Kitabı oku: «The Angel of Pain», sayfa 20
“I don’t know whether it was all accidents,” he said, “but if you begin to call things accidents, there is no stopping. If one thing is an accident, everything is. That I stayed at his house at Pangbourne when you were there you may call an accident. That we made friends there you will call an accident also, if you call the first an accident. And if you are consistent you will call the fact that we loved each other an accident. Only, if you call that an accident, you are using the word in a different sense to that which I use it in.”
“Then nothing is an accident?” she asked.
“Yes, my buying this bottle of champagne was an accident, because I didn’t mean to. But as it has happened, we may as well drink it.”
But a sudden stab of disappointment somehow pierced Madge. She had been serious, and so to a certain point had he. But now, when their talk seemed to be becoming fruit-bearing, he could dismiss it all with a jest. Her wifehood, for a month or two ago she would have done likewise, had developed her in a way that marriage had not developed him. He was still the bright-eyed boy. She, on the other hand, was no longer a girl but a woman. All the sub-consciousness of this twanged in her answer.
“You are so undeveloped,” she said suddenly.
But to his ears there was no reproach in this; it concerned the future, not the past. And his bright eyes but grew brighter.
“Surely,” he said, “but the development is in your hands. And I lay it – whatever it is – at your feet.”
That, too, Madge felt was so extraordinarily genuine; small as was the tribute, it could not be but graceful. Everywhere he was that, in no relation of life was he otherwise – the beautiful, undeveloped manhood put out buds everywhere, yet at present no bud was expanded into a flower. There was brilliant promise, no promise could be fairer or more sincere, for he was incapable of insincerity, yet it was the “imperishable child” with whose fate she had bound herself up. Everything was there, except one, and that was the man. His talent was brilliant, and she could not have parted with the constant companionship any more than she could have parted with the light of day, yet something was missing.
It was not less definite, this sense or quality which was missing in Evelyn, because it was indefinable; one could not know another person, whether man or woman, without knowing whether it was there or not, and indeed almost everybody was possessed of it. Philip had it to a notable degree – indeed it was that which, if she searched her heart, had in its extraordinary abundance in him made her originally accept the possibility of her becoming his wife. It had nothing to do with the ardour of love, since the man for whom she alone had experienced that had nothing of it. Nor was it brilliant in any way, since all that was his also. Only it was bed-rock; it was something quite secure and responsible, and willing to take all responsibility, and human. It co-existed with dulness, it existed in people who were frankly intolerable. It was probably bourgeois, but she felt the possibility, as yet far off, so far off that she would only strain her eyes if she tried to focus them on it, of its being necessary, just as food and drink were necessary. The little ghost at Le Touquet, in fact, had apparently begged its way across, and had established itself in the King’s Road. But ghosts of this kind do not mind prosaic surroundings; the discerning reader will perceive they have no need of tapestry or panels, for they are concerned in no way with what is past and ancestral, but with what is alive and knitted into the fabric of the present.
But after thus dismissing the question of the accidents and essentials of life with this ill-timed little jest about the champagne, Evelyn quite suddenly returned to a matter as serious.
“You called me undeveloped just now,” he said, “and I expect you are right in a way that you did not think. Tom Merivale told me once that I had not the rudiments of a conscience, and I have often thought of that, and believe it is quite true. That is where I am really undeveloped, and I expect it is that” – and his face lit up even more with this piece of intuition – “I expect it is that which you miss in me. He also said I had no depth. You miss that too, probably.”
Evelyn announced these discoveries with a perfectly serene and unclouded air; perturbation that he was lacking in so large a piece of moral equipment as a conscience would do no manner of good; nor, because his wife missed it, would it help matters that he should mourn with her over his deficiency. But the unshadowed brightness of his face, his frank acceptance of this so genially and generously made, was something of a reproach to her. All the sunshine of his beautiful nature was hers, all the brilliance of his talent, his extraordinary personal charm, his blithe acquiescence in all that happened was hers, and yet she was discontent. And with a pang of self-reproach she contrasted all he gave her with what she had herself thought good enough to give to Philip when she promised to be his wife, affection, respect, esteem, just a platter of frigid odds and ends, compared to this great feast and glorious banquet of love.
