Nevile Ingram was capable of fine ideas, we have seen, and could sometimes carry them out. He had had a moment of generosity, with Sanchia's letter in his hand, and held in the main to his expressed intentions. When he went to see her, at the end of three rigorous days, he behaved like a gentleman. She entered the room where he awaited her, pale for his embrace: he came to meet her, put his hand upon her shoulder, and, stooping, kissed her lightly. “My dear,” he said, “I'll deserve you yet;” and he really meant it. She was touched, and quite kind to him. He exhibited his version of her surrender.
“We're friends, eh? We know each other of old, have no surprises, and can take raptures for granted. That's your notion, I fancy? It's not mine, but I'll be thankful for what you give me, and it shall be my fault if you find me backward when you're ready. Bygones are bygones, then? We make a new start?”
She sat staidly under his gaze, not aware at the moment that his steel-blue eyes searched her avidly for a hint of more than he stated. “So far as I am concerned—certainly,” she said. “I shall never unlock any cupboards.”
“Better to burn the contents, perhaps,” he laughed. “I tell you fairly, I had rather they were cleared out. Now, I'll confess to anything you please to ask me. That's a firm offer.” He would probably have done it, but she told him that she had no questions to put. “Very well, my dear,” he said. “Have it as you will. It's sublime of you—but it's not love. If you don't want to know it's because you don't care.”
“No, indeed,” she sighed, with such conviction that he was stung.
“Hang it all, Sancie,” he cried, “you can't have known me for eight years without feeling something.” She looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were full.
“Oh, Nevile,” she said, with a quivering lip, “don't let us look back. Indeed, I can't do it now.” He put his arm round her and, drawing her closer, kissed her forehead. “My pretty one, we won't. I had much rather look forward. The future is to be my affair—if the past was yours.” Then he went away, and she saw nothing of him for two days. On the second of them he dined with Lady Maria, and met some of the Percivals—the father and mother, the Sinclairs, and Mr. Tompsett-King. (Philippa had declined to come.) He behaved with great discretion, and so continued. After a week or ten days of courtship, she could hardly believe that their relations had ever been interrupted. His reliance upon her was absolute, his confidence no less so. He babbled of himself and his concerns in the old vein of mocking soliloquy, careless whether she heard him or not. Now that he had her promise, he seemed in no hurry for possession. His kisses were fraternal, his embraces confined to a hand on her shoulder, an arm lightly about her waist. She was inordinately thankful to him, and by a queer freak of the mind, poured all her gratitude into Senhouse. She told herself that but for him she would never have brought herself to her duty; but for him, therefore, would never have discovered how little she had to fear. Here was a crown for her “dear obsequious head”: shutting her eyes tightly, she thought that she could feel his fingers putting it on, smoothing out her hair so that the circlet should fit closely. Night after night she knelt to receive it. It came as a result of prayer.
The marriage-announcement, got into the paper by Mrs. Percival, was accepted for what it was worth. It was partly the price of her crown. A few letters from old friends were formally answered. Sanchia had never been a free writer; nobody but Senhouse had found her letters eloquent—he only had been able to feel the throb beneath the stiff lines. Her handwriting, round and firm, had for him a provocative quality; it stung his imagination. He used to sing her “divine frugality of utterance,” and protest that it was all of a piece with the rest of her life. No one, he had told her once, but a sculptor could embody her in Art—her chill perfection, her severity and definite outline. A poet might not dare, for he would have to be greater than love itself, greater than the love which inspired him, able to put it down below him, and stand remote from it, and regard it as a speck in the landscape.
Your sober thought, and your pride
To nurse the passion you hold and hide
he had written of her in his day. That austere concealment of her heart, which so impassioned him, chilled enthusiasm in all others of her acquaintance. So her letters were few, and now she was thankful enough. She herself wrote to nobody, and never spoke of her future unless she was compelled to answer questions.
Once a day, however, she took out a writing-block, and traced upon it the words, “My dear Jack, I think I ought to tell you—” or a similar exordium. She got no further. How could she tell him that without telling him more? And how tell him more when, of her own accord, she had sent him about his business, and set her approval upon his marriage, or what must be considered his marriage? An instinct forbade her. She didn't reason with it: her reason was paralysed. “It's part of the price. It's what he would have praised me for”—and she flew to her text.
“A great power is in your thin sweet hands, my sweet; you are in the way of being a great artist.” She looked at her hands, and loved them for his sake who had loved them so well. Her “thin sweet hands!” Could one write so of her hands and not love them well?
