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+Project Gutenberg's The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne, by William J. Locke
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
+
+Author: William J. Locke
+
+Release Date: February, 2004  [EBook #5051]
+Posting Date: April 19, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Polly Stratton
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE MORALS OF MARCUS ORDEYNE
+
+
+by William J. Locke
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+For reasons which will be given later, I sit down here, in Verona, to
+write the history of my extravagant adventure. I shall formulate and
+expand the rough notes in my diary which lies open before me, and I
+shall begin with a happy afternoon in May, six months ago.
+
+
+May 20th.
+
+_London_:--To-day is the seventh anniversary of my release from
+captivity. I will note it every year in my diary with a sigh of
+unutterable thanksgiving. For seven long blessed years have I been
+free from the degrading influences of Jones Minor and the First Book of
+Euclid. Some men find the modern English boy stimulating, and the old
+Egyptian humorous. Such are the born schoolmasters, and schoolmasters,
+like poets, _nascuntur non fiunt_. What I was born passes my ingenuity
+to fathom. Certainly not a schoolmaster--and my many years of
+apprenticeship did not make me one. They only turned me into an
+automaton, feared by myself, bantered by my colleagues, and sometimes
+good-humouredly tolerated by the boys.
+
+Seven years ago the lawyer's letter came. The post used to arrive just
+before first school. I opened the letter in the class-room and sat down
+at my desk, sick with horror. The awful wholesale destruction of my
+relatives paralysed me. My form must have seen by my ghastly face that
+something had happened, for, contrary to their usual practice, they sat,
+thirty of them, in stony silence, waiting for me to begin the lesson. As
+far as I remember anything, they waited the whole hour. The lesson over,
+I passed along the cloister on my way to my rooms. I overheard one of my
+urchins, clattering in front of me, shout to another:
+
+"I'm sure he's got the sack!"
+
+Turning round he perceived me, and grew as red as a turkey-cock. I
+laughed aloud. The boy's yell was a clarion announcement from the
+seventh heaven. I _had got the sack_! _I_ should never teach him
+quadratic equations again. I should turn my back forever upon those
+hateful walls and still more abominated playing-fields. And I was not
+leaving my prison, as I had done once or twice before, in order to
+continue my servitude elsewhere. I was free. I could go out into the
+sunshine and look my fellow-man in the face, free from the haunting,
+demoralising sense of incapacity. I was free. Until that urchin's shriek
+I had not realised it. My teeth chattered with the thrill.
+
+I was fortunately out of school the second hour. I employed most of
+it in balancing myself. A perfectly reasonable creature, I visited the
+chief. He was a chubby, rotund man, with a circular body and a circular
+visage, and he wore great circular gold spectacles. He looked like a
+figure in the Third Book of Euclid. But his eyes sparkled like bits of
+glass in the sun.
+
+"Well, Ordeyne?" he inquired, looking up from letters to parents.
+
+"I have come to ask you to accept my resignation," said I. "I would like
+you to release me at once."
+
+"Come, come, things are not as bad as all that," said he, kindly.
+
+I looked stupidly at him for a moment.
+
+"Of course I know you've got one or two troublesome forms," he
+continued.
+
+Then I winced. His conjecture hurt me horribly.
+
+"Oh, it's nothing to do with my incompetence," I interrupted.
+
+"What is it, then?"
+
+"My grandfather, two uncles, two nephews and a valet were drowned a day
+or two ago in the Mediterranean," I answered, calmly.
+
+I have since been struck by the crudity of this announcement. It took my
+chief's breath away.
+
+"I deeply sympathise with you," he said at last.
+
+"Thank you," said I.
+
+"A terrible catastrophe. No wonder it has upset you. Horrible! Six
+living human beings! Three generations of men!"
+
+"That's just it," said I. "Three generations of my family swept away,
+leaving me now at the head of it."
+
+At this moment the chief's wife came into the library with the morning
+paper in her hand. On seeing me she rushed forward.
+
+"Have you had bad news?"
+
+"Yes. Is it in the paper?"
+
+"I was coming to show my husband. The name is an uncommon one. I
+wondered if they might be relatives of yours."
+
+I bowed acquiescence. The chief looked at the paragraph below his wife's
+indicating thumb, then he looked at me as if I, too, had suffered a
+seachange.
+
+"I had no idea--" he said. "Why, now--now you are Sir Marcus Ordeyne!"
+
+"It sounds idiotic, doesn't it?" said I, with a smile. "But I suppose I
+-am."
+
+And so came my release from captivity. I was profoundly affected by the
+awful disaster, but it would be sheer hypocrisy if I said that I felt
+personal grief. I knew none of the dead, of whom I verily believe the
+valet was the worthiest man. My grandfather and uncles had ignored
+my existence. Not a helping hand had they stretched out to my widowed
+mother in her poverty, when one kindly touch would have meant all.
+
+They do not seem to have been a lovable race, the Ordeynes. What my
+father, the youngest son, was like, I have no idea, as he died when
+I was two years old, but my mother, who was somewhat stern and
+puritanical, spoke of him very much as she would have spoken of the
+prophet Joel, had he been a personal acquaintance.
+
+Seven years to-day have I been a free man.
+
+Feeling at peace with all the world I called this afternoon on my Aunt
+Jessica, Mrs. Ordeyne, who has borne me no malice for stepping into the
+place that should have been the inheritance of her husband and of her
+son. Rather has she devised to adopt me, to guide my ambitions and to
+point out my duties as the head of the house. If I refuse to be adopted,
+avoid ambitions and disclaim duties, the fault lies not with her
+good-will. She is a well-preserved worldly woman of fifty-five, and
+having begun to dye her hair in the peroxide of hydrogen era has not
+the curiosity to abandon the practice and see what colour will result.
+I wish I could like her. I can't. She purrs. Some day I feel she will
+scratch. She received me graciously.
+
+"My dear Marcus. At last! Didn't you know I have been in town ever since
+Easter?"
+
+"No," said I. "I am afraid I didn't." Which was true. "Why didn't you
+tell me?"
+
+"I would have asked you to dinner, but you will never come. As for
+At Home cards I never dream of sending them to you. It is a waste of
+precious half-penny stamps."
+
+"You might have written me a nice little letter about nothing at all," I
+suggested.
+
+"For you to say 'What is that woman worrying me with her silly letters
+for?' I know what you men are." She looked arch.
+
+This is precisely what I should have said. As I am not an inventive
+liar, I could only smile feebly. I am never at my ease with Aunt
+Jessica. I am not the kind of person to afford her entertainment. I do
+not belong to her world of opulence, and if even I desired it, which the
+gods forbid, my means would not enable me to make the necessary display.
+My uncle, thinking to retrieve the fallen fortunes of the title, amassed
+enormous wealth as a company promoter, while I, on whom the title has
+descended, am perfectly contented with its fallen fortunes. I have
+scarcely a thought or taste in common with my aunt. In fact, I must bore
+her exceedingly. Yet she hides her boredom beneath a radiant countenance
+and leads me to understand that my society gives her inexpressible joy.
+I wonder why.
+
+She is always be-guide-philosopher-and-friending me. I resent it. A man
+of forty does not need the counsels of an elderly woman destitute of
+intellect. I believe there are some women who are firmly convinced that
+their sheer sex has imbued them with all the qualities of genius. To-day
+my aunt tackled me on the subject of marriage. I ought to marry. I asked
+why. It appeared it was every man's duty.
+
+"From what point of view?" I asked. "The mere propagation of the human
+race, or the providing of a superfluous young woman with a means of
+livelihood? If it is the former, then, in my opinion, there are too
+many people in the world already; and if the latter, I'm afraid I'm not
+sufficiently altruistic."
+
+"You are so _funny!_" laughed my aunt.
+
+I was not aware of being the least bit funny.
+
+"But, seriously," she continued, "you _must_ marry." She is a woman who
+has an irritating way of speaking in Italics. "Are you aware that if you
+have no son the title will become extinct?"
+
+"And if it does," I cried, "who on this earth will care a
+half-penny-bun?"
+
+I am growing tired of the title. At first it was rather amusing. Now
+it appears it is registered in Heaven's chancery and hedged about with
+divine ordinances. Only the other day an unknown parson requested me to
+open a church bazaar, and I gathered he had received his instructions
+direct from the Almighty.
+
+"Why, every one would care," exclaimed my aunt, genuinely shocked. "It
+would be monstrous. You owe it to your descendants as well as to your
+ancestors. Besides," she added, with apparent irrelevance, "a man in
+your position ought to live up to it."
+
+"I do," said I, "just up to it."
+
+"Now you are pretending you don't understand me. You ought to marry
+money!"
+
+I smiled and shook my head. I don't think my aunt likes me to smile
+and shake my head, for I saw a flicker in her eyes. "No, my dear aunt;
+emphatically no. It would be comfortless. If I kissed it, it would be
+cold. If I put my arms round it, it would be full of sharp edges which
+would hurt. If I tried to get any emotion out of it, it would only
+jingle."
+
+"What do you want then?"
+
+"Nothing. But if I must--let it be plain flesh and blood."
+
+"Cannibal!" said my aunt.
+
+We both laughed.
+
+"But you can have plenty of flesh and blood, with money as well, for the
+asking," she insisted; and thereupon my two cousins, Dora and Gwendolen,
+entered the drawingroom and interrupted the conversation. They are both
+bouncing, fresh-faced girls, in the early twenties. They ride and shoot
+and bicycle and golf and dance, and the elder writes little stories for
+the magazines. As I do none of these things, I am convinced they regard
+me as a poor sort of creature. When they hand me a cup of tea I almost
+expect them to pat me on the head and say, "Good dog!" I am long, lean,
+stooping, hatchet-faced, hawknosed, near-sighted. I have not the breezy
+air of the jolly young stockbrokers they are in the habit of meeting.
+They rather alarm me. Moreover, they have managed to rear a colossal
+pile of wholly incorrect information on every subject under the sun, and
+are addicted to letting chunks of it fall about one's ears. This stuns
+me, rendering conversation difficult.
+
+As I had not seen Dora since her return from Rome, where she had spent
+the early spring, I asked, in some trepidation, for her impressions.
+Before I could collect myself, I was listening to a lecture on St.
+Peter's. She told me it was built by Michael Angelo. I suggested that
+some credit might be given to Bramante, not to speak of Rosellino,
+Baldassare Peruzzi and the two San Gallo's.
+
+"Oh!" said my young lady, with a superb air of omniscience. "It was
+all Michael Angelo's design. _The others only tinkered away at it
+afterwards_."
+
+After receiving this brickbat I took my leave.
+
+To console myself I looked up, during the evening, Michael Angelo's
+noble letter about Bramante.
+
+"One cannot deny," says he, "that Bramante was as excellent in
+architecture as any one has been from the ancients to now. He placed the
+first stone of St. Peter's, not full of confusion, but clear, neat, and
+luminous, and isolated all round in such a way that it injured no
+part of the palace, and was held to be a beautiful thing, as is still
+apparent, in such a way that any one who has departed from the said
+order of Bramante, as San Gallo has done, has departed from the truth."
+
+Michael Angelo did not like San Gallo; neither did he like Bramante-who
+was his senior by thirty years-but this makes his appreciation of the
+elder's work all the more generous.
+
+Tinkered away at it, indeed!
+
+
+May 21st.
+
+I spent all the morning at work by the open window.
+
+I have a small house in Lingfield Terrace, on the north side of the
+Regent's Park, so that my drawing-room, on the first floor, has a
+southern aspect. It has been warm and sunny for the past few days, and
+the elms and plane-trees across the road are beginning to riot in their
+green bravery, as if intoxicated with the golden wine of spring. My
+French window is flung wide open, and on the balcony a triangular bit of
+sunlight creeps round as the morning advances. My work-table is drawn
+up to the window. I am busy over the first section of my "History of
+Renaissance Morals," for which I think my notes are completed. I have a
+delicious sense of isolation from the world. Away over those tree-tops
+is a faint purpurine pall, and below it lies London, with its strife and
+its misery, its wickedness and its vanity. Twenty minutes would take
+me into the heart of it. And if I chose I could be as struggling, as
+wretched, as much imbued with wickedness and vanity as anybody. I could
+gamble on the stock exchange, or play the muddy game of politics, or
+hawk my precious title for sale among the young women of London society.
+My Aunt Jessica once told me that London was at my feet. I am quite
+content that it should stay there. I have much the same nervous dread
+of it as I have of an angry sea breaking in surf on the shingle. If I
+ventured out in it I should be tossed hither and thither and broken on
+the rocks, and I should perish. I prefer to stand aloof and watch. If I
+had a little more of daring in my nature I might achieve something. I am
+afraid I am but a waster in the world's factory; but kind Fate, instead
+of pitching me on the rubbish-heap, has preserved me, perhaps has set me
+under a glass case, in her own museum, as a curiosity. Well, I am happy
+in my shelter.
+
+I was interrupted in my writing by the entrance of my cook and
+housekeeper, Antoinette. She was sorry to disturb me, but did Monsieur
+like sorrel? She was preparing some _veau a l'oseille_ for lunch, and
+Stenson (my man) had informed her that it was disgusting stuff and that
+Monsieur would not eat it.
+
+"Antoinette," said I, "go and inform Stenson that as he looks after
+my outside so do you look after my inside, and that I have implicit
+confidence in both of you in your respective spheres of action."
+
+"But does Monsieur like sorrel?" Antoinette inquired, anxiously.
+
+"I adore it even," said I, and Antoinette made her exit in triumph.
+
+What a reverential care French women have for the insides of their
+masters! At times it is pathetic. Before now, I have thrown dainty
+morsels which I could not eat into the fire, so as to avoid hurting
+Antoinette's feelings.
+
+I came across her three years ago in a tiny hostelry in a tiny town
+in the Loire district. She cooked the dinner and conversed about it
+afterwards so touchingly that we soon became united in bonds of the
+closest affection. Suddenly some money was stolen; Antoinette, accused,
+was dismissed without notice. I had a shrewd suspicion of the thief--a
+suspicion which was afterwards completely justified--and indignantly
+championed Antoinette's cause.
+
+But Antoinette, coming from a village some eighty miles away, was a
+stranger and an alien. I was her only friend. It ended in my inviting
+her to come to England, the land of the free and the refuge of the
+downtrodden and oppressed, and become my housekeeper. She accepted, with
+smiles and tears. And they were great big smiles, that went into creases
+all over her fat red face, forming runnels for the great big tears which
+dropped off at unexpected angles. She was alone in the world. Her only
+son had died during his military service in Madagascar. Although her man
+was dead, the law would not regard her as a widow because she had never
+been married, and therefore refused to exempt her only son. "_On ne
+peut-etre Jeune qu'une fois, n'est-ce pas, Monsieur?_" she said, in
+extenuation of her early fault.
+
+"And Jean-Marie," she added, "was as brave a fellow and as devoted a son
+as if I had been married by the Saint-Pere himself."
+
+I waved my hand in deprecation and told her it did not matter in the
+least. The della Scalas, supreme lords of Verona for many generations,
+were every man jack of them so parented. Even William the Conqueror--
+
+"_Tiens_," cried Antoinette, consoled, "and he became Emperor of
+Germany--he and Bismarck!"
+
+Antoinette's historical sense is rudimentary. I have not tried since to
+develop it.
+
+When I brought my victim of foreign tyranny to Lingfield Terrace,
+Stenson, I believe, nearly fainted. He is the correctest of English
+valets, and his only vice, I believe, is the accordion, on which
+he plays jaunty hymn-tunes when I am out of the house. When he had
+recovered he asked me, respectfully, how they were to understand each
+other. I explained that he would either have to learn French or teach
+Antoinette English. What they have done, I gather, is to invent a
+nightmare of a _lingua franca_ in which they appear to hold amicable
+converse. Now and again they have differences of opinion, as to-day,
+over my taste for _veau a l'oseille_; but, on the whole, their relations
+are harmonious, and she keeps him in a good-humour: Naturally, she feeds
+the brute.
+
+The duty-impulse, stimulated by my call yesterday on one aunt by
+marriage, led my footsteps this afternoon to the house of the other,
+Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne. She is of a different type from her sister-in-law,
+being a devout Roman Catholic, and since the terrible affliction of two
+years ago has concerned herself more deeply than ever in the affairs of
+her religion. She lives in a gloomy little house in a sunless Kensington
+by-street. Only my Cousin Rosalie was at home. She gave me tea made with
+tepid water and talked about the Earl's Court Exhibition, which she had
+not visited, and a new novel, of which she had vaguely heard. I tried in
+vain to infuse some life into the conversation. I don't believe she is
+interested in anything. She even spoke lukewarmly of Farm Street.
+
+I pity her intensely. She is thin, thirty, colourless, bosomless. I
+should say she was passionless--a predestined spinster. She has never
+drunk hot tea or lived in the sun or laughed a hearty laugh. I remember
+once, at my wit's end for talk, telling her the old story of Theodore
+Hook accosting a pompous stranger on the street with the polite request
+that he might know whether he was anybody in particular. She said,
+without a smile, "Yes, it was astonishing how rude some people could
+be."
+
+And her godfathers and godmothers gave her the name of Rosalie. Mine
+might just as well have called me Hercules or Puck.
+
+She told me that her mother intended to ask me to dine with them one
+evening next week. When was I free? I chose Thursday. Oddly enough I
+enjoy dining there, although we are on the most formal terms, not having
+got beyond the "Sir Marcus" and "Mrs. Ordeyne." But both mother and
+daughter are finely bred gentlewomen, and one meets few, oh, very, very
+few among the ladies of to-day.
+
+I reached home about six and found a telegram awaiting me.
+
+"_Sorry can't give you dinner. Cook in an impossible condition. Come
+later._ Judith."
+
+I must confess to a sigh of relief. I am fond of Judith and sorry
+for her domestic infelicities, though why she should maintain that
+alcoholized wretch in her kitchen passes my comprehension. If there is
+one thing women do not understand it is the selection, the ordering, and
+the treatment of domestic servants. The mere man manages much better.
+But, that aside, Antoinette has spoiled me for Judith's cook's cookery.
+I breathed a little sigh of content and summoned Stenson to inform him
+that I would dine at home.
+
+A great package of books from a second-hand bookseller arrived during
+dinner. Among them were the nine volumes of Pietro Gianone's _Istoria
+Civile del Regno di Napoli_, a copy of which I ought to have possessed
+long ago. It is dedicated to the "Most Puissant and Felicitous Prince
+Charles VI, the Great, by God crowned Emperor of the Romans, King of
+Germany, Spain, Naples, Hungary, Bohemia, Sicily, _etcetera_." Is there
+a living soul in God's universe who has a spark of admiration for this
+most puissant and most felicitous monarch crowned by God Emperor
+and King of the greater part of Europe (and docked of most of
+his pretensions by the Treaty of Utrecht)? We only remember the
+forcible-feeble person by his Pragmatic Sanction, and otherwise his
+personality has left in history not the remotest trace. And yet, on
+the 12th February, 1723, a profoundly erudite, subtle, and picturesque
+historian grovels before the man and subscribes himself "Of your Holy
+Caesarean and Catholic Majesty the most humble and most devoted and most
+obsequious vassal and slave Pietro Gianone." What ruthless judgments
+posterity passes on once enormous reputations! In Gianone's admirable
+introduction we hear of "_il celebre Arthur Duck, il quale oltro a' con
+confini della sua Inghilterra volle in altri a piu lontani Paesi andav
+rintracciando l'uso a l'autorita delle romane leggi ne' nuovi domini de'
+Principi cristiani; e di quelle di ciascheduna Nazione volle ancora aver
+conto: le ricerco nella vicina Scozia, e nell' Ibernia; trapasso nella
+Francia, e nella Spagna; in Germania, in Italia, a nel nostro Regno
+ancora: si stese in oltre in Polonia, Boemia, in Ungheria, Danimarca,
+nella Svezia, ed in piu remote parti_." A devil of a fellow this
+celebrated English Arthur Duck, who besides writing a learned treatise
+_De Usu et Auth. Jur. Civ. Rom. in Dominiis Principum Christianorum_,
+was a knight, a member of Parliament, chancellor of the diocese of
+London, and a master in chancery. Gianone flattens himself out for a
+couple of pages before this prodigy whom he lovingly calls _Ariuro_, as
+who should say Raffaelo or Giordano; and now, where in the hearts of men
+lingers Sir Arthur Duck? For one thing he had a bad name. Our English
+sense of humour revolts from making a popular hero of a man called Duck.
+Yet we made one of Drake. But there was something masculine about the
+latter: in fact, everything.
+
+I am afraid it was rather late when I got to Judith.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+May 22d.
+
+I wonder whether I should be happier now if I had lived in a garret "in
+the brave days when I was twenty-one," if I had undergone the lessons
+of misery with the attendant compensations of "_une folle maitresse, de
+francs amis et l'amour des chansons_," and had joyous-heartedly mounted
+my six flights of stairs.  I lived modestly, it is true; but never for a
+moment was I doubtful as to my next meal, and I have always enjoyed the
+creature comforts of the respectable classes; never did Lisette pin her
+shawl curtain-wise across my window. Sometimes, nowadays, I almost wish
+she had. I never dreamed of glory, love, pleasure, madness, or spent my
+lifetime in a moment, like the singer of the immortal song. Often the
+weary moments seemed a lifetime.
+
+And now that I am forty, "it is too late a week." Boon companions, of
+whom I am thankful to say I have none, would drive me crazy with their
+intolerable heartiness. I once spent an evening at the Savage Club.
+As for the _folle maitresse_--as a concomitant of my existence she
+transcends imagination.
+
+"What are you thinking of?" asked Judith.
+
+"I was thinking how the _'Dans un grenier qu'on est bien a vingt ans'_
+principle would have worked in my own case," I answered truthfully, for
+the above reflections had been Passing through my mind.
+
+Judith laughed.
+
+"You in a garret? Why, you haven't got a temperament!"
+
+I suppose I haven't. It never occurred to me before. Beranger omitted
+that from his list of attendant compensations.
+
+"That's the difference between us," she added, after a pause. "I have a
+temperament and you haven't."
+
+"I hope you find it a great comfort."
+
+"It is ten times more uncomfortable than a conscience. It is the bane of
+one's existence."
+
+"Why be so proud of having it?"
+
+"You wouldn't understand if I told you," said Judith.
+
+I rose and walked to the window and gazed meditatively at the rain which
+swept the uninspiring little street. Judith lives in Tottenham Mansions,
+in the purlieus of the Tottenham Court Road. The ground floor of the
+building is a public-house, and on summer evenings one can sit by the
+open windows, and breathe in the health-giving fumes of beer and whisky,
+and listen to the sweet, tuneless strains of itinerant musicians. When
+my new fortunes enabled me to give the dear woman just the little help
+that allowed her to move into a more commodious flat, she had the many
+mansions of London to choose from. Why she insisted on this abominable
+locality I could never understand. It isn't as if the flat were
+particularly cheap; indeed the fact of its being situated over a
+public-house seems to enhance the rent. She said she liked the shape of
+the knocker and the pattern of the bathroom taps. I dimly perceive that
+it must have had something to do with the temperament.
+
+"It always seems to rain when we propose an outing together. This is the
+fourth time since Easter," I remarked.
+
+We had planned a sedate country jaunt, but as the day was pouring wet we
+remained at home.
+
+"Perhaps this is the way the _bon Dieu_ has of expressing his
+disapproval of us," said Judith.
+
+"Why should he disapprove?" I asked.
+
+A shrug of her shoulders ended in a shiver.
+
+"I am chilled through."
+
+"My dear girl," I cried, "why on earth haven't you lit the fire?"
+
+"The last time I lit it you said the room was stuffy."
+
+"But then it was beautiful blazing sunshine, you illogical woman," I
+exclaimed, searching my pockets for a match-box.
+
+I struck a match. To apply it to the fire I had to kneel by her chair.
+She stretched out her hand--she has delicate white hands with slender
+fingers--and lightly touched my head.
+
+"How long have we known each other?" she asked.
+
+"About eight years."
+
+"And how long shall we go on?"
+
+"As long as you like," said I, intent on the fire.
+
+Judith withdrew her hand. I knelt on the hearthrug until the merry blaze
+and crackle of the wood assured me of successful effort.
+
+"These are capital grates," I said, cheerfully, drawing a comfortable
+arm-chair to the front of the fire.
+
+"Excellent," she replied, in a tone devoid of interest.
+
+There was a long silence. To me this is one of the great charms of human
+intercourse. Is there not a legend that Tennyson and Carlyle spent the
+most enjoyable evenings of their lives enveloped in impenetrable silence
+and tobacco-smoke, one on each side of the hob? A sort of Whistlerian
+nocturne of golden fog!
+
+I offered Judith a cigarette. She declined it with a shake of the head.
+I lit one myself and leaning back contentedly in my chair watched her
+face in half-profile. Most people would call her plain. I can't make up
+my mind on the point. She is what is termed a negative blonde--that is
+to say, one with very fair hair (in marvellous abundance--it is one of
+her beauties), a sallow complexion and deep violet eyes. Her face is
+thin, a little worn, that of the woman who has suffered--temperament
+again! Her mouth, now, as she looks into the new noisy flames, is drawn
+down at the corners. Her figure is slight but graceful. She has pretty
+feet. One protruded from her skirt, and a slipper dangled from the tip.
+At last it fell off. I knew it would. She has a craze for the minimum of
+material in slippers--about an inch of leather (I suppose it's leather)
+from the toe. I picked the vain thing up and balanced it again on her
+stocking-foot.
+
+"Will you do that eight years hence?" said Judith.
+
+"My dear, as I've done it eight thousand times the last eight years, I
+suppose I shall," I replied, laughing. "I'm a creature of habit."
+
+"You may marry, Marcus."
+
+"God forbid!" I ejaculated.
+
+"Some pretty fresh girl."
+
+"I abominate pretty fresh girls. I would just as soon talk to a baby in
+a perambulator."
+
+"The women men are crazy to marry are not always those they particularly
+delight to converse with, my friend," said Judith.
+
+I lit another cigarette. "I think the sex feminine has marriage on the
+brain," I exclaimed, somewhat heatedly. "My Aunt Jessica was worrying me
+about it the day before yesterday. As if it were any concern of hers!"
+
+Judith laughed below her breath and called me a simpleton.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"Because you haven't got a temperament."
+
+This was a foolish answer, having no bearing on the question. I told
+her so. She replied that she was years older than I, and had learned
+the eternal relevance of all things. I pointed out that she was years
+younger.
+
+"How many heart-beats have you had in your life--real, wild, pulsating
+heart-beats--eternity in an hour?"
+
+"That's Blake," I murmured.
+
+"I'm aware of it. Answer my question."
+
+"It's a silly question."
+
+"It isn't. The next time you see a female baby in a perambulator, take
+off your hat respectfully."
+
+I am afraid I am clumsy at repartee.
+
+"And the next time you engage a cook, my dear Judith," said I, "send for
+a mere man."
+
+She coloured up. I dissolved myself in apologies. Her wounded
+susceptibilities required careful healing. The situation was somewhat
+odd. She had not scrupled to attack the innermost weaknesses of my
+character, and yet when I retaliated by a hit at externals, she was
+deeply hurt, and made me feel a ruffianly blackguard. I really think if
+Lisette had pinned up that curtain I should have learned something more
+about female human nature. But Judith is the only woman I have known
+intimately all my life long, and sometimes I wonder whether I shall ever
+know her. I told her so once. She answered: "If you loved me you would
+know me." Very likely she was right. Honestly speaking, I don't love
+Judith. I am accustomed to her. She is a lady, born and bred. She is
+an educated woman and takes quite an intelligent interest in the
+Renaissance. Indeed she has a subtler appreciation of the Venetian
+School of Painting than I have. She first opened my eyes, in Italy, to
+the beauties, as a gorgeous colourist, of Palma Vecchio in his second or
+Giorgionesque manner. She is in every way a sympathetic and entertaining
+companion. Going deeper, to the roots of human instinct, I find she
+represents to me--so chance has willed it--the _ewige weibliche_ which
+must complement masculinity in order to produce normal existence. But as
+for the "_zieht uns hinan_"--no. It would not attract me hence--out of
+my sphere. I could commit an immortal folly for no woman who ever made
+this planet more lustrous to its Bruderspharen.
+
+I don't understand Judith. It doesn't very greatly matter. Many things
+I don't understand, the spiritual attitude towards himself, for example,
+of the intelligent juggler who expends his life's energies in balancing
+a cue and three billiard-balls on the tip of his nose. But I know that
+Judith understands me, and therein lies the advantage I gain from our
+intimacy. She gauges, to an absurdly subtle degree, the depth of my
+affection. She is really an incomparable woman. So many insist upon
+predilection masquerading as consuming passion. There is nothing
+theatrical about Judith.
+
+Yet to-day she appeared a little touchy, moody, unsettled. She broke
+another pleasant spell of fireside silence, that followed expiation of
+my offence, by suddenly calling my name.
+
+"Yes?" said I, inquiringly.
+
+"I want to tell you something. Please promise me you won't be vexed."
+
+"My dear Judith," said I, "my great and imperial namesake, in whose
+meditations I have always found ineffable comfort, tells me this: 'If
+anything external vexes you, take notice that it is not the thing which
+disturbs you, but your notion about it, which notion you may dismiss
+at once, if you please!' So I promise to dismiss all my notions of your
+disturbing communication and not to be vexed."
+
+"If there is one platitudinist I dislike more than another, it is Marcus
+Aurelius," said Judith.
+
+I laughed. It was very comfortable to sit before the fire, which
+protested, in a fire's cheery, human way, against the depression of the
+murky world outside, and to banter Judith.
+
+"I can quite understand it," I said. "A man sucks in the consolations of
+philosophy; a woman solaces herself with religion."
+
+"I can do neither," she replied, changing her attitude with an
+exaggerated shaking down of skirts. "If I could, I shouldn't want to go
+away."
+
+"Go away?" I echud.
+
+"Yes. You mustn't be vexed with me. I haven't got a cook--"
+
+"No one would have thought it, from the luncheon you gave me, my dear."
+
+The alcoholized domestic, by the way, was sent out, bag and baggage,
+last evening, when she was sober enough to walk.
+
+"And so it is a convenient opportunity," Judith continued, ignoring my
+compliment--and rightly so; for as soon as it had been uttered, I was
+struck by an uneasy conviction that she had herself disturbed the French
+caterers in the Tottenham Court Road from their Sabbath repose in order
+to provide me with food.
+
+"I can shut up the flat without any fuss. I am never happy at the
+beginning of a London season. I know I'm silly," she went on, hurriedly.
+"If I could stand your dreadful Marcus Aurelius I might be wiser--I
+don't mind the rest of the year; but in the season everybody is in
+town--people I used to know and mix with--I meet them in the streets
+and they cut me and it--hurts--and so I want to get away somewhere by
+myself. When I get sick of solitude I'll come back."
+
+One of her quick, graceful movements brought her to her knees by my
+side. She caught my hand.
+
+"For pity's sake, Marcus, say that you understand why it is."
+
+I said, "I have been a blatant egoist all the afternoon, Judith. I
+didn't guess. Of course I understand."
+
+"If you didn't, it would be impossible for us."
+
+"Have no doubt," said I, softly, and I kissed her hand.
+
+I came into her life when she counted it as over and done with--at eight
+and twenty--and was patiently undergoing premature interment in a small
+pension in Rome. How long her patience would have lasted I cannot say.
+If circumstances had been different, what would have happened? is the
+most futile of speculations. What did happen was the drifting together
+of us two bits of flotsam and our keeping together for the simple reason
+that there were no forces urging us apart. She was past all care for
+social sanctions, her sacred cap of good repute having been flung over
+the windmills long before; and I, friendless unit in a world of shadows,
+why should I have rejected the one warm hand that was held out to me?
+As I said to her this afternoon, Why should the _bon Dieu_ disapprove? I
+pay him the compliment of presuming that he is a broad-minded deity.
+
+When my fortune came, she remarked, "I am glad I am not free. If I were,
+you would want to marry me, and that would be fatal."
+
+The divine, sound sense of the dear woman! Honour would compel the
+offer. Its acceptance would bring disaster.
+
+Marriage has two aspects. The one, a social contract, a _quid_ of
+protection, maintenance, position and what not, for a _quo_ of the
+various services that may be conveniently epitomized in the phrase _de
+mensa et thoro_. The other, the only possible existence for two beings
+whose passionate, mutual attraction demands the perfect fusion of their
+two existences into a common life. Now to this passionate attraction
+I have never become, and, having no temperament (thank Heaven!), shall
+never become, a party. Before the turbulence therein involved I stand
+affrighted as I do before London or the deep sea. I once read an epitaph
+in a German churchyard: "I will awake, O Christ, when thou callest me;
+but let me sleep awhile, for I am very weary." Has the human soul ever
+so poignantly expressed its craving for quietude? I fancy I should have
+been a heart's friend of that dead man, who, like myself, loved the cool
+and quiet shadow, and was not allowed to enjoy it in this world. I may
+not get the calm I desire, but at any rate my existence shall not
+be turned upside down by mad passion for a woman. As for the
+social-contract aspect of marriage, I want no better housekeeper than
+Antoinette; and my dining-table having no guests does not need a lady to
+grace its foot; I have no _a priori_ craving to add to the population.
+"If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason
+alone," says Schopenhauer, "would the human race continue to exist?
+Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation
+as to spare it the burden of existence? or at any rate not take it
+upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?" By bringing
+children into the world by means of a marriage of convenience I should
+be imposing the burden of existence upon them in cold blood. I agree
+with Schopenhauer.
+
+And the dreadful bond of such a marriage! To have in the closest
+physical and moral propinquity for one hundred and eighty-six hours
+out of the week, each hour surcharged with an obligatory exchange of
+responsibilities, interests, sacrifices of every kind, a being who is
+not the utter brother of my thoughts and sister of my dreams--no, never!
+_Au grand non, au grand jamais!_
+
+Judith is an incomparable woman, but she is not the utter brother of my
+thoughts and the sister of my dreams; nor am I of hers.
+
+But the comradeship she gives me is as food and drink, and my affection
+fulfils a need in her nature. The delicate adjustment of reciprocals
+is our sanction. Marriage, were it possible, would indeed be fatal. Our
+pleasant, free relations, unruffled by storm, are ideal for us both.
+
+Why, I wonder, did she think her proposal to go away for a change would
+vex me?
+
+The idea implies a right of veto which is repugnant to me. Of all the
+hateful attitudes towards a woman in which a decent man can view himself
+that of the Turkish bashaw is the most detestable. Women seldom give men
+credit for this distaste.
+
+
+I kissed the white hand of Judith that touched my wrist, and told her
+not to doubt my understanding. She cried a little.
+
+"I don't make your path rougher, Judith?" I whispered.
+
+She checked her tears and her eyes brightened wonderfully.
+
+"You? You do nothing but smooth it and level it."
+
+"Like a steam-roller," said I.
+
+She laughed, sprang to her feet, and carried me off gaily to the kitchen
+to help her get the tea ready. My assistance consisted in lighting the
+gas-stove beneath a waterless kettle. After that I sprawled against
+the dresser and, with my heart in my mouth, watched her cut thin
+bread-and-butter in a woman's deliciously clumsy way. Once, as the
+bright blade went perilously near her palm, I drew in my breath.
+
+"A man would never dream of doing it like that!" I cried, in rebuke.
+
+She calmly dropped the wafer on to the plate and handed me the knife and
+loaf.
+
+"Do it your way," she said, with a smile of mock humility.
+
+I did it my way, and cut my finger.
+
+"The devil's in the knife!" I cried. "But that's the right way."
+
+Judith said nothing, but bound up my wound, and, like the well-conducted
+person of the ballad, went on cutting bread-and-butter. Her smile,
+however, was provoking.
+
+"And all this time," I said, half an hour later, "you haven't told me
+where you are going."
+
+"Paris. To stay with Delphine Carrere."
+
+"I thought you said you wanted solitude."
+
+I have met Delphine Carrere--_brave femme_ if ever there was one, and
+the loyalest soul in the world, the only one of Judith's early women
+friends who has totally ignored the fact of the Sacred Cap of Good
+Repute having been thrown over the windmills (indeed who knows whether
+dear, golden-hearted Delphine herself could conscientiously write the
+magic initials S.C.G.R. after her name?); but Delphine has never struck
+me as a person in whose dwelling one could find conventual seclusion.
+Judith, however, explained.
+
+"Delphine will be painting all day, and dissipating all night. I can't
+possibly disturb her in her studio, for she has to work tremendously
+hard--and I'm decidedly not going to dissipate with her. So I shall have
+my days and nights to my sequestered and meditative self."
+
+I said nothing: but all the same I am tolerably certain that Judith,
+being Judith, will enjoy prodigious merrymaking in Paris. She is
+absolutely sincere in her intentions--the earth holds no sincerer
+woman--but she is a self-deceiver. Her about-to-be-sequestered and
+meditative self was at that moment sitting on the arm of a chair and
+smoking a cigarette, with undisguised relish of the good things of this
+life. The blue smoke wreathing itself amid her fair hair resembled, so I
+told her in the relaxed intellectual frame of mind of the contented man,
+incense mounting through the nimbus of a saint. She affected solicitude
+lest the life-blood of my intelligence should be pouring out through my
+cut finger. No, I am convinced that the _recueillement_ (that beautiful
+French word for which we have no English equivalent, meaning the
+gathering of the soul together within itself) of the rue Boissy
+d'Anglais is the very happiest delusion wherewith Judith has hitherto
+deluded herself. I am glad, exceedingly glad. Her temperament--I have
+got reconciled to her affliction--craves the gaiety which London denies
+her.
+
+"And when are you going?" I asked.
+
+"To-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"Why not? I wired Delphine this morning. I had to go out to get
+something for lunch (my conviction, it appears, was right), and I
+thought I might as well take an omnibus to Charing Cross and send a
+telegram."
+
+"But when are you going to pack?"
+
+"I did that last night. I didn't get to bed till four this morning. I
+only made up my mind after you had gone," she added, in anticipation of
+a possible question.
+
+It is better that we are not married. These sudden resolutions would
+throw my existence out of gear. My moral upheaval would be that of a hen
+in front of a motor-car. When I go abroad, I like at least a fortnight
+to think of it. One has to attune one's mind to new conditions, to map
+out the pleasant scheme of days, to savour in anticipation the delights
+that stand there, awaiting one's tasting, either in the mystery of the
+unknown or in the welcoming light of familiarity. I love the transition
+that can be so subtly gradated by the spirit between one scene and
+another. The man who awakens one fine morning in his London residence,
+scratches his head, and says, "What shall I do to-day? By Jove! I'll
+start for Timbuctoo!" is to me an incomprehensible, incomplete being. He
+lacks an aesthetic sense.
+
+I did not dare tell Judith she lacked an aesthetic sense. I might just
+as well have accused her of stealing silver spoons. I said I should miss
+her (which I certainly shall), and promised to write to her once a week.
+
+"And you," said I, "will have heaps of time to write me the History of a
+Sequestered and Meditative Self--meanwhile, let us go out somewhere and
+dine."
+
+When I got home, I found a card on my hall-table. "Mr. Sebastian
+Pasquale."
+
+I am sorry I missed Pasquale. I haven't seen him for two or three years.
+He is a fascinating youth, a study in reversion. I will ask him to
+dinner here some day soon. It will be quieter than at the club.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+May 24th.
+
+Something has happened. Something fantastic, inconceivable. I am in a
+condition to be surprised at nothing. If a witch on a broomstick rode in
+through my open window and lectured me on quaternions, I should accept
+her visit as a normal occurrence.
+
+I have spent hours walking up and down this book-lined room, wondering
+whether the universe or I were mad. Sometimes I laughed, for the thing
+is sheerly ridiculous. Sometimes I cursed at the impertinence of the
+thing in happening at all. Once I stumbled over a volume of Muratori
+lying on the floor, and I kicked it across the room. Then I took it up,
+and wept over the loosened binding.
+
+The question is: What on earth am I to do? Why has Judith chosen this
+particular time to shut up her flat and sequester herself in Paris?
+Why did my lawyers appoint this particular morning for me to sign their
+silly documents? Why did I turn up three hours late? Why did I walk down
+the Thames Embankment? And why, oh, why, did I seat myself on a bench in
+the gardens below the terrace of the National Liberal Club?
+
+Yesterday was one of the most peaceful and happy days of my existence. I
+worked contentedly at my history; I gossiped with Antoinette who came to
+demand permission to keep a cat.
+
+"What kind of a cat?" I asked.
+
+"Perhaps Monsieur does not like cats?" she inquired, anxiously.
+
+"The cat was worshipped as a god by the ancient Egyptians," I remarked.
+
+"But this one, Monsieur," she said in breathless reassurance, "has only
+one eye."
+
+I would sooner talk to Antoinette than the tutorial staff of Girton. If
+she woke up one morning and found she had a mind she would think it a
+disease.
+
+In the afternoon I strolled into Regent's Park and meeting the
+McMurray's nine-year-old son in charge of the housemaid, around whom
+seemed to be hovering a sheepish individual in a bowler hat, I took him
+off to the Zoological Gardens. On the way he told me, with great glee,
+that his German governess was in bed with an awful sore throat; that he
+wasn't doing any lessons; that the sheepish hoverer was Milly's young
+man, and that the silly way they went on was enough to make one sick.
+When he had fed everything feedable and ridden everything ridable, I
+drove him to the Wellington Road and deposited him with his parents. I
+love a couple of hours with a child when it is thoroughly happy and
+on its best behaviour. And the enjoyment is enhanced by the feeling of
+utter thankfulness that he is not my child, but somebody else's.
+
+In the evening I read and meditated on the happiness of my lot.
+The years of school drudgery have already lost their sharp edge of
+remembered definition, and sometimes I wonder whether it is I who lived
+through them. I had not a care in the world, not a want that I could not
+gratify. I thought of Judith. I thought of Sebastian Pasquale. I
+amused myself by seeking a Renaissance type of which he must be the
+reincarnation. I fixed upon young Olgiati, one of the assassins of
+Gian Galeazzo Sforza. Of the many hundreds of British youths who passed
+before my eyes during my slavery, he is the only one who has sought
+me out in his manhood. And strange to say we had only a few months
+together, during my first year's apprenticeship to the dismal craft, he
+being in the sixth form, and but three or four years younger than I. He
+was the maddest, oddest, most diabolical and most unpopular boy in the
+school. The staff, to whom the conventional must of necessity be always
+the Divine, loathed him. I alone took to the creature. I think now that
+my quaint passion for the cinquecento Italian must have had something
+to do with my attraction. In externals he is as English as I am, having
+been brought up in England by an English mother, but there are thousands
+of Hindoos who are more British than he. The McMurrays were telling me
+dreadful stories about him this afternoon. Sighing after an obdurate
+Viennese dancer, he had lured her coachman into helpless intoxication,
+had invested himself in the domestic's livery, and had driven off with
+the lady in the darkness after the performance to the outskirts of the
+town. What happened exactly, the McMurrays did not know; but there was
+the devil to pay in Vienna. And yet this inconsequent libertine did the
+following before my own eyes. We were walking down Piccadilly together
+one afternoon in the hard winter of 1894. It was a black frost,
+agonizingly cold. A shivering wretch held out matches for sale. His
+hideous red toes protruded through his boots. "My God, my God!" cried
+Pasquale, "I can't stand this!" He jumped into a crawling hansom, tore
+off his own boots, flung them to the petrified beggar and drove home
+in his stocking-feet. I stood on the curb and, with mingled feelings,
+watched the recipient, amid an interested group of bystanders, match the
+small shapely sole against his huge foot, and with a grin tuck the boots
+under his arm and march away with them to the nearest pawnbroker. If
+Pasquale had been an equally compassionate Briton, he would have stopped
+to think, and have tossed the man a sovereign. _But he didn't stop to
+think._ That was my cinquecento Pasquale. And I loved him for it.
+
+I went to bed last night, as I have indicated, the most contented
+of created beings. I awoke this morning with no greater ruffle on my
+consciousness than the appointment with my lawyers. The sun shone. A
+thrush sang lustily in the big elm opposite my bedroom windows. The
+tree, laughed and shook out its finery at me like a woman, saying: "See
+how green I am, after Sunday's rain." Antoinette's one eyed black cat
+(a hideous beast) met me in the hall and arching its back welcomed me
+affably to its new residence. And on my breakfast-table I found a
+copy of the first edition of Cristoforo da Costa's "_Elogi delle
+Donne Illustri_," a book which, in great diffidence, I had asked Lord
+Carnforth, a perfect stranger, to allow me the privilege of consulting
+in his library, and which Lord Carnforth, with a scholar's splendid
+courtesy, had sent me to use at my convenience.
+
+Filled with peace and good-will to all men, like a personification
+of Christmas in May, I started out this morning to see my lawyers. I
+reached them at three o'clock, having idled at second-hand bookstalls
+and lunched on the road. I signed their unintelligible document, and
+wandered through the Temple Gardens and along the Embankment. When I had
+passed under Hungerford Bridge, it struck me that I was warm, a little
+leg-weary, and the Victoria Embankment Gardens smiled an invitation
+to repose. I struck the shady path beneath the terrace of the National
+Liberal Club, and sat myself down on a comfortable bench. The only other
+occupant was a female in black. As I take no interest in females
+in black, I disregarded her presence, and gave myself up to the
+contemplation, of the trim lawns and flower-beds, the green trees
+masking the unsightly Surrey side of the river, and the back of the
+statue of Sir Bartle Frere. A continued survey of the last not making
+for edification (a statue that turns its back on you being one of
+the dullest objects made by man), I took from my pocket a brown
+leather-covered volume which I had fished out of a penny box: "_Suite de
+l'Histoire du Gouvernement de Venise ou L'Histoire des Uscoques, par le
+Sieur Houssaie, Amsterdam, MDCCV._" A whole complete scholarly history
+of a forgotten people for a penny. The Uscoques were originally
+Dalmatians who settled at Segna on the Adriatic and became the most
+pestiferous colony of pirates and desperadoes of sixteenth century
+Europe. I opened the yellow-stained pages and savoured their acrid musty
+smell. How much learning, thought I, bought with the heart's-blood, how
+many million hours of fierce intellectual struggle appeal to mankind
+nowadays but as an odour, an odour of decay, in the nostrils of here and
+there a casual student. I thought this, and my eye caught, repeated many
+times, the name of the Frangipani, once lords of Segna. As men, their
+achievements are wiped out of commonly remembered history; but their
+name is distilled into a sensuous perfume which perchance may be found
+in the penny scent fountains of to-day. I was smiling over this quaint
+olfactory coincidence, and wondering whether any human being alive at
+that moment had ever read the Sieur Houssaie's book, when a tug at my
+arm, such as a neglected terrier gives with his paw, brought me back to
+the workaday world. I turned sharply and met a pair of melting, brown,
+piteous, imploring dog's eyes, belonging not to a terrier, but to the
+disregarded female in black.
+
+"Will you please, sir, to tell me what I must do."
+
+I stared. She was not in the least like what my half-conscious glance at
+the female in black had taken her to be. She was quite young, remarkably
+good looking. Even at the first instant I was struck by her eyes and the
+mass of bronze hair and the twitching of a childish mouth. But she
+had an untidy, touzled, raffish appearance, due to I knew not what
+investiture of disrepute. Her hands--for she wore no gloves--wanted
+washing.
+
+"What a young girl like yourself must not do," said I, "is to enter into
+conversation with men in public places."
+
+"Then I shall have to die," she said, forlornly, edging away from my
+side.
+
+She had the oddest little foreign accent. I looked at her again
+more critically, and discovered what it was that made her look so
+disreputable. She was wearing an old black dress many sizes too big for
+her. Great pleats of it were secured by pins in unexpected places, so
+that quaint chaos was made of the scheme of decoration--black velvet
+and bugles--on the bodice. Instinctively I felt that a middle-aged,
+fat, second-hand-clothes-dealing Jewess had built it many years ago
+for synagogue wear. On the girlish figure it looked preposterous.
+Preposterous too was her head-gear, an amorphous bonnet trimmed in
+black, with a cheap black feather drooping brokenly.
+
+Her eyes gave me a reproachful glance and turned away again. Then she
+shrugged her shoulders and sniffed. My mother had a housemaid once
+who always sniffed like that before beginning to cry. My position was
+untenable. I could not remain stonily on the seat while this grotesquely
+attired damsel wept; and for the life of me I could not get up and leave
+her. She looked at me again. Those swimming, pleading eyes were scarcely
+human. I capitulated.
+
+"Don't cry. Tell me what I can do for you," I said.
+
+She moved a few inches nearer.
+
+"I want to find Harry," she said; "I have lost him."
+
+"Who's Harry?" I naturally inquired.
+
+"He is to be my husband."
+
+"What's his other name?"
+
+"I have forgotten," she said, spreading out her hands.
+
+"Don't you know any one else in London?" I asked.
+
+She shook her head mournfully. "And I am getting so hungry."
+
+I suggested that there were restaurants in London.
+
+"But I have no money," she objected. "No money and nothing at all but
+this." She designated her dress. "Isn't it ugly?"
+
+"It is decidedly not becoming," I admitted.
+
+"Well, what must I do? You tell me and I do it. If you don't tell me, I
+must die."
+
+She leaned back placidly, having thus put upon my shoulders the
+responsibility of her existence. I did not know which to admire
+more, her cool assurance or the stoic fortitude with which she faced
+dissolution.
+
+"I can give you some money to keep you going for a day or two," said I,
+"but as for finding Harry, without knowing his name--"
+
+"After all I don't want so very much to find him," said this amazing
+young person. "He made me stay in my cabin all the time I was in the
+steamer. At first I was glad, for it went up and down, side to side, and
+I thought I would die, for I was so sick; but afterwards I got better--"
+
+"But where did you come from?" I asked.
+
+"From Alexandretta."
+
+"What were you doing there?"
+
+"I used to sit in a tree and look over the wall--"
+
+"What wall?"
+
+"The wall of my house-my father's house. He was not my father, but he
+married my mother. I am English." She announced the fact with a little
+air of finality.
+
+"Indeed?" said I.
+
+"Yes. Father, mother--both English. He was Vice-Consul. He died before I
+was born. Then his friend Hamdi Effendi took my mother and married her.
+You see?"
+
+I confessed I did not. "Where does Harry come in?" I inquired.
+
+She looked puzzled. "Come in?" she echoed.
+
+I perceived her knowledge of the English vernacular was limited. I
+turned my question differently.
+
+"Oh," she said with more animation. "He used to pass by the wall, and I
+talked to him when there was no one looking. He was so pretty--prettier
+than you," she paused.
+
+"Is it possible?" I said, ironically.
+
+"Oh, yes," she replied with profound gravity. "He had a moustache, but
+he was not so long."
+
+"Well? You talked to Harry. What then?"
+
+In her artless way she told me. A refreshing story, as old as the
+crusades, with the accessories of orthodox tradition; a European
+disguise, purchased at a slop dealer's by the precious Harry, a rope, a
+midnight flitting, a passage taken on board an English ship; the
+anchor weighed; and the lovers were free on the bounding main. A
+most refreshing story! I put on a sudden air of sternness, and shot a
+question at her like a bullet.
+
+"Are you making all this up, young woman?"
+
+She started-looked quite scared.
+
+"You mean I tell lies? But no. It is all true. Why shouldn't it be true?
+How else could I have come here?"
+
+The question was unanswerable. Her story was as preposterous as her
+garments. But her garments were real enough. I looked long into her
+great innocent eyes. Yes, she was telling me the truth. She babbled
+on for a little. I gathered that her step-father, Hamdi Effendi, was a
+Turkish official. She had spent all her life in the harem from which she
+had eloped with this pretty young Englishman.
+
+"And what must I do?" she reiterated.
+
+I told her to give me time. One is not in the habit of meeting abducted
+Lights of the Harem in the Embankment Gardens, beneath the National
+Liberal Club. It was, in fact, a bewildering occurrence. I looked around
+me. Nothing seemed to have happened during the last ten minutes. A pale
+young man on the next bench, whom I had noticed when I entered, was
+reading a dirty pink newspaper. Pigeons and sparrows hopped about
+unconcernedly. On the file of cabs, just perceptible through the
+foliage, the cabmen lolled in listless attitudes. Sir Bartle Frere
+stolidly kept his back to me, not the least interested in this Gilbert
+a Becket story. I always thought something was wrong with that man's
+character.
+
+What on earth could I tell her to do? The best course was to find the
+infernal Harry. I asked her how she came to lose him. It appears he
+escorted her ashore at Southampton, after having scarcely set eyes
+on her during the voyage, put her into a railway carriage with strict
+injunctions not to stir until he claimed her, and then disappeared into
+space.
+
+"Did he give you your ticket?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What a young blackguard!" I exclaimed.
+
+"I don't like him at all," she said.
+
+How she managed to elude the ticket collector at Vauxhall I could not
+exactly discover. Apparently she told him, in her confiding manner, that
+Harry had it, and when he found no Harry in the train and came back to
+say so, she turned her dewy imploring eyes on him and the sentimental
+varlet melted. At Waterloo a man had told her she must get out of the
+carriage--she had travelled alone in it--and she had meekly obeyed. She
+had wandered out of the station and across a bridge and had eventually
+found herself in the Embankment Gardens. Then she had asked me how to
+find Harry. Really she was ridiculously like Thomas a Becket's Saracen
+mother crying in London for Gilbert. And the most ludicrous part of the
+resemblance was that she did not know the creature's surname.
+
+"By the way," said I, "what is your name?"
+
+"Carlotta."
+
+"Carlotta what?" I asked.
+
+"I have no other name."
+
+"Your father--the Vice-Consul--had one."
+
+She wrinkled her young forehead in profound mental effort.
+
+"Ramsbotham," she said at last, triumphantly.
+
+"Now look here, Miss Ramsbotham--no," I broke off. "Such an appellation
+is anachronistic, incongruous, and infinitely absurd. I can't use it. I
+must take the liberty of addressing you as Carlotta."
+
+"But I've told you that Carlotta is my name," she said, in
+uncomprehending innocence.
+
+"And mine is Sir Marcus Ordeyne. People call me 'Sir Marcus.'"
