Kitabı oku: «The Golden Butterfly», sayfa 31
CHAPTER XXXVII
"'Come now,' the Master Builder cried,
'The twenty years of work are done;
Flaunt forth the Flag, and crown with pride
The Glory of the Coping-Stone.'"
Jack Dunquerque was to "slack off" his visits to Twickenham. That is to say, as he interpreted the injunction, he was not wholly to discontinue them, in order not to excite suspicion. But he was not to haunt the house; he was to make less frequent voyages up the silver Thames; he was not to ride in leafy lanes side by side with Phillis – without having Phillis by his side he cared little about leafy lanes, and would rather be at the club; further, by these absences he was to leave off being necessary to the brightness of her life.
It was a hard saying. Nevertheless, the young man felt that he had little reason for complaint. Other fellows he knew, going after other heiresses, had been quite peremptorily sent about their business for good, particularly needy young men like himself. All that Colquhoun extorted of him was that he should "slack off." He felt, in a manner, grateful, although had he been a youth of quicker perception, he would have remembered that the lover who "slacks off" can be no other than the lover who wishes he had not begun. But nobody ever called Jack a clever young man.
He was not to give her up altogether. He was not even to give up hoping. He was to have his chance with the rest. But he was warned that no chance was to be open to him until the young lady should enter upon her first season.
Not to give up seeing her. That was everything. Jack Dunquerque had hitherto lived the life of all young men, careless and insouciant, with its little round of daily pleasures. He was only different from other young men that he had learned, partly from a sympathetic nature and partly by travel, not to put all his pleasure in that life about town and in country houses which seems to so many the one thing which the world has to offer. He who has lived out on the Prairies for weeks has found that there are other pleasures besides the gas-light joys of Town. But his life had been without thought and purposeless – a very chaos of a life. And now he felt vaguely that his whole being was changed. To be with Phillis day after day, to listen to the outpourings of her freshness and innocence, brought to him the same sort of refreshment as sitting under the little cataract of a mountain stream brings to one who rambles in a hot West Indian island. Things for which he once cared greatly he now cared for no more; the club-life, the cards, and the billiards ceased to interest him; he took no delight in them. Perhaps it was a proof of a certain weakness of nature in Jack Dunquerque that he could not at the same time love things in which Phillis took no part and the things which made the simple pleasures of her every-day life.
He might have been weak, and yet, whether he was weak or strong, he knew that she leaned upon him. He was so sympathetic; he seemed to know so much; he decided so quickly; he was in his way so masterful, that the girl looked up to him as a paragon of wisdom and strength.
I think she will always so regard him, because the knowledge of her respect raises Jack daily in moral and spiritual strength, and so her hero approaches daily to her ideal. What is the highest love worth if it have not the power of lifting man and woman together up to the higher levels, where the air is purer, the sunshine brighter, the vision clearer?
But Colquhoun's commands had wrought a further change in him; that ugly good-looking face of his, which Agatha L'Estrange admired so much, and which was wont to be wreathed with a multitudinous smile, was now doleful. To the world of mankind – male mankind – the chief charm of Jack Dunquerque, the main cause of his popularity – his unvarying cheerfulness – was vanished.
"You ought to be called Doleful Jack," said Ladds. "Jack of Rueful Countenance."
"You don't know, Tommy," replied the lover, sorrowfully wagging his head. "I've seen Colquhoun; and he won't have it. Says I must wait."
"He's waited till forty. I've waited to five and thirty, and we're both pretty jolly. Come, young un, you may take courage by our examples."
"You never met Phil when you were five and twenty," said Jack. "Nobody ever saw a girl like Phillis."
Five and thirty seems so great an age to five and twenty. And at five and thirty one feels so young, that it comes upon the possessor of so many years like a shock of cold water to be reminded that he is really no longer young.
One good thing – Lawrence Colquhoun did not reproach him. Partly perhaps because, as a guardian, he did not thoroughly realize Jack's flagitious conduct; partly because he was an easy-going man, with a notion in his head that he had nothing to do with the work of Duennas and Keepers of the Gynæceum. He treated the confessions of the remorseful lover with a cheery contempt – passed them by; no great harm had been done; and the girl was but a child.
