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@@ -0,0 +1,6370 @@ +Project Gutenberg's The Quest of the Golden Girl, by Richard le Gallienne + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Quest of the Golden Girl + +Author: Richard le Gallienne + +Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #461] +Release Date: March, 1996 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN GIRL *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines. + + + + + + + + +THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN GIRL + +A ROMANCE + + +BY + +RICHARD LE GALLIENNE + + + + + + TO + PRIOR AND LOUISE CHRISTIAN, + WITH AFFECTION. + + + + +CONTENTS + +BOOK I + + +CHAPTER + +I. AN OLD HOUSE AND ITS BACHELOR + +II. IN WHICH I DECIDE TO GO ON PILGRIMAGE + +III. AN INDICTMENT OF SPRING + +IV. IN WHICH I EAT AND DREAM + +V. CONCERNING THE PERFECT WOMAN, AND THEREFORE CONCERNING ALL + FEMININE READERS + +VI. IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ANTICIPATES DISCONTENT ON THE PART OF + HIS READER + +VII. PRANDIAL + +VIII. STILL PRANDIAL + +IX. THE LEGEND OF HEBES OR THE HEAVENLY HOUSEMAID + +X. AGAIN ON FOOT-THE GIRLS THAT NEVER CAN BE MINE + +XI. AN OLD MAN OF THE HILLS, AND THE SCHOOLMASTER'S STORY + +XII. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GIPSIES + +XIII. A STRANGE WEDDING + +XIV. THE MYSTERIOUS PETTICOAT + +XV. STILL OCCUPIED WITH THE PETTICOAT + +XVI. CLEARS UP MY MYSTERIOUS BEHAVIOUR OF THE LAST CHAPTER + +XVII. THE NAME UPON THE PETTICOAT + +XVIII. IN WHICH THE NAME OF A GREAT POET IS CRIED OUT IN A + SOLITARY PLACE + +XIX. WHY THE STRANGER WOULD NOT LOSE HIS SHELLEY FOR THE WORLD + + +BOOK II + +I. IN WHICH I DECIDE TO BE YOUNG AGAIN + +II. AT THE SIGN OF THE SINGING STREAM + +III. IN WHICH I SAVE A USEFUL LIFE + +IV. 'T IS OF NICOLETE AND HER BOWER IN THE WILDWOOD + +V. 'T IS OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE + +VI. A FAIRY TALE AND ITS FAIRY TAILORS + +VII. FROM THE MORNING STAR TO THE MOON + +VIII. THE KIND OF THING THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOON + +IX. WRITTEN BY MOONLIGHT + +X. HOW ONE MAKES LOVE AT THIRTY + +XI. HOW ONE PLAYS THE HERO AT THIRTY + +XII. IN WHICH I REVIEW MY ACTIONS AND RENEW MY RESOLUTIONS + + +BOOK III + +I. IN WHICH I RETURN TO MY RIGHT AGE AND ENCOUNTER A COMMON + OBJECT OF THE COUNTRY + +II. IN WHICH I HEAL A BICYCLE AND COME TO THE WHEEL OF + PLEASURE + +III. TWO TOWN MICE AT A COUNTRY INN + +IV. MARRIAGE A LA MODE + +V. CONCERNING THE HAVEN OF YELLOW SANDS + +VI. THE MOORLAND OF THE APOCALYPSE + +VII. "COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SANDS!" + +VIII. THE TWELVE GOLDEN-HAIRED BAR-MAIDS + +IX. SYLVIA JOY + +X. IN WHICH ONCE MORE I BECOME OCCUPIED IN MY OWN AFFAIRS + +XI. "THE HOUR FOR WHICH THE YEARS FOR WHICH I DID SIGH" + +XII. AT THE CAFE DE LA PAIX + +XIII. THE INNOCENCE OF PARIS + +XIV. END OF BOOK THREE + + +BOOK IV + +THE POSTSCRIPT TO A PILGRIMAGE + +I. SIX YEARS AFTER + +II. GRACE O' GOD + +III. THE GOLDEN GIRL + + + + + +Gennem de Mange til En! + + + +BOOK I + + +CHAPTER I + +AN OLD HOUSE AND ITS BACHELOR + +When the knell of my thirtieth birthday sounded, I suddenly realised, +with a desolate feeling at the heart, that I was alone in the world. +It was true I had many and good friends, and I was blessed with +interests and occupations which I had often declared sufficient to +satisfy any not too exacting human being. Moreover, a small but +sufficient competency was mine, allowing me reasonable comforts, and +the luxuries of a small but choice library, and a small but choice +garden. These heavenly blessings had seemed mere than enough for +nearly five years, during which the good sister and I had kept house +together, leading a life of tranquil happy days. Friends and books and +flowers! It was, we said, a good world, and I, simpleton,--pretty and +dainty as Margaret was,--deemed it would go on forever. But, alas! one +day came a Faust into our garden,--a good Faust, with no friend +Mephistopheles,--and took Margaret from me. It is but a month since +they were married, and the rice still lingers in the crevices of the +pathway down to the quaint old iron-work gate. Yes! they have gone off +to spend their honeymoon, and Margaret has written to me twice to say +how happy they are together in the Hesperides. Dear happiness! +Selfish, indeed, were he who would envy you one petal of that wonderful +rose--Rosa Mundi--God has given you to gather. + +But, all the same, the reader will admit that it must be lonely for me, +and not another sister left to take pity on me, all somewhere happily +settled down in the Fortunate Isles. + +Poor lonely old house! do you, too, miss the light step of your +mistress? No longer shall her little silken figure flit up and down +your quiet staircases, no more deck out your silent rooms with flowers, +humming the while some happy little song. + +The little piano is dumb night after night, its candles unlighted, and +there is no one to play Chopin to us now as the day dies, and the +shadows stoop out of their corners to listen in vain. Old house, old +house! We are alone, quite alone,--there is no mistake about +that,--and the soul has gone out of both of us. And as for the garden, +there is no company there; that is loneliest of all. The very sunlight +looks desolation, falling through the thick-blossoming apple-trees as +through the chinks and crevices of deserted Egyptian cities. + +While as for the books--well, never talk to me again about the +companionship of books! For just when one needs them most of all they +seem suddenly to have grown dull and unsympathetic, not a word of +comfort, not a charm anywhere in them to make us forget the slow-moving +hours; whereas, when Margaret was here--but it is of no use to say any +more! Everything was quite different when Margaret was here: that is +enough. Margaret has gone away to the Fortunate Isles. Of course +she'll come to see us now and again; but it won't be the same thing. +Yes! old echoing silent House of Joy that is Gone, we are quite alone. +Now, what is to be done? + + + +CHAPTER II + +IN WHICH I DECIDE TO GO ON PILGRIMAGE + +Though I have this bad habit of soliloquising, and indeed am absurd +enough to attempt conversation with a house, yet the reader must +realise from the beginning that I am still quite a young man. I talked +a little just now as though I were an octogenarian. Actually, as I +said, I am but just gone thirty, and I may reasonably regard life, as +the saying is, all before me. I was a little down-hearted when I wrote +yesterday. Besides, I wrote at the end of the afternoon, a melancholy +time. The morning is the time to write. We are all--that is, those of +us who sleep well--optimists in the morning. And the world is sad +enough without our writing books to make it sadder. The rest of this +book, I promise you, shall be written of a morning. This book! oh, +yes, I forgot!--I am going to write a book. A book about what? Well, +that must be as God wills. But listen! As I lay in bed this morning +between sleeping and waking, an idea came riding on a sunbeam into my +room,--a mad, whimsical idea, but one that suits my mood; and put +briefly, it is this: how is it that I, a not unpresentable young man, a +man not without accomplishments or experience, should have gone all +these years without finding that + + "Not impossible she + Who shall command my heart and me,"-- + +without meeting at some turning of the way the mystical Golden +Girl,--without, in short, finding a wife? + +"Then," suggested the idea, with a blush for its own absurdity, "why +not go on pilgrimage and seek her? I don't believe you'll find her. +She isn't usually found after thirty. But you'll no doubt have good +fun by the way, and fall in with many pleasant adventures." + +"A brave idea, indeed!" I cried. "By Heaven, I will take stick and +knapsack and walk right away from my own front door, right away where +the road leads, and see what happens." And now, if the reader please, +we will make a start. + + + +CHAPTER III + +AN INDICTMENT OF SPRING + +"Marry! an odd adventure!" I said to myself, as I stepped along in the +spring morning air; for, being a pilgrim, I was involuntarily in a +mediaeval frame of mind, and "Marry! an odd adventure!" came to my lips +as though I had been one of that famous company that once started from +the Tabard on a day in spring. + +It had been the spring, it will be remembered, that had prompted them +to go on pilgrimage; and me, too, the spring was filling with strange, +undefinable longings, and though I flattered myself that I had set out +in pursuance of a definitely taken resolve, I had really no more +freedom in the matter than the children who followed at the heels of +the mad piper. + +A mad piper, indeed, this spring, with his wonderful lying music,--ever +lying, yet ever convincing, for when was Spring known to keep his word? +Yet year after year we give eager belief to his promises. He may have +consistently broken them for fifty years, yet this year he will keep +them. This year the dream will come true, the ship come home. This +year the very dead we have loved shall come back to us again: for +Spring can even lie like that. There is nothing he will not promise +the poor hungry human heart, with his innocent-looking daisies and +those practised liars the birds. Why, one branch of hawthorn against +the sky promises more than all the summers of time can pay, and a pond +ablaze with yellow lilies awakens such answering splendours and +enchantments in mortal bosoms,--blazons, it would seem, so august a +message from the hidden heart of the world,--that ever afterwards, for +one who has looked upon it, the most fortunate human existence must +seem a disappointment. + +So I, too, with the rest of the world, was following in the wake of the +magical music. The lie it was drawing me by is perhaps Spring's oldest, +commonest lie,--the lying promise of the Perfect Woman, the Quite +Impossible She. Who has not dreamed of her,--who that can dream at +all? I suppose that the dreams of our modern youth are entirely +commercial. In the morning of life they are rapt by intoxicating +visions of some great haberdashery business, beckoned to by the +voluptuous enticements of the legal profession, or maybe the Holy Grail +they forswear all else to seek is a snug editorial chair. These quests +and dreams were not for me. Since I was man I have had but one +dream,--namely, Woman. Alas! till this my thirtieth year I have found +only women. No! that is disloyal, disloyal to my First Love; for this +is sadly true,--that we always find the Golden Girl in our first love, +and lose her in our second. + +I wonder if the reader would care to hear about my First Love, of whom +I am naturally thinking a good deal this morning, under the +demoralising influences of the fresh air, blue sky, and various birds +and flowers. More potent intoxicants these than any that need licenses +for their purveyance, responsible--see the poets--for no end of human +foolishness. + +I was about to tell the story of my First Love, but on second thoughts +I decide not. It will keep, and I feel hungry, and yonder seems a +dingle where I can lie and open my knapsack, eat, drink, and doze among +the sun-flecked shadows. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +IN WHICH I EAT AND DREAM + +The girl we go to meet is the girl we have met before. I evolved this +sage reflection, as, lost deep down in the green alleys of the dingle, +having fortified the romantic side of my nature with sandwiches and +sherry, I lazily put the question to myself as to what manner of girl I +expected the Golden Girl to be. A man who goes seeking should have +some notion of what he goes out to seek. Had I any ideal by which to +test and measure the damsels of the world who were to pass before my +critical choosing eye? Had I ever met any girl in the past who would +serve approximately as a model,--any girl, in fact, I would very much +like to meet again? I was very sleepy, and while trying to make up my +mind I fell asleep; and lo! the sandwiches and sherry brought me a +dream that I could not but consider of good omen. And this was the +dream. + +I thought my quest had brought me into a strange old haunted forest, +and that I had thrown myself down to rest at the gnarled mossy root of +a great oak-tree, while all about me was nought but fantastic shapes +and capricious groups of gold-green bole and bough, wondrous alleys +ending in mysterious coverts, and green lanes of exquisite turf that +seemed to have been laid down in expectation of some milk-white queen +or goddess passing that way. + +And so still the forest was you could have heard an acorn drop or a +bird call from one end of it to the other. The exquisite silence was +evidently waiting for the exquisite voice, that presently not so much +broke as mingled with it, like a swan swimming through a lake. + +"Whom seek you?" said, or rather sung, a planetary voice right at my +shoulder. But three short unmusical Saxon words, yet it was as though +a mystical strain of music had passed through the wood. + +"Whom seek you?" and again the lovely speech flowered upon the +silence, as white water-lilies on the surface of some shaded pool. + +"The Golden Girl," I answered simply, turning my head, and looking half +sideways and half upwards; and behold! the tree at whose foot I lay had +opened its rocky side, and in the cleft, like a long lily-bud sliding +from its green sheath, stood a dryad, and my speech failed and my +breath went as I looked upon her beauty, for which mortality has no +simile. Yet was there something about her of the earth-sweetness that +clings even to the loveliest, star-ambitious, earth-born thing. She +was not all immortal, as man is not all mortal. She was the sweetness +of the strength of the oak, the soul born of the sun kissing its green +leaves in the still Memnonian mornings, of moon and stars kissing its +green leaves in the still Trophonian nights. + +"The maid you seek," said she, and again she broke the silence like the +moon breaking through the clouds, "what manner of maid is she? For a +maid abides in this wood, maybe it is she whom you seek. Is she but a +lovely face you seek? Is she but a lofty mind? Is she but a beautiful +soul?" + +"Maybe she is all these, though no one only, and more besides," I +answered. + +"It is well," she replied, "but have you in your heart no image of her +you seek? Else how should you know her should you some day come to meet +her?" + +"I have no image of her," I said. "I cannot picture her; but I shall +know her, know her inerrably as these your wood children find out each +other untaught, as the butterfly that has never seen his kindred knows +his painted mate, passing on the wing all others by. Only when the +lark shall mate with the nightingale, and the honey-bee and the +clock-beetle keep house together, shall I wed another maid. Fair maybe +she will not be, though fair to me. Wise maybe she will not be, though +wise to me. For riches I care not, and of her kindred I have no care. +All I know is that just to sit by her will be bliss, just to touch her +bliss, just to hear her speak bliss beyond all mortal telling." + +Thereat the Sweetness of the Strength of the Oak smiled upon me and +said,-- + +"Follow yonder green path till it leads you into a little grassy glade, +where is a crystal well and a hut of woven boughs hard by, and you +shall see her whom you seek." + +And as she spoke she faded suddenly, and the side of the oak was once +more as the solid rock. With hot heart I took the green winding path, +and presently came the little grassy glade, and the bubbling crystal +well, and the hut of wattled boughs, and, looking through the open door +of the hut, I saw a lovely girl lying asleep in her golden hair. She +smiled sweetly in her sleep, and stretched out her arms softly, as +though to enfold the dear head of her lover. And, ere I knew, I was +bending over her, and as her sweet breath came and went I whispered: +"Grace o' God, I am here. I have sought you through the world, and +found you at last. Grace o' God, I have come." + +And then I thought her great eyes opened, as when the sun sweeps clear +blue spaces in the morning sky. "Flower o' Men," then said she, low +and sweet,--"Flower o' Men, is it you indeed? As you have sought, so +have I waited, waited..." And thereat her arms stole round my neck, +and I awoke, and Grace o' God was suddenly no more than a pretty name +that my dream had given me. + +"A pretty dream," said my soul, "though a little boyish for thirty." +"And a most excellent sherry," added my body. + + + +CHAPTER V + +CONCERNING THE PERFECT WOMAN, AND THEREFORE CONCERNING ALL FEMININE +READERS + +As I once more got under way, my thoughts slowly loitered back to the +theme which had been occupying them before I dropped asleep. What was +my working hypothesis of the Perfect Woman, towards whom I was thus +leisurely strolling? She might be defined, I reflected, as The Woman +Who Is Worthy Of Us; but the improbability which every healthily +conceited young man must feel of ever finding such a one made the +definition seem a little unserviceable. Or, if you prefer, since we +seem to be dealing with impossibles, we might turn about and more truly +define her as The Woman of Whom We are Worthy, for who dare say that +she exists? If, again, she were defined as the Woman our More +Fortunate Friend Marries, her unapproachableness would rob the +definition of any practical value. Other generalisations proving +equally unprofitable, I began scientifically to consider in detail the +attributes of the supposititious paragon,--attributes of body and mind +and heart. This was soon done; but again, as I thus conned all those +virtues which I was to expect united in one unhappy woman, the result +was still unsatisfying, for I began to perceive that it was really not +perfection that I was in search of. As I added virtue after virtue to +the female monster in my mind, and the result remained still inanimate +and unalluring, I realised that the lack I was conscious of was not any +new perfection, but just one or two honest human imperfections. And +this, try as I would, was just what I could not imagine. + +For, if you reflect a moment, you will see that, while it is easy to +choose what virtues we would have our wife possess, it is all but +impossible to imagine those faults we would desire in her, which I +think most lovers would admit add piquancy to the loved one, that +fascinating wayward imperfection which paradoxically makes her perfect. + +Faults in the abstract are each and all so uninviting, not to say +alarming, but, associated with certain eyes and hair and tender little +gowns, it is curious how they lose their terrors; and, as with vice in +the poet's image, we end by embracing what we began by dreading. You +see the fault becomes a virtue when it is hers, the treason prospers; +wherefore, no doubt, the impossibility of imagining it. What +particular fault will suit a particular unknown girl is obviously as +difficult to determine as in what colours she will look her best. + +So, I say, I plied my brains in vain for that becoming fault. It was +the same whether I considered her beauty, her heart, or her mind. A +charming old Italian writer has laid down the canons of perfect +feminine beauty with much nicety in a delicious discourse, which, as he +delivered it in a sixteenth-century Florentine garden to an audience of +beautiful and noble ladies, an audience not too large to be intimate +and not too small to be embarrassing, it was his delightful good +fortune and privilege to illustrate by pretty and sly references to the +characteristic beauties of the several ladies seated like a ring of +roses around him. Thus he would refer to the shape of Madonna +Lampiada's sumptuous eyelids, and to her shell-like ears, to the +correct length and shape of Madonna Amororrisca's nose, to the lily +tower of Madonna Verdespina's throat; nor would the unabashed old +Florentine shrink from calling attention to the unfairness of Madonna +Selvaggia's covering up her dainty bosom, just as he was about to +discourse upon "those two hills of snow and of roses with two little +crowns of fine rubies on their peaks." How could a man lecture if his +diagrams were going to behave like that! Then, feigning a tiff, he +would close his manuscript, and all the ladies with their birdlike +voices would beseech him with "Oh, no, Messer Firenzuola, please go on +again; it's SO charming!" while, as if by accident, Madonna Selvaggia's +moonlike bosom would once more slip out its heavenly silver, perceiving +which, Messer Firenzuola would open his manuscript again and proceed +with his sweet learning. + +Happy Firenzuola! Oh, days that are no more! + +By selecting for his illustrations one feature from one lady and +another from another, Messer Firenzuola builds up an ideal of the +Beautiful Woman, which, were she to be possible, would probably be as +faultily faultless as the Perfect Woman, were she possible. + +Moreover, much about the same time as Firenzuola was writing, +Botticelli's blonde, angular, retrousse women were breaking every one +of that beauty-master's canons, perfect in beauty none the less; and +lovers then, and perhaps particularly now, have found the perfect +beauty in faces to which Messer Firenzuola would have denied the name +of face at all, by virtue of a quality which indeed he has tabulated, +but which is far too elusive and undefinable, too spiritual for him +truly to have understood,--a quality which nowadays we are tardily +recognising as the first and last of all beauty, either of nature or +art,--the supreme, truly divine, because materialistically +unaccountable, quality of Charm! + +"Beauty that makes holy earth and heaven May have faults from head to +feet." + +O loveliest and best-loved face that ever hallowed the eyes that now +seek for you in vain! Such was your strange lunar magic, such the +light not even death could dim. And such may be the loveliest and +best-loved face for you who are reading these pages,--faces little +understood on earth because they belong to heaven. + +There is indeed only one law of beauty on which we may rely,--that it +invariably breaks all the laws laid down for it by the professors of +aesthetics. All the beauty that has ever been in the world has broken +the laws of all previous beauty, and unwillingly dictated laws to the +beauty that succeeded it,--laws which that beauty has no less +spiritedly broken, to prove in turn dictator to its successor. + +The immortal sculptors, painters, and poets have always done exactly +what their critics forbade them to do. The obedient in art are always +the forgotten. + +Likewise beautiful women have always been a law unto themselves. Who +could have prophesied in what way any of these inspired law-breakers +would break the law, what new type of perfect imperfection they would +create? + +So we return to the Perfect Woman, having gained this much knowledge of +her,--that her perfection is nothing more or less than her unique, +individual, charming imperfection, and that she is simply the woman we +love and who is fool enough to love us. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +IN WHICH THE AUTHOR ANTICIPATES DISCONTENT ON THE PART OF HIS READER + +"But come," I imagine some reader complaining, "isn't it high time for +something to happen?" No doubt it is, but what am I to do? I am no +less discontented. Is it not even more to my interest than to the +reader's for something to happen? Here have I been tramping along +since breakfast-time, and now it is late in the afternoon, but never a +feather of her dove's wings, never a flutter of her angel's robes have +I seen. It is disheartening, for one naturally expects to find +anything we seek a few minutes after starting out to seek it, and I +confess that I expected to find my golden mistress within a very few +hours of leaving home. However, had that been the case, there would +have been no story, as the novelists say, and I trust, as he goes on, +the reader may feel with me that that would have been a pity. Besides, +with that prevision given to an author, I am strongly of opinion that +something will happen before long. And if the worst comes to the +worst, there is always that story of my First Love wherewith to fill +the time. Meanwhile I am approaching a decorative old Surrey town, +little more than a cluster of ripe old inns, to one of which I have +much pleasure in inviting the reader to dinner. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +PRANDIAL + +Dinner! + +Is there a more beautiful word in the language? + +Dinner! + +Let the beautiful word come as a refrain to and fro this chapter. + +Dinner! + +Just eating and drinking, nothing more, but so much! + +Drinking, indeed, has had its laureates. Yet would I offer my mite of +prose in its honour. And when I say "drinking," I speak not of +smuggled gin or of brandy bottles held fiercely by the neck till they +are empty. + +Nay, but of that lonely glass in the social solitude of the +tavern,--alone, but not alone, for the glass is sure to bring a dream +to bear it company, and it is a poor dream that cannot raise a song. +And what greater felicity than to be alone in a tavern with your last +new song, just born and yet still a tingling part of you. + +Drinking has indeed been sung, but why, I have heard it asked, have we +no "Eating Songs?"--for eating is, surely, a fine pleasure. Many +practise it already, and it is becoming more general every day. + +I speak not of the finicking joy of the gourmet, but the joy of an +honest appetite in ecstasy, the elemental joy of absorbing quantities +of fresh simple food,--mere roast lamb, new potatoes, and peas of +living green. + +It is, indeed, an absorbing pleasure. It needs all our attention. You +must eat as you kiss, so exacting are the joys of the mouth,--talking, +for example. The quiet eye may be allowed to participate, and +sometimes the ear, where the music is played upon a violin, and that a +Stradivarius. A well-kept lawn, with six-hundred-years-old cedars and +a twenty-feet yew hedge, will add distinction to the meal. Nor should +one ever eat without a seventeenth-century poet in an old yellow-leaved +edition upon the table, not to be read, of course, any more than the +flowers are to be eaten, but just to make music of association very +softly to our thoughts. + +Some diners have wine too upon the table, and in the pauses of thinking +what a divine mystery dinner is, they eat. + +For dinner IS a mystery,--a mystery of which even the greatest chef +knows but little, as a poet knows not, + + "with all his lore, + Wherefore he sang, + or whence the mandate sped." + + +"Even our digestion is governed by angels," said Blake; and if you will +resist the trivial inclination to substitute "bad angels," is there +really any greater mystery than the process by which beef is turned +into brains, and beer into beauty? Every beautiful woman we see has +been made out of beefsteaks. It is a solemn thought,--and the finest +poem that was ever written came out of a grey pulpy mass such as we +make brain sauce of. + +And with these grave thoughts for grace let us sit down to dinner. + +Dinner! + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +STILL PRANDIAL + +What wine shall we have? I confess I am no judge of wines, except when +they are bad. To-night I feel inclined to allow my choice to be +directed by sentiment; and as we are on so pretty a pilgrimage, would +it not be appropriate to drink Liebfraumilch? + +Hock is full of fancy, and all wines are by their very nature full of +reminiscence, the golden tears and red blood of summers that are gone. + +Forgive me, therefore, if I grow reminiscent. Indeed, I fear that the +hour for the story of my First Love has come. But first, notice the +waitress. I confess, whether beautiful or plain,--not too +plain,--women who earn their own living have a peculiar attraction for +me. + +I hope the Golden Girl will not turn out to be a duchess. As old +Campion sings,-- + + "I care not for those ladies + Who must be wooed and prayed; + Give me kind Amaryllis, + The wanton country-maid." + + +Town-maids too of the same pattern. Whether in town or country, give me +the girls that work. The Girls That Work! But evidently it is high +time woe began a new chapter. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THE LEGEND OF HEBE, OR THE HEAVENLY HOUSEMAID + +Yes, I blush to admit it, my First Love was a housemaid. So was she +known on this dull earth of ours, but in heaven--in the heaven of my +imagination, at all events--she was, of course, a goddess. How she +managed to keep her disguise I never could understand. To me she was so +obviously dea certe. The nimbus was so apparent. Yet no one seemed to +see it but me. I have heard her scolded as though she were any +ordinary earthly housemaid, and I have seen the butcher's boy trying to +flirt with her without a touch of reverence. + +Maybe I understood because I saw her in that early hour of the morning +when even the stony Memnon sings, in that mystical light of the young +day when divine exiled things, condemned to rough bondage through the +noon, are for a short magical hour their own celestial selves, their +unearthly glory as yet unhidden by any earthly disguise. + +Neither fairies nor fauns, dryads nor nymphs of the forest pools, have +really passed away from the world. You have only to get up early +enough to meet them in the meadows. They rarely venture abroad after +six. All day long they hide in uncouth enchanted forms. They change +maybe to a field of turnips, and I have seen a farmer priding himself +on a flock of sheep that I knew were really a most merry company of +dryads and fauns in disguise. I had but to make the sign of the cross, +sprinkle some holy water upon them, and call them by their sweet secret +names, and the whole rout had been off to the woods, with mad gambol +and song, before the eyes of the astonished farmer. + +It was so with Hebe. She was really a little gold-haired blue-eyed +dryad, whose true home was a wild white cherry-tree that grew in some +scattered woodland behind the old country-house of my boyhood. In +spring-time how that naughty tree used to flash its silver nakedness of +blossom for miles across the furze and scattered birches! + +I might have known it was Hebe. + +Alas! it no longer bares its bosom with so dazzling a prodigality, for +it is many a day since it was uprooted. The little dryad long since +fled away weeping,--fled away, said evil tongues, fled away to the town. + +Well do I remember our last meeting. Returning home one evening, I met +her at the lodge-gate hurrying away. Our loves had been discovered, +and my mother had shuddered to think that so pagan a thing had lived so +long in a Christian house. I vowed--ah! what did I not vow?--and then +we stole sadly together to comfort our aching hearts under cover of the +woodland. For the last time the wild cherry-tree bloomed,--wonderful +blossom, glittering with tears, and gloriously radiant with stormy +lights of wild passion and wilder hopes. + +My faith lived valiantly till the next spring. It was Hebe who was +faithless. The cherry-tree was dead, for its dryad had gone,--fled, +said evil tongues, fled away to the town! + +But as yet, in the time to which my thoughts return, our sweet secret +mornings were known only to ourselves. It was my custom then to rise +early, to read Latin authors,--thanks to Hebe, still unread. I used to +light my fire and make tea for myself, till one rapturous morning I +discovered that Hebe was fond of rising early too, and that she would +like to light my fire and make my tea. After a time she began to +sweeten it for me. And then she would sit on my knee, and we would +translate Catullus together,--into English kisses; for she was +curiously interested in the learned tongue. + +How lovely she used to look with the morning sun turning her hair to +golden mist, and dancing in the blue deeps of her eyes; and once when +by chance she had forgotten to fasten her gown, I caught glimpses of a +bosom that was like two happy handfuls of wonderful white cherries... + +She wore a marvellous little printed gown. And here I may say that I +have never to this day understood objections which were afterwards +raised against my early attachment to print. The only legitimate +attachment to print stuff, I was told, was to print stuff in the form +of blouse, tennis, or boating costume. Yet, thought I, I would rather +smuggle one of those little print gowns into my berth than all the +silks a sea-faring friend of mine takes the trouble to smuggle from far +Cathay. However, every one to his taste; for me, + + No silken madam, by your leave, + Though wondrous, wondrous she be, + Can lure this heart--upon my sleeve-- + From little pink-print Hebe. + + +For I found beneath that pretty print such a heart as seldom beats +beneath your satin, warm and wild as a bird's. I used to put my ear to +it sometimes to listen if it beat right. Ah, reader, it was like +putting your ear to the gate of heaven. + +And once I made a song for her, which ran like this:-- + + There grew twin apples high on a bough + Within an orchard fair; + The tree was all of gold, I vow, + And the apples of silver were. + + And whoso kisseth those apples high, + Who kisseth once is a king, + Who kisseth twice shall never die, + Who kisseth thrice--oh, were it I!