+
+"Seer Marcous," said Carlotta.
+
+She did not seem at all impressed with the fact that she was talking to
+a member of the baronetage.
+
+"Quite so," said I. "Now, Carlotta," I resumed, "our first plan is
+to set out in search of Harry. He may have missed his train, and have
+followed by a later one, and be even now rampaging about Waterloo
+station. If we hear nothing of him, I will drive you to the Turkish
+Consulate, give you in charge there, and they will see you safely home
+to Alexandretta. The good Hamdi Effendi is doubtless distracted, and
+will welcome you back with open arms."
+
+I meant to be urbane and friendly.
+
+She rose to her feet, grew as white as paper, opened her great eyes,
+opened her baby mouth, and in the middle of the Embankment Gardens
+plumped on her knees before me and clasped her hands above her head.
+
+"For God's sake get up!" I shrieked, wrenching her back acrobatically to
+the bench beside me. "You mustn't do things like that. You'll have the
+whole of London running to look at us."
+
+Indeed the sight had so far roused the pale young man from his
+lethargy that he laid his dirty pink paper on his knees. I kept hold of
+Carlotta's wrists. She began to moan incoherently.
+
+"You mustn't send me back--Hamdi will kill me--oh please don't send me
+back--he will make me marry his friend Mustapha--Mustapha has only two
+teeth--and he is seventy years old--and he has a wife already--I only
+went with Harry to avoid Mustapha. Hamdi would kill me, he would beat
+me, he would make me marry Mustapha."
+
+That is what I gathered from her utterances. She was frightened out of
+her wits, even into anticlimax.
+
+"But the Turkish Consul is your natural protector," said I.
+
+"You wouldn't be so cruel," she sobbed. The guttural sonority with which
+she rolled the "r" in "cruel" made the epithet appear one of revolting
+barbarity. She fixed those confounded eyes upon me.
+
+I wonder whether such a fool as I has ever lived.
+
+I promised, on my honour, not to hand her over to the Turkish consulate.
+
+I took a four-wheeled cab from the rank on the Embankment and drove her
+to Waterloo. On the way she reminded me that she was hungry. I gave her
+food at the buffet. It appears she has a passion for hard-boiled eggs
+and lemonade. She did not seem very much concerned about finding Harry,
+but chattered to me about the appointments of the bar. The beer-pulls
+amused her particularly. She made me order a glass of bitter (a beverage
+which I loathe) in order to see again how it was done, and broke into
+gleeful laughter. The smart but unimaginative barmaid stared at her in
+bewilderment. The two or three bar-loafers also stared. I was glad to
+escape to the platform.
+
+There, however, a group of idlers followed us about and stood in a ring
+round us when we stopped to interview a railway official. The beautiful,
+bronze-haired, ox-eyed young woman in her disreputable attire--I have
+never seen a broken black feather waggle more shamelessly--was a sight
+indeed to strike wonderment into the cockney mind. And perhaps her
+association with myself added to the incongruity. I am long and lean and
+unlovely, I know; but it is my consolation that I look irreproachably
+respectable. Of the two I was infinitely the more disturbed by the
+public attention. "Calm and unembarrassed as a fate" she returned the
+popular gaze, and appeared somewhat bored by my efforts to find Harry.
+In the midst of an earnest discussion with the station-master she begged
+me for a penny to put into an automatic sweetmeat machine, which she had
+seen a small boy work successfully. I refused, curtly, and turned to the
+station-master. A roar of laughter interrupted me again. Carlotta, with
+outstretched hand and pleading eyes, like an organ-grinder's monkey, had
+induced the boy to part with the sticky bit of toffee, and was in the
+act of conveying it to her mouth.
+
+"I'll call to-morrow morning," said I hurriedly to the station-master.
+"If the gentleman should come meanwhile, tell him to leave his name and
+address."
+
+Then I took Carlotta by the arm and, accompanied by my train of
+satellites, I thrust her into the first hansom-cab I could see.
+
+There was no sign or token of Harry. No pretty young man was hanging
+dejectedly about the station. None had torn his hair before the
+officials asking for news of a lost female in frowsy black. There was no
+Harry. There was no further need therefore to afford the British public
+a gratuitous entertainment.
+
+"Drive," said I to the cabman. "Drive like the devil."
+
+"Where to, sir?"
+
+I gasped. Where should I drive? I lost my head.
+
+"Go on driving round and round till I tell you to stop." The philosophic
+cabman did not regard me as eccentric, for he whipped up his horse
+cheerfully. When we had slid down the steep incline and got free of the
+precincts of that hateful station, I breathed more freely and collected
+my wits. Carlotta sucked her sticky thumbs and wiped them on her dress.
+
+"Where are we going?" she asked.
+
+"Across Waterloo Bridge," said I.
+
+"What to do?"
+
+"To dispose of you somehow," I replied, grimly. "But how, I haven't a
+notion. There's a Home for Lost Dogs and a Home for Stray Cats, and a
+Lost Property Office at Scotland Yard, but as you are neither a dog nor
+a cat nor an umbrella, these refuges are unavailable."
+
+The cab reached the Strand.
+
+"East or west, sir?" inquired the driver.
+
+"West," said I, at random.
+
+We drove down the Strand at a leisurely pace. I passed through a phase
+of agonised thought. By my side was a helpless, homeless, friendless,
+penniless young woman, as beautiful as a goddess and as empty-minded
+as a baby. What in the world could I do with her? I looked at her in
+despair. She met my glance with a contented smile; just as if we were
+old acquaintances and I were taking her out to dinner. The unfamiliar
+roar and bustle of London impressed her no more than it would have
+impressed a little dog who had found a kind master.
+
+"Suppose I gave you some money and put you down here and left you?" I
+inquired.
+
+"I should die," she answered, fatalistically. "Or, perhaps, I should
+find another kind gentleman."
+
+"I wonder if you have such a thing as a soul," said I.
+
+She plucked at her gown. "I have only this--and it is very ugly," she
+remarked again. "I should like a pink dress."
+
+We crossed Trafalgar Square, and I saw by Big Ben that it was a quarter
+to six. I could not drive through London with her for an indefinite
+period. Besides, my half past seven dinner awaited me.
+
+Why, oh, why has Judith gone to Paris? Had she been in town I could have
+shot Carlotta into Tottenham Mansions, and gone home to my dinner and
+Cristoforo da Costa with a light heart. Judith would have found Carlotta
+vastly entertaining. She would have washed her body and analysed her
+temperament. But Judith was in retreat with Delphine Carrere, and has
+left me alone to bear the responsibilities of life--and Carlotta.
+
+The cab slowly mounted Waterloo Place. I had thought of my aunts as
+possible helpers, and rejected the idea. I had thought of a police
+station, a hotel, my lawyers (too late), a furnished lodging, a
+hospital. My mind was an aching blank.
+
+"Where do you live?" asked Carlotta.
+
+I looked at her and groaned. It was the only solution. "Up Regent's Park
+way," I replied, aware that she was none the wiser for the information.
+
+I gave the address to the cabman through the trap-door in the roof.
+
+"I'm going to take you home with me for to-night," I said, severely. "I
+have an excellent French housekeeper who will look after your comfort.
+And to-morrow if that infernal young scoundrel of a lover of yours
+is not found, it will not be the fault of the police force of Great
+Britain."
+
+She laid her grubby little hand on mine. It was very soft and cool.
+
+"You are cross with me. Why?"
+
+I removed her hand.
+
+"You mustn't do that again," said I. "No; I am not in the least
+cross with you. But I hope you are aware that this event is of an
+unprecedented character."
+
+"What is an unprecedented character?" she asked, stumbling over the long
+words.
+
+"A thing that has never happened before and I devoutly hope will not
+happen again."
+
+Her face was turned to me. The lower lip trembled a little. The dog-look
+came into those wonderful eyes.
+
+"You will be kind to me?" she said, in her childish monosyllables, each
+word carefully articulated with a long pause between.
+
+I felt I had behaved like a heartless brute, ever since I thrust her
+into the cab at Waterloo. I relented and laughed.
+
+"If you are a good girl and do as I tell you," said I.
+
+"Seer Marcous is my lord and I am his slave," was her astounding reply.
+
+Then I realised that she had been brought up by Hamdi Effendi. There is
+something salutary, after all, in the training of the harem.
+
+"I'm very glad to hear it," I said.
+
+She closed her eyes. I saw now she was very tired. I thought she had
+gone to sleep and I looked in front of me puzzling out the problem.
+Presently the cab-doors were thrust violently open, and if I had net
+held her back, she would have jumped out of the vehicle.
+
+"Look!" she cried, in great excitement. "There! There's Harry's name!"
+
+She pointed to a butcher's cart immediately in front of us, bearing, in
+large letters, the name of "E. Robinson."
+
+"We must stop," she went on. "He will tell us about Harry."
+
+It took me from Oxford Circus to Portman Square to convince her
+that there were many thousands of Robinsons in London and that the
+probability of the butcher's cart being a clue to Harry's whereabouts
+was exceedingly remote.
+
+At Baker Street station she asked, wearily: "Is it still far to your
+house?"
+
+"No," said I, encouragingly. "Not very far."
+
+"But one can drive for many days through streets in London, and there
+will be still streets, still houses? So they tell me in Alexandretta.
+London is as big as the moon, not so?"
+
+I felt absurdly pleased. She was capable of an idea. I had begun to
+wonder whether she were not merely half-witted. The fact of her being
+able to read had already cheered me.
+
+"Many hours, yes," I corrected, "not many days. London seems big to
+you?"
+
+"Oh, yes," she said, passing her hand over her eyes. "It makes all go
+round in my head. One day you will take me for a drive through these
+wonderful streets. Now I am too tired. They make my head ache."
+
+Then she shut her eyes again and did not open them until we stopped
+at Lingfield Terrace. I modified my first impression of her animal
+unimpressionability. She is quite sane. If Boadicea were to be
+brought back to life and be set down suddenly at Charing Cross, her
+psychological condition would not be far removed from that of an idiot.
+Yet in her own environment Boadicea was quite a sane and capable lady.
+
+My admirable man Stenson opened the door and admitted us without moving
+a muscle. He would betray no incorrect astonishment if I brought home a
+hippogriff to dinner. I have an admiration for the trained serving-man's
+imperturbability. It is the guardian angel of his self-respect. I
+ordered him to send Antoinette to me in the drawing-room.
+
+"Antoinette," said I, "this young lady has travelled all the way from
+Asia Minor, where the good St. Paul had so many adventures, without
+changing her things."
+
+"_C'est y Dieu possible_!" said Antoinette.
+
+"Give her a nice hot bath, and perhaps you will have the kindness to
+lend her the underlinen that your sex is in the habit of wearing. You
+will put her into the spare bedroom, as she is going to pass the night
+here, and you will look generally after her comfort."
+
+"_Bien, M'sieu_," said Antoinette, regarding Carlotta in stupefaction.
+
+"And put that hat and dress into the dust-bin."
+
+"_Bien, M'sieu._"
+
+"And as Mademoiselle is broken with fatigue, having come without
+stopping from Asia Minor, she will go to bed as soon as possible."
+
+"The poor angel," said Antoinette. "But will she not join Monsieur at
+dinner?"
+
+"I think not," said I, dryly.
+
+"But the young ducklings that are roasting for the dinner of Monsieur?"
+
+"If they were not roasting they might be growing up into ducks," said I.
+
+"Oh, la, la!" murmured Antoinette, below her breath.
+
+"Carlotta," said I, turning to the girl who had seated herself humbly
+on a straight-backed chair, "you will go with Antoinette and do as she
+tells you. She doesn't talk English, but she is used to making people
+understand her."
+
+"_Mais, moi parley Francais un peu_," said Carlotta.
+
+"Then you will win Antoinette's heart, and she will lend you her finest.
+Good-night," said I, abruptly. "I hope you will have a pleasant rest."
+
+She took my outstretched hand, and, to my great embarrassment, raised
+it to her lips. Antoinette looked on, with a sentimental moisture in her
+eyes.
+
+"The poor angel," she repeated.
+
+Later, I gave Stenson a succinct account of what had occurred. I owed
+it to my reputation. Then I went upstairs and dressed for dinner. I
+consider I owe that to Stenson. It was eight o'clock before I sat down,
+but Antoinette's ducklings were delicious and brought consolation for
+the upheaval of the day. I was unfolding the latest edition of _The
+Westminster Gazette_ with which I always soothe the digestive half-hour
+after dinner, when Antoinette entered to report progress.
+
+She was sound asleep, the poor little one. Oh, but she was tired. She
+had eaten some _consomme_, a bit of fish and an omelette. But she was
+beautiful, gentle as a lamb; and she had a skin _on dirait du satin_.
+Had not Monsieur noticed it?
+
+I replied, with some over-emphasis, that I had not.
+
+"Monsieur rather regards the inside of his books," said Antoinette.
+
+"They are generally more worth regarding," said I.
+
+Antoinette said nothing; but there was a feminine quiver at the corners
+of her fat lips.
+
+She was comfortably disposed of for the night. I drew a breath of
+relief. To-morrow Great Scotland Yard should set out on the track of
+the absconding Harry. Carlotta's happy recollection of his surname
+facilitated the search. I lit a cigarette and opened _The Westminster
+Gazette_.
+
+A few moments later I was staring at the paper in blank horror and
+dismay.
+
+Harry was found. There was no mistake. Harry Robinson, junior partner of
+the firm of Robinson & Co., of Mincing Lane. Vain, indeed, would it be
+to seek the help of Great Scotland Yard. Harry had blown out his brains
+in the South Western Hotel at Southampton.
+
+
+I have read the newspaper paragraph over and over again to-night. There
+is no possible room for doubt that it is the same Harry.
+
+The ways of man are past interpretation. Here is an individual who
+lures a girl from an oriental harem, attires her in disgusting garments,
+smuggles her on board a steamer, where he claps her, so to speak, under
+hatches, and has little if anything to do with her, sets her penniless
+and ticketless in a London train, and then goes off and blows his brains
+out. Where is the sense of it?
+
+I have not a spark of sympathy for Harry--a callow, egotistical dealer
+in currants. He ought to have blown out his brains a year ago. He has
+behaved in a most unconscionable manner. How does he expect me to break
+the news to Carlotta? His selfishness is appalling. There he lies,
+comfortably dead in the South Western Hotel, while Carlotta has
+literally not a rag to her back, her horrific belongings having been
+dropped into the dust-bin. Who does he think is going to provide
+Carlotta with food and shelter and a pink dress? What does he imagine is
+to become of the poor waif? In all my life I have never heard of a more
+cynical suicide.
+
+I have walked about for hours, laughing and cursing and kicking the
+binding loose of my precious Muratori. I have wondered whether the
+universe or I were mad. For there is one thing that is clear to
+me--Carlotta is here, and here Carlotta must remain.
+
+Devastating though it be to the well-ordered quietude of my life, I must
+adopt Carlotta.
+
+There is no way out of it.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+May 25th.
+
+Shall I be accused of harbouring a bevy of odalisques at No. 20
+Lingfield Terrace? Calumny and Exaggeration walk abroad, arm in arm,
+even on the north side of Regent's Park. If they had spied Carlotta at
+my window this morning, they would have looked in for afternoon tea
+at my Aunt Jessica's and have waylaid Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne outside the
+Oratory. The question is: Shall Truth anticipate them? I think not.
+Every family has its irrepressible, impossible, unpractical member, its
+_enfant terrible_, who is forever doing the wrong thing with the best
+intentions. Truth is the _enfant terrible_ of the Virtues. Some times
+it puts them to the blush and throws them into confusion; at others it
+blusters like a blatant liar; at others, again, it stutters and stammers
+like a detected thief. There is no knowing how Truth may behave, so I
+shall not let it visit my relations.
+
+I must confess, however, that I feared the possible passing by of the
+two decrepit cronies, when Carlotta stood at my open French window this
+morning. She is really indecently beautiful. She was wearing a deep red
+silk peignoir, open at the throat, unashamedly Parisian, which clung
+to every salient curve of her figure. I wondered where, in the name of
+morality, she had procured the garment. I learned later that it was the
+joy and pride of Antoinette's existence; for once, in the days long ago,
+when she was _femme de chambre_ to a luminary of the cafes concerts, it
+had met around her waist. She had treasured the cast-off finery of this
+burned-out star--she beamed in the seventies--for all these years, and
+now its immortal devilry transfigured Carlotta. She was also washed
+specklessly clean. An aroma that no soap or artificial perfume could
+give disengaged itself from her as she moved. Her gold-bronze hair
+was superbly ordered. I noticed her arms which the sleeves of the gay
+garment left bare to the elbows; the skin was like satin. "_Et sa peau!
+On dirait du satin._" Confound Antoinette! She had the audacity, too,
+to come down with bare feet. It was a revelation of pink, undreamed-of
+loveliness in tus.
+
+I repeat she is indecently beautiful. A chit of a girl of eighteen (for
+that I learn is her age) has no right to flaunt the beauty that should
+be the appanage of the woman of seven and twenty. She should be modestly
+well-favoured, as becomes her childish stage of development. She
+looked incongruous among my sober books, and I regarded her with some
+resentment. I dislike the exotic. I prefer geraniums to orchids. I have
+a row of pots of the former on my balcony, and the united efforts of
+Stenson, Antoinette, and myself have not yet succeeded in making them
+bloom; but I love the unassuming velvety leaves. Carlotta is a flaring
+orchid and produces on my retina a sensation of disquiet.
+
+
+I broke the tidings of the tragedy as gently as I could. I had news of
+Harry, I said, gravely. She merely looked interested and asked me when
+he was coming.
+
+"I'm afraid he will never come," said I.
+
+"If he does not come, then I can stay here with you?"
+
+Her eyes betrayed a quiver of anxiety. For the life of me I could not
+avoid the ironical.
+
+"If you will condescend to dwell as a member of my family beneath my
+humble roof."
+
+The irony was lost on her. She uttered a joyous little cry and held out
+both her hands to me. Her eyes danced.
+
+"Oh, I am glad he is not coming. I don't like him any more. I love to
+stay here with you."
+
+I took both the hands in mine. Mortal man could not have done otherwise.
+
+"Have you thought why it is that you will never see Harry again?"
+
+She shook her beautiful head and held it to one side and puckered up her
+brows, like a wistful terrier.
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+"Would it grieve you, if he were?"
+
+"No-o," she replied, thoughtfully.
+
+"Then," said I, dropping her hands and turning away, "Harry is dead."
+
+She stood silent for a couple of minutes, regarding the row of pink
+toes that protruded beneath the peignoir. At last her bosom shook with a
+sigh. She glanced up at me sweetly.
+
+"I am so glad," she said.
+
+
+That is all she has vouchsafed to say with regard to the unhappy young
+man. "She was so glad!" She has not even asked how he met his death. She
+has simply accepted my statement. Harry is dead. He has gone out of her
+life like yesterday's sunshine or yesterday's frippery. If I had told
+her that yesterday's cab-horse had broken his neck, she could not be
+more unconcerned. Nay, she is glad. Harry had not treated her nicely. He
+had boxed her up in a cabin where she had been sick, and had subjected
+her to various other discomforts. I, on the contrary, had surrounded her
+with luxuries and dressed her in red silk. She rather dreaded Harry's
+coming. When she learned that this was improbable she was relieved. His
+death had turned the improbable into the impossible. It was the end of
+the matter. She was so glad!
+
+Yet there must have been some tender passage in their brief intercourse.
+He must have kissed her during their flight from home to steamer. Her
+young pulses must have throbbed a little faster at the sight of his
+comely face.
+
+What kind of a mythological being am I housing? Did she come at all out
+of Hamdi Effendi's harem? Is she not rather some strange sea-creature
+that clambered on board the vessel and bewitched the miserable boy,
+sucked the soul out of him, and drove him to destruction? Or is she a
+Vampire? Or a Succubus? Or a Hamadryad? Or a Salamander?
+
+One thing, I vow she is not human.
+
+If only Judith were here to advise me! And yet I have an uneasy feeling
+that Judith will suggest, with a certain violence that is characteristic
+of her, the one course which I cannot follow: to send Carlotta back to
+Hamdi Effendi. But I cannot break my word. I would rather, far rather,
+break Carlotta's beautiful neck. I have not written to Judith. Nor, by
+the way, have I received a letter from her. Delphine has been whirling
+her off her legs, and she is ashamed to confess the delusion of the
+sequestered life. I wish I were enjoying myself half as much as Judith.
+
+
+"I have adopted Mademoiselle," said I to Antoinette this morning. "If
+she returned to Asia Minor they would put a string round her neck, tie
+her up in a sack, and throw her into the sea."
+
+"That would be a pity," said Antoinette, warmly.
+
+"_Cela depend_," said I. "Anyhow she is here, and here she remains."
+
+"In that case," said Antoinette, "has Monsieur considered that the poor
+angel will need clothes and articles of toilette--and this and that and
+the other?"
+
+"And shoes to hide her shameless tus," I said.
+
+"They are the most beautiful toes I have ever seen!" cried Antoinette in
+imbecile admiration. She has bewitched that old woman already.
+
+I put on my hat and went to Wellington Road to consult Mrs. McMurray.
+Heaven be thanked, thought I, for letting me take her little boy the day
+before yesterday to see the other animals, and thus winning a mother's
+heart. She will help me out of my dilemma. Unfortunately she was not
+alone. Her husband, who is on the staff of a morning newspaper, was
+breakfasting when I arrived. He is a great ruddy bearded giant with
+a rumbling thunder of a laugh like the bass notes of an organ. His
+assertion of the masculine principle in brawn and beard and bass
+somewhat overpowers a non-muscular, clean-shaven, and tenor person like
+myself. Mrs. McMurray, on the contrary, is a small, bright bird of a
+woman.
+
+I told my amazing story from beginning to end, interrupted by many
+Hoo-oo-oo-oo's from McMurray.
+
+"You may laugh," said I, "but to have a mythical being out of
+Olympiodorus quartered on you for life is no jesting matter."
+
+"Olymp--?" began McMurray.
+
+"Yes," I snapped.
+
+"Bring her this afternoon, Sir Marcus, when this unsympathetic wretch
+has gone to his club," said his wife, "and I'll take her out shopping."
+
+"But, dear lady," I cried in despair, "she has but one garment--and that
+a silk dressing-gown of horrible depravity that belonged to a dancer of
+the second Empire! She is also barefoot."
+
+"Then I'll come round myself and see what can be done."
+
+"And by Jove, so will I!" cried McMurray.
+
+"You'll do such thing," said his wife
+
+"If I gave you a cheque for 100," said I, "do you think you could get
+her what she wants, to go on with?"
+
+"A hundred pounds!" The little lady uttered a delighted gasp and I
+thought she would have kissed me. McMurray brought his sledgehammer of a
+hand down on my shoulder.
+
+"Man!" he roared. "Do you know what you are doing--casting a respectable
+wife and mother of a family loose among London drapery shops with a
+hundred pounds in her pocket? Do you think she will henceforward give a
+thought to her home or husband? Do you want to ruin my domestic peace,
+drive me to drink, and wreck my household?"
+
+"If you do that again," said I, rubbing my shoulder, "I'll give her two
+hundred."
+
+When I returned Carlotta was sitting, Turkish fashion, on a sofa,
+smoking a cigarette (to which she had helped herself out of my box) and
+turning over the pages of a book. This sign of literary taste surprised
+me. But I soon found it was the second volume of my _edition de luxe_ of
+Louandre's _Les Arts Somptuaires_, to whose place on the shelves sheer
+feminine instinct must have guided her. I announced Mrs. McMurray's
+proposed visit. She jumped to her feet, ravished at the prospect, and
+sent my beautiful book (it is bound in tree-calf and contains a couple
+of hundred exquisitely coloured plates) flying onto the floor. I picked
+it up tenderly, and laid it on my writing-table.
+
+"Carlotta," said I, "the first thing you have to learn here is that
+books in England are more precious than babies in Alexandretta. If you
+pitch them about in this fashion you will murder them and I shall have
+you hanged."
+
+This checked her sumptuary excitement. It gave her food for reflection,
+and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further into the subject of
+clothes.
+
+"In fact," I concluded, "you will be dressed like a lady." She opened
+the book at a gaudy picture, "_France, XVI(ieme) Siecle--Saltimbanque et
+Bohemmienne_," and pointed to the female mountebank. This young person
+wore a bright green tunic, bordered with gold and finished off at
+the elbows and waist with red, over an undergown of flaring pink, the
+sleeves of which reached her wrist; she was crowned with red and white
+carnations stuck in ivy.
+
+"I will get a dress like that," said Carlotta.
+
+I wondered how far Mrs. McMurray possessed the colour-sense, and I
+trembled. I tried to explain gently to Carlotta the undesirability of
+such a costume for outdoor wear in London; but with tastes there is no
+disputing, and I saw that she was but half-convinced. She will require
+training in aesthetics.
+
+She is very submissive. I said, "Run away now to Antoinette," and she
+went with the cheerfulness of a child. I must rig up a sitting-room for
+her, as I cannot have her in here. Also for the present she must take
+her meals in her own apartments. I cannot shock the admirable Stenson
+by sitting down at table with her in that improper peignoir. Besides, as
+Antoinette informs me, the poor lamb eats meat with her fingers, after
+the fashion of the East. I know what that is, having once been present
+at an Egyptian dinner-party in Cairo, and pulled reeking lumps of flesh
+out of the leg of mutton. Ugh! But as she has probably not sat down to a
+meal with a man in her life, her banishment from my table will not hurt
+her feelings. She must, however, be trained in Christian table-manners,
+as well as in aesthetics; also in a great many other things.
+
+
+Mrs. McMurray arrived with a tape-measure, a pencil, and a notebook.
+
+"First," she announced, "I will measure her all over. Then I will go out
+and procure her a set of out-door garments, and tomorrow we will spend
+the whole livelong day in the shops. Do you mind if I use part of the
+100 for the hire of a private brougham?"
+
+"Have a coach and six, my dear Mrs. McMurray," I said. "It will
+doubtless please Carlotta better."
+
+I summoned Carlotta and performed the ceremony of introduction. To my
+surprise she was perfectly at her ease and with the greatest courtesy of
+manner invited the visitor to accompany her to her own apartments.
+
+When Mrs. McMurray returned to the drawing-room she wore an expression
+that can only be described as indescribable.
+
+"What, my dear Sir Marcus, do you think is to be the ultimate destiny of
+that young person?"
+
+"She shall learn type-writing," said I, suddenly inspired, "and make a
+fair copy of my Renaissance Morals."
+
+"She would make a very fair copy indeed of Renaissance Morals," returned
+the lady, dryly.
+
+"Is she so very dreadful?" I asked in alarm. "The peignoir, I know--"
+
+"Perhaps that has something to do with it."
+
+"Then, for heaven's sake," said I, "dress her in drabs and greys and
+subfusc browns. Cut off her hair and give her a row of buttons down the
+back."
+
+My friend's eyes sparkled.
+
+"I am going," said she, "to have the day of my life tomorrow."
+
+
+Carlotta had already gone to sleep, so Antoinette informed me, when the
+results of Mrs. McMurray's shopping came home. I am glad she has early
+habits. It appears she has spent a happy and fully occupied afternoon
+over a pile of French illustrated comic papers in the possession of my
+excellent housekeeper.
+
+I wonder whether it is quite judicious to make French comic papers her
+initiation into the ideas of Western civilisation. Into this I must
+inquire. I must also talk seriously to her with a view to her ultimate
+destiny. But as my view would be distorted by the red dressing-gown, I
+shall wait until she is decently clad. I think I shall have to set apart
+certain hours of the day for instructive conversation with Carlotta.
+I shall have to develop her mind, of which she distinctly has the
+rudiments. For the rest of the day she must provide entertainment out of
+her own resources. This her oriental habits of seclusion will render an
+easy task, for I will wager that Hamdi Effendi did not concern himself
+greatly as to the way in which the ladies of his harem filled up their
+time. And now I come to think of it, he certainly did not allow Carlotta
+to sprawl about his own private and particular drawing-room. I will
+not westernise her too rapidly. The Turkish educational system has its
+merits.
+
+This, in its way is comforting. If only I could accept her as a human
+creature. But when I think of her callous reception of the tidings of
+the unhappy boy's death, my spirit fails me. Such a being would run a
+carving-knife into you, as you slept, without any compunction, and when
+you squeaked, she would laugh. Look at her base ingratitude to the good
+Hamdi Effendi, who took her in before she was born and has treated her
+as a daughter all her life. No: her spiritual attitude all through has
+been that of the ladies who used to visit St. Anthony--in the leisure
+moments when they were not actively engaged in temptation. I don't
+believe her father was an English vice-consul. He was Satan.
+
+I wonder what she told Mrs. McMurray.
+
+I have been thinking over the matter to-night. The good lady was
+wrong. Whatever were the morals of the Renaissance, personalities were
+essentially positive. They were devilishly wicked or angelically good.
+There was nothing _rosse_, non-moral about the Renaissance Italian.
+The women were strongly tempered. I love to believe the story told by
+Machiavelli and Muratori of Catherine Sforza in the citadel of Forli.
+"Surrender or we slay your children which we hold as hostages," cried
+the besiegers. "Kill them if you like. I can breed more to avenge them."
+It is the speech of a giant nature. It awakens something enthusiastic
+within me; although such a lady would be an undesirable helpmeet for a
+mild mannered man like myself.
+
+And then again there is Bonna, the woman for whose career I desired to
+consult the prime authority Cristoforo da Costa. I have been sketching
+her into my chapter tonight. Here is a peasant girl caught up to his
+saddle-bow by a condottiere, Brunoro, during some village raid. She
+fights like a soldier by his side. He is imprisoned in Valencia by
+Alfonso of Naples, languishes in a dungeon for ten years. And for
+ten years Bonna goes from court to court in Europe and from prince to
+prince, across seas and mountains, unwearying, unyielding, with the
+passion of heaven in her heart and the courage of hell in her soul,
+urging and soliciting her man's release. After ten long years she
+succeeds. And then they are married. What were her tumultuous feelings
+as she stood by that altar? The old historian does not say; but the very
+glory of God must have flooded her being when, in the silence of the
+bare church, the little bell tinkled to tell her that the Host was
+raised, and her love was made blessed for all eternity. And then she
+goes away with him and fights in the old way by his side for fifteen
+years. When he is killed, she languishes and dies within the year.
+Porcelli sees them in 1455. Brunoro, an old, squinting, paralysed man.
+Bonna, a little shrivelled, yellow old woman, with a quiver on her
+shoulder, a bow in her hand; her grey hair is covered by a helmet
+and she wears great military boots. The picture is magical. There is
+infinite pathos in the sight of the two withered, crippled, grotesque
+forms from which all the glamour of manhood and beauty have departed,
+and infinite awe in the thought of the holy communion of the
+unconquerable and passionate souls. I wonder it has not come down to us
+as one of the great love-stories of the world.
+
+Elements such as these sway the Morals of the Renaissance.
+
+But I am taking Mrs. McMurray too seriously; and it is really not a bad
+idea to have Carlotta taught type-writing.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+May 26th.
+
+This morning a letter from Judith.
+
+"Do not laugh at me," she writes. "The road to Paris is paved with good
+intentions. I really could not help it. Delphine put her great arm round
+my would-be sequestered and meditative self and carried it off bodily,
+and here it is in the midst of lunches, picture-shows, dinners, suppers,
+theatres and dances; and if you laugh, you will make me humiliated when
+I confess that it is thoroughly enjoying itself."
+
+Laugh at her, dear woman? I am only too glad that she can fling her
+Winter Garment of Repentance into the Fires of Paris Springtide. She has
+little enough enjoyment in friendless London. Fill your heart with it,
+my dear, and lay up a store for use in the dull months to come. For my
+part, however, I am content to be beyond the reach of Delphine's great
+arm. I must write to Judith. I shall have to explain Carlotta; but for
+that I think I shall wait until she becomes a little more explicable.
+In dealing with women it is well to employ discrimination. You are never
+quite sure whether they are not merely simple geese or the most complex
+of created beings. Perhaps they are such a curious admixture that you
+cannot tell at a given moment which side, the simple or the complex,
+you are touching. May not there be the deepest of all allegories in Eve
+standing midway between the innocent apple and the guileful serpent? I
+shall have to see more of Carlotta before I can safely explain her to
+Judith.
+
+At any rate she is no longer attired like an odalisque of the Second
+Empire, and Mrs. McMurray has saved her from the lamentable errors of
+taste shown by the female mountebank of sixteenth century France. My
+excellent friend safely delivered up an exhausted and bewildered charge
+at half-past seven last evening, assuring me that her task had been
+easy, and that her anticipations of it being the day of her life
+had been fulfilled. It had been like dressing a doll, she explained,
+beaming.
+
+An edifying pastime for an adult woman! I did not utter this sentiment,
+for she would rightly have styled me the most ungrateful of unhung
+wretches.
+
+Carlotta, then, had followed her about like a perambulatory doll,
+upon which she had fitted all the finery she could lay her hands on.
+Apparently the atmosphere of the great shops had acted on Carlotta like
+an anaesthetic. She had moved in a sensuous dream of drapery, wherein
+the choice-impulse was paralysed. The only articles upon which, in an
+unclouded moment, she had set her heart--and that with a sudden passion
+of covetousness--were a pair of red, high-heeled shoes and a cheap red
+parasol.
+
+"You have no idea what it means," said Mrs. McMurray, "to buy
+_everything_ that a woman needs."
+
+I replied that I had a respectful distaste for transcendental
+philosophy.
+
+"From a paper of pins to an opera-cloak," she continued.
+
+"I'm afraid, dear Mrs. McMurray, an opera-cloak is not the superior
+limit of a woman's needs," said I. "I wish it were."
+
+She called me a cynic and went.
+
+This morning Carlotta interrupted me in my work.
+
+"Will Seer Marcous come to my room and see my pretty things?"
+
+In summer blouse and plain skirt she looked as demure as any damsel in
+St. John's Wood. She hung her head a little to one side. For the moment
+I felt paternal, and indulgently consented. Words of man cannot describe
+the mass of millinery and chiffonery in that chamber. The spaces that
+were not piled high with vesture gave resting spots for cardboard boxes
+and packing-paper. Antoinette stood in a corner gazing at the spoil with
+a smile of beatific idiocy. I strode through the cardboard boxes
+which crackled like bracken, and remained dumb as a fish before these
+mysteries. Carlotta tried on hats. She shewed me patent leather shoes.
+She exhibited blouses and petticoats until my eyes ached. She brandished
+something in her hand.
+
+"Tell me if I must wear it" (I believe the sophisticated call it
+"them"). "Mrs. McMurray says all ladies do. But we never wear it in
+Alexandretta, and it hurts."
+
+She clasped herself pathetically and turned her great imploring eyes on
+me.
+
+"_Il faut souffrir pour etre belle_," I said.
+
+"But with the figure of Mademoiselle, it is stupid!" cried Antoinette.
+
+"It is outrageous that I should be called upon to express an opinion on
+such matters," I said, loftily. And so it was. My assertion of dignity
+impressed them.
+
+Then, with characteristic frankness, my young lady shakes out before me
+things all frills, embroidery, ribbons, diaphaneity, which the ordinary
+man only examines through shop-front windows when a philosophic mood
+induces him to speculate on the unfathomable vanity of woman.
+
+"_Les beaux dessous!_" breathed Antoinette.
+
+"The same ejaculation," I murmured, "was doubtless uttered by an
+enraptured waiting-maid, when she beheld the stout linen smocks of the
+ladies of the Heptameron."
+
+I reflected on the relativity of things mundane. The waiting-maid no
+doubt wore some horror made of hemp against her skin. If Carlotta's
+gossamer follies had been thrown into the vagabond court of the Queen
+of Navarre, I wonder whether those delectable stories would have been
+written?
+
+As Antoinette does not understand literary English, and as Carlotta
+did not know what in the world I was talking about, I was master of the
+conversational situation. Carlotta went to the mantel-piece and returned
+with a glutinous mass of sweet stuff between her fingers.
+
+"Will Seer Marcous have some? It is nougat." I declined. "Oh!" she said,
+tragically disappointed. "It is good."
+
+There is something in that silly creature's eyes that I cannot resist.
+She put the abominable morsel into my mouth--it was far too sticky for
+me to hold--and laughingly licked her own fingers.
+
+I went down to work again with an uneasy feeling of imperilled dignity.
+
+
+May 29th.
+
+I sent her word that I would take her for a drive this afternoon. She
+was to be ready at three o'clock. It will be wholesome for her to regard
+her outings with me as rare occurrences to be highly valued. Ordinarily
+she will go out with Antoinette--for the present at least--as she did
+yesterday.
+
+At three o'clock Stenson informed me that the cab was at the door.
+
+"Go up and call Mademoiselle," said I.
+
+In two or three minutes she came down. I have not had such a shock in my
+life. I uttered exclamations of amazement in several languages. I have
+never seen on the stage or off such a figure as she presented. Her
+cheeks were white with powder, her lips dyed a pomegranate scarlet, her
+eyebrows and lashes blackened. In her ears she wore large silver-gilt
+earrings. She entered the room with an air of triumph, as who should
+say: "See how captivatingly beautiful I am!"
+
+At my stare of horror her face fell. At my command to go upstairs and
+wash herself clean, she wept.
+
+"For heaven's sake, don't cry," I exclaimed, "or you will look like a
+rainbow."
+
+"I did it to please you," she sobbed.
+
+"It is only the lowest class of dancing-women who paint their faces in
+England," said I, _splendide mendax._ "And you know what they are in
+Alexandretta."
+
+"They came to Aziza-Zaza's wedding," said Carlotta, behind her
+handkerchief. "But all our ladies do this when they want to make
+themselves look nice. And I have put on this nasty thing that hurts me,
+just to please Seer Marcous."
+
+I felt I had been brutal. She must have spent hours over her adornment.
+Yet I could not have taken her out into the street. She looked like
+Jezebel, who without her paint must have been, like Carlotta, a
+remarkably handsome person.
+
+"It strikes me, Carlotta," said I, "that you will find England is
+Alexandretta upside down. What is wrong there is right here, and vice
+versa. Now if you want to please me run away and clean yourself and take
+off those barbaric and Brummagem earrings."
+
+She went and was absent a short while. She returned in dismay. Water
+would not get it off. I rang for Antoinette, but Antoinette had gone
+out. It being too delicate a matter for Stenson, I fetched a pot of
+vaseline from my own room, and as Carlotta did not know what to make of
+it, I with my own hands cleansed Carlotta. She screamed with delight,
+thinking it vastly amusing. Her emotions are facile. I cannot deny that
+it amused me too. But I am in a responsible position, and I am wondering
+what the deuce I shall be doing next.
+
+I enjoyed the drive to Richmond, where I gave her tea at the Star and
+Garter and was relieved to see her drink normally from the cup, instead
+of lapping from the saucer like a kitten. She was much more intelligent
+than during our first drive on Tuesday. The streets have grown more
+familiar, and the traffic does not make her head ache. She asks me the
+ingenuous questions of a child of ten. The tall guardsmen we passed
+particularly aroused her enthusiasm. She had never seen anything so
+beautiful. I asked her if she would like me to buy one and give it her
+to play with.
+
+"Oh, would you, Seer Marcous?" she exclaimed, seizing my hand
+rapturously. I verily believe she thought I was in earnest, for when I
+turned aside my jest, she pouted in disappointment and declared that it
+was wrong to tell lies.
+
+"I am glad you have some elementary notions of ethics," said I. It
+was during our drive that it occurred to me to ask her where she
+had procured the paint and earrings. She explained, cheerfully, that
+Antoinette had supplied the funds. I must talk seriously to
+Antoinette. Her attitude towards Carlotta savours too much of idolatry.
+Demoralisation will soon set in, and the utter ruin of Carlotta and
+my digestion will be the result. I must also make Carlotta a small
+allowance.
+
+During tea she said to me, suddenly:
+
+"Seer Marcous is not married?"
+
+I said, no. She asked, why not? The devil seems to be driving all
+womankind to ask me that question.
+
+"Because wives are an unmitigated nuisance," said I.
+
+A curious smile came over Carlotta's face. It was as knowing as Dame
+Quickly's.
+
+"Then-"
+
+"Have one of these cakes," said I, hurriedly. "There is chocolate
+outside and the inside is chock-full of custard."
+
+She bit, smiled in a different and beatific way, and forgot my
+matrimonial affairs. I was relieved. With her oriental training there is
+no telling what Carlotta might have said.
+
+
+May 31st.
+
+To-day I have had a curious interview. Who should call on me but the
+father of the hapless Harry Robinson. My first question was a natural
+one. How on earth did he connect me with the death of his son? How did
+he contrive to identify me as the befriender of the young Turkish girl
+whose interests, he declared, were the object of his visit? It appeared
+that the police had given him the necessary information, my adventures
+at Waterloo having rendered their tracing of Carlotta an easy matter.
+I had been wondering somewhat at the meagre newspaper reports of the
+inquest. No mention was made, as I had nervously anticipated, of
+the mysterious lady for whom the deceased had bought a ticket at
+Alexandretta, and with whom he had come ashore. Very little evidence
+appeared to have been taken, and the jury contented themselves with
+giving the usual verdict of temporary insanity. I touched on this as
+delicately as I could. "We succeeded in hushing things up," said my
+visitor, an old man with iron-grey whiskers and a careworn sensitive
+face. "I have some influence myself, and his wife's relations--"
+
+"His wife!" I ejaculated. The ways of men are further than ever from
+interpretation. The fellow was actually married!
+
+"Yes," he sighed. "That is what would have made such a terrible scandal.
+Her relatives are powerful people. We averted it, thank Heaven, and his
+poor wife will never know. My boy is dead. No public investigation into
+motives would bring him back to life again."
+
+I murmured words of condolence.
+
+"He must have been out of his mind, poor lad, when he induced the girl
+to run away with him. But, as my son has ruined her," he set his teeth
+as if the boy's sin stabbed him, "I must look after her welfare."
+
+"You may set your mind at rest on that point," said I. "He smuggled her
+at once aboard the ship, and seems scarcely to have said how d'ye do to
+her afterwards. That is the mad part of it."
+
+"Can I be sure?"
+
+"I would stake my life on it," said I.
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"Frankness--I may say embarrassing frankness is one of the young lady's
+drawbacks."
+
+He looked greatly relieved. I acquainted him with Carlotta's
+antecedents, and outlined the part I had played in the story.
+
+"Then," said he, "I will see the child back to her home. I will take
+her there myself. I cannot allow you any longer to have the burden of
+befriending her, when it is my duty to repair my boy's wrongdoing."
+
+I explained to him the terror of Hamdi Effendi's clutches, and told him
+of my promise.
+
+"Then what is to be done?" he asked.
+
+"If any kind people could be found to receive her into their family, and
+bring her up like a Christian, I should hand her over with the greatest
+of pleasure. If there is one thing I do not require in this house, it is
+an idle and irresponsible female. But philanthropists are rare. Who will
+take her?"
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not prepared to do that."
+
+"I never dreamed of having the bad taste to propose it," said I. "I
+merely stated the only alternative to my guardianship."
+
+"I should be willing--only too willing--to contribute towards her
+support," said Mr. Robinson.
+
+I thanked him. But of course this was impossible. I might as well have
+allowed the good man to pay my gas bill.
+
+"I know of a nice convent home kept by the Little Sisters of St.
+Bridget," said he, tentatively.
+
+"If it were St. Bridget herself," said I, "I would agree with pleasure.
+She is a saint for whom I have a great fascination. She could work
+miracles. When an Irish chieftain made her a facetious grant of as much
+land as she could cover with her mantle, she bade four of her nuns
+each take a corner and run north, west, south and east, until her cloak
+covered several roods. She could have done the same with the soul of
+Carlotta. But the age of miracles is past, and I fear the Little Sisters
+would only break their gentle hearts over her. She is an extraordinary
+creature."
+
+I know I ought to have given some consideration to the proposal; but I
+think I must suffer from chronic inflammation of the logical faculty.
+It revolted against the suggested congruity of Carlotta and the Little
+Sisters of St. Bridget.
+
+"What can she be like?" asked the old man, wonderingly.
+
+"Would it pain you to see her?" I asked.
+
+"Yes," he said, in a low voice. "It would. But perhaps it would bring me
+nearer to my unhappy boy. He seems so far away."
+
+I rang the bell and summoned Carlotta.
+
+"Perhaps you had better not say who you are," I suggested.
+
+When Carlotta entered, he rose and looked at her---oh, so wistfully.
+
+"This, Carlotta," said I, "is a friend of mine, who would like to make
+your acquaintance."
+
+She advanced shyly and held out a timid hand. Obviously she was on
+her best behaviour. I thanked heaven she had tried her unsuccessful
+experiment of powder and paint on my vile body and not on that of a
+stranger.
+
+"Do you--do you like England?" asked the old man.
+
+"Oh, very--very much. Every one is so kind to me. It is a nice place."
+
+"It is the best place in the world to be young in," said he.
+
+"Is it?" said Carlotta, with the simplicity of a baby.
+
+"The very best."
+
+"But is it not good to be old in?"
+
+"No country is good for that."
+
+The old man sighed and took his leave. I accompanied him to the front
+door.
+
+"I don't know what to say, Sir Marcus. She moves me strangely. I never
+expected such sweet innocence. For my boy's sake, I would take her
+in--but his mother knows nothing about it--save that the boy is dead. It
+would kill her."
+
+The tears rolled down the old man's cheeks. I grasped him by the hand.
+
+"She shall come to no manner of harm beneath my roof," said I.
+
+Carlotta was waiting for me in the drawing-room. She looked at me in a
+perplexed, pitiful way.
+
+"Seer Marcous?"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Am I to marry him?"
+
+"Marry whom?"
+
+"That old gentleman. I must, if you tell me. But I do not want to marry
+him."
+
+It took me a minute or two to arrive at her oriental point of view.
+No woman could be shown off to a man except in the light of a possible
+bride. I think it sometimes good to administer a shock to Carlotta, by
+way of treatment.
+
+"Do you know who that old gentleman was?" said I.
+
+"No."
+
+"It was Harry's father."
+
+"Oh!" she said, with a grimace. "I am sorry I was so nice to him."
+
+What the deuce am I to do with her?
+
+I lectured her for a quarter of an hour on the ethics of the situation.
+I think I only succeeded in giving her the impression that I was in
+a bad temper. So much did I sympathise with Harry that I forbore to
+acquaint her with the fact that he was a married man when he enticed her
+away from Alexandretta.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+June 1st
+
+Sebastian Pasquale dined with me this evening. Antoinette, forgetful
+of idolatrous practices, devoted the concentration of her being to the
+mysteries of her true religion. The excellence of the result affected
+Pasquale so strongly that with his customary disregard of convention he
+insisted on Antoinette being summoned to receive his congratulations.
+He rose, made her a bow as if she were a Marquise of pre-revolutionary
+days.
+
+"It is a meal," said he, bunching up his fingers to his mouth and
+kissing them open, "that one should have taken not sitting, but
+kneeling."
+
+"You stole that from Heine," said I, when the enraptured creature had
+gone, "and you gave it out to Antoinette as if it were your own."
+
+"My good Ordeyne," said he, "did you ever hear of a man giving anything
+authentic to a woman?"
+
+"You know much more about the matter than I do," I replied, and Pasquale
+laughed.
+
+It has been a pleasure to see him again--a creature of abounding
+vitality whom time cannot alter. He is as lithe-limbed as when he was a
+boy, and as lithe-witted. I don't know how his consciousness could
+have arrived at appreciation of Antoinette's cooking, for he talked
+all through dinner, giving me an account of his mirific adventures in
+foreign cities. Among other things, he had been playing juvenile lead,
+it appears, in the comic opera of Bulgarian politics. I also heard of
+the Viennese dancer. My own little chronicle, which he insisted on my
+unfolding, compared with his was that of a caged canary compared with
+a sparrowhawk's. Besides, I am not so expansive as Pasquale, and on
+certain matters I am silent. He also gesticulates freely, a thing
+which is totally foreign to my nature. As Judith would say, he has a
+temperament. His moustaches curl fiercely upward until the points
+are nearly on a level with his flashing dark eyes. Another point of
+dissimilarity between us is that he seems to have been poured molten
+into his clothes, whereas mine hang as from pegs clumsily arranged about
+my person. By no conceivable freak of outer circumstance could I have
+the adventures of Pasquale.
+
+And yet he thinks them tame! Lord! If I found myself hatching
+conspiracies in Sofia on a nest made of loaded revolvers, I should feel
+that the wild whirl of Bedlam had broken loose around me.
+
+"But man alive!" I cried. "What in the name of tornadoes do you want?"
+
+"I want to fight," said he. "The earth has grown too grey and peaceful.
+Life is anaemic. We need colour--good red splashes of it--good wholesome
+bloodshed."
+
+Said I, "All you have to do is to go into a Berlin cafe and pull the
+noses of all the lieutenants you see there. In that way you'll get as
+much gore as your heart could desire."
+
+"By Jove!" said he, springing to his feet. "What a cause for a man to
+devote his life to--the extermination of Prussian lieutenants!"
+
+I leaned back in my arm-chair--it was after dinner--and smiled at
+his vehemence. The ordinary man does not leap about like that during
+digestion.
+
+"You would have been happy as an Uscoque," said I. (I have just finished
+the prim narrative.)
+
+"What's that?" he asked. I told him.
+
+"The interesting thing about the Uscoques," I added, "is that they were
+a Co-operative Pirate Society of the sixteenth century, in which priests
+and monks and greengrocers and women and children--the general public,
+in fact, of Senga--took shares and were paid dividends. They were also
+a religious people, and the setting out of the pirate fleet at the
+festivals of Easter and Christmas was attended by ecclesiastical
+ceremony. Then they scoured the high seas, captured argosies,
+murdered the crews--their only weapons were hatchets and daggers and
+arquebuses--landed on undefended shores, ravaged villages and carried
+off comely maidens to replenish their stock of womenkind at home. They
+must have been a live lot of people."
+
+"What a second-hand old brigand you are," cried Pasquale, who during my
+speech had been examining the carpet by the side of his chair.
+
+I laughed. "Hasn't a phase of the duality of our nature ever struck
+you? We have a primary or everyday nature--a thing of habit, tradition,
+circumstance; and we also have a secondary nature which clamours for
+various sensations and is quite contented with vicarious gratification.
+There are delicately fibred novelists who satisfy a sort of secondary
+Berserkism by writing books whose pages reek with bloodshed. The most
+placid, benevolent, gold-spectacled paterfamilias I know, a man who
+thinks it cruel to eat live oysters, has a curious passion for crime and
+gratifies it by turning his study into a _musee maccabre_ of murderers'
+relics. From the thumb-joint of a notorious criminal he can savour
+exquisitely morbid emotions, while the blood-stains on an assassin's
+knife fill him with the delicious lust of slaughter. In the same way
+predestined spinsters obtain vicarious enjoyment of the tender passion
+by reading highly coloured love-stories."
+
+"Just as that philosophical old stick, Sir Marcus Ordeyne, dus from this
+sort of thing," said Pasquale.
+
+And he fished from the side of his chair, and held up by the tip of a
+monstrous heel, the most audacious, high-instepped, red satin slipper I
+ever saw.
+
+I eyed the thing with profound disgust. I would have given a hundred
+pounds for it to have vanished. In its red satin essence it was
+reprehensible, and in its feminine assertion it was compromising.
+How did it come there? I conjectured that Carlotta must have been
+trespassing in the drawing-room and dropped it, Cinderella-like, in her
+flight, when she heard me enter the house before dinner.
+
+Pasquale held it up and regarded me quizzically. I pretend to no
+austerity of morals; but a burglar unjustly accused of theft suffers
+acuter qualms of indignation than if he were a virtuous person.
+I regretted not having asked Pasquale to dinner at the club. I
+particularly did not intend to explain Carlotta to Pasquale. In fact, I
+see no reason at all for me to proclaim her to my acquaintance. She is
+merely an accident of my establishment.
+
+I rose and rang the bell.
+
+"That slipper," said I, "does not belong to me, and it certainly ought
+not to be here."
+
+Pasquale surrendered it to my outstretched hand.
+
+"It must fit a remarkably pretty foot," said he.
+
+"I assure you, my dear Pasquale," I replied dryly, "I have never looked
+at the foot that it may fit." Nor had I. A row of pink toes is not a
+foot.
+
+"Stenson," said I, when my man appeared, "take this to Miss Carlotta
+and say with my compliments she should not have left it in the
+drawing-room."
+
+Stenson, thinking I had rung for whisky, had brought up decanter and
+glasses. As he set the tray upon the small table, I noticed Pasquale
+look with some curiosity at my man's impassive face. But he said nothing
+more about the slipper. I poured out his whisky and soda. He drank a
+deep draught, curled up his swaggering moustache and suddenly broke into
+one of his disconcerting peals of laughter.
+
+"I haven't told you of the Grefin von Wentzel; I don't know what put her
+into my head. There has been nothing like it since the world began. Mind
+you--a real live aristocratic Grefin with a hundred quarterings!"
+
+He proceeded to relate a most scandalous, but highly amusing story. An
+amazing, incredible tale; but it seemed familiar.
+
+"That," said I, at last, "is incident for incident a scene out of
+_L'Histoire Comique de Francion._"
+
+"Never heard of it," said Pasquale, flashing.
+
+"It was the first French novel of manners published about 1620 and
+written by a man called Sorel. I don't dream of accusing you of
+plagiarism, my dear fellow--that's absurd. But the ridiculous
+coincidence struck me. You and the Grefin and the rest of you were
+merely reenacting a three hundred year old farce."
+
+"Rubbish!" said Pasquale.
+
+"I'll show you," said I.
+
+After wandering for a moment or two round my shelves, I remembered that
+the book was in the dining-room. I left Pasquale and went downstairs.
+I knew it was on one of the top shelves near the ceiling. Now, my
+dining-room is lit by one shaded electrolier over the table, so that
+the walls of the room are in deep shadow. This has annoyed me many times
+when I have been book-hunting. I really must have some top lights
+put in. To stand on a chair and burn wax matches in order to find
+a particular book is ignominious and uncomfortable. The successive
+illumination of four wax matches did not shed itself upon _L'Histoire
+Comique de Francion_.