His own conscience it was which bullied Jack so tremendously. One day he rounded on his accuser like the poor worm in the proverb, who might perhaps have got safe back to its hole but for that ill-advised turning. He met the charges like a man. He pleaded that, criminal as he had been, nefarious and inexcusable as his action was, this action had given him a very high time; and that, if it was all to do over again, he should probably alter his conduct only in degree, but not in kind; that is to say, he would see Phillis oftener and stay with her longer. Conscience knocked him out of time in a couple of rounds; but still he did have the satisfaction of showing fight.
Of course he would do the same thing again. There has never been found by duenna, by guardian, by despotic parent, or by interested relation, any law of restraint strong enough to keep apart two young people of the opposite sex and like age, after they have once become attracted towards each other. Prudence and prudery, jealousy and interest, never have much chance. The ancient dames of duennadom may purse their withered lips and wrinkle their crow's-footed eyes; Love, the unconquered, laughs and conquers again.
It is of no use to repeat long explanations about Phillis. Such as she was, we know her – a law unto herself; careless of prohibitions and unsuspicious of danger. Like Una, she wandered unprotected and fearless among whatever two-legged wolves, bears, eagles, lions, vultures and other beasts and birds of prey might be anxiously waiting to snap her up. Jack was the great-hearted lion who was to bear her safely through the wistful growls of the meaner beasts. The lion is not clever like the fox or the beaver, but one always conceives of him as a gentleman, and therefore fit to be entrusted with such a beautiful maiden as Una or Phillis. And if Jack was quietly allowed to carry off his treasure it was Agatha L'Estrange who was chiefly to blame; and she, falling in love with Jack herself, quite in a motherly way, allowed the wooing to go on under her very nose. "A bad, bad woman," as Lawrence Colquhoun called her.
But such a wooing! Miss Ethel Citybredde, when she sees Amandus making a steady but not an eagerly impetuous advance in her direction at a ball, feels her languid pulses beat a little faster. "He is coming after Me," she says to herself, with pride. They snatch a few moments to sit together in a conservatory. He offers no remark worthy of repetition, nor does she; yet she thinks to herself, "He is going to ask me to marry him; he will kiss me; there will be a grand wedding; everybody will be pleased; other girls will be envious; and I shall be delighted. Papa knows that he is well off and well connected. How charming!"
Now Phillis allowed her lover to woo her without one thought of love or marriage, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. But if the passion was all on one side, the affection was equally divided. And when Jack truly said that Phillis did not love him, he forgot that she had given him already all that she knew of love; in that her thoughts, which on her first emancipation leaped forth, bounding and running in all directions with a wild yearning to behold the Great Unknown, were now returning to herself, and mostly flowed steadily, like streams of electric influence, in the direction of Jack; inasmuch as she referred unconsciously everything to Jack, as she dressed for him, drew for him, pored diligently over hated reading-books for him, and told him all her thoughts.
I have not told, nor can I tell, of the many walks and talks these two young people had together. Day after day Jack's boat – that comfortable old tub, in which he could, and often did, cut a crab without spilling the contents into the river – lay moored off Agatha's lawn, or rolled slowly up and down the river, Jack rowing, while Phillis steered, sang, talked, and laughed. This was pleasant in the morning; but it was far more pleasant in the evening, when the river was so quiet, so still and so black, and when thoughts crowded into the girl's brain, which fled like spirits when she tried to put them into words.
Or they rode together along the leafy roads through Richmond Park, and down by that unknown region, far away from the world, where heron rise up from the water's edge, where the wild fowl fly above the lake in figures which remind one of Euclid's definitions, and the deer collect in herds among great ferns half as high as themselves. There they would let the horses walk, while Phillis, with the slender curving lines of her figure, her dainty dress which fitted it so well, and her sweet face, made the heart of her lover hungry; and when she turned to speak to him, and he saw in the clear depths of her eyes his own face reflected, his passion grew almost too much for him to bear.
