Mike Fletcher Part 4

"I must go."

"No, dearest, you must not."

She looked round, taking the room in one swift circular glance, her eyes resting one moment on the crucifix.

"This is cruel of you," he said. "I dreamed of you madly, and why do you destroy my dream? What shall I do?--where shall I go?--how shall I live if I don't get you?"

"Men do not mind whom they love; even in the convent we knew that."

"You seem to have known a good deal in that convent; I am not astonished that you left it."

"What do you mean?" She settled her shawl on her shoulders.

"Merely this; you are in a young man's room alone, and I love you."

"Love! You profane the word; loose me, I am going."

"No, you are not going, you must remain." There was an occasional nature in him, that of the vicious dog, and now it snarled. "If you did not love me, you should not have come here," he said interposing, getting between her and the door.

Then she entreated him to let her go. He laughed at her; then suddenly her face flamed with a pa.s.sion he was unprepared for, and her eyes danced with strange lights. Few words were spoken, only a few ejaculatory phrases such as "How dare you?" "Let me go!" she said, as she strove to wrench her arms from his grasp. She caught up one of the gla.s.ses; but before she could throw it Mike seized her hand; he could not take it from her, and unconscious of danger (for if the gla.s.s broke both would be cut to the bone), she clenched it with a force that seemed impossible in one so frail. Her rage was like wildfire. Mike grew afraid, and preferring that the gla.s.s should be thrown than it should break in his hand, he loosed his fingers. It smashed against the opposite wall. He hoped that Frank had not heard; that he had left the chambers. He seized the second gla.s.s. When she raised her arm, Mike saw and heard the shattered window falling into the court below. He antic.i.p.ated the porter's steps on the staircase and his knock at the door, and it was with an intense relief and triumph that he saw the bottle strike the curtain and fall harmless.

He would win yet. Lily screamed piercingly.

"No one will hear," he said, laughing hoa.r.s.ely.

She escaped him and she screamed three times. And now quite like a mad woman, she s.n.a.t.c.hed a light chair and rushed to the window. Her frail frame shook, her thin face was swollen, and she seemed to have lost control over her eyes. If she should die! If she should go mad!

Now really terrified, Mike prayed for forgiveness. She did not answer; she stood clenching her hands, choking.

"Sit down," he said, "drink something. You need not be afraid of me now--do as you like, I am your servant. I will ask only one thing of you--forgiveness. If you only knew!"

"Don't speak to me!" she gasped, "don't!"

"Forgive me, I beseech you; I love you better than all the world."

"Don't touch me! How dare you? Oh! how dare you?"

Mike watched her quivering. He saw she was sublime in her rage, and torn with desire and regret he continued his pleadings. It was some time before she spoke.

"And it was for this," she said, "I left my convent, and it was of him I used to dream! Oh! how bitter is my awakening!"

She grasped one of the thin columns of the bed and her att.i.tude bespoke the revulsion of feeling that was pa.s.sing in her soul; beneath the heavy curtains she stood pale all over, thrown by the shock of too coa.r.s.e a reality. His perception of her innocence was a goad to his appet.i.te, and his despair augmented at losing her. Now, as died the fulgurant rage that had supported her, and her normal strength being exhausted, a sudden weakness intervened, and she couldn't but allow Mike to lead her to a seat.

"I am sorry; words cannot tell you how sorry I am. Why do you tremble so? You are not going to faint, say--drink something." Hastily he poured out some wine and held it to her lips. "I never was sorry before; now I know what sorrow is--I am sorry, Lily. I am not ashamed of my tears; look at them, and strive to understand. I never loved till I saw you. Ah! that lily face, when I saw it beneath the white veil, love leaped into my soul. Then I hated religion, and I longed to scale the sky to dispossess Heaven of that which I held the one sacred and desirable thing--you! My soul! I would have given it to burn for ten thousand years for one kiss, one touch of these snow-coloured hands. When I saw, or thought I saw, that you loved me, I was G.o.d. I said on reading your sweet letter, 'My life shall not pa.s.s without kissing at least once the lips of my chimera.'"

