III
Next morning, with seared eyelids, and heart a red raw wound, conscious of the peasant’s disapproving inspection, my feet carried me unreluctantly toward torture. It was part of my implacable fate that I should diagnose my own misery through the happiness of the two beings who bounded the limits of sensation for me. Trueberry was alone, and greeted me with a vagueness of glance that denoted retrospective bliss. He was glad to see me in a quiet way, as a feature in enchanting environment.
We smoked in silence until our incommunicative companionship was abruptly disturbed by the arrival of a couple of officers from a neighbouring garrison town. Pleasant fellows both, carrying a rollicking breath of Lever into the surcharged atmosphere. They spoke at the top of their voices, hailed us with obvious delight, joked, quizzed, and gallantly misconducted themselves from the point of view of lucky and unlucky lover. I was reminded that I was French, and made an effort to do honour to my land. While they stayed, I shook off melancholy, and matched their breezy recklessness with the intoxication of despair. Heaven knows what we laughed at, but everybody except Trueberry shouted hearty guffaws, and seemed to regard life as the most entertaining of jokes. They chaffed Trueberry on his captivity to isolated beauty, and hinted in their broad barrack way at the perils of bewitchment. Trueberry went white with repressed anger, and I dusky as a savage. I wanted to fell the harmless fool for a pleasantry common enough in affairs of gallantry between men, but Trueberry passed it off with his superlative breeding, and the officer adroitly changed the conversation.
When Brases joined us before lunch, the younger of the two again provoked me by approaching her with a slight military swagger, his air, as he took her beautiful hand, so clearly saying: ‘Madame, allow me to observe that you are a remarkably handsome woman, and I shouldn’t mind being your captive myself.’ Not that he was impertinent or fatuous, but his admiration was of a crude and youthful and self-assured flavour. Trueberry lifted a dolorous lid upon me, as if seeking sympathy in me for the exquisite torment of this outer desecrating breath upon the divine and hidden.
They left us as cheerily as they had come, bidding me persuade Lady Fitzowen to come to their garrison ball next week. The major begged to know what sins the county had committed, to be so punished by its fairest woman. I saw Trueberry’s fingers clench ominously, and my own lips shut upon a grim twist for all response. Brases stared at them softly, as if they were a long way off, and then a little puzzled smile stirred her eyes as she sought Trueberry’s glance.
‘I wish you could persuade Monsieur d’Harcourt to go,’ was her acknowledgment of their invitation. ‘He does not look nearly so well as when he first came.’
I grasped this notice as a famished dog pounces on a stale crust. I flung her an enchanted beam of gratitude, and red ran momently through the grey universe. She came out, and stood beside me on the broad gravel, when the officers had driven away, and I found courage to urge her to come with me to the ball at Kilstern. It was no baseness to my friend, surely, that I should hunger and thirst and pray for one little moment of her life unshared with him!
‘Had I any such foolish desire, Monsieur, my obligations as hostess would still prevent me. It is so little I can do for your friend, so much I would gladly do. But it is no privation for me to dispense with society. I never liked it, and have only bitter recollections of it. I ask nothing now from life but peace,—and strength to live my days for my children’s sake, striving not to wish them shortened, and remembering that there is much else besides personal hope and happiness. One despairs so quickly in youth, and then the children come, with their sweet faces made up of morning light, soft as flowers, with the smile of paradise in their clear eyes. And youth for me lies so far away,’ she added, with a scarce perceptible change of voice, and a ray lighting up her delicate face, showed a smile so wan and faint as rather to resemble the memory of a smile, reminiscent as the spectre of that youth she greeted as an alien, and I listening, wished I had died before hearing words so sad from her lips.
Her gesture in one less superlatively sincere might have been taxed with coquetry, so exquisite was its expression; her white hands fell in a gentle depression with the finger-tips curved inward.
‘Even music no longer pleases me,’ she continued, sweeping the circumscribed scene with a flame of revolt under the drawn arch of the lovely brows. ‘It is not sad enough. That is why I am so fond of the ravening melancholy of ocean’s song down upon the desolate beach. I listen for it at night as I lie awake, and it is the eternal funeral march of my dead youth.’
