A Child of the Age (Adams)/Chapter 15
III
Everywhere was dim. It seemed as if all the rigging of my soul's bark had turned to calcined semblances that fell, as calcined semblances fall, making no noise. And then it seemed as if some semblance of myself wandered to and fro, and round about, in this strange dim place, and thought and thought, trying to regain its hue and presence of health, and could not. Snatches of the music of that lifeful past came to me and grew into deeper colour, bringing hope of permanency—only to be lost again in this strange dim place of noiseless falling calcined semblances.
At last the great dim mass grew pale and receded: my own figure stood darker in the foreground. I began to think. I had vaguely felt in the earlier part of my walk that my body was a little weary: perhaps it was but the action of the mind on it; for, now that the mind was in almost healthy activity again, the body was in sympathy with it. I went on with a springy step, and began whistling, turning my thought into the parallel though less distinct expression of music.
And I had some enjoyment in the fine clear night, its air and its star-sown heaven. So at last I found myself in Trafalgar Square, where bells had been ringing and the air filled with an aerial swinging merriment; and the clear-soaring moon up above, and here and there stars. And one particular star twinkling through a slanting downward bank of gauzed clouds. Then I was in that road that I knew so well, that road by which I went to Hampstead. A little higher up on the left hand side was the concrete pillar; the memory of which and its accompaniments made me smile, as, now moving on, I glanced at it.
Then I stood looking in the Hampstead pool at in-numerous small up-leaping crescents of moonlight, as from a rain of moonlight only turning to colour as it struck. Sadness came to and grew of me, sadness almost of tears, thoughts of that past that was no more. I turned and set off homewards. The walking invigorated me.
By the time I had got to Dunraven Place, I was almost happy. I let myself in, and entered the library with an elastic step. The lamp was turned low, casting a tender rose-tinted shadow into the air. My supper was laid out, fruits and bread. The scene, colour and scent of it all pleased me. The tender rose-tinted shadowy light, the mellowed silver of the knives and forks, the subdued colour of the rich-bound books and costly ornaments around me. There were two letters on my plate.
'Two letters?' I thought, 'Who the devil should write to me?'
I lay back in the soft chair; reached to some grapes (I was a little hungry), and the plate with the letters on it: put them on the table-cloth just under the lamp, and, eating grapes, observed them.
'One blue, stiff, and with two stamps. A double weight of nonsense probably. The other—… Rosy. Yes, that's her handwriting. What does the child want? I have not seen her for …' (I took up her letter and looked closer at the address.) 'How long? Three weeks? Well, up you go on to the table-cloth! … Good! Scientific, quite! Miss Rosebud can wait a little … And now for you, my mystery of blue paper double-stamped. Who the devil are you, and what the devil do you want?… You rip up tenaciously.… An enclosure. Two. What's this? A cheque-book. And you, oh foreign-papered' A sudden suspense was in me before I knew of it. I opened the foreign-papered letter of four sheets, and looked at the end of it—'Colonel James!' Then I recognised the writing. I had the other letter open in a moment, (from my mother, perhaps! from my father!), and had glanced at it. 'Dead!' I glanced on:
'. . . Sunday night . . . sympathy . . . last thing . . . spoke . . . name . . . reparation . . . heir . . . in all something more than £1,000 . . . beg to enclose . . .'
I looked up.
'Great God,' I thought, 'what's this?'
I read the letter: then re-read it, more slowly. This is what struck me in it. Colonel James had died on Saturday night: had left me his fortune, and a letter—this letter enclosed, of the sending of which to me was almost the last thing he had spoken.
