CHAPTER IV
THE QUALITY OF MERCY
That night I went to my bedroom and pulled open the top of anold-fashioned desk standing in the corner. Except for this desk therewas not another unnecessary piece of furniture in the apartment, for Ilike a cell-like place to sleep. I consider that fresh air and a clearconscience ought to be the chief adjuncts--for a cluttered-up,luxurious bedroom always reminds me of Camille--and tuberculosis.
"And all this fuss about a few little faded wisps of paper!"
I sat down before the desk, after I had loosed my hair--which is thatvery, very black, that is the Hibernian accompaniment to blueeyes--and had slipped my slippers on.
"You have put me to considerable trouble to-day, Lady Frances."
Her portrait was hanging there--a small, cabinet-sized picture, in abattered gold frame. Her lover had succeeded in making her face oncanvas very beautiful--with the exaggerated beauty of eyes and mouthwhich all portraits of that period show. Her brow was fine andthoughtful, irradiating the face with intelligence, yet I never lookedat her without having a feeling that I was infinitely wiser than she.
Isn't it queer that we have this feeling of superiority over thepeople in old portraits--just because they are dead and we are living?We open an ancient book of engravings, and say: "Poor little MaryShelley! Simple little Jane Austen! Naughty little NellGwynne!"--There's only one pictured lady of my acquaintance who smilesdown my latter-day wisdom as being a futile upstart thing. I can'tpity her! Oh, no! Nor endure her either, for she's Mona Lisa!
I had always had this maternal protectiveness in my attitude towardLady Frances Webb, and to-night it was so keen that I could havetucked her in bed and told her fairy tales to soothe away thetrembling fright she must have endured all that day. Instead of doingthis, however, I satisfied myself with reading some of the lettersover again. Isn't it a pity that above every writing-desk devoted tointer-sex correspondence there is not a framed warning: "BeyondPlatonic Friendship Lies--Alimony!"
Anyway, Lady Frances and James Christie tried the medium ground for awhile. Over in a large pigeonhole, far away from the rest, was apacket of letters tied with a strong twine. They were the uninterestingones, because they were _muzzled_. The handwriting was the same asthat of the others--dainty, last-century chirography, as delicate andcurling as a baby's pink fingers--but I never read them, for I don'tcare for muzzled things. Gossip about Lady Jersey--MarlboroughHouse--the cold-blooded ire of William Lamb--all this held but littlecharm--compared with the other.
"Not you--not to-night," I decided, pushing them aside quickly. "I'vegot to have good pay for my pains of this day!"
I sought another compartment, where a batch huddled together--acarefully selected batch. They were as many, and as clinging in theircontact with one another, as early kisses. I took up the first one.
"Dear Big Man"--it began.
"It has been weeks and weeks now since I have seen you! If it were notthat you lived in that terrible London and I in this lonely country, Ishould be too proud to remind you of the time, for I should expect youto be the one to complain.
"Surely it is because of this that I now hate London so! It keeps thisknowledge of separation--this sense of dreary waiting--from burninginto your heart, as it does into mine!
"There you are kept too busy to think--but here I can do nothingelse!--Or perhaps I am quite wrong, and it is not a matter of Londonand Lancashire, after all, but the more primal one of your being aman, and my being a woman! _Do_ I love the more? I wonder? And yet, Idon't think that I care much! I am willing to love more abjectly thanany woman ever loved before--if you care for me just a little inreturn."
(I always felt _very_ wise and maternal at this point.)
"You were an awful goose, Lady Frances!" I said. "This is a mistakethat _I_ have never made!"
"Still, I am tormented by thoughts of you in London," the letter kepton. "I think of you--there--as a lion. It presses down upon me, thisrecollection that you are James Christie, the great artist, and theonly release from the torture is when I go alone into the library andsit down before the fire. The two chairs are there--those two thatwere there that day--and then I can forget about the lion.'Jim--Jim!' I whisper--'just my _lover_!'
"Then your face comes--it has to come, or I could never be good! Yourrugged face that speaks of great forests which have been yourhome--the fierce young freedom which has nurtured you--and theglorious uplift you have achieved above all that is small and weak!
"You have asked me a thousand times why I love you, but I have neverknown what to say--because I love you for so many things--until now,when I have nothing but memories--and the ever-present sight of yourabsent face. And now I don't know why I love you, but I know what Ilove best about you. Shall I tell you--though of course you knowalready! It is not your talent--wonderful as it is--for there havebeen other artists; nor your terrible charm with its power to lurewomen away from duty--for England is full of fascinating men; nor yoursweetness--and I think the first time I saw you smile I sounded thedepths of this--it is not any of these, dear heart! Not any of these!I love best the strength of you which you use to control thecharm--the untamed force of your personality which makes your talentseem just an incident--and the big, _big_ virility of you!
