Kitabı oku: «Under St Paul's: A Romance», sayfa 18

CHAPTER XI.
AFTER DINNER AT HOME

When the singing ended, Nevill looked up quickly into his companion's face, and cried in surprise, – 'What, another change! Why, the weather-cock and the moon are fixed stars compared with you! All is right between you and Marie, and all is wrong between you and yourself. You are as unintelligible as a woman, and more inconstant. What is your difficulty now?' 'I have no difficulty now. All is clear and fair.' 'Then we'll make it a double marriage. I'll give you away, and you'll give me away. That will be impressive. It reminds me of the time when I wore a turban.' 'Now, Nevill, Alice isn't here to be amused. Let us talk like men.' 'Severe, but perhaps merited. I am so delighted with all I see and hear and feel that I am disposed to dry up and become sedate and middle-aged; at once. Come, Osborne, I'll be middle-aged; you can't help being. You were born middle-aged. You were intended for the patriarchal time. You ought to have flocks and herds, and a long white beard, and five wives. A man with a slow blue eye, like yours, is always a good judge of cattle. But, as you suggest, let us talk like men. What is the new position? How have you managed-reconciled your difficulties?' 'You may remember that day Marie, Kate, and I deserted you in London, and dined with the husband of a friend of Marie's?' 'Yes, I recollect. It was a case of most inhuman desertion.' 'Well, on that occasion we dined with a man named Parkinson, a very agreeable, well-read, and thoughtful man. Nothing could have been more pleasant than the host; the hostess and the two children of the house were simply charming. Yet, as I told you at the time, Parkinson had long ceased to occupy his thoughts with anything beyond the world around us.' 'And you have lately come to the conclusion that-' 'Since Parkinson, notwithstanding his faith or want of faith, could be a good husband and make a good woman happy, there was no reason why another man should not do likewise, and no reason why spiritual matters should stand in the way of earthly ties.' 'Some people look on those ties as more than merely earthly. However, I will not argue the question with you. But she knows of your new view, and approves of it?' 'I have not yet had an opportunity of speaking to her about it, but I am certain she will not make any difficulty.' 'You intend telling her before you are married?' 'Undoubtedly. You do not think me capable of deceiving her?' 'No; but I do think you capable of deceiving yourself unwittingly. How are you sure Marie will be content with the new departure?' 'I asked her if she would marry me supposing such a case arose, and she said she would.' 'Well, but, my dear Osborne, more people than Marie are uneasy about you. I think it would kill your poor mother if she thought your present condition likely to be permanent.' 'My dear Nevill, what is the good of such thoughts? If I am of opinion the sky is black at midday, the mere fact that another person is grieved because I will not alter my opinion can in no way affect my opinion itself. Neither my mother nor Marie can be more grieved than I am at my present state. But if I suffer from a defect of sight, which makes the sky seem black to me, how can the wishes of other people change my eyes? If I myself could change my eyes, I would.' 'But ten thousand people say the sky at noon is blue for the ten that say it's black. Has the weight of evidence no value for you?' 'No. Suppose, when we go to the drawing-room, all there gathered round you and assured you Marie was Kate, would you believe us?' 'Certainly not; but that is not a fair case. Cæsar tells us he conquered Gaul and Britain. But you have more than Cæsar's word for it. You have most of the intelligent people of to-day and of eighteen centuries believing Cæsar's word; and against his word, and the words of sixty generations, you have only your own individual doubt.' 'My dear fellow, I am familiar with that argument and a hundred others. Let us drop the subject. No one was ever yet convinced by an argument when something more than reason did not prompt belief. I have lost my faith, and can, of my own will, no more recover it than a child who has lost a parent in a crowd can by its mere will return to the guardianship of that parent.' 'There may be a good deal in what you say, Osborne. You know most of my life I was utterly careless of all religious matters. When I came right, I came right all at once; and you will too in the same way. Suddenly I felt a great surprise, as if I had lived all my life on the sea-shore, but had kept my face always towards the land, and believed there was nothing but land, until suddenly I turned round and saw the ocean. I am not a religious man like you, and, instead of being terribly overawed, I felt inclined to laugh out loud at my old foolish self and my old foolish thoughts. There was the sea as sure as the land had been.' 'That is a very striking way of illustrating it,' said Osborne sadly. 'If I am to adopt it, I feel as though I had all my life stood upon firm land and had seen the sea and firm land, but that all at once a dense fog fell, and I could see nothing.' 