by Sax Rohmer
“I don’t know; but — if you knew how I’ve longed and longed to be able to go to London, among people who understand; to get away from these men and women who are really half vegetables!”
Paul laughed gaily. “But you love the country?”
“I could not live long away from it. But the people! And I love the birds and the animals, and — oh!” — her voice rose excitedly— “don’t kill it!”
A wasp was humming dangerously about Paul’s head, and although his love of all things that had life was as strong as Flamby’s, the self-protective instinct had led him to endeavour to knock the wasp away. Now, Flamby extending one motionless hand, the gaudily-striped insect alighted upon her finger and began busily to march from thence to the rosy tip of the next, and so on until it reached Flamby’s little curved thumb. Holding the thumb upright, so that the wasp stood upon a miniature tower, she pursed her lips entrancingly and blew the insect upon its way as gently as if borne upon a summer zephyr.
“They only sting if you hurt them,” she explained; “and so would you!”
“But,” said Paul, who had watched the incident wonderingly, “if all insects were permitted to live unmolested, and all animals for that matter, the world would become uninhabitable for man.”
“I know,” replied Flamby pensively— “and I cannot understand why nature is so cruel.”
Paul studied the piquant, sun-kissed face with a new interest. “Flamby,” he said earnestly, “one day you will be a great artist.”
She looked into his eyes, but only for a moment, turned and fled. There were a hundred things he had wanted to say to her, a hundred questions he had wanted to ask. But off she ran along the margin of the wood, and where a giant elm stood, a forest outpost at a salient, paused and waved her hand to him.
VII
For all the exquisite sympathy of his nature and intuitive understanding of others, there was a certain trait in the character of Paul Mario not infrequently found in men of genius. From vanity he was delightfully free, nor had adulation spoiled him; but his interest in the world was strangely abstract, and his outlook almost cosmic. He dreamed of building a ladder of stars for all earth-bound humanity, and thought not in units, but in multitudes. Picturesque distress excited his emotions keenly, and sometimes formed ineffaceable memories, but memories oddly impersonal, little more than appreciations of sorrow as a factor in that mystic equation to the solving of which he had bent all his intellect.
On the other hand he was fired by a passionate desire to aid; nor when occasion had arisen had he hesitated to sacrifice self for another’s good. But such altruism was born of impulse and never considered. The spectacle of the universe absorbed him, and listening for the Pythagorean music of the spheres he sometimes became deaf to the voices of those puny lives about him. His attention being called to them, however, his solicitude was sweet and sincere, but once removed from his purview they were also dismissed from his mind; and because of his irresistible charm there were some who wept to be so soon forgotten. His intellect was patrician — almost deiform in the old Roman sense. Probably all great masters have been similarly endowed, for if in order that one shall successfully conduct a military campaign he must think in armies and not in squads, so, if another would aspire to guide Thought, presumably must he think in continents. It does not follow that he shall lack genius for love and friendship, but merely that he cannot distract his mind in seeking out individual sorrows. The physician tends the hurts of the body, the priest ministers to the ills of the spirit; Paul Mario yearned to heal the wounds of a stricken world.
But Flamby interested him keenly, and therefore he draped her in a mantle of poesy, obscuring those shades displeasing to his sensibilities; as, an occasional coarseness due to association with her father; and enhancing her charms and accomplishments. Her beauty and spirit delighted the æsthete, and her mystery enthralled the poet. She had feared Sir Jacques. Why? Paul toyed with the question in his own fashion and made of Hatton Towers a feudal keep and of his deceased uncle a baron of unsavoury repute. The maid Flamby, so called because men had likened the glory of her hair to a waving flambeau, he caused to reside in a tiny cottage beneath the very shadow of Sir Jacques’ frowning fortress; and the men-at-arms looking down from battlement and bartizan marvelled when the morning wove a halo around the head of the witch’s daughter. (In the poem-picture which grew thus in his mind as he swung along towards Hatton, Mrs. Duveen had become even more shrivelled than nature had made her; her eyes had grown brighter and her earrings longer).
