A Child of the Age (Adams)/Chapter 17

by Francis William Lauderdale Adams

 

V

I

The Professor came in upon us after twelve o'clock lunch, one mild October day, when we were standing together, outside the study, leaning over the balcony-rails and watching the aerial manœuvres of two martins.

'I am glad to see you,' I said, holding his hand and looking into his face. Then turning to Rosy, who had drawn back on the sudden appearance of this stranger by my side, I explained:

'This is the friend for whose sake I wished our house to be ready—Professor Strachan.'

Rosy put out a timid hand, and said blushingly and softly:

'I am glad to see you, sir! '

The Professor smiled—who could help it?—and then gave an odd glance at me which I rejected, and that, I think, dismissed some invisible commonplace trouble of ours into the outer air, and he and I were in some way more really friends than we ever had been before.

He stayed in Paris for eight or nine days, during which I had the pleasure of going with the Rosebud and him to see the plays which were the best worth seeing. Those evenings were happy ones. He and the child took to one another, quite remarkably: and therein perhaps lay the happiness of those evenings—at least to me—to sit still and listen to their talk, with a certain half-dreaminess in my thoughts of them, and with a certain half-wonder in the half-dreaminess. I remember how particularly this feeling came to me the last night he was with us (at the Gymnase it was), and how it dominated me all the way home, and how, looking into his eyes, as after supper he said night to me a second time at the street-door, the sudden thought came that he knew my final thought, and to where did that final thought end? As I came up the dark staircase with my candle-light sending uncouth shadows about me above and below, I wondered, in a half-vague way about the meaning of the thing?

When I entered the dining-room, I found Rosy leaning against the mantelpiece, warming one foot.

'Are you cold?' I said, putting down the candle on the table and throwing myself into an easy-chair, with my knuckles up to my mouth and my eyes to her.

'Yes,' she said; 'I am cold—a little.'

'Why, it's quite warm.'

She made a little motion with her back expressive of a shiver. I took up a book. She turned her head:

'Don't read anymore to-night,' she said, 'You're always rea-ding.'

'Am I?' I asked, looking at the tops of the leaves; 'perhaps I want to get wise. Now if I were you, Rosy, I should learn French. I'd be only too glad to get you a master. And why not music too?'

'I don't seem to care about it,' she said.

'You are lazy?'

A pause.

She came to me.

'Don't sit on the arm of the chair,' I said, 'or you'll break it.'

She stopped. I continued looking at the tops of the leaves. 'Then she drew a stool from underneath the table to my feet, and sat down upon it and looked at me. In a little I met her gaze.

'Well?' I said.

'I will learn the French and the music if you like!' she said.

I laughed.

'My dear, the liking must be yours. I don't want you to do what you don't like.'

'You're always rea-ding,' she said, 'I don't believe you ever think about me. You don't care what I do!—really.'

'I don't,' I said, 'You are right.' She seemed struck speechless.

I opened the book and began reading.

At last:

'You don't—care—what—I do?' she repeated in amazement.

'No,' I said 'You may go to the devil as soon as you please.'

Silence. I reading.

At last I said:

'The Professor, you see, came over later than I thought he would.'

A pause.

I felt her hand on my knee.

'Are you joking?' she asked.

'Joking?' said I, lowering the book and looking at her with surprise, 'Not the least in the world. I said I didn't care what you did. I don't. You remember my agreement with you? You were to take half the money and leave me the moment you tired of me. I have come to the conclusion that it's only fair for me to be able to do the same with you. I'm tired of you.' I lifted up the book and continued my reading.

In a little she rose and went to the fire-place. I read on. She made no sign of life. A sudden idea came to me that she had fainted—nay, was dead! I lowered my book: saw her gazing over the table into the air: got up, throwing the book on to the table by the candle, and said slowly:

'Well, my dear, let's part good friends at the least. It was a blunder our acquaintance, but there is no ill-feeling on either side; eh? In token whereof we will spend one more night together, and then—part?…'

Silence; she still gazing over the table into the air. I advanced, and recognised that I desired her, which made me laugh. It was the first time I had recognised the fact. She answered nothing: made no motion. A sudden feeling of the cruelty of my experiment seemed to bite me. I had not thought of it in that way: cruelty. I at once began to undo my sewing:

'Well, Rosebud,' said I, taking her two little still hands in mine, 'You little duffer, what are you thinking about?'

At last she looked at me; looked in my eyes long, till I laughed.

'You are a bad man!' she said.

'You do not mean it?' I said saucily. You are a good wom …' She had in a moment smitten me smartly on the cheek with the palm of her hand! I burst out into bright laughter, catching her, as she sat bolt upright with an expression half-startled, half-defiant, in my arms, and smothering her cheeks and lips with kisses.…

But the experiment was spoilt. Perhaps it was premature.