'By-the-way, you have never seen the sea?' 'No, never. I shall go there when we are married.' 'But I suppose, now that all is square between you two, you will be married before summer?' 'Before summer! Before spring, I hope. Why should we wait any longer than is now absolutely necessary? All is settled between us. My mother is content, I think, and no friend or relative of Marie's has to be consulted.' 'I am sorry things are not so far forward between Kate and me. We have not definitely arranged anything yet, and I have first of all to get a formal answer from your mother. For that answer I cannot press immediately-I mean for a week or so. Although I asked you to make it a double event, I fear I haven't the power to arrange about it now. Twenty-four hours ago I thought I was much more near the happy state than you; and now you seem to be on the point of entering it, and I, although on the road to it, a long way off. Well, we must only take our luck as it comes. But why do you choose the seaside for your winter honeymoon?' 'It is a whim of mine, a foolish whim, perhaps. I can't give you a reason for it. Don't you think all whims foolish?' 'My dear fellow, I am delighted you have a whim; no man can possibly be perfect without a whim. You have gone up fifteen per cent, in my esteem within the last two minutes. Think whims foolish? Not I! Why, they are the bouquet in the wine of a man's nature. A whim is something out of the common. What is genius but a bundle of whims? Up to a few moments ago I regarded you as an assemblage of all the cardinal virtues mixed up humbo-jumbo, mixed up anyway, anyhow, but without the cement of vice or weakness. Now you are to me like a vast cathedral, perfect in proportion, perfect in detail. I don't say a whim is a vice or a crime, but it's a thing an archbishop would think very little of. Your having a whim reminds me of the time when I was cast away on a coral island in the Pacific. Just as I rubbed the salt-water out of my eyes I saw coming towards me-' 'Nevill, you are growing young again. Little Alice is in the drawing-room, and she will be delighted to hear about that crocodile.' 'Bless my soul, Osborne, you are too bad! The only crocodile I ever had an encounter with was one that escaped from the Japanese village at the Alexandra Palace, and took to the reedy shores and uninhabited islands of the New River at Wood Green. They had been trying to catch him with a kedge-anchor baited with the flesh of bailiffs; but the beast would not bite. The reptile naturally had an objection to a man in possession. I called upon the Mayor of Wood Green-' 'No, no, no! Come on. You have been only playing with the wine, and I know you like coffee, and it has gone up by this time; and I'm sure Alice is most anxiously awaiting you.' 'But, my dear fellow, this is not a drawing-room story at all. It is full of awful language.' 'Well, go on.' '"D-n you!" said I to the man at my elbow (I told you it was not a drawing-room story, but that's nothing in the way of swearing like what's coming), "d-n you!" said I to the man at the wheel, "why don't you put your helm hard a-port and throw her aback!"' 'Who, the crocodile?' 'No, no; don't be absurd, Osborne. Throw a crocodile aback by porting the helm of a full-rigged ship! Did anyone but yourself ever conceive such an idea? Don't you see, it was a stern chase. We were leading. My object was to throw our vessel suddenly across his bows, and rake him fore and aft; and then up stick and away again before he knew where he was. But I fear the description of the fight would be unintelligible to you, as it is full of technical terms. Tell me honestly, Osborne, do you know what a spankerboom is?' 'I have not the least idea.' 'Ah, then, there is no use in my going on. You could not understand the story. I am very sorry for it, Osborne, but I fear there is nothing left us to do but to rejoin the ladies.' When they reached the drawing-room Osborne led Nevill to where Alice was sitting at a small table by herself, and said, – 'Alice, Mr Nevill has a most amusing story to tell you. What is it about, Nevill?' 'Oh, about the spankerboom. You know nothing about sea terms?' 'I am sorry to say I do not. Should I know before I could understand the tale?' said Alice, with a smile. 'On the contrary. Nothing I know of embarrasses the narrator of a sea-story more than technical knowledge in the listener. For if I tell you we carried away our t'gallant backstay, and you asked me what we did then, did we splice it or cut it away, you interrupt the even and straightforward course of the tale-' At this point Osborne moved away, and went to the couch upon which Mrs Osborne and Marie sat. The drawing-room was large and of an L-shape. The shorter arm of the room was divided from the longer by thick curtains looped and held back so as to leave but a narrow opening between the curtains. At the rear of the back drawing-room was a small conservatory. Both rooms were lighted up, but the conservatory was not; it lay almost invisible, a place of warm, moist twilight. At the end of less than an hour Marie and George found themselves seated alone in this dim retreat. 