A Child of the Age (Adams)/Chapter 14
II
When I awoke on Monday morning it was into a state of dreaminess, the shadowy realm that is between the night's dreams and the day's. Rayne moved in it, with Claire, and myself; but all so dim and bodiless that they could not be called by names whose counterparts were realities. They were not of the night's dreams: they were not of the day's, but emanations. Outside this shadowy realm there was some other emanation, some child's, that was more of the earth than ours that were of this middle place, and it would have entered therein, but could not. And if this was a distress to anyone, I could not tell, not even if it was to myself.—The end was that a start shot up through me, and I awoke fully. The green blinds covered the two large windows opposite my bed. A little light came in through them and made a submarine atmosphere in the room. This I had known before. I sat up: then raised myself, till I could see myself in the large dressing-table mirror between the two green-blind-covered windows. That made me smile.
After lunch I went out for a walk.
The knowledge that whatever humour I went out in was sure to be different from the humour in which I returned, held to me a momentary trouble now. For I was happy enough with the life of the morning, the mild sunny air and soft heaven, to wish for no better state in which to face the ordeal of to-night. 'Ordeal? Ay; the faint tremor that comes to me at the thought is surely enough to tell me that to-night will be an ordeal. Ordeal? No: what ordeal can there be?… Of what am I thinking? I do not know.… Ay, that is the truth: "I do not know." And yet the sense of the unknown does not.… What?—Was ever such confusion? No: not confusion. What then? I don't know. It's folly trying to be subtle.' I gave it up.
That day was a day apart. A day apart is a day in which the past is pallid: the present pallid: the future a mist into which the earth-floor goes, not even unknown: a day of feelings about feelings, of dreams about dreams.
I came in about five. I had seen many things, known nothing. I felt and realised that I was hungry. I went to the top of the kitchen-stairs and called to Mrs. Herbert, asking if I could have some soup and rice? She agreed. I went into the study again, and stood in the window, and looked out.
I finished the soup and the rice.
Dinner was at seven. I had not the intention of eating a dinner then. That was why I had eaten the soup and the rice. It was almost six now by the mantelpiece clock. I got up and rang. Then: 'But Mrs. Herbert,' I thought, 'tells me she has varicose veins.'—So off I went down the kitchen-stairs, and got a can of hot water for myself.
Then I came up again and began slowly to mount the hall-staircase.
As my heavy foot struck the soft carpet, and one or two of the rods sounded, I suddenly recalled my going up the staircase that last night of ours in London. After a few steps, I stopped and looked over the broad banister down upon the dark shiny table where my bed-candle was, and where two had used to be then. I went on again: the thought had occurred to me before this. Now, I have always supposed that there would be something of … of something or other, in living in a house, and alone too, where you had lived with some one that is dead. The sharp sound that struck your hearing would startle you? The lonely depth of the darkness, or the shadowiness, or the gloom would contain its spectre? I cannot say. Death is so dim a thing, if it is anything at all, to me. What do you mean by death? You are not dead. I am not dead. Who is dead?—And with the thought that this was rather ridiculous, I came into my bedroom with the hot-water can. The gas was low.
I put down the can on the washing-stand, and went and turned up the gas. The room was all light. I took off my coat and threw it on to the bed.
I washed slowly, thinking. There was a little of the tremulousness in me somewhere. I felt it for a moment vaguely. But went on thinking and forgot it. I put on, first one, and then the other dress-boot, with the small steel shoe-horn, and tied their laces tight. Then changed my trousers, and brushed my hair before the mirror. Then put on my white shirt, and found and fastened the studs, and my collar to the top stud. As I was looking for the glass-topped box that held the white ties, I thought the gas seemed burning low, and looked up at it. It was, confound it! I found the white tie-box in the shadow of the curtain, and took out a tie, and began to tie it. My fingers confused. At that instant everything in me contracted. I stared into the mirror. Brooke was looking over my right shoulder.
My body was all a creeping thrill. I jerked round like one half-mad, with my fist tightly clenched, in some way saying:
'Devil!'
I would have beaten his pale, cold, corpse's face with my hard fist. There was not anything—except (I saw) the shadow of the bed-top on the upper wall-paper. I paced up and down the room, looking to right and left.
'Assuredly,' I said aloud in an observer's way, 'I will never believe in ghosts. It is far too easy to see one.'
In a little I came back and finished my hanging tie. I had been startled. There was no mistake about that. If I had really believed that I should have seen him, I pondered, then I should have seen him. And yet I desired to strike him. And yet I did not believe in him, somehow.