I wondered that night, or rather morning, as I lay awake thinking in the grey light, while she slept gently like a child beside me, why I had attempted that experiment, and what I had quite meant by it? And wondering, I fell asleep.

The next evening, I met the Professor at the Gare du Nord, as we had arranged, and (he, at the end of our walk up and down in the hall, commending Rosy to my care as a last sudden thought which I felt he hadn't liked to broach as of any other sort) I saw the last of him that was to be seen, and turned away a little sadly.

As I walked home to Rosy, who was waiting for me (to go out a walk she had said, and I had half agreed), I had a feeling that we two, she and I, were going through a somewhat difficult stage of development, and thought of it, as usual now, half vaguely. When I opened our door, I found her seated on the ottoman in the hall, dressed in furs, waiting.

'Dear girl,' I said, drawing out the latchkey, 'it's quite warm out. How can you expect to walk quickly when you're muffled up like a mummy? And stays on underneath, I'll be bound.' I was smiling. She came towards me with a saucy strut, holding up her dress, so to show her small pointed boots and pretty coloured stockings. I looked at them and said:

'Oh, frightful!'

She caught me by the arm and half-swung there.

'You 're in such a good temper to-day!' she said, laughing. 'We'll go to a nice cafe on the boulevard, and drink café noir, in nice china cups, and play at dominoes. I do like dominoes. We will—Eh?'

'If,' said I, 'you die before me, I will have you buried in stays and patent-leather boots, and have a corset cut on your gravestone. You won't find corsets in heaven when you get there. You will have to migrate further south. There are plenty of them in hell. Satan invented them.'

'How shockingly you do talk!' she said.

'How so? tell me that?' I said seriously.

'You shouldn't talk in that way.'

I sat down laughing on the ottoman.

'Shall we go to the café by the Français?' I asked, 'You see, my dear, this earth is, after all, rather an odd place to live in; and we humans—or rather, we animals—are really, after all, rather odd things to be living in it; and this is all the more so on account of murder and sausages. Shall we go to the cafe by the Français?'

'How ri-diculous you are!' she said, 'very well.'

'My dear,' I said, 'shall we take a cab?'

We took a cab, and I talked like a rational (or irrational) being for the rest of the evening.

It was late when we got home again, and the concierge apparently deep in his slumbers; for we stood at the door (I pulling at the bell. Rosy seemingly tired into the quietness of an implicit acceptance of things), for over five minutes. At last we got in, and went slowly up the dark staircase together, I all at once thinking of last night's experiment till I began to laugh. Then I found we were standing in front of our own door; perhaps had been so for some time. Rosy stood with her hands muff-wise in her sleeves, and her eyes half-closed, and her pretty little head sleepily quavering downwards. I chucked her sharply under the chin.

'It's time to get up and eat sally-luns,' I declared.

'Good gracious, how you did startle me!' she said: 'What's the matter?'

I drew the latch-key out of my pocket, and, at the first shot, drove it into the key-hole, and opened the door. The ornamented, luxurious passage looked as if it were warm and almost cosy in the red light of the hanging oil lamp's little floating red core-flame. She went in, and I after her, closing and locking the door behind me, while she passed on into the morning-room. There was a small window halfway up the left-hand wall of the passage, and it looked into the study. I could see that the curtain, that was usually drawn right across the window, was only half drawn. I went and observed what she was doing. She was on her way across the room—to the fire, of course. Down she sat on the hearthrug, and doubtless was staring into the red-ember realm of castles and dreams. Then she looked round: 'Why wasn't he coming?' Then back again at the red-ember realm. What a strange thing for me, here, in Space and Time and Life, so to be observing her here, too, in Space and Time and Life. What were we to one another? Not only Rosy to me, and I to Rosy, but each one of us—each one of us humans to each other one? The thought grew broader in me, my eyes still regarding the firelight picture there, but not comprehending it. She looked round again. The movement recalled me to my ordinary self. 'Why wasn't he coming?' I felt a sudden great tenderness for the poor child waiting for me there. Oh, Rosebud, Rosebud!

Then I passed in and through the morning-room, where, on the sofa, lay her furred coat and hat, and, parting the curtains of the doorway, stepped into the study. She was looking back for me. I threw my hat into a chair; pulled off my coat; sent it after the hat, and came to her. I threw myself down behind her on the soft hearthrug, and resting my head, that was beside her, on my hand, looked into the eyes that were looking into mine.

'Rosy,' I said, 'do you believe in God?'

'Yes!' adding, her eyes in the red-ember realm, 'of course.'

'Then don't you think you're doing wrong being with me?'

