July 19th.
Campsie, N.B. Hither have I fled from my buccaneering relations. I am seeking shelter in a manse in the midst of a Scotch moor, and the village, half a mile away, is itself five miles from a railway station. Here I can defy Aunt Jessica.
After my conversation with Pasquale, I passed a restless night. My slumbers were haunted by dreams of pirate yachts flying the jolly Roger, on which the skull and crossbones melted grotesquely into a wedding-ring and a true lovers’ knot. I awoke to the conviction that so long as the vessel remained on English waters I could find no security in London. I resolved on flight. But whither?
Verily the high gods must hold me in peculiar favour. The first letter I opened was from old Simon McQuhatty, my present host, a godfather of my mother, who alone of mortals befriended us in the dark days of long ago. He was old and infirm, he wrote, and Gossip Death was waiting for him on the moor; but before he went to join him he would like to see Susan’s boy again. I could come whenever I liked. A telegram from Euston before I started would be sufficient notice. I sent Stenson out with a telegram to say I was starting that very day by the two o’clock train, and I wrote a polite letter to my Aunt Jessica informing her of my regret at not being able to accept her kind invitation as I was summoned to Scotland for an indefinite period.
My old friend’s ministry in the Free Kirk of Scotland is drawing to a close; he has lived in this manse, a stone’s throw from his grave, for fifty years, and the approaching change of habitat will cost him nothing. He will still lie at the foot of his beloved hills, and the purple moorland will spread around him for all eternity, and the smell of the gorse and heather will fill his nostrils as he sleeps. He is a bit of a pagan, old McQuhatty, in spite of Calvin and the Shorter Catechism. I should not wonder if he were the original of the story of the minister who prayed for the “puir Deil.” He planted a rowan tree by his porch when he was first inducted into the manse, and it has grown up with him and he loves it as if it were a human being. He has had many bonny arguments with it, he says, on points of doctrine, and it has brought comfort to him in times of doubt by shivering its delicate leaves and whispering, “Dinna fash yoursel, McQuhatty. The Lord God is a sensible body.” He declares that the words are articulate, and I suspect that in the depths of his heart he believes that there are tongues in trees and books in the running brooks, just as he is convinced that there is good in everything.
He is a ripe and whimsical scholar, and his talk, even in infirm old age, is marked by a Doric virility which has rendered his companionship for these five days as stimulating as the moorland air. How few men have this gift of discharging intellectual invigoration. Indeed, I only know old McQuhatty who has it, and a sportive Providence has carefully excluded mankind from its benefits for half a century. Stay: it once fostered a genius who arose in Campsie, and sent him strung with tonic to Edinburgh to become a poet. But the poor lad drank whisky for two years without cessation, so that he died, and McQuhatty’s inspiration was wasted. What intellectual stimulus can he afford, for instance, to Sandy McGrath, an elder of the kirk whom I saw coming up the brae on Sunday? An old ram stood in the path and, as obstinate as he, refused to budge. And as they looked dourly at each other, I wondered if the ram were dressed in black broadcloth and McGrath in wool, whether either of their mothers would notice the metamorphosis. Yet my host declares that I see with the eyes of a Southron; that the Scotch peasant when he is not drunk is intellectual, and that there is no occasion on which he is not ready for theological disputation.
“But I dinna mind telling you,” he added, “that I’d as lief talk with my rowan tree. It does nae blaze into a conflagration at a comfortable wee bit of false doctrine.”
I should love to stay all the summer with my old friend, It seems that only from such a remote solitude can one view things mundane in the right perspective, and in their true proportion. One would see how important or unimportant portent in the cosmos was the agricultural ant’s dream of three millimetres and an aphis compared with the aspirations of the English labourer. One would justly focus the South African millionaire, Sandy McGrath and the ram, and bring them to their real lowest common denominator. One would even be able to gauge the value of a History of Renaissance Morals. The benefits I should derive from a long sojourn are incalculable, but my new responsibilities call me back to London and its refracting and distorting atmosphere. If I had dwelt here for fifty years I should have perceived that Carlotta was but a speck in the whirlwind of human dust whose ultimate destiny was immaterial. As my five days’ visit, however, has not advanced me to that pitch of wisdom, I am foolishly concerned in my mind as to her welfare, and anxious to dissolve the triumvirate, Miss Griggs, Stenson, and Antoinette, whom I have entrusted with the reins of government.
