MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE

BY

GEORGE MOORE

CONTENTS

APOLOGIA PRO SCRIPTIS MEIS

I. SPRING IN LONDON

II. FLOWERING NORMANDY

III. A WAITRESS

IV. THE END OF MARIE PELLEGRIN

V. LA BUTTE

VI. SPENT LOVES

VII. NINON'S TABLE D'HÔTE

VIII. THE LOVERS OF ORELAY

IX. IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS

X. A REMEMBRANCE

XI. BRING IN THE LAMP

XII. SUNDAY EVENING IN LONDON

XIII. RESURGAM

APOLOGIA PRO SCRIPTIS MEIS

[_The_ APOLOGIA _which follows needs, perhaps, a word ofexplanation, not to clear up Mr. Moore's text--that is as delightful, as irrelevantly definite, as paradoxically clear as anything thispresent wearer of the Ermine of English Literature has everwritten--but to explain why it was written and why it is published. When the present publisher, who is hereinafter, in the words ofSchopenhauer, "flattened against the wall of the Wisdom of the East, "first read and signified his pride in being able to publish these"Memoirs, " the passages now consigned to "the late Lord ----'slibrary" were not in the manuscript. On the arrival of the final copythey were discovered, and thereby hangs an amusing tale, consisting ofa series of letters which, in so far as they were written with acertain caustic, humorous Irish pen, have taken their high place amongthe "Curiosities of Literature. " The upshot of the matter was that thepublisher, entangled in the "weeds" brought over by his_ Mayflower_ancestors, found himself as against the author in the position ofMr. Coote as against Shakespeare; that is, the matter was sobeautifully written that he had not the heart to decline it, and yetin parts so--what shall we say?--so full of the "Wisdom of the East"that he did not dare to publish it in the West. Whereupon he adoptedthe policy of Mr. Henry Clay, which is, no doubt, always a mistake. And the author, bearing in mind the make-up of that race of Man calledpublishers, gave way on condition that this _APOLOGIA_ shouldappear without change. Here it is, without so much as the alterationof an Ibsen comma, and if the _Mayflower_ "weeds" mere instrumentalin calling it forth, then it is, after all, well that they grew_. --THEPUBLISHER. ]

Last month the post brought me two interesting letters, and the readerwill understand how interesting they were to me when I tell him thatone was from Mr. Sears, of the firm of Appleton, who not knowing mepersonally had written to Messrs. Heinemann to tell them that the firmhe represented could not publish the "Memoirs" unless two stories wereomitted; "The Lovers of Orelay, " and "In the Luxembourg Gardens, "--Messrs. Heinemann had forwarded the letter to me; my interest in theother letter was less direct, but the reader will understand that it wasnot less interesting when I tell that it came from the secretary of acertain charitable institution who had been reading the book in question, and now wrote to consult me on many points of life and conduct. He hadbeen compelled to do so, for the reading of the "Memoirs" had disturbedhis mind. The reader will agree with me that disturbed is probably theright word to use. To say that the book had undermined his convictionsor altered his outlook on life would be an exaggeration. "Outlook on life"and "standard of conduct" are phrases from his own vocabulary, and theydepict him. 

"Your outlook on life is so different from mine that I can hardlyimagine you being built of the same stuff as myself. Yet I venture toput my difficulty before you. It is, of course, no question of mentalgrasp or capacity or artistic endowment. I am, so far as these areconcerned, merely the man in the street, the averagely endowed and theordinarily educated. I call myself a Puritan and a Christian. I runcontinually against walls of convention, of morals, of taste, whichmay be all wrong, but which I should feel it wrong to climb over. Yourange over fields where my make-up forbids me to wander. 

"Such frankness as yours is repulsive, forbidding, demoniac! You speakof woman as being the noblest subject of contemplation for man, butinterpreted by your book and your experiences this seems in the lastanalysis to lead you right into sensuality, and what I should callillicit connections. Look at your story of Doris! I _do_ want toknow what you feel about that story in relation to right and wrong. Doyou consider that all that Orelay adventure was put right, atoned, explained by the fact that Doris, by her mind and body, helped you tocultivate your artistic sense? Was Goethe right in looking upon allwomen merely as subjects for experiment, as a means of training hisaesthetic sensibilities? Does it not justify the seduction of any girlby any man? And does not that take us straight back to the dissolutionof Society? The degradation of woman (and of man) seems to beinextricably involved. Can you regard imperturbedly a thought of yourown sister or wife passing through Doris' Orelay experience?"

 * * * * *

The address of the charitable institution and his name are printed onthe notepaper, and I experience an odd feeling of surprise wheneverthis printed matter catches my eye, or when I think of it; not so mucha sense of surprise as a sense of incongruity, and while trying tothink how I might fling myself into some mental attitude which hewould understand I could not help feeling that we were very far apart, nearly as far apart as the bird in the air and the fish in the sea. "And he seems to feel toward me as I feel toward him, for does he notsay in his letter that it is difficult for him to imagine me built ofthe same stuff as himself?" On looking into his letter again Iimagined my correspondent as a young man in doubt as to which road heshall take, the free road of his instincts up the mountainside withnothing but the sky line in front of him or the puddled track alongwhich the shepherd drives the meek sheep; and I went to my writingtable asking myself if my correspondent's spiritual welfare was myreal object, for I might be writing to him in order to exercise myselfin a private debate before committing the article to paper, or if Iwas writing for his views to make use of them. One asks oneself thesequestions but receives no answer. He would supply me with a point ofview opposed to my own, this would be an advantage; so feeling ratherlike a spy within the enemy's lines on the eve of the battle I beganmy letter. "My Dear Sir: Let me assure you that we are 'built of thesame stuff. ' Were it not so you would have put my book aside. I evensuspect we are of the same kin; were it otherwise you would not havewritten to me and put your difficulties so plainly before me. " Layingthe pen aside I meditated quite a long while if I should tell him thatI imagined him as a young man standing at the branching of the roads, deciding eventually that it would not be wise for me to let him seethat reading between the lines I had guessed his difficulty to be apersonal one. "We must proceed cautiously, " I said, "there may be awoman in the background.... The literary compliments he pays me andthe interest that my book has excited are accidental, circumstantial. Life comes before literature, for certain he stands at the branchingof the roads, and the best way I can serve him is by drawing hisattention to the fallacy, which till now he has accepted as a truth, that there is one immutable standard of conduct for all men and allwomen. " But the difficulty of writing a sufficient letter on a subjectso large and so intricate puzzled me and I sat smiling, for an oddthought had dropped suddenly into my mind. My correspondent was aBible reader, no doubt, and it would be amusing to refer him to thechapter in Genesis where God is angry with our first parents becausethey had eaten of the tree of good and evil. "This passage" I said tomyself, "has never been properly understood. Why was God angry? For noother reason except that they had set up a moral standard and could behappy no longer, even in Paradise. According to this chapter the moralstandard is the origin of all our woe. God himself summoned our firstparents before him, and in what plight did they appear? We know howridiculous the diminutive fig leaf makes a statue seem in our museums;think of the poor man and woman attired in fig leaves just pluckedfrom the trees! I experienced a thrill of satisfaction that I shouldhave been the first to understand a text that men have been studyingfor thousands of years, turning each word over and over, worrying overit, all in vain, yet through no fault of the scribe who certainlyunderlined his intention. Could he have done it better than byexhibiting our first parents covering themselves with fig leaves, andtelling how after getting a severe talking to from the Almighty theyescaped from Paradise pursued by an angel? The story can have no othermeaning, and that I am the first to expound it is due to nosuperiority of intelligence, but because my mind is free. But I mustnot appear to my correspondent as an exegetist. Turning to his letteragain I read:

"I am sorely puzzled. Is your life all of a piece? Are your 'Memoirs'a pose? I can't think the latter, for you seem sincere and frank tothe verge of brutality (or over). But what is your standard ofconduct? Is there a right and a wrong? Is everything open to any man?Can you refer me now to any other book of yours in which you view lifesteadily and view it whole from our standpoint? Forgive my intrusion. You see I don't set myself as a judge, but you sweep away apparentlyall my standards. And you take your reader so quietly and closely intoyour confidence that you tempt a response. I see your many admirablepoints, but your center of living is not mine, and I do want to knowas a matter of enormous human interest what your subsumptions are. Icannot analyze or express myself with literary point as you do, butyou may see what I aim at. It is a bigger question to me than thevalue or force of your book. It goes right to the core of the bigthings, and I approach you as one man of limited outlook to another ofwider range. "

The reader will not suspect me of vanity for indulging in thesequotations; he will see readily that my desire is to let the young manpaint his own portrait, and I hope he will catch glimpses as I seem todo of an earnest spirit, a sort of protestant Father Gogarty, hesitating on the brink of his lake. "There is a lake in every man'sheart"--but I must not quote my own writings. If I misinterpret him... The reader will be able to judge, having the letter before him. But if my view of him is right, my task is a more subtle one thanmerely to point out that he will seek in vain for a moral standardwhether he seeks it in the book of Nature or in the book of God. Ishould not move him by pointing out that in the Old Testament we aretold an eye for an eye is our due, and in the New the rede is to turnthe left cheek after receiving a blow on the right. Nor would he bemoved by referring him to the history of mankind, to the Boer War, forinstance, or the massacres which occur daily in Russia; everybodyknows more or less the history of mankind, and to know it at all is toknow that every virtue has at some time or other been a vice. But mancannot live by negation alone, and to persuade my correspondent overto our side it might be well to tell him that if there be no moralstandard he will nevertheless find a moral idea if he looks for it inNature. I reflected how I would tell him that he must not bedisappointed because the idea changes and adapts itself tocircumstance, and sometimes leaves us for long intervals; if he wouldmake progress he must learn to understand that the moral world onlybecomes beautiful when we relinquish our ridiculous standards of whatis right and wrong, just as the firmament became a thousand times morewonderful and beautiful when Galileo discovered that the earth moved. Had Kant lived before the astronomer he would have been a greatmetaphysician, but he would not have written the celebrated passage"Two things fill the soul with undying and ever-increasing admiration, the night with its heaven of stars above us and in our hearts themoral law. " The only fault I find with this passage is that I read theword "law" where I expected to read the word "idea, " for the word"law" seems to imply a Standard, and Kant knew there is none. Is thefault with the translator or with Kant, who did not pick his wordscarefully? The metaphysician spent ten years thinking out the"Critique of Pure Reason" and only six months writing it; no doubt histext might be emendated with advantage. If there was a moral standardthe world within us would be as insignificant as the firmament waswhen the earth was the center of the universe and all the stars werelittle candles and Jehovah sat above them, a God who changed his mindand repented, a whimsical, fanciful God who ordered the waters to riseso that his creatures might be overwhelmed in the flood, all exceptone family (I need not repeat here the story of Noah's Ark and thedoctrine of the Atonement) if there was one fixed standard of rightand wrong, applicable to everybody, black, white, yellow, and red menalike, an eternal standard that circumstance could not change. Thosewho believe in spite of every proof to the contrary that there is amoral standard cannot appreciate the beautiful analogy which Kantdrew, the moral idea within the heart and the night with its heaven ofstars above us. "It is strange, " I reflected, "how men can go onworrying themselves about Rome and Canterbury four hundred years afterthe discovery that the earth moved, and involuntarily a comparisonrose up in my mind of a squabble between two departments in an officeafter the firm has gone bankrupt.... But how to get all these vagrantthoughts into a sheet of paper? St. Paul himself could not proselytizewithin such limitations, and apparently what I wrote was notsufficient to lead my correspondent out of the narrow lanes ofconventions and prejudices into the open field of inquiry. Turning tohis letter, I read it again, misjudging him, perhaps ... But thereader shall form his own estimate. 

"I honestly felt and feel a big difficulty in reading and thinkingover your 'Memoirs' for you are a propagandist whether you recognizethat as a conscious mission or not. There is in your book achallenging standard of life which will not wave placidly by the sideof the standard which is generally looked up to as his regimentalcolors by the average man. One must go down. And it was because I feltthe necessity of choosing that I wrote to you. 

"'Memoirs' is clearly to me a sincere book. You have built your lifeon the lines there indicated. And there is a charm not merely in thatsincerity but in the freedom of the life so built. I could not, forinstance, follow my thoughts as you do. I do not call myself a cowardfor these limitations. I believe it to be a bit of my build; you saythat limitation has no other sanction than convention--raceinheritance, at least so I gather. Moral is derived from mos. Be itso. Does not that then fortify the common conviction that the moral isthe best? Men have been hunting the best all their history long by aprocess of trial and error. Surely the build of things condemns themurderer, the liar, the sensualist, and the coward! and how do youcome by 'natural goodness' if your moral is merely your customary? No, with all respect for your immense ability and your cultured outlook, Ido not recognize the lawless variability of the right and the wrongstandard which you posit. How get you your evidence? From humanactions? But it is the most familiar of facts that men do things theyfeel to be wrong. I have known a thief who stole every time in pangsof conscience; not merely in the fear of detection. There is a higherand a lower in morals, but the lower is recognized as a lower, anddoes not appeal to a surface reading of the code of an aboriginal indiscussing morals. That, I think is only fair. Your artistic sense isfinely developed, but it is none the less firmly based, although thereare Victorian back parlors and paper roses. 

"You see you are a preacher, not merely an artist. Every glimpse ofthe beautiful urges the beholder to imitation and _vice versa_. And that is why your 'Memoirs' are not merely 'an exhibition' of theimmoral; they are 'an incitement' to the immoral. Don't you think so?And thinking so would you not honestly admit, that society (in thewide sense, of course--civilization) would relapse, go down, deliquesce, if all of us were George Moores as depicted in your book?"

His letter dropped from my hand, and I sat muttering, "Howsuperficially men think!" How little they trouble themselves todiscover the truth! While declaring that truth is all important, theyaccept any prejudice and convention they happen to meet, fastening onto it like barnacles. How disappointing is that passage about themurderer, the sensualist, the liar, and the coward; but of what usewould it be to remind my correspondent of Judith who went into thetent of Holofernes to lie with him, and after the love feast drove anail into the forehead of the sleeping man. She is in Scripture heldup to our admiration as a heroine, the saviour of our nation. Charlotte Corday stabbed Marat in his bath, yet who regards CharlotteCorday as anything else but a heroine? In Russia men know that thefugitives lie hidden in the cave, yet they tell the Cossack soldiersthey have taken the path across the hill--would my correspondentreprove them and call them liars? I am afraid he has a lot of leewayto make up, and it is beyond my power to help him. 

Picking up his letter I glanced through it for some mention of "EstherWaters, " for in answer to the question if I could recommend him to anybook of mine in which I viewed life--I cannot bring myself totranscribe that tag from Matthew Arnold--I referred him to "EstherWaters, " saying that a critic had spoken of it as a beautifulamplification of the beatitudes. Of the book he makes no mention inhis letter, but he writes: "There is a challenging standard of life inyour book which will not wave placidly by the side of the standardwhich is generally looked up to as his regimental colors by theaverage man. " The idea besets him, and he refers to it again in thelast paragraph; he says: "You see, you are a preacher, not merely anartist. " And very likely he is right; there is a messianic aspect inmy writings, and I fell to thinking over "Esther Waters"; and readingbetween the lines for the first time, I understood that it was thatdesire to standardize morality that had caused the poor girl to betreated so shamefully. Once Catholicism took upon itself to tortureand then to burn all those it could lay hands upon who refused tobelieve with its doctrines, and now in the twentieth centuryProtestantism persecutes those who act or think in opposition to itsmoralities. Even the saintly Mrs. Barfield did not dare to keepEsther; but if she sent her servant away, she spoke kindly, giving herenough money to see her through her trouble; there are good peopleamong Christians. The usual Christian attitude would be to tell Estherthat she must go into a reformatory after the birth of her child, forthe idea of punishment is never long out of the Christian's thoughts. It is not necessary to recapitulate here how Esther, escaping from thenetwork of snares spread for her destruction, takes refuge in aworkhouse, and lives there till her child is reared; how she worksfifteen hours a day in a lodging house, sleeping in corners ofgarrets, living upon insufficient food; or how, after years ofstruggle, she meets William, now separated from his wife, and consentsto live with him that her child may have a father. For this second"transgression, " so said a clergyman in a review of the book, Esthercould not be regarded as a moral woman. His moral sense, dwarfed bydoctrine, did not enable him to see that the whole evil came out ofstandard morality and the whole good out of the instinct incarnate inher; and he must have read the book without perceiving its theme, therevelation in the life of an outcast servant girl of the instinct onwhich the whole world rests. 

Not until writing these lines did I ever think of "Esther Waters" as abook of doctrine; but it is one, I see that now, and that there is amessianic aspect in my writings. My correspondent did well to pointthat out, and no blame attaches to him because he seems to fail to seethat I may be an admirable moralist while depreciating Christianmorality and advocating a return to Nature's. He belonged to thetraditions yesterday, today he is among those who are seekers, andto-morrow I doubt not he will be among those prone to think thatperhaps Christianity is, after all, retrograde. His lips will curlcontemptuously to-morrow when he hears the cruelty of the circusdenounced by men who would, if they were allowed, relight the bonfires of the Inquisition; ... He is a Protestant, I had forgotten. Gladiators have begun to appear to us less cruel than monks, andeverybody who can think has begun to think that some return to paganmorality is desirable. That is so; awaking out of the great slumber ofChristianity, we are all asking if the qualities which once we deemedour exclusive possession have not been discovered among pagans--pride, courage, and heroism. Our contention has become that no superiority isclaimed in any respect but one; it appears that it must be admittedthat Christians are more chaste than pagans, at all events thatchastity flourishes among Christian communities as it has neverflourished among pagan. The Christian's boast is that all sexualindulgence outside of the marriage bed is looked upon as sinful, andhe would seem to think that if he proclaims this opinion loudly, itsproclamation makes amends for many transgressions of the ethical law. All he understands is the law; nothing of the subtler idea that theethical impulse is always invading the ethical law finds a way intohis mind. Women are hurried from Regent Street to Vine Street, and hisconscience is soothed by these raids; the owners of the houses inwhich these women live are fined, and he congratulates himself thatvice is not licensed in England, that, in fact, its existence isunrecognized. Prostitution thrives, nevertheless; but numbers do notdiscourage the moralist, and when he reads in the newspapers ofdegraded females, "unfortunates, " he breathes a sigh; and if thesereports contain descriptions of miserable circumstance and humangrief, he mutters "how very sad!"

But the assurance that the women are wretched and despised soothes hisconscience, and he remembers if he has not been able to abolishprostitution, he has at all events divested it of all "glamour. " Itwould appear that practical morality consists in making the meeting ofmen and women as casual as that of animals. "But what do you wish--youwould not have vice respected, would you?" "What you call vice wasonce respected and honored, and the world was as beautiful then asnow, and as noble men lived in it. In many ways the world was moremoral than when your ideas began to prevail. " He asks me to explain, and I tell him that with the degradation of the courtesan the moralstandard has fallen, for as we degrade her we disgrace the act oflove. We have come to speak of it as part of our lower nature, permissible, it is true, if certain conditions are complied with, butalways looked upon askance; and continuing the same strain ofargument, I tell him that the act of love was once deemed a sacredrite, and that I am filled with pride when I think of the noble andexalted world that must have existed before Christian doctrine causedmen to look upon women with suspicion and bade them to think of angelsinstead. Pointing to some poor drab lurking in a shadowy corner heasks, "See! is she not a vile thing?" On this we must part; he is tooold to change, and his mind has withered in prejudice and conventions;"a meager mind, " I mutter to myself, "one incapable of the effortnecessary to understand me if I were to tell him, for instance, thatthe desire of beauty is in itself a morality. " It was, perhaps, theonly morality the Greeks knew, and upon the memory of Greece we havebeen living ever since. In becoming _hetairae_, Aspasia, Lais, Phryne, and Sappho became the distributors of that desire of beautynecessary in a state which had already begun to dream the temples ofMinerva and Zeus. 

The words of Blake come into my mind, "the daring of the lion or thesubmission of the ox. " With these words I should have headed my letterto the secretary of the charitable institution, and I should have toldhim that many books which he would regard as licentious are lookedupon by me as sacred. "Mademoiselle de Maupin, " "the golden book ofspirit and sense, " Swinburne has called it, I have always looked uponas a sacred book from the very beginning of my life. It cleansed me ofthe belief that man has a lower nature, and I learned from it that thespirit and the flesh are equal, "that earth is as beautiful as heaven, and that perfection of form is virtue. " "Mademoiselle de Maupin" was agreat purifying influence, a lustral water dashed by a sacred hand, and the words are forever ringing in my ear, "by exaltation of thespirit and the flesh thou shalt live. " This book would be regarded bymy correspondent as he regards my "Memoirs, " and its publication hasbeen interdicted in England. How could it be permitted to circulate ina country in which the kingdom of heaven is (in theory) regarded asmore important than the kingdom of earth? A few pages back the ideacame up under my pen that the aim of practical morality was to renderillicit love as unattractive as possible, and I suppose, though he hasnever thought the matter out, the Christian moralist would regardGautier as the most pernicious of writers, for his theme is alwayspraise of the visible world, of all that we can touch and see; and inthis book art and sex are not estranged. I have often wondered if theestrangement of the twain so noticeable in English literature is notthe origin of this strange belief that bodily love is part of ourlower nature. Our appreciation of the mauve flush dying in the westhas been indefinitely heightened by descriptions seen in pictures andread in poems, and I cannot but think that if the lover's exaltationbefore the curve of his mistress's breast had not been forbidden, theugly thought that the lover's ardor is inferior to the poet's wouldnever have obtained credence. There is but one energy, and the vitalfluid, whether expended in love or in a poem, is the same. The poetand the lover are creators, they participate and carry on the greatwork begun billions of years ago when the great Breath breathing outof chaos summoned the stars into being. But why do I address myselflike this to the average moralist? How little will he understand me!In the Orelay adventure which horrified him there was an appreciationof beauty which he has, I am afraid, rendered himself incapable of. Myself and Doris were spiritual gainers by the Orelay adventure, Doris's rendering of "The Moonlight Sonata, " till she went to Orelay, was merely brilliant and effective; and have not all the critics inEngland agreed that the story in which I relate her contains some ofthe best pages of prose I have written? But why talk of myself whenthere is Wagner's experience to speak about? Did he not write toMadame Wasendonck, "I owe you Tristan for all eternity"? She has notleft any written record of her debt to Wagner, perhaps because shecould not find words to give the reader any idea how great it was. 

Histories of human civilization there are in abundance, but I do notknow of any history of the human intelligence. But when this comes tobe written--if it ever should come to be written--the writer willhesitate, at least I can imagine him hesitating, how much of thegenius of artists he would be justified in tracing back to sexualimpulses. Goethe, as my correspondent informs me, looked upon love ofwoman as a means of increasing his aesthetic sensibilities, and mycorrespondent seems to think that he did them wrong thereby, whereas Ithink he honored them exceedingly. Balzac held the contrary belief, soGautier tells us, maintaining that great spiritual elation could begained by restraint, and when inquiry was made into his precisebeliefs on this point he confessed that he could not allow an authormore than half an hour once a year with his beloved; he placed norestriction, however, on correspondence, "for that helped to form astyle. " When Gautier mentioned the names of certain great men whoselives offered a striking refutation of this theory, Balzac answeredthey would have written better if they had lived chastely. Gautierseems to have left the question there, and so will we, remarking onlythat Balzac was prone to formulating laws out of his singleexperience. I remember having written, or having heard somebody say, "in other writers we discover this or that thing, but everythingexists in Balzac. " And in his conversation with Gautier we do not findhim praising chastity as a virtue, but extolling the results that maybe gotten from chastity as a Yogi might. It is said that Englishmissionaries in India sometimes drive out in their pony chaises tovisit a holy man who has left his womenfolk, plentiful food, and aluxurious dwelling for a cave in some lonely ravine. The pony chaiseonly takes the parson to the mouth of the ravine, and leaving his wifeand children in charge of his servant, the parson ascends the rockyway on foot, meeting, perchance, a fat peasant priest from Maynoothbent on the same mission as himself--the conversion of the Yogi. It isamusing for a moment to imagine these two Western barbarians sittingwith the emaciated saint on the ledge in front of the cave. Thinkingto win his sympathy, they tell him that on one point they are allagreed. The Brahman's eyes would dilate; how can this thing be? hiseyes would seem to ask, and it is easy to imagine how contemptuouslyhe would raise his eyes when he gathered gradually from theirdiscourse that his visitors believed that chastity was incumbent uponall men. "But all men are not the same, " he would answer, if heanswered his visitors; "I dwell in solitude and in silence, and amchaste, and live upon the rice that the pious leave on the rocks forme, but I do not regard chastity and abstinence as possessed of anyinherent merits; as virtues, they are but a means to an end. How wouldyou impose chastity upon all men, since every man brings a differentidea into the world with him? There are men who would die if forced tolive chaste lives, and there are men who would choose death ratherthan live unchaste, and many a woman if she were forced to live withone husband would make him very unhappy, whereas if she lived with twomen she would make them both supremely happy. But the news has reachedme even here that in the West you seek a moral standard, and thisquest always fills me with wonder. There are priests among you, I cansee that, and soldiers, and fishermen, and artists and princes andfolk who labor in the fields--now do you expect all these men, livingin different conditions of life, to live under the same rule? I amafraid that the East and the West will never understand each other. The sun is setting, my time for speech is over, " and the wise man, rising from the stone on which he has been sitting, enters into thecave, leaving the priest and the parson to descend the rocks togetherin the twilight, their differences hushed for the moment, to breakforth again the next day. 

Schopenhauer has a fine phrase, one that has haunted my mind thesemany years, that the follies of the West flatten against the sublimewisdom of the East like bullets fired against a cliff. 

How can it be otherwise? For when we were naked savages the Brahmanswere learned philosophers, and had seen as far into every mystery asmortal eyes will ever see. We have progressed a little lately; ouruniversities, it is true, are a few hundred years old, but incomparison with the East we are still savages; our culture is butrudimentary, and my correspondent's letter is proof of it. It ischaracteristic of the ideas that still flourish on the banks of theThames, ideas that have changed only a little since the_Mayflower_ sailed. It would have been better if Columbus haddelayed his discovery for, let us say, a thousand years. I am afraidthe _Mayflower_ carried over a great many intellectual weedswhich have caught root and flourished exceedingly in yourStates--Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Washington. A letter arrivedfrom Washington some two or three months ago. The writer was a ladywho used to write to me on all subjects under the sun; about fifteenyears ago we had ceased to write to each other, so she began herletter, not unnaturally, by speaking of the surprise she guessed herhandwriting would cause me. She had broken the long silence, for shehad been reading "The Lake, " and had been much interested in the book. It would have been impolite to write to me without alluding to theaesthetic pleasure the book had given her, but her interest was mainlya religious one. About five years ago she had become a Roman Catholic, she was writing a book on the subject of her conversion, and wouldlike to find out from me why I had made Father Gogarty's conversionturn upon his love of woman, "for it seems to me clear, unless I havemisunderstood your book, that you intended to represent Gogarty as anintellectual man. " It is difficult to trace one's motives back, but Iremember the irritation her letter caused me, and how I felt it wouldnot be dignified for me to explain; my book was there for her tointerpret or misinterpret, as she pleased; added to which her"conversion" to Rome was an annoying piece of news. Fifteen years agoshe was an intelligent woman and a beautiful woman, if photographs donot lie, and it was disagreeable for me to think of her going on herknees in a confessional, receiving the sacraments, wearing scapulars, trying to persuade herself that she believed in the Pope'sindulgences. She must now be middle-aged, but the decay of physicalbeauty is not so sad a spectacle as the mind's declension. "She beganto think, " I said, "of another world only when she found herselfunable to enjoy this one any longer; weariness of this world produceswhat the theologians call 'faith. ' How often have we heard the phrase'You will believe when you are dying'? She would have had, " I said, "Father Gogarty leave his church for doctrinal rather than naturalreasons, believing scrolls to be more intellectual than the instincts;Father Gogarty poring over some early edition of the Scriptures in hislittle house on the hilltop, reading by the light of the lamp atmidnight and deciding that he would go out of his parish because, according to recent exegesis, a certain verset in the Gospel had beenadded three hundred years after the death of Christ. " I fell tothinking how dry, common, and uninteresting the tale would be had itbeen written on these doctrinal lines. Carlyle said that CardinalNewman had the brain of a half-grown rabbit, and he was right; Newmannever got further than a scroll, and man must think with his body, aswell as with his brain. To think well the whole man must think, and itseems to me that Father Gogarty thought in this complete way. RoseLeicester revealed to him the enchantment and the grace of life, andhis quest became life. Had it been Hose Leicester herself the storywould have merely been a sensual incident. The instinct to go rose upwithin him, he could not tell how or whence it came, and he went asthe bird goes, finding his way toward a country where he had neverbeen, led as the bird is led by some nostalgic instinct. And I do notdoubt that he found life, whether in the form of political or literaryambition or in some other woman who would remind him of the woman hehad lost; perhaps he found it in all these things, perhaps in none. Told as I told it the story seems to me a true and human one, and onethat might easily occur in these modern days; much more easily thanthe story my correspondent would have had me write. The story of apriest abandoning his parish for theological reasons is not animprobable one, but I think such a story would be more typical of thesixteenth century, when men were more interested in the authenticityof the Biblical texts than they are in the twentieth. The Bible hasbeen sifted again and again; its history is known, every word has beenweighed, and it is difficult to imagine the most scrupulous exegetistthrowing a search light into any unexplored corner. Even Catholicscholarship, if Loisy can be regarded as a Catholic, has abandoned thetheory that the gospels were written by the Apostles. The earliest, that of Mark, was written sixty years after the death of Christ, andit is the only one for which any scholar claims the faintesthistorical value. With this knowledge of history in our possessionbelief has become in modern times merely a matter of temperament, entirely dissociated from the intellect. Some painter once said thatNature put him out. The theologian can say the same about theintellect--it puts him out. Out of a great deal of temperament and aminimum of intellect he gets a precipitate, if I may be permitted todrop into the parlance of the chemist, for dregs would be an impoliteword to use, and the precipitate always delights in the fetich. Therewill always be men and women, the cleric has discovered, who willbarter their souls for the sake of rosaries and scapulars and thePope's indulgences. The two great enemies of religion, as the clericsknow well, are the desire to live and the desire to know. We find thisin Genesis: God: i. E. , the clerics, was angry because his creaturesate of these different fruits. God's comprehension of the danger ofthe tree of life is not wonderful, but his foreseeing of the danger ofthe tree of knowledge was extraordinary foreseeing, for very little ofthe fruit of this tree had been eaten at the time the text waswritten. All through the Middle Ages the clerics strove to keep menfrom it with tortures and burnings at the stake, and they were soanxiously striving for success in protecting their flocks from thistree that they allowed the sheep to wander, the rams to follow theewes, and to gambol as they pleased. But the efforts of the clericswere vain. There were rams who renounced the ewes, and the succulentherbage that grows about the tree of life, for the sake of the fruitof the tree of knowledge; all the fences that the clerics had erectedwere broken down one by one; and during the nineteenth century a greatfeast was held under the tree. But after every feast there are alwaysailing stomachs; these denouncing the feast go about in greatdepression of spirit, surfeited feasters, saying the branches of thetree have been plucked bare; others complain they have eaten bitterfruit. This is the moment for the prowling cleric. Hell is remote, ithas been going down in the world for some time, and biology, if noconclusions be drawn, serves the clerical purpose almost as well. "Theorigins of existence are humble enough, my son, but think of theglorious heritage, " and the faint-hearted sheep is folded again.... The tree of life is more abundant; whenever a fruit is plucked anotherinstantly takes its place, and all the efforts of the clerics are nowdirected to keep their flocks from this tree. "Back to the tree ofknowledge!" they cry. "Hu! Hu! Hu! Both trees, " they mutter amongthemselves, "are accursed, but this one, from which sweet fruit mayalways be plucked, is the worser. " And they collect together in groupsto pass censure on their predecessors. "My predecessors wereinfallible fools, " cries the Pope, "to have permitted praise of thisfatal tree, wasting their energies on such men as Bruno, who said theearth was round, and Galileo, whom they forced to say he was mistakenwhen he said the earth moves. A pretty set of difficulties they haveinvolved us in with their accursed astronomy. Boccaccio and theTroubadours should have been burned instead, and if this had been doneall the abominable modern literature which would persuade the faithfulthat this world is not all sackcloth and ashes would never have beenwritten. Away with him who says that the earth is as beautiful asheaven, " and Gautier's phrase, _"Moi, je trouve la terre aussi belleque le ciel, et je pense que la correction de la forme est lavertu, "_ has become the heresy more intolerable than any other tothe modern cleric, and to me and to all the ardent and intellectualspirits of my generation a complete and perfect expression ofdoctrine. To some it will always seem absurd to look to Gautier ratherthan to a Bedouin for light. Nature produces certain attitudes ofmind, and among these is an attitude which regards archbishops as moreserious than pretty women. These will never be among my disciples. Soleaving them in full possession of the sacraments, I pass on. 

My generation was in sympathy with "Mademoiselle de Maupin" and it didmore than to reveal and clarify the ideas we were seeking. It would bevain for me, as for any other man, to attempt to follow the course ofan idea and to try to determine its action upon life. Perhaps the partof the book which interested us the least was that very part whichwould be read aloud in court if a prosecution were attempted: I amalluding to the scene when Mademoiselle de Maupin comes into Albert'sroom. This scene was, however, inevitable, and could not be omitted, for does it not contain that vision of beauty which Albert had beenseeking and which was vouchsafed to him for a little while? Never didhe see Mademoiselle de Maupin afterwards, she was but a phantom of hisown imagination made visible by some prodigy to him. For a stillbriefer space Rosette shared Albert's dream, and man and wife remainedfaithful to each other. It is easy to imagine the vileness which aprosecuting counsel could extract from these beautiful pages madeentirely of vision and ecstasy. How false and shameful is the wholebusiness. We are allowed to state that we prefer pagan morality toChristian, but are interdicted from illustrating our beliefs byincident. So long as we confine ourselves to theory we are unmolested. But these are subtleties which do not trouble the minds of the membersof vigilance associations, the men and women who gather together inback parlors with lead pencils to mark out passages which theyconsider "un-Kur-istean" (a good strong accent on the secondsyllable). Their thoughts pursue beaten tracks. Books like"Mademoiselle de Maupin" they hold would act directly on thetemperament, and we know that they do not do this, we know that thethings of the intellect belong to the intellect and the things of theflesh to the flesh. Were it otherwise Rose Leicester, the prettyschool mistress, might have been left out of my story entitled "TheLake, " and her place taken by a book. My lady correspondent, it willbe remembered, was in favor of some doctrinal difficulty. My secondcorrespondent, the secretary of the charitable institution, would havechosen as the cause of Father Oliver's flight a sensual book. Hischoice might have been Burton's "Arabian Nights"; better stillCasanova's "Memoirs, " for this is a book written almost entirely withthe senses; the intellect hardly ever intrudes itself; and instead ofan emaciated priest poring over a dusty folio we should have had aninflamed young man curled up in an armchair reading eagerly, walkingup and down the room from time to time, unable to contain himself, andeventually throwing the book aside, he would find his way down to thelake. 

These two versions of "The Lake, " as it might have been written by mycorrespondents, will convince, I think, almost anyone, even them, thatthe desire of life which set Father Gogarty free could have beeninspired only by a woman's personality. It was not necessary that heshould go after the woman herself--but that point has already beenexplained. What concerns us now to understand is how the strange ideacould have come into men's minds that literature is a more potentinfluence than life itself. The solving of this problem has beguiledmany an hour, but the solution seems as far away as ever, and I havenever got nearer than the supposition that perhaps this fear ofliterature is a survival of the very legitimate fear that prevailed inthe Middle Ages against writing. In my childhood I remember hearing anold woman say that writing was an invention of the devil, and what anold woman believed forty years ago in outlying districts was almostthe universal opinion of the Middle Ages. Denunciations and burningsof books were frequent, and ideas die slowly, finding a slowextinction many generations after the reason for their existence hasceased. In the famous trial of Gille de Rais we have it on record thatthe Breton baron was asked by his ecclesiastical judges if paganliterature had inspired the strange crimes of which he was accused, ifhe had read of them in--I have forgotten the names of the Latinauthors mentioned, but I remember Gille de Rais' quite simple answerthat his own heart had inspired the crimes. Whereupon the judges notunnaturally were shocked, for the conclusion was forced upon them thatif Gille's confession were true they were not trying a man who hadbeen perverted by outward influence but one who had been bornperverted. Who then was responsible for his crimes? Lunacy sometimesin these modern days serves as a scapegoat, but the knowledge oflunacy in the fifteenth century was not so complete as it is now andthe judges preferred to believe that Gille was lying. And about tenyears ago London found itself in the same moral quandary. Three orfour little boys were discovered to have planned the murder of one oftheir comrades--sixpence, I think, was the object of the murder; notone was over eight, yet they planned the crime skillfully and verynearly succeeded in avoiding detection. To credit these little boyswith instinctive crime was intolerable, and just as in the Middle Agesa scapegoat had to be found. Apuleius and his Ass were out of thequestion, but the little boys admitted having read penny dreadfuls;London breathed again, the way now was clear, these newspapers must beprosecuted, and this recrudescence of wickedness in the heart of alittle boy would never be heard of again. A little later or maybe itwas a little earlier, I relate these things in the order in which theycome into my mind, the London Vigilance Association instituted aprosecution against Mr. Henry Vizetelly, a man of letters and thepublisher of Zola's novels. With the exception of Mr. Robert Buchananand myself not a single man of letters could be found to speak in Mr. Vizetelly's defense. Everybody urged some excuse, his wife was ill, his children were at the seaside and he had to go down to see them, orthat he had never cared much about naturalistic literature; whereas, if the prosecution had been directed against something romantic, etc. --Stranger still is the fact that it was almost impossible to finda counsel willing to defend Mr. Vizetelly. One man threw up the case, giving as his reason that he would have to read the books, anothersaid that it would be impossible to adequately defend Mr. Vizetelly'scase because no one could say what one had a right to put into a book. This remark seemed to me at the time contemptible, but there was morein it than I thought, for will it be believed that when the case cameinto court the judge ruled that the fact that standard writers hadavailed themselves of a great deal of license could not be taken as aproof that such license was permissible? Two wrongs do not make aright he said. In these circumstances perhaps counsel was wise to tellMr. Vizetelly to plead guilty to having published an indecent libel;but the advice seemed so cruel that, justly or unjustly, I suspect thelawyer of a wish to escape the odium that would have attached to himif he had defended a book accused of immorality. The old man washeavily fined. On going out of court he set to work to have the booksrevised, spending hundreds of pounds having the plates altered, butthe Vigilance Association attacked him again, and this time theysucceeded in killing him. Mr. Vizetelly was over seventy years of agewhen he went to prison, and the shame, anxiety, and three months ofprison life killed him. Five years afterwards the Authors' Society, who would not say a word in his favor, voted a great banquet for Zolawhen he came to London. Zola received every homage that could be paidto a man of letters. The Vigilance Association raised no protest, andI do not blame them. None would have been heard. But while thebanquets were held and the speeches were published in the newspaperssome of the members of the Association must have meditated sadly onthe futility of their efforts and the death of Mr. Vizetelly. Itrequires a heavy blow of a very heavy mallet to get anything into somepeople's heads, and nothing short of the reception that was given toZola could have affected the minds of the Vigilance Association. Thesignificance of the judge's words that the fact that classical writershad availed themselves of a certain license could not be taken asproof that such license was permissible escaped them altogether, forsome time afterwards the question of immorality in literature aroseagain--I have forgotten the circumstances of this case--but I rememberthat Mr. Coote, the secretary of the Association, was asked ifShakespeare had not written many very reprehensible passages. Mr. Coote was obliged to admit that he had, and when asked why theAssociation he represented did mot proceed against Shakespeare heanswered because Shakespeare wrote beautifully. A strangely immoraldoctrine, for if the license of expression that Shakespeare availedhimself of be harmful, Shakespeare should be prosecuted; that he wrotebeautifully is no defense whatever. Life comes before literature, andthe Vigilance Association lays itself open to a charge of neglect ofduty by not proceeding at once against Shakespeare and against allthose who have indulged in the same license of expression. The membersand their secretary have indeed set themselves a stiff job, but theymust not shrink from it if they would avoid shocking other people'smoral sense by exhibiting themselves in the light of mere busybodieswith a taste for what boys and old men speak of as "spicy bits. "Proceedings will have to be taken against all the literature that Mr. Coote believes to be harmful (I accept him as the representative ofthe ideas of his Association), and the plea must not be raised againthat because a reprehensible passage is well written it should beacquitted. We must consider the question impartially. It is true thata magistrate may be found presiding at Bow Street who will refuse toissue a warrant against the publishers, let us say of Byron, Sterne, the Restoration, and the Elizabethan dramatists. The Association willhave to risk the refusal; but I would not discourage the Associationfrom the adventure. It must not abandon the tope of finding amagistrate who, anxious to prove himself no moral laggard, will do allthat is asked of him. A very pretty selection of "spicy bits" can bepicked from "Don Juan, " and toward this compilation every member, maleand female, might contribute. The reading of these selections in BowStreet in a crowded court would prove quite a literary entertainment, and if the magistrate refused to issue a warrant he could only do soon the pretext that the book had been published a long while, apretext which can hardly be held to be more valid than the pretext putforward by Mr. Coote for not prosecuting Shakespeare. Of one thingonly would I warn the Society which I seem to be taking under my wing, and that is, even if it should succeed in interdicting two-thirds ofEnglish literature its task will still be only half accomplished. Thenewspaper question will still have to be faced. Books are relativelyexpensive, but the newspaper can be bought for a halfpenny, and itwill be admitted that no author is as indecent as the common reporter. The reader thinks that I am going to draw his attention to somecelebrated divorce case, an account of which was reported in full inthe columns of some daily paper under a large heading "PainfulDetails, " the details being the account the chambermaid gave theoutraged husband of--I will spare my reader. 

About fifteen years ago I was asked if I would care to go over to ----College to see the sports. We walked across the downs, and whilewatching the racing I was accosted by the head master, who asked me ifI would like to see the college. The sports were more interesting thanrefectories and dormitories, but it seemed a little churlish to refuseand we went together. No doubt we visited the kitchens and the chapel, but what I remember was a long hall wainscoted with oak and furnishedwith oak tables and chairs and benches, In this hall there were somethirty or forty boys, of ages varying from twelve to eighteen, readingthe newspapers, reading the reports of the Oscar Wilde trial; eachdaily paper contained three or four columns of it. I asked the headmaster if it were right to allow the boys to read such reports and heanswered that lately the newspapers contained a great deal ofobjectionable matter, "But how am I to keep the daily papers out ofthe college?" Now I am not easily scandalized, but I could not helpfeeling that a grave scandal was being committed in allowing theseboys to read the newspapers during the week of that trial. But if youadmit the newspapers one day how can you forbid them on anotheroccasion? And while appreciating the head master's difficulty I walkedout into the open air unable to take any further interest in thesports. Nor has time obliterated anything of the shame I felt thatday. I don't want to make a fuss, I don't want to pose as a moralist, but I cannot help thinking that while newspapers continue to bepublished, the Vigilance Society need not trouble lest certain booksshould fall into the hands of young people. My correspondent forgotthat thousands of newspapers are published to-day when he wrote to mesaying that my book roused sensuality. I am afraid I omitted thepassage in which these words occur, fearing to burden my article withquotation. Here it is:

"The perusal of the episodes (Doris' Orelay experiences) doescertainly not ennoble me, it rouses sensuality, it lowers woman from afriend and helpmeet into a convenience and a minister to pleasure. Iam less able and less willing to think 'high' after your book; poetryis distasteful, art is narrowed, I look out for the licentious, thesuggestive, the low, and the mean; and don't you? You seem in passageafter passage to be world-weary in a sense that no sane man ought tobe, sated, disgusted, tired of life--is it not so? You see I speakfrom what I am sure you will regard as a narrow platform, my idealsare certainly not yours but I am simply and frankly curious as to theultimates in your book and in yourself. "

Let us suppose now that the Vigilance Association after a sharpcrusade has succeeded in redeeming our literature from allreprehensible matter, and flushed with success has attacked thenewspapers and obtained an interdiction against the publication of allreports of sexual crimes and misdemeanors. And having extended ourimagination so far we may presume as the sequence a world of suchhighly developed moral susceptibilities that Miss Austen's novels arebeginning to cause uneasiness. Miss Austen's novels are stillpermitted, but in current literature nothing is said that would leadthe reader to suppose that men and women are not of the same sex. Butmen and women still continue to meet and hold conversation. Only someadvanced members of the Association are in favor of that completeseparation of the sexes which obtains in Ireland in the ruraldistricts. In the imaginary time of which I am writing the Associationhas only obtained complete control over literature. The theaters areeither closed or given over to the representation of plays onreligious subjects; but private life has not been invaded by thePuritan missionary, and waltz tunes are still heard and figures seenwhirling past lighted windows in Grosvenor Square and Fifth Avenue. Mr. Coote has at this time become a moderate, he is no longer amongthe progressives, and is in danger of losing his post, so I have nodifficulty in imagining what he would do in such a dilemma. He woulddisguise himself as a waiter and at the next meeting of the Societytell how he had until now showed some reluctance to--the sentencewould be a difficult one to finish, perhaps Mr. Coote would break offand say--reluctance to put restraint on the action of men and women aslong as they kept within their own doors, but after what he has seen, he finds himself obliged to pass from the moderates to theprogressives. What has Mr. Coote seen. How would he tell his tale?

He would tell of the length and the breadth of the ball room, of theparquet floor usually covered with an aubusson carpet but the carpethad been lifted and the gilded furniture taken away; the windows andthe recesses had been filled with flowers, and to keep these fresh, great blocks of ice had been placed in the niches. He would tell ofthe lighting arrangements, for are not flowers and lights incentivesto immorality? But his descriptions of the roses and the lilies wouldonly lead up to his descriptions of the shameless animality that cameup the staircase between twelve and one. A half-naked lady, thehostess, stood at the head of the stairs receiving her guests withsmiles and words of welcome. The dresses the women wore resembled thedress worn by the hostess; young and old alike went about theirpleasure with necks and bosoms and arms uncovered, and he saw theseundressed creatures slip into the arms of men who whirled them roundand round; it was but a whirling of silk ankles and a shuffling ofglazed shoes; and every now and then the men and women looked intoeach other's eyes, and the whole scene was reflected shamelessly intall mirrors. Notwithstanding the fact that most of Mr. Coote's timewas spent behind the buffet serving out ices, he neverthelesscontrived to find a spare moment for investigation. On the pretext ofseeking a lady who had dropped a handkerchief he had crossed the ballroom and was therefore in a position to give an accurate account ofthe waltzes he had heard, dulcet, undulating, capricious measures, farmore provocative than Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata" which Tolstoy hasdenounced. The lady that Mr. Coote sought was not in the ball room, and so he had an opportunity of investigating all the retiring rooms, and I need not describe the pensive and shocked faces that listened tohis descriptions of the shady nooks. Sometimes it was a screen, sometimes it was a palm that was employed to hide the couple fromobservation. Mr. Coote at last discovered the owner of thehandkerchief in one of those shady nooks, she was there with agentleman.... Mr. Coote, of course, would refuse to relate what hesaw, he would hesitate, but the members of his Association wouldinsist upon knowing everything, and he would at last confess: "Well, the gentleman had kissed the lady on the point of her shoulder. " Fromthis scandalous incident he would pass to tell all that he rememberedof the conversation he had heard at the table round which he hadworked till nearly four o'clock in the morning handing cutlets, chicken patties, and other delicacies, the names of which he was notacquainted with. 

Mr. Coote's description of what he saw may be ingenuous, but is hisdescription untrue? And when Mr. Coote finished up his speech as Iimagine him finishing it, by stating that the dancing, the music, thedresses, the wines, and the meats were arranged and learnedly chosenfor one purpose and one only, the stimulation of sexual passion, Icannot imagine anyone accusing him of having spoken an untruth. Mr. Coote added that no one went to the ball for the pleasure of theconversation--he was convinced that old and young derived theirpleasure, consciously or unconsciously, from sex. 

We will imagine the members of Mr. Coote's Society being greatly movedby his description, and the sudden determination of everybody thatdancing must be stopped. Had not Byron declared the waltz to be "halfa whore"? Tolstoy has gone one better and asked people to say if awoman can remain chaste if a low dress is permitted and Beethoven's"Kreutzer Sonata" is played. Forgetful, of course, that they haveprosecuted "Don Juan, " the Society accepts Byron's dictum as their warcry, and henceforth the business of Mr. Coote is to inquire into whatis immoral in dress, in music, in wine, and in food. After a longconsultation with experts and expensive law proceedings the VigilanceAssociation has (in our imagination) succeeded in reforming society ascompletely as it succeeded in reforming literature; and the months goby, October, November, December, January, February, March ... But onenight the wind changes, and coming out of our houses in the morning weare taken with a sense of delight, a soft south wind is blowing andthe lilacs are coming into bloom. My correspondent says that my bookrouses sensuality. Perhaps it does, but not nearly so much as a springday, and no one has yet thought of suppressing or curtailing springdays. Yet how infinitely more pernicious is their influence than anybook! What thoughts they put into the hearts of lads and lasses! andperforce even the moralist has to accept the irrepressible feeling ofunion and growth, the loosening of the earth about the hyacinth shootsand the birds going about their amorous business, and the white cloudsfloating up gladly through the blue air. Why, then, should he lookaskance at my book, which is no more than memories of my spring days?If the thing itself cannot be suppressed, why is it worth while tointerfere with the recollection? What strange twist in his mind leadshim to decry in art what he accepts in nature? A strange twist indeed, one which may be described as a sort of inverted sexuality, findingits pleasure not in the spring day, but in odd corners of ancientliterature read only for the sake of passages which he declares to bedisgusting, and in spying on modern literature, seeking out passagesand expressions which might be denounced in the newspapers orproceeded against in the police court. The psychology of one of thesepurity mongers is more interesting to the alienist than to a man ofletters. Let us take a typical case, that of the late Lord ----. Fortyor fifty years ago he was one of the most strenuous advocates ofpurity in literature, and more shops were raided at his instigationthan at any other; yet when he died his library was found to containthe finest collection of impure literature in Europe, and hisexecutors were left wondering whether the prosecutions were promptedby a desire to increase the value of his collection by the destructionof rare books, copies of which were in his possession, or whether hehad been moved by conscientious scruples; a man might bamboozlehimself in this way: "I am a man of letters and possess these booksbecause they are rare, a curious corner of literature, but it would behighly inexpedient for others to possess them. " His conscience mighttake a still more curious turn, leading to a dizzier height: "I am asinner; that, alas! is so; but I can prevent others from sinninglikewise. " No doubt the greater part of the literature which the noblelord collected with so much industry was of that frankly indecent kindwhich is debarred from every library, Continental as well as Englishand American. There is a literature which does not come within thescope of the present inquiry, and there is what may perhaps be calleda border literature, books which are found in public libraries in theGerman, the French, and the Italian texts. It seems pertinent to askwhy a little knowledge of French and German and Italian should procurethe right to read Brantôme's "Femmes Gallantes. " It would be difficultfor anybody to say that this book is not frankly obscene, and yet inthe French text I suppose every library contains it. Casanova's"Memoirs" is another book of the same kind; I am not aware of anycomplete translation of Boccaccio's tales, but every library possessesan edition in the original Italian. The only reason that can be putforward for the suppression of a book is that it is harmful, and ifBrantôme, Casanova, and Boccaccio are harmful in English, they do harmto those who can read them in the original texts. But perhaps I havepointed out enough inconsistencies, and the reader, growing weary, maysay: "Are you so young, then, that you don't know that the world is amass of contradictions? that life is no more than a tale told by anidiot full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing?" Shakespeare didno more than to put into eloquent language every man's belief, that weare all mad on one subject or another. If this be so, every race ismad on some point, for have we not often heard that what is true ofthe individual is true of the race? Anglo-Saxon madness is bookmorality. Madness has been defined as a lack of consequence in ideas, and can anything be less consequent than--we need look no further backthan Ibsen? The great genius who died in May last was decried by theEnglish people as one of the most immoral of writers; for twenty yearsat least this opinion obtained in the press, and even among men ofletters; suddenly the opinion disappeared, it went out like the flameof a candle; the text is the same, not a comma has been changed, yetnow everybody reads it differently. But I must not allow myself to bedrawn into speaking of the moral crusades directed against otherwriters; the task is tempting, and I hope it will be undertaken one ofthese days. Here, at all events, my concern is with my own writings, as indicated by the title of the article, and it is doubtful ifreference to any book would make my point clearer than the tale ofwhat happened in America to my own book, "Esther Waters. " The proofsheets were sent in turn to three leading firms, Scribner, Harper, andAppleton, and all three refused the book on the ground that, whilerecognizing, etc. , they did not think it was exactly the kind of book, etc. Even experts make mistakes; this is not denied; what makes mystory so remarkable is that all three firms offered to publish anauthorized edition of the book as soon as news of its success inEngland had been cabled to New York. Mr. Appleton, whom I met inParis, expressed his regret that expert opinion regarding this bookhad been at fault. "The book, " he said, "was quite a proper book topublish, a most admirable book, which would do honor to any firm. " Ianswered: "Very likely all you say, Mr. Appleton, is true, but threeweeks ago the experts thought differently. How is it that an immoralbook can become moral in three weeks?" My next book, "Evelyn Innes, "disturbed the house of Appleton as much as "Esther Waters, " and agentleman of leisure connected with the firm was deputed to mark outnot the passages to which he himself took exception, but to which, being an expert, he felt sure that others would take exception. Thegentleman was kind enough to insist on submitting his marked copy tome, and my wonderment increased as I turned over the pages, and itreached a climax when I happened upon the following passage, which hadbeen marked to be omitted by the American printer. The passage was:"... In her stage life Evelyn was an agent of the sensual passion, notonly with her voice, but in her arms, her neck, and hair, and in everyexpression of her face; and it was the craving music that had thrownher into Ulick's arms. If it had subjugated her how much more would itsubjugate and hold within its persuasion the listener--the listener, who perceived in the music nothing but its sensuality?" "But for whatreason, " I asked the expert, "do you suggest the elimination of thispassage? This is the Puritan point of view. I thought that yourproposal was to draw my attention to the passages to which you thoughtthe Puritan would object. " "Ah, " he said, "that is how I began, but asI got on with the work I thought it better to mark every passage thatmight give offense. " "And to whom would this passage give offense?" Isaid. "Certainly not to any religious body?" "No, " he answered, "notto any religious body, but it would give offense to the subscribers tothe New Opera House. If parents read that the music of 'Tristan' threwEvelyn Innes into the arms of Ulick Dean, they would not care to bringtheir daughters to hear the opera, and might possibly discontinuetheir subscriptions. " Everybody will agree that "expert opinion" canhardly go further, yet the folly which this "expert" was betrayed intodid not arise from any congenital stupidity; it is the mistake thatyou and I, every one of us, would make when we seek the truth in ourcasual experience instead of in our hearts. 