I took up the foreign-papered letter from my knee and began to skim it:
'. . . I have, after some thought, concluded that . . . proper and seemly.. . . Your father and mother . . . the regiment stationed . . . theatre in London . . . against the advice of all . . . married. [Pause for a moment.] . . . Quartered . . . Cork . . . unhappiness owing to religious . . . I . . . and the attentions of a . . . Captain Melvil . . . exchanged . . . Guards . . . of whom I frequently warned . . . but in vain . . . shortly ordered to Dungarvan and subsequently . . . Guernsey. I regret to have . . . attentions continued, and I was compelled to speak to your father . . . neglected warning, and . . . next day . . . scene with your mother, in which . . . common talk. I . . . could do no more, and remained. . . . One night . . . dining at mess with . . . walked home togeth . . . and . . . silence in the house. She was gone. 1 could not have imagined that anything could have made your father, a man naturally of the most praiseworthy self restraint, and rendered doubly so by his steadfast relig . . . sat down and cried like a child. I felt that I could not leave him in this condition, and accordingly, after having done all I could to comfort him by religi . . . so completely prostrated by the blow that I began to fear lest . . . sofa; lay there with his face . . . groaning. . . . From that time . . . strange personal dislike to you . . . till at last . . . almost madness . . . considering the state of his health . . . did not, then, think it advisable . . . and as soon as you were able to bear the . . . village in Derbyshire. Most of the rest you know already; for it has been your own life, I mean your education at Mr. Whittaker's and subsequently at Glastonbury with Dr. Craven. . . . Your father . . . while you were with Mr. Whittaker . . . died . . . Scotland . . . leaving his affairs in a . . . owing to his fatal confidence in. . . . It remains for me only to . . . ['What's this?'] . . . Late one bleak, windy night last March, about a fortnight after I had seen you, coming from my club in Waterloo Place . . . Regent's Street . . . lamp-post . . . unhappy woman pestered me, and . . . [A low cry smothered itself in my throat, my eyes growing to the paper.] I turned, saying, 'Here is some money for you. For heaven's sake, go home and . . . on such a night as this . . .' . . . then suddenly caught me by the arm, and cried out: 'Captain James, Captain James, don't you know me?—I'm Isabel Leicester.' I fell against the lamp-post, and almost . . . The apparently reliable news of her death, the . . . seemed like a horrible dream. At first I could not . . . then she told me that she had accidentally heard from a friend that he was dead, and had . . . and then asked about you. I answered nothing, for reasons which you will, I think, understand. But on her repeating her question, and adding that surely she had a right to know how you were, even if I refused to tell her where you were, I felt constrained to speak. I told her that you had been sent, first to a small school, and subsequently to a public school, where you had, I believed, done satisfactorily: and then proceeded to inform her of the events that had led up to your interview with myself about a fortnight ago, blaming myself as much as I justly considered I could, and you also in the same manner. She listened to me very quietly, and, when I had concluded, asked me if I had any idea where you had gone to? I answered that I had none. Then, as she remained silently looking in front of her, and as I began to perceive that any further prolongation of the scene could only be very painful and quite useless to both of us, I . . .' [I suddenly slipped a paragraph, catching only the word 'money.'] '. . . reviled me and flung it into my face with mad curses . . . went away. After some moments' thought, I decided that my duty . . . followed her . . . with a policeman I had happened to . . . to an arch under a railway-bridge, where the unhappy creature . . . approached and found that she was sunk in a stupor-like dream . . . and ultimately . . . hospital . . . comforts . . . died.'
Died.
I stood up with the letter in my hanging hand.
Nay, what was the meaning of all this?—I turned to the table.
How many apples were there on that plate? One, two, three, four, five, six.—I rent the letter into pieces. I strode across the room to the opened window: then looked back sharply, viciously, over my shoulder, almost expecting to see some one, some semi-human figure, with a cold smile on his cold face, behind me. Then the idea of Brooke, come from his grave to mock at me, seemed to cut my brain with a lash of madness. Then it was a loin-swathed, emaciate Christ that stood sardonically there in the shadow. I leaped fiercely to the place, and found that light and shade had tricked me.
Tricked me? Everything had tricked me! I was in a cave of trickery.
