The Book-Bills of Narcissus Part 6

Had I the pen which that same George will persist in keeping for his letters, I should venture to delight the Reader with more of his story.

One underhand hope of mine, however, for these poor hints is, that they may by their very imperfection arouse him to give the world 'the true story' of a happy home. Narcissus repeatedly threatened that, if he did not take pen in hand, he would some day 'make copy' of him; and now I have done it instead. Moreover, I shall further presume on his forbearance by concluding with a quotation from one of his letters that came to me but a few months back:--

'You know how deeply exercised the little ones are on the subject of death, and how I had answered their curiosity by the story that after death all things turn into flowers. Well, what should startle the wife's ears the other day but "Mother, I wish you would die." "O why, my dear?"

"Because I should so like to water you!" was the delicious explanation.

The theory has, moreover, been called to stand at the bar of experience, for a week or two ago one of Phyllis' goldfish died. There were tears at first, of course, but they suddenly dried up as Geoffrey, in his reflective way, wondered "what flower it would come to." Here was a dilemma. One had never thought of such contingencies. But, of course, it was soon solved. "What flower would you like it to be, my boy?" I asked.

"A poppy!" he answered; and after consultation, "a poppy!" agreed the others. So a poppy it is to be. A visit to the seedsman's procured the necessary surrept.i.tious poppy seed; and so now poor Sir Goldfish sleeps with the seed of sleep in his mouth, and the children watch his grave day by day, breathless for his resplendent resurrection. Will you write us an epitaph?'

Ariel forgive me! Here is what I sent:

'Five inches deep Sir Goldfish lies; Here last September was he laid; Poppies these, that were his eyes, Of fish-bones are these blue-bells made; His fins of gold that to and fro Waved and waved so long ago, Still as petals wave and wave To and fro above his grave.

Hearken, too! for so his knell Tolls all day each tiny bell.'

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: From a tiny privately-printed volume of deliciously original lyrics by Mr. R.K. Leather, since republished by Mr. Fisher Unwin, 1890, and at present published by Mr. John Lane.]

CHAPTER IX

THAT THIRTEENTH MAID

'Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.'-- _Merchant of Venice_.

It occurs to me here to wonder whether there can be any reader ungrateful enough to ask with grumbling voice, 'What of the book-bills?

The head-line has been the sole mention of them now for many pages; and in the last chapter, where a book was referred to, the writer was perverse enough to choose one that never belonged to Narcissus at all.'

To which I would venture to make humble rejoinder--Well, Goodman Reader, and what did you expect? Was it accounts, with all their thrilling details, with totals, 'less discount,' and facsimiles of the receipt stamps? Take another look at our first chapter. I promised nothing of the sort there, I am sure. I promised simply to attempt for you the delineation of a personality which has had for all who came into contact with it enduring charm, in hope that, though at second-hand, you might have some pleasure of it also; and I proposed to do this mainly from the hints of doc.u.ments which really are more significant than any letters or other writings could be, for the reason that they are of necessity so unconscious. I certainly had no intention of burdening you with the original data, any more than, should you accept the offer I made, also in that chapter, and entrust me with your private ledger for biographical purposes, I would think of printing it _in extenso_, and calling it a biography; though I should feel justified, after the varied story had been deduced and written out, in calling the product, metaphorical wise, 'The private ledger of Johannes Browne, Esquire'--a t.i.tle which, by the way, is copyright and duly 'entered.' Such was my attempt, and I maintain that I have so far kept my word. Because whole shelves have been disposed of in a line, and a ninepenny 'Canterbury'

has rustled out into pages, you have no right to complain, for that is but the fas.h.i.+on of life, as I have endeavoured to show. And let me say in pa.s.sing that that said copy of Mr. Rhys's Whitman, though it could not manifestly appear in his book-bills, does at the present moment rest upon his shelf--'a moment's monument.'