But there was no doubt as to the accuracy of the diagnosis which Evelyn had made as to what she missed in him. He had risen from the sofa, and was standing in front of her, and at this she rose too, and laid her hands on his shoulder.
“Ah, I’m an ungrateful little brute,” she said; “but I believe that is a woman’s way. Whatever you give a woman, she always wants more, and you – you, dear, whatever I give you, you always say you did not know so much was possible. So I confess, and am sorry.”
He looked at her still smiling, but without speaking, and the warmth of her contrition cooled a little. He ought to have known, so she told herself, that what she had said was not very easy to say; he ought to have met the warmth of her amende with welcome and acceptation, and even acknowledgment of her generosity, for she had been generous.
“Well,” she said at length, “have you nothing to say to that?”
He put his head a little on one side, as he did so often when he was painting.
“Yes, I was just arranging it in my head in beautiful language,” he said, “but the beautiful language won’t come, so you will have to hear it plain, not coloured. It’s just this. I don’t think one does any good by pulling oneself open to see what’s inside – oh, yes, rosebud, that’s part of the beautiful language – like a rosebud. One flowers best, I expect, by leaving oneself alone, by just living. Surely life is good enough! I suppose some people are naturally analytical, people who write books, for instance, about other people’s moral insides. But I’m quite certain that I’m not like that. I paint pictures, you see, of other people’s outsides. And if I went on painting your face for years, Madge, I should never get to the end of all it is, or all it is to me. Well, that’s Evelyn Dundas: I beg to introduce him. And you are Evelyn Dundas, let me tell you. You are me; you can’t get away from that. So don’t make either the best or the worst of me; don’t let us regard our relations like that. They are what they are, and want no interpretation or examination. Let them just burn, and not examine their light under a spectroscope. Dear me, there’s more beautiful language. I apologise.”
She could not help laughing at this conclusion; his earnestness, for he was absolutely earnest, was all of one piece with utter flippancy, and from one he passed to the other without break or transition. How that could be she did not know, only it was all he. And as far as any one person can convince any other, she was convinced. Indeed, it was tearing flowers open to behave and to think as she had been doing, and she answered him in his own manner.
“Take care of the habit of beautiful language, dear,” she said. “It grows on you without your knowing it. And surely it’s dinner time.”
Evelyn cast a tragic glance round.
“Ah, there it is,” he cried. “I really had completely forgotten – you needn’t believe it unless you like – about the dividend we are going to drink. I suppose a little ice now wouldn’t be possible? I would go and get it.”
“Yes, but I don’t officially know about it,” said she.
Storms in the physical and material sense are variously supposed to have two diametrically opposite effects; they may be regarded as likely to clear the air, or, on the other hand, to cause a general unsettlement in the weather. And mental or spiritual storms can in the same way either be the precursors and causes of serene blue weather, or they can produce a disturbance of equilibria which is not easily or immediately adjusted again; the violent agitation sets everything shaking and jarring. And the worst of it is that there is no barometer known which will reliably predict which of these effects is likely to be produced. To speak of a thing, “to have it out” as the phrase goes, may get rid of it altogether; it may be pricked like a puff-ball and vanish in a little dust and smoke, leaving an empty bladder, and again “to have it out” may but emphasise and make its existence more real. The “having it out,” in fact, is but a sort of preliminary examination, which proves whether there is something there or whether there is nothing.
This talk between Evelyn and his wife had its distinct analogy to a storm. Things had been gathering up – indeed they were clouds – in Madge’s mind ever since Le Touquet, and though their bursting had been unaccompanied by rain or explosions, yet to-night they had been undeniably discharged, and it remained only to see whether the air should prove to have been cleared, or whether the disturbance had upset the moral atmosphere. Again, they had “had it out,” she had indicated where her trouble lay, or rather he had laid an unerring finger on it, and as physician had said “Leave it alone; that is my suggestion. Don’t let us hear any more about it.” She fully intended to follow his advice, but half-consciously she made a reservation, for she knew that some time – next week, next month, next year – she must know that either he had been right, and that the trouble had vanished, or that he had been wrong and the trouble had grown worse. And so some secret sense of uncertainty and unsatisfiedness sat somewhere deep in the shadows of her heart. It did not often obtrude its presence, but she knew it was there.