A delicate dainty maiden, who was yet of strong and healthy physique; one who did not disdain to own a love for cake and strawberries, cream and ices, and other pleasant things; who had no young-ladyish affectations; who took life eagerly, not languidly. And not a coward, as many maidens boast to be; she ruled her horse with a rein as firm as Jack Dunquerque, and sat him as steadily; she clinched her little fingers and set her lips hard when she heard a tale of wrong; her eyes lit up and her bosom heaved when she heard of heroic gest; she was strong to endure and to do. Not every girl would, as Phillis did, rise in the morning at five to train her untaught eyes and hand over those little symbols by which we read and write; not every girl would patiently begin at nineteen the mechanical drudgery of the music-lesson. And she did this in confidence, because Jack asked her every day about her lessons, and Agatha L'Estrange was pleased.
The emotion which is the next after, and worse than that of love, is sympathy. Phillis passed through the stages of curiosity and knowledge before she arrived at the stage of sympathy. Perhaps she was not far from the highest stage of all.
She learned something every day, and told Jack what it was. Sometimes it was an increase in her knowledge of evil. Jack, who was by no means so clever as his biographer, thought that a pity. His idea was the common one – that a maiden should be kept innocent of the knowledge of evil. I think Jack took a prejudiced, even a Philistine, view of the case. He put himself on the same level as the Frenchman who keeps his daughter out of mischief by locking her up in a convent. It is not the knowledge of evil that hurts, any more than the knowledge of black-beetles, earwigs, slugs, and other crawling things; the pure in spirit cast it off, just as the gardener who digs and delves among his plants washes his hands and is clean. The thing that hurts is the suspicion and constant thought of evil; the loveliest and most divine creature in the world is she who neither commits any ill, nor thinks any, nor suspects others of ill – who has a perfect pity for backsliders, and a perfect trust in the people around her. Unfortunate it is that experience of life turns pity to anger, and trust into hesitation.
Or they would be out upon Agatha's lawn, playing croquet, to which that good lady still adhered, or lawn-tennis, which she tolerated. There would be the curate – he had abandoned that design of getting up all about Laud, but was madly, ecclesiastically madly, in love with Phillis; there would be occasionally Ladds, who, in his heavy, kindly way, pleased this young May Queen. Besides, Ladds was fond of Jack. There would be Gilead Beck in the straightest of frock coats, and on the most careful behaviour; there would be also two or three young ladies, compared with whom Phillis was as Rosalind at the court of her uncle, or as Esther among the damsels of the Persian king's seraglio, so fresh and so incomparably fair.
"Mrs. L'Estrange," Jack whispered one day, "I am going to say a rude thing. Did you pick out the other girls on purpose to set off Phillis?"
"What a shame, Jack!" said Agatha, who like the rest of the world called him by what was not his Christian name. "The girls are very nice – not so pretty as Phillis, but good-looking, all of them. I call them as pretty a set of girls as you would be likely to see on any lawn this season."
"Yes," said Jack; "only you see they are all alike, and Phillis is different."
That was it – Phillis was different. The girls were graceful, pleasant, and well bred. But Phillis was all this, and more. The others followed the beaten track, in which the strength of life is subdued and its intensity forbidden. Phillis was in earnest about everything, quietly in earnest; not openly bent on enjoyment, like the young ladies who run down Greenwich Hill, for instance, but in her way making others feel something of what she felt herself. Her intensity was visible in the eager face, the mobile flashes of her sensitive lips, and her brightening eyes. And, most unlike her neighbours, she even forgot her own dress, much as she loved the theory and practice of dress, when once she was interested, and was careless about theirs.
It was not pleasant for the minor stars. They felt in a vague uncomfortable way that Phillis was far more attractive; they said to each other that she was strange; one who pretended to know more French than the others said that she was farouche.
She was not in the least farouche, and the young lady her calumniator did not understand the adjective; but farouche she continued to be among the maidens of Twickenham and Richmond.
Jack Dunquerque heard the epithet applied on one occasion, and burst out laughing.
Phillis farouche! Phillis, without fear and without suspicion!
But then they do teach French so badly at girls' schools. And so poor Phillis remained ticketed with the adjective which least of any belonged to her.
A pleasant six weeks from April to June, while the late spring blossomed and flowered into summer; a time to remember all his life afterwards with the saddened joy which, despite Dante's observation, does still belong to the memory of past pleasures.
But every pleasant time passes, and the six weeks were over.
