The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne : a Novel

CHAPTER XX

November 11th.

I wrote Judith a long letter last night, urging her to disregard the forfeited claims of her husband and to join her life definitely with mine. I was cynical enough to feel that if such a proceeding annoyed the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring it would serve him right. The fact of a man’s finding religion and abjuring sack does not in itself exculpate him from wrongs which he has inflicted on his fellow-creatures in unregenerate days. Mainwaring deserved some punishment of which he seemed to have had remarkably little; for, mind you, his sack-cloth and ashes at Hoxton, although sincerely worn, are not much of a punishment to a man in his exalted mood. Now, on the contrary, Judith deserved compensation, such as I alone was prepared to offer her in spite of conventional morality and the feelings of the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring. Indeed, it seemed to be the only way of saving Judith from being worried out of her life by frantic appeals to embrace both himself and Primitive Christianity. Her position was that of Andromeda. Mine that of an unheroic Perseus, destined to deliver her from the monster—the monster whose lair is a little tin mission church in Hoxton.

I wrote the letter in one of those periods of semi-vitality when the pulses of emotion throb weakly, and sensitiveness is dulled. To-day I have felt differently. My nerves have been restrung. Something ironically vulgar, sordidly tragic has seemed to creep into my relations with Judith.

To my great surprise Judith brought her answer in person this evening. It is the first time she has entered my house; and her first words, as she looked all around her with a wistful smile referred to the fact.

“It is almost just as I have pictured it—and I have pictured it—do you know how often?”

She was calmer, if not happier. The haggard expression had given place to one of resignation. I wheeled an arm-chair close to the fire, for she was cold, and she sank into it with a sigh of weariness. I knelt beside her. She drew off her gloves and put one hand on my head in the old way. The touch brought me great comfort. I thought that we had reached the quiet haven at last.

“So you have come to me, Judith,” I whispered.

“I have come, dear,” she said, “to tell you that I can’t come.”

My heart sank.

“Why?” I asked.

We fenced a little. She gave half reasons, womanlike, of which I proved the inadequacy. I recapitulated the arguments I had used in my letter. She met them with hints and vague allusions. At last she cut the knot.

“I am going back to my husband.”

I rose to my feet and echud the words. She repeated them in a tone so mournfully distinct, that they had the finality of a death-knell. I had nothing to say.

“Before we part I must make my peace with you, Marcus,” she said. “I have suddenly developed a conscience. I always had the germs of it.”

“You were always the best and dearest woman in the world,” I cried.

“And I betrayed you, dear. That letter from Pasquale told me about his flight with Carlotta. I lied to you—but I was in a state bordering on madness.”

I rested my elbow on the mantel-piece and looked down on her. She appeared so sweet and fragile, like a piece of Dresden china, incapable of base actions. As I did not speak she went on: “I did not mean to play into Pasquale’s hands, Marcus. Heaven knows I didn’t—but I did play into them. Do you remember that awful night and our talk the next morning? I asked you not to see her all day—to mourn our dead love. I knew you would keep your promise. You are a man of sensitive honour. If all men were like you, the world would be a beautiful place.”

“It would go to smash in a few weeks through universal incompetence,” I murmured, with some bitterness.

“There would be no meanness and treachery and despicable underhand doings. Marcus, you must forgive me—I was a desperate woman fighting for my life’s happiness. I thought I would try one forlorn hope. I kept you out of the way and came up here to see Carlotta. Don’t interrupt me, Marcus; let me finish. I happened to meet her a hundred yards down the road, and we went into the Regent’s Park. We sat down and I told her about ourselves, and my love for you, and asked her to give you up. I don’t believe she understood, Marcus. She laughed and threw stones at a little dog. I recovered my senses and left her there and went home sick with shame and humiliation. I knew Pasquale was in love with her, for he had told me so the night before, and asked me how the marriage could be stopped. He didn’t believe in your announcement to Hamdi Effendi. But I never mentioned Pasquale to Carlotta, or hinted there might be another than you. I was loyal so far, Marcus. And two or three days afterwards came Pasquale’s letter. And I waited for you, in a fearful joy. I knew you would come to me—and I was mad enough to think that time would heal—that you would forget—that we could have the dear past again—and I would teach you to love me. But then, suddenly, without a word of warning—it has always been his way—appeared my husband. After that, you came with your offer of shelter and comfort—and you seemed like the angel of the flaming vengeance. For I had wronged you, dear—robbed you of your happiness. If I hadn’t prepared her mind for leaving you, she would never have run away. If I had not done this, or if on the other hand you loved me, Marcus, I should perhaps have looked at things differently. I am beginning to believe in God and to see his hand in it all. I couldn’t come and live with you as your wife, Marcus. Things stronger even than my love for you forbid it. Our life together would not be the sweet and gracious thing it has always been to me. We have come to the parting of the ways. I must follow my husband.”