Perhaps it would be well, before proceeding with this present 'place in the story,' to set out with a statement of the various 'authorities' for it; as, all this being veritable history, perhaps one should. But then, Reader, here again I should have to catalogue quite a small library.

However, I will enumerate a few of the more significant ones.

'Swinburne's _Tristram of Lyonesse_, 9/-, less dis., 6/9.'

All that this great poem of 'springtide pa.s.sion with its fire and flowers' meant to Narcissus and his 'Thirteenth Maid' in the morning of their love, those that have loved too will hardly need telling, while those who have not could never understand, though I spake with the tongue of the poet himself. In this particular copy, which, I need hardly say, does not rest upon N.'s shelves, but on another in a sweet little bedchamber, there is a tender inscription and a sonnet which aimed at acknowledging how the hearts of those young lovers had gone out to that poet 'with mouth of gold and morning in his eyes.' The latter I have begged leave to copy here:--

'Dear Heart, what thing may symbolise for us A love like ours; what gift, whate'er it be, Hold more significance 'twixt thee and me Than paltry words a truth miraculous, Or the poor signs that in astronomy Tell giant splendours in their gleaming might?

Yet love would still give such, as in delight To mock their impotence--so this for thee.

'This book for thee; our sweetest honeycomb Of lovesome thought and pa.s.sion-hearted rhyme, Builded of gold, and kisses, and desire, By that wild poet whom so many a time Our hungering lips have blessed, until a fire Burnt speech up, and the wordless hour had come.'

'Meredith's _Richard Feverel_, 6/-, less dis., 4/6.'

Narcissus was never weary of reading those two wonderful chapters where Lucy and Richard meet, and he used to say that some day he would beg leave from Mr. Meredith to reprint at his own charges just those two chapters, to distribute to all true lovers in the kingdom. It would be hard to say how often he and his maid had read them aloud together, with amorous punctuation--caresses for commas, and kisses for full-stops.

'Morris' _Sigurd the Volsung_, 12/-, less dis., 9/-.'

This book they loved when their love had grown to have more of earnest purpose in it, and its first hysteric ecstasy had pa.s.sed into the more solemn ardours of the love that goes not with spring, but loves even unto the winter and beyond. It is marked all through in pencil by Narcissus; but on one page, where it opens easily, there are written initials, in a woman's hand, against this great pa.s.sage:--

'She said: "Thou shalt never unsay it, and thy heart is mine indeed: Thou shalt bear thy love in thy bosom as thou helpest the earth-folk's need: Thou shalt wake to it dawning by dawning; thou shalt sleep and it shall not be strange: There is none shall thrust between us till our earthly lives shall change.

Ah, my love shall fare as a banner in the hand of thy renown, In the arms of thy fame accomplished shall it lie when we lay us adown.

O deathless fame of Sigurd! O glory of my lord!

O birth of the happy Brynhild to the measureless reward!"

So they sat as the day grew dimmer, and they looked on days to come, And the fair tale speeding onward, and the glories of their home; And they saw their crowned children and the kindred of the kings, And deeds in the world arising and the day of better things: All the earthly exaltation, till their pomp of life should be pa.s.sed, And soft on the bosom of G.o.d their love should be laid at the last.'

And on the page facing this lies a pressed flower--there used to be two--guarded by these tender rhymes:--

'Whoe'er shall read this mighty song In some forthcoming evensong, We pray thee guard these simple flowers, For, gentle Reader, they are "ours."'

But ill has some 'gentle Reader' attended to the behest, for, as I said, but one of the flowers remains. One is lost--and Narcissus has gone away. This inscription is but one of many such scattered here and there through his books, for he had a great facility in such minor graces, as he had a neat hand at tying a bow. I don't think he ever sent a box of flowers without his fertility serving him with some rose-leaf fancy to accompany them; and on birthdays and all red-letter days he was always to be counted upon for an appropriate rhyme. If his art served no other purpose, his friend would be grateful to him for that alone, for many great days would have gone without their 'white stone' but for him; when, for instance, J.A.W. took that brave plunge of his, which has since so abundantly justified him and more than fulfilled prophecy; or when Samuel Dale took that bolder, namely a wife, he being a philosopher--incidents, Reader, on which I long so to digress, and for which, if you could only know beforehand, you would, I am sure, give me freest hand. But beautiful stories both, I may not tell of you here; though if the Reader and I ever spend together those hinted nights at the 'Mermaid,' I then may.

