by Frank Harris
CHAPTER IV
Laura in the last phases
I HAD BEEN married a year or more and had returned to London and taken up my ordinary life when one day I got a letter from Laura, asking if she might call on me in my bachelor house in Kensington Gore. I never was so rejoiced in my whole life. My six months' honeymoon had wearied me and the life in Park Lane was simply tiresome, to a degree. I begged her to come at once, and a day or two later Laura came to me in the room where we had met so often. She was as lovely as ever, but at first withdrawn and strangely quiet.
"I wanted to see if you had forgotten me," she said.
"I could as soon forget my own soul," I answered; and our eyes met- hers were inscrutable but slowly turned into a question.
"Then why did you marry?" she exclaimed.
"Why did you lie and go abroad?" I countered.
"My mother's health," she replied.
"Why didn't you tell me?" I attacked.
"I hoped to be back before it would matter to you," she answered.
"Always your mother between us," I said.
"Nothing is altered, then," she went on, "you care for me as much as ever?"
"More, I am afraid," I replied, and it was indeed less than the truth. She was as beautiful to me as ever-more beautiful; in fact, infinitely attractive. Her very faults were dear to me. The worst of it was I could never quite believe in her affection, I don't know why: I never did, either earlier, or then, or later: that was the tragic background of our intimacy.
She assured me that no young man had gone abroad with them and that she cared for no one but me; and I told her how I had seen her with her mother at the station in Bologna, and how terribly it had affected me, making me realize my awful blunder. She put her arms round me at this, and our lips met, and at once hers grew hot.
"Will you come to our room, dear?" I asked.
She nodded her head: "Our room, indeed!" And we went upstairs together. In a few minutes she had undressed, and I lifted her into the bed, taking her chemise off as she lay: her superb form brought heat into my eyes. She was braver than she had been in the past; she made no resistance now, as she often used to make before, and as I began to kiss her, I couldn't but admire the exquisite beauty of her form and sex. Never surely was any one more perfect.
For some time I kissed her before she gave any sign of emotion. Then suddenly she called me, "Frank"; and when I lifted myself to answer, she drew me into her arms. "How could you, how could you? You dear, naughty boy! How could you leave me? When I love you more than all the world," and she broke into a flood of tears.
"Why didn't you say so?" I replied. "If you had, I should have been faithful."
"I never felt you cared," she answered, drying her tears, "I even feared you loved your wife till I saw her the other day, then I laughed and wrote to you; I was sure you couldn't love her as you had loved me. Oh, Frank, what hours we have had!"
"The Gods hate human happiness," I said, "that is why I have lost you. But now let us begin again. Come to me on our three holy days-Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday; tell me what you want frankly and I shall try to meet all your desires."
"They have been pressing me to marry some one," she said; "father has lost money again, but I have refused. If you could help me, it would make it easier."
"I am glad to do it, so glad! I shall give you more than before. Life is going to change and we shall come together yet."
"I love you," she replied, "and only you. I ought to have made that clear, but when we give ourselves, we women, we are apt to think that the man must know we are his and belong to him absolutely, and we are a little ashamed of it."
"You dear," I answered. "I ought to have guessed it; but let us begin again and bring love to a higher perfection."
I had never felt such passionate admiration for any other woman: the beauty of her figure appealed to me intensely, and the mere touch of her firm flesh thrilled me as no one else had ever done. I cannot explain the magnetism, the intensity of the attraction and the passion she inspired in me. Life would have reached its highest through my connection with her if it hadn't been for one thing.
I don't know why, but I was never sure of Laura's love; and that caused in me a curious reflex action: I never tried to give her the greatest sum of pleasure that I possibly could. I often stopped embracing just when she was most passionate, out of a sort of revenge that sprang from hurt vanity. This passion of vanity is the most cruel master of mankind-a very God. Who that has read them can ever forget Blake's lines:
Nought loves another as itself
Nor venerates another so
Nor is it given unto thought
A greater than itself to know.
Why did I doubt Laura's love? I remember once an article appearing in a London paper, putting me among the first writers of the time and declaring that I was a better talker even than Oscar Wilde. It was by Francis Adams, I think. I paid no attention to it, but Laura brought it to me one day in huge excitement wanting to know: "Had I seen it? Who was the writer? Was it true? Had I written a story called Mantes the Matador- 'one of the great stories of the world,' this critic says?"
Her astonishment was so unfeigned that I realized she didn't know me at all. I recalled the fact that at the beginning of our acquaintance, when I told her I would make money within a year or so, she didn't believe me, but went off and grew to care for some one else because she thought I should always be hard up as I was when we first met.
I remember, too, her astonishment when she saw my first articles on Shakespeare. "But how can you be sure," she said, "that he grew as you have depicted him?"
She had not the remotest conception of my intelligence or what I could do in literature; and love is, above everything, I said to myself, divination. One loves because one feels the utmost power of mind, of character, of soul in the beloved. Always I was sure that Laura did not love me, had never loved me; and I punished her for it by my restraints. Yet now and then she reached greatness.