I knew she spoke rightly. When she is not swept away to hysterical action by her temperament, she has a perception exquisitely keen into the heart of truth.

“The parting of the ways?” said I. “Yes; but can’t you rest at the cross-roads? Can’t you lead your present life—your husband and myself, both, just your friends?”

“Rupert has need of me,” she replied very quickly. “He is a man in torment of soul. He has gone to this extreme of religious fanaticism because he is still uncertain of himself. We had another long talk to-day. I may help him.”

“Does he deserve the sacrifice of your life?”

She did not take up my question directly; but sat for a few minutes with her chin on her hand looking into the fire.

“He is a man of evil passions,” she resumed, at last. “Drink and women mainly dragged him down. I knew the hell of it during the short time of our married life. If he falls away now, he believes he is damned to all eternity. He believes in the material torture—flames and devils and pitchforks—of damned souls. He says in me alone lies his salvation. I must go. If the tin church gets too awful, I shall run over to Delphine Carrere for a week to steady my nerves.”

What could I say? The abomination of desolation lay around about me. I might have prated to her of my needs, wrung her heart with the piteousness of my appeal. Cui bono? I can’t whine to women—or to men either, for the matter of that. When I am by myself I can curse and swear, play Termagant and rehearse an extravaganza out-Heroding all the Herods that ever Heroded. But before others—no. I believe my great-grandfather, before he qualified for his baronetcy, was a gentleman.

“But on these occasions,” said I, “you will avoid a sequestered and meditative self.”

Her laugh got choked by a sob.

“Do you remember that? It is not so long ago—and yet it seems many, many years.”

We moralised generally, after the way of humans, who desire to postpone a moment of anguished speech. She made the tour of my book-shelves. Many of the books she had borrowed, and she recognised them as old friends.

“Is that where Benvenuto Cellini has always lived?”

“Yes,” said I, running my hand along the row. “He is in his century, among his companions. He would be unhappy anywhere else.”

“And the History—how far has it gone?”

I showed her the pile of finished manuscript, of which she glanced at a few pages. She put it down hurriedly and turned away.

“I can’t see to read, just now, Marcus.”

Then she paused in front of her own photograph, the only one now on the mantel-piece.

“Will you give me that back?”

“Why should I?” I asked.

“I would rather—I should not like you to burn it.”

“Burn it? All I have left of you?”

She turned swimming eyes on me.

“You are good, Marcus—after what I have told you—you do not feel bitterly against me?”

“For what? For being quixotic? For going to martyrdom for an ideal?”

“You did not listen when I spoke about Carlotta?”

“Oh, my dear!” said I.

And now she has gone. We kissed at parting—a kiss of remembrance and renunciation. Shall we ever meet again?

Darkness gathers round me, and I am tired, tired, and I would that I could sleep like Rip Van Winkle, and awake an old man, with an old man’s passionless resignation; or better, awake not at all. Such poor fools as I are better dead.

I look back and see all my philosophy refuted, all my prim little opinions lying prone like dolls with the sawdust knocked out of them. All these years I have been judging Judith with an ignorance as cruel as it has been complacent. Verily I have been the fag end of wisdom. So I forbear to judge her now.

If I had loved Judith with the great passion of a man’s love for woman, not all the converted rascals in Christendom could have come between us.

And her seeing Carlotta—poor woman—what does it matter? What did she say about Carlotta? “She laughed and threw stones at a little dog.”

Oh, my God!

November 12th

This way madness lies. I will leave the house in charge of Stenson and Antoinette and go abroad. Something has put Verona into my head. One place is as good as another, so long as it is not this house—this house of death and madness and crime—and Verona is in Italy, where I have always found peace.