-- + May ask for anything. + + +Hebe blushed, and for answer whispered something too sweet to tell. + + +"Dear little head sunning over with curls," were I to meet you now, +what would happen? Ah! to meet you now were too painfully to measure +the remnant of my youth. + + + +CHAPTER X + +AGAIN ON FOOT--THE GIRLS THAT NEVER CAN BE MINE + +Next morning I was afoot early, bent on my quest in right good earnest; +for I had a remorseful feeling that I had not been sufficiently +diligent the day before, had spent too much time in dreaming and +moralising, in which opinion I am afraid the reader will agree. + +So I was up and out of the town while as yet most of the inhabitants +were in the throes of getting up. Somewhere too SHE, the Golden One, +the White Woman, was drowsily tossing the night-clothes from her limbs +and rubbing her sleepy eyes. William Morris's lovely song came into my +mind,-- + + 'And midst them all, perchance, my love + Is waking, and doth gently move + And stretch her soft arms out to me, + Forgetting thousand leagues of sea." + + +Perhaps she was in the very town I was leaving behind. Perhaps we had +slept within a few houses of each other. Who could tell? + + +Looking back at the old town, with its one steep street climbing the +white face of the chalk hill, I remembered what wonderful exotic women +Thomas Hardy had found eating their hearts out behind the windows of +dull country high streets, through which hung waving no banners of +romance, outwardly as unpromising of adventure as the windows of the +town I had left. And then turning my steps across a wide common, which +ran with gorse and whortleberry bushes away on every side to distant +hilly horizons, swarthy with pines, and dotted here and there with +stone granges and white villages, I thought of all the women within +that circle, any one of whom might prove the woman I sought,--from +milkmaids crossing the meadows, their strong shoulders straining with +the weight of heavy pails, to fine ladies dying of ennui in their +country-houses; pretty farmers' daughters surreptitiously reading +novels, and longing for London and "life;" passionate young farmers' +wives already weary of their doltish lords; bright-eyed bar-maids +buried alive in country inns, and wondering "whatever possessed them" +to leave Manchester,--for bar-maids seem always to come from +Manchester,--all longing modestly, said I, to set eyes on a man like +me, a man of romance, a man of feeling, a man, if you like, to run away +with. + + +My heart flooded over with tender pity for these poor sweet +women--though perhaps chiefly for my own sad lot in not encountering +them,--and I conceived a great comprehensive love-poem to be entitled +"The Girls that never can be Mine." Perhaps before the end of our tramp +together, I shall have a few verses of it to submit to the elegant +taste of the reader, but at present I have not advanced beyond the +title. + + + +CHAPTER XI + +AN OLD MAN OF THE HILLS, AND THE SCHOOLMASTER'S STORY + +While occupying myself with these no doubt wanton reflections on the +unfair division of opportunities in human life, I was leisurely +crossing the common, and presently I came up with a pedestrian who, +though I had little suspected it as I caught sight of him ahead, was +destined by a kind providence to make more entertaining talk for me in +half an hour than most people provide in a lifetime. + +He was an oldish man, turned sixty, one would say, and belonging, to +judge from his dress and general appearance, to what one might call the +upper labouring class. He wore a decent square felt hat, a shabby +respectable overcoat, a workman's knitted waistcoat, and workman's +corduroys, and he carried an umbrella. His upper part might have +belonged to a small well-to-do tradesman, while his lower bore marks of +recent bricklaying. Without its being remarkable, he had what one calls +a good face, somewhat aquiline in character, with a refined forehead +and nose. + +His cheeks were shaved, and his whitening beard and moustache were worn +somewhat after the fashion of Charles Dickens. This gave a slight +touch of severity to a face that was full of quiet strength. + +Passing the time of day to each other, we were soon in conversation, I +asking him this and that question about the neighbouring country-side, +of which I gathered he was an old inhabitant. + +"Yes," he said presently, "I was the first to put stick or stone on +Whortleberry Common yonder. Fifteen years ago I built my own wood +cottage there, and now I'm rebuilding it of good Surrey stone." + +"Do you mean that you are building it yourself, with your own hands, no +one to help you?" I asked. + +"Not so much as to carry a pail of water," he replied. "I'm my own +contractor, my own carpenter, and my own bricklayer, and I shall be +sixty-seven come Michaelmas," he added, by no means irrelevantly. + +There was pride in his voice,--pardonable pride, I thought, for who of +us would not be proud to be able to build his own house from floor to +chimney? + +"Sixty-seven,--a man can see and do a good deal in that time," I said, +not flattering myself on the originality of the remark, but desiring to +set him talking. In the country, as elsewhere, we must forego +profundity if we wish to be understood. + +"Yes, sir," he said, "I have been about a good deal in my time. I have +seen pretty well all of the world there is to see, and sailed as far as +ship could take me." + +"Indeed, you have been a sailor too?" + +"Twenty-two thousand miles of sea," he continued, without directly +answering my remark. "Yes, Vancouver's about as far as any vessel need +want to go; and then I have caught seals off the coast of Labrador, and +walked my way through the raspberry plains at the back of the White +Mountains." + +"Vancouver," "Labrador," "The White Mountains," the very names, thus +casually mentioned on a Surrey heath, seemed full of the sounding sea. +Like talismans they whisked one away to strange lands, across vast +distances of space imagination refused to span. Strange to think that +the shabby little man at my side had them all fast locked, pictures +upon pictures, in his brain, and as we were talking was back again in +goodness knows what remote latitude. + +I kept looking at him and saying, "Twenty-two thousand miles of sea! +sixty-seven! and builds his own cottage!" + +In addition to all this he had found time to be twenty-one years a +policeman, and to beget and rear successfully twelve children. He was +now, I gathered, living partly on his pension, and spoke of this +daughter married, this daughter in service here, and that daughter in +service there, one son settled in London and another in the States, +with something of a patriarchal pride, with the independent air too of +a man who could honestly say to himself that, with few advantages from +fortune, having had, so to say, to work his passage, every foot and +hour of it, across those twenty-two thousand miles and those +sixty-seven years, he had made a thoroughly creditable job of his life. + +As we walked along I caught glimpses in his vivid and ever-varying talk +of the qualities that had made his success possible. They are always +the same qualities! + +A little pile of half-hewn stones, the remains of a ruined wall, +scattered by the roadside caught his eye. + +"I've seen the time when I wouldn't have left them stones lying out +there," he said, and presently, "Why, God bless you, I've made my own +boots before to-day. Give me the tops and I'll soon rig up a pair +still." + +And with all his success, and his evident satisfaction with his lot, +the man was neither a prig nor a teetotaller. He had probably seen too +much of the world to be either. Yet he had, he said, been too busy all +his life to spend much time in public-houses, as we drank a pint of ale +together in the inn which stood at the end of the common. + +"No, it's all well enough in its way, but it swallows time," he +remarked. "You see, my wife and I have our own pin at home, and when +I'm a bit tired, I just draw a glass for myself, and smoke a pipe, and +there's no time wasted coming and going, and drinking first with this +and then with the other." + +A little way past the inn we came upon a notice-board whereon the lord +of the manor warned all wayfarers against trespassing on the common by +making encampments, lighting fires or cutting firewood thereon, and to +this fortunate circumstance I owe the most interesting story my +companion had to tell. + +We had mentioned the lord of the manor as we crossed the common, and +the notice-board brought him once more to the old man's mind. + +"Poor gentleman!" he said, pointing to the board as though it was the +lord of the manor himself standing there, "I shouldn't like to have had +the trouble he's had on my shoulders." + +"Indeed?" I said interrogatively. + +"Well, you see, sir," he continued, instinctively lowering his voice to +a confidential impressiveness, "he married an actress; a noble lady too +she was, a fine dashing merry lady as ever you saw. All went well for +a time, and then it suddenly got whispered about that she and the +village schoolmaster were meeting each other at nights, in the +meadow-bottom at the end of her own park. It lies over that way,--I +could take you to the very place. The schoolmaster was a noble-looking +young man too, a devil-me-care blade of a fellow, with a turn for +poetry, they said, and a merry man too, and much in request for a song +at The Moonrakers of an evening. Many 's the night I've heard the +windows rattling with the good company gathered round him. Yes, he was +a noble-looking man, a noble-looking man," he repeated wistfully, and +with an evident sympathy for the lovers which, I need hardly say, won +my heart. + +"But how, I wonder, did they come to know each other?" I interrupted, +anxious to learn all I could, even if I had to ask stupid questions to +learn it. + +"Well, of course, no one can say how these things come about. She was +the lady of the manor and the patroness of his school; and then, as I +say, he was a very noble-looking man, and probably took her fancy; and, +sir, whenever some women set their hearts on a man there's no stopping +them. Have him they will, whatever happens. They can't help it, poor +things! It's just a freak of nature." + +"Well, and how was it found out?" I again jogged him. + +"One of Sir William's keepers played the spy on them. He spread it all +over the place how he had seen them on moonlight nights sitting +together in the dingle, drinking champagne, and laughing and talking as +merry as you please; and, of course, it came in time to Sir William--" + +"You see that green lane there," he broke off, pointing to a romantic +path winding along the heath side; "it was along there he used to go of +a night to meet her after every one was in bed; and when it all came +out there was a regular cartload of bottles found there. The squire +had them all broken up, but the pieces are there to this day. + +"Yes," he again proceeded, "it hit Sir William very hard. He's never +been the same man since." + +I am afraid that my sympathies were less with Sir William than better +regulated sympathies would have been. I confess that my imagination +was more occupied with that picture of the two lovers making merry +together in the moonlit dingle. + +Is it not, indeed, a fascinating little story, with its piquant +contrasts and its wild love-at-all-costs? And how many such stories +are hidden about the country, lying carelessly in rustic memories, if +one only knew where to find them! + +At this point my companion left me, and I--well, I confess that I +retraced my steps to the common and rambled up that green lane, along +which the romantic schoolmaster used to steal in the moonlight to the +warm arms of his love. How eagerly he had trodden the very turf I was +treading,--we never know at what moment we are treading sacred earth! +But for that old man, I had passed along this path without a thrill. +Had I not but an hour ago stood upon this very common, vainly, so it +seemed, invoking the spirits of passion and romance, and the grim old +common had never made a sign. And now I stood in the very dingle where +they had so often and so wildly met; and it was all gone, quite gone +away for ever. The hours that had seemed so real, the kisses that had +seemed like to last for ever, the vows, the tears, all now as if they +had never been, gone on the four winds, lost in the abysses of time and +space. + +And to think of all the thousands and thousands of lovers who had loved +no less wildly and tenderly, made sweet these lanes with their vows, +made green these meadows with their feet; and they, too, all gone, +their bright eyes fallen to dust, their sweet voices for ever put to +silence. + +To which I would add, for the benefit of the profane, that I sought in +vain for those broken bottles. + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE TRUTH ABOUT THE GIPSIES + +I felt lonely after losing my companion, and I met nobody to take his +place. In fact, for a couple of hours I met nothing worth mentioning, +male or female, with the exception of a gipsy caravan, which I suppose +was both; but it was a poor show. Borrow would have blushed for it. In +fact, it is my humble opinion that the gipsies have been overdone, just +as the Alps have been over-climbed. I have no great desire to see +Switzerland, for I am sure the Alps must be greasy with being climbed. + +Besides, the Alps and the gipsies, in common with waterfalls and ruined +castles, belong to the ready-made operatic poetry of the world, from +which the last thrill has long since departed. They are, so to say, +public poetry, the public property of the emotions, and no longer touch +the private heart or stir the private imagination. Our fathers felt so +much about them that there is nothing left for us to feel. They are as +a rose whose fragrance has been exhausted by greedy and indiscriminate +smelling. I would rather find a little Surrey common for myself and +idle about it a summer day, with the other geese and donkeys, than +climb the tallest Alp. + +Most gipsies are merely tenth-rate provincial companies, travelling +with and villainously travestying Borrow's great pieces of "Lavengro" +and "Romany Rye." Dirty, ill-looking, scowling men; dirty, slovenly, +and wickedly ugly women; children to match, snarling, filthy little +curs, with a ready beggar's whine on occasion. A gipsy encampment +to-day is little more than a moving slum, a scab of squalor on the fair +face of the countryside. + +But there was one little trifle of an incident that touched me as I +passed this particular caravan. Evidently one of the vans had come to +grief, and several men of the party were making a great show of +repairing it. After I had run the gauntlet of the begging children, +and was just out of ear-shot of the group, I turned round to survey it +from a distance. It was encamped on a slight rise of the undulating +road, and from where I stood tents and vans and men were clearly +silhouetted against the sky. The road ran through and a little higher +than the encampment, which occupied both sides of it. Presently the +figure of a young man separated itself from the rest, stept up on to +the smooth road, and standing in the middle of it, in an absorbed +attitude, began to make a movement with his hands as though winding +string round a top. That in fact was his occupation, and for the next +five minutes he kept thus winding the cord, flinging the top to the +ground, and intently bending down to catch it on his hand, none of the +others, not even the children, taking the slightest notice of him,--he +entirely alone there with his poor little pleasure. There seemed to me +pathos in his loneliness. Had some one spun the top with him, it would +have vanished; and presently, no doubt at the bidding of an oath I +could not hear, he hurriedly thrust the top into his pocket, and once +more joined the straining group of men. The snatched pleasure must be +put by at the call of reality; the world and its work must rush in upon +his dream. I have often thought about the top and its spinner, as I +have noted the absorbed faces of other people's pleasures in the +streets,--two lovers passing along the crowded Strand with eyes only +for each other; a student deep in his book in the corner of an omnibus; +a young mother glowing over the child in her arms; the wild-eyed +musician dreamily treading on everybody's toes, and begging nobody's +pardon; the pretty little Gaiety Girl hurrying to rehearsal with no +thought but of her own sweet self and whether there will be a letter +from Harry at the stage-door,--yes, if we are alone in our griefs, we +are no less alone in our pleasures. We spin our tops as in an +enchanted circle, and no one sees or heeds save ourselves,--as how +should they with their own tops to spin? Happy indeed is he, who has +his top and cares still to spin it; for to be tired of our tops is to +be tired of life, saith the preacher. + +As the young gipsy's little holiday came to an end, I turned with a +sigh upon my way; and here, while still on the subject, may I remark on +the curious fact that probably Borrow has lived and died without a +single gipsy having heard of him, just as the expertest anglers know +nothing of Izaak Walton. + +Has the British soldier, one wonders, yet discovered Rudyard Kipling, +or is the Wessex peasant aware of Thomas Hardy? It is odd to think that +the last people to read such authors are the very people they most +concern. For you might spend your life, say, in studying the London +street boy, and write never so movingly and humourously about him, yet +would he never know your name; and though Whitechapel makes novelists, +it does so without knowing it,--makes them to be read in Mayfair,--just +as it never wears the dainty hats and gowns its weary little milliners +and seamstresses make through the day and night. It is Capital and +Labour over again, for in literature also we reap in gladness what +others have sown in tears. + +And now, after these admirable reflections, I am about to make such +"art" as I can of another man's tragedy, as will appear in the next +chapter. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +A STRANGE WEDDING + +My moralisings were cut short by my entering a village, and, it being +about the hour of noon, finding myself in the thick of a village +wedding. + +Undoubtedly the nicest way to get married is on the sly, and indeed it +is at present becoming quite fashionable. Many young couples of my +acquaintance, who have had no other reason for concealing the fact +beyond their own whim, have thus slipped off without saying a word to +anybody, and returned full-blown housekeepers, with "at home" days of +their own, and everything else like real married people,--for, as said +an old lady to me, "one can never be sure of married people nowadays +unless you have been at the wedding." + +My friend George Muncaster, who does everything charmingly different +from any one else, hit upon one of the quaintest plans for his +marriage. It was simple, and some may say prosaic enough. His days +being spent at a great office in the city, he got leave of absence for +a couple of hours, met his wife, went with her to the registrar's, +returned to his office, worked the rest of the day as usual, and then +went to his new home to find his wife and dinner awaiting him,--all +just as it was going to be every night for so many happy years. +Prosaic, you say! Not your idea of poetry, perhaps, but, after a new +and growing fashion in poetry, truly poetic. George Muncaster's +marriage is a type of the new poetry, the poetry of essentials. The old +poetry, as exemplified in the old-fashioned marriage, is a poetry of +externals, and certainly it has the advantage of picturesqueness. + +There is perhaps more to be said for it than that. Indeed, if I were +ever to get married, I am at a loss to know which way I should +choose,--George Muncaster's way or the old merry fashion, with the rice +and the old shoes and the orange-blossom. No doubt the old cheery +publicity is a little embarrassing to the two most concerned, and the +old marriage customs, the singing of the bride and bridegroom to their +nuptial couch, the frank jests, the country horse-play, must have +fretted the souls of many a lover before Shelley, who, it will be +remembered, resented the choral celebrations of his Scotch landlord and +friends by appearing at his bedroom door with a brace of pistols. + +How like Shelley! The Scotch landlord meant well, we may be sure, and +a very small pinch of humour, or even mere ordinary humanity, as +distinct from humanitarianism, would have taken in the situation. Of +course Shelley's mind was full of the sanctity of the moment, and +indignant that "the hour for which the years did sigh" should thus be +broken in upon by vulgar revelry; but while we may sympathise with his +view, and admit to the full the sacredness, not to say the solemnity, +of the marriage ceremony, yet it is to be hoped that it still retains a +naturally mirthful side, of which such public merriment is but the +crude expression. + +With all its sweet and mystical significance, surely the prevailing +feeling in the hearts of bride and bridegroom is, or should be, that of +happiness,--happiness bubbling and dancing, all sunny ripples from +heart to heart. + +Surely they can spare a little of it, just one day's sight of it, to a +less happy world,--a world long since married and done for, and with +little happiness in it save the spectacle of other people's happiness. +It is good for us to see happy people, good for the symbols of +happiness to be carried high amidst us on occasion; for if they serve +no other purpose, they inspire in us the hope that we too may some day +be happy, or remind our discontented hearts that we have been. + +If it were only for the sake of those quaint old women for whom life +would be entirely robbed of interest were it not for other people's +weddings and funerals, one feels the public ceremony of marriage a sort +of public duty, the happiness tax, so to say, due to the somewhat +impoverished revenues of public happiness. Other forms of happiness +are taxed; why not marriage? + +In a village, particularly, two people who robbed the community of its +perquisites in this respect would be looked upon as "enemies of the +people," and their joint life would begin under a social ban which it +would cost much subsequent hospitality to remove. The dramatic +instinct to which the life of towns is necessarily unfavourable, is +kept alive in the country by the smallness of the stage and the fewness +of the actors. A village is an organism, conscious of its several +parts, as a town is not. + +In a village everybody is a public man. The great events of his life +are of public as well as private significance, appropriately, +therefore, invested with public ceremonial. Thus used to living in the +public eye, the actors carry off their parts at weddings and other +dramatic ceremonials, with more spirit than is easy to a townsman, who +is naturally made self-conscious by being suddenly called upon to fill +for a day a public position for which he has had no training. That no +doubt is the real reason for the growth of quiet marriages; and the +desire for them, I suspect, comes first from the man, for there are few +women who at heart do not prefer the old histrionic display. + +However, the village wedding at which I suddenly found myself a +spectator was, for a village, a singularly quiet one. There was no +bell-ringing, and there were no bridesmaids. The bride drove up quietly +with her father, and there was a subdued note even in the murmur of +recognition which ran along the villagers as they stood in groups near +the church porch. There was an absence of the usual hilarity which +struck me. One might almost have said that there was a quite ominous +silence. + +Seating myself in a corner of the transept where I could see all and be +little seen, I with the rest awaited the coming of the overdue +bridegroom. Meanwhile the usual buzzing and bobbing of heads went on +amongst the usual little group near the foot of the altar. Now and +then one caught a glisten of tears through a widow's veil, and the +little bride, dressed quietly in grey, talked with the usual nervous +gaiety to her girl friends, and made the usual whispered confidences +about her trousseau. The father, in occasional conversation with one +and another, appeared to be avoiding the subject with the usual +self-conscious solemnity, and occasionally he looked, somewhat +anxiously, I thought, towards the church door. The bridegroom did not +keep us waiting long,--I noticed that he had a rather delicate sad +face,--and presently the service began. + +I don't know myself what getting married must feel like, but it cannot +be much more exciting than watching other people getting married. +Probably the spectators are more conscious of the impressive meaning of +it all than the brave young people themselves. I say brave, for I am +always struck by the courage of the two who thus gaily leap into the +gulf of the unknown together, thus join hands over the inevitable, and +put their signatures to the irrevocable. Indeed, I always get +something like a palpitation of the heart just before the priest utters +those final fateful words, "I declare you man and--wife." Half a second +before you were still free, half a second after you are bound for the +term of your natural life. Half a second before you had only to dash +the book from the priest's hands, and put your hand over his mouth, and +though thus giddily swinging on the brink of the precipice, you are +saved. Half a second after + + Not all the king's horses and all the king's men + Can make you a bachelor ever again. + + +It is the knife-edge moment 'twixt time and eternity. + +And, curiously enough, while my thoughts were thus running on towards +the rapids of that swirling moment, the very thing happened which I had +often imagined might happen to myself. Suddenly, with a sob, the +bridegroom covered his face with his hands, and crying, "I cannot! I +cannot!" hurriedly left the church, tears streaming down his cheeks, to +the complete dismay of the sad little group at the altar, and the +consternation of all present. + +"Poor young man! I thought he would never go through with it," said an +old woman half to herself, who was sitting near me. I involuntarily +looked my desire of explanation. + +"Well, you see," she said, "he had been married before. His first wife +died four years ago, and he loved her beyond all heaven and earth." + +That evening, I afterwards heard, the young bridegroom's body was found +by some boys as they went to bathe in the river. As I recalled once +more that sad yearning face, and heard again that terrible "I cannot! +I cannot!" I thought of Heine's son of Asra, who loved the Sultan's +daughter. + +"What is thy name, slave?" asked the princess, "and what thy race and +birthplace?" + +"My name," the young slave answered, "is Mahomet. I come from Yemen. +My race is that of Asra, and when we love, we die." + +And likewise a voice kept saying in my heart, "If ever you find your +Golden Bride, be sure she will die." + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +THE MYSTERIOUS PETTICOAT + +The sad thoughts with which this incident naturally left me were at +length and suddenly dispersed, as sad thoughts not infrequently are, by +a petticoat. When I say petticoat, I use the word in its literal +sense, not colloquially as a metaphor for its usual wearer, meaning +thereby a dainty feminine undergarment seen only by men on rainy days, +and one might add washing-days. It was indeed to the fortunate accident +of its being washing-day at the pretty cottage near which in the course +of my morning wanderings I had set me down to rest, that I owed the +sight of the petticoat in question. + +But first allow me to describe a little more fully my surroundings at +the moment. Not indeed that I can hope to put into words the charm of +those embowered cottages, like nests in the armpits of great trees, +tucked snugly in the hollows of those narrow, winding, almost +subterranean lanes which burrow their way beneath the warm-hearted +Surrey woodlands. + +Nothing can be straighter and smoother than a Surrey road--when it is +on the king's business; then it is a high-road and behaves accordingly: +but a Surrey bye-road is the most whimsical companion in the world. It +is like a sheep-dog, always running backwards and forwards, poking into +the most out-of-the-way corners, now climbing at a run some steep +hummock of the down, and now leisurely going miles about to escape an +ant-hill; and all the time (here, by the way, ends the sheep-dog) it is +stopping to gossip with rillets vagabond as itself, or loitering to +bedeck itself with flowers. It seems as innocent of a destination as a +boy on an errand; but, after taking at least six times as long as any +other road in the kingdom for its amount of work, you usually find it +dip down of a sudden into some lovely natural cul-de-sac, a +meadow-bottom surrounded by trees, with a stream spreading itself in +fantastic silver shallows through its midst, and a cottage half hidden +at the end. Had the lane been going to some great house, it would have +made more haste, we may be sure. + +The lane I had been following had finally dropped me down at something +of a run upon just such a scene. The cottage, built substantially of +grey stone, stood upon the side of the slope, and a broad strip of +garden, half cultivated and half wild, began near the house with +cabbages, and ended in a jungle of giant bulrushes as it touched the +stream. Golden patches of ragwort blazed here and there among a tangled +mass of no doubt worthier herbage,--such even in nature is the power of +gold,--and there were the usual birds. + +However, my business is with the week's washing, which in various +shades of white, with occasional patches of scarlet, fluttered +fantastically across a space of the garden, thereby giving unmistakable +witness to human inhabitants, male and female. + +As I lounged upon the green bank, I lazily watched these parodies of +humanity as they were tossed hither and thither with humourous +indignity by the breeze, remarking to myself on the quaint +shamelessness with which we thus expose to the public view garments +which at other times we are at such bashful pains to conceal. And thus +philosophising, like a much greater philosopher, upon clothes, I found +myself involuntarily deducing the cottage family from the family +washing. I soon decided that there must be at least one woman say of +the age of fifty, one young woman, one little child, sex doubtful, and +one man probably young. Further than this it was impossible to +conjecture. Thus I made the rough guess that a young man and his wife, +a child, and a mother-in-law were among the inhabitants of this idyllic +cottage. + +But the clothes-line presented charming evidence of still another +occupant; and here, though so far easy to read, came in something of a +puzzle. Who in this humble out-of-the-way cottage could afford to wear +that exquisite cambric petticoat edged with a fine and very expensive +lace? And surely it was on no country legs that those delicately +clocked and open-worked silk stockings walked invisible through the +world. + +Nor was the lace any ordinary expensive English lace, such as any good +shop can supply. Indeed, I recognised it as being of a Parisian design +as yet little known in England; while on the tops of the stockings I +laughingly suspected a border designed by a certain eccentric artist, +who devotes his strange gifts to decorating with fascinating miniatures +the under-world of woman. I have seen corsets thus made beautiful by +him valued at five hundred pounds, and he never paints a pair of +garters for less than a hundred. His name is not yet a famous one, as, +for obvious reasons, his works are not exhibited at public galleries, +though they are occasionally to be seen at private views. + +I am far from despising an honest red-flannel country petticoat. There +is no warmer kinder-looking garment in the world. It suggests country +laps and country breasts, with sturdy country babes greedy for the warm +white milk, and it seems dyed in country blushes. Yet, for all that, +one could not be insensible to the exotic race and distinction of that +frivolous town petticoat, daintily disporting itself there among its +country cousins, like a queen among milkmaids. + +What numberless suggestions of romance it awoke! What strange perfumes +seemed to waft across from it, perfumes laden with associations of a +world so different from the green world where it now was, a charming +world of gay intrigue and wanton pleasure. No wonder the wind chose it +so often for its partner as it danced through the garden, scorning to +notice the heavy homespun things about it. It was not every day that +that washing-day wind met so fine a lady, and it was charming to see +how gently he played about her stockings. "Ah, wind," I said, +"evidently you are a gallant born; but tell us the name of the lady. +It is somewhere on that pretty petticoat, I'll be bound." + +Is she some little danseuse with the whim to be romantically rustic for +a week? or is she somebody else's pretty wife run away with somebody +else's man? or is she some naughty little grisette with an extravagant +lover? or is she just the usual lady landscape artist, with a more than +usual taste in lingerie? + +At all events, it was fairly obvious that, for one reason or another, +the wearer of the petticoat and stockings which have now occupied us +for perhaps a sufficient number of pages, was a visitor at the cottage. + +The next thing was to get a look at her. So, remembering how fond I was +of milk from the cow, I pushed open the gate and advanced to the +cottage door. + + + +CHAPTER XV + +STILL OCCUPIED WITH THE PETTICOAT + +The door was opened by a comely young woman, with ruddy cheeks and a +bright kind eye that promised conversation. But "H'm," said I to +myself, as she went to fetch my milk, "evidently not yours, my dear." + +"A nice drying day for your washing," I said, as I slowly sipped my +milk, with a half-inclination of my head towards the clothes-line. + +"Very fine, indeed, sir," she returned, with something of a blush, and +a shy deprecating look that seemed to beg me not to notice the +peculiarly quaint antics which the wind, evidently a humourist, chose +at that moment to execute with the female garments upon the line. +However, I was for once cased in triple brass and inexorable. + +"And who," I ventured, smiling, "may be the owner of those fine things?" + +"Not those," I continued, pointing to an odd garment which the wind was +wantonly puffing out in the quaintest way, "but that pretty petticoat +and those silk stockings?" + +The poor girl had gone scarlet, scarlet as the petticoat which I was +sure WAS hers, with probably a fellow at the moment keeping warm her +buxom figure. + +"You are very bold, sir," she stammered through her blushes, but I +could see that she was not ill-pleased that the finery should attract +attention. + +"But won't you tell me?" I urged; "I have a reason for asking." + +And here I had better warn the reader that, as the result of a whim +that presently seized me, I must be content to appear mad in his eyes +for the next few pages, till I get an opportunity of explanation. + +"Well, what if they should be mine?" at length I persuaded her into +saying. + +I made the obvious gallant reply, but, "All the same," I added, "you +know they are not yours. They belong to some lady visitor, who, I'll +be bound, isn't half so pretty; now, don't they?" + +"Well, they just don't then. They're mine, as I tell you." + +"H'm," I continued, a little nonplussed, "but do you really mean there +is no lady staying with you?" + +"Certainly," she replied, evidently enjoying my bewilderment. + +"Well, then, some lady must have stayed here once," I retorted, with a +sudden inspiration, "and left them behind--" + +"You might be a detective after stolen goods," she interrupted. + +"I tell you the things are mine; and what I should like to know does a +gentleman want bothering himself about a lady's petticoat! No wonder +you blush," for, in fact, as was easy to foresee, the situation was +becoming a little ridiculous for me. + +"Now, look here," I said with an affectation of gravity, "if you'll +tell me how you came by those things, I'll make it worth your while. +They were given to you by a lady who stayed here not so long ago, now, +weren't they?" + +"Well, then, they were." + +"The lady stayed here with a gentleman?" + +"Yes, she did." + +"H'm! I thought so," I said. "Yes! that lady, it pains me to say, was +my wife!" + +This unblushing statement was not, I could see, without its effect upon +the present owner of the petticoat. + +"But she said they were brother and sister," she replied. + +"Of course she did," I returned, with a fine assumption of scorn,--"of +course she did. They always do." + +"Dear young woman," I continued, when I was able to control my emotion, +"you are happily remote from the sin and wickedness of the town, and I +am sorry to speak of such things in so peaceful a spot--but as a +strange chance has led me here, I must speak, must tell you that all +wives are not so virtuous and faithful as you, I am sure, are. There +are wives who forsake their husbands and--and go off with a handsomer +man, as the poet says; and mine, mine, alas! was one of them. It is +now some months ago that my wife left me in this way, and since then I +have spent every day in searching for her; but never till this moment +have I come upon the least trace of her. Strange, is it not? that +here, in this peaceful out-of-the-way garden, I should come upon her +very petticoat, her very stockings--" + +By this my grief had become such that the kind girl put her hand on my +arm. "Don't take on so," she said kindly, and then remembering her +treasured property, and probably fearing a counterclaim on my part to +its possession, "But how can you be sure she was here? There are lots +of petticoats like that--" + +"What was she like?" I asked through my agitation. + +"Middle height, slim and fair, with red goldy hair and big blue eyes; +about thirty, I should say." + +"The very same," I groaned, "there is no mistake; and now," I +continued, "I want you to sell me that petticoat and those stockings," +and I took a couple of sovereigns from my purse. "I want to have them +to confront her with, when I do find her. Perhaps it will touch her +heart to think of the strange way in which I came by them; and you can +buy just as pretty ones again with the money," I added, as I noticed +the disappointment on her face at the prospect of thus losing her +finery. + +"Well, it's a funny business, to be sure," she said, as