One would have thought that my pointing out the absurdity of thisexpurgation of "Evelyn Innes" to the house of Appleton would havesaved it ever afterwards from similar folly, and forgetful thatexperience is, as Coleridge describes it, only a lamp in a vessel'sstern which throws a light on the waters we have passed through, noneon those which lie before us, the publication of "The Lake" was issuedby Messrs. Appleton with my consent. The book, as the American publicalready know, is free from all matter to which the most severemoralist could take exception, yet the American edition did notconform entirely with the English; a dedication written in French wasomitted, for what reason I do not know, but it was omitted. The mattermay seem a small one, and it may seem invidious to allude to it atall, but on an occasion like the present nothing must be passed over. The English proofs of the "Memoirs" were read, and the book wasaccepted, but when it was set up in America it did not seem quite somoral in the American type as it did in the English and difficultiesarose; these have been alluded to in the first paragraph of thisarticle, and perhaps wrongly I agreed that the two stories, "TheLovers of Orelay" and "In the Luxembourg Gardens, " should be left out. On September 28th I wrote, suggesting that "In the Luxembourg Gardens"might be retained, that it was only necessary to drop out a fewsentences to make it, as the expert would say, "acceptable to theAmerican public, " but it never occurred to me that "The Lovers ofOrelay" could be published in any form except the form in which Iwrote it. This morning I received a letter from Mr. Sears. 

October 8, 1906. DEAR MR. MOORE:

Your letter of September 28th has just arrived this morning. I hopethat by the time you receive this I shall have the open letter whichwe are to print in "Memoirs of My Dead Life. " The book is all ready, waiting for it. As a matter of fact, we have not cut out either "Inthe Luxembourg Gardens" or "The Lovers of Orelay. " We simply havetaken out parts of each. Very truly yours, J. H. SEARS. 

"Simply have taken out parts of each!" My book, then, is a sort ofunfortunate animal, whose destiny was to be thrown on the Americanvivisecting table and pieces taken out of it. Well, I raise noobjection. The promise that this preface will be published withoutalteration soothes me (it is the anaesthetic), and after all, is itnot an honor to be Bowdlerized? Only the best are deemed dangerous.... I am not aware that anybody ever took liberties with Miss Braddon'stexts. And the day of the Bowdlerizer is a brief one! Sooner or laterthe original text is published. This is the rule, and I am confident Ishall not prove an exception to the rule. 

GEORGE MOORE. 

MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE

CHAPTER I

SPRING IN LONDON

As I sit at my window on Sunday morning, lazily watching thesparrows--restless black dots that haunt the old tree at the corner ofKing's Bench Walk--I begin to distinguish a faint green haze in thebranches of the old lime. Yes, there it is green in the branches; andI'm moved by an impulse--the impulse of Spring is in my feet;india-rubber seems to have come into the soles of my feet, and I wouldsee London. It is delightful to walk across Temple Gardens, tostop--pigeons are sweeping down from the roofs--to call a hansom, andto notice, as one passes, the sapling behind St. Clement's Danes. Thequality of the green is exquisite on the smoke-black wall. London canbe seen better on Sundays than on week-days; lying back in a hansom, one is alone with London. London is beautiful in that narrow street, celebrated for licentious literature. The blue and white sky showsabove a seventeenth-century gable, and a few moments after we are inDrury Lane. The fine weather has enticed the population out of grimcourts and alleys; skipping-ropes are whirling everywhere. Thechildren hardly escape being run over. Coster girls sit wrapped inshawls, contentedly, like rabbits at the edge of a burrow; the mensmoke their pipes in sullen groups, their eyes on the closed doors ofthe public house. At the corner of the great theatre a vendor of cheapices is rapidly absorbing the few spare pennies of the neighbourhood. The hansom turns out of the lane into the great thoroughfare, a brightglow like the sunset fills the roadway, and upon it a triangular blockof masonry and St. Giles's church rise, the spire aloft in the faintblue and delicate air. Spires are so beautiful that we would fainbelieve that they will outlast creeds; religion or no religion we musthave spires, and in town and country--spires showing between trees andrising out of the city purlieus. 

The spring tide is rising; the almond trees are in bloom, that onegrowing in an area spreads its Japanese decoration fan-like upon thewall. The hedges in the time-worn streets of Fitzroy Square lightup--how the green runs along? The spring is more winsome here than inthe country. One must be in London to see the spring. One can see thespring from afar dancing in St. John's wood, haze and sun playingtogether like a lad and a lass. The sweet air, how tempting! Howexciting! It melts on the lips in fond kisses, instilling a delicategluttony of life. It would be pleasant in these gardens walkingthrough shadowy alleys, lit here and there by a ray, to see girlswalking hand in hand, catching at branches, as girls do when dreamingof lovers. But alas! the gardens are empty; only some daffodils! Buthow beautiful is the curve of the flower when seen in profile, andstill more beautiful is the starry yellow when the flower is seen fullface. That antique flower carries my mind back--not to Greek times, for the daffodil has lost something of its ancient loveliness; it ismore reminiscent of a Wedgwood than of a Greek vase. My nonsensethoughts amuse me; I follow my thoughts as a child followsbutterflies; and all this ecstasy in and about me, is the joy ofhealth--my health and the health of the world. This April day has setbrain and blood on fire. Now it would be well to ponder by this oldcanal! It looks as if it had fallen into disuse, and that is charming;an abandoned canal is a perfect symbol of--well, I do not know ofwhat. A river flows or rushes, even an artificial lake harbourswaterfowl, children sail their boats upon it; but a canal doesnothing. 

Here comes a boat! The canal has not been abandoned. Ah! that boat hasinterrupted my dreams, and I feel quite wretched. I had hoped that thelast had passed twenty years ago. Here it comes with its lean horse, the rope tightening and stretching, a great black mass with ripples atthe prow and a figure bearing against the rudder. A canal reminds meof my childhood; every child likes a canal. A canal recalls the firstwonder. We all remember the wonder with which we watched the firstbarge, the wonder which the smoke coming out of the funnel excited. When my father asked me why I'd like to go to Dublin better by canalthan by railroad, I couldn't tell him. Nor could I tell any one to-daywhy I love a canal. One never loses one's fondness for canals. Theboats glide like the days, and the toiling horse is a symbol! how hestrains, sticking his toes into the path!

There are visits to pay. Three hours pass--of course women, alwayswomen. But at six I am free, and I resume my meditations in declininglight as the cab rolls through the old brick streets that crowd roundGolden Square; streets whose names you meet in old novels; streetsfull of studios where Hayden, Fuseli, and others of the rankhistorical tribe talked art with a big A, drank their despair away, and died wondering why the world did not recognise their genius. Children are scrambling round a neglected archway, striving to reachto a lantern of old time. The smell of these dry faded streets ispeculiar to London; there is something of the odour of the originalmarsh in the smell of these streets; it rises through the pavement andmingles with the smoke. Fancy follows fancy, image succeeds image;till all is but a seeming, and mystery envelops everything. That whiteArch seems to speak to me out of the twilight. I would fain believe ithas its secret to reveal. London wraps herself in mists; blue scarfsare falling--trailing. London has a secret! Let me peer into herveiled face and read. I have only to fix my thoughts todecipher--what? I know not. Something ... Perhaps. But I cannotcontrol my thoughts. I am absorbed in turn by the beauty of the MarbleArch and the perspective of the Bayswater Road, fading like anapparition amid the romance of great trees. 

As I turn away, for the wind thrills and obliges me to walk rapidly, Ithink how fortunate I am to experience these emotions in Hyde Park, whereas my fellows have to go to Switzerland and to climb up MontBlanc, to feel half what I am feeling now, as I stand looking acrossthe level park watching the sunset, a dusky one. The last red bar oflight fades, and nothing remains but the grey park with the blue ofthe suburb behind it, flowing away full of mist and people, dim andmournful to the pallid lights of Kensington; and its crowds are likestrips of black tape scattered here and there. By the railings thetape has been wound into a black ball, and, no doubt, the peg on whichit is wound is some preacher promising human nature deliverance fromevil if it will forego the spring time. But the spring time continues, despite the preacher, over yonder, under branches swelling with leafand noisy with sparrows; the spring is there amid the boys and girls, boys dressed in ill-fitting suits of broadcloth, daffodils in theirbuttonholes; girls hardly less coarse, creatures made for work, escaped for a while from the thraldom of the kitchen, now doing thebusiness of the world better than the preacher; poor servants ofsacred Spring. A woman in a close-fitting green cloth dress passes meto meet a young man; a rich fur hangs from her shoulders; and they gotowards Park Lane, towards the wilful little houses with low balconiesand pendent flower-baskets swinging in the areas. Circumspect littlegardens! There is one, Greek as an eighteenth-century engraving, andthe woman in the close-fitting green cloth dress, rich fur hangingfrom her shoulders, almost hiding the pleasant waist, enters one ofthese. She is Park Lane. Park Lane supper parties and divorce arewritten in her eyes and manner. The old beau, walking swiftly lest heshould catch cold, his moustache clearly dyed, his waist certainlypinched by a belt, he, too, is Park Lane. And those two young men, talking joyously--admirable specimens of Anglo-Saxons, slender feet, varnished boots, health and abundant youth--they, too, arecharacteristic of Park Lane. 

Park Lane dips in a narrow and old-fashioned way as it entersPiccadilly. Piccadilly has not yet grown vulgar, only a little modern, a little out of keeping with the beauty of the Green Park, of thatbeautiful dell, about whose mounds I should like to see a comedy ofthe Restoration acted. 

I used to stand here, at this very spot, twenty years ago, to watchthe moonlight between the trees, and the shadows of the trees floatingover that beautiful dell; I used to think of Wycherly's comedy, "Lovein St. James's Park, " and I think of it still. In those days theArgyle Rooms, Kate Hamilton's in Panton Street, and the Café de laRégence were the fashion. But Paris drew me from these, towards otherpleasures, towards the Nouvelle Athènes and the Elysée Montmartre; andwhen I returned to London after an absence of ten years I found a newLondon, a less English London. Paris draws me still, and I shall bethere in three weeks, when the chestnuts are in bloom. 

CHAPTER II

FLOWERING NORMANDY

On my arrival in Paris, though the hour was that stupid hour of sevenin the morning, while I walked up the grey platform, my head wasfilled with memories of the sea, for all the way across it had seemedlike a beautiful blue plain without beginning or end, a plain on whichthe ship threw a little circle of light, moving always like lifeitself, with darkness before and after. I remembered how we steamedinto the long winding harbour in the dusk, half an hour before we weredue--at daybreak. Against the green sky, along the cliff's edge, aline of broken paling zigzagged; one star shone in the dawning sky, one reflection wavered in the tranquil harbour. There was no soundexcept the splashing of paddle-wheels, and not wind enough to take thefishing boats out to sea; the boats rolled in the tide, their sailsonly half-filled. From the deck of the steamer we watched the strangecrews, wild-looking men and boys, leaning over the bulwarks; and Iremembered how I had sought for the town amid the shadow, but nowherecould I discover trace of it; yet I knew it was there, smothered inthe dusk, under the green sky, its streets leading to the cathedral, the end of every one crossed by flying buttresses, and the round roofdisappearing amid the chimney-stacks. A curious, pathetic town, fullof nuns and pigeons and old gables and strange dormer windows, andcourtyards where French nobles once assembled--fish will be sold therein a few hours. Once I spent a summer in Dieppe. And during the hourwe had to wait for the train, during the hour that we watched thegreen sky widening between masses of shrouding cloud, I thought of tenyears ago. The town emerged very slowly, and only a few roofs werevisible when the fisher girl clanked down the quays with a clumsymovement of the hips, and we were called upon to take our seats in thetrain. We moved along the quays, into the suburbs, and then into aquiet garden country of little fields and brooks and hillsidesbreaking into cliffs. The fields and the hills were still shadowlessand grey, and even the orchards in bloom seemed sad. But what shall Isay of their beauty when the first faint lights appeared, when thefirst rose clouds appeared above the hills? Orchard succeeded orchard, and the farmhouses were all asleep. There is no such journey in theworld as the journey from Dieppe to Paris on a fine May morning. Nevershall I forget the first glimpse of Rouen Cathedral in the diamondair, the branching river, and the tall ships anchored in the deepcurrent. I was dreaming of the cathedral when we had left Rouen farbehind us, and when I awoke from my dream we were in the midst of aflat green country, the river winding about islands and through fieldsin which stood solitary poplar-trees, formerly haunts of Corot andDaubigny. I could see the spots where they had set their easels--thatslight rise with the solitary poplar for Corot, that rich river bankand shady backwater for Daubigny. Soon after I saw the first weir, andthen the first hay-boat; and at every moment the river grew moreserene, more gracious, it passed its arms about a flat, green-woodedisland, on which there was a rookery; and sometimes we saw it ahead ofus, looping up the verdant landscape as if it were a gown, runningthrough it like a white silk ribbon, and over there the green gowndisappearing in fine muslin vapours, drawn about the low horizon. 

I did not weary of this landscape, and was sorry when the first villaappeared. Another and then another showed between the chestnut-treesin bloom; and there were often blue vases on the steps and sometimeslanterns in metalwork hung from wooden balconies. The shutters werenot yet open, those heavy French shutters that we all know so well, and that give the French houses such a look of comfort, of ease, oflong tradition. Suddenly the aspect of a street struck me as a place Ihad known, and I said, "Is it possible that we are passing throughAsnières?" The name flitted past, and I was glad I had recognisedAsnières, for at the end of that very long road is the restaurantwhere we used to dine, and between it and the bridge is the _bal_where we used to dance. It was there I saw the beautiful BlancheD'Antigny surrounded by her admirers. It was there she used to sit bythe side of the composer of the musical follies which she sang--inthose days I thought she sang enchantingly. Those were the days ofL'Oeil, Crevé, and Chilpéric. She once passed under the chestnut-treesof that dusty little _bal de banlieue_ with me by her side, proudof being with her. She has gone and Julia Baron has gone; Hortense hasoutlived them all. She must be very old, eighty-five at least. Itwould be wonderful to hear her sing "Mon cher amant, je te jure" inthe quavering voice of eighty-five; it would be wonderful to hear hersing it because she doesn't know how wonderful she is; the old lightof love requires an interpreter, and she has had many; many greatpoets have voiced her woe and decadence. 

Not five minutes from that _bal_ was the little house in whichHervé lived, and to which he used to invite us to supper; and where, after supper, he used to play to us the last music he had composed. Welistened, but the public would listen to it no longer. Sedan had takenall the tinkle out of it, and the poor _compositeur toqué_ nevercaught the public ear again. We listened to his chirpy scores, believing that they would revive that old nervous fever which was theEmpire when Hortense used to dance, when Hortense took the Empire fora spring-board, when Paris cried out, "Cascade ma fille, Hortense, cascade. " The great Hortense Schneider, the great goddess of folly, used to come down there to sing the songs which were intended torevive her triumphs. She was growing old then, her days were over, andHervé's day was over. Vainly did he pile parody upon parody; vainlydid he seize the conductor's _bâton_; the days of their glory hadgone. Now Asnières itself is forgotten; the modern youth has chosenanother suburb to disport himself in; the ballroom has been pulleddown, and never again will an orchestra play a note of these poorscores; even their names are unknown. A few bars of a chorus of pagescame back to me, remembered only by me, all are gone, like Hortenseand Blanche and Julia. 

But after all I am in Paris. Almost the same Paris; almost the sameGeorge Moore, my senses awake as before to all enjoyment, my soul asenwrapped as ever in the divine sensation of life. Once my youth movedthrough thy whiteness, O City, and its dreams lay down to dreams inthe freedom of thy fields! Years come and years go, but every year Isee city and plain in the happy exaltation of Spring, and departingbefore the cuckoo, while the blossom is still bright on the bough, ithas come to me to think that Paris and May are one. 

CHAPTER III

A WAITRESS

Feeling that he would never see Scotland again, Stevenson wrote in apreface to "Catriona":--"I see like a vision the youth of my father, and of his father, and the whole stream of lives flowing down therefar in the north, with the sound of laughter and tears, to cast me outin the end, as by a sudden freshet, on these ultimate islands. And Iadmire and bow my head before the romance of destiny. " Does not thissentence read as if it were written in stress of some effusive febrileemotion, as if he wrote while still pursuing his idea? And so itreminds us of a moth fluttering after a light. But howevervacillating, the sentence contains some pretty clauses, and it will beremembered though not perhaps in its original form. We shall forgetthe "laughter and the tears" and the "sudden freshet, " and a simplerphrase will form itself in our memories. The emotion that Stevensonhad to express transpires only in the words, "romance of destiny, ultimate islands. " Who does not feel his destiny to be a romance, andwho does not admire the ultimate island whither his destiny will casthim? Giacomo Cenci, whom the Pope ordered to be flayed alive, no doubtadmired the romance of destiny that laid him on his ultimate island, araised plank, so that the executioner might conveniently roll up theskin of his belly like an apron. And a hare that I once saw beating atambourine in Regent Street looked at me so wistfully that I am sureit admired in some remote way the romance of destiny that had taken itfrom the woodland and cast it upon its ultimate island--in this case abarrow. But neither of these strange examples of the romance ofdestiny seems to me more wonderful than the destiny of a wistful Irishgirl whom I saw serving drinks to students in a certain ultimate caféin the Latin Quarter; she, too, no doubt, admired the destiny whichhad cast her out, ordaining that she should die amid tobacco smoke, serving drinks to students, entertaining them with whateverconversation they desired. 

Gervex, Mademoiselle D'Avary, and I had gone to this café after thetheatre for half an hour's distraction; I had thought that the placeseemed too rough for Mademoiselle D'Avary, but Gervex had said that weshould find a quiet corner, and we had happened to choose one incharge of a thin, delicate girl, a girl touched with languor, weakness, and a grace which interested and moved me; her cheeks werethin, and the deep grey eyes were wistful as a drawing of Rossetti;her waving brown hair fell over the temples, and was looped up lowover the neck after the Rossetti fashion. I had noticed how the twowomen looked at each other, one woman healthful and rich, the otherpoor and ailing; I had guessed the thought that passed across theirminds. Each had doubtless asked and wondered why life had come to themso differently. But first I must tell who was Mademoiselle D'Avary, and how I came to know her. I had gone to Tortoni, a once-celebratedcafe at the corner of the Rue Taitbout, the dining place of Rossini. When Rossini had earned an income of two thousand pounds a year it isrecorded that he said: "Now I've done with music, it has served itsturn, and I'm going to dine every day at Tortoni's. " Even in my timeTortoni was the rendezvous of the world of art and letters; every onewas there at five o'clock, and to Tortoni I went the day I arrived inParis. To be seen there would make known the fact that I was in Paris. Tortoni was a sort of publication. At Tortoni I had discovered a youngman, one of my oldest friends, a painter of talent--he had a picturein the Luxembourg--and a man who was beloved by women. Gervex, for itwas he, had seized me by the hand, and with voluble eagerness had toldme that I was the person he was seeking: he had heard of my coming andhad sought me in every cafe from the Madeleine to Tortoni. He had beenseeking me because he wished to ask me to dinner to meet MademoiselleD'Avary; we were to fetch her in the Rue des Capucines. I write thename of the street, not because it matters to my little story in whatstreet she lived, but because the name is an evocation. Those who likeParis like to hear the names of the streets, and the long staircaseturning closely up the painted walls, the brown painted doors on thelandings, and the bell rope, are evocative of Parisian life; andMademoiselle D'Avary is herself an evocation, for she was an actressof the Palais Royal. My friend, too, is an evocation, he was one ofthose whose pride is not to spend money upon women, whose theory oflife is that "If she likes to come round to the studio when one's workis done, _nous pouvons faire la fête ensemble_. " But howeverdefensible this view of life may be, and there is much to be said forit, I had thought that he might have refrained from saying when Ilooked round the drawing-room admiring it--a drawing-room furnishedwith sixteenth-century bronzes, Dresden figures, _étagères_covered with silver ornaments, three drawings by Boucher--Boucher inthree periods, a French Boucher, a Flemish Boucher, and an ItalianBoucher--that I must not think that any of these things were presentsfrom him, and from saying when she came into the room that thebracelet on her arm was not from him. It had seemed to me in slightlybad taste that he should remind her that he made no presents, for hisremark had clouded her joyousness; I could see that she was not sohappy at the thought of going out to dine with him as she had been. 

It was _chez Foyoz_ that we dined, an old-fashioned restaurantstill free from the new taste that likes walls painted white and gold, electric lamps and fiddlers. After dinner we had gone to see a playnext door at the Odéon, a play in which shepherds spoke to each otherabout singing brooks, and stabbed each other for false women, a playdiversified with vintages, processions, wains, and songs. Neverthelessit had not interested us. And during the _entr'actes_ Gervex hadpaid visits in various parts of the house, leaving MademoiselleD'Avary to make herself agreeable to me. I dearly love to walk by theperambulator in which Love is wheeling a pair of lovers. After theplay he had said, "Allons boire un bock, " and we had turned into astudents' café, a café furnished with tapestries and oak tables, andold-time jugs and Medicis gowns, a café in which a studentoccasionally caught up a tall bock in his teeth, emptied it at a gulp, and after turning head over heels, walked out without having smiled. Mademoiselle D'Avary's beauty and fashion had drawn the wild eyes ofall the students gathered there. She wore a flower-enwoven dress, andfrom under the large hat her hair showed dark as night; and hersouthern skin filled with rich tints, yellow and dark green where thehair grew scanty on the neck; the shoulders drooped into opulentsuggestion in the lace bodice. And it was interesting to compare herripe beauty with the pale deciduous beauty of the waitress. Mademoiselle D'Avary sat, her fan wide-spread across her bosom, herlips parted, the small teeth showing between the red lips. Thewaitress sat, her thin arms leaning on the table, joining veryprettily in the conversation, betraying only in one glance that sheknew that she was only a failure and Mademoiselle D'Avary a success. It was some time before the ear caught the slight accent; an accentthat was difficult to trace to any country. Once I heard a southernintonation, and then a northern; finally I heard an unmistakableEnglish intonation, and said:

"But you're English. "

"I'm Irish. I'm from Dublin. "

And thinking of a girl reared in its Dublin conventions, but whom theromance of destiny had cast upon this ultimate café, I asked her howshe had found her way here; and she told me she had left Dublin whenshe was sixteen; she had come to Paris six years ago to take asituation as nursery governess. She used to go with the children intothe Luxembourg Gardens and talk to them in English. One day a studenthad sat on the bench beside her. The rest of the story is easilyguessed. But he had no money to keep her, and she had to come to thiscafé to earn her living. 

"It doesn't suit me, but what am I to do? One must live, and thetobacco smoke makes me cough. " I sat looking at her, and she must haveguessed what was passing in my mind, for she told me that one lung wasgone; and we spoke of health, of the South, and she said that thedoctor had advised her to go away south. 

Seeing that Gervex and Mademoiselle D'Avary were engaged inconversation, I leaned forward and devoted all my attention to thiswistful Irish girl, so interesting in her phthisis, in her red Medicisgown, her thin arms showing in the long rucked sleeves. I had to offerher drink; to do so was the custom of the place. She said that drinkharmed her, but she would get into trouble if she refused drink;perhaps I would not mind paying for a piece of beef-steak instead. Shehad been ordered raw steak! I have only to close my eyes to see hergoing over to the corner of the cafe and cutting a piece and puttingit away. She said she would eat it before going to bed, and that wouldbe two hours hence, about three. While talking to her I thought of acottage in the South amid olive and orange trees, an open window fullof fragrant air, and this girl sitting by it. 

"I should like to take you south and attend upon you. "

"I'm afraid you would grow weary of nursing me. And I should be ableto give you very little in return for your care. The doctor says I'mnot to love any one. "

We must have talked for some time, for it was like waking out of adream when Gervex and Mademoiselle D'Avary got up to go, and, seeinghow interested I was, he laughed, saying to Mademoiselle D'Avary thatit would be kind to leave me with my new friend. His pleasantryjarred, and though I should like to have remained, I followed theminto the street, where the moon was shining over the LuxembourgGardens. And as I have said before, I dearly love to walk by aperambulator in which Love is wheeling a pair of lovers: but it is sadto find oneself alone on the pavement at midnight. Instead of goingback to the café I wandered on, thinking of the girl I had seen, andof her certain death, for she could not live many months in that café. We all want to think at midnight, under the moon, when the city lookslike a black Italian engraving, and poems come to us as we watch aswirling river. Not only the idea of a poem came to me that night, buton the Pont Neuf the words began to sing together, and I jotted downthe first lines before going to bed. Next morning I continued my poem, and all day was passed in this little composition. 

 We are alone! Listen, a little while, And hear the reason why your weary smile And lute-toned speaking are so very sweet, And how my love of you is more complete Than any love of any lover. They Have only been attracted by the grey Delicious softness of your eyes, your slim And delicate form, or some such other whim, The simple pretexts of all lovers;--I For other reason. Listen whilst I try To say. I joy to see the sunset slope Beyond the weak hours' hopeless horoscope, Leaving the heavens a melancholy calm Of quiet colour chaunted like a psalm, In mildly modulated phrases; thus Your life shall fade like a voluptuous Vision beyond the sight, and you shall die Like some soft evening's sad serenity.... I would possess your dying hours; indeed My love is worthy of the gift, I plead For them. Although I never loved as yet, Methinks that I might love you; I would get From out the knowledge that the time was brief, That tenderness, whose pity grows to grief, And grief that sanctifies, a joy, a charm Beyond all other loves, for now the arm Of Death is stretched to you-ward, and he claims You as his bride. Maybe my soul misnames Its passion; love perhaps it is not, yet To see you fading like a violet, Or some sweet thought, would be a very strange And costly pleasure, far beyond the range Of formal man's emotion. Listen, I Will chose a country spot where fields of rye And wheat extend in rustling yellow plains, Broken with wooded hills and leafy lanes, To pass our honeymoon; a cottage where The porch and windows are festooned with fair Green leaves of eglantine, and look upon A shady garden where we'll walk alone In the autumn summer evenings; each will see Our walks grow shorter, till to the orange tree, The garden's length, is far, and you will rest From time to time, leaning upon my breast Your languid lily face, then later still Unto the sofa by the window-sill Your wasted body I shall carry, so That you may drink the last left lingering glow Of evening, when the air is filled with scent Of blossoms; and my spirits shall be rent The while with many griefs. Like some blue day That grows more lovely as it fades away, Gaining that calm serenity and height Of colour wanted, as the solemn night Steals forward you will sweetly fall asleep For ever and for ever; I shall weep A day and night large tears upon your face, Laying you then beneath a rose-red place Where I may muse and dedicate and dream Volumes of poesy of you; and deem It happiness to know that you are far From any base desires as that fair star Set in the evening magnitude of heaven. Death takes but little, yea, your death has given Me that deep peace and immaculate possession Which man may never find in earthly passion. 

Good poetry of course not, but good verse, well turned every lineexcept the penultimate. The elision is not a happy one, and the meresuppression of the "and" does not produce a satisfying line. 

 Death takes but little, Death I thank for giving Me a remembrance, and a pure possession Of unrequited love. 

And mumbling the last lines of the poem, I hastened to the café nearthe Luxembourg Gardens, wondering if I should find courage to ask thegirl to come away to the South and live, fearing that I should not, fearing it was the idea rather than the deed that tempted me; for thesoul of a poet is not the soul of Florence Nightingale. I was sorryfor this wistful Irish girl, and was hastening to her, I knew not why;not to show her the poem--the very thought was intolerable. Often didI stop on the way to ask myself why I was going, and on what errand. Without discovering an answer in my heart I hastened on, feeling, Isuppose, in some blind way that my quest was in my own heart. I wouldknow if it were capable of making a sacrifice; and sitting down at oneof her tables I waited, but she did not come, and I asked the studentby me if he knew the girl generally in charge of these tables. He saidhe did, and told me about her case. There was no hope for her; only atransfusion of blood could save her; she was almost bloodless. Hedescribed how blood could be taken from the arm of a healthy man andpassed into the veins of the almost bloodless. But as he spoke thingsbegan to get dim and his voice to grow faint; I heard some one saying, "You're very pale, " and he ordered some brandy for me. The South couldnot save her; practically nothing could; and I returned home thinkingof her. 

Twenty years have passed, and I am thinking of her again. Poor littleIrish girl! Cast out in the end by a sudden freshet on an ultimatecafé. Poor little heap of bones! And I bow my head and admire theromance of destiny which ordained that I, who only saw her once, should be the last to remember her. Perhaps I should have forgottenher had it not been that I wrote a poem, a poem which I now inscribeand dedicate to her nameless memory. 

CHAPTER IV

THE END OF MARIE PELLEGRIN

Octave Barrès liked his friends to come to his studio, and a few of uswho believed in his talent used to drop in during the afternoon, andlittle by little I got to know every picture, every sketch; but onenever knows everything that a painter has done, and one day, cominginto the studio, I caught sight of a full-length portrait I had neverseen before on the easel. 

"It was in the back room turned to the wall, " he said. "I took it out, thinking that the Russian prince who ordered the Pegasus decorationmight buy it, " and he turned away, not liking to hear my praise of it;for it neither pleases a painter to hear his early works praised norabused. "I painted it before I knew how to paint, " and standing beforeme, his palette in his hand, he expounded his new aestheticism: thatup to the beginning of the nineteenth century all painting had beendone first in monochrome and then glazed, and what we know as solidpainting had been invented by Greuze. One day in the Louvre he hadperceived something in Delacroix, something not wholly satisfactory;this something had set him thinking. It was Rubens, however, who hadrevealed the secret! It was Rubens who had taught him how to paint! Headmitted that there was danger in retracing one's steps, in beginningone's education over again; but what help was there for it, sincepainting was not taught in the schools. 

I had heard all he had to say before, and could not change my beliefthat every man must live in the ideas of his time, be they good orbad. It is easy to say that we must only adopt Rubens's method andjealously guard against any infringement on our personality; but inart our personality is determined by the methods we employ, andOctave's portrait interested me more than the Pegasus decoration, orthe three pink Venuses holding a basket of flowers above their heads. The portrait was crude and violent, but so was the man that hadpainted it; he had painted it when he was a disciple of Manet's, andthe methods of Manet were in agreement with my friend's temperament. We are all impressionists to-day; we are eager to note down what wefeel and see; and the carefully prepared rhetorical manner of Rubenswas as incompatible with Octave's temperament as the manner of JohnMilton is with mine. There was a thought of Goya in the background, inthe contrast between the grey and the black, and there was somethingof Manet's simplifications in the face, but these echoes were faint, nor did they matter, for they were of our time. In looking at hismodel he had seen and felt something; he had noted this harshly, crudely, but he noted it; and to do this, is after all the main thing. His sitter had inspired him. The word "inspired" offended him; Iwithdrew it; I said that he had been fortunate in his model, and headmitted that: to see that thin, olive-complexioned girl with finedelicate features and blue-black hair lying close about her head likefeathers--she wore her hair as a blackbird wears his wing--compelledone to paint; and after admiring the face I admired the black silkdress he had painted her in, a black silk dress covered with blacklace. She wore grey pearls in her ears, and pearls upon her neck. 

I was interested in the quality of the painting, so different fromOctave's present painting, but I was more interested in the womanherself. The picture revealed to me something in human nature that Ihad never seen before, something that I had never thought of. The soulin this picture was so intense that I forgot the painting, and beganto think of her. She was unlike any one I had ever met in OctaveBarrès's studio; a studio beloved of women; the women one met thereseemed to be of all sorts, but in truth they were all of a sort. Theybegan to arrive about four o'clock in the afternoon, and they stayedon until they were sent away. He allowed them to play the piano andsing to him; he allowed them, as he would phrase it, to_grouiller_ about the place, and they talked of the painters theyhad sat to, of their gowns, and they showed us their shoes and theirgarters. He heeded them hardly at all, walking to and fro thinking ofhis painting, of his archaic painting. I often wondered if hisappearance counted for anything in his renunciation of modern methods, and certainly his appearance was a link of association; he did notlook like a modern man, but like a sixteenth-century baron; his beardand his broken nose and his hierarchial air contributed to theresemblance; the jersey he wore reminded one of a cuirass, a coat ofmail. Even in his choice of a dwelling-place he seemed instinctivelyto avoid the modern; he had found a studio in the street, the name ofwhich no one had ever heard before; it was found with difficulty; andthe studio, too, it was hidden behind great crumbling walls, in themiddle of a plot of ground in which some one was growing cabbages. Octave was always, as he would phrase it, _dans une dècheépouvantable_, but he managed to keep a thoroughbred horse in thestable at the end of the garden, and this horse was ordered as soon asthe light failed. He would say, "Mes amis et mes amies, je regrette, mais mon cheval m'attend. " And the women liked to see him mount, andmany thought, I am sure, that he looked like a Centaur as he rodeaway. 

But who was this refined girl? this--a painting tells things thatcannot be translated into words--this olive-skinned girl who mighthave sat to Raphael for a Virgin, so different from Octave's usualwomen? They were of the Montmartre kin; but this woman might be aSpanish princess. And remembering that Octave had said he had takenout the portrait hoping that the Russian who had ordered the Pegasusmight buy it, the thought struck me that she might be the prince'smistress. His mistress! Oh, what fabulous fortune! What might herhistory be? I burned to hear it, and wearied of Octave's seeminglyendless chatter about his method of painting; I had heard all he wassaying many times before, but I listened to it all again, and topropitiate him I regretted that the picture was not painted in hispresent manner, "for there are good things in the picture, " I said, "and the model--you seem to have been lucky with your model. "

"Yes, she was nice to paint from, but it was difficult to get her tosit. A _concierge's_ daughter--you wouldn't think it, would you?"My astonishment amused him, and he began to laugh. "You don't knowher?" he said. "That is Marie Pellegrin, " and when I asked him wherehe had met her he told me, at Alphonsine's; but I did not know whereAlphonsine's was. 

"I'm going to dine there to-night. I'm going to meet her; she's goingback to Russia with the prince; she has been staying in the QuartierBréda on her holiday. _Sacré nom!_ Half-past five, and I haven'twashed my brushes yet!"

In answer to my question, what he meant by going to the Quartier Brédafor a holiday, he said:

"I'll tell you all about that in the carriage. "

But no sooner had we got into the carriage than he remembered that hemust leave word for a woman who had promised to sit to him, andswearing that a message would not delay us for more than a few minuteshe directed the coachman. We were shown into a drawing-room, and thelady ran out of her bedroom, wrapping herself as she ran in a_peignoir_, and the sitting was discussed in the middle of apolished _parquet_ floor. We at last returned to the carriage, but we were hardly seated when he remembered another appointment. Hescribbled notes in the lodges of the _concierges_, and betweenwhiles told me all he knew of the story of Marie Pellegrin. Thisdelicate woman that I had felt could not be of the Montmartre kin wasthe daughter of a _concierge_ on the Boulevard Extérieur. She hadrun away from home at fifteen, had danced at the Elysée Montmartre. 

 Sa jupe avait des trous, Elle aimait des voyous, Ils ont des yeux si doux. 

But one day a Russian prince had caught sight of her, and had builther a palace in the Champs Elysées; but the Russian prince and hispalace bored her. 

The stopping of the carriage interrupted Octave's narrative. "Here weare, " he said, seizing a bell hanging on a jangling wire, and thegreen door in the crumbling wall opened, and I saw an undersizedwoman--I saw Alphonsine! And her portrait, a life-sized caricaturedrawn by Octave, faced me from the white-washed wall of the hen-coop. He had drawn her two cats purring about her legs, and had writtenunder it, "Ils viennent après le mou. " Her garden was a gravelledspace; I think there was one tree in it. A tent had been stretchedfrom wall to wall; and a seedy-looking waiter laid the tables (therewere two), placing bottles of wine in front of each knife and fork, and bread in long sticks at regular intervals. He was constantlydisturbed by the ringing of the bell, and had to run to the door toadmit the company. Here and there I recognised faces that I hadalready seen in the studio; Clementine, who last year was studying thepart of Elsa and this year was singing, "La femme de feu, la cui, lacui, la cuisinière, " in a _café chantant_; and Margaret Byron, who had just retreated from Russia--a disastrous campaign hers wassaid to have been. The greater number were _hors concours_, forAlphonsine's was to the aged courtesan what Chelsea Hospital is to theaged soldier. It was a sort of human garden full of the sound andcolour of October. 

I scrutinised the crowd. How could any one of these women interest thewoman whose portrait I had seen in Barrès's studio? That one, forinstance, whom I saw every morning in the Rue des Martyres, in agreasy _peignoir_, going marketing, a basket on her arm. Searchas I would I could not find a friend for Marie among the women nor alover among the men--neither of those two stout middle-aged men withlarge whiskers, who had probably once been stockbrokers, nor thewithered journalist whom I heard speaking to Octave about a duel hehad fought recently; nor the little sandy Scotchman whose French wasnot understood by the women and whose English was nearlyunintelligible to me; nor the man who looked like a head-waiter--Alphonsine's lover; he had been a waiter, and he told you with the airof Napoleon describing Waterloo that he had "created" a certainfashionable café on the Boulevard. I could not attribute any one ofthese men to Marie; and Octave spoke of her with indifference;she had interested him to paint, and now he hoped she would get theRussian to buy her picture. 

"But she's not here, " I said. 

"She'll be here presently, " Octave answered, and he went on talking toClementine, a fair pretty woman whom one saw every night at the _RatMort_. It was when the soup-plates were being taken away that I sawa young woman dressed in black coming across the garden. 

It was she, Marie Pellegrin. 

She wore a dress similar to the one she wore in her portrait, a blacksilk covered with lace, and her black hair was swathed about hershapely little head. She was her portrait and something more. Hersmile was her own, a sad little smile that seemed to come out of adepth of her being, and her voice was a little musical voice, irresponsible as a bird's, and during dinner I noticed how she brokeinto speech abruptly as a bird breaks into song, and she stopped asabruptly. I never saw a woman so like herself, and sometimes herbeauty brought a little mist into my eyes, and I lost sight of her orvery nearly, and I went on eating mechanically. Dinner seemed to endsuddenly, and before I knew that it was over we were getting up fromtable. 

As we went towards the house where coffee was being served, Marieasked me if I played cards, but I excused myself, saying that I wouldprefer to sit and look at her; and just then a thin woman with redhair, who had arrived at the same time as Marie and who had sat nexther at dinner, was introduced to me, and I was told that she wasMarie's intimate friend, and that the two lived together wheneverMarie returned to Montmartre. She was known as _La Glue_, herreal name was Victorine, she had sat for Manet's picture of Olympe, but that was years ago. The face was thinner, but I recognised the redhair and the brown eyes, small eyes set closely, reminding one of_des petits verres de cognac_. Her sketch-book was being passedround, and as it came into my hands I noticed that she did not wearstays and was dressed in old grey woollen. She lit cigarette aftercigarette, and leaned over Marie with her arm about her shoulder, advising her what cards to play. The game was baccarat, and in alittle while I saw that Marie was losing a great deal of money, and alittle later I saw _La Glue_ trying to persuade her away from thecard-table. 

"One more deal. " That deal lost her the last louis she had placed onthe table. "Some one will have to pay my cab, " she said. 

We were going to the Elysée Montmartre, and Alphonsine lent her acouple of louis, _pour passer sa soirée_, and we all went away incarriages, the little horses straining up the steep streets; theplumes of the women's hats floating over the carriage hoods. Marie wasin one of the front carriages, and was waiting for us on the highsteps leading from the street to the _bal_. 

"It's my last night, " she said, "the last night I shall see the Elyséefor many a month. "

"You'll soon be back again?"

"You see, I have been offered five hundred thousand francs to go toRussia for three years. Fancy three years without seeing the Elysée, "and she looked round as an angel might look upon Paradise out of whichshe is about to be driven. "The trees are beautiful, " she said, "they're like a fairy tale, " and that is exactly what they were like, rising into the summer darkness, unnaturally green above the electriclights. In the middle of a circle of white globes the orchestra playedupon an _estrade_, and everyone whirled his partner as if shewere a top. "I always sit over there under the trees in the angle, "she said; and she was about to invite me to come and sit with her whenher attention was distracted from me; for the people had drawntogether into groups, and I heard everybody whispering: "That's MariePellegrin. " Seeing her coming, her waiter with much ostentation beganto draw aside tables and chairs, and in a few minutes she was sittingunder her tree, she and _La Glue_ together, their friends aboutthem, Marie distributing absinthe, brandy, and cigarettes. A littleprocession suddenly formed under the trees and came towards her, andMarie was presented with a great basket of flowers, and all hercompany with bouquets; and a little cheer went up from different partsof the _bal_, "Vive Marie Pellegrin, la reine de l'Elysée. "

The music began again, the people rushed to see a quadrille where twowomen, with ease, were kicking off men's hats; and while watching themI heard that a special display of fireworks had been arranged inMarie's honour, the news having got about that this was her last nightat the Elysée. A swishing sound was heard; the rocket rose to itsheight high up in the thick sky. Then it dipped over, the star fell alittle way and burst: it melted into turquoise blue, and changed toruby red, beautiful as the colour of flowers, roses or tulips. Thefalling fire changed again and again. And Marie stood on a chair andwatched till the last sparks vanished. 

"Doesn't she look like my picture now?" said Octave. 

"You seemed to have divined her soul. "

He shrugged his shoulders contemptuously. "I'm not a psychologist; Iam a painter. But I must get a word with her, " and with a carelessnessthat was almost insolence, he pushed his way into the crowd and calledher, saying he wanted to speak to her; and they walked round the_bal_ together. I could not understand his indifference to hercharm, and asked myself if he had always been so indifferent. In alittle while they returned. 

"I'll do my best, " I heard her say; and she ran back to join hercompanions. 

"I suppose you've seen enough of the Elysée?"

"Ah! qu'elle est jolie ce soir; et elle ferait joliment marcher leRusse. "

We walked on in silence. Octave did not notice that he had saidanything to jar my feelings; he was thinking of his portrait, andpresently he said that he was sorry she was going to Russia. 

"I should like to begin another portrait, now that I have learned topaint. "

"Do you think she'll go to Russia?"

"Yes, she'll go there; but she'll come back one of these days, andI'll get her to sit again. It is extraordinary how little is known ofthe art of painting; the art is forgotten. The old masters didperfectly in two days what we spend weeks fumbling at. In two daysRubens finished his _grisaille_, and the glazing was done withcertainty, with skill, with ease in half an hour! He could get moredepth of colour with a glaze than any one can to-day, however muchpaint is put on the canvas. The old masters had method; now there'snone. One brush as well as another, rub the paint up or down, itdoesn't matter so long as the canvas is covered. Manet began it, andCézanne has--well, filed the petition: painting is bankrupt. "

I listened to him a little wearily, for I had heard all he was sayingmany times before; but Octave always talked as he wanted to talk, andthis evening he wanted to talk of painting, not of Marie, and I wasglad when we came to the spot where our ways parted. 

"You know that the Russian is coming to the studio to-morrow; I hopehe'll buy the portrait. "

"I hope he will, " I said. "I'd buy it myself if I could afford it. "

"I'd prefer you to have something I have done since, unless it be thewoman you're after ... But one minute. You're coming to sit to me theday after to-morrow?"

"Yes, " I said, "I'll come. "

"And then I'll be able to tell you if he has bought the picture. "

Three days afterwards I asked Octave on the threshold if the Russianhad bought the portrait, and he told me nothing had been definitelysettled yet. 

Marie had gone to St. Petersburg with the prince, and this was thelast news I had of her for many months. But a week rarely passedwithout something happening to remind me of her. One day a books oftravels in Siberia opened at a passage telling how a boy belonging toa tribe of Asiatic savages had been taken from his deserts, where hehad been found deserted and dying, and brought to Moscow. Thegentleman who had found him adopted and educated him, and thereclaimed savage became in time a fashionable young man about town, betraying no trace of his origin until one day he happened to meet oneof his tribe. The man had come to Moscow to sell skins; and the smellof the skins awoke a longing for the desert. The reclaimed savage grewmelancholy; his adopted father tried in vain to overcome the originalinstinct; presents of money did not soothe his homesickness. Hedisappeared, and was not heard of for years until one day a caravancame back with the news of a man among the savages who had betrayedhimself by speaking French. On being questioned, he denied anyknowledge of French; he said he had never been to St. Petersburg, nordid he wish to go there. And what was this story but the story ofMarie Pellegrin, who, when weary of Russian princes and palaces, returned for her holiday to the Quartier Bréda?

A few days afterwards I heard in Barrès's studio that she had escapedfrom Russia; and that evening I went to Alphonsine's to dinner, hopingto see her there. But she was not there. There was no one there exceptClementine and the two stockbrokers; and I waited eagerly for news ofher. I did not like to mention her name, and the dreary dinner wasnearly over before her name was mentioned. I heard that she was ill;no, not dying, but very ill. Alphonsine gave me her address; a littlehigher up on the same side as the Cirque Fernando, nearly facing theElysée Montmartre. The number I could inquire out, she said, and Iwent away in a cab up the steep and stony Rue des Martyres, noticingthe café and then the _brasserie_ and a little higher up thefruit-seller and the photographer. When the mind is at stress onenotices the casual, and mine was at stress, and too agitated to think. The first house we stopped at happened to be the right one, and the_concierge_ said, "The fourth floor. " As I went upstairs Ithought of _La Glue_, of her untidy dress and her red hair, andit was she who answered the bell and asked me into an unfurnisheddrawing-room, and we stood by the chimneypiece. 

"She's talking of going to the Elysée to-night. Won't you come in?She'd like to see you. There are three or four of us here. You knowthem. Clementine, Margaret Byron?" And she mentioned some other namesthat I did not remember, and opening a door she cried: "Marie, here'sa visitor for you, a gentleman from Alphonsine's. You know, dear, theEnglishman, Octave Barrès's friend. "

She gave me her hand, and I held it a long while. 

"Comme les Anglais sont gentils. Dès qu'on est malade--"

I don't think Marie finished the sentence, if she did I did not hearher; but I remember quite well that she spoke of my distaste forcards. 

"You didn't play that night at Alphonsine's when I lost all my money. You preferred to look at Victorine's drawings. She has done somebetter ones. Go and look at them, and let's finish our game. Then I'lltalk to you. So you heard about me at Alphonsine's? They say I'm veryill, don't they? But now that I've come back I'll soon get well. I'malways well at Montmartre, amn't I, Victorine?" "Nous ne sommes pasinstallés encore, " Marie said, referring to the scarcity of furniture, and to the clock and candelabra which stood on the floor. But if therewere too few chairs, there was a good deal of money and jewelleryamong the bed-clothes; and Marie toyed with this jewellery during thegames. She wore large lace sleeves, and the thin arms showed delicateand slight when she raised them to change her ear-rings. Her smallbeauty, fashioned like an ivory, contrasted with the coarse featuresabout her, and the little nose with beautifully shaped nostrils, aboveall the mouth fading at the ends into faint indecisions. Every now andthen a tenderness came over her face; Octave had seen the essential inher, whatever he might say; he had painted herself--her soul; andMarie's soul rose up like a water-flower in her eyes, and then thesoul sank out of sight, and I saw another Marie, _une grue_, playing cards with five others from Alphonsine's, losing her money andher health. A bottle of absinthe stood on a beautiful Empire tablethat her prince had given her, and Bijou, Clementine's little dog, slept on an embroidered cushion. Bijou was one of those dear littleJapanese or Chinese spaniels, those dogs that are like the KingCharles. She was going to have puppies, and I was stroking her silkycoat thinking of her coming trouble, when I suddenly heardClementine's voice raised above the others, and looking up I saw agreat animation in her face; I heard that the cards had not beenfairly dealt, and then the women threw their cards aside, and _LaGlue_ told Clementine that she was not wanted, that _elle feraitbien de débarrasser les planches_, that was the expression sheused. I heard further accusations, and among them the plaintive voiceof Marie begging of me not to believe what they said. The women caughteach other by the hair, and tore at each other's faces, and Marieraised herself up in bed and implored them to cease; and then she fellback crying. For a moment it seemed as if they were going to sit downto cards again, but suddenly everybody snatched her own money and theneverybody snatched at the money within her reach; and, calling eachother thieves, they struggled through the door, and I heard themquarrelling all the way down the staircase. Bijou jumped from herchair and followed her mistress. 

"Help me to look, " Marie said; and looking I saw her faint handsseeking through the bed-clothes. Some jewellery was missing, abracelet and some pearls, as well as all her money. Marie fell backamong the pillows unable to speak, and every moment I dreaded a flowof blood. She began to cry, and the little lace handkerchief was soonsoaking. I had to find her another. The money that had been taken hadbeen paid her by a _fournisseur_ in the _Quartier_, who hadgiven her two thousand francs for her _garniture de cheminée_. Afew francs were found among the bed-clothes, and these few francs, shesaid, were sufficient _pour passer sa soirée_, and she begged meto go the dressmaker to inquire for the gown that had been promisedfor ten o'clock. 

"I shall be at the Elysée by eleven. _Au revoir, au revoir!_ Letme rest a little now. I shall see you to-night. You know where Ialways sit, in the left-hand corner; they always keep those seats forme. "

Her eyes closed, I could see that she was already asleep, and her calmand reasonable sleep reminded me of her agitated and unreasonablelife; and I stood looking at her, at this poor butterfly who was lyinghere all alone, robbed by her friends and associates. But she sleptcontentedly, having found a few francs that they had overlooked amidthe bedclothes, enough to enable her to pass her evening at theElysée! The prince might be written to; but he, no doubt, was weary ofher inability to lead a respectable life, and knew, no doubt, that ifhe were to send her money, it would go as his last gift had gone. Ifshe lived, Marie would one day be selling fried potatoes on thestreets. And this decadence--was it her fault? Octave would say:"Qu'est ce que cela peut nous faire, une fille plus ou moins fichue... Si je pouvais réussir un peu dans ce sacré métier!" This was howhe talked, but he thought more profoundly in his painting; his pictureof her was something more than mere sarcasm. 

She was going to the Elysée to-night. It was just six o'clock, so shewanted her dress by ten. I must hasten away to the dressmaker at once;it might be wiser not--she lay in bed peaceful and beautiful; at theElysée she would be drinking absinthe and smoking cigarettes untilthree in the morning. But I had promised: she wouldn't forgive me if Ididn't, and I went. 

The dressmaker said that Madame Pellegrin would have her dress bynine, and at half-past ten I was at the Elysée waiting for her. 

How many times did I walk round the gravel path, wearying of theunnatural green of the chestnut leaves and of the high kicking in thequadrilles? Now and then there would be a rush of people, and then thehuman tide would disperse again under the trees among the zinc chairsand tables, for the enjoyment of bocks and cigars. I noticed thatMarie's friends spent their evening in the left-hand corner; but theydid not call me to drink with them, knowing well that I knew the moneythey were spending was stolen money. 

I left the place discontented and weary, glad in a way that Marie hadnot come. No doubt the dressmaker had disappointed her, or maybe shehad felt too ill. There was no time to go to inquire in the morning, for I was breakfasting with Octave, and in the afternoon sitting tohim. 

We were in the middle of the sitting, he had just sketched in my head, when we heard footsteps on the stairs. 

"Only some women, " he said; "I've a mind not to open the door. "

"But do, " I said, feeling sure the women were Marie's friends bringingnews of her. And it was so. She had been found dead on her balconydressed in the gown that had just come home from the dressmaker. 

I hoped that Octave would not try to pass the matter off with someribald jest, and I was surprised at his gravity. "Even Octave, " Isaid, "refrains, _on ne blague pas la mort_. "

"But what was she doing on the balcony?" he asked. "What I don'tunderstand is the balcony. "

We all stood looking at her picture, trying to read the face. 

"I suppose she went out to look at the fireworks; they begin abouteleven. "

It was one of the women who had spoken, and her remark seemed toexplain the picture. 

CHAPTER V

LA BUTTE

To-morrow I shall drive to breakfast, seeing Paris continuouslyunfolding, prospect after prospect, green swards, white buildings, villas engarlanded; to-day I drive to breakfast through the whitetorridities of Rue Blanche. The back of the coachman grows drowsier, and would have rounded off into sleep long ago had it not been for thegreat paving stones that swing the vehicle from side to side, and wehave to climb the Rue Lepic, and the poor little fainting animal willnever be able to draw me to the Butte. So I dismiss my carriage, halfout of pity, half out of a wish to study the Rue Lepic, so typical isit of the upper lower classes. In the Rue Blanche there are_portes-cochères_, but in Rue Lepic there are narrow doors, partially grated, open on narrow passages at the end of which, squeezed between the wall and the stairs, are small rooms where_concierges_ sit, eternally _en camisole_, amid vegetablesand sewing. The wooden blinds are flung back on the faded yellowwalls, revealing a portion of white bed-curtain and a heavymiddle-aged woman, _en camisole_, passing between the cookingstove, in which a rabbit in a tin pail lies steeping, and the mensitting at their trades in the windows. The smell of leather followsme for several steps; a few doors farther a girl sits trimming abonnet, her mother beside her. The girl looks up, pale with theexhausting heat. At the corner of the next street there is the_marchand de vins_, and opposite the dirty little _charbonnier_, and standing about a little hole which he calls his _boutique_a group of women in discoloured _peignoirs_ and heavy carpetslippers. They have baskets on their arms. Everywhere traces ofmeagre and humble life, but nowhere do I see the demented wretchcommon in our London streets--the man with bare feet, the furtiveand frightened creature, gnawing a crust and drawing a black, tattered shirt about his consumptive chest. 

The asphalt is melting, the reverberation of the stones intolerable, my feet ache and burn. At the top of the street I enter a still poorerneighbourhood, a still steeper street, but so narrow that the shadowhas already begun to draw out on the pavements. At the top of thestreet is a stairway, and above the stairway a grassy knoll, and abovethe knoll a windmill lifts its black and motionless arms. For the millis now a mute ornament, a sign for the _Bal du Moulin de laGalette_. 