So, having turned down the gas, I came to the staircase-head and began to descend. A certain something, not too far from fear, prompted the idea of a hand reaching on to me from behind. I desired to turn and look. My will overcame my desire. I descended slowly, step after step, in an actor's way rather. My heel sounded on the tesselated floor of the hall. My eye observed of the big clock that it was a quarter to seven. I had beaten that something not too far from fear. I had not looked either round or behind. I went to the coat-rack; took down my theatre-coat; felt my latch-key in my right pocket, and went to the door. Opened it: went out, and drew it to with a low clang. Yes, I left certain supersensual things behind in the house—with Mrs. Herbert and the varicose veins!
I laughed as I drew on my coat; shot open the gibus, and put it on my head. I had been startled. There was no mistake about that. But I was wide awake now, surely. And I was going to dine at Sir James Gwatkin's, with Rayne. I stood on the pavement-edge (in Piccadilly now) and called out:
'Hansom!'
I should be there, with him, with her in ten minutes—in all human probability.
The hansom came up, and I got in, and gave the address—22 Balmoral Street—through the opened trap to the man. We set off quickly, the horse, a small beast, trotting. When we had gone a little way, I knocked up at the trap, two or three times before the man opened it, the horse's speed slackening.
'Go through the Park,' I said, 'through the Park!'
He shut down the trap, and the horse's speed quickened again. The evening was light and cool, the sun hid behind thick horizon clouds. We turned through the gates into the Park, I bent forward a little, looking at the carriages and people that we passed.
Then we swept by the Marble Arch into Oxford Street and by the mouth of the Edgware Road, up which, some way up which by a by-way to the left, lay in a small street, Maitland Street, a small house, No. 3. She would not be in yet. She would be still at her work, sitting sewing probably. Should I ever see her again? No, best not. Our paths of life went on in all but opposite directions. Poor child! 'Alone in the world, as if nobody else belonged to her.' In a hundred years, perhaps fifty, perhaps less, it would all he as if it had never been!
We drew up sharply. I looked out. It was the house all right. I threw open the flaps, and jumped on to the pavement, and went back and paid the man. Then ascended the steps, and knocked and rang as the little brass plate bade; and waited. A footman opened the door and ushered me in. Sir James was coming along the passage below the stairs, and saw me. He at once advanced, saying cordially:
'Ah, Mr. Leicester, how do you do?'
We went upstairs together slowly, I just a step behind him: then through a tall doorway with a deep-red velvet hanging, and along a room that was like a passage; and then he had opened a door and we were together in the soft light of the drawing-room, he just a step behind me.
I at once saw Rayne and some other woman, a young woman, seated close together under the pink-shaded candles, but my look was for Rayne's face, not for her companion's. How beautiful it was! How steadfast, and how sweet! And I thought that where I had before seen, as it were, the light of her face's form was in the sad wistful face of a child whose body had been sold to an evil task-master—Claire! And, at the thought, something of tearfulness rose in my heart and gathered to my eyes; for that sad wistful child's face had grown so bright for me and mine so bright for her, and then we had been parted by the task-master, who was jealous of the soul of the body that he had bought, and I had never seen her again.
'Rayne,' I thought, 'would to God or Fate or Chance or what it may be, that I had not found that light on your face too!… Your hand is soft.'
We had been speaking to one another with low tones and movements, and now I was turned from Rayne, bowing to this young woman her companion, whose name, his courteous voice had said, was Cholmeley too. And as I looked at her seated there before and below me, I smiled.
'It is strange,' said I, sinking with the smile into a chair by her, between her and Rayne, but nearer to her, 'It is strange how much men and women have in common.—I mean,' I said, leaning on the elbow next her, and looking at her, 'how much we have in common with one another.'
'Yes?' she said, elevating her brows a little, being a little surprised, I supposed, and wondering what sort of strange masculinity she had come across.
'I mean,' I said, with narrowing eyes, 'that—perhaps no one can live a life of his own. Suppose a man or a woman give themselves up to (say) love of money, as common a ruling-passion as any other, then that man or that woman will notice, if they only know how to, that their love of money generates, as it were, a subtle odour in their souls, and they will recognise that subtle odour in the souls of others who have given themselves up to the same dominion. La destinée est une!'
'I do not see how destiny is one,' said the young woman.
'Here,' said I, 'is the answer for you in eternal words:
'" We are what sun and winds and waters make us."'
'I do not see yet,' she said.
'We are all what we are made. Some of us are made by the sun; and some by the winds; and some by the waters; and some by them all. And that is how, is it not? we have so much in common with one another.'
'And you think,' said Rayne to me, with something of a smile, 'that the children of the sun recognise one another accordingly?'
