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Mike Fletcher: A Novel, a novel by George Augustus Moore |
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Chapter 2 |
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_ CHAPTER II An odour of spirits evaporated in the warm winds of May which came through the open window. The rich velvet sofa of early English design was littered with proofs and copies of the _Pilgrim_, and the stamped velvet was two shades richer in tone than the pale dead-red of the floorcloth. Small pictures in light frames harmonized with a green paper of long interlacing leaves. On the right, the grand piano and the slender brass lamps; and the impression of refinement and taste was continued, for between the blue chintz curtains the river lay soft as a picture of old Venice. The beauty of the water, full of the shadows of hay and sails, many forms of chimneys, wharfs, and warehouses, made panoramic and picturesque by the motion of the great hay-boats, were surely wanted for the windows of this beautiful apartment. Mike and Frank stood facing the view, and talked of Lily Young, whom Mike was momentarily expecting. "You know as much about it as I do. It was only just at the end that you spoke to your cousin and I got in a few words." "What did you say?" "What could I say? Something to the effect that the convent must be a very happy home." "How did you know she cared for you?" "I always know that. The second time we went there she told me she was going to leave the convent. I asked her what had decided her to take that step, and she looked at me--that thirsting look which women cannot repress. I said I hoped I should see her when she came to London; she said she hoped so too. Then I knew it was all right. I pressed her hand, and when we went again I said she would find a letter waiting for her at the post-office. Somehow she got the letter sooner than I expected, and wrote to say she'd come here if she could. Here is the letter. But will she come?" "Even if she does, I don't see what good it will do you; it isn't as if you were really in love with her." "I believe I am in love; it sounds rather awful, doesn't it? but she is wondrous sweet. I want to be true to her. I want to live for her. I'm not half so bad as you think I am. I have often tried to be constant, and now I mean to be. This ceaseless desire of change is very stupid, and it leads to nothing. I'm sick of change, and would think of none but her. You have no idea how I have altered since I have seen her. I used to desire all women. I wrote a ballade the other day on the women of two centuries hence. Is it not shocking to think that we shall lie mouldering in our graves while women are dancing and kissing? They will not even know that I lived and was loved. It will not occur to them to say as they undress of an evening, 'Were he alive to-day we might love him.'" My days for singing and loving are over, O happy moths that now flit and hover Through the song of the thrush and the pipe of the plover
Mike laughed. "Of course it is silly, but I cannot alter it; it is the sex and not any individual woman that attracts me. I enter a ball-room and I see one, one whom I have never seen before, and I say, 'It is she whom I have sought, I can love her.' I am always disappointed, but hope is born again in every fresh face. Women are so common when they have loved you." Startled by his words, Mike strove to measure the thought. "I can see nothing interesting in the fact that it is natural to you to behave badly to every woman who gives you a chance of deceiving her. That's what it amounts to. At the end of a week you'll tire of this new girl as you did of the others. I think it a great shame. It isn't gentlemanly." Mike winced at the word "gentlemanly." For a moment he thought of resentment, but his natural amiability predominated, and he said-- "I hope not. I really do think I can love this one; she isn't like the others. Besides, I shall be much happier. There is, I know, a great sweetness in constancy. I long for this sweetness." Seeing by Frank's face that he was still angry, he pursued his thoughts in the line which he fancied would be most agreeable; he did so without violence to his feelings. It was as natural to him to think one way as another. Mike's sycophancy was so innate that it did not appear, and was therefore almost invariably successful. "I have been the lover of scores of women, but I never loved one. I have always hoped to love; it is love that I seek. I find love-tokens and I do not know who were the givers. I have possessed nothing but the flesh, and I have always looked beyond the flesh. I never sought a woman for her beauty. I dreamed of a companion, one who would share each thought; I have dreamed of a woman to whom I could bring my poetry, who could comprehend all sorrows, and with whom I might deplore the sadness of life until we forget it was sad, and I have been given some more or less imperfect flesh." "I," said Frank, "don't care a rap for your blue-stockings. I like a girl to look pretty and sweet in a muslin dress, her hair with the sun on it slipping over her shoulders, a large hat throwing a shadow over the garden of her face. I like her to come and sit on