"Do you think for a moment that you look like an artist?Half-civilized you? Why, you are a woodsman, dear love--but not ahunter! You could never kill living things for the joy of seeing themdie!
"You look as if you had spent all your life in the woods, doing hardtasks patiently--a woodcutter, or a charcoal burner! Ah, a charcoalburner! A man who has had to grip life with bared hands and wrest hisbread from grudging circumstances. This is what you are, Jim, to myheart's eyes. You are a primal creature--simple-souled, great-bodied,and your mind is given over to naked truth.
"But all the time you are a famous artist--and London's idol! Yourstudio in St. James's Street is the lounging-place for curleddarlings! The hardest task that your hands perform is over the uglyfeatures of a fat duchess!--How can you, Jim? Why don't you come away?You are a man first, an artist afterward--and it is the man that Ilove!
"And, Jim, _do_ you know how much I love you? Do you know how yourface leads me on?--It is your face I must have now, darling. _Portraitof the Artist, by Himself_, is a title I have often smiled over,wondering how a man could be induced to paint his own features, butnow I know! It is always because some woman has so clamorouslydemanded it--a woman who loved him! What else can so entirelysatisfy--and when will you send it to me?"
When I came to the end I was sorry, for I had such a way of getting enrapport with her sentiments that I eyed the next express wagon Ipassed, eagerly, to see if it could possibly be bringing the _Portraitof the Artist, by Himself_!
And on this occasion I reread a portion of the letter.
"Your face--your rugged face--or I could never be good!"
The picture of a rugged face was haunting me, and after a moment asudden thought came to me.
"Why, that's what _I_ should like!"
I had the grace to feel ashamed, of course, especially as I recalledhow mother and Guilford had tormented me that afternoon to know why Iwouldn't marry--and I found the answer in this sudden discovery.Still, that didn't keep me from pursuing the subject.
"A rugged face--great forests--fierce freedom--glorious uplift!--Oh,Man! Man! Where are you--and where is your great forest?--That'sexactly what I want!"
I turned back to the desk, after a while, and still allowing my mindto circle away from the business at hand somewhat, I drew out anotherletter. It was short--and troubled. The dear, little, lady-likewriting ran off at a tangent.
"Yes, I have seen the picture! Next to Murillo's _Betrothal of St.Catherine_,--the face is the loveliest thing I have ever seen oncanvas.
"Of course it is idealized--yet so absurdly _like_ that they tell meall Mayfair is staring! This talk--this stirring-up of what has beensleeping--will make it a thousand times harder for us ever to see eachother, yet I
am glad you did it!
"They are saying--Mayfair--that your 'making a pageant of a bleedingheart' is as indelicate as Caroline Lamb's _Glenarvon_! If people aregoing to be in love wickedly at least they ought not to write booksabout it--nor paint pictures of it!... Oh, beloved, let us pray thatwe may always keep bitterness out of our portraits of each other!"
The letter burned my fingers, for the pen marks were quick andjagged--like electric sparks--and I felt the pain that had sent themout; so I turned back to others of the batch--others that I knewalmost by heart, yet always found something new in.
"I don't know that it's such an enviable state, after all, this beingin love," I mused. "It seems to me it consists of--quite a mixture!But, of course, it will take Heaven itself to solve the problem of athornless rose!"
I ran my finger over the edges of the improvised envelopes, heavilysealed and bearing complicated foreign stamping. There were dozens ofthem--many only the common garden variety of love-letters, long-drawnout, confidential, reminiscent or hopeful, as the case might be--and afew which sounded at times almost light-hearted.
"When I say that I think of you all the time I am not so original asmy critics give me credit for being, dear heart," she wrote in one."Nothing else in the annals of love-making is so trite as this, butwhen I explain how persistently your image is before me, howintricately woven with every thought of the future--how inseparablylinked with every vision of happiness--you will know that mine is nolight nor passing attachment.