still half +reluctantly she unpegged the coveted garments from the line; "but if +what you say 's true, I suppose you must have them." + +The wanton wind had been so busily kissing them all the morning that +they were quite dry, so I was able to find room for them in my knapsack +without danger to the other contents; and, with a hasty good-day to +their recent possessor, I set off at full speed to find a secure nook +where I could throw myself down on the grass, and let loose the absurd +laughter that was dangerously bottled up within me; but even before I +do that it behoves me if possible to vindicate my sanity to the reader. + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +CLEARS UP MY MYSTERIOUS BEHAVIOUR OF THE LAST CHAPTER + +What a sane man should be doing carrying about with him a woman's +petticoat and silk stockings, may well be a puzzle to the most +intelligent reader. + +Whim, sir, whim! and few human actions admit of more satisfactory +solution. Like Shylock, I'll say "It is my humour." But no! I'll be +more explanatory. This madcap quest of mine, was it not understood +between us from the beginning to be a fantastic whim, a poetical +wild-goose chase, conceived entirely as an excuse for being some time +in each other's company? To be whimsical, therefore, in pursuit of a +whim, fanciful in the chase of a fancy, is surely but to maintain the +spirit of the game. Now, for the purpose, therefore, of a romance that +makes no pretence to reasonableness, I had very good reasons for buying +that petticoat, which (the reasons, not the petticoat) I will now lay +before you. + +I have been conscious all the way along through this pilgrimage of its +inevitable vagueness of direction, of my need of something definite, +some place, some name, anything at all, however slight, which I might +associate, if only for a time, with the object of my quest, a definite +something to seek, a definite goal for my feet. + +Now, when I saw that mysterious petticoat, and realised that its wearer +would probably be pretty and young and generally charming, and that +probably her name was somewhere on the waistband, the spirit of whim +rejoiced within me. "Why not," it said, "buy the petticoat, find out +the name of its owner, and, instead of seeking a vague Golden Girl, +make up your mind doggedly to find and marry her, or, failing that, +carry the petticoat with you, as a sort of Cinderella's slipper, try it +on any girl you happen to fancy, and marry her it exactly fits?" + +Now, I confess, that seemed to me quite a pretty idea, and I hope the +reader will think so too. If not, I'm afraid I can offer him no better +explanation; and in fact I am all impatience to open my knapsack, and +inform myself of the name of her to the discovery of whom my wanderings +are henceforth to be devoted. + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +THE NAME UPON THE PETTICOAT + +So imagine me seated in a grassy corner, with my knapsack open on the +ground and my petticoat and silk stockings spread out in front of +me,--an odd picture, to be sure, for any passer by to come upon. I +suppose I could have passed for a pedlar, but undoubtedly it would have +been very embarrassing. However, as it happened, I remained +undisturbed, and was able to examine my purchases at leisure. I had +never seen a petticoat so near before,--at all events I had never given +one such close attention. What delicious dainty things they are! How +essentially womanly--as I hope no one would call a pair of trousers +essentially manly. + +How pretty it looked spread out on the grass in front of me! How soft! +how wondrously dainty the finish of every little seam! And the lace! +It almost tempts one to change one's sex to wear such things. There +was a time indeed, and not so long ago, when brave men wore garments no +less dainty. + +Rupert's Cavaliers were every bit as particular about their lace +collars and frills as the lady whose pretty limbs once warmed this +cambric. + +But where is the name? Ah! here it is! What sweet writing! "Sylvia +Joy, No. 6." + +Sylvia Joy! What a perfectly enchanting name! and as I repeated it +enthusiastically, it seemed to have a certain familiarity for my +ear,--as though it were the name of some famous beauty or some popular +actress,--yet the exact association eluded me, and obviously it was +better it should remain a name of mystery. Sylvia Joy! Who could have +hoped for such a pretty name! Indeed, to tell the truth, I had dreaded +to find a "Mary Jones" or an "Ann Williams"--but Sylvia Joy! The name +was a romance in itself. I already felt myself falling in love with +its unseen owner. With such a petticoat and such a name, Sylvia +herself could not be otherwise than delightful too. Already, you see, I +was calling her by her Christian name! And the more I thought of her, +the stronger grew the conviction--which has no doubt already forced +itself upon the romantic reader--that we were born for each other. + +But who is Sylvia, who is she? and likewise where is Sylvia, where is +she? Obviously they were questions not to be answered off-hand. Was +not my future--at all events my immediate future--to be spent in +answering them? + +Indeed, curiously enough, my recent haste to have them answered had +suddenly died down. A sort of matrimonial security possessed me. I +felt as I imagine a husband may feel on a solitary holiday--if there +are husbands unnatural enough to go holidaying without their +wives--pleasantly conscious of a home tucked somewhere beneath the +distant sunset, yet in no precipitate hurry to return there before the +appointed day. + +In fact, a chill tremor went through me as I realised that, to all +intent, I was at length respectably settled down, with quite a +considerable retrospect of happy married life. To come to a decision is +always to bring something to an end. And, with something of a pang, +resolutely stifled, I realised for a moment the true blessedness of the +single state I was so soon to leave behind. At all events, a little +golden fragment of bachelorhood remained. There was yet a fertile +strip of time wherein to sow my last handful of the wild oats of youth. +So festina lente, my destined Sylvia, festina lente! + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +IN WHICH THE NAME OF A GREAT POET IS CRIED OUT IN A SOLITARY PLACE + +As I once more shouldered my pack and went my way, the character of the +country side began to change, and, from a semi-pastoral heathiness and +furziness, took on a wildness of aspect, which if indeed melodramatic +was melodrama carried to the point of genius. + +It was a scene for which the nineteenth century has no worthy use. It +finds ignoble occupation as a gaping-ground for the vacuous +tourist,--somewhat as Heine might have imagined Pan carrying the +gentleman's luggage from the coach to the hotel. It suffers teetotal +picnic-parties to encamp amid its savage hollows, and it humbly allows +itself to be painted by the worst artists. Like a lion in a menagerie, +it is a survival of the extinct chaos entrapped and exhibited amid the +smug parks and well-rolled downs of England. + +I came upon it by a winding ledge of road, which clung to the bare side +of the hill like the battlements of some huge castle. Some two hundred +feet below, a brawling upland stream stood for the moat, and for the +enemy there was on the opposite side of the valley a great green +company of trees, settled like a cloud slope upon slope, making all +haste to cross the river and ascend the heights where I stood. Some +intrepid larches waved green pennons in the very midst of the turbulent +water, here and there a veteran lay with his many-summered head abased +in the rocky course of the stream, and here was a young foolhardy beech +that had climbed within a dozen yards of the rampart. All was wild and +solitary, and one might have declared it a scene untrodden by the foot +of man, but for the telegraph posts and small piles of broken "macadam" +at punctual intervals, and the ginger-beer bottles and paper bags of +local confectioners that lent an air of civilisation to the road. + +It was a place to quote Alastor in, and nothing but a bad memory +prevented my affrighting the oaks and rills with declamation. As it +was, I could only recall the lines + + "The Poet wandering on, through Arabie + And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, + And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down + Indus and Oxus from their icy caves--" + +and that other passage beginning + + "At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore + He paused--" + + +This last I mouthed, loving the taste of its thunder; mouthed thrice, +as though it were an incantation,--and, indeed, from what immediately +followed, it might reasonably have seemed so. + + + "At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore + He paused--" + +I mouthed for the fourth time. And lo! advancing to me eagerly along +the causeway seemed the very sprite of Alastor himself! There was a +star upon his forehead, and around his young face there glowed an +aureole of gold and roses--to speak figuratively, for the star upon his +brow was hope, and the gold and roses encircling his head, a miniature +rainbow, were youth and health. His longish golden hair had no doubt +its share in the effect, as likewise the soft yellow silk tie that +fluttered like a flame in the speed of his going. His blue eyes were +tragically fresh and clear,--as though they had as yet been little +used. There were little wings of haste upon his feet, and he came +straight to me, with the air of the Angel Gabriel about to make his +divine announcement. For a moment I thought that he was an apparition +of prophecy charged to announce the maiden of the Lord for whom I was +seeking. However, his brief flushed question was not of these things. +He desired first to ask the time of day, and next--here, after a bump +to the earth, one's thoughts ballooned again heavenwards--"had I seen a +green copy of Shelley lying anywhere along the road?" + +Nothing so good had happened to me, I replied--but I believed that I +had seen a copy of Alastor! For a moment my meaning was lost on him; +then he flushed and smiled, thanked me and was off again, saying that +he must find his Shelley, as he wouldn't lose it for the world! + +He had presently disappeared as suddenly as he had come, but he had +left me a companion, a radiant reverberant name; and for some little +space the name of Shelley clashed silvery music among the hills. + +Its seven letters seemed to hang right across the clouds like the Seven +Stars, an apocalyptic constellation, a veritable sky sign; and again +the name was an angel standing with a silver trumpet, and again it was +a song. The heavens opened, and across the blue rift it hung in a +glory of celestial fire, while from behind and above the clouds came a +warbling as of innumerable larks. + +How strange was this miracle of fame, I pondered, this strange +apotheosis by which a mere private name becomes a public symbol! +Shelley was once a private person whose name had no more universal +meaning than my own, and so were Byron and Cromwell and Shakespeare; +yet now their names are facts as stubborn as the Rocky Mountains, or +the National Gallery, or the circulation of the blood. From their +original inch or so of private handwriting they have spread and spread +out across the world, and now whole generations of men find +intellectual accommodation within them,--drinking fountains and other +public institutions are erected upon them; yea, Carlyle has become a +Chelsea swimming-bath, and "Highland Mary" is sold for whiskey, while +Mr. Gladstone is to be met everywhere in the form of a bag. + +Does Mr. Gladstone, I wonder, instruct his valet "to pack his +Gladstone"? How strange it must seem! Try it yourself some day and +its effect on your servant. Ask him, for example, to "pack your ----" +and see how he'll stare. + +Coming nearer and nearer to earth, I wondered if Colonel Boycott ever +uses the word "boycott," and how strange it must have seemed to the +late MacAdam to walk for miles and miles upon his own name, like a +carpet spread out before him. + +Then I once more rebounded heavenwards, at the vision of the eager +dreamy lad whose question had set going all this odd clockwork of +association. He wouldn't lose his Shelley for the world! How like +twenty! And how many things that he wouldn't lose for the world will he +have to give up before he is thirty, I reflected sententiously,--give +up at last, maybe, with a stony indifference, as men on a sinking ship +take no thought of the gold and specie in the hold. + +And then, all of a sudden, a little way up the ferny grassy hillside, I +caught sight of the end of a book half hidden among the ferns. I +climbed up to it. Of course it was that very green Shelley which the +young stranger wouldn't lose for the world. + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +WHY THE STRANGER WOULD NOT LOSE HIS SHELLEY FOR THE WORLD + +Picking up the book, I opened it involuntarily at the titlepage, and +then--I resisted a great temptation! I shut it again. A little flowery +plot of girl's handwriting had caught my eye, and a girl's pretty name. +When Love and Beauty meet, it is hard not to play the eavesdropper, and +it was easy to guess that Love and Beauty met upon that page. St. +Anthony had no harder fight with the ladies he was unpolite enough to +call demons, than I in resisting the temptation to take another look at +that pen-and-ink love making. Now, as I look back, I think it was +sheer priggishness to resist so human and yet so reverent an impulse. +There is nothing sacred from reverence, and love's lovers have a right +to regard themselves as the confidants of lovers, whenever they may +chance to surprise either them or their letters. + +While I was still hesitating, and wondering how I could get the book +conveyed to its romantic owner, suddenly a figure turned the corner of +the road, and there was Alastor coming back again. I slipped the book, +in distracted search for which he was evidently still engaged, under +the ferns, and, leisurely lighting a pipe, prepared to tease him. He +was presently within hail, and, looking up, caught sight of me. + +"Have you found your Shelley yet?" I called down to him, as he stood a +moment in the road. + +He shook his head. No! But he meant to find it, if he had to hunt +every square foot of the valley inch by inch. + +Wouldn't any other book do, I asked him. Would he take a Boccaccio, or +a "Golden Ass," or a "Tom Jones," in exchange?--for of such consisted +my knapsack library. He laughed a negative, and it seemed a shame to +tease him. + +"It is not so much the book itself," he said. + +"But the giver?" I suggested. + +"Of course," he blushingly replied. + +"Well, suppose I have found it?" I continued. + +"You don't mean it--" + +"But suppose I have--I'm only supposing--will you give me the pleasure +of your company at dinner at the next inn and tell me its story?" + +"Indeed I will, gladly," he replied. + +"Well, then," I said, "catch, for here it is!" + +The joy with which he recovered it was pretty to behold, and the +eagerness with which he ran through the leaves, to see that the violets +and the primroses and a spray of meadowsweet, young love's bookmarkers, +were all in their right places, touched my heart. + +He could not thank me enough; and as we stepped out to the inn, some +three or four miles on the road, I elicited something of his story. + +He was a clerk in a city office, he said, but his dreams were not +commercial. His one dream was to be a great poet, or a great writer of +some sort, and this was one of his holidays. As I looked at his +sensitive young face, unmarred by pleasure and unscathed by sorrow, +bathed daily, I surmised, in the may-dew of high philosophies--ah, so +high! washed from within by a constant radiancy of pure thoughts, and +from without by a constant basking in the shine of every beautiful and +noble and tender thing,--I thought it not unlikely that he might fulfil +his dream. + +But, alas! as he talked on, with lighted face and chin in the air, how +cruelly I realised how little I had fulfilled mine. + +And how hard it was to talk to him, without crushing some flower of his +fancy or casting doubt upon his dreams. Oh, the gulf between twenty +and thirty! I had never quite comprehended it before. And how +inexpressibly sad it was to hear him prattling on of the ideal life, of +socialism, of Walt Whitman and what not,--all the dear old +quackeries,--while I was already settling down comfortably to a +conservative middle age. He had no hope that had not long been my +despair, no aversion that I had not accepted among the more or less +comfortable conditions of the universe. He was all for nature and +liberty, whereas I had now come to realise the charm of the artificial, +and the social value of constraint. + +"Young man," I cried in my heart, "what shall I do to inherit Eternal +Youth?" + +The gulf between us was further revealed when, at length coming to our +inn, we sat down to dinner. To me it seemed the most natural thing in +the world to call for the wine-list and consult his choice of wine; +but, will you believe me, he asked to be allowed to drink water! And +when he quoted the dear old stock nonsense out of Thoreau about being +able to get intoxicated on a glass of water, I could have laughed and +cried at the same time. + +"Happy Boy!" I cried, "still able to turn water into wine by the divine +power of your youth"; and then, turning to the waiter, I ordered a +bottle of No. 37. + +"Wine is the only youth granted to middle age," I continued,--"in vino +juventus, one might say; and may you, my dear young friend, long remain +so proudly independent of that great Elixir--though I confess that I +have met no few young men under thirty who have been excellent critics +of the wine-list." + +As the water warmed him, he began to expand into further confidence, +and then he told me the story of his Shelley, if a story it can be +called. For, of course, it was simple enough, and the reader has long +since guessed that the reason why he wouldn't lose his Shelley for the +world was the usual simple reason. + +I listened to his rhapsodies of HER and HER and HER with an aching +heart. How good it was to be young! No wonder men had so desperately +sought the secret of Eternal Youth! Who would not be young for ever, +for such dreams and such an appetite? + +Here of course was the very heaven-sent confidant for such an +enterprise as mine. I told him all about my whim, just for the pleasure +of watching his face light up with youth's generous worship of all such +fantastic nonsense. You should have seen his enthusiasm and heard all +the things he said. Why, to encounter such a whimsical fellow as myself +in this unimaginative age was like meeting a fairy prince, or coming +unexpectedly upon Don Quixote attacking the windmill. I offered him +the post of Sancho Panza; and indeed what would he not give, he said, +to leave all and follow me! But then I reminded him that he had +already found his Golden Girl. + +"Of course, I forgot," he said, with I'm afraid something of a sigh. +For you see he was barely twenty, and to have met your ideal so early +in life is apt to rob the remainder of the journey of something of its +zest. + +I asked him to give me his idea of what the Blessed Maid should be, to +which he replied, with a smile, that he could not do better than +describe Her, which he did for the sixth time. It was, as I had +foreseen, the picture of a Saint, a Goddess, a Dream, very lovely and +pure and touching; but it was not a woman, and it was a woman I was in +search of, with all her imperfections on her head. I suppose no boy of +twenty really loves a WOMEN, but loves only his etherealised extract of +woman, entirely free from earthy adulteration. I noticed the words +"pure" and "natural" in constant use by my young friend. Some lines +went through my head, but I forbore to quote them:-- + + Alas I your so called purity + Is merely immaturity, + And woman's nature plays its part + Sincerely but in woman's art. + + +But I couldn't resist asking him, out of sheer waggery, whether he +didn't think a touch of powder, and even, very judiciously applied, a +touch of rouge, was an improvement to woman. His answer went to my +heart. + +"Paint--a WOMAN!" he exclaimed. + +It was as though you had said--paint an angel! + +I could bear no more of it. The gulf yawned shiveringly wide at +remarks like that; so, with the privilege of an elder, I declared it +time for bed, and yawned off to my room. + +Next morning we bade good-bye, and went our several ways. As we +parted, he handed me a letter which I was not to open till I was well +on my journey. We waved good-bye to each other till the turnings of +the road made parting final, and then, sitting down by the roadside, I +opened the letter. It proved to be not a letter, but a poem, which he +had evidently written after I had left him for bed. It was entitled, +with twenty's love for a tag of Latin, Ad Puellam Auream, and it ran +thus:-- + + The Golden Girl in every place + Hides and reveals her lovely face; + Her neither skill nor strength may find-- + 'T is only loving moves her mind. + If but a pretty face you seek, + You'll find one any day or week; + But if you look with deeper eyes, + And seek her lovely, pure, and wise, + Then must you wear the pilgrim's shoon + For many a weary, wandering moon. + + Only the pure in heart may see + That lily of all purity, + Only in clean unsullied thought + The image of her face is caught, + And only he her love may hold + Who buys her with the spirit's gold. + + Thus only shall you find your pearl, + O seeker of the Golden Girl! + She trod but now the grassy way, + A vision of eternal May. + + +The devil take his impudence! "Only the pure in heart," "clean, +unsullied thought." How like the cheek of twenty! And all the same +how true! Dear lad, how true! Certainly, the child is father to the +man. Dirige nos! O sage of the Golden Twenties! + +As I meditatively folded up the pretty bit of writing, I made a +resolution; but it was one of such importance that not only is another +chapter needed to do it honour, but it may well inaugurate another book +of this strange uneventful history. + + + + +BOOK II + + + +CHAPTER I + +IN WHICH I DECIDE TO BE YOUNG AGAIN + +Yes, I said to myself, the lad is quite right; I will follow his +advice. I'm afraid I was in danger of developing into a sad cynic, +with a taste for the humour of this world. What should have been a +lofty high-souled pilgrimage, only less transcendental than that of the +Holy Grail itself, has so far failed, no doubt, because I have +undertaken it too much in the wanton spirit of a troubadour. + +I will grow young and serious again. Yes, why not? I will take a vow +of Youth. One's age is entirely a matter of the imagination. From this +moment I am no longer thirty. Thirty falls from me like a hideous +dream. My back straightens again at the thought; my silvering hair +blackens once more; my eyes, a few moments ago lacklustre and sunken, +grow bright and full again, and the whites are clear as the finest +porcelain. Veni, veni, Mephistophile! your Faust is young +again,--young, young, and, with a boy's heart, open once more to all +the influences of the mighty world. + +I bring down my stick upon the ground with a mighty ring of resolution, +and the miracle is done. Who would take me for thirty now? From this +moment I abjure pessimism and cynicism in all their forms, put from my +mind all considerations of the complexities of human life, unravel all +by a triumphant optimism which no statistics can abash or criticism +dishearten. I likewise undertake to divest myself entirely of any +sense of humour that may have developed within me during the baneful +experiences of the last ten years, and, in short, will consent for the +future to be nothing that is not perfectly perfect and pure. These, I +take it, are the fundamental conditions of being young again. + +And as for the Quest, it shall forthwith be undertaken in an entirely +serious and high-minded spirit. From this moment I am on the look-out +for a really transcendental attachment. No "bright-eyed bar-maids," +however "refined," need apply. Ladies who are prodigal of their white +petticoats are no longer fit company for me. Indeed I shall no longer +look upon a petticoat, unless I am able first entirely to spiritualise +it. It must first be disinfected of every earthly thought. + +Yes, I am once more a young man, sound in wind and limb, with not a +tooth or an illusion lost, my mind tabula rasa, my heart to be had for +the asking. Oh, come, ye merry, merry maidens! The fairy prince is on +the fairy road. + +Incipit vita nuova! + +So in the lovely rapture of a new-born resolution--and is there any +rapture like it?--nature has no more intoxicating illusion than that of +turning over a new leaf, or beginning a new life from to-day--I sprang +along the road with a carolling heart; quite forgetting that Apuleius +and Fielding and Boccaccio were still in my knapsack--not to speak of +the petticoat. + + + +CHAPTER II + +AT THE SIGN OF THE SINGING STREAM + +Apuleius and Fielding and Boccaccio, bad companions for a petticoat, +I'm afraid, bad companions too for so young a man as I had now become. +However, as I say, I had for the time forgotten that pagan company, or, +in my puritanic zeal, I might have thrown them all to be washed clean +in the upland stream, whose pure waters one might fancy were fragrant +from their sunny day among the ferns and the heather, fragrant to the +eye, indeed, if one may so speak, with the shaken meal of the +meadowsweet. This stream had been the good angel of my thoughts all the +day, keeping them ever moving and ever fresh, cleansing and burnishing +them, quite an open-air laundry of the mind. + +We were both making for the same little town, it appeared, and as the +sun was setting we reached it together. I entered the town over the +bridge, and the stream under it, washing the walls of the high-piled, +many-gabled old inn where I proposed to pass the night. I should hear +it still rippling on with its gentle harpsichord tinkle, as I stretched +myself down among the cool lavendered sheets, and little by little let +slip the multifarious world. + +The inn windows beamed cheerily, a home of ruddy rest. Having ordered +my dinner and found my room, I threw down my knapsack and then came out +again to smoke an ante-prandial pipe, listen to the evensong of the +stream, and think great thoughts. The stream was still there, and +singing the same sweet old song. You could hear it long after it was +out of sight, in the gathering darkness, like an old nurse humming +lullabies in the twilight. + +The dinner was good, the wine was old, and oh! the rest was sweet! +Nothing fills one with so exquisite a weariness as a day spent in good +resolutions and great thoughts. There is something perilously sensuous +in the relaxation of one's muscles, both of mind and body, after a day +thus well spent. + +Lighting up my pipe once more, and drawing to the fire, I suddenly +realised a sense of loneliness. Of course, I was lonely for a +book,--Apuleius or Fielding or Boccaccio! + +An hour ago they had seemed dangerous companions for so lofty a mood; +but now, under the gentle influences of dinner, the mood had not indeed +changed--but mellowed. So to say, we would split the difference between +the ideal and the human, and be, say, twenty-five. + +It was in this genial attitude of mind that I strode up the quaint +circular staircase to fetch Fielding from my room, and, shade of Tom +Jones! what should be leaving my room, as I advanced to enter it, +but--well, it's no use, resolutions are all very well, but facts are +facts, especially when they're natural, and here was I face to face +with the most natural little natural fact, and withal the most charming +and merry-eyed, that--well, in short, as I came to enter my room I was +confronted by the roundest, ruddiest little chambermaid ever created +for the trial of mortal frailty. + +And the worst of it was that her merry eye was in partnership with a +merry tongue. Indeed, for some unexplained reason, she was bubbling +over with congested laughter, the reason for which mere embarrassment +set one inquiring. At last, between little gushes of laughter which +shook her plump shoulders in a way that aroused wistful memories of +Hebe, she archly asked me, with mock solemnity, if I should need a +lady's maid. + + +"Certainly," I replied with inane promptitude, for I had no notion of +her drift; but then she ran off in a scurry of laughter, and still +puzzled I turned into my room, TO FIND, neatly hung over the end of the +bed, nothing less than the dainty petticoat and silk stockings of +Sylvia Joy. + +You can imagine the colour of my cheeks at the discovery. No doubt I +was already the laughing-stock of the whole inn. What folly! What a +young vixen! Oh, what's to be done? Pay my bill and sneak off at once +to the next town; but how pass through the grinning line of boots, and +waiter, and chambermaid, and ironically respectful landlord and +landlady, in the hall... + +But while I thus deliberated, something soft pressed in at the door; +and, making a sudden dart, I had the little baggage who had brought +about my dilemma a prisoner in my arms. + +I stayed some days at this charming old inn, for Amaryllis--oh, yes, +you may be sure her name was Amaryllis--had not betrayed me; and indeed +she may have some share in my retrospect of the inn as one of the most +delightful which I encountered anywhere in my journeying. Would you +like to know its name? Well, I know it as The Singing Stream. If you +can find it under that name, you are welcome. And should you chance to +be put into bedroom No. 26, you can think of me, and how I used to lie +awake, listening to the stream rippling beneath the window, with its +gentle harpsichord tinkle, and little by little letting slip the +multifarious world. + +And if anything about this chapter should seem to contradict the high +ideals of the chapter preceding it, I can only say that, though the +episode should not rigidly fulfil the conditions of the transcendental, +nothing could have been more characteristic of that early youth to +which I had vowed myself. Indeed, I congratulated myself, as I looked +my last at the sign of The Singing Stream, that this had been quite in +my early manner. + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN WHICH I SAVE A USEFUL LIFE + +Though I had said good-bye to the inn, the stream and I did not part +company at the inn-door, but continued for the best part of a morning +to be fellow-travellers. Indeed, having led me to one pleasant +adventure, its purpose, I afterwards realised, was to lead me to +another, and then to go about its own bright business. + +I don't think either of us had much idea where we were or whither we +were bound. Our guiding principle seemed to be to get as much sunshine +as possible, and to find the easiest road. We avoided dull sandy +levels and hard rocky places, with the same instinctive dexterity. We +gloomed together through dark dingles, and came out on sunny reaches +with the same gilded magnificence. There are days when every stream is +Pactolus and every man is Croesus, and thanks to that first and +greatest of all alchemists, the sun, the morning I write of was a +morning when to breathe was gold and to see was silver. And to breathe +and see was all one asked. It was the first of May, and the world +shone like a great illuminated letter with which that father of +artists, the sun, was making splendid his missal of the seasons. + +The month of May was ever his tour de force. Each year he has strained +and stimulated his art to surpass himself, seeking ever a finer and a +brighter gold, a more celestial azure. Never had his gold been so +golden, his azure so dazzlingly clear and deep as on this particular +May morning; while his fancy simply ran riot in the marginal +decorations of woodland and spinney, quaint embroidered flowers and +copses full of exquisitely painted and wonderfully trained birds of +song. It was indeed a day for nature to be proud of. So seductive was +the sunshine that even the shy trout leapt at noonday, eager apparently +to change his silver for gold. + + + O silver fish in the silver stream, + O golden fish in the golden gleam, + Tell me, tell me, tell me true, + Shall I find my girl if I follow you? + + +I suppose the reader never makes nonsense rhymes from sheer gladness of +heart,--nursery doggerel to keep time with the rippling of the stream, +or the dancing of the sun, or the beating of his heart; the gibberish +of delight. As I hummed this nonsense, a trout at least three pounds +in weight, whom you would know again anywhere, leapt a yard out of the +water, and I took it, in my absurd, sun-soaked heart, as a good omen, +as though he had said, "Follow and see." + +I had no will but to follow, no desire but to see. All the same, +though I affected to take him seriously, I had little suspicion how +much that trout was to mean to me,--yes, within the course of a very +few moments. Indeed, I had hardly strolled on for another quarter of a +mile, when I was suddenly aroused from wool-gathering by his loud cries +for help. Looking up, I saw him flashing desperately in mid-air, a +lovely foot of writhing silver. In another second he was swung through +the sunlight, and laid out breathing hard in a death-bed of buttercups +and daisies. + +There was not a moment to be lost, if I were to repay the debt of +gratitude which in a flash I had seen that I owed him. + +"Madam," I said, breathlessly springing forward, as a heavenly being +was coldly tearing the hook from the gills of the unlucky trout, +"though I am a stranger, will you do me a great favour? It is a matter +of life or death..." + +She looked up at me with some surprise, but with a fine fearless +glance, and almost immediately said, "Certainly, what can I do?" + +"Spare the life of that trout--" + +"It is a singular request," she replied, "and one," she smiled, +"self-sacrificing indeed for an angler to grant, for he weighs at least +three pounds. However, since he seems a friend of yours, here goes--" +And with the gladdest, most grateful sound in the world, the happy +smack of a fish back home again in the water, after an appalling three +minutes spent on land, that prophetic trout was once more an active +unit in God's populous universe. + +"Now that's good of you," I said, with thankful eyes, "and shows a kind +heart." + +"And kind hearts, they say, are more than coronets," she replied +merrily, indulging in that derisive quotation which seems to be the +final reward of the greatest poets. + +For a moment there was a silence, during which I confess to wondering +what I should say next. However, she supplied my place. + +"But of course," she said, "you owe it to me, after this touching +display of humanitarianism, to entertain me with your reason for +interposing between me and my just trout. Was it one of those +wonderful talking fishes out of the Arabian Nights, or are you merely +an angler yourself, and did you begrudge such a record catch to a girl?" + +"I see," I replied, "that you will understand me. That trout was, so +to speak, out of the Arabian Nights. Only five minutes ago it was a +May-day madness of mine to think that he leaped out of the water and +gave me a highly important message. So I begged his life from a mere +fancy. It was just a whim, which I trust you will excuse." + +"A whim! So you are a follower of the great god Whim," she replied, +with somewhat of an eager interest in her voice. "How nice it is to +meet a fellow-worshipper!" + +"Do women ever have whims?" I respectfully asked. + +"I don't know about other women," she replied. "Indeed, I'm afraid I'm +unnatural enough to take no interest in them at all. But, as for +me,--well, what nonsense! Tell me some more about the trout. What was +the wonderful message he seemed to give you? Or perhaps I oughtn't to +ask?" + +"I'm afraid," I said, "it would hardly translate into anything +approaching