'I suppose I do,' I said, now a little off the direct scent, 'that is, I think that any given passion, as a rule, expresses itself in the same way in different people; and so one is constantly being struck by resemblances between people, and wondering wherein these resemblances lie. Am I not clear to you. Miss Cholraeley?' I asked.
'You are too subtle for me,' said the young woman,
'I am content to do my duty in that state of life—and the rest: and leave metaphysics to the choice spirits like you, and Sir James, and' (turning her head) 'you, Rayne.'
But it seemed to me that this young woman did not, for some reason, care to have matter of this sort talked now, and had quietly taken steps to stop it.
We went down to dinner soon after, Rayne and I, and Sir James and Miss Cholmeley: we two so far ahead, that I could say to her, in an odd, unnatural way, that I did not know she had any relation … like Miss Cholmeley.
'Miss Cholmondeley is no relation of mine,' she said quietly, as we passed through the dining-room door, 'our names are spelt differently.'
And there the big, liveried dolls stood by.
'C-h-o-l-m-o-n-d,' said I half to myself, the actor's sense growing in me, 'ah—I beg your pardon!'
The actor's sense went on growing in me as we took our places, and culminated in my high slightly-frowning downward survey of my menu card: Soup, Turbot and Lobster Sauce, Quenelles.—'Damnation!' I said under my breath. It was ludicrous!
I shivered: tightened my jaws, and in an instant thought: 'What foolery is this? I …' I might have been sitting, as I sat in my place that prize-giving day at Whittaker's, waiting for my turn, with my lips rather dry, and every now and then shivering as if a draught came upon me from an opened door. But Blake was dead. And Brooke was dead. And Mr. Cholmeley was dead.—And I raised my eyes and beheld this vision of fair youthfulness; with dark-gold hair whose floating outskirts were sunny, and deep slow eyes, and red lips ripe, and half-transparent teeth-tips, and soft sweet whiteness of the rounded throat whose thought was of the soft sweet white cool body. And all the while they talked, and ate from their plates, and I talked and ate from my plate, and the big swift quiet liveried dolls moved hither and thither and bent, ministering to us.
'You do not take wine?' he was saying.
'Nay,' I was answering, 'I love wine; wine that is yellow and foaming!' I could not, or would not, or did not see any face but his, bending with a mask's upward smile to me.
'But you refused to have any champagne just now?'
'My dear Rayne! ' she was saying, the beautiful, voluptuous young woman was saying (Corisande is her name. It sounds like a cleft pomegranate), 'but you really cannot mean …'
'I did not notice it,' I said, 'I will have some, if you please.'
And then from a gold-papered bottle-mouth out came the clear stream into the large round low glass, all foaming, but yellow as I lifted it up and drank it. I sat there, filled with the actor's sense, smiling, and bending and smiling, and smiling and bending and smiling and talking, and, in my deeper heart, in a sort of way, defied this devilry. I knew what they were saying, I knew what I was saying, although I have forgotten it now. Once, or twice, or three, or four times, I could have laughed outright at all this; but restrained myself with the feeling that I did well to restrain myself. I drank more champagne, and then fell into a somewhat dreamy state.
They were talking of French literature; a string of names and words scarcely comprehended by me, but there was light laughter in the yellowy air and restrained sadness. There was no one in the room now but we. The footmen had all gone. I was slowly twirling my champagne glass round, with my eyes on it: the light laughter was foaming in the yellowy air, and the sadness almost withdrawn.
Suddenly she, Rayne, rose. I started up. Corisande rose. Then they were moving round the table, and I was with my backward hand on the door-handle, and my face towards her. I had opened the door. She had passed out, my lovely Rayne! The young woman was by me, Corisande, the cleft pomegranate, the sweet soft harlot body. I crushed my right hand on the smooth hardness in it. I could have gripped that soft white throat just below the rounded half-shadow of the apple and throttled her, and, as I cast down the breathless limp body, softer but less sweet, the harlot body, been glad with a quiet half-fierce gladness. I closed the door softly upon her, and came back to my place. Sir James was looking at something just before and below his eyes, with the little smile round the corners of his mouth. I all but loved him, for having a swift thought of 'Arise begone,' I had another of one sitting in a summer parlour, with the fat closing upon the blade. I too had a little smile round the corners of the mouth.
We talked in a quiet orderly way for a little; and then went upstairs together.
Rayne was seated in her old place on the sofa, looking half-absently before her. Miss Cholmondeley lying back in the easy chair in which I had sat. She stopped speaking as we came in; looked up at us, or at Sir James, and smiled slightly.