"If I give you one foolish example of this will it bore you? I'vewritten you before, I believe, that this spring I have been outdoorsall the time--riding or driving about the country, because the madrestlessness of thinking about you drives me out. In this house, inthese gardens, _you_ are so constantly present that I can do nothingbut remember--then I go away, hoping to forget--and what happens?--Igo into a castle--a place where you have never been, perhaps--andbefore I can begin talking with any one, or think of any sensiblething to say the thought comes to me: 'How well the figure of my loverwould fit in with all this grandeur! How naturally and easily he wouldswing through these great rooms!'
"Then, early some mornings I ride into the village--past cottages thatlook so humble and happy that I feel my heart stifling with longing topossess one of them--and _you_! 'How happy I could be living there,' Ithink, 'but--how tremendously tall and stalwart Jim would look comingin through this low doorway, as I called him to supper!'
"Then I spend hours and hours planning the real home I want us tohave, dear love of mine. I don't care much whether it is a castle or acottage, just so it has you in it--and all around it must be the sightof distant hills! These for _your_ artist's soul!
"You and a hundred distant hills, Jim! Then days--and nights, andnights and days--and summers and winters of joy!
"Some time this will come to pass--it must--and we shall call itheaven! And we shall rejoice that we were strong to keep the faiththrough the days of trial and longing so that we could reach it and beworthy of it.
"And, when this shall come, I can never know fear again--fear thatLondon will make you cease to love me--that some other woman may gainpossession of you--that the artist in you may crush out and starve thelover. There will be but one thought of fear then, and that will bethat you may die and leave me, but this will not be hopeless, for Itoo can die!
"Oh, do you remember that first day--that wonderful, anguished,bewildering first day--then that night when I kissed you? When I thinkof sickening fear I always remember that time. Two weeks before theLondon newspapers had chronicled your visit to Colmere Abbey 'to paintthe portrait of the novelist, Lady Frances Webb,' but you weredeceiving the newspapers, for you had lost your power to paint!
"It was quite early in the morning of that eighth or ninth day ofblessed dalliance, when the canvas still showed itself accusinglybare, that you threw down your brush and declared you were going backto London, 'because--because Colmere Abbey had robbed your hands oftheir power.'
"And what did I do when you told me this terrible thing? I said,wickedly and without shame, 'Would you go away and leave me all alonein idleness?'
"'Idleness?' you repeated, pretending not to understand.
"'Neither can I do any work--since you came to Colmere!'
"You stood quite still beside the easel for a breathless moment, then:
"'Do _I_--keep _you_--from working?' you asked.
"Your face tried to look sorry and amazed, but the triumph showedthrough and glorified your dear eyes.
"'Then certainly I must go away--at once--to-day,' you kept on, butyou came straight across the room and placed your hands upon myshoulders. 'Just this once--just one time, sweetheart, then I'll gostraight away and never see you again!'
"And that night, true to your promise, you did go away, but I followedyou to the gates--and when I saw horses ready saddled there to takeyou away from me, the high resolves I had made came fluttering toearth. I put my hands up to your face and kissed you. During all thegiddy joy of that day's confessional I had kept from doing this,but--not when I saw you leaving!
"'I wish that this kiss could mark your cheek--and let all the worldknow that you are mine,' I whispered, shivering against you in thatfirst madness of fear over losing you.
"'You've made a mark!' you laughed fondly. 'A mark that I shall carryall the days of my life.'
"But I was still fearful.
"'You may know that you are marked, but how will the world--how willother women know that you are mine?'
"'The world shall know it,' you declared, brushing back my hair andkissing me again. 'There will never be another woman in my life--andsome day, when I can paint your portrait, it will certainly know then.To me you are so very beautiful.'"
Another letter was just a note, addressed to London, and evidentlywritten in great haste to catch a delayed post-bag.
"Oh, my dear, that orange tree of ours--that you and I plantedtogether that day--is putting out tiny blossoms! Do you suppose it isa happy omen, Jim? How I have worked with it through this drearywinter--and now to think that it is blooming!
"Your dear hands have touched it! It is a living thing which canreceive my caresses and repay their tenderness by growing tall andstrong and beautiful--like you. Do you wonder that I love it?
"When you come again I shall take you out to see it, and we shall walksoftly up to the shelf where it stands--so carefully, to keep fromjarring a single leaf--and we shall separate the branches, still verycarefully, to look down at the little new stems. And, Jim--Jim--theblossoms will be like starry young eyes looking up at us! The pink,faintly-showing glow will be as delicate as a tiny cheek, when sleephas flushed it--and the petals will close over our fingers with allthe clinging softness of a helpless little clutch!
"We will be very happy for a little while, but, because I am savageand resentful over our delayed joy, I shall cry on your shoulder andsay it's cruel--_cruel_--that you and I have only this plant to lovetogether."