common-sense." + +"Did I ask for common-sense?" she retorted. It was true, she hadn't. +But then I couldn't, with any respect for her, tell her the trout's +message, or, with any respect for myself, recall those atrocious +doggerel lines. In my dilemma, I caught sight of a pretty book lying +near her fishing-basket, and diverted the talk by venturing to ask its +name. + +"'T is of Aucassin and Nicolete," she replied, with something in her +voice which seemed to imply that the tender old story would be familiar +to me. My memory served me for once gallantly. + +I answered by humming half to myself the lines from the prologue,-- + + "Sweet the song, the story sweet, + There is no man hearkens it, + No man living 'neath the sun, + So outwearied, so foredone, + Sick and woful, worn and sad, + But is healed, but is glad + 'T is so sweet." + + +"How charming of you to know it!" she laughed. "You are the only man +in this county, or the next, or the next, who knows it, I'm sure." + +"Are the women of the county more familiar with it?" I replied. + +"But tell me about the trout," she once more persisted. + +At the same moment, however, there came from a little distance the +musical tinkle of a bell that sounded like silver, a fairy-like and +almost startling sound. + +"It is my lunch," she explained. "I'm a worshipper of the great god +Whim too, and close by here I have a little summer-house, full of books +and fishing-lines and other childishness, where, when my whim is to be +lonely, I come and play at solitude. If you'll be content with rustic +fare, and promise to be amusing, it would be very pleasant if you'd +join me." + +O! most prophetic and agreeable trout! Was it not like the old fairy +tales, the you-help-us and we'll-help-you of Psyche and the ants? + +It had been the idlest whim for me to save the life of that poor trout. +There was no real pity in it. For two pins, I had been just as ready +to cut it open, to see if by chance it carried in its belly the golden +ring wherewith I was to wed the Golden-- + +However, such is the gratitude of nature to man, that this little +thoughtless act of kindness had brought me face to face with--was it +the Golden Girl? + + + +CHAPTER IV + +'T IS OF NICOLETE AND HER BOWER IN THE WILDWOOD + +But I have all this time left the reader without any formal descriptive +introduction to this whimsical young lady angler. Not without reason, +for, like any really charming personality, she was very difficult to +picture. Paint a woman! as our young friend Alastor said. + +Faces that fall into types you can describe, or at all events label in +such a way that the reader can identify them; but those faces that +consist mainly of spiritual effect and physical bloom, that change with +everything they look upon, the light in which ebbs and flows with every +changing tide of the soul,--these you have to love to know, and to +worship to portray. + +Now the face of Nicolete, as I learnt in time to call her, was just +soul and bloom, perhaps mainly bloom. I never noticed whether she had +any other features except her eyes. I suppose she had a nose; a little +lace pocket-handkerchief I have by me at the moment is almost too small +to be evidence on that important point. + +As I walked by her side that May morning, I was only conscious of her +voice and her exquisite girlhood; for though she talked with the APLOMB +of a woman of the world, a passionate candour and simple ardour in her +manner would have betrayed her, had her face not plainly declared her +the incarnation of twenty. But if she were twenty years young, she was +equally twenty years OLD; and twenty years old, in some respects, is +the greatest age attained to by man or woman. In this she rather +differed from Alastor, of whom otherwise she was the female +counterpart. Her talk, and something rather in her voice than her +talk, soon revealed her as a curious mixture of youth and age, of +dreamer and desillusionee. + +One soon realised that she was too young, was hoping too much from +life, to spend one's days with. Yet she had just sufficiently that +touch of languor which puts one at one's ease, though indeed it was +rather the languor of waiting for what was going to happen than the +weariness of experience gone by. She was weary, not because of the +past, but because the fairy theatre of life still kept its curtain +down, and forced her to play over and over again the impatient overture +of her dreams. + +I have no doubt that it was largely nervousness that kept the +mysterious playwright so long fumbling behind the scenes, for it was +obvious that it would be no ordinary sort of play, no every-day +domestic drama, that would satisfy this young lady, to whom life had +given, by way of prologue, the inestimable blessing of wealth, and the +privilege, as a matter of course, of choosing as she would among the +grooms (that is, the bride-grooms) of the romantic British aristocracy. + +She had made youth's common mistake of beginning life with books, which +can only be used without danger by those who are in a position to test +their statements. Youth naturally believes everything that is told it, +especially in books. + +Now, books are simply professional liars about life, and the books that +are best worth reading are those which lie the most beautifully. Yet, +in fairness, we must add that they are liars, not with intent to +mislead, but merely with the tenderest purpose to console. They are +the good Samaritans that find us robbed of all our dreams by the +roadside of life, bleeding and weeping and desolate; and such is their +skill and wealth and goodness of heart, that they not only heal up our +wounds, but restore to us the lost property of our dreams, on one +condition,--that we never travel with them again in the daylight. + +A library is a better world, built by the brains and hearts of poets +and dreamers, as a refuge from the real world outside; and in it alone +is to be found the land of milk and honey which it promises. + +"Milk and honey" would have been an appropriate inscription for the +delicious little library which parents who, I surmised, doted on +Nicolete in vain, had allowed her to build in a wild woodland corner of +her ancestral park, half a mile away from the great house, where, for +all its corridors and galleries, she could never feel, at all events, +spiritually alone. All that was most sugared and musical and generally +delusive in the old library of her fathers had been brought out to this +little woodland library, and to that nucleus of old leather-bound poets +and romancers, long since dead, yet as alive and singing on their +shelves as any bird on the sunny boughs outside, my young lady's +private purse had added all that was most sugared and musical and +generally delusive in the vellum bound Japanese-paper literature of our +own luxurious day. Nor were poets and romancers from over sea--in +their seeming simple paper covers, but with, oh, such complicated and +subtle insides!--absent from the court which Nicolete held here in the +greenwood. Never was such a nest of singing-birds. All day long, to +the ear of the spirit, there was in this little library a sound of +harping and singing and the telling of tales,--songs and tales of a +world that never was, yet shall ever be. Here day by day Nicolete fed +her young soul on the nightingale's-tongues of literature, and put down +her book only to listen to the nightingale's-tongues outside. Yea, +sun, moon, and stars were all in the conspiracy to lie to her of the +loveliness of the world and the good intentions of life. And now, thus +unexpectedly, I found myself joining the nefarious conspiracy. Ah, +well! was I not twenty myself, and full of dreams! + + + +CHAPTER V + +'T IS OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE + +Thus it was that we lunched together amid the books and birds, in an +exquisite solitude a deux; for the ringer of the silver bell had +disappeared, having left a dainty meal in readiness--for two. + +"You see you were expected," said Nicolete, with her pretty laugh. "I +dreamed I should have a visitor to-day, and told Susan to lay the lunch +for two. You mustn't be surprised at that," she added mischievously; +"it has often happened before. I dream that dream every other night, +and Susan lays for two every day. She knows my whims,--knows that the +extra knife and fork are for the fairy knight that may turn up any +afternoon, as I tell her--" + +"To find the sleepless princess," I added, thinking at the same time +one of those irrelevant asides that will go through the brain of +thirty, that the woman who would get her share of kisses nowadays must +neither slumber nor sleep. + +A certain great poet, I think it was Byron, objected to seeing women in +the act of eating. He thought their eating should be done in private. +What a curiously perverse opinion! For surely woman never shows to +better advantage than in the dainty exercises of a dainty repast, and +there is nothing more thrilling to man than a meal alone with a woman +he loves or is about to love. Perhaps, deep down, the reason is that +there still vibrates in the masculine blood the thrilling surprise of +the moment when man first realised that the angel woman was built upon +the same carnivorous principles as his grosser self. + +That is one of the first heart-beating surprises that come upon the boy +Columbus, as he sets out to discover the New World of woman; and indeed +his surprise has not seldom deepened into admiration, as he has found +that not only does woman eat, but frequently eats a lot. + +This privilege of seeing woman eat is the earliest granted of those +delicate animal intimacies, the fuller and fuller confiding of which +plays not the least important part, and ever such a sweet one, even in +a highly transcendental affection. It is this gradual humanising of +the divine female that brings about the spiritualising of the +unregenerate male. + +In the earliest stages of love the services are small that we are +privileged to do for the loved one. But if we are allowed to sit at +meat with her,--ever a royal condescension,--it is ours at least to +pass her the salt, to see that she is never kept waiting a moment for +the mustard or the pepper, to cut the bread for her with geometrical +precision, and to lean as near her warm shoulder as we dare to pour out +for her the sacred wine. + +Yes! for sure I was twenty again, for the performance of these simple +services for Nicolete gave me a thrill of pure boyish pleasure such as +I had never expected to feel again. And did she not make a knight of +me by gently asking if I would be so kind as to carve the chicken, and +how she laughed quite disproportionally at my school-boy story of the +man who, being asked to carve a pigeon, said he thought they had better +send for a wood-carver, as it seemed to be a wood pigeon. + +And while we ate and drank and laughed and chatted, the books around us +were weaving their spells. Even before the invention of printing books +were "love's purveyors." Was it not a book that sent Paolo and +Francesca for ever wandering on that stormy wind of passion and of +death? And nowadays the part played by books in human drama is greater +than we perhaps realise. Apart from their serious influence as +determining destinies of the character, what endless opportunities they +afford to lovers, who perhaps are denied all other meeting-places than +may be found on the tell-tale pages of a marked volume. The method is +so easy and so unsuspect. You have only to put faint pencil-marks +against the tenderest passages in your favourite new poet, and lend the +volume to Her, and She has only to leave here and there the dropped +violet of a timid confirmatory initial, for you to know your fate. And +what a touchstone books thus become! Indeed they simplify love-making, +from every point of view. With books so inexpensive and accessible to +all as they are to-day, no one need run any risks of marrying the wrong +woman. He has only to put her through an unconscious examination by +getting her to read and mark a few of his favourite authors, and he is +thus in possession of the master clues of her character. With a list +of her month's reading and a photograph, a man ought to be able to make +up his mind about any given woman, even though he has never spoken to +her. "Name your favourite writer" should be one of the first questions +in the Engagement Catechism. + +There is, indeed, no such short cut to knowledge of each other as a +talk about books. One short afternoon is enough for any two +book-lovers, though they may have met for the first time in the +morning, to make up their minds whether or not they have been born for +each other. If you are agreed, say, in admiring Meredith, Hardy, Omar +Khayyam, and Maeterlinck,--to take four particularly +test-authors,--there is nothing to prevent your marrying at once. +Indeed, a love for any one of these significant writers will be enough, +not to speak of an admiration for "Aucassin and Nicolete." + +Now, Nicolete and I soon found that we had all these and many another +writer in common, and before our lunch was ended we were nearer to each +other than many old friends. The heart does not more love the heart +that loves it than the brain loves the brain that comprehends it; and, +whatever else was to befall us, Nicolete and I were already in love +with each other's brains. Whether or not the malady would spread till +it reached the heart is the secret of some future chapter. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A FAIRY TALE AND ITS FAIRY TAILORS + +As this is not a realistic novel, I do not hold myself bound, as I have +said before, to account reasonably for everything that is done--least +of all, said--within its pages. I simply say, So it happened, or So it +is, and expect the reader to take my word. If he be uncivil enough to +doubt it, we may as well stop playing this game of fancy. It is one of +the first conditions of enjoying a book, as it is of all successful +hypnotism, that the reader surrenders up his will to the writer, who, +of course, guarantees to return it to him at the close of the volume. +If you say that no young lady would have behaved as I have presently to +relate of Nicolete, that no parents were ever so accommodating in the +world of reality, I reply,--No doubt you are right, but none the less +what I have to tell is true and really did happen, for all that. And +not only did it happen, but to the whimsically minded, to the true +children of fancy, it will seem the most natural thing in the world. +No doubt they will wonder why I have made such a preamble about it, as +indeed, now I think of it, so do I. + +Again I claim exemption in this wandering history from all such +descriptive drudgery upon second, third, and fourth dramatis +personsonae as your thorough-going novelist must undertake with a good +grace. Like a host and hostess at a reception, the poor novelist has +to pretend to be interested in everybody,--in the dull as in the +brilliant, in the bore as in the beauty. I'm afraid I should never do +as a novelist, for I should waste all my time with the heroine; whereas +the true novelist is expected to pay as much attention to the heroine's +parents as though he were a suitor for her hand. Indeed, there is no +relative of hero or heroine too humble or stupid for such a novelist as +the great Balzac. He will invite the dullest of them to stay with him +for quite prolonged visits, and without a murmur set apart a suite of +chapters for their accommodation. I'm not sure that the humanity of +the reader in these cases is of such comprehensive sympathy as the +novelist's, and it may well be that the novelist undertakes all such +hard labour under a misapprehension of the desires of the reader, who, +as a rule, I fancy, is as anxious to join the ladies as the novelist +himself. Indeed, I believe that there is an opportunity for a new form +of novel, in which the novelist, as well as the reader, will skip all +the dull people, and merely indicate such of them as are necessary to +the action by an outline or a symbol, compressing their familiar +psychology, and necessary plot-interferences with the main characters, +into recognised formulae. For the benefit of readers voracious for +everything about everybody, schedule chapters might be provided by +inferior novelists, good at painting say tiresome bourgeois fathers, +gouty uncles and brothers in the army, as sometimes in great pictures +we read that the sheep in the foreground have been painted by Mr. +So-and-so, R.A. + +The Major-General and his Lady were taking the waters at Wiesbaden. +That was all I knew of Nicolete's parents, and all I needed to know; +with the exception of one good action,--at her urgent entreaty they had +left Nicolete behind them, with no other safeguard than a charming +young lady companion, whose fitness for her sacred duties consisted in +a temperament hardly less romantic and whimsical than Nicolete's own. +She was too charming to deserve the name of obstacle; and as there was +no other-- + +But I admit that the cart has got a little in front of the horse, and I +grow suddenly alarmed lest the reader should be suspecting me of an +elopement, or some such romantic vulgarity. If he will only put any +such thoughts from his mind, I promise to proceed with the story in a +brief and business-like manner forthwith. + +We are back once more at the close of the last chapter, in Nicolete's +book-bower in the wildwood. It is an hour or two later, and the +afternoon sun is flooding with a searching glory all the secret places +of the woodland. Hidden nooks and corners, unused to observation, +suddenly gleam and blush in effulgent exposure,--like lovers whom the +unexpected turning on of a light has revealed kissing in the dark,--and +are as suddenly, unlike the lovers, left in their native shade again. +It was that rich afternoon sunlight that loves to flash into teacups as +though they were crocuses, that loves to run a golden finger along the +beautiful wrinkles of old faces and light up the noble hollows of +age-worn eyes; the sunlight that loves to fall with transfiguring beam +on the once dear book we never read, or, with malicious +inquisitiveness, expose to undreamed-of detection the undusted picture, +or the gold-dusted legs of remote chairs, which the poor housemaid has +forgotten. + +So in Nicolete's bower it illuminated with strange radiancy the dainty +disorder of deserted lunch, made prisms out of the wine-glasses, +painted the white cloth with wedge-shaped rainbows, and flooded the +cavernous interiors of the half-eaten fowl with a pathetic yellow +torchlight. + +Leaving that melancholy relic of carnivorous appetite, it turned its +bold gold gaze on Nicolete. No need to transfigure her! But, heavens! +how grandly her young face took the great kiss of the god! Then it +fell for a tender moment on the jaundiced page of my old Boccaccio,--a +rare edition, which I had taken from my knapsack to indulge myself with +the appreciation of a connoisseur. Next minute "the unobstructed beam" +was shining right into the knapsack itself, for all the world like one +of those little demon electric lights with which the dentist makes a +momentary treasure-cave of your distended jaws, flashing with startled +stalactite. At the same moment Nicolete's starry eyes took the same +direction; then there broke from her her lovely laughter, merry and +inextinguishable. + +Once more, need I say, my petticoat had played me false--or should I +not say true? For there was its luxurious lace border, a thing for the +soft light of the boudoir, or the secret moonlight of love's permitted +eyes, alone to see, shamelessly brazening it out in this terrible +sunlight. Obviously there was but one way out of the dilemma, to +confess my pilgrimage to Nicolete, and reveal to her all the fanciful +absurdity to which, after all, I owed the sight of her. + +"So that is why you pleaded so hard for that poor trout," she said, +when I had finished. "Well, you are a fairy prince indeed! Now, do you +know what the punishment of your nonsense is to be?" + +"Is it very severe and humiliating?" I asked. + +"You must judge of that. It is--to take me with you!" + +"You,--what do you mean?" + +"Yes,--not for good and all, of course, but just for, say, a fortnight, +just a fortnight of rambles and adventures, and then to deliver me safe +home again where you found me--" + +"But it is impossible," I almost gasped in surprise. "Of course you +are not serious?" + +"I am, really, and you will take me, won't you?" she continued +pleadingly. "You don't know how we women envy you men those wonderful +walking-tours we can only read about in Hazlitt or Stevenson. We are +not allowed to move without a nurse or a footman. From the day we are +born to the day we die, we are never left a moment to ourselves. But +you--you can go out into the world, the mysterious world, do as you +will, go where you will, wander here, wander there, follow any bye-way +that takes your fancy, put up at old inns, make strange acquaintances, +have all kinds of romantic experiences-- Oh, to be a man for a +fortnight, your younger brother for a fortnight!" + +"It is impossible!" I repeated. + +"It isn't at all," she persisted, with a fine blush. "If you will only +be nice and kind, and help me to some Rosalind's clothes. You have only +to write to your tailors, or send home for a spare suit of +clothes,--with a little managing yours would just fit me, you're not so +much taller,--and then we could start, like two comrades, seeking +adventures. Oh, how glorious it would be!" + +It was in vain that I brought the batteries of common-sense to bear +upon her whim. I raised every possible objection in vain. + +I pointed out the practical difficulties. There were her parents. + +Weren't they drinking the waters at Wiesbaden, and weren't they to go +on drinking them for another three weeks? My fancy made a picture of +them distended with three weeks' absorption of mineral springs. Then +there was her companion. Nicolete was confident of her assistance. +Then I tried vilifying myself. How could she run the risk of trusting +herself to such intimate companionship with a man whom she hadn't known +half a dozen hours? This she laughed to scorn. Presently I was silent +from sheer lack of further objections; and need I say that all the +while there had been a traitor impulse in my heart, a weak sweetness +urging me on to accept the pretty chance which the good genius of my +pilgrimage had so evidently put in my way,--for, after all, what harm +could it do? With me Nicolete was, indeed, safe,--that, of course, I +knew,--and safely she should come back home again after her little +frolic. All that was true enough. And how charming it would be to +have such a dainty companion! then the fun, the fancy, the whim of it +all. What was the use of setting out to seek adventures if I didn't +pursue them when found. + +Well, the long and short of it was that I agreed to undertake the +adventure, provided that Nicolete could win over the lady whom at the +beginning of the chapter I declared too charming to be described as an +obstacle. + +By nine o'clock the following morning the fairy tailors, as Nicolete +called them, were at work on the fairy clothes, and, at the end of +three days, there came by parcel-post a bulky unromantic-looking +brown-paper parcel, which it was my business to convey to Nicolete +under cover of the dark. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +FROM THE MORNING STAR TO THE MOON + +I quite realise that this book is written perhaps only just in time for +the motive of these two or three chapters to be appreciated in its +ancient piquancy. Very soon, alas! the sexes will be robbed of one of +the first and most thrilling motives of romance, the motive of As You +Like It, the romance of wearing each other's clothes. Alas, that every +advance of reason should mean a corresponding retreat of romance! It +is only reasonable that woman, being--have you yet realised the +fact?--a biped like her brothers, should, when she takes to her +brothers' recreations, dress as those recreations demand; and yet the +death of Rosalind is a heavy price to pay for the lady bicyclist. So +soon as the two sexes wear the same clothes, they may as well wear +nothing; the game of sex is up. In this matter, as in others, we +cannot both have our cake and eat it. All romance, like all +temptation, is founded on the Fascination of the Exception. So soon as +the exception becomes, instead of merely proving, the rule, that +particular avenue of romance is closed. The New Woman of the future +will be the woman with the petticoats, she who shall restore the +ancient Eleusinian mysteries of the silk skirt and the tea-gown. + +Happily for me, my acquaintance among the Rosalinds of the bicycle, at +this period of my life, was but slight, and thus no familiarity with +the tweed knickerbocker feminine took off the edge of my delight on +first beholding Nicolete clothed in like manhood with ourselves, and +yet, delicious paradox! looking more like a woman than ever. + +During those three days while the fairy tailors were at work our +friendship had not been idle. Indeed, some part of each day we had +spent diligently learning each other, as travellers to distant lands +across the Channel work hard at phrase-book and Baedeker the week +before their departure. Meanwhile too I had made the acquaintance of +the charming lady Obstacle,--as it proved so unfair to call her,--and +by some process of natural magnetism we had immediately won each +other's hearts, so that on the moonlight night on which I took the +river path with my brown-paper parcel there was no misgiving in my +heart,--nothing but harping and singing, and blessings on the river +that seemed all silver with the backs of magic trout. As I thought of +all I owed that noble fish, I kneeled by the river's bearded lip, among +the nettles and the meadowsweet, and swore by the inconstant moon that +trout and I were henceforth kinsmen, and that between our houses should +be an eternal amity. The chub and the dace and the carp, not to speak +of that Chinese pirate the pike, might still look to it, when I came +forth armed with rod and line; but for me and my house the trout is +henceforth sacred. By the memory of the Blessed Saint Izaak, I swore it! + +My arrival at Beaucaire was one of great excitement. Nicolete and the +Obstacle were both awaiting me, for the mysteries of masculine attire +were not to be explored alone. The parcel was snatched quite +unceremoniously from my hands, the door shut upon me, and I laughingly +bidden go listen to the nightingale. I was not long in finding one, +nor, being an industrious phrase-maker, did I waste my time, for, +before I was summoned to behold Nicolete in all her boyhood, I had +found occasion and moonlight to remark to my pocket-book that, Though +all the world has heard the song of the Nightingale to the Rose, only +the Nightingale has heard the answer of the Rose. This I hurriedly hid +in my heart for future conversation, as the pre-arranged tinkle of the +silver bell called me to the rose. + +Would, indeed, that I were a nightingale to sing aright the beauty of +that rose with which, think of it, I was to spend a whole +fortnight,--yes, no less than fourteen wonderful days. + +The two girls were evidently proud of themselves at having succeeded so +well with the mysterious garments. There were one or two points on +which they needed my guidance, but they were unimportant; and when at +last Nicolete would consent to stand up straight and let me have a good +look at her,--for, poor child! she was as shy and shrinking as though +she had nothing on,--she made a very pretty young man indeed. + +She didn't, I'm afraid, look like a young man of our degenerate day. +She was far too beautiful and distinguished for that. Besides, her dark +curling hair, quite short for a woman, was too long, and her eyes--like +the eyes of all poets--were women's eyes. She looked, indeed, like one +of those wonderful boys of the Italian Renaissance, whom you may still +see at the National Gallery, whose beauty is no denial, but rather the +stamp of their slender, supple strength, young painters and sculptors +who held the palette for Leonardo, or wielded the chisel for +Michelangelo, and anon threw both aside to take up sword for Guelf or +Ghibelline in the narrow streets of Florence. + +Her knapsack was already packed, and its contents included a serge +skirt "in case of emergencies." Already, she naughtily reminded me, we +possessed a petticoat between us. + +The brief remainder of the evening passed in excited chatter and +cigarettes, and in my instructing Nicolete in certain tricks of +masculine deportment. The chief difficulty I hardly like mentioning; +and if the Obstacle had not been present, I certainly dare not have +spoken of it to Nicolete. I mean that she was so shy about her pretty +legs. She couldn't cross them with any successful nonchalance. + +"You must take your legs more for granted, dear Nicolete," I summoned +courage to say. "The nonchalance of the legs is the first lesson to be +learnt in such a masquerade as this. You must regard them as so much +bone and iron, rude skeleton joints and shins, as though they were the +bones of the great elk or other extinct South Kensington +specimen,"--"not," I added in my heart, "as the velvet and ivory which +they are." + +We had agreed to start with the sun on the morrow, so as to get clear +of possible Peeping Toms; and when good-nights had been said, and I was +once more swinging towards my inn, it seemed but an hour or two, as +indeed it was, before I heard four o'clock drowsily announced through +my bedroom door, and before I was once more striding along that +river-bank all dew-silvered with last night's moonlight, the sun +rubbing his great eye on the horizon, the whole world yawning through +dainty bed-clothes of mist, and here and there a copse-full of birds +congratulating themselves on their early rising. + +Nicolete was not quite ready, so I had to go listen to the lark, about +whom, alas! I could find nothing to say to my pocket-book, before +Nicolete, armed cap-a-pie with stick and knapsack, appeared at the door +of her chalet. + +The Obstacle was there to see us start. She and Nicolete exchanged many +kisses which were hard to bear, and the first quarter of an hour of our +journey was much obstructed by the farewells of her far-fluttering +handkerchief. When at last we were really alone, I turned and looked +at Nicolete striding manfully at my side, just to make sure that it was +really true. + +"Well, we're in for it now," I said; "aren't you frightened?" + +"Oh, it's wonderful," she replied; "don't spoil it by talking." + +And I didn't; for who could hope to compete with the sun, who was +making the whole dewy world shake with laughter at his brilliancy, or +with the birds, any one of whom was a poet at least equal to Herrick? + +Presently we found ourselves at four crossroads, with a four-fingered +post in the centre. We had agreed to leave our destination to chance. +We read the sign-post. + +"Which shall we choose?" I said,-- + +"Aucassin, true love and fair, To what land do we repair?" + + +"Don't you think this one," she replied, "this one?--To the Moon!" + +"Certainly, we couldn't find a prettier place; but it's a long way," I +replied, looking up at the sky, all roses and pearls,--"a long way from +the Morning Star to the Moon." + +"All the longer to be free," cried Nicolete, recklessly. + +"So be it," I assented. "Allons--to the Moon!" + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE KIND OF THING THAT HAPPENS IN THE MOON + +Two friends of my youth, with whom it would be hopeless to attempt +competition, have described the star-strewn journey to the moon. It is +not for me to essay again where the ingenious M. Jules Verne and Mr. +William Morris have preceded me. Besides, the journey is nowadays much +more usual, and therefore much less adventurous, than when those +revered writers first described it. In the middle ages a journey to the +moon with a woman you loved was a very perilous matter indeed. Even in +the last century the roads were much beset with danger; but in our own +day, like most journeys, it is accomplished with ease and safety in a +few hours. + +However, to the latter-day hero, whose appetite for dragons is not +keen, this absence of adventure is perhaps rather pleasurable than +otherwise; and I confess that I enjoyed the days I spent on foot with +Nicolete none the less because they passed in tranquil +uneventfulness,--that is, without events of the violent kind. Of +course, all depends on what you call an event. We were not waylaid by +robbers, we fed and slept unchallenged at inns, we escaped collision +with the police, and we encountered no bodily dangers of any kind; yet +should I not call the journey uneventful, nor indeed, I think, would +Nicolete. + +To me it was one prolonged divine event, and, with such daily +intercourse with Nicolete, I never dreamed of craving for any other +excitement. To walk from morning to evening by her side, to minister +to her moods, to provide such entertainment as I might for her brain, +and watch like a father over her physical needs; to note when she was +weary and too proud to show it, and to pretend to be done up myself; to +choose for her the easiest path, and keep my eyes open for wayside +flowers and every country surprise,--these, and a hundred other +attentions, kept my heart and mind in busy service. + +To picnic by some lonely stream-side on a few sandwiches, a flask of +claret, and a pennyworth of apples; to talk about the books we loved; +to exchange our hopes and dreams,--we asked nothing better than this +simple fare. + +And so a week went by. But, though so little had seemed to happen, and +though our walking record was shamefully modest, yet, imperceptible as +the transition had been, we were, quite insensibly indeed, and +unacknowledged, in a very different relation to each other than when we +had started out from the Morning Star. In fact, to make no more words +about it, I was head over heels in love with Nicolete, and I think, +without conceit, I may say that Nicolete was rapidly growing rather +fond of me. Apart from anything else, we were such excellent chums. We +got along together as if indeed we had been two brothers, equable in +our tempers and one in our desires. + +At last the feeling on my side became so importunate that I could no +longer keep silence. + +We were seated together taking tea at a small lonely inn, whose windows +looked out over a romantic little lake, backed by Salvator Rosa +pine-woods. The sun was beginning to grow dreamy, and the whole world +to wear a dangerously sentimental expression. + +I forget exactly what it was, but something in our talk had set us +glowing, had touched tender chords of unexpected sympathy, and +involuntarily I stretched out my hand across the corner of the table +and pressed Nicolete's hand as it rested on the cloth. She did not +withdraw it, and our eyes met with a steady gaze of love. + +"Nicolete," I said presently, when I could speak, "it is time for you +to be going back home." + +"Why?" she asked breathlessly. + +"Because," I answered, "I must love you if you stay." + +"Would you then bid me go?" she said. + +"Nicolete," I said, "don't tempt me. Be a good girl and go home." + +"But supposing I don't want to go home," she said; "supposing--oh, +supposing I love you too? Would you still bid me go?" + +"Yes," I said. "In that case it would be even more imperative." + +"Aucassin!" + +"It is true, it is true, dear Nicolete." + +"Then, Aucassin," she replied, almost sternly, in her great girlish +love, "this is true also,--I love you. I have never loved, shall never +love, any man but you!" + +"Nicolete!" + +"Aucassin!" + +There were no more words spoken between us for a full hour that +afternoon. + + + +CHAPTER IX + +WRITTEN BY MOONLIGHT + +I knew deep down in my heart that it couldn't last, yet how deny myself +these roses, while the opportunity of gathering them was mine!