A month ago, in similar circumstances, I should have railed at Fate and anathematised Carlotta from the tip of her pink toes to the gold and bronze glory of her hair. But I am growing more kindly disposed towards Carlotta, and taking a keen interest in her spiritual development.
An inner voice, an ironical, sardonic inner voice with which there is no arguing, tells me that I am a hypocrite; that an interest in Carlotta’s spiritual development is a nice, comforting, high-sounding phrase which has deluded philosophic guardians of female youth for many generations.
“What does it matter to you whether she has a soul or not,” says the voice, “provided she can babble pleasantly at dinner and play cribbage with you afterwards?”
Well, what on earth does it matter?
July 21st.
She was at Euston to meet me. As soon as she saw my face at the carriage window she left Stenson and flew up the platform like a pretty tame animal, and when I alighted hung on my arms and frisked and gamboled around me in excess of joy.
“So you are glad to have me back, Carlotta?” I asked, as we were driving home.
She sidled up against me in her terrier fashion.
“Oh, ye-es,” she cooed. “The day was night without you.”
“That is the oriental language of exaggeration,” I said. But all the same it was pleasant to hear, and the soft notes of her voice coiled themselves, as music sometimes dus, around my heart.
“I love dear Seer Marcous,” she said.
I put my arm round her waist for a moment, as one would do to a child.
“You are a good little girl, Carlotta. That is to say,” I added, remembering my responsibilities, “if you have been good. Have you?”
“Oh, so good. Antoinette has been teaching me how to cook, and I can make a rice pudding. It is so nice to cook things. I like the smell. But I burned myself. See.”
She pulled off her glove and showed me a red mark on her hand. I kissed it to make it well, and she laughed and was very happy. And I, too, was happy. Something new and fresh and bright has come into my life. Stenson is an admirable servant; but his impassive face and correct salute which have hitherto greeted me at London railway termini, although suggestive of material comfort, cannot be said to invest my arrival with a special atmosphere of charm. Carlotta’s welcome has been a new sensation. I look upon the house with different eyes. It was a pleasure, as I dressed for dinner, to reflect that I should not go down to a solemn, solitary meal, but would have my beautiful little witch to keep me company.
July 22d.
It appears that her conduct has not been by any means irreproachable. Miss Griggs reported that she took advantage of my absence to saturate herself with scent, one of the most heinous crimes in our domestic calendar. Mulier bene olet dum nihil olet is the maxim written above this article of our code. Once when she disobeyed my orders and came into the drawing-room reeking of ylang-ylang, I sent her upstairs to change all her things and have a bath, and not come near me till Antoinette vouched for her scentlessness. And “Ah, monsieur,” I remember Antoinette replied, “that would be impossible, for the sweet lamb smells of spring flowers, de son naturel.” Which is true. Her use of violent perfumes is thus a double offence. “There is something more serious,” said Miss Griggs.
“I can hardly believe there can be anything more serious than making one’s self detestable to one’s fellow-creatures,” said I.
“Unless it is making one’s self too agreeable,” said Miss Griggs, pointedly.
I asked her what she meant.
“I have discovered,” she replied, “that Carlotta has been carrying on a clandestine flirtation with the young man who calls for orders from the grocer’s.”
“I am glad it wasn’t the butcher’s boy,” I murmured.
Miss Griggs giggled in a silly way, as if I were jesting. At my stern request she recovered and unfolded the horrible tale. She had caught Carlotta kissing her hand to him. She had also seen him smuggle a three-cornered note between Carlotta’s fingers, and Carlotta had definitely refused to surrender the billet-dour.