Words and images rose in his mind without sensation or effort, and experiencing the giddiness and exultation of the orator, he strove to win her with eloquence. And all his magnetism was in his hands and eyes--deep blue eyes full of fire and light were fixed upon her--hands, soft yet powerful hands held hers, sometimes were clenched on hers, and a voice which seemed his soul rose and fell, striving to sting her with pa.s.sionate sound; but she remained absorbed in, and could not be drawn out of, angry thought.

"Now you are with me," he said, "nearly mine; here I see you like a picture that is mine. Around us is mighty London. I saved you from G.o.d, am I to lose you to Man? This was the prospect that faced me, that faces me, that drove me mad. All I did was to attempt to make you mine. I hold you by so little--I could not bear the thought that you might pa.s.s from me. A s.h.i.+p sails away, growing indistinct, and then disappears in the shadows; in London a cab rattles, appears and disappears behind other cabs, turns a corner, and is lost for ever. I failed, but had I succeeded you would have come back to me; I failed, is not that punishment enough? You will go from me; I shall not get you--that is sorrow enough for me; do not refuse me forgiveness. Ah!

if you knew what it is to have sought love pa.s.sionately, the high hopes entertained, and then the depth of every deception, and now the supreme grief of finding love and losing. Seeing love leave me without leaving one flying feather for token, I strove to pluck one--that is my crime. Go, since you must go, but do not go unforgiving, lest perhaps you might regret."

Lily did not cry. Her indignation was vented in broken phrases, the meaning of which she did not seem to realize, and so jarred and shaken were her nerves that without being aware of it her talk branched into observations on her mother, her home life, the convent, and the disappointments of childhood. So incoherently did she speak that for a moment Mike feared her brain was affected, and his efforts to lead her to speak of the present were fruitless. But suddenly, waxing calm, her inner nature s.h.i.+ning through the eyes like light through porcelain, she said--

"I was wrong to come here, but I imagined men different. We know so little of the world in the convent.... Ah, I should have stayed there. It may be but a poor delusion, but it is better than such wickedness."

"But I love you."

"Love me! ... You say you have sought love; we find love in contemplation and desire of higher things. I am wanting in experience, but I know that love lives in thought, and not in violent pa.s.sion; I know that a look from the loved one on entering a room, a touch of a hand at most will suffice, and I should have been satisfied to have seen your windows, and I should have gone away, my heart stored with impressions of you, and I should have been happy for weeks in the secret possession of such memories. So I have always understood love; so we understood love in the convent."

They were standing face to face in the faint twilight and scent of the bedroom. Through the gauze blind the river floated past, decorative and grand; the great hay-boats rose above the wharfs and steamers; one lay in the sun's silver casting a black shadow; a barge rowed by one man drifted round and round in the tide.

"When I knelt in the choir I lifted my heart to the saint I loved.

How far was He from me? Millions of miles!--and yet He was very near.

I dreamed of meeting Him in heaven, of seeing Him come robed in white with a palm in His hand, and then in a little darkness and dimness I felt Him take me to His breast. I loved to read of the miracles He performed, and one night I dreamed I saw Him in my cell--or was it you?"

All anger was gone from her face, and it reflected the play of her fancy. "I used to pray to you to come down and speak to me."

"And now," said Mike, smiling, "now that I have come to you, now that I call you, now that I hold my arms to you--you the bride-elect--now that the hour has come, shall I not possess you?"

"Do you think you can gain love by clasping me to your bosom? My love, though separated from me by a million miles, is nearer to me than yours has ever been."

"Did you not speak of me as the lover of your prayer, and you said that in ecstasy the nuns--and indeed it must be so--exchange a gibbeted saint for some ideal man? Give yourself; make this afternoon memorable."

"No; good-bye! Remember your promises. Come; I am going."

"I must not lose you," he cried, drunk with her beauty and doubly drunk with her sensuous idealism. "May I not even kiss you?"

"Well, if you like--once, just here," she said, pointing where white melted to faint rose.

Mastered, he followed her down the long stairs; but when they pa.s.sed into the open air he felt he had lost her irrevocably. The river was now tinted with setting light, the bal.u.s.trade of Waterloo Bridge showed like lace-work, the gla.s.s roofing of Charing Cross station was golden, and each spire distinct upon the moveless blue. The splas.h.i.+ng of a steamer sounded strange upon his ears. The "Citizen" pa.s.sed! She was crowded with human beings, all apparently alike. Then the eye separated them. An old lady making her way down the deck, a young man in gray clothes, a red soldier leaning over the rail, the captain walking on the bridge.