+
+If there is one thing that frets me more than another, it is not to be
+able to lay my hand upon a book. I knew Francion was there on the top
+shelves, and rather than leave it undiscovered, I would have spent the
+whole night in search. I suppose every one has a harmless lunacy. This
+is mine. I must have hunted for that book for twenty minutes, pulling
+out whole blocks of volumes and peering with lighted matches behind,
+until my hands were covered with dust. At last I found it had fallen to
+the rear of a ragged regiment of French novels, and in triumph I took it
+to the area of light on the table and turned up the scene in question.
+Keeping my thumb in the place I returned to the drawing-room.
+
+"I'm sorry to have--" I began. I stopped short. I could scarcely believe
+my eyes. There, conversing with Pasquale and lolling on the sofa, as if
+she had known him for years, was Carlotta.
+
+She must have seen righteous disapprobation on my face, for she came
+running up to me.
+
+"You see, I've made Miss Carlotta's acquaintance," said Pasquale.
+
+"So I perceive," said I.
+
+"Stenson told me you wanted me to come to the drawing-room in my red
+slippers," said Carlotta.
+
+"I am afraid Stenson must have misdelivered my message," said I.
+
+"Then you do not want me at all, and I must go away?"
+
+Oh, those eyes! I am growing so tired of them. I hesitated, and was
+lost.
+
+"Please let me stay and talk to Pasquale."
+
+"Mr. Pasquale," I corrected.
+
+She echoed my words with a cooing laugh, and taking my consent for
+granted, curled herself up in a corner of the sofa. I resumed my seat
+with a sigh. It would have been boorish to turn her out.
+
+"This is much nicer than Alexandretta, isn't it?" said Pasquale
+familiarly. "And Sir Marcus is an improvement on Hamdi Effendi."
+
+"Oh, yes. Seer Marcous lets me do whatever I like," said Carlotta.
+
+"I'm shot if I do," I exclaimed. "The confinement of your existence in
+the East makes you exaggerate the comparative immunity from restriction
+which you enjoy in England."
+
+I notice that Carlotta is always impressed when I use high sounding
+words.
+
+"Still, if you could make love over garden walls, you must have had a
+pretty slack time, even in Alexandretta," said Pasquale.
+
+Obviously Carlotta had saved me the trouble of explaining her.
+
+"I once met our friend Hamdi," Pasquale continued. "He was the politest
+old ruffian that ever had a long nose and was pitted with smallpox."
+
+"Yes, yes!" cried Carlotta, delighted. "That is Hamdi."
+
+"Is there any disreputable foreigner that you are not familiar with?" I
+asked, somewhat sarcastically.
+
+"I hope not," he laughed. "You must know I had got into a deuce of a
+row at Aleppo, about eighteen months ago, and had to take to my heels.
+Alexandretta is the port of Aleppo and Hamdi is a sort of boss policeman
+there."
+
+"He is very rich."
+
+"He ought to be. My interview with him cost me a thousand pounds--the
+bald-headed scoundrel!"
+
+"He is a shocking bad man," said Carlotta, gravely.
+
+"I'm afraid it is Mr. Pasquale who is the shocking bad man," I said,
+amused. "What had you been doing in Aleppo?"
+
+"_Maxime debetur_," said he.
+
+"English are very wicked when they go to Syria," she remarked.
+
+"How can you possibly know?" I said.
+
+"Oh, I know," replied Carlotta, with a toss of her chin.
+
+"My friend," said Pasquale, lighting a cigarette, "I have travelled much
+in the East, and have had considerable adventures by the way; and I
+can assure you that what the oriental lady doesn't know about essential
+things is not worth knowing. Their life from the cradle to the grave is
+a concentration of all their faculties, mortal and immortal, upon the
+two vital questions, digestion and sex."
+
+"What is sex?" asked Carlotta.
+
+"It is the Fundamental Blunder of Creation," said I.
+
+"I do not understand," said Carlotta.
+
+"Nobody tries to understand Sir Marcus," said Pasquale, cheerfully. "We
+just let him drivel on until he is aware no one is listening."
+
+"Seer Marcous is very wise," said Carlotta, in serious defence of her
+lord and master. "All day he reads in big books and writes on paper."
+
+I have been wondering since whether that is not as ironical a judgment
+as ever was passed. Am I wise? Is wisdom attained by reading in big
+books and writing on paper? Solomon remarks that wisdom dwells with
+prudence and finds out knowledge of witty inventions; that the wisdom of
+the prudent is to understand his way; that wisdom and understanding keep
+one from the strange woman and the stranger which flattereth with her
+words. Now, I have not been saved from the strange young woman who has
+begun to flatter with her words; I don't in the least understand my way,
+since I have no notion what I shall do with her; and in taking her in
+and letting her loll upon my sofa of evenings, so as to show off her red
+slippers to my guests, I have thrown prudence to the winds; and my
+only witty invention was the idea of teaching her typewriting, which
+is futile. If the philosophy of the excellent aphorist is sound, I
+certainly have not much wisdom to boast of; and none of the big books
+will tell me what a wise man would have done had he met Carlotta in the
+Embankment Gardens.
+
+I did not think, however, that my wisdom was a proper subject for
+discussion. I jerked back the conversation by asking Carlotta why she
+called Hamdi Effendi a shocking bad man. Her reply was startling.
+
+"My mother told me. She used to cry all day long. She was sorry she
+married Hamdi."
+
+"Poor thing!" said I. "Did he ill-treat her?"
+
+"Oh, ye-es. She had small-pox, too, and she was no longer pretty, so
+Hamdi took other wives and she did not like them. They were so fat and
+cruel. She used to tell me I must kill myself before I married a Turk.
+Hamdi was going to make me marry Mohammed Ali one--two years ago; but he
+died. When I said I was so glad" (that seems to be her usual formula of
+acknowledgment of news relating to the disasters of her acquaintance),
+"Hamdi shut me up in a dark room. Then he said I must marry Mustapha.
+That is why I ran away with Harry. See? Oh, Hamdi is shocking bad."
+
+From this and from other side-lights Carlotta has thrown on her
+upbringing, I can realise the poor, pretty weak-willed baby of a thing
+that was her mother, taking the line of least resistance, the husband
+dead and the babe in her womb, and entering the shelter offered by the
+amorous Turk. And I can picture her during the fourteen years of her
+imprisoned life, the disillusion, the heart-break, the despair. No
+wonder the invertebrate soul could do no more for her daughter than
+teach her monosyllabic English and the rudiments of reading and writing.
+Doubtless she babbled of western life with its freedom and joyousness
+for women; but four years have elapsed since her death, and her stories
+are only elusive memories in Carlotta's mind.
+
+It is strange that among the deadening influences of the harem she has
+kept the hereditary alertness of the Englishwoman. She has a baby mouth,
+it is true; she pleads to you with the eyes of a dog; her pretty ways
+are those of a young child; but she has not the dull, soulless, sensual
+look of the pure-bred Turkish woman, such as I have seen in Cairo
+through the transparent veils. In them there is no attraction save of
+the flesh; and that only for the male who, deformity aside, reckons
+women as merely so much cubical content of animated matter placed
+by Allah at his disposal for the satisfaction of his desires and the
+procreation of children. I cannot for the life of me understand an
+Englishman falling in love with a Turkish woman. But I can quite
+understand him falling in love with Carlotta. The hereditary qualities
+are there, though they have been forced into the channel of sex, and
+become a sort of diabolical witchery whereof I am not quite sure whether
+she is conscious. For all that, I don't think she can have a soul.
+I have made up my mind that she hasn't, and I don't like having my
+convictions disturbed.
+
+Until I saw her perched in the corner of the sofa, with her legs tucked
+up under her, and the light playing a game of magic amid the reds and
+golds and browns of her hair, while she cheerily discoursed to us of
+Hamdi's villainy, I never noticed the dull decorum of this room. I was
+struck with the decorative value of mere woman.
+
+I must break myself of the habit of wandering off on a meditative
+tangent to the circle of conversation. I was brought back by hearing
+Pasquale say:
+
+"So you're going to marry an Englishman. It's all fixed and settled,
+eh?"
+
+"Of course," laughed Carlotta.
+
+"Have you made up your mind what he is to be like?"
+
+I could see the unconscionable Don Juan instinctively preen himself
+peacock fashion.
+
+"I am going to marry Seer Marcous," said Carlotta, calmly.
+
+She made this announcement not as a jest, not as a wish, but as the
+commonplace statement of a fact. There was a moment of stupefied
+silence. Pasquale who had just struck a match to light a cigarette
+stared at me and let the flame burn his fingers. I stared at Carlotta,
+speechless. The colossal impudence of it!
+
+"I am sorry to contradict you," said I, at last, with some acidity, "but
+you are going to do no such thing."
+
+"I am not going to marry you?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"Oh!" said Carlotta, in a tone of disappointment.
+
+Pasquale rose, brought his heels together, put his hand on his heart and
+made her a low bow.
+
+"Will you have me instead of this stray bit of Stonehenge?"
+
+"Very well," said Carlotta.
+
+I seized Pasquale by the arm. "For goodness sake, don't jest with her!
+She has about as much sense of humour as a prehistoric cave-dweller.
+She thinks you have made her a serious offer of marriage." He made her
+another bow.
+
+"You hear what Sir Granite says? He forbids our union. If I married you
+without his consent, he would flay me alive, dip me in boiling oil and
+read me aloud his History of Renaissance Morals. So I'm afraid it is no
+good."
+
+"Then I mustn't marry him either?" asked Carlotta, looking at me.
+
+"No!" I cried, "you are not going to marry anybody. You seem to have
+hymenomania. People don't marry in this casual way in England. They
+think over it for a couple of years and then they come together in a
+sober, God-fearing, respectable manner."
+
+"They marry at leisure and repent in haste," interposed Pasquale.
+
+"Precisely," said I.
+
+"What we call a marriage-bed repentance," said Pasquale.
+
+"I told you this poor child had no sense of humour," I objected.
+
+"You might as well kill yourself as marry without it."
+
+"You are not going to marry anybody, Carlotta," said I, "until you can
+see a joke."
+
+"What is a joke?" inquired Carlotta.
+
+"Mr. Pasquale asked you to marry him. He didn't mean it. That was a
+joke. It was enormously funny, and you should have laughed."
+
+"Then I must laugh when any one asks me to marry him?"
+
+"As loud as you can," said I.
+
+"You are so strange in England," sighed Carlotta.
+
+I smiled, for I did not want to make her unhappy, and I spoke to her
+intelligibly.
+
+"Well, well, when you have quite learned all the English ways, I'll try
+and find you a nice husband. Now you had better go to bed."
+
+She retired, quite consoled. When the door closed behind her, Pasquale
+shook his head at me.
+
+"Wasted! Criminally wasted!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"That," he answered, pointing to the door. "That bundle of bewildering
+fascination."
+
+"That," said I, "is an horrible infliction which only my cultivated
+sense of altruism enables me to tolerate."
+
+"Her name ought to be Margarita."
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+"_Ante porcos_," said he.
+
+
+Certainly Pasquale has a pretty wit and I admire it as I admire most
+of his brilliant qualities, but I fail to see the aptness of this last
+gibe. At the club this afternoon I picked up an entertaining French
+novel called _En felons des Perles_. On the illustrated cover was a row
+of undraped damsels sitting in oyster-shells, and the text of the book
+went to show how it was the hero's ambition to make a rosary of these
+pearls. Now I am a dull pig. Why? Because I do not add Carlotta to my
+rosary. I never heard such a monstrous thing in my life. To begin with,
+I have no rosary.
+
+I wish I had not read that French novel. I wish I had not gone
+downstairs to hunt for its seventeenth century ancestor. I wish I had
+given Pasquale dinner at the club.
+
+It is all the fault of Antoinette. Why can't she cook in a middle-class,
+unedifying way? All this comes from having in the house a woman whose
+soul is in the stew-pot.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+July 1st.
+
+She has been now over five weeks under my roof, and I have put off the
+evil day of explaining her to Judith; and Judith returns to-morrow.
+
+I know it is odd for a philosophic bachelor to maintain in his
+establishment a young and detached female of prepossessing appearance.
+For the oddity I care not two pins. _Io son' io_. But the question that
+exercises me occasionally is: In what category are my relations with
+Carlotta to be classified? I do not regard her as a daughter; still less
+as a sister: not even as a deceased wife's sister. For a secretary she
+is too abysmally ignorant, too grotesquely incapable. What she knows
+would be made to kick the beam against the erudition of a guinea-pig.
+Yet she must be classified somehow. I must allude to her as something.
+At present she fills the place in the house of a pretty (and expensive)
+Persian cat; and like a cat she has made herself serenely at home.
+
+A governess, a fat-checked girl, who I am afraid takes too humorous
+a view of the position, comes of mornings to instruct Carlotta in the
+rudiments of education. When engaging Miss Griggs, I told her she must
+be patient, firm and, above all, strong-minded. She replied that she
+made a professional specialty of these qualities, one of her present
+pupils being a young lady of the Alhambra ballet who desires the
+particular shade of cultivation that will match a new brougham. She
+teaches Carlotta to spell, to hold a knife and fork, and corrects such
+erroneous opinions as that the sky is an inverted bowl over a nice flat
+earth, and that the sun, moon, and stars are a sort of electric light
+installation, put into the cosmos to illuminate Alexandretta and the
+Regent's Park. Her religious instruction I myself shall attend to, when
+she is sufficiently advanced to understand my teaching. At present she
+is a Mohammedan, if she is anything, and believes firmly in Allah. I
+consider that a working Theism is quite enough for a young woman in her
+position to go on with. In the afternoon she walks out with Antoinette.
+Once she stole forth by herself, enjoyed herself hugely for a short
+time, got lost, and was brought back thoroughly frightened by a
+policeman. I wonder what the policeman thought of her? The rest of the
+day she looks at picture-books and works embroidery. She is making
+an elaborate bed-spread which will give her harmless occupation for a
+couple of years.
+
+For an hour every evening, when I am at home, she comes into the
+drawing-room and drinks coffee with me and listens to my improving
+conversation. I take this opportunity to rebuke her for faults committed
+during the day, or to commend her for especial good behaviour. I also
+supplement the instruction in things in general that is given her by the
+excellent Miss Griggs. Oddly enough I am beginning to look forward to
+these evening hours. She is so docile, so good-humoured, so spontaneous.
+If she has a pain in her stomach, she says so with the most engaging
+frankness. Sometimes I think of her only, in Pasquale's words, as a
+bundle of fascination, and forget that she has no soul. Nearly always,
+however, something happens to remind me. She loves me to tell her
+stories. The other night I solemnly related the history of Cinderella.
+She was enchanted. It gave me the idea of setting her to read "Lamb's
+Tales from Shakespeare." I was turning this over in my mind while she
+chewed the cud of her enjoyment, when she suddenly asked whether I would
+like to hear a Turkish story. She knew lots of nice, funny stories. I
+bade her proceed. She curled herself up in her favourite attitude on the
+sofa and began.
+
+I did not allow her to finish that tale. Had I done so, I should
+have been a monster of depravity. Compared with it the worst of
+Scheherazade's, in Burton's translation, were milk and water for a
+nunnery. She seemed nonplussed when I told her to stop.
+
+"Are oriental ladies in the habit of telling such stories?" I asked.
+
+"Why, yes," she replied with a candid air of astonishment. "It is a
+funny story."
+
+"There is nothing funny whatever in it," said I. "A girl like you
+oughtn't to know of the existence of such things."
+
+"Why not?" asked Carlotta.
+
+I am always being caught up by her questions. I tried to explain; but
+it was difficult. If I had told her that a maiden's mind ought to be
+as pure as the dewy rose she would not have understood me. Probably
+she would have thought me a fool. And indeed I am inclined to
+question whether it is an advantage to a maiden's after career to
+be dewy-roselike in her unsophistication. In order to play tunes
+indifferently well on the piano she undergoes the weary training of many
+years; but she is called upon to display the somewhat more important
+accomplishment of bringing children into the world without an hour's
+educational preparation. The difficulty is, where to draw the line
+between this dewy, but often disastrous, ignorance and Carlotta's
+knowledge. I find it a most delicate and embarrassing problem. In fact,
+the problems connected with this young woman seem endless. Yet they do
+not disturb me as much as I had anticipated. I really believe I should
+miss my pretty Persian cat. A man must be devoid of all aesthetic sense
+to deny that she is delightful to look at.
+
+And she has a thousand innocent coquetries and cajoling ways. She has a
+manner of holding chocolate creams to her white teeth and talking to you
+at the same time which is peculiarly fascinating. And she must have some
+sense. To-night she asked me what I was writing. I replied, "A History
+of the Morals of the Renaissance." "What are morals and what is the
+Renaissance?" asked Carlotta. When you come to think of it, it is a
+profound question, which philosophers and historians have wasted vain
+lives in trying to answer. I perceive that I too must try to answer
+it with a certain amount of definition. I have spent the evening
+remodelling my Introduction, so as to define the two terms axiomatically
+with my subsequent argument, and I find it greatly improved. Now this is
+due to Carlotta.
+
+
+The quantity of chocolate creams the child eats cannot be good for her
+digestion. I must see to this.
+
+
+July 2d.
+
+A telegram from Judith to say she postpones her return to Monday. I have
+been longing to see the dear woman again, and I am greatly disappointed.
+At the same time it is a respite from an explanation that grows more
+difficult every day. I hate myself for the sense of relief.
+
+This morning came an evening dress for Carlotta which has taken a month
+in the making. This, I am given to understand, is delirious speed for
+a London dress-maker. To celebrate the occasion I engaged a box at the
+Empire for this evening and invited her to dine with me. I sent a note
+of invitation round to Mrs. McMurray.
+
+Carlotta did not come down at half-past seven. We waited. At last Mrs.
+McMurray went up to the room and presently returned shepherding a shy,
+blushing, awkward, piteous young person who had evidently been crying.
+My friend signed to me to take no notice. I attributed the child's lack
+of gaiety to the ordeal of sitting for the first time in her life at
+a civilised dinner-table. She scarcely spoke and scarcely ate. I
+complimented her on her appearance and she looked beseechingly at me, as
+if I were scolding her. After dinner Mrs. McMurray told me the reason of
+her distress. She had found Carlotta in tears. Never could she face me
+in that low cut evening bodice. It outraged her modesty. It could not be
+the practice of European women to bare themselves so immodestly before
+men. It was only the evidence of her visitor's own plump neck and
+shoulders that convinced her, and she suffered herself to be led
+downstairs in an agony of self-consciousness.
+
+When we entered the box at the Empire, a troupe of female acrobats were
+doing their turn. Carlotta uttered a gasp of dismay, blushed burning
+red, and shrank back to the door. There is no pretence about Carlotta.
+She was shocked to the roots of her being.
+
+"They are naked!" she said, quiveringly.
+
+"For heaven's sake, explain," said I to Mrs. McMurray, and I beat a
+hasty retreat to the promenade.
+
+When I returned, Carlotta had been soothed down. She was watching some
+performing dogs with intense wonderment and delight. For the rest of
+the evening she sat spell-bound. The exiguity of costume in the
+ballet caused her indeed to glance in a frightened sort of way at Mrs.
+McMurray, who reassured her with a friendly smile, but the music and the
+maze of motion and the dazzle of colour soon held her senses captive,
+and when the curtain came down she sighed like one awaking from a dream.
+
+As we drove home, she asked me:
+
+"Is it like that all day long? Oh, please to let me live there!"
+
+A nice English girl of eighteen would not flaunt unconcerned about my
+drawing-room in a shameless dressing-gown, and crinkle up her toes in
+front of me; still less would she tell me outrageous stories; but she
+will wear low-necked dresses and gaze at ladies in tights without the
+ghost of an immodest thought. I was right when I told Carlotta England
+was Alexandretta upside-down. What is immoral here is moral there, and
+vice-versa. There is no such thing as absolute morality. I am very glad
+this has happened. It shows me that Carlotta is not devoid of the better
+kind of feminine instincts.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+July 4th.
+
+Judith has come back. I have seen her and I have explained Carlotta.
+
+All day long I felt like a respectable person about to be brought before
+a magistrate for being drunk and disorderly. Now I have the uneasy
+satisfaction of having been let off with a caution. I am innocent, but I
+mustn't do it again.
+
+As soon as I entered the room Judith embraced me, and said a number of
+foolish things. I responded to the best of my ability. It is not usual
+for our quiet lake of affection to be visited by such tornadoes.
+
+"Oh, I am glad, I am glad to be back with you again. I have longed for
+you. I couldn't write it. I did not know I could long for any one so
+much."
+
+"I have missed you immensely, my dear Judith," said I.
+
+She looked at me queerly for a moment; then with a radiant smile:
+
+"I love you for not going into transports like a Frenchman. Oh, I
+am tired of Frenchmen. You are my good English Marcus, and worth all
+masculine Paris put together."
+
+"I thank you, my dear, for the compliment," said I, "but surely you must
+exaggerate."
+
+"To me you are worth the masculine universe," said Judith, and she
+seated me by her side on the sofa, held my hands, and said more foolish
+things.
+
+When the tempest had abated, I laughed.
+
+"It is you that have acquired the art of transports in Paris," said I.
+
+"Perhaps I have. Shall I teach you?"
+
+"You will have to learn moderation, my dear Judith," I remarked. "You
+have been living too rapidly of late and are looking tired."
+
+"It is only the journey," she replied.
+
+I am sure it is the unaccustomed dissipation. Judith is not a strong
+woman, and late hours and eternal gadding about do not suit her
+constitution. She has lost weight and there are faint circles under
+her eyes. There are lines, too, on her face which only show in hours of
+physical strain. I was proceeding to expound this to her at some length,
+for I consider it well for women to have some one to counsel them
+frankly in such matters, when she interrupted me with a gesture of
+impatience.
+
+"There, there! Tell me what you have been doing with yourself. Your
+letters gave me very little information."
+
+"I am afraid," said I, "I am a poor letter writer."
+
+"I read each ten times over," she said.
+
+I kissed her hand in acknowledgment. Then I rose, lit a cigarette and
+walked about the room. Judith shook out her skirts and settled herself
+comfortably among the sofa-cushions.
+
+"Well, what crimes have you been committing the past few weeks?"
+
+A wandering minstrel was harping "Love's Sweet Dream" outside the
+public-house below. I shut the window, hastily.
+
+"Nothing so bad as that," said I. "He ought to be hung and his wild harp
+hung behind him."
+
+"You are developing nerves," said Judith. "Is it a guilty conscience?"
+She laughed. "You are hiding something from me. I've been aware of it
+all the time."
+
+"Indeed? How?"
+
+"By the sixth sense of woman!"
+
+Confound the sixth sense of woman! I suppose it has been developed like
+a cat's whiskers to supply the deficiency of a natural scent. Also,
+like the whiskers, it is obtrusive, and a matter for much irritatingly
+complacent pride. Judith regarded me with a mock magisterial air, and I
+was put into the dock at once.
+
+"Something has happened," I said, desperately. "A female woman has come
+and taken up her residence at 26 Lingfield Terrace. A few weeks ago she
+ate with her fingers and believed the earth was flat. I found her in the
+Victoria Embankment Gardens beneath the terrace of the National Liberal
+Club, and now she lives on chocolate creams and the 'Child's Guide to
+Knowledge.' She is eighteen and her name is Carlotta. There!"
+
+As my cigarette had gone out, I threw it with some peevishness into the
+grate. Judith's expression had changed from mock to real gravity. She
+sat bolt upright and looked at me somewhat stonily.
+
+"What in the world do you mean, Marcus?"
+
+"What I say. I'm saddled with the responsibility of a child of nature
+as unsophisticated and perplexing as Voltaire's Huron. She's English and
+she came from a harem in Syria, and she is as beautiful as the houris
+she believes in and is unfortunately precluded from joining. One of
+these days I shall be teaching her her catechism. I have already
+washed her face. Kindly pity me as the innocent victim of fantastic
+circumstances."
+
+"I don't see why I should pity you," said Judith.
+
+I felt I had not explained Carlotta tactfully. If there are ten ways of
+doing a thing I have noticed that I invariably select the one way that
+is wrong. I perceived that somehow or other the very contingency I had
+feared had come to pass. I had prejudiced Judith against Carlotta. I had
+aroused the Ishmaelite--her hand against every woman and every woman's
+hand against her--that survives in all her sex.
+
+"My dear Judith," said I, "if a wicked fairy godmother had decreed that
+a healthy rhinoceros should be my housemate you would have extended
+me your sympathy. But because Fate has inflicted on me an equally
+embarrassing guest in the shape of a young woman--"
+
+"My dear Marcus," interrupted Judith, "the healthy rhinoceros would know
+twenty times as much about women as you do." This I consider one of the
+silliest remarks Judith has ever made. "Do," she continued, "tell me
+something coherent about this young person you call Carlotta."
+
+I told the story from beginning to end.
+
+"But why in the world did you keep it from me?" she asked.
+
+"I mistrusted the sixth sense of woman," said I.
+
+"The most elementary sense of woman or any one else would have told you
+that you were doing a very foolish thing."
+
+"How would you have acted?"
+
+"I should have handed her over at once to the Turkish consulate."
+
+"Not if you had seen her eyes."
+
+Judith tossed her head. "Men are all alike," she observed.
+
+"On the contrary," said I, "that which characterises men as a sex is
+their greater variation from type than women. It is a scientific fact.
+You will find it stated by Darwin and more authoritatively still by
+later writers. The highest common factor of a hundred women is far
+greater than that of a hundred men. The abnormal is more frequent in the
+male sex. There are more male monsters."
+
+"That I can quite believe," snapped Judith.
+
+"Then you agree with me that men are not all alike?"
+
+"I certainly don't. Put any one of you before a pretty face and a pair
+of silly girl's eyes and he is a perfect idiot."
+
+"My dear Judith," said I, "I don't care a hang for a pretty face--except
+yours."
+
+"Do you really care about mine?" she asked wistfully.
+
+"My dear," said I, dropping on one knee by the sofa, and taking her
+hand, "I've been longing for it for six weeks." And I counted the weeks
+on her fingers.
+
+This put her in a good humour. Now that I come to think of it, there
+is something adorably infantile in grown up women. Shall man ever
+understand them? I have seen babies (not many, I am glad to say) crow
+with delight at having their toes pulled, with a "this little pig went
+to market," and so forth; Judith almost crowed at having the weeks told
+off on her fingers. Queer!
+
+An hour was taken up with the account of her doings in Paris. She had
+met all the nicest and naughtiest people. She had been courted and
+flattered. An artist in a slouch hat, baggy corduroy breeches, floppy
+tie and general 1830 misfit had made love to her on the top of the
+Eiffel Tower.
+
+
+"And he said," laughed Judith, "'_Partons ensemble. Comme on dit en
+Anglais_--fly with me!' I remarked that our state when we got to the
+Champs de Mars would be an effective disguise. He didn't understand, and
+it was delicious!"
+
+I laughed. "All the same," I observed, "I can't see the fun of making
+jokes which the person to whom you make them doesn't see the point of."
+
+"Why, that's your own peculiar form of humour," she retorted. "I caught
+the trick from you."
+
+Perhaps she is right. I have noticed that people are slow in their
+appreciation of my witticisms. I must really be a very dull dog. If she
+were not fond of me I don't see how a bright woman like Judith could
+tolerate my society for half an hour.
+
+I don't think I contribute to the world's humour; but the world's
+humour contributes much to my own entertainment, and things which appear
+amusing to me do not appeal, when I point them out, to the risible
+faculties of another. Every individual, I suppose, like every
+civilisation, must have his own standard of humour. If I were a Roman
+(instead of an English) Epicurean, I should have died with laughter
+at the sight of a fat Christian martyr scudding round the arena while
+chased by a hungry lion. At present I should faint with horror. Indeed,
+I always feel tainted with savagery and enjoying a vicarious lust, when
+I smile at the oft-repeated tale of the poor tiger in Dore's picture
+that hadn't got a Christian. On the other hand, it tickles me immensely
+to behold a plethoric commonplace Briton roar himself purple with
+impassioned platitude at a political meeting; but I perceive that all
+my neighbours take him with the utmost seriousness. Again, your literary
+journalist professes to wriggle in his chair over the humour of Jane
+Austen; to me she is the dullest lady that ever faithfully photographed
+the trivial. Years ago I happened to be crossing Putney Bridge, in a
+frock-coat and silk hat, when a passing member of the proletariat dug
+his elbows in his comrade's ribs and, quoting a music-hall tag of the
+period, shouted "He's got 'em on!" whereupon both burst into peals of
+robustious but inane laughter. Now, if I had turned to them, and said,
+"He would be funnier if I hadn't," and paraphrased, however wittily,
+Carlyle's ironical picture of a nude court of St. James's, they would
+have punched my head under the confused idea that I was trying to
+bamboozle them. Which brings me to my point of departure, my remark to
+Judith as to the futility of jesting to unpercipient ears.
+
+I did not take up her retort.
+
+"And what was the end of the romance?" I asked.
+
+"He borrowed twenty francs of me to pay for the _dejeuner_, and his
+_l'annee trente_ delicacy of soul compelled him to blot my existence
+forever from his mind."
+
+"He never repaid you?" I asked.
+
+"For a humouristic philosopher," cried Judith, "you are delicious!"
+
+Judith is too fond of that word "delicious." She uses it in season and
+out of season.
+
+We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use
+it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words
+between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn
+bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological
+history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin
+of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for
+putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.
+
+I said something of the sort to Judith, after she had resumed her seat
+and I had opened the window, the minstrel having wandered to the next
+hostelry, where the process of converting "Love's Sweet Dream" into a
+nightmare was still faintly audible. Judith looked at me whimsically, as
+I stood breathing the comparatively fresh air and enjoying the relative
+silence.
+
+"You are still the same, I am glad to see. Conversation with the young
+savage from Syria hasn't altered you in the least."
+
+"In the first place," said I, "savages do not grow in Syria; and in the
+second, how could she have altered me?"
+
+"If the heavens were to open and the New Jerusalem to appear this moment
+before you," retorted Judith, with the relevant irrelevance of her
+sex, "you would begin an unconcerned disquisition on the iconography of
+angels."
+
+I sat on the sofa end and touched one of her little pink ears. She
+has pretty ears. They were the first of things physical about her that
+attracted me to her years ago in the Roman pension--they and the mass of
+silken flax that is her hair, and her violet eyes.
+
+"Did you learn that particular way of talking in Paris?" I asked.
+
+She had the effrontery to say she was imitating me and that it was a
+very good imitation indeed.
+
+
+We talked about the book. I touched upon the great problem that requires
+solution--the harmonising and justifying of the contradictory opposites
+in Renaissance character: Fra Lippo Lippi breaking his own vows and
+breaking a nun's for her; Perugino leading his money-grubbing, morose
+life and painting ethereal saints and madonnas in his _bottega_, while
+the Baglioni filled the streets outside with slaughter; Lorenzo de'
+Medici bleeding literally and figuratively his fellow-citizens, going
+from that occupation to his Platonic Academy and disputing on the
+immortality of the soul, winding up with orgies of sensual depravity
+with his boon companion Pulci, and all the time making himself an
+historic name for statecraft; Pope Sixtus IV, at the very heart of the
+Pazzi conspiracy to murder the Medici--
+
+"And Pope Nicholas V when drunk ordering a man to be executed, and being
+sorry for it when sober," said Judith.
+
+It is wonderful how Judith, with her quite unspecialised knowledge of
+history can now and then put her finger upon something vital. I have
+been racking my brain and searching my library for the past two or three
+days for an illustration of just that nature. I had not thought of it.
+Here is Tomaso da Sarzana, a quiet, retired schoolmaster, like myself,
+an editor of classical texts, a peaceful librarian of Cosmo de' Medici,
+a scholar and a gentleman to the tips of his fingers; he is made Pope, a
+King Log to save the cardinalate from a possible King Stork Colonna; the
+Porcari conspiracy breaks out, is discovered and the conspirators are
+hunted over Italy and put to death; a gentleman called Anguillara is
+slightly inculpated; he is invited to Rome by Nicholas, and given
+a safe-conduct; when he arrives the Pope is drunk (at least Stefano
+Infessura, the contemporary diarist, says so); the next morning his
+Holiness finds to his surprise and annoyance that the gentleman's head
+has been cut off by his orders. It is an amazing tale. To realise
+how amazing it is, one must picture the fantastic possibility of it
+happening at the Vatican nowadays. And the most astounding thing is
+this: that if all the dead and gone popes were alive, and the soul of
+the saintly Pontiff of to-day were to pass from him, the one who could
+most undetected occupy his simulacrum would be this very Thomas of
+Sarzana.
+
+"Pardon me, my dear Judith," said I. "But this is a story lying somewhat
+up one of the back-waters of history. Where did you come across it?"
+
+"I saw it the other day in a French comic paper," replied Judith.
+
+I really don't know which to admire the more: the inconsequent way in
+which the French toss about scholarship, or the marvellous power of
+assimilation possessed by Judith.
+
+Before we separated she returned to the subject of Carlotta.
+
+"Am I to see this young creature?" she asked. "That is just as you
+choose," said I.
+
+"Oh! as far as I am concerned, my dear Marcus, I am perfectly
+indifferent," replied Judith, assuming the supercilious expression with
+which women invariably try to mask inordinate curiosity.
+
+"Then," said I, with a touch of malice, "there is no reason why you
+should make her acquaintance."
+
+"I should be able to see through her tricks and put you on your guard."
+
+"Against what?"
+
+She shrugged her shoulders as if it were vain to waste breath on so
+obtuse a person.
+
+"You had better bring her round some afternoon," she said.
+
+Have I acted wisely in confessing Carlotta to Judith? And why do I use
+the word "confess"? Far from having committed an evil action, I consider
+I have exhibited exemplary altruism. Did I want a "young savage from
+Syria" to come and interfere with my perfectly ordered life? Judith
+does not realise this. I had a presentiment of the prejudice she would
+conceive against the poor girl, and now it has been verified. I wish I
+had held my tongue. As Judith, for some feminine reason known only to
+herself, has steadily declined to put her foot inside my house, she
+might very well have remained unsuspicious of Carlotta's existence. And
+why not? The fact of the girl being my pensioner does not in the least
+affect the personality which I bring to Judith. The idea is absurd. Why
+wasn't I wise before the event? I might have spared myself considerable
+worry.
+
+
+A letter from my Aunt Jessica enclosing a card for a fancy dress ball at
+the Empress Rooms. The preposterous lady!
+
+"Do come. It is not right for a young man to lead the life of a recluse
+of seventy. Here we are in the height of the London season, and I am
+sure you haven't been into ten houses, when a hundred of the very
+best are open to you--" I loathe the term "best houses." The tinsel
+ineptitude of them! For entertainment I really would sooner attend a
+mothers' meeting or listen to the serious British Drama--Have I read so
+and so's novel? Am I going to Mrs. Chose's dance? Do I ride in the Park?
+Do I know young Thingummy of the Guards, who is going to marry Lady
+Betty Something? What do I think of the Academy? As if one could have
+any sentiment with regard to the Academy save regret at such profusion
+of fresh paint! "You want shaking up," continued my aunt. Silly woman!
+If there is a thing I should abhor it would be to be shaken up. "Come
+and dine with us at seven-thirty _in costume_, and I'll promise you a
+delightful time. And think how proud the girls would be of showing off
+their _beau cousin_." _Et patiti et patita._ I am again reminded that I
+owe it to my position, my title. God ha' mercy on us! To bedeck myself
+like a decayed mummer in a booth and frisk about in a pestilential
+atmosphere with a crowd of strange and uninteresting young females is
+the correct way of fulfilling the obligations that the sovereign laid
+upon the successors to the title, when he conferred the dignity of a
+baronetcy on my great-grandfather! Now I come to think of it the
+Prince Regent was that sovereign, and my ancestor did things for him
+at Brighton. Perhaps after all there is a savage irony of truth in Aunt
+Jessica's suggestion!
+
+And a _beau cousin_ should I be indeed. What does she think I would
+go as? A mousquetaire? or a troubadour in blue satin trunks and cloak,
+white silk tights and shoes and a Grecian helmet, like Mr. Snodgrass at
+Mrs. Leo Hunter's _fete champetre?_
+
+I wish I could fathom Aunt Jessica's reasons for her attempts at
+involving me in her social mountebankery. If the girls get no better
+dance-partners than me, heaven help them!
+
+Only a fortnight ago I drove with them to Hurlingham. My aunt and
+Gwendolen disappeared in an unaccountable manner with another man,
+leaving me under an umbrella tent to take charge of Dora. I had an hour
+and a half of undiluted Dora. The dose was too strong, and it made my
+head ache. I think I prefer neat Carlotta.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+July 5th
+
+I lunched at home, and read drowsily before the open window till four
+o'clock. Then the splendour of the day invited me forth. Whither
+should I go? I thought of Judith and Hampstead Heath; I also thought
+of Carlotta and Hyde Park. The sound of the lions roaring for their
+afternoon tea reached me through the still air, and I put from me a
+strong temptation to wander alone and meditative in the Zoological
+Gardens close by. I must not forget, I reflected, that I am responsible
+for Carlotta's education, whereas I am in no wise responsible for the
+animals or for Judith. If Judith and I had claims one on the other, the
+entire charm of our relationship would be broken.
+
+I resolved to take Carlotta to the park, in order to improve her mind.
+She would see how well-bred Englishwomen comport themselves externally.
+It would be a lesson in decorum.
+
+I do not despise convention. Indeed, I follow it up to the point when it
+puts on the airs of revealed religion. My neighbours and I decide on
+a certain code of manners which will enable us to meet without mutual
+offence. I agree to put my handkerchief up to my nose when I sneeze in
+his presence, and he contracts not to wipe muddy boots on my sofa. I
+undertake not to shock his wife by parading my hideous immorality before
+her eyes, and he binds himself not to aggravate my celibacy by beating
+her or kissing her when I am paying a call. I agree, by wearing an
+arbitrarily fixed costume when I dine with him, to brand myself with the
+stamp of a certain class of society, so that his guests shall receive me
+without question, and he in return gives me a well-ordered dinner
+served with the minimum amount of inconvenience to myself that his
+circumstances allow. Many folks make what they are pleased to call
+unconventionality a mere cloak for selfish disregard of the feelings
+and tastes of others. Bohemianism too often means piggish sloth or
+slatternly ineptitude.
+
+Convention is solely a matter of manners. That is why I desire to instil
+some convention into what, for want of a more accurate term, I may
+allude to as Carlotta's mind. It will save me much trouble in the
+future.
+
+I summoned Carlotta.
+
+"Carlotta," I said, "I am going to take you to Hyde Park and show
+you the English aristocracy wearing their best clothes and their best
+behaviour. You must do the same."
+
+"My best clothes?" cried Carlotta, her face lighting up.
+
+"Your very best. Make haste."
+
+I smiled. She ran from the room and in an incredibly short time
+reappeared unblushingly bare-necked and bare-armed in the evening dress
+that had caused her such dismay on Saturday.
+
+I jumped to my feet. There is no denying that she looked amazingly
+beautiful. She looked, in fact, disconcertingly beautiful. I found it
+hard to tell her to take the dress off again.
+
+"Is it wrong?" she asked Nvith a pucker of her baby lips.
+
+"Yes, indeed," said I. "People would be shocked."
+
+"But on Saturday evening--" she began.
+
+"I know, my child," I interrupted. "In society you are scarcely
+respectable unless you go about half naked at night; but to do so in the
+daytime would be the grossest indecency. I'll explain some other time."
+
+"I shall never understand," said Carlotta.
+
+Two great tears stood, one on each eyelid, and fell simultaneously down
+her cheeks.
+
+"What on earth are you crying for?" I asked aghast.
+
+"You are not pleased with me," said Carlotta, with a choke in her voice.
+
+The two tears fell like rain-drops on to her bosom, and she stood before
+me a picture of exquisite woe. Then I did a very foolish thing.
+
+Last week a little gold brooch in a jeweller's window caught my fancy.
+I bought it with the idea of presenting it to Carlotta, when an occasion
+offered, as a reward for peculiar merit. Now, however, to show her that
+I was in no way angry, I abstracted the bauble from the drawer of my
+writing-table, and put it in her hand.
+
+"You please me so much, Carlotta," said I, "that I have bought this for
+you."
+
+Before I had completed the sentence, and before I knew what she was
+after, her arms were round my neck and she was hugging me like a child.
+
+I have never experienced such an odd sensation in my life as the touch
+of Carlotta's fresh young arms upon my face and the perfume of spring
+violets that emanated from her person. I released myself swiftly from
+her indecorous demonstration.
+
+"You mustn't do things like that," said I, severely. "In England, young
+women are only allowed to embrace their grandfathers." Carlotta looked
+at me wide-eyed, with the fox-terrier knitting of the forehead.
+
+"But you are so good to me, Seer Marcous," she said.
+
+"I hope you'll find many people good to you, Carlotta," I answered. "But
+if you continue that method of expressing your appreciation, you may
+possibly be misunderstood."
+
+I had recovered from the momentary shock to my senses, and I laughed.
+She fluttered a sidelong glance at me, and a smile as inscrutable as the
+Monna Lisa's hovered over her lips.
+
+"What would they do if they did not understand?"
+
+"They would take you," I replied, fixing her sternly with my gaze, "they
+would take you for an unconscionable baggage."
+
+"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta, suddenly. And she ran from the room.
+
+In a moment she was back again. She came up to me demurely and plucked
+my sleeve.
+
+"Come and show me what I must put on so as to please you."
+
+I rang the bell for Antoinette, to whom I gave the necessary
+instructions. Her next request would be that I should act the part of
+lady's-maid. I must maintain my dignity with Carlotta.
+
+The lovely afternoon had attracted many people to the park, and the
+lawns were thronged. We found a couple of chairs at the edge of one
+of the cross-paths and watched the elegant assembly. Carlotta, vastly
+entertained, asked innumerable questions. How could I tell whether a
+lady was married or unmarried? Did they all wear stays? Why did every
+one look so happy? Did I think that old man was the young girl's
+husband? What were they all talking about? Wouldn't I take her for a
+drive in one of those beautiful carriages? Why hadn't I a carriage? Then
+suddenly, as if inspired, after a few minutes' silent reflection:
+
+"Seer Marcous, is this the marriage market?"
+
+"The what?" I gasped.
+
+"The marriage market. I read it in a book, yesterday. Miss Griggs gave
+it me to read aloud--Tack--Thack--"
+
+"Thackeray?"
+
+"Ye-es. They come here to sell the young girls to men who want wives."
+She edged away from me, with a little movement of alarm. "That is not
+why you have brought me here--to sell me?"
+
+"How much do you think you would be worth?" I asked, sarcastically.
+
+She opened out her hands palms upward, throwing down her parasol, as she
+did so, upon her neighbour's little Belgian griffon, who yelped.
+
+"Ch, lots," she said in her frank way. "I am very beautiful."
+
+I picked up the parasol, bowed apologetically to the owner of the
+stricken animal, and addressed Carlotta.
+
+"Listen, my good child. You are passably good-looking, but you are by
+no means very beautiful. If I tried to sell you here, you might possibly
+fetch half a crown--"
+
+"Two shillings and sixpence?" asked the literal Carlotta.
+
+"Yes. Just that. But as a matter of fact, no one would buy you. This is
+not the marriage market. There is no such thing as a marriage market.
+English mothers and fathers do not sell their daughters for money. Such
+a thing is monstrous and impossible."
+
+"Then it was all lies I read in the book?"
+
+"All lies," said I.
+
+I hope the genial shade of the great satirist has forgiven me.
+
+"Why do they put lies in books?"
+
+"To accentuate the Truth, so that it shall prevail," I answered.
+
+This was too hard a nut for Carlotta to crack. She was silent for a
+moment. She reverted, ruefully, to the intelligible.
+
+"I thought I was beautiful," she said.
+
+"Who told you so?"
+
+"Pasquale."
+
+"Pasquale has no sense," said I. "There are men to whom all women who
+are not seventy and toothless and rheumy at the eyes are beautiful.
+Pasquale has said the same to every woman he has met. He is a Lothario
+and a Don Juan and a Caligula and a Faublas and a Casanova."
+
+"And he tells lies, too?"
+
+"Millions of them," said I. "He contracts with their father Beelzebub
+for a hundred gross a day."
+
+"Pasquale is very pretty and he makes me laugh and I like him," said
+Carlotta.
+
+"I am very sorry to hear it," said I.
+
+The griffon, who had been sniffing at Carlotta's skirts, suddenly leaped
+into her lap. With a swift movement of her hand she swept the poor
+little creature, as if it had been a noxious insect, yards away.
+
+"Carlotta!" I cried angrily, springing to my feet.
+
+The ladies who owned the beast rushed to their whining pet and looked
+astonished daggers at Carlotta. When they picked it up, it sat dangling
+a piteous paw. Carlotta rose, merely scared at my anger. I raised my
+hat.
+
+"I am more than sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am. I hope the
+little dog is not hurt. My ward, for whom I offer a thousand apologies,
+is a Mohammedan, to whom all dogs are unclean. Please attribute the
+accident to religious instinct."
+
+The younger of the two, who had been examining the paw, looked up with a
+smile.
+
+"Your ward is forgiven. Punch oughtn't to jump on strange ladies' laps,
+whether they are Mohammedans or not. Oh! he is more frightened than
+hurt. And I," she added, with a twinkling eye, "am more hurt than
+frightened, because Sir Marcus Ordeyne doesn't recognise me."
+
+So Carlotta had nearly killed the dog of an unrecalled acquaintance.
+
+"I do indeed recognise you now," said I, mendaciously. I seem to have
+been lying to-day through thick and thin. "But in the confusion of the
+disaster--"
+
+"You sat next me at lunch one day last winter, at Mrs. Ordeyne's,"
+interrupted the lady, "and you talked to me of transcendental
+mathematics."
+
+I remembered. "The crime," said I, "has lain heavily on my conscience."
+
+"I don't believe a word of it," she laughed, dismissing me with a bow. I
+raised my hat and joined Carlotta.
+
+It was a Miss Gascoigne, a flirtatious intimate of Aunt Jessica's house.
+To this irresponsible young woman I had openly avowed that I was the
+guardian of a beautiful Mohammedan whose religious instinct compelled
+her to destroy little dogs. I shall hear of this from my Aunt Jessica.
+
+I walked stonily away with Carlotta.
+
+"You are cross with me," she whimpered.
+
+"Yes, I am. You might have killed the poor little beast. It was very
+wicked and cruel of you."
+
+Carlotta burst out crying in the midst of the promenade.
+
+The tears did not romantically come into her eyes as they had done an
+hour before; but she wept copiously, after the unrestrained manner of
+children, and used her pocket-handkerchief. From their seats women put
+up their lorgnons to look at her, passers-by turned round and stared.
+The whole of the gaily dressed throng seemed to be one amused gaze. In'
+a moment or two I became conscious that reprehensory glances were being
+directed towards myself, calling me, as plain as eyes could call, an
+ill-conditioned brute, for making the poor young creature, who was at
+my mercy, thus break down in public. It was a charming situation for an
+even-tempered philosopher. We walked stolidly on, I glaring in front
+of me and Carlotta weeping. The malice of things arranged that ne.
+neighbouring chair should be vacant, and that the path should be
+unusually crowded. I had the satisfaction of hearing a young fellow say
+to a girl:
+
+"He? That's Ordeyne--came into the baronetcy--mad as a dingo dog."
+
+I was giving myself a fine advertisement.
+
+"For heaven's sake stop crying," I said. Then a memory of far-off
+childhood flashed its inspiration upon me. "If you don't," I added,
+grimly, "I'll take you out and give you to a policeman."
+
+The effect was magical. She turned on me a scared look, gasped, pulled
+down her veil, which she had raised so as to dab her eyes with her
+pocket-handkerchief, and incontinently checked the fountain of her
+tears.
+
+"A policeman?"
+
+"Yes," said I, "a great, big, ugly blue policeman, who shuts up people
+who misbehave themselves in prison, and takes off their clothes, and
+shaves their heads, and feeds them on bread and water."
+
+"I won't cry any more," she said, swallowing a sob. "Is it also wicked
+to cry?"
+
+"Any of these ladies here would sooner be burned alive with dyspepsia or
+cut in two with tight-lacing," I replied severely. "Let us sit down."
+
+We stepped over the low iron rail, and passing through the first two
+rows of people, found seats behind where the crowd was thinner.
+
+"Is Seer Marcous still angry with me?" asked Carlotta, and the simple
+plaintiveness of her voice would have melted the bust of Nero. I
+lectured her on cruelty to animals. That one had duties of kindness
+towards the lower creation appealed to her as a totally new idea.
+Supposing the dog had broken all its legs and ribs, would she not have
+been sorry? She answered frankly in the negative. It was a nasty little
+dog. If she had hurt it badly, so much the better. What did it matter if
+a dog was hurt? She was sorry now she had hurled it into space, because
+it belonged to my friends, and that had made me cross with her.
+
+Of course I was shocked at the thoughtless cruelty of the action; but my
+anger had also its roots in dismay at the public scandal it might have
+caused, and in the discovery that I was known to the victim's owner.
+It is the sad fate of the instructors of youth that they must
+hypocritically credit themselves with only the sublimest of motives. I
+spoke to Carlotta like the good father in the "Swiss Family Robinson." I
+gave vent to such noble sentiments that in a quarter of an hour I glowed
+with pride in my borrowed plumes of virtue. I would have taken a slug to
+my bosom and addressed a rattlesnake as Uncle Toby did the fly. I wonder
+whether it is not through some such process as this that parsons manage
+to keep themselves good.
+
+The soothing warmth of conscious merit restored me to good temper; and
+when Carlotta slid her hand into mine and asked me if I had forgiven
+her, I magnanimously assured her that all the past was forgotten.
+
+"Only," said I, "you will have to get out of this habit of tears. A wise
+man called Burton says in his 'Anatomy of Melancholy,' a beautiful book
+which I'll give you to read when you are sixty, 'As much count may be
+taken of a woman weeping as a goose going barefoot.'"
+
+"He was a nasty old man," said Carlotta. "Women cry because they feel
+very unhappy. Men are never unhappy, and that is the reason that men
+don't cry. My mamma used to cry all the time at Alexandretta; but
+Hamdi!--" she broke into an adorable trill of a chuckle, "You would as
+soon see a goose going with boots and stockings, like the Puss in the
+shoes--the fairy tale--as Hamdi crying. _Hou_!"
+
+Half an hour later, as we were driving homewards, she broke a rather
+long silence which she had evidently been employing in meditation.
+
+"Seer Marcous."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+She has a child's engaging way of rubbing herself up against one when
+she wants to be particularly ingratiating.
+
+"It was so nice to dine with you on Saturday."
+
+"Really?"
+
+"Oh, ye-es. When are you going to let me dine with you again, to show me
+you have forgiven me?"
+
+A hansom cab offers peculiar facilities for the aforesaid process of
+ingratiation.
+
+"You shall dine with me this evening," said I, and Carlotta cooed with
+pleasure.
+
+I perceive that she is gradually growing westernised.
+
+
+July 8th.
+
+In obedience to a peremptory note from Judith, I took Carlotta this
+afternoon to Tottenham Mansions. I shook hands with my hostess, turned
+round and said
+
+"This, my dear Judith, is Carlotta."
+
+"I am very pleased to see you," said Judith.
+
+"So am I," replied Carlotta, not to be outdone in politeness.
+
+She sat bolt upright, most correctly, on the edge of a chair, and
+responded monosyllabically to Judith's questions. Her demeanour could
+not have been more impeccable had she been trained in a French convent.
+Just before we arrived, she had been laughing immoderately because I had
+ordered her to spit out a mass of horrible sweetmeat which she had found
+it impossible to masticate, and she had challenged me to extract it with
+my fingers. But now, compared with her, Saint Nitouche was a Maenad. I
+was entertained by Judith's fruitless efforts to get behind this wall of
+reserve. Carlotta said, "Oh, ye-es" or "No-o" to everything. It was
+not a momentous conversation. As it was Carlotta in whom Judith was
+particularly interested, I effaced myself. At last, after a lull in the
+spasmodic talk, Carlotta said, very politely:
+
+"Mrs. Mainwaring has a beautiful house."
+
+"It's only a tiny flat. Would you like to look over it?" asked Judith,
+eagerly, flashing me a glance that plainly said, "Now that I shall have
+her to myself, you may trust me to get to the bottom of her."
+
+"I would like it very much," said Carlotta, rising.
+
+I held the door open for them to pass out, and lit a cigarette.
+When they returned ten minutes afterwards, Carlotta was smiling and
+self-possessed, evidently very well pleased with herself, but Judith had
+a red spot on each of her cheeks.
+
+The sight of her smote me with an odd new feeling of pity. I cannot
+dismiss the vision from my mind. All the evening I have seen the two
+women standing side by side, a piteous parable. The light from the
+window shone full upon them, and the dark curtain of the door was an
+effective background. The one flaunted the sweet insolence of youth,
+health, colour, beauty; of the bud just burst into full flower. The
+other wore the stamp of care, of the much knowledge wherein is much
+sorrow, and in her eyes dwelled the ghosts of dead years. She herself
+looked like a ghost-dressed in white pique, which of itself drew
+the colour from her white face and pale lips and mass of faint
+straw-coloured hair, the pallor of all which was accentuated by the red
+spots on her cheeks and her violet eyes.
+
+I saw that something had occurred to vex her.
+
+"Before we go," I said, "I should like a word with you. Carlotta will
+not mind."
+
+We went into the dining-room. I took her hand which was cold, in spite
+of the July warmth.
+
+"Well, my dear," said I. "What do you think of my young savage from Asia
+Minor?"
+
+Judith laughed--I am sure not naturally.
+
+"Is that all you wanted to say to me?"
+
+She withdrew her hand, and tidied her hair in the mirror of the
+overmantel.
+
+"I think she is a most uninteresting young woman. I am disappointed.
+I had anticipated something original. I had looked forward to
+some amusement. But, really, my dear Marcus, she is _bete a
+pleurer_--weepingly stupid."
+
+"She certainly can weep," said I.
