diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 8180.txt | 2406 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 8180.zip | bin | 0 -> 52084 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/phnlv10.txt | 2373 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/phnlv10.zip | bin | 0 -> 52105 bytes |
7 files changed, 4795 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/8180.txt b/8180.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a543b7f --- /dev/null +++ b/8180.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2406 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Phantom Lover, by Vernon Lee + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + +Title: A Phantom Lover + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Posting Date: September 19, 2014 [EBook #8180] +Release Date: May, 2005 +First Posted: June 26, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHANTOM LOVER *** + + + + +Produced by Katherine Delany, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles +Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + + + +A PHANTOM LOVER + + + + +By +VERNON LEE + +1890 + + + + + +To COUNT PETER BOUTOURLINE, +_AT TAGANTCHA_, +GOVERNMENT OF KIEW, RUSSIA. + +MY DEAR BOUTOURLINE, + +Do you remember my telling you, one afternoon that you sat upon the +hearthstool at Florence, the story of Mrs. Oke of Okehurst? + +You thought it a fantastic tale, you lover of fantastic things, and urged +me to write it out at once, although I protested that, in such matters, to +write is to exorcise, to dispel the charm; and that printers' ink chases +away the ghosts that may pleasantly haunt us, as efficaciously as gallons +of holy water. + +But if, as I suspect, you will now put down any charm that story may +have possessed to the way in which we had been working ourselves up, +that firelight evening, with all manner of fantastic stuff--if, as I +fear, the story of Mrs. Oke of Okehurst will strike you as stale and +unprofitable--the sight of this little book will serve at least to remind +you, in the middle of your Russian summer, that there is such a season +as winter, such a place as Florence, and such a person as your friend, + +VERNON LEE + +Kensington, _July_ 1886. + + + + +1 + + +That sketch up there with the boy's cap? Yes; that's the same woman. I +wonder whether you could guess who she was. A singular being, is she not? +The most marvellous creature, quite, that I have ever met: a wonderful +elegance, exotic, far-fetched, poignant; an artificial perverse sort of +grace and research in every outline and movement and arrangement of head +and neck, and hands and fingers. Here are a lot of pencil sketches I made +while I was preparing to paint her portrait. Yes; there's nothing but her +in the whole sketchbook. Mere scratches, but they may give some idea of her +marvellous, fantastic kind of grace. Here she is leaning over the +staircase, and here sitting in the swing. Here she is walking quickly out +of the room. That's her head. You see she isn't really handsome; her +forehead is too big, and her nose too short. This gives no idea of her. It +was altogether a question of movement. Look at the strange cheeks, hollow +and rather flat; well, when she smiled she had the most marvellous dimples +here. There was something exquisite and uncanny about it. Yes; I began the +picture, but it was never finished. I did the husband first. I wonder who +has his likeness now? Help me to move these pictures away from the wall. +Thanks. This is her portrait; a huge wreck. I don't suppose you can make +much of it; it is merely blocked in, and seems quite mad. You see my idea +was to make her leaning against a wall--there was one hung with yellow that +seemed almost brown--so as to bring out the silhouette. + +It was very singular I should have chosen that particular wall. It does +look rather insane in this condition, but I like it; it has something of +her. I would frame it and hang it up, only people would ask questions. Yes; +you have guessed quite right--it is Mrs. Oke of Okehurst. I forgot you had +relations in that part of the country; besides, I suppose the newspapers +were full of it at the time. You didn't know that it all took place under +my eyes? I can scarcely believe now that it did: it all seems so distant, +vivid but unreal, like a thing of my own invention. It really was much +stranger than any one guessed. People could no more understand it than they +could understand her. I doubt whether any one ever understood Alice Oke +besides myself. You mustn't think me unfeeling. She was a marvellous, +weird, exquisite creature, but one couldn't feel sorry for her. I felt much +sorrier for the wretched creature of a husband. It seemed such an +appropriate end for her; I fancy she would have liked it could she have +known. Ah! I shall never have another chance of painting such a portrait as +I wanted. She seemed sent me from heaven or the other place. You have never +heard the story in detail? Well, I don't usually mention it, because people +are so brutally stupid or sentimental; but I'll tell it you. Let me see. +It's too dark to paint any more today, so I can tell it you now. Wait; I +must turn her face to the wall. Ah, she was a marvellous creature! + + + + +2 + + +You remember, three years ago, my telling you I had let myself in for +painting a couple of Kentish squireen? I really could not understand what +had possessed me to say yes to that man. A friend of mine had brought him +one day to my studio--Mr. Oke of Okehurst, that was the name on his card. +He was a very tall, very well-made, very good-looking young man, with a +beautiful fair complexion, beautiful fair moustache, and beautifully +fitting clothes; absolutely like a hundred other young men you can see any +day in the Park, and absolutely uninteresting from the crown of his head to +the tip of his boots. Mr. Oke, who had been a lieutenant in the Blues +before his marriage, was evidently extremely uncomfortable on finding +himself in a studio. He felt misgivings about a man who could wear a velvet +coat in town, but at the same time he was nervously anxious not to treat me +in the very least like a tradesman. He walked round my place, looked at +everything with the most scrupulous attention, stammered out a few +complimentary phrases, and then, looking at his friend for assistance, +tried to come to the point, but failed. The point, which the friend kindly +explained, was that Mr. Oke was desirous to know whether my engagements +would allow of my painting him and his wife, and what my terms would be. +The poor man blushed perfectly crimson during this explanation, as if he +had come with the most improper proposal; and I noticed--the only +interesting thing about him--a very odd nervous frown between his eyebrows, +a perfect double gash,--a thing which usually means something abnormal: a +mad-doctor of my acquaintance calls it the maniac-frown. When I had +answered, he suddenly burst out into rather confused explanations: his +wife--Mrs. Oke--had seen some of my--pictures--paintings--portraits--at +the--the--what d'you call it?--Academy. She had--in short, they had made a +very great impression upon her. Mrs. Oke had a great taste for art; she +was, in short, extremely desirous of having her portrait and his painted by +me, _etcetera_. + +"My wife," he suddenly added, "is a remarkable woman. I don't know whether +you will think her handsome,--she isn't exactly, you know. But she's +awfully strange," and Mr. Oke of Okehurst gave a little sigh and frowned +that curious frown, as if so long a speech and so decided an expression of +opinion had cost him a great deal. + +It was a rather unfortunate moment in my career. A very influential sitter +of mine--you remember the fat lady with the crimson curtain behind +her?--had come to the conclusion or been persuaded that I had painted her +old and vulgar, which, in fact, she was. Her whole clique had turned +against me, the newspapers had taken up the matter, and for the moment I +was considered as a painter to whose brushes no woman would trust her +reputation. Things were going badly. So I snapped but too gladly at Mr. +Oke's offer, and settled to go down to Okehurst at the end of a fortnight. +But the door had scarcely closed upon my future sitter when I began to +regret my rashness; and my disgust at the thought of wasting a whole summer +upon the portrait of a totally uninteresting Kentish squire, and his +doubtless equally uninteresting wife, grew greater and greater as the time +for execution approached. I remember so well the frightful temper in which +I got into the train for Kent, and the even more frightful temper in which +I got out of it at the little station nearest to Okehurst. It was pouring +floods. I felt a comfortable fury at the thought that my canvases would get +nicely wetted before Mr. Oke's coachman had packed them on the top of the +waggonette. It was just what served me right for coming to this confounded +place to paint these confounded people. We drove off in the steady +downpour. The roads were a mass of yellow mud; the endless flat +grazing-grounds under the oak-trees, after having been burnt to cinders in +a long drought, were turned into a hideous brown sop; the country seemed +intolerably monotonous. + +My spirits sank lower and lower. I began to meditate upon the modern Gothic +country-house, with the usual amount of Morris furniture, Liberty rugs, and +Mudie novels, to which I was doubtless being taken. My fancy pictured very +vividly the five or six little Okes--that man certainly must have at least +five children--the aunts, and sisters-in-law, and cousins; the eternal +routine of afternoon tea and lawn-tennis; above all, it pictured Mrs. Oke, +the bouncing, well-informed, model housekeeper, electioneering, +charity-organising young lady, whom such an individual as Mr. Oke would +regard in the light of a remarkable woman. And my spirit sank within me, +and I cursed my avarice in accepting the commission, my spiritlessness in +not throwing it over while yet there was time. We had meanwhile driven into +a large park, or rather a long succession of grazing-grounds, dotted about +with large oaks, under which the sheep were huddled together for shelter +from the rain. In the distance, blurred by the sheets of rain, was a line +of low hills, with a jagged fringe of bluish firs and a solitary windmill. +It must be a good mile and a half since we had passed a house, and there +was none to be seen in the distance--nothing but the undulation of sere +grass, sopped brown beneath the huge blackish oak-trees, and whence arose, +from all sides, a vague disconsolate bleating. At last the road made a +sudden bend, and disclosed what was evidently the home of my sitter. It +was not what I had expected. In a dip in the ground a large red-brick +house, with the rounded gables and high chimney-stacks of the time of +James I.,--a forlorn, vast place, set in the midst of the pasture-land, +with no trace of garden before it, and only a few large trees indicating +the possibility of one to the back; no lawn either, but on the other side +of the sandy dip, which suggested a filled-up moat, a huge oak, short, +hollow, with wreathing, blasted, black branches, upon which only a handful +of leaves shook in the rain. It was not at all what I had pictured to +myself the home of Mr. Oke of Okehurst. + +My host received me in the hall, a large place, panelled and carved, hung +round with portraits up to its curious ceiling--vaulted and ribbed like the +inside of a ship's hull. He looked even more blond and pink and white, more +absolutely mediocre in his tweed suit; and also, I thought, even more +good-natured and duller. He took me into his study, a room hung round with +whips and fishing-tackle in place of books, while my things were being +carried upstairs. It was very damp, and a fire was smouldering. He gave the +embers a nervous kick with his foot, and said, as he offered me a cigar-- + +"You must excuse my not introducing you at once to Mrs. Oke. My wife--in +short, I believe my wife is asleep." + +"Is Mrs. Oke unwell?" I asked, a sudden hope flashing across me that I +might be off the whole matter. + +"Oh no! Alice is quite well; at least, quite as well as she usually is. My +wife," he added, after a minute, and in a very decided tone, "does not +enjoy very good health--a nervous constitution. Oh no! not at all ill, +nothing at all serious, you know. Only nervous, the doctors say; mustn't be +worried or excited, the doctors say; requires lots of repose,--that sort +of thing." + +There was a dead pause. This man depressed me, I knew not why. He had a +listless, puzzled look, very much out of keeping with his evident admirable +health and strength. + +"I suppose you are a great sportsman?" I asked from sheer despair, nodding +in the direction of the whips and guns and fishing-rods. + +"Oh no! not now. I was once. I have given up all that," he answered, +standing with his back to the fire, and staring at the polar bear beneath +his feet. "I--I have no time for all that now," he added, as if an +explanation were due. "A married man--you know. Would you like to come up +to your rooms?" he suddenly interrupted himself. "I have had one arranged +for you to paint in. My wife said you would prefer a north light. If that +one doesn't suit, you can have your choice of any other." + +I followed him out of the study, through the vast entrance-hall. In less +than a minute I was no longer thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Oke and the boredom +of doing their likeness; I was simply overcome by the beauty of this house, +which I had pictured modern and philistine. It was, without exception, the +most perfect example of an old English manor-house that I had ever seen; +the most magnificent intrinsically, and the most admirably preserved. Out +of the huge hall, with its immense fireplace of delicately carved and +inlaid grey and black stone, and its rows of family portraits, reaching +from the wainscoting to the oaken ceiling, vaulted and ribbed like a ship's +hull, opened the wide, flat-stepped staircase, the parapet surmounted at +intervals by heraldic monsters, the wall covered with oak carvings of +coats-of-arms, leafage, and little mythological scenes, painted a faded red +and blue, and picked out with tarnished gold, which harmonised with the +tarnished blue and gold of the stamped leather that reached to the oak +cornice, again delicately tinted and gilded. The beautifully damascened +suits of court armour looked, without being at all rusty, as if no modern +hand had ever touched them; the very rugs under foot were of +sixteenth-century Persian make; the only things of to-day were the big +bunches of flowers and ferns, arranged in majolica dishes upon the +landings. Everything was perfectly silent; only from below came the chimes, +silvery like an Italian palace fountain, of an old-fashioned clock. + +It seemed to me that I was being led through the palace of the Sleeping +Beauty. + +"What a magnificent house!" I exclaimed as I followed my host through a +long corridor, also hung with leather, wainscoted with carvings, and +furnished with big wedding coffers, and chairs that looked as if they came +out of some Vandyck portrait. In my mind was the strong impression that all +this was natural, spontaneous--that it had about it nothing of the +picturesqueness which swell studios have taught to rich and aesthetic +houses. Mr. Oke misunderstood me. + +"It is a nice old place," he said, "but it's too large for us. You see, my +wife's health does not allow of our having many guests; and there are no +children." + +I thought I noticed a vague complaint in his voice; and he evidently was +afraid there might have seemed something of the kind, for he added +immediately-- + +"I don't care for children one jackstraw, you know, myself; can't +understand how any one can, for my part." + +If ever a man went out of his way to tell a lie, I said to myself, Mr. Oke +of Okehurst was doing so at the present moment. + +When he had left me in one of the two enormous rooms that were allotted to +me, I threw myself into an arm-chair and tried to focus the extraordinary +imaginative impression which this house had given me. + +I am very susceptible to such impressions; and besides the sort of spasm of +imaginative interest sometimes given to me by certain rare and eccentric +personalities, I know nothing more subduing than the charm, quieter and +less analytic, of any sort of complete and out-of-the-common-run sort of +house. To sit in a room like the one I was sitting in, with the figures of +the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the +great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers +reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, +a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the +hands of ladies long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every +now and then, its faint silvery tune of forgotten days, filled the +room;--to do this is a special kind of voluptuousness, peculiar and complex +and indescribable, like the half-drunkenness of opium or haschisch, and +which, to be conveyed to others in any sense as I feel it, would require a +genius, subtle and heady, like that of Baudelaire. + +After I had dressed for dinner I resumed my place in the arm-chair, and +resumed also my reverie, letting all these impressions of the past--which +seemed faded like the figures in the arras, but still warm like the embers +in the fireplace, still sweet and subtle like the perfume of the dead +rose-leaves and broken spices in the china bowls--permeate me and go to my +head. Of Oke and Oke's wife I did not think; I seemed quite alone, isolated +from the world, separated from it in this exotic enjoyment. + +Gradually the embers grew paler; the figures in the tapestry more shadowy; +the columned and curtained bed loomed out vaguer; the room seemed to fill +with greyness; and my eyes wandered to the mullioned bow-window, beyond +whose panes, between whose heavy stonework, stretched a greyish-brown +expanse of sore and sodden park grass, dotted with big oaks; while far off, +behind a jagged fringe of dark Scotch firs, the wet sky was suffused with +the blood-red of the sunset. Between the falling of the raindrops from the +ivy outside, there came, fainter or sharper, the recurring bleating of the +lambs separated from their mothers, a forlorn, quavering, eerie little cry. + +I started up at a sudden rap at my door. + +"Haven't you heard the gong for dinner?" asked Mr. Oke's voice. + +I had completely forgotten his existence. + + + + +3 + + +I feel that I cannot possibly reconstruct my earliest impressions of Mrs. +Oke. My recollection of them would be entirely coloured by my subsequent +knowledge of her; whence I conclude that I could not at first have +experienced the strange interest and admiration which that extraordinary +woman very soon excited in me. Interest and admiration, be it well +understood, of a very unusual kind, as she was herself a very unusual kind +of woman; and I, if you choose, am a rather unusual kind of man. But I can +explain that better anon. + +This much is certain, that I must have been immeasurably surprised at +finding my hostess and future sitter so completely unlike everything I had +anticipated. Or no--now I come to think of it, I scarcely felt surprised at +all; or if I did, that shock of surprise could have lasted but an +infinitesimal part of a minute. The fact is, that, having once seen Alice +Oke in the reality, it was quite impossible to remember that one could have +fancied her at all different: there was something so complete, so +completely unlike every one else, in her personality, that she seemed +always to have been present in one's consciousness, although present, +perhaps, as an enigma. + +Let me try and give you some notion of her: not that first impression, +whatever it may have been, but the absolute reality of her as I gradually +learned to see it. To begin with, I must repeat and reiterate over and over +again, that she was, beyond all comparison, the most graceful and exquisite +woman I have ever seen, but with a grace and an exquisiteness that had +nothing to do with any preconceived notion or previous experience of what +goes by these names: grace and exquisiteness recognised at once as perfect, +but which were seen in her for the first, and probably, I do believe, for +the last time. It is conceivable, is it not, that once in a thousand years +there may arise a combination of lines, a system of movements, an outline, +a gesture, which is new, unprecedented, and yet hits off exactly our +desires for beauty and rareness? She was very tall; and I suppose people +would have called her thin. I don't know, for I never thought about her as +a body--bones, flesh, that sort of thing; but merely as a wonderful series +of lines, and a wonderful strangeness of personality. Tall and slender, +certainly, and with not one item of what makes up our notion of a +well-built woman. She was as straight--I mean she had as little of what +people call figure--as a bamboo; her shoulders were a trifle high, and she +had a decided stoop; her arms and her shoulders she never once wore +uncovered. But this bamboo figure of hers had a suppleness and a +stateliness, a play of outline with every step she took, that I can't +compare to anything else; there was in it something of the peacock and +something also of the stag; but, above all, it was her own. I wish I could +describe her. I wish, alas!--I wish, I wish, I have wished a hundred +thousand times--I could paint her, as I see her now, if I shut my +eyes--even if it were only a silhouette. There! I see her so plainly, +walking slowly up and down a room, the slight highness of her shoulders; +just completing the exquisite arrangement of lines made by the straight +supple back, the long exquisite neck, the head, with the hair cropped in +short pale curls, always drooping a little, except when she would suddenly +throw it back, and smile, not at me, nor at any one, nor at anything that +had been said, but as if she alone had suddenly seen or heard something, +with the strange dimple in her thin, pale cheeks, and the strange whiteness +in her full, wide-opened eyes: the moment when she had something of the +stag in her movement. But where is the use of talking about her? I don't +believe, you know, that even the greatest painter can show what is the real +beauty of a very beautiful woman in the ordinary sense: Titian's and +Tintoretto's women must have been miles handsomer than they have made them. +Something--and that the very essence--always escapes, perhaps because real +beauty is as much a thing in time--a thing like music, a succession, a +series--as in space. Mind you, I am speaking of a woman beautiful in the +conventional sense. Imagine, then, how much more so in the case of a woman +like Alice Oke; and if the pencil and brush, imitating each line and tint, +can't succeed, how is it possible to give even the vaguest notion with mere +wretched words--words possessing only a wretched abstract meaning, an +impotent conventional association? To make a long story short, Mrs. Oke of +Okehurst was, in my opinion, to the highest degree exquisite and +strange,--an exotic creature, whose charm you can no more describe than you +could bring home the perfume of some newly discovered tropical flower by +comparing it with the scent of a cabbage-rose or a lily. + +That first dinner was gloomy enough. Mr. Oke--Oke of Okehurst, as the +people down there called him--was horribly shy, consumed with a fear of +making a fool of himself before me and his wife, I then thought. But that +sort of shyness did not wear off; and I soon discovered that, although it +was doubtless increased by the presence of a total stranger, it was +inspired in Oke, not by me, but by his wife. He would look every now and +then as if he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain +himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, +manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women, +suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was +it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, +although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very +defined political and social views, and a certain childlike earnestness and +desire to attain certainty and truth which was rather touching. On the +other hand, Oke's singular shyness was not, so far as I could see, the +result of any kind of bullying on his wife's part. You can always detect, +if you have any observation, the husband or the wife who is accustomed to +be snubbed, to be corrected, by his or her better-half: there is a +self-consciousness in both parties, a habit of watching and fault-finding, +of being watched and found fault with. This was clearly not the case at +Okehurst. Mrs. Oke evidently did not trouble herself about her husband in +the very least; he might say or do any amount of silly things without +rebuke or even notice; and he might have done so, had he chosen, ever since +his wedding-day. You felt that at once. Mrs. Oke simply passed over his +existence. I cannot say she paid much attention to any one's, even to mine. +At first I thought it an affectation on her part--for there was something +far-fetched in her whole appearance, something suggesting study, which +might lead one to tax her with affectation at first; she was dressed in a +strange way, not according to any established aesthetic eccentricity, but +individually, strangely, as if in the clothes of an ancestress of the +seventeenth century. Well, at first I thought it a kind of pose on her +part, this mixture of extreme graciousness and utter indifference which she +manifested towards me. She always seemed to be thinking of something else; +and although she talked quite sufficiently, and with every sign of superior +intelligence, she left the impression of having been as taciturn as her +husband. + +In the beginning, in the first few days of my stay at Okehurst, I imagined +that Mrs. Oke was a highly superior sort of flirt; and that her absent +manner, her look, while speaking to you, into an invisible distance, her +curious irrelevant smile, were so many means of attracting and baffling +adoration. I mistook it for the somewhat similar manners of certain foreign +women--it is beyond English ones--which mean, to those who can understand, +"pay court to me." But I soon found I was mistaken. Mrs. Oke had not the +faintest desire that I should pay court to her; indeed she did not honour +me with sufficient thought for that; and I, on my part, began to be too +much interested in her from another point of view to dream of such a thing. +I became aware, not merely that I had before me the most marvellously rare +and exquisite and baffling subject for a portrait, but also one of the most +peculiar and enigmatic of characters. Now that I look back upon it, I am +tempted to think that the psychological peculiarity of that woman might be +summed up in an exorbitant and absorbing interest in herself--a Narcissus +attitude--curiously complicated with a fantastic imagination, a sort of +morbid day-dreaming, all turned inwards, and with no outer characteristic +save a certain restlessness, a perverse desire to surprise and shock, to +surprise and shock more particularly her husband, and thus be revenged for +the intense boredom which his want of appreciation inflicted upon her. + +I got to understand this much little by little, yet I did not seem to have +really penetrated the something mysterious about Mrs. Oke. There was a +waywardness, a strangeness, which I felt but could not explain--a something +as difficult to define as the peculiarity of her outward appearance, and +perhaps very closely connected therewith. I became interested in Mrs. Oke +as if I had been in love with her; and I was not in the least in love. I +neither dreaded parting from her, nor felt any pleasure in her presence. I +had not the smallest wish to please or to gain her notice. But I had her on +the brain. I pursued her, her physical image, her psychological +explanation, with a kind of passion which filled my days, and prevented my +ever feeling dull. The Okes lived a remarkably solitary life. There were +but few neighbours, of whom they saw but little; and they rarely had a +guest in the house. Oke himself seemed every now and then seized with a +sense of responsibility towards me. He would remark vaguely, during our +walks and after-dinner chats, that I must find life at Okehurst horribly +dull; his wife's health had accustomed him to solitude, and then also his +wife thought the neighbours a bore. He never questioned his wife's judgment +in these matters. He merely stated the case as if resignation were quite +simple and inevitable; yet it seemed to me, sometimes, that this monotonous +life of solitude, by the side of a woman who took no more heed of him than +of a table or chair, was producing a vague depression and irritation in +this young man, so evidently cut out for a cheerful, commonplace life. I +often wondered how he could endure it at all, not having, as I had, the +interest of a strange psychological riddle to solve, and of a great +portrait to paint. He was, I found, extremely good,--the type of the +perfectly conscientious young Englishman, the sort of man who ought to have +been the Christian soldier kind of thing; devout, pure-minded, brave, +incapable of any baseness, a little intellectually dense, and puzzled by +all manner of moral scruples. The condition of his tenants and of his +political party--he was a regular Kentish Tory--lay heavy on his mind. He +spent hours every day in his study, doing the work of a land agent and a +political whip, reading piles of reports and newspapers and agricultural +treatises; and emerging for lunch with piles of letters in his hand, and +that odd puzzled look in his good healthy face, that deep gash between his +eyebrows, which my friend the mad-doctor calls the _maniac-frown_. It was +with this expression of face that I should have liked to paint him; but I +felt that he would not have liked it, that it