Then the realisation of what I had been reading came to me again, and with it the frantic suspicion of false play: I began thinking of my mother, taking my sufferings as being the shadow of hers, for she, too, surely had gone through all that I had. Suddenly an idea came to me that almost made me shriek out. 'At last, passing somewhat quickly into an alley, I met one face to face under a protruding shadowed lamp. For a moment I stood breathless, with my eyes in the mad wolfishness and glitter of hers, and then, like a lightning-flash that fills the whole air, terror of her filled me quite. I leaped aside, and then passed her, plunged into a dark-covered way that was behind and beyond her, and hurried on, past.…' I began to laugh.
Yes, yes, yes, I was the cub of the she-wolf that was driven by hunger into the public way to see what price her empty, filthy carcase would bring! But she found no purchasers. Nor shall I!
Then suddenly, turning to the open window:
'Oh, you accursed city!' I cried, 'If I could sweep you off the earth with every … God!' I cried again, wheeling round convulsively with clenched fists, 'I have a few words to say to You, and then I have done. You have given me sight. The earth that You have made and the creatures that You have put into it are foul. You have given me thought. You have no right, be you God a thousand times, to make your creatures foul and then damn them for their foulness: You have no right to make them foul at all! You have given me love and hatred. With the love You have given me, I loathe You. With the hatred You have given me, I hate—I despise and scorn You! I am but a worm in the earth that is but an atom in your universe. But I stand here and scorn You! I am in your hand. You can do with me what You will—all except this: turn from my heart that scorn I have of You. Hear my last word to You, God. It is the last I will ever speak to You. Henceforth I endure your acts in silence. If I have joy, I will not thank You for it. If I have grief, I will not curse You for it. Henceforth, I am a stranger to You. If You are. You are to me as if You were not. If You are not' I smiled.
'Enough of this,' I said: 'perhaps something too much. I am sorry I railed. And yet the poor cuckold that we call soul must pour forth the lava of its discovered deception, or it would burst. I have done now, I think.'
I looked up and saw the other letter lying on the table-cloth, where I had thrown it past my plate. This letter was Rosy's.
I stretched across to it: opened it; and glanced into it:
'. . . I waited for you on Friday night for an hour and a half. And I really did think you would come some time to me, or you would write and tell me why you hadn't come these three Fridays. And I am very sorry if you are angry with me for writeing to you to tell you of it; but I think you must have forgoten that you told me that evening that you would come again the next Friday, and I thought perhaps I had made a mistake about it, and that is why I wated these three Fridays, and I think you might have written to tell me why you could not come.
'Minnie is dead. A man hit her across the back with a stick Yesterday, Mrs. Smith says, when I was away, and it killed her. I cried about it; which thing I have never had to do before quite like that. Please write to me and explain why you did not come these three Fridays, as you said you would. I hope you will please excuse this long letter and the writeing, but I don't suppose you care enough to mind.—I am, yours truly. Rosy Howlet.
I re-read some parts of it, and then threw it up on to the plate, and rose and began to pace about the room, thinking.
After a time I stopped at the open window.
'"There is a budding morrow in midnight,"' I said to myself.
I took up the lawyer's letter, and having folded, put it on the plate, and Colonel James' letter, and Rosy's, and put the cheque-book on the top. Then, standing thinking, I ate all the grapes, and drank a glassful of water, and gathered up what was on the plate, and went upstairs into my room.
The gas was low as I had left it. I turned it up. I set about doing what I intended. I changed my clothes and boots quickly: put the papers I had brought up, together with my usual cheque-book and a pocket-book containing bank-notes to the value of twenty-five pounds or so, into my breast-coat-pocket, all the gold I had into my right waistcoat-pocket, and all the silver I had into my right trouser-pocket. I had a sudden thought of packing a portmanteau; or my old black hand-bag. No: I couldn't be troubled with it. I would get what was wanted on the way.
Then I turned out the gas; went downstairs again, and wrote a short note to Mrs. Herbert, saying what I wished to be done in this matter. And as I sealed up the letter (force of habit, I suppose) I thought that it was lucky Rosy's letter had come in this way. Perhaps I should not have been doing this if it hadn't.