It was hardly by an effort of will that she ceased speaking: speech dropped from her as sound drops from the receding wave, and I could have cried aloud in passionate protest as I saw the veil drawn over this transient revelation of herself. Never had she spoken to me so before. Never had she referred to her past. And the hint that all joy for her lay in her children fired my brain with hope’s delirium. Surely I had been mistaken in my haunting dread, and stupidly interpreted the looks between her and Trueberry. He might love her, as I loved her, but her feeling was only the soft interest of compassion. And yet—and yet——!
Leaving her, I walked slowly down the path. At the gate I looked back. She was still standing there, staring across the hills, with the sunset hues upon the amber of her head, and revealing the matchless purity of line and tint of face and throat. Not surrender, not love, did that dejection of air denote. The thought went with me, rooted in my heart, and kept me awake, tossing on a fever-troubled pillow. I started up, and stood at the window to watch the stars till dawn sent a grey glimmer down the dusk, and a white cloud sped like a wing over the sky. I had a foreboding of rashness, of perilous explosion on the morrow, unless I had the wisdom to steal out alone into the empty world. If they loved one another, it was plainly my duty. But, oh! to be able to look into her eyes, and cry: ‘I love you, yet I leave you. For me death were easier, but my death would stain your bliss with regret’s shadow.’
I questioned the stars in my blind anguish to learn if there were no resources in nature to wall in this terrible blank of being that stretched so miserably, so limitlessly before me as a future without Brases or Trueberry. Old interests, old tastes, old desires had dropped from me, and I stood beggared of sum and aim of life.’
I was abroad upon the moors by sunrise, lessening my feeling of personal diminution in the earth’s grandeur and the wavering immensity of the Atlantic as it rolled under the lemon-tinted horizon. I took my last look of forked mountains against the grey-shot blue of the heaven, of shattered rocks, and sombre tarn seen through the opening of a valley, and the distant plain, an inner sea of bracken and heather. Ever the sound of water, of moaning wave, of mingling rill, of foaming fall, the shrill cry of eagle and curlew, and the melody of the early birds. An hour hence should find me trudging to Kilstern, away from the wild beauty of this place—the home of Brases! On my way back, I met my host, and mentioned my intention. ‘That’s as it should be,’ was all he said.
His curt approval galled me, and to silence discourteous retort, I flung myself over the stone ledge, and took the manor path like a chased creature. With what unconscious accuracy of observation I noted each leaf, each colour and form of a scene memory was destined to retain for evermore! following with eager eyes the light as it made its own short road of gold among the dense shadows, and these as they picked out in blots the sunny spaces.
The hall door as usual was open, and in passing the portraits, I took my last look of the boy with curls and ruffles, and beyond of the girl with the proud fair face that might be a portrait of Brases in younger days. I inspected it steadily, and traced where resemblance stopped in the lack of the subtle stamp of the soul, the ennobling seal of grief. It was a Brases who had never wept, never thought, a creature of mere bodily beauty.
I found Trueberry walking up and down in restless expectation. I could see that sight of me brought an uncontrollable smart of disappointment to his eyelids, and his expressive mouth twitched like a child’s.
‘What’s the matter, Gontran?’ he asked, with an affectionate effort, and placed one hand on my shoulder. ‘You look frightfully battered, my poor fellow.’
‘Last night I meant to go away in silence,’ I said, not able to meet his kind glance, ‘but to-day I decided I owed my friend a franker course. Neither of us is responsible for the fact, but we must separate now.’
‘You would desert me, Gontran—now!’ he cried, and the bitter tone of his reproach fetched a sob to my throat.
‘I wish to God it should not be, that I had the unselfish courage to stay and witness your happiness——’
‘Happiness!’ he shouted frantically. ‘My poor boy, I am more miserable than yourself,’ he added, with a dejected movement.
‘Then you are deceiving yourself,’ I said, shrugging and turning impatiently on my heel. ‘She loves you. I have seen it in her eyes, felt it to the inmost fibres of consciousness in her voice.’
‘And if it were so!’ Trueberry cried, in a soft, fond tone of interjection, that brought my fierce look back to his face. He called himself miserable, but bliss sparkled out of the depths of his frank eyes. He fronted daylight, the proud and conscious lover, and the shadow upon his radiance was, after all, but a becoming tone to temper fatuity to my amazed and acrid scrutiny. Without it, I might have longed to strike him, in my state of moral degradation.