On Evelyn, however, this same scene appeared to leave no trace of any kind – and, indeed, there was no reason why it should, because it had contained nothing that was new to him, and also because it had ended so thoroughly satisfactorily. Madge had agreed with him about the advisability of letting analysis alone for the future. He had, indeed, this evening indulged in a little, and he found that there was nothing in their mutual relations which he wanted altering, nothing which alteration would not have spoiled. Not for a moment did he say that there were not things in himself which he should have preferred vastly different, but with a certain good sense he considered that in shaping one’s course in life one had to accept certain tendencies and limitations in oneself, and, having granted them, to do one’s best. And he did not see that any perseverance or thought or pains on his part could create in him what Merivale had called a conscience. His life was honest, sober, and clean, not, it must be confessed, because morality indicated that it should be, but because his artistic sense would be hurt by its being other than that. It was sheer waste of time for him to sit down and think about duty, because it really meant nothing to him; he might as well have sat down and thought about Hebrew. But from the kindliness and warmth of his nature his conclusions as regards conduct were extraordinarily like those which the very finest sense of duty would have dictated. Yet now and then, as when he had said that he was sorry for Philip, but that nothing could have happened differently, though Madge in word agreed with him, yet she, with her fine feminine sense, knew that she agreed with him, but agreed somehow on a plane quite different from his. That nothing could have happened differently she knew in another way than his: deeply, fiercely, and whole-heartedly as he loved her. For all her life up till now, her whole nature had lain dormant; it had awoke all at once, and awoke to find that one person only was there, even as Brunnhilde woke on the mountain top and saw Siegfried. That awakening had been long delayed, but when it came it was complete, like that thunder-clap when he had declared his love for her, it deafened and paralysed all other senses; there was only one thing in the world for her, and that was her love.
But to him – she could not help knowing this – his love for her had not been the blinding flash that awoke all his nature. He had loved before that, keen sensibilities had been his, the sensibilities that inspired his art and made it so extraordinarily vital. All his life a huge joy of life had inspired him; he had waved in the winds of human emotions, he brought to her a love which was new indeed, but one which was driven by an engine that drove other machines as well, his art, his joy of life, for instance. But all that she was, was this one thing; she had lain like a chrysalis hitherto, and the moth beautiful that came out with wings at first crumpled and quivering, but momentarily expanding in the sun, had till then lived in darkness, and the light it saw when it emerged from its cracked husk was the only light it had ever known. She did not compare the respective dimensions, so to speak, of the love of each of them for a moment – she believed that Evelyn loved her as completely as she loved him. But he loved other things as well; his art was a vital part of his life, while she had nothing but him. This was why, though he was so much more developed than she, she had spoken a sort of truth when she said he was undeveloped, for he did not love her to the exclusion of all else. She was not, and could not be, the only thing the world held for him.
In the same way also his sorrow for Philip’s suffering was different from hers, for he, so it seemed to her, was sorry for Philip, as his nature would make it necessary for him to be sorry for anyone who had suffered great loss, for an artist who went blind, for a musician who went deaf, but had yet the other joys of life, with, in course of time, an increase in his other sensibilities as compensation to make his loss good. But she who had emerged from nothingness into the full blaze of this unconjectured noonday rated Philip’s loss at what her own would have been. All had been taken from him, he was left in the original outer darkness which can only be estimated by those who have seen light, and not by the purblind creatures that have never left it. Philip, what must Philip’s sufferings have been! Poor Philip, who was so kind, so likeable, so everything but loved by her. And it was she who had done this; she had brought a misery on him which she honestly gauged by the knowledge of what her misery would be if something happened which made Evelyn no longer love her.