my knee in the twilight before dinner, to come behind me when I am working and put her hand on my forehead, saying, 'Poor old man, you are tired!'" "And you could love one girl all your life--Lizzie Baker, for instance; and you could give up all women for one, and never wander again free to gather?" "It is always the same thing." "No, that is just what it is not. The last one was thin, this one is fat; the last one was tall, this one is tiny. The last one was stupid, this one is witty. Some men seek the source of the Nile, I the lace of a bodice. A new love is a voyage of discovery. What is her furniture like? What will she say? What are her opinions of love? But when you have been a woman's lover a month you know her morally and physically. Society is based on the family. The family alone survives, it floats like an ark over every raging flood. But you may understand without being able to accept, and I cannot accept, although I understand and love family life. What promiscuity of body and mind! The idea of never being alone fills me with horror to lose that secret self, which, like a shy bird, flies out of sight in the day, but is with you, oh, how intensely in the morning!" "Nothing pleases you so much as to be allowed to talk nonsense about yourself." Mike laughed. "Let me have those opera-glasses. That woman sitting on the bench is like her." The trees of the embankment waved along the laughing water, and in scores the sparrows flitted across the sleek green sward. The porter in his bright uniform, cocked hat, and brass buttons, explained the way out to a woman. Her child wore a red sash and stooped to play with a cat that came along the railings, its tail high in the air. "They know nothing of Lily Young," Mike said to himself; and knowing the porter could not interfere, he wondered what he would think if he knew all. "If she comes nothing can save her, she must and shall be mine." Waterloo Bridge stood high above the river, level and lovely. Over Charing Cross the brightness was full of spires and pinnacles, but Southwark shore was lost in flat dimness. Then the sun glowed and Westminster ascended tall and romantic, St. Thomas's and St. John's floating in pale enchantment, and beneath the haze that heaved and drifted, revealing coal-barges moored by the Southwark shore, lay a sheet of gold. The candour of the morning laughed upon the river; and there came a little steamer into the dazzling water, her smoke heeling over, coiling and uncoiling like a snake, and casting tremendous shadow--in her train a line of boats laden to the edge with deal planks. Then the haze heaved and London disappeared, became again a gray city, faint and far away--faint as spires seem in a dream. Again and again the haze wreathed and went out, discovering wharfs and gold inscriptions, uncovering barges aground upon the purple slime of the Southwark shore, their yellow yards pointing like birds with outstretched necks. The smoke of the little steamer curled and rolled over, now like a great snake, now like a great bird hovering with a snake in its talons; and the little steamer made pluckily for Blackfriars. Carts and hansoms, vans and brewers' vans, all silhouetting. Trains slip past, obliterating with white whiffs the delicate distances, the perplexing distances that in London are delicate and perplexing as a spider's web. Great hay-boats yellow in the sun, brown in the shadow--great hay-boats came by, their sails scarce filled with the light breeze; standing high, they sailed slowly and picturesquely, with men thrown in all attitudes; somnolent in sunshine and pungent odour--one only at work, wielding the great rudder. "Ah! if she would not disappoint me; if she would only come; I would give my life not to be disappointed.... Three o'clock! She said she would be here by three, if she came at all. I think I could love her--I am sure of it; it would be impossible to weary of her--so frail--a white blonde. She said she would come, I know she wanted to.... This waiting is agony! Oh, if I were only good-looking! Whatever power I have over women I have acquired; it was the desire to please women that gave me whatever power I possess; I was as soft as wax, and in the fingers of desire was modified and moulded. You did not know me when I was a boy--I was hideous. It seemed to me impossible that women could love men. Women seemed to me so beautiful and desirable, men so hideous and revolting. Could they touch us without a revulsion of feeling? Could they really desire us? That is why I could not bear to give women money, nor a present of any kind--no, not even a flower. If I did all my pleasure was gone; I could not help thinking it was for what they got out of me that they liked me. I longed to penetrate the mystery of women's life. It seemed to me cruel that the differences between the sexes should never be allowed to dwindle, but should be strictly maintained through all the observances of life. There were beautiful beings walking by us of whom we knew nothing--irreparably separated from us. I wanted to be with this sex as a shadow is with its object." "You didn't find many opportunities of gratifying your tastes in Cashel?" "No, indeed! Of course the women about the town were not to be thought