But the power, the power that she had! Hear her rhapsodist. “If you can so work upon your delicate surface as to mould it close to your noble soul; if in the gallery of the world you can unveil yourself for a thousand pair of eyes to see, and praise God for the right to see—why, what an artist you are, and what an audience you have! ... Like a whiff of thyme on a grassy down, like the breath of violets from a bank, or of bean-flower blown across a dusty hedge, some gentle exhalation of your soul sighed through your body will hint to the passion-driven wretch things innocent and quiet. The blue beam of your steadfast eyes may turn his own to heaven; a chance-caught, low, sweet tone of your voice may check clamour; an answer may turn his wrath.... You can be picture, form, poem, symphony in one.... Think of it, Sanchia, before you turn away. Think well whether upon that exquisite medium you cannot express your best.”
She found herself trembling—in these days she easily trembled—as she re-read these words. That such a power should indeed be hers—and how could she fail to believe it?—was inspiration enough to send her to the fire. She read no more, but used to sit shivering, thrilling through every fibre of her body, with the strength of such splendid praise. For whatever might be her fate, splendid it was to have been so loved, so seen, and so praised. It was well for Ingram that she read her old love-letters—and extremely unfortunate for the writer of them, who anguished for her now in his desert place. Odd situation! that the love-letters of one man should reconcile her to the arms of another.
From Torquay, where she spent the Easter holidays with her father, the two alone and happily together, she wrote two or three times to Nevile. He was at Wanless, professedly getting some order into things there, and protesting to her by every word he sent her upon the need there was of her hand upon affairs. There was not a word of love used between the pair. All the love-making, indeed, was done by Senhouse, whose master-stroke was called for by and by.
Towards the end of April she was alone in Charles Street, preparing the house for Lady Maria's return from Rome. Ingram was still at Wanless, grumbling through his duties of magistrate, landlord, and county gentleman. “They seem to think up here that a fellow has nothing to do but 'take the chair,'” he wrote. “I can tell you I'm pretty sick of it, and fancy that they will be before long. I'm an awkward customer when I'm bored—as I am now, damnably.” She sent him matter-of-fact replies, and wrote principally of the weather.
The Pole continued his discreet and temperate wooing after the plan he had formulated. He strove to interest her perpetually, never left her without having, as he taught himself to believe, impressed himself anew upon her imagination. Watching her as a cat a mouse, he learned to read her by signs so slight that no one who had not the intuition of a woman could have seen them at all. Unfortunately for him, he misinterpreted what he read. The slap-dash Ingram thought all was well; Chevenix, the more observant, thought there was a bare chance; Morosine alone could see how her quivering soul was being bruised, and if he thought that she looked to him for balm, he may be excused. She was drowning, she held out her hands. To whom, but to him upon the bank? How should he know what shadow stood behind him, with praise in his dim eyes for a “dear obsequious head”?
Playing deputy to Senhouse, little as he guessed it, he devoted himself to bracing her for the match, having made up his mind that there was no other way of making her happiness his own. His mistress she might be, his wife never. As he read her, she would keep the letter of the law—since the law required it of her. The rest, he flattered himself, might be left to time and him. His present aim was to interest and stimulate her, without alarming.
He counted greatly upon some sudden emotional stimulus, which would cause her to fall to him; and one came, though it had no such effect.
The opera of Tristan and Isolde, to which she was taken by Lady Maria—where she sat in his box, by his side, absorbed in the most sensuous expression of the love-malady that has ever tormented its way out of a poet's heart—had been a real test of his restraint. He had not once met her eyes—though hers, craving sympathy at any hand, had sought his often; he had not once permitted himself to gaze upon her beauty, though it was her beauty, so carven, so purely Greek, which had drawn him to her from the first. While the great music went sobbing and chiding through her frame, like wounded nightingales, he had sat in the dark, with his arms folded, never looking at her fully, nor seeking to win a glance from her soul to his own. That it stirred her to the deeps he knew. He could watch sideways, listen sideways, both hear and see that she was rapt. Her quick-heaving breast, the whistle of her short breath, the strained line of her head and shoulder—all this he marked and stored without a sign. Even when, on going out, he had been conscious of her overcharged heart, of her breast full of emotion; even when she had told him under her breath that she was happier, though he shivered, he drew away. He had nodded quickly, smiled, blinked his eyes. “I was sure of that,” was all he allowed himself in the way of intimacy.
