The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne Part 31

October 25th.

I went to Judith this afternoon, more to prove the loyalty of my friends.h.i.+p than to seek comfort from her society. Over tea we discussed the weather and books and her statistical work. It was dull, but unembarra.s.sing. The grey twilight crept into the room and there was a pause in our talk. She broke it by asking, without looking at me:

"When are we to have an evening together again?"

"Whenever you like, my dear Judith."

"To-morrow?"

"I am afraid not to-morrow," said I.

"Are you doing anything so very particular?"

"I have arranged to take Carlotta to the Empire."

"Oh," said Judith shortly, and I was left uncomfortable for another spell of silence.

"It would be very kind, Marcus, to ask me to accompany you," she said at last.

"Carlotta and myself?"

"Why not?"

"My question arose from the stupidity of surprise," said I. "I thought you disliked Carlotta."

"By no means. I should be glad to make her further acquaintance. Any one that interests you must also be interesting to me."

"In that case," said I, "your coming will give us both the greatest possible pleasure."

"I haven't had a merry evening for ever so long."

"We will dine somewhere first and have supper afterwards. The whole gamut of merriment. Toute la lyre. And you shall have," I added, "some of your favourite Veuve Cliquot."

"It will be charming," said Judith, politely.

In fact, politeness has been the dominant note of her att.i.tude to-day, a sober restraint of manner such as she would adopt when rather tired towards an ordinary acquaintance. Has she reconciled herself to the inevitable and taken this Empire frolic as a graceful method of showing it? I should like to believe so, but the course is scarcely consistent with that motor of illogic which she is pleased to call her temperament.

I am puzzled.

Her smile as we parted sent a chill through me, being the smile of a mask instead of a woman's face; and it was not the face of Judith. I don't antic.i.p.ate much merriment tomorrow evening.

At Carlotta's suggestion, I have sent a line to Pasquale to ask him to join us. His gay wit will lend to the entertainment a specious air of revelry which Carlotta will take as genuine.

I have often thought lately of the hopeless pa.s.sion of Alfonso the Magnanimous of Naples, as set forth by Pope Pius II in his Commentaries; for I am beginning to take a morbid interest in the unhappy love affairs of other men and to inst.i.tute comparisons. If they have lived through the torment, why should not I? But Alfonso sighed for Lucrezia d'Alagna, a beautiful chaste statue of ice who loved him; whereas I crave the warm-blooded thing that is mine for the taking, but no more loves me than she loves the policeman who salutes her on his beat. I cannot take her. Something stronger than my pa.s.sion opposes an adamantine barrier. I love her with my soul as well as with my body, and my soul cries out for the soul that the Almighty forgot when endowing her with ent.i.ty.

This evening a letter from the Editor of The Quarterly Review. It would give him great pleasure if I would contribute a Renaissance article, taking as my text a German, a Russian, and an English attempt to whitewash the Borgia family. Six months ago the compliment would have filled me with gratification. To-day what to me are the whitewashed Borgias or the solemn denizens of the Athenaeum reading-room who will slumber over my account of the blameless poisonings of this amiable family? They are vanity and vexation of a spirit already sore at ease.

As I write the door creaks. I look up. Behold Carlotta in hastily slipped on dressing-gown, open in front, her hair streaming loose to her waist, her bare feet flas.h.i.+ng pink beneath her night-dress.

"Oh, Seer Marcous, darling, I am so frightened!"

She ran forward and caught the lappels of my coat as I rose from my chair.

"What is the matter?"

"There is a mouse in my bed."

Polyphemus saved the situation by jumping from the sofa and rubbing his back against her feet.

"Take the cat and tell him to kill it," said I, "and go back to bed at once."

I must have spoken roughly, for she regarded me with her great eyes full of innocent reproach.

"There, take up the cat and go," I repeated. "You mustn't come down here looking like that."

"I thought I looked very pretty," said Carlotta, moving a step nearer.

I sat down at my writing-table and fixed my eyes on my paper.

"You are like a Houri that has been sent away from Paradise for misbehaviour," I said.

She laughed her curious cooing laugh.

"_Hou!_ Seer Marcous is shocked!" And she ran, away, rubbing Polyphemus's nose against her face.

I wonder if the Devil, having grown infirm, is mixing up his centuries and mistaking me for a mediaeval saint? Paphnutius for instance, who was visited by such a seductress. What is the legend? To get rid of her he burns off his hand, whereupon she falls dead. He prays and she returns to life and becomes a nun. No, Messer Diavolo, I am not Paphnutius. I will not maim myself, nor do I want Carlotta to fall dead; and I cannot pray and effect a pietistic resurrection. I am simply a fool of a modern man tempted out of his wits, who scarce knows what it is that he speaks or writes.

I am not superst.i.tious, but I feel myself to-night on the brink of some disaster. I walk restlessly about the room. On the mantel-piece are three photographs in silver frames: Judith, Carlotta, Pasquale. That which is of mockery in the spirit of each seems to-night to be hovering round the portraits and to be making sport of me. An autumn gale is howling among the trees outside, like a legion of lost souls. Listen.

Messer Diavolo himself might be riding by with a whoop of derision.

CHAPTER XV

October 26th.

I knew something would happen. Messer Diavolo does not ride whooping to no purpose by the windows of people whom he desires to torment; nor does he inspire photographs for nothing with an active spirit of mockery.

We dined at the Trocadero. Carlotta loves the band and the buzz of Babel and the heavy scents and the clatter and the tumult and the glare of light; otherwise I should have chosen a discreeter hostelry where the footfalls of the waiting-men were noiseless and the walls in quiet shadow, where there was nothing but the mellow talk of friends to distract the mind from the consideration of exquisite flavours. But in these palaces of clas.h.i.+ng splendour, the stunned brain fails to receive impressions from the glossopharyngeal nerve, and one eats unthinkingly like a dog. But this matters little to Carlotta. Perhaps when I was nineteen it mattered little to me. And to-night, also, it mattered little, for my mind was preoccupied and a dinner with Lucullus would have been savourless.

If the Psalmist cried, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" what cry had he at the back of his head to utter concerning woman? Did he leave her to be implicitly dealt with by Charles Darwin in his "Theory of s.e.xual Selection"? Or did he in the good old oriental way regard her as unimportant in the eyes of the Deity? If the latter, he was a purblind prophet and missed the very fount of human tears.

When I looked at Judith, I was smitten with a great pain. She had not looked so young, so fresh, so fragilely fair for many months. She wore a dress of corn-flower blue that deepened the violet of her eyes. In the ma.s.s of flax hued thistle-down that is her hair a blue argus b.u.t.terfly completed the chord of colour. There was the faintest tinge of pink in her cheek applied with delicate art. Her dress seemed made of unsubstantial dream stuff--I believe they call it chiffon--and it covered her bosom and arms like the spray of a fairy sea. She had the air of an impalpable Undine, a creation of sea-foam and sea-flower; an exquisite suggestion of the ethereal which floated beauty, as it were, into her face. I know little of women, save what these past few grievous months have taught me; but I know that hours of anxious thought and desperate hope lay behind this effect of fragile loveliness. The wit of woman could not have rendered a woman's body a greater contrast to that of her rival; and with infinite subtlety she had imbued the contrast with the deeper significance of rare and spiritual things. I know this was so. I know it was a challenge, a defiance, an ordeal by combat; and the knowledge hurt me, so that I felt like a Dathan or Abiram who had laid hand on the Ark of the Covenant (for the soul of a woman, by heaven! is a holy thing), and I wished that the earth could open and swallow me up.