'I think, George,' said Marie, after a long silence, 'this has been the happiest day of my life.' 'I am sure, my darling,' he said, pressing her hand, 'it has also been my happiest; and this is the happiest moment of my happiest day.' This was the first time they had been alone during the day. 'The change I saw come over you, George, in the train, after all the anxiety you and I have felt, would by itself have made this one of my happiest days. But the great kindness of your mother to me astonishes me, and pleases me more than I can tell.' 'Who could be anything else but kind to my darling?' 'But she was much more kind than anyone could expect or guess. I was wonderfully surprised. When she came with me to my room that time, she told me, George, all about your family and politics, until I felt I had been a great politician for years, ready to die for Church and State.' George kissed her and said, – 'In fact, my Marie, she treated you as though you already were her daughter. Is that not so, my love?' She answered by pressing his hand. 'She told me how all your family had been Conservatives. I don't know exactly what Conservatives are. I believe they have something to do with the Government. Won't you tell me all about Conservatives-by-and-by?' 'Yes, love; but let us not talk of such things now. Nevill and I had a chat after dinner to-day, and I was telling him that now all obstacles had been cleared away, I hope very soon to have my first look at the sea, and I had made up my mind never to set eyes on it until I go on my honeymoon. So, love, as I am very anxious to get my first glance at the sea, I hope you will let me go there as soon as ever you can. Won't you?' He felt her tremble and sigh in his arms. She did not answer. He went on, – 'You know, love, I told you of that awful dream I had in London of the sea, and of how I lost you. I am sure, not until this moment, not until now in this middle of peaceful and prosperous England, when my arm is safely round my own girl, did it occur to me why I had a whim to pass the honeymoon by the sea. The whim must have arisen in some way or the other from that dream. No doubt from a half-felt inclination to avoid the sea until nothing could take my Marie from me.' 'Not all the world, George. Not all the world could take me from you now, George.' She put her arm round him, and clung to him, and then ceased to cling, and simply leaned against him. 'George,' she continued, after a pause, 'I have travelled a good deal, and some might think me restless by nature. But I am not. I am quite content to rest here for ever. Won't you let me, George?' He pressed her closely to him. 'You shall never leave me, love. What moments these are, Marie!' 'I shall always think of this conservatory as the end of my wanderings. We did not feel quite sure, my love, did we, until your mother saw me?' 'I felt quite sure she could not but love my Marie.' 'George, suppose your mother had turned her back on me, would you have turned your back on me?' 'Why should we vex ourselves now with such questions? My mother likes you wonderfully well.' 'But suppose she had not received me well, would you have given me up?' 'Certainly not. Why do you ask such a question? Now that my mother has behaved so well, it is ungenerous to force such an answer from me.' 'I am not ungenerous, George. There is no harm in your telling me anything now, is there?' 'No, my love; you are quite right. You have a perfect right to my full confidence. I was utterly wrong to say you were ungenerous. Indeed, at the time I said the word, what I meant was that you forced me into saying an ungenerous thing when we think of how well my mother has treated me all my life, and especially on this occasion.' 'And if that change had not come over you in the train, if you had remained in the same state of mind as you were when you left London, would you, George, have given me up? Would you have sent poor Marie away from you some day?' 'I cannot tell. I do not know. I did not know. I was nearly mad, Marie. Cannot we forget all the bad past?' 'But, George, to think of the bad past while your arm is round me here makes the present more precious.' 'My darling! My darling! The past is nothing to me now! I think of only the present and the future.' 'Now, suppose you had promised your mother never to marry me if I became an infidel, would you, upon my becoming an infidel, give me up?' 'What earthly good can come of such strained and out-of-the-way suppositions? You are inventing difficulties for consideration just at the moment all difficulties have disappeared.' 'But there is no harm in your answering the question.' 'Well, I will make a bargain with you. If I answer you that question, will you promise to fix a day for our marriage?' 'I will.' 'Well, if I had promised my mother not to marry you if you became an infidel, I should keep my promise.' 'Oh, George, George, George! won't you be always as you are now? Won't you, love?' 'Yes, darling, I hope so. Now for your promise.' 'The promise I made to your mother?' 'No; the promise you made to me.' 'You said the sooner the better.' 