She had carried the skeleton of these thoughts with her to bed that night, and she woke early to find that, as in the dry bones of Ezekiel’s vision, they were beginning to knit themselves together, bone coming to his bone, and the flesh covering them. The pale dawn was beginning to peer into the windows, and the birds to tune up in broken chirrupings for the songs of the day. Had Philip woke like this, she wondered, during this hot August month that he, too, had spent in London? If so, what mitigation of his misery had he found? Not in his business, she could not believe that; surely he must have taken to work as another man, unhappy but less manly, takes to a drug that deadens the power of sense. Surely that must be the explanation of his tireless industry in the city all this month, when others now went for holiday to moor and mountain. Oh, poor Philip! She had brought all this on him, too; she could have made him happy, she felt sure of that, had not soft, irresistible love made that gracious task impossible for her.
The room in spite of its open window was very hot, and she turned back the blanket quietly so as not to disturb Evelyn. He lay with his face turned towards her, in deep sleep, not dreamless, perhaps, because he smiled. Even in this wan morning light, when all vitality burns low, his face was radiant; no scruple, no pale doubt troubled his rest. He would wake to another day with the same welcome of “Good morning” for it as that with which he had said “Good night” to the last. His lips were closed, he breathed evenly and slowly through his nostrils, no sleep could have been more tranquil. It was just the sleep of a child tired with play, who would be recuperated on the morrow for another day of play.
Then she rose very quietly, and, opening the door with precaution, went into the bath-room. She was afraid that the splash of the water might rouse him, and put her sponge underneath the tap so that the sound was muffled, for she had the same womanly tenderness with regard to breaking his sleep as she had towards Philip. All suffering was sacred; even a broken hour of rest was a thing to be avoided. Then with infinite care she tip-toed back into their bedroom and dressed, but before she left it she looked at him once more. No, she had not aroused him, and no play of sub-conscious cerebration told him that she had gone; he slept on with the same tranquil sleep.
EIGHTEENTH
LADY DOVER’S letter to Madge was most elastic as regarded the date of their visit and thoroughly cordial, for she never did things by halves, and the welcome that would be given to her and Evelyn if he could possibly spare time to visit so remote a place was sincerity itself. About accepting it, she had her own view quite clearly formed, but her own pride, her pride, too, in her husband, prevented her from giving the slightest inkling of it to him. For she saw clearly that this visit was proposed by Lady Dover with the definite purpose of showing an act of friendliness after her marriage; it was clearly made with intention, and in her heart of hearts Madge was intensely grateful. To hint this, however, to Evelyn was impossible. But his frank eagerness to go made it unnecessary for her to consider any more the diplomatic reason for doing so.
“Oh, let’s go,” he said. “Surely Scotland is better than London. What is there here? Just a stuffy town, and Battersea Park, and nothing whatever to do.”
Madge knew that her own feeling of being hurt at this was unreasonable. This solitude of London had been unutterably dear to her, but she knew her own feeling to be unreasonable, since she never doubted – and rightly – how dear it had been to him. And why should he not want to be externally amused – to shoot, to fish, to do all those things that he delighted in? And echo answered “Why?”
It was at breakfast time that this letter arrived, and the bacon was undeniably less good than it would have been two days previously. Evelyn sniffed at it, and decided against it. But his sensitiveness to slightly passée bacon was sensitive to her feelings also.
“One doesn’t want meat food in the summer,” he said. “Tea and marmalade – how delicious!”
Madge handed him his tea.
“You dear,” she said. “It is high, and it’s my fault; I thought it would be good just for to-day. But it isn’t. Oh, Evelyn, it was nice of you to pretend you didn’t want any. But you can’t act before me. I always know you. So give it up.”
Evelyn gave a great shout of laughter.
“Madge and marmalade,” he said. “That’s good enough for me. In fact, I would leave out the marmalade if required. Oh, Madge, why can’t you be serious and talk about this. By the way, I’ll paint another sketch of you called ‘Bad bacon’; the yearning face of the young wife. You are young, you know, and you are my wife. Don’t chatter so, it confuses me. Now Lady Dover, if you will be silent one moment, lives at Golspie.”
“That’s where you are wrong,” said Madge. “You have to go to Golspie before you begin.”
“I don’t want to begin. I want to get there. Don’t you?”