As I ascend the street grows whiter, and at the Butte it is empty ofeverything except the white rays of noon. There are some dustystreets, and silhouetting against the dim sky a dilapidated façade ofsome broken pillars. Some stand in the midst of ruined gardens, circled by high walls crumbling and white, and looking through abroken gateway I see a fountain splashing, but nowhere the inhabitantsthat correspond to these houses--only a workwoman, a grisette, a childcrying in the dust. The Butte Montmartre is full of suggestion; grandfolk must at some time have lived there. Could it be that this placewas once country? To-day it is full of romantic idleness andabandonment. 

On my left an iron gateway, swinging on rusty hinges, leads on to alarge terrace, at the end of which is a row of houses. It is in one ofthese houses that my friend lives, and as I pull the bell I think thatthe pleasure of seeing him is worth the ascent, and my thoughts floatback over the long time I have known Paul. We have known each otheralways, since we began to write. But Paul is not at home. The servantcomes to the door with a baby in her arms, another baby! and tells methat Monsieur et Madame are gone out for the day. No breakfast, nosmoke, no talk about literature, only a long walk back--cabs are notfound at these heights--a long walk back through the roasting sun. Andit is no consolation to be told that I should have written and warnedthem I was coming. 

But I must rest, and ask leave to do so, and the servant brings me insome claret and a siphon. The study is better to sit in than the frontroom, for in the front room, although the shutters are closed, thewhite rays pierce through the chinks, and lie like sword-blades alongthe floor. The study is pleasant and the wine refreshing. The houseseems built on the sheer hillside. Fifty feet--more than that--ahundred feet under me there are gardens, gardens caught somehow in thehollow of the hill, and planted with trees, tall trees, for swingshang out of them, otherwise I should not know they were tall. Fromthis window they look like shrubs, and beyond the houses that surroundthese gardens Paris spreads out over the plain, an endless tide ofbricks and stone, splashed with white when the sun shines on somerailway station or great boulevard: a dim reddish mass, like agigantic brickfield, and far away a line of hills, and above the plaina sky as pale and faint as the blue ash of a cigarette. 

I can never look upon this city without strong emotion; it has beenall my life to me. I came here in my youth, I relinquished myself toParis, never extending once my adventure beyond Bas Meudon, Villed'Avray, Fontainebleau--and Paris has made me. How much of my mind doI owe to Paris? And by thus acquiring a fatherland more ideal than theone birth had arrogantly imposed, because deliberately chosen, I havedoubled my span of life. Do I not exist in two countries? Have I notfurnished myself with two sets of thoughts and sensations? Ah! thedelicate delight of owning _un pays ami_--a country where you maygo when you are weary to madness of the routine of life, sure offinding there all the sensations of home, plus those of irresponsiblecaprice. The pleasure of a literature that is yours without beingwholly your own, a literature that is like an exquisite mistress, inwhom you find consolation for all the commonplaces of life! Thecomparison is perfect, for although I know these French folk betterthan all else in the world, they must ever remain my pleasure, and notmy work in life. It is strange that this should be so, for in truth Iknow them strangely well. I can see them living their lives from hourto hour; I know what they would say on any given occasion. 

There is Paul. I understand nothing more completely than that man'smind. I know its habitual colour and every varying shade, and yet Imay not make him the hero of a novel when I lay the scene inMontmartre, though I know it so well. I know when he dresses, how longhe takes to dress, and what he wears. I know the breakfast he eats, and the streets down which he passes--their shape, their colour, theirsmell. I know exactly how life has come to him, how it has affectedhim. The day I met him in London! Paul in London! He was there to meet_une petite fermière_ with whom he had become infatuated when hewent to Normandy to finish his novel. Paul is _foncièrement bon; hemarried her_, and this is their abode. There is the _salle-à-manger_, furnished with a nice sideboard in oak, and six chairs to match; on theleft is their bedroom, and there is the baby's cot, a present from_le grand, le cher et illustre maître_. 

Paul and Mrs. Paul get up at twelve, and they loiter over breakfast;some friends come in and they loiter over les _petits verres_. About four Paul begins to write his article, which he finishes ornearly finishes before dinner. They loiter over dinner until it istime for Paul to take his article to the newspaper. He loiters in theprinting office or the cafe until his proof is ready, and when that iscorrected he loiters in the many cafés of the Faubourg Montmartre, smoking interminable cigars, finding his way back to the Butte betweenthree and four in the morning. Paul is fat and of an equabletemperament. He believes in naturalism all the day, particularly aftera breakfast over _les petits verres_. He never said an unkindword to any one, and I am sure never thought one. He used to be fondof grisettes, but since he married he has thought of no one but hiswife. _Il écrit des choses raides_, but no woman ever had abetter husband. And now you know him as well as I do. Here are his ownbooks, "The End of Lucie Pellegrin, " the story that I have justfinished writing: I think I must explain how it was that I have cometo rewrite one of Paul's stories, the best he ever wrote. I rememberasking him why he called her Lucie, and he was surprised to hear hername was Marie; he never knew her, he had never been to Alphonsine's, and he had told the story as he had picked it up from the women whoturned into the Rat Mort at midnight for a _soupe à l'oignon_. Hesaid it was a pity he did not know me when he was writing it, for Icould have told him her story more sympathetically than the women inthe Rat Mort, supplying him with many pretty details that they hadnever noticed or had forgotten. It would have been easy for me to havedone this, for Marie Pellegrin is enshrined in my memory like aminiature in a case. I press a spring, and I see the beautifullyshaped little head, the pale olive face, the dark eyes, and theblue-black hair. Marie Pellegrin is really part of my own story, sowhy should I have any scruple about telling it? Merely because myfriend had written it from hearsay? Whereas I knew her; I saw her onher death-bed. Chance made me her natural historian. Now I think thatevery one will accept my excuses, and will acquit me of plagiarism. 

I see the Rougon-Macquart series, each volume presented to him by theauthor, Goncourt, Huysmans, Duranty, Céard, Maupassant, Hennique, etc. ; in a word, the works of those with whom I grew up, those whotied my first literary pinafore round my neck. But here are "LesMoralités Legendaires" by Jules Laforgue, and "Les Illuminations" byRambaud. Paul has not read these books; they were sent to him, Isuppose, for review, and put away on the bookcase, all uncut; theirauthors do not visit here. 

And this sets me thinking that one knows very little of any generationexcept one's own. True that I know a little more of the symboliststhan Paul. I am the youngest of the naturalists, the eldest of thesymbolists. The naturalists affected the art of painting, thesymbolists the art of music; and since the symbolists there has beenno artistic manifestation--the game is played out. When Huysmans andPaul and myself are dead, it will be as impossible to write anaturalistic novel as to revive the megatherium. Where is Hennique?When Monet is dead it will be as impossible to paint animpressionistic picture as to revive the ichthyosaurus. A little worldof ideas goes by every five-and-twenty years, and the next thatemerges will be incomprehensible to me, as incomprehensible as Monetwas to Corot.... Was the young generation knocking at the door of theOpéra Comique last night? If the music was the young generation, I amsorry for it. It was the second time I had gone. I had been to hearthe music, and I left exasperated after the third act. A friend waswith me and he left, but for different reasons; he suffered in hisears; it was my intelligence that suffered. Why did the flute play thechromatic scale when the boy said, "Il faut que cela soit un grandnavire, " and why were all the cellos in motion when the girl answered, "Cela ou bien tout autre chose?" I suffered because of the divorce ofthe orchestra and singers, uniting perhaps at the end of the scene. Itwas speaking through music, no more, monotonous as the Sahara, leagueafter league, and I lost amid sands. A chord is heard in "Lohengrin"to sustain Elsa's voice, and it performs its purpose; a motive isheard to attract attention to a certain part of the story, and itfills its purpose, when Ortrud shrieks out the motive of the secret, and in its simplest form, at the church door, the method may becriticised as crude, but the crudest melodrama is better than thisdesert wandering. While I ponder on the music of the youngergeneration, remembering the perplexity it had caused me, I hear avagrant singing on the other side of the terrace:

[Illustration]

 Moi, je m'en fous, Je reste dans mon trou

and I say: "I hear the truth in the mouth of the vagrant minstrel, onewho possibly has no _trou_ wherein to lay his head. " _Et moiaussi, je reste dans mon trou, et mon trou est assez beau pour que j'yreste, car mon trou est_--Richard Wagner. My _trou_ is theRing--the Sacrosanct Ring. Again I fall to musing. The intention ofLiszt and Wagner and Strauss was to write music. However long Wotanmight ponder on Mother Earth the moment comes when the violins beginto sing; ah! how the spring uncloses in the orchestra, and the loversfly to the woods!... 

The vagrant continued his wail, and forgetful of Paul, forgetful ofall things but the philosophy of the minstrel of the Butte, I pickedmy way down the tortuous streets repeating:

[Illustration]

Moi, je m'en fous, Je reste dans mon trou

CHAPTER VI

SPENT LOVES

I am going to see dear and affectionate friends. The train would takeme to them, that droll little _chemin de fer de ceinture_, and itseems a pity to miss the Gare St. Lazare, its Sunday morning tumult ofParisians starting with their mistresses and their wives for afavourite suburb. I never run up these wide stairways leading to thegreat wide galleries full of bookstalls (charming yellow notes), andpierced with little _guichets_ painted round with blue, withoutexperiencing a sensation of happy lightness--a light-headedness that Iassociate with the month of May in Paris. But the tramway that passesthrough the Place de la Concorde goes as far as Passy, and though Ilove the droll little _chemin de fer de ceinture_ I love thistramway better. It speeds along the quays between the Seine and thegarden of the Champs Elysées, through miles of chestnut bloom, theroadway chequered with shadows of chestnut leaves; the branches meetoverhead, and in a faint delirium of the senses I catch at a bloom, cherish it for a moment, and cast it away. The plucky littlesteamboats are making for the landing-places, stemming the current. Ilove this sprightly little river better than the melancholy Thames, along whose banks saturnine immoralities flourish like bulrushes!Behold the white architecture, the pillars, the balustraded steps, thedomes in the blue air, the monumented swards! Paris, like all pagancities, is full of statues. A little later we roll past gardens, gaiety is in the air.... And then the streets of Passy begin toappear, mean streets, like London streets. I like them not; but therailway station is compensation; the little railway station like ahouse of cards under toy trees, and the train steaming out into thefanciful country. The bright wood along which it speeds is like theseason's millinery. 

It is pleasant to notice everything in Paris, the flymen asleep ontheir box-seats, the little horses dozing beneath the chestnut trees, the bloused workmen leaning over a green-painted table in an arbour, drinking wine at sixteen sous the litre, the villas of Auteuil, richwoodwork, rich iron railings, and the summer hush about villasengarlanded. Auteuil is so French, its symbolism enchants me. Auteuilis like a flower, its petals opening out to the kiss of the air, itsroots feeling for way among the rich earth. Ah, the land of France, its vineyards and orchards, its earthly life! Thoughts come unbidden, my thoughts sing together, and I hardly knowing what they are singing. My thoughts are singing like the sun; do not ask me their meaning;they mean as much and as little as the sun that I am part of--thesun of France that I shall enjoy for thirty days. May takes me to dearand affectionate friends who await me at Auteuil, and June takes meaway from them. There is the villa! And there amid the engarlandingtrees my friend, dressed in pale yellow, sits in front of his easel. How the sunlight plays through the foliage, leaping through the rich, long grass; and amid the rhododendrons in bloom sits a little girl offour, his model, her frock and cap impossibly white under the great, gaudy greenery. 

Year after year the same affectionate welcome, the same spontaneouswelcome in this garden of rhododendrons and chestnut bloom. I wouldlinger in the garden, but I may not, for breakfast is ready _et ilne faut pas faire manquer la messe à Madame. La messe_! How gentlethe word is, much gentler than our word, mass, and it shocks us hardlyat all to see an old lady going away in her carriage _pour entendrela messe_. Religion purged of faith is a pleasant, almost a prettything. Some fruits are better dried than fresh; religion is such aone, and religion, when nothing is left of it but the pleasant, familiar habit, may be defended, for were it not for our habits lifewould be unrecorded, it would be all on the flat, as we would say ifwe were talking about a picture without perspective. Our habits areour stories, and tell whence we have come and how we came to be whatwe are. This is quite a pretty reflection, but there is no time tothink the matter out--here is the doctor! He lifts his skull-cap, andhow beautiful is the gesture; his dignity is the dignity that onlygoodness gives; and his goodness is a pure gift, existing independentof formula, a thing in itself, like Manet's painting. It was Degas whosaid, "A man whose profile no one ever saw, " and the aphorism remindsus of the beautiful goodness that floats over his face, a light fromParadise. But why from Paradise? Paradise is an ugly ecclesiasticalinvention, and angels are an ugly Hebrew invention. It is unpardonableto think of angels in Auteuil; an angel is a prig compared to the deardoctor, and an angel has wings. Well, so had this admirable chicken, abird that was grown for the use of the table, produced like avegetable. A dear bird that was never allowed to run about and wearyitself as our helpless English chicken is; it lived to get fat withoutacquiring any useless knowledge or desire of life; it became a caponin tender years, and then a pipe was introduced into its mouth and itwas fed by machinery until it could hardly walk, until it could onlystagger to its bed, and there it lay in happy digestion until the hourcame for it to be crammed again. So did it grow up without knowledgeor sensation or feeling of life, moving gradually, peacefully towardsits predestined end--a delicious repast! What better end, what greaterglory than to be a fat chicken? The carcasses of sheep that hang inbutchers' shops are beginning to horrify the conscience of Europe. Tocut a sheep's throat is an offensive act, but to clip out a bird'stongue with a long pair of scissors made for the purpose is genteel. It is true that it beats its wings for a few moments, but we must notallow ourselves to be disturbed by a mere flutter of feathers. Man ismerciful, and saved it from life. It grew like an asparagus! Andtalking of asparagus, here are some from Argenteuil thick as umbrellasand so succulent! A word about the wine. French red wines in Englandalways seem to taste like ink, but in France they taste of the sun. Melons are better in June--that one comes, no doubt, from Algeria. Itis, however, the kind I like best, the rich, red melon that one eatsonly in France; a thing of the moment, unrememberable; but the chickenwill never be forgotten; twenty years hence I shall be talking of achicken, that in becoming a fat chicken acquired twenty years ofimmortality--which of us will acquire as many?

As we rise from table the doctor calls me into his studio: for hewould give me an excellent cigar before he bids me good-bye, andhaving lighted it I follow my friend to the studio at the end of thegarden, to that airy drawing-room which he has furnished in paleyellow and dark blue. On the walls are examples of the great modernmasters--Manet and Monet. That view of a plain by Monet--is it notfacile? It flows like a Japanese water-colour: the low horizonevaporating in the low light, the spire of the town visible in thehaze. And look at the celebrated "Leçon de Danse" by Degas--thatdancer descending the spiral staircase, only her legs are visible, thestaircase cutting the picture in twain. On the right is the dancingclass and the dancing master; something has gone wrong, and he holdsout his hands in entreaty; a group of dancers are seated on chairs inthe foreground, and their mothers are covering their shoulders withshawls--good mothers anxious for their daughters' welfare, for theiradvancement in life. 

This picture betrays a mind curious, inquisitive and mordant; and thatplaid shawl is as unexpected as an adjective of Flaubert's. A portraitby Manet hangs close by, large, permanent and mysterious as nature. Degas is more intellectual, but how little is intellect compared witha gift like Manet's! Yesterday I was in the Louvre, and when weariedwith examination and debate--I had gone there on a special errand--Iturned into the Salle Carrée for relaxation, and there wandered about, waiting to be attracted. Long ago the Mona Liza was my adventure, andI remember how Titian's "Entombment" enchanted me; another year Idelighted in the smooth impartiality of a Terbourg interior; but thisyear Rembrandt's portrait of his wife held me at gaze. The face tellsof her woman's life, her woman's weakness, and she seems conscious ofthe burden of her sex, and of the burden of her own special lot--sheis Rembrandt's wife, a servant, a satellite, a watcher. The emotionthat this picture awakens is an almost physical emotion. It gets atyou like music, like a sudden breath of perfume. When I approach, hereyes fade into brown shadow, but when I withdraw they begin tellingher story. The mouth is no more than a little shadow, but what wistfultenderness there is in it! and the colour of the face is white, faintly tinted with bitumen, and in the cheeks some rose madder comesthrough the yellow. She wears a fur jacket, but the fur was no troubleto Rembrandt; he did not strive for realism. It is fur, that issufficient. Grey pearls hang in her ears, there is a brooch upon herbreast, and a hand at the bottom of the picture passing out of theframe, and that hand reminds one, as the chin does, of the old storythat God took a little clay and made man out of it. That chin and thathand and arm are moulded without display of knowledge, as Naturemoulds. The picture seems as if it had been breathed upon the canvas. Did not a great poet once say that God breathed into Adam? and here itis even so. 

The other pictures seem dry, insignificant; the Mona Liza, celebratedin literature, hanging a few feet away, seems factitious when comparedwith this portrait; I have heard that tedious smile excused on theground that she is smiling at the nonsense she hears talked about her;that hesitating smile which held my youth in tether has come to seembut a grimace; and the pale mountains no more mysterious than a globeor map seen from a little distance. The Mona Liza is a sort of riddle, an acrostic, a poetical decoction, a ballade, a rondel, a villanelleor ballade with double burden, a sestina, that is what it is like, asestina or chant royal. The Mona Liza, being literature in intentionrather than painting, has drawn round her many poets. We must forgiveher many mediocre verses for the sake of one incomparable prosepassage. She has passed out of that mysterious misuse of oil paint, that arid glazing of _terre verte_, and has come into herpossession of eternal life, into the immortality of Pater's prose. Degas is wilting already; year after year he will wither, until oneday some great prose writer will arise and transfer his spirit intoits proper medium--literature. The Mona Liza and the "Leçon de Danse"are intellectual pictures; they were painted with the brains ratherthan with the temperaments; and what is any intellect compared with agift like Manet's! Leonardo made roads; Degas makes witticisms. Yesterday I heard one that delighted me far more than any road would, for I have given up bicycling. Somebody was saying he did not likeDaumier, and Degas preserved silence for a long while. "If you were toshow Raphael, " he said at last, "a Daumier, he would admire it, hewould take off his hat; but if you were to show him a Cabanel he wouldsay with a sigh 'That is my fault!'"

My reverie is broken by the piano; my friend is playing, and it ispleasant to listen to music in this airy studio. But there are women Imust see, women whom I see every time I go to Paris, and too much timehas been spent in the studio--I must go. 

But where shall I go? My thoughts strike through the little streets ofPassy, measuring the distance between Passy and the Arc de Triomphe. For a moment I think that I might sit under the trees and watch thepeople returning from the races. Were she not dead I might stop at herlittle house in the fortifications among the lilac trees. There is herportrait by Manet on the wall, the very toque she used to wear. Howwonderful the touch is; the beads--how well they are rendered! Andwhile thinking of the extraordinary handicraft I remember his studio, and the tall fair woman like a tea-rose coming into it: Mary Laurant!The daughter of a peasant, and the mistress of all the greatmen--perhaps I should have said of all the distinguished men. I usedto call her _toute la lyre_. 

The last time I saw her we talked about Manet. She said that everyyear she took the first lilac to lay upon his grave. Is there one ofher many lovers who brings flowers to her grave? What was sorememberable about her was her pleasure in life, and her desire to getall the pleasure, and her consciousness of her desire to enjoy everymoment of her life. Evans, the great dentist, settled two thousand ayear upon her, and how angry he was one night on meeting Manet on thestaircase! In order to rid herself of her lover she invited him todinner, intending to plead a sick headache after dinner.... She mustgo and lie down. But as soon as her guest was gone she took off the_peignoir_ which hid her ball dress and signed to Manet, who waswaiting at the street corner, with her handkerchief. But as they wentdownstairs together whom should they meet but the dentist _qui aoublié ses carnets_. And he was so disappointed at meeting hisbeautiful but deceitful mistress that he didn't visit her again forthree or four days. His anger mattered very little to Mary. Someoneelse settled two thousand a year more upon her; and having fourthousand a year or thereabouts, she dedicated herself to the love andconversation of those who wrote books and music and painted pictures. 

We humans are more complicated than animals, and we love through theimagination, at least the imagination stimulates the senses, acting asa sort of adjuvant. The barmaid falls in love with No. 1 because hewipes a glass better than No. 2, and Mary fell in love with Coppée onaccount of his sonnet "Le Lys, " and she grew indifferent when he wrotepoems like "La Nourrice" or "Le petit épicier de Montrouge qui cassaitle sucre avec mélancolie. " And it was at this time when their lovestory was at wane that I became a competitor. But one day MadameAlbazi came to Manet's studio, a splendid creature in a carriage drawnby Russian horses from the Steppes, so she said; but who can tellwhether a horse comes from the Steppes or from the horse-dealers? Nordoes it matter when the lady is extraordinarily attractive, when sheinspires the thought--a mistress for Attila! That is not exactly howManet saw her: but she looks like that in his pastel. In it she holdsa tortoiseshell fan widespread across her bosom, and it was on one ofthe sticks of the fan that he signed his name. A great painter alwaysknows where to sign his pictures, and he never signs twice in the sameplace. The merit of these Russians is that they never leave one indoubt. She could not sit that day, she was going to the Bois, andasked me and a young man who happened to be in Manet's studio at thetime to go there with her, and we went there drawn by the Russianhorses, the young man and I wondering all the while which was going tobe the countess's lover; we played hard for her; but that day I waswiser than he; I let him talk and recite poetry and jingle out all theaphorisms that he had been collecting for years, feeling hiswitticisms were in vain, for she was dark as a raven and I was as goldas a sunflower. It was at the corner of the Rue Pontière that we gotrid of him. Some days afterwards she sat to Manet. The pastel nowhangs in the room of a friend of mine; I bought it for him. 

The picture of a woman one knows is never so agreeable a companion asthe picture of a woman one has never seen. One's memory and thepainter's vision are in conflict, and I like to think better of thelong delicate nose, and the sparkling eyes, and a mouth like redfruit. The pastel once belonged to me; it used to hang in my rooms;for with that grace of mind which never left him, Manet said one day, "I always promised you a picture, " and searching among the pastelsthat lined the wall he turned to me saying, "Now I think that thiscomes to you by right. " When I left Paris hurriedly, and left mythings to be sold, the countess came to the sale and bought herpicture, and then she sold it years afterwards to a picture-dealer, tempted by the price that Manet's pictures were fetching. Hearing thatit was for sale, I bought it, as I have said, for a friend. And now Ihave told the whole story, forgetting nothing except that it was yearsafterwards, when I had written "Les Confessions d'un jeune Anglais" inthe _Revue Indépendante_, that Mary Laurant asked me--oh! she wasvery enterprising; she sent the editor of the _Revue_ to me; anappointment was made. She was wonderful in the garden. She said themoment I arrived, "Now, my dear ----, you must go, " and we walkedabout, I listening to her aphorisms. Mary was beautiful, but she likedone to love her for her wit, to admire her wit; and when I asked herwhy she did not leave Evans, the great dentist, she said, "That wouldbe a base thing to do. I content myself by deceiving him, " andthen--this confidence seemed to have a particular significance--"I amnot a woman, " she said, "that is made love to in a garden. " Her gardenwas a nook at the fortifications, hidden among lilac bushes. Shewished to show me her house, and we talked for a long time in herboudoir. But I knew she was Mallarmé's mistress at the time, sonothing came of this _caprice littéraire_. 

My thoughts run upon women, and why not? On what would you have themrun? on copper mines? Woman is the legitimate subject of all men'sthoughts. We pretend to be interested in other things. In thesmoking-rooms I have listened to men talking about hunting, and I havesaid to myself, "Your interest is a pretence: of what woman are youthinking?" We forget women for a little while when we are thinkingabout art, but only for a while. The legitimate occupation of man'smind is woman; and listening to my friend who is playing music--musicI do not care to hear, Brahms--I fall to thinking which of the women Ihave known in years past would interest me most to visit. 

In the spring weather the walk from Passy to the Champs Elysées wouldbe pleasant and not too far; I like to see the swards and the poplarsand the villas, the tall iron railings, and the flower vases hidden inbouquets of trees. These things are Paris; the mind of the country, that mind which comes out of a long past, and which may be defined asa sort of ancestral beauty and energy is manifested everywhere inParis; and a more beautiful day for seeing the tall, white houses andthe villas and the trees and the swards can hardly be imagined. Ishould be interested in all these things, but my real interest wouldbe in one little hillside, a line of houses, eight or nine, close bythe Arc de Triomphe, the most ordinary in the avenue. She liked theordinary, and I have often wondered what was the link of association?Was it no more than her blonde hair drawn up from the neck, herfragrant skin, or her perverse subtle senses? It was something more, but you must not ask me to explain further. I like to remember therustle of a flowered dress she wore as she moved, drifting like aperfume, passing from her frivolous bedroom into the drawing-room. Aroom without taste, stiff and middle-class, notwithstanding the crownsplaced over the tall portraits. I see a picture of two children; butshe is the fairer, and in her pale eyes and thinly-curved lips thereis a mixture of yearning and restlessness. As the child was, so is thewoman, and Georgette has lived to paper one entire wall of her bedroomwith trophies won in the battlefields of ardently danced cotillons. The other child is of a stricter nature, and even in the picture herslightly darkened ringlets are less wanton than her sister's. Her eyesare more pensive, and any one could have predicted children for oneand cotillon favours for the other. 

We often sat on her bedroom balcony reading, talking, or watching thesky growing pale beyond Mount Valerian, the shadow drifting anddefining and shaping the hill. In hours like the present, dreaming ina studio, we remember those who deceived us, those who made us suffer, and in these hours faces, fragments of faces, rise out of a past, theline of a bent neck, the whiteness of a hand, and the eyes. I rememberher eyes; one day in an orchard, in the lush and luxuriance of June, her husband was walking in front with a friend, and I was pleading. "Well, " she said, raising her eyes, "you can kiss me now. " But herhusband was in front, and he was a thick-set man, and there was astream, and I foresaw a struggle--and an unpleasant one: confess andbe done with it!--I didn't dare to kiss her, and I don't think sheever forgave me that lack of courage. All this is twenty years ago, and is it not silly to spend the afternoon thinking of such rubbish?But it is of such rubbish that our lives are made. Shall I go to hernow and see her in her decadence? Grey hair has not begun to appearyet in the blonde, it will never turn grey, but she was shrivelling alittle the last time I saw her. And next year she will be older. Ather age a year counts for double. Others are more worthy of a visit. If I do not go to her this year, shall I go next?

In imagination I go past her house, thinking of a man she used to talkabout, "the man she left her 'ome for"; that is how the London streetgirl would word it. He had been the centre of a disgraceful scandal inhis old age, a sordid but characteristic end for the Don Juan of thenineteenth century. Perhaps she loved the big, bearded man whosephotograph she had once shown me. He killed himself for not havingenough money to live as he wished to live. That was her explanation. Ithink there was some blackmail; she had to pay some money to the deadman's relations for letters. These sensual American women are likeorchids, and who would hesitate between an orchid and a rose? It wastwenty years ago since she turned round on me in the gloom of herbrougham unexpectedly, and it was as if some sensual spirit had comeout of a world of perfume and lace. 

 * * * * *

In imagination I have descended the Champs Elysées, and have crossedthe Place de la Concorde, and the Seine is flowing past just as itflowed when the workmen were building Notre Dame, just as it will flowa thousand years hence. A thousand years hence men will stand watchingits current, thinking of little blonde women, and the shudder they cansend through the flesh; they can, but not twenty years afterwards. TheReverend Donne has it that certain ghosts do not raise the hair butthe flesh; mine do no more than to set me thinking that rivers werenot created to bear ships to the sea, but to set our memories flowing. Full many a time have I crossed the Pont Neuf on my way to see anotherwoman--an American! The time comes when desire wilts and dies, but thesexual interest never dies, and we take pleasure in thinking in middlelife of those we enjoyed in youth. She, of whom I am thinking, livesfar away in the Latin Quarter, in an ill-paven street. How it used tothrow my carriage from side to side! I have been there so often that Iknow all the shops, and where the shops end, and there is awhitewashed wall opposite her house; the street bends there. The_concierge_ is the same, a little thicker, a little heavier; shealways used to have a baby in her arms, now there are no more babies;her children, I suppose, have grown up and have gone away. There usedto be a darkness at the foot of the stairs, and I used to slip onthose stairs, so great was my haste; the very tinkle of the bell Iremember, and the trepidation with which I waited. 

Her rooms looked as if they had never been sat in; even the studio wasformal, and the richly-bound volumes on the tables looked as if theyhad never been opened. She only kept one servant, a little, redheadedgirl, and seeing this girl back again after an absence of many years, I spoke to Lizzie of the old days. Lizzie told me her servant's story. She had gone away to be married, and after ten years of misfortune shehad returned to her old mistress, this demure, discreet and sly NewEnglander, who concealed a fierce sensuality under a homelyappearance. Lizzie must have had many lovers, but I knew nothing ofher except her sensuality, for she had to let me into that secret. 

She was a religious woman, a devout Protestant, and thinking of her mythoughts are carried across the sea, and I am in the National Gallerylooking at Van Eyke's picture, studying the grave sensuality of theman's face--he speaks with uplifted hand like one in a pulpit, and thegesture and expression tell us as plainly as if we heard him that heis admonishing his wife (he is given to admonition), informing herthat her condition--her new pregnancy--is an act of the Divine Will. She listens, but how curiously! with a sort of partial comprehensionafloat upon her face, more of the guinea-pig than of the rabbit type. The twain are sharply differentiated, and one of the objects of thepainter seems to have been to show us how far one human being may beremoved from another. The husband is painfully clear to himself, thewife is happily unconscious of herself. Now everything in the picturesuggests order; the man's face tells a mind the same from day to day, from year to year, the same passions, the same prayers; his apparel, the wide-brimmed hat, the cloak falling in long straight folds, thepeaked shoon, are an habitual part of him. We see little of the room, but every one remembers the chandelier hanging from the ceilingreflected in the mirror opposite. These reflections have lasted forthree hundred years; they are the same to-day as the day they werepainted, and so is the man; he lives again, he is a type that Naturenever wearies of reproducing, for I suppose he is essential to life. This sober Flemish interior expresses my mistress's character almostas well as her own apartment used to do. I always experienced a chill, a sense of formality, when the door was opened, and while I stoodwaiting for her in the prim drawing-room. Every chair was in itsappointed place, large, gilt-edged, illustrated books lay upon thetables.... There was not much light in her rooms; heavy curtains clungabout the windows, and tapestries covered the walls. In the passagethere were oak chests, and you can imagine, reader, this woman waitingfor me by an oak table, a little ashamed of her thoughts, but unableto overcome them. Once I heard her playing the piano, and it struck meas an affectation. As I let my thoughts run back things forgottenemerge; here comes one of her gowns! a dark-green gown, the very sameolive green as the man's cloak. She wore her hair short like a boy's, and though it ran all over her head in little curls, it did notdetract at all from the New England type, the woman in whose speechBiblical phraseology still lingers. Lizzie was a miraculous survivalof the Puritans who crossed the Atlantic in the _Mayflower_ andsettled in New England. Paris had not changed her. She was _le gravePuritan du tableau_. The reader will notice that I write _legrave Puritan_, for of his submissive, childlike wife there wasnothing in Lizzie except her sex. As her instinct was in conflict withher ideals, her manner was studied, and she affected a certaincheerfulness which she dared not allow to subside. She neverrelinquished her soul, never fell into confidence, so in a sense wealways remained strangers, for it is when lovers tell their illusionsand lonelinesses that they know each other, the fiercest spasm tellsus little, and it is forgotten, whereas the moment when a woman sighsand breaks into a simple confidence is remembered years afterwards, and brings her before us though she be underground or a thousand milesaway. These intimacies she had not, but there was something true andreal in her, something which I cannot find words to express to-day;she was a clever woman, that was it, and that is why I pay her thehomage of an annual visit. These courteous visits began twenty yearsago; they are not always pleasant, yet I endure them. Our conversationis often laboured, there are awkward and painful pauses, and duringthese pauses we sit looking at each other, thinking no doubt of thechanges that time has wrought. One of her chief charms was herfigure--one of the prettiest I have ever seen--and she still retains agood deal of its grace. But she shows her age in her hands; they havethickened at the joints, and they were such beautiful hands. Last yearshe spoke of herself as an old woman, and the remark seemed to medisgraceful and useless, for no man cares to hear a woman whom he hasloved call herself old; why call attention to one's age, especiallywhen one does not look it? and last year she looked astonishinglyyoung for fifty-five; that was her age, she said. She asked me my age;the question was unpleasant, and before I was aware of it I had toldher a lie, and I hate those who force me to tell lies. The interviewgrew painful, and to bring it to a close she asked me if I would careto see her husband. 

We found the old man alone in his studio, looking at an engravingunder the light of the lamp, much more like a picture than any of hispaintings. She asked him if he remembered me, and he got up mutteringsomething, and to help him I mentioned that I had been one of hispupils. The dear old man said of course he remembered, and that hewould like to show me his pictures, but Lizzie said--I suppose it wasnervousness that made her say it, but it was a strangely tactlessremark--"I don't think, dear, that Mr. ---- cares for your pictures. "However celebrated one may be, it is always mortifying to hear thatsome one, however humble the person may be, does not care for one'sart. But I saved the situation, and I think my remarks were judiciousand witty. It is not always that one thinks of the right words at theright moment, but it would be hard to improve on the admonition thatshe did me a wrong, that, like every one who liked art, I had changedmy opinion many times, but after many wanderings had come back to thetruth, and in order to deceive the old man I spoke of Ingres. I hadnever failed in that love, and how could I love Ingres without lovinghim? The contrary was the truth, but the old man's answer was verysweet. Forgetful of his own high position, he answered, "We may bothlike Ingres, but it is not probable that we like the same Ingres. " Isaid I did not know any Ingres I did not admire, and asked him whichhe admired, and we had a pleasant conversation about the Apotheosis ofHomer, and the pictures in the Musée de Montauban. Then the old mansaid, "I must show Mr. ---- my pictures. " No doubt he had beenthinking of them all through the conversation about the Musée deMontauban. "I must show you my Virgin, " and he explained that the faceof the Infant Jesus was not yet finished. 

It was wonderful to see this old man, who must have been nearlyeighty, taking the same interest in his pictures as he took fiftyyears ago. Some stupid reader will think, perchance, that it matteredthat I had once loved his wife. But how could such a thing matter?Think for a moment, dear reader, for all readers are dear, even thestupidest, and you will see that you are still entangled inconventions and prejudices. Perhaps, dear reader, you think she and Ishould have dropped on our knees and confessed. Had we done so, hewould have thought us two rude people, and nothing more. 

What will happen to her when he dies? Will she return to Boston? ShallI ever see her again? Last year I vowed that I would not, and I thinkit would please her as well if I stayed away.... And she is right, forso long as I am not by her she is with me. But in the same room, amidthe familiar furniture, we are divided by the insuperable past, and toretain her I must send her away. The idea is an amusing one; I think Ihave read it somewhere, it seems to me like something I have read. DidI ever read of a man who sent his mistress away so that his possessionmight be more complete? Whether I did or didn't matters little, theidea is true to me to-day--in order to possess her I must never seeher again. A pretty adventure it would be, nevertheless, to spend aweek paying visits to those whom I loved about that time; and I canimagine a sort of Beau Brummel of the emotions going every year toParis to spend a day with each of his mistresses. 

There were others about that time. There was Madame ----. The name isin itself beautiful, characteristically French, and it takes me backto the middle centuries, to the middle of France. I always imaginedthat tall woman, who thought so quickly and spoke so sincerely, dealing out her soul rapidly, as one might cards, must have been bornnear Tours. She was so French that she must have come from the veryheart of France; she was French as the wine of France; as Balzac, whoalso came from Tours; and her voice, and her thoughts, and her wordstransported one; by her side one was really in France; and, as herlover, one lived through every circumstance of a French love story. She lived in what is called in Paris an hotel; it had its own_concierge_, and it was nice to hear the man say, "Oui, monsieur, Madame la Marquise est chez elle, " to walk across a courtyard and waitin a boudoir stretched with blue silk, to sit under a Louis XVI. Rockcrystal chandelier. She said one day, "I'm afraid you're thinking ofme a great deal, " and she leaned her hands on the back of the chair, making it easy for me to take them. She said her hands had not doneany kitchen work for five hundred years, and at the time that seemed avery witty thing to say. The drawing-room opened onto a conservatorytwenty feet high; it nearly filled the garden, and the marquise usedto receive her visitors there. I do not remember who was themarquise's lover when the last fête was given, nor what play wasacted; only that the ordinary guests lingered over their lightrefreshments, scenting the supper, and that to get rid of them we hadto bid the marquise ostentatiously goodnight. Creeping round by theback of the house, we gained the bedrooms by the servants' staircase, and hid there until the ordinary guests in decency could delay nolonger. As soon as the last one was gone the stage was removed, andthe supper tables were laid out. Shall I ever forget the moment whenthe glass roof of the conservatory began to turn blue, and theshrilling of awakening sparrows! How haggard we all were, but weremained till eight in the morning. That fête was paid for with thelast remnant of the poor marquise's fortune. Afterwards she was verypoor, and Suzanne, her daughter, went on the stage and discovered acertain talent for acting which has been her fortune to this day. Iwill go to the Vaudeville to-night to see her; we might arrange to gotogether to see her mother's grave. To visit the grave, and to strewazaleas upon it, would be a pretty piece of sentimental mockery. Butfor my adventure there should be seven visits; Madame ---- would makea fourth; I hear that she is losing her sight, and lives in a chateauabout fifty miles from Paris, a chateau built in the time of LouisXIII. , with high-pitched roofs and many shutters, and formal gardenswith balustrades and fish-ponds, yes _et des charmilles--charmilles_--what is that in English?--avenues of clipped limes. To walk in an avenueof clipped limes with a woman who is nearly blind, and talk to her of thepast, would be indeed an adventure far "beyond the range of formal man'semotion. "

Madame ---- interrupted our love story. She would be another--thatwould be five--and I shall think of two more during dinner. But now Imust be moving on; the day has ended; Paris is defining itself upon astraw-coloured sky. I must go, the day is done; and hearing the lastnotes trickle out--somebody has been playing the prelude to"Tristan"--I say: "Another pretty day passed, a day of meditation onart and women--and what else is there to meditate about? To-morrowwill happily be the same as to-day, and to-morrow I shall againmeditate on art and women, and the day after I shall be occupied withwhat I once heard dear old M'Cormac, Bishop of Galway, describe in hissermon as 'the degrading passion of "loave. "'"

CHAPTER VII

NINON'S TABLE D'HÔTE

The day dies in sultry languor. A warm night breathes upon the town, and in the exhaustion of light and hush of sound, life strikes sharplyon the ear and brain. 

It was early in the evening when I returned home, and, sitting in thewindow, I read till surprised by the dusk; and when my eyes could nolonger follow the printed page, holding the book between finger andthumb, my face resting on the other hand, I looked out on the garden, allowing my heart to fill with dreams. The book that had interested medealt with the complex technique of the art of the Low Countries--abook written by a painter. It has awakened in me memories of allkinds, heartrending struggles, youthful passion, bitterdisappointments; it has called into mind a multitude of thoughts andthings, and, wearied with admiring many pictures and arguing withmyself, I am now glad to exchange my book for the gentlehallucinations of the twilight. 

I see a line of leafage drawn across the Thames, but the line dips, revealing a slip of grey water with no gleam upon it. Warehouses and afactory chimney rise ghostly and grey, and so cold is that grey tintthat it might be obtained with black and white; hardly is the warmthof umber needed. Behind the warehouses and the factory chimney the skyis murky and motionless, but higher up it is creamy white, and thereis some cloud movement. Four lamps, two on either side of the factorychimney, look across the river; one constantly goes out--always thesame lamp--and a moment after it springs into its place again. Acrossmy window a beautiful branch waves like a feather fan. It is the onlypart of the picture worked out in detail. I watch its soft and almostimperceptible swaying, and am tempted to count the leaves. Below it, and a little beyond it, between it and the river, night gathers in thegardens; and there, amid serious greens, passes the black stain of aman's coat, and, in a line with the coat, in the beautifully swayingbranch, a belated sparrow is hopping from twig to twig, awakening hismates in search for a satisfactory resting-place. In the sharp towersof Temple Gardens the pigeons have gone to sleep. I can see the cotsunder the conical caps of slate. 

The gross, jaded, uncouth present has slipped from me as a garmentmight, and I see the past like a little show, struggles andheartbreakings of long ago, and watch it with the same indifferentcuriosity as I would the regulated mimicry of a stage play. Picturesfrom the past come and go without an effort of will; many are habitualmemories, but the one before me rises for the first time--for fifteenyears it has lain submerged, and now like a water weed or flower itrises--the Countess Ninon de Calvador's boudoir! Her boudoir or herdrawing-room, be that as it may, the room into which I was usheredmany years ago when I went to see her. I was then a young man, verythin, with sloping shoulders, and that pale gold hair that Manetused to like to paint. I had come with a great bouquet for Ninon, for it was _son jour de fête_, and was surprised and somewhatdisappointed to meet a large brunette with many creases in her neck, aloose and unstayed bosom; one could hardly imagine Ninon dressedotherwise than in a _peignoir_--a blue _peignoir_ seemed inevitable. She was sitting by a dark, broad-shouldered young man when I camein; they were sitting close together; he rose out of a corner andshowed me an impressionistic picture of a railway station. He wasone of the many young men who at that time thought the substitution ofdots of pink and yellow for the grey and slate and square brushwork ofBastien Lepage was the certain way to paint well. I learnedafterwards, during the course of the evening, that he was looked ataskance, for even in Montmartre it was regarded as a dishonour toallow the lady with whom you lived to pay for your dinner. Villiers deL'Isle Adam, who had once been Ninon's lover, answered the reproacheslevelled against him for having accepted too largely of herhospitality with, "Que de bruit pour quelques côtelettes!" and histransgressions were forgiven him for the sake of the _mot_ whichseemed to summarise the moral endeavour and difficulties of the entirequarter. When Villiers was her lover Villiers was middle-aged, andNinon was a young woman; but when I knew her she was interested in theyoung generation, yet she kept friends with all her old lovers, neverdenying them her board. How funny was the impressionist's indignationagainst Villiers! He charged him with having squandered a great partof Ninon's fortune, but Villiers's answer to the young man was, "Hetalks like the _concierge_ in my story of 'Les Demoiselles deBienfillatre. '"

Poor Villiers was not much to blame; it was part of Ninon'stemperament to waste her money, and the canvases round the roomtestified that she spent a great deal on modern art. She certainly hadbeen a rich woman; rumour credited her with spending fifty thousandfrancs a year, and in her case rumour said no more than the truth, forit would require that at least to live as she lived, keeping openhouse to all the literature, music, painting, and sculpture done inMontmartre. At first sight her hospitality seems unreasonable, butwhen one thinks one sees that it conforms to the rules of allhospitality. There must be a principle of selection, and were the_ratés_ she entertained less amusing than the people one meets inGrosvenor Square or the Champs Elysées? Any friend could introduceanother, that is common practice, but at Ninon's there was arestriction which I never met elsewhere--no friend could bring anotherunless the newcomer was a _raté_--in other words, unless he hadwritten music or verse, or painted or carved, in a way that did notappeal to the taste of the ordinary public; inability to reach thetaste of the general public was the criterion that obtained there. 

The windows of Ninon's boudoir opened upon the garden, and on myexpressing surprise at its size and at the large trees that grewthere, she gave me permission to admire and investigate; and I walkedabout the pond, interested in the numerous ducks, in the cats, in thecompanies of macaws and cockatoos that climbed down from their perchesand strutted across the swards. I came upon a badger and her brood, and at my approach they disappeared into an enormous excavation, andbehind the summer-house I happened upon a bear asleep and retreatedhurriedly. But on going towards the house I heard a well-known voice. "That is Augusta Holmes singing her opera, " I said; "she sings all thedifferent parts--soprano, contralto, tenor, and bass. " At this time wewere all talking about her, and I stood by the window listening untilsuddenly a well-known smell interrupted her. It was Ninon's cat thathad misconducted herself. A window was thrown open, but theventilation did not prove sufficient. Augusta and her admirers had toleave the piano, and they came from the house glad to breathe theevening air. How dear to me are flowered gowns and evening skies andwomen with scarfs about their shoulders. Ah! what a beautiful eveningit was! And how well do I remember the poet comparing the darkeningsky to a blue veil with the moon like a gold beetle upon it. One ofthe women had brought a guitar with her, and again Augusta's voicestreamed up through the stillness, till, compelled by the beauty ofthe singing, we drew nearer; as the composer sang her songs attitudesgrew more abandoned, and hands fell pensively. Among the half-seenfaces I caught sight of a woman of exceeding fairness; her hair hadonly a faint tinge of gold in it; and Ninon remembered that she was acousin of hers, one whom she had not seen for many years. How Clarehad discovered her in the Rue la Moine she could not tell. It waswhispered that she was the wife of a rich _commerçant_ at Tours. This added to the mystery, and later in the evening the lady told meshe had never been in artistic society before, and begged me to pointout to her the celebrities present, and to tell her why they werecelebrated. 

"Who is he--that one slouching towards the pond, that one wearing greytrousers and a black jacket?--oh!"

My companion's exclamation was caused by a new sight of Verlaine; atthat moment he had lifted off his hat (the evening was still warm), and the great bald skull, hanging like a cliff over the shaggyeyebrows, shaggy as furze bushes, frightened her. The poet continuedhis walk round the pond, and, turning suddenly towards us, he stoppedto speak to me. I was but a pretext; he clearly wished to speak to mycompanion. But how strangely did he suit his conversation to her, yethow characteristic of his genius were the words I heard as I turnedaway, thinking to leave them together--"If I were in love with a younggirl or with a young man?" My companion ran forward quickly and seizedmy arm. "You must not leave me with him, " she said. On account of hisgenius Verlaine was a little slow to see things outside ofhimself--all that was within him was clear, all without him obscure;so we had some difficulty in getting rid of him, and as soon as he wasout of hearing my companion inquired eagerly who he was, and I wasastonished at the perception she showed. "Is he a priest? I mean, washe ever a priest?" "A sort of cross between a thieves' kitchen and apresbytery. He is the poet Verlaine. The singer of the sweetest versesin the French language--a sort of ambling song like a robin's. Youhave heard the robin singing on a coral hedge in autumn-tide; therobin confesses his little soul from the topmost twig; his song is buta tracery of his soul, and so is Verlaine's. His gift is a vision ofhis own soul, and he makes a tracery as you might of a drawing with alead pencil, never troubling himself to inquire if what he traces isgood or ill. He knows that society regards him as an outcast, butsociety's point of view is not the only one, that he knows too, andalso, though he be a lecher, a crapulous and bestial fellow at times, at other times he is a poet, a visionary, the only poet thatCatholicism has produced since Dante. Huysmans, the apologist ofGilles de Rais, --there he is over yonder, talking to the impressionistpainter, that small thin man with hair growing thickly, low down onhis forehead--Huysmans somewhere in his description of the trial ofthe fifteenth-century monster, the prototype, so it is said, of thenursery tale of Blue Beard, speaks of the white soul of the MiddleAges; he must have had Verlaine on his mind, for Verlaine has spokenof himself as a mediaeval Catholic, that is to say a Catholic in whomsinning and repentance alternates regularly as night and day. Verlainehas not cut the throats of so many little boys as Gilles de Rais, butGilles de Rais always declared himself to be a good Catholic. Verlaineabandons himself to the Church as a child to a fairy tale; he doestrouble to argue whether the Conception of the Virgin was Immaculate;the mediaeval sculptors have represented her attired very prettily incloaks with long folds, they have put graceful crowns upon her head, and Verlaine likes these things; they inspire him to write, he feelsthat belief in the Church is part of himself, and his poetical geniusis to tell his own story; he is one of the great soul-tellers. From aliterary point of view there is a good deal to be said in favour offaith when it is not joined with practice; acceptation of dogmashields one from controversy; it allows Verlaine to concentratehimself entirely upon things; it weans him away from ideas--the curseof modern literature--and makes him a sort of divine vagrant livinghis life in the tavern and in the hospital. It is only those who havefreed themselves from all prejudice that get close to life, who getthe real taste of life--the aroma as from a wine that has been manyyears in bottle. And Verlaine is aware that this is so. Sometimes hethinks he might have written a little more poetry, and he sighs, buthe quickly recovers. 'After all, I have written a good many volumes. ''And what would art be without life, without love?' He has a verse onthat subject; I wish I could remember it for you. His verse is alwaysso winsome, so delicate, slender as the birch tree, elegiac like it; abirch bending over a lake's edge reminds me of Verlaine. He is a lakepoet, but the lake is in a suburb not far from a casino. What makes mespeak about the lake is that for a long time I thought these verses, Ton âme est un lac d'amour Dont mes pensêes sont les cygnes. Vois comme ils font le tour.... 

were Verlaine's, but they are much less original; their beauty, forthey are beautiful, is conventional; numbers of poets might havewritten them, whereas nobody but Verlaine could have written any ofhis, really his own, poetry. His desires go sometimes as high as thecrucifix; very often they are in the gutter, hardly poetry at all, having hardly any beauty except that of truth, and of course thebeauty of a versification that haunts in his ear, for he hears a songin French verse that no French poet has ever heard before, and a songso fluent, ranging from the ecstasy of the nightingale to the robin'slittle homily. 

 Oui, c'était par un soir joyeux de cabaret, Un de ces soirs plutôt trop chauds où l'on dirait Que le gaz du plafond conspire à notre perte Avec le vin du zinc, saveur naïve et verte. On s'amusait beaucoup dans la boutique et on Entendait des soupirs voisins d'accordéon Que ponctuaient des pieds frappant presque en cadence. Quand la porte s'ouvrit de la salle de danse Vomissant tout un flot dont toi, vers où j'étais, Et de ta voix fait que soudain je me tais, S'il te plaît de me donner un ordre péremptoire. Tu t'écrias 'Dieu, qu'il fait chaud! Patron, à boire!'

"She was from Picardy; and he tells of her horrible accent, and inelegy number five he continues the confession, telling how his wellbeloved used to get drunk. 

 "Tu fis le saut de ... Seine et, depuis morte-vive, Tu gardes le vertige et le goût du néant. "

"But how can a man confess such things?" my companion asked me, and westood looking at each other in the midst of the gardens until an ape, cattling prettily, ran towards me and jumped into my arms, and lookingat the curious little wizened face, the long arms covered with hair, Isaid:

"Verlaine has an extraordinary power of expression, and to be ashamedof nothing; but to be ashamed is his genius, just as it was Manet's. It is to his shamelessness that we owe his most beautiful poems, allwritten in garrets, in taverns, in hospitals--yes, and in prison. "

"In prison! But he didn't steal, did he?" and the _commerçant's_wife looked at me with a frightened air, and I think her hand wenttowards her pocket. 

"No, no; a mere love story, a dispute with Rambaud in some haunt ofvice, a knife flashed, Rambaud was stabbed, and Verlaine spent threeyears in prison. As for Rambaud, it was said that he repented andrenounced love, entered a monastery, and was digging the soilsomewhere on the shores of the Red Sea for the grace of God. But thesehopes proved illusory; only Verlaine knows where he is, and he willnot tell. The last certain news we had of him was that he had joined acaravan of Arabs, and had wandered somewhere into the desert withthese wanderers, preferring savagery to civilization. Verlainepreferred civilized savagery, and so he remained in Paris; and so hedrags on, living in thieves' quarters, getting drunk, writingbeautiful poems in the hospitals, coming out of hospitals and fallingin love with drabs. "

 Dans ces femmes d'ailleurs je n'ai pas trouvé l'ange Qu'il eût fallu pour remplacer ce diable, toi! L'une, fille du Nord, native d'un Crotoy, Etait rousse, mal grasse et de prestance molle; Elle ne m'adressa guère qu'une parole Et c'était d'un petit cadeau qu'il s'agissait, En revanche, dans son accent d'ail et de poivre, Une troisième, recemment chanteuse au Havre, Affectait de dandinement des matelots Et m'... Enguelait comme un gabier tancant les flots, Mais portrait beau vraiment, sacrédié, quel dommage La quatrième était sage comme une image, Châtain clair, peu de gorge et priait Dieu parfois: Le diantre soit de ses sacrés signes de croix! Les seize autres, autant du moins que ma mémoire Surnage en ce vortex, contaient toutes l'histoire Connue, un amant chic, puis des vieux, puis "l'îlot" Tantôt bien, tantôt moins, le clair café falot Les terasses l'été, l'hiver les brasseries Et par degrés l'humble trottoir en théories En attendant les bons messieurs compatissants Capables d'un louis et pas trop repoussants _Qutorum ego parva pars erim_, me disais-je. Mais toutes, comme la première du cortège, Dès avant la bougie éteinte et le rideau Tiré, n'oubliaient pas le "mon petit cadeau. "

"In the verses I have just quoted, you remember, he says that thefourth was chaste as an image, her hair was pale brown, she hadscarcely any bosom, and prayed to God sometimes. He always hated pietywhen it interfered with his pleasure, and in the next verse he says, 'The devil take those sacred signs of the Cross!'"

"But do you know any of these women?"

"Oh, yes; we all know the terrible Sara. She beats him. "

The _commerçante's_ wife asked if she were here. 

"He wanted to bring her here, in fact he did bring her once, only shewas so drunk that she could not get beyond the threshold, and Ninon'slover, the painter you saw painting the steam engines, was charged toexplain to the poet that Sara's intemperance rendered her impossiblein respectable society. 'I know Sara has her faults, ' he murmured inreply to all argument, and it was impossible to make him see thatothers did not see Sara with his eyes. 'I know she has her faults, ' herepeated, 'and so have others. We all have our faults. ' And it was along time before he could be induced to come back: hunger has broughthim. "

"And who is that hollow-chested man? How pathetic he looks with hisgoat-like beard. "

"That is the celebrated Cabaner. He will tell you, if you speak tohim, that his father was a man like Napoleon, only more so. He is theauthor of many aphorisms; 'that three military bands would benecessary to give the impression of silence in music' is one. He comesevery night to the Nouvelle Athènes, and is a sort of rallying-point;he will tell you that his ballad of 'The Salt Herring' is written in away that perhaps Wagner would not, but which Liszt certainly wouldunderstand. "

"Is his music ever played? Does it sell? How does he live? Not by hismusic, I suppose?"

