Louis Creswicke

"Love's wings are over-fleet,
And like the panther's feet
The feet of love."

The little travelling clock on his mantel struck with soft, gong-like chime; it seemed to speak from a great way off, like a person facing you, who answers your questions with an absent eye. Half-past six, and he was due from the Continent every moment. His lamp—green-shaded because his vision was weak from over-work—some soda water and a spirit stand were awaiting him on the table, and a small mass of letters and papers was congregated in front of his chair. All these were tones in the gamut of expectation that found its keynote in myself.

We had been "inseparables" before his going, and we would be so never again I felt convinced. She had absorbed him: mind, desire, future were packed in the little palm of her hand. Yet I was not vulgarly jealous. I loved Aubrey Yeldham better than I could have loved a brother, but I had seen her and had caught the reflection of his sentiment, though in a tempered degree. I had met her but once, for on the day after our chance encounter—in a verdurous Devon lane where she had lost her bearings and we had come to her assistance—I had been summoned to the bedside of a sick relative in town. Returning to the old haunts, I naturally expected to resume our fishing expeditions in the picturesque valley of the Exe, but I soon discovered Yeldham to have found other pellucid purple depths that interested him superlatively. I had watched the drama from a distance, and administered cautions with the cool pulse of an umpire. But he was past redemption. I suspected the truth when I made an impressionist sketch of her—milky complexion, dead copper chevelure and pulpy eyelids like some Greuze dreamer—and saw his greedy eyes fixed on the canvas, not daring to name a price, too delicate to crave a charitable dole. I learnt more from the attitude of reverence, almost of awe, wherewith he received the gift from my hands and hurriedly carried it to his own sanctum, hid it from me, the maker of it, as though to veil its charms from alien eye. I knew Aubrey Yeldham well, had shared many of his escapades, and winked apprehensively at others. But here I was of no use, and decided we had come to the supreme moment of life—there is always one—when we must let things slide.

Her name was Ruth Lascelles, and she was a widow; that was the sum total of our knowledge of her. She might have been twenty, but we estimated her age at twenty-five, deducing our theory from a certain fatigued languor of voice and expression that accorded ill with the girlish satin of her skin. This was arrived at on the first day of our meeting—we had not discussed her since. I had not been Yeldham's friend, his disciple, a mental sitter at his feet, without learning to walk warily where the fuse of his passions flickered. For some time there was a tacit agreement to ignore the impending danger, to talk of trivialities, wheeling round the central idea without ever settling there. But one morning when he had called at the little farm cottage where she lived and had found her flown without a word or a regret, his despair had been too much for him. The whole story rolled from his lips: his love for her, her seeming reciprocity, their wanderings in the woods, her reliant, trusting attitude—which had taught him to wish himself some knight of the Round Table and not a mere besmirched man of many passions—her flutterings of childish gaiety and sombre philosophy that had tinted her speech garishly as rainbows on thunder-clouds: he gave forth all, and asked, with an expression jejune as Sahara, what the sudden flight could mean.

I was so out of it, as the phrase is, that I could volunteer small elucidation: that she was a coquette of the first order seemed the most feasible solution, and I offered it. He derided the notion—it was apparently so frivolous a venture that it failed to anger him—he never set hands on the cudgels for defence. "She is not shallow," he had merely said, and his poor brain had tackled the enigma so often and to so little purpose that its purport had become an unmeaning and vacuous reiteration. But one day, after we had returned to town and were working well in harness, he with his book, I with my illustrations for it, he burst out afresh.

"She unintentionally let out where she lived: it is a little village on the coast of France. She must have returned."

"Well?" I said, suspending my work and pretending to extract a hair from the fine point of my drawing-pen.

"Well," he burst out, "the world is our oyster, and if we shirk opening it we can't hope to filch pearls!"

"That means?" I hinged expectantly.

"That means, in plain words, that I don't intend to give up the biggest pearl that God ever sent to make a man rich."

"You intend to follow her?" I questioned—needlessly, indeed, for his kindling eye contained a fire of decision and energy that for fourteen days, since the sorry one of her disappearance, had smouldered.

