The King of Alsander Part 11

Peronella, a few moments later, looking up, saw that his eyes had wandered, that the little book was on the floor, and that his face expressed deep thought. One does not often see people thinking in Alsander, and Peronella wondered if it hurt. Coming to the conclusion that it must be uncomfortable to wear such a face, she got up and went to stand by Norman's chair. Such a domestic scene has many an artist of Holland painted to please the quiet burghers of The Hague. Norman kissed her somewhat mechanically, and without that intense devotion and fiery rapture to which she was accustomed.

"What have you been reading that interests you so much and makes you kiss me in that stupid way?" she cried.

"It is a little Latin book I brought with me from England."

"In Latin? What's it all about? Is it very dull?"

"Sit on my knee and I will tell you all about it. No, don't ruffle my hair, but attend to lessons. I was reading about a great G.o.ddess who rose up from the sea, whose robe was so black that it shone...."

"But I thought she was quite naked."

"Who?"

"The G.o.ddess who came out of the foam."

"Why, who has been telling about the G.o.ddess who rose from the foam?"

"Father Algio in one of his Lent sermons told us a great deal about her."

Father Algio was an old monk with whom Norman had talked once or twice: a gentle soul, but with an odd fire lurking about his eyes. One realized that if roused by the trumpet of the Church he would have marched like a Crusader to uttermost Taprobane, fighting for the Lord.

"What had he to say about the Lady Aphrodite?"

"Aphrodite, yes, that was her name. How clever you are! Oh, the priest said that he thought the reason why we were so given to the sins of the flesh was that we were of the old Greek blood, and had never forgotten the wors.h.i.+p of this lady who came from the sea."

"What an intelligent priest it is! O Peronella, you are a true daughter of Aphrodite."

"Tell me about her, Normano. She was the G.o.ddess of Love!"

"Yes, and she has a son called Cupid and is drawn in a chariot by violet-throated doves. Also, Peronella, she has a little silver broom, with which she drives away the cobwebs from a man's soul when he has read too many books."

"And when did she wear the s.h.i.+ning black?"

"O! this book is not about Aphrodite, it is about Isis, an Egyptian G.o.ddess."

"Egyptian? That must be interesting. Was she as beautiful as Aphrodite?

Tell me all about her."

"There are different sorts of beauty. Aphrodite was a graceful, careless and happy woman, rather like you to look at, and very much like you in character."

"How charming of you to say so!"

"While Isis had all Nature to manage, and the moon and the sea. She was a terrible G.o.ddess, with snakes in her hair, and a great disc between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Men loved her none the less; she was the spirit of all Nature, and required purity and endurance from her wors.h.i.+ppers."

"Purity and endurance! And snakes in her hair! Aphrodite must have been far more pleasant, especially if she was like me. She was the patroness of our city, the Father said; and Dr Sforelli wrote to the papers once to say that the image of the Virgin in the Cathedral Church was a heathen statue that some King put up there and that clothes had been made for it later. I know that because Father Algio was so furious at the time that he preached three sermons against the Jews. But why do you read such rubbish?"

Norman was irritated by the naveness of the remark, and still more irritated with himself for being irritated.

"What an a.s.s I am," he said to himself, "to talk to a pretty girl about the Cla.s.sics, and what a much larger a.s.s to trouble what she thinks!"

Norman had to learn that education makes prigs of all of us, whether we will or no. Of wise and learned men only the truly great can keep their characters free of priggishness, and even then, what of Marcus Aurelius and William Wordsworth and John Ruskin? What even of Olympian Goethe?

And there she was, s.h.i.+ning, s.h.i.+ning.

"You mean," said Norman, "why do I read such rubbish when I have you to look at?"

And still Peronella shone.

"The book of your eyes is the best book," said Norman.

Romance even in her moment could not so fool him that he did not wish he could have said "the book of your soul."

Peronella shone, and, by an instinct, shone in silence.

"You are the prettiest girl I have ever seen," said Norman.

And the sun shone on Peronella.

Then though indeed for a moment more Norman heard the voice of caution, it was but a voice fading far away. Some arguments against caution ran through his mind--pompous self-depreciation and some inverted sn.o.bbery about "good enough for a grocer boy." Then the petty arguments were needed no longer: his mind faded and went out, and he leapt upon her like a G.o.d from Olympus on some not reluctant spirit of wood or water.

He pressed her to him till he felt as if every inch of the fiery contact were complete, and he forgot whole oceans of civilization in a moment.

That is what education is made for, some might say, it gives us more to forget and more to abandon in crucial moments of love or heroism.

He kissed her all round her burning face. He kissed the soft skin behind her ear where first he kissed her in the dawn--in the best and earliest hour of all the golden days. He kissed her smooth and naked arms that bound his neck like a silver chain. He set all the snow of her shoulder afire with kisses, and on her mouth he forgot the wise advice of Browning and gave her the bee's kiss first.

The maddening sun still shone on Peronella, on her soft dishevelled robe whence gleamed what a man might take for a red rosebud; on her dark hair with the hyacinthine shadows where a man might see all the stars that s.h.i.+ne in a Syrian night--on her cheek and throat and her silver arms--but not on her eyes, for, heavy with pa.s.sion, they were all but closed.