We talked in low half-nonchalant tones. The night breeze bulged in the window-curtain behind Rayne and the sofa with a slight rustle. There seemed something of hushed, but withal dreamy in the air: perhaps the quiet after the sunny wind-tempest of dinner-time.
Then Sir James spoke, his words sounding somewhat as a return to one's past humanity.
'I have as good as promised Mr. Leicester, Corisande,' he said, 'that you would give us Retsky's setting of Vivian's "Lullaby." I hope I did not take too much upon myself?'
She raised her eyebrows a little and the corners of her mouth, as she answered:
'But you forget that I only sang it to you the night before last, Rayne, I am sure, must be quite tired of the very name of Vivian by this time.'
'No,' she said, 'his story is too sad for one to be so soon tired of hearing his name. I should like to hear the Lullaby again.'
'Vivian,' said Sir James, now addressing me, 'was an old school-fellow of mine, and I might add—friend.'
I asked about Vivian. Sir James gave particulars of him:
'He ran away from Eton and came up to London, with the idea of achieving fame and fortune with his poetry. It is needless to say that he achieved neither. His parents were poor and obstinate,—and he, he had the pride of Milton's Satan. He died—starved, rather than ask help from anyone, A volume of his poems has just been published: this is it. You were reading it, Rayne?'
'Yes,' she said; 'I was reading it this morning.'
'How old was he?' I asked.
'A mere boy,' he said, 'eighteen or nineteen. Poor fellow! There is nothing really remarkable in any of his poems, as poems. Their chief interest lies in the fact of their having been written by one so young,'
I still stood thinking.—'Poor fellow! Nay, but I account him rich; for the strife of living and the terror of dying are for him both past and over now, and he is at rest,'
Miss Cholmondeley had passed into the other half of the drawing-room through the hanging lace-curtains, to where Sir James was standing fingering the music. Here was I with my head thrown down like a meditative cow. I made a few steps towards Rayne, and standing before her, with my head half-bent, said something or other purposeless about the Lullaby and Vivian. She answered with something of the same sort. I asked if she liked Retsky's music? She said she did not much; but she was afraid she didn't altogether appreciate it. I said that Sir James had been talking about him to me, saying he was the subtlest of modern composers. Doubtless he had written many pieces that were very 'precious,' if not 'entirely' so? She took no heed of my smile, but said that doubtless that was the reason (the subtleness was the reason) that she did not appreciate him. She only cared for simple music, and admitted that most classical music wearied her. But this Lullaby was not like any other music of Retsky's that she had heard. It was simple, and soft and sweet.—I was about to say that two of these were rather necessary qualities in a lullaby, especially if the baby was teething, when a flow of soft low notes came and made me think better of it. Certainly Miss Cholmondeley knew how to play.
I listened attentively. The soft low notes flowed on, flowed on, flowed on, but into their softness was gradually growing some other sound: more like an invasion of still dim water by rolling slaty-coloured volumes than anything else I could then think of. I was the song's now: my whole soul filled with it. A softer, lower place was heard: softer, far away: lower, closer to the front of the picture that was in me, the place in which I felt was a presence, two presences. They were sleeping; or they were lying together in rest. Then one of them roused—himself, for it was a man, or a boy with something of a man's soul: roused himself, and his voice began, at first with unrecognisable words rolling over the low slaty glassiness of the water, and rolling about, till that first melody of soft low flowing notes, all but filled with the rolling volumes, was hidden away. And another voice, a woman's, or a girl's with something of a woman's soul, answered softly and sweetly. And the other voice answered softly and deeply, with the depth of passion. And the rolling slaty-coloured volumes of his first unrecognisable words, which had filled the space between this softer lower place and that first mingled melody, had filled it into peacefulness, were growing disturbed: the volumed column of that first mingled melody was passing down over the slaty glassiness towards this lower place. The voices rose in an unspeakable harmony together, but some of it was losing itself in the slaty-coloured rolling volumes that came over the glassiness of the water of the now back-confused picture, and at last, half-dying, half-fading away, left the whole picture lost in the coloured rolling volumes: from which now came short, sharp notes, like the cracklings of connected and disconnected electric lines: crackle: crackle: crackle. And then the whole thing was whelmed in a full slaty silent flood.
I awoke.
'You remember,' Sir James's voice was saying, 'with what thought Keats closed his sweet, short nightingale's song? that wish to the bright star of steadfastness. There is just the difference between that death-song of Vivian's and this of Keats' that there was between Hylas and Narcissus.'
'Perhaps,' said Miss Cholmondeley, by him with the music in her hand, and looking at it, 'the difference was between their deaths rather than their songs. Do you think Vivian would have said: "Lift me up—I am dying—I shall die easy." I don't.'