+
+"Oh, can she?" said Judith, as if the announcement threw some light on
+Carlotta's character. "And when she cries, I suppose you, like a man,
+give in and let her have her own way?" And Judith laughed again.
+
+"My dear Judith," said I; "you have no idea of the wholesome discipline
+at Lingfield Terrace."
+
+Suddenly with one of her disconcerting changes of front, she turned and
+caught me by the coat-lappels.
+
+"Marcus dear, I have been so lonely this week. When are you coming to
+see me?"
+
+"We'll have a whole day out on Sunday," said I.
+
+
+As I walked down the stairs with Carlotta, I reflected that Judith had
+not accounted for the red spots.
+
+"I like her," said Carlotta. "She is a nice old lady."
+
+"Old lady! What on earth do you mean?" I was indeed startled. "She is a
+young woman."
+
+"Pouf!" cried Carlotta. "She is forty."
+
+"She is no such thing," I cried. "She is years younger than I."
+
+"She would not tell me."
+
+"You asked her age?"
+
+"Oh, ye-es," said Carlotta. "I was very polite. I first asked if she was
+married. She said yes. Then I asked how her husband was. She said she
+didn't know. That was funny. Why does she not know, Seer Marcous?"
+
+"Never mind," said I, "go on telling me how polite you were."
+
+"I asked how many children she had. She said she had none. I said it was
+a pity. And then I said, 'I am eighteen years old and I want to marry
+quite soon and have children. How old are you?' And she would not tell
+me. I said, 'You must be the same age as my mamma, if she were alive.'
+I said other things, about her husband, which I forget. Oh, I was very
+polite."
+
+She smiled up at me in quest of approbation. I checked a horrified
+rebuke when I reflected that, according to the etiquette of the harem,
+she had been "very polite." But my poor Judith! Every artless question
+had been a knife thrust in a sensitive spot. Her husband: the handsome
+blackguard who had lured her into the divorce court, married her, and
+after two unhappy years had left her broken; children: they would have
+kept her life sweet, and did I not know how she had yearned for them?
+Her age: it is only the very happily married woman who snaps her fingers
+at the approach of forty, and even she does so with a disquieting sense
+of bravado. And the sweet insolence of youth says: "I am eighteen: how
+old are you?"
+
+My poor Judith! Once more, on our walk home, I discoursed to Carlotta on
+the differences between East and West.
+
+"Seer Marcous," said Carlotta this evening at dinner--"I have decided now
+that she shall dine regularly with me; it is undoubtedly agreeable to
+see her pretty face on the opposite side of the table and listen to her
+irresponsible chatter: chatter which I keep within the bounds of decorum
+when Stenson is present, so as to save his susceptibilities, by
+the simple device, agreed upon between us (to her great delight) of
+scratching the side of my somewhat prominent nose--Seer Marcous, why
+does Mrs. Mainwaring keep your picture in her bedroom?"
+
+I am glad Stenson happened to be out of the room. His absence saved the
+flaying of my nasal organ. I explained that it was the custom in England
+for ladies to collect the photographs of their men friends, and use them
+misguidedly for purposes of decoration.
+
+"But this," said Carlotta, opening out her arms in an exaggerated way,
+"is such a big one."
+
+"Ah, that," I answered, "is because I am very beautiful."
+
+Carlotta shrieked with laughter. The exquisite comicality of the jest
+occasioned bubbling comments of mirth during the rest of the meal, and
+her original indiscreet question was happily forgotten.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+10th July.
+
+Judith and I have had our day in the country. We know a wayside station,
+on a certain line of railway, about an hour and a half from town, where
+we can alight, find eggs and bacon at the village inn and hayricks in
+a solitary meadow, and where we can chew the cud of these delights with
+the cattle in well-wooded pastures. Judith has a passion for eggs and
+bacon and hayricks. My own rapture in their presence is tempered by
+the philosophic calm of my disposition. She wore a cotton dress of a
+forget-me-not blue which suits her pale colouring. She looked quite
+pretty. When I told her so she blushed like a girl. I was glad to
+see her in gay humour again. Of late months she has been subject to
+moodiness, emotional variability, which has somewhat ruffled the smooth
+surface of our companionship. But to-day there has been no trace of
+"temperament." She has shown herself the pleasant, witty Judith she
+knows I like her to be, with a touch of coquetry thrown in on her
+own account. She even spoke amiably of Carlotta. I have not had so
+thoroughly enjoyable a day with Judith for a long time.
+
+I don't think she set herself deliberately to please me. That I should
+resent. I know that women in order to please an unsuspecting male will
+walk weary miles by his side with blisters on their feet and a beatific
+smile on their faces. But Judith has far too much commonsense.
+
+Another pleasing feature of the day's jaunt has been the absence of
+the appeal to sentimentality which Judith of late, especially since her
+return from Paris, has been overfond of making. This idle habit of
+mind, for such it is in reality, has been arrested by an intellectual
+interest. One of her great friends is Willoughby, the economic
+statistician, who in his humorous moments, writes articles for popular
+magazines, illustrated by scale diagrams. He will draw, for instance, a
+series of men representing the nations of the world, and varying in bulk
+and stature according to the respective populations; and over against
+these he will set a series of pigs whose sizes are proportionate to the
+amount of pork per head eaten by the different nationalities. To these
+queer minds that live on facts (I myself could as easily thrive on a
+diet of egg-shells) this sort of pictorial information is peculiarly
+fascinating. But Judith, who like most women has a freakish mental as
+well as physical digestion, delights in knowing how many hogs a
+cabinet minister will eat during a lifetime, and how much of the
+earth's surface could be scoured by the world's yearly output of
+scrubbing-brushes. I don't blame her for it any more than I blame her
+for a love of radishes, which make me ill; it is not as if she had no
+wholesome tastes. On the contrary, I commend her. Now, Willoughby, it
+seems, has found the public appetite so great for these thought-saving
+boluses of knowledge--unpleasant drugs, as it were, put up into gelatine
+capsules--that he needs assistance. He has asked Judith to devil for
+him, and I have to-day persuaded her to accept his offer. It will be an
+excellent thing for the dear woman. It will be an absorbing occupation.
+It will divert the current of her thoughts from the sentimentality that
+I deprecate, and provided she does not serve up hard-boiled facts to me
+at dinner, she will be the pleasanter companion.
+
+The only return to it was when I kissed her at parting.
+
+"That is the first, Marcus, for twelve hours," she said; very sweetly,
+it is true--but still reproachfully.
+
+But Sacred Name of a Little Good Man! (as the depraved French people
+say), what is the use of this continuous osculation between rational
+beings of opposite sexes who set out to enjoy themselves? If only St.
+Paul, in the famous passage when he says there is a time for this and a
+time for that, had mentioned kissing, he would have done a great deal of
+practical good.
+
+
+July 13th.
+
+To-night, for the first time since I came into the family estates (such
+as they are), I feel the paralysis of aspiration occasioned by poverty.
+If I were very rich, I would buy the two next houses, pull them down and
+erect on the site a tower forty foot high. At the very top would be one
+comfortable room to be reached by a lift, and in this room I could have
+my being, while it listed me, and be secure from all kinds of incursions
+and interruptions. Antoinette's one-eyed cat could not scratch for
+admittance; Antoinette herself could not enter under pretext of domestic
+economics and lure me into profitless gossip; and I could defy Carlotta,
+who is growing to be as pervasive as the smell of pickles over Crosse
+& Blackwell's factory. She comes in without knocking, looks at
+picture-books, sprawls about doing nothing, smokes my best cigarettes,
+hums tunes which she has picked up from barrel-organs, bends over me to
+see what I am writing, munching her eternal sweetmeats in my ear, and
+laughs at me when I tell her she has irremediably broken the thread of
+my ideas. Of course I might be brutal and turn her out. But somehow I
+forget to do so, until I realise--too late--the havoc she has made with
+my work.
+
+I did, however, think, when Miss Griggs mounted guard over Carlotta,
+and Antoinette and her cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that
+my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the
+tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the
+mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its
+skirts about my drawing-room.
+
+I was arranging my notes, I had an illuminating inspiration concerning
+the life of Francois Villon and the contemporary court of Cosmo de'
+Medici; I was preparing to fix it in writing when the door opened and
+Stenson announced:
+
+"Mrs. Ordeyne and Miss Ordeyne."
+
+My Aunt Jessica and Dora came in and my inspiration went out. It hasn't
+come back yet.
+
+My aunt's apologies and Dora's draperies filled the room. I must forgive
+the invasion. They knew they were disturbing my work. They hoped I
+didn't mind.
+
+"I wanted mamma to write, but she would come," said Dora, in her hearty
+voice. I murmured polite mendacities and offered chairs. Dora preferred
+to stand and gaze about her with feminine curiosity. Women always seem
+to sniff for Bluebeardism in a bachelor's apartment.
+
+"Why, what two beautiful rooms you have. And the books! There isn't an
+inch of wall-space!"
+
+She went on a voyage of discovery round the shelves while my aunt
+explained the object of their visit. Somebody, I forget who, had
+lent them a yacht. They were making up a party for a summer cruise in
+Norwegian fiords. The Thingummies and the So and So's and Lord This and
+Miss That had promised to come, but they were sadly in need of a man to
+play host--I was to fancy three lone women at the mercy of the skipper.
+I did, and I didn't envy the skipper. What more natural, gushed my
+aunt, than that they should turn to me, the head of the house, in their
+difficulty?
+
+"I am afraid, my dear aunt," said I, "that my acquaintance with
+skipper-terrorising hosts is nil. I can't suggest any one."
+
+"But who asked you to suggest any one?" she laughed. "It is you yourself
+that we want to persuade to have pity on us."
+
+"I have--much pity," said I, "for if it's rough, you'll all be horribly
+seasick."
+
+Dora ran across the room from the book-case she was inspecting.
+
+"I would like to shake him! He is only pretending he doesn't understand.
+I don't know what we shall do if you won't come with us."
+
+"You can't refuse, Marcus. It will be an ideal trip--and such a
+comfortable yacht--and the deep blue fiords--and we've got a French
+chef. You will be doing us such a favour."
+
+"Come, say 'Yes,'" said Dora.
+
+I wish she were not such a bouncing Juno of a girl. Large, athletic
+women with hearty voices are difficult for one to deal with. I am a
+match for my aunt, whom I can obfuscate with words. But Dora doesn't
+understand my satire; she gives a great, healthy laugh, and says, "Oh,
+rot!" which scatters my intellectual armoury.
+
+"It is exceedingly kind of you to think of me," I said to my aunt, "and
+the proposal is tempting--the prospect is indeed fascinating--but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I have so many engagements," I answered feebly.
+
+My Aunt Jessica rose, smiling indulgently upon me, as if I were a spoilt
+little boy, and took me on to the balcony, while Dora demurely retired
+to the bookshelves in the farther room. "Can't you manage to throw them
+aside? Poor Dora will be inconsolable."
+
+I stared at her for a moment and then at Dora's broad back and sturdy
+hips. Inconsolable? I can't make out what the good lady is driving at.
+If she were a vulgar woman trying to squeeze her way into society and
+needed the lubricant of the family baronetcy, I could understand her
+eagerness to parade me as her appanage. But titles in her drawing-room
+are as common as tea-cups. And the inconsolability of Dora--
+
+"If I did come she would be bored to death," said I.
+
+"She is willing to risk it."
+
+"But why should she seek martyrdom?"
+
+"There is another reason," said my aunt, ignoring my pertinent question,
+but glancing at me reassuringly "there is another reason why it would be
+well for you to come on this cruise with us." She sank her voice. "You
+met Miss Gascoigne in the park last week--"
+
+"A very charming and kind young lady," said I.
+
+"I am afraid you have been a little indiscreet. People have been
+talking."
+
+"Then theirs, not mine, is the indiscretion."
+
+"But, my dear Marcus, when you spring a good-looking young person, whom
+you introduce as your Mohammedan ward, upon London society, and she
+makes a scene in public--why--what else have people got to talk about?"
+
+"They might fall back upon the doctrine of predestination or the price
+of fish," I replied urbanely.
+
+"But I assure you, Marcus, that there is a hint of scandal abroad. It is
+actually said that she is living here."
+
+"People will say anything, true or untrue," said I.
+
+My aunt sighfully acquiesced, and for a while we discussed the depravity
+of human nature.
+
+"I have been thinking," she said at last, "that if you brought your
+ward to see us, and she could accompany us on this cruise to Norway, the
+scandal would be scotched outright."
+
+She glanced at me very keenly, and beneath her indulgent smile I saw the
+hardness of the old campaigner. It was a clever trap she had prepared
+for me.
+
+I took her hand and in my noblest manner, like the exiled vicomte in
+costume drama, bent over it and kissed her finger-tips.
+
+"I thank you, my dear aunt, for your generous faith in my integrity," I
+said, "and I assure you your confidence is well founded."
+
+A loud, gay laugh from the other room interrupted me.
+
+"Are you two rehearsing private theatricals?" cried Dora. As I was
+attired in a remarkably old college blazer and a pair of yellow Moorish
+slippers bought a couple of years ago in Tangier, and as my hair was
+straight on end, owing to a habit of passing my fingers through it while
+I work, my attitude perhaps did not strike a spectator as being so noble
+as I had imagined. I took advantage of the anti-climax, however, to
+bring my aunt from the balcony to the centre of the room, where Dora
+joined us.
+
+"Well, has mother prevailed?"
+
+"My dear Dora," said I, politely, "how can you imagine it could possibly
+be a question of persuasion?"
+
+"That might be taken two ways," said Dora. "Like Palmerston's 'Dear Sir,
+I'll lose no time in reading your book.'" Dora is a minx.
+
+"I fear," said I, "that my pedantic historical sense must venture to
+correct you. It was Lord Beaconsfield."
+
+"Well, he got it from Palmerston," insisted Dora.
+
+"You children must not quarrel," interposed my aunt, in the fond,
+maternal tone which I find peculiarly unpleasant. "Marcus will see how
+his engagements stand, and let us know in a day or two."
+
+"When do you propose to start?" I asked.
+
+"Quite soon. On the 20th.
+
+"I will let you know finally in good time," said I.
+
+As I accompanied them downstairs, I heard a door at the end of the
+passage open, and turning I saw Carlotta's pretty head thrust past the
+jamb, and her eyes fixed on the visitors. I motioned her back, sharply,
+and my aunt and Dora made an unsuspecting exit. The noise of their
+departing chariot wheels was music to my ears.
+
+Carlotta came rushing out of her sitting-room followed by Miss Griggs,
+protesting.
+
+"Who those fine ladies?" she cried, with her hands on my sleeve.
+
+"Who _are_ those ladies?" I corrected.
+
+"Who _are_ those ladies?" Carlotta repeated, like a demure parrot.
+
+"They are friends of mine."
+
+Then came the eternal question.
+
+"Is she married, the young one?"
+
+"Miss Griggs," said I, "kindly instil into Carlotta's mind the fact that
+no young English woman ever thinks about marriage until she is actually
+engaged, and then her thoughts do not go beyond the wedding."
+
+"But is she?" persisted Carlotta.
+
+"I wish to heaven she was," I laughed, imprudently, "for then she would
+not come and spoil my morning's work."
+
+"Oh, she wants to marry you," said Carlotta.
+
+"Miss Griggs," said I, "Carlotta will resume her studies," and I went
+upstairs, sighing for the beautiful tower with a lift outside.
+
+
+July 14th.
+
+Pasquale came in about nine o'clock, and found us playing cards.
+
+He is a bird of passage with no fixed abode. Some weeks ago he gave up
+his chambers in St. James's, and went to live with an actor friend, a
+grass-widower, who has a house in the St. John's Wood Road close by. Why
+Pasquale, who loves the palpitating centres of existence, should choose
+to rusticate in this semi-arcadian district, I cannot imagine. He says
+he can think better in St. John's Wood.
+
+Pasquale think! As well might a salmon declare it could sing better in a
+pond! The consequence of his propinquity, however, has been that he
+has dropped in several times lately on his way home, but generally at a
+later hour.
+
+"Oh, please don't move and spoil the picture," he cried. "Oh, you
+idyllic pair! And what are you playing? Cribbage! If I had been
+challenged to guess the game you would have selected for your
+after-dinner entertainment, I should have sworn to cribbage!"
+
+"An excellent game," said I. Indeed, it is the only game that I
+remember. I dislike cards. They bore me to death. So dus chess. People
+love to call them intellectual pastimes; but, surely, if a man
+wants exercise for his intellect, there are enough problems in this
+complicated universe for him to worry his brains over, with more profit
+to himself and the world. And as for the pastime--I consider that when
+two or more intelligent people sit down to play cards they are insulting
+one another's powers of conversation. These remarks do not apply to my
+game with Carlotta, who is a child, and has to be amused. She has picked
+up cribbage with remarkable quickness, and although this is only the
+third evening we have played, she was getting the better of me when
+Pasquale appeared.
+
+I repeated my statement. Cribbage certainly was an excellent game.
+Pasquale laughed.
+
+"Of course it is. A venerable pastime. Darby and Joan have played it of
+evenings for the last thousand years. Please go on."
+
+But Carlotta threw her cards on the table and herself on the sofa and
+said she would prefer to hear Pasquale talk.
+
+"He says such funny things."
+
+Then she jumped from the sofa and handed him the box of chocolates that
+is never far from her side. How lithe her movements are!
+
+"Pasquale says you were his schoolmaster, and used to beat him with a
+big stick," she remarked, turning her head toward me, while Pasquale
+helped himself to a sweet.
+
+He was clumsy in his selection, and the box slipped from Carlotta's
+hand and the contents rolled upon the floor. They both went on hands and
+knees to pick them up, and there was much laughing and whispering.
+
+It is curious that I cannot recall Pasquale having alluded, in
+Carlotta's presence, to our early days. It was on my tongue to ask
+when he committed the mendacity--for in that school not only did the
+assistant masters not have the power of the cane, but Pasquale, being
+in the sixth form at the time I joined, was exempt from corporal
+punishment--when they both rose flushed from their grovelling beneath
+the table, and some merry remark from Pasquale put the question out of
+my head.
+
+
+All this is unimportant. The main result of Pasquale's visit this
+evening is a discovery.
+
+Now, is it, after all, a discovery, or only the non-moral intellect's
+sinister attribution of motives?
+
+"A baby in long clothes would have seen through it," said Pasquale.
+"Lord bless you, if I were in your position I would go on board that
+yacht, I'd make violent love to every female there, like the gentleman
+in Mr. Wycherley's comedy, I'd fill a salmon fly-book with samples of
+their hair, I'd make them hate one another like poison, and at the end
+of the voyage I'd announce my engagement to Carlotta, and when they
+all came to the wedding I'd make the fly-book the most conspicuous of
+wedding presents on the table, from the bridegroom to the bride. By
+George! I'd cure them of the taste for man-hunting!"
+
+I wonder what impelled me to tell Pasquale of the proposed yachting
+cruise? We sat smoking by the open window, long after Carlotta had been
+sent to bed, and looking at a full moon sailing over the tops of the
+trees in the park; enveloped in that sensuous atmosphere of a warm
+summer night which induces a languor in the body and in the will. On
+such a night as this young Lorenzo, if he happens to have Jessica by his
+side, makes a confounded idiot of himself, to his life's undoing; and
+on such a night as this a reserved philosopher commits the folly of
+discussing his private affairs with a Sebastian Pasquale.
+
+But if he is correct in his surmise, I am much beholden to the relaxing
+influences of the night. I have been warned of perils that encompass me:
+perils that would infest the base and insidiously scale the sides of the
+most inaccessible tower that man could build on the edge of the Regent's
+Park. A woman with a Matrimonial Purpose would be quite capable of
+gaining access by balloon to my turret window. Is it not my Aunt
+Jessica's design melodramatically to abduct me in a yacht?
+
+"Once aboard the pirate lugger, and the man is ours!" she cries.
+
+But the man is not coming aboard the pirate lugger. He is going to keep
+as far as he possibly can from the shore. Neither is he to be lured into
+bringing his lovely Mohammedan ward with him, as an evidence of good
+faith and unimpeachable morals. They can regard her as a Mohammedan ward
+or a houri or a Princess of Babylon, just as they choose.
+
+Pasquale must be right. A hundred remembered incidents go to prove it. I
+recollect now that Judith has rallied me on my obtuseness.
+
+The sole end of all my Aunt Jessica's manoeuvring is to marry me to
+Dora, and Dora, like Barkis, is willing. Marry Dora! The thought is a
+febrifuge, a sudorific! She would be thumping discords on my wornout
+strings all day long. In a month I should be a writhing madman. I would
+sooner, infinitely sooner, marry Carlotta. Carlotta is nature; Dora
+isn't even art. Why, in the name of men and angels, should I marry Dora?
+And why (save to call herself Lady Ordeyne) should she want to marry
+me? I have not trifled with her virgin affections; and that she is
+nourishing a romantic passion for me of spontaneous growth I decline to
+believe. For aught I care she can be as inconsolable as Calypso. It
+will do her good. She can write a little story about it in _The Sirens'
+Magazine_.
+
+I am shocked. For all her bouncing ways and animal health and incorrect
+information, I thought Dora was a nice-minded girl.
+
+Do nice-minded girls hunt husbands?
+
+Good heavens! This looks like the subject of a silly-season
+correspondence in _The Daily Telegraph_.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+July 19th.
+
+_Campsie, N.B._ Hither have I fled from my buccaneering relations. I
+am seeking shelter in a manse in the midst of a Scotch moor, and the
+village, half a mile away, is itself five miles from a railway station.
+Here I can defy Aunt Jessica.
+
+After my conversation with Pasquale, I passed a restless night. My
+slumbers were haunted by dreams of pirate yachts flying the jolly Roger,
+on which the skull and crossbones melted grotesquely into a wedding-ring
+and a true lovers' knot. I awoke to the conviction that so long as the
+vessel remained on English waters I could find no security in London. I
+resolved on flight. But whither?
+
+Verily the high gods must hold me in peculiar favour. The first letter I
+opened was from old Simon McQuhatty, my present host, a godfather of my
+mother, who alone of mortals befriended us in the dark days of long ago.
+He was old and infirm, he wrote, and Gossip Death was waiting for him
+on the moor; but before he went to join him he would like to see Susan's
+boy again. I could come whenever I liked. A telegram from Euston before
+I started would be sufficient notice. I sent Stenson out with a telegram
+to say I was starting that very day by the two o'clock train, and I
+wrote a polite letter to my Aunt Jessica informing her of my regret
+at not being able to accept her kind invitation as I was summoned to
+Scotland for an indefinite period.
+
+My old friend's ministry in the Free Kirk of Scotland is drawing to a
+close; he has lived in this manse, a stone's throw from his grave,
+for fifty years, and the approaching change of habitat will cost him
+nothing. He will still lie at the foot of his beloved hills, and the
+purple moorland will spread around him for all eternity, and the smell
+of the gorse and heather will fill his nostrils as he sleeps. He is
+a bit of a pagan, old McQuhatty, in spite of Calvin and the Shorter
+Catechism. I should not wonder if he were the original of the story of
+the minister who prayed for the "puir Deil." He planted a rowan tree by
+his porch when he was first inducted into the manse, and it has grown
+up with him and he loves it as if it were a human being. He has had
+many bonny arguments with it, he says, on points of doctrine, and it
+has brought comfort to him in times of doubt by shivering its delicate
+leaves and whispering, "Dinna fash yoursel, McQuhatty. The Lord God is a
+sensible body." He declares that the words are articulate, and I suspect
+that in the depths of his heart he believes that there are tongues in
+trees and books in the running brooks, just as he is convinced that
+there is good in everything.
+
+He is a ripe and whimsical scholar, and his talk, even in infirm old
+age, is marked by a Doric virility which has rendered his companionship
+for these five days as stimulating as the moorland air. How few men have
+this gift of discharging intellectual invigoration. Indeed, I only
+know old McQuhatty who has it, and a sportive Providence has carefully
+excluded mankind from its benefits for half a century. Stay: it once
+fostered a genius who arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic
+to Edinburgh to become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky for two
+years without cessation, so that he died, and McQuhatty's inspiration
+was wasted. What intellectual stimulus can he afford, for instance, to
+Sandy McGrath, an elder of the kirk whom I saw coming up the brae on
+Sunday? An old ram stood in the path and, as obstinate as he, refused
+to budge. And as they looked dourly at each other, I wondered if the ram
+were dressed in black broadcloth and McGrath in wool, whether either of
+their mothers would notice the metamorphosis. Yet my host declares that
+I see with the eyes of a Southron; that the Scotch peasant when he is
+not drunk is intellectual, and that there is no occasion on which he is
+not ready for theological disputation.
+
+"But I dinna mind telling you," he added, "that I'd as lief talk with my
+rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable wee
+bit of false doctrine."
+
+I should love to stay all the summer with my old friend, It seems that
+only from such a remote solitude can one view things mundane in the
+right perspective, and in their true proportion. One would see how
+important or unimportant portent in the cosmos was the agricultural
+ant's dream of three millimetres and an aphis compared with the
+aspirations of the English labourer. One would justly focus the South
+African millionaire, Sandy McGrath and the ram, and bring them to their
+real lowest common denominator. One would even be able to gauge the
+value of a History of Renaissance Morals. The benefits I should derive
+from a long sojourn are incalculable, but my new responsibilities call
+me back to London and its refracting and distorting atmosphere. If I had
+dwelt here for fifty years I should have perceived that Carlotta was
+but a speck in the whirlwind of human dust whose ultimate destiny was
+immaterial. As my five days' visit, however, has not advanced me to that
+pitch of wisdom, I am foolishly concerned in my mind as to her welfare,
+and anxious to dissolve the triumvirate, Miss Griggs, Stenson, and
+Antoinette, whom I have entrusted with the reins of government.
+
+A month ago, in similar circumstances, I should have railed at Fate and
+anathematised Carlotta from the tip of her pink toes to the gold and
+bronze glory of her hair. But I am growing more kindly disposed towards
+Carlotta, and taking a keen interest in her spiritual development.
+
+An inner voice, an ironical, sardonic inner voice with which there is no
+arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta's
+spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which
+has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth for many generations.
+
+"What does it matter to you whether she has a soul or not," says the
+voice, "provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage
+with you afterwards?"
+
+Well, what on earth does it matter?
+
+
+July 21st.
+
+She was at Euston to meet me. As soon as she saw my face at the carriage
+window she left Stenson and flew up the platform like a pretty tame
+animal, and when I alighted hung on my arms and frisked and gamboled
+around me in excess of joy.
+
+"So you are glad to have me back, Carlotta?" I asked, as we were driving
+home.
+
+She sidled up against me in her terrier fashion.
+
+"Oh, ye-es," she cooed. "The day was night without you."
+
+"That is the oriental language of exaggeration," I said. But all the
+same it was pleasant to hear, and the soft notes of her voice coiled
+themselves, as music sometimes dus, around my heart.
+
+"I love dear Seer Marcous," she said.
+
+I put my arm round her waist for a moment, as one would do to a child.
+
+"You are a good little girl, Carlotta. That is to say," I added,
+remembering my responsibilities, "if you _have_ been good. Have you?"
+
+"Oh, so good. Antoinette has been teaching me how to cook, and I can
+make a rice pudding. It is so nice to cook things. I like the smell. But
+I burned myself. See."
+
+She pulled off her glove and showed me a red mark on her hand. I kissed
+it to make it well, and she laughed and was very happy. And I, too, was
+happy. Something new and fresh and bright has come into my life. Stenson
+is an admirable servant; but his impassive face and correct salute which
+have hitherto greeted me at London railway termini, although suggestive
+of material comfort, cannot be said to invest my arrival with a special
+atmosphere of charm. Carlotta's welcome has been a new sensation. I look
+upon the house with different eyes. It was a pleasure, as I dressed for
+dinner, to reflect that I should not go down to a solemn, solitary meal,
+but would have my beautiful little witch to keep me company.
+
+
+July 22d.
+
+It appears that her conduct has not been by any means irreproachable.
+Miss Griggs reported that she took advantage of my absence to saturate
+herself with scent, one of the most heinous crimes in our domestic
+calendar. _Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet_ is the maxim written above
+this article of our code. Once when she disobeyed my orders and came
+into the drawing-room reeking of ylang-ylang, I sent her upstairs
+to change all her things and have a bath, and not come near me till
+Antoinette vouched for her scentlessness. And "Ah, monsieur," I remember
+Antoinette replied, "that would be impossible, for the sweet lamb smells
+of spring flowers, _de son naturel_." Which is true. Her use of violent
+perfumes is thus a double offence. "There is something more serious,"
+said Miss Griggs.
+
+"I can hardly believe there can be anything more serious than making
+one's self detestable to one's fellow-creatures," said I.
+
+"Unless it is making one's self too agreeable," said Miss Griggs,
+pointedly.
+
+I asked her what she meant.
+
+"I have discovered," she replied, "that Carlotta has been carrying on a
+clandestine flirtation with the young man who calls for orders from the
+grocer's."
+
+"I am glad it wasn't the butcher's boy," I murmured.
+
+Miss Griggs giggled in a silly way, as if I were jesting. At my stern
+request she recovered and unfolded the horrible tale. She had caught
+Carlotta kissing her hand to him. She had also seen him smuggle a
+three-cornered note between Carlotta's fingers, and Carlotta had
+definitely refused to surrender the billet-dour.
+
+"What is the modern course of treatment," I asked, "prescribed for young
+ladies who flirt with grocers' assistants? In Renaissance times
+she could be whipped. The wise Margaret of Navarre used to beat her
+daughter, Jeanne d'Albrecht, soundly for far less culpable lapses from
+duty. Or she could be sent to a convent and put into a cell with rats,
+or she could be bidden to attend at a merry-making where the chief
+attraction was roast grocer's assistant. But nowadays--what do you
+suggest?"
+
+The unimaginative creature could suggest nothing. She thought that I
+would know how to deal with the offence. Perhaps preventive measures
+would be more efficacious than punishment. But what do I know of the
+repressory methods employed in seminaries for young ladies? Burton in
+his "Anatomy" speaks cheerfully of blood-letting behind the ears. He
+also quotes, I remember, Hippocrates or somebody, who narrates that a
+noble maiden was cured of a flirtatious temperament by wearing down her
+back for three weeks a leaden plate pierced with holes. This I told Miss
+Griggs, who spoke contemptuously of the Father of Medicine.
+
+"He also recommends--whether for this complaint, or for something
+similar I forget for the moment--" said I, "anointing the soles of the
+feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog;
+and speaks highly of a ram's lungs applied hot to the fore part of the
+head. I am sorry these admirable remedies are out of date. There is a
+rich Rabelaisianism about them. Instead of the satisfying jorums of our
+forefathers we take tasteless pellets, which procure us no sensation at
+the time, and even the good old hot mustard poultice is a thing of the
+past."
+
+"But what about Carlotta?" inquired Miss Griggs, anxiously.
+
+That is just like a woman, to interrupt a man when he is beginning to
+talk comfortably on a subject that interests him. I sighed.
+
+"Send Carlotta up to me," I said, resignedly.
+
+Another morning's work spoiled. I turned to my writing-table. I had just
+transcribed on my MS. the anecdote told with such glee by Machiavelli
+about Zanobi del Pino, a sort of Admiral Byng of the early fifteenth
+century, who was locked up and given nothing to eat but paper painted
+with snakes, so that he died, fasting, in a few days. I had an apt
+epigram on the subject of Renaissance humour trembling on my pen-point,
+when Miss Griggs came in with her foolish gossip. I am sure the
+platitude I wrote afterwards is not that original flash of wit.
+
+Carlotta entered and crossed the room to the side of my writing-chair,
+her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully behind her
+back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I believed less than
+ever in the enormity of the offence.
+
+"Do you know what you're here for?" I asked, magisterially.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Then you _have_ been making love to the young man from the grocer's?"
+
+She nodded again. I began to conceive a violent dislike to the grocer's
+young man. It was one of the most humiliating sensations I have
+experienced. I think I have seen the individual--a thick-set,
+red-headed, freckled nondescript.
+
+"What did you do it for?" I asked.
+
+"He wanted to make love to me," replied Carlotta.
+
+"He is a young scamp," said I.
+
+"What is a scamp?" she asked sweetly.
+
+"I am not giving you a lesson in philology," I remarked. "Do you know
+that you have been behaving in a shocking manner?"
+
+"Now you are cross with me."
+
+"Yes," I said, "infernally angry."
+
+And I was. I expected to see her burst into tears. She did nothing of
+the kind; only looked at me with irritating demureness. She wore a red
+blouse and a grey skirt, and the audacious high-heeled red slippers. I
+began to feel the return of my early prejudice against her. Nobody so
+alluring could possess a spark of virtue.
+
+"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said I. "I make many allowances
+for your lack of knowledge of our Western customs, but for a young
+lady to flirt with an ugly red-headed varlet of the lower orders is
+reprehensible all the world over."
+
+"He gave me dates and dried fruits with sugar all over them," said
+Carlotta.
+
+"Stolen from his employer," I said. "I will have that young man locked
+up in prison, and if you go on receiving his feloniously obtained
+presents they will put you in prison too, and I shall be delighted."
+
+Carlotta maintained her demure expression and extracted from her skirt
+pocket a very dirty piece of paper.
+
+"He writes poetry--about me," she remarked, handing me what I recognised
+as the three-cornered note.
+
+I took the thing between finger and thumb, and glanced over the poem. I
+have read much indifferent modern verse in my time--I sometimes take
+a slush-bath after tea at the club--but I could not have imagined the
+English language capable of such emulsion. It was execrable. The first
+couplet alone contained an idea.
+
+            "Thou art a lovely girl and so very nice
+              I dream till death upon your face."
+
+To the wretch's ear it was a rhyme! I destroyed the noisome thing and
+cast it into the waste-paper basket.
+
+"Prison," said I, "would be a luxurious reward for him. In a properly
+civilised country he would be bastinadoed and hanged."
+
+"Yes, he is dam bad," said Carlotta, serenely.
+
+"Good heavens!" I cried, "the ruffian has even taught you to swear. If
+you dare to say that wicked word again, I'll punish you severely. What
+is his horrid name?"
+
+"Pasquale," said Carlotta.
+
+"Pasquale?"
+
+"Yes, he likes to hear me say 'dam.' Oh, the other? Oh, no, he is too
+stupid. He does not say anything. His name is Timkins. I only play with
+him. He is so funny. He can go and kill himself; I won't care."
+
+"Never mind about Timkins," said I, "I want to hear about Pasquale. When
+did he teach you that wicked, wicked word?"
+
+I think Carlotta flushed as she regarded the point of her red slipper.
+
+"I went for a walk and he met me at the corner and walked here by my
+side. Was that wicked?"
+
+"What would the excellent Hamdi Effendi have said to it?"
+
+Woman-like she evaded my question.
+
+"I hope Hamdi is dead. Do you think so?"
+
+"I hope not. For if you behave in this naughty manner, I shall have to
+send you back to him."
+
+She had imperceptibly moved nearer my chair until she stood quite close
+to my side, so that as I spoke the last words I looked up into her face.
+She put her arm about my shoulders. It is one of her pretty, caressing
+ways.
+
+"I will be good--very good," she said.
+
+"You will have to," said I, leaning back my head.
+
+She must have caught a relenting note in my voice; for what happened I
+feel even now a curious shame in noting down. Her other arm flew under
+my chin to join its fellow, and holding me a prisoner in my chair, she
+bent down and kissed me. She also laid her cheek against mine.
+
+I am still aware of the indescribable, soft, warm pressure, although she
+has gone to bed hours ago.
+
+I vow that a man must be less a man than a petrified egg to have
+repulsed her. The touch of her lips was like the falling of dewy
+rose-petals. Her breath was as fragrant as new-mown hay. Her hair
+brushing my forehead had the odour of violets.
+
+
+I sent her back to Miss Griggs. She ran out of the room laughing
+merrily. She has received plenary absolution for her shameless coquetry
+and her profane language. Worse than that she has discovered how to
+obtain it in future. The witch has found her witchcraft, and having once
+triumphantly exerted her powers, will take the earliest opportunity of
+doing so again. I am fallen, both in my own eyes and hers, from my
+high estate. Henceforward she will regard me only with good-humoured
+tolerance; I shall be to her but a non-felonious Timkins.
+
+I was an idiot to have kissed her in return.
+
+
+I have not seen her since. I lunched at the club, and paid a formal call
+on Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne and my cousin Rosalie, in their sunless house in
+Kensington.
+
+I met a singular lack of welcome. Rosalie gave me a limper hand than
+usual, and took an early opportunity of leaving me tete-a-tete with her
+mother, who conversed frigidly about the warm weather. The very tea, if
+possible, was colder.
+
+I met Judith by appointment in Kensington Gardens, and walked with her
+homewards. I mentioned my chilly reception.
+
+"My dear man," she observed--I dislike this apostrophe, which Judith
+always uses by way of introduction to an unpleasant remark--"My dear
+man, I have no doubt that you have as unsavoury a reputation as any one
+in London. You are credited with an establishment like Solomon's--minus
+the respectable counter-balance of the wives, and your devout relatives
+are very properly shocked."
+
+I said that it was monstrous. Judith retorted that I had brought the
+calumny upon myself.
+
+"But what can I do?" I asked.
+
+"Board her out with a suburban family, as you should have done from the
+first. Even I, who am not strait-laced, consider it highly improper for
+you to have her alone with you in the house."
+
+"My dear," said I, "there is Antoinette."
+
+"Tush"--or something like it--said Judith.
+
+"And Stenson. No one seeing Stenson could doubt the irreproachable
+propriety of his master."
+
+"I really have no patience with you," said Judith.
+
+It is hopeless to discuss Carlotta with her. I shall do it no more.
+
+We sat for a while under the trees, and conversed on rational topics.
+She likes her employment with Willoughby. The morning she spends among
+blue books and other waste matter at the British Museum, and she devotes
+the evening to sorting her information. Willoughby commends her highly.
+
+"And there is something I know you'll be very pleased to hear," she
+continued. "Who do you think called on me yesterday? Mrs. Willoughby.
+Her husband wants me to spend August and September at a place they
+have taken in North Wales, and help him with his new book--as a private
+secretary, you know. I said that I never went into society. I must tell
+you this was the first time I had seen her. She put her hand on my arm
+in the sweetest way in the world and said: 'I know all about it, my
+dear, and that is why I thought I'd come myself as Harold's ambassador.'
+Wasn't it beautiful of her?"
+
+She looked at me and her eyes were filled with tears.
+
+"Marcus dear, I am not a bad woman, am I?"
+
+"My dearest," I answered, very deeply touched, "you are the best woman
+in the world. So far from conferring a favour on you, Mrs. Willoughby
+has gained for herself the inestimable privilege of your friendship."
+
+"Ah!" said Judith, "a man cannot tell what it means."
+
+Really men are not such dullard dunderheads as women are pleased
+to imagine. I have the most crystalline perception of what Mrs.
+Willoughby's invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a morbid
+satisfaction in the fiction that their sex is actuated by a mysterious
+nexus of emotions and motives which the grosser sense of man is
+powerless to appreciate. In her heart of hearts it is a prodigious
+comfort to a woman to feel herself misunderstood. Even she who is most
+perfectly mated, and is intellectually convinced that the difference
+of sex is no barrier to his complete knowledge of her, loves to cherish
+some little secret bit of her nature, to which _he_, on account of his
+masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are dull men who
+could not understand a tabbycat or a professional cricketer, let alone
+an expert autothaumaturgist--a self-mystery-maker--like a woman. But
+an intelligent and painstaking man should find no difficulty in
+appreciating what, after all, is merely a point of view; for what women
+see from that point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a
+two-year-old babe. I have confessed before that I do not understand
+Judith--that is to say the whole welter of contradictions in which her
+ego consists--but that is solely because I have not taken the trouble
+to subject her to special microscopic study. Such a scientific analysis
+would, I think, be an immodest discourtesy towards any lady of my
+acquaintance, especially towards one for whom I bear considerable
+affection. It would be as unwarrantable for a decent-minded man to
+speculate upon her exact spiritual dimensions as upon those portions
+of her physical frame that are hidden beneath her attire. The charm
+of human intercourse rests, to a great extent, on the vague, the
+deliberately unperceived, the stimulating sense that an individual
+possesses more attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But
+this, I say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well that beneath her
+skirts any young woman you please does not melt away into the scaly tail
+of a mermaid, but has a pair of ordinary commonplace legs. One knows
+that when she has passed through certain well defined experiences in
+life, a certain definite range of sentiments must exist behind whatever
+mask of facial expression she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense,
+therefore, for Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with
+regard to Mrs. Willoughby's invitation.
+
+I developed this theme very fully to Judith as we sat in Kensington
+Gardens and during our subsequent, stroll diagonally through Hyde Park
+to the Marble Arch. She listened with great attention, and when I had
+finished regarded me in a pitying manner, a smile flickering over her
+lips.
+
+"My dear Marcus," she said, "there is no man, however humble-minded, who
+has not one colossal vanity, his knowledge of women. He, at any rate,
+has established the veritable Theory of Women. And we laugh at you,
+my good friend, for the more you expound, the more do you reveal your
+beautiful and artistic ignorance. Oh, Marcus, the idea of you setting up
+as a feminine psychologist."
+
+"And pray, why not?" I asked, somewhat nettled.
+
+"Because you are that dear, impossible, lovable thing known as Marcus
+Ordeyne."
+
+This was exceedingly pretty of Judith. But really woman is the Eternal
+Philistine, as Matthew Arnold has defined the term. Her supreme
+characteristic is inconvincibility. I had simply wasted my breath.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+August 3d.
+
+_Etretat, Seine-Injerieure_:--A young fellow on the Casino terrace this
+evening caught my eye, looked at me queerly, and passed on. His face,
+though unfamiliar, stirred some dormant association. What was it?
+The profitless question pestered me for hours. At last, during the
+performance at the theatre, I slapped my knee and said aloud,
+
+"I've got it!"
+
+"What?" asked Carlotta in alarm.
+
+"A fly," I answered. Whereat Carlotta laughed, and bent forward to get a
+view of the victim. I austerely directed her attention to the stage. It
+was a metaphorical fly whose buzzing I had stopped.
+
+The young fellow was he who had pointed me out in Hyde Park to his
+companion, and lightly assured her that I was as mad as a dingo dog.
+From the moment after the phrase's utterance to that of the slapping of
+my knee, it had been altogether absent from my mind. Now it haunts me.
+It reiterates itself after the manner of a glib phrase. I am glad I am
+not in a railway carriage; the cranks would amuse the wheels with it all
+night long. As it is, the surf tries to thunder it out on the shingle
+just a few yards away from my window. I keep asking myself: why a dingo
+dog? If I am mad it is in a gentle, Jaquesian, melancholy manner. I do
+not dash at life, rabid and foaming at the mouth.
+
+I think the idiot simile must have been merely the misuse of language so
+common among the half-educated youth of Great Britain.
+
+Yet when I come to consider my present condition, I have doubts as to my
+complete sanity. Here am I, in a little, semi-fashionable French
+seaside place, away from my books and my comforts and my habits, as much
+interested in its vapid distractions as if the universe held no other
+pursuits worth the attention of a rational man. And I have been here a
+calendar month.
+
+To please Carlotta I wear white duck trousers, a pink shirt, and a
+yachting-cap. I wired for them to my London tailor and they arrived
+within a week. The first time I appeared in the maniacal costume I slunk
+from the stony stare of a gendarme, as I was about to ascend the Casino
+steps, and hid myself among the fishing-boats lower down on the beach.
+Carlotta, however, was delighted and said that I looked pretty. Now I
+have grown callous, seeing other fools similarly apparelled. But a
+year ago, should I have dreamed it possible for me to strut about a
+fashionable _plage_ in white ducks, a pink shirt, and a yachting-cap?
+I trow not. They are signs of some sort of madness--whether that of a
+Jaques or a dingo dog matters very little.
+
+Pasquale was the main cause of my taking Carlotta away from London.
+He came far too frequently to the house, established far too great a
+familiarity with my little girl. She quoted him far too readily. She
+is at the impressionable age when young women fall easy victims to
+the allurements of a fascinating creature like Pasquale. If he showed
+himself in the light of a possible husband for Carlotta, I should have
+nothing to say. I should give the pair my paternal benediction. But I
+know my Renaissance and I know my Pasquale. Carlotta is merely a new
+sensation--that's all he seems to live for, the delectable scoundrel.
+But I am not going to have her heart broken by any cinquecento wolf in
+Poole's clothing. I assume that Carlotta has a heart, even if she is not
+possessed of a soul. As to the latter I am still in doubt. At all events
+I resolved to withdraw Carlotta from his influence, put her in fresh
+surroundings, and allow her to mix more freely among men and women, so
+as to divert and possibly improve her mind.
+
+I perceive that Carlotta is becoming an occupation. Well, she is
+quite as profitable as collecting postage-stamps, or golf, or amateur
+photography.
+
+I have spent a pleasant month in this little place. It is the mouth of
+a gorge in the midst of a cliff-bound coast. The bay, but a quarter of a
+mile in sweep, is shut in at each end by a projecting wall of cliff cut
+by a natural arch. Half the shingle beach is given up to fisherfolk and
+their boats and tarred Noah's arks where they keep their nets. The
+other half suddenly rises into a digue or terrace on which is built a
+primitive casino, and below the terrace are the bathing-cabins. We are
+staying at the most spotlessly clean of all clean French hotels. There
+are no carpets on the stairs; but if one mounts them in muddy boots,
+an untiring chambermaid emerges from a lair below, with hot water and
+scrubbing-brush and smilingly removes the traces of one's passage.
+Carlotta and Antoinette have adjoining rooms in the main building. I
+inhabit the annexe, sleeping in a quaint, clean, bare little chamber
+with a balconied window that looks over the Noah's Arks and the
+fishing-smacks and fisherfolk, away out to sea. This morning as I lay in
+bed I saw our Channel fleet lie along the arc of the horizon.
+
+Antoinette dwells in continuous rapture at being in France again.
+Carlotta assures me that the smile does not leave her great red face
+even as she sleeps of nights. It is a little jest between us. She
+peeped in once to see. The good soul has filled herself up with French
+conversation as a starving hen gorges herself with corn. She has scraped
+acquaintance with every washerwoman, fish-wife, _marchande_, bathing
+woman and domestic servant on the beach. She is on intimate terms with
+the whole male native population. When the three of us happen to walk
+together it is a triumphal progress of bows and grins and nods. At
+first I thought it was I for whom this homage was intended. I was soon
+undeceived. It was Antoinette. She loves to parade Carlotta before
+her friends. I came upon her once entertaining an admiring audience in
+Carlotta's presence with a detailed description of that young woman's
+physical perfections--a description which was marked by a singular
+lack of reticence. The time of her glory is the bathing hour, when she
+accompanies Carlotta from her cabin to the water's edge, divests her of
+_peignoir_ and _espadrilles_, but before revealing her to fashionable
+Etretat, casts a preliminary glance around, as who should say: "Prepare
+all men and women for the dazzling goddess I am about to unveil."
+Carlotta is undoubtedly bewitching in her bathing costume, and enjoys a
+little triumph of beauty. People fall into a natural group in order to
+look at her, while I, sitting on a camp-stool in my white ducks and
+pink shirt and smoking a cigarette, cannot repress a complacent pride
+of ownership. I do not object to her flicking her wet fingers at me when
+she comes dripping out of the sea; and I do not even reproach her when
+she puts her foot upon my sartorially immaculate knee, to show me a
+pebble-cut on her glistening pink sole.
+
+Her conduct has been exemplary. I have allowed her to make the
+acquaintance of two or three young fellows, her partners at the Casino
+dances, and she walks up and down the terrace with them before meals. I
+have forbidden her, under penalty of immediate return to London and
+of my eternal displeasure, to mention the harem at Alexandretta. Young
+fellows are gifted with a genius for misapprehension. She is an ordinary
+young English lady, an orphan (which is true), and I am her guardian.
+Of course she looks at them with imploring eyes, and pulls them by the
+sleeve, and handles the lappels of their coats, and admits them to terms
+of the frankest intimacy; but I can no more change these characteristics
+than I can alter the shape of her body. She is the born coquette. Her
+delighted conception of herself is that she is the object of every man's
+admiration. I noticed her this morning playing a tune with her fingers
+on the old bathing-man's arm, as he was preparing to take her into the
+water, and I saw his mahogany face soften. In her indescribable childish
+way she would coquet with a tax-collector or a rag-and-bone man or the
+Archbishop of Canterbury. But she has committed no grave indiscretion,
+and I am sufficiently her lord and master to exact obedience.
+
+I pretend, however, to be at her beck and call, and it is a delight to
+minister to her radiant happiness--to feel her lean on my arm and hear
+her cooing voice say:
+
+"You are so good. I should like to kiss you."
+
+But I do not allow her to kiss me. Never again.
+
+
+"Seer Marcous, let us go to the little horses."
+
+She has a consuming passion for _petits chevaux_. I speak sagely of the
+evils of gambling. She laughs. I weakly take lower ground.
+
+"What is the good? You have no money."
+
+"Oh-h! But only two francs," she says, holding out her hand.
+
+"Not one. Yesterday you lost."
+
+"But to-day I shall win. I want to give you something I saw in a shop.
+Oh, a beautiful thing." Then I feel a hand steal into the pocket of my
+dinner jacket where I carry loose silver for this very purpose, just
+as a lover of horses carries lumps of sugar for the nose of a favourite
+pony, and immediately it is withdrawn with a cry of joy and triumph, and
+she skips back out of my reach. Then she takes my arm and leads me from
+the sweet night-air into the hot little room with its crowd around the
+nine gyrating animals.
+
+"I shall put it on 5. I always put on 5. He is a nice, clean, white,
+pretty horse."
+
+She stakes two francs, watches the turn in a tense agony of excitement;
+she wins, comes running to me with sixteen francs clutched tight in her
+hand.
+
+"See. I said I should win."
+
+"Come away then and be happy."
+
+But she makes a protesting grimace, and before I can stop her, runs back
+to stake again on 5. In twenty minutes she is ruined and returns to me
+wearing an expression of abject misery. She is too desolate even to try
+the fortune of the dinner-jacket pocket. I take her outside and restore
+her to beatitude with grenadine syrup and soda-water. She rejects the
+straws. With her elbows on the marble table, the glass held in both
+hands, she drinks sensuously, in little sips.
+
+And I, Marcus Ordeyne, sit by watching her, a most contented philosopher
+of forty. A dingo dog could not be so contented. That young fellow, I
+unhesitatingly assert, must be the most brainless of his type. I suffer
+fools gladly, as a general rule, but if I see much of this one I shall
+do him some injury.
+
+
+After dejeuner we strolled to the top of the west cliff and lay on the
+thick dry grass. The earth has never known a more perfect afternoon. A
+day of turquoise and diamond.
+
+The air itself was diaphanous blue. Below us the tiny place slumbered in
+the sunshine; scarcely a sign of life save specks of washer-women on the
+beach bending over white patches which we knew were linen spread out to
+dry. The ebb-tide lapped lazily on the shingle, where the sea changed
+suddenly from ultramarine to a fringe of feathery white. A white sail
+or two flecked the blue of the bay. A few white wisps of cirrus gleamed
+above our heads. Around us, on the cliff-tops, the green pastures and
+meadows and, farther inland, the cornfields stacked in harvest, and
+great masses of trees. Lying on our backs, between sea and sky, we
+seemed utterly alone. Carlotta and I were the sole inhabitants of the
+earth. I dreamily disintegrated caramels from their sticky tissue-paper
+wrappings for Carlotta's consumption.
+
+After a while unconquerable drowsiness crept over me; and a little
+later I had an odd sense of perfect quietude. I was lying amid moss and
+violets. In a languorous way I wondered how my surroundings had changed,
+and at last I awoke to find my head propped on Carlotta's lap and
+shaded by her red parasol, while she sat happy in full sunshine. I was
+springing from this posture of impropriety when she laughed and laid
+restraining hands on my shoulders.
+
+"No. You must not move. You look so pretty. And it is so nice. I put
+your head there so that it should be soft. You have been sound asleep."
+
+"I have also been abominably impolite," said I. "I humbly beg your
+pardon, Carlotta."
+
+"Oh, I am not cross," she laughed. Then still keeping her hands on me,
+she settled her limbs into a more comfortable position.
+
+"There! Now I can play at being a good little Turkish wife." She
+fashioned into a fan the _Matin_ newspaper, which I had bought for the
+luxurious purpose of not reading, and fanned me. "That is what Ayesha
+used to do to Hamdi. And Ayesha used to tell him stories. But my lord
+does not like his slave's stories."
+
+"Decidedly not," said I.
+
+I have heard much of Ayesha, a pretty animal organism who appears to
+have turned her elderly husband into a doting fool. I am beginning to
+have a contempt for Hamdi Effendi.
+
+"They are what you call improper, eh?" she laughed, referring to the
+tales. "I will sing you a Turkish song which you will not understand."
+
+"Is it a suitable song?"
+
+"Kim bilir--who knows?" said Carlotta.
+
+She began a melancholy, crooning, guttural ditty; but broke off
+suddenly.
+
+"Oh! but it is stupid. Like the Turkish dancing. Oh, everything
+in Alexandretta was stupid! Sometimes I think I have never seen
+Alexandretta--or Ayesha--or Hamdi. I think I always am with you."
+
+This must be so, as of late she has spoken little of her harem life; she
+talks chiefly of the small daily happenings, and already we have a store
+of common interests. The present is her whole existence; the past but
+a confused dream. The odd part of the matter is that she regards her
+position with me as a perfectly natural one. No stray kitten adopted by
+a kind family could have less sense of obligation, or a greater faith
+in the serene ordering of the cosmos for its own private and peculiar
+comfort. When I asked her a while ago what she would have done had
+I left her on the bench in the Embankment Gardens, she shrugged her
+shoulders and answered, as she had done before, that either she would
+have died or some other nice gentleman would have taken care of her.
+
+"Do you think nice gentlemen go about London looking for homeless little
+girls?" I asked on that occasion.
+
+"All gentlemen like beautiful girls," she replied, which brought us to
+an old argument.
