CHAPTER XIIPSYCHO-ANALYSIS
It wasone of those moments in which life seems to cast away the mask of convention and spring upon us like a giant fanged and armed for our destruction; one of those moments in which the bravest heart quails and the strongest hope withers to despair.
My crime had been committed for nothing. Whether the death of that despicable villain lay at my door or not, I did not know, and it hardly seemed to matter any longer. Somewhere there was still in existence the weapon with which he had terrorized his unhappy victim, and I could not tell in what hands, nor when it might be employed to ruin her and me together.
Weathered’s cunning scheme stood revealed in its full atrocity. His patients had been divided into two classes. Those who had nothing serious on their consciences, and those whom it was not worth his while to blackmail received the ordinary treatment given to nervous patients by respectable physicians. Those who came to him to be cured of vicious propensities, on the other hand, were encouraged to indulge them under his eye, under the pretence that they would thus be gradually overcome; and those who sought relief from evil memories were biddento rid their mind of its secret burden in correspondence which could be preserved for future use.
So far as I could judge he had fallen into those evil courses by degrees. Sarah Neobard’s defence of her step-father might not be far from the truth. I thought it likely that such a man as Weathered, with no strong principle to keep him straight, might naturally have deteriorated under the influence of his patients. All the precautions with which the confessional is surrounded in Catholic churches were wanting in this case. The doctor was probably a man without any religious feeling, and without any real scruples on the subject of morality. Instead of curing his patients he had let himself become infected with their disease. The confessions he had listened to had inflamed his own imagination, and made evil familiar to his thoughts. In the end he had come to take a fiendish pleasure in gloating over tales of guilty indulgence and innocence betrayed. He had delighted in the analysis of women’s hearts; he had learned to play upon their sensitive natures like instruments, and draw the notes of passion and pain. The devils in hell must soothe their own torments with such music.
It was torture enough for me to think of my own tragedy, as well as Violet’s, profaned by the coarse curiosity of a blackmailer. If I had sinned—and I never could admit that she had sinned at all—if I had sinned, at least I had not done so wilfully and basely, but swept away on the overpowering floodof that tremendous impulse by which all the planets move in heaven, and all the earth is wrapped in her green garment, and all the birds burst into song, and all the race of man is renewed for ever.
Our sad romance began in the purest innocence. I did not know of her existence on that morning when I set out with a knapsack on my back to explore the old borderland of England and Wales. I had formed no fixed plans; I meant to walk where fancy took me, and stop when I felt inclined; and the last thing I expected was that I should pass all my holiday on one spot. It was not till I reached the village that I heard of the ruins that lay hidden at the back of the Earl of Ledbury’s stately seat, and was persuaded to turn aside and see them.
I was told that a footpath leading from the churchyard up the hill would bring me past them, and, as far as I could make out, his lordship had laid down no absolute rule against strangers going over them. I was young and irresponsible enough to take the risk of being turned out as a trespasser. I climbed over a gate padlocked and fortified with barbed wire, crossed a meadow, and passed through a gap in the outer wall. I had spent half an hour in scrambling over heaps of fallen masonry, and was just beginning to descend a broken stairway up which I had climbed for the sake of the view, when I saw standing on the grass near its foot the loveliest girl I had ever seen.
She was watching me with the shy wonder of achild, and I came down slowly, scarcely daring to breathe, lest she should turn and run away. But no such thought was in her head. I seemed to her a boy, very little older than herself, and it turned out that she had come to take me under her protection.
When I lifted my cap, and expressed a hope that I wasn’t trespassing, she gave me a cordial smile of a comrade in mischief.
“Yes, you are trespassing,” she said frankly, “but they won’t take any notice if they see me speaking to you. I saw you from my window and I came to prevent any of the servants driving you away.”
I hardly knew which was more delicious, the simplicity or the friendliness of the child angel, as she was named already in my thoughts. That night I heard her story from the good mistress of the farm. She had lost her mother as soon as she was born, and, as sometimes happens, she had lost her place in her father’s heart in consequence. He was then a middle-aged man, his wife had been the only woman he had ever cared for, and she had borne him no other child. Life for him was closed. He resigned himself to let the earldom and the encumbered estate pass to his brother, and shut himself up with his grief in the one habitable corner of his desolate house.
