The Lady Paramount

by Henry Harland

  VII

  Adrian, pink with the livelier pink of Adrian freshly tubbed andrazored, and shedding a cheerful aroma of bay-rum, regarded Anthony,across the bowlful of roses that occupied the centre of the breakfasttable, with a show of perplexity.

  In the end, thrusting forward his chin, and dropping his eyelids,whereby his expression became remote and superior, "The state of mindof a person like you," he announced, "is a thing I am totally unable toconceive."

  And he plunged his spoon into his first egg.

  "It is inexplicable, it is downright uncanny," Anthony was thinking, ashe munched his toast, "the effect she produces upon a man; the way shepursues one, persists with one. I see her, I hear her voice, herlaughter, as clearly as if she were still present. I can't get rid ofher, I can't shut her out."

  Adrian, his announcement provoking no response, spoke up.

  "I am utterly unable," he repeated, "to conceive the state of mind of aperson like you."

  "Of course you are," said Anthony, with affability.

  "I suppose," he thought, "it's because she is what they call apronounced personality,--though that does n't seem a very flatteringdescription. I suppose it's her odylic force."

  Adrian selected a second egg, and placed it in his egg-cup.

  "You live, you move, you have a sort of being," he said, as he operatedupon the egg-shell; "and, apparently, you live contented. Yet, beapprised by me, you live in the manner of the beasts that perish. Forthe whole excuse, warrant, purpose, and business of life, you treat asalien to your equation."

  "The business of life I entrust to my eminently competent man ofbusiness," said Anthony, with a bow.

  "She 's so magnificently vivid," he thought. "That white skin of hers,and the red lips, and the white teeth; that cloud of black hair, andthe sweep of it as it leaves her brow; and then those luminous, lucid,glowing, glowing eyes--that last smile of them, before she went away!She gives one such a sense of intense vitality, of withheld power, ofunknown possibilities."

  Adrian, with some expenditure of pains, extracted the spine from agrilled sardine.

  "These children of the inconstant wave," he mused, "these captives fromthe inscrutable depths of ocean--the cook ought to bone them before shesends them to table, ought n't she? _Labor et amor_. The warrant forlife is labour, and the business of life is love."

  "You should address your complaints to the cook in person," saidAnthony.

  "That's it--unknown possibilities," he thought. "She 's vivid, but sheis n't obvious. It's a vividness that is all reserves--that hints, butdoes n't tell. It's the vividness of the South, of the Italy thatproduced her,--'Italy, whose work still serves the world for miracle.'She's vivid, but not in primary colours. I defy you, for example, tofind the word for her--the word that would make her visible to one whohad never seen her."

  "They 're immensely improved by a drop or two of Worcester sauce," saidAdrian, with his mouth full. "Observe how, in the labyrinth ofdestiny, journeys end in the most romantic and improbable conjunctions.These fishlets from a southern sea--this sauce from a northernmanufacturing town."

  "And then her figure," thought Anthony; "that superb, tall, pliantfigure,--the flow of it, the spring of it,--the lines it takes when shemoves, when she walks,--its extraordinary union of strength withfineness."

  "The longest night," said Adrian, "is followed by a dawn." He droppedthree lumps of sugar into his tea-cup. "There 's a paragraph in thisweek's _Beaux and Belles_ which says that sugar in tea is quite thecorrect thing again. Thank mercy. Tongue can never tell thehankerings my sweet-tooth has suffered during the years that sugar hasbeen unfashionable.

  "Nearest neighbours though they dwell, Neighbour Tongue can never tell What Neighbour Tooth has had to dree, Nearest neighbours though they be,"

  he softly hummed. "But that's really from a poem about toothache, anddoes n't perhaps apply. Do _you_ labour? Do _you_ love?" he enquired.

  "Love is such an ambiguous term," said Anthony, with languor.

  "Yes--strength and fineness: those are her insistent notes," he wasthinking. "She is strong, strong. She is strong as a perfect younganimal is strong. Yet she is fine. She is fine as only, of allcreated beings, a fine woman can be fine--a woman delicate, sensitive,high-bred, fine in herself, and with all her belongings fine."