+
+This afternoon, however, we did not argue. The day forbade it. I lay
+with my head on Carlotta's lap, looking up into the deep blue, and
+feeling a most curious sensation of positive happiness. My attitude
+towards life has hitherto been negative. I have avoided more than I have
+sought. I have not drunk deep of life because I have been unathirst. To
+me--
+
+               "To stand aloof and view the fight
+               Is all the pleasure of the game."
+
+My interest even in Judith has been of a detached nature. I have been
+like Faust. I might have said:
+
+               _"Werd' ich zum Augenblicke sagen
+               Werweile doch!  Du bist so schon!_
+
+Then may the devil take me and do what he likes with me!"
+
+I have never had the least inclination to apostrophise the moment in
+this fashion and request it to tarry on account of its exceeding charm.
+Never until this afternoon, when the deep summer enchantment of the
+turquoise day was itself ensorcelised by the witchery of a girl's
+springtide.
+
+"You have three, four, five--oh, such a lot of grey hairs," said
+Carlotta, looking down on my reclining head.
+
+"Many people have grey hair at twenty," said I.
+
+"But I have none."
+
+"You are not yet twenty, Carlotta."
+
+"Do you think I will have them then? Oh, it would be dreadful. No one
+would care to have me."
+
+"And I? Am I thus the object of every one's disregard?"
+
+"Oh, you--you are a man. It is right for a man. It makes him look wise.
+His wife says, 'Behold, my husband has grey hair. He has wisdom. If I am
+not good he will beat me. So I must obey him."'
+
+"She wouldn't run off with a good-for-nothing scamp of two-and-twenty?"
+
+"Oh, no-o," said Carlotta. "She would not be so wicked."
+
+"I am glad," said I, "that you think a sense of conjugal duty is an
+ineradicable element of female nature. But suppose she fell in love with
+the young scamp?"
+
+"Men fall in love," she replied sagely. "Women only fall in love in
+stories--Turkish stories. They love their husbands."
+
+"You amaze me," said I.
+
+"Ye-es," said Carlotta.
+
+"But in England, a man wants a woman to love him before he marries her."
+
+"How can she?" asked Carlotta.
+
+This was a staggering question.
+
+"I don't know," said I, "but she dus."
+
+"Then before I marry a man in England I must love him? But I shall die
+without a husband!"
+
+"I don't think so," said I.
+
+"I must begin soon," said Carlotta, with a laugh.
+
+A sinuous motion of her serpentine young body enabled her to bend her
+face down to mine.
+
+"Shall I love Seer Marcous? But how shall I know when I am in love?"
+
+"When you appreciate the exceeding impropriety of discussing the matter
+with your humble servant," I replied.
+
+"When a girl is in love she does not speak about it?"
+
+"No, my dear. She lets concealment like a worm i' the bud feed on her
+damask cheek."
+
+"Then she gets ugly?"
+
+"That's it," I answered. "You keep on looking in the glass, and when you
+perceive you are hideous then you'll know you are in love."
+
+"But when I am so ugly you will not want me," she objected. "So it is no
+use falling in love with you."
+
+"You have a more logical mind than I imagined," said I.
+
+"What is a logical mind?" asked Carlotta.
+
+"It is the antiseptic which destroys the bacilli of unreason whereby
+true happiness is vivified."
+
+"I do not understand," she said.
+
+"I should be vastly surprised if you did," I laughed.
+
+"Would you like me to marry and go away and leave you?" asked Carlotta,
+after a long pause.
+
+"I suppose," I said with a sigh, "that some tin-pot knight will drive
+up one of these days to the castle in a hansom-cab and carry off my
+princess."
+
+"Then you'll be sorry?"
+
+"My dear," I answered, "do not let us discuss such gruesome things on an
+afternoon like this."
+
+"You would like better for me to go on playing at being your Turkish
+wife?"
+
+"Infinitely," said I.
+
+
+Alas! The day is sped. I have asked the fleeting moment to tarry, and it
+laughed, and shook its gossamer wings at me, and flew by on its mad race
+into eternity.
+
+
+As we lay, a cicada set up its shrilling quite close to us. I slipped my
+head from Carlotta's lap and idly parted the rank grass in search of the
+noisy intruder, and by good luck I found him. I beckoned Carlotta, who
+glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath,
+we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood
+alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger,
+and every now and then making his corslet vibrate passionately. On the
+top of a blade of grass sat a brown little Juliet--a most reserved,
+discreet little Juliet, but evidently much interested in Romeo's
+serenade. When he sang she put her head to one side and moved as if
+uncertain whether to descend from her balcony. When he stopped, which
+he did at frequent intervals, being as it were timorous and tongue-tied,
+she took her foot from the ladder and waited, at first patiently and
+then with an obvious air of boredom. Messer Romeo made a hop forward and
+vibrated; Juliet grew tremulous. Alarmed at his boldness he halted and
+made a hop back; Juliet looked disappointed. At last another cicada set
+up a louder note some yards away and, without a nod or a sign, Juliet
+skipped off into space, leaving the most disconsolate little Romeo of
+a grasshopper you ever beheld. He gave vent to a dismal failure of a
+vibration and hopped to the foot of the faithless lady's bower.
+
+Carlotta broke into a merry laugh and clapped her hands.
+
+"I am so glad."
+
+"She is the most graceless hussy imaginable," I cried. "There was he
+grinding his heart out for her, and just because a more brazen-throated
+scoundrel came upon the scene she must needs leave our poor friend in
+the lurch. She has no more heart than my boot, and she will come to a
+bad end."
+
+"But he was such a fool," retorted my sage damsel, with a flash of
+laughter in her dark eyes. "If he wanted her, why didn't he go up and
+take her?"
+
+"Because he is a gentleman, a cicada of fine and delicate feeling."
+
+"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta. "He was a fool. It served him right. She grew
+tired of waiting."
+
+"You believe, then," said I, "in marriage by capture?"
+
+I explained and discoursed to her of the matrimonial habits of the
+Tartar tribes.
+
+"Yes," said Carlotta. "That is sense. And it must be such fun for the
+girl. All that, what you call it?--wooing?--is waste of time. I like
+things to happen, quick, quick, one after the other--or else--"
+
+"Or else what?"
+
+"To do nothing, nothing but lie in the sun, like this afternoon."
+
+"Yes," said I dreamily, after I had again thrown myself by her side.
+"Like this afternoon."
+
+
+I sit at my window and look out upon the strip of beach, the hauled-up
+fishing boats and the nets hung out to dry looming vague in the
+starlight, and I hear the surf's rhythmical moan a few yards beyond;
+and it beats into my ears the idiot phrase that has recurred all the
+evening.
+
+But why should I be mad? For filling my soul with God's utmost glory of
+earth and sea and sky? For filling my heart with purest pleasure in
+the intimate companionship of fresh and fragrant maidenhood? For giving
+myself up for once to a dream of sense clouded by never a thought that
+was not serenely fair?
+
+For feeling young again?
+
+
+I shall read myself to sleep with _La Dame de Monsoreau_, which I have
+procured from the circulating library in the Rue Alphonse Karr--(the
+literary horticulturist is the genius loci and the godfather of my
+landlady)--and I will empty flagons with Pere Gorenflot and ride on
+errands of life and death with Chicot, prince of jesters, and walk
+lovingly between the valiant Bussy and Henri Quatre. By this, if by
+nothing else, I recognise the beneficence of the high gods--they have
+given us tired men Dumas.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+September 30th.
+
+Something is wrong with Antoinette. The dinner she served up this
+evening was all but uneatable. Something is wrong with Stenson, who has
+taken to playing his lugubrious hymn-tunes on the concertina while I
+am in the house; I won't have it. Something is wrong with the cat. He
+wanders round the house like a lost soul, sniffing at everything. This
+evening he actually jumped onto the dinner-table, looked at me out of
+his one eye, in which all the desolation of two was concentrated, and
+miaowed heart-rendingly in my face. Something is wrong with the house,
+with my pens which will not write, with my books which have the air of
+dry bones in a charnel-house, with the MS. of my History of Renaissance
+Morals, which stands on the writing-table like a dusty monument to the
+futility of human endeavour. Something is wrong with me.
+
+Something, too, is wrong with Judith, who has just returned from her
+stay with the Willoughbys. I have been to see her this evening and found
+her of uncertain temper, and inclined to be contradictious. She accused
+me of being dull. I answered that the autumn world outside was drenched
+with miserable rain. How could man be sprightly under such conditions?
+
+"In this room," said Judith, "with its bright fire and drawn curtains
+there is no miserable rain, and no autumn save in our hearts."
+
+"Why in our hearts?" I asked.
+
+"How you peg one down to precision," said Judith, testily. "I wish I
+were a Roman Catholic."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I could go into a convent."
+
+"You had much better go to Delphine Carrere," said I.
+
+"I have only been back a day, and you want to get rid of me already?"
+she cried, using her woman's swift logic of unreason.
+
+"I want you to be happy and contented, my dear Judith."
+
+"H'm," she said.
+
+Her slipper dangling as usual from the tip of her foot fell to the
+ground. I declare I was only half conscious of the accident as my mind
+was deep in other things.
+
+"You don't even pick up my slipper," she said.
+
+"Ten thousand pardons," I exclaimed, springing forward. But she had
+anticipated my intention. We remained staring into the fire and saying
+nothing. As she professed to be tired I went away early.
+
+At the front door of the mansions, finding I had left my umbrella
+behind, I remounted the stairs, and rang Judith's bell. After a while
+I saw her figure through the ground-glass panel approach the door, but
+before she opened it, she turned out the light in the passage.
+
+"Marcus!" she cried, rather excitedly; and in the dimness of the
+threshold her eyes looked strangely accusative of tears. "You have come
+back!"
+
+"Yes," said I, "for my umbrella."
+
+She looked at me for a moment, laughed, clapped her hands to her throat,
+turned away sharply, caught up my umbrella, and putting it into my hands
+and thrusting me back shut the door in my face. In great astonishment I
+went downstairs again. What is wrong with Judith? She said this evening
+that all men are cruel. Now, I am a man. Therefore I am cruel. A perfect
+syllogism. But how have I been cruel?
+
+I walked home. There is nothing so consoling to the depressed man as the
+unmitigated misery of a walk through the London rain. One is not
+mocked by any factitious gaiety. The mind is in harmony with the sodden
+universe. It is well to have everything in the world wrong at one and
+the same time.
+
+
+I have changed my drenched garments for dressing-gown and slippers. I
+find on my writing-table a letter addressed in a round childish hand.
+It is from Carlotta, who for the last fortnight has been staying in
+Cornwall with the McMurrays. I have known few fortnights so long. In
+a ridiculous schoolboy way I have been counting the days to her
+return--the day after to-morrow.
+
+The letter begins: "Seer Marcous dear." The spelling is a little jest
+between us. The inversion is a quaint invention of her own. "Mrs.
+McMurray says, can you spare me for one more week? She wants to teach me
+manners. She says I have shocked the top priest here--oh, you call him
+a vikker--now I do remember--because I went out for a walk with a little
+young pretty priest without a hat, and because it rained I put on his
+hat and the vikker met us. But I did not flirt with the little priest.
+Oh, no! I told him he must not make love to me like the young man from
+the grocer's. And I told him that if he wrote poetry you would beat him.
+So I have been very good. And darling Seer Marcous, I want to come back
+very much, but Mrs. McMurray says I must stay, and she is going to have
+a baby and I am very happy and good, and Mr. McMurray says funny things
+and makes me laugh. But I love my darling Seer Marcous best. Give
+Antoinette and Polifemus (the one-eyed cat) two very nice kisses for me.
+And here is one for Seer Marcous from his
+
+"CARLOTTA."
+
+
+How can I refuse? But I wish she were here.
+
+
+31st October.
+
+I did not sleep last night. I have done no work to-day. The Renaissance
+has receded into a Glacial Epoch wherein, as far as its humanity is
+concerned, I have not a tittle of interest. I sought refuge in the
+club. Why should an old sober University club be such a haven of unrest?
+Ponting, an opinionated don of Corpus, seated himself at my luncheon
+table, and discoursed on political economy and golf. I manifested a
+polite ignorance of these high matters. He assured me that if I studied
+the one and played at the other, I should be physically and mentally
+more robust; whereupon he thumped his narrow chest, and put on a scowl
+of intellectuality. I fear that Ponting, like most of the men here,
+studies golf and plays at political economy. In serener moments I suffer
+Ponting gladly. But to-day his boast that he had done the course at
+Westward Ho! in seven, or seventeen, or seventy--how on earth should
+I remember?--left me cold, and his crude economics interfered with my
+digestion.
+
+Strolling forlornly down Piccadilly I, came face to face with my
+sad-coloured Cousin Rosalie in a sad-coloured gown. She gave me a hasty
+nod and would have passed on, but I arrested her. Her white face was
+turned piteously upward and from her expressionless eyes flashed a
+glance of fear. I felt myself in a brutal mood.
+
+"Why," I asked, "are you avoiding me as if I were a pestilence?"
+
+She murmured that she was not avoiding me, but was in a hurry.
+
+"I don't believe it," said I. "People have been telling you that I am
+a vile, wicked man who does unspeakable things, and like a good little
+girl you are afraid to talk to me. Tell people, the next time you see
+them, with my compliments, that they are malevolent geese."
+
+I lifted my hat and relieving Rosalie of my terrifying presence, walked
+away in dudgeon. I felt abominably and unreasonably angry. I bethought
+me of my Aunt Jessica, whom I held responsible for her niece's
+behaviour. A militant mood prompted a call. After twenty minutes in
+a hansom I found myself in her drawing-room. She was alone, the girls
+being away on country-house visits. Her reception was glacial. I
+expressed the hope that the yachting cruise had been a pleasant one.
+
+"Exceedingly pleasant," snapped my aunt.
+
+"I trust Dora is well," said I, keeping from my lips a smile that might
+have hinted at the broken heart.
+
+"Very well, thank you."
+
+As I do not enjoy a staccato conversation, I remained politely silent,
+inviting her by my attitude to speak.
+
+"I rather wonder, Marcus," she said at last, "at your referring to
+Dora."
+
+"Indeed? May I ask why?"
+
+"May I speak plainly?"
+
+"I beseech you."
+
+"I have heard of you at Etretat with your ward."
+
+"Well?" I asked.
+
+"_Verbum sap_," said my aunt.
+
+"And you have let Mrs. Ralph and Rosalie know of my summer holiday
+and given them to understand that I am a monster of depravity. I am
+exceedingly obliged to you. I have just met Rosalie in the street, and
+she shrank from me as if I were the reincarnation of original sin."
+
+"I have no doubt that in her innocent mind you are," replied my Aunt
+Jessica.
+
+The indulgent smile wherewith she used to humour my eccentricities had
+gone, and her face was hard and unpitying.
+
+"I am glad I have such charitable-minded relations," said I.
+
+"I am a woman of the world," my aunt retorted, "but I think that when
+such things are flaunted in the face of society they become immoral."
+
+I rose. "Do evil by stealth--as much as you like," said I, "but blush to
+find it fame."
+
+With a gesture my aunt assented to the proposition.
+
+"On the other hand," said I, heatedly, "I have been doing a certain
+amount of good both by stealth and openly, and I naturally blush with
+indignation to find it accounted infamous."
+
+I looked narrowly into my aunt's eyes and I read in them entire
+disbelief in my protest. I swear, if I had proved my innocence beyond
+the shadow of doubt, that woman would have been grievously disappointed.
+
+"Good-bye," said I.
+
+She shook hands frigidly and turned to ring the bell. A moment later--I
+really believe she was moved by a kindly impulse--she intercepted me at
+the door.
+
+"I know you are odd and quixotic, Marcus," she said in a softer tone. "I
+hope you will do nothing rash."
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked in a white heat of unreasonable rage.
+
+"I hope you won't try to repair things by marrying this--young person."
+
+"To make an honest woman of her, do you mean?" I asked grimly.
+
+"Yes," said my aunt.
+
+Then suddenly the Devil leaped into me and stirred all the elements of
+unrest, anger, and longing together in a cauldron which I suppose was my
+heart. The result was explosion. I made a step forward with raised hands
+and my aunt recoiled in alarm.
+
+"By heaven!" I cried, "I would give the soul out of my body to marry
+her!"
+
+And I stumbled out of the house like a blind man.
+
+
+From that moment of dazzling revelation till now I have nursed this
+infinite desire. To say that I love Carlotta is to express Niagara in
+terms of a fountain. I crave her with everything vital in heart and
+brain. She is an obsession. The scent of her hair is in my nostrils,
+the cooing dove-notes of her voice murmur in my ears, I shut my eyes
+and feel the rose-petals of her lips on my cheek, the witchery of her
+movements dances before my eyes.
+
+I cannot live without her. Until to-day the house was desolate enough--a
+ghostly shell of a habitation. Henceforward, without her my very life
+will be void. My heart has been crying for her these two weeks and I
+knew it not. Now I know. I could stand on my balcony and lift up my
+hands toward the south where she abides, and lift up my voice, and cry
+for her passionately aloud. There is no infernal foolishness in the
+world that I could not commit tonight. The maddest dingo dog, if he
+could appreciate my state of being, would learn points in insanity.
+
+
+It is two o'clock. I must go to sleep. I take from my shelves Epictetus,
+who might be expected to throw cold water on the most burning fever
+of the mind. I have not read far before I come across this consolatory
+apophthegm: "The contest is unequal between a charming girl and a
+beginner in philosophy." He is mocking me, the cold-blooded pedagogue! I
+throw his book across the room. But he is right. I am but a beginner
+in philosophy. No armour wherein my reason can invest me is of avail
+against Carlotta. I have no strength to smite. I am helpless.
+
+But by heaven! Am I mad? Is not this on the contrary the sanest hour
+of my existence? I have lived like an automaton for forty years, and
+I suddenly awake to find myself a man. I don't care whether I sleep or
+not. I feel gloriously, exultingly young. I am but twenty. As I have
+never lived, I have never grown old. Life translates itself into
+music--a wild "Invitation to the Waltz" by some Archangel Weber. I laugh
+out loud. Polyphemus, who has been regarding me with his one bantering
+eye from Carlotta's corner on the sofa, leaps to the ground and
+grotesquely curvets round the room in a series of impish hops. Heigh,
+old boy? Do the pulsations of the music throb in your veins, too? Come
+along and let us make a night of it. To the Devil with sleep. We'll go
+together down to the cellar and find a bottle of Pommery, and we will
+drink to Life and Youth and Love and the Splendour and the Joy thereof.
+
+He utters a little cry of delight and frisks around me. In the blackness
+of the cellar his one eye gleams like a star and he purrs unutterable
+rapture. My hand passed over his back produces a shower of sparks.
+We return up the silent stairs, I carry a bottle of Pommery and a
+milkjug--for you shall revel, too, Polyphemus; and as I have forgotten
+to bring a saucer, you shall drink, as no cat has drunk before, from
+an old precious platter bearing the arms of the Estes of Ferrara--over
+which Lucrezia Borgia laughed when the world was young. It is a pity
+cats don't drink champagne. I would have made you to-night as drunk as
+Bacchus. We drink, and in the stillness the glouglou of his tongue forms
+a bass to the elfin notes of the Pommery in the soda-water tumbler.
+
+Ha! Twin purveyors of the milk of paradise, I wonder like Omar what
+you buy one-half so precious as the stuff you sell. Motor-cars for Mrs.
+Pommery and cakes for the little Grenos? I do not like to regard you as
+common humans addicted to silk hats and umbrellas and the other vices of
+respectability. Ye are rather beneficent demigods, Castor and Pollux of
+the vine, dream entities who pour from the sunset lands of Nowhere the
+liquid gold of life's joyousness.
+
+A few words scribbled on this telegraph form would bring her here
+tomorrow night. But no. What is a week? Leaden-footed, it is an
+eternity; but winged with the dove's iris it is a mere moment. Besides,
+I must accustom myself to my youth. I must investigate its follies,
+I must learn the grammar of its wisdom. We'll take counsel together,
+Polyphemus, how to turn these chambers, fusty with decayed thought, into
+a bridal bower radiant and fragrant with innumerable loves. Let us drink
+again to her witchery. It is her breath itself distilled by the Heavenly
+Twins that foams against my lips. I would give the soul out of my body
+to marry her, did I say? It were like buying her for a farthing. I would
+pledge the soul of the universe for a kiss.
+
+I catch up Polyphemus under the arm-pits, and his hind legs dangle. He
+continues to lick his chops and looks at me sardonically. He is stolid
+over his cups--which is somewhat disappointing. No matter; he can be
+shaken into enthusiasm.
+
+"I care not," I cry, "for man or devil, Polyphemus.
+
+        _'Que je suis grand ici!  mon amour de feu
+          Va de pair cette nuit avec celui de Dieu!'_
+
+You may say that it's wrong, that the first line is a syllable short,
+and that Triboulet said _'colere'_ instead of _amour_. You always were
+a dry-as-dust, pedantic prig. But I say _amour_-love, do you hear? I'll
+translate, if you like:
+
+             'Now am I mighty, and my love of fire
+            To-night goes  even with a god's desire.'
+
+Yes; I'll be a poet even though you do scratch my wrist with your hind
+claws, Polyphemus."
+
+There! Empty your milk-jug and I will empty my bottle. The wine smells
+of hyacinth. It is a revelation. Her hair smells of violets, but it is
+the delicate odour of hyacinth that came from her bare young arms
+when she clasped them round my neck; _et sa peau, on dirait du satin_.
+Carlotta is in the wine, Carlotta with her sorcery and her laughter and
+her youth, and I drink Carlotta.
+
+              _"Quo me rapis Bacche pienum tui?"_
+
+To such a land of dreams, my one-eyed friend, as never before have I
+visited. You yawn? You are bored? I shoot the dregs of my glass into his
+distended jaws. He springs away spitting and coughing, and I lie back in
+my chair convulsed with inextinguishable laughter.
+
+
+October 2d.
+
+I have suffered all day from a racking headache, having awakened at six
+o'clock and crept shivering to bed. I realise that Pommery and Greno
+are not demi-gods at all, but mere commercial purveyors of a form of
+alcohol, a quart of which it is injudicious to imbibe, with a one-eyed
+tom-cat as boon companion, at two o'clock in the morning:
+
+But I am unrepentant. If I committed follies last night, so much the
+better. I struggle no longer against the inevitable, when the inevitable
+is the crown and joy of earthly things. For in sober truth I love her
+infinitely.
+
+
+October 6th.
+
+She comes back to-morrow. Antoinette and I have been devising a welcome.
+The good soul has filled the house with flowers, and, usurping Stenson's
+functions, has polished furniture and book backs and silver and has hung
+fresh blinds and scrubbed and scoured until I am afraid to walk about
+or sit down lest I should tarnish the spotless brightness of my
+surroundings.
+
+"You have forgotten one thing, Antoinette," I remarked, satirically.
+"You have omitted to strew the front steps with rose-leaves."
+
+"I would cover them with my body for the dear angel to walk upon as she
+entered," said Antoinette.
+
+"That would scarcely be rose-leaves," I murmured.
+
+Antoinette laughed. "And Monsieur then! He is just as bad. Has he not
+put new curtains in the room of Mademoiselle, and a new toilette table,
+and a set of silver brushes and combs and I know not what, as for the
+toilette of a princess? And the eiderdown in pink satin? _Regardez-moi
+ca!_ Monsieur can no longer say that it is I alone who spoil the dear
+angel."
+
+"Monsieur," said I, at a loss for a better retort, "will say whatever
+Monsieur pleases."
+
+"It is indeed the right of Monsieur," said Antoinette, respectfully, but
+with a twinkle in her eye not devoid of significance.
+
+Does the crafty old woman suspect? Perhaps my preparations for
+Carlotta's return have been inordinate, for they have extended to the
+transformation of the sitting-room downstairs into a lady's boudoir.
+I have been busy this happy week. But what care I? It will not be
+long before I have to say to her, "Antoinette, there is going to be a
+wedding."
+
+I must be on my guard lest, in the transports of her joy, she clasp me
+to her capacious bosom!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+October 7th.
+
+At Paddington I came upon Sebastian Pasquale lounging about the arrival
+platform. As I had not seen or heard of him since the end of July I had
+concluded that he was wandering as usual over the globe. He greeted me
+effusively, holding out both hands in his foreign fashion.
+
+"My dear old Ordeyne! who would have thought of meeting you here? What
+wind blows you to Paddington?"
+
+"I expect Carlotta by the Plymouth Express."
+
+"The fair Carlotta? And how is she? And what is she doing at Plymouth?"
+
+In the middle of my explanation he pulled out his watch.
+
+"By Jove! I must get to the next platform and catch my train to Ealing.
+I was just killing time about the station. I like seeing a train
+come in--the gleam and smoke and rush and whirr of the evil-looking
+thing--and the sudden metamorphosis of its sleek sides into mouths
+belching forth humanity. I think of Hades. This, by the way, isn't a bad
+representation of it--the up-to-date Hades. They've got a railway bridge
+now across the Styx, and Charon has a gold band around his cap, and this
+might be the arrival platform of the damned souls."
+
+"You forget," said I, "that it is the arrival platform of Carlotta."
+
+He threw back his head and laughed boyishly.
+
+"Well, consider it the Golden Gate terminus of the 'Earth, Hades
+and Olympus Railway' if you like. I'm off on a branch line to meet a
+beauteous duchessa at Ealing--oh, an authentic one, I assure you."
+
+"Why should I doubt it?" said I.
+
+Stenson, whom I had brought to look after Carlotta's luggage, came up
+and touched his hat.
+
+"Train just signalled, sir."
+
+Pasquale put out his hand after another glance at his watch.
+
+"I am sorry I cannot wait to greet the fair one. I'll drop in soon
+and pay my respects. I am only just back in London, you know. _A
+rivederci._"
+
+He waved me farewell and hurried off. The arrival of the train, the
+exuberance of Carlotta, the joy of having her sidle up against me once
+more in the cab while she poured out her story, and the subsequent
+gaiety of the evening banished Pasquale from my mind. But it is odd that
+I should have met him at Paddington.
+
+We parted on the landing to dress for dinner. A moment afterwards there
+was a beating at my door. I opened it to behold Carlotta, in a glow of
+wondering delight, brandishing a silver-backed brush in one hand and the
+hand-mirror in the other.
+
+"Oh, my darling Seer Marcous! For me? All that for me?"
+
+"No. It is for Antoinette," said I.
+
+"Oh-h!"
+
+She laughed and pulled me by the arm into her room and shut the door.
+
+"Oh, everything is beautiful, beautiful, and I shall die if I do not
+kiss you."
+
+"You must be kept alive at all hazards," I laughed; and this time I did
+not reject her. But it was a child around whom my arms closed. An
+inner flash, accompanied by a spasm of pain, revealed it, and changed a
+passionate desire to gentleness.
+
+"There," said I, after she had released herself and flown to open the
+drawers of the new toilette table, where lay some odds and ends of
+jewelry I had purchased for her. "You have been saved from extinction.
+The next deadly peril is hunger. I give you a quarter of an hour."
+
+She came down to dinner in a low-necked frock, wearing the necklace
+and bangle; and, child that she is, in her hand she carried the
+silver-backed mirror. I believe she has taken it to bed with her, as
+a seven-year-old does its toy. She certainly kept it by her all the
+evening and admired herself therein unashamedly like the traditional
+Lady from the Sea. Once, desiring to show me the ravishing beauty of a
+turquoise pendant, she bent her neck forward, as I sat, so as to come
+within reach of my nearsighted eyes (it is a superstition of hers that
+I am nearly blind without my glasses), and quite naturally slid onto
+my knee. She has the warm russet complexion that suits her heavy bronze
+hair, and there is a glow beneath the satin of her neck and arms. And
+she is fragrant--I recognise it now--of hyacinths. The world can hold
+nothing more alluring to the senses of man. My fingers that held
+the turquoise trembled as they chanced to touch her--but she was all
+unconcerned. Nay, further--she gazed into the mirror--
+
+"It makes me look so white--oh, there was a girl at Bude who had a gold
+locket--and it lay upon her bones--you could count them. I am glad I
+have no bones. I am quite soft--feel."
+
+She clasped my fingers and pressed their tips into the firm young flesh
+below her throat.
+
+"Yes," said I, with some huskiness in my voice, "your turquoise can
+sleep there very pleasantly. See, I will kiss it to bring you good
+luck."
+
+She cooed with pleasure. "I don't think any one kissed the locket of the
+girl at Bude. She was too thin. And too old; she must have been thirty!
+Now," she added, lifting up the locket, "you will kiss the place, too,
+where it is to lie."
+
+I looked for a moment into her eyes. Seeing me hesitate, they grew
+pathetic.
+
+"Oh-h," she said, reproachfully.
+
+I know I am a fool. I know that Pasquale would have hurled his sarcasms
+at me. I know that the whole of her deliciousness was mine for the
+taking--mine for ever and ever. If I had loved her less passionately
+I would have kissed her young throat lightly with a jest. But to have
+kissed her thus with such longing as mine behind my lips would have been
+an outrage.
+
+I lifted her to her feet, and rose and turned away, laughing unsteadily.
+
+"No, my dear," said I, "that would be--unsuitable."
+
+The bathos of the word made me laugh louder. Carlotta, aware that a joke
+was in the air, joined in my mirth, and her laughter rang fresh.
+
+"What is the suitable way of kissing?"
+
+I took her hand and saluted it in an eighteenth century manner.
+
+"This," said I.
+
+"Oh-h," said Carlotta. "That is so dull." She caught up Polyphemus and
+buried her face in his fur. "That's the way I should like to be kissed."
+
+"The man you love, my dear," said I, "will doubtless do it."
+
+She made a little grimace.
+
+"Oh, then, I shall have to wait such a long time."
+
+"You needn't," said I, taking her hands again and speaking very
+seriously. "Can't you learn to love a man, give him your whole heart and
+all your best and sweetest thoughts?"
+
+"I would marry any nice man if you gave me to him," she answered.
+
+"It would not matter who he was? Anyone would do?"
+
+"Why, of course," said Carlotta.
+
+"And any one wanting to marry you could kiss you as you kissed
+Polyphemus."
+
+"Oh-h, he would have to be nice--not like Mustapha."
+
+I turned away with a sigh and lit a cigarette, while Carlotta curled
+herself up on the sofa and inspected her face and necklace in the silver
+mirror. In a moment she was talking to the cat, who had jumped on her
+lap and with arched back was rubbing himself against her.
+
+Soon the touch of sadness was lost in the happy sight of her and the
+happy thought that my house was no longer left to me desolate. We
+laughed away the evening.
+
+But now, sitting alone, I feel empty of soul; like a man stricken with
+fierce hunger who, expecting food in a certain place, finds nothing but
+a few delicate cakes that mock his craving.
+
+
+October 14th.
+
+A week has passed. I have spent it chiefly in trying to win her love.
+
+Is she, after all, only a child, and is this love of mine but a
+monstrous passion?
+
+What is to be done? Life is beginning to be a torture. If I send her
+away, I shall eat my heart out. If she stays, fuel is but added to
+the fire. Her caressing ways will drive me mad. To repulse her were
+brutal--she loves to be fondled; she can scarcely speak to me without
+touching me, leaning over me, thus filling me with the sense of her. She
+treats me with an affectionate child's innocence, as if I were sexless.
+My happiest time with her is spent in public places, restaurants, and
+theatres where her unclouded pleasure is reflected in my heart.
+
+I am letting her take music lessons with Herr Stuer, who lives close by
+in the Avenue Road. Perhaps music may help in her development.
+
+
+October 21st.
+
+To please her I am accustoming myself to this out-of-door life, which
+once I despised so cordially. Pasquale has joined us two or three times.
+Last night he gave a dinner in Carlotta's honour at the Continental. The
+ladies of the party have asked her to go to see them. She must have
+some society, I suppose, and I must go with her. They belong to the
+half smart set, eager to conceal beneath a show of raffishness
+their plentiful lack of intellect and their fundamental bourgeois
+respectability. In spite of Pasquale's brilliance and Carlotta's
+rapturous enjoyment I sat mumchance and depressed, out of my element.
+
+My work is at a standstill, and Carlotta is my life. I fear I am
+deteriorating.
+
+On Judith, whom I have seen once or twice since Carlotta's return, I
+called this afternoon. She is unhappy. Although I have not confessed to
+my thraldom, her woman's wit, I feel sure, has penetrated to the heart
+of my mystery. There has been no deep emotion in our intercourse.
+Its foundation has been real friendship sweetened with pleasant
+sentimentality. And yet jealousy of Carlotta consumes her. Her _amour
+propre_ is deeply wounded. She makes me feel as if I had played the part
+of a brute. But O Judith, my dear, I have only been a man. "The same
+thing," I fancy I hear her answer. But no. I have never loved a woman,
+my dear, in all my life before, and as I made no secret of it, I am
+guiltless of anything like betrayal. In due season I will tell you
+frankly of the new love; but how can I tell you now? How could I tell
+any human being?
+
+I imagine myself as Panurge, taking counsel with a Pantagruelian friend.
+"I am in love with Carlotta and desire to marry her." "Then marry her,"
+says Pantagruel. "But she does not love me." "Then don't marry," says
+Pantagruel. "But nay," urges poor Panurge, "she would marry me according
+to any rite, civil or ecclesiastical, to-morrow." _"Mariez-vous doncques
+de par dieu,"_ replies Pantagruel. "But I should be a villain to take
+advantage of her innocence and submission." "Then don't marry." "But
+I can't live without her," says Panurge, desperately. "I am as a man
+bewitched. If I don't marry her I shall waste away with longing." "Then
+marry her in God's name!" says Pantagruel. And I am no wiser by his
+counsel, and I have paraded the complication of my folly before mocking
+eyes.
+
+
+October 23d.
+
+I perceive that the young man of the idiot metaphor was gifted with
+piercing acumen. Beneath the Jaquesian melancholy of my temperament he
+diagnosed the potentiality of canine rabidness. No rational being is
+afflicted with this grotesque concentration of idea, this fierce hot
+fury waxing in intensity day by day.
+
+I must consult a brain specialist.
+
+
+October 25th.
+
+I went to Judith this afternoon, more to prove the loyalty of my
+friendship than to seek comfort from her society. Over tea we discussed
+the weather and books and her statistical work. It was dull, but
+unembarrassing. The grey twilight crept into the room and there was a
+pause in our talk. She broke it by asking, without looking at me:
+
+"When are we to have an evening together again?"
+
+"Whenever you like, my dear Judith."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"I am afraid not to-morrow," said I.
+
+"Are you doing anything so very particular?"
+
+"I have arranged to take Carlotta to the Empire."
+
+"Oh," said Judith shortly, and I was left uncomfortable for another
+spell of silence.
+
+"It would be very kind, Marcus, to ask me to accompany you," she said at
+last.
+
+"Carlotta and myself?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"My question arose from the stupidity of surprise," said I. "I thought
+you disliked Carlotta."
+
+"By no means. I should be glad to make her further acquaintance. Any one
+that interests you must also be interesting to me."
+
+"In that case," said I, "your coming will give us both the greatest
+possible pleasure."
+
+"I haven't had a merry evening for ever so long."
+
+"We will dine somewhere first and have supper afterwards. The whole
+gamut of merriment. Toute la lyre. And you shall have," I added, "some
+of your favourite Veuve Cliquot."
+
+"It will be charming," said Judith, politely.
+
+In fact, politeness has been the dominant note of her attitude to-day,
+a sober restraint of manner such as she would adopt when rather tired
+towards an ordinary acquaintance. Has she reconciled herself to the
+inevitable and taken this Empire frolic as a graceful method of showing
+it? I should like to believe so, but the course is scarcely consistent
+with that motor of illogic which she is pleased to call her temperament.
+I am puzzled.
+
+Her smile as we parted sent a chill through me, being the smile of a
+mask instead of a woman's face; and it was not the face of Judith. I
+don't anticipate much merriment tomorrow evening.
+
+
+At Carlotta's suggestion, I have sent a line to Pasquale to ask him to
+join us. His gay wit will lend to the entertainment a specious air of
+revelry which Carlotta will take as genuine.
+
+I have often thought lately of the hopeless passion of Alfonso the
+Magnanimous of Naples, as set forth by Pope Pius II in his Commentaries;
+for I am beginning to take a morbid interest in the unhappy love affairs
+of other men and to institute comparisons. If they have lived through
+the torment, why should not I? But Alfonso sighed for Lucrezia d'Alagna,
+a beautiful chaste statue of ice who loved him; whereas I crave the
+warm-blooded thing that is mine for the taking, but no more loves me
+than she loves the policeman who salutes her on his beat. I cannot take
+her. Something stronger than my passion opposes an adamantine barrier. I
+love her with my soul as well as with my body, and my soul cries out for
+the soul that the Almighty forgot when endowing her with entity.
+
+This evening a letter from the Editor of The Quarterly Review. It would
+give him great pleasure if I would contribute a Renaissance article,
+taking as my text a German, a Russian, and an English attempt to
+whitewash the Borgia family. Six months ago the compliment would have
+filled me with gratification. To-day what to me are the whitewashed
+Borgias or the solemn denizens of the Athenaeum reading-room who will
+slumber over my account of the blameless poisonings of this amiable
+family? They are vanity and vexation of a spirit already sore at ease.
+
+As I write the door creaks. I look up. Behold Carlotta in hastily
+slipped on dressing-gown, open in front, her hair streaming loose to her
+waist, her bare feet flashing pink beneath her night-dress.
+
+"Oh, Seer Marcous, darling, I am so frightened!"
+
+She ran forward and caught the lappels of my coat as I rose from my
+chair.
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"There is a mouse in my bed."
+
+Polyphemus saved the situation by jumping from the sofa and rubbing his
+back against her feet.
+
+"Take the cat and tell him to kill it," said I, "and go back to bed at
+once."
+
+I must have spoken roughly, for she regarded me with her great eyes full
+of innocent reproach.
+
+"There, take up the cat and go," I repeated. "You mustn't come down here
+looking like that."
+
+"I thought I looked very pretty," said Carlotta, moving a step nearer.
+
+I sat down at my writing-table and fixed my eyes on my paper.
+
+"You are like a Houri that has been sent away from Paradise for
+misbehaviour," I said.
+
+She laughed her curious cooing laugh.
+
+"_Hou!_ Seer Marcous is shocked!" And she ran, away, rubbing
+Polyphemus's nose against her face.
+
+
+I wonder if the Devil, having grown infirm, is mixing up his centuries
+and mistaking me for a mediaeval saint? Paphnutius for instance, who was
+visited by such a seductress. What is the legend? To get rid of her he
+burns off his hand, whereupon she falls dead. He prays and she returns
+to life and becomes a nun. No, Messer Diavolo, I am not Paphnutius. I
+will not maim myself, nor do I want Carlotta to fall dead; and I cannot
+pray and effect a pietistic resurrection. I am simply a fool of a modern
+man tempted out of his wits, who scarce knows what it is that he speaks
+or writes.
+
+I am not superstitious, but I feel myself to-night on the brink of some
+disaster. I walk restlessly about the room. On the mantel-piece are
+three photographs in silver frames: Judith, Carlotta, Pasquale. That
+which is of mockery in the spirit of each seems to-night to be hovering
+round the portraits and to be making sport of me. An autumn gale is
+howling among the trees outside, like a legion of lost souls. Listen.
+Messer Diavolo himself might be riding by with a whoop of derision.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+October 26th.
+
+I knew something would happen. Messer Diavolo does not ride whooping to
+no purpose by the windows of people whom he desires to torment; nor does
+he inspire photographs for nothing with an active spirit of mockery.
+
+We dined at the Trocadero. Carlotta loves the band and the buzz of Babel
+and the heavy scents and the clatter and the tumult and the glare of
+light; otherwise I should have chosen a discreeter hostelry where the
+footfalls of the waiting-men were noiseless and the walls in quiet
+shadow, where there was nothing but the mellow talk of friends to
+distract the mind from the consideration of exquisite flavours. But in
+these palaces of clashing splendour, the stunned brain fails to receive
+impressions from the glossopharyngeal nerve, and one eats unthinkingly
+like a dog. But this matters little to Carlotta. Perhaps when I was
+nineteen it mattered little to me. And to-night, also, it mattered
+little, for my mind was preoccupied and a dinner with Lucullus would
+have been savourless.
+
+If the Psalmist cried, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" what
+cry had he at the back of his head to utter concerning woman? Did he
+leave her to be implicitly dealt with by Charles Darwin in his "Theory
+of Sexual Selection"? Or did he in the good old oriental way regard
+her as unimportant in the eyes of the Deity? If the latter, he was a
+purblind prophet and missed the very fount of human tears.
+
+When I looked at Judith, I was smitten with a great pain. She had not
+looked so young, so fresh, so fragilely fair for many months. She wore
+a dress of corn-flower blue that deepened the violet of her eyes. In the
+mass of flax hued thistle-down that is her hair a blue argus butterfly
+completed the chord of colour. There was the faintest tinge of pink
+in her cheek applied with delicate art. Her dress seemed made of
+unsubstantial dream stuff--I believe they call it chiffon--and it
+covered her bosom and arms like the spray of a fairy sea. She had the
+air of an impalpable Undine, a creation of sea-foam and sea-flower; an
+exquisite suggestion of the ethereal which floated beauty, as it were,
+into her face. I know little of women, save what these past few grievous
+months have taught me; but I know that hours of anxious thought and
+desperate hope lay behind this effect of fragile loveliness. The wit of
+woman could not have rendered a woman's body a greater contrast to that
+of her rival; and with infinite subtlety she had imbued the contrast
+with the deeper significance of rare and spiritual things. I know this
+was so. I know it was a challenge, a defiance, an ordeal by combat; and
+the knowledge hurt me, so that I felt like a Dathan or Abiram who
+had laid hand on the Ark of the Covenant (for the soul of a woman, by
+heaven! is a holy thing), and I wished that the earth could open and
+swallow me up.
+
+We sat down to table in the middle of the great room--a quiet corner
+on the balcony away from the band is not to Carlotta's taste--like any
+conventional party of four, and at first talked of indifferent matters.
+Conciergerie dinner-parties in the Terror always began with a discussion
+of the latest cure for megrims, or the most fashionable cut of a panier.
+Presently Pasquale who had been talking travel with Judith appealed to
+me.
+
+"What year was it, Ordeyne, that I came home from Abyssinia?"
+
+"I forget," said I. "I only remember you presenting me with that hideous
+thing hanging in my passage, which you called a dulcimer."
+
+_"Gage d'amour?"_ smiled Judith.
+
+Pasquale laughed and twirled his swaggering moustache.
+
+"I did get it from a damsel, and that is why I called it a dulcimer, but
+she didn't sing of Mount Abora. I wish I could remember the year."
+
+"I think it was in 1894," said Judith quietly.
+
+Pasquale, who had been completely unaware of Judith's existence until
+half an hour before, could not repress a stare of polite surprise.
+
+"I believe you are right. In fact, you are. But how can you tell?"
+
+"Through the kindness of Sir Marcus," replied Judith graciously, "you
+are a very old acquaintance. I could write you off-hand a nice
+little obituary notice with all the adventures--well, I will not say
+complete--but with all the dates accurate, I assure you. I have a head
+for that sort of thing."
+
+"Yes," I cried, desiring to turn the conversation. "Don't tell Mrs.
+Mainwaring anything you wish forgotten. Facts are her passion. She
+writes wonderful articles full of figures that make your head spin, and
+publishes them in the popular magazines over the signature of Willoughby
+the statistician. Allow me to present to you a statistical ghost."
+
+But Pasquale's subtle Italian brain was paying but half attention to me.
+I could read his inferences from Judith's observations, and I could
+tell what she wanted him to infer. I seem to have worn my sensory system
+outside instead of inside my skin this evening.
+
+"Ordeyne," said he, "you are a pig, and the great-grandfather of pigs--"
+
+"Foul" cried Carlotta, seizing on an intelligible point of the
+conversation.
+
+"Why didn't you present me to Mrs. Mainwaring in 1894? I declare I have
+thought myself allied to that man for twenty years in bonds of the most
+intimate friendship, and he has never so much as mentioned you to me."
+
+"Seer Marcous says that Pasquale is a bad lot," remarked Carlotta, with
+an air of sapience, after a sip of orangeade, a revolting beverage which
+she loves to drink at her meals.
+
+Pasquale threw back his handsome head and laughed again like the
+chartered libertine he is, and Judith smiled.
+
+"'Out of the mouths of babes, etc.,'" said I, apologetically.
+
+"In all seriousness," said Pasquale to Judith, "I had no idea that any
+one was such a close friend of Ordeyne's."
+
+Judith turned to me, with a graceful gesture of her shoulders.
+
+"I think we have been close friends, Marcus?"
+
+"Oh, ye-es," broke in Carlotta. "Mrs. Mainwaring has the picture of Seer
+Marcous in her bedroom, and there is the picture of Mrs. Mainwaring in
+our drawing-room. You have not seen it? But yes. You have not recognised
+it, Pasquale? Mrs. Mainwaring is so pretty tonight. Much prettier than
+the photograph. Yes, you are so pretty. I would like to put you on the
+mantel-piece as an ornament instead of the picture."
+
+"May I be allowed to endorse Carlotta's sentiment of appreciation?" I
+said, with a view to covering her indiscretion, for I saw a flash of
+conjecture in Pasquale's eyes and a sudden spot of real red in Judith's
+cheeks. She had evidently desired to suggest an old claim on my regard,
+but to have it based on such intimate details as the enshrining of my
+photograph was not to her fancy.
+
+"I am vastly beholden to you both," said Judith, who has a graceful way
+of receiving compliments. "But," turning to Pasquale, "we have travelled
+far from Abyssinia."
+
+"To Sir Marcus's mantel-piece. Suppose we stay there."
+
+"There is you and me and Mrs. Mainwaring," said the literal Carlotta,
+"and I am the big one in the middle. It was made big--big," she added,
+extending her arms in her exaggerating way. "I was wearing this dress."
+
+"Mr. Pasquale and I will have to enlarge our frames, Marcus," said
+Judith, "or we shall be jealous. We shall have to make common cause
+together."
+
+"We will declare an inoffensive alliance," laughed Pasquale.
+
+"Offensive if you like," said Judith.
+
+It may have been some effect of the glitter of lights, but I vow I saw
+a swift interchange of glances. Pasquale immediately turned to Carlotta
+with a jesting remark, and Judith engaged me in conversation on our old
+days in Rome. Suddenly she swerved from the topic, and leaning forward,
+indicated our companions with an imperceptible motion of her head.
+
+"Don't you think," she said in a low voice, "they are a well-matched
+pair? Both young and picturesque; it would solve many things."
+
+I glanced round. Carlotta, elbow on the table and chin in hand, was
+looking deep into Pasquale's eyes, just as she has looked into mine. Her
+lips had the half-sensuous, half-childish pout provocative of kisses.
+
+"Do, and I will love you," I heard her say.
+
+Oh, those dove-notes, those melting eyes, those lips! Oh, the horrible
+fool passion that burns out my soul and brain and reduces me to rave
+like a lovelorn early Victorian tailor! Which was worse I know not--the
+spasm of jealousy or the spasm of self-contempt that followed it. At
+that moment the music ceased suddenly on a loud crashing chord.
+
+The moment seemed to be magnetic to all but Carlotta, who was enjoying
+herself prodigiously. Our three personalities appeared to vibrate
+rudely one against the other. I was conscious that Judith read me, that
+Pasquale read Judith, that again something telegraphic passed between
+them. The waiter offered me partridge. Pasquale quickly turned from
+Carlotta to his left-hand neighbour.
+
+"I think we ought to drink Faust's health, don't you?"
+
+I started. Had I not myself traced the analogy?
+
+"Faust?" queried Judith at a loss.
+
+"Our friend Faust opposite me," said Pasquale, raising his champagne
+glass. "Hasn't he been transformed from the lean and elderly bookworm
+into the gay, young gallant about the town? Once one could scarcely drag
+him from his cell to the quietest of dinners, and now--has he told you
+of his dissipations this past month, Mrs. Mainwaring?"
+
+Judith smiled. "Have you been Mephistopheles?"
+
+"What is Mephistopheles?" asked Carlotta.
+
+"The devil," said Pasquale, "who made Sir Marcus young again."
+
+"Oh, that's me," cried Carlotta, clapping her hands. "He does not read
+in big books any longer. Oh, I was so frightened when I first came." (I
+must say she hid her terrors pretty effectually.) "He was so wise, and
+always reading and writing, and I thought he was fifty. And now he
+is not wise at all, and he said two, three days ago I had made him
+twenty-five."
+
+"If you go on at the rate you have begun, my dear," Judith remarked in
+her most charming manner, "in another year you will have brought him
+down to long clothes and a feeding-bottle."
+
+Carlotta thought this very funny and laughed joyously. I laughed
+too, out of courtesy, at Judith's bitter sarcasm, and turned the
+conversation, but Pasquale was not to be baulked of his toast.
+
+"Here's to our dear friend Faust; may he grow younger and younger every
+day."
+
+We clinked glasses. Judith sighed when the performance was concluded.
+
+"That is one of the many advantages of being a man. If you do sell your
+soul to the devil you can see that you get proper payment. A woman is
+paid in promissory notes, which are dishonoured when they fall due."
+
+I contested the proposition. The irony of this peculiarly painful revel
+lay in the air of gaiety it seemed necessary to maintain. A miserable
+business is civilisation!
+
+"Did you ever hear of a woman getting youth out of such a bargain?" she
+retorted with some vehemence.
+
+"As women systematically underpay cabmen," said I, "so do they try to
+underpay the devil; and he is one too many for them."
+
+"I am afraid," said Pasquale, "that the old days of shrewd bargains are
+over. There is a glut in the soul-market and they only fetch the price
+of old bones."
+
+"He is talking foolish things that I do not understand," said Carlotta,
+putting her hand on my arm.
+
+"It is called sham cynicism, my dear," said I, "and we all ought to be
+ashamed of ourselves."
+
+"What do you like best to talk about?" Judith asked sweetly.
+
+"Myself. And so does everybody," replied Carlotta.
+
+We laughed, and for a time talk ceased to be allusive. But later, over
+our coffee, while the band was playing loudly some new American march,
+and Carlotta and Pasquale were laughing together, Judith drew near me.
+
+"You did not answer my question about those two, Marcus."
+
+My fingers trembled as I lit a fresh cigarette.
+
+"He is not a man to whom any woman's destiny should be entrusted."
+
+"And is she a woman on whom a man should stake his life's happiness?"
+
+"God knows," said I, setting my teeth.
+
+It was not an enjoyable dinner-party. I longed for the evening to be
+over, to have Carlotta safe back with me at home. I felt a curious dread
+of the Empire.
+
+We arrived there towards the end of the first ballet. Carlotta, as soon
+as she had taken her seat, leaned both elbows on the front of the box
+and surrendered her senses to the stage. Pasquale talked to Judith.
+Wishing for a few moments alone I left the box and sauntered moodily
+along the promenade behind the First Circle. The occupants were either
+leaning over the partitions and watching the spectacle or sitting with
+drink before them at the little marble tables at the back. The gaudy,
+gilded, tobacco-smoke and humanity-filled theatre seemed to be unreal,
+the stage but a phantom cloud effect. I wondered why I, a creature from
+the concrete world, was there. I had an insane impulse to fly from it
+all, to go out into the streets, and wander, wander for ever, away from
+the world. I was walking along the promenade, lost in this lunacy, when
+I stumbled against a fellow-promenader and the shock brought me to my
+senses. It was an elderly, obese Oriental wearing a red fez. He had a
+long nose and small, crafty eyes, and was deeply pitted with smallpox.
+I made profuse apologies and he accepted them with suavity. It then
+occurring to me that I was he having in a discourteous and abjectly
+absurd manner, I made my way back to the box. I drew a chair to Judith's
+side.
+
+"You are giving me a captivating evening," she said, with a smile.
+
+"Whom are you captivating?" I asked, idly jesting. "Pasquale?"
+
+"You are cruel," whispered Judith, with a flicker of her eyelids.
+
+I flushed, ashamed, not having weighed the significance of my words.
+All I could say was: "I beg your pardon," whereat Judith laughed
+mirthlessly. I relapsed into silence. Turn followed turn on the stage.
+While the curtain was lowered Carlotta sank back with a little sigh of
+enjoyment, and nodded brightly at me.
+
+"Do you remember," she said, turning to me, at a fresh fall of the
+curtain, "when you brought me first? I said I should like to live here.
+Wasn't I silly?"
+
+She turned again, then suddenly rose to her feet and staggered back to
+the back of the box, pointing outward, with an expression of wild terror
+on her face.
+
+"Hamdi--he's down there--he saw me."
+
+I sprang to her assistance and put my arm around her.
+
+"Nonsense, dear," said I.
+
+But Pasquale, looking around the house, cried:
+
+"By Jove! she's right. I would recognise the old villain a thousand
+years hence in Tartarus. There he is."
+
+I left Carlotta, and the first person my eyes rested upon in the stalls
+was my obese but suave Oriental, regarding the box with an impassive
+countenance.
+
+"That's Hamdi Effendi, all right," said Pasquale.
+
+Carlotta clutched my arms as I joined her at the back of the box.
+
+"Oh, take me away, Seer Marcous, take me away," she moaned piteously. My
+poor child was white and shaken with fear. I again put my arm round her.
+
+"No harm can happen to you, dear," I said, soothingly.
+
+"Oh, darling Seer Marcous, take me home," cried Carlotta.
+
+"Very well," said I. I helped her on with her wrap, and apologising to
+the two others, begged them to remain.
+
+"We'll all go together," said Judith quietly.
+
+"And form a body-guard," laughed Pasquale.
+
+Carlotta clinging to my arm we left the box and slipped through the
+promenade and down the stairs.
+
+Hamdi Effendi, having anticipated our intention, cut off our retreat in
+the vestibule. Carlotta shrank nearer to me.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Monsieur, but may I have the pleasure of a few words
+with you about this young lady?" said he in the urbanest manner and the
+most execrable French.
+
+"I hardly see the necessity," said I.
+
+"Pardon me, but this young lady is a Turkish subject and my daughter.