Of Violet he took no more notice than he could help. His sense of duty bade him engage a strict governess, and direct that his daughter should be brought up to marry money, since he could leave hernone. The governess conceived that the way to attain this end was to keep the girl in absolute seclusion till a suitable bridegroom was found, and then to thrust her into his arms. The result was that her life had actually been very much like that of a princess in a fairy tale who is immured in a tower and kept from the sight of men. And I had been cast unconsciously for the part of the fairy hero who scales the tower and wins the maiden’s heart.
In the first confusion of the meeting I was far more tongue-tied than she. I guessed, of course, that she must be the daughter of Lord Ledbury, and this was the first time I had ever spoken to anyone of her rank. I was in doubt whether to address her with the word ladyship. I think the awe with which her rank inspired me had a great deal to do with what followed. It lifted her so far above me in my own mind, that I was blind to her growing love, and at first mistook my own love for the devotion of a vassal to his queen.
She talked to me about the ruins, holding me there spell-bound till neither of us could find more to say. At last, when I felt obliged to come away, she asked me wistfully where I was going. And I, who had made up my mind already not to go, if I could find any excuse for staying in the neighbourhood, with any chance of meeting her again, answered vaguely that I didn’t know. I was looking, I told her, for some place where I could put up.
Her whole face brightened when I said that, andshe cried eagerly, “There is a farm-house on the hill where they take visitors in the summer, and I don’t think they have anyone yet. I often go past it in my walks, and I haven’t seen any strangers about.”
My heart exulted within me. There was to be no walking tour for me that summer. When one has come within the gates of Paradise how can he want to wander more?
And so I took off my knapsack in the honeysuckle porch of the little farm-house, and stayed on. It chanced for our undoing that the strict governess had gone away for her own holiday a day or two before I came, and did not return till it was time for me to exile myself from Eden. Violet was left alone. No callers had come to the Castle for many years. There were no neighbours in her own station of life within many miles. The clergyman was an old bachelor interested only in butterflies and moths, of which he had a wonderful collection, and blind to everything that went on in his parish. If our romance was watched, and I have no doubt that it was watched by many curious eyes unknown to us, none of the watchers dared to carry tales of his daughter to the Earl of Ledbury. Violet saw her father twice a day at meals, and he never dreamed of asking her how she spent her time between.
The golden month rolled by. The first few days each of us made believe that our meetings were accidental. But soon we ceased to pretend that it waschance that had led her steps up the hill and led mine down them to the wood in which we came together. We explored the hills in company, rousing the partridges from the corn and rabbits from the fern. The wood-pigeons cooed and wheeled above our heads; the robins peeped at us from the hedges and the squirrels from the trees. We stood beside the lonely cromlech named after the mythical hero who held the Saxon hosts at bay, and we looked down into the Golden Valley and saw the peaks of the Welsh mountains far away. And we were happy....
Lightly, O lightly, broke upon me the knowledge that she loved me. What I had never hoped for had come to pass. I had been content to worship her in silence. Endymion might so have worshipped Artemis if he had been the first to see her. Bottom, the weaver, might so have worshipped Titania if the magic juice had touched his eyelids before hers. She had been as unapproachable in my eyes as any inhabitant of the moonlit world of sleep. It was with almost a pang, with a strange shrinking of the heart, that I first perceived that she was mortal like myself, and that I had awakened her. I seemed to have broken into a temple and profaned the shrine.
I do not recollect that we said anything. One day when we were walking side by side along a sunken lane that led to a little waterfall I stooped suddenly and kissed her.
From that day we were sweethearts as openly as any rustic pair. To her it was all as natural as theromances she had read, and she can never have had the least suspicion of the misgivings that had vexed my soul. She seemed surprised even when I touched on the social gulf that separated us. She owned sorrowfully that her father would never hear of such a match, but she evidently took it for granted that I should not heed his opposition. I was her knight, and it was for me to overcome every obstacle in the way. Her faith in me was perfect. All affection for her father had been crushed out of her in childhood. She had loved me more easily, and she loved me more passionately, because she had no one else to love.
