods employed in seminaries for young ladies? Burton in his “Anatomy” speaks cheerfully of blood-letting behind the ears. He also quotes, I remember, Hippocrates or somebody, who narrates that a noble maiden was cured of a flirtatious temperament by wearing down her back for three weeks a leaden plate pierced with holes. This I told Miss Griggs, who spoke contemptuously of the Father of Medicine.
“He also recommends—whether for this complaint, or for something similar I forget for the moment—” said I, “anointing the soles of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog; and speaks highly of a ram’s lungs applied hot to the fore part of the head. I am sorry these admirable remedies are out of date. There is a rich Rabelaisianism about them. Instead of the satisfying jorums of our forefathers we take tasteless pellets, which procure us no sensation at the time, and even the good old hot mustard poultice is a thing of the past.”
“But what about Carlotta?” inquired Miss Griggs, anxiously.
That is just like a woman, to interrupt a man when he is beginning to talk comfortably on a subject that interests him. I sighed.
“Send Carlotta up to me,” I said, resignedly.
Another morning’s work spoiled. I turned to my writing-table. I had just transcribed on my MS. the anecdote told with such glee by Machiavelli about Zanobi del Pino, a sort of Admiral Byng of the early fifteenth century, who was locked up and given nothing to eat but paper painted with snakes, so that he died, fasting, in a few days. I had an apt epigram on the subject of Renaissance humour trembling on my pen-point, when Miss Griggs came in with her foolish gossip. I am sure the platitude I wrote afterwards is not that original flash of wit.
Carlotta entered and crossed the room to the side of my writing-chair, her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully behind her back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I believed less than ever in the enormity of the offence.
“Do you know what you’re here for?” I asked, magisterially.
She nodded.
“Then youhavebeen making love to the young man from the grocer’s?”
She nodded again. I began to conceive a violent dislike to the grocer’s young man. It was one of the most humiliating sensations I have experienced. I think I have seen the individual—a thick-set, red-headed, freckled nondescript.
“What did you do it for?” I asked.
“He wanted to make love to me,” replied Carlotta.
“He is a young scamp,” said I.
“What is a scamp?” she asked sweetly.
“I am not giving you a lesson in philology,” I remarked. “Do you know that you have been behaving in a shocking manner?”
“Now you are cross with me.”
“Yes,” I said, “infernally angry.”
And I was. I expected to see her burst into tears. She did nothing of the kind; only looked at me with irritating demureness. She wore a red blouse and a grey skirt, and the audacious high-heeled red slippers. I began to feel the return of my early prejudice against her. Nobody so alluring could possess a spark of virtue.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said I. “I make many allowances for your lack of knowledge of our Western customs, but for a young lady to flirt with an ugly red-headed varlet of the lower orders is reprehensible all the world over.”
“He gave me dates and dried fruits with sugar all over them,” said Carlotta.
“Stolen from his employer,” I said. “I will have that young man locked up in prison, and if you go on receiving his feloniously obtained presents they will put you in prison too, and I shall be delighted.”
Carlotta maintained her demure expression and extracted from her skirt pocket a very dirty piece of paper.
“He writes poetry—about me,” she remarked, handing me what I recognised as the three-cornered note.
I took the thing between finger and thumb, and glanced over the poem. I have read much indifferent modern verse in my time—I sometimes take a slush-bath after tea at the club—but I could not have imagined the English language capable of such emulsion. It was execrable. The first couplet alone contained an idea.
“Thou art a lovely girl and so very niceI dream till death upon your face.”
To the wretch’s ear it was a rhyme! I destroyed the noisome thing and cast it into the waste-paper basket.
“Prison,” said I, “would be a luxurious reward for him. In a properly civilised country he would be bastinadoed and hanged.”
“Yes, he is dam bad,” said Carlotta, serenely.
“Good heavens!” I cried, “the ruffian has even taught you to swear. If you dare to say that wicked word again, I’ll punish you severely. What is his horrid name?”
“Pasquale,” said Carlotta.
“Pasquale?”
“Yes, he likes to hear me say ‘dam.’ Oh, the other? Oh, no, he is too stupid. He does not say anything. His name is Timkins. I only play with him. He is so funny. He can go and kill himself; I won’t care.”
“Never mind about Timkins,” said I, “I want to hear about Pasquale. When did he teach you that wicked, wicked word?”
I think Carlotta flushed as she regarded the point of her red slipper.
“I went for a walk and he met me at the corner and walked here by my side. Was that wicked?”
“What would the excellent Hamdi Effendi have said to it?”
Woman-like she evaded my question.
“I hope Hamdi is dead. Do you think so?”
“I hope not. For if you behave in this naughty manner, I shall have to send you back to him.”
She had imperceptibly moved nearer my chair until she stood quite close to my side, so that as I spoke the last words I looked up into her face. She put her arm about my shoulders. It is one of her pretty, caressing ways.
“I will be good—very good,” she said.
“You will have to,” said I, leaning back my head.
She must have caught a relenting note in my voice; for what happened I feel even now a curious shame in noting down. Her other arm flew under my chin to join its fellow, and holding me a prisoner in my chair, she bent down and kissed me. She also laid her cheek against mine.
I am still aware of the indescribable, soft, warm pressure, although she has gone to bed hours ago.
I vow that a man must be less a man than a petrified egg to have repulsed her. The touch of her lips was like the falling of dewy rose-petals. Her breath was as fragrant as new-mown hay. Her hair brushing my forehead had the odour of violets.
