Comedies and Errors

by Henry Harland

IV.

They were seated on the turf, under a great tree, in the park, amid a multitude of bright-coloured cushions, Johannah, Will, and Madame Dornaye. It was three weeks later—whence it may be inferred that he had abandoned his resolution to “go back to town to-morrow.” He was smoking a cigarette; Madame Dornaye was knitting; Johannah, hatless, in an indescribable confection of cream-coloured muslin, her head pillowed in a scarlet cushion against the body of the tree, was gazing off towards the sea with dreamy eyes.

“Will,” she called languidly, by-and-by.

“Yes?” he responded.

“Do you happen by any chance to belong to that sect of philosophers who regard gold as a precious metal?”

“From the little I’ve seen of it, I am inclined to regard it as precious—yes,” he answered.

“Well, then, I wouldn’t be so lavish of it, if I were you,” said she.

“If you don’t take care,” said he, “you’ll force me to admit that I haven’t an idea of what you’re driving at.”

“I’m driving at your silence. You’re as silent as a statue. Please talk a little.”

“What shall I talk about?”

“Anything. Nothing. Tell us a story,” she decided.

“I don’t know any stories.”

“Then the least you can do is to invent one,” was her plausible retort.

“What sort of a story would you like?”

“There’s only one sort of story a woman ever sincerely likes—especially on a hot summer’s afternoon, in the country,” she affirmed.

“Oh, I couldn’t possibly invent a love-story,” he disclaimed.

“Then tell us a true one. You needn’t be afraid of shocking Madame Dornaye. She’s a realist herself.”

“Jeanne ma fille!” murmured Madame Dornaye, reprovingly.

“The only true love-story I could tell has a somewhat singular defect,” said he. “There’s no heroine.”

“That’s like the story of what’s-his-name—Narcissus,” Johannah said.

“With the vastest difference. The hero of my story wasn’t in love with his own image. He was in love with a beautiful princess,” Will explained.

“Then how can you have the face to say that there’s no heroine?” she demanded.

“There isn’t any heroine. At the same time, there’s nothing else. The story’s all about her. You see, she never existed.”

“You said it was a true love-story,” she reproached him.

“So it is—literally true.”

“I asked for a story, and you give me a riddle.” She shook her head.

“Oh, no, it’s a story all the same,” he reassured her. “Its title is Much Ado about Nobody.”

“Oh? It runs in my head that I’ve met with something or other with a similar title before,” she considered.

“Precisely,” said he. “Something or other by one of the Elizabethans. That’s how it came to occur to me. I take my goods where I find them. However, do you want to hear the story?”

“Oh, if you’re determined to tell it, I daresay I can steel myself to listen,” she answered, with resignation.

“On second thoughts, I’m determined not to tell it,” he teased.

“Bother! Don’t be disagreeable. Tell it at once,” she commanded.

“Well, then, there isn’t any story,” he admitted. “It’s simply an absurd little freak of child psychology. It’s the story of a boy who fell in love with a girl—a girl that never was, on sea or land. It happened in Regent Street, of all romantic places, ’one day still fierce ’mid many a day struck calm.’ I had gone with my mother to her milliner’s. I think I was ten or eleven. And while my mother was transacting her business with the milliner, I devoted my attention to the various hats and bonnets that were displayed about the shop. And presently I hit on one that gave me a sensation. It was a straw hat, with brown ribbons, and cherries, great glossy red and purple cherries. I looked at it, and suddenly I got a vision—a vision of a girl. Oh, the loveliest, loveliest girl! She was about eighteen (a self-respecting boy of eleven, you know, always chooses a girl of about eighteen to fall in love with), and she had the brightest brown eyes, and the rosiest cheeks, and the curlingest hair, and a smile and a laugh that made one’s heart thrill and thrill with unutterable blisses. And there hung her hat, as if she had just come in and taken it off, and passed into another room. There hung her hat, suggestive of her as only people’s hats know how to be suggestive; and there sat I, my eyes devouring it, my soul transported. The very air of the shop seemed all at once to have become fragrant—with the fragrance that had been shaken from her garments as she passed. I went home, hopelessly, frantically in love. I loved that non-existent young woman with a passion past expressing, for at least half a year. I was always thinking of her; she was always with me, everywhere. How I used to talk to her, and tell her all my childish fancies, desires, questionings; how I used to sit at her feet and listen! She never laughed at me. Sometimes she would let me kiss her—I declare, my heart still jumps at the memory of it. Sometimes I would hold her hand or play with her hair. And all the real girls I met seemed so tame and commonplace by contrast with her. And then, little by little, I suppose, her image faded away.—Rather an odd experience, wasn’t it?”