of." Unpleasant memories seemed to check his flow of words. Without noticing his embarrassment, Frank said-- "After France it must have been a horrible change to come to Ireland. How old were you?" "About fourteen. I could not endure the place. Every day was so appallingly like the last. There was nothing for me to do but to dream; I dreamed of everything. I longed to get alone and let my fancy wander--weaving tales of which I was the hero, building castles of which I was the lord." "I remember always hearing of your riding and shooting. No one knew of your literary tastes. I don't mind telling you that Mount Rorke often suspected you of being a bit of a poacher." Mike laughed. "I believe I have knocked down a pheasant or two. I was an odd mixture--half a man of action, half a man of dreams. My position in Cashel was unbearable. My mother was a lady; my father--you know how he had let himself down. You cannot imagine the yearnings of a poor boy; you were brought up in all elegance and refinement. That beautiful park! On afternoons I used to walk there, and I remember the very moments I passed under the foliage of the great beeches and lay down to dream. I used to wander to the outskirts of the wood as near as I dared to the pleasure-grounds, and looking on the towers strove to imagine the life there. The bitterest curses lie in the hearts of young men who, understanding refinement and elegance, see it for ever out of their reach. I used to watch the parade of dresses passing on the summer lawns between the firs and flowering trees. What graceful and noble words were spoken!--and that man walking into the poetry of the laburnum gold, did he put his arm about her? And I wondered what silken ankles moved beneath her skirts. My brain was on fire, and I was crazed; I thought I should never hold a lady in my arms. A lady! all the delicacy of silk and lace, high-heeled shoes, and the scent and colour of hair that a _coiffeur_ has braided." "I think you are mad!" Mike laughed and continued-- "I was so when I was sixteen. There was a girl staying there. Her hair was copper, and her flesh was pink and white. Her waist, you could span it. I saw her walking one day on ..." "You must mean Lady Alice Hargood, a very tall girl?" "Yes; five feet seven, quite. I saw her walking on the terrace with your uncle. Once she passed our house, and I smarted with shame of it as of some restless wound, and for days I remembered I was little better than a peasant. Originally we came, as you know, of good English stock, but nothing is vital but the present. I cried and cursed my existence, my father and the mother that bore me, and that night I climbed out by my window and roved through the dark about the castle so tall in the moonlight. The sky that night was like a soft blue veil, and the trees were painted quite black upon it. I looked for her window, and I imagined her sleeping with her copper hair tossed in the moonlight, like an illustration in a volume of Shelley. "You remember the old wooden statue of a nymph that stood in the sycamores at the end of the terraces; she was the first naked woman I saw. I used to wander about her, sometimes at night, and I have often climbed about and hung round those shoulders, and ever since I have always met that breast of wood. You have been loved more truly; you have been possessed of woman more thoroughly than I. Though I clasp a woman in my arms, it is as if the Atlantic separated us. Did I never tell you of my first love affair? That was the romance of the wood nymph. One evening I climbed on the pedestal of my divinity, my cheek was pale ..." "For God's sake, leave out the poetics, and come to the facts." "If you don't let me tell my story in my own way I won't tell it at all. Out of my agony prayer rose to Alice, for now it pleased me to fancy there was some likeness between this statue and Lady Alice. The dome of leafage was sprinkled with the colour of the sunset, and as I pressed my lips to the wooden statue, I heard dead leaves rustling under a footstep. Holding the nymph with one arm, I turned and saw a lady approaching. She asked me why I kissed the statue. I looked away embarrassed, but she told me not to go, and she said, 'You are a pretty boy.' I said I had never seen a woman so beautiful. Again I grew ashamed, but the lady laughed. We stood talking in the stillness. She said I had pretty hands, and asked me if I regretted the nymph was not a real woman. She took my hands. I praised hers, and then I grew frightened, for I knew she came from the castle; the castle was to me what the Ark of the Covenant was to an Israelite. She put her arm about me, and my fears departed in the thrilling of an exquisite minute. She kissed me and said, 'Let us sit down.'" "I wonder who she was! What was her name? You can tell me." "No, I never mention names; besides, I am not certain she gave her right name." "Are you sure she was staying at the castle? For if so, there would be no use for her to conceal her name. You could easily have found it out." "Oh, yes, she was staying at the castle; she talked about you all. Don't you believe me?" "What, all about the nymph? I am certain you thought you ought to have loved her, and if what Harding says is right, that there is more truth in what we think than in what we do, I'm sure you might say that you had been on a wedding-tour with one of the gargoyles." Mike laughed; and Frank did not suspect that he had annoyed him. Mike's mother was a Frenchwoman, whom John Fletcher had met in Dublin and had pressed into a sudden marriage. At the end of three years of married life she had been forced to leave him, and strange were the legends of the profanities of that bed. She fled one day, taking her son with her. Fletcher did not even inquire where she had gone; and when at her death Mike returned to Ireland, he found his father in a small lodging-house playing the flute. Scarcely deigning to turn his head, he said--"Oh! is that you, Mike?