--the +more so, as I believed it would do no harm to Nicolete. At all events, +a day or two more or less of moonshine would make no matter either way. +And so all next day we walked hand in hand through Paradise. + +It has been said by them of old time, and our fathers have told us, +that the kiss of first love, the first kiss of the first woman we love, +is beyond all kisses sweet; and true it is. But true is it also that +no less sweet is the first kiss of the last woman we love. + +Putting my faith in old saws, as a young man will, I had never dreamed +to know again a bliss so divinely passionate and pure as came to me +with every glance of Nicolete's sweet eyes, with every simple pressure +of her hand; and the joy that was mine when sometimes, stopping on our +way, we would press together our lips ever so gravely and tenderly, +seems too holy even to speak of. + +The holy angels could not have loved Nicolete with a purer love, a love +freer from taint of any earthly thought, than I, a man of thirty, +blase, and fed from my youth upon the honeycomb of woman. + +It was curious that the first difficulty of our pilgrimage should +befall us the very next day. Coming towards nightfall to a small inn +in a lonely unpopulated countryside, we found that the only +accommodation the inn afforded was one double-bedded room, and there +was no other inn for at least ten miles. I think I was more troubled +than Nicolete. When, after interviewing the landlady, I came and told +her of the dilemma, where she sat in the little parlour wearied out +with the day's walk, she blushed, it is true, but seemed little put +about. Indeed, she laughed, and said it was rather fun, "like +something out of Sterne,"--of such comfort is a literary reference in +all seasons and circumstances,--and then she added, with a sweet look +that sent the blood rioting about my heart, "It won't matter so much, +will it, love, NOW?" + +There proved nothing for it but to accept the situation, and we made +the arrangement that Nicolete was to slip off to bed first, and then +put out the light and go to sleep. However, when I followed her, +having sat up as long as the landlady's patience would endure, I found +that, though she had blown out the candle, she had forgotten to put out +the moon, which shone as though it were St. Agnes' Eve across half the +room. + +I stole in very shyly, kept my eyes sternly from Nicolete's white bed, +though, as I couldn't shut my ears, the sound of her breathing came to +me with indescribable sweetness. After I had lain among the sheets +some five or ten minutes, I was suddenly startled by a little voice +within the room saying,-- + +"I'm not asleep." + +"Well, you should be, naughty child. Now shut your eyes and go to +sleep,--and fair dreams and sweet repose," I replied. + +"Won't you give me one little good-night kiss?" + +"I gave you one downstairs." + +"Is it very wicked to want another?" + +There was not a foot between our two beds, so I bent over and took her +soft white shoulders in my arms and kissed her. All the heaped-up +sweetness of the whitest, freshest flowers of the spring seemed in my +embrace as I kissed her, so soft, so fragrant, so pure; and as the +moonlight was the white fire in our blood. Softly I released her, +stroked her brown hair, and turned again to my pillow. Presently the +little voice was in the room again,-- + +"Mayn't I hold your hand? Somehow I feel lonely and frightened." + +So our hands made a bridge across which our dreams might pass through +the night, and after a little while I knew that she slept. + +As I lay thus holding her hand, and listening to her quiet breathing, I +realised once more what my young Alastor had meant by the purity of +high passion. For indeed the moonlight that fell across her bosom was +not whiter than my thoughts, nor could any kiss--were it even such a +kiss as Venus promised to the betrayer of Psyche--even in its fiercest +delirium, be other than dross compared with the wild white peace of +those silent hours when we lay thus married and maiden side by side. + + + +CHAPTER X + +HOW ONE MAKES LOVE AT THIRTY + +My sleeplessness while Nicolete slept had not been all ecstasy, for I +had come to a bitter resolution; and next morning, when we were once +more on our way, I took a favourable opportunity of conveying it to +Nicolete. + +"Nicolete," I said, as we rested awhile by the roadside, "I have +something serious to say to you." + +"Yes, dear," she said, looking rather frightened. + +"Well, dear, it is this,--our love must end with our holiday. No good +can come of it." + +"But oh, why? I love you." + +"Yes, and I love you,--love you as I never thought I could love again. +Yet I know it is all a dangerous dream,--a trick of our brains, an +illusion of our tastes." + +"But oh, why? I love you." + +"Yes, you do to-day, I know; but it couldn't last. I believe I could +love you for ever; but even so, it wouldn't be right. You couldn't go +on loving me. I am too old, too tired, too desillusione, perhaps too +selfish." + +"I will love you always!" said girl Nicolete. + +"Whereas you," I continued, disregarding the lovely refrain of her +tear-choked voice, "are standing on the wonderful threshold of life, +waiting in dreamland for the dawn. And it will come, and with it the +fairy prince, with whom you shall wander hand in hand through all its +fairy rose-gardens; but I, dear Nicolete,--I am not he." + +Nicolete did not speak. + +"I know," I continued, pressing her hand, "that I may seem young enough +to talk like this, but some of us get through life quicker than others, +and when we say, 'It is done,' it is no use for onlookers to say, 'Why, +it is just beginning!' Believe me, Nicolete, I am not fit husband for +you." + +"Then shall I take no other," said Nicolete, with set face. + +"Oh, yes, you will," I rejoined; "let but a month or two pass, and you +will see how wise I was, after all. Besides, there are other reasons, +of which there is no need to speak--" + +"What reasons?" + +"Well," I said, half laughing, "there is the danger that, after all, we +mightn't agree. There is nothing so perilously difficult as the daily +intercourse of two people who love each other. You are too young to +realise its danger. And I couldn't bear to see our love worn away by +the daily dropping of tears, not to speak of its being rent by the +dynamite of daily quarrels. We know each other's tastes, but we know +hardly anything of each other's natures." + +Nicolete looked at me strangely. 'Troth, it was a strange way to make +love, I knew. + +"And what else?" she asked somewhat coldly. + +"Well, then, though it's not a thing one cares to speak of, I'm a poor +man--" + +Nicolete broke through my sentence with a scornful exclamation. + +"You," I continued straight on,--"well, you have been accustomed to a +certain spaciousness and luxury of life. This it would be out of my +power to continue for you. These are real reasons, very real reasons, +dear Nicolete, though you may not think so now. The law of the world +in these matters is very right. For the rich and the poor to marry is +to risk, terribly risk, the very thing they would marry for--their +love. Love is better an unmarried than a married regret." + +Nicolete was silent again. + +"Think of your little woodland chalet, and your great old trees in the +park,--you couldn't live without them. I have, at most, but one tree +worth speaking of to offer you--" + +I purposely waived the glamour which my old garden had for my mind, and +which I wouldn't have exchanged for fifty parks. + +"Trees!" retorted Nicolete,--"what are trees?" + +"Ah, my dear girl, they are a good deal,--particularly when they are +genealogical, as my one tree is not." + +"Aucassin," she said suddenly, almost fiercely, "can you really jest? +Tell me this,--do you love me?" + +"I love you," I said simply; "and it is just because I love you so much +that I have talked as I have done. No man situated as I am who loved +you could have talked otherwise." + +"Well, I have heard it all, weighed it all," said Nicolete, presently; +"and to me it is but as thistledown against the love within my heart. +Will you cast away a woman who loves you for theories? You know you +love me, know I love you. We should have our trials, our ups and +downs, I know; but surely it is by those that true love learns how to +grow more true and strong. Oh, I cannot argue! Tell me again, do you +love me?" + +And there she broke down and fell sobbing into my arms. I consoled her +as best I might, and presently she looked up at me through her tears. + +"Tell me again," she said, "that you love me, just as you did +yesterday, and promise never to speak of all those cruel things again. +Ah! have you thought of the kind of men you would give me up to?" + +At that I confess I shuddered, and I gave her the required assurance. + +"And you won't be wise and reasonable and ridiculous any more?" + +"No," I answered; adding in my mind, "not, at all events, for the +present." + + + +CHAPTER XI + +HOW ONE PLAYS THE HERO AT THIRTY + +Had we only been able to see a day into the future, we might have +spared ourselves this agonising, for all our doubts and fears were +suddenly dispersed in an entirely unexpected manner. Happily these +interior problems are not infrequently resolved by quite exterior +forces. + +We were sitting the following afternoon in one of those broad bay +windows such as one finds still in some old country inns, just thinking +about starting once more on our way, when suddenly Nicolete, who had +been gazing out idly into the road, gave a little cry. I followed her +glance. A carriage with arms on its panels had stopped at the inn, and +as a smart footman opened the door, a fine grey-headed military-looking +man stepped out and strode hurriedly up the inn steps. + +"Aucassin," gasped Nicolete, "it is my father!" + +It was too true. The old man's keen eye had caught sight of Nicolete +at the window also, and in another moment we were all three face to +face. I must do the Major-General the justice of saying that he made +as little of a "scene" of it as possible. + +"Now, my girl," he said, "I have come to put an end to this nonsense. +Have you a petticoat with you? Well, go upstairs and get it on. I +will wait for you here... On you, sir, I shall waste no words. From +what I have heard, you are as moonstruck as my daughter." + +"Of course," I stammered, "I cannot expect you to understand the +situation, though I think, if you would allow me, I could in a very few +words make it somewhat clearer,--make you realise that, after all, it +has been a very innocent and childish escapade, in which there has been +no harm and a great deal of pleasure--" + +But the Major-General cut me short. + +"I should prefer," he said, "not to discuss the matter. I may say that +I realise that my daughter has been safe in your hands, however +foolish,"--for this I thanked him with a bow,--"but I must add that +your eccentric acquaintance must end here--" + +I said him neither yea nor nay; and while we stood in armed and +embarrassed silence, Nicolete appeared with white face at the door, +clothed in her emergency petticoat. Alas! it was for no such emergency +as this that it had been destined that merry night when she had packed +it in her knapsack. With a stern bow her father turned from me to join +her; but she suddenly slipped past him, threw her arms round me, and +kissed me one long passionate kiss. + +"Aucassin, be true," she cried, "I will never forget you,--no one shall +come between us;" and then bursting into tears, she buried her face in +her hands and followed her father from the room. + +In another moment she had been driven away, and I sat as one stupefied +in the inn window. But a few short minutes ago she had been sitting +merrily prattling by my side, and now I was once more as lonely as if +we had never met. Presently I became conscious in my reverie of a +little crumpled piece of paper on the floor. I picked it up. It was a +little note pencilled in her bedroom at the last moment. "Aucassin," +it ran, just like her last passionate words, "be true. I will never +forget you. Stay here till I write to you, and oh, write to me soon!-- +Your broken-hearted Nicolete." + +As I read, I saw her lovely young face, radiant with love and sorrow as +I had last seen it, and pressing the precious little letter to my lips, +I said fervently, "Yes, Nicolete, I will be true." + + + +CHAPTER XII + +IN WHICH I REVIEW MY ACTIONS AND RENEW MY RESOLUTIONS + +No doubt the youthful reader will have but a poor opinion of me after +the last two chapters. He will think that in the scene with the +Major-General I acted with lamentably little spirit, and that generally +my friend Alastor would have proved infinitely more worthy of the +situation. It is quite true, I confess it. The whole episode was made +for Alastor. Nicolete and he were born for each other. Alas! it is +one of the many drawbacks of experience that it frequently prevents our +behaving with spirit. + +I must be content to appeal to the wiser and therefore sadder reader, +of whom I have but a poor opinion if he too fails to understand me. +He, I think, will understand why I didn't promptly assault the +Major-General, seize Nicolete by the waist, thrust her into her +ancestral carriage, haul the coachman from his box, and, seizing the +reins, drive away in triumph before astonishment had time to change +into pursuit. Truly it had been but the work of a moment, and there was +only one consideration which prevented my following this +now-I-call-that-heroic course. It is a consideration I dare hardly +venture to write, and the confession of which will, I know, necessitate +my changing my age back again to thirty on the instant. Oh, be +merciful, dear romantic reader! I didn't strike the Major-General, +because, oh, because I AGREED WITH HIM! + +I loved Nicolete, you must have felt that. She was sweet to me as the +bunch of white flowers that, in their frail Venetian vase, stand so +daintily on my old bureau as I write, doing their best to sweeten my +thoughts. Dear was she to me as the birds that out in the old garden +yonder sing and sing their best to lift up my leaden heart. She was +dear as the Spring itself, she was only less dear than Autumn. + +Yes, black confession! after the first passion of her loss, the +immediate ache of her young beauty had passed, and I was able to +analyse what I really felt, I not only agreed with him, I thanked God +for the Major-General! He had saved me from playing the terrible part +of executioner. He had just come in time to behead the Lady Jane Grey +of our dreams. + +I should have no qualms about tightening the rope round the neck of +some human monster, or sticking a neat dagger or bullet into a +dangerous, treacherous foe, but to kill a dream is a sickening +business. It goes on moaning in such a heart-breaking fashion, and you +never know when it is dead. All on a sudden some night it will come +wailing in the wind outside your window, and you must blacken your +heart and harden your face with another strangling grip of its slim +appealing throat, another blow upon its angel eyes. Even then it will +recover, and you will go on being a murderer, making for yourself day +by day a murderer's face, without the satisfaction of having really +murdered. + +But what of Nicolete? do you exclaim. Have you no thought for her, +bleeding her heart away in solitude? Can you so soon forget those +appealing eyes? Yes, I have thought for her. Would God that I could +bear for her those growing pains of the heart! and I shall never forget +those farewell eyes. But then, you see, I had firmly realised this, +that she would sooner recover from our separation than from our +marriage; that her love for me, pretty and poignant and dramatic while +it lasted, was a book-born, book-fed dream, which must die soon or +late,--the sooner the better for the peace of the dreams that in the +course of nature would soon spring up to take its place. + +But while I realised all this, and, with a veritable aching of the +heart at the loss of her, felt a curious satisfaction at the turn of +events, still my own psychology became all the more a puzzle to me, and +I asked myself, with some impatience, what I would be at, and what it +was I really wanted. + +Here had I but a few moments ago been holding in my hands the very +dream I had set out to find, and here was I secretly rejoicing to be +robbed of it! If Nicolete did not fulfil the conditions of that +mystical Golden Girl, in professed search for whom I had set out that +spring morning, well, the good genius of my pilgrimage felt it time to +resign. Better give it up at once, and go back to my books and my +bachelorhood, if I were so difficult to please. No wonder my kind +providence felt provoked. It had provided me with the sweetest +pink-and-porcelain dream of a girl, and might reasonably have concluded +that his labours on my behalf were at an end. + +But, really, there is no need to lecture me upon the charms and virtues +of Nicolete, for I loved them from the first moment of our strange +introduction, and I dream of them still. There was indeed only one +quality of womanhood in which she was lacking, and in which, after much +serious self-examination, I discovered the reason of my instinctive +self-sacrifice of her,--SHE HAD NEVER SUFFERED. As my heart had warned +me at the beginning, "she was hoping too much from life to spend one's +days with." She lacked the subtle half-tones of experience. She lacked +all that a pretty wrinkle or two might have given. There was no +shadowy melancholy in her sky-clear eyes. She was gay indeed, and had +a certain childish humour; but she had none of that humour which comes +of the resigned perception that the world is out of joint, and that you +were never born to set it right. These characteristics I had yet to +find in woman. There was still, therefore, an object to my quest. +Indeed my experience had provided me with a formula. I was in search +of a woman who, in addition to every other feminine charm and virtue, +was a woman who had suffered. + +With this prayer I turned once more to the genius of my pilgrimage. +"Grant me," I asked, "but this--A WOMAN WHO HAS SUFFERED!" and, +apparently as a consequence, he became once more quite genial. He +seemed to mean that a prayer so easy to grant would put any god into a +good temper; and possibly he smiled with a deeper meaning too. + + + + +BOOK III + + + +CHAPTER I + +IN WHICH I RETURN TO MY RIGHT AGE AND ENCOUNTER A COMMON OBJECT OF THE +COUNTRY + +And so when the days of my mourning for Nicolete were ended (and in +this sentence I pass over letters to and fro,--letters wild from +Nicolete, letters wise from Aucassin, letters explanatory and +apologetic from the Obstacle--how the Major-General had suddenly come +home quite unexpectedly and compelled her to explain Nicolete's +absence, etc., etc. Dear Obstacle! I should rather have enjoyed a +pilgrimage with her too)--I found myself one afternoon again upon the +road. The day had been very warm and dusty, and had turned sleepy +towards tea-time. + +I had now pretty clearly in my mind what I wanted. This time it was, +all other things equal, to be "a woman who had suffered," and to this +end, I had, before starting out once more, changed my age back again at +the inn and written "Aetat. 30" after my name in the visitors' book. +As a young man I was an evident failure, and so, having made the +countersign, I was speedily transformed to my old self; and I must say +that it was a most comfortable feeling, something like getting back +again into an old coat or an old pair of shoes. I never wanted to be +young again as long as I lived. Youth was too much like the Sunday +clothes of one's boyhood. Moreover, I had a secret conviction that the +woman I was now in search of would prefer one who had had some +experience at being a man, who would bring her not the green plums of +his love, but the cunningly ripened nectarines, a man to whom love was +something of an art as well as an inspiration. + +It was in this frame of mind that I came upon the following scene. + +The lane was a very cloistral one, with a ribbon of gravelly road, +bordered on each side with a rich margin of turf and a scramble of +blackberry bushes, green turf banks and dwarf oak-trees making a rich +and plenteous shade. My attention was caught firstly by a bicycle +lying carelessly on the turf, and secondly and lastly by a graceful +woman's figure, recumbent and evidently sleeping against the turf bank, +well tucked in among the afternoon shadows. My coming had not aroused +her, and so I stole nearer to her on tiptoe. + +She was a pretty woman, of a striking modern type, tall, +well-proportioned, strong, I should say, with a good complexion that +had evidently been made just a little better. But her most striking +feature was an opulent mass of dark red hair, which had fallen in some +disorder and made quite a pillow for her head. Her hat was off, lying +in its veil by her side, and a certain general abandon of her +figure,--which was clothed in a short cloth skirt, cut with that +unmistakable touch which we call style--betokened weariness that could +no longer wait for rest. + +Poor child! she was tired out. She must never be left to sleep on +there, for she seemed good to sleep till midnight. + +I turned to her bicycle, and, examining it with the air of a man who +had won silver cups in his day, I speedily discovered what had been the +mischief. The tire of the front wheel had been pierced, and a great +thorn was protruding from the place. Evidently this had been too much +for poor Rosalind, and it was not unlikely that she had cried herself +to sleep. + +I bent over her to look--yes, there were traces of tears. Poor thing! +Then I had a kindly human impulse. I would mend the tire, having +attended ambulance classes, do it very quietly so that she wouldn't +hear, like the fairy cobblers who used to mend people's boots while +they slept, and then wait in ambush to watch the effect upon her when +she awoke. + +What do you think of the idea? + +But one important detail I have omitted from my description of the +sleeper. Her left hand lay gloveless, and of the four rings on her +third finger one was a wedding-ring. + +"Such red hair,--and a wedding-ring!" I exclaimed inwardly. "How this +woman must have suffered!" + + + +CHAPTER II + +IN WHICH I HEAL A BICYCLE AND COME TO THE WHEEL OF PLEASURE + +Moving the bicycle a little away, so that my operations upon it might +not arouse her, I had soon made all right again, and when I laid it +once more where she had left it, she was still sleeping as sound as +ever. She had only to sleep long enough, a sly thought suggested, to +necessitate her ending her day's journey at the same inn as myself, +some five miles on the road. One virtue at least the reader will allow +to this history,--we are seldom far away from an inn in its pages. +When I thought of that I sat stiller than ever, hardly daring to turn +over the pages of Apuleius, which I had taken from my knapsack to +beguile the time, and, I confess, to give my eyes some other occupation +than the dangerous one of gazing upon her face, dangerous in more ways +than one, but particularly dangerous at the moment, because, as +everybody knows, a steady gaze on a sleeping face is apt to awake the +sleeper. And she wasn't to be disturbed! + +"No! she mustn't waken before seven at the latest," I said to myself, +holding my breath and starting in terror at every noise. Once a great +noisy bee was within an ace of waking her, but I caught him with +inspired dexterity, and he buzzed around her head no more. + +But despite the providential loneliness of the road, there were one or +two terrors that could not be disposed of so summarily. The worst of +all was a heavy miller's cart which one could hardly crush to silence +in one's handkerchief; but it went so slowly, and both man and horses +were so sleepy, that they passed unheard and unnoticing. + +A sprightly tramp promised greater difficulty, and nothing but some +ferocious pantomime and a shilling persuaded him to forego a choice +fantasia of cockney humour. + +A poor tired Italian organ-grinder, tramping with an equally tired +monkey along the dusty roads, had to be bought off in a similar +manner,--though he only cost sixpence. He gave me a Southern smile and +shrug of comprehension, as one acquainted with affairs of the +heart,--which was a relief after the cockney tramp's impudent +expression of, no doubt, a precisely similar sentiment. + +And then at last, just as my watch pointed to 6.50 (how well I remember +the exact moment!) Rosalind awoke suddenly, as women and children do, +sitting straight up on the instant, and putting up her hands to her +tousled hair, with a half-startled "Where am I?" When her hair was +once more "respectable," she gave her skirts a shake, bent sideways to +pull up her stockings and tighten her garters, looked at her watch, and +then with an exclamation at the lateness of the hour, went over, with +an air of desperate determination, to her bicycle. + +"Now for this horrid puncture!" were the first words I was to hear fall +from her lips. + +She sought for the wound in the india-rubber with growing bewilderment. + +"Goodness!" was her next exclamation, "why, there's nothing wrong with +it. Can I have been dreaming?" + +"I hope your dreams have been pleasanter than that," I ventured at this +moment to stammer, rising, a startling apparition, from my ambush +behind a mound of brambles; and before she had time to take in the +situation I added that I hoped she'd excuse my little pleasantry, and +told her how I had noticed her and the wounded bicycle, et cetera, et +cetera, as the reader can well imagine, without giving me the trouble +of writing it all out. + +She was sweetness itself on the instant. + +"Excuse you!" she said, "I should think so. Who wouldn't? You can't +tell the load you've taken off my mind. I'm sure I must have groaned +in my sleep--for I confess I cried myself to sleep over it." + +"I thought so," I said with gravity, and eyes that didn't dare to smile +outright till they had permission, which, however, was not long +withheld them. + +"How did you know?" + +"Oh, intuition, of course--who wouldn't have cried themselves to sleep, +and so tired too!" + +"You're a nice sympathetic man, anyhow," she laughed; "what a pity you +don't bicycle!" + +"Yes," I said, "I would give a thousand pounds for a bicycle at this +moment." + +"You ought to get a good one for that," she laughed,--"all bright parts +nickel, I suppose; indeed, you should get a real silver frame and gold +handle-bars for that, don't you think? Well, it would be nice all the +same to have your company a few miles, especially as it's growing +dark," she added. + +"Especially as it's growing dark," I repeated. + +"You won't be going much farther to-night. Have you fixed on your +inn?" I continued innocently. She had--but that was in a town too far +to reach to-night, after her long sleep. + +"You might have wakened me," she said. + +"Yes, it was stupid of me not to have thought of it," I answered, +offering no explanation of the dead bee which at the moment I espied a +little away in the grass, and saying nothing of the merry tramp and the +melancholy musician. + +Then we talked inns, and thus she fell beautifully into the pit which I +had digged for her; and it was presently arranged that she should ride +on to the Wheel of Pleasure and order a dinner, which she was to do me +the honour of sharing with me. + +I was to follow on foot as speedily as might be, and it was with a high +heart that I strode along the sunset lanes, hearing for some time the +chiming of her bell in front of me, till she had wheeled it quite out +of hearing, and it was lost in the distance. + +I never did a better five miles in my life. + + + +CHAPTER III + +TWO TOWN MICE AT A COUNTRY INN. + +When I reached the Wheel of Pleasure, I found Rosalind awaiting me in +the coffee-room, looking fresh from a traveller's toilette, and with +the welcome news that dinner was on the way. By the time I had washed +off the day's dust it was ready, and a merry meal it proved. Rosalind +had none of Alastor's objections to the wine-list, so we drank an +excellent champagne; and as there seemed to be no one in the hotel but +ourselves, we made ourselves at home and talked and laughed, none +daring to make us afraid. + +At first, on sitting down to table, we had grown momentarily shy, with +one of those sudden freaks of self-consciousness which occasionally +surprise one, when, midway in some slightly unconventional situation to +which the innocence of nature has led us, we realise it--"for an +instant and no more." + +Positively, I think that in the embarrassment of that instant I had +made some inspired remark to Rosalind about the lovely country which +lay dreamy in the afterglow outside our window. Oh, yes, I remember the +very words. They were "What a heavenly landscape!" or something +equally striking. + +"Yes," Rosalind had answered, "it is almost as beautiful as the Strand!" + +If I'd known her better, I should have exclaimed, "You dear!" and I +think it possible that I did say something to that effect,--perhaps +"You dear woman!" At all events, the veil of self-consciousness was +rent in twain at that remark, and our spirits rushed together at this +touch of London nature thus unexpectedly revealed. + +London! I hadn't realised till this moment how I had been missing it +all these days of rustication, and my heart went out to it with a vast +homesickness. + +"Yes! the Strand," I repeated tenderly, "the Strand--at night!" + +"Indeed, yes! what is more beautiful in the whole world?" she joined in +ardently. + +"The wild torrents of light, the passionate human music, the hansoms, +the white shirts and shawled heads, the theatres--" + +"Don't speak of them or you'll make me cry," said Rosalind. + +"The little suppers after the theatre--" + +"Please don't," she cried, "it is cruel;" and I saw that her eyes were +indeed glistening with tears. + +"But, of course," I continued, to give a slight turn aside in our talk, +"it is very wrong of us to have such sophisticated tastes. We ought to +love these lonely hills and meadows far more. The natural man revels in +solitude, and wants no wittier company than birds and flowers. +Wordsworth made a constant companion of a pet daisy. He seldom went +abroad without one or two trotting at his side, and a skylark would +keep Shelley in society for a week." + +"But they were poets," retorted Rosalind; "you don't call poets +natural. Why, they are the most unnatural of men. The natural person +loves the society of his kind, whereas the poet runs away from it." + +"Well, of course, there are poets and poets, poets sociable and poets +very unsociable. Wordsworth made the country, but Lamb made the town; +and there is quite a band of poets nowadays who share his distaste for +mountains, and take London for their muse. If you'll promise not to cry +again, I'll recall some lines by a friend of mine which were written +for town-tastes like ours. But perhaps you know them?" + +It will gratify my friend to learn that Rosalind had the verses I refer +to by heart, and started off humming,-- + + "Ah, London, London, our delight, + Great flower that opens but at night, + Great city of the midnight sun, + Whose day begins when day is done... + Like dragon-flies the hansoms hover + With jewelled eyes to catch the lover;" + +and so on, with a gusto of appreciation that must have been very +gratifying to the author had he been present. + +Thus perceiving a taste for a certain modern style of poetry in my +companion, I bethought me of a poem which I had written on the roadside +a few days before, and which, I confess, I was eager to confide to some +sympathetic ear. I was diffident of quoting it after such lines as +Rosalind had recalled, but by the time we had reached our coffee, I +plucked up courage to mention it. I had, however, the less diffidence +in that it would have a technical interest for her, being indeed no +other than a song of cycling a deux which had been suggested by one of +those alarmist danger-posts always placed at the top of the pleasantest +hills, sternly warning the cyclist that "this hill is dangerous,"--just +as in life there is always some minatory notice-board frowning upon us +in the direction we most desire to take. + +But I omit further preface and produce the poem:-- + + "This hill is dangerous," I said, + As we rode on together + Through sunny miles and sunny miles + Of Surrey heather; + "This hill is dangerous--don't you think + We'd better walk it?" + "Or sit it out--more danger still!" + She smiled--"and talk it?" + + "Are you afraid?" she turned and cried + So very brave and sweetly,-- + Oh that brave smile that takes the heart + Captive completely! + + "Afraid?" I said, deep in her eyes + Recklessly gazing; + "For you I'd ride into the sun + And die all blazing!" + + "I never yet saw hill," I said, + "And was afraid to take it; + I never saw a foolish law, + And feared to break it. + Who fears a hill or fears a law + With you beside him? + Who fears, dear star, the wildest sea + With you to guide him?" + + Then came the hill--a cataract, + A dusty swirl, before us; + The world stood round--a village world-- + In fearful chorus. + Sure to be killed! Sure to be killed! + O fools, how dare ye! + Sure to be killed--and serve us right! + Ah! love, but were we? + + The hill was dangerous, we knew, + And knew that we must take it; + The law was strong,--that too we knew + Yet dared to break it. + And those who'd fain know how we fared + Follow and find us, + Safe on the hills, with all the world + Safely behind us. + + +Rosalind smiled as I finished. "I'm afraid," she said, "the song is as +dangerous as the hill. Of course it has more meanings than one?" + +"Perhaps two," I assented. + +"And the second more important than the first." + +"Maybe," I smiled; "however, I hope you like it." + +Rosalind was very reassuring on that point, and then said musingly, as +if half to herself, "But that hill is dangerous, you know; and young +people would do well to pay attention to the danger-board!" + +Her voice shook as she spoke the last two or three words, and I looked +at her in some surprise. + +"Yes, I know it," she added, her voice quite broken; and before I +realised what was happening, there she was with her beautiful head down +upon the table, and sobbing as if her heart would break. + +"Forgive me for being such a fool," she managed to wring out. + +Now, usually I never interrupt a woman when she is crying, as it only +encourages her to continue; but there was something so unexpected and +mysterious about Rosalind's sudden outburst that it was impossible not +to be sympathetic. I endeavoured to soothe her with such words as +seemed fitting; and as she was crying because she really couldn't help +it, she didn't cry long. + +These tears proved, what certain indications of manner had already +hinted to me, that Rosalind was more artless than I had at first +supposed. She was a woman of the world, in that she lived in it, and +loved its gaieties, but there was still in her heart no little of the +child, as is there not in the hearts of all good women--or men? + +And this you will realise when I tell you the funny little story which +she presently confided to me as the cause of her tears. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +MARRIAGE A LA MODE + +For Rosalind was no victim of the monster man, as you may have supposed +her, no illustration of his immemorial perfidies. On the contrary, she +was one half of a very happy marriage, and, in a sense, her sufferings +at the moment were merely theoretical, if one may so describe the +sufferings caused by a theory. But no doubt the reader would prefer a +little straightforward narrative. + +Well, Rosalind and Orlando, as we may as well call them, are two newly +married young people who've been married, say, a year, and who find +themselves at the end of it loving each other more than at the +beginning,--for you are to suppose two of the tenderest, most devoted +hearts that ever beat as one. However, they are young people of the +introspective modern type, with a new theory for everything. + +About marriage and the law of happiness in that blessed estate, they +boasted the latest philosophical patents. To them, among other +matters, the secret of unhappy marriages was as simple as can be. It +was in nothing more or less than the excessive "familiarity" of +ordinary married life, and the lack of personal freedom allowed both +parties to the contract. Thus love grew commonplace, and the unhappy +ones to weary of each other by excessive and enforced association. +This was obvious enough, and the remedy as obvious,--separate bedrooms, +and a month's holiday in each year to be spent apart (notoriously all +people of quality had separate bedrooms, and see how happy they were!). +These and similar other safeguards of individual liberty they had in +mock-earnest drawn up and signed on their marriage eve, as a sort of +supplemental wedding service. + +It would not be seemly to inquire how far certain of these conditions +had been kept,--how often, for example, Orlando's little hermit's bed +had really needed remaking during those twelve months! Answer, ye +birds of the air that lie in your snug nests, so close, so close, +through the tender summer nights, and maybe with two or three little +ones besides,--unless, indeed, ye too have felt the influence of the +Zeit-geist, and have taken to sleeping in separate nests. + +The condition with which alone we have here to concern ourselves was +one which provided that each of the two lovers, hereafter to be called +the husband of the one part and the wife of the other part, solemnly +bound themselves to spend one calendar month of each year out of each +other's society, with full and free liberty to spend it wheresoever, +with whomsoever, and howsoever they pleased; and that this condition +was rigidly to be maintained, whatever immediate effort it might cost, +as the parties thereto believed that so would their love the more +likely maintain an enduring tenderness and an unwearied freshness. And +to this did Orlando and his Rosalind set their hands and hearts and +lips. + +Now, wisdom is all very well till the time comes to apply it; and as +that month of June approached in which they had designed to give their +love a holiday, they had found their courage growing less and less. +Their love didn't want a holiday; and when Orlando had referred to the +matter during the early days of May, Rosalind had burst into tears, and +begged him to reconsider a condition which they had made before they +really knew what wedded love was. But Orlando, though in tears himself +(so Rosalind averred), had a higher sense of their duty to their ideal, +and was able, though in tears, to beg her look beyond the moment, and +realise what a little self-denial now might mean in the years to come. +They hadn't kept any other of their resolutions,--thus Rosalind let it +out!--this must be kept. + +And thus it had come about that Orlando had gone off for his month's +holiday with a charming girl, who, with the cynic, will no doubt +account for his stern adherence to duty; and Rosalind had gone off for +hers with a pretty young man whom she'd liked well enough to go to the +theatre and to supper with,--a young man who was indeed a dear friend, +and a vivacious, sympathetic companion, but whom, as a substitute for +Orlando, she immediately began to hate. Such is the female heart! + +The upshot of the experiment, so far as she was concerned, was that she +had quarrelled with her companion, and had gone off in search of her +husband, on which search she was embarked at the moment of my +encountering her. The tears, therefore,--that is, the first lot of +tears by the roadside,--had not been all on account of the injured +bicycle, you see. + +Now the question was, How had Orlando been getting on? I had an +intuition that in his case the experiment had proved more enjoyable, +but I am not one to break the bruised reed by making such a suggestion. +On the contrary, I expressed my firm conviction that Orlando was +probably even more miserable than she was. + +"Do you really think so?" she asked eagerly, her poor miserable face +growing bright a moment with hope and gratitude. + +"Undoubtedly," I answered sententiously. "To put the case on the most +general principles, apart from Orlando's great love for you, it is an +eternal truth of masculine sentiment that man always longs for the +absent woman." + +"Are you quite sure?" asked Rosalind, with an unconvinced half-smile. + +"Absolutely." + +"I thought," she continued, "that it was just the other way about; that +it was presence and not absence that made the heart of man grow fonder, +and that if a man's best girl, so to say, was away, he was able to make +himself very comfortable with his second-best!" + +"In some cases, of course, it's true," I answered, unmoved; "but with a +love like yours and Orlando's, it's quite different." + +"Oh, do you really mean it?" + +"Certainly I do; and your mistake has been in supposing that an +experiment which no few every-day married couples would be only too +glad to try, was ever meant for two such love-birds as you. Laws and +systems are meant for the unhappy and the untractable, not for people +like you, for whom Love makes its own laws." + +"Yes, that is what we used to say; and indeed, we thought that this was +one of love's laws,--this experiment, as you call it." + +"But it was quite a mistake," I went on in my character as matrimonial +oracle. "Love never made a law so cruel, a law that would rob true +lovers of each other's society for a whole month in a year, stretching +them on the rack of absence--" There my period broke down, so I began +another less ambitiously planned. + +"A whole month in a year! Think what that would mean in a lifetime. +How long do you expect to live and love together? Say another fifty +years at the most. Well, fifty ones are fifty. Fifty months +equal--four twelves are forty-eight and two over--four years and two +months. Yes, out of the short life God allows even for the longest +love you would voluntarily throw away four years and two months!" + +This impressive calculation had a great effect on poor Rosalind; and it +is a secondary matter that it and its accompanying wisdom may have less +weight with the reader, as for the moment Rosalind was my one concern. + +"But, of course, we have perfect trust in each other," said Rosalind +presently, with charming illogicality. + +"No doubt," I said; "but Love, like a good householder (ahem!), does +well not to live too much on trust." + +"But surely love means perfect trust," said Rosalind. + +"Theoretically, yes; practically, no. On the contrary, it means +exactly the opposite. Trust, perfect trust, with loved ones far away! +No, it is an inhuman ideal, and the more one loves the less one lives +up to it. If not, what do these tears mean?" + +"Oh, no!" Rosalind retorted, with a flush, "you mustn't say that. I +trust Orlando absolutely. It isn't that; it's simply that I can't bear +to be away from him." + +What women mean by "trusting" might afford a subject for an interesting +disquisition. However, I forbore to pursue the matter, and answered +Rosalind's remark in a practical spirit. + +"Well, then," I said, "if that's all, the thing to do is to find +Orlando, tell him that you cannot bear it, and spend the rest of your +holiday, you and he, together." + +"That's what I thought," said Rosalind. + +"Unfortunately," I continued, "owing to your foolish arrangement not to +tell each other where you were going and not to write, as being +incompatible with Perfect Trust, you don't know where Orlando is at the +present moment." + +"No; but I have a good guess," said Rosalind. "There's a smart little +watering-place, not so many miles from here, called Yellowsands, a sort +of secret little Monaco, which not many people know of, a +wicked-innocent gay little place, where we've often talked of going. I +think it's very likely that Orlando has gone there; and that's just +where I was going when we met." + +I will tell the reader more about Yellowsands in the next chapter. +Meanwhile, let us complete Rosalind's arrangements. The result of our +conversation was that she was to proceed to Yellowsands on the morrow, +and that I was to follow as soon as possible, so as to be available +should she chance to need any advice, and at all events to give myself +the pleasure of meeting her again. + +This arranged, we said good-night, Rosalind with ever such a +brightened-up face, of which I thought for half an hour and then fell +asleep to dream of Yellowsands. + + + +CHAPTER V + +CONCERNING THE HAVEN OF YELLOWSANDS + +On the morrow, at the peep of day, Rosalind was off to seek her lord. +An hour or so after I started in leisurely pursuit. + +Yellowsands! I had heard in a vague way of the place, as a whim of a +certain young nobleman who combined brains with the pursuit of +pleasure. Like most ideas, it was simple enough when once conceived. +Any one possessing a mile or two of secluded seaboard, cut off on the +land side by precipitous approaches, and including a sheltered river +mouth ingeniously hidden by nature, in the form of a jutting wall of +rock, from the sea, might have made as good use of these natural +opportunities as the nobleman in question, had they only been as wise +and as rich. William Blake proposed to rebuild Jerusalem in this green +and pleasant land. My lord proposed to erect a miniature Babylon amid +similar pleasant surroundings, a little dream-city by the sea, a home +for the innocent pleasure-seeker stifled by the puritanism of the great +towns, refugium peccatorum in this island of the saints. + +"Once it was the Puritan Fathers who left our coasts," he is recorded +to have said; "nowadays it is our Prodigal Sons." + +No doubt it was in further elaboration of this aphorism that the little +steamboat that sailed every other day from Yellowsands to the beckoning +shores of France was called "the Mayflower." + +My lord's plan had been simple. By the aid of cunning architects he +had first blasted his harbour into shape, then built his hotels and +pleasure-palaces, and then leased them to dependants of his who knew +the right sort of people, and who knew that it was as much as their +lease was worth to find accommodation for teetotal amateur +photographers or wistful wandering Sunday-school treats. As, +unfortunately, the Queen's highway ran down in tortuous descent to the +handful of fishermen's cottages that had clung there limpet-like for +ages, there was always a chance of such a stray visitation; but it was +remote, and the whole place, hand and heart, was in the pocket of my +lord. + +So much to give the reader some idea of the secret watering-place of +Yellowsands, situated at the mouth of that romantic little torrent, the +river Sly. Such further description as may be needed may be kept till +we come within sight of its gilded roofs and marble terraces. + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE MOORLAND OF THE APOCALYPSE + +I reckoned that it would take me two or three days, leisurely walking, +to reach Yellowsands. Rosalind would, of course, arrive there long +before me; but that I did not regret, as I was in a mood to find +company in my own thoughts. + +Her story gave me plenty to think of. I dwelt particularly on the +careless extravagance of the happy. Here were two people to whom life +had given casually what I was compelled to go seeking lonely and +footsore through the world, and with little hope of finding it at the +end; and yet were they so little aware of their good fortune as to risk +it over a trumpery theory, a shadow of pseudo-philosophy. Out of the +deep dark ocean of life Love had brought them his great moon-pearl, and +they sat on the boat's edge carelessly tossing it from one to the +other, unmindful of the hungry fathoms on every side. A sudden slip, +and they had lost it for ever, and might only watch its shimmering fall +to the bottom of the world. Theories! Theories are for the unknown and +the unhappy. Who will trouble to theorise about Heaven when he has +found Heaven itself? Theories are for the poor-devil outcast,--for him +who stands outside the confectioner's shop of life without a penny in +his pocket, while the radiant purchasers pass in and out through the +doors,--for him who watches with wistful eyes this and that sugared +marvel taken out of the window by mysterious hands, to bless some happy +customer inside. He is not fool enough even to hope for one of those +glistering masterpieces of frosted sugar and silk flowers, which rise +to pinnacles of snowy sweetness, white mountains of blessedness, rich +inside, they say, with untold treasures for the tooth that is sweet. +No! he craves nothing but a simple Bath-bun of happiness, and even that +is denied him. + +Would I ever find my Bath-bun? I disconsolately asked myself. I had +been seeking it now for some little time, and seemed no nearer than +when I set out. I had seen a good many Bath-buns on my pilgrimage, it +is true. Some I have not had space to confide to the reader; but +somehow or other they had not seemed the unmistakably predestined for +which I was seeking. + +And oh, how I could love a girl, if she would only give me the +chance,--that is, be the right girl! Oh, Sylvia Joy! where art thou? +Why so long dost thou remain hidden "in shady leaves of destiny"? + + + "Seest thou thy lover lowly laid, + Hear'st thou the sighs that rend his breast?" + + +And then, as the novelists say, "a strange thing happened." + +The road I was tramping at the moment was somewhat desolate. It ran up +from a small market town through a dreary undulating moorland, forking +off here and there to unknown villages of which the horizon gave no +hint. Its cheerless hillocks were all but naked of vegetation, for a +never very flourishing growth of heather had recently been burnt right +down to the unkindly-looking earth, leaving a dwarf black forest of +charred sticks very grim to the eye and heart; while the dull surface +of a small lifeless-looking lake added the final touch to the Dead-Sea +mournfulness of the prospect. + +Suddenly I became aware of the fluttering of a grey dress a little +ahead of me. Unconsciously I had been overtaking a tall young woman +walking in the same direction as myself, with a fine athletic carriage +of her figure and a noble movement of her limbs. + +She walked manfully, and as I neared her I could hear the sturdy ring +of her well-shod feet upon the road. There was an air of expectancy +about her walk, as though she looked to be met presently by some one +due from the opposite direction. + +It was curious that I had not noticed her before, for she must have +been in sight for some time. No doubt my melancholy abstraction +accounted for that, and perhaps her presence there was to be explained +by a London train which I had listlessly observed come in to the town +an hour before. This surmise was confirmed, as presently,--over the +brow of a distant undulation in the road, I descried a farmer's gig +driven by another young woman. The gig immediately hoisted a +handkerchief; so did my pedestrian. At this moment I was within a yard +or two of overtaking her. And it was then the strange thing happened. + +Distance had lent no enchantment which nearness did not a hundred times +repay. The immediate impression of strength and distinction which the +first glimpse of her had made upon me was more and more verified as I +drew closer to her. The carriage of her head was no whit less noble +than the queenly carriage of her limbs, and her glorious chestnut hair, +full of warm tints of gold, was massed in a sumptuous simplicity above +a neck that would have made an average woman's fortune. This glowing +description, however, must be lowered or heightened in tone by the +association of these characteristics with an undefinable simplicity of +mien, a certain slight rusticity of effect. The town spoke in her +well-cut gown and a few simple adornments, but the dryad still moved +inside. + +I suppose most men, even in old age, feel a certain anxiety, conscious +or not, as they overtake a woman whose back view is in the least +attractive. I confess that I felt a more than usual, indeed a quite +irrational, perturbation of the blood, as, coming level with her, I +dared to look into her face. As I did so she involuntarily turned to +look at me--turned to look at me, did I say? "To look" is a feeble +verb indeed to express the unexpected shock of beauty to which I was +suddenly exposed. I cannot describe her features, for somehow features +always mean little to me. They were certainly beautifully moulded, and +her skin was of a lovely pale olive, but the life of her face was in +her great violet eyes and her wonderful mouth. Thus suddenly to look +into her face was like unexpectedly to come upon moon and stars +reflected in some lonely pool. I suppose the look lasted only a second +or two; but it left me dazzled as that king in the Eastern tale, who +seemed to have lived whole dream-lives between dipping his head into a +bowl of water and taking it out again. Similarly in that moment I +seemed to have dived into this unknown girl's eyes, to have walked +through the treasure palaces of her soul, to have stood before the +flaming gates of her heart, to have gathered silver flowers in the +fairy gardens of her dreams. I had followed her white-robed spirit +across the moonlit meadows of her fancy, and by her side had climbed +the dewy ladder of the morning star, and then suddenly I had been +whirled up again to the daylight through the magic fountains of her +eyes. + +I'll tell you more about that look presently! Meanwhile the gig +approached, and the two girls exchanged affectionate greetings. + +"Tom hasn't come with you, then?" said the other girl, who was +evidently her sister, and who was considerably more rustic in style and +accent. She said it with a curious mixture of anxiety and relief. + +"No," answered the other simply, and I thought I noticed a slight +darkening of her face. Tom was evidently her husband. So she was +married! + +"Yes!" said a fussy hypocrite of reason within me, "and what's that to +do with you?" + +"Everything, you fool!" answered a robuster voice in my soul, kicking +the feeble creature clean out of my head on the instant. + +For, absurd as it may sound, with that look into those Arabian Nights' +eyes, had come somewhere out of space an overwhelming intuition, nay, +an unshakable conviction, that the woman who was already being rolled +away from me down the road in that Dis's car of a farmer's gig, was now +and for ever and before all worlds the woman God had created for me, +and that, unless I could be hers and she mine, there would be no home, +no peace for either of us so long as we lived. + +And yet she was being carried away further and further every moment, +while I gazed after her, aimlessly standing in the middle of the road. +Why did I not call to her, overtake her? In a few moments she would be +lost to me for ever-- + +Though I was unaware of it, this hesitation was no doubt owing to a +stealthy return of reason by the back-door of my mind. In fact, he +presently dared to raise his voice again. "I don't deny," he ventured, +ready any moment to flee for his life, "that she is written yours in +all the stars, and particularly do I see it written on the face of the +moon; but you mustn't forget that many are thus meant for each other +who never meet, not to speak of marrying. It is such contradictions +between the purposes and performance of the Creator that make +life--life; you'll never see her again, so make your mind easy--" + +At that moment the gig was on the point of turning a corner into a dark +pine-wood; but just ere it disappeared,--was it fancy?--I seemed to +have caught the flash of a momentarily fluttering handkerchief. "Won't +I? you fool!" I exclaimed, savagely smiting reason on the cheek, as I +sprang up wildly to wave mine; but the road was already blank. + +At this a sort of panic possessed me, and like a boy I raced down the +road after her. To lose her like this, at the very moment that she had +been revealed to me. It was more than I could bear. + +Past the dreary lake, through the little pine-wood I ran, and then I +was brought to a halt, panting, by cross-roads and a finger-post. An +involuntary memory of Nicolete sang to me as I read the quaint names of +the villages to one of which the Vision was certainly wending. Yes! I +was bound on one more journey to the moon, but alas! there was no +heavenly being by my side to point the way. Oh, agony, which was the +road she had taken? + +It never occurred to me till the following day that I might have been +able to track her by the wheel-marks of the gig on the dusty summer +road. Instead I desperately resorted to the time-honoured expedient of +setting up a stick and going in the direction of its fall. Like most +ancient guide-posts, it led me quite wrong, down into a pig's-trough of +a hamlet whither I felt sure she couldn't have been bound. Then I ran +back in a frenzy, and tried the other road,--as if it could be any use, +with at least three quarters of an hour gone since I had lost sight of +her. Of course I had no luck; and finally, hot and worn out with +absurd excitement, I threw myself down in a meadow and called myself an +ass,--which I undoubtedly was. + +For of all the fancies that had obsessed my moonstruck brain, this was +surely the maddest. Suppose I had overtaken the girl, what could I +have said to her? And, suppose she had listened to me, how did I know +she was the girl I imagined her to be? But this was sheer reason again, +and has no place in a fantastic romance. So I hasten to add that the +mood was one of brief duration, and that no cold-water arguments were +able to quench the fire which those eyes had set aflame within me, no +daylight philosophy had any power to dispel the dream of a face which +was now my most precious possession, as I once more took up my stick +and listlessly pursued my way to Yellowsands. + +For I had one other reason than my own infatuation, or thought I had. +Yes, brief and rapid as our glance at each other had been, I had +fancied in her eyes a momentary kindling as they met mine, a warm +summer-lightning which seemed for a second to light up for me the inner +heaven of her soul. + +Of one feeling, however, I was sure,--that on my side this apocalyptic +recognition of her, as it had seemed, was no mere passionate +correspondence of sex, no mere spell of a beautiful face (for such +passion and such glamour I had made use of opportunities to study), but +was indeed the flaming up of an elemental affinity, profounder than +sex, deeper than reason, and ages older than speech. + +But it was a fancy, for all that? Yes, one of those fancies that are +fancies on earth, but facts in heaven. Perhaps you don't believe in +them. Well, I'm afraid that cannot be helped. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +"COME UNTO THESE YELLOW SANDS!" + +Nothing further happened to me till I reached Yellowsands, except an +exciting ride on the mail-coach, which connected it with the nearest +railway-station some twenty miles away. For the last three or four +miles the road ran along the extreme precipitous verge of cliffs that +sloped, a giant's wall of grassy mountain, right away down to a dreamy +amethystine floor of sea, miles and miles, as it seemed, below. To +ride on that coach, as it gallantly staggered betwixt earth and heaven, +was to know all the ecstasy of flying, with an added touch of danger, +which birds and angels, and others accustomed to fly, can never +experience. And then at length the glorious mad descent down three +plunging cataracts of rocky road, the exciting rattling of the harness, +the grinding of the strong brakes, the driver's soothing calls to his +horses, and the long burnished horn trailing wild music behind us, like +invisible banners of aerial brass,--oh, it stirred the dullest blood +amongst us thus as it were to tear down the sky towards the white roofs +of Yellowsands, glittering here and there among the clouds of trees +which filled the little valley almost to the sea's edge, while floating +up to us came soft strains of music, silken and caressing, as though +the sea itself sang us a welcome. Had you heard it from aboard the +Argo, you would have declared it to be the sirens singing, and it would +have been found necessary to lash you to the mast. But there were no +masts to lash you to in Yellowsands--and of the sirens it is not yet +time to speak. + +It was the golden end of afternoon as the coach stopped in front of the +main hotel, The Golden Fortune; and for the benefit of any with not too +long purses who shall hereafter light on Yellowsands, and be alarmed at +the name and the marble magnificence of that delightful hotel, I may +say that the charges there were surprisingly "reasonable," owing to one +other wise provision of the young lord and master of that happy place, +who had had the wit to realise that the nicest and brightest and +prettiest people were often the poorest. Yellowsands, therefore, was +carried on much like a club, to which you had only to be the right sort +of person to belong. I was relieved to find that the hotel people +evidently considered me the right sort of person, and didn't take me +for a Sunday-school treat,--for presently I found myself in a charming +little corner bedroom, whence I could survey the whole extent of the +little colony of pleasure. The Golden Fortune was curiously situated, +perched at the extreme sea-end of a little horse-shoe bay hollowed out +between two headlands, the points of which approached each other so +closely that the river Sly had but a few yards of rocky channel through +which to pour itself into the sea. The Golden Fortune, therefore, +backed by towering woodlands, looked out to sea at one side, across to +the breakwater headland on another, and on its land side commanded a +complete view of the gay little haven, with its white houses built +terrace on terrace upon its wooded slopes, connected by flights of +zigzag steps, by which the apparently inaccessible shelves and +platforms circulated their gay life down to the gay heart of the +place,--the circular boulevard, exquisitely leafy and cool, where one +found the great casino and the open-air theatre, the exquisite +orchestra, into which only the mellowest brass and the subtlest strings +were admitted, and the Cafe du Ciel, charmingly situated among the +trees, where the boulevard became a bridge, for a moment, at the mouth +of the river Sly. Here one might gaze up the green rocky defile through +which the Sly made pebbly music, and through which wound romantic walks +and natural galleries, where far inland you might wander + + "From dewy dawn to dewy night, + And have one with you wandering," + +or where you might turn and look across the still lapping harbour, out +through the little neck of light between the headlands to the +shimmering sea beyond,--your ears filled with a melting tide of sweet +sounds, the murmur of the streams and the gentle surging of the sea, +the rippling of leaves, the soft restless whisper of women's gowns, and +the music of their vowelled voices. It was here I found myself sitting +at sunset, alone, but so completely under the spell of the place that I +needed no companion. The place itself was companion enough. The +electric fairy lamps had popped alight; and as the sun sank lower, +Yellowsands seemed like a glowing crown of light floating upon the +water. + +I had as yet failed to catch any sight of Rosalind; so I sat alone, and +so far as I had any thoughts or feelings, beyond a consciousness of +heavenly harmony with my surroundings, they were for that haunting +unknown face with the violet eyes and the heavy chestnut hair. + +Presently, close by, the notes of a guitar came like little gold +butterflies out of the twilight, and then a woman's voice rose like a +silver bird on the air. It was a gay wooing measure to which she sang. +I listened with ears and heart. "All ye," it went,-- + + All ye who seek for pleasure, + Here find it without measure-- + No one to say + A body nay, + And naught but love and leisure. + + All ye who seek forgetting, + Leave frowns and fears and fretting, + Here by the sea + Are fair and free + To give you peace and petting. + + All ye whose hearts are breaking + For somebody forsaking, + We'll count you dear, + And heal you here, + And send you home love-making." + + +"Bravo!" I cried involuntarily, as the song ended amid multitudinous +applause; and I thus attracted the attention of another who sat near me +as lonely as myself, but evidently quite at home in the place. + +"You haven't heard our sirens sing before?" he said, turning to me with +a pleasant smile, and thus we fell into talk of the place and its +pleasures. + +"There's one feature of the place I might introduce you to if you care +for a stroll," he said presently. "Have you heard of The Twelve +Golden-Haired Bar-maids?" I hadn't, but the fantastic name struck my +fancy. It was, he explained, the name given to a favourite buffet at +the Hotel Aphrodite, which was served by twelve wonderful girls, not +one under six feet in height, and all with the most glorious golden +hair. It was a whim of the management, he said. + +So, of course, we went. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE TWELVE GOLDEN-HAIRED BAR-MAIDS. + +Now it was not without some boyish nervousness that I followed my newly +made friend, for I confess that I have ever been a poor hand at talking +to bar-maids. It is, I am convinced, an art apart, an art like any +other,--needing first the natural gift, then the long patient training, +and finally the courageous practice. Alas for me, I possessed neither +gift, training, nor courage. Courage I lacked most of all. It was in +vain that I said to myself that it was like swimming,--all that was +needed was "confidence." That was the very thing I couldn't muster. No +doubt I am handicapped by a certain respectful homage which I always +feel involuntarily to any one in the shape of woman, for anything +savouring of respect is the last thing to win the bar-maid heart +divine. The man to win her is he who calls loudly for his drink, +without a "Please" or a "Thank you," throws his hat at the back of his +head, gulps down half his glass, and, while drawing breath for the +other half, takes a hard, indifferent look at her, and in an off-hand +voice throws her some fatuous, mirthless jest. + +Now, I've never been able to do this in the convincing grand manner of +the British male; and whatever I have said, the effect has been the +same. I've talked about theatres and music-halls, of events of the +day, I've even--Heaven help me--talked of racing and football, but I +might as well have talked of Herbert Spencer. I suppose I didn't talk +about them in the right way. I'm sure it must be my fault somewhere, +for certainly they seem easy enough to please, poor things! However, my +failure remains, and sometimes even I find it extremely hard to attract +their attention in the ordinary way of business. I don't mind my +neighbour being preferred before me, but I do object to his being +served before me! + +So, I say, I couldn't but tremble at the vision of those golden-haired +goddesses, standing with immobile faces by their awful altars. Indeed, +had I realised how superbly impressive they were going to be, I think I +must have declined the adventure altogether,--for, robed in lustrous +ivory-white linen were those figures of undress marble, the wealth of +their glorious bodies pressing out into bosoms magnificent as magnolias +(nobler lines and curves Greece herself has never known), towering in +throats of fluted alabaster, and flowering in coiffures of imperial +gold. + +Nor was their temple less magnificent. To make it fair, Ruskin had +relit the seven lamps of architecture, and written the seven labours of +Hercules; for these windows through a whole youth Burne Jones had +worshipped painted glass at Oxford, and to breathe romance into these +frescos had Rossetti been born, and Dante born again. Men had gone to +prison and to death that this temple of Whiskey-and-Soda might be fair. + +Strange, in truth, are the ministrations to which Beauty is called. +Out of the high heaven is she summoned, from mystic communion with her +own perfection, from majestic labours in the Sistine Chapel of the +Stars,--yea, she must put aside her gold-leaf and purples and leave +unfinished the very panels of the throne of God,--that Circe shall have +her palace, and her worshippers their gilded sty. + +As there were at least a score of "worshippers" round each Circe, my +nervousness became unimportant, and therefore passed. Thus, as my +companion and I sat at one of the little tables, from which we might +gaze upon the sea without and Aphrodite within, my eyes were able to +fly like bees from one fair face to another. Finally, they settled upon +a Circe less besieged of the hoarse and grunting mob. She was +conspicuously less in height, her hair was rather bright red than +golden, and her face had more meanings than the faces of her fellows. + +"Why," in a flash it came to me, "it's Rosalind!" and clean forgetting +to be shy, or polite to my companion, I hastened across to her, to be +greeted instantly in a manner so exclusively intimate that the little +crowd about her presently spread itself among the other crowds, and we +were left to talk alone. + +"Well," I said, "you're a nice girl! Whatever are you doing here?" + +"Yes, I'm afraid you'll have but a strange opinion of me," she said; +"but I love all experience,--it's such fun,--and when I heard that +there was a sudden vacancy for a golden-haired beauty in this place, I +couldn't resist applying, and to my surprise they took me--and here I +am! Of course I shall only stay till Orlando appears--which," she +added mournfully--"he hasn't done yet." + +Her hours were long and late, but she had two half-days free in the +week, and for these of course I engaged myself. + +Meanwhile I spent as much time as I decently could at her side; but it +was impossible to monopolise her, and the rest of my time there was no +difficulty in filling up, you may be sure, in so gay a place. + +Two or three nights after this, a little before dinner-time, while I +was standing talking to her, she suddenly went very white, and in a +fluttering voice gasped, "Look yonder!" I looked. A rather slight +dark-haired young man was entering the bar, with a very stylish pretty +woman at his side. As they sat down and claimed the waiter, some +distance away, Rosalind whispered, "That's my husband!" + +"Oh!" I said; "but that's no reason for your fainting. Pull yourself +together. Take a drop of brandy." But woman will never take the most +obvious restorative, and Rosalind presently recovered without the +brandy. She looked covertly at her husband, with tragic eyes. + +"He's much younger than I imagined him," I said,--reserving for myself +the satisfaction which this discovery had for me. + +"Oh, yes, he's really quite a boy," said Rosalind; adding under her +breath, "Dear fellow! how I love him!" + +"And hate him too!" she superadded, as she observed his evident +satisfaction with his present lot. Indeed the experiment appeared to +be working most successfully with him; nor, looking at his companion, +could I wonder. She was a sprightly young woman, very smart and merry +and decorously voluptuous, and of that fascinating prettiness that wins +the hearts of boys and storms the footlights. One of her +characteristics soothed the heart of Rosalind. She had splendid red +hair, almost as good as her own. + +"He's been faithful to my hair, at all events," she said, trying to be +nonchalant. + +"And the eyes are not unlike," I added, meaning well. + +"I'm sorry you think so," said Rosalind, evidently piqued. + +"Well, never mind," I tried to make peace, "she hasn't your hands,"--I +knew that women cared more about their hands than their faces. + +"How do you know?" she retorted; "you cannot see through her gloves." + +"Would any gloves disguise your hands?" I persisted. "They would shine +through the mittens of an Esquimau." + +"Well, enough of that! See--I