“What is the modern course of treatment,” I asked, “prescribed for young ladies who flirt with grocers’ assistants? In Renaissance times she could be whipped. The wise Margaret of Navarre used to beat her daughter, Jeanne d’Albrecht, soundly for far less culpable lapses from duty. Or she could be sent to a convent and put into a cell with rats, or she could be bidden to attend at a merry-making where the chief attraction was roast grocer’s assistant. But nowadays—what do you suggest?”
The unimaginative creature could suggest nothing. She thought that I would know how to deal with the offence. Perhaps preventive measures would be more efficacious than punishment. But what do I know of the repressory methods employed in seminaries for young ladies? Burton in his “Anatomy” speaks cheerfully of blood-letting behind the ears. He also quotes, I remember, Hippocrates or somebody, who narrates that a noble maiden was cured of a flirtatious temperament by wearing down her back for three weeks a leaden plate pierced with holes. This I told Miss Griggs, who spoke contemptuously of the Father of Medicine.
“He also recommends—whether for this complaint, or for something similar I forget for the moment—” said I, “anointing the soles of the feet with the fat of a dormouse, the teeth with the ear-wax of a dog; and speaks highly of a ram’s lungs applied hot to the fore part of the head. I am sorry these admirable remedies are out of date. There is a rich Rabelaisianism about them. Instead of the satisfying jorums of our forefathers we take tasteless pellets, which procure us no sensation at the time, and even the good old hot mustard poultice is a thing of the past.”
“But what about Carlotta?” inquired Miss Griggs, anxiously.
That is just like a woman, to interrupt a man when he is beginning to talk comfortably on a subject that interests him. I sighed.
“Send Carlotta up to me,” I said, resignedly.
Another morning’s work spoiled. I turned to my writing-table. I had just transcribed on my MS. the anecdote told with such glee by Machiavelli about Zanobi del Pino, a sort of Admiral Byng of the early fifteenth century, who was locked up and given nothing to eat but paper painted with snakes, so that he died, fasting, in a few days. I had an apt epigram on the subject of Renaissance humour trembling on my pen-point, when Miss Griggs came in with her foolish gossip. I am sure the platitude I wrote afterwards is not that original flash of wit.
Carlotta entered and crossed the room to the side of my writing-chair, her great dark eyes fixed on me, and her hands dutifully behind her back. She looked a Greuze picture of innocence. I believed less than ever in the enormity of the offence.
“Do you know what you’re here for?” I asked, magisterially.
She nodded.
“Then you have been making love to the young man from the grocer’s?”
She nodded again. I began to conceive a violent dislike to the grocer’s young man. It was one of the most humiliating sensations I have experienced. I think I have seen the individual—a thick-set, red-headed, freckled nondescript.
“What did you do it for?” I asked.
“He wanted to make love to me,” replied Carlotta.
“He is a young scamp,” said I.
“What is a scamp?” she asked sweetly.
“I am not giving you a lesson in philology,” I remarked. “Do you know that you have been behaving in a shocking manner?”
“Now you are cross with me.”
“Yes,” I said, “infernally angry.”
And I was. I expected to see her burst into tears. She did nothing of the kind; only looked at me with irritating demureness. She wore a red blouse and a grey skirt, and the audacious high-heeled red slippers. I began to feel the return of my early prejudice against her. Nobody so alluring could possess a spark of virtue.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said I. “I make many allowances for your lack of knowledge of our Western customs, but for a young lady to flirt with an ugly red-headed varlet of the lower orders is reprehensible all the world over.”
“He gave me dates and dried fruits with sugar all over them,” said Carlotta.
“Stolen from his employer,” I said. “I will have that young man locked up in prison, and if you go on receiving his feloniously obtained presents they will put you in prison too, and I shall be delighted.”
Carlotta maintained her demure expression and extracted from her skirt pocket a very dirty piece of paper.
“He writes poetry—about me,” she remarked, handing me what I recognised as the three-cornered note.