Jack was to "slack off." The phrase struck him, applied to himself and Phillis, as simply in bad taste; but the meaning was plain. He was to present himself at Twickenham with less frequency.
Accordingly he began well by going there the very next day. The new régime has to be commenced somehow, and Jack began his at once. He pulled up in his tub. It was a cloudy and windy day; drops of rain fell from time to time; the river was swept by sudden gusts which came driving down the stream, marked by broad black patches; there were no other boats out, and Jack struggled upwards against the current; the exercise at least was a relief to the oppression of his thoughts.
What was he to do with himself after the "slacking off" had begun – after that day, in fact? The visits might drop to twice a week, then once a week, and then? But surely Colquhoun would be satisfied with such a measure of self-denial. In the intervals – say from Saturday to Saturday – he could occupy himself in thinking about her. He might write to her – would that be against the letter of the law? It was clearly against the spirit. And – another consideration – it was no use writing unless he wrote in printed characters, and in words of not more than two syllables. He thought of such a love-letter, and of Phillis gravely spelling it out word by word to Mrs. L'Estrange. For poor Phillis had not as yet accustomed herself to look on the printed page as a vehicle for thought, although Agatha read to her every day. She regarded it as the means of conveying to the reader facts such as the elementary reading-book delights to set forth; so dry that the adult reader, if a woman, presently feels the dust in her eyes, and if a man, is fain to get up and call wildly for quarts of bitter beer. No; Phillis was not educated up to the reception of a letter.
He would, he thought, sit in the least-frequented room of his club – the drawing-room – and with a book of some kind before him, just for a pretence, would pass the leaden hours in thinking of Phillis's perfections. Heavens! when was there a moment, by day or by night, that he did not think of them?
Bump! It was the bow of the ship, which knew by experience very well when to stop, and grounded herself without any conscious volition on his part at the accustomed spot.
Jack jumped out, and fastened the painter to the tree to which Phillis had once tied him. Then he strode across the lawns and flower-beds, and made for the little morning-room, where he hoped to find the ladies.
He found one of them. Fortune sometimes favors lovers. It was the younger one – Phillis herself.
She was bending over her work with brush and colour-box, looking as serious as if all her future depended on the success of that particular picture; beside her, tossed contemptuously aside, lay the much-despised Lesson-Book in Reading; for she had done her daily task. She did not hear Jack step in at the open window, and went on with her painting.
She wore a dress made of that stuff which looks like brown holland till you come close to it, and then you think it is silk, but are not quite certain, and I believe they call it Indian tussore. Round her dainty waist was a leathern belt set in silver with a châtelaine, like a small armoury of deadly weapons; and for colour she had a crimson ribbon about her neck. To show that the ribbon was not entirely meant for vanity, but had its uses, Phillis had slung upon it a cross of Maltese silver-work, which I fear Jack had given her himself. And below the cross, where her rounded figure showed it off, she had placed a little bunch of sweet peas. Such a dainty damsel! Not content with the flower in her dress, she had stuck a white jasamine-blossom in her hair. All these things Jack noted with speechless admiration.
Then she began to sing in a low voice, all to herself, a little French ballad which Mrs. L'Estrange had taught her – one of the sweet old French songs.
She was painting in the other window, at a table drawn up to face it. The curtains were partly pulled together, and the blind was half drawn down, so that she sat in a subdued light, in which only her face was lit up, like the faces in a certain kind of photograph, while her hair and figure lay in shadow. The hangings were of some light-rose hue, which tinted the whole room, and threw a warm colouring over the old-fashioned furniture, the pictures, the books, the flowers on the tables, and the ferns in their glasses. Mrs. L'Estrange was no follower after the new school. Neutral tints had small charms for her; she liked the warmth and glow of the older fashion in which she had been brought up.
It looked to Jack Dunquerque like some shrine dedicated to peace and love, with Phillis for its priestess – or even its goddess. Outside the skies were grey; the wind swept down the river with driving rain; here was warmth, colour, and brightness. So he stood still and watched.
And as he waited an overwhelming passion of love seized him. If the world was well lost for Antony when he threw it all away for a queen no longer young, and the mother of one son at least almost grown up, what would it have been had his Cleopatra welcomed him in all the splendour of her white Greek beauty at sweet seventeen? There was no world to be lost for this obscure cadet of a noble house, but all the world to be won. His world was before his eyes; it was an unconscious maid, ignorant of her own surpassing worth, and of the power of her beauty. To win her was to be the lord of all the world he cared for.
