Robert Orange Part 21

Then he wished her goodbye, promising, however, to call again with regard to the Meeting. Lord Garrow met him on the staircase.

"I congratulate you on your election to Brookes's," stammered his lords.h.i.+p, "but for Heaven's sake be cautious at play. Really, the younger men there are trying to revive the worst traditions in gaming.

The loo was rather high at Chetwynd's last night," he added, with a studied air of guilt. "I won 500 from my host. I call that the limit--even on old Cabinet Steinberg!"

He smiled, he waved his hand, feeling that he had displayed great taste in a situation of enormous difficulty. Something unusual, too, in the young man's face touched his heart. It seemed to him that here was one who had felt the world's buffets.

"I have never been just in my estimate of Mr. Orange," said he to Sara, as he re-entered the drawing-room. "I quite took to him to-day. He has a fine countenance, and I am sure he is very much cut up by this painful affair. It's a pity he's a Catholic, for he would make such an excellent canon for St. Paul's. He would _look_ the part so well."

"'Happiness, that nymph with unreturning feet,' has pa.s.sed him by," said Sara, watching herself in one of the mirrors.

"She has pa.s.sed a good many," sighed his lords.h.i.+p. "But play me that lovely air which t.i.tiens sings in _Il Flauto Magico_."

CHAPTER XVI

Agnes was too ill to appear at the d.u.c.h.ess of Pevensey's dinner that evening. Lord Reckage's melancholy, absent air during the entertainment, and his early withdrawal from the distinguished party, were referred, with sympathy, to the very proper distress he felt at Miss Carillon's tiresome indisposition. The time pa.s.sed well enough for him--far better, in fact, than he had expected, for he was relieved from the strain of "dancing attendance" on his betrothed--a thing which he, even more than most men, found silly. In the chivalrous days of tournaments, troubadours and crusades this romantic exercise of seeming enslaved was, he held, justifiable, even interesting. But in modern life it had an appearance of over-emphasis.

Poor Agnes, however, could neither eat, nor sleep, nor rest. Her temples throbbed, her eyes ached; every nerve was a barbed wire; her soul was manacled by promises; she would not use her reason; the fever in her veins was not to be quelled, and the one agitating relief to her physical suffering was a constant perusal of David Rennes's letter. It was the first pa.s.sionate love-letter she had ever received. Just as a river may stream peacefully through pastoral lands till it joins the sea and becomes one with that vast element of unrest, so the little flame of her girl's nature was absorbed at last into the great fire underlying all humanity. Was she in love? she asked herself. When she was with Rennes she became silent, incapable of conversation, of thought. All she asked was to be near him, to watch him, to hear him.

Was this love? Was it love to press his letter to her heart, to read it again and again, to keep it under her pillow at night? Was it love to think of him every moment of the day, to compare all others to him and find them wanting, to see his face always before her eyes? Was it love to know that if he called her, as he called her now, she would leave home, father, mother, friends, all things, all people, and follow him to the world's end, to the beginning of h.e.l.l, or--further? At one-and-twenty such questions need no answer. They belong to the innocent rhetoric of youth which will cry out to June, "Are you fair?"

and to the autumnal moon in mist, "Must there be rain?" Neither June nor the moon make reply, but youth has no doubts. The girl, weeping tears of joy over Rennes's perilous words, had but one clear regret in her mind--she could not see him for some hours. His declaration dispelled the terrible bitterness, scepticism, and indifference to all sentiment which had gradually permeated, during their acquaintance, her whole heart. Repulsed affection may turn to hatred in haughty, impatient souls. But in Agnes it produced a moral languor--a mental indolence--the feeling that no one was in earnest, and nothing ought to matter. The more this feeling deepened, the more attentively did she observe the mere outward etiquette of all that pa.s.ses for seriousness, attending scrupulously to the minor obligations of existence and exhausting her courage in those petty matters which die with the day and yield no apparent fruit. How different now seemed the colourless, harsh fabric which she had mistaken for duty and wrapped--as a shroud--about her secret hopes! She had held every aspiration implying happiness as a "proverb of reproach"; she had endeavoured to believe that all poetry--except hymns--was false prophecy leading one to hard entanglements and grievous falls.