And what were we to do? I was barely of age. I was not qualified; I had no means of support except a dwindling legacy that would be exhausted by the time I was able to earn my first fee. The knights of old seem never to have been troubled by such hindrances as these; the dragons they vanquished were creatures who could be subdued by strength of arm; they never had to ride into anything worse than an ogre’s castle or a wizard’s cave. The terrors of the bank parlour and the house-agent’s office were unknown to them; and they never had to face a baker or a butcher armed with his weekly bill.
I put off as long as I could the pain of confessing to Violet that these dragons in the way must take years to vanquish. And at first she hardly grasped what it would mean to her. The mere waiting, I could see, would cost her less than me. After all,courtship is the supreme time of womanhood. Then she is queen indeed, and marriage is for her dethronement. Her bridal is like the glorious pyre on which the Hindu widow once expired in religious ecstasy. It was not until she realized that I was going that Violet broke down.
There the burden was shifted to the other side. Delay is the suffering of man, separation the suffering of woman. I had my work to go back to; I had my friends and all the distractions of life in London. She had nothing before her but her remote and solitary prison.
We had fallen into the way of meeting most often in the deserted barn. Its situation assured us of a privacy more secure than that of the lanes and woods. No one could approach us without being seen, and no one ever did approach. No one could see through the openings—a bare two inches wide in the thick wall; and no one could overhear. A pile of bracken made our seat, and there we rested many a long summer afternoon, the battered door thrown wide to let us count the windings of the river far below, while we talked of all the coming years might bring.
So it was there we met on that last afternoon to say good-bye. We had put off till the last moment any consideration of what was to happen next. We had made no plans to meet again. I did not even know that Lord Ledbury had a house in London, to which Violet was taken at rare intervals, when ithappened to be without a tenant, but always under strict guard and more for business than for pleasure. We had not even discussed any plans for correspondence, though it was evident that I could not write to her at her father’s house without everything coming out. It was understood between us that my very existence must be kept secret if it were possible. Beyond that we had not found courage to face the situation.
And now we had to face it at last, and it was too much for us to bear. It seemed to both of us like death. It was idle to think that we could part like that, uncertain if ever we should meet again. It was a waste of breath to pronounce the word good-bye when we were clinging to each other in the desperation of young life in travail with its destiny. I dare not try to recall that agony.... I stole across with the footstep of a felon and closed the battered door.
When I had slain my love I understood too late what I had done. Her anguish was a revelation to me of what her utter purity had been. We passed out from that brief frenzy into a strange world. The sun had fallen from our sky, and Joshua could not have called it back again. We were two spectres in each other’s sight. I did not ask her to forgive me—I could not forgive myself. Rather would I have begged her to reproach me. But no such thought was in her mind. Her whole feeling was one of horror at what she had destroyed in herself;and I was only hateful to her as the mirror in which she had seen her unknown self. She moved her lips to implore me never to let her see me again. She shuddered past me, and went down the hill with the stumbling gait of a wounded bird.
I know there are some men, and there may be some women, who will think that I was a fool to let her go. They will tell me that I ought not to have taken her at her word; that if I had waited, in a short time she would have recovered, and the breach might have been patched up, and the wound healed. I cannot tell if they are right; I only know that I obeyed her, and fled from her neighbourhood with no hope of ever coming back.
And so the lonely girl, left to herself with no one to confide in, brooded over her secret till it became like a viper gnawing at her heart. How she came to hear of the charlatan she had not told me. Somehow or other during one of her stays in her father’s house in town, the news reached her of the new science of psycho-analysis, and of the practitioner who undertook to do what Macbeth longed for in vain, to pluck from memory a rooted sorrow, and erase the writing from the tablets of the brain.
