CHAPTER XV
The days passed slowly and disagreeably for Maddison, the monotony broken only by Mrs. West’s sittings.
He worked occasionally at “The Rebel,” but dared not touch the face or hands. Marian’s absence, however, served to increase her influence over him greatly; he longed with painful intensity to return to her; he wrote long letters to her daily, and chafed at the brevity of her replies, though he had not any fault to find with their tenor; she wrote affectionately, warmly, sending messages of love and again and again expressing the delight with which she was looking forward to seeing him again.
It had not heretofore been Maddison’s habit of mind to weigh the wisdom of any of his acts, or to analyze any of his emotions. He had been frankly pagan, the joy of life was his while it was his with little if any alloy of pain or doubt; questions of present action or future conduct had not occurred to him. His emotions with regard to women had not been deep; they were a beautiful provision of nature for adding beauty to an already beautiful world; their voices, their graces, their loveliness, their caresses had charmed him, but had never absorbed him; not one of them had ever attained to any influence over him until his renewed friendship with Marian. In fact, nature had been his real mistress; when last at Rottingdean, for many weeks together he had led practically the life of a hermit, working in the studio and rambling far and wide across the country or along the coast. It was absolute joy to him to lie on his back, watching the panorama of the sky; to stand on the edge of the cliff, looking out over the sea, noting its subtle changes of color. Everything in nature, big or little, was lovable to him; the vast glory of a blood-red sunset; the minute perfection of a weed; the tumult and splendid power of a storm-smitten sea; the dewdrops upon a spraying fern; the cold, clear tones of sunrise or the trembling mystery of midday heat. No season came amiss to him: winter, spring, summer, autumn, there was no sameness in nature, save that of unadulterated beauty.
But he understood now that a change had come over him; between him and nature had come one woman.
The weather was cold, with days of biting, searching east wind; he could not saunter about the countryside, but would stride along at a great pace. What was it that had come into the foreground of every picture upon which his eyes rested? It seemed to him as if he were never alone now—Marian was always with him, persistently whispering in his ear: “You love me—you love me!” She had taken entire and sole possession of him; round her centered his every desire, every hope, every ambition.
One bright morning he stood at the edge of the cliff, some little distance from the village, the gentle murmur of a calm sea far below, and in his ears that weird muttering of vagrant winds which comes before the breaking of a tempest. He stood looking down on the rocks and shingle far below, thinking of Marian, counting the number of hours that remained to pass before her approaching visit, for it had been arranged that she should come down soon for a few days. Suddenly the thought came into his mind of the horror of her standing there beside him, of her being giddy, of her reeling, and clutching at his arm, missing her hold, falling down—down—a shapeless mass on the stones below. The horror of it sickened him.
Why had this woman come into his life? She had given him a supreme joy, the like of which he had never even dreamed of before; but might not that joy be too dearly purchased with the price of the contingent agony her love might bring him?
One evening he went down the village street, down through the gap to the edge of the sea, where the tumbling waves were bursting with sullen roar and crash upon the shingle. The storm that had raged all the day and the previous night was dying away, slowly, as if reluctant; the wind blew in fitful gusts; the clouds scurried across the moon, which shot down intermittent beams upon the tossing waters. His life, he thought, had hitherto been calm; but now a tempest raged within him, rising in strength day by day, hour by hour, so that there was but one thing in his being—love of Marian, that first, that last, that all in all. Away from the thought of her and his passion for her he could never tear himself; it was always with him. When he painted, there was her face before him, dim but insistent. Something of her features seemed to creep even into the portrait he was painting of Agatha West. When he read, the words conveyed no thought, no sense to his mind; he was thinking of her, wondering where she was and what she was doing, with whom if not alone. She possessed him, heart, soul and body; he was all hers.
More than once a frenzy of jealousy had attacked him: did she truly love him? Or was she just play-acting, fooling him, deceiving him, betraying him, laughing at him and his blind love? The impulse came on him strongly to go up to town, without warning her, and to watch—watch, unseen. But he dared not; in such a case, he thought, ignorance would be bliss compared with knowledge.