I took the thing between finger and thumb, and glanced over the poem. I have read much indifferent modern verse in my time—I sometimes take a slush-bath after tea at the club—but I could not have imagined the English language capable of such emulsion. It was execrable. The first couplet alone contained an idea.
“Thou art a lovely girl and so very nice
I dream till death upon your face.”
To the wretch’s ear it was a rhyme! I destroyed the noisome thing and cast it into the waste-paper basket.
“Prison,” said I, “would be a luxurious reward for him. In a properly civilised country he would be bastinadoed and hanged.”
“Yes, he is dam bad,” said Carlotta, serenely.
“Good heavens!” I cried, “the ruffian has even taught you to swear. If you dare to say that wicked word again, I’ll punish you severely. What is his horrid name?”
“Pasquale,” said Carlotta.
“Pasquale?”
“Yes, he likes to hear me say ‘dam.’ Oh, the other? Oh, no, he is too stupid. He does not say anything. His name is Timkins. I only play with him. He is so funny. He can go and kill himself; I won’t care.”
“Never mind about Timkins,” said I, “I want to hear about Pasquale. When did he teach you that wicked, wicked word?”
I think Carlotta flushed as she regarded the point of her red slipper.
“I went for a walk and he met me at the corner and walked here by my side. Was that wicked?”
“What would the excellent Hamdi Effendi have said to it?”
Woman-like she evaded my question.
“I hope Hamdi is dead. Do you think so?”
“I hope not. For if you behave in this naughty manner, I shall have to send you back to him.”
She had imperceptibly moved nearer my chair until she stood quite close to my side, so that as I spoke the last words I looked up into her face. She put her arm about my shoulders. It is one of her pretty, caressing ways.
“I will be good—very good,” she said.
“You will have to,” said I, leaning back my head.
She must have caught a relenting note in my voice; for what happened I feel even now a curious shame in noting down. Her other arm flew under my chin to join its fellow, and holding me a prisoner in my chair, she bent down and kissed me. She also laid her cheek against mine.
I am still aware of the indescribable, soft, warm pressure, although she has gone to bed hours ago.
I vow that a man must be less a man than a petrified egg to have repulsed her. The touch of her lips was like the falling of dewy rose-petals. Her breath was as fragrant as new-mown hay. Her hair brushing my forehead had the odour of violets.
I sent her back to Miss Griggs. She ran out of the room laughing merrily. She has received plenary absolution for her shameless coquetry and her profane language. Worse than that she has discovered how to obtain it in future. The witch has found her witchcraft, and having once triumphantly exerted her powers, will take the earliest opportunity of doing so again. I am fallen, both in my own eyes and hers, from my high estate. Henceforward she will regard me only with good-humoured tolerance; I shall be to her but a non-felonious Timkins.
I was an idiot to have kissed her in return.
I have not seen her since. I lunched at the club, and paid a formal call on Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne and my cousin Rosalie, in their sunless house in Kensington.
I met a singular lack of welcome. Rosalie gave me a limper hand than usual, and took an early opportunity of leaving me tete-a-tete with her mother, who conversed frigidly about the warm weather. The very tea, if possible, was colder.
I met Judith by appointment in Kensington Gardens, and walked with her homewards. I mentioned my chilly reception.
“My dear man,” she observed—I dislike this apostrophe, which Judith always uses by way of introduction to an unpleasant remark—“My dear man, I have no doubt that you have as unsavoury a reputation as any one in London. You are credited with an establishment like Solomon’s—minus the respectable counter-balance of the wives, and your devout relatives are very properly shocked.”
I said that it was monstrous. Judith retorted that I had brought the calumny upon myself.
“But what can I do?” I asked.
“Board her out with a suburban family, as you should have done from the first. Even I, who am not strait-laced, consider it highly improper for you to have her alone with you in the house.”
“My dear,” said I, “there is Antoinette.”
“Tush”—or something like it—said Judith.
“And Stenson. No one seeing Stenson could doubt the irreproachable propriety of his master.”
“I really have no patience with you,” said Judith.