"Yes, follow her, make her love me by every art, divine or devilish—I don't care which, so long as she loves me—and keep her till the same grave closes over us."

And he went.

He had been absent but a week when I received the telegram announcing his intended return. I stood—with my back against the mantel, and hands warming themselves behind my sheltering coat-tails—eager to recognise his rampant mount of the stairs, to feel the clasp of his hand or its thump on my shoulder-blade, and hear his cheery "Congratulate me, old fellow!" that I knew must come. A cab stopped outside, and a key turned in the lock. Then a slow, heavy tread ascended. We met in the passage. There was no need for more than a glance at him to abridge the exuberance of welcome that had bubbled to my lips. I settled with the cabman, and in a cowardly fashion lingered unduly outside among the rugs and the travelling impedimenta. I felt somehow that he would prefer to come face to face with his home in silence. He drank a pretty stiff dose of brandy before sitting down, and moved the lamp away from his eyes.

"Letters," I indicated.

"Bother letters! Open them or throw them in the fire."

I did neither, but transferred them to his bureau. Then, seeing he was disinclined for conversation, I relit my old briar pipe that had been suffered to go out, and lolled in an arm-chair facing the fender. Presently I surveyed him from the side of an eye. His chin was sunk on his chest, he was staring at his boots with the blank look of a gambler who has staked his last. There was something in his attitude that made me wish myself a dog or a woman, that I might lick, or croon, or croodle some softness into that stony mask. The silence was so long—so pregnant with unsyllabled anguish—that at last I closed a warm hand over his fingers as they clasped the arm-end of his chair.

"Well?"

"Well," he said, huskily, starting a little from his coma and poking a coal with the toe of his boot, "it's over."

"So I suppose; and the pearl was not——"

"Not for my handling," he interrupted. "I knew you'd think something hard of her, but you won't, you won't when I tell you——"

He stretched his hand to his glass and emptied it before continuing.

"It came about sooner than I intended—the horizon was so serene I wanted to lay-to for a bit—but it was no use. We were talking of something—I forget what—and I made a quotation. You know the chap who said, 'Show me a woman's clothes at different periods of her life and I will tell you her history'?"

"Yes; I forget his name, but I think it was a Frenchman."

"Well, I quoted him. Pretended to a like perspicacity: it was a sneaking, cowardly ruse to know more of her."

"Had she told you nothing?"

"All this week I had known no more than what we both knew or surmised—that there was a secret panel somewhere."

"And in your tapping for hollows——?"

"The spring flew; yes, but not as you suppose. I pretended that a sight of even a few of her past dresses might suggest a fragmentary romance, though of course she was too young for histories such as were meant by the originator of the idea. She is only twenty-four," he parenthesised, "was married at nineteen; I learnt that."

"Well?"

"She snapped at my offer—was almost ardent in her wish to test me.

"'I could show you the most important dresses I have worn in the last seven years,' she said. 'I used to clothe myself in gowns to match my moods at one time,' she added.

"I saw myself face to face with the last fence, and baulked. I began backing out. There were soft places, I could not tell how deep or how soft, beyond, and I was nervous.

"'Come,' she urged, spurring with almost excited insistence, 'if you outline with the smallest correctness I will supply the lights and shades truthfully.'

"She said the last words with pathetic emphasis that frightened me.

"I determined to change the subject. Caught the little finger of her left hand and kissed it. Did I tell you she had never shaken hands with me with her right—that she had explained she kept it for secular and the other for sacred use? I kissed it, in the centre of her palm, and her body curled like a sensitive plant with the warmth of my lips. I blushed for having doubted her purity or her love."

He buried his head in his hands and seemed disinclined to reveal more. But after a long pause he began afresh.

"I'm telling you everything—exactly as it happened—that you may reverence her. She's too clean and transparent to be clouded by vulgar doubt," he said, rather to himself than to me.

"She insisted on my accompanying her to a sparsely-furnished room," he went on. "The walls were fitted with hooks and slides to improvise a wardrobe.

"'I have kept some of my gowns since I was a girl,' she sighed.

"'Those, I suppose, that were episodic?' I affected to laugh to waive her seriousness.