It was after this first reconciliation, just when she had dressed and was standing before the glass, that she found a great word. We had resolved to meet on the next Tuesday. I had given her the latch key to the front door: she suddenly turned and kissed me. "Ah, you bad boy, you have taught me everything, Frank; but not how to do without you."
What could I do but kiss her while tears burnt my eyes. This was the beginning of love's renewal. From that day on we met three times a week for the next three years till my wife sold my bachelor house without my consent and forced us to meet elsewhere.
Even before this, Laura had told me of a rich man who wanted to marry her: he was an invalid, she said, and only wished to secure her in possession of his fortune before he died. I found out later it was partly true: but a certain coolness between us had come again, chiefly through her jealousy. I had a servant who happened to be very pretty: I had never made up to her: devoted to Laura, I scarcely looked at any one else; but one day I was late and found Laura furious.
"Your maid was rude to me," she declared; "you must get rid of her or I won't come again!"
I bowed my head and assured her that next time she should not be bothered.
When she went away, I called the maid, and for the first time noticed that she was well made and pretty. "Why were you rude?" I asked. "I wasn't rude first," she answered; "but when she was rude, I answered back; do you mind very much?" she went on, coming towards me, with challenging eyes.
"I don't like rudeness," I answered.
What devil is it in a man to make him desire at all times the Unknown, the new? It has never been explained, and never can be explained rationally. It is the primary urge, the keenest desire of the male; and the individual is not responsible for it in the smallest degree. He was fashioned in the far past of time, a creature of unregulated, impassioned desires.
Desires now surged over me in a hot wave, and I took her into my arms and kissed her. Ten minutes later I had stripped her, reveling in the beauty
of a slight girlish figure and extraordinary courage. In a quarter of an hour I realized that she was a seductive mistress, endowed with a passion that matched mine, and little cunning ways and turns of speech that pleased me by their cockney originality: she was really, as the French say, "some one!"
"Oh, oh," she cried the first time. "I won't ask you again for more kisses: my heart's in my mouth and flutters there-no, no more-I'm near hysterics! Kiss and part friends! I hope there's nothing to fear?"
"Nothing," I replied; "you can trust me!"
"Then," she cried cheekily as she began to dress, "Kensington Gore is quite a good place to live in."
I recall another scene later. For days she had been thoughtful and gone about heavy-eyed. Suddenly one morning she was her old gay self again; she came laughing into my bedroom with my tea, and when I asked her what had chased away the clouds, she struck an attitude. "You can't guess?" I shook my head.
"I always say," she went on, smiling cheekily, "all's well that end's unwell!"
I couldn't but laugh.
For some time she attended to all my wants and desires with great cleverness, leaving the older housemaid to take her place whenever Laura visited me.
She entertained me with frank stories of her early life. She had been naughty as a girl, she said, especially with one boy, and had given herself at fourteen to her first master, a married solicitor. She loved love, she confessed, and couldn't live without it; but she took everything lightly, and as soon as my passion was satisfied and I knew all her past, I lost interest in her: there was nothing extraordinary in her, either in face or figure or mind, and so I quickly grew to indifference.
At first I found myself putting Laura off more than once to enjoy Sadi- I could not call her "Sarah," though that was her name. But when she saw that I preferred Laura and was really devoted to her, Sadi suddenly left me with a letter, saying that she knew I preferred my "American, though she doesn't love you and will cheat you yet."
Strange creatures, women, to whom love lends a certain intuition!
Early in this year Laura spoke of the Passion Play as given by the peasants at Oberammergau in the Bavarian Alps. I had seen it in 1880 and had greatly admired the way Plunger played the Christ and Lechner the Judas. It would be a great holiday, I thought, so I proposed to take her and her mother for the opening performance in May.
Early in the month we all three went to Munich and stayed at my old hotel, the Vier Jahreszeiten. I was still remembered there and accordingly we were well received, and a couple of days later in the bright sunshine we took the train for Oberau. On the way I told them something about the Passion Play which we were going to see.
It has been played every ten years since 1634 with only two interruptions; an extra presentation in 1815 to celebrate the Great Peace, and another in 1871 to conclude the series interrupted by the Franco-German war. The history of it is almost an epitome of the changes in religious thought of these last centuries.
In the early drama, Lucifer had been one of the leading characters; and in 1740 9. monk named Rosner introduced comic incidents and gave Satan many attendant imps and demons, who strutted and gambolled about the stage, making the groundlings grin, until 1800. In consequence of these extravagances, the performance was almost forbidden in 1810; but the play was remodelled and limited to the simple Biblical narrative. In 1840 Pastor Daisenberger revised the text of the play and gave it much of its present reverence and charm.
The railway in 1890 ran as far as the Oberau station, within a short drive of the village: and the drive to the Ettal Monastery was by a new and infinitely more beautiful road than the one I remembered. Oberammergau itself had come to be a most flourishing village. At the dissolution of the Ettal Monastery the land was divided among the neighboring villagers and had made them extremely prosperous: every house showed comfort and well being.