“Very, very odd; very strange and very pretty,” Johannah murmured. “It seems as if it ought to have some allegorical significance, though I can’t perceive one. It would be interesting to know what sort of real girl, if any, ended by becoming the owner of that hat. You weren’t shocked, were you?” she inquired of Madame Dornaye.

“Not by the story. But the heat is too much for me,” said that lady, gathering up her knitting. “I am going to the house to make a siesta.”

Will rose, as she did, and stood looking vaguely after her, as she moved away. Johannah nestled her head deeper in her cushion, and half closed her eyes. And for a while neither she nor her cousin spoke. A faint, faint breeze whispered in the tree-tops; now a twig snapped, now a bird dropped a solitary liquid note. For the rest, all was still summer heat and woodland perfume. Here and there the greensward round them, dark in the shadow of dense foliage, was diapered with vivid yellow by sunbeams that filtered through.

“Oh, dear me,” Johannah sighed at last.

“What is it?” Will demanded.

“Here you are, silent as eternity again. Come and sit down—here—near to me.”

She indicated a position with a lazy movement of her hand. He obediently sank upon the grass.

“You’re always silent nowadays, when we’re alone,” she complained.

“Am I? I hadn’t noticed that.”

“Then you’re extremely unobservant. Directly we’re alone, you appear to lose the power of speech. You mope and moon, and gaze off at things beyond the horizon, and never open your mouth. One might suppose you had something on your mind. Have you? What is it? Confide it to me, and you can’t think how relieved you’ll feel,” she urged.

“I haven’t anything on my mind,” said he.

“Oh? Ah, then you’re silent with me because I bore you? You find me an uninspiring talk-mate? Thank you,” she bridled.

“You know perfectly well that that’s preposterous nonsense,” answered Will.

“Well, then, what is it? Why do you never talk to me when we’re alone?” she persisted.

“But I do talk to you. I talk too much. Perhaps I’m afraid of boring you,” he said.

“You know perfectly well that that’s a preposterous subterfuge,” said she. “You’ve got something on your mind. You’re keeping something back.” She paused for a second; then, softly, wistfully, “Tell me what it is, Will, please.” And she looked eagerly, pleadingly, into his eyes.

He looked away from her. “Upon my word, there’s nothing to tell,” he said, but his tone was a little forced.

She broke into a merry peal of laughter, looking at him now with eyes that were derisive.

“What are you laughing at?” he asked.

“At you, Will,” said she. “What else could you imagine?”

“I’m flattered to think you find me so amusing.”

“Oh, you’re supremely amusing. ’Refrain thou shalt; thou shalt refrain!’ Is that your motto, Will? If I were a man, I’d choose another. ’Be bold, be bold, and everywhere be bold!’ That should be my motto if I were a man.”

“But as you’re a woman———” he began.

“It’s my motto, all the same,” she interrupted. “Do you mean to say you’ve not discovered that yet? Oh, Will, if I were you, and you were I, how differently we should be employing this heaven-sent summer’s afternoon.” She gazed at the sky, and sighed.

“What should we be doing?” asked he.