was more fair to him to +represent him in his mere wholesome pink and white and blond +conventionality. I was perhaps rather unconscientious about the likeness of +Mr. Oke; I felt satisfied to paint it no matter how, I mean as regards +character, for my whole mind was swallowed up in thinking how I should +paint Mrs. Oke, how I could best transport on to canvas that singular and +enigmatic personality. I began with her husband, and told her frankly that +I must have much longer to study her. Mr. Oke couldn't understand why it +should be necessary to make a hundred and one pencil-sketches of his wife +before even determining in what attitude to paint her; but I think he was +rather pleased to have an opportunity of keeping me at Okehurst; my +presence evidently broke the monotony of his life. Mrs. Oke seemed +perfectly indifferent to my staying, as she was perfectly indifferent to my +presence. Without being rude, I never saw a woman pay so little attention +to a guest; she would talk with me sometimes by the hour, or rather let me +talk to her, but she never seemed to be listening. She would lie back in a +big seventeenth-century armchair while I played the piano, with that +strange smile every now and then in her thin cheeks, that strange whiteness +in her eyes; but it seemed a matter of indifference whether my music +stopped or went on. In my portrait of her husband she did not take, or +pretend to take, the very faintest interest; but that was nothing to me. I +did not want Mrs. Oke to think me interesting; I merely wished to go on +studying her. + +The first time that Mrs. Oke seemed to become at all aware of my presence +as distinguished from that of the chairs and tables, the dogs that lay in +the porch, or the clergyman or lawyer or stray neighbour who was +occasionally asked to dinner, was one day--I might have been there a +week--when I chanced to remark to her upon the very singular resemblance +that existed between herself and the portrait of a lady that hung in the +hall with the ceiling like a ship's hull. The picture in question was a +full length, neither very good nor very bad, probably done by some stray +Italian of the early seventeenth century. It hung in a rather dark corner, +facing the portrait, evidently painted to be its companion, of a dark man, +with a somewhat unpleasant expression of resolution and efficiency, in a +black Vandyck dress. The two were evidently man and wife; and in the corner +of the woman's portrait were the words, "Alice Oke, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret, Esq., and wife to Nicholas Oke of Okehurst," and the date +1626--"Nicholas Oke" being the name painted in the corner of the small +portrait. The lady was really wonderfully like the present Mrs. Oke, at +least so far as an indifferently painted portrait of the early days of +Charles I, can be like a living woman of the nineteenth century. There were +the same strange lines of figure and face, the same dimples in the thin +cheeks, the same wide-opened eyes, the same vague eccentricity of +expression, not destroyed even by the feeble painting and conventional +manner of the time. One could fancy that this woman had the same walk, the +same beautiful line of nape of the neck and stooping head as her +descendant; for I found that Mr. and Mrs. Oke, who were first cousins, were +both descended from that Nicholas Oke and that Alice, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret. But the resemblance was heightened by the fact that, as I soon +saw, the present Mrs. Oke distinctly made herself up to look like her +ancestress, dressing in garments that had a seventeenth-century look; nay, +that were sometimes absolutely copied from this portrait. + +"You think I am like her," answered Mrs. Oke dreamily to my remark, and her +eyes wandered off to that unseen something, and the faint smile dimpled her +thin cheeks. + +"You are like her, and you know it. I may even say you wish to be like her, +Mrs. Oke," I answered, laughing. + +"Perhaps I do." + +And she looked in the direction of her husband. I noticed that he had an +expression of distinct annoyance besides that frown of his. + +"Isn't it true that Mrs. Oke tries to look like that portrait?" I asked, +with a perverse curiosity. + +"Oh, fudge!" he exclaimed, rising from his chair and walking nervously to +the window. "It's all nonsense, mere nonsense. I wish you wouldn't, Alice." + +"Wouldn't what?" asked Mrs. Oke, with a sort of contemptuous indifference. +"If I am like that Alice Oke, why I am; and I am very pleased any one +should think so. She and her husband are just about the only two members of +our family--our most flat, stale, and unprofitable family--that ever were +in the least degree interesting." + +Oke grew crimson, and frowned as if in pain. + +"I don't see why you should abuse our family, Alice," he said. "Thank God, +our people have always been honourable and upright men and women!" + +"Excepting always Nicholas Oke and Alice his wife, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret, Esq.," she answered, laughing, as he strode out into the park. + +"How childish he is!" she exclaimed when we were alone. "He really minds, +really feels disgraced by what our ancestors did two centuries and a half +ago. I do believe William would have those two portraits taken down and +burned if he weren't afraid of me and ashamed of the neighbours. And as it +is, these two people really are the only two members of our family that +ever were in the least interesting. I will tell you the story some day." + +As it was, the story was told to me by Oke himself. The next day, as we +were taking our morning walk, he suddenly broke a long silence, laying +about him all the time at the sere grasses with the hooked stick that he +carried, like the conscientious Kentishman he was, for the purpose of +cutting down his and other folk's thistles. + +"I fear you must have thought me very ill-mannered towards my wife +yesterday," he said shyly; "and indeed I know I was." + +Oke was one of those chivalrous beings to whom every woman, every wife--and +his own most of all--appeared in the light of something holy. "But--but--I +have a prejudice which my wife does not enter into, about raking up ugly +things in one's own family. I suppose Alice thinks that it is so long ago +that it has really got no connection with us; she thinks of it merely as a +picturesque story. I daresay many people feel like that; in short, I am +sure they do, otherwise there wouldn't be such lots of discreditable family +traditions afloat. But I feel as if it were all one whether it was long ago +or not; when it's a question of one's own people, I would rather have it +forgotten. I can't understand how people can talk about murders in their +families, and ghosts, and so forth." + +"Have you any ghosts at Okehurst, by the way?" I asked. The place seemed as +if it required some to complete it. + +"I hope not," answered Oke gravely. + +His gravity made me smile. + +"Why, would you dislike it if there were?" I asked. + +"If there are such things as ghosts," he replied, "I don't think they +should be taken lightly. God would not permit them to be, except as a +warning or a punishment." + +We walked on some time in silence, I wondering at the strange type of this +commonplace young man, and half wishing I could put something into my +portrait that should be the equivalent of this curious unimaginative +earnestness. Then Oke told me the story of those two pictures--told it me +about as badly and hesitatingly as was possible for mortal man. + +He and his wife were, as I have said, cousins, and therefore descended from +the same old Kentish stock. The Okes of Okehurst could trace back to +Norman, almost to Saxon times, far longer than any of the titled or +better-known families of the neighbourhood. I saw that William Oke, in his +heart, thoroughly looked down upon all his neighbours. "We have never done +anything particular, or been anything particular--never held any office," +he said; "but we have always been here, and apparently always done our +duty. An ancestor of ours was killed in the Scotch wars, another at +Agincourt--mere honest captains." Well, early in the seventeenth century, +the family had dwindled to a single member, Nicholas Oke, the same who had +rebuilt Okehurst in its present shape. This Nicholas appears to have been +somewhat different from the usual run of the family. He had, in his youth, +sought adventures in America, and seems, generally speaking, to have been +less of a nonentity than his ancestors. He married, when no longer very +young, Alice, daughter of Virgil Pomfret, a beautiful young heiress from a +neighbouring county. "It was the first time an Oke married a Pomfret," my +host informed me, "and the last time. The Pomfrets were quite different +sort of people--restless, self-seeking; one of them had been a favourite of +Henry VIII." It was clear that William Oke had no feeling of having any +Pomfret blood in his veins; he spoke of these people with an evident family +dislike--the dislike of an Oke, one of the old, honourable, modest stock, +which had quietly done its duty, for a family of fortune-seekers and Court +minions. Well, there had come to live near Okehurst, in a little house +recently inherited from an uncle, a certain Christopher Lovelock, a young +gallant and poet, who was in momentary disgrace at Court for some love +affair. This Lovelock had struck up a great friendship with his neighbours +of Okehurst--too great a friendship, apparently, with the wife, either for +her husband's taste or her own. Anyhow, one evening as he was riding home +alone, Lovelock had been attacked and murdered, ostensibly by highwaymen, +but as was afterwards rumoured, by Nicholas Oke, accompanied by his wife +dressed as a groom. No legal evidence had been got, but the tradition had +remained. "They used to tell it us when we were children," said my host, in +a hoarse voice, "and to frighten my cousin--I mean my wife--and me with +stories about Lovelock. It is merely a tradition, which I hope may die out, +as I sincerely pray to heaven that it may be false." "Alice--Mrs. Oke--you +see," he went on after some time, "doesn't feel about it as I do. Perhaps I +am morbid. But I do dislike having the old story raked up." + +And we said no more on the subject. + + + + +4 + + +From that moment I began to assume a certain interest in the eyes of Mrs. +Oke; or rather, I began to perceive that I had a means of securing her +attention. Perhaps it was wrong of me to do so; and I have often reproached +myself very seriously later on. But after all, how was I to guess that I +was making mischief merely by chiming in, for the sake of the portrait I +had undertaken, and of a very harmless psychological mania, with what was +merely the fad, the little romantic affectation or eccentricity, of a +scatter-brained and eccentric young woman? How in the world should I have +dreamed that I was handling explosive substances? A man is surely not +responsible if the people with whom he is forced to deal, and whom he deals +with as with all the rest of the world, are quite different from all other +human creatures. + +So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mischief, I really cannot blame +myself. I had met in Mrs. Oke an almost unique subject for a +portrait-painter of my particular sort, and a most singular, _bizarre_ +personality. I could not possibly do my subject justice so long as I was +kept at a distance, prevented from studying the real character of the +woman. I required to put her into play. And I ask you whether any more +innocent way of doing so could be found than talking to a woman, and +letting her talk, about an absurd fancy she had for a couple of ancestors +of hers of the time of Charles I., and a poet whom they had +murdered?--particularly as I studiously respected the prejudices of my +host, and refrained from mentioning the matter, and tried to restrain Mrs. +Oke from doing so, in the presence of William Oke himself. + +I had certainly guessed correctly. To resemble the Alice Oke of the year +1626 was the caprice, the mania, the pose, the whatever you may call it, of +the Alice Oke of 1880; and to perceive this resemblance was the sure way of +gaining her good graces. It was the most extraordinary craze, of all the +extraordinary crazes of childless and idle women, that I had ever met; but +it was more than that, it was admirably characteristic. It finished off the +strange figure of Mrs. Oke, as I saw it in my imagination--this _bizarre_ +creature of enigmatic, far-fetched exquisiteness--that she should have no +interest in the present, but only an eccentric passion in the past. It +seemed to give the meaning to the absent look in her eyes, to her +irrelevant and far-off smile. It was like the words to a weird piece of +gipsy music, this that she, who was so different, so distant from all women +of her own time, should try and identify herself with a woman of the +past--that she should have a kind of flirtation--But of this anon. + +I told Mrs. Oke that I had learnt from her husband the outline of the +tragedy, or mystery, whichever it was, of Alice Oke, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret, and the poet Christopher Lovelock. That look of vague contempt, of +a desire to shock, which I had noticed before, came into her beautiful, +pale, diaphanous face. + +"I suppose my husband was very shocked at the whole matter," she +said--"told it you with as little detail as possible, and assured you +very solemnly that he hoped the whole story might be a mere dreadful +calumny? Poor Willie! I remember already when we were children, and I +used to come with my mother to spend Christmas at Okehurst, and my cousin +was down here for his holidays, how I used to horrify him by insisting +upon dressing up in shawls and waterproofs, and playing the story of the +wicked Mrs. Oke; and he always piously refused to do the part of Nicholas, +when I wanted to have the scene on Cotes Common. I didn't know then that I +was like the original Alice Oke; I found it out only after our marriage. +You really think that I am?" + +She certainly was, particularly at that moment, as she stood in a white +Vandyck dress, with the green of the park-land rising up behind her, and +the low sun catching her short locks and surrounding her head, her +exquisitely bowed head, with a pale-yellow halo. But I confess I thought +the original Alice Oke, siren and murderess though she might be, very +uninteresting compared with this wayward and exquisite creature whom I had +rashly promised myself to send down to posterity in all her unlikely +wayward exquisiteness. + +One morning while Mr. Oke was despatching his Saturday heap of Conservative +manifestoes and rural decisions--he was justice of the peace in a most +literal sense, penetrating into cottages and huts, defending the weak and +admonishing the ill-conducted--one morning while I was making one of my +many pencil-sketches (alas, they are all that remain to me now!) of my +future sitter, Mrs. Oke gave me her version of the story of Alice Oke and +Christopher Lovelock. + +"Do you suppose there was anything between them?" I asked--"that she was +ever in love with him? How do you explain the part which tradition ascribes +to her in the supposed murder? One has heard of women and their lovers who +have killed the husband; but a woman who combines with her husband to kill +her lover, or at least the man who is in love with her--that is surely very +singular." I was absorbed in my drawing, and really thinking very little of +what I was saying. + +"I don't know," she answered pensively, with that distant look in her eyes. +"Alice Oke was very proud, I am sure. She may have loved the poet very +much, and yet been indignant with him, hated having to love him. She may +have felt that she had a right to rid herself of him, and to call upon her +husband to help her to do so." + +"Good heavens! what a fearful idea!" I exclaimed, half laughing. "Don't you +think, after all, that Mr. Oke may be right in saying that it is easier and +more comfortable to take the whole story as a pure invention?" + +"I cannot take it as an invention," answered Mrs. Oke contemptuously, +"because I happen to know that it is true." + +"Indeed!" I answered, working away at my sketch, and enjoying putting this +strange creature, as I said to myself, through her paces; "how is that?" + +"How does one know that anything is true in this world?" she replied +evasively; "because one does, because one feels it to be true, I suppose." + +And, with that far-off look in her light eyes, she relapsed into silence. + +"Have you ever read any of Lovelock's poetry?" she asked me suddenly the +next day. + +"Lovelock?" I answered, for I had forgotten the name. "Lovelock, +who"--But I stopped, remembering the prejudices of my host, who was +seated next to me at table. + +"Lovelock who was killed by Mr. Oke's and my ancestors." + +And she looked full at her husband, as if in perverse enjoyment of the +evident annoyance which it caused him. + +"Alice," he entreated in a low voice, his whole face crimson, "for mercy's +sake, don't talk about such things before the servants." + +Mrs. Oke burst into a high, light, rather hysterical laugh, the laugh of a +naughty child. + +"The servants! Gracious heavens! do you suppose they haven't heard the +story? Why, it's as well known as Okehurst itself in the neighbourhood. +Don't they believe that Lovelock has been seen about the house? Haven't +they all heard his footsteps in the big corridor? Haven't they, my dear +Willie, noticed a thousand times that you never will stay a minute alone in +the yellow drawing-room--that you run out of it, like a child, if I happen +to leave you there for a minute?" + +True! How was it I had not noticed that? or rather, that I only now +remembered having noticed it? The yellow drawing-room was one of the most +charming rooms in the house: a large, bright room, hung with yellow damask +and panelled with carvings, that opened straight out on to the lawn, far +superior to the room in which we habitually sat, which was comparatively +gloomy. This time Mr. Oke struck me as really too childish. I felt an +intense desire to badger him. + +"The yellow drawing-room!" I exclaimed. "Does this interesting literary +character haunt the yellow drawing-room? Do tell me about it. What happened +there?" + +Mr. Oke made a painful effort to laugh. + +"Nothing ever happened there, so far as I know," he said, and rose from the +table. + +"Really?" I asked incredulously. + +"Nothing did happen there," answered Mrs. Oke slowly, playing mechanically +with a fork, and picking out the pattern of the tablecloth. "That is just +the extraordinary circumstance, that, so far as any one knows, nothing ever +did happen there; and yet that room has an evil reputation. No member of +our family, they say, can bear to sit there alone for more than a minute. +You see, William evidently cannot." + +"Have you ever seen or heard anything strange there?" I asked of my host. + +He shook his head. "Nothing," he answered curtly, and lit his cigar. + +"I presume you have not," I asked, half laughing, of Mrs. Oke, "since you +don't mind sitting in that room for hours alone? How do you explain this +uncanny reputation, since nothing ever happened there?" + +"Perhaps something is destined to happen there in the future," she +answered, in her absent voice. And then she suddenly added, "Suppose you +paint my portrait in that room?" + +Mr. Oke suddenly turned round. He was very white, and looked as if he were +going to say something, but desisted. + +"Why do you worry Mr. Oke like that?" I asked, when he had gone into his +smoking-room with his usual bundle of papers. "It is very cruel of you, +Mrs. Oke. You ought to have more consideration for people who believe in +such things, although you may not be able to put yourself in their frame of +mind." + +"Who tells you that I don't believe in _such things_, as you call them?" +she answered abruptly. + +"Come," she said, after a minute, "I want to show you why I believe in +Christopher Lovelock. Come with me into the yellow room." + + + + +5 + + +What Mrs. Oke showed me in the yellow room was a large bundle of papers, +some printed and some manuscript, but all of them brown with age, which she +took out of an old Italian ebony inlaid cabinet. It took her some time to +get them, as a complicated arrangement of double locks and false drawers +had to be put in play; and while she was doing so, I looked round the room, +in which I had been only three or four times before. It was certainly the +most beautiful room in this beautiful house, and, as it seemed to me now, +the most strange. It was long and low, with something that made you think +of the cabin of a ship, with a great mullioned window that let in, as it +were, a perspective of the brownish green park-land, dotted with oaks, and +sloping upwards to the distant line of bluish firs against the horizon. The +walls were hung with flowered damask, whose yellow, faded to brown, united +with the reddish colour of the carved wainscoting and the carved oaken +beams. For the rest, it reminded me more of an Italian room than an English +one. The furniture was Tuscan of the early seventeenth century, inlaid and +carved; there were a couple of faded allegorical pictures, by some +Bolognese master, on the walls; and in a corner, among a stack of dwarf +orange-trees, a little Italian harpsichord of exquisite curve and +slenderness, with flowers and landscapes painted upon its cover. In a +recess was a shelf of old books, mainly English and Italian poets of the +Elizabethan time; and close by it, placed upon a carved wedding-chest, a +large and beautiful melon-shaped lute. The panes of the mullioned window +were open, and yet the air seemed heavy, with an indescribable heady +perfume, not that of any growing flower, but like that of old stuff that +should have lain for years among spices. + +"It is a beautiful room!" I exclaimed. "I should awfully like to paint you +in it"; but I had scarcely spoken the words when I felt I had done wrong. +This woman's husband could not bear the room, and it seemed to me vaguely +as if he were right in detesting it. + +Mrs. Oke took no notice of my exclamation, but beckoned me to the table +where she was standing sorting the papers. + +"Look!" she said, "these are all poems by Christopher Lovelock"; and +touching the yellow papers with delicate and reverent fingers, she +commenced reading some of them out loud in a slow, half-audible voice. They +were songs in the style of those of Herrick, Waller, and Drayton, +complaining for the most part of the cruelty of a lady called Dryope, in +whose name was evidently concealed a reference to that of the mistress of +Okehurst. The songs were graceful, and not without a certain faded passion: +but I was thinking not of them, but of the woman who was reading them to +me. + +Mrs. Oke was standing with the brownish yellow wall as a background to her +white brocade dress, which, in its stiff seventeenth-century make, seemed +but to bring out more clearly the slightness, the exquisite suppleness, of +her tall figure. She held the papers in one hand, and leaned the other, as +if for support, on the inlaid cabinet by her side. Her voice, which was +delicate, shadowy, like her person, had a curious throbbing cadence, as if +she were reading the words of a melody, and restraining herself with +difficulty from singing it; and as she read, her long slender throat +throbbed slightly, and a faint redness came into her thin face. She +evidently knew the verses by heart, and her eyes were mostly fixed with +that distant smile in them, with which harmonised a constant tremulous +little smile in her lips. + +"That is how I would wish to paint her!" I exclaimed within myself; and +scarcely noticed, what struck me on thinking over the scene, that this +strange being read these verses as one might fancy a woman would read +love-verses addressed to herself. + +"Those are all written for Alice Oke--Alice the daughter of Virgil +Pomfret," she said slowly, folding up the papers. "I found them at the +bottom of this cabinet. Can you doubt of the reality of Christopher +Lovelock now?" + +The question was an illogical one, for to doubt of the existence of +Christopher Lovelock was one thing, and to doubt of the mode of his death +was another; but somehow I did feel convinced. + +"Look!" she said, when she had replaced the poems, "I will show you +something else." Among the flowers that stood on the upper storey of her +writing-table--for I found that Mrs. Oke had a writing-table in the yellow +room--stood, as on an altar, a small black carved frame, with a silk +curtain drawn over it: the sort of thing behind which you would have +expected to find a head of Christ or of the Virgin Mary. She drew the +curtain and displayed a large-sized miniature, representing a young man, +with auburn curls and a peaked auburn beard, dressed in black, but with +lace about his neck, and large pear-shaped pearls in his ears: a wistful, +melancholy face. Mrs. Oke took the miniature religiously off its stand, and +showed me, written in faded characters upon the back, the name "Christopher +Lovelock," and the date 1626. + +"I found this in the secret drawer of that cabinet, together with the heap +of poems," she said, taking the miniature out of my hand. + +I was silent for a minute. + +"Does--does Mr. Oke know that you have got it here?" I asked; and then +wondered what in the world had impelled me to put such a question. + +Mrs. Oke smiled that smile of contemptuous indifference. "I have never +hidden it from any one. If my husband disliked my having it, he might have +taken it away, I suppose. It belongs to him, since it was found in his +house." + +I did not answer, but walked mechanically towards the door. There was +something heady and oppressive in this beautiful room; something, I +thought, almost repulsive in this exquisite woman. She seemed to me, +suddenly, perverse and dangerous. + +I scarcely know why, but I neglected Mrs. Oke that afternoon. I went to Mr. +Oke's study, and sat opposite to him smoking while he was engrossed in his +accounts, his reports, and electioneering papers. On the table, above the +heap of paper-bound volumes and pigeon-holed documents, was, as sole +ornament of his den, a little photograph of his wife, done some years +before. I don't know why, but as I sat and watched him, with his florid, +honest, manly beauty, working away conscientiously, with that little +perplexed frown of his, I felt intensely sorry for this man. + +But this feeling did not last. There was no help for it: Oke was not as +interesting as Mrs. Oke; and it required too great an effort to pump up +sympathy for this normal, excellent, exemplary young squire, in the +presence of so wonderful a creature as his wife. So I let myself go to the +habit of allowing Mrs. Oke daily to talk over her strange craze, or rather +of drawing her out about it. I confess that I derived a morbid and +exquisite pleasure in doing so: it was so characteristic in her, so +appropriate to the house! It completed her personality so perfectly, and +made it so much easier to conceive a way of painting her. I made up my mind +little by little, while working at William Oke's portrait (he proved a less +easy subject than I had anticipated, and, despite his conscientious +efforts, was a nervous, uncomfortable sitter, silent and brooding)--I made +up my mind that I would paint Mrs. Oke standing by the cabinet in the +yellow room, in the white Vandyck dress copied from the portrait of her +ancestress. Mr. Oke might resent it, Mrs. Oke even might resent it; they +might refuse to take the picture, to pay for it, to allow me to exhibit; +they might force me to run my umbrella through the picture. No matter. That +picture should be painted, if merely for the sake of having painted it; for +I felt it was the only thing I could do, and that it would be far away my +best work. I told neither of my resolution, but prepared sketch after +sketch of Mrs. Oke, while continuing to paint her husband. + +Mrs. Oke was a silent person, more silent even than her husband, for she +did not feel bound, as he did, to attempt to entertain a guest or to show +any interest in him. She seemed to spend her life--a curious, inactive, +half-invalidish life, broken by sudden fits of childish cheerfulness--in an +eternal daydream, strolling about the house and grounds, arranging the +quantities of flowers that always filled all the rooms, beginning to read +and then throwing aside novels and books of poetry, of which she always had +a large number; and, I believe, lying for hours, doing nothing, on a couch +in that yellow drawing-room, which, with her sole exception, no member of +the Oke family had ever been known to stay in alone. Little by little I +began to suspect and to verify another eccentricity of this eccentric +being, and to understand why there were stringent orders never to disturb +her in that yellow room. + +It had been a habit at Okehurst, as at one or two other English +manor-houses, to keep a certain amount of the clothes of each generation, +more particularly wedding dresses. A certain carved oaken press, of which +Mr. Oke once displayed the contents to me, was a perfect museum of +costumes, male and female, from the early years of the seventeenth to the +end of the eighteenth century--a thing to take away the breath of a +_bric-a-brac_ collector, an antiquary, or a _genre_ painter. Mr. Oke was +none of these, and therefore took but little interest in the collection, +save in so far as it interested his family feeling. Still he seemed well +acquainted with the contents of that press. + +He was turning over the clothes for my benefit, when suddenly I noticed +that he frowned. I know not what impelled me to say, "By the way, have you +any dresses of that Mrs. Oke whom your wife resembles so much? Have you got +that particular white dress she was painted in, perhaps?" + +Oke of Okehurst flushed very red. + +"We have it," he answered hesitatingly, "but--it isn't here at present--I +can't find it. I