'Yes.'

'And don't you think you'll be punished for it?'

'I am sure I shall,' she said.

A pause.

'Then why do you do it?'

'Because I can't help it!'

'What do you mean?'

'I can't help it,—Can't you see,' she said, turning full unfathomed eyes on me, 'I can't help it! I love every muscle in your body.'

The simplicity of thought, and voice and word made me say, with a suspicion of a small smile round the corners of my mouth: 'That's awkward,' and bring my eyes down to the hearthrug, while I thought for a moment of that last expression of hers and its meaning.

Then, looking up:

'Would you like me to marry you?' I asked. Her eyes went as imfathomed as before into the red-ember realm again, and became distant. Her lips said slowly:

'I should like to have you without the sin; but …'

'Well——'

'I shouldn't like you to marry me.'

'Why?'

No answer.

I repeated:

'Why?'

'Can't you see,' she said, turning her eyes to me, 'why I shouldn't like you to marry me?'

'No.'

She looked to the red-ember realm once more, but not into it, and her eyes became dreamy.

At last she spoke. 'I don't think,' she said, 'you'd care for me even as much as you do now if you married me. No' (she shook her head), 'I wouldn't like you to marry me. Besides …'

'Well——?'

'You will want to marry some one,' she said, suddenly looking at me, 'some day.'

'No,' I said, 'I shall never want to marry—any one!'

'Ah,' she said, 'wait till you love some one—and then!' She nodded her head.

'Why do you think I didn't marry you?' I asked.

'Because you didn't want to!' she said.

'No! At least, no to your thought.'

'What do you mean?'

'I don't believe in marriage. If I did, I should have married you.'

'That's sinful, not to believe in marriage. Don't you believe in God?'

'To the best of my belief, no. One thing I am sure about: I don't believe in Jesus. I suppose Jesus and God are one and the same thing, are they not?'

'Yes, Jesus is God.'

'And God is Jesus?'

'Yes.'

'How is that?'

'That's the mystery. We don't know. You ought to have faith, and believe in it.' I looked down. There was absolutely no good in attempting to say anything serious on these matters to her. I looked up again.

'Rosy,' I said, 'I don't like you to think what I can see you do think about my not having married you. I would not marry any woman in the world, however much I loved her. I could not repeat the words of the marriage service with my lips, and laugh at them in my heart. That would not be true.'

'You would, though,' she said, looking at me with a look of experience, 'if you loved a person.'

What was the good of contradicting her? I kept silence, with downcast eyes, for a moment. Then I said.

'Why, if you believe that you will be punished for all this, don't you ask me to marry you and chance my not caring for you then even as much as I do now—as you say? What sort of punishment do you think you'll get?'

'I shall be burned in fire! I knew that long ago. … I knew quite well it would be like this some day. I used to pray to God not to think about you, but I could not help it: I did think about you! When you went away to Paris, I was ill, and I thought I was going to die; and I promised God I would never think about you any more; but I got well again, and I went on thinking about you more than ever! I couldn't help it! And at last I felt I couldn't do without you. You've no idea what a way I used to get in sometimes. I used to feel as if I must get up that very moment, and go and find you, and hold you in my arms and love you. I couldn't help it! I know I shall be punished for it; I suppose I must be!—Then, you see, you came back, and we had those walks together. I knew you didn't care for me; but you were so much to me. I couldn't do without you!'

To watch the child as she sat, looking with her dreamy, unfathomed eyes into the fire, and to hear her telling her story in this way!

I drew myself up beside her, and put my arm round her shoulders, leaning her body against mine. She did not seem to notice my movement, or to feel my arm round her shoulders. She was silently gazing before her. 'Rosy,' I said, 'Rosebud,' rubbing my cheek softly against hers, 'I would do anything, if it were only true, to make you happy. I would marry you tomorrow if it were not for those … those words that would be so false in my mouth, that I could not utter them. I could not do that. But there are other ways of marrying people, now I think of it. I will find out about them. Then, you see, you would be my wife: I mean, as far as having my name; so that no one could think or say anything against you.' (She was shaking her head.) 'Nay,' I said, smiling, 'can't you see that in this way you would have a greater, a more lawful claim, as you might say, upon me, in case I ever did want to marry any one—with the marriage-service and the rest of it?' I was smiling.

'No,' she said; 'I wouldn't care about that. Not one bit!'

'But suppose,' I said, 'suppose I ever did fall in love with any one, and did want to marry them?… What then.?'

'Then you'd have to, that's all!' she said.

'But what would you do?'

'I'd go away, and never see you again!'

'I hope you wouldn't. Rosy! I hope you never would, whatever comes or goes. You would always let me be your friend.'