“That’s a secret. Pray the fairies to-night to transpose our souls, and you’ll know by to-morrow morning—if the fairies grant your prayer. But in the meanwhile, you must try to entertain me. Tell me another story.”

“I can’t think of any more stories till I’ve had my tea.”

“You shan’t have any tea unless you earn it,” she stipulated. “Now that Madame Dornaye’s no longer present, you can tell me of some of your grown-up love affairs, some of your flesh-and-blood ones.”

“I’ve never had a grown-up love affair,” he said.

“Oh, come! you can’t expect me to believe that,” she cried.

“It’s the truth, all the same.”

“Well, then, it’s high time you should have one,” was her conclusion. “How old did you say you were?”

“I’m thirty-three.”

She lifted up her hands in astonishment. “And you’ve never had a love affair! Fi donc! I’m barely twenty-eight, and I’ve had a hundred.”

“Have you?” he asked, a little ruefully.

“No, I haven’t. But everybody’s had at least one. So tell me yours.”

“Upon my word, I’ve not had even one,” he reiterated.

“It seems incredible. How have you contrived it?”

“The circumstances of my birth contrived it for me. It would be impossible for me to have a love affair with a woman I could love,” he said.

“Impossible? For goodness sake, why?” she wondered.

“What woman would accept the addresses of a man without a name?”

“Haven’t you a name? Methought I’d heard your name was William Stretton.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Then permit me to remark,” she answered him, “that what you mean is quite superlatively silly. If you loved a woman, wouldn’t you tell her so?”

“Not if I could help it.”

“But suppose the woman loved you?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t come to that.”

“But suppose it had come to that?” she persevered. “Suppose she’d set her heart upon you? Would it be fair to her not to tell her?”

“What would be the good of my telling her, since I couldn’t possibly ask her to marry me?”

“The fact might interest her, apart from the question of its consequences,” Johannah suggested. “But suppose she told you? Suppose she asked you to marry her?”

“She wouldn’t,” said he.

“All hypotheses are admissible. Suppose she should?”

“I couldn’t marry her,” he declared.

“You’d find it rather an awkward job refusing, wouldn’t you?” she quizzed. “And what reasons could you give?”

“Ten thousand reasons. I’m a bastard. That begins and ends it. It would dishonour her, and it would dishonour me; and, worst of all, it would dishonour my mother.”

“It would certainly not dishonour you, nor the woman you married. That’s the sheerest, antiquated, exploded rubbish. And how on earth could it dishonour your mother?”

“For me to take as my wife a woman who could not respect her?” Will questioned. “My mother’s memory for me is the sacredest of sacred things. You know something of her history. You know that she was in every sense but a legal sense my father’s wife. You know why they couldn’t be married legally. You know, too, how he treated her—and how she died. Do you suppose I could marry a woman who would always think of my mother as of one who had done something shameful?”

“Oh, but no woman with a spark of nobility in her soul would or could do that,” Johannah cried.

“Every woman brought up in the usual way, with the usual prejudices, the usual traditions, thinks evil of the woman who has had an illegitimate child,” asserted he.

“Not every woman. I, for instance. Do you imagine that I could think evil of your mother, Will?” She looked at him intensely, earnestly.

“Oh, you’re entirely different from other women. You’re——” But he stopped at that.

“Then—just for the sake of a case in point—if I were the woman you chanced to be in love with, and if I simultaneously chanced to be in love with you, you could see your way to marrying me?” she pursued him.

“What’s the use of discussing that?”

“For its metaphysical interest. Answer me.”

“There are other reasons why I couldn’t marry you.”

“I’m not good-looking enough?” she cried.

“Don’t be silly.”

“Not young enough?”

“Oh, I say! Let’s talk of something reasonable.”

“Not old enough, perhaps?”

He was silent.

“Not wise enough? Not foolish enough?” she persisted.

“You’re foolish enough, in all conscience,” said he. “Well, then, why? What are the reasons why you couldn’t marry me?”