Word of the maid’s marvellous comeliness reaching Sir Jacques, he won entrance to the cottage crouching against his outer walls, disguised as a woodman; for the mighty weald had reclaimed its own in the period visited by Paul’s unfettered spirit and foresters roamed the greenwood. He wooed maid Flamby, employing many an evil wile, but she was obdurate and repulsed him shrewdly. Whereupon he caused Dame Duveen to be seized as a weaver of spells and one who had danced before Asmodeus at the Witches’ Sabbath to music of the magic pipe. To serve his end Sir Jacques invoked inhuman papal witch-law; the stake was set, each faggot laid. But by stratagem of a humble cowherd who loved her with a fidelity staunch unto death, Flamby secured the Dame’s escape and the two fled together covertly, through the forest and by night....
VIII
A few paces beyond the giant elm, Flamby paused, breathless, looking down at the drawing which she held in her hand. Then turning, she retraced her steps until she could peep around the great trunk of the tree. Thus peeping she stood and watched Paul Mario until, coming to the stile at the end of the meadow, he climbed over and was hidden by the high hedgerow.
Flamby looked at the sketch again, seized it as if to tear the board across; then changed her mind, studied the drawing attentively, smiled, and looked straight before her, but not at anything really visible. She was dreaming, as many another had dreamed who had heard Paul Mario’s voice and looked into Paul Mario’s eyes. From these maiden dreams, which may not be set down because they are formless, like all spiritual things, her mind drifted into a channel of reflection.
The memory of Paul’s voice came back again and thrilled her as though he had but just spoken. She grew angry because she had imagined his voice to resemble that of Sir Jacques. Poor little Flamby, the very name of Sir Jacques was sufficient to make her shudder, to cast black shadows upon the sunny fields of her dream-world. She dared not believe that Paul’s interest was sincere and disinterested — yet her heart believed it.
Almost the earliest recollection of her young womanhood was of a man’s interest in her welfare; that was at the big racing stables in Yorkshire where her father had trained for Lord Loamhurst. Flamby was thirteen, then, and already her beauty, later to develop into that elfin loveliness which had excited the wonder of Don, was unusual. The man in question was his lordship’s nephew, and his interest had grown so marked that Michael Duveen had spoken to him, had received an insolent reply and had struck down the noble youth with one blow of his formidable fist. The episode had terminated Duveen’s career as a trainer.
Thereafter had begun the nomadic life, with its recurrent phases of brawls, drunken debauches by her father, occasional brief intervals of prosperity and longer ones of abject poverty. Lower Charleswood had seemed as an oasis in the wilderness and the employment offered by Sir Jacques too bountiful to be real. Nevertheless, it was real enough, and all went well for a season. Michael Duveen gave the bottle a go-by, and the first real home that Flamby had known established its altars in Dovelands Cottage. The understanding between father and daughter was complete and was rendered more perfect by the necessity for companionship experienced by both. Poor Mrs. Duveen possessed the personality of a chameleon, readily toning with any background; but intellectually she was never present. Why Michael Duveen had selected such a mate was a mystery which Flamby, who loved her mother the more dearly for her helplessness, could never solve. It was a mystery to which Duveen, in his darker moods, devoted himse
lf cruelly, and many were the nights that Flamby had sobbed herself to sleep, striving to deafen her ears to the hateful insults and merciless taunts which Duveen would hurl at his wife.
Following such an outburst, Michael Duveen would exhibit penitence which was almost as shocking as his brutality — but it was always to Flamby that he came for forgiveness, bringing some love-gift which he would proffer shamefacedly, tears trembling in his eyes.
“Ask your mother to come into town with me, Flamby asthore; I’ve seen a fine coat at Dale’s that’ll make her heart glad.”
It was invariably the same, and never was the olive branch rejected for a moment by his long-suffering wife. Hers was the dog-like fidelity which men of Duveen’s pattern have the gift of inspiring in women, and had he been haled to the felon’s dock she would gladly and proudly have stood beside her man. So the years stole by, and Flamby crept nearer to womanhood and closer to her father’s heart. The drinking-bouts grew less frequent and only once again did Duveen offer violence to his wife. It was on the occasion of a house-party at Hatton Towers, and a racy young French commercial man who was one of Sir Jacques’ guests fell to the lure of Flamby’s ever increasing charms.