I will confess my madness. This book is a record of my morals—the finished version of the farce the high gods have called on meto play. I thought last night the curtain was rung down. I was wrong. Listen, and laugh as I do—if you can.

I fixed myself to work to-day. After all, I am not an idler. I earn my right to live. When I publish my History the world will be the richer by something, poor though it may be. I vow I have been more greatly, more nobly employed of late years, than I was when I earned my living at school-slavery teaching to children the most useless, the most disastrous, the most soul-cramping branch of knowledge wherewith pedagogues in their insensate folly have crippled the minds and blasted the lives of thousands of their fellow-creatures—elementary mathematics. There is no more reason for any human being on God’s earth to be acquainted with the Binomial Theorem or the Solution of Triangles—unless he is a professional scientist, when he can begin to specialise in mathematics at the same age as the lawyer begins to specialise in law or the surgeon in anatomy—than for him to be an expert in Choctaw, the Cabala or the Book of Mormon. I look back with feelings of shame and degradation to the days when, for the sake of a crust of bread, I prostituted my intelligence to wasting the precious hours of impressionable childhood, which could have been filled with so many beautiful and meaningful things, over this utterly futile and inhuman subject. It trains the mind—it teaches boys to think, they say. It doesn’t. In reality it is a cut and dried subject easy to fit into a school curriculum. Its sacrosanctity saves educationalists an enormous amount of trouble, and its chief use is to enable mindless young men from the universities to make a dishonest living by teaching it to others, who in their turn may teach it to a future generation.

I am mad to-night—why have I indulged in this diatribe against mathematics? I must find some vent, I suppose. I see now. I was saying that I earned my right to live, that I am not an idler. I cling strenuously to the claim. A man cannot command respect, even his own, by the mere reason of his vie sentimentale. And, after what I have done to-day, I must force my claim to the respect which on other grounds I have forfeited.

I spent, then, my day in unremitting toil. But this evening the horrible craving for her came over me. Such a little thing brought it about. Antoinette, who disapproves of the amorphous British lumps of sugar, has found some emporium where she can buy the regular parallelopiped of the Continent, and these she provides for my afterdinner coffee. Absent-mindedly I dipped the edge of the piece of sugar into the liquid, before dropping it, and watched the brown moisture rise through the white crystals. Then I remembered. It was an invariable practice of Carlotta’s. She would keep the lump in the coffee to saturation-point between her fingers, and then hastily put it into her mouth, so that it should not crumble to pieces on the way. If it did, there would be much laughter and wiping of skirts; and there would be a search through my dinner-jacket pockets for a handkerchief to dry the pink tips of her fingers. She called the dripping lump a canard, like the French children. It was such a trivial thing; but it brought back with a rush all the thousand dainty, foolish, captivating intimacies that made up the maddening charm of Carlotta.

Yes, I am aware that there is no language spoken under heaven that can fitly express the doting folly of a man who can be driven mad by a piece of sugar soaked in coffee. There is a ghastly French phrase not to be found in Lamartine, Chateaubriand, or any of the polite sentimentalists avoir les sangs tournes de quelqu’un. It is so with me. J’ai les sangs tournes d’elle. Somebody has said something somewhere about the passion of a man of forty. It must have to do with the French phrase.

I pushed my coffee aside untasted, and buried my head in my hands, longing, longing; eating my heart out for her. The hours passed. When the servants were abed, I stole upstairs to her room, left as it was on the night when Antoinette, hoping against hope, had prepared it for her reception. I broke down. Heaven knows what I did.

I returned to the drawing-room filled with the blind rage that makes a man curse God and wish that he could die. The fire was black, and I mechanically took up the poker to stir it. A tempest of impotent anger shook my soul. I saw things red before my eyes. I had an execrable lust to kill. I was alone amid a multitude of gibbering fiends. As I stooped before the grate I felt something scrabble my shoulders. I leapt back with a shriek, and saw standing on the mantel-shelf a black, one-eyed thing regarding me with an expression of infinite malice. Before I knew what I had done, I had brought the iron down, with all my force, upon its skull, and it had fallen dead at my feet.

Finis coronat opus.

November 22d.