+My name is Hamdi Effendi, Prefect of Police at Aleppo, and my address in
+London is the Hotel Metropole."
+
+"I am charmed to make your acquaintance," said I. "I have often heard
+of you from Mademoiselle--but I believe both her father and mother were
+English, so she is neither your daughter nor a Turkish subject."
+
+"Ah, that we will see," rejoined the polite Oriental. He addressed some
+words rapidly in Turkish to Carlotta, who shudderingly replied in the
+same language.
+
+"Mademoiselle unfortunately does not consent to accompany me," he
+interpreted with a smile. "So I am afraid I will have to take her back
+without her consent."
+
+"If you do, Hamdi Effendi," said Pasquale in a light tone of
+conversation, but with the ugliest snarl of the lips that I have ever
+beheld, "I shall most certainly kill you."
+
+Hamdi turned to him with a polite bow.
+
+"Ah, it is Monsieur Pasquale. I thought I recognised you."
+
+"You have every reason to do so," said Pasquale.
+
+"I saved you from prison."
+
+"You accepted a bribe."
+
+"For heaven's sake," cried Judith, "go on speaking in low voices, or we
+shall have a scene here."
+
+One or two idlers hung near with an air of curiosity and the huge
+beuniformed commissionaire watched us with an uncertain eye. I kept a
+tight hold of Carlotta and drew her more behind the screen of a palm
+near which we happened to stand.
+
+"Madame is right," said Hamdi. "We can discuss this little affair like
+gentlemen."
+
+"Then, in the most gentlemanly way in the world," said Pasquale, "I
+swear to you that if you touch this young lady, I will kill you."
+
+"It appears, to be Monsieur," said the obese Turk with a graceful wave
+of the hand in my direction, "and not you, who has robbed my home of
+its treasure, unless," he added, and I shall always remember the hideous
+leer of that pulpy-nosed and small-pox pitted face, "unless Monsieur has
+relieved you of your responsibilities."
+
+For a moment I was speechless. Pasquale put himself in front of me.
+
+"Steady on, Ordeyne."
+
+"Sir," said I, "I found this young lady destitute in the streets of
+London. She is my wife and therefore a British subject; so you can take
+yourself and your infamous insinuations to the devil, and the quicker
+the better."
+
+"Or there'll be two of us engaged in the killing," said Pasquale.
+
+Hamdi again exchanged a few sentences in Turkish with Carlotta, and then
+smiled upon us with the same unruffled suavity.
+
+_"Au revoir, Mesdames et Messieurs."_ With a courteous salute he
+shuffled back towards the stall-entrance.
+
+The tension over, Carlotta broke from me and clutched Pasquale by the
+arm.
+
+"Oh, kill him, kill him, kill him!" she cried in a passionate whisper.
+
+He freed himself gently and took out a cigarette case.
+
+"Scarcely necessary. He'll soon die." And turning to me he added: "Not
+a sound organ in his body. Besides, it seems to me that if there is any
+murdering to be done, it's the business of Sir Marcus."
+
+"There is going to be no murdering," said I, profoundly disgusted, "and
+don't talk in that revolting way about the wretched man dying."
+
+I regained possession of Carlotta who, seeing that I was angry, cast
+a scared glance at me, and became docile as suddenly as she had grown
+passionate. I turned to Judith.
+
+"Will you ever forgive me--" I began.
+
+But the sight of her face froze me. It was white and hard and haggard,
+and the lips were drawn into a thin line, and the delicate colour she
+had put upon her cheeks stood out in ghastly contrast. Her dress, like
+the foam of a summer sea, mocked the winter in her face.
+
+"There is nothing to forgive," she said, smiling icily. "I came for
+a variety entertainment and I have not been disappointed. Good-bye.
+Perhaps Mr. Pasquale will be so kind as to put me into a cab."
+
+"I will drive you home, if you will allow me," said Pasquale.
+
+We separated, shaking hands as if nothing had happened, as perfunctorily
+as if we had been the most distant of acquaintances.
+
+On our way back we spoke very little. Carlotta nestled close against
+me, seeking the shelter of my arm. She cried, I don't know why, but it
+seemed to afford comfort. I kissed her lips and her hair.
+
+At home, I drew the sofa near the fire--it has been a raw night and she
+feels the cold like a tropical plant--and sat down by her side.
+
+"Did you hear what I said to Hamdi Effendi--that you were my wife?"
+
+"But that was only a lie," she answered in her plain idiom.
+
+My petting and soothing together with the sense of home security and a
+cup of French chocolate prepared by Antoinette, who, astonished at our
+early return and seeing her darling in distress, had hastened to provide
+culinary consolation, had restored her wonted serenity of demeanour.
+Polyphemus also purred reassuringly upon her lap.
+
+"It was a lie this evening," said I, "but in a few days I hope it will
+be true."
+
+"You are going to marry me?" she asked, suddenly sitting erect and
+looking at me rather bewildered.
+
+"If you will have me, Carlotta."
+
+"I will do what Seer Marcous tells me," she answered. "Will you marry me
+to-morrow?"
+
+"I think it hardly possible, my dear," I answered. "But I shall lose no
+time, I assure you. Once you are my wife neither Hamdi Effendi nor the
+Sultan of Turkey can claim you. No one can take an Englishman's wife
+away from him."
+
+"Hamdi is a devil," said Carlotta.
+
+"We can laugh at him," said I.
+
+"Did you ever see such an ugly mug?"
+
+Where she gets her occasional bits of slang from I do not know; but her
+little foreign staccato pronunciation gives them unusual quaintness. I
+laughed, and Carlotta, throwing Polyphemus off her lap, laughed too, and
+sidled up against me. The cat regarded us for a moment with a disgusted
+eye, then stretched himself as if he had quitted Carlotta of his own
+accord, and walked away in a state of dignified boredom.
+
+"Hamdi is like a pig and an elephant and a great fat turkey," said
+Carlotta.
+
+"If all the world were beautiful," I exclaimed, "such a thing as our
+appreciation of beauty would not exist. I should not even be aware that
+my Carlotta was beautiful."
+
+She put her hands on my knees in her impulsive way, and bending forward
+looked at me delightedly.
+
+"Oh, you do think so?"
+
+"You are the loveliest and most intoxicating creature on the earth,
+Carlotta."
+
+"Now I am sure, sure, sure," she cried, enraptured. "You have never said
+it before, Seer Marcous darling, and I must kiss you."
+
+I checked her with my hands on her soft shoulders.
+
+"Only if you promise to marry me."
+
+"Of course," said Carlotta.
+
+She said it as thoughtlessly and light-heartedly as if I had asked her
+to come out for a walk. Again I felt the odd spasm of pain. In my late
+madness I had often pictured the scene: how I should hold her throbbing
+beauty in my arms, my senses clouded with the fragrance of her, and how,
+in burning words, I should pour out the litany of my passion. But to the
+gods it seemed otherwise. No Quaker maiden's betrothal kiss was chaster.
+Cold grew the fever in my veins and the litany died on my lips.
+
+
+Who and what is she whom I love? There have been days when her eyes have
+carried in their depths the allurements of a sorceress, when her limbs
+have woven Venusberg enchantments which it has taken all my strength to
+withstand. But tonight, when I take the greatest step and claim her
+as mine till our lives' end, she yields with the complaisance of an
+ignorant child and raises up between us the barrier of her innocence.
+When shall I learn the soul of her?
+
+Well, _jacta est alea_. The events of to-night have precipitated our
+destiny. In all probability Hamdi is powerless to take her from my
+protection, and this marriage is unnecessary as a safeguard. I have no
+notion of the international law on such points--but at any rate it will
+make the assurance of her safety absolute. No power on earth can take
+her from me. Great Heaven! The thought of her gone forever out of
+my life brings the cold sweat to my forehead. Without her, child,
+enchantress, changeling that she is, how could I face existence?
+
+I shall have my heart's desire. Why, I should be athrill with the joy
+and the flame of youth! I should laugh and sing! I should perform the
+happy antics of love's exuberance! I should be transported to the realms
+where the fairy tales end!
+
+Instead, I sit before a dying fire, as I sat last night, and am
+oppressed with the sense of tragedy. It was not altogether Carlotta's
+innocence that formed the barrier between us. That which rendered it
+impassable was Judith's white face.
+
+Judith's white face will haunt my dreams to-night.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+October 27th
+
+I do not like living. It is thoroughly disagreeable. Today Judith
+taunted me with never having lived, and I admitted the justice of
+the taunt and regretted in poignant misery the change from my old
+conditions. If to live is to have one's reason cast down and trampled
+under foot, one's heart aflame with a besotted passion and one's soul
+racked with remorse, then am I living in good sooth--and I would
+far rather be dead and suffering the milder pains of Purgatory. Men
+differently constituted get used to it, as the eels to skinning. They
+say _"mea culpa,"_ "damn," or _"Kismet,"_ according to their various
+traditions, and go forth comforted to their workaday pursuits. I envy
+them. I enter this exquisite Torture Chamber, and I shriek at the first
+twinge of the thumbscrew and faint at the preliminary embraces of the
+scavenger's daughter.
+
+I envy a fellow like Caesar Borgia. He could murder a friend, seduce
+his widow, and rob the orphans all on a summer's day, and go home
+contentedly to supper; and after a little music he could sleep like a
+man who has thoroughly earned his repose. What manner of creatures are
+other men? They area blank mystery to me; and I am writing--or have been
+writing--a sociological study of the most subtle generation of them that
+has ever existed! I am an empty fool. I know absolutely nothing. I can
+no more account for the peaceful slumbers of that marvellous young man
+of five-and-twenty than I can predicate the priority of the first hen or
+the first egg. I, with never a murder or a seduction or a robbery on my
+conscience, could not sleep last night. I doubt whether I shall sleep
+to-night. I feel as if I shall remain awake through the centuries with a
+rat gnawing my vitals.
+
+
+So unhappy looking a woman as Judith, when I called on her early this
+forenoon, I have never beheld. Gone was the elaborate coquetry of
+yesterday; gone the quiet roguishness of yesteryear; gone was all the
+Judith that I knew, and in her place stood a hollow-eyed woman shaking
+at gates eternally barred.
+
+"I--thought you would come this morning. I had that lingering faith in
+you."
+
+"Your face haunted me all night," I said. "I was bound to come."
+
+"So, this is the end of it all," she remarked, stonily.
+
+"No," said I. "It only marks the transition from a very ill-defined
+relationship to as loyal a friendship as ever man could offer woman."
+
+She gave a quivering little shrug of disgust and turned away.
+
+"Oh, don't talk like that 'I can't offer you bread, but I'll give you a
+nice round polished stone.' Friendship! What has a woman like me got to
+do with friendship?"
+
+"Have I ever given you much more?"
+
+"God knows what you have given me," she cried, bitterly. She stared out
+of the window at the sodden street and murky air. I went to her side and
+touched her wrist.
+
+"For heaven's sake, Judith, tell me what I can do."
+
+"What's done is done," she said, between her teeth. "When did you marry
+her?"
+
+I explained briefly the condition of affairs. She looked at me hard
+and long; then stared out of the window again, and scarce heeded what I
+said.
+
+"It was to set myself right with you on this point," I added, "that I
+have visited you at such an hour."
+
+She remained silent. I took a few turns about the familiar room that was
+filled with the associations of many years. The piano we chose together.
+The copy of the Botticelli Tondo--the crowned Madonna of the Uffizi--I
+gave her in Florence. We had ransacked London together to find the
+Chippendale bookcase; and on its shelves stood books that had formed
+a bond between us, and copies of old reviews containing my fugitive
+contributions. A spurious Japanese dragon in faence, an inartistic
+monstrosity dear to her heart, at which I had often railed, grinned
+forgivingly at me from the mantel-piece. I have never realised how
+closely bound up with my habits was this drawing-room of Judith's. I
+stopped once more by her side.
+
+"I can't leave you altogether, dear," I said, gently. "A bit of myself
+is in this room."
+
+Her bosom shook with unhappy laughter.
+
+"A bit?" Then she turned suddenly on me. "Are you simply dull or sheerly
+cruel?"
+
+"I am dull," said I. "Why do you refuse my friendship? Our relation has
+been scarcely more. It has not touched the deep things in us. We agreed
+at the start that it should not. The words 'I love you' have never
+passed between us. We have been loyal to our compact. Now that love
+has come into my life--and Heaven knows I have striven against it--what
+would you have me do?"
+
+"And what would you have me do?" said Judith, tonelessly.
+
+"Forgive me for breaking off the old, and trust me to make the new
+pleasant to you."
+
+She made no answer, but stood still staring out of the window like a
+woman of stone. Presently she shivered and crossed to the fire, before
+which she crouched on a low chair. I remained by the window, anxious,
+puzzled, oppressed.
+
+"Marcus," she said at last, in a low voice. I obeyed her summons. She
+motioned me to a chair, and without looking at me began to speak.
+
+"You said there was a bit of you in this room. There is everything of
+you. Your whole being is for me in this room. You are with me wherever
+I go. You are the beginning and end of life to me. I love you with a
+passion that is killing me. I am an emotional woman. I made shipwreck
+of myself because I thought I loved a man. But, as God hears me, you are
+the only man I have loved. You came to me like a breath of Heaven while
+I was in Purgatory--and you have been Heaven to me ever since. It has
+been play to you--but to me--"
+
+I fell on my knees beside her. Each of the low half-whispered words was
+a red hot iron. I had received last night the message of her white face
+with incredulity. I had reviewed our past life together and had found
+little warrant in it for that message. It could not come from the
+depths. It was staggeringly impossible. And now the impossible was the
+flaming fact.
+
+I fell on my knees beside her.
+
+"Not play, Judith--"
+
+She put out her hand to check me, and the words died on my lips. What
+could I say?
+
+"For you it was a detached pleasant sentiment, if you like; for me the
+deadliest earnest. I was a fool too. You never said you loved me, but I
+thought you did. You were not as other men, you knew nothing of the
+ways of the world or of women or of passion--you were reserved,
+intellectual--you viewed things in a queer light of your own. I
+felt that the touch of a chain would fret you. I gave you absolute
+freedom--often when I craved for you. I made no demands. I assented to
+your philosophic analysis of the situation--it is your way to moralise
+whimsically on everything, as if you were a disconnected intelligence
+outside the universe--and I paid no attention to it. I used to laugh at
+you--oh, not unkindly, but lovingly, happily, victoriously. Oh, yes,
+I was a fool--what woman in love isn't? I thought I gave you all you
+needed. I was content, secure. I magnified every little demonstration.
+When you touched my ear it was more to me than the embrace of another
+man might have been. I have lived on one kiss of yours for a week. To
+you the kiss was of no more value than a cigarette. I wish," she added
+in a whisper, "I wish I were dead!"
+
+She had spoken in a low, monotonous voice, staring haggardly at the
+fire, while I knelt by her side. I murmured some banal apologia,
+miserably aware that one set of words is as futile as another when one
+has broken a woman's heart.
+
+"You never knew I loved you?" she went on in the same bitter undertone.
+"What kind of woman did you take me for? I have accepted help from you
+to enable me to live in this flat--do you imagine I could have done such
+a thing without loving you? I should have thought it was obvious in a
+thousand ways."
+
+The fire getting low, she took up the scoop for coals. Mechanically I
+relieved her of the thing and fulfilled the familiar task. Neither spoke
+for a long time. She remained there and I went to the window. It had
+begun to rain. A barrel-organ below was playing some horrible music-hall
+air, and every vibrant note was like a hammer on one's nerves. The
+grinder's bedraggled Italian wife perceiving me at the window grinned up
+at me with the national curve of the palm. She had a black eye which the
+cacophonous fiend had probably given her, and she grinned like a happy
+child of nature. Men in my position do not blacken women's eyes; but
+it is only a question of manners. Was I, for that, less of a brute male
+than the scowling beast at the organ?
+
+The sudden sound of a sob made me turn to Judith, who had broken down
+and was crying bitterly, her face hidden in her hands. I bent and
+touched her shoulder.
+
+"Judith--"
+
+She flung her arms around my neck.
+
+"I can't give you up, I can't, I can't, I can't," she cried, wildly.
+
+For the first time in my life I heard a woman give abandoned, incoherent
+utterance to an agony of passion; and it sounded horrible, like the cry
+of an animal wounded to death.
+
+A guilt-stricken creature, scarce daring to meet her eyes, I bade her
+farewell. She had recovered her composure.
+
+"Make me one little promise, Marcus, do me one little favour," she said,
+with quivering lip, and letting her cold hand remain in mine. "Stay
+away from her to-day. I couldn't bear to think of you and her together,
+happy, love-making, after what I've said this morning. I should writhe
+with the shame and the torture of it. Give me your thoughts to-day. Wear
+a little mourning for the dead. It is all I ask of you."
+
+"I should have done what you ask without the asking," I replied.
+
+I kissed her hand, and went out into the street.
+
+I had walked but a few blind steps when I became aware of the presence
+and voice of Pasquale.
+
+"Coming from Mrs. Mainwaring's? I am just on my way there to restore
+her opera-glasses which I ran away with last night. What's her number? I
+forget. I dropped in at Lingfield Terrace to inquire, but found you had
+already started."
+
+"Seventeen," I answered, mechanically.
+
+"You are not looking well, my good friend," said he. "I hope last night
+has not upset you. It's all bluff, you know, on the part of the precious
+Hamdi."
+
+"I dare say it was," I assented.
+
+"And bluff on your part, too. I have never given your imaginative
+faculties sufficient credit. It bowled Hamdi out clean."
+
+"Yes," said I. "It bowled him out clean."
+
+"Serve him right," said Pasquale. "He's the wickedest old thief unhung."
+
+"Quite so," said I, "the wickedest old thief unhung."
+
+Pasquale shook me by the arm.
+
+"Are you a man or a phonograph? What on earth has happened to you?"
+
+I think I envied the laughter in his handsome, dark face, and the
+careless grace of the fellow as he stood beneath the dripping umbrella
+debonair as a young prince, in perfectly fitting blue serge-he wore no
+overcoat; mine was buttoned up to the chin, and immaculate suede gloves.
+
+"What is it?" he repeated, gaily.
+
+"I didn't sleep last night," said I, "my breakfast disagreed with me,
+and it's raining in the most unpleasant manner."
+
+Even while I was speaking he left my side and darted across the road.
+In some astonishment I watched him for a moment from the kerb, and then
+made my way slowly to the other side. I found him in conversation with
+an emaciated, bedraggled woman standing by an enormous bundle, about
+three times her own cubic bulk, which she had rested on the slimy
+pavement. One hand pressed a panting bosom.
+
+"You are going to carry that in your arms all the way to South
+Kensington?" I heard him cry as I approached.
+
+"Yes, sir," said the woman.
+
+"Then you shan't. I'm not going to allow it. Catch hold of this."
+
+The umbrella which he thrust out at her she clutched automatically,
+to prevent it falling about her ears. The veto she received with a
+wonderment which deepened into stupefaction when she saw him lift the
+huge bundle in his arms and stalk away with it down the street. She
+turned a scared face at me.
+
+"It's washing," she said.
+
+Pasquale paused, looked round and motioned her onward. She followed
+without a word, holding the trim silver mounted umbrella, and I
+mechanically brought up the rear. It had all happened so quickly that I
+too was confused. The scanty populace in the rain-filled street stared
+and gaped. A shambling fellow in corduroys bawled an obscene jest.
+Pasquale put down his bundle.
+
+"Do you want to be sent to hell by lightning?" he asked, with the evil
+snarl of the lips.
+
+"No," said the man, sheering off.
+
+"I'm glad," remarked Pasquale, picking up the bundle. And we resumed our
+progress.
+
+Luckily a four-wheeled cab overtook us. Pasquale stopped it, squeezed
+the bundle inside, and held the door open for the faltering and
+bewildered woman, as if she had been the authentic duchessa at Ealing.
+
+"You were saying, Ordeyne," he observed, as the cabman drove off with
+three shillings and his incoherent fare, "you were saying that your
+breakfast disagreed with you."
+
+
+In spite of my heaviness of heart, I laughed and loved the man. There
+was something fantastically chivalrous in the action; something superb
+in the contempt of convention; something whimsical, adventurous,
+unexpected; and something divine in the wrathful pity; and something
+irresistible in his impudent apostrophe to myself. It has been the one
+flash of comfort during this long and desolate day.
+
+
+I have kept my promise to Judith. I have lunched and dined at the club,
+and in the library of the club I have tried to while away the hours.
+I intended this morning to make the necessary arrangements for the
+marriage. After my interview with Judith I had not the heart. I put it
+off till to-morrow. I have observed the day as a day of mourning. I have
+worn sackcloth and ashes. I have done such penance as I could for the
+grievous fault I have committed. Carlotta is in bed and asleep. She went
+early, says Antoinette, having a bad headache. No wonder, poor child.
+
+A few moments ago I was tempted to peep into her room and satisfy myself
+that she was not ailing. A headache is the common precursor to many
+maladies. But I remembered my promise and refrained. The cooing notes of
+the voice would have called me to her side, and her arms would have been
+around my neck and I should have forgotten Judith.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+October 28th.
+
+I rose late this morning. When I went down to breakfast I found that
+Carlotta had already gone for her music lesson.
+
+I drove at once to the Temple to see my lawyers and to make arrangements
+for a marriage by special license.
+
+I returned at one o'clock. Stenson met me in the hall.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Sir Marcus, but Mademoiselle hasn't come back yet."
+
+I waited an uneasy hour. Such a lengthy absence from home was
+unprecedented. At two o'clock I went round to Herr Stuer in the Avenue
+Road--a five minutes' walk.
+
+He entered the sitting-room into which I had been ushered, wiping his
+lips.
+
+"I am sorry to disturb you, Herr Stuer," said I, "but will you kindly
+tell me when Miss Carlotta left you, this morning?"
+
+"Miss Carlotta came not at all this morning," he replied.
+
+"But it was her regular day?"
+
+"At ten o'clock. She did not come. At eleven I have another pupil. She
+has not before missed one lesson."
+
+I flew back home, in an agony of hope that her laughing face would meet
+me there and dispel a dread that chilled me like an icy wind.
+
+There was no Carlotta.
+
+There has been no Carlotta all this awful day.
+
+There will never be a Carlotta again.
+
+I drove to the police station.
+
+"What do you think has happened?" asked the Inspector.
+
+It was only too horribly obvious. Any man but myself would have kept her
+under lock and key and established a guard round the house. Any man but
+myself would have never let her out of his sight until he had married
+her, until he had tracked Hamdi and his myrmidons back to Alexandretta.
+
+"Abduction has happened," I cried wildly. "Between Lingfield Terrace and
+Avenue Road she has been caught, thrust into a closed carriage, gagged
+and carried God knows where by the wiliest old thief in Asia. He is the
+Prefect of Police in Aleppo. His name is Hamdi Effendi and he is staying
+at the Hotel Metropole."
+
+The Inspector questioned me. Heaven knows how I answered. I saw the
+scene. The waiting carriage. The unfrequented bit of road. My heart's
+darling, her face a radiant flower in the grey morning, tripping
+lightheartedly along. The sudden dash, the struggle, the swiftly closed
+door. It was a matter of a few seconds. My brain grew dizzy with the
+vision.
+
+"You say that he threatened to abduct her?" asked the Inspector.
+
+"Yes," said I, "and a friend of mine promised to kill him. Heaven grant
+he keep his promise!"
+
+"Be careful, Sir Marcus," smiled the Inspector. "Or if there is a murder
+committed you will be an accessory before the fact."
+
+I intimated my disregard of the contingency. What did it matter? Nothing
+in the world mattered save the recovery of the light and meaning of my
+existence. My friend's name? Sebastian Pasquale, He lived near by in the
+St. John's Wood Road.
+
+"The best thing you can do, Sir Marcus," said the Inspector, "is to get
+hold of Mr. Pasquale and take him with you to Scotland Yard. Perhaps
+two heads will be better than one. In the meanwhile we shall
+communicate with headquarters and make the necessary inquiries in the
+neighbourhood."
+
+I drove to St. John's Wood Road, and learned to my dismay that Pasquale
+had given up his rooms there a week ago. All his letters were addressed
+to his club in Piccadilly. I drove thither. How has mankind contented
+itself for these thousands of years with a horse as its chief means of
+locomotion? Oh, the exasperation I suffered behind that magnified snail!
+I dashed into the club. Mr. Pasquale had not been there all day. No, he
+was not staying there. It was against the rules to give members' private
+addresses.
+
+"But it's a matter of life and death!" I cried.
+
+"To tell you the truth, sir," said the hall porter, "Mr. Pasquale's only
+permanent address is his banker's, and we really don't know where he is
+staying at present."
+
+I wrote a hurried line:
+
+"Hamdi has abducted Carlotta. I am half crazed. As you love me give me
+your help. Oh, God! man, why aren't you here?"
+
+I left it with the porter, and crawled to Scotland Yard. The cabman at
+my invectives against his sauntering beast waxed indignant; it was a
+three-quarter blood mare and one of the fastest trotters in London.
+
+"She passes everything," said he.
+
+"It is because everything is standing still or going backward or turned
+upside down," said I.
+
+No doubt he thought me mad. Mad as a dingo dog. The thought of the
+words, the summer and the sun sent a spasm of hunger through my heart.
+Then I murmured to myself: "'Save my soul from hell and my darling from
+the power of the dog.' Which dog? Not the dingo dog." I verily believe
+my brain worked wrong to-day.
+
+Great Scotland Yard at last. I went through passages. I found myself in
+a nondescript room where a courteous official seated at a desk held me
+on the rack for half an hour. I had to describe Carlotta: not in the
+imagery wherein only one could create an impression of her sweetness,
+but in the objective terms of the police report. What was she wearing? A
+hat, and jacket, a skirt, shoes; of course she wore gloves; possibly she
+carried a muff. Impatient of such commonplace details, I described her
+fully. But the glory of her bronze hair, her great dark brown eyes,
+the quivering sensitiveness of her lips; her intoxicating compound of
+Botticelli and the Venusberg; the dove-notes of her voice; all was a
+matter of boredom to Scotland Yard. They clamoured for the colour of
+her feathers and the material of which her dress was made; her height in
+vulgar figures and the sizes of her gloves and shoes.
+
+"How on earth can I tell you?" I cried in desperation.
+
+"Perhaps one of your servants can give the necessary information,"
+replied the urbane official. If I had lost an umbrella he could not have
+viewed my plight with more inhuman blandness!
+
+A miracle happened. As I was writing a summons to Stenson to obtain
+these details from Antoinette and attend at once, a policeman entered
+and I learned that my confidential man was at the door. My heart
+leapt within me. He had tracked me hither and had come to tell me that
+Carlotta was safe. But the first glance at his face killed the wild
+hope. He had tracked me hither, it is true; but only apologetically to
+offer what information might be useful. "It is a very great liberty, Sir
+Marcus, and I will retire at once if I have overstepped my duties, but
+there are important details, sir, in catastrophes of this nature with
+which my experience has taught me only servants can be acquainted."
+
+There must be a book of ten thousand pages entitled "The Perfect Valet,"
+dealing with every contingency of domestic life which this admirable
+fellow has by heart. He uttered his Ciceronian sentence with the gravity
+of a pasteboard figure in the toy theatre of one's childhood.
+
+"Can you describe the young lady's dress?" asked the official.
+
+"I have made it my business," said Stenson, "to obtain accurate
+information as to every detail of Mademoiselle Carlotta's attire when
+she left the house this morning."
+
+I faded into insignificance. Stenson was a man after the Inspector's
+heart. A few eager questions brought the desired result. A dark red
+toque with a grey bird's wing; a wine-coloured zouave jacket and skirt,
+black braided; a dark blue bodice; a plain gold brooch (the first
+trinket I had given her--the occasion of her first clasp of arms around
+my neck) fastening her collar; a silver fox necklet and muff; patent
+leather shoes and brown suede gloves.
+
+"Any special mark or characteristics?"
+
+"A white scar above the left temple," said Stenson.
+
+Lord have mercy! The man has lived day by day for five months with
+Carlotta's magical beauty, and all he has noticed as characteristic is
+the little white scar--she fell on marble steps as a child--the only
+flaw, if flaw can be in a thing so imperceptible, in her perfect
+loveliness.
+
+"Mademoiselle has also a tiny mole behind her right ear," said Stenson.
+
+The Inspector's conception of Stenson expanded into an apotheosis. He
+paid him deference. His pen wrote greedily every syllable the inspired
+creature uttered. When the fount of inspiration ran dry, Stenson turned
+to me with his imperturbable, profoundly respectful air.
+
+"Shall I return home, Sir Marcus, or have you any further need of my
+service?"
+
+I bade him go home. He withdrew. The Inspector smiled cheerfully.
+"Now we can get along," said he. "It's a pity Mr.--Mr. Pasquale" (he
+consulted his notes) "is out of touch with us for the moment. He might
+have given us great assistance."
+
+He rose from his chair. "I think we shall very soon trace the
+young lady. An accurate personal description like this, you see, is
+invaluable."
+
+He handed me the printed form which he had filled in. In spite of my
+misery I almost laughed at the fatuity of the man in thinking that those
+mere unimaginative statistics applicable to five hundred thousand young
+females in London, could in any way express Carlotta.
+
+"This is all very well," said I; "but the first thing to do is to lay
+that Turkish devil by the heels."
+
+"You can count on our making the most prompt and thorough
+investigation," said he.
+
+"And in the mean time what can I do?"
+
+"Your best course, Sir Marcus," he answered, "is to go home and leave
+things in our hands. As soon as ever we have the slightest clue, we
+shall communicate with you."
+
+He bowed me out politely. In a few moments I found myself in the
+greyness of the autumn afternoon wandering on the Thames Embankment like
+a lost soul on the banks of Phlegethon. It seemed as if I had never seen
+the sun, should never see the sun again. I was drifting sans purpose
+into eternity.
+
+I passed by some railings. A colossal figure looming through the misty
+air struck me with a sense of familiarity. It was the statue of Sir
+Bartle Frere, and these were the gardens beneath the terrace of the
+National Liberal Club. It was here that I had first met her. The
+dripping trees seemed to hold the echo of the words spoken when their
+leaves were green: "Will you please to tell me what I shall do?" I
+strained my eyes to see the bench on which I had sat, and my eyes
+tricked me into translating a blurr at the end of the seat into the
+ghostly form of Carlotta. My misery overwhelmed me; and through my
+misery shot a swift pang of remorse at having treated her harshly on
+that sweet and memorable afternoon in May.
+
+I turned the corner at Whitehall Place and looked down the desolate
+gardens. The benches were empty, the trees were bare, "and no birds
+sang." I crossed the road.
+
+The Hotel Metropole. The great doors stood invitingly open, and from the
+pavement one could see the warmth and colour of the vestibule. Here was
+staying the Arch-Devil who had robbed me of my life. I stood for a moment
+under the portico shaking with rage. I must have lost consciousness for
+a few seconds for I do not remember entering or mounting the stairs.
+I found myself at the bureau asking for Hamdi Effendi. No, he had not
+left. They thought he was in the hotel. A page despatched in search
+of him departed with my card, bawling a number. I hate these big
+caravanserais where one is a mere number, as in a gaol. "Would to heaven
+it were a gaol," I muttered to myself, "and this were the number of
+Hamdi Effendi!"
+
+A lean man rose from a chair and, holding out his hand, effusively
+saluted me by name. I stared at him. He recalled our acquaintance at
+Etretat. I fished him up from the deeps of a previous incarnation and
+vaguely remembered him as a young American floral decorator who used to
+preach to me the eternal doctrine of hustle. I shook hands with him and
+hoped that he was well.
+
+"Going very strong. Never stronger. Never so well as when I'm full up
+with work. But you don't hurry around enough in this dear, sleepy old
+country. Men lunch. In New York all the lunch one has time for is to
+swallow a plasmon lozenge in a street-car."
+
+His high pitched voice shrieked bombastic platitude into my ears for an
+illimitable time. I answered occasionally with the fringe of my mind.
+Could my agonised state of being have remained unperceived by any human
+creature save this young, hustling, dollar-centred New York floral
+decorator?
+
+"Since we met, guess how many times I've crossed the Atlantic. Four
+times!"
+
+Long-suffering Atlantic!
+
+"And about yourself. Still going _piano, piano_ with books and things?"
+
+"Yes, books and things," I echud.
+
+The page came up and announced Hamdi's intention of immediate
+appearance.
+
+"And how is that charming young lady, your ward, Miss Carlotta?"
+continued my tormentor.
+
+"Yes," I answered hurriedly. "A charming young lady. You used to give
+her sweets. Have you noticed that a fondness for sugar plums induces an
+equanimity of character? It also spoils the teeth. That is why the front
+teeth of all American women are so bad."
+
+I must be endowed with the low cunning of the fox, who, I am told, by
+a swift turn puts his pursuers off the scent. The learned term the
+rhetorical device an _ignoratio elenchi_. My young friend's patriotism
+rose in furious defence of his countrywomen's beauty. I looked round the
+luxuriously furnished vestibule, wondering from which of the many
+doors the object of my hatred would emerge, and my young friend's talk
+continued to ruffle the fringe of my mind.
+
+"I'm afraid you're expecting some one rather badly," he remarked with
+piercing perceptiveness.
+
+"A dull acquaintance," said I. "I shall be sorry when his arrival puts
+an end to our engaging conversation."
+
+Then the lift door opened and Hamdi stepped out like the Devil in an
+Alhambra ballet.
+
+He looked at my card and looked at me. He bowed politely.
+
+"I did not know whom I should have the pleasure of seeing," said he in
+his execrable French. "In what way can I be of service to Sir Marcus
+Ordeyne?"
+
+"What have you done with Carlotta?" I asked, glaring at him.
+
+His ignoble small-pox pitted face assumed an expression of bland
+inquiry.
+
+"Carlotta?"
+
+"Yes," said I. "Where have you taken her to?"
+
+"Explain yourself, Monsieur," said Hamdi. "Do I understand that Lady
+Ordeyne has disappeared?"
+
+"Tell me what you have done with her."
+
+His crafty features grew satanic; his long fleshy nose squirmed like the
+proboscis of one of Orcagna's fiends.
+
+"Really, Monsieur," said he, with a hideous leer--oh, words are impotent
+to express the ugliness of that face! "Really, Monsieur, supposing I
+had stolen Miladi, you would be the last person I should inform of her
+whereabouts. You are simple, Monsieur. I had always heard that England
+was a country of arcadian innocence, so unlike my own black, wicked
+country, and now--" he shrugged his shoulders blandly, "_j'en suis
+convaincu_."
+
+"You may jeer, Hamdi Effendi," said I in a white passion of anger. "But
+the English police you will not find so arcadian."
+
+"Ah, so you have been to the police?" said the suave villain. "You
+have gone to Scotland--Scotland Place Scotland--n'importe. They are
+investigating the affair? I thank you for the friendly warning."
+
+"Warning!" I cried, choked with indignation. He held up a soft, fat
+palm.
+
+"Ah--it is not a warning? Then, Monsieur, I am afraid you have committed
+an indiscretion which your friends in Scotland Place will not pardon
+you. You would not make a good police agent. I am of the profession, so
+I know."
+
+I advanced a step. He recoiled, casting a quick look backward at the
+lift just then standing idle with open doors.
+
+"Hamdi Effendi," I cried, "by the living God, if you do not restore me
+my wife--"
+
+But then I stopped short. Hamdi had stepped quickly backward into the
+lift, and given a sign to the attendant. The door slammed and all I
+could do was to shake my fist at Hamdi's boots as they disappeared
+upwards.
+
+I remember once in Italy seeing a cat playing with a partially stunned
+bat which, flying low, she had brought to the ground. She crouched,
+patted it, made it move a little, patted it again and retired on her
+haunches preparing for a spring. Suddenly the bat shot vertically into
+the air.
+
+I stared at the ascending lift with the cat's expression of impotent
+dismay and stupefaction. It was inconceivably grotesque. It brought into
+my tragedy an element of infernal farce. I became conscious of peals
+of laughter, and looking round beheld the American doubled up in a
+saddlebag chair. I fled from the vestibule of the hotel clothed from
+head to foot in derision.
+
+
+I am at home, sitting at my work-table, walking restlessly about the
+room, stepping out into the raw air on the balcony and looking for
+a sign down the dark and silent road. I curse myself for my folly in
+entering the Hotel Metropole. The damned Turk held me in the palm of his
+hand. He made mock of me to his heart's content.... And Carlotta is in
+his power. I grow white with terror when I think of _her_ terror. She
+is somewhere, locked up in a room, in this great city. My God! Where can
+she be?
+
+The police must find her. London is not mediaeval Italy for women to be
+gagged and carried off to inaccessible strongholds in defiance of laws
+and government. I repeat to myself that she must come back, that the
+sober working of English institutions will restore her to my arms, that
+my agony is a matter of a day or two at most, that the special license
+obtained this morning and now lying before me is not the document of
+irony it seems, and that in a week's time we shall look back on this
+nightmare of a day with a smile, and look forward to the future with
+laughter in our hearts.
+
+But to-night I am very lonely. "Loneliness," says Epictetus, "is a
+certain condition of the helpless man." And I am helpless. All my aid
+lies in the learning in those books; and all the learning in all
+those books on all sides from floor to ceiling cannot render me one
+infinitesimal grain of practical assistance. If only Pasquale, man of
+action, swift intelligence, were here! I can only trust to the trained
+methods of the unimaginative machine who has set out to trace Carlotta
+by means of the scar on her forehead and the mole behind her ear. And
+meanwhile I am very lonely. My sole friend, to whom I could have turned,
+Mrs. McMurray, is still at Bude. She is to have a child, I understand,
+in the near future, and will stay in Cornwall till the confinement is
+over. Her husband, even were he not amid the midnight stress of his
+newspaper office, I should shrink from seeking. He is a Niagara of a
+man. Judith--I can go to her no more. And though Antoinette has wept
+her heart out all day long, poor soul, and Stenson has conveyed by
+his manner his respectful sympathy, I cannot take counsel of my own
+servants. I have gathered into my arms the one-eyed cat, and buried my
+face in his fur--where Carlotta's face has been buried. "That's the way
+I should like to be kissed!" Oh, my dear, my dear, were you here now,
+that is the way I should kiss you!
+
+I have gone upstairs and wandered about her room. Antoinette has
+prepared it for her reception to-night, as usual. The corner of the
+bedclothes is turned down, and her night-dress, a gossamer thing with
+cherry ribbons, laid out across the bed. At the foot lie the familiar
+red slippers with the audacious heels; her dressing-gown is thrown in
+readiness over the back of a chair; even the brass hot water can stands
+in the basin--and it is still hot. And I know that the foolish woman is
+wide-awake overhead waiting for her darling. I kissed the pillow still
+fragrant of her where her head rested last night, and I went downstairs
+with a lump in my throat.
+
+Again I sit at my work-table and, to save myself from going mad with
+suspense, jot down in my diary* the things that have happened. Put in
+bald words they scarcely seem credible.
+
+
+     * It will be borne in mind that I am writing these actual
+     pages, afterwards, at Verona, amplifying the rough notes in
+     my diary. M. O.
+
+
+A sudden clattering, nerve-shaking, strident peal at the front-door
+bell.
+
+I flew down the stairs. It was news of Carlotta. It was Carlotta herself
+brought back to me. My heart swelled with joy as if it would burst. I
+knew that as I opened the door Carlotta would fall laughing, weeping,
+sobbing into my arms.
+
+I opened the door. It was only a police officer in plain clothes.
+
+"Sir Marcus Ordeyne?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"We have traced the young lady all right. She left London by the
+two-twenty Continental express from Victoria with Mr. Sebastian
+Pasquale."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+November 1st.
+
+Five days ago the blow fell, and I am only now recovering; only now
+awakening to the horrible pain of it.
+
+I have gone about like a man in a dream. Blurred visages of men with
+far-away voices have saluted me at the club. Innumerable lines of print
+which my eyes have scanned have been destitute of meaning. I have forced
+myself to the mechanical task of copying piles of rough notes for my
+History; I have been able to bring thereto not an atom of intelligence;
+popes, princes, painters are a category of disassociated names, less
+evocative of ideas than the columns in the Post Office London Directory.
+I have stared stupidly into the fire or at the dripping branches of the
+trees opposite my windows. I have walked the streets in dull misery. I
+have sought solace in the Zoological Gardens.
+
+There is a kindly brown bear who pleads humanly for buns, and her I have
+fed into a sort of friendship. I stand vacantly in front of the cage
+finding in the beast an odd companionable sympathy. She turns her head
+on one side, regards me with melting brown eyes, and squatting on her
+haunches thrusts her paws beseechingly through the bars. Just so did
+Carlotta beseech and plead. I have bemused myself with gnostic and
+metempsychosic speculations. Carlotta as an ordinary human being with
+an immortal soul did not exist, and what I had known and loved was but
+a simulacrum of female form containing an elemental spirit doomed to
+be ever seeking a fresh habitat. It was but the lingering ghost of the
+humanised shell of air that was seen at Victoria station. The fateful
+spirit, untrammelled by the conventions of men and actuated by destinies
+unintelligible to mortal mind, had informed the carcass of this
+little brown bear, which looks at me so strangely, so coaxingly, with
+Carlotta's eyes and Carlotta's gestures. I asked her yesterday to come
+back to me. I said that the house was empty; that the rooms ached for
+the want of her. I pleaded so passionately and the eyes before me so
+melted that I thought her heart was touched. But in the midst of it all
+another visitor came up and the creature uttered a whining plaint and
+put out her paw for buns--by which token I felt indeed that it was
+Carlotta.
+
+
+I have accepted the blow silently. As yet I have told no one. I have
+made no inquiries. When a man is betrayed by his best friend and
+deserted by the woman he loves, time and solitude are the only
+comforters. Besides, to whom should I go for comfort? I have lived too
+remote from my kind, and my kind heeds me not.
+
+Not a line has reached me from Carlotta. She has gone out of my life as
+lightly and as remorselessly as she went out of Hamdi Effendi's; as she
+went, for aught she knew, out of that of the unhappy boy who lured her
+from Alexandretta. If she heard I was dead, I wonder whether she would
+say: "I am so glad!"
+
+Whether the flight was planned between them, or whether Pasquale waylaid
+her on her way to the Avenue Road and then and there proposed that she
+should accompany him, I do not know. It matters very little. She is
+gone. That is the one awful fact that signifies. No explanations, pleas
+for forgiveness could make me suffer less. Were she different I might
+find it in my heart to hate her. This I cannot do. How can one hate
+a thing devoid of heart and soul? But one can love it--God knows how
+blindly. So I have locked the door of Carlotta's room and the key is in
+my possession. It shall not be touched. It shall remain just as she left
+it--and I shall mourn for her as for one dead.
+
+For Pasquale--if I were of his own reversionary type, I should follow
+him half across Europe till we met, and then one of us would kill the
+other. In one respect he resembles Carlotta. He is destitute of the
+moral sense. How else to solve the enigma? How else to reconcile his
+flamboyant chivalry towards the consumptive washer-woman with the black
+treachery towards me, in which even at that very moment his mind must
+have been steeped? I knew that he had betrayed many, that where women
+were concerned no considerations of honour or friendship had stood
+between him and his desires; but I believed--for what reason save my own
+egregious vanity, I know not--that for me he had a peculiar regard.
+I believed that it was an idiosyncrasy of this wolf to look upon my
+sheepfold as sacred from his depredations. I was ashamed of any doubts
+that crossed my mind as to his loyalty, and did not hesitate to thrust
+my lamb between his jaws. And while he was giving the lie direct to my
+faith, I, poor fool, in my despair was seeking madly for his aid in the
+deliverance of my darling from the power of the dog.
+
+I have felt I owe Hamdi Effendi an apology; for it is well that, in the
+midst of this buffoon tragedy I find myself playing, I should observe
+occasionally the decencies of conduct. But, on the other hand, was he
+not amply repaid for moral injury by the pure joy he must have felt
+while torturing me with his banter? For all the deeper suffering, I
+am conscious of writhing under lacerated vanity when I think of that
+grotesque and humiliating blunder in the Hotel Metropole.
+
+
+November 2d.
+
+I have received news of the death of old Simon McQuhatty. In my
+few lucid moments of late I had been thinking of seeking his kindly
+presence. Now Gossip Death has taken him out across the moor. Now, dear
+old pagan, he is
+
+            "Rolled round in earth's diurnal course
+               With rocks and stones and trees."
+
+
+November 3d.
+
+Antoinette came up this morning with a large cardboard box addressed to
+Carlotta. The messenger who brought it was waiting downstairs.
+
+"I came to Monsieur to know whether I should send it back," said
+Antoinette, on the verge of tears.
+
+"No," said I, "leave it here."
+
+From the furrier's label, I saw that the box contained some furs I had
+ordered for Carlotta a fortnight ago--she shivered so, poor child, in
+this wintry climate.
+
+"But, Monsieur," began Antoinette, "the poor angel--"
+
+"May want it in heaven," said I.
+
+The good woman stared.
+
+"We'll be like the ancient Egyptians, Antoinette," I explained, "who
+placed food and wine and raiment and costly offerings in the tombs of
+the departed, so that their shades could come and enjoy them for all
+eternity. We'll have to make believe, Antoinette, that this is a
+tomb, for one can't rear a pyramid in London, though it is a desert
+sufficiently vast; and the little second floor room is the inner
+sanctuary where the body lies in silence embalmed with sweet spices and
+swathed in endless bands of linen."
+
+"But Mademoiselle is not dead?" cried Antoinette, with a shiver. "How
+can Monsieur talk of such things? It makes me fear, the way Monsieur
+speaks."
+
+"It makes me fear, too, Antoinette," said I, gravely.
+
+When she had gone I took the box of furs upstairs and laid it unopened
+on Carlotta's bed and came away, relocking the door behind me.
+
+
+November 9th.
+
+I have formed a great resolution. I have devoted the week to the
+envisagement of things, and while I lay awake last night the solution
+came to me as something final and irrevocable. Mistrusting the counsels
+of the night, when the brain is unduly excited by nervous insomnia, I
+have applied the test of a day's cold reason.
+
+I have broken a woman's heart. I have spurned the passionate love of a
+woman who has been near and dear to me; a woman of great nature; a woman
+of subtle brain who has been my chosen companion, my equal partner in
+any intellectual path I chose to tread; a sensitive lady, with all the
+graciousness of soul that term conveys. Heaven knows what a woman can
+see in me to love. I look in the glass at my bony, hawk-like face, on
+which the stamp of futility seems eternally set, and I am seized with a
+prodigious wonder; but the fact remains that to me unlovely and unworthy
+has been given that thing without price, a woman's love. I remember
+Pasquale laughing merrily at this valuation. He said the love of women
+was as cheap as dirt, and the only use for it was to make mud pies. The
+damned cynical villain! "Always reflect," said he, on another occasion,
+"that although a man may be as ugly as sin, the probability is that he
+is just as pleasant. Beauties will find hitherto unsuspected amenities
+in Beasts till the end of time." But I am such a poor and sorry Beast,
+without the chance of a transformation; a commonplace Beast, dull and
+didactic; a besotted, purblind, despicable Beast! Yet Judith loved me.
+Instead of thanking on my knees the high gods for the boon conferred, I
+rejected it, and went mad for craving of the infinitely lesser glory of
+Carlotta's baby lips and gold-bronze hair. I have broken Judith's heart.
+I will expiate the crime I have committed.
+
+Expiate the crime! The realisation of the meaning of the words covers
+me with shame. As if what I propose will be a sorry penance! That is the
+danger of a man thinking, as I have always done, in metaphors. It has
+given me my loose, indirect views of life, of myself, of those around
+me. If I had advice to offer to a young man, I should say: "Learn to
+think straight." Expiate, indeed! I will go to her and make confession.
+I will tell her that awful loneliness is crushing my soul. I will kneel
+before her and beseech her of her great woman's goodness to give me her
+love again, and to be my helpmeet and my companion who will be cherished
+with all that there is of loyalty in me to her life's end. She will pity
+me a little, for I have suffered, and I will pity her tenderly, in deep
+sincerity, and our life together will be based on that all-understanding
+which signifies all-forgiveness. And it shall be a real life together.
+I used to smile, in a superior way, at her dread of solitude. Heaven
+forgive me. I did not then know its terrors. It comforted for the first
+few benumbed days, but now it is gathering around me like a mysterious
+and appalling force. I crave the human presence in my home. I need the
+woman's presence in my heart.
+
+We shall live together then as man and wife, in defiance of the world.
+Let the moralists blame us. We shall not care. It will make little
+social difference to Judith, and as for myself, have I not already
+inflicted public outrage on society? does not my Aunt Jessica regard me
+as a wringer of the public conscience, and does not my Cousin Rosalie
+mention me with a shudder of horror in her tepid prayers? If I really
+give them cause for reprobation they will be neither wiser, nor better,
+nor sorrier. And if the baronetcy flickers out in unseemly odour, I
+for one shall know that the odour is sweeter than that wherein it was
+lighted, when my great-grandfather earned the radiance by services
+rendered at Brighton to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent. This is
+the only way in which I can make Judith reparation, the only way in
+which I can find comfort. We shall travel. Italy, beloved of Judith, is
+calling me. Probably Florence will be our settled home. I shall give
+up this house of madness. The clean sweet love of Judith will purify my
+heart of this poisonous passion, and in the end there will be peace.
+
+
+I have taken Carlotta's photograph from its frame and cast it into the
+fire, thus burning her for her witchcraft. I watched the flames leap and
+curl. The last look she gave me before they licked away her face had its
+infinite allurement, its devilish sorcery so intensified in the fierce
+yellow light, that the yearning for her clutched me by the throat and
+shook me through all my being.
+
+
+But it is over now. I have done with Carlotta. If she thinks I am going
+to sit and let the wind which comes over Primrose Hill drive me mad
+like Gastibelza, _l'homme a la carabine_, in Victor Hugo's poem, she is
+vastly mistaken. From this hour henceforth I swear she is nothing to me;
+I will eat and sleep and laugh as if she had never existed. Polyphemus,
+curled up in Carlotta's old place on the sofa, regards me with his
+sardonic eye. He is an evil, incredulous, mocking beast, who a few
+centuries ago would have been burned with his late mistress.
+
+I am sane and happier now that I have come to my irrevocable
+determination.
+
+To-morrow I go to Judith.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+November 10th.
+
+
+I had to ring twice before Judith's servant opened the flat door.
+
+"Mrs. Mainwaring is engaged just at present, Sir Marcus."
+
+"Ask her if I can come in and wait, as I have something of importance to
+say to her."
+
+She left me standing in the passage, a thing that had never before
+occurred to me in Judith's establishment, and presently returned with
+her answer. Would I mind waiting in the dining-room? I entered. The
+table was littered with sheets of her statistical work and odd bits of
+silk' and lining. A type-writer stood at one end and a sewing-machine at
+the other. On the writing-desk by the window, in the midst of a mass of
+letters and account-books, rested a large bowl filled with magnificent
+blooms of white and yellow chrysanthemums. A volume of Dante lay
+open face downwards on the corner. It did my heart good to see this
+untidiness, so characteristic of Judith, so familiar, so intimate. She
+had taken her trouble bravely, I reflected. The ordinary daily task had
+not been left undone. Through all she had preserved her valiant sanity.
+I felt rebuked for my own loss of self-control.
+
+I was about to turn away from the litter of the desk, when my eye caught
+sight of an envelope bearing a French stamp and addressed in Pasquale's
+unmistakable handwriting. As there seemed to be a letter inside, I did
+not take it up to examine it more closely. The glance was enough to
+assure me that it came from Pasquale. Why should he be corresponding
+with Judith? I walked away puzzled. Was it a justification, a
+confession, a plea to her as my friend to obtain my forgiveness?
+If there is one thing more irritating than another it is to
+light accidentally upon a mystery affecting oneself in a friend's
+correspondence. One can no more probe deeply into it than one can steal
+the friend's spoons. It seems an indiscretion to have noticed it, an
+unpardonable impertinence to subject it to conjecture. In spite of my
+abhorring the impulse of curiosity, the sweeping, flaunting, swaggering
+handwriting of Pasquale worried me.
+
+Judith came in, looking much as she had done on the occasion of my last
+visit, worn and anxious, with a strange expression in her eyes.
+
+"I am sorry to have kept you waiting," she said, extending a lifeless
+hand.
+
+I raised it to my lips.
+
+"I would have gladly waited all day to see you, Judith," I said.
+
+"Really?"
+
+She laughed in an odd way.
+
+"And idle speech from me to you at the present time would be an
+outrage," I answered. "I have passed through much since I saw you last."
+
+"So have I," said Judith. "More than you imagine. Well," she continued
+as I bowed my head accepting the rebuke, "what have you got so important
+to tell me?"
+
+"Much," said I. "In the first place you must be aware of what has
+happened, for I can't help seeing there a letter from Pasquale."
+
+She glanced swiftly at the desk and back again at me.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "he is in Paris."
+
+I was amazed at her nonchalance.
+
+"Has he told you nothing?"
+
+"Perhaps Sir Marcus Ordeyne would like to see his letter," she said,
+ironically.
+
+"You know perfectly well that I would not read it," said I.
+
+Judith laughed again, and rolled her handkerchief into a little ball
+between her nervous fingers.
+
+"Forgive me," she said. "I like to see the _grand seigneur_ in you now
+and then. It puts me in mind of happier days. But about Pasquale--the
+only thing he tells me is that he is not able to execute a commission
+for me. He told me on the night he drove me home that he was going to
+Paris, and I asked him to get me some cosmetic. Carmine Badouin, if you
+want to know. I have got to rouge now before I am fit to be seen in the
+street. I am quite frank about it."
+
+"Then you know nothing of Carlotta?" I cried.
+
+"Carlotta?"
+
+"She eloped with that double-dyed, damned, infernal villain, the day
+after I saw you."
+
+Judith looked at me for a moment, then closed her eyes and turned her
+head away, resting her hand on the table. My indignation waxed hot
+against the scoundrel. How dare he write casual letters to Judith about
+Carmine Badouin with his treachery on his conscience? I know the terms
+of flippant grace in which the knave couched this precious epistle. And
+I could see Carlotta reading over his shoulder and clapping her hands
+and cooing: "Oh, that is so funny!"