‘How much nearer am I to her for that?’ he went on, in reply to my hateful look. ‘My dear friend, there is nothing for us both but to take up our staff and knapsack, and trudge wearily out of this enchanted valley into the busy garish world, carrying with us the remembrance of an unstable and beautiful dream. We are equals in fortune, Gontran.’
‘Equals,’ I roared, goaded by the fiery bar of his speech. ‘What equality exists between success and unsuccess? between the chosen and the neglected? between heat and cold, sun and ice, glory and shame, tears and laughter? The barrier to your happiness may be levelled by fate at any moment. You have but to wait and watch the newspapers. While I——’
‘Don’t be rough, old man. You would be sorrier than I if you hurt me now, when I can ill bear more pain. For I am dismissed, sent away. Oh!’
He sat down and covered his face with both hands, and I, in awakened wickedness of spirit, gloated over his convulsive wretchedness. Suffering had blunted conscience, and the finer feelings, and left me abjectly enslaved to all the baser sensations that assail weakened humanity. In such moments, happily brief, the savage is uppermost, whatever the training of the gentleman. The soul sleeps, and the body, with all its frenzied needs and desires, stands naked, primitive, elemental, the mere animal living through the senses. The handsome sobbing creature had all, and I had nothing. Yet he dared to speak of equality in misery between us.
‘Good-bye,’ I said, and moved to the door.
Trueberry sprang up, and clutched my arm. His dear, simple nature could understand nothing of the vileness that the finer and more complex order of being may contain. To him I was not an embittered rival, but a cherished friend to whom he boyishly clung in his unbearable sorrow.
‘Must we separate, Gontran?’ he entreated. ‘Why, since we both go to-day?’
The inalterable sweetness of his temper shook me on a crest of remorse, and conquered assaulting vindictiveness. I felt so mean beside him that I could have begged his pardon for unuttered insult. His superiority more than justified Brases’ choice, though the dear fellow lacked my brains, and my name commanded considerable stir.
I consented to go with him, and hurried back to the cottage, where I found my host busy over my portmanteau. I told him my friend was coming with me too, upon which he scrutinised my face mildly, and, I thought, with satisfaction. He strapped the portmanteau, and remarked in a dry tone: ‘That, too, is as it should be, and I am glad there is no quarrel.’ Taking no note of my astonishment at his incredible discernment, he added: ‘You’ll drink a last drop of the mountain dew to your success and happiness in another spot, sir, where the girls, God bless them! are fresh and pretty and plentiful as the flowers in May.’
He went into the kitchen, and I stood at the window watching light chase shadow over the bold visage of a reek, and assured myself gloomily that there were a thousand ways, after all, of threading a path through despair. Whose life is crowned with happiness?—and hope of it must come to an end sooner or later. Pleasure still remains when we have shed the last tear, and whatever may be said to the contrary in pessimistic moments, pleasure to the last peeps out at us through the thorniest brambles, with its varied allurements. This I told myself, and though I could think of no possible pleasure at the time, or compensation for the miserable duty of facing life, I drearily supposed I would come, like another, to find my round of petty joys and mean delights. There was something to be done even by a fellow so sick at heart as I: books to be written, books to be read, people to see, and people to avoid, countries to travel in, and women to criticise. My host stood at the top of the path, bareheaded, cheering me on with his gracious ‘God speed ye, sir!’ until the bend of the hill hid his honest friendly face from me. I sought Trueberry in his room, and saw his gloves, and hat, and portmanteau on the table. I wandered about the house, through unfamiliar chambers, till, on lifting a curtain, a picture arrested me with a curdling thrill. The blood flowed from heart to brain on a dizzy wave, where it surged, so that I had some knowledge of the sensation of insanity. This explains my sin against honour in standing there. I could not have left the spot by any imperative order of conscience. I stood as immovable as a hypnotised figure. Like a spectator of the drama, with feelings unconcerned, I was quick to note the searching pathos and beauty of the picture.