Luck favoured me again: I lit upon a hansom at the end of the street. I told the man to drive up the Edgware Road, and I would tell him where to stop. The gas-lamps burned faintly. There was a hush in the place, broken every now and then by distant sounds of stirring life. We were going quickly. I sat thinking. We were almost at the turning that has to be taken for Maitland Street. I thrust my hand out and waved. We came up a little, as it were, sideways to the pavement. I got out. How much should I give the man?
I stood with two fingers in my waistcoat-pocket, considering a sovereign and an order to wait here for me. Then I determined no; and took out some silver, and gave him five shillings.
I went on alone to the corner of the turn that was to be taken for Maitland Street, and crossed over into the deeper shadow of the other side. The horse was wheeling round: the cab drove away with sounding hoof-strokes. I went on, but rather slowly. Then an idea came into my head to run as far as the corner of Maitland Street. I set off: came to the lamp-post: crossed over; knocked with strong knuckles at the door, and waited.
No sound.
I knocked again as before, but for longer. I listened. No sound. I knocked a third time. Nothing. This was foolery!
I went into the road, and bent down to pick up something to throw. There was nothing of the sort there.
I gave up an idea of thrusting my finger down between the stone-blocks, to jerk out problematical pebbles, and went into Hill Street, and set about searching for something to throw. I could find nothing. I went on looking in the road, in the hope of seeing a mended place, whence I could take gravel. At last I found one, and picked up some.
I returned. There was no sign of life in the house: no sign of life anywhere here apparently. Her head would be by the left-hand window. I threw up a pebble. It struck a pane: cracked it, I thought, and, falling on the pavement, bounded and rolled into the gutter. I made a step, picked it up, and, standing, threw again. Same result. But I didn't look for the falling pebble: I looked steadily at the window. Surely she was awake.
Now for a little soft earth!—Up it went.
I looked steadily at the window.
No—yes! A movement: a movement of the blind. I stepped back, and, taking off my hat, and turning a little sideways, so that she might if possible see something of my face, looked up as before.
Another movement of the blind. It was, I thought, drawn aside a little. I held up my outstretched arms. All at once I knew the blind ran up; heard a hasp strike, and the top half of the window came down. There was something white in the dark space that had been the top half of the window. I cried out:
'Rosy, it's me!—me! Come down and let me in.'
'O gracious!' said her dear voice, 'how you frightened me! What's the matter?'
'Let me in! let me in! let me in!' I said,
'"Do thou roll forth a fruit-cake
out of the rich house,
and a beaker of wine
and a basket of cheeses;
and wheat-bread the swallow
and the pulse porridge
does not reject. Say, shall I go away, or something receive!"'
Heaven only knew what the poor child thought of it all! I began laughing at the idea. Then, suddenly serious:
'Mrs. Smith is fast asleep,' I said quietly, 'down here. I want to tell you something—something very important to us both. Will you come and let me in?'
A pause, then:
'Yes,' she said, 'I will come down.'
Then the window was drawn up, and I stood waiting for some minutes. At last I heard her coming down the creaking stairs. A bolt was softly undone at the top of the door, a lock shot back: the door opened, and I was standing by her in the narrow passage.
'Don't make a noise,' she said, 'or else you'll wake'
'"The baby?"' I said. She had put on her dress.
She closed the door softly.
'What's the matter?' she asked. I was pleased by her quiet tone.
'Let's go upstairs,' I said, 'and I'll tell you.'
We went up carefully; she first, stopping once to tell me to be quiet, or Miss Martin would hear. My fickle thoughts that had become rather pallid (the trouble of going up so carefully, that is so slowly, and the hitting of my head against some damned beam or something), brought me into the shadowy room in no cheerful state. Why had not she lit a light? She was groping on the mantelpiece for the matches now. She found them; struck a light; and then there we were in the yellow full glare of the gas for a moment, before she turned it lower. I had not anything to say ready.