'I said so, and mean it with all my soul, darling Marie.' 'I say so too.' 'God bless you! When shall it be?' 'When you please, George.' 'But you know, sweetheart, it is you who are to decide this matter.' 'I know; but will you do it for me? I am yours now; do with me what you think best. I will marry you any day you tell me; I will do everything you tell me from this time. I am yours, George, body and soul!' 'Hush, hush, sweet love! I am not worthy of this. Shall we say this day month, my Marie?' 'Ay; I am willing.' 'This day three weeks?' 'If you wish it, George. The sooner the better.' 'Heaven bless my love for ever!' 'And Heaven bless my lover for ever, and keep him as he now is!' 'Amen.' 'Marie, you spoke a moment ago as if you had made my mother some promise. Have you done so?' 'Yes, George.' 'What was the promise?' 'Not to fix the day for our wedding so long as you were not as you are now.' 'What do you mean?' 'I told her I knew, by your manner in the train, that you had no longer those horrible ideas about religion; and as I knew they had disappeared on the way down from London, I promised not to marry you while you held them. What-what is the matter, George? Don't leave me, George. Why did you take your arm away? Why did you stand up? George, won't you speak to me?' 'My God, girl, what have you done!' 'What have I done? George, speak to me! My George, my love, my lord, tell me-tell poor Marie what she has done… George, will you not look down at me, and tell me what I have done? … I am on my knees at your feet… I am kneeling at your feet, George… Will you not look down?.. Oh, my heart will burst! Will you not look down at me-say a word to me?.. You will not? Then I will go!' She rose from her knees, and walked a few paces towards the door of the conservatory; stood, laid her hand on one of the flower-stands for support; essayed again to walk, tottered, stood still; and then, with a weary sigh, sank to the floor. The sound of her fall roused Osborne from his lethargy; the sound of his own voice was the last that had reached his consciousness. He sprang to her side, raised her, and opening the conservatory door, cried out, – 'Nevill, Kate, help! Marie has fainted.' When she opened her eyes she found herself lying on a couch in the drawing-room. 'With the door shut, the heat and closeness of the place were too much for her. George ought to know no girl could stand that place with the door shut,' said Mrs Osborne. 'I tried to get to the door, and then I remember no more,' said Marie feebly. 'It was all my fault,' said George, in a tremulous voice.

CHAPTER XII.
IN THE STORM

The mind of George Osborne was vigorous, fearless, and candid. He had the perception of the poet without the poet's mobility. Once he had built up an idea, he could not alter the parts without endangering the whole. He was in everything conservative, except when he was revolutionary. If corruption existed in an institution, rather than try to eradicate the evil he would abolish the institution itself. Without being wrong-headed or a bigot, he could not readily see how there might be two tolerably fair views to any subject. If he thought he was right, he felt himself to be entirely right. He would give perfect liberty to another man to differ from him, but he could not allow there existed any likelihood the other man was right. He saw all questions in their totality, not in detail. If it was morally wrong to hang a man for murder, why not abolish hanging to-morrow morning? If it was not morally wrong, and if it was necessary for the protection of the community that murderers should be hung, why, then it must be fools who could have any aversion from the office of hangman. He had been brought up in a small, rigid home, and in a dull, monotonous way. He had bean a student of books, those immutable echoes of eternal voices. He had been a lover of Nature, which week after week moves onward to well-ascertained stations, producing anticipated results. He had rarely been from home, and never far. He knew absolutely nothing of the world until mighty London surged round him. Even then he could not realise the magnitude of the great riddle of man being worked at and abandoned daily by the millions living round him. It was like giving a man sight for the first time in the middle of the Atlantic, and expecting him to be able to draw outlines of the American and European coasts. In the little town the ordinary affairs of man, the births, deaths, and marriages, went on in regular routine. No foreign armies camped in the tree-sheltered fields. To him the news of wars and battles sounded old-world and obsolete. There had been no sounds of fight here for many score years. No great famine visited the place, no great pestilence. Folk died in their beds, and had decent funerals. Neither great poverty nor great riches distinguished the inhabitants. As a rule, they went soberly through their lives, and usually left a little money behind them. There were no fleets arriving from wonderful climes. All the produce of the East was denationalised by the grocer or the druggist or the jeweller. For these people there was no place farther off than