know it's wickedly mean of me--but +couldn't you manage to sit somewhere near them and hear what they are +saying? Of course you needn't tell me anything it would be mean to +hear, but only what--" + +"You would like to know." + +But this little plot died at its birth, for that very minute the +threatened couple arose, and went out arm in arm, apparently as +absurdly happy as two young people can be. + +As they passed out, one of Rosalind's fellow bar-maids turned to her +and said,-- + +"You know who that was?" + +"Who?" said Rosalind, startled. + +"That pretty woman who went out with that young Johnny just now?" + +"No; who is she?" + +"Why, that's"--and readers with heart-disease had better brace +themselves up for a great shock--"that's SYLVIA JOY, the famous dancer!" + + + +CHAPTER IX + +SYLVIA JOY + +Sylvia Joy! And I hadn't so much as looked at her petticoat for weeks! +But I would now. The violet eyes and the heavy chestnut hair rose up +in moralising vision. Yes! God knows, they were safe in my heart, but +petticoats were another matter. Sylvia Joy! + +Well, did you ever? Well, I'm d----d! Sylvia Joy! + +I should have been merely superhuman had I been able to control the +expression of surprise which convulsed my countenance at the sound of +that most significant name. + +"The name seems familiar to you," said Rosalind, a little surprised and +a little eagerly; "do you know the lady?" + +"Slightly," I prevaricated. + +"How fortunate!" exclaimed Rosalind; "you'll be all the better able to +help me!" + +"Yes," I said; "but since things have turned out so oddly, I may say +that our relations are of so extremely delicate a nature that I shall +have very carefully to think out what is best to be done. Meanwhile, +do you mind lending me that ring for a few hours?" + +It was a large oblong opal set round with small diamonds,--a ring of +distinguished design you could hardly help noticing, especially on a +man's hand, for which it was too conspicuously dainty. I slipped it on +the little finger of my left hand, and, begging Rosalind to remain +where she was meanwhile, and to take no steps without consulting me, I +mysteriously, not to say officiously, departed. + +I left the twelfth Golden-Haired Bar-maid not too late to stalk her +husband and her under-study to their hotel, where they evidently +proposed to dine. There was, therefore, nothing left for me but to +dine also. So I dined; and when the courses of my dining were ended, I +found myself in a mellow twilight at the Cafe du Ciel. And it was +about the hour of the sirens' singing. Presently the little golden +butterflies flitted once more through the twilight, and again the +woman's voice rose like a silver bird on the air. + +As I have a partiality for her songs, I transcribe this Hymn of the +Daughters of Aphrodite, which you must try to imagine transfigured by +her voice and the sunset. + + + Queen Aphrodite's + Daughters are we, + She that was born + Of the morn + And the sea; + White are our limbs + As the foam on the wave, + Wild are our hymns + And our lovers are brave! + + Queen Aphrodite, + Born of the sea, + Beautiful dutiful daughters + Are we! + + + You who would follow, + Fear not to come, + For love is for love + As dove is for dove; + The harp of Apollo + Shall lull you to rest, + And your head find its home + On this beautiful breast. + + + Queen Aphrodite, + Born of the sea, + Beautiful dutiful daughters + Are we! + + + Born of the Ocean, + Wave-like are we! + Rising and falling + Like waves of the sea; + Changing for ever, + Yet ever the same, + Music in motion + And marble in flame. + + + Queen Aphrodite, + Born of the sea, + Beautiful dutiful daughters + Are we! + + +When I alighted once more upon the earth from the heaven of this song, +who should I find seated within a table of me but the very couple I was +at the moment so unexpectedly interested in? But they were far too +absorbed in each other to notice me, and consequently I was able to +hear all of importance that was said. I regret that I cannot gratify +the reader with a report of their conversation, for the excuse I had +for listening was one that is not transferable. A woman's happiness +was at stake. No other consideration could have persuaded me to means +so mean save an end so noble. I didn't even tell Rosalind all I heard. +Mercifully for her, the candour of fools is not among my superstitions. +Suffice it for all third persons to know--what Rosalind indeed has +never known, and what I hope no reader will be fool enough to tell +her--that Orlando was for the moment hopelessly and besottedly +faithless to his wife, and that my services had been bespoken in the +very narrowest nick of time. + +Having, as the reader has long known, a warm personal interest in his +attractive companion, and desiring, therefore, to think as well of her +as possible, I was pleased to deduce, negatively, from their +conversation, that Sylvia Joy knew nothing of Rosalind, and believed +Orlando to be a free, that is, an unmarried man. From the point of +view, therefore, of her code, there was no earthly reason why she +should not fall in with Orlando's proposal that they should leave for +Paris by the "Mayflower" on the following morning. Orlando, I could +hear, wished to make more extended arrangements, and references to that +well-known rendezvous, "Eternity," fell on my ears from time to time. +Evidently Sylvia had no very saving belief in Eternity, for I heard her +say that they might see how they got on in Paris for a start. Then it +would be time enough to talk of Eternity. This and other remarks of +Sylvia's considerably predisposed me towards her. Having concluded +their arrangements for the heaven of the morrow, they rose to take a +stroll along the boulevards. As they did so, I touched Orlando's +shoulder and begged his attention for a moment. Though an entire +stranger to him, I had, I said, a matter of extreme importance to +communicate to him, and I hoped, therefore, that it would suit his +convenience to meet me at the same place in an hour and a half. As I +said this, I flashed his wife's ring in the light so obviously that he +was compelled to notice it. + +"Wherever did you get that?" he gasped, no little surprised and +agitated. + +"From your wife," I answered, rapidly moving away. "Be sure to be here +at eleven." + +I slipped away into the crowd, and spent my hour and a half in +persuading Rosalind that her husband was no doubt a little infatuated, +but nevertheless the most faithful husband in the world. If she would +only leave all to me, by this time to-morrow night, if not a good many +hours before, he should be in her arms as safe as in the Bank. It did +my heart good to see how happy this artistic adaptation of the truth +made her; and I must say that she never had a wiser friend. + +When eleven came, I was back in my seat at the Cafe du Ciel. Orlando +too was excitedly punctual. + +"Well, what is it?" he hurried out, almost before he had sat down. + +"What will you do me the honour of drinking?" I asked calmly. + +"Oh, drink be d----d!" he said; "what have you to tell me?" + +"I'm glad to hear you rap out such a good honest oath," I said; "but I +should like a drink, for all that, and if I may say so, you would be +none the worse for a brandy and soda, late as it is." + +When the drinks had come, I remarked to him quietly, but not without +significance: "The meaning of this ring is that your wife is here, and +very wretched. By an accident I have been privileged with her +friendship; and I may say, to save time, that she has told me the whole +story. + +"What happily she has not been able to tell me, and what I need hardly +say she will never know from me, I overheard, in the interests of your +joint happiness, an hour or so ago." + +The man who is telling the story has a proverbial great advantage; but +I hope the reader knows enough of me by this to believe that I am far +from meanly availing myself of it in this narrative. I am well and +gratefully aware that in this interview with Orlando my advantages were +many and fortunate. For example, had he been bigger and older, or had +he not been a gentleman, my task had been considerably more arduous, +not to say dangerous. + +But, as Rosalind had said, he was really quite a boy, and I confess I +was a little ashamed for him, and a little piqued, that he showed so +little fight. The unexpectedness of my attack had, I realised, given +me the whip-hand. So I judged, at all events, from the fact that he +forbore to bluster, and sat quite still, with his head in his hands, +saying never a word for what seemed several minutes. Then presently he +said very quietly,-- + +"I love my wife all the same." + +"Of course you do," I answered, eagerly welcoming the significant +announcement; "and if you'll allow me to say so, I think I understand +more about the whole situation than either of you, bachelor though +unfortunately I am. As a famous friend of mine is fond of saying, +lookers-on see most of the game." + +Then I rapidly told him the history of my meeting with his wife, and +depicted, in harrowing pigments of phrase, the distress of her mind. + +"I love my wife all the same," he repeated, as I finished; "and," he +added, "I love Sylvia too." + +"But not quite in the same way?" I suggested. + +"I love Sylvia very tenderly," he said. + +"Yes, I know; I don't think you could do anything else. No man worth +his salt could be anything but tender to a dainty little woman like +that. But tenderness, gentleness, affection, even +self-sacrifice,--these may be parts of love; but they are merely the +crude untransformed ingredients of a love such as you feel for your +wife, and such as I know she feels for you." + +"She still loves me, then," he said pitifully; "she hasn't fallen in +love with you." + +"No fear," I answered; "no such luck for me. If she had, I'm afraid I +should hardly have been talking to you as I am at this moment. If a +woman like Rosalind, as I call her, gave me her love, it would take +more than a husband to rob me of it, I can tell you." + +"Yes," he repeated, "on my soul, I love her. I have never been false +to her, in my heart; but--" + +"I know all about it," I said; "may I tell you how it all +was,--diagnose the situation?" + +"Do," he replied; "it is a relief to hear you talk." + +"Well," I said, "may I ask one rather intimate question? Did you ever +before you were married sow what are known as wild oats?" + +"Never," he answered indignantly, flashing for a moment. + +"Well, you should have done," I said; "that's just the whole trouble. +Wild oats will get sown some time, and one of the arts of life is to +sow them at the right time,--the younger the better. Think candidly +before you answer me." + +"I believe you are right," he replied, after a long pause. + +"You are a believer in theories," I continued, "and so am I; but you +can take my word that on these matters not all, but some, of the old +theories are best. One of them is that the man who does not sow his +wild oats before marriage will sow them afterwards, with a whirlwind +for the reaping." + +Orlando looked up at me, haggard with confession. + +"You know the old story of the ring given to Venus? Well, it is the +ruin of no few men to meet Venus for the first time on their marriage +night. Their very chastity, paradoxical as it may seem, is their +destruction. No one can appreciate the peace, the holy satisfaction of +monogamy till he has passed through the wasting distractions, the +unrest of polygamy. Plunged right away into monogamy, man, +unexperienced in his good fortune, hankers after polygamy, as the +monotheistic Jew hankered after polytheism; and thus the monogamic +young man too often meets Aphrodite for the first time, and makes +future appointments with her, in the arms of his pure young wife. If +you have read Swedenborg, you will remember his denunciation of the +lust of variety. Now, that is a lust every young man feels, but it is +one to be satisfied before marriage. Sylvia Joy has been such a +variant for you; and I'm afraid you're going to have some little +trouble to get her off your nerves. Tell me frankly," I said, "have +you had your fill of Aphrodite? It is no use your going back to your +wife till you have had that." + +"I'm not quite a beast," he retorted. "After all, it was an experiment +we both agreed to try." + +"Certainly," I answered, "and I hope it may have the result of +persuading you of the unwisdom of experimenting with happiness. You +have the realities of happiness; why should you trouble about its +theories? They are for unhappy people, like me, who must learn to +distil by learned patience the aurum potabile from the husks of life, +the peace which happier mortals find lying like manna each morn upon +the meadows." + +"Well," I continued, "enough of the abstract; let us have another +drink, and tell me what you propose to do." + +"Poor Sylvia!" sighed Orlando. + +"Shall I tell you about Sylvia?" I said. "On second thoughts, I won't. +It would hardly be fair play; but this, I may say, relying on your +honour, that if you were to come to my hotel, I could show you +indisputable proof that I know at least as much about Sylvia Joy as +even such a privileged intimate as yourself." + +"It is strange, then, that she never recognised you just now," he +retorted, with forlorn alertness. + +"Of course she didn't. How young you are! It is rather too bad of a +woman of Sylvia's experience." + +"And I've bought our passages for to-morrow. I cannot let her go +without some sort of good-bye." + +"Give the tickets to me. I can make use of them. How much are they? +Let's see." + +The calculation made and the money passed across, I said abruptly,-- + +"Now supposing we go and see your wife." + +"You have saved my life," he said hoarsely, pressing my hand as we rose. + +"I don't know about that," I said inwardly; "but I do hope I have saved +your wife." + +As I thought of that, a fear occurred to me. + +"Look here," I said, as we strolled towards the Twelve Golden-Haired, +"I hope you have no silly notions about confession, about telling the +literal truth and so on. Because I want you to promise me that you will +lie stoutly to your wife about Sylvia Joy. You must swear the whole +thing has been platonic. It's the only chance for your happiness. +Your wife, no doubt, will lure you on to confession by saying that she +doesn't mind this, that, and the other, so long as you don't keep it +from her; and no doubt she will mean it till you have confessed. But, +however good their theories, women by nature cannot help confusing body +and soul, and what to a man is a mere fancy of the senses, to them is a +spiritual tragedy. Promise me to lie stoutly on this point. It is, I +repeat, the only chance for your future happiness. As has been wisely +said, a lie in time saves nine; and such a lie as I advise is but one +of the higher forms of truth. Such lying, indeed, is the art of +telling the truth. The truth is that you love her body, soul, and +spirit; any accidental matter which should tend to make her doubt that +would be the only real lie. Promise me, won't you?" + +"Yes, I will lie," said Orlando. + +"Well, there she is," I said; "and God bless you both." + + + +CHAPTER X + +IN WHICH ONCE MORE I BECOME OCCUPIED IN MY OWN AFFAIRS + +During a pause in my matrimonial lecture, Orlando had written a little +farewell note to Sylvia,--a note which, of course, I didn't read, but +which it is easy to imagine "wild with all regret." This I undertook +to have delivered to her the same night, and promised to call upon her +on the morrow, further to illuminate the situation, and to offer her +every consolation in my power. To conclude the history of Orlando and +his Rosalind, I may say that I saw them off from Yellowsands by the +early morning coach. There was a soft brightness in their faces, as +though rain had fallen in the night; but it was the warm sweet rain of +joy that brings the flowers, and is but sister to the sun. They are, at +the time of my writing, quite old friends of mine, and both have an +excessive opinion of my wisdom and good-nature. + +"That lie," Orlando once said to me long after, "was the truest thing I +ever said in my life,"--a remark which may not give the reader a very +exalted idea of his general veracity. + +As the coach left long before pretty young actresses even dreamed of +getting up, I had to control my impatient desire to call on +Mademoiselle Sylvia Joy till it was fully noon. And even then she was +not to be seen. I tried again in the afternoon with better success. + +Rain had been falling in the night with her too, I surmised, but it had +failed to dim her gay eyes, and had left her complexion unimpaired. Of +course her little affair with Orlando had never been very serious on +her side. She genuinely liked him. "He was a nice kind boy," was the +height of her passionate expression, and she was, naturally, a little +disappointed at having an affectionate companion thus unexpectedly +whisked off into space. Her only approach to anger was on the subject +of his deceiving her about his wife. Little Sylvia Joy had no very +long string of principles; but one generous principle she did hold +by,--never, if she knew it, to rob another woman of her husband. And +that did make her cross with Orlando. He had not played the game fair. + +There is no need to follow, step by step, the progression by which +Sylvia Joy and I, though such new acquaintances, became in the course +of a day or two even more intimate than many old friends. We took to +each other instinctively, even on our first rather difficult interview, +and very gently and imperceptibly I bid for the vacant place in her +heart. + +That night we dined together. + +The next day we lunched and dined together. + +The next day we breakfasted, lunched, and dined together. + +And on the next I determined to venture on the confession which, as you +may imagine, it had needed no little artistic control not to make on +our first meeting. + +She looked particularly charming this evening, in a black silk gown, +exceedingly simple and distinguished in style, throwing up the lovely +firm whiteness of her throat and bosom, and making a fine contrast with +her lurid hair. + +It was sheer delight to sit opposite her at dinner, and quietly watch +her without a word. Shall I confess that I had an exceedingly boyish +vanity in thus being granted her friendship? It is almost too boyish to +confess at my time of life. It was simply in the fact that she was an +actress,--a real, live, famous actress, whose photographs made shop +windows beautiful,--come right out of my boy's fairyland of the +theatre, actually to sit eating and drinking, quite in a real way, at +my side. This, no doubt, will seem pathetically naive to most modern +young men, who in this respect begin where I leave off. An actress! +Great heavens! an actress is the first step to a knowledge of life. +Besides, actresses off the stage are either brainless or soulful, and +the choice of evils is a delicate one. Well, I have never set up for a +man of the world, though sometimes when I have heard the Lovelaces of +the day hinting mysteriously at their secret sins or boasting of their +florid gallantries, I have remembered the last verse of Suckling's +"Ballad of a Wedding," which, no doubt, the reader knows as well as I, +and if not, it will increase his acquaintance with our brave old poetry +to look it up. + +"You are very beautiful to-night," I said, in one of the meditative +pauses between the courses. + +"Thank you, kind sir," she said, making a mock courtesy; "but the +compliment is made a little anxious for me by your evident implication +that I didn't look so beautiful this morning. You laid such a marked +emphasis on to-night." + +"Nay," I returned, "'for day and night are both alike to thee.' I +think you would even be beautiful--well, I cannot imagine any moment or +station of life you would not beautify." + +"I must get you to write that down, and then I'll have it framed. It +would cheer me of a morning when I curl my hair," laughed Sylvia. + +"But you are beautiful," I continued, becoming quite impassioned. + +"Yes, and as good as I'm beautiful." + +And she was too, though perhaps the beauty occasionally predominated. + +When the serious business of dining was dispatched, and we were +trifling with our coffee and liqueurs, my eyes, which of course had +seldom left her during the whole meal, once more enfolded her little +ivory and black silk body with an embrace as real as though they had +been straining passionate arms; and as I thus nursed her in my eyes, I +smiled involuntarily at a thought which not unnaturally occurred to me. + +"What is that sly smile about?" she asked. Now I had smiled to think +that underneath that stately silk, around that tight little waist, was +a dainty waistband bearing the legend "Sylvia Joy," No. 4, perhaps, or +5, but NOT No. 6; and a whole wonderful underworld of lace and linen +and silk stockings, the counterpart of which wonders, my clairvoyant +fancy laughed to think, were at the moment--so entirely unsuspected of +their original owner--my delicious possessions. + +Everything a woman wears or touches immediately incarnates something of +herself. A handkerchief, a glove, a flower,--with a breath she endues +them with immortal souls. How much, therefore, of herself must inhere +in a garment so confidential as a petticoat, or so close and constant a +companion as a stocking! + +Now that I knew Sylvia Joy, I realised how absolutely true my instinct +had been, when on that far afternoon in that Surrey garden I had said, +"With such a petticoat and such a name, Sylvia herself cannot be +otherwise than charming." + +Indeed, now I could see that the petticoat was nothing short of a +portrait of her, and that any one learned in the physiognomy of clothes +would have been able to pick Sylvia out of a thousand by that spirited, +spoilt, and petted garment. + +"What is that sly smile about?" she repeated presently. + +"I only chanced to think of an absurd little fairy story I read the +other day," I said, "which is quite irrelevant at the moment. You know +the idle way things come and go through one's head." + +"I don't believe you," she replied, "but tell me the story. I love +fairy tales." + +"Certainly," I said, for I wasn't likely to get a better opportunity. +"There's nothing much in it; it's merely a variation of Cinderella's +slipper. Well, once upon a time there was an eccentric young prince +who'd had his fling in his day, but had arrived at the lonely age of +thirty without having met a woman whom he could love enough to make his +wife. He was a rather fanciful young prince, accustomed to follow his +whims; and one day, being more than usually bored with existence, he +took it into his head to ramble incognito through his kingdom in search +of his ideal wife,--'The Golden Girl,' as he called her. He had hardly +set out when in a country lane he came across a peasant girl hanging +out clothes to dry, and he fell to talk with her while she went on with +her charming occupation. Presently he observed, pegged on the line, +strangely incongruous among the other homespun garments, a wonderful +petticoat, so exquisite in material and design that it aroused his +curiosity. At the same moment he noticed a pair of stockings, round +the tops of which one of the daintiest artists in the land had wrought +an exquisite little frieze. The prince was learned in every form of +art, and had not failed to study this among other forms of decoration. +No sooner did he see this petticoat than the whim seized him that he +would find and marry the wearer, whoever she might be--" + +"Rather rash of him," interrupted Sylvia, "for it is usually old ladies +who have the prettiest petticoats. They can best afford them--" + +"He questioned the girl as to their owner," I continued, "and after +vainly pretending that they were her own, she confessed that they had +belonged to a young and beautiful lady who had once lodged there and +left them behind. Then the prince gave her a purse of gold in exchange +for the finery, and on the waistband of the petticoat he read a +beautiful name, and he said, 'This and no other shall be my wife, this +unknown beautiful woman, and on our marriage night she shall wear this +petticoat.' And then the prince went forth seeking--" + +"There's not much point in it," interrupted Sylvia. + +"No," I said, "I'm afraid I've stupidly missed the point." + +"Why, what was it?" + +"The name upon the petticoat!" + +"Why, what name was it?" she asked, somewhat mystified. + +"The inscription upon the petticoat was, to be quite accurate, 'Sylvia +Joy, No. 6.'" + +"Whatever are you talking about?" she said with quite a stormy blush. +"I'm afraid you've had more than your share of the champagne." + +As I finished, I slipped out of my pocket a dainty little parcel softly +folded in white tissue paper. Very softly I placed it on the table. +It contained one of the precious stockings; and half opening it, I +revealed to Sylvia's astonished eyes the cunning little frieze of +Bacchus and Ariadne, followed by a troop of Satyrs and Bacchantes, +which the artist had designed to encircle one of the white columns of +that little marble temple which sat before me. + +"You know," I said, "how in fairy tales, when the wandering hero or the +maiden in distress has a guiding dream, the dream often leaves +something behind on the pillow to assure them of its authenticity. +'When you wake up,' the dream will say, 'you will find a rose or an +oak-leaf or an eagle's feather, or whatever it may be, on your pillow.' +Well, I have brought this stocking--for which, if I might but use them, +I have at the moment a stock of the most appropriately endearing +adjectives--for the same purpose. By this token you will know that the +fairy tale I have been telling you is true, and to-morrow, if you will, +you shall see your autograph petticoat." + +"Why, wherever did you come across them? And what a mad creature you +must be! and what an odd thing that you should really meet me, after +all!" exclaimed Sylvia, all in a breath. "Of course, I remember," she +said frankly, and with a shade of sadness passing over her face. "I +was spending a holiday with Jack Wentworth,--why, it must be nearly two +years ago. Poor Jack! he was killed in the Soudan," and poor Jack +could have wished no prettier resurrection than the look of tender +memory that came into her face as she spoke of him, and the soft baby +tears filled her eyes. + +"I'm so sorry," I said. "Of course I didn't know. Let's come for a +little stroll. There seems to be a lovely moon." + +"Of course you didn't," she said, patting my cheek with a kind little +hand. "Yes, do let us go for a stroll." + + + +CHAPTER XI + +"THE HOUR FOR WHICH THE YEARS DID SIGH" + +This unexpected awakening of an old tenderness naturally prevented my +speaking any more of my mind to Sylvia that evening. No doubt the +reader may be a little astonished to hear that I had decided to offer +her marriage,--not taking my serious view of a fanciful vow. Doubtless +Sylvia was not entirely suitable to me, and to marry her was to be +faithless to that vision of the highest, that wonderful unknown woman +of the apocalyptic moorland, whose face Sylvia had not even momentarily +banished from my dreams, and whom, with an unaccountable certitude, I +still believed to be the woman God had destined for me; but, all things +considered, Sylvia was surely as pretty an answer to prayer as a man +could reasonably hope for. Many historic vows had met with sadly less +lucky fulfilment. + +So, after dinner the following evening, I suggested that we should for +once take a little walk up along the river-side; and when we were quiet +in the moonlight, dappling the lovers' path we were treading, and +making sharp contrasts of ink and silver down in the river-bed,--I +spoke. + +"Sylvia," I said, plagiarising a dream which will be found in Chapter +IV.,--"Sylvia, I have sought you through the world and found you at +last; and with your gracious permission, having found you, I mean to +stick to you." + +"What do you mean, silly boy?" she said, as an irregularity in the road +threw her soft weight the more fondly upon my arm. + +"I mean, dear, that I want you to be my wife." + +"Your wife? Not for worlds!--no, forgive me, I didn't mean that. +You're an awful dear boy, and I like you very much, and I think you're +rather fond of me; but--well, the truth is, I was never meant to be +married, and don't care about it--and when you think of it, why should +I?" + +"You mean," I said, "that you are fortunate in living in a society +where, as in heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage, +where in fact nobody minds whether you're married or not, and where +morals are very properly regarded as a personal and private matter--" + +"Yes, that's what I mean," said Sylvia; "the people I care about--dear +good people--will think no more of me for having a wedding-ring, and no +less for my being without; and why should one put a yoke round one's +neck when nobody expects it? A wedding-ring is like a top-hat,--you +only wear it when you must--But it's very sweet of you, all the same, +and you can kiss me if you like. Here's a nice sentimental patch of +moonlight." + +I really felt very dejected at this not of course entirely unexpected +rejection,--if one might use the word for a situation on which had just +been set the seal of so unmistakable a kiss; but the vision in my heart +seemed to smile at me in high and happy triumph. To have won Sylvia +would have been to have lost her. My ideal had, as it were, held her +breath till Sylvia answered; now she breathed again. + +"At all events, we can go on being chums, can't we?" I said. + +For answer Sylvia hummed the first verse of that famous song writ by +Kit Marlowe. + +"Yes!" she said presently. "I will sing for you, dance for you, +and--perhaps--flirt with you; but marry you--no! it's best not, for +both of us." + +"Well, then," I said, "dance for me! You owe me some amends for an +aching heart." As I said this, the path suddenly broadened into a +little circular glade into which the moonlight poured in a silver +flood. In the centre of the space was a boulder some three or four +feet high, and with a flat slab-like surface of some six feet or so. + +"I declare I will," said Sylvia, giving me an impulsive kiss, and +springing on to the stone; "why, here is a ready-made stage." + +"And there," I said, "are the nightingale and the nightjar for +orchestra." + +"And there is the moon," said she, "for lime-light man." + +"Yes," I said; "and here is a handful of glow-worms for the footlights." + +Then lifting up her heavy silk skirt about her, and revealing a +paradise of chiffons, Sylvia swayed for a moment with her face full in +the moon, and then slowly glided into the movements of a mystical dance. + +It was thus the fountains were dancing to the moon in Arabia; it was +thus the Nixies shook their white limbs on the haunted banks of the +Rhine; it was thus the fairy women flashed their alabaster feet on the +fairy hills of Connemara; it was thus the Houris were dancing for +Mahomet on the palace floors of Paradise. + +"It was over such dancing," I said, "that John the Baptist lost his +head." + +"Give me a kiss," she said, nestling exhausted in my arms. "I always +want some one to kiss when I have danced with my soul as well as my +body." + +"I think we always do," I said, "when we've done anything that seems +wonderful, that gives us the thrill of really doing--" + +"And a poor excuse is better than none, isn't it, dear?" said Sylvia, +her face full in the cataract of the moonlight. + +As a conclusion for this chapter I will copy out a little song which I +extemporised for Sylvia on our way home to Yellowsands--too artlessly +happy, it will be observed, to rhyme correctly:-- + + Sylvia's dancing 'neath the moon, + Like a star in water; + Sylvia's dancing to a tune + Fairy folk have taught her. + + Glow-worms light her little feet + In her fairy theatre; + Oh, but Sylvia is sweet! + Tell me who is sweeter! + + + +CHAPTER XII + +AT THE CAFE DE LA PAIX + +As love-making in which we have no share is apt to be either +tantalising or monotonous, I propose to skip the next fortnight and +introduce myself to the reader at a moment when I am once more alone. +It is about six o'clock on a summer afternoon, I am in Paris, and +seated at one of the little marble tables of the Cafe de la Paix, +dreamily watching the glittering tide of gay folk passing by,-- + + "All happy people on their way + To make a golden end of day." + + +Meditatively I smoke a cigarette and sip a pale greenish liquor +smelling strongly of aniseed, which isn't half so interesting as a +commonplace whiskey and soda, but which, I am told, has the +recommendation of being ten times as wicked. I sip it with a delicious +thrill of degeneration, as though I were Eve tasting the apple for the +first time,--for "such a power hath white simplicity." Sin is for the +innocent,--a truth which sinners will be the first to regret. It was +so, I said to myself, Alfred de Musset used to sit and sip his absinthe +before a fascinated world. It is a privilege for the world to look on +greatness at any moment, even when it is drinking. So I sat, and +privileged the world. + +It will readily be surmised from this exordium that--incredible as it +may seem in a man of thirty--this was my first visit to Paris. You may +remember that I had bought Orlando's tickets, and it had occurred to +Sylvia and me to use them. Sylvia was due in London to fulfil a +dancing engagement within a fortnight after our arrival; so after a +tender good-bye, which there was no earthly necessity to make final, I +had remained behind for the purposes of study. Though, logically, my +pilgrimage had ended with the unexpected discovery of Sylvia Joy, yet +there were two famous feminine types of which, seeing that I was in +Paris, I thought I might as well make brief studies, before I returned +to London and finally resumed the bachelorhood from which I had +started. These were the grisette of fiction and the American girl of +fact. Pending these investigations, I meditated on the great city in +the midst of which I sat. + +A city! How much more it was than that! Was it not the most portentous +symbol of modern history? Think what the word "Paris" means to the +emancipated intellect, to the political government, to the humanised +morals, of the world; not to speak of the romance of its literature, +the tradition of its manners, and the immortal fame of its women. +France is the brain of the world, as England is its heart, and Russia +its fist. Strange is the power, strange are the freaks and revenges, +of association, particularly perhaps of literary association. Here +pompous official representatives may demur; but who can doubt that it +is on its literature that a country must rely for its permanent +representation? The countries that are forgotten, or are of no +importance in the councils of the world, are countries without +literature. Greece and Rome are more real in print than ever they were +in marble. Though, as we know, prophets are not without honour save in +their own countries and among their own kindred, the time comes when +their countries and kindred are entirely without honour save by reason +of those very prophets they once despised, rejected, stoned, and +crucified. Subtract its great men from a nation, and where is its +greatness? + +Similarly, everything, however trifling, that has been written about, +so long as it has been written about sufficiently well, becomes +relatively enduring and representative of the country in which it is +found. To an American, for example, the significance of a skylark is +that Shelley sang it to skies where even it could never have mounted; +and any one who has heard the nightingale must, if he be open-minded, +confess its tremendous debt to Keats: a tenth part genuine song, the +rest moon, stars, silence, and John Keats,--such is the nightingale. +The real truth about a country will never be known till every +representative type and condition in it have found their inspired +literary mouthpiece. Meanwhile one country takes its opinion of another +from the apercus of a few brilliant but often irresponsible or +prejudiced writers,--and really it is rather in what those writers +leave out than in what they put in that one must seek the more reliable +data of national character. + +A quaint example of association occurs to me from the experience of a +friend of mine, "rich enough to lend to the poor." Having met an +American friend newly landed at Liverpool, and a hurried quarter of an +hour being all that was available for lunch, "Come let us have a +pork-pie and a bottle of Bass" he had suggested. + +"Pork-pies!" said the American, with a delighted sense of discovering +the country,--"why, you read about them in Dickens!" Who shall say but +that this instinctive association was an involuntary severe, but not +inapplicable, criticism? A nightingale suggests Keats; a pork-pie, +Dickens. + +Similarly with absinthe, grisettes, the Latin Quarter, and so on. + +Why, you read about them in Murger, in Musset, in Balzac, and in +Flaubert; and the fact of your having read about them is, I may add, +their chief importance. + +So rambled my after-dinner reflections as I sat that evening smoking +and sipping, sipping and smoking, at the Cafe de la Paix. + +Presently in my dream I became aware of English voices near me, one of +which seemed familiar, and which I couldn't help overhearing. The +voice of the husband said,--you can never mistake the voice of the +husband,-- + + 'T was the voice of the husband, + I heard him complain,-- + +the voice of the husband said: "Dora, I forbid you! I will NOT allow +my wife to be seen again in the Latin Quarter. I permitted you to go +once, as a concession, to the Cafe d'Harcourt; but once is enough. You +will please respect my wishes!" + +"But," pleaded the dear little woman, whom I had an immediate impulse, +Perseus-like, to snatch from the jaws of her monster, and turning to +the other lady of the party of four,--"but Mrs. ---- has never been, +and she cannot well go without a chaperone. Surely it cannot matter for +once. It isn't as if I were there constantly." + +"No!" said the husband, with the absurd pomposity of his tribe. + +"I'm very sorry. Mrs. ---- will, of course, act as she pleases; but I +cannot allow you to do it, Dora." + +At last the little wife showed some spirit. + +"Don't talk to me like that, Will," she said. "I shall go if I please. +Surely I am my own property." + +"Not at all!" at once flashed out the husband, wounded in that most +vital part of him, his sense of property. "There you mistake. You are +my property, MY chattel; you promised obedience to me; I bought you, +and you do my bidding!" + +"Great heavens!" I ejaculated, and, springing up, found myself face to +face with a well-known painter whom you would have thought the most +Bohemian fellow in London. And Bohemian he is; but Bohemians are seldom +Bohemians for any one save themselves. They are terrible sticklers for +convention and even etiquette in other people. + +We recognised each other with a laugh, and presently were at it, hammer +and tongs. I may say that we were all fairly intimate friends, and thus +had the advantage of entire liberty of speech. I looked daggers at the +husband; he looked daggers at me, and occasionally looking at his wife, +gave her a glance which was like the opening of Bluebeard's closet. +You could see the poor murdered bodies dangling within the shadowy +cupboard of his eye. Of course we got no further. Additional +opposition but further enraged him. He recapitulated what he would no +doubt call his arguments,--they sounded more like threats,--and as he +spoke I saw dragons fighting for their dams in the primeval ooze, and +heard savage trumpetings of masculine monsters without a name. + +I told him so. + +"You are," I said,--"and you will forgive my directness of +expression,--you are the Primeval Male! You are the direct descendant +of those Romans who carried off the Sabine women. Nay! you have a much +longer genealogy. You come of those hairy anthropoid males who hunted +their mates through the tangle of primeval forests, and who finally +obtained their consent--shall we say?