They two stood together in the middle of the room, she with her hands on his shoulders, he with an arm round her waist, holding one of her little hands clasped above. The passionate gaze of both was matchless in its eloquence. Both faces were white and luminous, as if touched with a ray from heaven, anguish adequately mixed with transport. Such a look from a woman’s eyes was surely worth dying for.
‘Brases, must I go away?’ Trueberry asked brokenly.
She moved a little in his embrace, and pressed her face against his breast, then recovered herself, and said firmly—
‘You must, dear friend.’
‘Think of it, beloved,’ he cried, holding her closer to him. ‘Such links as chain us. We two as one, is it not madness to dream of living apart? Every beat of life within you, Brases, must cry out against this parting. It is murder of our souls. Go, I may, but with you, Brases.’
‘Don’t make me go over it again,’ she pleaded, in a tired voice, ‘it was so hard before. While a man lives who calls me wife, can I come to you with a tarnished name?’
‘Tarnished!’ The smile he shed upon her was convincing enough to redeem a fallen angel, it was so warm, and soft, and indulgent, with all love’s sweetness and shelter. ‘The stain is on his name, and that you would drop. The law will release you. Come, come. You cannot live alone now, any more than I can. Think of what it means—craving light and love and happiness, all within reach, and we dying apart on the brink.’
‘No, no, don’t tempt me. Your desire is my weakness. Your voice draws my being from its roots, and my pulses beat to the rhythm of yours. See how much I confess, and then be merciful, and go.’
‘Is it always right to follow our ideal of duty, when nature points so clearly another way?’ he still urged. ‘What reason have we always to regard our judgment as better than hers, since she is so big and mighty, and we so small and helpless.’ He held her hand pressed against his lips, and I could hear his murmuring speech through the trembling fingers. ‘What is the past with such a present as ours, such a future as we might have? My love would soon blot it from your memory. Trust me, Brases, I too have my past with its burden of regrets I would fain forget.’
‘Ah, had I met you before fatality crossed my path,’ she said, upon a quick sob, ‘when my palm was as clean as a child’s, how my spirit would have bounded to the wedding of yours! But that may never be now.’
Her arms dropped renouncingly, and the smile that travelled slowly over her blanched face shed a rapturous light upon his. His eyes held hers in willing bondage. Though this was her farewell I could divine the supreme effort that kept her from his arms, by the fingers fluttering like the wings of a bird against her dress, while it were hard to say which her half-lifted, gently averted face, with the eyes straining back to his, most eloquently expressed: surrender or renouncement.
Trueberry sprang to her and caught her to him, and their lips met in a kiss that had the solemnity of a sacrament. I staggered back, clapping my hand over my mouth to prevent a shout of white-hot anguish, and could see the darkness sweep down upon me like a big comforting wing. I hoped it was death come to gather me like a suffering, inarticulate child, into its soft mother’s arms.
But I struggled back into life, and had again to front the road of care and blind endeavour. How long later I cannot say, but I saw Brases standing over me, looking at me in pitying wonder. She took my hand in both of hers, and bending, softly kissed my cheek. This was the mother’s kiss I hoped death had given me. I stared at her, too broken for wonder or emotion, and sitting down beside me, with my hand still in hers, she said—
‘We were very much frightened, you were so long unconscious. Mr. Trueberry told me you have not slept of late, and that you are very unhappy. I, too, am unhappy, and that is why I kissed you. But you are better now, and you will try to forget your pain, or, at least, to bear it well. It is the best any of us can do. They will drive you to Kilstern, and you will return to France alone, carrying my best wishes for your welfare. Mr. Trueberry has gone already.’
I struggled to my feet, swallowed the wine she poured out for me, and then, in a dull, uneager voice, asked, ‘Did Trueberry leave no message for me, Madame?’
‘He was very much concerned, and full of sympathy, but he has his own trouble to bear, and thinks he will bear it best alone. He will write to you to Paris in a few days.’
A trap was at the door, and she came out with me, and when we had shaken hands in silence, stood looking after me, as I was indeed forcibly carried away. She was dim to my sight, a mere blurred grey figure, with light about her head, and the landscape looked watery and broken, as if seen through bits of bobbing glass.
A PAGE OF PHILOSOPHY
À M. Gaston, Paris
de l’Institut de France