On Norman, too, shone that great and primitive Ball of Fire--on Norman, as bright an Adonis as ever ran riot in a gallant tale.

But when they paused for breath, as even the bravest lovers must, and sat together on the little blue divan that graced the barren room; when Peronella's lips were free to speak, and Norman's mind was free to meditateif only for a brief, sharp, cruel moment--how swiftly went the sun behind a cloud!

"When will you marry me?" said Peronella, "and will you take me to England? O, say you will take me to England, Normano, and when you drive me round in your carriage all the world will say, 'That woman cannot be of our town; she is the most beautiful woman that we have ever seen.'"

"Darling," said Norman, "let me think of this moment, of nothing but this moment, and always of this moment," and he kissed her again.

But the sun shone no more on Peronella! And her lover was not thinking only of the moment. He was thinking of his life. Her pretty words pierced him like little darts of ice, and all the comminations of the sages could not have frightened him more than the maiden's innocent speech.

He saw in his clear-sighted panic that here was an end of all bright dreams save this one: and he knew how soon this dream would fade. He saw Peronella unhappy--a Peronella who could not be afforded a carriage--sulking behind the counter of the Bon Marche, in the rain. He saw how her beauty would fade away in England, swiftly, in a few years--and all in a moment she seemed as she sat there to grow old and tired before him, wasting away beneath the low, dark northern skies. He judged her character with Minoan rightness. He knew she would always be a child, always be silly, querulous, unfaithful, pa.s.sionate: he knew, above all, how soon she would kill that spark in him that made him different from other men--that spark the poet bade him cherish. And he feared she would bore him at breakfast every morning of his life.

Ah! Peronella was good enough--nay, a prize beyond all dreams!--for a Blaindon grocer: he knew that. But all the brilliant fantasies and conquering ambitions which his heart kept so secret that he would not have spoken of them to his old friend (are there not wild miracles which we all, even the sanest of us, hope will happen for our benefit and glory?), all these hidden desires and insane fancies came beating upon the doors of his soul.

Had he been a southerner himself, of course he would have taken the girl and left her at his pleasure, the moment the love-glow faded and the romance grew stale. Her body was his for a kiss, for a smile, at the worst for a traitor promise ora roseleaf he. But he was an Englishman--and perhaps only Englishmen can fully understand why Norman, for all that the thought quivered in his mind, withstood, as we say in our canting phrase, temptation.

For my part, I think the phrases we use, specially in books, are canting enough, and the foreigners rightly scorn us. In no tale since _Tom Jones_ have we had an honest Englishman who makes love because it is jolly and because he doesn't care. With what a pompous gravity and false seriousness do we talk, we English men of letters, of a little lovemaking which in France they pa.s.s with a jest and a smile. Think how our just and righteous novelists fulminate against the miscreants of their own creation. Think of Becky Sharp and her devilish intrigues, of Seaforth and his vile deceitfulness. For Thackeray, the Irregular Unionist (if so we may style those easy livers) is a scourge of high society: for d.i.c.kens, he is an unG.o.dly scoundrel, a scourge of low society; for Thomas Hardy, he is a n.o.ble fellow disregarding the shackles of convention; while the late George Meredith invariably punishes the amorous by describing them as intellectual failures. To-day Mr Shaw would consider Lovelace disreputable owing to his lack of interest in social problems, while the pale Nietzscheans would wors.h.i.+p him with ecstatic gasps as a monstrous fine blonde beast. Our popular novelists are entirely unaware that such horrible scoundrels exist, and our legislators will shortly pa.s.s a law which will enable all offenders against monogamy to be flogged. Their agitation will be called a "revival of the old Puritan spirit," and their law will be applied with rigour to the lower cla.s.ses. The French, I say, call us filthy hypocrites.

And yet the accusation, if levelled against our race and not only against our writers, is not a true one, however plausible. We _are_ more restrained than other races, and that neither because we are less pa.s.sionate nor because we are more timorous. Our athletic youths are purer--do not merely say they are purer, than the diminutive young men abroad. It is really true there is a special kind of n.o.bility-and generosity in the way our gentlemen treat women. There is something in our race that makes us different from other nations. Call our severe principles a fear of convention, an outworn chivalry, if you like; you have not accounted for all cases; perhaps it is true that an Englishman is more likely than any other European to love a woman deeply enough to be content with her for ever. At all events, it should be remarked how those Englishmen who through education or travel have most tolerance for the sins of others and most opportunity for sinning themselves seldom lose their own traditional scruples. And that is why (to come back to our hero) Norman, who would never have dreamed of blaming Tom Jones for his jolly conduct, and who had read with zeal and appreciation novelists of France who held the most scandalous theories concerning the unimportance of it all, was nevertheless unable to make love to a girl whom he intended to desert. Besides, it struck him, the girl had never yet yielded to a lover. For him the dilemma was clear: he must marry this girl or leave her, and the thought came over him like that

One clear nice Cool squirt of water o'er the bust, The right thing to extinguish l.u.s.t.