Mike called a hansom; a few seconds more and she would pa.s.s from him into London. He saw the horse's hooves, saw the cab appear and disappear behind other cabs; it turned a corner, and she was gone.

CHAPTER III

Seven hours had elapsed since he had parted from Lily Young, and these seven hours he had spent in restaurants and music-halls, seeking in dissipation surcease of sorrow and disappointment. He had dined at Lubi's, and had gone on with Lord Muchross and Lord Snowdown to the Royal, and they had returned in many hansoms and with many courtesans to drink at Lubi's. But his heart was not in gaiety, and feeling he could neither break a hat joyously nor allow his own to be broken good-humouredly, nor even sympathize with d.i.c.ky, the driver, who had not been sober since Monday, he turned and left the place.

"This is why fellows marry," he said, when he returned home, and sat smoking in the shadows--he had lighted only one lamp--depressed by the loneliness of the apartment. And more than an hour pa.s.sed before he heard Frank's steps. Frank was in evening dress; he opened his cigarette-case, lighted a cigarette, and sat down willing to be amused. Mike told him the entire story with gestures and descriptive touches; on the right was the bed with its curtains hanging superbly, on the left the great hay-boats filling the window; and by insisting on the cruelest aspects, he succeeded in rendering it almost unbearable. But Frank had dined well, and as Lizzie had promised to come to breakfast he was in excellent humour, and on the whole relished the tale. He was duly impressed and interested by the subtlety of the fancy which made Lily tell how she used to identify her ideal lover while praying to Him, Him with the human ideal which had led her from the cloister, and which she had come to seek in the world. He was especially struck with, and he admired the conclusion of, the story, for Mike had invented a dramatic and effective ending.

"Well-nigh mad, drunk with her beauty and the sensuous charm of her imagination, I threw my arms about her. I felt her limbs against mine, and I said, 'I am mad for you; give yourself to me, and make this afternoon memorable.' There was a faint smile of reply in her eyes. They laughed gently, and she said, 'Well, perhaps I do love you a little.'"

Frank was deeply impressed by Mike's tact and judgement, and they talked of women, discussing each shade of feminine morality through the smoke of innumerable cigarettes; and after each epigram they looked in each other's eyes astonished at their genius and originality. Then Mike spoke of the paper and the articles that would have to be written on the morrow. He promised to get to work early, and they said good-night.

When Frank left Southwick two years ago and pursued Lizzie Baker to London, he had found her in straitened circ.u.mstances and unable to obtain employment. The first night he took her out to dinner and bought her a hat, on the second he bought her a gown, and soon after she became his mistress. Henceforth his days were devoted to her; they were seen together in all popular restaurants, and in the theatres. One day she went to see some relations, and Frank had to dine alone. He turned into Lubini's, but to his annoyance the only table available was one which stood next where Mike Fletcher was dining. "That fellow dining here," thought Frank, "when he ought to be digging potatoes in Ireland." But the accident of the waiter seeking for a newspaper forced him to say a few words, and Mike talked so agreeably that at the end of dinner they went out together and walked up and down, talking on journalism and women.

Suddenly the last strand of Frank's repugnance to make a friend of Mike broke, and he asked him to come up to his rooms and have a drink. They remained talking till daybreak, and separated as friends in the light of the empty town. Next day they dined together, and a few days after Frank and Lizzie breakfasted with Mike at his lodgings. But during the next month they saw very little of him, and this pause in the course of dining and journalistic discussion, indicating, as Frank thought it did, a coolness on Mike's part, determined the relation of these two men. When they ran against each other in the corridor of a theatre, Frank eagerly b.u.t.ton-holed Mike, and asked him why he had not been to dine at Lubini's, and not suspecting that he dined there only when he was in funds, was surprised at his evasive answers. Mistress and lover were equally anxious to know why they had not been able to find him in any of the usual haunts; he urged a press of work, but it transpired he was hara.s.sed by creditors, and was looking out for rooms. Frank told him he was thinking of moving into the Temple.

"Lucky fellow! I wish I could afford to live there."