suppose," he blurted out with an effort, "that Alice has +got it. Mrs. Oke sometimes has the fancy of having some of these old things +down. I suppose she takes ideas from them." + +A sudden light dawned in my mind. The white dress in which I had seen Mrs. +Oke in the yellow room, the day that she showed me Lovelock's verses, was +not, as I had thought, a modern copy; it was the original dress of Alice +Oke, the daughter of Virgil Pomfret--the dress in which, perhaps, +Christopher Lovelock had seen her in that very room. + +The idea gave me a delightful picturesque shudder. I said nothing. But I +pictured to myself Mrs. Oke sitting in that yellow room--that room which no +Oke of Okehurst save herself ventured to remain in alone, in the dress of +her ancestress, confronting, as it were, that vague, haunting something +that seemed to fill the place--that vague presence, it seemed to me, of the +murdered cavalier poet. + +Mrs. Oke, as I have said, was extremely silent, as a result of being +extremely indifferent. She really did not care in the least about anything +except her own ideas and day-dreams, except when, every now and then, she +was seized with a sudden desire to shock the prejudices or superstitions of +her husband. Very soon she got into the way of never talking to me at all, +save about Alice and Nicholas Oke and Christopher Lovelock; and then, when +the fit seized her, she would go on by the hour, never asking herself +whether I was or was not equally interested in the strange craze that +fascinated her. It so happened that I was. I loved to listen to her, going +on discussing by the hour the merits of Lovelock's poems, and analysing her +feelings and those of her two ancestors. It was quite wonderful to watch +the exquisite, exotic creature in one of these moods, with the distant look +in her grey eyes and the absent-looking smile in her thin cheeks, talking +as if she had intimately known these people of the seventeenth century, +discussing every minute mood of theirs, detailing every scene between them +and their victim, talking of Alice, and Nicholas, and Lovelock as she might +of her most intimate friends. Of Alice particularly, and of Lovelock. She +seemed to know every word that Alice had spoken, every idea that had +crossed her mind. It sometimes struck me as if she were telling me, +speaking of herself in the third person, of her own feelings--as if I were +listening to a woman's confidences, the recital of her doubts, scruples, +and agonies about a living lover. For Mrs. Oke, who seemed the most +self-absorbed of creatures in all other matters, and utterly incapable of +understanding or sympathising with the feelings of other persons, entered +completely and passionately into the feelings of this woman, this Alice, +who, at some moments, seemed to be not another woman, but herself. + +"But how could she do it--how could she kill the man she cared for?" I once +asked her. + +"Because she loved him more than the whole world!" she exclaimed, and +rising suddenly from her chair, walked towards the window, covering her +face with her hands. + +I could see, from the movement of her neck, that she was sobbing. She did +not turn round, but motioned me to go away. + +"Don't let us talk any more about it," she said. "I am ill to-day, and +silly." + +I closed the door gently behind me. What mystery was there in this woman's +life? This listlessness, this strange self-engrossment and stranger mania +about people long dead, this indifference and desire to annoy towards her +husband--did it all mean that Alice Oke had loved or still loved some one +who was not the master of Okehurst? And his melancholy, his preoccupation, +the something about him that told of a broken youth--did it mean that he +knew it? + + + + +6 + + +The following days Mrs. Oke was in a condition of quite unusual good +spirits. Some visitors--distant relatives--were expected, and although she +had expressed the utmost annoyance at the idea of their coming, she was now +seized with a fit of housekeeping activity, and was perpetually about +arranging things and giving orders, although all arrangements, as usual, +had been made, and all orders given, by her husband. + +William Oke was quite radiant. + +"If only Alice were always well like this!" he exclaimed; "if only she +would take, or could take, an interest in life, how different things would +be! But," he added, as if fearful lest he should be supposed to accuse her +in any way, "how can she, usually, with her wretched health? Still, it does +make me awfully happy to see her like this." + +I nodded. But I cannot say that I really acquiesced in his views. It seemed +to me, particularly with the recollection of yesterday's extraordinary +scene, that Mrs. Oke's high spirits were anything but normal. There was +something in her unusual activity and still more unusual cheerfulness that +was merely nervous and feverish; and I had, the whole day, the impression +of dealing with a woman who was ill and who would very speedily collapse. + +Mrs. Oke spent her day wandering from one room to another, and from the +garden to the greenhouse, seeing whether all was in order, when, as a +matter of fact, all was always in order at Okehurst. She did not give +me any sitting, and not a word was spoken about Alice Oke or Christopher +Lovelock. Indeed, to a casual observer, it might have seemed as if all +that craze about Lovelock had completely departed, or never existed. +About five o'clock, as I was strolling among the red-brick round-gabled +outhouses--each with its armorial oak--and the old-fashioned spalliered +kitchen and fruit garden, I saw Mrs. Oke standing, her hands full of York +and Lancaster roses, upon the steps facing the stables. A groom was +currycombing a horse, and outside the coach-house was Mr. Oke's little +high-wheeled cart. + +"Let us have a drive!" suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Oke, on seeing me. "Look +what a beautiful evening--and look at that dear little cart! It is so long +since I have driven, and I feel as if I must drive again. Come with me. And +you, harness Jim at once and come round to the door." + +I was quite amazed; and still more so when the cart drove up before the +door, and Mrs. Oke called to me to accompany her. She sent away the groom, +and in a minute we were rolling along, at a tremendous pace, along the +yellow-sand road, with the sere pasture-lands, the big oaks, on either +side. + +I could scarcely believe my senses. This woman, in her mannish little coat +and hat, driving a powerful young horse with the utmost skill, and +chattering like a school-girl of sixteen, could not be the delicate, +morbid, exotic, hot-house creature, unable to walk or to do anything, who +spent her days lying about on couches in the heavy atmosphere, redolent +with strange scents and associations, of the yellow drawing-room. The +movement of the light carriage, the cool draught, the very grind of the +wheels upon the gravel, seemed to go to her head like wine. + +"It is so long since I have done this sort of thing," she kept repeating; +"so long, so long. Oh, don't you think it delightful, going at this pace, +with the idea that any moment the horse may come down and we two be +killed?" and she laughed her childish laugh, and turned her face, no longer +pale, but flushed with the movement and the excitement, towards me. + +The cart rolled on quicker and quicker, one gate after another swinging to +behind us, as we flew up and down the little hills, across the pasture +lands, through the little red-brick gabled villages, where the people came +out to see us pass, past the rows of willows along the streams, and the +dark-green compact hop-fields, with the blue and hazy tree-tops of the +horizon getting bluer and more hazy as the yellow light began to graze the +ground. At last we got to an open space, a high-lying piece of common-land, +such as is rare in that ruthlessly utilised country of grazing-grounds and +hop-gardens. Among the low hills of the Weald, it seemed quite +preternaturally high up, giving a sense that its extent of flat heather and +gorse, bound by distant firs, was really on the top of the world. The sun +was setting just opposite, and its lights lay flat on the ground, staining +it with the red and black of the heather, or rather turning it into the +surface of a purple sea, canopied over by a bank of dark-purple clouds--the +jet-like sparkle of the dry ling and gorse tipping the purple like sunlit +wavelets. A cold wind swept in our faces. + +"What is the name of this place?" I asked. It was the only bit of +impressive scenery that I had met in the neighbourhood of Okehurst. + +"It is called Cotes Common," answered Mrs. Oke, who had slackened the pace +of the horse, and let the reins hang loose about his neck. "It was here +that Christopher Lovelock was killed." + +There was a moment's pause; and then she proceeded, tickling the flies from +the horse's ears with the end of her whip, and looking straight into the +sunset, which now rolled, a deep purple stream, across the heath to our +feet-- + +"Lovelock was riding home one summer evening from Appledore, when, as he +had got half-way across Cotes Common, somewhere about here--for I have +always heard them mention the pond in the old gravel-pits as about the +place--he saw two men riding towards him, in whom he presently recognised +Nicholas Oke of Okehurst accompanied by a groom. Oke of Okehurst hailed +him; and Lovelock rode up to meet him. 'I am glad to have met you, Mr. +Lovelock,' said Nicholas, 'because I have some important news for you'; and +so saying, he brought his horse close to the one that Lovelock was riding, +and suddenly turning round, fired off a pistol at his head. Lovelock had +time to move, and the bullet, instead of striking him, went straight into +the head of his horse, which fell beneath him. Lovelock, however, had +fallen in such a way as to be able to extricate himself easily from his +horse; and drawing his sword, he rushed upon Oke, and seized his horse by +the bridle. Oke quickly jumped off and drew his sword; and in a minute, +Lovelock, who was much the better swordsman of the two, was having the +better of him. Lovelock had completely disarmed him, and got his sword at +Oke's throat, crying out to him that if he would ask forgiveness he should +be spared for the sake of their old friendship, when the groom suddenly +rode up from behind and shot Lovelock through the back. Lovelock fell, and +Oke immediately tried to finish him with his sword, while the groom drew up +and held the bridle of Oke's horse. At that moment the sunlight fell upon +the groom's face, and Lovelock recognised Mrs. Oke. He cried out, 'Alice, +Alice! it is you who have murdered me!' and died. Then Nicholas Oke sprang +into his saddle and rode off with his wife, leaving Lovelock dead by the +side of his fallen horse. Nicholas Oke had taken the precaution of removing +Lovelock's purse and throwing it into the pond, so the murder was put down +to certain highwaymen who were about in that part of the country. Alice Oke +died many years afterwards, quite an old woman, in the reign of Charles +II.; but Nicholas did not live very long, and shortly before his death got +into a very strange condition, always brooding, and sometimes threatening +to kill his wife. They say that in one of these fits, just shortly before +his death, he told the whole story of the murder, and made a prophecy that +when the head of his house and master of Okehurst should marry another +Alice Oke descended from himself and his wife, there should be an end +of the Okes of Okehurst. You see, it seems to be coming true. We have no +children, and I don't suppose we shall ever have any. I, at least, have +never wished for them." + +Mrs. Oke paused, and turned her face towards me with the absent smile in +her thin cheeks: her eyes no longer had that distant look; they were +strangely eager and fixed. I did not know what to answer; this woman +positively frightened me. We remained for a moment in that same place, with +the sunlight dying away in crimson ripples on the heather, gilding the +yellow banks, the black waters of the pond, surrounded by thin rushes, and +the yellow gravel-pits; while the wind blew in our faces and bent the +ragged warped bluish tops of the firs. Then Mrs. Oke touched the horse, and +off we went at a furious pace. We did not exchange a single word, I think, +on the way home. Mrs. Oke sat with her eyes fixed on the reins, breaking +the silence now and then only by a word to the horse, urging him to an even +more furious pace. The people we met along the roads must have thought that +the horse was running away, unless they noticed Mrs. Oke's calm manner and +the look of excited enjoyment in her face. To me it seemed that I was in +the hands of a madwoman, and I quietly prepared myself for being upset or +dashed against a cart. It had turned cold, and the draught was icy in our +faces when we got within sight of the red gables and high chimney-stacks of +Okehurst. Mr. Oke was standing before the door. On our approach I saw a +look of relieved suspense, of keen pleasure come into his face. + +He lifted his wife out of the cart in his strong arms with a kind of +chivalrous tenderness. + +"I am so glad to have you back, darling," he exclaimed--"so glad! I was +delighted to hear you had gone out with the cart, but as you have not +driven for so long, I was beginning to be frightfully anxious, dearest. +Where have you been all this time?" + +Mrs. Oke had quickly extricated herself from her husband, who had remained +holding her, as one might hold a delicate child who has been causing +anxiety. The gentleness and affection of the poor fellow had evidently not +touched her--she seemed almost to recoil from it. + +"I have taken him to Cotes Common," she said, with that perverse look which +I had noticed before, as she pulled off her driving-gloves. "It is such a +splendid old place." + +Mr. Oke flushed as if he had bitten upon a sore tooth, and the double gash +painted itself scarlet between his eyebrows. + +Outside, the mists were beginning to rise, veiling the park-land dotted +with big black oaks, and from which, in the watery moonlight, rose on all +sides the eerie little cry of the lambs separated from their mothers. It +was damp and cold, and I shivered. + + + + +7 + + +The next day Okehurst was full of people, and Mrs. Oke, to my amazement, +was doing the honours of it as if a house full of commonplace, noisy young +creatures, bent upon flirting and tennis, were her usual idea of felicity. + +The afternoon of the third day--they had come for an electioneering ball, +and stayed three nights--the weather changed; it turned suddenly very cold +and began to pour. Every one was sent indoors, and there was a general +gloom suddenly over the company. Mrs. Oke seemed to have got sick of her +guests, and was listlessly lying back on a couch, paying not the slightest +attention to the chattering and piano-strumming in the room, when one of +the guests suddenly proposed that they should play charades. He was a +distant cousin of the Okes, a sort of fashionable artistic Bohemian, +swelled out to intolerable conceit by the amateur-actor vogue of a season. + +"It would be lovely in this marvellous old place," he cried, "just to dress +up, and parade about, and feel as if we belonged to the past. I have heard +you have a marvellous collection of old costumes, more or less ever since +the days of Noah, somewhere, Cousin Bill." + +The whole party exclaimed in joy at this proposal. William Oke looked +puzzled for a moment, and glanced at his wife, who continued to lie +listless on her sofa. + +"There is a press full of clothes belonging to the family," he answered +dubiously, apparently overwhelmed by the desire to please his guests; +"but--but--I don't know whether it's quite respectful to dress up in the +clothes of dead people." + +"Oh, fiddlestick!" cried the cousin. "What do the dead people know about +it? Besides," he added, with mock seriousness, "I assure you we shall +behave in the most reverent way and feel quite solemn about it all, if only +you will give us the key, old man." + +Again Mr. Oke looked towards his wife, and again met only her vague, absent +glance. + +"Very well," he said, and led his guests upstairs. + +An hour later the house was filled with the strangest crew and the +strangest noises. I had entered, to a certain extent, into William Oke's +feeling of unwillingness to let his ancestors' clothes and personality be +taken in vain; but when the masquerade was complete, I must say that the +effect was quite magnificent. A dozen youngish men and women--those who +were staying in the house and some neighbours who had come for lawn-tennis +and dinner--were rigged out, under the direction of the theatrical cousin, +in the contents of that oaken press: and I have never seen a more beautiful +sight than the panelled corridors, the carved and escutcheoned staircase, +the dim drawing-rooms with their faded tapestries, the great hall with its +vaulted and ribbed ceiling, dotted about with groups or single figures that +seemed to have come straight from the past. Even William Oke, who, besides +myself and a few elderly people, was the only man not masqueraded, seemed +delighted and fired by the sight. A certain schoolboy character suddenly +came out in him; and finding that there was no costume left for him, he +rushed upstairs and presently returned in the uniform he had worn before +his marriage. I thought I had really never seen so magnificent a specimen +of the handsome Englishman; he looked, despite all the modern associations +of his costume, more genuinely old-world than all the rest, a knight for +the Black Prince or Sidney, with his admirably regular features and +beautiful fair hair and complexion. After a minute, even the elderly people +had got costumes of some sort--dominoes arranged at the moment, and hoods +and all manner of disguises made out of pieces of old embroidery and +Oriental stuffs and furs; and very soon this rabble of masquers had become, +so to speak, completely drunk with its own amusement--with the +childishness, and, if I may say so, the barbarism, the vulgarity underlying +the majority even of well-bred English men and women--Mr. Oke himself doing +the mountebank like a schoolboy at Christmas. + +"Where is Mrs. Oke? Where is Alice?" some one suddenly asked. + +Mrs. Oke had vanished. I could fully understand that to this eccentric +being, with her fantastic, imaginative, morbid passion for the past, such a +carnival as this must be positively revolting; and, absolutely indifferent +as she was to giving offence, I could imagine how she would have retired, +disgusted and outraged, to dream her strange day-dreams in the yellow room. + +But a moment later, as we were all noisily preparing to go in to dinner, +the door opened and a strange figure entered, stranger than any of these +others who were profaning the clothes of the dead: a boy, slight and tall, +in a brown riding-coat, leathern belt, and big buff boots, a little grey +cloak over one shoulder, a large grey hat slouched over the eyes, a dagger +and pistol at the waist. It was Mrs. Oke, her eyes preternaturally bright, +and her whole face lit up with a bold, perverse smile. + +Every one exclaimed, and stood aside. Then there was a moment's silence, +broken by faint applause. Even to a crew of noisy boys and girls playing +the fool in the garments of men and women long dead and buried, there is +something questionable in the sudden appearance of a young married woman, +the mistress of the house, in a riding-coat and jackboots; and Mrs. Oke's +expression did not make the jest seem any the less questionable. + +"What is that costume?" asked the theatrical cousin, who, after a second, +had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Oke was merely a woman of marvellous +talent whom he must try and secure for his amateur troop next season. + +"It is the dress in which an ancestress of ours, my namesake Alice Oke, +used to go out riding with her husband in the days of Charles I.," she +answered, and took her seat at the head of the table. Involuntarily my eyes +sought those of Oke of Okehurst. He, who blushed as easily as a girl of +sixteen, was now as white as ashes, and I noticed that he pressed his hand +almost convulsively to his mouth. + +"Don't you recognise my dress, William?" asked Mrs. Oke, fixing her eyes +upon him with a cruel smile. + +He did not answer, and there was a moment's silence, which the theatrical +cousin had the happy thought of breaking by jumping upon his seat and +emptying off his glass with the exclamation-- + +"To the health of the two Alice Okes, of the past and the present!" + +Mrs. Oke nodded, and with an expression I had never seen in her face +before, answered in a loud and aggressive tone-- + +"To the health of the poet, Mr. Christopher Lovelock, if his ghost be +honouring this house with its presence!" + +I felt suddenly as if I were in a madhouse. Across the table, in the midst +of this room full of noisy wretches, tricked out red, blue, purple, and +parti-coloured, as men and women of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and +eighteenth centuries, as improvised Turks and Eskimos, and dominoes, and +clowns, with faces painted and corked and floured over, I seemed to see +that sanguine sunset, washing like a sea of blood over the heather, to +where, by the black pond and the wind-warped firs, there lay the body of +Christopher Lovelock, with his dead horse near him, the yellow gravel and +lilac ling soaked crimson all around; and above emerged, as out of the +redness, the pale blond head covered with the grey hat, the absent eyes, +and strange smile of Mrs. Oke. It seemed to me horrible, vulgar, +abominable, as if I had got inside a madhouse. + + + + +8 + + +From that moment I noticed a change in William Oke; or rather, a change +that had probably been coming on for some time got to the stage of being +noticeable. + +I don't know whether he had any words with his wife about her masquerade of +that unlucky evening. On the whole I decidedly think not. Oke was with +every one a diffident and reserved man, and most of all so with his wife; +besides, I can fancy that he would experience a positive impossibility of +putting into words any strong feeling of disapprobation towards her, that +his disgust would necessarily be silent. But be this as it may, I perceived +very soon that the relations between my host and hostess had become +exceedingly strained. Mrs. Oke, indeed, had never paid much attention to +her husband, and seemed merely a trifle more indifferent to his presence +than she had been before. But Oke himself, although he affected to address +her at meals from a desire to conceal his feeling, and a fear of making the +position disagreeable to me, very clearly could scarcely bear to speak to +or even see his wife. The poor fellow's honest soul was quite brimful of +pain, which he was determined not to allow to overflow, and which seemed to +filter into his whole nature and poison it. This woman had shocked and +pained him more than was possible to say, and yet it was evident that he +could neither cease loving her nor commence comprehending her real nature. +I sometimes felt, as we took our long walks through the monotonous country, +across the oak-dotted grazing-grounds, and by the brink of the dull-green, +serried hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, +the drainage of the estate, the village schools, the Primrose League, and +the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst carefully cut down +every tall thistle that caught his eye--I sometimes felt, I say, an intense +and impotent desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I +seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it well seemed to imply +such a comfortable acquiescence; and it seemed so unfair that just he +should be condemned to puzzle for ever over this enigma, and wear out his +soul trying to comprehend what now seemed so plain to me. But how would it +ever be possible to get this serious, conscientious, slow-brained +representative of English simplicity and honesty and thoroughness to +understand the mixture of self-engrossed vanity, of shallowness, of poetic +vision, of love of morbid excitement, that walked this earth under the name +of Alice Oke? + +So Oke of Okehurst was condemned never to understand; but he was condemned +also to suffer from his inability to do so. The poor fellow was constantly +straining after an explanation of his wife's peculiarities; and although +the effort was probably unconscious, it caused him a great deal of pain. +The gash--the maniac-frown, as my friend calls it--between his eyebrows, +seemed to have grown a permanent feature of his face. + +Mrs. Oke, on her side, was making the very worst of the situation. Perhaps +she resented her husband's tacit reproval of that masquerade night's freak, +and determined to make him swallow more of the same stuff, for she clearly +thought that one of William's peculiarities, and one for which she despised +him, was that he could never be goaded into an outspoken expression of +disapprobation; that from her he would swallow any amount of bitterness +without complaining. At any rate she now adopted a perfect policy of +teasing and shocking her husband about the murder of Lovelock. She was +perpetually alluding to it in her conversation, discussing in his presence +what had or had not been the feelings of the various actors in the tragedy +of 1626, and insisting upon her resemblance and almost identity with the +original Alice Oke. Something had suggested to her eccentric mind that it +would be delightful to perform in the garden at Okehurst, under the huge +ilexes and elms, a little masque which she had discovered among Christopher +Lovelock's works; and she began to scour the country and enter into vast +correspondence for the purpose of effectuating this scheme. Letters arrived +every other day from the theatrical cousin, whose only objection was that +Okehurst was too remote a locality for an entertainment in which he foresaw +great glory to himself. And every now and then there would arrive some +young gentleman or lady, whom Alice Oke had sent for to see whether they +would do. + +I saw very plainly that the performance would never take place, and that +Mrs. Oke herself had no intention that it ever should. She was one of those +creatures to whom realisation of a project is nothing, and who enjoy +plan-making almost the more for knowing that all will stop short at the +plan. Meanwhile, this perpetual talk about the pastoral, about Lovelock, +this continual attitudinising as the wife of Nicholas Oke, had the further +attraction to Mrs. Oke of putting her husband into a condition of frightful +though suppressed irritation, which she enjoyed with the enjoyment of a +perverse child. You must not think that I looked on indifferent, although I +admit that this was a perfect treat to an amateur student of character like +myself. I really did feel most sorry for poor Oke, and frequently quite +indignant with his wife. I was several times on the point of begging her to +have more consideration for him, even of suggesting that this kind of +behavior, particularly before a comparative stranger like me, was very poor +taste. But there was something elusive about Mrs. Oke, which made it next +to impossible to speak seriously with her; and besides, I was by no means +sure that any interference on my part would not merely animate her +perversity. + +One evening a curious incident took place. We had just sat down to dinner, +the Okes, the theatrical cousin, who was down for a couple of days, and +three or four neighbours. It was dusk, and the yellow light of the candles +mingled charmingly with the greyness of the evening. Mrs. Oke was not well, +and had been remarkably quiet all day, more diaphanous, strange, and +far-away than ever; and her husband seemed to have felt a sudden return of +tenderness, almost of compassion, for this delicate, fragile creature. We +had been talking of quite indifferent matters, when I saw Mr. Oke suddenly +turn very white, and look fixedly for a moment at the window opposite to +his seat. + +"Who's that fellow looking in at the window, and making signs to you, +Alice? Damn his impudence!" he cried, and jumping up, ran to the window, +opened it, and passed out into the twilight. We all looked at each other in +surprise; some of the party remarked upon the carelessness of servants in +letting nasty-looking fellows hang about the kitchen, others told stories +of tramps and burglars. Mrs. Oke did not speak; but I noticed the curious, +distant-looking smile in her thin cheeks. + +After a minute William Oke came in, his napkin in his hand. He shut the +window behind him and silently resumed his place. + +"Well, who was it?" we all asked. + +"Nobody. I--I must have made a mistake," he answered, and turned crimson, +while he busily peeled a pear. + +"It was probably Lovelock," remarked Mrs. Oke, just as she might have said, +"It was probably the gardener," but with that faint smile of pleasure still +in her face. Except the theatrical cousin, who burst into a loud laugh, +none of the company had ever heard Lovelock's name, and, doubtless +imagining him to be some natural appanage of the Oke family, groom or +farmer, said nothing, so the subject dropped. + +From that evening onwards things began to assume a different aspect. That +incident was the beginning of a perfect system--a system of what? I +scarcely know how to call it. A system of grim jokes on the part of Mrs. +Oke, of superstitious fancies on the part of her husband--a system of +mysterious persecutions on the part of some less earthly tenant of +Okehurst. Well, yes, after all, why not? We have all heard of ghosts, had +uncles, cousins, grandmothers, nurses, who have seen them; we are all a bit +afraid of them at the bottom of our soul; so why shouldn't they be? I am +too sceptical to believe in the impossibility of anything, for my part! + +Besides, when a man has lived throughout a summer in the same house