+
+When I had told Judith the outlines of the story, pacing up and down the
+little room while she remained motionless by the table, she put out her
+hand to me, and in a low voice, and with still averted eyes said that
+she was sorry, deeply sorry. Her tone rang so true and loyal that my
+heart throbbed with quick appreciation of her high nature, and I wrung
+her outstretched hand.
+
+"God bless you, Judith," I cried, fervently. "Bless you for your sweet
+sympathy. Be sorry for me only as for a man who has passed through the
+horrors of delirium. But for me as I stand before you now, I ask you not
+to be sorry. I have come to bring you, if I can, dear Judith, a measure
+of gladness, perhaps of happiness."
+
+She wrenched herself free from me, and a terrified cry of "Marcus!"
+checked my dithyrambic appeal. She shrank away so that a great corner of
+the dining-table separated us, and she stared at me as though my words
+hats been the affrighting utterance of a madman.
+
+"Marcus! What do you mean?" she cried, with an unnatural shrillness in
+her voice.
+
+"I mean," said I, "I mean--I mean that 'crushed by three days' pressure,
+my three days' love lies slain.' Time has withered him at the root. I
+have buried him deep in unconsecrated ground, like a vampire, with a
+stake through his heart. And I have come back to you, Judith, humbly
+to crave your forgiveness and your love--to tell you I have changed,
+dear--to offer you all I have in the world if you will but take it--to
+give you my life, my daily, hourly devotion. My God!" I cried, "don't
+you believe me?"
+
+She still stared at me in a frightened way, leaning heavier on the
+table. Her lips twitched before they could frame the words,
+
+"Yes, I believe you. You have never lied to me."
+
+"Then in the name of love and heaven," I cried, "why do you look at me
+like that?"
+
+She trembled, evidently suppressing something with intense effort,
+whether bitter laughter, indignation or a passionate outburst I could
+not tell.
+
+"You ask why?" she said, unsteadily. "Because you seem like the angel of
+the flaming vengeance."
+
+At these astounding words it was my turn to look amazed.
+
+"Vengeance?" I echud. "What wrong have you done me or any living
+creature? Come, my dear," and I moved nearer by seating myself on the
+corner of the table, close to the type-writer, and leaning towards her,
+"let us look at this thing soberly. If ever a man had need of woman I
+have need of you. I can live alone no longer. We must share one home
+henceforth together. We can snap our fingers at the world, you and I.
+If you have anything to say against the proposal, let us discuss it
+calmly."
+
+Judith's slender figure vibrated like a cord strung to breaking-point.
+Her voice vibrated.
+
+"Yes, let us discuss it calmly. But not here. The sight of you
+sitting in the middle of my life, between the sewing-machine and the
+type-writer, is getting on my nerves. Let us go into the drawing-room.
+There is an atmosphere of calm there--" her voice quavered in a queer
+little choke--"of sabbatical calm."
+
+I slid quickly from the table and put my arm round her waist.
+
+"Tell me, Judith, what is amiss with you."
+
+She broke away from me roughly, thrusting me back.
+
+"Nothing. A woman's nothing, if you understand what that means. Come
+into the drawing-room."
+
+I opened the door; she passed out and I followed her along the passage.
+She preceded me into the drawing-room, and I stayed for a moment to
+close the door, fumbling with the handle which has been loose for some
+months. When I turned and had made a couple of steps forward, I halted
+involuntarily under the shock of a considerable surprise.
+
+We were not alone. Standing on the hearth-rug, his hands behind his
+back, his brows bent on me benevolently was a man in clerical attire. He
+looked ostentatiously, exaggeratedly clerical. His clerical frock-coat
+was of inordinate length; his boots were aggravatingly clump-soled; by
+a very large white tie, masking the edges of a turned-down collar, he
+proclaimed himself Evangelical. An otherwise clean-shaven florid face
+was adorned with brown side-whiskers growing rather long. A bald, shiny
+head topped a fringe of brown hair.
+
+I stared at this unexpected gentleman for a second or two, and then,
+recovering my self-possession, looked enquiringly at Judith.
+
+"Sir Marcus," she said, "let me introduce my husband, Mr. Rupert
+Mainwaring."
+
+Her husband! This benevolent Evangelical parson her husband! But the
+brilliant gallant who had dazzled her eyes? The dissolute scoundrel
+that had wrecked her life? Where was he? Dumfounded, I managed to bow
+politely enough, but my stupefaction was covered by Judith rushing
+across the room and uttering a strange sound which resolved itself into
+a shrill, hysterical laugh as she reached the door which she opened and
+slammed behind her. I heard her scream hysterically in the passage;
+then the slam of another door; and the silence told me that she had shut
+herself in her bedroom. Disregarding the new husband's presence, I rang
+the bell, and the servant who had left her kitchen on hearing the scream
+entered immediately.
+
+"Go to your mistress. She is ill," said I.
+
+The maid hurriedly departed. The parson and I looked at one another.
+
+"I am afraid," said I, "that my presence is unhappily an intrusion. I
+hope to make your better acquaintance on another occasion."
+
+"Oh, please don't go," said he, "my wife is only a little upset and will
+soon recover. I beg that you will excuse her. Besides, I should like to
+have a talk with you."
+
+He offered me a chair, my own chair, the comfortable, broad-seated
+Empire chair I had given Judith as a birthday present years ago, the
+chair in which I had invariably sat. He did it with the manner of the
+master of the house, a most courteous gentleman. The situation was
+fantastic. Some ingenious devil must have conceived it by way of
+pandering to the after-dinner humour of the high gods. As I sat down I
+rubbed my eyes. Was this brown-whiskered, bald-headed clerical gentleman
+real? The rubbing of my eyes dispelled no hallucination. He was flesh
+and blood and still regarded me urbanely. It was horrible. The desertion
+of the scoundrelly husband, who I thought was lost somewhere in the
+cesspool of Europe, was the basis, the sanction of the relations
+between Judith and myself; and here was this reverend, respectable man
+apologising for his wife and begging me to be seated in my own chair.
+The remark of Judith's that I should find sabbatical calm in the
+drawing-room occurred to me, and I had to grip the arms of the chair to
+prevent myself from joining Judith in her hysterics.
+
+The appearance of the husband in his legendary colours of rascality
+would have been a shock. The sudden scattering of my plans for Judith's
+happiness I should have viewed with consternation. But it would have
+been normal. For him, however, to appear in the guise of an Evangelical
+clergyman, the very last kind of individual to be associated with
+Judith, was, I repeat, horribly fantastic.
+
+"I believe, Sir Marcus," said he, deliberately parting the tails of his
+exaggerated frock-coat and sitting down near me, "that you are a very
+great friend of my wife."
+
+I murmured that I had known Mrs. Mainwaring for some years.
+
+"You are doubtless acquainted with her unhappy history."
+
+"I have heard her speak of it," said I.
+
+"You must then share her surprise in seeing me here to-day. I should
+like to assure you, as representing her friends and society and that
+sort of thing, as I have assured her, that I have not taken this step
+without earnest prayer and seeking the counsel of Almighty God."
+
+I am by no means a bigoted pietist, but to hear a person talk lightly
+about seeking the counsel of Almighty God jars upon my sense of taste. I
+stiffened at the sanctimonious tone in which the words were uttered.
+
+"You have without doubt very good reasons for coming back into the
+circle of her life," said I.
+
+"The best of all reasons," he replied, caressing a brown whisker,
+"namely, that I am a Christian."
+
+I liked him less and less.
+
+"Is that the reason, may I ask, why you remained away from her all these
+years?"
+
+"I deserve the scoff," said he: "Those were days of sin. I deserve every
+humiliation that can be put upon me. But I have since found the grace
+of God. I found it at three o'clock in the afternoon on the eighth of
+January, eighteen hundred and--"
+
+"Never mind the year," I interrupted.
+
+My gorge rose. The man was a sanctimonious Chadband. He had come with
+nefarious designs on Judith's slender capital. I saw knavery in the
+whites of his upturned eyes.
+
+"I should be glad," I continued quickly, "if you would come to the point
+of the conversation you desire to have with me. I presume it concerns
+Mrs. Mainwaring. She has reconciled herself to circumstances and has
+found means to regulate her life with a certain measure of contentment
+and comfort until now, when you suddenly introduce a disturbing factor.
+You appear to wish to tell me your reasons for doing so--and I can't see
+what the grace of God has to do with it."
+
+He sprang to his feet and shot out both hands in the awkward gesture of
+an inspired English prophet.
+
+"But it has everything to do with it! It is the beginning and end, core
+and kernel, root and branch of the matter. It is the grace of God that
+checked me in the full career of my wickedness. It is the grace of God
+that has lighted my path ever since to holier things. It is the grace of
+God that has changed me from what I was to what I am. It is the grace
+of God that has brought me here to ask pardon on my knees of the woman
+I have wronged. The grace of God and of his son our Lord Jesus Christ,
+which came upon me in a great light on that January afternoon even as it
+did upon Saul of Tarsus. The grace of God has everything to do with it."
+
+"Mr. Mainwaring," said I, "such talk is either blasphemous or--"
+
+He did not allow me to state the alternative, but caught up the word in
+a great cry.
+
+"Blasphemous! Why, man alive! for what are you taking me? Do you think
+this is some unholy jest? Can't you see that I am in deadly earnest?
+Come and see me where I live--" he caught me by the arm, as if he would
+drag me away then and there, "among the poor in Hoxton. You scarcely
+know where Hoxton is--I didn't when I was a man of ease like
+yourself--that wilderness of grey despair where the sun of the world
+scarcely shines, let alone the Light of God. Come and see for yourself,
+man, whether I am lying!"
+
+Then it dawned upon me that the man had been talking from innermost
+depths, that he was almost terrifyingly sincere.
+
+"I must ask you to pardon me," said I, "for appearing to doubt your good
+faith. You must attribute it to my entire unfamiliarity with the terms
+of Evangelical piety."
+
+He looked at me queerly for a moment, and then, in the quiet tones of a
+man of the world, said, smiling pleasantly:
+
+"Very many years ago I had the pleasure of knowing your grandfather, the
+late baronet. May I say that you remind me of him?"
+
+I have never heard an apology more gracefully and tactfully accepted.
+For an unregenerate second he had become the gallant Rupert Mainwaring
+again, and showed me wherein might lie his attraction.
+
+"Pray be seated," said he, more gravely, "and allow me to explain."
+
+He unfolded his story. It was well, said he, that an outsider (I an
+outsider in that familiar room!) should hear it. I was at liberty to
+make it public. Indeed, publicity was what he earnestly craved. As far
+as my memory serves me, for my wits were whirling as I listened, the
+following is an epitome of his narrative:
+
+He had been a man of sin--not only in the vague ecclesiastical sense,
+but in downright, practical earnest. He had committed every imaginable
+crime, save the odd few that lead to penal servitude and the gallows. He
+drank, he betrayed women, he cheated at cards, he had an evil reputation
+on the turf. His companions were chosen from the harlotry and knavery
+of the civilised world. He had lured Judith from her first husband, thus
+breaking his heart, poor man, so that he died soon after. He had married
+Judith, and had deserted her for a barmaid whom in her turn he had
+abandoned. He wallowed, to use his own expression, in the trough
+of iniquity. He was, as I had always understood, about as choice a
+blackguard as it would be possible to meet outside a gaol. One day
+a pretty girl, whom he had been following in the street, unwittingly
+enticed him into a revivalist meeting. He described that meeting so
+vividly that had my stupefied mind been capable of fresh emotions, I too
+might have been converted at second hand by the revivalist preacher.
+He repeated parts of the sermon, rose to his feet, waved his arms,
+thundered out the commonplaces of Salvation Army Christianity, as if
+he had made an amazing theological discovery. It was pathetic. It was
+ludicrous. It was also inconceivably painful. At last he mopped his
+forehead and shiny head.
+
+"Before that meeting was over I was on my knees praying beside the girl
+whom I had designed to ruin. I went into the streets a converted man,
+filled with the grace of God. I resolved to devote my life to saving
+souls for Christ. My old habits of sin fell away from me like a garment.
+I studied for the ministry. I am now in deacon's orders, and I am the
+incumbent of a little tin mission church in Hoxton. God moves in a
+mysterious way, Sir Marcus."
+
+"He is generally credited with doing so," said I, stupidly.
+
+"You are doubtless wondering, Sir Marcus," he went on, "why I placed
+such a long interval between my awakening and my communicating with my
+wife. I set myself a period of probation. I desired to be assured of
+God's will. It was essential that I should test my strength of purpose,
+and my power of making a life's atonement, as far as the things of this
+world are concerned, for the wrongs I have inflicted on her. I have come
+now to offer her a Christian home."
+
+I looked at him open-mouthed.
+
+"Do you expect Judith to go and live with you as your wife, in Hoxton?"
+I asked, bluntly.
+
+"Why not? She is my wife."
+
+I rose and walked about the room in agitation. Somehow such a
+contingency had not entered my bewildered head.
+
+"Why not, Sir Marcus?" he repeated.
+
+"Because Judith isn't that kind of woman at all," I said, desperately.
+"She doesn't like Hoxton, and would be as much out of place in a
+tin-mission church as I should be in a cavalry charge."
+
+"God will see to her fitness," said he, gravely. "To him all things are
+easy."
+
+"But she has considerable philosophic doubt as to his personal
+existence," I cried.
+
+He smiled prophetically and waved away her doubt with a gesture.
+
+"I have no fears on that score," he observed.
+
+"But it is preposterous," I objected once more, changing my ground;
+"Judith craves the arrears of gaiety and laughter which your conduct
+caused life to leave owing to her. She loves bright dresses, cigarettes,
+and wine and the things that are anathema in an Evangelical household."
+
+"My wife will find the gaiety and laughter of holiness," replied
+the fanatic. "She will not be stinted of money to dress herself with
+becoming modesty; and as for alcohol and tobacco, no one knows better
+than myself how easy it is to give them up."
+
+"You seem as merciless in your virtues as you were in your vices," said
+I.
+
+"I have to bring souls to Christ," he answered.
+
+"That doesn't appear to be the way," I retorted, "to bring them."
+
+"Pray remember, Sir Marcus," said he, bending his brows upon me, "that I
+did not ask you for suggestions as to the conduct of my ministry."
+
+"The general methods you adopt in the case of your congregation," said
+I, "are matters of perfect indifference to me. But I cannot see Judith
+imprisoned for life in a tin church without a protest. Your proposal
+reminds me of the Siennese who owed a victorious general more than they
+could possibly repay. The legend goes that they hanged him, in order to
+make him a saint after his death by way of reward. I object to this sort
+of canonisation of Judith. And she will object, too. You seem to leave
+her out of account altogether. She is mistress of her own actions. She
+has a will of her own. She is not going to give up her comfortable flat
+off the Tottenham Court Road in order to dwell in Hoxton. She won't go
+back to you under your conditions."
+
+He smiled indulgently and held out his hand to signify that the
+interview was over.
+
+"She will, Sir Marcus."
+
+Was there ever such a Torquemada of a creature? I respect religion. I
+respect this man's intense conviction of the reality of his conversion.
+I can respect even the long frock coat and the long brown whiskers,
+which in the case of so dashing a worldling as Rupert Mainwaring were
+a deliberate and daily mortification of the flesh. But I hold in
+shuddering detestation "the thumb-screw and the rack for the glory of
+the Lord," which he cheerfully contemplated applying to Judith.
+
+"Why on earth can't you let the poor woman alone?" I asked, ignoring his
+hand.
+
+"I am doing my duty to God and to her," said he.
+
+"With the result that you have driven her into hysterics."
+
+"She'll get over them," said he.
+
+"I wish you good-day," said I. "We might talk together for a thousand
+years without understanding each other."
+
+"Pardon me," he retorted, with the utmost urbanity. "I understand you
+perfectly."
+
+He accompanied me to the dining-room where I had left my hat and
+umbrella, and to the flat door which he politely opened. When it shut
+behind me I felt inclined to batter it open again and to take Judith
+by main force from under his nose. But I suppose I am pusillanimous. I
+found myself in the street brandishing my umbrella like a flaming sword
+and vowing to perform all sorts of Paladin exploits, which I knew in my
+heart were futile.
+
+I hailed an omnibus in the Tottenham Court Road, and clambered to the
+top, though a slight drizzle was falling. Why I did it I have not
+the remotest idea, for I abhor those locomotive engines of exquisite
+discomfort. I had no preconceived notion of destination. It was a moving
+thing that would carry me away from the Tottenham Court Road, away
+from the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring, away from myself. I was the solitary
+occupant of the omnibus roof. The rain fell, softly, persistently,
+soakingly. I laughed aloud.
+
+I recognised the predestined irony of things that at every corner checks
+the course of the ineffectual man.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+November 11th.
+
+I wrote Judith a long letter last night, urging her to disregard the
+forfeited claims of her husband and to join her life definitely with
+mine. I was cynical enough to feel that if such a proceeding annoyed
+the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring it would serve him right. The fact of a man's
+finding religion and abjuring sack does not in itself exculpate him from
+wrongs which he has inflicted on his fellow-creatures in unregenerate
+days. Mainwaring deserved some punishment of which he seemed to have had
+remarkably little; for, mind you, his sack-cloth and ashes at Hoxton,
+although sincerely worn, are not much of a punishment to a man in his
+exalted mood. Now, on the contrary, Judith deserved compensation, such
+as I alone was prepared to offer her in spite of conventional morality
+and the feelings of the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring. Indeed, it seemed to
+be the only way of saving Judith from being worried out of her life by
+frantic appeals to embrace both himself and Primitive Christianity.
+Her position was that of Andromeda. Mine that of an unheroic Perseus,
+destined to deliver her from the monster--the monster whose lair is a
+little tin mission church in Hoxton.
+
+I wrote the letter in one of those periods of semi-vitality when the
+pulses of emotion throb weakly, and sensitiveness is dulled. To-day
+I have felt differently. My nerves have been restrung. Something
+ironically vulgar, sordidly tragic has seemed to creep into my relations
+with Judith.
+
+To my great surprise Judith brought her answer in person this evening.
+It is the first time she has entered my house; and her first words, as
+she looked all around her with a wistful smile referred to the fact.
+
+"It is almost just as I have pictured it--and I have pictured it--do you
+know how often?"
+
+She was calmer, if not happier. The haggard expression had given place
+to one of resignation. I wheeled an arm-chair close to the fire, for she
+was cold, and she sank into it with a sigh of weariness. I knelt beside
+her. She drew off her gloves and put one hand on my head in the old way.
+The touch brought me great comfort. I thought that we had reached the
+quiet haven at last.
+
+"So you have come to me, Judith," I whispered.
+
+"I have come, dear," she said, "to tell you that I can't come."
+
+My heart sank.
+
+"Why?" I asked.
+
+We fenced a little. She gave half reasons, womanlike, of which I proved
+the inadequacy. I recapitulated the arguments I had used in my letter.
+She met them with hints and vague allusions. At last she cut the knot.
+
+"I am going back to my husband."
+
+I rose to my feet and echud the words. She repeated them in a tone so
+mournfully distinct, that they had the finality of a death-knell. I had
+nothing to say.
+
+"Before we part I must make my peace with you, Marcus," she said. "I
+have suddenly developed a conscience. I always had the germs of it."
+
+"You were always the best and dearest woman in the world," I cried.
+
+"And I betrayed you, dear. That letter from Pasquale told me about his
+flight with Carlotta. I lied to you--but I was in a state bordering on
+madness."
+
+I rested my elbow on the mantel-piece and looked down on her. She
+appeared so sweet and fragile, like a piece of Dresden china, incapable
+of base actions. As I did not speak she went on: "I did not mean to play
+into Pasquale's hands, Marcus. Heaven knows I didn't--but I did play
+into them. Do you remember that awful night and our talk the next
+morning? I asked you not to see her all day--to mourn our dead love. I
+knew you would keep your promise. You are a man of sensitive honour. If
+all men were like you, the world would be a beautiful place."
+
+"It would go to smash in a few weeks through universal incompetence," I
+murmured, with some bitterness.
+
+"There would be no meanness and treachery and despicable underhand
+doings. Marcus, you must forgive me--I was a desperate woman fighting
+for my life's happiness. I thought I would try one forlorn hope. I kept
+you out of the way and came up here to see Carlotta. Don't interrupt me,
+Marcus; let me finish. I happened to meet her a hundred yards down the
+road, and we went into the Regent's Park. We sat down and I told her
+about ourselves, and my love for you, and asked her to give you up. I
+don't believe she understood, Marcus. She laughed and threw stones at a
+little dog. I recovered my senses and left her there and went home sick
+with shame and humiliation. I knew Pasquale was in love with her, for he
+had told me so the night before, and asked me how the marriage could be
+stopped. He didn't believe in your announcement to Hamdi Effendi. But I
+never mentioned Pasquale to Carlotta, or hinted there might be another
+than you. I was loyal so far, Marcus. And two or three days afterwards
+came Pasquale's letter. And I waited for you, in a fearful joy. I knew
+you would come to me--and I was mad enough to think that time would
+heal--that you would forget--that we could have the dear past again--and
+I would teach you to love me. But then, suddenly, without a word of
+warning--it has always been his way--appeared my husband. After that,
+you came with your offer of shelter and comfort--and you seemed like the
+angel of the flaming vengeance. For I had wronged you, dear--robbed you
+of your happiness. If I hadn't prepared her mind for leaving you, she
+would never have run away. If I had not done this, or if on the other
+hand you loved me, Marcus, I should perhaps have looked at things
+differently. I am beginning to believe in God and to see his hand in
+it all. I couldn't come and live with you as your wife, Marcus. Things
+stronger even than my love for you forbid it. Our life together would
+not be the sweet and gracious thing it has always been to me. We have
+come to the parting of the ways. I must follow my husband."
+
+I knew she spoke rightly. When she is not swept away to hysterical
+action by her temperament, she has a perception exquisitely keen into
+the heart of truth.
+
+"The parting of the ways?" said I. "Yes; but can't you rest at the
+cross-roads? Can't you lead your present life--your husband and myself,
+both, just your friends?"
+
+"Rupert has need of me," she replied very quickly. "He is a man in
+torment of soul. He has gone to this extreme of religious fanaticism
+because he is still uncertain of himself. We had another long talk
+to-day. I may help him."
+
+"Does he deserve the sacrifice of your life?"
+
+She did not take up my question directly; but sat for a few minutes with
+her chin on her hand looking into the fire.
+
+"He is a man of evil passions," she resumed, at last. "Drink and women
+mainly dragged him down. I knew the hell of it during the short time of
+our married life. If he falls away now, he believes he is damned to all
+eternity. He believes in the material torture--flames and devils and
+pitchforks--of damned souls. He says in me alone lies his salvation. I
+must go. If the tin church gets too awful, I shall run over to Delphine
+Carrere for a week to steady my nerves."
+
+What could I say? The abomination of desolation lay around about me.
+I might have prated to her of my needs, wrung her heart with the
+piteousness of my appeal. _Cui bono?_ _I_ can't whine to women--or to
+men either, for the matter of that. When I am by myself I can curse and
+swear, play Termagant and rehearse an extravaganza out-Heroding all
+the Herods that ever Heroded. But before others--no. I believe my
+great-grandfather, before he qualified for his baronetcy, was a
+gentleman.
+
+"But on these occasions," said I, "you will avoid a sequestered and
+meditative self."
+
+Her laugh got choked by a sob.
+
+"Do you remember that? It is not so long ago--and yet it seems many,
+many years."
+
+We moralised generally, after the way of humans, who desire to postpone
+a moment of anguished speech. She made the tour of my book-shelves. Many
+of the books she had borrowed, and she recognised them as old friends.
+
+"Is that where Benvenuto Cellini has always lived?"
+
+"Yes," said I, running my hand along the row. "He is in his century,
+among his companions. He would be unhappy anywhere else."
+
+"And the History--how far has it gone?"
+
+I showed her the pile of finished manuscript, of which she glanced at a
+few pages. She put it down hurriedly and turned away.
+
+"I can't see to read, just now, Marcus."
+
+Then she paused in front of her own photograph, the only one now on the
+mantel-piece.
+
+"Will you give me that back?"
+
+"Why should I?" I asked.
+
+"I would rather--I should not like you to burn it."
+
+"Burn it? All I have left of you?"
+
+She turned swimming eyes on me.
+
+"You are good, Marcus--after what I have told you--you do not feel
+bitterly against me?"
+
+"For what? For being quixotic? For going to martyrdom for an ideal?"
+
+"You did not listen when I spoke about Carlotta?"
+
+"Oh, my dear!" said I.
+
+And now she has gone. We kissed at parting--a kiss of remembrance and
+renunciation. Shall we ever meet again?
+
+Darkness gathers round me, and I am tired, tired, and I would that I
+could sleep like Rip Van Winkle, and awake an old man, with an old man's
+passionless resignation; or better, awake not at all. Such poor fools as
+I are better dead.
+
+I look back and see all my philosophy refuted, all my prim little
+opinions lying prone like dolls with the sawdust knocked out of them.
+All these years I have been judging Judith with an ignorance as cruel as
+it has been complacent. Verily I have been the fag end of wisdom. So I
+forbear to judge her now.
+
+If I had loved Judith with the great passion of a man's love for woman,
+not all the converted rascals in Christendom could have come between us.
+
+And her seeing Carlotta--poor woman--what does it matter? What did she
+say about Carlotta? "She laughed and threw stones at a little dog."
+
+Oh, my God!
+
+
+November 12th
+
+This way madness lies. I will leave the house in charge of Stenson and
+Antoinette and go abroad. Something has put Verona into my head. One
+place is as good as another, so long as it is not this house--this house
+of death and madness and crime--and Verona is in Italy, where I have
+always found peace.
+
+I will confess my madness. This book is a record of my morals--the
+finished version of the farce the high gods have called on meto play. I
+thought last night the curtain was rung down. I was wrong. Listen, and
+laugh as I do--if you can.
+
+I fixed myself to work to-day. After all, I am not an idler. I earn my
+right to live. When I publish my History the world will be the richer by
+_something_, poor though it may be. I vow I have been more greatly,
+more nobly employed of late years, than I was when I earned my living
+at school-slavery teaching to children the most useless, the most
+disastrous, the most soul-cramping branch of knowledge wherewith
+pedagogues in their insensate folly have crippled the minds and
+blasted the lives of thousands of their fellow-creatures--elementary
+mathematics. There is no more reason for any human being on God's
+earth to be acquainted with the Binomial Theorem or the Solution of
+Triangles--unless he is a professional scientist, when he can begin
+to specialise in mathematics at the same age as the lawyer begins to
+specialise in law or the surgeon in anatomy--than for him to be an
+expert in Choctaw, the Cabala or the Book of Mormon. I look back with
+feelings of shame and degradation to the days when, for the sake of a
+crust of bread, I prostituted my intelligence to wasting the precious
+hours of impressionable childhood, which could have been filled with
+so many beautiful and meaningful things, over this utterly futile and
+inhuman subject. It trains the mind--it teaches boys to think, they say.
+It doesn't. In reality it is a cut and dried subject easy to fit into a
+school curriculum. Its sacrosanctity saves educationalists an enormous
+amount of trouble, and its chief use is to enable mindless young men
+from the universities to make a dishonest living by teaching it to
+others, who in their turn may teach it to a future generation.
+
+I am mad to-night--why have I indulged in this diatribe against
+mathematics? I must find some vent, I suppose. I see now. I was
+saying that I earned my right to live, that I am not an idler. I cling
+strenuously to the claim. A man cannot command respect, even his own, by
+the mere reason of his _vie sentimentale_. And, after what I have done
+to-day, I must force my claim to the respect which on other grounds I
+have forfeited.
+
+I spent, then, my day in unremitting toil. But this evening the horrible
+craving for her came over me. Such a little thing brought it about.
+Antoinette, who disapproves of the amorphous British lumps of sugar, has
+found some emporium where she can buy the regular parallelopiped of
+the Continent, and these she provides for my afterdinner coffee.
+Absent-mindedly I dipped the edge of the piece of sugar into the liquid,
+before dropping it, and watched the brown moisture rise through the
+white crystals. Then I remembered. It was an invariable practice of
+Carlotta's. She would keep the lump in the coffee to saturation-point
+between her fingers, and then hastily put it into her mouth, so that it
+should not crumble to pieces on the way. If it did, there would be much
+laughter and wiping of skirts; and there would be a search through my
+dinner-jacket pockets for a handkerchief to dry the pink tips of
+her fingers. She called the dripping lump a canard, like the French
+children. It was such a trivial thing; but it brought back with a rush
+all the thousand dainty, foolish, captivating intimacies that made up
+the maddening charm of Carlotta.
+
+Yes, I am aware that there is no language spoken under heaven that can
+fitly express the doting folly of a man who can be driven mad by a piece
+of sugar soaked in coffee. There is a ghastly French phrase not to be
+found in Lamartine, Chateaubriand, or any of the polite sentimentalists
+_avoir les sangs tournes de quelqu'un_. It is so with me. _J'ai les
+sangs tournes d'elle_. Somebody has said something somewhere about the
+passion of a man of forty. It must have to do with the French phrase.
+
+I pushed my coffee aside untasted, and buried my head in my hands,
+longing, longing; eating my heart out for her. The hours passed. When
+the servants were abed, I stole upstairs to her room, left as it was on
+the night when Antoinette, hoping against hope, had prepared it for her
+reception. I broke down. Heaven knows what I did.
+
+I returned to the drawing-room filled with the blind rage that makes
+a man curse God and wish that he could die. The fire was black, and I
+mechanically took up the poker to stir it. A tempest of impotent anger
+shook my soul. I saw things red before my eyes. I had an execrable lust
+to kill. I was alone amid a multitude of gibbering fiends. As I stooped
+before the grate I felt something scrabble my shoulders. I leapt back
+with a shriek, and saw standing on the mantel-shelf a black, one-eyed
+thing regarding me with an expression of infinite malice. Before I knew
+what I had done, I had brought the iron down, with all my force, upon
+its skull, and it had fallen dead at my feet.
+
+_Finis coronat opus._
+
+
+November 22d.
+
+Verona:--I have abandoned the "History of Renaissance Morals." The
+dog's-eared MS. and the dusty pile of notes I have shot into a lumber
+heap in a corner of this room, where I sit and shiver by a little stove.
+It is immense, marble, cold, comfortless, suggestive of "the vasty halls
+of death." I have been here a week to-day. I thought I should find rest.
+I should breathe the atmosphere of Italy again. I should ease my heart
+among the masterworks of Girolamo dai Libri and Cavazzola, and, in
+the presence of the blue castellated mountains they loved to paint,
+my spirit would even be as theirs. In this old-world city, I fondly
+imagined, I should forget the Regent's Park, and attune my mind to the
+life that once filled its narrow streets.
+
+But nothing have I found save solitude. I stood to-day before the
+mutilated fresco of Morone, my rapture of six years ago, and hated
+it with unreasoning hatred. The Madonna belied the wreath-supported
+inscription above her head, _"Miseratrix virginum Regina nostri
+miserere,"_ and greeted me with a pitiless simper. The unidentified
+martyr on the left stared straight in front of him with callous
+indifference, and St. Roch looked aggravatingly plump for all his
+ostentatious plague-spot. The picture was worse than meaningless. It was
+insulting. It drove me out of the Public Gallery. Outside a grey mist
+veiled the hills and a fine penetrating rain was falling. I crept home,
+and for the fiftieth time since I have been here, opened my "History of
+Renaissance Morals." I threw it, with a final curse, into the corner.
+
+I loathe it. I care not a fig for the Renaissance or its morals. I count
+its people but a pestilent herd of daubers, rhymers, cutthroats, and
+courtesans. Their _hubris_ has lost its glamour of beauty and has
+coarsened into vulgar insolence. They offend me by their riotous
+swagger, their insistence on the animal joy of living; chiefly by their
+perpetual reminiscence of Pasquale.
+
+Yet once they interested me greatly, filling with music and with colour
+the grey void of my life. Whence has come the change?
+
+In myself. To myself I have become a subject of excruciating interest.
+To myself I am a vastly more picturesque personage than any debonair
+hooligan of quattro-cento Verona. He has faded into the dullest (and
+most offensive) dog of a ghost. I only exist. This sounds like the
+colossal vanity of Bedlam. Heaven knows it is not. If you are racked
+with toothache from ear to ear, from crown to chin, and from eyeball
+to cerebellum, is not the whole universe concentrated in that head of
+yours? Are you not to yourself in that hour of torture the most vitally
+important of created beings? And no one blames you for it. Let me
+therefore be without blame in my hour of moral toothache.
+
+In the days gone by I was the victim of a singular hallucination. I
+flattered myself on being the one individual in the world not summoned
+to play his part in the comedy of Life. I sat alone in the great
+auditorium like the mad king of Bavaria, watching with little zest what
+seemed but a sorry spectacle. I thought myself secure in my solitary
+stall. But I had not counted on the high gods who crowd shadowy into the
+silent seats and are jealous of a mortal in their midst. Without warning
+was I wrested from my place, hurled onto the stage, and before my
+dazzled eyes could accustom themselves to the footlights, I found
+myself enmeshed in intolerable drama. I was unprepared. I knew my part
+imperfectly. I missed my cues. I had the blighting self-consciousness
+of the amateur. And yet the idiot mummery was intensely real. Amid the
+laughter of the silent shadowy gods I thought to flee from the stage.
+I came to Verona and find I am still acting my part. I have always been
+acting. I have been acting since I was born. The reason of our being
+is to amuse the high gods with our histrionics. The earth itself is the
+stage, and the starry ether the infinite auditorium.
+
+The high gods have granted to their troupe of mimes one boon. Each has
+it in his power to make the final exit at any moment. For myself I feel
+that moment is at hand. One last soliloquy, and then like the pagliacco
+I can say with a sigh, _"La commedia e finita_--the play is played out,"
+and the rest will be silence. At all events I will tell my own story. My
+"History of Renaissance Morals" can lie in its corner and rot, whilst I
+shall concern myself with a far more vital theme--The Morals of Marcus
+Ordeyne. The rough entries in my diary have been a habit of many futile
+years; but they have never sufficed for self-expression. I have not
+needed it till now. But now, with Judith and Carlotta gone from me, my
+one friend, Pasquale, cut for ever from my life, even the sympathetic
+Polyphemus driven into eternity by my murderous hand, I feel the
+irresistible craving to express myself fully and finally for the first
+and last time of my life. It will be my swan song. What becomes of it
+afterwards I care not.
+
+And when the last word is written, I shall go to the Pinacoteca and
+stand again before the Morone fresco, and if the _Miseratrix Virginum
+Regina_ still simpers at me, I shall take it as a sign and a token. I
+shall return to this marble cavern and make my final exit. It will
+be theatrically artistic--that I vow and declare--which no doubt will
+afford immense pleasure to the high gods in their gallery.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+It is some two years since I stood for the second time in the Pinacoteca
+of Verona and sought to read my fate in the simpering countenance
+of Morone's _Miseratrix Virginum Regina_. I met what might have been
+expected by a person of any sense--the self-same expression on the
+painted face as I had angrily found there two months before when I began
+to write the foregoing pages. But as I had no sense at all in those days
+I accepted the poor battered Madonna's lack of sympathy for a sign and a
+token, went home, and prepared for dissolution.
+
+Two years ago! It is only for the last few months that I have been able
+to look back on that nightmare of a time in Verona with philosophic
+equanimity. And this morning is the first occasion on which I have felt
+that dispassionate attitude towards a past self which enables a man to
+set down without the heartache the memories of days that are gone. I sit
+upon the flat roof of this house in Mogador on the Morocco coast, shaded
+by an awning from the bright African sun which glints in myriad sparkles
+on the sea visible beyond the house-tops. The atmosphere last night was
+somewhat heavy with the languorous, indescribable, and unforgettable
+smell of the East; but the morning is deliciously wind-swept by the
+Atlantic breeze, and the air tastes sweet. And it is clear, dazzlingly
+clear. The white square houses and the cupolas of the mosques stand
+out sharp against a sky of intense, ungradated blue. I am away from the
+centre of the busy sea-port and the noise of its streets thronged with
+grain-laden camels and shouting drivers and picturesque, quarrelling,
+squabbling, haggling Moors and Jews and desert Arabs, and I am enveloped
+in the peace of the infinite azure. Besides, yesterday afternoon, as
+I rode back to Mogador, across the tongue of desert which separates it
+from the Palm Tree House, and the town rose on the horizon, a dream city
+of pure snow set in the clear sunset amethyst against the still, pale
+lapis lazuli of the bay--something happened. And yesterday evening more
+happened still.
+
+
+Two years ago, then, I faced in Verona the dissolution of my ineffectual
+existence. I could see no reason for living. My theory of myself in my
+relation to the cosmos had been upset by practical phenomena. No other
+theory based on surer grounds presented itself. But what about life,
+said I, without a theory? Already it was life without a purpose, without
+work, without friends, without Judith and without Carlotta. I could not
+endure it without even a theory to console me. Beings do exist devoid of
+loves or theories. But of such, I thought, are the beasts that perish.
+I reflected further. Supposing, on extended investigation, I found a new
+theory. How far would it profit me? How far could I trust it not to lead
+me through another series of fantastic emotions and futile endeavours
+to the sublime climax of murdering a one-eyed cat? Self-abomination and
+contempt smote me as I thought of poor Polyphemus stretched dead on the
+hearthrug, and myself standing over him, sane, stupid, and remorseful,
+with the poker in my hand.
+
+I walked up and down the vast cold room of the marble palazzo, arraying
+before me in overwhelming numbers the arguments for selfdestruction. On
+a table in the middle of the room stood a phial of prussic acid which I
+had procured long before in London, it being a conviction of mine that
+every man ought to have ready to hand a sure means of exit from the
+world. I paused many times in front of the little blue phial. One lift
+of the hand, one toss of the head, and all would be over. At last I
+extracted the cork, and the faint smell of almonds reached my nostrils.
+I recorked the phial and lit a cigarette. This I threw away half smoked
+and again approached the table of death. I began to feel a strong
+natural disinclination to swallow the stuff. "This," said I, "is sheer
+animal cowardice." I again uncorked the phial. A new phase of the matter
+appeared to me. "It is the act of a craven to shirk the responsibilities
+of life. Can you be such a meanspirited creature as not even to have
+the courage to live?" "No," said I, "I have a valiant spirit," and I
+set down the bottle. "Bah," whispered the familiar imp of suicide at my
+elbow. "You are just afraid to die." I took up the bottle again. But the
+other taunter had an argument equally strong, and once more I put the
+phial uncorked on the table.
+
+Thus between two cowardices, one of which I must choose, stood I, like
+the ass of Buridan. I lit another cigarette and excogitated the problem.
+I smoked two cigarettes, walking up and down that vast, chill apartment,
+while the air grew sickly sweet with the smell of almonds, which
+intensified the physical repugnance the first faint odour had
+occasioned. I began to shiver with cold. The stove had burned out before
+I entered, and I had not considered it worth while to have it filled for
+the few minutes that would remain to me to live. I had not reckoned on
+the ass's bundles of cowardice.
+
+"I may as well be warm," thought I, "while I prove to my complete
+satisfaction that it is more cowardly to live than to die. There is no
+very great hurry."
+
+I caught up a travelling-rug with which I had tried to soften the
+asperities of an imitation Louis XV couch, and throwing it over my
+shoulders, resumed my pilgrimage. I soon lost myself in the problem and
+did not notice a corner of the rug gradually slipping down towards the
+floor.
+
+"I'll do it!" I cried at last, making a sudden dive towards the table.
+But the ironical corner of the rug had reached the ground. I stepped on
+it, tripped, and instinctively caught the table to steady myself. The
+table, a rickety gueridon, overbalanced, and away rolled my uncorked
+phial of prussic acid and fell into a hundred pieces on the tessellated
+floor.
+
+"_Solvitur_," said I, grimly, "_ambulando_."
+
+Looking back now, I am inclined to treat myself tenderly. Whether I
+should have drunk the poison, if the accident had not occurred, I
+cannot say. At the moment of my rush I intended to do so. After the
+catastrophe, which I attributed to the curse of ineffectuality that
+pursued me, I must confess that I was glad. Not that life looked more
+attractive than before, but that the decision had been taken out of my
+hands. I could not go about the shops of Verona buying prussic acid
+or revolvers or metres of stout rope. And my razors (without Stenson's
+care) were benignantly blunt, and I would not condescend to braces.
+I groaned and pished and pshawed, but as it was written that I was to
+live, I resigned myself to a barren and theoryless existence.
+
+After a day or two the vital instinct asserted itself more strongly. I
+became inspired by an illuminating revelation. I had a preliminary aim
+in life. I would go out into the world in search of a theory. When found
+I would apply it to the regulation of the score and a half years during
+which I might possibly expect to remain on this planet. I must take my
+chances of it leading me to the corpse of another Polyphemus.
+
+As it struck me I should not find my theory in Italy, I packed up my
+belongings and hastened from Verona. At Naples I picked up a Messageries
+Maritimes steamer and began a circular tour in the Levant. At
+Alexandretta I went ashore, and inquired my way to the dwelling of the
+Prefect of Police. I did not call on Hamdi Effendi. But I wandered round
+the walls and wondered in a moody, heart-achey way where it was that
+Carlotta sat when Harry came along and whistled her like a tame falcon
+to his arm. It was a white palace of a house with a closed balcony
+supported on rude corbels and tightly shuttered. At the back spread
+a large garden surrounded by the famous wall. There was no doubt that
+Hamdi was a wealthy personage, and that Carlotta's nurture had been as
+gentle as that of any lady in Syria. But the place wherein Carlotta's
+childhood had been sheltered had an air of impenetrable mystery. I stood
+baffled before it, as I had stood so often before Carlotta's soul. The
+result of this portion of my search was the discovery, not of a new
+theory, but of an old pain. I went back to the ship in a despondent
+mood, and caused deep distress to one of the gentlest creatures I have
+ever met. He was a lean, elderly German, who no matter what the occasion
+or what the temperature wore a long, tight-buttoned frock-coat, a narrow
+black tie, and a little bluish-grey felt hat adorned with a partridge's
+feather which gave him an air of forlorn rakishness. His name was Doctor
+Anastasius Dose, and he spent a blameless life in travelling up and
+down the world, on behalf of a Leipsic firm of which he was a member,
+in search of rare and curious books. For there are copies of books which
+have a well-known pedigree like famous jewels, and whose acquisition,
+a matter of infinite tact, gives rise, I was told by Herr Dose, to
+the most exquisite thrill known to man. He brought me on that morose
+afternoon a copy of the "Synonima," in Italian and French, of St.
+Fliscus, printed by Simon Magniagus of Milan in 1480, and opened the
+vellum covers with careful fingers.
+
+"In all the assemblage of human atoms that inhabit this vessel," said
+he, "there is but one who is imbued with reverence for the past and
+a sense of the preciousness of the unique. I need not tell you, Herr
+Baronet, who are a scholar, that of this book only two copies exist in
+this ink-sodden universe. One is in the University Library of Bologna;
+the other is before your eyes. It is also the only book known to have
+been printed by Magniagus. See the beautiful, small Roman type--a
+masterpiece. Ach, Herr Baronet! to have accomplished one such work in
+a lifetime, and then to sit among the blessed saints and look down on
+earth and know that the two sole copies in existence are cherished by
+the elect, what a reward, what eternal happiness!"
+
+I turned over the pages. The faint perfume of mouldy lore ascended and
+I remembered the smell of the "Histoire des Uscoques" in the Embankment
+Gardens.
+
+"The _odor di femina_ in the nostrils of the scholar," said I.
+
+"_Famina?_ Woman?" he cried, scandalised.
+
+"Yes, my friend," said I. "All things sublunar can be translated into
+terms of woman. St. Fliscus wrote because he hadn't a wife; Simon
+Magniagus stopped printing because he got married and devoted his
+existence to reproducing himself instead of St. Fliscus."
+
+"Ach, that is very interesting," said he. "Could you tell me the date of
+Magniagus's marriage?"
+
+"I never heard of him till this moment, my dear Herr Doctor. But depend
+upon it, he was either married or was going to be married, and she ran
+away from him and left him without the heart to print for posterity, and
+when he took his seat among the saints she said she was so glad; he was
+a stupid old ink-sodden fellow!"
+
+He departed sorrowingly from the deck, clasping the precious volume to
+his heart. Allusive or discursive speech scared him like indecency; and
+I had used his gem but as a peg whereon flauntingly to hang it. It took
+me three days to tame him and to induce him to show me another of his
+treasures, recently acquired in Athens. Ioannes Georgius Godelmann's
+_Tractate de Lamiis_, printed by Nicholas Bassaeus of Frankfurt. I read
+him Keats's poem about the young lady of Corinth, of which he had never
+heard. His mental attitude towards it was the indulgent one of an old
+diplomatist towards a child's woolly lamb. For him literature had never
+existed and printing ended in the year 1600. But I was sorry when he
+left me at Constantinople, where he counted on striking the track of a
+Bohemian herbal, printed at Prague, and never more to be read by any of
+the sons of man. In the summer he was going book-hunting in Iceland. By
+chance I have learned since that he died there. Peace to his ashes! For
+aught I could see he dwelt in a mild stupor of happiness, absorbed in
+the intoxication of a tremulous pursuit. I wondered whether his soul
+contained that antidote--the _odor di femina_. Perhaps he met it at
+Reykjavic and he died of dismay.
+
+I thought that my landing at Alexandretta was alone responsible for
+the continuance of my dotage, and hoped that fresh scenes would banish
+Carlotta's distracting image. But no, it was one of the many vain
+reflections on which I based a false philosophy. Whether in Beyrout, or
+the land of the "sweet singer of Persephone," or Alexandria, or on the
+Cannebiere of Marseilles, or in the queer half-Orient of Algiers whither
+a restless pursuit of the Identical led me, or in Lisbon, or in the
+mountainous republic of Andorre, where I hoped to find primitive wisdom
+and to shape a theory from first principles, and whence I was ironically
+driven by fleas--whether on land or sea, in cities or in solitudes, the
+vanished hand harped on my heartstrings and the voice that was still (as
+far as I was concerned) cooed its dove-notes into my ears.
+
+I remember overhearing myself described on a steamboat by a pretty
+American girl of sixteen, as "a quaint gentle old guy who talks awful
+rot which no one can understand, and is all the time thinking about
+something else." My sudden emergence from the companion-way, where I
+was lighting a cigarette, brought red confusion into the young person's
+cheeks.
+
+"How old do you think I am?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, about sixty," quoth the damsel.
+
+"I'm glad I'm quaint and gentle, even though I do talk rot," said I.
+
+With the resourcefulness of her nation she linked her arm in mine and
+started a confidential walk up and down the deck.
+
+"You are just a dear," she remarked.
+
+She could not have said more to Anastasius Dose had he been there;
+as far as I can recollect he must just then have been dying of the
+Inevitable in Iceland. Perhaps the few months had brought me to resemble
+him. Instinctively I put my hand to my head to reassure myself that I
+was not wearing a rakish little soft felt hat with a partridge-feather,
+and I reflected with some complacency that my rimless pince-nez did not
+give me the owlish appearance produced by Anastasius Dose's great round,
+iron-rimmed goggles. From such crumbs of vanity are we sometimes reduced
+to take comfort.
+
+"I just want to know what you are," said my young American friend.
+
+Shall I confess my attraction? She brought a dim suggestion of Carlotta.
+She had Carlotta's colouring and Carlotta's candour. But there the
+resemblance stopped. The grey matter of her brain had been distilled
+from the air of Wall Street, and there were precious few things between
+earth and sky of which she hadn't prescience.
+
+"I'm a broken-down philosopher," said I.
+
+"Oh, that's nothing. So is everybody as soon as they get sense. What
+did you make your money in?"
+
+"I've not made any money," I answered, meekly.
+
+"I thought all people who were knighted in your country had made piles
+of money."
+
+"Knighted!" I exclaimed. "What on earth do you think a quaint old guy
+like myself could possibly have done to get knighted?"
+
+"Then you're a baronet," she said, severely.
+
+"I assure you it is not my fault."
+
+"I thought all baronets were wicked. They are in the novels. Somehow you
+don't look like a baronet. You ought to have a black moustache and an
+eyeglass and smoke a cigar and sneer. But, say, how do you fill up the
+time if you do nothing to make money?"
+
+"I am going through the world," said I, "on an adventurous quest, like a
+knight--or a baronet, if you will--of the Round Table. I am in quest of
+a Theory of Life."
+
+"I guess I was born with it," cried young New York.
+
+"I guess I'll die without finding it," said I.
+
+
+London again. My quiet house. Antoinette and Stenson. The well-ordered
+routine of comfort. My books. The dog's-eared manuscript of the "History
+of Renaissance Morals," unpacked by Stenson and hid in its usual place
+on the writing-table. Nothing changed, yet everything utterly different.
+
+A growing distaste for the forced acquaintanceships of travel and a
+craving for home brought me back. Save perhaps in health I had profited
+little by my journeyings. My bodily shell formed part of strange
+landscapes and occurred in fortuitous gatherings of men, but my heart
+was all the time in my Mausoleum by the Regent's Park. I was drawn
+thither by a force almost magnetic, irresistible. My two domestics
+welcomed me home, but no one else. Only my lawyers knew of my arrival.
+With them alone had I corresponded during the many months of my absence.
+Stay; I did write one letter to Mrs. McMurray while I was at Verona,
+in reply to an enquiry as to what had become of Carlotta and myself.
+I answered courteously but briefly that Carlotta had run away with
+Pasquale and that I should be abroad for an indefinite period. But not
+even a letter from my lawyers awaited me. I thought somewhat wistfully
+that I would willingly have paid six and eight pence for it. But the
+feeling was momentary.
+
+Then began a queer, untroubled life. Without definite resolve I became
+a recluse, living forlornly from day to day. Like a bat I avoided the
+outer sunshine and took my melancholy walks at night. I had a pride in
+cherishing the habit of solitude. Were it not that I entertained a real
+dislike of roots and water and the damp and manifold discomforts of
+a cave, with which form of habitat the ministrations of Stenson and
+Antoinette would have been inconsistent, I should have gone forth into
+the nearest approach to a Thebaid I could discover. I was, in fact,
+touched by the mild mania of the hermit. My club I never entered. A line
+drawn from east to west, a tangent at the lowest point of the Zoological
+Gardens formed the southern boundary of my wanderings. Once I spied
+in the distance that very kind soul, Mrs. McMurray, and rushed into a
+providential omnibus, so as to avoid recognition. My History remained
+untouched. The glamour of the Renaissance had vanished. For occupation I
+read the Neo-Platonists, Thaumaturgy, Demonology and the like, which
+I had always found a fascinating although futile study. I regretted my
+bowing acquaintance with modern science, which forbade my setting up
+a laboratory with alembics and magic crystals wherewith to conduct
+experiments for the finding of the Elixir Vitae and the Philosopher's
+Stone.
+
+I seldom read the newspapers. I had an idea, like an eminent personage
+of the period, that a sort of war was going on, but it failed to
+interest me greatly. I shrank from the noise of it.
+
+"Monsieur," said Antoinette, "will get ill if he does not go out into
+the sunshine."
+
+"Monsieur," said I, "regards the sunshine as an impertinent intrusion
+into a soul that loves the twilight."
+
+If I had made the same remark to an Englishwoman, she would have pitied
+me for a poor, half-witted gentleman. But Antoinette has her nation's
+instinctive appreciation of soul-states, and her sympathy was none the
+less comprehending when she shook her head mournfully and said that it
+was bad for the stomach.
+
+"My good Antoinette," I remarked, harking back in my mind to a
+speculation of other days, "if you go on worrying me in this manner
+about my stomach, I will build a tower forty feet high in the back
+garden, and live on top, and have my meals sent up by a lift, and never
+come down again."
+
+"Monsieur might as well be in Paradise," said Antoinette.
+
+"Ah," said I. And I thought of the bottle of prussic acid with mingled
+sentiments.
+
+All through these many months I had Judith dwelling, a pale ghost,
+in the back of my mind. We had parted so finally that correspondence
+between us had seemed impertinent. But although I had not written to
+her, no small part of the infinite sadness that had fallen upon my life
+was the shadow of her destiny. Sweet, wine-loving Judith! How many times
+did I picture her sitting pinched and wistful in the little tin
+mission church at Hoxton! Had I, Marcus Ordeyne, condemned her to that
+penitentiary? Who can hold the balance of morals so truly as to decide?
+
+At last I received a letter from her on the anniversary of our parting.
+She had found salvation in a strange thing which she called duty. "I am
+fulfilling an appointed task," she wrote, "and the measure of my success
+is the measure of my happiness. I am bringing consolation to a wayward
+and tormented spirit. A year has swept aside the petty feminine
+vanities, the opera-glasses, so to speak, through which a woman
+complacently views her influence over a man, and it has cleared my
+vision. A year has proved beyond mortal question that without me this
+wayward and tormented spirit would fail. I hold in my hands the very
+soul of a man. What more dare a woman ask of the high gods? You see I
+use your metaphors still. Dearest of all dear friends, do not pity me.
+Beyond all the fires of love through which one passes there is the star
+of Duty, and happy the individual who can live in its serenity."
+
+This was astonishingly like the Theory of Life which I set out from
+Verona to seek, and which had hitherto eluded me. It was not very
+new, or subtle, or inspiring. But that is the way of things. No
+matter through what realms of the fantastic you may travel, you arrive
+inevitably at the commonplace.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+I answered Judith's letter. After the long silence it seemed, at first,
+strange to write to her; but soon I found myself opening my heart as I
+had never done before to man or woman. The fact that, accident aside,
+we were never to meet again, drew the spiritual elements in us nearer
+together, and the tone of her letter loosened the bonds of my natural
+reserve. I told her of my past year of life, of the locked memorial
+chamber upstairs, of the madness through which I had passed, of my weary
+pursuit of the Theory, and of my attitude towards her solution of the
+problem. Having written the letter I felt comforted, knowing that Judith
+would understand.