--by clubbing them on the head +with a stone axe. You talk a great deal of nonsense about the New +Woman, but you, Sir, are THE OLD MALE; and," I continued, "I have only +to obtain your wife's consent to take her under my protection this +instant." + +Curiously enough, "The Old Male," as he is now affectionately called, +became from this moment quite a bosom friend. Nothing would satisfy us +but that we should all lodge at the same pension together, and there +many a day we fought our battles over again. But that poor little wife +never, to my knowledge, went to the Cafe d'Harcourt again. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE INNOCENCE OF PARIS + +This meeting with William and Dora was fortunate from the point of view +of my studies; for that very night, as I dined with them en pension, I +found that providence, with his usual foresight, had placed me next to +a very charming American girl of the type that I was particularly +wishful to study. She seemed equally wishful to be studied, and we got +on amazingly from the first moment of our acquaintance. By the middle +of dinner we were pressing each other's feet under the table, and when +coffee and cigarettes had come, we were affianced lovers. "Why should +I blush to own I love?" was evidently my quaint little companion's +motto; and indeed she didn't blush to own it to the whole table, and +publicly to announce that I was the dearest boy, and absolutely the +most lovable man she had met. There was nothing she wouldn't do for +me. Would she brave the terrors of the Latin Quarter with me, I asked, +and introduce me to the terrible Cafe d'Harcourt, about which William +and Dora had suffered such searchings of heart? "Why, certainly; there +was nothing in that," she said. So we went. + +Nothing is more absurd and unjust than those crude labels of national +character which label one country virtuous and another vicious, one +musical and another literary. Thus France has an unjust reputation for +vice, and England an equally unjust reputation for virtue. + +I had always, I confess, been brought up to think of Paris as a sort of +Sodom and Gomorrah in one. Good Americans might go to Paris, according +to the American theory of a future state; but, certainly I had thought, +no good Englishman ever went there--except, maybe, on behalf of the +Vigilance Society. Well, it may sound an odd thing to say, but what +impressed me most of all was the absolute innocence of the place. + +I mean this quite seriously. For surely one important condition of +innocence is unconsciousness of doing wrong. The poor despised +Parisian may be a very wicked and depraved person, but certainly he +goes about with an absolute unconsciousness of it upon his gay and +kindly countenance. + +"Seeing the world" usually means seeing everything in it that most +decent people won't look at; but when you come to look at these +terrible things and places, what do you find? Why, absolute +disappointment! + +Have you ever read that most amusing book, "Baedeker on Paris"? + +I know nothing more delightful than the notes to the Montmartre and +Latin Quarters. The places to which you, as a smug Briton, may or may +not take a lady! The scale of wickedness allowed to the waxwork +British lady is most charmingly graduated. I had read that the cafe +where we were sitting was one of the most terrible places in +Paris,--the Cafe d'Harcourt, where the students of the Latin Quarter +take their nice little domestic mistresses to supper. But Baedeker was +dreadfully Pecksniffian about these poor innocent etudiantes, many of +whom love their lovers much more truly than many a British wife loves +her husband, and are much better loved in return. If you doubt it, +dare to pay attention to one of these young ladies, and you will +probably have to fight a duel for it. In fact, these romantic +relations are much more careful of honour than conventional ones; for +love, and not merely law, keeps guard. + +I looked around me. Where were those terrible things I had read of? +Where was this hell which I had reasonably expected would gape leagues +of sulphur and blue flame beneath the little marble table? I mentally +resolved to bring an action against Baedeker for false information. +For what did I see? Simply pairs and groups of young men and women +chattering amiably in front of their "bocks" or their "Americains." +Here and there a student would have his arm round a waist every one +else envied him. One student was prettily trying a pair of new gloves +upon his little woman's hand. Here and there blithe songs would spring +up, from sheer gladness of heart; and never was such a buzz of happy +young people, not even at a Sunday-school treat. To me it seemed +absolutely Arcadian, and I thought of Daphnis and Chloe and the early +world. Nothing indecorous or gross; all perfectly pretty and seemly. + +On our way home Semiramis was so sweet to me, in her innocent, artless +frankness, that I went to bed with an intoxicating feeling that I must +be irresistible indeed, to have so completely conquered so true a heart +in so few hours. I was the more flattered because I am not a vain man, +and am not, like some, accustomed to take hearts as the Israelites took +Jericho with the blast of one's own trumpet. + +But, alas! my dream of universal irresistibility was but short-lived, +for next afternoon, as William and I sat out at some cafe together, I +found myself the object of chaff. + +"Well," said William, "how goes the love-affair?" + +I flushed somewhat indignantly at his manner with sanctities. + +"I see!" he said, "I see! You are already corded and labelled, and +will be shipped over by the next mail,--'To Miss Semiramis Wilcox, 1001 +99th St., Philadelphia, U.S.A. Man with care.' Well, I did think +you'd got an eye in your head. Look here, don't be a fool! I suppose +she said you were the first and last. The last you certainly were. +There are limits even to the speed of American girls; but the first, my +boy! You are more like the twelfth, to my ocular knowledge. Here +comes Dubois the poet. He can tell you something about Miss Semiramis. +Eh! Dubois, you know Miss Semiramis Wilcox, don't you?" + +The Frenchman smiled and shrugged. + +"Un peu," he said. + +"Don't be an ass and get angry," William continued; "it's all for your +own good." + +"The little Semiramis has been seducing my susceptible friend here. +Like many of us, he has been captivated by her naturalness, her +naivete, her clear good eyes,--that look of nature that is always art! +May I relate the idyl of your tragic passion, dear Dubois, as an object +lesson?" + +The Frenchman bowed, and signed William to proceed. + +"You dined with us one evening, and you thus met for the first time. +You sat together at table. What happened with the fish?" + +"She swore I was the most beautiful man she had ever seen,--and I am +not beautiful, as you perceive." + +If not beautiful, the poet was certainly true. + +"What happened at the entree?" + +"Oh, long before that we were pressing our feet under the table." + +"And the coffee--" + +"Mon Dieu! we were Tristram and Yseult, we were all the great lovers in +the Pantheon of love." + +"And what then?" + +"Oh, we went to the Cafe d'Harcourt--mon ami." + +"Did she wear a veil?" I asked. + +"Oui, certainement!" + +"And did you say, 'Why do you wear a veil,--setting a black cloud +before the eyes and gates of heaven'?" + +"The very words," said the Frenchman. + +"And did she say, 'Yes, but the veil can be raised?'" + +"She did, mon pauvre ami," said the poet. + +"And did you raise it?" + +"I did," said the poet. + +"And so did I," I answered. And as I spoke, there was a crash of white +marble in my soul, and lo! Love had fallen from his pedestal and been +broken into a thousand pieces,--a heavy, dead thing he lay upon the +threshold of my heart. + +We had appointed a secret meeting in the salon of the pension that +afternoon. I was not there! (Nor, as I afterwards learnt, was +Semiramis.) When we did meet, I was brutally cold. I evaded all her +moves; but when at last I decided to give her a hearing, I confess it +needed all my cynicism to resist her air of innocence, of pathetic +devotion. + +If I couldn't love her, she said, might she go on loving me? Might she +write to me sometimes? She would be content if now and again I would +send her a little word. Perhaps in time I would grow to believe in her +love, etc. + +The heart-broken abandonment with which she said this was a sore trial +to me; but though love may be deceived, vanity is ever vigilant, and +vanity saved me. Yet I left her with an aching sense of having been a +brute, and on the morning of my departure from Paris, as I said +good-bye to William and Dora, I spoke somewhat seriously of Semiramis. +Dora, Dora-like, had believed in her all along,--not having enjoyed +William's opportunities of studying her,--and she reproached me with +being rather hard-hearted. + +"Nonsense," said William, "if she really cared, wouldn't she have been +up to bid you good-bye?" + +The words were hardly gone from his lips when there came a little knock +at the door. It was Semiramis; she had come to say good-bye. Was it in +nature not to be touched? "Good-bye," she said, as we stood a moment +alone in the hall. "I shall always think of you; you shall not be to +me as a ship that has passed in the night, though to me you have +behaved very like an iceberg." + +We parted in tears and kisses, and I lived for some weeks with that +sense of having been a Nero, till two months after I received a much +glazed and silvered card to the usual effect. + +And so I ceased to repine for the wound I had made in the heart of +Semiramis Wilcox. + +Of another whom I met and loved in that brief month in Paris, I cherish +tenderer memories. Prim little Pauline Deschapelles! How clearly I can +still see the respectable brass plate on the door of your little +flat--"Mademoiselle Deschapelles--Modes et Robes;" and indeed the +"modes et robes" were true enough. For you were in truth a very +hard-working little dressmaker, and I well remember how impressed I was +to sit beside you, as you plied your needle on some gown that must be +finished by the evening, and meditate on the quaint contrast between +your almost Puritanic industry and your innocent love of pleasure. I +don't think I ever met a more conscientious little woman than little +Pauline Deschapelles. + +There was but one drawback to our intercourse. She didn't know a word +of English, and I couldn't speak a word of French. So we had to make +shift to love without either language. But sometimes Pauline would +throw down her stitching in amused impatience, and, going to her dainty +secretaire, write me a little message in the simplest baby +French--which I would answer in French which would knit her brows for a +moment or two, and then send her off in peals of laughter. + +It WAS French! I know. Among the bric-a-brac of my heart I still +cherish some of those little slips of paper with which we made +international love--question and answer. + +"Vous allez m'oublier, et ne plus penser a moi--ni me voir. Les +hommes--egoistes--menteurs, pas dire la verite..." so ran the +questions, considerably devoid of auxiliary verbs and such details of +construction. + +"Je serais jamais t'oublier," ran the frightful answers! + +Dear Pauline! Shall I ever see her again? She was but twenty-six. +She may still live. + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +END OF BOOK THREE + +So ended my pilgrimage. I had wandered far, had loved many, but I came +back to London without the Golden Girl. I had begun my pilgrimage with +a vision, and it was with a vision that I ended it. From all my goings +to and fro upon the earth, I had brought back only the image of a +woman's face,--the face of that strange woman of the moorland, still +haunting my dreams of the night and the day. + +It was autumn in my old garden, damp and forsaken, and the +mulberry-tree was hung with little yellow shields. My books looked +weary of awaiting me, and they and the whole lonely house begged me to +take them where sometimes they might be handled by human fingers, +mellowed by lamplight, cheered by friendly laughter. + +The very chairs begged mutely to be sat upon, the chill white beds to +be slept in. Yes, the very furniture seemed even lonelier than myself. + +So I took heed of their dumb appeal. + +"I know," I answered them tenderly,--"I too, with you, have looked on +better days, I too have been where bells have knoll'd to church, I too +have sat at many a good man's feast,--yes! I miss human society, even +as you, my books, my bedsteads, and my side-boards,--so let it be. It +is plain our little Margaret is not coming back, our little Margaret, +dear haunted rooms, will never come back; no longer shall her little +silken figure flit up and down your quiet staircases, her hands filled +with flowers, and her heart humming with little songs. Yes, let us go, +it is very lonely; we shall die if we stay here all so lonely together; +it is time, let us go." + +So thereon I wrote to a furniture-remover, and went out to walk round +the mossy old garden for the last time, and say good-bye to the great +mulberry, under whose Dodonaesque shade we had sat half frightened on +starry nights, to the apple-trees whose blossom had seemed like +fairy-land to Margaret and me, town-bred folk, to the apricots and the +peaches and the nectarines that it had seemed almost wicked to own,--as +though we had gone abroad in silk and velvet,--to the little grassy +orchard, and to the little green corner of it, where Margaret had +fallen asleep that summer afternoon, in the great wicker-chair, and I +had brought a dear friend on tiptoe to gaze on her asleep, with her +olive cheeks delicately flushed, her great eyelids closed like the +cheeks of roses, and her gold hair tumbled about her neck... + +Well, well, good-bye,--tears are foolish things. They will not bring +Margaret back. Good-bye, old garden, good-bye, I shall never see you +again,--good-bye. + + + + +BOOK IV + +THE POSTSCRIPT TO A PILGRIMAGE + + + +CHAPTER I + +SIX YEARS AFTER + +This book is like a woman's letter. The most important part of it is +the postscript. + +Six years lie between the end of the last chapter and the beginning of +this. Meanwhile, I had moved to sociable chambers within sound of the +city clocks, and had lived the life of a lonely man about town, sinking +more and more into the comfortable sloth of bachelorhood. I had long +come to look back upon my pilgrimage as a sort of Indian-summer youth, +being, as the reader can reckon for himself, just on thirty-seven. As +one will, with one's most serious experiences, hastening to laugh lest +one should weep, as the old philosopher said, I had made some fun out +of my quest, in the form of a paper for a bookish society to which I +belonged, on "Woman as a Learned Pursuit." It is printed among the +transactions of the society, and is accessible to the curious only by +loan from the members, and I regret that I am unable to print any +extracts here. Perhaps when I am dead the society will see the +criminal selfishness of reserving for itself what was meant for mankind. + +Meanwhile, however, it is fast locked and buried deep in the archives +of the club. I have two marriages to record in the interval: one that +of a young lady whom I must still think of as 'Nicolete' to Sir +Marmaduke Pettigrew, Bart., of Dultowers Hall, and the other the +well-known marriage of Sylvia Joy... + +Sylvia Joy married after all her fine protestations! Yes! but I'm sure +you will forgive her, for she was married to a lord. When one is twenty +and romantic one would scorn a woman who would jilt us for wealth and +position; at thirty, one would scorn any woman who didn't. Ah me! how +one changes! No one, I can honestly say, was happier over these two +weddings than I, and I sent Sylvia her petticoat as a wedding present. + + +But it was to tell of other matters that I reopen this book and once +more take up my pen--matters so near to my heart that I shrink from +writing of them, and am half afraid that the attempt may prove too hard +for me after all, and my book end on a broken cry of pain. Yet, at the +same time, I want to write of them, for they are beautiful and solemn, +and good food for the heart. + +Besides, though my pilgrimage had been ended so long, they are really a +part, yea, the part for which, though I knew it not, all the rest has +been written--for they tell how I came to find by accident her whom so +long I had sought of design. + +How shall I tell of Thee who, first and last of all women, gave and +awoke in me that love which is the golden key of the world, the mystic +revelation of the holy meaning of life, love that alone may pass +through the awful gates of the stars, and gaze unafraid into the blue +abysses beyond? + +Ah! Love, it seemed far away indeed from the stars, the place where we +met, and only by the light of love's eyes might we have found each +other--as only by the light of love's eyes... But enough, my Heart, +the world waits to hear our story,--the world once so unloving to you, +the world with a heart so hard and anon so soft for love. When the +story is ended, my love, when the story is ended-- + + + +CHAPTER II + +GRACE O' GOD + +It was a hard winter's night four years ago, lovely and merciless; and +towards midnight I walked home from a theatre to my rooms in St. +James's Street. The Venusberg of Piccadilly looked white as a nun with +snow and moonlight, but the melancholy music of pleasure, and the sad +daughters of joy, seemed not to heed the cold. For another hour death +and pleasure would dance there beneath the electric lights. + +Through the strange women clustering at the corners I took my +way,--women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and +Hittites,--and I thought, as I looked into their poor painted +faces,--faces but half human, vampirish faces, faces already waxen with +the look of the grave,--I thought, as I often did, of the poor little +girl whom De Quincey loved, the good-hearted little 'peripatetic' as he +called her, who had succoured him during those nights, when, as a young +man, he wandered homeless about these very streets,--that good, kind +little Ann whom De Quincey had loved, then so strangely lost, and for +whose face he looked into women's faces as long as he lived. Often +have I stood at the corner of Titchfield Street, and thought how De +Quincey had stood there night after night waiting for her to come, but +all in vain, and how from the abyss of oblivion into which some cruel +chance had swept her, not one cry from her ever reached him again. + +I thought, too, as I often did, what if the face I seek should be here +among these poor outcasts,--golden face hidden behind a mask of shame, +true heart still beating true even amidst this infernal world! + +Thus musing, I had walked my way out of the throng, and only a figure +here and there in the shadows of doorways waited and waited in the cold. + +It was something about one of these waiting figures,--some movement, +some chance posture,--that presently surprised my attention and +awakened a sudden sense of half recognition. She stood well in the +shadow, seeming rather to shrink from than to court attention. As I +walked close by her and looked keenly into her face, she cast down her +eyes and half turned away. Surely, I had seen that tall, noble figure +somewhere before, that haughty head; and then with the apparition a +thought struck me--but, no! it couldn't be she! not HERE! + +"It is," said my soul, as I turned and walked past her again; "you +missed her once, are you going to miss her again?" + +"It is," said my eyes, as they swept her for the third time; "but she +had glorious chestnut hair, and the hair of this woman is--gilded." + +"It is she," said my heart; "thank God, it is she!" + +So it was that I went up to that tall, shy figure. + +"It must be very cold here," I said; "will you not join me in some +supper?" + +She assented, and we sought one of the many radiating centres of +festivity in the neighbourhood. She was very tired and cold,--so tired +she seemed hardly to have the spirit to eat, and evidently the cold had +taken tight clutch of her lungs, for she had a cough that went to my +heart to hear, and her face was ghastly pale. When I had persuaded her +to drink a little wine, she grew more animated and spots of suspicious +colour came into her cheeks. So far she had seemed all but oblivious +of my presence, but now she gave me a sweet smile of gratitude, one of +those irradiating transfiguring smiles that change the whole face, and +belong to few faces, the heavenly smile of a pure soul. + +Yes, it was she! The woman who sat in front of me was the woman whom I +had met so strangely that day on that solitary moorland, and whom in +prophecy still more strange my soul had declared to be, "now and for +ever and before all worlds the woman God had created for me, and that +unless I could be hers and she mine, there could be no home, no peace, +for either of us so long as we lived--" and now so strangely met again. + +Yes, it was she! + +For the moment my mind had room for no other thought. I cared not to +conjecture by what devious ways God had brought her to my side. I +cared not what mire her feet had trodden. She had carried her face +pure as a lily through all the foul and sooty air. There was a pure +heart in her voice. Sin is of the soul, and this soul had not sinned! +Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone. + +"Why did you dye that wonderful chestnut hair?" I asked her +presently--and was sorry next minute for the pain that shot across her +face, but I just wanted to hint at what I designed not to reveal fully +till later on, and thus to hint too that it was not as one of the +number of her defilers that I had sought her. + +"Why," she said, "how do you know the colour of my hair? We have never +met before." + +"Yes, we have," I said, "and that was why I spoke to you to-night. +I'll tell you where it was another time." + +But after all I could not desist from telling her that night, for, as +afterwards at her lodging we sat over the fire, talking as if we had +known each other all our lives, there seemed no reason for an arbitrary +delay. + +I described to her the solitary moorland road, and the grey-gowned +woman's figure in front of me, and the gig coming along to meet her, +and the salutation of the two girls, and I told her all one look of her +face had meant for me, and how I had wildly sought her in vain, and +from that day to this had held her image in my heart. + +And as I told her, she sobbed with her head against my knees and her +great hair filling my lap with gold. In broken words she drew for me +the other side of the picture of that long-past summer day. + +Yes, the girl in the gig was her sister, and they were the only +daughters of a farmer who had been rich once, but had come to ruin by +drink and misfortune. They had been brought up from girls by an old +grandmother, with whom the sister was living at the time of my seeing +them. Yes, Tom was her husband. He was a doctor in the neighbourhood +when he married her, and a man, I surmised, of some parts and promise, +but, moving to town, he had fallen into loose ways, taken to drinking +and gambling, and had finally deserted her for another woman--at the +very moment when their first child was born. The child died "Thank +God!" she added with sudden vehemence, and "I--well, you will wonder +how I came to this, I wonder myself--it has all happened but six months +ago, and yet I seem to have forgotten--only the broken-hearted and the +hungry would understand, if I could remember--and yet it was not life, +certainly not life I wanted--and yet I couldn't die--" + +The more I came to know Elizabeth and realise the rare delicacy of her +nature, the simplicity of her mind, and the purity of her soul, the +less was I able to comprehend the psychology of that false step which +her great misery had forced her to take. For hers was not a sensual, +pleasure-loving nature. In fact, there was a certain curious +Puritanism about her, a Puritanism which found a startlingly +incongruous and almost laughable expression in the Scripture almanac +which hung on the wall at the end of her bed, and the Bible, and two or +three Sunday-school stories which, with a copy of "Jane Eyre," were the +only books that lay upon the circular mahogany table. + +Once I ventured gently to chaff her about this religiosity of hers. + +"But surely you believe in God, dear," she had answered, "you're not an +atheist!" + +I think an atheist, with all her experience of human monsters, was for +her the depth of human depravity. + +"No, dear," I had answered; "if you can believe in God, surely I can!" + +I repeat that this gap in Elizabeth's psychology puzzled me, and it +puzzles me still, but it puzzled me only as the method of working out +some problem which after all had "come out right" might puzzle one. It +was only the process that was obscure. The result was gold, whatever +the dark process might be. Was it simply that Elizabeth was one of +that rare few who can touch pitch and not be defiled?--or was it, I +have sometimes wondered, an unconscious and after all a sound casuistry +that had saved Elizabeth's soul, an instinctive philosophy that taught +her, so to say, to lay a Sigurd's sword between her soul and body, and +to argue that nothing can defile the body without the consent of the +soul. + +In deep natures there is always what one might call a lover's leap to +be taken by those that would love them--something one cannot understand +to be taken on trust, something even that one fears to be gladly +adventured ... all this, and more, I knew that I could safely venture +for Elizabeth's sake, ere I kissed her white brow and stole away in the +early hours of that winter's morning. + +As I did so I had taken one of the sumptuous strands of her hair into +my hand and kissed it too. + +"Promise me to let this come back to its own beautiful colour," I had +said, as I nodded to a little phial labelled "Peroxide of Hydrogen" on +her mantelshelf. + +"Would you like to?" she had said. + +"Yes, do it for me." + +One day some months after I cut from her dear head one long thick lock, +one half of which was gold and the other half chestnut. I take it out +and look at it as I write, and, as when I first cut it, it seems still +a symbol of Elizabeth's life, the sun and the shadow, only that the +gold was the shadow, and the chestnut was the sun. + +The time came when the locks, from crown to tip, were all chestnut--but +when it came I would have given the world for them to be gold again; +for Elizabeth had said a curious thing when she had given me her +promise. + +"All right, dear," she had said, "but something tells me that when they +are all brown again our happiness will be at an end." + +"How long will that take?" I had said, trying to be gay, though an +involuntary shudder had gone through me, less at her words than because +of the strange conviction of her manner. + +"About two years,--perhaps a little more," she said, answering me quite +seriously, as she gravely measured the shining tresses, half her body's +length, with her eye. + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE GOLDEN GIRL + +One fresh and sunny morning, some months after this night, Elizabeth +and I stood before the simple altar of a little country church, for the +news had come to us that her husband was dead, and thus we were free to +belong to each other before all the world. The exquisite stillness in +the cool old church was as the peace in our hearts, and the rippling +sound of the sunlit leaves outside seemed like the very murmur of the +stream of life down which we dreamed of gliding together from that hour. + +It was one of those moments which sometimes come and go without any +apparent cause, when life suddenly takes a mystical aspect of +completeness, all its discords are harmonised by some unseen hand of +the spirit, and all its imperfections fall away. The lover of beauty +and the lover of God alike know these strange moments, but none know +them with such a mighty satisfaction as a man and a woman who love as +loved Elizabeth and I. + +Love for ever completes the world, for it is no future of higher +achievement, no expectation of greater joy. It lives for ever in a +present made perfect by itself. Love can dream of no greater +blessedness than itself, of no heaven but its own. God himself could +have added no touch of happiness to our happy hearts that grave and +sunny morning. You philosophers who go searching for the meaning of +life, thinkers reading so sadly, and let us hope so wrongly, the riddle +of the world--life has but one meaning, the riddle but one +answer--which is Love. To love is to put yourself in harmony with the +spheral music of creation, to stand in the centre of the universe, and +see it good and whole as it appears in the eye of God. + +Even Death himself, the great and terrible King of kings, though he may +break the heart of love with agonies and anguish and slow tortures of +separation, may break not his faith. No one that has loved will dream +even death too terrible a price to pay for the revelation of love. For +that revelation once made can never be recalled. As a little sprig of +lavender will perfume a queen's wardrobe, so will a short year of love +keep sweet a long life. And love's best gifts death can never take +away. Nay, indeed, death does not so much rob as enrich the gifts of +love. The dead face that was fair grows fairer each spring, sweet +memories grow more sweet, what was silver is now gold, and as years go +by, the very death of love becomes its immortality. + +I think I shall never hear Elizabeth's voice again, never look into her +eyes, never kiss her dear lips--but Elizabeth is still mine, and I am +hers, as in that morning when we kissed in that little chancel amid the +flickering light, and passed out into the sun and down the lanes, to +our little home among the meadow-sweet. + +She is still as real to me as the stars,--and, alas, as far away! I +think no thought that does not fly to her, I have no joys I do not +share with her, I tell her when the spring is here, and we sit beneath +the moon and listen to the nightjar together. Sometimes we are merry +together as in the old time, and our laughter makes nightfaring folk to +cross themselves; my work, my dreams, my loves, are all hers, and my +very sins are sinned for her sake. + +Two years did Elizabeth and I know the love that passeth all +understanding, and day by day the chestnut upon her head was more and +the gold less, till the day came that she had prophesied, and with the +day a little child, whose hair had stolen all her mother's gold, as her +heart had drained away her mother's life. + +Ah! reader, may it be long before you kneel at the bedside of her you +love best in the world, and know that of all your love is left but a +hundred heart-beats, while opposite sits Death, watch in hand, and +fingers upon her wrist. + +"Husband," whispered Elizabeth, as we looked at each other for the last +time, "let her be your little golden girl..." + +And then a strange sweetness stole over her face, and the dream of +Elizabeth's life was ended. + +As I write I hear in the still house the running of little feet, a +fairy patter sweet and terrible to the heart. + +Little feet, little feet--perhaps if I follow you I shall find again +our mother that is lost. Perhaps Elizabeth left you with me that I +should not miss the way. + +Tout par soullas. + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Quest of the Golden Girl, by +Richard le Gallienne + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN GIRL *** + +***** This file should be named 461.txt or 461.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/4/6/461/ + +Produced by Charles Keller. HTML version by Al Haines. + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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