"Yes, by his music, by playing waltzes and polkas in the Avenue de laMotte Piquet. His earnings are five francs a day, and for thirty-fivefrancs a month he has a room where many of the disinherited ones ofart, many of those you see here, sleep. His room is furnished--ah, youshould see it! If Cabaner wants a chest of drawers he buys a fountain, and he broke off the head of the Vénus de Milo, saying that now she nolonger reminded him of the people he met in the streets; he couldhenceforth admire her without being troubled by any sordidrecollection. I could talk to you for hours about his unselfishness, his love of art, his strange music, and his stranger poems, for hismusic accompanies his own verses. "

"Is he too clever for the public, or not clever enough?"

"Now you're asking me the question we've been asking ourselves for thelast ten years.... The man fumbling at his shirt collar over yonder isthe celebrated Villiers de L'Isle Adam. "

And I remember how it pleased me to tell this simple-minded woman allI knew about Villiers. 

"He has no talent whatever, only genius, and that is why he is araté, " I said. 

But the woman was not so simple as I had imagined, and one or twoquestions she put to me led me to tell her that Villiers's genius onlyappeared in streaks, like gold in quartz. 

"The comparison is an old one, but there is no better one to explainVilliers, for when he is not inspired his writing is very likequartz. "

"His great name----"

"His name is part of his genius. He chose it, and it has influencedhis writings. Have I not heard him say, 'Car je porte en moi lesrichesses stériles d'un grand nombre de rois oubliés. '"

"But is he a legitimate descendant?"

"Legitimate in the sense that he desired the name more than any ofthose who ever bore it legitimately. "

At that moment Villiers passed by me, and I introduced him to her, andvery soon he began to tell us that his _Eve_ had just beenpublished, and the success of it was great. 

"On m'a dit hier de passer à la caisse ... L'edition était épuisée, vous voyez--il paraît, la fortune est venue ... Même à moi. "

But Villiers was often tiresomely talkative about trifles, and as soonas I got the chance I asked him if he were going to tell us one of hisstories, reminding him of one I had heard he had been telling latelyin the _brasseries_ about a man in quest of a quiet village wherehe could get rest, a tired composer, something of that kind. Had hewritten it? No, he had not written it yet, but now that he knew Iliked it he would get up earlier to-morrow. Some one took him awayfrom us, and I had to tell my companion the story. 

"Better, " I said, "he should never write it, for half of it exists inhis voice, and in his gestures, and every year he gets less and lessof himself onto the paper. One has to hear him tell his stories in thecafé--how well he tells them! You must hear him tell how a man, recovering from a long illness, is advised by his doctor to seek restin the country, and how, seeing the name of a village on the map thattouches his imagination, he takes the train, feeling convinced he willfind there an Arcadian simplicity. But the village he catches sight offrom the carriage window is a morose and lonely village, in the midstof desolate plains. And worse than Nature are the human beings he seesat the station; they lurk in corners, they scrutinise his luggage, andgradually he believes them all to be robbers and assassins. 

"He would escape but he dare not, for he is being followed, so turningon his pursuers he asks them if they can direct him to a lodging. Thepoint of Villiers's story is how a suspicion begins in the man's mind, how it grows like a cancer, and very soon the villagers are convincedhe is an anarchist, and that his trunks are full of material for themanufacture of bombs. And this is why they dare not touch them. Sothey follow him to the farmhouse whither they have directed him, andtell their fears to the farmer and his wife. Villiers can improvisethe consultations in the kitchen; at midnight in the café, but whenmorning comes he cannot write, his brain is empty. You must come somenight to the Nouvelle Athènes to hear him; leaning across the table hewill tell the terror of the hinds and farmer, how they are sure thehouse is going to be blown up. The sound of their feet on thestaircase inspires terror in the wretched convalescent. He sits up inbed, listening, great drops of sweat collected on his forehead. Hedare not get out of bed, but he must; and Villiers can suggest thesound of feet on the creaking stairs--yes, and the madness of the manpiling furniture against the door, and the agony of those outsidehearing the noise within. When they break into the room they find adead man; for terror has killed him. You must come to the NouvelleAthènes to hear Villiers tell his story. I'll meet you there to-morrownight.... Will you dine with me? The dinner there is not really toobad; perhaps you'll be able to bear with it. "

The _commerçant's_ wife hesitated. She promised to come, and shecame; but she did not prove an interesting mistress; why, I cannotremember, and I am glad to put her out of my mind, for I want to thinkof the strange poet whom we heard reciting verses, under the aspen, inwhich one of the apes had taken refuge. Through the dimness of theyears I can see his fair hair floating about his shoulders, his blueeyes and his thin nose. Didn't somebody once describe him as a sort ofsensual Christ? He, too, was after the _commerçant's_ wife. Anddidn't he select her as the subject of his licentious verses--reassureyourself, reader, licentious merely from the point of view of prosody. 

 "Ta nuque est de santal sur les vifs frissons d'or. Mais c'est une autre, que j'adore. "

The _commerçant's_ wife, forgetful of me, charmed by the poet, bythe excitement of hearing herself made a subject of a poem, drewnearer. Strange, is it not, that I should remember a few words hereand there?

 "Il m'aime, il m'aime pas, et selon l'antique rite Elle effleurait la Marguerite. "

The women still sit, circlewise, as if enchanted, the night inspireshim, and he improvises trifle after trifle. One remembers fragments. Some time afterwards Cabaner was singing the song of "The SaltHerring. "

 "He came along holding in his hands dirty, dirty, dirty, A big nail pointed, pointed, pointed, And a hammer heavy, heavy, heavy. He placed the ladder high, high, high, Against the wall white, white, white. He went up the ladder high, high, high, Placed the nail pointed, pointed, pointed Against the wall--toc! toc! toc! He tied to the nail a string long, long, long, And at the end of it a salt herring, dry, dry, dry, And letting fall the hammer heavy, heavy, heavy, He got down from the ladder high, high, high, And went away, away, away. Since then at the end of the string long, long, long, A salt herring dry, dry, dry, Has been swinging slowly, slowly, slowly. Now I have composed this story simple, simple, simple, To make all serious men mad, mad, mad, And to amuse children, little, little, little. "

This was the libretto on which Cabaner wrote music "that Wagner wouldnot understand, but which Liszt certainly would. " Dear, dear Cabaner, how well I can see thee with thy goat-like beard, and the ape in thetree interrupting thee; he was not like Liszt, he chattered all night. Poor ape, he broke his chain earlier in the evening, and it was foundimpossible to persuade him to come down. The brute seemed somehowdetermined that we should not hear Cabaner. Soon after the cocks begananswering each other, though it was but midnight; and so loud wastheir shrilling that I awoke, surprised to find myself sitting at mywindow in King's Bench Walk. A moment ago I was in Madame Ninon deCalvador's garden, and every whit as much as I am now in King's BenchWalk. Madame Ninon de Calvador--what has become of her?

Is the rest of her story unknown? As I sit looking into the darkness, a memory suddenly springs upon me. Villiers, who came in when dinnerwas half over, brought a young man with him. Fumbling at his shirtcollar, apologising for being late, assuring us that he had dined, heintroduced his friend to the company as a young man of genius, ofextraordinary genius. Don't I remember Villiers's nervous, hystericalvoice! Don't I remember the journalist's voice when he asked Ninon'slover if he sold his pictures, creating at once a bad impression? Bysome accident a plate was given to him, out of which one of the catshad been fed. The plate might have been given to any one else:Villiers would not have minded, and as for Cabaner, he never knew whathe was eating; but it was given to the journalist. Now I remember theyoung man misconducted himself badly; he struck the table with hisfist, and said, "Et bien, je casse tout. " Yes, it was he who wrote thearticle entitled "Ninon's Table d'hôte" in the _Gil Blas_, andfrom it she learned for the first time how the world viewed herhospitality, how misinterpreted were her efforts to benefit the artsand the artists. Somebody told me this story: who I cannot tell; it isall so long ago. But it seems to me that I remember hearing that itwas this article that killed her. 

The passing of things is always a moving subject for meditation, andit is strange how accident will bring back a scene, explicit in everydetail--a tree taking shape upon the dawning sky, the hairy uglinessof the ape in its branches, and along the grey grass a waddling squadof the ducks betaking themselves to the pond, a poet talking to a_commerçant's_ wife, Madame de Calvador leaning on a lover's arm. 

Had I a palette I could match the blue of the _peignoir_ with thefaint grey sky. I could make a picture out of that dusky suburb. Had Ia pen I could write verses about these people of old time, but thepicture would be a shrivelled thing compared with the dream, and theverses would limp. The moment I sought a pen the pleasure of themeditation, which is still with me, which still endures, would vanish. Better to sit by my window and enjoy what remains of the mood and thememory. The mood has nearly passed, the desire of action isapproaching.... I would give much for another memory, but memory maynot be beckoned, and my mind is dark now, dark as that garden; theswaying, fan-like bough by my window is nearly one mass of green; thelast sparrow has fallen asleep. I hear nothing.... I hear a horsetrotting in the Strand. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE LOVERS OF ORELAY

I had come a thousand miles--rather more, nearly fifteen hundred--inthe hope of picking up the thread of a love story that had gotentangled some years before and had been broken off abruptly. Astrange misadventure our love story had been; for Doris had given agreat deal of herself while denying me much, so much that at last, indespair, I fled from a one-sided love affair; too one-sided to beborne any longer, at least by me. And it was difficult to fly from herpretty, inveigling face, delightful and winsome as the faces one findson the panels of the early German masters. One may look for her faceand find it on an oak panel in the Frankfort Gallery, painted in paletints, the cheeks faintly touched with carmine. In the background ofthese pictures there are all sorts of curious things; very often agold bower with roses clambering up everywhere. Who was that masterwho painted cunning virgins in rose bowers? The master of Cologne, wasit not? I have forgotten. No matter. Doris's hair was darker than thehair of those virgins, a rich gold hair, a mane of hair growing asluxuriously as the meadows in June. And the golden note was continuedeverywhere, in the eyebrows, in the pupils of the eyes, in thefreckles along her little nose so firmly and beautifully modelledabout the nostrils; never was there a more lovely or affectionatemouth, weak and beautiful as a flower; and the long hands were curvedlike lilies. 

There is her portrait, dear reader, prettily and truthfully andfaithfully painted by me, the portrait of a girl I left one afternoonin London more than seventeen years ago, and whom I had lost sight of, I feared for ever. Thought of her? Yes, I thought of her occasionally. Time went by, and I wondered if she were married. What her husband waslike, and why I never wrote. It were surely unkind not to write.... Reader, you know those little regrets. Perhaps life would be all onthe flat without regret. Regret is like a mountaintop from which wesurvey our dead life, a mountaintop on which we pause and ponder, andvery often looking into the twilight we ask ourselves whether it wouldbe well to send a letter or some token. Now we had agreed upon onewhich should be used in case of an estrangement--a few bars ofSchumann's melody, "The Nut Bush, " should be sent, and the one whoreceived it should at once hurry to the side of the other and alldifference should be healed. But this token was never sent by me, perhaps because I did not know how to scribble the musical phrase:pride perhaps kept her from sending it; in any case five years are along while, and she seemed to have died out of my life altogether; butone day the sight of a woman who had known her, brought her before myeyes, and I asked if Doris married. The woman could not tell me; shehad not seen her for many years; they, too, were estranged, and I wenthome saying to myself: "Doris must be married. What sort of a husbandhas she chosen? Is she happy? Has she a baby? Oh, shameful thought!"

Do you remember, dear reader, how Balzac, when he had come to the lastpage of "Massimilla Doni, " declares that he dare not tell you the endof this adventure. One word, he says, will suffice for the worshippersof the ideal: "Massimilla Doni was expecting. " Then in a passage thatis pleasanter to think about than to read--for Balzac when he spokeabout art was something of a sciolist, and I am not sure that thepassage is altogether grammatical--he tells how the ideas of all thegreat artists, painters, and sculptors--the ideas they have wrought onpanels and in stone--escaped from their niches and their frames--allthese disembodied maidens gathered round Massimilla's bed and wept. Itwould be as disgraceful for Doris to be "expecting" as it was forMassimilla Doni, and I like to think of all the peris, the nymphs, thesylphs, the fairies of ancient legend, all her kinsfolk gatheringabout her bed, deploring her condition, regarding her as lost tothem--were such a thing to happen I should certainly kneel there inspirit with them. And feeling just as Balzac did about MassimillaDoni, that it was a sacrilege that Doris should be "expecting" or evenmarried, I wrote, omitting, however, to tell her why I had suddenlyresolved to break silence; I sent her a little note, only a few words, that I was sorry not to have heard of her for so long a time; butthough we had been estranged she had not been forgotten; a littlecommonplace note, relieved perhaps by a touch of wistfulness, ofregret. And this note was sent by a messenger duly instructed to askfor an answer. The news the messenger brought back was somewhatdisappointing. The lady was away, but the letter would be forwarded toher. "She is not married, " I thought; "were she married her name wouldbe sent to me.... Perhaps not. " Other thoughts came into my mind, andI did not think of her again for the next two days, not till a longtelegram was put into my hand. Doris! It had come from her. It hadcome more than a thousand miles, "regardless of expense. " I said, "This telegram must have cost her ten or twelve shillings at theleast. " She was delighted to hear from me; she had been ill, but wasbetter now, and the telegram concluded with the usual "Am writing. "The letter that arrived, two days afterwards, was like herself, fullof impulse and affection; but it contained one phrase which put blackmisgiving into my heart. In her description of her illness and herhealth, which was returning, and how she had come to be staying inthis far-away Southern town, she alluded to its dulness, saying thatif I came there virtue must be its own reward. "Stupid of her to speakto me of virtue, " I muttered, "for she must know well enough that itwas her partial virtue that had separated us and caused this longestrangement. " And I sat pondering, trying to discover if she appliedthe phrase to herself or to the place where she was staying. How couldit apply to the place? All places would be a paradise if----

At the close of a long December evening I wrote a letter, the answerto which would decide whether I should go to her, whether I shouldundertake the long journey. "The journey back will be detestable, " Imuttered, and taking up the pen again I wrote: "Your letter contains aphrase which fills me with dismay: you say, 'Virtue must be its ownreward, ' and this would seem that you are determined to be moreaggressively Platonic than ever. Doris, this is ill news indeed; youwould not have me consider it good news, would you?"

Other letters followed, but I doubt if I knew more of Doris'sintentions when I got into the train than I did when I sat ponderingby my fireside, trying to discover her meaning when she wrote thatvile phrase, "Virtue must be its own reward. " But somehow I seemed tohave come to a decision, and that was the main thing. We act obeying alaw deep down in our being, a law which in normal circumstances we arenot aware of. I asked myself as I drove to the station, if it werepossible that I was going to undertake a journey of more than athousand miles in quest--of what? Doris's pretty face! It might bepretty no longer; yet she could not have changed much. She had saidshe was sure that in ten minutes we should be talking just as in oldtimes. Even so, none but madmen travel a thousand miles in search of apretty face. And it was the madman that is in us all that waspropelling me, or was it the primitive man who crouches in some jungleof our being? Of one thing I was sure, that I was no longer aconventional citizen of the nineteenth century; I had gone back two orthree thousand years, for all characteristic traits, everythingwhereby I knew myself, had disappeared! Yet I seemed to have metmyself somewhere, in some book or poem or opera.... I could notremember at first, but after some time I began to perceive a shadowysimilarity between myself and--dare I mention the names?--the heroesof ancient legend--Menelaus or Jason--which? Both had gone a thousandmiles on Beauty's quest. The colour of Helen's hair isn't mentioned ineither the "Iliad" or the "Odyssey. " Jason's quest was a goldenfleece, and so was mine. And it was the primitive hero that I haddiscovered in myself that helped me to face the idea of the journey, for there is nothing that wearies me so much as a long journey in thetrain. 

When I was twenty I started with the intention of long travel, but thetrain journey from Calais to Paris wearied me so much that I hadrested in Paris for eight years, to return home then on account ofsome financial embarrassments. During those eight years I thoughtoften of Italy and the south of France, but the train journey ofsixteen or seventeen or eighteen hours to the Italian frontier alwaysseemed so much like what purgatory must be, that the heaven of Italyon the other side never tempted me sufficiently to undertake it. Acompanion would be of no use; one cannot talk for fifteen or sixteenhours, and while debating with myself whether I should go to Plessy, Ioften glanced down the long perspective of hours. Everything, pleasureand pain alike, are greater in imagination than in reality--there isalways a reaction, and having anticipated more than mortal weariness, I was surprised to find that the first two hours in the train passedvery pleasantly. It seemed that I had only been in the train quite alittle while when it stopped, yet Laroche is more than an hour fromParis, quite a countryside station, and it seems strange that the_Côte d'Azur_ should stop there. That was the grand name of thetrain that I was travelling by. Think of any English company running atrain and calling it "The Azure Shore"! Think of going to Euston or toCharing Cross, saying you are going by "The Azure Shore"! So long asthe name of this train endures, it is impossible to doubt that theFrench mind is more picturesque than the English, and one no longerwonders why the French school of painting, etc. 

A fruit seller was crying his wares along the platform, and justbefore we started from Laroche breakfast was preparing on board thetrain; I thought a basket of French grapes--the grapes that grow inthe open air, not the leathery hot-house grapes filled with lumps ofglue that we eat in England--would pass the time. I got out and boughta basket from him. On journeys like these one has to resort to manyvarious little expedients. Alas! The grapes were decaying; only thebunch on the top was eatable; nor was that one worth eating, and Ibegan to think that the railway company's attention should be directedto the fraud, for in my case a deliberate fraud had been effected. Thedirectors of the railway would probably think that passengers shouldexercise some discrimination; it were surely easy for the passenger toexamine the quality of a basket of grapes before purchasing--thatwould be the company's answer to my letter. The question of a letterto the newspaper did not arise, for French papers are not likeours--they do not print all the letters that are sent to them. TheFrench public has no means of ventilating its grievances; a misfortuneno doubt, but not such a misfortune as it seems, when one reflects onhow little good a letter addressed to the public press does in the wayof remedying abuses. 

I don't think we stopped again till we got to Lyons, and all the waythere I sat at the window looking at the landscape--the long, longplain that the French peasant cultivates unceasingly. Out of that longplain came all the money that was lost in Panama, and all the moneyinvested in Russian bonds--fine milliards came out of the Frenchpeasants' stockings. We passed through La Beauce. I believe it wasthere that Zola went to study the French peasant before he wrote "LaTerre. " Huysmans, with that benevolent malice so characteristic ofhim, used to say that Zola's investigation was limited to going outonce for a drive in a carriage with Madame Zola. The primitive manthat had risen out of some jungle of my being did not view thisimmense and highly cultivated plain sympathetically. It seemed to himto differ little from the town, so utterly was nature dominated by manand portioned out. On a subject like this one can meditate for a longtime, and I meditated till my meditation was broken by the stopping ofthe train. We were at Lyons. The tall white-painted houses reminded meof Paris--Lyons, as seen from the windows of _La Côte d'Azur_ atthe end of a grey December day might be Paris. The climate seemed thesame; the sky was as sloppy and as grey. At last the train stopped ata place from which I could look down a side street, and I decided thatLyons wore a more provincial look than Paris, and I thought of thegreat silk trade and the dull minds of the merchants ... Their dinnerparties, etc. I noticed everything there was to notice in order topass the time; but there was so little of interest that I wrote out atelegram and ran with it to the office, for Doris did not know whattrain I was coming by, and it is pleasant to be met at a station, tomeet one familiar face, not to find oneself amid a crowd of strangers. Very nearly did I miss the train; my foot was on the footboard whenthe guard blew his whistle. "Just fancy if I had missed the train, " Isaid, and settling myself in my seat I added, "now, let us study thelandscape; such an opportunity as this may never occur again. "

The long plain cultivated with tedious regularity that we had beenpassing through before we came to Lyons, flowed on field after field;it seemed as if we should never reach the end of it, and looking onthose same fields, for they were the same, I said to myself: "If Iwere an economist that plain would interest me, but since I gotDoris's letter I am primitive man, and he abhors the brown and thewaving field, and 'the spirit in his feet' leads him to some grassyglen where he follows his flocks, listening to the song of the wildingbee that sings as it labours amid the gorse. What a soulless race thatplain must breed, " I thought; "what soulless days are lived there;peasants going forth at dusk to plough, and turning home at dusk toeat, procreate and sleep. " At last a river appeared flowing amidsparse and stunted trees and reeds, a great wide sluggish river withlow banks, flowing so slowly that it hardly seemed to flow at all. Rooks flew past, but they are hardly wilding birds; a crow--yes, wesaw one; and I thought of a heron rising slowly out of one of thereedy islands; maybe an otter or two survives the persecution of thepeasant, and I liked to think of a poacher picking up a rabbit hereand there; hares must have almost disappeared, even the flock and theshepherd. France is not as picturesque a country as England; onlyNormandy seems to have pasturage, there alone the shepherd survivesalong the banks of the Seine. Picardy, though a swamp, never conveysan idea of the wild; and the middle of France, which I looked at thenfor the first time, shocked me, for primitive man, as I have said, wasuppermost in me, and I turned away from the long plain, "Dreary, " Isaid, "uneventful as a boarding-house. "

But it is a long plain that has no hill in it, and when I looked outagain a whole range showed so picturesquely that I could not refrain, but turned to a travelling companion to ask its name. It was theEsterelles; and never shall I forget the picturesqueness of onemoment--the jagged end of the Esterelles projecting over the valley, showing against what remained of the sunset, one or two bars of duskyred, disappearing rapidly amid heavy clouds massing themselves as iffor a storm, and soon after night closed over the landscape. 

"Henceforth, " I said, "I shall have to look to my own thoughts foramusement, " and in my circumstances there was nothing reasonable for meto think of but Doris. Some time before midnight I should catch sightof her on the platform. It seemed to me wonderful that it should beso, and I must have been dreaming, for the voice of the guard, cryingout that dinner was served awoke me with a start. 

It is said to be the habit of my countrymen never to get intoconversation with strangers in the train, but I doubt if that be so. Everything depends on the tact of him who first breaks silence; if hismanner inspires confidence in his fellow-traveller he will receivesuch answers as will carry the conversation on for a minute or two, and in that time both will have come to a conclusion whether theconversation should be continued or dropped. A pleasant little bookmight be written about train acquaintances. If I were writing such abook I would tell of the Americans I once met at Nuremberg, and withwhom I travelled to Paris; it was such a pleasant journey. I shouldhave liked to keep up their acquaintance, but it is not the etiquetteof the road to do so. But I am writing no such book; I am writing thequest of a golden fleece, and may allow myself no further deflectionin the narrative; I may tell, however, of the two very interestingpeople I met at dinner on board _La Côte d'Azur_, though somereaders will doubt if it be any integral part of my story. The womanwas a typical French woman, pleasant and agreeable, a woman of theupper middle classes, so she seemed to me, but as I knew all her ideasthe moment I looked at her, conversation with her did not flourish; orwould it be more true to say that her husband interested me more, being less familiar? His accent told me he was French; but when hetook off his hat I could see that he had come from the tropics--Algeria I thought; not unlikely a soldier. His talk was lessstilted than a soldier's, and I began to notice that he did not looklike a Frenchman, and when he told me that he lived in an oasis in thedesert, and was on his way home, his Oriental appearance I explainedby his long residence among the Arabs. He had lived in the desertsince he was fourteen. "Almost a Saharian, " I said to him. And duringdinner, and long after dinner we sat talking of the differencebetween the Oriental races and the European; of the various Arab_patois_. He spoke the Tunisean _patois_ and wrote the languageof the Koran, which is understood all over the Sahara and theSoudan, as well as in Mecca. What interested me, perhaps even morethan the language question, was the wilding's enterprise in attemptingto cultivate the desert. He had already enlarged his estate by thediscovery of two ancient Roman wells, and he had no doubt that allthat part of the desert lying between the three oases could be broughtinto cultivation. In ancient times there were not three oases but one;the wells had been destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of acres hadbeen laid waste by the Numidians in order, I think he told me, to savethemselves from the Saracens who were following them. He spent eightmonths of every year in his oasis, and begged of me, as soon as I hadwearied of Cannes, to take the boat from Marseilles--I suppose it wasfrom Marseilles--and spend some time with him in the wild. 

"Visitors, " he said, "are rare. You'll be very welcome. The railwaywill take you within a hundred miles; the last hundred miles will beaccomplished on the back of a dromedary; I shall send you a fleet oneand an escort. "

"Splendid, " I answered. "I see myself arriving sitting high up on thehump gathering dates--I suppose there are date palms where you are?Yes?--and wearing a turban and a bournous. "

"Would you like to see my bournous?" he said, and opening his valisehe showed me a splendid one which filled me with admiration, and onlyshame forbade me to ask him to allow me to try it on. Ideas haunt one. When I was a little child I insisted on wearing a turban and going outfor a ride on the pony, flourishing a Damascus blade which my fatherhad brought home from the East. Nothing else would have satisfied me;my father led the pony, and I have always thought this fantasyexceedingly characteristic; it must be so, for it awoke in me twentyyears afterwards; and fanciful and absurd as it may appear, Icertainly should have liked to have worn my travelling companion'sbournous in the train if only for a few minutes. All this is twelveyears ago, and I have not yet gone to visit him in his oasis, but howmany times have I done so in my imagination, seeing myself arriving onthe back of a dromedary crying out, "Allah! Allah! And Mohammed is hisprophet!" But though one can go on thinking year after year about abournous, one cannot talk for more than two or three hours about one;and though I looked forward to spending at least a fortnight with myfriends, and making excursions in the desert, finding summer, asFromentin says, _chez lui_, I was glad to say good-bye to myfriends at Marseilles. 

I was still quite far from the end of my journey, and so weary of talkthat at first I was doubtful whether or not it would be worth while toengage again in conversation, but a pleasant gentleman had got into mycarriage, and he required little encouragement to tell me his story. His beginnings were very humble, but he was now a rich merchant. It isalways interesting to hear how the office boy gets his first chance;the first steps are the interesting ones, and I should be able to tellhis story here if we had not been interrupted in the middle of it byhis little girl. She had wearied of her mother, who was in the nextcarriage, and had come in to sit on her father's knee. Her hair hungabout her shoulders just as Doris's had done five years ago, takingthe date from the day that I journeyed in quest of the golden fleece. She was a winsome child, with a little fluttering smile about her lipsand a curious intelligence in her eyes. She admitted that she wastired, but had not been ill, and her father told me that long trainjourneys produced the same effect on her as a sea journey. She spokewith a pretty abruptness, and went away suddenly, I thought for good, but she returned half an hour afterwards looking a little faint, Ithought, green about the mouth, and smiling less frequently. Onecannot remember everything, and I have forgotten at what station thesepeople got out; they bade me a kindly farewell, telling me that inabout two hours and a half I should be at Plessy, and that I shouldhave to change at the next station, and this lag end of my journeydragged itself out very wearily. 

Plessy is difficult to get at; one has to change, and while waitingfor the train I seemed to lose heart; nothing seemed to matter, noteven Doris. But these are momentary capitulations of the intellect andthe senses, and when I saw her pretty face on the platform Icongratulated myself again on my wisdom in having sent her thetelegram. How much pleasanter it was to walk with her to the hotelthan to walk there alone! "She is, " I said to myself, "still the samepretty girl whom I so bitterly reproached for selfishness inCumberland Place five years ago. " To compliment her on her looks, totell her that she did not look a day older, a little thinner, a littlepaler, that was all, but the same enchanting Doris, was the facileinspiration of the returned lover. And we walked down the platformtalking, my talk full of gentle reproof--why had she waited up? Therewas a reason.... My hopes, till now buoyant as corks, began to sink. "She is going to tell me that I cannot come to her hotel. Why did Isend that telegram from Lyons?" Had it not been for that telegram Icould have gone straight to her hotel. It was just the telegram thathad brought her to the station, and she had come to tell me that itwas impossible for me to stay at her hotel. 

After thirty hours of travel it mattered little which hotel I stayedat, but to-morrow and the next day, the long week we were to spendtogether passed before my eyes, the tedium of the afternoons, theirritation and emptiness of Platonic evenings--"Heavens! what have Ilet myself in for, " I thought, and my mind went back over the longjourney and the prospect of returning _bredouille_, as thesportsmen say. But to argue about details with a woman, to get angry, is a thing that no one versed in the arts of love ever does. We are inthe hands of women always; it is they who decide, and our best plan isto accept the different hotel without betraying disappointment, or aslittle as possible. But we had not seen each other for so long that wecould not part at once. Doris said that I must come to her hotel andeat some supper. No; I had dined on board the train, and all she couldpersuade me to have was a cup of chocolate. Over that cup of chocolatewe talked for an hour, and then I had to bid her good-night. The moonlooked down the street coldly; I crossed from shadow to light, feelingvery weary in all my body, and there was a little melancholy in myheart, for after all I might not win Doris. There was sleep, however, and sleep is at times a good thing, and that night it must have comequickly, so great was the refreshment I experienced in the morningwhen my eyes opened and, looking through mosquito curtains (themselvessymbols of the South), were delighted by the play of the sunlightflickering along the flower-papered wall. The impulse in me was tojump out of bed at once and to throw open _les croisées_. Andwhat did I see? Tall palm trees in the garden, and above them a dim, alluring sky, and beyond them a blue sea in almost the same tone asthe sky. And what did I feel? Soft perfumed airs moving everywhere. And what was the image that rose up in my mind? The sensuousgratification of a vision of a woman bathing at the edge of a summerwood, the intoxication of the odour of her breasts.... Why should Ithink of a woman bathing at the edge of a summer wood? Because themorning seemed the very one that Venus should choose to rise from thesea. 

Forgive my sensuousness, dear reader; remember it was the first time Ibreathed the soft Southern air, the first time I saw orange trees;remember I am a poet, a modern Jason in search of a golden fleece. "Isthis the garden of the Hesperides?" I asked myself, for nothing seemedmore unreal than the golden fruit hanging like balls of yellow worstedamong dark and sleek leaves; it reminded me of the fruit I used to seewhen I was a child under glass shades in lodging-houses, but I knew, nevertheless, that I was looking upon orange trees, and that thegolden fruit growing amid the green leaves was the fruit I used topick from the barrows when I was a boy; the fruit of which I ate somuch in boyhood that I cannot eat it any longer; the fruit whose smellwe associate with the pit of a theatre; the fruit that women nevergrow weary of, high and low. It seemed to me a wonderful thing that atlast I should see oranges growing on trees; I so happy, so singularlyhappy, that I am nearly sure that happiness is, after all, no morethan a faculty for being surprised. Since I was a boy I never felt sosurprised as I did that morning. The _valet de chambre_ broughtin my bath, and while I bathed and dressed I reflected on the luck ofhim who in middle age can be astonished by a blue sky, and still findthe sunlight a bewitchment. But who would not be bewitched by thepretty sunlight that finds its way into the gardens of Plessy? I knewI was going to walk with Doris by a sea blue as any drop-curtain, andfor a moment Doris seemed to be but a figure on a drop-curtain. Am Ivery cynical? But are we not all figures on drop-curtains, and is noteverything comic opera, and "La Belle Hélène" perhaps the only truereality? Amused by the idea of Jason or Paris or Menelaus in Plessy, Iasked Doris what music was played by the local orchestra, and she toldme it played "The March of Aïda" every evening. "Oh, the cornet, " Isaid, and I understood that the mission of Plessy was to redeem onefrom the coil of one's daily existence, from Hebrew literature and itsconcomitants, bishops, vicars, and curates--all these, especiallybishops, are regarded as being serious; whereas French novels andtheir concomitants, pretty girls, are supposed to represent thetrivial side of life. A girl becomes serious only when she is engagedto be married; the hiring of the house in which the family is rearedis regarded as serious; in fact all prejudices are serious; everydeflection from the normal, from the herd, is looked upon as trivial;and I suppose that this is right: the world could not do without theherd nor could the herd do without us--the eccentrics who go to Plessyin quest of a golden fleece instead of putting stoves in the parishchurches (stoves and organs are always regarded as too devilishlyserious for words). 

Once I had a long conversation with my archbishop concerning the Bookof Daniel, and were I to write out his lordship's erudition I mighteven be deemed sufficiently serious for a review in the _ChurchGazette_. But looking back on this interview and judging it withall the impartiality of which my nature is capable, I cannot in truthsay that I regard it as more serious than pretty Doris's fluentconversation, or the melancholy aspect of his lordship's cathedral asmore serious than the pretty Southern sunlight glancing along theseashore, lighting up the painted houses, and causing Doris to openher parasol. What a splendid article I might write on the trivial sideof seriousness, but discussion is always trivial; I shall be much moreserious in trying to recall the graceful movement of the opening ofher parasol, and how prettily it enframed her face. True that almostevery face is pretty against the distended silk full of sunlight andshadow, but Doris's, I swear to you, was as pretty as any medievalvirgin despite its modernness. Memline himself never designed a moreappealing little face. Think of the enchantment of such a face after along journey, by the sea that the Romans and the Greeks used to crossin galleys, that I used to read about when I was a boy. There it was, and on the other side the shore on which Carthage used to stand; thereit was, a blue bay with long red hills reaching out, reminding me ofhills I had seen somewhere, I think in a battle piece by SalvatorRosa. It seemed to me that I had seen those hills before--no, not in apicture; had I dreamed them, or was there some remembrance of aprevious existence struggling in my brain? There was a memorysomewhere, a broken memory, and I sought for the lost thread as wellas I could, for Doris rarely ceased talking. 

"And there is the restaurant, " she said, flinging up her parasol, "built at the end of those rocks. "

We were the first swallows to arrive; the flocks would not be here forabout three weeks. So we had the restaurant to ourselves, the waiterand doubtless the cook; and they gave us all their attention. Would wehave breakfast in the glass pavilion? How shall I otherwise describeit, for it seemed to be all glass? The scent of the sea came throughthe window, and the air was like a cordial--it intoxicated; andlooking across the bay one seemed to be looking on the very thing thatWhistler had sought for in his Nocturnes, and that Steer had nearlycaught in that picture of children paddling, that dim, optimistic bluethat allures and puts the world behind one, the dream of theopium-eater, the phrase of the syrens in "Tannhäuser, " the phrasewhich begins like a barcarolle; but the accompaniment tears underneathuntil we thrill with expectation. 

As I looked across the bay, Doris seemed but a little thing, almostinsignificant, and the thought came that I had not come for nothingeven if I did not succeed in winning her. 

"Doris, dear, forgive me if I am looking at this bay instead of you, but I've never seen anything like this before, " and feeling I wasdoing very poor justice to the emotions I was experiencing, I said:"Is it not strange that all this is at once to me new and old? I seem, as it were, to have come into my inheritance. "

"Your inheritance! Am I not----"

"Dearest, you are. Say that you are my inheritance, my beautifulinheritance; how many years have I waited for it?" As I took her in myarms she caught sight of the waiter, and turning from her I lookedacross the bay, and my desire nearly died in the infinite sweetnessblowing across the bay. 

"Azure hills, not blue; hitherto I have only seen blue. "

"They're blue to-day because there is a slight mist, but they are inreality red. "

"A red-hilled bay, " I said, "and all the slopes flecked with the whitesides of villas. "

"Peeping through olive trees. "

"Olive trees, of course. I have never yet seen the olive; the olivebegins at Avignon or thereabouts, doesn't it? It was dark night whenwe passed through Avignon. "

"You'll see very few trees here; only olives and ilex. "

"The ilex I know, and there is no more beautiful tree than the ilex. "

 "Were not the crocuses that grew Under that ilex tree, As beautiful in scent and hue As ever fed the bee?"

"Whose verses are those?"

"Shelley's. I know no others. Are the lines very wonderful? They seemno more than a statement, yet they hang about my memory. I am glad Ishall see the ilex tree. "

"And the eucalyptus--plenty of eucalyptus trees. "

"That was the scent that followed us this morning as we came throughthe gardens. "

"Yes, as we passed from our hotel one hung over the garden wall, andthe wind carried its scent after us. "

The arrival of the waiter with _hors d'oeuvres_ distracted ourattention from the olive tree to its fruit, I rarely touch olives, butthat morning I ate many. Should we have mutton cutlets or lamb? Dorissaid the Southern mutton was detestable. "Then we'll have lamb. " Anidea came into my head, and it was this, that I had been mistakenabout Doris's beauty. Hers was not like any face that one may find ina panel by Memline. She was like something, but I could not lay mythoughts on what she was like. 

"A sail would spoil the beauty of the bay, " I said when the waiterbrought in the coffee, and left us--we hoped for the last time. Takinghands and going to the window we sat looking across the sailless bay. "How is it that no ships come here? Is the bay looked upon as a mereornament and reserved exclusively for the appreciation of visitors?Those hills, too, look as if they had been designed in a likeintent.... How much more beautiful the bay is without a sail--why Icannot tell, but----"

"But what?"

"A great galley rowed by fifty men would look well in this bay.... Thebay is antiquity, and those hills; all the morning while talking toyou a memory or a shadow of a memory has fretted in my mind like a flyon a pane. Now I know why I have been expecting a nymph to rise out ofthose waves during breakfast. For a thousand years men believed thatnymphs came up on those rocks, and that satyrs and their progeny mightbe met in the woods and on the hillsides. Only a thin varnish has beenpassed over these beliefs. One has only to come here to look down intothat blue sea-water to believe that nymphs swim about those rocks; andwhen we go for a drive among those hillsides we'll keep a sharplookout for satyrs. Now I know why I like this country. It is heathen. Those mountains--how different from the shambling Irish hills fromwhence I have come! And you, Doris, you might have been dug upyesterday, though you are but two-and-twenty. You are a thing ofyester age, not a bit like the little Memline head which I imaginedyou to be like when I was coming here in the train, nor like anythingdone by the Nuremberg painters. You are a Tanagra figure, and one ofthe finest. In you I read all the winsomeness of antiquity. But I mustlook at the bay now, for I may never see anything like it again; neverhave I seen anything like it before. Forgive me, remember that threedays ago I was in Ireland, the day before yesterday I was in England, yesterday I was in Paris. I have come out of the greyness of theNorth. When I left Paris all was grey, and when the train passedthrough Lyons a grey night was gathering; now I see no cloud at all:the change is so wonderful. You cannot appreciate my admiration. Youhave been looking at the bay for the last three weeks, and _La côted'azur_ has become nothing to you now but palms and promenades. Tome it is still quite different. I shall always see you beautiful, whereas Plessy may lose her beauty in a few days. Let me enjoy itwhile I may. "

"Perhaps I shall not outlast Plessy. "

"Yes, you will. Do you know, Doris, that you don't look a day oldersince the first time I saw you walking across the room to the piano inyour white dress, your gold hair hanging down over your shoulders. Ithas darkened a little, that is all. "

"It is provoking you should see me when I am thin. I wish you had seenme last year when I came from the rest cure. I went up more than astone in weight. Every one said that I didn't look more than sixteen. I know I didn't, for all the women were jealous of me. "

As I sat watching the dissolving line of the horizon, lost in a dream, I heard my companion say:

"Of what are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking of something that happened long ago in that very bay. "

"Tell me about it;" and her hand sought mine for a moment. 

"Would you like to hear it? I'd like to tell it, but it's a long, longstory, and to remember it would be an effort. The colour of the seaand the sky is enough; the warmth of the sunlight penetrates me; Ifeel like a plant; the only difference between me and one of thosepalm trees----"

"I am sure those poor palms are shivering. There is not enough heathere for them; they come from the south, and you come from the north. "

"I suppose that is so. They grow, but they don't flourish here. However, my mood is not philanthropic; I cannot pity even a palm treeat the present moment. See how my cigar smoke curls and goes out! Itis strange, Doris, that I should meet you here, for some years ago itwas arranged that I should come here----"

"With a woman?"

"Yes, of course. How can it be otherwise? Our lives are woven alongand across with women. Some men find the reality of their lives inwomen, others, as we were saying just now, in bishops. "

"Tell me about the woman who asked you to come here? Did you love her?And what prevented you from coming here with her?"

"It is one of the oddest stories--odd only because it is like myself. Every character creates it own stories; we are like spools, and eachspool fills itself up with a different-coloured thread. The story, such as it is, began one evening in Victoria Street at the end of along day's work. A letter began it. She wrote asking me to dine withher, and her letter was most welcome, for I had no plans for thatevening. I do not know if you know that curious dread of life whichsteals through the twilight; it had just laid its finger on myshoulder when the bell rang, and I said: 'My visitor is welcome, whoever she or he may be. ' The visitor would have only spent a fewminutes perhaps with me, but Gertrude's letter--that was her name--wasa promise of a long and pleasant evening, for it was more than a mereinvitation to dinner. She wrote: 'I have not asked any one to meetyou, but you will not mind dining alone with me. I hope you will beable to come, for I want to consult you on a matter about which Ithink you will be able to advise me. ' As I dressed I wondered what shecould have to propose, and with my curiosity enkindled I walked to herhouse. The evening was fine--I remember it--and she did not live farfrom me; we were neighbours. You see I knew Gertrude pretty well, andI liked her. There had been some love passages between us, but I hadnever been her lover; our story had got entangled, and as I went toher I hoped that this vexatious knot was to be picked at last. To beGertrude's lover would be a pleasure indeed, for though a woman offorty, a natural desire to please, a witty mind, and pretty mannersstill kept her young; she had all the appearance of youth; and Frenchgowns and underwear that cost a little fortune made her a woman thatone would still take a pleasure in making love to. It would bepleasant to be her lover for many reasons. There were disadvantages, however, for Gertrude, though never vulgar herself, liked vulgarthings. Her friends were vulgar; her flat, for she had just left herhusband, was opulent, overdecorated; the windows were too heavilycurtained, the electric light seemed to be always turned on, and asfor the pictures--well, we won't talk of them; Gertrude was the onlyone worth looking at. And she was rather like a Salon picture, aGervex, a Boldeni--I will not be unjust to Gertrude, she was not asvulgar as a Boldeni. She had a pretty cooing manner, and her whitedress fell gracefully from her slender flanks. You can see her, can'tyou, coming forward to meet me, rustling a little, breathing an odourof orris root, taking my hand and very nearly pressing it against herbosom? Gertrude knew how to suggest, and no sooner had the thoughtthat she wished to inspire passed through my mind than she let go myhand, saying: 'Come, sit down by me, tell me what you have beendoing'; and her charm was that it was impossible to say whether what Ihave described, dress, manner, and voice, was unconscious orintentional. "

"Probably a little of both, " Doris said. 

"I see you understand. You always understand. "

"And to make amends for the familiarity of pressing your hand to herbosom she would say: 'I hope you will not mind dining alone with me, 'and immediately you would propound a little theory that two is companyand three is a county council, unless indeed the three consist of twomen and one woman. A woman is never really happy unless she is talkingto two men, woman being at heart a polyandrist. "

"Doris, you know me so well that you can invent my conversations. "

"Yes, I think I can. You have not changed; I have not forgotten youthough we have not seen each other for five years; and now go on, tellme about Gertrude. "

"Well, sitting beside her on the sofa----"

"Under the shaded electric light, " interrupted Doris. 

"I tried to discover--not the reason of this invitation to dinner; ofcourse it was natural that old friends should dine together, but shehad said in her letter that she wished to talk to me about some matteron which she thought I could advise her. The servant would come in amoment to announce that dinner was ready, and if Gertrude did not tellme at once I might, if the story were a long one, have to wait tilldinner was over; her reluctance to confide in me seemed to point topecuniary help. Was it possible that Gertrude was going to ask me tolend her money! If so, the loan would be a heavy one, more than Icould afford to lend. That is the advantage of knowing rich people;when they ask for money they ask for more than one can afford to lend, and one can say with truth: 'Were I to lend you five hundred pounds, I should not be able to make ends meet at the end of the year. ' Herreluctance to confide in me seemed incomprehensible, unless indeed shewanted to borrow money. But Gertrude was not that kind, and she was arich woman. At last, just before the servant came into the room, sheturned round saying that she had sent for me because she wished tospeak to me about a yacht. Imagine my surprise. To speak to me about ayacht! If it had been about the picture. 

"The door opened, the servant announced that dinner was ready, and wehad to talk in French during dinner, for her news was that she hadhired a yacht for the winter in order that she might visit Greece andthe Greek Islands. But she did not dare to travel in Greece alone forsix months, and it was difficult to find a man who was free and whomone could trust. She thought she could trust me, and remembering thatI had once liked her, it had occurred to her to ask me if I would liketo go with her. I shall never forget how Gertrude confided her plan tome, the charming modesty with which she murmured: 'Perhaps you dostill, and you will not bore me by claiming rights over me. I don'tmind your making love to me, but I don't like rights. You know what Imean. When we return to England you will not pursue me. You know whatI have suffered from such pursuits; you know all about it?' Is it notcurious how a woman will sometimes paint her portrait in a singlephrase; not paint, but indicate in half-a-dozen lines her whole moralnature? Gertrude exists in the words I have quoted just as God madeher. And now I have to tell you about the pursuit. When Gertrudementioned it I had forgotten it; a blankness came into my face, andshe said: 'Don't you remember?' 'Of course, of course, ' I said, andthis is the story within the story. 

"One day after lunch Gertrude, getting up, walked unconsciouslytowards me, and quite naturally I took her in my arms, and when I hadtold her how much I liked her, and the pleasure I took in her company, she promised to meet me at a hotel in Lincoln. We were to meet therein a fortnight's time; but two days before she sent for me, and toldme that she would have to send me away. I really did like Gertrude, and I was quite overcome, and a long hour was spent begging of her totell why she had come to this determination. One of course says unjustthings, one accuses a woman of cruelty; what could be the meaning ofit? Did she like to play with a man as a cat plays with a mouse? ButGertrude, though she seemed distressed at my accusations, refused togive me any explanation of her conduct; tears came into her eyes--theyseemed like genuine tears--and it was difficult to believe that shehad taken all this trouble merely to arrive at this inexplicable andmost disagreeable end. Months passed without my hearing anything ofGertrude, till one day she sent me a little present, and in responseto a letter she invited me to come to see her in the country. And, walking through some beautiful woods, she told me the reason why shehad not gone to Lincoln. A Pole whom she had met at the gamblingtables at Monte Carlo was pursuing her, threatening her that if he sawher with any other man he would murder her and her lover. This atfirst seemed an incredible tale, but when she entered into details, there could be no doubt that she was telling the truth, for had shenot on one occasion very nearly lost her life through this man? Theywere in Germany together, she and the Pole, and he had locked her upin her room without food for many hours, and coming in suddenly he hadpressed the muzzle of a pistol against her temple and pulled thetrigger. Fortunately, it did not go off. 'It was a very near thing, 'she said; 'the cartridge was indented, and I made up my mind that ifthings went any further, I should have to tell my husband. ' 'Butthings can't go further than an indented cartridge, ' I answered. 'Whatyou tell me is terrible'; and we talked for a long time, walking aboutthe woods, fearing that the Pole might spring from behind every bush, the pistol in his hand. But he did not appear; she evidently knewwhere he was, or had made some compact with him. Nevertheless, at theclose of the day, I drove through the summer evening not having gotanything from Gertrude except a promise that if she should findherself free, she would send for me. Weeks and months went by duringwhich I saw Gertrude occasionally; you see love stories, once they getentangled, remain entangled; that is what makes me fear that we shallnever be able to pick the knot that you have tied our love story into. Misadventure followed misadventure. It seems to me that I behaved verystupidly on many occasions; it would take too long to tell youhow--when I met her at the theatre I did not do exactly what I shouldhave done; and on another occasion when I met her driving in a suburb, I did not stop her cab, and so on and so on until, resolved to bringmatters to a crisis, Gertrude had sent me an invitation to dinner, andher plan was the charming one which I have told you, that we shouldspend six months sailing about the Greek Islands in a yacht. We leftthe dining-room and returned to the drawing-room, she telling me thatthe yacht had been paid for--the schooner, the captain, the crew, everything for six months; but I not unnaturally pointed out to herthat I could not accept her hospitality for so long a time, and thegreater part of the evening was spent in trying to persuade her toallow me to pay--Gertrude was the richer--at least a third of theupkeep of the yacht must come out of my pocket. 

"The prospect of a six months' cruise among the Greek Islands kindledmy imagination, and while listening to Gertrude I was often in spiritfar away, landing perchance at Cyprus, exalted at the prospect ofvisiting the Cyprians' temple; or perchance standing with Gertrude onthe deck of the yacht watching the stars growing dim in the east; thesailors would be singing at the time, and out of the ashen stillness awind would come, and again we would hear the ripple of the waterparting as the jib filled and drew the schooner eastward. I imaginedhow half an hour later an island would appear against the golden sky, a lofty island lined with white buildings, perchance ancient fanes. 'What a delicious book my six months with Gertrude will be!' I said asI walked home, and the title of the book was an inspiration, 'AnUnsentimental Journey. ' It was Gertrude's own words that had suggestedit. Had she not said that she did not mind my making love to her, butshe did not like rights? She couldn't complain if I wrote a book, andI imagined how every evening when the lover left her, the chroniclerwould sit for an hour recording his impressions. Very often he wouldcontinue writing until the pencil dropped from his hand, till he fellasleep in the chair. An immediate note-taking would be necessary, sofugitive are impressions, and an analysis of his feelings, theirwaxing and their waning; he would observe himself as an astronomerobserves the course of a somewhat erratic star, and his descriptionsof himself and of her would be interwoven with descriptions of theseas across which Menelaus had gone after Helen's beauty--beauty, thenoblest of men's quests. 

"For once Nature seemed to me to put into the hands of the artist asubject perfect in its every part; the end especially delighted me, and I imagined our good-byes at Plymouth or Portsmouth or Hull, wherever we might land. 'Well, Gertrude, goodbye. We have spent a verypleasant six months together; I shall never forget our excursion. Butthis is not a rupture; I may hope to see you some time during theseason? You will allow me to call about tea-time?' And she wouldanswer: 'Yes, you may call. You have been very nice. ' Each would turnaway sighing, conscious of a little melancholy in the heart, for allpartings are sad; but at the bottom of the heart there would be asense of relief, of gladness--that gladness which the bird feels whenit leaves its roost: there is nothing more delicious perhaps than thefirst beat of the wings. I forget now whether I looked forward most tothe lady or to the book.... If the winds had been more propitious, Imight have written a book that would have compared favourably with theeighteenth-century literature, for the eighteenth century was cynicalin love; while making love to a woman, a gallant would often considera plan for her subsequent humiliation. Gouncourt----"

"But, dear one, finish about the yacht. "

"Well, it seemed quite decided that Gertrude and I were to go toMarseilles to meet the schooner; but the voyage from the Bay of Biscayis a stormy and a tedious one; the weather was rough all the way, andshe took a long time to get to Gibraltar. She passed the straitsignalling to Lloyd's; we got a telegram; everything was ready; I hadordered yachting clothes, shoes, and quantities of things; but afterthat telegram no news came, and one evening Gertrude told me she wasbeginning to feel anxious; the yacht ought to have arrived atMarseilles. Three or four days passed, and then we read in thepaper--the _Evening Standard_, I think it was--the _Ring-Dove_, a large schooner, had sunk off the coast while making for the Bayof Plessy. Had she passed that point over yonder, no doubt shewould have been saved; all hands were lost, the captain, sevenmen, and my book. "

"Good heavens, how extraordinary! And what became of Gertrude? Wereyou never her lover?"

"Never. We abstained while waiting for the yacht. Then she fell inlove with somebody else; she married her lover; and now he deploresher; she found an excellent husband, and she died in his arms. "

At every moment I expected Doris to ask me how it was that, for thesake of writing a book, I had consented to go away for a six months'cruise with a woman whom I didn't love. But there was a moment when Iloved her--the week before Lincoln. Whether Doris agreed tacitly thatmy admiration of Gertrude's slender flanks and charm of manner andtaste in dress justified me in agreeing to go away with her, I don'tknow; she did not trouble me with the embarrassing question I hadanticipated. Isn't it strange that people never ask the embarrassingquestions one foresees? She asked me instead with whom I had been inlove during the past five years, and this too embarrassed me, thoughnot to the extent the other question would have done. To say thatsince I had seen Doris I had led a chaste life would be at onceincredible and ridiculous. Sighing a little, I spoke of a_liaison_ that had lasted many years and had come to an end atlast. Fearing that Doris would ask if it had come to an end throughweariness, it seemed well to add that the lady had a daughter growingup, and it was for the girl's sake we had agreed to bring our lovestory to a close. We had, however, promised to remain friends. 

Doris's silence embarrassed me a little, for she didn't ask anyquestions about the lady and her daughter; and it was impossible totell from her manner whether she believed that this lady comprised thewhole of my love life for the last five years, and if she thought Ihad really broken with her. For a moment or two I did not dare to lookat Doris, and then I felt that her disbelief mattered little, so longas it did not enter as an influencing factor into the presentsituation. Under a sky as blue and amid nature poetical as adrop-curtain, one's moral nature dozes. No doubt that was it. There isan English church at Plessy, but really! Dear little town, town of myheart, where the local orchestra plays "The March of Aida" and "LaBelle Hélène"! If I could inoculate you, reader, with the sentiment ofthe delicious pastoral you would understand why, all the time I was atPlessy, I looked upon myself as a hero of legend, whether of theArgonauts or the siege of Troy matters little. Returning from MountIda after a long absence, after presenting in imagination the fairestof women with the apple, I said:

"You asked me whom I had been in love with; now tell me with whom haveyou been in love?"

"For the last three years I have been engaged to be married. "

"And you are still engaged?"

She nodded, her eyes fixed on the blue sea, and I said laughing, thatit was not of a marriage or an engagement to be married that I spoke, but of the beautiful, irrepressible caprice. 

"You wouldn't have me believe that no passion has caught you anddragged you about for the last five years, just as a cat drags alittle mouse about?"

"It is strange that you should ask me that, for that is exactly whathappened. "

"Really?"

"Only that I suffered much more than any mouse ever suffered. "

"Doris, tell me. You know how sympathetic I am; you know I shallunderstand. All things human interest me. If you have loved as much asyou say, your story will ... I must hear it. "

"Why should I tell it?" and her eyes filled with tears. "I sufferedhorribly. Don't speak to me about it. What is the good of going overit all again?"