But to return. I said above that if I were to enumerate all the books, so to say, 'implicated' in the love of Narcissus and his Thirteenth Maid, I should have to catalogue quite a small library. I forgot for the moment what literal truth I was writing, for it was indeed in quite a large library that they first met. In 'our town' there is, Reader, an old-world inst.i.tution, which, I think, you would well like transported to yours, a quaint subscription library 'established' ever so long ago, full of wonderful nooks and corners, where (of course, if you are a member) one is sure almost at any time of the day of a solitary corner for a dream. It is a sweet provision, too, that it is managed by ladies, whom you may, if you can, image to yourself as the Hesperides; for there are three of them; and may not the innumerable galleries and spiral staircases, serried with countless shelves, cl.u.s.tered thick with tome on tome, figure the great tree, with its many branches and its wonderful gold fruit--the tree of knowledge? The absence of the dragon from the similitude is as well, don't you think?

Books, of all things, should be tended by reverent hands; and, to my mind, the perfunctory in things ecclesiastical is hardly more distressing than the service of books as conducted in many great libraries. One feels that the _librarii_ should be a sacred order, nearly allied to the monastic, refined by varying steps of initiation, and certainly celibates. They should give out their books as the priest his sacrament, should wear sacred vestments, and bear about with them the priestlike _aura_, as of divine incarnations of the great spirit of Truth and Art in whose temples they are ministrants. The next step to this ideal ministry is to have our books given out to us by women.

Though they may understand them not, they handle them with gentle courtesy, and are certainly in every way to be preferred to the youthful freckled monster with red spines upon his head, and nailed boots, 'the work of the Cyclops,' upon his feet, whose physiognomy is contorted by cinnamon-b.a.l.l.s at the very moment he carries in his arms some great Golden-lips or gentle Silver-tongue. What good sweet women there are, too, who would bless heaven for the occupation!

Well, as I said, we in that particular library are more fortunate, and two of the 'subscribers,' at least, did at one time express their appreciation of its privileges by a daily dream among its shelves. One day--had Hercules been there overnight?--we missed one of our fair attendants. Was it Aegle, Arethusa, or Hesperia? Narcissus probably knew. And on the next she was still missing; nor on the third had she returned; but lo! there was another in her stead--and on her Narcissus bent his gaze, according to wont. A little maid, with noticeable eyes, and the hair Rossetti loved to paint--called Hesper, 'by many,' said Narcissus, one day long after, solemnly quoting the Vita Nuova, 'who know not wherefore.'

'Why! do _you_ know?' I asked.

'Yes!' And then, for the first time, he had told me the story I have now to tell again. He had, meanwhile, rather surprised me by little touches of intimate observation of her which he occasionally let slip--as, for instance, 'Have you noticed her forehead? It has a fine distinction of form; is pure ivory, surely; and you should watch how deliciously her hair springs out of it, like little wavy threads of "old gold" set in the ivory by some cunning artist.'

I had just looked at him and wondered a moment. But such attentive regard was hardly matter for surprise in his case; and, moreover, I always tried to avoid the subject of women with him, for it was the one on which alone there was danger of our disagreeing. It was the only one in which he seemed to show signs of cruelty in his disposition, though it was, I well know, but a thoughtless cruelty; and in my heart I always felt that he was too right-minded and n.o.ble in the other great matters of life not to come right on that too when 'the hour had struck.'