Madge put on the woeful face that always introduced Ellesdee.
“I don’t like the ticket man at King’s Cross,” she said. “I don’t think he is what he seems.”
Evelyn had eaten by this time all the crust off a Hovis loaf.
“More crust,” he said. “There isn’t any. Very good; marmalade in a spoon. But I won’t distend my – my vie intérieure with crumb. About the ticket man. You are wrong if we are generous to Lady Dover with regard to the length of our visit. Why mince matters? Can we afford it? I say ‘Yes.’ Board wages for our enormous establishment here. Tickets for ourselves, third class – I wish there was a fourth or fifth – and what’s the dem’d total, as Mr. Mantalini said. Besides these” – Evelyn waved his hand like a man commanding millions – “these are temporary economies. The pink and butter-coloured is going to visit these classic abodes in October, and if orders don’t pour in like our own leaky roof, I’ll eat all the gamboge in my paintbox. I can’t say fairer. And as I don’t possess gamboge,” he added, “the bet finds no takers. I give you that information, for though I am poor, I am honest.”
Evelyn proceeded to eat marmalade with a spoon.
“It will be very chic, if you come to think of it,” he said. “Probably several ladies’ maids and valets will arrive with their respective owners by the same train. You, Madge, will flirt with one or two of the valets, and I with several of the ladies’ maids. The scene then is shifted to Golspie station. You squeeze the hands of the valets on the platform, and I gaze into the eyes of the ladies’ maids. The sumptuous motor has come for Lady Dover’s guests. We strive to subdue – quite ineffectually – our air of conscious superiority, and squeeze the hands of Dukes and Duchesses. Then they will know us in our true colours. Triumphal explosion of the motor-car. The valets and ladies’ maids are saved. Hurrah for the lower classes! Another cup of tea, please. Right up to the top. And the point is the fare to Golspie. Arrived there, we shall have no more food and drink to buy.”
The reasoning was inevitable; given that domestic economy could manage it, there was no reason that could reasonably indicate King’s Road instead. Yet, even after the A.B.C. had added its voice to the overmastering argument, Madge hesitated. She could not quite see her husband among the surroundings that awaited her there. She had been there before, and knew. How would he and that particular milieu suit each other? All this was secondary to her original desire to go; her private, incommunicable feeling that such a visit would poser them – for she could not have been Lady Ellington’s daughter so long without that point of view having soaked into her – was paramount, but the other was there, and the complication in her mind was that though she wished, taking the reasons all round, to leave this hot house which still was intertwined with exquisite and undying memories, she could not see how Evelyn should wish to leave this, not having her own worldly reasons for going to Golspie, without a pang. But since the question of whether economy would allow had been decided in favour of going, there was certainly no more to be said, and, so she told herself, no more to be thought.
But, since the logical conclusion is the one conclusion in the world that is absolutely without effect as regards results, she continued to think. For the ordinary mind is not in the least reasonable; it would cease to be reasonable the moment it was, and take its place among fixed stars and other unattainable objects. Logic, reason, are perhaps the most ineffective of human motives; they may be appealed to as a last resort; but if there is any impulse still alive, it, and not logic, will be seized on as a ground for action. Hence the divine uncertainty of human affairs. If the world was ruled by reason it would become duller than a week-old newspaper. But it is the fact that every human soul is so impredicable that lends the zest to existence. Finding out, in fact, not knowledge, is the spring that makes life fascinating. Whenever the element of certainty enters, it is the death’s head at the feast. Nobody cares for the feast any more. The champagne is flat.
So to Golspie they went, and Evelyn’s prophecy as regards the journey was sufficiently fulfilled to make anybody believe that there must have been something in it. He, at any rate, before they arrived at even Inverness, was engaged in conversation with an agreeable female opposite, a conversation which was not, however, so engrossing but that he could observe with secret glee the fact that Madge was reading the Scotsman, provided for her by an equally agreeable young man, who sat opposite, and hoped that his cigarette would not be disagreeable. Then, luck was really on his side that day, important people stepped out of first-class carriages at Golspie, and, by the usages of this cruel world, these acquaintances so pleasantly begun were rudely interrupted. A cart waited for their travelling companions, and the swift motor received them and the strangers, before whom their own travelling acquaintances were but dust and ashes.