At last:
'I am tired,' I said. 'Will you sit down? there'—(pointing to the foot of the bed), 'and I will sit here'—(at the head where the bed-clothes were drawn back). The child obeyed in silence. Although I did not look at her, I noticed her. Her hair was all disordered, and rather matted, her cheeks flushed with what I knew was a hot dry flush.
I put my hat on the chair by me—the old cane-bottomed chair I knew (the same as of old, save that the hole in its bottom was grown larger). Then I said (she looking at me in a strange way all the time):
'Rosy, I have come to make an offer to you. I have committed a crime here, in London, to-night. I must bolt out of England at once. I have scarcely any money left—in fact, just enough to get out of the place with. I want to know will you come with me?' I heard her breath go suddenly sharply inwards, and stop for a moment.
Looking at my booted toes shoving together on the carpet, I proceeded:
'I don't know what I'm going to do—supposing I am not caught, that is. But I dare say I shall be able to turn my hand to something or other that will do to keep body and soul together, and I dare say you, supposing you would care to come with me, might do the same. It's not a very inviting prospect to offer anyone—and there's worse to come yet. I don't believe in marriage. You would have to come with me as my mistress. I might tire of you. You would have no guarantee but my word that I wouldn't bolt from you there, just as I am bolting from justice now. You know the sort of creature I am.' I looked up at her.
Then, in a moment, she was in my arms, kissing me, laughing, crying, kissing me over and over again, and I her, speaking unintelligible sentences, uttering unknown words. A thrill went through me—the same thrill, it seemed, that had gone through me that winter's evening in the farm-house kitchen where Mary kissed me with her soft red lips, the same thrill that had gone through me when I saw Rayne standing there on the station platform, while I was carried away from her.
I pressed her closely to me, my cheek against hers, the tears welling out of my eyes. The stubborn will seemed broken at last. But I was tired, tired in body and soul. Breathless as she was from my embrace, she yet strained me to her with strength, strained me to her when my embrace relaxed, held me when, all things turning and swimming, I would have fallen. In that place of confused and dreamy sensations, I felt her hold, and had some comfort in it. I think I moaned and muttered things scarcely intelligible to myself. At last I opened my eyes. She was smiling at me as a new-made mother might at her wakened child. For a moment I felt the pleasure of that hold and look. Then I loosed myself from her and said:
'Damn it, I must have been fainting.'
She nodded her head at me in her old half-merry way.
'That's just what you did, then!'
'Dear child,' I said, getting up to my feet, and making some steps, 'I'm a fool. Let me see. What did I say to you just now?' But, feeling a little dizzy, came back and sat down on the bed before I said any more.
Then, looking at my booted toes shoving together on the carpet as before, I began:
'We've both, it seems, been making fools of ourselves, especially I. Now listen to me. Did you intend this to mean that you wanted to go with me abroad? Yes or no?'
'Yes,' she said, 'yes!'
'Did you understand what I told you about the crime I'd committed, and the rest of it? Did you understand it, what it meant?'
'I don't mind about it,' she said, 'one bit, so long as they don't catch you. And I'm sure they won't!'
'How do you know that?'
'It would be so cruel!'
'What would be so cruel?'
'Now that I've got you, for them to take you straight away from me again!' (She shook her head.) 'I'm sure they won't! I'm sure they won't!'
Her tone of voice, almost fierce, made me laugh.
'Rosy,' I said, 'I'm too tired to spend an hour in asking you to consider what a serious question all this is. Do you understand that our life will be a hard one—perhaps a very hard one? '
'Yes,' she said; 'I don't mind one bit!'
'Do you understand that I won't marry you—now or ever?'
No answer.
'Ah,' I said, 'You didn't understand that? You thought I was joking? I was not. I am not. I am in earnest. I will never marry you, if you come with me: never, O never!'
I rose and stood before her, and looked at her looking fiercely at me.
'Now,' I said, 'answer me simply; but do not hurry. Reflect before you answer. Don't be afraid of saying "No." Believe I shall not break my heart if you say "No."'