Swift, fire-consumed, intensely sensitive, subtle-minded, this was a man who relished suggestions more than things. He had far rather deal mentally with the lovely image of Sanchia, as he saw it, than actually with the breathing, palpitating flesh. To picture her longing, straining, trembling—to keep her always so, always holding out her arms, never obtaining what she sought: his bliss lay in that. He knew himself, after much experience of the sort; he had missed so often by blundering in, that now he dared not risk a wreck. Here at last, he told himself, was perfection: let him look to it that he kept it at its perfect poise. He must poise himself to do that, balance himself upon a knife-edge. Little of an ascetic as he was by temper, he could train himself to the last ounce if the prize were worth it. And it was. Never had musician had instrument more sensitive to play upon. It seemed to him worthy of a lifetime of preparation to have her for one moment of time throbbing in his arms.
{Illustration: The great music went sobbing and chiding through her frame, like wounded nightingales.}
So Morosine went into the palaestrum, and fasted with prayer. His sangfroid through Tristan, and the going out with all its cry ringing in him, and in her, surprised even himself, who knew himself well. “My friend,” he thought, as he stalked to his club, “you have done well.”
But he had not reckoned with the flinty core which lay beneath her fair and delicate seeming. Her frugality of utterance, which charmed and chained him, really implied no reserve. She did not speak, because she had nothing to say, did not reveal herself, because she knew of no mystery. She was at once very simple and very practical; she had healthy tastes which she desired to gratify, and a deliberate mind which instructed her how far she might do so. Once in her life those had played her false, when they told her that the pity she had for Ingram was love, and the need he had for possession of her was her own need to give it him. She had been bitterly mistaken, and was now so weary with herself that she seemed to have no desire in the world but that of sleep. Tristan and Isolde, drowning soul and body in music which made love, and love which was the heart of music, were not to be thought of on this side of the grave. The Fates had a sterner way for her. She was never to empty herself in a kiss or to watch out the stars with Jack Senhouse. Homing in the carriage with Lady Maria, she denied him, like Peter his Lord. “I know not the man.” Vaguely dreaming at her open window, under the fire-fretted roof of that May night, she suddenly thought of him again—nay, knew him bodily there, alone with her under the sky—and for the first time in her life felt his eyes upon her, seeking of her what he had never dared to seek, and then his arms about her, touching her as assuredly he had never dreamed to do. She had denied him once too often, it seems. Here was a sudden attack, a trick of the sprites. She held her breath, she trembled, her breast heaved, she shut her eyes, and her lips relaxed their hold of each other. “Not yet, my blessed one, not yet!” and “Come, Rose of the World!” Thus they murmured to each other and strove. An expectancy, the shiver and thrill of it, possessed her; she seemed to feel the touch of a beloved hand, which drew her, trembling and panting, closer and closer to some high experience of which she had never dreamed before, to the expression of inexpressible things, to a giving of the utmost, to a wild strife of emulation which of them two should give the most. The dark was all about them like a bed—and closer he drew her, and closer yet. For one wild moment that endured—O heaven, they two in love under the stars! He was of the Open Country—as free as the wind. Thus he would love her, if he ever loved. Tristan's crying would be his—and Isolde's whimper of hurt would be her answer. Thus, if ever, she might be loved. And then, if ever in this world, peace!
Shivering still, with the sense of an arm still about her, of wild breath beating on her cheek, she looked wonderfully out at the stars which had seen her possessing. They burned steadily in their violet hold—a million kindly eyes welcoming her to the Open Country. The great town lay so still below that but for the glare behind the houses, which told her that it lived, she might have thought herself enfolded in the hills. So sure she was that she had been wedded, she glanced swiftly up and down the street, lest one chance passenger should have seen her naked soul. So a young girl, kissed by her lover, will search the emptiness in fear. Not a soul could be seen; Charles Street under its lamplight showed like a broad white ribbon curving towards the Square, towards the Park. To her heart she whispered, “Dearest, you may love me—we are alone under the stars”—and then shut her eyes fast, and with parted lips breathed quick and short.
Out of the night, out of an empty street, a voice came up, “He loves you—none so well. He lies out on the down in a white robe. He watches for you and waits. I have seen him, talked with him of you. Can you refuse such love as his? Goddess though you are, you will get no higher love.”
