Hector Graeme

by Evelyn Brentwood

The old proverb, "One man may better steal a horse, than another look over the hedge," like most sayings of its kind, possesses a very deep meaning, particularly when applied to the passions and emotions by which human nature is swayed.

There are beings, for instance, to whom a little flirtation is a pastime, enjoyable maybe, but never to be allowed to interfere with the serious business of their lives; it is taken up or dropped whenever it pleases them, for their natures allow them so to do. On the other hand, there are others to whom a love affair, once entered upon, means a temporary enthralment of body and soul; and to this class belonged Hector Graeme. Though but ten days had elapsed since the episode of the bookmarker, he had managed, even in that short space, to forget both love of wife and his ambition, the one destroyed for ever, the other for the time superseded by a mad unreasoning desire of possession the more imperative because of the seeming impossibility of fulfilment.

The small phial, hidden away in his dressing-case, was by now almost empty. Its contents had been drawn on at the rate of three or four tabloids a night, and yet sleep, save intermittently, failed him; nor could he eat, racked as he was by the triple pangs of unsatisfied desire, impatience of the wasted present, and jealousy of the future, with its certain rivals.

Such love as this the brutal and plain-spoken call "lust," the more refined "earthly passion." Scornfully they contrast it with the sentiments they feel for their own beloved, ignoring the fact that love between man and woman, disguise it as you will, is that and that only—the sexless guardians of the harem proving this in their insensibility to the emotion—though it varies according to the nature of him or her who feels it.

Thus the dull, material being is as dull and brutish in his loves as he is in all else; the rare, steadfast nature, knowing no satiety, loves on till death; the ardent and imaginative invests his mistress with a halo of romantic fancies. And so, Hector loved Stara, with an exalted, passionate adoration, rendering him, for the time, ready and longing for any manifestation of self-sacrifice, and, as he truly believed, incapable of the very wrong to the accomplishment of which his whole present energies were nevertheless directed.

It is men like Graeme who are the only really dangerous lovemakers to pure-minded women, for apparently grossness has no part in their minds, they place their divinities on a pedestal and worship at it: not for worlds, they declare and believe, would they sully her white purity with suggestions of earthly passion. Then the time comes, and they ... do, and that far more effectually and thoroughly than doer, the ordinary commonplace lover, whose feeling, though obviously of the earth, is nevertheless healthy, and not rendered unnatural and fantastic by a fevered imagination. And so Hector vowed that Stara was, and would be always, sacred to him: he only wanted her love, that was all, and to gain this he now concentrated all the force of which his nature was capable. But the days were slipping by, the end of the journey was already in sight, and still so far, apparently, his efforts were all in vain; for, from the first, Stara had made it plain that she would have none of his lovemaking. Good friend he might be to any extent, but nothing more; and to this resolution she adhered, despite all his attempts at trespass on ground forbidden, and thereby rendered imperatively desirable.

The whole day long she would sit with him, and often till late at night, when the decks were dark, and, save for them, deserted; also she would dance with him, fence with him, and on one occasion had even matched herself to drink against him. This last, however, like their fencing bouts, had resulted in humiliation to Hector, who, with the deck heaving beneath his feet and the stars dancing giddily above him, had staggered away below, his steps being guided by the soft, white, yet steel strong arm of his late antagonist. Further, she would discuss love in all its aspects, but at any attempt on his part to take advantage of her candour, and turn the conversation to a personal issue, Stara would round on him, lashing him with her tongue in a manner that left Hector sullen and discomfited for hours afterwards.

Indeed, so far, with the woman lay victory, even in those very intellectual attainments on which he had now come to set such store; for his reading, compared with hers, was as the veriest smattering, while in knowledge of subjects called deep, and ability to discuss them, Stara was on another plane.

Nevertheless, though hitherto baffled, Graeme's purpose remained unchanged, rather it increased in intensity with the passing of the days. Nor did his confidence in ultimate success lessen, for that Stara loved him he felt intuitively certain, though at the same time he realised that she was determined not to acknowledge that love, possibly from pride, more likely because she did not believe in his, thinking it to be but a passing infatuation and not the life's passion it really was to him.

He must make her believe—that was all; not by words, for they, he realised, would never convince her, but by action, and that soon, for his own endurance, he knew, was now well-nigh at an end. The only question was, what was that action to be? Something big it must be; nothing small would do. Well, the bigger the better; he wouldn't shrink whatever it was, even to the burning of the ship, if necessary, and subsequent rescue of Stara from the flames. He didn't care—the end was before him, and everything must give way to the attainment of that end.