"Yes, there is good; very much good comes of speaking, if this lovestory is over, if there is no possibility of reviving it. Tell it, andin telling, the bitterness will pass from you. Who was this man? Howdid you meet him?"

"He was a friend of Albert's. Albert introduced him. "

"Albert is the man you are engaged to? The old story, the very oldest. Why should it always be the friend? There are so many other men, butit is always the friend who attracts. " And I told Doris the story of afriend who had once robbed me, and my story had the effect of dryingher tears. But they began again as soon as she tried to tell her ownstory. There could be no doubt that she had suffered. Things areinteresting in proportion to the amount of ourselves we put into them;Doris had clearly put all her life into this story; a sordid one itmay seem to some, a story of deception and lies, for of course Albertwas deceived as cruelly as many another good man. But Doris must havesuffered deeply, for at the memory of her sufferings her face streamedwith tears. As I looked at her tears I said: "It is strange that sheshould weep so, for her story differs nowise from the many storieshappening daily in the lives of men and women. She will tell me theold and beautiful story of lovers forced asunder by cruel fate, andthis spot is no doubt a choice one to hear her story. " And raising myeyes I admired once again the drooping shore, the serrated line ofmountains sweeping round the bay. And the colour was so intense thatit overpowered the senses like a perfume, "like musk, " I thought. WhenI turned to Doris I could see she was wholly immersed in her ownsorrow, and it took all my art to persuade her to tell it, or itseemed as if all my art of persuasion were necessary. 

"As soon as you knew you loved him, you resolved to see him no more?"

Doris nodded. 

"You sent him away before you yielded to him?"

She nodded, and looking at me her eyes filled with tears, but whichonly seemed to make them still more beautiful, she told me that theyhad both felt that it was impossible to deceive Albert. 

 * * * * *

All love stories are alike in this; they all contain what thereviewers call "sordid details. " But if Tristan had not takenadvantage of King Mark's absence on a hunting expedition, the worldwould have been the poorer of a great love story; and what, after all, does King Mark's happiness matter to us--a poor passing thing, whoselife was only useful in this, that it gave us an immortal love story?And if Wagner had not loved Madame Wasendonck, and if MadameWasendonck had not been unfaithful to her husband, we should not havehad "Tristan. " Who then would, for the sake of Wasendonck's honour, destroy the score of "Tristan"? Nor is the story of "Tristan" the onlyone, nor the most famous. There is also the story of Helen. IfMenelaus's wife had not been unfaithful to him, the world would havebeen the poorer of the greatest of all poems, the "Iliad" and the"Odyssey. " Dear me, when one thinks of it, one must admit that artowes a great deal to adultery. Children are born of the marriage, stories of the adulterous bed, and the world needs both--stories aswell as children. Even my little tale would not exist if Doris hadbeen a prudent maiden, nor would it have interested me to listen toher that day by the sea if she had naught to tell me but herunswerving love for Albert. Her story is not what the world calls agreat story, and it would be absurd to pretend that if a shorthandwriter had taken it down his report would compare with the stories ofIsolde and Helen, but I heard it from her lips, and her tears and herbeauty replaced the language of Wagner and of Homer; and so well didthey do this that I am not sure that the emotion I experienced inlistening to her was less than that which I have experienced before awork of art. 

"Do you know, " she began, "perhaps you don't, perhaps you've neverloved enough to know the anxiety one may feel for the absent. We hadbeen together all day once, and when we bade each other good-bye weagreed that we should not see each other for two days, till Thursday;but that night in bed an extraordinary desire took hold of me to knowwhat had become of him. I felt I must hear from him; one word would beenough. But we had promised. It was stupid, it was madness, yet I hadto take down the telephone, and when I got into communication what doyou think the answer was?--'Thank God you telephoned! I've beenwalking about the room nearly out of my mind, feeling that I should gomad if the miracle did not happen. '"

"If you loved Ralph better than Albert----"

"Why didn't I give up Albert? Albert's life would have been broken andruined if I had done that. You see he has loved me so many years thathis life has become centred in me. He is not one of those men who likemany women. Outside of his work nothing exists but me. He doesn't caremuch for reading, but he reads the books I like. I don't know that hecares much about music for its own sake, but he likes to hear me singjust because it is me. He never notices other women; I don't thinkthat he knows what they wear, but he likes my dresses, not becausethey are in good taste, but because I wear them. One can't sacrifice aman like that. What would one think of oneself? One would die ofremorse. So there was nothing to be done but for Ralph to go away. Itnearly killed me. "

"I'm afraid I can give you no such love; my affection for you willprove very tepid after such violent emotions. "

"I don't want such emotions again; I could not bear them, they wouldkill me; even a part would kill me. Two months after Ralph left I wasbut a little shadow. I was thinner than I am now, I was worn to athread, I could hardly keep body and skirt together. "

We laughed at Doris's little joke; and we watched it curling and goingout like a wreath of cigarette smoke. 

"But did you get no happiness at all out of this great love?"

"We were happy only a very little while. "

"How long?"

Doris reflected. 

"We had about six weeks of what I should call real happiness, the timewhile Albert was away. When he came back the misery and remorse beganagain. I had to see him--not Albert, the other--every day; and Albertbegan to notice that I was different. We used to go out together, wethree, and at last the sham became too great and Albert said he couldnot stand it any longer. 'I prefer you should go out with him alone, and if it be for your happiness I'll give you up. '"

"So you nearly died of love! Well, now you must live for love, likingthings as they go by. Life is beautiful at the moment, sad when welook back, fearful when we look forward; but I suppose it's hopelessto expect a little Christian like you to live without drawingconclusions, liking things as they go by as the nymphs do. Dry thosetears; forget that man. You tell me it is over and done. Remembernothing except that the sky and the sea are blue, that it is a luxuryto feel alive here by the sea-shore. My happiness would be to make youhappy, to see you put the past out of your mind, to close your eyes tothe future. That will be easy to do by this beautiful sea-shore, underthose blue skies with flowers everywhere and drives among themountains awaiting us. We create our own worlds. Chance has left youhere and sent me to you. I want you to eat a great deal and to sleepand to get fatter and to dream and to read Theocritus, so that when wego to the mountains we shall be transported into antiquity. You mustforget Albert and him who made you unhappy--he allowed you to lookback and forwards. "

"I think I deserve some happiness; you see I have sacrificed so much. "

At these words my hopes rose--shall I say like a balloon out of whicha great weight of ballast has been thrown?--and so high did they gothat failure seemed like a little feather swimming in the gulf below. "She deserved some happiness, " and intends to make me her happiness. Her words could bear no other interpretation; she had spoken withoutthought, and instinctively. Albert was away; why should she not takethis happiness which I offered her? Would she understand that distancemade a difference, that it was one thing to deceive Albert if he werewith her, and another when she was a thousand miles away? It was as ifwe were in a foreign country; we were under palm trees, we were by theMediterranean. With Albert a thousand miles away it would be so easyfor her to love me. She had said there was no question of her marryingany one but Albert--and to be unfaithful is not to be inconstant. These were the arguments which I would use if I found that I hadmisunderstood her; but for the moment I did not dare to inquire; itwould be too painful to hear I had misunderstood her; but at last, feeling she might guess the cause of my silence, I said, not beingable to think of anything more plausible:

"You spoke, didn't you, of going for a drive?"

"We were speaking of happiness--but if you'd like to go for a drive. There's no happiness like driving. "

"Isn't there?"

She pinched my arm, and with a choking sensation in the throat I askedher if I should send for a carriage. 

"There will be time for a short drive before the sun setting. You saidyou admired the hills--one day we will go to a hill town. There is abeautiful one--Florac is the name of it--but we must start early inthe morning. To-day there will be only time to drive as far as thepoint you have been admiring all the morning. The road winds throughthe rocks, and you want to see the ilex trees. "

"My dear, I want to see you. "

"Well, you're looking at me. Come, don't be disagreeable. "

"Disagreeable, Doris! I never felt more kindly in my life. I'm stillabsorbed in the strange piece of luck which has brought us together, and in such a well-chosen spot; no other would have pleased me asmuch. "

"Now why do you like the landscape? Tell me. "

"I cannot think of the landscape now, Doris: I'm thinking of you, ofwhat you said just now. "

"What did I say?"

"You said--I tried to remember the words at the time, but I haveforgotten them, so many thoughts have passed through my mindsince--you said--how did you word it?--after having suffered as muchas you did, some share of happiness----"

"No, I didn't say that; I said, having sacrificed so much, I thought Ideserved a little happiness. "

"So she knew what she was saying, " I said to myself. "Her words werenot casual, " but not daring to ask her if she intended to make me herhappiness, I spoke about the landscape. "You ask me why I like thelandscape? Because it carries me back into past times when menbelieved in nymphs and in satyrs. I have always thought it must be awonderful thing to believe in the dryad. Do you know that menwandering in the woods sometimes used to catch sight of a white breastbetween the leaves, and henceforth they could love no mortal woman?The beautiful name of their malady was nympholepsy. A disease thatevery one would like to catch. "

"But if you were to catch it you wouldn't be able to love me, so I'llnot bring you to the mountains. Some peasant girl----"

"Fie! Doris, I have never liked peasant girls. "

"Your antiquity is eighteenth-century antiquity. There are manyalcoves in it. "

"I don't know that the alcove was an invention of the eighteenthcentury. There were alcoves at all times. But, Doris, good heavens!what are those trees? Never did I see anything so ghastly; they arelike ghosts. Not only have they no leaves, but they have no bark norany twigs; nothing but great white trunks and branches. "

"I think they are called plantains. "

"That won't do, you are only guessing; I must ask the coachman. "

"I think, sir, they are called plantains. "

"You only think. Stop and I'll ask those people. "

"Sont des plantains, Monsieur. "

"Well, I told you so, " Doris said, laughing. 

Beyond this spectral avenue, on either side of us there were fields, and Doris murmured:

"See how flat the country is, to the very feet of the hills, and thefolk working in the fields are pleasant to watch. "

I declared that I could not watch them, nor could you, reader, if youhad been sitting by Doris. I had risen and come away from long monthsof toil; and I remember how I told Doris as we drove across thosefields towards the hills, that it was not her beauty alone thatinterested me; her beauty would not be itself were it not illumed byher wit and her love of art. What would she be, for instance, if shewere not a musician? Or would her face be the same face if it wererobbed of its mirth? But mirth is enchanting only when the source ofit is the intelligence. Vacuous laughter is the most tiresome ofthings; a face of stone is more inveigling. But Doris prided herselfon her beauty more than on her wit, and she was disinclined to admitthe contention that beauty is dependent upon the intelligence. Ourtalk rambled on, now in one direction, now in another. 

Lovers are divided into two kinds, the babbling and the silent. 

We meet specimens of the silent kind on a Thames back-water--the puntdrawn up under the shady bank with the twain lying side by side, theirarms about each other all the afternoon. When evening comes, and it istime to return home, her fellow gets out the sculls, and they partsaying: "Well, dear, next Sunday, at the same time. " "Yes, at the sametime next Sunday. "

We were of the babbling kind, as the small part of our conversationthat appears in this story shows. 

"My dear, my dear, remember that we are in an open carriage. "

"What do those folks matter to us?"

"My dear, if I don't like it?"

To justify my desire of her lips I began to compare her beauty withthat of a Greek head on a vase, saying that hers was a cameo-likebeauty, as dainty as any Tanagra figure. 

"And to see you and not to claim you, not to hold your face in myhands just as one holds a vase, is----"

"Is what?"

"A kind of misery. What else shall I say? Fancy my disappointment if, on digging among these mountains, I were to find a beautiful vase, andsome one were to say: 'You can look at it but not touch it. '"

"Do you love me as well as that?" she answered, somewhat moved, for mywords expressed a genuine emotion. 

"I do indeed, Doris. "

"We might get out here. I want you to see the view from the hilltop. "

And, telling the driver that he need not follow us, to stay there andrest his panting horse, we walked on. Whether Doris was thinking ofthe view I know not; I only know that I thought only of kissing Doris. To do so would be pleasant--in a way--even on this cold hillside, andI noticed that the road bent round the shoulder of the mount. We soonreached the hilltop, and we could see the road enter the village inthe dip between the hills, a double line of houses--not muchmore--facing the sea, a village where we might go to have breakfast;we might never go there; however that might be, we certainly shouldremember that village and the road streaming out of it on the otherside towards the hills. Now and then we lost sight of the road; itdoubled round some rock or was hidden behind a group of trees; andthen we caught sight of it a little farther on, ascending the hills infront of us, and no doubt on the other side it entered anothervillage, and so on around the coast of Italy. Even with the thought ofDoris's kisses in my mind, I could admire the road and the curves ofthe bay. I felt in my pocket for a piece of paper and a pencil. Thecolour was as beautiful as a Brabizon; there were many tints of blue, no doubt, but the twilight had gathered the sea and sky into one tone, or what seemed to be one tone. 

"You wanted to see olive trees--those are olives. "

"So those are olives! Do I at last look upon olives?"

"Are you disappointed?"

"Yes and no. The white gnarled trunk makes even the young trees seemold. The olive is like an old man with skimpy legs. It seems to me apathetic tree. One does not like to say it is ugly; it is not ugly, but it would be puzzling to say wherein lies its charm, for it throwsno shade, and is so grey--nothing is so grey as the olive. I like theilex better. "

Where the road dipped there was a group of ilex trees, and it was intheir shade that I kissed Doris, and the beauty of the trees helps meto appreciate the sentiment of those kisses. And I remember that roadand those ilex trees as I might remember a passage in Theocritus. Doris--her very name suggests antiquity, and it was well that she waskissed by me for the first time under ilex trees; true that I hadkissed her before, but that earlier love story has not found achronicler, and probably it never will. I like to think that thebeauty of the ilex is answerable, perhaps, for Doris's kisses--in ameasure. Her dainty grace, her Tanagra beauty, seemed to harmonisewith that of the ilex, for there is an antique beauty in this treethat we find in none other. Theocritus must have composed many a poembeneath it. It is the only tree that the ancient world could havecared to notice; and if it were possible to carve statues of trees, Iam sure that the ilex is the tree sculptors would choose. The beechand the birch, all the other trees, only began to be beautiful whenmen invented painting. No other tree shapes itself out so beautifullyas the ilex, lifting itself up to the sky so abundantly and with suchdignity--a very queen in a velvet gown is the ilex tree; and we stoodlooking at the group, admiring its glossy thickness, till suddenly theilex tree went out of my mind, and I thought of the lonely night thatawaited me. 

"Doris, dear, it is more than flesh and blood can bear. My folly layin sending the telegram. Had I not sent it you wouldn't have known bywhat train I was coming; you would have been fast asleep in your bed, and I should have gone straight to your hotel. "

"But, darling, you wouldn't compromise me. Every one would know thatwe stayed at the same hotel. "

"Dearest, it might happen by accident, and were it to happen byaccident what could you do?"

"All I can say is that it would be a most unfortunate accident. "

"Then I have come a thousand miles for nothing. This is worse than thetime in London when I left you for your strictness. Can nothing bedone?"

"Am I not devoted to you? We have spent the whole day together. Now Idon't think it's at all nice of you to reproach me with having broughtyou on a fool's errand. "

"I didn't say that, " and we quarrelled a little until we reached thecarriage. Doris was angry, and when she spoke again it was to say:

"If you are not satisfied, you can go back. I'm sorry. I think it'smost unreasonable that you should ask me to compromise myself. "

"And I think it's unkind of you to suggest that I should go back, forhow can I go back?"

She did not ask me why--she was too angry at the moment--and it waswell she did not, for I should have been embarrassed to tell her thatI was fairly caught. 

I had come a thousand miles to see her, and I could not say I wasgoing to take the _Côte d'azur_ back again, because she would notlet me stay at her hotel; to do so would be too childish, too futile. The misery of the journey back would be unendurable. There was nothingto do but to wait, and hope that life, which is always full ofaccidents, would favour us. Better think no more about it. For it isthinking that makes one miserable. 

There were many little things which helped to pass the time away. Doris went every evening to a certain shop to fetch two eggs that hadbeen laid that morning. It was necessary for her health that sheshould eat eggs beaten up with milk between the first and secondbreakfast. We went there, and it was amusing to pick my way throughthe streets, carrying her eggs back to the hotel for her. She knew afew people--strange folk, I thought them--elderly spinsters living_en pension_ at different hotels. We dined with her friends, andafter dinner Doris sang, and when she had played many things that sheused to play to me in the old days, it was time for her to go to bed, for she rarely slept after six o'clock, so she said. 

"Good-night. Ah, no, the hour is ill, " I murmured to myself as Iwended my lonely way, and I lay awake thinking if I had said anythingthat would prejudice my chances of winning her, if I had omitted tosay anything that might have inclined her to yield. One lies awake atnight thinking of the mistakes one has made; thoughts clatter in one'shead. Good heavens! how stupid it was of me not to have used a certainargument. Perhaps if I had spoken more tenderly, displayed a moreChristian spirit--all that paganism, that talk about nymphs and dryadsand satyrs and fauns frightened her. In the heat of the moment onesays more than one intends, though it is quite true that, as a rule, it is well to insist that there is no such thing as our lower nature, that everything about us is divine. So constituted are we that themind accepts the convention, and what we have to do is to keep to theconvention, just as in opera. Singing appears natural so long as thecharacters do not speak. Once they speak they cannot go back to music;the convention has been broken. As in Art so it is in Life. Tell awoman that she is a nymph, and she must not expect any more from youthan she would from a faun, that all you know is the joy of thesunlight, that you have no dreams beyond the worship of the perfectcircle of her breast, and the desire to gather grapes for her, and shewill give herself to you unconscious of sin. I must have fallen asleepthinking of these things, and I must have slept soundly, for Iremembered nothing until the servant came in with my bath, and I sawagain the pretty sunlight flickering along the wall-paper. Beforeparting the previous night, Doris and I had arranged that I was tocall an hour earlier than usual at the hotel; I was to be there athalf-past ten. She had promised to be ready. We were going to drive toFlorac, to one of the hill towns, and it would take two hours to getthere. We were going to breakfast there, and while I dressed, and inthe carriage going there, I cherished the hope that perhaps I might beable to persuade Doris to breakfast in a private room, though feelingall the while that it would be difficult to do so, for the public roomwould be empty, and crowds of waiters would gather about us likerooks, each trying to entice us towards his table. 

The village of Florac is high up among the hills, built along certainledges of rock overlooking the valley, and going south in the trainone catches sight of many towns, like it built among mountaindeclivities, hanging out like nests over the edge of precipices, showing against a red background, crowning the rocky hill. No doubtthese mediaeval towns were built in these strange places because ofthe security that summit gives against raiders. One can think of noother reason, for it is hard to believe that in the fifteenth centurymen were so captivated with the picturesque that for the sake of itthey would drag every necessary of life up these hills, severalhundred feet above the plain, probably by difficult paths--theexcellent road that wound along the edge of the hills, now to theright, now to the left, looping itself round every sudden ascent likea grey ribbon round a hat, did not exist when Florac was built. On theleft the ground shelves away into the valley, down towards the sea, and olives were growing down all these hillsides. Above us were olivetrees, with here and there an orange orchard, and the golden fruitshining among the dark leaves continued to interest me. Every now andagain some sudden aspect interrupted our conversation; the bay as itswept round the carved mountains, looking in the distance more thanever like an old Italian picture of a time before painters began tothink about values and truth of effect, when the minds of men wereconcerned with beauty; as mine was, for every time I looked at Dorisit occurred to me that I had never seen anything prettier, and notonly her face but her talk still continued to enchant me. She wasalways so eager to tell me things, that she must interrupt, and theseinterruptions were pleasant. I identified them with her, and soclosely that I can remember how our talk began when we got out of thesuburbs. By the last villa there was a eucalyptus tree growing; thesun was shining, and Doris had asked me to hold her parasol for her;but the road zigzagged so constantly that I never shifted the parasolin time, and a ray would catch her just in the face, adding perhaps tothe freckles--there were just a few down that little nose which wasalways pleasant to look upon. I was saying that I still remember ourtalk as we passed that eucalyptus tree. Doris had begun one of thoselittle confessions which are so interesting, and which one hears onlyfrom a woman one is making love to, which probably would not interestus were we to hear them from any one else. It delighted me to hearDoris say: "This is the first time I have ever lived alone, that Ihave ever been free from questions. It was a pleasure to remembersuddenly as I was dressing that no one would ask me where I was going, that I was just like a bird by myself, free to spring off the branchand to fly. At home there are always people round one; somebody is inthe dining-room, somebody is in the drawing-room; and if one goes downthe passage with one's hat on there is always somebody to ask whereone is going, and if you say you don't know they say, 'Are you goingto the right or to the left, because if you are going to the left Ishould like you to stop at the apothecary's and to ask----?'" How Iagreed with her! Family life I said degrades the individual, and isonly less harmful than socialism, because one can escape from it.... 

"But, Doris, you're not ill! You are looking better. "

"I weighed this morning, and I have gone up two pounds. You see I amamused, and a woman's health is mainly a question whether she isamused, whether somebody is making love to her. "

"Making love! Doris, dear, there is no chance of making love toanybody here. That is the only fault I find with the place; the sea, the bay, the hill towns, everything I see is perfect in every detail, only the essential is lacking. I was thinking, Doris, that for thesake of your health we might go and spend a few days at Florac. "

"My dear, it would be impossible. Everybody would know that I had beenthere. "

"Maybe, but I don't agree. However, I am glad that you have gone uptwo pounds.... I am sure that what you need is mountain air. Theseaside is no good at all for nerves. I have a friend in Paris whosuffers from nerves and has to go every year to Switzerland to climbthe Matterhorn. "

"The Matterhorn!"

"Well, the Matterhorn or Mont Blanc; he has to climb mountains, glaciers, something of that kind. I remember last year I wrote to himsaying that I did not understand the three past tenses in French, andwould he explain why--something, I have forgotten what--and heanswered: 'Avec mes pieds sur des glaciers je ne puis m'arrêter pourvous expliquer les trois passés. '"

Doris laughed and was interested, for I had introduced her some yearsago to the man who had written this letter; and then we discussed the_fussent_ and the _eussent, été_, and when our language ofthe French Grammar was exhausted we returned to the point whence wehad come, whether it was possible to persuade Doris to pass three daysin the hotel at Florac--in the interests of her health, of course. 

"I'm not sure at all that mountain air would not do me good. Plessylies very low and is very relaxing. "

"Very. "

But though I convinced her that it would have been better if she hadgone at once to stop at Florac, I could do nothing to persuade her topass three days with me in the inn there. As we drove up through thetown the only hope that remained in my mind was that I might induceher to take breakfast in a private room. But the _salle durestaurant_ was fifty feet long by thirty feet wide, it contained ahundred tables, maybe more, the floor was polished oak, and theceilings were painted and gilded, and there were fifty waiters waitingfor the swallows that would soon arrive from the north; we were thevan birds. 

"Shall we breakfast in a private room?" I whispered humbly. 

"Good heavens! no! I wouldn't dare to go into a private room beforeall these waiters. "

My heart sank again, and when Doris said, "Where shall we sit?" Ianswered, "Anywhere, anywhere, it doesn't matter. "

It had taken two hours for the horses to crawl up to the mountaintown, and as I had no early breakfast I was ravenously hungry. A boxof sardines and a plate of butter, and the prospect of an omelette anda steak, put all thoughts of Doris for the moment out of my head, andthat was a good thing. We babbled on, and it was impossible to saywhich was the more interested, which enjoyed talking most; and thepleasure which each took in talking and hearing the other talk becamenoticeable. 

"I didn't interrupt you just now, I thought it would be cruel, for youwere enjoying yourself so much, " said Doris, laughing. 

"Well, I promise not to interrupt the next time--you were in the midstof one of your stories. "

It was not long before she was telling me another story, for Doris wasfull of stories. She observed life as it went by, and could recallwhat she had seen. Our talk had gone back to years before, to theevening when I first saw her cross the drawing-room in a white dress, her gold hair hanging over her shoulders; and in that moment, as shecrossed the room, I had noticed a look of recognition in her eyes; thelook was purely instinctive; she was not aware of it herself, but Icould not help understanding it as a look whereby she recognised me asone of her kin. I had often spoken to her of that look, and we likedspeaking about it, and about the time when we became friends in Paris. She had written asking me to go to see her and her mother. I had foundthem in a strange little hotel, just starting for some distant suburb, going there to buy presents from an old couple, dealers in china andglass, from whom, Doris's mother explained, she would be able to buyher presents fifty per cent, cheaper than elsewhere. She was one ofthose women who would spend three shillings on a cab in order to savetwopence on a vase. 

"It took us two hours to get to that old, forgotten quarter, to theold quaint street where they lived. They were old-world Jews who readthe Talmud, and seemed to be quite isolated, out of touch with themodern world. It was like going back to the Middle Ages; this queerold couple moving like goblins among the china and glass. Do you eversee them now? Are they dead?"

"Let me tell you, " cried Doris, "what happened. The old man died twoyears ago, and his wife, who had lived with him for forty years, couldnot bear to live alone, so what do you think she did? She sent for herbrother-in-law----"

"To marry him?"

"No, not to marry him, but to talk to him about her husband. You seethis couple had lived together for so many years that she had becomeingrained, as it were, in the personality of her late husband, herhabits had become his habits, his thoughts had become hers. The storyreally is very funny, " and Doris burst out laughing, and for some timeshe could not speak with laughing. "I am sorry for the poor man, " shesaid at last. 

"For whom? For the brother-in-law?"

"Yes; you see he is dyspeptic, and he can't eat the dishes at all thathis brother used to like, but the wife can't and won't cook anythingelse. "

"In other words, " I said, "the souvenir of brother Isaac is poisoningbrother Jacob. "

"That is it. "

"What a strange place this world is!" And then my mind drifted backsuddenly. "O Doris, I'm so unhappy--this place--I wish I had nevercome. "

"Now, now, have a little patience. Everything comes right in the end. "

"We shall never be alone. "

"Yes, we shall. Why do you think that?"

"Because I can't think of anything else. "

"Well, you must think of something else. We're going to the factorywhere they make perfume, and I'm going to buy a great many bottles ofscent for myself, and presents for friends. We shall be able to buythe perfume twenty-five per cent. Or fifty per cent. Cheaper. "

"Don't you think we might go to see the pictures? There are some in achurch here. "

On inquiry we heard that they had been taken away, and I followedDoris through the perfume factory. Very little work was doing; thesuperintendent told us that they were waiting for the violets. A fewold women were stirring caldrons, and I listened wearily, for it didnot interest me in the least, particularly at that moment, to hearthat the flowers were laid upon layers of grease, that the greaseabsorbed the perfume, and then the grease was got rid of by means ofalcohol. The workrooms were cold and draughty, and the choice of whatperfumes we were to buy took a long time. However, at last, Dorisdecided that she would prefer three bottles of this, three bottles ofthat, four of these, and two of those. Her perfume was heliotrope; shealways used it. 

"And you like it, don't you dear?"

"Yes, but what does it matter what I like?"

"Now, don't be cross. Don't look so sad. "

"I don't mind the purchase you made for your friends, but the purchaseof heliotrope is really too cynical. "

"Cynical! Why is it cynical?"

"Because, dear, it is evocative of you, of that slender body movingamong fragrances of scented cambrics, and breathing its own dear odouras I come forward to greet you. Why do you seek to torment me?"

"But, dear one----"

I was not to be appeased, and sat gloomily in the corner of thecarriage away from her. But she put out her hand, and the silken palmcalmed my nervous irritation, and we descended the steep roads, thedriver putting on and taking off the brake. The evening was growingchilly, so I asked Doris if I might tell the coachman to stop hishorses and to put up the hood of the carriage. In a close carriage oneis nearly alone. But every moment I was reminded that people werepassing, and between her kisses the thought passed that I must go backto Paris, however unkind it might be. It would be unkind to leave her, for she was not very strong; she would require somebody to look afterher. As I was debating the question in my mind Doris said:

"You don't mind, dear, but before we go back to the hotel, I have avisit to pay. "

In the three weeks' time she had spent at Plessy before I came there, Doris had made the acquaintance of all kinds of elderly spinsters, wholived in the different hotels _en pension_, and who would go awayas soon as the visitors arrived, to seek another "resort" where theseason had not yet commenced, and where they could be boarded andbedded for ten francs a day. I had made the acquaintance of Miss Tubbsand Miss Whitworth, and we were dining with them that night. Doris hadexplained that we could not refuse to dine with them at least once. 

"But as we're going to spend the evening with them, I don't see thenecessity----"

"Of course not, dear, but don't you remember you promised to go to seethe Formans with me?"

Miss Forman had dined with us last night, but her mother had not beenable to come, and that was a relief to me whatever it may have been toDoris; I had heard that Mrs. Forman was a very old woman, and as herdaughter struck me as an ineffectual person, I said as I sat down todinner, "One of the family is enough. " What her mother's age could beI could not guess, for Miss Forman herself might pass for seventy. Butafter speaking to her for a little while one saw that she was not soold as she looked at first sight. Nothing saddens me more than thosewho have aged prematurely, for the cause of premature ageing isgenerally a declension of the mind. As soon as the mind begins tonarrow and wither the body follows suit; prejudices and conventionsage us more than years do. Before speaking a word it was easy to seefrom Miss Forman's appearance that no new idea had entered into herlife for a long while, and I imagined her at once to be one of thosedaughters that one finds abroad in different provincial towns, livingwith their mothers on small incomes. "The daughter's tragedy iswritten all over her face, " I said, and while speaking to her Iscrutinised her, reading in her everything that goes to make up thattragedy. She had the face of those heroines, for they areheroines--the broad low brow, the high nose, the sympathetic eyes, grey and expressive of duty and sacrifice of self. Her dress and hermanners were as significant as her face, and seemed to hint at thelife she had lived. She wore a black silk gown which lookedold-fashioned--why I cannot say. Was it the gown or the piece of blacklace that she wore on her head, or the Victorian earrings that hungfrom her ears down her dust-coloured neck, that gave her a sort ofbygone appearance, the look of an old photograph? Her manners took mefarther back in the century even than the photograph did; she seemedto have come out of the pages of some trite and uninteresting novel, arather listless book written at the end of the eighteenth century, before the art of novel-writing had been found out. She listened, andher listening was in itself a politeness, and she never lost herpoliteness, though she seldom understood what I said. When I finishedspeaking she answered what I had said indirectly, like one whose mindwas not quite capable of following any conversation except the mosttrite. She laughed if she thought I had said anything humourous, andsometimes looked a little embarrassed; she only seemed to be at herease when speaking of her mother. If, for instance, we were speakingof books, she would break in with her mother's opinions, thinking itwonderful that her mother had read--shall we say, "The ThreeMusketeers?" three times. She was interested in all her mother'scharacteristics, and her habit was to speak of her mother as hermamma. She seemed to delight in the word, and every time shepronounced it a light came into her old face, and I began tounderstand her and to feel that I could place her, to use acolloquialism which is so expressive that perhaps its use may beforgiven. "The daughter's tragedy, " I muttered, and considering it, philosophising according to my wont, I tried to reconcile myself tothis visit. "After all, " I said, "I am on my own business, therefore Ihave no right to grumble. "

I wished to see what Miss Forman was like in her own house; above all, I wished to see if her mother were as typical of the mother whoaccepts her daughter's sacrifice, as Miss Forman was of the daughterthat has been sacrificed. From the daughter's appearance I hadimagined Mrs. Forman to be a tall, good-looking, distinguished woman, lying upon a sofa, wearing a cap upon her white hair, her feet coveredwith a shawl, and Miss Forman arranging it from time to time. Natureis always surprising; she follows a rhythm of her own; we beat one, two, three, four, but the invisible leader of the orchestra sets amore subtle rhythm. But though Nature's rhythm is irregular, itsirregularity is more apparent than real, for when we listen we hearthat everything goes to a beat, and in looking at Mrs. Forman Irecognised that she was the inevitable mother of such a daughter, andthat Nature's combination was more harmonious than mine. The firstthing that struck me was that the personal energy I had missed in thedaughter survived in the mother, notwithstanding her seventy-fiveyears. The daughter reminded me now of a tree that had beenovershadowed; Miss Forman had remained a child, nor could she havegrown to womanhood unless somebody had taken her away; no doubtsomebody had wanted to marry her; there is nobody that has not had herlove affair, very few at least, and I imagined Miss Forman giving uphers for the sake of her mamma, and I could hear her mamma--thatshort, thick woman, looking more like a ball of lard than anythingelse in the world, alert notwithstanding her sciatica, with two smallbeady eyes in the glaring whiteness of her face--forgetful of herdaughter's sacrifice, saying to her some evening as they warmed theirshins over the fire:

"Well, Caroline, I never understood how it was that you didn't marryMr. So-and-so, I think he would have suited you very well. "

My interest in these two women who had lived side by side all theirlives was slight; it was just animated by a slight curiosity to see ifMiss Forman would be as much interested in her mother in her own houseby her mother's side as she had been in the hotel among strangers. Iwaited to hear her call her mother mamma; nor had I to wait long, foras soon as the conversation turned on the house which the Formans hadlately purchased, and the land which Mrs. Forman was buying up andplanting with orange trees, Miss Forman broke in, and in herhigh-pitched voice she told us enthusiastically that mamma was soenergetic; she never could be induced to sit down and be quiet; evenher sciatica could not keep her in her chair. A few moments after MissForman told us that they did not leave Plessy even during the summerheat. Mamma could not be induced to go away. The last time they hadgone to a hill village intending to spend some three or four weeksthere, but the food did not suit mamma at all, and Miss Formanexplained how the critical moment came and she had said to her mamma, "Well, mamma, this place does not suit you; I think we had better gohome again"; and they had come home after six days in the hillvillage, probably never to leave Plessy again; and turning to hermother with a look of admiration on her face Miss Forman said: "Ialways tell mamma that she will never be able to get away from hereuntil balloon travelling comes into fashion. If a balloon were to comedown to mamma's balcony, mamma might get into it and be induced to goaway for a little while for a change of air. She would not be afraid. I don't think mamma was ever afraid of anything. " Her voice seemed tome to attain a certain ecstasy in the words, "I don't think mamma wasever afraid of anything, " and I said, "She is proud of her ideal, andit is well that she should be, for there is no other in the world, notfor her at least, " and noticing that the three women were talkingtogether, that I was no longer observed, I got up with a view tostudying the surroundings in which Mrs. Forman and her daughter lived. 

On the wall facing the fireplace there were two portraits--twoengravings--and I did not need to look at the date to know that theyhad been done in 1840; one was her Majesty Queen Victoria, the otherher Royal Consort, Prince Albert. Shall I be believed if I say that inmy little excursions round the room and the next room I discovered asmall rosewood table on which stood some wax fruit, a small sofacovered with rep and antimacassars, just as in old days? Morecharacteristic still was the harmonium, with a hymn-book on the musicrest, and every Sunday, no doubt, Miss Forman played hymns with herstiff, crooked fingers, and they said prayers together, the sameold-fashioned English prayers for which I always hanker a little. 

Satisfied with the result of my quest, and fearing that it might beregarded as an impertinence if I stayed away any longer, I returned tothe back drawing-room, only to accompany the Formans and Doris backagain to the front drawing-room. There was a piano there. The Formanshad persuaded Doris to sing, and she was going to do so to pleasethem. "They don't know anything about singing, " she whispered to me;"but what does that matter? You see, poor things, they have so littleto distract them in their lives; it will be quite a little event forthem to hear me sing, " and she went to the piano and sang song aftersong. 

"It is kind indeed of you to sing to us, to an old woman and amiddle-aged woman, " Mrs. Forman said, "and I hope you will come to seeus again, both of you. "

"What should bring me to see them again?" I asked myself as I tried toget Doris away, for she lingered about the doorway with them, makingimpossible plans, asking them to come to see her when they came toEngland, telling them that if her health required it and she came toPlessy again she would rush to see them. "Why should she go on likethat, knowing well that we shall never see them again, never in thisworld?" I thought. Mrs. Forman insisted that her daughter shouldaccompany us to the gate, and all the way there Doris begged of MissForman to come to dine with us; we were dining with Miss Tubbs andMiss Whitworth, friends of hers; it would be so nice if she wouldcome. The carriage would be sent back for her; it would be so easy tosend it back. I offered up a prayer that Miss Forman might refuse, andshe did refuse many times; but Doris was so pressing that sheconsented; but when we got into the carriage a thought struck her. "No, " she said, "I cannot go, for the dressmaker is coming thisevening to try on mamma's dress, and mamma is very particular abouther gowns; she hates any fulness in the waist; the last time the gownhad to go back--you must excuse me. "

"Good-bye, dear, good-bye, " I heard Doris crying, and I said tomyself, "How kind she is!"

"Now, my dear, aren't you glad that you came to see them? Aren't theynice? Isn't she good? And you like goodness. "

"Dear Doris, I like goodness, and I like to discover your kind heart. Don't you remember my saying that your pretty face was dependent uponyour intelligence; that without your music and without your wit yourface would lose half its charm? Well, now, do you know that it seemsto me that it would only lose a third of its charm; for a third of mylove for you is my admiration of your good heart. You remember how, years ago, I used to catch you doing acts of kindness? What has becomeof the two blind women you used to help?"

"So you haven't forgotten them. You used to say that it was wonderfulthat a blind woman should be able to get her living. "

"Of course it is. It has always seemed to me extraordinary that anyone should be able to earn his living. "

"You see, dear, you have not been forced to get yours, and you do notrealise that ninety per cent of men and women have to get theirs. "

"But a blind woman! To get up in the morning and go out to earn enoughmoney to pay for her dinner; think of it! Getting up in the dark, knowing that she must earn four, five, ten shillings a day, whateverit is. Every day the problem presents itself, and she always in thedark. "

"Do you remember her story?"

"I think so. She was once rich, wasn't she? In fairly easycircumstances, and she lost her fortune. It all went away from her bitby bit. It is all coming back to me, how Fate in the story as you toldit seemed like a black shadow stretching out a paw, grabbing some partof her income again and again till the last farthing was taken. Eventhen Fate was not satisfied, and your friend must catch the smallpoxand lose her eyes. But as soon as she was well she decided to come toEngland and learn to be a masseuse. I suppose she did not want to stopin Australia, where she was known. How attractive courage is! Andwhere shall we find an example of courage equal to that of this blindwoman coming to England to learn to be a masseuse? What I don'tunderstand is bearing with her life in the dark, going out to her workevery day to earn her dinner, and very often robbed by the girl wholed her about?

"How well you remember, dear. "

"Of course I do. Now, how was it? Her next misfortune was asentimental one. There was some sort of a love story in this blindwoman's life, not the conventional, sentimental story which neverhappens, but a hint, a suggestion, of that passion which takes ahundred thousand shapes, finding its way even to a blind woman's life. Now don't tell me; it's all coming back to me. Something about astudent who lived in the same house as she did; a very young man; andthey made acquaintance on the stairs; they took to visiting eachother; they became friends, but it was not with him she fell in love. This student had a pal who came to share his rooms, an older man withserious tastes, a great classical scholar, and he used to go down toread to the blind woman in the evening. It really was a very prettystory, and very true. He used to translate the Greek tragedies aloudto her. I wonder if she expected him to marry her?"

"No, she knew he could not marry her, but that made no difference. "

"You're quite right. It was just the one interest in her life, and itwas taken from her. He was a doctor, wasn't he?"

Doris nodded, and I remembered how he had gone out to Africa. "Nosooner did he get there than he caught a fever, one of the worstkinds. The poor blind masseuse did not hear anything of her loss for along time. The friend upstairs didn't dare to come down to tell her. But at last the truth could be hidden from her no longer. It'sextraordinary how tragedy follows some. "

"Isn't it?"

"And now she sits alone in the dark. No one comes to read to her. Butshe bears with her solitude rather than put up with the pious peoplewho would interest themselves in her. You said there were nointeresting books written for the blind, only pieties. The charitableare often no better than Shylocks, they want their money's worth. Ionly see her, of course, through your description, but if I see hertruly she was one of those who loved life, and life took everythingfrom her!"

"Do you remember the story of the other blind woman?"

"Yes and no, vaguely. She was a singer, wasn't she?" Doris nodded. "And I think she was born blind, or lost her sight when she was threeor four years old. You described her to me as a tall, handsome womanwith dark, crinkly hair, and a mouth like red velvet. "

"I don't think I said like red velvet, dear. "

"Well, it doesn't sound like a woman's description of another woman, but I think you told me that she had had love affairs, and it was thatthat made me give her a mouth like red velvet. Why should she not havelove affairs? She was as much a woman as another; only one doesn'trealise until one hears a story of this kind what the life of theblind must be, how differently they must think and feel about thingsfrom those who see. Her lover must have been a wonder to her, something strange, mysterious; the blind must be more capable of lovethan anybody else. She wouldn't know if he were a man of forty or oneof twenty. And what difference could it make to her?"

"Ah, the blind are very sensitive, much more so than we are. "

"Perhaps. "

"I think Judith would have known the difference between a young manand a middle-aged. There was little she didn't know. "

"I daresay you're quite right. But still everything must have beenmore intense and vague. When the blind woman's lover is not speakingto her he is away; she is unable to follow him, and sitting at homeshe imagines him in society surrounded by others who are not blind. She doesn't know what eyes are, but she imagines them like--what?anyhow she imagines them more beautiful than they are. No, Doris, noeyes are more beautiful than yours; she imagines every one with eyeslike yours. I have not thought of her much lately, but I used to thinkof her when you told me the story, as standing on a platform in frontof the public, calm as a caryatid. She must have had a beautiful voiceto have been able to get an engagement; and the great courage thatthese blind women have! Fancy the struggle to get an engagement, adifficult thing to do in any circumstances--but in hers! And when hervoice began to fail her she must have suffered, for her voice was herone possession, the one thing that distinguished her from others, theone thing she knew herself by, her personality as it were. She didn'tknow her face as other women know theirs; she only knew herself whenshe sang, then she became an entity, as it were. Nor could teachingrecompense her for what she had lost, however intelligent her pupilsmight be, or however well they paid her. How did she lose her pupils?"

"I don't think there was any reason. She lost her pupils in theordinary way; she was unlucky. As you were just saying, it was moredifficult for her to earn her living than for those who could see, andJudith is no longer as young as she was; she isn't old, she is still ahandsome woman, but in a few years.... If old-age pensions are to begranted to people, they surely ought to be granted to blind women. "

"Yes, I remember; the sentiment of the whole story is in my mind; onlyI am a little confused about the facts. I remember you wrote a lot ofletters--how was it?"

"Well, I just felt that the thing to do was to get an annuity forJudith; I could not afford to give her one myself; so after a greatdeal of trouble I got into communication with a rich woman who wasinterested in the blind and wanted to found one. "

"You are quite right, that was it. You must have written dozens ofletters. "

"Yes, indeed, and all to no purpose. Judith knew the trouble I wastaking, but she couldn't bear with her loneliness any longer; thedread of the long evenings by herself began to prey upon her nerves, and she went off to Peckham to marry a blind man--quite an elderlyman; he was over sixty. They had known each other for some time, andhe taught music like her; but though he only earned forty or fiftypounds a year, still she preferred to have somebody to live with thanthe annuity. "

"But I don't see why she should lose her annuity. "

"Don't you remember, dear? This to me is the point of the story. Thecharitable woman drew back, not from any sordid motive, because sheregretted her money, but for a fixed idea; she had learned fromsomebody that blind people shouldn't marry, and she did not feelherself justified in giving her money to encouraging such marriages. "

"Was there ever anything so extraordinary as human nature? Itsgoodness, its stupidity, its cruelty! The woman meant well; one can'teven hate her for it; it was just a lack of perception, a desire tolive up to principles. That is what sets every one agog, trying tolive up to principles, abstract ideas. If they only think of what theyare and what others are! The folly of it! This puzzle-headed woman--Imean the charitable woman pondering over the fate of the race, as ifshe could do anything to advance or retard its destiny!"

"You always liked those stories, dear. You said that you would writethem. "

"Yes, but I'm afraid the pathos is a little deeper than I could reach;only Turgenieff could write them. But here we are at the Dog's Home. "

"Don't talk like that--it's unkind. "

"I don't mean to be unkind, but I have to try to realise things beforeI can appreciate them. "

It seemed not a little incongruous that these two little spinstersshould pay for our dinners, and I tried to induce Doris to agree tosome modification in the present arrangements, but she said it wastheir wish to entertain us. 

The evening I spent in that hotel hearing Doris sing, and myselftalking literature to a company of about a dozen spinsters, all plainand elderly, all trying to live upon incomes varying from a hundredand fifty to two hundred pounds a year, comes up before my mind, everyincident. Life is full of incidents, only our intelligence is notalways sufficiently trained to perceive them; and the incident I amabout to mention was important in the life I am describing. Miss Tubbshad asked me what wine I would drink. And in a moment of inadvertenceI said "Vin Ordinaire, " forgetting that the two shillings the winewould cost would probably mean that Miss Tubbs would very likely haveto go without her cup of tea at five o'clock next day in order thather expenditure should not exceed her limit, and I thought howdifficult life must be on these slippery rocks, incomes of one hundredand fifty a year. Poor little gentlefolk, roving about from oneboarding-house to another, always in search of the cheapest, sometimesgetting into boarding-houses where the cheapness of the foodnecessitates sending for the doctor, so the gain on one side is a losson the other. Poor little gentlefolk, the odds-and-ends of existence, the pence and threepenny bits of human life!

That Doris's singing should have provoked remarks painfullyinadequate, mattered little. Inadequate remarks about singing andabout the other arts are as common in London drawing-rooms as inhotels and boarding-houses (all hotels are boarding-houses; there isreally no difference), and the company I found in these winter resortswould have interested me at any other time. I can be interested in thewoman who collects stamps, in the gentle soul who keeps a botany bookin which all kinds of quaint entries are found, in the lady who writesfor the papers, and the one who is supposed to have a past. Whereverhuman beings collect there is always to be found somebody of interest, but when one's interest is centred in a lady, everybody else becomesan enemy; and I looked upon all these harmless spinsters as myenemies, and their proposals for excursions, and luncheons, anddinners caused me much misgiving, not only because they separated mefrom Doris, but because I felt that any incident, the proposed picnic, might prove a shipwrecking reef. One cannot predict what will happen. Life is so full of incidents; a woman's jealous tongue or the arrivalof some acquaintance might bring about a catastrophe. A love affairhangs upon a gossamer thread, you know, and that is why I tried topersuade Doris away from her friends. 

She was very kind and good and didn't inflict the society of thesepeople too much upon me. Perhaps she was conscious of the dangerherself, and we only visited the boarding-houses in the evening. Butthese visits grew intolerable. The society of Miss Tubbs and MissWhitworth jarred the impressions of a long day spent in the open air, in a landscape where once the temples of the gods had been, where menhad once lived who had seen, or at all events believed, in the faunsand the dryads, in the grotto where the siren swims. 

One afternoon I said to Doris: "I'm afraid I can't go to see MissTubbs this evening. Can't we devise something else? Another dinner ina boarding-house would lead me to suicide, I think. "

"You would like to drown yourself in that bay and join the nymphs. Doyou think they would prove kinder than I?"

I did not answer Doris. I suddenly seemed to despair; the exquisitetenderness of the sky, and the inveigling curves of the bay seemed tobecome detestable to me, theatrical, absurd. "Good God!" I thought: "Ishall never win her love. All my journey is in vain, and all thislove-making. " The scene before me was the most beautiful in shape andcolour I had ever seen; but I am in no mood to describe theLeonardo-like mountains enframing the azure bay. The reader mustimagine us leaning over a low wall watching the sea water gurglingamong the rocks. We had come to see some gardens. The waiter at myhotel had told me of some, the property of a gentleman kind enough tothrow them open to the public twice a week; and I had taken hisadvice, though gardens find little favour with me--now and again anold English garden, but the well-kept horticultural is my abhorrence. But one cannot tell a coachman to drive along the road, one must tellhim to go somewhere, so we had come to see what was to be seen. Andall was as I had imagined it, only worse; the tall wrought-iron gatewas twenty feet high, there was a naked pavilion behind it, and awoman seated at a table with a cash-box in front of her. This womantook a franc apiece, and told us that the money was to be devoted to acharitable purpose; we were then free to wander down a gravel walktwenty feet wide branching to the right and the left, along a line ofclosely clipped shrubs, with a bunch of tall grasses here and aforeign fir there; gardens that a painter would turn from in horror. Isaid to Doris:

"This is as tedious as a play at the _Comédie_, as tiresome as atragedy by Racine, and very like one. Let us seek out one of theexternal walks overlooking the sea; even there I'm afraid theknowledge that these shrubs are behind us will spoil our pleasure. "

Doris laughed; that was one of her charms, she could be amused; and itwas in this mood that we sat down on a seat placed in a low walloverlooking the bay, looking at each other, basking in the rays of theafternoon sun, and there we sat for some little while indolent aslizards. Pointing to one at a little distance I said:

"It is delightful to be here with you, Doris, but the sunlight is notsufficient for me. Doris, dear, I am very unhappy. I have lain awakeall night thinking of you, and now I must tell you that yesterday Iwas sorely tempted to go down to that bay and join the nymphs there. Don't ask me if I believe that I should find a nymph to love me; onedoesn't know what one believes, I only know that I am unhappy. "

"But why, dear, do you allow yourself to be unhappy? Look at thatlizard. Isn't he nice? Isn't he satisfied? He desires nothing but whathe has got, light and warmth. "

"And, Doris, would you like me to be as content as that lizard--todesire nothing more than light and warmth?"

Doris looked at me, and thinking her eyes more beautiful even than thesunlight, I said:

 "'And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss the sea, But what are all those kissings worth, If thou kiss not me?'

"That is the eternal song of the spheres and of the flowers. If I don'tbecome part of the great harmony, I must die. "

"But you do kiss me, " Doris answered wilfully, "when the evening turnscold and the coachman puts up the hood of the carriage. "

"Wilful Doris! Pretty puss cat!"

"I'm not a puss cat; I'm not playing with you, dear. I do assure you Ifeel the strain of these days; but what am I to do? You wouldn't haveme tell you to stay at my hotel and to compromise myself before allthese people?"

"These people! Those boarding-houses are driving me mad! That MissForman!"

"I thought you liked her. You said she is good, 'a simple, kindperson, without pretensions. ' And that is enough, according toyesterday's creed. You were never nicer than you were yesterdayspeaking of her (I remember your words): you said the flesh fades, theintellect withers, only the heart remembers. Do you recant all this?"

"No, I recant nothing; only yesterday's truth is not to-day's. One daywe are attracted by goodness, another day by beauty; and beauty hasbeen calling me day after day: at first the call was heard far awaylike a horn in the woods, but now the call has become more imperative, and all the landscape is musical. Yesterday standing by those ancientruins, it seemed to me as if I had been transported out of my presentnature back to my original nature of two thousand years ago. The sightof those ancient columns quickened a new soul within me; or should Isay a soul that had been overlaid began to emerge? The dead are neverwholly dead; their ideas live in us. I am sure that in England I neverappreciated you as intensely as I do here. Doris, I have learned toappreciate you like a work of art. It is the spirit of antiquity thathas taken hold of me, that has risen out of the earth and claimed me. That hat I would put away----"

"Don't you like my hat?"

"Yes, I like it, but I am thinking of the Doris that lived twothousand years ago; she did not wear a hat. In imagination I see thenymph that is in you, though I may never see her with mortal eyes. "

"Why should you not see her, dear?"

"I have begun to despair. All these boarding-houses and theirinhabitants jar the spirit that this landscape has kindled within me. I want to go away with you where I may love you. I am afraid what I amsaying may seem exaggerated, but it is quite true that you remind meof antiquity, and in a way that I cannot explain though it is quiteclear to me. "

"But you do possess me, dear?"

"No, Doris, not as I wish. This journey will be a bitter memory thatwill endure for ever; we must think not only of the day that we live, but of the days in front of us; we must store our memories as thesquirrel stores nuts, we must have a winter hoard. If some way is notfound out of this horrible dilemma, I shall remember you as acollector remembers a vase which a workman handed to him and whichslipped and was broken, or like a vase that was stolen from him; Icannot find a perfect simile, at least not at this moment; my speechis imperfect, but you will understand. "

"Yes, I understand, I think I understand. "

"If I do not get you, it will seem to me that I have lived in vain. "

"But, dear one, things are not so bad as that. We need not be in Parisfor some days yet, and though I cannot ask you to my hotel, there isno reason why----"

"Doris, do not raise up false hopes. "

"I was only going to say, dear, that it does not seem to be necessarythat we should go straight back to Paris. "

"You mean that we might stop somewhere at some old Roman town, atArles in an eighteenth-century house. O Doris, how enchanting thiswould be! I hardly dare to think lest----"

"Lest what, dear? Lest I should deceive you?"

There was a delicious coo in her voice, the very love coo; it cannotbe imitated any more than the death-rattle, and exalted and inspiredby her promise of herself, of all herself, I spoke in praise of theeighteenth century, saying that it had loved antiquity better than thenineteenth, and had reproduced its spirit. 

"Is it not strange that, in the midst of reality, artistic conceptionsalways hang about me; but shall I ever possess you, Doris? Is it mydelicious fate to spend three days with you in an old Roman town?"

"There is no reason why it shouldn't be. Where shall it be?"

"Any town would be sufficient with you, Doris; but let us think ofsome beautiful place"; and looking across the bay into the sunset, Irecalled as many names as I could; many of those old Roman towns roseup before my eyes, classic remains mingling with mediaeval towers, cathedral spires rising over walls on which Roman sentries had oncepaced. We could only spend our honeymoon in a town with a beautifulname--a beautiful name was essential--a name that it would be adelight to remember for ever after; the name would have to express bysome harmonious combination of syllables the loves that would beexpended there. Rocomadour imitated too obviously the sound of suckingdoves, and was rejected for that reason. Cahor tempted us, but it wastoo stern a name; its Italian name, Devona, appealed to us; but, afterall, we could not think of Cahor as Devona. And for many reasons wererejected Armance, Vezelay, Oloron, Correz, Valat, and Gedre. Amongthese, only Armance gave us any serious pause. Armance! That eveningand the next we studied _L'Indicateur des Chemins de fer_. "Armance, " I said, interrupting Doris, who was telling me that weshould lose our tickets by the _Côte d'Azur_. For in Doris'sopinion it was necessary that we should leave Plessy by the _Côted'Azur_. Her friends would certainly come to the station to see heroff. "That is a matter of no moment, " I said. "At Marseilles we cancatch an express train, which will be nearly as good. There are twoexcellent trains; either will do, if you have decided to spend threedays at Armance. "

She asked me if Armance were a village or a town, and I answered, "What matter?"--for everywhere in France there are good beds and goodfood and good wine--ay, and omelettes. We should do very well in anyvillage in the south of France for three days. But suddenly two namescaught my eye, Orelay and Verlancourt, and we agreed that we preferredeither of these names to Armance. 