The voice was very real. She knew it well. From the close arms that held her, she answered it. “Oh, Struan, I know! I knew before you told me. It's wonderful. Love is a wonderful thing.”
“It's all we have in the world. I am here to tell you that he waits for you. Good-night.”
“Good-night, Struan,” she said. “I'm quite happy now.”
She remembered afterwards, with a shock of dismay at her selfishness, that she had never asked Struan of his welfare.
She came to herself with a shudder and envisaged her circumstance. She had had “a rare vision,” like Bottom the weaver—and that was all. Jack Senhouse had never loved her so. To him she had been Artemis, the cold goddess, or Queen Mab, whom no man might take. He had said so often—and had looked it whenever she was near him. Meantime, she was to be married—and Tristan was unprofitable provender. It had given her an indigestion of the mind. She would go to bed.
That she deliberately did—with one ceremony, characteristic of her frugality. She opened a locked drawer, and looked at its contents. There lay three goodly piles of letters, tied with blue ribbon. Each packet was labelled “Jack to Me,” and dated with beginning and ending. She contented herself with looking at them, smiling wisely and thoughtfully as she did so. Then, like a child, not trusting to her eyes alone, she looked at them with her fingers; touched them delicately in turn, with a caress. Immediately afterwards she locked them up; and turned to her disrobing. She slept quietly, and went about her affairs of the morrow with a calmness that surprised her.
At a later day, in a conversation which Morosine had with her, he permitted himself a reference to the Museum. “You go no more? They've done their work—the Three?”
She smiled upon him, looking up from a little blue-covered book which lay half-cut upon her lap. It had arrived by the post that morning without message, or even inscription. But it was dedicated, she observed, “To the Fairest,” and had smiled wisely to herself, observing it. A finger in the book, she answered Morosine. “Yes, they've done their work. I'm much happier now. I've thrown up my arms, you see. I'm drowning.” She suddenly blushed, to remember her dream; and he perceived it.
“Drowning?” he asked.
“Drifting with the tide,” she explained. “And I like it.”
It was on his tongue to refer to Tristan, but—such was her hardihood—she saved him the trouble. “I was fearfully excited with the opera. During the performance, and after it.”
His heart beat high. “You were not more so than I was,” he said, looking at her. “I thought of things possible and impossible. I had a vision.”
So had she had a vision, whose force was such that she could not continue to talk of such things. She had flashed her eyes upon him vividly for a moment, but was compelled to turn them away. He read in them a wild surmise; he thought that she understood him and was perturbed—perturbed, but not displeased. The bustling entry of Chevenix, unannounced, prevented him from pursuing his campaign.
Chevenix was gay. “Hulloa, Sancie—this is ripping. I say, I have something frightfully interesting to tell you.” Then he saw Morosine. “Hulloa, Alexis, is that you? Now we'll sit each other out, and Sancie won't have her news.”
“But I hope I shall,” she cried. “I haven't got a secret in the world. Don't go, Prince, please. Mr. Chevenix shall tell you the news too. I haven't the faintest idea.”
“It's something you want to know very badly. At least, I should think you did. It's not Nevile's address.” She took him gaily.
“I don't want to know that at all, if it's a new one. I have three already.”
“Perhaps,” said Morosine, with a friendly look, “it's to cancel some of them.”
She held up a book. “Is that what you mean? Do look. Songs, by S. Glyde. Did you mean to tell me of that?”
Chevenix stared. “The poet Glyde? No. By Jove, though, not a bad shot. I referred, my dear, to the poet Senhouse.”
She received that full in the face. She paled, then coloured. Her heart leaped, then stood still. She spelt with her blue eyes, “Tell me.”
Chevenix peered at her. “Thought I should fetch you, my dear. The poet Senhouse is run to ground, and I'm going to see him. That's all.”
It was plain to Morosine that she was very much concerned with this intelligence. She simply sat there, staring at Chevenix, shaking, moving her white lips. She was as white as chalk and her eyes burned black in her face. What on earth—who on earth—? He couldn't for the life of him make it out. He had never heard of the man. It was a shock to him to discover—so soon we flatter ourselves—that Sanchia had any reserve of confidence. He had felt so sure of her!
“Another new poet?” he asked her. She recovered herself, shook her head.
“He's not new—to me. He's the greatest friend I ever had.” That was all she could say. She turned to Chevenix, her desire fainting in her eyes. “You're going to see him? Oh, take me with you!”
“Right,” said Chevenix.
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