  "Life," said Adrian, "is a thing a man should come by honestly; a thingthe possession of which a man should justify; a thing a man shouldearn."

  "Some favoured individuals, I have heard, inherit it from theirforebears," said Anthony, as one loth to dogmatise, on the tone of amere suggestion.

  "Pish," answered Adrian, with absoluteness. "Our forebears affect mythesis only in so far as they did not forbear. At most, they touchedthe button. The rest--the adventurous, uncertain, interesting rest--wemust do ourselves. We must _earn_ our life; and then we should _spend_it--lavishly, like noble, freehanded gentlemen. Well, we earn our lifeby labour; and then, if we spend as the gods design, we spend our lifein love. I could quote Browning, I could quote Byron, I could evenquote What's-his-name, the celebrated German."

  "You could--but you won't," interposed Anthony, with haste. "It isexcellent to have a giant's strength, but tyrannous to use it like agiant."

  "The puzzling thing, however," he reflected, "is that I can't in theleast realise her as what she is. She is a widow, she has beenmarried. I can't in the least think of her as a woman who has beenmarried. Not that she strikes one exactly as a young girl,either,--she exhibits too plentiful a lack of young-girlish rawness andinsipidity,--she 's a woman, she 's a _femme faite_. But I can't thinkof her as a woman who has passed through marriage. One feels afreshness, a bloom, a something untouched, intact. One feels thepresence of certain inexperiences. And yet--well, by the card, one'sfeeling is mistaken."

  Adrian sprinkled sugar and poured cream over a plateful of big redstrawberries.

  "All this--and Heaven too," he piously murmured.

  Then, rosy face and blue eyes bright with anticipation, he tasted one.Slowly the brightness faded.

  "Deceivers!" he cried, falling back in his seat, and shaking his fistat the tall glass dish from which he had helped himself. "Fair asHyperion, false as dicers' oaths. Acid and watery--a mere sour bath.You may have them all." He pushed the dish towards Anthony. "Isuppose it's too early in the season to hope for good ones. Butthis"--he charged a plate with bread, butter, and marmalade--"thishonest, homely Scottish marmalade, this can always be depended upon tofill the crannies." And therewith he broke into song.

  "To fill the crannies, The mannie's crannies,

  Then hey for the sweeties of bonny Dundee!" he carolled lustily. "Letme see--I was saying?" he resumed. "Ah, yes, I was saying that thestate of mind of a man like you is a thing I am utterly unable toconceive. And that 's funny, because it is generally true that thelarger comprehends the less. But I look at you, and I think to myself,thinks I, 'There is a man--or at least the semblance of a man,--abreathing thing at least, with anthropoid features and dimensions,--whois never, never, never tormented by the feeling--'Now, tell me, whatfeeling do you conjecture I mean?"

  "Don't know, I 'm sure," said Anthony, without much animation.

  "'By the feeling that he ought to be bending over a sheet of paper,ruled in pretty parallels of fives, trying to embellish the same withsemi-breves and crotchets.' That is what I think to myself, thinks I;and the thought leaves me gasping. I am utterly unable to conceiveyour state of mind."

  "I shan't--barring happy accidents--see her again till Sunday; andto-day is only Friday," Anthony was brooding.

  "Apropos," he said to Adrian, "I remember your telling me that Fridaywas unlucky."

  "Tut," said Adrian. "That is n't apropos in the slightest degree. Thedifference that baffles me, I expect, is that I 've the positive, you've the negative, temperament; I 've the active, you 've the passive; I've the fertile, you 've the sterile. It's the difference between Yeaand Nay, between Willy a
nd Nilly. Serenely, serenely, you will driftto your grave, and never once know what it is to be consumed, harried,driven by a deep, inextinguishable, unassuageable craving to write asong. You 'll never know the heartburn, the unrest, theconscience-sickness, the self-abasement that I know when I 'm notwriting one, nor the glorious anguish of exhilaration when I am. I canget no conception of your state of mind--any more than a nightingalecould conceive the state of mind of a sparrow. In a sparrowish way, itmust be rather blissful--no? We artists are the salt of the earth, ofcourse; but every art knows its own bitterness, and--_il faut souffrirpour etre sel_."

