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diff --git a/old/ggirl10.txt b/old/ggirl10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..704e76e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/ggirl10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6698 @@ +**The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Quest of the Golden Girl** +by Richard le Gallienne + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Illinois + Benedictine College" within the 60 days following each + date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare) + your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association / Illinois Benedictine College". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +Scanned by Charles Keller with +OmniPage Professional OCR software +donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226. +Contact Mike Lough <Mikel@caere.com> + + + + + +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 atten- tions, 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 I 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 Etext of The Quest of the Golden Girl + |