'While some other woman had you? That's likely! Oh, you don't know what love is!'

'I don't,' I said, 'but you know quite well that I never would leave you, however much I loved any one else.'

'But I would leave you, if I thought you loved any one else.'

'But I wouldn't let you know.'

'But you couldn't help it.'

'But I never shall love any one.'

'How do you know that? I thought I never should love any one; but, you see, I do. I hope you'll love some one some day who doesn't love you, and then you'll know what I have to suffer.'

A pause.

'Supposing,' said I, 'that I loved you, and you didn't love me.'

'Yes.'

'Well, supposing you loved somebody else, and left me, I shouldn't mind always being your friend.'

She gave a short laugh.

'Wouldn't you! Oh no! I tell you: if I ever found out that you touched any woman besides me, I would go away from you! I would never see you again! You never should touch me again! The idea of being your—friend, as you call it! Do you think I could look at any woman, and know that she had you, and … and not kill her?'

She stopped: then began shaking her head and laughing to herself. I eyed her from under gathered brows: I suspected the actor's sense in her as well as in myself. I turned her head round to me and kissed her full and long on the lips. The effect was strange.—It was a new child this, here with me in a new place of early day's air and light. I could scarcely think of the old self of hers that was now gone, gone I knew not where.

'Kiss me again,' she said in a low, half-breathless voice, bringing her mouth towards mine, 'kiss me!'

A certain devil's light of mirth came into my eyes; I laughed at her, and drew sharply back with back-spread arms.

'No, no, no,' I said, 'you little green-eyed monster you! You shall chase me for another kiss, if you want it. I …' I had stopped.

She bent to me with her hands half-up, frightened a little at the look in my face:

'What is it?' she said. 'What's the matter?'

She came close to me anxiously.

'What is it, dear?' she said, 'Oh, do tell me! What's the mat-ter with you, dear? Are you ill?'

'Nothing's the matter with me,' I said. It's time we were going to bed … There, there! It's all right, I tell you. Now, off you go to bed! You're tired out.'

I took her hand and patted it between my two; and then led her, strutting with fantastic, playful gallantry, to the door-way and held up one curtain for her to pass. Just through it, she turned her head and shoulders back and asked prettily:

'But you will come, too—soon?'

'Yes,' I said, smiling at her, 'I have something that I must do, that will take me a few minutes, and then I will come.'

I let fall the curtain. In a moment I heard her step go on.

Then I sat down in the easy-chair and began to think: to think of all this and what it meant, and then of the events of that far night of supreme folly at Rayne's, or best say madness at once.

Something which I had to do was now done—done well, as it seemed to me, and that something was the final and complete clearing away of all the clouding illusion that had blackened the sight of that strange time of devilry, had dimmed the sight of the time that had followed upon the other as an oblivious summer upon an intoxicated spring. I was at last free. I saw things as they were, not as they seemed to be. It might well be that illusion would play its part in my future's wilder hours; but it never could be what it had been to the daily hours of my past. I was free. And that, I thought, meant something.

I blew out the candles and drew back the hearthrug (for fear of some hot coals falling out of Rosy's specially procured English grate, and burning her and me and the house, and my so significant freedom in the night), and then went in to her.

She was already in bed, lying on her side, looking to the door-way curtains, A deep-shaded candle on the reading-table by the bedside threw a light over the lower part of her face, and on one out-stretched arm in its long white-worked frill, and on the hand with up-held fingers on the white rounded edge of the bed. All the rest was shadowed.

'Well?' I said, smiling, and standing for a moment with the curtains in my backward hands.

She smiled back to me. I crossed over to her, and sat down beside the outstretched arm of the long white-worked frill and the hand of the upheld fingers on the rounded edge of the bed. And I took the hand of the upheld fingers, while her two eyes looked quietly in mine; and bent, and softly kissed her two soft red lips; and she murmured:

'You see, I hadn't to chase you for it, after all!'

'No,' I answered, 'I cheerfully do what the dilly-ducks would not do: I come to be killed. Death's too sweet to be fearful.'

'. . . What do you mean?'

I kissed her, again, smiling:

'That I love you.'

'. . . Then I hope you will always mean that; for I love you—oh, I do love you,—ever so much!'

'More than you love yourself?'

'I don't think I have any self left to love. It's all yours!'

Then, in loving myself, I shall but be loving you?'

'Yes!' 'Love must be unselfish, then, whether it like it or no. For, in loving itself, it only succeeds in loving somebody else. . . . Do you understand it all?'

And seeing she did not, all of it, I once more bent again, and once more kissed her two soft red lips; and she once more murmured, laughing low:

'I understand that part!. . . But—I seem to think you might do it over a-gain!'

 

---

 

Layout 2