  "It's the difference between egotism rampant and modesty regardant,"Anthony, with some grimness, returned. "I am content to sit in myplace, and watch the pantomime. You long to get upon the stage. Yourunassuageable craving to write a song is, in its essence, just anunassuageable craving to make yourself an object of attention. Andthat's the whole truth about you artists. I recollect your telling methat Friday was unlucky."

  "Oh, how superficial you are," Adrian plaintively protested. "A manlike me, you should understand, is meant for the world--for the world'sdelight, for mankind's wonder. And here unfortunate circumstances--mypoverty and not my will--constrain me to stint the world of its due: tolanguish in this lost corner of Nowhere, like Wamba the son of Witless,the mere professed buffoon of a merer franklin. Well, my unassuageablecraving to write a song is, in its essence, just a great, splendid,generous desire to indemnify the world. The world needs me--the worldhas me not--but the world _shall_ have me. For the world's behoof, Iwill translate myself into semi-breves and crotchets. So _there_!Besides, to be entirely frank, I can't help it. Nothing human isperfect that does not exhibit somewhere a fine inconsequence. Thus Iexhibit mine. I make music from a high sense of duty, to enrich theworld; but at the same time I make it because I can't help making it.I make it as the bee makes honey, as the Jew makes money,spontaneously, inevitably. It is my nature to,--just as it 's thenature of fire to burn, and of dairy-maids to churn. It is theinherent, ineradicable impulse of my bounteous soul."

  "You told me in so many words that Friday was unlucky," said Anthony.

  "Well, and so it is," said Adrian.

  "I don't agree with you. Friday, in my experience, is the luckiest dayof the seven. All sorts of pleasant things have happened to me onFriday."

  "That's merely because your sponsors in baptism happened to name youTony," Adrian explained. "Friday, and the still more dread thirteen,are both lucky for people who happen to be named Tony. Because why?Because the blessed St. Anthony of Padua was born on a Friday, and wentto his reward on a thirteenth--the thirteenth of June, this very month,no less." He allowed Anthony's muttered "_A qui le dites-vous_?" topass unnoticed, and, making his voice grave, continued, "But for thoseof us who don't happen to be named Tony--_unberufen_! Take a man likeme, for instance, an intellectual young fellow, with work to do, butdelicate, and dependent for his strength upon the regularadministration of sustaining nourishment. Well, Friday comes, andthere he is, for twenty-four hours by the clock, obliged to keep up, asbest he may, on fish and vegetables and suchlike kickshaws, when everyfibre of his frame is crying out for meat, red meat. And now"--hepushed back his chair--"and now, dear heart, be brave. Steel yourselfto meet adversity. A sorrow stoically borne is already half a sorrowvanquished. I must absent thee from thy felicity a while---I must bestepping." He rose, and moved, with that dancing gait of his, to thedoor. From the threshold he remarked, "If you will come to mybusiness-room about half an hour before luncheon, I shall hope to havethe last bars polished off, and I 'll sing you something sweeter thanever plummet sounded. _Lebe wohl_."

  "Yes," thought Anthony, left to himself, "barring happy accidents, Imust wait till Sunday."

  And he went into the park.

  "The nuisance," he said to Patapouf, as he released him, "the nuisanceof things happening early is that they 're just so much the less likelyto happen late. The grudge I bear the Past is based upon thecircumstance that it has taken just so much from the Future.Meanwhile, suggest the unthinking, let's enjoy the present. Butvirtually, as I need n't remind _you_, there is no such thing as thepresent. The present is an infinitesimal between two infinites. 'T isa line (a thing without breadth or thickness) moving across the surfaceof Eternity. The present is no more, by the time you have said, Thisis present. So, then, it were inordinate to hope to fall in with heragain to-day, and you and I must face an anti-climax. Be thankful wehave the memories of the morning to feed upon. And, if you desire asubject for meditation, observe how appetites are created. If we hadnot met her at all, we should not hunger and thirst in this way foranother meeting."

  He left the red collar round Patapouf's neck. The rest of the tornribbon he carefully gathered up and put in his pocket-book.