Verona:—I have abandoned the “History of Renaissance Morals.” The dog’s-eared MS. and the dusty pile of notes I have shot into a lumber heap in a corner of this room, where I sit and shiver by a little stove. It is immense, marble, cold, comfortless, suggestive of “the vasty halls of death.” I have been here a week to-day. I thought I should find rest. I should breathe the atmosphere of Italy again. I should ease my heart among the masterworks of Girolamo dai Libri and Cavazzola, and, in the presence of the blue castellated mountains they loved to paint, my spirit would even be as theirs. In this old-world city, I fondly imagined, I should forget the Regent’s Park, and attune my mind to the life that once filled its narrow streets.

But nothing have I found save solitude. I stood to-day before the mutilated fresco of Morone, my rapture of six years ago, and hated it with unreasoning hatred. The Madonna belied the wreath-supported inscription above her head, “Miseratrix virginum Regina nostri miserere,” and greeted me with a pitiless simper. The unidentified martyr on the left stared straight in front of him with callous indifference, and St. Roch looked aggravatingly plump for all his ostentatious plague-spot. The picture was worse than meaningless. It was insulting. It drove me out of the Public Gallery. Outside a grey mist veiled the hills and a fine penetrating rain was falling. I crept home, and for the fiftieth time since I have been here, opened my “History of Renaissance Morals.” I threw it, with a final curse, into the corner.

I loathe it. I care not a fig for the Renaissance or its morals. I count its people but a pestilent herd of daubers, rhymers, cutthroats, and courtesans. Their hubris has lost its glamour of beauty and has coarsened into vulgar insolence. They offend me by their riotous swagger, their insistence on the animal joy of living; chiefly by their perpetual reminiscence of Pasquale.

Yet once they interested me greatly, filling with music and with colour the grey void of my life. Whence has come the change?

In myself. To myself I have become a subject of excruciating interest. To myself I am a vastly more picturesque personage than any debonair hooligan of quattro-cento Verona. He has faded into the dullest (and most offensive) dog of a ghost. I only exist. This sounds like the colossal vanity of Bedlam. Heaven knows it is not. If you are racked with toothache from ear to ear, from crown to chin, and from eyeball to cerebellum, is not the whole universe concentrated in that head of yours? Are you not to yourself in that hour of torture the most vitally important of created beings? And no one blames you for it. Let me therefore be without blame in my hour of moral toothache.

In the days gone by I was the victim of a singular hallucination. I flattered myself on being the one individual in the world not summoned to play his part in the comedy of Life. I sat alone in the great auditorium like the mad king of Bavaria, watching with little zest what seemed but a sorry spectacle. I thought myself secure in my solitary stall. But I had not counted on the high gods who crowd shadowy into the silent seats and are jealous of a mortal in their midst. Without warning was I wrested from my place, hurled onto the stage, and before my dazzled eyes could accustom themselves to the footlights, I found myself enmeshed in intolerable drama. I was unprepared. I knew my part imperfectly. I missed my cues. I had the blighting self-consciousness of the amateur. And yet the idiot mummery was intensely real. Amid the laughter of the silent shadowy gods I thought to flee from the stage. I came to Verona and find I am still acting my part. I have always been acting. I have been acting since I was born. The reason of our being is to amuse the high gods with our histrionics. The earth itself is the stage, and the starry ether the infinite auditorium.

The high gods have granted to their troupe of mimes one boon. Each has it in his power to make the final exit at any moment. For myself I feel that moment is at hand. One last soliloquy, and then like the pagliacco I can say with a sigh, “La commedia e finita—the play is played out,” and the rest will be silence. At all events I will tell my own story. My “History of Renaissance Morals” can lie in its corner and rot, whilst I shall concern myself with a far more vital theme—The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne. The rough entries in my diary have been a habit of many futile years; but they have never sufficed for self-expression. I have not needed it till now. But now, with Judith and Carlotta gone from me, my one friend, Pasquale, cut for ever from my life, even the sympathetic Polyphemus driven into eternity by my murderous hand, I feel the irresistible craving to express myself fully and finally for the first and last time of my life. It will be my swan song. What becomes of it afterwards I care not.

And when the last word is written, I shall go to the Pinacoteca and stand again before the Morone fresco, and if the Miseratrix Virginum Regina still simpers at me, I shall take it as a sign and a token. I shall return to this marble cavern and make my final exit. It will be theatrically artistic—that I vow and declare—which no doubt will afford immense pleasure to the high gods in their gallery.