"Which name shall give shelter to two unfortunate lovers flying insearch of solitude?"

"Orelay is a beautiful name. "

"Orelay it shall be, " I said. "We shall be able to get there fromMarseilles in a few hours. "

"You see, dear, it would be impossible for me to travel all the way toParis--a journey of at least twenty-four hours would kill me, and I'mnot strong; nothing tires me more than railway traveling. We must stopsomewhere. Why not at Orelay?"

As this history can have only one merit, that of absolute truth, Imust confess that the subterfuge whereby Doris sought to justifyherself to herself, delighted me. Perhaps no quality is more humanthan that of subterfuge. She might unveil her body, but she could notunveil her soul. We may only lift a corner of the veil; he who wouldstrip human nature naked and exhibit it displays a rattling skeleton, no more: where there is no subterfuge there is no life. 

This story will be read, no doubt, by the young and the old, the wiseand the foolish, by the temperate and the intemperate, but the subjectmatter is so common to all men that it will interest every one, evenecclesiastics, every one except certain gentlemen residing chiefly inConstantinople, whose hostility to the lover on his errand is so wellknown, and so easily understandable, that I must renounce all hope ofnumbering them among the admirers of my own or Doris's frailty. Buthappily these gentlemen are rare in England, though it is suspectedthat one or two may be found among the reviewers on the staff ofcertain newspapers; otherwise how shall we account for the solitaryfalsetto voices in the choir of our daily and weekly press, shoutingabstinence from the housetops? But with the exception of these fewcritics every one will find pleasure in this narrative; even in agedmen and women enough sex is left to allow them to take an interest ina love story; in these modern days when the novel wanders even as faras the nuns in their cells (I have good authority for making thisstatement), perhaps I may be able to count upon an aged Mother Abbessto be, outwardly perhaps a disapproving, but at heart a sympatheticreader. Indeed, I count upon the ascetic more than upon any otherclass for appreciation, for the imagination of those who have had noexperience in love adventures will enkindle, and they will appreciateperhaps more intensely than any other the mental trouble that ajourney to Orelay with Doris would entail. 

It would take nearly five hours according to the time table to getfrom Marseilles to Orelay; and these five hours would wear themselveswearily away in conversation with Doris, in talking to her of everysubject except the subject uppermost in my mind. I should have kept anotebook, just as I had arranged to do when I thought I was going onthe yachting excursion among the Greek Islands with Gertrude; but, having no notes, I can only appeal to the reader's imagination. I mustask him to remember the week of cruel abstinence I had been through, and to take it into his consideration. My dear, dear reader, I am sureyou can see me if you try (in your mind's eye, of course) walkingabout the corridors, seeking the guard, asking every one I meet:

"How far away are we now from Orelay?"

"Orelay? Nearly two hours from Orelay. "

Our heavy luggage had been sent on before, but we had a number ofdressing cases and bags with us, and there might not be time to removeall these. The guard, who had promised to take them out of thecarriage for us, might not arrive in time. However this might be, he was not to be found anywhere, and I sought him how many timesup and down the long length of the train. You can see me, reader, can you not? walking about the train, imagining all kinds ofcatastrophes--that the train might break down, or that it might notstop at Orelay; or, a still more likely catastrophe, that the younglady might change her mind. What if that were to happen at the lastmoment! Ah, if that were to happen I should have perchance to throwmyself out of the train, unless peradventure I refrained for the sakeof writing the story of a lover's deception. The transitional stage isan intolerable one, and I wondered if Doris felt it as keenly, andevery time I passed our carriage on my way up and down in search ofthe guard, I stopped a moment to study her face; she sat with her eyesclosed, perhaps dozing. How prosaic of her to doze on the way toOrelay! Why was she not as agitated as I?

And the question presented itself suddenly, Do women attach the sameinterest to love adventures as we do? Do women ask themselves as oftenas we do if God, the Devil, or Calamitous Fate will intervene betweenus and our pleasure? Will it be snatched out of our arms and from ourlips? Perhaps never before, only once in any case, did I experience anexcitement so lancinating as I experienced that day. And as I writethe sad thought floats past that such expectations will never be mylot again. The delights of the moment are perhaps behind me, but whyshould I feel sad for that? Life is always beautiful, in age as wellas in youth; the old have a joy that the youths do not know--recollection. It is through memory we know ourselves; withoutmemory it might be said we have hardly lived at all, or only likeanimals. 

This is a point on which I would speak seriously to every reader, especially to my young readers; for it is of the utmost importancethat every one should select adventures that not only please them atthe moment, but can be looked back upon with admiration, and for whichone can offer up a mute thanksgiving. My life would not have beencomplete, a corner-stone would have been lacking if Doris had not cometo Orelay with me. Without her I should not have known the joy thatperfect beauty gives; that beauty which haunted in antiquity wouldnever have been known to me. But without more, as the lawyers say, wewill return to Doris. I asked her if she had been asleep? No, she hadnot slept, only it rested her to keep her eyes closed, the sunlightfatigued her. I did not like to hear her talk of fatigue, and to hidefrom her what was passing in my mind I tried to invent someconversation. Orelay--what a lovely name it was! Did she think thetown would vindicate or belie its name? She smiled faintly and saidshe would not feel fatigued as soon as she got out of the train, andthere was some consolation in the thought that her health would notallow her to get farther that day than Orelay. 

We decided to stay at the Hôtel des Valois. One of the passengers hadspoken to me of this hotel; he had never stayed there himself, but hebelieved it to be an excellent hotel. But it was not hisrecommendation that influenced me, it was the name--the Hôtel desValois. How splendid! And when we got out at Orelay I asked theporters and the station-master if they could recommend a hotel. No, but they agreed that the Hôtel des Valois was as good as any other. Wedrove there wondering what it would be like. Everything had turned outwell up to the present, but everything would go for naught if theHôtel des Valois should prove unworthy of its name. And the firstsight of it was certainly disappointing. Its courtyard wasinsignificant, only saved by a beautiful ilex tree growing in onecorner. The next moment I noticed that the porch of the hotel waspretty and refined--a curious porch it was, giving the hotel for amoment the look of an eighteenth-century English country house. Therewere numerous windows with small panes, and one divined the hallbeyond the porch. The hall delighted us, and I said to Doris as wepassed through that the hotel must have been a nobleman's house somelong while ago, when Orelay had a society of its own, perhaps alanguage, for in the seventeenth or the eighteenth century Provençalor some other dialect must have been written or spoken at Orelay. Weadmired the galleries overlooking the hall, and the staircase leadingto them. We seemed to have been transported into the eighteenthcentury; the atmosphere was that of a Boucher, a provincial Boucherperhaps, but an eighteenth-century artist for all that. The doves thatcrowd round Aphrodite seemed to have led us right; and we foresaw alarge quiet bedroom with an Aubusson carpet in the middle of a parquetfloor, writing-tables in the corners of the room or in thesilken-curtained windows. 

This was the kind of room I had imagined--one as large as adrawing-room, and furnished like a drawing-room, with sofas andarm-chairs that we could draw around the fire, and myself and Dorissitting there talking. Love is composed in a large measure of desireof intimacy, and if the affection that birds experience in makingtheir nest be not imitated, love descends to the base satisfaction ofanimals which merely meet in obedience to an instinct, and separate assoon as the instinct has been served. Birds understand love betterthan all animals, except man. Who has not thought with admiration ofthe weaver-birds, and of our own native wren? But the rooms that wereoffered to us corresponded in no wise with those that we had imaginedthe doors of the beautiful galleries would lead us into. The Frenchwords _chambre meublée_ will convey an idea of the rooms we wereshown into; for do not the words evoke a high bed pushed into thecorner, an eider-down on top, a tall dusty window facing the bed, withskimpy red curtains and a vacant fireplace? There were, no doubt, afew chairs--but what chairs!

The scene was at once tragic and comic. It was of vital importance tomyself and Doris to find a room such as I have attempted to describe, and it was of equal indifference to the waiter whether we did ordidn't. The appearance of each contributed to the character of thescene. Doris's appearance I have tried to make clear to the reader;mine must be imagined; it only remains for me to tell what the waiterwas like; an old man, short and thick, slow on the feet from longservice, enveloped in an enormous apron; one only saw the ends of histrousers and his head; and the head was one of the strangest everseen, for there was not a hair upon it; he was bald as an egg, and hishead was the shape of an egg, and the colour of an Easter egg, apretty pink all over. The eyes were like a ferret's, small andrestless and watery, a long nose and a straight drooping chin, and athick provincial accent--that alone amused me. 

"Have you no other rooms?"

"Nous n'avons que cela. "

I quote his words in the language in which they were spoken, for Iremember how brutal they seemed, and how entirely in keeping with thecharacter of the room. No doubt the words will seem flat and tame tothe reader, but they never can seem that to me. "_Nous n'avons quecela_" will always be to me as pregnant with meaning as the famous_to be or not to be_. For it really amounted to that. I can seeDoris standing by me, charming, graceful as a little Tanagrastatuette, seemingly not aware of the degradation that the possessionof her love would mean in such a room as that which we stood in; and Ithink I can honestly say that I wished we had never come to Orelay, that we had gone straight on to Paris. It were better even tosacrifice her love than that it should be degraded by vulgarcircumstances; and, instead of a holy rite, my honeymoon had come toseem to me what the black mass must seem to the devout Christian. 

"The rooms will look better, " Doris said, "when fires have beenlighted, and when our bags are unpacked. A skirt thrown over the armof a chair furnishes a room. "

Taking her hands in mine I kissed them, and was almost consoled; butat that moment my eyes fell upon the beds, and I said:

"Those beds! O Doris, those beds! yours is no better than mine. " Womenare always satisfied, or they are kind, or they are wise; and acceptthe inevitable without a murmur. 

"Dearest, ask the waiter to bring us some hot water. "

I did so, and while he was away I paced the room, unable to think ofanything but the high bed; it was impossible to put out of my sightthe ridiculous spectacle of a couple in a nightgown and pyjama suitclimbing into it. The vision of myself and Doris lying under thateider-down, facing that tall window, with nothing to shut out thelight but those vulgar lace curtains, pursued me, and I paced the roomtill the pink waiter returned with two jugs; and then, feeling verymiserable, I began to unpack my bag without getting further than theremoval of the brushes and comb; Doris unpacked a few things, and shewashed her hands, and I thought I might wash mine; but before I hadfinished washing them I left the dreadful basin, and going to Doriswith dripping hands I said:

"There is very little difference in the rooms. Perhaps you would liketo sleep in mine?"

"I can see no difference. I think I'll remain where I am. "

Which room she slept in may seem insignificant to the reader, but thisis not so, for had we changed rooms this story would never have beenwritten. I can see myself even now walking to and fro like a cagedanimal vainly seeking for a way of escape, till suddenly--my adventurereminds me very much of the beginning of many romantic novels--thetapestry that the wind had blown aside, the discovery of the secretdoor--suddenly I discovered a door in the wall paper; it wasunlatched, and pushing through it I descended two steps, and lo! I wasin the room of my heart's desire; a large, richly-coloured saloon withbeautifully proportioned windows and red silk damask curtains hangingfrom carved cornices, and all the old gilding still upon them. And thesilk fell into such graceful folds that the proportions of the windowswere enhanced. And the walls were stretched with silk of a fineromantic design, the dominant note of which was red to match thecurtains. There were wall lights, and a curious old clock on themarble chimney-piece amid branching candelabra. I stayed a moment toexamine the clock, deciding very soon that it was not of much value... It was made in Marseilles a hundred years ago. 

"A beautiful room in its proportions and in its colour, " I said, andseeing another door ajar I went through it and discovered a bedroomlikewise in red with two beds facing each other. The beds were high, it is true, and a phrase from a letter I had written to Doris, "aggressively virtuous, " rose up in my mind as I looked upon them. Butthe curtains hung well from _les ciels de lit_ (one cannot say_cieux de lit_, I suppose)--the English word is, I think, "tester. " "This room is far from the bedroom of my dreams, " Imuttered, "but _à la rigueur ça peut marcher_. " But pursuing myquest a little farther, I came upon a spacious bedroom with twowindows looking out on the courtyard--a room which would havesatisfied the most imaginative lover, a room worthy of the adorableDoris, and I can say this as I look back fondly on her many variousperfections. A great bed wide and low, "like a battlefield as our bedshould be, " I said, for the lines of the old poet were running in myhead:

 "Madame, shall we undress you for the fight? The wars are naked that you make to-night. "

And, looking upon it, I stood there like one transfigured, filled witha great joy; for the curtains hanging from a graceful tester like acrown would have satisfied the painter Boucher.... He rarely paintedbedrooms. I do not remember any at this moment; but I remember many byFragonard, and Fragonard would have said: "I have no fault to findwith that bed. " The carpet was not Aubusson, but it was nevertheless afinely-designed carpet, and its colour was harmonious; the sofa wasshapely enough, and the Louis XVI. Arm-chairs were filled with deepcushions. I turned to the toilet-table fearing it might prove anincongruity, but it was in perfect keeping with the room, and I beganat once to look forward to seeing it laid out with all the manifoldivories and silver of Doris's dressing-case. 

Imagine my flight, dear reader, if you can, back to Doris, whom I hadleft trying to make the best of that miserable square room; more likea prison cell than a bedroom. 

"What is the matter, dearest?" she asked. 

But without answering her I said, "Give me your hand, " and led her asa prince leads his betrothed, in a fairy tale, through therichly-coloured salon, lingering a moment for her to admire it, andthen I took her through my room, the double-bedded room, saying: "Allthis is nothing; wait till you see your room. " And Doris pausedovercome by the beauty of the bed, of the curtains falling from thetester gracefully as laburnum or acacia branches in June. 

"The rooms are beautiful, but a little cheerless. "

"Doris, Doris, you don't deserve to lie there! The windows of coursemust be opened, fresh air must be let in, and fires must be lighted. But think of you and me sitting here side by side talking before ourbedtime. "

Fires were lighted quickly, servants came in bearing candelabra intheir hands, and among them, and with Doris by my side, I imaginedmyself a prince, for who is a prince but he who possesses the mostdesirable thing in the world, who finds himself in the most delectablecircumstances? And what circumstance is more delightful than sittingin a great shadowy bedroom, watching the logs burning, shedding theirgrateful heat through the room, for the logs that were brought to us, as we soon discovered, were not the soft wood grown for consumption inParisian hotels; the logs that warmed our toes in Orelay were denseand hard as iron, and burned like coal, only more fragrantly, and verysoon the bareness of the room disappeared; a petticoat, as Doris hadsaid, thrown over a chair gives an inhabited look to a room at once;and the contents of her dressing-case, as I anticipated, took the roomback to one hundred years ago, when some great lady sat there in aflowered silk gown before one of those inlaid dressing tables, filledwith pigments and powders and glasses. 

There was one of those tables in the room, and I drew it from thecorner and raised its lid, the lid with the looking-glass in it. And Iliked the unpacking of her dressing-case, the discovery of a multitudeof things for bodily use, the various sponges; the flat sponge for theface, the round sponge for the body, and the little sponges; all thescissors and the powder for the nails, and the scents, the soft silks, the lace scarfs, and the long silk nightgown soon to droop over hershoulders. My description by no means exhausts the many things sheproduced from her dressing-case and bags, nor would the most completecatalogue convey an impression of Doris's cleanliness of her littlebody! One would have to see her arranging her things, with her longcurved hands and almond nails carefully cut--they were her immediatecare, and many powders and ointments and polishers were called intorequisition. Some reader will cry that all this is most unimportant, but he is either hypocritical or stupid, for it is only with scent andsilk and artifices that we raise love from an instinct to a passion. 

"I am longing, " said Doris, "to see that beautiful red drawing-roomwith all the candelabra lighted and half a dozen logs blazing on thehearth. It is extraordinary how cold it is. "

To procure an impartial mind, bodily ease is necessary, and we sat oneither side of a splendid fire warming our toes. At the bottom of hisheart every Christian feels, though he may not care to admit it inthese modern days, that every attempt to make love a beautiful andpleasurable thing is a return to paganism. In his eyes the only excusefor man's love of woman is that without it the world would come to anend. Why he should consider the end of the world a misfortune I havenever been able to find out, for if his creed be a true one theprincipal use of this world is to supply Hell with fuel. He is neverweary of telling us that very few indeed may hope to get to Heaven. 

"But France is not a Christian country, and yet you see the high bedhas not become extinct, " said Doris. 

Doris, who was doubtless feeling a little tired, sat looking into thefire. Her attitude encouraged reverie; dream linked into dream till atlast the chain of dreams was broken by the entrance of the pink waiterbringing in our dinner. In the afternoon I had called him an imbecile, which made him very angry, and he had explained that he was not animbecile, but if I hurried him he lost his head altogether. Of courseone is sorry for speaking rudely to a waiter; it is a shocking thingto do, and nothing but the appearance of the bedroom we were showninto would excuse me. His garrulousness, which was an irritation inthe afternoon, was an amusement as he laid the cloth and told me thebill of fare; moreover, I had to consult him about the wine, and Iliked to hear him telling me in his strong Southern accent of acertain wine of the country, as good as Pomard and as strong, andwhich would be known all over the world, only it did not beartransportation. Remembering how tired we were, and the verse--

 "Quand on boit du Pomard on devient bon on aime, On devient aussi bon que le Pomard lui-même--"

we drank, hoping that the wine would awaken us. But the effect of thatstrong Southern wine seemed to be more lethargic than exhilarating, and when dinner was over and we had returned to our seats by thefireside we were too weary to talk, and too nervous. 

The next morning, the coffee and the rolls and butter were readybefore Doris, and the vexation of seeing the breakfast growing coldwas recompensed by the pleasure of teasing her, urging her to pass herarms into her dressing-gown, to come as she was, it did not matterwhat she had on underneath. The waiter did not count; he was not aman, he was a waiter, a pink creature, pinker than anything in theworld, except a baby's bottom, and looking very like that. 

"Hasten, dear, hasten!" and I went back to the salon and engaged inchatter with the old provincial, my English accent contrastingstrangely with his. It was the first time I had heard the Southernaccent. At Plessy I had heard all accents, Swiss, German, Italian;there was plenty of Parisian accent there, and I had told a Parisianflower-woman, whose husband was a Savoyard, that I declined to believeany more in the Southern accent _"C'est une blague qu'on m'afaite"_; but at Orelay I had discovered the true accent, and Ilistened to the old man for the sake of hearing it. He was asking mefor my appreciation of the wine we had drunk last night when Dorisentered in a foamy white dressing-gown. 

"You liked the wine, dear, didn't you? He wants to know if we willhave the same wine for twelve-o'clock breakfast. "

"Dear me, it's eleven o'clock now, " Doris answered, and she looked atthe waiter. 

"Monsieur and Madame will go for a little walk; perhaps you would liketo breakfast at one?"

We agreed that we could not breakfast before one, and our waitersuggested a visit to the cathedral--it would fill up the timepleasantly and profitably; but Doris, when she had had her coffee, wanted to sit on my knee and to talk to me; and then there was apiano, and she wanted to play me some things, or rather I wanted tohear her. But the piano was a poor one; the notes did not come back, she said, and we talked for some hours without perceiving that thetime was passing. After lunch the waiter again inquired if we intendedto go for a little walk; there were vespers about four in thecathedral. 

"It would do Monsieur and Madame good. "

"The walk or the cathedral?" we inquired, and, a little embarrassed, the old fellow began to tell us that he had not been to the cathedralfor some years, but the last time he was there he had been muchimpressed by the darkness. It was all he could do to find his way frompillar to pillar; he had nearly fallen over the few kneeling women whocrouched there listening to the clergy intoning Latin verses. According to his account there were no windows anywhere except high upin the dome. And leaning his hands on the table, looking like all thewaiters that ever existed or that will ever exist, his _tablier_, reaching nearly to his chin, upheld by strings passed over theshoulders, he told us that it was impossible to see what was happeningin the chancel; but there had seemed to be a great number of clergyseated in the darkness at the back, for one heard voices behind thetall pieces of furniture singing Latin verses; one only heard theterminations of the words, an "us" and a "noster, " and words ending in"e, " and the organ always coming in a little late. 

"My good man, " I said, "your description leaves nothing to be desired. Why should I go to the cathedral unless to verify your impressions? Iam sure the service is exactly as you describe it, and I would not forthe world destroy the picture you have evoked of those forgottenpriests intoning their vespers in the middle of the granite churchbehind a three-branched candlestick. "

The poor man left the room very much disconcerted, feeling, Dorissaid, as if he had lost one of the forks. 

"Thank Heaven that matter is done with--a great weight is off mymind. "

"But there is the museum. You would like to see that?" said Doris, anda change came into my face. 

"Well, Doris, the waiter has told us that there is a celebrated studyby David in the museum, 'The Nymph of Orelay. '"

"But, dear one, am I not your nymph of Orelay?" and Doris slipped onher knees and put her arms about me. "Will I not do as well as thepainted creature in the museum?"

"Far better, " I said, "far better. Now we are free, Doris, freed fromthe cathedral and from the museum. All the day belongs to us, andto-morrow we may pass as we like. "

"And so we will, " Doris said meditatively; and so we did, dear reader, and I consider the time was well spent, for by so doing we avoidedcatching cold, a thing easy to do when a mistral is blowing. It wasnot until the following evening we remembered that time was always onthe wing, that our little bags would have to be packed. Next morningwe were going. 

"Going away by the train, " Doris said regretfully. "Would we weregoing away in a carriage! We shall leave Orelay knowing nothing of itbut this suite of apartments. "

"There is no reason why we should not drive, " and I stopped packing mybag, and stood looking at her. 

"I wonder if we should have stayed three days if we had not discoveredthese rooms? Dear one, I think I should not have meant so much to youin those humbler rooms: you attach much importance to these cornicesand hangings. "

"I should have loved you always, Doris, but I think I can love youbetter here, " and with our bags in our hands we wandered from thebedroom into the drawing-room and stood admiring its bygone splendour. "Doris, dear, you must play me 'The Nut Bush. ' I want to hear it onthat old piano. Tinkle it, dear, tinkle it, and don't play 'The NutBush' too sentimentally, nor yet too gaily. "

"Which way will you have it?" she asked; "'a true love's truth or alight love's art'?"

"I would have it dainty and fantastic as Schumann wrote it, 'only thesong of a secret bird. '"

"With a pathos of loneliness in it?"

"That is it, " I cried, "that is the right time to play it in, withoutstress on either side.... No, you mustn't leave the piano, Doris. Sing me some songs. Go on singing Schumann or Schubert; there are noother songs. Let me hear you sing 'The Moonlight' or 'TheLotus-flower. ' Schumann and Schubert were the singing birds of thefifties; I love their romantic sentimentalities, orange gardens, southwinds, a lake with a pinnace upon it, and a nightingale singing in adark wood by a lonely shore; that is how they felt, how they dreamed. "

And resigning herself to my humour, she sang song after song till atlast, awaking from a long reverie of music and old association ofmemories, I said, "Play me a waltz, Doris; I would hear an old-timewaltz played in this room; its romantic flourishes will evoke thedeparted spirits. " And very soon, sitting in my chair with half-closedeyes, it seemed to me that I saw crinolines faintly gliding over thefloor, and white-stockinged feet, sloping shoulders and glisteningnecks with chignons--swan-like women, and long-whiskered cavalierswearing peg-top trousers and braided coats dancing or talking withthem.... The music suddenly stopped and Doris said:

"If we are to catch our train we must go on with our packing. "

"You mustn't talk to me of trains, " and overcome with a Schumann-likelonging and melancholy I took her in my arms, overcome by her beauty. She was perfection. No Chelsea or Dresden figure was ever more dainty, gayer, or brighter. She was Schumann and Dresden, but a Dresden of anearlier period than Schumann; but why compare her to anything? She wasDoris, the very embodiment of her name. 

"Ah, Doris, why are we leaving here? Why can't we remain here forever?"

"It is strange, " she said; "I feel the charm of those old statelyrooms as much as you do. But, dearest, we have missed the train. "

The pink waiter came up, I promised to hasten, but my love of Dorisdelayed us unduly, and we arrived at the station only to hear that thetrain had gone away some ten minutes before. The train that had leftwas the only good train in the day, and missing it had given usanother twenty-four hours in Orelay; but Doris was superstitious. "Ourthree days are done, " she said; "if we don't go today we shall goto-morrow, and to go on the fourth day would be unlucky. What shall wedo all day? The spell has been broken. We have left our hotel. Let ustake a carriage, " she pleaded, "and drive to the next station. The sunis shining, and the country is beautiful; we saw it from the railway, a strange red country grey with olives, olive orchards extending tothe very foot of the mountains, and mingling with the pine treesdescending the slopes. "

"The slopes!" I said, "the precipitous sides of that high rock! ShallI ever forget it, beginning like the tail of a lion and rising up tothe sky, towering above the level landscape like a sphinx. "

"The drive would be delightful!"

"And it would be a continuation of the romance of the old Empiredrawing-room. A post-chaise would be the thing if we could discoverone. "

Sometimes Nature seems to conspire to carry out an idea, and though noveritable post-chaise of old time was discovered in the coach-housebehind the courtyard in which the ilex trees flourished, we happenedto catch sight of a carriage some twenty-five or thirty years old, acumbersome old thing hung upon C springs, of the security of which thecoachman seemed doubtful. He spoke disparagingly, telling us that theproprietor had been trying to sell it, but no one would buy it, soheavy was it on the horses' backs, so out of fashion one was ashamedto go out in it. The coachman's notions of beauty did not concern us, but Doris dreaded lest one of the wheels should come off; however, onexamination it was found to be roadworthy, and I said to Doris as Ihelped her into it:

"If it be no post-chaise, at all events ladies wearing crinolines havesat inside it, that is certain, and gentlemen wearing peg-top trouserswith braid upon them. Good God, Doris, if you were to wear a crinolineI should love you beyond hope of repentance. Don't I remember when Iwas a boy every one wore white stockings; I had only heard of blackones, and I always hoped to meet a lady wearing black stockings... Nowmy hope is to meet one wearing white. "

"We might have searched the town for a crinoline and a pair of whitestockings. "

"Yes, and I might have discovered a black silk stock. I wonder how Ishould have looked in it. Doris, " I said, "we have missed the bestpart of our adventure. We forgot to dress for the part we are playing, the lovers of Orelay. "

Who will disagree with me when I say that no adventure is completeunless it necessitates an amount of ceremonial, the wearing of wigs, high bodices, stockings, and breeches? Every one likes to dresshimself up, whether for a masquerade ball or to be enrolled in somestrange order. Have you, reader, ever seen any one enrolled in any ofthese orders? If you have, you will excuse the little comedy andbelieve it to be natural--the comedy that Doris and I played in theold carriage driving from Orelay to Verlancourt, where we hoped tobreakfast. 

We could hardly speak for excitement. Doris thought of how she wouldlook in a crinoline, and I remembered the illustrations in an earlyedition of Balzac of which I am the happy possessor. How nice the menlooked in the light trousers and the black stockings of the period;and crossing my legs I followed with interest the line of my calf. Somebody did that in "Les Illusions Perdues. " She and I lay backthinking which story in "The Human Comedy" was the most applicable toour case; and the only one we could think of was when Madame Bargeton, a provincial blue-stocking, left Angoulême for Paris with Lucien deRubempré. There were no railways in the forties; they must havetravelled in a post-chaise. Yes, I remember their journey, faintly itis true, but I remember it. Madame Bargeton was a woman offive-and-thirty at least, and Doris was much younger. Lucien was onlyone-and-twenty, and even at that time I was more than that. The namesof these people and of the people they met at the theatre and in theTuileries Gardens--Rastignac, Madame d'Espard, the Duchess ofChaulieu, Madame de Rochefide, and Canalis--carried my mind back fromcrinolines and white stockings, from peg-top trousers and braidedcoats, to the slim trousers that were almost breeches and to thehigh-breasted gowns of the Restoration. Our mothers and fathers worethe crinolines and the peg-top trousers, and our grandfathers thetight trousers and the black silk stocks. The remembrance of thesecostumes filled me with a tenderness and a melancholy I could notsubdue, and I could see that Doris was thinking of the same subject asmyself. 

We were thinking of that subject which interested men before historybegan, the mutability of human things, the vanishing of generations. Young as she was, Doris was thinking of death; nor is it the leastextraordinary she should, for as soon as any one has reached the ageof reflection the thought of death may come upon him at any moment, though he be in the middle of a ballroom or lying in the arms of hismistress. If the scene be a ballroom he has only to look outside, andthe night will remind him that in a few years he will enter theeternal night; or if the scene be a bedroom the beautiful face of hismistress may perchance remind him of another whose face was equallybeautiful and who is now under the earth; lesser things will sufficeto recall his thoughts from life to death, a rose petal falling on amarble table, a dead bird in the path as he walks in his garden. Andafter the thought of death the most familiar thought is the decay ofthe bodily vesture. The first grey hair may seem to us an amusingaccident, but very few years will pass before another and yet anotherappear, and if these do not succeed in reminding us that decay hasbegun, a black speck on a tooth cannot fail to do so; and when we goto the dentist to have it stopped we have begun to repair artificiallythe falling structure. The activity of youth soon passes, and itsslenderness. I remember still the shock I felt on hearing an athletesay that he could no longer run races of a hundred yards; he was halfa second or a quarter of a second slower than he was last year. Ilooked at him saying, "But you are only one-and-twenty, " and heanswered, "Yes, that is it. " A football player I believe is out ofdate at eight-and-twenty. Out of date! What a pathos there is in thewords--out of date! _Suranné_, as the French say. How are we torender it in English? By the beautiful but artificial word"yester-year"? Yester-year perhaps, for a sorrow clings about it; itconveys a sense of autumn, of "the long decline of roses. " There issomething ghostlike in the out-of-date. The landscape about Plessy hadtransported us back into antiquity, making us dream of nymphs anddryads, but the gilt cornices and damask hangings and the salon atOrelay had made us dream of a generation ago, of the youth of ourparents. Ancient conveys no personal meaning, but the out-of-datetransports us, as it were, to the stern of the vessel, throws us intoa mournful attitude; we lean our heads upon our hands and, lookingback, we see the white wake of the vessel with shores sinking in thehorizon and the crests of the mountains passing away into the clouds. 

While musing on these abstract questions raised by my remark that wehad not managed our adventure properly, since we had forgotten toprovide ourselves with proper costumes, the present suddenly thrustitself upon me. 

"Good God!" I said to Doris, "let us look back, for we shall never seeOrelay again!" and she from one window, and I from the other, saw thespires of Orelay for the last time. We could not tear ourselves away, but fortunately the road turned; Orelay was blotted out from our sightfor ever, and we sank back to remember that a certain portion of ourlives was over and done, a beautiful part of our lives had been throwninto the void, into the great rubble-heap of emotions that had beenlived through, that are no more. 

"Of what are you thinking, dear? You have been far away. This is thefirst time we have been separated, and we are not yet five miles fromOrelay. "

"Five miles! Ah, if it were only five!"

We did not speak for a long time, and watching the midday sun, Ithought that peradventure it was not farther from us than yesterday. Were I to say so to Doris she would answer, "It will be the same inParis, " but if she did it would be the first falsehood she had toldme, for we both knew that things are never the same; thingschange--for better or worse, but they change. 

This last sentence seems to me somewhat trite, and if I were tocontinue this story any further my pen would run into many othersuperficial and facile observations, for my mind is no longerengrossed with the story. I no longer remember it; I do not mean thatI do not remember whether we got to Verlancourt, whether we hadbreakfast, or whether we drove all the way to Paris with relays ofhorses. I am of course quite certain about the facts: we breakfastedat Verlancourt, and after breakfast we asked the coachman whether hewould care to go on to Paris with us; he raised his eyes--"Thecarriage is a very old one, surely, Monsieur----" Doris and I laughed, for, truth to tell, we had been so abominably shaken that we were gladto exchange the picturesque old coach of our fathers' generation forthe train. 

These stories are memories, not inventions, and an account of the daysI spent in Paris would interest nobody; all the details are forgotten, and invention and remembrance do not agree any better than the goatand the cabbage. So, omitting all that does not interest me--and if itdoes not interest me how can it interest the reader?--I will tellmerely that my adventure with Doris was barren of scandal orunpleasant consequences. Her mother, a dear unsuspiciouswoman--whether her credulity was the depth of folly or the depth ofwisdom I know not; there are many such mothers, my blessing be uponthem!--took charge of her daughter, and Doris and her mother returnedto England. I am afraid that when I confess that I did not speak toDoris of marriage I shall forfeit the good opinion of my reader, whowill, of course, think that a love story with such an agreeablecreature as Doris merited a lifetime of devotion; but I pray thereader to discover an excuse for me in the fact that Doris had told mewhen we were at Plessy that there was no question of her marrying anyone but Albert. Had she not sacrificed the great love of her life inorder that she might remain constant to Albert? Is it to be expected, then, that having done that, she would put Albert aside and throw herlot in with mine? She might have done this; men and women actinconsequently. Having on one occasion refused to drop the mutton chopfor the shadow, on the next occasion they would drop it for the shadowof the shadow; but Doris was made of sterner stuff, and some monthsafterwards she wrote me a steady, sensible little letter telling methat she was going to be married, and that it seemed to her quitenatural that she should marry Albert. Years have passed away, andnothing has happened to lead me to believe that she has not proved atrue and loving wife. Albert has always told me that he found all thequalities in her which he had foreseen from the first time he lookedupon her pretty, sparkling face. Frown not, reader; accuse me not ofsuperficial cynicism! Albert is part of the world's inheritance. Youmay be Albert yourself--every one has been or will be Albert; Albertis in us all, just as I am in you all. Doris, too, is in you, dearlady who sit reading my book--Doris my three-days mistress at Orelay, and Doris the faithful spouse of Albert for twenty years in a lonelyLondon suburb. 

Study and boudoir would like to know if Doris had any children. Abouttwo years afterwards I heard that she was "expecting. " The word cameup spontaneously in my mind, perhaps because I had written it in thebeginning of the story. Reader, do you remember in "Massimilla Doni"how Balzac, when he came to the last pages, declares that he dare nottell you the end of the adventure. One word, he says, will suffice forthe worshippers of the ideal--_Massimilla Doni_ was "expecting. "I have not read the story for many years, but the memory of it shinesin my mind bright--well, as the morning star; and I looked up thislast paragraph when I began to write this story, but had to excusemyself for not translating it, my pretext being that I was baffled bycertain grammatical obscurities, or what seemed to me such. I seemedto understand and to admire it all till I came to the line that"_les peuplades de cent cathédrales gothiques_" (which might berendered as the figured company of a hundred Gothic cathedrals), "_tout le peuple des figures qui brisent leur forme pour venir àvous, artistes compréhensifs, toutes ces angéliques fillesincorporelles accoururent autour du lit de Massimilla, et ypleurèrent!_" What puzzles me is why statues should break theirforms (_form_ I suppose should be translated by _mould_)--breaktheir moulds--the expression seems very inadequate--break theirmoulds "in order to go to you, great imaginative artists. " Howcould they break their moulds or their forms to go to theimaginative artists, the mould or the form being the gift ofthe imaginative artists? I should have understood Balzac better ifhe had said that the statues escape from their niches and the madonnasand the angels from their frames to gather round the bed of_Massimilla_ to weep. Balzac's idea seems to have got a littletangled, or maybe I am stupid to-day. However, here is the passage:

"Les péris, les ondines, les fées, les sylphides du vieux temps, lesmuses de la Grèce, les vierges de marbre de la Certosa di Pavia, leJour et la Nuit de Michel Ange, les petits anges que Bellini lepremier mit au bas des tableaux d'église, et que Raphaël a faits sidivinement au bas de la vierge au donataire, et de la madone qui gèlea Dresde, les délicieuses filles d'Orcagna, dans l'église deSan-Michele à Florence, les chœurs célestes du tombeau de Saint Sébaldà Nuremberg, quelques vierges du Duomo de Milan, les peuplades de centcathédrales gothiques, tout le peuple des figures qui brisent leurforme pour venir à vous, artistes compréhensifs, toutes ces angéliquesfilles incorporelles accoururent autour du lit de Massimilla, et ypleurèrent. "

CHAPTER IX

IN THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS

There was a time when my dream was not literature, but painting; and Iremember an American giving me a commission to make a small copy ofIngres's "Perseus and Andromeda, " and myself sitting on a high stoolin the Luxembourg, trying to catch the terror of the head thrown back, of the arms widespread, chained to the rock, and the beauty of thefoot advanced to the edge of the sea. Since my copying days thepicture has been transferred to the Louvre. What has become of mycopy, whether I ever finished it and received the money I had beenpromised, matters very little. Memories of an art that one hasabandoned are not pleasant memories. Maybe the poor thing is in someWestern state where the people are ignorant enough to accept it as asketch for the original picture. My hope is that it has drifted away, and become part of the world's rubbish and dust. But why am I thinkingof it at all? Only because a more interesting memory hangs upon it. 

After working at it all one morning, I left the museum feeling halfsatisfied with my drawing, but dreading the winged monster thatawaited me after lunch. In those days I was poor, though rich for theQuarter. I moved in a society of art students, and we used to meet forbreakfast in a queer little café; the meal cost us about a shilling. On my return from this café soon after twelve--I had breakfasted earlythat morning--I remember how, overcome by a sudden idleness, I couldnot go back to my work, and feeling that I must watch the birds andthe sunlight (they seemed to understand each other so well), I threwmyself on a bench and began to wonder if there was anything better inthe world worth doing than to sit in an alley of clipped limes, smoking, thinking of Paris and of myself. 

Every one, or nearly every one, except perhaps the upper classes, whose ideas of Paris are the principal boulevards--the Rue de Rivoli, the Rue de la Paix--knows the Luxembourg Gardens; and watching Aprilplaying and listening to water trickling from a vase that a greatstone Neptune held in his arms at the end of the alley, my thoughtsembraced not only the garden, but all I know of Paris, of the old citythat lies far away behind the Hôtel de Ville and behind the BoulevardSt. Antoine. I thought of a certain palace now a museum, rarelyvisited, of its finely proportioned courtyard decorated withbas-reliefs by Jean Goujon. I had gone there a week ago with Mildred;but finding she had never heard of Madame de Sévigné, and did not carewhether she had lived in this palace or another, I spoke to her of thePlace des Vosges, saying we might go there, hoping that she would feelinterested in it because it had once been the habitation of the oldFrench nobility. As I spoke, its colour rose up before my eyes, prettytones of yellow and brown brick, the wrought-iron railings and thehigh-pitched roofs and the slim chimneys. As I walked beside her Itried to remember if there were any colonnades. It is strange how oneforgets; yes, and how one remembers. The Place des Vosges has alwaysseemed to me something more than an exhibition of the most beautifuldomestic architecture in France. The mind of a nation shapes itself, like rocks, by a process of slow accumulation, and it takes centuriesto gather together an idea so characteristic as the Place des Vosges. One cannot view it--I cannot, at least--without thinking of the greatmonarchical centuries, and of the picturesque names which I havelearned from Balzac's novels and from the history of France. In his"Étude de Catherine de Médicis, " Balzac speaks of Madame de Sauve, andI am sure she must have lived in the Place des Vosges. Monsieur deMontresser might have occupied a flat on the first floor. Le ComteBouverand de la Loyère, La Marquise d'Osmond, Le Comte de Coëtlogon, La Marquise de Villefranche, and Le Duc de Cadore, and many othernames rise up in my mind, but I will not burden this story with them. I suppose the right thing to do would be to find out who had lived inthe Place des Vosges; but the search, I am afraid, would prove tediousand perhaps not worth the trouble. For if none of the bearers of thenames I have mentioned lived in the Place des Vosges, it is certainthat others bearing equally noble names lived there. 

Its appearance is the same to-day as it was in the seventeenthcentury, but it is now inhabited by the small tradespeople of theQuarter; the last great person who lived there was Victor Hugo; hishouse has been converted into a museum, and it is there that the mostinteresting relics of the great poet are stored. I unburdened my mindto Mildred, and my enthusiasm enkindled in her an interest sufficientto induce her to go there with me, for I could not forgo a companionthat day, though she was far from being the ideal companion for suchsentimental prowling as mine. Afterwards we visited Notre Dametogether, and the quays, and the old streets; but Mildred lacked thehistorical sense, I am afraid, for as we returned in the glow of thesunset, when the monumented Seine is most beautiful, she said thatParis wasn't bad for an old city, and it was the memory of thissomewhat crude remark that caused a smile to light up my lips as Ilooked down the dark green alley through which the April sunlightflickered. 

But I did not think long of her; my attention was distracted by thebeauty of a line of masonry striking across the pale spring sky, tender as a faded eighteenth-century silk, only the blue was a youngblue like that of a newly opened flower; and it seemed to me that Icould detect in the clouds going by, great designs for groups andsingle figures, and I compared this aerial sculpture with thesculpture on the roofs. In every angle of the palace there arestatues, and in every corner of the gardens one finds groups or singlefigures. Ancient Rome had sixty thousand statues--a statue for everythirty-three or thirty-four inhabitants; in Paris the proportion ofstatues to the people is not so great, still there are a great many;no city has had so many since antiquity; and that is why Paris alwaysreminds me of those great days of Greece and Rome when this world wasthe only world. 

When one tires of watching the sunlight there is no greater delightthan to become absorbed in the beauty of the balustrades, the statelyflights of steps, the long avenues of clipped limes, the shapely stonebasins, every one monumented in some special way. "How shapely thesegardens are, " I said, and I fell to dreaming of many rocky hillswhere, at the entrance of cool caves, a Neptune lies, a vase in hisarms with water flowing from it. Yesterevening I walked in thesegardens with a sculptor; together we pondered Carpeau's fountain, and, after admiring Frémiet's horses, we went to Watteau's statue, appropriately placed in a dell, among greenswards like those he lovedto paint. At this moment my meditation was broken. 

"I thought I should find you in the museum painting, but here you are, idling in this pretty alley, and in the evening you'll tell us you'vebeen working all day. "

"Will you come for a walk?" I said, thinking that the gardens mightinterest her, and, if they did not, the people we should meet couldnot fail to amuse her. It was just the time to see the man who cameevery morning to feed the sparrows; he had taught them to take breadfrom his lips, and I thought that Mildred would like to see the funnylittle birds hopping about his feet, so quaint, so full of themselves, seeming to know all about it. Then if we had luck we might meet RobinHood, for in those days a man used to wander in the gardens wearingthe costume of the outlaw, and armed with a bow and quiver. Thestrange folk one meets in the Luxembourg Gardens are part of theircharm. Had I not once met a man in armour, not plate, but thebeautiful chain armour of the thirteenth century, sitting on a bencheating his lunch, his helmet beside him?--a model no doubt come from astudio for the lunch hour, or maybe he was an _exalté_ or a_fumist_; a very innocent _fumist_ if he were one, not oneof the Quarter certainly, for even the youngest among us would knowthat it would take more than a suit of armour to astonish thefrequenters of the gardens. As we came down a flight of steps we metan old man and his wife, an aged couple nearly seventy years of age, playing football, and the gambols of this ancient pair in the prettyApril sunlight were pathetic to watch. I called her attention to them, telling her that in another part of the garden three old women came todance; but seeing that Mildred was not interested, I took the firstopportunity to talk of something else. She was more interested in thelife of the Quarter, in _le bal Bullier_, in my stories ofgrisettes and students; and I noticed that she considered everystudent as he passed, his slim body buttoned tightly in a longfrock-coat, with hair flowing over his shoulders from under hisslouched hat, just as she had considered each man on board the boat aweek ago as we crossed from Folkestone to Boulogne. We had met on theboat; I noticed her the moment I got on board; her quiet, neat clotheswere unmistakably French, though not the florid French clothesEnglishwomen so often buy and wear so badly. The stays she had on Ithought must be one of those little ribbon stays with very few bones, and as she walked up and down she kept pressing her leather waistbandstill more neatly into its place, looking first over one shoulder andthen over the other. She reminded me of a bird, so quick were hermovements, and so alert. She was nice-looking, not exactly pretty, forher lips were thin, her mouth too tightly closed, the under lip almostdisappearing, her eyes sloped up very much at the corners, and hereyebrows were black, and they nearly met. 

The next time I saw her she was beside me at dinner--we had come bychance to the same hotel, a small hotel in the Rue du Bac. Her motherwas with her, an elderly, sedate Englishwoman, to whom the girl talkedvery affectionately, "Yes, dearest mamma"; "No, dearest mamma. " Shehad a gay voice, though she never seemed to laugh or joke; but herface had a sad expression, and she sighed continually. After dinnerher mother went to the piano and played with a great deal of accentand noise the "Brooklyn Cake Walk. "

"We used to dance that at Nice. Oh, dear mamma, do you remember thatlovely two-step?"

Her mother nodded and smiled, and began playing a Beethoven sonata, but she had not played many bars before her daughter said:

"Now, mother, don't play any more; come and talk to us. "

I asked her if she did not like Beethoven. She shrugged her shoulders;an expression of irritation came into her face. She either did notwant to talk of Beethoven then, or she was incapable of forming anyopinion about him, and, judging from her interest in the "BrooklynCake Walk, " I said:

"The Cake Walk is gayer, isn't it?"

The sarcasm seemed lost upon her; she sat looking at me with a vagueexpression in her eyes, and I found it impossible to say whether itwas indifference or stupidity. 

"Mildred plays Beethoven beautifully. My daughter loves music. Sheplays the violin better than anybody you ever heard in your life. "

"Well, she must play very well indeed, for I've heard Sarasateand----"

"If Mildred would only practise, " and she pressed her daughter to playsomething for me. 

"I haven't got my keys--they're upstairs. No, mother ... Leave mealone; I'm thinking of other things. "

Her mother went back to the piano and continued the sonata. Mildredlooked at me, shrugged her shoulders, and then turned over theillustrated papers, saying they were stupid. We began to talk aboutforeign travel, and I learned that she and her mother spent only asmall part of every year in England. She liked the Continent muchbetter; English clothes were detestable; English pictures she did notknow anything about, but suspected they must be pretty bad, or elsewhy had I come to France to paint? She admitted, however, she had metsome nice Englishmen, but Yankees--oh! Yankees! There was one atBiarritz. Do you know Biarritz? No, nor Italy. Italians are nice, arethey not? There was one at Cannes. 

"Don't think I'm not interested in hearing about pictures, because Iam, but I must look at your ring, it's so like mine. This one wasgiven to me by an Irishman, who said the curse of Moreen Dhu would beupon me if I gave it away. "

"But who is Moreen Dhu? I never heard of her. "

"You mustn't ask me; I'm not a bit an intelligent woman. People alwaysget sick of me if they see me two days running. "

"I doubt very much if that is true. If it were you wouldn't say it. "

"Why not? I shouldn't have thought of saying it if it weren't true. "

Next evening at dinner I noticed that she was dressed more carefullythan usual; she wore a cream-coloured gown with a cerise waistband anda cerise bow at the side of her neck. I noticed, too, that she talkedless; she seemed preoccupied. And after dinner she seemed anxious; Icould not help thinking that she wished her mamma away, and wassearching for an excuse to send her to bed. 

"Mamma, dear, won't you play us the 'Impassionata'?"

"But, Milly dear, you know quite well that I can't play it. "

Mamma was nevertheless persuaded to play not only the "Impassionata"but her entire repertoire. She was not allowed to leave the piano, andhad begun to play Sydney Smith when the door opened, and a man's faceappeared for a second. Remembering her interest in men, I said:

"Did you see that man? What a nice, fresh-looking young man!"

She put her finger on her lip, and wrote on a piece of paper:

"Not a word. He's my fiancé, and mother doesn't know he's here. Shedoes not approve; he hasn't a bean. " ... "Thank you, mother, thankyou; you played that sonata very nicely. "

"Won't you play, my dear?"

"No, mother dear, I'm feeling rather tired; we've had a long day. "

And the two bade me good-night, leaving me alone in the sitting-roomto finish a letter. But I had not quite got down to the signature whenshe came in looking very agitated, even a little frightened. 

"Isn't it awful?" she said. "I was in the dining-room with my fiancé, and the waiter caught us kissing. I had to beg of him not to tellmamma. He said _'Foi de gentilhomme, _' so I suppose it's allright. "

"Why not have your fiancé in here? I'm going to bed. "

"Oh, no, I wouldn't think of turning you out. I'll see him in mybedroom; it's safer, and if one's conscience is clear it doesn'tmatter what people say. "

A few days afterwards, as I was slinging my paintbox over myshoulders, I heard some one stop in the passage, and speaking to methrough the open door she said:

"You were so awfully decent the other night when Donald looked in. Iknow you will think it cheek; I am the most impudent woman in theworld; but do you mind my telling mamma that I am going to the Louvrewith you to see the pictures? You won't give me away, will you?"

"I never split on any one. "

"My poor darling ought to go back. He's away from the office withoutleave, and he may get the sack; but he's going to stay another night. Can you come now? Mamma is in the salon. Come just to say a word toher and we will go out together. Donald is waiting at the corner. "

Next morning as I was shaving I heard a knock at my door. 

"_Entré!_"

"Oh, I beg your pardon, but I didn't want to miss you. I'll wait foryou in the salon. "

When I came downstairs she showed me a wedding ring. She had marriedDonald, or said she had. 

"Oh, I am tired. I hate going to the shops, and now mamma wants me togo shopping with her. Can't you stay and talk to me, and later on wemight sneak out together and go somewhere?... Are you paintingto-day?"

"Well, no, I'm going to a museum a long way from here. I have neverseen Madame de Sévigné's house. "

"Who is she?"

"The woman who wrote the famous letters. "

"I am afraid I shall only bore you, because I can't talk about books. "

"You had better come; you can't stay in this hotel by yourself all themorning. "

There was some reason which I have forgotten why she could not go outwith Donald, and I suppose it was my curiosity in all things humanthat persuaded me to yield to her desire to accompany me, though, as Itold her, I was going to visit Madame de Sévigné's house. The readerdoubtless remembers that we visited not only Madame de Sévigné'shouse, but also Victor Hugo's in the Place des Vosges, and perhaps herremark as we returned home in the evening along the quays, that "Pariswasn't bad for an old city, " has not yet slipped out of the reader'smemory. For it was a strange remark, and one could hardly hear itwithout feeling an interest in the speaker; at least, that was how Ifelt. It was that remark that drew my attention to her again, and whenwe stopped before the door of our hotel, I remembered that I had spentthe day talking to her about things that could have no meaning forher. Madame de Sévigné and Jean Goujon, old Paris and its associatedideas could have been studied on another occasion, but an opportunityof studying Mildred might never occur again. I was dining out thatevening; the next day I did not see her, and the day after, as I satin the Luxembourg Gardens, beguiled from my work by the pretty Aprilsunlight and the birds in the alley (I have spoken already of thesethings), as I sat admiring them, a thought of Mildred sprang into mymind, a sudden fear that I might never see her again; and it was justwhen I had begun to feel that I would like to walk about the gardenswith her that I heard her voice. These coincidences often occur, yetwe always think them strange, almost providential. The reader knowshow I rose to meet her, and how I asked her to come for a walk in thegardens. Very soon we turned in the direction of the museum, for, thinking to propitiate me, Mildred suggested I should take her there, and I did not like to refuse, though I feared some of the pictures andstatues might distract me from the end I now had in view, which was tofind out if Donald had been her first lover, and if her dear littlemamma suspected anything. 

"So your mother knows nothing about your marriage?"

"Nothing. He ought to go back, but he's going to stay another night. Ithink I told you. Poor dear little mamma, she never suspected a bit. "

As we walked to the museum I caught glimpses of what Donald's pastlife had been, learning incidentally that his father was rich, butsince Donald was sixteen he had been considered a ne'er-do-well. Hehad gone away to sea when he was a boy, and had been third mate on amerchant ship; in a hotel in America he had been a boot-black, andjust before he came to Paris he fought a drunken stoker and won apurse of five pounds. 

She asked me which were the best pictures, but she could not keep herattention fixed, and her attempts to remember the names of thepainters were pathetic. "Ingres, did you say? I must try toremember.... Puvis de Chavannes? What a curious name! but I do likehis picture. He has given that man Donald's shoulders, " she said, laying her hand on my arm and stopping me before a picture of a youngnaked man sitting amid some grey rocks, with grey trees and a greysky. The young man in the picture had dark curly hair, and Mildredsaid she would like to sit by him and put her hands through his hair. "He has got big muscles, just like Donald. I like a man to be strong:I hate a little man. "

We wandered on talking of love and lovers, our conversationoccasionally interrupted, for however interested I was in Mildred, andI was very much interested, the sight of a picture sometimes calledaway my attention. When we came to the sculpture-room it seemed to methat Mildred was more interested in sculpture than in painting, forshe stopped suddenly before Rodin's "L'age d'arain, " and I began towonder if her mind were really accessible to the beauty of thesculptor's art, or if her interest were entirely in the model that hadposed before Rodin. Sculpture is a more primitive art than painting;sculpture and music are the two primitive arts, and they are thereforeopen to the appreciation of the vulgar; at least, that is how I triedto correlate Mildred with Rodin, and at the same moment the thoughtrose up in my mind that one so interested in sex as Mildred was couldnot be without interest in art. For though it be true that sex isantecedent to art, art was enlisted in the service of sex very earlyin the history of the race, and has, if a colloquialism may be allowedhere, done yeoman service ever since. Even in modern days, notwithstanding the invention of the telephone and the motor car, weare still dependent upon art for the beginning of our courtships. To-day the courtship begins by the man and the woman sending eachother books. Before books were invented music served the purpose ofthe lover. For when man ceased to capture woman, he went to theriver's edge and cut a reed and made it into a flute and played it forher pleasure; and when he had won her with his music he began to takean interest in the tune for its own sake. Amusing thoughts like thesefloated through my mind in the Luxembourg galleries--how could it beotherwise since I was there with Mildred?--and I began to argue thatit was not likely that one so highly strung as Mildred could be blindto the sculptor's dream of a slender boy, and that boy, too, swayinglike a lily in some ecstasy of efflorescence. 