with a +woman like Mrs. Oke of Okehurst, he gets to believe in the possibility of a +great many improbable things, I assure you, as a mere result of believing +in her. And when you come to think of it, why not? That a weird creature, +visibly not of this earth, a reincarnation of a woman who murdered her +lover two centuries and a half ago, that such a creature should have the +power of attracting about her (being altogether superior to earthly lovers) +the man who loved her in that previous existence, whose love for her was +his death--what is there astonishing in that? Mrs. Oke herself, I feel +quite persuaded, believed or half believed it; indeed she very seriously +admitted the possibility thereof, one day that I made the suggestion half +in jest. At all events, it rather pleased me to think so; it fitted in so +well with the woman's whole personality; it explained those hours and hours +spent all alone in the yellow room, where the very air, with its scent of +heady flowers and old perfumed stuffs, seemed redolent of ghosts. It +explained that strange smile which was not for any of us, and yet was not +merely for herself--that strange, far-off look in the wide pale eyes. I +liked the idea, and I liked to tease, or rather to delight her with it. How +should I know that the wretched husband would take such matters seriously? + +He became day by day more silent and perplexed-looking; and, as a result, +worked harder, and probably with less effect, at his land-improving schemes +and political canvassing. It seemed to me that he was perpetually +listening, watching, waiting for something to happen: a word spoken +suddenly, the sharp opening of a door, would make him start, turn crimson, +and almost tremble; the mention of Lovelock brought a helpless look, half a +convulsion, like that of a man overcome by great heat, into his face. And +his wife, so far from taking any interest in his altered looks, went on +irritating him more and more. Every time that the poor fellow gave one of +those starts of his, or turned crimson at the sudden sound of a footstep, +Mrs. Oke would ask him, with her contemptuous indifference, whether he had +seen Lovelock. I soon began to perceive that my host was getting perfectly +ill. He would sit at meals never saying a word, with his eyes fixed +scrutinisingly on his wife, as if vainly trying to solve some dreadful +mystery; while his wife, ethereal, exquisite, went on talking in her +listless way about the masque, about Lovelock, always about Lovelock. +During our walks and rides, which we continued pretty regularly, he would +start whenever in the roads or lanes surrounding Okehurst, or in its +grounds, we perceived a figure in the distance. I have seen him tremble at +what, on nearer approach, I could scarcely restrain my laughter on +discovering to be some well-known farmer or neighbour or servant. Once, as +we were returning home at dusk, he suddenly caught my arm and pointed +across the oak-dotted pastures in the direction of the garden, then started +off almost at a run, with his dog behind him, as if in pursuit of some +intruder. + +"Who was it?" I asked. And Mr. Oke merely shook his head mournfully. +Sometimes in the early autumn twilights, when the white mists rose from the +park-land, and the rooks formed long black lines on the palings, I almost +fancied I saw him start at the very trees and bushes, the outlines of the +distant oast-houses, with their conical roofs and projecting vanes, like +gibing fingers in the half light. + +"Your husband is ill," I once ventured to remark to Mrs. Oke, as she sat +for the hundred-and-thirtieth of my preparatory sketches (I somehow could +never get beyond preparatory sketches with her). She raised her beautiful, +wide, pale eyes, making as she did so that exquisite curve of shoulders and +neck and delicate pale head that I so vainly longed to reproduce. + +"I don't see it," she answered quietly. "If he is, why doesn't he go up to +town and see the doctor? It's merely one of his glum fits." + +"You should not tease him about Lovelock," I added, very seriously. "He +will get to believe in him." + +"Why not? If he sees him, why he sees him. He would not be the only person +that has done so"; and she smiled faintly and half perversely, as her eyes +sought that usual distant indefinable something. + +But Oke got worse. He was growing perfectly unstrung, like a hysterical +woman. One evening that we were sitting alone in the smoking-room, he began +unexpectedly a rambling discourse about his wife; how he had first known +her when they were children, and they had gone to the same dancing-school +near Portland Place; how her mother, his aunt-in-law, had brought her for +Christmas to Okehurst while he was on his holidays; how finally, thirteen +years ago, when he was twenty-three and she was eighteen, they had been +married; how terribly he had suffered when they had been disappointed of +their baby, and she had nearly died of the illness. + +"I did not mind about the child, you know," he said in an excited voice; +"although there will be an end of us now, and Okehurst will go to the +Curtises. I minded only about Alice." It was next to inconceivable that +this poor excited creature, speaking almost with tears in his voice and in +his eyes, was the quiet, well-got-up, irreproachable young ex-Guardsman who +had walked into my studio a couple of months before. + +Oke was silent for a moment, looking fixedly at the rug at his feet, when +he suddenly burst out in a scarce audible voice-- + +"If you knew how I cared for Alice--how I still care for her. I could kiss +the ground she walks upon. I would give anything--my life any day--if only +she would look for two minutes as if she liked me a little--as if she +didn't utterly despise me"; and the poor fellow burst into a hysterical +laugh, which was almost a sob. Then he suddenly began to laugh outright, +exclaiming, with a sort of vulgarity of intonation which was extremely +foreign to him-- + +"Damn it, old fellow, this is a queer world we live in!" and rang for more +brandy and soda, which he was beginning, I noticed, to take pretty freely +now, although he had been almost a blue-ribbon man--as much so as is +possible for a hospitable country gentleman--when I first arrived. + + + + +9 + + +It became clear to me now that, incredible as it might seem, the thing that +ailed William Oke was jealousy. He was simply madly in love with his wife, +and madly jealous of her. Jealous--but of whom? He himself would probably +have been quite unable to say. In the first place--to clear off any +possible suspicion--certainly not of me. Besides the fact that Mrs. Oke +took only just a very little more interest in me than in the butler or the +upper-housemaid, I think that Oke himself was the sort of man whose +imagination would recoil from realising any definite object of jealousy, +even though jealously might be killing him inch by inch. It remained a +vague, permeating, continuous feeling--the feeling that he loved her, and +she did not care a jackstraw about him, and that everything with which she +came into contact was receiving some of that notice which was refused to +him--every person, or thing, or tree, or stone: it was the recognition of +that strange far-off look in Mrs. Oke's eyes, of that strange absent smile +on Mrs. Oke's lips--eyes and lips that had no look and no smile for him. + +Gradually his nervousness, his watchfulness, suspiciousness, tendency to +start, took a definite shape. Mr. Oke was for ever alluding to steps or +voices he had heard, to figures he had seen sneaking round the house. The +sudden bark of one of the dogs would make him jump up. He cleaned and +loaded very carefully all the guns and revolvers in his study, and even +some of the old fowling-pieces and holster-pistols in the hall. The +servants and tenants thought that Oke of Okehurst had been seized with a +terror of tramps and burglars. Mrs. Oke smiled contemptuously at all these +doings. + +"My dear William," she said one day, "the persons who worry you have just +as good a right to walk up and down the passages and staircase, and to hang +about the house, as you or I. They were there, in all probability, long +before either of us was born, and are greatly amused by your preposterous +notions of privacy." + +Mr. Oke laughed angrily. "I suppose you will tell me it is Lovelock--your +eternal Lovelock--whose steps I hear on the gravel every night. I suppose +he has as good a right to be here as you or I." And he strode out of the +room. + +"Lovelock--Lovelock! Why will she always go on like that about Lovelock?" +Mr. Oke asked me that evening, suddenly staring me in the face. + +I merely laughed. + +"It's only because she has that play of his on the brain," I answered; "and +because she thinks you superstitious, and likes to tease you." + +"I don't understand," sighed Oke. + +How could he? And if I had tried to make him do so, he would merely have +thought I was insulting his wife, and have perhaps kicked me out of the +room. So I made no attempt to explain psychological problems to him, and he +asked me no more questions until once--But I must first mention a curious +incident that happened. + +The incident was simply this. Returning one afternoon from our usual walk, +Mr. Oke suddenly asked the servant whether any one had come. The answer was +in the negative; but Oke did not seem satisfied. We had hardly sat down to +dinner when he turned to his wife and asked, in a strange voice which I +scarcely recognised as his own, who had called that afternoon. + +"No one," answered Mrs. Oke; "at least to the best of my knowledge." + +William Oke looked at her fixedly. + +"No one?" he repeated, in a scrutinising tone; "no one, Alice?" + +Mrs. Oke shook her head. "No one," she replied. + +There was a pause. + +"Who was it, then, that was walking with you near the pond, about five +o'clock?" asked Oke slowly. + +His wife lifted her eyes straight to his and answered contemptuously-- + +"No one was walking with me near the pond, at five o'clock or any other +hour." + +Mr. Oke turned purple, and made a curious hoarse noise like a man choking. + +"I--I thought I saw you walking with a man this afternoon, Alice," he +brought out with an effort; adding, for the sake of appearances before me, +"I thought it might have been the curate come with that report for me." + +Mrs. Oke smiled. + +"I can only repeat that no living creature has been near me this +afternoon," she said slowly. "If you saw any one with me, it must have been +Lovelock, for there certainly was no one else." + +And she gave a little sigh, like a person trying to reproduce in her mind +some delightful but too evanescent impression. + +I looked at my host; from crimson his face had turned perfectly livid, and +he breathed as if some one were squeezing his windpipe. + +No more was said about the matter. I vaguely felt that a great danger was +threatening. To Oke or to Mrs. Oke? I could not tell which; but I was aware +of an imperious inner call to avert some dreadful evil, to exert myself, to +explain, to interpose. I determined to speak to Oke the following day, for +I trusted him to give me a quiet hearing, and I did not trust Mrs. Oke. +That woman would slip through my fingers like a snake if I attempted to +grasp her elusive character. + +I asked Oke whether he would take a walk with me the next afternoon, and he +accepted to do so with a curious eagerness. We started about three o'clock. +It was a stormy, chilly afternoon, with great balls of white clouds rolling +rapidly in the cold blue sky, and occasional lurid gleams of sunlight, +broad and yellow, which made the black ridge of the storm, gathered on the +horizon, look blue-black like ink. + +We walked quickly across the sere and sodden grass of the park, and on to +the highroad that led over the low hills, I don't know why, in the +direction of Cotes Common. Both of us were silent, for both of us had +something to say, and did not know how to begin. For my part, I recognised +the impossibility of starting the subject: an uncalled-for interference +from me would merely indispose Mr. Oke, and make him doubly dense of +comprehension. So, if Oke had something to say, which he evidently had, it +was better to wait for him. + +Oke, however, broke the silence only by pointing out to me the condition of +the hops, as we passed one of his many hop-gardens. "It will be a poor +year," he said, stopping short and looking intently before him--"no hops at +all. No hops this autumn." + +I looked at him. It was clear that he had no notion what he was saying. The +dark-green bines were covered with fruit; and only yesterday he himself had +informed me that he had not seen such a profusion of hops for many years. + +I did not answer, and we walked on. A cart met us in a dip of the road, and +the carter touched his hat and greeted Mr. Oke. But Oke took no heed; he +did not seem to be aware of the man's presence. + +The clouds were collecting all round; black domes, among which coursed the +round grey masses of fleecy stuff. + +"I think we shall be caught in a tremendous storm," I said; "hadn't we +better be turning?" He nodded, and turned sharp round. + +The sunlight lay in yellow patches under the oaks of the pasture-lands, and +burnished the green hedges. The air was heavy and yet cold, and everything +seemed preparing for a great storm. The rooks whirled in black clouds round +the trees and the conical red caps of the oast-houses which give that +country the look of being studded with turreted castles; then they +descended--a black line--upon the fields, with what seemed an unearthly +loudness of caw. And all round there arose a shrill quavering bleating of +lambs and calling of sheep, while the wind began to catch the topmost +branches of the trees. + +Suddenly Mr. Oke broke the silence. + +"I don't know you very well," he began hurriedly, and without turning his +face towards me; "but I think you are honest, and you have seen a good deal +of the world--much more than I. I want you to tell me--but truly, +please--what do you think a man should do if"--and he stopped for some +minutes. + +"Imagine," he went on quickly, "that a man cares a great deal--a very great +deal for his wife, and that he finds out that she--well, that--that she is +deceiving him. No--don't misunderstand me; I mean--that she is constantly +surrounded by some one else and will not admit it--some one whom she hides +away. Do you understand? Perhaps she does not know all the risk she is +running, you know, but she will not draw back--she will not avow it to her +husband"-- + +"My dear Oke," I interrupted, attempting to take the matter lightly, "these +are questions that can't be solved in the abstract, or by people to whom +the thing has not happened. And it certainly has not happened to you or +me." + +Oke took no notice of my interruption. "You see," he went on, "the man +doesn't expect his wife to care much about him. It's not that; he isn't +merely jealous, you know. But he feels that she is on the brink of +dishonouring herself--because I don't think a woman can really dishonour +her husband; dishonour is in our own hands, and depends only on our own +acts. He ought to save her, do you see? He must, must save her, in one way +or another. But if she will not listen to him, what can he do? Must he seek +out the other one, and try and get him out of the way? You see it's all the +fault of the other--not hers, not hers. If only she would trust in her +husband, she would be safe. But that other one won't let her." + +"Look here, Oke," I said boldly, but feeling rather frightened; "I know +quite well what you are talking about. And I see you don't understand the +matter in the very least. I do. I have watched you and watched Mrs. Oke +these six weeks, and I see what is the matter. Will you listen to me?" + +And taking his arm, I tried to explain to him my view of the +situation--that his wife was merely eccentric, and a little theatrical and +imaginative, and that she took a pleasure in teasing him. That he, on the +other hand, was letting himself get into a morbid state; that he was ill, +and ought to see a good doctor. I even offered to take him to town with me. + +I poured out volumes of psychological explanations. I dissected Mrs. Oke's +character twenty times over, and tried to show him that there was +absolutely nothing at the bottom of his suspicions beyond an imaginative +_pose_ and a garden-play on the brain. I adduced twenty instances, mostly +invented for the nonce, of ladies of my acquaintance who had suffered from +similar fads. I pointed out to him that his wife ought to have an outlet +for her imaginative and theatrical over-energy. I advised him to take her +to London and plunge her into some set where every one should be more or +less in a similar condition. I laughed at the notion of there being any +hidden individual about the house. I explained to Oke that he was suffering +from delusions, and called upon so conscientious and religious a man to +take every step to rid himself of them, adding innumerable examples of +people who had cured themselves of seeing visions and of brooding over +morbid fancies. I struggled and wrestled, like Jacob with the angel, and I +really hoped I had made some impression. At first, indeed, I felt that not +one of my words went into the man's brain--that, though silent, he was not +listening. It seemed almost hopeless to present my views in such a light +that he could grasp them. I felt as if I were expounding and arguing at a +rock. But when I got on to the tack of his duty towards his wife and +himself, and appealed to his moral and religious notions, I felt that I was +making an impression. + +"I daresay you are right," he said, taking my hand as we came in sight of +the red gables of Okehurst, and speaking in a weak, tired, humble voice. "I +don't understand you quite, but I am sure what you say is true. I daresay +it is all that I'm seedy. I feel sometimes as if I were mad, and just fit +to be locked up. But don't think I don't struggle against it. I do, I do +continually, only sometimes it seems too strong for me. I pray God night +and morning to give me the strength to overcome my suspicions, or to remove +these dreadful thoughts from me. God knows, I know what a wretched creature +I am, and how unfit to take care of that poor girl." + +And Oke again pressed my hand. As we entered the garden, he turned to me +once more. + +"I am very, very grateful to you," he said, "and, indeed, I will do my best +to try and be stronger. If only," he added, with a sigh, "if only Alice +would give me a moment's breathing-time, and not go on day after day +mocking me with her Lovelock." + + + + +10 + + +I had begun Mrs. Oke's portrait, and she was giving me a sitting. She was +unusually quiet that morning; but, it seemed to me, with the quietness of a +woman who is expecting something, and she gave me the impression of being +extremely happy. She had been reading, at my suggestion, the "Vita Nuova," +which she did not know before, and the conversation came to roll upon that, +and upon the question whether love so abstract and so enduring was a +possibility. Such a discussion, which might have savoured of flirtation in +the case of almost any other young and beautiful woman, became in the case +of Mrs. Oke something quite different; it seemed distant, intangible, not +of this earth, like her smile and the look in her eyes. + +"Such love as that," she said, looking into the far distance of the +oak-dotted park-land, "is very rare, but it can exist. It becomes a +person's whole existence, his whole soul; and it can survive the death, not +merely of the beloved, but of the lover. It is unextinguishable, and goes +on in the spiritual world until it meet a reincarnation of the beloved; and +when this happens, it jets out and draws to it all that may remain of that +lover's soul, and takes shape and surrounds the beloved one once more." + +Mrs. Oke was speaking slowly, almost to herself, and I had never, I think, +seen her look so strange and so beautiful, the stiff white dress bringing +out but the more the exotic exquisiteness and incorporealness of her +person. + +I did not know what to answer, so I said half in jest-- + +"I fear you have been reading too much Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. There +is something dreadfully esoteric in all you say." + +She smiled contemptuously. + +"I know people can't understand such matters," she replied, and was silent +for some time. But, through her quietness and silence, I felt, as it were, +the throb of a strange excitement in this woman, almost as if I had been +holding her pulse. + +Still, I was in hopes that things might be beginning to go better in +consequence of my interference. Mrs. Oke had scarcely once alluded to +Lovelock in the last two or three days; and Oke had been much more cheerful +and natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed so worried; and +once or twice I had caught in him a look of great gentleness and +loving-kindness, almost of pity, as towards some young and very frail +thing, as he sat opposite his wife. + +But the end had come. After that sitting Mrs. Oke had complained of fatigue +and retired to her room, and Oke had driven off on some business to the +nearest town. I felt all alone in the big house, and after having worked a +little at a sketch I was making in the park, I amused myself rambling about +the house. + +It was a warm, enervating, autumn afternoon: the kind of weather that +brings the perfume out of everything, the damp ground and fallen leaves, +the flowers in the jars, the old woodwork and stuffs; that seems to bring +on to the surface of one's consciousness all manner of vague recollections +and expectations, a something half pleasurable, half painful, that makes it +impossible to do or to think. I was the prey of this particular, not at all +unpleasurable, restlessness. I wandered up and down the corridors, stopping +to look at the pictures, which I knew already in every detail, to follow +the pattern of the carvings and old stuffs, to stare at the autumn flowers, +arranged in magnificent masses of colour in the big china bowls and jars. I +took up one book after another and threw it aside; then I sat down to the +piano and began to play irrelevant fragments. I felt quite alone, although +I had heard the grind of the wheels on the gravel, which meant that my host +had returned. I was lazily turning over a book of verses--I remember it +perfectly well, it was Morris's "Love is Enough"--in a corner of the +drawing-room, when the door suddenly opened and William Oke showed himself. +He did not enter, but beckoned to me to come out to him. There was +something in his face that made me start up and follow him at once. He was +extremely quiet, even stiff, not a muscle of his face moving, but very +pale. + +"I have something to show you," he said, leading me through the vaulted +hall, hung round with ancestral pictures, into the gravelled space that +looked like a filled-up moat, where stood the big blasted oak, with its +twisted, pointing branches. I followed him on to the lawn, or rather the +piece of park-land that ran up to the house. We walked quickly, he in +front, without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped, just where there +jutted out the bow-window of the yellow drawing-room, and I felt Oke's hand +tight upon my arm. + +"I have brought you here to see something," he whispered hoarsely; and he +led me to the window. + +I looked in. The room, compared with the out door, was rather dark; but +against the yellow wall I saw Mrs. Oke sitting alone on a couch in her +white dress, her head slightly thrown back, a large red rose in her hand. + +"Do you believe now?" whispered Oke's voice hot at my ear. "Do you believe +now? Was it all my fancy? But I will have him this time. I have locked the +door inside, and, by God! he shan't escape." + +The words were not out of Oke's mouth. I felt myself struggling with him +silently outside that window. But he broke loose, pulled open the window, +and leapt into the room, and I after him. As I crossed the threshold, +something flashed in my eyes; there was a loud report, a sharp cry, and the +thud of a body on the ground. + +Oke was standing in the middle of the room, with a faint smoke about him; +and at his feet, sunk down from the sofa, with her blond head resting on +its seat, lay Mrs. Oke, a pool of red forming in her white dress. Her mouth +was convulsed, as if in that automatic shriek, but her wide-open white eyes +seemed to smile vaguely and distantly. + +I know nothing of time. It all seemed to be one second, but a second that +lasted hours. Oke stared, then turned round and laughed. + +"The damned rascal has given me the slip again!" he cried; and quickly +unlocking the door, rushed out of the house with dreadful cries. + +That is the end of the story. Oke tried to shoot himself that evening, but +merely fractured his jaw, and died a few days later, raving. There were all +sorts of legal inquiries, through which I went as through a dream; and +whence it resulted that Mr. Oke had killed his wife in a fit of momentary +madness. That was the end of Alice Oke. By the way, her maid brought me a +locket which was found round her neck, all stained with blood. It contained +some very dark auburn hair, not at all the colour of William Oke's. I am +quite sure it was Lovelock's. + + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Phantom Lover, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHANTOM LOVER *** + +***** This file should be named 8180.txt or 8180.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/8/1/8/8180/ + +Produced by Katherine Delany, Suzanne L. Shell, Charles +Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, +and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive +specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this +eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook +for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, +performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given +away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks +not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the +trademark license, especially commercial redistribution. + +START: FULL LICENSE + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full +Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at +www.gutenberg.org/license. + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or +destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your +possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a +Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound +by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the +person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph +1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this +agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the +Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection +of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual +works in the collection are in the public domain in the United +States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the +United States and you are located in the United States, we do not +claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, +displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as +all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope +that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting +free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm +works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the +Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily +comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the +same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when +you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are +in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, +check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this +agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, +distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any +other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no +representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any +country outside the United States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other +immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear +prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work +on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, +performed, viewed, copied or distributed: + + This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and + most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the + United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you + are located before using this ebook. + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is +derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not +contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the +copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in +the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are +redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply +either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or +obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any +additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms +will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works +posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the +beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including +any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access +to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format +other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official +version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site +(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense +to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means +of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain +Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the +full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +provided that + +* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed + to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has + agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid + within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are + legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty + payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project + Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in + Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg + Literary Archive Foundation." + +* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all + copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue + all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm + works. + +* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of + any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of + receipt of the work. + +* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than +are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing +from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The +Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm +trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project +Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may +contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate +or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or +other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or +cannot be read by your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium +with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you +with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in +lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person +or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second +opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If +the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing +without further opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO +OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of +damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement +violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the +agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or +limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or +unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the +remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in +accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the +production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, +including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of +the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this +or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or +additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any +Defect you cause. + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of +computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It +exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations +from people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future +generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see +Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at +www.gutenberg.org Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by +U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the +mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its +volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous +locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt +Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to +date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and +official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact + +For additional contact information: + + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND +DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular +state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To +donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project +Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be +freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and +distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of +volunteer support. + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in +the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not +necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper +edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search +facility: www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + diff --git a/8180.zip b/8180.