It is hopeless to discuss Carlotta with her. I shall do it no more.
We sat for a while under the trees, and conversed on rational topics. She likes her employment with Willoughby. The morning she spends among blue books and other waste matter at the British Museum, and she devotes the evening to sorting her information. Willoughby commends her highly.
“And there is something I know you’ll be very pleased to hear,” she continued. “Who do you think called on me yesterday? Mrs. Willoughby. Her husband wants me to spend August and September at a place they have taken in North Wales, and help him with his new book—as a private secretary, you know. I said that I never went into society. I must tell you this was the first time I had seen her. She put her hand on my arm in the sweetest way in the world and said: ‘I know all about it, my dear, and that is why I thought I’d come myself as Harold’s ambassador.’ Wasn’t it beautiful of her?”
She looked at me and her eyes were filled with tears.
“Marcus dear, I am not a bad woman, am I?”
“My dearest,” I answered, very deeply touched, “you are the best woman in the world. So far from conferring a favour on you, Mrs. Willoughby has gained for herself the inestimable privilege of your friendship.”
“Ah!” said Judith, “a man cannot tell what it means.”
Really men are not such dullard dunderheads as women are pleased to imagine. I have the most crystalline perception of what Mrs. Willoughby’s invitation means to Judith. Women appear to find a morbid satisfaction in the fiction that their sex is actuated by a mysterious nexus of emotions and motives which the grosser sense of man is powerless to appreciate. In her heart of hearts it is a prodigious comfort to a woman to feel herself misunderstood. Even she who is most perfectly mated, and is intellectually convinced that the difference of sex is no barrier to his complete knowledge of her, loves to cherish some little secret bit of her nature, to which he, on account of his masculinity, will be eternally blind. Of course there are dull men who could not understand a tabbycat or a professional cricketer, let alone an expert autothaumaturgist—a self-mystery-maker—like a woman. But an intelligent and painstaking man should find no difficulty in appreciating what, after all, is merely a point of view; for what women see from that point of view they are as indiscreet in revealing as a two-year-old babe. I have confessed before that I do not understand Judith—that is to say the whole welter of contradictions in which her ego consists—but that is solely because I have not taken the trouble to subject her to special microscopic study. Such a scientific analysis would, I think, be an immodest discourtesy towards any lady of my acquaintance, especially towards one for whom I bear considerable affection. It would be as unwarrantable for a decent-minded man to speculate upon her exact spiritual dimensions as upon those portions of her physical frame that are hidden beneath her attire. The charm of human intercourse rests, to a great extent, on the vague, the deliberately unperceived, the stimulating sense that an individual possesses more attributes than flash upon the bodily or mental eye. But this, I say, is deliberate. One knows perfectly well that beneath her skirts any young woman you please does not melt away into the scaly tail of a mermaid, but has a pair of ordinary commonplace legs. One knows that when she has passed through certain well defined experiences in life, a certain definite range of sentiments must exist behind whatever mask of facial expression she may choose to adopt. It is sheer nonsense, therefore, for Judith to say that I cannot enter into her feelings with regard to Mrs. Willoughby’s invitation.
I developed this theme very fully to Judith as we sat in Kensington Gardens and during our subsequent, stroll diagonally through Hyde Park to the Marble Arch. She listened with great attention, and when I had finished regarded me in a pitying manner, a smile flickering over her lips.
“My dear Marcus,” she said, “there is no man, however humble-minded, who has not one colossal vanity, his knowledge of women. He, at any rate, has established the veritable Theory of Women. And we laugh at you, my good friend, for the more you expound, the more do you reveal your beautiful and artistic ignorance. Oh, Marcus, the idea of you setting up as a feminine psychologist.”
“And pray, why not?” I asked, somewhat nettled.
“Because you are that dear, impossible, lovable thing known as Marcus Ordeyne.”
This was exceedingly pretty of Judith. But really woman is the Eternal Philistine, as Matthew Arnold has defined the term. Her supreme characteristic is inconvincibility. I had simply wasted my breath.
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