--sit down." At his father's death, Mike had sold the lease of the farm for three hundred pounds, and with that sum and a volume of verse he went to London. When he had published his poems he wrote two comedies. His efforts to get them produced led him into various society. He was naturally clever at cards, and one night he won three hundred pounds. Journalism he had of course dabbled in--he was drawn towards it by his eager impatient nature; he was drawn from it by his gluttonous and artistic nature. Only ten pounds for an article, whereas a successful "bridge" brought him ten times that amount, and he revolted against the column of platitudes that the hours whelmed in oblivion. There had been times, however, when he had been obliged to look to journalism for daily bread. The _Spectator_, always open to young talent, had published many of his poems; the _Saturday_ had welcomed his paradoxes and strained eloquence; but whether he worked or whether he idled he never wanted money. He was one of those men who can always find five pounds in the streets of London. We meet Mike in his prime--in his twenty-ninth year--a man of various capabilities, which an inveterate restlessness of temperament had left undeveloped--a man of genius, diswrought with passion, occasionally stricken with ambition. "Let me have those glasses. There she is! I am sure it is she--there, leaning against the Embankment. Yes, yes, it is she. Look at her. I should know her figure among a thousand--those frail shoulders, that little waist; you could break her like a reed. How sweet she is on that background of flowing water, boats, wharfs, and chimneys; it all rises about her like a dream, and all is as faint upon the radiant air as a dream upon happy sleep. So she is coming to see me. She will keep her promise. I shall love her. I feel at last that love is near me. Supposing I were to marry her?" "Why shouldn't you marry her if you love her? That is to say, if this is more than one of your ordinary caprices, spiced by the fact that its object is a nun." The men looked at each other for a moment doubtful. Then Mike laughed. "I hope I don't love her too much, that is all. But perhaps she will not come. Why is she standing there?" "I should laugh if she turned on her heel and walked away right under your very nose." A cloud passed over Mike's face. "That's not possible," he said, and he raised the glass. "If I thought there was any chance of that I should go down to see her." "You couldn't force her to come up. She seems to be admiring the view." Then Lily left the embankment and turned towards the Temple. "She is coming!" Mike cried, and laying down the opera-glass he took up the scent and squirted it about the room. "You won't make much noise, like a good fellow, will you? I shall tell her I am here alone." "I shall make no noise--I shall finish my article. I am expecting Lizzie about four; I will slip out and meet her in the street. Good-bye." Mike went to the head of the staircase, and looking down the prodigious height, he waited. It occurred to him that if he fell, the emparadised hour would be lost for ever. If she were to pass through the Temple without stopping at No. 2! The sound of little feet and the colour of a heliotrope skirt dispersed his fears, and he watched her growing larger as she mounted each flight of stairs; when she stopped to take breath, he thought of running down and carrying her up in his arms, but he did not move, and she did not see him until the last flight. "Here you are at last!" "I am afraid I have kept you waiting. I was not certain whether I should come." "And you stopped to look at the view instead?" "Yes, but how did you know that?" "Ah! that's telling; come in." The girl went in shyly. "So this is where you live? How nicely you have arranged the room. I never saw a room like this before. How different from the convent! What would the nuns think if they saw me here? What strange pictures!