Presently she laid down her brush, and raised her head. Then she pushed aside the curtains, and looked out upon the gardens. The rain drove against the windows, and the wind beat about the branches of the lilacs on the lawn. She shivered, and pulled the curtains together again.
"I wish Jack were here," she said to herself.
"He is here, Phil," Jack replied.
She looked round, and darted across the room, catching him by both hands.
"Jack! Oh, I am glad! There is nobody at home. Agatha has gone up to town, and I am quite alone. What shall we do this afternoon?"
Clearly the right thing for him to propose was that he should instantly leave the young lady, and row himself back to Richmond. This, however, was not what he did propose. On the contrary, he kept Phillis's hands in his, and held them tight, looking in her upturned face, where he saw nothing but undisguised joy at his appearance.
"Shall we talk? Shall I play to you? Shall I draw you a picture? What shall we do, Jack?"
"Well, Phil, I think – perhaps – we had better talk."
Something in his voice struck her; she looked at him sharply.
"What has happened, Jack? You do not look happy."
"Nothing, Phil – nothing but what I might have expected." But he looked so dismal that it was quite certain he had not expected it.
"Tell me, Jack."
He shook his head.
"Jack, what is the good of being friends if you won't tell me what makes you unhappy?"
"I don't know how to tell you, Phil. I don't see a way to begin."
"Sit down, and begin somehow." She placed him comfortably in the largest chair in the room, and then she stood in front of him, and looked in his face with compassionate eyes. The sight of those deep-brown orbs, so full of light and pity, smote her lover with a kind of madness. "What is it makes people unhappy? Are you ill?"
He shook his head, and laughed.
"No, Phil; I am never ill. You see, I am not exactly unhappy – "
"But Jack, you look so dismal."
"Yes, that is it; I am a little dismal. No. Phil – no. I am really unhappy, and you are the cause."
"I the cause? But, Jack, why?"
"I had a talk with your guardian, Lawrence Colquhoun, yesterday. It was all about you. And he wants me – not to come here so often, in fact. And I musn't come."
"But why not? What does Lawrence mean?"
"That is just what I cannot explain to you. You must try to forgive me."
"Forgive you, Jack?"
"You see, Phil, I have behaved badly from the beginning. I ought not to have called upon you as I did in Carnarvon Square; I ought not to have let you call me Jack, nor should I have called you Phil. It is altogether improper in the eyes of the world."
She was silent for a while.
"Perhaps I have known, Jack, that it was a little unusual. Other girls haven't got a Jack Dunquerque, have they? Poor things! That is all you mean, isn't it, Jack?"
"Phil, don't look at me like that! You don't know – you can't understand – No; it is more than unusual; it is quite wrong."
"I have done nothing wrong," the girl said proudly. "If I had, my conscience would make me unhappy. But I do begin to understand what you mean. Last week Agatha asked me if I was not thinking too much about you. And the curate made me laugh because he said, quite by himself in a corner, you know, that Mr. Dunquerque was a happy man; and when I asked him, why he turned very red, and said it was because I had given to him what all the world would long to have. He meant, Jack – "
"I wish he was here," Jack cried hotly, "for me to wring his neck!"
"And one day Laura Herries – "
"That's the girl who said you were farouche, Phil. Go on."
"Was talking to Agatha about some young lady who had got compromised by a gentleman's attentions. I asked why, and she replied quite sharply that if I did not know, no one could know. Then she got up and went away. Agatha was angry about it, I could see; but she only said something about understanding when I come out."
"Miss Herries ought to have her neck wrung, too, as well as the curate," said Jack.
"Compromise – improper." Phil beat her little foot on the floor. "What does it all mean? Jack, tell me – what is this wrong thing that you and I have done?"
"Not you, Phil; a thousand times not you."
"Then I do not care much what other people say," she replied simply. "Do you know, Jack, it seems to me as if we never ought to care for what people, besides people we love, say about us."
"But it is I who have done wrong," said Jack.