"The only fault I find with him is that he is not long enough from theknee to the foot, and the thigh seems too long. I like the greaterlength to be from the knee to the foot rather than from the knee tothe hip. Now, have I said anything foolish?"

"Not the least. I think you are right. I prefer your proportions. Ashort tibia is not pretty. "

A look of reverie came into her eyes. "I don't know if I told you thatwe are going to Italy next week?"

"Yes, you told me. "

Her thoughts jerked off at right angles, and turning her back on thestatue, she began to tell me how she had made Donald's acquaintance. She and her mother were then living in a boarding-house in the samesquare in which Donald's father lived, and they used to walk in thesquare, and one day as she was running home trying to escape a shower, he had come forward with his umbrella. That was in July, a few daysbefore she went away to Tenby for a month. It was at Tenby she hadbecome intimate with Toby Wells; he had succeeded for a time inputting Donald out of her mind. She had met Toby at Nice. 

"But you like Donald much better than Toby?"

"Of course I do; he came here to marry me. Oh, yes, I've forgotten allabout Toby. You see, I met Donald when I went back to London. But dolook at that woman's back; see where her head is. I wonder what madeRodin put a woman in that position. "

She looked at me, and there was a look of curious inquiry on her face. Overcome with a sudden shyness, I hastened to assure her that thestatue was "La Danaide. "

"Rodin often introduces a trivial voluptuousness into art; and hissculpture may be sometimes called _l'article de Paris_. It isoccasionally soiled by the sentiment, of which Gounod is the greatexponent, a base soul who poured a sort of bath-water melody down theback of every woman he met, Margaret or Madeline, it was all thesame. "

"Clearly this is not a day to walk about a picture-gallery with you. Come, let us sit down, and we'll talk about lighter things, aboutlovers. You won't mind telling me; you know you can trust me. One ofthese days you will meet a man who will absorb you utterly, and allthese passing passions will wax to one passion that will know nochange. "

"Do you think so? I wonder. "

"Do you doubt it?"

"I don't think any one man could absorb me; no one man could fill mylife. "

"Not even Donald?"

"Donald is wonderful. Do you remember that morning, a few days afterwe arrived?"

"Your wedding night?"

"Yes, my wedding night. "

We are interested in any one who is himself or herself, and this girlwas certainly herself and nothing but herself. Travelling about as shedid with her quiet, respectable mother, who never suspected anything, she seemed to indicate a type--type is hardly the word, for she was anexception. Never had I seen any one like her before, her frankness andher daring; here at least was one who had the courage of herinstincts. She was man-crazy if you will, but now and then I caughtsight of another Mildred when she sighed, when that littledissatisfied look appeared in her face, and the other Mildred onlyfloated up for a moment like a water-flower or weed on the surface ofa stream. 

"... You know I do mean to be a good girl. I think one ought to begood. But really, if you read the Bible----Oh, must you go?--it hasbeen such a relief talking things over with you. Shall I see youto-night? There is no one else in the hotel I can talk to, and mammawill play the piano, and when, she plays Beethoven it gets upon mynerves. "

"You play the violin, don't you?"

"Yes, I play, " and that peculiar sad look which I had begun to thinkwas characteristic of her came into her face, and I asked myself ifthis sudden misting of expression should be ascribed to stupidity orto a sudden thought or emotion. "I am sorry you're not dining at thehotel. "

"I am sorry, too; I'm dining with students in the Quarter; they wouldamuse you. "

"I wish I were a grisette. "

"If you were I would take you with me. Now I must say good-bye; I haveto get on with my painting. "

That night I returned to the hotel late and went away early in themorning. But the next day she came upon me again in the gardens, andas we walked on together she told me that Donald had gone away. 

"He was obliged to return, you see; he left the office without leave, and he had only two pounds, the poor darling. I don't know if I toldyou that he had to borrow two pounds to come here. "

"No, you omitted that little fact. You see, you are so absorbed inyourself that you think all these things are as interesting toeverybody else as they are to you. "

"Now you're unkind, " and she looked at me reproachfully. "It is thefirst time you have been unsympathetic. If I talked to you it wasbecause I thought my chatter interested you. Moreover, I believed thatyou were a little interested in me, and I have come all this way--"

My heart was touched, and I begged of her to believe that my remarkwas only uttered in sport, to tease her. But it was a long time beforeI could get her to finish the sentence. "You have come a long way, yousaid--"

"I came to tell you that we are going to Rome tomorrow. I didn't liketo go away without seeing you, but it seems as if I were mistaken; itwould not have mattered to you if I had. "

She had her fiddle-case with her; and to offer to carry it for herseemed an easy way out of my difficulty; but she would not surrenderit for a while. I asked her if she had been playing at a concert, orif she were coming from a lesson. No; well, then, why had she herfiddle-case with her?

"Don't ask me; leave me in peace. It doesn't matter. I cannot playnow, and ten minutes ago my head was full of it. "

These little ebullitions of temper were common in Mildred, and I knewthat the present one would soon pass away. In order that its passingmight be accomplished as rapidly as possible, I suggested we shouldsit down, and I spoke to her of Donald. 

"I don't want to talk about him. You have offended me. "

"I'm sorry you are leaving Paris. This is the beautiful month. Howpleasant it is here, a soft diffused warmth in the air, the sunlightflickering like a live thing in the leaves, and the sound of waterdripping at the end of the alley. We are all alone here, Mildred. Come, tell me why you brought your fiddle-case. "

"Well, " she said, "I brought it on the chance of meeting you. Ithought you might like to hear me play. We are going away to-morrowmorning. I can't play in that hotel, in that stuffy little room; mammawould want to accompany me. "

"Play to me in the Luxembourg Gardens!"

"One can do anything one likes here; no one pays any attention toanybody else, " and she pointed with her parasol to a long poet, withhair floating over his shoulders, who walked up and down the other endof the alley reciting his verses. 

"Perhaps your playing will interrupt him. "

"Oh, if he doesn't like it he'll move away. But I don't want to play;I can't play when I'm out of humour, and I was just in the very humourfor playing until your remark about--"

"About what?"

"You know very well, " she answered. 

The desire to hear her play the fiddle in the gardens gained upon me. The moment was an enchanting one, the light falling through thetranslucid leaves and the poet walking up and down carried my thoughtsinto another age. I began to see a picture--myself, the poet, andthis girl playing the violin for us; other figures were wanting tomake up the composition. Cabanel's picture of the Florentine poetintruded itself, interrupting my vision, the picture of Dante readinghis verses at one end of a stone bench to a frightened girl whoselover is drawing her away from him who had been to Hell and witnessedthe tortures of the damned, who had met the miserable lovers of Riminiwhirling through space and heard their story from them. Lizard-like, aman lies along a low wall, listening to the poet's story. But whydescribe a picture so well known? Why mention it at all? Only becauseits design intruded itself, spoiling my dream, an abortive idea that Idimly perceived in Nature without being able to grasp it; an illusivesuggestion for a picture was passing by me, and so eager was mypursuit of the vision that there was no strength in me to ask Mildredto play. True that the sound of her violin might help me, but it musthappen accidentally, just as everything else was happening, withoutsequence, without logic. At that moment my ear caught the sound ofviolin-playing; some dance measure of old time was being played, andin the sunlit interspace three women appeared dancing a gavotte, advancing and retiring through the light and shade. The one who playedthe violin leaned sometimes against a tree, and sometimes she joinedthe others, playing as she danced. 

"I know that gavotte. Come, let us go to them. I'll play for them ifthey'll let me. "

Very soon the woman who played the violin seemed to recognise Mildredas a better player than herself. She handed her fiddle to a bystanderand the gavotte proceeded, the three old ladies bowing and holding uptheir skirts and pointing their toes with the grace of bygone times. Never, I think, did reality seem more like a dream. "But who are thesethree women?" I asked myself, and, sinking on a bench like oneenchanted, I dreamed that these were three sisters, the remnant of anoble family who had lost its money during several generations till atlast nothing remained, and the poor old women had to devise some modeof earning their living. I imagined the scene in some great housewhich they would have to leave on the morrow, and they talkingtogether, thinking they must go forth to beg, till she who played thefiddle said that something would happen to save them from the shame ofmendicancy. I imagined her saying that their last crust of bread wouldnot be eaten before some one would come to tell them that a fortuneawaited them. And it so happened that the day they divided this crustthe one to whom faith had been given came upon an old letter. Shestood reading till the others asked her what she was reading with somuch interest. "I told you, " she said, "that we should be saved, thatGod in His great mercy would not turn us out into the streets to beg. This letter contains explicit directions how the gavotte used to bedanced when our ancestors lived in the Place des Vosges. "

"But what help to us to know the true step of the gavotte?" cried theyoungest sister. 

"A great deal, " the eldest answered gravely; "I can play the fiddle, and we can all learn to dance; we'll go to dance the gavotte in theLuxembourg Gardens whenever it is fine--the true gavotte as it wasdanced when Madame de Sévigné drove up in a painted coach drawn by sixhorses, and entered the courtyard of her hotel decorated withbas-reliefs by Jean Goujon. "

This is the story that I dreamed as I sat on the bench listening tothe pretty, sprightly music flowing like a live thing. Under thefingers of the old woman the music scratched along like dead leavesalong a pathway, without accent, without rhythm; now the old gavottetripped like the springtime, pretty as the budding trees, as thesunlight along the swards. Mildred brought out the contrast betweenthe detached and the slurred notes. How gaily it went! Full of thefashion of the time--the wigs, the swords, the bows, the gallantry!How sedate! How charming! How well she understood it! How well the oldwomen danced to it! How delighted every one was! She played on untilthe old women, unable to dance any more, sat down to listen to her. After trying some few things which I did not know, I heard her playinga piece of music which I could not but think I had heard before--inchurch! Beginning it on the low string, she poured out the long, longphrase that never seems to end, so stern and so evocative ofProtestantism that I could not but think of a soul going forth on itsway to the Judgment Seat, telling perforce as it goes how it hasdesired and sought salvation, pleading almost defiantly. But Mildredcould not appreciate such religious exaltation, yet it was her playingthat had inspired the thought in me. Had she been taught to play it?Was she echoing another's thought? Her playing did not sound like anecho; it seemed to come from the heart, or out of some unconsciousself, an ante-natal self that in her present incarnation only emergedin music, borne up by some mysterious current to be sucked down byanother. 

She played other things, not certain what she was going to play; andthen, as if suddenly moved to tell us about other things, she began toplay a very simple, singing melody, interrupted now and again, so itseemed to me, by little fluttering confessions. I seemed to see a ladyin white, at the close of day, in a dusky boudoir, one of AlfredStevens's women, only much more refined, one whose lover has beenunfaithful to her, or maybe a woman who is weary of lovers and knowsnot what to turn her mind to, hesitating between the convent and theball-room. Ah, the beautiful lament--how well Mildred playedit!--followed by the slight crescendo, and then the return of the soulupon itself, bewailing its weakness, confessing its follies inelegant, lovely language, seemingly speaking in a casual way, yetsaying such profound things, profound even as Bach. The form isdifferent, more light, more graceful, apparently more superficial, butjust as deep; for when we go to the bottom of things all things aredeep, one as deep as another, just as all things are shallow, one asshallow as another; for have not mystics of every age held that thingsexist not in themselves, but in the eye that sees and the ear thathears?

A crowd had collected to hear her, for she was playing out of thegreat silence that is in every soul, in that of the light-o'-love aswell as of the saint, and she went on playing, apparently unaware ofthe number of people she had collected about her. She stopped playingand returned to me. 

"You play beautifully; why did you say you didn't like Beethoven?"

"I didn't say I didn't like Beethoven; you know very well mamma can'tplay the 'Impassionata. '"

"Why aren't you always like this?"

"I don't know. One can't always be the same. I feel differently when Iplay; the mood only comes over me sometimes. I used to play a greatdeal; I only play occasionally now, just when I feel like it. "

We walked through the alleys by the statues, seeing them hardly atall, thinking of the music. 

"I must be getting back, " she said. "You see, I've got to pack up. Mother can't do any packing; I've to do hers for her. I hope we shallmeet again some day. "

"What good would it be? I only like you when you're playing, andyou're not often in the mood. "

"I'm sorry for that; perhaps if you knew me better----"

"Now you're married, and I suppose Donald will come to Rome to fetchyou?"

"Oh, I don't think he'll be able. He has got no money. "

"And you'll fall in love with some one else?"

"Well, perhaps so; I don't feel that I ever could again after thisweek. " Stopping suddenly in front of a hosier's shop, she said: "Ilike those collars; they have just come out--those turned-down ones. Do you like them as well as the great high stand-up collars aboutthree inches deep? When they were the fashion men could hardly movetheir heads. " Then she made some remarks about neckties and the colourshe liked best--violet. "Yes, there's a nice shade of violet. PoorDonald! He's so handsome. "

After the hosier's shop she spoke no more about music. And long beforewe reached the hotel she who had played--I cannot say for certain whatshe played that day in the Luxembourg Gardens; my love of music wasnot then fully awakened; could it have been?--the names of Bach andChopin come up in my mind--"I can't speak about music, " she said, aswe turned into the Rue du Bac, and she ran up the stairs of the hotelpossessed completely by the other Mildred. She asked her mother toplay the "Brooklyn Cake Walk, " and she danced "the lovely two-step, "as she had learned it at Nice, for my enjoyment. I noticed that shelooked extraordinarily comic as she skipped up and down the room, theline of her chin deflected, and that always gives a slightly comiclook to a face. She came downstairs with me, and, standing at thehotel door, she told me of something that had happened yesterday. 

"Mother and I went to Cook's to get the tickets. When we went into theoffice I saw a Yank--oh, so nicely dressed! Lovely patent-leatherboots. And I thought, 'Oh, dear, he'll never look at me. ' Butpresently he did, and took out his card-case and folded up a card andput it on the ledge behind him, and gave me a look and moved away. SoI walked over and took it up. Mamma never saw, but the clerks did. "

 * * * * *

I have reported Mildred's story truthfully at a particular moment ofher life. Those who travel meet people now and again whoseindividuality is so strong that it survives. Mildred's has survivedmany years, and I have written this account of it because it seems tome to throw a gleam into the mystery of life without, however, doinganything to destroy the mystery. 

CHAPTER X

A REMEMBRANCE

It was in the vastness of Westminster Hall that I saw her for thefirst time--saw her pointed face, her red hair, her brilliant teeth. The next time was in her own home--a farm-house that had been rebuiltand was half a villa. At the back were wheat-stacks, a noisythrashing-machine, a pigeon-cote, and stables whence, with jangle ofharness and cries of yokels, the great farm-horses always seemed to becoming from or going to their work on the downs. In a garden plantedwith variegated firs she tended her flowers all day; and in theparlour, where we assembled in the evening, her husband smoked hispipe in silence; the young ladies, their blonde hair hanging downtheir backs, played waltzes; she alone talked. Her conversation waseffusive, her laughter abundant and bright. I had only just turnedeighteen, and was deeply interested in religious problems, and one dayI told her the book I carried in my pocket, and sometimes pretended tostudy, was Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason. " My explanation of thevalue of the work did not seem to strike her, and her manifest want ofinterest in the discussion of religious problems surprised me, for shepassed for a religious woman, and I failed to understand how merebelief could satisfy any one. One day in the greenhouse, whither I hadwandered, she interrupted some allusion to the chapter entitled "TheDeduction of the Categories" with a burst of laughter, and declaredthat she would call me Kant. The nickname was not adopted by the restof the family--another was invented which appealed more to theirimagination--but she held to the name she had given me, and during thecourse of our long friendship never addressed me by any other. 

There was no reason why I should have become the friend of thesepeople. We were opposed in character and temperament, but somehow weseemed to suit. There was little reflection on either side; certainlythere was none on mine; at that time I was incapable of any; my youthwas a vague dream, and my friends were the shadows on the dream. I sawand understood them only as one sees and understands the summer cloudswhen, lying at length in the tall grass, one watches the clouds curland uncurl. In such mood, visit succeeded visit, and before I wasaware, the old Squire who walked about the downs in a tall hat died, and my friends moved into the family place, distant about a hundredyards--an Italian house, sheltered among the elms that grew along theseashore. And in their new house they became to me more real thanshadows; they were then like figures on a stage, and the building ofthe new wing and the planting of the new garden interested me as mightan incident in a play; and I left them as I might leave a play, takingup another thread in life, thinking very little of them, if I thoughtat all. Years passed, and after a long absence abroad I met them bychance in London. 

Again visit succeeded visit. My friends were the same as when I hadleft them; their house was the same, the conduct of their lives wasthe same. I do not think I was conscious of any change until, one day, walking with one of the girls in the garden, a sensation of home cameupon me. I seemed always to have known these people; they seemed partand parcel of my life. It was a sudden and enchanting awaking of love;life seemed to lengthen out like the fields at dawn, and to becomedistinct and real in many new and unimagined ways. Above all, I wassurprised to find myself admiring her who, fifteen years ago, hadappeared to me not a little dowdy. She was now fifty-five, but such anage seemed impossible for so girl-like a figure and such young andeffusive laughter. I was, however, sure that she was fifteen yearsolder than when I first saw her, but those fifteen years had broughteach within range of the other's understanding and sympathy. We becamecompanions. I noticed what dresses she wore, and told her which Iliked her best in. She was only cross with me when I surprised her inthe potting-shed wearing an old bonnet out of which hung a fadedpoppy. She used to cry: "Don't look at me, Kant. I know I'm like anold gipsy woman. "

"You look charming, " I said, "in that old bonnet. "

She put down the watering-can and laughingly took it from her head. "It is a regular show. "

"Not at all. You look charming when working in the greenhouse.... Ilike you better like that than when you are dressed to go toBrighton. "

"Do you?... I thought you liked me best in my new black silk. "

"I think I like you equally well at all times. "

We looked at each other. There was an accent of love in ourfriendship. "And strange, is it not, " I said, "I did not admire youhalf as much when I knew you first?"

"How was that? I was quite a young woman then. "

"Yes, " I said, regretting my own words; "but, don't you see, at thattime I was a mere boy--I lived in a dream, hardly seeing what passedaround me. "

"Yes, of course, " she said gaily, "you were so young then, all you sawin me was a woman with a grown-up son. "

Her dress was pinned up, she held in her hand the bonnet which shesaid made her look like an old gipsy woman, and the sunlight fell onthe red hair, now grown a little thinner, but each of the immaculateteeth was an elegant piece of statuary, and not a wrinkle was there onthat pretty, vixen-like face. Her figure especially showed no signs ofage, and if she and her daughters were in the room it was she Iadmired. 

One day, while seeking through the store-room for a sheet of brownpaper to pack up a book in, I came across a pile of old_Athenaeums_. Had I happened upon a set of drawings by Raphael Icould not have been more astonished. Not one, but twenty copies of the_Athenaeum_ in a house where never a book was read. I looked atthe dates--three-and-thirty years ago. At that moment she wasgathering some withering apples from the floor. 

"Whoever, " I cried, "could have left these copies of the_Athenaeum_ here?"

"Oh, they are my _Athenaeums_, " she said. "I always used to readthe _Athenaeum_ when I was engaged to be married to Mr. Bartlett. You must have heard of him--he wrote that famous book about theEuphrates. I was very fond of reading in those days, and he and I usedto talk about books in the old garden at Wandsworth. It is all builtover now. "

This sudden discovery of dead tastes and sympathies seemed to draw uscloser together, and in the quietness of the store-room, amid theodour of the apples, her face flushed with all the spirit of hergirlhood, and I understood her as if I had lived it with her. 

"You must have been a delightful girl. I believe if I had known youthen I should have asked you to marry me. "

"I believe you would, Kant.... So you thought because I never readbooks now that I had never read any? You have no idea how fond ofbooks I was once, and if I had married Mr. Bartlett I believe I shouldhave been quite a blue-stocking. But then Dick came, and my fatherthought it a more suitable match, and I had young children to lookafter. We were very poor in those days; the old Squire never attemptedto help us. "

At this time I seemed to be always with my friends; I came to see themwhen I pleased, and sometimes I stayed a week, sometimes I stayed sixmonths: but however long my visit they said it was not long enough. The five-o'clock from London brought me down in time for dinner, and Iused to run up to my room just as if I were a member of the family. IfI missed this train and came down by the six-o'clock, I found them atdinner, and then the lamplight seemed to accentuate our affectionateintimacy, and to pass round the table shaking hands with them all wasin itself a peculiar delight. On one of these occasions, missing herfrom her place, I said: "Surely you have not allowed her to remaintill this hour in the garden?"

I was told that she was ill, and had been for the last fortnightconfined to her room. Several days passed; allusion to her illnessbecame more frequent; and then I heard that the local doctor wouldaccept the responsibility no longer, and had demanded a consultationwith a London physician. But she would not hear of so much expense forher sake, and declared herself to be quite sufficiently well to go toLondon. 

The little pony-carriage took her to the station, and I saw her in thewaiting-room wrapped up in shawls. She was ashamed to see me, but intruth the disease had not changed her as she thought it had. There aresome who are so beautiful that disease cannot deform them, and she wasendowed with such exquisite life that she would turn to smile back onyou over the brink of the grave. 

We thought the train was taking her from us for ever, but she cameback hopeful. Operation had been pronounced unnecessary, but sheremained in her room many days before the medicine had reduced hersufficiently to allow her to come downstairs. Nearly a month passed, and then she appeared looking strangely well, and every day she grewbetter until she regained her girlish figure and the quick dance ofmovement which was a grace and a joy in the silent peacefulness of theold house. Her grace and lightness were astonishing, and one day, coming down dressed to go in the carriage, she raced across thelibrary, opened her escritoire, hunting through its innumerabledrawers for one of the sums of money which she kept there wrapped upin pieces of paper. 

"How nice you look! You are quite well now, and your figure is like agirl of fifteen. "

She turned and looked at me with that love in her face which an oldwoman feels for a young man who is something less and something moreto her than her son. As a flush of summer lingers in autumn's face, sodoes a sensation of sex float in such an affection. There is somethingstrangely tender in the yearning of the young man for the decadentcharms of her whom he regards as the mother of his election, and who, at the same time, suggests to him the girl he would have loved if timehad not robbed him of her youth. There is a waywardness in such anaffection that formal man knows not of. 

I remember that day, for it was the last time I saw her beautiful. Soon after we noticed that she did not quite recover, and we thoughtit was because she did not take her medicine regularly. She spentlong hours alone in her greenhouse, the hot sun playing fiercelyon her back, and we supplicated--I was the foremost among hersupplicators--that she would not carry the heavy flower-pots to andfro, nor cans of water from the tank at the bottom of the garden, andto save her I undertook to water her flowers for her. But she was oneof those who would do everything herself--who thought that if she didnot shut the door it was not properly shut. She was always speaking ofher work. "If I leave my work, " she would say, "even for one week, everything gets so behind-hand that I despair of ever being able tomake up the arrear. The worst of it is that no one can take up my workwhere I leave off. " And as she grew worse this idea developed until itbecame a kind of craze. At last, speculating on the strength of ourfriendship, I told her her life belonged to her husband and children, and that she had no right to squander it in this fashion. I urged thatwith ordinary forbearance she might live for twenty years, but at thepresent rate of force-expenditure she could not hope to live long. Ispoke brutally, but she smiled, knowing how much I loved her; and, looking back, it seems to me she must have known she could not besaved, and preferred to give the last summer of her life entirely toher flowers. It was pathetic to see her, poor moribund one, sittingthrough the long noons alone, the sun beating in upon her through thefiery glass, tending her flowers. I remember how she used to come inin the evenings exhausted, and lie down on the little sofa. Herhusband, with an anxious, quiet, kindly look in his eyes, used to drawthe skirt over her feet and sit down at her feet, tender, loving, soliciting the right to clasp her hand, as if they had not beenmarried thirty years, but were only sweethearts. At that time we usedall to implore her to allow us to send for the London doctor, and Iremember how proud I was when she looked up and said, "Very well, Kant, it shall be as you wish it. " I remember, too, waiting by thelittle wood at the corner of the lane, where I should be sure to meetthe doctor as he came up from the station. The old elms were beautifulwith green, the sky was beautiful with blue, and we lingered, lookingout on the fair pasturage where the sheep moved so peacefully, and, with the exquisite warmth of summer in our flesh, we talked of her whowas to die. 

"Is it then incurable?"

"There is no such thing as cure.... We cannot create, we can onlystimulate an existent force, and every time we stimulate we weaken, and so on until exhaustion. Our drugs merely precipitate the end. "

"Then there is no hope?"

"I'm afraid not. "

"Can she live for five years?"

"I should think it extremely improbable. "

"What length of life do you give her?"

"You are asking too much.... I should say about a year. "

The doctor passed up the leafy avenue. I remained looking at the sillysheep, seeing in all the green landscape only a dark, narrow space. That day I saw her for the last time. She was sitting on a low chair, very ill indeed, and the voice, weak, but still young and pure, said:"Is that you, Kant? Come round here and let me look at you. " Amid mywork in London, I used to receive letters from my friends, letterstelling me of the march of the disease, and with each letter deathgrew more and more realisable until her death seemed to stand inperson before me. It could not be much longer delayed, and the lettercame which told me that "Mother was not expected to live through thewinter. " Soon after came another letter: "Mother will not live anothermonth"; and this was followed by a telegram: "Mother is dying; come atonce. "

It was a bleak and gusty afternoon in the depth of winter, and theSunday train stopped at every station, and the journey dragged itsjogging length of four hours out to the weary end. The little stationshivered by an icy sea, and going up the lane the wind rattled andbeat my face like an iron. I hurried, looking through the trees forthe lights that would shine across the park if she were not dead, andwelcome indeed to my eyes were the gleaming yellow squares. Slippingin the back way, and meeting the butler in the passage, I said: "Howis she?"

"Very bad indeed, sir. "

She did not die that night, nor the next, nor yet the next; and as wewaited for death, slow but sure of foot, to come and take whatremained of her from us, I thought often of the degradation that theselingering deaths impose upon the watchers, and how they force intodisgraceful prominence all that is animal in us. For, however greatour grief may be, we must eat and drink, and must even talk of otherthings than the beloved one whom we are about to lose; for we may notescape from our shameful nature. And, eating and drinking, wecommented on the news that came hourly from the sickroom: "Mother willnot live the week. " A few days after, "Mother will hardly get overSunday"; and the following week, "Mother will not pass the night. "Lunch was the meal that shocked me most, and I often thought, "She isdying upstairs while we are eating jam tarts. "

One day I had to ride over the downs for some letters, and when, on myreturn, I walked in from the stables, I met her son. He was in tears, and sobbing he said: "My dear old chap, it is all over; she is gone. "I took his hand and burst into tears. Then one of her daughters camedownstairs and I was told how she had passed away. A few hours beforeshe died she had asked for a silk thread; for thirty years, beforesleeping, she always passed one between her beautiful teeth. Her poorarms were shrunken to the very bone and were not larger than a littlechild's. Haggard and over-worn, she was lifted up, and the silk wasgiven to her and the glass was held before her; but her eyes wereglazed with death, and she fell back exhausted. Then her breathinggrew thicker, and at last and quite suddenly, she realised that shewas about to die; and looking round wildly, not seeing those who werecollected about her bed, she said, "Oh, to die when so much remainsundone! How will they get on without me!"

I helped to write the letters, so melancholy, so conventional, andexpressing so little of our grief, and the while the girls sat weavingwreaths for the dead, and at every hour wreaths and letters ofsympathy arrived. The girls went upstairs where the dead lay, and whenthey returned they told me how beautiful their mother looked. Andduring those dreadful days, how many times did I refuse to look on herdead! My memory of her was an intensely living thing, and I could notbe persuaded to sacrifice it. We thought the day would never come, butit came. There was a copious lunch, cigars were smoked, the crops, theprice of lambs, and the hunting, which the frost had much interferedwith, were alluded to furtively, and the conversation was interspersedwith references to the excellent qualities of the deceased. I rememberthe weather was beautiful, full of pure sunlight, with the colour ofthe coming spring in the face of the heavens. And the funeralprocession wound along the barren sea road, the lily-covered coffin ona trolley drawn by the estate labourers. That day every slightest lineand every colour of that bitter, barren coast impressed themselves onmy mind, and I saw more distinctly than I had ever done before the oldchurch with red-brown roofs and square dogmatic tower, the forlornvillage, the grey undulations of the dreary hills, whose ring of treesshowed aloft like a plume. In the church the faces of the girls werediscomposed with grief, and they wept hysterically in each other'sarms. The querulous voice of the organ, the hideous hymn, and thegrating voice of the aged parson standing in white surplice on thealtar-steps! Dear heart! I saw thee in thy garden while others lookedunto that sunless hole, while old men, white-haired and tottering, impelled by senile curiosity, pressed forward and looked down intothat comfortless hole. 

The crowd quickly dispersed; the relatives and the friends of thedeceased, as they returned home, sought those who were most agreeableand sympathetic, and matters of private interest were discussed. Thosewho had come from a distance consulted their watches, and an apologyto life was implicit in their looks, and the time they had surrenderedto something outside of life evidently struck them as being strangelydisproportionate. The sunlight laughed along the sea, and the youngcorn was thick in the fields; leaves were beginning in the branches, larks rose higher and higher, disappearing in the pale air, and, as weapproached the plantations, the amorous cawing of the rooks soundedpleasantly in the ear. The appearance of death in the springtime, atthe moment when the world renews its life, touched my soul with thatanguish which the familiar spectacle has always and will never fail tocause as long as a human heart beats beneath the heavens. And, dropping behind the chattering crowd that in mourning-weed wended itsway through the sad spring landscape, I thought of her whom I hadloved so long and should never see again. I thought of memory as ashrine where we can worship without shame, of friendship, and of thepure escapement it offers us from our natural instincts; I rememberedthat there is love other than that which the young man offers to herhe would take to wife, and I knew how much more intense and strangelypersonal was my love of her than the love which that day I saw theworld offering to its creatures. 

CHAPTER XI

BRING IN THE LAMP

For many days there has not been a wind in the trees, and thelandscape reminds me of a somnambulist--the same silence, the samemystery, the same awe. The thick foliage of the ash never stirs; eventhe fingery leaves hanging out from the topmost twigs are still. Thehawthorns growing out of a tumbled wall are turning yellow and brown, the hollyhocks are over, the chrysanthemums are beginning. Last nighta faint pink sky melted into the solemn blue of midnight. There werefew stars; Jupiter, wearisomely brilliant, sailed overhead; red Marshung above the horizon under a round, decorative moon.... The lastdays of September! and every day the light dies a few minutes earlier. At half-past five one perceives a chilliness about one's feet; nodoubt there is a touch of frost in the air; that is why the leaveshang so plaintively. There is certainly a touch of frost in the air, and one is tempted to put a match to the fire. It is difficult to saywhether one feels cold or whether one desires the company of theblaze. Tea is over, the dusk gathers, and the brute Despondency lurksin the corners. At the close of day, when one's work is over, benumbing thoughts arise in the study and in the studio. Think of apainter of architecture finishing the thirty-sixth pillar (there areforty-three). The dusk has interrupted his labour, and an ache beginsin his heart as he rises from the easel. Be his talent great orlittle, he must ask himself who will care should he leave the lastseven pillars unfinished? Think of the writer of stories! Two, three, or four more stories are required to make up a requisite number ofpages. The dusk has interrupted his labour, and he rises from hiswriting-table asking who will care whether the last stories arewritten or left unwritten? If he write them his ideas will flickergreen for a brief springtime, they will enjoy a little summer; whenhis garden is fading in the autumn his leaves will be well-nighforgotten; winter will overtake them sooner than it overtakes hisgarden, perhaps. The flowers he deemed immortal are more mortal thanthe rose. "Why, " he asks, "should any one be interested in my storiesany more than in the thousand and one stories published this year?Mine are among the number of trivial things that compose the tediumwhich we call life. " His thoughts will flit back over the past, andhis own life will seem hardly more real than the day's work on theeasel if he be a painter, on the secretaire if he be a writer. He willseem to himself like a horse going round and round a well. But thehorse is pumping water--water is necessary; but art, even if his workis good enough to be called art, is not, so far as he knows, necessaryto any one. Whosoever he may be, proof is not wanting that the worldcan do well without his work. But however sure he may feel that thatis so, and in the hours I describe it seems sure indeed, he will haveto continue his labour. Man was born to labour, as the oldest textssay; he must continue to drive his furrow to the end of the field, otherwise he would lie down and die of sheer boredom, or go mad. Heasks himself why he became a maker of idols. "An idol-maker, anidol-maker, " he cries, "who can find no worshippers for his wares!Better the sailor before the mast or the soldier in the field. " Histhoughts break away, and he begins to dream of a life of action. Itwould be a fine thing, he thinks, to start away in a ship for SouthAmerica, where there are forests and mountain ranges almost unknown. He has read of the wild shepherds of the Pampas. So inured are they tohorseback that they cannot walk a mile without resting; and sitting bythe fire at the end of the autumn day, he can see them gallopingthrough the long grass of the Pampas, whirling three balls attached byleather thongs. The weapon is called the bolus, and flying through theair it encircles the legs of the guana, bringing it to the earth. Butif he went to America, would he find content in a hunter's life? Canthe artist put by his dreams and find content in the hunter's life?His dreams would follow him, and sitting by the camp-fire in theevening he would begin to think how he might paint the shadows or tellof the uncouth life of those who sat around him eating of jerked meat. No, there is nothing for him but to follow the furrow; he will have towrite stories till his brain fades or death intervenes. And what storyshall he write to complete his book, since it must be completed, itforming part of the procession of things? The best part ofstory-writing is the seeking for the subject. Now there is a sound ofchurch bells in the still air, beautiful sounds of peace and longtradition, and he likes to listen, thinking of the hymns and thehomely sermons of the good minister. Shall he get up and go? Perhapsthe service would soothe his despondency; but there is not courageenough in his heart. He can do no more than strike a match; the firelights up. It is one of those autumn afternoons with just that touchof frost in the air which makes a fire welcome, and as he crouches inhis arm-chair the warmth soothes the spirit and flesh, and in the dozeof the flesh the spirit awakes. What--is the story coming now? Yes; itis forming independently of his will, and he says, "Let it takeshape. " And the scene that rises up in his mind is a ball-room; hesees women all arow, delicate necks and arms of young girls, and youngmen in black collected about the doorways. Some couples are moving tothe rhythm of a languorous waltz, a French imitation of Strauss, awaltz never played now, forgotten perhaps by everybody but him--awaltz he heard twenty long years ago. That waltz has lain ever sinceforgotten in his brain, but now he hears it all; never before was heable to remember that _coda_, and it comes with a scent ofviolets in it--the perfume of a little blond woman who dreams as shedances with the young man blond as herself. Let it be that the choicewas made by her rather than by him, and let her wear _crêpe dechime_, with perhaps a touch of white somewhere, and a white frillabout her neck. Let her be a widow whose husband died six months aftermarriage, six months ago. Let her have come from some distant part ofthe world, from America--Baltimore will do as well as any other, perhaps better, for the dreamer by the fire has no faintest notionwhether Baltimore lies in the middle of a plain or surrounded bymountains, whether it be built of marble or brick or stone. Let hercome from Baltimore, from some prettily named street--CathedralStreet--there must be a Cathedral Street in Baltimore. The sound ofthe church bells in the air no doubt led the dreamer to chooseCathedral Street for her to live in.... The dance would have to be aninformal one, some little dance that she might come to though herhusband was dead only six months. Coming from America, she would bedancing the sliding Boston step, and the two together would passbetween the different groups sliding forward and back, avoiding thedancer here, and reappearing from behind a group of French men andwomen bumping up and down, hammering the floor, the men holding thewomen as if they were guitars. An American widow dances, her hand uponher partner's shoulder, fitting herself into him, finding a nookbetween his arm and side, and her head is leaned upon his shoulder. She follows his every step; when he reverses there is never a hitch orjolt; they are always going to the same rhythm. How delicious arethese moments of sex and rhythm, and how intense if the woman shouldtake a little handkerchief edged with black and thrust it into herdancer's cuff with some little murmur implying that she wishes him tokeep it. To whomsoever these things happen life becomes a song. Alittle event of this kind lifts one out of the humdrum of materialexistence. I suppose the cause of our extraordinary happiness is thatone is again, as it were, marching in step; one has dropped into theGreat Procession and is actively doing the great Work. There is nodenying it, that in these moments of sex one does feel more consciousthan at any other time of rhythm, and, after all, rhythm is joy. It isrhythm that makes music, that makes poetry, that makes pictures; whatwe are all after is rhythm, and the whole of the young man's life isgoing to a tune as he walks home, to the same tune as the stars aregoing over his head. All things are singing together. And he sings ashe passes the _concierge's_ lodge, pitying the poor coupleasleep--what do they know of love? Humble beasts unable to experiencethe joy of rhythm. Exalted he goes upstairs; he is on rhythm bent, words follow ideas, rhymes follow words, and he sits down at hiswriting-table and drawing forth a sheet of paper he writes. A songmoves within him, a fragrant song of blond hair and perfume--thehandkerchief inspires him, and he must get the rondel perfect: arondel, or something like a rondel, which he will read to hertomorrow, for she has appointed to meet him--where? No better placefor lovers than the garden of L'Église de la Trinité. His night passesin shallow sleep; but his wakings are delicious, for at every awakinghe perceives a faint odour of violets. He dreams of blond hair and howcarefully he will dress himself in the morning! Would she like himbetter in his yellow or his grey trousers? Or should he wear a violetor a grey necktie? These are the questions that are important; andwhat more important questions are there for a young man of twenty-fivegoing to meet a delicious little Dresden figure with blond hair andforget-me-not eyes in the garden of L'Église de la Trinité? He knowsshe will come, only he hopes not to be kept too long waiting, and atten o'clock he is there for sure, walking up and down watching thenursemaids and the perambulators drawn up in the shade. On anotheroccasion he might have looked at the nursemaids, but this day theprettiest is plain-featured; they are but the ordinary bread ofexistence; to-day he is going to partake of more extraordinary fare. He hopes so, at least, and the twenty years that have gone by havedone nothing to obliterate the moment when he saw her walk across thegravelled space, a dainty little woman with blond hair, dressed inblack, coming to her appointment. The dreamer sees her and her lovergoing together out of the garden. He follows them down the street, hearing them talking, trying to decide where they shall go tobreakfast. To take her to a Parisian restaurant would be a commonpleasure. He is bent on taking her to the country. Both want to sit onthe warm grass and kiss each other peradventure. All souls dream ofthe country when they are in love; and she would hear him tell herthat he loves her under the shade of trees. She is Chloe, and he iswhomsoever was Chloe's lover. Whither are they going? Are they goingto Bougeval? Many things may be said in its favour, but he has beenthere; and he has been to Meudon; he would go with her to some placewhere he has never been before, and where perchance he will never beagain. Vincennes? The name is a pretty one, and it lures him. And theygo there, arriving about eleven o'clock, a little early for breakfast. 

The sun is shining, the sky is blue, white clouds are unfolding--likegay pennants they seem to him. He is glad the sun is shining--all isomen, all is oracle, the clouds are the love pennants of the sky. Whata chatter of thoughts and images are going on in his brain, perchancein hers, too! Moreover, there is her poem in his pocket--he must readit to her, and that she may hear it they sit upon the grass. Twentyyears ago there was some rough grass facing the villas, and some treesand bushes, with here and there a bench for lovers to sit upon--forall kinds of people to sit upon, but lovers think that this world ismade only for lovers. Only love is of serious account, and the objectof all music and poetry, of pictures and sculpture, is to incite love, to praise love, to make love seem the only serious occupation. Vincennes, its trees and its white clouds lifting themselves in theblue sky, were regarded that day by these lovers as a very suitablesetting for their gallantries. The dear little woman sits--the dreamercan see her on the warm grass--hidden as well as she can hide herselfbehind some bushes, the black crêpe dress hiding her feet orpretending to hide them. White stockings were the fashion; she wearswhite stockings, and how pretty and charming they look in the littleblack shoes! The younger generation now only knows black stockings;the charms of white are only known to the middle-aged. But the youngman must read her his poem. He wants her to hear it because the poempleases him, and because he feels that his poem will aid him to heraffections. And when she asks him if he has thought of her during thenight, he has to answer that her violet-scented handkerchief awoke himmany times, that the wakings were delicious. What time did he go tobed? Very late; he had sat up writing a poem to her telling of thebeauty of her blond hair. 

 "Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair. May flowers are not more sweet Than the shower of loosened hair That will fall around my feet. Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair. 

 "The golden curls they paint, Round the forehead of a saint, Ne'er glittered half so bright As thy enchanted hair, Full of shadow, full of light. Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair. 

 "Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair, And weave a web of gold Of thy enchanted hair, Till all be in its hold. Lady, unwreath thy hair, That is so long and fair. "

"Do let me see your poem.... It is charming. But what do you mean by'enchanted hair'? Is it that my hair has enchanted you? 'And weave aweb of gold. '... 'Unwreath'--do you mean unloose my hair?"

 "Dames, tressez vos cheveux blonds Qui sont si lourds et si longs. 

"How well it goes with French!"

"I don't understand French, but I like your poem in English. Do youknow, I like it very much!"

It is easy to obtain appreciation for poetry in such circumstances. Horace's best ode would not please a young woman as much as themediocre verses of the young man she is in love with. It is well thatit should be so, and this is the dreamer's criticism of life as hesits lost in shadow, lit up here and there by the blaze. He remembersthe warmth of the grass and the scanty bushes; there was hardlysufficient cover that spring day for lovers in Vincennes, and he triesto remember if he put his hand on her white ankle while she wasreading the poem. So far as he can remember he did, and she checkedhim and was rather cross, declaring just like the puss-cat that hemust not do such things, that she would not have come out with him hadshe thought he was going to misbehave himself in that way. But she isnot really angry with him. How can she be? Was it not he who wrotethat her hair was enchanted? And what concern is it of hers that thephrase was borrowed from another poet? Her concern is that he shouldthink her hair enchanted, and her hands go up to it. The young manprays to unloose it, to let it fall about her shoulders. He must bepaid for his poem, and the only payment he will accept is to see herhair unwreathed. 

"But I cannot undo my hair on the common. Is there no other payment?"and she leans a little forward, her eyes fixed upon him. The dreamercan see her eyes, clear young eyes, but he cannot remember her mouth, how full the lips were or how thin; ah, but he remembers kissing her!On such a day a young man kisses his young woman, and it may bedoubted if the young woman would ever go out with him again if herefrained, the circumstances being as I describe. But the lovers ofVincennes have to be careful. The lady with the enchanted hair hasjust spied a middle-aged gentleman with his two sons sitting on abench at a little distance. 

"Do be quiet, I beg of you. I assure you, he saw us. "

"If he did it would matter little; he would remember his young days, before his children were born. Moreover, he looks kindly disposed. "

Later on the lovers address themselves to him, for time wears awayeven with lovers, and the desire of breakfast has come upon them both. The kindly disposed gentleman tells them the way to the restaurant. Heinsists even on walking part of the way with them, and they learn fromhim that the restaurant has only just been opened for the season; theseason is not yet fairly begun, but no doubt they will be able to getsomething to eat, an omelette and a cutlet. 

Now the accomplished story-teller would look forward to thisrestaurant; already his thoughts would fix themselves on a _cabinetparticulier_, and his fancy, if he were a naturalistic writer, would rejoice in recording the fact that the mirror was scrawled overwith names of lovers, and he would select the ugliest names. But, dearreader, if you are expecting a _cabinet particulier_ in thisstory, and an amorous encounter to take place therein, turn the pageat once--you will be disappointed if you do not; this story containsnothing that will shock your--shall I say your "prudishsusceptibilities"? When the auburn-haired poet and the corn-colouredAmerican lunched at Vincennes they chose a table by the window in thegreat long _salle_ lined with tables, and they were attended byan army of waiters weary of their leisure. 

There was a lake at Vincennes then, I am sure, with an island upon itand tall saplings, through which the morning sun was shining. The eyesof the lovers admired the scene, and they admired too the prettyreflections, and the swans moving about the island. The accomplishedstory-teller cries, "But if there is to be no scene in the restaurant, how is the story to finish?" Why should stories finish? And would asensual _dénouement_ be a better end than, let us say, that thelovers are caught in a shower as they leave the restaurant? Such anaccident might have happened: nothing is more likely than a shower atthe end of April or the beginning of May, and I can imagine the loversof Vincennes rushing into one of the _concierge's_ lodges at thegates of the villas. 

"For a few minutes, " they say; "the rain will be over soon. "

But they are not long there when a servant appears carrying threeumbrellas; she gives one to Marie, one to me; she keeps one forherself. 

"But who is she? You told me you knew no one at Vincennes. "

"No more I do. "

"But you must know the people who live here; the servant says thatMonsieur (meaning her master) knows Monsieur (meaning you). "

"I swear to you I don't know anybody here; but let's go--it will berather fun. "

"But what shall we say in explanation? Shall we say we're cousins?"

"Nobody believes in cousins; shall we say we're husband and wife?"

The dreamer sees two figures; memory reflects them like a convexmirror, reducing them to a tenth their original size, but he sees themclearly, and he follows them through the rain up the steps of thevilla to the _perron_--an explicit word that the English languagelacks. The young man continues to protest that he never was atVincennes before, that he knows no one living there, and they are botha little excited by the adventure. Who can be the owner of the house?A man of ordinary tastes, it would seem, and while waiting for theirhost the lovers examine the Turkey carpet, the richly upholsteredsofas and chairs. 

A pretty little situation from which an accomplished story-tellercould evolve some playful imaginings. The accomplished story-tellerwould see at once that _le bon bourgeois et sa dame_ and thechildren are learning English, and here is an occasion of practice forthe whole family. The accomplished story-teller would see at once thatthe family must take a fancy to the young couple, and in his story therain must continue to fall in torrents; these would prevent the loversfrom returning to Paris. Why should they not stay to dinner? Afterdinner the accomplished story-teller would bring in a number ofneighbours, and set them dancing and singing. What easier to supposethan that it was _la bourgeoise's_ evening at home? The youngcouple would sit in a distant corner oblivious to all but their ownsweet selves. _Le bourgeois et sa dame_ would watch them withkindly interest, deeming it a kindness not to tell them that therewere no trains after twelve; and when the lovers at last determinedthat they must depart, _le bourgeois_ and _la bourgeoise_would tell them that their room was quite ready, that there was nopossibility of returning to Paris that night. A pretty littlesituation that might with advantage be placed on the stage--on theFrench stage. A pretty, although a painful, dilemma for a young womanto find herself in, particularly when she is passionately in love withthe young man. "Bitterly, " the accomplished story-teller would say, "did the young widow regret the sacrifice to propriety she had made inallowing her young man to pass her off as his wife!" The accomplishedstory-teller would then assure his reader that the pretty American hadacted precisely as a lady should act under the circumstances. But notbeing myself an accomplished story-teller, I will not attempt to sayhow a lady should act in such a situation, and it would be a fatuousthing for me to suggest that the lady was passionately in love. Thesituation that my fancy creates is ingenious; and I regret it did nothappen. Nature spins her romances differently; and I feel sure thatthe lovers returned from Vincennes merely a little fluttered by theiradventure. The reader would like to know if any appointment was madeto meet again; if one was made it must have been for the next day orthe next, for have we not imagined the young widow's passage alreadytaken? Did she not tell that she was going back to America at the endof the week? He had said: "In a few days the Atlantic will be betweenus, " and this fact had made them feel very sad, for the Atlantic is abig thing and cannot be ignored, particularly in love affairs. Itwould have been better for the poet if he had accepted the bourgeois'invitation to dinner; friends, as I suggested, might have come in, animpromptu dance might have been arranged, or the rain might have begunagain; something would certainly have happened to make them miss thetrain; and they would have been asked to stay the night. The widow didnot speak French, the young man did; he might have arranged it allwith the _bourgeois et sa dame_, and the dear little widow mightnever have known her fate--O happy fate!--until the time came for themto go to their room. But he, foolish fellow, missed the chance therain gave him, and all that came of this outing was a promise to comeback next year, and to dance the Boston with him again; meanwhile hemust wear her garter upon his arm. Did the suggestion that she shouldgive him her garter come from her or from him? Was the garter given inthe cab when they returned from Vincennes, or was it given the nexttime they met in Paris? To answer these questions would not help thestory; suffice it to say that she said that the elastic would last ayear, and when she took his arm and found it upon it she would knowthat he had been faithful to her. There was the little handkerchiefwhich she had given him, and this he must keep in a drawer. Perhapssome of the scent would survive this long year of separation. I amsure that she charged him to write a letter to the steamer she hadtaken her passage in, and, careless fellow! instead of doing so hewrote verses, and the end of all this love affair, which began sowell, was an angry letter bidding him good-bye for ever, saying he wasnot worthy because he had missed the post. All this happened twentyyears ago; perhaps the earth is over her charming little personality, and it will be over me before long. Nothing endures; life is butchange. What we call death is only change. Death and life alwaysoverlapping, mixed inextricably, and no meaning in anything, merely astream of change in which things happen. Sometimes the happenings arepleasant, sometimes unpleasant, and in neither the pleasant nor theunpleasant can we detect any purpose. Twenty long years ago, and thereis no hope, not a particle. 

 * * * * *

I have come to the end of my mood; an ache in my heart brings me to myfeet, and looking round I cry out: "How dark is the room! Why is thereno light? Bring in the lamp!"

CHAPTER XII

SUNDAY EVENING IN LONDON

Married folk always know, only the bachelor asks, "Where shall I dine?Shall I spend two shillings in a chop-house, or five in my club, orten at the Café Royal?" For two or three more shillings one may sit onthe balcony of the Savoy, facing the spectacle of evening darkening onthe river, with lights of bridge and wharf and warehouse afloat in thetide. Married folk know their bedfellows; bachelors, and perhapsspinsters, are not so sure of theirs: this is a side issue which wewill not pursue; an allusion to it will suffice to bring before thereader the radical difference between the lives of the married and theunmarried. O married ones, from breakfast to six, only, do our livesresemble yours! At that hour we begin to experience a sense of freedomand, I confess it, of loneliness. Perhaps life is essentially a lonelything, and the married and the unmarried differ only in this, that weare lonely when we are by ourselves, and they are lonely when they aretogether. 

At half-past six the bachelor has to tidy up after the day's work, toput his picture away if he be a painter, to put his writings away ifhe be a writer, and then the very serious question arises, with whomshall he dine? His thoughts fly through Belgravia and Mayfair, andafter whisking round Portman Square, and some other square in thenorthern neighbourhood, they soar and go away northward to Regent'sPark, seeking out somebody living in one of those stately terraces whowill ask him to stay to dinner. At So-and-So's there is always a roundof beef and cold chicken-pie, whereas What-do-you-call-them's beginwith soup. But really the food is not of much consequence; it isinteresting company he seeks. 

It was last week that I realised, and for the first time, howdifferent was the life of the married from the unmarried. The day wasSunday, and I had been writing all day, and in the hush that beginsabout six o'clock I remembered I had no dinner engagement thatevening. The cup of tea I generally take about half-past four hadenabled me to do another hour's work, but a little after six sentencesrefused to form themselves, a little dizziness began in the brain, andthe question not only "Where shall I dine?" but "Where shall I passthe hour before dinner?" presented itself. The first thing to do wasto dress, and while dressing I remembered that I had not wandered inSt. James's Park for some time, and that that park since boyhood hadfascinated me. St. James's Park and the Green Park have never beendivided in my admiration of their beauty. The trees that grow alongthe Piccadilly railings are more beautiful in St. James's Park, orseem so, for the dells are well designed. The art of landscape-gardening is more akin to the art of a musician than to that ofa painter; it is a sort of architecture with colour added. Theformal landscape-gardening of Versailles reminds one of a tragedy byRacine, but the romantic modulations of the green hills along thePiccadilly areas are as enchanting as Haydn. There was a time when aboy used to walk from Brompton to Piccadilly to see, not the dells, but the women going home from the Argyle Rooms and the Alhambra, butafter a slight hesitation he often crossed from the frequented to thesilent side, to stand in admiration of the white rays of moonlightstealing between the trunks of the trees, allowing him to perceive theshapes of the hollows through the darkness. The trees grow sobeautifully about these mounds, and upon the mounds, that it is easyto fill the interspaces with figures from Gainsborough's pictures, ladies in hoops and powdered hair, elegant gentlemen wearing buckledshoes, tail-coats, and the swords which made them gentlemen. Gainsborough did not make his gentlemen plead--that was his fault; butWatteau's ladies put their fans to their lips so archly, asking thepleading lover if he believes all he says, knowing well that his vowsare only part of the gracious entertainment. But why did not the greatdesigner of St. James's Park build little Greek temples--thosepillared and domed temples which give such grace to English parks?Perhaps the great artist who laid out the Green Park was a moralistand a seer, and divining the stream of ladies that come up fromBrompton to Piccadilly he thought--well, well, his thoughts were hisown, and now the earth is over him, as Rossetti would say. 

Five-and-twenty years ago the white rays slanted between thetree-trunks, and the interspaces lengthened out, disappearing inillusive lights and shades, and, ascending the hill, the boy used tolook over the empty plain, wondering at the lights of the Horse Guardsshining far away like a village. Perhaps to-night, about midnight, Imay find myself in Piccadilly again, for we change very little; whatinterested us in our youth interests us almost to the end. St. James'sPark is perhaps more beautiful in the sunset--there is the lake, and, led by remembrance of some sunsets I had seen on it, I turned out ofVictoria Street last Sunday, taking the eastern gate, my thoughtsoccupied with beautiful Nature, seeing in imagination the shapes ofthe trees designing themselves grandly against the sky, and the littlelife of the ponds--the ducks going hither and thither, every duckintent upon its own business and its own desire. I was extremelyfortunate, for the effect of light in the Green Park was morebeautiful last Sunday than anything I had ever seen; the branches ofthe tall plane trees hung over the greensward, the deciduous foliagehardly stirring in the pale sunshine, and my heart went out to theceremonious and cynical garden, artificial as eighteenth-centurycouplets. Wild Nature repels me; and I thought how interesting it wasto consider one's self, to ponder one's sympathies. Our antipathiesare not quite so interesting to consider, but they are interesting, too, in a way, for they belong to one's self, and self is man's mainbusiness: all outside of self is uncertain; all comes from self, allreturns to self. The reason I desired St. James's Park last Sunday wassurely because it was part of me--not that part known to my friends;our friends understand only those margins of themselves which theydiscover in us. Never did I meet one who discovered for himself orherself that I loved trees better than flowers, or was deeplyinterested in the fact when attention was called to it.... 