London, whence all exotic produce found its way to the town. As with all places possessing an ancient fame, which is much visited by strangers, the popular mind of Stratford was continually driven back to the days of its idol, when the house of Tudor held the sceptre of England, and the man of Stratford held the imperial baton in the universe of song. In the windows, as one walked along the street, appeared Shakespeare collars and Shakespeare cuffs, and Shakespeare drinking-cups, and Shakespeare plates, and Shakespeare chairs. Everything one looked upon drove the mind back to Queen Bess. But it was not to the weapon named after the virgin queen. Here was no compulsion to think of foreign wars or approaching Armada. No discords and bloody broils of armed men broke in upon the ears. This was a wayside village hard by the Forest of Arden. At the other side of that hill stood the 'wood not far from Athens.' No one was in haste here, not even American tourists. The town had plenty of time for all it had to do. Strangers, when they came to the place, assumed a grave and deliberate manner. They looked up and down streets with conciliatory eyes, as though embryo poets might be coming those ways, and it were only meet to show respect to those of Shakespeare's cloth. It was a place where the strangers listened and the inhabitants talked, and talked of little else than Shakespeare. It was the business of Stratford to do honour to all things which, in point of time, approach her great son, and to regard the things of to-day as mere shadows passing across that splendid background formed by the achievements of her immortal son. With such a mind and in such a place, George Osborne had reached the prime of manhood. Had he been dull, or vicious, or fond of pleasure, he might have braved all the dangers of a plunge from such a history into London. But he was intellectual rather than intelligent, as Marie had told him. He dwelt within himself rather than went forth to seek new things. He had no mastering evil passion, and consequently nothing which at once gave him an object of pursuit and a reason for darkening his conscience. He was not a frivolous man, and could not be put off with toys and bubbles. But he was religious, profoundly religious. In the presence of the object of his worship he felt pride in his manhood, diffidence in himself. He believed that if a man were thoroughly good, that man could worship worthily. He lifted his eyes and asked help or sympathy fearlessly when he thought of his manhood; when he thought of himself he bent his eyes upon the ground. He aspired with all his soul to rise above evil; the daily routine of petty cares and petty passions dragged him down. He would have given up his life freely any day for his fellow-man. Upon this man, when all the faculties of his intellect, all the sensibilities of his emotions, had come to their full development, had burst the passion of love. He was no raw school-boy, sighing after a pretty face or a neat figure, but a strong man of mature thought, overwhelmingly convinced by his intellect as well as by his emotions that this woman alone could save his future life from being a desert, could make it full of the richest, fullest, most abounding life. 'Drunk or mad,' as he had said-he did not care what it was called-drunk or mad, he wanted her; and, if he won her, he could walk through life with a triumphant tread; without her he could do nothing but shamble into the grave. He prospered in his love; and then came that spiritual upheaval, wherein the records of his life were swallowed up, and all the palaces he had built thrown down. He stood aghast before the awful ruin. He had never before conceived so stupendous a disaster. His nerves were shattered, his reason was shaken. As soon as he got a moment's respite, a returning ray of faith, he thought of this woman, for the lightest pain of whose body he would give up his life. He thought she had been careless once, and if ever she married a man like Parkinson she would lose all. So at their betrothal, he swore her never to wed outside the church. After this came his complete downfall; and then he stood face to face with the confounding problem: Should he lose his love to save her faith, or snatch at the woman he loved, and imperil the future happiness, perhaps, of one for whose sake he would die a thousand times? It was during this fierce struggle he had behaved so inexplicably, and asked her to give him time. At that point he had thought his reason would utterly break down. This day, on the journey, the question wholly lost its spiritual aspect. All through the day, at dinner, and during the early part of that interview in the conservatory, he had been more happy than ever in all his life before, as he told her. But in those few simple words, alluding to his infidel ideas, 'I promised not to marry you while you held them,' a key had been struck which had never been sounded before. The positions of her and him had been reversed. He had been trying to save her; now she was trying to save him. This situation caused all the old agony to flow in upon him, and he did not hear or see anything until she fell.