She looked down now, and seemed to be thinking. What of? Did she believe that I wouldn't break my heart if she said 'No'? If that was her thought, I must answer it.
'This very night,' I said, 'I asked another woman to come with me, and she wouldn't. You see the sort of man you have to deal with.'
I waited.
At last:
'Yes,' she said in a low voice, 'I'll go with you.'
'You'll have a hard life of it with me—even supposing the life itself wasn't hard. You see the sort of man I am. I am a little mad. I care for nobody but myself. Then I'm a terrible liar: you can believe nothing I say. I have told you bushels of lies to-night.'
She rose, and looked me in the face.
'I don't be-lieve you!' she said. 'You're not selfish! you're not a liar!'
'But I'm quite mad.'
'How can you talk like that?' she cried out, 'You know I'd go with you wherever you liked in the whole world! You know I would!'
'Very well,' I said, 'very well.' I sat down on the bed almost exhausted.
As I sat with my head bowed, looking at the carpet and not caring to struggle any more, she knelt down in front of me, looking into my face, and then put her arms up and round me. I opened my knees: she put herself between them. I closed my eyes. My head nodded, and nodded, and nodded.
'Ha!' said I, waking with a start, 'what's the time? I mustn't forget to wind up my watch.' I took it out. A quarter-past three. Time had gone quickly.
'Let me see,' I said, 'What time's the morning mail to Paris?… Can we get a cab here easily?'
'Yes,' she said, 'there's a mews at the end of the street.'
'It'll be all right if we start by six, I'm sure.' I was thinking what time it was when Brooke and I left Dunraven Place for the French mail.
The end of it was that I lay down on the bed to rest myself for a few minutes, while she did something or other (I did not notice what she said), and then I fell asleep. Then I was half-wakened by feeling some one bending over me, to kiss me on the lips: to which I objected, and moved my head, but the other lips came after mine, and almost caught them, despite a quick move back again. I awoke after that: and saw Rosy standing by the door, and the room filled with light not the gaslight.
'Is it time to go?' I asked.
'Yes,' she said.
I got up,
'Now, what about the cab? Where is this mews place you told me about. Rosy!'
'The cab 's downstairs at the door waiting.'
'You didn't go and get it, did you?'
'Yes, I got it!'
A pause.
'What's that?' I asked, looking at a bundle on the table.
'My things.'
'You needn't take them, you know,' I said.
'But'
'No; we'll get everything we want in Paris.'
'But'
'There, now! there, now!' said I, putting my arm round her, and getting her along, expostulating, to the door and opening it. 'Don't talk any more about it! It's no good talking about it! Get along!'
'But' she said, turning at the top of the stairs. I put my hand on her mouth, whispering:
'You'll have Miss Martin up in a moment. Do you owe Mrs. Smith anything?'
'No,' she said, 'Hush!'
She went down the dark stairs, I following her.
Mrs. Smith was standing by her door. She made a sort of curtsey to me.
'Good-morning, sir,' she said.
'Good-morning,' I said.
She had the door open for us in a moment Rosy went out quickly, and was into the cab (a hansom), and I followed, without a further word or sign to the old devil. As I was getting in, I told the man 'Charing Cross,' over the roof, and then sank down beside her.
'I have had rather a hard day of it on the whole,' I said.
'But why did you make me leave'
I put my hand over her mouth.
'But———'
I pressed my hand closer.
'If,' I said, 'it 's your economical soul that's alarmed, know, my pippin, that there's no need for it. I'm not a forger. I'm not a beggar. I am an atheist. I am a liar. I told you that I had told you bushels of lies to-night, or rather, this morning.' I took down my hand, adding:
'Now don't ask more than twenty questions at a time, and I will do my best to explain matters.' I looked at her, and seeing her pretty puzzled face, laughed, and gave her a kiss sideways.
'You are mad!' she said.
'I am!' I answered, 'everybody's mad. And the maddest people of all are those that are most sane!'