--those ballet-girls; they remind me of the pantomime. Did you buy those pictures?" "No; they are wonderful, aren't they? A friend of mine bought them in France." "Mr. Escott?" "Yes; I forgot you knew him--how stupid of me! Had it not been for him I shouldn't have known you--I was thinking of something else." "Where is he now? I hope he will not return while I am here. You did not tell him I was coming?" "Of course not; he is away in France." "And those portraits--it is always the same face." "They are portraits of a girl he is in love with." "Do you believe he is in love?" "Yes, rather; head over heels. What do you think of the painting?" Lily did not answer. She stood puzzled, striving to separate the confused notions the room conveyed to her. She wore on her shoulders a small black lace shawl and held a black silk parasol. She was very slender, and her features were small and regular, and so white was her face that the blue eyes seemed the only colour. There was, however, about the cheek-bones just such tint as mellow as a white rose. "How beautiful you are to-day. I knew you would be beautiful when you discarded that shocking habit; but you are far more beautiful than I thought. Let me kiss you." "No, you will make me regret that I came here. I wanted to see where you lived, so that when I was away I could imagine you writing your poems. Have you nothing more to show me? I want to see everything." "Yes, come, I will show you our dining-room. Mr. Escott often gives dinner-parties. You must get your mother to bring you." "I should like to. But what a good idea to have book-cases in the passages, they furnish the walls so well. And what are those rooms?" "Those belong to Escott. Here is where I sleep." "What a strange room!" discountenanced by the great Christ. She turned her head. "That crucifix is a present from Frank. He bought it in Paris. It is superb expression of the faith of the Middle Ages." "Old ages, I should think; it is all worm-eaten. And that Virgin? I did not know you were so religious." "I do not believe in Christianity, but I think Christ is picturesque." "Christ is very beautiful. When I prayed to Him an hour passed like a little minute. It always seemed to me more natural to pray to Him than to the Virgin Mary. But is that your bed?" Upon a trellis supported by lion's claws a feather bed was laid. The sheets and pillows were covered with embroidered cloth, the gift of some unhappy lady, and about the twisted columns heavy draperies hung in apparent disorder. Lily sat down on the pouff ottoman. Mike took two Venetian glasses, poured out some champagne, and sat at her feet. She sipped the wine and nibbled a biscuit. "Tell me about the convent," he said. "That is now a thing over and done." "Fortunately I was not professed; had I taken vows I could not have broken them." "Why not? A nun cannot be kept imprisoned nowadays." "I should not have broken my vows." "It was I who saved you from them--if you had not fallen in love with me ..." "I never said I had fallen in love with you; I liked you, that was all." "But it was for me you left the convent?" "No; I had made up my mind to leave the convent long before I saw you. So you thought it was love at first sight." "On my part, at least, it was love at first sight. How happy I am!--I can scarcely believe I have got you. To have you here by me seems so unreal, so impossible. I always loved you. I want to tell you about myself. You were my ideal when I was a boy; I had already imagined you; my poems were all addressed to you. My own sweet ideal that none knew of but myself. You shall come and see me all the summer through, in this room--our room. When will you come again?" "I shall never come again--it is time to go." "To go! Why, you haven't kissed me yet!" "I do not intend to kiss you." "How cruel of you! You say you will never come and see me again; you break and destroy my dream." "How did you dream of me?" "I dreamed the world was buried in snow, barred with frost--that I never went out, but sat here waiting for you to come. I dreamed that you came to see me on regular days. I saw myself writing poems to you, looking up to see the clock from time to time. Tea and wine were ready, and the room was scented with your favourite perfume. Ting! How the bell thrilled me, and with what precipitation I rushed to the door! There I found you. What pleasure to lead you to the great fire, to help you to take off your pelisse!" The girl looked at him, her eyes full of innocent wonderment. "How can you think of such things? It sounds like a fairy tale. And if it were summer-time?" "Oh! if it were summer we should have roses in the room, and only a falling rose-leaf should remind us of the imperceptible passing of the hours. We should want no books, the picturesqueness of the river would be enough. And holding your little palm in mine, so silken and delicately moist, I would draw close to you." Knowing his skin was delicate to the touch, he took her arm in his hand, but she drew her arm away, and there was incipient denial in the withdrawal. His face clouded. But he had not yet made up his mind how he should act, and to gain time to think, he said-- "Tell me why you thought of entering a convent?" "I was not happy at home, and the convent, with its prayers and duties, seemed preferable. But it was not quite the same as I had imagined, and I couldn't learn to forget that there was a world of beauty, colour, and love." "You could not but think of the world of men that awaited you." "I only thought of Him." "And who was he?" "Ah! He was a very great saint, a greater saint than you'll ever be. I fell in love with Him when I was quite a little girl." "What was his name?" "I am not going to tell you. It was for Him I went into the convent; I was determined to be His bride in heaven. I used to read His life, and think of Him all day long. I had a friend who was also in love, but the reverend mother heard of our conversations, and we were forbidden to speak any more of our saints." "Tell me his name? Was he anything like me?" "Well, perhaps there is a something in the eyes." The conversation dropped, and he laid his hand gently upon her foot. Drawing it back she spilt the wine. "I must go." "No, dearest, you must not." She looked round, taking the room in one swift circular glance, her eyes resting one moment on the crucifix. "This is cruel of you," he said. "I dreamed of you madly, and why do you destroy my dream? What shall I do?