I watch the trees and never weary of their swaying--solemnly silentand strangely green they are in the long, rainy days, excited when abreeze is blowing; in fine weather they gossip like frivolous girls!In their tremulous decline they are more beautiful than ever, far morebeautiful than flowers. Now, I am telling myself, the verysubconscious soul is speaking. And with what extraordinary lovelinessdid the long branches hang out of the tall, stately plane trees likeplumes; in the hush of sound and decline of light the droop of thedeciduous foliage spoke like a memory. I seemed to have known the parkfor centuries; yon glade I recognised as one that Watteau had painted. But in what picture? It is difficult to say, so easily do his picturesflow one into the other, always the same melancholy, the melancholy offestival, that pain in the heart, that yearning for the beyond whichall suffer whose business in life is to wear painted or embroidereddresses, and to listen or to plead, with this for sole variation, thatthey who listen to-day will plead to-morrow. Watteau divined thesorrow of those who sit under colonnades always playing some part, great or small, in love's comedy, listening to the murmur of thefountain, watching a gentleman and lady advancing and bowing, bowingand retiring, dancing a pavane on a richly coloured carpet. Pierrot, the white, sensual animal, the eighteenth-century modification of thesatyr, of the faun, plays a guitar; the pipe of Pan has been exchangedfor a guitar. 

As the twilight gathered under the plane trees my vision became moremixed and morbid, and I hardly knew if the picture I saw was thepicture in the Dulwich Gallery or the exquisite picture in the Louvre, "Une Assemblée dans la Parc. " We all know that picture, the gallantsand the ladies by the water-side, and the blue evening showing throughthe tall trees. The picture before me was like that picture, only theplacing of the trees and the slope of the greensward did not admit ofso extended a composition. A rough tree-trunk, from which a greatbranch had been broken or lopped off, stood out suddenly in verynineteenth-century naturalness, awaking the ghost of a picture which Irecognised at once as Corot. Behind the tree a tender, evanescent sky, pure and transparent as the very heart of a flower, rose up, fillingthe park with romance, and as the sunset drooped upon the water, mysoul said, "The Lake!" Ah, the pensive shadow that falls from thehills on either side of "The Lake, " leaving the middle of the picturesuffused with a long stream of light, narrowing as it approached thelow horizon. But the line of the trees on the hither side of thisLondon lake was heavier than the spiritual trees in the pictureentitled "By the Water-side, " and there was not anywhere the beauty ofthe broken birch that leans over the lake in "Le Lac de Garde. " Then Ithought of "The Ravine, " for the darkening island reminded me of thehillside in the picture. But the St. James's Park sky lacked therefined concentration of light in "The Ravine, " so beautifully placed, low down in the picture, behind some dark branches jutting from theright. The difference between Nature and Corot is as great as thedifference between a true and a false Corot. Not that there isanything untrue in Nature, only Nature lacks humanity--self! Thereforenot quite so interesting as a good Corot. 

So did I chatter to myself as I walked toward the bridge, that dearbridge, thrown straight as a plank across the lake, with numerouswater-fowl collected there, a black swan driving the ducks about, snatching more than his due share of bread, and little childrenstaring stolidly, afraid of the swan, and constantly reproved by theirmothers for reasons which must always seem obscure to the bachelor. Alittle breeze was blowing, and the ducks bobbed like corks in thewaves, keeping themselves in place with graceful side-strokes of theirwebbed feet. Sometimes the ducks rose from the water and flew roundthe trees by Queen Anne's Mansions, or they fled down the lake withoutstretched necks like ducks on a Japanese fan, dropping at last intothe water by the darkening island, leaving long silver lines, whichthe night instantly obliterated. 

An impression of passing away, of the effacement of individual life. One sighs, remembering that it is even so, that life passes, sunriseafter sunrise, moonlight upon moonlight, evening upon evening, and welike May-flies on the surface of a stream, no more than they for allour poets and priests. 

The clock struck seven, reminding me of the dinner-hour, remindingme that I should have to dine alone that evening. To avoid diningalone I should not have lingered in St. James's Park, but if I hadnot lingered I should have missed an exquisite hour of meditation, and meditations are as necessary to me as absinthe to theabsinthe-drinker. Only some little incident was wanting--a meetingwith one whom one has not seen for a long time, a man or a woman, itwould not matter which, a peg whereon to hang the description of thedusk among the trees, but I had met no friend in the Park. But oneappeared on the threshold of St. James's Street. There I met a youngman, a painter, one whose pictures interested me sometimes, and wewent to a restaurant to talk art. 

"After dinner, " I said, "we will get the best cigars and walk aboutthe circus. Every Sunday night it is crowded; we shall see the womenhurrying to and fro on love's quest. The warm night will bring themall out in white dresses, and a white dress in the moonlight is anenchantment. Don't you like the feather boas reaching almost to theground? I do. Lights-o'-love going about their business interest meextraordinarily, for they and the tinkers and gipsies are the lastthat remain of the old world when outlawry was common. Now we are allsocialists, more or less occupied with the performance of duties whichobtain every one's approval. Methinks it is a relief to know thatsomebody lives out of society. I like all this London, this midnightLondon, when the round moon rises above the gracious line of RegentStreet, and flaming Jupiter soars like a hawk, following some quest ofhis own. We on our little, he on his greater quest. "

 * * * * *

The night was hot and breathless, like a fume, and upon a great silkensky the circular and sonorous street circled like an amphitheatre.... I threw open my light overcoat, and, seizing the arm of my friend, Isaid:

"He reminds me of a Turk lying amid houris. The gnawing, creepingsensualities of his phrase--his one phrase--how descriptive it is ofthe form and whiteness of a shoulder, the supple fulness of the arm'smuscle, the brightness of eyes increased by kohl! Scent is burning onsilver dishes, and through the fumes appear the subdued colours ofembroidered stuffs and the inscrutable traceries of bronze lamps. Or, maybe, the scene passes on a terrace overlooking a dark river. Behindthe domes and minarets a yellow moon dreams like an odalisque, herhand on the circle of her breast; and through the torrid silence ofthe garden, through the odour of over-ripe fruit and the falling soundthereof, comes the melancholy warble of a fountain. Or is it thesorrow of lilies rising through the languid air to the sky? The nightis blue and breathless; the spasms of the lightning are intermittentamong the minarets and the domes; the hot, fierce fever of the gardenwaxes in the almond scent of peaches and the white odalisquesadvancing, sleek oracles of mood.... He reminds me of the dark-eyedBohemian who comes into a tavern silently, and, standing in a corner, plays long, wild, ravishing strains. I see him not, I hardly hear him;my thoughts are far away; my soul slumbers, desiring nothing. I carenot to lift my head. Why should I break the spell of my meditations?But I feel that his dark eyes are fixed upon me, and little by little, in spite of my will, my senses awake; a strange germination is inprogress within me; thoughts and desires that I dread, of whoseexistence in myself I was not aware, whose existence in myself I wouldfain deny, come swiftly and come slowly, and settle and absorb andbecome part of me.... Fear is upon me, but I may not pause; I amhurried on; repudiation is impossible, supplication and the wringingof hands are vain; God has abandoned me; my worst nature is uppermost. I see it floating up from the depths of my being, a viscous scum. ButI can do nothing to check or control.... God has abandoned me.... I amthe prey to that dark, sensual-eyed Bohemian and his abominablefiddle; and seizing my bank-notes, my gold and my silver, I throw himall I have. I bid him cease, and fall back exhausted. Give me "TheRing, " give me "The Ring. " Its cloud palaces, its sea-caves andforests, and the animality therein, its giants and dwarfs and sirens, its mankind and its godkind--surely it is nearer to life! Or go intothe meadows with Beethoven, and listen to the lark and the blackbird!We are nearer life lying by a shady brook, hearing the quail in themeadows and the yellow-hammer in the thicket, than we are now, underthis oppressive sky. This street is like Klinsor's garden; here, too, are flower-maidens--patchouli, jessamine, violet. Here is thelanguorous atmosphere of "Parsifal. " Come, let us go; let us seek thecountry, the moon-haunted dells we shall see through Piccadillyrailings. Have you ever stood in the dip of Piccadilly and watched themoonlight among the trees, and imagined a comedy by Wycherley actedthere, a goodly company of gallants and fine ladies seated under thetrees watching it? Every one has come there in painted sedan-chairs;the bearers are gathered together at a little distance. "

"My dear friend, you're talking so much that you don't see those whoare passing us. That girl, she who has just turned to look back, favours heliotrope; it is delicious still upon the air; she is aspretty a girl as any that ever came in a sedan-chair to see a comedyby Wycherley. The comedy varies very little: it is always the samecomedy, and it is always interesting. The circus in a sultry summernight under a full moon is very like Klinsor's garden. Come, if you benot _Parsifal_. "

CHAPTER XIII

RESURGAM

I was in London when my brother wrote telling me that mother was ill. She was not in any immediate danger, he said, but if a change for theworse were to take place, and it were necessary for me to come over, he would send a telegram. A few hours after a telegram was handed tome. It contained four words: "_Come at once. --Maurice. _" "Somother is dying, " I muttered to myself, and I stood at gaze, foreseeing myself taken into her room by a nurse and given a chair bythe bedside, foreseeing a hand lying outside the bed which I shouldhave to hold until I heard the death-rattle and saw her face becomequiet for ever. 

This was my first vision, but in the midst of my packing, I rememberedthat mother might linger for days. The dear friend who lies in thechurch-yard under the downs lingered for weeks; every day her husbandand her children saw her dying under their eyes: why should not thismisfortune be mine? I know not to what God, but I prayed all night inthe train, and on board the boat; I got into the train at theBroadstone praying. It is impossible, at least for me, to find wordsto express adequately the agony of mind I endured on that journey. Words can only hint at it, but I think that any one possessed of anyexperience of life, or who has any gift of imagination, will be ableto guess at the terror that haunted me--terror of what?--not so muchthat my mother might die, nor hope that she might live, but just thatI might arrive in time to see her die. In this confession I am afraidI shall seem hard and selfish to some; that will be because manypeople lack imagination, or the leisure to try to understand thatthere are not only many degrees of sensibility, but many kinds, and itis doubtful if any reader can say with truth any more than that mysensibility is not his or hers. It is my privilege to be sympatheticwith ideas I do not share, and in certain moods I approach those whotake a sad pleasure in last words, good-byes, and at looking on thedead. In my present mood it seems to me that it is not unlikely thatmy mother's last good-bye and her death appeared to me more awful inimagination than it would have ever done in reality. Indeed, there canbe hardly any doubt that this is so, for we are only half-conscious ofwhat is happening. Reality clouds, our actions mitigate, ourperception; we can see clearly only when we look back or forwards. There is something very merciful about reality; if there were not, weshould not be able to live at all. 

But to the journey. How shall I tell it? The third part must have beenthe most painful, so clearly do I remember it: the curious agony ofmind caused by a sudden recognition of objects long forgotten--a treeor a bit of bog-land. The familiar country, evocative of a great partof my childhood, carried my thoughts hither and thither. My thoughtsranged like the swallows; the birds had no doubt just arrived, and inswift elliptical flights they hunted for gnats along the banks of theold weedy canal. That weedy canal along which the train travelled tookmy thoughts back to the very beginning of my life, when I stood at thecarriage window and plagued my father and mother with questionsregarding the life of the barges passing up and down. And it was thesudden awakenings from these memories that were so terrible--thesudden thrust of the thought that I was going westward to see mymother die, and that nothing could save her from death or me fromseeing her die. Perhaps to find one's self suddenly deprived of allwill is the greatest suffering of all. How many times did I say tomyself, "Nothing can save me unless I get out at the next station, "and I imagined myself taking a car and driving away through thecountry! But if I did such a thing I should be looked upon as amadman. "One is bound on a wheel, " I muttered, and I began to thinkhow men under sentence of death must often wonder why they wereselected especially for such a fate, and the mystery, the riddle of itall, must be perhaps the greatest part of their pain. 

The morning was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen, and I usedto catch myself thinking out a picturesque expression to describe it. It seemed to me that the earth might be compared to an egg, it lookedso warm under the white sky, and the sky was as soft as the breastfeathers of a dove. This sudden bow-wowing of the literary skeletonmade me feel that I wanted to kick myself. Nature has forgotten toprovide us with a third leg whereby we may revenge ourselves oninstincts that we cannot control. A moment afterward I found myselfplunged in reflections regarding the impossibility of keeping one'sthoughts fixed on any one subject for any considerable length of time. At the end of these reflections I fell back, wondering, again askingif I were really destined to watch by my mother's death-bed. That dayI seemed to become a sheer mentality, a sort of buzz of thought, and Icould think of myself only as of a fly climbing a glass dome. Itseemed to me that I was like a fly climbing and falling back, buzzing, and climbing again. "Never, " I said to myself, "have I been more thana fly buzzing in a glass dome. And, good Lord, who made the glassdome?" How often did I ask myself that question, and why it was made, and if it were going to endure for ever!

In such sore perplexity of mind questions from anybody would beintolerable, and I shrank back into the corner of the carriagewhenever a passer-by reminded me, however vaguely, of anybody I hadever known; the mental strain increased mile after mile, for the namesof the stations grew more familiar. I began to try to remember howmany there were before we arrived at Claremorris, the station at whichI was going to get out. Half an hour afterward the train slackened, the porter cried out "Ballyhaunis. " The next would be Claremorris, andI watched every field, foreseeing the long road, myself on one side ofthe car, the driver on the other; a two hours' drive in silence or intalk--in talk, for I should have to tell him my errand.... He might beable to tell me about my mother, if the news of her illness had got asfar as Claremorris. At the public-house where I went to get a car Imade inquiries, but nothing was known. My mother must have fallen illsuddenly--of what? I had not heard she was ailing; I did not rememberher ever to have been ill. At that moment some trees reminded me thatwe were close to Ballyglass, and my thoughts wandered away to the longroad on the other side of the hill, and I saw there (for do we notoften see things in memory as plainly as if they were before us?) thetwo cream-coloured ponies, Ivory and Primrose, she used to drive, andthe phaeton, and myself in it, a little child in frocks, anxious, above all things, to see the mail-coach go by. A great sight it was tosee it go by with mail-bags and luggage, the guard blowing a horn, thehorses trotting splendidly, the lengthy reins swinging, and thedriver, his head leaned a little on one side to save his hat frombeing blown away--he used to wear a grey beaver hat. The great eventof that time was the day that we went to Ballyglass, not to see thecoach go by, but to get into it, for in those days the railway stoppedat Athenry. And that was the day I saw the canal, and heard withastonishment that there was a time long ago, no doubt in my father'syouth, when people used to go to Dublin in a barge. Those memorieswere like a stupor, and awaking suddenly I saw that more than two anda half miles lay between me and my mother. In half an hour more Ishould know whether she were alive or dead, and I watched the horsetrotting, interested in his shambling gait, or not at all interestedin it--I do not know which. On occasions of great nervous tension oneobserves everything.... Everything I remembered best appeared withmechanical regularity; now it was a wood, a while afterward somebody'sfarmyard, later on a line of cottages, another wood, one of my owngate lodges. An old sawyer lived in it now--looking after it for me;and I hoped that the wheels of the car would not bring him out, for itwould distress me to see him. The firs in the low-lying land had growna little within the last thirty years, but not much. We came to thebridge; we left it behind us; the gate lodge and the drive from it;the plantation that I knew so well, the lilac bushes, the laburnums--good Heavens! How terrible was all this resurrection! Mists hide themountains from us, the present hides the past; but there are timeswhen the present does not exist at all, when every mist is clearedaway, and the past confronts us in naked outline, and that perhaps iswhy it is so painful to me to return home. The little hill at thebeginning of the drive is but a little hill, but to me it is muchmore, so intimately is it associated with all the pains and troublesof childhood. All this park was once a fairyland to me; now it is buta thin reality, a book which I have read, and the very thought ofwhich bores me, so well do I know it. There is the lilac bush! I usedto go there with my mother thirty years ago at this time of year, andwe used to come home with our hands full of bloom. Two more turningsand we should be within sight of the house! This is how men feel whencondemned to death. I am sure of it. At the last hill the driverallowed his horse to fall into a walk, but I begged of him to drive onthe horse, for I saw some peasants about the steps of the hall door;they were waiting, no doubt, for news, or perhaps they had news. "Wehave bad news for you, " they cried in the wailing tones of the West. 

"Not altogether bad news, " I said to myself; "my mother is dead, but Ihave been saved the useless pain, the torture of spirit, I should haveendured if I had arrived in time. " China roses used to grow over therailings; very few blooms were left. I noticed just a few as I ran upthe high steps, asking myself why I could not put the past behind me. If ever there was a time to live in the present this was one; butnever was the present further from me and the past clearer than when Iopened the hall door and stood in the hall paved with grey stones andpainted grey and blue. Three generations had played there; in thatcorner I had learned to spin my first top, and I had kept on trying, showing a perseverance that amazed my father. He said, "If he willshow as much perseverance in other things as he does in the spinningof a top, he will not fail. " He used to catch me trying and trying tospin that top when he came downstairs on his way to the stables to seehis beloved racehorses; that is the very chair on which he used to puthis hat and gloves. In those days tall hats were worn in the country, and it was the business of his valet to keep them well brushed. Howthe little old man used to watch me, objecting in a way to my spinningmy top in the hall, fearful lest I should overturn the chair on whichthe hat stood: sometimes that did happen, and then, oh dear!

In search of some one I opened the drawing-room door. My sister wasthere, and I found her on a sofa weeping for our mother, who had diedthat morning. We are so constituted that we demand outward signs ofour emotions, especially of grief; we are doubtful of its genuinenessunless it is accompanied by sighs and tears; and that, I suppose, iswhy my sister's tears were welcomed by me, for, truth to tell, I was alittle shocked at my own insensibility. This was stupid of me, for Iknew through experience that we do not begin to suffer immediatelyafter the accident; everything takes time, grief as well as pain. Butin a moment so awful as the one I am describing one does not reflect;one falls back on the convention that grief and tears are inseparableas fire and smoke. If I could not weep it were well that my sistercould, and I accepted her tears as a tribute paid to our mother'sgoodness--a goodness which never failed, for it was instinctive. Iteven seemed to me a pity that Nina had to dry her eyes so that shemight tell me the sad facts--when mother died, of her illness, and thespecialist that had not arrived in time. I learned that some one hadblundered--not that that mattered much, for mother would not havesubmitted to an operation. 

While listening to her, I unwittingly remembered how we used to talkof the dear woman whose funeral I described in the pages entitled "ARemembrance. " We used to talk, her daughters and her son and herhusband and I, of her who was dying upstairs. We were greatly moved--Iat least appreciated my love of her--yet our talk would drift from hersuddenly, and we would speak of indifferent things, or maybe thebutler would arrive to tell us lunch was ready. How these incidentsjar our finer feelings! They seem to degrade life, and to such a pointthat we are ashamed of living, and are tempted to regard life itselfas a disgrace. 

I foresaw that the same interruptions, the same devagations, wouldhappen among ourselves in the square Georgian house standing on ahill-top overlooking a long winding lake, as had happened among myfriends in the Italian house under the downs amid bunches of evergreenoaks. Nor had I to wait long for one of these unhappy devagations. Mysister had to tell me who was staying in the house: an aunt was there, my mother's sister, and an uncle, my mother's brother, was coming overnext day. It is easy to guess how the very mention of these namesbeguiled us from what should be the subject of our thought. And theroom itself supplied plenty of distractions: all the old furniture, the colour of the walls, the very atmosphere of the room took mythought back to my childhood. The sofa on which my sister was sittinghad been broken years ago, and I unwittingly remembered how it hadbeen broken. It had been taken away to a lumber-room; somebody had hadit mended. I began to wonder who had done this--mother, most likely;she looked after every thing. I have said that I had just arrivedafter a long journey. I had eaten nothing since the night before. Mysister spoke of lunch and we went into the dining-room, and in themiddle of the meal my brother came in looking so very solemn that Ibegan to wonder if he had assumed the expression he thoughtappropriate to the occasion--I mean if he had involuntarilyexaggerated the expression of grief he would naturally wear. We are soconstituted that the true and the false overlap each other, and sosubtly that no analysis can determine where one ends and the otherbegins. I remembered how the relatives and the friends on the day ofthe funeral in Sussex arrived, each one with a very grave face, perchance interrupting us in the middle of some trivial conversation;if so, we instantly became grave and talked of the dead womansympathetically for a few minutes; then on the first opportunity, andwith a feeling of relief, we began to talk of indifferent things; andwith every fresh arrival the comedy was re-acted. Returning from thepast to the present, I listened to my brother, who was speaking of theblunder that had been made: how a wrong doctor had come down owingto--the fault was laid upon somebody, no matter upon whom; the subjectwas a painful one and might well have been dropped, but he did notdare to talk of anything but our mother, and we all strove to carry onthe conversation as long as possible. But my brother and I had notseen each other for years; he had come back from India after a longabsence. Nor, I think, had I seen my sister since she was married, andthat was a long while ago; she had had children; I had not seen herbefore in middle age. We were anxious to ask each other questions, tohear each other's news, and we were anxious to see the landscape thatwe had not seen, at least not together, for many years; and I rememberhow we were tempted out of the house by the soft sunlight floating onthe lawn. The same gentle day full of mist and sunlight that I hadwatched since early morning had been prolonged, and the eveningdiffered hardly from the morning; the exaltation in the air was alittle more intense. My mother died certainly on the most beautifulday I had ever seen, the most winsome, the most white, the mostwanton, as full of love as a girl in a lane who stops to gather aspray of hawthorn. How many times, like many another, did I wonder whydeath should have come to any one on such a bridal-like day. That weshould expect Nature to prepare a decoration in accordance with ourmoods is part of the old savagery. Through reason we know that Naturecares for us not at all, that our sufferings concern her not in theleast, but our instincts conform to the time when the sun stood stilland angels were about. It was impossible for us not to wonder why theblack shadow of death should have fallen across the white radiant day. I say "us, " for my brother no doubt pondered the coincidence, thoughhe did not speak his thoughts to me. No one dares to speak suchthoughts; they are the foolish substance of ourselves which we try toconceal from others, forgetting that we are all alike. The day movedslowly from afternoon to evening, like a bride hidden within a whiteveil, her hands and her veil filled with white blossom; but a blackbird, tiny like a humming-bird, had perched upon a bunch of blossom, and I seemed to lose sight of the day in the sinister black speck thathad intruded itself upon it. No doubt I could think of somethingbetter were I to set my mind upon doing so, but that is how I thoughtthe day I walked on the lawn with my brother, ashamed and yetcompelled to talk of what our lives had been during the years thatseparated us. How could one be overpowered with grief amid so manydistracting circumstances? Everything I saw was at once new and old. Ihad come among my brother and sister suddenly, not having seen them, as I have said, for many years; this was our first meeting sincechildhood, and we were assembled in the house where we had all beenborn. The ivy grown all over one side of the house, the disappearanceof the laburnum, the gap in the woods--these things were new; but thelake that I had not seen since a little child I did not need to lookat, so well did I know how every shore was bent, and the place ofevery island. My first adventures began on that long yellow strand; Idid not need to turn my head to see it, for I knew that treesintervened and I knew the twisting path through the wood. That yellowstrand speckled with tufts of rushes was my first playground. But whenmy brother proposed that we should walk there, I found some excuse;why go? The reality would destroy the dream. What reality could equalmy memory of the firs where the rabbits burrowed, of the drain wherewe fished for minnows, of the long strand with the lake far away insummertime? How well I remember that yellow sand, hard and level insome places as the floor of a ball-room. The water there is so shallowthat our governess used to allow us to wander at will, to run on aheadin pursuit of a sandpiper. The bird used to fly round with littlecries; and we often used to think it was wounded; perhaps it pretendedto be wounded in order to lead us away from its nest. We did not thinkit possible to see the lake in any new aspect, yet there it lay as wehad never seen it before, so still, so soft, so grey, like a whitemuslin scarf flowing out, winding past island and headland. Thesilence was so intense that one thought of the fairy-books of longago, of sleeping woods and haunted castles; there were the castles onislands lying in misted water, faint as dreams. Now and then a birduttered a piercing little chatter from the branches of the talllarches, and ducks talked in the reeds, but their talk was only a softmurmur, hardly louder than the rustle of the reeds now in full leaf. Everything was spellbound that day; the shadows of reed and islandseemed fixed for ever as in a magic mirror--a mirror that somebody hadbreathed upon, and, listening to the little gurgle of the water aboutthe limestone shingle, one seemed to hear eternity murmuring its sadmonotony. 

The lake curves inland, forming a pleasant bay among the woods; thereis a sandy spit where some pines have found roothold, and they live onsomehow despite the harsh sallies of the wind in winter. Along theshore dead reeds lie in rows three feet deep among the rushes; hadthey been placed there by hand they could not have been placed withmore regularity; and there is an old cart-track, with hawthornsgrowing out of a tumbled wall. The hillside is planted--beautifulbeeches and hollies at one end, and at the other some lawnyinterspaces with tall larches swaying tasselled branches sheddingfaint shadows. These were the wonder of my childhood. A path leadsthrough the wood, and under the rugged pine somebody has placed aseat, a roughly hewn stone supported by two upright stones. For somereason unknown to me this seat always suggested, even when I was achild, a pilgrim's seat. I suppose the suggestion came from theknowledge that my grandmother used to go every day to the tomb at theend of the wood where her husband and sons lay, and whither she wastaken herself long ago when I was in frocks; and twenty years after myfather was taken there. 

What a ceaseless recurrence of the same things! A hearse will appearagain in a few days, perhaps the same hearse, the horses covered upwith black made to look ridiculous with voluminous weed, the coachmanno better than a zany, the ominous superior mute directing the otherswith a wand; there will be a procession of relatives and friends, allwearing crepe and black gloves, and most of them thinking how soonthey can get back to their business: that masquerade which we call afuneral!

Fearing premature burial (a very common fear), my mother had askedthat her burial should be postponed until a natural change in theelements of her body should leave no doubt that life no longerlingered there. And the interval between her death and her burial Ispent along the lake's shore. The same weather continued day afterday, and it is almost impossible to find words to express the beautyof the grey reflection of the islands and the reeds, and the faintevanescent shores floating away, disappearing in the sun-haze, and thesilence about the shores, a kind of enchanted silence, interrupted, asI have said, only by the low gurgle of the water about the limestoneshingle. Now and then the song of a bird would break out, and all wassilence again.... "A silence that seems to come out of the very heartof things!" I said, and I stopped to listen, like one at the world'send; I walked on, wondering, through the rushes and tussocked grassand juniper bushes which grew along the wilding shore, along the edgeof the wood. Coming from the town, I could not but admire theemptiness of the country; hardly ever did I hear the sound of a humanvoice or a footstep; only once did I meet some wood-gatherers, poorwomen carrying bundles of faggots, bent under their loads. Andthinking that perchance I knew them--they were evidently from thevillage; if so, I must have known them when I was a boy--I wassuddenly seized by an unaccountable dread or a shyness, occasioned nodoubt by the sense of the immense difference that time had effected inus: they were the same, but I was different. The books I had ponderedand the pictures I had seen had estranged me from them, simple soulsthat they were; and the consciousness of the injustice of the humanlot made it a pain to me to look into their eyes. So I was glad to beable to pass behind some bushes, and to escape into the wood withouttheir perceiving me. 

And coming upon pleasant interspaces, pleasanter even than those thatlingered in my memory, I lay down, for, though the days were the firstdays of May, the grass was long and warm and ready for the scythe, thetasselled branches of the tall larches swung faintly in a deliciousbreeze, and the words of the old Irish poet came into my mind, "Thewood was like a harp in the hands of a harper. " To see the boughs, tolisten to them, seemed a sufficient delight, and I began to admire thelow sky full of cotton-like clouds, and the white flower that wasbeginning to light up the little leaves of the hedgerow, and I supposeit was the May-flower that drew down upon me a sudden thought of thebeloved girl lost to me for ever. My mother's death had closed thatwound a little, but in a moment all my grief reappeared, the woundgaped again, and it was impossible to stanch the bleeding. 

A man cannot lament two women at the same time, and only a month agothe most beautiful thing that had ever appeared in my life, an ideawhich I knew from the first I was destined to follow, had appeared tome, had stayed with me for a while, and had passed from me. All thepartial loves of my youth seemed to find expression at last in apassion that would know no change. Who shall explain the mystery oflove that time cannot change? Fate is the only word that conveys anyidea of it, for of what use to say that her hair was blond and thick, that her eyes were grey and blue? I had known many women before her, and many had hair and eyes as fine and as deep as hers. But never onebut she had had the indispensable quality of making me feel I was moreintensely alive when she was by me than I was when she was away. Itis that tingle of life that we are always seeking, and that perhaps wemust lose in order to retain. On such a day, under the swayingbranches of the larches, the whiteness of the lake curving sobeautifully amid low shores could not fail to remind me of her body, and its mystery reminded me of her mystery; but the melancholy line ofmountains rippling down the southern sky was not like her at all. Oneforgets what is unlike, caring only to dwell upon what is like.... Thinking of her my senses grow dizzy, a sort of madness creeps upbehind the eyes. What an exquisite despair is this--that one shallnever possess that beautiful personality again, sweet-scented as theMay-time, that I shall never hold that dainty oval face in my handsagain, shall look into those beautiful eyes no more, that all theintimacy of her person is now but a memory never to be renewed byactual presence--in these moments of passionate memory one experiencesreal grief, a pang that never has found expression perchance except inNiobe; even that concentration of features is more an expression ofdespair than grief. And it was the grief that this girl inspired thatprevented me from mourning my mother as I should like to have mournedher, as she was worthy of being mourned, for she was a good woman, hervirtues shone with more admirable light year after year; and had Ilived with her, had I been with her during the last years of her life, her death would have come upon me with a sense of personal loss; Ishould have mourned her the day she died as I mourn her now, intimately; when I am alone in the evening, when the fire is sinking, the sweetness of her presence steals by me, and I realise what I lostin losing her. 

We do not grieve for the dead because they have been deprived of thepleasures of this life (if this life be a pleasure), but because ofour own loss. But who would impugn such selfishness? It is the bestthing we have, it is our very selves. Think of a mistress's shame ifher lover were to tell her that he loved her because she wished to bebeloved, because he thought it would give her pleasure to beloved--she would hate him for such altruism, and deem him unworthy ofher. She would certainly think like this, and turn her face from himfor a while until some desire of possession would send her back tohim. We are always thinking of ourselves directly or indirectly. I wasthinking of myself when shame prevented me from going to meet the poorwood-gatherers; they would not have thought at all of the injustice ofhaving been left to the labour of the fields while I had gone forth toenjoy the world; they would have been interested to see me again, anda few kind words would have made their load seem easier on theirbacks. Called back by a sudden association of ideas, I began toconsider that shameful injustice is undoubtedly a part of our humanlot, for we may only grieve passionately for the casual, or what seemsthe merely casual; perhaps because the ultimate law is hidden from us;I am thinking now of her who comes suddenly into our lives tempting uswith colour, fugitive as that of a flower, luring us with light asrapid as the light shed from the wings of a dove. Why, I asked myself, as I lay under the larches, are we to mourn transitory delight sointensely, why should it possess us more entirely than the sorrow thatwe experience for her who endured the labour of child-bearing, whonourished us perchance at her breast, whose devotion to us wasunceasing, and who grew kindlier and more divorced from every thoughtof self as the years went by? From injustice there can be no escape, not a particle. At best we can, indeed we must, acquiesce in the factthat the only sorrow to be found in our hearts for aged persons is asort of gentle sorrow, such as the year itself administers to oursenses in autumn, when we come home with our hands full of thebeautiful single dahlias that the Dutchmen loved and painted, bound upwith sprays of reddening creepers; we come home along the sunny roadsover which the yellow beeches lean so pathetically, and we are sad forthe year, but we do not grieve passionately; our hearts do not break. 

Then again we cannot grieve as the conventions would have usgrieve--in strange dress; the very fact of wearing crepe and blackgloves alienates us from our real selves; we are no longer ourselves, we are mummers engaged in the performance of a masque. I could havemourned my mother better without crêpe. "There never has been inventedanything so horrible as the modern funeral, " I cried out. A picture ofthe hearse and the mutes rose up in my mind, and it was at that verymoment that the song of the bird broke out again, and just above myhead in the larches an ugly, shrilling song of about a dozen noteswith an accent on the two last, a stupid, tiresome stave that nevervaried. "What bird can it be, " I cried out, "that comes to interruptmy meditations?" and getting up I tried to discover it amid thebranches of the tree under which I had been lying. It broke out againin another tree a little farther away, and again in another. Ifollowed it, and it led me round the wood towards the hilltop to thefoot of the steps, two short flights; the second flight, or part of itat least, has to be removed when the vault is opened. It consists, nodoubt, of a single chamber with shelves along either side; curiosityleads few into vaults not more than a hundred years old; above thevault is the monument, a very simple one, a sort of table built in, and when my father was buried, a priest scrambled up or was lifted upby the crowd, and he delivered a funeral oration from the top of it. 

That day the box edgings were trampled under foot, and all the flowersin the beds. My mother, perhaps, cared little for flowers, or she didnot live here sufficiently long to see that this garden was carefullytended; for years there were no children to come here for a walk, andit was thought sufficient to keep in repair the boundary wall so thatcattle should not get in. No trees were cut here when the Woods werethinned, and the pines and the yews have grown so thickly that theplace is overshadowed; and the sepulchral dark is never lifted even atmidday. At the back of the tomb, in the wood behind it, the headstonesof old graves show above the ground, though the earth has nearlyclaimed them; only a few inches show above the dead leaves; all thishillside must have been a graveyard once, hundreds of years ago, andthis ancient graveyard has never been forgotten by me, principally onaccount of something that happened long ago when I was a little child. The mystery of the wood used to appeal to my curiosity, but I neverdared to scramble over the low wall until one day, leaving mygoverness, who was praying by the tomb, I discovered a gap throughwhich I could climb. My wanderings were suddenly brought to an end bythe appearance, or the fancied appearance, of somebody in a browndress--a woman I thought it must be; she seemed to float along theground, and I hurried back, falling and hurting myself severely in myhurry to escape through the gap. So great was my fear that I spoke notof my hurt to my governess, but of the being I had seen, beseeching ofher to come back; but she would not come back, and this fact impressedme greatly. I said to myself, "If she didn't believe somebody wasthere she'd come back. " The fear endured for long afterwards; and Iused to beg of her not to cross the open space between the last shiftof the wood and the tomb itself. We can re-live in imagination anemotion already experienced. Everything I had felt when I was a childabout the mysterious hollows in the beech wood behind the tomb and theold stone there, and the being I had seen clothed in a brown cloak, Icould re-live again, but the wood enkindled no new emotion in me. Everything seemed very trivial. The steps leading to the tomb, thetomb itself, the boundary wall, and the enchanted wood was now no morethan a mere ordinary plantation. There were a few old stones showingthrough the leaves, that is all. Marvels never cease; in youth onefinds the exterior world marvellous, later on one finds one's innerlife extraordinary, and what seemed marvellous to me now was that Ishould have changed so much. The seeing of the ghost might be put downto my fancy, but how explain the change in the wood--was its mysteryalso a dream, an imagination? Which is the truth--that experience robsthe earth of its mystery, or that we have changed so that theevanescent emanations which we used suddenly to grow aware of, andwhich sometimes used to take shape, are still there, only our eyes areno longer capable of perceiving them? May not this be so?--for as onesense develops, another declines. The mystic who lives on the hillsidein the edge of a cave, pondering eternal rather than ephemeral things, obtains glimpses, just as the child does, of a life outside this lifeof ours. Or do we think these things because man will not consent todie like a plant? Wondering if a glimpse of another life had once beenvouchsafed to me when my senses were more finely wrought, I descendedthe hillside; the bird, probably a chaffinch, repeated its cry withoutany variation. I went down the hillside and lay in the shadow of thetasselled larches, trying to convince myself that I had not hoped tosee the brown lady, if it were a lady I had seen, bending over thestones of the old burial-ground. 

One day the silence of the woods was broken by the sound of a mason'shammer, and on making inquiry from a passing workman--his hodmanprobably--I learned that on opening the vault it had been discoveredthat there was not room for another coffin. But no enlargement of thevault was necessary; a couple of more shelves was all that would bewanted for many a year to come. His meaning was not to bemistaken--when two more shelves had been added there would be room formy brothers, myself, and my sister, but the next generation would haveto order that a further excavation be made in the hill or look out fora new burial-ground. He stood looking at me, and I watched for amoment a fine young man whose eyes were pale as the landscape, and Iwondered if he expected me to say that I was glad that things hadturned out very well.... The sound of the mason's hammer got upon mynerves, and feeling the wood to be no longer a place for meditation, Iwandered round the shore as far as the old boat-house, wondering howit was that the words of a simple peasant could have succeeded inproducing such a strange revulsion of feeling in me. No doubt it wasthe intensity with which I realised the fact that we are never farfrom death, none of us, that made it seem as if I were thinking onthis subject for the first time. As soon as we reach the age ofreflection the thought of death is never long out of our minds. It isa subject on which we are always thinking. We go to bed thinking thatanother day has gone, that we are another day nearer our graves. Anyincident suffices to remind us of death. That very morning I had seentwo old blue-bottles huddled together in the corner of a pane, and atonce remembered that a term of life is set out for all things--a fewmonths for the blue-bottle, a few years for me. One forgets how onethought twenty years ago, but I am prone to think that even the youngmeditate very often upon death; it must be so, for all their bookscontain verses on the mutability of things, and as we advance in yearsit would seem that we think more and more on this one subject, forwhat is all modern literature but a reek of regret that we are butbubbles on a stream? I thought that nothing that could be said on thisold subject could move me, but that boy from Derryanny had broughthome to me the thought that follows us from youth to age better thanliterature could have done; he had exceeded all the poets, not by anysingle phrase--it was more his attitude of mind towards death (towardsmy death) that had startled me--and as I walked along the shore Itried to remember his words. They were simple enough, no doubt, sosimple that I could not remember them, only that he had reminded methat Michael Malia, that was the mason's name, had known me since Iwas a little boy; I do not know how he got it out; I should not havebeen able to express the idea myself, but without choosing his words, without being aware of them, speaking unconsciously, just as hebreathed, he had told me that if my heart were set on any particularplace I had only to tell Michael Malia and he would keep it for me;there would be a convenient place for me just above my grandfatherwhen they had got the new shelf up; he had heard we were both writers. 

That country boy took it out of me as perhaps no poet had ever done! Ishall never forget him as I saw him going away stolidly through thegreen wood, his bag of lime on his back. 

And sitting down in front of the tranquil lake I said, "In twenty orthirty years I shall certainly join the others in that horrible vault;nothing can save me, " and again the present slipped away from me andmy mind became again clear as glass; the present is only subconscious;were it not so we could not live. I have said all this before; again Iseemed to myself like a fly crawling up a pane of glass, falling back, buzzing, and crawling again. Every expedient that I explored provedillusory, every one led to the same conclusion that the dead arepowerless. "The living do with us what they like, " I muttered, and Ithought of all my Catholic relations, every one of whom believes inthe intervention of priests and holy water, the Immaculate Conception, the Pope's Indulgences, and a host of other things which I could notremember, so great was my anguish of mind at the thought that my poorpagan body should be delivered helpless into their pious hands. Iremembered their faces, I could hear their voices--that of my dearbrother, whom I shall always think of as a strayed cardinal ratherthan as a colonel; I could see his pale eyes moist with faith in theintercession of the Virgin--one can always tell a Catholic at sight, just as one can tell a consumptive. The curving lake, the palemountains, the low shores, the sunlight, and the haze contributed nota little to frighten me; the country looked intensely Catholic at thatmoment. My thoughts swerved, and I began to wonder if the face of acountry takes its character from the ideas of those living in it. "Howshall I escape from that vault?" I cried out suddenly. Michael Malia'shodman had said that they might place me just above my grandfather, and my grandfather was a man of letters, a historian whose histories Ihad not read; and in the midst of the horror my probable burialinspired in me, I found some amusement in the admission that I shouldlike the old gentleman whose portrait hung in the dining-room to haveread my novels. This being so, it was not improbable that he wouldlike me to read his histories, and I began to speculate on what theauthor of a history of the French Revolution[1] would think of "EstherWaters. " The colour of the chocolate coat he wears in his picturefixed itself in my mind's eye, and I began to compare it with thecolour of the brown garment worn by the ghost I had seen in the wood. Good Heavens, if it were his ghost I had seen!

[Footnote 1: Still unpublished. ]

And listening to the lapping of the lake water I imagined a horriblecolloquy in that vault. It all came into my mind, his dialogue and mydialogue. "Great God, " I cried out, "something must be done toescape!" and my eyes were strained out on the lake, upon the island onwhich a Welshman had built a castle. I saw all the woods reaching downto the water's edge, and the woods I did not see I remembered; all thelarch trees that grew on the hillsides came into my mind suddenly, andI thought what a splendid pyre might be built out of them. No treeshad been cut for the last thirty years; I might live for anotherthirty. What splendid timber there would then be to build a pyre forme!--a pyre fifty feet high, saturated with scented oils, and me lyingon the top of it with all my books (they would make a nice pillow formy head). The ancient heroes used to be laid with their arms besidethem; their horses were slaughtered so that their spirits might befree to serve them in the aerial kingdoms they had gone to inhabit. Mypyre should be built on the island facing me; its flames would be seenfor miles and miles; the lake would be lighted up by it, and my bodywould become a sort of beacon-fire--the beacon of the pagan futureawaiting old Ireland! Nor would the price of such a funeral beanything too excessive--a few hundred pounds perhaps, the price of athousand larches and a few barrels of scented oil and the great feast:for while I was roasting, my mourners should eat roast meat and drinkwine and wear gay dresses--the men as well as the women; and thegayest music would be played. The "Marriage of Figaro" and someOffenbach would be pleasing to my spirit, the ride of the Valkyriewould be an appropriate piece; but I am improvising a selection, andthat is a thing that requires careful consideration. It would be afine thing indeed if such a funeral--I hate the word--such a burningas this could be undertaken, and there is no reason why it should notbe, unless the law interdicts public burnings of human bodies. Andthen my face clouded, and my soul too; I grew melancholy as the lake, as the southern mountains that rippled down the sky plaintive as anIrish melody, for the burning I had dreamed of so splendidly mightnever take place. I might have to fall back on the Public Crematoriumin England--in Ireland there is no Crematorium; Ireland lingers in thebelief in the resurrection of the body. "Before I decide, " I said tomyself, "what my own funeral shall be, I must find out what funeralliberties the modern law and Christian morality permit the citizen, "and this I should not be able to discover until I returned to Dublin. 

It was by the side of dulcet Lough Cara that I began to imagine myinterview with the old family solicitor, prejudiced and white-headedas the king in a certain kind of romantic play, a devout Catholic whowould certainly understand very little of my paganism; but I shouldcatch him on two well-sharpened horns--whether he should be guilty ofso unbusiness-like an act as to refuse to make a will for theologicalreasons, or to do a violence to his conscience by assisting afellow-creature to dispose of his body in a way that would give theAlmighty much trouble to bring about the resurrection of the body inthe valley of Jehoshaphat. The embarrassment of the family solicitorwould be amusing, and if he declined to draw up my will for me therewould be plenty of other solicitors who would not hesitate to draw upwhatever will I was minded to make. In order to secure the burial ofmy body, my notion was to leave all my property, lands, money, pictures, and furniture to my brother, Colonel Maurice Moore on thecondition that I should be burnt and the ashes disposed of without thehumiliation of Christian rites; that if the conditions that theinheritance carried with it were so disagreeable to Colonel MauriceMoore that he could not bring himself to see that the disposal of myremains was carried out according to my wishes, my property, lands, money, pictures, and furniture, should go to my brother AugustusMoore; that in the event of his declining to carry out my wishesregarding the disposal of my remains, all my property should go to mybrother Julian Moore; that if he should refuse to carry out my wishesregarding the disposal of my remains, all the said property should goto my friend Sir William Eden, who would, I felt sure, take a sadpleasure in giving effect to the wishes of his old friend. A willdrawn up on these lines would secure me against all chance of beingburied with my ancestors in Kiltoon, and during the next two days Ipondered my own burning. My brother might think that he was put to agood deal of expense, but he would not fail me. He had taken off myhands the disagreeable task of seeing the undertakers and makingarrangements for the saying of Masses, etc. , arrangements which wouldbe intensely disagreeable to me to make so. I had plenty of time tothink out the details of my burning; and I grew happy in the thoughtthat I had escaped from the disgrace of Christian burial--a disgracewhich was never, until the last two days, wholly realised by me, butwhich was nevertheless always suspected. No doubt it was the dread ofKiltoon that had inspired that thought of death from which in lateyears I had never seemed able to escape. I am of the romantictemperament, and it would be a pity to forgo the burning I hadimagined. I delighted in the vision that had come upon me of thefelling of the larch trees on the hillside and the building of thepyre about the old castle. It would reach much higher; I imagined itat least fifty feet high. I saw it flaming in imagination, and whenhalf of it was burnt, the mourners would have to take to the boats, sointense would be the heat. What a splendid spectacle! Never did anyman imagine a more splendid funeral! It would be a pity if the lawobliged me to forgo it. But there was no use hoping that the law wouldnot; there was a law against the burning of human remains, and I mighthave to fall back on the Public Crematorium: it only remained for meto decide what I would wish to be done with the ashes. In a moment ofhappy inspiration I conceived the idea of a Greek vase as the onlysuitable repository for my ashes, and I began to remember all theGreek vases I had seen: all are beautiful, even the Roman Greek; theseare sometimes clumsy and heavy, but the sculpture is finely designedand executed. Any Greek vase I decided would satisfy me, provided, ofcourse, that the relief represented Bacchanals dancing, and nearlyevery Greek vase is decorated in this way. The purchase of the vasewould be an additional expense; no doubt I was running my brother infor a good deal of money; it is becoming more and more difficult tobuy original Greek sculpture! and in a moment of posthumous parsimonymy thoughts turned to a copy of a Greek vase in granite, granite beingmore durable than marble, and I wanted the vase to last for a longtime. It was delightful to take a sheet of paper and a pencil and todraw all that I remembered of the different vases I had seen, different riots of lusty men carrying horns of wine, intermingled withgraceful girls dancing gracefully, youths playing on pipes, and amidstthem fauns, the lovely animality of the woods, of the landscape ages, when men first began to milk their goats, and when one man out of thetribe, more pensive, more meditative than the others, went down to theriver's bank and cut a reed and found music within it. The vase Iremembered best has upright handles springing from the necks of swans. It stands about two feet high, perhaps a little more, and its cavityshould be capable of containing all that remains of me after myburning. None would have thought, from the happy smile upon my lips, that I was thinking of a Grecian urn and a little pile of white ashes. "O death, where is thy sting?" I murmured, and the pencil dropped frommy hand, for my memory was more beautiful than anything I couldrealise upon paper. I could only remember one side of a youth, thatside of him next to an impulsive maiden; her delight gives her wings;his left arm is about her shoulder. She is more impulsive than he, andI wondered at his wistfulness--whether he was thinking of another loveor a volume of poems that he loved better. Little by little many ofthe figures in the dance were remembered, for the sculpture was sowell done that the years had only clouded my memory. The cloudsdispersed, and I saw this time one whole figure, that of adancing-girl; her right arm is extended, her left arm is bent, sheholds a scarf as she dances, and the muscles of the arms are placed sowell, and the breasts too, that one thinks that the girl must havebeen before the sculptor as he worked. Ingres and Antiquity alone knewhow to simplify. There is little, but that little is so correct thatdetail is unnecessary, and I exulted in remembrance of the daintydesign of the belly, half hidden, half revealed by little liquidfolds. "How exquisite, " I said, "is that thigh! how well it advances!And we poor moderns have lived upon that beauty now well-nigh twothousand years? But how vainly we have attempted to imitate thatdrapery flowing about the ankles, like foam breaking on the crest of awave. " A slender youth stands next; his shoulders are raised, for thepipes are to his lips, his feet are drawn close together, and by him asatyr dances wildly, clashing cymbals as he dances. He is followed, Ithink--it is difficult to say whether this be a recollection ofanother vase or whether the figure is included in the same group--by afaun tempting the teeth and claws of a panther with a bunch of grapes. And it was this winsome faun that decided me to select this vase asthe repository of my ashes. And I determined to stipulate in my willthat this vase be chosen. But my will must not be too complicated, otherwise it might be contested. All that is not common can easily beargued to be madness by a loquacious lawyer before a stupid jury. Whoexcept a madman, asks the lawyer, would trouble to this extent as towhat shall be done with his remains? Everybody in the court agreeswith him, for every one in court is anxious to prove to his neighbourthat he is a good Christian. Everything is convention, and leadcoffins and oak coffins cannot be held as proof of insanity, becausemen believe still in the resurrection of the body. Were the Pharaohsinsane? Was the building of the Great Pyramid an act of madness? Thecommon assurance is that it matters nothing at all what becomes of ourremains, yet the world has always been engaged in setting up tombs. Itis only those pretty satyrs who do not think of tombs. Satyrs wanderaway into some hidden place when they feel death upon them. But poorhumanity desires to be remembered. The desire to be remembered for atleast some little while after death is as deep an instinct as any thatmight be readily named, and our lives are applied to securing somelittle immortality for ourselves. What more natural than that everyone should desire his death and burial to be, as it were, typical ofthe ideas which he agreed to accept during life: what other purpose isserved by the consecration of plots of ground and the erection ofcrosses? In this at least I am not different from other people; if Iam anxious about my burning, it is because I would to the lastmanifest and express my ideas, and neither in my prose nor verse haveI ever traced out my thoughts as completely or as perfectly as I havedone in this order for my tomb. One trouble, however, still remainedupon my mind. Where should the vase be placed? Not in WestminsterAbbey. Fie upon all places of Christian burial! A museum inspireslofty thoughts in a few; Gouncourt speaks of the icy admiration ofcrowds. The vase might stand in the stone wall, and in the very cornerwhere I learned to spin my top? But sooner or later a housemaid wouldbreak it. The house itself will become the property of another family, and the stranger will look upon the vase with idle curiosity, orperhaps think it depressing to have me in the hall. An order for myremoval to a garret might be made out. 

The disposal of the vase caused me a great deal of anxiety, and Iforesaw that unless I hit upon some idea whereby I could safeguard itfrom injury for ever, my project would be deprived of half its value. As I sat thinking I heard a noise of feet suddenly on the staircase. "They are bringing down my mother's coffin, " I said, and at thatmoment the door was opened and I was told that the funeral processionwas waiting for me. My brother, and various relatives and friends, were waiting in the hall; black gloves were on every hand, crepestreamed from every hat, "All the paraphernalia of grief, " I muttered;"nothing is wanting. " My soul revolted against this mockery. "But whyshould I pity my mother? She wished to lie beside her husband. And farbe it from me to criticise such a desire!"

The coffin was lifted upon the hearse. A gardener of old time came upto ask me if I wished there to be any crying. I did not at firstunderstand what he meant; he began to explain, and I began tounderstand that he meant the cries with which the Western peasantfollows his dead to the grave. Horrible savagery! and I ordered thatthere was to be no keening; but three or four women, unable to containthemselves, rushed forward and began a keen. It was difficult to tryto stop them. I fancy that every one looked round to see if there wereany clouds in the sky, for it was about a mile and a half to thechapel; we would have to walk three miles at least, and if it rained, we should probably catch heavy colds. We thought of the damp of thewood, and the drip from the melancholy boughs of yew and fir growingabout that sepulchre on the hillside. But there was no danger of rain;Castle Island lay in the misted water, faint and grey, reminding me ofwhat a splendid burial I might have if the law did not intervene toprevent me. And as we followed the straggling grey Irish road, withscant meagre fields on either side--fields that seemed to be on thepoint of drifting into marsh land--past the houses of the poor people, I tried to devise a scheme for the safeguarding of the vase. ButRameses the Second had not succeeded in securing his body againstviolation; it had been unswathed; I had seen his photograph in theStrand, and where he failed, how should I succeed?

Twenty priests had been engaged to sing a Mass, and whilst theychanted, my mind continued to roam, seeking the unattainable, seekingthat which Rameses had been unable to find. Unexpectedly, at the verymoment when the priest began to intone the Pater Noster, I thought ofthe deep sea as the only clean and holy receptacle for the vasecontaining my ashes. If it were dropped where the sea is deepest itwould not reach the bottom, but would hang suspended in dark, movelessdepths where only a few fishes range, in a cool, deep grave "madewithout hands, in a world without stain, " surrounded by a lovely revelof Bacchanals, youths and maidens, and wild creatures from the woods, man in his primitive animality. But nothing lasts for ever. In somemillions of years the sea will begin to wither, and the vasecontaining me will sink (my hope is that it will sink down to somesecure foundation of rocks to stand in the airless and waterlessdesert that the earth will then be). 

Rameses failed, but I shall succeed. Surrounded by dancing youths andmaidens, my tomb shall stand on a high rock in the solitude of theextinct sea of an extinct planet. Millions of years will pass away, and the earth, after having lain dead for a long winter, as it doesnow for a few weeks under frost and snow, will, with all otherrevolving planets, become absorbed in the sun, and the sun itself willbecome absorbed in greater suns, Sirius and his like. In the mattersof grave moment, millions of years are but seconds; billions conveyvery little to our minds. At the end of, let us say, some billionyears the ultimate moment towards which everything from the beginninghas been moving will be reached; and from that moment the tide willbegin to flow out again, the eternal dispersal of things will beginagain; suns will be scattered abroad, and in tremendous sun-quakesplanets will be thrown off; in loud earth-quakes these planets willthrow off moons. Millions of years will pass away, the earth willbecome cool, and out of the primal mud life will begin again in theshape of plants, and then of fish, and then of animals. It is likemadness, but is it madder than Christian doctrine? and I believe thatbillions of years hence, billions and billions of years hence, I shallbe sitting in the same room as I sit now, writing the same lines as Iam now writing: I believe that again, a few years later, my ashes willswing in the moveless and silent depths of the Pacific Ocean, and thatthe same figures, the same nymphs, and the same fauns will dancearound me again.