After this came two or three more, like it, then I reached for onewhich brought a misty wetness to my eyes. The lover was gone--quitegone--and the woman had seemed to feel that they would meet no more.
... "At other times I remember all the months which have gone by sincethen--and the miles of dark water which roll between your land andmine. God pity the woman who has a lover across the sea!
"_Am_ I sorry that I sent you away? You ask me this--yet how can you!How many letters I have written, bidding you, nay _begging_ you tocome back--how many times have I dropped them into the post-bag inthe hall--then, after an hour's thought, have run in terror andsnatched them out again!
"I am trying so hard to be good! Can I hold out--just a little whilelonger? I am going to die young, remember, and that is the one hopewhich consoles me! It used to be that I shrank from the medical menwho told me this--who told me with their pitying eyes and gravelooks--but now I welcome their gravity. Sir Humphrey Davy has writtena letter to my husband, advising him to send me off to Italy for thisi
ncoming winter--but I shall not go! 'I fear that dread phthisis inthe rigor of English cold,' he writes--but for me it can not come toosoon!
"... Yet all the time the knowledge haunts me that our lives arepassing! I can not bear it! I spend the hours out in the garden--wherethe sun-dial tells me--all _silently_--of the day's wearing on.
"Since you went away I can not listen to the sound of the clock in thehall. That chime--that holy trustful chime--'O Lord, our God, be Thouour Guide,' shames the unholy prayer on my lips.
"Then the clock ticks, ticks, ticks--all day--all night--on, and on,and on--to remind me of our hearts' wearying beats! Does this thoughtever come to madden you? That our hearts have only so many times tothrob in this life--and when we are apart every pulsation is wasted?"
I thrust this letter back into its place--then hastily closed down thedesk. The sensation of reading a thing like that is not pleasant. Shehad written with an awful, _awful_ pain in her heart--and she hadlived before the days of anesthetics!
"Women don't feel things like that--now," I muttered, as I crossed theroom and lowered the curtain. "They--they have too many other thingsto divert them, I suppose!"
I knew, however, that I was judging everybody by myself, and certainly_I_ had never known an awful hurt like that.
"Why, I could listen to a _taximeter_ tick--for a whole year--whileGuilford was away from me, and I don't believe it would make menervous for a sight of him."
I was considerably disgusted with myself for my callousness as I cameto this conclusion, however, and I sat down in the window, overlookingthe tiny strip of rose-garden to think it out. Presently I crossed theroom again to the desk.
_"I'm_ not going to jest at scars--even if I haven't felt a wound!" Idecided, once and for always.
I opened the desk then and gathered up the letters, packet by packet,tying them into one big bundle.
"Publish these--heart-throbs!"
I was so furious that I could have gagged Uncle Lancelot if he hadopened his mouth--which he didn't dare do! In this respect he andgrandfather are very much like living relatives. They'll argue withyou through ninety-nine years of indecision, but once you've made upyour mind irrevocably they close their lips into a sullensilence--saving their breath for "I told you so!"
"I don't see how anybody could have thought of such blasphemy!" I kepton. "It would be like a vivisection! That's what people want though,nowadays--they won't have just a book! They want to be present at aclinic!--They want to see others' hearts writhe--because they have nofeelings of their own!"
Then, after my thoughts had had time to get away from the past up intothe present and project themselves, somewhat spitefully, into thefuture, I made another decision, slamming the desk lid to accentuateit.
"I shall not publish them myself--nor ever give anybody else a chanceto publish them!" I declared. "By rights they are not really mine! Iam just their guardian, because Aunt Patricia couldn't take them onher journey with her--and some day I shall take them on a journey withme. To Colmere Abbey--that dream-house of mine! That's the thing todo! And burn them on the hearth in the library, where she likelyburned his--if she did burn them! Of course I can't run the risk ofwhat the next generation might do!"
This last thought tormented me as I fell asleep.
"No, I can not hand those letters down to my daughters," I decideddrowsily, being in that hazy state where the mind traverses unheard-offields--unheard-of for waking thought--and queer little twistingdecisions come. "They would _never_ be able to understand!"
I was aroused by this hypothesis into sudden wakefulness.
"Of course they could not understand--me or my feelings!" I muttered,sitting up in bed and facing the darkness defiantly. "They _could_not--if--_if_ they were Guilford's daughters, too!"
Amazing Grace, Who Proves That Virtue Has Its Silver Lining Page 4