"'Oh, the everyday ones were thrown away—worn out: these were most of them connected with'—she hesitated—'eventful occasions.'

"I again wavered—allusions to these eventful occasions seemed to portend grief to her and pain incidentally to me.

"I caught her wrist as it turned the handle of the wardrobe door, and remonstrated. 'I refuse to see them; I know nothing of clothes and I'm not a detective, I won't pry into your past secrets, either of sorrow or of joy.'

"Her hand shook in my clasp.

"'Don't stop me,' she cried, imperatively. 'Help me—I want you to know them.'

"'So be it,' I said, and pushed back the door. Then she suddenly flung herself in front of it, between me and the row of dainty frocks and shimmering laces. She looked like Cassandra—in a soft, yellowy flannel gown with loose sleeves falling away from her pink arms that blushed with the heaving blood in her warm breasts—like Cassandra guarding the gate of a citadel, though her lips said in a tone richer than wine, sweeter than music, 'Kiss me first.'"

There was a long pause—Yeldham sat blankly staring at the coals, and I gazed intently into the mists of nicotine that curled upwards to the ceiling. Through them I could conjure a vision of her bronzed coronal and Aubrey's massive muscularity, and could picture her glowing arms around his neck—a convolvulus entwining a Gothic column.

"There are some kisses," he said presently, "that are worth the whole sum of human pleasure. Pleasure! Faugh!—a rotten word—belonging to those who only half live!"

He handled a cigarette mechanically and lit it.

"Well," he continued, "the first dress was white. A virginal thing of simple gauze and flummery, with a frontage of puffings to make up for bust development. Quite a girl's dress. Women, you know, are less generous in the matter of—chiffon, don't they call it?—and more so in the matter of flesh. It was her debÛt dress—I supposed—but she contradicted.

"'No,' she explained, 'not quite that. One's debÛt is a hazy affair: all excitement, wonder, blush, and clumsiness, with little or no enjoyment. Yet how many of us would give the long, grey end of life for that first night's dappling of peach bloom? It was the frock I wore on the evening I first met my husband.'

"She spoke his name with a dull accent of grief, and I buried myself amongst the flippery. Her kiss was moist on my lips, and I had no taste for allusions to the dead man.

"The next thing was a riding habit—torn across the skirt.

"'A cropper,' I remarked; 'and enjoyed, or this memento would scarcely be here?'

"'That,' she allowed, sadly, 'is a natural inference—correct in this case, but not in all.' I glanced hurriedly along the line for relics of crape—but she resumed my enlightenment. 'This was a souvenir of a grand day's hunting and a broken ankle.'

"'And someone?' I hinted.

"'Yes; George—my husband—carried me home.'

"I turned abruptly to a party frock—the colour of a rose. There was a green patch on the right breast—the blurr of crushed flowers.

"'No occasion to state what this means,' I snapped irritably. I was seized with a desire to close the wardrobe on these trophies of conquest.

"'No,' she said, with a quiver of the lips, 'we were married soon after.'

"I threw myself into an arm-chair in the sulks, but she moved on to show another gown—a bed or invalid gown—worn and faded.

"'An illness,' I said; 'you had no strength left for coquetry?'

"'Puerperal fever,' she explained. 'My baby died, and my brain—it seemed to get paroxysms of depression and exaltation. Don't you think that a supernatural power ordains our moods, shifts the evenness of balance, makes us sometimes irresponsible?'

"There was a lambent excitement in her manner, which was usually gentle, almost lethargic.

"'We can't be responsible for our brains in illness, particularly fever. But you recovered?' I said, pointing to some fine azure drapery encrusted with Japanese gold.

"'I recovered; yes, but I never wore that.'

"'It belonged to someone you loved?'

"'It was mine,' she said, 'and was worn by a woman I hated. She borrowed it one night after coming over in the rain; she used to attend me devotedly during my illness.'

"'Yet you hated her?' I asked, taking my cue from the curl of her lip.

"'Not then. In those days I thought men were true—George truest of all—and women good.'

"I smiled, but she was quite serious.