And what had been the impoverishment of her soul under this grim discipline? How could she tell the many thoughts which had travelled unquestioned over the highway of her heart during that process of disillusion? But all was changed now, and all that had been difficult, painful or obscure in the world seemed perfect with the inexhaustible glory of young pa.s.sion. Rennes begged her to see him once more before he left England for some years. Would she meet him in Kensington Gardens?

She had often walked there, under the old trees, with himself and Mrs.

Rennes, and the place had become very dear, very familiar to her from these a.s.sociations. At any other time, however, the idea of a clandestine meeting with David would have been intolerable. To go now was misery, yet she dared not stay away. The sunny morning mixed with her mood, which was one of determination to risk all in order to win all. Driven by a sense of her capabilities for endurance, she faced, with a kind of exultation, the possible disaster or remorse which might follow her action. Was there not a possible joy also? For ten days now she had been ill in body as well as mind; she had suffered a hard struggle. She knew now that she could not, could not, could not, no matter what happened, become the wife of Lord Reckage. The result of great self-delusion for so long a period was a condition of mind in which she was practically unable to distinguish between candour and disingenuousness. Any appearance of deceit--which she regarded as wrong in itself--always excited her scorn, but desperation now urged a step which might lead, she thought, to much good or much evil. That it could lead to more evil than a loveless marriage was not, however, to be feared. She started from the house with feverish cheeks, a beating pulse, and a new strange consciousness of power--power over herself, her fate, the world.

Rennes was waiting for her under the long avenue of trees by the Lancaster Gate walk. She had a tall, stately figure of that type immortalised by Du Maurier--indeed, she herself may be recognised in some of his famous society sketches about the year 1870. The clear, decisive features, the tender discerning expression, the poise of the head, were irresistibly attractive to all artists with a strong sense of grace--even artificial grace--as opposed to rude vigour or homeliness.

She possessed naturally that almost unreal elegance which many painters--Frederick Walker, for instance--have been accused of inventing.

"This is very wrong of me," she said, blus.h.i.+ng as Rennes advanced, hat in hand, to meet her, "very wrong. I never do these things."

"I said in my letter--right or wrong it matters not--what I thought.

This is a thing which runs up into eternity, Agnes. It had to be. We needn't try to justify it."

"I cannot--I dare not regard it as you do."

"But you have come! Let me look at you!"

"Does it require much looking to see that I am really unhappy?"

"I see that you are beautiful, that you are here--with me. Ah, don't be unhappy! When we take into account our scanty time together"--he grew pale at the thought--"and the danger we have just missed of losing each other, perhaps for ever----" She caught his hand for a second and he kept it.

"What is to be done?" she asked, after an agitated silence. "What will people say? Not that I can think of _anything_ to do."

"Darling, I know I have asked you to make an impossible sacrifice--to break off a most brilliant marriage, to marry me and share the despair, hards.h.i.+ps, tortures of a life very different to any you have seen. Well has Goethe said--

_'Love not the sun too much, nor yet the stars, Come, follow me to the realms of night.'_

This is what I offer you, dearest. You can hardly realise what a wretched, desolate existence mine has been. Resignation is a miserable refuge. They say work gives one contentment, but unless one is servile and gives in to the spirit of the age, it is rarely understood till one is dead. And so the discouragement is perpetual. Even your sympathy would pain me at such times. I feel then--as I feel now--that I will grasp Fate by the throat; it shall not utterly crush me."

"But," said Agnes, a little frightened at this outburst, "do you never think of G.o.d and His Will?"

He returned her anxious glance with gloomy, almost compa.s.sionate amazement.

"Does G.o.d think of me?" he asked. "Really, I cannot feel that the salvation of my soul is so important. Indeed, any idea of immortality is awful How could it ever be a consolation--except to a smug, very self-satisfied egoism? Call it the burden--or the cross of immortality--if you call it anything. I wish it could be proved that we end when we die. But physicians dissect _dead_ bodies to find the soul.

It would not be a soul if they could find it in the dead. And imagine one becoming penitent when the day of grace is over!"

"I keep Clement's words before me, '_The Lord who died for us is not our enemy_.' Surely that is a splendid thought against final despair."