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6388d1c --- /dev/null +++ b/8180.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..442a97e --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #8180 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8180) diff --git a/old/phnlv10.txt b/old/phnlv10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9582abf --- /dev/null +++ b/old/phnlv10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2373 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Phantom Lover, by Vernon Lee + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: A Phantom Lover + +Author: Vernon Lee + +Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8180] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on June 26, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHANTOM LOVER *** + + + + +Produced by Katherine Delany, Suzanne L. Shell, +Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + +A PHANTOM LOVER + + + + +By +VERNON LEE + +1890 + + + + + +To COUNT PETER BOUTOURLINE, +_AT TAGANTCHA_, +GOVERNMENT OF KIEW, RUSSIA. + +MY DEAR BOUTOURLINE, + +Do you remember my telling you, one afternoon that you sat upon the +hearthstool at Florence, the story of Mrs. Oke of Okehurst? + +You thought it a fantastic tale, you lover of fantastic things, and urged +me to write it out at once, although I protested that, in such matters, to +write is to exorcise, to dispel the charm; and that printers' ink chases +away the ghosts that may pleasantly haunt us, as efficaciously as gallons +of holy water. + +But if, as I suspect, you will now put down any charm that story may +have possessed to the way in which we had been working ourselves up, +that firelight evening, with all manner of fantastic stuff--if, as I +fear, the story of Mrs. Oke of Okehurst will strike you as stale and +unprofitable--the sight of this little book will serve at least to remind +you, in the middle of your Russian summer, that there is such a season +as winter, such a place as Florence, and such a person as your friend, + +VERNON LEE + +Kensington, _July_ 1886. + + + + +1 + + +That sketch up there with the boy's cap? Yes; that's the same woman. I +wonder whether you could guess who she was. A singular being, is she not? +The most marvellous creature, quite, that I have ever met: a wonderful +elegance, exotic, far-fetched, poignant; an artificial perverse sort of +grace and research in every outline and movement and arrangement of head +and neck, and hands and fingers. Here are a lot of pencil sketches I made +while I was preparing to paint her portrait. Yes; there's nothing but her +in the whole sketchbook. Mere scratches, but they may give some idea of her +marvellous, fantastic kind of grace. Here she is leaning over the +staircase, and here sitting in the swing. Here she is walking quickly out +of the room. That's her head. You see she isn't really handsome; her +forehead is too big, and her nose too short. This gives no idea of her. It +was altogether a question of movement. Look at the strange cheeks, hollow +and rather flat; well, when she smiled she had the most marvellous dimples +here. There was something exquisite and uncanny about it. Yes; I began the +picture, but it was never finished. I did the husband first. I wonder who +has his likeness now? Help me to move these pictures away from the wall. +Thanks. This is her portrait; a huge wreck. I don't suppose you can make +much of it; it is merely blocked in, and seems quite mad. You see my idea +was to make her leaning against a wall--there was one hung with yellow that +seemed almost brown--so as to bring out the silhouette. + +It was very singular I should have chosen that particular wall. It does +look rather insane in this condition, but I like it; it has something of +her. I would frame it and hang it up, only people would ask questions. Yes; +you have guessed quite right--it is Mrs. Oke of Okehurst. I forgot you had +relations in that part of the country; besides, I suppose the newspapers +were full of it at the time. You didn't know that it all took place under +my eyes? I can scarcely believe now that it did: it all seems so distant, +vivid but unreal, like a thing of my own invention. It really was much +stranger than any one guessed. People could no more understand it than they +could understand her. I doubt whether any one ever understood Alice Oke +besides myself. You mustn't think me unfeeling. She was a marvellous, +weird, exquisite creature, but one couldn't feel sorry for her. I felt much +sorrier for the wretched creature of a husband. It seemed such an +appropriate end for her; I fancy she would have liked it could she have +known. Ah! I shall never have another chance of painting such a portrait as +I wanted. She seemed sent me from heaven or the other place. You have never +heard the story in detail? Well, I don't usually mention it, because people +are so brutally stupid or sentimental; but I'll tell it you. Let me see. +It's too dark to paint any more today, so I can tell it you now. Wait; I +must turn her face to the wall. Ah, she was a marvellous creature! + + + + +2 + + +You remember, three years ago, my telling you I had let myself in for +painting a couple of Kentish squireen? I really could not understand what +had possessed me to say yes to that man. A friend of mine had brought him +one day to my studio--Mr. Oke of Okehurst, that was the name on his card. +He was a very tall, very well-made, very good-looking young man, with a +beautiful fair complexion, beautiful fair moustache, and beautifully +fitting clothes; absolutely like a hundred other young men you can see any +day in the Park, and absolutely uninteresting from the crown of his head to +the tip of his boots. Mr. Oke, who had been a lieutenant in the Blues +before his marriage, was evidently extremely uncomfortable on finding +himself in a studio. He felt misgivings about a man who could wear a velvet +coat in town, but at the same time he was nervously anxious not to treat me +in the very least like a tradesman. He walked round my place, looked at +everything with the most scrupulous attention, stammered out a few +complimentary phrases, and then, looking at his friend for assistance, +tried to come to the point, but failed. The point, which the friend kindly +explained, was that Mr. Oke was desirous to know whether my engagements +would allow of my painting him and his wife, and what my terms would be. +The poor man blushed perfectly crimson during this explanation, as if he +had come with the most improper proposal; and I noticed--the only +interesting thing about him--a very odd nervous frown between his eyebrows, +a perfect double gash,--a thing which usually means something abnormal: a +mad-doctor of my acquaintance calls it the maniac-frown. When I had +answered, he suddenly burst out into rather confused explanations: his +wife--Mrs. Oke--had seen some of my--pictures--paintings--portraits--at +the--the--what d'you call it?--Academy. She had--in short, they had made a +very great impression upon her. Mrs. Oke had a great taste for art; she +was, in short, extremely desirous of having her portrait and his painted by +me, _etcetera_. + +"My wife," he suddenly added, "is a remarkable woman. I don't know whether +you will think her handsome,--she isn't exactly, you know. But she's +awfully strange," and Mr. Oke of Okehurst gave a little sigh and frowned +that curious frown, as if so long a speech and so decided an expression of +opinion had cost him a great deal. + +It was a rather unfortunate moment in my career. A very influential sitter +of mine--you remember the fat lady with the crimson curtain behind +her?--had come to the conclusion or been persuaded that I had painted her +old and vulgar, which, in fact, she was. Her whole clique had turned +against me, the newspapers had taken up the matter, and for the moment I +was considered as a painter to whose brushes no woman would trust her +reputation. Things were going badly. So I snapped but too gladly at Mr. +Oke's offer, and settled to go down to Okehurst at the end of a fortnight. +But the door had scarcely closed upon my future sitter when I began to +regret my rashness; and my disgust at the thought of wasting a whole summer +upon the portrait of a totally uninteresting Kentish squire, and his +doubtless equally uninteresting wife, grew greater and greater as the time +for execution approached. I remember so well the frightful temper in which +I got into the train for Kent, and the even more frightful temper in which +I got out of it at the little station nearest to Okehurst. It was pouring +floods. I felt a comfortable fury at the thought that my canvases would get +nicely wetted before Mr. Oke's coachman had packed them on the top of the +waggonette. It was just what served me right for coming to this confounded +place to paint these confounded people. We drove off in the steady +downpour. The roads were a mass of yellow mud; the endless flat +grazing-grounds under the oak-trees, after having been burnt to cinders in +a long drought, were turned into a hideous brown sop; the country seemed +intolerably monotonous. + +My spirits sank lower and lower. I began to meditate upon the modern Gothic +country-house, with the usual amount of Morris furniture, Liberty rugs, and +Mudie novels, to which I was doubtless being taken. My fancy pictured very +vividly the five or six little Okes--that man certainly must have at least +five children--the aunts, and sisters-in-law, and cousins; the eternal +routine of afternoon tea and lawn-tennis; above all, it pictured Mrs. Oke, +the bouncing, well-informed, model housekeeper, electioneering, +charity-organising young lady, whom such an individual as Mr. Oke would +regard in the light of a remarkable woman. And my spirit sank within me, +and I cursed my avarice in accepting the commission, my spiritlessness in +not throwing it over while yet there was time. We had meanwhile driven into +a large park, or rather a long succession of grazing-grounds, dotted about +with large oaks, under which the sheep were huddled together for shelter +from the rain. In the distance, blurred by the sheets of rain, was a line +of low hills, with a jagged fringe of bluish firs and a solitary windmill. +It must be a good mile and a half since we had passed a house, and there +was none to be seen in the distance--nothing but the undulation of sere +grass, sopped brown beneath the huge blackish oak-trees, and whence arose, +from all sides, a vague disconsolate bleating. At last the road made a +sudden bend, and disclosed what was evidently the home of my sitter. It +was not what I had expected. In a dip in the ground a large red-brick +house, with the rounded gables and high chimney-stacks of the time of +James I.,--a forlorn, vast place, set in the midst of the pasture-land, +with no trace of garden before it, and only a few large trees indicating +the possibility of one to the back; no lawn either, but on the other side +of the sandy dip, which suggested a filled-up moat, a huge oak, short, +hollow, with wreathing, blasted, black branches, upon which only a handful +of leaves shook in the rain. It was not at all what I had pictured to +myself the home of Mr. Oke of Okehurst. + +My host received me in the hall, a large place, panelled and carved, hung +round with portraits up to its curious ceiling--vaulted and ribbed like the +inside of a ship's hull. He looked even more blond and pink and white, more +absolutely mediocre in his tweed suit; and also, I thought, even more +good-natured and duller. He took me into his study, a room hung round with +whips and fishing-tackle in place of books, while my things were being +carried upstairs. It was very damp, and a fire was smouldering. He gave the +embers a nervous kick with his foot, and said, as he offered me a cigar-- + +"You must excuse my not introducing you at once to Mrs. Oke. My wife--in +short, I believe my wife is asleep." + +"Is Mrs. Oke unwell?" I asked, a sudden hope flashing across me that I +might be off the whole matter. + +"Oh no! Alice is quite well; at least, quite as well as she usually is. My +wife," he added, after a minute, and in a very decided tone, "does not +enjoy very good health--a nervous constitution. Oh no! not at all ill, +nothing at all serious, you know. Only nervous, the doctors say; mustn't be +worried or excited, the doctors say; requires lots of repose,--that sort +of thing." + +There was a dead pause. This man depressed me, I knew not why. He had a +listless, puzzled look, very much out of keeping with his evident admirable +health and strength. + +"I suppose you are a great sportsman?" I asked from sheer despair, nodding +in the direction of the whips and guns and fishing-rods. + +"Oh no! not now. I was once. I have given up all that," he answered, +standing with his back to the fire, and staring at the polar bear beneath +his feet. "I--I have no time for all that now," he added, as if an +explanation were due. "A married man--you know. Would you like to come up +to your rooms?" he suddenly interrupted himself. "I have had one arranged +for you to paint in. My wife said you would prefer a north light. If that +one doesn't suit, you can have your choice of any other." + +I followed him out of the study, through the vast entrance-hall. In less +than a minute I was no longer thinking of Mr. and Mrs. Oke and the boredom +of doing their likeness; I was simply overcome by the beauty of this house, +which I had pictured modern and philistine. It was, without exception, the +most perfect example of an old English manor-house that I had ever seen; +the most magnificent intrinsically, and the most admirably preserved. Out +of the huge hall, with its immense fireplace of delicately carved and +inlaid grey and black stone, and its rows of family portraits, reaching +from the wainscoting to the oaken ceiling, vaulted and ribbed like a ship's +hull, opened the wide, flat-stepped staircase, the parapet surmounted at +intervals by heraldic monsters, the wall covered with oak carvings of +coats-of-arms, leafage, and little mythological scenes, painted a faded red +and blue, and picked out with tarnished gold, which harmonised with the +tarnished blue and gold of the stamped leather that reached to the oak +cornice, again delicately tinted and gilded. The beautifully damascened +suits of court armour looked, without being at all rusty, as if no modern +hand had ever touched them; the very rugs under foot were of +sixteenth-century Persian make; the only things of to-day were the big +bunches of flowers and ferns, arranged in majolica dishes upon the +landings. Everything was perfectly silent; only from below came the chimes, +silvery like an Italian palace fountain, of an old-fashioned clock. + +It seemed to me that I was being led through the palace of the Sleeping +Beauty. + +"What a magnificent house!" I exclaimed as I followed my host through a +long corridor, also hung with leather, wainscoted with carvings, and +furnished with big wedding coffers, and chairs that looked as if they came +out of some Vandyck portrait. In my mind was the strong impression that all +this was natural, spontaneous--that it had about it nothing of the +picturesqueness which swell studios have taught to rich and aesthetic +houses. Mr. Oke misunderstood me. + +"It is a nice old place," he said, "but it's too large for us. You see, my +wife's health does not allow of our having many guests; and there are no +children." + +I thought I noticed a vague complaint in his voice; and he evidently was +afraid there might have seemed something of the kind, for he added +immediately-- + +"I don't care for children one jackstraw, you know, myself; can't +understand how any one can, for my part." + +If ever a man went out of his way to tell a lie, I said to myself, Mr. Oke +of Okehurst was doing so at the present moment. + +When he had left me in one of the two enormous rooms that were allotted to +me, I threw myself into an arm-chair and tried to focus the extraordinary +imaginative impression which this house had given me. + +I am very susceptible to such impressions; and besides the sort of spasm of +imaginative interest sometimes given to me by certain rare and eccentric +personalities, I know nothing more subduing than the charm, quieter and +less analytic, of any sort of complete and out-of-the-common-run sort of +house. To sit in a room like the one I was sitting in, with the figures of +the tapestry glimmering grey and lilac and purple in the twilight, the +great bed, columned and curtained, looming in the middle, and the embers +reddening beneath the overhanging mantelpiece of inlaid Italian stonework, +a vague scent of rose-leaves and spices, put into the china bowls by the +hands of ladies long since dead, while the clock downstairs sent up, every +now and then, its faint silvery tune of forgotten days, filled the +room;--to do this is a special kind of voluptuousness, peculiar and complex +and indescribable, like the half-drunkenness of opium or haschisch, and +which, to be conveyed to others in any sense as I feel it, would require a +genius, subtle and heady, like that of Baudelaire. + +After I had dressed for dinner I resumed my place in the arm-chair, and +resumed also my reverie, letting all these impressions of the past--which +seemed faded like the figures in the arras, but still warm like the embers +in the fireplace, still sweet and subtle like the perfume of the dead +rose-leaves and broken spices in the china bowls--permeate me and go to my +head. Of Oke and Oke's wife I did not think; I seemed quite alone, isolated +from the world, separated from it in this exotic enjoyment. + +Gradually the embers grew paler; the figures in the tapestry more shadowy; +the columned and curtained bed loomed out vaguer; the room seemed to fill +with greyness; and my eyes wandered to the mullioned bow-window, beyond +whose panes, between whose heavy stonework, stretched a greyish-brown +expanse of sore and sodden park grass, dotted with big oaks; while far off, +behind a jagged fringe of dark Scotch firs, the wet sky was suffused with +the blood-red of the sunset. Between the falling of the raindrops from the +ivy outside, there came, fainter or sharper, the recurring bleating of the +lambs separated from their mothers, a forlorn, quavering, eerie little cry. + +I started up at a sudden rap at my door. + +"Haven't you heard the gong for dinner?" asked Mr. Oke's voice. + +I had completely forgotten his existence. + + + + +3 + + +I feel that I cannot possibly reconstruct my earliest impressions of Mrs. +Oke. My recollection of them would be entirely coloured by my subsequent +knowledge of her; whence I conclude that I could not at first have +experienced the strange interest and admiration which that extraordinary +woman very soon excited in me. Interest and admiration, be it well +understood, of a very unusual kind, as she was herself a very unusual kind +of woman; and I, if you choose, am a rather unusual kind of man. But I can +explain that better anon. + +This much is certain, that I must have been immeasurably surprised at +finding my hostess and future sitter so completely unlike everything I had +anticipated. Or no--now I come to think of it, I scarcely felt surprised at +all; or if I did, that shock of surprise could have lasted but an +infinitesimal part of a minute. The fact is, that, having once seen Alice +Oke in the reality, it was quite impossible to remember that one could have +fancied her at all different: there was something so complete, so +completely unlike every one else, in her personality, that she seemed +always to have been present in one's consciousness, although present, +perhaps, as an enigma. + +Let me try and give you some notion of her: not that first impression, +whatever it may have been, but the absolute reality of her as I gradually +learned to see it. To begin with, I must repeat and reiterate over and over +again, that she was, beyond all comparison, the most graceful and exquisite +woman I have ever seen, but with a grace and an exquisiteness that had +nothing to do with any preconceived notion or previous experience of what +goes by these names: grace and exquisiteness recognised at once as perfect, +but which were seen in her for the first, and probably, I do believe, for +the last time. It is conceivable, is it not, that once in a thousand years +there may arise a combination of lines, a system of movements, an outline, +a gesture, which is new, unprecedented, and yet hits off exactly our +desires for beauty and rareness? She was very tall; and I suppose people +would have called her thin. I don't know, for I never thought about her as +a body--bones, flesh, that sort of thing; but merely as a wonderful series +of lines, and a wonderful strangeness of personality. Tall and slender, +certainly, and with not one item of what makes up our notion of a +well-built woman. She was as straight--I mean she had as little of what +people call figure--as a bamboo; her shoulders were a trifle high, and she +had a decided stoop; her arms and her shoulders she never once wore +uncovered. But this bamboo figure of hers had a suppleness and a +stateliness, a play of outline with every step she took, that I can't +compare to anything else; there was in it something of the peacock and +something also of the stag; but, above all, it was her own. I wish I could +describe her. I wish, alas!