Meanwhile, he had a way of cla.s.sifying amours by the number of verses inspired--as, 'Heigho! it's all over; but never mind, I got two sonnets out of her'--which seemed to me an exhibition of the worst side of his artist disposition, and which--well, Reader, jarred much on one who already knew what a true love meant. It was, however, I could see, quite unconscious; and I tried hard not to be intolerant towards him, because fortune had blessed me with an earlier illumination.

Pray, go not away with the misconception that Narcissus was ever base to a woman. No! he left that to Circe's hogs, and the one temptation he ever had towards it he turned into a s.h.i.+ning salvation. No! he had nothing worse than the sins of the young egoist to answer for, though he afterwards came to feel those pitiful and mean enough.

Another noticeable feature of Hesper's face was an ever-present sadness--not as of a dull grief, but as of some s.h.i.+ning sorrow, a quality which gave her face much arresting interest. It seemed one great, rich tear. One loved to dwell upon it as upon those intense stretches of evening sky when the day yearns through half-shut eyelids in the west. One continually wondered what story it meant, for some it must mean.

Watching her thus quietly, day by day, it seemed to me that as the weeks from her first coming went by, this sadness deepened; and I could not forbear one day questioning the elder Hesperides about her, thus bringing upon myself a revelation I had little expected. For, said she, 'she was glad I had spoken to her, for she had long wished to ask me to use my influence with my friend, that he might cease paying Hesper attentions which he could not mean in earnest, but which she knew were already causing Hesper to be fond of him. Having become friendly with her, she had found out her secret and remonstrated with her, with the result that she had avoided Narcissus for some time, but not without much misery to herself, over which she was continually brooding.'

All this was an utter surprise, and a saddening one; for I had grown to feel much interest in the girl, and had been especially pleased by all absence of the flighty tendencies with which too many girls in public service tempt men to their own destruction. She had seemed to me to bear herself with a maidenly self-respect that spoke of no little grace of breeding. She had two very strong claims on one's regard. She was evidently a woman, in the deep, tragic sense of that word, and a lady in the only true sense of that. The thought of a life so rich in womanly promise becoming but another of the idle playthings of Narcissus filled me with something akin to rage, and I was not long in saying some strong words to him. Not that I feared for her the coa.r.s.e 'ruin' the world alone thinks of. Is that the worst that can befall woman? What of the spiritual deflowering, of which the bodily is but a symbol? If the first fine bloom of the soul has gone, if the dream that is only dreamed once has grown up in the imagination and been once given, the mere chast.i.ty of the body is a lie, and whatever its fecundity, the soul has nought but sterility to give to another. It is not those kisses of the lips--kisses that one forgets as one forgets the roses we smelt last year--which profane; they but soil the vessel of the sacrament, and it is the sacrament itself which those consuming spirit-kisses, which burn but through the eyes, may desecrate. It is strange that man should have so long taken the precisely opposite att.i.tude in this matter, caring only for the observation of the vessel, and apparently dreaming not of any other possible approach to the sanct.i.ties. Probably, however, his care has not been of sanct.i.ties at all. Indeed, most have, doubtless, little suspicion of the existence of such, and the symbol has been and is but a selfish superst.i.tion amongst them--woman, a symbol whose meaning is forgotten, but still the object of an ignorant veneration, not unrelated to the preservation of game.

Narcissus took my remonstrance a little flippantly, I thought, evidently feeling that too much had been made out of very little; for he averred that his 'attentions' to Hesper had been of the slightest character, hardly more than occasional looks and whispers, which, from her cold reception of them, he had felt were more distasteful to her than otherwise. He had indeed, he said, ceased even these the last few days, as her reserve always made him feel foolish, as a man fondling a fair face in his dream wakes on a sudden to find that he is but grimacing at the air. This rea.s.sured me, and I felt little further anxiety. However, this security only proved how little I really understood the weak side of my friend. I had not realised how much he really was Narcissus, and how dear to him was a new mirror. My speaking to him was the one wrong course possible to be taken. Instead of confirming his growing intention of indifference, it had, as might have been foreseen, the directly opposite effect; and from the moment of his learning that Hesper secretly loved him, she at once became invested with a new glamour, and grew daily more and more the forbidden fascination few can resist.