"Many thoughts are splendid," he replied, "if we could believe them now as the early Christians did in the first centuries."

Agnes, with parted, whitening lips, could find no response. Rennes painted her afterwards in the same att.i.tude, and with all he remembered of her expression, in his now famous picture, _Pilate's Wife_.

"You will never be happy--never," she murmured at last. "But perhaps no one is happy."

"I can grant that the saints were always profoundly happy. Let me tell you why. The state of the saint is one of dependence. His convictions, therefore, are enduring and unclouded. He accepts his trials as privileges; he loses all sense of his own ident.i.ty; his humanity is merged in G.o.d; his ecstasies lift him up to heaven and bring him down to a transfigured earth. He has been bought with a ransom, and he is the co-heir with Christ. He is found worthy of suffering. But with artists, all is different. The saint is in search of holiness. The artist thinks chiefly of beauty. Holiness is a state of mind--it is something permanent. Beauty, however, mocks one half the time--it may be a deception. Anyhow, one cannot define it, or keep it, or even satisfactorily catch it. Our inspired moments, therefore, alternate with a miserable knowledge of our individual wretchedness. We learn that we are no stronger than our individuality. That is the barrier between us and our visions. The saint has G.o.d before his eyes, and he carries Him in his heart. The artist sees only himself and bears only the weight of his own incompetence. But these, darling, are not the things I meant to say to you, although they may explain my life. The common run of people wouldn't understand all this in the least."

"I want to hear all--I want to enter into all your thoughts, David. I have always known that those who devote themselves to the study of what is sublime and beautiful suffer proportionately from the squalor of actual facts."

She quoted from one or her father's speeches which he invariably gave with much earnestness at the opening of schools of art and similar inst.i.tutions.

"The world," replied Rennes, "rewards the beautiful only inasmuch as it flatters the senses, and the sublime remains--so far as the general taste is concerned--altogether without response."

"But one would think," said Agnes, "that you were a disappointed or an unsuccessful man, whereas every one admires your genius."

He laughed at her practical bent, which seemed the more fascinating because of her picturesque appearance.

"One often feels cast down without the least cause," said he; "the truth is we all want more praise than we get. We are a vain lot, that's the trouble. Let me paint myself in the blackest colours. You must know the worst--you must realise the bad bargain you may make. Reckage would never bore and tire you in this way. How can you care for me?"

"It _is_ hard!" she said, smiling.

"Darling! Do you remember the white violets at Woodbridge, and sitting on that gate looking across that deep valley at the bonfires? Wasn't it perfect? Look through these trees now--see the flames and smoke? They are burning dead leaves and twigs. I wish I could burn my past. This may be a good omen for me. But I must not deceive you; that would be a bad beginning."

"We must decide on some course," said Agnes. "Your letter was quite clear, but I suppose I am not going on as I ought to do. My present position is that of a person telling a lie to people. Before you wrote, however, I had made up my mind to _some_ change. I could give no good grounds for carrying out my engagement to Beauclerk. The motives would not bear examination. I intended to be patient till the way was mercifully cleared for me. Even birds, in cold weather, grow tame from distress. So I waited in a dull, frozen way for what might happen."

He remembered, with a pang of remorse, that he had once called this devoted woman an accomplished, incurable Philistine.

"I must put myself in the wrong with regard to Beauclerk," she continued quietly. "That is merely fair to him. Every one shall know that I have been weak and vacillating. May G.o.d forgive me and humble me--for I shall not be understood, even by many good people. But the next worst thing to making an error is to abide by it. Dear David, try to follow my feeling.

It has all pa.s.sed in my mind in such a way that it is impossible for me to describe it. In a sense, giving Reckage up seems to uproot me altogether from all my former life, and the future is only not a blank because it is such a mystery. I am sure, though, that sorrow is never in G.o.d's ordinance the _whole_ law of life. These are great compensations."

"Anything is better than to sit still and dream," said Rennes. "I have dreamt too long. I find solitude oppressive. Yet you will admit how dreadful it is to live among those who don't know or don't care a bit about art."

"But there are other interests equally engrossing."

"Not to me. And even Epicurean advice is only the way to ignominious, contemptible happiness. I must have an ideal life or else annihilation--splendid misery or splendid content--nothing between the two."