Flamby, who now was wise with a wisdom possessed by few women, and who could confound a gallant with the wit of Propertius, or damn his eyes like any trooper, amused herself with the overdressed youth, and ate many expensive chocolates. Mistaking the situation, and used to the complaisance of the French peasant, M. le Petit-Maitre presented himself at Dovelands Cottage and made certain overtures of a financial nature to Mrs. Duveen. Between his imperfect English, his delicate mode of expressing the indelicate, and his great charm, poor Mrs. Duveen found confusion, brewed tea and reported the conversation to her husband.
Michael Duveen grew black with wrath, and, taking up a heavy dish from the table, he hurled it at the poor, foolish woman. As he did so the door opened and Flamby came in. The dish, crashing against the edge of the door, was shattered and a fragment struck Flamby’s bare arm, inflicting a deep wound.
Like a cloak discarded, Duveen’s wrath fell from him at sight of the blood on that soft round arm. He was a man suddenly sick with remorse; and, to the last, the faint scar which the wound left was as a crucifix before which he abased himself. He did not even thrash the Frenchman, but was content with sending to that astonished gallant an acknowledgment of his offer couched in such pure and scathing French prose that it stung more surely than any lash.
Duveen’s was a strange nature, and to Flamby, as her powers of observation grew keener, he presented a study at once fascinating and mournful. He had deeper scholarship than many a man who holds a university chair; he knew the classics as lesser men know their party politics; and the woodlands, fields and brooks, with their countless inhabitants, held no mysteries for him. Yet he was content to be as Flamby had always known him — a manual labourer. The larder of Dovelands Cottage was well stocked, winter and summer alike, and Mrs. Duveen, who accepted what the gods offered unquestioningly, never troubled to inquire how folks so poor as they could procure game and fish at all proper seasons. Fawkes could have enlightened her; but there was no man in Lower Charleswood, or for that matter in the county, of a hardihood to cross Michael Duveen. Furthermore, Sir Jacques, who was a Justice of the Peace, would hear no ill of him. Finally, one bitter winter’s morning in the first year of the war, Flamby learned why.
Sir Jacques, for the first time since the Duveens had resided there, crossed the threshold of Dovelands Cottage, bringing a letter which he had received from Duveen, then newly arrived in Flanders. That memorable visit was the first of many; and the diabolical patience with which Sir Jacques for over two years had awaited his opportunity was further exemplified in his conduct of the affair now that he was truly entered upon it.
At his first word of greeting, Flamby read his secret and her soul rose up in arms; by the time that he took his departure she doubted her woman’s intuition — and wondered. Such was the magic of the silver voice, the Christian humility expressed in the bearing of that black figure. And when he had come again, and yet again, the first, true image began to fade more and more, and she listened with less and less misgiving to the words of encouragement which he bestowed upon her drawings. Her father, although himself no draughtsman, understood art as he understood all that was beautiful, and had taught her the laws of perspective and the tricks of the pencil as he had taught her the ways of the woodland and of the creatures who dwelt there. On her sixteenth birthday he had presented Flamby with a complete water-colour outfit, together with a number of text books; and many a golden morning had they spent together in solving the problem of why, although all shadows look black, some are really purple and others blue, together with kindred mysteries of the painter’s craft.
Now came Sir Jacques, a trained critic and collector, with helpful suggestion and inspiring praise. He made no mistakes; his suggestions held no covert significance, his praise was never extravagant. Miss Kingsbury, of High Fielding, the local Lady Butler, hearing of Sir Jacques’ protégée, as she heard of everything else in the county, sent a message of honeyed sweetness to Flamby, desiring her to call and bring some of her work. Flamby had never forgotten the visit. The honey of Miss Kingsbury was honey of Trebizond, and it poisoned poor Flamby’s happiness for many a day. Strange is the paradox of a woman’s heart; for Flamby, well knowing that this spinster’s venom was a product of jealousy — jealousy of talent, super-jealousy of youth and beauty — yet took hurt from it and hugged the sting of cruel criticism to her breast. In this, for all her engrafted wisdom, she showed herself a true limb of Eve.