"'In this way;' she explained, 'I imagined that if they sinned, it was either for sheer love or for bare life.'

"I looked down at the gold storks on the heavy eastern silk, and said, 'And when did you change your opinion?'

"'When I hung away this gown, and determined it should never touch me.'

"'This woman showed you a new type?'

"'Yes,' she replied, very simply, 'she neither loved nor starved.'

"For a long time the poor girl remained mute, staring at the ill-fated blue garment, and one of white cambric that hung the last on the hooks. I rose to put my arm round her, to break the skein of unpleasant associations, but she moved away, and said in a hard, almost defiant, voice:—

"'There is one more; tell me its tale if you can, and if not——'

"She paused while I took the fine lace and lawn into my fingers; it seemed a summer dress, scarcely crushed; in front, however, and on the sleeve was a splash of dull red-brown.

"'Paint?' I suggested, 'or blood. An accident, perhaps?' and in questioning I met her eyes.

"'Don't, don't!' I cried, 'don't speak!' I flung myself back in the chair, and covered my face to avoid the sight of hers—the expression of horror that was staring from it.

"'I will, I must speak. Yes, blood; his blood. Oh!' she exclaimed, standing in front of me in that Cassandra-like attitude I had noticed before, 'I can see it now. George had gone to the country—so he had said—and I, to pass the time, dined with an uncle at Bignards. You know the room—the thousand lights and loaded tables, the chink of glass and glow of silver—the gay and brilliant company that is always there? We dined, and were leaving afterwards for the Opera. My uncle passed out first, and I was about to follow him, when, at a little table a deux, I saw George and her; George looking down, down into her eyes and her bosom, with a hot red flush in his cheeks, and a lifted wine-glass in his hand. I don't know what happened; I burst between them, flung the glass from his fingers, and then——'

"I thought she must scream, but only a gasp escaped her. She looked at something on the ground and added in an awed, strangely intense voice, 'He was dead!'

"The tone compelled me to her side; a torrent of agony seemed frozen at her lips.

"'Hush! Hush!' I implored. 'Your brain was deranged: you had been ill——'

"I had recovered. Did you never read of the Reymond affair? I am that miserable woman. Lucky, some people have called me, because in France they are human and class such deeds as crimes passionels.'

"My words I cannot remember. They were violent reiterations of love, assurances that I had read and recalled the catastrophe—the fatal result of a glass splint probing an artery—and had pitied her before I knew her. I protested, raved, threatened, vowed I had come with the one object of linking my life to hers, and that now, more than ever, my mind was fixed.

"But she remained cold, almost severe. 'You remember,' she said, 'how I fled from you to spare myself a Tantalus torture—a hungering for spiritual peace, a thirsting for rare devotion which you seemed to be offering with laden hands?'

"'Your longings must have been slight!' I scoffed, ungenerously.

"'Listen,' she cried, still standing rigid, though the thrilling tone of her voice confessed her emotion. 'The verdict of acquittal was merely a doom to perpetual remorse. "A life for a life," was cried to me from even the day-break cheeping of the birds. I thought to make atonement by fasting and prayer: I hoped for it in attending the stricken—walking hand-in-hand with disease. On stormy nights I fancied I might save some drowning soul from wreck; earn an innocent life at the cost of my own; I was ready—craving of God the hour and the opportunity, but it never came. I have knelt and starved, I have nursed the sick to health, I have rescued a child from the depths, and yet I live!'

"I clutched her gown, kissed it, abjured her to leave her theories of atonement with Heaven, and trust her future and its serenity to me. But she put me aside.

"'Oh, Aubrey, be merciful—spare me all you can, for I am like a pilgrim who faints in sight of the Great Road. I know now that it is not the pulse of life, but the colour and the scent of it that make one's sacrifice. I believe that every guilty soul must have his moment of high opportunity—of expiation, and this is mine. You are brave, you are great, you are generous. Shall you tempt me—and stay; or will you save me—and go?'"

Poor Yeldham's voice broke to a hoarse whisper, and I laid a sympathetic hand upon his knee.

"And you, Aubrey, you went?"

"I am here," he answered, with a groan that was more pitiful than tears.