--where shall I go?--how shall I live if I don't get you?" "Men do not mind whom they love; even in the convent we knew that." "You seem to have known a good deal in that convent; I am not astonished that you left it." "What do you mean?" She settled her shawl on her shoulders. "Merely this; you are in a young man's room alone, and I love you." "Love! You profane the word; loose me, I am going." "No, you are not going, you must remain." There was an occasional nature in him, that of the vicious dog, and now it snarled. "If you did not love me, you should not have come here," he said interposing, getting between her and the door. Then she entreated him to let her go. He laughed at her; then suddenly her face flamed with a passion he was unprepared for, and her eyes danced with strange lights. Few words were spoken, only a few ejaculatory phrases such as "How dare you?" "Let me go!" she said, as she strove to wrench her arms from his grasp. She caught up one of the glasses; but before she could throw it Mike seized her hand; he could not take it from her, and unconscious of danger (for if the glass broke both would be cut to the bone), she clenched it with a force that seemed impossible in one so frail. Her rage was like wildfire. Mike grew afraid, and preferring that the glass should be thrown than it should break in his hand, he loosed his fingers. It smashed against the opposite wall. He hoped that Frank had not heard; that he had left the chambers. He seized the second glass. When she raised her arm, Mike saw and heard the shattered window falling into the court below. He anticipated the porter's steps on the staircase and his knock at the door, and it was with an intense relief and triumph that he saw the bottle strike the curtain and fall harmless. He would win yet. Lily screamed piercingly. "No one will hear," he said, laughing hoarsely. She escaped him and she screamed three times. And now quite like a mad woman, she snatched a light chair and rushed to the window. Her frail frame shook, her thin face was swollen, and she seemed to have lost control over her eyes. If she should die! If she should go mad! Now really terrified, Mike prayed for forgiveness. She did not answer; she stood clenching her hands, choking. "Sit down," he said, "drink something. You need not be afraid of me now--do as you like, I am your servant. I will ask only one thing of you--forgiveness. If you only knew!" "Don't speak to me!" she gasped, "don't!" "Forgive me, I beseech you; I love you better than all the world." "Don't touch me! How dare you? Oh! how dare you?" Mike watched her quivering. He saw she was sublime in her rage, and torn with desire and regret he continued his pleadings. It was some time before she spoke. "And it was for this," she said, "I left my convent, and it was of him I used to dream! Oh! how bitter is my awakening!" She grasped one of the thin columns of the bed and her attitude bespoke the revulsion of feeling that was passing in her soul; beneath the heavy curtains she stood pale all over, thrown by the shock of too coarse a reality. His perception of her innocence was a goad to his appetite, and his despair augmented at losing her. Now, as died the fulgurant rage that had supported her, and her normal strength being exhausted, a sudden weakness intervened, and she couldn't but allow Mike to lead her to a seat. "I am sorry; words cannot tell you how sorry I am. Why do you tremble so? You are not going to faint, say--drink something." Hastily he poured out some wine and held it to her lips. "I never was sorry before; now I know what sorrow is--I am sorry, Lily. I am not ashamed of my tears; look at them, and strive to understand. I never loved till I saw you. Ah! that lily face, when I saw it beneath the white veil, love leaped into my soul. Then I hated religion, and I longed to scale the sky to dispossess Heaven of that which I held the one sacred and desirable thing--you! My soul! I would have given it to burn for ten thousand years for one kiss, one touch of these snow-coloured hands. When I saw, or thought I saw, that you loved me, I was God. I said on reading your sweet letter, 'My life shall not pass without kissing at least once the lips of my chimera.'" Words and images rose in his mind without sensation or effort, and experiencing the giddiness and exultation of the orator, he strove to win her with eloquence. And all his magnetism was in his hands and eyes--deep blue eyes full of fire and light were fixed upon her--hands, soft yet powerful hands held hers, sometimes were clenched on hers, and a voice which