It was Sir Jacques who restored her confidence, and Sir Jacques who seized the opportunity to invite her to study the works in his collection. The original image of the master of Hatton Towers (which had possessed pointed ears and the hoofs of a goat) was faded by this time, and was supplanted by that of a courtly and benevolent patron. Flamby went to Hatton Towers, and meeting with nothing but kindness at the hands of Sir Jacques, went again many times. With the art of a Duc de Richelieu, Sir Jacques directed her studies, familiarising her mind with that “broad” outlook which is essential to the artist. It was done so cleverly that even Flamby the wise failed to recognise whither the rose-strewn path was tending, and might have pursued it to the end but that Fate — or Pan, god of the greenwood, jealous of trespass — intervened and unmasked the presumptuous Silenus.
Like one of those nymphs to whom Don had detected her resemblance, Flamby, throughout the genial months, often betook herself at early morning to a certain woodland stream far from all beaten tracks and inaccessible from the highroads. Narcissi carpeted the sloping banks above a pool like a crystal mirror, into which the tiny rivulet purled through forest ways sacred to the wild things and rarely profaned by foot of man. In their shy, brief hour, violets lent their sweetness to the spot, and at dusk came quiet creatures afoot and awing timidly to slake their thirst at the magic fountain. A verdant awning, fanlike, swayed above, and perhaps in some forgotten day an altar had stood in the shady groves which protected all approaches to this pool whereby Keats might have dreamed his wonder dreams.
One morning as she stepped out like Psyche from her bath, and stood for a moment where an ardent sunbeam entering slyly through the bower above wrapped her in golden embrace, upon that sylvan mystery intruded a sound which blanched the roses on Flamby’s cheeks and seemed to turn her body to marble. It was a very slight sound, no more than a metallic click; but like the glance of Gyges it stilled her heart’s beating. She had never known such helpless fear; for, without daring, or having power, to turn her head, she divined who hid beside the pool and the purpose of his coming.
In great leaps her heart resumed its throbbing, and Flamby, trembling and breathless, sprang into the undergrowth upon that side of the pool farthest from the high bank which masked the intruder and there crouched pitifully, watching. Another than she might have failed to discern him, so craftily did he crawl a
way; but Flamby, daughter of the woods, saw the wriggling figure, and knew it; moreover she knew, by the familiarity with the pathway which he displayed, that this was not the first time Sir Jacques had visited the spot.
She returned to the cottage, her courage restored and a cold anger in her breast, to find her mother alternately laughing and sobbing — because Michael Duveen would be home that day on leave. Whatever plan Flamby had cherished she now resigned, recognising that only by silence could she avert a tragedy. But from that morning the invisible guardians of the pool lamented a nymph who came no more, and the old joy of the woods was gone for Flamby. At one moment she felt that she could never again suffer the presence of Sir Jacques, at another that if she must remain in Lower Charleswood and not die of shame she must pretend that she did not suspect him to have been the intruder. The subterfuge, ostrich-like, woman-like, finally was adopted; and meeting Sir Jacques in Babylon Lane she managed to greet him civilly, employing her mother’s poor state of health as an excuse for discontinuing her visits to Hatton Towers. But if Flamby’s passionate spirit had had its way Sir Jacques that day must have met the fate of Candaules at the hands of this modern Nyssia.
* * * * * *
Standing there beneath the giant elm, Flamby lived again through the sunshine and the shadows of the past, her thoughts dwelling bitterly upon the memory of Sir Jacques and of his tireless persecution, which, from the time that she ceased her visits to Hatton Towers, became more overt and pursued her almost to the day of Sir Jacques’ death. Finally, and inevitably, she thought again of Paul Mario, and still thinking of him returned to Dovelands Cottage.
Mrs. Duveen had gone into the town, an expedition which would detain her for the greater part of the day, since she walked slowly, and the road was hilly. Therefore Flamby proceeded to set the house in order. A little red-breasted robin hopped in at the porch, peeped around the sitting-room and up at the gleaming helmet above the mantelpiece, then finding the apartment empty hopped on into the kitchen to watch Flamby at work. Sunlight gladdened the garden and the orchard where blackbirds were pecking the cherries; a skylark rose from the meadow opposite the cottage, singing rapturously of love and youth — so that presently, the while she worked, Flamby began to sing, too.