She went to him, of course, without consulting those about her, and from that moment she became his helpless prey. What arts he used to beguile her it is easy to guess. At first she believed in him, and when her suspicion began to be aroused she was already in his power, and dared not break with him.
By this time the Earl of Ledbury and the duenna had put their heads together and decided that Lady Violet must pass a season in London, and be seen in the great world. In consequence she had much more liberty. She made some girl friends whom she was allowed to go about with, and among them were not a few who held modern notions on the rights of girlhood, and were ready to encourage and to screen her in the courses into which she was compelled by her taskmaster. Her most intimate comrade willingly became a member of the Domino Club.
But not even to her most intimate friend dared Violet disclose the true situation. While she still trusted in Weathered and believed in his power to heal her soul of sin, she had written the whole story of our love in letters which the scoundrel now refused to give up, except as the price of a far worse surrender. There was only one being in the world whom she could appeal to without the risk of further shame. And thus we met again.
The medical directory gave her my address, and she wrote to me at Sir Frank Tarleton’s. But her letter begged for a strictly private interview in such urgent language that I thought it safer not to let her come there. I asked her to meet me at the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue, as though by accident, and I took her to the little room which I could call my own.
Nearly four years had gone by since our tragic parting, but when we stood face to face again theydid not seem four hours. Violet’s face changed from red to white and back again as she half held out a trembling hand and dropped it woefully; and my hand trembled too as I raised it to my hat. I thought it best to say nothing except the few words necessary to explain where we were going, and she seemed glad to keep silent till we were safely there.
The story she had to tell was so appalling, and the effort of telling it cost her so much, that naturally a good deal was left out. Certainly I quite failed to gather from her that Weathered had induced her to make her confession to him in letters. I supposed that he had taken it down from her lips. It is the familiar practice of West End consultants, who see their patients at long intervals, to make a careful entry of all the particulars of the case for future reference; and I supposed that Weathered had taken advantage of this to make a damning record in his case-book, which would be quite sufficient to enable him to blast his victims’ reputation, although it might not be evidence in a lawyer’s eyes.
The truth is that I was myself too agitated to go into the matter carefully even if Violet had been in a state to be cross-examined. The whole interview resolved itself into a series of wild outbreaks on her part, and attempts to assure her on mine. Indeed, I hardly know that we arrived at any clear understanding of what she was asking of me, or what I was promising her. The one thing clear to me was that the only way to save her would be forme to get at the doctor’s case-book and destroy it. And to do that I must obtain his keys.
What Violet had told me about the Domino Club and their meetings in that accursed place gave me my plan. I would do what I could not ask her to do. All that was necessary was that I should be able to approach Weathered without putting him on his guard. I must disguise myself in a costume with which he was familiar, one which would allure him, and in which I could play the part of the sought rather than the seeker. And so the fatally easy plot took shape.
There was barely an inch between Violet and me in height, and that inch would be concealed by the Zenobia helmet. It would not be too difficult for me to imitate for an hour or two the lighter movements of a woman. Weathered would be quite unsuspicious; the dress, the artificial light, the noise and excitement of the revel would all be in my favour. The doctor, I gathered, drank freely on these occasions; I had only to wait till the night was advanced and the wine had done its work.
I told the distressed girl as little as possible of what I meant to do, or to attempt. I said merely that I must meet Weathered, and that it would be the best way for me to impersonate her for one night. She consented readily enough—what else could she do? She told me the date of the next dance, and undertook to send the mask and costume to my room some days beforehand, so that I should have timeto see that it fitted, and to practice moving about with it on.
We did not bid each other any formal farewell. Nothing was said about our next meeting, indeed I felt no confidence that there would be another. She had been driven to appeal to me in her extremity, but she showed no sign of having forgiven me. Rather she seemed to find every moment painful that she passed with me. All the time she was struggling with herself, trying to speak to me as if I were a stranger whom she found herself obliged to trust, but continually faltering and letting her voice die down to a broken whisper.
When I had let her out at the street door she hurried away blindly like an escaping prisoner. And as soon as she was out of sight I hastened round to Montague Street, and locked myself up in Tarleton’s arsenal of poisons.