I sent her back to Miss Griggs. She ran out of the room laughing merrily. She has received plenary absolution for her shameless coquetry and her profane language. Worse than that she has discovered how to obtain it in future. The witch has found her witchcraft, and having once triumphantly exerted her powers, will take the earliest opportunity of doing so again. I am fallen, both in my own eyes and hers, from my high estate. Henceforward she will regard me only with good-humoured tolerance; I shall be to her but a non-felonious Timkins.
I was an idiot to have kissed her in return.
I have not seen her since. I lunched at the club, and paid a formal call on Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne and my cousin Rosalie, in their sunless house in Kensington.
I met a singular lack of welcome. Rosalie gave me a limper hand than usual, and took an early opportunity of leaving me tete-a-tete with her mother, who conversed frigidly about the warm weather. The very tea, if possible, was colder.
I met Judith by appointment in Kensington Gardens, and walked with her homewards. I mentioned my chilly reception.
“My dear man,” she observed—I dislike this apostrophe, which Judith always uses by way of introduction to an unpleasant remark—“My dear man, I have no doubt that you have as unsavoury a reputation as any one in London. You are credited with an establishment like Solomon’s—minus the respectable counter-balance of the wives, and your devout relatives are very properly shocked.”
I said that it was monstrous. Judith retorted that I had brought the calumny upon myself.
“But what can I do?” I asked.
“Board her out with a suburban family, as you should have done from the first. Even I, who am not strait-laced, consider it highly improper for you to have her alone with you in the house.”
“My dear,” said I, “there is Antoinette.”
“Tush”—or something like it—said Judith.
“And Stenson. No one seeing Stenson could doubt the irreproachable propriety of his master.”
“I really have no patience with you,” said Judith.
It is hopeless to discuss Carlotta with her. I shall do it no more.
We sat for a while under the trees, and conversed on rational topics. She likes her employment with Willoughby. The morning she spends among blue books and other waste matter at the British Museum, and she devotes the evening to sorting her information. Willoughby commends her highly.
“And there is something I know you’ll be very pleased to hear,” she continued. “Who do you think called on me yesterday? Mrs. Willoughby. Her husband wants me to spend August and September at a place they have taken in North Wales, and help him with his new book—as a private secretary, you know. I said that I never went into society. I must tell you this was the first time I had seen her. She put her hand on my arm in the sweetest way in the world and said: ‘I know all about it, my dear, and that is why I thought I’d come myself as Harold’s ambassador.’ Wasn’t it beautiful of her?”
She looked at me and her eyes were filled with tears.
“Marcus dear, I am not a bad woman, am I?”
“My dearest,” I answered, very deeply touched, “you are the best woman in the world. So far from conferring a favour on you, Mrs. Willoughby has gained for herself the inestimable privilege of your friendship.”
“Ah!” said Judith, “a man cannot tell what it means.”
Really men are not such dullard dunderheads as women are pleased to imagine. I have the most crystalline perception of what Mrs. Willoughby’s invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a morbid satisfaction in the fiction that their sex is actuated by a mysterious nexus of emotions and motives which the grosser sense of man is powerless to appreciate. In her heart of hearts it is a prodigious comfort to a woman to feel herself misunderstood. Even she who is most perfectly mated, and is intellectually convinced that the difference of sex is no barrier to his complete knowledge of her, loves to cherish some little secret bit of her nature, to whichhe, on account of his masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are dull men who could not understand a tabbycat or a professional cricketer, let alone an expert autothaumaturgist—a self-mystery-maker—like a woman. But an intelligent and painstaking man should find no difficulty in appreciating what, after all, is merely a point of view; for what women see from that point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a two-year-old babe. I have confessed before that I do not understand Judith—that is to say the whole welter of contradictions in which her ego consists—but that is solely because I have not taken the trouble to subject her to special microscopic study. Such a scientific analysis would, I think, be an immodest discourtesy towards any lady of my acquaintance, especially towards one for whom I bear considerable affection. It would be as unwarrantable for a decent-minded man to speculate upon her exact spiritual dimensions as upon those portions of her physical frame that are hidden beneath her attire. The charm of human intercourse rests, to a great extent, on the vague, the deliberately unperceived, the stimulating sense that an individual possesses more attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But this, I say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well that beneath her skirts any young woman you please does not melt away into the scaly tail of a mermaid, but has a pair of ordinary commonplace legs. One knows that when she has passed through certain well defined experiences in life, a certain definite range of sentiments must exist behind whatever mask of facial expression she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense, therefore, for Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with regard to Mrs. Willoughby’s invitation.
I developed this theme very fully to Judith as we sat in Kensington Gardens and during our subsequent, stroll diagonally through Hyde Park to the Marble Arch. She listened with great attention, and when I had finished regarded me in a pitying manner, a smile flickering over her lips.
“My dear Marcus,” she said, “there is no man, however humble-minded, who has not one colossal vanity, his knowledge of women. He, at any rate, has established the veritable Theory of Women. And we laugh at you, my good friend, for the more you expound, the more do you reveal your beautiful and artistic ignorance. Oh, Marcus, the idea of you setting up as a feminine psychologist.”
“And pray, why not?” I asked, somewhat nettled.
“Because you are that dear, impossible, lovable thing known as Marcus Ordeyne.”
This was exceedingly pretty of Judith. But really woman is the Eternal Philistine, as Matthew Arnold has defined the term. Her supreme characteristic is inconvincibility. I had simply wasted my breath.