I did not learn this for many months. Meanwhile Narcissus chose to deceive me for the first and only time. At last he told me all; and how different was his manner of telling it from his former gay relations of conquest. One needed not to hear the words to see he was unveiling a sacred thing, a holiness so white and hidden, the most reverent word seemed a profanation; and, as he laboured for the least soiled wherein to enfold the revelation, his soul seemed as a maid torn with the blus.h.i.+ng tremors of a new knowledge. Men only speak so after great and wonderful travail, and by that token I knew Narcissus loved at last. It had seemed unlikely ground from which love had first sprung forth, that of a self-wors.h.i.+p that could forgo no slightest indulgence--but thence indeed it had come. The silent service my words had given him to know that Hesper's heart was offering to him was not enough; he must hear it articulate, his nostrils craved an actual incense. To gain this he must deceive two--his friend, and her whose poor face would kindle with hectic hope, at the false words he must say for the true words he _must_ hear. It was pitifully mean; but whom has not his own hidden l.u.s.t made to crawl like a thief, afraid of a shadow, in his own house? Narcissus'

young l.u.s.t was himself, and Moloch knew no more ruthless hunger than burns in such. Of course, it did not present itself quite nakedly to him; he persuaded himself there could be little harm--he meant none.

And so, instead of avoiding Hesper, he sought her the more persistently, and by some means so far wooed her from her reticence as to win her consent to a walk together one autumn afternoon. How little do we know the measure of our own proposing! That walk was to be the most fateful his feet had ever trodden through field and wood, yet it seemed the most accidental of gallantries. A little town-maid, with a romantic pa.s.sion for 'us'; it would be interesting to watch the child; it would be like giving her a day's holiday, so much suns.h.i.+ne 'in our presence.' And so on. But what an entirely different complexion was the whole thing beginning to take before they had walked a mile. Behind the flippancy one had gone to meet were surely the growing features of a solemnity.

Why, the child was a woman indeed; she could talk, she had brains, ideas--and, Lord bless us, Theories! She had that 'excellent thing in woman,' not only a voice, which she had, too, but character. Narcissus began to loose his regal robes, and from being merely courteously to be genuinely interested. Why, she was a discovery! As they walked on, her genuine delight in the autumnal nature, the real imaginative appeal it had for her, was another surprise. She had, evidently, a deep poetry in her disposition, rarest of all female endowments. In a surprisingly few minutes from the beginning of their walk he found himself taking that 'little child' with extreme seriousness, and wondering many 'whethers.'

They walked out again, and yet again, and Narcissus' first impressions deepened. He had his theories, too; and, surely, here was the woman! He was not in love--at least, not with her, but with her fitness for his theory.

They sat by a solitary woodside, beneath a great elm tree. The hour was full of magic, for though the sun had set, the smile of her day's joy with him had not yet faded from the face of earth. It was the hour vulgarised in drawing-room ballads as the 'gloaming.' They sat very near to each other; he held her hand, toying with it; and now and again their eyes met with the look that flutters before flight, that says, 'Dare I give thee all? Dare I throw my eyes on thine as I would throw myself on thee?' And then, at last, came the inevitable moment when the eyes of each seem to cry 'O yes!' to the other, and the gates fly back; all the hidden light springs forth, the woods swim round, and the lips meet with a strange shock, while the eyes of the spirit close in a lapping dream of great peace.

If you are not ready to play the man, beware of a kiss such as the lips of little Hesper, that never knew to kiss before, pressed upon the mouth of Narcissus. It sent a chill shudder through him, though it was so sweet, for he could feel her whole life surging behind it; and was the kiss he had given her for it such a kiss as that? But he had spoken much to her of his ideas of marriage; she knew he was sworn for ever against that. She must know the kiss had no such meaning; for, besides, did she not scorn the soiled 'tie' also? Were not their theories at one in that?