seemed his soul rose and fell, striving to sting her with passionate sound; but she remained absorbed in, and could not be drawn out of, angry thought. "Now you are with me," he said, "nearly mine; here I see you like a picture that is mine. Around us is mighty London. I saved you from God, am I to lose you to Man? This was the prospect that faced me, that faces me, that drove me mad. All I did was to attempt to make you mine. I hold you by so little--I could not bear the thought that you might pass from me. A ship sails away, growing indistinct, and then disappears in the shadows; in London a cab rattles, appears and disappears behind other cabs, turns a corner, and is lost for ever. I failed, but had I succeeded you would have come back to me; I failed, is not that punishment enough? You will go from me; I shall not get you--that is sorrow enough for me; do not refuse me forgiveness. Ah! if you knew what it is to have sought love passionately, the high hopes entertained, and then the depth of every deception, and now the supreme grief of finding love and losing. Seeing love leave me without leaving one flying feather for token, I strove to pluck one--that is my crime. Go, since you must go, but do not go unforgiving, lest perhaps you might regret." Lily did not cry. Her indignation was vented in broken phrases, the meaning of which she did not seem to realize, and so jarred and shaken were her nerves that without being aware of it her talk branched into observations on her mother, her home life, the convent, and the disappointments of childhood. So incoherently did she speak that for a moment Mike feared her brain was affected, and his efforts to lead her to speak of the present were fruitless. But suddenly, waxing calm, her inner nature shining through the eyes like light through porcelain, she said-- "I was wrong to come here, but I imagined men different. We know so little of the world in the convent.... Ah, I should have stayed there. It may be but a poor delusion, but it is better than such wickedness." "But I love you." "Love me! ... You say you have sought love; we find love in contemplation and desire of higher things. I am wanting in experience, but I know that love lives in thought, and not in violent passion; I know that a look from the loved one on entering a room, a touch of a hand at most will suffice, and I should have been satisfied to have seen your windows, and I should have gone away, my heart stored with impressions of you, and I should have been happy for weeks in the secret possession of such memories. So I have always understood love; so we understood love in the convent." They were standing face to face in the faint twilight and scent of the bedroom. Through the gauze blind the river floated past, decorative and grand; the great hay-boats rose above the wharfs and steamers; one lay in the sun's silver casting a black shadow; a barge rowed by one man drifted round and round in the tide. "When I knelt in the choir I lifted my heart to the saint I loved. How far was He from me? Millions of miles!--and yet He was very near. I dreamed of meeting Him in heaven, of seeing Him come robed in white with a palm in His hand, and then in a little darkness and dimness I felt Him take me to His breast. I loved to read of the miracles He performed, and one night I dreamed I saw Him in my cell--or was it you?" All anger was gone from her face, and it reflected the play of her fancy. "I used to pray to you to come down and speak to me." "And now," said Mike, smiling, "now that I have come to you, now that I call you, now that I hold my arms to you--you the bride-elect--now that the hour has come, shall I not possess you?" "Do you think you can gain love by clasping me to your bosom? My love, though separated from me by a million miles, is nearer to me than yours has ever been." "Did you not speak of me as the lover of your prayer, and you said that in ecstasy the nuns--and indeed it must be so--exchange a gibbeted saint for some ideal man? Give yourself; make this afternoon memorable." "No; good-bye! Remember your promises. Come; I am going." "I must not lose you," he cried, drunk with her beauty and doubly drunk with her sensuous idealism. "May I not even kiss you?" "Well, if you like--once, just here," she said, pointing where white melted to faint rose. Mastered, he followed her down the long stairs; but when they passed into the open air he felt he had lost her irrevocably. The river was now tinted with setting light, the balustrade of Waterloo Bridge showed like lace-work, the glass roofing of Charing Cross station was golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue. The splashing of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears. The "Citizen" passed! She was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike. Then the eye separated them. An old lady making her way down the deck, a young man in gray clothes, a red soldier leaning over the rail, the captain walking on the bridge. Mike called a hansom; a few seconds more and she would pass from him into London. He saw the horse's hooves, saw the cab appear and disappear behind other cabs; it turned a corner, and she was gone. _ |
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