It was, in fact, but a short week after Lady Ellington’s arrival at Glen Callan that her daughter and son-in-law got there, and though she would, as previously arranged, have gone on to her next house the day before their arrival, she put off her departure for two days in order to have the pleasure of seeing them. The party, in fact, was unaltered, and so was their way of life; Mr. Osborne’s flow of humour showed no signs of running dry, nor was the blank amazement with which Lord Ellington regarded him in the least abated. Mr. Dennison was getting steadily on towards the completion of his panorama of Sutherland, and Lady Dover found fresh lights and shadows on the purple heather every day.
Lady Ellington had carefully considered what her exact attitude towards Madge and her husband should be, and had come to the most sensible conclusion about it. Since the world had made up its mind to welcome them, and to draw a wet sponge over the past, it was clear that unless she wished to make an exception of herself, and not do in Rome what Rome did, she must extend to them not merely the welcome of the world, but the welcome of a mother also. And it was decidedly the best plan to make this thorough; astonished as Madge might be, it was better to astonish her than the world, and neither in public nor in private should she hear one word of reproach nor an uncordial accent. Lady Ellington had no desire to see private talks with her daughter; in fact, she meant rather to avoid them; but her whole policy was to accept what had happened, and welcome Madge in the flesh with the same unreservedness as she had shown in the letter she had written her a week ago, urging her to accept Lady Dover’s invitation. She was determined, in fact (now that Lady Dover had shown the way), to make the best of it, and, instead of bitterly counting up (and mentally sending the bill in to Madge) all that would have been at her command, had not the speculation with regard to Madge’s marriage failed, to make the most of the assets that remained to her. And the more she thought of them, unattractive as they had seemed at first, the more they seemed to her to have a promising air. Philip was immensely wealthy, and Evelyn was poor, that was unfortunately undeniable; but Evelyn – regarding him as a property – had certainly prospects which Philip had not, and though nothing could quite make up, to her mind, for the loss of much tangible wealth, yet Evelyn with his brilliant gifts might easily be a rich man, while even now he was a much more rising figure socially than the other. People talked about him, admired his cleverness and charm, asked to be introduced to him. All these merits, it is true, she had not seen in those days at Pangbourne, when she looked upon him merely as an impossible young artist, but since that impossible young artist had become an inevitable son-in-law, it was wise to take him into account. So her welcome to both was going to be unreserved.
They arrived, just as Lady Ellington had arrived, after the rest of the party had gone in to dinner, and their host and hostess came out into the hall as usual to meet them. Madge, it must be confessed, had gone through a bad quarter of an hour of anticipatory shyness as they got near; but this on arrival she found to have been a superfluous piece of self-inflicted discomfort, for Lady Dover was absolutely natural, and all that was required of her was that she should be natural too.
“Ah, dear Madge,” she said, “how nice to see you and Mr. Dundas. And we have such a surprise for you; your mother is here still. We persuaded her to delay her departure a couple of days in order just to have a glimpse of you. We call her Lady Salmon, and are eating a fish she caught only this afternoon.”
She turned to welcome her other guests, when Lady Ellington also followed her from the dining-room.
“My dearest Madge,” she cried, kissing her, “this is too delightful. How well you are looking. But did you only wear this thin cloak for your drive; surely that was rash? How are you, dear Evelyn? This is nice. I could not help coming out of dinner to have a glimpse of you. You have brought no maid, Madge?”
“Dear mother, I haven’t got one to bring.”
“No? Evelyn, she must have a maid. But Parkins, of course, shall attend to you here. Now you must go and dress.”
That her mother was still in the house had been absolutely a surprise to Madge, but her welcome fully endorsed the cordiality of her letter. She had not seen her since that afternoon in July when she had come to Evelyn’s studio, and whatever had caused this complete and radical change she was grateful to it. It, too, bore its meaning as clearly stamped as did Lady Dover’s greeting; whatever had happened, had happened but the past was over.