"Have you, Jack? Oh, then I forgive you. I think I know you. You should have come to me with an unreal smile on your face, and pretended the greatest deference to my opinion, even when you knew it wasn't worth having. That is what the curate does to young ladies. I saw him yesterday taking Miss Herries's opinion on Holman Hunt's picture. She said it was 'sweetly pretty.' He said, 'Do you really think so?' in such a solemn voice, as if he wasn't quite sure that the phrase summed up the whole picture, but was going to think it over quietly. Don't laugh, Jack, because I cannot read like other people, and all I have to go by is what Mr. Dyson told me, and Agatha tells me, and what I see – and – and what you tell me, Jack, which is worth all the rest to me."
The tears came into her eyes, but only for a moment, and she brushed them aside.
"And I forgive you, Jack, all the more because you did not treat me as you would have treated the girls who seem to me so lifeless and languid, and – Jack, it may be wrong to say it, but Oh, so small! What compliment could you have paid me better than to single me out for your friend – you who have seen so much and done so much – my friend – mine? We were friends from the first, were we not? And I have never since hidden anything from you, Jack, and never will."
He kept it down still, this mighty yearning that filled his heart, but he could not bear to look her in the face. Every word that she said stabbed him like a knife, because it showed her childish innocence and her utter unconsciousness of what her words might mean.
And then she laid her little hand in his.
"And now you have compromised me, as they would say? What does it matter Jack? We can go on always just the same as we have been doing, can we not?"
He shook his head and answered huskily, "No, Phil. Your guardian will not allow it. You must obey him. He says that I am to come here less frequently; that I must not do you – he is quite right, Phil – any more mischief; and that you are to have your first season in London without any ties or entanglements."
"My guardian leaves me alone here with Agatha. It is you who have been my real guardian, Jack. I shall do what you tell me to do."
"I want to do what is best for you, Phil – but – Child" – he caught her by the hands, and she half fell, half knelt at his feet, and looked up in his eyes with her face full of trouble and emotion – "child, must I tell you? Could not Agatha L'Estrange tell you that there is something in the world very different from friendship? Is it left for me to teach you? They call it Love, Phil."
He whispered the last words.
"Love? But I know all about it, Jack."
"No, Phil, you know nothing. It isn't the love that you bear to Agatha that I mean."
"Is it the love I have for you, Jack?" she asked in all innocence.
"It may be, Phil. Tell me only" – he was reckless now, and spoke fast and fiercely – "tell me if you love me as I love you. Try to tell me. I love you so much that I cannot sleep for thinking of you; and I think of you all day long. It seems as if my life must have been a long blank before I saw you; all my happiness is to be with you; to think of going on without you maddens me."
"Poor Jack!" she said softly. She did not offer to withdraw her hands, but let them lie in his warm and tender grasp.
"My dear, my darling – my queen and pearl of girls – who can help loving you? And even to be with you, to have you close to me, to hold your hands in mine, that isn't enough."
"What more – O Jack, Jack! what more?"
She began to tremble, and she tried to take back her hands. He let them go, but before she could change her position he bent down, threw his arms about her, and held her face close to his while he kissed it a thousand times.
"What more? My darling, my angel, this – and this! Phil, Phil! wake at last from your long childhood; leave the Garden of Eden where you have wandered so many years, and come out into the other world – the world of love. My dear, my dear! can you love me a little, only a little, in return? We are all so different from what you thought us; you will find out some day that I am not clever and good at all; that I have only one thing to give you – my love. Phil, Phil, answer me – speak to me – forgive me!"
He let her go, for she tore herself from him and sprang to her feet, burying her face in her hands and sobbing aloud.
"Forgive me – forgive me!" It was all that he could say.
"Jack, what is it? what does it mean? O Jack!" – she lifted her face and looked about her, with hands outstretched as one who feels in the darkness; her cheeks were white and her eyes wild – "what does it mean? what is it you have said? what is it you have done?"
"Phil!"
"Yes! Hush! don't speak to me – not yet, Jack. Wait a moment. My brain is full of strange thoughts" – she put out trembling hands before her, like one who wakes suddenly in a dream, and spoke with short, quick breath. "Something seems to have come upon me. Help me, Jack! Oh, help me! I am frightened."