As we drove into Oberammergau I told Laura an amusing experience. In 1880, going early to the first performance of the Passion Play, I suddenly noticed a curiously caparisoned figure standing in the wings, as if about to come on.
"Who is that?" I asked the village magnate who accompanied me.
"That," he said; "oh! that's Adam waiting to be created."
Laura laughed merrily.
The scenery was really splendid; high above us towered the Kopelberg, surmounted by a glittering cross. I had ordered tickets in advance and the proprietor of the Vier Jahreszeiten had secured for us the best accommodation in the inn. But alas, the village innkeeper, reading of a visit by mother, daughter, and one man, gave us one large bedroom with three beds: and when Laura's mother declared that she wouldn't have me in the room, the maid said it was quite easy to put up a Scheidewand, and brought in a little screen not three feet high, which shocked the American Puritanism of Laura's mother so that I thought she would have a fit. I went away and quickly got a couple of rooms at the forester's house.
Everyone knows that the performances at Oberammergau are given in an open-air theatre: that is, the stage and the lower part of the stalls next the stage are in the open air: fortunately there is a cover for the more highly placed spectators, chiefly Americans and English, which protects them both from the sun and rain. The stage is more than quaint: on the left a wide space; on the right a small stage, before which hangs a curtain; further to the right the horse of Annas, the High Priest; on the left, the house of Pilate-the whole outlook framed, so to speak, by green hills and blue sky.
The booming of a cannon tells us that the play is about to begin. You see half of the Old Testament pictures before any of the New; the slaying of Abel, the sacrifice of Isaac, the affliction of Job.
The music, however, was really good and redeemed the trivialities of the first scenes. The orchestra, of course, was in front of the stage. The music, I learned, was written by one Dedler at the beginning of the century, and excellent music it is. It must be admitted that when the curtain drops after each scene, the effect grows in intensity through the harmony of colors and the fine grouping of the figures. All the costumes are taken from old pictures, and the arrangements this year were in the hands of the stage manager of the Munich Court Theatre and Opera-House; and so were all super-excellent, from the children bearing palm branches to the crowd assembled at the entry of Christ into Jerusalem to the singing of hosannas.
I was dreadfully disappointed in the impersonator of Christ, Joseph Maier, but then I had the memory of Plunger, who was a real genius just as the new Judas, one Zwinc, was nothing like as good as Lechner had been ten years before. Maier hadn't the face of Christ; his expression was that of the fighter rather than of the saint; yet, in spite of his bad acting, the agony in Gethsemane set every one in the great audience weeping; and the crucifixion scene must always remain among the imperishable memories of those who saw blood streaming from his hands and feet; then a soldier pierces his side, the last words are uttered, and the great life seems to be finished.
After some discussion Joseph of Arimathea begs the body and the disciples, with Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus, bear it away to burial.
Then comes the Resurrection and the Ascension, which made no deep impression on me.
The one player who really rose to the height of the drama was a newcomer, one Rosa Lang, who played Mary, the mother of Jesus. She showed superbly the mother's joy and pride in her son, her sorrow at parting, her sympathy with him in affliction, her agony at the foot of the cross.
The idea seemed to occur to no one that this is not at all the way that the mother of Jesus is pictured in the Bible. But of course the usual mother business had to be played at Oberammergau; and thanks to a good actress, the performance was wonderfully effective. Long before the close, Laura and her mother, as well as the five thousand spectators, were sobbing as if their hearts would break.
Strange to say, however, none of us wanted to go back and see the play again the next day. We all preferred to keep the memory of it alive and for some time we went for long drives through th
e Bavarian highlands. After three or four days, however, Laura's mother thought she would like to see it again, and with much difficulty I got one seat for her; and of course no more could be gotten for love or money, so Laura came and spent the afternoon with me in my room-four hours never to be forgotten.
Who can tell of love-encounters with the same person and intensify interest by bringing something new into each recital? It was love, I suppose, real affection, that made many of our meetings memorable. Here in this bedroom I was surprised by the intensity of her passion; her emotions always seemed to determine her sensations. "You have given me so much," she said, "made the long journey so delightful, and now the unforgettable memory of how the Jesus story was made living and vivid-a part of my being forever, I want to thank you and reward you if I can!"
"Oh, you can," I cried; "let yourself go once with all your heart and I shall be rewarded."
And she did as I asked: for the first time she threw reserve to the winds and met every movement of mine with appropriate response, and finally loved me in turn and showed herself as clever as any French woman in rousing passion to intensity.
And as I began later to kiss her again and excite her, she cried, "I am drained of feeling there, dear; but kiss my breasts, for they burn and throb, and my lips, for I love you."
As we went out two hours later we met the forester's daughter with a girl friend who took Laura in with sidelong appraising glance.
Whenever I think of Laura and the great days we spent together, the superb verses of Baudelaire come back to me:
The night grew deep between us like a pall, And in the dark I guessed your shining eyes, And drank your breath, O Sweet, O Honey-gall!
Your little feet slept on me sister-wise, The night grew deep between us like a pall.