'No,' said Sir James, 'he would not. He probably would have died in trying to lift himself up, as Emily Brontë did. But I was not prepared to have my words pressed home. I only meant to notice the two death-songs as being characteristic of the two singers: the likeness and the difference. Vivian's is a child's dream of a sensuous death, Keats' a man's. Of course, any further comparison than the superficial thoughts suggested by the two death-songs would be ludicrous.'
'Would it?' asked Miss Cholmondeley, looking up, 'personally, I prefer Vivian's.'
I suddenly thought she was teasing him. I thought he was mocking Rayne and mocking me; so that that she-devil was as the laughter inside the laughter, the aerial merriment that came from Comus under the low horizon clouds. Her song had bewitched me. I had been positively arrayed against Rayne a moment ago. I was bewildered.
I watched Sir James and Miss Cholmondeley cross into the piano-room again, talking about Retsky's conception of the Lullaby. I looked at Rayne. I sat down in the chair I had sat in before going down to dinner. The sensations of being in the chair unsettled my bewilderment. I spoke, scarcely expecting to hear my voice's sounds.
'That was a wonderful song, the Lullaby.'
'Yes,' said Rayne, looking at me.
Her look shot through me. I scarcely realised what it meant: I only felt it,—felt it, it seemed to me, in every part of my body and my soul. A mass of ideas rushed into my mind. My eyes flashed.
We spoke some words together. I do not know what I said. I do not think she knew what she said. Surely some feeling was in her, as it was in me? There was a sense of mystery in this half-sympathy of ours. I went on speaking to her, not knowing what I said (We were in a low soft melody that rose and fell, and rose and fell. We were alone.), and not knowing what she said, or what she thought; but she knew, not what I said, but what I thought. My thoughts grew more distinct:
'Rayne, Rayne, I will not leave you! I will rend you from him. He shall not have you. Let him have his soft-bodied harlot there. You are the queen of my soul.'
I knew that they were together in the next room, and that she was playing that soft melody that rose and fell and rose and fell. We were alone. There was something of the villain and his chance in my heart.—I looked at her. Ay, she was dazed, a little dazed; not altogether. But how could I get her away? Get her away? I clenched my teeth. Take her by the hand, lead her out, away! away! away!
'Rayne!' I said, 'Rayne! Listen to me. It is the night of our lives, this. It is the night of all eternity for us. Come! quickly!' (She was looking at me with dilated, almost sightless eyes, opened breathless mouth, beatless heart. I did not know where we were—in heaven, in hell, in the earth, with sea around us, in life, in death, in eternity.)
'Are you ill, Bertram } ' she said. 'What is the matter?' I half threw myself back in the chair with something that partook of smile and laugh and was neither smile nor laugh. She knew nothing! A phantasy! A pure phantasy!
Then:
'Nothing is the matter with me,' I said, 'now. I suffer from my eyes occasionally.' I rose. ' Really, I am afraid I must be saying good-night,' I said, 'I' I looked at her.
'Whither away so fast?' I thought; 'are you so sure, oh wiseacre, that she knew, knows nothing? She knew! She knows!' Then I thought: 'Shall I pass it over in silence? Shall I say anything of sorrow for it? No. I am not sorry for it!—My dream? My dream in Paris?… "I rose and crossed over the stone bridge: came to behind the carriage and began climbing over it from the back. The lady turned and, seeing me, put out her brown-gloved hand to me; and then, when I would have caught and pressed it into my bosom, touched my chest with her finger-tips, the carnage moved.…"'
For a moment a superstitious feeling all but possessed me. Then I cried to myself that, at this rate, I might as well become a clairvoyant, or an augurer, or a fool.—I looked at her again. (It was not more than four seconds perhaps since I had looked at her before.)
I said:
'I did wrong. I ask pardon.'
I left her. I passed across the room and through the door and down, and, as one in a day-dream does the things that his body remembers but his soul forgets, took hat and coat and passed out into the night. I went on.
Then the thought came:
What, was it done? Was it really done? Was I not in that room with them and was not this a dream?
No, I answered to myself, it was no dream. I had left her. . . . What did it mean? I had left her. I had left her. I had left her. I had left her. I had left her.—Ay; I knew now! That woman was the woman of my heart and soul. My life had been lived for her since the day I had first dreamt of the dear girl-comrade. I had left her. The cross-road of my heart's life and soul's was reached.—I had left her!
I stopped; then went on again.
'The malice of fate is infinite,' I said, 'It is too late!'
And everywhere was dim.