“What is the good of talking about this?” he groaned.

“I want to know. A man has the hardihood to inform me to my face that he’d spurn my hand, even if I offered it to him. I insist upon knowing why.” She feigned high indignation.

“You know why. And you know that ’spurn’ is very far from the right word,” was his rejoinder.

“I don’t know why. I insist upon your telling me,” she repeated, fierily.

“You know that you’re Sir William Silver’s heiress, I suppose,” he suggested.

“Oh, come! that’s not my fault. How could that matter?”

“Look here, I’m not going to make an ass of myself by explaining the obvious,” he declared.

“I daresay I’m very stupid, but it isn’t obvious to me.”

“Well, then, let’s drop the subject,” he proposed.

“I’ll not drop the subject till you’ve elucidated it. If you were in love with me, Will, and I were in love with you, how on earth could it matter, my being Sir William Silvers heiress?”

“Wouldn’t I seem a bit mercenary’ if I asked you to marry me?”

“Oh, Will!” she remonstrated. “Don’t tell me you’re such a prig as that. What! if you loved me, if I loved you, you’d give me up, you’d break my heart, just for fear lest idiotic people, whose opinions don’t matter any more than the opinions of so many deep-sea fish, might think you mercenary! When you and I both knew in our own two souls that you really weren’t mercenary’ in the least! You’d pay me a poor compliment, Will. Isn’t it conceivable that a man might love me for myself?”

“You state the case too simply. You make no allowances for the shades and complexities of a man’s feelings.”

“Bother shades and complexities. Love burns them up. Your shades and complexities are nothing but priggishness and vanity,” she asserted hotly. “But there! I’m actually getting angry over a purely supposititious question. For, of course, we don’t really love each other the least bit, do we, Will?” she asked him softly.

He appeared to be giving his whole attention to the rolling of a cigarette; he did not answer. But his fingers trembled, and presently he tore his paper, spilling half the tobacco in his lap.

Johannah watched him from eyes full of languid, half mocking, half pensive laughter.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she sighed again, by-and-by.

He looked at her; and he had to catch his breath. Lying there on the turf, the skirts of her frock flowing round her in a sort of little billowy white pool, her head deep in the scarlet cushion, her black hair straying wantonly where it would about her face and brow, her eyes lambent with that lazy, pensive laughter, one of her hands, pink and white, warm and soft, fallen open on the grass between her and her cousin, her whole person seeming to breathe a subtle scent of womanhood, and the luxury and mystery of womanhood—oh, the sight of her, the sense of her, there in the wide green stillness of the summer day, set his heart burning and beating poignantly.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she sighed, “I wish the man I am in love with were only here.”

“Oh! You are in love with some one?” he questioned, with a little start.

“Rather!” said she. “In love! I should think so. Oh, I love him, love him, love him. Ah, if he were here! He wouldn’t waste this golden afternoon as you’re doing. He’d take my hand—he’d hold it, and press it, and kiss it; and he’d pour his soul out in tumultuous celebration of my charms, in fiery avowals of his passion. If he were here! Ah, me!”

“Where is he?” Will asked, in a dry’ voice.

“Ah, where indeed? I wish I knew.”

“I’ve never heard you speak of him before,” he reflected.

“There’s none so deaf as he that will not hear. I’ve spoken of him to you at least a thousand times. He forms the staple of my conversation.”

“I must be veryy deaf indeed. I swear this is absolutely news to me.”

“Oh, Will, you are such a goose—or such a hypocrite,” said she. “But it’s tea-time. Help me up.”

She held out her hand, and, he took it and helped her up. But she tottered a little before she got her balance (or made, at least, a feint of doing so), and grasped his hand tight as if to save herself, and all but fell into his arms.

He drew back a step.

She looked straight into his eyes. “You’re a goose, and a hypocrite, and a prig, and—a dear,” she said.