--I wish, I wish, I have wished a hundred +thousand times--I could paint her, as I see her now, if I shut my +eyes--even if it were only a silhouette. There! I see her so plainly, +walking slowly up and down a room, the slight highness of her shoulders; +just completing the exquisite arrangement of lines made by the straight +supple back, the long exquisite neck, the head, with the hair cropped in +short pale curls, always drooping a little, except when she would suddenly +throw it back, and smile, not at me, nor at any one, nor at anything that +had been said, but as if she alone had suddenly seen or heard something, +with the strange dimple in her thin, pale cheeks, and the strange whiteness +in her full, wide-opened eyes: the moment when she had something of the +stag in her movement. But where is the use of talking about her? I don't +believe, you know, that even the greatest painter can show what is the real +beauty of a very beautiful woman in the ordinary sense: Titian's and +Tintoretto's women must have been miles handsomer than they have made them. +Something--and that the very essence--always escapes, perhaps because real +beauty is as much a thing in time--a thing like music, a succession, a +series--as in space. Mind you, I am speaking of a woman beautiful in the +conventional sense. Imagine, then, how much more so in the case of a woman +like Alice Oke; and if the pencil and brush, imitating each line and tint, +can't succeed, how is it possible to give even the vaguest notion with mere +wretched words--words possessing only a wretched abstract meaning, an +impotent conventional association? To make a long story short, Mrs. Oke of +Okehurst was, in my opinion, to the highest degree exquisite and +strange,--an exotic creature, whose charm you can no more describe than you +could bring home the perfume of some newly discovered tropical flower by +comparing it with the scent of a cabbage-rose or a lily. + +That first dinner was gloomy enough. Mr. Oke--Oke of Okehurst, as the +people down there called him--was horribly shy, consumed with a fear of +making a fool of himself before me and his wife, I then thought. But that +sort of shyness did not wear off; and I soon discovered that, although it +was doubtless increased by the presence of a total stranger, it was +inspired in Oke, not by me, but by his wife. He would look every now and +then as if he were going to make a remark, and then evidently restrain +himself, and remain silent. It was very curious to see this big, handsome, +manly young fellow, who ought to have had any amount of success with women, +suddenly stammer and grow crimson in the presence of his own wife. Nor was +it the consciousness of stupidity; for when you got him alone, Oke, +although always slow and timid, had a certain amount of ideas, and very +defined political and social views, and a certain childlike earnestness and +desire to attain certainty and truth which was rather touching. On the +other hand, Oke's singular shyness was not, so far as I could see, the +result of any kind of bullying on his wife's part. You can always detect, +if you have any observation, the husband or the wife who is accustomed to +be snubbed, to be corrected, by his or her better-half: there is a +self-consciousness in both parties, a habit of watching and fault-finding, +of being watched and found fault with. This was clearly not the case at +Okehurst. Mrs. Oke evidently did not trouble herself about her husband in +the very least; he might say or do any amount of silly things without +rebuke or even notice; and he might have done so, had he chosen, ever since +his wedding-day. You felt that at once. Mrs. Oke simply passed over his +existence. I cannot say she paid much attention to any one's, even to mine. +At first I thought it an affectation on her part--for there was something +far-fetched in her whole appearance, something suggesting study, which +might lead one to tax her with affectation at first; she was dressed in a +strange way, not according to any established aesthetic eccentricity, but +individually, strangely, as if in the clothes of an ancestress of the +seventeenth century. Well, at first I thought it a kind of pose on her +part, this mixture of extreme graciousness and utter indifference which she +manifested towards me. She always seemed to be thinking of something else; +and although she talked quite sufficiently, and with every sign of superior +intelligence, she left the impression of having been as taciturn as her +husband. + +In the beginning, in the first few days of my stay at Okehurst, I imagined +that Mrs. Oke was a highly superior sort of flirt; and that her absent +manner, her look, while speaking to you, into an invisible distance, her +curious irrelevant smile, were so many means of attracting and baffling +adoration. I mistook it for the somewhat similar manners of certain foreign +women--it is beyond English ones--which mean, to those who can understand, +"pay court to me." But I soon found I was mistaken. Mrs. Oke had not the +faintest desire that I should pay court to her; indeed she did not honour +me with sufficient thought for that; and I, on my part, began to be too +much interested in her from another point of view to dream of such a thing. +I became aware, not merely that I had before me the most marvellously rare +and exquisite and baffling subject for a portrait, but also one of the most +peculiar and enigmatic of characters. Now that I look back upon it, I am +tempted to think that the psychological peculiarity of that woman might be +summed up in an exorbitant and absorbing interest in herself--a Narcissus +attitude--curiously complicated with a fantastic imagination, a sort of +morbid day-dreaming, all turned inwards, and with no outer characteristic +save a certain restlessness, a perverse desire to surprise and shock, to +surprise and shock more particularly her husband, and thus be revenged for +the intense boredom which his want of appreciation inflicted upon her. + +I got to understand this much little by little, yet I did not seem to have +really penetrated the something mysterious about Mrs. Oke. There was a +waywardness, a strangeness, which I felt but could not explain--a something +as difficult to define as the peculiarity of her outward appearance, and +perhaps very closely connected therewith. I became interested in Mrs. Oke +as if I had been in love with her; and I was not in the least in love. I +neither dreaded parting from her, nor felt any pleasure in her presence. I +had not the smallest wish to please or to gain her notice. But I had her on +the brain. I pursued her, her physical image, her psychological +explanation, with a kind of passion which filled my days, and prevented my +ever feeling dull. The Okes lived a remarkably solitary life. There were +but few neighbours, of whom they saw but little; and they rarely had a +guest in the house. Oke himself seemed every now and then seized with a +sense of responsibility towards me. He would remark vaguely, during our +walks and after-dinner chats, that I must find life at Okehurst horribly +dull; his wife's health had accustomed him to solitude, and then also his +wife thought the neighbours a bore. He never questioned his wife's judgment +in these matters. He merely stated the case as if resignation were quite +simple and inevitable; yet it seemed to me, sometimes, that this monotonous +life of solitude, by the side of a woman who took no more heed of him than +of a table or chair, was producing a vague depression and irritation in +this young man, so evidently cut out for a cheerful, commonplace life. I +often wondered how he could endure it at all, not having, as I had, the +interest of a strange psychological riddle to solve, and of a great +portrait to paint. He was, I found, extremely good,--the type of the +perfectly conscientious young Englishman, the sort of man who ought to have +been the Christian soldier kind of thing; devout, pure-minded, brave, +incapable of any baseness, a little intellectually dense, and puzzled by +all manner of moral scruples. The condition of his tenants and of his +political party--he was a regular Kentish Tory--lay heavy on his mind. He +spent hours every day in his study, doing the work of a land agent and a +political whip, reading piles of reports and newspapers and agricultural +treatises; and emerging for lunch with piles of letters in his hand, and +that odd puzzled look in his good healthy face, that deep gash between his +eyebrows, which my friend the mad-doctor calls the _maniac-frown_. It was +with this expression of face that I should have liked to paint him; but I +felt that he would not have liked it, that it was more fair to him to +represent him in his mere wholesome pink and white and blond +conventionality. I was perhaps rather unconscientious about the likeness of +Mr. Oke; I felt satisfied to paint it no matter how, I mean as regards +character, for my whole mind was swallowed up in thinking how I should +paint Mrs. Oke, how I could best transport on to canvas that singular and +enigmatic personality. I began with her husband, and told her frankly that +I must have much longer to study her. Mr. Oke couldn't understand why it +should be necessary to make a hundred and one pencil-sketches of his wife +before even determining in what attitude to paint her; but I think he was +rather pleased to have an opportunity of keeping me at Okehurst; my +presence evidently broke the monotony of his life. Mrs. Oke seemed +perfectly indifferent to my staying, as she was perfectly indifferent to my +presence. Without being rude, I never saw a woman pay so little attention +to a guest; she would talk with me sometimes by the hour, or rather let me +talk to her, but she never seemed to be listening. She would lie back in a +big seventeenth-century armchair while I played the piano, with that +strange smile every now and then in her thin cheeks, that strange whiteness +in her eyes; but it seemed a matter of indifference whether my music +stopped or went on. In my portrait of her husband she did not take, or +pretend to take, the very faintest interest; but that was nothing to me. I +did not want Mrs. Oke to think me interesting; I merely wished to go on +studying her. + +The first time that Mrs. Oke seemed to become at all aware of my presence +as distinguished from that of the chairs and tables, the dogs that lay in +the porch, or the clergyman or lawyer or stray neighbour who was +occasionally asked to dinner, was one day--I might have been there a +week--when I chanced to remark to her upon the very singular resemblance +that existed between herself and the portrait of a lady that hung in the +hall with the ceiling like a ship's hull. The picture in question was a +full length, neither very good nor very bad, probably done by some stray +Italian of the early seventeenth century. It hung in a rather dark corner, +facing the portrait, evidently painted to be its companion, of a dark man, +with a somewhat unpleasant expression of resolution and efficiency, in a +black Vandyck dress. The two were evidently man and wife; and in the corner +of the woman's portrait were the words, "Alice Oke, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret, Esq., and wife to Nicholas Oke of Okehurst," and the date +1626--"Nicholas Oke" being the name painted in the corner of the small +portrait. The lady was really wonderfully like the present Mrs. Oke, at +least so far as an indifferently painted portrait of the early days of +Charles I, can be like a living woman of the nineteenth century. There were +the same strange lines of figure and face, the same dimples in the thin +cheeks, the same wide-opened eyes, the same vague eccentricity of +expression, not destroyed even by the feeble painting and conventional +manner of the time. One could fancy that this woman had the same walk, the +same beautiful line of nape of the neck and stooping head as her +descendant; for I found that Mr. and Mrs. Oke, who were first cousins, were +both descended from that Nicholas Oke and that Alice, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret. But the resemblance was heightened by the fact that, as I soon +saw, the present Mrs. Oke distinctly made herself up to look like her +ancestress, dressing in garments that had a seventeenth-century look; nay, +that were sometimes absolutely copied from this portrait. + +"You think I am like her," answered Mrs. Oke dreamily to my remark, and her +eyes wandered off to that unseen something, and the faint smile dimpled her +thin cheeks. + +"You are like her, and you know it. I may even say you wish to be like her, +Mrs. Oke," I answered, laughing. + +"Perhaps I do." + +And she looked in the direction of her husband. I noticed that he had an +expression of distinct annoyance besides that frown of his. + +"Isn't it true that Mrs. Oke tries to look like that portrait?" I asked, +with a perverse curiosity. + +"Oh, fudge!" he exclaimed, rising from his chair and walking nervously to +the window. "It's all nonsense, mere nonsense. I wish you wouldn't, Alice." + +"Wouldn't what?" asked Mrs. Oke, with a sort of contemptuous indifference. +"If I am like that Alice Oke, why I am; and I am very pleased any one +should think so. She and her husband are just about the only two members of +our family--our most flat, stale, and unprofitable family--that ever were +in the least degree interesting." + +Oke grew crimson, and frowned as if in pain. + +"I don't see why you should abuse our family, Alice," he said. "Thank God, +our people have always been honourable and upright men and women!" + +"Excepting always Nicholas Oke and Alice his wife, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret, Esq.," she answered, laughing, as he strode out into the park. + +"How childish he is!" she exclaimed when we were alone. "He really minds, +really feels disgraced by what our ancestors did two centuries and a half +ago. I do believe William would have those two portraits taken down and +burned if he weren't afraid of me and ashamed of the neighbours. And as it +is, these two people really are the only two members of our family that +ever were in the least interesting. I will tell you the story some day." + +As it was, the story was told to me by Oke himself. The next day, as we +were taking our morning walk, he suddenly broke a long silence, laying +about him all the time at the sere grasses with the hooked stick that he +carried, like the conscientious Kentishman he was, for the purpose of +cutting down his and other folk's thistles. + +"I fear you must have thought me very ill-mannered towards my wife +yesterday," he said shyly; "and indeed I know I was." + +Oke was one of those chivalrous beings to whom every woman, every wife--and +his own most of all--appeared in the light of something holy. "But--but--I +have a prejudice which my wife does not enter into, about raking up ugly +things in one's own family. I suppose Alice thinks that it is so long ago +that it has really got no connection with us; she thinks of it merely as a +picturesque story. I daresay many people feel like that; in short, I am +sure they do, otherwise there wouldn't be such lots of discreditable family +traditions afloat. But I feel as if it were all one whether it was long ago +or not; when it's a question of one's own people, I would rather have it +forgotten. I can't understand how people can talk about murders in their +families, and ghosts, and so forth." + +"Have you any ghosts at Okehurst, by the way?" I asked. The place seemed as +if it required some to complete it. + +"I hope not," answered Oke gravely. + +His gravity made me smile. + +"Why, would you dislike it if there were?" I asked. + +"If there are such things as ghosts," he replied, "I don't think they +should be taken lightly. God would not permit them to be, except as a +warning or a punishment." + +We walked on some time in silence, I wondering at the strange type of this +commonplace young man, and half wishing I could put something into my +portrait that should be the equivalent of this curious unimaginative +earnestness. Then Oke told me the story of those two pictures--told it me +about as badly and hesitatingly as was possible for mortal man. + +He and his wife were, as I have said, cousins, and therefore descended from +the same old Kentish stock. The Okes of Okehurst could trace back to +Norman, almost to Saxon times, far longer than any of the titled or +better-known families of the neighbourhood. I saw that William Oke, in his +heart, thoroughly looked down upon all his neighbours. "We have never done +anything particular, or been anything particular--never held any office," +he said; "but we have always been here, and apparently always done our +duty. An ancestor of ours was killed in the Scotch wars, another at +Agincourt--mere honest captains." Well, early in the seventeenth century, +the family had dwindled to a single member, Nicholas Oke, the same who had +rebuilt Okehurst in its present shape. This Nicholas appears to have been +somewhat different from the usual run of the family. He had, in his youth, +sought adventures in America, and seems, generally speaking, to have been +less of a nonentity than his ancestors. He married, when no longer very +young, Alice, daughter of Virgil Pomfret, a beautiful young heiress from a +neighbouring county. "It was the first time an Oke married a Pomfret," my +host informed me, "and the last time. The Pomfrets were quite different +sort of people--restless, self-seeking; one of them had been a favourite of +Henry VIII." It was clear that William Oke had no feeling of having any +Pomfret blood in his veins; he spoke of these people with an evident family +dislike--the dislike of an Oke, one of the old, honourable, modest stock, +which had quietly done its duty, for a family of fortune-seekers and Court +minions. Well, there had come to live near Okehurst, in a little house +recently inherited from an uncle, a certain Christopher Lovelock, a young +gallant and poet, who was in momentary disgrace at Court for some love +affair. This Lovelock had struck up a great friendship with his neighbours +of Okehurst--too great a friendship, apparently, with the wife, either for +her husband's taste or her own. Anyhow, one evening as he was riding home +alone, Lovelock had been attacked and murdered, ostensibly by highwaymen, +but as was afterwards rumoured, by Nicholas Oke, accompanied by his wife +dressed as a groom. No legal evidence had been got, but the tradition had +remained. "They used to tell it us when we were children," said my host, in +a hoarse voice, "and to frighten my cousin--I mean my wife--and me with +stories about Lovelock. It is merely a tradition, which I hope may die out, +as I sincerely pray to heaven that it may be false." "Alice--Mrs. Oke--you +see," he went on after some time, "doesn't feel about it as I do. Perhaps I +am morbid. But I do dislike having the old story raked up." + +And we said no more on the subject. + + + + +4 + + +From that moment I began to assume a certain interest in the eyes of Mrs. +Oke; or rather, I began to perceive that I had a means of securing her +attention. Perhaps it was wrong of me to do so; and I have often reproached +myself very seriously later on. But after all, how was I to guess that I +was making mischief merely by chiming in, for the sake of the portrait I +had undertaken, and of a very harmless psychological mania, with what was +merely the fad, the little romantic affectation or eccentricity, of a +scatter-brained and eccentric young woman? How in the world should I have +dreamed that I was handling explosive substances? A man is surely not +responsible if the people with whom he is forced to deal, and whom he deals +with as with all the rest of the world, are quite different from all other +human creatures. + +So, if indeed I did at all conduce to mischief, I really cannot blame +myself. I had met in Mrs. Oke an almost unique subject for a +portrait-painter of my particular sort, and a most singular, _bizarre_ +personality. I could not possibly do my subject justice so long as I was +kept at a distance, prevented from studying the real character of the +woman. I required to put her into play. And I ask you whether any more +innocent way of doing so could be found than talking to a woman, and +letting her talk, about an absurd fancy she had for a couple of ancestors +of hers of the time of Charles I., and a poet whom they had +murdered?--particularly as I studiously respected the prejudices of my +host, and refrained from mentioning the matter, and tried to restrain Mrs. +Oke from doing so, in the presence of William Oke himself. + +I had certainly guessed correctly. To resemble the Alice Oke of the year +1626 was the caprice, the mania, the pose, the whatever you may call it, of +the Alice Oke of 1880; and to perceive this resemblance was the sure way of +gaining her good graces. It was the most extraordinary craze, of all the +extraordinary crazes of childless and idle women, that I had ever met; but +it was more than that, it was admirably characteristic. It finished off the +strange figure of Mrs. Oke, as I saw it in my imagination--this _bizarre_ +creature of enigmatic, far-fetched exquisiteness--that she should have no +interest in the present, but only an eccentric passion in the past. It +seemed to give the meaning to the absent look in her eyes, to her +irrelevant and far-off smile. It was like the words to a weird piece of +gipsy music, this that she, who was so different, so distant from all women +of her own time, should try and identify herself with a woman of the +past--that she should have a kind of flirtation--But of this anon. + +I told Mrs. Oke that I had learnt from her husband the outline of the +tragedy, or mystery, whichever it was, of Alice Oke, daughter of Virgil +Pomfret, and the poet Christopher Lovelock. That look of vague contempt, of +a desire to shock, which I had noticed before, came into her beautiful, +pale, diaphanous face. + +"I suppose my husband was very shocked at the whole matter," she +said--"told it you with as little detail as possible, and assured you +very solemnly that he hoped the whole story might be a mere dreadful +calumny? Poor Willie! I remember already when we were children, and I +used to come with my mother to spend Christmas at Okehurst, and my cousin +was down here for his holidays, how I used to horrify him by insisting +upon dressing up in shawls and waterproofs, and playing the story of the +wicked Mrs. Oke; and he always piously refused to do the part of Nicholas, +when I wanted to have the scene on Cotes Common. I didn't know then that I +was like the original Alice Oke; I found it out only after our marriage. +You really think that I am?" + +She certainly was, particularly at that moment, as she stood in a white +Vandyck dress, with the green of the park-land rising up behind her, and +the low sun catching her short locks and surrounding her head, her +exquisitely bowed head, with a pale-yellow halo. But I confess I thought +the original Alice Oke, siren and murderess though she might be, very +uninteresting compared with this wayward and exquisite creature whom I had +rashly promised myself to send down to posterity in all her unlikely +wayward exquisiteness. + +One morning while Mr. Oke was despatching his Saturday heap of Conservative +manifestoes and rural decisions--he was justice of the peace in a most +literal sense, penetrating into cottages and huts, defending the weak and +admonishing the ill-conducted--one morning while I was making one of my +many pencil-sketches (alas, they are all that remain to me now!) of my +future sitter, Mrs. Oke gave me her version of the story of Alice Oke and +Christopher Lovelock. + +"Do you suppose there was anything between them?" I asked--"that she was +ever in love with him? How do you explain the part which tradition ascribes +to her in the supposed murder? One has heard of women and their lovers who +have killed the husband; but a woman who combines with her husband to kill +her lover, or at least the man who is in love with her--that is surely very +singular." I was absorbed in my drawing, and really thinking very little of +what I was saying. + +"I don't know," she answered pensively, with that distant look in her eyes. +"Alice Oke was very proud, I am sure. She may have loved the poet very +much, and yet been indignant with him, hated having to love him. She may +have felt that she had a right to rid herself of him, and to call upon her +husband to help her to do so." + +"Good heavens! what a fearful idea!" I exclaimed, half laughing. "Don't you +think, after all, that Mr. Oke may be right in saying that it is easier and +more comfortable to take the whole story as a pure invention?" + +"I cannot take it as an invention," answered Mrs. Oke contemptuously, +"because I happen to know that it is true." + +"Indeed!" I answered, working away at my sketch, and enjoying putting this +strange creature, as I said to myself, through her paces; "how is that?" + +"How does one know that anything is true in this world?" she replied +evasively; "because one does, because one feels it to be true, I suppose." + +And, with that far-off look in her light eyes, she relapsed into silence. + +"Have you ever read any of Lovelock's poetry?" she asked me suddenly the +next day. + +"Lovelock?" I answered, for I had forgotten the name. "Lovelock, +who"--But I stopped, remembering the prejudices of my host, who was +seated next to me at table. + +"Lovelock who was killed by Mr. Oke's and my ancestors." + +And she looked full at her husband, as if in perverse enjoyment of the +evident annoyance which it caused him. + +"Alice," he entreated in a low voice, his whole face crimson, "for mercy's +sake, don't talk about such things before the servants." + +Mrs. Oke burst into a high, light, rather hysterical laugh, the laugh of a +naughty child. + +"The servants! Gracious heavens! do you suppose they haven't heard the +story? Why, it's as well known as Okehurst itself in the neighbourhood. +Don't they believe that Lovelock has been seen about the house? Haven't +they all heard his footsteps in the big corridor? Haven't they, my dear +Willie, noticed a thousand times that you never will stay a minute alone in +the yellow drawing-room--that you run out of it, like a child, if I happen +to leave you there for a minute?" + +True! How was it I had not noticed that? or rather, that I only now +remembered having noticed it? The yellow drawing-room was one of the most +charming rooms in the house: a large, bright room, hung with yellow damask +and panelled with carvings, that opened straight out on to the lawn, far +superior to the room in which we habitually sat, which was comparatively +gloomy. This time Mr. Oke struck me as really too childish. I felt an +intense desire to badger him. + +"The yellow drawing-room!" I exclaimed. "Does this interesting literary +character haunt the yellow drawing-room? Do tell me about it. What happened +there?" + +Mr. Oke made a painful effort to laugh. + +"Nothing ever happened there, so far as I know," he said, and rose from the +table. + +"Really?" I asked incredulously. + +"Nothing did happen there," answered Mrs. Oke slowly, playing mechanically +with a fork, and picking out the pattern of the tablecloth. "That is just +the extraordinary circumstance, that, so far as any one knows, nothing ever +did happen there; and yet that room has an evil reputation. No member of +our family, they say, can bear to sit there alone for more than a minute. +You see, William evidently cannot." + +"Have you ever seen or heard anything strange there?" I asked of my host. + +He shook his head. "Nothing," he answered curtly, and lit his cigar. + +"I presume you have not," I asked, half laughing, of Mrs. Oke, "since you +don't mind sitting in that room for hours alone? How do you explain this +uncanny reputation, since nothing ever happened there?" + +"Perhaps something is destined to happen there in the future," she +answered, in her absent voice. And then she suddenly added, "Suppose you +paint my portrait in that room?" + +Mr. Oke suddenly turned round. He was very white, and looked as if he were +going to say something, but desisted. + +"Why do you worry Mr. Oke like that?" I asked, when he had gone into his +smoking-room with his usual bundle of papers. "It is very cruel of you, +Mrs. Oke. You ought to have more consideration for people who believe in +such things, although you may not be able to put yourself in their frame of +mind." + +"Who tells you that I don't believe in _such things_, as you call them?" +she answered abruptly. + +"Come," she said, after a minute, "I want to show you why I believe in +Christopher Lovelock. Come with me into the yellow room." + + + + +5 + + +What Mrs. Oke showed me in the yellow room was a large bundle of papers, +some printed and some manuscript, but all of them brown with age, which she +took out of an old Italian ebony inlaid cabinet. It took her some time to +get them, as a complicated arrangement of double locks and false drawers +had to be put in play; and while she was doing so, I looked round the room, +in which I had been only three or four times before. It was certainly the +most beautiful room in this beautiful house, and, as it seemed to me now, +the most strange. It was long and low, with something that made you think +of the cabin of a ship, with a great mullioned window that let in, as it +were, a perspective of the brownish green park-land, dotted with oaks, and +sloping upwards to the distant line of bluish firs against the horizon. The +walls were hung with flowered damask, whose yellow, faded to brown, united +with the reddish colour of the carved wainscoting and the carved oaken +beams. For the rest, it reminded me more of an Italian room than an English +one. The furniture was Tuscan of the early seventeenth century, inlaid and +carved; there were a couple of faded allegorical pictures, by some +Bolognese master, on the walls; and in a corner, among a stack of dwarf +orange-trees, a little Italian harpsichord of exquisite curve and +slenderness, with flowers and landscapes painted upon its cover. In a +recess was a shelf of old books, mainly English and Italian poets of the +Elizabethan time; and close by it, placed upon a carved wedding-chest, a +large and beautiful melon-shaped lute. The panes of the mullioned window +were open, and yet the air seemed heavy, with an indescribable heady +perfume, not that of any growing flower, but like that of old stuff that +should have lain for years among spices. + +"It is a beautiful room!" I exclaimed. "I should awfully like to paint you +in it"; but I had scarcely spoken the words when I felt I had done wrong. +This woman's husband could not bear the room, and it seemed to me vaguely +as if he were right in detesting it. + +Mrs. Oke took no notice of my exclamation, but beckoned me to the table +where she was standing sorting the papers. + +"Look!" she said, "these are all poems by Christopher Lovelock"; and +touching the yellow papers with delicate and reverent fingers, she +commenced reading some of them out loud in a slow, half-audible voice. They +were songs in the style of those of Herrick, Waller, and Drayton, +complaining for the most part of the cruelty of a lady called Dryope, in +whose name was evidently concealed a reference to that of the mistress of +Okehurst. The songs were graceful, and not without a certain faded passion: +but I was thinking not of them, but of the woman who was reading them to +me. + +Mrs. Oke was standing with the brownish yellow wall as a background to her +white brocade dress, which, in its stiff seventeenth-century make, seemed +but to bring out more clearly the slightness, the exquisite suppleness, of +her tall figure. She held the papers in one hand, and leaned the other, as +if for support, on the inlaid cabinet by her side. Her voice, which was +delicate, shadowy, like her person, had a curious throbbing cadence, as if +she were reading the words of a melody, and restraining herself with +difficulty from singing it; and as she read, her long slender throat +throbbed slightly, and a faint redness came into her thin face. She +evidently knew the verses by heart, and her eyes were mostly fixed with +that distant smile in them, with which harmonised a constant tremulous +little smile in her lips. + +"That is how I would wish to paint her!" I exclaimed within myself; and +scarcely noticed, what struck me on thinking over the scene, that this +strange being read these verses as one might fancy a woman would read +love-verses addressed to herself. + +"Those are all written for Alice Oke--Alice the daughter of Virgil +Pomfret," she said slowly, folding up the papers. "I found them at the +bottom of this cabinet. Can you doubt of the reality of Christopher +Lovelock now?" + +The question was an illogical one, for to doubt of the existence of +Christopher Lovelock was one thing, and to doubt of the mode of his death +was another; but somehow I did feel convinced. + +"Look!" she said, when she had replaced the poems, "I will show you +something else." Among the flowers that stood on the upper storey of her +writing-table--for I found that Mrs. Oke had a writing-table in the yellow +room--stood, as on an altar, a small black carved frame, with a silk +curtain drawn over it: the sort of thing behind which you would have +expected to find a head of Christ or of the Virgin Mary. She drew the +curtain and displayed a large-sized miniature, representing a young man, +with auburn curls and a peaked auburn beard, dressed in black, but with +lace about his neck, and large pear-shaped pearls in his ears: a wistful, +melancholy face. Mrs. Oke took the miniature religiously off its stand, and +showed me, written in faded characters upon the back, the name "Christopher +Lovelock," and the date 1626. + +"I found this in the secret drawer of that cabinet, together with the heap +of poems," she said, taking the miniature out of my hand. + +I was silent for a minute. + +"Does--does Mr. Oke know that you have got it here?" I asked; and then +wondered what in the world had impelled me to put such a question. + +Mrs. Oke smiled that smile of contemptuous indifference. "I have never +hidden it from any one. If my husband disliked my having it, he might have +taken it away, I suppose. It belongs to him, since it was found in his +house." + +I did not answer, but walked mechanically towards the door. There was +something heady and oppressive in this beautiful room; something, I +thought, almost repulsive