+
+I finished it about six o'clock one afternoon, and shrinking from giving
+it to Stenson to post, as it was the first private letter I had written
+since my arrival in London, I took it myself to the pillar-box. The
+fresh air reproached me for the unreasonable indoor life I had been
+leading, and invited me to remain outside. It was already dark. An early
+touch of frost in the November air rendered it exhilarating. I walked
+along the decorous, residential roads of St. John's Wood feeling
+less remote from my kind, more in sympathy with the humdrum dramas in
+progress behind the rows of lighted windows. Now and then a garden gate
+opened and a man in evening dress, and a woman, a vague, dainty mass of
+satin and frills and fur, emerged, stood for a moment in the shaft of
+light cast by the open hall-door beyond, which framed the white-capped
+and aproned parlour-maid, and entering a waiting hansom, drove off into
+the darkness whither my speculative fancy followed them. Now and then
+silhouettes appeared upon the window-blinds, especially on the upper
+floors, for it was the dressing hour and the cares of the day were being
+thrown aside with the workaday garments. In one house, standing far
+back from the road, the drawing-room curtains had not been drawn. As I
+passed, I saw a man tossing up a delighted child in his arms, and the
+mother standing by. _Ay de mi!_ A commonplace of ten thousand homes,
+when the man returns from his toil. Yet it moved me. To earn
+one's bread; to perpetuate one's species; to create duties and
+responsibilities; to meet them like a brave man; to put the new
+generation upon the right path; to look back upon it all and say, "I
+have fulfilled my functions," and pass forth quietly into the eternal
+laboratory--is not that Life in its truth and its essence? And the
+reward? The commonplace. The welcome of wife and children--and the
+tossing of a crowing babe in one's arms. And I had missed it all, lived
+outside it all. I had spoken blasphemously in my besotted ignorance of
+these sacred common things, and verily I had my recompense in a desolate
+home and a life of about as much use to humanity as that of St. Simeon
+Stylites on top of his pillar.
+
+So I walked along the streets on the track of the wisdom which Judith
+had revealed to me, and I seemed to be on the point of reaching it when
+I arrived at my own door.
+
+"But what the deuce shall I do with it when I get it?" I said, as I let
+myself in with my latch-key.
+
+I had just put my stick in the stand and was taking off my overcoat,
+when the door of the room next the diningroom opened, and Antoinette
+rushed out upon me.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur!" she cried, wringing her hands. "Oh, Monsieur!
+How shall I tell you?"
+
+The good soul broke into sobbing and weeping.
+
+"What is the matter, Antoinette?" Z asked.
+
+"Monsieur must not be angry. Monsieur is good like the Bon Dieu. But it
+will give pain to Monsieur."
+
+"But what is it?" I cried, mystified. "Have you spoiled the dinner?"
+
+I was a million miles from any anticipation of her answer.
+
+_"Monsieur-she has come back!"_
+
+I grew faint for a moment as from a blow over the heart. Antoinette
+raised her great tear-stained face.
+
+"Monsieur must not drive her away."
+
+I pushed her gently aside and entered the little room which I had
+furnished once as her boudoir.
+
+On the couch sat Carlotta, white and pinched and poorly clad. At first
+I was only conscious of her great brown eyes fixed upon me, the dog-like
+appeal of our first meeting intensified to heart-breaking piteousness.
+On seeing me she did not rise, but cowered as if I would strike her. I
+looked at her, unable to speak. Antoinette stood sobbing in the doorway.
+
+"Well?" said I, at last.
+
+"I have come home," said Carlotta.
+
+"You have been away a long time," said I.
+
+"Ye-es," said Carlotta.
+
+"Why have you come?" I asked.
+
+"I had no money," said Carlotta, with her expressive gesture of upturned
+palms. "I had nothing but that." She pointed to a tiny travelling bag.
+"Everything else was at the Mont de Piete--the pawnshop--and they would
+not keep me any longer at the pension. I owed them for three weeks, and
+then they lent me money to buy my ticket to London. I said Seer Marcous
+would pay them back. So I came home."
+
+"But where--where is Pasquale?" I asked.
+
+"He went five, six months ago. He gave me some money and said he would
+send some more. But he did not send any. He went to South Africa. He
+said there was a war and he wanted to fight, and he said he was sick of
+me. Oh, he was very unkind," she cried with the quiver of her baby lips.
+"I wish I had never seen him."
+
+"Are you married?"
+
+"No," said Carlotta.
+
+"Damn him!" said I, between my teeth.
+
+"He was going to marry me, but then he said it did not matter in Paris.
+At first he was so nice, but after a little--oh, Seer Marcous dear, he
+was so cruel."
+
+There was a short silence. Antoinette wept by the door, uttering little
+half-audible exclamations _"la pauvre petite, le cher ange!"_
+
+Carlotta regarded me wistfully. I saw a new look of suffering in her
+eyes. For myself I felt numb with pain.
+
+"What kind of a pension were you living in?" I asked, unutterable
+horrors coming into my head.
+
+"It was a French family, an old lady and two old daughters, and one fat
+German professor. Pasquale put me there. It was very respectable," she
+added, with a wan smile, "and so dull. Madame Champet would scarcely let
+me go into the street by myself."
+
+"Thank heaven you did not fall into worse hands," said I.
+
+Carlotta unpinned her old straw hat, quite a different garment from the
+dainty head-wear she delighted in a year before, and threw it on the
+couch beside her. A tress of her glorious bronze hair fell loose across
+her forehead, adding to the woebegone expression of her face. She rose,
+and as she did so I seemed to notice a curious change in her. She came
+to me with extended hands.
+
+"Seer Marcous--" she whispered.
+
+I took her hands in mine.
+
+"Oh, my dear," said I, "why did you leave me?"
+
+"I was wicked. And I was a little fool," said Carlotta.
+
+I sighed, released her, walked a bit apart. There was a blubber from the
+egregious old woman in the threshold.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur is not going to drive her away."
+
+I turned upon her.
+
+"Instead of standing there weeping like a fountain and doing nothing,
+why aren't you getting Mademoiselle's room ready for her?"
+
+"Because Monsieur has the key," wailed Antoinette.
+
+"That's true," said I.
+
+Then I reflected on the futility of converting bedchambers into
+mausoleums for the living. The room shut up for a year would not be
+habitable. It would be damp and inch-deep in dust.
+
+"Mademoiselle shall sleep in my room to-night," I said, "and Stenson can
+make me up a bed and put what I want here. Go and arrange it with him."
+
+Antoinette departed. I turned to Carlotta.
+
+"Are you very tired, my child?"
+
+"Oh, yes--so tired."
+
+"Why didn't you write, so that things could have been got ready for
+you?"
+
+"I don't know. I was too unhappy. Seer Marcous--" she said after a
+little pause and then stopped.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I am going to have a baby."
+
+She said it in the old, childlike way, oblivious of difference of sex;
+with her little foreign insistence on the final consonants. I glanced
+hurriedly at her. The fact was obvious. She stood with her hands
+helplessly outspread. The pathos of her would have wrung the heart of a
+devil.
+
+"Thank God, you've come home," said I, huskily.
+
+She began to cry softly. I put my arm round her shoulders, and comforted
+her. She sobbed out incoherent things. She wished she had never seen
+Pasquale. I was good. She would stay with me always. She would never run
+away again.
+
+I took her upstairs, and opened the door of her room with the key that I
+had carried for a year on my bunch, and turned on the electric light.
+
+"See what are still usable of your old things," said I, "and I will send
+Antoinette up to you."
+
+She looked around her, somewhat puzzled.
+
+"Why should I sleep in your room when this one is ready for me--my night
+dress--even the hot water?"
+
+"My dear," said I, "that hot water was put for you a year ago. It must
+be cold now."
+
+"And my red slippers--and my dressing-gown!" she cried, quaveringly.
+
+Then sinking in a heap on the floor beside the dusty bed, she burst into
+a passion of tears.
+
+I stole away and sent Antoinette to minister to her.
+
+A year before I had raved and ranted, deeming life intolerable and
+cursing the high gods; I suffered then, it is true; but I hope I may
+never again go through the suffering of that first night of Carlotta's
+return. Even now I can close my eyes and feel the icy grip on my heart.
+
+She came down to dinner about an hour later, dressed in a pink wrapper,
+one of the last things she had bought, which Antoinette (as she
+explained to excuse her delay) had been airing before the fire. She sat
+opposite me, in her old place, penitent, subdued, yet not shy or ill
+at ease. Stenson waited on us, grave and imperturbable as if we had put
+back the clock of time a twelvemonth. The only covert reference he made
+to the event was to murmur discreetly in my ear:
+
+"I have brought up a bottle of the Pommery, Sir Marcus, in the hope you
+would drink some."
+
+I was touched, for the good fellow had no other way of showing his
+solicitude.
+
+Carlotta allowed him to fill her glass. She sipped the wine, and
+declared that it did her good. She was no longer a teetotaller, she
+explained. Once she drank too much, and the next day had a headache.
+
+"Why should one have a headache?"
+
+"Nemesis," said I.
+
+"What is Nemesis?"
+
+I found myself answering her question in the old half-jesting way. And
+in her old way she replied:
+
+"I do not understand."
+
+How vividly familiar it was, and yet how agonisingly strange!
+
+"Where is Polyphemus?" she asked.
+
+"Dead," said I.
+
+"Oh-h! How did poor Polyphemus die?"
+
+"He was smitten by Destiny at the end of the last act of a farcical
+tragedy."
+
+The ghost of a "_hou!_" came from Carlotta. She composed herself
+immediately.
+
+"I often used to think of Polyphemus and Seer Marcous and Antoinette,"
+she said, musingly. "And then I wished I was back. I have been very
+wicked."
+
+She put her elbows on the table, and framing her face with her hands
+looked at me, and shook her head.
+
+"Oh, you are good! Oh, you are good!"
+
+"Go on with your dinner, my child," said I, "and wonder at the genius
+of Antoinette who has managed to cook it and look after you at the same
+time."
+
+She obeyed meekly. I watched her eat. She was famished. I learned that
+she had had nothing since the early morning coffee and roll. In spite of
+pain, I was curiously flattered by her return. I represented _something_
+to her, after all--even though the instinct of the prodigal cat had
+driven her hither. I am sure it had never crossed her mind that my doors
+might be shut against her. Her first words were, "I have come home." The
+first thing she did when we went into the drawing-room after dinner
+was to fondle my hand and lay it against her cheek and say, with a deep
+sigh:
+
+"I am so happy."
+
+However shallow her butterfly nature was, these things came from its
+depths. No man can help feeling pleased at a child's or an animal's
+implicit trust in him. And the pleasure is of the purest. He feels that
+unreasoning intuition has penetrated to some latent germ of good in his
+nature, and for the moment he is disarmed of evil. Carlotta, then,
+came blindly to what was best in me. In her thoughts she sandwiched
+me between the cat and the cook: well, in most sandwiches the
+mid-ingredient is the most essential.
+
+She curled herself up in the familiar sofa-corner, and as it was a
+chilly night I sent for a wrap which I threw over her limbs.
+
+"See, I have the dear red slippers," she remarked, arching her instep.
+
+"And I have my dear Carlotta," said I.
+
+I drew my chair near her, and gradually I learned all the unhappy story.
+
+Pasquale had made love to her from the very first minute of their
+acquaintance--even while I was hunting for the _L'Histoire Comique
+de Francion_. He had met her many times unknown to me. They had
+corresponded, her letters being addressed to a little stationer's shop
+close by. She did not love him. Of that I have an absolute conviction.
+But he was young, he was handsome, he had the libertine's air and
+manner. She was docile. And she was ever positively truthful. If I had
+questioned her she would have confessed frankly. But I never questioned,
+as I never suspected. I wondered sometimes at her readiness in quoting
+him. I noticed odd coincidences; but I was too ineffectual to draw
+inferences from phenomena. His appearance on the Paddington platform was
+prearranged; his duchessa at Ealing a myth.
+
+Apparently he had dallied with his fancy. The fruit was his any day
+for the plucking. Perhaps a rudimentary sentiment of loyalty towards
+me restrained him. Who can tell? The night of our meeting with Hamdi
+brought the crisis. The Turk's threats had alarmed both Carlotta and
+myself. It was necessary for him to strike at once. He saw her the next
+day--would to heaven I had remained at home!--told her I was marrying
+her to save her from Hamdi. I loved the other woman. He would save her
+equally well from Hamdi. The other woman met her soon after parting from
+Pasquale and besought her to give me up. She did not know what to do.
+Poor child, how should she have known? On the previous evening I had
+told her she was to marry me. She was ready to obey. She went to bed
+thinking that she was to marry me. In the morning she went for her music
+lesson. Pasquale was waiting for her. They walked for some distance down
+the road. He hailed a cab and drove away with her.
+
+"He said he loved me," said Carlotta, "and he kissed me, and he told
+me I must go away with him to Paris and marry him. And I felt all weak,
+like that--" she dropped her arms helplessly in an expressive gesture,
+"and so what could I do?"
+
+"Didn't you think, Carlotta, that I might be sorry--perhaps unhappy?" I
+asked as gently as I could.
+
+"He said you would be quite happy with the other woman."
+
+"Did you believe him?"
+
+"That's why I said I have been very wicked," Carlotta answered, simply.
+
+She went on with her story--an old, miserable, detestable, execrable
+story. At first all went merrily. Then she fell ill in Paris. It was
+her first acquaintance with the northern winter. Her throat proved to be
+delicate and she was laid up with bronchitis. To men of Pasquale's type,
+a woman ill is of no more use than a spavined horse or a broken-down
+motor-car. More than that, she becomes an infernal nuisance. It was
+in his temperament to perform sporadic acts of fantastic chivalry. It
+appealed to something romantic, theatrical, in his facile nature. But to
+devote himself to a woman in sickness--that was different. The fifteenth
+century Italian hated like the devil continued association with pain. He
+would have thrown his boots to a beggar, but he would have danced in his
+palace over the dungeons where his brother rotted in obscurity.
+
+So poor Carlotta was neglected, and began to eat the bread of
+disillusion. When she got well, there was a faint recrudescence of
+affection. Has not this story been written a million miserable
+times? Why should I rend my heart again by retelling it? Wild rages,
+jealousies, quarrels, tears--
+
+"And then one day he said, 'You damned little fool, I am sick to death
+of you,' and he went away, and I never saw him again. He wrote and he
+sent his valet to put me in the pension."
+
+"And yet, Carlotta," said I bitterly, "you would go back to him if he
+sent for you?"
+
+She sprang forward and gripped me by the arm--I was sitting quite close
+to her--and her face wore the terror-stricken expression of a child
+frightened with bogies.
+
+"Go back? After what he has done to me? You would not send me back? Seer
+Marcous, darling, you will keep me with you? I will be good, good, good.
+But go back to Pasquale? Oh, no-o-o!"
+
+She fell back in her sofa-corner, and fixed her great, deep imploring
+eyes on me.
+
+"My dear," said I, "you know this is your home as long as ever you
+choose to stay in it--but--" and I stroked her hair gently--"if he
+comes back when your child is born--his child--"
+
+She drew herself up superbly.
+
+"It is my child--my very, very own," cried Carlotta. "It is mine,
+mine--and I shall not allow any one to touch it--" and then her face
+softened--"except Seer Marcous."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Behold Carlotta again installed in my house which she regarded as her
+home. Heaven forbid that I should sow any doubt thereof in her mind.
+
+I had learned perhaps one lesson: the meaning of love. The love that
+is desire alone, though sung in all romance of all the ages, is of the
+brute nature and is doomed to perish. The love that pardons, endures
+through wrong, contents itself in abnegation, is of the imperishable
+things that draw weak man a little nearer to the angels. When Carlotta
+wept upon my shoulder during those few first moments of her return I
+knew that all resentment was gone from my heart, that it would have
+been a poor, ignoble thing. Had she come back to me leprous of body and
+abominable of spirit, it would not have mattered. I would have forgiven
+her, loved her, cherished her just the same. It was a question, not
+of reason, not of human pity, not of quixotism; not of any argument or
+sentiment for which I could be responsible. I was helpless, obeying a
+reflex action of the soul.
+
+The days passed tranquilly. In spite of pain I felt an odd happiness. I
+had nothing selfishly to hope for. Perhaps I had aged five years in one,
+and I viewed life differently. It was enough for me that she had come
+home, to the haven where no harm could befall her. She was my appointed
+task, even as her husband was Judith's. I recognised in myself the man
+with the one talent. The deep wisdom of the parable can be taken to
+inmost heart for comfort only by men of little destinies. With infinite
+love and patience to mould Carlotta into a sweet, good woman, a wise
+mother of the child that was to be--that was the inglorious task which
+Providence had set me to accomplish. In its proportion to the aggregate
+of human effort it was infinitesimal. But who shall say that it was not
+worth the doing? Save writing a useless book, in what other sphere of
+sublunar energy could I have been effectual? I did not thus analyse my
+attitude at the time; the man who does so is a poser, a mime to his
+own audience; but looking back, I think I was guided by some such
+unformulated considerations.
+
+Although my hermit mania was in itself radically cured, yet I altered
+nothing in my relations with the outside world. I wrote to Judith a
+brief account of what had occurred and received from her a sympathetic
+answer. My reading among the Mystics and Thaumaturgists put me on the
+track of Arabic. I found that Carlotta knew enough of the language to
+give me elementary instruction, and thus the whirligig of time brought
+in its revenge by constituting me her pupil, to our joint edification.
+
+After a while the unhappiness of the past seemed to have faded from her
+mind. She spoke little of Paris, less of the dull pension, and never of
+Pasquale. She bore towards him an animal's silent animosity against a
+human being who has done it an unforgettable injury. On the other hand,
+as I have since discovered, she was slowly developing, and had begun to
+realise that in giving herself light-heartedly to a man whom she did not
+love, she had committed a crime against her sex, for which she had
+paid a heavy penalty: a sentiment, however, which did not mitigate her
+resentment against him. Often I saw her sitting with knitted brows,
+her needlework idle on her lap, evidently unravelling some complicated
+problem; presently she would either shake her head sadly as if the
+intellectual process were too hard for her and resume her needle, or if
+she happened to catch my glance, she would start, smile reassuringly at
+me, and apply herself with exaggerated zeal to her work. These fits of
+abstraction were not those of a woman speculating on mysteries of the
+near future. Such Carlotta also indulged in, and they were easy to
+recognise, by the dreaminess of her eyes and the faint smile flickering
+about her lips. The moods of knitted brows were periods of soul-travail,
+and I wondered what they would bring forth.
+
+One afternoon I came home and found her weeping over a book. When I bent
+down to see what she was reading--she had acquired a taste for novels
+during the dull pension time in Paris--she caught my head with both
+hands.
+
+"Oh, Seer Marcous, do you think they ought to make me wear a great 'A'?"
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked.
+
+"Like Hester Prynne--see."
+
+She showed me Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter."
+
+"What made you take this out of the shelves?"
+
+"The title," she replied, simply. "I am so fond of red things; but I
+should not like that great red 'A'."
+
+"Those were days," said I, "when people thought they could only be good
+by being very cruel."
+
+"They would have been more cruel if Hester had not loved the minister,"
+said Carlotta, looking at me wistfully.
+
+"My dear little girl," said I, seeing whither her thoughts were tending,
+"do not bother your brain with psychological problems."
+
+"What are--?" began Carlotta.
+
+I pinched the question, as it were, out of her cheek and smiled and took
+away the book.
+
+"They are a dreadful disease my little girl has been afflicted with
+for some time. When you sit and wrinkle your forehead like this," and I
+scowled forbiddingly, whereat Carlotta laughed, "you are suffering from
+acute psychological problem."
+
+"Then I am thinking," said Carlotta, reflectively.
+
+"Don't think too much, dear, just now," said I. "It is best for you to
+be happy and calm and contented. Otherwise I'll have to tell the doctor,
+and he'll give you the blackest and nastiest physic you have ever
+tasted."
+
+"To cure me of a what-you-call-it problem?"
+
+"Yes," said I, emphatically.
+
+"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta in a superior way, "physic can't cure that."
+
+"You are relying on an exploded fallacy immortalised in a hackneyed
+Shakespearian quotation," I remarked.
+
+"Go on," said Carlotta, encouragingly.
+
+"What do you mean?" I asked, taken aback.
+
+"Oh, you darling Seer Marcous," cried Carlotta. "It is so lovely to hear
+you talk!"
+
+So I went on talking, and the distress occasioned by the "Scarlet
+Letter" was forgotten.
+
+I have mentioned Carlotta's needlework. This was undertaken at the
+sapient instigation of Antoinette, who in her turn, I am sure, neglected
+the ladle for the scissors, and cast many of her duties upon the
+silent but sympathetic Stenson. Carlotta herself delighted in these
+preparations. She was never happier than when curled up on the sofa,
+a box of chocolates by her side, her work-basket frothing over, like a
+great dish of _oeufs a la neige_, with lawn or mull or what-not, and
+(I verily believe to complete her content) my ungainly figure and
+hatchet-face within her purview. She would eat and sew industriously.
+Sometimes she would press too hard on a sweetmeat and with a little cry
+would hold up a sticky finger and thumb.
+
+"Look," she would say, puckering up her face.
+
+And to save from soilure the dainty fabric she was working at, I would
+rise and wipe her fingers with my handkerchief; whereupon she would
+coo out the sweetest "thank you," in the world, and perhaps hold up a
+diminutive garment.
+
+"Isn't it pretty?"
+
+"Yes, my dear," I would say, and I would turn aside wondering at the
+exquisite refinements of pain that men were sometimes called upon to
+bear.
+
+
+At last the time came. I sat up all night in a torture of suspense,
+having got it into my foolish head that Carlotta might die. The doctor
+came upon me at six in the morning sitting half frozen at the bottom of
+the stairs. When he gave me his cheery news he seemed to develop from a
+middle-aged, commonplace man into a radiant archangel.
+
+I met Antoinette soon afterwards, busy, important, exultant. She
+nevertheless graciously accorded me a brief interview.
+
+"And to think, Monsieur," she exclaimed, as if the crowning triumph of a
+million ions of evolution had at, last been attained, "to think that it
+is a boy!"
+
+"You would have been just as pleased if it had been a girl," said I.
+
+She shook her wise, fat head. "Women _ca ne vaut pas grand' chose._"
+
+Let it be remembered that "women are of no great account" is a sentiment
+expressed, not by me, but by Antoinette. But all the same I soon found
+myself a cipher in the house, where the triumvirate of the negligible
+sex, Antoinette, the nurse and Carlotta, reigned despotically.
+
+To write much of Carlotta's happiness would be to treat of sacred things
+at which I can only guess. She dwelt in rapture. The joy and meaning of
+the universe were concentrated in the tiny bundle of pink flesh that lay
+on her bosom. I used to sit by her side while she talked unwearyingly of
+him. He was a thing of infinite perfections. He had such a lot of hair.
+
+"She won't believe, sir," said the nurse, "that it will all drop off and
+a new crop come."
+
+"Oh-h!" said Carlotta. "It can't be so cruel. For it is my hair--see,
+Seer Marcous, darling; isn't it just my hair?"
+
+It was her great solicitude that the boy should resemble her.
+
+"I don't know about his nose," she remarked critically. "There is so
+little of it yet and it is so soft--feel how soft it is. But his eyes
+are brown like mine, and his mouth--now look, aren't they just the
+same?"
+
+She put her cheek next to the child's and invited me to compare the two
+adjacent baby mouths. They were, of a truth, very much alike.
+
+She was jealous of the baby, desirous of having it always with her to
+tend and fondle, impatient of the nurse and Antoinette. It was a thing
+so intensely hers that she resented other hands touching it. Oddly
+enough, of me she made an exception. Nothing delighted her more than to
+put the little creature into my awkward and nervous arms, and watch me
+carry it about the room. I think she wanted to give me something, and
+this share in the babe was the most precious gift she could devise.
+
+Of Pasquale she continued to say nothing. In her intense joy of
+motherhood he seemed to have become the dim creature of a dream. I had
+registered the birth without consulting her--in the legal names of the
+parents.
+
+"What are you going to call him, Carlotta?" I asked one day.
+
+"_Mon petit chou._ That's what Antoinette says. It's a beautiful name."
+
+"There are many points in calling an infant one's little cabbage," I
+admitted, "but soon he'll grow up to be as old as I am, and--" I sighed,
+"who would call me their _petit chow_?"
+
+Carlotta laughed.
+
+"That is true. We shall have to find a name." She reflected for a few
+moments; then put her arms round my neck and continued her reflections.
+
+"He shall be Marcus--another Marcus Ordeyne. Then perhaps some day he
+will be 'Seer Marcous' like you."
+
+"Do you mean when I die?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, not for years and years and years!" she cried, tightening her clasp
+in alarm. "But the child lives longer than the father. It is fate. He
+will live longer than I."
+
+"Let us hope so, dear," I answered. "But it is just because I am not his
+father that he can't be Sir Marcus when I die. He can have my name; but
+my title--"
+
+"Who will have it?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"It will die too?"
+
+"It will be quite dead."
+
+"You are his father, you know, _really_," she whispered.
+
+"The law of England takes no count, unfortunately, of things of the
+spirit," said I.
+
+"What are things of the spirit?"
+
+"The things, my dear," said I, "that you are beginning to understand." I
+bent down and kissed the child as it lay on her lap. "Poor little Marcus
+Ordeyne," I said. "My poor quaintly fathered little son, I'm afraid
+there is much trouble ahead of you, but I'll do my best to help you
+through it."
+
+"Bless you, dear," said Carlotta, softly.
+
+I looked at her in wonder. She had spoken for the first time like a
+grown woman--like a woman with a soul.
+
+
+A few weeks later.
+
+We were sitting at breakfast. The morning newspaper contained the
+account of a battle and the lists of British officers killed. I scanned
+as usual the melancholy columns, when a name among the dead caught my
+eye--and I stared at it stupidly. Pasquale was dead, killed outright
+by a Boer bullet. The wild, bright life was ended. It seemed a horrible
+thing, and, much as he had wronged me, my first sentiment was one of
+dismay. He was too gallant and beautiful a creature for death.
+
+Carlotta poured out my tea and came round with the cup which she
+deposited by my side. To prevent her peeping over my shoulder at the
+paper, as she usually did, I laid it on the table; but her quick eye had
+already read the great headlines.
+
+"Great Battle. British officers killed. Oh, let me see, Seer Marcous."
+
+"No, dear," said I. "Go and eat your breakfast."
+
+She looked at me strangely. I tried to smile; but as I am an incompetent
+actor my grimace was a proclamation of disingenuousness.
+
+"Why shouldn't I read it?" she asked, quickly.
+
+"Because I say you mustn't, Carlotta."
+
+She continued to look at me. She had suddenly grown pale. I stirred my
+tea and made a pretence of sipping it.
+
+"Go on with your breakfast, my child," I repeated.
+
+"There is something--something about him in the paper," said Carlotta.
+"He is a British officer."
+
+In the face of her intuition further concealment appeared useless.
+Besides, sooner or later she would have to know.
+
+"He is a British officer no longer, dear," said I.
+
+"Is he dead?"
+
+My mind flew back to an evening long ago--long, long ago it seemed--when
+another newspaper had told of another death, and my ears caught the echo
+of the identical question that had then fallen from her lips. I dreaded
+lest she should say again, "I am so glad."
+
+I beckoned her to my side, and pointing with my finger to the name
+watched her face anxiously. She read, stared for a bit in front of her
+and turned to me with a piteous look. I drew her to me, and she laid her
+face against my shoulder.
+
+"I don't know why I'm crying, Seer Marcous, dear," she said, after a
+while.
+
+I made her drink some of my tea, but she would eat nothing, and
+presently she went upstairs. She had not said that she was glad. She had
+wept and not known the reason for her tears. I railed at myself for my
+doubts of her.
+
+She was subdued and thoughtful all the day. In the evening, instead of
+curling herself up in the sofa-corner among the cushions, she sat on
+a stool by my feet as I read, one hand supporting her chin, the other
+resting on my knee.
+
+"I am glad he was a brave man," she said at last, alluding to Pasquale
+for the first time since the morning. "I like brave men."
+
+"_Dulce et decorum est._ He died for his country," said I.
+
+"It does not hurt me now so much to think of him," said Carlotta.
+
+I could not help feeling a miserable pang of jealousy at Pasquale's
+posthumous rehabilitation as a hero in Carlotta's heart. Yet, was it not
+natural? Was it not the way of women? I saw myself far remote from her,
+and though she never spoke of him again I divined that her thoughts
+dwelt not untenderly on his memory. I was absurd, I know. But I had
+begun almost to believe in my make-believe paternity, and I was jealous
+of the rightful claims of the dead man.
+
+And yet had he lived he might have come back one day with his conquering
+air and his irresistible laugh, and carried them both away from me. In
+sparing me this crowning humiliation I thanked the high gods.
+
+But never to this day has she mentioned his name again.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+How shall I set down that which happened not long afterwards?
+
+The death of a baby is so commonplace, so unimportant. Few reasoning
+people, viewing the matter in the abstract, can do otherwise than
+rejoice that a human being is saved from the weariness of the tired
+years that make up life. For who shall disprove the pessimist's
+assertion that it is better not to have been born than to come into the
+world, and that it is better to die than to live? But those from whom
+the single hope of their existence is ravished find little consolation
+in reason. Grief is the most intensely egotistical of emotions. I have
+lost all that makes life beautiful to me. Is not that enough for the
+stricken soul?
+
+To Carlotta it meant a passage through the valley of the shadow. To me,
+at first, it meant the life of Carlotta, and then a blank in my newly
+ordered scheme of things. The curse of ineffectuality still pursued
+me. I had allotted to myself my humble task--the development of the new
+generation in the form of Carlotta's boy, and even that small usefulness
+was I denied by Fate.
+
+A chill, a touch of croup, an agonised watching, and the tiny thing lay
+dead. Antoinette and I had to drag it stone cold from Carlotta's bosom.
+I alone carried it to burial. The little white coffin rested on the
+opposite seat of the hired brougham, and on it was a bunch of white
+flowers given by Antoinette. In the cemetery chapel another fragment of
+humanity awaited sepulture, and the funeral service was read over both
+bodies. I stood alone by the little white coffin. A crowd of mourners
+were grouped beside the black one. I glanced at the inscription as
+I passed: "Jane Elliot, in the eighty-sixth year of her age." The
+officiant referred in the service to "our dear brother and sister, here
+departed." It was either an awful jest or an awful verity.
+
+My "quaintly fathered little son" had small need of my help through the
+troubles of his life. His mother needed all that I could give. Without
+me she would have died. That I verily believe. I was her solitary
+plank in the welter wherein she would have been submerged. She clung to
+me--literally clung to me. I sat for hours with her grasp upon me. To
+feel assured of my physical presence alone seemed to bring her calm.
+
+Recent as are those sleepless days and nights, their memory is all
+confused. The light burning dimly in the familiar chamber which I had
+once sealed up as a tomb; the shadows on the wall; the fevered face
+and great hollow eyes of Carlotta against the pillows; her little hand
+clutching mine in desperation; the soft tread of the nurse, that is all
+I remember. And when she recovered her wits and grew sane, although for
+a long time she spoke little, and scarcely noticed me otherwise,
+she claimed me by her side. She was still dazed by the misery of her
+darkness. It was only then that I realised the part the child had
+played in her development. Her nature had been stirred to the quick; the
+capacity for emotion had been awakened. She had left me without a qualm.
+She had given herself to Pasquale without a glimmer of passion. She had
+returned to me like a wounded animal seeking its home. For the child
+alone the passionate human love had sprung flaming from the seed hidden
+in her soul. And now the child was dead, and the sun had gone from her
+sky, and she was benumbed with the icy blackness of the world.
+
+Then came a time when her speech was loosened and she talked to me
+incessantly of the child, until one day she spoke of it as living and
+clamoured for it, and relapsed into her fever.
+
+At last one morning she awakened from a sound sleep and found me
+watching; for I had relieved the nurse at six o'clock. She smiled at
+me for the first time since the child fell sick, and took my hand and
+kissed it.
+
+"It is like waking into heaven to see your face, Seer Marcous, darling,"
+she whispered.
+
+"I hope heaven is peopled by a better-looking set of fellows," I said.
+
+"_Hou!_" laughed Carlotta. "Don't you know you are beautiful?"
+
+"You mustn't throw an old jest in my teeth, Carlotta," said I, and I
+reminded her how she had once screamed with laughter when I had told her
+I was very beautiful.
+
+Carlotta listened patiently until I had ended, and then she said, with a
+little sigh:
+
+"You cannot understand, Seer Marcous, darling. I have been thinking of
+my little baby and the angels--and all the angels are like you."
+
+To cover the embarrassment my modesty underwent, I laughed and drew the
+picture of myself with long flaxen hair and white wings.
+
+"My angels hadn't got wings," said Carlotta, seriously. "They all wore
+dressing-gowns. They were real angels. And the one that was most like
+you brought my baby in his arms for me to kiss; and when he put it on a
+white cloud to sleep, and took me up in his arms instead and carried me
+away, away, away through the air, I didn't cry at leaving baby. Wasn't
+that funny? I snuggled up close to him--like that"--she illustrated the
+action of "snuggling" beneath the bed-clothes--"and it was so comfy."
+
+The pale sunshine of a fine February morning filtered into the room from
+behind the curtains. I turned off the dimmed electric lamp and let full
+daylight into the room.
+
+"Oh!" cried Carlotta, turning to the window, "how lovely the good
+sun is! It is more like heaven than ever. Do you know," she added,
+mysteriously, "just before I woke it was all dark, and I had lost my
+angels and I was looking for them."
+
+I counselled her sagely to look for no more members of the Hierarchy _en
+deshabille_, but to content herself with the humbler denizens of this
+planet. She pressed my hand.
+
+"I'll try to be contented, Seer Marcous, darling."
+
+She did her best, poor child, when I was by; but I heard that often she
+would sit by a little pile of garments and take them up one by one and
+cry her heart out--so that though she quickly recovered, her cheeks
+remained wan and drawn, and pain lingered in her eyes. The weather
+changed to fog and damp and she spent the days crouching by the fire,
+sometimes not stirring a muscle for an hour together. Her favourite seat
+was the fender-stool in the drawing-room. Her own boudoir downstairs,
+where she used to receive instruction from the excellent Miss Griggs,
+she scarcely entered.
+
+She broke one of these fits suddenly and called me by her own pet
+version of my name. I looked up from the writing-table where I was
+studying the Arabic grammar.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I have been thinking--oh, thinking, thinking so long. I've been
+thinking that you must love me very much."
+
+"Yes, Carlotta," said I, with a half smile. "I suppose I do."
+
+"As much as I loved my baby," she said, seriously,
+
+"I used to love you in a different way, perhaps."
+
+"And now?"
+
+"Perhaps in the same sort of way, Carlotta."
+
+"I loved my baby because it was mine," she remarked, looking at the
+flames through one hand's delicate fingers. "I wanted to do everything
+for him and didn't want him to do anything for me. I would have died
+for him. It is so strange. Yes, I think you must love me like that, Seer
+Marcous. Why?"
+
+"Because when I found you in the Embankment Gardens nearly two years
+ago you were about as helpless as your little baby," I replied, somewhat
+disingenuously.
+
+Carlotta gave me a quick glance.
+
+"You thought me then what you call an infernal nuisance. Oh, I know now.
+I have grown wise. But you were always good. You looked good when you
+sat on the seat. You were reading a dirty little book."
+
+"_L'Histoire des Uscoques,_" I murmured. How far away it seemed.
+
+There was a pause. I regarded her for a moment or two. She was sunk
+again in serious reflection. I sighed--at the general dismalness of
+life, I suppose--and resumed my Arabic.
+
+"Seer Marcous."
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Why didn't you drive me away when I came back?"
+
+I shut up the Arabic grammar and went and sat beside her on the
+fenderstool.
+
+"My dear little girl--what a question! How could I drive you away from
+your own home?"
+
+She flashed a queer, scared look at me, then at the fire, then at me
+again and then burst out crying, her head and arms on her knees.
+
+I muttered a man's words of awkward comfort, saying something about the
+baby.
+
+"It isn't baby I'm crying about," sobbed Carlotta. "It's me! And it's
+you! And it's all the things I'm beginning to understand."
+
+I patted her head and lit a cigarette and wandered about the room,
+rather puzzled by Carlotta's psychological development, and yet stirred
+by a faint thrill at her recognition of my affection. At the same time
+the sad "too late, too late," was knelled in my ears, and I thought of
+the might-have-been, and rode the merry-go-round of regret's banalities.
+I had grown old. Passion had died. Hope--the hope of hearing the
+patter of a child's feet about my house, the hope of pride in a
+quasi-paternity, of handing on, vicariously though it were, the torch of
+life--hope was dead and it was buried in a little white coffin. Only a
+great, quiet love remained. I was a tired old man, and Carlotta was to
+me an infinitely loved sister--or daughter--or granddaughter even--so
+old did I feel. And when I raised her from the fender-stool, and kissed
+the tears from her eyes, it was as grandfatherly a kiss as had ever been
+given in this world.
+
+
+The same old problem again. What the deuce to do with Carlotta? Yet not
+quite the same: rather, what the deuce to do with Carlotta and myself?
+In our strange relationship we were inextricably bound together.
+
+First, she needed sunshine--instead of the forlorn bleakness of an
+English spring--and a change from this house of pain and death. And
+then I, too, felt the need of wider horizons. London had grown to be a
+nightmare city which I never entered. Its restless ambitions were not
+mine. Its pleasures pleased me not. With not five of its five million
+inhabitants dared I speak heart to heart. Judith had gone out of my
+life. My aunts and cousins regarded me as beyond the moral pale. Mrs.
+McMurray was still unaware of my return to England. I confess to shabby
+treatment of my kind friend. I know she would have flown to aid Carlotta
+in her troubles; but would she have understood Carlotta? Reasoning now
+I am convinced that she would: in those days I did not reason. I shrank
+like a snail into its shell. The simile is commonplace; but so was
+I--the most commonplace human snail that ever occupied a commonplace
+ten-roomed shell. And now the house and its useless books and its
+million-fold more useless manuscript "History of Renaissance Morals,"
+all its sombre memories and its haunting ghosts of ineffectualities,
+became an unwholesome prison in which I was wasting away a feeble
+existence. I resolved to quit it, to leave my books, to abjure
+Renaissance morals, and to go forth with Carlotta into the wilderness
+and the sunshine, there to fulfil whatever destiny the high gods should
+decree.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+
+Again I sit on the housetop in Mogador on the Morocco coast, where a
+month ago I began to write these latter pages. Time has passed quickly
+since that day.
+
+I said then that on the previous afternoon something had happened. It
+was something which I might have foreseen, which, in fact, with my habit
+of putting the telescope to my blind eye, I obstinately had refused
+to foresee. During our wanderings I had watched the flowering of her
+splendid beauty as she drank in health from the glow of her own Orient.
+I had noted the widening of her intellect, the quickening of her
+sympathies. I had been conscious of the expansion of her soul in the
+great silences when the stars flamed over the infinite sea of sand. But
+a growing wistfulness that was no longer the old doglike pleading of her
+glorious eyes, a gathering sadness that was not an aftermath of grief
+for the child that had gone--into this, if I did remark it, I did
+not choose to inquire. Instead, I continued my study of Arabic and
+cultivated the acquaintance of a learned Moor whose conversation
+afforded--and still affords--me peculiar pleasure. One of these days I
+shall make a book of his Table-talk. But now I have to tell of Carlotta.
+
+She accepted with alacrity my proposal that morning to ride over to the
+Palm Tree House for luncheon, as we had done several times before. To
+please me, I think, she had resolutely overcome her natural indolence.
+So much so that she had come to love the nomad life of steamers and
+caravans, and had grown restless, eager for fresh scenes, craving
+new impressions. It was I who had cried a halt at Mogador where this
+furnished house to let, belonging to a German merchant absent in Europe,
+tempted me to rest awhile. I am not so young as Carlotta, and I awakened
+to the fact of a circumambient universe so many years ago that I have
+grown slumberous. Carlotta, if left to herself, would have gone on
+riding camels through Africa to the end of time. She had changed in many
+essentials. Instead of regarding me as an amiable purveyor of sweetmeats
+and other necessaries of life to which by the grace of her being
+Carlotta she was entitled, she treated me with human affection and
+sympathy, keeping her own wants in the background, anxious only to
+anticipate mine. But she still loved sweetmeats and would eat horrible
+Moorish messes with an avidity only equalled by my repugnance. She
+was still the same Carlotta. On the other hand again, she had of late
+abandoned her caressing habits. If she laid her hand on my arm, she did
+it timorously--whereat I would laugh and she would grow confused. Once
+she had driven me to frenzy with her fondling. Those days had passed.
+I told myself that I was as old as the sphinx we had moralised over in
+Egypt.
+
+We lunched, then, at the Palm Tree House and rode back in the cool of
+the afternoon to Mogador. We were alone, as we knew the path across the
+tongue of desert, and had no need of a guide and the rabble of sore-eyed
+urchins who, like their attendant flies, infest the tourist on his
+journeyings. On our right the desert rose to meet a near horizon; on our
+left sandhills and boulders cut off the view; ahead the shimmering line
+beyond which the sea and city lay. We were enveloped by solitude and
+stillness. In the clear African air objects detached themselves against
+the sky with startling definition.
+
+I had unconsciously ridden a bit ahead of Carlotta, thinking my
+own thoughts, and sighing as a man often does sigh, for the vague
+unattainable which is happiness. Suddenly I missed her by my side, and
+turning round saw a sight that made my heart beat with its sheer beauty.
+It was only Carlotta on her barbarically betrapped and besaddled mule.
+But it was Carlotta glorified in colour. She held above her head a
+cotton parasol, which she had bought to her delight and my disgust
+in Mogador; an impossible thing, all deep cherry reds and yellows;
+a hateful thing made for a pantomime--or for this African afternoon.
+Outspread and luminous in the white sunlight its cherry reds and yellows
+floated like translucences of wine above Carlotta's bronze hair crowned
+by a white sun hat, her warm flesh-tints, and the dazzling white of her
+surah silk blouse; the whole picture cut out vivid against the indigo of
+the sky. It was a radiant vision. I stared openmouthed, smitten with
+the pang that sudden and transient loveliness can sometimes deal, as
+Carlotta approached, her figure swaying with the jog of her barbaric
+beast. Her eyes were fixed on mine. She halted, and for a moment we
+looked at one another; and in those wonderful eyes I saw for the first
+time a beautiful sadness, a spiritual appeal. The moment passed. We
+started again, side by side, neither speaking. I did not look at her,
+conscious of a vague trouble. Things that I had thought dead stirred in
+my heart.
+
+Presently like a dawn of infinite delicacy rose the city before us. Its
+fairy minarets and towers gleamed first white in an atmosphere of pale
+amethyst toning through shades of green to the blue of the zenith. And
+the lazy sea lay at the city's foot a pavement of lapis lazuli. But
+all was faint, unreal. Far, far away a group of palms caught opalescent
+reflections. A slight breeze had sprung up, raising minute particles of
+sand which caused the elfland on the horizon to quiver like a mirage.
+
+"It is a dream-city," said I, in admiration.
+
+Carlotta did not reply. I thought she had not heard. We jogged on a
+little in silence. At last she drew very close to me.
+
+"Shall we ever get there?" she asked, pointing ahead with the hand that
+held the reins.
+
+"To Mogador? Yes, I hope so," I answered with a laugh. I thought she was
+tired.
+
+"No, not Mogador. The dream-city--where every one wants to get."
+
+"You have travelled far, my dear," said I, "to hanker now after
+dream-cities and the unattainable. I knew a little girl once who would
+have asked: 'What is a dream-city?"
+
+"She doesn't ask now because she knows," replied Carlotta. "No. We shall
+never get there. It looks as if we were riding straight into it--but
+when we get close, it will just be Mogador."
+
+"Aren't you happy, Carlotta?" I asked.
+
+"Are you, Seer Marcous?"
+
+"I? I am a philosopher, my child, and a happy philosopher would be a
+_lusus naturae_, a freak, a subject for a Barnum & Bailey Show. If
+they caught him they would put him between the hairy man and the living
+skeleton."
+
+"I suppose I'm getting to be a philosopher, too," said Carlotta, "and
+I hate it! Sometimes I think I hate everything and everybody--save you,
+Seer Marcous, darling. It's wicked of me. I must have been born wicked.
+But I used to be happy. I never wanted to go to dream-cities. I was just
+like a cat. Like Polyphemus. Do you remember Polyphemus?"
+
+"Yes," said I. And then set off my balance by this strange conversation
+with Carlotta, I added: "I killed him."
+
+She turned a startled face to me.
+
+"You killed him? Why?"
+
+"He laughed at me because I was unhappy," said I.
+
+"Through me?"
+
+"Yes; through you. But that's neither here nor there. We were not
+discussing the death of Polyphemus. We were talking about being
+philosophers, and you said that as a philosopher you hated everything
+and everybody except me. Why do you exclude me, Carlotta?"
+
+We were riding so near together that my leg rubbed her saddle-girth.
+I looked hard at her. She turned away her head and put the pantomime
+parasol between us. I heard a little choking sob.
+
+"Let us get off--and sit down a little--I want to cry.
+
+"The end of all feminine philosophy," I said, somewhat brutally. "No.
+It's getting late. That's only Mogador in front of us. Let us go to it."
+
+Carlotta shifted her parasol quickly.
+
+"What has happened to you, Seer Marcous? You have never spoken to me
+like that before."
+
+"The very deuce seems to have happened," said I, angrily--though why I
+should have felt angry, heaven only knows. "First you turn yourself into
+a Royal Academy picture with that unspeakable umbrella of yours and the
+trumpery blue sky and sunshine, and make my sentimental soul ache; and
+then you--"
+
+"It's a very pretty umbrella," said Carlotta, looking upwards at it
+demurely.
+
+"Give it to me," I said.
+
+She yielded it with her usual docility. I cast it upon the desert. Being
+open it gave one or two silly rebounds, then lay still. Carlotta reined
+up her mule.
+
+"Oh-h!" she said, in her old way.
+
+I dismounted hurriedly, and helped her down and passed my arm through
+the two bridles.
+
+"My dear child," said I, "what is the meaning of all this? Here we have
+been living for months the most tranquil and unruffled existence, and
+now suddenly you begin to talk about dream-cities and the impossibility
+of getting there, and I turn angry and heave parasols about Africa. What
+is the meaning of it?"
+
+The most extraordinary part of it was that I should be treating Carlotta
+as a grown-up woman, after the fashion of the hero of a modern French
+novel. Perhaps I was younger than I thought.
+
+She kept her eyes fixed downward.
+
+"Why are you angry with me?" she asked in a low voice.
+
+"I haven't the remotest idea," said I.
+
+She lifted her eyelids slowly--oh, very, very slowly, glanced
+quiveringly at me, while the shadow of a smile fluttered round her lips.
+I verily believe the baggage exulted in her feminine heart. I turned
+away, leading the two animals, and picked up the parasol which I closed
+and restored to her.
+
+"I thought you wanted to cry," I remarked.
+
+"I can't," said Carlotta, plaintively.
+
+"And you won't tell me why you exclude me from your universal hatred?"
+
+Carlotta dug up the sand with the point of her foot. The sight of it
+recalled the row of pink toes thrust unashamedly before my eyes on the
+second day of her arrival in London. An old hope, an old fear, an old
+struggle renewed themselves. She was more adorably beautiful even than
+the Carlotta of the pink tus, and spiritually she was reborn. I heard
+her whisper:
+
+"I can't."
+
+Now I had sworn to myself all the oaths that a man can swear that I
+should be Carlotta's grandfather to the end of time. Hitherto I had
+felt the part. Now suddenly grey beard and slippered pantaloons are cast
+aside and I am young again with a glow in my heart which beats fast at
+her beauty. I shut my teeth.
+
+"No," said I to myself. "The curtain shall not rise on that farcical
+tragedy again."
+
+I threw the reins on the neck of Carlotta's mule, which with its
+companion had been regarding us with bland stupidity.
+
+"I think we had better ride on, Carlotta," I said. "Mount."
+
+She meekly gave me her little foot and I hoisted her into the saddle.
+
+We did not exchange a word till we reached Mogador. But each of us felt
+that something had happened.
+
+At dinner we met as usual. Carlotta spoke somewhat feverishly of our
+travels, and asked me numberless questions, betraying an unprecedented
+thirst for information. I never gave her historical instruction with
+less zest.
+
+After the meal we went onto the flat roof. Carlotta poured out my coffee
+at the small table beside the long Madeira cane chair which was my
+accustomed seat. The starlit night was blue and languorous. From some
+cafe came the monotonous strains of Moorish music, the harsh strings and
+harsh men's voices softened by the distance. Carlotta took my coffee-cup
+when I had finished and set it down in her granddaughterly way. Then she
+stood in front of me.
+
+"Won't you make a little room for me on your chair, Seer Marcous,
+darling?"
+
+I shifted my feet from the foot-rest and she sat down. I may observe
+that I was not, in oriental bashawdom, occupying the one and only chair
+on the housetop.
+
+"Tell me about the stars," she said.
+
+I knew what she meant. She loved the old Greek myths; their poetry,
+obscured though it was through my matter-of-fact prose, appealed to
+her young imagination. She was passing through an exquisite phase of
+development.
+
+I scanned the heavens for a text and found one in the Pleiades. And I
+told her how these were seven daughters of Atlas and Pleione who herself
+was the daughter of the Sea, and how they were all pure maidens, save
+one, and were the companions of Artemis; how Orion the hunter, who was
+afterwards slain by Artemis and whose three-starred girdle gleamed up
+there in the sky, pursued them with evil intent, and how they prayed the
+gods for deliverance and were changed into the everlasting stars; and,
+lastly, how the one who was not a maiden, for she loved a mortal, shrank
+away from her sisters through shame and was invisible to the eye of man.
+
+"She was ashamed," said Carlotta in a low voice, "because she loved some
+one afterwards, one of the gods, who would not look at her because
+she had given herself to a mortal. A woman then has a fire here"--she
+clasped her hands to her bosom--"and wishes she could burn away to
+nothing, nothing, just to air, and become invisible."
+
+She was rising hurriedly on the last word, but I brought my hands down
+on her shoulders.
+
+"Carlotta, my child," said I, "what do you mean?"
+
+She seized my wrists and struggling to rise, panted out in desperation:
+
+"You are one of the gods, and I wish I were changed into an invisible
+star."
+
+"I don't," said I, huskily.
+
+By main force I drew her to me and our lips met. She yielded, and this
+time the whole soul of Carlotta came to me in the kiss.
+
+"It's beautiful to snuggle up against you again," said my ever direct
+Carlotta, after a while. "I haven't done it--oh, for such a long time."
+She sighed contentedly. "Seer Marcous--"
+
+"You must call me Marcus now," said I, somewhat fatuously.
+
+She shook her head as it lay on my shoulder. "No. You are Marcus--or Sir
+Marcus--to everybody. To me you are always Seer Marcous. Seer Marcous,
+darling," she half whispered after a pause. "Once I did not know the
+difference between a god and a mortal. It was only that morning when I
+woke up--"
+
+"You took me for a saint in a dressing-gown," said I.
+
+"It's the same thing," she retorted. And then taking up her parable,
+she told me in her artless way the inner history of her heart since that
+morning; but what she said is sacred. Also, a man feels himself to be a
+pitiful dog of a god when a woman relates how she came to establish him
+on her High Altar.
+
+Later we struck a lighter vein and spoke of the present, the enchantment
+of the hour, the scented air, the African stars.
+
+"It seems, my dear," said I, "that we have got to Nephelococcygia after
+all."
+
+"What is Nephelococcygia?" asked Carlotta.
+
+I relented. "It's a base Aristophanic libel on our dream-city," said I.
+
+
+Thus out of evil has come good; out of pain has grown happiness; out of
+horror has sprung an everlasting love. Many a man will say that in all
+my relations with Carlotta I have comported myself as a fool, and that
+my marriage is the crowning folly. Well, I pretend not unto wisdom.
+Wisdom would have married me to five thousand a year, a position in
+fashionable society, my Cousin Dora and premature old age antecedent to
+eternal destruction. I hold that my salvation has lain the way of folly.
+Again, it may be urged against me that I have squandered my life, that
+with all my learning, such as it is, I have achieved nothing. I once
+thought so. I boasted of it in my diary when I complacently styled
+myself a waster in Earth's factory. Oh, that diary! Let me here solemnly
+retract and abjure every crude and idiot opinion and reflection of life
+set forth in that frenetic record! I regard myself not as a waster--I
+remember a passage in Epictetus treating of the ways of Providence:
+
+"For what else can I do, a lame old man, than sing hymns to God? If then
+I were a nightingale I would do the part of a nightingale: if I were
+a swan, I would do like a swan. But now I am a rational creature and I
+ought to praise God; this is my work, I do it, nor will I desert this
+post so long as I am allowed to keep it; and I exhort you to join in
+this same song."
+
+No, I am neither nightingale nor swan, and cannot add, as they do,
+to the beauty of the earth. The lame old man has his limitations; but
+within them, he can, by cleaving to his post and praising God, fulfil
+his destiny.
+
+Carlotta coming onto the housetop to summon me to lunch looks over my
+shoulder as I write these words.
+
+"But you are not a lame old man!" she cries in indignation. "You are the
+youngest and strongest and cleverest man in the world!"
+
+"What am I to do with these miraculous gifts?" I ask, laughing.
+
+"You are to become famous," she says, with conviction.
+
+"Very well, my dear. We will have to go to some new land where attaining
+fame is easier for a beginner than in London; and we'll send for
+Antoinette and Stenson to help us."
+
+"That will be very nice," she observes.
+
+So I am to become famous. _Ce que femme veut, Dieu le veut_. And
+Carlotta has got a soul of her own now and means to make the most of
+it. It will lead me upward somewhere. But whether I am to be king of
+New Babylon or Prime Minister of New Zealand or lawgiver to a Polynesian
+tribe is a secret as yet hidden in the lap of the gods, whence Carlotta
+doubtless will snatch it in her own good time.
+
+"You are writing a lot of rubbish," says Carlotta.
+
+"And a little truth. The mixture is Life," I answer.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne, by William J. Locke
+
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