in this exquisite woman. She seemed to me, +suddenly, perverse and dangerous. + +I scarcely know why, but I neglected Mrs. Oke that afternoon. I went to Mr. +Oke's study, and sat opposite to him smoking while he was engrossed in his +accounts, his reports, and electioneering papers. On the table, above the +heap of paper-bound volumes and pigeon-holed documents, was, as sole +ornament of his den, a little photograph of his wife, done some years +before. I don't know why, but as I sat and watched him, with his florid, +honest, manly beauty, working away conscientiously, with that little +perplexed frown of his, I felt intensely sorry for this man. + +But this feeling did not last. There was no help for it: Oke was not as +interesting as Mrs. Oke; and it required too great an effort to pump up +sympathy for this normal, excellent, exemplary young squire, in the +presence of so wonderful a creature as his wife. So I let myself go to the +habit of allowing Mrs. Oke daily to talk over her strange craze, or rather +of drawing her out about it. I confess that I derived a morbid and +exquisite pleasure in doing so: it was so characteristic in her, so +appropriate to the house! It completed her personality so perfectly, and +made it so much easier to conceive a way of painting her. I made up my mind +little by little, while working at William Oke's portrait (he proved a less +easy subject than I had anticipated, and, despite his conscientious +efforts, was a nervous, uncomfortable sitter, silent and brooding)--I made +up my mind that I would paint Mrs. Oke standing by the cabinet in the +yellow room, in the white Vandyck dress copied from the portrait of her +ancestress. Mr. Oke might resent it, Mrs. Oke even might resent it; they +might refuse to take the picture, to pay for it, to allow me to exhibit; +they might force me to run my umbrella through the picture. No matter. That +picture should be painted, if merely for the sake of having painted it; for +I felt it was the only thing I could do, and that it would be far away my +best work. I told neither of my resolution, but prepared sketch after +sketch of Mrs. Oke, while continuing to paint her husband. + +Mrs. Oke was a silent person, more silent even than her husband, for she +did not feel bound, as he did, to attempt to entertain a guest or to show +any interest in him. She seemed to spend her life--a curious, inactive, +half-invalidish life, broken by sudden fits of childish cheerfulness--in an +eternal daydream, strolling about the house and grounds, arranging the +quantities of flowers that always filled all the rooms, beginning to read +and then throwing aside novels and books of poetry, of which she always had +a large number; and, I believe, lying for hours, doing nothing, on a couch +in that yellow drawing-room, which, with her sole exception, no member of +the Oke family had ever been known to stay in alone. Little by little I +began to suspect and to verify another eccentricity of this eccentric +being, and to understand why there were stringent orders never to disturb +her in that yellow room. + +It had been a habit at Okehurst, as at one or two other English +manor-houses, to keep a certain amount of the clothes of each generation, +more particularly wedding dresses. A certain carved oaken press, of which +Mr. Oke once displayed the contents to me, was a perfect museum of +costumes, male and female, from the early years of the seventeenth to the +end of the eighteenth century--a thing to take away the breath of a +_bric-a-brac_ collector, an antiquary, or a _genre_ painter. Mr. Oke was +none of these, and therefore took but little interest in the collection, +save in so far as it interested his family feeling. Still he seemed well +acquainted with the contents of that press. + +He was turning over the clothes for my benefit, when suddenly I noticed +that he frowned. I know not what impelled me to say, "By the way, have you +any dresses of that Mrs. Oke whom your wife resembles so much? Have you got +that particular white dress she was painted in, perhaps?" + +Oke of Okehurst flushed very red. + +"We have it," he answered hesitatingly, "but--it isn't here at present--I +can't find it. I suppose," he blurted out with an effort, "that Alice has +got it. Mrs. Oke sometimes has the fancy of having some of these old things +down. I suppose she takes ideas from them." + +A sudden light dawned in my mind. The white dress in which I had seen Mrs. +Oke in the yellow room, the day that she showed me Lovelock's verses, was +not, as I had thought, a modern copy; it was the original dress of Alice +Oke, the daughter of Virgil Pomfret--the dress in which, perhaps, +Christopher Lovelock had seen her in that very room. + +The idea gave me a delightful picturesque shudder. I said nothing. But I +pictured to myself Mrs. Oke sitting in that yellow room--that room which no +Oke of Okehurst save herself ventured to remain in alone, in the dress of +her ancestress, confronting, as it were, that vague, haunting something +that seemed to fill the place--that vague presence, it seemed to me, of the +murdered cavalier poet. + +Mrs. Oke, as I have said, was extremely silent, as a result of being +extremely indifferent. She really did not care in the least about anything +except her own ideas and day-dreams, except when, every now and then, she +was seized with a sudden desire to shock the prejudices or superstitions of +her husband. Very soon she got into the way of never talking to me at all, +save about Alice and Nicholas Oke and Christopher Lovelock; and then, when +the fit seized her, she would go on by the hour, never asking herself +whether I was or was not equally interested in the strange craze that +fascinated her. It so happened that I was. I loved to listen to her, going +on discussing by the hour the merits of Lovelock's poems, and analysing her +feelings and those of her two ancestors. It was quite wonderful to watch +the exquisite, exotic creature in one of these moods, with the distant look +in her grey eyes and the absent-looking smile in her thin cheeks, talking +as if she had intimately known these people of the seventeenth century, +discussing every minute mood of theirs, detailing every scene between them +and their victim, talking of Alice, and Nicholas, and Lovelock as she might +of her most intimate friends. Of Alice particularly, and of Lovelock. She +seemed to know every word that Alice had spoken, every idea that had +crossed her mind. It sometimes struck me as if she were telling me, +speaking of herself in the third person, of her own feelings--as if I were +listening to a woman's confidences, the recital of her doubts, scruples, +and agonies about a living lover. For Mrs. Oke, who seemed the most +self-absorbed of creatures in all other matters, and utterly incapable of +understanding or sympathising with the feelings of other persons, entered +completely and passionately into the feelings of this woman, this Alice, +who, at some moments, seemed to be not another woman, but herself. + +"But how could she do it--how could she kill the man she cared for?" I once +asked her. + +"Because she loved him more than the whole world!" she exclaimed, and +rising suddenly from her chair, walked towards the window, covering her +face with her hands. + +I could see, from the movement of her neck, that she was sobbing. She did +not turn round, but motioned me to go away. + +"Don't let us talk any more about it," she said. "I am ill to-day, and +silly." + +I closed the door gently behind me. What mystery was there in this woman's +life? This listlessness, this strange self-engrossment and stranger mania +about people long dead, this indifference and desire to annoy towards her +husband--did it all mean that Alice Oke had loved or still loved some one +who was not the master of Okehurst? And his melancholy, his preoccupation, +the something about him that told of a broken youth--did it mean that he +knew it? + + + + +6 + + +The following days Mrs. Oke was in a condition of quite unusual good +spirits. Some visitors--distant relatives--were expected, and although she +had expressed the utmost annoyance at the idea of their coming, she was now +seized with a fit of housekeeping activity, and was perpetually about +arranging things and giving orders, although all arrangements, as usual, +had been made, and all orders given, by her husband. + +William Oke was quite radiant. + +"If only Alice were always well like this!" he exclaimed; "if only she +would take, or could take, an interest in life, how different things would +be! But," he added, as if fearful lest he should be supposed to accuse her +in any way, "how can she, usually, with her wretched health? Still, it does +make me awfully happy to see her like this." + +I nodded. But I cannot say that I really acquiesced in his views. It seemed +to me, particularly with the recollection of yesterday's extraordinary +scene, that Mrs. Oke's high spirits were anything but normal. There was +something in her unusual activity and still more unusual cheerfulness that +was merely nervous and feverish; and I had, the whole day, the impression +of dealing with a woman who was ill and who would very speedily collapse. + +Mrs. Oke spent her day wandering from one room to another, and from the +garden to the greenhouse, seeing whether all was in order, when, as a +matter of fact, all was always in order at Okehurst. She did not give +me any sitting, and not a word was spoken about Alice Oke or Christopher +Lovelock. Indeed, to a casual observer, it might have seemed as if all +that craze about Lovelock had completely departed, or never existed. +About five o'clock, as I was strolling among the red-brick round-gabled +outhouses--each with its armorial oak--and the old-fashioned spalliered +kitchen and fruit garden, I saw Mrs. Oke standing, her hands full of York +and Lancaster roses, upon the steps facing the stables. A groom was +currycombing a horse, and outside the coach-house was Mr. Oke's little +high-wheeled cart. + +"Let us have a drive!" suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Oke, on seeing me. "Look +what a beautiful evening--and look at that dear little cart! It is so long +since I have driven, and I feel as if I must drive again. Come with me. And +you, harness Jim at once and come round to the door." + +I was quite amazed; and still more so when the cart drove up before the +door, and Mrs. Oke called to me to accompany her. She sent away the groom, +and in a minute we were rolling along, at a tremendous pace, along the +yellow-sand road, with the sere pasture-lands, the big oaks, on either +side. + +I could scarcely believe my senses. This woman, in her mannish little coat +and hat, driving a powerful young horse with the utmost skill, and +chattering like a school-girl of sixteen, could not be the delicate, +morbid, exotic, hot-house creature, unable to walk or to do anything, who +spent her days lying about on couches in the heavy atmosphere, redolent +with strange scents and associations, of the yellow drawing-room. The +movement of the light carriage, the cool draught, the very grind of the +wheels upon the gravel, seemed to go to her head like wine. + +"It is so long since I have done this sort of thing," she kept repeating; +"so long, so long. Oh, don't you think it delightful, going at this pace, +with the idea that any moment the horse may come down and we two be +killed?" and she laughed her childish laugh, and turned her face, no longer +pale, but flushed with the movement and the excitement, towards me. + +The cart rolled on quicker and quicker, one gate after another swinging to +behind us, as we flew up and down the little hills, across the pasture +lands, through the little red-brick gabled villages, where the people came +out to see us pass, past the rows of willows along the streams, and the +dark-green compact hop-fields, with the blue and hazy tree-tops of the +horizon getting bluer and more hazy as the yellow light began to graze the +ground. At last we got to an open space, a high-lying piece of common-land, +such as is rare in that ruthlessly utilised country of grazing-grounds and +hop-gardens. Among the low hills of the Weald, it seemed quite +preternaturally high up, giving a sense that its extent of flat heather and +gorse, bound by distant firs, was really on the top of the world. The sun +was setting just opposite, and its lights lay flat on the ground, staining +it with the red and black of the heather, or rather turning it into the +surface of a purple sea, canopied over by a bank of dark-purple clouds--the +jet-like sparkle of the dry ling and gorse tipping the purple like sunlit +wavelets. A cold wind swept in our faces. + +"What is the name of this place?" I asked. It was the only bit of +impressive scenery that I had met in the neighbourhood of Okehurst. + +"It is called Cotes Common," answered Mrs. Oke, who had slackened the pace +of the horse, and let the reins hang loose about his neck. "It was here +that Christopher Lovelock was killed." + +There was a moment's pause; and then she proceeded, tickling the flies from +the horse's ears with the end of her whip, and looking straight into the +sunset, which now rolled, a deep purple stream, across the heath to our +feet-- + +"Lovelock was riding home one summer evening from Appledore, when, as he +had got half-way across Cotes Common, somewhere about here--for I have +always heard them mention the pond in the old gravel-pits as about the +place--he saw two men riding towards him, in whom he presently recognised +Nicholas Oke of Okehurst accompanied by a groom. Oke of Okehurst hailed +him; and Lovelock rode up to meet him. 'I am glad to have met you, Mr. +Lovelock,' said Nicholas, 'because I have some important news for you'; and +so saying, he brought his horse close to the one that Lovelock was riding, +and suddenly turning round, fired off a pistol at his head. Lovelock had +time to move, and the bullet, instead of striking him, went straight into +the head of his horse, which fell beneath him. Lovelock, however, had +fallen in such a way as to be able to extricate himself easily from his +horse; and drawing his sword, he rushed upon Oke, and seized his horse by +the bridle. Oke quickly jumped off and drew his sword; and in a minute, +Lovelock, who was much the better swordsman of the two, was having the +better of him. Lovelock had completely disarmed him, and got his sword at +Oke's throat, crying out to him that if he would ask forgiveness he should +be spared for the sake of their old friendship, when the groom suddenly +rode up from behind and shot Lovelock through the back. Lovelock fell, and +Oke immediately tried to finish him with his sword, while the groom drew up +and held the bridle of Oke's horse. At that moment the sunlight fell upon +the groom's face, and Lovelock recognised Mrs. Oke. He cried out, 'Alice, +Alice! it is you who have murdered me!' and died. Then Nicholas Oke sprang +into his saddle and rode off with his wife, leaving Lovelock dead by the +side of his fallen horse. Nicholas Oke had taken the precaution of removing +Lovelock's purse and throwing it into the pond, so the murder was put down +to certain highwaymen who were about in that part of the country. Alice Oke +died many years afterwards, quite an old woman, in the reign of Charles +II.; but Nicholas did not live very long, and shortly before his death got +into a very strange condition, always brooding, and sometimes threatening +to kill his wife. They say that in one of these fits, just shortly before +his death, he told the whole story of the murder, and made a prophecy that +when the head of his house and master of Okehurst should marry another +Alice Oke descended from himself and his wife, there should be an end +of the Okes of Okehurst. You see, it seems to be coming true. We have no +children, and I don't suppose we shall ever have any. I, at least, have +never wished for them." + +Mrs. Oke paused, and turned her face towards me with the absent smile in +her thin cheeks: her eyes no longer had that distant look; they were +strangely eager and fixed. I did not know what to answer; this woman +positively frightened me. We remained for a moment in that same place, with +the sunlight dying away in crimson ripples on the heather, gilding the +yellow banks, the black waters of the pond, surrounded by thin rushes, and +the yellow gravel-pits; while the wind blew in our faces and bent the +ragged warped bluish tops of the firs. Then Mrs. Oke touched the horse, and +off we went at a furious pace. We did not exchange a single word, I think, +on the way home. Mrs. Oke sat with her eyes fixed on the reins, breaking +the silence now and then only by a word to the horse, urging him to an even +more furious pace. The people we met along the roads must have thought that +the horse was running away, unless they noticed Mrs. Oke's calm manner and +the look of excited enjoyment in her face. To me it seemed that I was in +the hands of a madwoman, and I quietly prepared myself for being upset or +dashed against a cart. It had turned cold, and the draught was icy in our +faces when we got within sight of the red gables and high chimney-stacks of +Okehurst. Mr. Oke was standing before the door. On our approach I saw a +look of relieved suspense, of keen pleasure come into his face. + +He lifted his wife out of the cart in his strong arms with a kind of +chivalrous tenderness. + +"I am so glad to have you back, darling," he exclaimed--"so glad! I was +delighted to hear you had gone out with the cart, but as you have not +driven for so long, I was beginning to be frightfully anxious, dearest. +Where have you been all this time?" + +Mrs. Oke had quickly extricated herself from her husband, who had remained +holding her, as one might hold a delicate child who has been causing +anxiety. The gentleness and affection of the poor fellow had evidently not +touched her--she seemed almost to recoil from it. + +"I have taken him to Cotes Common," she said, with that perverse look which +I had noticed before, as she pulled off her driving-gloves. "It is such a +splendid old place." + +Mr. Oke flushed as if he had bitten upon a sore tooth, and the double gash +painted itself scarlet between his eyebrows. + +Outside, the mists were beginning to rise, veiling the park-land dotted +with big black oaks, and from which, in the watery moonlight, rose on all +sides the eerie little cry of the lambs separated from their mothers. It +was damp and cold, and I shivered. + + + + +7 + + +The next day Okehurst was full of people, and Mrs. Oke, to my amazement, +was doing the honours of it as if a house full of commonplace, noisy young +creatures, bent upon flirting and tennis, were her usual idea of felicity. + +The afternoon of the third day--they had come for an electioneering ball, +and stayed three nights--the weather changed; it turned suddenly very cold +and began to pour. Every one was sent indoors, and there was a general +gloom suddenly over the company. Mrs. Oke seemed to have got sick of her +guests, and was listlessly lying back on a couch, paying not the slightest +attention to the chattering and piano-strumming in the room, when one of +the guests suddenly proposed that they should play charades. He was a +distant cousin of the Okes, a sort of fashionable artistic Bohemian, +swelled out to intolerable conceit by the amateur-actor vogue of a season. + +"It would be lovely in this marvellous old place," he cried, "just to dress +up, and parade about, and feel as if we belonged to the past. I have heard +you have a marvellous collection of old costumes, more or less ever since +the days of Noah, somewhere, Cousin Bill." + +The whole party exclaimed in joy at this proposal. William Oke looked +puzzled for a moment, and glanced at his wife, who continued to lie +listless on her sofa. + +"There is a press full of clothes belonging to the family," he answered +dubiously, apparently overwhelmed by the desire to please his guests; +"but--but--I don't know whether it's quite respectful to dress up in the +clothes of dead people." + +"Oh, fiddlestick!" cried the cousin. "What do the dead people know about +it? Besides," he added, with mock seriousness, "I assure you we shall +behave in the most reverent way and feel quite solemn about it all, if only +you will give us the key, old man." + +Again Mr. Oke looked towards his wife, and again met only her vague, absent +glance. + +"Very well," he said, and led his guests upstairs. + +An hour later the house was filled with the strangest crew and the +strangest noises. I had entered, to a certain extent, into William Oke's +feeling of unwillingness to let his ancestors' clothes and personality be +taken in vain; but when the masquerade was complete, I must say that the +effect was quite magnificent. A dozen youngish men and women--those who +were staying in the house and some neighbours who had come for lawn-tennis +and dinner--were rigged out, under the direction of the theatrical cousin, +in the contents of that oaken press: and I have never seen a more beautiful +sight than the panelled corridors, the carved and escutcheoned staircase, +the dim drawing-rooms with their faded tapestries, the great hall with its +vaulted and ribbed ceiling, dotted about with groups or single figures that +seemed to have come straight from the past. Even William Oke, who, besides +myself and a few elderly people, was the only man not masqueraded, seemed +delighted and fired by the sight. A certain schoolboy character suddenly +came out in him; and finding that there was no costume left for him, he +rushed upstairs and presently returned in the uniform he had worn before +his marriage. I thought I had really never seen so magnificent a specimen +of the handsome Englishman; he looked, despite all the modern associations +of his costume, more genuinely old-world than all the rest, a knight for +the Black Prince or Sidney, with his admirably regular features and +beautiful fair hair and complexion. After a minute, even the elderly people +had got costumes of some sort--dominoes arranged at the moment, and hoods +and all manner of disguises made out of pieces of old embroidery and +Oriental stuffs and furs; and very soon this rabble of masquers had become, +so to speak, completely drunk with its own amusement--with the +childishness, and, if I may say so, the barbarism, the vulgarity underlying +the majority even of well-bred English men and women--Mr. Oke himself doing +the mountebank like a schoolboy at Christmas. + +"Where is Mrs. Oke? Where is Alice?" some one suddenly asked. + +Mrs. Oke had vanished. I could fully understand that to this eccentric +being, with her fantastic, imaginative, morbid passion for the past, such a +carnival as this must be positively revolting; and, absolutely indifferent +as she was to giving offence, I could imagine how she would have retired, +disgusted and outraged, to dream her strange day-dreams in the yellow room. + +But a moment later, as we were all noisily preparing to go in to dinner, +the door opened and a strange figure entered, stranger than any of these +others who were profaning the clothes of the dead: a boy, slight and tall, +in a brown riding-coat, leathern belt, and big buff boots, a little grey +cloak over one shoulder, a large grey hat slouched over the eyes, a dagger +and pistol at the waist. It was Mrs. Oke, her eyes preternaturally bright, +and her whole face lit up with a bold, perverse smile. + +Every one exclaimed, and stood aside. Then there was a moment's silence, +broken by faint applause. Even to a crew of noisy boys and girls playing +the fool in the garments of men and women long dead and buried, there is +something questionable in the sudden appearance of a young married woman, +the mistress of the house, in a riding-coat and jackboots; and Mrs. Oke's +expression did not make the jest seem any the less questionable. + +"What is that costume?" asked the theatrical cousin, who, after a second, +had come to the conclusion that Mrs. Oke was merely a woman of marvellous +talent whom he must try and secure for his amateur troop next season. + +"It is the dress in which an ancestress of ours, my namesake Alice Oke, +used to go out riding with her husband in the days of Charles I.," she +answered, and took her seat at the head of the table. Involuntarily my eyes +sought those of Oke of Okehurst. He, who blushed as easily as a girl of +sixteen, was now as white as ashes, and I noticed that he pressed his hand +almost convulsively to his mouth. + +"Don't you recognise my dress, William?" asked Mrs. Oke, fixing her eyes +upon him with a cruel smile. + +He did not answer, and there was a moment's silence, which the theatrical +cousin had the happy thought of breaking by jumping upon his seat and +emptying off his glass with the exclamation-- + +"To the health of the two Alice Okes, of the past and the present!" + +Mrs. Oke nodded, and with an expression I had never seen in her face +before, answered in a loud and aggressive tone-- + +"To the health of the poet, Mr. Christopher Lovelock, if his ghost be +honouring this house with its presence!" + +I felt suddenly as if I were in a madhouse. Across the table, in the midst +of this room full of noisy wretches, tricked out red, blue, purple, and +parti-coloured, as men and women of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and +eighteenth centuries, as improvised Turks and Eskimos, and dominoes, and +clowns, with faces painted and corked and floured over, I seemed to see +that sanguine sunset, washing like a sea of blood over the heather, to +where, by the black pond and the wind-warped firs, there lay the body of +Christopher Lovelock, with his dead horse near him, the yellow gravel and +lilac ling soaked crimson all around; and above emerged, as out of the +redness, the pale blond head covered with the grey hat, the absent eyes, +and strange smile of Mrs. Oke. It seemed to me horrible, vulgar, +abominable, as if I had got inside a madhouse. + + + + +8 + + +From that moment I noticed a change in William Oke; or rather, a change +that had probably been coming on for some time got to the stage of being +noticeable. + +I don't know whether he had any words with his wife about her masquerade of +that unlucky evening. On the whole I decidedly think not. Oke was with +every one a diffident and reserved man, and most of all so with his wife; +besides, I can fancy that he would experience a positive impossibility of +putting into words any strong feeling of disapprobation towards her, that +his disgust would necessarily be silent. But be this as it may, I perceived +very soon that the relations between my host and hostess had become +exceedingly strained. Mrs. Oke, indeed, had never paid much attention to +her husband, and seemed merely a trifle more indifferent to his presence +than she had been before. But Oke himself, although he affected to address +her at meals from a desire to conceal his feeling, and a fear of making the +position disagreeable to me, very clearly could scarcely bear to speak to +or even see his wife. The poor fellow's honest soul was quite brimful of +pain, which he was determined not to allow to overflow, and which seemed to +filter into his whole nature and poison it. This woman had shocked and +pained him more than was possible to say, and yet it was evident that he +could neither cease loving her nor commence comprehending her real nature. +I sometimes felt, as we took our long walks through the monotonous country, +across the oak-dotted grazing-grounds, and by the brink of the dull-green, +serried hop-rows, talking at rare intervals about the value of the crops, +the drainage of the estate, the village schools, the Primrose League, and +the iniquities of Mr. Gladstone, while Oke of Okehurst carefully cut down +every tall thistle that caught his eye--I sometimes felt, I say, an intense +and impotent desire to enlighten this man about his wife's character. I +seemed to understand it so well, and to understand it well seemed to imply +such a comfortable acquiescence; and it seemed so unfair that just he +should be condemned to puzzle for ever over this enigma, and wear out his +soul trying to comprehend what now seemed so plain to me. But how would it +ever be possible to get this serious, conscientious, slow-brained +representative of English simplicity and honesty and thoroughness to +understand the mixture of self-engrossed vanity, of shallowness, of poetic +vision, of love of morbid excitement, that walked this earth under the name +of Alice Oke? + +So Oke of Okehurst was condemned never to understand; but he was condemned +also to suffer from his inability to do so. The poor fellow was constantly +straining after an explanation of his wife's peculiarities; and although +the effort was probably unconscious, it caused him a great deal of pain. +The gash--the maniac-frown, as my friend calls it--between his eyebrows, +seemed to have grown a permanent feature of his face. + +Mrs. Oke, on her side, was making the very worst of the situation. Perhaps +she resented her husband's tacit reproval of that masquerade night's freak, +and determined to make him swallow more of the same stuff, for she clearly +thought that one of William's peculiarities, and one for which she despised +him, was that he could never be goaded into an outspoken expression of +disapprobation; that from her he would swallow any amount of bitterness +without complaining. At any rate she now adopted a perfect policy of +teasing and shocking her husband about the murder of Lovelock. She was +perpetually alluding to it in her conversation, discussing in his presence +what had or had not been the feelings of the various actors in the tragedy +of 1626, and insisting upon her resemblance and almost identity with the +original Alice Oke. Something had suggested to her eccentric mind that it +would be delightful to perform in the garden at Okehurst, under the huge +ilexes and elms, a little masque which she had discovered among Christopher +Lovelock's works; and she began to scour the country and enter into vast +correspondence for the purpose of effectuating this scheme. Letters arrived +every other day from the theatrical cousin, whose only objection was that +Okehurst was too remote a locality for an entertainment in which he foresaw +great glory to himself. And every now and then there would arrive some +young gentleman or lady, whom Alice Oke had sent for to see whether they +would do. + +I saw very plainly that the performance would never take place, and that +Mrs. Oke herself had no intention that it ever should. She was one of those +creatures to whom realisation of a project is nothing, and who enjoy +plan-making almost the more for knowing that all will stop short at the +plan. Meanwhile, this perpetual talk about the pastoral, about Lovelock, +this continual attitudinising as the wife of Nicholas Oke, had the further +attraction to Mrs. Oke of putting her husband into a condition of frightful +though suppressed irritation, which she enjoyed with the enjoyment of a +perverse child. You must not think that I looked on indifferent, although I +admit that this was a perfect treat to an amateur student of character like +myself. I really did feel most sorry for poor Oke, and frequently quite +indignant with his wife. I was several times on the point of begging her to +have more consideration for him, even of suggesting that this kind of +behavior, particularly before a comparative stranger like me, was very poor +taste. But there was something elusive about Mrs. Oke, which made it next +to impossible to speak seriously with her; and besides, I was by no means +sure that any interference on my part would not merely animate her +perversity. + +One evening a curious incident took place. We had just sat down to dinner, +the Okes, the theatrical cousin, who was down for a couple of days, and +three or four neighbours. It was dusk, and the yellow light of the candles +mingled charmingly with the greyness of the evening. Mrs. Oke was not well, +and had been remarkably quiet all day, more diaphanous, strange, and +far-away than ever; and her husband seemed to have felt a sudden return of +tenderness, almost of compassion, for this delicate, fragile creature. We +had been talking of quite indifferent matters, when I saw Mr. Oke suddenly +turn very white, and look fixedly for a moment at the window opposite to +his seat. + +"Who's that fellow looking in at the window, and making signs to you, +Alice? Damn his impudence!" he cried, and jumping up, ran to the window, +opened it, and passed out into the twilight. We all looked at each other in +surprise; some of the party remarked upon the carelessness of servants in +letting nasty-looking fellows hang about the kitchen, others told stories +of tramps and burglars. Mrs. Oke did not speak; but I noticed the curious, +distant-looking smile in her thin cheeks. + +After a minute William Oke came in, his napkin in his hand. He shut the +window behind him and silently resumed his place. + +"Well, who was it?" we all asked. + +"Nobody. I--I must have made a mistake," he answered, and turned crimson, +while he busily peeled a pear. + +"It was probably Lovelock," remarked Mrs. Oke, just as she might have said, +"It was probably the gardener," but with that faint smile of pleasure still +in her face. Except the theatrical cousin, who burst into a loud laugh, +none of the company had ever heard Lovelock's name, and, doubtless +imagining him to be some natural appanage of the Oke family, groom or +farmer, said nothing, so the subject dropped. + +From that evening onwards things began to assume a different aspect. That +incident was the beginning of a perfect system--a system of what? I +scarcely know how to call it. A system of grim jokes on the part of Mrs. +Oke, of superstitious fancies on the part of her husband--a system of +mysterious persecutions on the part of some less earthly tenant of +Okehurst. Well, yes, after all, why not? We have all heard of ghosts, had +uncles, cousins, grandmothers, nurses, who have seen them; we are all a bit +afraid of them at the bottom of our soul; so why shouldn't they be? I am +too sceptical to believe in the impossibility of anything, for my part! + +Besides, when a man has lived throughout a summer in the same house with a +woman like Mrs. Oke of Okehurst, he gets to believe in the possibility of a +great many improbable things, I assure you, as a mere result of believing +in her. And when you come to think of it, why not? That a weird creature, +visibly not of this earth, a reincarnation of a woman who murdered her +lover two centuries and a half ago, that such a creature should have the +power of attracting about her (being altogether superior to earthly lovers) +the man who loved her in that previous existence, whose love for her was +his death--what is there astonishing in that? Mrs. Oke herself, I feel +quite persuaded, believed or half believed it; indeed she very seriously +admitted the possibility thereof, one day that I made the suggestion half +in jest. At all events, it rather pleased me to think so; it fitted in so +well with the woman's whole personality; it explained those hours and hours +spent all alone in the yellow room, where the very air, with its scent of +heady flowers and old perfumed stuffs, seemed redolent of ghosts. It +explained that strange smile which was not for any of us, and yet was not +merely for herself--that strange, far-off look in the wide pale eyes. I +liked the idea, and I liked to tease, or rather to delight her with it. How +should I know that the wretched husband would take such matters seriously? + +He became day by day more silent and perplexed-looking; and, as a result, +worked harder, and probably with less effect, at his land-improving schemes +and political canvassing. It seemed to me that he was perpetually +listening, watching, waiting for something to happen: a word spoken +suddenly, the sharp opening of a door, would make him start, turn crimson, +and almost tremble; the mention of Lovelock brought a helpless look, half a +convulsion, like that of a man overcome by great heat, into his face. And +his wife, so far from taking any interest in his altered looks, went on +irritating him more and more. Every time that the poor fellow gave one of +those starts of his, or turned crimson at the sudden sound of a footstep, +Mrs. Oke would ask him, with her contemptuous indifference, whether he had +seen Lovelock. I soon began to perceive that my host was getting perfectly +ill. He would sit at meals never saying a word, with his eyes fixed +scrutinisingly on his wife, as if vainly trying to solve some dreadful +mystery; while his wife, ethereal, exquisite, went on talking in her +listless way about the masque, about Lovelock, always about Lovelock. +During our walks and rides, which we continued pretty regularly, he would +start whenever in the roads or lanes surrounding Okehurst, or in its +grounds, we perceived a figure in the distance. I have seen him tremble at +what, on nearer approach, I could scarcely restrain my laughter on +discovering to be some well-known farmer or neighbour or servant. Once, as +we were returning home at dusk, he suddenly caught my arm and pointed +across the oak-dotted pastures in the direction of the garden, then started +off almost at a run, with his dog behind him, as if in pursuit of some +intruder. + +"Who was it?" I asked. And Mr. Oke merely shook his head mournfully. +Sometimes in the early autumn twilights, when the white mists rose from the +park-land, and the rooks formed long black lines on the palings, I almost +fancied I saw him start at the very trees and bushes, the outlines of the +distant oast-houses, with their conical roofs and projecting vanes, like +gibing fingers in the half light. + +"Your husband is ill," I once ventured to remark to Mrs. Oke, as she sat +for the hundred-and-thirtieth of my preparatory sketches (I somehow could +never get beyond preparatory sketches with her). She raised her beautiful, +wide, pale eyes, making as she did so that exquisite curve of shoulders and +neck and delicate pale head that I so vainly longed to reproduce. + +"I don't see it," she answered quietly. "If he is, why doesn't he go up to +town and see the doctor? It's merely one of his glum fits." + +"You should not tease him about Lovelock," I added, very seriously. "He +will get to believe in him." + +"Why not? If he sees him, why he sees him. He would not be the only person +that has done so"; and she smiled faintly and half perversely, as her eyes +sought that usual distant indefinable something. + +But Oke got worse. He was growing perfectly unstrung, like a hysterical +woman. One evening that we were sitting alone in the smoking-room, he began +unexpectedly a rambling discourse about his wife; how he had first known +her when they were children, and they had gone to the same dancing-school +near Portland Place; how her mother, his aunt-in-law, had brought her for +Christmas to Okehurst while he was on his holidays; how finally, thirteen +years ago, when he was twenty-three and she was eighteen, they had been +married; how terribly he had suffered when they had been disappointed of +their baby, and she had nearly died of the illness. + +"I did not mind about the child, you know," he said in an excited voice; +"although there will be an end of us now, and Okehurst will go to the +Curtises. I minded only about Alice." It was next to inconceivable that +this poor excited creature, speaking almost with tears in his voice and in +his eyes, was the quiet, well-got-up, irreproachable young ex-Guardsman who +had walked into my studio a couple of months before. + +Oke was silent for a moment, looking fixedly at the rug at his feet, when +he suddenly burst out in a scarce audible voice-- + +"If you knew how I cared for Alice--how I still care for her. I could kiss +the ground she walks upon. I would give anything--my life any day--if only +she would look for two minutes as if she liked me a little--as if she +didn't utterly despise me"; and the poor fellow burst into a hysterical +laugh, which was almost a sob. Then he suddenly began to laugh outright, +exclaiming, with a sort of vulgarity of intonation which was extremely +foreign to him-- + +"Damn it, old fellow, this is a queer world we live in!" and rang for more +brandy and soda, which he was beginning, I noticed, to take pretty freely +now, although he had been almost a blue-ribbon man--as much so as is +possible for a hospitable country gentleman--when I first arrived. + + + + +9 + + +It became clear to me now that, incredible as it might seem, the thing that +ailed William Oke was jealousy. He was simply madly in love with his wife, +and madly jealous of her. Jealous--but of whom? He himself would probably +have been quite unable to say. In the first place--to clear off any +possible suspicion--certainly not of me. Besides the fact that Mrs. Oke +took only just a very little more interest in me than in the butler or the +upper-housemaid, I think that Oke himself was the sort of man whose +imagination would recoil from realising any definite object of jealousy, +even though jealously might be killing him inch by inch. It remained a +vague, permeating, continuous feeling--the feeling that he loved her, and +she did not care a jackstraw about him, and that everything with which she +came into contact was receiving some of that notice which was refused to +him--every person, or thing, or tree, or stone: it was the recognition of +that strange far-off look in Mrs. Oke's eyes, of that strange absent smile +on Mrs. Oke's lips--eyes and lips that had no look and no smile for him. + +Gradually his nervousness, his watchfulness, suspiciousness, tendency to +start, took a definite shape. Mr. Oke was for ever alluding to steps or +voices he had heard, to figures he had seen sneaking round the house. The +sudden bark of one of the dogs would make him jump up. He cleaned and +loaded very carefully all the guns and revolvers in his study, and even +some of the old fowling-pieces and holster-pistols in the hall. The +servants and tenants thought that Oke of Okehurst had been seized with a +terror of tramps and burglars. Mrs. Oke smiled contemptuously at all these +doings. + +"My dear William," she said one day, "the persons who worry you have just +as good a right to walk up and down the passages and staircase, and to hang +about the house, as you or I. They were there, in all probability, long +before either of us was born, and are greatly amused by your preposterous +notions of privacy." + +Mr. Oke laughed angrily. "I suppose you will tell me it is Lovelock--your +eternal Lovelock--whose steps I hear on the gravel every night. I suppose +he has as good a right to be here as you or I." And he strode out of the +room. + +"Lovelock--Lovelock! Why will she always go on like that about Lovelock?" +Mr. Oke asked me that evening, suddenly staring me in the face. + +I merely laughed. + +"It's only because she has that play of his on the brain," I answered; "and +because she thinks you superstitious, and likes to tease you." + +"I don't understand," sighed Oke. + +How could he? And if I had tried to make him do so, he would merely have +thought I was insulting his wife, and have perhaps kicked me out of the +room. So I made no attempt to explain psychological problems to him, and he +asked me no more questions until once--But I must first mention a curious +incident that happened. + +The incident was simply this. Returning one afternoon from our usual walk, +Mr. Oke suddenly asked the servant whether any one had come. The answer was +in the negative; but Oke did not seem satisfied. We had hardly sat down to +dinner when he turned to his wife and asked, in a strange voice which I +scarcely recognised as his own, who had called that afternoon. + +"No one," answered Mrs. Oke; "at least to the best of my knowledge." + +William Oke looked at her fixedly. + +"No one?" he repeated, in a scrutinising tone; "no one, Alice?" + +Mrs. Oke shook her head. "No one," she replied. + +There was a pause. + +"Who was it, then, that was walking with you near the pond, about five +o'clock?" asked Oke slowly. + +His wife lifted her eyes straight to his and answered contemptuously-- + +"No one was walking with me near the pond, at five o'clock or any other +hour." + +Mr. Oke turned purple, and made a curious hoarse noise like a man choking. + +"I--I thought I saw you walking with a man this afternoon, Alice," he +brought out with an effort; adding, for the sake of appearances before me, +"I thought it might have been the curate come with that report for me." + +Mrs. Oke smiled. + +"I can only repeat that no living creature has been near me this +afternoon," she said slowly. "If you saw any one with me, it must have been +Lovelock, for there certainly was no one else." + +And she gave a little sigh, like a person trying to reproduce in her mind +some delightful but too evanescent impression. + +I looked at my host; from crimson his face had turned perfectly livid, and +he breathed as if some one were squeezing his windpipe. + +No more was said about the matter. I vaguely felt that a great danger was +threatening. To Oke or to Mrs. Oke? I could not tell which; but I was aware +of an imperious inner call to avert some dreadful evil, to exert myself, to +explain, to interpose. I determined to speak to Oke the following day, for +I trusted him to give me a quiet hearing, and I did not trust Mrs. Oke. +That woman would slip through my fingers like a snake if I attempted to +grasp her elusive character. + +I asked Oke whether he would take a walk with me the next afternoon, and he +accepted to do so with a curious eagerness. We started about three o'clock. +It was a stormy, chilly afternoon, with great balls of white clouds rolling +rapidly in the cold blue sky, and occasional lurid gleams of sunlight, +broad and yellow, which made the black ridge of the storm, gathered on the +horizon, look blue-black like ink. + +We walked quickly across the sere and sodden grass of the park, and on to +the highroad that led over the low hills, I don't know why, in the +direction of Cotes Common. Both of us were silent, for both of us had +something to say, and did not know how to begin. For my part, I recognised +the impossibility of starting the subject: an uncalled-for interference +from me would merely indispose Mr. Oke, and make him doubly dense of +comprehension. So, if Oke had something to say, which he evidently had, it +was better to wait for him. + +Oke, however, broke the silence only by pointing out to me the condition of +the hops, as we passed one of his many hop-gardens. "It will be a poor +year," he said, stopping short and looking intently before him--"no hops at +all. No hops this autumn." + +I looked at him. It was clear that he had no notion what he was saying. The +dark-green bines were covered with fruit; and only yesterday he himself had +informed me that he had not seen such a profusion of hops for many years. + +I did not answer, and we walked on. A cart met us in a dip of the road, and +the carter touched his hat and greeted Mr. Oke. But Oke took no heed; he +did not seem to be aware of the man's presence. + +The clouds were collecting all round; black domes, among which coursed the +round grey masses of fleecy stuff. + +"I think we shall be caught in a tremendous storm," I said; "hadn't we +better be turning?" He nodded, and turned sharp round. + +The sunlight lay in yellow patches under the oaks of the pasture-lands, and +burnished the green hedges. The air was heavy and yet cold, and everything +seemed preparing for a great storm. The rooks whirled in black clouds round +the trees and the conical red caps of the oast-houses which give that +country the look of being studded with turreted castles; then they +descended--a black line--upon the fields, with what seemed an unearthly +loudness of caw. And all round there arose a shrill quavering bleating of +lambs and calling of sheep, while the wind began to catch the topmost +branches of the trees. + +Suddenly Mr. Oke broke the silence. + +"I don't know you very well," he began hurriedly, and without turning his +face towards me; "but I think you are honest, and you have seen a good deal +of the world--much more than I. I want you to tell me--but truly, +please--what do you think a man should do if"--and he stopped for some +minutes. + +"Imagine," he went on quickly, "that a man cares a great deal--a very great +deal for his wife, and that he finds out that she--well, that--that she is +deceiving him. No--don't misunderstand me; I mean--that she is constantly +surrounded by some one else and will not admit it--some one whom she hides +away. Do you understand? Perhaps she does not know all the risk she is +running, you know, but she will not draw back--she will not avow it to her +husband"-- + +"My dear Oke," I interrupted, attempting to take the matter lightly, "these +are questions that can't be solved in the abstract, or by people to whom +the thing has not happened. And it certainly has not happened to you or +me." + +Oke took no notice of my interruption. "You see," he went on, "the man +doesn't expect his wife to care much about him. It's not that; he isn't +merely jealous, you know. But he feels that she is on the brink of +dishonouring herself--because I don't think a woman can really dishonour +her husband; dishonour is in our own hands, and depends only on our own +acts. He ought to save her, do you see? He must, must save her, in one way +or another. But if she will not listen to him, what can he do? Must he seek +out the other one, and try and get him out of the way? You see it's all the +fault of the other--not hers, not hers. If only she would trust in her +husband, she would be safe. But that other one won't let her." + +"Look here, Oke," I said boldly, but feeling rather frightened; "I know +quite well what you are talking about. And I see you don't understand the +matter in the very least. I do. I have watched you and watched Mrs. Oke +these six weeks, and I see what is the matter. Will you listen to me?" + +And taking his arm, I tried to explain to him my view of the +situation--that his wife was merely eccentric, and a little theatrical and +imaginative, and that she took a pleasure in teasing him. That he, on the +other hand, was letting himself get into a morbid state; that he was ill, +and ought to see a good doctor. I even offered to take him to town with me. + +I poured out volumes of psychological explanations. I dissected Mrs. Oke's +character twenty times over, and tried to show him that there was +absolutely nothing at the bottom of his suspicions beyond an imaginative +_pose_ and a garden-play on the brain. I adduced twenty instances, mostly +invented for the nonce, of ladies of my acquaintance who had suffered from +similar fads. I pointed out to him that his wife ought to have an outlet +for her imaginative and theatrical over-energy. I advised him to take her +to London and plunge her into some set where every one should be more or +less in a similar condition. I laughed at the notion of there being any +hidden individual about the house. I explained to Oke that he was suffering +from delusions, and called upon so conscientious and religious a man to +take every step to rid himself of them, adding innumerable examples of +people who had cured themselves of seeing visions and of brooding over +morbid fancies. I struggled and wrestled, like Jacob with the angel, and I +really hoped I had made some impression. At first, indeed, I felt that not +one of my words went into the man's brain--that, though silent, he was not +listening. It seemed almost hopeless to present my views in such a light +that he could grasp them. I felt as if I were expounding and arguing at a +rock. But when I got on to the tack of his duty towards his wife and +himself, and appealed to his moral and religious notions, I felt that I was +making an impression. + +"I daresay you are right," he said, taking my hand as we came in sight of +the red gables of Okehurst, and speaking in a weak, tired, humble voice. "I +don't understand you quite, but I am sure what you say is true. I daresay +it is all that I'm seedy. I feel sometimes as if I were mad, and just fit +to be locked up. But don't think I don't struggle against it. I do, I do +continually, only sometimes it seems too strong for me. I pray God night +and morning to give me the strength to overcome my suspicions, or to remove +these dreadful thoughts from me. God knows, I know what a wretched creature +I am, and how unfit to take care of that poor girl." + +And Oke again pressed my hand. As we entered the garden, he turned to me +once more. + +"I am very, very grateful to you," he said, "and, indeed, I will do my best +to try and be stronger. If only," he added, with a sigh, "if only Alice +would give me a moment's breathing-time, and not go on day after day +mocking me with her Lovelock." + + + + +10 + + +I had begun Mrs. Oke's portrait, and she was giving me a sitting. She was +unusually quiet that morning; but, it seemed to me, with the quietness of a +woman who is expecting something, and she gave me the impression of being +extremely happy. She had been reading, at my suggestion, the "Vita Nuova," +which she did not know before, and the conversation came to roll upon that, +and upon the question whether love so abstract and so enduring was a +possibility. Such a discussion, which might have savoured of flirtation in +the case of almost any other young and beautiful woman, became in the case +of Mrs. Oke something quite different; it seemed distant, intangible, not +of this earth, like her smile and the look in her eyes. + +"Such love as that," she said, looking into the far distance of the +oak-dotted park-land, "is very rare, but it can exist. It becomes a +person's whole existence, his whole soul; and it can survive the death, not +merely of the beloved, but of the lover. It is unextinguishable, and goes +on in the spiritual world until it meet a reincarnation of the beloved; and +when this happens, it jets out and draws to it all that may remain of that +lover's soul, and takes shape and surrounds the beloved one once more." + +Mrs. Oke was speaking slowly, almost to herself, and I had never, I think, +seen her look so strange and so beautiful, the stiff white dress bringing +out but the more the exotic exquisiteness and incorporealness of her +person. + +I did not know what to answer, so I said half in jest-- + +"I fear you have been reading too much Buddhist literature, Mrs. Oke. There +is something dreadfully esoteric in all you say." + +She smiled contemptuously. + +"I know people can't understand such matters," she replied, and was silent +for some time. But, through her quietness and silence, I felt, as it were, +the throb of a strange excitement in this woman, almost as if I had been +holding her pulse. + +Still, I was in hopes that things might be beginning to go better in +consequence of my interference. Mrs. Oke had scarcely once alluded to +Lovelock in the last two or three days; and Oke had been much more cheerful +and natural since our conversation. He no longer seemed so worried; and +once or twice I had caught in him a look of great gentleness and +loving-kindness, almost of pity, as towards some young and very frail +thing, as he sat opposite his wife. + +But the end had come. After that sitting Mrs. Oke had complained of fatigue +and retired to her room, and Oke had driven off on some business to the +nearest town. I felt all alone in the big house, and after having worked a +little at a sketch I was making in the park, I amused myself rambling about +the house. + +It was a warm, enervating, autumn afternoon: the kind of weather that +brings the perfume out of everything, the damp ground and fallen leaves, +the flowers in the jars, the old woodwork and stuffs; that seems to bring +on to the surface of one's consciousness all manner of vague recollections +and expectations, a something half pleasurable, half painful, that makes it +impossible to do or to think. I was the prey of this particular, not at all +unpleasurable, restlessness. I wandered up and down the corridors, stopping +to look at the pictures, which I knew already in every detail, to follow +the pattern of the carvings and old stuffs, to stare at the autumn flowers, +arranged in magnificent masses of colour in the big china bowls and jars. I +took up one book after another and threw it aside; then I sat down to the +piano and began to play irrelevant fragments. I felt quite alone, although +I had heard the grind of the wheels on the gravel, which meant that my host +had returned. I was lazily turning over a book of verses--I remember it +perfectly well, it was Morris's "Love is Enough"--in a corner of the +drawing-room, when the door suddenly opened and William Oke showed himself. +He did not enter, but beckoned to me to come out to him. There was +something in his face that made me start up and follow him at once. He was +extremely quiet, even stiff, not a muscle of his face moving, but very +pale. + +"I have something to show you," he said, leading me through the vaulted +hall, hung round with ancestral pictures, into the gravelled space that +looked like a filled-up moat, where stood the big blasted oak, with its +twisted, pointing branches. I followed him on to the lawn, or rather the +piece of park-land that ran up to the house. We walked quickly, he in +front, without exchanging a word. Suddenly he stopped, just where there +jutted out the bow-window of the yellow drawing-room, and I felt Oke's hand +tight upon my arm. + +"I have brought you here to see something," he whispered hoarsely; and he +led me to the window. + +I looked in. The room, compared with the out door, was rather dark; but +against the yellow wall I saw Mrs. Oke sitting alone on a couch in her +white dress, her head slightly thrown back, a large red rose in her hand. + +"Do you believe now?" whispered Oke's voice hot at my ear. "Do you believe +now? Was it all my fancy? But I will have him this time. I have locked the +door inside, and, by God! he shan't escape." + +The words were not out of Oke's mouth. I felt myself struggling with him +silently outside that window. But he broke loose, pulled open the window, +and leapt into the room, and I after him. As I crossed the threshold, +something flashed in my eyes; there was a loud report, a sharp cry, and the +thud of a body on the ground. + +Oke was standing in the middle of the room, with a faint smoke about him; +and at his feet, sunk down from the sofa, with her blond head resting on +its seat, lay Mrs. Oke, a pool of red forming in her white dress. Her mouth +was convulsed, as if in that automatic shriek, but her wide-open white eyes +seemed to smile vaguely and distantly. + +I know nothing of time. It all seemed to be one second, but a second that +lasted hours. Oke stared, then turned round and laughed. + +"The damned rascal has given me the slip again!" he cried; and quickly +unlocking the door, rushed out of the house with dreadful cries. + +That is the end of the story. Oke tried to shoot himself that evening, but +merely fractured his jaw, and died a few days later, raving. There were all +sorts of legal inquiries, through which I went as through a dream; and +whence it resulted that Mr. Oke had killed his wife in a fit of momentary +madness. That was the end of Alice Oke. By the way, her maid brought me a +locket which was found round her neck, all stained with blood. It contained +some very dark auburn hair, not at all the colour of William Oke's. I am +quite sure it was Lovelock's. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Phantom Lover, by Vernon Lee + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PHANTOM LOVER *** + +This file should be named phnlv10.txt or phnlv10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, phnlv11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, phnlv10a.txt + +Produced by Katherine Delany, Suzanne L. Shell, +Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* + diff --git a/old/phnlv10.zip b/old/phnlv10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..8f063b6 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/phnlv10.zip |